My Goodness it’s Guinness Bread and Orange Veggies

Isn’t it strange how we believe what we read, or what we think we read? Well tonight I decided to use up my leftover Guinness from the cake I made on the weekend. It was only as I started to check over my recipe once the bread was in the oven, that I saw I had missed a vital word in the recipe – ‘OR’.

Yes, I put in the two cups of wholemeal flour AND two cups of oatmeal and oatbran. Oops! I had liked the sound of the recipe because it sounded like an Irish soda bread but more wholesome grains and the slightly bitter dark taste of Guinness. I love soda breads because they are quick and straightforward and usually pleasingly soft. But this dough was quite stiff which I thought was the recipe but have now discovered it was because I inadvertently added an extra two cups of flour through carelessness. Despite my oversight, the bread tasted surprisingly good – a little moist and stodgy but not bad for a total carwreck of a bread. I have reproduced the recipe as it should be rather than as I made it.

I served it with a variation on a dish I made recently – Pickled Brussels Sprouts. I cooked some beetroot leaves recently and wasn’t keen but Lucy who introduced me to the sprouts recipe, encouraged me to try again. So I did. But I found them a little bitter last time and thought some orange juice might make them more palatable. So why not Cointreau as well. I added lots of veggies to make it a full meal rather than a side dish.

I wont give an exact recipe for the Orange Veggies but I can tell you what I put in: olive oil, brown onion, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, garlic, beetroot leaves, chickpeas, juice of half an orange, chopped flesh of half an orange, zest of one orange, Cointreau, parsley, purple basil,. Served with corn on the cob and Guinness bread, these veggies were great mix of textures and colours – and I never even noticed I forgot to add salt (until now when I list the ingredients). One thing I noticed today and found quite pleasing was the pinkish colour the beetroot leaves give out. Maybe this dish will be a regular (thanks Lucy).

Wholesome Guinness Soda Bread
(Adapted from Karott Productions)

2 cups plain whole wheat flour OR 1 cup each quick-cooking oatmeal and oatbran
2 cups plain white flour
1 tbsp cup superfine sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
8 Tablespoons butter or margarine
1 teaspoon malt extract (optional – I didn’t use)
1 ½ cups buttermilk
1 cup Guinness

Preheat oven to 425º F. Grease a 9-inch loaf pan and dust with whole meal flour (I actually used 1 small loaf tin and a 15cm square tin).

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, sugar, soda, and salt. Rub in the butter. Add buttermilk, and Guinness and mix well. Spoon into prepared pan and sprinkle with 1 to 2 tablespoons plain whole wheat flour.

Bake for 30 minutes, then reduce heat to 400º F and bake 15 to 30 minutes longer (mine too another 15 minutes). Bread is done when a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Turn off the oven and cool with the door open for 30 minutes. I left it about 15 minutes and then ate it hot. Cool it if you want as the recipe suggests but I was ready to eat it.

On the Stereo:
Deserter's Songs: Mercury Rev

Guinness Chocolate Cake for Bloomsday

On Saturday night I had dinner with my friends Kathleen and Mook, and I said I would bring a cake. I decided to take a Chocolate Guinness Cake because it was Bloomsday.

I was fortunate enough to be in Dublin some years back on Bloomsday (16 June). For the uninitiated, James Joyce wrote Ulysses about a day in the life of Leopold Bloom on 16 June 1904. The novel gives such a detailed description of Dublin that over 100 years later it is still possible to trace Bloom's steps through the city, and that is one of the ways that Dubliners celebrate the day. I was able to enjoy readings on O’Connell St Bridge, in a pub and in a bookstore. I haven’t read the novel – it is reputedly long and difficult, albeit rewarding. In fact, most people I met in Dublin on that Bloomsday hadn’t read it so I didn’t feel so bad but I hope I will read it one day.

Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922 by Sylvia Beach, ex-pat American and owner of Shakespeare and Company bookstore. She spotted genius and innovative use of language in the book but he was not the easiest person: on one occasion she described him as a Napoleonic figure who’d grind his fellow beings’ bones to make his bread. Luckily for Joyce, his books have overshadowed his personality. And if you want to see the sort of food Leopold Bloom ate, check out the Old Foodie.

Instead of the likes of kidney fritters, we had Mediterranean Pie and Chocolate Guinness Cake. Much nicer and seemed appropriate given Joyce’s European and Dublin connections. Kathleen made a wonderful pie filled with tender, well seasoned eggplant, capsicum and olives stuffed within a homemade buttery short crust pastry. I don’t like making pastry and always admire anyone who does it well. And there was garlic bread too, followed by the Guinness Chocolate Cake, cherries and cream.

