Nourish Me

Quince

After the Owl and the Pussycat were married in the Edward Lear poem,

'They dined on mince and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon.'

Now, I’m not sure about the combination of mince and quince (though there are many Middle Eastern dishes that happily combine the two), but the quince itself is a fruit that would be more than welcome on my wedding table (metaphorically speaking, people). Such delicious little morsels are worth waiting all year for. And I’d love a runcible spoon, whatever that is, with which to eat them.

The transformation that cooking can bring about, the alchemy if you like such fanciful ideas, is nowhere more evident than in the slowly cooked quince. The change from dull and inedible to headily-fragrant, jewelled pink is miraculous. In just under 3 hours, with a bit of lazy attending to now and then whilst pottering about, they are ready. It’s enough to make a girl feel very clever indeed.

before

Recently I read that Mexican cooks use the pips, cores and skins to make a syrup to soothe coughs and sore throats. If you have a jar of these quinces in the fridge, a spoonful or two ladled into a glass and sipped slowly with a smidgen of honey will do your aching throat no end of good. Thus the use of the whole fruit in this recipe – there is much wisdom to be gained from traditional ethnic cookery. Use it or lose it I say. Just in time too with winter, officially that is, just days away.

Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander both wax lyrical about the quince. Naturally I turned to them first, but both used excessive and frankly scary amounts of sugar. Deborah Madison saved the day (again). In fact you could quite easily replace the sugar with something like agave syrup or even honey to make it far more virtuous. Over to you.

The fruit makes a luscious dessert with a spoonful of the poaching liquid, a coat of thick vanilla yoghurt or cream and a few hideously expensive but oh-so-worth-it amaretti biscuits crumbled over the whole lot. Kept with its syrup in a tightly sealed jar in the fridge, it will be good for two months.

Poached quinces – adapted from Local Flavours by Deborah Madison

6 quinces (4 if they are huge)
¾ cup of caster sugar
1 cinnamon stick
5 cloves
2 wide strips of lemon zest
1 tablespoon of rosewater (optional – but very good)

Rub the downy-fuzz from the quinces with your fingers, though there may not be any on yours. Give them a good rinse. You’ll need a very sharp knife for this, so sharpen yours if it’s looking dull.

Trim a little bit off the base of each fruit so that they stand upright. Cut away the skin from top to bottom in long strokes. Quarter each fruit lengthways. Cut out the cores. Reserve all of the trimmings. Slice the fruit into wedges just larger than 1cm.

Place the skin, cores and pips, into a heavy-based saucepan or lidded, flame-proof casserole with 2 litres of water. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for 30 minutes.

Strain the liquid and return it to the saucepan. Add the sugar, stir to dissolve and add the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to very low and place a piece of baking paper, roughly cut to fit the pan, directly on top of the fruit to help keep it submerged. Cover and simmer for 2 ½ - 3 hours (maybe even a little longer). When ready, the slices will have become a deep pink and should be slightly translucent.

Store, with their syrup, in a lidded jar for up to 2 months.

after

No runcible spoon required.

Labels: autumn, desserts, natural remedies, photos, quinces

Roasted pears

Quartered, cored and rubbed with olive oil and salt.

Roasted with a little ginger and fat wedges of pumpkin until soft and well caramelised.

Pureed in a soup.

Good with other roasted veg, but just as good on their own. Sweet, juicy and succulent.

Labels: autumn, pears, soup

Red cabbage

Red cabbage.

Or should that be purple?

Not a favourite. Before now that is.

Shredded and braised for two hours with diced beetroot.

Red wine vinegar, soft brown sugar, onion and garlic to make it sweet and sour.

Sticky, caramelised bits on the bottom of the pot.

Crumbled goat's milk feta and roasted walnuts tossed through at the end.

Good with green lentils, I'm sure. But just as good with a glass of red wine and your feet up on the couch.

Now, what to do with the other half?

