Three good things
For many years I have determinedly avoided making any new year resolutions. “Pah!” I said when asked about it. My memory of resolution setting as a child is of making long lists of them, many repeated year after year. Within a few weeks I would start to feel a growing sense of failure and anxiety as I could not keep to most (any?) of them. They were probably mostly silly and mostly impossible – like “be good all the time”. No wonder I grew into an A type personality where successes are ignored and failures focussed on far too much.
This year as a family we decided that we would make some resolutions (the kids wanted to do it). We limited ourselves to three per person and they all had to be achievable and sensible. Feedback and suggestions were encouraged as we negotiated our way through developing the resolutions. We took a few days to do it and let the idea ‘settle’ to see if we could really live with them. It was actually quite a fun process and quite interesting to get a little bit of feedback from the rest of the family as to how they wanted each person to improve or change (or not!). All good.
It got me thinking that in a lighthearted vein, I should come up with three food related resolutions. Eating less fat or sugar or whatever is not what I am talking about at all. When I think back on culinary triumphs of last year, two things stand out for me. One was late in the year – finally being able to make caramel. A basic skill to most, but completely elusive to me for quite a few years. I was so excited about my new-found talent that my family got to eat creme caramel for 5 days that week!
The second thing I am most proud of is the 100% rye sourdough, slow ferment bread I managed to make after many trial attempts. I so loved the fantastic rye bread I ate during my visit to Copenhagen that I was determined to try to recreate it at home. When I finally made a ‘perfect’ version of it (and I had kept detailed notes of quantities, times, etc. – just for a change for me!), I was more than thrilled.
So what could I set as my challenges for 2012?
- I would like to become a super salad maker. I have a few good salads that I make time and time again. Boring. And when I am faced with making a new type of salad, I feel hopelessly lacking in creativity and inspiration. Making fabulous salads would have to be on the list.
- Tempering chocolate. Despite having a lesson from the chocolate queen herself (Celia from FJ&LC if you haven’t guessed!), it is still something I am too daunted to try at home. Not this year. Easter should provide good motivation and a deadline for me!
- ?? Any suggestions?
How about you? What were your culinary triumphs for 2011? Would you like to set some new year culinary resolutions with me? I would love to hear what your resolutions would be.
Christmas Eve
The gingerbread house creations are all ready (along with a good start made on Tara’s birthday jigsaw puzzle). The kids made up their own house designs and patterns, channeling their inner-architects! A few tears, a few pieces we could not work out what part of which house they belong to (since I threw away the patterns after rolling out the dough)…at least one, and possibly two houses didn’t get built! This year I managed to make the royal icing perfectly and the pieces just stuck together almost immediately with no need for pins, toothpicks or other supports. Perhaps the inner-engineer in me has finally come to the fore?!
The salted butter caramels are all wrapped and ready to take for a post Christmas lunch treat tomorrow. The honey truffles are waiting to be rolled in cocoa. A last minute Christmas cake is cooling on the rack. A batch of sourdough stollen (very experimental) is slowly rising, waiting for its turn in the oven.
The 5kg organic turkey is in the oven for our Christmas eve dinner. I followed the Gordon Ramsay recipe that was on ABC TV last week (much as I dislike the man, I decided to give his method a try this year).
Look how busy the Sydney Fish Markets were this morning! I made an unplanned visit there since I found myself in the city for some other purpose. I found parking on the street (could not face the long queue to get into the car park), put 45 minutes on the meter and was back in 30! Didn’t think I would ever get served but it ended up being relatively painless. I am sure that if I had planned to go there I would have been stressed by the experience, but since I was there by chance I happily went with the flow and pushed my way through the crowds, coped with being pushed and made my purchases. I bought some Sydney Rock Oysters and prawns to have for our entree tonight; and a giant salmon to take to the family lunch tomorrow. Trying to come up with something creative to make with it.
