Pumpkin, Ricotta and Facon Spaghetti Bake

Last week the doctor said that Sylvia was too sick for childcare so I needed some sturdy meals to see me through some days at home with a sick grizzly child. I decided to try Helen’s Sicilian Spaghetti Cake. It was made easier to put together because Sylvia insisted on staying outside playing in her favourite pots of dirt.

Deciding what to include was made easier in an unexpected way. I was thinking about what to include instead of bacon and perusing the comments on Helen’s post. There was my own suggestion of pumpkin that I had forgotten. (So next time you are wondering if you should comment on a post, here is one reason to do so!) I decided to make facon out of tempeh and add some parmesan for some of the intensity that would have been found in the bacon. I was pleased to be able to use a lemon and some baby silverbeet from the garden.

My version was remarkably different to Helen’s. Hers was a round spaghetti cake filled with lemony ricotta, bacon, olives and artichokes. Mine was a roasting pan bake with roasted pumpkin, sun dried tomatoes and facon, which all fused with the ricotta to give it a wonderful flavour. I didn’t find the need for the generosity with olive oil that Helen encouraged, which may be due to the different ingredients I used.

It was only when we ate that I found the taste familiar and identified it as similar to a macaroni cheese that I had posted a few years ago. However, this dish had different flavours and was less heavy. I think the facon was essential in replacing the saltiness in the bacon, even though it made the dish a little more complex. I am yet to find a perfect facon recipe as I just can't work out how to get it as crispy as bacon, but I will keep searching.

The best surprise was that Sylvia loved it. She now rejects a lot of food I make for dinner. But she loves spaghetti and enjoyed shoving the long wriggly strands in her mouth, especially when she grabbed them off my plate. I hoped that some of the vegetables and facon stuck to the pasta but I think that kids are often as sneaky as parents when it comes to food.

The pasta bake lasted for a few nights as well as doing very well for the odd lunch and night time snack. It reheated well but Sylvia got less and less enthused each night we had it. Not to worry. E loved it and I was grateful to have the delicious leftovers at the end of a few tiring days.

I am also sending this to Helen of Fuss Free Flavours for this week’s Presto Pasta Nights (#171), the event coordinated by Ruth of Once Upon a Feast.

Previously on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
This time last year: Breakfast Burritos – My Way!
This time two years ago: Miss Marple’s Tea Room – cosy charm
This time three years ago: Mexicale Pie - an old favourite

Pumpkin, Ricotta and Facon Spaghetti Bake
inspired by Food Stories
serves 8

• 700g pumpkin, trimmed, peeled and cut in chunks
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• pinch salt
• 500g uncooked spaghetti
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2 medium onion, finely chopped
  
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  
• handful baby silverbeet, finely sliced
  
• 250g ricotta cheese
  
• A generous handful of parsley, chopped
  
• juice of one lemon
  
• 2 tbsp olive oil for mixing
  
• 1 bunch basil, roughly chopped
  
• ¾ cup frozen peas
  
• 1 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
  
• 1 batch of facon, as below (or use some fried shop bought facon)
  

Toss pumpkin with olive oil and pinch of salt in a roasting dish and bake at 220 C for 30 minutes or until soft.

Cook the spaghetti til it is a little less cooked than you would like. I simmered mine for about 8-9 minutes in a large stockpot because it is far more pasta than I usually would cook.

Fry onion in 1 tsp olive oil for about 10 minutes till golden brown. Add garlic and silverbeet and fry another 1-2 minutes.

Mix together pumpkin, onion mixture and remaining ingredients then add cooked spaghetti and toss so it is coated evenly with the ricotta mixture. Coating the spaghetti is not easy because there is so much and it loves to clump together but using a spiked spaghetti serving spoon and mixing in my stockpot helped me.

Scrape all the spaghetti mixture into a greased roasting dish – I used the same one that I roasted the pumpkin in (but cleaned it first). Bake at 220 C till crispy and brown on top.

