Spaghetti Squash!

It's always exciting to try something new. I'd heard of spaghetti squash before, but never actually seen one in real life until just now. I found one in Choku Bai Jo, and I'm told that they grow quite well in the Canberra region. Since it's such an oddity, I've taken lots of photos.

So here it is in its original state, looking a bit like an elongated honeydew melon. There's a nice big avocado next to it for scale. The first step is to cut it in half, where it now looks like a cross between a melon and a pumpkin.

Now you need to cook it, and this is where the advice I found differs. Either you can put it in a greased oven tray, or on one with a couple of centimetres of water in it. Place it cut side down, and bake at 180C for about 30 minutes, until it's quite easy to pierce the rind with a knife. Take it out and scrape out the seeds. You can leave it to cool first, but I found holding it with an oven mitt and scraping with a spoon was fine.

And now, take to it with a fork and scrape lengthwise along the squash, and you will end up with a lot of strands, like angelhair pasta - that's very thin spaghetti. Serve it how you will.



Don't expect it to taste like spaghetti, no matter what the low-carb diet books say! It's definitely a squash, more like zucchini. But the texture is fun, and it makes for a nice light meal. Good for summer, tossed with pesto, olives and fetta, perhaps. We actually ate it with a tomato, olive, bacon and chilli sauce. It seemed to need cheese quite a lot. I've also had some tossed with tuna, chilli, peas and corn. It seems to leave me a bit unsatisfied, like having a salad for dinner. A hunk of nice bread would help complete it. Or it could be a side dish - I think it would be good in a gratin.

Eating around the web

I'm very erratic with food reading on the web. There's a few blogs that I check regularly, but otherwise things just seem to turn up. From links friends post on facebook or message boards, mostly. Or sometimes I google an ingredient, and find something on some totally random site. I've had the chance to try quite a few things recently; with this crazy weather anything from salad to porridge is an option.

I googled quinoa a while ago and found a nice quinoa porridge. At the same site, a recipe for quinoa pilaf took my fancy. Now, as the bloke hates corn and walnuts, I had to make a variant. But the general idea is very adaptable. Quinoa cooked in stock, then fried up with onion, spices, and vegetables. It's good with that dark Tuscan kale, but you could try spinach or silverbeet. I served it as an accompaniment to some quick grilled lamb chops from that new Dickson butcher.

And 35C one day, 15C the next, it's still possible to have porridge. I was quite intrigued by this idea, cooking brown rice in a crockpot. I almost followed the recipe, except that I used low fat milk instead of full-fat, and coconut milk and a 1/4 cup of sugar instead of the sweetened condensed milk. And raspberries on top instead of cranberries or raisins cooked in. So, yeah, almost the same. The result is, well, OK. The bran separates off, while the inner rice goes squishy, which gives it more of a porridge texture than a rice pudding texture. Also I think it needed less sugar. I couldn't put maple syrup on top since it was already quite sweet enough for me.

Serious Eats crops up quite a lot, since I'm a facebook fan. This American site has some wonderful discussions. Check out this hilarious recipe for boiled water, and don't miss the reader comments. These chocolate chip cookies are from Serious Eats. I made them before Xmas, and have two sausages of dough still in the freezer waiting for the next cookie occasion.

And then there's this chocolate cake. I simply could not resist making this, as it is just so very weird. It's gluten-free - it uses not chickpea flour but actual chickpeas. I liked the flavour in the end. The chickpeas add some flavour, but it's quite neutral tending to nutty - a reasonable match to chocolate. The texture was less of a hit. It came out quite dry. I found that it was OK when tempered with a dollop of icecream, and B2 liked it, but B1 did not. So, variable.

I did edit the recipe slightly for Australian measures, so here you go.

Recipe: Chocolate Chickpea Cake

1 tablespoon butter, softened
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
150g dark cooking chocolate
2 x 420g tins of chickpeas
4 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Grease a small loaf tin with the butter, and "flour" it with the cocoa.
• Drain the chickpeas and rinse them well.
• Weigh out 2/3 of them, and set the rest aside for some other use.
• Put them in a food processor, with the eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla and baking powder.
• Puree until very smooth.
• Melt the chocolate, and blend it into the rest of the mix.
• Pour the cake batter into the tin and smooth surface.
• Bake at 180C for 45-60 minutes, until a knife comes out clean.
• Allow cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before inverting to cooling rack to cool completely.
• Dust with icing sugar just before serving.

Note: I used the extra chickpeas in a mixed veggie curry. You could also add them to a soup or a salad, or mash them up with garlic, lemon and tahini to make hommous.

I like to melt chocolate in the microwave - break it up into a glass bowl, zap it for 20 sec, stir well, and repeat until all is melted. Much easier than a double boiler, or the old bowl over boiling water technique.

Followups and repeats

So yes, I have been cooking without blogging. It's been repeats, along with a couple of pudding that I have assigned to a new post. I have recently made a ham and olive arrabiatta style pasta sauce, a "bolognese" pasta sauce, a keema, a roast chook, a risotto with leftover chicken; steak & salad; a massaman curry from a tub of paste; and sausages and salad. When I started this blog I was wondering how long it would be before I ran out of ideas, but it seems the answer is not too soon. Even though the Canberra Times has taken a lot of my review writing options, I still experiment with new ideas and techniques. Truffles and duck featured recently, as you may recall.

And I do follow up some of the ideas I spot on the net. Here are a few followup notes:

1. I made Alton Brown's granola, though I decided to use golden syrup. Maple is so expensive, and I do really like golden syrup. I also chucked in a half cup of sesame seeds. It's fine, but I still prefer Nigella's. Alton's is less sweet, which is good for me, so I will reduce the sugars on that next time I make hers. I had a problem with the cashews, too. 250F is only 120C, but even so they were starting to burn, especially the ones sitting around the edges. I reduced it further to 100C after that, but there are still some over-scorched ones. Since I caught it early, they are dark brown rather than black. But be warned - toasting cashews takes a lower temperature than almonds.

2. The vanilla essence proved disappointing. It darkened to a nice medium-weak tea colour after a couple of weeks, which was encouraging, but then it stayed put. It's more of a strong vanilla vodka than a real essence. I am now using it as a flavour, in cases where you need quite a lot of liquid so you can splash it in generously.

3. Those devilled kidneys. Let me remind you of the quantity for eight kidneys. You need two ounces of butter, and:

“I have accurately exacted the following measures. They are: three tablespoons of worstershire sauce; one heaping tablespoon of Coleman’s English mustard powder; one tablespoon of freshly squeezed juice of a lemon; half a table glass of water; one two-ounce canister of Fullers Earth, one substantial tablespoon of cayenne pepper; a heaping pinch of ground black pepper; and four drops of Tabasco sauce.”

