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In My Kitchen, July 2011

July 15, 2011 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

In my kitchen…

…are saffron crocus bulbs, a gift from my lovely friend Becca, the InTolerant Chef.  I could be picking my own saffron next year!

In my kitchen…

…are some new textured mugs.  Made by Ecology Homewares, each design comes in a box of four, but I split packs with my mum and Uncle Steve (Pete’s brother), so that we could all have one of each.  They worked out at about $5 per mug.

The Bubble is my current favourite – it reminds me of old photos of the moon…

…although most people seem to be drawn to the regularity of the Mesh mug…

…except for Big Boy, who prefers this design known as Sticks…

In my kitchen…

…is a sized up version of my ricotta tart, made with double the ingredients and baked in a 10″ fluted flan tin with a removable base…

In my kitchen…

…is a large slab of caramelised white chocolate.  I re-melted the jarred chocolate and tempered it with more white chocolate…

About a third of the bar has been cut up into chips. Now I just need to find a good use for them!

In my kitchen…

…is a batch of rhubarb and raspberry jam, made with our backyard rhubarb and the frozen raspberries we bought from Chef Express in Marrickville.  It’s one of Pete’s most popular preserves…

In my kitchen…

…is an indulgence in tomatoes.  We were really missing good tomatoes, so we bought this mixed box from an expensive fruit market.  It was worth it too, as every single tom was delicious.  The box had an assortment of red and yellow cherries, red and yellow Bella Rossas and Black Zebras…

The Black Zebras were a new variety to me – slightly tart, thick walled and well flavoured…

In my kitchen…

…is the pomegranate powder I bought at the Aum Spice centre.  I haven’t used it yet, but I told Choclette I’d take a photo for her.  It’s pleasantly acidic …

In my kitchen…

…is yet another gift from the lovely Moo. We’d had a discussion about cloudberries, and Moo’s wife Jane found these jars of cloudberry jam at Ikea in Adelaide…

The golden jam has an unusual flavour – it’s a little tangy, quite sweet and filled with crunchy pips.

Thanks Moo, for an opportunity to try this elusive food!

. . . . .

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 use this format, and to leave a comment here linking back to your post.  We’d all love to see what’s happening in your kitchen every month too!

Posted in In My Kitchen | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 79 Comments »

Spicy Things

July 13, 2011 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

I’ve been having a blast playing with all my new spices!

I dragged out my masala dabba, which I bought a couple of years ago but never got around to using.  It’s a traditional Indian spice box, made of stainless steel…

It has an inner lid to lock in freshness, and a small spoon…

I filled mine with (clockwise) : Kashmiri chilli powder, coriander powder, black mustard seed, turmeric, cumin powder and fennel seeds, with cinnamon, green cardamon and star anise in the middle.

I made garam masala, following  this recipe from Mamta’s Kitchen.

Into a grinder went:

  • 1 tablespoon black Sarawak pepper
  • 1 teaspoon whole cloves
  • 4 whole black cardamon pods
  • 4 whole green cardamon pods
  • 2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
  • 5 broken dried bay leaves (a gift from the Spice Girl)
  • 10cm cinnamon stick, broken up

After blitzing, the mix was sifted to remove any fibrous bits.

I used the garam masala in Mamta’s chickpea curry (Channa curry) following the recipe here.

A tip from the lovely Barbara at Harkola – dried chickpeas can be soaked and frozen before boiling. They can then be boiled from frozen as required.

When I made this curry, I simply took the container out of the freezer and emptied it straight into a pot of cold water, brought it to the boil and simmered it until the chickpeas were soft.

Finally, I used my homemade curry powder to make a Malaysian style chicken and potato curry.  It was a hearty feed on a cold winter’s night!

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , , , | 47 Comments »

Japanese Noodle Bar Manmaruya

July 11, 2011 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

I don’t post a lot of restaurant reviews here, mostly because we don’t actually eat out very often.

When we have a hankering for Japanese food though, we almost always eat at Manmaruya.  This very reasonably priced noodle bar began as a single outlet in Campsie, and has now expanded to include stores in Hurstville and Ashfield.  The food is always consistently good and, according to our Japanese friends, very authentic.

The Ashfield restaurant has only been opened a couple of weeks, so we headed out last night with the boys and my parents to try it out.  I clicked happily away with my pocket Lumix, which coped brilliantly with the lower light and managed to take all these photos flash-free.

There was so much salad on the table – almost every dish came with its own serve…

The  Salmon Avocado Sushi Fusion ($12.80) is a new dish to us – the sauce is a light mayonnaise that perfectly complements the other ingredients.

Endamame was just $3 a bowl – we ordered two…

Small Man always has Teriyaki Chicken Don ($12.80)..

I ordered a Kabayaki-Eel Bento Box ($18.80), which came with rice and miso soup.  The set included gyoza, seaweed salad, green salad and salmon sashimi as well..

Big Boy had a Pork Katsu Bento Box ($15.80)…

My dad had the Pork Sho-yu Ramen ($9.80)…

…and Pete had the slightly more extravagent Cha-Shu Ramen ($12.80).

Both ramen and udon noodles are available, in either pork or chicken soup bases.  The extensive menu offers about twenty different noodle soup options…

The menu also offers a variety of ways to customise your meal – you can add a side order of dumplings and salad, or extra ingredients in your soup, or purchase a mini ramen set with your main meal for an extra $5.

There is also a cheaper lunch menu, with smaller box meal sets available around the $10 mark.  And if you bring kids to lunch, you can purchase a mini ramen for them for just $3.  Great value for fresh, delicious food!

. . . . .

Japanese Noodle Bar Manmaruya
217 Liverpool Road
Ashfield   NSW  2131
Tel. 9799 6889

Lunch: 11.30am – 2.30pm
Dinner: 5.30 pm – 9.30pm
Closed Tuesdays

Posted in Food & Friends | Tagged , | 45 Comments »

Chicken-Cam

July 10, 2011 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

My lovely friend Joanna is roaming Bristol taking photos of gorillas for me, so I thought I’d reciprocate with a few chicken videos.

Because the videos are quite large, I’ve uploaded the first one here, and put the other two on their own pages. Please click on the links to have a look!

Here is Queenie, the circus chicken, balancing on the rail of the dome to nibble at a bit of homemade sausage…

. . . . .

Three chickens on a swing, preening (Rosemary in the middle, Francesca on the right, and Pete thinks it’s Maggie on the left) …

Click here to see this video

. . . . .

…and a just dead pond fish, thrown into the dome, caused a vigorous chase…and gave me the giggles!

Click here to see this video

Posted in Frugal Living | 31 Comments »

Pebbly Beach Fruit Squares

July 9, 2011 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

When I was growing up, one of my favourite treats was the Arnott’s Spicy Fruit Roll – a buttery shortbread biscuit wrapped around a dried fruit filling.  These easy cookies are very reminiscent of those, and I find them incredibly moreish!

These delightfully named Pebbly Beach Fruit Squares come from Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies – the latest addition to my cookbook library, and an absolute treasure trove of interesting recipes.  I’ve added metric measures for the ingredients, as I always prefer to use scales when I bake.

  • 240g (8.5oz) plain (AP) flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 125g (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
  • 150g (¾ cup) sugar
  • 1 large (59g) egg
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon ground anise (or grated lemon rind, or ground cinnamon)
  • 1 cup moist dried fruit – I used a mix of blueberries, candied orange peel, golden raisins, finely chopped Persian figs and cranberries
  • raw or demerara sugar, for sprinkling (I used raw caster sugar, as I couldn’t find my demerara!)

1. Mix the dried fruit together, breaking up any lumps with your fingers.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until combined (but not fluffy), then add the egg, vanilla and ground anise (or lemon rind or cinnamon) and mix well.  Then add the flour mixture, and beat until combined.

4. Divide the dough into two, flatten it out and wrap well in clingfilm, then refrigerate for at least two hours, or overnight.

5. Remove the chilled dough from the fridge and allow it to rest before rolling out.  Preheat oven to 175C (350F) with fan.

6. Between two sheets of parchment, roll out one piece of dough until it forms a large thin rectangle – the original recipe specifies dimensions of 8½” x 16½”, but mine wasn’t quite that big.  Carefully peel off the top sheet of parchment.

7. Scatter half the dried fruit mixture over half of the dough.

8. Using the parchment paper, carefully fold the other half of the dough over to enclose the fruit.  Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour and flip it back over onto the parchment, so that you can gently loosen the paper from the other side.

9. Scatter the top of the dough with raw or demerara sugar.  Trim the edges, and then cut into 16 pieces.

10.  Lay the cookies onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper, and repeat with the remaining dough and fruit.  Bake the cookies for 12 – 15 minutes (mine took 15 minutes) or until lightly golden brown, rotating the pan(s) once during the baking time.

11. Allow to cool on a wire rack, and then store in an airtight container. Try not to scoff them all at once!

Posted in Recipes | Tagged | 28 Comments »

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