Looking up, listening

The beauty of waking to rain lies in the listening. There is no more delicious sound to be had, tucked up, dry and warm. Blowing small ripples across the surface of my tea, thawing fingers frozen solid by the cold, I watched the rain fall from a grey sky in silent gratitude last week. Winter inspires introspection, and close skies, well, they make looking down rather than up easier on the eye. Earth squelching beneath socked and booted feet; the profusion of green that thrives in this damp cold; a small scruffy dog leading us across the park – there is much to look down on during this season. My neck, however, was developing a crick from the weight of a low, skewed gaze. With the rain that gaze shifted upward, to the cold, dripping sky.

Clearly I have not been looking up enough of late. Rain, in a dry continent, changes everything.

Sunday: Football. Sherbrooke lies in the Dandenong Ranges, a place of steep, rolling hills and small-scale daffodil farming on Melbourne’s fringe. A rectangular field of mud sits atop a steep hill there, too. Drawn by the promise of a little bushwalking, we plunged into a triangular sloping patch of tall trees and scrubby undergrowth on the other side, an hour before play got under way. Wind rushed way up high through the bending branches of slender eucalypts, a lonely, haunting sound deep in winter, one I love. Later, the sky changed dramatically as Oscar played, much better, I am pleased to report. There was bright sun and a small kiss of almost-snow on the wind. Back turned on the action, I watched two kookaburras settle themselves, feathers bristling, on waving branches. Wild. Graceful. A young magpie sang out, announcing their arrival and the dog, clown that she is, balanced on her tiny hind legs to leap at them, barking. Their disdain for her futile attempts made us giggle.

Listening. Hmm. Should have listened more closely to the little voice that said, ‘too fussy’ – you know the one, surely - when approaching a recipe from what is, this winter, my favourite reading. It was delicious, oh yes, but used every pan and all my patience to produce a dish that was scoffed in seven minutes flat. Sheesh. This got me thinking. About formal, fussy dining and the kind of multi-pan, showing-off it involves in home kitchens. Frankly, I can’t be bothered. Better to serve a simple dish cooked well and wow them with a sauce good enough to make them look up and engage, if only to refill their plates, at least once. Yes, please.

Why re-invent the wheel? Walnuts are exquisite right now. From Claudia Roden.

Teradot
A chunky, robust Southern Turkish sauce from Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food. Perfect for dipping crisp, raw veg in to and slathering on falafels. You can make your own, and sometimes I do, but it’s just as easy to go out and buy a good dry falafel mix and doctor it with huge handfuls of finely chopped coriander and parsley.

2 cloves of garlic, chopped
Coarse sea salt
1½ cups (about 125g) of shelled walnuts, chopped
4 tablespoons of tahini
Juice of 2 fat lemons
1-2 tablespoons of boiling water
Large handful of chopped parsley

Pound the garlic with a good pinch of salt for 30 seconds, add the walnuts and continue pounding to make a chunky paste. Blend in the tahini and the lemon juice, then the boiling water, stirring well until smooth. Stir through the parsley and thin with a little more water if you like.

Or, whack the first 5 ingredients in a food processor and whiz away, stopping just short of a smooth paste. You may need to add a little warm water to get things moving around the blade nicely, but you want some texture here. Stir through the parsley. Keeps well in the fridge, but bring it back to room temperature before eating.

Serve with oven-warmed pita breads; a bunch or two of red radishes, quartered; hot, doctored falafels (see recipe intro); shredded lettuce and some thick plain yoghurt.

Pudla: Pancakes on Parade

Every freezer contains, within its cold depths, a bag of peas, lurking way up the back. Grasp about in the dark and you’ll no doubt find other long-abandoned edibles worth retrieving, or perhaps dumping, in the process. Much as I like people - really, I do - there are days when being alone, at home, is much needed. Digging around in the freezer and standing in front of the pantry sighing can yield surprising results. The sort that make stepping out into the fray irrelevant. Discovering a very icy bag of green peas, still sweet despite their lengthy hibernation, made me ridiculously happy this weekend.

Besan or gram, a buff-coloured flour made of chickpeas, may not be an ingredient native to your panty, but that may change once you’ve tried Pudla. Egg-less, dairy-less pancakes, Pudla traditionally belong to the cooking of the mango-shaped state of Gujarat in western India. Some cooks liken these to crepes, but that’s not quite right – there’s a certain magic that eggs, milk and refined white flour weave that cannot be equalled by besan alone. I don’t envision serving these sweet, though you, of course, with a little tweaking, may. The batter is best when spicy and served as a quick, simple dinner or lunch to my way of thinking. There’s much that can be made with the flour besides; a veritable wealth of gorgeous recipes await the remainder of your stash.

