Relaxing to improve

I had an epiphany in the pool yesterday.  I realised that when I try to swim fast I start to tense up, my stroke shortens becoming less strong, and I end up being slower and quickly running out of breath.  To avoid this, my focus has become any tension in my body.  I try to concentrate on relaxing this tension and trying to utilise each stroke as much as I can while that arm is under water.  

I wonder how many things in life this could apply to.  For example, if I'm trying to cook dinner in a hurry I stop doing things efficiently.  The pasta is ready long before the sauce and vegetables are.  Or I forget a vital step like adding salt to the bread dough.  When I used to perform to people on either the violin or piano, I would think too hard and lose my place in the music, making a massive glitch I wouldn't normally have made had I been playing at home alone without the pressure of an audience.  Or my bow would start to shake and my left hand fingers would play out of tune.  I'm forever trying to get through to my adult students that being relaxed is the key to most of their technical issues.  I think I need to start taking my own advice. 

A great Hot Cross Bun bake-off

It seems hot cross buns have been in the supermarkets back home - probably at a dollar for a packet of six - for a good long time because there have been lots of status updates about them on facebook.  I thought the tradition was to have them on Good Friday but wiki tells me they're generally served during lent.  All I remember from my childhood is Easter eggs were definitely a no-go before Easter Sunday. Regardless, I've been craving them for a while but kept forgetting to prepare the sourdough starter the night before I had some time to bake bread.  Finally I prepared it during a morning when I thought there would be some spare time within the next 48 hours.  Because I am more wary of my starter working, I decided to also bake some dried yeast hot cross buns.  That way I knew there would be some successful buns (dried yeast always rises) and I could compare the two types of breads.  Both recipes called for 1/4 cup of sugar but because I'm still trying to be basically sugar-free, I only put in a teaspoon or two to help encourage the yeast to activate.  

The first photos are the yeast buns, the second are the sour dough buns.  They both rose beautifully and have a soft, yummy looking crumb.  However, we both thought the sourdough buns were better.  Somehow they seem to have more substance to them, with a richer crumb.  The dried yeast ones were so light and fluffy, they were like eating air.  I was surprised as they called for two eggs and twice as much butter.  I'm definitely hooked on sourdough bread - it's the good stuff.  It was very hard for me not to spread a berry jam on the final outcome but I didn't succumb, settling for melty butter instead.

Cooking frenzy

I have particularly busy Wednesdays and Thursdays while my Tuesdays are all but blank.  This Tuesday was looking strangely busy until 2 of my 3 appointments cancelled on me.  It was a cold day and I was glad for the excuse to stay warm at home.  With some time on my hands I went into a frenzy preparing dinners for the rest of the week...and beyond.  I slow cooked up a split green pea ham hock soup, made a chilli con carne, and made a family chicken pie, as my trusty Edmunds cook book calls it.  It's basically a chicken pot pie.  With bacon.  I was able to freeze several helpings of the soup and chilli, as well as putting some in the fridge for later in the week.  Satisfaction is being able to come home on a cold day and knowing there is a meal waiting in the freezer that just needs defrosting and heating on the stove top.  To add some sugar to life, I prepared apple pikelets for an afternoon tea guest and used the left over pastry from the chicken pie for a berry/apple tart for dinner.  I couldn't help making an egg vanilla custard to go with this - and ate more than I should have for dessert tonight.  This was not quite an all day affair, but it definitely took a large portion of the afternoon.  I wonder how parents do it with kids under their feet?  I guess I'll be finding out soon enough.

The perfect pasta sauce

I still find it funny that Americans call pasta sauce tomato sauce.  Seriously, it gives me a good giggle.  Mostly because when we want tomato sauce, we want what Americans consider ketchup - it seems like a polar opposite of pasta sauce.  Jbird didn't even realise this until this week and it took me a good long time to figure it out too. 

