Nourish Me

Friday

Friday, oh, Friday. A sunny one, not a bit like this day.

No. Not at all.

I make a list of every vegetable we have, mindful that there will be not an ounce of shopping done this weekend. Plenty of potatoes in the drawer; a bag of mushrooms need using before they open their gills and expire; three long, expensive, but irresistible leeks; a plump-bottomed eggplant and a kabocha squash (both currently employed in a still life and, therefore, out of culinary action); a grimly smiling half pumpkin; a tiny bunch of radishes; two heads of celery (can’t get enough of it right now) a bunch of baby carrots and two cauliflowers, hiding shyly beneath their leaves. Onions, always, and some really good local garlic. There are pears and apples too, small and perfectly fitted to the palm, sweet mandarins and a hand of slightly unripe bananas. More than enough, with what’s growing in the garden, to see us through to week’s end.

Potatoes are scrubbed, knobbly, waxy kipflers this time, then sliced and layered with rounds of leek, cut from the tallest of the trio, and thin, crisp crescents of mushroom. A rich, porcini-infused sauce – I am temporarily annoyed with Deborah Madison for referring to the resultant cupful of liquid as a ‘stock’, one thickened with a generous sprinkling of flour – is warmed with an equal quantity of milk that would, without Oscar, have gone to waste. Carefully poured over while hot, the dish is covered with foil and baked slowly for a couple of unattended hours. We come home to woodsy, wintry aromas, cheeks flushed by the cold and appetites bolstered by a considerable amount of sandy dog-walking. Foil comes off, heat goes up and all is lifted, golden and bubbling, to the table.

There were other things this weekend, of course. Quiet, good things. Onions cooked on the gentlest of heats in 2 cups of real stock (retrieved triumphantly from the back of the freezer), a few chunks of preserved lemon, some ginger and oil - oh, boy – for a tart with roasted chunks of said grim pumpkin. The cameras and I went out collecting light, too, and the wait, as always, is part of the fun. There was sun on the skin, sleeping in, dog burrowed between us each morning, and some unformed thoughts about photography and the importance of illustrating our food.

That post, I hope, is to come. How did it get to be Monday so quickly?

What does home mean to you?

Home is where the grass is dry in summer,

the gum trees solid, silent, and the sky a haze of shimmering blue.

Home is him

and it is her.

Home is where you kick off your sandals

and rest your weary self.

A lovely idea, Home, but for many displaced people on this little planet, home is a less comforting notion and a long, long way away. What does Home mean to you?

For Wendy, in aid of Refugee Week 2009.

(Happy Winter Solstice, all.)

Green salad with persimmon

Kylie ordered a salad at Il Fornaio during her visit – sliced red grapes, tiny, halved brussels sprouts and pale yellow wax beans dressed in hazelnut oil – one which turned out to be the ideal antidote to a week of gluttonous but joyful eating out. During recent years I’ve done a back flip on a long-held no-fruit-in-salad rule and though, ever skeptical, I thought the combination odd, it worked a treat.

A note stuck to the fridge door reads, 'Grow the greens you cannot (easily) find'. The following salad is why, if possible, you should. Buying up pre-Christmas at the North Sydney Farmer’s Market with mum, a plastic bag, an airy pillow in fact, of small, lemony sorrel leaves from the Darling Mills farm got me thinking – long and hard and distractedly - about gardening. Their buckwheat sprouts were nice, but it was the sorrel that, for me, completely stole the show. I’ve been growing it in small pots on a sunny sill ever since. This salad, seductive in shades of deep, bright orange and dark, wintry green, combines bitter salad leaves and sweet slices of persimmon with creamy avocado dice, the crunch of fresh, Tasmanian walnuts and a zing, right at the end, of lemon juice. It nearly upstaged the leftover slices of an onion, leek and spinach tart it accompanied last night. Almost.