Serve piping hot, straight from the pan, with an array of chutneys, salsas, relishes, pickles or some thick, strained yoghurt; whatever your fridge holds. I made a winter salsa with a prized tamarillo and an avocado, but don’t go to great lengths here. That would simply defeat the purpose. You don’t want to have to go shopping.

I may never leave the house again.

Pudla (chickpea pancakes) with ginger and crushed peas - feeds 2-3

From Madhur Jaffrey. I’ve made these a lot this week. Exactly how many times, I’m not willing to share. It’s a little embarrassing. These will not turn out to be perfectly round – each will take on its own, odd shape and that, for me, is part of their charm.

1 cup of frozen, shelled green peas
2 cups of chickpea flour (besan/gram)
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
Good pinch of ground turmeric
Good pinch of chilli powder
1 teaspoon of sea salt
2 cups of water
A large thumb of ginger
4 spring onions, finely sliced
A little olive oil, for frying

Cook the peas, in their frozen state, in boiling water according to the packet instructions and drain well. Lightly crush with either a fork or a potato masher.

Sift the chickpea flour, spices and salt into a roomy bowl. Make a well and slowly trickle the water into the centre, whisking in a little of the dry mixture from the sides as you go. There must be no lumps. Lumps are bad. Grate the ginger and squeeze the resulting juice into the mixture, whisk well and stir through the peas and spring onions. Rest, at room temperature, for 30 minutes.

Warm a frying pan over a medium-high heat and drizzle in a little oil. When hot, pour in a ladle of the mixture and cook for 2 minutes. They should be golden underneath. Drizzle the uncooked side with another dribble of oil before flipping and cooking for a further 2 minutes. Eat hot, straight from the pan.

Tamarillo and avocado salsa

My beautiful almost-mother-in-law Barbara often serves rosy-hued poached tamarillos for dessert. They are truly a sensational winter fruit. I’m indebted to Stephanie Alexander for the idea of using tamarillo in a salsa. This is rather good.

1 tamarillo
1 ripe but firm avocado
2 spring onions
Scrap of garlic, crushed
A little sugar
Sea salt and pepper
Olive oil

Cut a small cross in the pointed end of the tamarillo and place it in a heat-proof bowl. Cover with freshly boiled water and retrieve after 1 minute. Peel then dice the flesh – seeds and all. Peel, deseed and dice the avocado and chop the spring onions as finely as your inclination permits. Gently toss with the garlic in a small bowl. Season to taste with a sprinkling of sugar, some salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and toss again.

Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook, is hosting a one off event called Pancakes on Parade.

Get flipping - entries close on the 6^th of July.

Raiding the Pantry: Solstice Cake

Stepping into a dark June morning, rugged-up, the cold takes a moment to adjust to. Shivering hands are thrust deeply into pockets. Even the dog, bounding with her usual energy, is a little reluctant to leave the faint light of the hallway. Softly, the door clicks shut. The key is icy, finally found fumbling through layers and swearing under foggy clouds of breath. These days of early winter, with their misting chill hold such delicious promise. Summer has her charms, oh yes – the deadly nightshades; luscious, dripping stone fruits – but it’s winter and the kind of cooking that colder weather inspires that I adore. Stepping in, post-walk, kettle rumbling toward its familiar ‘ping’, I give the fruit, plumping in a fragrant bath of orange liqueur, one last stir.

As a greedy child, I stole chunks of tooth-achingly sweet icing from my mothers carefully, lovingly, crafted Christmas fruit cake. It sat on the sideboard each December dressed in snowy, wintry white, adorned with plastic sprigs of festive holly. But the cake itself was too rich, too dark, too adult for my taste. It still sits there in its time-honoured place, though these days the icing is, at last, safe from prying fingers. The cake, well, now that’s another story.

Here, close to the bottom of the globe, the pagan roots of the religious holidays that punctuate the calendar sit awkwardly. Traditions really do die hard. Rich, hot food served beneath a sweltering Christmas sky is beyond silly. Icy days and freezing nights on the other hand, make a cake attuned to the contents of the pantry seem worthy of a rare baking experiment. With the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, rapidly approaching, A.O.F.’s Solstice cake event places the celebratory fruit cake squarely in the season to which it so clearly belongs. Sans icing, this fudgy cake is quite something. Heavenly scenting the house as it slowly cooks, just knowing that it’s sitting tightly wrapped in the pantry, waiting to reach perfection, is very nearly agony.

Marzipan Solstice Cake – feeds 8-10
Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess for both its tinker-ability and comparatively fast maturation. Nigella, Queen of Cakes, makes this with ready-made marzipan, but I made my own for the simple reason that there is already a truckload of sweetness coursing through it and besides, a cane sugar-free version is dead easy. This is hardly everyday fare. You may as well go all the way, I say.

