Eat Australia

spanokopita was delicious, thanks

I used the SBS Food Safari recipe, as it used fewer ingredients, more eggs, and less cooking (ie no pre-cooking) than Stephanie's version.  I also turned it into two large strudel-y logs, rather than a single deepish pie, as I was trying to get the 60mins cooking time down to 30mins.

It worked.  :)

Recipe variants or notes:

Warrigal greens instead of spinach (blanched in boiling water and hand-squeezed to remove excess water)
Home-made ricotta, and nore of it than the other cheeses.
Home-grown eggs
Home-grown herbs (including lemon thyme, oregano, flat-leaf parsley, and native pepper, as well as the listed mint)
6 layers of filo as I was wrapping it around itself
Blended in a Breville Wizz (it would have been the Kenwood blender but I broke it some time back - must get a new one!) rather than mashed.  Produced the precise grainy texture I was looking for.

YUM.

Num.

we made some cheese, grommit!

There's a recipe for 30-minute mozzarella in Barbara Kingslover's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle". And then I found a man selling rennet at the Farming Small Areas expo, and I sourced four litres of milk ...

... and have failed to make mozzarella yet, because I failed to source a cooking thermometer, and temperature's sort of vital (at least, until one has a good feel for what happens when, I suspect).

But I do appear to have made a perfectly OK ricotta ... and on the plus side, I have an excellent insight into how all these different cheeses came to be!  Basically, once you've heated the milk and added the rennet, what results is curds and whey ... and when you remove curds from whey, you have cheese. The kind of cheese completely depends on what you added when and at what temperature, and what you do to it from this point onwards ... but it's still cheese.

Either that, or I have excellent beginner's luck.  Because while it didn't make the nice solid curds I was expecting, the little grainy lumps, when drained of whey and hung in cloth for an hour or so, are perfectly edible.  No nasty flavour (*phew* for all that cleaning and scalding I did of everything beforehand!).  Dry, bland, nothing I'd spread on a cracker right now - but it tastes like cheese.

My sister recommended a large infusion of chopped herbs and salt and turning into spanokopita (Greek cheese and spinach pie, essentially).  This shall occur this evening, with some substitutes - warrigal greens for the spinach (there's my bushtucker component!), and a lot more herbs and salt than the usual recipes call for, because it really IS bland.

And as I only need half of what turned up, I'll do the other half of the mozzarella recipe ANYway and see what occurrs.  At worst, I'll end up with a ... well ... cheesy sticky mess.  And if I won't eat it, the chooks will, so it becomes dinner in some way or another anyway :)

Note: cooking cheese is the limit of my food inspiration right now.  I've got all these seedlings and forestry tubes awaiting transplanting, and I appear to have run out of energy to put them in the ground, dammit.  Maybe when I finally get the last part of the irrigation equation together, I'll be motivated.

In the meantime, the greenhouse beans are producing lovely flat green and purple pods, which we're eating raw and by the handful.  One of these days I'll produce enough to actually _cook_ ... until then, it's a snack or salad veggie!

And the reducrrants are fruiting already - we've netted just in time!!  I don't think we'll get bucketsful from these either, but handsful will do me ...

exhibition of early Australian cookbooks

... fascinating the stuff you find when you actually sit down and look ... I need to get up to Sydney sometime soon. The State Library of NSW is holding an exhibition of early Australian cookbooks - and of course, recipes for native Australian fare are included.

I do have one collection of a "colonial recipes" which does have some fascinating things to do with kangaroo (it's very complimentary about the taste, and I can't but agree :) ), not to mention wombat (about which it is less complimentary), wallaby, and possum. Not a lot about using native plants and it's those recipes I hope to find. I think they're more to be found in the diaries of the settlers ... lillypilly jam, wattleseed coffee ... those are the records I'm looking for.

But I still want to go to the SL and see these cookbooks :)

season of digging and simmering ...

Well, it's officially the first week of autumn. Not, as anyone will point out, that we've really had a summer in this part of the continent.

However. My nasty grumblings about not having had enough warmth to bolster me against an undoubtedly bitter winter coming up aside, it DOES make for excellent early-season cooking and digging weather. And finally, FINALLY, I seem to have some energy to actually make use of it. A couple of consecutive days off work and out of air-con seems to have had an effect, and the booooring tejious tiredness seems to be giving way. 'bout damn time.

