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Archive for July, 2012

Transcending through cultures

Posted in Recipes, Travel and Food Experiences, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 30, 2012| 3 Comments »

Last night I had a friend over who is headed back over to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. When she was here a few weeks ago, she bought a small flask of Al-Qahwa, (pronounced Ghe-wha) a Saudi Arabian coffee. It is completely sublime and I have been quite obsessed lately with this heady spiced coffee made with cardamom, saffron and cloves.

Roasted Coffee Beans, Green Coffee Beans, Cardamom, Saffron, Ground Cloves for Al-Qahwa

It is traditionally drunk from beautiful little glasses that are not filled up the whole way. Now, being quite the coffee fan, I am used to my large cappucino and so not to fill these beautiful little glasses all the way up requires a great deal of constraint on my behalf .

Al-Qahwa

According to Ya Salam Cooking  , “when serving you should pour enough coffee to fill the cup slightly more than one third, but definitely less than half as over filling indicates that the server is not hospitable and would like the guest to leave as quickly as possible.” Now, as you can see from my picture, this I did not achieve but truly it is because it is just so yummy…………..

My friend had brought me some bags of roasted coffee beans, unfrosted green coffee beans, cardamom, and a bag of the ground clove, ground cardamom and saffron spice mix she makes herself. To go with it she had brought the stickiest caramel tasting dates, Awamat, which are like crisp doughnut balls, you can find a recipe here and another yummy caramel tasting cake made with condensed milk but I can’t remember the name of it.

Awamat, dates and cake

I love how food is shared between cultures, I remember going to Japan about 15 years ago and staying with a Japanese friends family. The mother of my friend couldn’t speak a word of English, but wanted to show me how to have a traditional tea ceremony. It was lovely, no words needed, just a sharing of cultural traditions over tea. Similarly, Wafa has left me with a little part of her homeland, a shared tradition, that I will treasure.  I urge you to give it a try. It really is well worth the effort.

Al-Qahwa

Roast green coffee beans under the grill turning every 10 seconds until they are lightly toasted

1 tbspn full cream milk

1 1/2 tbspn cardamom

Pinch Saffron

Pinch ground cloves

Boiling water about 400 – 500 ml

Bring the water up to a high heat and add all the ingredients in. Bring to the boil, the top will be slightly frothy.

Let stand for a few minutes so the spices sink to the bottom before pouring.

Serve with a sweet treat such as sticky dates or baklava……..yum

TIP – As it is drunk slowly in small amounts, I would suggest popping this into a flask to save reheating it and then you can sip it over several hours, perfect for a girls afternoon tea.

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The Thrifty Kitchen

Posted in Book Reviews, Feed your Family on $50 a week, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I love cookbooks, I mean, I really love them. I have lots, but its just never enough.  I heard an interview with Nigella Lawson recently and she was saying she has over 4000. Well, I am not sure I could manage to even fit 4000 in my house but its certainly a nice idea!

This book, I bought a few years ago, and whilst is not in my aspirational, drool over category, it certainly has stood the test of time and is in my use regularly, practical and kid friendly category. I have just noticed it has gone into reprint, so others must agree.

This book is written by the daughter and granddaughter of the Grand Dame of Australian cooking Margaret Fulton. In the introduction her daughter Suzanne recalls her youth “We didn’t have alot, but you would never have guessed it from the food that we had at our table”……..and later, when talking about her family today; “We eat simply, the way I always have , and every meal is special. We cook together, set the table, share a bottle of wine and relax as we talk over the days activities, not unlike generations of our family have always done”

The book is a gorgeous insight into the way this family live complete with a pizza recipe contribution by Kates most adorable fiancee. (He does give credit to the woman who taught him this one, Kate’s grandmother; Margaret Fulton, Lucky him to learn from the best!!)

I think particularly when we become parents we start to question what we do, the way we live, and what our children will take out from their childhood. One of the things I have always wanted for Poppy was to have a childhood filled with an appreciation of the most delicious fresh produce, wonderful baking aromas and an understanding of how important food is not just as a sustenance, not just as a fuel but as a healthy, wonderful joy that has the ability to bring people together and nurture the soul.

Some years ago now whilst I was on maternity leave with Poppy and living three hours north of Perth, I loved having the time to pickle crayfish, make tomato chutney from the abundance of tomatoes in season that my neighbours would give me and to make masses of fig jam from the absolute glut of fresh figs that the 90 year old man from down the road would bring me in his white fishing bucket from his tree.

