Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Juggling

June 4, 2014 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Recently, I received a text photo from my baby cousin Lih, with a note reminding me that I’d taught him to juggle fifteen years ago.

Back then, I actually could juggle, but I hadn’t picked up the beanbags for nearly a decade. I figured it was time to get back into it. Here’s my more recent, slightly tragic attempt…

I’ve decided I need to put in some serious practice, so that I can make another attempt at juggling clubs. The last time I tried, I threw the first club into the air…and it came straight back down on my head and nearly knocked me out. Uncle Mike has offered to coach me, so I’m going to try again.

Juggling is surprisingly easy – I’m nearly fifty, with truly rubbish hand-eye co-ordination, so if I can do it, then I reckon just about anyone can. This great video is a good place to start. Have fun!

Posted in Cool Things, Food & Friends, Recipes | 56 Comments »

Tea Craft

June 3, 2014 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

After a long hiatus, I’ve recently started drinking caffeinated tea again.

It began a few months ago when I was reading a fellow blogger’s In My Kitchen post about using Earl Grey for iced tea. From there, it’s evolved into a daily cup (or two) of hot Earl Grey, milk-free and sweetened with a little honey.

Last week, I was out and about with my foodie friend Allison. Our lunch dates often turn into road trips, as we drive our cars in convoy from one suburb to another, stopping to pick up goodies along the way. On our last adventure, we started at a new eatery in Marrickville, popped into Southern Cross supplies, then trekked out to the Portuguese shops in Petersham.

On the way, we stopped at Double Roasters in Marrickville. These guys take their coffee very seriously – apart from a selection of custom roasted beans for sale, they were also offering a rare single origin brew that Al was keen to try. It’s a testament to their graciousness that not a single eyebrow was raised when I sheepishly announced that I didn’t drink coffee. Instead, they sat us down and brought me a pot of the most amazing Earl Grey tea I’d ever tasted.

I discovered that the tea was blended locally by a Sydney based company called Tea Craft. The following morning, I hopped onto their website and placed an order – some Earl Grey for me, a bag of their signature Karavan blend to try, and Russian Caravan for Big Boy (my eldest son has strong opinions about tea). The order was placed at 9.23am, shipped at 9.38am, and delivered at 2pm. It’s hard not to be impressed with service like that!

Tea Craft products aren’t cheap, but the quality is superb. Their Earl Grey is aromatically flavoured with bergamot and blue cornflowers, and it’s a delicious, gentle brew (unlike the one I bought from T2 recently, which I found overly tannic and bitter). Big Boy loved the Russian Caravan. The Karavan blend is also very nice – it’s a mix of black and green teas flavoured with bergamot, peppermint and rose…

I was keen to try other teas from this company, but didn’t want to pay for a full bag of each, so I contacted them on Twitter and asked if they offered a sample pack. They replied instantly – they didn’t offer it as a standard product, but would be more than happy to put one together for me. I told them my budget and my drinking preferences (weak black teas or herbal teas, drunk without milk) and let them choose.

The next day, a silver bag of treasure arrived…

I don’t have any affiliation whatsoever with either of these companies, but I am biased – I like to support our homegrown, Sydney-based businesses as much as possible, particularly when they offer such great products and service!

. . . . .

Tea Craft
Tel: (+61) 1300 733 973
www.teacraft.com.au

. . . . .

Double Roasters / Wicks Park Cafe
199 Victoria Rd, Marrickville,
Sydney, NSW 2204
Tel: (02) 9572 7711
www.doubleroasters.com

. . . . .

Posted in Cool Things, Food & Friends, In My Kitchen | 55 Comments »

In My Kitchen, June 2014

June 1, 2014 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

In my kitchen…

…is a beautiful Acacia wood board, a gift from the lovely Bev and Les…

In my kitchen…

…is new Falcon enamelware. I’m so suggestible that after seeing photos of Lorraine’s and Brydie’s baking sets, I couldn’t resist buying one for myself. The red trim matches our Turkish tile trivets perfectly.

Both Peters of Kensington and Odgers & McClelland stock the Falcon brand – Duncan and Megan at O&M are lovely, and particularly helpful if you’re looking for something specific (I’ve been buying pie tins from them for years)…

In my kitchen…

…is a fabulous dark chocolate by Mast Brothers that lovely Jo brought all the way back from New York for me to try. The Dominican Republic blend is a dark 70% cacao, with interesting smoky tobacco notes – it was too much for Pete, but I absolutely loved it. I ended up eating the bar whizzed into 30g chocolate shots…

In my kitchen…

…was my first and possibly last attempt at cooking pigs’ trotters. They were incredibly cheap – about 80c each – so I bought five home to experiment with. I ended up adapting Ai-Ling’s belly pork recipe, and I thought it all went rather well.

Pigs’ trotters don’t have much meat on them – they’re basically skin and cartilage. When I posted the photo below, I had a very mixed reaction – Nancy in Shanghai and Chicago John both offered to join us for dinner, Ali in Canberra nearly brought up her lunch, and my friend Dan rang from California to chastise me for scaring my followers.

