White, Green and Red Soup

After an exciting visit to the Art Gallery I made this soup out of leftovers and things from the garden.

Ingredients:

2 leaves radicchio, washed and sliced
2 leaves spinach, washed and sliced
Boiled potatoes, cut into small chunks
5 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
Salt
Pepper
Sherry or red wine vinegar

Method:

Heat a heavy pot over a medium heat, add a little olive oil, then the potato chunks. Stir about. Add a little salt and pepper. Add the chopped radicchio and spinach leaves and stir to combine, put a lid on and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Boil the kettle and had about a cup of hot water. Add the cherry tomatoes, stir again and cook for another minute, just to heat through the tomatoes.

Serve in a warmed bowl adding a teaspoon of vinegar on top.

Weekly Meal Planner & Shopping List

Over the last few months I've been developing a Meal Planner. At first it was very rough: just my usual shopping list on a scrap of paper with meal ideas jotted at the bottom. That developed slightly when I wanted to keep track of what I had in the freezer and what needed using up in the fridge. For a while I had two scraps of paper going - one with the shopping list, one with the list of food we already had. Untidy, ungainly, unacceptable.

The major breakthrough was the decision to scrap the scraps of paper and use a whole sheet of A4. Wow! The extravagance! (You don't need to use a virgin piece of paper, you could use a previously printed on sheet. It just has to be blank on one side.)

So with the huge amount of note making real estate available on the sheet of A4 I played about with the best way align the various lists. I have come up with the following:

Weekly Meal Planner & Shopping List

How to use the WMP&SL:

1. Do an audit of your fridge, freezer and pantry. This might take some time initially but persevere, it's worth it.

2. List the food that you've already got under the heading "in fridge, freezer, etc" in the top left hand corner of the WMP&SL.

3. Think about the meals you could cook with the food that you've listed and jot down those ideas in the blank space in the middle top of the sheet.

4. Under the day headings block out where you won't need lunch or dinner eg you know you're going out to dinner on Saturday night. You could make a note also of the number of people eating lunch or dinner on a particular day eg you've invited friends over for lunch on Sunday, so you'll need more food.

5. Add to the meals list things that you'd like to cook but don't have the ingredients for yet.

6. Start allocating meals to particular days of the week. Don't worry if you don't have enough meals to fill the whole week. You might cook a meal and have plenty of delicious leftovers or someone might ask you out to dinner! Nice. Or you could do some recipe research and go shopping mid-week. Or if worst comes to the worst you could cook the same thing twice.

7. Make a list of the ingredients you'll need this week under the "shopping list" heading. Look at the meals you've put into your meal planner and at the ingredients that you've already got to help you do this.

8. Ask yourself some questions:
- Have I run out of salad vegetables?
- What am I eating for breakfast?
- Do I need toothpaste?
Add the answers to your shopping list.

9. Fold the WMP&SL into a handy jeans pocket size concertina-ed almanac.
- Fold in half long ways ie so that the top left hand corner meets the bottom left hand corner.
- Fold in half again, this time so that the top left hand corner meets the top right hand corner.
- Fold the top flap back on itself, and the bottom flap back on itself.

Hopefully the WMP&SL will now be folded into 8 with the "shopping list" page on the back and the "in fridge, freezer etc" page on the front.

10. Put your WMP&SL in your pocket. Get your shopping bags and money. Go shopping. Buy what's on your shopping list. Don't buy stuff you've already got.

11. Come home, unpack your shopping. Take your shopping list out of your pocket and stick it on the fridge. Cross the things you've bought off the shopping list.

12. During the week cross off the food use from your "in fridge, freezer etc" list. Add things you need to the "shopping list".

haloumi in vine leaves, baked potatoes, tomato sauce & broccoli

Tonight I'm cooking from Maria Benardis' book My Greek Family Table. It's a lovely book with recipes based on Maria's family life in Greece and Australia.

I'm making "Chargrilled haloumi in vine leaves", with "My favourite baked potatoes", the "Santorini caper and tomato sauce", and a salad of blanched broccoli for greens. Normally I'd cook rice to go with haloumi but I wanted to eat rice pudding for dessert and didn't want too much of a good thing.

Paella with chorizo, red capsicum, beans and artichokes

Tim cooked paella last night for dinner. I love paella for its infinite variety, and because it is, I think the ultimate, one dish meal. It has rice, vegetables, beans, herbs, seasoning and perhaps meat and crustaceans. Really it has whatever is available but in a particular balance.

Traditionally paella is an outdoors food cooked over a charcoal fire in a broad shallow pan - the paella - with ingredients being added in order for them all to be cooked and ready at the same time. And it is worth remembering this as you cook it at home over the stove, starting out with the things that require most cooking and adding more delicate ingredients towards the end.

