Good things in Autumn 1

It is definitely starting to get cooler here. The days are gradually getting shorter and the sky is often grey. There is still the odd sunny day (of the beautiful, not-too-hot autumnal kind) but the leaves are turning brown and covering the front lawn and nature's wheel is beginning to turn.

This of course means that the time has come for some cold weather treats to come back into the schedule because, let's face it, steaming-hot milky porridge topped with honey or strawberry jam just doesn't make sense in summer!

Posh Nosh

Do you like restaurants? I have been to some wonderful ones, but I am always a little bit skeptical of them when they have received 'rave reviews' in the newspapers. I like to decide whether it's a good restaurant for myself. Silly, I know. Having written a few book reviews over the years though, I do feel that reviews are such subjective things. Last night, we went - on the the suggestion of the others in our party - to one of the restaurants that is currently very popular. Nothing fundamentally wrong with the food but such small portions for the cost. Perhaps nouvelle cuisine is another 80s fad that's made a comeback! And paying extra for any sort of accompaniment (and I do mean any sort - not even so much as a lettuce leaf)? Ouch! A little mean spiritedness there in my opinion. But perhaps there's something about such dining experiences that I just don't get. It wouldn't be the first time! I'd love to know what you think - and do feel free to tell me if think I'm being an old curmudgeon!!

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What did tickle my taste buds was the dish I made from Smorgasbord & Scandinavian Cooking by Ingrid Svenson (1974) on Saturday night. I had a go at 'Pork with Apples or Pears', replacing the pork with chicken and opting for apples and pears. I fried up some sliced chicken fillets, golden delicious apples and packham pears, set the lot cooking and then added sultanas. I used olive oil and butter to cook it all in - I thought butter might help it poach a little more. I have always been a little undecided about meat/fruit combos but I think the trick is to let the fruit cook thoroughly and get lovely and soft - rather than being reminded of crunching into an apple while also having a mouthful of chicken! The end result - served with boiled potatoes - went down very well, with my sweet husband even going up for seconds. This afternoon, if I get time, I think I will give Cheesecake Slice from the same book a go.

What was on your table this weekend?

PS Have you seen Posh Nosh, the wonderful cooking show satire with Richard E Grant? -

Monday musings

Has anyone noticed that Blogger is being a bit difficult at the moment? Or is it me? I have tried to write this post about five times over the course of the day. I wanted to post a clip of Sandie Shaw singing the Smiths song "Jeane" because I am listening to it non-stop at the moment and it just will not post. Ah well. Check it out for yourself on You Tube if you like :)

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Made some delicious Irish soda bread on the weekend which was so easy. I never thought of myself as a bread making person. I always thought it was super tricky. But...soda bread has no yeast. This is the secret. Yeast is scary - you have to warm it and watch and do all sorts of things that I generally can't be bothered doing. And my lovely husband made pumpkin pie from one of the many pumpkins he's grown in the garden. Good baking weekend. How about you?

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Does anyone know what to do with rosehips? I have lots of them on my old rose bush in the front yard and it has recently dawned on me that you can eat (or drink) rosehips. But how...?

The Barbara Pym Cookbook

Now, regular readers of this blog will be aware of my long-standing obsession with the English writer, Barbara Pym. Imagine my delight this morning then to receive in the post The Barbara Pym Cookbook. I have only had a brief look through it so far but already I think I will certainly give Chicken with Tarragon, Beef Casserole with Lentils, Oeufs Florentine, Curried Fish Cakes and Sausage Rolls a go. All well-known recipes of course, but I am always especially on the look-out for new sausage roll recipes! And I love what I would call 'traditional' recipes. Good, 'straightforward' food. Hmmm. I think I'm channelling my grandmother here!

There's also Fairy Cakes, Victoria Sponge, Trifle and Railway Pudding (what could that be?) They are all included here because of references to them in either her books or diaries. I'll keep you posted on the results. And I love Barbara's quote in here from her diaries on the extraordinary things people say:

I never read novels

I never watch television

I never eat jam

I never have tea

Oh Barbara, I do love you :)

Are you a fan of the 'tried-and-true' recipe or do you like trying something new?

Comfort Food

The Ukranian Goulash from the Kripalu Cookbook was oh so good. It restored my faith in my ability to make savoury food (I normally think of myself as the cake-maker of the household).

2 cups carrots

3 cups potatoes

1/8 cup butter

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbs parsley

1/2 tsp tarragon

1/4 tsp basil

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 cup flour

1 cup tomato paste

2 cups water

Steam potatoes and carrots until soft. Melt butter in frying pan. Add spices. Add flour, tomato paste and water to make smooth paste. Add potatoes and carrots. Stir together until hot. Serve.

