Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

A shout out to the guys at The Steam Engine!

My darling friend Allison works in Chatswood and every few months we meet up in her neck of the woods for lunch and a much needed debrief. The food varies a bit – for such a culturally diverse area, it can be surprisingly ordinary at times – but it doesn’t really matter because we’re actually there for the coffee.

The relief is almost palpable as we plonk ourselves into a couple of the dozen or so seats at The Steam Engine and order our brews – a cold pour over for Al and an iced decaf latte for me…

What makes The Steam Engine special though, isn’t just the coffee (although it’s very, very good). It’s not even the free sparkling water they have on tap.

For me, what’s truly impressive is how hard they work at minimising their eco-footprint. On their shelf sits a stack of 365 coffee cups, a reminder of how much waste ends up in landfill each year from a single takeaway coffee per day…

I’ve seen bags of spent coffee grounds outside the shop for gardeners. They bottle their cold brews in glass jars which folks bring back for washing and reuse. When we were in last week, I asked for sugar and expected a paper sachet. Instead, I was given a spoonful of raw sugar in a tiny metal jug. It’s the attention to small details like this that shows their commitment and mindset.

And here’s their latest clever idea – if you forget your KeepCup, they’ll sell you a $2 glass jar with a neoprene sleeve made from recycled old wetsuits. I think they’ll even lend them to locals who forget their reusable cups…

If we want to minimise our impact on the planet, we have to focus on more than just what we do at home (although that’s obviously the best place to start). We also have to make considered choices and support businesses that are trying to operate thoughtfully and sustainably. So if you’re in the Chatswood area, do pop in for a coffee at The Steam Engine. Just make sure you take your own cup! ♥

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The Steam Engine

Shop 25A, The Interchange
436 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood

Mon – Fri 6am – 4pm
Sat 7am-3pm
Sun CLOSED

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Happy Chinese New Year!

I recently bought some of these super cute piggy wrappers, just enough for handing out and making a few lanterns. I’ve been calling them my Day of the Dead piggies, but my very Chinese sister doesn’t approve (superstition dictates no mention of mortality during the CNY period)…

I dragged out my old instruction books…

…and made some old favourites…

…as well as a couple of new designs…

This one really tested my spatial skills, which are rubbish at the best of times…

Chinese New Year lasts for fifteen days, so there’s plenty of time left if you’d like to make a lantern. You can buy the red packets at most Chinese grocery stores, or substitute red mailing envelopes. Sometimes you can get them free from the banks as well. Here’s my tutorial for a very simple ball shaped lantern, and an even easier one for a single packet decoration.

. . . . .

A couple of weeks ago, I sorted out my lantern making supplies and took all my surplus stock to Reverse Garbage.

As I was going through them, I found these gorgeous old world wrappers – I’ve hoarded them for over a decade because I loved them too much to give away, knowing that they’d be discarded minutes later. I thought they might get a longer life if I gave them away as bookmarks, so I dragged out my old laminator and guillotine and set to work.

I made these ones as well…

Chinese New Year is always snake bean season in our garden, and we’ve had a bumper crop this year. We’ve picked this many every day for the past couple of weeks…

We feasted on them for our New Year’s Eve Reunion Dinner…

We had chicken rice and homemade dumplings…

And Malaysian prawn crackers of course, fried to order…

. . . . .

Wishing you every happiness and the best possible health this Year of the Pig! And in honour of the swine, I hope you get to enjoy many delicious meals with your loved ones! ♥

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Yotam Ottolenghi is visiting Australia at the moment, so it seems a good time to put up this post which has been sitting in my drafts for a few days.

I bought his book SIMPLE at the end of last year in iPad format. So yes, it has an exit plan – at any time I can just delete it from my library. But I can’t see myself doing that any time soon, because it’s brilliant.

I have several of Ottolenghi’s other books and they’re very inspiring but the recipes are complicated and often too much work for a family dinner. This one however, as the title proclaims, is simple. Last weekend, having come home excitedly with discount berries from Harris Farm, I made two of the desserts from it.

The first was the Blackberry and Plum Friand Cake (here’s a link to the recipe)…

It used five of our backyard eggs – whites only, so I turned the yolks into microwave custard to accompany it (recipe is here). I used all five yolks in the custard, even though my recipe only specifies four, and it was completely fine…

We had friends over for dinner and the entire cake was demolished for dessert…

The following day, I tried the Blueberry, Almond and Lemon Cake. If you’d like to give it a go, the recipe can be found here. Our lemon tree is on holidays at the moment, so I used one of the many limes I have in the fridge…

The cake was moist and very moreish. Big Boy and Small Man had three slices each…

I can’t recommend SIMPLE highly enough! The e-book is  well formatted, with lots of hyperlinks for easy navigation, and about half the price of the hardcover version. You will need a tablet or a computer though – I don’t think it will work very well on the original black and white Kindle. Enjoy!

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