Cookie - cosmopolitan chic

This post is from a meal before my holidays in September and I had meant to post much earlier but holidays, work and lack of energy took over. But my friend, Heather, put up with me using the flash on my camera and I took notes so finally here it is!

Heather and I enjoyed a lovely dinner at Cookie. This is the sort of place that E is not so keen on - too crowded and noisy and too many luvvies at the bar for him. He tells me all the waiters look like drama students - and indeed, he has a point, as to watch them pour a beer is quite a performance. They clean the glasses before you by placing them over rotating roller brushes and then put them over a little water fountain to rinse them. I find it quite intriguing.

I have not really eaten there before - just been for a quick drink. But Heather and I decided it was worth a try. Despite E's protestations, I enjoyed the space. It takes up the first floor of Curtin House in the city. Curtin House is a fine early twentieth century building (built in 1922 and once the headquarters of the Communist party). Inside, some of the attractive period details are retained including wonderful arched leadlight windows (which I managed to take a photo of). The large room is partitioned so the spaces feel more intimate and large pillars breaks up the space.

After realizing it was reservation only in the dining section, we found a seat in the ‘back benches’ of the other section (I don’t remember what they called it). One large wall is covered with an oversized photo of a black and white crowd. Above us were lightbulbs that were painted black on the bottom to dim the lighting. Our table had a kitsch patterned runner with flowers and hens on it, and we had gingham serviettes.

The menu has some good vegetarian options and we chose a range of dishes to share. Our vegetarian pad thai was nicely presented with a garnish of bean sprouts, shredded chilli, boiled eggs and chopped peanuts. I love the dry spicy noodles and tofu. The Eggplant and Sweet Potato in coconut and lime was fragrantly spicy with the eggplant cooked to melting perfection. We ordered the steamed vegetables with tomato & chilli jam. I found the combination of cabbage, marrow and broccolini an odd one but still appreciated some bland veggies to go with the other dishes. I didn’t try the chilli jam as I had enough spice in the meal but Heather seemed to enjoy it. And finally we had some plain boiled rice which was welcome with the spicy foods.

A filling and delicious meal in a bustling but interesting ambience, so I will be thinking of ways to persuade E that it is worth a visit.

Cookie,
Level 1, Curtin House,
252 Swanston St, Melbourne,tel: (03) 9663 7660
http://www.cookie.net.au/

PS – I know it has been some time since I posted on this blog – but as I have done very little cooking lately (and nothing exciting), it has slowed down considerably. Thanks for the comments and I will try and write up something from my holiday soon! And hopefully I'll have a little more to write after that. (posted 6 Oct 07)

WTSIM ... Beggars Burgers

I found myself home on Sunday night after a few nights out, having brought home a bag of vegetables from my sister's place. Francesca's partner, Steve, has started working at a market job which means he brings home boxes of vegetables. Which is excellent motivation for getting different vegetables into my diet.

Courtesy of Steve, I brought home a bounty of cauliflower, parsnip, silverbeet, baby leeks, basil, sage. Now I confess to a particular aversion to silverbeet when I was young. My mum grew it in the garden and it seemed to be the sort of thing she would serve with cabbage and corned beef - one of my worst meals of childhood (sorry mum)! So although I wouldn't buy it, I was interested to consider how to use it. It has lovely green leaves after all, so it can't be all bad. For those who don't hail from these parts, I think it is called Swiss Chard elsewhere.

Various possibilities for the vegetables came to me: pasta sauce, a rice dish or even roast veggies. But I ended up taking the easy way out and making vegetable burgers with them. I have been tongue in cheek and called them Beggars Burgers because, as we all know, beggars can't be choosers, and I feel I didn't choose these vegetables. But I actually was quite pleased to have risen to the challenge of using what I had on hand.

The burgers were an exellent way of using silverbeet - it gave the pale burgers some lovely green flecks and didn't taste too overwhelming. But I have a small confession - I didn't use the stalks. I put in a tin of creamed corn which I thought would go well with the vegetables and help to bind them. I probably would have used more breadcrumbs if I hadn't had a breadcrumb shortage - which is also why I coated them in flour instead of breadcrumbs. I also fried them in some chilli oil which made them particularly spicy. E loved them.

Now I was excited to see that the 'Waiter there's something in my ...' event had chosen the Meatless BBQ this month and I had hoped to participate as I love a BBQ as much as the next meat eater if there is a decent vegetarian offering. But last night the internet was playing up on me so I am hoping that Jeanne of Cooksister will show some mercy and take a late submission. I also wanted to reply to her request that if there are sad people like myself who do not have a BBQ, then we could either cook it on a griddle pan or wrap it in foil! (PS - she accepted it - see this recipe and lots other great ones at the round up)

I must protest that vegetarians at BBQs are even sadder than she thinks. I have been at BBQs where everyone is outside enjoying the sun and the smell of charcoal while I am inside cooking my vegetarian sausages on a frypan or under the grill! Yes, BBQs can be the bane of a vegetarian's life. As the years have progressed, I (and my family whose BBQs I grace most frequently) have sorted it out a little. Now mostly my vegetarian offerings go on foil on a BBQ so they don't taste of meat. But here is where Jeanne made me think about griddle pans. When you barbecue meat, it is a little scary to see the amount of fat that it releases. Barbecuing vegetarian burgers or sausages seems the opposite - they dry up so easily that often they need to be doused with oil. Hence, the need for meatlovers to use griddle pans to drain away the fat, but for vegetarians they are really just a bit of window dressing if you want some nice charred lines on your food. And this is my convoluted excuse that I am sending to Jeanne for not owning or using a griddle pan.

Having said all that, I would happily put these burgers onto the BBQ but only after they have been pan fried first to seal them - they were so moist, I would worry about putting them straight on a BBQ and finding that half of them were stuck to the grill. This again is based on experiences I have had at BBQs. Vegetarians can have BBQs but like most meals, need to think differently to carnivores if they want them to work. Having said that, our current warm weather (up to 22c this week) as we near the end of winter makes me look forward to summer and enjoying some BBQ meals outside.

Beggars Burgers
Makes about 18 small burgers

½ cauliflower, trimmed of the stalk
300g silverbeet
1 parsnip, peeled
2 baby leeks, trimmed
Handful basil leaves, finely chopped
440g tin of creamed corn (or tin of corn)
2 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 cup breadcrumbs
1 cup oatmeal
½ cup almond meal
Black pepper, ground
Plain flour for dusting
Oil for frying (I used chilli oil)

Chop cauliflower and parsnip and place in a medium saucepan with about 2 inches of water. Bring to boil and simmer for about 12 minutes til a knife goes easily into them. Add finely chopped baby leeks, and finely chopped green leaves of silverbeet, and simmer a further 2-3 minutes til wilted. Drain and mash well.

Add remaining ingredients except flour and oil. Mix well. Place a pile of flour in a shallow bowl. Take handfuls and use your hands to shape into small burgers (and be prepared to have messy hands by the time you have finished). Toss each burger in the flour to coat. Ideally, place in the fridge for at least an hour to firm up. As my life is never ideal, I placed some of them directly onto the frypan and left the remainder uncooked but covered in the fridge til the next evening.

Heat 2-3 tablespoons of oil in a large non-stick frypan. Fry patties for about 20-25 minutes over medium-to-high heat, turning over during this period to ensure they are well cooked either side. If you want to put them on the BBQ or in the freezer (or reheat later in the oven) then just cook lightly each side.

On the Stereo:
Europe '72: The Grateful Dead

ACMI Café – sweet but no sourdough!

Last weekend, E and I met my dad at 10am on Saturday for brunch at the ACMI café. It was early for us – but my dad had already had breakfast (especially early to see my mum off before she left at 6am for the airport to fly to Alice Springs), purchased a new car and a few CDs.

