Mandarin skins

Once dried, on the window sill, these mandarin peels will be slipped into a small bottle of tamari and put away in a cool, dark place to mature.

Thick, luscious, salty, citrussy. Like nothing you can buy.

Last year, Kathryn of Limes and Lycopene offered a month long series of posts encouraging readers to gain more energy. This year, for the whole of August, she's revisiting the idea with an eye on your diet.

Each day, Kathryn, or one of a series of guest hosts, offers helpful, practical and, most importantly, achievable ways to get you feeling good about what you eat.

Head on over here to get on board. Invaluable dietary and lifestyle advice.

Required reading this August.

Tea

Each day begins with a small, quiet ritual. A pot of tea is brewed and sipped silently, usually over my current reading. Sometimes the tea is green, but mostly it’s black, a strong brew steeped in a chipped ceramic teapot covered in a patchwork of blue and white butterflies; a beaten silver jug of soy its partner. It is a ritual worth waking early for. Coffee in the morning makes my heart pound against my chest in a deeply unpleasant way. Tea, however, soothes as it steeps.

Rooibos tea is grown, exclusively, in its native South African soil. Thriving in scrubby, tufted rows of green, it becomes a deep cedar red once dried. Caffeine-free and low in tannin, it boasts a swathe of health claims but, being something of a skeptic, I cannot vouch for all of them, antioxidant properties aside. What I do know for certain is that it is good. Surprisingly, rooibos is never bitter, no matter how long it is left to brew. Perfect in the summer, served in tall, frosted glasses with sprigs of mint and curled slices of lemon.

Cooking a pot of grains in rooibos will increase the antioxidant qualities, yes, but more importantly, adds a certain, mysterious something to the final dish, not unlike a light, herbal vegetable stock. A whole lot quicker to make, too. This dish of amaranth and brown rice, cooked in a red bath of tea, sits comfortably on the more esoteric side of ‘healthy’ cooking but its virtues are matched perfectly by its creamy, versatile nature. Once made, it has a variety of possibilities, limited only by the cook’s imagination.

Small sesame-coated balls of the mixture floating across the surface a bowl of adzuki bean soup are perfection, but these are also rather good when formed around a half teaspoon of the exquisite Japanese chutney natto miso, or a small piece of salty-sour umeboshi plum. Enough to make you glow from the inside out. A Macrobiotic diet will do that to you. Ah, I wish.

Amaranth and brown rice cooked in rooibos tea – feeds 2
Based on an elegant and minimal, but rather fabulous recipe from the pages of Lisa’s Vegetarian Kitchen. This has a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pan, so gently, gently with the heat. A heat diffuser is essential, I think.

1 ½ cups of strained rooibos tea
¼ cup of amaranth (or hulled millet)
½ cup short-grain brown rice
Sea salt
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons of tahini
1 tablespoon of tamari
½ tablespoon of unsalted butter or pale sesame oil
Palmful of leafy herbs, chopped (parsley or celery leaves are ideal)

Pour the rooibos tea into a small, heavy-based saucepan. Tip in the grains and add a pinch of sea salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting and cover with a tight-fitting lid. A heat diffuser, set between pot and flame, is best. Simmer, lid untouched, for 40-45 minutes. Rest, off the heat, still covered, for 5 minutes.

Stir through the remaining ingredients. Cool, then roll into sticky marbles and, if you like, coat in sesame seeds to float in a bean or lentil soup. Or, shape into larger patties and fry to golden brown in little olive oil or, as we often do, eat, simply as is, with a pile of greens.

July’s edition of Click, a food photography event, highlights coffee and tea, substances so entwined in our daily lives that they, rightly, deserve an event all of their own. The image, right there at the top, is my entry.

Bee and Jai have, very kindly, asked me to sit upon the judging panel this month.

Entries close on the 30^th of July.

Gingko Nut Custards

The Ginkgo Biloba is a tree with an ancient lineage. It’s a living fossil, like a crocodile or the remarkable Wollemi Pine. 270 million years old it is, and that people, commands respect. Reputed to improve the memory, the green fruit, or nut, of the female tree is highly prized by both Chinese and Japanese cuisines. Julie told me that she has watched families in New York gather the stinking fruit from the pavement. Having smelt it walking around The Gardens during her stay, it’s not a task that excites me very much, I have to say. Lazy, I know, but there you go. Better by far is finding a net of gingko nuts, as I finally did, in the fridge of an excellent Asian grocery.

