How to cook an egg in one easy step!

Well - you couldn't get any easier than this.  I was watching Adam Liaw the other day on SBS, (don't you just love his hair?) and he mentioned in passing that he steams his eggs now, and never boils them.  I was intrigued! It looked so easy, and he said it always works and they are soft and delicious.  So for lunch today, I steamed myself some lovely free-range eggs. And they were tender and they were delicious.  Just so darn easy folks!

as Hannah Glasse would say-
take 2 (free-range) eggs

place them in a steamer which is already simmering

give them 6 minutes-no more!

and here you have delish, soft, beautiful eggs   

Absolute perfection and no stress.  You just whack them in for 6 minutes and you are done, my dears. Maybe I will follow Adam's lead and never boil again.

In My Kitchen October 2014

You know the drill-  here it is, that time of the month again (already!!??).  Lots of lovely bloggers around the world show off what is in their kitchen for wistful others to drool over, as we join up with Celia from Fig Jam & Lime Cordial  once again.  I seem to have had a busy month in September, with so many festivals going on I could barely blink before the next one was on.  I guess that's Spring for you.

So here is my kitchen this month- why is it that I want to say My Kitchen Rules every time the words "my kitchen" appear?  Clearly I have been brain-washed by TV!

love those rabbit bookends!

seeing a theme here?  lots of rabbits in my kitchen

Halloween is a-coming!

another cookbook!  and an antique French fruit masher. Oh! and some Jamie Oliver bowls

I had such a fun month gathering things for my kitchen.  I bought the book-ends in a little vintage shop in the middle of nowhere when we were in northern NSW.  It is in a tiny village with a couple of shops and lots of cows.  How could I resist the siren-call of more rabbits?   The little green tumbler with the cow is from our friend Brooke the marvellous potter. The wooden stirrer is from the Bangalow Market; and the odd-looking bronze apparatus was made by a blacksmith in Stanthorpe for his most recent exhibition.  It is a 3 legged Lewis also known as St Peter's Keys, and is a real thing!  i.e. in medieval times, they used it to lift up massive stone blocks by inserting the 3 legs into a hole in the block then winching it up.  Yep sounds weird to me too!

And a spotted enamel jug?  not to be passed over.  I really like the Jamie bowls; they are pretty and useful. Of course I love Belinda's books- she has the best recipes.  And last but definitely not least, my absolutely gorgeous French fruit masher that I bought in the antique centre.  Not sure if it is genuinely antique but who cares?  It is so lovely, and I am afraid I may have to rush there again to buy a few more things like the wooden pestle and the boulangerie shelves.  I do have a few more things that I gathered in September, but I think I better save them for next time.  Hope to see you all at Celia's (virtual) place this month.

Hannah Glasse, Orange Fool and a really old recipe book

Ok- I confess to a great love of books, and food, and cooking, and did I say books?  And of course cookbooks, as my shelves testify.  And it seems that if you love food, you end up loving the history of food also.  I think many food bloggers would have a copy of Mrs Beeton lurking somewhere, and perhaps other historic food writers on their shelves.  I have lately got hold of a copy of Hannah Glasse's cookbook The Art Of Cookery Made Plain and Easy and so on ...let me tell you, the title continues for quite some time.  I love her confidence; her book "far exceeds any thing of the kind yet published".  This book was published in 1747, and according to Wikipedia, was one of the most important culinary references in the 18th century and into the 19th.  She apparently wrote it for use by domestic servants -"the lower sort"- in an easy to read style.  It seems that many of her recipes were taken from earlier works, as is the case with Mrs Beeton.  Plagiarism was alive and well with cookery writers it seems!
I first became interested in Hannah when I read Clarissa Dickson Wright's History of English Food.  Clarissa was a huge fan of Hannah's and felt that she had been sadly under-represented in food history.  She even made a doco for the BBC a few years before she died about Hannah Glasse's influence on British cooking. The copy I have is from Nabu Public Domain Reprints which scans (mostly) old library books so there are pages missing or library stamps on them; and you can see the edges of the book on each page that was scanned. It is very charming, and certainly feels like you have picked up a dog-eared old copy though it is a recent reprint.  It is presented in a very readable way; something that modern readers would recognise with a list of contents at the front and an alphabetical index at the back.  It is set out clearly in titled chapters, and even though it doesn't provide a list of ingredients at the start of each recipe, it certainly gives a clear indication of what and when and how much.  Alas, no pictures or drawings of the dishes!  And very sadly there is no existing depiction of Hannah at all so we will just have to imagine how sprightly and smart she must have looked.  She was 39 when the book was published which I suppose was quite old in those days.
There is certainly no namby-pambyness allowed here; if you are going to eat a food, you are going to catch it and cut off its head, take out its gizzards, crack its bones and slime its tenches!  Hang on, what is that?!  I think it means you actually de-slime it; i.e. wash off the slime from the fish- what, you didn't know that tench was a slippery fish and had to be de-slimed?  Shame on you.
My fave recipe starts with -take the turtle out of the water the night before and lay it on its back, in the morning cut its head off and hang it up by its hind fins...to bleed out; cut the fins off, take off the scales and cut out the guts- well you get the picture.  She did not ever say -first catch your hare -though that has been attributed to her and to Mrs Beeton and to Eliza Acton.  There is some mention of casing (i.e. catching) a beast then dispatching it so you can see where that may have come from.  I thought I would try one of her recipes to see how it stacks up in the 21st century; no not a beastly one just a simple dessert.
So here is my rendition of Orange Fool, which seems to be an orange version of a simple custard and quite delicious to boot!

