Put the kettle on.

2010-12-12T20:31:00.000+07:00

Cooks with dedicated apprentices: Mannie, Francis Apprentice Cook to Mannie: Jilly Apprentice Cooks to Francis: Heartness, Frond, Skink Independant Cooks: Shell, Just Jo, Roz, Francesca, Angelata, Frank General Apprentice Cooks: Trouble and Calypso Kitchen Lurkers and Olive Stealers: Thea, Emma Dilemma and Viola who's here mainly for the Doctor Who content at 36! Kitchen Vultures: Sausage, Gruesome, Miranda, Cassandra and their dastardly accomplice Gray.

Aunt E.H.

2010-06-01T20:15:00.002+07:00

All our food shenanigans are at the other place these days.

Exciting times.

Whistling in the dark.

2010-03-28T08:46:00.001+07:00

So, in the kitchen, interpersonal relationships have been incredibly lively.

As you may know, if you've been paying attention, Angelata is now a reformed vegan and this has changed everything about how we work together. I'm very optimistic about the future direction we're headed and I hope that in time we'll be able to produce some really great dishes together.

I haven't got anything new to report in the kitchen, in terms of dishes, just now.

The Jerry.

2010-02-18T06:24:00.000+07:00

Tonic water, ice, ginger syrup and three sour cherries.

And if that's not enough hot news...

2010-01-31T21:00:00.000+07:00

There will be a bake off between us and our favourite cook in Bugsplat.

Sour cherries are involved.

Bugsplat Future Cafe.

2010-01-31T20:59:00.001+07:00

And today, after Mannie had her 5th Sunday privilege, we helped Mannie's particular friend and our general friend move some furniture in preparation for her opening a cafe one day... soonish.

Very exciting.

The bread and wine, of fellowship.

2010-01-31T20:55:00.001+07:00

I'm so grateful. Thank you all so much.

Pastry.

2009-12-05T18:09:00.003+07:00

We've been saving pastry and Graham Greene and bridge for "later".

Now we are of age, it's time. Pastry first.

Rye and walnut pastry with parsnip and roast eggplant, for a birthday.

So now we need yet another bookshelf and a marble bench.

Pizza, again.

2009-11-08T19:55:00.001+07:00

It's Gray's favourite.

Cooking with gas.

2009-10-04T20:37:00.002+07:00

The move has been disruptive, of course, as we knew it would be, travel is easy, relocation is something else again and there have been difficulties.

The new stove is gas! And there's a garden.

Things will improve.

Genius Country Cook.

2009-07-03T19:36:00.001+07:00

She's amazing.

And so am I.

Dishy!!

Vegan Haggis.

2009-05-21T16:25:00.001+07:00

And other mystical and mythical beasts.

New culinary influences.

2009-01-16T15:41:00.002+07:00

So, Angelata and me work together now, and that's been wonderful.

Nothing much to say except that our current diet is proving to be an enjoyable challenge.

Sister of Lentilla.

2008-07-10T15:04:00.001+07:00

So I see that someone (heartness maybe or frond) has set up a blog with Angelata called The Lovely Lentilla. I like it. I like the first couple of posts.

I wonder if one day they'll finally convert me?

Evidence based nutrition.

2008-06-29T14:06:00.002+07:00

We've been researching what to feed Wednesday and after all the people in our system have had their say and after lots of reading (books from the library as well as the usual crackpot internet conspiracy theories) and talking to people we respect we've got a diet worked out for her.

We think the best food for her is probably raw meaty bones from the butcher. Chicken necks and small lamb bone scraps to start with and thinly sliced marrow bones. We'll feed her raw eggs, lactose free milk, banana, avocado and any other fruit she shows an interest in (she likes banana) as well as her dry kibble. The plan is that Wednesday will be fed canned food occasionally, just as we occasionally eat junk food. It will be something she recognises and is happy to eat. This way she can stay over with her mum and sibling or with other dogs and be happy to eat what they eat. She'll have table scraps if they seem okay for her - like rice or potato with sauce and or meat but in small quantities.

We want her main diet to be raw meaty bones. Good for her teeth, lots of natural calcium and good quality protein. She seems to be doing really well on it so far.

The thing that might be missing is a replacement for the stomach contents of herbivores in her traditional diet - so we might grind up fresh leafy greens for her and mix them in with something she really likes, but as she can't digest cellulose we'll have to process quite thoroughly.

Suggestions?

Wednesday pot luck.

2008-05-10T13:05:00.003+07:00

We've made two meals for soon-to-be-our puppy, her litter mates and mum.

One was a chicken casserole and one a tuna casserole.

For future reference.

2008-04-21T13:26:00.002+07:00

dolmade leftovers are yummy additions chopped up to spinach pie

that's all i have for you today.

Rainbow promise.

2008-03-03T20:24:00.002+07:00

After the Cow God Dream everything changed.

Lots of vegans became vegetarians and lots of omnivores gave up beef.
Now our food pact is very simple - as follows.

1. We may eat anything offered to us at another's table if we choose to.
2. In ordinary life, we should avoid pork, beef and battery hen or eggs.

That's pretty much it.

Bye bood.

2008-02-19T15:06:00.000+07:00

I'm gonna miss that pesky little vegan.
Mannie

Apricot and ginger cake.

2007-12-21T11:08:00.000+07:00

It's more like the polenta, almond meal and self-raising flour together make 2 cups.

The variation I made next was an apricot & ginger version.
The dried apricots and crystalised ginger pieces soaked in rum.
The topping was glace apricots, flaked almonds and crushed ginger nut biscuits.

Gray says it's better than the first version.
But that might be because we iced it (to conceal a break) with vanilla icing.
And he's a bit of a kid about icing.

It is amazing though. Really beautiful to look at.

Our cooking lately has become so much better and is finally getting a kind of stamp of its own since Angelata & Mannie have been working together. When they actually cook together the dishes they create together are truly original and so good. I need (I'm just jo) to get my act together and start noting down their recipes. I have been watching. Sometimes I like the idea of a wired up kitchen, where it's all recorded so I could later identify exactly what happenned. Both Mannie and Angelata pour scorn on this idea but I can tell they're intruiged.
The other interesting thing that has become plain after so long of not being able to see it is that the two are very similar in many ways. Their ideology (and their food!) so different and the years of conflict between them has blinded me to it but I see now - they're so similar!

