Food

Marjoram! where’ve you been all my life?

Posted on July 31, 2011 by melhm

I’m obsessed! Marjoram has taken over my life… I’m finding ways of getting it into all sorts of dishes these last few weeks and I’m loving it… I can’t have enough of marjoram, and thyme, and oregano and I can’t believe for the first 40 years of my life I only looked for basil and coriander in the herb section of the supermarket… with a bit of bay and a tiny bit of parsley (bleugh) and ignoring mint totally (BLEUGH).

And now I’m growing my own to keep with up with the amounts I need; it’s like a drug. A perfumed, lemony, herbaceous, aromatic and healthy drug, I’m chopping with abandon…!

Uses for marjoram leaves this week: tossed with leaves and a classic lemon vinaigrette for a crunchy almost-spring salad; chopped up with thyme, salt, a little chilli and butter and smeared under the skin of roasting chicken; sprinkled over a freshly cooked tomato, red onion & bocconcini pizza; sauced up with its aromatic herby friends – basil, coriander, thyme and oregano – garlic and butter and tossed through home-made linguine; garnishing a bowl of wintry Jerusalem artichoke soup; and my favourite: finishing off my easy-peasy & cheap one-pot chicken braise… delish. And now to the recipe!

Mel’s easy-peasy & cheap one-pot chicken braise – Serves 4 (with potential leftovers for pasta!)

 8 chicken drumsticks (free-range at least)

Olive oil

2 brown onions

4 cloves garlic

2 tins cherry tomatoes

A cup of chicken stock

Salt & pepper

Fresh herbs: handful marjoram, oregano, thyme

Dried herbs: 2 bay leaves

Preheat oven to 160°C.

Brown off the chicken drumsticks with a good glug of olive oil in an oven-proof casserole dish* (with lid & wide enough to fit chicken in one layer if possible). Remove.

Peel then halve onions & finely slice, add to hot pot and stir. Strip thyme leaves from stalks and add to the onions. Peel and crush the garlic, add to the pot and cook, stirring, on medium heat until the onions are soft but not brown.

Add chicken back to the pot, pour in the tomatoes and enough stock to almost cover the chicken, sprinkle a good pinch of salt, grind some pepper and add the bay leaves. Turn heat up and watch until it’s almost boiling, then pop lid on and place in oven for an hour.

With 20 minutes to go, take the lid off to let the liquid reduce a little.

Remove from the oven, pick the leaves from the marjoram and oregano, chop them up and sprinkle over the finished chicken. Serve immediately.

Best eaten with buttery boiled potatoes and garlicky broccoli.

*Best by far is to cook this in cast-iron – I’ve got a big Le Creuset and a small cheapie version from Aldi and they both cook up a storm… worth investing in (or not!).

dear dear marjoram, grow quickly please

Linguine and herbs

serves 6

 500g fresh linguine

1 tablespoon cooking salt

225 g butter

8 small cloves garlic

Small bunch basil to yield 1/3 cup

Bunch coriander to yield 1/3 cup

3 or 4 sprigs thyme to yield 2 tablespoons

3 or 4 sprigs marjoram to yield 2 tablespoons

3 or 4 sprigs oregano to yield 2 tablespoons

Small bunch parsley to yield 2 tablespoons

2 tablespoons black olives

Flaked salt & black pepper

 Fill a large stockpot with water and heat on high. Meanwhile wash & carefully dry the herbs, then pick the leaves if needed, discarding the stems. Finely chop herbs. Slice the olives & finely chop the garlic.

Melt the butter in the saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the garlic and cook gently for a couple of minutes. Stir in the herbs.

When the water is boiling add the pasta & cooking salt, stir, put lid back on and when boiling again cook for 3 minutes until ‘al dente’. Drain the pasta and transfer to back into the stockpot. Add the butter mixture to the stockpot and toss carefully. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with black olive slices and serve into the serving bowls.

(Adapted from Alice Waters’ ‘The Art of Simple Food)

yum yum pigs bum.

