Quince Charming

I find a quince so imbued with it's own heady fragrance it really needs little embellishment. A little sweet, be it sugar or honey, brings out the floral notes so redolent of Arabian evenings, cardamom and rose water sweet. A quince is nothing if not an introvert, hiding her perfumed beauty beneath a downy fur and presenting a hard exterior to the judging world. She certainly requires perseverance, a slow and tender touch. But our patience is rewarded with soft and yielding rosey hued flesh. 

Every year I witnessed the ritualistic production of quince jelly by my mother and father. Like Süskind's Grenouille they worked on a mountain of the yellow fruit. Chopped, boiled, strained, separated and variously adulterated into the pure essence of quince. The alchemy of cloudy juice transformed into liquid gold is a magic of which I will never grow tired. However, in the absence of a muslin bag, a hook to hang it on or a spare weekend I prefer to bake them simply and slowly. Halved and cored, knobs of butter and spoonfuls of honey, nestled in a baking dish with a little water to keep them moist, covered for 3 hours in a low oven, they are perfectly tender and blushingly pink. Served warm with a splodge of sweetened and cardamon flecked yoghurt, drizzled with the syrupy honey juices, nothing could be simpler or more luscious.

A borrowed heritage

I am oft lamenting, to my oft lamented to boyfriend, the incongruence of our respective cultural heritages. And when I say culture I of course am talking about food.

He grew up in an extended Italian family where every occasion centred around food. The tomato harvest meant the entire clan gathering for the making of passata, liquid summer captured in brown beer bottles that were all boiled up in a 44 gallon drum. Pigs were slaughtered, grapes were pressed and olives were cured as social events where every family member had a job and a place in the hierarchy. These people did self-sufficiency before it was cool. He speaks of a large rambling orchard and of grandmothers that rolled pasta by hand. If they had a family motto it would surely be 'Mangia, mangia' at every opportunity. And what impression has this upbringing had on said boyfriend? Nothing but an increased appreciation and capacity for good food and better company. His grasp of the Italian language and food culture is rudimentary at best.

I would kill to have such a food culture running through my veins. Not to say my mother is not the best cook I know. But if we had any food culture in our blood it would be so working class Australiana it would surely clog an artery. Nothin' but mutton and white sauce running through these veins. Any cooking prowess that Mum possesses she gained through reading, travel and, above all, eating. I love having access to the cultural melting pot that is Australia. That I can happily eat and cook countless different cuisines in the one day without a second thought or a glance at a recipe is testament to the gifts that my mother has given me and the gifts that this city gives me every day. But what I wouldn't give to have been born with an Italian accent, a little European chic and have spaghetti do for me what it's done for Sophia Loren.

So, they say you fake it till you make it and until I'm told otherwise my boyfriend's family is as good as mine. What could be more Italian that using the very last of the season's produce, the green tomatoes that would otherwise go to waste to make delicious Pomodori Verdi Sott' Olio? That's Green Tomatoes in Olive Oil for those of you without my rich cultural heritage!

Turn turn turn....

A new house means a new garden and a farewell to hardy established plants and growing cycles. It is exciting to begin a new garden, to learn from past mistakes and triumphs. While winter may be the time to build these new constructions, I see little to do once the soil, straw and compost are layered neatly in their little beds. A pea planted here or there will be nothing to the frenzied planting of a few months time.
I cannot decide if I prefer spring or summer in the garden. Spring is exciting as soil unveils it's tender little offerings into the air, everything shooting and budding and full of promise. All is lime-green potential, crisp mornings and rosy hued sunsets. Summer is, by comparison, showy, obvious, a corner hussy advertising her wares. All is forbidden fruit and broken promises. The ripeness of fruit ready for the picking is somehow tinged with the regret of death, of rotted flesh, of seasons ebb. A flower only blooms for so long. A fruit ripens but a short while before descending into decay. As the parsley bolts to seed I try to prune and prune and prune, somehow delaying the inevitable parsley-free period of the year. Yet at summer's end, who can deny the beauty of Autumn, the last sweet tomatoes off the vine, the figs and quinces asking for a syrupy baking and a  generous splodge of cream. Aahh, comfort food, hello my old friend. Winter is the quiet achiever of the bunch, a severe schoolmarm who forces us to eat our greens. The much maligned brassica is, luck would have it, the friend of bacon and anchovies and there's always dessert if we manage to get through our veg.

