Brisbane Open House 2013

Brisbane springtime flowering jacarandas architecture history - what's not to love?  A couple of weeks ago this river city celebrated its 4th year with the Open House scheme. And this year I decided to be one of the 500 volunteers who help keep the scheme running.  I spent an afternoon at the Old Windmill on Wickham Terrace, enjoying meeting people and helping them get a taste of Brisbane history and architecture.  The Windmill is the oldest surviving building in Queensland, built in 1828 by convicts.  It has had a chequered life and is currently unused.  It is very popular when open during the Open House weekend each year, and hopefully next year they will be able to allow visitors to check out the old reservoirs at the same location. There were 71 buildings open, 500 volunteers and over 51000 visitors all up.

I managed to fit in a visit to the Old Museum after my volunteer shift.  There was a gorgeous full moon, music, food, wine and a beautiful old building to boot.  I thoroughly recommend the Open House scheme- come one come all. See you there next year!

looking out from the bottom floor of the old mill

from the top of the old mill

gorgeous bougainvillea outside the old museum

looking up at the old museum at sunset

outside the old museum at night

looking up from inside the Old Windmill

Homemade vanilla extract

Wow when you do a fair bit of baking, the vanilla essence/extract bottle seems to disappear like nobody's business!  I had been thinking of making up some myself, as it will also be great for Xmas gifts.  And you need to get started now, as it takes up to 8 weeks of steeping to mature.

So I split some beans, and threw them into a jar with some vodka; some recipes suggest bourbon or other hard liquor, but I think watching the clear liquid turn beautifully brown over the weeks is more fun!  I can't believe how much it has changed after just one day;  it is already looking mysteriously and sumptuously golden brown. 

You need to give it a shake a couple of times a week, and then after 6-8 weeks, bottle it and give some away to lucky friends and family for Xmas. 

Ingredients:

6 plump moist vanilla beans

500 mls (2 cups) of vodka (or other liquor of your choice)

Method:

Slit the beans in half horizontally after cutting into 2 or 3 pieces 

Place them in the bottom of a jar

Pour over the vodka

Let it steep for at least 6 weeks

Strain it and bottle it

You can place a piece or 2 of the beans into each bottle for extra flavour.

slitting the beans

pouring in the vodka

ready to steep for 8 weeks!

after one day!

chocolate and potato cake

I love a moist chocolatey chocolate cake and this one from Belnda Jeffery's book Mix and Bake is a beauty.  (just follow the link above and hit the look inside button and then go into the second page and the recipe comes up).   It is so easily made- just chuck everything in a food processor, then whizz it and bake it.  Easy peasy!  For a bit of a change, I replaced 40g of the chocolate with caramel chips (drops, bits-whatever they are called) which gave it a slightly chewy, fudgy texture.  And instead of icing or ganache, I smothered it in Nutella mixed with cream, and spread it liberally over the top.  I actually whipped this up in the morning as a birthday surprise, and we were eating it by early lunch time.

Belinda Jeffery is definitely one of my food heroes (along with Nigella, and Not Quite Nigella, and Annabel Langbein).  Her recipes are easy, fabulous and delicious.  You can't go wrong if you buy her marvellous baking book!

adding the ingredients to the processor

mixture all ready for the oven

the result- ta da!

Lemon curd icecream

Ok you'll be thinking- not only is she a chocolate nut, she's also freakily obsessed with lemons. True on both counts! I am never without chocolate of some sort and lemons in my fridge.

So this week I decided to make up a batch of lemon curd icecream; recipe here from the blog Spicy icecream. It is actually a recipe for blueberry cobbler with the icecream but I left out the cobbler part!

I used my regular recipe for lemon curd-here- then I followed Spicy Icecream's instructions.

Ingredients:

250 mls lemon curd

1 can condensed milk

500 mls thickened cream

Method:

Simply whip the cream in one bowl till you have soft peaks

Empty the condensed milk into another bowl

Fold the cream gently but firmly into the condensed milk

Grab your loaf tin lined with freezer liner

Spoon some of the creamy mixture into your tin, then some of the curd and swirl!  Keep going till all the cream and curd are finished up

Freeze for at least 8 hours. 

