Febfast (aka month of torture) has begun

I am sincerely beginning to question why I decided to embark on this whole non-drinking journey. I am repeating 'Doin' it for the kids' over and over in my head like a crazed, Robbie Williams inspired mantra. For some reason, the image of Corey Delaney keeps popping into my mind; I cling to the hope that the recipients of the drug and alcohol programs I am raising money for are not nearly so aggravatingly smug. Not very charitable, I know. "You're a nice teenager, so you can have my money, whereas you are a git and clearly don't deserve any help".

I put my attitude down to the fact that Febfast has begun and I am feeling its effects; the thought of it hovers around like a nasty puritan waiting to catch me in a sinful act. I am not planning to outline my teetotal experience in great detail here, but if you're interested in a daily update (or would like to donate money for this worthy cause) visit my irritatingly tweely named "Hero Page".

Wish me luck, folks.

Technorati tags:
food blogs food food and drink alcohol Febfast fund raising

Grow your Own: Nana's Zucchini Slice

Something new: I have decided to enter a dish into Grow Your Own, run by Andrea of Andrea's Recipes. I stumbled (happily) upon on this event on the Is my Blog Burning site. For those of you unfamiliar with blogging events (as I was, until rather recently), foodie bloggers from all over the globe publish recipes and then submit or link them to a host site, whose author provides a round up of all entries after the event has closed. Cool, huh? I may never have to buy a cookbook again (although to be honest, that is a rather unlikely consequence of this discovery).

As my regular readers know, we are currently experiencing what can only be described as a zucchini glut, and I have been working feverishly to concoct delicious recipes to reduce the abundant supply. This one is actually an old family favourite; my Nan passed it on to me several years ago, and it continues to grace our table with considerable regularity. I've fiddled with the original a bit, I hope to its benefit.

Ingredients:
400g grated zucchini (excess juice squeezed out) *
1 cup of grated cheddar
4 eggs
1 cup SR flour
just under 1/2 cup olive oil
100g (couple of rashers) of good, smokey bacon, diced
1 onion, diced
seasonal fresh or dried herbs - couple of teaspoons, or to taste
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

To serve:
Tomato Passata (with sautéed garlic and mushrooms - mmm)
shaved parmesan

Directions:
Preheat oven to 190˚c. Grease a large ovenproof dish with olive oil.

Fry off the onion and the bacon until the onion is soft and the bacon a little crispy. Stir through herbs. I like to use dried oregano, but fresh basil works very well. Allow to cool.

Whisk eggs in a large bowl, add flour and oil and stir vigorously (the mix should resemble a thick cake batter). Fold through cheese, onion mixture, grated zucchini and season to taste.

Pour into the dish and place in the oven for approximately 45 minutes, or until the top is golden and cake is cooked through. I prefer to use a high sided casserole or cake tin, but If you are using a shallow dish, reduce the cooking time.

Allow to cool slightly before serving with tomato passata and shaved parmesan.

* This is also delicious with a little bit of grated pumpkin (say, half a cup), which can be cooked off slightly with the onion and bacon.

Serves 4.


Technorati tags:
food blogs food food and drink cooking recipes vegetables kitchen garden gardening blogging events zucchini grow your own

A Month without Alcohol

So I have decided to bite the bullet and try to go for one month (February, being the shortest, of course) without consuming any alcohol. This will be no easy task. I'm doing it for a couple of different reasons; the most important one is that I feel like I should probably drink less, as, incidentally, do many of my friends.
Actually, to clarify that, they don't think I should drink less (although they might after the antics of Kris Kringle Day; now there's an event best forgotten by alcohol-induced amnesia), they think that they themselves should also drink less.

I know it's a killjoy kind of attitude, but I keep having these niggling worries, like the fact that liver damage, not to mention the dreaded alcoholism, can creep up on you, and that each glass of wine kills thousands of my finite number of brain cells... just minor concerns, really.

Being a person of extremely limited willpower, I decided that it would be really hard to commit to this decision unless I added another element. So I've signed up to Febfast, a fund raising campaign tackling teenage alcohol and drug addiction. Participants pay a registration fee (there's my commitment) and seek sponsors to encourage their abstinence efforts. I figure the more sponsors I attract, the less likely I am to succumb to the power of a nice bottle of red. Or white. Or beer. Etc.

If you would like to support my efforts (or to sign up for Febfast yourself) click this link.

Technorati tags:
food blogs food food and drink alcohol febfast fund raising

Beef Stroganoff

Okay, so I know that it’s not really Beef Stroganoff weather (or ‘Beef Strongenough’, so named by one reader of the Jamie Oliver forum) right now, but just before Christmas, Melbourne threw down one of those characteristic wet and cold patches that make you want to yank the Le Creuset out of hibernation and crank up the electric blanky.