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Sunday: cooking with four-year-old Ava

Posted on July 10, 2011 by melhm

A cup of Earl Grey and an Anzac biscuit, perfect

It’s a beautiful sunny day out there but there’s a frrrrreezing cold wind… Steve has sneaked away for forty winks and Olly has finally gone down too. Ava not so! She’s bouncing off the walls after allowing me to while away some time on the laptop. Now she wants action! How to amuse her quietly and let the others have their siestas? Let’s bake biscuits!

Ava rolls Anzac biscuits

Whilst it’s not Anzac Day here (not even close – 25th April?) I never need an excuse to make Anzac biscuits. And un-Australian as it may be – apologies to those purists out there – we add some orange zest. Because we’ve some fantastic oranges in the fruit bowl and we feel like it.

Ava is funny, she keeps bending down to hide her head under the table: she’s sneaking bits of raw oat & flour mixture and doesn’t want me to see… I tell her that the more she leaves now, the more biscuits we get to eat later but I think she likes the game of subterfuge… She loves rolling the little spheres of goo in her hands and asks me every time if the ball’s the right size. She lines them up neatly to one side of the baking tray, all rubbing together, and doesn’t really understand that they’ll all spread. They’re all different sizes, but I tell her that’s ok: some will be chewy and some crispy, but all will be delicious!

The smell of the orange zest wafts out of the oven mingling with the toasty biscuit/ Golden Syrup yumminess, mmmmm.

Best thing about these bikkies? They only take 15 minutes or so to cook! Just enough time to clean up and pop the kettle on.

Anzac biscuits done!

Ava’s Orange Anzac Biscuits

 1 cup rolled oats

1 cup plain flour

1 cup raw sugar (or white, or half brown, half white)

¾ cup desiccated coconut

125g butter

2 tablespoons golden syrup

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 tablespoon boiling water

1 orange

 Preheat oven to 150°C.

 Combine oats, sifted flour, sugar and coconut in a large bowl. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and golden syrup over a gently heat. Mix the bicarb soda with boiling water, add to melted butter mixture and add this to the dry ingredients. Finely zest the orange and add the zest to the mixture. Stir until combined.

 Take a teaspoonful of mixture at a time and roll into small balls. Place these on a lightly greased oven tray and allow room to spread. Cook for about 15 -20 mins, until lovely and golden. Allow to cool on the trays and then eat!

Makes about 30. Try not to eat all in one setting like we did.

Proof of the Anzac is in the eating...

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Mayhem of a Masterchef Mother?

Posted on November 18, 2010 by melhm

Well, I made it into the Top 50 of Aussie Masterchef 3 – and then waved sadly and gladly goodbye a week later. Now I’m back in the land of the living after a few weeks of Masterchef craziness and wondering: “What was THAT all about?!”

I don’t want to be on telly! I don’t want to be a reality tv non-celebrity! I don’t want to be away from my children/Steve/life/garden/cats for up to 7 MONTHS!!! Why did I fill out the application form in the first place? And then keep accepting each audition? Well, I’ve searched my soul and come out the other end a much wiser woman – in a nutshell, I think it’s all about validation/ congratulation/ appreciation on a egoistic ability level, usually that one gets from ones job and that one doesn’t get mopping up squashed food from under Olly’s highchair 5 times a day. In short I think it means I’m ready to get back to work and get some other stuff going on in my life…

So I feel that I’ve come all around the houses in a big circle to stand exactly where I was in the beginning but with a whole lot more decided about the future. One thing that trying to get through the levels into Masterchef is that you’re asked to define your ‘Food Dream’ a hundred times a day, so if nothing else I’ve given that a huge amount of thought – If I Could Do Anything What Would It Be?  And also being involved for the week that I was WAS very exciting. Especially as I kept getting through…

I certainly hadn’t banked on the level of contact (or lack of) during the time of competition, which could be only one phone call home a week, and many weeks not even that. They have psychologists and practices in place to help once you go in to the ‘House’ however the fact remains is that you may not be able to hold your little kids for a huge amount of time. I think I was kidding myself that I could go in for a few weeks and then pull out but I think now that to enter in is to go with your eyes on the prize and expect to be there until the end – as my good friend Kerry said, the longer you’re there, the harder it will be to pull out.

So I pulled out of the Top 50 and let someone else take their place at the hotel for a 17 day ‘lock-down’ to establish who’ll be going through to Top 24 in January. Good luck to all, and I really hope we see Samala, Tony or Nathalie go through.