Back to the subject at hand.  I have been making our pasta sauce since we moved here, to varying degrees of success.  It should be an easy item to make, in my mind, but it turns out it's not always.  It's not simply a matter of simmering some tomatoes with other ingredients.  They need to be simmered for long enough to incorporate flavours and soften the tomatoes and have enough flavour added to stop them tasting too tomato-ey.  I've made enough watery, weak pasta sauces that it has become my personal vendetta to always make it well.  If I don't have the time, I don't make it.  If I haven't made it for a while, I'll look up a new recipe to see if there're any twists or turns I might take in my cooking.  In this journey, I have found that basically marinara (basic pasta sauce) is marinara.  There aren't too many changes that can be made.  My key is sugar.  It brings out the flavour to the tomatoes, while cutting their acidity.

Yesterday, I was reading a recipe for pasta sauce on a blog which offered me a secret ingredient.  A secret ingredient.  I was immediately drawn in and read through her detailed, humorous description with the usual  excessive number of additional (yet gorgeous) photos. You want to know what the secret ingredient was?  She did basically everything I do but she also added a jar of store bought marinara.  Huh? Her reasoning was that you couldn't get that depth of flavour without it and whatever they've done in the factory to create it.  Phew, I thought, why bother at all?  

The thing is, I don't disagree with her.  If I throw in that little half cup of left over sauce from earlier in the week, the brew comes out soooo good.  Because the second cooking up of any pasta sauce just improves its flavour.  But I'm opposed to her addition of store-bought.  Why bother spending all that money on fresh/canned ingredients when you could just spend a dollar on store bought in the first place.  

Lacking leftover pasta sauce, I have found that that sought after depth can also be achieved with stock/(red) wine vinegar/Worcestershire sauce or all of the above.  Oh and I often bung in cumin and/or cayenne pepper and always some kind of spice when I'm first softening the onions.  And never forget that teaspoon or two of sugar.  But also patience with a long slow cook and tasting it as you go to see how it's developing. 

Very-special French toast

It was Martin Luther King Jr. day on Monday and to celebrate we had some very-special friends over for breakfast.  They're very-special because the girl lives all the way in up-state New York so we only rarely see them together.  That makes all of our friends in NZ and other parts of the country and world very-special too.  Just so you know.

Because they're so very-special, I wanted to make the breakfast a special affair.  I found a lovely recipe in my new book Tartine Bread for delicious French toast designed specifically for that fussy country bread I've been making.  I call it fussy because last time we tried using it for French toast, the egg cooked so that it was like having a fried egg inside bread.  Weird.  I found this horrid concoction so stressful that I had to take some time in our bedroom to myself.  The recipe calls for first sealing the custard mixture and bread with a quick burst on heat on the stove top and then baking it for 30 - 40 minutes.  This gives the base a caramelised, crispy texture while the egg mixture custardises beautifully as it slowly cooks in the oven.  The baking time also takes the stress off kitchen deadlines as everything else can be prepared in the meantime.

We insisted on the favourite NZ combo topping - syrup, banana, and bacon.  Jbird has been given a large bottle - at least a litre (!) of real maple syrup which shone in this meal.  I also threw a few blueberries on top and Jbird sifted icing sugar over everything.  As side dishes we served some mini lemon/poppy seed cupcakes - my current favourite since my birthday - and we chopped up some grapefruit.  We offered plunger coffee and tea.  It was a pretty special breakfast, worthy of any NZ cafe.  And any very-special friends.

A really good sandwich

There have been many nights of late when I haven't had a clue what to cook for dinner, or even what I felt like eating.  Unfortunately tea and toast doesn't quite cover all the food groups and while it has been my staple in-between meal recently, I can't substitute that for dinner.  Luckily we were taken out unexpectedly for dinner last night so I was able to use the idea I'd had last night for dinner tonight.  One less night to have to have a brilliant idea.

My very favourite thing of all is a really good sandwich.  New Zealanders might even consider these burgers, as these are on burger buns (I broke my sourdough only rule).  However, I've become more accustomed to labelling anything between bread as a sandwich unless it has ground beef (known as 'hamburger' here) which then becomes a burger.  It was a goodie too.  So good we didn't add any sauce at all and were glad to be able to taste so many different flavours.  It had fried aubergine, egg, and bacon with fresh avocado, tomato, that beet root salad I wrote about the other day, and cheese.  Delish.

