A fragrant bowl of wild rice

Digging around in the pantry these last few weeks has been quite enjoyable. A jar of wild rice – long sleek grains of black and chocolate brown – and a packet of dried porcini were unearthed this weekend. Soup season may have dug its heels firmly in this week, but I’m nowhere near done with it. Not while the celeriac looks this good, anyway.

Clean is Deborah Madison’s typically spare description of this soup and she is, typically, spot on. Clean, as a descriptor, may not seal the deal on recipes ordinarily, but by this stage of winter I find myself longing for something lighter. There’s been a lot of stodge eaten in these parts of late. So this beautiful and yes, clean, balance of warm, wintry earthiness and toothsome, lightly-cooked vegetables seemed to say all the right things. A cloudy, fragrant stock from simmering wild rice and dried mushrooms together; a little soothing creaminess stirred through at the last moment and I served it with a little saucer of amber sesame oil to dribble, at will, across the surface.

The recipe below is the result of gleaning a little from each of Deborah Madison’s wild rice chowders, some streamlining from experience and a small bottle of organic, unhomogenised cream from Tasmania. I must say, I quite like the photos for this one. They say, to me, exactly what I wanted them to. Fresh, clean, healthy. With cream.

It is excellent. A timely reminder that spring, and change, are not too far away.

A wild rice and celeriac soup – feeds 4
Wild rice smells intoxicatingly good as it cooks. Too often that scent is lost in and amongst other grains. Not here. Here, it is star. Attention paid to the quality and flavour of your soy milk will make all the difference if cream is not your thing. Adapted, heavily, from Deborah Madison.

3 handfuls of wild rice (about ¾ cup)
1 handful of dried mushrooms (porcini, shiitake, etc)
Toasted sesame oil
6 cups of water
Sea salt
3 tablespoons of olive oil (or a mixture of butter and oil)
1 large bundle of spring onions
1 bunch of parsley
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 fist-sized potato, scrubbed well
1 small celeriac
1 bay leaf
A few healthy sprigs of thyme
½ cup soy milk or thin cream
Pepper

Place the wild rice in a saucepan, add the mushrooms, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and the water. Bring to a boil, add ½ a teaspoon of sea salt and reduce the heat to a burble. Set a lid, slightly ajar, on top and simmer for 40 minutes. When ready – the grains will butterfly open, bursting from their skins – set a strainer over a large bowl to collect the rice stock and drain. Set both stock and rice aside separately.

Warm the olive oil in a wide saucepan over a gentle heat. Trim the spring onions and chop finely. Slice the parsley leaves from their stalks, reserving the leaves. Finely chop the stalks. Add the spring onions and parsley stalks to the saucepan and cook while you chop the remaining veg. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Cut the carrots into thick slices and then into large irregular shapes. Trim and slice the celery stalks. Cut the potato into large dice then thickly peel the celeriac and cut it too into large dice. Add the vegetables to the saucepan, up the heat and fry for about 3 minutes. Throw in the bay leaf and thyme and pour in the reserved rice stock along with another cup, perhaps a little more, of water. Bring to a boil, add 1½ teaspoons of salt then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.

Chop the remaining parsley leaves. Add the soy milk or cream to the soup, remove the bay leaf and tip in the rice and mushrooms and most of the parsley leaves. Warm through and serve in deep bowls, each garnished with a little parsley, lots of pepper and a few droplets of toasted sesame oil to round things off nicely.

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.

Stalky

‘Tis the season for all things stalky.

A head of celery for a soup of adzuki beans and tiny millet and brown rice balls.

Tender rhubarb, for stewing with rosewater and ginger.

