Abercrombie & Feast

Oh boy, the puns never stop around here. 

We’ve just returned from a weekend away in Berry, NSW.  Berry is a charming town about 2 hours south of Sydney (or 3.5 hours if you try to leave after 4pm on Friday- but no worries!)  The trip was to celebrate the birth of Andy as well as the birth of our friend (and favourite Croatian/Canadian) Maja.  Six of us rented a big house complete with a pool, tennis court and putting green- none of which were used.  There was also a huge wrap-around porch, a fireplace, an enormous flat screen TV and a guitar- all of which were used. 

As we were planning the trip we determined that the best way to make use of the house, and to safely drink large amounts of very good red wine, was to stay in and cook dinner for ourselves on Saturday night.  There was a barbie available, so I assumed we’d use that.  However, on Friday morning a cryptic email arrived from a fellow traveller.  Jason wrote us to say that he was bringing “a surprise” for dinner on Saturday night.  We tried to guess what the surprise was (the best guess was a pheasant), but Jason was resolute in his secret keeping. 

Saturday dawned bright and sunny.  We relaxed on the porch with books and glasses of fresh orange juice (there were fruit trees in the yard!  Maja made OJ!  She is Martha Stewart!) 

We went into town for a late lunch at the pub.  It was there, in the beer garden over bowls of cauliflower soup, that Jason revealed his secret…

A PASTA MACHINE!!!

Seriously, I was so excited.  Andy and I took an Italian cooking class a few years ago and we learned how to make fresh pasta.  But we never invested in a pasta maker due to moves / lack of space / blah blah blah… see previous post.  We’ve made pasta at home a few times, but rolling it by hand and trying to cut it using a knife and your finger as a guide does not good pasta make. 

So Jason and I assembled a dough of semolina, ’00′ flour, 5 eggs, a little olive oil, a little salt and a little water.  We kneaded the crap out of it.  We let it rest.  And then, the real fun began.  We made two pasta dishes- tagliatelle with tomato sauce and tortellini with spinach and ricotta stuffing and butter sage sauce.  Everyone got in on the act.  Jason and Andy were in charge of rolling the dough in the machine.  I caught the strands of tagliatelle as they were cut and cut the circles for the tortellini.  Steve managed to totally master the tortellini stuffing and sealing process and set up an assembly line so productive and efficient that Henry Ford would have been jealous.  Maja and Jody carried out the tortellini making process to Steve’s high standards.  It was a pasta-pa-looza!

I have to say, I was really pleased with the results.  Both dishes were excellent.  I didn’t manage to get a picture of the tortellini before it was eaten, but here’s a shot of the tagliatelle. 

Don’t be fooled by the deceptively simple bowl of pasta in the photo above.  It took 6 people to create that!  The pasta was firm and had a wonderful robust texture.  The sauce was sweet with slow cooked tomatoes and was topped with a sprinkling of salty Parmesan cheese.  It went very well with a glass of red wine, a fireplace and some lovely friends.  Happy birthday Andy and Maja!!

I was thinking recently about what I really love in my kitchen.  The things I couldn’t do without.  You see, we live a somewhat transient lifestyle.  We travel a lot and we’ve moved several times in the past 3 years, so we can’t really accumulate “stuff”. 

We don’t have lots of trinkets cluttering the mantel (we don’t have a mantel, but you get it), we don’t have “fancy” wine glasses only brought out on special occasions.  We have the basics.  And, if I say it myself, this is fine with me. 

It’s really rather freeing to know that you’re not tied down by the “stuff” builds up over a life time.  Sure, there have been times when I’ve coveted the lovely crystal that friends got for their wedding (we didn’t register- didn’t really need that stuff), or that I wished we could invest in a really nice stereo system or a flash TV.  But those moments pass quickly when I think about how lucky we are to be able to travel as much as we do, or to be able to move abroad whenever and where ever we’d like. 

This isn’t to say that I don’t have ANY “stuff”.  I totally do, and it’s mostly kitchen “stuff”.  So here is my Top Ten list of Favourite Kitchen Wares.  When we move, not all of this will be coming with us, but for right now, I wouldn’t want to live without it. 

