one thing i will miss about australia is its mild wet winters. summer is all about being outside, but in winter it’s staying indoors, spending hours in bed cocooned in blankets and feeling sorry for yourself (but you’re not really that sorry, because you’re in bed, and not out in the rain).
last winter, after a road trip up the central coast and a raid of the farmers market, we made pea & ham soup. even though the ingredients and the method are pretty basic, 2 hours of simmering time meant that them flavours were making some serious flavour babies and grandchildren. which means lots of smiles, second servings, and pleas and negotiations on how much one could take home.
this recipe is for my hammy, who discovered the soup with me. xxx
pea and ham soup with sourdough croutons
recipe by belinda jeffery, august 2009 edition of delicious. magazine — serves 6 - 8
March 2010
35 posts
February 2010
28 posts
most of us grew up or survived eating some really rudimentary, sometimes canned variant of the most versatile sauce known to broke university students. have you tried spag bol on rice? or in a nice crusty loaf? oh man, it wins every time
i went through a serious spaghetti bolognese phase thanks to this jamie oliver recipe. this was also the first dish i whipped up in my bright orange le creuset 6.8 litre cast iron pot. i wasn’t a poor student by then, but i discovered the recipe when i was a university student, drooling along while watching his show (and eating something quite unspectacular).
the flavour is much more concentrated than typical student cafeteria bolognese, and it loves to wrap itself around broad pasta like pappardelle or fettuccine. it’s a fair bit of work and a long wait, but so worth the face dive.
rustic spaghetti bolognese
modified from a recipe by jamie oliver — serves 4 - 6
— bill granger
it seems like i’m going through a bit of a curry phase. the problem is, i’m always going through a curry phase.
fragrant chicken and spinach curry
recipe by bill granger — serves 4
we came across sarti in a small alleyway on a cold saturday night in melbourne, after getting lost trying to find il bacaro.
as soon as we walked up the stairs, we did a double-take at how un-clichéd the place was for a modern italian eatery. then the unwritten, unannounced specials (beetroot fettucine with homemade sausage, slow cooked saffron lamb) left us triple-taking. the pinot recommended by the sommelier floored us. but even after all of that eye-rolling and purring, it was the pannacotta that i still can’t get over — a generous wobble of pistachio (‘gasm!) pannacotta, accompanied with a giant popcorn ball (gush!) held together with caramel (swoon!) and peanuts.
now that it’s right up there in the “top 5 most memorable meals ever” list, i wonder if i’d still feel that way if i went back for another night with sarti.
combining spam, “cooked until crisp-tender” vegetable + orange juice combo, basil, spring onions AND dijon mustard sounds more like crude medieval medicine than something that’s meant to be eaten willingly.
i’m starting to think that this is totally made up.
(thanks jeremy!)
(recipe complete with immature commentary.)
swedish meatballs
transcribed by jason from somewhere
high recommended with ikea packet gravy and lingonberry jam.
the power of indian side dishes is that they easily hold their own as a main — and you’ll hardly notice the lack of meat. (unless you had some lamb rogan josh in front of you, then that would be difficult to ignore.)
thanks to j for the recipes, and that one time he let me raid his fridge and finish all of the remaining kumb makki and jeera aloo. and he didn’t even ask me too! burp.
kumb makki hara dhania (mushrooms and corn with coriander)
recipe from jason, from one of his 235376 cookbooks.
there’s a tiny, brief window in february / early march when sugar plums are in season, dirt cheap, and mouth gushing. it started about two weeks ago, and i don’t know how long it’ll last — so if you’re in sydney right now, basking in what remains of summer (even though it’s technically autumn) then grab a kilo of sugar plums and crumble away.
sugar plum crumble
recipe found somewhere on the internet
(— my cousin’s very british husband, as we were standing in the spelt / flour / grains aisle in an organic food store in LA.)
i spend a lot of time in thomas dux. ever since macro got bought out, the dux is the new place to stare at weird stuff that hardly looks edible but must be because you’re paying $4 for a small 200g bag of what appears to be horsefood.
having said that, one of the perks i’m looking forward to when i’m state-side is cheaper organic produce and accessibility to different grains that aren’t so easy to get here. unless i fork out for a rice cooker, i’m going to need my grains in one form or the other — and farro is a great alternative to rice due to being low GI, and high in fibre, protein, B-complex vitamins, zinc, AND simple and complex carbohydrates.
i don’t know what sort of kitchen i’ll end up living with, but i am totally getting stuck into this on those cold lonely nights.
lamb shank soup with farro and vegetables (serves 4-6)
recipe from the good weekend, torn out and kept from my melbourne trip last year.
gone are the freshman year home ec class days where i would be happy with just a result. barely edible is a result, but you may as well put it out of its misery by burying it in the garbage can.
the bourke street bakery carrot cake* recipe is alchemy, physics and precision timing. you can buy carrot cake from a supermarket. you can even buy packet mix for it. but you can’t buy carrot cake that aligns the stars and births unicorns — not without really working for it.
its either a clever ploy so hipsters won’t bother and buy the ready-made version at the bakery, or the guys at bourke street bakery really want you to appreciate how much effort goes into making you diabetic.
while i might wimp out at life, i never do with recipes, regardless of how tedious the steps may be. some highlights:
- careful 1/8 teaspoon measurements of spices. srsly, who has a 1/8 measuring teaspoon?!
- scouring thomas dux for 30 minutes trying to find the un-google-able and un-findable neufchâlet cream cheese.
- trying to figure out whether the egg whites qualified as “soft peaks” or were a total fail (they weren’t, thankfully).
- folding everything together within a matter of seconds without deflating the yolks + sugar + meringue.
in short, it paid off: an oh-so-moist yet light cake with a lovely crisp top layer (thanks to the meringue), walnuts for that occasional hit of texture and bitterness, and the triple-bypass icing layer (icing sugar + butter + cream cheese + whipping cream) as the rounding-off glue that holds this universe together.
if you need a major ego boost, there’s nothing like conquering a fast-moving recipe that requires octopus arms.
read this other person’s blog for the recipe and photos. obviously hers wasn’t as tasty; i didn’t even have a chance to take a photo of my cake before it got completely nom’d. (har har)
* not to be mistaken for this. which is also a lot of work, for a whole other awesome altogether.
valentines day is for suckers who find comfort in meaningless rituals. for starters, shouldn’t being nice to your partner be a given? “hey, maybe i won’t be such an asshole and beat my girlfriend today ‘cause its valentines day. but only for today.”
then there’s the having-to-buy-stuff (and keeping the receipt in case she hates it). don’t people buy stuff for each other all the time, so why does it have to be on february 14th? i deserve awesome bangles made from old lenses everyday! (by the way, smart people buy chocolates after valentines day, ‘cause they mark them down.)
but that’s not the point of this post. i rant about this stuff every year.
when my parents were dating, my dad was such a cheapskate that he wouldn’t take my mum out to lunch. instead, they’d go on their romantic day trips around taiwan, holding hands while watching cranes take off over the water, fishermen hauling in their nets, waves crashing into rocks…and then go back to a meal of cheap instant noodles like these 統一肉燥米粉 — President-brand pork mince vermicelli:
from some taiwanese blog about food.
there’s no actual pork mince in it. just dried spring onions, pork fat (that melts and forms part of your soup), some awesome MSG-derived flavours, and vermicelli:
image from flickr.
my dad would also time it on purpose — leave super early in the morning, so they would get back in time for lunch. and since because they’d be so tired from driving and day-tripping, whack the kettle on and the noodles are done in 5 minutes. i suppose dinner would’ve meant taking my mum out, and therefore a bigger dent in dad’s wallet.
yet despite my dad’s cheap ways, my mother still married him and i popped out 9 months later. at first i thought my mum was just a sucker, but then i tried them and now i make her stock up on 6-packs of pork mince vermicelli whenever she goes back to taiwan.
so dudes, i can vouch for the power of inexpensive but extremely tasty noodles to win over a woman’s heart. fork out 15 NT dollars and you’re right as rain.
sydney can really suck the life out of you sometimes.
sometimes you have a really bad morning and have a fight over the phone with someone and end up walking to work with tears streaming down your face because you’re upset about having unvalidated feelings and peeved that you had to fight about it over the phone and not face-to-face (where you would’ve been able to sucker-punch your opponent).