Holmes was being sloppy here. It's "Worcestershire" sauce, and Fuller's Earth is basically fine clay (in the story, Watson surreptitiously removes this). There's also an amusing contrast between the substantial tablespoon of (potent!) cayenne pepper and the mere four drops of (mild) Tabasco.

I can only assume that Holmes' cayenne came in a slow ship from India, and it sat in warehouses for a year or two, and then on a grocer's shelf for another year going slowly stale. However, my cayenne comes from the Indian grocer and it is knock-your-socks off hot. I used a heaped teaspoon instead and it was still very potent. I had to go eat a tub of yoghurt for dessert, just to cool down.

So, well, use your judgement about your hot foods. I find that the heat comes off the mustard quite a lot with cooking, so this amount is fine. I used Keen's, since that's what I have. And water? Really? Just say no. The kidneys release quite a lot of juice, so you don't need much extra liquid. A tablespoon of brandy is the ticket here.

Icecream and Jelly

I've had an orange jelly in mind ever since my houseguests gave me some oranges from their backyard Sydney tree in late July. They came with a warning that they were very sour, which on an early test was proved to be true. A sprinkle of sugar was necessary to finish the wedges I'd cut. Then it took me a month to get round to it, by which time I'd had to throw three out for being moldy. But I got a cup and a half of juice from the remainder, which was enough.

And then I was toying with the title option: "Icecream and Jelly" or "Cold Jelly and Custard" since I had both options. Which would it be? The custard is just a Dairy Farmers, bought for my sloppy food phase last week. If I'd made a nice custard, things might have been different. The icecream is also a bought one, but it's pretty special. It's a new one from Maggie Beer: lemon and orange curd. Wow, it's a good one - very smooth, tangy and not too sweet, a nice pale lemon colour with no artificial extras, and some little dots of candied orange peel. A grown-up icecream to have with your grown-up jelly.


Recipe: Orange Jelly
1.5 cups orange juice
0.5 cups boiling water
10g (1 sachet) gelatine
30ml cointreau
2 tblsp caster sugar

Pour the boiling water into a small jug or mug.
Sprinkle the gelatine over, and stir very vigorously to dissolve.
Add the sugar and stir well until that also dissolves.
Leave for a couple of minutes and stir vigorously again.
Add the juice and cointreau, stir well, and pour into a bowl or mould.
Refrigerate to set.

Notes: You can use a bit less sugar if your juice isn't sour. Or more if you like it really sweet.

The double stirring bit is just because I find that powdered gelatine can be tricky to dissolve. Sometimes you think you've got it, and then there are lumps after all. You can even heat it up in the microwave to soften it again if it starts to set, and you find lumps. But I wouldn't do this is it has the juice in it. The freshness of the orange juice would be spoiled.

I know the foodie magazines often say to use leaf gelatine, not powdered, but this is one case where I don't buy it. Gelatine is a simple protein, there's no difference in taste, just in ease of use. And looks, and price.

Here's some more information on gelatine at taste.com.au. Oddly, they say that boiling can destroy gelatine's ability to set. But I've certainly never encountered that with a chicken stock!

The Last Resort

How to get a stuck jar open:
a) use a cloth, grip mat or similar. I used to wrap a rubber band around, but the tupperware mat is more convenient. This simply allows you to use more force on the jar, by increasing the friction so you don't slip.
b) run metal lid under hot water for a minute. It should expand, making it easier to remove.
c) both a. and b.
d) ask handy bloke to open it, enhancing his chances with a, b, and c as required, or any other set of grips from his shed.
e) whack jar lid edge firmly against benchtop (potentially breaking an airlock).
f) poke a hole in the jar lid (definitely breaking any airlock).
g) buy a special jar opening tool with a handle - this adds leverage.
h) see picture.

I got up to f, then skipped on to h. The ingredients are
* 1 recalcitrant jar
* 1 sharp pointed knife
* 1 meat mallet
* 1 spare, clean jar
* 1 clean spoon
* 1 knife sharpener

Method: hold knife point down on jar lid. Whack with meat mallet. Keeping knife in the hole so created, use it to cut a line. Repeat a couple of times, creating a rough N shape. Use the knife to lever back sections of the lid - caution, edges will be sharp. Use the spoon to extract the contents of the jar to the spare jar.

This is not good for your knife. Resharpen afterwards. And do look out for any metal shavings from the edge: they are not good to eat.

Another Anzac Day, Another Batch of Biscuits

Saturday was of course the correct day, but today is the public holiday so I figure that if I make biscuits today it still counts. I'm using the same Anzac biscuit recipe as last year: an authentic one from the war memorial. The recipe makes about 3 dozen, assuming you use well-rounded teaspoons. I compress the mix into the bowl of the spoon with my hands. It's pretty dry and crumbly, but don't worry, it bakes up fine. And of course clean hands are a cook's most essential tool.

I rarely use dessicated coconut, so I was a bit worried that my stock might have gone rancid, but it smelled and tasted fine. It's safe to do a tiny taste test of potentially rancid nuts and oils - just nasty if it is actually off. And while it's not safe to consume a lot of them, it's more likely to give you cancer later in life than to kill you right off.

I didn't take a picture of these - it looks exactly the same as last year. Bickies: check, bag of oranges: check; funky but nasty blue tile benchtop: check. (Waiting for a quote to fix that last point.)

On a more serious note, the Bloke reminded me of Kemal Ataturk's words on the ANZACS. Another good thing about ANZAC day is that the enemy our troops fought is no longer our enemy. The tragic events have, oddly, forged bonds of friendship between the nations.

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well."

Chilli Con Not Very Much Skippy

I talked about my generic spag bog recently; and generic chilli is very much the same except with different herbs and spices. And kidney beans.

Today I thought I'd do a quick weigh-in of the veggies before cleaning them. It turns out that this time I'm using:
200g onions
400g mushrooms
400g zucchini
400g capsicum
400g tinned tomato
750g fresh tomato
500g kangaroo mince

What I'm doing right now is cooking the mince mixture without adding any flavours at all. After about half an hour simmering to reduce the moisture, I'll be freezing half of it. That will be the base to make another chilli or a spag bog. Each potful will probably serve up around 6 meals, once you add a baked potato or spaghetti and some salad to the dinner.

Pretty frugal on the meat, eh? That works out to about 42g of low-fat meat per serving. And yet the meat-loving bloke does not complain; in fact he loves these two household staple dishes. The Heart Foundation would surely give me a tick for this one! Until they saw how much cheese I add, but we won't mention that, will we?

ORLY, Delicious?

