Pavlova

We made a pav the other night: sat around the outdoor table with citronella candles and lanterns in the garden and ate it for dessert. (Dinner was juicy lamb chops with oregano and lemon, roast potatoes and crispy green salad.)

We saw Jamie do his pav with chocolate sauce, vanilla cream and hazelnuts, and at the time we were horrified (sugar overload!! Teeth melting!!) and vowed that a pav was far too sweet to be teamed with other sweet items. This is why fruit was invented: so that the pav could bring some sugar to the party and the fruit could bring some acidity. So we decided that OUR pav would be served with cream and a huge pile of fresh cherries.

Meanwhile, someone at home was unaware of the master plan. At about 6pm, we found out that all the cherries had been eaten. Scandal! With no other fruit in the house, it was agreed that we would make an approximation of Jamie's pav, for curiosity's sake.
We whipped up some toasted mixed nuts (hazelnuts, brazil nuts and macadamias) in a frying pan and added sugar and butter to toffee them together. Then we let the lot cool and smashed it into nutty toffee shards with a rolling pin.
On top of the pav went a sauce made from 2 rows of dark chocolate and 100mls cream, melted together over a low heat. Then the nuts, then more sauce. On the side we served a jug of plain unsweetened cream.
The verdict? TOO SWEET.
Really, too sweet by far. Lord Porkface loved it, though. His idea of cutting down sugar is to not add honey to his icecream with chocolate fudge sauce.

Breakfast bruschetta

Mmm. Tomato, basil and a shred of finely-sliced red onion, stirred together with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Tip it onto some toasted ciabatta and eat it while watching Video Hits or some weekend-morning cartoons.

Sugar-coated fennel seeds

I have seen these around town, especially in Indian and Middle-Eastern food stores, but wasn't quite sure what they were and what to do with them. Then good old Food Safari came to the rescue. Maeve was snacking on a bowl of them during one of the episodes (and I wish I could remember which one, because the SBS website doesn't help.) Iknow it's generally an Indian thing though. The deal is that they freshen the breath after a meal, particularly a spicy flavour-filled one, and help with digestion. If you are into herbs, fennel also does about a million other awesome healthy things for your body, including relieve bloating, gas, period pain and other assorted womanly issues.

So I got me a packet: about a buck fifty for a big packet at the Indian grocer, and ate a couple after dinner. And they ARE tasty and I DO feel well-digested. And I like having a new thing in the kitchen to think about, especially something that makes me feel connected to another country's food heritage. If only I looked good in a sari.

My favourite ever tomato salad

Tomatoes are so great. But only the good tomatoes: not those hard cold pale ones at the supermarket (and that according to the font of all knowledge, I mean Today Tonight, might have been picked and in storage for up to a YEAR) that taste like nothing. We have recently started growing our own little tomatoes, and nothing beats the beautiful old-timey scent of a fresh tomato stalk. It's enough to make you pack it all in and become a full-time grower.


Anyway, my favourite ever tomato salad is thus. It must be made with primo tomatoes, nothing less. Farmer's markets quality, home-grown, gourmet organic, whatever. The tomatoes must be burstingly ripe, red as red, with that tomato-smell all over them. The basil must also be primo, freshly torn, not chopped. Without great ingredients, I would never make this salad. There's nothing here to hide a shoddy ingredient with.

Combine chopped tomatoes, basil leaves, a little crushed garlic, olive oil and smashed rock salt in a bowl, in the quantities you prefer. Leave for fifteen minutes to infuse and build flavour.

Can be spread on bread, like bruschetta; mixed with fresh hot penne and left to cool for a fabulous pasta dish, or used as a base for something else. I sometimes have a tomato salad bed on a plate and then top it with some grilled chicken.

Grass, the end of humanity and a mango

With the rain, dry heat, humidity, more rain, more heat and more rain, the grass is going berko at the moment. Not only is the grass growing, but it's GREEN. I haven't seen green this green since the Big Green of '78.
And the weeds are keeping pace, along with flowers, herbs, creepers and general foliage. It reminds me of disaster movies, when humanity is wiped out and Nature reclaims the planet. It's slightly offputting to realise that it wouldn't take very long for this to happen: within a year things would decay and rot and be overgrown with vines. It puts my pining for a yellow baby grand into perspective...
Last night around 8, on an evening stroll around the suburb, I passed by a parked car in a dark tree-lined street. Just as I drew level with the car, there was a huge bang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin... only to see the remains of a massive, pre-sucked, battered and juicy mango that had fallen from above, just missed me, and exploded on impact, all over the car and the road (and almost me, but luckily not.) I looked up, straight into the drunken face of a leering fruit bat. The fruit bat proceeded to wee noisily and without decorum all over the car, then flapped lazily off into the night.
Maybe that bat was reminding me about how suddenly Nature can reclaim us all, whether it be through rapid-growth flora, or with a heavy mango to the head.