When I browsed the Guiness Chocolate cake recipes on the web, I was interested to see that both Nigella and Delia have published recipes for this cake which shows it is quite trendy. Quite a lot of recipes had sour cream but I opted for a dairy free recipe I wrote down years ago – I think it was from The Age newspaper.

Every recipe I found had cocoa rather than chocolate, but once I started following the recipe, I understood why. The chocolate and cocoa are mixed together to form a pleasing sludge – it was so like mud, it made me want to step in it barefoot and feel it ooze between my toes! Instead I was adult and used it to make the cake dark and rich. My cake wasn’t quite cooked in the centre but the goo was enjoyable. It is that sort of rich moist cake – although it is a rich version of a butter cake rather than decadent in the fashion of a mud cake or flourless chocolate cake.

I toyed with the idea of a white chocolate ganache to imitate the frothy head of the Guinness. Nigella did hers with a cream cheese frosting. But I felt it was rich enough without icing and had some new icing stencils to test out. The icing sugar stars looked great and the cherries and cream were a pleasing accompaniment.

Chocolate Guinness Cake

110g butter or margarine
250g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
175g plain flour (1 generous cup)
Pinch baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
200ml Guiness
55g cocoa (generous ½ cup)

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line 20cm round cake tin.

Cream butter and sugar in medium bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. The recipe says to sift flour, baking powder and baking soda together three times but I never sift flour if I can help it.

Mix together Guinness and cocoa in a separate small bowl or jug. It makes a wonderful muddy sludge. The recipe says it might foam a lot so I was a bit disappointed not to get much foam. Add this mixture to the butter and sugar mixture alternatively with the flour. The mixture will be quite moist and light..

Bake in oven 45 minutes or til a skewer comes out cleanly. Cool in tin 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool. It is a moist cake that can be served dusted with icing sugar, with cream and shaved chocolate or with a chocolate ganache. (Nigella even does a cream cheese frosting).

On the Stereo:
Sound of White: Missy Higgins

Wee cakes for wee girls

Having a new gluten free cookbook and a visit to my gluten free sister, Susie, and niece, Grace, provided the perfect opportunity to try out a new gluten free recipe.

I decided to make some cupcakes. My sister Francesca wants mum and me to make cupcakes for her wedding and so we will want to make some gluten free cupcakes. Plus I know kids love cupcakes. My interest in cupcakes lately has been piqued by a number of new colourful cupcake cookbooks. One comment I read recently was that cupcakes are just any cake recipe baked as small individual cakes. What a liberating thought. So I took the Victoria Sponge Recipe and used it to make plain vanilla cupcakes.

I made them Friday night while I made the Guinness Chocolate Cake. I also had some new silicon mini muffin pans and wanted to try these out. I made one batch in cupcake papers, one in mini muffin papers and one in the silicon pans without papers. So I have estimated the baking time, because I was a wee bit distracted to take proper notice and it varied from batch to batch.

What I liked about the recipe is that it just is like an ordinary cake recipe with brown rice flour instead of wheat flour. Given my bad experiences with commercially prepared gluten free flour, I thought this an easy option. Although my mum says she has just used a gluten free flour for cupcakes and it has worked fine. Maybe this is due to us using different brands! Anyway, the cupcakes were excellent – E was most impressed by their lightness and asking me to bring him some home.

The real fun with cupcakes is icing them. My four young nieces were the icing team and I just was the coordinator, and take full responsibility for the brightness of the colours – I didn’t take as much care with adding colouring as I usually would. Quin and Maddy spread on the icing and Grace and Ella sprinkled the coloured chocolate bits on. We ended up with as many chocolate bits on the bench and the floor as on the cupcakes but it was lots of fun and they seemed to enjoy eating them almost as much (except Grace who doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth).

Gluten Free Cupcakes
(adapted from Louise Blair)

175g margarine or butter, softened
175g castor sugar
175g brown rice flour
3 eggs
1tbsp gluten free baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Put all ingredients in a bowl and beat til combined and smooth (or blend in a food processor). Spoon into min-muffin pans or cupcake pan. Made 18 mini muffins and 8 cupcakes. Bake 10-15 minutes til just golden brown and a skewer comes out cleanly. Cool on a rack and ice and decorate when cool.

