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Archive for the ‘Food & Friends’ Category

Chana Dhal

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , , on October 21, 2010| 25 Comments »

We’re frantically busy at the moment.

My mother has a lovely Hokkien expression for times like this –  pee kung bor hong – which literally translated means, “nose has no air”.  Or in other words, “too busy to breathe”.

When things get hectic, I like to eat dhal, specifically chana dhal.  Not only do I adore the taste of it, but it has an amazingly low GI – between 5 and 11 – and I find it comforting and levelling during busy times.  I first read about it years ago on this website, and have been a big fan of the pulse ever since.

Today, I used it to cook up a large batch of Simon Bryant’s dhal soup recipe, which can be found here.  I’ll now stash the pot in the fridge, and dip into it for lunches over the next few days.  That’s one thing sorted, and I’m feeling better already!

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Korean Pickles

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , on October 20, 2010| 35 Comments »

A note to my friend Lisa who checks my blog every morning at 5.30am.
Li, you don’t want to read this post.  Trust me.
Dan, that goes for you too.
. . . . .

I’ve been on a quest!

It all started when Maude’s oldest daughter made kim chee, a traditional Korean cabbage pickle, and brought me some to taste (photo above).  This in turn led to a discussion about Korean pickles in general, and I thought it might be fun to explore the different varieties on offer.

So off I went, with my family chanting “Ni! Ni! Ni!” in the background (obscure Monty Python reference there), to the nearby suburb of Strathfield, enclave of Korean stores and food supplies.

Inside Strathfield Mall, I found a fascinating store, simply named Food World, selling all sorts of wonderful and bizarre pickled offerings…

It was like uncovering treasure!  I bought a few samples to try, then went back and bought a few more.  These aren’t “pickles” as most of us know them – they’re unusual and spicy and, to me, very delicious.  Pete won’t go near them with a barge pole.

It’s difficult to discern from the photo above, but the offerings ranged from the more mundane seaweed pickles to pickled pollack tripe (raw fish stomach) and salted pollack roe (raw fish eggs).  I must admit the tripe wasn’t to my liking, but the others have been tasty and sooo interesting!

These sesame leaf pickles are in a hot red pepper sauce – each one unfolds like a large vine leaf.  Maude and I both found them a little salty…

All the pickles seemed to be either hot and spicy, or sweet – these lotus root pickles, dusted in sesame seed, were the latter…

Spicy dried pollack in red pepper paste and sesame was chewy in a beef jerky kind of way…

An interesting duo here – both were hot and crunchy! On the left is bamboo flower root, and on the right is radish pickle..

My very favourite of them all – a hot and spicy dried anchovy pickle in red pepper sauce – just the best thing on a bowl of steamed rice!

The almost fluorescent green of this seaweed pickle made me wonder if it had been artificially coloured…

Finally, another one of my favourites, raw squid pickle.  It’s chewy (in an edible rubber band kind of way), hot and very moreish.  Pete, however, refused to be in the same room when I was eating this…

I love trying new flavours, and these were certainly different from anything I’d tasted before, although I do apologise if I’ve grossed anyone out too much. For what it’s worth, Pete’s on your side.

Pete: “I’m not giving you a kiss unless you’ve drunk a bottle of mouthwash”

Me: “You can’t say that, you took a vow to smooch me!”

Pete: “I didn’t take a vow to kiss a squid-mouth!”

Sigh…at least Maude was willing to taste these with me!

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Kneadless Pizza

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on October 18, 2010| 32 Comments »

UK baker Dan Lepard maintains that when yeast, flour and water are combined, the resultant dough will rise, regardless of whether it’s kneaded or not.  This process is known as autolysing.

I decided to test this theory out on a batch of pizza dough we made yesterday.

Into a large mixing bowl went my usual ingredients:

  • 500g bakers flour
  • 10g dried yeast
  • 7g fine sea salt
  • 320g water
  • 50g extra virgin olive oil

I squelched these together until all the dry ingredients were moistened…

The mixed but unkneaded dough was left in the mixing bowl, covered with cling film…

Here it is after an hour…

…and at the two hour mark…

I scraped the risen dough onto the bench…

…and gave it ten folds, no more, which was enough to turn it into this…

The dough was divided into four, shaped into balls and rested for a further half hour before shaping and baking.

We made four man’oushe – Small Man’s favourite – and the delicious pizzas came out of the oven with large air pockets, a sign that the yeast was active and doing its job.

The whole process took longer than usual (I allowed the dough to bulk prove for two hours, whereas I would normally leave it for less than one), but the end results were no different to our regular pizzas.

Is it necessary to knead dough?  In this case, it would appear not!

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Teeny Tiny Happinesses

Posted in Food & Friends, Musings on October 11, 2010| 75 Comments »

Sometimes, the smallest things in life can bring a little cheer.  We refer to them as teeny tiny happinesses. Here are the moments which brought me joy today…

Teeny Tiny Happiness #1

I opened my inbox this morning and found my friend Mazza the Toymaker’s Halloween newsletter.  How cute are these little guys!

. . . . .

