Australian cooking: May 2011

Banc d'Arguin

Création d’une zone de protection pour la nidification
sur la réserve naturelle du Banc d’Arguin

Le préfet de la Gironde vient de signer un arrêté créant sur le territoire de la réserve naturelle du Banc d’Arguin, une zone de protection supplémentaire d’accès strictement interdit, destinée à la nidification des sternes.

La réserve naturelle nationale du Banc d'Arguin, gérée pour le compte de l'Etat par la SEPANSO, abrite un patrimoine naturel remarquable.
Une zone de protection intégrale (ZPI) délimitée par arrêté préfectoral permet à une partie de l'avifaune de la réserve naturelle de se reproduire, se reposer ou de s'alimenter en toute quiétude.

Depuis le début du mois de mai, une colonie de « Sterne caugek », oiseau marin pour lequel le Banc d'Arguin possède une responsabilité internationale pour sa conservation et emblème de la réserve naturelle (puisque sa protection fut à l'origine de la mise en réserve naturelle du Banc d'Arguin en 1972) a commencé à se reproduire en dehors de la ZPI actuellement délimitée.

Afin de garantir la protection et la reproduction de cette espèce rare et vulnérable, une nouvelle zone de protection d'accès strictement interdit au public à été délimitée autour de la nouvelle implantation de la colonie d'oiseaux par arrêté préfectoral du 24 mai 2011, en accord avec le décret ministériel de création de la réserve naturelle actuellement en vigueur sur ce site.

Cette nouvelle zone protégée (située dans la conche Sud) sera maintenue en place et balisée jusqu'à la fin de la période de reproduction des sternes.

Les personnes intéressées pour observer ce spectacle naturel peuvent aller à la rencontre des guides naturalistes bénévoles de la SEPANSO qui pourront les accueillir gracieusement et mettre à leur disposition du matériel optique afin de pouvoir observer à distance les oiseaux sans les déranger.

Plush Pizza- Gluten Free 2

Plush Pizza is a vegetarian pizza, yes all vegetarian!

Back when the vegan fitness guys were in town, we went to plush. Everyone ordered regular chunky pizzas and I had the ben special on a gf base. I love this pesto topped pizza with a touch of balsamic vinegar, tomatoes, red onion, mushrooms and avocado. Thankfully the avocado is not cooked, I hate cooked avocado. Rochelle's friend Andrea also got a gluten free pizza, so we exchanged a few pieces. You can see a half eaten piece of hers on my pic at the top. She got a chunky pizza which comes with all of the regular toppings like tofu, olives, mushrooms etc except for the soy sausages which aren't gf. It's like a regular pizza with everything on it except it also has gherkins on it. I also enjoyed it but missed the sausages. As much as I love the ben special, it's good to have a bit of variety so was thankful that she wanted to share!

As for the gf bases, I think I was perhaps a bit harsh on my last post. I'm not sure if they were just having a bad day the last time with their bases, or if my tolerance for gf bases has changed but their gf bases were fine. They are quite thin but didn't have quite the undercooked feel that I remembered. I will aim to go back again before they sell their premise which likely won't be until at least the end of the year.

I don't think there has been any other reviews since last year when Carla, Steph and Cindy blogged about it.

By the way, if you google plush pizza then this site comes up, plush pizza, literally!

85 Burwood Rd
Hawthorn
9819 1188

Culinary gifts of a good-fairy house

The very year I was born, my parents, who were then working as expatriates in Indonesia, bought their first house, with my grandmother's help. La Nouvelle Terrebonne, as they named it(after my father's French-Canadian ancestors' grand manor house at Terrebonne near Montreal—the house still exists though it's no longer in the family), was at the time a large, beautiful but crumbling late-eighteenth and nineteenth century house, with dilapidated seventeenth century outbuildings, in a south-western French village called Empeaux. It was an unfashionable, eccentric—and cheap--buy at the time—for back then Empeaux was thought to be much too remote from the city--a whole thirty-five kilometres from Toulouse-- for most middle-class people to want to live there. Besides, the house had been allowed to go to rack and ruin, and there was heaps of work to do in it and in the large overgrown parklands that surrounded it, with its ancient trees. Much too much, most people thought.
Well, nothing daunted, my parents set to work or rather set their expatriate salaries to work, first in Indonesia and then in Australia, paying a succession of masons, tilers, electricians, roofers, painters, carpenters and lots more local tradesmen, who slowly but surely, under my parents' guiding hand, turned neglected Cinderella into a beautiful princess admired by all, at considerable expense it must be said. And as we settled into a routine of three years in Australia, three months in France, the house became our French base.
We loved it. It was an utterly magical place. In that enchanted Narnia-like space, everything was extraordinary. The house had an amazing history, full of strange, sad and mysterious stories: stories of the haunted red room, where a young man had hung himself, a hundred years before; of the well, where a witch had been thrown, centuries ago; of the majestic elm tree outside my parents’ bedroom window, planted by one of Louis XIV’s ministers in the late seventeenth century(which was protected by order of the French state, though later, very sadly, it died in the Dutch elm epidemic of the 1980's). The stairs creaked, the attic was spooky, the cellar dim and creepy; there were storage antechambers off just about every room. Each of these storage rooms had its own exotic cargo: a huge oak wardrobe full of old fur coats, including my great-grandmother’s Canadian wolf-skin coat; an old wicker doll’s pram with my aunt’s doll in it, sporting a wig made of her own, blond childhood hair; and in another, the baskets brought back by my parents from Indonesia, full of red and gold and green and gold costumes. And tall pottery jars full of goose and duck confit in the winter, for it was so cold in those unheated antechambers in winter that they might as well have been fridges, and you had to quickly ladle out what you needed from the pottery confit jars before your fingers dropped off!
It was a house that breathed presence; a presence that despite the many terrible stories associated with it radiated a kind of good-fairy benevolence. It was a presence that nurtured people, especially children, and all of us children remember it with huge fondness and a real melancholy, for it is lost to us now--in the early 90's, after they'd returned permanently to France, my parents finally sold La Nouvelle Terrebonne and moved to another region. But I still go and visit it when I am back in France, as do my siblings; it is a house that haunts anyone who's ever lived in it—even when we were living there, former residents would sometimes drop by to look at it again just like we do now--a house that forever becomes a part of your emotional and imaginative DNA.
But if, like a good fairy at a christening, La Nouvelle Terrebonne and the village of Empeaux(we tend to conflate them, and just say 'Empeaux') have given me an integral part of my creative inner landscape and in different guises have emerged in many of my books, they are also a part of my culinary DNA—of my most cherished memories of food, influencing how we eat now. It wasn't just the jars of confit in the storage-room. It was also the thrill of finding, when we would first arrive from our long and gruelling voyage from Australia, that the wonderful Madame Baron, a local farmer's wife who looked after the house in our absence, had laid the scrubbed old kitchen table with a cheerful tablecloth and a fantastic simple local lunch: a big pat of creamy golden butter she'd made from the milk of her own cows; a big round loaf of fresh local pain de campagne; a plateful of thickly-sliced local air-dried ham, jambon de pays, with its gorgeous pepper-flavoured rim of fat and delicious texture; a selection of local cheeses; fresh fruit in season and a big salad, ready to be tossed. It was also looking up at the huge jambon de pays she'd cut the slices from, which swung snugly in its pillowcase from the ancient bullock-yoke suspended above the table on chains; the garlic and onions in their tresses beside it. It was stepping down into the earthern-walled pantry just off the kitchen which breathed the cool of ages, with its shelves lined with preserves and bottles and groceries of all sorts(though I was always a bit scared that one of my mischievous brothers would take the opportunity to lock me in there—it was windowless with a very low ceiling!)It was gorging yourself on fruit from your own trees—the cherry, the fig, the apple, the reine-claude,(greengage), and picking mushrooms and hazelnuts in the woods with Dad if we were there in the autumn. I wasn't so keen on another kind of picking—dandelion leaves, which my parents, especially Dad, were very fond of for salads but I didn't like much at all, not only because of its slightly bitter taste but because of its name(in French, it's pissenlit—literally 'piss-the-bed'--!) It was about going to another farm, the Miquel place, where a black-clad Madame Miquel, with her wisps of grey hair, crooked nose and few teeth she displayed in a crocodiley smile that was meant to be friendly, put me irresistibly but banally in mind of a witch(though I knew she wasn't—the real village witch was a striking youngish brunette!). My parents bought eggs, chickens and ducks and geese from the Miquels(the ducks and geese were turned into that confit that sat in the pottery jars), and also some vegetables and the occasional rabbit. But we bought butter and milk from Madame Baron, whose farm had a much more sympathique atmosphere and who always invited us in to have a little snack and a glass of something with her family. If it was afternoon—and it generally was—it'd be a small glass of fiery home-made gnole for the adults and mint or pomegranate or berry cordial for the children sometimes with the extra of a tiny cube of sugar soaked in a little gnole once you reached a certain age. It was about going to the markets in l'Isle-Jourdain or St Lys and buying fresh pates and terrines made from deer and boar and hare and partridge hunted locally—for there are fine rich hunting woods around there—and hearing the joyful toot-toot of the baker's van or the greengrocer's or the fishmonger's or butcher's or horse-butcher that would come tootling into the village once every couple of days or so, for Empeaux did not have any shops. It was about going off on our bikes to the next village, Saint-Thomas, only three or four kms away and possessed of a great attraction: a cafe, where you could get a meal or an icecream or cake or coffee or a glass of wine(if you were an adult of course!)Yes, it was about all those gorgeous, wonderful things that people now think of as slow food, of the regional, the local, the intimate—nothing to do with fashion or fad but just the way people had always eaten around there. And that has stayed with me ever since.

