Category: World Cooking

Name Plates: Eggs Benedict

Hello brunch!  Eggs Benedict is one of my favourite brunch dishes.  Mind you, I would also eat them for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  I’m not that fussy!  But today’s project is to uncover the eponymous Benedict,

Eggs Benedict 1

What Are Eggs Benedict?

Okay, so…given this is such a brunch favourite, I know many of you will already know exactly what Eggs Benedict entails.  And all of you are quite welcome to skip to the next section.

For those who are in the dark, Eggs Benedict is a dish typically served at breakfast or brunch which consists of two halves of a toasted English muffin, topped with bacon or ham, a poached egg and Hollandaise Sauce.

Who Was Benedict?

Larousse names Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans as one of the possible birthplaces of Eggs Benedict.  And there is certainly an amazing looking Eggs Benny on their website.😍  However, all the other research I have done points to New York as being the birthplace of Eggs Benedict.

Delmonico’s in New York is a contender.  A regular customer, one of the Le Grand Benedict family, got bored with the regular breakfast and asked for “poached eggs on toasted English muffins with a thin slice of ham, Hollandaise sauce and a truffle on top” as a more exciting alternative.

In 1967, a letter to the New Yorker said that  Commodore E.C.Benedict, a yachtsman and retired banker was the inventor of Eggs Benedict.

Eggs Benedict 2

My favourite story, however, and so the one we are going to go with,  suggests that the recipe was devised by one Lemuel Benedict in 1942 when he strolled into the Waldorf Hotel with a raging hangover and asked for  “buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and a hooker of hollandaise”.

Instead of looking askance at him and saying in a very stern manner, “We Sir, are a classy establishment and hence not familiar with the practice of measuring our sauces, Hollandaise or otherwise in units of sex workers”,  the kitchen complied and Eggs Benedict was born!

Can we just take a step out to talk about how delicious Hollandaise Sauce is?

OMG..it’s the best thing in the world.    Sometimes, when I really don’t feel like cooking?  I will buy a jar of Hollandaise sauce, heat it up in the microwave and just dip vegetables…asparagus, broccoli, beans, etc right into the jar for my dinner!

Hollandaise Sauce

And do you also know that it was only very recently that I reaslised Hollandaise is just French for “from Holland”?   I mean, it’s totally damn obvious when you think about it but….at the time?

The Recipe

Given it’s likely New York origins, I used the recipe from the New York Times for my classic version of Eggs Benedict.

Some variations are below.

Variations

The interwebs abound with variations of Eggs Benny.  You can change the meat:

  • This Naughty Benny swaps out the ham for mortadella and adds an onion jam.

You can change the base:

You can combine it with other brunch favorites such as this Benedict BLT.

Or add some Italian Pizzazz with an Eggs Benedict Pizza.

You can also swap out the sauce 

For those who like a bit of booze with their Benny, this one has a beer-based sauce.

I guess the only constant is the eggs…

Oops, scratch that.  Here’s a vegan version.

  • A myriad of other versions can be found here

Modern Day Benedict

In my mind, there can only be one:

What’s your favourite version of Eggs Benedict?

And to whom would you dedicate a modern dish of poached eggs, ham and hollandaise sauce on an English Muffin?

Have a wonderful week!

Sri Lankan Lamprais

I had a different post planned for today but after the events of Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka, I thought I would change things up and share some Sri Lankan food.  Lamprais is a dish from the Dutch Burgher community of Sri Lanka, which is my heritage.  The name is derived from the Dutch word “lomprijst” which translates into “parcel of food”.

For English speakers, the closest pronunciation is “lump rice”.

So this is our “parcel of food”.  It is Sri Lankan comfort food at it’s best – hearty, spicy, flavoursome.  Lamprais is something that I have eaten for as long as I can remember – from being a small child who would only eat the fish cutlets (the meatball type things you can see in the picture above) and the rice because everything else was too spicy to nowadays loving the fact that I can have a delicious, satisfying, complex meal on the table within about 45 minutes and using either one baking tray or a steamer.

For the last, we think four years, (maybe five) Mum and I have been making our lamprais at Easter and it has become a little tradition for us(just like chocolate eggs)!  We were planning our timetable over a very non Sri Lankan roast lamb dinner when we heard the horrible news of the Easter Sunday Isis bombings in Sri Lanka.  Thankfully no one in our family or friends was injured in the horrendous act of violence but over 300 innocent people have lost their lives.

I have always wanted to share this dish but have baulked at it because it’s just so involved…but given we were down to make them, now seemed like a perfect time.

Let’s break down what goes into our version of lamprais.  This will vary slightly, each family will have their own variation. For instance, many people add an egg into their lamprais which is not something we do.  Also, traditionally in Sri Lanka many people add fried ash plantains.

Here’s what goes into ours:

Here is Charmaine Solomon’s recipe for Lamprais – there are some slightly different spellings / terminology but this is the closest version to ours that I could find.

We do not however, pour that final bit of coconut milk over the dish before cooking.

Lamprais9 - Ghee Rice recipe

 

Lamprais Base – Ghee Rice

Ghee Rice is the foundation of every lamprais.  (Except for last year when we ran out and had to sub in some microwave brown rice for our last two lamprais).

Ghee rice is long grain or basmati ricecooked in ghee (duh) with spices such as cardamom, cloves, curry leaves and cinnamon.  This gives a lovely flavourful base for your lamprais.

Lamprais3 Ghee Rice

The Main – Lamprais Curry

So, in our breakdown of labour, mum always cooks the ghee rice because she does it really well and I can’t cook rice for shit.  Making the lamprais curry?  That’s my job.

Lamprais curry is like no other curry, I know for two reasons.  Firstly it’s a mixed meat curry containing beef, lamb, chicken and pork.  I mean have you ever?  It’s also delicious.  Like seriously who knew mixing ALL the meats would taste so good?

Second, in most other curries, you cook the meat from the start in the gravy.  Not so with this one.  You boil the beef, lamb and chicken first, then tip the cooked meat into the curry gravy to simmer away for a couple of hours.

If you make this, be prepared to chop things for HOURS.  Four onions,  eight garlic cloves.  And around two kilos of meat into a pea-sized dice.

Did I say labour of love?

Did I say this is why we split this between two people and only cook it once a year?  On a long weekend?

Also, you can use the water used to boil the mix of meats as stock to flavour the rice.
Lamprais4 Lamprais curry

Lamprais 10 - Curry recipe

Lamprais – My Favourite Bit – Fish Cutlets

Usually, in a lamprais, you get two fish cutlets.  So, they are always the first thing I eat.  And the last thing I eat.  These are little crumbed meatballs you can see in the photo. Or should that be fishballs?  Either way?  They are delicious.  If you are averse to fish, you could sub these out with frikkadels.

Mum makes these –  she made around 60 of them this year.  Which was handy because I ate my weight in them as we were going!

This recipe is from S for Sri Lanka.  All other recipes are from Charmaine Solomon via the The Great Australian Cookbook.

 

Lamprais5 - fish cutlets

 

Lamprais 11a - Fish cutlets

Lamprais 11b - Fish cutlets

In the above photo, you can also see our first condiment or sambol – Prawn Blachan

Lamprais Accoutrements 1 – Prawn Blachan

Blachan is made from dried prawns and spices.  It is spicy, salty, pungent and a little goes a long way.

Lamprais Accoutrements 2 – Seeni Sambol

Seeni Sambol is a caramelised onion relish that adds a touch of sweetness to your lamprais.  You could make this yourself.  If you feel like chopping up another four onions after you’ve chopped up four for the curry….or you could find your local Indian / Asian / Sri Lankan grocery store and just buy a jar of it.

You have to make the rice, you have to make the curry, the meatballs and the blachan.  Trust me,  unless you want to end up sobbing on the floor, buy the seeni sambol.

Or make it just because it’s delicious a couple of days before you want to make the lamprais.

Lamprais 12 Seeni and Blachan

 

Lamprais 6

Here is our process in motion!

Lamprais Accoutrements 2 – Brinjal (Eggplant) Moju

Now, normally I make our brinjal moju but this year, I decided to use some ready made. Not so much because of my recently diagnosed allergies, but more so because I just didn’t have the time.  The purpose of the eggplant moju is to add a little sour into the dish, to cut through the richness of the curry.  And possibly also to add a vegetable that is not onion into this dish!

I also have no concerns about eating the moju despite the allergy.  It is, after all, only a spoonful per meal

Lamprais 13 Eggplant

Which brings us to the end.  We made 16 lamprais. We make ours big so one is enough for a meal.

