In My Kitchen: September 2024

September has brought us longer days, gentle sunshine and spring rains.  It is hard to believe iwe are already well into spring.  Not so long ago it I was admiring autumn leaves glowing in the light of the early setting sun.  Now my bike rides pass trees sprouting lots of new green leaves, rabbits bounding with cute little bobtails and the evocative smell of spring flowers.  It has been a busy month with lots of delicious meals and interesting food shopping trips!  I will share more meals and outings in My Monthly Chronicles post (coming soon).

Above is a photo of what is our favourite salad of the moment: Lemon Cucumber Couscous Feta Salad.  I have renamed it from the Hungry Happens blog where we found it.  It is as simple as she says, though we are still unsure about the salad dressing.  It feels really healthy with all the greens (cucumber, rocket and we add edamame), substantial with pearl couscous and so tasty with feta stirred through.  We have already made it a few times and plan to make it often over summer.

 

I tried Serious Eat's Scallion Sourdough Pancakes and loved how simple and delicious they were.  They are not as robust as some crunchy pancakes I have had in Asian restaurants but are a great way to use up sourdough discard.  I ate mine with pumpkin soup.

The pumpkin soup was not great but when I added tahini and salt it made a it taste so much better.  Tahini is such a transforming ingredient!  I made the soup more substantial when I served it with Tomato orzo with chickpeas and mushrooms, leftover wholemeal spaghetti and green leaves.

Cauliflowers have been cheap so I made a cauliflower soup with potato and celery.  It was quite thin when blended but Sylvia is a big fan of cauliflower and enjoyed the soup with leftover vodka pasta.  I enjoyed mine with tofu bacon, peas and vodka pasta.

Sylvia has been adapting a favourite vegan banana and coconut cake recipe into a banana and choc chip cake.  I find it hard to believe she omits the desiccated coconut but somehow she is convinced this is better.  The chop chips are an excellent addition.

If the banana cake recipe is Sylvia's current favourite sweet recipe, her favourite savoury recipe is cheese and parsley muffins.  She made a variation with fresh corn (3 cobs), jalapeno (about 1/4 cup) and haloumi (sprinkled on top of the muffins.  She was not so keen on the texture when she added uncooked tofu bacon and plans to fry it next time.  These muffins were a big hit with me and excellent as a portable snack when we went to the Royal Melbourne Show.

The muffins were also great with grilled sausages an a chickpea salad.  Sylvia used 3 tins of chickpeas in her salad and winged it with the other ingredients but decided more tomato and more cucumber would be good next time.  I was really pleased to have leftovers to take into work for lunch.  We still had plenty of salad leftover to serve with tofu nuggets the next night.

We made a batch of oven baked tacos with refried beans from a can.   While I liked them, I prefer more texture than pureed beans, even with some spring onion and corn added.  When we made them a second time I made these with rapid refried beans which I have made often.  The beans are a rough mash with vegies rather than a puree.  The ingredients didn't hold together quite as well.  We love the idea and want to experiment more.   Sylvia made an avocado crema both times that went well with them.

We had leftovers to use up after the oven baked tacos.  I made quesadillas for lunch out of some remaining tortillas.  The filling was refried beans, rocket, cheese, tofu bacon, tomato slices.  They were excellent.  Crispier on the stovetop with my cast iron fry pan, but more demanding than arranging 6 in a roasting tin and turning once or twice.

Another easy leftover lunch were muffins topped with zucchini slice, grated cheese and fried tofu bacon.  I put them under the grill until the cheese was melty and then tried to wait long enough to eat so it wasn't so steaming hot that I burnt my tongue!

My sister had a peanut butter stall at the Carlton Farmers Market (which is in the North Carlton Primary School on Canning Street these days - the last time I went it was in the Rathdowne Street opposite the museum).  I enjoyed riding my bike there, catching up with my sister and wandering around the stalls.  I was delighted to buy some Good Brew kombucha, purple sprouting broccoli, Frankly Raw peanut butter, and bakes from Back Alley Bakes (capsicum stuffed muff and a kimchi and cheese scroll).  I loved having a vegan nacho pie for lunch from the Pie Thief.

We had a gardening afternoon where we cut back a lot of the rosemary and salvia out the front.  Sylvia also had taken out the woody old thyme that a friend planted for me in 2007 and planted supple young thyme.  So we have had lots of thyme and rosemary about the house and a few extra bay leaves from the garden.  Sylvia has previously dried some rosemary and catnip and has brought these to the kitchen.  We also have rhubarb and lime from my mum's garden.  Not seen is also blood oranges from Yav and lemons from Kerin.  Friends and family's citrus are appreciated while my lemon and lime trees have not yielded much fruit lately in our back yard.

