The Librarian and the Kitchen

#blogjune 28 Sweet chilli prawn pies

2011-06-30T21:01:00.007+10:00

I am still on a bit of a roll about cooking pies. This started this time last year when I was in England and had fabulous pies in a few pubs. The latest one I tried was a pie cooked with prawns, sweet chilli sauce and broccoli. It was very yummy and I ate it with potato and sweet potato chips cooked with garam masala.

Ingredients

4-5 tbs ready prepared tomato sauce
12 prawns (peeled)
8-10 broccoli flowerets
2 tbs chopped parsley
1/2 tsp chopped red chilli (dry or fresh)
2-3 tbs Thai sweet chilli sauce
Puff pastry

Mode

Heat oven to 200c
Remove pastry to thaw (if frozen)
Chop broccoli, parsley and chilli
Add tomato sauce to pan and heat
When heated add prawns, broccoli, parsley, chilli and sweet chilli sauce
Stir to combine
Simmer until cooked
Add to mixture to pie dish or individual dishes
Cover with pastry
Cook for 20-25 minutes
Serves two

#blogjune 15 The Flavour Thesaurus

2011-06-19T13:14:00.003+10:00

For my last birthday, I said "No presents" but some people did sneak some in. One of them was this fascinating little toolbox entitled The Flavour Thesaurus: pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook, published by Bloombury in 2010 and written by Niki Segnit.

Segnit divides 99 foods into twelve categories ranging from "Roasted" through "Mustardy" and "Woodland" to "Floral Fruity" to name just a few. Within each food section there is information about the food, a few recipes, and pairings with other foods on the list. I often use Stephanie's bible for its suggestions of what goes with the food element I happen to have on hand so it will be interesting to see if I use this reference tool as well or stick with my tried and true Stephanie. It will also be interesting to see how much similarity there is between the two lists of "pairings".

#blogjune 13 Turkey and coriander balls in tomato sauce

2011-06-18T15:05:00.006+10:00

I made two different meals with my turkey and coriander meat balls. Apart from eating them directly from the pan with stir-fry vegetables, I made a dish of them in tomato sauce.

Ingredients
500 gr minced turkey
1 slice multigrain bread
1 bunch of coriander
1 egg
Flour
Olive oil
1 cup ready made tomato sauce

Mode
Place the bread in water to absorb liquid
Roughly chop coriander
Place turkey in bowl
Add coriander and egg and mix
Squeeze excess liquid from the bread and add to mixture
Combine mixture thoroughly using hands
Using a dessertspoon and hands form meatballs
Place tomato sauce in large pan or casserole and heat
Add oil to pan and heat
Roll balls in flour
Add to oil and seal quickly
Place into tomato sauce
Place a simmer pad under pan and simmer for half an hour

#blogjune 12 Turkey and coriander balls

2011-06-18T14:42:00.007+10:00

One of the recurrent themes to this blog is definitely meatballs - of all shapes and sizes and used in many different ways. Wandering around the supermarket at lunchtime the other day I saw minced turkey. Hmm, turkey meatballs! There was some lovely fresh coriander as well, so my dinner plans were made. Turkey and coriander meatballs with plum sauce served with sweet chilli sauce stir-fried vegetables!

Ingredients
500 gr minced turkey
1 slice multigrain bread
1 bunch of coriander
1 egg
Flour
Olive oil

Mode
Place the bread in water to absorb liquid
Roughly chop coriander
Place turkey in bowl
Add coriander and egg and mix
Squeeze excess liquid from the bread and add to mixture
Combine mixture thoroughly using hands
Using a dessertspoon and hands form meatballs
Add oil to pan and heat
Roll balls in flour
Add to oil and seal quickly
Then cook until done turning regularly

#blogjune 7 Mackerel and vegetable pie

2011-06-12T21:51:00.005+10:00

This pie is a bit in the category of what to cook you haven't been shopping and are scrounging to cook something with what's lurking around the kitchen. But it is very tasty nonetheless and I reckon I will cook it again!

Ingredients

1 can mackerel (425 gr)
3 tomatoes
Head of broccoli
1/2 cup ready made tomato pasta sauce
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (or whatever is required for pie dish)

Mode

Heat tomato sauce in pan
Remove pastry from freezer and set aside to thaw
Preheat oven to 200c
Chop tomatoes roughly and add to tomato sauce and combine
Cut broccoli into flowerets and add to mixture
Add mackerel and break down into small pieces
Reduce heat and simmer on a simmer pad until vegetables are tender
Spoon mixture into one large pie dish or four individual ones
Cover with pastry after brushing edges with water to seal
Cook for 20-25 minutes at 200c.

#blogjune 6 Chicken, coriander and mushroom pie

2011-06-12T21:37:00.005+10:00

I think I must be becoming obsessed with pies. This one is really just a variant on the previous pie. I used fresh coriander instead of parsley as well as spring onions and it so changed the flavour! I also cooked the ingredients in a slightly different order.

Ingredients

6 chicken thighs (about 600 gr)
Bunch coriander
4 spring onions/shallots
2 cups mushrooms
250 gr low fat Greek yoghurt
Olive oil
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (or whatever is required for pie dish)

Mode

Heat olive oil in pan
Remove pastry from freezer and set aside to thaw
Preheat oven to 200c
Remove fat from chicken thighs and chop roughly into cubes
Add chicken to olive oil
Turn up heat and quickly seal the chicken
Slice mushrooms and chop coriander and spring onions
Add coriander and spring onions to chicken and stirring to combine
Add mushrooms to mixture and do the same
Turn down heat and simmer mixture
Add yoghurt and mix thoroughly
Reduce heat and simmer on a simmer pad until the chicken is tender
Spoon mixture into one large pie dish or four individual ones
Cover with pastry after brushing edges with water to seal
Cook for 20-25 minutes at 200c.

Chicken and mushroom pie

2011-04-03T18:03:00.007+10:00

I had been meaning to make a chicken and mushroom pie with pastry for ages. When I say pastry, I mean not phyllo as I often make a delicious chicken and mushroom pie with phyllo. I finally did it and now I am finally writing it up!

I shopped for all the ingredients to make the same filling I usually do for the phyllo pie but at the last minute was in a hurry and used yoghurt instead of bechamel sauce. And I loved the end result. When I make my other chicken pie I usually cook a whole chicken and use the flesh. This time I used chicken thighs which give more flavorsome meat but don't require all the boning.

Ingredients

6 chicken thighs (about 600 gr)
Half bunch flat leafed parsley
2 cups mushrooms
250 gr low fat Greek yoghurt
Olive oil
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (or whatever is required for pie dish)

Mode

Heat olive oil in pan
Remove pastry from freezer and set aside to thaw
Preheat oven to 200c
Slice mushrooms and chop parsley
Add mushroom to oil and cook lightly and quickly
Add parsley to mixture and do the same
Turn down heat and simmer mixture
Remove fat from chicken thighs and chop roughly into cubes
Add chicken to parsley and mushroom mixture
Turn up heat and quickly seal the chicken
Add yoghurt and mix thoroughly
Reduce heat and simmer on a simmer pad until the chicken is tender
Spoon mixture into one large pie dish or four individual ones
Cover with pastry after brushing edges with water to seal
Cook for 20-25 minutes at 200c.

Lamb and sherry pie

2011-03-14T14:37:00.009+11:00

When I was in the UK last year I had a lot of wonderful pies. I particularly remember a great one at the Hand in Llangollen: it was beef in beer served with mushy peas. I have made a few since I came back and had planned that the next one I experimented with would be a chicken and mushroom pie or a kangaroo in shiraz.

But during the week I grabbed some lamb at the supermarket one night after work and once I opened it I thought it looked a bit tough and needed simmering for a while. So I left it to cook until the weekend and this pie was the result. I used ready prepared puff pastry from the freezer and ready prepared tomato sauce. You can, of course, start from scratch for both of those items. I used an Amontillado sherry but you can use whatever you have on hand. And the sherry measurement is a sherry glass not a tumbler! I cut the lamb into strips but you can cube it if you prefer. I made one pie but you can use the same ingredients to make individual pies in souffle dishes: you won't need to use the egg cup in those.

Ingredients

660 gr lamb
1 onion
olive oil
1.5 glasses sherry
Couple teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
Couple tablespoons ready prepared tomato pasta sauce
2 carrots
1 sheet puff pastry

Mode

Chop onion roughly
Cut lamb into strips roughly half an inch by three inches
Heat olive oil in frying pan
Quickly fry onions and add to large saucepan
Seal the lamb in oil in batches and add to saucepan as done
Add sherry, Worcestershire sauce, and tomato sauce to lamb and onion mixture
Bring to the boil
Cook vigorously for 15 minutes then reduce to a simmer
Place a simmer mat under the pot and simmer for about an hour
Meanwhile peel and slice carrots
Add carrots to the mixture and simmer for another half hour (or longer) until everything is tender and yummy
Preheat oven to 200c
Take pan from heat and spoon into pie dish after placing upturned egg cup in centre
Using a pastry brush paint water around the rim of the pie dish
Place the pastry sheet over and trim
Seal the edges to the dish with the water
Gather the remains of pastry sheet and roll
Use to decorate top as desired
Place in oven and bake for about 30 minutes

I served it with sweet potato and peas cooked in cumin but mushy peas would be good too :)

Chicken and basil balls in broth

2011-03-14T13:13:00.006+11:00

We have had a very unusual summer and it certainly hasn't been very hot. That has been good for bush fires but also for soup. I made this yummy soup in early February but haven't got around to posting about it until now.

Ingredients

4 cups chicken stock
3 spring onions
2 teaspoons crushed ginger
500gr minced chicken
1 slice bread
water
olive oil
1 onion
Basil
1 egg
Flour
Shaved Parmesan

Mode
Add stock to large pan on stove
Chop spring onions and add
Peel and crush ginger
Bring to boil and leave simmering
Place bread in bowl of water
Chop onion roughly
Chop basil leaves
Add chicken, basil, onion, bread and egg to mixing bowl
Mix to combine preferably using hands to finish
Form small balls with the mixture and roll in flour
Heat olive oil in frying pan
Quickly seal the chicken balls in the oil in batches and add to broth
Simmer for 3/4 hour on chicken balls have been added
Serve with shaved Parmesan on top.

Beef & couscous meatballs

2011-01-09T13:59:00.005+11:00

Another day another recipe for meatballs! Yum! I love meatballs. This latest version happened quite serendipitously. I had some beef minced and was thinking about making meatballs. I thought about soutzoukakia with rice but didn't want to take the time to cook rice. My container of couscous was on the bench because I had just filled it up with a new stock. So I thought of using couscous with the beef. The mixture ended up a bit dry so I added some ricotta. They were absolutely yummy with a reminder of middle eastern food.

Ingredients
600 gr minced beef
1/2 cup couscous
1/2 cup water
Cummin seeds
4 spring onions
2 cloves garlic crushed
2 heaped tablespoon ricotta
1 egg
Pepper
Olive oil
Separately prepared tomato sauce
Shaved parmesan

Mode

Prepare the tomato sauce and simmer on stovetop
Bring water to boil and take from heat
Add couscous to water and set aside
Crush garlic and chop spring onions
Place meat, spring onions, garlic, cummin, egg, ricotta and pepper in bowl and mix
Fluff up couscous with fork and add to meat mixture
Mix meat and couscous mixture thoroughly preferably with hands
Using a tablespoon for mixture form in into soutzoukakia shaped meatballs (ie long)
Heat olive oil in a pan
Quickly seal the meatballs in batches and add to pan of tomato sauce
Simmer in tomato sauce for about 30 minutes on stove top or bake in oven for about 45 minutes
Serve topped with shaved parmesan.

"Pritikin style" Beetroot

2010-12-19T16:54:00.003+11:00

I have had several people recently diagnosed with diabetes and lots of people I know have their cholesterol edging up. This is a particular issue for those of us who have taken aromatose inhibitors such as Femara or Arimidex. So I dredged back in my head to the days when I was a Pritikin person and came up with this simple beetroot recipe to include amongst my Christmas produce along with the sugar filled relishes.

Ingredients

6 large beetroot
Cloves
1.5 cups cider vinegar
1.5 cups apple juice

Mode

Prepare jars in hot wash in dishwasher and cool
Cut the ends of the beetroots and slit the base and top with a cross
Add the beetroots to a large pan of water and bring to the boil
Simmer gently until tender
Allow to cool in water
Drain and rub off skins
Slice beetroot and half fill first jar
Sprinkle 3-4 cloves in
Fill to below rim with rest of sliced beetroot
Repeat for other jars (this makes about 3 jars depending on size)
Mix apple juice and cider vinegar
Pour slowly into jars allowing mixture to filter through to bottom
Place on lids and seal tightly
Decorate as required if giving as presents.

Cauliflower & Chickpea soup

2010-12-19T16:36:00.004+11:00

This soup was the result of opening up some stock to cook couscous in and wondering what to do with the other three cups of it! Well I found half a cauliflower in the firdge and went on from there with what I had on hand and made a very yummy soup.

Ingredients
3 cups low salt chicken stock
1/2 cauliflower
1 can chickpeas (or use dry chickpeas and pre-soak and pre-cook)
4 spring onions
3 cloves garlic
Heaped tbs ginger root
1/2 teaspoon Sambal Oelek
Small bunch coriander

Mode
Place large pan on heat and add stock
Break cauliflower into flowerlets, roughly chop leaves and stalks, and add to stock
Clean and roughly chop spring onions and add
Crush garlic and ginger and add along with Sambal Oelek
Roughly chop coriander and add
Bring to boil and gently simmer until vegetables are tender.

Easy Pork & Silverbeet Lasagne

2010-11-24T08:28:00.007+11:00

I am very fond of lasagne but sometimes it just takes a bit too long to cook up all the component parts, assemble them and then cook the assembled product. The other evening I felt like lasagne but wanted it a bit for quickly. So I used a few prepared ingredients and was creative about including what I had on hand in temrs of vegetables and ricotta.

Ingredients

375gr reduced fat ricotta
500gr minced pork
1 carrot
1 parsnip
1 piece of broccoli
400gr Bertolli Summer basil & pasta sauce
2 gloves garlin
1/4 tsp Sambal Oelek
4 leaves of silverbeet
Ready to cook lasagne sheets
Grated parmesan

Mode

Preheat oven to 160c.
Pour pasta sauce into pan and heat.
Add peeled and sliced parsnip and carrot to sauce and stir.
Add pork mince to mixture and stir to combine.
Break broccoli into florets and add.
Stir, cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until vegetables tender.
Meanwhile fill steamer with water and bring to boil.
Roughly chop leaves and stalks of silverbeet and add to steamer.
Add crushed garlic and Sambal Oelek to silverbeet.
Steam until silverbeet tender.
Assemble lasagne with layers of pasta sheets, meat sauce, silverbeet and ricotta.
Commence with layer of meat sauce in bottom of dish, add pasta sheet, then silverbeet and top with ricotta.
Continue in this order until to top of dish, ending with meat sauce layer.
Place in middle of oven and cook for 50 minutes in 160c oven.
Allow to sit for 15 minutes then slice into chunks to serve.
Sprinkle with parmesan and serve either alone or with a green salad.

Beef & pumpkin meatballs

2010-10-10T14:19:00.004+11:00

Readers of this blog know that I like meatballs in any shape or form and that necessity (or not having ingredients I want on hand) sometimes forces me to improvise. These pumpkin and beef meatballs were no exception. I bought minced beef and planned to cook my normal meatballs with bread, onion and cumin. Uh oh! No bread! What do I have in the house that could be used bind them a bit? Hmm, there is some pumpkin in the fridge that really needs cooking. I'll try that. I am very glad that I did try pumpkin as it was a great combination: beef, cumin and pumpkin.