On the Stereo:
Mozart Wind Concertos: Berliner Philharmoniker Karajan

Presto Pasta Night - Red Russian

Tonight Melbourne was unusually foggy. It was like a London pea souper. The mist made the almost naked elm trees along Royal Parade look spooky but it softened the harsh edges of the industrial landscape on the bike path by the railway and made Brunswick look like the set of a romantic old movie. It looked so lovely but is not really ideal for riding a bike.

So we needed some good thick comfort food tonight to ward off the winter chills. I bought some beetroot at lunchtime. Red is such a warming colour and it is worth having stained hands to see the vibrant ruby red of beetroots. I love their sweetness and their ability to take on other strong tastes. Once of my favourite juices is apple, carrot and beetroot. I love beetroot dip and roasted beetroot but decided it was time for new challenges. I liked the idea of the beetroot curry on lime and lycopenes (which Lucy linked to this week) but pasta seemed easier.

I used to make pasta a lot more but it can feel too much starch and stodge and not enough vegetables. Now I don’t make it much and, when I do, I am often being lazy and just do lots of veggies in the same water as the pasta and throw in a bottled sauce at the end. Probably also avoiding all those saucepans. I have no inclination to eat pasta day in day out but I don’t want pasta to drop off my radar altogether, either. Especially as I know it is always bound to please E.

Beetroot seemed an interesting idea. Beetroot makes me think borscht and vodka and Russian Cossacks in warm furry hats. Russian food seems just the thing for this weather. So I decided to try using my huge bottle of vodka that I bought duty free over a year ago and sat in the cupboard gathering dust. It is raspberry flavoured but I have made quite a few savoury meals with fruit recently so this didn’t seem a huge obstacle.

I have seen vodka in pasta recipes before but often it seems to go with a creamy sauce and I am not a big fan of those. So I did a quick search of the net to check if it was too outlandish to put it in a tomato based sauce that seemed quite alright – although I was a bit scared of a recipe suggested putting a flame to the vodka. So I took my inspiration for the sauce from borscht – beetroot, vodka, sour cream. I added some flavours depending on what needed to be used and what took my fancy. It was a great sauce – very smooth tasting with an intense tomato flavour and a sweet edge – and I do believe I could taste the vodka in there somewhere. E’s verdict was that it was unusual but very nice.

I think it was a bit too intense to eat without accompaniments. To serve I roasted some zucchini and Brussels sprouts in vodka, lemon juice, chopped garlic, salt and pepper at 230ºC for about 35 minutes. I also chopped and fried the leaves from my beets with some raspberry vinegar, mirin, chopped garlic and salt. Not sure about the beet leaves which I haven’t tried before but would like to try them with other accompaniments. They were a little bitter and as soon as I added the orange juice to the sauce I realised I should have kept it to fry the beet leaves in so might try this next time.

Red Russian Pasta
(serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks of celery, diced
2 medium beetroots, peeled and diced
100g mushrooms, sliced
½ cup vodka (I used raspberry vodka)
450g tin of diced tomatoes
1 tsp veggie salt
2 bay leaves
Shake of allspice
2 tsp seeded mustard
Juice of one orange
¼ cup water
1/3 cup sour cream (optional - I used light sour cream)
1 dessert bowl of dried pasta (this is how I measure it but is quite approximate)

Heat oil in large saucepan. Fry onion and celery in oil about 15 minutes over low heat. Add beetroot and cook another 5 minutes on low heat. Add mushrooms and garlic. Turn heat up to medium and cook 10 minutes.

Add vodka and heat on high approximately 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until the vodka is almost all evaporated.

Add remaining ingredients except sour cream. Bring to boil, cover and simmer for approximately 20 minutes over low heat. After about 10 minutes put pasta on to cook for about 10 minutes or til tender.

When beetroot is tender turn off the heat, remove the bayleaves and stir in the sour cream (if using). Drain pasta and mix with beetroot sauce. Serve hot with extra sour cream or cheese and roasted or steamed veggies or a salad.

I am entering this pasta dish into Presto Pasta Nights that Ruth hosts at Once Upon a Feast.

On the Stereo:
Angels in the Architecture: Various Artists

HotM #4: Deconstructed pumpkin hummus

Let me tell you how much I love pumpkin. It is one of the few vegetables I ate regularly as a child and still love eating often. It adds so much flavour and colour to casseroles, curries and soups, is fantastic roasted for a couple of hours with the skin on, and was part of my favourite childhood mash of potato, pumpkin, peas and vegemite!

