Archive for the ‘chutneys & pickles’ Category

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What I ate on my holidays

January 18, 2013

Salad days

It’s been 46.2 degrees Celsius here in Sydney today – that’s over 112 degrees for you Farenheit fans – at the end of my first week back in the office for a loooong time. Luckily this room is air conditioned  unlike the rest of the house, but I’m wondering what on earth to cook for dinner. Last time it got nearly this hot I made this, but I think I have a batch of Karen Martini’s amazing Syrian chicken in the freezer, so I think we’ll have that (actually it’s ours, not Karen’s – but the recipe is hers…)

January has been perfect salad weather so far. So in lieu of a very, very overdue posting – and just before I go and find a cooling bevvy in the fridge – I’ve decided instead of writing here I will merely present a pictorial history of my favourite bits of holiday cooking and eating. Salads, salads, salads and more salads, with the odd bit of protein thrown in. Have been inspired again by the wonderful Ottolenghi lads, as I was given this fantastic book for Christmas, but also have revived lots of old favourites. Hope to be back here soon with some recipes … if you’re in Australia, stay cool folks!

Oh look, the cool change is here! Aaaaahhhh….

Posted in chutneys & pickles, grains, herbs & spices, meat, pulses, salad, seafood, summer food, Uncategorized, vegetable, zing things | Tagged , | 9 Comments »

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Oh my dahling: my deskside devotion

May 12, 2011

Some of you may remember my ill-fated experiment with dhal many mooons ago – an experience that made me gag. Well, thanks to a fantastic vegetarian Indian cookbook I was sent recently, I have not only got back on the dahl horse but the two of us have taken to spending many long, loving hours together.

What I’ve discovered, you see, is that dahl – and my particular favourite, spinach – is quite possibly the perfect desk-side lunch. And what with all the structural editing and rereading and copy-editing and rewriting of my forthcoming novel that’s been happening lately, I have been spending more time than usual glued to the office chair, working away to meet the required deadlines. At times like these, as many of you know, nicking off to the kitchen to potter about making lunch feels way too guilt-inducingly like wagging school.

So after a few goes at making dahl from different recipes, and falling head-over-heels in love with it, one Sunday I prepared for a very intensive week of editing by making a giant pot of spinach dahl. Flavour-wise, I find it improves more with each day (even up to four or five days in). It has the comfort-food factor to boot: soft in the mouth, and deeply nourishing to the body and soul. I have eaten this dahl every day for lunch for almost a week, and not tired of it one little bit.

Once it’s in the fridge, the only lunch preparation required is a bowl, a couple of pings in the microwave, and a spoon. Except, I must add, the one crucial addition when serving is a dollop of spicy chutney or hot pickle – this is absolutely essential in my view.

Another great thing about dahl is that it’s so easy to concoct your own version. After once or twice following a recipe, now I just bung in whatever I feel like on the day, with quantities and textures and ingredients varying each time. I am sure there are some dahl purists out there, and if so I would very much love to hear your views on texture and heat and starchiness and so on. But if you’re a fan of the bung-it-in-and-see-what-happens approach to cooking, this could be your new favourite too.  This recipe is a result of combining a Madhur Jaffrey recipe and one from the Mysore Style Cooking book, I think, as well as a few others I read online.

This serves about six people – or enough for one novel’s intensive week-long copy-edit.

Ingredients

  • 3 bunches English spinach, thoroughly washed and leaves separated from stems. roughly chop leaves; keep the stems from one bunch and discard the others. Finely chop the stems and set aside.
  • 2 cups dahl – I used skinned and split moong dahl, but you could use any old kind of split lentil (there are so many different types of dried lentil, split and whole, that work for dahl – try a few different ones to discover your favourite)
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • 1 bay leaf
  • vegetable oil
  • 2 tsp brown mustard seeds
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 or 3 onions, finely chopped
  • 5cm piece ginger, finely chopped
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp chilli flakes
  • green or red chillies, finely chopped, to taste
  • 2 tbsp shredded coconut

Method

1. Thoroughly wash the dahl in several changes of water, then add to a heavy based pan with 8 cups water, the turmeric and bay leaf.