I mentioned back when I was making the zucchini muffins that Delicious magazine this month has a zucchini bread recipe. And my zucchini plant is continuing production. I even had the traditional experience of discovering one as thick as my wrist, that I was sure hadn't existed on the previous day. So, well. Zucchini bread. Here it is.

I made it yesterday, and I'm eating some for breakfast as I write this. I'll put the recipe under the fold, but here are some selected quotes from the magazine. "Savoury Breads have taken over from quiche as the perfect lunch snack", and "a savoury fruit and nut bread served with soft cheeses and prosciutto is the perfect lunchtime snack." (March '09 issue, p73)

Honestly, Valli, what were you thinking? Did they swap a different recipe in at the last minute? This recipe contains nearly 400g of sugar, and no ingredient that might be construed as savoury, unless you count the zucchini. I reduced the sugar in my version, and it's actually pretty nice, but I do feel that I'm eating cake for breakfast. I can imagine it with cream cheese, but prosciutto would be going too far.

Recipe: Zucchini Bread
400g self-raising flour
200ml melted butter & sunflower oil
1 heaped tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 large zucchini, grated
3/4 cup pecans
1/2 cup dried cranberries (craisins)
* Find a loaf tin that holds about 2 litres, and prepare tin as you prefer for baking.
* Preheat oven to 150C.
* In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients except the flour and butter/oil. Stir very thoroughly to distribute the spices evenly.
* Mix through the butter/oil blend well, then finally fold in the flour gently.
* Pour into the loaf tin, and bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, or until a testing skewer comes out clean.
* Cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack.

Notes:
Original recipe by Valli Little, Delicious magazine. This variant of mine is different in that:
1. I use self-raising flour, instead of plain plus bicarb plus baking powder.
2. I used 1/2 tsp allspice instead of 1/4 tsp mixed spice, and heaped up the cinnamon. Next time I think I'll add nutmeg, too.
3. I reduced the caster sugar from 1 1/3 cups to 3/4 cup. This could go lower.
4. 200ml of sunflower oil in the original became a melted butter & oil mix, because, well, I had butter to use up.
5. I used a bit more fruit and nuts. It could go even more, I think.
6. I used pecans, the Bloke hates walnuts. (But it might be too sweet for him anyway.)
7. I changed the mixing order a bit.

Also, I really wish she'd given a cup or weight measure for the zucchini. "Three large ones" is a bit vague. I suspect she didn't mean my huge one. I used that and a small-medium one, guesstimating that it's about the same amount as 3 of the largest you commonly see in shops. I'm wishing now that I'd measured it at the time. Isn't hindsight wonderful?

By the way, I measured my loaf tin by filling it with water from a cup measure, then I dumped the water in the bucket which I keep for the garden. To prepare the tin for baking, you can grease & line the tin, which is the old-fashioned way; or use a silicon pan as is, or line one with baking paper.

Real Blokes Eat Quiche. And Burgers

Especially a decadent rich quiche. I made a caramelised onion, chargrilled capsicum and brie quiche, and it met with blokey approval. I haven't made a quiche for ages; they tend to be rather rich and heavy. This combo was no exception, but very good. You can do more or less work on it as you buy or make the fillings. On this occasion, I used caramelised onion marmalade from a jar, and grilled my own capsicum, but you can also buy capsicum in jars, or from deli counters. Look for the antipasto sections.

Recipe 1: Caramelised Onion, Roast Capsicum and Brie Quiche
1/4 cup caramelised onions
1 very large red capsicum, grilled and peeled
125g pack Brie-style cheese
3 eggs
150ml milk
pinch salt
20cm pastry case, blind baked
Cover the base of the pastry case with the onion. Add a layer of chopped capsicum. Mix the egg, milk and salt well and pour in. Arrange the sliced brie on top.
Bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes, until filling is set.

Notes: The cheese will melt, so a test knife may not come out clean. If you want to be super-decadent, use cream instead of milk.

To make the capsicum, char it over a gas flame - I just drop it on the burner and turn over regularly to make sure all sides are done. The skin can go quite black. Put into a plastic bag and twist it closed. Leave for 5-10 minutes, and then peel. The blackened skin will mostly just flake off, and the rest will peel easily. Also, oven-roasting them is an easy option, if you are preparing in advance. Skins peel off very easily from a well-done capsicum.

How do you make a pastry case?
Recipe 2: Pastry Case
2 cups plain flour, plus a little extra
1/2 cup butter
iced water
This is the simplest pastry I do, and it's even easier in a food processor. Dump flour in the processor, add roughly chopped butter, and whizz until it's mixed well. It sort of looks like breadcrumbs. Add iced water - start with a tablespoon, whizz it up again, and then add teaspoons as a time until the dough just comes together. The amount of water varies with the weather, the type of flour and butter, the phase of the moon, and the number you last thought of.

Remove dough, knead very briefly, and let it rest for half an hour. Roll out on a floured board or benchtop to make a pastry case size; trim and edge by pressing with a fork. You'll probably have enough leftovers for a small turnover or something. (I made a rhubarb & raspberry jam turnover with the trimmings.)

Prick the pastry gently with a fork, not going all the way through. Line the case with baking paper and pour in some pastry weights or dried beans. (You can't cook the beans later, but you can save them to re-use as weights.) Bake at 200C for 10 minutes, remove weights. If you are going to return it to the oven with a filling, bake for another 5 minutes. Otherwise, if you will fill it cold, with no further cooking, give it 10 minutes.

So that was the quiche - serve with a salad, it is rich. We actually ate mostly vego all week, though not 100%. I rummaged through the freezer when we got back from Corinbank, and converted some leftover wallaby curry with lots of sauce and little meat into a veggie curry. So it was a curry, this quiche, and then there was also a wholemeal pasta dinner.

I've never had any luck with the dry kind of wholemeal pasta - I can never cook it right, it was too raw or total mush with nothing in between. But the Latina wholemeal ravioli with ricotta and spinach worked pretty well. I'll buy then again. I made a simple roast tomato, onion, zucchini and fresh basil sauce for it.

We did this diet switch on medical advice for the Bloke, and he didn't object much. But when the tests came back negative, he wanted a burger, stat! So I made us cheezburger last night. In this pic: cheezburger, made with Belted Galloway beef mince and my favourite supermarket cheddar - Bega vintage strong'n'bitey. Also, McCain's heart-healthy oven chips, baked with a good shake of Crankypants cajun seasoning, and a salad.

Smoky Devils at the Tiki Party

We went all out for last Saturday night's cocktail party. The Bloke assembled an amazing outdoor bar with lots of fake flowers and vines, flaming torches, and swivelling barstools. He even provided leis for everyone, and the first couple of rounds of drinks. Later on, Master Mixologist Len presided over the bar. I recall a planter's punch, and a lime rickey, and a margarita, and several Campari based drinks...

And when you're going retro, you've got to have retro food. I went for the classic cheese & pickled onion hedgehog; egg & caviar dip; and devils on horseback. With Jatz for the dips, of course. We also had melon balls in a basket, and french onion dip, and coconut cherry cupcakes, and mini sausage rolls (home made), and lots more. All good for soaking up the cocktails. I made up a smoky variant on the devils on horseback, which people seemed to like quite a lot. But man, this is not something you want to do too often! See the recipe for more detail...


Here the divine Miss Em models with a hedgehog and one half serve of the egg dip. I'm sure you don't need a hedgehog recipe - put cheese cubes on sticks with luridly coloured pickled onions; shove into half grapefruit. It may look tacky, but it gets eaten - who doesn't love a bit of cheese and pickle?

Recipe 1: Egg & Caviar Dip
10 free range eggs
250ml sour cream
2 tsp finely chopped fresh dill
1 tblsp finely chopped green spring onion
1 small jar black caviar (lumpfish)
1 small jar red caviar (salmon or lumpfish)
additional finely chopped herbs to garnish
Hardboil the eggs.
Peel and cool.
Mash eggs with herbs and sour cream.
Put into a bowl, and decorate the top with the caviar and herbs.
Serve with Jatz biscuits to dip.


Notes: To hardboil eggs straight from the fridge, put them in the saucepan and fill with hot tap water. Leave for 5 minutes to warm up. Then drain, refresh with more hot tap water, and put on the stove. Leave to simmer for ten minutes. Bash them around under cold water to break the shells thoroughly, and then you can leave them to peel later if you like. If you put cold eggs in boiling water, they crack easily. If you leave boiled eggs sitting around hot for too long, then they go grey around the yolk.

I actually made this with light sour cream and it didn't work quite as well as I'd intended. It was too sloppy. Oh well. I sat the leftovers in a sieve for a couple of hours and got some very nice egg salad for my lunch.



Recipe 2: Smoky Devils on Horseback
500g large pitted prunes
1 kg bacon rashers
250g smooth smoked cheese
packet of melba toasts
1/2 cup red wine
Pour the red wine over the prunes and leave to soften for an hour or two, stirring occasionally.
Cut the smoked cheese into short straws, about 1cm long and 3mm in other dimensions.
Stuff each prune with a piece of cheese.
Remove the bacon rind and eyes. Use short lengths of the streaky bacon to wrap each prune, securing with a toothpick. Cutting it lengthwise may hep if they're wide rashers.
Lay the devils on a baking sheet, and bake at 180C for 15 minutes, or until bacon is crisped.
Put each one on a piece of melba toast.
Serve hot.


Notes: Yes, you do have to be slightly insane to stuff and wrap 70-odd prunes. The 1950s were a very strange time, much better in fantasy than reality, what with all the segregation and unequal pay and McCarthyism going on. By the time I'd finished putting these together, not to mention all the cheese and onion skewering, I was thinking of adopting a gin-and-valium soaked desperate housewife persona. But luckily I recovered by the time of the party.

The cheese needs to be the smooth kind, not a crumbly cheddar. The dimensions are, of course, general guidelines to what makes it easier to stuff. Try one or two to see how big they should be for your prunes. It's not as bad as it sounds; the machine pitted prunes have a hole at each end that you can shove your cheese in quite easily.

I didn't have quite enough streaky bacon so had to use some of the eye pieces to wrap the last dozen or so. The rest of the lean bacon went into BLT sandwiches for us on Friday dinner (we weren't too hungry after our lunch out), and into the lasagna.

Silly Hat Day BBQ & Cake

I've been meaning to post this for a few days now, but I've mislaid my USB card reader for my camera. So here it is without pictures. I'll add them in later. (Later: not found, but replaced. The cats must have hidden it. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

Last Tuesday was a public holiday here, and we hosted a small BBQ party. I made a couple of salads and a couple of desserts, and our friends brought bread, and more cake, and things to cook on the BBQ. In honour of the day I wore my chicken hat. For a little while, anyway. We made up a sweepstake, and went inside to yell at the horsies for a few minutes around 3 o'clock. All of mine lost, chiz chiz. But apart from that, it was a lovely day.

I made a potato salad and a silverbeet salad, and we barbecued lots of mushrooms, and some saltbush lamb sausages and steaks. For desserts or afternoon tea we had Robyn's mini muffins, Sandra's moist lemon cake, a raspberry spice cake, and the wattleseed pavlova that I described in my last post. People were trying to guess the flavour, and coffee was the most common pick. It was pretty good, though it came out more chewy and less crisp than I'd intended. I had been pretty slack about monitoring the oven temperature and time, so this surprise result was, well, really not a surprise. The raspberry spice cake was very successful. Read on for the recipes.




Recipe 1: Potato Salad
1 kg small new potatoes
1/2 red onion
3 hardboiled eggs
2 teaspoons chopped fresh tarragon
2 teaspoons seeded mustard
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
watercress to garnish
Boil the potatoes whole, in their skins, for about 20 minutes or until done. Drain and cut into large chunks.
Meanwhile, chop the onion finely, and blanch it for 30 seconds in boiling water.
Mix onion with mayo, mustard, tarragon and vinegar in a large bowl.
Add the hot potato chunks to the dressing and stir gently to coat.
Stir through chopped hard boiled egg.
Refrigerate, and garnish with watercress when cold.

Notes:Like all salad recipes, this is flexible! And here is the evidence: another version, that I forgot that I'd written up before.

I'd have liked to use tarragon vinegar, but I didn't have any. Lemon juice and dill would work very well instead of vinegar and tarragon. You don't have to blanch the onion, if you prefer a stronger flavour. Light or whole mayo works, or a blend. Oh, and special thanks to Fiona's chooks for the eggs.


Recipe 2: Silverbeet & Orange Salad
1 bunch silverbeet
4 medium oranges
1/4 medium red onion
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 tablespoons fruity olive oil
pinch salt
Wash the silverbeet, and trim it by cutting off the stems at the base of the leaf. Pick over, and save largest outer leaves for cooking if they're a bit imperfect.
Shred the good leaves and place in your salad bowl.
Slice the onion finely, and add to bowl.
Peel and slice 3 of the oranges, discarding seeds. Add orange slices to bowl.
Toast the pine nuts, and add them.
Juice the last orange.
In a small jar, mix 2 tablespoons of the juice with the olive oil and a small pinch of salt. Shake vigorously, and pour over salad at serving time.