I would borrow books by Maggie Beer from the local library, copying her recipes into my tattered notebook because I couldn’t afford to actually buy the book. I would furiously make preserved lemons and every sort of jam with the local produce available. Most of this produce was excess, donated by a neighbour not wanting it to go to waste and I found that food cooked this way with shared produce connected people. It may have been destined to rot on the ground as it fell from a tree, but this donated fruit would be returned as a jam as a thank you, and in this process created the relationships that form communities.

In our modern life, we have become too busy, life too complex and too many take away meals have been eaten. I know my  soul craves the simplicity of a meal created with shared produce. I truly miss the simple pleasure of collecting eggs from my chickens or the satisfaction of giving scraps to the chooks, knowing that nothing in the house is left to waste.  Now, that I am in the process of changing my life and repurposing my business, I know that my connection and passion for food, slow and real food,  must play a pivotal role. It must be central to grounding my existence.

Books like The Thrifty Kitchen remind us of the power that food has. The power in its simplicity and freshness, of ingredients combined and shared, the unprocessed kind, that brings people together, the power that can bind communities and most importantly creates the memories that are the foundation of families everywhere.

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Chicken Soup for the Soul?

Posted in Chicken Recipes, Feed your Family on $50 a week, Recipes, tagged , , , , , on July 22, 2012| 1 Comment »

I have been listening to some lectures by Jack Canfield this week and he tells the story of how he came up with the name “Chicken Soup for the Soul” Jack is a big believer in meditation and had been meditating for three days asking what he believes is the infinite intelligence, source energy or God if you prefer, to help him with a title for his book. He says on the third day he saw a hand come out with the words chicken soup and he thought, “What on earth does that have to do with my book?!”

This voice inside his head said to him, “Well when you were little and you were sick, your Grandmother would always make you chicken soup” He said, “But this is not a book about sick people!” And then he realised;  peoples spirits were sick. The Gulf war had just ended, there had been a recession and people were uncertain. He mulled over “Chicken Soup for the Spirit” and finally rested on what we all now know as “Chicken Soup for the Soul” He says when that title came into his head, he had a shiver up his spine.

My daughter has been quite sick in the past few months and a good friend invited us over for dinner this week and she mentioned that she would make her “Bow Tie Soup” which would make Poppy feel better and it got me thinking. So many cultures around the world have their own version of a chicken soup that is not only nourishing but healing.

Now I was curious, is there any scientific evidence to support this? Or is this an old wives tale?

According to an article in the New York Times, chicken soup may be more effective at treating coughs than over the counter cough medicines. Given the lack of hard science to show that there is any benefit to using cough medicine, this is probably not a hard feat! There was, however a study completed in 2000, by Dr. Stephen Rennard of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha who using blood samples from volunteers,  showed that the soup inhibited the movement of neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell that defends against infection. Dr. Rennard theorizes that by inhibiting the migration of these infection-fighting cells in the body, chicken soup essentially helps reduce upper respiratory cold symptoms. This was interesting for me particularly because currently Poppy’s neutrophil levels are so low she is unable to fight off even the slightest infection.

There is something more to chicken soup and I think Jack Canfield has it in one. We give medicine to our children when they are sick, we give them cuddles, we tuck them up in bed and pick up their snotty tissues but often we are left feeling helpless, like we could somehow do more.

For me, it makes me feel better to cook Poppy nutritious and nurturing food. I am a fan of pureeing lots of veges and slipping them into meatballs, pasta and anything else I can sneak past her observant little tastebuds. For the Jewish, a child’s Bubbe, may make a Chicken Matzo Ball Soup, if you are in Italy, your Nonna would make you a Pastina en Brodo di Pollo, or Pastina in a Chicken Broth. If you are in Asia, a dose of Tom Yum or Tom Ka Gai would knock your illness on its head. It is fascinating that across so many cultures, variations on the same dish have evolved and are given for treatment of the same condition. 

Is this science or is this soul? A warm homemade chicken broth is simple, nutritious and it feeds our soul. Our child feels warmed and cared for. As a parent we feel like we have taken the extra step and nourished our child but the soup has another power. In the act of making, giving and feeding our child, our own soul is nurtured. It helps us to feel like we have done our best. We are helping to make them better away from the powerless feeling we so often have when dealing with doctors and pharmaceuticals. So last night I made up a big batch in the slow cooker and have about 4 litres of it waiting to be frozen and then used in various dishes.