(Photographs are 1/the house from the back, with dependencies on right hand side and beginning of the parkland garden in front, and looming over it on the right also is the castle of Empeaux. 2/my parents and three youngest siblings at the Nouvelle Terrebonne kitchen table in 1984--my brother Louis is holding my then 2 year old daughter Pippa.)

Hare delights

I've eaten plenty of rabbit over the years both in France and Australia, mostly farmed but some wild as well, but seldom eaten hare. The reason of course is that the meat is not as easily available, as hares cannot be farmed--solitary animals which range widely, they simply do not thrive in captivity, unlike their more sedentary cousins. But the other day we were lucky enough to get hold to get hold of some hare meat, and were able to try out a couple of recipes: a delicious hare stew, made from the most fleshy part of the animal, its saddle(the back and flanks) and a lovely terrine made from the other parts.
The hare meat was much denser and darker than rabbit, especially farmed rabbit, and it was very lean, with a rich but not particularly 'gamey' taste. Stewing seemed to bring out those flavours much more than roasting could have done(there'd have been a danger of the meat drying out.)Note that while the hare terrine can feed up to 8 people, the hare stew is just for two.These recipes could also be adapted for rabbit meat.
For the hare terrine: Two rashers bacon, about 500 g pork mince or 4 thick pure pork sausages opened up, back and front legs and other bits of hare, liver and heart of hare, two eggs, breadcrumbs, thyme, nutmeg, a little coriander seed, salt, pepper. First debone the hare meat and put the meat in a dish ready to mix with other stuff. Boil the bones up for stock(for next recipe). Cook the liver and heart. Now mix the cooked chopped liver and heart, the hare meat, pork mince, add the eggs, breadcrumbs, herbs and spices, salt and pepper. The terrine mixture needs to be not sloppy and not crumbly either but well mixed. Oil a log-shaped Pyrex or earthenware baking dish, drape one rasher bacon on bottom. fill dish with terrine mix and drape the bacon over the top, tucking in the sides. Cook in a bain-marie(standing in a dish part-filled with water)in a slow oven--175 C--for about 2 and a half hours. When cooked, let it sit in a cool place. Serve cold, sliced. (You can also serve it hot with a tomato sauce if you like, like a meatloaf, but it's even nicer cold, as a lunch dish or an entree.)
For the hare stew: 1 saddle of hare cut into two or four pieces, 2 rashers bacon, onion, garlic, sage, parsley, creme de cassis(blackcurrant liqueur) or similar, some hare stock(see above),a little oil to fry initially, salt, pepper.
First marinade the hare in the creme de cassis or similar liqueur(or even red wine)for a couple of hours. Fry the onion, the chopped up bacon, and then add the hare, without its marinade first. Add crushed garlic, herbs, and then the marinade. Add enough stock to cover. Simmer for about 45 minutes or until meat is tender. Serve with mashed potato(we made ours with lovely home-grown Tasmanian pink-eyes, which produce a gorgeous yellow fluffy mash)and sweet and sour red cabbage(cooked with brown sugar and vinegar, a little red wine and a little hare or beef stock.)

The olive harvest

We've never had a great deal of luck with olive trees. The very first one we planted, at least seventeen years ago, right at the beginning of living here, still survives, but has had a very chequered history over the years, producing one good crop years ago, one a much smaller crop a couple of years later, and then nothing for ages, getting setbacks from scale and drought and all sorts of things. Other olive trees have bitten the dust very early; only one other one has survived despite multiple plantings David's done over the years, and this year it's been joined by one further one which looks as though it might survive. The trouble is that though the climate's fine for it--cold winters but plenty of sunshine, and rain mostly in the winter and summer--the weather can be unpredictable in the Northern Tablelands, with freak frosts starting early and finishing late. But that's not the main trouble, it's the quality of the soil, at least outside the kitchen garden proper. Under a thin layer of topsoil, it's a mixture of large patches of impermeable, badly-drained clay--or rock! The kitchen garden is different, as not only was it a patch that had a bit more topsoil, but over the years David's built it up with plenty of compost, mulch, and horse and sheep manure into a rich deep matetial that now grows pretty much whatever he wants(although very deep-rooted things still have a bit of a struggle.) But in the orchard it's been a constant battle to keep the trees not only alive but doing anything other than grow sluggishly and produce lots of leaf but no fruit. This year's seen a real change, with lots of fruit appearing--and the olives have been no exception.