Danish-inspired 100% rye sourdough bread – part 2
This is my take on recreating the wonderful sourdough rye bread I had in Copenhagen earlier this year. While I have boldly claimed that it is 100% rye, for the pedants out there, it is probably more likely 99% rye as I started with a couple of tablespoons of wheat sourdough starter (I don’t have the patience to maintain two sourdough starters in my life). Start it a few days before you want to eat it. If you rush it, the wonderful malty flavours will not develop and the bread will lose some of its magic. If you do try this recipe, I would love to hear your thoughts on the bread.
My Danish-inspired Rye Sourdough Bread
Day 1
2 tablespoons sourdough starter (mine was wheat 100% hydration starter)
2 tablespoons rye flour
2 tablespoons water
150 gm rye grain
150gm water
Mix together in a glass bowl and cover with a lid or cling film. (Variation – in previous attempts at this bread I used to first soak just the rye grain and water and keep it overnight or sometimes longer. The grains would almost be on the verge of sprouting before I added the starter. This made for a much softer grain in the loaf and something I would do again next time. It does add another day to the procedure though!)
You can feed up some sourdough starter with rye flour at the same time so that subsequent additions of starter will be more rye based and have very little wheat remaining.
Day 2
Add equal quantity of sourdough starter, rye flour and water to the mix.(Eg: 1/4 cup of each)
The total weight should be 660gm at this stage
Add:
100gm sunflower seeds
100gm linseeds
60gm buttermilk or sourmilk (I used milk kefir)
40ml water
Day 2 + 12 hours
1/2 cup rye flour
1/4 cup water
1 tbs fennel seeds
Add the above to your grainy mix and combine well. Cover.
Day 3 (Day 2 + 24 hours)
Total mixture weight at this stage is approx 1.1kg
Add:
100ml beer
200gm coarse rye flour
Mix all of this really well – use your hands to really get it all really well combined and mimic a kneading action as best you can. Roughly shape into a log and place into a well lined baking tin. (Trust me here, you want to double line your baking tin with baking paper, unless you have a concrete scraper handy to get it out of the tin later!). Smooth the top. loosely cover and place the entire baking tin in a plastic bag or equivalent and put it in the fridge overnight. Remove from the fridge 1-2 hours before baking. By this stage it should have risen about 20% in the baking tin.
Preheat your oven to 250C. Spray the top of the loaf with water and make a slash as best you can (pretty wet dough so not hugely successful). Then cover the top with baking paper and foil (trying to simulate a closed baking tin tp minimise the drying of the top crust and maximise steam effect. This covered baking tin approach made a really big difference to the end result so I definitely recommend it.) Place in the oven along with a good squirt of water to create some steam. After 5 minutes turn the oven temperature down to 170C. Bake for 4.5 hours. About half way through the baking you should be able to smell the beer predominantly. It is only when it smells more like bread than beer that you will know that it is done. I ended up varying the temperature of my oven that whole time as I needed to cook other things at the same time. It is pretty forgiving of this variation – just adjust cooking times if you need to. When it is sufficiently cooked the colour will have changed to a dark brown (it seems to do this in the last half hour of cooking), the aroma will be closer to bread that beer and if you stick a knife in its centre, it will be only slightly sticky. You need to use your eyes and nose to work out when it is done as the depth of the baking tin will also make a difference.
A few minutes after you remove it from the oven, remove it from the tin and wrap in a tea towel. When cool wrap it well in a plastic bag. Try and be patient and wait at least a day or two before you cut into the loaf. The day it is baked it will still be very sticky and taste a bit raw in the centre. By day 2 it will be perfect. Slice thinly and enjoy!
