Nourish Me

a sorrel and lentil soup

A weekend of very good eating: a barley risotto, one made with the properly pearled stuff, stirred slowly while dancing (as best one can) to Van Morrison at the stovetop. Almost better the next day made into almond-crusted croquettes with quick-pickled radishes and steamed carrots on the side. Salads straight from the garden each lunchtime, and a tray of tiny jam tarts, some filled with the incredible lime curd that mum brought from her kitchen to mine, for afters.  

While mum and dad were here last week I cooked a dish not dissimilar to this, consequently ending up with too many lentils. Long ago I'd bookmarked a recipe from Elizabeth David's Summer Cooking, a soup of lentils, properly seasoned and made into a thin purée then simmered, for about 10 minutes, with a handful of finely chopped - not sliced - sorrel leaves. A spoonful of cream goes in just before serving, but I often think it optional with soup. There's something to be said, from time to time, for restraint. David says, "This is one of the best of the sorrel soups" and I couldn't agree more. Simple, restorative, and rather a nice, somewhat ascetic, beginning to the weekend.

cherry tomato gratin

A few weeks ago - can it really have been a few weeks ago? where does the time go - Kathryn came to stay, a visit that was part just catching up but also, because we so rarely get time to see one another in the flesh, part work. An Honest Kitchen may be quiet from time to time in a public sense, but privately, there is always a lot going on, in and among other bits of work of course, but it's a happy constant in our lives. Pens and diaries poised, we planned a full year and a half ahead at the red table, then we cooked - Kathryn sliced, then roasted thick rounds of eggplant from the garden (and skillfully worked the knife around the bug-nibbles) while I worked on a dill, miso and leek (again, from the garden) pesto for squidging into them.

Huge fun, let me tell you.

So it’s not been all about the garden around here, not a chance, even though this space may be light-on for recipes of late. Cooking is and shall always be the reason for the work, for the energy, for the precious time invested. That there’s been so much talk of garden is simply because we have never stayed put anywhere long enough to establish anything lasting; here I am able to put down roots, to build something permanent, something in which to grow ourselves – indeed, MY-self - a more fulfilling life. It's a complete change of pace for us. Physically exhausting, yes, but deeply - deeply - rewarding.

By some sort of strange coincidence nearly all of the tomatoes I picked out from the catalogue were small, not-quite cherry but near enough to be called thus, the exception being the heart-shaped cherry tomatoes which were, obviously, cherry-sized (not quite as romantic as they seemed in the photograph) and the Tigerella, a small tomato with a taste delicious to humans and, unfortunately when the rains came in February, the slugs. All were prolific, but I found myself longing, from time to time, for a thick, ripe slice of something heartier, from one of dad's plants, more classically Italian, to sprinkle with a good crunch of salt and then eat, with knife and fork, outside in the sun. They are slowly ripening now, but they would have been so much better planted 2 months earlier. No harm in trying, I say. No harm at all.

cherry tomato gratin

Offered because it is simple enough to adapt to what you have (or not, accordingly) and was utterly delicious. Nothing beats cooking (and eating) tomatoes while they are in season. This gratin by Georgeanne Brennan came along late in the piece, a recipe copied haphazardly out of a book of mum’s over Christmas, but it was perfectly placed in the latter part of the season. I was beginning to tire of tomatoes, one of the odd joys, I should think, of growing over 35 kilos (that's correct!) of one’s own.

Arrange cherry tomatoes in a single(ish) layer in an olive-oiled gratin dish.

Chop a few cloves of garlic, a good handful of basil and tear up a few small slices of bread. I used a loaf loaded with seeds the first time, and it was particularly noteworthy. Blitz in a food processor with salt and pepper. Scatter half of the crumbs over the tomatoes.

Whisk a cup of fresh ricotta OR ½ cup of crumbled feta and enough milk or cream to make it all loose, with 2 eggs and another handful of basil, sliced as finely as you can be bothered – this should all be done rather quickly; a meal for the end of a busy day.

Pour mixture over dish. Scatter with the rest of the crumbs and drizzle generously with olive oil, then in to a 200C oven for 20-30 minutes. Good hot or at room temperature and really quite good, I must say, eaten out of the tin with a spoon at breakfast the following day.

mezze to milk tart: a review

Mezze to Milk Tart: from The Middle East to Africa in my vegetarian kitchen

By Cecile Yazbeck (published by Wakefield Press)

It took a while for Cecile Yazbek's voice to grab me, to seduce me into the kitchen, though now we've been there together half a dozen times or so, I'm not sure that I can tell you what it was that initially held me back. Good books - the best of cookery books - are like that, not so much page-turners, but made up of the the kind of pages you end up lingering over, remembering as you're driving along listening to all the economic doom and gloom on the radio, that come to you in the middle of the night, that remind what it is that you enjoy so very much about food writing.