The first olive tree(a Verdale, incidentally) was planted on top of a sub-soil rocky ridge which is why it's managed to survive despite its many struggles; the second survives because it's over a drain, the third no doubt will for the same reason. Anyway, it's the first tree, the gnarly old survivor, that's done us proud this year again--though because there wasn't as much sun as usual this summer, because of the long periods of rainy and overcast weather we've had over months now, the cold weather--and the first of the big frosts--started early before the fruit had a change to completely ripen, so David had to pick them green and not black like last time. We love green olives too though, and these, succulent and fleshy though small are particularly delicious.

It's quite a palaver, the whole olive-preparation thing. I'd never really realised before we started doing it that you most certainly can't eat olives straight off the tree--they are very bitter, and that bitterness has to be extracted with a caustic soda solution(and then the olives are washed over and over very thoroughly for a week before putting them in brine.)We've got a fabulous book called Preserving the Italian Way, written and self-published by Italo-Australian writer Pietro Demaio--it's very highly recommended for all kinds of tips and recipes for doing everything from curing olives to making sausage and bottling artichokes etc--you can read about it and order it at http://www.preservingtheitalianway.com.au/ It's also a lovely warm, individual sort of book with memoir and ancedote mixed in with the recipes. We used the methods described in that to cure the olives. (You do have to be pretty careful.)

Anyway, we've got a big bucketful of brined olives now and yesterday I began to bottle some of the harvest, taking some of the fruit out of the brine in which it's been sitting for over a week now and putting them in jars with olive oil, garlic, thyme, pepper and a little lemon peel. I want to try out other mixtures for others--maybe with chillis, for instance, or with balsamic vinegar, or with different herbs, or maybe some just dry-salted. Though I love green olives stuffed with anchovies, I don't think I'll try that with these--the olives are too small, the stone too tight in the centre of the flesh. But there's so many other ways to eat them--and so many aperitifs and entrees that they'll enliven for the next few months!

Home-made millas: Toulouse cornmeal fritters

Corn and maize are rarely found in French cuisine--maize is mostly considered 'pig food' and sweet corn is practically unknown(more's the pity for French people; we always love it when it's sweet corn season in our garden!). But there's one area of France where maize has a much better press, and that's in the south-west, in the Toulouse region. Maize is grown there mostly to feed the region's famous fat geese and ducks, it's true, but it's also widely used for a variety of traditional dishes, from the rich, golden, moist cake, Gateau de Mais to the ubiquitous millas or cornmeal fritters which appear on restaurant menus, on home dinner tables and can be bought in readymade squares, ready-to-fry in traiteurs and bakeries and markets in Toulouse and its region.

Millas are versatile: they can be eaten with both sweet and savoury things: they are delicious as a side-dish with duck magrets(as Camille had in her recipe)or lamb or pork or indeed any kind of meat. They are also delicious served as a sweet snack or dessert, fried golden and sprinkled with sugar or honey or whatever you like. They are best hot but are also pretty nice cold, if you have leftovers.

Millas are not difficult to make from scratch, but they do take some time to prepare, which is why many people in France buy them ready-made(they are usually excellent, incidentally.) But of course you can't buy them here in Australia--at least certainly not in our country region!--so having had a sudden craving for millas the other day, I had to make mine from scratch, with the invaluable advice of Ginette Mathiot's I Know how to Cook, which I wrote about in my last post. (She has lots of recipes for classic regional basics like that which most other cookbooks simply do not have.)

The millas you buy in Toulouse is made from white maize meal, finely ground; as I could not get that here, mine had to be made with the readily-available polenta, or yellow maizemeal(pretty finely-ground also). I had no idea if it would turn out or not but I wanted to give it a go. And it did turn out really well, despite the fact my millas didn't look at all like the tidy pale squares I remember from childhood, when Maman used to buy them at the markets in l'Isle-Jourdain near our place in the Toulousain countryside. Intensely yellow and rather untidy, these frangourou millas were nevertheless delicious and went superlatively well with the lamb in tomato and red pepper and basil sauce I had made. And despite the difference in maize meal, they tasted pretty much as millas ought to, as well--a minor miracle in itself!

Here's how to make them(proportions are for two people): Take 90 g polenta meal(the finest grade you can find), 150 ml boiling water, 150 ml milk, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon butter, a pinch salt. First mix the polenta with a little water to make a paste, then add the rest of the water and cook till polenta has absorbed all the water and become stiff(takes about 10 mins).You need to stir it all the time--do not let it burn. Add the milk and egg, beat thorougly till well-mixed, then add butter and keep cooking over low heat till the mixture is like a ball of dough(or something like choux pastry) and comes away from sides and bottom of pan. Take it off the heat, let cool a little then shape into either circles or squares or any other shape you want--mine were a little crumbly at the edges so the shapes weren't exactly perfect, but the dough kept together well still. Fry in hot oil till very golden and crisp on outside. Serve hot, a little salted and peppered, as a side dish with meat and sauce(or vegetables)or as a simple dessert--sprinkled with sugar or served with honey, maple syrup, etc. You can also have them sugared, with whipped cream on top.

The charm of Ginette Mathiot

One of the many lovely presents I got for my birthday this year was the English-language edition of the classic French home cookbook, Ginette Mathiot's Je sais cuisiner(I Know how to Cook), which my three wonderful grown-up children, Pippa, Xavier and Bevis gave me. It's a huge tome, which covers absolutely everything you could possibly want to know, and is written in a direct, charming and unpretentious manner. Nothing is assumed and yet no-one is talked down to. It was first published in 1932, and hasn't been out of print since. Generations of French home cooks have grown up with it, and kids are given it as a leaving-home present.

Ginette(Genevieve was her real first --Ginette being her nickname) was only twenty-five and a home economics teacher when she was asked by a publisher to compile a book of recipes that would be of use both to young people starting out and for more mature home cooks looking for more ideas. Actually it's more like a combination of cookbook and cooking encyclopedia! The freshness of her style and the fact her recipes can indeed be within the range of beginners as well as those more experienced, have assured the book's longevity. There are recipes for everything from making your own chestnut puree from scratch to how to boil the perfect egg, from the most spectacular of cakes to the simplest sauce, and it is also remarkably well-organised and carefully explained yet not in the least bit precious. There's also advice on wines, table settings, menu planning and more, and lots of mouth-watering photographs. This lovely English-language edition by Phaidon Books also features menus and recipes from celebrated French chefs practising around the world, including our very own Guillaume Brahimi from Bennelong restaurant at the Sydney Opera House!

