Shimmy Shimmy Coconut

Cherry and nectarine tartlettes

Mel — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:18:26 +0000

Ok, well, it is technically the early end of the nectarine season but I’m such lover of all things summer that I start as early as possible. It may have its origins in my obsession with the movie Grease at the age of 3 where I’d frequently be dancing around to Summer lovin’. Or it may just be the comparatively cold winters in my Canberra days that make me savour summer when it is here. Whatever the reasons, I’m a big fan of summer fruit and devour it as soon as its available, even if it is not yet the sweetest of offerings.

Although this was really tasty, it needs optimisation, particularly the base which just wasn’t sweet enough or thin enough to really be considered great. Either way, summer is almost upon us and I’ll have plenty of opportunity to get this right!

Shallot cake redux

Mel — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:38:22 +0000

Since leaving Canberra, I have only a few things I truly miss, food-wise. The beloved shallot cake is close to the top of the list.

I’ve mentioned them before when I was trying to replicate them at home. Well, starting this blog again made me get the urge to try and perfect them. I found the recipe I used the first few times from here and have to say that it is on its own close to perfect. That said, the required amount of shallots is definitely too low (the recipe calls for 7-8 spring onions, I’ve altered the recipe by cooking the chopped green parts of the spring onions in a little soy sauce with some garlic so would recommend doubling the amount of spring onions to ~16). The dough also needs a little something extra that I can’t quite figure out yet…but it’s close to the best we’ve had at Dumpling Inn over the years.

These were deep fried, but they are pretty tasty oven baked (with a little vegetable oil brushed over the tops). I also added a dipping sauce (2 parts soy sauce, 1 part mirin, 1 part sweet chilli sauce, a pinch of hot chilli powder), which is actually pretty amazing to dip these into.

Nostalgia

Mel — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:31:15 +0000

We had a local village fair yesterday in our suburb. Walking along the street lined with all sorts of stalls and seeing kids with their faces painted, eating snow cones got me a little nostalgic for the times I went to that very same fair as a child. I guess that sense of nostalgia is a product of moving back to the area I grew up in as I was also recently speaking to my brother about our childhood food ‘adventures’. They were definitely few and far between, as my mother was the only cook in our house and she was quite traditional (i.e. meat and three veg) when we were kids, although she is pretty adventurous these days. But when we did manage to exhaust our parents with our pestering to eat out, it was typically Chinese food we’d eat. I still love Chinese food today, although I’ve only really been completely satisfied with one Canberran restaurant. Nonetheless, after speaking to my brother about this and getting a similar response from him, I’d have to say I occasionally really miss my childhood Chinese restaurant favourite of Wonton soup.

Those chewy wontons, the salty soup, the little bits of shallots floating without purpose…mmm. This is seriously happy family dining memories right there in a bowl. I sipped at this while minding my nephew and wondered what will be the foods he’ll reminisce about in 20 years time. The way he scoffs down cupcakes, I’d say they at least will be on the list.

Wonton soup

Makes 2 serves

Ingredients

Wonton wrappers

Chicken-like stock (I used Massels liquid stock, salt-reduced)

~150g extra firm tofu, dried and crumbled

~4 grated medium-sized button mushrooms

3 stalks of shallots, cut into 1-2 cm lengths

Soy sauce, hot sauce of choice, minced garlic, (or really whatever flavourings you really like) to taste

Fry the tofu in a fry pan until just golden brown. Add the mushrooms and 3/4 of the shallots and sweat for around 5 mins. Add the seasonings of choice and cook for another few minutes. Set aside to cool.

Wonton wrapping is an art, or so I’ve been told after making a bit of mess with my wontons. Essentially, don’t do what I did, which is kind of twist and pinch the wonton sides together until they stuck. It wasn’t pretty. But google definitely came up with a myriad of suggestions of how to fold wontons for those willing to try!

After I bumbled my way through the wonton wrapping, I dumped them into the chicken-like stock with the remaining shallots. The wontons took around 5 mintues to cook through.