Penne puttanesca

Had to post this recipe today, after a request from a friend. Puttanesca: whore's pasta. Says the font of all knowledge:

The name originated in Naples after the local prostitutes,
Pasta alla Puttanesca meaning "Pasta in the way a whore would make it". The
reason why the dish gained such a name is debated. One possibility is that the
name is a reference to the sauce's hot, spicy flavour and pungent smell. Another
is that the dish was offered to prospective customers at a low price to entice
them into a brothel. According to chef Jeff
Smith of the Frugal Gourmet, its name
came from the fact that it was a quick, cheap meal that prostitutes could
prepare between customers.
A more thorough story about this dish comes from
Diane Seed in her book, Top 100 Pasta Sauces. She says:

My introduction to this famous pasta dish occurred when I overheard two elderly priests discussing the pros and cons of Spaghetti alla Puttanesca ("Whore's spaghetti") as they deliberated over the menu in a Neapolitan restaurant. Made of ingredients found in most Italian larders, this is also known as 'Spaghetti alla Buona Donna' - or 'Good Woman's Spaghetti' - which can be misleading if one is not familiar with the ironic insult 'figlio d'una buona donna' - son of a good woman.To understand how this sauce came to get its name, one must consider the 1950s when brothels in Italy were state-owned. They were known as case chiuse or 'closed houses' because the shutters had to be kept permanently closed to avoid offending the sensibilities of neighbors or innocent passers-by. Conscientious Italian housewives usually shop at the local market every day to buy fresh food, but the 'civil servants' were only allowed one day per week for shopping, and their time was valuable. Their speciality became a sauce made quickly from odds and ends in the larder.

Very well then. We used to have this dish at The Spaghetti House in Port Moresby (see here.) I have to say that Giuliano Hazan's recipe, the one I use, doesn't contain chili: I usually put it in though, either as crushed dried chillies or fresh chopped. Other personal preferences: I like penne rigate, not spaghetti, as I find it picks up more sauce and is robust to match the sauce. I usually also add torn basil leaves to serve.

Penne Puttanesca (serves 6)

• 100ml extra virgin olive oil, plus a bit more
• 500g packet dried pasta (see above)
• 6 chopped anchovies out of a tin or jar
• 1 tsp finely chopped fresh garlic (or more if you want)
• 2 tins tomatoes (get the diced ones, or get the whole ones and dice them up yourself)
• 2 tablespoons capers
• 1 tablespoon fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried oregano
• about 10 black olives (you can take the stone out if you want)

Put the oil and anchovies in a big frying pan or saucepan. I use my Le Chasseur pan. Cook over low heat, stirring with wooden spoon, until the anchovies dissolve. Add garlic and cook for about 15 seconds, not letting it brown.

Increase the heat to medium-high and add tomatoes, plus the juice from the cans, and a tiny pinch of salt. When it boils, turn it down and simmer until tomatoes have reduced and separated from the oil. This takes 20-40 minutes, depending on how big your pan is.

Remove from heat, set aside. Cook pasta in boiling salted water. When pasta is halfway done, reheat the sauce. Add the oregano, capers and olives. When pasta is cooked, drain it and toss it together with the sauce in the pan over a low heat. Add one more tablespoon of olive oil and toss. Tip the whole thing into a heated serving bowl and serve it straight away while it's really hot.

If you wanted to do more, you could make a plain green salad to go with it. I would say a full-bodied red wine or an icy cold lager to go with it. Garlic bread could be nice too if that's your thing.

Summer lunch plate

This was a great lunch. Possibly my favourite kind of lunch in the summer. In winter I prefer noodle soup. It's a delicious plate of lots of great cold foods.

• ciabatta slices spread with Gympie Farm chevre goats' cheese
• one cold roasted chicken leg
• sliced tomato
• basil
• dried date olives from the West End Markets
• sliced red onion
  

Herb garden

Got me a little herb garden in a pot. Thanks Mum. The plan is that they will grow and intertwine and tumble over one another to create a little cottage pot of kitcheny goodness.
What's in the pot? Oregano, basil, a chili bush, rosemary, a tomato plant, thyme, snow pea sprouts. In a different pot I've got French lavender growing, and in another there's silverbeet. Hoping that none of them die (it hasn't begun well: when I brought the pot home I dropped it on the lawn and had to repot half the seedlings. Perhaps an omen? I could name the garden Damien) and that bugs don't come over for a snack, either. Only I shall be snacking on those herbs, thanks very much.

I'm most excited about the tomatoes, and the basil. It will be just lovely to be able to make a tiny little salad from tiny little fresh tomatoes (2 minutes old) and fresh basil out of my very own Damien.

Beef and couscous summer salad

Seems like I'm all about salads right now. Salads and ciabatta; but I'm trying to lose the bread and increase the foliage. This was made with some leftover grilled rump steak, cold, the next day. I sliced it thinly, added torn butter lettuce, flat-leaf parsley, basil, lemon juice, olive oil, cooked couscous, and a gremolata of lemon zest, chili and grated garlic. Salt and pepper to finish. With a huge glass of icy water with a lemon slice floating in it. Refreshing!

Jamie Oliver's lamb kofta kebabs with onion salad, grilled corn and couscous

These were really good. From Jamie at Home. I made the kebabs as instructed, but changed the rest of it.

The kebabs were a mixture of lamb mince, pistachios, sumac, crushed chili, salt, pepper and cumin powder. You smash the lot together in the food processor, then mould it around skewers. (I used wooden skewers, but just be sure to soak them in water for a while first so they don't burn.)