Ingredients
600 gr minced beef
1 onion
2 cups pumpkin pieces
1 egg
2 tsp ground cummin
Pepper
Flour
Extra cummin
Olive oil
Ready made tomato sauce

Mode

Prepare tomato sauce and have simmering
Chop pumpkin into small portions and peel
Place in steamer or microwave until soft
Chop onion finely
Place beef, onion, egg, pumpkin and cummin in bowl and mix until combined preferably with hands
Place flour on a plate and add a few grinds of pepper and a little cummin and stir
Using tablespoons of mixture form meatballs by hand and roll in seasoned flour
Heat oil in pan
Add batches of meatballs and seal
Add meatballs to tomato sauce and simmer until cooked through (about 20 minutes)
Serve with rice or pasta

Beef & shiraz pie with lemon thyme potatoes

2010-08-22T21:33:00.008+10:00

One of the meals that I really loved in England and Wales earlier this year were the yummy pies, particularly the beef and ale ones. I had never made pies like that but thought I would have a go tonight. I didn't have any Guinness on hand or on tap but I did have red wine so I thought I would try my hand at a beef and red wine pie.

To accompany it, I cooked potatoes roasted with lemon thyme and lemon-infused olive oil. It ended taking a lot longer than I expected. So it is certainly a meal to make on the weekend or a meal to do a lot of the preparatory cooking before! I certainly enjoyed my pie but think that I like the ale ones better!

Beef & shiraz pie with lemon thyme potatoes

Ingredients
12 potatoes
Several sprigs of lemon thyme
Lemon-infused olive oil
880 gr topside beef
Plain flour
Pepper
Olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 onion
4 handfuls mushrooms
1.5 glasses shiraz
Puff pastry
Water
1 egg

Mode
Preheat the oven to 220c
Chop the potatoes into halves or quarters and place in ovenproof dish
Sprinkle with lemon-infused olive oil and add lemon thyme
Mix to coat, preferably with hands
Put aside potatoes
Heat oil in pan
Place flour on plate, add pepper and mix
Chop the topside into cubes and coat with seasoned flour
In batches quickly brown the meat in the oil and add to a lidded casserole
Roughly chop the onion and crush the garlic
Add to the pan once the meat has been removed and cook until soft
Slice the mushrooms and add to the onion mix in pan
Cook a further few minutes and then add to meat mix in casserole
Pour the shiraz into the pan and bring to the boil loosening the pan scrapings
Pour over the meat mixture in the casserole
Place the casserole in the oven and cook at 220c for 30 minutes
Check and stir the casserole and add potatoes to oven and cook for 45 minutes
Check and stir the casserole and turn the potatoes
Cook for a further 30 minutes or until meat is tender
Remove casserole from the oven (leaving potatoes in oven)
Decant the meat into six individuals oven-proof dishes (I used souffle dishes)
Roll and cut the pastry into circles to cover the dishes and cut out decorative pieces if desired
Wet the rims of the dishes and seal the pastry around the edges
Pierce the pastry in a couple of places with the point of a knife to allow the steam to escape
Add decorative pastry leaves if desired
Beat the egg and use it to brush the pastry lids
Place pie dishes on oven tray and return to oven for 15 minutes
Allow to cool slightly and serve with the potatoes.

Lamb's fry and bacon

2010-08-14T16:28:00.006+10:00

Earlier in the week I was browsing in the supermarket meat shelves looking for something to improve a cat's anaemia and generally tempt her appetite. I was amazed to see a shelf of lamb's fry. I hadn't eaten lamb's fry for years but we used to have it regularly when I was a child.

The cats weren't at all keen on it, but I really enjoyed looking up recipes for lamb's fry in my old favourites Margaret Fulton and my Stephanie bible. It was also fun trying to remember how we used to cook it when I was a child.

The resulting recipe is an amalgam of all these sources, combined with what I had on hand in the kitchen.

Ingredients

1 lamb's fry
6 rashers of shortcut rindless bacon
Pepper
Flour
1 cup combination of stock/red wine
Olive oil
Margerine

Mode

Moisten the bottom of pan with oil and heat
Add the bacon rashers and cook until crisp
Put aside in serving bowl which is being kept warm
Meanwhile chop the lamb's fry into pieces a couple of inches long
Season the flour with pepper
Coat the lamb's fry pieces in flour
Once the bacon has been taken from the pan add some margerine to the bacon fat
Cook the lamb's fry in fat/margerine in batches for 2 minutes each side
Add cooked lamb's fry to the bacon in serving dish
Make up a cup of stock and red wine
Clarify the pan with this and then simmer until reduced
Pour sauce over lamb's fry and bacon in serving dish
Serve with mashed potatoes.

Spinach and Ricotta Pastries

2010-08-01T20:25:00.005+10:00

After using half a tub of ricotta to make my meatballs, guess what? I needed to decide what to do with the rest. And what goes with ricotta? Spinach! So I decided to make some spinach pastries using ready made sheets of frozen puff pastry I had in the freezer. The result was pretty yummy, if I say so myself, and incredibly simple to do.

2 sheets frozen puff pastry
200 gr low fat ricotta
2 spring onion chopped
Handful shaved Parmesan
6 individual serves frozen spinach
1 clove of garlic peeled and crushed
Half teaspoon Sambal Oelek
1 egg
Sesame seeds

Mode
Preheat the oven to 200 c.
Take sheets of frozen pastry from freezer and put on wire rack to thaw
Place frozen spinach, spring onion, garlic and chilli in bowl
Cover with greaseproof paper and microwave for 2.5 minutes
If microwave not available, place in top level of steamer until cooked
Place ricotta and parmesan in mixing bowl
Beat egg in cup with fork and add most of it to cheese mixture (leave enough to baste the pastries)
Add vegetable mixture to bowl and stir until combined
Cut pastry sheets into four equal portions
Spoon heaped dessertspoon of mixture onto each square
Pull each corner to centre and press together to seal
Make sure that the four outer corners are also sealed thoroughly to prevent leakage
Using pastry brush baste tops of pastries with beaten egg
Sprinkle with sesame seed
Place in middle of oven and cook for 20-30 minutes
Leave for 15 minutes before serving

Beef and Ricotta Balls

2010-07-31T11:31:00.004+10:00

Last night was my first night at home after being in the Dandenongs for three days at a libraryland retreat and after catching up at work later. I was exhausted. On my way home I decided I wanted meatballs in tomato sauce with pasta for dinner. So I stopped by the shops on my way home. Alas! When I got home I realized I didn't have any bread and I didn't want to cook rice.

I started making the meatball mixture anyway but it really needed something else. Voila! I saw some low fat ricotta in the fridge. I sometimes make salmon cakes with ricotta and wondered how it would go. It was fine. I would never have thought of making these meatballs otherwise, but they are really delicious. And just as well as there are more for tonight (or freezing).

Ingredients

Tomato sauce (previously prepared)
600gr minced beef
1 onion
1 egg
2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon ginger
1 tsp Sambal Oelek
1 teaspoon ground cummin
Half cup grated cheese
150 gr low fat ricotta
Flour
Olive oil

Mode

Have prepared tomato sauce simmering on stovetop
Peel and chop onion finely and place in mixing bowl
Add minced beef and egg and mix (perhaps giving a taste of meat to hovering cat pictured above)
Chop and crush garlic and ginger and add to mixture
Add chilli, cummin, grated cheese and ricotta
Stir until completely integrated, preferably with hands
Place flour on flat plate
With soup spoon and hands shape meatballs and roll in flour
Heat olive oil in pan and quickly seal meatballs in batches
When sealed, add meatballs to tomato sauce which has been prepared previously and is simmering on stove
Simmer meatballs in tomato sauce until cooked
Serve with rice or pasta

Lentil soup with carrot and silverbeet

2010-07-25T17:40:00.004+10:00

Yesterday I had to spend the afternoon at work, a semi-reluctant #saturdaylibrariansortoff, because a historic display celebrating 150 years of Hawthorn Library needed to be completed. No food shopping was done. As a result, cooking this weekend has featured around stuff that I had in the house. This variant on the more traditional lentil soup is the yummy result of my foraging and I am posting the recipe here at @mundoo's request.

Ingredients

2 400 gr cans lentils (ie 800 gr)
1 400 gr can crushed tomatoes
1 bunch baby silver-beet
2 carrots
1 tbs tomato paste
2 cloves garlic
1 tbs ginger
1 tsp Sambal Oelek
2-3 cups of water

Mode

Heat soup pot on stove and add canned tomatoes
Stir in tomato paste
Strain lentils and add to pot
Peel and crush garlic and ginger and add to pot along with Sambal Oelek
Peel and slice carrots and add to pot
Roughly chop leaves and stalks of silver-beet and add to pot
Stir to combine, add cup of water and bring to the boil
Simmer until all the vegetables are tender, adding more water as needed.
Serve with buttered crusty bread.

Beef stroganoff

2010-07-12T21:42:00.008+10:00

Geraldine Dillon isn't much known these days but in the 1960s and 1970s she was well known in Melbourne as a cooking presenter and writer. She had a weekly cooking program on Channel 9 for years, gave demonstrations at Gas & Fuel and at Myers, she wrote for the Age and the Women's Weekly and had a regular cooking column in the Melbourne Advocate. My mother always watched her cooking program and, as it was on during the day (on Friday I think), I only got to watch it during the holidays. My mother used to jot down recipes while watching the program and sometimes we wrote into Channel 9 for a roneoed version. We also went off occasionally on holidays to see her real life demonstrations. We tried lots of her recipes in our family and these recipes were often the reason for us trying different recipes and ingredients. Apart from cooking with my mother, I am sure that Geraldine was one of the main reasons for my abiding interest in and love of cooking.

Recently I was asked by a young colleague if I had a good recipe for beef stroganoff, probably because a boomer would be expected to cook such a thing I speculated. Well, indeed, I had but I hadn't cooked it for decades. And there it was in my copy of the The Geraldine Dillon cookbook, published by Paul Hamlyn in 1974. That was the stroganoff that I had cooked, that my mother had cooked and that I had a vague memory of Bert Newton doing some skit about on IMT one night. However, I thought I really should try it again before giving it out.

I was also mystified by Tania's mention of a recipe with paprika in it. I didn't remember using paprika in beef stroganoff and sure enough there was no paprika in the Geraldine recipe. So I thought I would explore a little. I didn't Google. I just looked at a few of my own recipe books and discovered variants. Geraldine's recipe, which would have come through her Cordon Bleu background, had stock, tomato paste, mustard and sour cream along with the meat, mushrooms etc. She used stewing steak. Margaret Fulton, an Australian cooking icon (@margaretfulton - yes, she's on Twitter!) who was writing at the same time, didn't have mustard or stock but did have mushrooms and sour cream and used fillet steak.

Hmm, I thought, is this really an Anglicized version of a Russian dish or just some Anglo dish given a fancy name? So off I went to my trusty Time Life Foods of the World series - also dating from 1970s. Sure enough there in the book on The Cooking of Russia was a recipe for Bef Stroganov. The recipe was prefixed by the statement: "Bef Stroganov, created in the late 19th century for a Russian count, has become one of the world's famous dishes. The recipe that follows is the classic Russian version. The numerous European and American variations called Beef Stroganov do not in any sense reproduce the dish as it was originally made."

And the differences? Well, Margaret Fulton and Geraldine Dillon both use butter, whereas the Russian recipe uses oil. Apart from that the recipe is pretty similar to the Geraldine Dillon one apart from that she adds stock and powdered mustard, and the Russian recipe made up the mustard in water. It also didn't include tomato paste. However, I found another Russian recipe which this time had both the made up mustard and the stock as well as tomato paste, but no mushrooms though a footnote said that another variant included mushrooms. Both the Russian recipes called for fillet steak.

I decided after all this that the recipe I was still going to cook was the original Geraldine Dillon one. However, I am not very good at sticking to recipes so there were some differences. She said grilling steak: I purchased stir fry beef. She said stock (not sure what kind) I used low salt beef stock. And I didn't include the added salt. I normally use light sour cream but I got the full catastrophe. The Russian recipe suggested doing the meat in two batches as being essential. So I did this. Otherwise the recipe is Geraldine Dillon.

Ingredients

90 gr butter
1 medium onion
250 gr mushrooms
750 gr stir fry beef
2 tablespoon plain flour
1 cup salt-reduced beef stock
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 teaspoon pepper
pinch mustard
1/2 cup sour cream

Mode

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan and fry the finely chopped onion until golden.
Slice the mushrooms and add to the onions with a further tablespoon of butter.
Saute for 2-3 minutes, then remove the onion and mushrooms from the pan.
Add the remaining butter to the pan and brown half the meat strips quickly.
Remove from the pan and repeat with the rest of the meat.
Add the flour, stock tomato paste, pepper and mustard to the pan and bring to the boil.
Return the meat and vegetables to the pan, cover and simmer gently for 8-10 minutes stirring occasionally.
Once the meat is tender, add the sour cream the sour cream and heat.
Serve with rice or noodles.

So what was beef Stroganoff like decades after I had last had it? I found it pretty rich I must say with butter and sour cream but it's a good taste. As I am much more used to cooking with oil and normally only use low fat sour cream I might try another variant. But pretty tasty really.

Thanks for being the trigger for this trip down memory lane, Tania!

Veal and pork meatballs in tomato sauce

2010-07-09T16:39:00.008+10:00

One of my very favourite meals is meatballs in tomato sauce. I usually make them with with beef or chicken but last weekend I got some veal and pork mince and thought I would have a go making meatballs with it.

I just wanted some fairly light flavours to go with the meat so I settled on parsley and parmesan. I wondered for a while if I had overdone the parsley, but once cooked the flavours all balanced beautifully. I used already prepared tomato sauce.

Ingredients

500 gr veal & pork mince
1/2 bunch Italian parsley
1 large slice bread
Milk
1 egg
1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
Flour
Olive oil
Splash red wine
Tomato sauce previously made

Mode

Place the bread in a bowl and cover with milk to soak
Chop parsley
Place the mince in a large bowl
Add parsley and squeezed out bread
Add egg
Grate Parmesan and add to mix
Stir all ingredients to combine
Meanwhile have tomato sauce simmering in large casserole
Roll up sleeves and use hands to ensure that meat mixture is combined
Place flour on flat plate
Using a dessertspoon take spoonfuls of the mixture, form into balls and lightly coat with flour
Heat olive oil in pan
Add meatballs a few at a time and quickly seal
When sealed, added to tomato sauce in casserole
Continue in batches until all meatballs sealed and added to casserole
Splash red wine onto hot pan and use to gather meat juice, oil and flour
Pour into casserole and stir
Cook meatballs in casserole on top of stove or in 180c oven for 45 minutes to an hour
Serve with noodles or rice.

Sweet potato and cauliflower for @shewgirl

2010-06-26T17:09:00.007+10:00

When I recently returned to Australia, it was to discover that many of my online friends were participating in a #blogeverydayofjune project. I have been reading their blogposts and sometimes commenting and all the while reflecting on how slack I have become in my own blogging. So one of my aims this weekend was to do a few blogposts and in particular to finish off a few outstanding and half-written posts. This post is not one of those though it was triggered by my online community within some Twitter comments last night.

It has been a very long week here in Australia with the excitement of a new Prime Minister and all the lead-up to that. I also had a very busy week ending with all day Friday at Lilydale in a workshop on emergency management standard operating procedures. It was cold and pouring rain. When I finally got home after 7pm I wasn't in any mood to cook anything that was going to take time; nor did I even want to go to the supermarket on the way home to pick up anything.