100g (4oz) of sulphur-free dried apricots
150g (5oz) of dried pears
150g (5oz) of sultanas
100ml (scant ½ cup) of Cointreau or white rum
250g (9oz) of marzipan (something good OR see below)
100g (4oz) of caster sugar
100g (4oz) of unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs, beaten
50g (2oz) of ground almonds
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest and juice of ½ an orange
175g (6oz) of wholemeal spelt flour

If you’re making your marzipan (see below), start it first. Snip the apricots and pears into small pieces with scissors. Soak the dried fruit overnight in the alcohol of your choice and cover, giving it a lazy stir from time to time. Chop the marzipan into small dice and place in the freezer.

Next day, preheat the oven to 140 C (275 F).

Drain the fruit of any liquid left at the bottom of the bowl (my fruit drank it all – shame, that). Beat the sugar, butter and eggs together in a roomy bowl, followed by the ground almonds, zests, orange juice and flour. Fold through the drained fruit and the frozen marzipan dice and mix well.

Line the base and sides of a springform cake tin, approximately 20cm (8 in) in diameter, with baking paper. Spoon the mixture into the tin, level with the back of the spoon and bake in the preheated oven for 2-2½ hours, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Cool in the tin. Wrap the cake in baking paper, then tightly in foil and set aside in a pantry for at least two days, but preferably a week.

Marzipan. Sugar-free.
The texture of this is akin to those little fruits that grace Proper Cakes rather than the silky, marble-like stuff used to ice them. Thanks go to Ricki who assured me it was, indeed, possible. Little nuggets dipped in lush, dark chocolate would be rather nice.

1 ½ cups almonds (about 225g)
3 tablespoons of rice syrup (from organic/health food shops)
¼ tsp of almond essence

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Boil the almonds for 3 minutes, drain and add to a bowl of cool water. Slip each almond from its coat, place in a single layer on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 5-7 minutes, enough to dry them thoroughly. Cool.

Whiz the almonds to a fine texture in a food processor. Add the rice syrup and almond essence. Turn the machine back on and let it run until the mixture forms a ball around the blade. Remove the paste immediately then knead for a moment. Form into a log, wrap in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Makes 250g (or near enough).

There is something to be said for this sort of cooking. It really does connect you with tradition in a small, but significant way. Next time, I may even attempt mum's more laborious recipe.

Pictures when she's ready, folks.

Solstice Cake 2008 runs right up until the 25th of June. Get soaking and baking.

Holy Goat: Salad For One

My father’s mother was a consummate gardener. A terrible cook, mind, but blessed with more than a mere thumb of green. Occasionally I catch sight of her in my own reflection when passing the windows, grey hair pulled back, cheeks flushed from weeding. It’s a likeness I’d not imagined before I let my hair ‘go’. Nana grew things in her Sydney garden that other gardeners could only dream about. The ‘drought’, ever-present at the edges of my adult life, seemingly only affected farmers in hers. Her sprinkler system, like many in my 1970’s suburban childhood, would often run all day.

It’s easy to forget, standing at the supermarket dairy cabinet, that farmers make extraordinary daily sacrifices to bring food to our tables. To do so organically, in a country of dry grass and almost non-existent rainfall is very nearly a miracle. Seldom do I mention a product by name – thanks, Naomi Klein - but some things demand attention. Holy Goat organic cheeses, hand-crafted from paddock to plate by Carla Meurs and Ann-Marie Monda in country Victoria, are divine. One episode of Love’s Harvest, a series of half-hour documentaries exploring the pleasures and perils of farming organically, followed their fortunes. Watching them struggle through drought, grain shortages, births and deaths, all the while lovingly tending their herd of charming, cheeky goats, added, for me, extra sparkle to their already stellar range. Organic food has always been more costly – the unpredictable nature of the act itself determines that – but I like to give a little back to the farmer making a red-hot go of it, whenever, financially, I can.

Lately, I’d sensed an air of exclusivity about Organics; the tiniest whiff of snobbery that seemed out of kilter with its grass roots, hands-in-the-dirt philosophy. Not the farmer, mind you, but the (usually chain) retailer. The fusty, earth-worshipping image, much like the vegetarian eating it encompassed, is slowly being replaced by slick styling and clever marketing. But I miss the fustiness; I like the earth-worshipping. Enter a trip, with a friend, to the Queen Vic Market. There, poking around stalls with spankingly fresh organic produce, I sensed the spirit of community that I had imagined gone. A fragment of fustiness, delivered with a sense of style and warmth. Faith, resolutely, restored.

Nana didn’t get to eat at my table, and I was too young to learn any real, concrete gardening skills during her lifetime. Her cooking was a rushed affair because for her, the garden itself held the key to happiness. A simple, honest salad such as this makes an ideal lunch for one. If that lettuce just happens to come fresh from your garden, well, all the better.

