Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

A super quick post…

This year, I’ve baked Christmas fruit loaves for the neighbours. They’re packed with colourful dried fruit, nuts and cinnamon (but no added sugar), and they’re very tasty…

Here’s the formula I used:

• 100g bubbly active sourdough starter
• 1kg bread/bakers flour
• 750g water
• 18g fine sea salt
• 100g walnut pieces
• 100g chopped dried figs
• 100g dried cranberries
• 50g chopped dried apples
• 50g chopped glace orange slices
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

I followed the instructions in our overnight high hydration tutorial, adding the fruit, nuts and cinnamon with the water. The dough will turn a gorgeous purpley hue. The only other change is to drop the temperature of the oven by 10 degrees once the lids of the roasters have been removed – the dried fruit has a tendency to burn otherwise.

I wrapped each loaf in a paper bag and sealed it with washi tape. Easy, delicious and very festive! ♥

Picanha, also known as beef rump cap, is traditionally cooked hot and fast, then served rare.

I saw it advertised for sale last week at our local Harris Farm Market for just $12.99/kg. It was a locally raised, grassfed bargain, so I shouldered my old backpack and walked to the nearest store. Of course, I’d forgotten that I can’t seem to enter a Harris Farm and not leave with a full load, so the 2km walk home was a bit tricky…

At this point, may I take a brief moment to rave about Harris Farm Markets? For two seconds in the early 1990s, I worked with Cathy Harris (she was in PR back then) and met her and David on the odd social occasion. They were the nicest people – smart and entrepreneurial, but also kind and very family focused. So I was delighted but not at all surprised to read recently that Harris Farm Markets continues to be a family business, now run by three of their five sons.

As a shopper, I like everything about them (I have no idea what they’re like to work for or with). They offer a large and diverse range, they don’t sell caged eggs in their stores, they’re getting rid of plastic bags altogether, and much of their meat is grassfed and free range. A few years ago (and months before the supermarkets), they started selling imperfect fruit and vegetables at greatly reduced prices, to the benefit of both farmer and consumer. And they have pretty fabulous specials, which they email out every week to subscribers.

Which brings me back to my rump cap. There were a few brands on offer, but I bought this grassfed Angus beef from the Australian Meat Group…

The meat wasn’t marbled, but it did come with a generous “cap” of fat…

As I said at the beginning, the traditional way of cooking picanha is hot and fast, until the fat renders and crisps but the meat is still quite rare. I, on the other hand, had been craving slow cooked beef all week.

I dragged out my trusty Römertopf clay pot and popped it into a sinkful of water to soak for 20 minutes…

This photo was taken when my pot was new. It’s not so clean now (sigh)…

The fat on the cap was scored deeply and the whole piece rubbed generously with salt and pepper, before being nestled (fat side up) into the soaked pot – I had to squish it a bit to fit. With the lid on, the pot went into a cold oven and I turned the heat up to 200C with fan.

After an hour, I took the pot out carefully and sat it on a folded tea towel (the Romy is quite sensitive to thermal shock, so plonking a hot pot onto a cold bench could cause it to crack). I poured boiling water in almost to the fat level, and added a couple of large pinches of salt.

The lid went on and the pot went back into the oven, with the heat reduced to 150C with fan, for a further two hours. By that stage the meat was very tender – we carefully removed it from the pot and wrapped it in foil to rest. The fat was skimmed off and used  to flavour roast potatoes, and Pete turned the stock into a delicious gravy.

Here’s the end result…tender and incredibly flavoursome slow cooked Aussie beef, cut with the grain to keep the slices intact. The 1.75kg piece cost us $22.50 and produced enough food to feed four adults generously or five comfortably…

We served it with homemade caponatina, potatoes roasted in the beef fat, focaccia croutons and Pete’s perfect gravy…

This was sooo good that I raced back to Harris Farm the following day and bought a couple more rump caps for the freezer!

My friend Al laughed at me recently.

“You’re always figuring out how much everything costs!”, she said.

I had to laugh with her – I’ve been doing it for so long now that I don’t even notice. It was ironic too, because while I was telling her about buying broken bags of salt at bargain prices, we were busy eating at Anason in Barangaroo. The food was excellent, but certainly not cheap…

You see, whilst the adding up and counting costs began out of necessity, a lot of time has passed since then. It was important when Small Man was sick in hospital and Pete had been retrenched, but that was decades ago. And although we live a fairly moderate lifestyle now, we certainly aren’t stingy on ourselves.

So it’s intriguing that I still find so much joy in scrimping and saving. Is it that my Asian genes love a bargain? Maybe that plays a part. But after giving it more thought, I’ve decided that it also has to do with empowerment. I find it very reassuring to know that if the time ever came again that we had to survive on very little, we could.

Actually, survive isn’t the right word. I reckon we could thrive. We would eat our homemade sourdough at 60c a loaf, turn chicken bones into hearty meals, bake cakes with discounted tinned fruit, and cook up nourishing pasta soups.

Which is, in fact, how we eat now – not because we have to, but because we enjoy it. It feels like an important life lesson to pass on to Big Boy and Small Man – work hard, enjoy yourselves, but understand that if times ever get tough, you can always survive thrive on very little. I know too many people who equate contentment with a certain level of income, but life has shown us the hard way that it’s not something we always have control over. By practising frugality even when we don’t need to, we hope to model a mindset to our sons that will not just prepare them for, but allow them to embrace, the unpredictability of life.

. . . . .

On our last trip to Costco, baby barramundi from Humpty-Doo (it’s a real place, google it!) was discounted by 50%. We brought home two fish, cut off the heads, then filleted them. The four fillets (skin on) and the bones were dusted in seasoned flour and simply pan fried, then I microwaved the heads with black beans and spring onions.

Accompanied by stir fried garden vegetables and steamed rice, this was a delicious meal for four adults using just $10 worth of fresh local fish. See, I’m still adding up! Do you do it too? ♥