Gingerbread in a cookie

I have never been very interested in baking sweet biscuits (or cookies) – not the type that are just butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Too dry, too hard and too plain. I prefer them to have chocolate, caramel, nuts, fruit, spices, oats etc - like bought biscuits – tim tams, chocolate digestives, tunnocks caramel wafers. I’ve been trying to think back to the biscuits my mum made when I was a child. She made ginger biscuits, anzacs and yo-yos which were nice but not as good as her cakes and slices.

But recently I have fallen in love with home made chocolate chip cookies. They are small, transportable and full of chocolate. I love them chewy and dense with oats, and they are so ready to accommodate any texture or flavour I fancy. As I have said before, I have a great cookbook by Gwen Steege, called The Search for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie. This book is filled with the entries into a chocolate chip cookie competition in the USA. The huge range of recipes has helped me to experiment with different ideas that interest me.

One of the ingredients I have been keen to try in choc chip cookies is molasses. I love the dark mysterious bitterness of molasses. But my recent cookie baking has been for people with unknown tastes and I haven’t dared to venture too far into investigative cooking.

Chocolate chip cookies make good presents. I made a huge batch of over 100 at easter which I gave to my family as presents and also put in the freezer for snacks – they are great to take to work for that inevitable mid-morning munchies moment. This stash recently came to an end.

I looked to Gwen Steege’s book for a new recipe to try. I found one called Molasses-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. As well as having them for snacks, I wanted to take some to a friend, Will, who has just moved into a new house. I hope Will will be fine with some molasses but I did leave out the raisins as I didn’t think he would be keen on these. And if he really doesn’t like them, at least he has something to offer others visiting his new abode.

These cookies were not quite what I expected. They were dark and spicy. In fact they reminded me of gingerbread, which delighted me because I have been longing to make a chocolate gingerbread. I add some orange zest because the taste was so heavy but I think next time I might like some currants in the recipe.

They spread a lot when they cooked and were quite flat with lacy bubbles. I was a little disconcerted to find that the recipe directed me to let them cool on the tray. I have one big baking sheet that I usually lift hot cookies off so I can put the next batch in the oven straight away. The first batch were on baking paper so I was able to slide the baking paper with cookies off and start on the second lot. While the next batch were in the oven I was being impatient and lifted the cookies onto a wire rack when they were lukewarm. But I thought I could get by without baking paper for the second batch and cool them completely. Big mistake! Once cold and hard they were very hard to get off the baking sheet and I ended up with a pile of crumbly cookies and lots of broken bits. I have amended these directions in my recipe below.

Gingerbread Choc Chip Cookies
(adapted from recipe by Mrs Harriet A Kemp of Seattle)
Makes 4 dozen

½ cup SF white flour (or plain flour plus tsp of baking powder)
1 cup plain wholemeal flour
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp lemon salt (or salt)
1 tsp linseed meal (flaxseed meal)
1 cup castor sugar
185g (¾ cup) butter
1 egg
¼ cup dark molasses
¾ cup quick cooking rolled oats
¼ cup sunflower seeds (generous)
1 generous cup dark choc chips
Zest of one orange

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cream butter. Add egg and cream with butter. If you don’t have electric beaters or opt to do it by hand like me then you might need to add a spoon of flour to stop it curdling – makes a world of difference. The recipe says 2 minutes but I just did it til it seemed nicely creamy. Add remaining ingredients. The dough is quite sticky and a beautiful deep nutty brown colour.

Drop teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper. These biscuits will spread so give them a little space. Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on baking sheet 10-20 minutes. When lukewarm, lift onto wire rack to cool completely.

On the Stereo
The Love Songs of Burt Bacharach: Various Artists

Sentimental Baked Eggplants

Recently I couldn’t resist buying some lovely black glossy eggplants I’d seen on sale in the supermarket. They always bring to mind a fantastic Charmaine Solomon recipe that one of my housemates, Will, introduced me to. When I left the house I wrote down the recipe and I can’t make it without feeling a little sentimental. It brings back memories of this student household where we all ate such good food because the five of us shared the cooking. We only cooked once a week and were able to put a lot of energy and creativity into the meals. How I miss that luxury when I rush in late, wishing a good meal was placed in front of me. If Virginia Woolf was around today, she would realise money and a room of one's own isn't enough for a woman. We need time and head space too!

