Monday, December 26, 2011
It Always Tastes Better… or, How Sweet It Is?
Monday, November 28, 2011
Zelnacka, or Spicy, Sauerkraut and Sausage Soup
Next, I sprinkled a few tablespoons of flour onto the mixture and stirred it in. This is basically like making a gravy base or a roux, as it thickens the soup.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Feats, Fetes, and Finally, Finding Our Way…
The following week we drove south to pick up the imported, used, renovated UK caravan that we had bought sight unseen in a 1$ reserve online auction. Again, we got a very good deal. When we sell the second car, it will more than cover the Range Rover and the caravan.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Balance and Harmony, or Teaching Your Food to Sing!
I have been asked to explain myself, AGAIN! It seems that I keep making reference to ‘balance’ when discussing making dressings, sauces, and marinades with a certain someone. This came from an e-mail discussion regarding the picture I took of Brad’s Basil Marinade of Love, one of the ‘faceless’ recipes from the recent ‘Marathon of Love’. I mentioned that while the marinade was very tasty and lovely, and had absolutely nothing wrong with it, that it was weird for me to be following a recipe for marinade, as I always shoot from the hip. I know the balance of acid and oil, flavours and herbs that I like, and depending on what my target flavours are (Asian, BBQ, etc), or what ingredients I want to use, I am generally able to throw together a great marinade. I continued on to say, that particularly with Asian flavours, I understood the ‘balance’ of sweet, sour, salty and spicy. Now, my relentlessly inquiring friend wanted to know more about the four ‘S’s’. Specifically, exact amounts of what, as in baking where you have precise ratios of flour:oil:moisture. It’s not quite that simple, my dear, I tried to explain (NOT to imply that baking is simple – it is a skill I have barely mastered!). It depends on the dish. It depends on whether you want fish sauce salty or soy sauce salty; honey, sugar or tamarind paste sweet?Blast your socks off heat, or a pleasant, mild chilli flavour. Sour from lime, lemon or vinegar?I’m afraid there are many correct forms of balance. Then, when you get the herbs and flavourings (garlic, ginger, coriander, sesame oil/seeds etc.) correct, on top of the balance, your dish will sing!
Fifteen or twenty years ago, when I was a young wife and enthusiastically learning and experimenting in the kitchen, I did follow recipes, mostly from Joy of Cooking. I’ve always loved ‘Joy’ because each section begins with “About ….”, giving me just enough info and confidence to tweak any of the following recipes with success. As The Man and I began to travel the world, our palates expanded and we craved knowledge of re-creating the fabulous cuisines we experienced. At this time, our cookbook collection began to expand. Instead of t-shirts we came back from places like
One of our favourite cuisines is Thai, and one of my personal favourite dishes is Yum Nua, or Thai Beef Salad. The recipe that I use, in my opinion, is a classic example of balance and harmony, and to me this dish doesn’t just sing, it performs Arias! The best Yum Nua I have ever had was in
So, my dear inquisitive friend, this one is for you:
(WARNING: The following recipe contains coriander!!! If you are even slightly prejudiced, you may want to skip this part!!! It is, however, totally beet-free!))
Yum Nua (Thai Beef Salad)
Ingredients
· 1 lb beef fillet (or any quality steak)
· 10 ounces Chinese cabbage, shredded
· 6 ounces sliced cucumber
· 1 small carrot, shredded or julienned
· 1 cup of fresh coriander
· (optional tweaks: water chestnuts, bean sprouts, cherry tomatoes, bell pepper)
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·
Ma Marinade:
· 2 stalks fresh lemon grass, finely chopped
· 2 inch piece of ginger root, finely chopped or grated
· 6 kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped
· 2 shallots, finely chopped
· 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
· Juice of two limes
· 4 tsp of soft brown sugar
· 4 tsp of tamarind concentrate
· 2 tsp of fish sauce (nam pla)
· 2 tbsp chili oil
·
· Dressing:
· 2 Tbsp fish sauce (nam pla)
· 2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
· 2 Tbsp peanut oil
· 4 Tbsp chopped fresh coriander
· pinch of sugar
Don’t let the ingredient list frighten you. A good Asian market will have all of the ingredients. I am able to buy frozen lemon grass stalks and frozen kaffir lime leaves, so I always have a stash in the freezer. If you don’t have/can’t find tamarind paste, it is only a small part of the marinade, so don’t panic, just add a little extra brown sugar.