So, over the course of the last few days, I've made (or am making as I type):

• Pesto. LOTS of pesto, made with my own basil and local olive oil (Denmar Olive Oil from Goulburn. No website, sorry) and parmesan cheese and garlic, and not-very-local pine nuts. Now in little jars, topped with more olive oil and looking awfully tasty. Now _that's_ local food :)
• Gnocchi from left-over mashed potato and seasoned with aforementioned pesto. Not my own potatoes, I admit; I haven't dug them up. Yet ...
• Slow-cooked octopus a la Jamie Oliver and stuffat tal-qarnit, served with aforementioned gnocchi
• Chicken and/or turkey stock. That is, I bought the makings for chicken stock and whilst fosscking out the stored chicken carcasses from the freezer, found the Christmas turkey carcase. So in it goes as well ... plus the last rinsings of the pesto container that I've just decanted.
• Bolognaise/mince thing. I use this as a basis for pasta and taco sauces. Basic tacos are v. popular in our house and as long as there's a mince sort of a thing, a salsa sort of a thing, cheese, tomatoes, and some kind of green leaf, we're set. We can forgo guacamole and sour cream quite cheerfully :)
• Poached chicken. This will happen when the chicken stocks are finished this afternoon. I'll cook up a couple of cheap chooks in the stock - with any luck the good stock will improve the flavour of the chooks - and then strip the meat to make the family favourite chicken stew/pies. (It depends on whether one can be stuffed making pastry to create said pies or not. Generally, I don't, but encasing it in pastry does make for better freezing ... ).
• Pre-prepared chook mash. No, not halfway as exciting as human food, but with any luck it'll bring the morning chook food preparation down to a few minutes rather than anywhere up to 10, but still maintain the happy condition of the chooks, all of whom will probably go into moult Any Day Now and stop laying. So the longer I can put that off, and the shorter I can keep the moult (it can go up to three months, eep), the better everything will be. So - a morning mash, made from bought oats and pre-grated frozen carrot and chook pellets, defrosted with hot water. Happy chookies!

And I even finally got into the garden again and cleaned up the struggling citrus garden, turned over the soil, and planted perennials around the edges. Citrus don't like competition around their roots but the coriander, broccoli, parsley, cabbage, calendula, and lettuces aren't going to be a threat to these small trees over the next 12 months, and it means the soil gets broken up and gets some action, rather than just drying out - the usual state of soil around here, despite the excellent rain. I was rather shocked at the dust-dryness of the soil around the citrus - it was well-worked before I planted, with lots of manure and new soil, but still tries to revert to clay dryness. Much, much more work needed! I think water crystals will help.

I'd like to add some groundcovers as well - maybe even pretties like eyebrights or violas or pansies, as well as my usual preferences for thyme and chamomile.

The next tasks are to collect tomatoes and, instead of feeding them to the chooks, making tomato sauce. Even just passata. Or adding them into the bolognaise.

It's going to take me a little time to move into an organised food pre-prepration mode ... maybe a couple of years ... but I will get there. Because it is SO warming when you can reach into the cupboard of fridge or freezer and eat your own produce.

Two veg and meat

Here's the next instalment in the adapted recipes.  Having been slack and not written anything for almost two weeks, I present twe recipes:  a light consomme and crispy fitters.  These were adapted for my "Eat the coat of arms" dinner party, the recipes and notes for which are still in the process of being written up, despite having been held almost 12 months ago. 

Unlike the previous recipe, these have actually been made and tasted.  However, there is some extrapolation from the originally cooked recipe to these; I need to make these actual recipes to provide a definitive report.

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Consomme of tomato and tea.

Recipe adapted from Tetsuya's cookbook.

4-5 medium-sized very ripe tomatoes, chopped.
About 8-9 whole dried bush tomatoes (approximately equiv. to 6 pieces sun-dried tomatoes, not in oil).
600ml water
1/2 teaspoon Ceylon tea.
salt to flavour.

Combine tomatoes, bush tomatoes and water in a saucepan and cook over low heat until "the flavours come together".  It should be noted that this actually takes several hours and allowing the liquid to come to the boil will drastically reduce the quantity of liquid to about a cup per person.  So don't let it boil.  Be patient.

When you're convinced all the flavours are together, add the tea-leaves and infuse over the same gentle heat.  Maybe 10-15 mins.

Strain the liquid through muslin.  Do not push on the solids - let the liquid drip through.  Discard solids.

Set liquid aside for sediment to settle.  Skim off any scum, pour into small bowls, and serve.

The bush tomatoes add a caramel-y, slightly bitter taste to the consomme.  Salt may be added for flavour.

