There hasn’t been too much food on the blog of late. I could say it’s because I’ve been too tired to write, but that’s not really true. I am rarely too tired to write. The thing is, I haven’t been experimenting too much in the kitchen on account of the man of the house still being on a very restricted diet. Although the rest of us are free to eat as we please, then generally I’ve been trying to keep the majority of our meals in the safe zone so that we can all enjoy it together. Now establishing foods that are in the ‘safe zone’ hasn’t been that easy, and it’s a path that we’re only a short way down, but we are progressing down it.
Tonight, we had a small harvest of broad beans from the garden. Young enough not to need popping from their outer skins. Worth a little celebration of sorts.
Ingredients
Sweet potatoes, cut into chunks, and roasted together with several garlic gloves, lashed in olive oil.
Fresh young broad beans, quickly blanched (or use more mature / frozen and pop them from the outer shells)
Handful of flat leaf parsley chopped
Pumpkin and sunflower seeds, toasted in a hot dry pan.
This salad sounds insanely busy in a very unfashionable way doesn’t it? I believe it’s in vogue these days to go minimal. Short lists of ingredients. Simple. So I’m off trend once again. Never-mind, the salad was rather lovely with big fat sausages.
Ingredients
1 cup – 1 mug of quinoa (depending on how many you’re feeding)
1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes cut into small cubes
1 large aubergine chopped into small cubes and generously salted
Fry the sweet potato and aubergine cubes in a little butter (or ghee or coconut oil) until really soft and caramalised. I think it took about 30 minutes. Meanwhile cook and drain the quinoa. Mix everything together and dress.
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.
Since I shared this blog a few months ago it has been rather lovely and encouraging to see people are reading it. It is particularly fabulous to see people reading it from all over the place. 57 countries (I just counted), which makes me smile. I always say that living in Wellington sometimes feels like a strong gust of wind could blow you off the edge of the world, so it’s nice to know people are out there, connected a little bit, anchoring me down in some strange abstract way. This post is my way of saying a big hello and welcome.
And the goodbye? It’s just temporary! I’m optimistically packing our summer gear and leaving the Welly winter for a month in sunny England. I hope I’ll be too busy catching up with family and friends, eating food I haven’t cooked and reading books that have been patiently waiting far too long to be opened to blog…. but things rarely go as I think they will and perhaps the lure of cooking and photographing a big fat chocolate cake will get the better of me.
Also, I’ve updated the ‘about’ page and I’ve finally joined twitter… you can follow me @themonkeytrail.
No one was keen to hang around while I took a photo of the finished ice-blocks .. here’s the puree. They are a pretty good way to get the kids into eating rhubarb. Just made with stewed rhubarb with a couple of frozen strawberries thrown in to sweeten it and a squeeze of honey. Blended and poured into the super-dooooper ice block maker. In fact last night we actually had the ice-block maker in the middle of the table and poured in the puree as we sat down – it froze while we ate the main course…if that’s not incentive for kids to eat their beans up I don’t know what is.
Chop the fruit and grate over some fresh ginger – shake a little sugar over if you are so inclined – maybe honey if you want to be healthy.
Mix the crumble topping by chopping up a little room temperature butter (maybe a cm off a block – about 30g) and rubbing it together using fingertips with 1/2 cup of coconut flour, 1/2 cup ground almonds. Add a spoon of chia seeds and a spoon of sugar. Pat the topping over the crumble and bake until fruit is soft. 30 – 40 mins at 180 – might have to turn the oven down if the topping looks too brown before the fruit is soft.
This is a great Friday night supper on a number of levels. For a start it’s roast chicken – always a winner , smells great while it’s cooking and as easy as putting the chicken in the oven to roast. You can get a bit flash with sticking things in the cavity (lemon / garlic / herbs etc) but if you can’t be bothered I reckon even just slamming the bird on a tray in the oven with a bit of salt and pepper still gets a fine result.
You can make the salad in advance so that when the pre-dinner slump hits and all you can think about is a large glass of wine then you can kick back with your large glass of wine, put the TV on for the kiddos and smell the chicken roasting. Sweet. Also, all that raw veg in the salad is super-healthy so you can treat yourself to an extra wine safe in the knowledge your brightly coloured vegetables are busy de-toxing your liver for you while you drink it.
To make the salad, grate up whatever vegetables are to hand. I used my lovely swirly grating machine (which for those of you feeling like your life is incomplete without one (I did get that comment this week so I know the sentiment is out there!) is a Tefal fresh express – got it from Moore Wilsons for about $90 I think. I used courgette, carrot, beetroot and celery – also put some grapes in because I wanted to crumble in a little blue cheese at the end and grapes and blue cheese are a very happy pairing. The ‘super grain’ part is a mix of white, red and black quinoa and amaranth that you’ll find from Ceres in the organics section (you can get it ready mixed all in one bag). I feel healthy just writing it and it has a nice mild nutty flavour that seems to go down OK with the kids (it’s gluten free as well). You just simmer it for about 15 mins in boiling water and then cool it for the salad (you can rinse it in cold water using a sieve if you don’t have time to let it cool on it’s own). I put some olive oil, apple cider vinegar and lemon on to dress the salad but it would carry any dressing well.
If you’re looking at the salad photo and thinking it might be a bit of a hard sell to the little guys then it’s easy to cut them some sticks of the vegetables with maybe some mashed avocado to dip them in and to give them a serving of the super-grains on the side. That’s how my little dudes like it but all kids have their own strange ways.
The final hurrah of this fantastic Friday supper is that you get a chicken carcass, and maybe even some leftover chicken if you have a slightly less greedy (or smaller) family than mine. You can put it straight on to boil for stock and then you’ll have a lovely batch of stock to cook with over the weekend. You can also make the salad bigger than you’ll need as it’s a great BBQ accompaniment or pizza side which make Saturday’s meals a bit easier.
Bolognese is always a good idea. It has a cross seasonal appeal and an ability to soak up a little of the day it’s made in. Yesterday, the wind eased back and left a beautiful sea fret hanging over the house. I find the wind disconcerting, but there is something magical about the low mist that sometimes follows. In honor of the magic mist, I used a batch of fresh chicken stock in the bolognese , which then slowly simmered and reduced all afternoon creating a rich and rather lovely sauce.
I have been using Nigel Slater’s bolognese recipe for a while now but needed to adapt it today due to having a glut of celery but no carrot and having lost the nutmeg (yes apparently I live in a house where it is possible to loose a jar of nutmeg) and also didn’t think the usual quantity of wine made it very baby friendly.
Garlic, onion, celery and mince cooked together until mince brown then add salt and pepper and some tomato paste – a pint or so of fresh chicken stock (I’m not sure there is a huge art to making chicken stock – I just sling in the carcass in a pan after a roast and cover it with water – maybe some herbs if they are to hand and maybe some garlic cloves and salt and pepper – apparently the longer you cook it the better but we’re not really clock watchers over stuff like making stock around here).
I’m sure it could have been enhanced in all sorts of lovely ways had I not been racing out the door with 4 little people to get to a swim class, but it was pretty fine as it was when we came home. (Add some milk about 20 mins before eating it to make it even richer, and of course, have it over pasta of some kind with lashings of cheese).
Another of Jake’s creations – inspired by a dessert eaten in India recently and with a flash little apple carving on the side - because once you start thinking about making the food look lovely then you start doing all kinds of crazy stuff!
Melt a little butter in a pan with some soft brown sugar – add some chunks of apple and cook till starting to soften, then add some fresh chili, a cinnamon stick, black pepper and fresh ginger – a splash of water and cook for a while until apple is soft but still with a bit of bite. For the apple flower you need to do a day course at a cooking school in Vietnam so that bit’s optional – it does look very pretty though. Good with ice-cream or yogurt.
Stopped at Bluebank Farm on the way back from Martinborough for a big blueberry picking session with the kids. Heaps of berries, lots at kid-friendly height. They make these blueberry ice-blocks there and were kind enough to share the recipe ; basically just boil up some blueberries for a few minutes with a little sugar and lemon juice and then blend and freeze in ice-block containers – I guess the health-freaks could skip the sugar or replace it with something like honey or maple syrup. These were a beautiful intense purple colour so I’m guessing they had very little water - have a feeling we may be making our own batch this weekend – sure have enough blueberries to use up with 3 eager young pickers.
There hasn’t been too much food on the blog of late. I could say it’s because I’ve been too tired to write, but that’s not really true. I am rarely too tired to write. The thing is, I haven’t been experimenting too much in the kitchen on account of the man of the house still being on a very restricted diet. Although the rest of us are free to eat as we please, then generally I’ve been trying to keep the majority of our meals in the safe zone so that we can all enjoy it together. Now establishing foods that are in the ‘safe zone’ hasn’t been that easy, and it’s a path that we’re only a short way down, but we are progressing down it.