Teeny Tiny Happiness #2

I bought this pocket SAS survival guide at a discount book stall for $4.

When I brought it home, Small Man said, “I’ve been looking for that, mum, how did you know?”

How did I know my quirky son would like a compact book on building artic shelters and figuring out which monkeys were safe to eat?  Just a lucky guess…

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Teeny Tiny Happiness #3

Our six lovely ladies laid six gorgeous eggs today!  I can’t decide if we should scramble them for breakfast, or turn them into a triple batch of marshmallows.

By the way, if you’d like to ooh and ahh over some perfectly formed eggs, have a look at Christine’s entries in her local show!

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Teeny Tiny Happiness #4

I am stupidly happy that my handbag has a pocket on the outside which is exactly the right size for a car park ticket…

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Teeny Tiny Happiness #5

Someone rang me today to thank me for my “unfailing optimism and quirkiness”.  I was very chuffed by the compliment!

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Teeny Tiny Happiness #6

I can’t tell you how happy I was to discover that all the fish in our pond are still there – but the mosquito larvae are not.

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Teeny Tiny Happiness #7

This morning, my friend Maude, who lives across the road, came over for a cup of tea.  M and I are both early risers, so we’ll often have a cup of tea at 6am, before the rest of our families are awake.  It’s such a lovely, gentle start to the day.

. . . . .

Teeny Tiny Happiness #8

My lovely friend Wendy owns The Fresh Green Bag, a company which specialises in reusable grocery bags.  I was soooo taken with her new range of mini bags that I bought some to share with you.  These are brilliant – I now have two in my handbag at all times.

They fold down to teeny tiny…

…and open up to carry a large load of shopping.  I recently brought home six kilos of groceries in one!

Would you like a couple of these incredibly cute minis?

I have ten to g1ve αway – five sets of two.   I’ll happily mail these to both Australian and international addresses.

Please εnter before 21st October by sharing with us one little thing that’s brightened your day.  And please make sure to tell us if you’re based in Oz or overseas.

Wishing you all a wonderful day filled with many teeny tiny happinesses!

. . . . .

Congratulations to Kitty, Intolerant Chef, Preppy Pink Crocodile,
Judy and Keri!  I’ll be emailing you all shortly!

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Garden Update

Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, tagged , , , , , on September 30, 2010| 66 Comments »

Congratulations, Soy!  Linda’s book will be on its way to you soon!

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I can’t believe how fast our garden is growing!

Here’s what the first bed looked like in late August…

…and here it is today.  Over the past five weeks, we’ve harvested broccoli, a dozen lettuces, kale and several beetroots from this bed.

The cabbages haven’t been a great success – we planted them too close together, and possibly a little late.  As a result, they’ve been making lots of leaves, but not forming a tight ball.  They haven’t been going to waste though – the chickens absolutely adore them…

The broadbeans seem to be growing before our eyes at the moment!  We can’t decide whether to eat them young as Linda suggests, or to wait until they’re a bit bigger and shell them..

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Bed number two was newly planted when these photos were taken just over a month ago…

…and it’s grown prolifically! In amongst the jungle of pea shoots, you can see kale, cabbage, broccoli, as well as carrots and lettuce.  We’re following Linda Woodrow’s plan from her book, The Permaculture Home Garden, which very cleverly allocates part of the space in each bed to growing feed for the chickens…

The baby pea pods are forming.  I’m very new to gardening, so I didn’t realise that each flower would turn into a pod.  Now I’m excitedly counting the flowers to see how many peas and broadbeans we’re going to get…

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The dwarf peach and nectarine trees seem to be making lots of fruit, although it’s unlikely they’ll all develop…

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Garden bed number three has potatoes, capsicums, eggplants and tomatoes – this single cherry tomato plant has grown like a weed and is threatening to take over the whole bed…

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We have a blueberry plant growing in a pot, waiting for a permanent home, and somewhat surprisingly, given our temperate climate, it seems to be  fruiting!  Maybe it has something to do with all the bees who visit our backyard now…

In a patch of soil where the chicken dome was originally situated, a small crop of wheat is growing from the uneaten grain mix we were feeding to the girls…

Today’s harvest of sprouting broccoli will be eaten at dinner tonight, simply dunked in boiling water and dressed with a little butter and salt..

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I thought you might also enjoy seeing how the chickens are travelling..here’s Rosemary glaring at me for spying on her while she was laying…

…and Queenie, being very vocal and reminding the others that she’s the boss!

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If you live in Australia and would like to undertake a garden project like ours, we have one copy of Linda Woodrow’s book, The Permaculture Home Garden, to g!ve @way (the funny characters are an attempt to avoid the search bots – I want to g!ve the book to someone who actually reads our blog!).

I was buying a copy for our friend Ian the Chicken Whisperer, and couldn’t resist picking up an extra copy for you.  Linda’s book is tailored for Australian gardens, and is full of brilliant and inspired ideas – you can dip into it for suggestions, or go all out and follow her plan completely as we have.

To εnter, please leave a comment (before 14th October) and tell us  which state you live in and what your favourite vegetable is. And apologies to our international visitors, but we can only ship to Australian addresses this time!

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