So my dad went for the ricotta pancakes with berries and icecream for his second breakfast (for anyone not familiar with second breakfasts, check out the Scottish hobbit in the Lord of the Rings film – can’t remember which of the trilogy but the idea delighted E and has stuck with us).

I have had the rustic baked bean before and decided to go with these again, and a couple of hash browns. I toyed with the idea of some other veggie but I know the beans are homemade with lots of tomato in them and I didn’t feel like any of the other veggies on offer. E went for the big brekkie!

I think my dad hit the jackpot. He was most pleased with his and when I had a taste I wished I had ordered the pancakes. E liked his but it was a bit big (well they don’t call it the big brekkie for nothing!). Mine was nice but the beans were bit intensely tomatoey. In fact, I think what I didn’t like so much this time was that I was served Turkish bread rather than the sourdough which was on the menu. The beans needed a more substantial bread. But the hash browns were wonderful and crisp, so no complaints there, except why can’t they be healthier!

All in all, a very pleasing brunch before we headed off for the Guggenheim exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. (A modern art exhibition is quite fitting really for a morning spent in some of the fine modern buildings of Melbourne.)

ACMI Lounge Cafe & Bar
Federation Square
Flinders Street
Melbourne 3000
Phone: + 61 3 9655 1900
Open Monday to Friday 8.30am till late
Open Saturday & Sunday 9.30 am till late

Blues Clues Birthday Cake

My sister Fran is in the middle of party season for her partner’s kids and organized a party for Dylan on the weekend. It was a barbecue in the park – sausages and hamburgers on the electric barbie, and lots of bread and tomato sauce to eat them with (and veggies sausages for me!).

Fran chose blue as the theme and asked me to help her with doing a Blues Clues cake – she knows I love a fun cake and had found an idea on the internet. So on the Friday before the party, she cooked E and I a curry, and while the boys watched a dvd, we set to work on a plain sponge cake that she had prepared earlier.

It was the first sponge cake she had made – actually I call it a butter cake because my mum’s sponges are light and fluffy and not at all good for kiddie cake decorating. Fran had problems finding a plain cake recipe and ended up with an American one off the internet which is unsatisfactory if you are used to Australian measurements (I am always confused when I am asked to measure butter by cups rather than grams) so I will put the one I usually use here. It is not my favourite recipe so I often put in a couple of spoons of cocoa to make it a chocolate cake

Common garden butter cake
(from the Australian Women’s Weekly)
Makes one cake

125 g (4 oz) butter, at room temperature
½ tsp vanilla
½ cup castor sugar
2 eggs
1½ cups self raising flour
⅓ cup milk

Cream butter and vanilla, add sugar and beat til light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Stir in half flour and half milk, then other half of flour and milk. Only stir lightly. Spoon batter into a greased and lined cake tin – if you use a 20 cm tin it should take 50 minutes to cook in a 180C oven, but test with a skewer to check it is done. The Women’s Weekly give different times for different size cake tins, depending on the shape of the cake.

---

Of course, even without this recipe, Fran made a nice cake which, when the paper was peeled off, looked a perfect shape. She also had to make a few little cakes – I think we needed about 7. Our first task was to cut away some small bits from the sides of the large cake to shape the head, and then to place the little cakes to make the ears. It wasn’t perfect but looked ok (see my photo).

Then it was a matter of icing it all over with blue icing. Fran had bought some gel icing tubes for another cake. I’ve never used these before and was curious. They are useful for quite small amounts of icing but don’t seem to dry which I think is not so practical for cakes that have to travel (as mine often do) or sit around for some time (as this cake did). But they were quite good for shaping the nose. Fran thought it was an easy cake and it wasn’t hard but it was time consuming to ice around the edges of the ears. I made the mistake of thinning the icing a little to make it easier to spread but unfortunately it sort of pooled on the tray on which the cake was sitting which displeased me.

For the patches on the ears, I started with putting some black into a blue icing mix and it went a muddy colour so I threw it out and started again, this time with a darker blue I have in my icing colours which worked much better. We used marshmallows with a little black gel icing for the eyes (and used a teeny bit of icing to stick the eyes on). For the tongue, we cut out a wedge and place a pink iced wedge of little cake in there.

We were pleased with the cake – it is so easy to please kids with a bit of colour and novelty. The adults seemed to like it too. But I have to give a special mention to my mum who made a marshmallow slice for the party in advance, even though on the day she was visiting a remote Aboriginal community near Alice Springs – now that is dedication! (And an honorary mention goes to my dad and niece, Maddy, who navigated all sorts of road blocks for Melbourne University’s open day to bring the slice to the party.)

Midweek Mock Fish

This is a light meal I made last week on a day when energy failed me after a fruitless dash into town after work looking for a replacement dishrack because ours keeps falling apart.

I was wanting hot chips and thought some potato rosti might do the trick – crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy inside. I grated 3 medium potatoes, squeezed some of the water out. Then I melted about a teaspoon of butter in a non-stick frypan and placed the grated potato in it. I sprinkled a bit of salt on it for taste.

I would like to say I just left it to cook. But I can’t help a little bit of meddling. That is how I learnt to cook with my mum – poking a spoon in here and giving that a stir. So I keep pushing my eggflip (which some might call spatula?) under the mixture to make sure it wouldn’t stick. That was my main concern – that the mixture would fall to bits when I tried to turn it over.

Meanwhile my mum rang so I chatted to her while it cooked. When I told her I was cooking potato rosti, she said her mum used to make it on Fridays (her family being good Catholics who didn’t eat meat on Fridays) and they called it mock fish. She said they thought it was food for poor people and were surprised when potato rosti became a bit posh. Interestingly, according to the Rösti page on Wikipedia, this dish was originally eaten by farmers in Switzerland (I looked for mock fish on Wiki but they are yet to acknowledge that the potato-loving Irish had their own version). Rosti is something you can dress up or dress down but it is mercifully easy, and surely tastes much better than a wartime mock fish recipe I saw recently while browsing in a bookstore.

My mum told me I needed to squeeze the moisture out, and I was pleased I had, given that I had not consulted any cookbook. When it came to turning it over, it all flipped in one piece which seemed nothing short of miraculous but then I thought maybe some cultural memory was guiding me. I’d like to think so. In fact it was lovely and crisp – I had it over a medium heat for probably 40-45 minutes all up (can’t quite remember how much time each side) which I think was why it worked. I mustered all my patience to wait til it was golden brown on each side.

We ate it with chopped tomato and cucumber and a bit of yoghurt. Dinner was a bit light that night – probably would have served one rather than two. If I was to do this again, I would do a more substantial salad (chickpeas would have been good) and maybe more potatoes. Luckily we had brownies for dessert!

On the stereo:
Low Symphony: Philip Glass

Ruby Crumble of rhubarb and raspberries!

Once I got my Enchanted Broccoli Forest into the oven last Saturday when Kim and Jo were over, I turned my attention to the important issue of dessert! I often make cakes but I had initially thought I would make a rhubarb and strawberry crumble. I have seen a few berry crumbles on blogs lately.

Here is where I must pause to reflect on dessert. I grew up in a household where my mother made cooked desserts most nights. In fact I was always a little dismayed to just be offered a bought biscuit when I was at dinner with school friends! Yet I now rarely make dessert. If I have been baking, we have some baked goodies but I usually prefer fruit fresh rather than cooked. I love apples when in season but I am not a big fan of stewed apple that my mum would put in crumbles, pies and sponges. When friends come to dinner these days I often make cake.