Today it was a simple Chicken Soup with Poached Eggs from one of my favourite books “Cooking with Italian Grandmothers’ by Jessica Theroux , you can buy it here

Chicken Soup with Poached Eggs – adapted from Jesssica Theroux’s Cooking with Italian Grandmothers

First make your stock. I like things to be easy, so I do this in the slow cooker. I do however make the effort to buy a whole organic chicken for making a soup or stock. I think if its going to be for healing, then I want as much goodness as I can, but I know I will get a few good meals from this one.

I remove the breasts and thighs and put these aside for another meal and place the carcass and the wings in the slow cooker. I chop up 2 carrots and two sticks of celery roughly and pop these in too. 1/2 a lemon goes in. Apparently the acid from the lemon pulls the minerals from the chicken bones into the soup.

I set this on a low heat on the slow cooker overnight. I then strained it through a strainer and cooled and froze what I didn’t need for lunch today.

To make the soup for about 4-6 people…..

6 cups Chicken Broth lightly salted

3 cloves whole garlic peeled

4-6 eggs

2 tablespoons parsley or majoram (I used parsley simply because I have it growing outside)

Salt to taste

Freshly ground pepper

Bring the chicken broth to the boil and add the garlic. Reduce the heat and simmer covered for 10 minutes. Season to taste and remove the whole garlic cloves from the broth. Crack the eggs into small  bowls and while the broth is at a low simmer, add one egg at a time to the pot. (I must admit, I am not the perfect egg poacher and you can see from my picture, my eggs never end up in a perfect ball, its lucky it doesn’t affect the taste 😉 )

Once all the eggs have been added , place the lid on slightly ajar, be sure the flame is low, otherwise the broth could boil over, disrupting the eggs. If you prefer runny yolks (I do, it was delis having all that yolk burst open into the soup), cook for 3 minutes total. (I actually found I needed a little less than this).

To serve, spoon an egg into each bowl and ladle the broth over. Garnish with freshly chopped herbs, salt and black pepper. There are a number of additives to this dish that are delicious, olive oil, grated cheese and a scattering of sizzling bread crumbs are just a few examples.

This soup was delicious. Just perfect to warm up a winters day.

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Not just an aphrodisiac

Posted in Recipes, Travel and Food Experiences, tagged , , , , , on July 19, 2012| 1 Comment »

I am always intrigued by the  extraordinary ability that food has to bond people and create shared experiences. A shared meal allows the cook to experience the joy of creation and giving and the guest the experience of receiving and gratitude. I am often reminded of this when I watch Jamie Oliver present his lively, homely food on bread boards or giant platters for communal digging in and sharing. Even more than a formal meal served on fine crockery and the good cutlery, sometimes, the mish mash of second hand, non matching plates and platters and a cluster of cutlery in the middle of the table in an old jam jar creates an environment of closeness and intimacy.

After coming back from the US, we were really having some serious holiday withdrawals this last week and most of all had been talking about the sublime Hogwash and Sweetwaters oysters that we had had in San Francisco. I had once again become lost in a food market, swept up by rows and rows of chocolates I had never seen…….Chocolat Moderne Butter Toffee with Welsh Sea Salt Crumbled into Fine Dark Chocolate, or the Vosges Organic Enchanted Mushroom; Reishi mushrooms, walnuts and dark chocolate and the delicious Taza’a Mexican style stone ground Guajillo Chilli chocolate, not to mention the delicious Sunny Seeds; chocolate covered Sunflower seeds.

The boyfriend after snapping a few shots of me inspecting the fabulous produce had become bored and wandered off out of sight. When I emerged perhaps 1/2 an hour later, I was rather pleasantly surprised to find him at the Hog Island Oyster Bar just next to the market with an enormous oyster platter waiting to be devoured with a rather large glass of crisp white wine by its side! Here began our love affair with the American Oyster……..

We had the signature dressing, described in The Hog Island Oyster Lover’s Cookbook as “A savoury variation on the classic mignonette sauce – a vinegar and shallot topping for oysters – this sauce was developed by Mark Miller of Santa Fe’s Coyote Cafe. Michael Watchorn, cofounder of Hog Island Oyster Company, riffed on Mark’s original, adding cilantro and jalapeño, and it has since become Hog Island’s signature topping. The mixture of seasoned and unseasoned rice vinegar gives it the perfect balance of acidity and sweetness.”

