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Archive for April, 2010

Chilli Sauce

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , on April 23, 2010| 18 Comments »

This is a bowl of chillies from our garden.

All of them are hot, the yellow habañero ridiculously so, and the red birdseyes not far behind.  The green birdseyes are from a branch that we accidentally pruned off, and the large green one is from a shrub that I bought on spec from the markets.

Apart from herbs, these chillies are the only real produce coming from our newly established garden, and I’m inordinately proud of them. There’s at least another twenty red chillies ripening on the birdseye bush, and more habañero on the way.

I turned this crop into a wickedly good chilli sauce using a recipe from Choclette, tweaking the ingredients slightly to suit what we had in the pantry.  As we had far fewer chillies than specified, our sauce is quite mild, and perfect for everyday use. It’s a very flexible recipe, which I’m sure could be worked to suit whatever chillies your garden provides you with.  Here’s our version – the original is on Choclette’s blog…

  • hot chillies – I used the ones in the photo above
  • 2 red capsicums (bell peppers)
  • 250g Spanish or brown onions, peeled and chopped
  • 8 large cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
  • 2 large apples – I used Pink Ladies – peeled, cored and chopped
  • 3 bay leaves
  • several sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
  • 300ml white wine vinegar
  • 2 teaspoons fine sea salt

1.  Grill the capsicums over a flame or in the oven until blackened and blistered.  Place these into a large bowl and cover the top of the bowl with clingfilm or foil. Allow the capsicums to rest until softened, then rub off the blackened skin.  Deseed, then cut into chunks.

2. Halve and deseed the chillies (I wear gloves).  If you’d like to reduce their heat further, rinse the deseeded halves under cold running water.

3. Place the chillies, capsicums, onions, garlic, apple and herbs into a large stock pot with 500ml water.  Bring the pot to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for half an hour, adding more water if required.

4. Add the vinegar and sea salt, and simmer for an additional half an hour or more, until the ingredients are soft and pulpy and well combined.

5. Ladle the sauce into a blender and puree until smooth.  Return to the stock pot and taste for flavour, adding extra salt or vinegar if required.

6. Pour the sauce into sterilised bottles and process in a hot water bath for 20 minutes.  We stood our bottles in a tall pasta pot, and filled it with boiling water up to the base of the bottle lids.

This was so delicious that I had it on pizza tonight, before the bottles had even cooled.  It’s quite reminiscent of Mexican style sauces, with a clean, pure taste that allows the chilli flavour to shine through.   As soon as the next crop of chillies are ripe, I’ll be making this again.  Thanks, Choclette!

Click here for a printable version of this recipe

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Figmented Brownies

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2010| 26 Comments »

Big Boy, our resident wordsmith, will occasionally stop me mid-sentence with, “No, that didn’t happen, you figmented it”.

It’s a clever, if (currently) incorrect use of the noun, but it’s actually very appropriate when applied to these brownies. They were indeed a figment of my imagination, or more precisely, my dreams – I woke one morning thinking about figs, rum and dark, dark chocolate.   This is what I ended up with…

Fig, Rum and Cacao Nib Brownies
(adapted from a recipe in David Lebovitz’ Ready for Dessert)

  • 90g unsalted butter
  • 225g dark chocolate, chopped or in callets
  • 150g white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used homemade)
  • 2 large (59g) eggs, at room temperature
  • 40g plain (AP) flour
  • 150g Turkish figs, soaked in rum (see below)
  • 40g cacao nibs

Note: I made these with 70% cacao bittersweet chocolate, but the basic brownie recipe works best with semisweet (I normally use Callebaut 811 with 54% cacao).  With the higher cocoa fat content, the batter has a tendency to split, resulting in a pool of oil on the top of the finished brownies.  70%  seems to hold together – just – but when I tried using a 75%, the mix split completely and had to be thrown away. Having said that, in this instance I really wanted a bittersweet chocolate to offset the figs…

1. The night before, place some Turkish figs in a clean jar, and top it up with rum.   You’ll need seven or eight well-intoxicated figs, although I try and keep a jar full at all times (for emergencies, you understand).

2. Preheat the oven to 160C with fan.  Line a 20cm square pan with parchment paper.  Chop the figs up, discarding the stems.

3. In a medium saucepan, soften the butter, then add the chocolate and stir over low heat until combined and smooth.   Remove the pan from the heat and, using a silicon spatula or wooden spoon, stir in the sugar and vanilla.

4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, working quickly so that you don’t end up with scrambled eggs.  Add the flour, and stir vigorously for one minute (this bit is important) – the mixture will change from grainy to smooth and glossy in that time.

5. Add in the chopped figs and cacao nibs, stirring well.  Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until just set – about 25 minutes.  Do not overbake.

6.  Cool in the pan, before removing the brownies and cutting into squares for serving.

Click here for a printable version of this recipe

. . . . .