Here’s what I cooked to get through those first crucial stages, with mandates & subsequent recipes:

Day one, audition: You will need to bring 1 x  plated serving of the dish you have prepared.  There are no heating facilities available for you to reheat your dishes, so please come up with something that does not require it.

Chicken liver pate with balsamic onions and Sean’s malt scrolls

CHICKEN LIVER PATE (from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course)
225g chicken livers, cleaned
175g butter, room temperature (I used European-style unsalted)
50g extra butter, for melting
2 tbsp brandy
2 tsp mustard powder
¼ tsp powdered mace (I used nutmeg)
1 tsp fresh chopped thyme
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Salt and black pepper

Melt about 25g butter in a heavy frying pan and sauté the chicken livers over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring all the time. Using a slotted spoon remove them from the pan and transfer them to a blender.

Melt the rest of the 175g butter and add this to the blender. Deglaze the pan with the brandy then add to blender. Then add the mustard, mace, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper and blend until you have a smooth paste.

Next, pour the mixture into one large or several small ramekins. Pour the 50g melted butter over, leave to cool, cover with cling film and put it in the bottom of the fridge for a day or two to set.

BALSAMIC ONIONS
Peel and halve 6 large brown onions, slice finely. Heat a large frying pan with a glug of olive oil and add onions in two lots so as not to overcrowd the pan. Fry gently until soft then add alternate sprinklings of brown sugar and splashes of aged balsamic vinegar until onions are super caramelised and gorgeous.

My notes: the audition was fun and easy, everyone was friendly – and nervous! My pate smelt fab, very garlicky – but I overestimated the time we would spend waiting – and consequently wasn’t able to let it warm up a bit and was too hard to mold into a pretty swirly curl… what I put on the plate looked super-rustic (which is how I described my food in the first place, phew) but could also have been described as turd-like…a  bit lump of brown poo on the plate with brown onions and brown bread. A study in brown you could say. Luckily it tasted bloody good, and even though I say it myself, my second ever attempt of Sean’s bread (baked that morning) was great.

Day two, audition: Within your allotted time, you will have 1 HOUR to prepare and cook your dish. After this there will be an allotted amount of time for judging by the judges and they will ask you plenty of questions about your dish so be prepared.  
You will need to bring:
All the raw ingredients for your dish including salt, oil etc
Any food containers that you will need
A cool bag containing all of your perishables (items to be refrigerated)
You must use raw ingredients and all preparation is to be done at the Masterchef kitchen
Your judging hour: You will have 1 hour to prepare your dish in the MasterChef kitchen. You will plate up in the kitchen and the judges will taste your food at your station. There is no time or facility to wash up so ensure you have brought enough equipment with you.

Polenta and parmesan torta with a spring ragout of broad beans, artichokes hearts and peas

(This recipe serves 4-6, I obviously adjusted the amount I needed on the day…)

POLENTA (serves 4-6)
1 corn cob
1 clove garlic
100g coarse polenta
50g grana padano
Olive oil
Salt

Grate corn directly into a heavy based saucepan
Peel & crush garlic & add to 500ml water, bring to boil over moderate flame
Rain in polenta, stirring
Cover & reduce to mere simmer 15 mins
Remove lid, beat in parmesan, season well
Pour onto tray to cool, refrigerate
*Cut cooled polenta into 4-6 wedges, brush with olive oil, panfry until golden & crisp

ARTICHOKES
2 lemons
1 lt chicken stock
2 globe artichokes, stalks snapped & removed
Stock on to simmer
Gloves on, basin cold water with juice of 1 lemon squeezed, have another half ready
Pull off dark outer leaves til uniformly pale
Place on side & cut off top half, rub lemon
Trim base & stalk, rub lemon

Halve or quarter artichokes & remove prickly, pointy, pink-tinged leaves & choke, rub lemon
Drop into acidulated water
Cut stalks into 6cm lengths, strip away dark green, rub lemon & drop into lemon
Transfer all to simmering stock, simmer 10 mins
Cool in liquid a few minutes then lift out with slotted spoon to cool further

