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Archive for the ‘Food & Friends’ Category

Birthday Cake

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , , , on January 12, 2011| 33 Comments »

This is the birthday cake Big Boy requests every year!

Based on a recipe in the Mrs Field’s Best Ever Cookie Book, it uses the same batter as the chocolate slab cake, but instead of a roasting pan,  the batter is baked in two 20cm/8″ round cake tins (the original recipe specified 23cm/9″ tins, but I don’t have any that size).

Prepare the pans by greasing them well and lining the bases (or the base and sides) with parchment paper.  Divide the slab cake batter evenly between the two pans, and bake in a preheated 175C/350F fan forced oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the cakes are cooked when tested with a skewer.

The two cakes are then sandwiched together with frosting, iced and decoratively piped.  The frosting uses an indecent amount of butter and icing sugar, but it is a special occasion treat. The finished cake is always popular, and feeds a horde of hungry friends!

Chocolate Frosting

  • 315g (1¼ cups) unsalted butter, softened
  • 500g (4 cups) icing sugar mixture (powdered sugar), sifted
  • 110g (1 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted (I used dutched)
  • 10ml (2 teaspoons) vanilla extract
  • 65g (¼ cup) milk (or as required)

1. Sift the icing sugar mixture and cocoa together in a large bowl.

2. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter in a large bowl, then beat in a third of the icing sugar/cocoa mixture and the vanilla.   Beat in the remainder of the icing sugar/cocoa mixture alternately with as much milk as is required to create a spreadable frosting.

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Minor Superpowers

Posted in Food & Friends on January 9, 2011| 26 Comments »

(photo source: http://www.tutusandladybeetles.com)

Just for fun, do you have any minor superpowers?  We were discussing this over dinner recently, and were surprised by the number of people we know who actually do!

Big Boy’s friend John has a unique ability to negotiate even the most frightening traffic as a pedestrian.  On a recent band tour, his fellow musicians realised that the safest way to cross a busy road was to walk in line with John, as he had an innate ability to weave and duck through oncoming traffic.  His sixth sense extended to knowing when a car was going to run a red light, or judging exactly the right amount of time required to avoid an accelerating vehicle.  Big Boy and his mates refer to it as “Johnwalking”.

Small Man has a highly acute sense of smell, which is both remarkable and problematic.  He’s been known to walk into a kitchen where chocolate truffles were prepared hours before and pick up the scent of the strawberry puree used in the fillings.  Of course, the downside to this is that anything that smells even the slightest bit funky never makes it past his lips.

My friend the Spice Girl has the power to bend time.  Truly, she does.  She can ring and say, “I have a meeting that finishes at 1.15pm, so I should be able to get across town to you by 1.30pm for lunch, which will leave me plenty of time to get back to the kids at 2.15pm”.  Given we live 40 minutes apart, it’s amazing that she can do that, and yet she always manages to somehow.  She has the ability to squeeze more things into a short window of time than anyone I know!

Kevin Sherrie, all round good guy and miller extraordinaire, is one of those people who can find a parking spot any where, any time.  It’s always best to travel to busy events in Kev’s car, especially if high heels are involved, as it’s the surest way to guarantee the least amount of walking.  I’ve known Kevin to drive into town on Anzac Day and find free street parking.

What about you, do you have any minor superpowers?  Mine are very minor  indeed and relate more to experience than anything else, I suspect – I’m able to pick when the chocolate is almost at temper, and I’m often able to get to the kitchen timer as it’s counting down its final thirty seconds.  Given that I’ll still occasionally burn something in the oven though, it’s hardly an infallible superpower!

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Frozen Garlic

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , , on January 8, 2011| 30 Comments »

As we’re awash with new garlic, I thought it was prudent to use up the remains of my frozen stash from last year!

When we buy our new season garlic each year from Di and Ian, we keep some of it aside for immediate consumption and break the rest into cloves which we vacuum seal and freeze in a thick plastic bag.  After a full year in our stand-alone freezer, our cloves were still in great condition…

Freezing changes the texture of the cloves – they become translucent and softer.   Peeling is much easier, and we don’t really discern a noticeable difference in flavour or aroma, although we do always cook our frozen garlic.

I made a caramelised garlic filling using a Dan Lepard recipe which I posted about almost exactly one year ago. The recipe specifies boiling the unpeeled cloves, but as our defrosted garlic was already quite soft, I simply immersed them briefly in a bowl of boiling water and then removed the papery skins.  You can see from the photo below that the defrosted cloves are a different  colour and texture to fresh – they’re no longer crunchy, but rather have a soft, almost gelatinous quality to them.

The blanched cloves were browned briefly in olive oil, before a mixture of water, balsamic vinegar, caster sugar, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary were added (quantities are here)…

The thick caramel was allowed to cool slightly before being incorporated into a batch of white sourdough.  I simply flattened out the dough, spread over the mixture, and folded the sides over to enclose it.

The end result was delicious – sweet, but not overly so – and very garlicky!

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A Day at Ian and Diana’s Garlic Farm

Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, tagged , , , on January 6, 2011| 45 Comments »

I have a great story about Pete’s cousin, MJ (who is going to shoot me when she reads this).

When their grandmother passed away a few years ago, city girl MJ generously offered to help sort through Grandma’s old country house before it was sold.  While rummaging through a pile of clothes stacked on top of a closet, she pulled out what she thought was an old fur coat, only to find her hand grasping a large dead rat.

After screaming and running out of the house, she stood on the grass, trying to catch her breath, when a toy rubber snake caught her eye.  Then it moved.  More screaming ensued, which ended with her curled up in the foetal position on a bed, demanding to be taken home to the city.

Now, I have to confess, I’m about as comfortable in a rural setting as MJ is.  So whilst I was very excited at the prospect of spending the day with our old friends Diana and Ian on their small property near the Blue Mountains, I was a little perturbed by Di’s remark that they might be shearing sheep that day, and that we’d all be put to work.

The perturbation subsided as soon as we arrived.  Di and Ian’s property is so relaxing, and so incredibly welcoming, that our few hours there felt like a week’s holiday.

And we were indeed put to work, as were our friends Christina and Steve who joined us for lunch, although it didn’t involve shearing, much to Small Man’s disappointment.  However, we did move the sheep…

Aren’t they beautiful?

The lambs needed to be sorted from the ewes and weighed, and it was Big Boy’s job to push them off the weighing platform.  I asked him what it felt like, and he said it was “like trying to move a furry sofa that pushes back”.

As I’ve mentioned before, Di and Ian are small scale garlic growers – and whilst their garlic isn’t certified organic (a very expensive process here), it is grown organically and all tended and weeded by hand, a laborious process that necessitates the unpaid slave labour of their three handsome sons.

The garlic was harvested in late November, and has been drying and curing ever since. I thought you might like to see some photos of the process.

It’s hard to get an idea of scale, but these large Russian bulbs are the size of  my fist…

The purple striped garlic are a new crop for Di and Ian…

Different varieties were hanging from the rafters..

..and drying on airing shelves, before being cleaned up for sale…

We bought two kilos of garlic to add to our homegrown crop.  Compared to our baby bulbs, Di and Ian’s are large and perfectly formed.  Their Australian white garlic will sell for $30/kg this year, and the purple stripe variety for $35/kg.   If you’re in NSW and are interested in purchasing some, please email Diana – djditchfield(at)hotmail.com.

(Edit: My apologies for the earlier misinformation, but Di’s just let me know that they can only post to NSW, not the whole of Australia.  I believe there are quite convoluted quarantine rules about shipping garlic interstate).

Most of the garlic we bought were Australian whites, with their lightly blushing bulbs and pungent, creamy pink cloves (there’s a kilo of garlic in the photo above)…

The beautiful purple stripe garlic is quite different, but equally as delicious.  To my palate, these are a bit sweeter, both in aroma and flavour…

Christina and I have bought our annual supplies, which we’ll be breaking into unpeeled cloves and freezing. Doing so will ensure that we can cook with locally grown garlic all year, without having to buy imported bulbs sprayed with toxic methyl bromide (a mandatory Australian government requirement).

After lunch, we spent time wandering around Di and Ian’s fabulous vegetable garden.  I was particularly impressed with their sage – we’ve only ever grown the ordinary gray-green type, but Diana has both variegated and reddish purple varieties growing as well.

In preparation for next year’s garlic, they’ve planted a legume crop to improve the soil.  The bonus are these deliciously sweet peas – we harvested around the edges and picked nearly two kilos to bring home!

A perfectly wonderful day, spent with great friends.  Maybe country life isn’t that scary after all!

. . . . .

Ian and Diana Ditchfield
contact: djditchfield(at)hotmail.com

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The Birds and the Bees

Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, tagged , , on January 4, 2011| 38 Comments »

Our large lilly pilly tree is home to a breeding pair of Australian Red Wattlebirds.

However, we believe the chick they’re feeding is an Australian Koel – a local version of the cuckoo. The chick is enormous, much bigger than its unwitting foster parents, and was happily climbing over the top branches today, feasting on the small red fruit.  I took these photos especially for birdlovers Joanna and Brian.  If anyone can shed some light on whether this really is a Koel, or whether Wattlebird chicks change substantially as they fledge, please let us know!

I also managed to snap some interesting bee photos  today – they were particularly enamoured with our flowering broccoli spikes and happily buzzed around for several minutes while I played wildlife photographer.

I was fascinated by the packets of pollen on their legs! I’d read about these, but had never actually seen them before, yet today every bee in the yard seemed to sport a couple of yellow balls on her legs.  I’d love to know what broccoli flower honey tastes like!

Edit: The bees are still feasting, so I took a couple more photos this afternoon!

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