Beyond My Control

Never Doubt Stephanie

(or Jonathan's).

In recent times (ok, since I've had a car) I've become the type of person who zips all over town on a weekend morning picking up ingredients from a variety of different places.

I am very fortunate that O'Heas Bakery and Deli, the source of fabulous bread and host to a giant cheese cabinet and a large variety of pasta (and that's before you even get to the cakes, which, again fortunately, aren't my thing) is 3 minutes walk from my house. I always have fresh crusty bread and bitey cheese on hand.

And then I flit around, sometimes to the Victoria Market, but frequently to LaMannas for fruit and veg and flowers, and Meditteranean Wholesalers for so many things. To Victoria Street for the Asian supermarket and spices and herbs, and kitchenware. Other places for fish and meat and beans and more cheese.

I really quite enjoy spending a Saturday morning gathering up provisions from a variety of places.

This morning, my eyes more on furniture at Angelluci - I'm looking for a lamp and a rug and a table for the entry hall - I took the opportunity to drop into Jonathan's and pick up some sausages and a lamb noisette (with basil and garlic), i.e. lamb roast for one (with left overs).

To remind myself of the cooking time I consulted Stephanie, as any wise person would do. Her Cook's Companion is really an essential in any kitchen.

Nevertheless, I was a little sceptical. Lamb loin, 500gm, 10 minutes at 220 degrees, plus 15 minutes rest, to produce a nice pink roast? That seems very short. Short enough that I could do it after work on a weeknight.

I had faith, however, and went with it.

My faith was rewarded.

Fabulous, simple, non-time-consuming roast. Pink, but cooked, cripsy on the outside, and so, so tender.

Served with fresh peas, and mushrooms tossed in a pan with a little olive oil and garlic and thyme and the pan juices from the lamb.

Simple, easy, yum.

 

 

 

 

Random #220

Confession:

When at home alone (i.e. frequently) I:

(a)    usually cut up my spaghetti (& fettucini & linguine) with a knife before eating it to make it easier to pick up with the fork; and

(b)    often hold my wine glass by the 'bowl' of the glass instead of the stem smothing it in warmth and grubby finger marks.

Yes, at home I fail the sophistication and foodie tests repeatedly.

My napoli sauce with chilli does rock though.

 

The Music of Failure

This was going to be a great, fabulous looking food post about how I cooked a fantastic roast chicken on my new barbeque.

I took preparatory photos of preparing the stuffing - lemons, garlic, onion, herbs - and of the BBQ. All that was left was the photo of the lovely crispy on the outside, moist on the inside chicken.

Ha!

I pulled the bird out of the BBQ too early, realized too late it wasn't cooked enough, then overdid it in finishing it off in the oven. I managed to salvage enough for a passable dinner, but there was certainly nothing worth capturing for posterity. Or even leftovers.

So, instead, the following is my playlist of 2010 - which I've been meaning to post before we get too far into 2011:

The Opener - The Courteeners

Trouble Comes Running - Spoon

The Ghost Inside - Broken Bells

Drunk Girls - LCD Soundsystem

Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbit

Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National

In Sleep - Lissie

Hustle & Cuss - The Dead Weather

Dilly - Band of Horses

Let's Get Lost - Beck & Bat for Lashes

Rocket - Goldfrapp

Crash Years - The New Pornographers

Hollywood - Marina & the Diamonds

Next Girl - The Black Keys

Scissor Runner - Jenny & Johnny

MoneyGrabber - Fitz & the Tantrums

Do-Wah-Do - Kate Nash

Barricade - Interpol

The Ghost Who Walks - Karen Elson

Come Undone - Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan

Fade Like A Shadow - KT Tunstall

Sunday Best - Washington

Coquet Coquette - Of Montreal

The Bike Song - Mark Ronson & the Business International

The Hair Song - Black Mountain

Sing Me To Sleep - Fran Healy (with Neko Case)

I bought a lot of music last year, and listened to a lot more, and I'm looking forward to keeping that up and hopefully seeing more live music in 2011.

My favorite albums of last year were definitely The Black Keys "Brothers" and Band of Horses "Infinite Arms", both of which are still on high rotation in my car.

See, that was a good way to forget about my failure as a cook, wasn't it?

I have been eating. And there's been some drinking.

Never fear, I have been eating recently.

I've also been working too much and traveling a bit and house hunting and generally, without intention, not blogging about food or anything else. 

I have also been cooking, and photographing the cooking, and mentally composing the posts, and yet not quite getting to the actual posts.  Balancing that out, however, I have also been racing around and eating crap and drinking too much and getting fatter.  Gah.

