Halloween
I don’t care much for Halloween. This is why I present you instead a picture of mouldy tea. It’s the beauty in the details that gets me. I hope you’ll find some beauty somewhere today too.
burnt toast
October 26, 2012
Focaccia
So um, hey. If I invited you over for dinner, would you say yes? Feel the pressure. Of course you would. I’d spoil you rotten you know that. So if you asked me what you could bring, chances are that if it’s not a bottle of wine, then something to dip with. Because you know me well enough that there will always be dip. That’s how I roll. Now, corn chips or crackers or crisps may be your first choice, and I understand that. But if you’re feeling a little creative, and think of making your own dipping utensils, then baby, you can come again. I’m sure you’ve got your own special cracker/flatbread recipe, which I’ll be more than delighted to taste, but for now, this is what I would make if you were inviting me. And I’ll bring a bottle of shiraz too, just in case.
This is my go-to dough for pizza and focaccia. Often I just top it with some sea salt flakes and a drizzle of olive oil, but I’ve been also known to infuse the oil with garlic, or scatter some fresh rosemary over the top.
Focaccia
300g (2 cups) plain flour
180ml warm water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 packet (7g) dried yeast
2 Tbsp olive oil, plus more for drizzling
Plonk the flour in a bowl and make a well in the middle. Pour in the warm water, and sprinkle the rest of the ingredients over it, including the oil. Stir with a butter knife until roughly combined, then give it a go with your hands, until it comes together and gets that soft and elastic feel. Oil the bottom of the bowl you’ve just used and turn the dough in it. Now cover with cling wrap or a damp towel and place somewhere warm for an hour. Once it’s risen to twice its size, give it a little punching action and transfer it to an oiled baking tray, rolling it as thin or as thick as you like. Ideally now, you cover it again and let it rest for about 20 minutes. I’m usually too impatient and only let it get about 10. Then, once it’s risen again slightly, gently dimple the risen dough back down with your fingers. This is where you can top your focaccia.Olive oil, maybe some halved cherry tomatoes or a scatteing of parmesan. Now place the tray in the oven and bake at 200°C for 20 minutes. After it’s done, drizzle with some more olive oil and cut into wedges.
October 20, 2012
Pesto rosso
I love Saturdays. Maybe not quite as much as Fridays, but they’re very close. Growing up in Switzerland, my family and I would always go to the markets on Saturdays. The vendors would give me olives to sample, or a morsel of cheese, and little cups of home made cordial. Such bliss. There’s no way you’d be able to get a loaf of bread to stay crunchy for more of a couple of hours in this ridiculously humid climate here in Australia. The cheese would be kidnapped by an army of flies before it would have time to go off in the sweltering summer heat. Aah, I’m being too harsh. I love you both, my two homes. What one place lacks, the other has plenty of, tearing me back and forth, making it difficult to decide if I could ever live in the one place forever…
Let’s get back to business. One of our favourite buys on Saturday mornings was the pesto rosso we’d get from a friend’s shop. We’d eat that deliciousness with cheese, on bread, with maybe a few sliced picked cucumbers. It never occurred to me I could make it myself until I stumbled across it on this gem of a site, The Traveller’s Lunchbox. Pestos should always be made at home anyway. You save yourself money and disappointment. Which is a pretty good deal in my opinion. Get pestoing. And give your mother some. She’d love that.
Pesto Rosso
20 semi dried tomato halves
80g grated parmesan
80g roasted walnuts, roughly chopped
2 medium rosemary sprigs, picked and chopped finely
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
½ tsp salt
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp honey
2 pinches chilli flakes
6+ Tbsp olive oil
Combine all those beautiful ingredients in a jug or something with tall sides and introduce them to your hand held blender, or alternatively use a different blending device. You know what’s best. Whizz until well combined. You might have to add more oil. Yum yum. Now get a spoon and try. Or if you’ve got manners spread some on a piece of toast. Or fold through pasta with a few roasted cherry tomatoes. Or combine with some sour cream to make a tasty spread or dip.
October 15, 2012
More dip
It is time my friends. Time for what you may ask. I will turn my head and stare whistfully into the distance, and in a husky voice I will answer: It is time… for some dip. The original, the fabulous, the guilt-free-because-it-contains-chickpeas-and-tahini-and-that-stuff’s-supposed-to-be-good-for-you dip. Yes. Hummus. “Oh hummus!” you scoff. “I can go and buy a big tub of that at the supermarket! You surely don’t want to make it now, do you?!” Well, yeah?! Is there anything easier than making hummus? I think not. So stop being lazy and chuck that half-eaten tub of beige Super Organic, Gluten Free and Taste Free plust 20% Extra sludge and hop in the kitchen for approximately ½ a minute.