2. Stir and bring to a simmer. Cover almost entirely with the lid and leave to simmer gently for up to an hour, or until the lentils are tender.

3. In a separate pan, heat a little oil and fry the mustard and cumin seeds over medium heat until they start to crackle and pop.

4. Add onion, ginger and finely chopped spinach stems, saute gently until translucent.

5.  Into the pan put the spinach, firmly packing it in if necessary, and cover.

6. Cook over gentle heat until the spinach is thoroughly wilted and shrinks right down.

7.  When the dahl is cooked, combine the contents of the two pans and mix thoroughly over low heat.

8. Add the remaining ingredients, adjusting seasoning and heat to taste, and continue to cook gently until you achieve the texture you prefer. Add more water if it becomes too thick for your liking.

9. Serve in a bowl with a dollop of hot pickle (this one is a standard Patak’s Hot Lime Pickle) or sweet chutney* and some chopped coriander if desired.

*My absolute favourite chutney in the world, first given me by our friend Caro, is this Roasted Cherry Chutney made by a New Zealand company called Provisions of Central Otago. Senor and I became so addicted to it that when we finished the jar Caro brought us back from across the ditch, and I learned my Twitter buddy and food fiend @Reemski was going to NZ, I basically begged her to bring some back for me. She doubled the joy by also bringing their Roasted Nectarine Chutney – lordy me, what a feast.  If anyone hears of a local stockist for this stuff, let me know! Otherwise next time I shall be biting the bullet and buying over $50 worth from their website (if they ship to Oz – not sure). 

Posted in chutneys & pickles, countries, lunch, pulses, starches miscellaneous, Uncategorized, vegetable | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments »

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Checkpoint chutney

January 31, 2011

What’s the difference between a chutney, a relish and a pickle?

That’s not a joke – I actually want to know. Some people say the difference lies in the texture, and others in the sweetness, and still others in the level and type of spice. But then when you turn to Asian and sub-continental cultures everything changes again, as Anglo definitions appear to be irrelevant here.

While I am genuinely interested in the difference if anyone has strong views, I also am quite happy to embrace the who-cares-as-long-as-it’s-good school of thought. We haven’t really discussed chutneys and pickles much here at How to Shuck An Oyster, have we? Apart from this pickled pear relish (see how confusing the lingo is?), and a very brief link to the unquestionably good Manfield eggplant pickle here, and this rather sour half-invented cumquat chutney, that is.

I am beginning to think that the upshot with chutney seems to be: if you have a glut of anything and don’t know what to do with it,  simply shove it in a pot together with chopped onion, sugar, vinegar, some dried fruit and a little spice, and out come some jars of jewellish goodness to keep and distribute.  I suppose I should note that the glut should probably be vegetable in nature (fish pickle, anyone?) although I would very much welcome news of more outlandish recipes.

We have had a good few tomatoes from the garden this year, and scoffed the lot in salads – the next crop is slowly forming, but sadly we haven’t been able to complain of tomato glut. But I was moved to ponder chutneys the other day when Ms Lily – she of last summer’s amazing fig salad – asked me for a tomato chutney recipe, as her glut was getting out of control. Clueless, I spent a few seconds Googling before coming upon this Nigel Slater red and green tomato chutney. Ms Lily reported the results as spectacular, and thus – being the bitter type of person I am – my subsequent days and nights were filled with chutney envy. I had to have it.

I may not have had a tomato glut, but the grocer certainly has a few, so I decided to fiddle with the recipe a teeny bit and go with fully ripe tomatoes. Being lazy and greedy, I messed about with the quantities a little, using a tad less sugar and adding a good few glugs of olive oil near the end. I love the result  (it could be slightly too acidic for some, so do taste along the way and adjust accordingly) and I also love the fact that there is almost no effort involved beyond chucking everything in a pot and waiting. So, here tis

Tomato Chutney, with apologies to Nigel Slater – this quantity made two largeish jars. The second time I made it I almost tripled the quantity and got seven medium-sized jars.