This would be lovely with fresh strawberries or other fruit on top. I am thinking candied lemon slices would be great also. And maybe finely chopped into the icecream before freezing. Or you could even try the cobbler!

ingredients in the saucepan

curd all ready to go!

swirling and layering

all done!

Violet truffles

Yep I know- chocolate again!  But I can't resist flower scented chocs.  I have had this recipe floating around in my recipe folder for ages, so this week I thought now is the time. I ordered some violet liqueur from Mount Tamborine Distillery last week (as any sort of violet liqueur is not easily come by in Brisbane), and I bought some violet colouring so I was good to go.  The recipe does not call for colouring but I thought it would look better rather than plain white.  I was not able to obtain crystallised violets either in shops or online, so I used some little Queen decorating flowers and coloured them with the violet colouring and then chopped them into tiny pieces to sprinkle on top of the truffles.

Chocolate is best made on a cool day so it was probably not a great idea to pick the hottest week for September in years but I didn't let that stop me!
(BTW- I suggest melting the chocolate in a pyrex jug so that you have a nice deep puddle in which to roll your truffles.  You can then stick a skewer through them, jam those into a piece of styrofoam then pull them off and place in petit-four cases.  I  wish I had done this with these!)

getting ingredients together

a few more ingredients

starting to roll the ganache filling in icing sugar

these little beauties look like sausage mince!

dropping the mix into the melted dark chocolate

the finished truffles- don't laugh at their funny appearance- it was hard to do!

Beechworth tomato relish

My mother in law asked me recently to make her some relish for her breakfast biscuits.  Apparently she just eats relish on biscuits in the morning.  Well who said we have to eat cornflakes or toast?
So I hunted up some recipes on the Net and found this rather wonderfully old-fashioned CWA-type recipe.  I love those sorts of recipes and collect CWA and local cookbooks whenever I find them.  They always have such interesting and "steady" recipes; you feel like your grandmum is standing behind you helping you to make the lovely dishes, and that they will always turn out just right.
Here's hoping my MIL likes the relish I made her this week!
(my tip with this recipe:  keep the drained tomato liquid in the freezer and re-use in stews or curries etc).

piling up the ingredients

more ingredients!

about to bubble away

chopped up and ready to go

the finished product

chocolate

chocolate lovers trying out the diverse flavours of regional chocolate

Okay readers, you know I like chocolate and I like it dark and not too sweet.  That's not to say I won't devour an Easter egg made of compound chocolate, or some other over the top gooey product if thrust in front of me.
I am fascinated by how a cacao bean becomes such a delectable treat after it has been processed.  Those Aztecs/Mayans- I am never sure who-surely were on to a good thing when they first picked up the big pod full of beans and decided to ferment, dry, roast, grind and press them into chocolate heaven.  Well, once they thought of adding a bit of sugar to the mixture anyway.  I suggest googling it to check out photos of the weird pods and beans.
So, Mr Pickings and I headed out on a most beautiful Queensland day last weekend to trendy Paddington,  to check out the incredible Antiques Centre, my fave St Vinnies full of bargains, and Monty's chocolate shop (about which I have blogged before).
Steve the owner was hosting a chocolate tasting with Peter from Cravve chocolates.  They had a range of different chocolates to try, sourced mainly from the Pacific region, all with incredibly diverse flavour accents depending on where they come from.

a table full of regional chocolate

Peter kindly answered a few of my chocolatey questions:
How did you arrive at the name Cravve for your business?

we were formerly byron tea & cocoa but on moving to burleigh felt a name change was due to something not as demographic and defined our philosophy in a single word over time we drifted to crave but for trademark reasons use a 'vv'

What led you into making chocolate and when did you start?

i've spent a lifetime in food and worked with chocolate off and on over the years around 2000 started in drinking chocolate with a origin range which has grown to couverture drinking choc which led to couverture dark chocolate

How did you source your beans? 

mainly through industry contacts made over the years who put me in touch with growers & grower groups across the Pacific

Do you roast and process them into chocolate yourself?

yes, we have the beans harvested and dried shipped to us then we sort- roast- winnow-refine and finally conche the cocoa into chocolate over a 3-4 day period

Do you still love chocolate? J(I assume you did/do)

yes but only dark origin cacaos, i don't have much interest in pretty lolly chocolate.

Steve and Peter in front of Monty's