Kids Curry

I have a very fussy child who has a strange palate. I suspect I am not alone on this. While he is happy, and in fact chooses, to take ciabbiatta bread with his own tub of olive oil to school, he won't eat chicken or pork, is ambivalent about mashed potato, hates bananas but loves a juicy T-Bone. The following recipe is an adaptation of a curry I was shown during a very short lived career as a cattle station cook when I was 17. Jorge and his friends love this meal. I suspect it is the sweetness in the fruit. One tip for this recipe, is to cook it for a very long time until the sauce goes dark.

Ingredients
500gm lamb, cut in cubes
1 tablespoon ghee
2 onions finely diced
3 cloves garlic finely diced
Fresh ginger, grated (around 1 teaspoon)
1-2 tablespoons water or stock
2 tablespoons tomato puree
Mild curry paste or powder
Tumeric powder and ground cinnamon
1 apple or banana

Method
1. Melt ghee over low heat in a heavy saucepan.
2. When melted, add onions, garlic and ginger and sautee over low heat until well cooked and soft.
3. Add curry paste, and a few pinches of both cinnamon and tumeric.  Cook for 2 more minutes more.
4. Add diced lamb and brown.
5. Turn the heat down low and cover.
6. After 30 minutes, add fruit and tomato and cover again. Cook for around 2 hours, checking every half hour or so. If the curry gets too dry, add a few tablespoons of water or stock.
7. Continue to cook until the meat is very tender and the surrounding sauce is dark. You almost want a toffeed sauce.  Don't overcook the meat.
8. Add salt to taste.

Serve
.. with basmati rice, yoghurt, papadams and chutney.

Cousin Rosa's Braised Pumpkin

This is my father's cousin Rosa's braised pumpkin recipe. I only ever tasted it once actually cooked by Cousin Rosa, but my mother and I worked on the recipe and now I claim it as one my own. Very simple and great as an accompaniment to a roast dinner. Don't omit the pepper, it's what makes this dish so special.

Ingredients
Around a quarter of a good sized pumpkin
2-3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
Extra virgin olive Oil
Herb of choice (?Rosemary)
Salt
Pepper

Method
1. Seed, skin and and chop pumpkin into medium sized pieces.
2. Heat olive oil in a heavy cast iron enamel pot which has a well fitting lid.
3. Drop in garlic and heat through for around a minute, then add pumpkin.
4. Saute for around 2 minutes.
5. Add salt, pepper and herb, then add around two tablespoons of water.
6. Put lid on pot and cook undisturbed for at least a half hour.
7. Check the done-ness of the pumpkin. It should be a little bit caramelised on the bottom.
Enjoy

My best Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients
A good piece of pumpkin
4-5 cloves good garlic (preferably organic)
Extra virgin olive oil
1 good sized onion
1 carrot, chopped into medium bits
1 small potato, sliced
grated nutmeg
Rosemary
2-3 cups milk
salt

Method
1. Seed, skin and and chop pumpkin into medium sized pieces.
2. Place in a baking dish with garlic and rosemary, and dribble with olive oil. Move the pumpkin around so that all the pieces and garlic are covered in olive oil.
3. Bake in a medium to hot oven until just beginning to go brown on edges.
At the same time....
4. Heat 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy cast iron pot which has a lid (stainless steel saucepan will suffice.)
5. Add onions and saute for at least 15 minutes until they are starting to caramelise.
6. Add carrots. Keep the heat very low and saute, covered for around 15 to 20 minutes.
7. Take lid off and add baked pumpkin (leave the garlic out), and sliced potato. Add around a cup of water and grated nutmeg and put the lid back on. Cook for at least another 20 minutes to a half hour until all the vegetables are well cooked.
8. Puree the soup with a stab blender. It doesn't need to be too smooth.
9. Add milk until you reach your desired consistency, add salt to taste and crumble in roasted garlic.
10. Heat through (don't boil), and serve with garlic croutons.