Facon (Tempeh bacon)
adapted from Diet Dessert and Dogs and Vegan Brunch

• 300g tempeh
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• ½ tsp smoked paprika
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp lemon juice quarter lemon
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Slice tempeh into wafer thin slices and place in a large plastic tub. Toss with remaining ingredients and marinate for about 45 minutes (or more if you get organised), giving a good stir every now and again. Arrange slices in a large roasting try and bake until most of the moisture has been absorbed. I baked mine for 15 minutes at 180 C and then for 15 minutes at 220 C. I always live in hope of crispy facon but have only managed to get good flavour but not the right texture.

On the stereo
What I did on my holidays: an introduction to…: Fairport Convention

Falafel for E, Pizza for Sylvia

Last night I got home from work and told E that I had decided we would have falafel for dinner. I had bought some falafel on special and it's best-by date was yesterday. He looked at me in surprise and said, but we had most of them for lunch. Necessity being the mother of invention, dinner morphed into falafel pizza on turkish bread.

I love trying different pizza toppings. Last night it was inspired by the contents of the fridge: mashed pumpkin, ricotta, steamed broccoli, diced tomato, crumbled falafel, and grated mozzarella cheese on top of two halves of a small turkish bread baked in a hot oven for about 10-15 minutes. Delicious.

Most amusing was my help in the kitchen. Sylvia was grizzly so I put her in the high chair by me and placed the turkish bread on the tray in front of her. She was fascinated by the ricotta and kept digging a chubby finger in it. She also enjoyed sprinkling some of the toppings on it. But when it came out of the oven, she turned up her nose and left it to E and me to enjoy it.

Previously on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
This time last year: NCR Quinoa, Cabbage and Corn Soup
This time two years ago: Corn bread, borscht and common sense
This time three years ago: Mexicale Pie - an old favourite

On the Stereo:
Early Morning Hush - Notes from the UK Folk Underground 1969-1976: Various Artists

Pumpkin soup for busy days

I stood in the middle of the kitchen not knowing what to eat for dinner. I was tired after a busy day at work and the night was slipping away. E suggested pasta and pesto but I needed something full of healthy vegetables. I try to eat well but it really is easier when there is plenty of energy and time.

E tries to help but what do you expect from a man who sees “tins toms” on a shopping list and buys two packets of tim tams – an extra one because he expected I would be baking with the chocolate biscuits. Surely everyone know tins toms means tins of tomatoes!I had a packet of soba noodles and decided to turn them into soup. I perused my savoury recipes notebook before finding the recipe that I had in mind. Somen Noodles in Autumn Broth. From The Age Good Weekend Magazine many years ago. It was bursting with vegetables and flavours: pumpkin, mushrooms, yellow squash, 100ml of mirin, fish sauce, kombu, white miso. I used the vegetables I had and eased off on the seasoning. The fish sauce was replaced with tamari and a touch of umeboshi vinegar. I found some leftover brown rice in the fridge that was used instead of the soba noodles.The soup was just what I needed. Delicious, seasonal, packed with vegetables and light enough to leave room for dessert. Which was just as well because I had some leftover rhubarb and quince crumble (recipe soon). My only quibble was that I could have cooked the Brussels sprouts a little less.I was pleased to have leftovers the following night because we had a full day visiting Heide Museum of Modern Art and I could just warm up the soup when we got home. It had been quite an outing because it was our first trip where Sylvia constantly wanted to be out of the stroller and digging her fingers in dirt or climbing any stairs she could find. I enjoyed seeing the house where Sunday and John Reed had lived (Heide I) especially the warm inviting library. I liked Simryn Gill’s exhibit though the corner where the public was invited to rip up old books to make paper boats looked like the cleaners had forgotten to clean up (but it was fun).This was last weekend not yesterday. This weekend we have all been snuffly and miserable. We have missed two of Sylvia’s cousins’ birthdays and I have had Sylvia sleep on my lap for over an hour today. I have made soup that looks like Dickensian gruel but fortunately we have been comforted by a batch of pumpkin scones. As I write, E is playing guitar and Sylvia has run into the lounge room with his plectrums giggling mischievously.

And just to prove E is not the only one to make mistakes (with tins toms) I will tell you about my cinema expedition last Sunday. I raced to the cinema thinking that my free cinema pass expired at the end of June. It was fortunately that I had misread the due date, which was actually the end of July, because I found that I was at the wrong cinema chain. Going to the cinema is a rare treat these days so I paid up and saw Animal Kingdom anyway. I highly recommend this well made Australian film about the demise of a criminal family. On the way home I finally got Sylvia some bookends for the books in her room. I also highly recommend this soup. It is the sort of thing that I make in summer often but don’t often make a winter version that is hearty enough to satisfy but wont weigh me down.