The recipe in question involves eggplants stuffed with a creamy ground cashew mixture and a topping of crispy garlicky cheese and breadcrumbs. I really wanted to make it for dinner last night. The ingredients were waiting at home but my energy levels were too low to throw them together. Instead I ate something which could quickly travel from freezer to microwave.

Once my hunger was appeased I returned to thoughts of eggplants. I really wanted to do my baked eggplants before they went off. I decided the best way to do this was to spend some time preparing last night so I could skip in the door tonight and pop it in the oven. It is so relaxing to cook with plenty of time, some mellow music on the stereo and E on the couch reading Nostradamas Ate My Hamster (I have to mention this bizarre title)!

I made a few changes to the recipe. One of the most exciting changes was continuing to explore Australia’s Indigenous herbs and spices. I used Tasmanian pepperberries instead of black pepper. What a lovely smell – like the name says they smelled faintly of pepper but also the sweet aroma of berries too. I put in Tabasco Sauce to please E and fresh parsley because it seems superior to dried oregano and I need to use it. I wanted to make more changes but it is such a good recipe I didn’t want to mess with it too much.

My plan worked in a way. It would have been better if I had not got caught up at work - the roasted pumpkin that I planned really should have been in the oven longer. It was only just cooked but the eggplant topping was crisp and brown in the way I dream of when I think of this recipe. The tomato sauce, which was just a jar of pasta sauce with some tomatoes, mushrooms and red wine sauce, was great. E is not a fan of eggplants but he ate it all happily.

Baked Eggplant with Cashews
(Adapted from Charmaine Solomon’s Complete Vegetarian Cookbook)
Serves 4

2 medium eggplants
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 button mushrooms, finely chopped
½ tsp ground pepperberries (or black pepper)
1 tsp salt – optional
2 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 cup ground cashews
Tabasco sauce, to taste - optional
1 cup fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs (I used light rye with caraway)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Cut eggplants in half lengthwise (Charmaine says to slice stems off but I think they look nice and help keep the shape of the eggplant so I left them on). Score deep vertical cuts in the flesh. Drop in boiling water or steam in a large saucepan for 7-10 minutes until just tender. Drain well with cut side facing down til cool enough to handle.

While eggplant is cooling do your chopping and grinding. Fry onions oil over low heat in a medium sized saucepan til golden and softening – about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and fry an additional 2 minutes. While the vegetables are frying scoop out eggplant centres, using a spoon. (Charmaine says to leave a thick shell to hold its shape but I left a fairly thin one – it still fills out ok but I figure this gives me more of a chance with E and his eggplant aversion.) Chop eggplant flesh finely. Take off the heat.

Add salt (if using – if you have salted cashews like me don’t use any salt!), pepper, cashews, and eggplant flesh. Stir to combine. Spoon mixture into eggplant shells and smooth down. I put a few drops of Tabasco Sauce on each (or you could add it to the mixture if you prefer).

Mix breadcrumbs, olive oil, garlic and cheese. Spread over filled eggplant shells.

Bake 25-35 minutes. Or you can prepare in advance like me and bake 20 minutes. I froze two halves for another day and baked the other halves for 40 minutes which gave a lovely golden brown crust but might have done less if my roast veggies had been quicker.

On the Stereo:
Is a Woman: Lambchop

Kraut Rock Cupcakes

E is a big fan of kraut rock – the more obscure, the more he loves it! I never thought this could be an inspiration for baking. But is there anything that doesn’t have some link to food!

This week E and I were discussing what I should bake. He wanted vanilla. I wanted chocolate. Finally he said I should have a kraut rock theme like Amon Düül II’s album called Yeti – I think this was an allusion to vanilla (and coconut?). But unfortunately for him, his beloved ‘krauts’ reminded me of a recipe I found recently that fascinated me: Chocolate Sauerkraut Cupcakes which Alanna at A Veggie Venture made earlier this year.