Polenta Pear and Almond Cake

2007-12-18T13:42:00.000+07:00

stuff:
four big eggs (free range duck)
some butter (or nuttelex)
some icing sugar and some raw sugar
cup of almond meal, cup of polenta, cup of self raising flour
a fresh pear
several dried pears
a cup of brandy (whiskey)

turn on the oven (180 degrees)
soak pears in brandy (or whiskey) and set aside
make the topping of crushed dark chocolate and finely chopped fresh pear with a little brown or raw sugar and set aside

cream the butter and sugar until you have about a cup in a mixing bowl
add yolks one at a time and cream, setting aside egg whites

add almond meal, stir, add polenta, stir, add flour, stir
chop the dried pears up and pour the remaining whiskey into mix
whisk egg whites until they're white and fluffy and then
fold them into the mix

pour/ladle out half the mix into the greased cake pan and then add pieces of whiskey soaked dried pear
pour/ladle out the rest of the mix on top

add topping: crushed chocolate, chopped fresh pear

bake at 170 degrees for fifty minutes

allow cake to cool in tin for a little while before removing

The Kitchen Sink.

2007-10-29T09:52:00.000+07:00

Kitchen events in the last month have been interesting with Angelata and myself (Mannie) working together and the combinations have been excellent. We have some exciting new ingredients found at Bigsplat's new deli/cafe which shall hereafter be known as Bigsplat Cafe (for there's no point bothering with any of the other cafes in Bigsplat so they're hardly likely to come up in conversation with you, dear reader.
(I use the singular advisedly.)

The new stuff from Bigsplat Cafe;

1. dried cranberries

I'd always thought the cranberry a bit of a one trick pony, but I was mistaken. The dried cranberry is fabulous. We've made a three bowl slice that turned out well. Don't ask for measurements, we don't use them. We hate them.

Bowl 1. It was half and half buckwheat flour and plain wholemeal flour, rubbed with nuttelex until it reached breadcrumb texture and some sugar (not much, we don't like things sweet)
Bowl 2. Was three little bantam eggs (so you know, two eggs I guess - basically an egg per cup of flour is the ratio we tend to use) and enough soy milk, beaten. Vanilla.
Bowl 3. Chopped brazil nuts, chopped chocolate and the lovely DRIED cranberries (about 2/3 cups all up)
Then bowl 2 was poured into bowl 1 and mixed.

The mixture was poured into a large rectangular baking tray that we lined with paper as we do.

Then we pushed the contents of bowl 3 into the mix and baked for 40 minutes at 180 degrees.

2. dried porcini mushrooms

I love these. Angelata persuaded me - at first I thought it all rather suspect, and SO EXPENSIVE, but see, you really don't need much to give your ordinary mushrooms so much more MUSHROOM in their character.

We made a mushroom sauce with them.

We soaked three slices of them in 2/3 cup of rainwater overnight. Then we chopped the porcini mushrooms into soggy little slivers (keeping the liquid which is a kind of soy sauce colour), and added them to ordinary fresh sliced mushrooms, and made our mushroom sauce the usual way (liquid of some kind, often milk, added to cornflour & very finely chopped or smashed garlic that has been sauteed for a minute in butter/whatever vegan nonsense is being used)
only this time we used the liquid of the porcini, and it was very delicious though we did add some milk (soy, *sigh*, pesky damn vegans) for purely cosmetic reasons because people like caramel brown sauces rather than inky black sauces I have found.

3. the most beautiful lentils in the world

I don't know what they are. They are gorgeous. They are grey/green and tiny. And they are the most delicious and attractive lentil I've ever met. So good they could be served alone, with a little olive oil, chopped flat leaf parsley and smashed garlic (if you like garlic).

We made a vegan shephard's pie out of them, and it was actually all right. It would have been better if I'd been allowed to put a great dollop of lamb mince in it like I wanted to, but it wasn't bad.

I can't remember how it went. Roast parsnip was involved.

Other than that we've been roasting stuff a lot (especially beetroot) as it's been chilly.
We went away for a night and I made a terrible chicken curry and I'm still feeling mortified by the experience. Sometime the Weedle Thrift gives me such bad advice.

I wish you could come and have a cup of tea with me. I'm about to make a pot of Orange Pekoe.

See you next time.

Mannie (Miss Moodle, for long)

Vegan Canneloni

2007-09-30T20:28:00.000+07:00

The filling was grated tofu, grated carrot, slivered flat leaf parsley and raisins.
The base sauce was a tomato based sauce (I used V8 whizzied up with softened sauteed onions) and the topping sauce was a white sauce with a little mustard and topped with finely chopped walnuts.
Black pepper, salt and the usual herbs were all involved in the tomato sauce.

Mushrooms Scarborough Fair on Sour Dough.

2007-09-30T20:22:00.001+07:00

Halved mushrooms cooked in a little olive oil with parsley, sage, rosemary and thymne in a cast iron pan on the stovetop.

Roast tomato and garlic on sour rye.

2007-08-27T13:33:00.000+07:00

Treacherous dungeon no longer united against vegans, indeed, harbouring them, indeed, converting to the cult, under my very nose. Gruesome, how could you?

We now have to make a lot more vegan meals.

I've noticed that vegans often have a sweet tooth, but the plan is that we're to include lots of vegan (and variations of other fussy eating such as "I will eat free range chicken but I won't eat dairy products" etc.) meals of all kinds. Not just vegan treats.

With that in mind I made extra slow roasted tomato (with whole garlic cloves and fresh rosemary sprigs) last time the oven was on and this morning Angelata made rye bread toast with roast tomato on it. That's it. No fetta on top. Just slow roasted tomoato with roast garlic mush on rye toast.

Surprisingly good.
No, get away you dirty little vegan, you can't have any.

Mannie

Baby frittatas.

2007-08-08T19:26:00.001+07:00

Hmm babies....

I made a batch of these in cupcake tins with cupcake patty pan papers.
They were a flop.
No recipe for you.

