artichoke bruschetta

I've been making this topping a lot this summer. 

Take a jar* of artichoke hearts, drain well. In a small food processor, chop the artichokes with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, the juice of half to one lemon (to taste), a tablespoon or two of some good olive oil and a pinch of sea salt. Whiz til blended but before it gets too smooth. You want a bit of texture.

If there's some fresh parsley at hand, finely chop and stir that through or any other herb you take a fancy to.

Dollop on freshly toasted bread. Sure you can first rub it while hot with some olive oil and a clove of garlic, it smells great but it's not entirely necessary.

* A jar or a can? I've made it with both. The more expensive ones in a jar have a better texture than canned artichokes, which tend to be softer/over cooked. However, any port in a storm. Do the best with what you have. It still tastes good as a puree.

Baked fish with potatoes and asparagus

I’ve always been a tad contrary.

As blogging is in its final hour, I’ve got the urge to write again. Each day it seems another blogger from way back when is pulling up stumps. It gets tiring, that nagging voice in the back of your mind, to blog. We all run out of steam eventually. 

I have no desire to share my life story, publish a cookbook or be a photography wizard in this space, I’m just going back to my roots which are simply a food blog as a cook’s journal, my digital scribble of recipes created (and the occasional culinary failure) so I can remember them in future.  No pressure to post on schedule, or at all. I'm only popping back when something is worth reproducing. And bugger the grammar!

On holiday I stumbled upon a simple fish recipe that kept my diminutive New Zealand family happy. I adapted the original source that features salmon (though I eat it when I have no other choice, farmed and flabby Australasian salmon is a disappointing experience) and tweaked cooking times accordingly. It needed some jazzing up so I added olives, garlic and seasoning. Next time I’ll skip the balsamic (as I have done below) and top the finished dish with a capery-salsa verde, which I reckon will give the meal the added zip it needs.

Be my guest and use salmon if that’s the only fish you feel competent cooking, it will hold its shape well and is unlikely to offend. As I was in New Zealand I couldn’t go past the local fresh snapper but most fillets will work. If thin check at 7-8 minutes to see if cooked, otherwise thicker ones may require the full 15.

The original recipe calls for successive ingredients to be tossed together in the pan but I got all Virgo and kept them in neat layers.

Baked snapper with asparagus and potatoes

(Serves 3)

600g small new potatoes, scrubbed (I used Jersey Bennies but if you only have big old spuds, slice into 3 cm chunks)

3 cloves of garlic (skin on)

2 tabs olive oil

1 – 2 bunches of asparagus, woody parts removed

1 punnet cherry (or similar small) tomatoes

3 medium sized fish fillets (I used NZ snapper, which are quite thin but Blue Eye would also work well)

Sea salt

½ cup Kalamata olives (omit if serving with salsa verde)

To serve – lemon wedges or salsa verde (optional) 

Fire up the oven to 220c (fan) and find an oven dish (ceramic or metal) that will fit the potatoes in a single layer. If you don’t like washing up, line it with foil or parchment.

Tip a tablespoon of oil into a plastic bag or bowl and toss the spuds and garlic with a sprinkle of salt. Arrange in a single layer in the dish and bake for 20 minutes. Don’t chuck out the oil or bag just yet – add the asparagus to gently coat.

Remove from oven and give the spuds a good shake to loosen. Add the asparagus in a layer on top. If your tomatoes are a little on the large size, add them now as well. Just scatter around the pan. Cook for a further 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and give the pan another shake. Season the fish and lie on top of the asparagus, throw in some olives (and add the tomatoes now if tiny). Sprinkle the fish with the remaining tablespoon of oil. Bake 10 – 15 minutes until the fish is cooked.

Assemble equal quantities of vegetables and fish on each plate.

Serve as is, or with a wedge of lemon. If you’re in the mood, a spoonful of salsa verde on the fish would give it a gentle kick.

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.

Report from Emerald City: Part one: finding my organic groove

A few weeks shy of the six-month mark since my move, I thought it was time for an update.

The  food adventures in my new home have been rather eclectic. This is largely due to my own dietary perculiarities combined with the Not Boyfriend now being in his third year of veganism. It has also been a year or so of unexpected hiccoughs, interrupting our cash flow – so we’ve been a tad parsimonious.

Sydney is a noticeably more expensive city to live in. From the price of produce to the inflated real estate market, eating out or at home just costs more. No longer having my tiny but productive 9 square metres of veggie garden doesn’t help either. Though I’ve got my name down on the waiting list at the nearest community garden (but that could take a decade to come to fruition!)

Organic produce

I mourn my mid-week pilgrimage to Vic Markets. Not just the healthy competition between the organic stalls and diversity of conventional produce available but the one-stop shop aspect of the market. There’s nowhere that even remotely replicates the quality and variety of the fresh fruit and vegetables, plus the diversity of the market hall vendors. I yearn for a single market to buy quality fish, great olives, fantastic bread, my weekly staples (oats, nuts and tofu) and graze delectable edibles. 

Pick of the crop

Orange Grove Public School

Cnr Perry Street & Balmain Road, Leichhardt, 2040, Saturday, 7 am to 1 pm. 

This has more organic stalls than all the food markets I’ve shopped at, plus interesting homemade food and a delightful array of plant stalls. It's nice to see plants and foods come together.

Bonus: ample on-street parking.

Marrickville Organic Market 

142 Addison Road, Addison Road Centre, Marrickville, 2204, Sunday, 7.30 am to 3 pm.

It's a little bit hippy with a relaxed atmosphere, the famed chai tent (or sloping lawn) and a wide variety of home cooked food to graze on. There's a dearth of Sunday markets, so that's a bonus.  A couple of beefs with it though. Despite the name, only one stall is 100% organic (but it’s a great one). Parking is a nightmare, necessitating being there by 8am if you need to drive. Not a lot of fun on a day off. But otherwise a charming weekend diversion.

Don't miss the amazing smoked olives available at the smoked salmon stall - at Leichhardt on Saturday and Marrickville on Sunday.

Fresh chamomile at Marrickville

Eveleigh Market at Carriageworks


245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, Saturday 8 am – 1 pm

Well curated and a good place to bring visitors, it’s handy for topping up on a few extras for the fridge and pantry but a bit pricy for a weekly shop. Favourites include the truffle oil, exotic mushrooms, flowers, pho stall (vegan and omni) and watching Kylie Kwong cook. There’s a knife sharpener as well, plus good coffee and pastries. Definitely a foodie outing for both locals and tourists.

Bonus: If you’re lucky you’ll catch Barbara Sweeney AKA The Talking Cookbook – I love what she’s about and if you're a reader of food blogs, you'll also enjoy having a chat with her.

Back to the weekly shop

After many weekends spent exploring produce markets and weekdays trawling through expensive health food stores (don't get me started), we’ve settled on ordering a weekly organic veggie box. After a couple of months buying one elsewhere for more than twice the price, we’ve settled on a Wednesday box from our local food co-op Alfalfa House and topping up on fruit and other goodies elsewhere as needed. The $25 box of organic veg is great value and always fresh (though oddly I often find the fresh produce in store expensive and of variable quality). We can combine a mid-week collection while restocking the pantry. There’s a great selection of grains, spices and pantry staples but it’s the tempeh collection that  exceeds my Vic market stalwart. The Byron Bay fava and seaweed (soy free) tempeh is exceptional. There's lots of other yummy stuff in the fridge including a locally made coconut yoghurt (the makers are sometimes at Eveleigh Market).

While I still dream of Melbourne’s cornucopia of goodies at an affordable price, the kitchen is now fully stocked with an interesting variety of fresh organic food. I’ve always loved the challenge of culinary improvisation, so a box of mystery goods (bar the turnips and capsicum!) is a joy to create from. 

The dreaded turnip

Despite the odd moments of frustration it has been fun exploring the shopping options in my new locale. And while I think I've finally cracked it, there's something new opening around the corner,  pandering to the gamut of Sydney food fads from vegan to paleo, with a side of kale and activated nuts.

London Markets – the biggie at Borough

You’ve got to remember that My London was the one of Thatcher’s Britain. Grey skies. Muddy moods. Gritty.

