Rice paper rolls.

We have duck skin again, ready to be crisped and slivered up.
This time the plan is:

Snow pea sprouts
Pink pickled ginger
Crispy duck skin crumbs
Oyster sauce, chilli sauce and sesame oil.

Duck with persimmon sauce.

We did just as we did last time with the duck - roasting the duck for two hours (turning once) on a sloped rack over a deep pan. The cavity we stuffed with persimmon halves, garlic, cardamon pods and a little stick of cinnamon. Once the duck cooled we cut off the pieces for tonight's dinner, and put aside all the other flesh (in a bowl for the fridge) and skin (in another bowl, for the fridge). We harvested some duck fat to baste the potato and parsnip pieces with and cooked them in the wood stove adding the duck pieces to be warmed and crisped just before serving: Roast duck & vegetables with persimmon sauce.

We've left the carcass cooling in the oven overnight and will stock it up tomorrow.

The persimmon sauce was as made with finely diced shallot bulbs sauteed until transluscent in duck fat, with spices aniseed, corriander, cumin, paprika, pepper & salt; then, a teaspoon of cornflour; some white wine; 3/4 teaspoon of sugar and a peeled and chopped persimmon. The cornflour was added and the mixture stirred for a minute or so before the white wine - then it was simmered for a bit. The sugar and fruit was added and as it seemed too chunky a sauce, a little water was added. It simmered for at least ten minutes, maybe even twenty. It was perfect.

The "comfrey comfort" team.

The "comfrey comfort" team arrived this morning - Troy and Nadia with their champion juicer and various herbal remedies including several great big comfrey roots and a bunch of small pale (japanese radish like) chichory roots. Troy made them up into a hot sticky paste and applied it to my knee. Nadia brought apple pie and brownies.
That was morning.

In the afternoon, Troy had to go to work at the Bugsplat Family Centre but Nadia was free for lunch at Castenada's. Gray gave a detailed critique of the coffee. He enjoys the coffee but I think he enjoys his critique even more. He had empanadas - little parcels of yumminess with creamy spinach sauce. Nadia and I had marron - the local freshwater crayfish. It was a bright sunny winter's day.

Afternoon crash.

People talk about the mid-afternoon sugar crash. I'm not sure it's got much to do with sugar. I think it might be related to vitamen B and salt. A cup of miso soup helps me through it.

The trouble with this slice.

Trouble made a slice yesterday.

Here's the ingredients she used:

a block of dark chocolate
10/12 dried figs finely chopped
two lemon rinds finely chopped
juice of a lemon
two cups of chopped nuts - brazil, walnut, pecan - AND sesame seeds
a handful of dried apricots
apricot nectar
cup buckwheat flour
cup wholemeal flour
cup cornflour
raising agent
enough butter
ginger cordial (equivalent sugar: a tablespoon)
apricot nectar (equivalent sugar: a tablespoon)
two tablespoons of quince paste (equivalent sugar: a tablespoon)
a tablespoon of sugar

The trouble with this slice is that it's so confusing!
It came out very well, sliced up well, was moist and held together perfectly and it tasted vaguely ~yummy~ but it didn't really taste of anything in particular. Mixed fruit and nuts and chocolate. I think the flour mix worked very well so I wouldn't change that but this slice would have been better made in three baking dishes as follows:

1. Lemon, fig and ginger
2. Chocolate, quince and pecan
3. Apricot and walnut

The brazil nuts and sesame belonged in some other Hiking Bar style slice that only those dirty Hinchinbrook girls would eat.

Morning mousetrap.

Jarlsberg is the best cheese with which to make a banana and black pepper mousetrap.

I don't feel like cooking.

It's one of those days. Nobody wants to cook.
Thea suggests olives, cheeses, smoked salmon, crackers and sun-dried tomato. Guess what Sausage wants?

Trouble offers to cook. Her cooking is sturdy. She uses pre-mixed spices. Francesca can't bear to see the little tins, lined up from the east to west. Culinary orientalism. We used to roast our own cumin and hand grind it in a stone mortar. And perhaps we will again. On our own land. We used to grow so much basil that we'd crush it for the pleasure of the smell. That was on the mountain. Perhaps we'll grow food again.
There was a mouse in the kitchen. Sausage lied about it's whereabouts to a frypan-wielding Gray and Gray realised who she was. She wanted to keep it as a pet. She talked about getting it a little wheel to run in and feeding it toast.
Gray is a kind man. He caught the mouse in a bright orange colander and we drove to Bugsplat Forest Park to let Sausage let it go by the picnic tables.