Paella with chorizo, red capsicum, beans and artichokes

Ingredients:

for 2

1 tbspn olive oil
2 rosemary sprigs
2 sprigs of thyme
1 small chorizo, about 150g, sliced into 1cm rounds
1 small red capsicum / red bell pepper, cut into strips about 1.5 cm wide, then cut again into squares
3/4 cup paella rice (or risotto rice)
small pinch of saffron threads (optional)
a large handful of green beans, trimmed and cut into 4cm lengths
4 preserved artichokes, halved or quartered, depending on their size

Method:

Put the paella pan over a medium heat. Add the oil, when it is hot add the rosemary and thyme. Let them sizzle a little then add the chorizo so that it is evenly distributed about the pan. Cook for about 2 minutes then turn over the pieces of chorizo. Add the capsicum between the pieces of chorizo and cook for another 2 or 3 minutes. Shake the pan a little to loosen the food.

Sprinkle the rice into the pan, shaking into the spaces between the chorizo and capsicum. Pour on about one and a half cups of water, enough that the rice is completely submerged. Shake the pan again to even the rice, meat and capsicum out. Sprinkle on the saffron threads then bring the water to a simmer.

When the dish is simmering distribute the green beans over the top and turn the heat down slightly. The paella should not be stirred as a crust should form on the bottom but this means that you need to keep an eye on the dish and shake it about a little to make sure that it doesn't burn. You may need to add more water as the rice cooks. Towards the end of cooking distribute the artichoke pieces across the top.

At the end the rice should have plumped up and there should be little air holes across the surface. Turn off the heat and cover the pan with a lid or a piece of foil and a tea towel to allow the rice to finish cooking. Leave it to sit for 10 minutes.

Serve straight from the pan.

Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook

(draft)

I bought Veganomicon, not because I'm going to become a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but because I want to make more vegetable based meals. Expand my repertoire. Get healthier. The book is lovely to look at, dark turquoise green and paler green olive text on a roughish paper. It sits open by itself, very useful when cooking. And the writing is engaging.

The authors, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, although they've both written several other cookbooks, are obviously home cooks. I like this. They know about taking food to picnics and barbecues, about entertaining at home, about cooking for yourself and maybe one other person. They know about which foods are probably available in your local supermarket and which things you'll most likely have to go to a specialist supplier to buy.

I'm fascinated by the culture portrayed through the recipes: New York, Brooklyn, Mexican, Greek, Jewish food is put through a vegan filter, and comes out in sometimes surprising combinations. And I wonder if in Australia where we've been influenced by Greek, Arabic, Italian, and South-East Asian foods and ways of cooking we do the same thing.

Week 2 - Summer

Cold Chicken and Salad

Sausages w Salad or Veg and Mash

Chicken and Leek Pie

Grilled Fish and Salad

Spinach and Chickpeas w Yogurt and Rice

Paella

Fried Cheese and Eggs

Week 1 - Summer

Tomato, onion and olive tart

Steak and salad

Pasta w cauliflower and capers

Fish w tomato sauce

Rice and lentils 

Grilled fish and salad

Roast, or fried, chicken and vegetables 

food gardening

I went to Mum's today and came back with - from left to right - watercress, oranges and lemons, snow peas, all from her garden. She always sends me home heavily laden!

And online I've recently come across three interesting moves to support vegetable gardening:

1. The Dinner Garden - www.thedinnergarden.org
Is an initiative aimed at providing food security through supply of vegetable seeds, gardening supplies and gardening advise to US families. The organisation buys seed in bulk, then sends it out to partner organisations for distribution.

2. Landshare - www.landshare.net
This is an English thing - people with land to spare and people who want to garden put up a notice on the website, and find each other. Sharing! Lovely.

3. Rosalinda Peridos' project at the School for Social Entrepreneurs
A demonstration community organic garden in Claymore in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. The garden will hopefully lead to people gardening in their own backyards, holding a produce market, and eating better food.

baked rigatoni with bean sauce

This recipe was inspired by a dish my ex-mother-in-law used to make, and by a recipe in Marcella Hazan's "The Classic Italian Cookbook", which I'm using a lot lately.

Nadia, my ex-m-i-l, was/is an excellent cook. We'd go to dinner once a week and get two courses and dessert - lovely. The only problem was the speed at which the family ate, very fast. Nadia's version of Baked Rigatoni with Meat Sauce aka Rigatoni al forno col ragu was absolutely delicious and I'd always make a pig of myself eating as much as I could as fast as I could, then struggle to fit in the next course. Then dessert.

This week given that Tim's away I decided to treat myself to some Rigatoni. Doesn't sound like much of a treat does it, but Tim doesn't like hollow pasta so all we ever eat in the pasta shape way is long flat or long round stuff ... also I've decided to have a meat free week. Why? I don't know, call it a whim.