1.  Without a doubt my big, red Chasseur dutch oven is #1.  I literally use this pot 3-4 times a week.  It’s heavy, big, easy to clean and lovely to look at. 

2.  A close second is my new, big, red Le Creuset stone baking dish.  It looks so gorgeous filled with a gratin, a roasting chicken or just some Brussels sprouts crisping up. 

3.  My Wusthof knives.  I have two.  I am spoiled.  They are gorgeous and heavy and they will chop anything.   I love those knives.

4.  A small, red handled paring knife that Andy bought my as part of my last birthday present (the Chasseur dutch oven was the other part).  It is small and light and great for mincing garlic and chillis, plus the handle is red.  I love red.  I’m sure that doesn’t come as a surprise. 

5.  Little wooden reemer.  It’s cute and useful and I can finally get juice out of limes (an important ingredient in the making of the World’s Best Guacamole- made by me!)

6.  My food processer.  When I first got the food processer I didn’t really take advantage of all its wonderful options and gadgets.  To be honest I mostly used it for pureeing things.  Now, I know better.  It chops, it grates, it mixes batters, it makes dough.  It is like having a kitchen fairy.  

7.  Rice cooker.  I used to think rice cookers were useless.  I mean, how hard is it to make rice?  But then I moved into small Sydney apartments with little stove tops and realized how freeing it can be to move the rice preparation to the other end of the kitchen entirely- which leaves the other burners free for the rest of dinner.

8.  IPod Speakers.  Officially this isn’t a kitchen ware, but I love to have some background music as I chop and stir and generally cook and dance the stress of a day away.

9.  Those new Glad ice cube bags.  They are brilliant for storing chicken stock!  All you have to do is let your stock cool, pour it in the baggie and seal it!  Then when you want just a cube or two of fresh stock to add to a soup or a risotto, you just grab what you need.  Genius!

10.  Silicon baking pads.  I couldn’t find the famous Silpat brand in my usual kitchen store here, so I just bought the brand they had.  These things are genius.  No more losing ½ your cookie to the pan, no more scrubbing off burnt over pie, too easy!

This is a basic list of my favourites right now.  Honestly, this list changes weekly depending on what I’m in the mood to cook.  Although, I doubt anything will ever knock the IPod speakers off the list.  Music to cook by is essential!

Picture this:  It’s a cloudy winter Sunday.  You’ve spent a lazy morning wandering through book stores in the city (and perhaps stopping off to buy a new dress??) and having a late breakfast at a really elegant little cafe near Town Hall. 

Then, you hop on the ferry with some mates and cruise through the Harbour over to Watson’s Bay- a little strip of beach with a huge view of the city skyline, a pub with lots of outdoor seating and a famous seafood restaurant.  So you have lunch- a plate of shared oysters to start, then the famous fish and chips and a cold beer to wash it all down.  You linger over a drink, enjoying the view and the breeze off the water.  You don’t even need a coat- just a cardigan and a scarf and you’re nice and cozy. 

View of the city from Watson’s Bay

You grab the bus back to your neighbourhood and pop into the grocery store on your way home.  You know you don’t want a big dinner (you’ve been eating all day!) but it’s only 5pm and you might want something to top you up before the night is through.  What do you do???  You make this soup. 

Soup is one of my all-time favourite foods.  When I was at Syracuse University there was a little cafe in the building where most of my public policy classes were held (that was my major, I was there a lot) and the cafe had a different soup every day.  I tell you what, there were times that finding out the soup was the highlight of my day.  The beef and barley soup days weren’t very popular with me, but a bowl of potato leek, chicken noodle or 5 bean soup could certainly make me forget looming paper deadlines or exam anxieties.  In short, soup makes me happy.   

So, after enjoying the activities described above on Sunday (you knew it was us doing all those things, right??) I decided to make this soup for dinner.  Since we weren’t starving, there was plenty left over for lunch the next day.  Which is great, because this soup is goooood. 

I’m going to do something a little different and give you pictures of the preparation process as well as ingredients and steps as we go along, rather than a big recipe at the end.  Just shaking things up here at Abercrombie & Feast.  Enjoy!