It was a marsupial mouse: they have very cute ears and they hop rather than scuttle.

moussaka

Moussaka!
Mmmm.
The dark sauce: An onion, chopped. A couple of sliced mushrooms. Some diced tomato. A tin of whole tomato; scissored up in the can. Chilli, rosemary, paprika, basil, oregano. Tin of borlotti beans, thoroughly rinsed and drained.
The onion is softened in a little oil & salt, in a saucepan, until translucent. Mushrooms are added first (sizzle, sizzle); then, the rest. It should simmer for a while, while you're making the white sauce.

White sauce: Fetta, crumbled (a vegan could easily use tofu here, with a little extra salt and pepper and perhaps some addtional base notes such as ... more garlic or some smashed cumin); lots of mint, slivered; lots of yogurt, soy milk, leftover cheese that needed using, a couple of slivered olives, and a few tiny pieces of sun-dried tomato that happenned to be left in the fridge. Smashed garlic cloves. Well mixed. Should be creamy.

Eggplant: Sliced into thin sheets. I slice off the skin on both sides (lengthwise) and then continue with thin slices so they end up like roundish sheets. I have been known to make little cuts in the 'rind' of eggplant skin, but as long as the slices are thin this isn't really necessary. About a centimetre thick. No more. Perhaps a little less.

Into an olive oil readied baking dish - a layer of dark sauce, a layer of thin sliced eggplant (aubergine), pepper, white sauce, dark sauce, eggplant layer, white sauce.

180 degrees for an hour.

mustard, mustard, mustard!

The Herrings had a hand in dinner tonight. Vegetable stew.
Potato, zuchinni, corn, celery, onion, mint, mustard, black pepper, herbs and white wine.

It was nice enough, but as always with a Herring dish - it's nostalgic rather than creative.

Couscous bake.

This is one of Angelata's specialties - and a favourite with the vegans of our system. The only problem, says Angelata, is that people keep adding fish and chicken pieces to it!

I want to say hello, but I feel a little shy. I have a bad reputation in this system because I'm not particularly likable. It makes me sad sometimes that Gray doesn't like me much, and I feel guilty about the way I sneakily get attention and love from him, coming in under the radar, you know, when he's with someone he does like. I hope that one day we'll be friends. Anyway, I did a lot of the cooking when we travelled around Australia because we travelled with my friend Andrew who is also a vegan. Since we moved to Bugsplat the vegans in our system have lost a lot of power and I rarely cook any more, but this dish is one I invented one night here. Unfortunately, we often have it with fish pieces and chicken, but I prefer it when we follow the original idea using big pieces of zuchinni that provide lots of natural juice to the dish. Here's the recipe - or rather - here's my ramble about how I make it.

An onion is quartered and split along it's natural lines so as to form petal-like flakes one layer of onion thick. These are spread out as the base in a baking dish. The dish I use is glass and it works well. Tomato and mushroom and capsicum are likewise cut into bite size pieces. Generous drizzles of olive oil are added at this stage as well as rosemary, thymne, dried chilli flakes, and black pepper; and then the dish is tossed with a fork. Big pieces of zuchinni are added to the top - they will retain their shape and bleed their juice steadily. We slice them diagonally so they are about 1.4cm thick and 10 - 12 cm long and 6-7cm wide. If you have baby zuchinni you can have them whole, just top and tailed and if you have smallish ones they can be halved along the length. After 40 minutes at 180 degrees we take it out and check that the tomato has disintergrated and that there is enough juice to add the couscous. It depends somewhat on the zuchinni. There should be an inch deep of juice or more. If there's not enough we add a small quantity of white wine and return it to the oven for a few minutes before adding the couscous. The couscous needs just enough juice to swell, no more. It is a matter of experienced judgement. I'm not a cook who follows recipes. We return it to the oven for another five minutes or so and then check it again.
If it looks ready, it's done, I say.
Thank you for reading.