Shell-bound, the ginkgo is shaped much like an almond; one end rounded, the other tapered to a point. Paler and thinner-skinned, with a strong, pungent smell. Once freed, the fruit itself is a little rubbery. Not quite what I was expecting, but interesting, nonetheless. The recipe that follows uses just three and this is, I think, ideal for an untrained Western palate to begin with.

Served in tiny Japanese tea cups, these barely-set custards shudder in a very luscious way. Not sure about you, but I have days when little bowls of this sort of restorative thing are very, very welcome. Wholesome, but light. Smoked tofu adds depth and complexity to the girly-ness of it all, but originally, I made this with about 60g (2oz) of salmon belly cut into small cubes, just as Holly Davis did. It made an extraordinarily good custard, gentler and even more delicate. The earthier grounding of smoked tofu however, feels somehow right for autumn. Play as you like. Best of all, it’s quick and simple. It is surprising just how much liquid two eggs will, tremulously, set. I didn’t expect this to work at all. Lovely stuff.

Steamed ginkgo and mushroom custards – makes 6

Adapted from a Holly Davis recipe. I’ve looked, longingly, at this recipe for years, but never found the nuts. If they elude you, this, I promise, will not suffer their omission in the slightest. I wish I’d made them sooner.

8 dried shiitake mushrooms, destalked
A thin slice of smoked tofu
3 ginkgo nuts, shelled OR 6 almonds, blanched and slivered
2 free-range eggs (best you can afford/find)
½ cup of mirin
1 ½ tablespoons of shoyu, tamari or soy sauce
4 spring onions, white and an inch or so of greens, sliced
A little of green tops of the spring onion, finely chopped

You will also need:
A bamboo (or similar) steamer
A wok
6 Japanese/Chinese teacups, each of about 80ml (1/3 cup) capacity

Soak the shiitakes in freshly boiled water for 1 hour. Soak the tofu separately in cool water to cover at the same time. Drain the tofu, pat dry and cut into tiny dice.

Drain the mushrooms, reserving 1 cup (250 ml) of the liquid. Place the mushrooms in a small saucepan, cover with water and simmer until tender. Scoop out and squeeze gently when ready. Slice caps very thinly. Rub the skin from each ginkgo nut and boil in the same saucepan for 10 minutes. Drain well and slice each into 6 pieces.

Whisk eggs, mushroom liquor, mirin and shoyu together in a bowl until well combined. Divide evenly between 6 teacups and gently arrange the mushrooms, nuts, tofu (or salmon) and spring onions in each cup.

Carefully place the cups in a bamboo steamer. Pour a little water into the base of the wok, bring to a simmer and balance the steamer on top. Place the lid on and steam for 10-12 minutes. Remove and cool for 10 minutes, then serve garnished with spring onion greenery.

The gorgeous, inventive Laurie of Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska is this week’s host of Kalyn Denny’s Weekend Herb Blogging.

Dinner for five

Saturday morning: cars whoosh through the rain-soaked street, tyres sending up small waves of water, as welcome a sound to these ears as the velvet voice of Ella Fitzgerald as she filters into the kitchen. The downpour washed away the dust and crept inside, trickling through holes in the roof at first, then wending its way through flickering light-fittings and finally caving in the laundry ceiling. Not even the mad rush for buckets and pots and pans to catch the stuff daunted us. A rare task this and, as such, undertaken with some joy. We’ve been deluged and it’s delightful.

I dawdle through the recipe, lingering over the eggplant, playing with the light that falls on the glossy, oiled cherry tomatoes. We will we be five for dinner, this deliciously grey autumn evening. Golden rounds of eggplant sandwiched with herb-, pistachio- and olive-laced mounds of fresh ricotta; a heap of cherry toms, the yellow ones from the front garden, roasted until their skins split; a gratin of thinly sliced potatoes layered with red onions, sliced to a similar papery-thinness, cooked in a mixture of stock, lemon juice and olive oil. Show-off stuff.

