Raspberry Trifle: Anything But Trifling

According to the Macquarie dictionary, a trifle is "an article or thing of small value; a matter of slight importance; a trivial or insignificant affair or circumstance." As in, "don't worry, it's just a trifle" or "it was no effort, only a trifle". Well, after making this dessert, I am here to tell you that no dish was ever so poorly named as the "trifle"? It should be called "the stupendous", "the abundance" or possibly even "the time-consuming raving beauty". It is certainly the most awe-inspiring dessert I have ever made. The one thing it wasn't was a "trifle".

Melinda at Melbourne Larder started me thinking about this trifle after she gave it her seal of approval last month in our "We Made It" challenge. Then the planets collided. I had promised to make some dessert for a family get together for Chinese New Year, and the idea of this trifle kept playing on my mind. Sadly I had missed the dark berry season, however raspberries were available and they were (comparatively) inexpensive. They were also the perfect red for Chinese New Year. Decision made. I then substituted Chambord (raspberry liqueur) for the Creme de Mure called for in the recipe.

The biggest issue with this recipe is the time it takes. To make it, you need to resign yourself to the best part of a day spent near the kitchen, the day before you plan to serve it. Not that the recipe is that difficult or time consuming, but there is a lot of setting and resting time in its construction. But it is definitely worth the investment in both berries and time. The only thing I was unhappy with was the sponge which I thought was a bit hard. I suspect that was my own fault. Instead of baking in one large tin, I split the mixture into two round cake tins that were the right size for my bowl. I should have reduced the baking time and I didn't, so my sponge was certainly on the firm side. Oh well, nothing that a bit of cream and liqeuer didn't solve....

As you can see from the picture, the end result is definitely designed for a party. It's a dessert that Melinda describes as a showstopper, and it certainly is. The recipe was the cover of the Gourmet Traveller in Dec/Jan - they obviously felt it was the perfect festive dessert as well.

Just don't call it a trifle.



Dark Berry Trifle adapted from Gourmet Traveller
Serves 20

1.5 kg blackberries or mulberries, plus extra to serve (I used raspberries)
300 gm caster sugar
2 vanilla beans, split and seeds scraped
10 gelatine leaves (titanium strength), softened in cold water for 5 minutes
300 ml pink moscato
1 lemon, juice only
330 ml crème de mûre (I used Chambord)
1.25 kg crème fraîche
150 ml milk, or enough to thin
2 lemons, finely grated rind only
40 gm (¼ cup) pure icing sugar, sifted
Sponge
8 eggs, at room temperature
250 gm raw caster sugar
250 gm plain flour, sieved
50 gm butter, melted and cooled


For sponge, preheat oven to 175C. Whisk eggs and sugar in an electric mixer until tripled in volume (7 minutes). Fold through flour in batches, fold in butter, pour into a 28cm-square cake tin lined with baking paper. Bake until golden and centre springs back when pressed (20-25 minutes). Cool in tin, turn out, halve sponge horizontally, trim each half to fit a 6 litre-capacity glass bowl, then remove from bowl and set aside, reserving trimmings.

Meanwhile, combine 1kg berries, sugar, 1 vanilla bean and seeds and 1.1 litres water in a large saucepan, simmer over low heat until infused (50 minutes). Strain through a fine sieve (discard solids), transfer 1 litre hot liquid to a bowl (reserve remainder). Squeeze excess water from gelatine, add to bowl, stir to dissolve. Add moscato, lemon juice and 80ml crème de mûre. Strain half into trifle bowl, scatter over 250gm berries and refrigerate until set (2-2½ hours). Chill remaining berry jelly, removing from refrigerator if it starts to set.

Reduce remaining liquid over high heat until syrupy (10-15 minutes), refrigerate until required.

Meanwhile, combine crème fraîche, milk, rind, icing sugar and remaining vanilla seeds in a bowl, adding extra milk if necessary until spreadable. Spread one-third over set jelly, top with a sponge round, fill any gaps with trimmings, drizzle with 125ml crème de mûre. Scatter over remaining berries, pour over remaining jelly (mixture should be starting to set). Refrigerate until set (2-2½ hours). Top with half the remaining crème fraîche mixture, then remaining sponge. Drizzle with remaining crème de mûre, top with remaining crème fraîche mixture. Cover, refrigerate overnight. Serve scattered with extra berries and drizzled with blackberry syrup.

Note You'll need to begin this recipe a day ahead. Crème de mûre is a blackberry liqueur available from good bottle shops. If unavailable, substitute crème de cassis. You can use frozen blackberries for the jelly and the syrup.

Herb-Crusted Flathead With Tomato and Avocado Salsa

I am forever surprised by the number of people who won't eat fish or seafood. For some it is not a choice. My brother developed a crustacean allergy, possibly after spending too many summers using prawns as bait for fishing, and now cannot eat anything with even a mere taint of seafood. Food prepared on a chopping board that was previously used with prawns is enough to send him to the emergency department at hospital. So people with an allergy, I understand.

But what about the rest of you? I have had adults (or at least they appeared to be adults) tell me that they don't eat fish because they had it once when they were a child and didn't like it. Or maybe their mother used to cook it, but only ever heavily coated in a stodgy batter, and so it no longer appeals to them. Others have told me that they don't cook fish at home (which means their kids mostly don't eat fish) because they are worried it will make their house smell. To all of you, I say it is time to have another shot at making fish for dinner. The only thing that will make your house smell is failing to clean up after yourselves.

This recipe is fast and delicious, and a great one to try on the kids. If your kids are still at the stage where even the smallest piece of green means that they won't touch it, by all means skip the herbs, the zest and the salsa. The simple combination of crispy crumbs, and tender white fish is a winner with even small fussy eaters. For the adults at the table, include the herbs and lemon - they really lift the flavour of the fish. If you have never used them, fresh breadcrumbs are larger and fluffier than the boxed crumbs. Make them every time you have a leftover chunk of good bread, by cutting off the crusts and whizzing the remains in a food processor. They can be stored in the freezer for a month or two, so they are handy every time you want to make this recipe, and I promise you will want to make it again.

This is the last of the recipes I have tried from Delicious Dec 09 / Jan 10 for my We Made It challenge with Melinda from Melbourne Larder. In February, we will be looking to the Feb / Mar 10 issue of Donna Hay.

Herb Crusted Flathead With Tomato and Avocado Salsa

adapted from Delicious Dec 09 / Jan 10
Serves 4

8 x 100g flathead fillets
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 tbs chopped thyme
1 tbs chopped parsley
30g unsalted butter melted
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tomatoes. chopped
2 avocados, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed

Put fish on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Combine breadcrumbs, herbs, zest and butter. Add seasoning to taste. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs over each fish fillet. Drizzle with 1 tbl olive oil. Grill under medium heat for 4-5 minutes until fish is cooked and crust is golden. (NB If your griller is very hot, make sure you put the tray on a low shelf and keep an eye on the crumbs to make sure that they don't catch). For salsa, combine remaining tomato, avocado, garlic, lemon juice, remaining oil and salt and pepper to taste in a mixing bowl. Serve fish with salsa.

