Tuesday 17 May 2011

Comment away!

Good news friends! Many people are complaining they are having trouble commenting on my blog entries. Well, I believe I have fixed the problem! So comment away! looking forward to reading them all.
Lots of love readers xo!

The humble onion and the mighty ‘pain barrier’.




So, the soup, that, ‘oh so adored’ chicken soup recipe pictured in my last blog entry, was not so adored by yours truly or her husband. Yes, that lovely old Jewish lady who announced the recipe as one of her own special treasures, and me, gullible me, so earnestly believed and made in faith. Oh the feeling of creating a recipe that has been around for centuries, the tradition I felt run through my veins, (I’m so totally NOT Jewish by the way, but for a moment, I believed I was. I really did.) then after two hours on at a simmer and only an hour and half before serving, (to a table full of guests I might add) I dipped in my spoon singing, “lai-lai-lai-lai”, and thus the steaming broth filled my spoon, and I lifted thy spoon to mine mouth and behold, (please insert a screeching record for dramatic effect) it was; TASTELESS! Desperately I added salt, but alas, one can not serve salted water to ones guests. My husband shook his head, “you should have listened to me”, and it’s true, I should have. I assumed his comment, “Jewish food is tasteless”, to be too general, why almost racist! So I ignored my genius of a husband and listened to the sweet little old Jewish lady. Let the record show, my husband DOES know more than a little old Jewish lady who lost all her taste buds 27 years ago.
Desperate, I turned to a little novel I read several years ago and two of the most wonderful flavors I have ever known. “Pomegranate Soup”, by Marsha Mehran, cumin and the humble onion.
It was not the most glorious soup that I served that evening, but let me tell you, it was a far cry from the salty water I was faced with and hour earlier. Actually I met ‘red lentil soup’ half way, not having any lentils or more than 2 spare onions at the time. However I will pass the ‘red lentil soup’ recipe onto you, because really, it is my very favorite soup ever and is so totally worth sharing.
I would like to for a moment, if you don’t mind, revert back to my early teens and reminisce. More specifically to sports class, actually I wasn’t fantastic at many sports bar one, long distance running. For some reason, despite the fact the I genuinely despised the sport itself, I was very good at it, and with no prior training, seemed to be more than often, able to leg my way over the finish line in first place. I will say that my gift from God was legs the same length as Japan and that really my ability to do so well had more to do with these gigantic bean poles than my actual sporting ability. There is one thing that I would like to highlight about long distance running though; I call it the ‘pain barrier’.
There is a point when you are running where every muscle cries out in pain, your will power is lost to the wind and collapsing on the ground beneath you is a real risk. What I did know, was that when I hit this point, I only had to run about a minute more (the most painful and drawn out 60 seconds of the entire race and occasionally ones entire life too) and I would cross my beloved ‘pain barrier’. Then a strange thing would happen; I would almost loose feeling in my legs, it was like my legs had fallen off and someone else’s legs would pull in underneath me as mine fell out, and low and behold I would look down at these strange legs, that were most obviously not mine,  running entirely of their own accord. Earnestly, it is the oddest feeling. They just kept running almost completely out of my control. Sometimes I believed if someone didn’t tackle me at the finish line, these legs would never release me and keep on running forever. But the main thing was (ah the genius of adrenaline) all the pain would float away.
Bringing this all back to food, I was eating or more battling a chicken laska one day, tears and snot running down my face, and I discovered an amazing thing…..food has a ‘pain barrier’!!
What a discovery!
This weekend’s BBQ was the perfect time to try it out on chopping onions. Armed with six, yes, SIX kilo’s of onions, an open window and a sink of water, I proceeded to the chopping board, knife in hand. Ladies and gentlemen of the blog reading world, the scene that followed was not pretty. There were tears, lots of tears. Tears, snot, screaming, (though mostly by my husband who despite being two rooms away watching a DVD, ran into the kitchen about 3 kilo’s in yelling “what are you doing??!!”. Apparently the odor of onions had floated through to the lounge and made it “impossible” to sit in peace without being tortured. “I’m going outside to work in the garden”, he huffed…Ladies take note) there was gnashing of teeth and tearing out of hair, but finally 6 kilo’s of onions were chopped, fried and boxed up. Uh, did I mention there was going to be about eighty people at the BBQ? Believe me if I could have done less, I would have. That pain threshold I was hoping for? Well, lets just say, my eyeballs don’t count.
There were a few left over onions this evening which I pounced upon and threw into a tart for tea. A glass of white and an onion tart, a terrific ending to a very stinky story.


Red Lentil Soup
  • 2 cups of dry red lentils
  • 7 large onions, chopped
  • 7 cloves of garlic, crushed
  • 1 teaspoon of turmeric
  • 4 teaspoons of ground cumin
  • Olive oil
  • 7 cups of chicken broth
  • 3 cups of water
  • Salt and pepper (or nigella seeds instead of pepper if you have them)

Place lentils in saucepan with the water, cover and bring to the boil. Cook then uncovered for 9 minutes, drain, and then set aside. In a large stock pot fry in oil 6 of the onions, garlic, turmeric and cumin till golden.
Transfer lentils to stock pot; add salt, pepper and chicken broth. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook for 40 minutes.
Serve and garnish with the last onion fried.