The common beet root

After doing some research, Mum and I found out that beet root* (as well as their leaves) are an incredibly nutritious vegetable.  They have a high percentage of folate and manganese, as well as fiber, vitamin C, tryptophan, magnesium, and other trace minerals like iron, copper and phosphorus.   You can read all about what that means for our bodies here.

I had generally avoided this vegetable growing up because it seemed so slippery and likely to stain.  At home we often use the canned version which leaves it's texture bland at best.  I wrote it off as Grandma food.  However, it's such a commonly used vegetable at home that I am at least accustomed to the taste, and had grown to enjoy it, even if I don't regularly seek it out.  I do miss the kiwi burger and Jbird and I had recently tried the canned version on our home made burgers.  However they're canned in water here instead of vinegar and don't quite taste right.  Anyway, while mum was here we sourced some fresh beet root tucked away in the leafy green section of the produce department in the supermarket.  That night we made a delicious fresh salad by grating some of the root, adding some of the leaves alongside other lettuce type leaves - alone, their flavour is overpower, mixing in some grated carrot, grated garlic, and a vinaigrette of olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.  Since then Jbird and I have enjoyed a version of this salad many times.  He doesn't love the fresh garlic on it and I agree it steals a lot of the flavour so I only add it rarely and sparingly.  The only vegetable I have found that didn't seem to improve this salad were fresh mushrooms.  I think they absorbed the oil, leaving the salad dry tasting instead of sweet and moist.  It's a lovely salad to enjoy in these winter months when fresh vegetables don't seem so appetising.   

*beet root - beets

Time for an ad hoc

In NZ we love a good savoury pie.  Mince* and Cheese, Steak and Cheese, Chicken, Bacon and Egg, Steak and Mushroom, or the good old plain Mince.  We love to buy them from the Dairy* for lunch with a bottle of coke.  The primary ingredients are pastry, some form of filling (as named earlier), and tomato sauce* slathered liberally on top.

When my parents and my brother and his wife were here, mum and I baked a lamb roast.  It was kind of a celebration meal just because there were so many of us together for once.  We had pumpkin pie for dessert in honour of the upcoming Thanksgiving that mum was sad she would be missing.  After the meal we had a lot of leftovers.  A few nights later we threw them all together, along with some other items we found in the fridge, and baked them in a pie.  We decided to just put the pastry on top of the pie to be slightly healthier, similar to a chicken pot pie.  If this were a true New Zealand savoury pie, the pastry would completely surround the filling, like a sweet Apple Pie in the American tradition but probably eaten all over the world.

Thus became the tradition of my new favourite meal, named by Jbird: the Ad Hoc Pie. I've made at least one other Ad Hoc Pie since then and another last night.  Each time, Jbird and I love the meal.  Last night's pie had left over chilli con carne, steak, lentil and vegetable soup, and roast vegetables as its filling. 

* 
mince - hamburger meat

dairy - corner store

tomato sauce - ketchup 

A fail in the kitchen

I goofed up big time on a meal for our neighbours last night.  I was making slow cooked split pea soup with a ham hock*  and whole wheat focaccia bread.  First of all, I completely killed the bread - it was as hard and thin as a cracker. Bah to that.  The recipe called for 24 hours rising time in the refrigerator but I rushed it without adding extra yeast, silly me.  I guess I normally leave whole wheat bread to rise even longer than white bread so that might have been the second reason for its lack of rising.   It rose beautifully for the first two sittings but just sat there for the last one.  Secondly, my soup came out really really salty.  Unfortunately, if I follow a recipe, I like to really follow the recipe so Jbird can't say Did you follow the recipe? if it turns out wrong.  This recipe called for 5 cups of chicken stock* along with the ham hock.  My instincts told me: the ham hock will create loads and loads of flavour, you don't need chicken stock as well. But for some reason I ignored those instincts and added all that stock anyway.  When the soup was basically ready, I tasted it and was really annoyed to find that while it looked absolutely gorgeous and perfect, lovely and green and thick, it tasted really really salty.  To try and fix it, I added as much water as I could without compromising its thickness and served it anyway.  I think my replacement open face cheese toasties*** soaked up some of the salt.  I used some lovely Gouda cheese on them and it wasn't too sad not to have home made bread.

