In My Kitchen June 2024

I am as amazed as anyone that we are at the start of July and halfway through the year.  But so much has happened and changed so far that it seems a lifetime since the start of the year.  June has seen ill health, work on our outdoor plumbing, new verandah awnings, a long weekend, the winter solstice and the end of Term 2 of school.  The weather is very wintery but I am enjoying going for bike rides with my fingerless mittens that I brought home from Scotland.  At home we are enjoying more soups and stews.  Fruit here is less plentiful with mainly mandarins and frozen berries.  More on my activities last month is in My Monthly Chronicles.  I continue to tinker with my blog header.  I am still not sure if it needs more work.  I have also updated the introduction to my Recipe Index.  And on it goes!

Above is a Chipotle Black Bean Bake, which was nice and lasted a few nights.  It was a dump and bake recipe on From My Bowl website but it took quite a bit of time to prepare the vegies.  We added kale and fresh corn as well as substituting some of a freekah and barley mix for some of the quinoa.  It was lovely with some tacos on the first night.

We've had some savoury baking this month.  Sylvia was determined to bake English muffins.  They are not technically baking.  After she kneaded the dough and left it to rise, she patted it out and cut it into stars to "bake" on the frypan.  We loved them but she saved some dough for the next day and that was a bit doughy so success seems a matter of getting the heat right.  I have also baked a Spinach and feta slice and a batch of Cheesy broccoli, carrot and corn muffins that I posted this month! 

I sometimes wish I liked eggs when they look so pretty.  Sylvia recently made some Ramen eggs.  The marinade was made by boiling soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar.  She mostly ate them with rice but I only photographed the ones she ate with toast.  She was very pleased with her work.  Meanwhile we had a ziplock bag of eggs in marinade in the fridge for a few days looking like some alien spawn.

My lemon and lime trees are hanging in there.  We have had some healthier lemons since the manky ones I posted last month.  The citrus leaf miner (CLM) seems to have abated somewhat.  No more silver trails.  Only a handful of curling leaves.  There is still less fruit on the lime tree but if it can have a period without CLM maybe I can then let the new growth flourish.

It is so satisfying to have lemons, parsley and dill from our small garden when cooking dinner.  The dill is a recent addition to the garden and is mostly thriving.  When we changed to a bigger netting cover in the original pot, the dill thrived.  But the dill that we moved to another pot has not grown so well.

I picked the lemon, parsley and dill to used in this Lemon Dill Quinoa Casserole we found on From My Bowl.  We made changes by substituting some freekah and barley for the quinoa.  I had soaked overnight after I had too much for the below stew.  

I also made the suggested Green Goddess Dressing to serve it with.  I substituted some raw cashews for two thirds of the tahini.  The tahini still was a dominant flavour.  We drizzled some on our casserole but had plenty over to use as a dip.  The green colour of the parsley and spring onions was delightful but did not photograph well!

I made this stew to use up the vegetables left in the fridge when we went grocery shopping.  It was so satisfying to have an empty crisper.  It was so satisfying to have a delicious stew rather than adding to the compost.  I also finally used a freekah and barley mix of grains.  It was freekahing amazing.

In the past I have found too many grains (in leftover stews and soups) soaks up the liquid and I wanted to avoid that.  I was really pleased the morning after cooking that the stew wasn't too stodgy.  Although I soaked the grains for about 20-30 minutes in boiling water while I chopped and fried the bulk of the vegies (celery, onion, carrot, cabbage, potato) before adding 2 tins of tomatoes, soaked grains, 3 tins of legumes, vinegar and seasoning.  The final addition was the kale.  It was so good

When I went out to an evening work function, Sylvia made Creamy Mushroom Gnocchi with added spinach.  We were both happy that there was plenty leftover.