Imagine how difficult I found it living in the UK where pumpkin seems to be wheeled out at Halloween for jack o’ lanterns and a laugh. I did a spot of work as a carer in a little village in Warwickshire (no shops and two buses out a week) where I had to order food in once a week and had very little to do other than watch the telly, walk down the high street of thatched cottages, and think about what to cook for dinner. How excited was I to find that the next door neighbour grew pumpkins! But he only grew them for his pigs and thought I was crazy to want to cook with them. Admittedly they were not a patch on a Queensland Blue or a Kent pumpkin but it was good to find one when they were so thin on the ground.

Last night I had a yen to eat pumpkin and tahini. E was out so I was free to experiment without worrying about what I might serve him or others. So I did a search on the net. Most recipes were pumpkin salad with tahini or pumpkin hummus. Delicious recipes for summer. Not right for a cold winter night. Then I found one called Pumpkin with Chickpea, Tahini and Onion which seemed interesting.

The recipe from Mary Laird Hamady's Lebanese Mountain Cookery, calls for the frying of batches of pumpkin in an inch of oil. It sounds like a great idea if I had the time and the metabolism. But I decided to just throw the pumpkin in with the onions and sort of stir fry which meant it was probably mushier than MLH intended – in fact I don’t think she would recognize the recipe. But I love pumpkin mash. And once I had finished it, I saw that it was a warm deconstructed pumpkin hummus.

I served it with shards of crisp pitta bread in memory of the fantastic dish I had at the Moroccan Soup Bar last month. It is a thick warming stew that sticks to your insides. So I was glad I had a ‘salsa’ with it to lighten the creamy sauce. It made it a little healthier too. Tahini is good for you with lots of calcium but it is too oily and rich to have in large quantities. But this is a flexible alternative to the usual tomato based stews – it could have less tahini and more seasoning to make it lighter and other vegetables could be used such as more mushrooms, cauliflower, or some beetroot.

The salsa is one I found in my recipe notebook which had strawberries, cucumber and mint but I thought I could just as easily use coriander to use up the bunch I bought for my TGRWT challenge. It is a sign of how little I buy coriander that I got it confused with flat leaf parsley and threw it in to my stew, thinking it smelt odd. Too much racing around the kitchen just before serving and thinking I had my bunches of herbs sorted out. I had to scoop it out because I didn’t want coriander in my nice stew. But I actually thought the coriander went well with the salsa.

Deconstructed Pumpkin Hummus with ‘Salsa’
Serves 4-6

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1,350g pumpkin, diced (approx 3 lb)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
200g button mushrooms, sliced
450g can chickpeas (or other white beans – I used cannelini beans)
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp chilli paste
½ tsp salt
⅔ cup tahini
⅔ cup cider vinegar (or lemon juice)
1 cup water
4 small wholemeal pitta breads (or rice)

- Preheat oven to 180ºC
- Heat oil in a large stockpot. Fry onion on medium low heat for 5 minutes.
- Add pumpkin, garlic, chickpeas and chilli paste and fry for 20 minutes over medium heat, stirring frequently or til pumpkin just tender.
- Add mushroom and chickpeas and stir another 5 minutes.
- Add salt, tahini, vinegar, and water. Simmer about 10-15 minutes.
- While stew is simmering, put pitta breads in the oven for 15-20 minutes til crisp (I had mine in for 15 minutes and they were crisp outside but the middles could have crisped up a bit more but I worried the outer edges would be too crisp). When done, chop or break into pieces.
- Divide pitta bread pieces between 4 bowls. Spoon pumpkin stew over pitta bread. (For a gluten free version serve with rice.) Top with Strawberry and Cucumber Salsa (see recipe below) or steamed green vegetables

Strawberry and Cucumber Salsa
Half telegraph cumcumber, diced
12 large strawberries, diced (approx 150-200g)
50g baby spinach leaves, thinly sliced
1 tbsp fresh coriander or parsley or mint, finely chopped
Raspberry vinegar to drizzle

Toss vegetables together. Drizzle with vinegar

On the Stereo
Best of Roxy Music – Roxy Music

I am submitting this to the Heart of the Matter which is being hosted by Joanna’s Food in June. This month’s theme is vegetables.

Gluten Free Cornbread

After a long weekend of cooking, I was pleased to have leftovers for dinner on Monday but I felt an extra something was needed. But something simple.

My sister, Susie, has recently started a gluten free diet after a coeliacs disease diagnosis so I have been on the lookout for gluten free recipes. After some time browsing the stores, I have purchased a new cookbook called Great Gluten Free Baking: over 80 delicious cakes and bakes, by Louise Blair. It has some excellent recipes I am dying to try out.