So I decide to convert Marcella's perfectly good meat filled recipe to a vegetarian friendly one. I could've gone purely with a tomato sauce but thought adding mashed beans would up the protein quotient. Somebody told me once that combining a legume and a grain makes a perfectly acceptable protein, so I work to that theory.

Baked Rigatoni with Bean Sauce

Ingredients

for the Bean Sauce

olive oil
4 rosemary sprigs
2 garlic cloves
1 small onion
2 sticks of celery
1/2 a 425g tin of butter beans (kidney beans might be better ...)
1 425g tin of tomatoes
pepper

for the White Sauce

butter - approx 30g
2 tbspns of plain flour
milk - approx 250ml

cheese - approx 4 tblspns grated - I used a combination of parmesan and cheddar
rigatoni - approx 150g
extra butter - approx 20g

Method

Put the rosemary sprigs, olive oil and peeled garlic in a heavy pot and cook over a very low heat. The idea is to get the oil tasting of the garlic and rosemary. It takes about 45 minutes, the rosemary shrivels up and goes brittle when it's done. Remove it and throw it away. You could always skip this step and just fry some rosemary and garlic in the oil for 5 minutes but it's not as good.

Chop the onion and the celery. When the oil is ready and you've removed the rosemary add the onion, up the heat, and cook for about 5 minutes, add the celery and fry for a little longer. Add the drained beans and stir about. As the beans combine with the celery and onion mash them up a bit. Add the tin of tomatoes and stir, cook on a low heat for about 20 minutes or longer.

To make the white sauce melt the butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat. When it's foaming, add the flour and stir thoroughly to combine, cook the mixture a little, it shouldn't be too soft ... add a splash of milk, enough to cover the bottom of the pan by about 4mm, stir rapidly with a wooden spoon to incorporate the milk into the flour and butter. You'll have a fairly thick paste. Add more milk, and stir again. Each time the milk gets incorporated add some more until you've got a nice thickish sauce. Stir while it comes to the boil. Once it's done you can turn the heat off and just leave it.

Heat your oven to 200C/400F.

Bring a pot of water to the boil, add the rigatoni and cook until al dente. Drain the pasta and tip into a bowl with the bean & tomato sauce, the white sauce and the two thirds of the cheese, mix it all together, then put it into an oven dish, smooth the top over, sprinkle on the remaining one third of cheese and dot with the extra butter.

Put into the top of the oven and cook for 10 minutes. When it's done you can leave it for about 5 minutes before serving.

I ate this with a very simple salad of lettuce and capers. It was good.

basil >> pesto

Today was the day to dig out the basil plants, pull off the better looking leaves, and make pesto.

As you can see I harvested a goodly amount of the herb. The chickens "helped" by eating the little shield bugs that were living on the plants.

I used Marcella Hazan's recipe for "Pesto made in the Blender" leaving out the cheese and butter because the whole lot is going in the fridge. I'll add it later as required.

simple, yet delicious

Tonight's dinner was brought to me by Michele Di'Bartolo's The Sicilian Kitchen:

Ricotta and Pasta
with
Spinach and Chilli

The beauty of this meal is that it is what it says it is - for the Ricotta and Pasta you cook pasta and add it to ricotta that's been mashed with a little salt and some of the pasta cooking water. The Spinach and Chilli similarly is chilli and garlic fried slowly in olive oil with spinach added (actually Michele blanches the spinach first but I'm lazy). And there you have it a very elegant and delicious meal.

reading the kitchen and garden

Today I went into work, briefly, to discuss my return from leave. (I've been off for 3 months - it's been fantastic.) Afterwards I trotted over to Kinokuniya for a browse and found some rather interesting eating and gardening books:

A History of Kitchen Gardening - Susan Campbell
The title is slightly deceptive, it seems to be a history of one kitchen garden in the south of England. It's got some lovely drawings and diagrams and lots of detail about the mechanisms of growing food for a large house. I thought about getting it for Mum for Christmas but she's more into story ... I'll keep it in mind though.

Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn - Fritz Haeg
This looked cool but the copy in Kinokuniya was wrapped in plastic so I couldn't check out the contents. The basic premise is making vegetable gardens out the front of houses instead of lawn. Super!

A Tale of 12 Kitchens: Family Cooking in Four Countries - Jake Tilson
Another groovy book (on sale now at Amazon!) it attracted me because it seemed to be talking about why we eat/cook what we eat/cook where. Thinking about who has influenced what we eat. I might buy it if I can remember my Amazon log in.

Cook Your Own Veg - Carol Klein
This book is the sort of thing I want to do - recipes organised by season made from things you've grown in your own garden. It's English so the summer section is full and winter pretty empty - lovely photos.