I have a fine collection of chocolate cake recipes and have cooked chocolate cakes with all sorts of interesting flavours and textures – beetroot, Guinness, mayonnaise, black pepper. So I couldn’t resist sauerkraut!

At first I thought sauerkraut with chocolate was one of the weirdest combinations I'd seen. Unlike zucchini, carrot or potato – common vegetables I have used in sweet baking – sauerkraut seems a rather strong taste to pair with sweet food. But then I checked the ingredients and it is only cabbage, salt and vinegar. Salt and vinegar are not such unusual ingredients in cake recipes. I didn’t even use the blender but just chopped it finely with my chef’s knife - it gave the cake a little texture in the way grated zucchini or carrot might but not in a strong tasting way. So don’t be afraid to try it.

E took my decision like a man and got out his signed copy of krautrocksampler: one head’s guide to the great komische musik – 1969 onwards by Julian Cope. He pointed me to a song by Amon Düül called ‘Mama Düül and her Sauerkraut-band Start Up’.

So I set about making the cupcakes. Here I have to say that I am with the Passionate Cook in my confusion about what are cupcakes and what are muffins. I have quite a few muffin cookbooks with lots of interesting ingredients. I was always under the impression muffins had lots of exciting flavours and textures, and were superior to cupcakes, which in my understanding were smaller and quite plain. So I would put these into the muffin category. But I notice it is trendy to call them cupcakes again because suddenly there are lots of cookbooks full of colourful and interesting cupcakes and not a muffin cookbook in sight.

I had to adapt Alanna’s recipe. I only have one 12 hole muffin pan and only wanted one batch so I downsized the recipe to allow for this. I also only had Self Raising Flour (ie 2 tsp baking powder added to each cup of all-purpose flour) so I think these might have been a bit lighter than intended. I also didn’t feel like getting my electric beaters and food processor out – one of the joys of muffin recipes was always that it was simply a matter of mixing the wet and dry ingredients together. And to ice them I used some orange cream cheese frosting that had been in my freezer for about a month.

For all that meddling they were good. E was pleased at their lightness. I was pleased to have some home baked chocolate goodies in the house again. I think the sauerkraut was merely seasoning and some slight texture but the recipe will take place with some of my more eccentric chocolate recipes. And I now have lots of sauerkraut to use up because it didn’t use up much of what was in the tin I bought.

Kraut Choc Cupcakes
Adapted from A Veggie Venture
Makes 12

2/3 cup sauerkraut, rinsed and drained
2/3 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup water
1½ cups self raising flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tbsp flaxseed meal (ground linseeds)
½ cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Mix margarine and butter with a spoon or electric beaters. Add eggs, sauerkraut, vanilla essence and water and stir til combined. Add remaining ingredients and mix til combined.

Line 12 hole muffin pan with cupcake paper cups (or if like me, you forget, just spray the pan with oil spray but they might be reluctant to come out). Bake for 20- 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes and remove from pan. Cool completely before icing. Alanna did a chocolate cream cheese frosting. I used an orange cream cheese frosting – in fact it was so good I would recommend some orange zest in the recipe.

On the Stereo:
Amon Düül II: Tanz der Lemminge

Degraves Espresso Bar – Built to Last

This afternoon E and I spent a good 2½ hours roaming the laneways and arcades of Melbourne city on a tour run by the CAE. Wilma Farrow, our most entertaining guide, took us through laneways of redbrick nineteenth century warehouses and early twenthieth century arcades and filled our heads with some wonderful stories. I have posted a photo of my favourite arcade, Royal Arcade with the scary Gog and Magog who fascinated me as a child.

After the tour, we were in desperate need of a seat and some warmth. So we dropped in to Degraves Espresso Bar. It suited our mood of going back in time perfectly. The overall impression when we entered is olde worlde cream walls and dark wood paneling. The air conditioners look ancient and the bar is wooden and looks to have been there for years. Our seats were rows of deep padded leather chairs that seemed to be old cinema seats – the leather had the odd tear and the wooden arm rests were a bit worn but they seemed to be built to last – much like the café. But you can tell they are cool not dowdy because the staff look art school and they play Mazzy Star on the stereo.