I grilled the koftas on my humumgous Le Chasseur grill pan. A heavy frying pan would be fine, too. Jamie cooks his in the coals of a barbecue: I will try this if and when I get the outdoor barbecue I want.

(Note: I want a pit full of rocks with a grill over the top that everyone can sit round and stare at glowing embers and roast marshmallows. None of this gas-fired, temperature-controlled pansy work).

They don't take very long at all to cook. I had mine done medium-rare: still tender and juicy inside, with a tinge of pink in the middle. Meanwhile, the salad was just finely-sliced red onion marinated in lemon juice for five minutes, and torn basil leaves. I also made some plain couscous, and corn cobs wrapped in husk pieces and then in tin foil. I grilled the cobs on the grill pan with the koftas.

Maybe the only thing that would have been good with this might be some plain Greek-style yoghurt.

Cloverfield

Lordy, I shouldn't have gone to see this. Now I have more questions than answers, but I know that I like it and I want more.
Everything that could possibly be said about this film has already been said, particularly well here, here and here. The geeks on IMDB have also got a lot to say. When's the sequel coming out?

Back to school, and back to school lunches

God. How can it be that the holidays are almost over? Oh, cruel world.
Anyhoo, school lunches.Education Queensland's new-ish tuckshop policy Smart Choices has been in place for about a year now. It allocates tuckshop food to a colour value, either red, amber or green. Green foods can be on sale all the time, amber
foods occasionally, and red foods only get sold two days a term. I tell you, the kids hate that. There are many true stories of the milk bar down the road suddenly getting a LOT more business, as kids jump the back oval fence and nick down for a chiko roll or meat pie with sauce.
The red foods are:

All types of confectionary/lollies and chocolate;
Sugar and artificially sweetened drinks e.g. soft drinks, flavoured mineral
waters, energy drinks, sports drinks;
All types of deep fried foods;
Most types of savoury snack foods, whether baked or fried e.g. crisps,
chips, extruded snacks (Cheezels, Burger Rings), snack biscuits, etc.;
Most ice creams (premium and chocolate coated);
Most cakes, muffins, sweet pastries and slices.
Jam, marmalade, honey, nutella in large amounts.

Mmm, extruded snacks.

The green foods are reasonable, though. Kudos to EQ for going through with the new rule. Even though individual choice should play a part, parents and carers are often too busy to provide kids with a proper lunch, or sometimes they don't actually know what should go into a lunchbox.

Often you'll see kids turning up with a mini-packet of chips and a sachet of Nutella. I have never seen a sandwich turn up from home made of anything but plastic white bread, even if it has Vegemite inside (but never salad, unfortunately.)

I remember my mother making me eat sultana, cheese and celery sandwiches on brown bread. By the time lunch rolled around (and this was before my primary school had a fridge for lunchboxes), the cheese was melted and sticky, the bread was soggy and the celery had wilted. Plerk.

On Dad's day to make the lunches, he would often come down to the kitchen early, and we would witness an excellent time-and-motion example. First he would put several eggs on to boil, and while the eggs were cooking he would fill our lunchboxes with crackers / fruit / a frozen juice box. Two eggs would be put before us with a plate of toast soldiers, and while we dipped and munched, the other eggs would be mashed into a bowl with curry powder, mayonnaise and seasonings. Dad would carefully fill our sandwiches with curried egg, wrap them in plastic wrap and fit them precisely into the lunchboxes. It was like Tetris, Dad-style.

My favourite lunches were the ones made of leftovers. If there had been a party on the weekend, us kids would get the goods: perhaps a slice of birthday cake, a roasted chicken leg wrapped in tin foil, a hunk of shallot-filled quiche Lorraine.

Nowadays, it's often tough to organise myself a good workday lunch. I do like the convenience of little tuna and salmon tins, although you need a TicTac afterwards to avoid tuna breath. Salads don't always keep. Leftover curries and takeaway and such can be heavy, messy, and the smell can annoy your co-workers.
What do people in other countries take for lunch? The French have their hot-meal cantines for the kids. Some French and British agricultural workers still take the old ploughman's lunch (a good standby for anyone, including us.) Indians have tiffins of home-cooked meat, vegetables and rice that gets ferried to the worker, after being prepared in the morning (and Melbourne residents can try this out for themselves.)A lot of people in the world get to go home for lunch, although that only really works if there's someone already at home making something yummy. The Japanese have bento for their city workers, and often, Japanese parents prepare their own bento for kids heading to school.
A Chinese lady I knew used to make her children and herself a lunch ball: a big tennis ball of glutinous rice, with a filling of pork floss mixed with vegetables and sauce. The whole thing was twisted up in plastic wrap, and had the added benefit of being able to be chucked straight into a schoolbag, exist indefinitely without refrigeration and survive being squashed, poked or sat on. One day she brought me a lunch ball of my own, after enduring my many questions. It was delicious.
Imagine if Aussie parents put the same amount of effort into preparing their child a healthy, interesting and delicious lunch? Although I know many do, it's not often evident.