1kg ripe tomatoes (I used Romas), halved

350g onions, roughly chopped

90g raisins

180g light brown sugar

1 birdseye  chilli, with seeds, halved

1 tsp salt

2 tsp yellow mustard seeds

250ml white wine vinegar

150ml olive oil

Method:

  1. Chuck everything except the oil in a pot, bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for around an hour, stirring occasionally. If it looks too runny, turn up the heat and reduce until it begins to turn jammier. Add the oil, stir thoroughly and turn off the heat.
  2. Meanwhile, sterilise your jars – I pour boiling water into the jars & over lids and let sit for a few minutes, then drain and bung them into a warm oven to dry (unless the lids are plastic, obviously) for another few minutes. Bung the hot chutney into hot jars, screw the lids on tightly and invert. When you return after ten or twenty minutes, the lids should have gone slightly concave, making a good vacuum seal.

Now I’ve realised how really basic and relatively quick and simple chutney can be, I am quite keen to try some more unusual stuff. I would love to hear your ideas, recipes and hints.

For a start, where do you get good jars? I ended up buying a few of those expensive beautiful Italian jobs as I ran out of recycled jars, but once you give those away they’re gone, unless you know the recipient well enough to ask for it back, which you can encourage by suggesting they might get another filled with something good on its return.

When buying food in jars I try to go for those with plastic lids as they seem easier to clean than the metal ones, with those scungy bits of paper lining, and also often to give a better seal. Am I right on this?

Also, do you have any foolproof label-removal methods? I can’t bear standing at the sink with the jar in soapy water, scratching off tiny shreds with my fingernails, but that seems to be what I always end up doing. Any better ideas?

*A quick plug here for the dreary initiative known as Febfast – in this house called FeebleFeb – which Senor and I are doing in an effort to shed some ballast and give the broken-down old livers a rest. Not known for our restraint, we will endure this month as best we can. If you feel like encouraging our team Chopped Livers and sending some bucks to deserving folks (not us!) feel free to sling a dollar our way here. If you are appalled by such tedium, I can only agree and say please have a big glass of something cold for me.


Posted in chutneys & pickles, vegetable | Tagged | 8 Comments »

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Doing the wild thing

October 15, 2010

I could spend all day admiring the glossy black spikes of wild rice.

Aren’t they stunning? Like dropped sea urchin spines, or an echidna’s shrugged-off party frock.

There’s something tribal and daring about the look of this rice family’s younger punk sibling, which is apparently not rice at all but a type of aquatic grass,  from the genus Zizania.

I haven’t used it terribly often – have you? – but I love the chewy texture and nutty flavour that comes when the grain splits as it cooks. The stuff I buy comes from North America, where several Zizania species are native. Other species are native to different parts of the world (like China), and there is even a completely different wild rice plant, Potamophila parviflora – not available commercially, which is unsurprising given our water problems – native to  Australia.

I’m told it takes about 45 minutes of boiling for wild rice to properly cook, and in truth I’ve never really measured the time but just drained it when the kernel splits to reveal the white inside – the shorter the cooking time, the chewier the texture.

You may remember that my favourite quinoa salad, a bastardisation of a quinoa dish by the wonderful Yotam Ottolenghi, includes wild rice.  And I’ve used it in stuffing for chicken, with nuts and dried fruit. But I would love to hear how you use wild rice, so do share your ideas.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with an easy rice and lentil side dish I made the other night to accompany some chermoula-barbecued salmon fillets (more on chermoula soon). I just threw this together and liked it so much I’m going to do lentil and rice combinations much more often. We did cheat a bit with this, having brought home a container of seeni sambol, the deliciously sticky, jammy, spicy Sri Lankan caramelised onion sambal from Kammadhenu the other night.  This stuff is the business, to add a kick to any dish you like, from soup to rice to whatever. If you can be bothered making your own, I bet it would be amazing. But otherwise you could just fry some onion till very dark and stir through this pilaffy number at the end.