Anyway I've always heard lots about this book but this is the first time I've owned a copy--and how much I'm enjoying trying out new things and cooking up variations on old themes. And you can adapt Ginette's recipes very easily to your individual needs and likes and as the inspiration strikes you--there's nothing of the precious 'don't change a grain of salt' feeling about her work, which suits me just fine as I'm constitutionally resistant to following orders!

Here's a couple of (adapted) very simple and delicious recipes of hers I cooked recently, which worked brilliantly:

Fresh mushroom soup (serves two)shown in foreground of photo:

Ingredients: 1/2 kilo small field mushrooms, couple sprigs fresh thyme(dried thyme can also be used),a little butter, some chives, chopped, salt,pepper, chicken or vegetable stock, 100 ml cream, a tablespoon cornflour or potato flour or rice flour, 1 egg yolk.

Slice most of the mushrooms thinly, reserving some for putting later in the soup as decoration. Fry the sliced mushrooms in butter, add half the chopped herbs, then salt, pepper, chicken stock. Simmer for about fifteen minutes, then blend soup till smooth(or mash with a masher). Beat the egg yolk into the cream, dissolve the flour in the liquid(there should be no lumps) and add to the soup blend, stirring through on stove till well-blended and thickening. Separately fry the remaining mushrooms(sliced) and add to the soup, stirring through with remaining bits of herbs. Serve. It's absolutely delicious the day it's made but is even better the day after!

Perch fillets in a milk anchovy sauce(I've adapted this from a couple of recipes of hers--so you won't find that title in the book!)--photo of dish just behind the soup. Also serves two.

Ingredients: To poach fish: 4 small ocean perch fillets, a little butter, court-bouillon(I use a French court-bouillon stock cube for this but you can make a version using some sliced onion fried in butter, with a little splash of white wine added, salt, pepper, tarragon or thyme, and some water, boiled together and then a squeeze of lemon juice in it.) For milk anchovy sauce: a tablespoon soft butter, some finely chopped parsley, pepper, about five or six flat anchovy fillets, crushed, one garlic clove, crushed, a little more butter for the roux, teaspoon flour(wheat or rice or cornflour etc), some milk.

Melt a little butter in pan, quickly sear fish then add the court-bouillon liquid to just cover the fish. Simmer. It only needs to cook for about 7 mins or so. Meanwhile make some anchovy butter with the crushed anchovies, garlic, parsley, pepper, mashed into the butter. Make a roux, melting the butter, adding the flour, and then the milk till nice and thick. Take off stove, and add the anchovy butter to the milk sauce, stirring well till the butter has melted and everything is all blended in. Serve on top of the fish.

(I served the fish with carrots cooked in a little stock too and some sweet and sour red cabbage, which worked very well. But it'll go with pretty much anything you like--good mashed potato made with waxy spuds would be lovely for instance.)

Family recipes 6: David's beautiful 'Russe-style' special occasion cake

Whenever we went back to Biarritz, when I was a kid, and were taken on one of our favourite outings, to the wonderful Dodin patisserie, I would always ask for the same cake: a 'Russe', or'Russian'. This wonderful cake, made of hazelnut or almond meringue, layered with butter cream that was either flavoured with coffee or hazelnut, tasted like a slice of heaven to me, with its combination of breautiful crunchy meringue and lusciously smooth flavourful butter cream. It's a cake you only ever find in patisseries in the South of France, and only in the south-west at that--you never see it in the patisseries of Paris, or anywhere else in France. So you could get it in Toulouse and Biarritz but not Marseille, for instance. I didn't know why it was called a 'Russe'. Later, I heard that originally it was made with the best almonds imported from Crimea. But now I think that it must have been in fact a kind of adaptation of a beautiful Russian meringue cake called 'Swallow's Nest'--and though I'm not sure who first devised it, I'd hazard a guess its origin might be in Biarritz, which was full of Russian exiles after 1917. Dodin's Patisserie has been going since the 19th century and though it lays claim to being the originator of the famous (and delicious)chocolate cake, the 'Beret Basque'(so-called because its shape ressembles the famous Basque headgear) it does not claim to have birthed the Russe, though its examples were always wonderful. (By the way, if you want to drool over some of Dodin's beauties, here is their website: http://www.dodin.eu/ )

Anyway to get back to my Russe, it's something that I not only loved in childhood but now too. But I always thought I had to wait to get back to South-west France to indulge in it again. I thought it would be one of those sorts of cakes that would be too difficult to pull off for a home cook and so each birthday in Australia, I'd put in a request for my second-favourite cake, the Gateau Moka. This is also a gorgeous cake--a Genoise sponge layered with coffee butter cream, and David, my husband, has made it superlatively well for many years. But a Gateau Moka is not easy to make too far ahead of time and transport and as my birthday was going to be in Sydney this year, I knew I'd have to think again. I remembered seeing the 'Swallow's Nest' cake in the Russian cookbook we bought in Moscow and thought, how about that, and then started thinking, that sounds a bit like a 'Russe'--and then David said, well, meringue's much easier to make ahead of time, why don't I have a go at a Russe? He made me describe it and started looking up recipes--and then made his own version which turned out spectacularly well and which proved a huge hit at the birthday party!

Here's his recipe for a beautiful 'Davidov' which I think I'll dub his version of the 'Russe'! And it shows that a home cook can indeed pull off a Russe as well as any patissier--all my siblings, who'd tasted the 'real' Russes, agreed that it reproduced exactly the look and texture and flavours we all loved at Dodin's!

The various bits of the Davidov cake can be made well ahead of time--several days ahead in fact. If you do that you need to conserve the meringue in an airtight tin and the coffee butter cream in the fridge. As the butter cream will harden in the fridge, you'll need to warm it up slightly when you are assembling the cake, or you'll break the meringue. This cake will serve up to 15 people. (It did at the party anyway!)

Ingredients for meringue layers and individual meringue rosettes for decoration: 10 egg whites, 400 g castor sugar, 2 tablespoons cornflour, 150 g hazelnut meal. You will also need, for decoration on last meringue layer, some crushed roasted hazelnuts.

Method: Beat egg whites till stiff, add sugar bit by bit, beating well after each addition till you get a beautiful glossy meringue. Mix cornflour and hazelnut meal together, fold into meringue mix. On one greased or baking-papered tray, pipe some meringue rosettes for decoration; on another two or three, the meringue layers(this one had three layers). Bake in a slow oven(150 C) for an hour or so, till done(biscuit-coloured and reasonably dry.)

Ingredients for coffee butter cream: 6 egg yolks, 450 g butter(David used a mixture of 300 g unsalted, 150 g salted, but you can use just unsalted if you like), 2/3 cup castor sugar, 1/2 cup hazelnut syrup(or light corn syrup, or pure maple syrup--David used the hazelnut syrup--Monin from France which can be used to flavour coffee etc), coffee essence or make your own as David did with 2 tablespoons instant coffee and two tablespoons boiling water--it should be a thick gooey mixture--you can also use a small amount of strong espresso).