This recipe is adapted from Robert’s Absolute Best Brownies in David Lebovitz’ new Ready for Dessert.  Like all of his books, this one is a cracker – full of anecdotes and delicious recipes. I’m keen to try the chocolate cake recipe that he copied off the wall of a restaurant toilet…

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Olive Bialy

Posted in Recipes, tagged , on April 20, 2010| 12 Comments »

I was inspired to try Dan Lepard’s black olive bialy recipe by the gorgeous Sally at Bewitching Kitchen.

Mine turned out a little chubby, but so delicious.  A cousin of the bagel, but much easier to make, the bialies were chewy and flavoursome, and attained a surprising amount of rise from just half a teaspoon of dried yeast and minimal kneading.

Dan’s recipe specifies Kalamata olives – make sure you use the full amount of pitted olives in oil, as they contribute to the liquid content of the dough.  I had Sicilian green olives as well, so I used a mix of both.  It’s a very easy recipe, and a  great combination of flavours, with the olives and dough well matched to the onion and poppy seed topping.

The instructions are here, and I hope you enjoy making these as much as I did.  It’s always a good day when you can take a batch of bread out of the oven before 8am!

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Fromage Fort

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , on April 19, 2010| 13 Comments »

Warning: this recipe isn’t for everyone.  If you’re not a fan of blue cheese, stinky cheeses or fondues, click away now.

I’ve been tossing up whether or not to post this – surely there aren’t many people other than me who would enjoy a bowl of soft, stinky blue-grey cheese? Certainly the rest of my family won’t go near it.

Nevertheless here it is: Fromage Fort (“strong cheese”) from my food hero Jacques Pépin, in Chez Jacques, Traditions and Rituals of a Cook.  This frugal recipe from Pépin’s youth was traditionally made by his father.  I’ll let him tell you about it…

Making fromage fort is the ultimate way of using your leftover cheese. When my father used to make it every month or so, he would go through our garde manger…He would search through our leftover cheese in this container, often finding pieces of very hard, strong, smelly goat cheese.  He would scratch the top of the cheese with his knife to see if there was  mold on it, which he would remove before placing the cheese in his crock.  On top of this he would place pieces of Camembert or Brie…then add pieces of Swiss, blue cheese, and fresher goat cheese.  He would cover these with leek broth, white wine, and two or three cloves of crushed garlic.

These ingredients would marinate in a cold place in the cellar for 1 to 1½ weeks, sometimes longer…eventually, it was smelly enough and soft enough for him…and then he would crush it with a large fork into a puree and add salt and pepper, if need be.

. . . . .

My take on Pépin’s recipe includes a little Kirsch – a hangover from my 80s fondue days.

  • 250g assorted cheeses – in my fridge, I had Gorgonzola Dolce, grated Parmesan, Manchego, Picasso sheeps’ cheese and some Philadelphia cream cheese.  Use whatever you have, although I’d be inclined to avoid anything with uninvited mould growing on it.
  • 1 to 2 cloves garlic
  • ¼ cup white wine
  • splash of Kirsch
  • freshly ground black pepper

1.  Grate the hard cheeses, to make it easier on the mixing process.

2. Put all the cheeses, garlic, wine and Kirsch in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse briefly, until the mix is creamy but not too runny.  Scoop the cheese into a small container and store in the fridge.

The fromage fort can be used as a cold spread, but I prefer it spread over sourdough slices and grilled (broiled).  After a few days in the fridge, the alcohol flavours permeate through the cheeses, providing pleasant fondue flashbacks.

Burn, baby, burn…disco inferno…

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April In My Kitchen

Posted in In My Kitchen, tagged , , , , , on April 18, 2010| 16 Comments »

In my kitchen…

…are some jars of pickled garlic, made with Diana and Ian’s homegrown produce and using a recipe from Pam Corbin’s wonderful Preserves book…

In my kitchen…

…I’m sipping on a cup of hot mint tea, made with a mix of Chinese green  tea and fresh spearmint from our garden. I’m drinking out of the most beautiful tea cup which my friend Donnie bought me from T2…

In my kitchen…

…is a plate of Australian tiger prawns, bought fresh from the Sydney Fish Markets.  Big Boy and I are going to have them for lunch today!

In my kitchen…

…are two gorgeous copper bowls.  I’ve longed for beautiful copper cookware, but have always been dissuaded by the hefty pricetag.  So when I spotted these two bowls at Chefs’ Warehouse for under $20 each, I couldn’t resist!  They’re serving bowls, copper on the outside, lined with stainless steel.

In my kitchen…

…is a half-batch of these seriously decadent chocolate brownies (the other half is in the freezer).  They’re simple to make, but the large quantity of sugar makes them a nibble-only food…

What’s happening in your kitchen this weekend?

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