Food markets were everywhere. They’d pop up in the morning along a street and often disappear without a trace around lunchtime. Barrow boys would spruik their wares. Long before twenty-first century eco-consciousness, markets didn’t run to the expense of plastic bags. You bought your basket, opened the mouth wide and they’d pour the produce in straight from the scales.

These neighbourhood markets were the lifeblood of every suburb in London. Mine was in Dalston.  Each week our large shared household would head down and buy produce by the pack load. There were many treasures I’d never come across before in New Zealand, especially all the exciting roots and leaves favoured by the local Jamaican community. Even the somewhat less exotic caused a thrill for a gal who’d never seen fresh beetroot before. The beets were sold boiled and slopped from steaming vats. Into a BYO container they’d slip and quickly taken home, sliced and doused with vinegar while still warm.

While it’s rumoured that the first incarnation of Borough Market opened in the eleventh century, its latest retail incarnation is comparatively recent and didn't exist in the Thatcher era. Let’s face it, you couldn't even get a decent coffee in London back then.

Fast forward to September 2014 and I finally make it to the hallowed halls (after a right neighbourhood/wrong day experience two years earlier). Did it live up to the hype?

Yup.

I swapped recipes with the mushroom seller (her: ‘the giant fleshy mushrooms cooks and tastes just like chicken”, me: “the chantarelle’s taste amazing with potatoes”), gorged on some gluten/dairy-free rocky road (no marshmallow but biscuits and honeycomb), salivated at the beautiful tarts, olives, bread, currants, tomatillos…

Like those who have gone before, I feasted my eyes and my belly.

Revelation – the next time I make a falafel I’ll skip the obligatory iceberg/tomato combo and stick to hommos, Middle Eastern pickles and a large handful of fresh mint. This was one of the cheapest meals I ate in my week in London and arguably the best.

I don’t need to tell you how to find Borough Market – just bring your appetite, jump a tube to London Bridge and follow the hungry hoards across Borough High Street. 

kickarse kimchi

I blame Yong Green.

Thanks to their Dragon Bowl (brown rice, homemade kimchi and other vegan goodies), I became hooked on the stuff. Not satisfied with eating it only at Yong, I’d buy tubs of the Korean staple and throw it into vegan dishes, even gyoza .It was the summer of kimchi.

So, of course, once cabbage season hit it was time to make my own.

Another summer find was the Hot Knives cookbook, Salad Daze. It’s like a kid that forgot to take his Ritalin - loud, in your face but with a certain charm. A vego cookbook with attitude.

And Salad Daze has a kickarse kimchi recipe.

Making kimchi is simple but requires patience. And clean implements. You want the good bacteria, not the kind that makes you sick.

Day one: sterilise your pickling vessel. Make a batch of brine. Chop tons of cabbage, carrots, daikon, pak choi and spring onions. Blend garlic, fresh chillies, ginger and Korean pepper powder to make the spice paste. Keep the spice paste in it’s own jar. Cover the chopped vegetables with brine and place a heavy weight on top. The pressure and the salt help push the moisture out of the vegetables so they’ll absorb the flavours from the herbs when you add them.

Having no ceramic crock, I improvised with a massive antique glass jar and used a brine filled plastic bag as a weight and makeshift lid. It worked surprisingly well.

Day two: drain the brine soaked vegetables and taste for saltiness (mine also needed a quick rinse). Mix veg with the spice paste (that’s also been brewing nicely in it’s jar for the past day) and shove the spicy vegetable mixture back in the jar. Really jam it into the crock. Cover with the brine bag again. Let it brew in the jar for at least 7 days before bottling. After a week the spices were still very hot and gingery. I left it another two days before bottling and in that time the flavour had mellowed. Still a hit of chilli but the overall heat was more rounded.

I made two huge jars of kickarse kimchi. One went back to Sydney with the Significant Eater. Mine is going down nicely. I use it as a lazy extra serve of vegetables – in almost everything. Other than in a homemade dragon bowl, I like it in a wrap with some fried tofu, to give a stir-fry an extra kick and even in an omelette.

Do you like Kimchi? Have you made it? What are your tips?

Check out the crazy Hot Knives guys.