Small wonders that arrive in the post from halfway across the world.
(Thank you, Callipygia. I adore him.)
This photo because he, the kookaburra, looks far nobler than my attempts to capture them on film.
Edward Rochester, in Jane Eyre, both on paper and on my telly.
All lovely things, no?
A week away from home and my 'Greenfeast' peas, a bushy, low growing variety, have begun to flower - sweet, white-faced blossoms that look remarkably like the butterflies encamped in the rocket one bed over - and actually send out recognisable pods. It's all very pretty, I must say. A lot can happen in a week.
Now. You may be wondering, as well you might, where the Spring Edition of An Honest Kitchen is, being, as it is, practically summer. Thing is, part of my trip to Sydney last week was all about just that.
Kathryn and I have decided that Honesty is a huge part of our joint project - the driving force in fact - and thus, in the interest of making An Honest Kitchen engaging, entertaining, practical, honest and beautiful, something you'll really love, we'll be combining Spring (which is nearly done) with Summer (which is well and truly here in Melbourne this week). Releasing all the warm weather goodies together makes sense and allows us the chance to have much-needed holidays (which we both took this spring), deal with the unpredictable nature of freelance work and still make something meaningful.
We'll keep you updated.
Last night's curry wasn't properly thought through. The flavours were all there - my favourite coconut, ginger & lime ones - but they jarred with one another. The things that bookended the meal felt somehow wrong, too.
Organising negatives, today. Pulling up my socks and getting on. Snipping, filing, labelling; these are the jobs I want on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Quiet employment is the best kind. Turns out even the curry's better today.
(Transit lounge, L.A., stupidly early)
When you live at the bottom of the world, getting to the top of it takes a long time.
(Window, morning, hotel in The Lakes District)
But it's time well spent.
A lot of things happened on this trip, many of them, I can happily report, internal. And I think that sort of holiday, one where you return a woman changed, is the very best kind.
Stories to tell, though I need to think for just a little bit first.
(Rose garden, early evening, The Lakes District)
(Greengages, windowsill in Edinburgh)
Can you believe I took hardly any photos of food? Other things caught my eye.
(Temple of Literature, Hanoi)
And though it's lovely to go away, getting home,
to your own bed, is lovelier still.
If, like me, you favour salt and crunch over sweet for snacking, and if, like me, you have a garden full of kale, then kale chips will make you, and your garden, rather happy. I've been pottering around the greenery wondering at times what to do with it all.
Shatteringly crisp and nutty, a little like just-popped corn, kale chips have been on high rotation over the past two weeks. Not much else has been happening, kitchen-wise. I do believe I've lost a little of my mojo. No matter. Simple is good when you're about to jet off on an overseas holiday. Have vowed to use everything before we leave.
Kale chips enough for 1 or 2. If, unlike me, you are willing to share, that is.
Tonnes of people have blogged this recipe, but I used 28 Cooks as my guide.
Pre-heat the oven to 180 C (375 F). Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
Head outside, knife in hand, and pick 4 or 5 curly kale leaves. I also like to use the purple-stemmed curly-ish 'Red Winter' that was/is a prolific and very pretty cropper. Tear, or cut if you prefer, the leaves from their stalks. This action depends, I suspect, on how hungry you are.
Whisk 1 tablespoon of olive oil with 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and a tiny crumble of sea salt. Tear the leaves into large pieces and toss very well in the dressing. Drench and massage those curly bits completely. Arrange in a single layer on the baking sheet and cook for 5 minutes. Flip then return to the oven for a further 5-7 minutes. Be careful not to burn their delicate, crisp edges.
See you in a month or so.
‘One of the essential beauties of having your own veg patch is that the simple act of growing and eating your own food decorates life in often unexpected ways.’
Mark Diacono, ‘River Cottage Handbook No.4: Veg Patch’
A quick, barefoot check around the garden last week found the hedge, up there on the left, coming back to life. A chunk running parallel to the back half of the house burnt last summer, but winter has healed the gap. Broad beans, jam-packed in their tub and recently moved to a shadier, less windy spot, are stunning. They've been my favourite plant to photograph this year. The pear tree, midway down on the right, which doesn’t ever, even when covered with pears, look like it will ever actually bear fruit, is sending out big, juicy blossoms. There are lemons, not many, but they are all excellent. Last year’s pruning was instinctive, but was absolutely the right thing to do. I made Lemon (and Tangelo, as you can see) Delicious Pudding to celebrate.