Pete wouldn’t go near them and insisted on dumplings for dinner, the boys ate one trotter each, willingly but not particularly enthusiastically, and I thought they were delicious, but hard work to eat.

So here’s a photo for the records, as I won’t be making them again…

In my kitchen…

…are gifts from my friend Jane, who picks up treasures for me on her travels. The eclair liners and cucumber twister were from her last trip to London and France, and the culinary lavender from Tasmania. I recently read a recipe for lavender shortbread, but can’t now remember where – if it was on your blog, could you please let me know?  Thanks..

In my kitchen…

…is Australian sea mullet, a cheap and (I believe) sustainable fish. I’ve never seen them for sale before, so when I found this one for just $5.99 a kilo in Flemington, I bought it home to try. The large fish below set me back just $6.80 and easily fed all four of us – I roasted it wrapped in foil and seasoned with soy, ginger and spring onions.

The flesh was firm and mildly flavoured – pleasant, but not particularly interesting. I think it would work well as a base for strong flavours, so the next time I buy one, I’ll use it in a fish curry…

In my kitchen…

…are gifts from lovely Madge – shaped bread tins! I’m still thinking about how to use them…

In my kitchen…

…there seems to always be yellow cherry tomatoes from the garden. The passionfruits are off the vine overhanging from our neighbour Mark’s yard…

Finally, in my kitchen…

…are scones for afternoon tea, made with Pepe Saya buttermilk…

. . . . .

Tell me, what’s happening in your kitchen this month?

If you’d like to do an In My Kitchen post on your own blog, please feel free  to do so. We’d love to see what’s happening in your kitchen this month!  Please link back to this blog, and let us know when your post is up, and we’ll add it to our monthly listing. Please upload your post by the 10th of each month.

Here are this month’s posts:

Bernice @ Dish ‘n’ the Kitchen (Calgary, Canada)

Mel @ The Cooks Notebook (Brisbane, QLD)

JJ @ 84th & 3rd (Sydney, NSW)

Emily @ Cooking for Kishore (first IMK post! New Jersey, USA)

Emilie @ The Clever Carrot (New York, USA)

Laila @ Table of Colors (Finland)

Selma @ Selma’s Table (London, UK)

Fran @ The Food Marshall (Canberra, ACT)

Ella @ Mulberry and Pomegranate (Sydney, NSW)

Moya @ Food & Tools (Bahrain)

Fran @ Life in the Food Lane (Houston, Texas, USA)

Jason @ Don’t Boil The Sauce (Melbourne, VIC)

Glenda @ Healthy Stories (Melbourne, VIC)

Lisa @ I’ll Be There With A Fork (Brisbane, QLD)

Claire @ Claire K Creations (Brisbane, QLD)

Danielle @ The nOATbook (Melbourne, VIC)

Anne @ Anne Lawson (Melbourne VIC)

Ale @ Ligera de Equipaje (Argentina)

Christine @ Food Wine Travel (Brisbane, QLD)

Jane @ The Shady Baker (Broken Hill, NSW)

Barb @ Just A Smidgen (Calgary, Canada)

Aneela @ The Odd Pantry (San Francisco, USA)

Nicole @ Miss Food Fairy (first IMK post! Melbourne, VIC)

Lisa @ Gourmet Wog (Sydney, NSW)

Liz @ Bizzy Lizzy’s Good Things (Canberra, ACT)

Kim @ A Little Lunch (Oklahoma, USA)

Kari @ Bite-Sized Thoughts (Western Australia)

Shaheen @ Allotment2Kitchen (Wales)

Anne @ Life in Mud Spattered Boots (Essex, UK)

Johanna @ Green Gourmet Giraffe (Melbourne, VIC)

Sandra @ Please Pass the Recipe (Melbourne, VIC)

Sherry @ Sherry’s Pickings (first IMK post! Brisbane, QLD)

Jennifer @ Milk and Honey (Gippsland, VIC)

Brydie @ CityHippyFarmGirl (Sydney, NSW)

Kylie @ Town Mouse Country Mouse (Northern Victoria)

Nancy @ Jamjnr (Shanghai, China)

Joanne @ What’s on the List? (Adelaide, South Australia)

Tandy @ Lavender and Lime (Gordons Bay, South Africa)

Clare @ The Life of Clare (Geelong, VIC)

Becca @ The InTolerant Chef (Canberra, ACT)

Taryn @ The Wooden Spoons (Canberra, ACT)

Debi @ My Kitchen Witch (Sheffield, UK)

Lauren @ Living the Savory Life (Perth, Western Australia)

Mandy @ The Complete Cookbook (Sundays River, South Africa)

Ardys @ Ardysez (Alice Springs, Northern Territory)

Charlie Louie @ Hotly Spiced (Sydney, NSW)

Tania @ The Cook’s Pyjamas (Perth, Western Australia)

Gail @ Using Up The Veggie Box (Ballarat, VIC)

Maureen @ Orgasmic Chef (Sunshine Coast, QLD)

Francesca @ Almost Italian (Melbourne, VIC)

Siobhan @ Garden Correspondent (Ulupinar, Turkey)

Sally @ Bewitching Kitchen (Kansas, USA)

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella (Sydney, NSW)

Liz @ Mother Hubbards Cupboard (first IMK post! Gold Coast, QLD)

Sarah @ Chantille-Fleur (Queensland)

Glenda @ Passion Fruit Garden (Perth, Western Australia)

Fiona @ TIFFIN – Bite Sized Food Adventures (Brisbane, QLD)

Posted in In My Kitchen | 175 Comments »

Raspberry and Quince Jelly Tea Cake

May 30, 2014 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Sorry about the dead email link yesterday – user error on my part!