  • ¼ cup wild rice
  • ½ cup Basmati rice
  • ¼ cup Persian red lentils
  • ¼ cup currants soaked in red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon seeni sambol or 1 whole onion, sliced and fried till very crisp and dark
  • 1 tablespoon torn mint
  • sale & pepper

Cook the rice and lentils in three separate pots of boiling water till tender (the wild rice will take up to 45 minutes), then drain and mix.

Stir through the currants, sambol or onion and mint, check seasoning and serve.

Now your turn. What do you do with this dark and spiky little number?

 

 

Posted in chutneys & pickles, grains, herbs & spices, starches miscellaneous, vegetable | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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Bitter is better

October 13, 2010

This week I learned something new: sweetness counteracts bitterness.

Ah, lessons for life, you might be thinking. But I’m talking about soup.

Now you all probably knew this sweet-bitter thing years ago, but I didn’t, and am constantly surprised by how happy the discovery of such a simple thing makes me.

My adventures in bitterness began when leafing through the fabulous Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells (given me by the Empress, so it must be good), I came across a recipe for watercress and potato  soup. Sounded delicious, and it was, but only once I’d managed to figure out how to balance out the bitterness. Not sure what I did wrong, because Patricia mentions nothing about bitterness. It could have been the cress itself, of course.

Or it could be that I am what’s known as a supertaster, as explained to me by the Parsnip Princess ages ago during her research for a story on tastebuds for Good Weekend magazine, when I was one of her guinea pigs sucking on small strips of paper with various odious flavours.  “Hmm, looks like you could be a supertaster,” she said, peering down at her notes. “Well,” I laughed modestly, “I always secretly thought I perhaps might be a just little superior-” , but that’s when she interrupted: “It’s not a good thing.”

Around a quarter of people are supertasters, apparently, which means we have more tastebuds than the rest of you, resulting in distorted sense of various flavours (and as the princess  informed me – a little too smugly I thought – chefs are generally not supertasters). One of the flavours we most over-detect is bitterness. Now, please don’t tell any of the bakeoff contestants about my supertasting deficiencies, and in fact I have doubts about my status, because according to this site supertasters are supposed to dislike coffee and dark chocolate, both of which I adore. So who knows.

But whatever the status of my tastebuds, the fact remained that my watercress soup was too bitter. I didn’t think the stems were woody so didn’t discard them, but perhaps a few more needed chucking. I got online and discovered that the way to counteract bitterness was to add sugar, so that’s what I did. Seemed odd to put sugar in a soup – but it did work. Still, depending on one’s particular fondness for bitterness, I thought even a little more sweetness might be needed. That’s when I remembered Skye Gyngell’s pickled pear relish.

Skye Gyngell, you will recall, is the author of this fabulous book and one of my favourite cookery writers. She adds this relish to several things including the cauliflower and gorgonzola soup in the link above (more on cauli love later).

I made the relish, with a little adaptation in the cooking time, and added a dollop to my next bowl of watercress soup. The combination was absolutely startling. The bitterness of the soup was still there as a kind of dusky undertone, but the caramelised, sticky relish gave the whole dish a kind of bejewelled zing  I absolutely loved. So, supertaster or no, I have decided that bitter is better so long as there’s a little bolt of complex sweetness somewhere along the line. Here’s the combination for you to try yourself. Love to hear if you try it, and what you think.