It was during this wild week that I happened to catch an autumn episode of Jamie at Home, and found myself salivating as he prepared a fetchingly dark and succulent Beef Strog. Big chunks of meat, garlic, onions, mushrooms and the seemingly out of place pickled gherkins to go with the usual sour cream and parsley sauce. I wasn’t sure about the gherkins, but I was prepared to give it a crack, especially given that years ago, Jamie put me on to anchovies in stew, and I’ve never looked back. I may well complain about him a lot, but it’s definitely thinly disguised jealousy, because I will ogle his food and his garden at any opportunity. It’s practically stalking. Lucky he lives in the UK.

So, despite Channel Ten’s advertisements claiming that Jamie at Home recipes were available on their website, there were none to be found. As a matter of fact, the blurb on the program page still says ‘not currently showing – new episodes coming soon’. Might I tactfully suggest that the PR Ho-Ho-Hoes at Network Serious get their shite together? Anyhoo, I googled the recipe, found afore-mentioned Jamie forum, which contained recipe queries from several similarly inspired Australian viewers. I also happened upon this old thread on Kitchen Wench’s blog. If you don’t have time for a look, let’s just say that there is a lot of anti-gherkin sentiment out there. In fact, the recipe itself did not receive rave reviews. In the end I decided to go with a combination of Rich Stein’s recipe (thanks Wench-reader-Mellie) and the Bill Granger version from the August '04 Delicious. (does anyone else find that full stop annoying?) that I have been using faithfully for the last couple of years.

As you can see, it’s still not the most photogenic of dishes, however I do think the tomato paste adds a bit of richness to the colour (and flavour). This one we ate with steamed rice (because that is what Mini Chef requested), but it is lovely with fresh buttered noodles.



Ingredients:
6oog beef fillet or rump steak, trimmed and cut into thick strips
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoons of Hungarian paprika
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
400g mushrooms - I prefer swiss browns, but whatever takes your fancy
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup creme fraiche or sour cream
fresh pepper and sea salt

fresh lemon and hot buttered noodles, to serve

Directions:
Melt butter in a large heavy-based frying pan and cook onion and paprika until onion is soft and sweet. Add garlic, thyme and mushrooms and fry gently for a few minutes. Remove to plate.

Heat olive oil in the same pan and add the meat in batches, seasoning with pepper and sea salt as you go. Brown the meat quickly on all sides, remove to a plate and add the next batch until all of it is done.

Turn down the heat, return the meat to the pan and add the tomato paste and mustard, cooking for about a minute. Add the mushroom mixture, stir, then add the sour cream and parsley. Stir through and simmer for no more than a minute, then remove from the heat. Season if necessary.

Serve with the hot buttered noodles, a squeeze of lemon juice and a blob of sour cream.

Technorati tags:
food blogs food food and drink cooking recipes celebrity chefs Jamie Rick Stein stroganoff

December Vegetables and Salutations

I am so in love with our veggie garden right now (apologies to David Lebovitz readers, otherwise known as those who profess to hating the word veggies. I shall continue to use the word unashamedly). We have harvested multiple batches of lovely zucchinis, which we have grilled on the barbecue, grated into zucchini slice (or 'cake', as Mini Chef wishes it to be known), shaved on a mandolin and drizzled with vinaigrette for a carpaccio, and stuffed with goat's cheese and topped with pepper and fresh mint, wrapped in foil and thrown onto the Webber. I can't wait until the little experimental eggplanty ones are ready to simmer with our green chillies (not yet taken by possums - fingers crossed it stays that way) in a curry.

We've also harvested plenty of cherry tomatoes, however I think our grape tomato plant is one of those high yield, low taste varieties. To overcome the issue, we roasted them with garlic and fresh thyme, then added them to breakfast pizza and pasta dishes (recipes to come at some stage in the not too distant future).

The Rosemary looks extraordinarily healthy... since planting it out last year it has just gone wild, maybe because we eat so much of it that it's constantly being pruned.It has served us well with many stews and roast lamb dishes. My personal favourite involved an entire bottle of rosé - minus the glass I had to have during the preparation, of course. I'd quite like to use this particular variety of rosemary as an edible border in the front garden, as it's bushy enough that it will probably make for quite a good sound barrier (unfortunately we are located down wind of an RSL with an all night liquor licence). It's so hardy that even if you just chop off a bit and plop it in the dirt, it manages to take root.

What I'm most excited about though, is the latest trial plant, the Lebanese cucumbers. Clever Husband made a little teepee for the three plants to climb up, and they seem very pleased with the arrangement. One of the plants has a cucumber that's ripe for the picking, and I plan to do just that this evening. I was thinking I might make a little salsa with the cucumber, vine-ripened tomatoes, red onion, garlic (also from the garden) yellow capsicum and maybe some of the green chillies if I can find any that look big enough to eat.

