miso butter

I blame Annabel Crabb* for my new (rare) dairy addiction. Patting this beauty into a log isn't pretty but it sure is tasty.

Miso butter

1 part butter (salted or unsalted it’s up to you)

2/3 – 1 part miso (I prefer darker miso e.g. hatcho or shiro)

1 spring onion (mostly white part), minced

1 – 3 cloves garlic, minced

(I’ve never added lime juice, maybe next time?*)

Chop the butter into cubes and put into a bowl. Sit that inside another bowl with a couple of centimetres of boiling water. In the couple of minutes it takes to get it a bit melted (technically I’d say the ideal meltage is a quarter) mince the spring onion and garlic. Start with one of each for your first batch. Before the butter melts too much add the miso and either mash together by hand or throw into a mini food processor for a couple of quick whizzes until combined.

Dollop onto a piece of cling film and “pat into a log”. Don’t worry if you over did the melting, it will firm up in the fridge.

Store in the refrigerator, technically it should be ok for a couple of months but once tried, its addictive!

How much miso? It depends on what miso you use and how salty you like your food. If you’re a vegemite fan go the full equal quantities but if you’re not a fan of super salty food start as little as half as much miso to butter, and taste as you blend.

My favourite uses:

• Tossed through steamed asparagus.
• On toast (tasted even better that vegemite and butter), cut into soldiers and dipped into a boiled egg.
• On toast with grilled tomatoes or avocado.
• A little stirred through scrambled eggs just before they set.
• Big dollop on an old-fashioned jacket potato.
• With corn on the cob.

* From her excellent podcast with Leigh Sales. Annabel's recipe verbatim.

“Take half a block of butter, cut the half in half and melt one of the halves and just mash up the other. Put 60 gm of miso and 2 cloves of garlic (minced) and a spring onion (minced) and the hard butter in with the melted butter and mash and whip them all together. Then add a squeeze of lime juice. Then pat it into a log.”

Annabel’s favourite uses: Toss through freshly steamed green beans or mushrooms en papillote mushroom cooked in baking paper. 

There's nothing photogenic about a log of brown stuff, so feast your eyes on something I prepared earlier.

baked eggs

It’s time for lunch
It’s after two
What on earth am I going to do?

Baked eggs are not the best “I need to eat now” kind of food. But boy do they ever hit just the right spot.

I’ve been playing with this recipe for a while. It is simple, flexible and once you understand the basics, the combinations are endless.

Although it’s not dairy-free due to the luscious inclusion of butter, olive oil is an ok substitute as my recipe contains no cream or cheese. If you have a good feel for flavour combining, just use your imagine. If you're after some ideas, pick an ingredient, grab Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook's Companion and consult the notes on what it goes well with. She’ll guide you through the right companions.

I’ve been given a lot of sage lately and checked with Stephanie as to what non-meaty things it goes with. Leeks! Butter! Eggs! Oh yes…baked eggs with leeks and sage here I come…but first some basics.




Baked egg basics

• This is such a flexible recipe – just as easy for one as it is for six.
• Use two eggs per person (unless you are very hungry).
• Choose an ovenproof dish that will snugly hold the number of eggs you want to cook. They want to nestle next to each other.
• Use an even smaller dish if you are doing plain eggs, just butter the dish, dot the eggs with butter and sprinkle with salt, pepper and herbs if desired.
• If using a base e.g. chilli beans or a thick tomato sauce, create a well with the back of a spoon for the eggs to sit in separately.
• Cook in a bain maire, an oven dish filled with water to go half way up the dish you are baking the eggs in – the eggs seem softer and fluffier when cooked this way.
• Eggs like to be cooked low and slow. Be patient.
• Remember to pre-heat the oven to 180c (175c fan-forced).
• Cooking times vary depending on how you like your yolks. 10 minutes is very runny, 15 in between, 20 softly set (ideal for pregnant women and those with a compromised immune system).

Baked eggs with leeks and sage
(Serves 1)

1/2 –1 leek, sliced about 2-3 cm wide
Oil/butter
4-6 fresh sage leaves
2 organic eggs
“Greek fasting fetta” (dairy-free cheese) – about 1 tablespoon, crumbled
Salt and pepper.

Melt some butter in a small frying pan. Use olive oil if you’d prefer it or half and half oil and butter. Cook the leeks on low, covered with a lid for 5-10 minutes til soft.

Grease your ovenproof dish. Spread the cooked leeks in an even layer in the bottom of the dish. Rip up a couple of sage leaves and scatter over the leeks. Carefully break your eggs one at a time and place on top. Now sprinkle on the crumbled fetta, more sage and salt and pepper if desired.