Previously on Green Gourmet Giraffe:This time last year: Slideshows, Nostalgia and Hedgehog
This time two years ago: Curious Chipotles and Bonza Burritos
This time three years ago: Green Refectory Café: cakes galore

Japanese-style Pumpkin, Sprouts and Tofu Soup
Serves 4

• 1 strip of dried kombu (mine was about 10-12cm long)
• 500ml lightly seasoned stock
• 500ml water
• 350g firm tofu 
• 12 slices dried shitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp dashi powder (about ½ one of my sachets)
• 2 thumb sized knobs of ginger, finely grated
• 1 large carrot, cut into matchsticks
• 800g pumpkin, peeled and chopped
• kernels of one corn cob
• 1 cup cooked brown rice
• about 10 brussels sprouts, trimmed and quartered
• 1 tbsp white miso
• 1 tbsp tamari (or less)
• 3 tbsp mirin
• 1-2 spring onions, finely chopped
• stalk of one bunch of broccoli, peeled and finely chopped

Soak kombu in cold water for about 15 minutes (which can be done while you are preparing veg), then drain and cut into thin strips. (The soaking liquid can be reserved and tipped into the soup)

Place stock, water, tofu, shitake mushrooms, dash, ginger and carrot into a large saucepan or stockpot and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Add pumpkin, corn kernels, brown rice and kombu and simmer for 5 minutes. Add Brussels sprouts and cook for about 3 minutes.

While the vegetables are cooking, spoon some hot stock into a cup or small bowl and dissolve the white miso into the stock. Stir in tamari and mirin.

Add miso mixture, spring onions and broccoli stalk to the soup. Simmer for about 1-2 minutes. Serve hot.

On the stereo:Calling for Vanished Faces: Current 93

Lemon Slice and some Nostalgia

It has been another of those weeks. Ill health, new speed restrictions on Sydney Road, and an expired parking permit have all been sent to try me. Fortunately I have had lemon slice to cheer me up. This is another of my childhood slices that immerses me in nostalgia.

I am not usually interested in sweet lemon recipes. When my mum made lemon pudding or lemon meringue pie when I was little I went without dessert. When lemon tart is brought to morning tea at work I find it easy to refuse. But when lemon juice meets the magic of condensed milk and marie biscuits in lemon slice, I must have a piece.

Like hedgehog and chocolate caramel slice, lemon slice is a classic Australian slice that every housewife made when I was growing up. I think it was the favourite of my oldest sister. They were often found in cake stalls, church fetes and biscuit bins. It harks back to a time when everyone had a lemon tree in their backyard. It was easy enough for kids to help out with making it. Today you will find lemon slice in cafes but all too often it is cut into monstrously large slabs that have dried out in the display cabinet and don't resemble the slice that I grew up with.

I made a batch of lemon slice last year and intended to blog it but I misread the recipe. Instead of adding half a tin of condensed milk, I added a full tin. I couldn’t for the life of me work out why it was so gooey. I had made it take to meet up with some other mothers and was a bit embarrassed at it. They loved it. After all, you can never have too much condensed milk.

This week I made lemon slice when I was at home with Sylvia because she was too sick to go to child care. We had plenty of lemons on the tree and I thought lemon might be good for our colds. E loved it last time. Sylvia was quite interested in watching me crushing the marie biscuits and helped by sampling a small piece of biscuit or two. I didn’t have much time. By the time I was mixing it together I was racing to get it in the tin because she was so grizzly. So I can tell you it comes together in a flash with no baking.

I found the freshly made slice quite sharp with the lemon juice, perhaps because the last time I had double the condensed milk. This slice goes against a lot of my preferences. Not only does it have a predominant lemon flavour but it needed icing (frosting) and was better for firming up in the fridge. The icing took the edge off the lemon. The contrast of the smooth buttery slightly sour biscuit with the tooth-achingly sweet pastiness of the icing and the slight crunch of the coconut is just right.