Now, I was less exact on my measurements and I didn't have tarragon or basil and it was still good. Imagine how lovely it would be if you followed the recipe to the letter :)

Kitchening

I am growing a few herbs in the garden at the moment - dill, oregano, thyme, sage - but I am never quite sure what to do with them beyond dropping a few leaves in with pasta sauce. A number of my favourite bloggers seem to do wonderful things with herbs. I'd love to hear some of your favourite recipes!

Also has anyone else got the Kripalu Kitchen cookbook? I found a copy in the op-shop and it looks great - I am trying the Ukranian Goulash from it tonight. What have you got planned for dinner tonight?

Roasted Squirrel?

Some of the famous Mrs Beeton's desserts.

Still hooked on all things Victorian as I make my way through George Eliot's Middlemarch and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Once again though, having last night watched The Supersizers Go Victorian, I am very glad I didn't actually have to live in this era. I am astounded that people who lived - at the latter end of the era - only 109 years ago ate as differently from what we do today.

The programme focussed mainly on a fairly affluent diet but still! Enormous pies made of eight different meats. Roasted squirrel. Calves' heads (with calves' ear fritters). Roasted snipe (a snipe is a bird. The trick was to suck the brains out of its head with your mouth, eat the brains and then pick your teeth with its beak). Enormous wobbling jellies and blancmanges. It would seem that the extent to which human behaviour was repressed in the Victorian era found a way of bursting out in extravagant food. The poor, on the other hand, were served a soup composed mainly of water and flour. No wonder there were not long life expectancies!

Winter grazing

We had a lovely weekend of happy winter grazing. On Saturday, I made Apple Bran muffins (recipe here: http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/739/apple-bran-muffins.aspx) and we had a comfortingly warming beef casserole for dinner. Yesterday, we breakfasted on pancakes with cranberry and blueberry jam (my DH is the master creator of pancakes) and then lunched out at a Malaysian restaurant on Nasi Lemak and Curry Laksa. Mmmmmm. In classic cold weather style, we do seem to be packing on our winter coats of warm chub and eating ourselves silly. Or perhaps we are simply responding to the call of our ancestors and keeping internally warm during the winter months. At least I have cut back on sugar... What did you snack on this weekend?

Food nostalgia

I am currently researching food in the 1960s, particularly in America, for a book that is being put together about Mad Men. I have been trawling the Internet for favoured recipes of the decade and what food was regarded as new and exotic. There are really some brilliantly informative sites out there if you want to go looking. Retro Food Recipes at www.retrofoodrecipes.com/ was especially good with such memory jogging favourites as avocados with prawns, prawn cocktail, brandy snaps, caramelised oranges, chicken kiev, chicken maryland, chicken & mushroom vol au vents, creme brulee and lemon souffle. Although I wasn't born in the 60s (just missed it), my parents were still serving these dishes at their dinner parties into the 70s. How I hated avocados! "You'll like them when you're a grown-up", my mother would tell me (she was right). Chicken & mushroom vol au vents were more in my line and my mother would make them with salmon too. And I still have the dish that my grandma always made her famed creme brulee in. It's not that any of this food was particularly brilliant - though it's hard to tell when viewed through the tastebuds of a five year-old - rather it's food nostalgia. Avocado with prawns takes me back to our kitchen circa 1976, watching my mother in her long, green 70s evening dress, putting the final touches to each dish before the guests arrived. The creme brulee transports me to all of us sitting around my grandparents' kitchen table circa 1978 at our weekly Sunday lunch. Of course, we realise now that a lot of the food of this era was often full of chemicals (think 'Tang'!) and cooked almost exclusively in butter (or dripping - ewww!). So we mostly eat differently now. But one bite of any of those dishes is like a trip in a time machine. It's not the food itself, but the memory.

What foods do you remember?

Salad Days

We're getting closer to summer in this part of the world and so my thoughts are turning to salads. Several months ago I read about the New York Times list of 101 salads and a number of the American blogs I was reading at that time enthused about the list: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/dining/22mlist.html This was in the middle of winter here, when all I wanted to do was set myself up on the couch with a doona, a bowl of mashed potato and a side order of hot chocolate. Salads?, I thought, what be they? But now... so, on the weekend we tried salad number 1 and salad number 13.

Number 1:

Watermelon

Tomatoes

Basil leaves

Bacon

Feta

French dressing

Number 13:

Tomatoes

Strawberries

Basil leaves

Shaved Parmesan

Balsamic vinegar

Number 1 disappeared before the camera could be brought out. I took a shot of Number 13 (above) which is not a great photo as you can see but if food could appear in an action shot, this would be it. The slightly shimmery, 'in motion' effect of it suggests (I think at least - my Fellow Traveller suggests it's simply blurry) the fact that my FT was hovering next to it, waiting to spoon some onto his plate.