One of the highlights of birthday dinners as a child was that we were allowed to pick the menu for our birthday dinner. Dessert was always a birthday cake from the classic Australian Women's Weekly birthday cakes book. I would pore over the book for at least a month in advance, agonising over which cake to choose. Between myself and my two sisters, we managed to get through most of the cakes in the book. My favourites included the piano, with keys made of white chocolate and licorice, and the sweet shop, with dinky little pans filled with jewel-like boiled lollies.
My birthday entree was always prawn cocktail. Mum used her special 1970s glass cups for the occasion. A generous mound of juicy pink prawns perched atop a lining of pale-green iceberg lettuce leaves. The crowning glory of the dish, which lifted it from pedestrian to special was the seafood sauce, a spicy mix of mustard powder, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce.
Seafood has always been one of my favourite foods but usually eaten only on special occasions because of the expense and difficulty of getting fresh seafood when I was growing up in rural Victoria. A highlight of our family holidays in Queensland was the bounteous offerings of seafood at restaurants, from plates of plump oysters to large piles of king prawns or mounds of juicy Moreton Bay bugs.
Now that I live in Melbourne, fresh fish and seafood is more readily available, and more reasonably priced, than it was when I was growing up. When I shop at the Queen Victoria Market, it's always so difficult to choose because of the huge displays on offer. Recipes flash through my mind as I contemplate thick fillets of flake, rockling and blue grenadier, glistening slabs of salmon, fat sashimi-grade tuna steak, green prawns or a special marinara mix that I love to fry up with garlic and mix with chopped mint, basil, parsley, capers, tomatoes and a hint of chilli and serve with spaghetti.
I've recently discovered the delights of Conway, a fresh fish shop in Footscray that is a 10-minute drive from my house (and more accessible at the moment for me, as I have not yet had the courage to tackle the Queen Victoria Market with my nine-month-old son, pram and trolley!) Everything in the shop looks enticing but on my last visit I was particularly taken by the gleaming orange salmon fillets.
When I told Adam that dinner was salmon, he groaned and said "I don't like salmon." I was surprised at this display of fussiness, as we both have fairly robust and healthy appetites, so I persuaded him that he should try it before he dismissed it outright. I mention that I'm trying a new recipe from my Christmas present of Bill Granger's latest cookbook, Every Day and that seems to satisfy him that he should give it a go. I love Bill's cooking, as it's easy and always full of fresh, local ingredients to be turned into delicious dishes with a minimum of fuss.
The recipe I try is "caramel salmon" and is Bill's version of a traditional Vietnamese caramel dish. It is extremely easy to make: the salmon is seared and then coated with a rich, syrupy sauce of brown sugar, soy sauce and fish sauce. Bill tags this recipe as "almost-no-cook dinner for friends", which is an accurate description of a simple but impressive dish that would have your friends putting you in the "superwoman" camp if you were to serve this up to them on a weeknight.
Caramel salmon is an absolute hit with Adam, who immediately demands that I cook it again tomorrow night. "It doesn't taste like salmon I've had before. This one is more flavoursome than fishy," he explains. A happy diner makes for a happy chef and therefore a happy household!
CARAMEL SALMON
This recipe makes enough for four people; you can successfully halve the ingredients without the final result suffering.
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
800g (1 pound, 12 ounces) salmon fillets, with skin, cut into large cubes
1 red onion, sliced
3 garlic cloves, sliced
3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
115g (4 ounces) soft brown sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce
freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon lime juice
Heat the oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the salmon (you may have to do this in two batches) and cook for two minutes until lightly browned. Turn over and cook for a further minute before removing from the pan.
Reduce the heat to medium and add a little extra oil if needed. Add onion and garlic and cook for three minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in soy sauce, sugar and fish sauce. Return the salmon to the pan and cook for one minute until the sauce is rich, dark and syrupy. Sprinkle liberally with black pepper and stir through lime juice.
Stir with steamed rice, with a little sauce drizzled over the top, and with lime wedges on the side.
From "Every Day Cooking" by Bill Granger
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Friday, February 9, 2007
Sizzling on a summer's night
One of the best things about summer's endless hot nights is barbeques (BBQs). Walk the neighbourhood streets on a hot night and the smell of sizzling onions and meat will have your stomach rumbling and mouth watering. BBQs are attractive for many reasons: the kitchen's hot enough without turning the oven on to cook; it's a simple meal to put together - buy some excellent meat at the local butcher, throw together a salad and dinner's done; and, best of all, barbequing is a man's domain, so you can send him out with a platter of meat, a cold beer, and make the salads in peace.
