no eggs or nuts

Crumble recipes

2011-09-03T21:16:00.002+10:00

Margaret Fulton:

1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
90g butter

Rub butter into dry ingredients. Place on top of fruit. Bake 200 degrees C for 20 minute, reduce to 180 degrees for 30 minutes.

Jane Grigson:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 cup ground almonds
3/4 cup (175g) butter

Bake at 200 degrees C for 35 or until top is nicely browned

Pasta with saffron, spinach and roast capsicum

2011-09-03T20:24:00.002+10:00

Saffron Butter:
6 tbs butter
1 tbs basil or marjoram, finely chopped
1 tbs parsley, finely chopped
1/8 tsp saffron threads, soaked in 1 tsp hot water
pinch sweet paprika
1 lemon or 1/2 orange, grated rind only
1/4 tsp salt

Mix together

2 red capsicums
1 bunch spinach
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 red onion, finely diced
1 cup stock or water
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt
pepper
Parmesan

Roast capsicums in the usual manner. Put the pasta on. Toast pine nuts in saucepan until they are golden. Wash and shred spinach.

Fry onion in olive oil, when soft add the garlic soften for a moment, then add the stock, capsicums and salt. After a minute add the spinach, lower the heat and add the saffron butter. Mix in pasta when cooked.

Serve with pine nuts and Parmesan.

Wheat and Rye bread from "The Village Baker"

2011-09-03T20:14:00.003+10:00

Sponge:

2 1/2 tsp dry yeast
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup rye flour
1/2 cup organic white flour

Proof the yeast in 1/2 cup of water, add to the rest of the water in a largish bowl. Add combined flours by the handful, stirring 50 times after each handful. All to sit for 15-24 hours covered with a tea towel

Dough:

1 cup warm water
sponge from previous step
3 3/4 cups organic white flour
2 3/4 tsp salt

Mix the water into the sponge, add the 2 3/4 cups of flour handful by handful, stirring 50 times after each. Add salt and mix in remaining flour by kneading on a bench for 2-3 minutes. Dough should still feel sticky

Allow to rise for 2 hours, covered. When it has doubled, shape into a round loaf. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and allow to rise for about 1 1/2 hours. The loaf is ready when an indentation by a finger does not bounce back.

Slash with a sharp knife and bake at 215 degrees C for 35 to 45 minutes

Potatoes cooked with Mustard Seeds - from Madhur Jaffrey

2011-08-25T21:30:00.002+10:00

2-3 potatoes
3 tbs oil
pinch of asafetida
1 tbs black mustard seeds
1/4 tsp turmeric
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sweet paprika

Peel and dice the potatoes into 1.5cm pieces.

Heat the oil in a fry-pan with a lid. When hot add in succession; asafetida, mustard seeds, turmeric then potatoes. Stir and fry for a minute. Cover the potatoes and turn pan to low, stirring every 5 or so minutes. When done sprinkle salt and paprika and mix well.

A successful food challenge

2009-11-01T22:18:00.003+11:00

Last week Hannah attended her first food challenge - the cake with two eggs challenge. To my immense surprise it was successful. We can now include cake, biscuits and muffins with egg in Hannah's diet. The next challenge - the hard boiled egg challenge probably won't be done for another 18 months, but I don't mind. This small change will have a very big impact on our lives, going out and socialising suddenly become much easier. Seeing a panettone in the local supermarket the other day made me tear up - finally I'm allowed to let her try this delight.

As a result I've decide to stop posting on this blog. We will continue to make many of these recipes, the chocolate cake will always be a favourite (and of course Hannah can't lick the bowl of a cake made with egg ). I've just posted three newish biscuit recipes which have also become firm favourites. And would you believe it, our chicken stopped laying the week we found out.

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Biscuit

2009-11-01T22:05:00.002+11:00

1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/3 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
155g butter
2/3 cup brown sugar (packed)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
140g chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Place non-stick baking paper onto 2 large trays.

Beat butter till creamy in an electric mixer. Add sugars, salt and vanilla and beat for another 2 minutes. Mix in the dry ingredients and chocolate chips by hand.

Work the dough by hand until it sticks together, then make two logs about 4cm in diameter. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least 1/2 hour.

With your sharpest knife cut the logs into rounds (l like them quite thin - about 5mm thick, but you can make them thicker). The sharp knife is essential otherwise the chocolate chips make the log fall apart.

Place on tray and bake for 12 minutes, they will firm as they cool. Allow to cool on the tray.

Chocolate Balsamic Biscuits

2009-11-01T21:56:00.002+11:00

1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/8 tsp salt
75g butter
1/3 cup cocoa
2/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Cover two biscuit trays with non-stick baking paper.

Mix the flour, bicarb soda and salt together. Melt the butter in a saucepan, when melted take it off the heat and add sugars and cocoa. Mix well and then add yoghurt, vanilla and balsamic vinegar. Finally mix with the flour mixture and stir until just combined.

Drop tablespoons of the mix onto the trays, leaving room for spreading. Sprinkle lightly with vanilla sugar if desired. Cook for 11 minutes. They will be soft at this stage, but will firm up on cooling.

Sugared-Topped Ginger Biscuits

2009-11-01T21:47:00.004+11:00

1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
pinch salt
1 1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground clove
65g butter melted, or 1/2 oil such as grape seed oil
2 tbs treacle
2 tbs milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

2 tbs sugar extra (can use demerera sugar if you have it)

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C. Place non-stick baking paper on large biscuit tray.

Mix together flour, bicarb soda, salt, sugar and spices. Separately mix melted butter, treacle, milk and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well.

Roll into 1 inch balls, slightly flatten them and press into extra sugar. Place a little apart on the tray (they will spread a little) and bake for 11 minutes. They will be very soft at this point but will firm up as they cool, (if you bake them until firm they will be too hard to eat!).

Kiwi Biscuits

2009-03-10T22:40:00.005+11:00

This recipe comes courtesy of a colleague of mine, she'd passed it on to me knowing of our egg-free kitchen. I'd not heard of kiwi biscuits before - but a bit of a google suggests they are a not uncommon New Zealand version of the chocolate chip biscuit, with the unusual inclusion of condensed milk. They are good:

220g butter
100g castor sugar
4 tablespoons of condensed milk
2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 to 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugar. Add condensed milk. Mix flour and baking powder. Add to butter and mix well (if too dry add more condensed milk). Then mix in chocolate chips.

Roll into small balls and place onto a greased tray and press down with a fork

Bake 15 minutes in a 180 degree C oven.

Date Slice

2008-08-23T21:39:00.006+10:00

I found this recipe last week in a sweet book entitled "500 Cookies" by Philippa Vanstone. My first thought was "mmm, that would be good in a lunch box". Yes, next year I will need to change my blog subtitle - I've just handed in Hannah's school enrolment, and am starting to get my head around this impending new phase in our lives. And of course US food allergy blogs are full of back to school postings (this is a good one).

I'm delighted the staff at Hannah's childcare are instilling in the children the importance of not sharing their lunch. (Well, delighted and yet really saddened that this is the world we must live in.) Later in the year they get to practice by bringing their own lunch. And in October we get to practice going to school, a morning once a week for six weeks. It is really all about to happen.

But to the recipe. We tried it and liked it, but it is essentially shortbread and a very crumbly one at that. The date spread sort of glues it all together, but I can see lunch box problems unless very carefully packed. The book suggest you can substitute dried apricot, fig or cherry and blueberry.

250g dates, pitted and chopped
zest and juice of one orange
120ml boiling water

175g unsalted butter
225g plain flour
2 tbs cornflour
1/2 tsp baking powder
50g demerera sugar ( I used a brown sugar, not having any demerera)

Pre-heat the oven to 175 degrees C. Line a 20 x 23 cm baking tin with baking paper.

Combine the dates, orange juice and zest and water in a saucepan, simmer for 3-4 minutes or until soft, stirring frequently so they don't stick. Allow to cool, then puree in a blender or with a Bamix (my preferred option).

Rub the butter into the combined flours, baking powder and sugar. Press about two-thirds of this into the baking tin. Spread the date mix over this. Then either sprinkle the remaining one-third of the mixture over the date spread, pressing down to give a crumbled effect, or roll the remaining one-third between two sheets of baking paper and lay on top of the date spread (my preference).

Saffron Cake

2008-06-24T20:59:00.006+10:00

Local food blogger 'Another Outspoken Female' is running a winter solstice cake event, and if I type really fast I'll be within a cats whisker of being in time to enter. The intention is to bake a Christmas style cake to celebrate the passing of the longest night in winter.

In fact we celebrated the winter solstice this year, as we usually do, with a small Christmas pudding (I make two every year, a big one for the family Christmas, and a small one for solstice). Solstice falling on a Friday this year - one of the days I work outside of the home - there is no possibility of any fancy cooking.

However on Sunday I had a chance to make something I've been keen to try for a while. I've always loved the variations of sweet breads made at Christmas time such as the Italian Panetonne and the German Stollen. Of course traditionally they are very 'rich' breads, which of course means eggs and nuts. Saffron cake is not as far as I know associated with any time of year, and yes it is strictly speaking a bread being leavened with yeast. Reading in Elizabeth David's "English Bread and Yeast Cookery" it is interesting to see that use of chemical leavening (baking powder and so on) in cakes is a recent innovation, and that earlier cakes were in fact leavened with yeast. So I'd like to push the understanding of cake to include this lovely recipe.

Just a word of warning, mine cooked much quicker than I expected - so hover around your oven - don't go outside and garden like I did - it's not supposed to be quite so brown :( . The recipe is modified from Dan Lepard's "The Handmade Loaf", a cook book I'd heartily recommend if you like cooking with yeast - great recipes and incredibly clearly written instructions.

Solstice Cake 2008 - Saffron Cake

Sponge
100g lukewarm milk
1/4 tsp dried yeast
100g plain flour

Beat together all ingredients until smooth. Leave covered for 1 hour at which point the mix should have risen and be bubbly.

Dough
1 tsp saffron
3/4 tbs boiling water
250g strong white flour
25g castor sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp clove
30g unsalted butter, softened
150ml lukewarm milk
a handful of currants
1 tbs sherry

Mix the saffron and the boiling water and leave for at least 10 minutes. Mix sherry with currants and leave at least 1 hour.

Combine flour, salt, spices and sugar in a large bowl and rub in butter. Mix saffron into milk, then pour this into the flour along with the sponge prepared earlier and the currants. Mix until well combined. Allow to rest, covered, for 10 minutes.

Lightly oil working surface before kneading dough for 10 seconds, then rest covered for another 10 minutes (the oil stops the dough from sticking). Knead again and leave for 1 hour, covered, in a warm place (I use a hot water bottle covered with a towel).

Shape dough (but don't try anything too fancy - it is a fairly wet dough and my plait completely disappeared). Allow to rise, covered for an hour in a warm place.

Bake at 210 degrees C for 30 minutes, then reduce to 190 degrees for another 15 minutes.

Glaze
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs water

Simmer together in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Brush onto warm cake with pastry brush.

Leave to cool before enjoying.

Chocolate crunch cheesecake.

2008-05-22T21:27:00.007+10:00

Cheesecake does not need eggs! A while ago I found a fairly bland plain egg-free cheesecake recipe that tasted like an ordinary cheesecake. There was nothing particularly unusual about it. I guess eggs in a cheesecake are used for richness and flavour rather than as functional part of the mix. To test this theory I decided to try omitting the eggs from one of my favourite cheesecake recipes, and yes it worked perfectly.

Just a word of warning with the biscuit crumb base. It is not so easy to find a safe commercial biscuit. We ended up using McVities Digestives. These are completely egg and nut free (though always check the label in case this changes). The original recipe called for a chocolate ripple biscuit, so I've suggested adding some cocoa to compensate. Alternatively you could make a shortcrust base for the cheesecake, flavoured with a little cocoa.

Also for the chocolate coated honeycomb; if you are buying confectionery in Australia you are looking at either a Cadbury Crunchy or a Nestle's Violet Crumble. This means including an ingredient with traces of eggs and nuts. Hannah has had some problems with Cadbury's chocolate in the past (skin on her face becoming reddened and itchy) but was ok eating this. It is possible to make one's own honeycomb, something I remember doing when I was a kid with my mum. I attempted the recipe I had and ended up with a seething mass of burnt toffee. If any readers can advise on a successful recipe I'd be most interested.

And a word of warning: this is very rich - small slices at a time please!

125g biscuits, crushed
2 tbs cocoa (if the biscuits are not chocolate biscuits)
60g butter, melted
500g cream cheese
1/3 cup castor sugar
2 tsp grated lemon rind
1/3 cup cream
1 tbs flour
45g bar Chocolate coated Honeycomb, finely chopped

Caramel Filling:
30g butter
¼ cup brown sugar
2 tbs sweetened condensed milk
1 tbs golden syrup
2 tbs hot water

Topping:
150g chocolate, chopped
¼ cup cream

Combine crumbs and butter, and press into base of 20cm spring-form. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Beat cheese, sugar and rind until smooth. Add cream and flour, beat until smooth.

Place spring-form tin on oven tray, pour ½ the cheese mixture into tin, sprinkle with honeycomb. Spoon caramel filling over honeycomb, top with remaining cheese mixture. Bake in slow oven about 1 hour or until firm.

Spread topping over cheesecake, refrigerate until set, decorate with extra cream and berries.

Caramel filling:
Combine all ingredients in a pan, stir over heat without boiling until sugar is dissolved. Boil without stirring 4 minutes or until deep caramel colour, cool 10 minutes.

Topping: Melt chocolate with cream in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, cool to room temperature

Show on radio national about allergies

2008-05-01T22:47:00.002+10:00

The other day Background Briefing on Radio National had a 50 minute program focused on allergies, including a look at the recent change in theory about avoiding early introduction of peanuts to small children. It is worth a listen. It can be listened to as streaming audio or down loaded as an MP3 for a few weeks, there is also a transcript which I think stays up a bit longer.