One recipe seemed right for the dinner – a quick savoury cornbread. I have made cornbread before without flour but I have found that the polenta can be a bit dry without flour. This recipe uses mostly polenta but also chickpea flour. I am still investigating different gluten free flours. The commercial mixture I bought had the squeakiness of cornflour and hasn’t held together well. But I like the binding quality of chickpea flour so thought it was worth a try.

I had a similar recipe from another book which I ended up using. The main difference seemed to be that the one I used made a loaf about half the size. Smaller suited me. I made a few changes – added some parsley and cheese, but mostly followed the recipe, which was pretty easy. It was a nice accompaniment to our leftover stew from the weekend (yes I added strawberries from my TGRWT challenge - and dill pickle - to the pierogi filling from last night).

Not the best cornbread ever, but pretty good. Makes me wonder if I could try other cornbread recipes and substitute chickpea flour for wheat flour. The search will continue.

Gluten Free Cornbread
(adapted from Gluten Free Food by Lyndel Costain and Joanne Farrow)

100g (scant ⅔ cup) fine cornmeal
75g chickpea flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
25 g butter melted
250ml milk or yoghurt (full fat or semi skimmed)
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp chopped parsley
Chilli flakes, to taste
⅔ cup grated cheese

Lightly oil and line a 500g loaf tin. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. The batter will be very thin. Pour into the loaf tin. Bake in oven at 200ºC for 25-35 mins til just firm (Actually I baked it at 170ºC for 15 minutes and when I checked it looked so uncooked I put the temperature up to 200 for the next 25 minutes). The recipe also recommended leaving the loaf in the tin 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack but we were ready to eat so I turned it out and cut it up straight away and it was fine – eat hot or cold

On the stereo:
Bellavista Terrace Best of the Go-Betweens – Go Betweens

TGRWT#3 Berry Good Guacamole

I am a big fan of the blog event that Martin at http://blog.khymos.org/ has recently started called They Go Really Well Together. Martin seeks out compatible but unusual ingredients, based on scientific reasoning that is interesting but a bit beyond me. This month Evelin at Bounteous Bites is hosting and the challenge is to bring strawberries and coriander together. This is my entry.

Strawberries often seem the plain Jane of berries – not as exotic or sharp as some of their berry cousins. But they often provide good honest refreshment on a cake or pavlova and they are look so pretty. I never appreciated how good they could be till I lived in the UK where they have an intense sweetness I never find in our Melbourne strawberries.

Fresh coriander is more of a challenge for me. It looks great but I just can’t understand its recent popularity because it tastes like soap to me. I use the dried variety at times but avoid it fresh. But strawberries seem best suited to the fresh green leaves and so I decided it was time to face the hip young herb that has everyone talking.

What to make? I saw a sweet strawberry soup months ago but threw away the magazine. Martin suggested rice paper rolls, salsa and muffins. Sounded good. Then I was inspired as I washed my hair with my strawberry shampoo and avocado conditioner yesterday morning. I remembered Eat’n Veg’n’s recent love of this combination and the pieces fell into place. Holy guacamole Batman! Oh yes! I love putting finely chopped tomato in guacamole so the small red pieces appear like jewels in the bright green dip. But instead of tomato, I would put in strawberries, and add some coriander.

It is not strawberry season in Melbourne and I had to try it before I could organize myself to get to one of our fine markets. The supermarket was selling Californian strawberries for $8 a 375g punnet! So I felt slightly better, but not much, to find a punnet of Australian strawberries for $5. Still felt like daylight robbery. Especially as they were not delicate small sweet berries but monsters that would look at home in one of the B-grade sci-fi movies E loves so much.

The guacamole was great – the sweet succulence of the strawberries contrast nicely with the creaminess of the avocado and the coriander adds an interesting flavour – but still seems a little soapy! I think I could have had even more berries in it next time. And it was spicy thanks to a chilli pepper grown by my sister-in-law Miriam. Most delicious on toast with sauerkraut (thanks Lucy for the suggestion).

Berry Guacamole

Flesh of 1 avocado, mashed
2 large strawberries, finely chopped
1 tbsp coriander, finely chopped
Juice of ½ a small lemon
1 small red chilli, finely chopped
1 medium garlic clove, crushed
4 pepperberries (or peppercorns), ground
1/4 tsp raspberry vinegar
Pinch salt

Mix all ingredients.

On the Stereo:
The Hill for Company: Sodastream