I've always appreciated the thrill of skimming through a cookbook or food magazine to plan the perfect meal, but the whole experience becomes so much more exhilarating when the ingredients are coming from your own garden. Makes you feel sort of creative and a bit smug... and for some reason, the voice in my head has a British accent when I write (or think) about the veggie garden. I must be channelling Monty Don, or Alan Titchmarsh, or someone. Admittedly, Clever Husband does most of the growing... I weed, prune and pick and, well, cook.

Wishing all the growers, cookers and eaters out there a delicious New Year's celebration meal... let's hope that 2008 is filled with more tasty treats than our food-obsessed minds can conjure.

Technorati tags:
food blogs food food and drink cooking recipes growing vegetables kitchen garden gardening vegetables rosemary zucchini tomatoes cucumber

Cassoulet Revisited

For those of you who were interested in my earlier, Cassoulet inspired post ...

I was doing a bit of browsing in my (clearly copious) spare time, I came across this amazing blog entry (with even more amazing pictures) about the famed dish. Have a look at David Lebovitz's gorgeous food blog. Imagine how cool it would be to be this into food AND live in France. Mmmm.

Technorati tags:
food blogs food food and drink cooking recipes cassoulet french food

Letter from Japan – Part 3

The final instalment. Miraculously, I was not put off sushi after this experience. In fact, a few days after returning home I found myself craving the salty goodness of fresh, raw fish. There’s something pure about it, something that is lost as soon as you cook it. Eating raw food is a grounding experience, every mouthful reminding us of where it came from. Perhaps it also reminds us that it simply a matter of luck that we ended up higher up in the food chain, and should be thankful that we are the ones doing the eating.

September 24, 2004

Only four days left here in Ise before heading back to Nagoya on Wednesday for the flight home. Can't believe how much the trip has flown. . . am looking forward to coming home and having a rest before going back to school though :-)

For those who have made enquiries, I still haven't tried out the squirt-up-ya-clack (clearly I'm referring to the toilet), but have it on good authority that it is a rather painful experience. Was taken out for dinner and to a pub on Wednesday night by the two Assistant Language Teachers, Jess (Australian) and Caesar (English). Becky, a Canadian ALT from another school told an hilarious story about how she decided to give it a go, but found it so uncomfortable that she actually cried out involuntarily in pain. She said it was a very long 10 seconds, especially considering that Japanese walls are paper thin, and she was convinced that her host family would think she was some kind of pervert.

The ALTs seem to have a lot of fun over here. They are paid more than first year teachers in Australia (not difficult) but they don't need a teaching qualification. They get set up in an apartment, are given a bike, and basically just have to run a lesson or two a day, do a bit of conversation practice and mark a few essays. Not a bad life. Of course, they seem to spend more time partying with each other than working. Caesar (very funny guy) tells me that he plans to stay for three years, because he has, quote, 'absolutely no prospects at home'. Three years is the maximum you can stay, but most can only handle it for one or two years. The rigidity of the culture apparently gets to you after a while, especially because teachers are supposed to set an example, so have to be really careful about following the 'rules' (see previous e-mail for more details). Jess has been told off by her supervisor a couple of times (he is an uber-anal freak who has no friends and is clearly in need of a shag).

I am still a bit battered. I have a huge bruise on my arm (to match all of the other bruises caused by the poisonous mosquitoes), which I acquired in Nara, whilst climbing through a Buddha's nostril. There was a breathtakingly gorgeous temple with a GIANT Buddha statue, and near the statue was a wooden pole with a hole in it, claiming, 'Hole same size as Buddha nostril. Please climb'.

Of course, we had to do it. I was actually very scared at first. It was a small opening, about 1 metre long and you had to kind of go through with your arms above your head. It took me a few goes to work up the courage. After watching a fat American go through first, I was able to do it. I must have got the bruise as I scrambled out the other side (after staying put for about five minutes for many photos and videoing. These kids always take the opportunity to catch embarrassing moments on camera).

Yesterday was a public holiday, but we all had to come into school for a PR exercise which involved our students making sushi with the students from one of the local junior high schools. The students worked in groups of five to make the 'sushi' (a loose term), which was then judged by a group of highly regarded food connoisseurs (myself included). My concerns began when I was told that the sushi would be judged on taste, looks and 'creativity'. Personally, I prefer my sushi to be less creative, more palatable. A number of the pieces (I was supposed to eat 8 in total - a hard task even when they taste good) were okay, but a couple of kids had creatively combined ingredients such as 'wieners' (frankfurt-esque things which are made out of fish paste with a tempting, spam-like texture) and chocolate sauce. I think the Principal got that one. I managed to avoid the totally disgusting ones. Justin however, who had a rather large night the night before (he was taken out by some of the male teachers to dinner and a bar) was having a lot of difficulty keeping some of them down, and spent a suspicious amount of time in the toilet. Poor 'Big J' (as the students now call him; my nickname alternates between 'Calvin' and 'Skanky Ho'...don't ask) will never be able to look at sushi the same way again.

Must dash - class now. See you all soon xx

Technorati tags:
food blogs food and drink food recipes cooking travel japan sushi nara culture shock