Oh, and yes, my dear friend, the 1:1:1 ratio of fish sauce, rice wine vinegar and peanut oil in the dressing is an excellent base to start from…
Marinade Ingredients
Directions
Blend the marinade ingredients in a large bowl and allow the steak(s) to marinade for at least an hour. (You can use a cheaper cut of meat, but I like a good steak. I have also ‘cheated’ and used leftover, bbq’d rare steak, marinated it, and re-grilled/warmed it!)
Blend the dressing ingredients well and set aside.
Fresh Coriander!!!
Toss vegetables together in a bowl. Grill or fry steak until cooked to your liking (I prefer rare-medium). Allow steak to rest. Meanwhile, dress the salad, toss well, and arrange on individual plates. Slice rested steak into diagonal slices and arrange on top of salad. Serve at once
Now, here is where I am going to digress. We have some lovely fresh/flash frozen tuna in the deep freeze that we need to use up, so today, we made some lovely fishcakes out of it. We were pondering what to serve them with... Last week, on a rare but fantastic break, we had lunch at Highfield Winery, in Marlborough . I had Battered Bluenose (a fish) with an incredible Thai style salad. It was beautiful in appearance, it tasted sensational, but it also reminded me of how balance and harmony is important with texture, as well as taste. This salad was a combination of shredded, julienned and shaved veggies and apple, tossed with rice noodles (vermicelli), and dressed with a citrus vinaigrette. It worked on all levels. Sweet, yet tart apples, a bit of fresh chilli flavour from the bell pepper, more, but different sweet from the carrot, earthiness from the cabbage, and the added four ‘S’s’ from the dressing. BUT, it also had the moist crispiness of the apple and bell pepper, the slightly tougher crunch of the carrots and cabbage, all bound together with the tenderness of the rice noodles! SING!!!!
So, tonight we are having the Thai Steaks, but I am experimenting with the salad to see how it will work with the Fishcakes. Tonight, I am using cabbage, carrot, a bit of green bell pepper, chopped coriander, chopped mint and a not too hot red chili pepper, as well as a julienned Granny Smith apple off of our tree. I tossed everything with the dressing while the steak cooked. When I tasted it, I realized that I had forgotten the pinch of sugar! It was clearly out of balance! I tweaked my seasonings, and ‘La dee da’ I plated the salad while the steak rested, and, we were most pleased with the results! I will add a bit more mint to the final dish tomorrow, and then it will truly belt out a good tune! This not only works with the Yum Nua, but will be a perfect partner for the fishcakes!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
We Can and We Can!, or Preserving and Persevering!
PREAMBLE: Our hearts and deepest sympathies go out to everyone in
Exactly three weeks ago today, I was sitting in this very spot, feeling more positive and cheerful than I had in a long time. Summer was rolling along, not great but steady. The bank account was slowly creeping up and the bills were slowing going down. The Man’s copious pepper crop was starting to ripen, the orchard across the road was selling box lots of seconds suitable for preserves, and I was keeping a close eye on our very own apple, peach and crab-apple trees, hoping to beat the birds to their offerings.
Ironically, we had recently noticed lots of grapes on our ancient vine, and they, too, were beginning to ripen. During the five years we have lived here, we have never had a single grape from this plant, as the little waxeye birdies always beat us. But, since the September 4th earthquake, these poor little dears have all but disappeared from our yard, even leaving a half eaten suet on the bird tray.
So far, I had bottled poached pears and rather unsuccessfully made a peach jam, that was more akin to peach flavoured applesauce, but something that could certainly be used as the base for something else.