I didn't buy anything, but it was fun to check what's out there.

vegetable gardening

On Saturday evening I found a wonderful "when to plant what vegetable and how" website:

www.gardenate.com

It's very good - it's organised by month, and by region, so you get a list of all the things that it's plausible to grow right now. And each of the vegetables has an individual page showing what months to plant it, giving a short description of the best way to plant it, then people can add comments and questions about their experience.

Very cool.

I got to gardenate.com via the Italian gardener - they're a seed supplier and I've discovered that they stock pimentos de padron the Spanish chilies for frying. So I'll be giving some of them a go later in the year.

Most excellent.

soup of leftovers

Tonight we had soup made from left over leftovers - the remains of the chicken and tomato casserole we had on Tuesday night, which included, as I'm sure you remember the remains of the tomato, bean and potato dish we had on Saturday night.

ingredients

oil
1 stick of celery, sliced
1 clove of garlic, smashed and sliced
corn from 1 cob of corn
5 spring onions, sliced
leftover chicken and tomato casserole: take the meat off the chicken maryland and chop, chop the potatoes into smaller pieces

method

Heat a heavy bottomed saucepan over a medium heat. Add some oil. Add the sliced celery and stir about. Add the garlic and stir again. Add the chopped potatoes and the corn. Add the tomato sauce and some boiling water. Add the spring onions. Bring it all to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the chicken, simmer about 3 minutes. Add some more boiling water if it's looking to thick.

Pour into heated bowls and serve with crusty bread.

mushroom risotto

mushroom risotto
pressed salad - cabbage, celery, carrot and spring onion

ingredients

butter
oil
1 x onion, chopped
8 mushrooms, sliced (approx 8 medium sized cultivated mushrooms)
3/4 cup of risotto rice - that'd be arborio rice
pepper
2 cups of hot stock - I used half of a Massel's 'beef style' stock cube in boiling water
sliced spring onion, white and green
extra butter
Parmesan cheese

method

Put a heavy frypan onto heat. I use a cast iron pan and a medium-hot heat. Put in a little oil, and a knob of butter. When the butter has melted and is foaming add the onion. Stir and cook, maybe turn the heat down a little. I usually cook the onion until it's just going transparent and soft, but today I let it stick a little and go brown. It was good. When the onion is partially cooked add the rice and stir around to coat it with the butter and oil. Add the sliced mushrooms, again stir and let cook for about 2 minutes. Grind on some pepper. Add some of the hot stock, stir. Let the rice and stock cook together stirring occasionally. As the rice soaks up the liquid add more. Eventually the rice will have pretty much taken up all the liquid. Taste the rice to see if it's cooked. If it's not add a little more stock, or hot water. Stir and keep cooking. Right at the end turn off the heat, add the spring onions, a little more butter cut into very small bits, and stir through. Add the grated Parmesan and stir through again.

Serve on hot plates or shallow bowls. This is enough for two people.

making it up

I was going to show Tim how to make Poulet Bonne Femme for dinner tonight, but on my way home I realised that we've only got one potato left in the cupboard. And PBF needs at least two potatoes, if not three.

So, I had a think about what we've got in the fridge and remembered that we've got a large container of leftover tomato, green bean, and potato stew left over from Saturday night ... I'll run a chicken and tomato casserole by Tim when he gets home and see what he thinks.

I'll write up a recipe as he might find that helpful.

ingredients

olive oil
sprigs of thyme and oregano
1 x bay leaf
chicken pieces - we've got 3 x chicken marylands
salt & pepper
1 x onion cut in half and sliced
left over tomato paste, about a tablespoonful
red wine, about a small wine glassful
left over tomato, bean and potato stew
olives, halved and pitted

method

heat the olive oil in a heavy pot
put in the herbs and let sizzle for a minute
put in the chicken, grind over some pepper, and sprinkle on a little salt and brown
remove the chicken to a side plate
put in the onion and cook until softening and beginning to turn golden
stir in the tomato paste
add the chicken back into the pot
pour on the wine and stir around
add in the tomato component of the stew bring to a simmer and let cook for approx 20 minutes
towards the end of the cooking add in the bean and potato component of the stew
right at the end add the olives

serve with braised silver beet (again!)

lamb & spinach curry

lamb & spinach curry
silver beet
carrot salad
rice with onions
lime pickle
mango pickle

What sounds like an elaborate dinner was actually very easy to prepare as I had a container of curry in the freezer. "Here's one I made earlier!"

black bean chili with sweet potato

black bean chili with sweet potato
skillet corn bread
garlicky greens

I made all of this out of The Real Food Daily Cookbook (with just a few adjustments).

leatherjackets savoro-style

Tim cooked from Andy Harris' Modern Greek.

leatherjackets with rosemary and red wine vinegar
stewed green beans, potatoes and tomatoes

delicious!

pan fried chicken breast

pan fried chicken breast
brussel sprouts
carrots
potatoes