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Chocolate Sherbet

February 8, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Maude, whom I’ve known for nearly twenty-five years, is my BBB (Bestest Baking Buddy).  She lives directly across the road, and many of our daily discussions revolve around food.  Between us, we own nearly every Nordicware cake pan, and if I now have an addiction to Chicago Metallics bakeware, it’s Maude’s fault.  We also follow the same food blogs and our conversations often begin with “Did you see what Dan (Lepard) made today?”  or “Dorie Greenspan’s new recipe looks nice”…

Yesterday, Maude asked me if I’d tried “David’s sherbet”. I had indeed tried it, and it was indeed very good.  I’ve had to make it again today, since the taste of it is now in my head and won’t come out.  It’s a cool, dark chocolate hit, perfect when you want a treat without the richness of regular icecream.

David Lebovitz Chocolate Sherbet

  • 500ml (2 cups) milk (I used UHT, 1 cup full cream and 1 cup skim)
  • 100g sugar
  • pinch salt
  • 50g cocoa powder (I used Callebaut Dutched)
  • 115g dark chocolate (I used Callebaut 70%, although I often use the 54% for a slightly more child-friendly version)
  • ¼ teaspoon homemade vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons Kahlua

1.  Heat half the milk in a saucepan with the sugar, salt and cocoa powder.  Whisk constantly until boiling, then reduce the heat and simmer gently for 30 seconds.

2. Remove the saucepan from the heat, and add the chocolate, vanilla and Kahlua.  Then stir in the remaining milk, whisking constantly until smooth.  Lebovitz suggests that if the mix is grainy, you can puree it in a blender, but I’ve never needed to do this.  Try not to drink it all at this stage.

3. Refrigerate until cold, then pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze until set.

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

Baking

February 6, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Sydney’s weather has eased slightly, and I’ve leapt at the opportunity to turn the oven on!

This kamut, potato and beer bread comes from Tessa Kiros’ Falling Cloudberries.   The loaf was soft and slightly cakey,  with a pronounced but not unpleasant bitterness from the Guinness.  It was very tasty smothered with Pete’s homemade butter, and topped with fresh tomato and sheep’s milk cheese.

The bread only used 60ml of stout, and I was loathe to waste the rest of the can, so I made a Chocolate Guinness Cake (topping up the shortfall in beer with 60ml of water).  It was moist, dark and very grown-up, and baked particularly well in my extra-large bundt pan.

Some more experiments with choux pastry – this time chocolate fondant covered éclairs and mini Paris-Brest wheels…

Finally, a comment left by Deb reminded me that I had half a carton of buttermilk in the fridge that needed using up.  I baked an old standby, the Buttermilk and Almond Cake, and dressed it up with a generous swirl of Pete’s freshly made white nectarine and raspberry conserve.

Pete, who was mildly miffed at only getting three slices of Guinness cake, declared that this one was all his…

Posted in Food & Friends | Tagged , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Herb Garden

February 5, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Peter, Peter, couldn’t be sweeter
How does your garden grow?

With sage so fine…

And crops of thyme…

And sweet-scented o-reg-ano!

PS. Our herb garden is only three weeks old!  Pretty good, eh?

PPS. I’d love any suggestions on what to do with all these herbs…

Posted in Frugal Living | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments »

Mah-Mah’s Chicken Stew

February 4, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

I don’t cook a lot of Chinese food, much to my mother’s chagrin, but one dish that I do make regularly is her soy sauce chicken and potato stew.

Mum, or Mah-Mah as she’s known to the boys, has been cooking this dish for as long as I can remember.  It was always served in a square Corningware casserole dish, and my sister and I always fought over the potatoes.  Now when I cook it, I add massively more potatoes than anyone can eat, just to make sure there’s plenty to go around!

Like all recipes of this ilk, there aren’t fixed quantities to the ingredients used.  My mother always eyeballed the amounts, and then tasted before serving to see if everything was in balance.  It was always perfect.

  • 1 – 1½ kg free range chicken pieces, preferably drumsticks or thighs
  • Sweet dark soy sauce
  • Kikkoman Teriyaki Marinade, or light soy sauce
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • lots of potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
  • ground pepper
  • oil for frying – we use grapeseed
  • cornflour (optional)

1. In a large mixing bowl, marinate the chicken pieces in a generous splash of sweet soy, a little Teriyaki sauce and ground pepper.  Below are the brands my mother and I use, but feel free to substitute your own.  Leave the chicken to soak for about half an hour.

