Lovely dinner.

Today it is nine years since my father died.  Year after year I find that the simple fact of the repeated date has the disconcerting effect of snapping me back in time.  The intervening years seem to compress and fade and I am back in the day, the moment, the shock, the grief.

I guess we are programmed by date from a very early age - birthdays, Christmas, Friday the 13th.  I heard a terrible story recently of someone who found out at 16 that his parents had got the date wrong all these years and he had been celebrating his birthday a day late.  It makes a mockery of the whole thing if you do all the rituals on the wrong day, doesn't it? 

Today was sad but it was also a chance to stop and remember without shying away from the pain and some dear friends remembered too and made an effort to tell us they were thinking of us.  That helps.  It's nice not having to explain why today, particularly, I feel sad.  Such anniversaries are public license for emotion and faltering a little as you 'get on' with the stuff of life that fills all the other days.  

And my Mum and I made a small but rich celebration of it.  Linguine marinara for me, 'coin' pasta (large, round discs, homemade) with a rich, red sauce for her, rucola and parmesan salad in the middle and some sharp, clean pinot grigio.  Then coffee and a shared pistachio tart with pear poached in rose`.  It went perfectly with the 'remember when?' and  'remember how?' and the love for a very good man.  It was sad, but lovely.

Feeling miserable but this image helps.

Is there anything a good shoe fetish can't do? 

Comfort needed ASAP

It's been an awful five days in Victoria.  The direct effects of the worst natural disaster in Australian history are mostly unfathomable for this urbanite sitting comfortably in Melbourne, but the proximity of death and destruction has made for many tears, much hand-wringing and a sombre mood.  

I am always struck by how action - having something TO DO - is what one craves in a crisis and, unable to do anything of any actual benefit to the victims last Sunday as the shocking news broke, I did something weirdly comforting albeit ridiculously trite.  I made pancakes for my mother and me.  I flipped and we ate, I flipped again and we ate more and we watched one horror story after another.  The death toll rose and the fires still burned.  Doughy, buttery, warming and covered in sugary maple syrup it seemed both crass and obvious.  We cried and ate and wondered what else to do. 

Comfort food is important.  I heard on the radio that cake was going down a treat at the hastily convened meeting places for victims, emergency aid workers and assembled media.  I want to bake madly for them all but I know at the moment I'd be more trouble than help if I turned up in a danger zone with a back seat full of sponge cake.  I think I'll do some serious cooking and foisting food on those around me over the weekend though.  I think Nigella will help.

Toast, porridge, risotto, spaghetti bolognese, apple crumble, crumpets, piklets, rice pudding, cupcakes...  what are the foods that bring you comfort?

If life gives you lemons...

It's really hot and I have a cold - WTF?  I need Vitamin C and I need refreshing.  We have a heap of lemons and some mint in the garden.... 

Lemonade from Feel Good Food by Mim Beim & Gul McCarty

4 cups water

juice of 4 lemons

2 tablespoons of honey (raw/cold pressed if you've got it)

handful mint leaves

Pour water and lemon juice into a jug and stir well.  Add honey and stir until dissolved.  Add more water or more honey to taste.

Add mint leaves and refrigerate for 2 hours or until thoroughly chilled.  Drink with ice!

The book also suggests I need to eat chicken soup, lots of garlic and ginger, chilli, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, parsley, basil, onions, miso, oranges, thyme, cloves, cinnamon, more raw honey, nasturtiums (!) and 3 litres of fluid daily (water, tea or soup)!!

I'll get back to you.

all I want for Christmas is...

It's totally churlish to start writing a Xmas wish list on January 2nd but....  I want Santa to bring me an ice-cream maker come Dec 2009!  I have been inspired by this recipe but the hardcore whisking required dulls my enthusiasm somewhat.  Perhaps someone out there who owns a magic ice-cream making device could try it and let me know how it goes?  Even post some to me in an esky marked 'urgent'?!

It's an English recipe and I love how it specifies English over French lavender - historical cultural divisions run deep!