Notes: Just drink the leftover orange juice, OK? To toast pine nuts, you can put them in the oven, or in a dry frying pan, but you can also microwave them. Place on a saucer, and nuke on high setting for a minute. Stir them, and continue to heat in 30 second bursts until they brown.


Recipe 3: Raspberry Spice Cake
450 ml self-raising flour
300 ml brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
250 ml raspberries
2 eggs
200 ml cream
50 ml melted butter
50 ml sunflower oil
Preheat the oven to 160C.
Butter and flour a 25cm cake tin.
Mix all the dry ingredients, except fruit, in a large bowl.
Melt the butter, combine with the oil and cream.
Beat the eggs together in a small bowl, then mix in the butter, oil and cream mixture.
Add the wet mix and the raspberries to the dry mix, and stir well to combine.
Dollop into the cake tin, and bake for an hour, or until done when tested with a skewer.


Notes: this is a fairly thick mix, and the fruit stays nicely suspended instead of sinking to the bottom. I found the recipe when browsing some US election blogs and following odd links. Mine is different from the original, in that I used whole frozen raspberries instead of mashed cranberries, and swapped some spices (2 tsp ground cloves? Srsly? I don't think so!) Also I misread a couple of lines, and used ten times more cream and butter than I was supposed to. But this recipe here is what I actually did, and it worked well. Here's the original: search the page for "cake" and it's the second match.

How to Take a Salad to Work

Sunshine. 25 degree days. It's a good time to eat salad, but how do you stop it going soggy and revolting in a packed lunch? Of course it helps if you have access to a fridge, but a cooler bag will do. This bodgy photo from my phone camera shows today's lunch. (Caution: chocolate component may be hidden.) There are three tips illustrated.

1. Don't dress the salad. The larger box contains dry salad foods - in this case, rocket, baby spinach, pre-cooked asparagus tips, cucumber and ham. Keep the dressing separate and add just before eating.

2. Keep avocado from browning by coating it in the dressing. This is why I have a small box rather than a tiny jar for the dressing. The pink spots are finger lime pearls; this is the last of the dressing from the weekend.

3. Nothing to do with salad, but a cob of corn is nice, and very easy if you like it without butter or salt, just plain. I'm using a Glad steamer bag so it can go straight in the microwave for 2 minutes. There's a "tear-open" strip which would make them single-use, but if you exercise care on opening them up at the ziploc instead, you can re-use these bags. Steam can give you a nasty burn, so be careful.

Mmmm, mango!

I'm sorry, I'm a slacker. I haven't really cooked anything this week that requires a recipe, apart from the mango salsa. OK, I'll write that up properly. The week's menu has been pretty simple.

* Roast saltbush lamb and veggies
* Wattleseed fettucini with mango chilli chicken
* Grilled steak and salad
* Lamb pide sandwiches (leftover lamb, pide, hommous and tabouli from Dickson)

I do love mangoes. They're one of my favourite fruits, and every year I make a point of eating some on or near my birthday. It's early in the season, so they're quite expensive, but it does really signal that summer's on the way. This year I bought four expensive mangoes ($3.75 each); I probably won't buy any more until they come in under $2.50. Unless I get too tempted.

Mostly they just get eaten as is: just cut them up, and eat. This is easy, and if you google it you'll find videos. And OMG! you can even buy a gadget for it: the OXO mango splitter. I've not seen them for sale here yet and I wouldn't recommend it anyway. All you need is a sharp knife, and that will work on all sizes of mango.

This is how you slice a mango. Image credit to mangoes.net.au, because I ate all mine without taking a photo. Click on the image to see their how to.

First, find the stem end, stand the mango up with stem down. Then find the flatter sides. Slice these off the mango, cutting as close to the centre as the knife will easily go. Seeds do vary in size.

You now have two mango cheeks. The conventional advice is to cut these in a checkerboard pattern, not cutting quite through to the skin. You mostly want this 3x4 or 4x5, if it's too fine it gets too easy to squash rather than cube neatly. Turn it inside out and slice the cubes from the skin.

I mostly prefer cutting strips instead. To do this, score into three or four vertical strips each, and use a small sharp knife to remove the flesh from the peel. It takes a little practice.

I also like mangoes in salsas, salads, smoothies, lassis, and sorbets - in all cases the fruit is not cooked. I'm not very big on cooked mango, but I don't hate it either. The bloke, as it turns out, does not like it at all. Here's the salsa recipe

Recipe: Mango Salsa
1 medium mango, diced small
1/2 small red onion, diced small
2 jalapeno chillies, seeded and diced very small
Combine, rest for half an hour in the fridge for the flavours to meld a bit, and serve on grilled chicken or fish.

Notes: First, some herbs would be really good to add to this. Especially some coriander and/or fresh mint. Second, some people don't like a strong onion taste. Use spring onion instead, or blanch the onion under boiling water for a minute.

Also, it makes a simple sauce. You can simply heat this up, and bingo!, you have mango chilli sauce. The mango will mush down. But that is not something I'll do again, because the bloke didn't like it. I thought it was fine, but I much prefer the raw version, too.

On following a recipe

Since my last post I've made a pork roast, and some stuffed capsicums. We bought Dickson TurkOz pide on Sunday night - I was a bit tired after the concert, and besides, I love that pastirmali salt beef.

For the stuffed capsicum, I had no recipe. I just cooked some rice and mixed it in with bits and pieces from the fridge. That included some leftover onions from the pork roast, half of another red capsicum, some fetta, and smoked tomatoes and pine nuts. Shove into the capsicums, and bake until capsicums are done. In this case, I put them at a very slow 130 degrees for 2 hours, because I was going off to yoga class while they cooked. We also had some black kale for a side dish, which I sauted with olive oil and garlic and a touch of orange juice.

For the pork roast, I actually used a recipe. I followed directions from Stephanie Alexander's big book for ""traditional roast leg of pork". It's page 562 in the big old orange book. I can't quite come at paying $100 to update to the rainbow coloured edition.

Anyway, in this recipe, the pork sits on a bed of onions and potatoes, and you pour stock into the dish to keep a level of about a centimetre of liquid in the dish. I thought that the potatoes might turn to mush in this treatment, but it actually worked quite well. But that was partly due to my amendments.

I very rarely follow a recipe, so I suppose it might seem a bit odd that I post them. What I normally do is riff off the recipe, using both my experience and the recipe as a guide. When I was learning to cook, I started by following recipes more exactly. But after a while, you discard the precision in favour of intuition and habit. Unless it's a special case, where you want a specific outcome rather than just dinner. As a rough generalisation, cakes are the most tricky to change, stews are dead easy, and a roast is in between.