Serve hot and think of the happy family dinners you had with family members who thought it was funny to put pepper on your seat when you went to the bathroom and dipped their spring rolls in their coke…

Coconut and kaffir lime leaf panna cotta tart

Mel — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:35:55 +0000

My friend is a panna cotta queen. I think it got to the point where she was going through uber pricey vanilla paste insanely quickly because of the multitude of requests she would get from people to make vanilla bean panna cotta. Of course, the classic recipes for this dessert are not vegan. Not even vegetarian, in fact, unless you’ve got some amazing cook willing to use agar-agar or the like.

So when I stumbled onto a recipe for soy milk panna cotta from ‘Great chefs cook vegan’ I added it to the list to try as I really hate missing out on food-related fun. I must say, it is a seriously easy recipe to follow, although my first attempt was too stiffly set by the agar-agar. Chefs (usually male, I admit) on cooking shows always seem to mention they need to wobble like natural boobs. My first attempt was more akin to a boob job kind of wobble. I have long wanted to tart-up the panna cotta, but when I made these little cuties I’d forgotten to reduce the amount of agar-agar so these were definitely still too stiff, but tasted really fresh and summery, which is so perfect as we head toward the lovely hot weather.

I’ll post a recipe once its tweaked a little more!

Currently obsessed with…

Mel — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:11:46 +0000

All things Darren Hanlon! Lucky he’s coming to Sydney soon.

(Language warning on the following clip)

Focaccia is like crack to some people…apparently

Mel — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 05:24:22 +0000

Those people appear to be certain family members who shall remain nameless (that is, until the end of this post). We had a family gathering on Sunday which seemed a perfect time to make this glorious Olive, garlic and rosemary focaccia:

Precooked:

Fresh out of the oven:

It always surprises me how fast my tiny mother can devour most of the 500g of bread, although she blames the cats for its mysterious disappearance. What do you think? Is this the face of a bread-stealing menace:

Pancake weather

Mel — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 02:29:18 +0000

The weather has been seriously strange of late, or perhaps my expectations of spring in Sydney is full of fantasies about wearing 1950s-style dresses and skipping through parks filled with Jacarandas, all the while eating delicious (vegan) ice cream. As we edge closer to summer, the weather has remained more like winter, which means ice cream has stayed put in the freezer and stodgy foods continue to frequent the table. This morning I woke up with a serious desire for pancakes, which is not something that happens very often. My go-to recipe when the cravings do hit has to be the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. I’d recommend giving this recipe a go a few times if it doesn’t work out the first time, as I had disastrous results my first go and am glad to have resisted blaming the recipe as these pancakes now consistently come out fluffy, light and not sickly sweet (until you add the syrup or sugar post-cooking, that is). My only additional tip would be to rest the batter for a while in the fridge before cooking them – I rest them up to overnight, although think an hour or so does the trick if you’re able to last that long.

This batch made 7 generous-sized pancakes. Perfect for sharing with the freeloaders who seem to appear out of nowhere while you’re cooking. Here are the four ways we ate them:

Just plain with a little of the most delicious jam (a future ode/blog post will be dedicated to this stuff, no doubt!):

Topped with organic maple syrup and nuttelex:

The classic sugar and lemon juice combo:

And, my favourite of golden syrup and banana, probably due to bananas remaining too pricey to consume on a daily basis in Australia right now:

Make some! You know you want to!

Well…its been a little while

Mel — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:34:47 +0000

Hi there, I can’t believe how long its been! So many months since my last post, years actually…but here we are. After a few months of thinking about it, I’ve decided to come back to the land of blogging and start up this poor partially defunct blog again. It’ll be a little different – not just food but hopefully still interesting nonetheless.

First up…

Brownies

Brownies – something no doubt close to the hearts of many people out there; however, my own childhood and indeed early adulthood were completely devoid of all the fudgy chocolatey goodness that is the brownie. Call it the influence of many an American food blog with mad photographic skillz or simply my own desire to have some go-to non-cupcake baking recipes to use in a pinch that is popular with kids and adults, either way I’ve been on a brownie hunt of late and have to agree with an old blog post over at Bread and Honey about these being the best. That said, I’m rather shamefully not a chocolate fan myself so ‘ best to give it a go yourself! My more-chocolate savvy family seems to hate me for making these as often as I do as they all eat way too much way too quickly (although if you keep these babies in the fridge they maintain their goodness for over a week I’ve found or you could always revive stale brownies using this method).