For those wondering where the recipe came from, I cannot say. It went into my sweet recipes notebook many years ago when my handwriting was neater and my waistline slimmer. I assume I got the recipe from my mum. After all she has been making it all my life. I have written up what I did for the icing but my mother would never be so precise.

Nostalgia never goes out of fashion but lately it has seemed to be the dish of the day. Here are a few nostalgia trips I have seen recently:

• My personal favourite is the competition at Big M for voting for revisiting past flavours. I never drink flavoured milk like Big M but I have fond memories of my dad jumping on a Big M carton and of how popular blueberry Big M was at primary school, even though personally I though it tasted like dishwashing liquid.

• I can’t mention nostalgia without reference to MasterChef on Wednesday where the teams botched their challenge of baking traditional Australian recipes for the CWA ladies. I felt smug that I can bake the scones and fruitcake, and have made lamingtons with my mum (should blog them someday). As for the Neapolitan cake, I haven’t made one with the coloured layers but I can make a butter cake.

• Some people seem nostalgic for the good old days when apparently everyone was married with kids. Our new Prime Minister is not only female but also childless and living in a de facto relationship. My angriest moments this week were over Bettina Arndt’s rant about this de facto relationship being a bad influence. According to this article, it seems you still aren’t allowed to choose career over children, even when your career takes you into the most powerful position in the country! Betina Arndt needs to spend more time baking scones! (I'll refer you to Myf Warhurst's response if you want to read more.)

• Last night I read a beautifully-written post by Kim at Affairs of Living about her life long love affair with rhubarb that comes from her family’s nurturing of some of the best local rhuabarb plants. She writes “I love knowing that my great-grandparents ate rhubarb pies made from these same plants. … It is almost like great-grandma is right there with me when I'm picking a stalk.”

• Finally we are experiencing the coldest wettest winter for the first time in years.This morning on the radio, Jon Faine was talking about covering up his frangipani tree with a garbage bag to protect it from frost.I so rarely hear anyone preparing for frosts these days but it reminds me of my mother trying to protect her young jacaranda plants from the frost when I was little.

I am sending this post to Anh from A Food Lovers Journey who is hosting this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging (#240). This event highlights uses of fruit, vegetables, herbs and seeds around the blogosphere and it is coordinated by Haalo and was founded by Kalyn.

Previously on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
This time last year: A Tale of Carrot and Feta Dip
This time two years ago: Sparkles the Rabbit Cake
This time three years ago: The Worcestershire Sauce Puzzle

Lemon Slice
from my mum

1 packet (250g) marie biscuits
½ cup (90g) coconut
½ tin (400g tin) of condensed milk
125g butter, melted
juice of 1 lemon

Lemon Icing:1 cup icing sugar
1-2 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp softened butter
extra coconut for sprinkling

Line a slice tin (about 18 x 28cm) with greaseproof paper. I didn’t worry about greasing the bits untouched by paper because there is so much butter in the slice.

Crush marie biscuits – I used a rolling pin and then the bottom of a drinking glass to bash the biscuits about in a large mixing bowl. You want a few small chunks and a lot of finely crushed crumb. Mix with coconut. Pour in condensed milk, butter and lemon juice and stir until combined. Scrape the mixture into prepared tin and smooth with the back of a spoon.

Make icing by mixing icing sugar, lemon juice and butter with a few dribbles of hot water (between 1-2 tablespoons). Adjust ingredients slightly, if necessary, until you are happy with the taste and spreading consistency. Spread icing over slice and sprinkle generously with extra coconut.

Place slice in fridge to firm up. Cut into squares or bars and store in an airtight container in the fridge.

NOTES: I made this in 2018 and accidentally put the butter with the condensed milk so I melted them together and it was quite hot when I added the liquid to the biscuits and coconut.  This was not ideal - a bit more mushy than usual but edible.  I took some photos and have replaced some of the original ones with my photos of the finger shaped bars.

On the stereo:
Propaganda ‘900: J Orphic and Jorvalla

The Comforts of Rice Pudding

"Both the heart and the stomach thrill to … an old fashioned rice pudding that makes magic of just milk, rice and sugar", wrote Terry Durack in the The Age Good Weekend Magazine this weekend just passed.