Two Lunchbox Salads

Sturdy enough to withstand transit, wholesome and filling enough to help you through the afternoon, you might imagine a salad based on hearty, earthy wholegrains, would make perfect sense in your lunchbox. Ideal. Invincible, even. Sadly, to use a much-abused cliché, not all are created equal. Freshly cooked and quickly dressed? Delicious. Plump grains, bearing even the faintest trace of warmth, tossed in grass-green oil and something sharp, something fragrant, are far more forgiving dressed now than later, stone cold. But that very same salad fridge-cold two days later? Awful. Or so I thought.

Lunch, or more to the point, the question of what to pack for lunch, has always puzzled me. Bringing your own is clearly the clever person’s cash and time-saving solution, but exactly what to bring becomes less obvious once you move beyond soggy sandwiches and leftovers. But leftovers, however obvious they seem, are a very good place to begin.

Toss leftover rice, pilaf or otherwise, with generous spoonfuls of thick plain yoghurt, a squeeze of lemon, salt, crushed garlic and lots of dill. Halve a cucumber lengthways, scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon and slice it thinly crossways. Toss these quarter moons in next. In a separate container, pack some sturdy lettuce leaves, washed and carefully dried, to wrap around spoonfuls of creamy, herby rice. This, I find, stops you eating in front of the computer screen – while not impossible, it is rather difficult to check emails when both hands are actively, pleasurably, engaged.

I now happily roast extra vegetables just so they can be doused in this unbelievably good dressing. Tumbled with handfuls of roughly chopped parsley and/or coriander it’s easy and very, very do-able before you head out. Whip up a double batch over a morning coffee, pour into a clean jar and take it with you for the week. Carrot and celery sticks, those dreaded dieting staples, are lovely dipped or drizzled this way. Tinned dolmades (drained and splashed with both olive oil and balsamic vinegar) and pre-made falafels are good to have on hand. Serve with a tub of hummus or the roughly forked flesh of a ripe avocado. Tinned staples in fact make great salads: Sophie has a wealth of ideas and Stephanie’s own take on one of my earlier suggestions is grand – peruse the comments section while you’re there for a bunch of possibilities well worth exploring.

And then there are these two beautiful wholegrain salads. They’ll need to be made ahead, a quiet Sunday afternoon immediately springs to this mind, but both travel well and last beyond the single lunch. Not wanting to sound like a bore, I think it worth a reminder here to remove your lunch from the fridge about thirty minutes before you plan to eat – fridge-cold anything does neither the digestive system nor tastebuds any particular favours.

Karen Martini’s brown rice salad – 3-4 lunch-sized servings

Karen Martini’s fabulous, nutty salad in her latest offering Cooking at Home is so good it’s worth doubling. I’ve adapted the recipe to suit my needs, but the beautiful flavours are essentially hers. It just seems to improve with age. Frankly, we can’t stop eating it around here...

¾ cup of brown rice (stubby Japanese grains, for preference)
1½ cups of water
½ cup of currants
½ cup of red wine vinegar
½ cup of pine nuts
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
3 onions, sliced into thin half moons
Generous pinch each of sea salt, cinnamon and allspice
1 bunch of parsley leaves, roughly chopped
½ bunch of mint leaves
1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
Juice of 2 lemons

Get the rice on first. Bring the rice and water to a boil in a small, heavy-based saucepan. Lower the heat right down, clamp the lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 45 minutes. Remove from the heat, lid still on, and rest while you get on with the recipe.

In another small saucepan, bring the currants and vinegar to a boil. Simmer for 3-5 minutes, until the fruit is plump and there is just a little liquid left at the bottom of the saucepan.

Toast the pine nuts until golden in a dry frying pan. Remove to a plate to cool, place the frying pan back on the heat and pour in the oil. Add the onions, salt and spices and cook over a low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring from time to time. You want golden threads.

Toss everything together over and over while the rice and onions are still warm. Keeps for up to three days.