Some comments from friends would couldn't put up a post:
Don't use celery.
Try sweet potato in addition to other vegetables.
Replace milk with coconut milk and add five-spice.

Root Vegetable (Pumpkin) Marak

Pumpkins are still in season, and a whole heap of other root and winter vegetables. This recipe is an adaptation of Tess Malos' "Marka dar Marhzin" (Moroccon Pumpkin Stew - similar to Tagine) with a few variations. What I love about this recipe is that it has a certain summer quality about it - the colour and flavours - but is made with winter vegetables. I would also like to suggest to my Alice Springs followers that Siri Omberg's locally made Harissa really lifts this dish. (Available at Afghan Traders.)

Ingredients
Olive oil
2 onions finely chopped
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 teaspoon each tumeric, ginger and cinnamon
A selection of root and winter vegetables could include: carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, parsnip, cabbage. About a cup of each, diced.
2-3 cups water
1 teaspoon Harissa (see above)
1 tablespoon sultanas
1 dessertspoon honey
1/4 cup pine nuts (toasted)
Fresh coriander for garnish


Method
1. Heat olive oil in large heavy saucepan, preferably cast iron enamel.
2. Add onions and garlic and sautee over a low heat until well cooked and soft (but not brown).
3. Add spices and cook for around 2 more minutes.
4. Add carrots and cover with water. Bring to boil and simmer for around 10 minutes.
5. Add other vegetables, sultanas, honey and salt and pepper to taste.
6. Cover and simmer for another 20 minutes until vegetables are cooked to your taste.
7. Add harissa.

Serve
with couscous, lime wedges. Would look good on a large plate on top of couscous, but I prefer to leave the ratio of couscous to Marak to the diner.
(For a more substantial meal, you can always add chick peas.)
Enjoy.

Dates

I'll be talking about dates this week on my regular local ABC slot.... not, that I'm on an expert on dates - because I'm not... but I do have quite a few dates in my fridge and I'd like to cook with them, rather than snack on them continuously.. And besides, they're a locally grown product.

Dates are one of the rare foods we have in abundance in Alice Springs. They sell for around $20/kg depending on the variety. The best looking ones are the Medjool but not always the best tasting. My favourites are the the Deglet Noor (or bread) dates which I haven't seen in shops at the moment. The don't look great. They're hard and caramel like, and quite addictive. Recently I have purchased the Kadrawi variety, and they're good, but not as good as the Deglet Noor. There are many other varieties, for further info check out the Aridgold farm website at:
http://aridgold.com/date_varieties.htm

I have been told - anecdotally - that the beautiful plump dates in supermarkets have actually been steamed to look better and of course weigh more. However, beauty is not always the best when it comes to dates, at least not cooking with dates.

Now you don't need to cook with dates. They're such a sweet treat by themselves, not to mention eaten with almonds and/or ricotta. But this is a cooking blog, so cook with dates we must.

I've been asking around for 'date recipes' amongst friends, acquaintances and work colleagues... . The first recipe that everyone talks about is traditional date or date and walnut loaf. Doesn't have much appeal to me. And then there's the ubiquitous sticky date pudding - which has now become so popular that you can buy it as a prepackaged dessert in supermarkets. What I am searching for is a middle-eastern meat and rice dish with dates. Comments and recipes, please!

However, instead my friend Barb gave me her steamed date recipe, as follows:
Boil up fresh orange juice, lemon juice and seeded, chopped dates. Cook until a paste is formed. Let cool and put in a jar.
Great on toast.

Beans with Tomato

Ingredients:
500 gms green beans (incl Italian wavy beans)
Virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves organic garlic
Salt & Pepper
Green capsicum
Fresh red chili
Tomato puree (preferable home made, but if bought ensure ingredients are tomatoes and salt only.)

