Socialising

I rather like having visitors to stay.  One big advantage, apart from the company, is that it forces me to clean up, dust and vacuum, chores I am not terribly fond of, but do because I hate dirt and squalor.  When visitors are coming , I actually see the house with new eyes and chuck things out, rearrange and buy flowers too. For me, flowers are welcoming and give the illusion of homeliness and house-wifeliness.  But, the most fun comes from buying food and drink that I think my guests will like, and that I don't usually have in the house.  I love it when people do that for me.........I remember that years ago,  I went to work for my sister-in-law at her property, Ocean Grange, on the Gippsland Lakes, when she was running school camps.  When I arrived at my sleeping quarters, I was greeted by a tin of home made biscuits and a vase of daisies.  It made such a lovely welcome.

Anyway, these friends from Melbourne were the sort you feel comfortable with, and they are foodies, though one is not able to eat onions or wheat.  Bob made gluten free biscuits, which it turns out have to be cooked for a shorter time in our oven and are flatter than the usual, and I went out to buy all sorts of treats for nibbles : Segret brand Smoked Salmon dip ( gluten free), which is absolutely delicious served with carrot sticks or rice crackers., Yun's Spicy Mix and Orient Mix rice snacks, sheepsmilk cheeses, Jamon Serrano, olives, nuts......and lots of fruit.  Of course there were the favourite drinks: white wine, and Rekorderling  and Dirty Granny cider.  But this visit, we avoided chocolate to avoid temptation.

We are all theoretically eating healthy though, so I tried to make the meals healthy. It sort of worked while we were home, But when we went out, things fell apart!

Lunches were salads and cold meats, and cheeses.

One dinner was flying fish roe,

 sweet potato chips,

seasoned wakame, pickled radish, pickled vegetables and pickled ginger,

 edamame, asparagus,

grilled mackerel,

 and enare with sushi rice and seasoning.

To drink, we had Choya Umeshu, with a pickled uma in it.  Very nice indeed!

Another was marinated and grilled lamb steaks

baby potatoes

and salad.

We had an old family favourite we call Eggs Flamenco, as well.  We make this when we don't need a full meal and it is particularly nice in winter.

Eggs Flamenco

Ingredients:

Olive oil
chopped salami or chorizo (I used Schukltz's garlic salami)
Bottled tomato pasta sauce (flavoured is nice.  I used a pepper one)
Frozen peas
pipped black or green olives
2 eggs per person
Sherry
Tomato ketchup
Ground pepper

Method:

 

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Grease ramekins with olive oil.
In the bottom of each ramekin put enough chopped salami, olives and  frozen peas to fill half the ramekin.
Add tomato pasta sauce, leaving room for the eggs.
Add 2 eggs per person.
Top with ground black pepper, a dollop of ketchup and a slurp of sherry.
Place in oven and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes if you like your eggs totally cooked, less if not.

(Some nice bread to sop up the juices can be added if you like.)

Generally, we had fruit for dessert, like this pawpaw:




Last week, the Ladies Who Lunch took me to the Dudley Street Cafe, in Annerley, for lunch, but we had to evacuate after a cup of coffee because the traffic made conversation impossible.  We ended up at the nearby Great Cafe and Restaurant,  which looked pretty unimpressive, and had that rather ominous sounding name, but which served up rather good lunches of a prawn salad,

spring rolls and salad

and toasted bacon rolls and salad:

It was certainly a nice surprise.   ( We also visited the very nice gift shop next door,  Peter Baker-Finch and Co., and left with several brown paper bags)

With these Melbourne friends, since we were in Fortitude Valley hunting for clothes at Dogstar and wool at Tangled Yarns, we went to our favourite PhoB in Fortitude Valley for rare beef pho. Huge serves, tasty and filling as usual.

On the way back to the car, we decided to explore a Thai shop I had been meaning to visit.  The lady in there was eating a snack made of browned coconut and  peanuts, chopped ginger, red onion  and lime (with peel still on), small bird peppers, and dried prawns with a sauce poured on, all wrapped up in a leaf  She offered me one, advising me to eat it in one bite and it was so delicious I had to buy a pre- made packet of the ingredients to have at home.  Apparently it is called Mieng Kham.Here's what it looks like:

We also bought other goodies like Chiang Mai dried cherries, salted sunflower seeds, and spiced and sugared nuts.  We were very taken by the packets of these desserts of Black sesame balls in ginger syrup, Taro pearls in coconut cream and Assorted Beans in syrup

so we had the first two for dessert one night.  We roared with laughter when we found out how much the packets lied, but we still like the desserts.  The sesame balls got our vote.