Beetroot and quinoa salad – 3-4 lunch-sized servings

Ah, the Wonder Grain. High in protein and easily digestible, quinoa is also rich in minerals. While most wholegrains will take an hour, often longer, to reach tender, toothsome perfection, quinoa is a speedy twenty-minute affair. Think tabbouleh and you’re halfway to understanding both its texture and functionality. Adapted from Rebecca Wood’s Splendid Grain, this is very a pretty shade of pink.

2 cups (500ml) of stock (cube, especially Marigold, is fine)
1 small beetroot, peeled and very finely diced
1 cup of quinoa
1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
Juice and zest of 1 small lemon
Sea salt
1 bunch of chives, snipped with scissors
1 bunch of parsley leaves, chopped
Large handful of black olives, pitted and chopped
A few anchovies (optional), chopped
Thick, plain yoghurt or sour cream
Large soft lettuce leaves, washed and carefully dried (optional)

Bring the stock to a boil, drop in the beetroot, quinoa, oil and half a teaspoon of salt, followed by the zest and juice. Bring back to the boil, lower the heat right down, clamp the lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 15 minutes. Stand, still covered, for a further 3 minutes.

Lift the lid and fork through half of the herbs, the olives and anchovies (if using). Cool completely, and add the rest of the herbs. Pack the yoghurt and lettuce in two separate containers. To serve, wrap spoonfuls of the quinoa in the leaves, dolloped with a little yoghurt or cream as you go. Just as good without the lettuce, but I quite like this ritual. Keeps for up to two days.

How do you ‘do’ lunch?

Faux meat: Nut roast

‘But surely the most crucial point of all is that if someone doesn’t want to eat meat, the chances are they don’t want their dinner to look like it either. You wouldn’t dream of presenting your Jewish guests with fish carefully manufactured to look like a pork chop. So why wave replica meat in front of someone who clearly doesn’t want to see it?’

Nigel Slater; ‘The Nut Cutlet’, Eating for England

Despite Johanna’s protestations, I think that Nigel makes rather a good point, poking fun, gently, at the sort of vegetarian cookery no longer considered in vogue. Having arrived at the flesh-free party somewhat late, I’ve never quite grasped the notion that replacing meat, with something concocted to look like it, is wise. Besides, I’m more of a legume girl, content to be drawn into the kitchen by what’s seasonal and abundant.

No-one writes about food like Nigel Slater. It’s writing one sinks, blissfully, in to. Later in the same book, he pokes a little more fun at ‘The Slightly Grubby Wholemeal Cook’:

‘Here you will eat healthily…the yoghurt will be goat’s, the chocolate barely sweetened and the milk soya…[the cookbooks] are on the same shelf as the meditation CD’s, the fruit tea and the tantric sex manual’

Mind you, he’s got my pantry eerily right, but the sound of dolphins cavorting through rainforests inexplicably angers me and frankly I’d rather eat Tofurky wrapped in Soy Bacon than spend hours and hours tangled tantrically. Perhaps a foray into faux meat, in light of Nigel’s dubious stereotyping, was worth exploring. I settled on Deborah Madison’s much-lauded terrine from Greens.

Nut roast is, essentially, something akin to the stuffing that steams in the cavity of a roasting bird, minus, obviously, the bird. Think meatloaf and you’re halfway there. A nut cutlet is similar in construction, differing only in size and shape.

This smells like a proper roast while it cooks: incredibly, deliciously, good. It’s substantial, weighty and golden: worthy of presenting at the table with a flourished ta-dah! Madison warns this is heavy, rich fare and she is right. Thin slices, daubed with plenty of chunky tomato and basil sauce are ideal. And if the thought of half a kilo of cheese and all those nuts fills you as much fear as it did me, try to make up for it in the days that follow with truckloads of salad and fruit…

Cheese and nut roast - feeds six or more, with leftovers

Serve with a quick tomato sauce made by dumping two tins of chopped tomatoes into a saucepan with 3 thinly sliced cloves of garlic, a glug of red wine and a sprinkling of sugar. Bubble away until reduced by about one third, add half a bunch of torn basil leaves and serve. Nut roast adapted from Greens by Deborah Madison.