Many the time, E and I have passed the bustle of tables in the middle of Degraves St but we have never been into this bar. Today, I was attracted by the cakes in the window which looked like old-fashioned goodness. The cake proved to be as good as it looked. It was called a teacake but I think in Britain it is called a Victoria Sponge. Dense buttery cake with sweet buttery icing and tart berry jam sandwiched beneath the layers.

It was also good to sit in a warm cosy café. I got peppermint tea and was pleased it was loose tea leaves in a silver teapot with a proper tea strainer and a jug of hot water. My mother would approve! And there is nothing like sitting with a hot tea cup in your hand after standing about in cold drafty laneways. A perfect end to an enjoyable afternoon.

Degraves Espresso Bar
23 Degraves St
Melbourne
03 9654 1245

Asian Fusion Dinner Party

My sister Francesca and I live in adjacent suburbs and still struggle to find time for a meal together in Melbourne, so we have decided to try organising a monthly meal together. Last night was our first monthly meal.

Fran had recently had rice paper rolls and wanted to try making them. Thus set the tone for our cooking. We thought we would make an Asian meal but the recent chill in the air, as winter sets in, made us want more warm food so we decided to do Asian plus some more western dishes for warmth.

The afternoon started with a trip to Fran’s nearby Preston Market. We firstly braved the cramped Asian grocery – which yielded many interesting and bargain goodies but is not for the claustrophobic. Then we set out for fruit and vegetables. I have only been there once before on a 40°C day when everything (including the people) seemed terribly wilted. Yesterday it was full of fresh cheap food, vibrant colour, good humour and liveliness - I will be back.

So with our trolleys full of goodies we headed back to Fran’s kitchen to start our cooking. First up I did a vegetable ragout which promised an interesting mixture of ingredients including molasses, which I love for a warming winter stew. It was a little watery but tasty. (We had leftovers for dinner tonight, mixed with pumpkin and leftover sausage crumbles and served with rice.)

Then we started on the rice paper rolls. Neither of us had made these before but I had seen my mum and my sister, Chris, make them. On that occasion their problem had been separating the dried rice paper wrappers but ours separated easily. But when we soaked the first few in a bowl of warm water we were concerned that the dried wrappers had cracks in them and would not wrap our mixture well. Thankfully, after the first few, the wrappers were not cracked and they wrapped easily. We had the issue of Fran wanting to do some meat ones and working out how to differentiate them but this was quite easy. We made the mixture and then separated it so that I could add tofu and a bit more seasoning to my half. When we rolled them up, I put a parsley leave inside my wrapper. It all seemed ridiculously easy.

While I was doing the ragout, Fran had started on the fried rice – boiling 4 cups of jasmine rice so it could sit and cool while we made the rice paper rolls. Then she chopped carrot and capsicum to cook in a large saucepan with some soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sweet chilli sauce. She then added the rice, peas, snowpeas, corn kernels, pineapple chunks, chopped fried eggs, and lots more soy. Fran is a much better cook then she gives herself credit for, but isn’t as keen on her veggies as me. She was very pleased with this as it had many more veggies than she would normally use – and tasted great!

More veggies was one of our aims of the dinner. Both Fran and her partner, Steve, were very accommodating of my vegetarian diet. Steve was keen to join our cooking frenzy and chose a fragrant Simple Coconut Milk Fish Curry from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook's Companion. Fran and I had hunted down lemongrass, spring onions, garlic, kaffir lime leaves and chilli at the market to flavour the curry. Steve did some impressive pounding of ingredients with his pestle and mortar. And rather than just adding fish he put in lots of vegetables ( broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, cabbage) and put aside a vegetarian version before adding the fish. It was spicy but delicious.

For veggies on the side, we roasted potato and pumpkin with oil and salt for over two hours (crunchy, melting and the flavours almost sweet from roasting - or was that me melting from the delicious taste!). I roasted some marinated tofu alongside it. In addition I also had decided to try some Asian mushrooms. I am a button mushroom girl but I was inspired by Lucy’s photos of enoki mushrooms. I found a recipe for Mixed Asian Mushrooms in Dashi in my Vegie Food: From Vegies on the Side to the Main Event. It was the sort of recipe that had to be made minutes before serving. The result was tasty and attractive with lots of interesting textures.