We also went down to Albert Street in the city to try out the Japanese burgers at MOS Burger.  What a nice difference to the usual fast food burgers.  Our buns were made of rice and came with a range of fillings.  They were small, but very tasty.  We chose seafood kakiage (pictured), beef yakiniku, seafood okonomi and kimchi yakiniku rice burgers

 

 

 

   and they gave us these apple bites (which were a bit ordinary.  Sorry for the ingratitude).

We also tried the salad - uninspiring lettuce, tomato, corn, and onion, but the sesame flavoured dressing was beautiful.

 and cranberry iced tea ( fantastic!)

Then it was off to Gelatissimo for gelato.  Bob reckons Maleny is better, but they still enjoyed it.

On their last day here, we went to GOMA and  while we were there, tried out their Cafe Bistro.  We were impressed by the friendly staff and the confit duck, Toowoomba leaf salad, orange, kipfler potato and mustard dressing salad

and the Bangalow pork belly, du puy lentils and red cabbage slaw.

 

 

 

We took another break later in the afternoon for afternoon tea and tried out the QAG cafe by the water gardens.  Watched by a very friendly, very handsome lizard, we really enjoyed our cakes:

 

 

orange cake

 

 

 passionfruit tart

and berry cheesecake.

 

 

What a great long weekend holiday !

Avoiding being average.

Well, it turns out that I am a liar - or at least have a misguided understanding of the diet of the average Australian.  I read an amusing, if alarming,  article by David Dale in his "The Tribal Mind" column in the Age newspaper on the weekend (April 2 2013).  He was rather bemused at the Aussie diet described by ACNielsen research.  According to them, the average Aussie drinks Berri juice, Nescafe Blend 43, Coca Cola or Jacob's Creek wine.   They eat Weet-Bix, Vegemite and Tip Top bread in the morning and snack on Cadbury's chocolate, Smiths chips and Tim Tam biscuits.  For dinner they have San Remo pasta with Leggo sauce and Bega cheese, with Peter's icecream on Gooulburn Valley canned fruit.  Then, they drink Milo before they go to bed.  I can quite see why he calls his column "The average Australian is a suburban Frankenstein" and why he thinks that statistical averages are totally misleading.  I much prefer my vision of a multicultural Australia with interesting, healthy and varied food to the idea of Australia as a boring, unhealthy set of clones, eating the same thing day in a day out. so, I'll continue describing the Australia I know rather than the one of the polls.

We haven't eaten out much lately.  Just fish, calamari and chips by the foreshore at Shorncliffe with an icecream for dessert (yes, I know that isn't fresh or healthy, but the fish was grilled and we had healthy for dinner that night!  Stop nagging!  It was an exception!  OK?).  And, we taste tested Maleny's dark chocolate, pomegranate and lychee icecream at Chermisde.  The unanimous vote was lychee - light, tasty, fruity.

My discovery of the week was Baska- Jon brand DryForest Mix mushrooms (Slippery Jack, Porcini, Bay Boletus, Chantarelle).  They were amazing.  The smell is almost edible when you soak them, and when I used them in a risotto, I was in food heaven.  I keep promising myself to go on a mucshroom gathering course in Victoria one autumn, after being amazed at the variety of muchrooms available in Europe, and Asia, and hearing from Swedish and Spanish friends about mushroom gathering excursions.  This experience has firmed my resolve.  I am a) going to experiment with mushrooms more, and b) book into an excursion next year.

I had to confess to Bob, after he found the shells in the bin, that I treated myself to a mudcrab for lunch after coming face to face with it at the local fishmonger.  I don't really feel guilty, he doesn't like crab, but it was very greedy of me!