Pickled pear relish – adapted from Skye Gyngell’s recipe

  • 2 tablespoons dried cranberries
  • 1 tablespoon currants
  • 75 ml red wine vinegar
  • 2 pears
  • 1 apple
  • peppercorns (I used only a single peppercorn of this beautiful Tasmanian native pepperberry given me by my sisters recently – I have never gotten into fancy peppers or salts, but this is brilliant stuff, very hot and slightly fruity and chewy. You use about a tenth of the normal pepper amount.)
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 25g butter
  • thyme
  • 1 stick cinnamon
  • olive oil

1. Soak the dried fruit in the red wine vinegar for  a few minutes to soften.

2. Core and roughly chop the pears & apple, leaving the skin on.

3. Melt butter over a low heat and toss in the fresh fruit, cooking for a few minutes before adding all the other ingredients and cooking till very soft.

Now, the recipe says to cook for a further 8-10 minutes, but I cooked it over a low heat for much longer – around 45 minutes  – until the fruit was soft, adding olive oil now and then when it got too sticky. Perhaps my pears weren’t ripe enough – the recipe says to use very ripe pears – and so the long cooking was needed to get the fruit very soft. But it also made for a lovely jammy, sticky relish. Remove the cinnamon stick at the end before putting into a sterilised jar and keeping in the fridge.

Watercress & potato soup a la Patricia Wells

  • 2 bunches watercress
  • 50g butter
  • 1kg potatoes, peeled & cut into 2cm cubes
  • 2litres chicken stock
  • salt & pepper

1. Wash & pick over the watercress, discarding any woody stems & leaves that are past it (and watch out for tiny slugs – they won’t taste good). Roughly chop the cress.

2. Melt butter in a large pot and add the cress, cooking for several minutes until thoroughly wilted.

3. Add potatoes, stock & salt to taste (if using shop-bought stock, watch the salt until later).

4. When potatoes are very soft, whizz the soup with a stick blender or food processor till smooth.

5. Serve with a dollop of the relish, and swoon.

V: Simply swap the chicken stock in the soup for vegetable.


Posted in chutneys & pickles, people & cooking, soup, vegetable, zing things | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments »

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Loaves and fishes: my list of miracle foods

December 15, 2009

Okay, I know Christmas isn’t strictly related to that particular miracle (reminds me of the time my heathen brother-in-law demanded of my mother what the hell Easter eggs had to do with Jesus being born in Bethlehem anyway…), but one of the things I really like Christmas & New Year holidays is the tendency toward spontaneous and sprawly gatherings over food.

You know the kind of thing, two people for lunch turns into ten, and an instant party ensues. But to make that kind of thing fun it’s gotta be stress free – so here’s my list of good stuff you can pull out at the last second for lunch or picknicky dinner, or take to a friend’s place to blast off their Christmas stress.

Some are old summer holiday faves, and some gleaned from these pages this year. Most of this stuff can be bought in advance and shoved in the fridge, freezer or pantry to pull our for miracle-working when requried…

  • Oysters – of course! Buy them unopened a few days before Christmas and keep in a bucket with a wet towel over them in a cool place – they keep for a couple of weeks.
  • Glazed ham – leftovers, for weeks. Mmmmm.
  • Chutneys & pickles – years ago the Empress introduced me to the killer recipe for Christine Manfield’s eggplant pickle.
  • Smoked salmon – or Virginia & Nigella’s cured salmon! – w creme fraiche and/or salmon roe & sourdough
  • Smoked trout –  keep a couple in the freezer and pull them out any old time
  • Cooked prawns, green salad, mayonnaise
  • Bread – keep a supply of sourdough in the freezer
  • Green salad, nicely dressed with good oil & vinegar
  • Chickpeas – of course! Chuck em in a bowl with bottled roasted capsicum & marinated feta or labneh, or try these ideas
  • Baba ganoush & Steph’s beetroot dip – plus packets and packets of rice crackers
  • Quinoa salad or citrus couscous (make a huge batch – both of these keep forever)
  • Lots of luscious, ripe avocado – buy a heap of those rock hard ones now to have softies on hand for later.
  • Lots and lots and lots of ripe tomatoes
  • Devils on horseback – everybody loves them! And you can keep sealed pancetta & pitted prunes on hand for months…
  • A couple of fillets of salmon in the freezer and a couple of spuds can yield a heap of salmon patties for a crowd.
  • Peas! I am never without a huge bag of frozen peas in the freezer. Actually there will be a new post on peas coming shortly…
  • Eggs – chuck a few halved, hard-boiled eggs in a green salad with some chunks of fresh, cured or smoked salmon and you have a delicious twist on nicoise.
  • Labneh – mmmm.
  • Quiche – if you have frozen shortcrust pastry in the freezer, a quiche takes about fifteen minutes to throw together and another twenty to cook. Fast and fab.