A Stuffed Kitchen plus Chilled Pea Soup With Mint Sorbet

Yesterday, I was reading Casual Kitchen, a cooking blog that does a great job of distilling a lot of other cooking blogs, as well as always providing interesting food for thought. Daniel was talking about what a relief it was to be in a kitchen that was 70-80% packed for a move because he did not have to contemplate which coffee mugs or wine glasses to use as all but the last two had been packed. The basics were to hand, but none of the peripheral stuff, which was inspiring him to cook more not less. Daniel challenged his readers to contemplate what could they get rid of and not miss.

So, would I be better off getting rid of 70% of my kitchen equipment? What do I have that I could get rid of and not miss? Certainly I have a lot of platters - we got married in the Year of the Platter - and I could probably get rid of half of them, and still have plenty, but I won't. Wear and tear is slowly taking its toll, and I suspect this cupboard will get emptied by natural attrition. Appliances? I use all my appliances regularly (toaster, blender, food processor, stick blender, toasted sandwich maker, and the hero, my Kitchenaid stand mixer), so nothing to ditch there. In another cupboard, I have a couple of salad bowls, about 10 mixing bowls of different sizes (some of which also double up as heat proof bowls for melting chocolate), about half a dozen baking dishes, a couple of souffle bowls (that also get used for salads, and serving from time to time) and a salad spinner. They all work hard for me all year.

Onto the less used items: I have two large colanders - and yes, I could probably get by with one - plus three tiny colanders that I use for jobs like rinsing salted capers, but are by no means essential. I have a mortar and pestle, that gets used maybe three or four times a year. More embarrassingly, I have two full drawers of baking equipment: a cupcake tin, a mini muffin tin, a friand tin, a madeleine silicone sheet, two springform tins, six cake tins, a swag of cookie cutters and a cookie press, a couple of square tins for brownies or slices, oven trays, a couple of loaf tins, a bundt tin and a mini-bundt tin. A lot of this was given to me, or came from my grandmothers' kitchen when she was packing up her house, and it all gets used, at least a few times a year. My least favourite drawer is the plasticware, which is in a symbiotic relationship with my freezer - when the freezer is full, the plastics drawer is half empty, when the freezer is empty, the plastics drawer won't shut. And the plastic drink bottles appear to be breeding with the takeaway box lids. I keep throwing them out and more and more turn up.

The entertaining-related items are probably the ones that don't really earn their living in my kitchen: the "good" dinner plates, the cake stand, the ham stand, the butter curler (inherited from my grandmother), a cherry pipper, tea cups, dessert forks. In a world, where there are people who don't know where their next meal will come from, it does seem wrong and indulgent to have so much, and I feel awkward about it now I am looking at it all. But would I ditch any of them? The simple answer is, not as long as I have the cupboards to hold them. I love to entertain and it really makes me happy to use the things that have come to me from other people, other times, other places. I feel a strong sense of continuity when I hold them. I also feel that the way you make a happy house is to fill it up with memories. If a fire took them from me, I probably would not replace any of these things, but while I have them, they are helping me build those memories. Sorry Daniel, but I don't agree. Two coffee cups just wouldn't do it for me.

Now onto some food for the very sticky weather we are having. Cold pea soup is a favourite of mine, and I already have one chilled pea soup on the blog. This recipe popped out at me from the Dec 90 / Jan 10 issue of Delicious (part of my We Made It Challenge with Melinda from Melbourne Larder), and I wanted to try it because of the mint gelato. The soup recipe is very plain - peas, potato, onion, lettuce and stock - so make sure you use really good (preferably homemade) stock, or else your soup won't taste as good as it should. The mint gelato is delicious, and when I make it again, I will make it in a deeper plastic box, as the large and shallow box the recipe called for meant it was impossible to get pretty balls of gelato. The taste was great, regardless of how shambolic my gelato balls looked. And make sure you do make the gelato: the soup without it is pretty bland, but together, they are light and refreshing, and completely perfect for this muggy weather.

Green Pea Soup with Mint Gelato
from Delicious, Dec 09 / Jan 10

Mint Gelato:
1/4 cup castor sugar
1/3 cup water
2 tsp grated lemon zest plus 1 tbsp lemon juice (or a little more)
1 cup plus 2 tbls slivered fresh mint plus extra leaves to garnish (forgot those for the photo!)
½ cup mascarpone cheese
1 egg white

Put sugar, water, lemon zest, juice and mint in a saucepan over low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Increase heat to medium, and simmer for 2 mins. Cool syrup and strain, pushing down on solids to extract as much flavour as possible. Stir cooled mint syrup into mascarpone. Freeze in a plastic box (deep enough for you to use a melon baller to scoop the gelato) for at least 2 hours. Place frozen mixture in a food processor with egg white, and extra mint. Puree and refreeze for at least four hours.

Soup:
2 cups of green peas (frozen is fine),
1 large peeled potato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup shredded lettuce (iceberg)
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
¼ cup thickened cream

Combine potato, onion, lettuce and stock in pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add peas and simmer for 2 more mins. Puree soup in a blender until smooth. Add cream and season to taste. Chill for at least a couple of hours. Ladle soup into bowls and top each with a small scoop of gelato.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken - For Kids or Kids At Heart

Confession time: I do not like cooking for other people's children. When you are cooking for adults you get to try out different flavours, a wide variety of ingredients, some heat, some spice - in other words it is interesting cooking. Cooking for other people's kids is (mostly) a disappointing experience. It doesn't matter how good your sauce is, or that your homemade pizza dough is amazing or that your teriyaki salmon has your kids licking their dishes. Other people's kids mostly want to eat food that tastes the same at your house as it does at their home, and I expect my kids are the same at other people's houses. If your food is different from their normal meals, they will usually cross their arms and say "I'm not hungry" even when you know they could eat the leg off the table. Which means that most of the time (there are some key exceptions) when we entertain other people's kids, they get sausages in bread for dinner. Sausages + bread = sausages + bread. Every kid will eat it happily because it tastes the same wherever you are. And this approach works extremely well until you get to summer. In summer, when you are entertaining a lot more frequently, and in family groups, suddenly you need to add a bit of choice into the menu. If for no other reason than to stop your own kids from being bored to tears with the same dinner over and over.

Enter: Fried Chicken. This has become my new menu item for kids. If my first attempt was anything to go by, the small fry loved it, and the adults mopped up the leftovers. The chicken is marinated in buttermilk to tenderize the flesh, then battered and shallow-fried briefly before cooking in the oven. This is good in two ways:

- a nice battered exterior, without the chicken spending an extended period cooking in oil

- you can get it half-cooked ahead of time, and just finish it off in the 15 mins before dinner. Perfect for when you are entertaining another tribe.