It's like music: classicists follow the recipe, with only slight changes. Jazz improvisation has its own rules, and you need to know the genre well before you can do it successfully. But when you do, you can ring considerable changes and get a good and individual result.

The amendments that I made to the recipe, and their rationale, follows.

* I used sage instead of the thyme in the recipe. This was for two reasons. I like the tradition of sage with pork; and I have fresh sage in the garden but no fresh thyme any more. This is a very obvious swap; you could use pretty much any herb you fancied and not go wrong. (Eau de cologne mint would be a bad choice, I guess, but if you like it, then you like it, and why not?)

* I used halved white onions instead of pickling onions. I didn't have any pickling onions on hand. And while I usually keep brown onions, the white ones were better at the shop on Friday. A simple adaptation - I thought at first that only minimal knowledge is required here. But it does help to know that it's good to leave most of the skin on the onion, as outer layers will be inedible. And it's best not to cut off the root end of the onion, except the actual external roots. That way the onion pieces will stay together better.

* I put the potatoes back in the oven and turned it up hotter while the pork was resting. This is from experience. I thought that they were too soft, and I know that roast potatoes will crisp up nicely given ten minutes in a hot oven, especially if sprayed with a little oil. Or pork fat.

* I added some pumpkin. This took more knowledge, because pumpkin takes less time to cook than potato. So at one of the basting times, about 45 mins before the meat was due to be done, I added that in to the tray.

* I cheated with the crackling. I'm never very successful with the "rub oil & salt in" method; perhaps I use too little? Anyway, if you peel off the half-crackled skin from the finished roast, you can pop it under a grill or into a very hot oven for ten minutes to crisp. That's what I did - on a tray next to the potatoes. That one takes knowledge and experience. If you do try this under a grill, keep a close eye on it: it can catch fire very easily.

* I didn't make the gravy and stewed apple as describe in the recipe. I just saved the defatted stock & meat juices, and used some apple I'd made before. This is a dead simple component substitution. Many recipes include modular components, that you can easily swap in and out.

* I reduced the oven temperature by 15 degrees. This is because I have a fast convection oven - not only experience and knowledge needed here, but also awareness of local conditions. Most dishes tend to be quite sensitive to oven temperatures. It's not something to change willy-nilly. I was a little too timid, actually, I should have gone for 20 degrees. The pork came out just a tad on the dry side, a bit too well-done. So now I have learned something I can apply next time.

How the stirfry worked out

As I mentioned recently, I tried out a Woolworths own brand stirfry sauce. I also used pre-cut chicken breast strips, so it was low effort. All I had to cut up was the veggies. I used 600g of chicken, and it actually worked out quite well. I made two lemon chicken dinners: one from the wok, one from the microwave.

The trick about reheating stirfry is not to include the vegetables that will go soggy and horrible. The trick about making stirfry is to do all the preparation before you cook. Every single bit, right down to any garnishes. If you're uncertain about timing, you can even start cooking the stirfry after your rice is done - it will keep warm long enough, especially if you have a rice cooker. Or wrap your pot in a towel, or reheat it for a minute in the microwave. The rice is a lot less precious than the vegetables.

So you get your wok hot and cook the meat - I like to use a little sesame oil as well as the plain light oil. Garlic and ginger go in at this stage, too. You can remove the meat and add it back later, and many recipes suggest this. But I generally just toss the hard vegetables in when the meat is nearly done. Stirfry for a couple of minutes, then add the softer vegetables and the sauce. When you serve it, pick out all the delicate crisp veggies to eat immediately. When you reheat it, simply steam up a few more veggies to mix in at the last minute.

The vegetables that I'll reheat are mostly onion, carrot, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, cauliflower, mushrooms and cabbage. The capsicum, snow peas, broccoli, bok choy, gai lan and such are much better freshly cooked than reheated. Your preferences might vary a little - if you prefer your onion and carrot very crunchy, for instance. Anyway, it's a simple enough thing to do, especially if you leave the "eat now" veggies in large pieces.

The Woolworth lemon sauce was bad, though. I had, of course, assumed that it would be fluoro yellow, cornflour thickened, sweetish goop, and on that front it did not disappoint. But where was the lemon? How do you make it so totally devoid of lemon flavour? It's a mystery. It wasn't even acid at all. I rescued it rapidly by tossing in the juice of 4 lemons from the garden - small one, lime sized. And some sambal oelek, because everything's better with chilli.

Cooking for One, Take Two

Another week on my own. The bloke's epic journey continues - he got stuck in Birdsville, by a flood. Yes, he's crossing the desert, and it rained. He's due back Saturday, but may be late. So anyway, I have another week of eating stuff he doesn't like. Last week I ate a lot of pasta and eggplant. This week I've based it around a big tray of roast vegetables - looks like a stupid amount for one, doesn't it?

I've made liver and onions for two dinners. Yummy. And how else do you get organic lamb for $6.99 a kilo? I ate it with onions and bacon, with roast parsnips and carrots one night, and with mashed sweet potato the other night - that was just the baked sweet potato, squished and nuked. I had some broccolini and frozen peas for greens.

There are a couple of tricks with liver - first, it is really, really disgusting if overcooked. Either it turns to shoe-leather, or it goes weirdly granular. Possibly even both, if it's an uneven thickness. Trim it well, slice thinly (about 1cm), and flash fry in a dash of olive oil - a minute a side is enough; even less is OK. That's it. You can get foofy with seasoned flour and such if you want; there's plenty of recipes out there. The second trick with liver is that you can soak it in milk. Liver tastes pretty strong, and lots of people don't like its metallic notes, even though all that iron is very good for you. If you're a bit marginal on the idea, but you still like pate, try milder choices like calves' liver and chicken livers. Soaking it in milk for a few hours, up to a whole day, can make it a lot milder, and tenderises it slightly, too.

Another think the bloke doesn't like is leeks, unless they are well-concealed. Leeks have a mild onion flavour, and they're pretty easy to handle. You just need to be aware that they will contain quite a lot of dirt in the upper part, and make sure you wash them well. If you're chopping them up, this is dead easy. Remove the dark green parts, chop the rest, and just leave them to soak in a bowl for a while. Swish them around a bit to loosen the dirt, and lift them out of the water with a slotted spoon. Leeks float, dirt sinks. If you're wanting to keep them whole, a bit more rigmarole is needed - slice partway down, fan out the leaves as much as you can, and soak, rubbing the dirt off with your hands as much as you can. If you google for "preparing leeks" you'll find videos. The internet, what did we do before we had it?

I baked them in a Welsh style, chopped in short lengths, mixed with bacon shreds. Sprinkle over some nutmeg, salt and pepper, pour over some milk (or cream) to cover, and bake uncovered until soft. Most of the milk will evaporate. Cover with grated cheese and bake another ten minutes. Ideally you'd use Caerphilly cheese, but you don't normally get that around here. I used a white Cheshire, which is similar: white and crumbly, but not as buttermilk-sour. Really, any old cheddar would do - you can't go wrong with bacon and cheese and leeks. A couple of small baked potatoes and roast carrots, and there's another lovely meal or two.

After all that, the last thing left in my tray of roast veg is the pumpkin. I'm thinking I'll probably turn that into soup.

Fruit, glorious fruit

On my latest Choku Bai Jo round, I seem to have bought almost nothing but fruit. If only that "5+2" thing was 5 fruit and 2 veg a day, I'd have no problems. Instead, when I got home, I set my lone cauliflower and bunch of leeks on the bench with the 2kg of apples, 3kg of oranges, 1 1/2 kg of persimmons, and a couple of grapefruit, and thought "uh oh". In my defense, I do have quite a lot of veg left over from last week. Because I bought too much, not because I didn't eat enough.

Choku Bai Jo has developed very nicely since they opened. Opening hours have shifted slightly - from 2pm-7pm weekdays now, and Saturday closing is at 1pm. The trestle tables are still there, but now there's some new racks and a new fridge. Apart from fresh produce, there's also local olives and olive oil, free range eggs, a selection of herbs, teas, and coffee beans, and some high quality processed foods like the Pilpel dips and the wonderful Darikay pesto I bought last week.

The prices are still good, although it won't always beat the supermarket for everything - they do have some economies of scale, after all. But I don't begrudge an extra 50c here and there to support our local producers. So far everything I've bought from there has been top quality, and so fresh that it keeps way longer than produce from other sources. I've had only one exception - I got a half dozen fuji apples a few weeks ago which turned out to be unripe.

Other people seem to be pleased with them, too. They were absolutely packed at midday on Saturday. So, good news, it looks like they are going to be successful. North Lyneham probably doesn't know what hit it. Somebody smart is going to open another kind of food shop there to pick up the sudden massive influx of passing trade. A bakery or a butcher would be good.

Mostly I just eat my fruit straight, and the persimmons are just too delicious to do anything else. With this new variety, you can eat them before they go soft, and they have very few seeds. I like to just slice them up on a plate. You can peel them if you like, as the skin is a little bit tough, but I don't bother. Apples, of course, I also just eat straight, unless they've got too old to be crunchy. I hate soft, mealy apples. Yecchh.

I like to eat grapefruit for breakfast but I rarely have the energy to prep it in the morning, so I made a grapefruit salad to keep in the fridge. (Recipe below.) I also had some old apples to use up, so I've cooked them up with cinnamon and sugar. That was quite interesting, as I had a mixture of apple varieties: a couple of golden delicious, a Cox' orange pippin, and the 5 unripe fujis I mentioned above. What happened was the fujis stayed almost whole, while the others cooked down to a total mush. Since I was feeling like LOTS of cinnamon, that mush is very brown. So I now have an odd mix of semi-firm chunks of pale cooked apple in brown apple sauce. It looks really horrible, but it's delicious. I had some with my porridge this morning.

Recipe: Grapefruit Salad
2 pink grapefruit
2 yellow grapefruit
3 oranges
3 tablespoons stringybark or other strong flavoured honey
few mint leaves
Peel the grapefruit and oranges with a sharp knife, removing all pith. Slice the oranges, removing seeds and any large chunks of internal pith or membrane. Segment the grapefruit clear from its membrane. Pour over the honey. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours, then stir. The honey will have mostly dissolved into the juice by then.

This will keep in the fridge for several days. Add some shredded mint leaves at serving time.

Notes: To segment grapefruit, peel all the pith off, then slide a small sharp knife down in between the membrane and the flesh of each grapefruit segment, and come up the other side to separate the juicy segment from its cover. Drop it into the bowl, and continue around. This is surprisingly easy when you get going. When you get to the end, squeeze the book-like leaves over the bowl to get juice from the bits of segment that didn't come off cleanly. Do this whole process over the bowl, to catch the juice and falling bits as you go. You can do this with the oranges, too, but I find that's mostly more trouble than its worth.

Honestly, this is more a concept than a recipe. Do what you like with the balance of fruit and honey. I like sharp flavours, so you might like more honey than me. The picture looks more yellow than pink, because one of my grapefruits was a bright ruby and the other a softer pink. Also, the pretty segments will come apart a bit as you stir. Whatever. It's for eating, not for a beauty contest.

Microwave Smoked Chicken Risotto

The concept sounds like an abomination, so although my old friend Tania gave me this recipe over a decade ago, I'd never got around to trying it. On a whim, I had a go tonight. Tania's recipe is for a generic risotto - add your own flavours. It's actually surprisingly good. It's not quite as creamy as a stirred one, but perfectly acceptable for a weeknight quickie. Actually, the worst part of it was the cheap supermarket smoked chicken. Poacher's Pantry has spoiled me...

TANIA QD'S MICROWAVE RISOTTO
1. heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter on high for 2 min.
2. stir in 1 cup finely chopped onions and stir. Cook on high for 2 min.
3. stir in 1 cup arborio rice and stir. Cook on high for 4 min.
4. add 3 cups stock (the flavour seems to stick better than when cooking on a stovetop, so I generally use one Real Stock and top up the rest with water. Or wine). Cook for 9 min on high.
5. Stir. Cook for another 9 minutes on high.
6. Add cheese. Sit for 5 min (if you can cope). Gobble it down.

The cooking times vary a bit depending on microwave size and phases of the moon. It often needs a couple of minutes extra at the end (perfect for adding some peas or corn). It should be slightly gloppy when you finish cooking, as it absorbs the remaining liquid while sitting. But not sloppy.

My notes: I kept the 3:1 ratio of stock, but used a full litre of stock. This makes four reasonable serves; so there's leftovers for lunch. Leftover risotto will actually microwave tolerably enough for a work lunch, but it comes out pretty thick and solid; not at all nice and creamy.

In keeping with the slacker nature of this recipe I used a tetrapack of Campbell's Real Stock. I also added 2 cloves of crushed garlic with the rice. Towards the end I tossed in 180g chopped smoked chicken breast and 50g chopped sundried tomatoes. At the cheese stage, I used 50g finely grated grana padano, and I also added a good grind of pepper and a teaspoon of rosemary-in-a-tube.

While it was resting I cooked up some broccolini and asparagus to have on the side. I'd have mixed the asparagus in, but the bloke would object.