Ingredients:

6 oranges, juiced- it ended up being about 400mls  (try blood oranges for a modern twist)
6 eggs well-beaten
568 mls of cream (a pint measure)
125g caster sugar
cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

Method:

Place all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and mix well together
Stir and keep stirring till it thickens- be prepared, this took 15 minutes!
Once thickened, take it off the heat   - I recommend placing the pan into a sink of cold water
Throw in a knob of butter
Keep stirring till cold- and serve

just like regular custard, you keep stirring till thickened-till the fingerline down the centre holds

a simple and easy recipe-just as advertised!

I love this letter!  What a smart gal she was.  A bit like Jonathan Swift with his famous pamphlet A Modest Proposal which suggests that the children of the Irish poor are fattened up and fed to the rich land-owners thus solving more than one problem- i.e. too many children, not enough food and providing a healthy diet to the rich!

My Sunday Photo/Silent Sunday 28 Sept 2014

                         

Bangalow Banquet, and Edible Treasures- book review

I love collecting books and have many cookbooks on my shelves- and I just keep buying more- shamelessly and willfully. And I just saw that the new Matt Preston is coming out, and the new Belinda Jeffery, and the new Annabel Langbein- oh where will it end?!  Can these people not stop writing wonderful books that I simply must have?  Anyways, guess what?  I recently bought another Public School fundraiser cookbook to add to my collection.  When Mr Pickings and I headed down to Bangalow recently for the Sample Food Festival I bought the Bangalow Banquet cookbook which has been put together by the P & C, and Community Children's Centre.  It is a lovely book full of photos of the locals, and lots of stories about the history of the town and surrounding area.  There are heaps of recipes including lots of old faves like chicken cacciatore, beef stroganoff, lamingtons, sausage rolls and so on.  There are also some modern recipes like the one from Belinda Jeffery (who has to be one of my very favourite cooks) - salmon, spinach and chermoula rolls.  I had locked on to this recipe before realising that it was one of hers!  I am keen to try the cream cake with strawberry icing, and the raw strawberry and coconut fudge.   Oh, and did I forget to mention the fetta, rocket and zucchini slice?  And the lemon and garlic chicken?   There is a useful index at the back, and many photos throughout the book.  The book is divided into Early, Middle, Now and Future Years with recipes throughout.  There is a recipe from Cecile Yazbek (I have her interesting book Mezze to Milk Tart) for a spinach and black-eyed bean bake which looks healthy and tasty.  The recipes look well-written with a list of ingredients at the start of each, followed by the how-to.  I believe that the ladies of Bangalow spent many happy hours testing the recipes to make sure they turned out well.  You can check out their Facebook page for further info. and how to order if you can't make a trip down there (or up there, depending on where you live).
I also have in my collection a lovely little book -Edible Treasures-  from the Wanaka Primary School on the South Island of New Zealand.  It is jam-packed with great recipes like sushi, nachos, quiche, soups, cakes, sweets; homey recipes like lambs' shanks and shepherd's pie, and lovely simple recipes like ginger ale chicken which I make quite often.  It is not quite as elaborate and polished as the Bangalow book, but it has some great recipes, nice stories about the locals, and also has a recipe list at the start of the book, and photos of many of the dishes.  The ginger ale chicken is very handy in that you can just chuck all the ingredients in the baking dish and go off for an hour and a half doing whatever takes your fancy.  Then come back to a delightful-smelling kitchen - as Mr Pickings will testify upon coming upstairs from his office.