A search of cupboards and fridge revealed that I wasn't going to starve (God forbid that that would ever happen!) and I started making a quick old vegetable stand-by. I think the origin of it was in an old Penguin Indian cookbook and related to cooking green peas with onion and turmeric. Over the years I have usually cooked the dish with green peas and often added potatoes. I often cook it with turmeric but sometimes with the first spicy ingredient that comes to hand, be this Malaysian curry powder, Vindaloo or whatever. Last night the potato shelf was bare, but I had a sweet potato and a cauliflower. And a jar of curry powder was the first spicy jar my hand reached for. So that was what I prepared to cook quickly before catching the end of the news and the start of the Geelong St Kilda match.

As I sat down to await the cooking, I reached for my iPod and found myself in the middle of a Twitter exchange that was about people wanting something quick for Friday dinner. After I mentioned my sweet potato and cauliflower, quick as a blink @shewgirl pointed out her expectations of a blog post so that she could check it out! So here it is @shewgirl! I think it has taken me longer to write this than it did to reach for the ingredients, chop, and cook!

Curried sweet potato & cauliflower

Ingredients
1 white onion
Olive oil
1 orange sweet potato
Quarter cauliflower
Curry powder
Water

Mode

Heat some olive oil in a saucepan which is large enough to contain all ingredients
When oil is hot, add sliced onion and stir until softened
Add to onions about a tablespoon of curry powder of your choice and stir
Slice the sweet potato and add to mix stirring again
Break the cauliflower into small flowerlets and add to mix and stir to combine
Add a cup of water to the saucepan
Place on the lid and cook until tender

Last night, I also unearthed some spicy sausages in the freezer and grilled them while the vegetables were cooking. I served them with Maggie Beer's plum sauce (ala Polyxena) and the vegetables. That was a yummy and very quick dinner. Unfortunately the AFL match was not so yummy :((

Trahanas in chicken stock

2010-06-14T20:39:00.003+10:00

As some of you have been keen to tell me I have been very bad with my food blogging recently. I do apologize. Unfortunately my home PC was suffering and in death's throes and then I went off on long service leave. However, I am back now and ready to chase up all those half-written posts dating back to Christmas.

Today's post is a new one though. Trahanas is a Greek "pasta" apparently created by shepherds as an instant food as they could drop the yoghurt noodles into boiling water while tending their flocks. Today these noodles can be purchased ready made at shops carrying Greek produce and come in two forms, "sweet" which are made with milk and "sour" which are made with yoghurt. You can find a recipe here.

Trahanas is normally cooked with water and then served with crumbled fetta, parsley or avgolemeno. I well remember eating a bowl of it made by a student in Thessaloniki in the 1970s. Tonight I decided to do something a little different. I had some dried sour trahanas in the pantry. I heated some chicken stock, added the trahana and some dried thyme. Before serving I added some shaved parsley. It was delicious!

Ingredients

1 litre chicken stock
1.5 cups sour trahanas
Dry thyme
Shaved parmesan

Mode
Bring stock to boil
Add trahana
Add dry thyme
Stir regularly until thickened (about 15 minutes)
Serve topped with shaved parmesan

Abla in print again!

2010-01-10T13:23:00.001+11:00

Great news for lovers of Abla's Lebanese cooking! The Penguin website has an forthcoming announcement that Abla's Lebanese kitchen will be published in hardback as part of the Lantern imprint in 2010. Abla Amad's The Lebanese kitchen was published by Penguin under the Viking imprint in 2001 and was very soon being re-printed and then out of print. It is not clear from the forthcoming promo whether this is simply a reprint or whether it will be a new edition. That the title is different makes one live in hope. The Lantern imprint is the one which recently published Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen garden companion in time for the Christmas market. That's to Pat Miller for this headsup!

I love Abla's food and only last night cooked lemon and garlic chicken drummettes made according to her recipe for chicken wings. For those of you who don't know Abla, her eponymous Lebanese restaurant has been a Melbourne institution for years.

Butter chicken with Madras curry vegetables

2009-10-03T21:13:00.006+10:00

One of the great things about working in Hawthorn is that being located near to Swinburne University there is a fabulous array of Indian eateries. I love being able to dash out at lunch time to grab some butter chicken or other dishes from one of the places where Indian students gather to eat and watch Indian TV. I also like being able to make a quick and easy butter chicken at home. And this is where supplies at Piedimonte's help me and provide the sauce which is the basis for this.

Today is Saturday and so I had time to prepare and simmer the chicken and vegetables and cook rice as one needs to do with Indian food. It is also the start of daylight savings (Blah!) so I should have started to do my simmering earlier. I served the butter chicken with rice and a vegetable dish which I made with Madras curry powder.

Butter Chicken

Ingredients

600 gr chicken thigh pieces
Butter chicken sauce ready prepared
300 ml low fat Greek yoghurt

Mode

Heat butter chicken sauce in large pan
Roughly chop chicken thighs
Place chicken pieces in pan over medium heat and cook partially
Add yoghurt and stir through
Simmer on low heat until chicken is tender and sauce thickened.

Madras Curry vegetables

Ingredients

1 onion
Frozen peas
3 potatoes
Frozen broad beans
Water
Madras curry powder
Olive oil

Mode

Heat olive oil in saucepan
Chop onion and toss in oil until softened
Slice potatoes and add to mixture
Add Madras curry powder according to taste and stir through
Add frozen peas and beans and mix
Add cup of water and mix
Cover and simmer until tender

Serve the butter chicken and Madras curry vegetables on steamed rice.

Beetroot and fetta salad

2009-09-12T13:28:00.006+10:00

I love beetroot in any shape or form - except the canned variety. I was delighted recently to find it available and stocked up. As it was Father's Day last weekend we were gathering for lunch so I thought I would make a beetroot salad using a couple of my other favourite foods: fetta and dill.

Note that it's a good idea to make this just before serving as the beetroot quickly colours the fetta. The taste is fine later but it's visually nicer early after tossing.

Ingredients

7 medium-sized beetroots
400 gr fetta
15 gr dill
Olive oil
White wine vinegar

Mode

Chop both ends of beetroots and crosscut ends
Place in a saucepan and cover with water
Cook until tender
When cool peel off skins and chop into pieces of desired size
Roughly chop dill
Add beetroot and dill to serving dish
Crumble fetta into mixture
Dribble with oil and vinegar and toss

Dill chicken balls take two!

2009-09-12T13:01:00.010+10:00

After my first disastrous but redeemed go at chicken balls I thought I would have another go! This time the mixture was very firm and easy to form into balls.

They tasted very meaty as I didn't add any bread, though the addition of grated parmesan was nice. They were fine but I think I will try again with bread as I like that texture. Dill chicken balls are a work in progress!

Ingredients

650 gr chicken mince
15 gr dill
1 egg
2 cloves garlic crushed
4 tbs grated parmesan
Flour
Olive oil
Tomato sauce
Shaved parmesan

Mode

Roughly chop the dill
Place chicken, dill, parmesan, garlic, egg in bowl and stir
Roll up sleeves and blend the mixture until combined
Form balls of desired size and roll in flour
Add tomato sauce to large pan or saucepan and heat on top of stove
Heat oil in pan
Quickly seal the balls in oil and added to already heated tomato sauce
Simmer on top of the stove for 30 mins or if preferred in 180c oven for 45 mins
Serve with shaved parmesan and accompanied by vegetables or green salad

Dill chicken balls

2009-09-12T12:28:00.006+10:00

I love all sorts of meatballs and am particularly partial to some chicken balls I buy as a treat from a chicken place at Northland shopping centre. So a couple of weeks ago I thought I would have a go at trying to make some myself. I couldn't make up my mind whether to do them with dill which I was excited to find at the shops or to do a more Asian tasting lot with chilli, ginger and coriander. I finally plumped for the dill as I thought it would go nicely with tomato sauce.

Unfortunately the process was somewhat fraught as I didn't realize how sloppy minced chicken would be in comparison to minced beef or lamb and ended up with a mixture that was too moist to form balls. I think that two eggs was too much for the mixture and that the bread would have been better not soaked in milk. I added extra dry bread to the mixture and managed to make balls and cook them. The end result tasted lovely but I am going to continue experimenting with this!

Ingredients
1/2 cup milk
4 slices stale multigrain sourdough bread
650 gr chicken mince
15 gr dill
2 eggs
2 cloves garlic
Flour
Oil
Ready made tomato sauce
Shaved parmesan

Mode

Soak two slices of bread in the milk
Roughly chop dill
Place chicken mince, dill, crushed garlic, and eggs in bowl
Remove bread from milk and squeeze before adding to bowl
Stir all ingredients until combined
Make breadcrumbs from other two slices of bread and add to mixture
Combine full with hands
Form mixture into balls and roll in flour
Place in refrigerator for an hour before cooking to help form
Meanwhile make a tomato sauce or heat ready-made one
Remove to ovenproof dish which is large enough to contain chicken balls as well
Preheat oven to 180c
Heat oil in frying pan and quickly seal the chicken balls
Add to tomato sauce in oven-proof dish
Cook in oven for 45 minutes
Serve with shaved parmesan and accompany with vegetables or green salad

Osso buco - with a touch of orange

2009-08-12T10:20:00.005+10:00

Yummy, yummy osso buco! I'm always very open to temptation when I go shopping. I can reframe that easily into meaning that I cook things seasonally and like trying new things. On Monday I went shopping and saw lots of osso buco in the meat section of Piedimonte's. I hadn't cooked osso buco for ages and thought it a great idea for a cold, wet week here in Melbourne.

I thought I had all the basic ingredients: osso buco, tomatoes, red wine. But I found when I checked out a few recipes that that I had forgotten the gremolata and didn't have any parsley. This meant I had to be a bit more creative about the recipe. So I looked at some of my Greek stifado recipes and finally got inspiration from the use of lemon and pickling spices in some of the recipes I had been reading.

I would try a new flavour by adding some of my Stephanie's Spiced oranges and the spicy liquid! I also cooked the dish over two days for a minumum of 2.5 hours and added some carrot and parsnip in the last half hour of cooking. This recipe is definitely not your traditional Italian osso buco apart from the meat used, but it is delicious. Tomato and orange and carrot go so well together, and the little taste of orange that comes through is a lovely taste sensation!

Ingredients

4 pieces of osso buco
Plain flour
Olive oil
Pepper
2 onions
5 cloves of garlic crushed
1 can diced tomatoes
4 quarters spiced orange
2 dsp Spiced orange liquid
Glass red wine
2 cups water (or more if needed)
1 carrot
1 parsnip

Mode

Heat oil in stovetop pan or casserole which will be large enough to contain all ingredients
Pepper some plain flour
Coat osso buco lightly in flour
Seal in olive oil and remove from pan
Cook roughly chopped onion and garlic until tender
Add red wine to sear pan
Return meat to pan and stir
Add canned tomatoes
Chop the spiced orange and add spiced orage and liquid to pan
Add water to cover all ingredients
Bring to boil and simmer over low heat for about 2 hours checking regularly that meat doesn't stick and adding more water if needed
About half an hour before serving peel and slice the carrot and parsnip
Add vegetables to pan and stir to integrate
Cook for another half hour
Serve with mashed potatoes

I cooked this over two days, about an hour the first night and then 1.5 hours the next day. The flavours intensify and the taste improves over a couple of days!

Spiced Orange Roast Chicken

2009-08-04T20:48:00.008+10:00

It really is feast or famine with me! I can't think when was the last time I cooked a roast chicken before I was enticed into it on Sunday. Though there are still some leftovers from Sunday's delicious Librarians' Lemon Thyme Chook, when I was walking home tonight in the wet and was approaching Piedimonte's I was struck with the desire to do another chicken!

So what would I do this time? The Librarians' one again or just Stephanie Alexander's normal one with fresh lemon and rosemary? What else could I try? Suddenly I thought of my stock of Spiced oranges high in the pantry. That was what I was going to try.

Ingredients

1 fresh chicken
2 cloves garlic
Spiced oranges (orange and syrup)
4 potatoes
1 orange sweet potato
Olive oil

Mode

Preheat oven to 220c
Quarter potatoes, chop sweet potato and place in bowl
Dribble with olive oil
Pull up your sleeves and mix vegetables to coat with oil
Rub the chicken inside and out with several pieces of the spiced orange
Place remnants of spiced orange inside cavity
Crush the garlic cloves rub over chicken
Sprinkle several spoonsful of the spiced orange syrup over top, bottom, sides and cavity of chicken
Place chicken in baking dish on its side
Arrange vegetables around
Rub chicken with remaining oil from bowl
Place in centre of oven and cook for 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken to other side
Turn the vegetables
Cook for another 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken onto back (ie breast facing upwards)
Turn the vegetables
Cook for another 20 minutes
During this final 20 minutes of cooking prepare salad or vegetables to accompany.

The orange sauce provided the basis for a lovely glaze and the trick was to ensure that it didn't burn. I served it with a simple rocket, parmesan, oil and balsamic vinegar salad on the side. It was yummy! And I am sure it will be yummy cold as well. What will I try next? Something with plum sauce is very tempting!

Librarians' Lemon Thyme Chook

2009-08-02T19:40:00.012+10:00

You might think with the new series of The Librarians coming up next week that that TV program might be the inspiration for this recipe. But how wrong would you be!

Oh the power of suggestion! Tonight several of my friends on Facebook were roasting chickens for dinner. I had planned making meatballs with some "organic" meat that I sincerely hope did not go through the traumata I saw in the great doco Food Inc yesterday. But what happened to me? I went off to do my regular Sunday night supermarket shopping to my favourite Piedimonte's, pleased to notice their pledges about preservatives and organicness at the door and to note that most of their fruit and vegetables were "Product of Australia" and hence somewhat seasonal. I was just about to leave when I thought: hmm roast potatoes would be nice. I bought some potatoes and next thing you know I was back in the meat section buying a chicken! Thanks Stephanie McGlinchey and Michelle McLean for the inspiration: this recipe is for you!

My chicken recipe has at its basis Stephanie Alexander's roast chook, 220c, chook with vegetables around, 20 minutes each side, 20 minutes breast up. But I used preserved lemons, dried thyme, garlic and salt instead of her condiments. I haven't done this before, so I really looked forward to the flavours. It was delicious.

Ingredients

1 fresh chicken
2 cloves garlic
4 quarters preserved lemons
1 dsp salt
4 potatoes
Olive oil
Dry thyme sprigs

Mode

Preheat oven to 220c
Quarter potatoes and place in bowl with thyme and dribble with olive oil
Pull up your sleeves and mix potatoes to coat with thyme and oil
Rub the chicken inside and out with quarter of preserved lemon
Place other quarters of preserved lemon inside cavity
Crush the garlic cloves and place inside cavity
Sprinkle salt over all top, bottom and sides of chicken
Place chicken in baking dish on its side
Arrange potatoes around
Rub chicken with remaining oil and thyme mixture from bowl
Place in centre of oven and cook for 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken to other side
Turn the potatoes
Cook for another 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken onto back (ie breast facing upwards)
Turn the potatoes
Cook for another 20 minutes
During this final 20 minutes of cooking prepare salad or vegetables to accompany.

I served it with a simple rocket, parmesan, oil and vinegar salad on the side and was delighted to have chicken for lunches during the film festival this coming week.

Thanks Stephanie Alexander, Stephanie McGlinchey and Michelle McLean for the inspiration to try this out! You can't go wrong really with the ingredients. Pretty good hey? The power of four librarians in the kitchen! Now I need to get on with those meatballs and use up the meat waiting for that!

Stephanie's Mushroom Confit

2009-07-27T15:28:00.008+10:00

On the recent Queen's Birthday holiday when we went to Canberra to celebrate Pat's birthday (see previous blog posts and Flickr photos referred to there), one of the other recipe books that was used was, of course, Stephanie's bible which we all refer to regularly. I think we only had one dish that actually came from Stephanie and that was Mushroom Confit that we had served on biscuits as a pre-dinner nibble a couple of times. Actually I lie. I had forgotten the Stephanie's Spiced Oranges which we did have the odd nibble of with cheese.