It requires what Stephanie Alexander refers to as ‘strong’ greens; assertive ones like rocket are ideal, perfect for the job, but it was the other greens the rocket was tossed with – greens not quite so easy to find - that brought things to life. Tender parsley and curly kale thinnings from an early morning session last week and a palmful of home-grown baby sorrel leaves made things, already rather good, even better.

Persimmons come in two distinct varieties. An astringent persimmon must be ripened to the consistency of jelly and eaten, top lopped carefully off, straight from the fruit with a spoon. We won’t be using that kind today. Their non-astringent, tomato-shaped cousins with frilly, ruffled collars however can be eaten crisp, just like apples, or at the soft ‘n squelchy end of proceedings as well as each honeyed, vanilla-scented stage in between.

They are in season, and delicious, right now.

Green salad with persimmon – feeds 2, as a side
Adapted from The Cook’s Companion. Alexander suggests dressing the salad with either extra virgin olive oil or, if you have it, avocado oil. We liked this so much that I will be seeking out a good bottle of the latter. Well-plucked flat-leaf parsley, in lieu of above mentioned exotics, is worth adding should you have any. Mine is feral.

Toast some walnuts in a dry frying pan for a few minutes, long enough to make them smell irresistible. Cool on a plate. Wash 2 small crisp, non-astringent persimmons. Slice off the blossom end using a small, serrated knife. Quarter each fruit from top to bottom, cutting out and discarding any seeds. Slice thinly and set aside.

Peel and dice an avocado. Toss everything in a large bowl with a few handfuls of rocket. Rocket is good, but a mixture of things (see above) will be better. Squeeze over a few drops of lemon juice from on high, followed by a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Toss again and serve. 

For the June edition of No Croutons Required, hosted by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes.

A busy, all-consuming affair

Saturday morning was spent gardening with the dog, urged on by an unconvincing burst of sunshine - I, planting neat rows of sorrel and rocket and broccoli rabe and she, stalking birds. I love the birds, but alas, Poppy does not. Magpies, dressed in black and white, were thankfully undeterred. A family of three looked down contemptuously from the plum, rightly unmoved by a blur of barking schmoo. Eventually, she gave up and lay smack bang in the centre of the lawn, spotted belly up as the sun came out.

Curly kale was pricked out of a box set by the garden tap and relocated to the back, scattered among more mature greens. They seemingly require deeper ground in which to send out roots. Parsley most certainly does – roots pulled from one errant group yielded long, ratty taps, firmly attached to their patch of earth. Only an almighty heave-ho, one ending with my bum planted squarely in the other bed, would set them free. Small, they are pure white beneath hairy, wrinkled skins, somewhat like an anorexic parsnip, and tasting sweeter, more herbal. In the course of tidying, I think I’ve found three fledgling stinging nettles. Not willing to disturb such valuable weeds, I mulched around them in case - fingers crossed – they are.

The produce of winter is exciting, both to grow and to cook. Familiar things make their way back to the kitchen. Winter in these parts is bare-branched, pale grey but lushly green. A mere three months of double-layering, triple if you’re up early or out late, but mild with the odd day of sparkling blue. I've been testing and photographing recipes for a very exciting, soon-to-be-revealed project with Kathryn of Limes and Lycopene for the last month or so, and looking after Oscar nearly full-time on my own, so cooking has been a busy, all-consuming affair. It's hard to get bored when the produce looks so damn fine.

A bag of cumquats sat forlornly by the fruit bowl for a week but were used, finally, in a sauce. I wanted the flavour of cumquat, not sugar, to prevail, so Stephanie Alexander’s recipe was adjusted accordingly. Destined for a steamed pudding this long weekend. A swede and leek soup with crisp, buttery croutons tossed in smoked paprika was excellent on a cold Thursday night, just Oscar and I, and, on Friday morning, I began the biblically-timed 40 day (and night) soaking required to cure a first batch of fat black olives.

Stay tuned.