Luxury Lasagne

2007-07-27T20:04:00.000+07:00

I made a friend 'luxury lasagne' to try to chase away her feelings of poverty.
It had all kinds of strange things in it that worked brilliantly together as well as more traditional lasagne ingredients.
List:

beef mince AND chicken (chopped pretty fine)
onions (carmelised and pureed)
token vegetables: broccoli, pumpkin and zucchini
four types of cheese
capers
olives
pickled egg plant
finely chopped parsley, sage, thyme
porcini mushrooms reconstituited in red wine
chilli, garlic

It seemed to cheer her up.

Vegan Tyranny in the Kitchen.

2007-07-23T20:21:00.000+07:00

Red Lentil Dhal - this was great.

Roast Vegetable Soup - also great.

Angelata is back and HOT.

*beams*

Mannie

Put on the beans.

2007-05-22T21:36:00.000+07:00

I hear that the Food Pact may return.

Time to soak some lentils.

On Again, Oven.

2007-04-07T22:10:00.000+07:00

Oven is fixed!

Vegan profiteroles.

2007-03-22T21:29:00.000+07:00

Not many culinary adventures have been had lately except for some spectacular vegan profiteroles.

The mock cream was a very thick white sauce with lemon zest sweetened with maple syrup (not honey, but honey would be nice too), and the little choux buns were bought in a bag from Bianca's Continental in Bigsplat.

Vegan pastry, cakes, etc. at Bianca's have an alarmingly long shelf life.
But, never mind.

The chocolate was easy - melted in a stainless steel dish floating in water in a saucepan (double boiler) and I sliced the profiteroles (little choux buns) in half (top/bottom) and filled the bottom half with mock cream and then dunked the top half in the chocolate. And chilled.

It was good. The vegan girls were very excited about it. We'll do it again.

Mad as a meat axe.

2007-03-06T21:46:00.000+07:00

A good deal of tea has been drunk lately.

Very few culinary adventures. Mostly it's been M. Trouble making something up quick.

I did discover, again, how handy it is to have rice paper around to make big fat noodles with.

The Bugsplat Food Co-op did the catering for last weekend's Bugsplat Bike Race and that was interesting. No wonder so many chefs hit the weed or the bottle. Bistromaths is crazy making.

From Kuma's amazing cookbook.

2007-02-10T00:23:00.000+07:00

Thank you to Mia, International Woman of Mystery for the wonderful gift cookbook.

Tonight Nadia and Roy and Noel came to dinner.

Here's the menu.

Entree of Peach Salad - warm peaches, asofetida, olive oil, coriander, tarragon, lemon juice served on lettuce with black pepper and toasted almonds. It was fantastic. Angelata chose that one.

Main of char-grilled polenta and served it with a tomato & onion salsa, roast red peppers and pickled zucchini. It was very good. The polenta (a favourite of Shell's) and the surprising salad were both from Kuma's book.

Thank you Mia!

Dessert of Italian cake "Amaretti" (half price at Bianca's Continental Store in Bigsplat) and cherry sorbet (which Angelata made a couple of weeks ago).

Penny wise, pound foolish.

2007-02-08T15:34:00.000+07:00

Our day in Bigsplat today - shopping. We're finding it difficult to live within our income. Gray did find some work today though - for later in the year - an audio engineering job. Yay.

Despite having to use the credit card to pay for groceries (I really hate that) it was a good day. We bought lots of useful things and Roz got her huge long swim. I have a notice to go an put up at the shops, a couple of sporting things that we should sell on account of our knee. So, that might bring a little money in to help out.

The landlord will soon fix our oven and I'll be cooking again. Roz and Francesca have been helping Angelata with her garden so that will help. Angelata studied permaculture a long time ago. Her gardens are frightful looking things full of newspaper and bits of rock and very untidy and uneven (maximising the surface area she claims) etc. but they have been known to produce good food so...

Gray and Trouble had a breakfast date, Roz did laps at the pool, Gray went to an interview and we did lots of rather dull chores. Also bought a blanket, a birdbook for Frond and a brown felt bowler (hat), I guess the brown hat is for Roz, but I'm wearing it right now and it feels very comfortable.

Mannie.

I like jars.

2007-01-30T08:33:00.000+07:00

I'm in love with a particular jar. It's at Biana's Continental in Bigsplat. It costs $8 when it's full of beautiful roast red peppers. We like the peppers but we're buying them for the jar. It has a wide mouth see, and a gold lid sans text and it's big enough for ... big things.

And I like jars.

Bill at Tom's, then lunch with Gray.

2007-01-28T12:40:00.000+07:00

I see Thea is calling the new friend we made "Tom" so I will too, as she is The Other Megan.
I just came back from her place. We watched the Bill together. Her husband taped it for her last night. It was fun to watch it together. I like her and I like her husband. Thanks Megan for sharing your friends.

Gray made lunch today and Angelata is in awe.

It ~looked~ like fettuccini - but it was very thinly sliced zucchinni with roast red pepper pieces and both green and black olives. Even a fruitarian could eat it!

I was skeptical but it was really good.

I didn't tell Gray but on the way back from Tom's house Trouble & Me pulled into the Bugsplat Bureau to wish the new Manager a happy first day and it wasn't such a good idea, but we didn't stay long. Oh well. That was that, I guess.

Trouble and Just Jo.

2007-01-27T16:00:00.000+07:00

Well, I can see Miss Trouble has had front for long enough to manage to eat bacon.
We had lunch at Castenada's and Trouble ordered the BLT. That's quite a demonstration of autonomy.
The only other person who can do that is Just Jo.
I don't know if that's such a great achievement but it's vaguely food related.

It just goes to show... err. something.

Calypso gave up battery chicken even though it was her favourite (the deep fried kind) treat on account (finally) of the suffering of the birds and now doesn't eat anything other than the free range kind. She eats fish. No red meat. It took a while though for her to make that choice, despite being surrounded by Hinchinbrook Chicks.

Anyway, enough of that. There's rumours of the Food Pact returning. I don't want to discuss that here, right now. I want to salute Ms Trouble.

Well done, Trouble, you did a grand job.
Love to you, Mannie.