Utensils:
Large frying pan with reasonable depth, or saucepan

Method:

1. Wash and top and tail beans. If beans are particularly fresh, leave the tails.
2. Crush garlic cloves and remove outer skin.
3. Heat 3 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil on medium to low heat.
4. When warm, drop in garlic and a piece of green capsicum.
5. Cook for 5 minutes and add chili.
6. Cook for another 5 minutes being careful not to burn or brown the garlic as this will alter the flavour.
7. Add the raw beans and cook for another 2 minutes.
8. Add half a bottle of tomato puree and cook on a low heat for 5 to 10 minutes until beans are cooked to your taste.
9. Add salt and pepper to taste, and remove capsicum.
10. The sauce is ready when the oil starts to separate a bit from the tomato.
    

(Variation: If you have lots of ripe fresh tomatoes, chop them and add them before the beans and cook down for a few minutes before adding beans. Fresh tomatoes will taste heaps better.)


Great served with polenta or couscous or as an accompaniment to a Middle Eastern Meal.

Beans (fresh)

Mark and I have different approaches to food shopping. I hate supermarkets and visit them once a month to do a 'dry goods' shop so that I don't need to go near them for another 4 weeks. (I perfected this technique during my 7 years living in Yuendumu, with shops that would cost in excess of $1,000.)
Consequently this means that while I visit some of Alice Springs F&V specialty shops and markets several times a week, I rarely get to see what is fresh in Alice Springs supermarkets, apart from my monthly visits.
However, having said this, Mark has the opposite approach. He visits the supermarkets daily, searching for bargains and picking up those essential items I occasionally forget (dishwasher tablets this week!)
Over the past week, a lot of green beans have been turning up in our kitchen, and the aren't the variety that are soft with dark spots. No, these are fresh and lovely and abundant.
And so, what to do with them?
Of course, steam them, and serve them with virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. My mother would have fried garlic and sauteed them briefly, and they are a great addition to a salad when lightly steamed and cooled, and essential for a Salad Nicoise. (Recipe to follow).
Generally, beans can replace any green vegetable or salad for a meal, but for me they're us much a meal as a side dish. The following, very easy recipe, can be served with couscous or polenta or rice cooked with kidney beans.
But before I move onto cooking - what beans are out there? There are a lot of green beans, occasional snake beans, and if you're lucky those funny wavy Italian beans which I love. Now, there a lot more other beans in the world, but in my world in Alice Springs, I rarely get to see or eat them, unless some avid and generous gardener decides to give a go. And then, what are the chances of such abundance and generosity?

Date, Chocolate and Almond Torte Recipe

Many thanks to Libby Kartzoff, Gary Fry and his sister Jen for this recipe. Apparently the original recipe was from an old Gourmet Traveller by Kay and John Hansen, but a similar recipe can be found in Stephanie Alexander's Cookbook, but I notice the quantities are different and she doesn't use almonds.
In total I made 2.5 times the original recipe of varying size cake tins. I would think this recipe would have been best in my 26 cm spring form cake tin.
Torte Ingredients:
250g almonds, unpeeled
250g dark chocolate (Callebaut or Couverture)
250g dates
6 eggs whites (Free Range)
1/2 cup sugar

Utensils:
Stainless Steel bowls
Electric Mixer
Food processor
Spatula

Method:
1. Chop almonds and chocolate into chunky pieces in the food processor
2. Cut dates finely
3. Beat eggs whites till they hold stiff peaks
4. Gradually add castor sugar
5. Fold in chopped nuts, chocolate and dates
6. Cook 160-180 degrees in lined spring-form pan - 45 minutes
7. Open oven door and allow to cool
8. Put in fridge overnight. Wait until cool/cold to decorate and cut
as can be very crumbly.

Decoration:
Spread with sweetened whipped cream with vanilla (not too sweet). I also made a chocolate ganache by melting chocolate with cream in a double boiler and letting it cool a bit, then dribbling over cake.

I added some pomegranate molasses, rosewater and castor sugar to the berries to give them a bit of extra flavour.