Clementine clafoutis

It's one of those wacko fruits that we don't see much in Queensland, or ever. But I really wish we did. Wikipedia says:

A Clementine is the fruit of a variety of mandarin,
(Citrus reticulata), named in 1902. The rind is of medium
thickness; moderately firm, but easily peelable and does not puff until well
after maturity. Smooth and glossy surface of color deep orange to
reddish-orange. Flesh color deep orange; tender and melting; 8 to 12 juicy
segments; flavor sweet. The Clementine is not always distinguished from other varieties of mandarin: in German, it is generally referred to as "Mandarine". However, it should not be confused with similar fruit such as the satsuma, which is
another name for the Japanese mikan, and is another popular
variety. The clementine is occasionally referred to as Algerian
tangerine.

Known for its low total heat requirement for fruit maturity
and the sensitivity of the seedless fruit to unfavorable conditions during the
flowering and fruit-setting period; in regions of high total heat, the
Clementine matures very early—only slightly later than the satsuma mandarins.
Such regions also favor production of fruit of maximum size and best eating
quality. As a consequence, Clementine is without doubt the best early variety in
the Mediterranean basin, particularly in North Africa, and in other regions of
similar climate.

I have lovely happy memories of buying 2-kilo bags of fresh sweet clementines at the local markets in France, for what seemed like months on end. They were perfect: better than any mandarin I've ever had in Australia. None of that floury, square, loose-skinned, bitter, hard-insides thing going on. None of that loaded-with-pith thing either. The clementine skin was easier to peel than an orange, but more difficult than a normal mandarin. The flavour was indescribably delicate and with very little acidity. Anyway, I went through a bag a week, and when the last one was eaten, I was counting down the hours until Saturday morning when I could get back to the fruit guy in the market square for my clementine fix. They must have thought I was totally nuts.

Meanwhile, clafoutis are great too. Basically, it's a French traditional enriched pancake batter that you pour over fruit pieces and bake in the oven. The result can be custardy and comforting, or cakey and rich. Usually it's done with cherries (and I better get on with it while cherries are so cheap and good), but the below American recipe does it with the ole' clementine. Really, this is impossible to make in Queensland, but I'm going to use either cherries or another seasonal stonefruit. Probably plums. Yellow peaches might be a goer too. Or strawberries. The important thing is to make sure you have lots of fruit and that it is perfectly ready to eat. The dish should be filled to almost-full with fruit, and then the batter is poured over and settles around it. Too much batter equals a povvo clafoutis.

It needs to be served either at a lavish breakfast, or as the showpig dessert after a simple French bistro-style dinner, dusted with sugar and served with thick cream for those who would care for it I would say definitely no icecream.
Clafoutis are rustic and homely. Traditionally they would be baked in a cast-iron skillet, in a slow oven, while the rest of the meal was being eaten. I've seen this done in small individual ramekins, but in my mind that is just twee posturing, and an insult to what a true clafoutis can be, puffed up majestically in its oven dish, golden brown and enormous, studded thickly with gorgeous fruit, sailing along in a sea of its own awesomeness and saying: "Behold my glory, underlings!!"
At which point you attack it with a spoon.

Clementine clafoutis (serves 6)

Butter as needed
1/2 cup flour, more for dusting pan
3 eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar (I'll use caster)
Pinch salt
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup milk
5 to 15 clementines, peeled and sectioned, about 3 cups
Powdered sugar (icing sugar)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a gratin dish, about 9 by 5 by 2 inches, or a 10-inch round deep pie plate or porcelain dish, by smearing it with butter, just a teaspoon or so.
(My note: Whatever, but use a shallow dish rather than deep, so that the mixture cooks through before browning).
Dust it with flour, rotating pan so flour sticks to all the butter; invert dish to get rid of excess.
2. In a large bowl, whisk eggs until frothy. Add granulated sugar and salt and whisk until combined. Add cream and milk and whisk until smooth. Add 1/2 cup flour and stir just to combine.
3. Layer clementine sections in dish; they should come just about to the top. Pour batter over fruit to as close to top of dish as you dare; you may have a little leftover batter, depending on size of your dish. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until clafoutis is nicely browned on top and a knife inserted into it comes out clean. Sift some powdered sugar over it and serve warm or at room temperature. Clafoutis does not keep; serve within a couple of hours of making it.

Red lentil soup with lemon

From the New York Times. Healthy, easy, simple, light. I'm going to make this tomorrow.

Red Lentil Soup With Lemon

3 tablespoons olive oil, more for drizzling
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
Pinch of ground chili powder or cayenne, more to taste
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup red lentils
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
Juice of 1/2 lemon, more to taste
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (coriander)

1. In a large pot, heat 3 tablespoons oil over high heat until hot and shimmering. Add onion and garlic, and sauté until golden, about 4 minutes.
2. Stir in tomato paste, cumin, salt, black pepper and chili powder or cayenne, and sauté for 2 minutes longer.
3. Add broth, 2 cups water, lentils and carrot. Bring to a simmer, then partially cover pot and turn heat to medium-low. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary.
4. Using an immersion or regular blender or a food processor, purée half the soup then add it back to pot. Soup should be somewhat chunky.
5. Reheat soup if necessary, then stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Serve soup drizzled with good olive oil and dusted lightly with chili powder if desired.

Yield: 4 servings.