Cooler days, curiously, have made me ravenously hungry for dairy produce. Yoghurt, cheese and sour cream. Standing at the deli counter, armed with a quickly scribbled list that simply read:

Cracked green olives (the ones flecked with red chillies)
Turkish bread (2?)

I came home with things that were definitely not on the list:

A very large piece of unpasturised French Basque blue cheese
Another, larger still, of aged cheddar
A small(ish) triangle of chalky Manchego

A trembling wedge of fresh ricotta, snowy white, also snuck its way into the basket. Like a child unleashed in a sweet shop, I couldn’t stop. Unusual behaviour, this. Wary of the effect on my digestive system and the uncanny ability dairy has to make my nose drip not unlike our leaking home (utterly charmless two days later, I must add) it’s difficult to imagine what, exactly, came over me.

Time to re-think; time to re-adjust. An overhaul in the kitchen is due. There will be some changes around here over the next few weeks as this blog quietly enters its third year. Subtle changes perhaps, but just the shift in thinking that’s required. The world does not need another recipe for roasted cherry tomatoes; instead, all I can offer today is a bunch of glistening baubles, anointed with olive oil and ready to roast to bursting perfection. Not much, I know, but their brightness cheered me no end.

Recipes, and developments, as they come.

The radish

Carved into roses or sliced into salads (when cleaning out the fridge drawer reveals a long-forgotten bag of them, lurking near the aging celery), the radish has a less than flamboyant reputation. Nutritionally it is no superstar – no fashionable ‘Superfood’ tag for this humble veg - but as a member of the cancer-fighting cruciferous family (think cabbage, broccoli) it has its uses. My dog-eared copy of Healing with Whole Foods lists the clearing of sinuses and soothing of sore throats among its (few) attributes. Pedestrian qualities perhaps, but admirable nonetheless. More importantly, radishes possess a crisp, peppery bite that’s perfect for raw nibbling. Pretty and pink, too.

Still, there’s that sulphurous smell unique to the cabbage family to contend with. Masking that pungency is the key. A quick and easy pickle of thin radish slices finished with a dressing of sesame oil and dark, complex tamari is my current solution.

The result? Crimped, frilly edges and a moreish balance of sweet, sour and salty. Make them part of a sushi platter, arranged next to your pink pickled ginger and obligatory swirl of wasabi. A small heap is a welcome digestive aid for a generous, Chinese-style banquet. Less conventional ways work marvellously, too – tossed with a few handfuls of salad leaves and similarly cut paper-thin rounds of carrot, the tamari and agave dressing will provide all the seasoning required. Carrots, I have discovered, themselves fridge drawer lurkers, stand up well to this method of pickling, as do small, sweet turnips. Look for perky green leaves still attached to your radishes as a sure sign of freshness - wash well and blanch briefly before chopping and using as you would any other gorgeous, health-giving green. Unthinkably easy, this recipe is also unexpectedly delicious.

Kylie Kwong’s pickled radishes

Though it is hardly a chore to slice six or eight radishes, a mandoline does make light work of the job, but only if you are confident that neither your knuckles nor your fingertips will end up on the other side of the blade. Mine is a cheap, plastic thing I’ve had for years and it’s perfect. Recipe adapted, slightly, from Simple Chinese Cooking.

6-8 red radishes, very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of sea salt

Dressing:
1 tablespoon of tamari or shoyu
1 tablespoon of agave syrup or brown sugar
½ teaspoon of dark (toasted/roasted) sesame oil
A good pinch of chilli powder

Toss the radish slices with the sugar and salt and leave to marinate for 30 minutes.

Whisk the dressing ingredients together in a small bowl. Drain and gently squeeze the radishes, draining away the pickling mixture, then drizzle with the dressing.

How do you use radishes?

Winter

By the time August comes around, the deep winter blues generally start to set in like the weather around us. Kathryn at Limes and Lycopene is writing an inspiring series of posts this month featuring achievable daily hints to help alleviate the blues and get you feeling better about both yourself and your health. Even northern hemisphere residents, now feeling the effects of summer heat will no doubt be keen to get on board. Though six days in already, head over and check out Kathryn’s suggestions for better well-being.

