Nourish Me

Cooking for the dog

By suggesting that cooking for your dog is an act akin to cooking for your human loved ones in her cracking Jam Today, Tod Davies tricked me into finally reading M. F. K. Fisher. Davies excellent idea comes from Fisher's How to Cook A Wolf, in a chapter titled How To Stay Alive. Highly enjoyable reading.

After all, I thought, we eat well - very well. Why shouldn't Poppy? Fisher calls her dog-friendly concoction Sludge and it is, she says, as good for people in hard times as it is for dogs in good. I've taken to calling it Slop rather than Sludge for the onomatopoeic plop a few spoonfuls make as they hit her bowl, but Poppy adores it regardless and I get to feel like a proper dog mother as she licks the bowl clean. Marvellous all 'round.

What I like about the idea is that it is just that; an idea, not a recipe, one I can file away in my head.   

There’s a cheerful economy to this that pleases me no end; leftovers are an important part of the deal, especially when you put your mind to getting creative, and I've found that looking out for cheap cuts of organic meat is enjoyable in a slightly creepy way. The above batch featured ginger, parsley stalks, beetroot and carrot, millet for the grain component and almost-out-of-date organic lamb. Cooked slowly in the quiet of a wet Melbourne afternoon, this combination has been her favourite yet. 

Start by browning 1 lb of chopped meat in a bit of oil in a heavy, lidded casserole-type of dish. Chop 1 lb of dog-friendly vegetables* and add them next. Tip in 1/3 lb of brown rice (or millet, quinoa, barley - she's loving barley right now) stir well and pour in just enough water to cover. I add a bit of smoked trout skin and a crumble of seaweed because Davies makes an excellent case for the inclusion of both. Bring it all to a boil, reduce the heat, then cover and simmer until the rice is cooked. Long and slow, to be sure.

Keeps, refrigerated, for a few days. Please note that this is not a complete dog food, not by any means, so keep feeding your dog good quality dried biscuits and bones, all the usual things. Think on this as a kind of bonus. Which it most certainly is.   

*NO alliums (onions, garlic, leeks...), legumes, or deadly nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant) - seriously, NO alliums, okay? - but anything else is fair game. Broccoli, daikon, radishes, carrots, celery are all good and even better if you save trimmings during the course of the week.    

Jelly

Crabapple jelly.

Again. I like those satisfying cooking rituals.

Really just solidly set pink sugar, but good to have around nonetheless. We managed to get through all of last year's stash quite quickly to my surprise, so there's more this time. I skimmed constantly - this is key - and it behaved beautifully, setting to a nice wibble-wobble.

Mum gave me an idea while she was here. She 's been making a very plain apple jelly that she then uses as a kind of jam stock, added, in large tablespoon's-worth I imagine, to low-pectin jams as they simmer. This batch is full of pectin and the idea's intriguing, I reckon.

Keeping some back just to test the theory.   

Emerging

Pomegranate honey, via Katrina. Delicious, nutritious and medicinal. Can't ask for more than that, 'cos winter's arrived a week early.

Just popping in to let you know that An Honest Kitchen is having 15 minutes of fame over at the Emerging Writers Festival. Head over and see what else is happening, all of it online, naturally.

Honeycakes

(Click on the image - it's better, bigger)

I bake when I know the boys are coming. The simple act of sharing the sugar out keeps me sane. If Corinne, Oscar’s raven-haired, rosy-cheeked girlfriend is with us, all the better, so I leave cakes or cookies or, come winter, puddings for weekends (my childhood favourite is lemon delicious; a puddle of lemon custard pooling beneath an airy puff of cake). It’s the kind of kitchen activity that punctuates a Friday afternoon’s work with a welcome, sugary full-stop or defines a pottering-about Saturday morning post tea, an attempt at the crossword and a long-distance chat with mum. Baking heralds the arrival of the weekend in our house and it’s something I must – finally - admit to loving.