This recipe comes from Jill Dupleix in Delicious Dec 09 / Jan 10. I have been working my way through this issue of Delicious as part of the "We Made It" challenge with Melinda from Melbourne Larder. Jill Dupleix is a writer I follow - she has a lovely style, and her cooking is definitely at the less fiddly end of the spectrum. I have a couple of her cookbooks and I love her Delicious and SMH columns. In fact one of my favourite cooking quotes is from her: "I love cooking, but not while I could be eating and drinking." On that note here's to a great Australia Day weekend.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken

adapted from Jill Dupleix in Delicious Dec 2009 / Jan 2010

8 chicken legs (look for kid sized ones; some are big enough to be used in combat)

1 cup buttermilk

1 3/4 cups plain flour

1 tsp paprika

Salt and pepper

Vegetable oil for frying

Cover the chicken with the buttermilk and refrigerate for at least 1 hr, or ideally overnight. Preheat oven to 200C.

Mix flour with paprika and some salt and a little pepper in a medium bowl. Dredge each leg through the flour until it is well-coated.

Heat 1cm oil over medium high heat . Cook the chicken in batches until it is well-browned on both sides. Do not attempt to cook it through. Put chicken on a baking tray lined with baking paper to sop the batter sticking to the tray. Bake for 15 mins, or until the chicken is cooked through. Allow to cool long enough so that little fingers don't get burnt, then serve. I is even delicious at room temperature.

A Surprising Discovery and Chocolate Macadamia Shortbread

Right now I am feeling pretty stupid. For the last two or three months, I have been receiving regular comments on my blog in Chinese. As any blogger will tell you, receiving comments is one of the great things about blogging. It is incredibly gratifying when people find what you write interesting enough to give you some feedback. So I was flattered and would think to myself how nice it is that someone overseas is reading my blog, and be amazed yet again at how the Internet is making the world a smaller and smaller place. Lots of warm feelings....

And then today, I received a lengthy comment in Chinese and started to wonder what on earth my correspondent could be saying. Most comments that I receive run about a sentence or two, while this one appeared to be a lengthy paragraph. I decided to send it on to my clever sister-in-law who can read Chinese characters, who immediately responded "It's a list of adult short films, with a short description of each film. DELETE! DELETE!" So, if you can read Chinese, and thought that I was starting to act as a middleman peddling exotic services, rest assured that I will be sticking to the core business of cooking from here on. Also understand that I have now activated comment moderation, so I will be able to bin the adult services before they get posted on my blog. Apologies to anyone who has been offended in the last month or two. And here I was thinking they must be keen on mango recipes......

Now, onto something sweeter. This shortbread recipe appeared in this month's Delicious in Belinda Jeffrey's column. I really rate Belinda Jeffrey's recipes as scrumptious and achievable. I have two of her cookbooks ("100 Favourite Recipes" and "Tried and True Recipes") and have made so many brilliant things from them, that if I posted all of them I would be reproducing virtually half of each book. I noticed that one of them has recently been reprinted so if you want a recommendation for a cookbook you will keep turning to, I suggest you take a look. Or you can just accumulate her columns from Delicious!

This shortbread was made as a thank you present for a neighbour, who later phoned and asked for the recipe - always a good sign. It came out a little moister than I expected despite my decision to leave it in the oven for an additional ten or fifteen minutes. I think this may have been because it was so hot here when I was making them that my butter was half melted, instead of the firm butter envisioned by Belinda. So the final biscuit, in texture, was closer to a slice than to shortbread. But it was completely scrumptious - just the thing for me to nibble on over a cup of tea as I contemplate how daft I can be at times.

I have been cooking from Delicious all month with Melinda from Melbourne Larder in a challenge to make use of our food magazines. If you would like to join us, drop either one of us a line. Oh, and watch out for any unintelligible comments...

Chocolate Macadamia Shortbread Biscuits
from Delicious Dec 09 / Jan 10

1 1/2 cups plain flour
2/3 cup fine semolina
1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup chopped roasted macadamias
60g chopped dark chocolate
300g unsalted butter at room temperature, chopped
180g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Grease and line the base and sides of a 18 x 28 cm lamington pan, leaving a 3cm overhang on all sides. Place the flour, semolina, baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt in a bowl and stir well to combine. Stir in macadamias and chocolate.

Combine butter, sugar and vanilla in a food processor and whiz for 1-2 mins till creamy, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides with a spatula. Stir butter mixture into flour mixture until well combined. The dough should be quite thick and a bit hard to mix - mine wasn't because of the very soft butter. Press the dough into a pan and prick all over with a fork. Chill for 15 mins. Preheat over to 160C. Bake shortbread for 25-30 mins until firm to the touch. While it is still hot, use a knife to score the biscuits. Cool in the pan for 10 mins, then lift out the shortbread and cut into fingers. Keeps for 5 days.

Mango-misu - Tiramisu's Tropical Cousin

We are deep in mango season at the moment. Prices are reasonable, the mangos are sweet, juicy and abundant, and we are all trying to enjoy them as much as possible before they disappear in another month or so. In fact, scarcely any of my shopping trolleys for the last month haven't contained at least one mango. In case you were wondering, that's me you can hear humming "mmmmmmangos". So you won't be surprised to hear that the cover of this month's Delicious sang to me like the worst kind of siren, an evil mango and cream toting siren.


The cover dessert was a tropical fruit take on the classic tiramisu: a mango-misu. And I have some questions: "Oh why evil publishing geniuses are the most deadent desserts saved for the cover? Is it so they can endlessly haunt you, in every supermarket, in every newsagent ??" I'm sure that lots of people found themselves, just like me, reduced to buying enormous volumes of mascarpone and cream and mangos because they just COULD NOT STOP thinking about this dessert. And I can report that it really was delicious, as well as extremely rich and filling. We had it with some old friends, and we all loved it, even if we were largely unable to move after having a slice. In fact, this was a good thing as it made it it easier for me to force leftovers on them before they could escape. (There was no way that I was going to allow them to leave without taking enough of the leftovers to use as a door stop. That much temptation cannot be left in this house. Never.) Incidentally, I can see myself making this for many summers to come - probably not more than once a summer, but as an indulgent treat on a hot night, it is hard to beat. Even better, it was easy peasy to do.

Melinda from Melbourne Larder and I are exploring the Dec/ Jan edition of Delicious, and trying to cook as much as possible from this volume of our underutilised food porn. If, like us, you have food magazines lying around that have migrated to become bed-time reading instead of cooking inspiration, grab Delicious this month and join in. Drop either one of us a line; we'd love to have you join our "We Made It" challenge.




Mangomisu
adapted from Delicious magazine, Issue 89, Dec/Jan

500g mascarpone cheese
600ml thickened cream
1/3 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup Cointreau - I ran out of cointreau, so I topped up with some brandy
Juice of two oranges
300g savoiardi (sponge finger biscuits) - I used almost 500g of biscuits in a 25cm springform
3 mangoes, sliced 1cm thick

Line the base of a 22cm springform cake pan with plastic wrap or baking paper. Place the cheese, cream, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and beat until thick and well combined.

Combine the Cointreau and orange juice in a separate bowl. Dip half the sponge fingers into the juice, and create a layer in the base of the cake pan. Then, spread 1/3 of the cream mixture, top with 1/3 mango slices, and repeat the process. Top with remaining cream mixture and top with mango slices. Cover and chill overnight. To serve, remove the cake from the in and transfer to a platter.