It is a lovely piece that articulates the Australian attitudes to puddings. They are not as the English seem to think, “anything served at the tail end of the meal”. Puddings are sweet, sticky, stodgy, steamy mounds of nostalgia. They are warm with dense, cake-like crumb, plump dried fruit, sweet stewed fruit and never complete without a sauce or cream of some sort. This is comfort food as mum made it.

I made rice pudding on Sunday night. E has been hankering after it because he remembers his mum making it for him as a child. I asked his sister HH about it and she said yes she remembered it cooking such a long time that she would smell it when she got home from school. Like my mum’s, it was filled with creamy sweet clumpy rice and plump sultanas under a brown skin.

I was never crazy about my mum’s rice pudding. But making just the sort of pudding we had as children filled me with nostalgia and it tasted just so good. It made me think of the 9 of us seated around the big wooden table with our spoons by us, watching my mother with a stack of dessert bowls and a large serving spoon ready to dig into the a steaming dish of rice pudding. She gave each bowl of rice pudding a splash of milk and a sprinkle of sugar before passing it out to us. I remember our old yellow plastic sugar bowl but I can’t remember if she put the milk in a jug.

I’m not the only one to find it evocative. E loved it. I asked if it was like his mum’s and he said his mum’s had even less liquid but was very similar. (Whereas I thought my mum’s was a little more creamy.) We expected Sylvia to eat it because she loves rice and sweet food but she just picked out the sultanas. Maybe one day she will learn to love it.

Despite the rice pudding being a trip down memory lane, I was aware that I have changed and I felt that it needed stewed fruit after seeing Nigel’s rice pudding with poached damsons. Being winter here, stewed apple and/or rhubarb seemed quite fitting but I had blueberries in the freezer and made a quick sauce with them.

It is not the first time I have revisited rice pudding. Last time I veered even further from my mum’s with a chocolate rice pudding made on the stove top. Lately when talking to my mum she told me that rice pudding on the stove top was actually called creamed rice. Traditional rice pudding is cooked slowly in the oven. It is so easy that I could put in the oven and go outside to play with Sylvia while it cooked.

Eating such family dishes bring about such comfort through filling the tummy and nurturing the soul. They are not just about our childhoods but they connect us to our foremothers. My mum learned a lot of her cooking from her own mother. My grandmother is very much in my thoughts at the moment after visiting her in hospital yesterday. She would be proud of my rice pudding.

Previously on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
This time last year: Awesomely Delicious GF Pumpkin Brownies
This time two years ago: Airport Novels and Comfort Food
This time three years ago: Crown Cake for Princess Madeline

Rice Pudding with Blueberries
serves 4-6

Rice pudding
From Australian Women’s Weekly Old Fashioned Favourites

2½ cups milk (I used full fat)
½ cup uncooked medium grain rice (I used Arborio rice)
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup sultanas
½ tsp vanilla essence (I used ½ a vanilla bean)
2 tsp butter
freshly grated nutmeg (about ½ tsp)

Blueberry sauce:

1½ cups blueberries (I used frozen)
splash of lemon (about a teaspoon)
generous splash of maple syrup (maybe a tablespoon)
1 teaspoon of cornflour (optional)

Mix milk, rice and sugar in a greased medium baking dish. Add vanilla essence if using. If using a vanilla bean, slice it in half and scrape the insides into the milk mixture. Mix and then place the bean pods on top of the mixture. Dot with butter. Bake at 160 C (or 170 C if like me you have a slow old oven) for about 1 hour. Remove from oven and grate nutmeg over the top. Return to the oven for another 20 minutes. It is ready when there is a slightly browned skin on top and then pudding feels firm to touch because the rice has absorbed most of the milk.

When the pudding is cooked, let sit aside and prepare the blueberry sauce by gently bringing all ingredients to the boil in a saucepan. (If you add cornflour add just a little liquid to dissolve it before adding to mixture so it doesn’t get lumpy.) Serve warm rice pudding with warm blueberry sauce.

On the stereo:
Schattenkrieger: Schattenspiel

Food props - food photography

Ilva at Lucilian Delights has started a series called Food Props on Sunday and she has invited bloggers to join in her reflections on the props that surround food in our photos. I can’t resist a bit of navel gazing!