Cook at 180c for 15-20 minutes.


Fresh out of the oven. I like my eggs just set


Baked eggs also go well with arepas.

putting reality back into television and the truth about mash

I’ve been more than lukewarm about the latest hyped reality television show – Masterchef. I love food, like cooking but have known enough chefs to get an inkling of just how tough being an actual chef really is. Hospitality has nightmare working hours and conditions. Commercial kitchens are uncomfortable and at times dangerous places, just look at the scarred hands and arms of those who work there. As for the lifestyle of your average chef, ”Kitchen Confidential” wasn’t a piece of fiction. Yet many brave souls follow their passion, get paid ridiculously low wages and sign up for apprenticeships to become chefs. Good on them.

Celebrity chefs/cooks are not a new phenomena. Graham Kerr, “The Galloping Gourmet”, first started broadcasting in 1959 and no one can forget Julia Childs. Both were more television personalities who cooked rather than classically apprenticed, restaurant chefs. Kerr’s parents owned hotels and his first job was in management rather than the kitchen. Childs took herself off to Le Cordon Bleu to study and started teaching cooking classes. So perhaps considering the lineage of television “chefs”, it is not so crazy to turn a home cook into an overnight media sensation, with a little training in technique and a lot of PR.

Celebrity chefs are an extension of the “food porn” industry, complete with glossy cookbooks, Nigella pouts and Oliver’s home ware. Food is sexy and so therefore are those linked to it (though cravat wearing food critics may be pushing it a bit, a woman that unattractive, chunky and with such bad taste in clothes would never have got the gig). Reality television is the home of the overnight sensation, so our current obsession with food and watching Ms Average getting all teary on telly is an obvious hit. However when it comes to those who actually go into the industry the old fashioned way, the reality is most chefs don’t even get a guest spot on Ready, Steady, Cook, no matter how skilled they are.

Masterchef will not turn these home cooks into chefs. There’s not enough graft or training to do that. I doubt if any in the top 20 (or more than a handful of the 7,000 hopefuls who auditioned for the show) would be prepared to swap a future in the law, their current established career or at the age of 40-something actually choose to step onto the bottom rung of the commercial kitchen hierarchy. What attracts people to the gig is fame and fortune, book signings and the odd gig demonstrating a dish. Will any end up in a restaurant kitchen and if they do could they stick it out? I find it very doubtful.

My food nazi moment for the week was the episode that was actually of interest to anyone who has a passion for cooking, rather than the soapy storyline the series is trying to spin. This week featured an actual masterclass, a down to earth; here is how you make restaurant food demonstration. Four simple dishes - some lamb (a great basic intro for carnivores), mash, eggy bread (fantastic loved that one) and a simple though creamy chocolate mousse. For me this was the standout of the whole series. In fact can we cut the hype, jettison the star making, drop the amateur dramatics and just have Gary and George do some simple cooking demos - no cravat wearing critics need apply.

But the genius of adding lemon zest to French toast aside, the health abiding person in me loved the reality-check moment when Gary made mash (or pomme puree, if you prefer). Just watching the skinny, food loving female contestants faces when he threw in the stick of butter was fantastic. Yes this is what restaurant food is all about. Bourdain didn’t just dish the dirt on the secret life of kitchen staff but he drove home the message to readers that the amount of butter in traditional chef-cuisine is literally heart stopping and don’t forget – never order the fish on a Monday!

But back to the heart stopping pomme puree. The spud cooking technique was brilliant – whole jacked potatoes cooked at 160c for 2 hours, baked on a bed of sea salt to draw out the moisture. But wait here comes the butter. The demo showed Gary throwing in 100gms per spud, with an extra dollop for luck plus some whole milk for good measure.

In nutritional terms that worked out to over 720 calories/3000 kilojoules of 80% fat butter, in each modest serve of mash – over a third of your daily food requirements in the side dish alone. Nowhere on this site have you seen the dreaded word “kilojoule” before. It is a cold hard technical term, not sexy and definitely not part of the vernacular of food porn. But “reality” television in its truest sense has driven me to it.

So the take home message. If you have any respect for your health – skip the mash. Go for a steamed potato, even by comparison a scant handful of chips doesn’t look so bad.

But most of all, stick to being a cook, just use a modest splash of fat in your mash at home. Even if this won’t bring the dreamed of book deal you hanker for, you might live long enough to achieve a whole lot more.