And then we ate the hare

Today my sister, her partner Anne and their kids Ciara and Reece joined us for The Eating of The Hare. They took our bigger boy out to lunch and Owy went to cricket, so I had a couple of hours of uninterrupted kitchen time to potter while our smaller boy slept. There is nothing nicer than feeding people that you care about, and to be feeding them food which they’d been responsible for increased the pleasure. Anne is a bit of a spoiler, so things kicked off with spiders made with sexy ice cream and Cascade soft drinks:

I’m not sure if that’s sharing or territorial pissing that you’re seeing in that picture, but that’s five year old boys for you.

Harry presents: Impressing the Hot Interior Designer Marinara

(This post is the final in a series which begins here and continues here and here.)

On Friday I visited my delightfully mad aunt who totally rocks. It was my turn to cook, so I brought the ingredients for the second version of a Italian seafood dish with which to impress the Hot Interior Designer.

My aunt is an avid cook and generally awesome woman for whom I acted as chauffeur and butler on a two week driving holiday/seafood odyssey into Victoria last October.

We discussed many recipes on the way including many she disparaged.
Aunt: I mean, look at this! Fennel and Rocket Salad!? Easy! And yet there’s a recipe for it.
Nephew: Yes, it’s hardly Fennel and Rocket science.

Sichuanese Hotpot

My dear friend Steevie is leaving Canberra for Northern NSW this week. His parents are ageing and unless one of the kids steps up, the farm – in the family for generations – will have to be sold. So he’s taken a year’s leave from work to test drive the farming life, pasture fattening steers and breeding bush chooks. It doesn’t hurt that the property, at the foot of the border ranges, is lush, well watered and drop dead gorgeous.

Thinking selfishly, there are some of Steevie’s friends who we know quite well, but not really well yet. We decided it was time to have them over for dinner before he left. No point not doing it properly, but little kids make elaborate plans difficult, so Sichuanese hotpot it was. All you have to do is make the broth and cut up some things to cook in it at the table. Of course, you can do this the simple way or the food nerd way. I chose the food nerd way.

Dr Sista Outlaw presents: Dead Cert Seduction Pudding

Those of us who live in the climatic zones of Canberra and Katoomba are currently freezing their bloody tits off, and there’s nothing more warming than a very nice pudding. Here is a recipe that really hits the spot for winter. It tastes divine. It invokes memories of grandmotherly warmth (at least for those of us who had grandmothers who could cook. Mine couldn’t, so for me it invokes memories of wishing I had one of those other grandmothers. You know, the nice dainty ones, who could cook). It is quick and requires no special ingredients. And did I mention it tastes divine?

This has been adapted from the PWMU – short for the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union – Cookbook, first printed 1904 and reprinted at least 18 times in the interval between the first edition and this one, which dates from 1973, just before Presbyterians became Uniting Churchies.

This particular volume was pocketed when I cleaned out a blind poet’s house. I figured she wouldn’t notice it was gone. Now it’s subject to a custody battle because my ex says he was closer to the blind poet than I was and it came from his mother’s house anyway. I am, so far, resisting all entreaties to return it.

Part of the reason I love it because it shows how far we have come since the culinary dark ages that beset the country between 1788 and Margaret Fulton. It has ‘International Recipes’ – only one example from any country, ordered alphabetically, by country rather than recipe. ‘Savouries’, which might be called hors’ d’ouevres elsewhere, include Angels on Horseback, Curried Eggs, Devilled Kidneys, Scots Eggs and, completing the unholy circle, Devils on Horseback. It also contains recipes for Tripe and Onions, Boiled Fowl and Jugged Hare.

All this means it is a boon for anyone hunting traditional recipes. It’s got loads of good soup, sauce and stew recipes, which show a bit of French influence, as you would expect. It contains the recipes my beleaguered home economics teachers tried to impart to me back in my country childhood, which I never wrote down, even though I have never forgotten how good they tasted. I consult it most often when baking or preparing puddings. My faves are Golden Syrup Dumplings, Kiss Biscuits, and this one, which is, as I have noted, a bit of an adaptation.

Lemon Delicious Pudding

Single girls should know that the production of one of these desserts weakens the knees of red blooded males but they only take 10 minutes to put together and you can bake them while you eat the main and linger over the wine. All you require is some familiarity with bringing egg whites to a stiff peak, and folding things in gently (you see, this is a seductive pudding).

Firstly, get your oven nice and moderately warm – somewhere between 150 and 180 degrees, depending on the ferocity or otherwise of your beast. Get a soufflé or deep pie dish or bowl and butter it liberally.

Then grab your blender/food processor/mix master or, if you have neither, a spoon and bowl and cream together 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of butter. While you are doing that, take a lemon and grate all the rind off it. Chuck the rind in with the sugar and butter so it’s macerated (and smells divine). Then add ¼ cup of self-raising flour. Juice the lemon, and put all the juice in with the sugar mix and add a cup of milk – lite milk is fine.

Then carefully separate two eggs. Because I know many people are stumped by this instruction I shall explain. Crack the egg over a bowl just once and use your fingers to prize the shell in half, catching the yolk in one half. Tip the shell until the white falls into the bowl, and pass it into the other half as you need to. Be careful not to snag the yolk – your egg whites will never reach their peak (same goes for fat). Use a hand mixer to whip the egg whites sitting in your bowl until they form stiff peaks – the stiffer the better. Then add the yolks to the lemon mix. Here’s a picture, with the lemon mix safely in the blender. Note also wine bottle.