I'm fortunate that my local butcher, Eddie the Butcher in Newport, has a fabulous array of good-quality products to choose from. I often drop in on my daily walk, tempted by the enticing window display. In winter, I buy chunks of lamb or beef that become meltingly tender in casseroles, or a good roast that will fill the kitchen with delicious smells for hours. In summer, his tasty rissoles and award-winning sausages are perfect for a BBQ dinner.
BBQ cookbooks often rave about kebabs or fish or seafood grilled on the BBQ but I'm simple and old-fashioned with my tastes and a thick steak, some juicy chops, tasty rissoles or fat sausages are about as adventurous as I get. (I'm not averse to any of the other offerings, but much prefer someone else to be organising and cooking this for me!) I often par-boil slices of potatoes that are then crisped up on the hotplate and no BBQ is complete without a mountain of sizzling onions, sliced into thin rings.
The meat is easily taken care of. There are plenty of simple marinades you can use to flavour the meat (my current favourite is a steak marinade of hot English mustard, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and crushed garlic), and it is easy to mix up your own tasty rissoles, livened up with fresh herbs, if you prefer to make your own.
This leaves the more delicate task of salads. I like to have a few on the table to choose from: a simple green salad of lettuce and tomatoes, perhaps given a Greek twist with the addition of black olives and feta chunks; a tasty coleslaw, made with sliced cabbage and grated carrot and onion, mixed with some good home-made, or store-bought, whole egg mayonnaise; and perhaps a potato salad, with chunks of tender potato slathered in mayonnaise and finely chopped chives.
My latest salad delight is a simple pasta salad that I first tasted at a BBQ at my Auntie Jess's house. Made by her friend's daughter, we discovered there was a secret ingredient that gave the pasta a delicious twist: sweet chilli sauce. The salad is very simply put together: cook one packet of farfalle pasta according to the packet instructions. Drain and combine with one finely diced red capsicum, one finely diced red onion, and 125g (4 ounces) (or more, according to taste) bacon rashers, cut into squares, fried and drained on paper towel. Combine equal amounts (about one-third of a cup, but use more or less according to your taste and current diet status) of whole-egg mayonnaise and sweet chilli sauce and stir through the salad. Enjoy!
I'm fortunate that my local butcher, Eddie the Butcher in Newport, has a fabulous array of good-quality products to choose from. I often drop in on my daily walk, tempted by the enticing window display. In winter, I buy chunks of lamb or beef that become meltingly tender in casseroles, or a good roast that will fill the kitchen with delicious smells for hours. In summer, his tasty rissoles and award-winning sausages are perfect for a BBQ dinner.
BBQ cookbooks often rave about kebabs or fish or seafood grilled on the BBQ but I'm simple and old-fashioned with my tastes and a thick steak, some juicy chops, tasty rissoles or fat sausages are about as adventurous as I get. (I'm not averse to any of the other offerings, but much prefer someone else to be organising and cooking this for me!) I often par-boil slices of potatoes that are then crisped up on the hotplate and no BBQ is complete without a mountain of sizzling onions, sliced into thin rings.
The meat is easily taken care of. There are plenty of simple marinades you can use to flavour the meat (my current favourite is a steak marinade of hot English mustard, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and crushed garlic), and it is easy to mix up your own tasty rissoles, livened up with fresh herbs, if you prefer to make your own.
This leaves the more delicate task of salads. I like to have a few on the table to choose from: a simple green salad of lettuce and tomatoes, perhaps given a Greek twist with the addition of black olives and feta chunks; a tasty coleslaw, made with sliced cabbage and grated carrot and onion, mixed with some good home-made, or store-bought, whole egg mayonnaise; and perhaps a potato salad, with chunks of tender potato slathered in mayonnaise and finely chopped chives.