Today's non-diary eating list is an example of how things have been working recently:

1.    My morning diet consisted of three cups of tea (black, one sugar), 600ml of water and 1/2 a chocolate wombat.  Granted, usually there's no chocolate wombat involved (at least it didn't attack me and put me in hospital), but otherwise, there's nothing unusual about that on a weekday.

2.    At about 12.30 I ducked across the street and picked up a couple of sushi rolls and a miso soup.  This is not usual either, though, frankly, I wish I did it more often.  The eating of this meal was entirely symptomatic of recent weeks, however.  Because often I instead walk down the street and pick up the Best Chicken Schnitzel Sandwich in the World (post to come).  Three sips of the soup and two bites of the first roll in the phone rang.  Someone who I knew was in meetings most of the day so there was a very narrow window for conversation.  So much so that during our 15 minute phone call he ate a sandwich and I finished the soup.  Once I got off the phone I finished the first roll, and between the slow eating and the chocolate wombat I wasn't hungry any more.  I set the other roll aside.

3.    About 4.30, having only consumed another 600ml of water since 2 above, I was hungry and sleepy.  I acquired a can of Diet Coke (I'm cutting back again) and took two bites into the 2nd sushi roll when the phone rang again.  An international call I'd been waiting for.  I finished the roll about 5pm.

4.    Arrived home between 7 and 7.30 and crashed on couch with a glass of wine, wholly ignoring the fact that last night's somewhat excessive wine consumption has resulted in no ill effects whatsoever (something I regard as simultaneously great and horrible).

5.    8pm, an old, not that hungry because I ate part of lunch at 5pm, standby.  Omelette with mushrooms and spring onions - thin sliced mushrooms, chopped spring onions, 3 eggs, a little grated parmesan, pepper and salt.  Done.

6.    Wine.

7.    No photos, though it looked pretty.

Regular posting to recommence now.  With catch-up posts re stuff cooked an eaten previously.

Over the Top(ping)

While my pizza cooks, let's talk about pizza toppings.

I have very firm views about what does and does not belong on top of a pizza.  I suspect most people do, and that those views vary as much as the endless list of possible toppings.

I can cope with change and variation quite well, and sometimes I do crave different things, but the following ingredients, for me, have no place on a pizza, ever:

1.    Egg. Go away so-called "Aussie" pizza. This has never ever appealed to me, and as a child my pizza order was usually "anything but the Aussie".

2.    Avocado. This is partly because I don't actually like avocado unless it's loaded down with garlic, chili and lemon or lime juice in a powerful guacamole, and partly because of 3 below.

3.    Rocket, salad leaves, anything that can't actually be cooked in the oven with the pizza.  Just seems wrong to me. 

Then there are things that as a preference I won't order, but I can see, sort of why other people might.  Anything "meat lovers".  Chicken. Pumpkin.  Seafood, mainly because I think that's much, much better treated with more care than being banged in the oven at high temps.  That said the pub around the corner from one of my offices does a really good, simple, chili prawn pizza.

And I don't like olives, so I prefer my pizzas without them, but I'm not such a spoil sport that I'm incapable of picking them off.

On the flip-side, there are some things that I am perfectly happy to put on a pizza that horrify others.  Especially:

1.    Pineapple.

2.    Anchovies.

Not, I must add, together.  That does not work.

My favourite pizza toppings?  Pepperoni/salami (actually, not that I think about it, the only meat (or meat-like substance) I really like on pizza).  Mushrooms.  Capsicum.  Tomatoes (in addition to the tomato sauce/base). Onion.

And, of course, cheese. 

I don't like a pizza drowned in mozzarella.  Just a bit to hold it all together.  Some parmesan.  Maybe some goats cheese.

Definitely cheese though.

So what can't you abide on a pizza?  What do you love?

Breakfast for Dinner

I'm quite the fan of Breakfast for Dinner.

Perhaps it's because as a general rule I only eat breakfast on the weekends, so I sometimes need to get my fix at other times of the day.  (And yes, I know, I know, most important meal of the day, but I have tried all sorts of weekday breakfast options and it just never works for me.  I have long ago come to terms with this and developed a fondness for lunch right on the strike of noon.)

Another reason for Breakfast for Dinner is simplicity.  Sometimes I just cannot be bothered cooking a full-on meal when I get home, or get home at an hour when I need something fast.

This may lead to happily resorting to the old favourite of Vegemite on toast.  But that's usually only when I'm not really hungry but just need a little something to take the edge off.