But lately I have started to see sense in baking desserts. Firstly, when I was reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, the family set out to eat locally and started out the year at the end of winter with virtually no fresh fruit. I kept wanting to tell her they should have had stewed fruit on hand. But I also have been craving fruit lately in a similar way.

I love seasonal fruit but I do tend to eat lots of fruit in season and then towards the end of the season I tire of apples or nectarines or mandarins or pears, and they aren’t tasting so good when they are no longer as fresh. It takes me a while to adjust to a new season. So lately, as we near the end of winter, I have wanted fresh fruit but not found it appealing. Cooking fresh fruit seems odd, but having fruit preserved to eat out of season suddenly makes a lot of sense. I now see just how much fruit my mother made us eat through eating desserts.

However I had some problems thinking about doing a strawberry and rhubarb crumble. I wanted to do it but was feeling ridiculous about using out of season strawberries. Then at my recent farmer’s market outing, I bought Di’s rhubarb for the crumble and some of her rhubarb and raspberry jam. The combination made sense as soon as I saw the frozen raspberries for sale at another stall. I would make rhubarb and raspberry crumble.

Next challenge was finding the recipe. I knew I had seen recipes for rhubarb and strawberry crumble but couldn’t remember where. Unfortunately it wasn’t til the next morning that I remembered Holler had an excellent recipe on her blog. But I had remembered that Tara had a recipe for a strawberry and coriander crumble which interested me because it had a very oaty crumble. One of my guests, Kim, has a gluten free diet but can eat a little gluten. I had looked for gluten free crumbles and not found any to inspire me so I thought this recipe with mostly oats (which my reading tells me can be eaten by some on gluten free diets) and a tiny amount of flour, might be the next best thing.

So I used the ingredients from Tara’s recipe but instead of her method of freezing and then breaking up the crumble, I just did my usual method of rubbing the butter into the ingredients, which seemed to work fine. By the time I was making it I didn’t have time for fancy freezing techniques. I also couldn’t decide on if I should cook the rhubarb first or not. I found a Vikki Leng recipe for stewing rhubarb using honey and lemon which I used rather than sugar. But quite a lot of recipes didn’t precook the rhubarb so I thought I could get away without it.

The crumble was lovely with all the oats. (It was ok although probably not ideal for Kim). But the rhubarb was only just cooked – it kept its shape and even the occasional crunch rather than being the stringy slush that we know and love. Next time (as my mum has advised after the event) I will cook the rhubarb first, so I have amended the recipe to reflect this. But it still was a great dessert with brilliant colour, great texture and wonderful flavours. Jo said it tasted like a really good muesli which I thought was a great way to describe it. It indeed did feel more healthy than my usual cakes.

I forgot to take a photo so the photo of the actual dish is from the next morning but the one of the fruit is before I put it in the oven when it was such a divine ruby red! Here is what I did.

Rhubarb and Raspberry Crumble
Serves 4

400g bunch rhubarb, topped and tailed, and chopped
⅓ cup honey (I used a bit less than ½ cup and found it a bit much)
Juice of one small lemon
350g frozen raspberries

Crumble:
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
3 tbsp plain flour
¼ tsp cinnamon
100g butter, chopped

Cook rhubarb, honey and lemon approximately 10 minutes til rhubarb is just done. Cool a little while you make the crumble.

To make the crumble, rub the butter into the remaining crumble ingredients til mostly mixed – mine wasn’t quite mixed and seemed ok.

Add raspberries to rhubarb mixture and stir. Place in greased baking dish and top with crumble. Bake at 180ºC for 30 – 40 minutes or til crumble is golden brown and crisp. Serve with cream or yoghurt or (an excellent idea by E after the event) custard!

On the stereo:
Seeds of Happiness, part 1: Jeffrey Roden

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest

A forest in my kitchen does indeed seem magical! This is exactly what this recipe for the Enchanted Broccoli Forest promises. It is the recipe of the title of the excellent Mollie Katzen book, and I think I can say it is one of the most inspired recipe names I know.

I made it last Saturday (oh yes I am having a little blogger backlog!) when our friends Kim and Jo came for dinner. It seemed like a fun and delicious meal, and gluten free for Kim.

It is made with broccoli florets standing in a bed of rice but lest anyone think this is a wholesome but dull old-school vegetarian meal, check out the interesting ingredients: garlic, dill, mint, swiss cheese, pepper and chilli.

I get excited at the greenness of it, and yet after baking it, the broccoli went a little brown, despite being covered with foil. I think I felt less paranoid because I have a dim memory of this happening last time I made it (many years ago) but I am still willing for someone to let me know it is something I did rather than the recipe. Maybe barely cooking the broccoli might help. And it tasted great anyway, especially with the swiss cheese giving it a particular sweet nutty flavour.

It actually felt a bit like gardening when I had to make the holes in the bed of rice to ‘plant’ my broccoli trees in it. So when E asked for more risotto, I was black affronted he thought my enchanted forest was a mere risotto and took great delight in asking if he wanted more trees or more undergrowth.

I served it with a simple salad on the side: tomatoes, avocado, red capsicum, basil, lemon juice and pepper. It tasted fresh and looked great, especially the sweetest tomatoes from the Farmers Market. (But I got too caught up in conversation to photograph the salad in the forest when I served dinner!)

The Enchanted Broccoli Forrest
(From Mollie Katzen)
serves 6

400g bunch of broccoli
2 cups brown rice
3 cups water
1 tbsp butter
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
Generous pinch of salt
½ tsp dill weed
Lots of black pepper
Chilli flakes, to taste
2 eggs
¼ cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
1 cup swiss cheese (approx 100-150g), or cheddar
Juice from one lemon

Place rice and water in small to medium saucepan. Bring to the boil, lower heat and cover. Cook til just done – about 20-30 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

Cut broccoli into little trees with a couple of centimetres of stalk still on (as you will need this length to plant the broccoli). Steam broccoli til just done (I suspect I overdid it by microwaving on high for about 5-6 minutes).

Meanwhile prepare other ingredients. In a medium to large saucepan sauté onion and garlic in butter over medium heat, stirring til onions are soft and translucent (8-10 minutes). Add remaining ingredients (except lemon juice) and rice and stir well.

Spread rice mixture into a greased 10 x 6 inch pan and smooth out. Use a skewer or end of a fork to make holes at regular intervals. Place broccoli in the holes. I don’t know I did this quite right as my broccoli was quite floppy – maybe it was too well cooked or the stems were too long but it still looked fine. Squeeze lemon juice over broccoli. The recipe suggested using mixed lemon juice and butter but I decided to leave out the butter.

Cover with foil (Mollie says gently but firmly) and bake at 180C for 30 minutes.

On the stereo:
Le Pavillon Témoin: Mathias Delplanque

BBoM Raspberry Brownies for Two

It sometimes seems that some recipes are waiting for the right ingredient to appear in my kitchen. Buying frozen raspberries for my crumble on Saturday (oops this post is still to come) seemed such a luxury in winter that I had to make the most of it. I have had a Donna Hay recipe for raspberry brownies that has interested me for some time but the raspberries have never appeared at the right time … until now!

Well they are named brownies but are not brownies as I know them. I think of brownies as slabs of chocolate that is chewy, even a little undercooked in the middle. These are actually cooked in a mini muffin pan and are more cake-like than densely fudgy.

Nevertheless, what appealed to me about the recipe was it seemed quite small. A lot of recipes seem to cater for a small army which is fine if you are cooking for lots of family or work colleagues or friends. But, in a household of two, it is a relief to find a recipe that is small enough to eat without feeling gluttonous, and shamed into loading up the freezer or taking food to whoever will eat it! It is also a useful recipe for when you don’t have many ingredients on hand (or if you wanted to use GL flour so you could take a small amount of gluten free cakes available at a party).