My latest salad delight is a simple pasta salad that I first tasted at a BBQ at my Auntie Jess's house. Made by her friend's daughter, we discovered there was a secret ingredient that gave the pasta a delicious twist: sweet chilli sauce. The salad is very simply put together: cook one packet of farfalle pasta according to the packet instructions. Drain and combine with one finely diced red capsicum, one finely diced red onion, and 125g (4 ounces) (or more, according to taste) bacon rashers, cut into squares, fried and drained on paper towel. Combine equal amounts (about one-third of a cup, but use more or less according to your taste and current diet status) of whole-egg mayonnaise and sweet chilli sauce and stir through the salad. Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Cake of glace jewels
Christmas has flashed past once again, leaving me with some new cookbooks and foodie must-haves, a pile of shiny paper to recycle, some lovely memories of the food we ate and the new dishes I cooked, and lots of itsy-bitsy leftovers. (Is it just me getting older or is Christmas coming around faster each year?) There are half-empty packets of dried cranberries that went into the pistachio and cranberry nougat I made as gifts for friends (it also gave me the chance to try out my latest gadget - a sugar thermometer). I tried a new panforte di siena recipe, an aromatic concoction of spices, glace fruit and chocolate that was designed specifically to accompany a glass of rich Rutherglen muscat and that left me with a pile of glace figs and ginger. There are also many small bags of almonds, walnuts, and hazelnuts taking up space in my pantry.
My new year's resolution is to try and buy fewer cookbooks, as they are rapidly pushing every other book out of my bookcase and leaving little room for my stack of foodie magazines. But my resolve is being sorely tested as more and more glossy books full of luscious pictures and recipes pour forth from publishers. So I've decided to road-test the latest cookbooks through my local library. A recent loan was the interestingly titled How to cook absolutely everything cookbook by The Australian Women's Weekly. It's an impressively hefty and thick red-covered book with hundreds of recipes sorted according to ingredient type (salads, pasta, seafood, cakes etc). There were versions of many tried and true recipes, such as caesar salad, beef pies, chocolate cake and Christmas pudding, but also many new recipes. As I flicked through the cake chapter, I came across a recipe for fig, walnut and ginger cake that instantly took care of most of my Christmas itsy-bitsy leftovers.
The fig, walnut and ginger cake is dense but moist, with sweetness from the figs, zing from the ginger and an addictive crunch from the walnuts. It also looks very pretty, with the jewels of glace fruit studded throughout the texture. I tweaked the recipe a little, substituting natural yoghurt for sour cream and adding extra glace fruit and nuts. Next time I will add a sprinkling of cinnamon or mixed spice for some extra tang.
It's an extremely easy cake to make, with the only drawback being the time-consuming task of finely chopping the ginger and figs. But the end result is worth it. A nice wedge of this cake, accompanied by a cup of Earl Grey tea, makes a perfect morning tea. It's so delicious that I won't be waiting for leftovers to make this again!
FIG, WALNUT AND GINGER CAKE
185g (6 1/2 ounces) butter, softened
165g (6 ounces) caster sugar
3 eggs
160g (6 ounces) glace figs, finely chopped
70g (2 ounces) glace ginger, finely chopped
70g (2 ounces) walnuts, finely chopped
75g (2 ounces) plain (all-purpose) flour
75g (2 ounces) self-raising flour
80g (2 ounces) natural yoghurt
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Grease and line the base of a 14cm x 21cm (5 1/2 x 8 inch) loaf pan with non-stick baking paper. Cream butter and sugar together in a medium bowl until light and fluffy, then beat in eggs, one at a time. Stir in the figs, ginger and nuts, then fold in the sifted flours and yoghurt. Put into the prepared tin, smoothing the top. Bake for about one-and-a-quarter hours. Stand in the tin for five minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
Adapted from a recipe featured in "How to cook absolutely everything" by The Australian Women's Weekly.
My new year's resolution is to try and buy fewer cookbooks, as they are rapidly pushing every other book out of my bookcase and leaving little room for my stack of foodie magazines. But my resolve is being sorely tested as more and more glossy books full of luscious pictures and recipes pour forth from publishers. So I've decided to road-test the latest cookbooks through my local library. A recent loan was the interestingly titled How to cook absolutely everything cookbook by The Australian Women's Weekly. It's an impressively hefty and thick red-covered book with hundreds of recipes sorted according to ingredient type (salads, pasta, seafood, cakes etc). There were versions of many tried and true recipes, such as caesar salad, beef pies, chocolate cake and Christmas pudding, but also many new recipes. As I flicked through the cake chapter, I came across a recipe for fig, walnut and ginger cake that instantly took care of most of my Christmas itsy-bitsy leftovers.