I feel that I should start with a disclaimer. I am not in the league of Ilva and her guest posts. I don’t have a studio or an SLR camera or cupboards devoted to ‘props’. I don’t have the time or patience to take photos of breathtaking beauty. Most of my meals are photographed hot in the minutes before eating them.

On the other hand, I have taken so many photos of food in the three years since starting this blog that I have learnt a thing or two. Probably the most important thing for you to know about my food photography is that it is a window into my world. I take delight in the curve of a pumpkin or the sheen on an apple but I find that my personal life can’t help but creep into many of my photos.

The plates and bowls that I serve on are ones that we use in our daily life. When I have time to set up a photo, I usually look around my house for inspiration. Sometimes it is an ornament, sometimes one of Sylvia’s toys or even a suduko puzzle.

So when thinking about food props, the entire contents of my house seems to be my box of props, though first port of call is always my kitchen. First decision is often a plate, a bowl, a casserole dish or a tea towel. I love colour and patterns. I love bold and pretty and funky. Very few of my crockery is white though my kitchen is not as colourful as I would like.

Some plain colour is useful. When it comes to background, I struggle to keep the clutter at bay. Some days I use the back of the oven or white walls for background. Tea towels, pillow slips and chopping boards have been requisitioned at times. Though I often take close ups where only the inside of the bowl is visible. If I do have time, I will often arrange food on one of the rugs, in the backyard or on the kitchen floor. (Unfortunately my kitchen table is in a dark corner and rarely is used for photos.)

Many of my kitchenware was purchased before blogging. But not all. I rarely buy anything for the kitchen these days without thinking about how it might appear in my food photography. No matter how long I have owned a dish or ornament, when I use it I often find myself filled with memories. I remember who gave it to me or where it was purchased, or when we used it in a dinner party in a student household. Occasionally I even take photos at other people's houses when the food is shared or prepared there. It gives some new views but most of all captures the memory of the occasion.

If I have the time, energy and sunlight, I sometimes choose some quirky item to appear in a photo alongside the food. It is often a reminder of that moment in time. A new toy received as a gift, a teething ring that Sylvia has needed that day, a tea towel I have just bought on holidays. I fear that the photos mean much more to me than readers but I hope that we can all enjoy the fun.

As you will have already gathered, friends and family are often present in my photos, whether through gifts or memories. Some are more present than others. I have a blog policy of no faces but I do love hands. They are so expressive. Often Sylvia is around when I am photographing and her pudgy little hand makes its way into the photo. I love capturing the ephemeral in photos - a gesture, packaging, peels or a scribbled list.

So Ilva, you have asked about my food props. They range from anything that will prevent my soup being a puddle on the floor (to paraphrase Bron Marshall), to the ornaments on the shelves in the loungeroom, to Sylvia's toys, to the backyard plants, to a wee curious hand. My food props are full of colour, of fun, and of meaning.

Going on a picnic with nutroast

It has been quite a week. In this side of the world it was the winter solstice. In our country, we had the appointment of Australia’s first female Prime Minister. In our house we had many chocolate treats, a soup that reminded me of gravy and a nut roast that gave the soup new life as a sauce. The nut roast may have been inspired by the soup and a celebration of the solstice, but it was also the perfect offering for a virtual picnic.

I found the nut roast recipe many months ago via the International Vegetarian Union list of cookbooks. I love browsing the historic cookbooks and found one called Modern Meatless Cookbook: five hundred recipes for preparing food with special reference to cooking without meat published by the House of Rest, San Jose California in 1907.

The idea of baking a nut roast covered in mashed potato appealed in a daggy retro sort of way. The minimal instructions in these recipes always scares me a little. This one had all of two sentences: “Mold into a roll. Spread with a covering of mashed potatoes and bake in slow oven until well browned.” It was not quite that simple. So I have modernised the recipe a bit in my adaption.

Though the recipe looked straightforward, there were many components and it took me some hours to make. I started cracking the walnuts mid afternoon while Sylvia insisted on staying outside in the garden and digging in some pots of dirt. Zinc ran around like a crazy cat looking for new places to explore. She managed to climb on the handle bars of E’s neglected bike and looked for all the world like she was trying to figure out how to work the damned contraption.