Whole bush tomatoes can be bought from The Essential Ingredient or Herbie's Spices.

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Bunya nut fritters.

500g frozen bunya nuts
4 eggs, separated (retain both yolks and whites).
1-2 cups breadcrumbs
2tsp baking powder
Salt and pepper to taste (use dorrigo pepper or mountain pepperleaf if possible).
Oil, for frying.

Note: this is based on a family recipe for sweetcorn fritters, and is very much a "add until it feels right" sort of a recipe.  The proportions of the original recipe call for 2 eggs, 1/2-1 cup of breadcrumbs, and 1tsp of baking powder per 375g tin of corn kernels.  When I made this for the first time, it was combined with grated sweet potato as I wasn't sure how the plain bunya would turn out.  As it happens, the sweet potato was redundant.  This recipe is an extrapolation and will require testing again.

Separate bunya nuts from shells and grate or blend, to form crumbs.  Add dry ingredients and egg yolks.  Only use half the breadcrumbs - keep other half in reserve for use if required to get the proper texture. 

Briefly whisk eggwhites until fluffy and fold into mixture.  Add more breadcrumbs if required to ensure texture is just solid enough to hold a circular fritter shape when dropped from a spoon.  Add salt and pepper to taste (if using Australian peppers, use less than with black pepper, as they are much more potent).

Use oil to about 1cm depth (at most) and heat.  Drop about 1tblespoon of mixture for each fritter - it should spread a little.  Pikelet size at most.  Fry until golden on each side, drain on paper towels and keep warm in oven untill all mixture is done.  Serve hot and crispy - however, leftovers make excellent midnight snacks from the fridge.

The bunya nuts provide a lovely piney flavour without being overwhelming.  Serve with practically anything (it was with kangaroo and emu on my menu, but would be excellent with fish as well).

I'd like to experiment with adding warrigal greens to this mix, and maybe even adding the corn back in for a more filling fritter.

Bunya nuts available from the frozen foods section of The Essential Ingredient.  Native peppers from The Essential Ingredient and Herbie's Spices. 

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And now, this week's rant.  To counter the vegetarian recipes presented above, it's about meat.  (Actually, that wasn't deliberate; just how it worked out).

Taking shape ...

Admittedly, all the recent rain _is_ helping the warrigal greens (tetragon) to not die and actually start sprouting. It looks like I may in fact keep four out of the five, about which I'm very pleased (if they don't all snuff it when the sun finally comes back out again (number five has disappeared into the soil which makes its resurrection somewhat unlikely).

Put in more over this weekend. I started a new job last week (locum librarian at Bankstown City Library) but before I gave up the free and easy (and penniless) lifestyle of an unemployed bum, I visited the fabulous Randwick Nursery and came away with four midyim plants, two cut-leaf mintbush and two completely non-native but sorely needed tomatoes.

I shall pause here a moment and explain why those tomatoes are staying.

It's not dead!

Last Monday, after a weekend creating new garden beds, I found myself (FINALLY!) a source of wild Warrigal Greens (which I've now got in the habit of calling tetragon, as apparently that's what it's called oveseas where it's popular). It's a Sydney bay, revealed to me by Dave of Randwick City Nursery, but a location I'm selfishly keeping to myself for the moment so I can eat them myself :)

I carefully dug out five plants from among various clumps of others, reasoning that it should give the remaining plants more space to grow and so therefore I was doing everyone a favour, including myself.

Well, we know about Sydney's weather last week. Three stinking hot days followed by three days of rain. I rigged little shadecloths for the tetragon in the main large bed and put the others under flowerpots to shield them from the worst of the heat, but their little leaves just shrivelled and went completely limp.

An introduction

One has to start somewhere, and this seems the quickest way to do it. Now I need to get links up and actually find some readers ...

This site is going to be my outlet for my new obsession - Australian Native Produce. Also known as bushfoods. I plan to grow and eat it, buy all the stuff I can as an ordinary consumer, and eventually and if I'm very lucky, I may be able to sell some of the produce I grow and/or make.

This started as a real obsession earlier this year (2004), when I decided to have an "Eat the coat of arms" dinner party. I'll be posting up the recipes and comments from that later, when I've worked out how/where. My aim was to have a 100% Australian native produce menu. In the end, it was about 75%, but once the frustration of finding fresh greens was over, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. The idea was to plan a perfectly ordinary style of meal, and then substitute the more common products with Australian equivalents, and see how it subtly changed the whole style. That aspect of things worked very well, I think, and my guests didn't seem to object all that much either.