Method: Dissolve the sugar in the syrup in a pan on stove. Take off stove and let cool a little. Meanwhile beat egg yolks till pale and foamy. Little by little, mix the warm(but not hot)sweet syrup into the egg mixture. When you have incorporated it all, cut the butter into small pieces and add to the mixture, beating in well so butter melts and makes a thick cream(you can make this in the food processor if you have one.) The cream can now be used if you are putting together the cake or it can go in fridge till you put the cake together. (Remember to warm it before use.)

Putting cake together: Put the first layer of nut meringue on the plate, spread with some of the butter cake. Layer the next round of meringue, repeat, till you have used up the meringue layers and most of the butter cream(but keep some for the top and maybe the sides if you want. On the last layer, spread the rest of the butter cream, and decorate with the meringue rosettes and crushed roasted hazelnuts.

Birthday menu

I celebrated my birthday in Sydney with all the family last week, it was a lovely day even if a bit cold. And the menu was sumptuous--and a joint effort between all of us! Here's what we had:

Aperitifs:

Selection prosciuttos, salamis, olives and lots more. Thank you, Bertrand and Margot!

Entrees:

Home-made houmous with fresh bread. This was made by my younger son Bevis, it had a beautiful tangy flavour and lovely smooth texture.

Georgian(Caucasus)-style braised eggplants with pomegranate seeds. This was made by my sister Camille(who learned it from Georgian friends): the eggplant was sliced and braised in an electric wok with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and the pomegranates seeded and served with the eggplant on the plate. A gorgeous contrast of flavour, texture and colour.

Home made tuna ceviche with Nundle smoked trout and Nundle smoked trout pate. This was made by me(at least the ceviche! I bought the Nundle trout things--absolutely delicious. I made the ceviche with fresh tuna, sliced thinly and then simply marinaded in lemon juice, salt and pepper for a couple of hours. If you prefer, you can also leave it overnight--the tuna will then go completely white.

Prawns. Just served as is!

Selection of wonderful French cheeses. Served with water-crackers. Thank you, Pippa!

Main courses:

Pickled pork slow-cooked in a cranberry and brandy sweet and sour sauce. I made this, it's a Russian-influenced dish which can be cooked the night before and then reheated the next day(increases the flavour.) I simply braise a piece of pickled pork(from butcher or supermarket)in some butter, sear it all over then add pepper, herbs(I use tarragon or sage but you can experiment), splash brandy, cognac, armagnac or whisky over it, reduce, add the cranberries(I use dried) and then (meat or herb)stock to go up to about half of the piece of meat. Put a lid tight on, simmer for about 30 minutes, then add cranberry juice if you want or cranberry jelly, some brown sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Taste(it should be rich and a little tangy.) Keep cooking slowly for another 45 minutes or so so meat is very tender. Add a little more brandy if necessary. If you are cooking it early and reheating, do this when you reheat, along with a touch more cranberry juice if you want. Take the pork out, slice it, reduce the sauce till thick then return the pork to the dish and warm through.

Roast chicken. Simply roasted by Louis with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Filipino-style Pancit(see Fran's recipe in previous post.)

Sauteed potatoes with garlic and parsley. Camille made these, they are thickly sliced, and cooked in electric wok slowly in olive oil and butter till they get a lovely melting texture.

Big bowl salad with lots of different ingredients.

Cake:

My birthday cake, on special request, was a spectacular home made 'Russe' style cake of hazelnut meringue layered with coffee butter cream--my husband David's creation, which I'll write about at length in the next post!

Bought Black Forest Gateau(which everyone was too full to do more than nibble at the edges!)

Washed down with champagne or at least 'blanquette' style sparkling wine, and various other wines. A fantastic gourmet meal, and a beautiful day, thanks to all!

Vegan and Gluten Free Trifle

Toby become an Australian citizen last week, we didn't intend to do anything special but friends of ours very kindly insisted on having dinner to celebrate and hosted an Aussie themed BBQ in his honour. I made thetvp burgers (mentioned in previous post), BBQ tofu and this:

Vegan and Gluten Free Trifle

I remembered how awesome Vicky's gf sponge cake was so tried to replicate it, unfortunately my oven temperature dropped and then I tried to turn it up and it resulted in a slightly weird overcooked hard cake. I doubled this recipe which might also be part of the problem. The original cake recipe is from Cooking with Diva:

115gm vegan spread (I used nuttelex)
115gm gluten free self raising flour (I used the orgran brand)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 egg replacers (read back of box for instructions)
115 gm unrefined caster sugar

Cream the vegan spread, extract and caster sugar together.
Slowly add in the egg replacers and mix in with the vegan spread and sugar.
Meanwhile sift the flour twice and slowly fold into the mixture.
Stir together until nice and creamy.
Split the batter evenly between to 6″ sandwich tins. (I doubled the batter and used one large cake tin)
Bake at 180°C (356°F) for 20 minutes.
Turn out on cooling rack.

Let cake cool then cut into pieces and place in bottom of bowl (I used a large glass mixing bowl).

Peach Layer:
Drain 825 gram of peach slice and reserve 3 tablespoons of juice to pour over. Place on top of cake pieces.

Jelly Layer
1 packet of gf vegan raspberry jelly
Make jelly, let cool and when alost set pour over peach slices and refrigerate until fully set

Custard Layer
3 tablespoons Orgran gluten-free custard powder
650ml rice or soy milk
3tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Mix the custard powder with 4 tablespoons of the milk to make a smooth paste. Add the sugar. Heat the remaining milk until it is almost boiling, pour it over the custard blend and mix. Return the custard to the pan and heat, stirring until it has thickened.Add vanilla essence. Cool completely. Pour on top of jelly.

Cream Layer:
2 cartons of soyatoo cream
grated chocolate (optional)

Whisk cream and then use spatula to smooth cream on top, sprinkle shaved chocolate.

It is quite a time consuming dish to make and since the dinner was midweek I made it over 3 nights. I also had lots of issues, firstly the cake was not great which I suspect was due to my changes or my oven and then the first batch of custard was gross but all together it was fine. Cindy and Michael made some pies and pavlova cups and the hosts Troy and Bec made some vegemite and cheezly toasted sandwiches and bought some gf vegan tim tams.

Family recipes 5: Francia's 'pancit' and 'kare-kare'

My sister in law Francia, who's married to my younger brother Louis-Xavier, comes originally from the Philippines, from a small village called Bulong Gubat Candabba, about one and a half hour's drive west of Manila. But she's now a proud 'Filiroo', having lived in Sydney, Australia with my brother for many years. Whenever we go to their place, we are treated to her delicious repertoire of Filipino recipes, adapted for Australian conditions. Here's a couple she's passed on to try out, which are both easy and very tasty.

Pancit (illustrated in photos)

(literally, the name of this dish means, 'noodle'--the name is based on the Chinese-style parcooked noodle popular in the Philippines and known as pancit Canton which forms the base of the dish--you can see it above. But any kind of similar parcooked Chinese noodle can be used)

Serves 6-8 people.