Humble veggies

In the midst of studying for an exam later this week (in fact it was in the middle of a list of the whopping 150 phytochemicals present in onions) it occurred to me that the most humble of vegetables, the ones that seem almost pedestrian in a kitchen, are in fact the ones that are full of the most promise. They might need a little bit of coaxing with other flavours or a completely different approach to make them delicious in their own right, but that is exactly what makes the wait so worthwhile. They are the ones that can elicit the most surprising comments and complements. Take celery for example. How many times have I bought a whole or half bunch just to use one, maybe two stalks and left the rest to waste away in the fridge? Okay, so you can juice the remainder, something we do often as celery is a fantastic cleanser for the kidneys, but that seems kind of lazy.

So, armed with a huge bunch of the most luscious organic celery and a determination not to let it rot away this time, I set out to cook as many things as possible. I often feel sorry for the Artist as he does have to put up with endless dishes on a theme at times (a few weeks ago it was lentils every night...) but this was easier to take. The braised celery is unbelievably good – I’m not kidding you, it is utterly delicious.

Braised celery - serves 2 with a bit left over

Braising is a simple method of cooking celery that highlights its delicate flavour but is by no means plain - in fact it renders this vegetable utterly delicious with its buttery juices. The perfect accompaniment would be thin pan-fried white fish fillets with a squeeze of lemon juice, preferably King Whiting as they are not only beautiful but according to the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s guide to sustainable seafood they are a species that is a good choice for conscientious consumers. If fish ain’t your thing then serve the celery with some garlicky, well-flavoured green (French or Puy) lentils and plain steamed basmati rice.

30g butter or 2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 whole bunch of celery, trimmed of its leaves and cut into 10 cm lengths

1 clove of garlic, sliced thinly

3 semi-dried tomatoes, finely sliced

2 cups of vegetable stock, made with a cube, maybe more (see below)

2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped or a drop or two of soy sauce

Heat the butter or oil in a frying pan in which the celery will fit cosily in one layer. Add the celery, the garlic and the semi-dried tomatoes and fry, moving around occasionally, until the celery has caught on the bottom of the pan in places, turning an attractive golden mottled colour. Almost cover with stock- you might need to add a little more than suggested above according to the size and shape of your pan - and cook at a simmer for about 30-40 minutes until the celery is tender. Top up with water from time to time if the celery seems to be taking a while to get to that stage. Increase the heat, throw in the anchovies or dash of soy sauce and reduce until the celery coated in a small amount of sticky sauce. Serve hot.

Celery leaf soup – serves 4

Stuck for what to do with the left over leaves that you’ve trimmed? Don’t throw them away - I saw Maggie Beer on the telly the other day put them into a winter salad of roasted vegetables and chickpeas, dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar that looked fantastic. Or you could make this soup. Just make sure that you use organic celery as pesticides tend to lurk in the leaves...

4 cloves of garlic, peeled

Leaves from 1 bunch of celery, well washed

1 litre of vegetable stock (good stock cube is fine)

1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

1 medium sized potato, scrubbed clean and chopped into 2cm dice

2-3 tablespoons of organic cream (optional)

Sea salt and pepper

6-8 slices of sourdough bread, toasted

1 cup of grated Gruyere or cheddar cheese

Heat the garlic, celery leaves stock and diced potato together in a large heavy based saucepan and bring slowly to the boil. Lower heat, cover and add the oil. Simmer for 30 minutes with the lid on. When ready, blend until smooth and return to the pot with the cream if you are using it. Season to taste and gently re-heat. Top each piece of bread with a little cheese and grill until bubbling. Serve with the hot soup.

Homework - again

The 'Food as Medicine' course that I am doing requires that, as the final assessment, you present a vegan-friendly dish to the class. It is, of course, group work - groan - and there's always someone who can't turn up isn't there?

Our group of five have all written our assignments around the ingredients given to us by the sixth member, a bloke who wanted to make a wanky panna cotta with agar (a seaweed-derived gelling agent) and honey. Well, it's all due in 10 days or so and guess what? Still no sign of the recipe or the bloke! So I am searching for alternatives madly on the internet. I have had some luck, but don't you think that you'd have the decency to at least answer phone messages or e-mails? What an idiot...