It was ambitious - we cooked for 5-6 hours - but the results were worth it. We had seven of us around the table. Fran is a whiz at transforming her kitchen into a stylish candlelit dining space. I confess one of my favourite dishes was one of the simplest – the roast vegetables – but I loved it all. Here is our menu, and a couple of recipes:

Menu:

Starters:
Vegetarian Spring Rolls
Chicken Spring Rolls

Mains:
Vegetarian Fried Rice
Vegetable Ragout
Thai Vegetable Curry
Thai Fish Curry
Roast Potato and Pumpkin
Roasted Tofu
Mushrooms in Dashi

Dessert:
Berry Pancakes with applesauce and berry sorbet

Mixed Asian Mushrooms with Dashi
(adapted from Vegie Food)
Serves 4 as a side

1 tsp dashi granules
1 tbsp shoyu
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp oil
100g oyster mushrooms, halved
100 enoki mushrooms, chopped into three lengths
200g fresh shitake mushrooms, sliced
100g button mushrooms, sliced
1 spring onion, finely sliced

In a small bowl combine 125ml or ½ cup boiling water with the dashi, shoyu and mirin. Set aside. Heat oil in a medium saucepan and add shitake mushrooms and button mushrooms. Fry over medium heat about 3-5 minutes or til softening. Set aside. Add enoki and oyster mushrooms to saucepan for about 2-3 minutes til softening. Add shitake and button mushrooms, spring onions and dashi mixture and heat. Serve hot.

Rice Paper Rolls
(makes approx 15)

½ cup shredded cabbage
½ carrot, grated
15g vermicelli, broken and cooked
1 spring onion, finely chopped
Small handful snowpeas, finely sliced vertically
Small handful bean sprouts
Small handful parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce (or to taste)
2 tsp chilli sauce
200g tofu, shredded
100g dried rice paper wrappers (approx 20cm in diameter)

Mix all ingredients except wrappers. Check seasoning – add more soy sauce if required. Soak rice paper wrappers in a large bowl of hot water for 10-15 seconds til starting to soften. Place on benchtop - we found if it wasn’t totally soft it would continue to soften on bench and was a bit easier to handle than if it went really soft in the bowl of water. Place 2-3 tablespoons of filling in the middle of the wrapper. Wrap up like a cigar (ie wrap in half across the filling, wrap in the corners and then roll up). They were quite wet when just wrapped but they dry out a little quite quickly. Once rolls are all wrapped, keep covered in a container or with gladwrap til ready to serve. We served with sweet chilli sauce.

On the Stereo
fabriclive.07 – John Peel

Pancakes of Frankenstein

One of my favourite albums in the world begins 'This is the sound of someone losing the plot, trying to make out that they're ok when they're not'. Well it was the right soundtrack for my life this morning. Thank you Jarvis for your nervous breakdown album :-)

Some of my favourite breakfast foods are pancakes, maple syrup and raspberries. So I was excited last night to find a recipe in The Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook (by Jennie Brand-Miller, Kaye Foster-Powell, & Kate Marsh with Philippa Sandall) for pancakes with which would use up my remaining buttermilk, and use the raspberries I bought in summer and froze for a just such a winter morning. Seemed a good idea in theory.

But this morning it seemed like unmitigated disaster. I had a spot of domestic blindness and had to wake E to find my measuring cups. Then there were weevils in some of my flours. Then I halved some ingredients and not others and had to do a hatchet job with the recipe. I used less maple syrup than the recipe suggested because I wanted more on top than in. I had run out of buttermilk so I used some old cream mixed with water. Don't try this at home kids.

On top of that, when I tried some blogging while the pancake mixture rested, not only is my wireless broadband not working, but the whole internet account needed resetting. Argh!

I have put on photos to show hope as I started out, despair with the first pancake and then the final results which were very pleasing. Being able to sit and eat a lovely pancake with maple syrup was good and a relief that my frozen batch of summer's raspberries weren't used in vain. Below is a useable version of the recipe I used.