Danish style sourdough rye bread – part 1
When I visited Copenhagen earlier this year I fell in love with their rye bread. I didn’t know that rye bread could be so tasty. For the first couple of days everything was amazing and fantastic. Then my palate kicked in and I started to be able to pick out the breads that had added yeast (instead of being just sourdough), and that had a lot of wheat (and colour) so they were light and not really true rye bread. Some of the locals told me that even Danes are losing some of their traditions and starting to eat more wheat bread and less of the traditional sourdough rye breads. What I particularly loved was the fact that a lot of the locals I spoke to still made bread at home; that it was mostly a male domain to make the rye bread; and that they just accepted that it took two to three days to make a loaf of bread. Love it!
Have a look at this flour mill for customer use in the rather fancy Magasin store. The little bags of spelt and rye grain were presumably meant to be ground in the mill if you wanted. I don’t know if many supermarkets in Copenhagen offers such a fantastic service…I’d like to think they do. When I came home I tried to convince my local organic wholesale store that they should also install a flour mill for their customers to use…but didn’t get much traction there!
When I got home I was on a mission to recreate some of the best rye bread I had. I trawled the internet and bread books looking for a recipe that could deliver the grainy, nutty, slightly sour bread I had fallen in love with. I even tried my hand at translating some recipes I found in Danish blogs – that is how obsessed I was! Someone sent me the Noma recipe which made a quite nice bread (but still not quite right) and certainly helped inform the recipe I eventually developed. And then finally I managed to make it. I still had to experiment with baking times and temperatures as I was finding the outside a bit too dry and the inside a bit too wet. But the taste and texture were definitely there. Then I left it….for a few months. And I mostly forgot what I had done before (my usual lazy habit of not measuring ingredients or keeping notes).
Last week I started again. This time it worked out just beautifully. And I kept notes along the way!!! Hooray! Next post will have the recipe. Here is a photo just to keep you interested…. 
Early morning walk in Cairns
Yes I can!
Do you have something that no matter how many times you try it, you just cannot do? Making caramel was one of those things for me. No matter how many times I tried, following the instructions to the finest details, it would always end up in a crystallised hard, unusable lump of sugar. Needless to say, I also then could not make creme caramel or any of those other dishes that require this fairly basic skill.
But no more my friends. I have finally managed to crack it. I cannot describe the excitement in this house over this achievement other than to tell you that I have made creme caramel four times already this week! It is one of our favourite desserts. A thing of beauty when made well. Slightly bitter caramel, silky-smooth custard….what’s not to love?!
We had a really nice version of this when we had dinner at Rockpool Bar and Grill a week or so ago. It inspired me to try making it once again (encouraged by Sam who absolutely loves creme caramel). Fully expecting failure, I threw some things together and it came out rather perfect. Damn, I thought, I really should have measured the ingredients so I can replicate it. Luckily I have made it three more times since then and each of those was a success too. And no, I still haven’t measured anything! Am I asking for trouble or what?! Here is an approximation of what I did:
Creme Caramel (makes 6)
3 tablespoons caster sugar
1 tablespoon water
3 eggs
3 tablespoons caster sugar
200ml cream
400ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
In a small saucepan pour in the water and then add the sugar. Put it on a medium stove and don’t be tempted to stir it or in fact do anything at all other than watch it! When it starts to colour, you can gently swirl the saucepan around to get the heat moving evenly. Allow it to get fairly dark in colour and then pour a little in a ramekin. Swirl the caramel around the ramekin quickly so it coats the base and a little of the sides. It will set quickly so do one ramekin at a time – but be quick!
In a small bowl gently whisk the eggs with the sugar. You really don’t want bubbles in the mix so don’t be too enthusiastic with your whisking. Add the remaining ingredients and gently stir together. Divide equally among the ramekins.
Place the ramekins in a dish that you top up with almost boiling water. Bake in a 160C oven for 30-40 minutes. Allow to cool for at least 15 minutes in the water bath after you take it out of the oven. Run a knife around the sides and invert onto a plate. Try not to make it every day of the week, particuarly if you are dairy intolerant like me!