Ingredients: One onion, chopped; 2 garlic cloves, chopped fine; 1/2 kilo chicken breast fillet, cut into thin strip pieces; one packet pancit Canton or similar parcooked golden-coloured Chinese noodle; some chopped vegetables: whatever you want, but mostly cabbage, carrot, broccoli, etc are used. Also some strips red capsicum(pepper) and handful snow peas, if desired for decoration at end; some chicken stock; olive oil for cooking(Fran notes this isn't traditional Filipino but since marrying a frangaroo, she's really taken to olive oil and thinks it adds extra taste to the dish!); salt and pepper; soya sauce.

Method: In a wok, cook onion and garlic in the olive oil till soft, add chicken strips, then chopped vegetables, stir well to cook, add seasoning, a little soya sauce. Now add the noodles(do not pre-cook them or wash them)to the mixture, add chicken stock and let it simmer, covered, till the noodles are soft and everything is cooked through(vegs shouldn't be soft though but still a little crunchy). Add a little soya sauce if you think it needs it(but not too much.)If wanted, you can serve this with some very quickly stir-fried red capsicum and snow peas on top, to add colour.

Kare-kare

Ingredients: Some oxtail or osso bucco; oil; water; salt and pepper; vegetables--cabbage carrot etc, or whatever else you want; 'kare-kare' spice mix(Fran advises paprika can be a good substitute, mixed with peanut butter dissolved with beef stock from the oxtail.)

Method: Fry the oxtail quickly till brown, then add salt, pepper and water. Simmer till tender. When cooked, drain the stock(keep to use later.). Fry the vegs, then add to the beef, add some stock, and then the 'kare-kare' mix. Serve with rice and shrimp paste.

Gluten Free Lifestyle Bakery Giveaway

Lifestyle Bakery kindly offered to send me some of their products to sample and to offer an extra package to one of you lucky readers. All of these products featured here are both gluten free and vegan. Toby was impressed that there wasn't any weird preservatives in these products too.

The first product that I tried was their mulitgrain buns, you can eat them plain but I preferred them toasted. We chose to eat them with vegan sloppy joes. The buns kind of reminded me of damper, although it has been a long time since I had damper. They did become a little soggy after a while but had a good taste. Whilst I enjoyed them, this was probably my least favourite product but then I'm yet to have a gf bun that I have thought was close to regular buns, I guess it's one of the harder gf things to replicate. I used to prefer crusty buns whereas gf buns tend to be quite soft.

Next up I tried their award winning chia seed toast. I was relieved to discover that all of their breads were already sliced since most gf bread are not and I hate slicing bread. This was my favourite. I decided to make a toasted sandwich out of it using tomatoes and cheezly. It went a nice golden brown, was not tiny like other gf toast, had a pleasant flavour, was quite filling and as an added bonus chia seeds are healthy! I will certainly be buying this again.

Next up was the plain white toast, this was slightly burnt (my fault), but I was pleased to see that it could go so brown as other varieties of gluten free bread struggle to go brown and have that lovely toasted texture. This did closely resemble the taste of regular white toast although had a slightly different texture inside, basically it crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside but that's not an unpleasant thing. It is mostly made of maize, soya, potato and rice flour. Doesn't it look like regular white toast?

I was so excited about the pizza bases, we tried it with shredded smoked tofu, tomato paste, pineapple and cheezly. This was probably my second fave of their products.

The texture was quite bready, like a thick pizza base and again quite filling and without any unusual weird flavour. Toby and I agreed that we preferred this to other gf pizza bases we have tried at home.

Next up I used the bread crumbs to make these tvp burgers (replacing the flour with a mixture of bread crumbs and chickpea flour). I wasn't a massive fan of the burger pattie flavours but thought that the bread crumbs worked and tasted pretty similar to regular breadcrumbs. This one pictured had bread crumbs inside, but the others had extra breadcrumbs on the outside and BBQed well (more on that later).

Lastly I tried the fruit toast. I'm not a huge fan of fruit toast but this had a nice subtle cinnamon flavour and again was super filling, I only needed 2 slices to fill me up.At first I just had it with margarine (nuttelex) but when I run out tried it with coconut oil which worked really well with the flavours.

To enter the giveaway all you have to do:

Like the Lifestyle Bakery page on facebook and/or twitter
Leave a comment here answering the question: what is your favourite sandwich filling? and telling me which page you have liked/followed.
Winner will be announced on Sunday 29th May night so you have until Sunday 29th at 1pm (eastern standard time) to enter.
Entries restricted to people in Australia.

And number generator decided that comment 20: Maree is the winner.

I will forward your email address to lifestyle bakery so they can arrange to send you your package. Congrats!

Premier's dinners!

Small diversion from my usual posts today, as it's the day after the NSW Premier's Literary Awards dinner at which I learned to my thrilled amazement that my 2010 novel, The Hunt for Ned Kelly(Scholastic) had won the Patricia Wrightson Prize, which is the children's literature section of the Awards. A most wonderful moment, I'm so thrilled, for myself, for the book, and for my wonderful agent, publishers, editor, publicist, and dearest husband who had to put up with me rabbiting on about Ned Kelly for months on end! And thank you to the fantastic judges who gave me the best moment of my literary life!

Anyway--a food angle on this is a short report on the dinner we had, which was pretty nice, actually--I had an entree of a cheese and celeriac souffle with candied beetroot--great combination of flavours and textures and colour--David had the alternative entree, which was a lovely leek and potato and bacon soup. I then had roast salmon on a very nice mash with good vegies as well(by this stage was getting a bit distracted!!)and a mixed leaf salad, while David had the alternative, roast small medallions of beef, nicely cooked, with good vegies as well. Dessert were tiny Eccles cakes and something else which I'm afraid I've forgotten as I only glimpsed them going past as I had to get on the stage with the rest of the winners to have our photo opportunity with the Premier! Wine flowed in rivers and there were some good nibblies beforehand, seared scallops in a nice sauce served on individual china soup spoons. A good atmosphere in the Opera House Point marquee--very friendly and convivial and not at all pretentious. A gorgeous view of the Harbour all lit up but some noisy big ferries and cruise boats going past on occasion! A wonderful night.

Family recipes 4: Alexis' passionfruit 'floating island' dessert

My nephew Alexis Braconnier, youngest son of my sister Beatrice(whose recipes I profiled in the previous post)is only 20, but has already gone a long way in his cooking career. Trained at chef school in Toulouse, he's worked at celebrity hotel the Byblos in Saint Tropez and this year featured in the Top Chef TV cooking show and competition which is only open to professional chefs. By far the youngest of the Top Chef line-up, Alexis rapidly became a great favourite with TV audiences, for his imaginative flair in cooking, good looks and natural, unpretentious manner, and when he was eliminated from the show, still had the votes of a great many members of the public! His public profile has shown no sign of abating since then, and he's appeared a good deal in the French media. There's plans now of him being offered his own TV cooking show, and writing a cookbook.