Marmalade Biscuits

2008-02-27T22:00:00.003+11:00

We like marmalade in this house, Hannah and I, and have done for a since Hannah has been old enough to ~~pinch my~~ eat toast. A good tart Seville orange Marmalade please. (I recommend the recipe in Stephanie Alexanders 'The Cooks Companion' - though oddly it is not in the new edition). Recently we've started reading the Paddington Bear books and are learning about Paddington's obsession with marmalade - particularly marmalade sandwiches. Can't say that I like the idea of marmalade on untoasted bread, but we've just found out that marmalade does work in biscuits.

I've known for awhile of a beaut website by baker and writer Dan Lepard, where as well as forums open to questions and comments on the cookbooks he has written, he also republishes recipes that he has written for The Guardian newspaper. Of course many of the recipes aren't suitable for us, but a few are just perfect. These Marmalade Buttons are an example. They are essentially based on a shortbread mix (with 50/50 flour and ground rice), with the addition of mixed peel, marmalade and a delicious crusty edge coated with sugar. Lepard's recipe specifies demerara sugar, not having any I used brown sugar which made the most delicious crust. I biscuit I'd heartily recommend.

Gyoza

2008-02-14T21:48:00.006+11:00

Last week was Chinese New Year. At Hannah's kinder the activities revolved around this. Lots of pretend dragons, lanterns and fire-crackers were made. She mentioned that they made Chinese dumplings. I quizzed her if they ate them, did they made real dumplings? It appears they did. She thought they were great and wanted more. I'd discovered gyoza a long time back and decided in lieu of knowing much about Chinese dumplings we'd try these together. It was a brilliant idea. Next time I'll know that I just have to measure the filling ingredients and leave my little cook to it.

250g ground pork
250g chopped, steamed cabbage
1 sping onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp ginger, grated
2 tbs soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1-2 tsp sesame oil (optional - we don't use it)
1 tsp sake (optional)
1 package of gyoza skins - from an Asian grocery

Mix together, put 1 teaspoon of filling in each gyoza skin. Wet the edge of the pastry and fold over the filling. Ideally one side is given little pleats, so that one side is flat, the other rounded - but this is detail can be omitted depending on the skill of the cook.

Fry a few gyoza at a time til browned, then add a few tablespoons of water, put lid on and steam for about 5 minutes.

Dipping Sauce
3 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs lemon juice

Alternative Vegetarian Filling
Substitute an equivalent amount of celery (diced finely) together with shitake mushrooms (sliced and steamed) for the pork mince.

Calabrese-style Meatballs

2008-01-30T21:55:00.000+11:00

I've suddenly found myself working full time for a short while in order to complete an important project - normally I only work three days in the week. It has left me a little panicky at the loss of all that lovely lazy time I've got used to having with my small girl, noodling around the museum or the zoo, or making things for the fairies in the garden (for real - there are five of them!) and so on. But it is just divine to come home starving, and my wonderful spouse has dinner ready. Tonight we had these meatballs. They are incredibly good, totally egg-free and because they are cooked by simmering in a tomato sauce - they are soft and gentle and very comforting.

The original recipe has the juice of 1 lemon and it's zest which we're not keen on, we prefer just a little zest. The recipe makes enough for 6 but don't reduce it - it freezes fantastically.

Meatballs
3 thick slices of bread, white or wholemeal
1/2 cup of milk
2 tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tsp salt
500g pork mince
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup coarsely chopped parsley
black pepper

Remove crusts from the bread, break into pieces and mix with the milk and oil. Rest for 15 minutes then mash with a fork until it is all smooth. Place the garlic and salt in a mortar and pestle and grind to a paste.

Mix together with hands all ingredients in a large bowl until well combined. Shape tablespoons of mixture into balls (really you can make them any size you like - I'm quite partial to tiny ones).

The recipe at this point suggest refrigerating the meatballs for 20 minutes - I put them straight into the sauce to no ill affect.

Tomato sauce
1 tbs olive oil
1 small onion, chopped finely
750ml tomato passata (bottled tomato sauce - or the equivalent in tinned tomatoes mushed up with the potato masher)

1 1/2 cups of water
salt and pepper to taste
2 small chilies (optional)

Heat oil in a large frying pan and cook onion until softened but not coloured. Add remaining sauce ingredients and cook uncovered over a medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. (Can I confess to another short cut here - if I'm short on time (often) I don't add any water and just bring the sauce to a simmer before proceeding...).

With the sauce at simmering point (a rolling boil will lead to meatball disintegration) add the meatballs to the sauce, cook uncovered for about 12 minutes, or until cooked through. They may need some gentle turning.

Serve with pasta and more grated Parmesan cheese.

"stained glass" star biscuits

2008-01-01T10:02:00.000+11:00

Um.. a slightly late Christmas biscuit posting. These use the recipe for Laura's shortbread, with the addition of crushed boiled lollies.

They can be any shape, of course, limited only by what biscuit cutters you have access to. In previous years I've made them heart-shaped with a circular cut-out (using the end of a large icing tube to make the circle). The biscuits are best placed on non-stick baking paper before doing the 'cut-out' (as above) as they become very fragile.

The boiled lollies are crushed in a mortar and pestle, though really the pieces just need to be small enough to fit in the cut-out. Our lollies are ground into a fine powder as biscuit making is now a mother and daughter activity, and the assistant cook delights in smashing ingredients to a powder. This can be a little messy (fragments of lolly flying everywhere so it gets done outside, allowing the ants to get a treat.

As a side note, I found it very productive to give Hannah about a quarter of the dough to make her own biscuits - . Her's were Christmas trees decorated as traffic lights (three circular cut-outs). This keeps both of us happy (my desire for the perfect biscuit and her need for creativity).

cranberry cornmeal biscuits

2007-12-13T22:00:00.000+11:00

It's that time of year again when there is a good excuse to make time consuming fancy biscuits. I've pretty much stopped feeling sad about no longer making gorgeous European style biscuits with nut meal and masses of egg white. The shortbread style biscuit can be stretched in a number of interesting directions, and this one has become a favourite. The dried cranberries (or Craisins as they are sold as in the supermarket) are cooked with morello cherry jam and them pureed to form the fruit filling, which is tangy and deliciously chewy.

The origin of this biscuit is on the Martha Stewart site, where it is called Striped Icebox Cookie. Not a very prepossessing name, and I don't claim to have improved it much. It is fairly time consuming to make, but has the virtue that if you double the quantity you get twice as many biscuits for the same amount of work. My changes include removing the egg and substituting dried cranberries for dried sour cherries.

Filling
3/4 cup dried cranberries (I used Craisins)
1/3 cup morello cherry jam
2 tbs water

Place ingredients in a small saucepan and gentle simmer for about 5 minutes. Allow to cool then coarsely puree.

Biscuit
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter
1 cup castor sugar
2 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla essence

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add milk and vanilla and mix in. Add remaining ingredients and mix by hand until a ball of dough forms. Divide the dough into 4 pieces (I did this with the scales and each piece was about 140g).

Roll each piece of dough into a rectangle 9cm x 23cm. I'd recommend drawing a rectangle on a piece of paper, then placing a piece of baking paper over this and rolled each piece out using the rectangle underneath as a guide. When the first piece of dough is rolled, lift it onto a tray with the baking paper underneath it and refrigerate while you roll the next piece of dough on another piece of baking paper. When the second piece of dough is the right shape put it in the fridge and pull the first piece out of the fridge, spread it with one third of the fruit filling. The second piece of dough can be put in place on top of the filling when it is firm enough to handle, carefully peeling away the layer of baking paper. Continue with the remaining dough and filling - the refrigeration makes it possible to spread the fairly stiff filling on what would otherwise be quite a soft dough.

Refrigerate for an hour, then trim the sides and cut the dough into two lengthwise (so that you have two pieces approximately4.5cm x 23cm. Slice into approximately 5mm thick rectangles, and place on non-stick baking paper covered trays, leaving about 20mm between each biscuit.

Bake in a 180 degrees C oven until they just start to change colour, about12-15 minutes. Store in an airtight container.

Article on allergies in the weekend paper

2007-11-19T15:11:00.000+11:00

I jump each time I see a headline with allergies in the media, hoping that there is some real news to give us hope. This article "Rising allergies trend mystifying" in Saturday's Australian doesn't provide any earth shaking news. It reports on the increase in anaphylaxis, " 5 1/2-fold increase in the rate of Australian hospital admissions between 1994 and 2005 for food-related anaphylaxis in the under-fives" and research being done on allergy prevention.

Something that I hadn't heard is that "... we know kids with allergy problems have lower numbers of good bacteria like bifidobacteria and lactobacilli, and higher numbers of pathogenic bacteria, those that can cause disease, in their gut flora than healthy children." This was in the context of trials giving pro-biotics to mums just prior to birth and to new born babies which seems to show a reduction in allergy symptoms.

Ricotta, Orange and Currant Fritters

2007-11-15T22:18:00.000+11:00

As soon as I saw this recipe on Vicious Ange's site I could see we'd need to try it. In Ange's version the recipe includes two eggs - the egg whites stiffly whipped to help keep the fritters light. But whilst egg is useful in this context it is not at all necessary. The baking powder provides some aeration and the use of ricotta means the fritters are naturally quite light. I should give credit to my spouse for suggesting that fritters don't need egg. We have a favourite ricotta and corn fritter with smoked cheese which I'd put in the "don't make until Hannah leaves home" category. Missing them, he suggested trying it anyway without the eggs - something that didn't occur to me. Must type up that recipe some time soon, corn season will soon be upon us.

The currants and orange rind give the fritters a vaguely Christmasy aura - I've made them a second time substituting a finely diced fresh apricot which worked well though I'd strongly recommend the use of a non-stick fry pan. Next weekend I think I'll try some cherries. Anyway give them a go - they are easy and delicious, good with lemon and icing sugar, or just lots of melted butter.

1 cup (150g) plain flour, sifted
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder, sifted
1/3 (73 1/3g) cup caster sugar
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon finely grated orange rind
½ cup (75g) currants

butter for greasing
icing sugar for dusting
lemon wedges to serve

Place, the flour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl and combine. Add the ricotta, milk, orange rind, currants and mix gently.

Heat a lightly greased frying pan (preferably non-stick) over medium heat. Cook 2 tablespoons of the mixture in batches for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden. Dust with icing sugar and serve with lemon wedges.

Brown Sugar Biscuits

2007-11-12T15:57:00.000+11:00

These now compete with the jam drops as favourite biscuit. I strongly recommend splurging on some Billingtons molasses cane sugar. Whilst brown sugar will work, this stuff has the most incredible smell and flavour, and because it is prone to lumpiness, the biscuits have tiny nuggets of sugar that give them a great texture.

Like the jam drops these are well suited to the assistance of a small child. Bizarrely today Hannah declined to help (or even lick the bowl once I'd finished), explaining that as she was a fairy, she was allergic to home-made food and could only eat honey, borek and pizza. It struck me that she never eats bought sweet things (apart from a small amount of confectionery) as there is almost nothing that is safe. The one thing I've encountered (and I should send them a big thank you card) is at Mediterranean Wholesalers, a massive Italian supermarket in Brunswick, which has a cafe with food baked on the premises - wonderously they have a egg and nut free jam biscuit.

125g butter, at room temperature (ie quite soft)
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup dark brown sugar or molasses cane sugar
1 tbs golden syrup or maple syrup
1 1/4 cups self raising flour
1 - 2 tbs water, if needed

Cream the butter, vanilla, sugar and honey until light and creamy. (I use an electric hand-held beater here (a Bamix) which still leaves little lumps of sugar just as desired). Mix in flour and enough water, if required to make a dough. (If the butter is soft enough there is no need for water).

Roll mixture into balls (approximately 1 tablespoon of mixture per ball), and place on greased or baking paper lined tray. Flatten balls slightly with palm of hand, then use a fork to make decorative indentations.

Bake at 150 degrees C for 30 minutes or until firm.

Jam Drops

2007-10-13T20:24:00.001+10:00

This is now a much loved recipe we acquired from Hannah's Grandma. Highly recommended as a recipe to cook with a small person, as rolling the biscuit dough into a ball and making an impression for the jam are ideal activities for small hands.

On the subject of cooking with a small child, may I recommend reading Maisy makes Gingerbread, a story which contains an important detail - Maisy doesn't lick the bowl until the biscuits are in the oven. Hannah, bless her, has taken this on as gospel, quite happy not to consume raw dough as long as there is something in the bowl to 'clean up' when we've finished. Yes I know, she'll wise up soon....

125g butter, softened
75g castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla
185g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbs milk
jam

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla, then add flour, baking powder and milk and mix in well.

Divide the mix up into 40 pieces, roll each piece then flatten slightly. Then create an indent for the jam with your thumb or the end of a wooden spoon or whatever else seems a good size. Spoon in a good 1/2 tsp of jam.

Bake on a greased or lined tray at 180 degrees C for 18-20 minutes. Try to let the jam cool a little before sampling.

Milo biscuits

2007-09-16T21:45:00.000+10:00

I don't know how I came across these biscuits, on a baking blog from Singapore called Happy Home Baking, but I'm glad I found them. Using a mysterious product called 'Koko Krunch' on this site the biscuits are delightfully decorated as little dogs. We've experimented with the recipe a few times using Milo instead of Horlicks, and we do nothing fancier than place a piece of chopped up chocolate in the middle; some with milk chocolate, some with dark. I've modified the recipe to include a little sugar, otherwise I think they'd need a lot more chocolate.

They are an excellent biscuit to make with a child as the dough is nice to handle and one could go to town decorating them. Bizarrely I've discovered that Hannah much prefers them with dark chocolate - is this common amongst four year olds?

180g softened butter
80g Milo
80g castor sugar
200g flour
25g corn flour
25g milk powder
a couple of squares of nut-free chocolate, chopped into small pieces

Pre-heat the oven to 140 degrees C.