White bean, tomato and chorizo soup
(adapted from Bill Granger, Every Day)

 You start by cutting up 2 links of chorizo (spicy Spanish sausage- in America you could substitute kielbasa if you can’t find chorizo).  Saute the chorizo pieces in a large pot over medium heat until they begin to crisp up on the outside a little.  You don’t need to cook them for long- they are already cooked. 

While the chorizo is warming up, chop up one purple onion, 2 cloves of garlic and 1 chili pepper.  Remove the chorizo from the pot and drain it on a plate lined with paper towels.  Add the onion, garlic and chili along with a little olive oil to the pan and cook for 5-7 mins or until the onion becomes translucent.

Once the onions are translucent, add the chorizo back to the pot and tip in a can of plain, diced tomatoes and the leaves from 4-5 stalks of fresh thyme.

Let all this cook together for a few minutes.  It will smell so good that you’ll want to scoop it up and sample a bit on a piece of the bread that you bought to go with dinner.  That’s ok.  Sample away!

Here I am about to sample the mix.  Looks like I’m offering it to my kitchen Buddha, huh?

Next you add 1 litre (about 4 cups) of chicken stock and 2 cans of cannellini beans or white beans.  Stir all this together and allow it to simmer for about 20 mins. 

After the soup has simmered for about 20 mins, you can either eat it immediately (delicious!) or you can remove about 1/3 of the soup to a blender or a food processor and puree it for a few seconds (even MORE delicious- just make sure you let it cool off a bit so it doesn’t explode!!)  I pureed mine a bit and here’s the final shot:

Andy thought I was crazy to post pictures of soup.  I must agree, it’s not going to win Miss Photogenic at the Food Beauty Pageant this year.  But it will win Miss Congeniality, and that’s what’s most important to me!

As far as I’m concerned, living in Sydney, AU has a lot of benefits (people from Melbourne might disagree, but I can’t get into that here.)  The weather is generally very nice, the beer is much better than in the States, people actually say “G’day mate” to one another and, let’s be honest, animals over here are hilarious. 

However, nearly all of this fabulousness is negated a few times a year when we have to go to work on major American public holidays.  Case in point- last Friday.  The 4th of July.  Independence Day.  SK8 and Andy and all Americans in Australia were at work.  There were no bbqs or fireworks or sparklers or questionable mayo-based salads left out in the sun for 6 hours for us. 

But fear not… We did have some red, white and blue fun!  After work, we had 3 other All-American couples over for dinner at our apartment.  The burgers were cooked on the stove and the little space heater was cranked up in the corner, but we had a flag, some sparkly star necklaces (when I say we, I mean me) and, most importantly, we had some good old fashioned (literally) cream-cheese pizza-ish retro dip to aid in our meager celebrations.

Note the sparkly star necklaces.  All 6 of them!

Andy and the American flag!

Stars and snacks.

Throughout my childhood we spent each 4th of July in Rhode Island, land of my mother’s birth, lots of seafood and the smallest state in the USA.  My grandma Joan would make this dip for the various events and gatherings held in the weeks leading up the big party on the 4th and we’d usually have it again on the big day.  This recipe is SO very 1950′s or 1960′s (I wasn’t alive then!  I don’t know which culinary decade this belongs to!)  But, it’s also very good and very versatile and I really really like it.  Don’t judge me.  Just try it for your next fun summer event, or tiny ex-pat gathering, when you want a taste of home- circa Leave It To Beaver.   

Retro Cream Cheese and Shrimp “Pizza” Dip

Serves 8-10 as a snack

2 packages of cream cheese at room temperature (I used Philidelphia Light)
1 jar of cocktail sauce (I could not find proper American cocktail sauce in any store in Sydney, so I substituted spicy sweet chilli sauce and it was fine- but it is better with American style cocktail sauce)
1 bag shredded cheese (cheddar is good or a pizza mix)
6 medium prawns
salt and pepper
Ritz crackers to serve

This is so easy you don’t even need a recipe!  Spread the cream cheese on a round serving platter or pizza pan (I just used a dinner plate and it was fine.)  You’ll probably have about 1/2 a package of cream cheese leftover. 