2. In a large pot (I use a wok), heat the oil and fry the onion briefly, then lift the chicken pieces out of the marinade (don’t throw it out!) and add them to the pan.  Fry until the chicken is slightly crisp on the outside.  Add water to the remaining marinade and pour it over the chicken. You want quite a lot of liquid in the pot.

3. Add the potatoes, and stir to coat them in the sauce. Bring  to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered,  until the chicken is cooked, and the potatoes are fork tender.  Taste the sauce, and if necessary add more dark soy if it needs sweetness, or Teriyaki if it needs more salt.

4. Once cooked, remove the chicken and potatoes with a slotted spoon and place them in a square Corningware pot (ok, you could use any serving dish you choose).  Heat the sauce to reduce it slightly, then pour over the chicken and potatoes and serve. Alternatively, mix a little cornflour with cold water, stir it into the sauce, and bring it to the boil again before pouring over the other ingredients.

We usually serve this with basmati rice and  stir fried greens. And I’m completely content, because there’s always a potato or two left over.

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

Ceramics

February 2, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Sharing some of the gorgeous coloured ceramics my eyes have been blessed with recently! I spotted these handpainted Turkish bowls at the Orange Grove Organic Markets.

And here are the plates and tile that graced our table at Kazbah on Darling, a Middle Eastern and North African restaurant in Balmain.  The food was pretty good too!

Posted in Cool Things | 13 Comments »

Paris-Brest

January 31, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Tah-dah!

Mark and Bruce at Real Food Has Curves (what an irresistible name!) wrote a three-post recipe for Paris-Brest, a French pastry traditionally made to celebrate and nourish athletes at the end of the long Paris to Brest bike race.  Created in 1891, the wheel-shaped ring of choux pastry is filled with crème pralinée and sweetened whipped cream.

I had to walk to the shops twice to buy necessary ingredients – not quite the 1200km between Paris and Brest – but I figured that justified me eating a generous slice nonetheless.

The guys have written the best instructions I’ve come across yet for choux pastry, and I’m confident that it’s something I’ll be baking regularly from now on.  I won’t repost their recipe here, but will instead refer you directly to their first post: Paris-Brest, Part 1.

I followed their instructions to the letter to make the nougatine and choux pastry, but substituted my own recipe for crème pâtissière (forgive me, Bruce!), which is made in the microwave in just a few minutes.

The nougatine, also known as almond praline, was remarkably simple to create  from icing sugar mixture and flaked almonds.  Yet another useful addition to my dessert répertoire! Here’s a photo of it before it was pulverised and added to the pastry cream…

Some assembly photos :

Choux pastry ring cut open for filling…

Crème pralinée, made by folding the crumbled nougatine through the pastry cream, was spread over the base, then topped with sweetened whipped cream, piped in a swirly pattern…

Here’s the  finished pastry, dusted with icing sugar…

I let this set up in the fridge for a couple of hours before attempting to cut it, as the cream was quite soft. It sliced beautifully after that.

Now, time to ring the neighbours and share the love around!


Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Easy Tomato Purée

January 30, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

I saw this technique on Wild Gourmets in Spain, a cooking show currently screening on our local SBS television station.

It’s a brilliant idea, and such an easy one – when you need tomato pulp in a hurry, and you can’t be bothered to blanch and then peel them, just shred the tomatoes through a large holed grater.

What you see above is the product of two fairly firm Roma tomatoes and literally just a minute’s work.

And here’s the leftover skin…

It’s wonderful how a simple technique like this can open up a whole world of recipes and ideas.  Next step, a Berber tagine omelette!

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

Cheap Lunch

January 29, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

On a whim, I picked up a discounted tray of lamb offcuts at the Italian butchers this morning.  At $1.41, they looked like nothing more than fat, bone and gristle, but there was a thin promise of pink meat in the middle of each piece.  I suspect they were lamb breast offcuts, but the labelling was fairly nondescript.

I trimmed the meat out of the fat and sinew, and ended up with 275g of usable lamb…

….which was marinated in a mix of homemade yoghurt, olive oil, salt and some Chermoula spice mix, and threaded onto skewers…

…then cooked on a hot griddle pan and served with creamy mash potatoes, Roma tomatoes and homemade harissa.  We ended up with nine sticks – enough to feed all four of us for lunch!