RAGOUT (from Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen  Garden Companion)
500g broad beans in pods, to be shelled
250g peas in pod, to be shelled (yields 1 cup peas)
4 cloves new season garlic
Ice cubes
30g unsalted butter, chopped
2 trimmed & cooked artichoke hearts, halved or quartered (see above)
½ cup light chicken stock
1 teaspoon freshly chopped French tarragon
½ tablespoon finely chopped flat leaf parsley
Black pepper

Garlic into saucepan, cover with water. Bring to boil low-med heat, drain.
Repeat
Slip skins off & set aside
Refill saucepan with water & bring to boil on high
Drop broad beans in & boil for 1 minute, drain & immerse into iced water. Peel
Melt half butter in sauté pan medium heat
Once frothing add artichoke pieces, turnips, garlic & sauté until artichokes are golden flecked
Add stock & peas, cook covered for 5 mins
Uncover, scatter over broad beans & herbs & shake gently
Should be very little liquid now, if so turn heat to high & continue shaking
Add remaining butter, grind over pepper, serve.

My notes: I don’t think I spared even a minute of the 60 in getting it all done – all 6 of us were a blur of energy and activity & I didn’t even manage to look sideways the whole time to what the others were doing. I made the dish twice at home, once to work it all out and the second to fix the timing but I hadn’t been able to finesse the presentation… Amazingly on the day it all came together (the photos shown here are home ones) and I put up a lovely dish. Gary and George were just like on the tv, very friendly & supportive – George did question where he knew me from (old sommelier days) and then ask why I was there, to which I had to give the positive, ‘to win!’ spiel, but of course it should have been more a ‘what AM I doing here?!’… To their credit (and mine) they loved the dish & seasonal tones of it, and said straight away that I was in the Top 50 but would give me extra time to think about whether I wanted in, and was prepared to weather the anti-ex-restaurant-staff ‘advantage’ backlash from the public & press that would ensue… my thoughts at the time: I’ve got an out! hooray…

So now back to the highchair wiping, the nappy changes, the endless washing & the weed & snail removal and back to my life! Back to Jazzie B on a Saturday morning, yoga overlooking the beach, a bracing dip in the still-cold Pacific, digging a couple of seats in the sand for Ava & Olly, lovely summery dinners & a wineglass or two with Stevie after the children have gone to bed… and of course back to you  my lovely fellow MMMers! 

Chop chop! 

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Little cakes for our friends the fairies (and gnome)

Posted on October 5, 2010 by melhm

What to do on a long weekend where there’s nothing but rain, rain, rain? My thoughts turn, as always, to food! With Ollsy asleep, we gave daddy a well-earned nap on the sofa watching sport on the telly & apron’d up in the kitchen for a little fairy cake escapade…

Fairy Cakes

 Ingredients
110g self-raising flour
110g butter, softened
110g caster sugar
50g sultanas
2 eggs, lightly beaten

 Method
Pre-heat oven to 180°C
Cream the butter and sugar until soft and light
Add the eggs a little at a time
Sift the flour and gently fold into the mixture
Fold in the sultanas
Place 24 paper baking cases into mini muffin trays & spoon in  the mixture
Bake for 12-15 minutes,  until well risen and golden brown
Eat in garden with fairies
Makes 24

A perfect public holiday Monday afternoon: Steve & Olly woke to a house of yummy cake smells & Ava got to do some important mixing & spooning, licking the bowl and even to do some washing up –  me, I bit my lip and ignored the floods of soapy water cascading onto the kitchen floor…

Such delicious little morsels! They almost made up for the lost playground opportunities over the three days with the early spring downpours – a great thing for the garden as all the green stuff has EXPLODED! I’ve got some lovely photos for my next post –  in the meantime, as they say: the proof is in the pudding, hmm-mm!

So, with that the weekend was over and it was time to think about finishing our little holiday – back to work, school and the week ahead with all its stresses and worries. Well, maybe after just one more tasty little morsel? And still enough cakes left to hide one in the garden for our little friends…

…and one last thing!

Good old Collingwood forever!
We know how to play the game
Side by side we stick together
To uphold the Magpies name
Hear the barrackers are shouting,
As all barrackers should!
All the Premierships a cake-walk
For the good old Collingwood!