Okeydokes, that’s Santa’s (or Jesus’s?) list of magic expandable food for now – but you must have lots of things to add …

*Oh, and today’s Christmas Excess Antidote is courtesy of www.kiva.org– I absolutely love this site. At the click of a mouse you can provide a micro-loan (as little as $25) to someone in a developing country who’s making a go of things with very slim pickings indeed. I love it so much because your loan just keeps on giving – you can either get the money back (though what kind of a person …) or choose that it goes to someone else in the chain. Perfect!

Posted in chutneys & pickles, dips & snacks, eggs, food as love, generosity, grains, pulses, salad, starters, summer food, Uncategorized, vegetable | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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Sweet & sour: spicy cumquat chutney

August 27, 2009

cumquatsInspired by Fiona’s comment about Indian food yesterday, plus the fact we had been given two kilos of beautiful Killcare cumquats by our friends the Nannas of Naremburn, I messed around with a few chutney recipes and came up with this spicy Indian-style cumquat chutney.

I began with the recipe for spiced kumquat chutney here, and then made a few variations based on what I had in the cupboards, and by flipping back and forth through Stephanie Alexander’s orange book to check out her pickled cumquat, her mango chutney (p733) and her peach chutney (p519).

Mine turned out a little sweeter than I would’ve liked, but adjusting the sweetness with plenty of salt and a little lime juice I think I’ve ended up with a lovely thick, sweet Indian-style chutney with a nice note of gingery heat. To those of you who’ll find a jar on their doorsteps, just don’t use too much at once! It’s quite tart as well, but the cumquat fruit itself has a nice slightly bitter edge …

cumquat chutneyThe original recipe called for currants; I had only a handful of currants in the larder but lots of barberries, the tart little rubies I found on our Persian excursion the other week, so I threw them in instead, which doubtless bumped up the sour/tart factor.  I also threw in some cardamom pods, cinnamon, whole cloves and star anise. Anyhoo, if you’re game and have heaps of ready cumquats on your conscience, try it out. I take no responsibility for the outcome, though!

Sweet & spicy cumquat chutney

  • 2kg cumquats, halved or quartered (it’s good to get the seeds out now, but if you can’t be bothered, it is possible to scoop them out later with a slotted spoon – bit laborious either way, but the latter is more meditative…)
  • 3-4 cups sugar
  • 1.5 cups orange juice
  • 1.5 cups water
  • 1 cup white wine vinegar
  • 2 sticks cinnamon
  • 5 star anise
  • pinch of whole cloves
  • 1 cup currants or half currants and half barberries
  • 1 large knob ginger, finely chopped
  • 2 birdseye chillies, chopped
  • a teaspoon or two dried chilli flakes, to taste
  • 3 tablespoons salt (or more, to taste)
  • (optional) juice 1 lime

jarschutneyThrow everything but the lime juice into a heavy-based saucepan, reserving a little of the sugar and salt until you taste it at the end.

Stir over heat until sugar has dissolved and chutney has come to boiling point. Boil steadily for an hour or so, until the chutney reduces and becomes thick.

Adjust seasoning with sugar and salt, then bottle into sterilised jars.

This quantity made eight small to medium jars of chutney.

Posted in chutneys & pickles, fruit, herbs & spices, recipes | Tagged , | 11 Comments »