Warm Baked Peach and Raspberry Cake: Win Some, Lose Some

I have been going backwards and forwards in my mind about this post, but in the interests of full disclosure, and to let you know that I get my share of disappointments in the kitchen, here goes:

After my rapturous excitement about the slow-cooked lamb shoulder, I thought that I would have a shot at the warm baked peach and raspberry cake, which featured in the same article in the Dec / Jan Delicious. It looked appropriately rustic for me to cook in an unfamiliar oven while we were on holidays. It was big enough to serve a crowd, and you served it up by scooping it out of a baking dish - the perfectly relaxed feeling I was after. Sadly, it was underwhelming, particularly when you consider that it took a dozen eggs, 500g raspberries, 8 peaches, 2 packs of butter and 5 cups of flour. In fact, I found it a bit dry and hard.

When I look for explanations of where I went wrong, I think that I just did not "get" the recipe. You make a softish batter, dot it with fruit, then top it with an egg and sugar mixture and then bake for two hours at 180C. The two hours was bothering me - cooking a cake for two hours seemed wrong and excessive. So because I was using several smaller baking dishes, I checked everything repeatedly from the 1 hour mark onwards, but, at least on the skewer test, it wasn't cooked until close to the 2 hour mark. The cakes were removed from the oven and left to sit because the oven needed to be used for cooking dinner, then the cakes were gently reheated at dinner time. The result was not worth the time and effort required, which makes me cranky.

If you made this cake and it worked, please drop me a note and let me know what I did wrong, or what you did right. If you are considering making this cake, I suggest you stick to the lamb in the same article, because I can promise you that is worth cooking.

Melinda from Melbourne Larder, and I are cooking our way through Delicious Dec/Jan issue at the moment, as part of our We Made It challenge. If you are inspired to join us, drop either one of us a note and join in - we'd love to have you.

The BEST Slow Cooked Lamb Ever

Please note: the title of this post is not an exaggeration or some form of puffery designed to entice you to try this recipe. While it may not be the prettiest, this is easily the best slow cooked lamb I have eaten, no joke. And I have proof: I cooked it for some extremely well-mannered friends, a few weeks ago. At the end of main course, my lovely polite friends hopped up to clear the table and were then caught in the kitchen eating leftover bits and pieces in their fingers straight from the baking dish. I don't want to alarm you, but there was juice dribbling down forearms, much smacking of lips and even more licking of fingers. Yes, I know people do that at home all the time, but when you catch dinner party guests throwing politesse to the wind, you know that you have cooked a winner.

And on this hot summer's day, I grant you that slow-cooked lamb is probably not your immediate thought as to what to have for dinner, but it is actually completely perfect:
- it cooks at 150C for the whole six hours. You really can leave it while you head down to the beach as there is no adjusting of cooking temperatures.
- no basting: into the oven and forget it for six hours. Concentrate instead on basting yourself with the factor 30+.
- it uses bottled capsicums. No reason why you couldn't use fresh, but sometimes, life is all about being easy.
- the chilli flakes soften in the oven to become a flavoursome addition, without any uncomfortable heat or spiciness.
- ditto for the fennel seeds: the lamb has lots of flavour but no obvious aniseed taste
- the recipe feeds a crowd: halve it if you have only a family to feed, and you will probably still have leftovers
- you can make it all again in winter and it will still be perfect

This is the first recipe from Delicious Dec/Jan issue that I have made. Melinda from Melbourne Larder and I are exploring Delicious this month, after our fun with Australian Gourmet Traveller last month. If you are keen on joining in the fun, drop either one of us a line. Or else feel free to play along at home.

Slow-cooked Lamb Shoulder With Capsicum and Olives

2 x 3kg lamb shoulders
1 garlic bulb
1/2 cup chopped rosemary
2 tsp dried chilli flakes
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tbls olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
4 oranges roughly chopped
1 jar roasted red capsicum, cut into strips
2 cups pitted kalamata olives
2 tbls salted capers

Score the fat on the lamb shoulders in a criss cross pattern. Place garlic, rosemary, chilli, fennel and oil in a food processor and process to a coarse paste. (I added a little extra olive oil - about 1 tbl - at this point as I felt my paste was too dry and would not go far enough on the lamb). Spread the paste over the lamb, rubbing in well to work into the scoremarks. Cover and refrigerate for somewhere between 4 hours and overnight.

Preheat oven to 150C. Line a large baking tray with foil, leaving an overhang all around, then cover it with a double layer of baking paper, again leaving an overhang. Sit the lamb on the paper, then scatter over the orange, capsicum, olives and capers. Top with another double layer of paper and more foil. Fold all the overhanging edges of the paper in, then seal all the edges of the foil, so you have a package sitting in your baking tray that is locked pretty tight. Roast lamb for 6 hours or until falling off the bone. Remove from the oven and allow it to rest inside its parcel for 30 mins. Tear lamb into chunks and toss with oranges mixture on a platter. Scatter with parsley if you really want to impress.

Coleslaw and Chicken and Lime Leaf Fritters

"Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever." ~Mark Twain

So before my shortcomings become any shorter, indulge me while I catch up on some homework. I have two extra dishes from the December Gourmet Traveller to post about. The first is the King Cole coleslaw that I made on Christmas Day. I have a bit of a thing for coleslaw: something about the crunchiness, the creamy dressing, the slightly sour flavour of cabbage offset by other ingredients. When I saw the King Cole coleslaw in Gourmet Traveller, it seemed a perfect salad for Christmas lunch - excellent seasonal colours, all in reds and white, and something that could be prepared ahead to take the pressure off Christmas Day. While the results were good, (it was a tasty coleslaw, and I liked the inclusion of the radish and the hazelnuts), it was not significantly better than other coleslaw I have made. In fact the best bit for me was the leftovers: I had a small bowl of coleslaw for dinner on both Xmas night and Boxing night - which were more than satisfying after days spent feasting.

The final dish I made from Gourmet Traveller Dec 09 was the chicken and lime leaf fritters. This recipe comes from a restaurant called Cookie in Melbourne and was included in the magazine section where readers are able to request chefs' recipes. I always love this section as the unwritten subtext is that these recipes must be really, really, really good for someone to go to the trouble of writing to Gourmet Traveller to ask them to get the recipes. I did however make some changes to the recipe. Deep frying always leaves me with battle scars, so I decided instead to bake the fritters (which must make them balls not fritters). I also did not have any rice flour, but I did have some potato flour that I used instead, and it formed a nice thin crust on the outside of the balls. Instead of frying, I sprayed them with olive oil spray and put them into a 170C oven for 35 mins until they were golden brown and cooked through. These had a great Thai-style flavour, were really more-ish and made a perfect nibble for New Year's Eve. I am confident that they will be turning up around here again soon.

My focus on Gourmet Traveller Dec 09 came from a challenge with Melinda from Melbourne Larder that we called "We Made It". Sick of under-utlising our food magazines, we decided to try to focus on one and see how much we could cook from it. I loved doing this because it forced me to explore the magazine in depth and prodded me towards recipes I may never have otherwise attempted. Looking back over the month, my favourites were:

- the Rosemary Cranberry Florentines

- the Chilli Mud Crab

- the Ouzo Cured Ocean Trout

January's focus will be on the Dec/Jan edition of Delicious, so if you are cooking from Delicious feel free to join in. Now excuse me while I go attend to my shortcomings.