4 Vegan Salads, all cold.

2007-01-23T07:32:00.000+07:00

We had a couple of hot days in a row and Troy and Nadia have been going to Storm Point (Troy to gather seaweed for his garden, and Nadia to swim) and we've been joining them. We had a meal together (and then watched Runaway Bride) so Angelata made some summer salads.

Hi. I'm Angelata.

1. Pasta with creamy spinach sauce.

The penne cooked 9 minutes, the twirls for 7 (packet says 10 and 8) and then rinsed thoroughly in cold water stirred a few times in olive oil, salt and pepper; and set aside to wait for the sauce - finely slivered silverbeat leaves, soy yogurt, lemon juice and crushed garlic.

2. Steamed vegetables with avocado oil and flat-leaf parsley dressing.

Steamed potato, turnip and fresh sugar-snap peas, the sugar snap peas just blanched with boiling water. The turnip takes a good deal longer than potato to steam so I dice it quite finely - about 1 cm cubed, and the potato pieces about 2cm cubed. Avocado oil is tinged with green and looks better with chopped herbs to ... um... explain the colour.

3. Chilli bean and vegetable salad.

Tinned (thoroughly rinsed and drained) borlotti beans are sauteed with chilli and garlic and small cauliflower pieces. Once the garlic is soft - not long - maybe three minutes with lots of stirring, add tinned tomato - I used a tin of cherry tomatoes. I added the tomato juice just before taking off the heat and stirred ot in well. The other vegetables I added to this salad were fresh green bean pieces (about an inch long - and so bright - I cooked them seperately in boiling water for a minute only and then chilled them immediately) and finely sliced raw celery.

4. Pistachio Rice.

Cold basmati rice, finely sliced spring onion and finely sliced sage leaves with roughly chopped pistachio nuts.

We had these with cold tofu slices for the vegans, and because it's Nadia's favourite we also had cold smoked salmon. Then the next day, I believe Gray and Mannie had them for lunch with slices of cold silverside beef.

A.

Consolation Pasta.

2007-01-21T13:14:00.000+07:00

Gray's favourite is Slow Cooked Sausage Sauce.

Last night I made it with free range chicken sausages. To an almost done slow-softened (in olive oil, cast iron pan) diced onion I added the inside mincemeat of the chicken sausages, breaking it up so it wouldn't cook in large pieces and then a small quantity of finely chopped garlic, mushrooms, flat-leaf parsley, olives; some green olives (halved); a dash of red wine and some tomato juice and let it cook very slowly on the stovetop for about an hour and a half.
It's good with spagetti or penne.
Or; Gray's preference; both.

Me oh my.

2007-01-20T16:08:00.000+07:00

But what is more stupid than a committee?
What fools.

How could they go past Gray?

Back later, with food talk.
Maybe I shall make a consolation dinner.
For some of us, it's the only way we can express our love for Gray.

Double boiler.

2007-01-16T06:25:00.000+07:00

Our pots and pans are wonderful. Now we have our knives back again too. I've made cannelli bean mash and a curry of chick pea and vegetables. I get ideas sometimes *waves to Lyria* about writing up recipes. IT seems that I'm always teaching someone how to cook. Trouble has been a good apprentice. And over the years of teaching people to cook I've noticed how strongly a person's character affects their cooking - their flaws, their strengths. Trouble for example is one of the first people of Polly able to cook Japanese food - which requires precision and restraint and a certain... judgement. Francis is one of the few who can bake. Baking not an art, but a science, or so she claimed, back when she was a young girl and not the triple-gendered avatar with a cult of brown-frocked gardener-philosopher-priests at ZIR beck and call. But I digress.
I was Nursie to her Juliet, so I'm allowed to take liberties.
Or seem to be. I won't know until I hit the orange button.

Mannie

Snappy new boo.

2006-12-31T21:15:00.000+07:00

It's just gone eleven. We're waiting for Megan and Rose to arrive. Honey piked. We'll probably just walk to the Bugsplat Worker's Club, stay for a little bit and then walk home again. It's been a really productive day of moving furniture, assembling a bed and cleaning the bathroom.

We have lassies chilling in the fridge - yogurt, water, lime, lemon sorbet and cardomon all whizzied up in the (yay for being back in my kitchen!) whizzie. I like a good whizzie, don't you?

Pots and pans.

2006-12-30T15:46:00.000+07:00

In the interests of rent reduction we have been buying household goods. All our household goods from Hometown have arrived now so it's no good imagining that we probably have a double-boiler somewhere anymore. Now we know the true state of affairs kitchen-wise.

It's strange to have everything here. It's all here now. There are some things I miss that I don't have. Some plates I particularly liked. Some things have memories that make me a bit sad. Mostly though, it's okay. The kitchen has always been the most stable place in my life. I don't really know much about the life I had before I joined this body in 1985 (sorry, I know it's very strange, but trust me, I'm a very ordinary and dull lady otherwise) but the Herrings (ghosts from an Edwardian age, see previous apology) say I was a cook. I'm most at home in the kitchen, especially kitchens with real fireplaces.

My kitchen news is that we bought a nine piece pots and pans set. They're lovely.

I must go. Thea has a coffee date.

Cook books have arrived!

2006-12-19T08:12:00.000+07:00

Day to day cookery!

Has arrived. This is my high school cookbook. It has everything you could need in the world of arse-end of the Anglosphere cookery. The recipes usually work really well by halving the sugar and fat content and putting in fruit or yogurt or nuts instead. And it's nice and small and with no stupid glossy photographs. I like it.

cold roast beetroot

2006-12-06T14:36:00.000+07:00

we've been sick. it's all the work stress making us vulnerable to the various colds going 'round Bugsplat. Mannie and Angelata have both been making food to make us well.

This is Mannie's idea of get well food:

Chicken soup
Lamb roast with mashed potato and gravy and peas and roast pumpkin

This is Angelata's idea of get well food:

Grapefruit juice
Chilli/garlic/ginger soup
Miso soup
Raw things like carrot and fruit

They do have one thing in common:

Cold roast beetroot.

Waitress days.

2006-11-11T08:31:00.000+07:00

Nadia and Trouble traded tales of waitressing as they lunched together at Castle Tree Cafe, on the other side of Bigsplat. Calypso and Nadia talked about Italy. I didn't say much. Most people don't much like me and I do hate to mess up other people's friendships. I'm Mannie.