By nature, I am greedy and have been since early childhood. This is less comfortable to admit to, yet I continue to make no apology for enjoying food and its rituals. Constant vigilance is required to tame that greed, and though there are bad days in and among the more prevalent good, I am working hard at adopting restraint. Kathryn’s piece on pudding in the autumn edition of An Honest Kitchen (you can read it by viewing this sample) struck a slightly-uncomfortable chord deep within...and set me quietly on a path of re-thinking. Restraint may be unfashionable, but damn it – restraint in the 21st century can only be good.

Why then, I hear you ask, is she offering a recipe for Honeycakes? Because, quite simply, these are Good. Unforgettable-good. Each honeycake is small, sticky and nutty; a perfect, buttery bite to be nibbled slowly (not absent-mindedly) with a cup of tea and company (be it a book, the dog or your beloved – not while checking emails). This approach satisfies in just the right kind of way. Your brain needs to be present lest you eat the whole tray. A second one won’t hurt - this I know - but a third one begins the slippery slope. Take your time and enjoy the moment.

It’s the absent-minded greed that I battle against daily, but I am learning.

However slowly.

 
Honeycakes
Copied out, almost word for word, from my friend Ali’s email. Ali and I talk about “slow” being a state of mind and way of living worth attaining. Her recipe is slow at its charming best. Makes a lot. Freeze half of the dough or give some away if you do not trust yourself – a box or tin make a thoughtful, celebratory gift.  

2 ½ cups of plain flour (I use a mixture of spelt and wholemeal)
¾ teaspoon of coarse sea salt
1 ¼ cups of very coarsely chopped walnuts
250g of unsalted butter, softened (2 sticks for U.S. readers)
¼ cup of sugar (I like soft brown or, better still, rapadura)
1/3 cup honey, plus more for glazing

Preheat the oven to 120 C (250 F). Toast the walnuts, spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet, for 10 minutes. Cool on a plate.

Pulse the flour, salt and ¾ of the nuts in a food processor until fine.

Beat the butter in a mixer until fluffy – about 5 mins should do it. Add the sugar and beat for 2 minutes, then drizzle in the honey. Beat for 30 seconds or so, then reduce the speed to low. Gradually add the flour mixture until the dough just comes together. Shape into a disk, wrap in greaseproof paper and chill in the fridge for at least 1 ½ hours.

Preheat the oven to 170 C (325 F). Pinch off 2 tsp of dough, roll into a ball and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Repeat, leaving 2 ½ cm (1 in) between each, until the sheet is full. Carefully press a walnut piece into each honeycake and flatten, just a little, with the floured base of a small glass.

Bake, rotating halfway, until the edges are pale gold, about 20 minutes.

Line a cooling rack with paper. Warm a few spoonfuls of honey over a very gentle heat. When the honeycakes are ready, transfer them to the racks and brush – quite generously – with the warmed honey. Cool before placing in a tin – one you can put away, up high if necessary – for up to two weeks.        

Roast onion soup

Autumn is pottering, puttering weather. After months of feeling disinterested in the kitchen, and despite the bounteous nature of summer produce, the arrival of the first cool weekend changes everything. I want the smell of slowly cooking vegetables – especially onions, baking to a deep, deep gold – to fill the house, but I’m not ready quite yet to spend all day tied to the stove even though skies are grey. A simple soup then, as Nigel Slater says, to invigorate. Adapted from his whimiscal and lovely book, Real Cooking. 

Roast onion soup
Though it won’t win any prizes for good looks – it’s all a bit, well, brown – there’s a lot of complexity, fragrance and texture happening here that will convince anyone to dive in. The photo above might suggest that red onions are the kind to use here, but no, brown are best. The washed-out shade of violet-grey that roasted red onions take on won’t win anyone over - this I know. Enough for four.

4 brown- or white-skinned onions
4 fat cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of oil
6 kaffir lime leaves
A thumb-sized knob of ginger
1 red chilli
1 litre of vegetable stock (see below)
1 tablespoon of fish sauce (nam pla) or tamari
The smallest tin of coconut milk you can find
½ - 1 cup of rice milk
1 lime

Heat the oven to 200 C (400 F) and halve the onions, skin and all, from root to tip. Tip them into a baking dish with the garlic and toss to coat lightly in the oil. Flip each onion half so it sits cut-side-down and roast for 45 minutes, maybe a little longer. Turn them at about the 30 minute mark.