Poached Pears
I was finding these old fashioned tasks therapeutic in light of the September earthquake that hit us on top of a very poor economy. Plus, on that day, we had a large corporate lunch booked for later in the afternoon, the Ellerslie Flower show in two weeks (which brings heaps of people to the province) and the Rugby World Cup Games in another 6 months. Right, we can and we will persevere – we might just squeak through!!! I had even written the tile of this post down on a slip of paper and stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans...
So, here I was sitting placidly, paying bills and sneaking at peak at the Buzz. I had showered and dried my hair, as I was planning to go to the Hilltop just before 2:00 to help with the corporate booking that was promising to be quite lucrative. At 12:52, I began to hear and feel the all too familiar rumbling of yet another aftershock. “Sheesh – when will they stop? Hey, wait, when will THIS one stop?” I dashed to the doorway just as a few things started to crash from shelves and Bessie began barking. I huddled in the doorway, near tears, trembling like a leaf, cuddling my dog. I tried to pull myself together. I wanted to go outside but the gate was open and I knew Bess would dash onto the road, so I reluctantly left her inside while I quickly closed the gate. By the time I got back to the house, I had decided I needed to go to the Hilltop and be with my people. Just as I was changing into old jeans and throwing a bra in my handbag, the cellphone rang (the power had gone out during the crashing). I knew it was The Man – I said ‘I’m coming up!’
As I went around one of the first bends, a campervan was stopped right in the middle of the on-coming lane, and some young folks were pulling rocks from a small slip out of the middle of the road. But, seeing as how they were in the middle of the road around another down hill bend, it might not have been the wisest thing. Happily, when I got around that bend, another uphill traveller had stopped and was ready to slow down other down-hill drivers.
When I got to the Hilltop, brooms were out, dust pans were filled with broken quiche dishes and other crockery. The bar floor was sticky from the crashed Sambuca, and the chill room looked a lot like it did back in September. BUT, everyone was okay, if not quite rattled. Fortunately, and strangely, we had no customers in at the time the latest earthquake struck.
The Grand Old Dame (The Hilltop) can rock and roll with the best of them. One of her recently repaired cracks by the front door opened up, and all the new plaster upstairs is back at square one, but by and large, there appears to be no structural damage.
We came home and, as it was a lovely day, decided to work in the garden where we could listen to the car radio (we still had no power). As we listened, we realized the full devastation of this event. Frequently, the car would bounce on its tires with the aftershocks. Unlike September 4th, when everyone was tucked away safe in their beds, this new quake hit on a busy weekday right at the end of the lunch hour. The epicentre was much closer to the central business district and was pretty much right by the little hillside
For the first few days, we did not open the café. We would go up for a bit each day, clean up and try to work in the beer garden (after all, we did have a wedding scheduled for the following weekend, didn’t we?). We watched the road traffic and there was none, apart from what appeared to be locals relocating away from
We finally re-opened on the Friday, more for our own mental health than anything else. We needed to DO something. By this time, I had identified a few charities that I felt I could help. Cash donations were out of the question at this time, but we had inventory and we can cook. I found out the ‘The Christchurch Baking Army’ was a Facebook network supporting ‘Comfort for
We are still baking and donating, but things are starting to come more under control. Day by day we get more familiar with the ‘new normal’. We are back at work with reduced hours and staff, running at about 30 – 50% of what we could expect. The wedding, at least, has been rescheduled for this weekend. Sadly, the Flower Show and most other major events have been cancelled.
So, on Tuesdays, like today, we are off. The peaches are ripe and are our best crop ever. The grapes yielded 8 cups of juice!!! Even, The Man is making an awesome Sweet Chilli Jelly with a peach base (aka the failed peach jam), and bottling it!
Grape Jelly, and LOTS of it!
Somehow, doing these old fashioned things with the many gifts from our garden is still reassuring. Flo and Myrtle are still delivering their daily finest of eggs, having set up a new nest in the shed. Even though my slightly confident attitude of February 22 got knocked right off its shelf, we can, and we will persevere!