Lamprais7

Now you might have been wondering about the preponderance of aluminium foil in this post.  Lamprais are traditionally wrapped in and steamed in a banana leaf.  This also adds another layer of flavour/aroma to this dish.   Here is a traditional lamprais that I had at the DBU (Dutch Burgher Union) in Colombo when I was there in 2015.

Lamprais8

As much as I would like to go traditional, we use aluminium foil so we can pop our “parcels of food”  straight into the freezer.  You can either bake your frozen lamprais in the oven for around 40 minutes or steam them for around the same amount of time.  I personally like to cook them in the oven because the bottom of the rice goes a little crispy like in claypot rice.

So that’s it…our lamprais….I don’t expect any of you to be crazy enough to make it, but if you have somewhere that sells Sri Lankan food near you, why not try some!

Stay safe, be kind to each other, take care and have a wonderful week!

 

The Ultimate Shawarma….Man!

For my modern take on Turkish food, there was only one choice.  It was always going to be shawarma.  And my first thought was that I could give some props to my girl Sabrina Ghayour.   I own all of her cookbooks and Persiana remains one of my favourite books to cook from.  Sabrina’s recipe for ultimate chicken shawarma comes from her book Feasts and it is totally delicious!!!!

Chicken Shawarma 2

But, as I was cooking the shawarma, I reallised I had another connection (that does not involve late night stops at the Hollywood Palace) and that connection is my new favourite podcast, or actually set of pods.  I ‘m sure I have spoken about my love of the true crime pod before and some time ago I started listening to Small Town Murder.  I virtually inhaled every episode so I was able to catch up on the back catalogue of then 80 something episodes pretty quickly.  I’m listening to  Episode 114 as I write.

Chicken Shawarma3

But what do you do when you run out of pod and don’t want to wait a whole week to hear more from the funniest guys in podcasting?  Well, in my case, despite barely knowing one sport from another, you start listening to their other pod Crime In Sports.   And let me tell you, you don’t have to know anything about sport to enjoy it.  

Both of these pods are amazing, the hosts, James Pietrogiallo and Jimmie Whisman are hilarious!!!  And the stories!!!! Who knew????

For a good start to the level of crazy Crime in Sports reaches, why not give Episode 58 a try? 

#058 – If He Could Kill The World… – The Terribleness Of Viacheslav Datsik

This tale contains neo-Nazi’s, naked snow wrestling, armed robbery, unrestrained testicle pummelling, bare handed escapes from Russian mental asylums and the self-nicknamed Red Tarzan.  Believe me, amongst all the, what James and Jimmie would call nudnickery, there is not much time for too much sport. 

Another favourite of mine comes from my own country…

#058 – Such is Annihilation – The Chaoticness of Ben Cousins

Aka…you hid your meth where?

Chicken Shawarma4

What has all this to do with Shawarma you ask?  Well, there are some recurring characters in Crime in Sports, a few special guests that pop in for a fleeting moment in each episode and one of those is the Shawarma man.  Spawned in Episode 32, (Dave Meggatt), the Shawarma man invariably refuses to serve some hapless and very confused sporting criminal some lovely lamb shawarma.  I wonder what he would think about Sabrina’s chicken version!

Chicken Shawarma1

Just quickly back to Sabrina, her shawarma contains normal pickles.  I made some pickled turnips for mine.  Normally when you see these they are a gorgeous hot pink.  This normally comes from beet juice.  I think beets are the food of the devil so I added some radishes to my turnips which turned my pickles a much paler but still rather pretty pink.

That’s me done!

Read and cook Sabrina, listen to Small Town Murder and Crime in Sports and tell me what you think!

Also, please let me know your favourite cookbooks and I’m always up for a good pod recommendation.

For now?  

Sign says closed!

 

 

 

 

Shish Kebabs

So as luck would have it, the week I wanted to write about the Turkish meal of Shish kebabs, there has been a diplomatic incident between Australia and Turkey.  But this blog is not afraid to tackle contentious issues.  Actually, no, scratch that, this blog doesn’t want to have anything to do with this debacle.  To be frank, both sides of this spat are terrifying and we here at RFFMT are cowards peace lovers who just want to eat some meat on a stick.  

Or, to be etymologically exact roasted meat (kebap) on a sword (sis). 

Or to be even more precise, delicious roasted meat on a sword.