King Cole

Serves 8
½ small white cabbage (about 1kg), shredded
1 radicchio, shredded
8 radishes, thinly sliced
½ Spanish onion, thinly sliced
½ cup each torn dill and parsley (loosely packed)
35 gm (¼ cup) hazelnuts, roasted, skins rubbed, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp sunflower seeds (optional)
Sherry dressing
1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
1½ tbsp sherry vinegar
3 egg yolks
375 ml (1½ cups) olive oil
20 ml dry sherry, or to taste

Combine cabbage, radicchio and radish in a bowl of iced water, stand until crisp (5-10 minutes).
Meanwhile, for sherry dressing, process garlic, vinegar and yolks in a food processor until combined. With motor running, add oil in a thin steady stream until thick and emulsified, stir through sherry, season to taste.

Drain cabbage mixture, dry in a salad spinner, add to a bowl with onion. Add sherry dressing, toss to combine, transfer to a serving bowl, scatter with herbs, nuts and seeds.

Chicken and Lime Leaf Fritters

Serves 6
For deep-frying: vegetable oil
For dusting: rice flour
500 gm minced chicken
1 Spanish onion, finely diced
1 cup (loosely packed) coriander, finely chopped
6 kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded
80 ml (1/3 cup) fish sauce
80 ml (1/3 cup) lime juice
To serve:
thinly sliced cucumber, long red chilli and lime wedges

Preheat oil in a deep-fryer or deep-sided frying pan to 180C. Place rice flour in a bowl, set aside. Combine remaining ingredients in a large bowl and mix well (mixture will be quite wet). Divide mixture into even walnut-sized balls, dust with rice flour. Then either deep-fry in batches, turning occasionally, until golden and cooked through (2-4 minutes; be careful as hot oil may spit) OR spay with olive oil and bake at 170C for 35mins. Drain on absorbent paper, season to taste with sea salt flakes and serve with cucumber, red chilli and lime wedges.

Rosemary Cranberry Florentines

If you are still in the mood for festive flavours, here is another amazing recipe I tried for the "We Made It" Challenge with Melinda from Melbourne Larder. Between us, we decided to seek inspiration from this month's Gourmet Traveller, and cook as much as possible from the magazine. While we originally thought that December was a great month to start this project, the biggest problem I hit was that it was December. In other words, if you are like me, you may well spend December in the kitchen, but this is the month when you are making all your old traditional favourites. So no matter how good the Gourmet Traveller ham or turkey looked, I was only ever going to cook Aunty Judy's ham recipe and Mum's turkey recipe (which incidentally, I promise to post in time for next Christmas. I couldn't post it any earlier because the only photo I had of Mum's turkey recipe was of me, sweaty and exhausted on a boiling hot Xmas Day pulling the bird out of the oven. Was that photo going to appear on the blog? No way. Not ever.)

But now, thanks to Gourmet Traveller, I have another tradition to add to my permanent Xmas list: cranberry-rosemary florentine bars. These appeared in an article featuring the recipes of patissier of the moment, Adriano Zumbo. Zumbo has been building a profile for the last few years, starting with the odd mention in the food pages of the paper, before building to a star turn on both Masterchef and Celebrity Masterchef. Every time the Masterchef contestants were challenged with a Zumbo recipe, the judges would suck some air back through their teeth, shake their heads and discuss how many "processes" were involved. It was this image that kept popping into my head as I was making these bars: Gary and George shaking their heads and saying, "but how many processes does she still need to complete?" And I must admit, at the end of the cooking, I thought to myself "well, that was interesting. Rather serious effort for a Christmas sweet. Maybe next year I should set my sights a little lower. Who needs to do so much work at this time of year? Who really wants some fancy-pants chocolates?"

But then I tasted them, and the answer is ME ME ME. I will slave in the kitchen every year just so I can have another hit of those chocolates. Zumbo says in his GT introduction “These were inspired partly by stuffing mix from Christmas, with the rosemary, but made into a chocolate." I never would have contemplated rosemary and chocolate together, but these were phenomenal - a really perfect balance between sweet and savoury, and filled with so much flavour, that, even though I cut them smaller than Zumbo, one is plenty. And almost everyone who tried them was bewitched by the flavour. I must also admit, that while there are plenty of processes, none are very hard. It's just that there are a lot. But for the end result? I promise you will never hear another word of complaint from me. Gosh, I would even cop another process or two, just to eat them again. Really.

You start by making the flaked almond layer of the florentine; once that is in the fridge, you move onto the rosemary sable biscuit dough. These biscuits are cut into 1cm squares and baked until they are golden. Then all except 16 are crushed. (In case you were wondering, I have never made biscuits before for the sole purpose of smashing them up.) The recipe then asks you to process rosemary and cream in a small food processor. I only have a large food processor, so I decided to do this bit in the blender, and very quickly created something that more closely approximated rosemary butter than cream flecked with rosemary. I wasn't about to throw in the towel at this point, so I added a couple of extra tablespoons of pouring cream, and continued. The cream and rosemary are then brought to the boil, then left to infuse before being poured over the white chocolate and crushed pistachios to make a ganache and folded with the crushed biscuits. Zumbo then instructs that this mixture is poured over the almonds. My mixture was so thick that pouring was impossible, so I wound up taking a sheet of glad wrap and using it to push the mix flat on top of the almonds. That mix is then left to set in the fridge ofr 6 hours to overnight, before it is cut into bars, dipped in chocolate and decorated. And the final piece of advice comes from Zumbo: "The secret here is to not overcook them or the sugars become too reduced and they become too hard. And, no suprises, you’ll need to begin this recipe a day ahead.

Rosemary Cranberry Florentine Bars
Australian Gourmet Traveller Dec 09
Serves 16
Cooking Time Prep time 40 mins, cook 40 mins (plus infusing, cooling, setting)
125 gm flaked almonds
150 gm Tasmanian leatherwood honey (I just used the normal honey I had)
100 ml pouring cream
35 gm liquid glucose (I used corn syrup as a subsitute)
15 gm glacé cherries, finely chopped (I used some dates)
35 gm dried cranberries, finely chopped, plus extra whole, to serve
350 gm dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely chopped
To serve:
rosemary leaves and coarsely chopped pistachios

Rosemary sablé
25 gm caster sugar
1½ tbsp rosemary leaves
50 gm (1/3 cup) plain flour
35 gm cold unsalted butter, diced
2 tsp lightly beaten egg

Pistachio and rosemary ganache
60 ml (¼ cup) pouring cream
½ cup (loosely packed) rosemary leaves
115 gm good-quality white chocolate, finely chopped
20 gm pistachio kernels, pounded in a mortar and pestle until finely crushed
1 tsp liquid glucose
25 gm softened butter


Preheat oven to 180C. Spread almonds on an oven tray and roast, stirring occasionally, until golden (5-7 minutes), set aside. Stir honey, cream and glucose in a saucepan over medium-high heat until combined, then cook until mixture reaches 123C on a sugar thermometer (10-12 minutes). Stir in almonds, cranberries and cherries, then spoon into a 22cm-square cake pan lined with baking paper, smooth top and refrigerate until set (1-2 hours).