Congratulations to the fearsome Magpies, winners of this year’s AFL Grand Final

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Broad beans and blood oranges

Posted on September 27, 2010 by melhm
blood orange

Image by sweetbeetandgreenbean via Flickr

Yum yum, spring has sprung and we’ve taken full advantage of the delicious seasonal goodies of blood oranges & broad beans: we splashed out on a bottle of Campari to have with freshly squeezed blood orange juice at our regular long Sunday lunch with the delicious Kerry & Rod last week & followed drinks with broad bean & pecorino bruschetta and Spanish jamon…

Campari used to be my drink of choice a few moons ago, when I lived and drank in Melbourne as a young single thing – and when I had the energy to demand the proper measure (45mls) of the various bars if poured incorrectly – and drinking it the other day after ten years’ absence brought back many late night Negroni memories. Aaah, misspent youth!

Also, I found a lovely recipe for broad beans from Stephanie Alexander, so I set up my able sous chef Ava to podding:

We steamed the beans for 3 minutes, then re-podded to get the smaller, softer beans inside and smashed them straight away with the mortar & pestle. Then added a little salt & pepper, some grated pecorino and a glug of olive oil, stirred again and then served in a bowl to spread on yummy BBQ’d Brasserie Bread’s quinoa & soy sourdough, with a little garlic rubbed on. Just so delicious draped with a slither of jamon, am hungry just thinking about it now…

Pity Ava didn’t get in to the final product… those sneaky green vegetables!

PS. Soundtrack to this week’s cooking:
Smiley Culture – Shan-a-Shan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-yMtPDsAw
Jurassic 5 -Hey (instrumental) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjNjZq7_TAU
The Headhunters – If You’ve Got It, You’ll Get It http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0JedCdsWSo
Mayer Hawthorne – Maybe So Maybe No http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpfcydeSGeo (still…!)

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Heirloom Tomatoes

Posted on September 22, 2010 by melhm

Olly graced me with a second sleep today of two hours, which allowed me to dig the composted cow manure & lovely rich new soil into the cleared garden bed, and plant my new heirloom tomato seedlings. I’m so excited that I managed to achieve it as I usually would procrastinate & not get around to it, and leave the pots out until the little plants fried in the hot spring sun… When I worked at Sean’s Panaroma in the summer they used to make a very simple tomato salad, but the tomatoes were so delicious that you couldn’t believe the flavour in your mouth… I’m going to attempt to grow some of the same crazy ones I saw there: Black Russian, Green Zebra, Black Krim and Lemon Drop as well as Grosse Lisse and Principe Borghese. I hope to have some fabulous looking photos up here by Christmas!

It’s  a lovely feeling, to be making use of the vegetable beds, as I remember when we moved in almost two years ago and I felt such worry to be taking on another person’s established organic garden, with lots of vegetables I couldn’t identify. And I can fully understand how gardening is reccomended to people suffering from depression as it really does uplift the soul – especially when you see your seeds show their little green heads for the first time, and your seedlings flourish.

So, in anticipation  of a bumper crop of huge tomatoes in a few months’ time, here is my recipe for a wonderful and sneaky tomato/veggie sauce – perfect for pasta & rice, for kids big and small…

Sneaky Tomato Sauce
6-8 ripe tomatoes
a stick of celery
a carrot
a zucchini/some broccoli/whatever else!
half an onion
a clove of garlic
a few basil leaves
olive oil & salt
2 saucepans & a hand-held blender

Start by filling up one of the saucepans with water & setting over high heat to boil. In the meantime, chop up the onion and start to fry it off in the other saucepan with quite a good glug of the olive oil. After a minute or so add the chopped up carrot & celery and fry them off on high for a few minutes too. Then drop the heat to simmer, sprinkle a little salt over the top and sweat with the lid on while you do the next stage.

With the 1st pan of water boiling, drop the tomatoes in for 3 or 4 minutes. In the meantime chop up the zucchini or other veggies & add to the onion, carrot & celery. The tomatoes by this time should be ready to be pulled out to cool slightly – the skins now should be easy to peel off, if not put the tomatoes back in for another minute. Once all are peeled chop them up roughly and add to the veggies, with the crushed garlic & half a cup of water. Now bring up to the boil and then immediately turn down to simmer for at least 20 minutes, stirring every so often.