Ginger Ale Chicken:

This is my version of the recipe.  I have added whatever took my fancy on the day.  The original recipe calls for a packet of mushroom soup, and one of onion soup but I have adjusted to use fresh ingredients. You can use other vegetables or herbs, or throw in half a cup of wine as you wish.
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

1.2 kg chicken thigh fillets
250g mushrooms finely sliced
1 red onion finely sliced
1 medium red capsicum finely sliced
1 large potato diced
3 cloves garlic chopped
handful of chopped parsley or 4 tsp of lightly dried parsley
salt and pepper  (I used 1 tsp of truffle salt and 1/4 tsp of saffron salt)
1 tsp of black elderberry concentrate (optional)- a dash of Worcester may go well here
300ml bottle of dry ginger ale
a drizzle of olive oil
juice of half a lemon

Method:

Slice the thighs into 2 pieces down the join and layer them on the bottom of a baking dish
Layer on all the other ingredients over the chicken pieces
Pour over the ginger ale
Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the top of everything
Cover and put into a 180C oven for one and a half hours checking each 30 minutes
After the first hour, pour over the juice of half a lemon and put back in the oven for the other 30 minutes
Serve with rice or mashed potatoes, and some steamed broccoli or other greens

veggies ready for chopping; chicken halved and in the baking dish

chopped veggies layered over the chicken; squeezing the lemon half

all baked and ready to eat with steamed veggies

I really love browsing through local cookbooks as it gives you such a sense of the place and the people. And both Bangalow and Wanaka are such delightful places to get to know!

the exterior of Bangalow Public School  (author- moi!)

Lake Wanaka (author Stephanie Searle via Wikimedia Commons)

Cheese and Fermentation Seminar

Our dear friend and neighbour Princess Pia gifted me a spot in this class for my birthday this year.  So finally the day came around for the seminar and we both trotted off to the 3 hour morning session.  It was held in a historic building called the Albion Peace Hall (I think it was something to do with WW2, as there is a listed building nearby called the Drill Hall which is on the BCC heritage register).  Classes are run by a very passionate and informed lady called Elisabeth Fekonia who lives on the Sunshine Coast and has her own small farm with goats, cows etc.   She said she has been living there pretty much self-sufficiently for the last 20 years.  She is full of knowledge, and has so much experience in this way of living and eating.  It was so interesting and informative that my head is still reeling with it all- in a great way!
She started off by showing us how to make halloumi, which as she said is just for fun.  It is not a "live" cheese- ie full of good bacteria- but is delicious and a pleasure to eat.  The milk is heated which destroys the good stuff in it, so I guess the solution is to not eat a lot of it, but just now and again.  And oh boy, was it delicious?!  Oh yes it was!  So fresh and creamy.  Elisabeth explained to us about the kind of milk to use; she told us that the stuff you buy at the supermarket has been heat-treated so that basically all the good things in it are destroyed.   Such a shame we cannot easily (or at all) get hold of unpasteurised milk.  She suggested we try to get unhomogenised at least, and to use local milk from cows such as Jersey and Guernsey which have a higher fat content in the milk which is great for making your own cream, butter and cheese.

Elisabeth on the left with willing helper adding vegetarian rennet to the heated milk
      You can see the curds have formed after setting for 45 minutes                                      

There are quite a lot of steps after heating and setting the milk- heating the curds, draining them, pressing them, heating again, cutting into chunks and placing back in the boiled whey for up to 80 minutes, cooling, sprinkling with salt, then grilling.  Phew!  And this is the simplest cheese to make apparently.  You can keep the chunks in a jar of brine in the fridge if you are not eating it right away.

curds and whey                                                              
 chunks of halloumi ready for grilling-- oh so delish!           