Meanwhile, for rosemary sablé, reduce oven to 160C. Process sugar and rosemary in a small food processor or spice grinder until finely chopped, then transfer to a mixing bowl. Add flour and butter and rub in with your fingertips until fine crumbs form. Add egg, mix until a dough just forms (don’t overwork it) then flatten into a square, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate to rest (1-2 hours). Roll out on a lightly floured surface to 7mm thick, cut into 1cm squares and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake until golden (10-15 minutes), cool completely and coarsely crush.

For pistachio and rosemary ganache, process cream and rosemary in a small food processor to break down leaves, transfer to a saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat. Remove from heat, stand for 20 minutes to infuse, then bring back to the boil. Combine chocolate, pistachio and glucose in a heatproof bowl, strain over cream mixture and stir to combine. Stir in butter, fold in rosemary sablé (reserve 16 pieces to garnish). Pour over almond mixture, smooth top, cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate until firm (6 hours-overnight), turn out and cut into 3cm x 9cm bars.

Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Dip bars into chocolate, shaking off excess, and place on trays lined with baking paper. Decorate each bar with a rosemary leaf, a cranberry, a pistachio and a little remaining rosemary sablé, then refrigerate until set (10-15 minutes). Cranberry-rosemary Florentine bars will keep refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

This recipe is from the December 2009 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine.

Cured Ocean Trout - Make Your Christmas Meal Easier Pt 2

After writing yesterday's tips for making Christmas easier, I am feeling a bit warm and fuzzy as befits the season of goodwill among men. Probably a bit fuzzier than I should be (I did arrive two hours early at the dentist yesterday), but I am trying hard to hang onto a sense of calm this week. Please, will someone remind me of this when I fight for an hour to get into a Westfield car park next week, or when the hundredth playing of "Santa Baby" makes me want to kick Santa in the shins and run away.

Looking at the week ahead, I know Christmas Eve will be a long day. I will be hosting lunch for close to a dozen of us. I have one standard-sized oven with both a ham to glaze and a turkey to cook before lunch (the current plan is to glaze the ham and then cook the turkey and then whack the ham back into the oven for a few minutes so it tastes freshly glazed.) My turkey recipe is also like a high maintenance friend, and needs fairly constant attention until it appears golden and rested: worth it ultimately, but a bit demanding at times. So, in my spirit of calm, I am trying to take the pressure off myself everywhere else. I am doing only cold side dishes (fitting since it is likely to be very hot): a spinach and rice salad in perfect Christmas colours, a King Cole coleslaw (from Gourmet Traveller Dec 09) also in seasonal colours and a Christmas caponata. Both the caponata and the rice salad will be made the day before they are needed, as they improve when the flavours are given a bit of time. The coleslaw requires only a bit of chopping, which can be easily managed between bastes of the turkey. I have also decided to serve a fruit salad of mangos, nectarines and raspberries as the dessert, and then do more seasonal, indulgent petit fours with coffee, which will all be made ahead of time. All of this makes me feel happy and capable of managing the cooking without any of it being too difficult on the day. But there is one final item I need to share with you. My final blinding piece of inspiration (or self-preservation) was choosing to do cured ocean trout for the entree, which needs to be prepared now to be ready for Christmas.

If you have never cured trout or salmon, today is the day to think about doing it. It is so easy, I am nearly embarassed by it, and the resulting fish is wonderful. If you have never eaten cured fish, the texture is somewhere between sashimi and cooked fish, but does not taste at all raw. Depending on what you use for the cure, different flavours can be introduced into the dish. I am trying the recipe from Gourmet Traveller Dec 09 for Greek Cured Ocean Trout for the first time, however I have cured fish before (salmon gravlax). The fish needs to cure for five days before being eaten, so what you see above is the side of ocean trout in its ziploc curing bath. Once cured, the fish will last another couple of weeks. As soon as it is ready, I will taste it and update this post, and the picture. In the meantime, here is the recipe. Hopefully it will be perfect for Christmas!

UPDATE: The ocean trout was really good. Because it cures for longer than other recipes, the fish shrinks quite a bit, so each slice from the fillet is quite small. The taste however is wonderful - and don't be afraid even if you don't like ouzo - it definitely does not have a strong ouzo flavour, just an almost unidentifiable background hint. This recipe was a definite hit with everyone, and was eaten too fast for me to get another photo.

Greek Cured Ocean Trout
Gourmet Traveller Dec 09

100g caster sugar
100g fine sea salt
100ml ouzo
1 small side ocean trout
Baby coriander sprigs to garnish
Condiments as desired

Combine sugar, salt and ouzo in a bowl. Place trout in a ziploc bag, and pour in the curing mixture. Press mixture down to evenly coat fis. Seal, removing as much air as possible, and refrigerate, turning occasionally until lightly cured (5 days.)

Wipe curing liquid from trout, then brush any remains away with a wet pastry brush (don't wet the fish too much). Thinly slice fish, arrange on a platter, scatter with garnish and serve. (I am planning to serve it wih thin sourdough toasts, capers, pickled onions and a garlic aioli).

Speculaas for Christmas

Inspired by Melinda from Melbourne Larder, I decided to whip up a batch of these speculaas during the week. I had never heard of speculaas until they were featured in this month's Gourmet Traveller, but the description grabbed my attention: baking speculaas "will make your kitchen smell like the inside of a gingerbread house." Who could resist that?


I have always been completely taken by gingerbread houses, from Hansel and Gretel onwards. When I was little my mother made a beautiful gingerbread house once at Christmas time. I think she used a recipe in "The Cooking of Germany", part of a Time Life series, which featured an amazing gingerbread house on its cover. I remember Mum's gingerbread house sitting proudly on the dining room table, tiled with lollies, so picture-perfect that I was completely dazzled by it. It was in the dining room to keep it away from little hands, but I kept sneaking in to look at it. Sadly the Sydney humidity ensured that within a day or so of completion, it had collapsed in on itself, and we wound up picking the lollies out of the gingerbread rubble. Poor Mum. (Note to self, if I ever attempt a gingerbread house, make sure to use a local recipe, not one that presumes European winter conditions.)


So, on to the speculaas and my attempt to make my kitchen smell like a gingerbread house.... This recipe certainly creates a lovely crisp biscuit, with rich spicy gingerbread flavours, and your kitchen really will smell superb while you are making them. The downside is the work involved. Like many Christmas treats, these speculaas are much more a labour of love than a simple batch of biscuits. Firstly there is a spice mix to make. Then a dough which needs resting overnight. Then the dough needs to be rolled out, and returned to the fridge for more resting, and then it is cut with cookie cutters and returned to the fridge for more resting. And only then does it hit the oven and turn your kitchen into a gingerbread house. Incidentally, the final resting is to ensure that your cookies hold the intricate patterns of some speculaas cutters, but I got a bit bored and impatient and reduced it dramatically with no apparent ill-effect. As long as your biscuits aren't too intricately patterned, you cold probably get away with it too. Incidentally, in case you are wondering, my cutters are supposed to look like Christmas ornaments, but I think they wound up looking a little like some sort of medical instrument. You've got to laugh - at least they tasted good.