Rescue
We spotted this baby bird on the ground as we were about to head into a cafe this morning. Heavy rain and wind must have tossed it out of the nest. It was sitting at the base of a big tree looking up and cheeping. Andrew picked it up and put it in a raised garden bed so it would be safe from being stepped on or going onto the busy road. It was cold and looking quite wet and terrified.
It was still there when we were leaving, but looking less cold and wet. The sun came out while we were having breakfast. Sam tried to pick the bird up but it kept hopping away. Eventually Andrew got it and placed it on a branch. It kept looking up and tried hopping to the branch above. First hop was successful. Then it over reached and ended up down on the road. I tried to get it but it hopped under a car. When I reached for it, it gave me a little nip on my finger. Good fighting spirit! It was getting quite cross with me, and tried a few more nips as I tried to shoo it out from under the car and back up to the pavement. We eventually got there. Then the mother bird arrived and gave the baby a good feed. It was the sweetest thing to watch. The mother flew across the road and kept watch. We still had to get the baby up in the tree. Sam and I dragged Andrew out of the car so he could put the bird back on the branch. Hopefully the mother bird was able to help it get back in the nest from there. I am sure that cheeky little fighting spirit will help!
Stealing chook food
Our chickens attract a lot of other wild creatures into our garden. Not through anything they do, just as a result of the free food being available on tap. Brush turkeys and hordes of birds are always hanging around, trying their best to get into the chicken’s yard and steal their food. The other day I noticed this cheeky fellow gobbling up the chook food at a remarkable rate. The door was open and the chickens were out in the backyard. He saw his opportunity and slunk in there. I watched him for quite a while, not daring to get any closer to take a better photo. It was quite a funny sight to see a lizard eating out of the chicken feeder. Can you see how full his belly looks? Not sure quite how good chicken pellets and grains are going to be for his diet!
I think he is a monitor lizard but I could be wrong (no reptile expert here!). Do you know what it is?
Lazy Sunday
It is a hot, sunny day and I am sitting out in the garden, in the shade of the camellia tree. A book, a cool drink and some lovely music keep me company. I have a head cold so not much reading is getting done. But I am watching the animals wandering around and feeling a sense of calm.
The chooks wander over to say hello and peck at my toes or my new toy. In fact all the animals are displaying a fair amount of curiosity about the toy. It is a speaker that plays music via Bluetooth from my phone. The phone is charging inside and I have music in the garden. I love it! No complaints about the music being too loud in the house while I sit outside. The dog keeps looking from the speaker to the house which makes me think that she can pick up Bluetooth signals and is finding it quite confusing.
I hope it is not upsetting the bees. One theory about the diminishing bee population worldwide lays the blame on mobile phone signals. Is Bluetooth the same I wonder?
The kids have spent all morning inside making paper toys. Sam is now making a cake. Andrew is putting out the washing in between reading the papers. All is well in our little world on this lazy Sunday morning. How are things in your world today?
Afternoon tea cake
I wanted to make a cake for my kids afternoon tea and for them to take to school in lunchboxes. Tara loves chocolate but does not like berries or citrus all that much. Sam loves berries and citrus but won’t eat chocolate. They won’t eat anything that is too sweet either. So what to make that will suit both kids? I looked through some of my cookbooks looking for inspiration and something new to try. No luck. So I ended up just making up a cake on the run.
It turned out really lovely and light, great ‘cake’ flavour (do you know what I mean by that?!), and a hint of spice. I will be making this again. Hope it gets the tick of approval from the kids. I will have fun making them guess what flavours are in this cake (our latest game – spot the mystery ingredient). This is a really easy and quick cake to mix up by hand in a bowl.
Afternoon tea cake
200gm butter at room temperature
3 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup almond meal
1 cup self-raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
In a bowl mix the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup until well combined. Add in the eggs one at a time and mix well. Add the spices, vanilla, milk and almond meal and stir until well combined. Add in the flour and mix as little as possible, until just combined. Pour into a cake tin and bake for 30 minutes at 160C fan forced or 180C.