I have no interesting cooking stories today. We've been unadventurous. Sticking to old favourites. I do have a duck in the freezer though... so.

Angelata loves scissors.

2006-11-06T12:33:00.000+07:00

Angelata wants magenta scissors, two pairs. One to be kept (secret) in a pencil case belonging to Calypso. For us. For clothes and secret scissor business we might have. The other to be CHAINED to the kitchen bench. CHAINED.

There are broad beans silverbeat in this dish - the only fresh (non leftover) ingredients.

There is also;
leftover roast pumpkin
a little bit of leftover roast lamb
some peas from the roast lamb dinner
leftover coq au vin (with carrots and onion)

Leftover minestrone.

2006-11-06T11:57:00.000+07:00

Is not minestrone made yesterday or the day before... it's a minestrone of leftovers.
I'm just about to make it.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Frittata.

2006-10-17T14:53:00.000+07:00

Onion, fennel, spinach and cheese frittata with green chilli jam.

We had a dozen too many eggs so I made a huge frittata a few days ago. We've just finished it. Gray's been having it for lunch, and it's finally all et up. Fennel makes things taste so fresh. I think it's a good companion for egg. Spinach and cheese are made for each other.

One for Nana.

2006-10-11T21:16:00.000+07:00

Corned beef, roast potato (two types; spicy and 'plain'), sauteed carrots, roast parsnip and onion, steamed silverbeet, steamed cabbage and a very yummy cheese sauce.

Eaten by three grandchildren of my beautiful Nana B. (me, and two of my cousins) and four great grandchildren (she didn't live to meet them in person) - two from each of my cousins, and their wives (though one abstained from the beef - and Nana would have been proud at how quickly I whipped up marinated tofu for her) and my lovely husband. Ten for dinner.

Those leaves (we talked about earlier..) are falling hard and fast.

This seems to be a very intense time for us here at Polly HQ. We're not at all in charge of our days and we are feeling ~sans safety net~ (Shandra, is there a word I'm looking for here - 'bare/honest'?) and it's okay. It really is okay. It's just a lot, all at once, to accept and to move on from and to forgive and to REALLY forgive. And I think this might be the other side of the process that began with our knee injury.

God bless, good health etc.
(Hey - seems like we had a kinda Thanksgiving by accident.)

Sunday dinner party.

2006-10-09T09:30:00.000+07:00

Four people. Two bottles of wine.

Nibbles:

Plate with olives on one side and carrot sticks on the other
Plate with dried figs on one side and rockmelon slices on the other
Brie and crackers

Then, on little plates;

A slice of pizza (boccocini and tomato)
Stuffed mushrooms

Then, on big plates (with people helping themselves):

Baked fennel
Steamed zuchinni
Butter bean and pasta salad (with mint, parsley and sun dried tomato)

Staying with Mum, getting pats and dinner!

2006-10-08T12:48:00.000+07:00

We had a good time together, Mum and me. We ate mostly takeaway Thai food from the fantastic Thai Noodle Bar around the corner. That was wonderful. We drank wine in the evening together, with Friday at our feet. It was very good. The girls were sad about losing Friday but so happy that she loves Mum. It was a growing up experience for them, a moral lesson about putting Friday's and Mum's interests ahead of their own. Though I know that Gruesome said she understands Men Who Kidnap Their Children now.

We talked to her (Friday) when she caught us half way down the stairs with our new purple suitcase. She figured out that we were going. We told her how much we wanted to take her, and that we would take her if she wanted but that we thought she would prefer to stay with Mum, getting pats and dinner. She seemed to agree with that.

We didn't cook a thing the whole time we were away. Made a salad or two, but that's it. When we visited Watkins we brought Mary a whole barramundi and intended to cook it but got distracted by the Vesuviano family drama down the road and a wonky corkscrew and Nadia cooked it instead, the champion.

Now we are home. I made dinner for Nadia and Troy for their Doctor Who evening here and I'm so grateful that it no longer hurts to cook. It doesn't even hurt to hunt for saucepan lids in the back reaches of the cupboard. It doesn't even hurt to fetch a chair to have to retrieve the salt from the mantlepiece where Gray sometimes puts it. It does still piss me off that things are never in the same place and I'm trying to deal with my outrage in a healthy way, but apparently failing. I do wish I had my own kitchen. I suppose I am selfish.

Dinner made:

Tomato and mint salad - peeled tomatos with finely chopped mint leaves, pepper, salt, slivered onion and smashed garlic, steeped for at least an hour
Orange and sultana salad - diced orange pieces with sultanas, steeped for at least an hour
Yogurt with corriander - there is no mystery here
Baked spicy potato - baked with a rub of hot spices
Rice - with lemon myrtle powder, so aromatic
Lentil and Carrot Tomato Curry - sweet and spicy

There was also a jar of green chilli jam.

It was such a pretty plate!

A portmanteau of "pot"+"luck".

2006-09-10T12:35:00.000+07:00

We like bring-a-plate dinners and they're very popular in Bugsplat.

Mum's roast chicken.

2006-08-31T11:15:00.000+07:00

Mum made dinner last night.
Roast chicken with pear & ginger jam in the stuffing, baked vegetables (potato, onion, sweet potato, pumpkin), cheesy cauliflower, broccoli and asparagus. Delicious.

Hot chocolate.

2006-08-22T20:55:00.000+07:00

A gang of girls calling themselves "The Sunday Witch" have been kitchening.
Their last effort - a hot chocolate.
Mmmmm.
It's been a long time!

M. Sharky, all et up.

2006-08-13T11:29:00.000+07:00

Yama stayed for dinner: m. Sharky, potatoes and salad.

We gave the rest of m. Sharky away to the other writers. That was fun. They came around to our place to pick up their bbq packs of m. Sharky.

M. Sharky is all et up now.

Eye BALLS, yes, bit of a giveaway.
Ew.

Mr. Sharky.