Organic leaves dressed with goat’s cheese – for one

The quality of your cheese lies at the heart of success or failure here – choose accordingly. The fromage frais is apparently low in fat. Imagine that? I couldn’t help myself and added some sour cream…

1 hard-boiled (hard-cooked) free-range egg
1 small, organic Cos (Romaine) lettuce
1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon of sugar or honey
1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
Small piece of garlic, peeled
Sea salt
1/3 cup (80ml) of Holy Goat fromage frais (or soft goat’s curd)
1 very heaped tablespoon of sour cream
Black pepper

Carefully separate the egg white from the yolk. Finely chop both separately. Wash the lettuce leaves well and dry meticulously. Tear as artfully (or not) as you like.

In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, sugar and vinegar. Crush the scrap of garlic to a paste with a little salt using the flat of your knife. Whisk this paste into the bowl next, followed by the finely chopped egg yolk, the fromage frais and the cream. Thin with a little water, bearing in mind you’re aiming for a pourable/dollop-able consistency.

Arrange the leaves on a plate, in a bowl, whatever you like, pour over the dressing and top with the finely chopped egg white and a good grinding of pepper.

In the northern hemisphere warmer weather is taking a firm foothold but that doesn't stop southern cooks from salad-making. Holler requests your cheesy, salad-y best for this month’s edition of No Croutons Required, an event co-hosted with Lisa.

Entries close on the 20th of May.

Home, sweet home

Our backyard, the one in which I grew up, teemed with wildlife. Backing onto bush land (Patrick White territory, no less) my father’s garden, always beautifully kept, is a haven for birds of all kinds. In a week that saw an extraordinary outpouring of emotion from the sublime (a nation’s long overdue apology) to the ridiculous, I spent most mornings patiently coaxing the Rainbow Lorikeets into eating, literally, from the palm of my hand. They sang to me then danced on the table for the camera, hanging first this way, then that. Jesters the lot of them, dressed in vivid green, red and blue.

As usual, food was central to the week away. There was Jo’s birthday dinner, a sun-soaked lunch on a central coast deck with Emma (we’ve hatched a little visual project to keep us both in check), an exquisite lunch with mum and dad and a long overdue catch-up at Red Lantern with my oldest friend. There is something about the simple – no, simple won’t do - spare elegance of Asian cuisines that cleanse more than merely the palate. Who would have imagined that fresh lemon juice mixed with roasted, ground peppercorns would make the most amazing, ever, dipping sauce?

My mother’s cooking is a dessert-lover’s dream. Her cherry sorbet was blindingly good, especially when paired with another made of ripe, juicy nectarines. A marriage of two beautiful stone fruits in each little bowl – one scoop assertive and unctuous, best attacked in small spoonfuls; the other light and pink, a tart contrast to the rich, wine-dark red. The pantry boasts six kilos of chocolate at any given time; three of the creamy, buttery white variety and three of the wickedly dark and bitter stuff. I was brought up on a passion for dessert. But somehow, working my own way around the kitchen, it seems that the sweet tooth that defines my small family has, in my case, been firmly extracted.

Is it a remnant of teenage defiance? That sheer will and determination to set oneself apart from the flock? Actually, I think it’s all the washing up. Coming back to our quiet, sparsely decorated home, the baking bug bit in an altogether unfamiliar way. Like that teenager I recall, my brand of baking is stamped, decidedly, with my own, unfussy, thang.

Chocolate thumbprint cookies – makes about 20

A revelatory one bowl wonder this recipe is and, thankfully, there’s very little washing up. Based on a recipe in Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s now legendary book, Vegan with a Vengeance, these are utterly, spectacularly, delicious.

5 tablespoons of macadamia oil (or almond, grapeseed, etc, but not olive)
5 tablespoons of soy milk (or rice, oat, etc)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
½ teaspoon of almond extract (this adds a great, marzipan-like something)
135g (4 ½ oz) unrefined sugar
120g (4oz) of wholemeal (whole-wheat) flour
5 tablespoons of good quality cocoa powder
Good pinch of sea salt, finely crumbled
Good pinch of baking powder
Jam (fruit preserves), your favourite, to finish

Preheat the oven to 180 C (375 F). Line two baking sheets with parchment.

Mix the first 5 ingredients together in a roomy bowl with a fork. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder into the wet ingredients and stir well to combine.

Place dessertspoon sized dollops of the mixture onto the baking trays, leaving a little space for expansion around each. With damp hands, roughly mould each dollop into as round a shape as you can be bothered to, then gently press to flatten very slightly.

Bake for 5 minutes, retrieve from the oven and gently make shallow thumbprint sized indentations in each cookie. Fill each hollow with half a teaspoon of jam and return to the oven for 6 minutes. Cool on their trays for 2 minutes then cool completely on a rack.

And I'm baking another batch tonight.

For the boys, you understand...