The Birthday Torte - Finale

All done and what a hit.. no iPhone, no camera, so had to use on my old Nokia phone.. hence the quality of the photo.. but the cake was a great.
I ended up cooking three of the Tortes, and two chocolate mousse cakes of varying sizes, thinking I could put them all together.
However, at the last minute I ditched all my presentation ideas and went for a single spectacular 'look' with the three Tortes of varying sizes, fixing them together with whipped cream, covering the whole think with whipped cream, then dripping chocolate ganache (unwhipped) creatively over the entire edifice. Finishing it off with berries, ribbon, some leaves at the bottom and three of my mother's day flowers. (Left the chocolate mousse cakes for extras.)
To serve it though was a bit of challenge.. what I did was take off each cake and place it on a separate plate and cut from there. I would then quickly redecorate the remaining layer so that guests didn't feel like they missed out on the topping.
It looked good and tasted fantastic, and what I discovered is that guests really, really want a piece of the BIRTHDAY CAKE. They don't want a piece of chocolate mousse cake.. or cheese cake, although these were equally delicious and made with as much love ..they just want a piece of the action.. and there was plenty to go around.
Still feeling the warm glow of cooking compliments, although I must acknowledge the generous persons who gave the recipe to me.. Hopefully coming soon!

The Birthday Torte - Stage 2

One cake down, and now my camera is on the blink. Jorge is complaining of the dates... do I make 4 more cakes and place them on a large board in this sort of a design.. And of these 4 cakes, should they all be Date, Chocolate & Walnut Tortes, or do I make 2 different ones.. what is the etiquette of a birthday cake? This is my idea for the presentation of the cakes on a painted board I have.. one cake for each decade?

The Birthday Torte - Stage 1

Well, I now have well over a kilo of local dates.. not the plump ones, the other ones that don't look as good but taste better (Khadrawi dates), a kilo of dark cooking chocolate (Callebaut - see note below), a kilo of almonds, 2 dozen eggs and a few bags of castor sugar. With any luck I should have a couple of Chocolate, Date and Almond Tortes this time tomorrow.


(Note: Callebaut chocolate is apparently the chocolate used by "artisans and chefs".. Check out their website at http://www.barry-callebaut.com/)

Date, Chocolate and Almond (Birthday) Torte

I have agreed to make a cake for 60 people for a 50th birthday.. how exciting and how daunting. And, is it completely fool hardy to use a recipe that I have never used before?
I am thinking a Date, Chocolate and Almond Torte.. of varying sizes.. laid out on a board.. wait and see.

Pomegranate Molasses Iced Tea

This have become a nightly favourite for me when preparing dinner - a good replacement for that glass of red I'm trying to give up.

Ingredients
Light sugar syrup (made with 2 parts water, to 1 part sugar)
Lime Juice
Pomegranate Molasses
Sparkling mineral water
Ice
(White spirit to make a cocktail if inclined.)

Implements
Highball glass
Straw or stirrer

Method
Place Pomegranate Molasses, sugar syrup and lime juice in glass, with ice and mineral water. Stir and taste, and adjust accordingly. The pomegranate molasses tends to sit at the bottom, but I quite like the effect when drinking through a straw... a little bit like Vietnamese ice coffee with the condensed milk at the bottom.