Cream butter with Milo and sugar, then mix in flour, cornflour and milk powder. Divide the dough up into 48 pieces. Roll and slightly flatten each ball of dough, then place a piece of chocolate in the middle.

Place onto a lined baking tray and bake for about 25 minutes.

egg-free french toast

2007-09-09T21:24:00.000+10:00

This is an egg-free breakfast treat from a vegan source, and is heartily enjoyed by myself and Hannah, though disdained by Hannah's dad who is a French toast purist. I've made it with a couple of different brands of silken tofu, and I should warn that they vary in consistency. An Asian brand from the supermarket made a much thinner batter than an organic brand I found yesterday, so treat the milk quantities as a guide only. The recipe as I received it contained a tsp of vanilla which I've omitted as I don't fancy it and includes the cinnamon in the tofu mix, suggesting maple syrup as a condiment. I was taught to serve french toast with cinnamon sugar, separately, and of course now I'm not allowed to do anything else.

Tofu French Toast

75g silken or soft tofu
2-4 tbs milk
butter
3 slices of stale bread
4 tbs castor sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Blend the tofu and milk in a bowl with a Bamix or liquifie in a food processor. It should be the consistency of two beaten eggs so vary milk as needed. Dip pieces of bread into the mixture and fry in a little melted butter until browned on each side.

Mix sugar with cinnamon and sprinkle on liberally.

Cauliflower baked in Tomato Sauce

2007-08-02T22:03:00.000+10:00

I buying cook books, and I've also a particular weakness for a good reference book. When I saw Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: the essential reference at work a while ago, my heart did flip flops. It has 133 detailed entries on the less common veggies (and mushrooms) with great photos, information on history, storage, preparation and cooking. I'm not convinced that all of the recipes are winners - but even the less appetising ones make clear how to approach something new. Now that I'm a happy owner of it, I'm attempting to not be intimidated by its size and make friends with it. I has turned out to be a really good guide to the wackier things at the markets. I've learnt that kohlrabi is really yummy raw and sublime grated, and fried with thinly sliced bacon. And I found this gorgeous way of cooking cauliflower, a perfect accompaniment to some rice and dahl (not that cauliflower is unusual in my books). Make lots as it is even better cold the next day.

Cauliflower baked in Tomato Sauce

1 tbs coriander seeds
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 inch knob of ginger, grated
1 medium onion, diced
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 to 1/2 tsp of chili powder (or to taste)
1 tsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups tomato juice
1 medium-large cauliflower

Coriander, yoghurt and rice to serve

Set oven to 200 degrees C. Gently heat coriander, cumin and fennel seeds in a saucepan until fragrant, then finely grind.

Heat oil in a saucepan, add onion and cook until softened. Add garlic, ginger, spice mixture, turmeric, chili (if using), sugar and salt. Cook for a minute or two, then add tomato juice and simmer for 5 minutes.

Trim cauliflower, cutting close to the curd. Spread the cauliflower out in a 2 quart baking dish. Cover completely with sauce. Cover and bake until tender - 30-35 minutes. Then remove top and allow to brown.

Not a recipe post...

2007-07-25T22:11:00.000+10:00

...but I had to share what I found in the sales a few weeks ago.

I don't speak much of the passion in this house for penguins. It started probably two years ago when we had a brilliant kid's book out from the library which outlined the life story of the Emperor penguin. At the zoo we always check out the little penguins, and the number of soft toy penguins continue to grow. Hannah is currently very taken with wearing a dress-up wedding dress, but not without her baby penguin stuffed down the front.

When I chanced upon a penguin waffle maker in the end of financial year sales (discontinued I believe and it was the last in the shop) want else could I do? More waffle recipes to come....

Hannah is now four

2007-07-15T21:45:00.000+10:00

This year Hannah's birthday cake was much simpler, and gave no less pleasure. She's been long taken with making and drawing things with the 'rainbow' colours, and the few real rainbows that we've seen have been very exciting. So a chocolate cake, (recipe doubled) baked in a roasting dish before being carved, was the substrate, butter cream the icing and jelly beans the decoration. It accompanied tiny cup-cakes with rainbow 100's and 1000's, star biscuits and fairy bread.

For me there was a bit of a cloud over the proceedings as earlier in the week we had our annual allergy review. Counter to last years results, all the tests showed an increased response the allergens. My earlier optimism looks a little misplaced. For the first time we had all the tree nuts tested as well and it was bizarre seeing how some were as dangerous as peanut (cashew and pistachio) and others nuts produced no reaction (walnut, pine nut and macadamia). Sadly my favourite nut, the almond turns out to be one that does cause a response. The specialist suggested we continue as before - avoiding all nuts, particularly when going out as it can as otherwise it will be confusing, and we want to minimise risk. However if I wish I can introduce pine nuts, as long as I do it very cautiously (starting by touching the inside of her lip with a piece of pine nut). We asked about if or when they might be able to challenge Hannah with egg or nuts, to be told that with results lower than hers challenging can still lead to anaphylaxis, that we'd just need to wait and see.

On the positive side Hannah told me after we'd been to the local library recently, that a lady there had offered her a biscuit and Hannah had refused it saying she had allergies. Yes, I feel I was negligent not watching her every minute of our visit, (I was hunting for a book for her, so had my back to her). But she appears to now have a good enough grasp of her situation that she can act appropriately. And for that I'm grateful, and very proud of her.

Possible vaccine for peanut allergy ?

2007-05-22T21:42:00.000+10:00

Last week on the 7.30 Report on the ABC there was a segment on allergies. This link takes you to a transcript and the segment itself (although I'm not sure how long the video on demand is archived). Not much in the show was news, it was mainly concerned with awareness raising, however I something that I was unaware of, reasearchers from Melbourne's very own Alfred Hospital "are leading the world in developing a peanut vaccine they hope could be available within five to 10 years". Neat stuff.

Happy Birthday to me... afternoon tea sandwiches

2007-05-15T21:59:00.000+10:00

I recently had an afternoon tea party to celebrate reaching 40. Mostly it was for me, though naturally I catered carefully for Hannah. She was particularly excited to make and decorate a cake for me (chocolate cake with pink icing, dinosaurs and jelly beans - very sweet!) and she helped me blow out the candles.

I did make a few things that were not Hannah-safe. Partly because I adore fancy cake making and decided that my birthday treat to myself was to take a day off work and cook up a storm. And partly because I felt I've been very overprotective of what my girl encounters and feel that now that she is old enough to understand she can't eat everything. I'm unsure it's the right thing to do though. Poor mite look so crestfallen when she saw the chocolate hazelnut dacquoise put on the table and could see it wasn't for her. Of course when the fairy bread appeared she forgot all about it, but I felt a bit mean. Any thoughts...

Cucumber Tea Sandwiches
cucumber
salt and pepper
white wine vinegar
light wholemeal bread sliced very thinly and lightly buttered

Peel the cucumber and slice into very thin slices. Sprinkle with a little of the vinegar and a little salt and allow to drain in a seive for about 1/2 hour. Pat dry with a paper towel and place 2 layers of cucumber on the bread, sprinkling light with some black pepper, then topping with anoth er slice of bread. Trim off the crusts and cut into small triangles.

Goat Cheese and Watercress Tea Sandwiches
Soft fresh goat cheese
watercress leaves washed and chopped finely
salt and pepper
sliced lightly buttered white bread

Spread the goat cheese on the bread, season and add a watercress. I like a lot, but this does impact on the structural integrity of the sandwich. Mixing the cheese and watercress beforehand may help. Top with another slice of bread. Trim off the crusts and cut into small triangles.

Smoked Salmon Sandwiches
cream cheese
smoked salmon
salt and pepper
lemon juice
freshly chopped dill and chives
sliced lightly buttered white bread

Spread cream cheese on the bread, season and cover in salmon. Squeeze on a little lemon juice and sprinkle dill and chives to taste. Top with another slice of bread. Trim off the crusts and cut into small triangles.

Allergy Awareness time

2007-05-09T21:29:00.000+10:00

Ria from Check my tag left a comment pointing out that next week in the USA it is Allergy Awareness Week. In Australia this week is Anaphylaxis Awareness Week. We've been very lucky in not having first hand knowledge of an Anaphylaxis reaction, but under the advice of Hannah's allergy doctor we always have an Epipen at hand.

Hannah's allergies were diagnosed when she was a breast-feeding baby (she reacted to the eggs and nut proteins in my breast milk from what I was eating), and so far we have been able been able to avoid her ingesting either allergan. I have a sense of what we're up against by her reaction to sesame seeds, which according to the prick tests and the advice of the doctor are not a serious reaction. If Hannah ends up eating a one or two seeds her face almost instantly goes a blotchy itchy red for the rest of the day.

Now that Hannah's nearly four I feel that I can say we are managing really well. Cooking for her has stopped being a problem. She goes to a childcare centre a couple of days a week. The centre has a nut-free policy, and are committed to making sure it is a safe environment (Hannah is one of a number of kids in this small centre with allergy issues). Eating out is never going to be stress free but I'm good at always carrying safe snacks with me and am ever appreciative with the friends and family who take the issue seriously and cater for her. However in February 2009 my girl will start primary school and I must say that the thought fills me with a certain amount of terror. But we will face that when we need to.

Penguin Cake revisited

2007-04-17T21:28:00.000+10:00

I didn't expect the penguin cake I made for Hannah's last birthday would be a major source of traffic to this site. But then I didn't expect my daughter's favourite toy would be penguins (now seven in number, including Ruby the wicked emperor penguin who constantly instructs Hannah on naughty stuff to do).

In response to a recent comment here is an approximation of how I put the cake together. The large cake was in a made in an 8 inch round tin, the smaller in a 4 inch. They were then trimmed approximately as illustrated (I suspect I rounded the corners of the body a little more once these cuts were made) :

The offcuts from the big cake were trimmed into approximate feet shapes. Then the cake pieces were covered entirely with appropriately coloured fondant icing. I then trimmed away the icing from the parts of the feet and the head that were going to touch the body so that they could sit snugly in place. I may have glued them in place with jam, I vaguely recall jam being very useful.

The body and head were covered in a chocolate fondant (pre-made) and I mixed up a little food colouring with some fondant to get the feet and beak colour. The white front is a separate piece that sits on top of the body, as do the flippers and the eyes. I recall wanting to inset the white piece into the chocolate body, but at that point it was 12.30 at night and I decided simplicity was OK. The nice thing about sitting one layer on top of another is you can fiddle a little to get it in the right spot. I may have given it a gentle roll with a rolling pin to help the layers hold together once it was all in place.

Lemon Cornmeal Pancakes

2007-03-26T14:45:00.000+10:00

I love a big Sunday morning breakfast. But if I sleep in, I need to eat fast before hunger induced crankiness descends - no time for fussing around. I decided I'd make waffles for Sunday breakfast, I'd inherited my Nana's waffle iron, it was time to finally give it a go. I found an egg-free recipe from the wonderful Vegan with a Vengeance book, and made sure the night before that I had all of the ingredients.

However it is a bit rough cooking something new with fewer than half the brain cells functioning. I'd decided to go dairy rather than soy; cow milk and yogurt substitute well enough for soy milk and yogurt. But then I decided instead of oil to use up some of the butter that melted on Friday 'cause we forgot to put it in the fridge and was almost a puddle when I got home from work. I remelted the butter and st ired it in; sadly it set in lots of little lumps as it came in contact with the icy cold milk and yogurt. This necessitated a bit of careful heating of the milk in order that the butter remelt.

I haven't used a waffle iron since I was a kid, but I seem to recall heating it for a while, pouring some mix in, and in a moment, waffle magic. Well sadly that didn't happen. I think the non-stick surface was no-longer non-stick. Cooked, the waffles would split in half as I opened the waffle iron to remove them. After messing up three, things were getting bad; I'd burnt myself, I was insanely hungry, the small one was under my feet, hungry and very keen t0 see what mum was doing and have a go. So I heated up the fry pan, diluted the waffle mix with a bit more milk and made pancakes and they were fantastic. Two things to remember next time: the pancakes need to sit for a minute; they magically change from being doughy and a bit yuk to crisp, and no need to keep tabs on the maple syrup bottle - the small girl doesn't like it

Dry ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup cornmeal (I used yellow maize flour from the local organic wholefoods shop)

Wet ingredients
1/4 cup corn oil (veg or canola oil will do, don't use butter unless you warm the milk)
2 1/2 cups dairy or soy milk (may need to add a little more if this is still too thick)
1/4 cup dairy or soy yogurt
zest and juice from 2 lemons
1/4 cup sugar

Sift together the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. In a medium bowl, mix together all the wet ingredients (including sugar and lemon juice/zest) until well combined. Create a well in the center of the flour mixture and slowly blend in the wet ingredients until combined.

Heat a non-stick fry pan, and make pancakes as desired.

Serve with blueberry sauce or pure maple syrup.

Eating out...

2007-03-11T22:50:00.000+11:00

... can be a fraught activity. Planning is often essential, I usually carry food with me if I'm not sure what will be available. Calling ahead is not a bad idea.

If a quick cheap calorie hit is necessary there are few reliable options. The ham, cheese and tomato sandwich (or variations of the same) is a beauty, fresh or toasted. Hot potato chips are great, and fortunately for us they now get the thumbs up - could you believe there could exist a toddler that didn't like chips - yes I had one. Pies are to be avoided - I've yet to find one without an egg glaze. Be careful with to check that sandwiches don't contain mayonnaise (which might be egg-free - but must be checked) and that darn pesto stuff is still ubiquitous on salads, in sandwiches and the like. Battered fish can be OK, but always ask, we recently bought some (really nice) fish and chips on the beach at Mornington, and for the first time in my experience discovered that there was egg in the batter.

Pizza is usually safe too, but again always ask. Recently we were at a friend's wedding. By the time we got to the food at the reception Hannah was ready to pounce on everything. I'd had a glass of lovely wine, was relaxed and full of good will with the world and seeing the mini pizzas thought yay, perfect food for Hannah. Thankfully a waiter passed in front of me at that moment, I figured I should check whether there was anything else that might be suitable. The waiter got the chef, the chef went through everything with me, and believe it or not, the pizzas had egg in them. Scones are another food that sometimes unexpectedly have egg in them.

The really awkward moments come when you are in the sort of place that doesn't make it's own food. This seems to be becoming more common, it has happened to us a few times at lunch bars in the city. There is usually only one member of staff who knows were the ingredient information is kept, and by the time you have a clear idea what is and isn't safe you feel you've inconvenienced a bunch of other customers.

Our favourite fast food is the Lebanese spinach and cheese triangle. Sadly I've only encountered them on Sydney Road, it is a form of fast food that I'd love to see more freely available. Cheap (we usually pay around $2.60), very yummy, nutritious, and totally egg and nut free. How can you beat that. Fine dining, well at the moment with Hannah we don't. Top pick for a good meal is going out to I Carusi for some really fine pizza, (which has the advantage that the pizza making is on display and fun to watch which helps the young girl to pass that agonising time between ordering and receiving the goods).

I keep hoping this part of our lives will become easier, and in a way it is, as Hannah is prepared to eat a wider range of food. But as a parent, one can never become complacent and never assume a food prepared by somebody else is egg or nut free, just because it usually is.

Shoo Fly or Currant Buns

2007-02-17T16:34:00.000+11:00

On one of Hannah's Playschool dvd's there is a song about currant buns. They became a big topic of conversation, and so last weekend she helped me make them. It's a pretty simple recipe if you have a Bamix or food processor for pureeing the orange needed in the recipe. You just need to allow time for rising (this can be an issue if your cooking with a little person who wants instant results).

The other problem with making yeast goods with a three-year-old is with all the will and effort in the world, they lack the muscle to make a decent effort at kneading. I've a suspicion that sometimes the required kneading is over-rated. One day I meant to blog about the Dan Lepard bread workshop I attended last year which demonstrated very successfully how to make good bread without kneading.

The recipe is from a cracker of a book, 'Baker; the best of international baking from Australian and New Zealand professionals' by Dean Brettschneider and Lauraine Jacobs. The shoo fly bun recipe originates from Babka in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, which is a sublime place for breakfast or lunch. They are best the day made (sublime freshly buttered when still warm from the oven), but re-heated the next day (to counter staleness) the buns are still good. I've adapted the recipe a little, putting less salt and have halved the amount of currants (until I've worked out how to avoid them getting charred by the oven when they sit on top of the bun).

500g plain flour
1 tsp salt
50g sugar
25g skim milk powder
50g unsalted butter
8g dried yeast
150g water
250g (about 1/2) pureed oranges (chop up, remove pips, puree)
125g currants

Place flour, salt, sugar, milk powder, and butter into a bowl. Make a well and add the yeast, water and pureed oranges. Mix then knead for 10-15 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic. You want a soft, not too firm dough so adding some more flour or water may be necessary.

Add currants, gently incorporating them into the dough. Place dough in oiled bowl. Cover with cling wrap, leave in a warmish place (23-25 degrees C) and allow to double in size (about 1 1/2 hours).

Gently knock back the dough so that it deflates, cover and leave for 30 minutes.

Tip dough onto a lightly floured surface and cut into 12 pieces. Mould each piece into a ball. This is done by cupping the hand over a dough piece on a flour-less bench, applying downwards pressure and moving your hand around in circular motions. (If making with a small person use any method that works!).

Place on a greased baking tray, cover again with cling wrap and allow to rise for about 1 hour or until nearly doubled in size.

Place in pre-heated 200 degree C oven and bake for 15-20 minutes. They should be lightly coloured on the sides and a little darker on the top. Brush immediately with glaze.

Sticky Bun Glaze:
50g sugar
2 tbs water
a little orange zest

Bring to the boil in a saucepan until sugar dissolved.

Mystery plum

2007-02-05T14:36:00.000+11:00

Out of curiousity I'm posting photos of the plums mentioned in the previous post. I'd be most interested to hear if anyone recognises the variety. The two specimens below are what I'd regard as over-ripe, but photograph clearly shows up their unusual shape.

Plum Sorbet

2007-02-03T22:13:00.000+11:00

We've lovely Italian neighbours on both sides of our house; one of them is an ardent a fruit and veggie grower as me. Every year we get gifts of excess fruit, plus I'm commanded to pick everything that hangs over the fence (figs, grapes, persimmons, perennial chilies...). We're currently working our way through a big bag of stone fruit; some white nectarines with greenish yellow skins the likes of which I've never seen before, and some greenish yellow plums (long with points at either end) again a novelty to me. The nectarines are lovely, I been eating them my favourite way, chopped up with yoghurt and honey for breakfast. The plums.... well I'm not really a plum eater. Looking guiltily at the neglected bowlful I decided to trying stewing them and turning them into a sorbet. So if they were a bit bland I could zip things up with some more sugar and lemon juice.

Well if I'd known how good was going to end up I'd have taken some before shots, it was just sublime. The sorbet was rich and plumy in a totally unfamiliar way. Hannah's Dad pointed out that if one hadn't know what the fruit was, it would be assumed to be tropical and exotic.

I'm not sure how repeatable this is, but I'm now inclined to try out other plum varieties (the organic stalls at Vic Market always have a large selection of varieties at this time of year). So what I did is as follows:

10 or so plums (enough to make 2 cups of stewed fruit)
Sugar to taste, probably around 1/2 cup

Stew plums, if you cook them really slowly to start with you can avoid adding water, otherwise add about a tablespoon just so they don't catch as they commence cooking.

Cook on a gentle heat until very soft. Cool and puree. Check they are sweet enough, add a little castor sugar if you think they need it.

Pour into ice-cream machine and process until the right consistency.

Pyrohy

2007-01-13T21:59:00.000+11:00

Every year my family celebrates Christmas twice, on the 25th like most folk and then again about two weeks later to mark my Ukrainian Dad’s Christmas (which is later as the Orthodox church follows the Julian calendar which is somewhat out of sync with the Gregorian calendar used in the west.)

The second Christmas meal is usually a lot simpler; this year we held it at my house (yay for having a new kitchen!). I cooked a pair of roast chooks, the usual veg, and decided for a change to add a Ukrainian component. Now I should point out here that my beloved dad learnt to cook in Australia, so I didn’t grow up with any Ukrainian food traditions. I do however have two rather nice Ukrainian cookbooks (Traditional Ukrainian Cookery by Savella Stechishin and Festive Ukrainian Cooking by Marta Pisetska Farley) from which I have obtained this recipe.

Pyrohy are the Ukrainian equivalent of ravioli, also known as varenyky in the eastern parts of Ukraine and pierogi in Poland. I’d made them before in my pre-motherhood days, and hadn’t considered cooking them again as just like good ravioli, the dough contains egg. However while reading the Stechishin book a little closer I noticed there was an option for an egg-free dough, using evapourated milk. To my surprise it worked a dream. I can now see no reason not to use the same recipe for egg-free home-made pasta.

Pyrohy dough:
2 ½ cups flour
½ tsp salt
1-2 tbs butter, melted
½ to 1 cup evaporated milk
¼ cup of water as needed

Place flour and salt in a bowl, forming a well in the middle, add evapourated milk and enough water to form a medium soft dough. Knead until dough sticks together, allow to rest for a few minutes, then knead until smooth. Rest, covered, for at least 30 minutes. (It may be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for a day or so, bring to room temperature before rolling out).

At this point you can either roll the dough out by hand to 1/8th inch thickness or do like I did and use a pasta machine which is much easier. The dough is then cut into circles with whatever you have at hand. 3 to 4 inches wide are suggested in my books, I used a 2 inch scone cutter; just remember the smaller they are, the more work you have on your hands (because you end up making a lot more). They can also be cut into squares which would be much quicker, but less cute.

Then about a teaspoon of filling (or a tablespoon if you are making 4 inch circles) is placed on each circle and they are folded in half and sealed by squeezing the edges with your fingers. A dab of water around the edges before you fold can make the edges adhere better if the dough is on the dry side. Try not to get any filling on the edges as it will then leak when you cook it. Place filled pyrohy on a teatowel, floured board or non-stick tray, and be careful that they don’t stick together.

Bring a large pot of water to a vigorous boil, add as many as you can without them sticking together (with my stockpot and this recipe I managed to cook them in 4 batches). Boil for 3-4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon or sieve and drain thoroughly. Place in a deep dish and coat evenly with melted butter to prevent them sticking. Cover and keep hot until all are cooked.

They can be served just with butter, with sour cream, topped with browned buttered bread crumbs, and/or chopped crisped bacon. If you are lucky enough to have leftovers they can be reheated by steaming them, or fried in yet more butter until golden.

Potato filling:
2 tbs onion, grated or very finely chopped
2 tbs butter
2 cups cold mashed potato
1 cup of cottage cheese (or more if you prefer)

Mix and add salt and pepper to taste. One of my books says to sieve the cottage cheese, I think life is too short and am not concerned with the cottage cheese being visible in the filling.

They can also be filled with cheese, cabbage, mushroom, ham, or made as a desert with a sweet plum filling.

Vietnamese beef and noodle soup...

2007-01-04T20:47:00.000+11:00

otherwise know as pho bo or juice with wiggley worms.

It's probably crazy making this at home as it's a soup dish that is easily and cheaply avaliable in Vietnamese restaurants. However the satisfaction to effort ratio makes it a winner. It is also on of those great dishes that allows those of us who love chilli to go to town, whilst not offending the children. The recipe is from Meera Freeman's The Vietnamese Cookbook. A peculiarity with this recipe is that while it claims to serve 6-8, the three of us manage to consume most of it in a sitting. For more servings the soup may require a little diluting (probably not a bad idea, as this recipe makes a very strong stock).

1kg beef shin bone (cut into pieces)
500g brisket (gravy beef is fine)
1 thumb sized knob of fresh, peeled ginger
2 scrolls cassia bark (cinnamon would probably do)
2 star anise
2 finely sliced brown onions
500g fresh rice noodles or hokkien noddles (not authentic, but prefered in this house)

2 spring onions, finely sliced
a piece of rump steak or scotch fillet, finely sliced
2 tbs coriander, finely chopped
fresh red chillies, finely sliced
lemon or lime juice
bean shoots, washed

Bring three litres of water to boil with shin bones and ginger. Skim any scum off and add brisket/gravy beef and 4 tablespoons of fish sauce. Simmer for four hours.

Add cassia bark, star anise and onions, and cook for an additional half hour. Strain into a fresh pot and allow to cool. Skim fat as desired.

When ready, boil water and drop rice noodles in for 10 seconds, just to heat through (a bit longer if you use the yellow hokkien noodles). Bring soup to the boil. Place noodles in serving bowls and put thinly sliced raw beef on top, plus chopped spring onion. Add a few cupfuls of the boiling soup to each bowl and watch the meat cook before your eyes. You can also add some thinly sliced brisket if desired.

Serve with chillies, lemon/lime juice, bean shoots, sliced onion, corriander, etc to taste.

the kitchen

2006-12-26T09:18:00.000+11:00

We moved back into the kitchen about a month ago. It is sheer bliss having everything in the one room. The kitchen is still petite, but having deeper benches make a huge difference as does substantial more storage. The only unforseen design error was placing the drawers so close to the stove, making two person use of the kitchen some what squeezy at times.

There is still not quite enough storage space (and I've done a big purge), so we decided a dresser was the way to go...
Possibily not the most efficient use of space, but it was a case of love at first sight.

Most importantly, see how well Rufus goes with the new linoleum....

Still to be completed: repair and paint window and door frames, a storage chest/ padded seat for Rufus for under the side window (which is not visible in above photos) and bookcases. We're planning to get built-in book-cases on either side of fireplaces in the study and living room. When this is done there will be a number of freed-up bookcases which can then live in the kitchen (and solve the book storage crisis). And maybe one day a new kitchen table and chairs.

Moist Chocolate Crazy Cake

2006-12-07T22:27:00.000+11:00

I don't know where I found the link to this article, it's an interesting look at the one bowl chocolate cake (or 'dump' cake, a term I've never encountered before). A range of food professionals bake six different recipes of this nature and rate them. The one that caught my attention, being egg-free, was Shirley Corriher's Moist Chocolate Crazy Cake.

The joy of this type of recipe is the minimal effort and cleaning up required. This recipe actually states that the cake can be mixed in a non-stick cake tin, not having one I used a normal aluminium tin with paper lining, and mixed the cake in a bowl. And I substitute melted butter for oil, as I prefer the taste. It is a very quick cake, if you're happy to eat it warm, you can be eating it within an hour of starting. And it is yummy.

Moist Chocolate Crazy Cake

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/4 cups castor sugar
1/3 cup of cocoa (not Dutch-processed)
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp salt
90g butter, melted (recipe calls for 1/3 cup oil)
1 tsp vinegar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup cold water or coffee

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. In an 8- by 8- by 2-inch nonstick cake tin, stir together flour, sugar, cocoa, bicarb soda and salt. Poke three holes in ingredients with handle of a wooden spoon. Pour butter or oil into one hole. Do not mind if it overflows. Spoon vinegar into second hole and the vanilla into last. Pour cold water over the top and stir ingredients until smooth.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Place the pan on a rack to cool. Serve from the pan. Serves 8.

Broad Bean Spread

2006-11-13T15:35:00.000+11:00

The broad beans are the last of the spring veggies in the garden. I didn't get many beans this year as I'm practicing hard love on the garden and haven't been watering much. This is a blessing in disguise as much as I love them, it is possible to have too much. I remember the first year I grew a huge bed of them, ending up with many buckets full. After much blanching and freezing there were more in the fridge than I could ever want.

I usually cook too many when I prepare them as a side dish, so Hannah and I ended up preparing this as a spread for crackers or bread.