. . . . .

In one of the episodes of River Cottage Autumn, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall bakes a delicious pear syrup tea cake.

It was such an easy recipe that I didn’t even have to write it down. It’s a variation on a pound cake, and it occurred to me that it could probably be topped with all sorts of different fruits and syrups. Here’s the formula I used for the base (I reduced the butter a bit as 300g seemed excessive, and added vanilla):

  • 250g unsalted butter, soft but not melted
  • 200g caster (superfine) sugar (edit 8/6: reduced from the original 250g)
  • 4 large free range eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used homemade)
  • 150g self-raising flour
  • 150g almond meal

I topped the cake with:

1. Preheat oven to 160C with fan and line a baking tray with parchment paper (I used a rectangular 30cm x 23cm / 12″x9″ pan, but Hugh used a large round baking tin).

2. Beat the butter until light and fluffy, then beat in the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until combined, stirring in a spoonful of the flour if required to stop the batter from splitting. Add the vanilla and beat to combine.

3. Stir or sift the flour and almond meal together, then fold through the batter. Scrape batter into the prepared tray and top with the fruit. Heat the quince jelly briefly in the microwave to melt it, then drizzle over the top of the cake.

4. Bake for 35 – 40 minutes, or until a fine skewer inserted into a non-fruity bit comes out clean – the baking time will vary depending on the shape of the tin used and the depth of the batter.

This recipe can be easily adapted to use up leftover jams and fruits.

I uncovered an old bottle of ginger syrup in the fridge, as well as a jar of fig jam that Moo had sent us, and tried drizzling and dolloping both over the top of our next cake in place of the raspberries and quince jelly…

It was gingery, tender and deliciously sweet. It was a bit too sweet for Pete, but I found it perfect with a hot cup of tea (in later attempts, I reduced the sugar from 250g to 200g – recipe has been amended accordingly).

The very yellow crumb is a result of our backyard eggs – the girls have been feasting on rainbow chard lately, which seems to supercharge their yolks. Little bits of glacé ginger and fig glistened like encased jewels…

The variations on this recipe are endless – I’m sure we have old jars of rhubarb and berry jams lurking in the pantry, and sour cherries in the freezer, both of which would be perfect for this recipe. In its original incarnation, Hugh cooked down peeled pears in syrup and used both on his cake. It’s the perfect recipe to have up our sleeve for an emergency bake!

Posted in Recipes | 67 Comments »

Old Bread

May 28, 2014 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

It seems a bit tragic to write a post essentially about making toast, but here goes anyway.

In Chad Robertson’s wonderful Tartine Bread, he offers over thirty different recipes for using up old bread. The entire book is fabulously inspirational, but that chapter particularly so, given that I have a freezer full of loaves from all my baking experiments (I appear to have filled the neighbours’ freezers as well).

Midway through the chapter, Chad recounts how he asked the legendary Alice Waters what she did with her old bread and the reply was, simply, “bread crumbs”. That was what I had in mind when I tore apart our failed Römertopf loaf and laid it out to bake for three hours in a low 100C oven.

What I didn’t realise was how delicious oven dried sourdough is – it reminded me of the little squares of melba toast from  my childhood. I’d baked the bread until it was dry all the way through – there weren’t any soft bits of crumb left at all. Before I’d even had a chance to think about whizzing them up in the food processor, Small Man devoured half of them.

I figured it had to have something to do with the crunchiness.

A few days later, I cut the crust off a sesame loaf (the tribe had spoken, and these loaves had been ignored by everyone except me). I sliced it up thinly and baked the pieces in the oven, again at 100C (no fan) for a couple of hours. I also tore apart half of another loaf and baked it on the lower shelf…

As they were cooking, I made a batch of frijoles negros refritos (refried beans) using precooked defrosted black beans from the freezer and a little of our recently rendered lard…

The boys scoffed the bread and dip for Sunday lunch with enormous enthusiasm. The crunchy dry sourdough made a great substitute for corn chips (without the deep frying)…

Any leftovers (providing the pieces have been baked completely dry) should keep for a while in an airtight container, in much the same way as breadcrumbs would. They make wonderful croutons for soup, can be whizzed into crumbs in the food processor (or crushed with a rolling pin as Chad Robertson suggests), and they work well with cheeses and dips. Slicing the bread produces prettier results, but the torn pieces have a certain rustic charm which we found very appealing.

In the end, lunch for the entire family cost us very little – the bread was surplus, the beans were dirt cheap, and running a low oven isn’t hugely expensive (according to my engineer husband). More importantly, we didn’t have to waste any bread!

Posted in Frugal Living, Recipes | 60 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »