Archive for February, 2010

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Secrets of a corn star

February 22, 2010

Every time I opened the fridge door on Saturday I was accused by three shrinkwrapped corn cobs bought two weeks ago. Food waster! Abandoner! they cried, in their tiny little corny voices.

They were a teeny bit worse for wear, and it was lunchtime, and I was home alone. The thought of eating three corn cobs there and then didn’t appeal. But corn fritters did. I checked a recipe and then made my own version according to what I had in the house – using yoghurt instead of ricotta cheese and rice flour instead of ordinary flour. And they were pretty darn good! I ate several and froze the rest.

Then Sunday morning, when Senor was hankering for something luxurious, I whipped up the most fab breakfast in minutes (I was sooo Bill Granger – shame about the non-matching teeth): into the pan went the corn fritters, a few shreds of proscuitto; half a chorizo sausage, thinly sliced; leftover roasted tomatoes. I think it may have been the best breakfast I have ever made.

Corn fritters

  • 3 cobs corn kernels
  • 4-5 tablespoons rice flour
  • 1 tablespoon yoghurt
  • 1 handful each finely chopped basil, parsley, chives
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
  • salt & pepper

1. Shuck the corn (don’t you love that word?) by standing the cob on its end and running a knife sharply down the side.

2. Mix everything in a bowl, adjusting the flour if it gets too watery (it does look unnervingly runny, but that doesn’t really matter in the end).

3. I threw two-thirds of the mix in the food processor and pulsed just a couple of times to get a rough blend, then returned to the bowl.

4. Heat some oil in a non-stick pan over med-high heat and cook the fritters in batches. Depending on the amount of oil you use and the runniness of your mix, the texture tends more to the pikelet than fritter, but either is delicious.

5. Drain on kitchen paper before serving.

Posted in dairy, eggs, herbs & spices, vegetable | Tagged | 8 Comments »

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The Vine Intervention, pt 1

February 19, 2010

Till now, my appreciation of Vitis vinifera has been limited to a lifelong (and let’s admit it, rather passionate) love affair with the grape. I’ve admired the leaves from afar – on the plant – but cooking with them has never appealed. I know everybody loves dolmades, for example, but their vineleaf wrapping has always been way too slimy for my liking. Frankly I’ve found eating dolmades too often to feel like popping a big fat slug in the mouth. So the idea of using those vine leaves packed in oil – ugh.

But joy of joys, these reservations are in the past, because this week I have discovered the joy of cooking with fresh vine leaves, and there ain’t no turning back. I love them. And now I’m plotting to somehow grow a vine here, for our own supply.

This new affair began when Mr & Ms Melba offered me some leaves from their gorgeously lush and laden vine, and mentioned a turkish vine leaf ‘pie’ Ms M had made. I had to check that out. And then the stars aligned, with Karen Martini’s incredible looking vine leaf recipes in last week’s Sun Herald.  Both these dishes are the business. I urge you to pluck a big handful of leaves next time you are in the vicinity of a vine, and try them. One other great thing about the leaves is, as I discovered by leaving a sealed plastic bag full of them in the fridge and then forgetting them for a whole two weeks, that they keep incredibly well. When I opened the bag it was as if they were picked minutes before. Amazing.

This post I’ll share the Karen Martini recipe, which I now understand is a variation on a traditional Greek dish (JMo, if you’re out there, can you confirm?), but was a revelation to me.  Next time, the pie.

Now the recipe below used packaged vine leaves, but was perfect with fresh. The only preparation I did was soak the leaves in boiling water for 10 minutes, then drain and press dry in a tea towel, and cut out the hard stalk. We used nectarines in place of peach and it was delicious. Having never heard of saba, I used vin cotto as suggested. Di-vine.

Karen Martini’s vine-leaf wrapped haloumi with peach

1 large bulb garlic

olive oil

1 packet haloumi cheese, sliced into 8 pieces

8 vine leaves (rinsed, if packet, or fresh prepared as above)

2 ripe peaches (or nectarines), cut into wedges

1/2 lemon, juiced

3 tbsp saba, a grape must reduction (or vin cotto, or balsamic vinegar)

1. Cut the top off the garlic bulb, drizzle with oil, wrap in foil and roast in a moderate oven for 40 minutes or till soft. Allow to cool.

2. Smear each haloumi slice with the roasted garlic, then wrap tightly in a vine leaf.

3.  Heat 80ml olive oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and cook haloumi for 1 minute each side, till the cheese starts to melt, but not burning the leaf.

4. Arrange on a plate, scatter with the nectarine or peach and drizzle with the lemon juice and vin cotto / saba .

Posted in dairy, dips & snacks, fruit, starters, summer food, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

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In the pink: salmon Nicoise

February 15, 2010

I don’t know about you, but whenever I unwrap a salmon fillet these days it seems to have grown to twice the size it looked in the fish shop. So I’ve started cutting them in half after barbecuing – the easiest way to cook salmon, I find – and keeping half in the fridge for lunch.

Ever since I read in this book here that one of the major keys to preventing dementia (both Alzheimer’s & non-A) is to eat oily fish a couple of times a week, our salmon consumption has gone up. I know chefs turn their noses up a bit at salmon – all those early nineties menus full of pan-fried salmon on a lump of mash, I guess – and I’ve heard salmon described as fish for steak eaters (hmm, who could that be…?). And I see their point. I still love it though, and being a bit of a fish-cooking scaredy-cat, I find it durn simple to cook (these days, that is – remind me to tell you one day of the first time I cooked for my Neil-Perry-trained-seafood-restaurant-chef-brother-in law-to-be, chefbro Hamish, using a crap electric stove and oven in my old flat. He was very gracious at the overcooked, soggy pink slab he got – but what was I thinking!??)

Anyhoo, the other day I slung this little salmon nicoise salad together from leftovers and fridge staples. It pretty much only took as long to make as the egg took to hardboil (around eight minutes) – and, I have to say, was very fabulous. I used vino cotto instead of making a dressing, because I can kid myself that it’s got no oil (but I bet the sugariness of it cancels out that benefit…), but any dressing you like would be fine.

This made a big salad for one, but obviously you can mix and match quantities to suit.

Reckon it’s easy enough to stick in lunch for lazy people?

  • 1 piece cooked salmon, broken into bite-sized pieces
  • 5 kalamata olives
  • 5 anchovies, roughly chopped
  • 1 hardboiled egg, quartered
  • 1-2 tomatoes (I used a few I’d roasted; they shrink a lot so used more)
  • lettuce leaves
  • a couple of teaspoons of vino cotto (or balsamic & oil dressing)
  • next time, I’d add some green beans
  • salt & pepper

Method: Chuck it all in.

Posted in salad, seafood, summer food, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

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The incredible lightness of bean

February 10, 2010

The other night Senor and I went with Sister & Beau to the very good Da Gianni Trattoria in Annandale. Great food. And accompanying my delicious lamb was a very fine, very simple white bean & tomato number that I kept yearning for later on. As you know, round these parts we love anything with a pulse – but unlike lots of bean dishes this one was zingy, light and fresh. So I had a shot at replicating it a few days later, and while mine wasn’t exactly as good as the restaurant’s, it was near enough to get the compliments we kitchen kids secretly crave …

Happily, I was able to use some of the slow-roasted tomatoes I had already made (from the home-grown glut, you understand *preen*).  You could use canned cannellini beans but one of the best things about this dish was the only-just-tender, firm texture of the beans, and I reckon canned ones could go a bit slushy. So I say live dangerously, do the soaking thing and the result will be much better. I used whatever white dried beans were in the pantry (since I solved my bean dilemmas of yore I have given up caring what the difference may be between navy, cannellini, haricot & so on).

  • 1 cup dried white beans
  • 4 slow-roasted tomatoes (there’s a bit here on slow-roasting – easypeasy, but takes time)
  • 6 anchovies, finely chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
  • juice ½ lemon
  • 1 bunch chives, finely chopped (if you use garlic chives, skip the garlic above)
  • 4 basil leaves, cut into fine ribbons
  • 1 slug best quality olive oil
  • salt & pepper

1. Soak the beans overnight, drain and cook in boiling water until just tender. Drain & cool.

2. Chop the tomatoes as finely as possible without turning to mush.

3. Ditto with the anchovies.

4. Gently toss all ingredients together, adjusting the balance of oil, lemon & salt as you go. Done, and delicious.

Posted in herbs & spices, pulses, vegetable | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments »

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Preening…

February 10, 2010

Well, well. We’re feeling a bit flouncy round here today, having been told that the very cool online news site Crikey included us in their list of “a smatttering of fantastic food blogs and recipe sites” yesterday, as inspiration for readers to get out of their food rut and cook up a new signature dish.