Pomegranate Molasses

I spoke about Pomegranate Molasses last week on local ABC Radio, but in truth I had long since abandoned my bottle of pomegranate molasses which was looking pretty scungey. (Is this a word?) Of course, there was the initial honeymoon period where I used it in everything, and then bang! Nothing.. it had barely entered my repertoire for 18 months.. and then dear Alice wanted to talk about it last Friday.
I dragged the forgotten bottle out of my ex-linen closet-come-pantry, and in order to prepare for the task ahead, I poured some into a bowl and tasted it. Wow! It was good.. sour, sweet, thick and molasses like. I also sensed some mystery heady element... almost like alcohol. Now I was ready and this is what I discovered:
Pomegranate syrup is made from pomegranate seeds, sugar and lemon.. boiled down.
Pomegranates go way back.. to the old Testament (some believe it to be the forbidden fruit eaten by Even and offered to Adam) and to Greek mythology (eaten by Persephone, who was then banished to the underworld), but most positively spoken about in the Qu'uran, it is called the fruit of paradise.
Back to Pomegranate Molasses. Now, at the time I did this talk on radio, I had really only used pomegranate molasses in two ways.. as a salad dressing, and in pavlova. Yes, Pavlova. Only to be used for berry based fruits.. I put in a dash of pomegranate molasses and rosewater. It works, trust me!
Now, since I spoke about Pomegranate Molasses, we have finished off our old scungey bottle and bought a new bottle. The new bottle is nowhere near as nice and heavy and heady as the old scungey bottle, which Mark tells me he picked up in Hobart two years back, but it's OK. It's also much cleaner looking. It's Alice Springs, and I should thank my lucky stars that I can even buy it here, in the Centre of the Universe.
So, here is my favourite of the week (and I also added it to my boiling corn meat tonight. I figured pomegranate molasses had all the qualities that I would otherwise add as separate ingredients: brown sugar (sweet), vinegar (sour).. and that other special quality .)

Vietnam

10 days in Vietnam in April this year. Not long enough, but a good intro to this wondeful place. Why Vietnam? Because of the food and because it seemed to be the only destination Mark and I could agree on and the airfares from Darwin are incredibly cheap... I just want to say "Do it!" What a wonderful place, with so many lovely people and such great food. My food highlights were:
Sapote
Red Bridge Cooking School
Hoi An White Rose Dumplings
Tamarind Sorbet
DIY Hot Pot Restaurant
.. and possibly more, but I just can't remember right now.
Each morning, at breakfast, we were confronted with a stunning array of food: Vietnamese, French, American, Chinese, Japanese... without doubt, we would always head for the fruit.
The photo here is typical of the morning spread.. but the most amazing fruit of all was the brown fruit at the back, which I believe is a type of sapote. I did some internet research and discovered it is a different variety to the black sapote you get here in Australia. It is originally from Central/South America, and was introduced to the Phillipines and then to Southern Vietnam. What an amazing experience. A bit like eating a butterscotch fruit pudding. We even went to the Ben Thanh market and bought our own supply.
No sapote in Hoi An, but wonderful food. One of the local specialities are the White Rose dumplings, which look like little white roses with minced prawn and pork in the middle and sprinkled with crisp onion flakes. While in Hoi An, I tracked down the Red Bridge Cooking School and spent an afternoon in this beautiful location with my son Jorge, cooking many things, most memorable were the home made Vietnamese rice pancakes. Now I've since followed the recipe, and it just doesn't seem to work for me. Have I got the wrong type of rice, the wrong type of cloth, the wrong type of pot.. any ideas, anyone?
Jorge never eats eggplant, but we cooked this lovely simple dish, and he loved it. Not a great photo, but you get the general idea. The chef/teacher was a very funny fellow. Laconic.. yes, that is how I would describe him. And he made us wash our hands many times. I did start to wonder if food hygiene was particularly good in Vietnam, which is perhaps why we got no food upsets at all. I even ate prawns.. constantly.
Back in Ho Chi Minh City, Jorge and I discovered a funny hot pot restaurant. We thought we were going into a sushi train, as we saw all these little dishes on a conveyer belt.. but it was not to be. The hot pot restaurant consisted of a hot pot of soup base (Japanese, Thai or Chinese) put into a round space in front of you and then a knob which you controlled to bring it to boiling. On the conveyer belt were ingredients that you cooked yourself in the hotpot. Great for kids who like to cook and are kitchen-savvy.
Finally, and on the last day, I tasted a most wonderful Tamarind sorbet. I will do experimenting in the weeks to come, so stay posted.