I was impressed by the Mushroom Confit and made a batch of it when I got back to Melbourne. I basically used Stephanie's recipe apart from a few variants. I don't have any sherry vinegar and don't even know what it is like so I used cider vinegar. And I didn't empty the final mixture into a food processor to pulse as Stephanie suggested: I just whisked it with a hand-held chopper. Otherwise I think it was really Stephanie's recipe.

Ingredients

15 gr dried porcini mushroom
1 head garlic
300 gr button mushrooms
Couple bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
100 ml olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup cider vinegar

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c
Pour boiling water over the porcini and leave to soak for 30 minutes
Wrap garlic head in oiled foil and bake in oven until tender (30-45 minutes)
Squeeze liquid from porcini
Place porcini, roasted garlic, button mushroom, thyme, bay leaves, and 1/3 oil in a baking dish which can also be used on top of stove
Grind on pepper and cover with foil
Bake until mushrooms are tender (about 30 minutes)
Place baking dish on top of stove over medium heat
Add sherry and stir to dislodge stuck bits
Allow to boil and reduce
Remove garlic, peel and press flesh through coarse sieve
Discard thyme, bay leaves and garlic skins
Chop the mushroom mixture with hand-held device or else pulse roughly in food-processor
Pack into hot, sterilized jar and pack down firmly
Cover with remaining oil and seal
Leave for at least two months but once opened eat within two weeks.

My jar of mushroom confit is still sitting high in kitchen cupboard waiting for its time to come. I hope it is as delicious as the batch that Margie made for Queen's Birthday! I think she used field mushrooms that had been picked around Yarralumla so the flavour might be a bit different from bought button mushrooms! We'll see in the fullness of time.

Cauliflower and Broccoli Cheese

2009-07-26T19:49:00.006+10:00

It's cold and wet in Melbourne at present and there's lot of cauliflower in season. So what better to do that whip up a vat of comfort food like cauliflower cheese? Lemons are around also and I always have Greek yoghurt and fetta on hand so I thought I would give it a bit of a Greek flavour by adding the quintessentially Greek flavours of lemon, yoghurt and fetta. There was nice broccoli around at the shops too, so I used both cauliflower and broccoli as the vegetables.

Ingredients

1 cauliflower
1 bunch broccoli
1 lemon
1 cup water
1 tbs margerine/butter
1 tbs flour
1 cup milk
2 heaped tbs Greek yoghurt (low fat)
150 gr fetta
Grated low fat cheese

Mode

Preheat oven to 180c
Break or chop cauliflower and broccoli into flowerlets
Add vegetables to large pan
Grate the rind of the lemon over the vegetables
Juice the lemon and add
Add a cup of water, stir and cover
Steam on stove top until vegetables are tender
Meanwhile in a saucepan melt the margerine/butter
Add the flour and stir until mixed
Add yoghurt to the milk and stir until combined
Add yoghurt/milk mixture slowly to butter/flour mixture stirring all the while
Crumble the fetta and add to mixture
Stir until fetta melted and mixture starts to thicken
Place vegetables in an oven-proof dish
Pour over cheese sauce
Sprinkle with grated low-fat cheese
Bake for about 45 minutes until golden.

This is delicious by itself with some crusty bread and a glass of retsina, or serve with any main meal as a side dish. The night I made it, it was served with chicken schnitzel (take note @shewgirl) but it also goes well with Abla's chicken from the previous post.

Lime garlic chicken - after Abla

2009-06-28T14:34:00.006+10:00

Over the recent Queen's Birthday weekend several of us journeyed from Melbourne to Canberra to stay with Margaret and Tony and to celebrate Pat Miller's 60th birthday. You can see some of my photos here. You may notice in the dinner photos that there was a lot of food. Margaret had cooked up a storm before we came and, though I had come up the night before the others with a view to helping with the cooking, there wasn't much to do!

The major themes (apart from the requisite pavlova) were Greek and Lebanese and the recipe sources were Abla Amad's the Lebanese Kitchen (now sadly out of print) and a book on Greek cooking by Andy Harris. As I had given both of these books to Margie I was pleased to see them so well used and literally stained. I always think this a sign of a well-loved cookbook!

The good thing about such a feast where we are sharing lots of dishes is that it reminds one of old favourites. One of those that I hadn't eaten for a while was Abla's chicken wings in garlic. Needless to say, once I got back to Melbourne and my kitchen and my copy of Abla's recipe book, I cooked up a variant.

As I had a whole lot of limes I substituted that for the lemon juice, I used little chicken drummettes instead of wings and I just used already prepared and purchased minced garlic from a jar. So the principle and the cooking methodology was Abla's but practically no ingredient remained the same! Well, that's how I like to cook: getting ideas from different sources and seeing what's at the shops.

Ingredients

12 chicken drummettes
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Juice of 6 limes
1.5 tablespoons minced garlic (purchased prepared)

Mode

Preheat the oven to 220c
Place the chicken pieces in a single layer in a baking dish
Sprinkle salt over
Roast for approximately 30 minutes until browned
Meanwhile squeeze limes and add minced garlic to resulting juice
Remove chicken from oven and pour over garlic and lime mixture
Stir through
Cook for another 20 minutes

These chicken pieces melt in your mouth. I served them with a simple rocket, pear and parmesan salad which we had also had at a Canberra meal over the break. I was flattered at the reception this simple main course had when I was told I was serving restaurant quality food! Well, it was: Abla's!

A few days later I tried another variant. I had some chicken breasts that I had intended grilling souvlaki style but as I still had limes that were also needing to be used, I chopped up the chicken breasts and cooked them using the same method above. They ended up being a little dry and probably didn't need the whole first 30 minutes of cooking; probably 20 would have done. But nonetheless they were delicious in salad for lunch and I'll be making them again too. Thanks, Abla, for being such an inspiration.

Ceylon Curry Pasties

2009-04-07T14:32:00.006+10:00

Having a few days off work before and after Easter means that I have time to do a few things during the week - such as cooking and blogging about it. I have been very slack in this department recently. So what took my fancy on this cold, autumn day in Melbourne? I decided to revisit the idea of cooking pasties. I had last done this just after Christmas to cope with Christmas leftovers.

Today I wanted something warm as I stubbornly refused to turn the heating on during the day. I used a mixture of vegetables which I had on hand as well as ready made short pastry from the freezer. My friend Graham makes his own Ceylon curry powder (ingredients are secret) so I used some of that to add flavour. This made a quick, hot, tasty meal in about an hour.

Ingredients

Potatoes
Brussel sprouts
Broccoli
Red pepper
Short crust pastry
Graham's Ceylon curry powder
1 egg

Mode

Preheat oven to 220 c
Take pastry from freezer and leave to thaw for 15 minutes
Chop vegetables and place in steamer with Ceylon curry powder to taste
When vegetables are tender and pastry thawed, roll out puff pastry to desired thickness and using dinner plate or smaller plate if desired cut circles for pasties
Beat egg
Spoon vegetables onto pastry circle, making sure not to overfill
Brush edges of pastry with beaten egg
Bring the edges together and pinch to form pastry
Brush with beaten egg
Repeat to make as many pasties as desired
Bake in 220 c oven until golden (20-25 minutes)

Salmon & ricotta patties

2009-02-07T20:50:00.008+11:00

Today was the hottest day in Melbourne's history. I think weather started being recorded in about 1855. The temperature rose to 46.4 celsius: that is 115.52 fahrenheit. We sweltered and there are fires throughout the state. Xena and Hecuba felt the heat though not as badly as they did during the last heatwave when we had 40+ temperatures for days.

In the midst of a lot of serious monitoring of fires and people at risk of evacuation, we had a lot of flippant comments on Twitter (and Facebook) about magnums, peppermint or otherwise. Then @shewgirl stopped me in my tracks by asking when I was going to blog! Good point. I wasn't going to blog about peppermint magnums but I did have a blog post waiting to write. So Tania, thanks for the wakeup call! This is for you! You may even be interested to know that during the week I had a couple of chicken schnitzels influenced by you. I bet you don't normally eat them with plum sauce though ;.)) Delicious!

Over Christmas one of the jobs I did was a major clearout of the pantry. This was needed but I also wanted to make space to store my new food-processor and my vacuum cleaner in the pantry. Well, I succeeded in all that. I also found various items that I needed to eat. Amongst the booty was a stock of canned pink salmon. Nom, nom! But what should I do with it? I had a couple of salads and then I remembered that once upon a time I used to make salmon patties. I remembered that I used ricotta in them, and think I probably also had grated carrot, grated zucchini and potato though the recipe varied according to what was in stock at the time. However, this time I decided on a much simpler recipe focusing on salmon, ricotta and the piece de resistance, dill! The mixture can be used to make patties or smaller balls which can be used for nibbles.

Ingredients

375 gr low fat ricotta
420 gr canned pink salmon
Cup dill
2 eggs
2 cloves of garlic
Breadcrumbs, dry
Olive oil

Mode

Drain salmon and ricotta
Roughly chop dill
Place salmon, ricotta and dill in bowl
Add one egg
Crush garlic cloves and add to mix
Mix thoroughly and form into patties (or small balls if desired for nibbles)
Beat remaining egg and put in a dish
Put breadcrumbs on a plate
Crumb the patties (or balls) in the egg and breadcrumbs
Let these rest in a cool place for a couple of hours
Heat some olive oil in a pan
Cook the patties until browned on the outside and cooked inside, turning regularly
Serve patties hot or cold with a salad or vegetables for a main meal
If making salmon balls, serve as nibbles with drinks.

Plums and Australia Day weekend

2009-01-26T16:19:00.007+11:00

I came home on the Friday night before the long weekend with about 10 kilos of blood plums that a colleague had harvested off her tree. This year the harvest seemed particularly good because of the vigilance of her cat who warded off marauding birds by choosing the plum tree as a favourite place to rest. So I'll be interested to see how many more kilos of plums make their way to work this weekend. Thanks Aileen and Doyle!

But, don't misinterprete what I am saying! I wasn't a reluctant receiver of these plums: I had been waiting for them to ripen and seeking updates on their status regularly. Last year at the about the same time I took home a batch and experimented with making a batch of Maggie Beer's plum sauce. I blogged about it here later in the year when I was eating some of it and it was a great favorite with a number of friends. So I was keen to repeat the exercise. I only cooked about three kilos and made one batch last year. This year the kitchen became quite a production line as I washed plums, chopped onions, belted ginger, dashed out to buy extra sugar and vinegar, simmered it all, strained and bottled it. Finally I could stand back with relief and admire my 14 bottles of plum sauce - the product of six kilos of the plums.

I won't repeat the recipe and the method here as I basically used Maggie Beer's recipe. However, I varied it a bit and also varied the ingredients between the two batches. I used red wine vinegar in one batch according to Maggie's recipe, but in the other I used apple cider vinegar as I had a lot of it on hand. I will be interested to see the difference in taste. I was also rather loose in sticking to the recipe in terms of the onion, ginger, peppercorns and cayenne. But then I always am. I also added the strainings (ginger, plum stones, peppercorns etc) from the first batch to the cooking of the second, in addition to all the other ingredients. The strainings are also nice to keep and add to various other dishes, I found last time.

And the rest of this batch of plums? Well, I decided I would stew them. I washed them and cut off various weathered bits, then I simmered them with about a cup of apple and peach juice and half a cup of currants. That will keep me in breakfast fruit for a while.

Now to clean down all the surfaces in the kitchen which seem spattered with plum! I have had a lovely long weekend immersed in plum cooking with the Australian Open tennis playing along in the background and providing a very Melbourne January sound that brings back decades of memories.

Christmas pasties

2009-01-03T11:31:00.005+11:00

Inevitably Christmas Day ends and there is food over! We divide the spoils and head home with ham, turkey, chicken, spanakopitta, roast vegetables, pudding, pavlova, berries - and vow that next year we will not bring so much. Well, of course, that remains to be seen. And let's face it, we always say it.

As usual I was responsible for the vegetables and did a tray of delicious vegetables roasted with garlic and rosemary. But people also said they wanted carrots and peas cooked on the stove top. So I did a big pot of those too, thinking that the vegetarians at least would eat them up. The vegetarians didn't seem too keen and like everyone else piled their plates with roast vegetables. One of them even said later she didn't like peas and carrots. Humph. Next year they are not being cooked despite what anyone requests.

Meanwhile, I went home with a big pot of peas and carrots. What could I do with these? Well, initially I stuck them in the freezer and during the week, in response to a moan about them, my friend Sue said the magic word: PASTIES. Now I hadn't made pasties for decades, but it seemed a great idea particularly once I saw a recipe in Stephanie for pasties made with ham, mustard and leeks. So I decided that I would make Christmas pasties with ham, mustard, peas and carrots!

Ingredients

1.5 cups chicken stock
2 potatoes
1 parsnip
2 cups cooked peas and baby carrots
1 egg
Ham cut from ham on bone
Dijon mustard
Puff pastry

Mode

Preheat oven to 220 c
Heat stock in pan
Peel and dice potatoes and parsnip and add to stock
Add cooked peas and carrots
Simmer until vegetables are tender
Roll out puff pastry to desired thickness and using dinner plate or smaller plate if desired cut circles for pasties
Beat egg
Place ham at bottom and add dollop of Dijon mustard (or other mustard of choice)
Spoon on vegetables, making sure not to overfill
Brush edges of pastry with beaten egg
Bring the edges together and pinch to form pastry
Brush with beaten egg
Repeat to make as many pasties as desired
Bake in 220 c oven until golden

Enjoy! Be careful not to overfill or the pasties will open up while cooking like mine did. They still tasted delicious but the look left something to be desired. And the rest of the vegetables? Well, given the unseasonal wintery weather, they became part of a vegetable soup. Of that, maybe more anon.

Preserved Lemons

2009-01-02T14:35:00.007+11:00

I love preserved lemons and always have some on the go, usually from Maggie Beer but also from resourceful friends. But I had never actually preserved any myself. Cleaning out the pantry was the trigger for this burst of activity, as was having a few days at home. I found two jars of coarse kitchen salt at the back of the pantry: I had bought it when I was into making my own olives. So what could I do with it? A friend said she wished she had known about my stock before she had to buy some to make preserved lemons! Now was the time to preserve lemons, especially as I was doing a census of my empty jars.

I read recipes in Stephanie's bible and also had a look at Claudia Roden. And let's face it did a bit of a Google too. Some recipes require storing for at least a month, while other recipes suggest tips for practically instant gratification such as freezing the lemons or cooking them in advance. A special touch Greg Malouf gives is to add honey: I knew this because I have bought his ready made. After all this, I decided to do the non-instant variety, to marinate them (as it were) overnight, to add cloves, cinnamon stick, bay leaves, coriander seeds, and then to mix some honey with the final lot of lemon juice a la Malouf. We'll see how they turn out in a month or so.

Ingredients

7 large, thick-skinned lemons
1 cup coarse kitchen salt
3 dry bay leaves
cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
coriander seeds
1 dessertspoon honey

Mode

Scrub and quarter the lemons and place in a large stainless steel bowl
Pour in salt and mix well
Cover and leave for 24 hours
Break up bay leaves and cinnamon sticks and put cloves and coriander seeds at hand
Pulpate lemons in salt to release as much juice at possible
Pack lemon quarters into jars with rind facing the edge, pressing down hard to release juice
Insert pieces of bay leaf and cinnamon stick and cloves and coriander on different layers as packing
Heat dessertspoon with hot water and spoon honey into remaining lemon and salt mix
Place the bowl briefly on fire and stir until honey is melted
Spoon the salty mixture into the jars, pressing down firmly to ensure that liquid penetrates and covers all the fruit
Wipe jars and cap tightly
Store for at least a month in cool spot.