In my draft folder were my notes of making Delia's Oven Roasted Ratatouille in 2018.  I finally made it again.  Delia Smith is a much loved British author and this is a genius way of making ratatouille that I had previously made on the stovetop.  It took a while to salt the eggplant and zucchini but it was worth the time.  I used tinned tomatoes rather than fresh tomatoes but the vegies were still roasted to crispy edges.  I would like to include this as a regular winter warmer.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased a new cast iron 27cm "Chef Pan".  I love my 25cm frypan so much but it sometimes is just a bit too small.  The Pyrolux cast iron at our local kitchen shop is a reasonable price.  However I am not quite clear why my frypan I have used so much has a very smooth cooking surface and while the new pan is more rough.  It has been fun to make meals with two cast iron pans in action.

I love my cast iron because it is so indestructible.  I wish I could say the same of my old Willow non-stick bakeware that used to be sold in supermarkets for a song.  Now so much of the metal baking tins and trays are non-stick.  Even good non-stick kitchenware does not last as long as these older ones.  The non-stick coating will eventually start to peel off.  I wish I could still find the Willow tins and trays but for now I am just trying to keep them suitable for use.  

So I was upset when this 20cm cake tin, which is like the ones I grew up using, got a rusty ring from drying against another dish.  I had worried it was the end for the tin.  Then I cleaned it with some heavy duty steel wool and a generous squirt of dishwashing liquid (because too much scrubbing without can leave a stain but the dishwashing liquid seemed to prevent that).  It is now looking back to its usual condition and should last a while longer.

Every now and again Sylvia requests her favourite Tofu Nuggets.  She would happily eat these every night.  Then she saw people posting about dino nugget volcanoes.  They looked pretty cute on mashed potato volcano with gravy lava and broccoli trees.  So we bought some dinosaur cookie cutters to shape the tofu nuggets.  It did not work because it seems that home crumbing does not look as neat as the ones made in a facory.  And the cookie cutters leave odd shaped tofu in their wake.  Not to despair.  I am sure they tasted better than the packaged ones but we wont be making dino tofu nuggets again.We might try some dino potato parsley shapes or pastry shapes or biscuits at some stage.    Although they did taste delicious!

We shared this amazing cauliflower, blue cheese and pickled onion danish from the Ovens Street Bakery (19 Ovens Street, Brunswick).  They describe themselves as a micro bakery.  Sylvia says it is a hole in the wall with some seats and a small but decent lunch menu including toasties and pizza.  She speaks very highly of them so I hope to get there some day.  Especially after tasting this wonderful savoury danish.

These purchases were probably about packaging as much as the substance.  I loved the name Tofu Tots.  Although we don't use the term Tater Tots here, it is pretty cute and then is a riff on it.  I also liked the sound of the miso mushroom flavour.  I really liked them but Sylvia was not so keen on the flavour.  The Golden Gaytime was bought because it was my favourite ice cream when I was a child and now they keep coming out with new flavours to tempt me.  Honestly, I don't love Golden Gaytimes as much as I used to and I don't rate the Strawberries and Cream flavour among their best.

We did a scan of the British food in the Aldi centre aisle.  Strangely enough they had a packet of Smiths Cheese and Pickles Crisps.  Smiths is an Australian company that does not usually sell this flavour.  It is a far more common flavour in the UK.  I though the Aldi British specials were about British brands.  We enjoyed them.

This Walkers Shortbread bus in the Aldi aisle was more British and seems more likely to be direct from the UK.  It is pretty cute with the people on the bus and some Scottish icons like puffins and castles.

We have been big fans of Melbourne Kebab Station (451 Sydney Road, Coburg).  It is an unassuming kebab shop that only takes cash payments (unless you order on UberEats) and does fantastic food.  After grocery shopping we were lacking energy and bought a large Vegetarian meal to share.  It has falafels, rice, salad, choice of two dips, and Turkish Bread.  I have had this meal a few times before but it was Sylvia's first time having the Vegetarian meal.  She loved it as much as she has loved the other food like pides and bread that she has had from here.

We bought these mini mushroom bao dumplings from an Asian supermarket in the CBD.  Sylvia had tried steaming dumplings in the microwave but found they got soggy bottoms.  I improvised with the dumplings resting on chopsticks over small tubs of water in a large enough tub that I could seal the lid so they steamed without being soggy.  They were delicious.  Perhaps I need to buy a microwave steamer container!  It would be a good investment given how much we love dumplings in our place.
 

 I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event. If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.