Actually, apart from the lovely cover image, I think it was that the book is illustrated with images not, for the most part, of food that made me slower to take it all in, but of old family photographs, a family I did not (yet) know. Having read the book cover to cover now, I feel I know Yazbek's people a little better - and the pictures, now, are wonderful.

the modestly-titled Eggplant Bake

Let's talk about the food first: recipes couldn't be explained more simply, and yet, like many of my favourite cooks, they deliver in spades because they are cleverly spiced, carefully constructed, and none too difficult for a busy home cook to prepare. Better yet is that this is food that is budget-friendly, and the ingredients are, like a lot of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/African/Good Vegetarian recipes, generally inexpensive and, for the most part, easy to find. Mind you, I had a stupidly difficult time finding burghul this weekend in Kyneton, but I'll stock up in the city this week 'cos I want to cook and eat everything she does.

Yazbek uses loads of vegetables. I mean, just look at everything that went into that dish above:

(and again!)

Brilliant.
 
Dishes are inventive, the flavours just my kind. She kicks things off with the unfortunately-titled Sweated Vegetable Mix (6 carrots, an onion and 6 celery sticks, all grated and sweated for up to 45 minutes over the lowest heat possible in a heavy, lidded pan with 2 bay leaves, 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a little salt) and turns the mixture - something you can, indeed should, freeze in 2 cup amounts for later use - into 8 very different, quick meals. The Oat Patties, oven-baked (vegan now I come to think about it) were served on a thick gingery, garlicky tomato sauce of my own making. Astoundingly good, made from simple ingredients in the pantry.

Ingenious, delectable stuff for mid-week.

Kibbe of Potatoes

This weekend the two of us enjoyed her Kibbe of Potatoes (vegan, again), filled with a mixture of onions and currants and walnuts over three meals, and it just got better each day. It needs a juicy, crunchy, salty salad to go with it to my mind, something to offset the sweetness of the cinnamon in the kibbe dough, and I will be making the pumpkin version come autumn. 

Generous, this is a book that is inclusive to all styles of vegetable-friendly eating; vegans, gleegans and the ovo-lacto-vegetarian will all find solace within this collection. Chapters cover, among other things, tofu (lots of gorgeous tofu in here), cooking from the garden (close to my own heart, and packed full of eggplant and okra recipes!), celebratory food, everyday food and, of course, the food of South Africa via Lebanon. She, like Kathryn, puts dessert in context, and I love them both for that!   

Then there's Yazbek's writing voice. The book is part manual, part memoir and manages to be modest, poetic, wise, compassionate, funny (very) and warm. It's a cookbook with soul, one to read for more than recipes alone. This, from Food for the Road, I love:

Solitary driving and stopping at will for a view, or to write something that silence has dislodged, is as gratifying as arriving in the arms of loving friends - the moment when the city and all cares of home have fallen away. Enfolded in green hills, close to a blue and white sea, I become friend to myself once more.

Look. I could just go on and on about Mezze to Milk Tart (and have, at length, to friends, some of whom think I've gone mad), but I think it's best that you try and track down a copy for yourself. It is thoughtful, full of food that wends its way through some of the most interesting parts of the world, and is both fresh and inventive.

Highly recommended.

 

hot days

Just perfect for sunflowers and corn, standing tall, next to one another on these hot days. 

SUPER-excited about the corn as well you might imagine, but it's the sunflowers that have stolen the show.   

Just look at that lazy snoozer, in between the rows. Jo called her a (scruffy) child of the corn. Should be ready for the pot or grill this long, hot weekend.  

(the corn, not the dog)

brick oven: part 4

Back in June of 2011, it stopped raining just long enough one weekend for me to a) take a photo (one which, I think, shows how Dalek-like Peter's design turned out to be) and b) to get things fired up in there. You know, to actually use the thing.

Once again, Russell Jeavons displays a somewhat laid back approach to explaining how to fire up the beast, but we knew to expect that now, knew that it's all about learning how to use your particular oven, and, as such, there's no precise map to follow. So. Make a HUGE fire, get it burning fiercely and tend it for a good 2 hours or so before you want to cook. Longer is better in ours, but maybe not yours. It's one of those touchy-feely things. You'll need to shift it around a bit at that time, to make room for the food, raking out some coals occasionally. It'll take at least 2 barrows-ful of various kinds and sizes of wood. 

Peter took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to grasp that the fire needs to fill the thing. He kept leaving space to cook in, building small fires when, in fact, what is needed is a scary roaring fire (contained by the dome, of course). He is good at making that kind of fire, so once he was ready to listen to me reading out Jeavons' suggested scale, he decided to follow the rules.

I'm glad he finally did.   

Anyway, that was back in June. We made attempts from time to time to get out there and cook in it, but our timings were off, the rain kept pouring all damn year really, and the food coming out of it was, at best, lukewarm. We decided to wait until it was warm, sunny and dry. 

With family from Auckland here for New Year, our timing and the weather were, for once, just right. We got to work, a practice run of sorts, on the 29th of December.

Ta-daaa. First pizza!

(You'll have to excuse the exposure in the photo - too hot to get my lightmeter in there)

(Also, kale, sliced into shreds, arranged on top of your fridge-cleaning pizza then drizzled with olive oil before going in for a 5-7 minute blast is, I think, even better than kale made into chips. Just saying.)       