Then enjoy either as a condiment with fish or cold meats, or for cooking. These should last for years without refrigeration, says Stephanie!

Christmas tortilla

2008-12-21T20:51:00.009+11:00

This afternoon was Christmas with family and friends in Edinburgh Gardens. Despite a week of wet, solid rain (which we love to have in a drought), today was a beautiful day. And didn't everyone make the most of it in Edinburgh Gardens? There were weddings and so many groups of people coming and going all day: eating, drinking, children and dogs playing, talking, reading the paper. There were so many groups: we were all part of a community, and yet all private and separate. How lucky am I to have this as my local park!

At this event we always take food. I had been asked to bring spanakopitta, but didn't fancy running down the street with a baking tray of hot spanakopitta in the full knowledge that by the time everyone came it would be cold. So I went back to an old stand-by, Spanish omelette or tortilla, and decided to give it a Christmas edge by adding some red and green pepper to the vegetables. Classic Spanish omelette is just eggs and potato, so the peppers added a Christmas touch.

Ingredients

4 large potatoes
3 cloves garlic
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
8 eggs
Olive oil

Mode

Heat enough oil in pan to coat potatoes
Peel and slice thinly the potatoes
Place in pan and toss to cover with oil
Cover pan and cook for about 10 minutes turning every now and again
Crush garlic and add
Seed and slice peppers and add to potatoes
Mix to coat with oil and cook for another few minutes
Meanwhile, quickly beat the eggs in a large bowl
When vegetables are soft, strain and add to eggs
Mix vegetables and eggs
Clean pan and add and heat more oil
When a haze shows on the oil, pour in egg and vegetable mixture
Cook until sides and bottom cooked, shaking regularly to stop sticking
Take pan from fire and cover with a plate
Quickly turn over the plate and pan and leaving the torilla on the plate
Add more oil to pan and heat
When a haze shows, slide the tortilla from the plate into the pan
Cook for a few minutes, shaking regularly
Take pan from the fire and cover with plate
Turn the plate and pan over allowing the tortilla to rest on plate
Serve hot or cold as tapas or main course with salad

Christmas salad - for Sue Gray

2008-12-13T15:10:00.003+11:00

Last Sunday I was having a Christmas lunch at Sue's house. She asked me to bring insalata caprese. Hmm! I was happy to bring a salad but not one that I was going to slice and arrange and travel with. I know the end result of that: all the arranging slides all over the place and a mess ensues. In my view the best food to transport is in a bowl!

So I thought of an alternate insalata caprese that I sometimes do, essentially made with cherry tomatoes (not sliced normal ones) and cherry bocconcini (not the normal sized ones sliced). And as it was Christmas I added a couple of other red and green ingredients. When it came to dressing, I was just going to slosh on some olive oil when I remembered my piri piri oil. So I drizzled a bit of that over. If you don't have piri piri oil to hand just use straight olive oil or add a smidgin of sambal oelek or chopped fresh chili to the oil. But whatever you do, don't drown it either with oil or add vinegar as the great thing about this salad is the fresh, crisp taste.

Ingredients

20 cherry bocconcini
1 punnet cherry tomatoes
Basil
2 Lebanese cucumbers
1 red pepper
Piri piri oil

Mode

Drain the bocconcini and slice in half before adding to serving bowl
Slice the cherry tomatoes and add to bowl
Slice Lebanese cucumbers in half lengh-wise and them chop into chunks before adding to bowl
Seed and roughly chop red pepper and add to bowl
Detach basil leaves from stalks and tear up roughly while adding to vegetable and cheese mixture
Drizzle a small amount of piri piri oil over top
Toss and serve for a colourful Christmassy salad.

Enjoy!

Soutzoukakia - yum!

2008-09-28T20:16:00.005+10:00

I reckon I must be getting over the dreadful flu and bronchitis I had in August but it has certainly taken time. Why do I think that? Well, twice this weekend I have felt like cooking and blogging about it and I have also been excited by reading a big backlog of blogs, including many food ones. I am delighted that my Bloglines is now down to under 2000! It has been hovering around 4ooo since I went to Alice Springs a few weeks ago but there was a flu-caused backlog before. So today I have been enjoying everyone's posts.

One of the blogs I was looking at today was Kalofagas - Greek food and beyond by Peter Minakis by a Canadian-Greek food blogger from Toronto. As usual he had lots of mouth-watering Greek recipes and there was a special added touch as he had been in Greece over the northern summer. I always enjoy Peter's posts and can't wait for plum season here to test his plum tarte tatin. But today it was his post on soutzoukakia that was a trigger for me. I had some leftover rice and was thinking about making piperies gemistes and had even got peppers from Mecca Bros yesterday. But when I saw his post I changed my mind.

Now Peter didn't use rice in his soutzoukakia and I don't know where I have come across soutzoukakia with rice, but I have! So this is what I did with the rice. Thanks for the inspiration, Peter, even though my recipe isn't anything like yours. I also added some piri piri oil to the mix as it was around from my Portuguese experiment a while ago. I think that this is pretty typical of Australian cooking. We are a multicultural community and our cooking reflects that: we have different cooking elements and simply combine them to see what they will be like. That's certainly how I cook much to the annoyance of purist friends who can't deal with pasta served with Asian sauces. Yeah right you should only serve pasta with classic Italian sauces? Not in my house, you don't!

Ingredients

500 gr. minced beef
1.5 cups cooked rice
2 eggs lightly beaten
3 cloves garlic crushed
1 dessertspoon ground cummin
Red wine
Piri piri oil
Olive oil
Pepper
Tomato sauce already prepared

Mode

Have already prepared tomato sauce simmering in a large pan
Place the minced beef, rice, eggs, garlic, cumin, pepper in a bowl
Add a couple of dashes of piri piri oil
Add a few splashes of red wine
Roll up your sleeves and ensure that the ingredients are mixed
Form into soutzoukakia shapes
Roll in flour
In a pan heat olive oil
Fry meatballs until sealed on all sides
Add additional olive oil as needed during the process
As cooked, remove from pan and add to pan with tomato sauce
When finished, add additional water to pan to ensure meatballs are covered
When cooking of meatballs completed, sear the frying pan with red wine and add this mixture to the pan with tomato sauce and meatballs
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes or more
Alternately, place in an ovenproof tray and cook in moderate oven for 45 minutes.

Then enjoy with potatoes, or in my case with cauliflower cheese from yesterday, or a green salad.

Cauliflower cheese: comfort food for Grand Final night!

2008-09-27T20:11:00.005+10:00

I was always planning to cook cauliflower cheese tonight as it is the season for cauliflower. But as it also turns out, tonight is a great night for comfort food as in Melbourne it is Grand Final night and my football team was supposed to cap off a wonderful season by winning back to back premierships. Not to be alas!

Fortunately I am only a very luke-warm supporter of football and so I am not weeping and gnashing my teeth in the anguish of loss. The other team which won is the local team, Hawthorn, which started out life just down the road from where I work. In fact, despite the fact that the Hawthorn team no longer operates out of Glenferrie Oval, its original home, it is telling that today that was where fans gathered. History does tell.

But to cauliflower cheese. At cauliflower season, cauliflower cheese is a favourite of mine, whether I cook it to serve as an accompaniment to a main, or to eat by itself. I usually use the whole cauliflower including any greenery and sometimes do a variant with cauliflower and broccoli which my nephew likes (and so do I). I also vary the cheese I use. Tonight I didn't include the greenery from the cauliflower as it was a bit seedy looking and I didn't include broccoli as I thought both wouldn't fit in the dish. I used a combination of cheddar and mozzarella cheese IN the sauce, and shaved Parmesan on top. And for a touch of piquancy I added capers to the cauliflower when it was cooking.

Ingredients

1 cauliflower, broken into flowerlets
1 dessertspoon capers
Water
600 ml milk
2 heaped tablespoon butter/margerine
2 heaped tablespoon flour
Pepper
1 cup grated cheese (cheddar & mozzarella)
Grated parmesan

Mode

Preheat oven to 160 c.
Break cauliflower in to flowerlets
Place cauliflower and capers in pan with small amount of water and cook until tender
Meanwhile make a bechamel sauce with flour, butter, pepper and milk
As sauce is beginning to thicken add cup of grated cheese
Continue to stir until combined and thick
Drain the cauliflower and caper mixture and place in an oven-proof dish
Pour the cheese sauce over and level
Sprinkle shaved parmesan over
Bake in the middle of a moderate oven for 45 minutes
Serve as an accompaniment to a main course, or by itself with salad.

Lovely food clouds!

2008-09-22T20:44:00.004+10:00

Michelle over at Connecting Librarian has been posting about Wordle.net which creates lovely clouds from words. And now it can do whole blogs! I thought I would give it a whirl for a couple of my blogs and see what words I obsess about.

This blog, the Librarian and the Kitchen, came out thus:

I wasn't very surprised at the main words: they reflect the foods I like best and the food I like.

This was fun to do. You can change the colours and layout. I did find trying to load them into the blog a bit frustrating. You had to save to the Gallery to get the code and then it pasted strangely so that you had to edit it to get the HTML to work. But it was an interesting exercise. Try it for your food blog. You might be surprised by the words you concentrate on - or not!

Spicy vegetables

2008-08-05T18:16:00.004+10:00

The other night I cooked up a tray of meat lasagne (another product of the pantry cleaning) and I was wondering about vegetables. I had potatoes and pumpkin on hand and a few other staples. So I remembered an old standby. I am sure that the recipe originated with one for peas in an old Indian cookbook but I have made it so often and with so many variations that I am not sure it bears any relation to the original. Maybe just the peas and onion and turmeric? It might be interesting to pull out the recipe and see if there are any remaining similarities.

Anyway, here's my Spicy vegetables. Again, I don't have quantities or times. Just do as much as you need for the number of people and cook it until it is cooked.

Spicy Vegetables

Ingredients

Oil
Onion
Mustard seed
Cumin seed
Tumeric
Pumpkin
Potatoes
Frozen baby peas
Water

Mode

Peel and slice the onion.
Cut the potatoes roughly into quarters, depending on the size of the potatoes.
Deseed the pumpkin and cut the pumpkin into manageable portions.
You can peel both the potates and pumpkin if you prefer but I don't usually.
Heat the oil in a saucepan large enough to contain all the vegetables
Add the onion and stir until softened.
Add mustard seed and stir.
Add other spices.
Add potatoes and pumpkin and stir so that coated in onion/spice mixture
Cook for a few minutes while stirring.
Add frozen baby peas and mix.
Add water and simmer until pumpkin and potatoes are tender and the flavours absorbed.

Note that I am taking the opportunity to take a photo using the nifty little yellow silicone trivet that Neville and Wayan gave me for my birthday. It's a great little tool.

Piperies Gemistes - again

2008-08-05T18:10:00.002+10:00

With the rest of the rice, tomato and dill mixture I filled and cooked a couple more red peppers. This time rather than adding fetta I added a handful of raisins to the mixture. The reason was simply that I was engaged in cleaning out the pantry and found a container with that number of raisins in it and I wanted to use them ;>).

These peppers were also delicious, but a lot sweeter. I think that I could probably have done with fewer raisins as raisins are very sweet and plump up a lot. However, I enjoyed these as well as the previous batch. I'll be cooking piperies now that they are on my radar again. Maybe I'll try stuffing with couscous next time?

Piperies Gemistes

2008-07-30T23:40:00.007+10:00

A few days ago I posted about the need to think of something to do with leftover rice. Sounds like I am trying to be the Leftover Queen! I'm not aspiring to be there: we all cook with leftovers ;>). But I did need to do something with my leftover rice and I am finally blogging about what I did. And it was gemistes piperies. In fact, it was only just piperies in the plural as I only had one red and one green in the fridge. I ended up with more rice mixture so I have frozen that for more peppers or tomatoes, or just for eating by itself as it is yummy.

With my already cooked rice, I added tomato sauce (I used ready made Bertolli tomato sauce from a jar but feel free to make your own), lots of chopped dill, and some crumbled fetta, Dodoni of course. The rice is delicious and the baked peppers are too!

I don't have any proper measures but these are the ingredients and mode.

Piperies gemistes

Ingredients
Cooked rice
Red and green peppers
Chopped dill
Tomato sauce
Fetta

Mode
Place cooked rice in pan and heat with tomato sauce to taste.
Add chopped dill and simmer.
Prepare peppers by slicing around top to make cap with stalk.
Remove seeds.
Add crumbled fetta to rice mixture.
Fill peppers with fetta and rice mixture.
Replace caps on peppers.
Place peppers in casserole with a little water.
Cover and cook in a moderate oven for 30 minutes.
Remove cover and cook for 30-40 minutes or until cooked.

Another day, another bowl of cauliflower soup

2008-07-29T10:14:00.005+10:00

It's MIFF time here in cold Melbourne and a good bowl of soup after hours in the dark is a great thing. Last night I had a great big bowl of cauliflower soup with a difference. I added a few chunks of fetta and some freshly ground pepper as a garnish. The pepper added a hit to the soup and the melting fetta was delicious and quite different from the normal Parmesan touch.

As is perhaps inevitable with our population, Melbourne has access to a mountain of different types of fetta - some local and ordinary, some local and gourmet, some full-fat, some low-fat, some Bulgarian, and some Greek. I guess they all have their place in the scheme of cheese making but the fetta I always have on hand is the my old favourite, Dodoni.

I don't know if it really has anything to do with the oracle of Zeus at Dodona near Dodoni in Epirus but the name for me evokes memories of visiting Dodoni one summer and the Greek family who took me into their house on the mountainside for a visit. They thought I was mad wanting to visit archaeological sites and read guidebooks there. But there you are. Greek oracles are long ago in my past but the Dodoni fetta is very much of my present. It is a proionta of Epirus even if not of Dodoni and I get quite anxious when I don't have stocks on hand ;>)

And the highlight of yesterday? Courtney Hunt's Frozen river, which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance. See it if you get the opportunity. It's not oracular or Epirote but a great film set on the US/Canadian border and about poverty and a hand to mouth existence not dissimilar in some ways to the old Greek subsistence but in other ways very dissimilar.

A pot of cauliflower soup

2008-07-27T14:05:00.007+10:00

During the winter I like to have a pot of soup on the go and I like to use seasonal produce for the soup. A few weeks ago I went back to an old favourite, Two in the Kitchen's Pumpkin soup. Last weekend as cauliflowers were plentiful, I bought a cauliflower to make soup. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on which way you look at it), the cauliflower got eaten before it became soup. Cauliflowers are, of course, still plentiful. So yesterday I purchased another and made soup before the cauliflower could be eaten.

This is a pretty simple soup: just butter/margerine, onion, cauliflower, stock and a few additions like ginger, garlic and coriander. As I have been longing to try my piri piri oil, I flung in a dash of that too, though the difference was not at all noticeable. Maybe I need to leave it sit for a bit longer, or it is not as strong as I expected.

Cauliflower soup

Ingredients
1 tablespoon butter or margerine
1 onion
1 whole cauliflower
2 teaspoons crushed ginger
2 cloves garlic crushed
1 dessertspoon chopped coriander
1 teaspoon piri piri oil
1 litre chicken stock
Shaved Parmesan cheese

Mode
Break up cauliflower roughly into flowerlets.
Chop the cauliflower stalk and any leaves.
Chop onion roughly.
Melt the butter/margerine in a stockpot.
Add onion and stir until soft.
Add cauliflower - all parts of it - and stir with butter and onion.
Leave to cook for a few minutes.
Add the chicken stock (or vegetable if you prefer).
Add ginger, garlic, coriander and piri piri oil.
Bring to the boil and leave to simmer until all the vegetables are tender.
Puree the soup.
Serve with some shaved Parmesan to garnish.