Hummus
1 can chickpeas, with 1/3 of the liquid reserved
1 big garlic clove, halved
2 Tbsp tahini
½ lemon, juice
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
¾ tsp ground cumin
a splash of soy sauce (umami that stuff up)
salt and pepper
ground paprika, more ground cumin and sesame seeds (optional)
Now. Take above mentioned ingredients (minus the optional ones), and place them in a blender, or in a jug, and wack out your hand held blender. Blend until desired consistency and or flavour is reached. You know, add more lemon juice if you like it zingy, more salt if you’re like me. Transfer to a bowl and add decorative dustings of paprika, cumin and sesame seeds, or, if you’re too impatient, grab a bag of tortilla chips and demolish.
October 6, 2012
Cheesecake
Look, I baked you a cake. Nice of me isn’t it? That’s because I love you. And because I just can’t eat a whole cheesecake by myself, I need help in sharing the calories. That’s what true friends are for.
Cheesecake was a coming of age thing for me. Like wine or maybe even blue cheese for some, it took me a good long time to get used to. Maybe because what I grew up with in Europe was nowhere near as good as what I’m getting my teeth into now. Mind, it has to be worth it. If I’m going to eat a piece of cream cheese as big as a brick I want to taste the calories please. I want to taste every gram of guilty pleasure. I want it to be creamy, silky and smooth, with a deliciously buttery base. Because life’s too short.
Cheesecake of Cheesecakes
2 Tbsp caster sugar
150g frozen raspberries
500g granita biscuits, roughly crushed
200g salted butter, melted
750g cream cheese, softened
250g sour cream
330g caster sugar
1 lemon, juice
finely grated rind of half an orange
1 Tbsp vanilla essence
½ vanilla bean, seeds (if you can afford it – I just think the little black dots elevate it from great to sexy)
4 eggs
combine the sugar and the raspberries in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved and raspberries are soft. Remove and pass through a sieve. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 200°C. Grind the biscuits to a fine powder and combine with the melted butter. Line the base of a 24cm tin and add crumb mixture, patting it firmly into the base and up the sides. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove and reduce heat to 150°C.
Beat cream cheese until creamy. Add the sour cream, the sugar, the juice, rind and vanilla and keep on beating until the sugar is dissolved. Add the eggs, one at a time, until you’ve got a volumtiously creamy cheesecake filling in front of you. Resist the urge to eat it all and spoon into the cooled baking tin. Draw a few swirls with the raspberry sauce on top of the cheesecake filling and make it look fancy by pulling the back of a spoon through it. Or just leave it. But I like fancy.
Place into the oven. Place a baking tray beneath it, and fill it about halfway with some water. This is the secret to the cheesecake’s dreamy texture, promise. Make sure you top it up if it runs low during the baking process.
So now, bake this little gem for 1½ hours. Then take out of the oven, cool, and keep in the fridge for a few hours or over night.
Serve it cut into thin slices with a few dabs of the remaining raspberry sauce and a scattering of raspberries. And if you still feel guilty (you sinful person you) then run around your house five times. Done. Time for another slice.
October 3, 2012
Carbalicious
You know those annoying people (usually women – I’ve rarely come across a man saying this) whom you go out to dinner with that go: “Oh sorry, I don’t do carbs. I guess I’ll just go for a salad…” And then you feel like a pig while you order some garlic bread and some extra potatoes with your duck confit? Yeah, I’m one of them. Well as often as I can bare it. I just do it to make you feel like crap, actually. And secretly, behind your back, I’ll eat half a triple cheese pizza (with wasabi) just to spite you. The truth is, I would love to be one of those people. That “ I can eat everything and still look fabulous” race. They seen to have some sort of supernatural powers, I swear. Where else does do all those fries go?!
To be honest, I’m a sinner half the time. It’s more fun that way anyway. Be a little naughty. Do something you shouldn’t. Especially when it’s devilishly good. Like chicken angelica pasta. Remember whenever some old family member goes: “Oh well, apples and cinnamon are a match made in heaven, simple as that”, well, this recipe also belongs to the heaven category. Cream, white wine and mustard? I mean, come on.