2006-08-11T22:53:00.000+07:00

Last weekend we attended the Bugsplat Quiz Night at the Bugsplat Builder's Arms (a pub: they sell drinks there) and during the auction hysteria we bid on a small (relative) shark.
We bid $20.
Nobody bid higher.
We 'won'.
Mr Sharky. Frozen.
We picked up m. Sharky yesterday, and when we got m. Sharky home we realised - m.Sharky too big! to fit! into freezer! So m.Sharky started thawing. In the fridge.

Trouble rang up Nell. She's such a good cook. Nell told us lots of Sharky tricks.
We have cutleted m. Sharky into 21 slices. We have soaked these cutlets in COLD WATER. We have rinsed several times. We have drained. We have floured. We have pressed herbs and spices into the skin. We have sqeezed lime and lemon all over them. We have dipped them in egg and then in flour and spice. We have wrapped them up onto little plastice plates. Bright Green!
The scariest thing was m.Sharky's eyes popping out and revealing themselves to be round.
We now have a jar of sharky stock and seven plates of bbq ready fillets.
Clever Us.

It all looks fabulous.

Soup stone.

2006-08-08T12:41:00.000+07:00

I love it when we're overdue for a shop and need to use things up.
Yesterday we made lentil and lamb soup.
Today we made silverbeet and cheese lasagne.

Tamarillo & mint.

2006-08-07T09:43:00.000+07:00

I made roast lamb, the usual way; lots of garlic and rosemary, sesame oil and pepper. Angelata made a side dish of baked cauliflower & yogurt and another of tamarillo & mint (which needs to rest for at least an hour) and when Zil arrived and agreed to dinner we added potato and carrot to the roasting dish. Zil liked everything, but especially the tamarillo & mint.

Now I have a lamb bone to make lamb and lentil soup with. What a wonderful way to spend a rainy Monday morning.

Doctor "Fresh for you."

2006-07-30T15:33:00.000+07:00

We invited Troy and Nadia to our place for a Doctor Who marathon (1st, 2nd and 3rd episode of the currently screening series with David Tennant as the Doctor) and a Japanese dinner. Ms Trouble seems to have taken a liking to cooking Japanese style since attending the cooking class with Jean and Rashi at the Bugsplat Family Centre the other night. Birthday gift of fiddly little table settings has also been inspiring.

So this is what we made, with Trouble nominally head chef for the afternoon.

We (again) attempted sushi and it was (again) a schmozzle that we tossed straight to bin. Don't want to talk about it. Hate it. Will never attempt it again. Until next time.

The sauces and condiments we put in the middle of the table and they included;
wasabi in a tube
tamari
soy sauce
two types of pickled ginger
grated raw ginger
mirren
rice wine vinegar
Hakubaku chilli soy noodle sauce

1st course: Things prettily arranged on a individual plates, each with a pretty little bowl for sauces.

Raw things included cucumber flowers, carrot flowers, capsicum flourishes and (smoked) salmon. Trouble was aiming for a winter budding kind of look. You know, like the as yet unidentified stone fruit trees out on the block are currently displaying - tidy little sleepy buds. Winter buds.

2nd course: Nori and mushroom soup. Again with the sauces for people to chose from, mix in their little bowls and add to their cups as they chose.

Angelata led a departure from the planned menu and came up with this one because *sigh* Bigsplat supermarket has not heard of miso.

Nori pieces steeped in hot water for a few hours, as did (seperately) saffron. She made a broth of rice grains, fine chopped mushroom and carrot with some nori pieces. The soup was made by straining the broth and then combining the three; rice broth, nori broth & saffron broth and serving. Waiting in each of the cups were paper thin slices of spring onion and finely sliverered dried mushroom.

At this point we watched (and it was FANTASTIC) the Christmas special.

3rd course. Tempura Vegetables

Cauliflower is our favourite tempura vegetable so there were two pieces each of that, and then one each of mushroom, spring onion and sweet potato. The tempura batter was just rice flour, baking power and very cold beer. It was perfect.

Again with the sauces. And lots and lots of very enthusiastic Doctor Who nostalgia and excitement. And, beer.

4th course. Soba noodles with steamed vegetables and steamed cod.

This is pretty obvious. The noodles were great - buckwheat is really yummy. The vegetables were carrots and sweet potato in one dish, snow peas and green beans in another. Keeping the colours together. The cod had been marinated in rice wine vinegar and smashed garlic.

It was great, and lots of fun.

Time for Episode 2. Never trust a cat!

Dessert. Strawberries and Kiwifruit in a bowl, looking beautiful, with yogurt on top and vanilla sauce attempts at Japanese writing. I expect it said "Fresh for you".

Storms. Tea cups. Sex war.

2006-07-25T23:56:00.000+07:00

In the kitchen cupboard the saucepans have no particular home. Often their lids are on a different shelf. There aren't enough cupboards and all of them are low, and require agility. This used to be a smug little pleasure of ours. Dance made us so flexible we would squat in complete comfort and hunt around re-uniting pans with lids and discovering reclusive colanders in the far reaches. Now it's all just too much.

Reaching for the lid I found myself hit by a wave of irrational outrage. Husbands take the kitchen scissors from the draw and don't return them. The salt and pepper in this house are never in the same place twice. And, it made me really, really angry. It was as if I was suddenly Woman and he was Man, and instead of being two people who share a kitchen, usually very cosily, we were at war.

Lately, I've given up searching for things in the kitchen. I just can't.
This is how I decide what I'm cooking lately - I look at what's in the dishrack. If I see a colander, I'll consider pasta, but I'm not going looking for it. Nuh Uh. Not this little washerwoman. Not this old fishwife. "Right", I say, when I spot a big pot with no lid, 'we'll be cooking a one pot wonder again tonight'.

Reaching for the lid I found myself hit by a wave of irrational outrage. Husbands take the kitchen scissors from the draw and don't return them. The salt and pepper in this house are never in the same place twice. And, it made me really, really angry. It was as if I was suddenly Woman and he was Man, and instead of being two people who share a kitchen, usually very cosily, we were at war.

Note to readers: Be very polite to your knees. When offended, they are incredibly spiteful and boy do they know how to hold a grudge.

Very kawaii.