More frequently Breakfast for Dinner is an omelette.  Often filled with the bits and pieces that are about to die in the fridge or fruit bowl.  Tomatoes, mushrooms, capsicum etc.  Fast, easy, tasty.

Less often it's scrambled eggs.  This is because I don't keep milk in the house.  I don't drink it in tea, I don't eat cereal and when I did I was never, ever a fan of the sloppy, milky variety, I don't drink coffee at home, and my sinuses dislike it.  So I actually have to plan when coffee or milky tea drinkers are coming over.  Often I have to buy the coffee too. 

This past weekend my Mum stayed over and so I planned ahead stopped by the supermarket after picking her up and bought some milk for her tea.  Which meant that come Monday I still had most of a small carton of full cream milk sitting in the fridge.  Which for me means only one thing: scrambled eggs.

I'm not sure there's any right or wrong way to make scrambled eggs.  I pretty much taught myself/came up with a way of doing eggs as I like them. 

I just take two or three eggs, depending on the size, whisk them in a bowl with a fork, and then mix in a generous splash of milk, some grated parmesan and pepper and salt.  I then push the mix around in a pre-heated lightly buttered pan with a spatular until it comes together in a nice, but not to runny or dry, pile of lovely scrambled eggs.  Takes about three minutes.

Served on light rye toast, with a side of sauteed mushrooms and spring onions (with the tiniest hint of garlic):

The perfect dinner for an oh my, I am so tired, weekday evening.

Made-up Lamb Meatballs

Over time I have found a few good recipes involving lamb meatballs.  I have even made them actually following the recipe.  Which, as you would know by now, I'm not generally inclined to do.

I bought some lamb mince a few days back with the aim of making one of those recipes during the week.  Except that in wandering around the supermarket I had clearly mixed up the recipes in my head, because when I came home to make it this evening I discovered that the things I had bought were part from one recipe and part from another.

So I did what I always do and made stuff up taking what I had to hand and a few elements of those recipes.

I figured the outcome would be either bland or spectacular.  I'm pleased to report they turned out really well and thus I am posting this recipe in order to remember it myself.

Made-up Lamb Meatballs

Mix the following in a bowl:

500 grams of minced lamb

1 small onion, grated (Best meatball trick I learned from one such recipe: grate the onion.  No more onion chunks, great onion flavour, and the meatballs hold together much better (a perennial problem for me with any type of meat patty))

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 red chili, de-seeded and chopped

a handfull of mint, chopped

2-3 generous splashes of Worchestershire sauce

pepper & salt

1 egg (free range, of course)

breadcrumbs, enough so the mixture is still moist, but no runny egg left  (now, let's be honest: it's a weeknight, and a made-up as I go along recipe, so these are packet breadcrumbs.  And, you know what?  Who cares. Tastes good.)  

Mix it all up with your hands.  Leave it to sit for a while - perhaps because you are ducking out of the kitchen to watch something on TV for a while with a glass of wine - and then make them into medium sized meatballs.  Perhaps let them sit around a while longer while going back to the TV.

Heat some olive oil in a pan over a high heat, and then place the meatballs in.  Leave them to form a crust on the bottom.  Seriously, don't touch them.  Don't play with them.  Go into the other room and watch some more TV and have some more wine.  (Can you tell this is a patty-cooking lesson hard-learned by me?).  Then turn them over and do the same on the other side.  Do not over-coook them. They should be nicely brown and bit crusty on the top and bottom but still moist and generally squishy.  Take them out and put them on some paper towel on a plate.

In the same pan, with the heat turned right down, put in a couple of small tins of chopped tomatoes.

Here I will divert for a moment and confess that I put in one small tin of chopped tomatoes and one jar of small tomatoes with a hint of basil which I bought from Mediterranean Wholesalers.  The second one on this list.  They are good.  Very good.

Leave the tomatoes to cook in the pan on a low heat with a bit of pepper & salt and a splash of balsamic (the latter: because it was there), and, of course, the leftovers from the meatballs in the pan.  I guess I left the tomatoes go for 15-20 minutes.  Can't tell you exactly how long because I was looking at photos from Fashion Week and posting over here.

I also added 1/4 of a green capsicum because it was there and about to die, but I think that's totally unnecessary.

Then add the meatballs back in and mix them around a bit in the sauce.  This amount of sauce won't cover them completely, but coat them a bit.  Leave it cook a while longer.   Towards the end if the sauce is a bit watery, add a tablespoon or 2 of tomato paste.

Serve with rice, or pasta, or salad, or whatever.

Uli's Rice Theory

I have a theory about cooking rice. 