Top the cream cheese with a layer of the cocktail or sweet chilli sauce.  Make sure it’s a good thick layer or all you’ll taste is cream cheese.  Top this layer with a few handfuls of shredded cheese.

Meanwhile, bring a small pot of water to boil and drop the prawns in for about 3 minutes or until they are pink.  Chop the prawns finely and sprinkle across the cheese layer.  Season with salt and pepper and eat with Ritz crackers.

You can play around with this as much as you want.  My grandmother would add slices of canned black olives, but I think that some chopped capsicum (bell pepper) would be great, as would chopped onion or even a bit of chilli pepper.  You can substitute other crackers for the Ritz, but do so at your own risk.  The Ritz are magical and really good with this dip.  I can’t explain why, but trust me.   Go for the Ritz. 

Of my many and varied hobbies (and they are varied… Hi drama class people!) cooking and reading are certainly my two favourites.  In fact, reading may even edge out cooking for the title of “Number One Way Skate Spends Her Free Time.”  I have a stack of about four books next to our bed, I have another two on my desk at work and I currently have one book in my handbag.  This does not include the dozens lounging on the bookshelf in our living room.  I would like to tell you that those books are all very important pieces of literature written by the master authors of our time, but that would be a big ole lie.  Secretly, more and more of the books I buy and read are books about food, thereby combining my two favourite activities and making it possible that I will never read anything else.  I’ve read most of the classics (Kitchen Confidential, My Life in France, lots of M.F.K Fisher) so now I’m looking for new food writers to entertain and inspire me.  I thought I might review a few of the books here, so long as they are on topic (food related) and they don’t suck. 

I bought “The Sharper Your Knife The Less You Cry” by Kathleen Flinn after seeing little write-ups of it on Chow.com and in this month’s Gourmet Traveller magazine.  It’s a great premise.  An American woman loses her job and instead of jumping right into a new job, chooses to take some time and attend Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.  I was particularly interested in this book because Julia Child studied at Le Cordon Bleu many years ago and she is a hero of mine.

So, the book.  It was good.  It wasn’t great.  Have you ever seen an episode of Grey’s Anatomy?  When the main character has a little monologue at the beginning of each episode and all of the main characters and patients at the hospital just conveniently  fit into the lesson we all learn in the opening monologue??  This book is a bit like that.  Each chapter opens with the titles of the dishes the author learns to cook and each dish seems almost like a metaphor for the other events in the chapter.  At times this was clever, but too often it was predictable and a touch cloying for my tastes. 

Also, I think there was a missed opportunity here.  Le Cordon Bleu is so well known and so famous that it’s like the Angelina Jolie of the cooking school world (a bizarre metaphor, I admit, but hey… I haven’t published a book yet so you can’t judge my metaphors.)  We want the juicy details!  A little bit of insider knowledge and gossip about the school, the chefs or even other students would have been greatly appreciated by this reader.  I’m not looking for an US Weekly or WHO magazine version of the book, but a few little tidbits wouldn’t have gone astray.

Overall I enjoyed the book and it certainly made the bus rides to Randwick more enjoyable for a week.  I give it a B+. 

Well, it happens that I finally get a chance to add to the blog.  Last Monday was my chance to cook dinner, and I have been working on my recipe for Singapore noodles.  They are very tasty if done well.  My last batch was very edible, and hence I had another go at it.

Singapore noodles are rice noodles with a bit of sauce, a meat or two, and some veggies.  We decided (Meaning Skate bought) carrots, mushrooms, shallots, chillies, coriander, capsicum, garlic (of course, have you met my wife?), and onions to go in the mix.  There was a fair amount of dicing.  We got the wok out.  Magic happened!

Here are a few pictures of the noodles (I was quite happy!):

I had originally planned to post the recipe, but I think I may hold off until I can remember the recipe.  We adjusted this recipe a bit, and I did not record all of the changes.  We’ll just call it a work in progress!

I’m sure I’ll make it again in the near future.  It did turn out to be one of our favourites.