This was quite time consuming, and I probably wouldn’t do it again, but it’s nice to know that it’s possible to turn $1.41 worth of meat into a decent feed!

Posted in Frugal Living | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments »

Harissa

January 28, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

One of Pete’s plans for 2010 is to establish a permaculture garden in our small suburban backyard.  My mum donated one of her chilli plants to start us off  and, even though it’s still in a pot, this small shrub has fruited abundantly – here’s just a small portion of our harvest!

I turned the chillies into harissa sauce, using a recipe I put together years ago. It’s adapted from a recipe in Dave Dewitt’s A World of Curries, and is very simple to make, providing you have a food processor (I use a mini one). The quantities are pretty loose – use whatever you have on hand in amounts that suit your personal preferences.

  • 7 large red chillies, medium heat
  • 4 red bullet chillies, hot
  • 2 teaspoons caraway seed
  • 2 teaspoons ground cumin
  • 2 teaspoons ground coriander
  • 2 teaspoons ground paprika (I sometimes use smoked paprika)
  • ½ teaspoon Malden salt flakes
  • 30 or more fresh mint leaves
  • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 10 cloves of peeled garlic
  • water

1. Wash and deseed the chillies.  I usually wear gloves to do this, because I’m a wuss. For this batch, I used a dozen of our red chillies, as I didn’t have any long red ones.

2. Place the chillies, garlic and all the spices in the bowl of a small food processor or blender.  Add the mint leaves and pulse to combine, then add the olive oil and enough water to create a thick sauce.

3.  Scrape the harissa into a clean sterilised jar and cover it with a thin film of olive oil.  Best to use the sauce within a couple of weeks, as it doesn’t have any vinegar or lots of salt to preserve it.

As I mentioned before, this is a very adaptable recipe, and I tend to use whatever chillies I have on hand, and then pack the little food processor with as many mint leaves as I can jam in.  I also prefer to use spearmint rather than peppermint, if given a choice.   Allow a couple of days for the flavours to meld together, then serve on everything from carrot sticks to roast chicken!

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | 8 Comments »

Chocolate Tasting

January 26, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Inspired by a recent series of posts at Some Say Cacao, I thought it might be fun to have a chocolate tasting.  And as I can only buy my chocolate from our friends Peter and Lisa Lee at Colefax Chocolates (loyalty must always override curiosity), it’s fortunate that they produce such an interesting range of origin chocolate bars.  I bought just three on this occasion, but they have over a dozen on offer, including certified organic and fairtrade varieties.

Even though I’m very much a dark chocolate fan, I was completely smitten with this milk block from Venezuela. At 43% cacao, it’s the darkest I’ve ever tried, and very moreish as a consequence.  It’s not overly sweet, with delicious caramel overtones and a wonderfully rich mouthfeel.  It was gone by the end of the evening…

The 64% cacao dark chocolate from Peru was also delicious, dark and slightly bitter, but with quite a sweet finish. It had a slight woodiness which I found particularly appealing, reminiscent of the cigar box/cedar aromas often found in red wines.

Naturally, we couldn’t try all these interesting chocolates without inviting the neighbours around, and the result was a most enjoyable afternoon of friends wandering over for a bit of chocolate and a cup of tea. Most of them really liked this 70% block from Sao Thome – a deliciously mellow dark bar of  subtle flavours and sweetness, without being overly bitter.

Chocolate tasting on a lazy Saturday afternoon – how sweet life can be sometimes!

Posted in Food & Friends | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments »

Frugal Living #3: Time = Money

January 24, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Time = Money

If there is one thing that has helped us to live more frugally – in a happy, contented, non-miserly way – it was getting our heads around the fact that time is money, particularly where food is concerned.

It’s pretty simple maths:

Least Time Spent →  Most Time Spent

Eating Out →  Cooking Prepared Meals →  Making From Scratch

Most Expensive →  Least Expensive

We’ve found that the more time we can put into preparing our food, the more we can afford to spend on really great ingredients, while still saving quite a bit of money (understand, of course, that we’re not buying truffles or organic lamb backstrap on a regular basis).

Here’s a personal example:

We used to (and still occasionally do) buy takeaway pizzas.  They were (and still are) very good, but expensive.