This morning I'm cooking up some more split peas to add to the left over soup to calm down the overdose in flavour.  I will freeze it in small one and two serving size Tupperware.  We love defrosting home made frozen soup for lunch in this cold weather.   

*some ham on a bone

** American term for stock: broth

***American term for cheese toasties: grilled cheese sandwiches

Crepes for brekkie

Jbird made me crepes for brekkie this morning.  I would say that is one of my very favourite ways to wake.  It could probably only be topped by the sound of waves hitting a stony beach outside my window.  We've been using Julia child's recipe.  It's not much different from the recipe I grew up with but it uses an extra egg, a little less milk (she uses water as well), and some melted butter.  Of course there's butter, this is Mrs. Child we're talking about.  I think the extra egg makes all the difference because you can still get them paper thin but they have a bit more substance to them.  Our favourite toppings at the moment are lemon and sugar, and nutella.  I've been trying to substitute sugar for honey but it doesn't quite taste right on crepes.  

Her recipe (makes 8 crepes):

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup milk

2 eggs

2 tablespoons melted butter (I only use 1 at the most)

1 cup sifted flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

I tend to mix the wet ingredients, then add the dry and mix again.  Leave to rest for up to an hour.  Add more water or milk to the desired consistency.  After pouring into frying pan, I use a spatula to help spread them really thinly.  I only learnt this tip very recently even though these are the first things I ever made alone in the kitchen.  In those days, there was butter everywhere and they were fried crepes.  I thought butter was the only way to keep them from sticking to the pan. 

Raspberry lemon bars

We were asked to bring dessert for dinner at a friends in the weekend and I remembered this favourite I'd made several times last year.  I discovered this recipe around the time that I realised 'bars' are what we call a 'slice' at home.   I once substituted lime for the lemon.  It was too tart - I probably needed to put less in but I'd recommend sticking to lemon.  Be careful to bake it for long enough too, you want it to feel pretty firm in the middle.  I know you probably know this, but take the time to read the recipe before you want to bake it, I was caught out several times with timing issues! It. Is. Really. Delicious.

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line an 8" circular pie pan with parchment paper.  Set aside.

For the crust:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup flour

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 tsp grated lemon zest

Preparing the crust:
Prepare the crust:  Combine all the crust ingredients in a medium bowl and stir with a wooden spoon until a soft dough forms.  Press evenly into the prepared pan.  Refrigerate for 10 minutes.  Bake the crust for 15 minutes, then let cool for 15 minutes.

For the lemon topping:

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1/2 zest of 1 lemon

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp flour

around 1/2 cup raspberries, fresh or frozen

Lemon topping:  Seive dry ingredients.  Combine all the topping ingredients, except the raspberries, in a medium bowl and whisk until well blended.  Spread the raspberries evenly over the baked crust.  Slowly pour the lemon topping mixture over the raspberries.  Bake for 22-24 minutes.  Lower the oven temperature to 325F and continue baking for 20-25 minutes longer or until topping is set.  Transfer the baking pan to a cooling rack and let cool completely.  Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before cutting.  Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Strawberry Shortcake and its complimentary cocktail

We were invited to a friend's for strawberry shortcake on Sunday night.  We wanted to take a drink but you can't buy alcohol on Sundays in Indiana so I had me a little think about what we had at home, grabbed that, and concocted a delicious cocktail at his house.  

The items I found were: 12oz of some fancy gingerbeer*, 2 10 oz bottles of tonic water*, a lemon, 12 raspberries, a bottle of gin and a bottle of vodka.  There were four of us, and I had enough to make a pretty nice sized cocktail each.  I gave a squeeze of lemon and a half shot of each of the alcohols to each glass.  In that, I muddled (smashed) the raspberries and then distributed out the sodas to each glass.  They were arguably the best drink I'd had in a long time.  The raspberries made them look a little bit girlie but the three boys I was drinking with savoured them over the next hour.  A lovely compliment to strawberry shortcake.  The strawberry shortcake itself was a variation from mine which I will have to bake some day.  It had a sweet scone as the cake.  Also, it was made by a boy (kudos to him), and was absolutely delicious.  That combined with several round of Pit and some decent piano playing and conversation called for a very successful Sunday evening.  Well, I think it was successful, but I was little chatty Kathy...

* all of these drinks are from single serve bottles, if you don't measure in ounces

Stuffing peppers

The produce from our garden is at its best right now.  In the last few days we harvested a pound of lovely juicy green beans, the usual 10 or so tomatoes, and 10 bell boy peppers which are suddenly plentiful and growing larger than they have been.  Bell boy peppers are like miniature capsicum peppers.  I'm not particularly fond of eating them raw, and they seem to disappear into most things I cook them in.  Because we had so many this week, I realised I could make stuffed peppers, and I finally found a dish they could really shine in.  They're so cute, too.  I lopped off their spout, scooped out their seeds and they were a perfect little cup to stuff.  I cooked up some rice risotto, adding feta cheese and fresh herbs as an after thought, stuffed eight little peppers, placing a slice of tomato on top of each, and baked them until I could see the peppers were starting to brown in splotches.  They hold together better than half a capsicum and make a filling meal.  It's lovely having home grown produce to eat and enjoy every day.  It's a great time of the year.

Strawberry granita

Granita is an icy dessert which has been stirred with a fork while it freezes from Italy.  I did not try granita when I was in Italy back in '05.  I was so fixated with their gelati, I didn't even notice if it was available.  But my ice cream making recipe book tells me it's very popular - so popular that some Italians put it in bread and eat it for breakfast.  I thought I'd take a small hiatus from making summer popsicles and see what the granita fuss is all about.  I had a pound of strawberries in my fridge just waiting for this event.  I added more water because compared to popsicles, granita is very intensely flavoured. Too intense, in my opinion.

1 pound strawberries

3 tablespoons honey (the recipe called for sugar)

1 cup water (or more, you'll have to decide, the recipe calls for a half cup)

A few drops freshly squeezed lemon - I used lime and it was delicious

Slice strawberries and toss with honey, stirring until it starts to dissolve.  Let sit for up to an hour, stirring every so often.

Combine with liquids.  Purée in blender until smooth.  Press through a strainer to remove seeds.  This is optional, but I think it adds a nice smooth texture to your liquid. 

Pour into a dish and place in freezer.  Start checking after the first hour.  Once it begins to freeze around the edges, stir with a fork, breaking up the frozen parts and raking towards centre.  If you leave it too long, leave it out to melt a bit.  Keep stirring until it's all frozen, similar to shaved ice.

Enjoy with ice cream, whipped cream, or alone.

236 Years Later

It's my first Independence Day in America and we're going to a cook-out at our friends' tonight to celebrate.  We're having ribs.  Yum.  Remember that scene in the opening song of the Flintstones where Fred gets (dinosaur) ribs at the drive-thru and their car topples over?  Well, they won't be that big but they'll be close.  Thank you America: for knowing meat.  I'm taking Strawberry Shortcake as it feels like such a summery, picnic-type dessert.  

Unfortunately the weather has been so dry that people are being strongly advised not to use fireworks - the words fire ban have been thrown around.  The grass has turned to hay so I'm not surprised.  I hear the fireworks people are suing - I'm not exactly sure who - and only the State can make the fire ban a law, which they haven't yet. 

A Yummy Burger

Our summer dinner repertoire is in full swing and my favourite is still home made burgers.  Because we borrowed a Coleman two burner, I've been setting up our make shift patio and we grill 'em on the cast iron outside.  Our house is far less smoky which makes Jbird happy.  

Tonight I put some hot sauce in the burger patty - along with the usual of cayenne, worchestershire sauce, onion, bread crumbs, salt, pepper - and laid down four large basil leaves over it.  There's something about different flavours to bring old favourites back to life. 

Cantaloupe and mint icy pops...

...is the only way to eat cantaloupe melons if you detest them raw like I do.  Jbird prefers them raw.  

I steeped 2 sprigs of mint leaves in about half a cup of sugar water (1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of sugar).  I mixed this with a puréed mixture of just over half a cantaloupe after the sugar water had cooled.  I then froze the mixture in my icy pop moulds and voilà!  A delicious snack in my freezer.  I'm going to go and have one right now.

Remember to always taste the mixture before freezing.  It will taste the same when it's frozen so you'll be able to tell if there's something wrong with it.  And it will be easier to fix pre-frozen.

The requested recipe

I've had a couple of people ask for the lavender-blueberry popsicle recipe.  I have adapted it from lavender-huckleberry ice pops from Ice Pops by Shelly Kaldunski. 

1/3 C sugar

1 tspn unflavoured gelatin powder

1.5 tspn fresh lavender blossoms, finely chopped (pesticide free!)

*1/4 of lime's thinly peeled zest (try to avoid the pith)

1/4 C blueberries, fresh or frozen

*1/3 C (or less) freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 C + 1 C water

In a saucepan, combine sugar, gelatin, lavender, lemon zest, 1/2 C water.   Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved, boil off some water.  Add berries, continue to boil 1 or 2 minutes, lightly crushing some of the berries.  Allow to stand off the heat for 5 minutes.  Remove zest.  Add lemon juice and 1 C of water, stir to combine.  Cool to room temperature.  Pour into popsicle moulds and freeze.

*You may have to play around with the lemon/lime quantities to taste.

Lavender-huckleberry

It has been hot hot hot and Jbird and I are craving all things icy and cool.  Weirdly, I am not interested in making ice cream.  At all.  It's completely out of fashion on my to-do list.  I have made frappes and icy cocktails twice a day for more than a month so it's time to move into the weird and wonderful world of popsicles.  The Ice Pops book I got out of the library is very inspirational and today I tried lavender-huckleberry.  What's that, you say?  Lavender and huckleberry pair well?  Well, I've never heard of huckleberry but I have been dying to flavour a food item with home grown lavender ever since I bought a lavender plant at the local farmers market nearly two years ago.  As for the huckleberry, the Internet suggested blueberries as a substitution.  The recipe involved steeping lemon rind with the lavender and I improvised by adding a little unflavoured gelatin. 

Unfortunately, the dollar store popsicle mould just wasn't cutting it so we made a trip down to the local kitchen supply store with our $5 voucher and bought a high-tech mould.  Here's to popsicle moulds that hold their sticks and too many items in the plastics drawer.

Delicious Chilli and Corn Bread

My go-to I don't know what to cook meal these days is this yummy black bean and tomato chilli with fresh home-made corn bread.  Actually, is there any other kind of corn bread?  I've never bought it in a store.  

If you try the chilli recipe, you'll see why.  The addition of cumin is welcome in most savoury dish, but there's also that little added something with the raw tomatoes, raw garlic, and balsamic vinegar dressing to really make your taste buds tingle.  I sometimes mash half teaspoon of raw diced onion into an avocado and sit while everything's cooking to use as a topping later.

I use this corn bread muffin recipe, it's quicker than the chilli, so get the chilli cooking before starting the muffins.

heat oven to 450 degrees F or 230 degrees C

1/2 C flour

1/2 C corn flour

2 tspns baking powder

1/8 C sugar

1/3 tspn salt

Sieve and combine

1/2 C milk

1 egg

1/8 C oil

Add, whisk together for about a minute.  Pour into muffin tray.  Bake around 20 minutes until starting to brown.  Makes 6.  We slice them in half and toast to eat with left over chilli for about a week afterwards. Adapted from an allrecipes.com recipe.