For this post, Alexis has passed on one of his dessert recipes, which isn't only delicious, but easy to make as well: his re-imagining of the traditional French dessert, 'ile flottante' or 'floating island' where a snowy caramelised meringue floats on a custard sea. This one uses passionfruit and the lovely French caramels, 'carambars' to great effect. (Carambars are traditional, individually wrapped caramel sweets whose wrappers include silly, often lame jokes that have passed into the vernacular: a 'blague carambar' or 'carambar joke' means a particularly lame one that's so lame it's sort of cool! If you can't get 'caramabars' substitute another types of caramel sweets, perhaps even caramel fudge.)Ingredients:

6 eggs.

100 g castor sugar

150 g icing sugar

4 passionfruit

2 vanilla beans(could substitute vanilla essence if you don't have these, but the beans have a more delicate flavour)

750 ml milk.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together till thick and pale. Add vanilla beans to milk and bring to boiling point. Take off stove, add egg yolk and sugar mixture and stir through then return to heat for 3 minutes. Scoop the flesh from the passionfruit, stir in. Beat the egg whites till stiff, add icing sugar and beat till glossy. Place egg white mix in dish in microwave, cook for 10 seconds on high heat, take out and slide onto custard which you have placed into a serving bowl. Melt the caramels in the oven on baking paper(this should be done before you do the egg whites)and dribble the liquid caramel on the meringue so it sets in a crackly sort of way. If you prefer, you can do the traditional caramel: sugar and a little water melted over gentle heat till it goes golden, then dribbled over meringue. Serve.

Malai Kofta

I made this the other day and it is my new favourite Indian dish to make at home. The balls are great, the sauce is great and together it is kind of magnificent. The following day I had it at work and had multiple people ask what the yummy smell was. I substituted cumin for cumin seeds and left out the cilantro but it was still damn tasty. I was particularly amazed with the tangy sauce, which I think is quite similar to other Indian tangy sauces. The only downside was Toby's comment that there is no protein so I mixed some beans into the sauce (after the photo). We will certainly be making this again!

Malai Kofta by happyveganface:

kofta balls:
3 small russet potatoes, boiled until cooked through
½ yellow onion, diced
3 cloves o’ garlic, crushed & minced
¼“ ginger, peeled & chopped
3 green onions, very finely chopped (white & green parts!)
big ‘ol handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
2 slices ‘o gluten-free bread
¼ cup raw cashew pieces
2 tsp safflower oil
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp sea salt
¼ tsp garam masala
pinch of cayenne pepper

malai kofta gravy:
2 large tomatoes, finely diced
6 mushrooms, finely diced
3 big cloves o’ garlic, crushed & minced
½ yellow onion, finely diced
½ bell pepper, finely diced
½ cup veggie broth
¼ cup coconut milk (or any non-diary milk)
2 tbsp chickpea flour
2 tsp safflower oil
1 tsp toasted ground coriander
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp turmeric
¼ tsp sea salt
juice from ½ a lime
handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
handful of fresh parsley, chopped
Start with the potato balls: in one skillet toast up those cumin seeds & cashews on medium heat. set aside. place the 2 tsp of oil in the other skillet and heat to medium and sauté the onions and ginger until the onions become clear. add the garlic to the onions and sauté for another minute. add the remaining spices for the kofta balls and let it cook for another minute. remove the spiced onion mix from the stove & transfer to the food processor. add to the food processor those toasted cashew pieces & cumin seeds, slices of gluten-free bread, and cilantro. whiz it up until it’s pretty well combined then transfer the whole mess o’ yum to the large mixing bowl (which you could use to smash up those potatoes) & add the smashed potatoes & green onions. combine well & adjust seasonings to taste. form a bunch ‘o walnut sized balls and place them on the baking sheet that’s been spritzed with a little cooking spray. bake the kofta balls on 350 (no need to preheat) for 20 minutes. turn them over & bake another 10. while your balls are baking get your gravy on!

In the medium pot, on medium heat, sauté the onions, bell pepper, mushrooms & garlic until the onions become soft (don’t let them brown). add in the spices & sauté for another minute. toss in the chopped tomatoes & veggie broth. bring everything to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat – simmer for 10 minutes. uncover, add the coconut milk, and whisk in the chickpea flour. toss in the cilantro, parsley and lime juice, adjust seasonings to taste, and set aside.

To serve: ladle gravy over kofta balls & enjoy!

Family recipes 3: Beatrice's stuffed cabbage and cassoulet

These wonderful winter rib-stickers are from the kitchen of my sister Beatrice, who lives in a big, beautiful old house called La Colombelle which she's restored herself with great taste and imagination, in a lovely little village in the south-western French countryside, near Castelnaudary. The very recent photo, above, shows the courtyard at her place, with the table laid for a meal. She also runs a 'gite' or self-catering accomodation in part of the house and can also on occasion be persuaded, as an extra, to make some of these delicious dishes for guests!(see http://http//www.toprural.co.uk/Self-catering/La-Colombelle_43045_f.html )
And now here are two of her signature dishes:

Chou farci(stuffed cabbage)
First, in a tureen or casserole dish I blanch one whole(smallish) green cabbage.
Then I prepare the stuffing:
Mix sausage mince(or minced pork), chopped onion, garlic, herbs(thyme, sage, parsley are good), plus one egg to bind it together.
I unpeel each blanched cabbage leaf and put a bit of stuffing on it, then fold back to form a parcel.Then I put the parcels back in the casserole dish, wet the whole thing up with coconut milk(this takes away a too-strong 'cabbagey' taste and makes the dish particularly unctuous), and add sliced carrots and potatoes to the dish. The whole is simmered, covered, on the stove for about 1 hour. I serve two little parcels per person--this is a fantastic dish in winter!

Next is my 'cassoulet façon Béa '
(Note from Sophie: Cassoulet is a famous local peasant dish, of which there are many variants. Bea's version, which is simple to prepare and saves a lot of time, achieved national fame in France recently when her youngest son Alexis, a talented chef, featured with great success on the TV cooking show Top Chef, and cited it several times as one of the dishes that inspired him to take up cooking for a living! I will feature one of Alexis' recipes in a future post.)
The day before you want to cook the cassoulet, soak some white haricot beans. The next day, melt some duck fat in a tureen, add chopped onions, leeks, carrots. Add the beans, some crushed garlic, herbs(thyme, rosemary, parsley or variants), then cover with stock--chicken is best and cook till beans are tender. Half-way through the cooking of the beans, add some duck thighs, some pork belly, and some white wine. Just before the beans are completely tender, take them off the stove, put in an ovenproof dish(earthenware is best),add some sausage(Toulouse sausage is ideal, if you can't get that, try Italian sausage),add grilled 'pain de campagne' or breadcrumbs on top and put in oven to go golden. There needs to be a good amount of juice(from the cooking) in the dish and for it to be perfect I usually break the bread crust several times and then let it reform. But make sure the beans do not 'mash' at all!
Take out when golden and bubbling. Serve with a good red wine!
Bon appetit!