Deeper into the yard, where the grass is longer, the earth beneath it cool, there is a lot of parsley. Half of which is beginning to go to seed. I made this soup from last year again if anyone’s got a similar problem. It’s still rather good. Tiny curds are forming when you peer into each cauliflower, the leaves of which are gargantuan. Silverbeet Perpetua, a variety of chard I’ve never seen for sale (because it wilts comparatively quickly?) was the most useful winter crop by a mile. Its prolific output was aided by what felt, at least to me, like a substantial dumping of winter rain. A huge bunch looks good set out on the kitchen bench in a jug of water. It makes a good still life.
For the past three weeks, some impressively-sized nettles I’ve been ‘saving’ have begun snagging me when cutting the rocket they sprung up among. I’d like to pull them out now before they do some serious damage and I stomp them flat. Lots of good ideas, thank you, but the simplest won out in the end. Nettle soup with some of the silverbeet (yay) too. A little bottle of smarty-pants cream needed using, but I suspect that this soup will in fact be even better with a large potato subbed for the small I used and an equivalent quantity of rice milk. A squeeze of lemon juice changes the character, but try it without, first. It had the effect of making us feel, as Madison suggests, ‘...like an animal that had been out grazing in the wild, which is just how a spring tonic should make you feel.’ Too right.
Stinging Nettle Soup enough for 2 people, over one weekend.
Only worthwhile if the nettles are from your garden. I wouldn’t seek them out specifically. I agree with Jane Grigson in that they are, ‘not as good as spinach’ and will make this again with spinach very happily. I think the butter at the beginning essential, though you may certainly use oil in its place. Based on a recipe in the excellent ‘Local Flavours’ by Deborah Madison. And remember, please, that they really do sting until blanched. Wear something long-sleeved.
Stinging nettles, a basketful
2 tablespoons of butter
1 onion, chopped
1 small potato, scrubbed and diced
1 large bunch of silverbeet (chard), roughly chopped
Sea salt
½ - ¾ cup of thin cream
1 lemon, cut into quarters (optional)
Pick, wash and plunge your nettles – hands protected – into a saucepan of boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain, discarding any large stems and chop roughly. Warm the butter in a large saucepan. When foaming, sauté the onion and potato until soft and catching a little on the base of the pan. Add the silverbeet, turning with tongs until wilted. Add the drained nettles to the pot, a good pinch of salt and enough boiling water to cover things by about 5 cm (2 in). Bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer until the potato is cooked through.
Puree, in batches if necessary, and press through a strainer. Return to the heat, add cream to taste and warm through. I like it sipped from a small Japanese bowl that I can cup my cold hands around, but it’s an elegant deep velvet green thing, quite graceful in a way. Try without the lemon first to get a grassy dose of vitamins. Which I mean in a good way. I swear.
What to do with the nettles? This, from AOF.
Get out your garden gloves (and something long-sleeved, preferably) for this task.
I plunged my nettles, hands gloved, into a pot of boiling water for 1 minute, drained them over a bucket, then squeezed them almost dry. I replaced the spices with a palmful of parsley and another of rocket, but that's the only tinkering I did. It tastes vital and green - very - and is very, very good. Less splendid the next day, but only because its deep, grass green fades a little on standing.
Any more nettle ideas?
With spring springing forth, leaping from each corner turned, and the next edition of An Honest Kitchen well underway, winter food is giving way to lighter eating in these parts. There’s a remarkably simple carrot and parsley salad among Kathryn’s next batch of recipes, one that I’ve been happy to call lunch almost every day for a week. Sometimes I include small cubes of smoked tofu, browned in oil, sometimes a crumble of snowy feta; half an avocado last Tuesday, lazily diced, and a spoonful of leftover lentils on Friday. The attraction – it’s a very pretty salad - is not least because it conveniently manages to provide a solution to the parsley that’s become a little uncontrollable.
Who am I kidding? It’s taken over.
I’ve learnt a lot from Kathryn simply by cooking in her kitchen. One ingredient that features in her recipes for AHK is Shaoxing wine. As Kathryn says:
I’m a recent convert to Chinese cooking wine. After watching Kylie Kwong use it in everything on one of her cooking programmes, I just had to get some. And I’ve been experimenting with it ever since.
