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Archive for the ‘Food & Friends’ Category

Pukara Estate Novello 2009

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , , on May 1, 2009| 2 Comments »

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I was giddy with excitement to see the sales rep from Pukara Estate at the cheese shop today.  That’s because he was pulling out long elegant bottles of this year’s release of the Pukara Estate Novello.

This amazing liquid is the very first cold pressed olive oil from Pukara’s 2009 harvest. It’s bottled straight off the press, unfiltered, and is designed for immediate consumption.  Unlike most olive oils which are allowed to settle in dark glass to increase their shelf life, the Novello is bottled in clear, and is to be used straight away, while it is still young, cloudy and green.  Basically, it is fresh fruit juice, bottled from olives that were on the tree a week ago.  It has a delicious, slightly peppery flavour, a luscious mouthfeel and a long, long finish you can taste for minutes afterwards.  In some ways, the Novello is to regular EVOO what fresh apple juice is to apple cider.

While the keeping time is supposedly six months, the oil  is really at its best as soon as it is pressed.  We will enjoy our bottle right now, while it is at its peak, mourn its passing when the last drop has been consumed, and look forward with eager anticipation to next year’s release.  Only 1500 bottles were made in 2009, all of them numbered (ours is bottle 668).  At $35/bottle, it’s a very affordable annual indulgence!

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Gougeres

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , , , on April 27, 2009| 3 Comments »

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Dorie tweeted about her gougeres and I needed a dish for lunch, so I made these.  Gougeres are choux pastry balls flavoured with cheese.  They are easy to make and definitely moreish – perhaps a little too much so.  Mine were flavoured with a sharp pecorino, but next time I’m going to try them with blue cheese (I can hear Jane and Christina moaning from here).  These light morsels browned beautifully in the oven and cooked through, leaving a hollow centre, which could probably have been filled with something savoury (I didn’t get a chance to try anything before they were all eaten).

The recipe is here and I hope these photos will inspire you to give them a go!

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Sunday Baking

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , , on April 26, 2009|

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Most days the bread is more than good enough to eat, and some days it is so good that we eat nothing else.

Jeffrey Steingarten, The Man Who Ate Everything

Today is one of those days when the bread is so good that I really don’t want to eat anything else.  I kneaded up a batch of sourdough last night, using my current favourite mix – 85% white bakers flour to 15% dark organic rye – and left it to prove on the bench overnight in a covered plastic container.  Here’s what greeted me this morning at 5am..

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I baked two 750g loaves for school lunches and some small rolls to take to El and Peter’s today for a barbeque lunch.  The rolls were simply cut from a log of dough and flattened out onto a tray, but they are absolutely perfect.  They’re crispy on the outside with an airy, holey crumb and a sublime flavour that beautifully complements Pete’s homemade butter (which he made last night, so it’s super fresh).  I wonder if it’s bad form to go to lunch and just eat bread?

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Hope you’re all having an equally enjoyable Sunday!

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Mascarpone Reale

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged , on April 24, 2009| 4 Comments »

A photo for the gorgeous Jane…..

Mascarpone Reale is a Paesanella speciality – layers of mascarpone interleaved with slices of gorgonzola, then studded with walnuts. Perfect with sourdough baguettes and homemade quince paste, or a glass of Vintage Porto!

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Dorie’s Fifteen Minute Torte

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , , , , on April 20, 2009| 5 Comments »

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I tend to anthropomorphise inanimate objects.  My oven is Bob, the laser printer is Ralph, the car is Buddy.  But I’ve never given the food processor a name, because I’ve never been overly attached to it.  It’s over 20 years old and for the past ten of those, I’ve willed it to break, so that I could replace it.   You know how you end up sick of something, but just can’t justify replacing it because it still works?

About six months ago, something finally did give – the little button that starts the blade spinning when you close the lid broke.  As a temporary fix, Pete drilled it out so that I could operate the machine with a chopstick.  And now, bizarrely, I can’t bring myself to part with it. Pete’s been trying for months to buy me a new food processor – a whiz bang stainless steel one with multiple bowls – and I keep refusing.  It’s like the old one suddenly has personality.  So now it has a reprieve and I’ll be using it until the motor burns out.  Maybe she needs a name..any suggestions?

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It’s interesting to observe the domino effect food blogs have on each other.  I was inspired to make Dorie Greenspan’s Fifteen Minute Chocolate Amaretti Torte today by a piece that Barb wrote on her blog, Babette Feasts.  She, in turn, was baking this cake as part of a weekly bake-off run by another food blog.  The recipe is featured here and it’s a very easy cake to make – using just seven ingredients.  The  batter really does take just minutes to make in a food processor (even one that’s chopstick operated) and uses these gorgeous amaretti biscuits in place of flour.  They’re so addictive that I ate a dozen of them in the short time the mix was whizzing in the food processor (fortunately I could eat them one-handed, while operating the chopstick with the other). See how hollow they are inside?

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The end result was this dense, fudgey, almond and chocolate treat.  A perfect dinner party dessert!

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By the way, this recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours.  I ordered a copy from Amazon earlier this year and have made half a dozen dishes from it already.  It’s the sort of cookbook you take to bed with you at night to plan the next day’s baking.

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