If you are cooking something from Gourmet Traveller this month and would like to join Melinda and I, on our new We Made It challenge, drop us a line either here or at Melbourne Larder.


Speculaas
Australian Gourmet Traveller December 09
Makes about 30-40 biscuits

500 gm (3 1/3 cups) plain flour, sieved
2 tsp baking powder
220 gm butter, softened
250 gm dark brown sugar
2 tbsp milk

Speculaas spice
8 green cardamom pods
8 cloves
5 star anise
1 tsp white peppercorns
1 piece of mace
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp finely grated nutmeg

For speculaas spice, finely grind cardamom, cloves, star anise, peppercorns and mace in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle. Transfer to a large bowl, add cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, stir, add to flour and baking powder, and set aside.

Beat butter, sugar and a pinch of salt in an electric mixer until creamy (3-4 minutes). Add milk, beat to combine, then add flour mixture and mix until just combined. Form mixture into a dough with your hands on a work surface (add extra milk if mixture is too dry), shape into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate to rest (8 hours-overnight).

Preheat oven to 170C. Roll pastry on a lightly floured surface to 5mm thick, then refrigerate until firm (30 minutes). Cut into desired shapes (see note) and place on trays lined with baking paper. Re-roll scraps and repeat. Chill until firm (20 minutes), then bake in batches until light brown and crisp (10-12 minutes). Cool for 5 minutes on trays, then transfer to wire racks and cool completely. Speculaas will keep, stored in an airtight container, for 1 week.

Chilli Mud Crab for a Date Night

This week a very unexpected thing happened - both children were suddenly invited away to the country with friends. For two nights. As far as I can remember, which admittedly isn't that far, this is only the second or third time we have had both girls away simultaneously for more than a night, in more than a decade. Yes, we have been away without the kids, and yes one or both of them have regular sleepovers at friends' houses, but both away together for 48 hours is different. Especially because Darling Husband and I are still at home, which makes it much more noticeable - the rhythm of the house changes completely. For me it has been liberating, but a little strange. It also focuses the mind a bit on how life soon will be as the children emerge into the wide world, and Mum and Dad are left behind.

Right now, I feel we are drawing to the close of a lovely period, where the children are old enough to be reasonable, interesting and articulate, but not yet old enough to be revolting, vile teenagers. And I know it is coming - if I was a vile teenager, why would I imagine that they won't be? Both daughters are probably already practicing the teenager-y rolling of the eyes in front of the mirror. The angst and door slamming must be coming soon too. Already, they point out to me how embarrassing I am (I make sure that I only take glee in this; in fact I tell them that I live to humiliate them - in a good way of course). But the little girls in them are still clearly there too; the one who crawls into your lap and sobs because life didn't go the way she wanted it today; or the one who still looks for reassurance and validation as she starts to make her own decisions. Every time one of them snuggles into me like a little child, the thought crosses my mind, that maybe this is the last time they will cuddle up to me like that. I know that we will still hug or hold each other, but it makes me sad to think the nuzzling will soon go. Such a bittersweet time.....

But, let's not pretend that the children being out of the house for just a couple of days is even a little bit sad. Darling Husband and I got two date nights, one night at home featuring chilli crab, some good conversation and a little TV, the other out at a show and then on to an alfresco dinner on a gorgeous balmy night. Plus some of the Xmas shopping was knocked over, leaving me feeling a little calmer about the fortnight ahead. Yes, I do know how lucky I am.

For our date night dinner, I picked this chilli crab both because it looked good, and because I am still trying to cook as much as possible from this month's Gourmet Traveller. Melinda from Melbourne Larder and I have started a very low-key cooking challenge, trying to cook as much as possible from a different food magazine each month. This month's focus for the "We Made It" challenge is Australian Gourmet Traveller, December 2009. The chilli crab was the third thing I have made, and is my favourite so far. The sauce successfully achieved that fantastic Thai balance between hot, sweet, sour and salty - it was incredibly moreish. I did however simplify the recipe a little. I have no desire to bring home live crabs and then boil them just to set them aside and then reheat in the sauce. So I bought pre-cooked crab and got the fish shop to clean the crabs and chop them in four for me - skipping this ickiness made dinner taste even better. As long as you go to a good fish shop, I would recommend you do this. The crab tasted sensational. This recipe is a definite keeper for me - absolutely perfect summer fare. PS This is not a meal to be eaten in front of anyone you want to impress - licking your fingers is not for company.

Incidentally, if you are cooking from Gourmet Traveller this month and you would like to play along, drop a note to either Melinda or me.

Chilli Mud Crab

Australian Gourmet Traveller, December 09

2 live mud crabs (I used cooked)

6 kaffir lime leaves torn

2 red bird's eye chillis, thinly sliced

Juice of 2 limes

1 tbl fish sauce

1 egg. lightly beaten with a fork

Generous handful of coriander and Thai basil, torn

2 shallots, sliced (green onions)

Chilli Jam

60 ml vegetable oil

1 onion finely chopped

5 garlic cloves finely chopped

15g each (3 cm piece) of galangal and ginger, grated

3 long red chillis, thinly sliced

80g palm sugar grated, plus extra to taste

2 tbl fish sauce

1. Place crabs in the freezer to stun them for 30-40 mins. Bring a stockpot to the boil, add crab, cover and cook until cooked through (15-20 mins). Drain, remove top shell from crab, discard gills and coral, quarter crabs, crack claws, set aside. (Or just avoid this bit and get your crabs cooked).

To make chilli jam, heat oil in a wok. Add onion and cook over a medium flame, stirring occasionally, until the onion begins to caramelize (15-20 mins). Add galangal, ginger, garlic and chilli, and saute until chilli is tender (5-10 mins). Process this mixture in a food processor until it turns to paste, then return it to the wok with the fish sauce and the palm sugar. (I added the fish sauce to my food processor as it made it easier to chop the mixture.) Cook until caramelized (a further 5-10 mins).

Add crab, lime leaves, bird's eye chillis and 40 ml water to the chilli jam. Stir until the crab is heated through (5-10 mins). Add lime juice and fish sauce, and check seasoning, adding more juice, sauce or sugar to balance the flavours to your liking. Add egg and stir until egg is cooked and crab is well-coated (2-4 mins). Transfer to a bowl, scatter with herbs and shallots, and serve hot.

Fried Quail With Cucumber and Lettuce Wedges

One of the reasons that I love cooking is that it forces me to employ my senses more than my cognitive ability. In other words, my brain can enjoy the equivalent of a snooze on the couch, while smell or feel or taste take over. I get enormous pleasure from the meditative moments as I watch a pot boil, or hold down the lid on my food processor while it whizzes away (don't ask). But sometimes the food itself distracts me and I find myself doing the mental equivalent of a gym workout.

