Abercrombie & Feast

We’ve just returned from a long weekend in Mudgee, NSW to celebrate Australia Day.  Australia Day is a little bit like the 4th of July… big summer holiday with lots of BBQ’s, heat and fireworks.  We didn’t see any fireworks, but we did sweat a lot and cook on the barbie, so I guess we did ok.

Mudgee is about 4.5 hours from Sydney and is known for making some great red wines.  It is also, in my opinion, in possession of a hilarious and fun-to-say name.  This was actually our second trip to Mudgee and we had a blast.  We went with our friends Steve and Maja, got a little apartment near town, tasted wines all day and drank wine while watching the Australian Open all night.  With the glaring exception of a wedding / bar fight that we witnessed on the first night, it was a quiet and relaxing weekend away.

 We used the barbie in our little back yard for every meal, which was both delicious and very Australian of us.  On Saturday night, we enjoyed prawns marinated in lemon, garlic, chilli flakes, salt, pepper and olive oil as a starter.  Perfectly cooked (thanks Steve!), the prawns were gorgeous with a cold glass of white wine at the end of a scorching day.  These pics aren’t great, but I’d already enjoyed a few glasses of that white wine by this point. 

Steve throws another prawn on the barbie

Continuing the streak of light and delicious food that’s perfectly matched for crisp, lemon-y white wine, we enjoyed skewers of marinated chicken, chunks of capsicum (bell pepper) and haloumi cheese.  The skewers were so nice served over a small bed of white rice and eaten outside, dodging the grasshoppers.  A few pieces of the haloumi escaped from their skewers, but we forgave Steve for that.  He’d had plenty of wine, too.  I didn’t get a picture of the skewers after they were cooked (we were pretty hungry), but here’s a shot of the skewers all prepped and ready to be grilled. 

We also had toast for brekkie, eggs cooked on the barbie, a cheese plate for lunch and sandwiches for a late afternoon filler.  The food was simple, but that’s what you want when it’s hot outside.  Lots of cold white wine doesn’t hurt, either. 

Just a quick post this week to apologise.  I realised yesterday that in the past few weeks I have written some very contradictory posts here.  One week I wrote about how I hate cold soups and the very next week I wrote a post raving about a cold soup that I loved. 

Then, last week, I wrote about salads.  I told you that I wasn’t doing much baking due to the hot weather here in Sydney.  But, despite the heat and its curl frizzing effects, I spent most of yesterday in front of the oven. 

So, to make it up to you and to win back your trust, I give you this recipe for Lime and Passionfruit cupcakes.  These are pretty much my ideal dessert.  Fruity and tangy, summery and sweet, really fun to make and eat. (I did not mean for the previous sentence to rhyme like that, but I like it and I’m leaving it in.) 

In fact, these cupcakes are so good that I ate one at 3.30 this morning.  I got up in the middle of the night to watch the inauguration celebration live from the US.  Alone in the dark with my cupcake, watching history being made on television, I felt really really happy. 

Let’s be honest, I probably won’t be any more consistent in the future.  But try these cupcakes and I bet you won’t care.

Lime and Passionfruit Cupcakes
(adapted from Australian Good Food)

Makes 12 cupcakes

2 passionfruit
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tbs finely grated lime zest

for the icing

3/4 cup pure icing sugar
juice of one lime

Preheat your oven to 180C or 350F.  Line a 12 hole cupcake pan with paper cases.

Using a fine sieve, strain the passionfruit pulp over a small bowl.  Reserve the seeds that are still in the sieve to be used in the icing.  The juice will be used in the cupcake batter.

With an electric mixer, beat together butter, sugar, eggs, flour, buttermilk, passionfruit juice and lime zest until combined.  Then, increase speed to medium and beat for about 3-4 mins. 

Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake pan.  Bake for 15-20 mins, or until golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean.  Allow to cool briefly in the pan, then remove and allow to cool completely.