Chicken Agelica Fettuccine
600g chicken thigh fillets, chopped into 2cm pieces
200g semi-dried tomatoes, chopped
3 Tbsp seeded mustard
3 Tbsp garlic butter
150ml white wine
450ml thickened cream
1 cup basil, finely sliced
1 Tbsp soy sauce (it adds a finishing touch to the depth of the flavour of the dish)
cracked black pepper
500g fettucini
parmesan, to serve
Fry the chicken in some olive oil until ¾ done. Add the sundrieds, the mustard and the garlic butter and cook for a further few minutes on high heat. Reduce heat and add wine and cream. Simmer until sauce has thickened and chicken is done. Stir in the basil.
Cook the pasta, then combine with the sauce. Top with parmesan and enjoy with a glass of wine. Because pasta just needs wine.
September 25, 2012
Garlic
There are many of you out there that worry about their meal-choices imparting a negative impact on their haleine. That is the reason I have never packed a lunch of canned tuna and rice cakes for uni. Cat food and crackers. I mean please. And any members of the cabbage family, well, go easy on them. Trust me, I’ve learnt from other’s mistakes. There is one thing however I couldn’t care less about what effect I could have on my fellow lunch-eaters (sorry guys). I adore garlic. nay, I love it. Maybe not so much raw garlic though. I have been told that if you eat a few raw cloves a day it will help keep mosquitos at bay. Yeah well I personally prefer insect repellent, but whatever you’re into.
Cooked, baked, fried and caramelized garlic, however, a recipe can never have enough of. There is nothing more satisfying than scooping the creamy white cloves out of an oven-roasted head of garlic, drizzled with some olive oil and a grating of Parmesan cheese onto a slice of crusty baguette.
As a young’un I always wondered how the street vendors made their garlic bread so tasty, so much better than that home made version my parents’ friends would offer at dinner parties. I don’t know, but I think I’ve cracked it.
If you are going to make garlic bread with this, please do a Nigella and don’t be stingy with the butter. It’s naughty anyway so why not go all the way. The more the better.
Garlic Butter
250g unsalted butter, cubed, softened
1 Tbsp mayonnaise (In my opinion, this is the secret)
t tsp Dijon mustard
small bunch of curly parsley, finely chopped
small bunch of chives, finely chopped
6 large garlic cloves, finely chopped or grated
30g parmesan cheese, grated
½ tsp vegetable stock granules
2 pinches turmeric (optional – I just like the beautiful golden hue it gives to the garlic bread)
There are two ways to do this: either, beat the butter with a spoon or hand held mixed until creamy, then add the rest of the ingredients and beat until combined. Or, get your hands and treat it as if it where bread dough, kneading and squishing it until well mixed.
Roll the butter into a sausage shape and wrap up in cling wrap. Store in the freezer until needed. Which in my case is immediately, duh.
September 14, 2012
Coriander
I have an affinity to add coriander to pretty much everything I cook. I can’t help it, coriander haters, it is just so that I can have more and you have to sit there sulking. Get over your hate for that green leafiness and direct it at something that needs your hate more, like sweet mayonnaise (seriously, who came up with the genius idea to put sugar in it? Did some housewife one day go: Man I really want dessert but all I have is mayonnaise…or maybe it was her husband who thought she was making custard and after having a taste, threw in a kilo of caster sugar…we can only speculate. And hate.). I promise you’ll love it one day.
I love it in Thai- and Indian curries, atop cheesy nachos, especially in salsas, in zingy guacamole and in good old pumpkin soup. And in this pesto. Inspired by the Woolworths dip section, minus the preservatives, citric acid, food acid, lactic acid and any other sort of acid they can get a hold of. Dangerous stuff I’m telling you.
Make this if you’re over pesto, if you want to jazz up your evening apéro selection of chips and dip, or if you just really want to give coriander another chance.
Thai Style Pesto
2 bunches of coriander, roots, stems, leaves, roughly chopped
4cm knob ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves
1 stick lemongrass, finely sliced
2 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced
½ chilli, finely sliced
1 lime, grated rind and juice
80g roasted cashews, plus an additional handful of chopped cashews, to stir in at the end for texture
4+ Tbsp olive oil
salt
Blend the lot with a handheld blender in a measuring cup or jug until smooth, adding more oil as needed.
Use immediately or transfer to a jar and cover with olive oil. This will keep for about 1 week in the fridge.
I love this as a dip, with crisp pita wedges, with fried eggs on toast,or with rice noodles, some freshly chopped mint and a sprinkling of crispy-fried shallots.
September 8, 2012
Salad time
So it’s getting warmer slowly. Yep, lug out that litre bottle of 30+ suntan lotion. We don’t want to burn now, do we. Long sleeves and hats people, time to cover up. And if you’re one of those gorgeous olive skinned people, well whatever, ignore those first four sentences. Continue on living that amazing bronzed life of yours while I suffer through crimson complexions, irritating sun rashes, and aloe vera overdoses. The fairness of it all.