Beef and orange daube

This is a direct result of me watching that Elizabeth David program on the ABC the other night. I really enjoyed it: the actress playing her was very talented and I got a lot out of the show. Admittedly, the biography I have of her is quite dry and boring, so I skipped a fair bit of it. Watching the program helped to fill in some of the gaps I have about her life. She certainly was a live spark: the men, the adultery (which would have been a bigger deal then, I guess), the struggle for meaning, the resistance from people when she tried to introduce Mediterranean / Continental flavours into British cooking. I really liked the fact that she cooked and worked and wrote and entertained all on the same battered old table, and that her dining room / kitchen / workroom was decidedly unglamorous: not that big, utilitarian, worn. I think I want to grow up to be her.
But there was a scene in the program where she is languishing in some cold English field, dreaming about "beef scented with orange peel". That was it for me. The end, questions over, casserole time. To be more specific, daube time.

A daube is supposed to be meat cooked with wine, over a long slow heat, together with other suitable vegetables and so on, to produce a rich stew on the thick side, with the beef falling apart and meltingly tender. I didn't really do that, probably because I made the daube and THEN went looking for her book, French Provincial Cooking (read it for free via Google Books). This book has been a great teacher. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. If I had read the recipe first, things might have been different, but I am still very pleased with the result.

My daube turned out to be a rich meaty sauce, coating chunks of tender beef and vegetables. I served it with steamed potatoes, broccoli and zucchini in a bowl, with the persillade on top. In retrospect I should have omitted the persillade, but Mrs Daid did recommend it. I though it detracted from the soft flavours of the meat and gravy.

The daube would be great with pasta, or even on thick toast.

Escoffier, the great French chef, was all about "depouiller, depouiller, depouiller". Skim, skim, skim. Skimming a broth, soup or stock makes it clear and lovely. I remembered Escoffier just in time, and and all my depouillering went to good use, for the daube was indeed clear, murk-free and enchanting.


Pinky's beef and orange daube

• About a kilo of beef bones (I bought mine cheap from the supermarket: they were called "beef soup bones".) Make sure you get bones that have been cut right through so you can see the marrow.



• Some suitable beef pieces. If the soup bones are very meaty, perhaps that would be enough. I bought "gravy beef", which looked to be chuck or stewing steak in pieces. It worked well.



• 1 cup red wine



• 1-2 onions, peeled and halved



• 3 celery sticks, roughly chopped



• 2 carrots, sliced



• Peel slices from half an orange



• Tomato passata



• salt



• olive oil

For the persillade:

• Flat-leaf parsley




• Orange zest (use the other half of the orange from above)




• Half a clove of garlic, grated

Trim the steak into large cubes. Trim off any fat, sinew, gristle, anything white. This will help the meat to relax and become awesome. In a giant saucepan or stock pot, splash in some oil. Add the meat and bones, and cook on medium heat for a few minutes until browned all over. Pour in the wine and cook off the alcohol for a minute or so. Add the vegetables, the peel, a slug of passata, and water to cover the lot. Use more water rather than less. My stockpot was almost full. Add a little bit of salt, just a pinch. Bring to the boil. Stand there and skim it as it boils: you want to get rid of any grey-brown-green scungey scum or foam. These are the impurities that will cloud your dish. Bubbles are OK. Red-brown foam is OK too. Reduce heat to a low simmer, move it to your smallest burner, and simmer for several hours. Mine went for 4-5 hours. Skim it periodically: you could even bring it back to the boil once or twice to encourage the scum to surface and then skim it away.

After the long slow simmering, you should have a deep, rich-coloured broth, crumbly tender meat and mushy vegetables. Let it cool for a while (or don't bother). Get a big big bowl, sit a colander inside and line the colander with a clean tea towel. Strain the broth through this. You want the clear juice going into the bowl below. Discard the bones: take the meat off them first if you like. Rinse the stockpot and pour the strained broth back into it. Add the meat cubes and the carrots, if they look OK. Taste for seasoning: adjust as you will. Put the pot of broth and meat back on the stove. It should be about a quarter or a fifth of the original volume. Continue reducing gently, thicken with a little flour towards the end. Total cooking time for me was about 6 hours.

The persillade is a mixture that you sprinkle over the finished daube. If using a persillade, finely chop the parsley and combine with the zest and grated garlic. Serve as you like. The flavour of the orange peel will be beautiful and haunting. Vive la Provence!

Lasagne: a dream remembered

Yeah, my first lasagne ever. All I could think about the whole day was Garfield, and the fact that I spent my entire life from ages six to thirteen reading Garfield comics and trying to match my personality to his. I would tuck the doona around my face just like he does, grumbling about how sucky it was to have to get up and actually go to school. Mum eventually gave in to my requests for lasagne and as I recall, it was a momentously exciting day. The careful stirring, the new concept of white sauce, the grating of the cheese, the whole circus. The laborious assembly, the tasting of the meat sauce (to check for poison, you understand), the baking, and then the beautiful ritual of placing the straight-from-the-oven lasagne, fragrant and cheesy, onto the table before a hungry family. I can't remember having it again at home.