He loves mussels so this is what I cooked one night:

Steamed mussels:

Ingredients:

1 kg live mussels
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 knob ginger, chopped
1knob galangal chopped
I each shallot chopped
 Handful of coriander chopped
 2 spring onions chopped
8 small tomatoes chopped
1 handful snow peas
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons ginger wine
Salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoon salmon xo sauce
Vegetable oil

Method:

Heat oil and sauté garlic, ginger, shallot and galangal till soft.  Add tomatoes, sauce, wine, sugar, fish sauce, xo sauce, spring onion, salt and pepper. Cook until softened.  Check taste.  Add mussels and snow peas and heat until mussels are just cooked but still juicy.  This only takes a minute or two.  Stir in coriander before serving.  Bob liked this so much that when we finished our servings, he drank all the extra broth. ( Note, mussels do not need to be open to be edible.  That is a myth.)

Another night, we had a nice piece of trevally from the fishmonger, so I cooked it in olive oil, Moscato wine and  lemon, with scallions, capers, green olives garlic and asparagus, and served it with mashed sweet potato and potato.  It was another winner with a beautiful sauce.

We had a snack  one evening of plantain chips, baked in the oven:

And another night we had this meal:

The carnivore's falafel.

 ( This is a really quick meal to prepare and is great for children to make, and those of your guests who are allergic to the idea of being vegetarians to eat.  I usually serve it with salad, but it is great with tzatziki in a wrap).

Ingredients:

500 g lamb mince
200 g falafel mix
200 ml water.

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Mix ingredients.
Wet hands and roll walnut sized balls.
Place on greased baking trays.
Bake for  15  minutes.

Or, deep fry.

 

 

 

A world cook

As you may have read in my other blog, Patapan Art, I have discovered and been surprised that my main readers are not people I know, but people I do not know, mostly in Germany, but in Alaska the US and Australia too, so I thought I would dedicate this blog to these unseen readers.

Australia, traditionally had a very British based diet, and traditional Aussie cooks were famous for  food like lamb roasts, with potatoes and two vegetables, sponge cakes, huge steaks (well done), and fruits like apples, pears and oranges.  Because of this, I love going to funerals catered for by the local ladies in country towns - not for the death, tears and mourning, I hasten to add, but for the great food!   Absolutely yummy passionfruit sponges, asparagus rolls, cucumber sandwiches, lamingtons and pavlovas, for instance.  I  also enjoy the more British food that my Aussie husband whips up,  like these date and lemon scones .

 Surprisingly, in the past, there was very little food eaten that was native to Australia - except maybe the macadamia nut.  When I arrived here, in the 1960s, it was very difficult to buy any other type of food and Anglo-Aussie  was what most people ate.  However, the Chinese have had a very long association with this country, mostly because of the gold rush, and most towns  had a Chinese restaurant, where you could buy such Aussie Chinese specialities as dim sims, chow mien, and chop suey ( all containing cabbage, chopped up carrot and mince, in my recollection).  And by the 1960s, the Italians and Greeks and Jews in Melbourne had begun to introduce Australians to delicacies like percolated coffee, European style cakes and biscuits, spaghetti and salami.  No doubt other cities in Australia were more influenced by some migrant groups than others, but Australians tended, in my opinion to be pretty wary of "strange" food from overseas.  Needless to say, my parents were a bit horrified at the lack of variety when they arrived, having travelled a lot, and lived in Hong Kong and  the West Indies.  My mother , in particular, bemoaned the fact that so many ingredients were unavailable in Australia.  My  father took to taking us on excursions to dodgy little cafes dotted around Melbourne, where no- one appeared to speak English and the customers mostly seemed to be shady looking men, in order to fulfil the family craving for "exotic" food.

 