Which brings me to today. I found myself at my kitchen bench, contemplating very small birds. Birds that could have been cupped in my hand quite easily, and I have small hands. The reason for the birds was dinner, and more specifically, a fast dinner after a busy day from a Gourmet Traveller recipe. I am trying to cook as much as possible from Gourmet Traveller this month because of a new monthly challenge with Melinda from Melbourne Larder. We have called this project "We Made It" and we are planning to try and cook as much as possible from a different food magazine each month. Ideally, we want our food magazine purchases to be put to better use than just contemplating hypothetical dinner parties. Not that I can see the hypothetical dinner parties being cancelled anytime soon.

On scouring this month's Gourmet Traveller for something fast to cook for dinner, I landed on marinated quail in the Gourmet Fast section. I knew immediately that darling husband and kids would love this. While many people would quail (!) at the thought of eating a quail, my people are not those people. My Asian husband and children are used to eating small birds from pigeon onwards, after years of meals at Chinese restaurants. I consider it something to do with the famine mentality that is visible at times behind even the fanciest Chinese cuisine. Yes, I'm looking at you, 1000 year old eggs.

But as I sat there contemplating the small birds, I was wondering whether there was something inherently cruel about eating something so little. I can only put this down to the "pick on someone your own size" school of thought, as most days of the week, I have no problem eating all manner of animals. Which then led me to wondering whether empirically there was something different in quality between the life of a quail, or a cow or a sheep or even a very unlovable shark. Logically, there isn't. Which then led me to contemplating our position at the top of the food chain and the fact that nature can be cruel at almost every turn. Those at the top of the food chain tend to win, but the only ones who worry about it are humans. And as if the cruelty and health arguments for and against vegetarianism aren't enough to wrestle with, now there is an environmental dimension to be considered as well. Promise to let you know when I reach some conclusion.....

Back to the quail. If you are someone who does not quail at quail (sorry, I loved that line so much I had to use it twice), this recipe is a winner. I measured all of my marinade ingredients into the same measuring cup, so by the time I had finished measuring and chopping the sugar had nearly dissolved. The marinade then needed only a minute or two on the stove to be ready for use. Incidentally, I couldn't find 4 jumbo quail, so I used 6 regular quail and cooked them for slightly less time (about 2 mins). After ten minutes, the oil was hot, the salad was made and the quail was ready for the pan. Cooking took another ten minutes by the time I had worked in batches. The result was really good. Daughter came back for seconds and husband came back for thirds. If you are not keen on deep frying, I also tried cooking one of the quail under the griller, and it was good too.

PS Apologies for the photo - light was failing and we were all too hungry for much styling.

Fried Quail With Cucumber and Lettuce Wedges Australian Gourmet Traveller December 2009

Serves 4
4 jumbo quail, butterflied and halved lengthwise (have your butcher do this if the thought of it bothers you)
200 ml light soy sauce
100 ml chicken stock
40g caster sugar
2 pieces of orange rind removed with a peeler
2 cm piece of ginger thinly sliced
1 star anise crushed coarsely
Vegetable oil for deep frying
1/4 iceberg lettuce cut into thin wedges
1/2 cucumber cut into 4cm batons
1 tsp Chinese five spice mixed with chilli flakes (ooops forgot this bit)
Lime wedges and coriander sprigs to serve

Place quail in a single layer in a non-reactive bowl (I used plastic; glass or ceramic are fine too). Combine soy sauce, sugar, stock, orange rind, star anise and ginger, in a small saucepan, and stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Cool, pour half over the quail and return the rest to the stove. Cook until it is a nice, syrupy sauce, then strain and set aside.

Meanwhile heat oil to 180C in a high sided frypan or a deep fryer. Combine five spice, chilli and 2 tsp sea salt in a small dish, and set aside. Drain quail, pat dry and deep fry until golden and crisp. Drizzle the sauce over the quail, and serve with lettuce, cucumber, lime wedges, coriander and five spice salt.

Mixed Tomato Salad: We Made It

December is upon us. I have neglected my blog even more than my garden for the last couple of weeks, so apologies to any regular readers who thought I had fallen down the proverbial plug hole. Some low level renovations made me briefly computer-less, followed by the usual ups and downs of a household at this time of year, but I am planning to more than make up for lost time this month, so brace yourselves.

A few months ago, I saw a post from Melinda at Melbourne Larder about making good use of food magazines. In one month, she had made more than 10 recipes from a recent Gourmet Traveller. I was impressed because - brace yourselves - my name is Suzie and I am a food porn addict. I don't just enjoy them; I mainline food magazines. As well as filed and orderly collections of magazines I am keeping, there are piles of unsorted magazines hidden in various corners around the house. I have an enormous box of unsorted clippings from magazines that have been sent off to recycling, plus three largish scrapbooks of sorted recipes. Whenever I find myself out and about with some time to kill before collecting the kids, going to an appointment, or meeting a friend, I tend to dive into a newsagency and collect another hit. Which all wouldn't be nearly as wicked if I actually used them a bit more instead of just conjuring up hypothetical meals in my head.

So I dropped a note to Melinda suggesting some sort of monthly challenge, and after an exchange of emails, we have decided to play. Our plan is to pick a different magazine each month, try and cook and review and post as much as possible from it in the month. If anyone else decides to join in, they are more than welcome, just drop a comment in to either Melinda or me. No more rules or pressure than that. This month's choice is Australian Gourmet Traveller, December 2009. And tentatively, this project of ours is called "We Made It". Which, incidentally, is how I feel by the time I get to December.

So first recipe off the rank was a mixed tomato salad with sumac, herbs and flatbread. At this time of year, the available varieties of tomatoes spin out from the usual choices of Italian, vine-ripened or bog standard to a gorgeous palette of shapes and sizes and colours. And the recipe is not prescriptive as to what varieties you pick - take a look at what is available and what will look pretty in a bowl and work from there. Tomato salads are a great addition to any buffet or plate because of the shot of colour they give. They also last longer than your standard leaf salad - I enjoyed the remainders yesterday of a salad prepared the night before - so make sure you don't bin the leftovers. The tomato holds its shape and texture well, and if anything the flavour is enhanced. Incidentally, I prefer to blacken the capsicum skins under the griller than mess around with open flames - no need for yet another cooking scar on my hands!

If you would like to join in the fun of cooking from Gourmet Traveller this month, leave me a comment, and make sure you go and visit Melinda at Melbourne Larder and see what amazing things she is whipping up too.

Mixed tomato salad with sumac and herbs

Australian Gourmet Traveller December 2009
Serves 6

3 red capsicum
1.2 kg assorted tomatoes, such as vine-ripened, green, ox heart, grape, cherry, kumato
80 ml (1/3 cup) extra-virgin olive oil
3 golden shallots, thinly sliced
1 lemon, juice only
2 tsp sumac
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 bunch each coriander, parsley and mint, leaves torn
To serve:
grilled flatbread and crumbled feta (optional)

Grill capsicum over a low open flame until blackened, turning occasionally (20-30 minutes). Transfer to a heatproof bowl, cover with plastic wrap and stand until cooled (1 hour), then peel, coarsely chop and set aside.

Cut large tomatoes into wedges, halve smaller ones and combine in a bowl. Add olive oil, shallot, lemon juice, sumac and garlic, season to taste and toss to combine. Stir through capsicum and herbs and serve with grilled flatbread to the side and crumbled feta, if desired.