Labels: autumn, beetroot, cabbage, photos

Mushroom and noodle broth

There are times when I cannot face another rich, spicy, vegetable laden dish. Admittedly this happens rarely – who doesn’t love spice in all its guises? - but those moments do arise from time to time. Though my cooking is about as far flung from the thoughtful and gentle world of macrobiotics as you could imagine, I’m nonetheless drawn to its focus on eating and living well. The beauty of Japanese food, the artful presentation of dishes, appeals no end. Armed with some gorgeous exotic Asian mushrooms, a dish with a nod in that general geographical direction seemed seasonally right.

What I’m about to suggest is a pretty, cool weather broth. Flavoured with ginger, it has an earthiness that is echoed in the pure buckwheat soba noodles. It’s a meal in a bowl, just right for slurping noisily and with enough textural variety to keep almost anyone happy. Some ingredients used here live contentedly in my pantry, though possibly not in yours, but none are difficult to find. Besides, they have many uses beyond this delicious broth.

Kombu is a dried seaweed that is mineral-rich and the basis for many Japanese soups. Whenever I cook dried beans or long-cooking grains, I add a small piece of kombu to increase their digestibility, chopping it and adding it to the finished dish, regardless of cuisine.

Mirin is used in place of white wine in dishes that need a little alcohol-inspired lift. If left with the remains of a bottle of wine, I invariably drink it rather than sensibly freezing it in wine glassfuls. Mirin proves to be useful time and again. Good in salad dressings also.

Dried shiitakes are more useful than fresh. How often do you find sad, old shiitakes at the grocer, quietly sweating in their plastic wrap? The dried ones are cheaper, easily found on supermarket shelves, reconstitute incredibly well and have the same nutrients. Fresh is best, but the flavour of dried ones cannot be underestimated. Both are used here, but use reconstituted whole dried ones if good fresh ones allude you.

Soba noodles. Great in a stir-fry. I use traditional 100% buckwheat ones, but there are many varieties out there that are 50% or less buckwheat with the remainder made of wheat flour. If you’re cooking for someone with gluten sensitivity, make the effort to find the real ones. Spiral brand is my favourite.

Exotic mushrooms with soba noodles in a cool-weather broth – for 2-3

You could use the faster cooking udon noodles instead of the soba, but I like the chewy texture that soba provides. The broth makes more than you’ll probably need. Place it in the fridge in a covered container and it will keep for weeks. Add to stir-fried dishes in spoonfuls for a hit of extra flavour.

1 strip of kombu, roughly between 10 and 15cm long 1.25 litres of water Large handful of fresh shiitake mushrooms ½ cup of dried shiitake mushrooms 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced 100-150g, of dried soba noodles 2 tablespoons of tamari 2 tablespoons of mirin ½ tablespoon of brown rice vinegar 1 teaspoon of oil A bundle of enoki mushrooms, bases trimmed 2 spring onions, sliced thinly on the diagonal Roasted sesame oil to serve (optional)

Place the kombu in a saucepan, pour in 1 litre of the water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 1 minute. Retrieve the kombu and set it aside.

Remove the stalks from the fresh shiitake mushrooms. Add these stalks to the kombu stock along with the dried shiitakes and the sliced ginger. Bring to the boil, cover with a lid and reduce the heat to low. Simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Strain the broth into another saucepan, discarding the solids. Add the remaining water, tamari, mirin and rice vinegar and keep warm.

Cook the soba noodles according to the packet instructions. When they are cooked, drain them, rinse and place in a bowl of cold water. Set aside.

Slice the fresh shiitake mushroom caps thinly. Finely chop about one third of the kombu and discard the rest. Warm the oil in a small frying pan over a medium heat and add the sliced shiitakes. Stir-fry for about 5 minutes, and then add the enoki mushrooms and the spring onions. Toss about for 2 minutes and remove from the heat.