What I do like about this time of year however, is salad. I would say I’m relatively open to anything and everything with the word “salad” in its title, as long as it doesn’t include strawberries or sprouts or some other “genius” ingredient. Berries belong into cakes and smoothies and champagne glasses, and alfa alfa sprouts can just go die. Thirteen years of having to eat them in salads is enough to traumatise you for life, believe me. Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts.
Back to salad. Greek salad. À la Laura. I like mine to be chopped into relatively small pieces – not only do I want a perfect burst of salty, sour, sweet and crunchy with every bite, I want to be able to fit it into my mouth. A lot of restaurants will present you a huge plate with tomato quarters, half a cucumber and a whole block of feta. Not here with me. And no, I didn’t forget the capsicum. I just think it’s not needed.
Greekish Salad
1 bunch parsley, finely chopped
16 (I’m serious here) kalamata olives, finely chopped
5 sundried tomatoes, finely chopped
3 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp mustard
salt, pepper
1 large telegraph cucumber, seeded and chopped into little cubes
5 large tomatoes, seeded and chopped into little cubes
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
200g fetta, in 1 cm cubes
Combine the first 8 ingredients in a large bowl. They may not look like a traditional Greek salad dressing, but hey, I’m not traditional. And it’s delicious like this. So just add the rest of the ingredients, give it a good stir and you’re done. You could heap it onto grilled sourdough for some Greekified bruschette, have it as part of a mezze spread or just serve (and eat) it with a spoon.
August 31, 2012
Can I have some more of that?
Alright sweethearts, it’s curry time. But before I go off on a tangent about coconut milk and why I left the religion of vegetarianism, I would like to let you in on a little secret. I love curries. No, seriously. So much as that I would choose my last supper to be curry. Preferably thali – style, with about 20 different types. Yum. But while we’re all alive with plenty of years ahead of us, let’s continue with coconut milk. I have had my fair share of bland-tasting white goopy glue labelled “Organic Super Creamy Tasty Coconut Cream”. Bull. A few years of taste-testing have lead me to the hydrated coconut milk powder from Ayam. A definite winner. You can get it pretty much everywhere in the world now. Just in case you were wondering. Up to you what you want to use, just be careful. You’re halfway to an amazing curry, so don’t wreck it.
Now, to the veggie bit. I’ve been a meat-avoider for about 17 years of my life now. The reason for this being my parents, and my child-self feeling sorry for the going-to-be slaughtered animals. I guess things have changed. A bite of chicken kebab here, a spoonful of beef lasagne there. It actually started to taste good! Mind, I’m still at the beginning stage of things. The more processed, the more the likelihood that I like it. I know, I’m ashamed about that. One day, in the distant future, you’ll see me eating a rare steak. Promise. But until then, I’ll stick to dry chicken and burgers. And much much better things of course. Like this curry.
Red Thai Chicken Curry
Serves about 4
2/3 of the red curry paste I was talking about in the previous post
500 ml chicken stock, plus more
1 box coconut milk powder (3 packets)
1 ½ red capsicums, sliced thinly
1 large carrot, cut into matchsticks
1 large handful of green beans, topped and tailed, sliced at an angle into 3
(this is so they cook at the same rate as the rest of the vegetables)
½ lime, juice, plus wedges to serve
the reserved coriander leaves
Cooked jasmine or basmati rice
5 chicken thighs, cut into 3 cm pieces, seasoned lightly
The rest of the curry paste
1 Tbsp honey
Get a nice big saucepan and start frying off the curry paste. Once it looses that raw “bite” and starts smelling quite delicious, add the chicken stock , which you have previously mixed with the coconut milk powder. This just makes it easier to dissolve. Bring to the boil. Once all the coconutty lumps have gone, take it off the flame.
Time to make start cooking the rice. I’m quite confident you know how to do this.
While the rice is bubbling away, add your chicken pieces to a frypan with a glug of oil and fry till all sides are sealed, but not cooked through. Add the paste and the honey and stir till well coated. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until done.
Just before serving, Reheat the curry sauce, and add the sliced vegetables. Boil for a few minutes until cooked to your liking (still lightly crunchy, in my case). Add some seasoning and the lime juice.
Get 4 big soup bowls, fill with the amazing-smelling curry, top with a little mound of rice, the tender, spice-crusted chicken and a handful of fresh coriander leaves. Serve with lime wedges.
Told you so.
burnt toast 