Things have certainly changed.  I think Australians nowadays are some  of the most adventurous and exciting  diners and cooks in the world. Plus, in my humble opinion, Melbourne is  the capital of the food world.  You could eat your way around the world in this one city.  From Tibet, to Mali, from France to Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Argentina, you can get the food  in Melbourne.  (Of course, there could be even more variety.  I, for one, would like to see more of a representation from Papua New Guinea, West Africa, Latin America  and the Pacific Islands in the restaurants available).  Furthermore, the cooks in this city have the confidence to put their own spin on the food and create their own food culture.   It is fantastic.  There is good food available for any pocket.  A lot of this is because of the influences of each group of migrants.  A lot of  the change is because Australians are keen travellers.  Even the most conservative of travellers ( like the woman I shared a tour with in Vietnam who would not eat fish that don't swim in Australian waters), seems to be influenced by the food they discover in their travels. Even in very traditional Australian homes, I have been been offered food as diverse as buffalo bocconcini, basil and tomato entrees,  home made pizza,  barbecued kangaroo, curried fish, quinoa salad, lamb souvlaki, paella and  Wiener schnitzels.  A lot of the change is because Australians are pretty adventurous.  In addition, Australians are rediscovering and learning to value native foods, so nowadays, you can buy kangaroo in most supermarkets, emu and crocodile from some speciality stores, and "bush food", for instance: seasonings like lemon myrtle, mountain pepper and aniseed myrtle.  Food companies are beginning to incorporate bush foods in their sauces and seasonings.  Chefs are using bush foods in their cooking.  Gardeners can  grow native plants like warrigals (a green, sour spinach type of leaf) finger limes and lily pillies in the kitchen garden.

My cooking certainly reflects this change.  Like many people who live in Australia, I am very fond of fresh food, so Asian food has a big influence on my cooking, as does any nationality which uses a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables.  I also love trying new things.

For instance, I had a salad at a cafe in James street, Fortitude Valley, a few years ago,  that included Freekeh.  I had never heard of it, so searched around until I  discovered that it is young green wheat which is roasted, and commonly eaten in the Middle East. It is now grown in Australia and I finally found a packet and bought it.  we have continued to use it in our meals since then. We went for a long walk last weekend, trying to build up my fitness after a period of sloth, and rewarding the dogs for having to be stuck in the house during the recent rain.   I decided to make a salad to keep up the good work, and made up this recipe using Freekeh.  Probably not authentic middle eastern at all, but influenced by the Middle East.

Freekeh salad.

Ingredients:

1 cup Freekeh
2 cups boiling water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 diced lebanese cucumber
1 cup diced sweet orange  potato
 kernels cut off 2 cobs of corn
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1 cup pepitas
 Pulp of 1 pomegranate
3 chopped up spring onions

Salad dressing:
2 teaspoons date syrup
Juice of I lemon
3 dessert spoons olive oil
salt
pepper

Method:
Pour water on Freekeh and salt in a microwave proof bowl.  Cover and cook on high for 5 minutes in microwave.  Add sweet potato and cook for 5 more minutes.
Cool, then stir into a salad  bowl with other ingredients.
Mix all the ingredients for the dressing and pour on the salad.  Mix.

There was lots left over - and we liked it- so we decided to have it for dinner too.  Of course, we had to have a middle eastern style addition to it. Claudia Rodin came to the rescue providing the inspiration with a marinade for the two chicken thigh fillets I had ( I found it in her "Tamarind and Saffron " book).

Grilled chicken kebabs.

Ingredients
2 chicken thigh fillets, cubed
2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of half a lemon
salt
pepper
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon paprika

Method:
Mix all the ingredients together and refrigerate for an hour or two.
Soak the bamboo skewers in water.
Thread the chicken cubes onto the skewers and grill.


  We have also had  a fairly simple meal of fresh mackerel, marinated in lemon juice and coated in flour, coconut, salt and pepper, then fried, with a sweet potato and potato mash, corn and French beans:

as well as curried vegetables, and asalted duck egg salad. See? More mixed ethnic influences.

Apart from that, we have eaten out.  We were given free tickets to see "The Company You Keep" in Indooroopilly by a very kind friend.  We enjoyed it, but it is a long film and we were starving when we emerged.  Luckily, we spotted a little take-away place just outside the cinema, called Phuc Deli -Viet.  We ordered Hainan chicken and rice:

and spicy seafood hu tieu:

and had fresh cocnut juice to drink.  They were both very good indeed, though there was a considerable gap between the deliveries of the dishes.  In fact, they were so good, we decided to try out their strange looking Malaysian Ice Kachang:

Thank God we only ordered one!  It was huge - and rather wonderful.  From what we could work out, it had shaved rice  with two syrups poured over ( was one made from cochineal and the other from pandan leaves added to palm sugar?) and coconut milk, all on top of sweet corn, grass jelly, kidney beans,  palm seed  and another jelly.  Very refreshing!