So, a big welcome to any Crikey-led visitors – we hope to see you round these parts often. Better lift my game!

Posted in writing | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

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Go nuts!

February 6, 2010

A couple of people have asked me for this recipe, which constituted one of the bits of our Christmas present to family & a few friends. These are totally delicious and very easy, even when I was making ten times the quantity.

It’s a Karen Martini recipe, from that second book, Cooking at Home, one of the better books in my collection (mind you, it may shortly be replaced in my affections by the fabulous-looking Bistro Cooking, by Patricia Wells, which the Empress just gave me!)

I used a mix of cashews, almonds and pecans but you could throw any raw nut in I reckon – these are very good with drinks. We made sure to spend lots of time with family over Christmas so we could eat theirs as well as ours. I packaged them up in cellophane bags and then threw them in the freezer, and just pulled out before giving them away.

Karen Martini’s Spanish-Inspired Spiced Almonds

40g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
400g large blanched almonds (or a mix of other nuts)
3 large cloves garlic, bruised with the back of a knife
4 tablespoons sea salt flakes
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
2 teaspoons castor sugar
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
2 pinches cayenne pepper
½ egg white, lightly whisked

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celcius and line a baking tray with baking paper. Melt butter and olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add almonds and garlic and stir constantly for 4-5 minutes or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels, discard garlic and put almonds in a large bowl.

Place salt and coriander seeds in a mortar and pestle and grind into a powder. Add the sugar and spices and mix well. Add the spice mix and egg white to almonds and toss together.

Spread almonds on baking tray and toast in the oven for 5 minutes. Remove and cool completely on the tray, then store in an airtight container for up to a week – or in the freezer forever.

Posted in herbs & spices, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

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Food & friendship: on Crossing to Safety

February 1, 2010

‘The expression of a civilised cuisine’

It’s been a while since I posted any fictional food, and this morning trawling through my bookshelves for readerlyinspiration I found Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner. This novel (introduced to me, incidentally, by the Parsnip Princess) is One of Those Books – it will remain one of my favourites for ever, I think. It’s about a lifelong friendship between two couples, and the dominance of one charismatic, exceptional, difficult woman over all four individuals. Very little has been written about this kind of complex, meandering, intense friendship, so the subject in itself is a fine thing. But the finest thing is the writing. I love this book.

Here are new arrivals Larry and Sally going to Sid and Charity Lang’s place for the first time.

I have heard of people’s lives being changed by a dramatic or traumatic event – a death, a divorce, a winning lottery ticket, a failed exam. I never heard of anybody’s life but ours being changed by a dinner party.

We straggled into Madison, western orphans, and the Langs adopted us into their numerous, rich, powerful, reassuring tribe. We wandered into their orderly Newtonian universe, a couple of asteroids, and they captured us with their gravitational pull and made moons of us and fixed us in orbit around themselves.

What the disorderly crave above everything else is order, what the dislocated aspire to is location. Reading my way out of disaster in the Berkeley library, I had run into Henry Adams. ‘Chaos,’ he told me, ‘is the law of nature; order is the dream of man.’ No-one had ever put my life to me with such precision, and when I read the passage to Sally, she heard it in the same way I did. Because of her mother’s uncertain profession, early divorce, and early death, she had first been dragged around and farmed out, and later deposited in the care of overburdened relatives. I had lost my security, she had never had any. Both of us were peculiarly susceptible to friendship. When the Langs opened their house and their hearts to us, we crept gratefully in.

Crept? Rushed. Coming from meagerness and low expectations, we felt their friendship as freezing travelers feel a dry room and a fire. Crowded in, rubbing our hands with satisfaction, and were never the same thereafter. Thought better of ourselves, thought better of the world.

In its details, that dinner party was not greatly different from hundreds we have enjoyed since. We drank, largely and with a recklessness born of inexperience. We ate, and well, but who remembers what? Chicken kiev, saltimbocca, escallope de veau, whatever it was, it was the expression of a civilised cuisine, as far above our usual fare as manna is above a baked potato. A pretty table was part of it, too – flowers, wine in fragile glasses, silver whose weight was a satisfaction in the hand. But the heart of it was the two people who had prepared the occasion, apparently just to show their enthusiasm for Sally and me.


Posted in fiction, food as love, generosity, people & cooking, Uncategorized, writing | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »