on the monkey trail

kitchen and garden diaries

Monthly Archives: August 2012


by 1 Comment

the slummy mummy’s ode to (non)meal planning

I can be a highly organised and efficient person, when someone’s paying me to be so. However, I’m not one of those people who brings their business skills into play when running the home. On the contrary I like to run a pretty loose ship. More slummy mummy than yummy mummy. The iron stays in hibernation from one year to the next, the kids have rarely been seen in anything other than odd socks, and we are usually to be found running up the hill to school at 8.57, after some kind of epic library book search.  You won’t find any charts or lists in this house. You won’t even find a functioning calendar or diary system (we have tried, but always seem to default to the rather stupid idea that I can hold a schedule for a family of six in my head).

So it’s pretty relaxed around here, and needless to say there isn’t any meal planning. This post is a little ode to the art of keeping it random.

  • The free-style cook has almost no waste. You use whatever is leftover from the day before as the starting point for the day ahead.
  • It’s economical. Partly because there is no waste, partly because you shop frequently and can base the meal around whatever is on offer / looks good.
  • It’s more enjoyable, because you always cook what you feel like cooking.
  • You are free to follow the weather, as well as your mood.
  • It encourages you to be creative, especially when you have a strange selection of ingredients to hand, and no desire to schelp out to the shops. Being creative in the kitchen helps kids expand their culinary horizons, and grow up with an interest in food. (Which is not to say they will embrace everything that you create.)
  • Best of all, you can genuinely answer ‘I don’t know’, when the kids ask you what’s for dinner. Unless you happen to be making their absolute favourite meal, and unless all your kids have the same absolute favourite meal, then it is best to keep the dinner menu pretty close to your chest until the dinner hour has arrived. By that time, they are likely to be hungry enough to put their impassioned preferences to one side, and eat what is in front of them.

I realise that cooking for a family of six,  and taking this approach makes me a bit strange. I think just about every article on how to ‘best’ or ‘efficiently’ approach feeding the family, revolves around some form of meal planning and ‘the weekly shop’. That’s OK. I’m happy to swim against the tide. Sometimes it’s nice to put a different point of view out there. It does help if you have a well stocked pantry , enjoy cooking, and are a long way away from being a perfectionist…(working from home is kind of a bonus too).

*A random chicken, coconut, aubergine, sweet potato and red lentil casserole from earlier this week.


by 5 Comments

for the love of food

It was barely 9am, and the air was heavy with the scent of chocolate. I eyed up the trays of fizz, wondering momentarily if it was too early for a glass. Of course not. If you have a rare day away from the kids, and are in a room filled with some of the world’s finest chocolate, then clearly it’s not a time to abstain.The last conference I attended was over seven years ago. I seem to recall that I showed a spectacular lack of self restraint there also… but that’s a story for another day (although this is a food blog so it probably wouldn’t do at all to digress into tales of seedy hotels in Coventry).

So I ate a lot of chocolate. Good chocolate that made me slightly ashamed of the sheer quantity of cheap creamy milk I’ve consumed (hovering round the fridge) over the years. Surely the equivalent of necking a bottle of Diamond White on a park bench. But I guess that’s the joy of getting older. We get a little wiser, with slightly better taste. Or so I hope.

It was fantastically well organised by Allison of Gourmet Gannet and Shirleen of Sugar and Spice , and it turns out food bloggers are a pretty lovely bunch and very open to new folk joining in. Even when they haven’t got much of a clue what they’re doing, have no photography skills, and need help learning how to tweet.

So all round a pretty fabulous couple of days, and easily the best lemon macaroons that have ever been made (thanks Cordon Blue NZ). I’m working my way through my goodie bag (OK, most of it is already gone), reading lots of new blogs, and dreaming of the day I’ll have time to put all the stuff I learnt into practice. For a ‘taste’ of what I’m talking about then check out this post from My Darling Lemon Thyme. This post from The Kitchen Maid

Sorry, no photos (was overcome by photo-fright amongst so many cameras) but pop over here because Lydia took some great ones.


by Leave a comment

you’ve made your bed, now put your pork shoulder on it

There’s usually some kind of a commotion in the wee small hours around here. We’re well used to a bit of rowdiness. Last night the kids took it up a gear, and we were jolted from our slumber in ways I don’t care to dwell upon. Consequently I started the day already feeling a bit jaded, and generally unenthused. Schlepping round the supermarket when feeling unenthused isn’t a brilliant plan, but with four hungry kids in the house you can’t just mince around in your jammies waiting to feeling inspired.

In lieu of an actual plan for dinner I started by making something that looked pretty. Sliced plums, star anise, a cinnamon stick, fresh ginger, garlic cloves, bay leaves, olive oil. Sometimes in a house full of boys you really just need to take a moment to admire the purple flesh of a plum .. if you have boys you might know what I mean, or you might think that I am having one of my slightly strange days.