I am a good cook, so can probably come up with a simplified version of what I think he was trying to make, but really. This guy was so keen to tell us just how 'flat out' he is (pregnant wife, full-time job in a restaurant and full-time study) but I am convinced that he is just a bad manager of time.

Oh well, now that is off my chest I feel much better. Phew!

Wholefood

Autumn has become winter this week in Melbourne! So it's time to do a bit of cold-weather thinking and some cold-weather cooking.

I think it is important at this stage that I should define what I mean by Wholefood. It's probably easier to explain as natural food; food that is as far from fast food as you would undoubtedly expect, but also food that includes whole grains, legumes and pulses cooked from dried and lots of fresh fruit and veggies. With little bit of full-fat yoghurt, organic butter and occasionally some goats cheese. Even the odd bit of full-fat, unhomogenized and organic milk. Fish and on rare, special occasions, good organic meat. This kind of food should be seasonal, healing, nurturing but above all exquisitely beautiful and delicious.

I enjoy cooking and am convinced that if you are so inclined that you should share food as the gift that it is. So few people have time to cook. Fewer people find that time spent cooking is NOT time wasted. This is why we are faced with so many food-related allergies (all that inedible gunk they put in packaged food makes me shudder), obesity and diabetes. Not to mention the way that food affects women and our self-image. Who hasn't looked at those gossip magazines and thought oooohh, hasn't such-and-such gained weight? As though it were either interesting or important! This translates to bad relationships with eating. But food is a healer and nourisher - it's not the enemy.

But so-called health food has an image with a kind of beige-ness to it - so politically correct, so time-consuming to prepare and it often looks unappetizing or too healthy. I reckon that it can be made sexy! It's time for an image change...

So here's a quick meal that is beautiful, warming, health-giving and will make you happier and fuller without gaining weight.

Buckwheat with mushrooms and walnuts

Serves 2

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 cup of whole, un-roasted buckwheat (from health food shops)

2 cups of water or veggie stock

500g of mixed mushrooms, sliced - include some shiitakes

2 cloves of garlic, very finely chopped

1 tablespoon of tamari or soy sauce

1 tablespoon or more of chopped, toasted walnuts or pine nuts

1 tablespoon of finely chopped parsley

Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan and fry the buckwheat, stirring all the time, until slightly browned and aromatic. Pour in the water, bring to the boil and then clamp the lid on tightly and reduce the heat. Simmer very gently for about 15 minutes until the buckwheat is very soft and all the water is absorbed.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a frying pan and fry the mushrooms until dark and chewy (about 10 minutes). Add the garlic and tamari and continue to cook for a couple of minutes before stirring into the cooked buckwheat. Garnish with the chopped walnuts and parsley.

Serve, hot, with some steamed broccoli and lemon wedges.

Quinoa and millet pilaf

Yes, millet is birdseed.

Now you know that, you should also know that it is nutty in flavour, high in B vitamins, delicious and really low in calories. Perfect gluten-free food. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah), an ancient grain native to South America, is similarly nutty and and is one of the most nutrient-rich, gluten-free grains available. In fact there is more and better quality protein in this dish than in your average meat-and-two-veg diet! Too many people, especially vegetarians, rely solely on pasta, bread and dairy products as their main source of food. By varying the grains you eat, your digestive system will improve and your taste buds will thank you. This is so yum, so simple, that I plan to make it again tonight with some slices of haloumi cheese pan-fried and some sautéed zucchini, left over from last fortnights' organic box...

Quinoa and millet pilaf

Serves 3-4

1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

1 smallish onion, peeled and finely diced (the smaller the dice, the better)

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and bashed with a knife

1 small carrot, diced

½ teaspoon of ground cumin

½ teaspoon of ground coriander

½ cup of hulled millet (most health food shops should sell this)

½ cup of quinoa (again, from health food shops)

2 cups of water

½ cup of freshly squeezed orange juice

½ teaspoon of sea salt

Heat the olive oil in a lidded saucepan over a medium heat, add the onion and sauté for about 4 minutes, or until soft, but not coloured. Add the garlic and carrot and sauté for another 4-5 minutes.

Add the spices, stirring constantly to stop them from burning, for 1 minute. Add the millet and cook for 5 minutes, stirring all the time. Add the quinoa and sauté for 2 minutes more.

Add the water, orange juice and sea salt, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, clamp the lid on tightly and simmer very gently (a simmer pad beneath the saucepan is really useful here), for 35-40 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed. Take off the heat, leaving the lid on and rest for 5 minutes before fluffing up with a fork and serving.

Chickpeas. Why are they so damn hard to cook?

I have just discovered the single best way to cook chickpeas from dried after so many failures. It came, as a suggestion in the margin, from Jude Blereau's book Wholefood. It is, in fact a revelation. Better even than Anna Del Conte's method which I thought was pretty good anyway. Nigella Lawson had recommended Anna's way in the encyclopedic and very sexy How to Eat. But still the meltingly tender and nutty chickpeas I imagined myself cooking elluded me. They were either bullets or a mush.

This way is time consuming, but little of the work involves you standing around worrying over the pot. The texture is wonderful, the chickpeas are perfectly in tact and almost all the work is done by the oven. So simple - and all you need is a bit of forethought and patience:

Cover your desired amount of chickpeas in plenty of clean, cold water. To this add 2 teaspoons of yoghurt and mix well. Leave to soak for at least 24 hours, preferably 36.

Preheat the oven to 160 C. Drain the chickpeas and put into a flameproof casserole dish (I use an oval Le Creuset pot), cover with fresh, cold water and bring to the boil. Boil hard for five minutes. Drain, rinse well and place the chickpeas back into the rinsed out casserole dish and cover with cold fresh water to cover by 10 cms. Add 3 bay leaves, 3 peeled cloves of garlic, a small piece of kombu (this makes the beans more digestible and helps to prevent any 'nasty' side-effects). Bring to the boil gently, skimming off any scum that rises to the surface. Put the lid on, take off the flame and cook in the oven for anywhere between 5 and 8 hours.

This seems like a long time, and it is, but the results are worth the effort, though as I've said earlier, this isn't really going to tire you out. You may need to top up with boiling water from time to time, so start checking after 4 hours.

Better and far more nutritious than tinned, and much better than disintegrating into the dish!

Homework...aaarrrggghh!

Last year was quite an important one for me. I had been a children's bookseller for longer than I care to remember and had hit a wall. I had been doing the same job, in one form or another, in Sydney since I left Art School and when I met the Artist, who happened to live in Melbourne I was happy to make a change, both in moving and career. But guess what? It's hard to extricate yourself when you are not sure where you want to go. So I found another book shop or two, but it was no longer fulfilling and when I think about it, I hadn't actually read or enjoyed anything other than cookbooks for about five years. My mum and I adore cook books. My employers are passionate about food (well one of them is!) and so are a couple of the other staff, particularly the gorgeous Cath and when we talked it was often of food. I've never enjoyed work so much!

So I found myself with a guilty passion for food writing, but felt as though I should actually be following my first love - art. I tried, but failed (again...) and the Artist finally convinced me that it's okay to write.

And what do you write about? What you love. What you know. What you want to learn about...and that's what this blog is for - it is a way of ensuring that I write a little, every once in a while.

And one of my favourite aspects of food is healthy and nourishing food. So I've started, as of February this year, learning about Food As Medicine and am studying at a college in the city. I am looking at my homework right now and thinking that it's all a bit too scientific. I love food, and breaking it all down into scientific names and proteins, macro- and micro-nutrients (among other things) is a little, well, off-putting. It is making me realise that food needs to be seductive, luscious and enjoyable. Wholefood is where my heart is and it's key to improving your health and energy, but it can't be scientific - it's gotta be sexy.

I am reading the work of Annemarie Colbin, an American who writes about nutrition, but with an earthy, inspiring voice and she is making me see food in a different way. Her recipes, along with Nadine Abensur's and Tamasin Day Lewis' writing have had a profound affect on my own cooking. So this blog is where all of that learning will come out it we're lucky.

Soon I'll progress to pictures...ooohhhh...and it will, with any luck, start to look good! And you know what? I am enjoying reading again!