These are some purchase from the supermarket that have sparked joy: Charcoal and sesame crackers, Parmesan, truffle and pepper crackers, red leicester cheese, goats cheese with dill, non alcoholic Peach bellinis and Passionfruit martinis.  Isn't it odd that kids are expected to drink sugary sweet drinks and adults expect to drink less sweet alcoholic drinks (with alcopops the bridging drink).  I like that there is more non-alcoholic drinks now that have less sugariness about them in the style of alcoholic drinks.

I tried making this Cheesey tex mex rice from the Kitchn.  It is fried for a while and mine had the smoky caramelised flavour but did not have as many crispy bits as I expected.  I used black beans instead of olives.  Sylvia did not like it much so I had a lot of it.  I had it at work lunches and for leftovers.  I made a pizza with some of it as well as tomato sauce, mushrooms and cheese.  It was really good.  On th same night I had my first go of thinly mandolinned zucchini and seasoned cream cheese with cheese on top.  It was excellent.

I used my favourite fast track sourdough pizza dough again a week later and had another go at the zucchini pizza.  After it was mandolinned thinly (with a bleeding finger tip as collateral damage), Sylvia suggested salting the zucchini which helped it be well seasoned and soften slightly.  After it stood for about 15 minutes I squeezed out the liquid and arranged it on the pizza in alternating rows with lightly steamed and chopped purple sprouting broccoli.  It was delicious hot out of the oven but also great for a cold work lunch the next day.

When Sylvia told me about the weird pairing of coke and Oreos in both the fizzy coke drink and the Oreo biscuits (cookies).  So we bought both and found that the coke didn't taste very like oreos, perhaps a bit of a vanilla scent.  The Oreos had an unnervingly accurate but chemical aroma of coke.  Sylvia could not stand the smell. I quite liked it in a weird way that was ok for a packet of biscuits but left me with no desire to buy again.

We went to the Royal Melbourne Show last week.  We came home with four showbags.  The one above is from the Craft and Cookery building.  I really loved the tote bag it came in. 

This is the contents of the showbag were a mixed bag.  I am most impressed with the hazelnut chocolate spread.  Sylvia will have a go at the Caffe Frother and is very pleased to be able to try the green tea with mango and lychee.  The dinosaur pasta will be used and so will the tapioca flour.  The cookbooks has too many photos of the hunter with his guns for me to be comfortable with it.  I cannot see us using the cream stabiliser but maybe I can give it away.  The craft supplies are something I hope we will have some fun with: wool, envelopes, invitations, glue, modelling clay, cupcake cutouts and collage pieces.

Sylvia bought a Chupa Chups showbag and a Smiths Showbag.  They were quite small and cheap (about $6-10 each).  Too many lolly pops for my liking but I am sure she will make them last.  And there was fairy floss too.  I am told that the combination of fairyfloss and salt and vinegar chips is wonderful but was not too interested in trying it!

My preference was the Old Style Liquorice showbag.  IT has a good selection of liquorice and bullets  (I took the photo after I used the liquorice allsorts in the footy platter below).  Unfortunately I bought it before I saw the Uncle John's showbag.  They do such good liquorice.  If I had waited I might have bought this one instead.

I made some cottage cheese fritters based on this recipe.  I had one for dinner with tomato relish, roast pumpkin and green leaves in a sandwich.  Since then I have enjoyed the fritters with salads and with roast pumpkin for lunches and dinners.

Last weekend was the AFL Grand Final.  We made some purchases for a platter.  I checked the ingredients of the Thins Sausage Sangas crisps and happy to find no meat  products.  .  It smelled and tasted uncannily like when we eat vegetarian sausages with sauce.  The Truffle arancini is a favourite of Sylvia's.  I loved the cheesey cauliflower pies,  My mum gave me the Chickpea Crackers which were alright but a bit stale.  The popcorn is the one that rated best in this rather amusing Guardian taste test.  And who doesn't love some berries on a platter! 

Our Grand Final platter was fairly straightforward to put together.  I had planned making our fave vegetarian sausage rolls but was too tired from the previous day's visit to the Show.  So I headed up some arancini and cauliflower cheese pies.  I chopped up some celery, carrot, capsicum.  Everything else was just a matter of arranging the charcoal crackers, chickpea crackers, Oreos, sausage sanga chps: sweet and salty popcorn, hummus, tomato sauce, sliced green apple, blood orange wedges, coke coke oreos, liquorice allsorts

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.