Five years ago, we started making our own at home, using supermarket ingredients: McCain’s frozen pizza bases, Leggo’s pizza sauce, shredded cheese out of a bag, pitted Spanish olives from a jar and ham in little packets from the cold section.

Now we make our own pizza bases from flour, yeast and extra virgin olive oil, and top them with homemade roasted tomato passata, marinated Kalamata olives, hand sliced fresh mozzarella, dry cured pancetta and Italian anchovy fillets.

The more time we’ve spent on the pizza we’ve eaten, the less money it’s cost, even with the substantial increase in quality of the raw materials.  That makes sense, because when we have a takeaway pizza, we’re paying for someone to process our food for us, which saves us time.   Even our first attempts at homemade pizza cost us more than our pizzas do now, because there was still an element of processing - someone else made the bases, grated the cheese and prepared the sauce.

Now, were we to have the time to plant, harvest and mill our own flour, grow our own tomatoes and raise our own meat, we could probably reduce the cost of our food even further. But that’s not an option currently available to us, nor one we would necessarily like to take up!

This post isn’t intended to make you feel guilty about how much food prep you do or don’t do.  We’re blessed to have the time and inclination to try and make things from scratch, but someone who works 60 hours a week is unlikely to have the  energy to turn a box of tomatoes into sauce. Every family needs to find the time-money balance that suits their lifestyle.

But the knowledge that what you’re paying for in food is often time, rather than ingredients, might help you to make more informed decisions  about where your food dollars are spent. And maybe you’ll be able to find painless ways to save money, by doing small things which don’t feel like a chore. It might not be much, but every little bit makes a difference!

. . . . .

Click here for more Frugal Living posts

Posted in Frugal Living | Tagged , , | 8 Comments »

Cacao

January 22, 2010 by figjamandlimecordial

Having watched Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory on television recently, I was fascinated by the concept of these 100% cacao blocks – pure raw chocolate with nothing else added to it.

They’re not available in Australia yet, so my friend Jo very kindly mailed me a couple of blocks, and they serendipitously arrived at the same time as the cookbook, which I’d ordered from Amazon in the UK.

The book is a great read – half autobiography and half recipes – although at £6 per 180g block, the cacao is an expensive ingredient to use regularly (even if I could buy it here).  It has a strong aroma of fine chocolate, and tastes as you imagine it would – dark and very bitter, without a hint of sweetness.

I couldn’t wait to try it, and began with a half sized version of Willie’s Tartuffo, which is basically solid ganache set in a loaf tin.  It needs to be refrigerated overnight before slicing, and it’s very rich, so a little goes a  long way.

  • 90g cacao, finely grated
  • 150ml heavy whipping cream
  • 75g pure icing sugar, sifted

1. Line a small loaf tin or bowl with cling film.

2. Melt the cacao in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.  I actually used a microwave for this, and I’m not sure it worked as well as it could have.

3. Whip the cream and 25g of the icing sugar together until it forms soft peaks.

4. Stir the remaining icing sugar into the cacao and leave to cool slightly.  My mix seized up when I did this, but I was able to loosen it up again with the whipped cream.

5. Stir a scoop of whipped cream into the cacao mixture  until softened, then gently and gradually fold the remainder of the cream and cacao together.  Pour into the lined tin or bowl, and refrigerate until firm.

. . . . .

Here’s my reworking of Le Chocolate Chaud recipe from David Lebovitz’ The Sweet Life in Paris, using the cacao.  It creates a very different drink to one made with dark chocolate.

  • 50g of Willie’s 100% Cacao, grated into a small saucepan
  • 20g white sugar
  • 375ml (1½ cups) milk
  • pinch of sea salt

Gently whisk all the ingredients together in the small saucepan over a medium heat – keep whisking until the chocolate and sugar are melted and the mixture comes to a boil.

Reduce the heat to low, and barely simmer the hot chocolate for three to five minutes until the liquid is thick and viscous, whisking regularly.  Pour into little demitasse cups to serve, and top with whipped cream if desired.

. . . . .

And with the last 30g of my first block, I made a scaled down version of Anna’s Jewel Bites, using cacao and tiny quantities (at least for my small batch) of cinnamon, dried fruits, nuts, vanilla, rum and a scant teaspoon of honey.  Very dark and delicious!

It’s amazing how many things I was able to make with a single block of cacao. Maybe it’s not such an expensive ingredient after all!

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments »

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