Start the vegetable stock (see below) if you’re making it yourself. You’re in the kitchen anyway, and the onions will take at least 45 minutes...  

Remove the spine from each lime leaf and, very carefully, very patiently, shred them into fine ribbons. Peel and grate the ginger. Halve the chilli and deseed it; you want warm heat, not searing pain, here. When the onions are ready, peel them – the skins come away easily – and slice the softened layers very roughly. Spiking them with a fork and using a serrated knife helps this procedure along enormously. Remove each garlic clove from its skin.

Pop the onion, garlic, lime leaves, ginger, chilli, stock and fish sauce (or tamari) into a deep saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a burbling simmer and cook for 20 minutes. Tip in the milks, squeeze the lime over the pan and bring back to a simmer. Discard the chilli. Taste for seasoning, adjusting with more fish sauce or tamari, before ladling into deep bowls. Your house will now smell wonderful.  

A basic – very – vegetable stock

Roughly chop the following: An onion; 2 small carrots (no need to peel if they are young and sweet); 1 or 2 stalks of celery (including a few of their leaves); and a few cloves of garlic.

Fry these with 2 bay leaves and the stalks of a half a bunch of parsley in a teaspoon of oil over a high heat, letting it all catch here and there on the bottom of the pan. Add a big sploosh of white wine or mirin, let it evaporate (seconds, really), then pour in 1 ½ litres (6 cups) of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. I add 1 teaspoon of an excellent, low-salt vegetable stock powder, but, honestly, a pinch of sea salt is just as good. Set a colander over a large saucepan or bowl and strain the stock. Press with the back of a spoon to get the most out of things. Easy, but only if you have the time. 

Before relegating the vegetables to the compost, I sift carefully through, blowing on burning finger tips as I go, picking out large lumps of carrot. A quick rinse to remove any onion, and I put them aside for the dog’s dinner. Poppy quite likes cooked carrot, you see, and I feel far less wasteful. A win-win situation.

P.S. Don't forget our An Honest Kitchen flickr comp! Entries close this Sunday.

P.P.S. I've just realised (thanks, Johanna!) that this soup fits perfectly with Jacqueline and Lisa's No Croutons Required event of this month. This, therefore, is my submission.   

Our best yet

Well, it's the Easter long weekend and, to celebrate, a competition is in order.

Because Kathryn and I want An Honest Kitchen to be a living, organic project - something useful, too - we set up a flickr group where we post some of the steps we make along the way. We'd love you to join us there and some of you lovely people already have. As such, we've decided to run a competition and give away some copies of our upcoming Autumn edition. We think it's our best edition yet.

Now all we need is you. 

We want you to photograph something you've made from any of the editions of An Honest Kitchen. If you've adapted it to suit what you have in your fridge or pantry, all the better. Tell us which recipe it began life as, and tell us how/why you adapted it to suit your needs in a few sentences. Then, if you have a flickr account, upload your photograph to the group. Kathryn and I will select our favourite shots and ideas but we're not necessarily looking for the prettiest. Points will be awarded for originality and creativity: we'd like you to have fun!  

Even if you don't have a copy of An Honest Kitchen, we still want you to participate! By clicking HERE you can download 3 recipes from the sample editions listed (one from each ed.) for free.

Non-bloggers and those without a flickr account are encouraged to join in - we'd be absolutely chuffed to receive your input, too. Simply cook your chosen dish, adapt it if you like, and take a photograph. Then send it along as an attachment to my email address:

lucindadoddsATyahooDOTcomDOTau (replacing the AT with @ and the DOT'S with .'s)

and I'll set it all up for you.    

Entries must be received by midnight, Sunday the 18th of April (Australian time) and winners will be announced on the 20th of April - our official release date.   

And for those of you with a twitter fetish, you can follow us there, too: we're @AnHonestKitchen.