And so, my food experiences merge. We decided to splurge a little and relive for a few minutes the sheer joy at eating a completely new flavour. The burst of sensation that fills your mouth, the widening of your eyes as your tastebuds ripple with excitement. As we ate Sydney Rock Oysters with Hogwash and Sweetwaters on a winters night back home, sitting around my kitchen bench, hardly a setting fit for such a meal, memories came flooding back with the taste of the sublime dressing, the view out to the waters of San Francisco Bay, the enthusiastic service delivered with gusto from the wait staff as our wine was refilled. That day spent wandering through the wharf, eating drinking and laughing now merged with a new shared experience. A plate of oysters, a whole fish, flavoured with the leftover herbs and chillis from the oysters and a bottle of sake around my kitchen bench. In that moment as I looked at my daughter and by boyfriend tucking into a shared meal with no plates, eaten straight of the budget platters they were served on, mismatched glasses and I felt that life was complete. A new perfect moment.

Hogwash and Sweetwaters taken from the The Hog Island Oyster Lover’s Cookbook 

1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar

1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar

1 large shallot, minced

1 large jalapeño chili, seeded and minced

1/2 bunch of leaves cilantro finely chopped ( I used coriander as I didn’t have any cilantro)

Juice of 1 lime

3 dozen Pacific or Eastern Oysers on the half shell, on a bed of crushed ice

In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients except for the oysters. Just before serving, stir the mixture to make sure you pick up all the goodies in the bowl. Top each oyster with a teaspoonful of the sauce. Serve immediately.

My only improvement to this recipe is that it is almost essential to serve this with a crisp white wine or live on the edge a little and serve with a little sake……….YUM……this is a recipe to save your spare change for, save…….and then savour…..every last mouthful.

Book available for purchase here

http://www.amazon.com/The-Island-Oyster-Lovers-Cookbook/dp/1580087353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342654885&sr=8-1&keywords=hog+island

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LA to San Francisco on an empty tummy……

Posted in Travel and Food Experiences, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Prior to all the drama of the last few days I had the opportunity of attending a conference in San Jose. Somehow in 2 days tacked onto the front of the trip and one day up our sleeve at the end, a road trip from LA to San Francisco was in order with a return trip and a day in LA at the end.

Travel is a funny thing. Some of us yearn for it, some of us are content to stay where we are. Me, I yearn for it. Its a feeling that I try and squash back down, I try and ignore it, for travel, or much of it anyway has been off the radar from some time due to the commitments and responsibilities of life. I feel like I come alive when stimulated my new sights and sounds and I travel primarily with my eyes and my tastebuds. Sometimes to the annoyance of travel companions who think there must be more to life than seeking out the next eatery to devour.  For me, my best travel experiences are those I remember by shutting my eyes and feeling the textures, the tastes flood back into my mouth.

The tastes take me back to the moment and the emotion, sights and sounds follow. I close my eyes and scan my travel memories and  I am taken back to simple but delicious banana pancakes from a food cart in Thailand, ginger fish in Bali,  the best Pad Thai ever in Cambodia, Japanese Okonomiyaki with delicious bulldog sauce cooked on a hotplate in the centre of a table of friends or the burst of a sour plum from a stall out the front of a temple in Japan and on this trip, for me the highlight was the oysters, I think I ate over 10 varieties of oysters, all different but all wonderful. (I promise I will share with you the recipe for best oyster dressing I have ever tasted in  a later post, not quite spare change cooking but we all need a little indulgence from time to time).  I was struck by the amazing produce in California. My perception of the US has changed forever. Its funny, I ended up in the US by chance, a chance stumble on the internet somehow lead up to me travelling up the west coast in a convertible.

Its funny but here in Australia, we rave about our produce, and granted we have wonderful produce, but the variety of mushrooms, species of plums and cherries, delicious seafood available in San Francisco, surely is second to none. I ate fresh plums in varieties I had never heard of and sour dried cherries at the markets, the best beans I’ve ever had at a local bistro in an out of the way suburb, salted caramel chocolate tart, an affagato to die for and macarons that were perfectly and deliciously chewy.