1 cup cooked broad beans (shelled beans are boiled for about 5 minutes then thrown into cold water which causes the skins to spilt and makes removal easy)
1 or 2 lemons (to taste)
a good glug of oil
a good pinch of salt
some crushed garlic if desired

Puree the broad beans. We use a mortar and pestle as nothing seems to please a three year old as much as pounding something to a pulp with a lot of noise (no crushed fingers so far!).

Then add lemon juice, oil, salt and garlic to taste and mix well.

Asparagus Pasta

2006-10-20T20:17:00.000+10:00

We grow asparagus. There are four plants at the back of the garden, and with no attention apart from a yearly feed of manure, there seems to be enough for the three of us, for 2 or 3 meals a week for about 6 weeks. This post commemorates the end of our asparagus season, at which point I'm usually happy to leave the plant alone to send its ferny shoots skywards.

I love asparagus with hollandaise sauce, but obviously we don't do that here. Asparagus with melted butter and lemon is the bees knees, and I love this pasta recipe. My mum gave it to me a long time ago, and it has mutated and simplified alot. This year I added a little bacon to it, as we get the best bacon in the world (from Hagans, the organic butcher at Vic Market, damn that Age article for mentioning it).

1 onion, diced finely
splash of olive oil
1-2 rashers of bacon, cut finely
a handful of asparagus, thinly sliced
a few tbs of cream

Put enough pasta for three on.

Soften onion in a frying pan with some olive oil, then add bacon and fry. When the pasta is 5 minutes from being done add the asparagus to the onions, turn down the heat down to the minimum and cook with the lid on the frying pan. When pasta is done, add cream to frying pan and heat. Then tip in drained pasta and mix thoroughly.

Serve with parmasean cheese.

no food in this one

2006-09-21T21:53:00.000+10:00

I haven't written for a while - partly as I've been exhausted by the number of colds I picked up this year, and partly as the kitchen is not ... quite ... finished ... yet ...

The functional bit of the kitchen is all done - the immense pleasure of using a fully functional stove is only slightly clouded with getting my head around this fan-forced oven business. I still feel my back sing as I prepare food at a 95cm high bench. And there is almost enough storage. Remaining to do is painting, light installation and new flooring (which will be marmoleum - beautiful genuine lino in a bright blue shade). So we continue to live with the 'fridge in the bathroom, kitchen table in the louge room and lots of other stuff in passages and under beds.

The painting would have been finished months ago, but I foolishly decided the wood paneling around the walls (I believe dado is the correct albeit ridiculous word) would look better if stripped before painting. I did not anticipate what a mammoth task this would be.

This is just at start of the process - aren't the different colours pretty? We're much more efficient now at removing more paint in one go, but I'll spare you the details.

This is what was underneath. And what keeps me going, I really rather like that dark rail! Shame it turns to pine half-way around the room.

I won't go on as I don't want to turn into a renovation blog. Hope to blog more when I cook more. Well, see how we go.

Egg-free egg and bacon pie

2006-07-14T23:56:00.000+10:00

Whenever I see a food allergy cookbook, I usually pick it up eagerly, flip through it quickly and put it down with a bit of a sigh. I guess the problem is that we are just dealing with two of a range of allergies, and I (fortunately) don't need to know how to cook without gluten or milk or the number of other foods that can be a problem. I've (mostly) worked out how to adapt recipes with egg in them, and it is easy to avoid cooking with nuts. I just keep hoping somehow to replace those yummy things that are now in the past; satay sauce, omlette, etc...

I found this book 'Allergies, egg, nut and dairy" by Jody Vassallo (Fortiori 2005) recently at the local library. I excitedly borrowed it, as it had one recipe in it that gave me a real 'ohhhh' moment. And eating it made me smile. You see I really love egg and bacon pie. I love it hot, cold, at the table or in a picnic basket. I won't say this tastes exactly the same, but it fills the same food niche. And incidently Hannah loves it.

I've changed the original recipe by substituting onions for leeks as the beautiful leek is currently not acceptable. You can make a single large pie as described, or 4 perky little pies if you have some small pie tins. I haven't put in the crust recipe given in the book as it wasn't to my taste. Commercial puff pastry (the one with butter in it) works well, or make your favourite shortcrust pastry.

Bacon and Tofu Pie

1 medium onion, finely chopped
250g bacon chopped
200g mushrooms, sliced
300g silken tofu
1 tsp honey mustard
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese

Bake pastry lined pie tin for 15 minutes, with beans then a further 10 without.

Fry onion and bacon in 1 tbs olive oil, for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes or until soft. Spoon the mixture into the pastry shell. Put the tofu and mustard into a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Pour the mixture over the filling, sprinkle with the cheese and bake for 30 minutes or until the tofu is set. Set aside for 5 minutes before slicing. Serves 4-6

12 month allergy review

2006-07-13T21:17:00.000+10:00

Yesterday was a day that I'd been both looking forward to and dreading. The annual visit to the Children's Hospital to see what is happening with Hannah's allergies. The results look cautiously optomistic. The egg and nut allergies are still there, but don't appear to getting worse, and there is a possibility now that she will grow out of them.

The way they are checked is through a pick test; the nurse marks up the back with texta, dabbs suspected allergens on the grid and then pricks each dot of liquid with a scapel blade. Hannah was superbly brave during this process. We had peanut, egg, sesame seeds, house dust mite and rye grass tested plus a control and histamine. After a wait of 10 minutes the size of each reaction is measured, and the measurement is converted into a score.

The results show Hannah is allergic to eggs and peanut still but a little less than last year, which is positive. The specialist pointed out that the yearly measurements plateauing like this suggests that she will grow out of these allergies. I asked about foods with 'traces of nuts' and was told they are ok, though we were advised to continue to carry the epipen. The sesame seed gave a small score, not enough to be concerned about, though we wont be eating a lot of tahini in the future. And no result for rye grass.

The bad news is that house dust mite measure has more than doubled, making asthma more likely in the future. I've come home with a brochure with lots of housekeeping advice for Hannah's bedroom.

Penguin cake

2006-07-09T22:56:00.000+10:00

My girl is now three. We celebrated with a very small party (the kitchen is still incomplete and in a state of upheaval). And the cake was a penguin. It consisted of coconut cake (the recipe doubled to make enough for the body and the head). I baked it at my mum's which was best place to do it, as I had access to her excellent cake tin collection - yes the head of the penguin was baked in a 4 inch cake tin - who would have thought such a thing existed. The cake was then frozen, sliced in half so the middle could be slathered with strawberry jam, then carved into an appropriate penguin shape. This was then slathered with more jam (to make the icing stick), then covered with plain and chocolate Orchard icing. A little of the icing was coloured with food dyes for the beak and feet. I roughed out a vague design myself, not liking the 'Linux' style penguin in the Australian Women's Weekly's 'Kid's Birthday Cakes' book. And it went down very well.

A picture of penguin before the candles got him. I chose a penguin in the end as it seems be one of the more major of Hannah's current obsessions (along with dinosaurs, Meg books and being a dragon or a butterfly). There are currently five penguins living at our house and they're all starting to look well loved (read; 'in need of a wash').

Edited to add: check the entry Penguin Cake revisited which gives more info on how I put this together.

Butterscotch Buttons

2006-06-23T23:05:00.000+10:00

These were the last thing I cooked in the oven, before I got sensible and helped the spouse finish emptying the kitchen out. Bye bye oven - hope you're on your way to some meaningful recycled future, and thanks for giving my food your all despite those unfortunate structural flaws.

From the Womans Weekly's 'Sweet old fashioned favourites' cookbook, these are cute and very morish- think of a small round brown-sugar coloured shortbread with no decoration bar the imprint of fork tines.

No photos I afraid, our Canon A70 camera has completely given up the ghost. It has been slowing packing it in over the last few months, the LCD occasionally showing strange purple-black lines which would disappear with a gentle tap. A bit of a web search showed it was a very common failing of these cameras, however after a visit to the service centre, Canon refused to admit it is a flaw in the camera. We've yet to work out what non-Canon camera will grace our home next.

125g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tbs golden syrup
1 1/4 cups self raising flour

Beat the butter, vanilla essence, sugar and golden syrup until light and fluffy. Stir in flour. Roll into about 40 balls, each of approximately 2 teaspoons of mixture (or go larger or small as suits). Bake in a slow oven for about 30 minutes or until firm.

Nana's Christmas Pudding

2006-06-21T21:53:00.000+10:00

This is the Christmas pudding I make every year. It's a rich, beautifully flavoured recipe which my nana used to make every year (I suspect she made several batches as I know often gave puddings as gifts). Sadly she is no longer alive, that she passed the recipe on to me is something that I treasure.

Why mention Christmas pudding now? Well I make two, a big family one for the big Christmas meal, and tiny one (using the mix that doesn't fit in my big pudding bowl) for winter solstice for just the three of us. I've written down the recipe just as it was given to me, and yes it has almonds and eggs in it. The last two years I've just omitted those ingredients, which leaves the pudding a little less well structured on unmoulding, but no less delicious. You could start making this years Christmas pudding any time now...

4oz prunes
1 cup raisins
2oz preserved ginger
1 cup sultanas
1 cup currants
4oz mixed peel
grated rind and juice of 2 lemons and 2 oranges
1/3 cup rum
1/3 cup stout
1/3 cup brandy
3 eggs
6 cups or 12oz fresh breadcrumbs (one large loaf of white bread)
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
½ tsp cinnamon
pinch ground ginger
pinch salt
6oz butter
3 oz ground almond

Marinate fruit in rum and brandy, fruit rind and juices. Stand overnight

Cream butter, add brown sugar,spices and salt and beat until mixed. Add eggs one at a time. Add fruit and stout alternately with ground almonds and breadcrumbs.

Put into well greased 4 pint pudding basin, filling it no more than ¾. Cover top of basin with foil and tie securely with string, leaving it fairly loose at the top to allow mixture to rise.

Steam, water ½ way up side, with tight fitting lid for 6 hours. Pudding will go soggy if water not boiling.

Replace foil when storing. Resteam for 2 hours. Will keep several years

Chocolate Biscuits or Cocoa Fudge Cookies

2006-06-17T16:34:00.000+10:00

This isn't a new recipe, I've spent the last week in bed with the flu and have done no cooking let alone thinking about food. Niki posted this on her site Esurientes a little while ago, we made them that day, and they are beaut. The only change I've made is reducing the amount of cocoa to a more child-friendly quantity.

I'm reposting the recipe here as I know some of the extended family read this, and they need to know - these biscuits are Hannah-safe and they are really yummy! I think I need to make another batch tonight before the oven gets ripped out and we are kitchen free for three weeks.

1 cup plain flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter
4 tbsp cocoa powder (unsweetened)
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
dried tart cherries or cranberries for optional decoration

Preheat oven to 350F (175C). Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.
In a large, microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter in the microwave. Stir in cocoa powder and sugars. Stir in yogurt and vanilla extract. Add flour and mix until just combined.

Drop tablespoonfuls of batter onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Press down slightly to flatten; cookies do not spread a lot. Decorate with dried fruit if desired

Bake at 350F/175C for 9-12 minutes or until set and slightly firm at the edges. Allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 2 dozen.

Finnish Buttermilk Cake

2006-05-27T17:30:00.000+10:00

In another Melbourne food blog, Tomatom talks about the sad plight of being served a tea bag in lieu of a proper pot of tea in a place calling itself a tearoom. A good pot of leaf tea is such a fine thing. Lately I've needed to wake my small girl up from her extensive afternoon nap (I believe more that 3 hours leads to trouble in the evening). As a salve to her grumpy state we have afternoon tea. We have what ever cake or biscuit is in the house (or cheese and dried fruit if there isn't), and share a pot of tea. I guess you could say Hannah really has milk with tea (just a drop to faintly colour the milk). She so enjoys the ritual of making the tea. Also she has the important duty of tea-strainer placement).

Yesterday we had some of this cake:

Finnish Buttermilk Cake

2 ½ cup plain flour
1 ½ cup caster sugar
1 ½ tsp bicarb
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground clove
2 tsp grated orange rind
½ cup melted butter
1 ¾ cup butter milk

Sift dry ingredients, make a well in bowl and add wet ingredients. Pour into greased and sugared (using 1 tsp of castor sugar) 23cm ring or gugelhopf tin.

Bake 1 hour in 180°C oven.

Dust with icing sugar

time for a new kitchen

2006-05-26T20:24:00.000+10:00

No food today, I've decided to record my current crappy kitchen to celebrate finally getting the installation date for the new one. When we moved into this house nearly five years ago I vowed the kitchen would go before anything else got done. But more important matters such as the leaky roof and dodgy shower jumped the queue. The kitchen is functional, I have lived with worse (I had my share of student houses) but boy I'm ready to put an axe to it. I guess its worst feature is the benchtop, built at granny height - 83cm. I'm tallish, so I have to take my shoes off to do the dishes (or I'll have back ache for the rest of the evening).

The oven, in the picture above does function, once on however one can't turn the temperature down, or it will turn itself off and not function until its cooled down. And the door is a little prone to falling out, I find a child's highchair (without child) useful for holding it open when extracting something hot. The grill also functions, the rack sits on an upturned cake tin as the metal bits that hold the rack along the side have disintegrated.

Three out of four burners on the stove function, but but the spacing is poorly designed so as to only allow the use of small saucepans if one is planning a lot of cooking. You might notice the gap under the cupboards over the stove - that is part of the fan extraction system - which is powered by a weak fan in the ceiling. I've spared the viewer a picture of the stove itself. When I realised I'd be living with it for a while, I decided to clean it. I purchased appropriate evil chemicals and soaked the stove bits for a week, however the brown gunge remained. I just try not to notice it now.

The next image is the rest of the kitchen. Beautiful window (yes sadly today's view is washing, but there are many improbably small pairs of undies which I find unaccountably funny). I'd never had a double sink before and have become so fond of it that the new kitchen will have a double sink under the same window. The image fails to show that the hot tap is so close the wall that one grazes one's fingers on the tiles if not careful; and classiest bit of patching I've ever seen - the benchtop is covered in contact, wood-grain patterned contact.

The final image is to record the careful colour palette chosen for the kitchen. Beigeish vinyl flooring, flesh kickboard, and contrasting veneers. The drawers please note are to be opened from underneath. They still remain childproof which is quite a feat, but that underneath bit is, um, sort of a bit yucky. Rufus the cat poses to show where we put the cat crunchies when we first moved in, not thinking of how easy it would be for him to self serve. They haven't been there now for a long time, but he's never lost hope.

The new kitchen should start arriving on the 19th June.

Red Lentil Dhal

2006-05-21T16:33:00.000+10:00

You know how some favourite recipes unaccountably drop off the menu, and then you rediscover then and think why don't I make this all the time. I started cooking this in 1990 when I eschewed eating meat. I found the recipe again today - and can't think when I last made it. It is quick, hearty, healthy and really delicious. And to my immense pleasure Hannah liked it, it just pays not to call it soup, soup is currently a no go food. And this can be so thick, one need not think of it as soup. Certainly it could be served with rice rather than toast. I just prefer toast. If you have left-overs, it is superb reheated as a variation on baked beans on toast (it thickens even more when it cools).

A brief word on red lentils. We've been buying the Mount Zero brand of Australian grown red lentils, they are just perfect for Kedgeree. They are no good for dhal, as they stay beautifully intact. Stick with the imported ones here I'm afraid.

2 tbs butter or olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground fenugreek
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 1/2 cups red lentils
4-6 cups water (more or less depending on how thick you like it)
4 tbs tomato paste
salt to taste
squeeze of lemon

Gently fry the onion in butter or oil. Then add garlic and spices, and fry until fragrant (about 2 minutes). Add lentils, water and tomato paste and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 30 minutes, being careful as it will catch on the bottom of the saucepan if you forget to stir occasionally.

Serve with a squeeze of lemon, yoghurt and toast. Or rice.

Orange pears

2006-05-17T09:08:00.000+10:00

We don't usually do desert, usually Hannah's meal ends with a plate of fresh fruit. But something I've been making lately, a really easy desert of stewed pears. Peel and core a few beurre bosc pears, then gently simmer for a while (1-1 1/2 hours) in enough fresh orange juice to cover. The juice from the pears forms a sumptuously thick sweet sauce. I think this used to be a fancy desert involving butter and sugar and brandy, but just like this it's perfect. Cream or ice-cream optional.

Daube of beef with oxtail

2006-05-09T22:12:00.000+10:00

It is cold, miserably cold... I just love this weather. Perfect time of year for a beef daube. I was a little hesitant in offering this to Hannah, its very rich dish with the sort of gravy that sets if you let it cool down, but she adored it. I now make enought for lots of left-overs as it freezes and reheats beautifully. It is supposed to be served with pasta, we often do mashed spud as it's so good with the gravy. This version is from Escoffier's Ma Cusine and I use oxtail. The downside of this is that you will want to refridgerate this once cooked in order to skim the copious amounts of fat off. But oxtail is so worth it. Certainly other cuts of beef are possible. The original recipe merely requests lean beef.

1/2 kg of Oxtail (approximately) or one Oxtail chopped up
2 small onions or one large, quartered
2 medium carrots, chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
2 tbs Brandy
2 cups red wine
2 tbs wine vinegar
1/8 tsp ground clover,
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger

2 rashers of bacon
2 tbs olive oil
skin of an 1/8 of an orange
1 clove of garlic
1 bouquet garni
(sprigs of thyme, marjoram, parsley and a bayleaf tied together)

Rub oxtail with garlic and spices. Mix with carrots, onion, and liquids and marinate for 5 hours (or overnight).

In an ovenproof casserole fry bacon in olive oil, remove bacon from the pan and brown drained oxtail. Add marinade and remaining ingrediants. Cover tightly and cook in a slow oven 150 degrees C for five hours.

Coconut Cake

2006-04-30T20:41:00.000+10:00

I've a bit of a weakness for coconut in sweet things. At school fetes I always head straight for the tables with sweet stuff for the coconut ice (have never had a good commercial one, and it's no fun to make). And I love the old bounty chocolate bar. So I've been looking for a good coconut cake recipe for a while, and I think this might be it. It's adapted from Nigella Lawson's 'Forever Summer' where it is call Coconut Slab and she makes enough for a crowd (cooked in a baking dish!). I've reduced the cake size, added some desicated coconut to the cake mix, removed the eggs and changed the icing, it just seemed obvious to use chocolate (and I've rather a lot spare from the chocolate sampling of the previous post). I used a 19cm square cake tin, and as you can see from the photograph, it ended up a bit on the thin side. I don't mind this, but a slightly smaller tin could be an option.

115g unsalted butter
115g castor sugar
4 tbs milk
135g plain flour
1 1/3 tsp baking powder
15g cornflour
100ml coconut cream (ie the thick tinned stuff - not the thin coconut milk)
1/2 cup desicated coconut

Chocolate for coating the top of cake (I used about 75g)

Cream butter and sugar until light, then add milk and mix in thoroughly. Add both flours and baking powder and mix well, then stir in coconut cream and desicated coconut. Put into a lined tin (19cm square for a thin cake) and bake at 180 degrees celcius for 30 minutes or until done.

Melt chocolate in bowl over container of boiling water (ie using water that is boiling hot, but not on the stove) and spread over cake.

chocolate sampling

2006-04-11T22:19:00.000+10:00

I admit I don't think an almost 3 year old girl is going to care much about the quality of her chocolate. However so far her diet has been chocolate-free (it is a hassle finding nut-free chocolate and what you don't know you don't miss), but as the bunny is visiting this week-end I was curious as to the quality of the nut-free chocolate out there. Now I should say at the outset, that while I like a nice bit of dark chocolate, I'm not a raving chocolate connoisseur, so please accept that my judgements are from an uneducated palate and pretty subjective. Thanks to the spouse for helping here, I think he has good judgement with the sweet stuff.

First up Sweet William Original Diary-Free Chocolate (Australian-made). These can be purchased in bunny shapes, however I sampled the basic 50g bar which I purchased in Safeway (in the health-food section). We like these the least of all chocolate sampled; it was a bit grainy, tasted a bit like carob (it wasn't and I'm not fond of carob, so I see it as a fault), was quite thin and had a disappointing aftertaste. In addition the label says may contain traces of almonds so these are not for us.

I found Alpha dark chocolate eggs in David Jones, these are made in down-town Balaclava. They were the most expensive chocolates I purchased ($7.95 for 100g). For a diary-free chocolate these were pretty good, still a little of that odd caroby aftertaste but much better body and texture. Not sure if the small girl will like dark chocolate - I kind of hope not so I can eat these ones. Was amused by the label which claims 'Servings per package - 5' , there are 7 medium-sized hollow eggs in the bag.

After hunting fruitlessly in a few Safeways which were supposed to stock Kinnerton's milk chocolate easter eggs, I found a bag in Kmart. These were just under $4 for a 160g bag of small solid eggs. The texture was a little grainy, ok but overall Cadbury milk chocolate tastes better. These are made in the UK.

A finally Willow Mild Chocolate. We sampled a 20g bar of this (60c). These are made in Mordialloc and are much nicer than the Kinnerton's. No disconcerting aftertaste and not at all grainy. As Hannah would say (and hopefully will on Sunday) - Yummo!

chocolate bunnies...

2006-04-09T16:39:00.000+10:00

Too busy to blog lately, in a week I go to New Zealand for a conference, so I've been madly trying to finish the paper and talk (and get to know powerpoint and so on and so on). My dearest girl will be staying behind in Melbourne, and I must say I'm quietly freaking out at the thought of not seeing her for nearly six days. Yay for the telephone and internet.

I thought I had to mention these bunnies though. There is a company called Allergy Block, existing both online and as a shopfront at 220 Elgin Street, Carlton. The bunnies are nut and egg free, and the chocolate, made by a local company called Willow, is not too bad at all.

I've found two other companies that produce nut-free chocolate. Kinneton is an English company that retails products locally in K-Mart, Big-W, Target, Myers and so forth. Most of their chocolates are licenced character based (not something that I'm big on), but they do have plain small solid eggs which I think the bunny needs to both track down and try out - I'll update this when I've done this. Sweet William is based in Sydney, and as well as being peanut-free the chocolate is dairy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, vegetarian safe, halal etc. It may contain traces of other nuts so is not really a contender for us.

Damson Fool

2006-03-01T15:16:00.000+11:00

I had some damson plums years ago, when an old friend of my nana gave me some to make into jam with the blackberries I'd just picked . Raw they were tart and nothing special, cooked they were rich and incredibly yummy. The damson is a small plum, pretty much impossible to stone, my nana's friend said to sieve out the stones and stalks once they were cooked which worked relatively well (I'm not sure how I'd do this on a large scale).

So years later when deciding what fruit trees to plant, I had to put in a damson as I've never seen them available anywhere as fruit. Trying to maximise the types of fruit in my backyard, I've espaliered it together with other fruit trees along the fence. So that's what the wire is in my dodgy photo. With this year's crop I've made damson gin (obviously not to share with the small girl) and damson fool.

There's not really much of a recipe to making a fool. Stew plums with enough sugar to not be too tart. Sieve or pick out stones from stewed fruit. Puree the fruit if you didn't sieve it. Chill. Mix with whipped cream to taste. Damson are strongly flavoured so 50/50 proportion wouldn't be too much. Then try to eat it slowly.

Patty cakes

2006-02-18T17:18:00.001+11:00

I started making these earlier in the week when we had a food scare at childcare. The kids had been served banana cake, I think it was someone's birthday. Hannah had been given something else, and she had grabbed someone else's slice of cake and may have taken a mouthful. I was horrified that it had happened - the staff at the centre know how serious this can be, but at the same time there was relief as there was no reaction. We have never known what might happen if she ingested egg or nuts because the allergy was picked up when she was so young. She reacted to the egg and peanut protein in breast milk, which was identified by a dermatologist because of the nature of her eczema. The allergy specialist said he couldn't tell what would happen were she to ingest egg or nuts, we were told to carry an epi-pen and be very careful. Hannah's next prick test is not until July, so I won't know for sure til then - but I'm am now desparately hoping that the egg allergy has disappeared.

However until we know for sure, life will still be egg-free. I realised I should have supplied the childcare centre with some egg-free cake so that Hannah wouldn't feel left out when cake was served. So I started experimenting with these. The photo is from my fourth batch which I thought worked the best so far. I'll now send a batch, individually bagged and labelled to the childcare centre for them to freeze and use as needed.

I'm not sure what to call them, in the original recipe from my Mum, they are patty cakes. I imagine now they would be called cup cakes, Hannah calls them muffins. They are baked in paper liners that are called patty pans, and then traditionally they would be iced or turned into butterfly or jelly cakes. They store well in a cake tin for a few days and freeze well.

In my mum's recipe the cream used is supposed to be soured, i.e. ordinary cream that has turned. She said it made no difference to the recipe if you used soured cream or fresh cream, so I guess it's an economy measure to use up cream that would otherwise be wasted. This recipe makes between 11 and 12 small cakes.

1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup castor sugar
3/4 cup plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla
4 tbs milk

Beat the cream and sugar until the cream thickens. Gently mix in milk and vanilla, then add flour and baking powder and gently combine.

Place patty pan liners (or paper muffin cases) into patty-pan tray (muffin tray with 40ml capacity cups) and spoon 1 desertspoon of mix into each. Bake at 180 degrees C for between 20 and 25 minutes. Makes 12.

Cured Salmon

2006-02-08T21:19:00.000+11:00

I've no idea where I found this recipe, though I seem to recall it originally specified a very large piece of fish, indeed possibly a whole salmon. I make it often when its hot and I'm organised - its one of those dishes you need to plan at least 24 hours ahead. And yes we've had a bit of hot here in Melbourne lately, so this has been on high rotation - and the small girl loves it.

I've posted the recipe as it is in my recipe file, and offer the following amendments for the frazzled cook. If you don't have any white wine in the house, red works ok, though the skin of each slice will have a faint blush. I haven't tried any other alcohol yet. If you are short of time you can skip adding the zests. The dill and mustard layer is usually missed here as I usually forget about it until too late. The small girl is not big on herbs either. The fish has never lasted 10 days in our house so I cannot confirm that it will be safe to eat at this point.

In the photo is the ubiquitous mashed potato - it will not be eaten in any other form. If I was to have my way it would be the Stephanie Alexander potato salad which is sensational and totally mayonaise free. I'll try to post it soon.

1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp white peppercorns
75 g table salt
25 g sugar
zest of 1/2 orange
zest of 1 lemon
85 ml lemon juice
40ml orange juice
50 ml white wine

1 fillet of salmon, skin left on, bones removed (use pliers)
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/4 bunch dill

Roughly crush coriander seeds and peppercorns and combine with other ingredients (except mustard and dill). Whisk to dissolve salt and sugar. Pour into dish and submerged fillet. Leave for 24 hours in the 'fridge, turning after 12 hours.

Remove salmon from marinade and brush with a clean cloth, removing excess zest. Brush skinless side of fillet with mustard and coat with finely chopped dill. Wrap tigthly in cling film, and rest in refridgerator for 2 hours.

Cut finely with knife at an angle towards the skin.

Can be kept safely for up to 10 days.
Serve with squeeze of lemon, crema fresca and lightly toasted sour dough. Good with stout.

Baby cherry cakes

2006-01-19T22:34:00.000+11:00

Following on from the last post, morello cherries are still available! You just have to find a pick your own orchard. There are a few farms on the Mornington Peninsula, we went to Ellisfield Farm (109 McIlroys Rd Red Hill, ph 5989 2008). The sour cherries there are around during January, and there were masses of them on the trees when we went there last Sunday. They are $7 a kilo if you pick your own, or $10 if you buy them prepicked.

Information for the uninitiated: the farm supplies buckets, a full bucket is around 4 1/2 kg, and we noticed some european families (who knew what they were doing) equiped with small shears to facilitate the easy removal of cherries from the tree. The cherries pull off the stalk very easily, but then of course they don't last very long - you'll need to process them straight away. With a bit of stalk you can keep the cherry in the 'fridge for a week or so.

So we came away with 9 kgs. Whoops. So since Sunday we have made jam, frozen cherries, made preserves and cherry cake. I've adapted a favourite plum cake and used a small silicon muffin tin (as the cake mix is very sticky). The result is a little bit crunchy, a little bit chewy and a bit cakey. The small girl loved them - except for the morello cherry! Maybe next time with sweet cherries. This quantity makes 7.

50g butter
1/4 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder (sift together with flour)
2 tbs of milk
7 or 8 cherries, stoned

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then mix in the flour and baking powder. Add enought milk to make a soft dough. Spoon mix into muffin tins (maybe no more than 3/4 full - they are prone to spreading alot). Make an indentation and insert stoned cherry.

Bake at 170 degrees C for about 30 minutes or until they are starting to brown. Turn out immediately from tray (so they don't get soggy). Beware they are very fragile until cooled down.

Morello Cherry Icecream

2006-01-02T22:27:00.000+11:00

Just so I don't forget next year.... morello cherry icecream is a really good use of my precious morello cherry crop. Morello cherries are known as a sour cherry, and although these aren't too sour to eat raw, they do make one pucker up a little. They are gorgeous cooked, and almost impossible to find fresh in Melbourne.

We've a small tree in a pot, waiting to go in the garden, while we work out how much of a renovation we can afford on our dear old house. I dare not plant it yet for fear of it being damaged. I've had the tree for three years in a huge pot and every year it puts out a ridiculous amount of fruit given its size. We lose most of the cherries to birds (despite netting the tree). I had about three quarters of a cup of cherries left, and decided that icecream was the best way of celebrating them.

The following ingredients are approximate and there is no photo, the small amount I made got consumed so quickly. Imagine the the strawberry bit of neopolitan icecream, then adjust a shade or two darker. When I next make this ice cream I'll try substituting a little milk for the some of the cream as it was very rich. We ate it with some homemade chocolate sauce, a fine way to start the new year. This quantity was enough for two serves. Hopefully next year there will be enough cherries to double it.

3/4 cup morello cherries
150ml double cream
40g sugar

Stone the cherries. Cook with stone in a small amount of water until soft. Remove stone and chill.

Puree cherries, add cream and sugar and beat until mixed. Pour into icecream maker. This quantity was ready in about 7 minutes.

Swedish Coconut Biscuits

2005-12-28T21:54:00.000+11:00

This years biscuits were the Laura's Shortbread (heart-shaped biscuits with coloured centres, then clockwise), Chocolate Chip Biscuits with nut-free chocolate, Swedish Coconut Biscuits (see below) and Orange, Cardamon and Brandy Biscuits from Bill Granger's Open Kitchen which I discovered after reading about Niki making them in her food blog Esurientes - The Comfort Zone.

I altered the shortbread recipe by cutting a hole in the cut-out biscuit dough and when they were on the baking paper-lined tray, filling the hole with crushed boiled lolly. These turned out to be the small food critic's favourite, she renamed them 'jelly biscuits'. After much anticipation on my part she didn't take to the chocolate chip biscuits at all.

My favourites are the Swedish Coconut Biscuits which are very buttery, quite fragile and horribly moreish, or when I'm sitting down with a cuppa - the orange, cardamon and brandy biscuits. The later seem to require very soft butter and lots of beating of the butter and sugar to make the mixture cohere. And I skipped giving the biscuits an egg white wash before sprinkling them with sugar, the sugar still adhered (well I put enough on that some of it did) and they looked fine when baked.

Swedish Coconut Biscuits

125 g unsalted butter
100 g caster sugar
125 g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp backing powder
1/2 tsp pure vanilla essence
35 g desiccated coconut

Beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Mix in the vanilla. Sift the flour with bicarb soda and baking powder, add with coconut and work the mixture with hands until it comes together.

Make two sausages 6 cm in diameter. Wrap and chill overnight.

Cut slices about 2mm in thickness. Bake at 180 degreesC for 8 - 10 minutes. Watch carefully as they brown very quickly and you want to catch them just as the biscuits on the edge of the tray are starting to change colour.

Cha-sui Pork

2005-12-18T22:22:00.000+11:00

This is an awesome dish, great hot, fabulous cold and as a bonus - very easy. The recipe is an adaption of one found in Stephanie Alexander's 'The Cook's Companion'. Even Rufus the cat does circuits of the kitchen when it's cooking and being eaten, he knows how good it is and will not allow us to forget him.

This quantity serves the three of us with lots of left overs. (And yes the rice in the photo does look weird - it has a liberal dollop of yoghurt on it, the small girl wouldn't eat it otherwise). You'll find the first three ingredients in an Asian grocer.

1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/4 cup red rice vinegar
1/4 cup mirin
1 tbs honey
1 tbs hoisin sauce
1 tsp sesame oil (optional)
1 clove crushed garlic
1/2 tbs grated ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of 5 spice powder
1/2 kg of pork fillet

Combine all of the marinade ingredients then add the pork. Marinade in the 'fridge for 1 to 3 hours (3 hours is better, but I'm never that organised).

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Place pork on a meat rack in a baking dish filled with about 1 1/2 inches of water. Roast the meat for 40 minutes or until cooked.

Slice and serve with steamed rice and stir fried vegetables.

Laura's Shortbread

2005-11-27T22:55:00.000+11:00

The shortbread recipe comes from a friend's daughter. It is so yummy I've made it every Christmas since she passed it on to me. I've altered the orginal a little, (which has the cooked shortbread dredged with castor sugar and sandwiched with jam). I find baking a little jam on them means they can live in a biscuit jar with other biscuits, and I love the slightly toffeed texture of baked jam. I like to use apricot jam on half the biscuits and strawberry on the rest.

6oz self raising flour
5oz butter
2oz ground rice
3 oz castor sugar
jam

Sieve flour, sugar and ground rice. Rub in butter and knead into pliable dough. Roll out onto floured board to 1/4" thick and cut into desired shapes (I like hearts). Make a small indentation in the centre of each biscuit and place a small amount of jam (maybe 1/4 tsp - you don't want too much or it will bubble everywhere).

Bake on greased tray at 350 degrees F or until a light biscuit colour (about 20 minutes).

Chocolate Chip Biscuits

2005-11-23T21:58:00.000+11:00

I always been fond of the old choc chip biscuit, and like another Melbourne food blogger Niki, I've been messing with a few recipes to find the perfect one for me. Normally when I make a batch, they go in a tin, and out of sight until after the toddler's bedtime. This time out of curiousity I didn't add the egg to a portion of the mix. Surprisingly, they tasted remarkably similar to the biscuits with egg. Now I can't make proper chocolate chip bikkies for the small girl yet, as I've yet to find a source of chocolate that doesn't have the usual 'may contain traces of nuts'. The good news however is that I've just discovered an Australian E-store AllergyBlock that will be opening a shop in nearby Carlton and they will be selling egg and nut free chocolate. Oh boy, is my little girl going to have a happy Christmas (then again wouldn't life be easier if she never knew how good chocolate is!).

250g butter
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
2 tbs water
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 1/2 cups of chocolate pieces (either bought chocolate bits or coarsely chopped chocolate)

Cream butter, mix in sugars. Beat in vanilla and water, then mix in dry ingredients then chocolate pieces. Drop well heaped teaspoons of the mixture well spaced on a non-stick baking paper lined tray. Bake at 190 degrees C for about 10 minutes or until done. Cool on tray and try not to eat too many at a time.

Orange Jelly

2005-11-14T21:14:00.000+11:00

Jelly is good. Packet Jelly is pretty good, but this stuff is a lot more satisfying. The small girl sometimes tracks down the packet of gelatine, hands it to me, and demands we make it. Which we usually do unless it's just before dinnner (with no time for it to set). The recipe is an adaption of one in Margaret Fulton's 'Encyclopedia of Food and Cookery' (the old one, not the new edition that appeared very recently - something I must check out). The original recipe suggests sieving the juice, but I like a bit of texture in the jelly.

1 cup fresh orange juice (3-4 oranges)
2 lemons, squeezed
1 cup water
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 1/2 tbs gelatine

Put the water, sugar and gelatine in a saucepan over a gentle heat, and stir until the sugar and gelatine are dissolved. Allow to cool, then strain through a fine sieve. Add juice. Pour into 3 one cup jelly moulds and allow to set (about 3-4 hours).

Fish Kebabs

2005-11-06T15:05:00.000+11:00

I'm always trying to find ways of introducing more oily fish into our diet. Finding this recipe the other day thrilled me to bits. Both easy and very yummy. And the novelty of having food on sticks makes the small girl enthusiastic too. You need to watch the marination time, too long and the tuna doesn't taste too much of tuna anymore. The recipe is adapted from 'Campion and Curtis in the Kitchen'.

I don't think I've mentioned in other posts that I no longer cook with sesame seeds or sesame seed products (tahini, sesame oil etc) as they cause an instant nasty face rash on the small girl. This recipe does call for sesame oil, but works fine without it. If anyone out there knows how to make a decent hummus without tahini I'd be very interested!

1 big piece of tuna (about 350-400g)
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs mirin
1 tsp grated ginger
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp brown sugar

Cut the tuna into bite size chunks (about 2cm cubes - but accuracy here is not an issue). Mix the marinade ingrediants and marinate tuna for no more than 30 minutes.

Thread the chunks onto bamboo skewers (with this quantity of fish I aim for 5 skewers - 2 for me and spouse, one for the small girl).

Fry in a hot frypan for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, turn over and cook for a further 1 1/2 minutes (this allows for the tuna to be a little rare in the middle - cook more if you desire). Serve with rice and stir fried bok choy.

Curried Sausages

2005-10-24T22:28:00.000+10:00

I don't know what to say about this - I sort of assume everyone makes curried sausages. It was a landmark dish in our lives. The small girl was a shocking eater when she started solids. I'd take so much care steaming and pureeing and so on, and pretty much all of it got spat out. Then one day she had a little of my dinner of curried snags, and it became clear that she needed food with much more flavour. She now has a slightly obsessive relationship with our tin of curry powder. (I use the Keen's brand. I now keep it carefully hidden away, as if it's in sight and within reach the small girl delights in sniffing it, and then shaking it, and the last time she had access to it, she tipped it over her head.)

Anyway I probably cook this once a fortnight, using the best plain snags I can find. It's nice with rice, peas, yoghurt and a little chutney.

8 - 9 sausages
1 onion, chopped
1 - 2 carrots, diced
1 - 2 apples, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 stick of celery, diced
1 tbs Curry Powder
2 tbs coconut
1 tsp brown sugar
1 1/2 cups of chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste

Put sausages into cold water and bring to the boil, boil for one minute then drain. Remove the sausage casings if they are becoming a little loose.

Saute the onion in a little oil then add vegetables and saute briefly.

Add stock, sausages and remaining ingrediants and cook in a covered casserole for 45 minutes.

tagged for 23/5 meme

2005-10-24T21:57:00.000+10:00

I feel I exist in a new and strange way - I've been tagged! Caroline at Bibliocook has tagged this site for the 23/5 meme: find your 23rd post and ponder on the meaning of the 5th line. Hmmm, a bit tricky this as although I've been posting since July, I'm not the world's most regular writer and only total 13 posts so far. What if I switch the numbers around and comment on the 23rd line of my 5th post - would that be fair?

This would make it the Birthday Cake post, "I used an icing bag with a plastic nozzle, which meant when the icing started getting a little firm I could pop it in the microwave for a few moments." I was actually rapt to discover this. I was accustomed to icing with royal icing, which sets as it dries so one can squeeze it out of the piping bag as slowly as needed. The icing used here sets as it cools so I could see I was in for trouble. As I noticed the plastic nozzles in my collection of icing equipment I realised I could use the microwave. And yay, it worked!

Lion's head meatballs

2005-10-15T20:23:00.000+10:00

We tried this for dinner tonight and it was a huge hit. Originally a Shanghai dish the oversized pork meatballs and greens would have been cooked in a sand clay pot. We used a cast iron casserole and cooked it in the oven. The name comes from intended resemblance to a lion's head of the shredded cabbage 'mane' drapped over the large meatball. The recipe I've adapted is from'Campion and Curtis in the Kitchen'. The recipe serves four so for two adults and a hungry toddler next time I'd probably halve this unless you want lots of left-overs, (I don't think the noodles would freeze well).

The recipe for this does also include finely chopped waterchestnuts in the meatball mix, I'm sure it would add a lot texturally but I've omitted them as I'm not sure how they sit in terms of nut proteins (and we had none in the cupboard).

500g pork mince
6 shiitake mushrooms (we used ordinary mushrooms as I couldn't find any today), finely chopped
4 spring onions, finely chopped
2 tsp grated ginger
3 tsp cornflour
30 ml Chinese rice wine (shao hsing wine) or dry sherry
extra cornflour

100g vermicelli noodles (from flour not bean thread)
1/2 chinese cabbage (wombok)
approx 500ml chicken stock
3 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs Chinese rice wine (shao hsing wine) or dry sherry

Mix together pork, mushrooms, spring onions, ginger, cornflour and rice wine. Divide mixture into 16 portions and make into balls using the extra cornflour.

Preheat the oven to 180 degreesC. Soak the vermicelli in boiling water for a few minutes until soft then drain. Chop the cabbage into 2cm chunks. Line the casserole with the cabbage then the vermicelli. Brown the meatballs in a frypan for a few minutes then add to the casserole dish. Mix soy sauce, stock and rice wine and pour into the casserole. Place lid on and cook for 45 minutes. Serve with rice and stir-fried vegies.

Edited later: After making these again, I've discovered asian vermicelli are not all the same. OriginallyI made this with 'Amoy flour vermicelli' which contain flour and tapioca. This worked perfectly. Make with just flour vermicelli the noodles turned to a sort of goo, which while kind of interesting, was not to be desired.