Pancakes and the River Moruya

I had a terrific weekend down the coast, at Michael & Belinda's house. We did a little shopping at Bateman's Bay - I got some black pearl earrings and a nice cheap red knit cardie - and had Friday night dinner at Monet's. We had a couple of walks, one round the Eurobodalla Botanic Gardens, and one rock hopping at Guerilla Bay. We had a fabulous dinner at the River Moruya on Saturday night. Everyone except Michael slept very late on Sunday, and I made pancakes for our afternoon breakfast.

My usual pancakes, the ones I can do without looking anything up, are my Mum's Welsh pancakes. They're a little bit unusual, being rather thicker than a crepe but a lot thinner than a pikelet or an American pancake. Here's the recipe.

Welsh Pancakes
2 cups self-raising flour
2 eggs
milk, 1 to 1 1/2 cups
butter, about 1-2 tablespoons
currants, about 1/4 cup
lemons
caster sugar
Put the flour in a bowl, make a hollow, and put in the eggs. Whisk them in gradually, adding milk as you go, incorporating in more flour from the edges until it's all mixed in and not lumpy. Add enough milk to make the batter easily pourable, just a bit thicker than single cream.

To cook the pancakes, heat a small chip of butter in a frypan (nonstick is helpful). It should sizzle, but not burn brown. Pour on a dollop of the batter, swirl the pan around a bit to spread it out, and sprinkle over a few currants. Wait until the batter looks quite set - bubbles coming up - and flip it over to brown the other side briefly. They won't go very brown, as the batter contains no sugar. Just a nice light gold.

Sprinkle with some caster sugar and lemon juice, and roll up to eat. Makes about 12 pancakes. Yummy.

Notes: The vague quantities are deliberate. Recipe can be halved for two people. And I swear the weather seems to affect the amount of milk the batter needs. And how big a dollop of batter and chip of butter depends on the frypan you use - I use about a soup ladle and about 1/8 teaspoon per pancake. And as for currants, sugar, and lemon, that really is a matter of taste. I like lots of currants.

Regional reviews follow:
North St Cafe, Bateman's Bay
Good coffee, unusual cakes, many of them gluten-free. The lunch salads were very fresh and packed with fresh herbs. I had corncakes and salad, which was the lunch special, at $8. No meals over $20, I think. It's urban in style, with banquette seating and bright open space. I'd go back regularly if I lived round there.

Monet, Bateman's Bay
A French restaurant, BYO or a short but decent wine list. Decor runs heavily to French country, with lots of Monet posters. Not too bad for a local cheapie - the service was decent; the food was reasonable, but very Australian country provincial. The charcuterie plate ($18 for two) was just basic supermarket cold cuts; all the dishes had way too much iceberg lettuce everywhere. My fish with risotto ($25) was competently cooked, but too bland. The highlight was the outstanding Grand Marnier zabaglione ($12.50) - no iceberg lettuce there, but it did have redundant icecream. I suspect this might be a better lunch spot; it's a pleasing atmosphere and the crepes and salad looked like they'd make much better lunch dishes than entrees.

The River Moruya
Wow. My second visit and I'm just as impressed. This is a great place for a seriously good dinner out; though I think it's even better for a long lunch, because you get the river view in daylight. The Canberra Times didn't favour it as much as I think it deserves, but I hear on the grapevine that the reviewer had very poor service. It must have been a bad night. We've twice now had excellent service there.

I had an entree of scallops with pea puree and crisp crumbed cubes of ham hock - a terrific blend of flavours and textures. The assiette of lamb three ways had morsels of roast loin, slow cooked shoulder and crumbed sweetbread; all excellent. We had a side of green beans, with butter and almonds, cooked perfectly to just three seconds past squeaky. My dessert was another mixed plate, this time of citrus. I had a scoop of a stunning campari and grapefruit sorbet; a tiny but intense lemon creme brulee; and a flourless orange cake. The cake was pretty normal, good but not up to the amazingness of the others.

It's not a cheap night out - with my three courses and a share of a bottle of white, plus a couple of other glasses, I chipped in $90. But it seemed well worth it to me. We were celebrating a birthday and an anniversary; definitely a special occasion.

Strawberry Jam and Clotted Cream

Strawberry jam is worth making. For years I was under the impression that I didn't like strawberry jam, until one year I decided to make some for Christmas presents. Of course, I had to taste some - and the difference between this and mass market jam is just unbelievable. It's very simple and quick, too. And I found punnets of strawberries for a dollar apiece on Friday, so I just had to make some. Here's a basic recipe.

Recipe: Strawberry Jam
1 kg strawberries (cleaned weight)
1 kg white sugar
2 lemons
2 tablespoons cognac
Dehull the strawberries and cut off any nasty bits. Cut up if large. Put in a large preserve pan or stockpot, and add the sugar. Squeeze the lemons, put 1/4 cup of juice in with the strawberries. Wash the lemon skins and put them in the pan, too.

Bring to boil gently, and simmer for 5 minutes to soften the fruit. Raise the heat to boil. Test for set every couple of minutes, and when ready, turn of the heat. Let sit for ten minutes, then remove lemon rinds, add the cognac, stir well, and pour off into clean glass jars.

Notes:I got 1kg of strawberries from six 250g punnets of small berries. You can still use the bruised ones if you cut off all the bruised bits. Mould is a no-no. Some recipes tell you to skim off scum as jam is boiling. This is quite hard with strawberry jam as you get a great mountain of lurid pink foam in the first boil up. Just skim off any remaining white frothy bits after its ten minute rest.

The simplest way to test for setting is to shove a couple of saucers in the freezer. Drip a half a teaspoon or so of the syrup onto the saucer, pop it back in the freezer, and check it in a minute. If the surface wrinkles up, it's done. If it sets solid, it's overdone. If it's liquid, even if syrupy, it's not done yet. You could buy a jam thermometer, but I don't use them myself.

Clean glass jars can be soaked in a sink of hot water while the jam is cooking, then dried out in a warm oven. Or just dried with a clean tea towel. I've never had any problems with preserves going off from bad jars. The sugar is a heavy duty antibacterial preservative, as are the salt and vinegar you find in pickles and chutneys.

This is pretty much how I've always made my strawberry jam. I was tempted to try a variation, like using Jamsetta instead of the lemons, and a touch of balsamic vinegar instead of the cognac, but the classic appeal won for me today.

And now I must eat some for afternoon tea, even though I am going out to dinner. With clotted cream, which came from the shiny new Manuka Wine and Cheese Providore. On bread, because I can't be bothered making scones or pikelets right now. It's a nice grainy bread from Le Croissant d'Or, whose wonderful patisserie and bread are now being sold in Manuka through the Wine and Cheese Providore.