For the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl.  Make sure it’s smooth without lumps.  Stir in the lime juice and the reserved passionfruit pulp.  The mixture should be thick, but not gluey.  If it’s too thick, add a bit more lime juice.  If it’s too runny, add more sugar.

Spread the icing on top of the cooled cupcakes and enjoy!

Summer is officially upon us here in Sydney.  Remember back a few months ago when I thought that warm weather was never going to get here?  Oh man, I was so wrong.  We don’t have air conditioning, so our days are spent with the windows open and the fan on.  Needless to say, I’m not baking much.

This type of weather really makes me crave a few specific heat-beaters.  First on that list is a cold beer, especially if you can stick a lime in the top of it.  Second on the list is a swim in Mock Springs, the teeth-chatteringly cold swimming hole near the town where I grew up.  And third on the list of cool-me-downers is a salad.

I love salads all year round, but in the summer I find I eat salad all day.  Literally.  I had cold lentil salad with feta and walnuts for breakfast last Wednesday.  So here are a few of my new favourite salad recipes, along with the links to some salads I’ve written about on this site previously.   

And don’t worry if you live somewhere above the Equator where it’s cold right now.  You can make one of these salads and let the bright flavours remind you of the summer that’s to come. 

Noodles with peanut sauce and summer veggies

 Serves 4 as a side or 3 for lunch

Dressing:
1 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs peanut oil or other light oil
1 garlic clove, very finely chopped
1 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs spicy sweet chilli sauce
2 tbs lime juice
1/3 cup smooth peanut butter

Salad:
1 1/2 cups snow peas, cut into bite sized pieces
1 red capsicum (bell pepper), cut into bite sized strips
1 carrot, cut into thick strips with a vegetable peeler
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1 lb pack of prepare egg noodles or Hokkien noodles
fresh coriander (cilantro) and chopped chilli to garnish

Put all the ingredients for the dressing into a bowl and whisk with a fork.  It will take a few minutes, but eventually the dressing will become smooth and liquid.  It will still be really thick, but that’s ok.

Prepare the noodles according to the package.  I had to pour boiling water over mine for 2 mins, then drain. 

Put the noodles, snow peas, capsicum, carrot and spring onions into a large bowl.  Pour the dressing over the other ingredients and toss.  This will take a minute, but keep tossing until everything is coated. 

Eat immediately, topped with coriander and chilli.  Or, you can keep this in the fridge for a few days.  It is excellent nice and cold for lunch.

 Corn and cumin salad

Serves 2

2 ears of fresh corn
1 red capsicum (bell pepper), chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 jalapeno chilli, finely chopped
1 handful coriand (cilantr0), finely chopped
1 heaping tsp ground cumin
1 tbs red wine vinegar
1 tbs good olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the corn.  It would be even better if you grilled it, but we don’t have a barbie anymore, so I just cooked it in foil in the oven for 30 mins.  Easy. 

Remove the corn from the cob by placing the flat end on a cutting board and running a sharp knife down the cob.  The kernels will come right off. 

Combine the corn, capsicum, zucchini, spring onions and chilli and mix well.  This will help break the kernels up. 

Whisk together cumin, vinegar and oil and pour over the veggie mixture.  Mix well.  Top with coriander and serve. 

Other salads from the archives:
Beetroot and apple salad
Quinoa and cauliflower salad
Asparagus and goat’s cheese salad

I love going out for breakfast.  There is something simultaneously relaxing and energizing and having your breakfast made for you in a lovely, preferably sun drenched, locale.  However, breakfast out is, for me, often fraught with peril.  You see, I don’t like eggs.

I know!  I wish so much that I could enjoy eggs.  They are a perfect package of food.  I see magazine pictures of poached eggs atop crisp salads or fried eggs leaking out of a bacon sandwich and they look gorgeous.  But I cannot eat them. 