Lavender & Honey Ice-Cream 

from madamesays.com

2 teaspoons lavender petals (English not French)


4 tablespoons honey (acacia if you have it….but not essential)


2-4 tablespoons icing sugar (use 2 to start off with and then add to taste - I tend to use more like 2 1/2)


Juice of 1 lemon


1/2 pint double cream


1/4 pint greek yoghurt

 

Marinate the lavender petals with the honey, icing sugar and lemon juice for an hour or so.
Lightly whip the cream and mix in the honey/lavender mixture.
Fold in the yoghurt.

Freeze - either in an ice-cream machine (if you have one - if you do, you don’t really need to whip the cream, just mix it with the yoghurt/lavender/honey mixture and put it in the machine until done), or if you don’t have a machine, put into a wide-ish shallow plastic container in the freezer and check every 45 minutes or so to see if ice particles are developing and give a good beat with a whisk to disperse them. You should ideally do this about 3 or 4 times.


Take out of the freezer about 15-25 minutes before serving to allow to thaw a little (this mix sets very hard).

Slack

Nearly a month without a post!  I feel like a bad blogger - a blog is for life, not just till the novelty wears off etc etc... 

Now it's New Year'

s Day and I'm a little headachy, very lazy and in my PJs before it's even dark outside.  Seems appropriate to post a recipe for the Easiest Cake Ever which I served at my little NYE VIP BBQ last night.  Well, perhaps there are easier cakes to make, but I bet they aren't as good as this; the ratio of ease (of method) to please (that which you bring to your appreciative cake-eating audience) on this one is very satisfying.  And see how I coined a little rhyming thing there? I work best in pyjamas.

Claudia Roden's Orange and Almond Cake - one of my very favourites.

2 oranges

5 eggs, beaten

250g castor sugar

250g ground almonds

1 teaspoon baking power (use gluten-free and the whole cake is celiac-friendly)

Put the oranges, whole, into a saucepan and fill with enough water to cover them.  Boil gently for two hours (keep an eye on the water level and top up if necessary).  Heat oven to 200C and butter and flour (if going gluten-free use appropriate flour or some extra almond meal) a large, spring-form cake tin.

Remove oranges from water and let them cool before putting them into a blender or food processor, or turning them into pulp with a stick blender in a large bowl.

Add sugar, almond meal, baking powder and eggs to oranges, combine well and pour into prepared tin.  Bake for about an hour or until skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out (mostly) clean - the joy of this cake is it is very moist but the outside goes a nice deep brown and is slightly crisp.

Easy pleasey!  Thanks Claudia!

...like a fish needs a bicycle.

I've come to the conclusion - after many tantrums, tears and late night phone calls to my ever-patient friends - that I just don't have the ego to be friends with the Ex-Love.  

It always ends badly and last night I cracked it, was nasty via Facebook (how pathetic is that?!) and went to bed feeling really sad.  I woke up still feeling sad but by tonight I've decided enough is enough.  I'm admitting it - I don't have the patience, the angelic good will or the tough skin to say 'okay, so I offered you everything and you didn't want it... but that's cool - let's hang out!'.

What I do have, however, is two overripe bananas that need baking up.  Now there's something I can use...

Banana Cake from Belinda Jeffery's Mix & Bake

1 1/2 cups plain flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

pinch salt

1/2 teaspoon bi-carb of soda

2 - 3 very ripe bananas 

1 2/3 cups raw castor sugar

2 eggs

125g unsalted butter, softened and cut into small pieces

100ml buttermilk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180C.  Butter and line a deep, round tin.

Put the flour, baking powder, salt and bi-carb soda into a food processor and whiz together for about 15 seconds, then transfer to bowl.

Mash bananas and put in (now empty) food processor and then add sugar and eggs and whiz for 1 minute. Add the butter and whiz again for another minute or until mixture is thick and creamy.  

Add buttermilk and vanilla and pulse to just mix.  Add the flour mixture and whiz again in quick bursts, scraping down the sides and mixing in until it is just combined (don't overmix or cake will be rubbery).  Scoop into prepared tin.

Bake for 30 - 35 mins until skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean (it won't rise much as is quite dense).