½ cup of brown rice, or a mixture of brown and wild if possible
4 dried shiitake mushrooms
½ cup, packed, of dried porcini mushrooms
2 cups of nuts, a mixture of cashews, walnuts and pecans
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
Sea salt
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 large handful of parsley leaves, chopped
3 eggs
250g (½ pound) of cottage cheese
250g (½ pound) of strong cheddar cheese, grated

Place the rice in a small saucepan and cover with one cup of water. Bring to the boil, lower the heat right down to its lowest possible setting, clamp a lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F) and line a large loaf tin with baking paper.

Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water to cover for 20 minutes. Drain well and de-stalk the shiitakes, then chop the mushrooms. Spread the nuts out on a baking sheet and cook for 5 minutes. Cool on a plate. Chop the nuts quite finely, but not so much that you’re bored. A few chunks here and there don’t matter much.

Increase the oven temperature to 190 C (375 F). Warm the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook the onion and celery until soft, about 6 minutes or so. Add a little salt, followed by the mushrooms, garlic and parsley and cook for a further 2 minutes.

In a roomy bowl, combine the cooked rice, nuts, onion and celery mixture. In another bowl, lightly beat the eggs and cottage cheese, then stir through the grated cheddar. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, combine well and press into the prepared loaf tin.

Bake for 1 – 1 ¼ hours until the top is burnished and golden, the loaf coming away easily from the sides of the tin. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before gingerly slicing with a serated knife.

Am I a convert? Not quite, but I’ll be eagerly awaiting Johanna’s round-up for more inspiration. You have until April the 18^th to have a Neb at Nut Roast.

Embracing the new

If the world is divided into those that love coriander and those that loathe it, then I am a card-carrying, paid-up, life-long member of the former camp. Its sharp citrussy notes and soft, pungent green-ness get all my juices flowing. Luckily, I fell for it from the very first mouthful. Equally at home in the cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, India and South East Asia, it pairs beautifully with vegetable dishes of all kinds. For this reason alone, I cannot fault it.

Tofu on the other hand, I can take or leave. Or so I thought. New Year, new resolve. Dismissing something simply because one has little experience with it is not a good enough reason to ban it from the kitchen. Something worthwhile addressing, and soon, I think. Tofu feeds entire cultures – it is the ‘cheese’ of Asia with varieties and grades to match the finest dairy in Europe – and provides a sizeable chunk of the world’s population with a cheap, affordable form of good, plant-based protein. It loves the flavours that I love. What’s not to like?

One of the things I have learned to love about silken tofu – and it is by far my tofu of choice - is its wobbly texture. Slicing through it is like gliding your knife through a shivering, jelly-like cloud of pure white. Easier to cut than butter; even room-temperature butter at that lovely stage of near collapse, caught moments before it melts into a puddle of gold. Its soft, barely-there texture is light, airy even, on the tongue. Here, simmered briefly in a coconut milk broth, like a sponge, it absorbs the strong flavours of coriander, lemongrass, ginger and chilli but somehow manages to diffuse and tame the heat at the same time. A full-blown tofu-lover I may not be yet, but I do know a good thing when I’m onto it.

Silken tofu and green beans in a lemongrass broth – for 2-3

Light, aromatic and pretty, yes, but the real clincher is that it is both quick and easy. You need rice to soak up the juices going on here, and while steamed jasmine or basmati are good, sticky short-grain brown rice is my preference. Brown rice grounds the lightness of this dish with its particular brand of earthy goodness and, of course, is far more nutritious to boot. My method is below, but follow your own by all means.

2 stalks of fresh lemongrass, roughly chopped (the whole lot)
2 thick slices of ginger
6 kaffir lime leaves (or zest of 1 lime)
1 large bunch of coriander (cliantro), well washed and shaken dry
Sea salt
1 tablespoon of tamari or soy sauce
1 tablespoon of palm sugar or brown sugar
1 x 300g (10 oz) packet of organic silken tofu
A large handful of green beans, topped and tailed
1 teaspoon of macadamia or light olive oil
2 small red onions, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1 red chilli, finely chopped
½ teaspoon of turmeric
200ml of coconut milk
Rice, to serve (see below)
Fried shallots, to serve (optional)

Get your rice on before you begin, regardless of type and method.

Place the first 3 ingredients into a saucepan. Cut the leaves from the stalks of the coriander and set them aside. Roughly chop the stalks and, if you are lucky enough to have the roots with your coriander, roughly chop them too. Chuck these in to the saucepan, add 1 ½ cups of water and a good pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until reduced to a little over half. Strain into a jug and stir in the tamari and sugar.

Gently drain the tofu. Place it carefully on a wad of kitchen paper and slice into cubes (don’t be precious – it will dissolve a little into the sauce). Slice the beans into 5cm (2 inch) lengths. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, throw in the beans and simmer them for 3 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Heat a frying pan, add the oil and when it is hot add the onions, garlic and chilli. Stir fry over a high heat for 2 minutes and then add the par-cooked beans and the turmeric. Pour in the broth, add the tofu and gently stir. Add the coconut milk and simmer the whole lot for about 5 minutes. Add the reserved coriander leaves (yes, all of them), stir and simmer for a further minute.

Taste for salt, adjusting as you see fit - a splash of fish sauce (nam pla) is good - and serve over rice. Scatter each dish with fried shallots, if using, and serve immediately.

Brown rice, enough for two

½ cup of short grain brown rice
1 cup of water

Bring the rice and water to a boil in a small, heavy-based saucepan. Don’t be tempted to add salt – it inhibits the grain’s cooking, much as adding salt to dried beans does. Lower the heat right down to its lowest possible setting, clamp a lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 45 minutes. Now you can lift the lid. The water should be completely absorbed and the grains should be bursting from their skins. Replace the lid, remove from the heat and leave to rest for a further 5 minutes.

Spring leeks

'No onions’ he told me, ‘Drought. Still.’

Obviously, a man of few words. That’s two months now. Instead, there are plenty of tightly coiled, crisp green leeks and a large pile of purple garlic, small bulbs of which are astronomically priced, but no less tempting for it. Despite that statement, there are some onions this week - fresh ones, pink-skinned with their green tops standing to attention. Sweet and wonderful, these are quite unlike the more familiar papery-skinned kitchen basic they will become later in the year. Alliums a-plenty to keep me happy. ‘I can wait’, I told him, ‘I’m in no hurry’, and trundled off with a small bag of that expensive, highly perfumed garlic, a bunch of young onions and an armload of perky leeks.

Spring in Melbourne is changeable. Rain soaks the garden one day (and boy, did it drink deeply this last weekend) and the next finds you waking to bright cerulean skies, the sun beckoning you to shed layers and drink in the light. Just when you think you’re ready for salad weather to descend, the wind sweeps through the yard, knocks over your lemon balm and, damn it, it’s cold enough to warrant scarves. Again.

Patience is a virtue. Salad days are coming.

Any recipe that suggests you, ‘serve with a green salad’ is greeted in this kitchen with an audible sigh of relief. Any side dish whose sole instruction involves me, almost unthinkingly, tearing up a lettuce or two, adding a few leaves of whatever herbs look healthy in the garden and tossing them, at the last possible moment, in a mustardy-garlicky dressing is a very fine thing. Elaborate side dishes are tedious and frankly undo-able mid-week.

Transitional weather requires a transitional recipe. A savoury crumble, one that uses at least some of those leeks. Softly cooked, they lie beneath a layer of fresh, chunky tomato sauce and a crispy, herby, sesame seed-crusted topping. The tomatoes cook down while you sweat the leeks; you rub the crumble ingredients through your fingertips with a lazy eye on both pans, assemble, then chuck it in the oven for 30 minutes. Only when your partner pops his head over your shoulder and says, ‘It’s a bit like a tart, but in reverse’ do you think, ah, yes, it will be good. It is.

Needless to say, all you need to do is serve, predictably, with a green salad.

Leek and tomato crumble – for 4
Based on a recipe in Leith’s Vegetarian Bible. A recent post by Callipygia revised my thinking after this was photographed. I offer both ways here – one is béchamel-based (that’s what you see) and the other is milk-free and uses more leeks. It’s just as good, if not better.

Tomato sauce:
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
10 ripe, juicy tomatoes, preferably roma (plum)
Salt and pepper

Warm the oil in a saucepan over a low-medium heat. Add the onions, pop the lid on and sweat, lifting the lid to stir occasionally, for 5 minutes. Roughly chop the tomatoes and add to the pan, along with a little salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then cook at a steady pace, stirring often, until tomatoes have broken down and the sauce thickened some, about 20 minutes.

Leeks, version 1:
1 tablespoon of olive oil
3 leeks, trimmed, well washed and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of flour
1 cup of rice, almond or cows milk
1 tablespoon of tahini
Sea salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the leeks, turn the heat to low and cover. Sweat, lifting the lid to stir occasionally, for 5-8 minutes or until the leeks are soft. Add the butter to the leeks and when it melts stir in the flour, stirring constantly, scraping the base of the pan as you go, for a minute or so.

Take the saucepan off the heat, pour in the milk and mix well. Return to the heat and, stirring constantly, bring to the boil. Simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the tahini, season to taste and set aside

OR

Leeks, version 2:
2 tablespoons of olive oil/butter or a mixture of both
5-6 leeks, trimmed, well washed and thinly sliced
1-2 tablespoons of tahini
Sea salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the leeks, turn the heat to low and cover. Sweat, lifting the lid to stir occasionally, for 5-8 minutes or until the leeks are soft. Remove from the heat, stir in the tahini, season to taste and set aside.

The rest:
1 scant cup of flour (wholemeal [whole-wheat] works well)
½ cup of rolled oats
2 tablespoons of fresh herbs, finely chopped
85g of cold butter, cubed
1 tablespoon of sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F).

Mix the flour, oats and herbs together in a roomy bowl. Rub in the cubed butter with your fingertips until it resembles chunky breadcrumbs.

Spread the leeks in an ovenproof dish with the back of a spoon. Pour the tomato sauce on top, spreading it out to the edges, then top evenly with the crumble mixture. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds and bake in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes or until golden.

Even better the next day. No matter what the weather holds.

New York, Spain and what I'd do again

Travelling makes you hungry. Hungry for life, hungry for new experiences, hungry to learn as much as possible before you return to the ins and outs of daily life. Mostly though, it just makes you hungry for more travel. Language washes over you, seducing you with its unfamiliarity and teasing you with its similarities. Eating in a foreign country, however ‘safe’ your choice of cuisine, is one of the most seductive elements of travelling. And for the cook, travel, surely, is the most useful ingredient of all.

I wanted to get it out now, all in one blurt so to speak, because it’s not the end of the year quite yet. Holidays cannot go on forever, though the days here are warm and sunny enough to encourage that kind of thinking. It’s still spring, people. The Racing Carnival has begun and summer, well, she’s just around the corner. How did it get to be the end of October so quickly? There are things to be done, important things, and they’ll be needing my attention. Relaxed and refreshed, I’m ready for it.

Kathryn, I love you. Invaluable, crackingly good advice, I tell you. Planning a big trip? Please, check out these tips before you do. They made me far more companionable than the last time we went overseas...

It’s been a challenge to write about travel when, as a subject, it’s a little alien. I spent the weekend perusing the pages of The Age and still couldn’t come up with the right formula. So highlights it shall be. It’s a long post, and for that I apologise in advance. You can just scroll on down to the bottom of the page, where there is, I promise, a travel-inspired recipe worth waiting for.

