Tagged: Top Ten Photos

Food blogging seems an odd activity sometimes when we spend so much time sharing recipes and meals and yet never tasting each other's food. Photos and words have to work hard to compensate.

So I thought it would be interesting (or some might say indulgent) to give you some insight into my photos when I was tagged by both Pixie of You Say Tomahto, I Say Tomayto and Helen of Food Stories for my top ten food photos. I am no expert and my camera is just a point-and-click Canon Powershot A85. Nevertheless, it was not an easy task to pick just 10 photos from 278 posts, even accounting for some spectacularly dodgy photos. These are not necessarily my favourite recipes but are some of my most successful and meaningful photos.

1. Giraffe Birthday Cake
Strangely enough, one of my favourite photos on my blog does not come anywhere near my favourite things to eat. The cake tasted ordinary. The photo was spectacular. My green giraffe birthday cake was the picture I had always wanted for my avatar. I had looked for the right picture but sometimes it isn’t out there and you just have to make it yourself. And did I mention how much I love green!

2. Birthday afternoon tea
My birthday afternoon tea this year allowed me to indulge in baking some favourite treats – chocolate walnut fudge cake, grubs and cheesey almond muffins, plus grapes and Wendy’s lovely green apple tea. Of course I like the colours and textures of the spread as well. This photo is taken during the day at our kitchen table which has plenty of light in summer during the day. Wish I could say the same of the evenings.

3. Reconciliation Dinner
I love a good theme meal and created a dinner to celebrate last year’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ Reconciliation Week. I used my childhood barbeques for inspiration and had my first foray into experimenting with Australian indigenous herbs and spices. I presented dinner so it looked like the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flag.

4. Winter Solstice Dinner
Last year’s winter solstice dinner was based on the sort of roast dinner my mum used to make, with my nut roast where her roast beef would have been. It is always a pleasure to have the table spread with interesting food, and to have an opportunity to use some of the good serving dishes. E and I often light a small candle while we eat dinner but it is less often that we light up a candelabra. This candelabra is one I bought cheaply as a student and lit at many a share house dinner party. I took the photo at our kitchen table where we eat. Unfortunately it is in a dark corner of our house and not very conducive to food photography in the evening.

5. Peanut Stew with Colourful Vegies
Stews and casseroles taste delicious but they really like look like a pile of mud. My Peanut Stew with Bananas tasted really interesting but you wouldn’t have known it to look at it. I used the time honored trick of adding a garnish. Then I was lucky to find some purple cauliflower which looked so cheerful with some broccoli on the border. I was particularly pleased to pep up the photo because it was for my very first blog event. I also like photographing my dishes with the side vegetables because it gives additional colour and context. This photo is taken in the kitchen directly under the fluorescent light – one of my favourite places for photos when I don’t have any natural light.

6. Mole with Tacos
This photo of my borlotti bean mole with roast pumpkin and silverbeet had the same problem as the above stew. Fantastic flavours but looks like dark mush. So I liked this ‘action’ photo of me holding it in a filled taco. You don’t see much of the mole but that doesn’t matter. You see how it is eaten and in the background is the spread of dishes of accompaniments. This photo is taken in the backyard in summer when we ate outside a lot and had long hours of daylight for photography.

7. Still Life with Fruit
Much as I love chocolate, this picture was really all about the fruit. Fresh fruit is one of the most beautiful images in the kitchen. But I still thought some linen and a gorgeous bowl would add pleasing colour and contrast. The bowl was purchased in Istanbul about 10 years ago and is the one I usually keep my fruit in. The condensed milk fudge sauce was also delicious but it was cold in this photo so I could shoot in daylight, rather than warm and gooey for dipping chunks of fruit in.

8. Vampire Birthday Cake
Another of my favourite novelty cakes is the vampire cake because E requested it for his birthday last year and I created it without any template to follow. I had been thinking of starting a blog and this was the tipping point. I wanted to share it partly because I was proud of it and partly to share it with others. I hope that it will give some guidance to others like me who are asked to make a vampire birthday cake. This was my first blog entry and unlike the giraffe cake, the actual cake recipe was one of my favourite gluten free cakes I have made.

9. Posh Butter Biscuits
Biscuits and cookies come into a category of seen-one-seen-them-all (see here if you don't know what I mean by biscuits). They are not that attractive alone and need context or props. I always enjoy seeing how bloggers present them. I like this picture of Butter biscuits with cocoa nibs and candied orange because I think it gives a feeling of airy lightness which is echoed in the taste of the biscuits. It also gives me some satisfaction because when I baked these biscuits they all spread and stuck together in odd shapes but I managed to stack them in such a way that they looked like lovely round biscuits. Was anyone fooled?

10. Pancakes for Brunch
One of the joys of posting about brunch foods is that there is lots of daylight for photographs. You can see this in my photo of oaty pancakes with berries. I also like it because the close-up shows the texture of the pancakes and the light captures the lovely deep reds of the berries.

I am not going to tag anyone but would welcome hearing from anyone who is interested in doing a top ten of their photos.

Pumpkin soup and history

When my sister Francesca lived in London in the mid-1990s, we asked for requests for foods from home (Melbourne) when a friend was visiting her. Among other things, she asked for a tin of pumpkin soup because it was so hard to find. I was astounded. Surely pumpkin soup was an everyday food!

Later, when I lived in the UK I learnt that while pumpkin is like mother’s milk to an Australian, it is pig feed in the UK. Pumpkin soup in Australian cafes is often jazzed up with exotic spices but in the UK the very idea of pumpkin soup seems exotic.

Indeed in Europe pumpkins were a curiosity when brought back from the Americas in the 1500s. Perhaps this is why they features in fairy tales (Cinderella) and nursery rhymes (Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater). The name comes from ‘pepon’, a greek word for large melon. Pumpkins are a fruit which are part of the squash family. Not just a fruit but a berry, albeit the only one with such a hard outer shell.

So it should be no surprise to find that it seems to be used like a fruit for cakes and pies in the USA. Pumpkins originated in the Americas. Seeds have been found in Mexico from 7000-5500 BC. The English colonists ate so much of this fruit that the port of Boston was once known as Pumpkinshire. Pumpkin pie, jack o’ lanterns and pumpkin festivals have become part of the way of American life. Apparently 99% of pumpkins are sold for decoration but I think this must be only in America.

In Australia there is so much more to pumpkins than fairytales and festive food. I grew up eating pumpkin mashed or roasted beside my vegies, or in soups, casseroles and curries. We use them when baking scones, bread and biscuits. And I highly recommend them in quiche, burgers, mole, dips, risotto, pasta, cornbread, salads, chutney, pancakes and smoothies. Pumpkins are moist and sweet with a willingness to adapt to any dish. We even have pumpkin kitchen tips such as using pumpkin to thicken a stew or dusting leftover raw pumpkin with pepper to keep it fresh.

Pumpkins are available year round in all shapes. I buy it in large wedges and never see it sold as a puree in tins (as seems to be common in America). You need a good heavy chef’s knife to cut through it and a small knife to scrape out the seeds. Wiki says that most pumpkins have orange or yellow skins but most pumpkins I buy have dark grey or green skin.

When I was young we mostly ate was the large grey/blue-skinned Queensland Blue (photo above) and if we were feeling fancy we might have had a Butternut Pumpkin (which is known as Butternut Squash in other countries). Now Kent and Jap pumpkins (right hand photo) with their bright orange flesh and dark green skin are popular with shoppers, including myself. I took the top photo at a farmers market of heirloom pumpkins, which made me wonder if anyone had considered naming pumpkins after a giraffe.

So this has left me asking the question: where has the Australian love of pumpkins for dinner come from? When so many of our food habits come from America and Britain, why do we treat pumpkins as a regular vegetable rather than as pie fodder or pig feed? Have I discovered something that is uniquely Australian? Not an easy question to answer. It got me searching historic cookbooks, reading One Continuous Picnic and engaged in conversation with booksellers.

Michael Symons’ history of food in Australia, One Continuous Picnic, was the source of greatest insight into Australia’s love affair with pumpkins. The first mention of them in the book is on pp 34-35. In 1830 Alexander Harris describes the bounty of small Hawkesbury farmers. He says that the pumpkins were ‘as big as a large bucket’ and the chief vegetable in most households. It is mentioned again on p 107 in a childhood reminiscence of pumpkins appearing day after day in the 1850s. Then on p 164 there is a mention of pumpkin as one of the vegetables being recommended to be boiled on the side by a 1930s cookbook. It’s not much.

I decided the best way to find out the history of how Australians when pumpkins became popular was to search historic cookbooks. A 1970s history Two Hundred Years of Australian Cooking by Babette Hayes gives a disturbingly fascinating recipe and photo of possum cooked in pumpkin which seems to be from colonial Australia. Philip E Muskett, who wrote The Art of Living in Australia in 1893, gives a recipe for pumpkin soup (but so do British vegetarian cookbooks from the same era so it does not prove it is uniquely Australian). There is no mention of it at all in my Green and Gold Cookbook (c 1940s).

I find that pumpkin often gets paired with marrow. Marrow? Squash? Pumpkin? What is the difference? This is not my area of expertise but I have noticed that often American and Brits say squash where I would say pumpkin (eg butternut) so I think some confusion arises here. Colin Spencer says that pumpkins and marrows are part of the squash family. I always thought marrows and squash was softer than pumpkins.

In the 1950s/1960s Australian Cookery of Today Illustrated which gives recipes for steaming and stuffing marrows or pumpkins as well as jam, scones and tarts made from pumpkin. A Sanitarium recipe book from early 1950s gives recipes for pumpkin scones and pumpkin fritters which are sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Strangely enough this recipe is repeated in the Vegetarian section of a 1955 Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union (PMWU) of Victoria cookbook.

Very little mention of pumpkin soup and then on 4 October in 1961 there is an article in the Australian Women’s Weekly with a list of old time favourites that have been passed down the generations. At the top of the list is cream of pumpkin soup. Pumpkin soup also gets a place in The Women’s Weekly Best Ever Recipes (c1980s).

So I don’t really have any answers, but I do have more questions. I’ve had fun searching but I felt I finally had to stop and write. I have a few hunches. Colin Spencer’s comment that marrows (read ‘pumpkins’) are native to temperate and tropical climates suggests the Australian climate was just right for them. I once went to a student house that I had been told had a vegetable garden and it was merely an out of control pumpkin vine. But Denis Cotter describes pumpkin as ‘so damn useful’ and boldly claims that they grow so well in Ireland that they might have become part of the Irish culinary tradition if they had been discovered earlier.

I love Colin Spencer’s description of the colour as the pumpkin’s ‘greatest quality – that’s fiery russet or Van Gogh orange sets the table aflame’. He also says that large pumpkins were a common sight in London’s markets in the Nineteenth Century and that it was used to bulk out bread. Is this possibly where our love of pumpkin scones originated? I also found some fun facts about pumpkins including that they were once believed to cure snake bite and remove freckles, which also could have been quite useful in Australia.

Before I tell you about my recipe, I will lastly just mention the more modern appearances of pumpkins in our culture. The band Smashing Pumpkins, Jack the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town in The Nightmare before Christmas, and The Great Pumpkin who haunts Linus van Pelt in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Surprisingly Shakespeare mentioned the vegetable with the old spelling in the Merry Wives of Windsor (c1600): ‘Go to, then: we'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we'll teach him to know turtles from jays’. I don’t know what it means but he doesn’t sound like a fan of the stuff.

It seemed obvious that the recipe to post here was pumpkin soup. As I said above, it is something I grew up with. I originally decided I would post a recipe for pumpkin and lentil soup but it was too watery. I decided to go back to a basic recipe. I tried just pureeing pumpkin and onion in stock and it tasted just like pureed pumpkin. Too basic! So I looked for a recipe like we used to eat – no fancy vegies or spices added. The key seemed to be to add some potato. I also added some cream because I had some needing to be used but I found it made it quite rich. The result was delicious and velvety.

In the course of my searching pumpkin soup recipes I came across lots of ideas for flavourings so I thought I would list these to show just how versatile this recipe could be if you fancy something different. But I do recommend this recipe which is just what I suspect my ancestors might have cooked or eaten in a city café.

Pumpkin Soup
(Adapted from Best Recipes and Go for 2&5)
serves 4-6

1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
750g Jap pumpkin, peeled and diced
250g potatoes, diced
3½ cups stock (or water)
60 ml thickened cream (or yoghurt or coconut milk)
Salt and Pepper
Nutmeg to serve

- Fry onion in oil (or if you want a low fat version cook in a small amount of water)
- Place remaining ingredients, except cream, in a large saucepan.
- Simmer until vegetables are tender. (Approximately 15-20 minutes)
- Remove from heat.
- Blend with a stick blender until smooth.
- Add cream and stir through (do not boil after adding cream).
- Season to taste.
- Serve with a garnish of freshly grated nutmeg

Variations:
- Method variations: make a roux to thicken the soup, roast the pumpkin for deeper flavour, mash or leave pumpkin in chunks for more texture
- Liquids: coconut milk, white wine, cream, yoghurt, buttermilk, sour cream, milk
- Flavourings: nutmeg, chives, rosemary, tarragon, cumin, coriander, bacon/facon, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, tahini, tomato paste, chicken noodle soup, lemon grass, chilli, curry powder, nut butters, parsley, sage
- Vegetables/fruits: corn, cauliflower, tomato, apple, sweet potato, potato, leeks
- Textures: lentils, beans, rice, pasta, wild rice, quinoa, walnuts, peanut butter
- Garnishes: chives, parsley, nutmegs, pears coated in maple syrup

And because I feel that our worldview of pumpkin is not know as well outside Australia, I am sending this to Simona from Briciole who is hosting Weekend Herb Blogging this week, the event founded by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

See Louise's post for Pumpkin Day on 26 October 2011 for more global information about pumpkins.

On the stereo:
Country Songs for the Aussie Bloke – 30 Tracks and that’s No Crap: Various Artists

Miss Marple’s Tea Room – cosy charm

It all began when I was looking at old vegetarian cookbooks online and discovered a Vintage Cookbooks store at Kallista in the Dandenong Ranges. This is the edge of the other side of Melbourne for us but a pretty tourist destination with cosy tea rooms and impressive bush scenery. So E and I decided to make a day of it. When I told my sister Fran, she said there is a shop with hundreds of types of tea we should visit.

A quick search on the internet turned up Miss Marple’s Tea Room. Not Fran’s tea shop but right up E’s alley. Let me explain. Both his parents are ex-librarians and have read every crime novel and watched every crime television show that has ever existed. Honestly! Agatha Christie’s detective, Miss Marple, is almost like a family friend. So although E’s folks live too far away to take them along, we had to visit.

We arrived in the small town of Sassafras at 12.45 and decided we would lunch at Miss Marple’s first. We were told there was a 45 minute wait. There are lots of little shops selling soaps, candles, teatowels, toys and gifts so we were happy to browse. We were less pleased to get back to Miss Marple’s and wait another half hour before being seated. But the service and the food were so good that we didn’t mind. This is just as well because I got the impression they are used to people waiting. Besides, the wait gave us time to take in the tea room’s charms.

Miss Marple’s is a quaint little timber-framed cottage that looks like it would be more at home in ye olde English village than in the middle of the Australia bush. Inside it feels exactly like a small village tea room. Small windows are hung with frilly curtains, the timber frames can be seen inside, a fire burns in the large fireplace and flowery tablecloths cover the tables. The sort of place you would take your great-aunt. Actually a few of the diners looked like extras off an Agatha Christie movie.

The waitresses are friendly and attentive. They fit right into the period drama with their long black dresses and white bib aprons. While we waited we marvelled at the food they carried to the tables, especially the magnificent sundaes. On the walls are black and white photos from the 1960s Miss Marple films with Margaret Rutherford. Of course, there are some Agatha Christie paperbacks on display but most of the shelves are dedicated to an amazing collection of teapots.

While we had strolled around Sassafras we had spotted a few Christmas displays. The friendly man in Bluestone Candles had explained that Sassafras celebrated Christmas in July all month long. Miss Marple’s really got into the spirit. Carols played and the ceiling beams were hung with large wreaths of holly and pinecones. Stockings even hung from the fireplace just in case St Nick made an appearance.

Even the menu had yuletide specials. The food is not fancy nor terribly expensive. It is mainly soup, cheese on toast, pies, cakes and Devonshire teas. But it is good quality and is served with style. I found there were enough vegetarian options to keep me happy: pasties, ploughman’s lunch, welsh rarebit, cauliflower soup. E chose the festive fingers for his lunch – toast fingers with turkey, cranberry and melted cheese. With an eye to the dessert menu, I had the ploughman’s lunch.

My ploughman’s lunch came piled on a huge plate. There were two chunks of mature cheese – one yellow and one orange – which crumbled at the touch of a knife but melted in the mouth. Beside these were two fresh white bread rolls. In the middles was a small bowl of pickles and olives and a smaller dish of Branston-style pickle. Surrounding it was a forest of salad – tomatoes, cucumber, shavings of carrot, alfalfa sprouts and masses of lettuce. My complaints are really a matter of personal taste – I am not a huge fan of white bread or lettuce. But I did enjoy my lunch and E was pleased to have a bit of my salad with his festive fingers which had him swooning.

Most importantly, I had room for dessert. I had already decided on Christmas Pudding with brandy custard. E swithered between Mr Stringer’s Sticky Toffee Pudding and the Vicar’s Folly but he went with the pudding. The Christmas pudding was pleasingly dark and rich. I liked the festive plate it was served on which revealed a picture of St Nick himself as I mopped up the pool of custard. I didn’t quite finish mine and nor did E but we were both very satisfied.

On the way back to the car we visited the next door shop called Tea Leaves which had over 300 varieties of tea, as well as many coffees, mugs, tea pots and other tea paraphernalia. No doubt, this is the place Fran had originally mentioned. We were tempted but didn’t buy. Unlike Vintage Books in Kallista which had a fine range of older cookbooks and a friendly manager who keeps a good stock of vegetarian books. Next time we are passing, we will be sure to drop in.

Miss Marple's Tea Room
382 Mt. Dandenong-Tourist Road
Sassafras Victoria 3787
(Melways Reference: 66F9)
Telephone: (03) 9755-1610
Facsimile: (03) 9755-3601
Open 11am – 4.30pm every day
Website: http://www.missmarples.com.au/

Corn bread, borscht and common sense

The last few days I have been eating a cornbread that Tanna recently made on My Kitchen in Half Cups. I had to try it because she claimed it to be ‘the most magnificent corn bread’ and because it was quite unlike any corn bread I had seen before. There was one problem. This corn bread was different because it was baked with sausage as a topping. However as a lover of all things sausage so long as there is no meat (in a manner of speaking), I decided I was up for a challenge.

I was tossing up between trying this with vegetarian sausages or nut roast. I had a leftover piece of nut roast in the freezer that needed to feel useful so that decision was made. One difference that I have noticed between faux meat and meat is that the animal kind leaves great rivers of fat running in its wake while nut roast and vegie sausages tend to be a lot drier. Which gave me an excuse to add some cheese to the topping. It doesn’t take much to convince me to add some cheese to a corn bread.

The batter was very runny and it made 2 soft moist loaves so I had had plenty for lunches and dinners. The first night I served it with some cauliflower and brussels sprouts which I roasted with a little dukkah, plus some red cabbage and onion which I fried up with some garlic and orange juice and zest. It was nice but a little dry. Needed more juice. So I decided to make soup the second night.

Lysy had made some borscht recently which looked wonderfully crimson and sounded delicious. The recipe was the one her grandparents used to make her and it came from the Entertaining with Cranks cookbook. I was impressed because, much as I loved my grandmothers’ cooking as a child, I just couldn’t imagine them cooking from vegetarian cookbooks. Then again, nor could I imagine them cooking borscht. I was inspired by Lysy’s suggestion that some soups can be eaten hot or cold and that this is one of them. She served hers chilled but it is not the season for such summery treats in Melbourne.

Just like with the corn bread I made some adjustments to suit me. It amused me to see the Lysy used a food processor in preference to grating the beetroot. I also read once that Nigella wears gloves to cut up beetroot. I don’t mind getting my hands stained purple but I will happily grate beetroot rather than having the palaver of using a food processor. I also wanted to use up some of the leftovers from the previous night so I added the leftover cooked vegies and substituted buttermilk for the sour cream/yoghurt. Both worked a treat. I even shortened my cooking times because I started cooking at 7.30 and was horrified to see it should cook for an hour. Luckily I didn’t have to wait for it to chill as well.

The soup was fantastic with the corn bread and made me think yet again, how interesting blogging is because we see the different ways people cook. Lately I have come across three useful pieces of advice that relate to this which made great sense to me. These words seem obvious but there is so much advice floating around the internet that it is cheering to see such wisdom. I fear that common sense is not so common anymore.

Firstly, Susan of Wild Yeast wrote about doing what works for you and not doing what doesn’t work for you. Sounds obvious? But it is where instinct kicks in. Such advice makes sense of the times instructions or suggestions sound helpful but I know they wont work in my kitchen.

Susan directed readers to another great post by David Lebovitz which reflects on what is a handful. He says that when you are instructed to add a handful in a recipe it means the exact quantity doesn’t matter. He also shares some interesting thoughts on writing recipes and how easy it is for them to be misunderstood. He makes the point that a lot of recipes are for people who have a sense of cooking. I think that the less someone is familiar with cooking the more they have to following recipes to the letter which is where they can be confusing, because they don’t have instinct to fall back on. But more experienced cooks know that methods and amounts often depends on many variables such as the your oven, the weather, and source of ingredients.

Which leads me to the last piece of wise advice I saw recently. It was passed on at Limes and Lycopene, where Kathryn directed readers to a quote by Craig Hassel whose advice on whether coconut oil is healthy or not summed up what she would like to answer to the general question, is this healthy or not. In a nutshell the answer is, it depends. But this quote expands on this a bit by saying it depends on your genes, your diet, your lifestyle, how often you use it etc etc etc. It reminded me a little of Michael Pollan’s common sense advice which I wrote about a few weeks back.

Life just isn’t that simple, just as it is not a matter of following a recipe to the letter. We should listen to our gut instinct occasionally because so often the instructions we are following don’t take into account our ovens, our climates, what sort of day we have had and what else is going on in our lives. So here are my versions of these recipes, but if you are interested in trying them, I expect you will make your own amendments!

Corn Bread with Nut Roast
(adapted from Tanna’s version of that in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart)

1 cup coarse cornmeal (polenta)
2 cups buttermilk
170g nut roast
2 tablespoons butter
1-2 tablespoon honey
3 eggs
3 ears corn, kernels cut off cob
1 tsp chipotle peppers in adobe sauce (or a chilli pepper)
1¾ cup plain white flour
1½ tablespoons (20g) baking powder
¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon salt
Couple of handfuls of cheese

The night before: mix cornmeal and buttermilk in a large bowl, cover and leave at room temperature overnight. The next morning little buttermilk mountains were appearing so there was obviously something going on in that mixture. But I was feeling too suspicious of leaving dairy products out of the fridge too long and put it in the fridge until I was ready to bake that evening. Tanna left hers in the fridge for 3 days before using it.

Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Grease and line 2 loaf tins (approx 13 x 22cm).

In a small microwave proof bowl, melt the butter in the microwave (or use a small saucepan on a stovetop). Stir in honey. Use a fork to lightly whisk in the eggs. Add to the cornmeal and buttermilk mixture. Add corn kernels and chipotle or chilli.

Add dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt) to the wet mix and stir to combine. The batter will be quite runny.

Pour batter into the prepared loaf tins and sprinkle the cheese and nut roast on top. (I sprinkled cheese on top of nut roast but next time I would mix the cheese and nut roast first.) Press into the mixture a little. Bake for 40-50 minutes or til they feel cooked when you press gently on the loaves and a skewer comes out cleanly. Keeps for quite a few days (mine is now 3 days old and still quite soft).

Borscht
(adapted from Lysy and Entertaining with Cranks)
Serves 4 as a main course

2 tsp oil
1 medium sized onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
450g (about 3 medium) raw beetroot
1 carrot
1 diced small potato
1 litre vegetable stock
2 tbsp red wine vinegar or lemon juice
1 tbsp tomato puree
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 bayleaf
generous pinch ground cloves (I ground two cloves)
2 cups leftover vegies (optional)*
300ml sour cream, yoghurt or buttermilk
salt and pepper, to taste
chopped chives to garnish (optional)

* I used leftover cooked cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and saute the onion over a low heat. Meanwhile peel and grate beetroot. Add to saucepan and stir 1-2 minutes, then add stock and bring to the boil. While stock is coming to the boil, peel and grate carrots and potato and add to the saucepan. Add spices. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30minutes. Add cooked vegies and simmer an additional 10 minutes. Remove bayleaf and blend using a hand held blender. Add seasoning and a quarter of a cup of buttermilk and stir. If you wish to serve chilled, set aside to cool. If you like it hot, serve straight away. Ladle into bowls. Drizzle with buttermilk and garnish with chives.

On the stereo:
auteur labels: les disques de crepuscule 1980-1985 – Various Artists

Curious Chipotles and Bonza Burritos

I don’t get excited by chillis but I do love to wander through a foreign food store in search of something different from our usual supermarket offerings. On a visit to Casa Iberica in Fitzroy recently I was intrigued by a tin of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, which I had never seen before. I also bought tinned black beans and dried garlic flakes because I rarely encounter them elsewhere.

To celebrate my first purchase of chipotle peppers I thought I should find out just what they are and turned to the trusty Wikipedia. To my surprise I found they were actually red jalapeno peppers that had been dried in a smoking chamber. It was less surprising to then discover that the word comes from Nahuatl for dried chilli. For those of you wondering about Nahuatl, it is a group of dialects and related languages of the Aztecs. Curious about the history, I turned to the Tabasco Historian who writes that they have been eaten in ancient Mexican civilizations since before the Aztecs.

It seemed only right and proper that I sample my new chipotle peppers in a Mexican dish and I had been eyeing off Wendy’s version of the Moosewood’s Black Bean and Sweet Potato Burritos that she posted recently. How would they be with chipotle? I couldn’t resist finding out.

Rather good, actually. Smoky and fiery hot. Even E (who is known as Mr Tabasco Fiasco in this house for his tendency to add Tabasco to almost every meal I serve) exclaimed at the heat. Fortunately I warned him to taste before he doused. It may have been made hotter by me adding more of the adobo sauce than I had intended because the jar I put the remains in was a little bit too small. Wikipedia gives them 3 out of 5 on the heat scale but they are much hotter than I am used to. However, I am sure there will be a lot more of them on my blog as I have a jarful to get through.

While I was feeling like the Curious Orange, I also did a little experiment with the cheese. When Wendy had posted her burritos, I wondered why she had grilled the cheese after cooking them rather than just cooking them with cheese on them. So I tried just baking the burritos with cheese. It didn’t crisp up as I had hoped. But if I had grilled it I am sure my ends of burritos would have charred (unlike Wendy’s very appetizing looking ones). I have decided that tortillas are just too delicate to be able to produce a nice crispy golden cheese topping and maybe next time I should try adding the cheese to the mixture.

Wendy served hers with tomato salsa but I wasn’t organized enough. Only as I was cooking them did I remember they needed some sort of sauce. I cooked up a quick makeshift tomato sauce out of tomato passata, pumpkin chutney, a pinch of salt, spring onions and garlic. It was very good. We also had broccoli and corn on the cob with them. The following night I lightly fried some vegies and added more of my passata which was lovely. There are lots of ways to eat these burritos and I highly recommend you try some. But if you do use chipotle peppers and feel about chillis as I do, go easy!

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Burrito
(adapted from Wendy’s version of The Moosewood Low Fat Cookbook)
Serves 4

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed (about 600g)
Vegetable oil
3 spring onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 chipotle pepper, finely chopped
1 tbsp adobo sauce
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp ground cumin
400g (15oz) tin of black beans, drained and rinsed
Handful of parsley
Juice of half a lemon
½ tsp salt
4 tortillas
Grated cheddar cheese (optional)

Add the sweet potato to a pan of salted water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until the sweet potato is tender. Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a medium sized saucepan. Fry spring onions and garlic over low heat for 2-3 minutes. Add cumin and coriander and cook for 1 minute.

Remove saucepan from the heat and add sweet potato, chilli, black beans, parsley, lemon juice and salt. Use a potato masher to roughly mash together. (Or use a blender to roughly chop.)

Pre-heat oven to 170 C and lightly grease a 23cm square baking dish (I used a cake tin because it was the best size in the kitchen).

Divide the sweet potato mixture between 4 tortillas. Spread mixture along the middle of each tortilla, roll up and place in baking dish with seam down so they fit snugly.

I sprinkled cheese and some sesame seeds on mine and baked uncovered for 30 minutes but Wendy covered hers with foil, baked for 30 minutes, then she sprinkled with cheese and placed under the grill til the cheese was bubbling and starting to brown.

On the Stereo:
13 + 1 of the best: Tuxedo Moon

Pumpkin Pancakes on Parade

When Susan at The Well Seasoned Cook announced an event called Pancakes on Parade, I immediately knew that my contribution would be pumpkin buckwheat pancakes. Pumpkin because I had craved Lisa’s gorgeous Spiced Pumpkin Waffles but I don’t have a waffle iron and I love anything with pumpkin. Buckwheat is something I don’t usually use but I had bought some intending to make Hippolyra;s healthy sticky toffee pudding (yet to come to our kitchen).

'Buckwheat pancakes' had a strangely familiar ring to it that was echoed in the many recipes on the internet. Of course I couldn’t find a recipe for pumpkin buckwheat pancakes. I found a recipe for buckwheat pancakes that were wheat free but had too many eggs. It seemed easier to amend a recipe for pumpkin pancakes so that is what I did. I made pancakes that were large and fluffy, just as I like them.

The wet ingredients mixture was nice and orange but the pancakes didn’t take on the bright colour of pumpkin scones . They flipped nicely on my new scanpan frypan and did retain some pleasing orange marbling in the finished result. My main reservation was the spices. If I make them again I will either add choc chips or to do away with the spices. But with a rosy raspberry sauce and lashings of maple syrup, I wasn’t complaining.