...............................okay, I confess, Australians also eat a lot of junk food too, and food that is bad for you - full of fat, sugar, preservatives and salt.  And Australians are beginning to be among the most obese people in the world.  In addition, there are, of course, people here who only eat pre-packaged food and never cook at all. But, we still have an enormous variety of foods from many different countries available to us here, and it is of very good quality, compared to many countries that I have visited.  All countries have good local food, but not all countries are open to the foods of other countries.  I am lucky enough to live in a country which has excellent local food and cuisine,  is open to the cuisine of others,  and has absolutely disgusting but often tasty, junk food.

Mixing it up in Queensland

It has been a bit quiet this week on the cooking front, but we have still had some nice meals

One was mixture of Asian inspired dishes:  pickles, beans, sweet potato, stuffed bean curd with wasabi:

 Grilled salted mackerel:

 Fried eggplant:

 

 This last dish was learned at a cooking class at Miss. Vy's School of  Cooking in Hoi An, Vietnam.  It is based on the little eggplants, usually called Thai eggplants, that you can sometimes find.

Ingredients:
6 Thai eggplants
1 bowl cold, salted water
1 pot boiling water
 2 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 teaspoons light soya sauce
1 teaspoon brown sugar
3 sliced spring onions
12 teaspoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1 teaspoon chopped red chilli

Method:
Thinly slice the eggplants but not down to the base.  Then, turn the eggplant 90 degrees and repeat.  The top threequarters of the eggplant should now be gridded.
Soak the eggplants in the cold water for 30 minutes.
Remove the eggplants, then place in boiling water for 7 minutes, weighing them down with a plate.
Remove the eggplants from boiling water, and place between two plates.  Squeeze the plates to drain off excess water.
Saute eggplant in 1 tablespoon  hot oil for 2 or 3 minutes on each side until brown and crispy of the outside.  Place on a serving plate.
Mix soy and sugar together.
Mix garlic and chilli together.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil and fry spring onions or 2 or 3 minutes, then add fish sauce.
Pour onion mix and soy mix on eggplant.  Serve garlic mix as a side accompaniement.

We also had a seafood marinara:

 

and smoked salmon and greens slice:

 

My other half made me peppered steak with tacos and salad:

 

 and  Lime Delicious Pudding.  (The top got a little bit burned beacause we couldn't tear ourselves away from the latest episode of "Game of Thrones").

Every week,when I can, I try to make a cake, slice or tin of buscuits for my husband to take to work.  This partly because I love them all dearly, partly because they eat everything I cook and never complain, and partly because I miss cooking for a large family.  This week's offering was Canadian Lemon slice - an old favourite:

As for eating out, this week we ate at an old favourite, Elixir.  I also discovered a new favourite for Italian cakes, gelati and coffee, Dolci Sapori, in Clayfield.  And, I got taken out to lunch with the "Ladies who Lunch" at  Riverbend Books in Bulimba.There, I had a very filling mixture of ricepaper rolls: prawn, beef and chicken

 while my fellow diners had  mashed avocado, tomato and fetta on bread

and a watermelon and proscuitto salad.

All were voted a great success.

This weekend we visited the Toowoomba Show. Why is the food at shows so awful?  We had a passable steak and salad roll outside Sideshow Alley, but most people seemed to be stuffing themselves with absolutely revolting looking concoctions.  I think they were frankfurt suasages impaled on a stick, dipped in a thick orange batter and deep fried, then topped with a large quantity of artificially red ketchup .  I think they are called Dagwoods, or Pluto dogs or corndogs or something.  Another crowd favourite was something that looked like slices of potato on a stick which have been deep fried - with an equally unnatural colour.  Tornado Fries? YUKKKK!  Do these people have no taste buds or sense of healthiness? What would Jamie Oliver say?  Reminds me of when my son was boarding at Dookie and was offered deep fried steaks, sausages, etc and suddenly realised he liked healthy, well-cooked meals - not heart attack specials.

On the good side, we discovered a new vegetable at the vegetable section: spiny cucumbers

I wonder if they taste any good?
And I renewed my acquaintance with the ornamental corns that I used to grow in Melbourne:

( I reckon mine were better!)