Pleased with ourselves? Hell yess.

New Year's Eve, Peter got his hat, workboots and kilt out and, despite the 40 degree heat, he had a ball firing it all up. A roaring (literally, considering the singed hairs on his arms) success, I'd say.

Happiness, in our camp, abounds.

The pizza dough I use is a Nigel Slater recipe, one I know by heart and the truly great thing about it is that it doubles as a flatbread recipe, so you'll only ever need this one set of measurements. Of course you can do it by hand, but there's something nice about knowing that the machine does a very fine job indeed. Makes 6 small flatbreads, 2 larger ones or 2 good-sized pizzas.     

Sift 500g (1lb & 2oz) of strong bread flour into the bowl of a standing mixer. Fit the machine with a dough hook. Add 1/2 a teaspooon of salt and about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Dissolve 2 level teaspoons of active dried yeast in 300ml of blood-temperature water, add to mixer bowl and turn the machine on low. Stand back and let it do it's thing for about 5 minutes or so, give it a quick knead and then pop it back into the bowl. Dust generously with flour and leave to rise, covered, somewhere warm for an hour. Worry not if it's not balloned in that time; forge ahead regardless. Shape, pop on a flour-dusted baking tray and decorate as you like. In a domestic oven I preheat the oven to 220C and keep an eagle eye on things after 10 minutes, but about 20 minutes is how long things will take all up. In the brick oven? No idea what the temperature it gets to actually is - farking hot isn't precise enough, but that's what it is - and will take considerably less time to reach true perfection. If you've a pizza stone in either case, heat it up while the oven comes to temperature.              

back

Back, in a sense, although not quite back in another (the sense in which one can string together coherent thoughts in an easy fashion, obviously). Yesterday morning was a balmy 12 degrees when the dog and I woke, so we broke our break, and headed back to the city for a few days. Who wants to build a fire in (almost) mid-January? Not me, least not on my lonesome. I may be good at being alone - I excel at it in fact - but sometimes it's nice to have company other than the scruffy canine kind.  

Actually, the impending summer cold (hail is battering the windows as I type - oh, the irony) made me chicken out. That and the need to get this year well and truly underway. I'm ready to be back.

Almost.

We've eaten very, very well, I must say, though it's been not our usual style, but the moment everyone was gone both Peter and I fell upon simple, vegan fare. Brown rice, as I've noted before, fixes everything. Tofu, grated carrot, thin half-moons moons of biodynamically grown cucumber on the side. All of that feels somehow right after a period of indulgence, and I love that returning-to-normal feeling. I'm sure my younger self would have mocked such thinking, but man, I am SO looking forward to routine.   

Happy 2012, all. Let's raise a glass of sparkling water to getting back to it.    

mustard seeds, sweet potato

I was supposed to teach Corinne how to cook something cheap 'n cheerful before she left for good, but she was off before we (any of us) had a chance to catch our breath. She was the harder one to please, but she loved sweet potato and she LOVED rice. This was one of her faves - loads of black mustard seeds, though here I think they are nearly-out-of-date nigella seeds found when scrabbling about at the back of the spice rack  - and we would eat it over rice, usually with some sort of vaguely Indian chickpea thing and a salad of green. If there was eggplant in there, all the better. Anyhoo, just a little reminder-to-self that I must keep in touch with her. Gosh, when Oscar flies off in February, we will be alone far more often. Makes me the teeniest bit sad, that.       

honestly

we're working away on another edition of an honest kitchen, one i'm actually rather excited about as kathryn and i are trying new things, giving it all a fresh new look. we decided on using film for the photographs because, honestly, apart from the occasional picture taken with my phone (not an iPhone) it's how photographs get made 'round here.

an outtake, this, but one i've a particular affection for. stay tuned.

a bunch of stuff i ate (part 2)

the brussels sprouts that made me fart all night long

the watercress that i floated on a clear golden broth of chicken

the ginger was for tea, the butter on my morning toast

a pilaf that was more vegetables than rice, the way i like the ratio these days

sneaky mid-winter tomatoes for my mid-winter birthday (they were goood)

and a mango juice in bali that i can't get out of my head, this rainy 'ole morning.

stamp

Finally found a use for the stamp I had made in Hanoi: labels on jars of things to keep on the shelf.

Made a batch of Laurie Colwin's lemon chutney yesterday. A bit too salty, and maybe a touch too sweet, it was enough for 2 good-size jars, not the 4 she suggests, but the fault is partly mine I suspect and besides, it's a joy to read Colwin while stirring a pot of something that makes the house smell that good. I'm beginning to get things feeling a lot like home up in the hills, one year in. A shelf of jarred things in the pantry only feeds that cosy, domestic goddess notion. I can see why Molly of Orangette likes Colwin so much - a thread of charming domestic storytelling links the two and I am grateful for the introduction. Colwin's food writing is hugely enjoyable, fits like a comfortable old cardigan, all that breezy New York Jewish gorgeousness, near-perfect recipes and smart - very - writing.