The recipe for these Shish Kebabs came to you direct from 1972 via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery.  As usual, the introduction to each chapter comes with a gorgeous drawing of representing the food of the region:

Turkey2

 

Each chapter also has an overview of the food of the region.  Some “facts” I learned about the food of Turkey:

  • The Turks have more than forty ways of cooking eggplant

  • People in Istanbul, choose their drinking water with as much care as people in France choose wine.

  • Peaches and apples are ordered by name for those from different areas have a different flavour and fragrance

  • A formal dinner can start with as many as thirty or forty appetisers


The shish kebabs are simple to make, look really pretty with all the colours of the vegetables and taste delicious!

A little drizzle of pomegranate molasses over the top sets these off to perfection.

These shish kebabs are also a tasty lunch treat!  

Shish Kebab3

Have a great week. And be kind to each other!

Use By: Apricot, Lemon and Basil Sorbet

There were so many things I could have named this post.  But hey, I made an Apricot, Lemon and Basil Sorbet. So when I couldn’t decide between witty or explanatory  I decided to go with plain old pragmatism. Who knew ice cream was so complicated?

Apricot, Lemon, Basil Sorbet

BEING MORE FRENCH

Towards the end of last year, one of my work buddies and I were talking about New Year’s Resolutions. He said he never made the traditional resos of saving money, losing weight or getting fit.  Instead, he chooses something that explores a different way of being / thinking / creating.  So, it could be a  year of reading the financial papers or a year of being vegetarian or a year of being celibate or totally slutty or otherwise exploring a part of your personality that you feel needs expressing or you just want to have fun with.

“You know, like a year of being more French”

My reaction?

 

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

This is the beauty of something like this – it can mean whatever you want it to be.  For me…in no particular order:

Dress More French

  • Such as totally indulging my love of a striped t shirt.

 

Eat / Drink more French food (and wine)

Fromage anyone?

Fig, Fennel and Pistachio Roulade10

Watch More French movies / French tv shows

Including one of my favourite films ever The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

And just to balance out all that sweeetness, some gritty French police drama.

Be more Cultured

Self Care

French women take fabulous care of their skin and have amazing beauty regimes.

I plan on getting me a piece of that. My first foray into this realm was to buy some French eye drops that were RAVED about in a beauty blog.  They have made absolutely no discernible difference so that was money down le toilet but  I will try a new product each month.

 Read More French

I haven’t quite decided where this bit lands

  • Dip my toe in – Read more books set in France…eg Cara Black’s Murder In….Series
  • Float along – Read more books by French authors…I have some Proust and some Zola and some Binet in my TBR.
  • Dive in deep – Read French in French – I also have Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire and, weirdly a French translation of a James Patterson novel.

Maybe a bit of each…

Other ideas not fully thought out yet

  • Have an attitude
  • Start a revolution
  • Sexy Frugality

Mais, bien sûr

Cook More French

Which brings us back to doh oh oh oh.

The topic for our latest Tasty Reads Book Club was a “non book” book.  So you could cook recipes off the interwebs or the tv or, in my case a food magazine.  I bought this mag when I was on holiday last year and had not cooked anything from it.  

So, when some friends gave me a big bag of apricots of varying degrees of ripeness,  I decided to

  1. Be more French,  and
  2. To use this produce before it went bad (Year of Less Waste)

By cooking the Apricot, Lemon and Basil Sorbet from the mag.

Here’s the recipe.

In English.

Print

Apricot, Lemon and Basil Sorbet

A delightfully refreshing fruity sorbet

Ingredients

Scale
  • 500g apricots
  • 12 basil leaves
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 3 eggs
  • 200ml of cream
  • 150g sugar
  • 1 tbsp honey

Instructions

  1. Infuse 6 basil leaves in cream for at least 2 hours.
  2. Then put the apricots, the rest of the basil, lemon juice and a little water into a pot and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes.
  3. Taste and add the honey (a little more or less may be required depending on the sweetness of the apricots.
  4. Cook for another five minutes.
  5. Let cool.
  6. Separate the eggs.
  7. In a large bowl, beat the yolks and the sugar until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture turns pale. Then stir in the apricot mixture.
  8. In a separate bowl, beat the whites to soft peaks.
  9. In a third bowl, beat the cream to soft peaks.
  10. Add the cream to the apricot mix and blend through.
  11. Gently fold in the egg whites.
  12. Pour into a container. Freeze for 24 hours

Au revoir mes amis and have a lovely weekend!