Baked Beans

2005-10-12T22:02:00.000+10:00

I was looking in the supermarket the other day for baked beans as they make a great lunch for small girl and myself. I noticed that none of the brands avaliable were 100% made in Australia. Most opted for the weaselly 'Made with local and imported ingrediants'.

This seemed a good enough reason to tackle making baked beans myself. I've long wanted to master this slow cooking dish, this is my first go, using a recipe from Stephanie Alexander's 'The Cooks Companion'. The next time I make it I will pre-cook the beans as ours were not edible until after about 8 hours cooking. I understand the acid in the tomatoes can make the skins of the beans tough, maybe I had particularly acidic tomatoes, maybe the beans were a bit old. Who can say. Also I would suggest adding a little less water- after 8 hours cooking we needed to simmer the dish on the stove for 1/2 an hour to reduce the liquid to a thick sauce. Although the recipe says it serves four, we had enough for the three of us, plus two family sized meals to freeze. A bonus as it was delicous.

375g red kidney beans
2 tbs olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 rashers thickly sliced streaky bacon, diced
2 red peppers, seeded and diced
1 green pepper, seeded and diced
1 400g can peeled tomatoes in juice
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
1 tsp paprika
1/2 crushed coriander seeds
salt
freshly gound black pepper
3 tbs maple syrup, treacle, golden syrup or honey

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Rinse soaked beans, then put into a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, then strain and rinse with cold water. Heat oil in a large enamelled cast-iron casserole and saute onion, garlic, carrot and bacon. After 5 minutes, when onion has softened and bacon is sizzling, add red and green peppers. Puree tomatoes and juice in a food processor and add to casserole with beans and remaining ingredients, except maple syrup. Mix well. Add sufficient cold water to cover beans by 4 cm. Transfer casserole, tightly sealed, to oven and bake for at least 4 hours. Stir well after 2 hours, checking that it is still reasonably sloppy (if it is too dry, add a little water and reduce oven temperature). After 4 hours, stir in maple syrup, extra salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. The beans should now be in a rich sauce. If too thick, add a little extra water; if too runny and the beans are tender, increase oven temperature and continue to cook.

Boiled Fruit Cake

2005-09-28T22:03:00.000+10:00

I made this for myself not the small girl, I don't like to eat food I cannot share. I wasn't sure toddlers would even eat fruit cake, but it seems they do and then request a second serve. This isn't too rich, though it is a real fruit cake. Keeps well and travels well. Next time I might see what happens with a little wholemeal flour in it so I don't feel so guilty with us both eating so much of it.

No bad photographs for a little while, our poor old camera has gone bung.

3 cups self raising flour
1 1/2 cups dried apricots, chopped
1 cup raisins, chopped
1/2 cup dates, chopped
3/4 cup glacé cherries, halved
1 1/2 cups sultanas
1/2 cup currants
1 cup mixed peel
1 cup butter
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup apple or orange juice
1/4 cup apricot jam
6 tablespoons cream

Preheat the oven to 160C. Line and grease a deep 20cm square cake tin.

Combine the fruit, butter, sugar and water in saucepan. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Stir in the juice and jam, cover, cool to room temperature. Stir the double cream, then the sifted flour into the fruit mixture. Mix well. Spread into the prepared tin. Bake for about 2 1/2 hours. Cover with foil, cool in the tin.

Baked Rice with Pumpkin

2005-09-25T20:33:00.000+10:00

This one has become a favourite, and a good way to eat rice as the small girl does not like her rice to taste dry. I've also at various times added sweet potato, grilled capsicums (as seen in this photo) and cooked chickpeas to this. I'm sure it can be varied in many other ways.

1 red onion, chopped
1 leeks, finely sliced
1 garlic cloves, finely chopped
olive oil
approx 300g butternut pumpkin, chopped
125g basmati rice
300ml chicken stock

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Fry the onion and leeks in an oven-proof pot until soft, add the garlic and continue to cook a minute or two. Add rice, cook it for a minute then add stock and bring to the boil. Cover and bake 35 minutes.

Ice cream

2005-09-21T20:51:00.000+10:00

I've been meaning to write about ice cream for a while. If you hunt in the supermarket you can find ice cream without egg or nuts, but there's not that much choice. With home made ice cream you have lots of choice. However if you plan on making it for the small person in your life, maybe consider acquiring an ice cream maker. I'm a ludite about many things, but I love my ice cream maker. It's just a basic cheap model (the sort that has an electric paddle and an inner "cooling disk" that you freeze before making your ice cream). One can make ice cream without a machine, but it's a lot more time and labour intensive and I don't think I'd do it with a toddler in the house.

The basic recipe which I've adapted from my ice cream maker's instruction manual is as follows:

300g fruit
125g castor sugar
1 tbs lemon juice
300ml full cream milk
150ml cream

Puree fruit. Whip cream. Mix ingredients. Pour into ice cream maker. Ready to consume in 45-55 minutes.

Fruits that I've tried successfully so far; fresh strawberries, stewed apricots (my favourite), stewed blood plums and fresh mango. Keep in mind the quality of the fruit will be reflected in the quality of the ice cream - I used mediocre strawberries once and the resulting ice cream was pretty ho-hum. You can play around with the amount of milk and cream if you want more or less creamy ice cream, just make sure it totals 450ml. And the lemon juice acts to accentuate the flavour, so you can use it with your discretion (I didn't think the blood plums needed it). And if you halve the recipe its ready in 20 minutes!

I did make a discovery a few months ago which I'll record here before I forget; seville orange ice cream. It was awesome. Its a Nigella Lawson recipe, I've already forgotten from which book. If it is July or August look around for seville oranges. I found mine in Melbourne at Victoria Market.

Seville Orange Ice Cream

3 seville oranges
175g icing sugar
584ml double cream

Squeeze the juice of the oranges (Nigella includes the zest but I don't like anything marring the texture of this one). Whip cream until it holds soft peaks. Mix all ingredients together and pour into ice cream maker.

The picture above is an experiment using this recipe with blood oranges. It was ok, but not as amazing as the seville orange original.

Gingerbread

2005-09-15T22:20:00.000+10:00

I'm in two minds about including this. It makes fair gingerbread. Small girl adored the raw mix and the biscuits just out of the oven. But once cold she complained they don't work and refuses to eat them. I like them. I've halved the recipe from a Women's Weekly book of 'Old fashioned favourites' and added a little cream in lieu of the egg.

65g butter
1/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 cup golden syrup
2 tbs cream
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1/2 tbs ground ginger
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

Cream the butter and sugar in a small bowl until light and fluffy, then beat in the golden syrup and cream. Stir in dry ingredient, press into a ball and knead until smooth. Refridgerate for 30 minutes.

Roll dough between greaseproof paper until 4mm thick (I like mine thicker, but try to make the dough all the same thickness or the biscuits will cook unevenly). Cut out shapes and bake at 180 degrees C for 8 minutes. They will burn very quickly, so don't forget them!

Cool on trays.

kedgeree

2005-09-08T21:36:00.000+10:00

This is an old favourite which makes a very fine simple meal. There are peas in the photo as they are currently a favourite veggie, and no kipper as it was, um , a little past its use-by date.

½ cup brown lentils (pre-cook for 1/2 hour)
1 cup basmati rice
1 tbs butter
2 bay leaves
3 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
2 tbs ginger, grated
2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp cumin
3 green cardamon pods
3 cloves
1 2cm piece of cinnamon
good pinch of salt

2 cups of water
1 onion, sliced
1 tbs butter

1 kipper, grilled
tomatoes, quartered
lemons, halved
parsley, chopped
chutney

Heat butter in heavy based saucepan, add spices and stir until spices are fragrant. Add rice and stir for a minute then add lentils and water and bring mix to a vigorous boil. Cover pot and reduce heat to a simmer (with heat mat). Leave undisturbed for about 40 minutes.

Cook onions in butter until brown. Top each serving with onions and serve with remaining ingredients

Hopping John

2005-08-30T20:39:00.000+10:00

Small girl loves beans. This is good, instead of just relying on meat for protein, we do different sorts of beans often. This one is a favourite. From the Dean and DeLuca Cookbook it makes enough for one meal for three for now, and one to freeze (freeze the beans and ham before adding the rice, then heat and add rice as per usual). Sometimes we can't find a ham hock, substituting good quality ham and a cup of stock as part of the 1 litre of water works ok.

225g black-eyed beans, soaked overnight
1 tbs olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
l litre water
1 smoked ham hock or some chopped up thickly sliced ham
1 bay leaf
1 tsp salt
225g basmati rice
pinch of ground clove
2 sprigs chopped fresh thyme

For garnishing:
1 chopped tomato
2 chopped sping onions
handful chopped fresh parsley
a few sprigs chopped fresh mint
ground red pepper

Fry the onion, celery and garlic in the oil until soft. Add the water, ham hock (if using ham this can be added later), bayleaf and beans. Either cook in a pressure cooker for 9 minutes or gently simmer for 2 hours until beans are tender.

Remove the ham hock and dice the meat and return to pot, throwing out the bone. If using plain ham, add it at this point. Also add cloves, thyme and salt. If you intend to freeze half of this do it now (rice does not freeze very well).

Add rice (remembering to only add 112g if you have frozen half of the beans and ham) and bring back to the boil. Cover and cook gently (using heat mat) for 20 minutes, then turn off heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes undisturbed.

Serve in bowls with garnishes.

Birthday Cake

2005-08-17T07:31:00.000+10:00

otherwise now know as 'bob builder cake'. Small girl turned two so we needed a cake. So far I've found cakes the biggest challenge, the pritken style fruit cake is ok, but I didn't think it was birthday cake material. This recipe is modified from the Australian Womens Weekly 'Kids Birthday Cakes'. I've given the quantity for one cake (ie enough for a 18cm round tin), for this cake I tripled the recipe and baked it in a 21 x 31 cm tin.

125g Butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 tsp No Egg
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup of milk, plus 2 tbs

Beat the butter, vanilla and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. Mix the No Egg with the flour, then stir in the flour and milk in two batches. Bake in a moderate oven until cooked. Leave in tin for 5 minutes before turning onto a rack to cool.

I found a 'Bob' image on the web, sized it to fit my cake, printed and cut it out. This I used as a template to cut the cake. The cake was iced using Orchard White Icing from the supermarket. I thought about using a butter cream, but this was pretty easy to drap over the cake. Must remember next time to brush the cake with something sugary to help the icing stick.

I then made pin-pricks through the paper template to make a guide for the decorative icing. Here I just used plain chocolate icing, it was too late at night to mess around with colours, and I quite like the monochrome look. I used an icing bag with a plastic nozzle, which meant when the icing started getting a little firm I could pop it in the microwave for a few moments. This sort of icing doesn't stick as well as royal icing, but I couldn't think of any other options.

Chocolate Icing

1 cup icing sugar
1 tbs boiling water
1 tsp butter
1 tbs cocoa

Melt the butter, add the rest of the ingrediants and warm very gently on the stove.

The hardest thing was deciding where to put the candles, they ended up in the hat. The cake tasted pretty good for something without eggs and the birthday girl was delighted.

Drop Scones

2005-08-15T08:48:00.000+10:00

I've discovered drop scones. I think some people call them pikelets, they could really just be described as mini-pancakes. And they are quick. I was reluctant to delve into egg replacement products, but how long can you live without pancakes. The amount below is enough to fill one large frypan, which is enough for one hungry toddler and mum for morning or afternoon tea.

½ cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp NO EGG
1 ½ tbs sugar
1 tbs melted butter
½ cup milk

Mix dry ingredients, add milk and butter (melt butter in frying pan you are about to use), and mix well. Drop spoonfuls onto moderately hot greased frying pan. When bubbles have formed and burst, turn over and cook until done.

Serve with lots of butter and jam.

Spinach and Cheese Muffins

2005-08-08T22:05:00.000+10:00

Still on the spinach theme, these are yummy warm spread with cream cheese or butter. They freeze well, this recipe makes approx 18 in a mini-muffin tin.

120ml milk
30ml oil or melted butter
45g grated cheese
40g grated parmesan cheese
70g or half a bunch spinach, chopped well
240g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt

Mix milk, butter or oil, cheeses and spinach in a large bowl. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir until just combined. Place dessertspoons into mini-size muffin tin and bake at 200°C for 20 minutes.

Spinach Pasta

2005-07-18T22:11:00.000+10:00

Ever in search of yummy ways to cook green vegetables a friend suggested this. Her version included parmesan cheese, my toddler food tester prefers tasty cheese. It is easy enough to add the cheese after plating the food, so everyone is happy. Cream can be substituted for ricotta for a richer meal.

1 washed bunch of spinach
1/2 cup ricotta
grated tasty cheese to taste
grated parmesan cheese to taste
2 cups of spiral pasta

Cook pasta in a saucepan of boiling water.

Wash and chop spinach, cook on a low heat in a covered saucepan until thoroughly wilted. (The water from washing is usually enough for this to cook in, add a little more water if you think it is too dry). Puree, add ricotta and stir into pasta. Add grated tasty cheese or parmesan. This is enough for 2 adults and 1 small person.

hmmm, better work on that food photography...

a toddler foodie blog?

2005-07-17T19:41:00.000+10:00

I'm the mum of a 2 year old little girl. After bad eczema outbreaks in the first months of her life, we discovered she was allergic to eggs and peanuts. At this stage she hadn't encountered any solids, she was reacting to the egg and nut proteins in my breast milk. Further tests indicated she should avoid all nuts and sesame seeds. So began the big change in our diet. And then of course our small girl is a very picky eater. Its only been two months since she has agreed potato is indeed ok.

I decided to write a toddler food blog as it's something I would like to have read when we made these discoveries. If it serves as inspiration to just one other mum I'll be happy. All of the food suggested here is of course not just for the small person in ones life, but intended to be shared with the big folk.