My theory is that for every person there is only one true rice cooking method.  Only one way an individual can cook rice well.

I'm not talking about risotto or paella, I'm talking about plain old white long grain or basmati, steamed or boiled or whatever.  Regular old rice.

I have had this theory for many years, but it's been confirmed over the last year or so since I obtained a rice cooker.

My rice cooker really does rock.  It's large and shiny and non-stick and I just plug it in and turn it on and away it goes.  Set and forget.  So, so easy.

But it turns out I really, really prefer rice cooked in a pot the way I always used to do it before I got a rice cooker.

So much so that, while I'm planning on trying other things in the rice cooker, 8 times out of 10 I go back to cooking rice in a saucepan these days.

If I do say so myself, the rice I cook in a saucepan is really good.  Light, fluffy, and actually easy.  Boil the water, put the basmati rice in (unwashed), stir once, wait til boiling again, stir again and turn down just a tad so the water is between boiling and simmering, cook for 12 minutes, pour into a colander and rinse under hot water.  Drain. Serve.

It's, unsurprisingly, a variation on the way I learned from Mum.  Her version when I was growing up was similar, except at the end it involved sitting the pot of rice under the running cold tap for about five minutes until the water the rice was sitting in was clear and then draining and pouring a kettle of boiling water over it to reheat.  Which seems inappropriate on numerous levels now.

Mum has, however, contributed significantly to my 'only one good way to cook rice' theory.

First there was the attempt at microwave rice.  Sometime back in the 80s, having settled into microwave cookery - in the microwave oven that Grandmere gave her as a present in 1982 and which I still have and use in my kitchen today - there was a period where all the rice in our house was cooked in the microwave.  In a big flat Pyrex baking dish and covered with Glad Wrap, as I recall.  It was never the same.  Never absorbed enough water.

Then there were the clay pots.  20-odd years ago my Aunt - my mother's identical twin sister - lived in Malaysia for a few years.  While there she learned to cook rice in clay pots of all different sizes.  And taught Mum, and bought back clay pots in all different sizes for all of us.  I kept mine for years before passing it on to someone else before I moved house the last time.  I tried twice to cook rice in it in accordance with the instructions and it didn't work.  On one occasion there was burning.  And I never burn rice.  My mother's attempts, which lasted for several years, were an improvement on mine but still never very convincing and never anywhere as good as her empty-the-dams-rice. 

Mum has since gone back to some micro-wavy contraption.

Which brings me to Dad.  Dad can only cook rice in the microwave.  I think he originally learned the Pyrex-Glad Wrap method from Mum, but could always execute it better, and when they split up (nothing to do with rice, I must add) and he lived on his own he perfected it.  Ask Dad to cook rice on the stove and he cannot do it, but in the microwave - these days in some plastic container designed for the purpose - and his rice comes out exactly like mine does from a saucepan.  My step-mother doesn't even bother cooking rice in their house, Dad is the rice cooker.

I, however, cannot cook rice in a microwave to save my life.  Notwithstanding that I'm using the exact same microwave that Dad learned in.  I also cannot cook rice in the micro-wavy container he uses in his current microwave.  Does not work for me.

Then there's my old housemate.  Whizz with the rice cooker.  The rice turns out well, and she's made good risotto in there too.  Do not, however, ask her to make rice in a saucepan.  I'm sure she won't be offended when I say that she is clearly genetically pre-disposed to Boil Over Syndrome.  When we shared a house several pots went to heaven as a result of boiled over, burned down rice.  Thus her adoration of the set-and-forget-and-it-won't-even-get-cold rice cooker.

For me, however, the rice cooker delivers okay rice.  Just okay.  But there's always the slightly brown bit on the bottom and it's never quite as fluffy and doesn't work very well as leftovers the next day, which is an important consideration for someone living alone. 

Because really there's only one way I can cook regular old rice well.  In a saucepan.

How do you cook rice?

A Typical Untypical Weeknight

Up to a point, today was a very typical day in the life of this single career girl/woman/no-labels-at-this-age-thanks.

I had a very full - one might go so far as to say relentless - day of work. I managed to get out for 15 minutes somewhere in the general vicinity of lunchtime to go to the ATM and grab a wrap from one of my favourite cafes in Centre Place/Degraves St (post to come, I'm sure), which I ate at my desk. 

I left work at about 6.45 fully aware that I had nothing in the kitchen for dinner.

In this case the lack of groceries came about from the following series of events: kitchen cleaned to within an inch of its life for the purposes of pre-sale inspection (apartment now sold!); unwillingness to cook or eat anything in said kitchen because it was so clean; a few naturally occurring meals out including a dinner meeting last night. 