Now fold the blender mixture into the egg whites to lightly disperse the flour and flavourings through the whites. Do this using a spatula or something, so you don’t bash the air out of the egg whites. You don’t need to do any more than this.

Then pour it in the pie dish. You can sit the dish in a bowl of water, but I don’t think you have to. Bake it for about an hour and a half. The top will set, and you’ll have a nice saucy bottom, and it will look something like this – all the lemony goodness is under the crust.

Eat it whenever you feel like it – sometimes they sag as they cool but the point is they are not soufflés and remain delicious. You can refrigerate and reheat if there are leftovers (hah!). What you will find is it’s different every time you cook it, particularly if your oven is cantankerous. Shorter cooking times produce a white fluffy meringue with a nice brown crust and a tart sloppy sauce underneath – if that’s the way you really like them, cut the flour back to two tablespoons, as PWMU recommends. If you cook them longer you’ll get a cakey meringue, like a self-saucing pudding.

By the way, I fell in love with these puddings at Varuna, The Writers’ House, where the famed cook Sheila serves them. She uses limes, and they are inimitably macaroony.

Ampersand Duck presents – Duck Souper

Nothing like inviting people around for soup on a chill Autumnal evening. Knowing that you’ve invited foodies adds a bit of pressure, but I chose soups that had been tried and praised before, so the only pressure was to cook them well: Lamb Shank & Penne Soup, and Spinach & Dahl Soup.

The Lamb Shank soup comes from one of those generic newsagent cookbooks: the Family Circle Pasta & Noodles Book. I’ve been trying to remember when I got this, and whether I inherited it from my mother when she had a clean-out, or whether I bought it from a garage sale. It’s quite a dull book, but there’s a couple of winner recipes that I’ve discovered and treasured. This is one of them.
 

The Spinach & Dahl soup was bought as a packet mix of spices produced by a fab little family company called The Saucy Spice Co., based in Pambula on the Far South Coast of NSW. They peddle online, but also have a stall at the Canberra Bus Depot Markets every Sunday. I highly recommend their spice mixes. They buy fresh supplies, and their simple packages are always marked with a use-by date so that they are never stale (unless you stash them in the back of a cupboard and forget them).

They sell packages of spice mixes for specific recipes, and you provide the rest of the ingredients. The ingredients needed are listed on the label, but the actual recipe is inside the packet. Their curries and soups are superb. I can’t include the recipe for the Dahl soup here, mainly because they tell you which spices they’ve used, but not the quantities, so I encourage you to buy a packet or two of their wares and enjoy. The heat of each recipe is always indicated, and they have some fantastic mild recipes that kids will love. I highly recommend their Javanese Chicken, my son loves it.

The Dahl soup needed blending at the 2/3 point of cooking, and I’d given my stab blender away to my mother years ago, once I’d stopped making my own baby food. I just never seem to need one. So I asked Zoe to bring hers… talk about the awesome power of the blend! It had a life of its own, with scary suction action…

I forgot to take a photo of the finished soup on the night, but I managed to catch one of the bowls when we had leftovers a couple of nights later:

Yum! Coriander garnish, and we added yogurt on the leftover bowl (both of which, stupidly, I forgot to offer during the dinner party. Sorry guys.) There’s a drip on the bowl, too, for which you can mentally slap me on the wrist.

Now, the Lamb Shank Soup. I’ve been promising Zoe this recipe for years. Here it is.

PENNE, PEA AND LAMB SHANK SOUP

Prep time: 15 mins
Cooking time: 1 hour, 15 mins
Serves 6 (just)

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 lamb shanks (about 1 kg), well trimmed of fat
2 medium onions, cut into strips
1/4 cup dry red wine
1/2 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 whole cinnamon stick
1 dried bayleaf (I used fresh)
4 cups water (I added more later)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup penne pasta
1 cup fresh or frozen peas
1 cup fresh or frozen broad beans
1 clove garlic, crushed

1. Heat oil in pan. Add lamb, cook over high heat for about 3 minutes each side or until well browned. Remove from pan, drain on absorbent paper.

2. Add onions to pan, cook over medium heat for about 3 mins or until well browned.

(This browning of meat and onion is essential, because it dictates the colour of the soup. It becomes a lovely rich brown soup instead of a pale broth.)

2 (cont) Return lamb to pan, add wine, peppercorns, cumin, cinnamon, bay leaf and water; bring to boil. Reduce heat, simmer covered, 1 hour or until lamb is tender.

3. Remove lamb from pan, discard bay leaf and cinnamon stick from stock. Add soy sauce and tomato paste to pan, stir until combined. Bring to boil, add pasta, simmer, covered, 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. meanwhile, cut lamb into bite-sized pieces; discard bones. Return lamb, peas and broad beans to pan, simmer, covered, a further 5 minutes or until pasta is al dente. Stir in crushed garlic just before serving.

Yum! I forgot to photograph this one before serving as well, so here is the cookbook version, followed by the result of happy eating: