I have some weird little strips of paper in my “recipes to be made” folder. They are not so much recipes as hints, maybe even whispers of things to make. I have no idea where they came from – they are numbered and printed so I presume from a list of some sort. Anyway, each of these is an absolute gem, if a little vague.
Take for instance, strip #58.
“Hull and quarter some strawberries; at the last minute, combine with a little chopped tarragon, black pepper and balsamic vinegar. Goat’s cheese is good too”
That’s all folks.
I had strawberries galore (huh, sounds a bit like the name of a Bond girl), I had tarragon, black pepper and balsamic…
Ingredients for Strawberry Tarragon Salad
I know it’s only just over a week into the year but I strongly believe this salad will be one of my top ten finds of the year.
This was soooooo good. The sweet strawberries, the aniseedy tarragon, the sticky sweet sour balsamic and the warming zing of pepper are…mindblowingly awesome!
I neither hulled nor quartered my strawberries…who can be bothered following so many steps in a recipe…
Strawberry, Tarragon, Black Pepper, Balsamic Salad
The recipe suggests that goat’s cheese would not go astray here. I didn’t have any (why would I? I didn’t have sugar. Why on earth would I have goat’s cheese?) but I mixed up some sour cream and mascarpone and dobbed that on and it was delicious. Goat’s cheese would be amazing. I also would like to try blue cheese.
The vinegar that the strawberries soaked in went all thick and syrupy and took on a pinkish tinge from the strawberry juice. I siphoned this back into a small bottle for later use as it seemed too good to throw out.
Strawberry Balsamic
And speaking of awesome, my White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Semifreddo for Mark’s birthday? Amazing!!! Another good contender for top ten for the year. I hope I haven’t peaked early!
with the addition of White Chocolate into both the base and the filling.
Why white chocolate?
I was leafing through one of my favourite food books, Niki Sengit’s Flavour Thesaurus to see if she had anything to say about strawberries and tarragon (she doesn’t, although there is a section on strawberries and anise). This book is a must have for any serious foodie and even the not so serious ones as some of the entires are hilarious!
Flavour Thesaurus
Niki has the following to say about strawberries and white chocolate:
“In fancy chocolate shops, I sometimes see slabs of white chocolate spattered with clots of freeze dried strawberry, like stucco after a shoot out. White chocolate makes for a better combination with strawberry than milk or dark because, like strawberry and gangland comparisons, it’s a little cheesy”
I couldn’t resist. So I bought a family block of white chocolate and melted half into the biscuit base and half into the filling. It was sensational. And just right for a birthday celebration on a hot night. We had dinner at our favourite Thai restaurant then came home for some bubbly and the semifreddo. It was a delightful way to end a lovely day!
And in honour of Niki, and with a slight nod to the K-pops, but mostly because White Chocolate Strawberry Cheesecake Semifreddo is too much of a mouthful, from now on, in this house at least, it will be known as Semifreddo Gangland Style.
Last week I mocked some of the food styling in The Hot Weather Cookbook, so in the interest of fair and unbiased reporting I thought it was only fair to show what I think is easily the best photo in the book. Not only that, I was so inspired by the photo I had plans to cook the exact meal as shown for a barbecue dinner we were having.
Lamb Sosaties, Carrot Salad, Cucumber Salad
Why do I love this so much? First, I think it has a clean modern look to it. This would not look out-of-place in a current issue of Bon Appetit or Delicious magazine. Second, I love gingham. One of the reasons is that it evokes memories of summer, picnics by a river in the shade of a tree, the gingham table-cloth spread on the ground absolutely loaded with super tasty picnic food, the sound of birds and crickets chirping lazily in the background, the sun dappling through the leaves…In my mind picnics look like this. Thanks to the lovely Amber Clery from the Vintage Homeblog for her permission to use these gorgeous photos.
In reality, I remember having a picnic with my parents by a river. I went for a swim and got a leech on my leg. The sounds of that picnic weren’t so much the gentle noises of nature or the hushed sounds of silence but hysterical screaming and uncontrollable sobbing. I vastly prefer Amber’s version.
Apart from the gingham, the other things I liked in the photo from “The Hot Weather Cookbook” were those amazing looking kebabs and the saffron rice with juicy raisins that they are lying on top of. The legend for the picture told me that were Barbecued Lamb Sosaties accompanied by Carrot Salad and Cucumber Salad. No mention of the rice. I had never heard of a Sosatie before so I flipped to the glossary which told me that Sosaties were a:
“Cape Malay (South African) dish of curried meat, cooked in small pieces on a skewer”
So now, not only do these kebabs look delicious, they sound delicious. I was salivating in anticipation of finding out how to cook these delights because I thought they would reconfirm my position as queen of the barbecue. One of the first things I ever cooked for my family was a “Spicy Feta Burger”. I must have been eight. I didn’t even know what feta was but begged my mum to buy some so I could make these burgers. Some decades later we still make them. People invited to family barbecues demand them. In my family and circle of friends, they are legend. However, all empires fall and it had been quite some time since I had come up with some delectable barbecue goodness. I’ve rested on my feta burger laurels for far too long. The time was ripe to launch a new taste sensation.
In my mind, my spicy feta burgers were already singing that Coldplay song about “that was when I ruled the world”. My Barbecued Lamb Sosaties were running up and down flights of stairs and humming “The Eye of The Tiger.”
We’ll pause there and I’ll tell you about the rice with raisins. Remember how I said they weren’t mentioned in the picture tag? I searched for the recipe in index. Under R there are two entries:
Radish Salad, Cool
Rice Salad
I didn’t really know where else I might find the recipe for the rice with raisins (it was not the rice salad recipe listed). So I flicked through the entire book and found the recipe on page 64…well I found something on page 64 called Yellow Rice With Raisins. As it’s not name checked in the photo, I can’t be entirely sure it is the same recipe but given that what is pictured is yellow and it’s rice and it contains raisins I used my best Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction and decided they were one and the same. I then went back and checked the recipe index. This time, I not only checked under R in case I had missed something in the vast number of recipes beginning with that letter. (I hadn’t.) I then checked Y…just in case. Not there either. I then checked every recipe in the index to see what exactly was listed for page 64. There’s a Barbecue Sauce which is actually on page 64. There is no mention of the Yellow Raisin Rice in the index at all. Grrr….
That annoyed me. It’s slapdash and surely someone in the editing process should have picked it up before the book went to print. Never mind, at least I could make it. After all, I had the recipe, even if it appeared to have been inserted into the book by stealth.
Ok, so the last time we saw the Barbecued Lamb Sosaties, they were fist pumping the air and claiming global victory in the barbecue stakes. I looked up Barbecued Lamb Sosaties in the index.
I started with L…not there.
S…not there either.
I tried B…I may was well not bothered.
I tried a lateral approach and looked under K for kebab and, harking back to the glossary definition, I looked under C (Curry and Cape Malay). I then looked through every other letter. There was no mention to the Barbecued Lamb Sosaties in the index. Double Grrr!
But the rice recipe wasn’t in the index either. No point in getting upset. So, in the spirit of keeping calm and carrying on, I flicked through “The Main Course” section of the book.
Nothing.
I flipped back to the picture. Those kebabs look hearty but I thought that maybe they are meant to be a first course, like satay sticks in an Asian restaurant.
They weren’t in the first course section either.
I then looked through the entire book.
Zippedy doo dah.
I then looked through the entire book again, this time focussing on the page numbers. (This was a second-hand book and, given the awesomeness of the Barbecued Lamb Sosatie, someone may have ripped the page out to keep it for posterity).
Every page was accounted for.
THE RECIPE FOR WHAT LOOKED LIKE THE MOST AWESOME DISH IN THE BOOK….WAS NOT IN THE BOOK.
If that looks like I am yelling, it’s because I am. It’s actually a lot nicer than what came out of my mouth when I initially made this discovery. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to print exactly what I said. It’s more than likely illegal in some countries and frowned upon in most others.
I could give you a recipe for Barbecued Lamb Sosaties. I (eventually) found a number of them on Google. Instead, I was so annoyed with the HotWeather Cookbook, I am going to give you the original recipe for the spicy feta burgers. This recipe is so old now, it comes from a time where they didn’t quite know how to spell spicy. These are awesome and you should all make them immediately. (Sorry it’s a bit crooked, that is literally the way it is stuck to the page in the family recipe compendium).
Just to top off a few days where recipes from the past have really let me down, it is also wrong.
I defy anyone to make 12 burgers out of 50g of minced steak. Unless of course they happen to be pixies. (To anyone not familiar with the metric system, as a point of comparison, I just weighed an egg from my fridge. It came in at 64g. )
I used 500g of mince when I made the burgers this time and made 12 decent sized burgers. I left all other amounts as stated.
This can also be very much treated as a base recipe. For instance, this time round I added some dried chilli flakes and some chopped up coriander. You could use mint or parsley or basil. Pinenuts in the mix are fabulous! You can also use lamb mince instead of steak for another variation in flavour.