Drain the noodles, and divide them between 2 or 3 deep bowls. Ladle over some broth and add the reserved chopped kombu and the stir-fried mushrooms. Taste it and see if you need more tamari or mirin. A drop or two of roasted sesame oil at the end is very good.

A panacea for almost any kind of excess you can think of.

Labels: Asian flavours, autumn, Buckwheat, mushrooms, noodles, seaweed, soups

Enoki mushrooms

The freshest enoki's I've ever seen.

Like long, stark white pins.

Recipe to follow.

Labels: autumn, mushrooms, photos

Me, me, me

bird #1

I’ve been tagged by Stephanie of the very elegant Elegant Sufficiency for a meme – 7 Random Facts. It’s my first, so let’s see what little nuggets of information I can give you…

1. My hair colour has changed dramatically over the years – I’ve been dyeing it since I was fourteen. It’s been fire-engine red; a deep but bright hot pink (my favourite); black; bleached to a startling white and streaked with blue. Last year I finally stopped. Now it’s grey.

2. I do a mean impression of the Mother Superior from the Sound of Music. My ‘Climb Every Mountain’ is legendary and full of nun-like warbles and crescendos.

3. Though I love music, complete silence is often better.

4. I once asked art critic Robert Hughes at a National Art School opening night if he’d like, ‘a shitty plastic tumbler of delightfully crappy cheap plonk?’ before I knew it was him. Luckily it was before he lost his sense of humor - he laughed heartily and asked for another.

5. I’m obsessed with birds, crows in particular. Drawing them, collecting them, dreaming about them. The bigger and blacker they are, the more I love them. My heart leaps when I hear the magpies calling out to one another. Here’s a couple of big charcoal drawings from a year or two ago - one at the top, another below.

bird #3

6. Though Sydney born and bred, I love Melbourne. I couldn’t ever go back. Sorry mum…

7. I catch myself talking to the dog. A lot.

I'm trying to sleep. Bugger off.

By the way, you should read Stephanie’s mammoth 100^th post – she’s running a competition to celebrate with a wonderful prize, though you only have until the 20^th of May to enter. Better get cracking.

Now I tag Susan, Johanna and Truffle.

Labels: meme, photos, Poppy

A Very Good pear cake

Recently Truffle posted a recipe for a pear and spice cake.

This is one of those dense cakes, more rustic than light-as-a-feather. Just the way I like my cakes to be. Ice cream to serve was suggested, but it’s hard to find a good one. Find one however, I did – a preservative-free rhubarb one, a blush-pink colour that looked rather good next to slices of the golden cake. If I could have just one more piece of cooking equipment, it would be an ice cream churn.

This is pretty much Truffle’s recipe with a few small changes here and there to suit what we had in the cupboard - and I hate mixed peel, so out it went. Truffle’s recipe uses 8 tablespoons of butter which I reckoned on being about 125 g and, seemingly, it worked.

Delicious still warm with ice cream or some plain, thick yoghurt swirled with a little cinnamon and the seeds scraped from half a vanilla pod. You could even add a drizzle of pure maple syrup to the yoghurt, just to sweeten the deal.

Pear and spice cake

¾ cup of almond meal
½ cup of polenta
½ cup of plain flour
Large pinch of baking soda
2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
½ teaspoon of allspice
125g of unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup of sugar, plus extra sugar for sprinkling
2 eggs
1/3 cup of plain yoghurt (or buttermilk)
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2-3 pears, cored and thinly sliced

You’ll also need a spring form pan approximately 25cm in diameter, though Truffle suggests (wisely) that you could use a smaller one, in which case you will only need 1-2 pears. Grease it and line the base with baking paper.

Preheat the oven to 160 C.

Tip the ingredients from the almond meal through to the allspice into a large bowl and whisk to aerate. Easier than sifting and just as effective.

Cream (beat) the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the yoghurt (or buttermilk) and vanilla and mix well.

Fold in the dry ingredients, mixing well before spooning into the prepared tin, smoothing the mixture down (not too obsessively) with a spatula. Arrange the pear slices as artfully (or not) as you like on top. Sprinkle a little sugar over the pears and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes away clean.

No photo of finished cake. It was all eaten before I had a chance to do so.

Truly, the mark of a Good Cake.

Baby turnips

Tiny turnips, so sandy they needed a good hour of soaking.

To be cooked slowly until tender with creamy butter beans, garlic and those frilly greens.

With pasta.

Labels: autumn, pasta, photos, turnips

Fish and chips: Vaguely Mediterranean

The nights are finally beginning to get that familiar chill, the kind that makes you want to curl up on the couch, bowl in hand, and eat deeply warming food.

But we’re not quite there yet. The leaves on the maples out the front are only just now turning a shade more seasonally appropriate. Officially winter may be snapping at our heels; the reality is however very different.

Yesterday, Friday, was stunning. Autumn at her best. Sun streamed in through the windows urging me out on to the office balcony to finish the week's work.

I wanted to make Susan’s incredible Andean potato soup. I really did. The annatto seeds, an exotic and totally unfamiliar spice, arrived a couple of weeks ago. I was eager for the cold nights to settle into a pattern. Then that sunshine broke through - a reminder that it’s not quite deepest, darkest winter yet.

Instead, a slow-cooked Mediterranean potato dish called. Well, sort of Mediterranean. Some of the spicing (saffron and garlic) is from that region. The addition of a tablespoon raisins imitates the sweet/sour flavours of Sicilian food. Quite proudly I can say that this dish is pretty much my own with only a bit of technique nicked from Nadine Abensur.

The chips: This will serve four people, though I heartily recommend that even if you are only two that you make the full amount – you won’t regret it.

Braised, sort-of Mediterranean potatoes – for 2-4

300g of shallots (eshallots), small ones if possible 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil 500g of kipfler potatoes (or waxy salad potatoes), sliced into even chunks of about 3cm 2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced 2 cloves Finely grated zest of 1 orange 1 tablespoon of raisins, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes and drained Pinch of saffron 350ml of vegetable stock (cube is fine) ½ cup white wine 1 lemon A handful of coriander leaves

First, peel your shallots. This is frankly annoying and difficult. So, here is the easy way. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, chuck in the shallots and leave to blanch for 1 minute. Drain and cool a little before easily peeling away the skins. Much easier. Much less swearing.

Warm the oil in a large, lidded frying pan over a low-medium heat. Add the shallots, whole, and fry, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Try not to let them burn too much, though there will inevitably be some that catch on the bottom of the pan. Add the potatoes and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the garlic, cloves, orange zest, raisins and saffron.

Tip in about 100mls of the stock. Fry for another 15 minutes, shaking the pan from time to time rather than stirring to concentrate the flavours on the bottom of the pan. Pour in the remaining stock, cover with a lid (a sheet of baking paper pressed right on top of the potatoes and liquid will do the same thing) and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer, gently stirring occasionally for 30 minutes.

Lift off the lid, add the wine and cook until only a small amount of sauce remains in the pan (about 5-10 minutes).

Before serving, squeeze in some lemon juice to taste and stir through the fresh coriander. A green salad would complement these ‘taters nicely.

The fish: Firstly, I need to learn to cook fish more adventurously (suggestions are not only welcome, but encouraged!). That said, this is a favourite way with thin fillets of white fish – though next week I’m going to try the method kitchen hand described.

Take one or two fillets of King George Whiting per person. Dip into rice flour, pressing to coat well. Heat a large knob of butter in a frying pan over a medium-high flame and when it foams add your fish fillets, skin-side down. Fry for 2 minutes, flip and fry for another 1-2 minutes. Remove to the plates, add the juice of one orange to the pan and bubble for a second or two. Pour over fish.

Labels: autumn, Fish and chips, potatoes

Horse

No food, just the light caught at the right moment.

One of the Artist's prized possessions.

Labels: autumn, photos, the Artist