Some highlights. Yes. These are the things I'd do again.

New York: Huge.

The apartment. Upper West Side. Near Central Park. The view from the roof was great; the view from the top of the stairs was vertigo-inducing.

Crying (quietly) in the Jewish Museum over an engraved camp spoon from Auschwitz and being confronted by an actual yellow star. Cheering up enormously over the silver Hanukah lamp adorned with emus and kangaroos.

Stumbling toward lunch on that first day, at Lumi, on the corner of Lexington and 70^th. Halibut on a bed of fennel and tomato, braised until sweet. Topped with shavings of fresh, crispy fennel.

More Rembrandt’s and Vermeer’s than you can poke a stick at in The Met. Meeting a friend on the steps, in the flesh, for the first time. Knowing instantly that this blogging thing has changed my life and added things that are more valuable, more satisfying, than I ever suspected it would. A great Indian lunch, spiced just the way I like it. Thank you, Susan.

Realizing just how confusing it is to navigate The Subway, late, on the way home from a fun dinner on the Lower East Side. Schiller’s three wines come by the bottle and are labeled thus; Cheap, Decent and Good. Honest, eh?

MoMA. UN-believable. Nothing else to say. Just go.

The American Museum of Natural History. A labyrinth of goodies. Oh, my. Dinosaur bones; taxidermed animals hung in a strangely beguiling way; beautiful birds, owls I wanted to revive and take home; American Indian costumes, headdresses, weaponry, all so exquisite; Aztec and Mayan treasures beyond priceless.

The Empire State building at night. A long way up. A Very Long Way Down.

Wandering, barefoot, in the grass in Central Park on our last morning. Eating lunch at the Boathouse beneath the slowly turning fans.

Madrid: Hot, but cool. Very cool.

Flying in while the sun rose; thinking just how hot and dry the place is and how like home the searing sun made me feel.

Narrow, cobbled streets. You don’t realize just how small the old section of the city is until you’ve traversed it, from hotel to Palace, in 30 minutes. Like a slightly smaller Rome, but with a very distinctive flavour of its own.

The plazas, surrounded by bars and restaurants, are empty until about 12.30, when the tourists, unfamiliar with the distinctive Spanish eating hours, head out to (sometimes unsuccessfully) find lunch.

A Paula Rego retrospective at the Reina Sofia (how lucky were we?). Didn’t see Guernica, but then how many times to you need to see that harrowing image? Brilliant.

Walking, albeit briefly, around the exquisite El parque del Retiro.

In our hotel one morning, the waiter pressed a business card into my hand for El Rincon de Esteban (about halfway down the page), an ‘authentic’ Spanish restaurant. Joyful, satisfying and hospitable. Best meal of the holiday. Esteban, a man larger than life and rotund enough to suggest he eats Very Well, kissed me goodbye on both cheeks, embraced me and then gave me flowers as we left. Apparently coming from Melbourne made us popular with both the waiters and the chef. Go figure.

9am: on the doorstep of the Prado for a quick run through. Fast and furious – better without all the tourists that flood in later. Velazquez (egotistical; magnificent); enough Goya’s to make your hair curl. Welling up with tears seeing his final, eerie works.

San Sebastian: A politically active fishing town, overrun by tourists in summer.

Hotel was beautiful, elegant and quiet. The haven we were seeking.

Climbing Monte Urgull, a fort, now crumbling romantically, offering the best view of the city and the shell-shaped beach it rests upon, La Concha. Green and lush vegetation grows wildly, making it seem even more romantic and mysterious. The huge statue of Christ that presides over the town stands at the summit looking down, concerned. Unsurprising given the Basque capital is often referred to as a 'party town'.

his work just gets better and better

Sun on winter-white skin, a local beer in hand and tomato, lettuce and sweet onion bocadillos (sandwiches, Spanish-style) eaten in a sunny plaza – followed by a siesta.