2006-07-23T16:47:00.000+07:00

As we may have already gushed, for birthday our darling Gray gave us a boxed set of ornate wooden Japanese kitchenware - 6 itty bitty wooden bowls for single serves of sauce, 6 chopstick rests and 6 pairs of chopsticks. Very kawaii!

Tonight we're making steamed vegetables, noodles and salmon yakitori.

Washed up mermaids...

2006-07-16T16:51:00.000+07:00

... enjoy smoked salmon and salad for lunch.

Pizza and a movie.

2006-07-16T09:28:00.000+07:00

We went to the Bugsplat Film Club night last night.

It was just us and Troy and Nadia. The movie was wonderful. "Morocco", with Marlene Dietrich. Black and white. God she's beautiful in this movie. The story was ludicrous but she was so compelling that it didn't matter.

Gray made pizza. Tamarillo, roasted pumpkin and pine nut pizza.

Fragile. This Way Up.

2006-07-16T08:40:00.000+07:00

Castenada's hosted our birthday brunch. The guests were;

Naomi & Pete & Ruby
Nadia and Troy
Megan & her son Howard
Lanie
Angela
Nell and Hank

And Gray, of course.

Nell & Hank are in a wine-making syndicate and gave us two bottles of delicious wine; a smooth and spicy cabernet; and a shoebox with holes in it tied up with a ribbon with the words;
Fragile. This Way Up.
written; a rather wobbly hand!; in thick black marker pen.

Aside (dungeon): We love Hank and Nell. They are just fabulous.
And Nell is the best cook I know.

When Trouble opened the box she found two fresh caught marron waving their claws.
Gray cooked the marron in the afternoon - grilled with garlic. Perfect.

When I grow up I want to be as good a cook as Nell.

It's always better on a stick.

2006-07-07T23:03:00.000+07:00

Lilly, the Scrabble Mistress, came over yesterday afternoon.
While Thea was whipping her at Scrabble, I was plotting an impromptu dinner.

Jean and Rasha the new girls in town are both chefs and Jean gave a Japanese cooking class last week. I learnt;
that rice goes on the shiny side of sushi paper;
the never-fail Korean rice absorption method;
& how to make the Japanese dish "Yakitori".

Traditional Yakitori has chicken and spring onions - elegant simplicity. And I was planning on sticking to the recipe - I'd prepared the chicken and some purple onion pieces to make enough for two but when Lilly arrived (with Carrot-Mop) I got out extra skewers and made a pile of thin discs of sweet potato and a collection of mushroom halves.
It was fun arranging them on the skewers. It was fun listening to them sizzle as they cooked on the flat cast iron grill on the top of the wood stove. There's something sociable and festive and cheerful about food on sticks.

Abandoning any pretence at Japanese cooking, I made couscous with paprika and cream to go with. Coz it's quick!
(...and Thea had a Q to get rid of.)

Zil's dinner.

2006-07-01T16:27:00.000+07:00

Zil came around last night and made dinner for us. Silverside, vegetables, white sauce. She steamed green beans and mushrooms. I've never steamed mushrooms. They're fabulous.
You're never to old to learn new tricks.

Rice paper rolls.

2006-06-27T13:50:00.000+07:00

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.

2006-06-24T19:09:00.000+07:00

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.

2006-06-24T15:19:00.000+07:00

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.

2006-06-21T23:32:00.000+07:00

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.

2006-06-18T08:25:00.000+07:00

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.

2006-06-13T09:33:00.000+07:00

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

I don't feel like cooking.

2006-06-11T16:08:00.000+07:00

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

2006-06-06T20:42:00.001+07:00

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!

2006-06-05T20:22:00.000+07:00

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.

2006-06-03T14:20:00.000+07:00

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.

Mustard and corned beef sandwiches.

2006-05-29T08:37:00.000+07:00

That's what Mannie made today.
Thank you to Sassy for the silver napkin ring (and box to keep it in) and blue scarf.
She feels cherished.

Duck and Prawn in Tamarind Curry Sauce with Saffron Rice.

2006-05-28T20:08:00.000+07:00

Zil is coming over tomorrow night to join us for the last of the duck dishes. She knows about us. On the phone, when we invited her, she spoke to Calypso, and said when Calypso told her all about the duck extravaganza of this weekend - so Mannie has been very busy then! And yes, Mannie has, but this dish has some very strong influences from Hinchinbrook - from some of the vegan inspired cooking styles of Angelata and Francis.

And from dishes Francis made Francesca when she first came here to this body - the spicy fish soups that Francesca longed for - indeed I (shell) can see an image of Francis making fish head soup for Francesca, justifying the use of fish from the fact that in Australia the fish heads are often thrown away anyway, and that we knew how this particular fish died, and that it had died well. I see also the day that Francis watched a man (how fascinated the men in our system are by manliness, how drawn they are to men who can, for example, catch and kill and cook a fish) make this soup for us. He was making it for Leafy Jo, for Just Jo, for Thea. Though really, he was making it for his platonic friend "Jo", and of course, did not see us as ourselves. Perhaps he was making it for Pia. I'm just being delivered this memory now, a sense memory of aroma. Perhaps that's why so many of us are drawn to food, to recreating dishes from our past - to capture the memory again, to live through it again. And perhaps one of us was doing just what I have done now, back then, breathing in Pia's recollections of street vendors. Re-remembering.

In any case, this dish was a heady brew of nostalgia.

I believ it was also inspired by the aromas of a Heart Town resturaunt Satay Mas (the indonesian/malaysian resturaurant mentioned briefly last post) and perhaps also for our home, Heart Town where Tamarind trees are very common and produce an abundance of the sharply sour sticky paste that surrounds the tamarind seeds in their pods.

So here's how we did it.

We clarified the duck stock as described earlier and brought the stock to gentle simmer.

In the big pot we sauteed a sliced onion in a little olive oil at low heat. I would have much preferred to use grapeseed oil if Bigsplat Supermarket hadn't decided to discontinue the line in favour of yet more canola brands.

The other vegetables we prepared were spring onion sliced into two inch stalks, a couple of big fat roughly chopped garlic cloves and some leftover silverbeat stalks sliced across the grain so that they don't get irritating with their long fibres. We chopped up the leftover potato (baked in duck fat) and in a seperate bowl (the to-be-added last bowl) we put a cup of frozen peas and about the same of fresh cherry tomato.