You could also reserve some chopped coriander for garnish. If you prefer a creamier soup, add a dollop of sour cream or Greek yoghurt when serving. So, here we can have an almost pointless meal - or it would have been if I hadn't eaten it with toast and butter ;>(

Now I need to think what to do with a whole lot of leftover rice from the butter chicken curry I made during the week. Piperies gemistes?

Lebanese "raita"

2008-07-19T17:05:00.008+10:00

During the week, we had our regular BC Geek Dinner. We tend to alternate between going out and bringing food to someone's house. This time we were going to Caroline's house and I said I would bring salad, not knowing what Caroline was cooking for main course. When she said she was cooking lamb curry and dhal, I started thinking about cucumber and yoghurt. I was particularly thinking about a delicious recipe with sour cream and yoghurt that my friend Karen cooks but unfortunately didn't get the recipe in time.

I looked at some Indian books, but finally lighted upon a cucumber salad in Abla Amad's The Lebanese kitchen and made that. It wasn't Indian but people treated it as such and were saying "Pass the raita" even though I had stressed the Lebanese nature of the dish. But hey! Brunswick is multicultural and our meal was too. The mint and yoghurt and cucumber was a delicious counterfoil to Caroline's curry and also to the butter chicken I made last night and ate with the leftover "raita".

The recipe is basically Abla's but I didn't add any water (she includes 2 tablespoons) and I used 500 ml yoghurt, whereas she uses 800 ml. All of this meant that my consistency was probably thicker than hers was intended to be but it was right for what I wanted.

Cucumber salad (aka Lebanese raita) after Abla

Ingredients

4 medium-sized Lebanese cucumbers
2 gloves garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 heaped teaspoon dried mint
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh mint
500 ml natural yoghurt

Peel cucumbers, then cut into quarters lengthwise and slice.
Finely crush garlic in a bowl with salt.
Add cucumber, dried mint, fresh mint and yoghurt and mix.
Add water if you prefer a thinner consistency.
Serve immediately.

Two in the Kitchen's Pumpkin Soup

2008-07-13T21:06:00.005+10:00

One of my favourite cookery books from the 1980s (and only just as it was published in 1981) is Rita Erlich and Dennis Pryor, Two in the kitchen: recipes for four hands published by Penguin, 1981. I have never cooked their recipes with four hands but let me tell you that that doesn't matter and a lot of them are very good and easy to make with two hands!

With my ongoing saga about pureeing soup (there have been more adventures in between now and my last post about it), I was keen to cook soup today as a friend was coming to lunch. So off I hopped to my battered and food-stained copy of Two in the kitchen for the Pumpkin soup recipe which is an old faithful stand-by. I change the Erlich Pryor recipe slightly by not adding salt and sugar and by adding ground cummin in addition to the nutmeg, but essentially it is their recipe. I also don't specify below what are the tasks for the first and second cooks as I do it as a stand-alone cook!

Ingredients
1 kg butternut pumpkin (seeded, peeled and chopped)
1 onion
1 potato
4 cloves garlic
60 gr butter
1500 ml chicken stock or stock and water
bayleaf
sour cream
pepper
nutmeg
ground cummin
chives

Method
Peel the pumpkin, remove seeds, chop into large cubes.
Peel the potato and quarter.
Put the stock on to heat in a saucepan.
Peel the onion, slice finely and gently soften in the butter in a 3 litre saucepan.
Peel the garlic cloves.
Add the garlic and vegetables to the onion and butter and stir until the vegetables are glistening.
After about 5 minutes, add the hot stock.
Season with pepper, nutmeg, cummin and bayleaf.
Cover the saucepan and simmer until the vegetables are very tender.
Remove the bayleaf and puree the soup.
Serve with a dollop of sour cream and chopped chives.

We had a yummy lunch with the pumpkin soup and Philippa's bread, followed by a couple of King Island cheeses served with Marg's Spiced oranges from Stephanie. I continued the tradition and gave Karen some of MY Spiced oranges from Stephanie to take home. She will now cook some and pass them on and who knows where this will end.

Prosciutto and ricotta tartlets

2008-07-05T17:50:00.009+10:00

I was wondering what to cook to take to a friend's house when I remembered that a couple of weeks ago my friend Penny told me she had made my prosciutto tartlets. Duh! I had a complete chemobrain episode for a few minutes until I remembered what she was talking about. It had been so long since I had made them - and I often have made them with phyllo cases for vegetarians. I have no idea where I got the idea for either of these as it's so long ago that I started cooking them.

So there was the answer: prosciutto and ricotta tartlets. Most of the ingredients were easy. Yes, Piedimonte's, of course. However, they let me down on the dill front and I had to do an extra trip to Queens Parade to the great greengrocer's where, of course, they had dill. I am glad to have some on hand as now I can make some lentil soup with it as well.

Prosciutto and ricotta tartlets

Ingredients
375 gr ricotta
1 egg
2 tablespoons shaved parmesan
1/2 cup dill roughly chopped
18 slices prosciutto (roughly 200 gr)
9 cherry tomatoes

Mode
Preheat oven to 180 degrees c.
Mix together the ricotta, dill, parmesan and egg.
Take one slice of prosciutto and cut in half horizontally.
Place one half in a small muffin tin compartment, and add the other half crossways.
Repeat for all of the compartments.
Place a heaped dessertspoon of the ricotta mixture in each prosciutto case.
Slice the cherry tomatoes into quarters
Place two quarters on the top of each tartlet.
Bake for approximately 30 minutes.
Allow to cool slightly before serving.

This quantity makes about 18 tartlets in the baking trays I was using, but will make more or less depending on your trays and how much filling you put in the cases. They will disappear in minutes so that you wonder about the effort ;>)

Death of the pea and ham soup

2008-07-05T11:56:00.010+10:00

Last weekend I was very glad to have picked up some bacon bones from the deli and confidently set out to make a pot of pea and ham soup. In fact, at the end of Sunday I self-confidently stated on Twitter that one of my achievements for the weekend was a pot of pea and ham soup. Well, so I thought.

I had great fun on Sunday looking at various recipes for pea and ham soup from Stephanie to Margaret Fulton. But what I ultimately cooked depended really on what I had bought with the soup in mind (pre recipe perusing) and what else I had in the house. All went well and it simmered away on Sunday night.

On Monday I came home from work excited by the prospect of a bowl of thick soup. Before that I needed to put the final touches to it with my trusty Sunbeam maestro. Alas! The trusty Sunbeam maestro was no longer trusty. It was dead. Well, it truly owed me nothing as I had had it for 20 years or so. The soup - well, I pulled out a sieve and then discovered the soup needed more cooking. I ate something else and days passed and the soup ended up in the compost.

This morning I was very excited to purchase for all of A$79 (it was on special) a Sunbeam Stickmaster Pro which is a stickmixer, a whisk and a chopper. So I can now aerate, puree, crush ice, emulsify, mince, chop, dice, make bread crumbs, and whisk. All the components except the actual motor part can be put in the dishwasher, a big improvement on the poor old dead maestro. I plan to have lots of fun with this new toy. I will even be able to make soup again.

Alas, poor maestro, we have had good times but you are soon going to your rest in the garbage bin. You have been replaced by a younger, sleeker model.

Spinach and ricotta gnocchi with tomato and basil sauce

2008-06-29T20:58:00.008+10:00

I love cooking and spend a lot of my time experimenting with recipes or trying other people's recipes. However, I also work long hours and like to have quick, good food that I can prepare quickly.

In North Fitzroy and North Carlton we are very lucky to have Maria's pasta in Nicholson Street. Maria has a range of fresh and snap frozen pasta which is just wonderful. I always try to have some of it in my freezer, and, apart from purchasing it at Maria's, I can also get it at my local supermarket, Piedimonte's.

Tonight, as I was feeling a bit challenged by getting late to the making of a pot of pea and ham soup, I was happy to pull out some of Maria's ricotta and spinach gnocchi and cook it with Bertolli Five Brothers Summer tomato basil pasta sauce. The gnocchi served with the sauce and some shaved parmesan was better than I could ever do, let's face it.

I have no connection with either of these products except that I find them delicious products which are great to have on hand for preparing a quick meal.

Stephanie's spiced oranges - my reprise

2008-06-28T15:52:00.007+10:00

I got quite over-excited about Stephanie's spiced oranges and went out to buy the ingredients yesterday. Today I followed the recipe using eight oranges. I used Stephanie's recipe except, yes there is always at least one except ;>). Well except that I used raw sugar not white sugar. I know that she doesn't specify but I always assume white sugar unless otherwise specified. And except that I misread the recipe and put the cardamon pods in whole, not the seeds thereof.

The eight oranges filled three jars, but I still had a lot of syrup left. So I started off again with another eight oranges.

With the syrup I topped it up with a bit more golden syrup and some more cloves and black peppercorns. I followed the recipe for cooking the oranges in water, cooling, and slicing and then added them to the syrup and simmered for 30 minutes or so.

The oranges are now cooling before I put them away up high to be preserved for summer months. Meanwhile I can enjoy Marg's spiced oranges. Maybe she is making some more in Canberra today?

Stephanie's spiced oranges and other Canberra goodies

2008-06-27T20:36:00.004+10:00

Yes, I know you are all saying: what has Stephanie Alexander to do with Canberra? She's a Hawthorn woman. And you are both right and wrong. This week I was in Canberra for the funeral of my cousin who died of @#$% breast cancer. One of the pleasures of being there was that I stayed with my friends Marg and Tony, and Marg sent me away with her produce.

Marg has a prolific orange tree and last winter she made a vat of Stephanie's spiced oranges. We had some with cheese on Tuesday night - luscious. They highly recommended it with cold meats as well. I have Marg's bottle to eat immediately but I decided that I needed to lay in stock for myself. So as navel oranges are in abundance at present, I have bought a batch and all the other ingredients and will be making my own vat tomorrow. This is Stephanie's recipe and the photographs are mine but of Margaret's spiced oranges.

Ingredients

Oranges
8 oranges (preferably pipless navels), washed
1 teaspoon salt

Syrup
1 kg sugar
1/3 cup golden syrup
1.5 cups white wine vinegar
seeds from six cardamon pods
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon whole allspice
1 teaspoon cloves
1/2 stick cinnamon

Method
Put oranges in large non-reactive pot, then cover generously with cold water and add salt.
Settle a plate down over oranges to keep them under the water.
Bring to simmering point, then simmer for about 50 minutes until the oranges are tender.
Lift gently into a colander and drain.
Discard water in pot.
When oranges are cool enough to handle, halve them using a serrated knife and cut each half into 4-5 wedges (do not peel).
To make the syrup combine all ingredients and heat to simmering point in a non-reactive saucepan, stirring until sugar has dissolved.
Simmer for five minutes, then remove from heat.
Put orange wedges into syrup and and return to a moderate heat with pan resting on a simmer mat.
Simmer for about 30 minutes until orange is tender and skin can be pierced easily with a fine skewer.
Using tongs fill sterilized jars with orange pieces, then ladle in syrup to cover.
Seal and leave for as long as possible before eating (at least a month).
The fruit will darken over time.

How lucky am I? I can cook my oranges tomorrow and, while mine are steeping in the syrup, I can eat Marg's 2007 oranges! Thanks, Marg!

Lebanese lamb and pinenut phyllo pie - with sumac!

2008-06-26T20:49:00.013+10:00

Recently I cooked Abla's meat and pine-nut pastries with a variant. I didn't have sumac so I used lemon and lime juice and zest instead and upped the other spices. Since then I have managed to source both sumac and pomegranate molasses. So tonight I used Abla's recipe to make a Lebanese lamb and pinenut phyllo pie according to her directions. Well, it is Abla's in terms of the ingredients, but she doesn't use it to make a pie but rather lady fingers.

Ingredients

1/2 cup pinenuts
2 tablespoon olive oil
500 gr minced lamb
2 onions chopped
1/2 teaspoon cumin seed
1/2 teaspoon allspice
Black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon sumac
7 sheets phyllo pastry
Oil for basting phyllo
Poppy seeds
Pomegranate molasses

Method

Preheat oven to 180c, 160 c if fan-forced.
In a pan, cook pine nuts in olive oil until golden.
Drain on kitchen paper.
Place lamb mince in pan and heat gently allowing it to cook in its own juices while stirring constantly.
Add onion and spices.
When onion turns transparent, add pine nuts and remove from heat.
Place phyllo on tea-towel to work from, and add sheets to pan, basting with olive oil as you go.
Add approximately six sheets to the pan.
Pour in filling.
Fold over phyllo, basting with oil.
Add top sheet of phyllo to beautify and baste with olive oil.
Sprinkle poppy seeds on top.
Cut into required pieces through upper layer, taking care not to cut right through the pie.
Cook in the middle of a moderate oven for about 45 minutes.
Cut through phyllo and serve individual piece with dash of pomegranate molasses.

For vegetables to serve with this I made a dish with potatoes and peas with Lebanese spices.

Ingredients

2 potatoes chopped roughly
2 handfuls frozen baby peas
1/4 teaspoon all spice
1/2 teaspoon sumac
Olive oil

Mix potatoes and spices in a bowl.
Cook potatoes and spices at high in microwave for 3 minutes. Meanwhile add olive oil to a pan and heat.
Add potatoes to oil and toss continuously until coated with spices and cooked.
Add peas and toss again until cooked.

The lamb and pinenut phyllo pie was again delicious. This time it tasted more like the real Lebanese thing, but I will make the one with lemon and lime again. Although not authentic, that variant was very nice indeed. It would be interesting to try another variation using lentils instead of lamb. The flavours would be different but it should work.

Chilli prawn wontons

2008-06-15T19:43:00.022+10:00

I wasn't thinking of cooking something new this weekend. I still had umpteen limes and was keen to do a few extra batches of lime curd and indeed I did complete this aim. However, when I was shopping today I came across wonton wrappers and was tempted. Could I whip out a few prawns from my dinner and make them wontons? Could I also do wontons tomorrow with a pasta sauce I was going to make?

Well, of course, the upshot of this speculation was buying the wonton wrappers and experimenting with chilli prawn wontons. I had never made wontons before so this was getting out of the comfort zone. The first thing I did was to Google wontons and come up with a good page on Taste.com.au about making wontons. This page had its source in Australian Good Taste, September 2004 p. 53. I found a couple of other instructions and played around a bit as well.

Essentially, I started cooking my sauce for Chilli prawns with pasta which I have blogged about before. Then I took a small bowl of water and a pastry brush, pulled out a wonton wrapper, placed a prawn in the middle and followed the instructions on Taste.com.au as well as playing around with a couple of other variants. I then steamed them for 10 minutes and ate them up with a chilli sauce for dipping. Yummy! I could have popped them in a soup or deep-fried them and served with the chilli dipping sauce. I will continue to experiment with these. They are easy and yummy.

The learnings were: wontons are very simple to make; whole prawns are perhaps a wee bit big for them but it did work ok; and when steaming make sure that the individual pieces are placed separately or it will not be possible to separate after cooking!

TasteSpotting is dead. Long live TasteSpotting clones!

2008-06-15T15:17:00.005+10:00

As we all mourn the passing of TasteSpotting and hope that the ending will be temporary, already several clones of it have appeared. Recipes2Share was the first one I heard about on the Leftover Queen Forum, and then today I discovered Food Gawker. which describes itself as: "This is our homage to Tastespotting. We hope you return, but until then we built a clone to satisfy people’s need to gawk at food porn."

I have registered with both and subscribed to both through my Bloglines. So I guess we'll just see what evolves. At first sight, I prefer Food Gawker because of its cleaner lines and because it's just a collection of food photos linked to websites rather than being part of something else. And let's face it, because it reminds me of TasteSpotting.