Next Elisabeth taught us about kefir making.  You place a kefir culture (which you can buy online-here) into a glass jar of milk; let it stand for up to 36 hours depending on the ambient temperature; strain out the keft grains so you can use them in your next batch, and use the kefired milk to make sour cream, or butter or a light curd cheese, or drink it in smoothies as it is so good for the health of your gut.

kefir grains/kefired milk/fermented cream/straining melted butter to make ghee

You can beat the fermented cream till it becomes sour cream, or keep going till you end up with beautiful cultured butter which has an incredibly tangy taste and is full of the good bacteria.  Ghee (clarified butter) is easy to make once you have made the butter; you just heat it gently till the milk solids remain on the bottom of the pan, and the scum floats on the surface.  Scoop up the frothy stuff with a wide spoon, discard the solids, and you are left with a butter which can be heated to very high temperatures, and is nearly as good for you as olive oil.  Elisabeth said she uses it all the time in cooking as you can easily fry with it, and it can be re-used several times.  Oh, and don't forget - you can make yoghurt from the fermented milk also.

blitz the kefired cream then wash it several times in cold water;
 beat till most of the water is gone                                                
      You will end up with beautiful butter!                                                  

The 3 hours flew by, and I felt that we had only just scratched the surface of fermentation and cheese-making.  Elisabeth gave us a lot to think about, including her stricture not to buy A2 milk!   Apparently A2 is a natural form of protein in milk which has been patented by a certain company, so that if anyone wants to use that label, they have to pay 8 cents per litre!  So her (strong) suggestion is not to buy it, as it is unfair to other milk producers.   So folks, keep buying local milk that you know comes from happy cows, and support your local dairy farmers!  And happy cheese-making.  Oh, and if you are interested in a bit more info about this issue, read the Dairy section in Matthew Evans' book The Real Food Companion, which talks about the difference between untreated and treated milk, and how it affects dairy products like cheese.

the Albion Peace Hall with class in session!

Sample Food Festival 2014 & Swell Sculpture Festival - Part 2

Our northern NSW trip continued with a stop-off at Harvest Deli in Newrybar.  Before Harvest settled into town, there was a shop and a fire station here and that was about it.  Now it is super busy and full of visitors from near and far.  In fact, we were told that Chris Hemsworth had been there for dinner the night before. As we were just passing by, we stopped at the deli for a quick look -  and found it to be a real treasure trove.  (We have had lunch at the Cafe quite a few times, and have always enjoyed it).  It is full of fabulous treats, and has a cheese room and a meat room.  They grow their own herbs and veg., make their own bread and use local produce wherever possible.  And the ladies serving behind the counter were delightful.  One of the lovely ladies explained that the brick wall in the deli was made with bricks from the baker's oven that had burnt down a couple of years ago.  Rather than throw them away, they decided to incorporate them into the deli building which was a derelict house falling down before being restored recently and turned into the deli.  I had a marvellous time wandering around and taking photos, while Mr Pickings chatted to the ladies (as is his wont).

lovely ladies/ the cheese room/ and the bakery

inside the deli/reflections on the glass door of the meat room

the marvellous exterior of the building, with a clever wooden loveseat

After buying a few (I restrained myself) goodies, we then continued on to our dear friend Brooke's pottery studio- Red Door Studio- in the nearby Byron hinterland.  She is a fabulous potter, and her work is vibrant and beautiful.  My kitchen is absolutely chockers with her gorgeous wares.  You can buy her pieces at Harvest also.  We had a looong chat with her, then headed back to our motel room at Pottsville.

Brooke and Mr Pickings communing in the studio

Brooke's stunning pieces in the afternoon sunlight

Mr Pickings working as usual in our motel room/curious cows in the countryside

delish ham'n cheese toastie for me, and burger and chips for him at Tweed River Art Gallery cafe

cute mailbox in Pottsville/stunning view from the Tweed Art gallery
                                               Freeman's organic fruit, veg. and coffee stall just over the NSW/QLD border                                                   

We had a wonderful weekend away- we saw lots of things, and spoke to some great people, tasted great food and enjoyed the serenity of the truly spectacular countryside in this amazing region of NSW.  Wish I was there now...