So I’d made my bed and I decided to slow roast a pork shoulder upon it. Covered tightly in foil and starting in a hot oven (around 220) then turning the heat straight down to a slow 140degrees and cooking all afternoon. I think I got that idea from Jamie Oliver or Nigel Slater or a hybrid of the two and seem to remember it being a successful endeavor a while ago. It could have been fabulous again, had I just paid it slightly more attention. If i’d actually covered it tightly in foil, rather than slung some over in a slapdash fashion.

As it was, the pork was pretty good – kept moist by the thick layer of fatty crackling. The pan, however, was crucified. The plumy, saucy, gravy of my imaginings, was just a crisp black smear, an idea of what the flavour might have been,clinging to the bottom of the joint.

Broken dreams.


by Leave a comment

freestyle chocolate, blueberry and pumpkin seed loaf

 

When I’m feeling stressed or anxious I often bake. This loaf was free-style baking at it’s best. Almost trancelike concocting without any real idea what the outcome would be.

The quantities here are very vague (as per the trancelike state I refer to above)..but very roughly ; 50g melted dark chocolate, 50g melted butter, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup raw sugar, large scoop of full fat yogurt, 1 cup ground pumpkin seeds, 1 cup ground almonds, 1/2 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup rice flour, 2 spoons cocoa powder, 1 tsp baking powder. All beaten together and then poured in a loaf tin – baked for around 40 minutes at 180 until a knife came out clean.

Maybe I need to think about yoga.

Aside from some crazy freestyle baking I’ve been making a lot of the old staples. Looking forward to the food bloggers conference tomorrow for some new inspiration. Will also be writing a few posts for Munch over the coming weeks – pop over there and check out this interview.


by Leave a comment

the b word

The day began and ended with butter. Things have been a little heavy around here lately and it’s taken it’s toll on all of us. So midway through breakfast this stormy Tuesday morning I decided we needed a bit of baking frivolity. Frivolity in the form of pink party buns. We’re planning T’s third birthday, so recipe testing was kind of an excuse, although really it was just one of those mornings that seemed to call for pink icing.

About 70g soft butter / 1/2 cup raw sugar creamed together and then in with a big scoop of full fat yogurt, 2 eggs, 1 cup plain flour, 1/2 cup of wholemeal flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder mixed to a froth with the juice of a mandarin (random, but you need to be open to randomness when baking with the kids). Made 12 small muffin case size buns/ baked in about 15 mins at 180. The icing is just raspberry juice and icing sugar (I use frozen raspberries defrosted to a pulp in the microwave and then pushed through a sieve to get the juice).. which sounds quite an involved thing to be doing at 8am with a couple of kids to get ready for school and a couple more underfoot … but actually it was kind of festive and you can’t argue with a fresh out of the oven bun before heading out to school.

Well, the pink icing worked it’s magic on my soul and roused me from a rather low patch of kitchen gloom. Feeling bold, I decided to try making ghee – I’d just read this post (by Nourish-ed) and decided we needed some in our lives immediately. Who knew it was this easy! Thanks Nourish-ed.


by 2 Comments

incompatibility stew

The man of the house and I are not very compatible when it comes to our appetite for meat. I grew up only eating meat occasionally (and indeed flirted with vegetarianism for a few years in my teens). Now I enjoy meat, but if left to my own devices I’d probably only eat it a few times a week. He, on the other hand, would eat it all the time. The boys seem to take after their Dad, so I try and keep my vegetarian urges to myself these days (let’s just say my meatless Monday attempt a while ago was not popular).

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m trying to incorporate some of the principles of ‘Nourishing Traditions’ in our diet. Sally Fallon (the author) seems to be a big meat lover herself. A significant principle of Nourishing Traditions is eating animal fat (rather than the lean cuts which are my natural choice) and organ meats. It doesn’t sound that appealing does it?

Animal fat is one of the areas of the ancestral diet that I’ve been a little reluctant to embrace. I get the bone broth bit and am a true convert, the fermented vegetables are OK too, and I’m doing my best to see gluten free as a positive learning curve… but meat fat and organ meats? I just don’t want to go there. It may be the best thing since sliced bread but I just don’t feel good after eating fatty meat and aside from chicken liver pate I don’t enjoy the taste of organs (unless I pay someone a lot of money to do something fancy with them, and consume them in dim lighting with a rather lovely glass of wine..not that there’s a lot of that kind of thing in my life these days!)

So up to now we’ve been compromising. I’ve been buying moderately lean cuts with bones in. But we’ve run into a problem. The man of the house is a big guy and since he gut back on grains is struggling to keep the weight on. He clearly needs more something in his diet.

So this super slow cooked stew was just for him. A lunch special. Made with a deeply marbled (really pretty fatty actually) beef shins (bone in), garlic, onion, sweet potato, fresh ginger, turmeric, bay leaf, salt and a little cider vinegar. Covered the lot in water and cooked for 14 hours overnight in the crock-pot.


by Leave a comment

some kind of wonderful

So I cooked the tamarillos. Lightly poached in water with a little pomegranate syrup (I own pomegranate syrup purely because I couldn’t walk past something that sounded so fine in the supermarket recently) and some cardamon pods. It wasn’t looking good, for a day of kitchen creativity (the man of the house was home unwell, and had proclaimed he had no appetite at all). I decided I wouldn’t let this deter me. I think I’d become a little fixated with the tamarillos, since my last post they had become a small symbol of hope in the fruit bowl. The big idea was to poach them (as above) and serve them with greek yogurt, drizzled with honey and scattered with almonds and fresh mint. Just writing it down sounds some kind of wonderful doesn’t it?

Unfortunately things didn’t quite go that way. It turned out that when the man of the house said he had no appetite he actually meant it, regardless of what kind of fancy shenanigans I pulled with a tree tomato. So I ate a couple straight from the poaching pan and put the rest to languish in a bowl in the fridge, awaiting happier times. In truth I haven’t been able to face them since then. Optimism and I aren’t very comfortable companions.

Chocolate cake, on the other hand, will always be my trusted friend. After putting the tamarillos to one side I made a quick cake with milk chocolate, prunes, blueberries and almonds. I’ve made loads of versions of this cake (just search the archives of this site under prunes – it’s pretty much the only thing I do with prunes). But I’m working on the ultimate recipe , the top of the chocolate prune cake pops. When I’ve got it, I’ll post it up on Welly Kitchen. This one was a decent port on a stormy day.

The basics of this cake (as far as I remember them : 1/2 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup prunes (poached together in a little water and then blended to a paste). 50 g melted milk chocolate (usually use dark but ran out), 70g melted butter. 3 eggs, 1 cup ground almonds, 1/2 cup rice flour, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 cup yogurt and 1 tsp of baking powder. Beat the whole lot up any which way you like and bake for about half an hour at 180.


by Leave a comment

optimistic tamarillos

What comes out of the kitchen here is usually a reasonable indicator of my joie de vivre. Let’s just say last night’s dinner was something of a low point. Given it was risotto without Arborio rice, then how could it be anything other than disappointing? Basically it was just rice and peas with bacon. I found myself without energy or enthusiasm to even chop and cook a little onion and garlic.To make matters worse, the bacon was grilled to the burnt side of crispy. Bland, bland, bland (with burnt bits).

Today I felt compelled to buy Tamarillos. I’ve never cooked Tamarillos before so I took this compulsion as a good sign.Maybe the jet lag is lifting and and I am on the verge of getting a little enthusiasm back. Perhaps I will do something fabulous with them.

Right now they are sitting in the fruit bowl looking handsome. I am cautiously optimistic.


by Leave a comment

Jet lag, chocolate cake, chicken soup and new bloginnings

We’ve been home for a week now and the jet lag has been brutal. It’s not helped by the vaguely discontented feeling of homesickness that always settles around me on return to NZ (or indeed by the kids all waking at different points during the night). Frankly the two combined have put me in a bit of a grump. I’ve tried the two food cure-alls of chicken soup and chocolate cake (not together obviously) and they haven’t really helped that much. I’ve also tried coffee, mint tea and even red wine and whilst all provided temporary relief it was just fleeting respite. I therefore conclude that it is not possible to eat or drink your way out of jet-laggy, post-holiday malaise.

The chocolate cake was good though. Something of a recipe breakthrough actually (baking soda and orange juice = airy fluffiness) which got me thinking about this blog and how sometimes in the midst of all my harping on about the colour of the sky and the song on the radio, that the actual recipes can get a little lost. Well, actually sometimes the recipes aren’t even real recipes, just random collections of ingredients that I may or may not remember to note down in the right order, whilst pondering something completely unrelated. But the chocolate cake got me thinking. I’ve probably made 20 chocolate cakes in the last 6 months. I’m not going to scroll through the archives and check – it might be embarrassing to see the actual number (and besides, there have been many more that haven’t made this particular diary). Who makes that many chocolate cakes (aside from people who work as bakers)? It’s kind of bordering on obsessive isn’t it? If I keep up with the blog then what will it look like in a few years – will there be thousands of chocolate cake entries, or will someone have carted me off to Cadburys World as an exhibit by then?

So I’ve started a new ‘best of’ collection of pure recipes over at Welly Kitchen. (Now I feel like an aging pop star). Welly Kitchen is  going to be in proper recipe format with all the important details like measurements and timings and temperatures. It’s also going to be a place to outline how I adapt the meals for the small folk.

This blog will remain my test kitchen and my diary. The place to experiment, freestyle, and ponder the mood of the day. Facebook / twitter accounts are the same for both so if you’re a follower you’ll get updates from both. If you’d like an email when a recipe goes up on Welly Kitchen then you can subscribe on the home page just as you can here to On the monkey trail.

Thanks for reading. Here’s a leaning tower of chocolate cupcakes in a misguided attempt to ‘style’ the food whilst feeling a bit lack-lusture about being awake. For the recipe pop over here

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 189 other followers