Spicy Feta Burgers
Out of sheer spite I also didn’t make the rice or either of the salads from The Hot Weather Cookbook. I made a gorgeous carrot salad inspired by a recipe from Gourmande in the Kitchen. This recipe is amazing…quite possibly the most vibrant delicious taste sensation I have had all year. The orange flower water in the dressing is a stroke of genius! The original recipe required watercress. I tried three local green grocers and was advised that due to the hot weather, we are suffering watercress drought. I used rocket and it was lovely. I will definitely also try it with watercress as soon as I can get my hands on some!
The cumin and the orange flower water actually go very nicely with the lamb and feta to create a lovely Middle Eastern vibe to this meal.
I made a really quick cucumber salad to go with this, just sliced cucumber, a sprinkle of cayenne pepper and chives, and a squeeze of lemon. I had a small bowl of pomegranate molasses as a condiment for the burgers.
Et voila! Here is my Not The Hot Weather Cookbook Middle East Feast!
Feta Burgers, Carrot and Orange Flower Water Salad, Cucumber Salad and Pomegranate Molasses
This will more than likely be my last post before the New Year as I need to focus on cooking and other things related to the season for the next few days.
Best wishes to all for a safe and happy Christmas and a joyous New Year.
After harping on about the awful recipes contained in this book last time, it was only fair to showcase some of the better recipes. Three of them will be included here (I actually made 4 however this week is all about being positive so we won’t mention the Asparagus Italienne. Ever.)
I chose the Stuffed Celery Curls as my first course. This was jam-packed with flavours I love – celery, walnuts, chives, cream cheese and Tabasco so there was everything to like. I chose not to add the red food colouring. I’m hyperactive enough without it and I could see no earthly reason why it should be there. I think the “au naturel” version looks much prettier anyway!
Ingredients
Sadly, my celery did not curl as per the picture in the book. I read the recipe as saying you needed 15 pieces of celery 5 cm long. Which is what I did. In retrospect, I think it may mean an unnamed number of pieces of celery 15 cm long by 5 cm wide. Although that doesn’t seem quite right either – 5cm seems too wide. If you really want your celery to curl, here’s how.
It didn’t really matter though because whilst mine did not look as fun, they tasted amazing! We had these as our starter however they could just as easily be a lunch box snack or as finger food. Blue cheese would be an amazing variation.
Original
Mine – with obligatory knife but no curls
Next up, for our main dish I made a Farmhouse Potato Bake. This dish contains potatoes, Hungarian sausage (I used salami), sour cream and paprika so I guess is Eastern European in tone. It was damn good wherever it came from. If you weren’t fond of salami you could make this with ham, bacon, or left over roast beef or chicken or for a spot of luxury some smoked salmon. As you will see from the picture, I subbed in basil for the oregano. I think it is one of those recipes that you could pretty much use whatever proteins and herbs as you wanted. You could layer in other vegetables as well. Asparagus, green beans, spinach would all be great!
Ingredients
Salami and Onion Sauteing, Potatoes Par-Boiling in the background
Layering
Crumb Mixture
I made a Panama Radish Salad from the book to go with this. Well, I sort of did. There is no intended slur to the recipe for my changes, I think you could follow it absolutely and the result would be delicious. I just happened to have no red onions and a bucketload of chives and rocket that I needed to use. So I swapped these in. I also used my favourite Black Russian tomatoes so my salad is probably “greener” than it should be….it still looks pretty good though.
Ingredients
Panama Radish Salad
These worked really well together, the pepperiness of the rocket and the radish in the salad, the freshness of the mint and the lemon in the dressing cut through some of the creamy, potato, salami induced richness of the Farmhouse bake. Two big ticks here, will definitely be making both of these again.
What we’re going to do right here is go back, way back, back into time…
Today we are leaving behind those heady patchouli scented days of the ’70’s to take a step back to some really retro food and talk about my experience as a food forager! Food foraging has been around for as long as people have been around and basically involves making lots of deliciousness out of stuff that is growing wild around you…well, that’s my definition…if you want to get more technical, try google! When most people think about foraging, they probably imagine it being done in the country however urban foraging is becoming increasingly popular.
Part of my birthday resolutions this year was to do something new each month – which is why a few Sundays ago, I found myself sipping a Cleavers smoothie with a group of strangers. I was taking part in an Edible Weeds Walk run by Very Edible Gardens (www.VeryEdibleGardens.com). The smoothie was really good and set the tone for what was a very pleasant and informative few hours. During that time we were taught to identify a number of so-called weeds and learned how these could be used both as medicine and as food.
The setting was amazing, an urban farm, virtually under the domes of the Russian Orthodox Church in Brunswick. And a glorious day to boot….one of the first real signs that Spring was on its way.
It was also just a short stroll away from the CERES environmental park and the Merri Creek Bike Track.