It is always a treat to have pancakes for brunch. Which is odd because when I was young the very idea of pancakes for brunch was quite foreign to us kids who started the day with cereal, toast and vegemite. We mostly had pancakes for sweets (dessert). My mum would sometimes bring the electric frypan to the dining table and we would take our turns getting hot pancakes fresh out of the pan. Our pancakes were quite small and served with either lemon and sugar or butter and sugar. Occasionally mum cut up banana into the pancake batter or gave us jam and butter.

On the weekend I was talking about cooking with mum and she reminded me that she used to cut up chunks of leftover meat and mix them into pancake batter which she fried and served with tomato sauce for dinner. I quite liked these. When I became vegetarian, I found all manner of recipes for savoury pancakes meals and was surprised at how versatile they can be. I really should try more of these recipes rather than just drooling over them.

I find that I mostly make pancakes for brunch every now and again because one of my favourite childhood memories is of Pancake Parlour fluffy buttermilk pancakes with whipped butter and maple syrup. As a child we never used buttermilk or maple syrup at home (nor buckwheat for that matter) so it seemed quite exotic. But the idea of buttermilk in pancakes still seems so right. I am not sure why, but now maple syrup on pancakes and lazy luxurious mornings are inextricably linked in my mind.

In fact the only time I can remember eating pancakes for breakfast while still living with my parents was the morning after my last day of high school. I can’t remember what we did but I know we stayed up all night and decided to have pancakes for breakfast at the Pancake Parlour as soon as it opened. Come to think of it I am not sure if I had them even on that occasion. All I can remember of that night is the delicious anticipation of waiting to eat those wonderful pancakes. Maybe it was closed that day. Or maybe the anticipation was much better than the pancakes.

Even today I consider pancakes an extravagance because I love lots of butter and maple syrup on them. I don’t feel I can or should indulge in such luxuries regularly but every now and again a little pampering is good for the soul.

Pumpkin Buckwheat Pancakes
(adapted from Pinch My Salt)
Makes 5 largish pancakes

180g pumpkin (a bit more than ½ cup) peeled, cooked and mashed
1¼ cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp dark brown sugar
½ cup buckwheat flour
¼ cup plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 tsp mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg and mace)
Pinch of ground ginger
⅓ cup choc chips (optional)
Butter for frying
Raspberry sauce and maple syrup to serve

Mix together the first 5 ingredients in a small bowl or measuring jug with a fork or whisk (don’t worry if the pumpkin hasn’t cooled). Place remaining (dry) ingredients in a large mixing bowl and add the wet ingredients. Mix well but don’t worry if there are a few pumpkin lumps. Add more buttermilk or liquid if the batter is too thick.

Heat a little butter in a non-stick frypan over medium low heat. Use a brush or paper towel to make sure butter evenly distributed. Drop about 3 generous dessertspoons of mixture into frypan and spread it out to about 15-20 cm diameter. Fry about 2 minutes or until bubble begin to appear and the mixture seems to just thicken (or start to cook). Flip and fry another 1-2 minutes on the other side.

Serve with raspberry sauce and maple syrup. (I made the raspberry sauce in the same way as I made berry sauce for my oaty pancakes.)

On the stereo:
A Brief History of the Twentieth Century: Gang of Four

Sparkles the Rabbit Cake

My niece Maddy has a favourite old pink rabbit called Sparkles. So this year when she was planning a pink party to celebrate turning six, she chose a pink bunny rabbit birthday cake. I couldn’t get to the party but most of the fun is in the decorating so I went to Geelong beforehand to help create the Sparkles the Rabbit Cake. We based the cake on a Maisie the Rabbit cake we found at http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/ but made a few changes including deciding against the ribbon in the hair.

I made the cake at home the night before so it was easier to cut and ice. I used a double quantity of this butter cake recipe. Before adding the flour I put a few spoonfuls in a small bowl and added Casalare gluten free flour, baking powder and a bit of milk. This gluten free cake was baked in a greased and lined ramekin. The remaining mixture had the flour and milk folded in (making allowances for the small bit removed) and I divided it between two tins but I think a swiss roll or lamington tin might also suit the needs of this cake.

In Geelong it seemed like there was an army of helpers (apart from my sister and her husband who were cleaning up for the party). My sister-in-law Erica mixed a large bowl of pink icing which was quite an achievement with my two 3-year-old nieces Ella and Grace helping her. She also helped Ella and Grace decorate the ‘candle cake’ or ‘Grace’s special cake’. I like the idea of a separate small cake for the candles rather than having to find a place on a novelty cake. But my main inspiration was to make sure Grace has something gluten free so she doesn’t miss out.

As I have written before, Grace has celiacs disease and consequently has a gluten free diet. In the past I have tried baking gluten free cakes and she has not been interested. But when I made the Green Giraffe Cake in April and did the little separate GF cake for her, my mum said that later on she was requesting the rest of her ‘special cake’.

I also took down some GF cornmeal choc chip biscuits and told Grace they were ok for her. When Maddy was eating one of my mum’s baked treats (possibly the hedgehog), Grace helped herself to one of my cookies and seemed to enjoy it. I wasn’t sure anyone would like them as they have a much coarser, heavier texture than traditional choc chip cookies but they were easy to make with ingredients from the supermarket and surprisingly pleasing. When I asked E how many I should take to Geelong, he suggested that two might be sufficient as he had taken an unexpected shine to them too. I have included the recipe at the end.