Moving right along

Autumn is my favourite time in Melbourne. There's golden light in the afternoon, cooler nights and, best of all, there are dog walks along the beach to be had.  

Which is good, 'cos the dog and I are getting a wee bit thicker 'round our middles.

The long, uninterrupted walks of the cooler months mean we all get back on track, weight-wise. Phew.   

Harvest months

Slow to start, our beans became prolific during a cooler than expected February. Blue Lakes and Purple Kings were pushed, without much thought, into earthy, revamped beds of soil, straw and manure late in October, trussed (slightly clumsily) a month later and subsequently burnt to a crisp in our January holidaying absence. Some water, some love, a chat about pulling up their socks – keep calm and carry on - and back they came. Pods dangled heavily and seemingly grew overnight; picking beans each morning, barefoot in long grass, became late summer ritual.

Most days, we’ve had them dressed with oil and lemon - a simple side dish for a zucchini and tomato gratin or bowls of pasta or braised baby carrots or Peter’s stellar omelettes. The recipe that follows, earmarked last winter, was the single most useful recipe of summer, its minimal method belying its moreishness. 

There’s a school of thought that suggests that green beans, being fresh and snappy creatures, should remain so with only the very quickest of cooking times. Having never actually liked crisp beans, when Anna Del Conte pointed out that all beans need to be thoroughly cooked in order to be properly digested, I found myself nodding in agreement. Sensible advice. A green bean is simply the young, still-podded version of the dried ones that, as winter creeps in, you’ll soak and slowly coax to softness in soups and stews. A certain limpness is desirable.

 A recipe for the harvest months.

Elizabeth David’s French Bean Salad
One of those occasions when a rewrite - the re-wording of a recipe to comply with copyright rules - would betray the precision, elegance and simplicity that makes David’s recipe so perfect. Frankly, I cannot say it any better and won't even try. Besides, "Is There a Nutmeg in the House" is worth owning. Seek a copy out - Elizabeth David is as good as food writing gets.

Top and tail (and string if need be) your beans and, if yours are a not "bootlace thin", cut each in half through its middle, to make two shorter lengths.

“Allow 125g (4oz) beans per person. Cook them for not more than 7 minutes in boiling salted water. Drain them, and while still warm, mix them in a bowl with olive oil, lemon juice and more salt if necessary. Do not be tempted to add anything else. It is the simplicity of the seasoning and the fresh flavour of the beans which make the dish.”

On show

Right, so, here's the post in which I

a) apologise for not writing about food not nearly enough of late and

b) manage to sneak in a bit of self-promotion while I'm at it.

Until Sunday - Sunday the 28th of March, that is - you can see two of my photos in a group show at St Ali in South Melbourne. The show's open, so I am told, from 10am 'til about 2 pm daily.

St Ali

12-18 Yarra Place

South Melbourne

In the meantime, Kathryn just explained the fascinating idea of brining red cabbage to me over the telephone. Now I'm keen to get playing 'cos cabbage and I have some major digestive issues and I'm determined that this winter, cabbage and I will work together for some kind of greater good. It's cheap, it's cheerful, it's cancer-fighting, health-on-a-stick reputation is reason enough to learn to love it and rows of them look stunning in a garden.

Normal posting will resume soon.

Figs

Click on the photo to make it bigger.

At home, I'm fast becoming a film bore.

Last night, in the darkroom, I watched the first photo I have printed myself in twenty years magically appear under red lights. Sexy figs, on an old tin plate, on my kitchen table. Photoshop does my head in, but being in a darkroom makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. The three hour class flew by. I'm giddy with it all. 

Now. The question is, what to do with those figs? I'm thinking savoury/sweet starter/main combinations and get a wee bit bored by the 'wrap with proscuitto' suggestion because, as I've mentioned here before, the Jewish blokes I live with wouldn't ever go near the stuff and I only have on exceedingly rare occasions. (In Rome, I ate it draped over slices of perfect melon on a hot, hot day. Bliss, but that was a long time ago.)

Ideas?