These brownie muffins probably felt more of a treat in winter with the hard to come by raspberries. I loved the wonderful scarlet splodges throughout them. E told me that he found them pleasingly light because some of my baking is just too much chocolate (blasphemer!). But I can’t help agree they tasted good with the berries giving off little tart explosions that go nicely with the rich chocolate taste.

I am sending this to Myriam at Once Upon a Tart for the Brownie Babe of the Month event. If you are feeling like a chocolate fix, go to the full list of brownies at the round up.

Donna Hay Raspberry Brownies
(makes 12 small mouthfuls)

50g dark chocolate, chopped
60g butter
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
¼ cup plain flour
¼ tsp baking powder
1 tbsp cocoa powder
¼ cup fresh raspberries

Preheat oven to 180C. Melt chocolate and butter in large bowl. Mix in remaining ingredients except raspberries. Fold in raspberries.

Now the bit I don’t understand in the recipe is the instructions to cut 10 x 10cm rounds of paper to line 12 x 25ml hole mini muffin pans – seems to me it would just fill the holes with paper but maybe that is my limited imagination. I just used mini muffin papers.

Spoon into mini muffin pan (actually I used an 11 hole pan and it seemed fine to fill each hole!) Bake 20 minutes or til set.

On the Stereo:
Life: Inspiral Carpets

Collingwood children’s farm – peppercorn trees and part time vegetarians

On Saturday morning, E, Will and I went to the Farmers Market at Collingwood Children’s Farm. My current book, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, is making me think a lot about eating locally, and needing to visit farmers markets. I confess to always feeling a little overwhelmed by such abundance of good food and unsure what I need, but I am getting better at buying at such places.

The day started well with a parking place presenting itself – which in that area makes you feel truly blessed (although admittedly it would be nice to have a farmers market in walking distance)! The market is always busy. You enter down a little path past leafy garden plots and chook pens complete with preening roosters. E was the first to be distracted and left us to indulge in coffee and porridge while he read the paper and people-watched in the café.

Will and I continued past the pancake stall in the barn, past the fruit trees stall to the clearing where a circle of stalls is surrounded by gum trees. It was a fine sunny winter day, although there was one incident with the awning of a stall dancing in the wind a little too dangerously with stall holders chasing after it. Many stall holders were wise to the wind and held onto their tent frames.

There were all sort of delicacies on offer: olives, spices and even nettles. I am always interested in tasting all sorts of food – falafel, apple and lemon juice, cheeses, and blood oranges. Will and I decided to stop for some great Turkish bread with spinach and fetta in them (see my pic of it on my knee) which we enjoyed on a couple of damp haybales. We watched them being chargrilled on a little grill and ate them fresh and warm out of the paper bag.

I enjoyed buying lots of yummy food and some chatting with stall holders. Our favourite stall holder was the man selling eggs. Will, a fellow vegetarian, asked the difference between free range, vegetarian and organic eggs. He was told that hens are carnivores and can only go vegetarian for weeks or they stop laying eggs. As long time vegetarians, Will and I were a little unsure about buying eggs from part time vegetarians.

After the shopping and Turkish bread (which E had managed to join us for so he could share mine) we returned to the café for drinks and cake. I had organic ginger beer and a lovely fresh dark chocolate and blueberry muffin. Will chose a very cute looking cup cake. (E again shared mine). All very pleasing, if you don't mind a wait for coffees. It is an outdoor café with wooden seats and benches, umbrellas to keep shade and rain off, and fine peppercorn trees around us. It gave us time to spot peahens, mull over if we are secondary carnivores when we eat eggs, and wonder what sort of children were farmed at a children's farm (and I will spare you the more nerdy details of the discussion)!

Here is what I bought – probably a little more expensive than the supermarket but such a nicer shopping experience: Vegetarian eggs (laid by part time vegetarian hens!), Maffra red Leicester cheese, rhubarb, falafel, broccoli, parsley, frozen raspberries, tomatoes, a mint plant, Di’s rhubarb and raspberry jam, St Andrews olive bread and a fruit scroll.

'Local' in inner city Collingwood actually means local to the state rather than the suburb but the stall holders seemed like decent hardworking people producing quality goods that hadn't travelled too far to my table. I felt blessed indeed as I left with my bag of goodies!

Update April 2008
Visited farmer's market again and was impressed at range of fruit and vegetable stalls. Got the last punnet of strawberries for my gluten free niece, had lemon and apple juice, corn on the cob, dried fruit, and ice cream. Bought rhubarb, heirloom pumpkins and Hope Farm wholemeal sourdough bread. Then visited the animals with my mum, sister and nieces - chooks, geese, cows, goats, horses and pigs. But no rabbits for Maddy!

Collingwood Children's Farm
Second Saturday of the Month
St Heliers St, Abbotsford
44G5 in the Melways
http://www.farm.org.au/

My beautiful pea green soup

My mum made lots of scones in my childhood (and still bakes them) so I find them very comforting. Ever since I saw Cindy baking parmesan and rosemary scones to serve with soup, I have had a hankering for scones and soup.

But I wanted to make pumpkin scones which are my favourite. The challenge was to work out what soup to serve with it. Many of my soups are red or orange and it just seemed wrong to serve orange and red together. I need green! Finally I came up with the perfect answer – fresh pea soup (or in my case frozen pea soup which doesn’t sound quite so wholesome).

I am sure I have seen pea soup on blogs but couldn’t think where so I decided to just make up my own using what was in the house. It worked brilliantly. In fact it was easy peasy, if you will excuse the pun. My buttered scones needed something simple as well as needing some green. It feels like a long time since I have made such a wonderful green creation. The soup felt light and healthy, while the buttered scones provided comfort.

E was most impressed and asked for more soup, which unfortunately there wasn’t. But green is the colour of hope, and he did get to watch his favourite movie, Stalker, on DVD, even though I couldn’t stay awake for all of it!

Fresh Green Pea soup
(serves 2)

750g frozen green peas
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 large handful basil, torn
1 handful spinach, roughly chopped
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp vegetarian stock powder
2 tbsp yoghurt
Juice of ½ lemon juice

Place peas, spring onion, stock and Worcestershire sauce in medium saucepan and just cover with water. Bring to boil, and simmer a few minutes. Add basil and spinach and blend. Stir in yoghurt and lemon juice.

On the stereo:
Orchestral Music: Wagner/Karajan

SHF #34: Pumpkin scones

This month Johanna at the Passionate Cook is hosting Sugar High Friday, and the theme is Going Local (check out the round up). She asks us to consider local or regional food that we might make.

So I have been racking my brains for food that is particularly local to Melbourne or even our state of Victoria. I’ve looked in local histories, searched the net, had some discussions and come up with slim pickings. Will suggested peach melba because Dame Nellie Melba, after whom the dish was named, actually named herself after Melbourne. But ‘tis not the season for such summery delights! I have come up with Rowntree Hoadley’s violet crumble chocolate bar which we used to buy my dad each Christmas. But this is really a brand name for chocolate covered honeycomb. Then there are local cheeses such as the one which I ate as a child from our nearby town, Colac. It is all very unsatisfactory.

This type of exercise is likely to bring me out in a bad case of cultural cringe. But as a lover and defender of Australian history, I want to explain to Johanna that the development of our food culture is quite different due to the immigrant nature of my more immediate ancestors. (I wont talk about our Indigenous populations except to say that they have had very little influence on what I eat.) Johanna comes from Austria where communities lived in the same local area for centuries with travel being difficult and infrequent, and food specialities could develop slowly. Whereas in Australia people moved about a lot.