Raspberry Buttermilk Pancakes
(adapted from the Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook)
makes 7

1 cup SR wholemeal flour
1/2 cup SR white flour
2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tbsp maple syrup (or honey)
150g frozen raspberries
olive oil spray

Mix buttermilk, eggs and maple syrup and add flour. Stir til mixed. Add raspberries and stir in (if you stir too much as I did they lose their form but the upside is the mixture becomes a lovely light purple colour). Sit 1/2 hour. Heat non-stick frypan on medium heat. Spray to just coat with olive oil spray. Pour a three or 4 spoonfuls (the recipes says to use a 1/3 cup measure). I spread the mixture to a nice round circle with a back of a spoon. When bubbles appear and begin to burst in the mixture, flip the pancake over. Then give it another 2-3 minutes on the other side. I just served them with maple syrup but would be great with some fruit, lemon & sugar, or butter and jam.

On the Stereo:
This is Hardcore: Pulp

WHB: Reconciliation damper, snags and dead horse

Sunday was the start of Reconciliation Week which is celebrated in Australia each year. According to Reconciliation Australia, reconciliation is about recognizing the special place and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; about justice recognition and healing; and about understanding our past. Sunday was also the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum.

This is not the place for long political rants, suffice to say it is a crying shame that Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples suffer such disadvantage. But I would also like to acknowledge that I am very lucky to work alongside many wonderful and talented Indigenous people and learn from the good work being done to redress the inequalities.

Regrettably, I have been too busy blogging and baking to be out on the streets marching but when I arranged for my dad to come to dinner tonight, I decided it was a perfect opportunity for a Reconciliation dinner as a nod to a special week. But what to make?

I had buttermilk leftover that I forgot to put into my seed bread. A quick flick through my recipe books gave me an idea of making cornbread. The lovely yellow of cornbread made me think of the Aboriginal flag and I thought I could do cornmeal muffins to represent the yellow circle. But then cornbread didn’t seem Australian. So I hit upon damper which is quintessentially Australian and part of my childhood.

When I was young we would drive to Angahook Forest Park near Lorne for barbeques. These weren’t the type where you would put a coin in a slot and start cooking. No. These barbies required mum and dad sending off the kids to find kindling to get the fire going. We had sausages in soft white bread smothered in tomato sauce, and mum would make damper by mixing flour and milk (or was it water?) and stick it in the fire so it got all burnt outside and soft and fluffy inside. Tea was made in a billycan. We shared our food with the kookaburras and then went on a bushwalk.

So I decided that I would do damper, sausages and tomato sauce – or to use some great aussie slang – damper, snags and dead horse! Sausages was a little challenging. I decided I could serve it so that the sausage mix (with gravy) represented the black top of the flag and the tomato represented the red bottom of the flag. But it wasn’t just about me. It was about bringing together my life with our Indigenous culture, so I thought I would hunt down some Indigenous Australian spice and herbs.

I know I have seen Indigenous spices recently but, once I started looking, they were nowhere to be found. On a rainy windy Tuesday lunchtime I rode my bike to the Vic Market where I found only one product – Tony’s Own Organic Lemon Myrtle Sprinkle and Rub. It was 80% salt so I thought I would keep searching. I rode on to the upmarket David Jones foodhall and there again only found one ingredient – Enspice Bush Spice BBQ Rub. It was a beautiful bottle, albeit not functional. The spices (bush tomato, pepperberry, paprika, garlic salt and basil) were layered but it assumed they would be used in one go on a huge lump of meat – I had to tip them out, mix them and tip them back in the bottle. I wasn’t really after herb and spice mixes but with a lack of choice, I bought it and returned to Vic Market for the Lemon Myrtle mix. Oh that I would be organized enough to order from the net!

Now as this is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Kalyn's Kitchen, I looked up lemon myrtle and found it was indeed an Indigenous herb of Australia. In addition to a strong lemon scent, it has antimicrobial properties and is one of the best known bush tucker foods. Although it was ‘named’ in 1853, Indigenous people have long used it for healing properties and in their cooking. More bizarrely, it was used to flavour commercial lemonade in Australia during World War II. I decided to use it to spice up my damper.