The fig, walnut and ginger cake is dense but moist, with sweetness from the figs, zing from the ginger and an addictive crunch from the walnuts. It also looks very pretty, with the jewels of glace fruit studded throughout the texture. I tweaked the recipe a little, substituting natural yoghurt for sour cream and adding extra glace fruit and nuts. Next time I will add a sprinkling of cinnamon or mixed spice for some extra tang.
It's an extremely easy cake to make, with the only drawback being the time-consuming task of finely chopping the ginger and figs. But the end result is worth it. A nice wedge of this cake, accompanied by a cup of Earl Grey tea, makes a perfect morning tea. It's so delicious that I won't be waiting for leftovers to make this again!
FIG, WALNUT AND GINGER CAKE
185g (6 1/2 ounces) butter, softened
165g (6 ounces) caster sugar
3 eggs
160g (6 ounces) glace figs, finely chopped
70g (2 ounces) glace ginger, finely chopped
70g (2 ounces) walnuts, finely chopped
75g (2 ounces) plain (all-purpose) flour
75g (2 ounces) self-raising flour
80g (2 ounces) natural yoghurt
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Grease and line the base of a 14cm x 21cm (5 1/2 x 8 inch) loaf pan with non-stick baking paper. Cream butter and sugar together in a medium bowl until light and fluffy, then beat in eggs, one at a time. Stir in the figs, ginger and nuts, then fold in the sifted flours and yoghurt. Put into the prepared tin, smoothing the top. Bake for about one-and-a-quarter hours. Stand in the tin for five minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
Adapted from a recipe featured in "How to cook absolutely everything" by The Australian Women's Weekly.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Essence of summer
It's a common complaint that fruit and vegetables these days don't have taste; that they're bred for their looks and shelf life rather than flavour. Perhaps it's the rose-coloured glasses of adulthood but so many fruits and vegetables don't seem to have the intense, juicy flavour that I remember from childhood. I think the biggest disappointment is tomatoes. I'm so sick of eating watery, tasteless tomatoes that I've actually gone right off them. I eat canned tomatoes by the truckload in stews, casseroles and soups but fresh tomatoes are much rarer in my kitchen.
One of the favourite food memories from my childhood is the fresh tomato sandwiches at my mother's Saturday afternoon tennis matches. Once all the tennis players had eaten, the kids were allowed to devour the leftovers. I always went straight for the tomato sandwiches: fresh white bread, smeared with butter, filled with fire-engine-red slices of tomato and finished with a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper. It's been years since I ate a tomato that could compare. I told this story so often, and lamented the state of modern tomatoes so much, that the first thing my husband Adam made for me when we grew our own tomatoes last year was a fresh tomato sandwich. So simple, yet so divine!
Whenever my parents come to visit, they bring bags full of home-grown produce from their vegetable and herb garden: huge bunches of basil to turn into pesto; handfuls of parsley to flavour dumplings to simmer on top of a beef stew; bunches of tangy spring onions for my stir-fries; leafy green silverbeet to chop into frittatas; and, this visit, a kilogram of Dad's first tomatoes for the season, as well as a handful of baby red onions. The tomatoes were plump and juicy, a little blemished on the skin, but glowing with flavour. I boiled them with some water for an hour and strained the juice to make an intensely flavoured stock for risotto, one that had the essence of tomatoes rather than the texture or colour.
This recipe had been given to me last year by a work colleague, John, an infrequent cook who found the recipe years ago in The Age's Epicure section and used it at a dinner party to impress his friends with his cooking skills. I have been waiting for the right amount of fresh tomatoes to make this recipe. Melbourne supermarkets might be open 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and you might be able to get most fruit and vegetables every month of the year, but this recipe calls for fresh tomatoes at the peak of their season. Sometimes you have to ignore modern-day convenience to get old-fashioned flavour.
The preparation of the stock is slightly unusual, but the end result is an absolutely delicious risotto, and the quantities are easily halved if you have, like me, only a kilogram of tomatoes available.
ESSENCE OF WHITE TOMATO RISOTTO
Serves 8
2 kg (4 1/2 pounds) ripe tomatoes (big, juicy ones, not the fleshy roma types)
water or vegetable stock
4 shallots, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
50ml (1/4 cup) olive oil, or 25g (1 ounce) butter
400g (14 ounces) arborio rice
150g (5 ounces) cold butter to stir in at the end
200g (7 ounces) parmesan
sea salt and freshly ground white pepper
Score tomatoes and place in a non-reactive heavy-based pot. Add about 100ml (3 1/2 ounces) water and heat slowly, with the lid on tightly. After about 10 minutes, the tomatoes should be cooking in a clear liquid. Don't stir and let the tomatoes cook for about 40 minutes at a gentle simmer.