All we know about the closing of TasteSpotting is what is on the note on site. Questions on the TasteSpotting Facebook site haven't elicited answers and really this is not unexpected if there is a legal case sub iudice or pending. Much of the discussion has been around the issue of copyright of images, though others have said it is another legal matter. The very cloning of this site by several others makes me wonder about copyright - not of images, but of the whole NotCot concept. Any comments?

Piedimonte's Redeemed!

2008-06-14T14:30:00.004+10:00

Well, it's another day and another weekend and I've slipped off to Piedimonte's for more ingredients (and the obligatory cat food). And what have I found? I suddenly remembered another herb and spice section at Piedimonte's, not the normal one but a more specialized one near the vegetables. And lo! I am the proud owner of 80 grams of premium grade Sumac from Turkey! They had it all the time.

Now I can try the Lebanese Lamb Pie in Phyllo with sumac instead of lemon and lime juice and zest. However, I am actually glad that I didn't find the sumac last weekend as the lemon and lime added a lovely tangy flavour to the pie. Now I just need to go in search of pomegranate molasses - and I have been given a lead for that ;>)

Tastespotting gone? Wah!

2008-06-13T21:21:00.004+10:00

Wah! What has happened to Tastespotting? Why does it suddenly not exist? We just see a statement like this on the website:

I love Tastespotting and find so many good links from it. Does anyone know the reasons behind this? I've only known about this since 18 April and I've addicted since I first was told about it. Thanks, Sandy! What will I do now?

Lebanese Lamb and Pinenut Phyllo Pie

2008-06-09T19:00:00.011+10:00

I have been having a bit of a burst of Lebanese food in the last week with dinners at Zum zum in North Carlton and Rumi in East Brunswick. Not surprisingly I ended up getting out my best Lebanese cookbook, The Lebanese Kitchen by Abla Amad. Abla's Restaurant in Carlton has to be one of my all time favourite restaurants in Melbourne. It's small and in a terrace in Carlton. Abla is always there presiding over her kitchen and welcomes everyone as to her home. It's Lebanese family cooking and I have adored it for years, or is it decades? Abla opened it in 1979 so that looks like decades to me.

At Zum zum, I had had some scrumptious dishes and one of them was a bigger version of ladies fingers, a delectable dish of phyllo filled with lamb, onion and pine-nuts. Normally these are literally finger or cigar size, but at Zum zum they were larger and had dribbled pomegranate molasses on the top (I think). At Rumi we had delicious cigar pastries filled with cheese. I wanted to make something like this!

Abla had a recipe for ladies fingers: she said she made them more here in Melbourne where fresh phyllo is always available than in Lebanon. Fresh phyllo is indeed something I always have. So I was ready to try it. I had most of the ingredients and stocked up on lamb mince at my local treasure house, Piedimonte's. Unfortunately they let me down in the sumac line. I simply couldn't get it. Sumac is a red-coloured spice from the berries of the sumac bush and its flavour adds a sharp fruity taste similar to lemon: the illustration here is from Wikipedia. Pomegranate molasses is also on my shopping list but I found a source for that today from a friend who dropped by! How lucky am I in my friends! Thanks, Pamela!

I will pursue the procurement of this but at present I decided to substitute lemon/lime juice and zest for the sumac and increase the other spices. We'll see how it goes! I also decided that, rather than doing umpteen ladies fingers, I would use the filling to make a phyllo pie which would be a main course rather than mezza.

Lebanese Lamb & Pine-nut Phyllo Pie (after Abla Amad, Abla's kitchen)

Ingredients:
450 gr. lamb mince
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 onions, chopped
1 teaspoon cummin seeds
1 teaspoon allspice
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Juice of half a lemon
Teaspoon lemon zest finely chopped
Juice of 1 lime
Olive oil
7-8 sheets phyllo pastry
Sesame seeds

Method:
Preheat oven to 180c, 160 c if fan-forced.
In a pan, cook pine nuts in olive oil until golden.
Drain on kitchen paper.
Place lamb mince in pan and heat gently allowing it to cook in its own juices while stirring constantly.
Add onion, spices, lemon and lime zest and juice.
When onion turns transparent, add pine nuts and remove from heat.
Place phyllo on tea-towel to work from, and add sheets to pan, basting with olive oil as you go.
Add approximately six sheets to the pan.
Pour in filling.
Fold over phyllo, basting with oil.
Add top sheet of phyllo to beautify and baste with olive oil.
Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
Cut into required pieces through upper layer, taking care not to cut right through the pie.
Cook in the middle of a moderate oven for about 45 minutes.
Serve with vegetables or salad for a main course.
Well, all I can say is that it's just yummy! The combination of the crisp phyllo and the lamb inside is just delicious! I have found it delicious in ladies' fingers but it is great in a pie too. I really like the taste of the lemon/lime too! Once I get some sumac I'll try it that way, but at present I am very happy with the outcome.

Piri piri oil: a beautiful live fire!

2008-06-09T14:20:00.011+10:00

Today is a holiday in Melbourne, so I went back to bed with my coffee to finish off the last section of Piri piri starfish. And. of course, then I wanted to cook something! I decided to start with one of the "basics", piri piri oil. There were a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, it seemed that almost every savoury recipe in the book called for some form of piri piri and piri piri oil was one of the many forms used. Second, I had a batch of chillies drying on the kitchen window ledge and there were also a few ripe ones left on the bush that had escaped my last culling. It seemed meant to be. And probably the last time this season that I would have the fresh chillies.

Tessa Kiros describes piri piri oil thus: " This is like a beautiful live fire. Use it here, use it there, use it just anywhere you love 'hot'.... A drop onto your rice, into prego rolls, over a soup ... even just a tiny drip will add a very different layer to your plate."

Another birthday present was some Red Rock Grampians olive oil infused with chilli and garlic. So that will form an interesting comparison though I am sure that the Grampians example will have a much milder impact as it has been infused and strained and doesn't have all the chilli flesh and seeds nestling in it.

I am not very good at sticking to recipes and this one was not to be an exception. I used the chillies from my garden but have no idea what the variety is. I used white wine vinegar not red as Tessa suggested: this was an accident as I pulled the wrong bottle down and noticed too late ;>). I didn't have the coarse salt used in Portugal so I used "normal" refined salt. Tessa didn't specify what kind of olive oil to use, so I used Greek olive oil as that is my favourite. With those differences, this recipe comes from her Piri piri starfish.

Piri piri oil (adapted from Tessa Kiros, Piri piri starfish: Portugal found).

Ingredients:
3 fresh chillies, green stem removed & roughly chopped
6 dried chillies, green stem removed & roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves peeled
2 tablespoon whisky
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 fresh bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup olive oil

Method:
Using a mortar and pestle, mash the fresh and dry chillies and the garlic into a paste. Tessa says this should be about 2 tablespoon of chilli paste, though I didn't measure it.
Scrape the chilli paste into a small saucepan, add the whisky and turn the heat to low.
Add the lemon zest and juice, the vinegar, the bay leaf, salt and 2-3 tablespoons of the oil.
Let it bubble until it smells good.
Remove from the heat and whisk in the rest of the oil.
Pour into a sterilized jar and leave for a few days at least for the flavours to settle.
The oil will be hot at first but will settle and mellow.
You can add more olive oil to the mixture if you find it too strong after this.

Now I just need to put it aside and wait for a while for it to settle ;>). I enjoy making oils and vinegars and am wondering now whether I could use sambal oelek as a base for an oil, along with ginger and garlic. That is a combination I often use for a dressing, so maybe I will experiment with that next. Meanwhile, I wait.

Piri piri starfish - Portugal found!

2008-06-08T15:03:00.004+10:00

Recently I celebrated my birthday. I got lots of delicious presents of the food and wine variety as well as books. Piri piri starfish: Portugal found by Tessa Kiros is one of the books I received. I am sure that I will want to relish it from cover to cover but to date I have just been dipping into it randomly and being excited by the taste and place memories that it evokes. It's been decades since I visited Portugal - 1987 to be precise. But it is a place to which I have always wanted to return.

I realize that I know very little about Portuguese cooking. So this book will provide a treasure trove of recipes for me. The beautifully produced book is a pleasure to touch and feel as well as to view the illustrations of place, decorative art and food. After a general introduction, the book is divided into Essential recipes, Petisco plates, Starters and soups, Mains and side plates, and Desserts and cakes. Aside from the browsing and reading, I hope to find lots of recipes to try and cook for people. Thanks Penny and Mark!

The piri piri is a red, plump chilli pepper originating from Portuguese colonies such as Angola and Mozambique but widely used in Portuguese food, such as piri piri oil which is dribbled over many dishes. These chillies are known in some countries as birds eye chillies. The illustration below is from the Wikipedia article and looks very like the chilli plant growing outside my back door ;>).

And for the librarians amongst you: Piri piri starfish: Portugal found was published in 2008 by Murdoch Books, ISBN 9781740459099.

Maggie Beer's Spiced Pear Paste

2008-06-01T16:17:00.004+10:00

One of the foodie related items I recently received for my birthday was a tub of Maggie Beer's spiced pear paste. Thanks, Aileen! I have been impatient to try it out and today it formed part of a delicious lunch as a break from housework. Freshly baked Turkish bread (from the ovens of Piedimonte's of course) formed the basis: I tore the bread, added the pear paste, ham, cos lettuce and radicchio! It was yummy.

Chef Maggie Beer's products are widely available in Melbourne. This paste which has ginger in it goes brilliantly with either goat's cheese or a sharp cheese such as Cheddar. For those of you who don't have access to her products, I had hoped that there might be a recipe in Maggie's Harvest but alas! you will just have to come to Australia or experiment with your own pear and ginger paste.

Culinaria Greece

2008-06-01T14:52:00.004+10:00

One of the best presents I got for Christmas last year was Culinaria Greece. Thanks Sue and Brian and Callum and Tom! I have been savouring it for months and gradually reading it through section by section. This lavishly illustrated book brings the sunshine, the olive oil, the light, the retsina, the scent of jasmine and so much more right into my house. And, of course, there are the recipes and descriptions of Greek food in all its regional variety, from Epiros to the Cyclades, from Corfu to Cyprus.

Culinaria Greece is divided up geographically: Athens, Attica and Central Greece, Peloponnese, Ionian Islands, Epirus, Thessaly, Sporades, Chalkidiki, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Thrace, North Aegean Islands, the Cyclades, Dodecanese, Crete and Cyprus. In each of the sections, there is stuff about the area, its food and wine specialties,and recipes that relate to the area and to the food and wine featured in the section. Want to know how retsina is made? Try the Attica section. And, of course, where would you go for bougatsa but to Epiros? That section brought back vivid memories of the main street of Iannina and eating bougatsa just pulled from the oven. Memories of smell and sight mingled with the taste of the bougatsa.

I have many books on Greek food but this one is a real storehouse of information and photographs about Greek food and cooking! It is just lovely to dip into and to savour.

Coconut & Lime Blogiversary: Lime Curd

2008-05-25T19:52:00.008+10:00

Rachel over at Coconut and Lime is about to celebrate a Blogiversary. She is coming up to her 700th original recipe and is having a competition to celebrate. Participants can either cook one of Rachel's published recipes or create something new with the ingredients of coconut and lime. As a new food blogger I haven't yet participated in any competitions. Was this to be the one for me? I have been having a bit of a binge with limes recently and knew that there were lots around in the shops.

So could I come up with something creative for limes and coconut? Well, I probably could have but I cast a quick glance at Rachel's recipes and lit upon Key Lime Curd. I have never made curd myself. Well, why would I as my mother used to make lemon curd regularly? So here was my opportunity: eggs, butter, sugar and limes. As limes were A$3.99 for a kilo bag, I rather over-purchased as I ended up only needing 6-7 limes in the recipe.

But one never knows if there will be a disaster. Now I can make a few more batches or look for some other way to use the limes. Of course, we don't have key limes in Melbourne as the recipe requires. I just got normal Melbourne limes, well from South Australia actually. They are probably Tahitian limes as that's what we mostly use.

Before I started I also went to consult my bible, Stephanie The Cook's Companion, and she had some interesting comments to make about curd, lemon in her case, e.g. it not mattering if it boils, don't use a double saucepan, and she did things in a different order. One thing I did transfer from her recipe was whisking the eggs and sugar together before adding them to the juice and butter mixture.

Lime curd

Ingredients:
3 eggs
6 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
2/3 cup fresh lime juice (6-7 limes)
1 teaspoon lime zest

Method:
Squeeze limes to make juice and add required zest.
Whisk the eggs and sugar together lightly.
Melt butter in saucepan over low heat.
Pour in lime mixture while stirring.
Add egg and sugar mixture.
Stir all ingredients together continuously for about 8 minutes until it starts to form a custard and to simmer.
Take from the stove and allow to cool.
Pour into a jar and refrigerate.
Note: the curd thickens as it cools.

This tastes and looks lovely. I have firmly put it away in the refrigerator but maybe a little bit on toast for breakfast tomorrow will be yummy? Rachel, thanks for getting me to cook something I haven't tried before. And congratulations on your blogiversary!

Foodie Blogroll

2008-05-22T21:18:00.005+10:00

I am very excited that the Librarian and the Kitchen has been accepted onto the Foodie BlogRoll. This is a list of foodie blogs maintained by the Leftover Queen. How great a job is that! It's just the sort of task that is dear to the heart of a librarian in a kitchen.

You can access the Foodie Blogroll widget on the right hand side of my blog. From there you can submit your blog, join the Forum, and access the BlogRoll! I look forward to participating in the Foodie Blogroll Forum too.

Chilli prawns with vegetables and pasta - a quick meal with a bit of help from Piedimonte's!

2008-05-19T20:27:00.008+10:00

One of the fabulous things about living where I do in Melbourne is that my local supermarket is the renowned Piedimonte's. This means that mostly I can get anything I want to cook with and often things that I can cook but don't bother to because I can get them ready made. This meal is based on a couple of things that I can buy from Piedimonte's and have on hand for a quick meal.

There are basically two prepared elements here, the pasta sauce and the chilli prawns though, of course, the pasta is also sourced from Piedimonte's. Piedimonte's sells ready prepared chilli prawns available in their fish and seafood section which I'll be using here. I am also going to use one of the Bertolli Five Brothers range of pasta sauce as a base for this dish as I find them so good. I am using the roast garlic and onion one tonight but many of the others are equally suitable and contain fresh ingredients without preservatives.

Yes, I could make both of these without any problems, but when I come home late from work and want a quick meal this is always a favourite for me. It can be served with whatever fresh or dry pasta you have on hand. Tonight, the fresh pasta I had on hand (from Piedimonte's, of course) was tortellini with veal and sage, so I am serving my chilli prawns with a dry spaghetti as the fresh really was not suitable.

Chilli prawns with vegetables and pasta

250 gr Piedimonte's chilli prawns (prawns, sweet chilli sauce, garlic, salt, parsley)
Half red pepper sliced
10 florets broccoli
Roasted garlic and onion (Five Brothers) pasta sauce (tomatoes, tomato puree, onion, roasted garlic, salt, herbs, olive oil)
1 serve fresh/dry pasta
Olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
Shaved parmesan

Heat pan on moderate heat and add chilli prawns.
Chop vegetables, add to prawns and continue to simmer.
Bring water to boil, add a dash of olive oil and pasta.
Cook pasta for required time - 15 minutes for the dry pasta I was using.
Drain pasta and return to saucepan.
Drizzle on olive oil and grind black pepper and mix.
Turn out pasta into bowl and add prawn mix.
Top with shaved parmesan and serve.

Lime sardines - grilled or baked!