Wednesday 11 May 2011

Sick-head

Sick days are far from fun. They wreak havoc on your plans, make you grumpy and tired and down right miserable. They are boring. They involve the boss ringing to see when you will be back, and three hour return trek to Doctors who charge you fifty dollars for the two and a half minutes it takes them to look in your mouth, your eyes, your ears and then sign a printed form.  Sick days, in short, suck.
Today I am sick.
But being the Pollyanna that I am, here’s what can make it a little better.
·         Sleeping in.

·         Waking up 4 hours after you would usually then staying but bed to finish that tattered paint splattered book you’ve been carrying around with you for the last month in your work shorts, trying to finish between sandwiches and cups of tea on your fifteen minute work break.


      ·         Watching a DVD.

·         Finishing a drawing you thought you never would, then spamming a girlfriends FB page with pictures of it.




·         Piping hot cups of tea. As many as you want, as often as you want.


·         The smell of chicken soup simmering away on the stove.


Being exhausted after folding a basket of washing is NOT on that list. I’m off to bed again *YAWN*.

Saturday 7 May 2011

Chocolate French Toast with Roasted Plums

Breakfast this morning.......

Half and de-pip plums, Sprinkle with freshly squeezed orange juice and brown sugar, roast in oven till tender.
Melt some dark chocolate and spread over thinly sliced baguette, then sandwich two pieces together.
In a bowl whisk together egg, milk, caster sugar and vanilla essence, soak baguette sandwich in mixture and fry in a little butter (both sides) till golden. serve with plums and mascarpone.



Be warned you may become paralyzed with bliss whilst eating this.

Cake Monster

That's me by the way. I have now become a.... no wait, the Cake Monster, and yesterday, the Cake Monster had a very cakey-day. Do you remember that cake shop I spoke about? the one open only for non-working housewives.....well, I made it! Though only just, I was 20 minutes late to meet my girlfriend, Zoie there (thank God for patient friends) and didn't have much time to sit back and 'chillax'. We ordered our cake after waiting in a fairly long line (proof this place is popular) and somehow, also managed to grab a table by the window. Did I mention the shop's name at all? It's 'Sherbet'. Those of you in Perth, go check it out, it's in Maylands and is well worth the trip.


We ordered two slices of cake, one a choc-raspberry and the other, a Delicious layered red velvet cake, devine to look at, even better to dive into. Armed with cake forks and a feisty appetite, we did our utmost to conquer what was set before us, but alas, we were beaten three quarters of the way in. Defeated, we sat back shaking our heads at one another, these cakes were good, too good, the were down right dangerous, (Thank God also for doggy bags).  Whilst Zoie went out on a hunt for the little ladies room, I sparked up a conversation with a woman sitting next to us who was halfway through a Turkish orange cake, (will have to try that one next trip!). We spoke about the food culture that is growing (finally) in Perth, of our favorite cake recipes and she even gave me a few welcome tips on photographing my cakes too (Thank God for random strangers who are willing to chat). As if the doggy bags were not enough, I grabbed a cupcake on the way out. Three hours later I was well glad I did.



You know what really makes me a....sorry, the Cake Monster? The fact that after all this (unfinishable) cake, I drove down to another girlfriends house to watch her make cake. Actually I was buying the cake off her. She has started a little hobby business, just making a few cakes here and there. Both her and 'Sherbets' cakes have that wonderful homemade taste, not plasticy, full of preservatives and overly fluffy, but rich, dense and fresh. Truly I recommend them both. I will also be going back to them both and quite soon because........CAKE MONSTER IS 'UNGRY!! 

Thursday 5 May 2011

Margret and Basil

I think that my aim with this blog is constantly changing.
At first it was to stretch myself and learn more about food, then I thought, you know what is food without including the people that cook it? So I decided that I would include more about the people around the food as well as the food itself. But then Honestly, can you do that without including the culture's surrounding food? Then I ask, what about that cute little cake shop that opened up down in Maylands, I have to go there and blog about that. Ooo and a tea shop has opened up two doors down, and now I think of it, there are a few new cafes opening up that I have to try. So now I'm touring food shops in Perth. Then on my drive to check out the cake shop (which was closed by four o'clock I might add, meaning that only non-working housewives can go and eat their cakes. Sigh!) I see a sign outside a butcher that advertises a mini market every Saturday morning, so I must go and blog about that too. In fact, now that I think about it, I really should research more places to acquire food, butchers, wholesalers, farms etc. But of course, this would all be in Perth, so here I would be advertising food culture in my little city. What fun it is not to have a specific aim.

The possibilities are endless!

One of my favorite places to shop is the Asian precinct in Northbridge. The smells walking into these shops drive me mad and I could spend hours exploring their over crowded shelves. I bought myself a little present this week from 'Lucky's Emporium', I call her Margret, do ask me why, I just do. I can't believe I lasted thing long without her in my life!

I de-flowered her for a pork dish I made last night, pounding away happily, the smells of the emporium overtaking my kitchen. By the way, garlic, salt and coriander root, pounded to a paste, then mixed with fish sauce, raw palm sugar and dark soy sauce makes for a simple but delicious marinade for Thai pork skewers. 

The other thing a achieved this week was to go out and buy myself some potted herbs. Two types of basil and coriander. I figure if I can keep those alive, something that I am not very good at, then I will reward myself with a few more.  
Out to dinner tonight to farewell our housemate. She is leaving us for new horizons and we are getting two new ones fresh from New Zealand.....I hope they like cooking.