What’s great about this recipe is that it can be tweaked and altered to suit your every brownie need. Like nuts? Go for it. Like cherries? That works well too (I highly recommend this variation to cut through the rich chocolate taste). Below is my most used version but seriously give the original a go too as its great without the variations!

Tweaked best vegan brownies recipe

Sourced from the Bread and Honey blog

Ingredients:

1/2 cup plain flour

1 and 1/2 cup white spelt flour (or more plain flour if you like)
½ cup almond meal
1 and 1/4 cup water (or strong freshly brewed coffee)
1 and 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup raw/brown caster sugar

1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla paste (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup 70% chocolate, chopped finely
1/2 cup chopped nuts or cherries (optional)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease an 11” by 17” rectangular pan.

Boil water and the plain flour in a saucepan over low heat and stir vigorously until it becomes a glue-like paste. Set aside to cool for around 5-10 minutes.

Mix the sugars, salt, vanilla paste/extract, cocoa and canola oil until the sugars have dissolved. Add the flour-water mixture and combine. Add the remaining flour, almond meal and baking powder and mix until just combined, then add the chocolate/nuts/cherries/etc.

Spread the batter into the pre-greased baking pan and bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on the depth of the pan – the deeper, the longer the cooking time). For those similar to myself who were deprived of brownies in childhood, virtually every source seems to suggest that a brownie is better slightly under-cooked than slightly over-cooked. If your skewer comes out with a little bit of batter on it, it is probably close to being done. Just wait to gobble it up until it cools down because it really does taste so much better when it’s completely cooled. Also, best not to attempt to flip it out of the baking pan to help with the cooling process…a minor (but still delicious) ugly mess of brownie ensues!

mmm....brownies

Am I making you hungry???

Mel — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:15:27 +0000

I couldn’t resist posting another creme brulee picture. This time its wattleseed creme brulee (while I’m on a wattleseed frenzy):

Still trying to perfect the texture…I have a couple of ideas so hopefully more to come on this.

Wattleseed and blueberry friands

Mel — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:05:58 +0000

Wattleseeds are my iron chefesque ingredient of late. I’m constantly thinking about ways to incorporate it into my breakfast, lunche, dinner and baking. I fully intend to make an extensive blog post about these lovely seeds, but for now my work hours are getting crazy and I don’t usually feel motivated between the hours of 1am and 6am to cook anything beyond pasta or rice. So that will come later…possibly quite far into the future!

Anyway, wattleseeds are, in my opinion, an under-utilised ingredient in Australian kitchens. They have a taste that is a hybrid of hazelnut, coffee and chocolate with a slight liquor after taste. In ground form (the form that I purchased from my health food store and is from the Vic Cherikoff range of aussie ingredients) is probably the easiest form to include in cooking. In the friands* below I included 1/8 C of ground wattleseeds to an adapted VCTOTW vanilla cupcake recipe, used homemade vanilla extract and also used 1tsp of homemade wattleseed extract that has been curing away in the depths of my pantry for three months**. As a finishing touch, after pouring the batter into my pretty friand tin, I added ~1tsp blueberry conserve to the centre of the batter.

You can just see the jumper of my friend from work as she was impatiently waiting for me to take a picture so she could eat one. She and the rest of my lab seemed to really like them, but I’m thinking they need a bit of work, especially as they didn’t contain nut meal of any kind* and really are just muffins in friand- shaped moulds. One of my work friends suggested using hazelnut meal, which I think would be a perfect way of complementing the wattleseeds.

*Friands, or financiers as they are known in France, are usually golden buttery tea cakes. They’re a popular type of morning tea here in Australia.

** I recently made several extracts (lavender, vanilla, hazelnut, wattleseed and coffee) using a handful of the product I wanted to extract flavour from, 2 cups of vodka, a glass jar and 1 TBSP of agave nectar. They take two months to cure and need to be kept in a dark place and shaken for a couple of seconds every day. The two month wait certainly pays off, as the extracts tend to be stronger than store bought and significantly cheaper per mL