I ground nuts, boiled rice, made fresh breadcrumbs, fried onion, boiled potatoes and in the middle of it all I had to run out to pick up the car from its service. I also burnt the rice while washing the dirt off Sylvia's hands but managed to salvage enough of it. When we sat down to eat it, the work was worthwhile. The nut roast was dense and substantial – dare I even say meaty! I loved the combination of ground nuts, breadcrumbs and rice. (E loved it but Sylvia was not a fan.)

When I first found the recipe, I had intended to serve it with this sherry gravy. Meanwhile I made a pumpkin soup with some leftover beetroot and rhubarb crumble. It wasn’t quite right and seemed more gravy than soup. In fact, I felt it was in need of a nut roast and hence dug out this recipe. The smooth well seasoned sauce with a hint of piquancy was perfect. It pooled around the slab of nut roast the mound of mashed potato and the pile of brussel sprouts. It was a great way to include more vegies in the meal.

One thing I loved about the nut roast was the crispy little layer of mashed potato. In fact when I sliced it up I thought it would make great finger food. I knew the Louise was holding a virtual picnic and thought she would love some nutroast. Hence my special picnic photos (which are actually taken at night as it is winter here but just ignore that and admire the little capsicums and tomatoes from my mum's garden).

This blog event, being held by Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations, is quite different to most events that I participate in. It is based on the picnic game – you know, the one where you say "I went on a picnic and I took an Apple", and the next person picks something starting with B and the next person picks something starting with C and so on. Each person also has to remember the letters before them so the last person has to recite a long list. Well fortunately my memory is not being tested here but there is an alphabetical list to include. So here is my contribution to Louise’s picnic game:

I’m going on a picnic and I’m bringing:

A: Almond Joy Pie
B: Baked Beans
C: Chocolate Picnic Cake
D: Dutch Funnel Cake
E: Easy Blender Chicken Pie
F: Five Bean Salad
G: Granola Bars
H: Herb and Cheese Pasta Salad
I Incredibly Fruity Raspberry Cakes
J: Jewelled Picnic Bars
K: Kaltschale (Cold Fruit Soup)
L: Long Island Lemonade Cocktail
M: Mushroom Tart
And I’m bringing Nut roast

Louise will post the whole picnic alphabet on Thursday 1 July so be sure to visit to check it out. I will also fill in the dishes as they are posted for A-M. For those of you who haven’t yet discovered Louise's wonderful blog, you will also find lots of fascinating information on food being celebrated each day, week and month. The picnic game celebrates National Picnic Month in July in the USA. But I think my favourite celebration I have seen on her blog lately is Kitchen Klutzes of America Day (13 June).

Previously on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
This time last year: The Amazing Chocolate Cake in a Mug
This time two years ago: BBD #11 Sprouted Bread
This time three years ago: SHF: Mud Glorious Mud (mud cake)

Walnut and rice nutroast with mashed potato crust
adapted from Modern Meatless Cookbook, p 29
serves 4-6

• 1½ cups ground walnuts
• ½ cup ground cashews
• 1½ cups cooked brown rice
• 1½ cups fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp olive oil,
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 2 eggs
• about 10-12 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
• 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• ½ tsp salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2-3 potatoes, chopped
• generous glug of milk
• knob of butter

Prepare the ingredients. For me this meant shelling and grinding the nuts, cooking the rice, processing the breadcrumbs, frying the onion in the oil til brown and cooking the potatoes for about 20 minutes and mashing them with milk and butter,

Mix nuts, brown rice, breadcrumbs, fried onions, eggs, sage leaves, tomatoes and seasoning. Adjust seasoning according to taste. The recipe said to mould into a roll and cover with mashed potatoes. My mixture was not that firm so I decided to spread it in a lined and greased 22cm square tin and spreading a thin layer of mashed potato over the top.

I baked the nut roast in the oven at 170 C for about 50 minutes and then for 15-20 minutes at 220 C until the mashed potato was browned and starting to crisp up. It reheated well the next night in the oven without any foil over it because mine wasn't that brown.

On the stereo:
self titled: art abscons / gabe unruh