The deliciously sweet, pale-fleshed, dark green-skinned melons served at breakfast. Between broken Spanish, Basque and English, I still can’t figure out what it was…

Reading (Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie - stunning; Vegetable Pleasures by Colin Spencer, and the sadly less-than-thrilling Chez Panisse Vegetables), writing lots (giving a project some space to grow; nutting out some worries, both general and specific; wholefoods and food politics; just getting words on paper) and drawing were what we wanted. San Sebastian, then, is the perfect, laid-back place in which to get it all.

Swimming. The surf beach, to the left of La Concha, was more like the beaches we’re used to – real waves that toss you about and leave you gasping for air – and became a favourite for people watching. The deeply-tanned man who strode confidently up and down the beach wearing nothing but a pair of dark designer sunglasses caught our attention on a number of occasions. Who was he?

The older Basque men in their berets, ambling along like the thick-waisted older Picasso; the middle-aged women in their tight leopard-, tiger- and zebra-printed clothes. Often all at once.

Eating? Neither the artist or I are big drinkers (any more), so late nights in the pintxos (tapas, pronounced ‘pinchos’ in Basque) bars were increasingly less interesting. The Japanese we ate twice was a magnificent contrast to the heavy, oily Basque food. We ordered a couple of magnificent Roija’s while we were there (all great, Deb). I desperately wanted a Spanish rice dish (to no avail) and would have given my right arm (and my left too) for a dish of vegetables, just once. Spain ain’t the place for a vegetarian. My advice is to eat the fish which is outstanding, and try to make up for it when you get home. Otherwise, you WILL starve.

Complaining? Not me. But here’s something I would have liked to eat. It’s a re-working of something from last year, simplified, improved, adapted and all vegetarian. God, how I missed vegetables. Being away I realized how infrequently our meals contain wheat flour – we are the wholegrain freaks.

Millet paella with saffron, tomatoes and asparagus - for 4

Toasting the millet before rinsing it is a trick gleaned from Rebecca Wood’s The Splendid Grain. It makes the millet wonderful, taking away the hint of bitterness that tends to accompany this incredibly healthful grain. The Spanish smoked paprika is non-negotiable. It is one of the most intensely flavoured spices and is especially useful in vegetarian cookery because of its ability to simulate some of the smoky qualities associated with bacon and ham.

1 cup of hulled millet
1 ½ tablespoons of olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 large pinch of saffron
2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
1x 400g tin of tomatoes
Sea salt
1 teaspoon of tamari (or soy sauce)
2½ cups of boiling water
12 juicy black olives
¼ preserved lemon
1 bundle of asparagus, woody ends snapped off
A handful of sugar snap peas
Chopped parsley, to serve

Place the millet in a large frying pan and toss constantly over a medium heat until it pops and starts to smell nutty. Rinse well and drain.

Heat 1½ tablespoons of olive oil in a very large lidded frying pan and fry the onion and garlic over a medium heat for about 5 minutes.

Reduce the heat and add the millet, saffron, paprika and tomatoes, breaking them up with a wooden spoon. Stir, then add a pinch of salt, the tamari and the boiling water. Cover with a lid and cook until the liquid is absorbed and the millet is cooked, about 35 minutes. If the millet still tastes a little raw, add another ¼ cup of boiling water and cook until it’s absorbed.

Pit the olives and roughly chop them. Thinly slice the preserved lemon. Slice the asparagus into thirds and, with the whole sugar snap peas, simmer for 3 minutes in a pan of salted water. Drain well.

Lift the lid and arrange the olives, lemon and vegetables on top of the millet. Replace the lid and cook for a further 3-5 minutes, just to warm the vegetables through.

Sprinkle with parsley and eat. Gratefully.

And you know what? I even missed blogging.