Monthly Archives: May 2011

Review: Earthly Delights, by Kerry Greenwood

Posted on 31 May, 2011 | 12 Comments

No, my blog hasn’t been hacked, and Earthly Delights is, despite the lurid cover, relevant to a food blog.  Bear with me while I explain…

A year or two ago, when my husband had just finished reading the latest book  that I had pressed on him with all earnest entreaty that he must read it at once, he gave me an odd look and asked “Did you know that whenever you tell me a book is really, really good, it has a lot of cooking in it?”.

Oh.  Apparently, I had noticed nothing of the sort. I am an avid and eclectic reader – indeed, it’s possible that I spend more time reading than I do thinking  and talking about food.  Mostly I don’t assume that everyone needs to read the same books that I do, but there are some novels or biographies which I feel are objectively so good that I want everyone to read them.  And as it turns out, these novels and biographies tend to be full of people cooking, eating, or thinking about really good food.  So much for my powers of literary criticism…

Actually, there is an increasing trend towards people writing mystery novels, romances and even urban fantasy novels that are full of cooking (and sometimes even recipes).  The quality varies, but – I can’t help myself – I devour them all.  Well, perhaps not all.  There are a few that I’ve given up on, and one which I  threw against a wall, but generally speaking, descriptions of lavish meals or contented cookery will have me going back to these books whenever I feel tired or sad or in need of a pick-me-up.

Right now, I am very tired indeed.  This weekend was, as you may have noticed, quite a busy one, and work is not precisely relaxing either.  So instead of posting a recipe or a cookbook review today, I’m going to write about one of my favourite cosy mystery novels.  It’s set in Melbourne, and every time I read it, it makes me want to start a bakery.

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Posted in Reviews

Housekeeping

Posted on 31 May, 2011 | Leave a comment

This is very nearly the only kind of housekeeping you will ever see me do (Andrew is Officer In Charge of Washing Up).

Just a brief note to mention that this site is now registered under Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/).  In brief, this means that  you are welcome to quote or share my work, provided you attribute it to me and provide a link to this blog, but if you would like to quote a post in its entirety, please ask permission first, either by commenting here or on Twitter.   And no commercial use, please!

We will now return you to your regularly scheduled posts about food.

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Recipe: Choc-Chip Cookies for Scientists who have had a Very Bad Day

Posted on 30 May, 2011 | 6 Comments

One of my very nicest postdocs just discovered that the freezer had defrosted, taking all her experiments with it. Her partner, another particularly delightful postdoc, had a Bad Grant Day.  And one of the PhD students came into my office asking the sort of questions about my job that suggest that her write-up is not going well.  Altogether a No Good, Very Bad Science Day.

It will come as no surprise to you that my response to distressed scientists (to distressed anyone, really) is to feed them.  Besides, my lab is full of deserving scientists who could use more chocolate in their lives…

Your Shopping List

75g butter, softened
60ml canola oil (1/4 cup, if you are going metric)
100g caster sugar
110g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
100g rolled oats
150g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
180g good quality dark chocolate, chopped.  I mean it!  70% cocoa or more, please – choc chips just will not have the same effect.

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Posted in biscuits, chocolate, everyday cooking, nut-free, oats, Recipes, vegetarian

Shakespeare Feast: Cymbeline

Posted on 29 May, 2011
The chef looks a little strung out...

This gallery contains 26 photos.

I hear a picture is worth a thousand words, and by now I’m sure you all know that I am quite long winded.  So without further ado (about anything, or nothing), here’s today’s feast in its entirety… Why yes, I … Continue reading →

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More thoughts on Roman cooking

Posted on 28 May, 2011 | 4 Comments

I was going to write a beautiful, illustrated post on making curd cheese today.  Alas, O my readers, I can do nothing of the sort, because the cheese, which I have made successfully at least twice before, was a dire failure and refused to curdle at all.

So you will have to put up with my musings on the oddities of Roman flavourings.  Brief musings, I might add, because I’ve been shopping and cooking since about 11 this morning, and am rather flattened as a result.

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Posted in historical cookery, Shakespeare cooking, Writing about cooking

Ancient Roman Inferiority Complex

Posted on 27 May, 2011 | 3 Comments

This blog will probably be on the quiet side for the next couple of days.  I do, however, have the best possible reason for not writing much about food – I’m going to be far too busy cooking it.

One of my more crazy projects over the last few years has been an attempt to read through the complete dramatic works of Shakespeare.  The crazy part isn’t so much the reading, but the fact that I decided it would be more fun to read the plays I invited a bunch of friends around once a month, assigned characters, and had us all do a dramatic reading.  Even this would only have been moderately insane if I hadn’t also decided that it was absolutely necessary to have themed feasts.  The phrase ‘organisational nightmare’ comes to mind…

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Posted in Shakespeare cooking, Uncategorized, Writing about cooking

Recipe: Roman Pine-Nut, Cheese and Herb Purée

Posted on 26 May, 2011 | 7 Comments

This recipes is adapted from Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens by Mark Grant.  Somewhere, I know, I have the vegan version of this recipe, in which I substituted tofutti cream cheese for the feta, but I can’t find it now.  For what it’s worth, I believe I used a little more tofutti than I would have used of the feta, and it needed to sit overnight in the fridge, as it was fairly liquid when first made (but firmed up nicely overnight).  More recently, I’ve tried it with 150g firm tofu, and that worked very well and gave a good consistency.  With or without feta, it’s delicious – very fresh and tangy and lovely on fresh bread.