Family recipes 2: Pippa's pork and garlic chive wonton soup

This scrumptious recipe is from the repertoire of my daughter Pippa, literary agent extraordinaire, all-round gorgeous girl--and fabulous cook!
Ingredients:

Soup
1 L good chicken stock, either homemade or Campbells Real Stock
1 tbs of finely grated ginger
2 grated garlic cloves
¼ cup fish sauce
1 tsp brown sugar
2 tbs soy sauce
Dash chilli oil
Vegetable oil or rice bran oil to cook with
Asian greens and/or asian cabbage, shredded
Chopped chilli and coriander to serve

Wontons
Wonton wrappers (available from Asian grocer stores or even some Coles now)
250-300g pork mince
Garlic chives, finely chopped
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs Shaoxing cooking wine
Dash of sesame oil

Combine the pork, garlic chives, soy, shaoxing and sesame oil together in a bowl and leave to marinate for 20-30 mins.
Whilst marinating start working on your soup base.
Sautee the ginger and garlic in a heavy based pan with some oil.
Once soft and fragrant, add fish sauce, soy sauce and brown sugar.
When simmering, add the stock and bring to the boil. Then turn down to a gentle simmer.
Now, make your wontons!
Spoon a teaspoon worth of pork mixture in the middle of each wonton wrapper, then wet the edges gently, fold across and pinch. Then fold around to form wonton shape (picture above).
Place wontons in your simmering soup mixture and cook for 3-5 minutes. They’ll start coming to the surface when they’re ready.
Quickly add in your asian greens/and or cabbage to blanch as well as the dash of chilli oil.
Serve topped with chillis and coriander!

Family recipes 1: Camille's duck breasts in salt crust with a juniper flavour

This is the first of a series that I want to run on the blog: favourite family recipes, contributed by different members of the family. The first is my sister Camille's gorgeous recipe for magrets de canard en croute de sel parfumee au genievre, duck breasts cooked in salt crust pastry with a juniper flavour. Camille's a fantastic cook and can whip up the most delicious and imaginative meals in a trice; this is one she developed while living for a long time in the beautiful countryside near Carcassonne in southern France. That's her at her kitchen window in the old house where she used to live. (She's

Camille's magrets de canard en croute de sel parfume au genievre.

Make a special pastry (that will not be eaten ) with 200g flour,a handful of whole juniper berries, bruised,3 egg whites and a tablespoon of rock salt. Make into a pastry. Line a terrine with half of this mix to make the bottom shell.

Grill your magrets(duck breasts) for 10 minutes to get most of the fat off. Then let them cool down, add lots of freshly ground pepper.Place them carefully into the pastry, then cover the top with other half of the pastry.

Make a few top holes to let some steam out.
Leave in oven for about 30 minutes. Then serve the whole dish and crack the pastry open before the guests. Serve with millas(polenta cake--polenta and water and salt made into a stiff dough, then cut into squares and fried) and a pissenlit(dandelion) and rocket salad.

Veggie Kitchen- G/F Banquet 2

The famous JP and flux from vegan fitness visited Melbour recently which was a great excuse to visit Vegie Kitchen. Toby and I attended with about a dozen others including the uproar guys and a few Melbourne vegan strength guys. I've blogged about veggie kitchen a few times, once with the regular menu and once with the gf adaption, this is their new banquet. Once again they were able to provide g/f alternatives with all of the dishes. Many of the dishes were same as previous with a few new ones too. Please excuse my phone photos. Since our last visit I also noticed that they have little v and g symbols on their menu to show what is vegan and gluten free.The banquet costs $28 and is pretty good value, look what I got:

Apple sprout soy milk, this has quite a strong flavour similar to asian style soy milk:

Lettuce delight, I think the only difference is that I get nuts instead of mock meat in mine:

This was probably my favourite course, I can't remeber what each one was called but each one was a different version of mock meat, I loved the one with pineapple but the fishball was also good and I don't even like mock fish.

This was probably the only dissapontment of the night, every else got mock meat with their rice and I had plain rice:

This was similar to the last banquet with tofu and veg covered in tofu skin and a healthy stew. The stew had all sorts of interesting things like gingko nuts and chinese red dates.

For dessert we had the option of a silken tofu red bean dessert or Tang Yuan (sweet rice sweet potato ball) with soy ice cream which I forgot to take a picture of. We had the tofu dessert which I enjoyed but I know it's a bit of an unusual dessert for people who haven't had it before.

See other reviews from vegan about town and wheres the beef.

159 St George Rd

Northcote

Childhood markets, 3: Flemington, western Sydney

Flemington markets, eight o'clock in the morning, 1970's. We've had a long and enervating drive through slow Saturday traffic from our sedate northern suburb to the 'wild west', and now we're in this vast corrugated iron shed, with people shouting, gimlet-eyed bargain hunters running you over with heavily laden trolleys, vegetables squashing underfoot, kids getting lost in the melee...
Maman and Dad both love this place. For Maman, who can 'take or leave' markets when she's in Europe, this is a place that makes her feel she is at home, here in this country that will never be home to her. For Dad, though, the love is there because it's a market, because it's filled with people, with sights, sounds, smells, life to plunge into with gusto, where the colourful noisy swell of multicultural Australia washes over you in a great human wave. For me as a prickly teenager mortified by looking 'different' and by the teasing refusal of our parents to talk English to us in public, it's somewhere that's both relaxing--because here no-one cares a bit if you 'speak foreign' or not but also a bit confronting-- for the same reason. This is a very different Australia to the surfie paradise I imagine my school friends inhabit, and I'm soon overtaken by its vivid atmosphere, forgetting I'm supposed to be trying to be cool in the urge to observe and catalogue and file away things in my head for writing in my notebook later.
There are Italian fruit sellers, Greek olive oil merchants, Turkish sweet-sellers, Anglo vegetable sellers, Arabic souvenir sellers, South American churros vendors, Chinese and Vietnamese greengrocers, Eastern European pickle and smallgoods sellers. There's chickens and ducks and eggs, mounds of fruit and vegetables, carpets and cheap trousers, kebabs and Turkish delight, dried figs and toffee apples. A tiny, very old Chinese woman stops at a stall, prods a vegetable, clucks in annoyance and contempt, while the seller, an enormous brawny fellow with a strong Australian accent calls out indignantly, "Hey, lady! Them's for selling!" Maman and Dad walk rapidly down each aisle, like people possessed, hunting down bargains, while we children drag along in their wake, anxious lest we lose them in the swirling crowds, liking it in some strange, unarticulate way and yet embarassed, too, for here you have to shout and argue and comment and even make loud jokes. There's no mask of reserve, no distance. And so we go along, occasionally clutching at a fallen orange, asking ourselves whether our parents will buy us a toffee apple this time, or whether we'll get an almond biscuit and a sweet black shot of coffee at the Italian cafe, just down the alleyway.