That unusual set of circumstances notwithstanding, the weeknight no groceries situation is actually not all that unusual, largely because I've been putting in an effort to cook a wider, and fresher, variety of meals which means more frequent shopping and fewer stand-by items in the fridge.  Also because sometimes I am lazy or uninspired.

Tonight I was uninspired, but not sufficiently so to warrant vegemite toast for dinner, so this seemed to be the perfect opportunity to, on the tram on the way home, make use of the Jamie Oliver iPhone application which I had downloaded a few weeks ago and scrolled through but not yet used.

I settled, quickly, on Herby Grilled Chicken Kebabs.

Of course, I then did it my own practical/lazy way.

First, the actual skewers? Um, no. See above re being single. Single means not needing to present chicken on skewers that you're just going to pull it off anyway.  Thus I also skipped the zucchini intersects, though if I make this for others - which I probably will - I'll be perfectly happy to do both.

Second, I also skipped the coriander.  Those of you who know me will be immediately saying "that's because Uli doesn't like fresh coriander", but in this case it wasn't that.  I'd have been happy to try it out in the context of this recipe (as it's a new recipe and it would be partly cooked and I have no issue with cooked coriander (the reason I have an issue with fresh goes back to an incident involving tequila that may or may not be told later)), except there was none in the store. 

This is another point about the whole work/life/cooking thing; sometimes I don't have the luxury of heading to the market for herbs and have to rely on the supermarket.  In my current apartment-living location growing my own is also a challenge, one that I plan to overcome when I buy a house some time in the next few days/weeks/hopefully not months.

Anyway, no coriander.

It might just be my anti-coriander bias, but totally not necessary.

So, leaving the lack of coriander and skewers aside, I followed the chicken part of the recipe.  Up to and including the point of blitzing (yes, yes, I watch a lot of English cooking shows) the herby mix in the food processor.  This might not seem so dramatic, but think about it for a moment.  Lazy career person who has not arrived home from work/supermarket until after 7pm actually getting out the food processor as part of the evening meal for one.

That's not typical, I promise.  But it seemed ridiculous to try chopping this by hand and the food processor is right there.  

I mixed it up with the chicken pieces and left it to sit for half an hour or so while I caught a little of Masterchef Professionals on Lifestyle Food and had a glass of wine.  And answered a few emails.  See, the food processor was an anomaly, and normality quickly reasserted itself for the evening.

I then ignored Jamie's salad recipe - don't like avocado and don't need a recipe for a side salad - and mixed up a quick one of my own.  Baby cos, Lebanese cucumber, tomato, spring onion and a balsamic mustard dressing I'd be happy to make myself but have in a lovely bottle from Milawa Mustards.

I didn't grill the chicken in a pan.  I don't have a decent grill pan at the moment - though I intend to buy one - and, as previously mentioned, I'm lazy.  So I covered a tray in foil, spread the herbed chicken pieces out over the tray and put them under the grill.  Easy, less washing up, still moist (the only circumstances in which I can cope with the use of that word is in relation to the cooking of meat), and crisped on the edges.  And can I say how fantastic I smelled while grilling?  So fantastic.

So, here we have it, my lazy weekday version of an already very easy dish, and it tasted really, really good.  I will make it again.

Tomorrow, normality, and a whole different style of eating, continues when I take a day trip to Brisbane for work.

Tomato Chutney

A few months back I had a sudden urge to make tomato chutney. 

I'd never made it, or anything like it, before, but it just went the way it often goes: eat something that's unexpectedly yummy and then try to replicate it.

I hunted around through various recipe books and recipes online and found a number of variations, all of which had some common elements, and then settled on this recipe.  With my own variations.  Of course.

My first variation was to double, and then a bit more, the amount of tomatoes.  I really did want tomato chutney, as opposed to capsicum chutney, and 500 grams just didn't seem to be enough especially sitting next to 4 large capsicums and 4 onions.  I probably wound up with about 1.2kgs of tomatoes.

I also then added four medium green chillies and three cloves of garlic.  

I also then made small adjustments to volumes of vinegar etc, and I let it simmer for longer than an hour.  Probably closer to an hour and a half, or a bit more.  But that's all about texture etc.

This made three large jars, and I'm about to break into the second one.  It's aged very nicely and I'm really pretty stoked with how it all turned out for a first attempt.  I'll definitely make it again, and next time might even be willing to use some smaller jars and give some away to friends now that I know it stands up pretty well.