My dad also was a willing helper who would probably do more cake decorating if it involved power tools. When we were working out about doing the eyes, he thoughtfully offered to drill some holes in some lollies (when I say lollies I mean candy in America and sweeties in the UK). I declined but it reminded me of one Christmas when we were young. He spent time drilling holes in fruit tingle lollies to make a necklace for my sister. It was the year we each got a packet of fruit tingles for a present in amusing and creative ways. Dad also contributed with cutting up liquorice, offering his pliers to manage the liquorice and cleaning up the mess we left in the kitchen.

Number 1 helper was the birthday girl who remained by my side up to her elbows in pink coconut, selecting the right lollies, sprinkling coconut and pressing on the lollies. Her little sisters also gave a bit of help with the decoration. By the end, it seemed that every time I turned my back there was another little hand sprinkling a bit more pink coconut on the cake. They were thrilled with the cake. Before I left, there was a lot of joy and pride in the cake that looked just like Maddy’s Sparkles. By all reports the party was a great success and very pink!

Sparkles the Rabbit Cake
You will need:

- double batch of butter cake batter divided into a 15cm (6 inch) square cake tin, and a 23 cm (9 x 9 inch) square cake tin and baked as per the recipe
- pink icing (frosting) made with icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar), a bit of melted butter and some pink food dye
- desiccated coconut
- extra pink food dye
- black liquorice
- red liquorice
- round brown lolly (candy or sweetie) or biscuit for the nose – we used a choc mint patty but I also considered a disk of milk chocolate
- two large white lollies for the eyes (we used discs of white chocolate)
- two smallish flat round red lollies for the eyes (we used jubes which I think are also called jellies)
- two long thin lollies for teeth – Maddy wanted pink so we chose some candy coated liquorice

How to make the cake:
First take a sharp knife and trim the corners of the small square cake so the edges are more round as this will be the face. Then cut two long ears from the large tin and a small oblong snout with a little dip where the teeth will be (see picture). Leftover cake can be used in cake crumb cookies or truffles.

Make the icing if it is not already made. It should be thick enough that it wont drip over the sides of the cake. Colour the coconut by placing it in a large shallow bowl with a fewdrops of pink food dye. Using your hands rub the food dye into the coconut (and don’t worry if your fingers stain – it comes out after a day or two). Be generous with the amounts of icing and coconut because if you run out it is difficult to match the colours. Luckily my mum was making jelly cakes and other pink party food and happy to use up the leftover icing and coconut.

Now assemble the cake. We used an oven tray covered in foil for the tray. The small square is turned to make it a diamond and placed at the bottom of the tray. The ears are placed at the top of the head. We trimmed the ears because they were a bit long. Then the oblong snout is placed with the top just above the halfway mark on the face (see picture). A little icing can be used to ‘glue’ the ears and snout to the face.

Use a butter knife to evenly spread the icing over the top and sides of the cake. If it is difficult to spread (especially where the cake has been trimmed) the icing knife can be wiped and dipped in a mug of boiling water to help spreading or smoothing icing. While icing is still wet sprinkle it with coconut. As it will take a while to spread the icing over the whole cake you will need to sprinkle coconut as you go or use the knife dipped in hot water and run over the surface of the icing to lightly moisten it.

To finish the ears, I rubbed a bit more pink food dye into some of the leftover coconut. I used a finger that had been rubbed with the pink dye while doing the coconut and dipped it in the hot water. Then I rubbed my finger over the ears to wet the icing, leaving about a 1cm margin around the outside. (alternately you could use a pastry brush but you should be careful not to wet the icing too much). I then sprinkled the wet darker pink area with some of the darker pink coconut.

For the face, I used a little icing to ‘glue’ the round brown nose onto the snout, the round white discs for eyes just above the snout and the teeth just below the snout. I glued red lollies to the whites of the eyes and then a little bit of black liquorice as the inner eye. We had to cut black liquorice into thin strips for the outline of the eyes, the eyebrows and the whiskers, plus red liquorice for the outline of the mouth. I wet the areas I was pressing the liquorice into but found it quite hard to get the outlines of the eyes to stick. Maybe next time I will wet it before putting the eyes on. Use a dry pastry brush to brush away the extra coconut from the cake and then from the tray. Now your rabbit is complete and looks a little crazy but likeable.

Cornmeal Choc Chip Cookies
(From Vegetarian by Nicola Graimes)
Makes 16-18 cookies

75g (6tbsp) soft butter or margarine
50g (¼ cup) brown sugar
50g (¼ cup) caster sugar
1 egg
Few drops vanilla essence
75g (¾ cup) rice flour
75g (¾ cup) cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt
115g (⅔ cup) chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugars till light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Fold in rice flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Then fold in chocolate chips. Drop teaspoonfuls on a greased/lined baking tray leaving space in between for them to spread. Bake at 180 C for 10-15 minutes or til slightly browned. Cool on a wire rack and store up to 1 week.

On the Stereo:
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: the Beatles