2008-05-18T15:46:00.013+10:00

The sardines, derivative of Lorenza di Medici, were delicious yesterday, but what will I do with the rest of the sardines? I had a look at a few recipes, mainly in Greek books, and then went back to my bible for ideas, Stephanie. I don't think I have cooked many of her recipes, but I love her this goes with that column under each of the topics and often pull the book down for inspiration.

Finally I decided that I would marinate the sardines this afternoon and then grill them this evening. I thought about various combinations from Stephanie but then decided to focus my marinade on the limes that I had on hand. Sardines are oily and strong flavoured and need something to balance that. Lime juice should do the trick and I really like lime juice. I finally settled on a combination of lime juice, olive oil, ginger, garlic, coriander and Sambal oelek (hot chilli paste).

Of course, the first trick was to secure the kitchen from the cats who were going berserk about the sardines yesterday ;>) and still aware of something very interesting in the fridge. Stephanie suggests always cooking sardines outside because of next day's smell, but I don't have a barbecue so I shall have to bear the consequences, I thought as I prepared the marinade. Then as I was putting the bowl with the sardines and the marinade into the refrigerator, I had an idea. These would be delicious baked in this marinade with potatoes. So I'll offer two variants for this recipe. And to obviate the need for grill cleaning and a sardine-smelling kitchen, I'll make the baked variant tonight.

Lime sardines

12 sardines (cleaned, headed, and butterflied)
Juice of 2 limes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon Sambal Oelek
1 teaspoon crushed ginger root
2 cloves garlic crushed
Chopped coriander to taste
Two potatoes (for option 2)

Mix together all the marinade ingredients. Place the sardines in a bowl. Pour over the marinade. Allow to rest in the refrigerator for at least two hours.

For grilled lime sardines:
Heat the grill until it is very hot. Place the sardines on the grill skin side up. Brush with the marinade. These should be cooked in about two minutes. Serve with green salad and olive bread. Serves two for a main meal, or can be served as part of antipasto.

For baked lime sardines:
Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius. Peel and chop each of the potatoes into about eight pieces and add to the lime and sardine mixture. Bake for 80-90 minutes until the potatoes are tender and have absorbed the lime mixture. If you partially pre-cook the potatoes, you could speed up the process but the long cooking allows all the flavours to permeate beautifully. Serve with green salad. Serves two for a main meal.

Saturday Treats from Canals!

2008-05-17T19:03:00.013+10:00

I am not by nature an early riser but one of the the things that I like to do to pamper myself on a Saturday morning is roll out of bed and head off to do shopping at Piedimonte's. This means that I can bring home a freshly baked almond croissant for breakfast. Sometimes I go slightly further afield to Canals in Nicholson St, the best fish shop in Melbourne.

Today I had a craving to cook a sardine recipe based on one by Lorenza di Medici but I wasn’t sure whether sardines were around. It was very cold and raining but I got myself out of bed and to Piedimonte’s, and thence to Canals. And guess what was in the Canals window? Filleted and flattened sardines just like I wanted! I was also tempted by the Pacific oysters and cooked prawns as I waited my turn. So I went away satisfied!

After I dropped off flowers to a friend for her birthday and devoured the almond croissant, housework and fighting with my modem intervened. Lunch was my reward (even though there was plenty more housework and I still couldn’t get a connection on the modem): Philippa’s luscious green olive bread with the oysters and prawns and lime juice. I normally use lemon but had been given some limes. The lime juice added a great touch, as I fought off the kokkinaki from the seafood. The greedy aspraki was asleep near the heater and missed the battle.

And the sardines? I wanted to cook an old favourite which involves baking the sardines with breadcrumbs, oil, orange juice, pinenuts and currants. There were a couple of obstacles. First, the pottery dish I have always used had cracked and was unusable for baking. Second, I couldn’t find the Lorenza di Medici recipe book anywhere amongst my cookbooks. I didn’t need the recipe book to cook the sardines but, so that I could discuss it here, I wanted to see what her recipe involved as opposed to mine which I know I have varied from Lorenza’s. Finding another dish proved less of an obstacle than finding Lorenza di Medici’s The Renaissance of Italian cooking which remains mislaid.

Hmm! After a good start my Saturday was not going well: broken dish, lost cook book, no internet connection and an overwhelming amount of housework. Use another dish, just cite the recipe book as a source, start inputting my blog post in Word for uploading later (@#$% internet connection), and do more housework (or put on my raincoat and go for a walk in the beautiful rain).

Things didn't get better. The modem was on its last legs so I dashed out to buy a replacement and still the washing wasn't done! And when I started cooking the sardines the quantities were not quite right for the dish I was using and required a bit of playing with quantities. However, the final product was delicious and well worth the effort. And the new modem is still working and the first load of washing is completed!

Baked Sardines with breadcrumbs and orange juice

12 sardines (headed, filleted and flattened)
3 heaped tablespoons dry breadcrumbs
1 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon currants
1 tablespoon pinenuts
Olive oil

Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees. Place the sardines in a circular arrangement in a round dish that is suitable for oven to table use. Sprinkle the currants over. Add breadcrumbs. Pour on orange juice to cover and dash with olive oil. Toss pinenuts on top. Place in the middle of the oven and cook for 30 minutes.

Serves four as an entree and two as a main meal. For a main meal serve with salad or vegetables.

Lentil & Bocconcini Salad for Mother's Day

2008-05-10T20:36:00.008+10:00

It's Mother's Day here in Australia and as is normal we are all gathering for lunch and bringing food. I need to bring something that will not need cooking or heating when I get there as others need the oven, and it also needs to be something that is good for the vegetarians who will be there. I am also still feeling in the need of comfort food because of my illness. So I decided on an favourite old stand-by, my Lentil and Bocconcini Salad. This is a dish that I can do very quickly and it is also one that will not need any further work on arrival. It is fresh and tasty and a regular pleaser at any time of the year.

I have a long-standing love of lentils in any shape or form that dates to my living in Greece. I am going to use normal sized lentils today, but you can also use the delicious tiny variety grown in France and also in Australia. I find this a very versatile recipe. This time I am using Vietnamese mint as it is flourishing in the garden. But sometimes I use coriander - I won't use this today as my sister is allergic to it. Or, for a totally different taste, in season I use basil which goes beautifully with the tomato and bocconcini with which it is often married in salata caprese. When I use basil, I leave out the ginger and the chilli. I also vary the pulse I use, with chickpeas being the most common variant.

Lentil & Bocconcini Salad

Ingredients:

800 g lentils ( pre-cooked or canned)
200 g cherry bocconcini
1 red pepper
200 g cherry or grape tomatoes
1 zucchini
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp ginger root
1/2 tsp Sambal Oelek (or crushed/chopped fresh chilli)
Vietnamese mint
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Drain the lentils and place in a bowl which can be used for serving. Drain cherry bocconcini and cut in half. (If you are using normal sized bocconcini, quarter them). Add bocconcini to lentils. Deseed and chop red pepper into strips. Julienne the zucchini. Slice the cherry or grape tomoatoes into halves. Add all the vegetables to the lentil and bocconcini mix.

Roughly chop the Vietnamese mint, put the garlic and ginger through a press and add this along with the chilli. Dash some Greek olive oil and balsamic vinegar (di Modena, of course) to taste on the salad. Toss and serve.

This is a delicious lunch served with olive bread or a crusty loaf and butter. Or it can be served as part of a larger array of food as it will be for my family's Mother's Day.

Comfort food & Maggie Beer!

2008-05-07T19:43:00.003+10:00

This Librarian is still feeling challenged by the throat, sinus and chest infection she has had for over two weeks. Sure it is getting better. But tonight comfort food was on the agenda. Several things conspired. This morning in the pantry my eye had lighted on some plum sauce I had made a month or so ago from a Maggie Beer recipe. And this evening when I had finally been enticed to the kitchen by the hungry cats I turned on the television to get a bit of the Cook and the Chef, i.e. Maggie Beer. That was all about eggs, bacon, pastry, and other yummy things that I wasn't going to cook. They were also talking about food to eat when they felt sooky.

But what to eat? Comfort food was needed. Soup and toast offered one prospect. Then I remembered the plum sauce - yum! Next thing I was chopping up onion and potato, heating olive oil in a saucepan, popping in the onion and potato with a bit of Madras curry, tossing them around for a while, and then adding a basic comfort standby from the freezer, frozen peas, and a bit of water. Meanwhile I had retrieved some frozen plum sausages from the freezer and was thawing them in the microwave. What a great comfort meal resulted! Grilled sausages, peas, potatoes and onion, and the highlight: Maggie Beer's plum sauce.

And the plum sauce? A while ago, during plum season anyway, a colleague gave me a mass of blood plums. I hunted around my recipes and found a great recipe in Maggie's Orchard for plum sauce. Maggie says it was an interpretation of one of the recipes in the Barossa cookery book first published in 1917. It has also been re-published in Maggie's harvest.

You need:
3 kg blood plums
500 g onions
2 cloves garlic
1.25 kg sugar
500 ml red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Halve the plums but leave the stones in. Cut the onions into small chunks and slice the garlic. Bruise the ginger by pressing down on it with the blade of a knife (do not chop it up as I did, but keep it in one large piece!!). Saute the onion, garlic, and ginger in a little olive oil in a large preserving pan until softened. Add the remaining ingredients and cook until the plum stones come away from the flesh, about 30 minutes. Strain the sauce and allow to cool. Fill hot, sterilized bottles with the cooked sauce and seal.

I had a great meal, while watching Spicks and specks. The good thing is that I still have some of the vegetables ready cooked and I have all the other ingredients to do it again tomorrow night if I am still feeling in the need of comfort food! Now, I can get off to chamomile tea and my warm bed! Hopefully, I will feel better tomorrow.

Food Social Networking Sites

2008-05-04T19:32:00.006+10:00

I got into this food and cookery blogland via Sandy's Things at Learning 2.1. So I have been interested to find a couple of food social networking sites. Bakespace is touted as the MySpace for cooks and has been an Official Honoree in both the 2007 and the 2008 Webby Awards. You can swap recipes, make friends, blog, message, join Pantry Forums and Tearoom Chat, tag recipes to set up your cookbook and move out into the wider world to buy from Amazon. You can reach me at Bakespace here.

The other site that I kept on coming across is Foodbuzz. Foodbuzz is a site of foodies: you might be someone who likes eating, who enjoys commenting on restaurants, or someone who wants to share recipes or food blogs. You can review restaurants (there are very few in Melbourne, two to be precise, neither of which I had ever heard), and link up with other foodies as friends, read and share recipes and link into foodie blogs. A lot of the foodie blogs I came upon were members of Foodbuzz but it is certainly limited in local interest for Australians, though there are 40 odd Melbourne members. You can follow me on Foodbuzz here and I am interested to see that this blog is feeding there beautifully.

Brave New World!

2008-05-04T14:15:00.008+10:00

What an amazing world I have found out there in food and cookery blog land! I have been exploring some of them that I came across through Tastespotting and others I have been led to through lists of blogs on the blogs I have bookmarked. This is definitely a brave new world that I want to explore further. The blogs vary from the highly professional and highly specialized to people who just enjoy food and like to blog about their experiences.

I was a bit mystified initially on Tastespotting to see a whole swag of recipes for cheesecake pops. Eventually after reading a few of the blogs I discovered the Daring Bakers Challenge! These cooks were all participating in the the April Daring Bakers Challenge. Someone posts a recipe and everyone registered has a go at it or variants of it. They then blog about it, put it up on Tastespotting or whatever. I don't think there is any competition here: just learning from each other.

And today this time through Souvlaki for the Soul, I came across another online challenge, the Joust, which operates out of the Leftover Queen Forum. Each month someone suggests a few ingredients and members come up with recipes, cook them, illustrate them, blog about them and post them on the Joust site. You need to have a food blog to register; then you can participate and vote for the recipe of the month.

It sounds a bit like the Iron Chef ;>( but is probably a bit less stressful in terms of time-pressure.

I can see that I am going to need to set aside a bit of time each week to catch up with reading all these blogs. Then I need to work out time to do some cooking and experimenting with creating recipes. Fun, fun, fun. And I got the original of Aunty Luce's recipe book yesterday so that is another exciting focus for the librarian in me.

Taramasalata

2008-04-20T19:40:00.005+10:00

I was amazed in my journeys through ImCooked and TasteSpotting not to hit any recipes for taramasalata - and yes, I did try a range of variant titles. I was thinking that I needed to get out all my Greek cookbooks and post a recipe or even do some cooking and work out my own favoured variant. I confess that it is a very long time since I cooked any Greek dips as so many wonderful ready-made examples are available in Melbourne off the shelf. Given Melbourne's reputation as being the third largest Greek city in the world, this is not surprising ;>).

So before I got to the recipe books, I hit Google and found an Australian recipe there on Taste.com.au - the photo is from there. Gourmet traveller also had one and Delia online did too. Mietta's recipes did too, though I thought the addition of cream a bit over the top. And they are just a couple that I picked out! Fortunately making taramasalata is alive and well on Google! How relieved am I! Particularly as it means that I won't have to do major research into the variants and possibilities of tarama just yet.

Lahanodolmades from Closet Cooking

2008-04-18T23:13:00.003+10:00

How amazingly bizarre! I went out and had dinner at a Hungarian place in Glenhuntly Road and the minute I saw cabbage rolls on the menu that was what I had to have. I came home and checked Bloglines only to discover that Kevin at Closet Cooking had featured lahanodolmades, the Greek version of cabbage rolls with avgolemono sauce. Yum! Here's the photo of Kevin's cabbage rolls and his recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cabbage (cored)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion (chopped)
4 cloves garlic (chopped)
1 pound lean ground beef (or lamb)
1/2 cup Arborio rice
1/4 cup tomato puree
1/2 cup feta (crumbled)
1 lemon (zest)
1 bunch of green onions (sliced)
1/4 cup dill (chopped)
1/4 cup mint (chopped)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
* chicken stock
2 eggs

1 lemon (juice)

Directions:
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil with some salt.
2. Carefully place the head of cabbage into the water and boil for 10-15 minutes. The leaves should be a little see through and they should come off easily without ripping.
3. Drain the water and carefully peel the leaves off one by one removing the thick part of the rib of each leaf.
4. Heat the oil in a pan.
5. Add the onion and saute until tender, about 5-7 minutes.
6. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 1 minute and remove from heat.
7. Mix the onions, garlic, ground beef, rice, tomato puree, feta, lemon zest, green onions, dill, mint salt and pepper in a large bowl.
8. Place a cabbage leaf on a flat surface with the vein side up.
9. Place a tablespoon of filling in the middle of the leaf and fold the sides over the filling and roll the leaf up. Repeat until all of the filling is used up.
10. Place stuffed leaves into a baking dish in layers and just cover with chicken stock.
11. Bake in a 375F oven for about 1 hour.
12. Whisk the eggs in bowl over a small pan of simmering water until frothy, about 3 minutes.
13. Slowly pour in the lemon juice while whisking.
14. Add some of the liquid from the baking dish and continue whisking until it thickens.
15. Mix most of the avgolemono sauce into the dish with the wraps reserving some for garnish.

16. Serve garnished with the reserved avgolemono sauce and some chopped dill and or mint.

The Librarian and the Kitchen

2008-04-18T15:33:00.009+10:00

No, this isn't a blog about Stephanie Alexander, though no doubt she or her bible will feature here in days to come! When I was doing #57 in Learning 2.1 I came across a fabulously yummy website, TasteSpotting which linked me to a myriad of blogs about food.

One of my many foibles is to gather recipes on bits of paper cut from newspapers or magazines or scribbled on the back of envelopes. How great it would be to sort them out and gather them in one place along with clips of online recipes or food articles.

A wiki was something I thought about, but the blog is sortable and a bit more free-form. Hence, the Librarian and the Kitchen which has many layers of meaning. The next step will be to sort and declutter!