I can illustrate this with the story of my great great grandfather whom came to Australia from Wales in circa 1859. He originally came to Clunes, a gold mining town in Victoria, and then went in search of gold to Coolgardie (WA) over the other side of Australia where he died. But his children returned to Clunes and then to Melbourne. Not only would they have brought food culture from the home country but the amount of travel meant people swapping food ideas over great distances around Australia, rather than food cultures developing in discreet regions.

Given this history, it seems quite reasonable to me that we don’t have so much regional or local food culture. But we do have a fine national food culture, often created through the fusion of ideas from a home country which are then adjusted to the local conditions. I heard a great example of this on the radio recently, where an Australian whiskey maker explained that our climate means it takes 5 years to age a whiskey which in Scotland will take 10 years to age!

‘Australian’ cuisine, rather than being regional, is often divided up by descent. My family is very anglo celtic and has quite a different diet to – for example – those of Vietnamese or Macedonian descent. Many fine sweet foods, peculiar to Australia (or maybe Australia and New Zealand), were part of my childhood – lamingtons, pavlova, jelly cakes, anzac biscuits and pumpkin scones. Pumpkin scones are a fine example of adapting to local conditions. Scones are very British (but in the UK you never would have your brother requesting scones with vegemite and cream – yes it happened!) and someone in Australia (long before Flo Bjelke Petersen) came up with the excellent idea of adding pumpkin. As I have commented before, pumpkin is readily available in Australia and a staple part of my diet. It adds a sweetness and moisture to scones that is a delight to behold.

I know the Sugar High Friday event is about sweet food, but one of the great things about pumpkin scones, is that like their plainer cousins, they are great for either savoury or sweet food. I served them with pea soup but we also had them for dessert with blueberry jam. However you serve them they are delicious.

I used a recipe which was among the first recipes I baked when I first moved into a share house – a great home comfort. When I cooked the pumpkin the previous night I sort of forgot about it and it was the traditionally badly overcooked vegetables that fall apart at the sight of a fork – almost caramelized. So to compensate I only used 1 tablespoon sugar but usually use the 2 tablespoons the recipe requires. There are variations on this recipe with dates or sultanas but I think this is the best.

Pumpkin Scones
Makes 12-15

60g butter
2 tbsp castor sugar
½ cup cooked and mashed pumpkin
1 egg lightly beaten
½ cup milk
2 ½ cups self raising flour
1 tbsp milk
1 egg yolk (optional)

Preheat oven to 230 C.

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in pumpkin (I have done this with hot pumpkin but it seems a waste of time creaming the butter and sugar if you do because it just melts the butter. It is better if the pumpkin is cooled – don’t worry if the mixture looks a little curdled when you add the cooled pumpkin – mine never seems to mix in too smoothly but it is fine when the flour is added). Slowly mix in the milk and egg. Sift flour and stir into the mixture ad stir into the dough. (Sifting is well and good but I never do!)

Lightly knead and roll out 2-3cm thick on a lightly floured surface. Use a scone cutter (or if you want to be traditional, a vegemite glass!) dipped in flour to cut out scones. Roll out any scrapes of dough and cut more scones til no dough is left. Place on a baking tray. I like doing them close together so they all join up and have to be broken apart but you can space them out if you prefer.

Brush scones with milk and egg yolk (or just milk which is what I usually do). Bake in preheated oven 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

On the Stereo:
Wonderland soundtrack: Michael Nyman

Turning Winter Roasts into Salads – genius or marketing?

Oh dear! I have a bit of a blogging backlog and Thursday night seems long ago. But I wanted to blog this meal as it was a nice healthy and easy one! I roasted some veggies because I wanted to make pumpkin scones and couldn’t think what to have with them.

So had one of those evenings where I ran around the supermarket, eyeing off vegetables like fennel and eggplant that I think I should use more, but then returning to my comfort vegetables – potatoes, beetroot, zucchini and Brussels sprouts. (When I turned my nose up at Brussels sprouts in my childhood, who would have thought they would become a great comfort to me!). The biggest excitement – and the closest I came to adventurous – was finding a yellow zucchini which looked brilliant next to my green zucchini.

At home I diced the vegetables to help them cook quickly. I also gave the potatoes and beetroot a quick boil first, so I ended up with pinkish potatoes. I didn’t have time to wait for everything to go nice and crispy – possibly there was not enough oil and too much vegetables for that! By the time I had everything in the oven I didn’t have any energy left for scones – they could wait. So I decided to turn it into a sort of salad by adding salad sort of ingredients like tomato, baby spinach, yoghurt and pesto.

Winter roast veggie salad is quite trendy at the moment – I seem to see it in food magazines and web recipes quite often, even in the occasional cafe. Sometimes I struggle to understand exactly when a meal becomes a salad – sometimes it seems anything with some oil and lemon/vinegar. I have my suspicions that people call a dish a salad so it sounds more healthy but that isn’t always so with a salad depending on how oily the dressing is. But maybe I too have been brainwashed into thinking my meal would be healthier if it was called a salad, rather than just calling it roast veggies with yoghurt and pesto (which is what E thought it was)! Whatever you call it, it tasted great and there was enough left for lunch the next day. Here is what I did:

Winter Roast Vegetable Salad
Serves 2-3

5 smallish potatoes – red skinned, diced
1 medium beetroot, peeled and diced
8 Brussels sprouts, halved
2 zucchini, diced
½ red onion, sliced
2 tbsp chilli olive oil
1 tomato, diced
200g tin of chickpeas (or half a 400g tin)
1 tbsp worchestershire sauce
1 tbsp fresh basil, torn
Handful baby spinach, roughly sliced
2 tsp pesto
2 tbsp yoghurt

Place potatoes and beetroot in a medium saucepan with an inch of cold water. Cover and bring to the boil slowly, then simmer about 5 minutes. They should be barely done – don’t worry if potato turns pink – it just adds to the colour of the dish! Drain.

Place potatoes, beetroot, sprouts, zucchini and red onion in a large roasting tray and toss with oil. Place in a very hot oven (about 230C) for 30-40 minutes, stirring once or twice during this time. Mix in chickpeas and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.

Stir in remaining ingredients and serve warm. Call it a salad if you dare!

On the stereo:
The Early Years: Roxy Music

Fresh and Healthy Salad Sandwich

I often proudly tell how my six brothers and sisters all had jobs at fast food takeaway chains, but I ended up with a job at an obscure inner suburban takeaway shop called Fresh and Healthy. I am glad I never worked flipping burgers for places which seem to spend their dollars on flashy advertising rather than good food.

Truth be told, I never enjoyed my job at Fresh and Healthy which served a lot of chicken schnitzel sandwiches that have a dubious claim to healthy food. But I did learn to make a pretty damned good salad sandwich. I used to make them for housemates and every now and again I make one for E.

On Saturday morning we got a loaf of multi-seeded bread from Sugardough (Lygon St East Brunswick). It is one of those dense loaves that give you a sore arm as you saw a slice off it. After my beans at Rumi for brunch, I needed some veggies, and having some lettuce after my taco-making on Friday, the opportunity presented itself for a salad sandwich.

When I had set off for the market in search of an iceberg lettuce I hadn’t really thought about them being seasonal until I saw what was on offer – they were small, wilted and expensive. So I guess it isn’t lettuce season. Some references I have found say it is lettuce season all year round but these lettuces looked well past their best. So I probably will try not to have a yen for lettuce meals til the sun shines a bit more warmly on us. But on Saturday I had lettuce so I was going to use it.

The way I do my salad sandwich is to have shredded lettuce, grated carrot and thinly sliced tomato as a base on one side of bread. On Saturday I also used thinly sliced red capsicum. Other veggies I like to include are sliced mushroom, dill pickle, sprouts, beetroot (from a can). Too many veggies can become a bit of a balancing act but I enjoy the challenge. I usually like to add sliced cheese and we have a fine vintage onion and chive cheese which added a lot of flavour. Finally I add a bit of pepper and some mayonnaise (if it is available which it wasn’t in deep midwinter in my fridge).

The trick is not to load the sandwich so much that it falls apart. I usually have a wee bit much in it but who can resist all those good veggies. It tasted sensational – like a summer breeze!

On the Stereo:
Songs in the Attic: Billy Joel

Rumbledethumps: death to the red hag!

Yesterday I was surfing the net for inspiration for making dinner. I fancied mashed potato and was vaguely looking for a shepherd’s pie recipe when I found one for a dish called Rumbledethumps on the Moosewood Restaurant website. How could anyone resist a recipe with a great name and a great story!

It is actually a version of a dish better known to me as Colcannon which has cabbage and mashed potato mixed together. But this dish has many more greens plus some cheese. It was a pleasing accompaniment to some sausage rolls from the freezer (see below for other leftover recommendations).

Plus when we sat down to eat, I had story to tell about dinner. The Moosewood folk introduce rumbledethumps as a variation on colcannon – a dish traditionally eaten at the feast of Lugnasa (apparently it was a taboo to eat potatoes before then) – ‘All the members of the family must share the dish or risk offending the agricultural spirit that protects the crop. After the first bite everyone shouts, “Death to the Red Hag!” thus driving away the spectre of starvation.’

Having had friends, as a child, with a print of the Potato Eaters by Van Gogh in their living room, I have a pretty good picture in my head of a dark grim cottage full of peasant folk, all yelling ‘Death to the Red Hag!’ I had thought it might be fun to yell as we started eating but the food was too good and distracted me. It is probably a sign of our abundance of food that I don’t feel any threat of the spectre of starvation.

But I do live with a Scottish partner who, unlike me, had heard of Lugnasa. He was even able to tell me that it is celebrated at the start of August and in Scotland they call it Lammas. So I had a search around Wiki and E, of course, is right. It is a celebration of the harvest, also called the ‘feast of first fruits’. (Check the links for more info from Wiki.) My one main disappointment was that although my timing seemed so right in making this dish early in August, being in the Southern Hemisphere means I should celebrate it at the start of February!

Here is the recipe. This is delicious and quick dish that is a great way of getting your starches and greens in your diet. It is so easy I barely looked at the recipe as I made it.I think it would go well with lots of nutloaves, burgers, bean casseroles. On the first night I made this I served it with sausage rolls from the freezer. The second night I heated the leftovers with extra grated cheese on top for 30 minutes at 180C and then put under the grill for a few minutes til the cheese was brown and crisp - I served it with more sausage rolls and leftover blackbean and apricot chilli non carne. The third night I made patties, brushed them with oil and put them under the grill - they were delicious with my orange soup revamped with some lentils and dried apricots.

Rumbledethumps
(adapted from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant)
Serves 6

5 large potatoes (2-2 ½ pounds), chopped in large chunks
2½ cups chopped cabbage
2 leeks, washed and chopped
2½ cups coarsely chopped broccoli
50g butter
¼ teaspoon nutmeg, grated
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
¼ cup milk
1 cups grated cheddar cheese
1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped

Boil potatoes for 15-30 minutes. I did mine for 30 minutes because I had the vegetables steaming on top of them and it was too awkward to take them out from below the steaming basket. Mash the potatoes with butter and milk. (I left the potato skin on and didn’t bother about the potato being a bit chunky rather than smooth – this didn’t matter once everything was mixed.) Mix with remaining ingredients.

The recipe actually says to spread into a large baking pan and sprinkle with cheese and place under grill to brown which was great the second night, but I think you could get by without adding the cheese, if you lack the time or energy. I added it to the mix but it didn't make heaps of difference. It would be easy to veganise by using dairy free margarine and milk, and leave out the cheese.

On the stereo:
The milk-eyed mender: Joanna Newsome

Favourite food books

A few weeks back Lucy did a meme which she creatively morphed into 7 favourite food books. She welcomed anyone to join in and, I relished the challenge, but have taken some time to get my thoughts together.

Seeing Susan’s list, made me realize just how much I love reading about others cookbooks. If I came into your kitchen and a cookbook was lying on your table, I would have to pick it up and browse through it. While I try to avoid buying many cookbooks (especially meaty ones) because there are so many recipes I’d never make or already have, there are few cookbooks without some new idea to interest me.

Picking favourites is difficult and over time, books come in and out of favour. But I chose to focus on books about food that have influenced my attitudes to food, and which have actually inspired some of my favourite cooking. Quite a few come from when I turned vegetarian and was seeking guidance and inspiration to support me in my choice. I have tried to make this list representative of the sort of cookbooks I have. But many newer cookbooks didn’t make the list, partly because not enough time has passed to demonstrate if they will be a fly-by-night or a keeper. Here is my list, in no particular order:

1. The Enchanted Broccoli Forest: Mollie Katzen
If you have been reading my blog you will have spotted that I have been rediscovering this cookbook. Mollie was a cooking guru for me before the cult of celebrity brought us mentors like Nigella and Jamie. It recorded recipes made by the Moosewood collective at a restaurant in Ithaca New York – a place I often dreamed of going. This is actually her second cookbook – I also have her first (the Moosewood Cookbook). I think she put many of the standard vegetarian recipes in her first book and more of her creativity into her second.

Creativity can be found both in the recipes and in the handwritten recipes which are decorated with her drawings. This book is worth owning for the wonderful purple and green cover and the inspired name (and there really is a recipe called the enchanted broccoli forest which has little broccoli trees planted in a bed of rice). It is a labour of love and her delight in food shines through. Some of my favourite recipes are tofu nutballs, mushroom yoghurt pie with spinach crust and her shepherd’s pie. She also has some good flexible guides to making bread, quiches, stirfries with whatever is on hand. I learnt a lot about making stirfries from her.

2. The Vegetarian Alternative: a guide to a healthful and humane diet: Vic Sussman
This is not a recipe book but it was an important book for me as a new vegetarian. I went vegetarian because it felt right and I didn’t like meat. I was upset when I found out we had eaten our pet lambs, I hate the sight of dead animals, and I remember feeling ill the one time I tried to make chicken stock with a chicken carcass and having the neck flopping around. But it wasn’t any one event or thing that turned me vegetarian, it just felt right. So once I went vegetarian and faced all the inevitable questions and challenges I needed some information to help me respond.

Vic Sussman was my man. I happened across a second hand copy of the book with its brown 1970s cover. He explained all the reasons of vegetarianism – ethical, environmental, aesthetic and health. It explained why vegetarian is good for us and gave some stomach churning details about the production of meat. He even gives a few recipes at the back of the book but I confess I’ve never made any of them – maybe one day! This book might not be for everyone but it gave me what I needed.

3. Green and Black’s Chocolate Recipes: from the cacao pod to muffins, mousses and moles
I bought this one recently. I had begun to realize that most of my cookbooks were vegetarian cookbooks which meant when I was looking for cakes and desserts I was often faced with ridiculously healthy recipes at the end of vegetarian cookbooks. Being vegetarian doesn’t mean you never want to indulge in chocolate desserts. I originally saw this book in an Oxfam Charity Shop in Durham while visiting friends Chris and Yavanna there early last year. It was such a large book it seemed too heavy for my case and so I waited til I was back in Melbourne and found a copy in Community Aid Abroad. It is such a wonderfully decadent book with beautiful photography and an amazing range of rich chocolatey dishes: ranging from chocolate stollen (which I want to make) to chocolate pecan pie (which was sinfully good) and any number of decadent cakes, brownies and cookies. It just shows that you can be ethical about food and still eat very very well!