We took the translucent onion pieces out of the pan and set them aside with the onion, garlic, silverbeat and potato, and turned the heat up. When the pan was very hot we added the duck meat (thighs, lower wings and the flesh) to the pan to fry, and two big tablespoons of tamarind paste, two teapsoons of chilli paste and a teaspoon of a ground spice mix - fennel, cumin, corriander, aniseed, cloves, chilli, black pepper, cardomom, and mustard.

Then we added the onion, garlic, silverbeat and potato. As soon as it was hot again we added the simmering stock, and let it all simmer for about ten minutes. We turned up the heat until it was boiling rapidly for a bit and then added the prawns, peas and cherry tomato and after a minute removed the whole dish to cool.

It's in the fridge now steeping overnight. The peas are still bright green as are the spring onion stalks and the sauce is a beautiful colour - terracotta. The saffron is soaking (for the saffron rice tomorrow) in a whiskey glass full of water, staining the liquid gradually, like a sunset in Bangkok.

Angelata waxes nostalgic about a peanut she once knew.

2006-05-28T19:54:00.000+07:00

In our seventeenth year, when we were in our last year at Heart Town High School, we went out to dinner with a bright young lawyer who claimed that his ambition in life was to run an opera company. He had already loaned us a beautiful handcover copy of the works of George Sand and taped for us the complete works of Stravinsky.

It was a gorgeous winter evening the night he took us to a restuarant in Heart-town, the softly lit, exotic "Satay Ma" on Cleveland Avenue just up from Dugong Sound. The young man's name I can't recall but I do remember the peanut sauce.

Fourth dish!

2006-05-28T16:20:00.000+07:00

Making the curry this afternoon I clarified the duck stock, not with any fancy eggwhite binding process, but by a method I invented myself - putting the stock in a container into the freezer, and taking it out when the top, edges and bottom have frozen, skimming the sheets of frozen fat off the top in big sheets (with an egg flip) and then pouring the liquid out into a vessel.

To make the curry part of the process includes bringing the stock to near boil.
But, I'll tell you about the curry later.

The unexpected fourth dish shall be called: Clear Duck Broth with Crusty White Bread.

Vegetarians might wish to duck out.

2006-05-28T13:10:00.000+07:00

Duck, three ways.

1. Last Night's Dinner : Roast Duck & Vegetables with Orange Sauce.

2. Today's Lunch: Crispy Duck Skin Rice Paper Rolls.

3. Tomorrow's Dinner: Duck Curry.

Day before yesterday - out of the freezer - a 2kg "duckling".

Yesterday in the early afternoon the duck was prepared for baking.

We stuffed the cavity with small mandarins (they have lots of zest that way), garlic cloves, onion slices, corriander seeds, cloves, star anise, cardomon pods and sticks of rosemary. Duck skin does not need basting with oil, so we just rubbed salt and pepper into the skin. We baked the duck on a tray that was fortuitously too large for the pan meaning it was on a lean - ideal for harvesting duck fat. We baked it on it's back for an hour, then covered the wings with alfoil to prevent them overcooking and drying and turned the bird over for another hour of baking. Done! Once the pan had cooled a little, but before the duck fat had time to set we poured all the beautiful dark caramel coloured duck fat that had collected in the pan into a large cup. Then we let the bird cool completely on the tray it had been baked in. Once it was cold we very carefully seperated the various pieces for the duck orange - the boneless upperbreast - just the inch closest to the skin, not the long thin pinkish fillet underneath, with skin, cut into four square pieces, the legs (not thighs) and the drumstick-like part of the wings.

We carefully stripped the remains of the bird for skin - setting that aside. Then we took the meat, thigh bones and lower wing and set that aside for the duck curry. The rest of the carcass we stocked for two hours on the stovetop (skimming once at the beginning and then letting it simmer) for the duck stock. We added a carrot and the carcass stuffing sans mandarins (spices, garlic, rosemary, onion).

When that was simmering away, we basted the (Roast Duck & Vegetables with Orange Sauce) vegetables - parsnip, carrot and potato - in the duck fat and set them baking for fifty minutes.

To make the Orange Sauce we used a little duck fat and a teaspoon of olive oil to fry the flesh from the mandarins (from the stuffing) and some freshly zested orange skin with a tablespoon of cornflour. Then we added some sweet white wine and a teaspoon of lime marmalade. Then we added a cup of the stock (which we took early on in the stocking process, just scooping in out with a ladle and straining it seperately) and some chilli, rosemary and pepper.

When the vegetables were done, we took the out and rested them and turned the grill on to grill the duck pieces arranged on a pan with the skin up. They were grilled for about five - ten minutes to really crisp up the skin and at some point we put the vegetables back in (our grill and oven are, annoyingly, not seperate - you may not have to do so much juggling if your grill is seperate) - then we served the vegetables and duck pieces with the orange sauce.

For lunch today we made Crispy Duck Skin Rice Paper Rolls inspired by Beijing Duck or Peking Duck, which we once ate in Beijing and loved. First we prepared a small bowl of thinly sliced cherry tomato and spring onions and mixed them with a teaspoon of ginger cordial and a teaspoon of hot chilli. Then a small bowl of slivered silverbeat (could use lettuce, cabbage, sprouts) and the small bowl of slivered duck skin. The duck skin we grilled at high heat - laying out the skin flat on the pan and grilling it for five to ten minutes until it was really crispy and then slivered it thin. We made a dozen of the rice paper rolls, using the very small rice papers rounds. We softened the rice paper in steaming water on the stovetop (in a fry pan) for a few minutes and then cooled them for a moment on a plate (by this time the next rice paper round is in - it gets quite methodical after a while) and then made the roll - about a teapoon from each of the three bowls (saucy tomato and spring onion; slivered silverbeat; crispy duck skin) and then roll.

We made six for us, six for Gray, and served them with individual dipping dishes of soy sauce

Now it's Sunday afternoon and I'm going to make the Duck Curry. I'll make it today, but we won't eat it until tomorrow night. I think it is better the second day.

Time for tea.

2006-05-21T14:42:00.000+07:00

Put the kettle on. It's time for tea.