As have I. A dusty bottle sat in the pantry untouched since we moved in late last year, retreating further each week. (This pantry is a weird, cavernous beast, able to swallow ingredients whole and spit them back randomly, months later, usually when on your knees scrabbling through the bottom shelf convinced that you had some Vietnamese rice paper in there somewhere. That package, in turn, will appear when you were looking for the cashews weeks later…) But the fault is largely, neglectfully, mine. I tend toward the sweet grape-based alcohols when cooking, though a splash of Japanese mirin works its way in from time to time. Sherry is, as Kathryn suggests, a good approximation, but cooking sherry is horrid. No point getting out your best Spanish Fino either. Instead, seek out a mid-priced bottle of Shaoxing wine and start playing. It adds a beautiful depth to the soups and braises it touches; a mysterious, quietly bitter note best rounded out with something sweet, something salty and some gentle, spicy warmth.
This inspired braise of mushrooms is the perfect segue between cooler nights and warmer days, be they winter-spring or summer-autumn. A combination of Asian mushrooms is best – oysters, enokis, shiitakes, shimejis - but at a pinch, any mushroom, bar the European exotics, will shine. Red braising liquor is simple to make but, though the recipe below produces more than you need, it is difficult to say exactly how much of it your wok or mushrooms will need. Besides, it freezes well. Fill ice-cube trays with the remainder, freeze until solid, release and then bag up. A single cube such as this added – while frozen - to a stir-fry is excellent. Made ahead, it can be left to mature in the fridge for up to 3 days. Things only deepen if you do.
Red braised mushrooms
The very reason I bought Maria Elia’s Modern Vegetarian, particularly as she suggests the red braising liquor is suited to more than just exotic ‘shrooms. Try eggplant (steamed first) or thickly shredded wombok (Chinese cabbage) prepared in the same way. The braising liquor was initially too salty to my taste (I say this as someone who gravitates toward salted food) so the quantity of soy has been knocked back. Elia’s method concludes, ‘Serve in deep bowls with jasmine rice and a spoon’. Do. And some greens, please.
For the braising liquor:
1/2 cup of light soy sauce
3/4 cup of Shaoxing wine
150g (5oz) of yellow rock sugar
2 long strips of orange peel (or dried mandarin rind, if you have it)
1 red chilli, pointed end slit with a sharp knife
5 thin slices of ginger
1 stick of cassia bark (or 2 cinnamon sticks)
2 star anise
1 litre (1 quart) of water
Place all ingredients in saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain and reserve (see above for keeping qualities).
For the mushrooms:
400g (1 scant lb) of mixed Asian mushroom
1 tablespoon of pale sesame oil
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 golden shallots, sliced
A small knob of ginger, grated
1 red chilli, sliced
Leaves from 1 bunch of coriander
Prepare the mushrooms as follows: shiitakes should be de-stemmed and quartered; larger oysters torn gently in two; shimejis broken up gently from their clumped base; enokis prised apart with care.
Heat oil in a wok and, when hot, add the garlic, shallots, ginger and chilli. Stir-fry for a minute of so. Add the mushrooms to the wok, give them a quick stir and pour in just enough red braising liquor to cover (this is important – in the photograph, I used far too much and paid for it). Simmer quietly for 15 minutes or until the mushrooms are tender.
Scatter with coriander. Serve with a slotted spoon over rice, pouring over just a little of the liquor.
(Oh, and Happy Birthday, mum XX)
Have been as glorious as this.
And this.
If not a little windswept. Last week while cooking, at 5.30 on Wednesday to be precise, I got the first real glimpse of the light that attracted me to this place in the beginning.
Soft, pretty and longer-lasting than it has been for months. Hallelujah.
Is what you make with the remaining half of a large bunch of mint.
From Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion (revised ed.). Page 580 if you're interested.
Strip leaves from the stems of 1 large handful (half a bunch or so) of mint. Wash, drain and dry. Finely chop. Mix in 2 teaspoons of sugar. Add 1 tablespoon of boiling water, stirring to dissolve, then stir in 1/4 cup (I used a spoonful more) of really good cider vinegar. Keeps for up to 2 days, refrigerated.
I particularly like Alexander's instruction, '...that one spoons the solids onto the meat and does not just pour out flavoured vinegar'. I think she gives a terrific idea of the texture you should expect and, of course, how one should go about using it. To be spooned over roasted new potatoes tonight, tossed with a dollop of grain mustard, just for good measure.