4. Vegetarian Christmas: Rose Elliot
I love my British old-school vegetarian cookbooks with their nutloaves and gravies, croquettes and croustades, pease pudding and parkin. I think the title of an early Rose Elliot book, Not Just a Load of Old Lentils, shows how much these writers like Rose Elliot and Sarah Brown were out to prove vegetarians could eat well. And one of the times it is most important to try and eat well is Christmas when it is easy for vegetarians to get sidelined by turkey and ham. I also love my theme vegetarian cookbooks and this is one of the best, despite a lack of photos. I turn to it in midwinter when I need comforting food, and I turn to it in midsummer when I need Christmassy food. It has the obligatory nutloaves, plus seasonal treats such as celery and stilton soup, parsley potato stars, and a flaky mushroom Christmas tree. I’d recommend them all. Plus it has mulled wine and mulled apple juice. Something for everyone, really.

5. How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Nigella Lawson
I like Nigella. I love watching her tv shows. I love the way she talks about food. I have read her How to Eat from cover to cover. Yet, she really loves her meat and so I am not so interested in buying most of her books. But Domestic Goddess, despite a few meat recipes, is a favourite on my shelves. I love her introductions, her encouragement and the way she tosses her hair nonchalantly. Alright, that has nothing to do with her books but I can see why celebrity chefs have taken off. It is nice to have an image of a person who is guiding you through your cooking, especially when they shrug ingenuously to indicate how easy it is. She manages to combine old-fashioned comfort with trendy new ideas. Some of my fond memories of baking from the book include Store Cupboard Chocolate Orange Cake, Millionaire’s Shortbread and Pizza. There are lots more I hope to bake!

6. Vegie Food: from vegies on the side to the main event
This book is one of those books with no author. I love it because it has so many wonderful recipes that are full of vegetables – soups, salads, sides, mains. It has mouthwatering pictures and inspiring ideas. I have used it for some great salads and sides such as snowpea salad with Japanese dressing, semi-dried tomato and baby spinach salad, and zucchini with mint and fetta. I just wish I could remember which soups I have made from it and which soups I have merely fantasized about (that is the story of my cookbook collection, I am sorry to say – let me digress to say a friend used to be proud of how I could remember what we ate on any given occasion but these days my memory aint what it used to be, and too many wonderful dishes I thought would linger on my palate forever have faded in the mists of time – I hope this blog will help me out!)

7. The Man Who Ate Everything: Jeffrey Steingarten
This book was such a delight to read, I had to include it. It is not a cookbook but it is a great journey to join Mr Steingarten in his wonderful tales of culinary curiosity and obsession. He starts off the book promising himself that there is nothing he wont try and indeed he is a fearless explorer. He makes me feel a little shamed about the foods I wont eat which are indeed personal limitations, but this books gives me an opportunity to be a bit of an armchair daredevil with food. I also love how he can make me look differently at the most simple foods. One of my favourite chapters is his search for the pure taste of water.


That’s my list for today. It may change tomorrow. There are lots of great food books I had to leave off to reduce the list to a measly 7. I was going to give honorable mentions but then the list got too long so, suffice to say, it was hard to pick only seven, and there are many other wonderful books on my shelves.

On the stereo:
As Time Goes By: Brian Ferry

Rumi: Middle Eastern Delights

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. E and I found ourselves in East Brunswick end of Lygon Street seeking brunch yesterday morning. My first choice, Sourdough, was too busy as usual but I did come away with a loaf of bread. Rumi was the fourth place we went to.

I have long wanted to visit Rumi which has had wonderful reviews (here and here). But I have also heard it is very busy in evenings. So I was surprised to see it both open for breakfast and looking almost empty (although it did fill up as we sat there). Fortunately, E gave up his vision of porridge for something more exotic.

The breakfast menu is a middle eastern take on the usual fry-up, baked beans and toast. I was tempted by the Turkish breakfast of tomato, cucumber, fetta and olives. It took me back to a trip to Turkey and the breakfasts we had there. In particular, I remember one hostel in Cappadocia towards the end of my trip where I flippantly said to the owner that I wasn’t going to spend any more money before I left and he kindly presented me with a generous plate of tomato, cucumber, fetta, olives and bread – free of charge. He then went off into town and asked me to deal with any enquiries, which worried me because the only Turkish word I knew was Merhaba (hello).

E said it wasn’t the weather for a cold breakfast, and I was also tempted by a dish of white beans with tahini, parsley, pinenuts and paprika oil, so I chose that. The waitress was quite happy to take out the eggs. It was served with wonderfully fresh pitta bread and Turkish bread, and was like a creamy Middle Eastern version of baked beans. It was delicious but I couldn’t finish it because it was quite rich and I think next time I would ask for some tomato and cucumber on the side. E ordered deep fried eggs with dukkah, spinach and sausage which he said was one of the most unusual breakfasts he had ever had – and he highly recommended it.

We were also pleased with our drinks. The woman at the next table asked for a cappuccino and was kindly told they didn’t serve them. It is not the place for your usual coffees and teas, but if you are willing to try something different you will be rewarded.

E had Lebanese coffee laced with cardamom. It came in a little brass pot with a long handle to pour it into the small cup. I had Turkish apple tea which came in a teapot with a little hour glass shaped glass to pour it into. I had been tempted by a cold drink but was glad I decided on the apple tea. In Turkey, this sweet hot drink was served in these glasses in many cafes and carpet shops. I loved it as an alternative to tea or coffee, despite being told by my brother and sister (who lived in Istanbul at the time) that only tourists drank apple tea. Rumi’s apple tea wasn’t quite a sweet as I remember, and had a pleasing tartness.

The café is elegantly simple. White walls with the interior walls decorated with lines of Arabic writing. We sat overlooking large windows which were great for people watching. I also liked the small touches of bluestone surrounding the doorway, and a wooden panelled ceiling which avoided whitewashing the historic feel of the old terraced building. And at the counter is a very tempting display of Middle Eastern sweet treats such as halva, Turkish delight and baklava. With friendly waiting staff in a chartreuse green aprons, the ambience just added to the good feelings about our food.

Lastly, a comment on photography in cafes. I have been to a few places recently which I haven’t blogged due to it being difficult to take photos either because it was too dark or too awkward or because I forgot the camera. So I felt a little self-conscious when I took out my camera to photograph my breakfast and the people at the next table turned around to talk about what we had ordered. But I am always curious about what others order, and these people seemed to have a long wait for their friend before they ordered so I hope some vicarious enjoyment of the food helped their time pass.

Update March 2008
I have eaten dinner at Rumi a couple of times in the last few months and highly recommend it. After the first visit, I was tempted to try making the Carrots with Dukkah and Tahini. The second visit, the group I was with chose to have a banquet and I was impressed that they made a vegetarian version of every dish on the banquet menu. As with our breakfasts, the food is cooked just right and the dishes are innovative. But I have been told that they no longer serve breakfasts.

Rumi
132 Lygon Street (update April 2009 - Rumi has moved to 116 Lygon St)
East Brunswick VIC 3057
Phone: (03) 9388 8255

Friday Night Tacos

One of my work colleagues goes to the Vic Market regularly at lunchtime and on Friday she suggested I come along. I love going with Judy because she knows the prices and loves the produce so it is always a pleasure. And it meant I could get the veggies I needed rather than stopping off at the supermarket on the way home.