One of my recent cookbook purchases is Vegan with a Vengeance and I have been eyeing off the recipe for sausage crumbles which, coupled with gravy, would form the top of my flag. So I started this last night and instead of using the spices recommended by Isa, I used my bush spice bbq rub. I know better than to wantonly toss in large tablespoonfuls of an unknown mix of spice, but I still went right ahead. So, late last night, I was in crisis mode about how salty and spicy and uncrunchy the sausage crumbles were. Luckily I had just started my dark mushroom gravy when I tasted the crumbles, so I was very light on with any seasonings.

Tonight I only added under half my sausage crumbles to the mushroom sauce and it was just right – dark and mysterious with the pinquant bouquet of bush spices. I made a very light and very red tomato sauce. I searched the net for inspiration for damper recipes and came across a simple one to adapt to my needs. My memory of my mum’s damper was the simplicity so I rejected all recipes with egg, butter, beer. Pumpkin was tempting to get the yellow colour but in the end I decided on saffron. It is such an easy recipe I am determined to make it again.

I also decided to make an cauliflower and broccoli gratin (by covering the steamed veggies with a white sauce topped with cheese and breadcrumbs and baking in hot oven about 30 minutes). I thought if my dad was uneasy with vegetarian sausage he would be comforted by my version of cauliflower cheese. It is a dish that my mum makes regularly – in fact as I child she often made large batches so we could take some, in a small dish, to our neighbour two doors up.

And my dad loves dessert. I despaired that, after weeks of baking, I had no homemade baked goods hanging around. Then inspiration hit when I remembered I had cream in the fridge. I decided to use the leftover damper as a bush scones with jam and cream. Dinner was a success both in remembering reconciliation week and thinking of my mum during her travels in Ireland and Scotland. Here’s what I did:

Bush Mushroom and Sausage Gravy
(adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance and Entertaining with Cranks)
Serves 4

Sausage crumbles (I have halved what I made):
110g tempeh
½ tbsp tamari
½ tbsp bush spice mix (actually I recklessly threw in 1½ tbsp – never again)
½ tbsp fennel
½ tbsp olive oil

Gravy:
1 tbsp olive oil
1½ onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 large Portobello mushrooms, chopped
4 tbsp plain flour
2 cups water
½ tsp promite or yeast extract
1tsp port or red wine

To make the sausage crumbles, choose a large frypan (mine was non-stick but it still left a veneer of mixture on it). Crumble the tempeh with your hands into frying pan – add water to almost cover and simmer on medium heat about 15 minutes til almost all water evaporated. Mix remaining ingredients and add. Fry, stirring frequently. I did this on medium heat about 30 mins hoping it would crisp up but it didn’t so next time I would do it for less time – although I quite liked it drying out a lot as a seasoning.

While the crumbles are frying, make the gravy. In a medium saucepan, fry onion on medium to low heat in oil til brown – about 10-15 minutes. Add garlic and mushrooms for another 10-15 minutes. Stir in flour and cook about 2 minutes. Add water gradually and promite and port (these are what are available in my kitchen). Heat, stirring frequently til mixture thickens.

To serve, mix crumbles into gravy.

Simple Tomato Sauce

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic
1 x 400g tin diced tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp white wine vinegar
Pinch of salt, or to taste

Boil about an inch of water in a medium saucepan with onion in it. Simmer about 5-10 minutes til onion softening. Add remaining ingredients and simmer on low heat, covered til thickens – 30-40 minutes.

Buttermilk and Lemon Myrtle Damper
(adapted from stason.org)
Makes 11 mini dampers

2 cups self raising flour
1¼ cups buttermilk
1 tsp lemon myrtle salt mix
Pinch saffron strands (optional)

If using, soak saffron in 2 tbsp hot water for about 30 minutes. Mix all ingredients. Spoon batter into greased muffin pan. Bake in 220ºC oven about 20-25 minutes. It took mine 25 minutes but most of the time they were at the bottom of the oven so probably could be quicker.

On the Stereo:
Born Sandy Devotional: The Triffids

3 June 2007 - PS After my searching in the wrong places, I found a good source of bush spices today at Flinders Organics in the Oz Tukka range. Their website gives excellent advice on the herbs and spices as well as recipe suggestions.