And I have tried!  A few years back, my father and I were driving around Ireland to visit all the “relations”.  At each elderly auntie’s house a large breakfast or lunch would be prepared for us, usually involving a fried egg.  I would try one bite, then cut the rest into tiny ribbons and hide them under my toast.  Even now, at home, I make scrambled eggs for Andy a few times a month.  I try little bites, hoping that this will be the magical moment in which eggs begin to make sense to me.  Never happens. 

So this egg-aversion makes going out for brekkie a real challenge.  I dare you to try to find a yummy menu item that does not involve eggs in some fashion.  It’s hard!  I can usually get toast or yogurt and that’s about it.  Not that there is anything really wrong with toast or yogurt.  I love them both.  But they get old after a while. 

However, we’ve recently found a cafe at Bondi Beach that serves a breakfast I can fully support.  Sourdough toast, topped with a rich, creamy ricotta cheese and slices of fresh tomato.  I order it with a side of avocado because everything in this world is better with a side of avocado.  It’s a gorgeous breakfast, and one that I wanted to recreate at home.  Here are the results:

A slice of toasted ciabatta bread, a layer of ricotta cheese, tomato and avocado and the whole thing is drizzled with some nice extra virgin olive oil, a sprinkling of cracked pepper and coarse salt. 

I can’t really give you a recipe for this, because it’s just a matter of buying good ingredients and stacking them on top of one another.  But I do urge you to try this for brekkie just once.  It’s light but filling, rich but tangy.  A perfect way to start another egg-hating day.

The past few months have been crazy around here!  Lots of travel and events and little time at home to cook.  But now that the holidays are out of the way, we’re getting back to normal. 

For us, normal means homemade dinner about 3-4 nights a week.  Lots of veggies, not much red meat.  Some successful meals… some that are really just ok.  Luckily for us, and for you, this meal falls into the success category.

I had been craving a burger for a while.  But, I wanted something lighter and fresher than a normal burger and Andy wanted to avoid eating a huge hunk of red meat (trust me, this was pretty much the first time he has EVER had that opinion.)  So I went to the store armed with an idea for a Mediterranean-style turkey burger. 

However, my local grocery store had other plans.  Shopping in the meat section approximately 4 days after Christmas was a sad experience.  This must be what it’s like in countries where food is rationed.  The shelves and coolers were practically empty.  A few containers of beef mince, some sad looking lamb cutlets and… ground pork.  Abandoning my turkey burger plans, I grabbed the pork and ran before some other hungry, post-holiday zombie could try to steal it away from me. 

And that, my friends, is how the Mediterranean-style pork burger was born.  Topped with homemade, tangy tzatziki and sweet, slowly carmelised red onions, it was the pork version of exactly what I wanted. 

I’m not going to lie, there are some time consuming aspects of this meal.  But, you could very easily cut them out and make this much faster.  Use store-bought tzatziki and fresh onions instead of carmelised ones and you could have this dinner on the table in no time.  Doesn’t it feel good to be back to normal??

Mediterranean-style Pork Burgers

500g or 1lb ground pork
1 tbs worcestershire sauce
1 tbs chopped coriander (cilantro)
2 tbs pine nuts, toasted
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg 

Combine all ingredients very well.  Use your hands!  Get messy!  It’s fun and feels all cool and squishy.  Form the mixture into four patties of equal size.  Allow the patties to rest in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat.  Add 1 tbs olive oil to coat the pan.  Fry the burgers in batches.  Serve with toasted seeded buns, tzatziki and carmelised red onions. 

Greatest Tzatziki Ever

1 small container plain, full fat yogurt
3 tbs sour cream
1/2 cucumber, finely chopped or shredded
1 clove garlic, very finely chopped
1 spring onion, very finely chopped
1 large handful parsley, chopped
1 large handful coriander (cilantro), chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  Allow to cool in the fridge for at least 1 hour before serving, to give the flavours time to mingle.  Taste for seasoning just before serving.  I like plenty of salt in this tzatziki.