Mind, you, the setting did have some drawbacks, on my way back to my car, I was quite happily strolling along, enjoying the lovely view, the sunshine and my solitude, when I came across this sign, and suddenly the fact that I was alone in this large parkland became a little bit frightening!
However, I made it home safely and was able to use my new-found knowledge to make this lovely floral foraged salad! For my salad I used:
Angled Onion – stalks and flowers:
There are literally thousands of these plants growing by our local creek and whilst I had previously noticed the strong smell of onions around them, I had no idea they were edible. They have an onion flavour, much like chives.
Wild Brassica – leaves and flowers:
This too is prolific in my local area. The leaves taste like supercharged cabbage It can give you that nose tickle you get when you eat mustard. The flowers are much milder and added some colour to the salad.
Nasturtium – leaves and flowers
These were growing in my garden but the flowers are pretty and added some colour. The leaves have a peppery flavour. Since then, I have seen nasturtiums growing in the wild so this wasn’t too cheaty!
Dandelion leaves.
These are quite bitter. Adam, our guide on the walk, said that even if you do not like these the first time you have them, to persevere with them as the taste really does grow on you. Also, the bitterness is very cleansing. I didn’t mind them in my salad but I was light handed, not only due to Adam’s caution but also because the park I was foraging in had just been mown and the leaves were not that easy to come by!
Along with these foraged ingredients, to make my salad, I added some lettuce and some avocado, some thinly sliced radish and a few cherry tomatoes. I also made a very simple lemon and oil dressing as I really wanted to be able to taste the different leaves and flowers. Here are the ingredients:
This was a very tasty salad which, I will definitely be making again. I think I was right to err on the side of caution with the dandelion leaves. I chopped these up quite finely so whilst there was a slight underlying bitterness in some bites it was certainly not unpleasant and added a depth to the salad. How pretty and fresh does this look? I also took advantage of one of first really warm days and ate this outside….Voila!
The foraging itself was great fun, I really enjoyed walking through the park and identifying and choosing the weeds for my salad. There is also something incredibly gratifying about picking and eating your own produce, whether you have grown it or foraged it. In fact, foraging is a little bit more fun because it feels like you’re doing something a little bit naughty!
But really, cooking with things I have grown (or foraged) makes me feel connected to the earth and the environment in a way that shop brought produce can never do. Who knew I was such a hippy? And now for my inner risk manager – if this post inspires you to commence your own adventures in foraging, I would really suggest doing a group exercise like I did – not all plants are good for you and many can actually cause you harm. Having advice from a knowledgeable person like Adam could be the difference between a totally fun and enriching experience and one that leaves you very ill indeed!
Sorry Oscar, none left for you!
Adam, who lead our walk, has also written a fab book:
This can be purchased at the following
http://www.eatthatweed.com/edible-weeds-book/
There are a number of other books and other resources on foraging you could use as well. Here is a link to an article from Gourmet Traveller but most libraries and book shops will have something on the topic plus there is an abundance of info on the internet.
http://gourmettraveller.com.au/how-to-forage.html
I will be experimenting with more foraged finds over the next few months. I would like to try a cooked option next. I don’t think the ngled onions will be in season much longer so before they disappear I’m thinking a stir fry with some of the wild brassica, some chilli, ginger and garlic may be in order. This would be delicious as a side dish or tossed through some noodles as a lovely vegetarian main meal.
In the meantime if you make something lovely out of foraged foods, please let me know and….enjoy!
Who doesn’t love a chicken salad? Shut up vegans and vegetarians. I heard you. Ok…what normal person doesn’t love a chicken salad?
Busy women of the 1970’s loved a chicken salad. They also loved curly parsley. I have never seen so much curly parsley in my life as in these old cookbooks. They also loved scales. Scales feature heavily in vintage cookbooks. I have no idea why. Some sneaky physics lesson maybe. Which weighs more – parsley or a lead weight? Garlic or clams? Maybe these pictures were the precursor to the BrainTraining games of today where you are shown a kitten and an elephant sitting on some scales and you have to say which one weighs the most (it’s usually the kitten).
The Busy Woman’s Curried Chicken Salad is a a pretty good recipe, all it needs is a few little tweaks to adapt it to modern taste. I suggest the following:
Toast your curry powder before adding to the dressing. It smooths the flavour out.
Use fresh mushrooms – I kept mine raw
Use fresh asparagus – I steamed mine.
I didn’t put red pepper in my version because I don’t like it. I added some tomato for colour and celery for crunch. Other things you could add into ths would be carrots, avocado, steamed green beans, nuts….pretty much whatever you have or you like!