Strange that I never made lasagne myself until this day, many years later.
And it was just as special as I remembered, and wanted it to be. The recipe was different, of course, but the lasagne was very good. I used The Silver Spoon and Jamie at Home as help for the bechamel sauce and the pasta sheets, respectively, and the meat sauce was invented by me.
Here we go. Let the carnage begin!
Lasagne
For the meat sauce:

• 200g lean beef mince
• 200g pork mince
• 1 brown onion
• 2 peeled carrots
• half a bunch of celery, trimmed
• 2 cans of diced peeled tomatoes (I like La Gina brand)
• 2 tbsps tomato puree
• chopped rosemary leaves
• Red wine
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• unsalted butter

Chop the onion finely, or blitz it in the food processor. Do the same with the carrots and celery. Put in a large heavy saucepan with a knob of butter and a splash of olive oil. Cook until the onion is translucent and the vegetables have changed colour slightly. Add the meats and brown. Pour in about a cup of wine and cook off the alcohol for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes, the puree, the rosemary. I usually also add a tomato-canful of water, but you don't have to. Bring the lot to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for an hour or so, until quite reduced and thick. Taste and season as you will. Let it cool.

For the bechamel sauce:

• Quarter cup plain flour
• Quarter cup unsalted butter
• 500ml of milk diluted half with water
• salt and pepper

Put the flour and butter together in a small saucepan. Heat gently, stirring constantly, until the doughy lump becomes pale brown. Add the liquid slowly, stirring constantly. Stir on a low heat until the whole thing thickens to your desired consistency. Season to taste. Pour it our of the saucepan into a jug or dish and let it cool. (You could flavour this more with herbs / cheese / whatever, as you wish).

For the pasta sheets:

• 2 big eggs, room temperature
• 2 cups '00' Italian fine flour
• olive oil, optional

Crack eggs into food processor. Add flour. Blitz. Looks like fine breadcrumbs? Good. Maybe add some oil if it looks too dry. Remove to a clean bench or board. Knead briefly to bring it together. Flatten it out and cut into fat strips. Run each strip through your pasta machine, finishing on a medium-thick setting. Drop the strips into fast boiling salted water for about ten seconds each. Lift out carefully (mine tore a bit while doing this, but it doesn't matter) and spread out carefully onto clean tea towels to dry. Note: if you don't have a processor and/or pasta machine, you can do it like this. Or just buy those dried lasagne sheets from the supermarket and half-cook them.

The assembly:

• A few handfuls of grated mozzarella
• Same again of a grated tasty cheese, like maybe parmesan, pecorino, or just cheddar

Preheat oven to about 190C. Take a big ceramic baking dish, or a metal one lined with baking paper, and put one layer of pasta on the bottom. Follow with a layer of meat, white sauce and cheese. More pasta. Meat, white sauce and cheese. Continue until all gone. I ended up with a layer of pasta on the top, which I sprinkled with the last of the cheese. Bake for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Let it sit for a few minutes before you dive into it with a spatula... or gobble it straight from the pan! Great the next day, cold from the fridge.

Food Safari on SBS

Having a great time with this show. And I am totally going to win that trip to Vietnam.
It hasn't quite yet pushed Iron Chef out of my top SBS viewing position, but it's close. The only thing that bugs me is Maeve O'Meara: she's very nice and I'm sure she's a lovely person and I'm sure it's not deliberate, but seems like whenever she tries a dish, there's a pause, and then her eyes go wide and there's a wild nodding of the head, and she says "Mmm!! That IS good!" as if she was expecting the dish to be really gross, and then the person cooking the dish says thanks Maeve, and she says "No really!! That is lovely!!"
Patronising.
And she also has an annoying habit of stating the obvious. Like if the cook adds lemon juice, she'll say "And that's to add a bit more acidity??" Like she has to tell us that adding salt makes it saltier. Whatever.
But I think what I really like about the show is that it seems really authentic: that the recipes are real in-use recipes that real people who know what they are talking about cook at home. Seems like getting a Pakistani recipe off the website, one that came from a Pakistani home cook, would be more legitimate than a bastardised recipe published in the latest Women's Weekly cookbook, or some recipe database or something. I like that. Could be that the show just makes it seem like recipes aren't from a test kitchen, but I still believe that the dishes are proper living pathways to new, unsanitised, culinary worlds. And that's how we want it, right?

Pesto

Basil is pretty cheap right now. I truly love basil. In a platonic sense, of course, but you never know. Basil on toast, basil on tomato on toast, basil in a chicken stir-fry, basil in tomato soup, basil smashed into a caipirinha, basil all day and all night all summer long.
Then to winter, when we dream about basil and for that first warm day when it will return to us, triumphantly, like Persephone returning from the underworld to spend the long summer days with her mother, Demeter.
Ooh, evocative.
Anyhoo, right now is basil time. The Broadway markets have GIANT bunches of pretty much any herb for a buck fifty. These bunches are so big, I could only fit one each of basil and flat-leaf parsley into my new Andy Warhol commemorative neon tote bag. The big pink one. True story.
The basil has enormous glossy leaves and looks like it tooks some sort of steroids to get that big.

Incidentally, in this humidity and heat, I am finding that herbs can't live well out of the fridge, but they won't fit into the fridge (standing in a jug of water with a plastic bag elasticked over the whole thing, which DOES work and really DOES keep them fresh for ages) in their enormous steroid state, and I refuse to pull the leaves off and watch them wilt in the crisper. So I found the best option for me is to stand the bunch in the laundry sink, or a bucket, with a few inches of water in the bottom. The laundry is a relatively cool spot, and then each day I soak the whole bunch in water for a few minutes. Works very well.

I did have a bit of the basil in a salad, but then I made the whole bunch into pesto. Pesto on crackers, pesto through pasta, pesto on a steak, pesto straight out of the jar...
I'm sure this isn't the legit traditional way, but this is how I made it:

• One enormous monstro-bunch of basil, leaves only (nicely washed and dried)


• 2 peeled garlic cloves


• big pinch of rock salt


• Handful of pine nuts, medium-toasted


• Good olive oil

Insert all into food processor. The leaves might need to go in bit by bit so they fit. Blitz. Pour in olive oil gradually, just enough for the pesto to move freely and spread nicely. I like mine not too oily. Taste and check, decant into jar, store in fridge. Savour the season.

Apple and ginger tart

Made this last night: friend came round for simple Sunday night dinner. I was wondering what to cook, and possibly as a result of reading too much Elizabeth David (new series starting on the ABC tonight: all about her life and times) and Simon Hopkinson and watching Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes show on cable, I regressed back to French. Easy, worry-free, comforting.
The main was some pieces of juicy rump that the Annerley butcher cut for me. I marinated them for a few hours in a tiny bit of peanut oil and some slivers of garlic, to add flavour. No salt at all. With that we served these potatoes (AGAIN...but they're so good!) except this time, I added some baby brown onions, peeled, omitted the garlic, and added a sprinkle each of sugar and salt. The onions caramelised up really well and added their flavour to the potatoes. I served a salad separately. It had baby spinach, watercress, butter lettuce, radish and Lebanese cucumber in it with a light vinaigrette dressing.
Afterwards we had this simple apple and ginger tart. In retrospect, I should have had the oven on hotter: the pastry didn't crisp evenly and I was a bit unimpressed with that. However, I thought the tart itself was sound. Worth making again.
Apple and ginger tart

• 3 big green apples
• One thumb of new (pink) ginger, grated (or the same of old, but use more and peel it first)
• 1 cup sugar
• Frozen puff pastry ( I used half of one sheet)
• Apple schnapps or cognac, about 2 tablespoons

Peel and slice the apples so that they form half-moon shapes. Put them into a saucepan with the grated ginger and just cover with water. Add the sugar and bring to the boil: poach the apples for one minute. Lift out the apples and set aside. Drain the syrup to remove the ginger. Put the drained syrup back on the heat: add the schnapps. Boil and reduce to a medium syrup: not too dark or thick though. Let it cool. Pour it back over the apples. At this point you could store the syrupy apples in the fridge until you decide to make the tart.

Preheat oven to 200C. Lay a sheet of puff pastry on baking paper on a baking tray. Arrange the slices however you like. I do mine in two little overlapping rows. Paint the apples with a bit of the syrup. Bake the tart for about twenty minutes or half an hour, until the pastry is puffed and golden to your liking. Brush a little more syrup over before serving, or just hand the syrup round in a jug.

I served mine with slightly sweetened whipped cream, flavoured with maple syrup. If I did this again I would lose the syrup and the whipping. I would have the cream plain in a bowl nearby.

Cherries in rosemary syrup

Still thinking about stonefruit with rosemary. My latest attempt to combine them: rosemary sprigs infused in a light sugar syrup, poured over chilled fresh cherries. It was good, not great. Maybe the rosemary needs to be finely chopped, and them perhaps baked into a cherry clafoutis.

Jamie Oliver's lamb shoulder with noodles, baby spinach and mint caper gravy

In his new book, Jamie At Home (which is truly great, by the way: not one dud recipe in there), in the lamb chapter, there's a recipe for slow-roasted shoulder of lamb with smashed vegetables and some wilted greens. Mum had a go at the shoulder, using a boned rolled leg, flattened out. (The butcher was being difficult: we'll deal with him later.) She put it in a baking dish with unpeeled garlic cloves, rosemary and a tiny bit of olive oil and salt, and roasted it with a tight lid of tinfoil for a few hours at a low heat. It was perfect: melting, falling apart, heaps of flavour and still juicy.
I took a piece of it home to play with: it ended up as a homage to Jamie, and using the same sauce he recommends in the book.
We cooked some of that curly wide pasta (not lasagne sheets, ricciarelle) until just before al dente. It was dressed with some unsalted butter and went into a bowl with baby spinach leaves. We tossed them together to slightly wilt the leaves. Over the top went the shredded lamb pieces. The sauce is a mixture of the lamb juices from the roasting, light chicken stock, capers and red wine vinegar. I heated all these together in a pan and used a little flour to thicken. The sauce went over the lamb and sprinkled on top were some torn fresh mint leaves.
It was really delicious. Probably not what Jamie originally has in mind, but definitely a testament to what you can do with a few simple ingredients and easy slow cooking.

Later we cooked the REAL roast shoulder, with steamed squash, broccolini, carrot, beans and roast kipfler potatoes. Big success.

Top movies of 2007

Slate's list of the top movies of 2007 is as follows:


4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Away From Her
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Host
Killer of Sheep
No End in Sight
Once
Persepolis
Ratatouille
There Will Be Blood
Eastern Promises
Michael Clayton
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
I'm Not There
Lust, Caution

Well, unfortunately I didn't see most of those. In 2007 I was more interested in a sweet filmic escape, rather than more intellectual fare. Maybe that will change this year: maybe not. My resolution is to let it be. To not beat myself up when I don't feel like doing something that I maybe should be doing.

Meanwhile, here's MY top movies of 2007:

The Bourne Ultimatum
Ratatouille
Sunshine
The Simpsons Movie
Zodiac
Death Proof
Die Hard 4.0

Media Censorship, or: You Can't Say That on Teh Interweb!!

Guess I was going to have to talk about this sometime. Thanks, Neal, for prompting. Before we begin, though:

1. PLEASE TAKE THIS POST WITH THE USUAL GRAIN OF SALT.
2. ALL OPINIONS ARE MY OWN AND SHOULD NOT BE BELIEVED WITHOUT SEEKING FURTHER ADVICE.
3. DISCUSSING THIS TOPIC DOESN'T MAKE ME GUILTY OF ANYTHING.
4. DO NOT TAKE INTERNALLY. SEEK MEDICAL ADVICE IF INGESTED.

That ought to cover me from any legal mumbo-jumbo. Now, children, gather round, for there is a story to tell of mystery and intrigue. This is the tale, about as objective and straightforward as I can tell it.

Maybe four or five months ago, someone contacted me and asked me to call them about a story they were writing. I called them and it turned out this person was a journalist for a newspaper. I was at first excited to be talking about my blog, but during the course of the conversation things turned decidedly accusatory. The journalist was specifically interested in my eating out reviews and comments and opinions, particularly regarding market stalls and smaller outlets. This person asked whether or not I thought that comments like this or this were likely to actively discourage others from buying that product and therefore to drive away business, hurting small business-owners, in effect partaking in legal slander for which I could be sued.

I tried as much as possible to defend not only my position in writing honest reviews and giving opinions, but to defend WHAT EXACTLY I had written. In a nutshell:

• Anyone can see that I am not a professional reviewer, paid to know what I am talking about. Therefore, a reasonable person would know that one opinion does not a fact make.
• I have never written a totally negative review or comment. I take care to try to stay objective, or at least to qualify what I've said to make it clear that this is just my opinion.
• If posting a blog is legally the same as any other sort of mainstream publishing, then surely restaurant guides, movie critics and so on must be similarly liable?
• The internet is a wild and untamed place, screaming with sane and less-sane ramblings, spoutings and rants. I am just one chirping bird, a voice in the wilderness. I hardly get twenty hits a day. There must be plenty of websites disagreeing with me. Wouldn't that effectively prove that I don't know best?

And lastly:

• If ever anyone wants to take me to task and to demonstrate that ACTUALLY, that wasn't packet mix (as I thought), or that ACTUALLY, this cafe has fantastic and fresh coffee (not stale, as I thought), then I will gladly and without delay, recant any original comments, apologise, post a new and glowing review.

For isn't that what the whole spirit of the net was originally about? The capacity for discussion, talk, communication of ideas, learning and growing? If it turns out I was wrong, fine. No problem there.

The comment after this post illustrates (sort of) what I mean. This person (nice work, "Anonymous", if that IS your real name) thinks I am full of it and doesn't hesitate to tell me so. But, they are allowed to say what they think, just as I did.

And there's always the old standby: no one's forcing anyone to read it. By all means, click away to another, less offensive site, if you so desire.

Anyway, the bottom line with this phone call and this journalist was that in their opinion, I was out of line in making the comments that I did and that I should be aware of the legal ramifications involved. I did a quick search and it seems that yes, bloggers can go to court for defamation or slander. Remember this?

I was obviously quite rattled by this and immediately took down any of the more out-there posts, until the heat was off. Some of them still aren't back up yet. I also added a disclaimer under my blog header... just for those types who need things spelled out for them.

What's the answer? Not sure. I still want to post reviews, but I'll always be hesitant in criticising and tread carefully when it comes to saying what I really think. Part of me feels that when this sort of thing happens, humanity loses a little part of themselves. We lose some civilization, we lose some of those higher ideals that maybe we strove for: honesty, the capacity to communicate without prejudice or bias.

Then again, that's...

...just my opinion.

Blog tracker: who's looking for me

You know what's interesting? When I check out my hits to this blog, I can see what people were searching for which led them to me. The usual recipes (especially Nigella's crispy potatoes, gingerbread, seasonal stuff like galette des rois) are there, and people search a LOT for marie claire and donna hay recipes, but you know what heaps of people are searching for?

Poison.


Mmm. Really makes you think.

White peonies

Sourdough rye, pancetta, tomato, rocket and red onion sandwich

Post-celebratory, post-seasonal baking, post-everything. I just wanted a sandwich.

And I wanted a flavoursome one, too.

On one slice of sourdough rye bread, spread Philly mixed with a little crushed garlic and pepper. On the other slice, mustard. In the middle, tomato, red onion, rocket, sliced pancetta.