I already knew what I was making for dinner. E has been asking for Mexican this week so I had decided to make tacos. I have been looking for tinned black beans because I am too lazy to cook my own, but I was a bit disappointed to read on the label that the the tin I finally found was from the USA and the beans weren’t as coal black as the label promised, so I doubt I will buy them again. (I am reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and am interested in trying to see if I can eat more local food – which in the first instance means trying to be aware where my food comes from.)

I have written below how I made my chilli non carne as it was a nice little esoteric effort that was a combination of whim and recycling (with my apologies to the purists)! I have had a yen to make soup with apricots and lentils – and I hope you will see it here in the not too distant future. Since I had decided on tacos I thought I could put apricots in the chilli non carne. I am a lover of Australian dried apricots - they are tarter, darker and chewier than the Turkish dried apricots. The Australian ones are also halved and look like little orange ears the way they dry. I have a feeling I found them hard to find in the UK so I am not sure how readily available they are outside Australia. (I have included a photo of them so you know what I am talking about). I also bought a falafel in pitta bread for lunch instead of my soup, so I was pleased when I realised I could avoid waste by adding it to the chilli non carne.

I love having tacos and doing a spread of interesting fillings. On Friday we had tomato, red capsicum, avocado, lettuce, grated cheese, yoghurt and chilli non carne. Tacos are such a great sociable and messy meal. So let me tell you my tacos story.

When I was a naïve 18 year old, I lived in a residential college at my university. It was one of those archaic institutions where we would attend dinner wearing academic gowns and the staff sat at high table. But at lunchtime, staff sat among us. We ate very well for lunches and I have never forgotten having tacos one day. I happened to sit next to the thin graceful nun who was our principal. I was curious to see if she could eat tacos and retain her poise. But rather than stuff a taco and find half of it running down her hands and spilling in her lap (as I do) she put the fillings on the plate and had her unstuffed taco shells at the side. So if you ever need to eat tacos elegantly, I guess that is the way to do it. But where is the fun in that!

Black bean and apricot chilli non carne
(serves 4-6)

1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped finely
1 medium carrot, diced
2 zucchini, diced
1 x 440g tin black beans, drained and rinsed
1 x 400g tin corn kernels, drained and rinsed
1 x 400g tin diced tomatoes
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp chilli paste
1 tsp cumin powder
½ tsp dried oregano
9 Australian dried apricots, chopped
400ml orange soup

I cooked the onion, garlic and carrot in about 1 cm of water in a big stockpot for 5-10 minutes on a medium heat, til the onion was starting to soften. Then I added the rest of the ingredients, brought it to the boil and cooked another 5 minutes. I then turned off the heat, waited for E to get home from work and heated it up for another 5-10 minutes when he got home. If you aren’t waiting for others to get home you can probably do it a little quicker!

On the Stereo:
Reprise 1990-1999: Vangelis

Bonza Baked Potatoes!

I love baked potatoes. They are fantastic fast food. I remember in summer earlier this year, looking for something to eat on Australia Day and looking for some late lunch in the afternoon at a cluster of burger vans. How happy was I to find a hot potato van to save me from unrelenting fattiness of deep fried food. When I worked in Edinburgh, there was a great baked potato shop on Cockburn Street which would serve huge baked potatoes with vegetarian haggis which was always a treat at lunchtime. Vegetarians are treated so much better in the UK! But baked potato stalls always treat vegetarians well.

The beautiful thing about baked potatoes is that they are so easy to make at home - if you have time. But I often just forget about them as an option. Maybe it’s because I like them with salad but don’t want the oven on for hours in summer. Maybe I don't often have time to bake them long enough. I love them when they have been in the oven so long they have a thick and crunchy skin and sweet soft flesh.

I was laid low at home earlier in the week with no energy to think about cooking. By evening I hadn’t eaten much and needed some vegetables. It had to be easy and the flavours had to be simple. I remembered a recipe I had seen in Julia Stafford’s Vegetarian Cookbook on a recent ramble through my cookbooks. It was called Baked Beany Potatoes with Pesto.

This was a perfect meal to do (adapted slightly to what I had in the house). All I needed to do with put some pierced potatoes in a hot oven for 90 minutes and then I could just lie on the couch and feel sorry for myself. When they were almost ready, I chopped some veggies (spring onions, carrot, red capsicum, tomato, avocado, baby spinach) and tossed them with chickpeas, lemon and pepper. Then I placed one or two potatoes (they are never as huge as the ones you get in a takeaway) in a bowl, sprinkle with grated cheese, generously scatter vegetable/chickpea mixture, and top with a dollop of yoghurt and a spoonful of pesto. Thank you Julia!

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The Best of: Vangelis

Baking cake for climate change

My friend Yarrow has started up a climate change discussion group through the Big Switch website. The group is based in Wills electorate of Melbourne (and if you know your electorate you are much more knowledgeable than me, but Moreland might mean a bit more to locals) and is called Eat Cake, Save the World.

Yaz knows that I might be a little hesitant about joining political groups but I will always be interested in cake. So I am in! The idea is that we meet, bake cake, and talk about what we might do about climate change – a bit of thinking globally and acting locally.

The cake we chose is a favourite Vikki Leng vegan chocolate cake recipe that has tofu, coconut cream and dates to make it moist and sweet. It sounds crazy but it works. I have made it a few times before but unfortunately this was not its most successful incarnation – I think it needed a little more time in the oven. This is not a rich chocolatey one that is so rich and fudgy that it can cope with a gooey centre. No, it bakes firm with a crumb-like texture.

It can easily be done as a vegan cake but I had forgotten to bring the soy milk, so we used cow’s milk. I think this recipe is comparatively low fat. Yaz had thought that coconut cream is high in fat, but when we compared it to butter we were pleasantly surprised. We also did half wholemeal flour and half white flour. Nevertheless it is an old fashioned wholesomely healthy vegan cake with a dense texture than comes from wholemeal flour and dates rather than chocolate. But I still find it pleasing.

Yaz was keen to make the recommended chocolate and date cream to ice the cake. I enjoyed stirring the dates, cocoa and water over the heat and seeing it get all pulpy. The icing was ok, but a bit sweet for my liking. Yaz loved it and so did E. I am glad to have tried it although I don’t have much inclination to make it again.

The cake was cautiously appreciated - however once others tried it with cream they were much happier with it - but that wasn't my sort of thing! It felt like a good honest cake to be eating while we discussed water saving devices, organic food, and light bulbs. I also had one of the most curiously pleasing teas I’ve ever had – salted cherry green tea! It was a relaxed (and small) meeting which I enjoyed. I’ll be interested to see how this group develops. I suspect the baking wont always be so healthy!

Chocolate Coconut and Date Cake
(from A Vegetarian Feast by Vikki Leng)

250g tofu, drained
225ml coconut cream
3 tbsp honey
½ cup (125ml) soy milk (or cow’s milk)
2 cups (250g) wholemeal self raising flour (or use half wholemeal and half white)
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 cup (155g) chopped pitted dates

Chocolate and Date Cream:
1 cup (155g) chopped pitted dates
1 tbsp cocoa powder
½ cup (125ml) water

To make cake:
Blend tofu, coconut cream, honey and milk in food processor or blender. Pour into bowl and ‘fold’ in remaining ingredients. (Our mixture was quite stiff and didn’t fold and pour as the recipe suggested.) Spoon mixture into lined and greased round 20cm cake tin and bake in moderate oven (180C) for 30 minutes or til a skewer comes out cleanly. Cool on a wire rack. You can ice with Chocolate and Date Cream while still warm (but I think it tastes good fresh and un-iced).

To make icing:
Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and warm gradually. The recipe says bring to boil and simmer til dates become pulpy but ours never boiled as it warmed slowly. We also found we needed to add a bit more water. The recipe says to blend in food processor but we didn’t blend it further.

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