then you have a morning conference call with new york and you’re trying to pay attention but you’re still peeved and upset about having that fight earlier. your boss tells you to circulate the meeting notes, of which you’ve taken none. then you head out into the CBD for another meeting, bumping up against the suits and heels and all you want is to walk in a straight line with your hands freely at your side without having to apologize at every 5th pace.
then you have a meeting with a client that your agency had a falling out with two years ago, and without your boss around you have no idea what to say because there was no agenda sent out before the meeting. and since you only had 5 hours of sleep last night, you’re trying to sit up in your chair without leaning your head on your hand, coming up with small talk and suffocating in the dead air that is false corporate congeniality. and the co-worker that came along to the meeting has a really really bad breath.
then you finally leave the meeting, 30 minutes overdue, and line up at the ATM to get cash. you take your card and receipt but forget to take your cash. luckily a grumpy sweaty man picks it up and hands it to you, making you look like a complete ass in front of everyone.
at the lights you realise that central baking depot is literally just around the corner, so instead of going back to a desk lunch, you walk into the homey embrace of freshly baked bread and stuff your face with a pork and fennel sausage roll (which you first tasted back in 2006 when you first met the person that you had a fight with that morning), gruyere and panchetta quiche, and the most perfect flat white. since you’re too stuffed to have something sweet, you take home a chocolate and poppyseed twist, which you have as an after-dinner treat .
then you decide you’re not going to go back to work, so you get on the train and head home. you make up for your fight in the morning with another phone call and ends with giggling and squeaky-voiced pet names, change into your pyjamas, and basically spend the rest of the day drinking hot tea and reading comics.
central baking depot made my day.
read this article with a very, very large grain of salt. a whole sack of it, even.
(and double that if you decide to buy this book too.)
during that surreal week back in 2007 where i met and fell in love with SF, i picked up a bay area food guide put together by the community alliance with family farmers (CAFF).
somehow i knew (or hoped) that it would come in handy one day, so i kept it and devoured it with my eyeballs.
i also had plenty of ridiculous farmers market daydreams where i’m wearing a glaring white dress with flowers in my sea-salt-laden hair, walking barefoot with a wicker basket in hand and fresh flowers in another, while a tanned, unshaven, extremely good looking farmer feeds me a slice of vine-ripened tomato. as his sandpaper finger callouses run over my lips and the acidic tomato juices and drool run down my chin, our eyes meet and he sinks his supermodel-white teeth into the rest of the tomato in a fit of passion, spraying tomato juice all over my face. and then we fall, oh how we fall, into a crate of heirlooms, la tomatina styles, and make sweet sweet tomato purée.
(can anyone recommend a good romance novel publisher?)
but anyway, apart from their print-edition of the food guide, you can also search fresh foods by county and find your nearest farmers markets on their site, too.
this is so deceivingly simple, but it’s so amazingly awesome. if you cut the crusts off then you end up with a classier sandwich — although if you’re hungry, you should probably leave ‘em on.
curried egg sandwiches
serves 4 hungry kids / 2 adults / 1 famished student
as part of the move, i did a late-summer clean and came across a cheese guide i picked up at central market in austin, texas. nestled amongst the nice typography, name dropping and cheese tips was a recipe for cheddar beer soup.
you’d think that putting beer and cheese together into soup would be as enjoyable as swigging a mouthful of beer with some crumbled cheese bits. oh, ye of little faith: the awesome powers of ale and cheddar combine to make something quite spectacular and different to the simple sum of their parts. and because it starts out as a roux, it’s surprisingly familiar too.
cheddar beer soup
adapted from a recipe found in a central market brochure
You rock up to this cafe and make your order, only for the previous person’s order to served to you! Your order is then given to the next person who comes into the cafe! Nothing short of awesome.
(to the tune of “you are my sunshine”)
you are my ham ham
my only ham ham
you make me ham ham
inside my pants!
i am the best love poem and song writer a guy could ever want.
(so far i’ve only found this on tap in rooftop bar in melbourne and the clare hotel in sydney, and in bottle form in north sydney cellars.)