If I’m in the middle of a hundred things, I leave the pot with the lid on, to rest until I’ve got time to add the basil & whizz it all up to a smooth sauce, and then pour it all into containers to freeze or chill or eat.

Que aproveche!

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Strawberry Jam for Christmas!

Posted on September 20, 2010 by melhm

 

I’ve taken full advantage of all the lovely cheap strawberries available in the shops at the moment and bought some to bottle as jam for us and for Christmas presents… just near our house a grocer was selling 15 punnets for $10! I find it’s so worth the few hours of mess & attention to get beautiful and luscious home-made jam free from all the rubbish that one buys in the supermarket. So in the spirit of thrift & yummy food, here is my suggestion for a pressie for family and friends:

Mel’s Strawberry Jam Recipe
2kg and an extra punnet of strawberries
2kg white sugar
the juice of 2 lemons
a small amount of brandy
jars, kitchen towel, baking tray, large stock pot

I think it’s really important to wash your strawberries, especially if like me you can’t always afford organic ones… normal strawberries are coated in all sorts of pesticides & preservative sprays as they’re so soft and damageable, so it’s best to give them a quick soak in water with a few drops of vinegar added. The strawberries need to be as dry as possible so best to do this with enough time to lay them out to air dry before you need them for the recipe.

I save all my old jars (and now even my Granny saves them for me too!) – metal lidded ones, no plastic lids alas – and wash & drain them throughly. I warm the oven to 150 degrees C and while my jam is resting, I pop the jars onto a baking tray right side up and heat them in  the oven to sterilise. The lids I dry by hand & don’t include in the oven with the jars .

Chop off the stalks of the strawberries and  cut into quarters (I don’t like too many big bits in my jam, leave bigger if you do) and then measure up to give 2kg hulled weight, drop into a clean stock pot and gently heat so that all the berries are hot and starting to liquidise before adding all the sugar.

Gently heat the sugar & strawberry mixture for at least 20 minutes until all the sugar has dissolved, stirring occasionally – you can check if the granules are visible on the back of a wooden spoon. Once you are happy all is dissolved, add the lemon juice & crank the heat up to boil for around 15 minutes. You will need to stand close by to regulate the temperature as the jam can happy boil over if not watched! Also stir the bottom of the pot regularly so that the sugar doesn’t burn.

All the recipe books tell you to put some saucers into the freezer & then check the ‘set’ of the jam by dragging your finger over the tiop and seeing if it has formed a skin… I’ve never been able to do that and instead go by the general feeling of the jam when stirring it. You may well need to do another 10 minutes to get the best consistency… and then once happy, leave the pot to rest for another 10 minutes while you sort out your jars.

I recently bought a jam funnel which has revolutionised my jam-making escapades… at least for the large jars anyway as the funnel is huge, and doesn’t fit the small mustard-type ones, resulting in sloppy and sticky drips… hmmm, I must find an alternative!

Anyway I carefully bring the jars up out of the oven & use my ladle to drop the jam into them one by one, right to the top & take care to waste as little as possible… once they’re all done I cut up some little squares of kitchen towel, soak a piece at a time in a saucer of brandy & lay them over the top of the jars, & then close as tightly as possible, wiping them down with a damp cloth. Once the jars are cool, I check the lids are tight again and give them a proper wipe down.

When the jars are completely cold I make up labels for them and – hey presto! all done. And whatever I don’t use as pressies, we eat on buttery toast or cream-laden scones. Yum yum.

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Spring veggie planting

Posted on August 30, 2010 by melhm

Today Olly and I planted our first Spring vegetable seeds. Since it has been so lovely and warm I’m hoping that the seeds will think it’s spring and not the winter that it truly is… sweetcorn, silverbeet and green dwarf beans, along with basil and oregano to go with the skerricks of tarragon that survive from last summer. There is so much hope with planting – in my case the results rarely live up to the expectation – and the fabulous feeling of actually having got out there and pulled the weeds out of the bleedin’ beds first. A tick off the to-do list, hooray! I will be smugly satisfied for a while now every time I look out of the kitchen window to our green-thumbed work…one big bed down, now only one small one to go…

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