Strain the liquid through a fine sieve. Don't crush or press the tomatoes but use their own weight to allow the clear juice to drain through. The remaining liquid should be a clear broth with an intense tomato flavour. Don't reduce any further, as you will lose the freshness of taste. Set aside. Dilute with one-third water or vegetable stock.
Heat the olive oil or butter in a pan and saute the shallots and garlic for a few minutes, until they are soft but not coloured. Add the arborio rice, making sure each grain is coated with the oil or butter, and heat through. Add the stock in small batches, stirring after each addition. You may need to add extra water or stock until the rice is cooked.
Once cooked, stir in the butter and parmesan cheese and season with salt and pepper. Rest for three minutes with the lid on. Stir once and serve.
One of the favourite food memories from my childhood is the fresh tomato sandwiches at my mother's Saturday afternoon tennis matches. Once all the tennis players had eaten, the kids were allowed to devour the leftovers. I always went straight for the tomato sandwiches: fresh white bread, smeared with butter, filled with fire-engine-red slices of tomato and finished with a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper. It's been years since I ate a tomato that could compare. I told this story so often, and lamented the state of modern tomatoes so much, that the first thing my husband Adam made for me when we grew our own tomatoes last year was a fresh tomato sandwich. So simple, yet so divine!
Whenever my parents come to visit, they bring bags full of home-grown produce from their vegetable and herb garden: huge bunches of basil to turn into pesto; handfuls of parsley to flavour dumplings to simmer on top of a beef stew; bunches of tangy spring onions for my stir-fries; leafy green silverbeet to chop into frittatas; and, this visit, a kilogram of Dad's first tomatoes for the season, as well as a handful of baby red onions. The tomatoes were plump and juicy, a little blemished on the skin, but glowing with flavour. I boiled them with some water for an hour and strained the juice to make an intensely flavoured stock for risotto, one that had the essence of tomatoes rather than the texture or colour.
This recipe had been given to me last year by a work colleague, John, an infrequent cook who found the recipe years ago in The Age's Epicure section and used it at a dinner party to impress his friends with his cooking skills. I have been waiting for the right amount of fresh tomatoes to make this recipe. Melbourne supermarkets might be open 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and you might be able to get most fruit and vegetables every month of the year, but this recipe calls for fresh tomatoes at the peak of their season. Sometimes you have to ignore modern-day convenience to get old-fashioned flavour.
The preparation of the stock is slightly unusual, but the end result is an absolutely delicious risotto, and the quantities are easily halved if you have, like me, only a kilogram of tomatoes available.
ESSENCE OF WHITE TOMATO RISOTTO
Serves 8
2 kg (4 1/2 pounds) ripe tomatoes (big, juicy ones, not the fleshy roma types)
water or vegetable stock
4 shallots, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
50ml (1/4 cup) olive oil, or 25g (1 ounce) butter
400g (14 ounces) arborio rice
150g (5 ounces) cold butter to stir in at the end
200g (7 ounces) parmesan
sea salt and freshly ground white pepper
Score tomatoes and place in a non-reactive heavy-based pot. Add about 100ml (3 1/2 ounces) water and heat slowly, with the lid on tightly. After about 10 minutes, the tomatoes should be cooking in a clear liquid. Don't stir and let the tomatoes cook for about 40 minutes at a gentle simmer.
Strain the liquid through a fine sieve. Don't crush or press the tomatoes but use their own weight to allow the clear juice to drain through. The remaining liquid should be a clear broth with an intense tomato flavour. Don't reduce any further, as you will lose the freshness of taste. Set aside. Dilute with one-third water or vegetable stock.
Heat the olive oil or butter in a pan and saute the shallots and garlic for a few minutes, until they are soft but not coloured. Add the arborio rice, making sure each grain is coated with the oil or butter, and heat through. Add the stock in small batches, stirring after each addition. You may need to add extra water or stock until the rice is cooked.
Once cooked, stir in the butter and parmesan cheese and season with salt and pepper. Rest for three minutes with the lid on. Stir once and serve.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