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100g pine nuts
80ml olive oil
80ml red wine vinegar
125g feta (or 150g firm tofu)
1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch of coriander
half a bunch of mint, maybe more.  The original recipe says 3 mint leaves, but I completely ignore this theory
1 sprig of thyme
1 sprig of savory (I used marjoram instead)
1 sprig of rue (I used fennel fronds or dill)
salt and pepper

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Posted in coriander, dairy-free, egg-free, feta, gluten-free, historical cookery, low fructose, low glycemic index, mint, parsley, pine nuts, sauces, toppings and frostings, side dishes, vegan, vegetarian

Review: Roman Cookery – Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens, by Mark Grant

Posted on 26 May, 2011 | 2 Comments

Let’s face it – no cookbook collection can possibly considered complete until you have good recipes for baked flamingoes, lark’s tongues, and stuffed dormice.  What modern kitchen is without such vital and everyday ingredients?

Having said that, this cookbook will not complete your cookbook collection in quite that way.  What it will do is provide you with a large number of surprisingly tasty recipes such as might have been eaten by the hoi polloi, if you’ll pardon the expression, of Ancient Rome.  (You probably should pardon the expression, as the Romans were absolutely and thoroughly fascinated by Greek culture, and were quite strongly influenced by it as a result) (Also, did you know that Julius Caesar’s last words were not ‘et tu, Brute’, but ‘Kai su, teknon’, which means ‘You too, my child?’.  I didn’t.  Shakespeare has a great deal to answer for.). Continue reading →

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Posted in Cookbooks, Reviews, Uncategorized

Recipe: Red Cabbage, German style

Posted on 25 May, 2011 | 5 Comments

This recipe comes from Dr Oetker’s German Cooking Today, with a few little tweaks by me.  I don’t know how to describe it, because to me it’s the thing you do with red cabbage.  (Apparently, there is no other thing you do with red cabbage) It’s sweet, very tangy from the vinegar, and goes really well with rich things like veal sausages or duck or, of course, frankfurters.  To me, it feels almost like a pickle or a chutney – it has that sort of condimenty nature. 

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800g red cabbage (one small red cabbage)
3 nice apples – I would use eating apples like sundowners or maybe pink lady or jonathon)
2 onions
50g butter
2 bay leaves
5 cloves
salt
pepper
2 tsp brown sugar
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
3 tbsp redcurrant jelly
125ml water

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Posted in vegetarian, gluten-free, nut-free, side dishes, low glycemic index, egg-free, cooking with vegetables, red cabbage, apple

What’s for dinner?

Posted on 25 May, 2011 | Leave a comment

What do you cook on those nights when you really don’t feel like cooking?  For me, nine times out of ten it’s pasta.  Generally baked with something, though my old friend, pasta bolognese, the first dish I ever cooked by myself, also gets a fair bit of airtime. But more often it’s tuna casserole – a concoction of pasta, bechamel sauce, vegetables, and, usually, tuna.  (Sometimes the vegetables manage to outnumber everything else so much that there’s no room for the tuna, and it goes back into the cupboard, waiting for another opportunity).  If I have people coming around, I’ll grab some instant pasta sheets from the refrigerator section, and layer my vegetables and bechamel with that and a sauce made from garlic and a tin or two of tomatoes, with a few herbs thrown in.  It’s the same meal, but when you call it lasagne and serve it with bread and a salad it becomes glamorous enough for guests…

The trouble is, of course, that I did this on Monday night, and there’s a limit to how many pasta bakes one can eat in a single week.  Especially as we’re still eating our way through the lasagne leftovers.  So tonight, I’m returning to that other old faithful – sausages.  In summer, it’s sausages with bread and sautéed onions and capsicums (with fruit salad for dessert, because I feel guilty about the lack of vegetable content).  In autumn, the sausages often get thrown into a casserole with onions, celery, and grapes, and get served with a baked sweet potato.  In winter, they might become part of my Cheat’s Cassoulet, casseroled with beans, tomatoes, carrots, celery and onions, and baked for hours with breadcrumbs on top (and you can blame Diana Henry’s Cook Simple for those last two combinations).

But today is a grey, cold day, and I have red cabbage in the fridge and jerusalem artichokes and potatoes in the pantry and organic veal, pumpkin and apricot sausages from the farmer’s market.  Just contemplating these ingredients makes me feel very Eastern European, which means it’s time to relive a dish from my childhood… though not one I actually ever liked as a child.

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Posted in everyday cooking, food memories, Writing about cooking