San Francisco has the highest number of restaurants per capita in the nation — 3,588, according to health department records; one for every 227 residents. (New York City has one restaurant per every 347 people.) Add to that a growing fleet of about 200 (and counting) licensed food trucks, some serving upscale fare like ahi tuna sliders and crème brûlée. (source The New York Times)

This has created a competitive thriving food culture. Sometimes in Australia I find that it can be exceedingly hard to find a restaurant that ticks all the boxes, exceptional food, exceptional service and exceptional atmosphere, particularly if you are not paying top dollar and even then, I have had some pretty bad service and some achingly unpleasant atmospheres. In the US, it seems that the tipping culture has created a service culture and the pros and cons of that are best left to another post. On this trip, I was happy to just enjoy the the wonderful experience of walking into an unknown restaurant and being delighted by the food and the service.

For me the hardest part about travelling is coming back to reality. The mundane reality of everyday life, the washing, the ironing, the constant demands of parenting. Sometimes I have a inkling in the back of my mind that it is better just not to go. If I somehow forget how much I love it, then perhaps I can be content at home. Every time I travel, I come home a little more unsettled, a little more restless, with a longing in the back of my heart to pack it all up,  just go and never come back. There is a freedom in travelling, a freedom from accountability, responsibility and I truly delight in the knowledge that no one really knows exactly where I am at any one time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mother, but sometimes when your mind wanders, you wonder, what if? What else could have been?

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Pasta…..oh how I love pasta…….

Posted in Feed your Family on $50 a week, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

So, this week was bad, like really bad. I had gone overseas for a conference and whilst I was away my daughter was admitted to hospital with severe pneumonia. A day after I returned she then had a really bad allergic reaction to the antibiotics she was on which was pretty scary all round, then as if anything else couldn’t go wrong. I ballsed up…….well and truly, like I  made the biggest stuff up at work ever! You know when you have that worst nightmare, the thing that you never want to do? Well I did it, its a horror story that I can’t even talk about yet!

So by 6am this morning, I was wide awake and seriously in need of some serious comfort cooking. Since I haven’t restocked the fridge since I got back and Poppy was still asleep, my options were limited. As I surveyed the cupboard, my eyes came to rest on Tipo “00”  flour…….my body breathed a sigh of relief, one of my favourite cuisines……….Italian. Like any good stressed out Italian, I turned to pasta making.

Well maybe not like all good Italians actually………as a side note…….when I discovered that my daughter was in the emergency department last week, I was in a hotel room in San Jose at 2am with my lovely Italian boyfriend whom I was travelling to the conference with. I was frantic, I couldn’t get hold of my mother whom was looking after my daughter and was calling everywhere I could think of. Finally as a last resort I called the local hospital. Truly when the phone answers “Emergency Department, Westmead Hospital” The last thing you want to hear when you ask if your daughter is there is the word “Yes”. My response was of course “Oh my God, she’s in emergency!” not knowing at that stage why or any details. The boyfriend is fumbling around over near the television in the hotel room and looks up at me upon hearing those words and says “Do you know how to use the percolator?”

Oh dear, well I suppose between my stress relief cooking and his emergency percolating we should be able to get through most crisis situations!

So take 400g of Tipo “00” flour, 4 large eggs and pop them into a food processor. I don’t have one of these so I just put into the kitchen aid with the dough hook until it started to come together. Then take it out and give it a bit of a knead till it is a bit smoother.

I then cut it into four pieces and cover the three I am not using with cling film.

Then flatten the piece out and start putting it through the pasta machine starting on the widest setting. You can do this with a rolling pin but you can pick up a pasta machine really cheaply, I think mine was maybe $20 at Victorias basement and it really is worth the investment. You can then make your own silken, luxurious pasta for a few dollars, and served with a few choice ingredients you have a seriously budget dish, that will impress anyone at the finest dinner party.

I fold the pasta over a few times before putting through again on the widest setting until I am happy that it is nice and smooth before then running through until I am happy with the thickness, for my machine I go down to #2 but they are all different.

I think folded the sheets of pasta over and then cut into long strips. I do like my strips quite wide when I am needing a little comfort. Somehow they seem that much more generous and indulgent.

I have put half of the pasta, well dusted with flour into a plastic container in the freezer for later and there is a lovely big mound of it drying on the bench, that I will just pop into some salted boiling water tonight. I am thinking perhaps…..well based on the current limitations of ingredients in my house and some serious shopping limitations with a still sick child…….perhaps a creamy broccoli, parmesan, garlic and pine nut sauce………yum…..its a pity its only 9.23 am…….

 

 

 

 

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