So, like the book and the song say, to every thing there is a season, a time to plant, a time to reap. There is beauty and anticipation in every season. But for me, this year, spring has got my name written all over it.

To zucchini or not to zucchini?

I am faced with a conundrum. A query, a question an insurmountable mountain of doubt and indecision. Because I love love LOVE zucchini flowers, predictably stuffed with goat curd and fried in a crispy coating, a classic combination that will never grow naff or tired in my eyes. But if I eat them now I won't experience the satisfaction of a full-grown, adult-sized zucchini. No prize winning, beribboned behemoths to show at the fair. No green-tinged frittata or ratatouille at the height of summer. Nothing with which to assuage my latent penis-envy. And besides, it feels a little bit like eating a baby, especially when you've witnessed the tender little shoots first poke their soft little heads through the soil. You feel like a cannibal midwife, your hideous gaping maw salivating over succulent flesh. Nightmarish stuff! 

So I daily count my intended victims, waiting for the day they number enough for a meal. And they sleep innocent of my plotting, beneath their shady leaves, on their cosy beds of mulch. 

Happily, should I hesitate long enough, the decision will be taken out of my hands as my vulnerable little pups enter adulthood. Like Humbert Humbert losing his lust for a grown up Lolita, suddenly a delectable flower will be nothing more than soggy green veg.

An oven full of naughty

Call me crazy, but at the moment I am experimenting with a diet free of sugar, wheat and dairy. So what should I choose to make but cheesecake? It could have been worse, I was contemplating tiramisu and I'm off coffee as well. Why exactly I should choose to restrict my diet so aggressively is anyone's guess. Perhaps a need for order and control in a seemingly chaotic and violently random universe. Anyone else feel an overwhelming need to organise their underwear draw? OCD aside, an occasional descent into loss of control is healthy and normal, that's why nothing could stop me from licking the bowl to my heart's content.

This cheesecake is of the baked variety and the ricotta gives it an unexpected lightness. It is not too sweet and the salted butter in the crumbly biscuit base adds to the slightly savoury quality. I am serving it with sliced strawberries macerated for about an hour in balsamic vinegar and a little sugar. Stopping at just once slice is sure to be a challenge, that's why I'm getting the damn thing out of the house as quickly as possible. 

Baked Ricotta Cheesecake

Recipe adapted from Breakfast Lunch Tea, Rose Bakery

butter, for greasing

800g ricotta

200g cream cheese

2/3 cup caster sugar

grated zest and juice 2 lemons

pinch ground cinnamon

5 eggs

1 egg yolk

200ml pouring cream

180g digestive biscuits

60g melted butter

pinch ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180°C

Butter a 25cm springform tin and line with baking paper on bottom and sides.

To make the base process biscuits, butter and cinnamon in a food processor until crumbs. Press onto base of tin.

Mix ingredients for filling together in the following order, mixing well after each addition: cheeses, sugar, lemon zest and juice, cinnamon, eggs and yolk, cream and flour. 

Pour into tin over biscuit base. Bake about 45mins or until just set, not browned but just beginning to puff up. Remove from oven and cool in tin before taking out.

Nourishing Sunday

There is nothing I want more at the close of a weekend, whether I have been working or relaxing, than a soothing, nourishing meal. Something I can cook in a jiffy with little to no thought or effort. That makes me feel like I am a good girl regardless of where my weekend has taken me. A Sunday night clean slate. It used to be pho or chicken and corn soup - made with a box of stock and a can of creamed corn! Lately however, I can't get enough of this recipe adapted from the Gourmet Traveller Slow Food Cookbook. There is something so comforting about the flavour of miso and the little chewy grains of barley, contrasting beautifully with the silky tofu. If you can't be bothered or can't seem to remember to soak the barley overnight, just give it a 10min boil before starting the braise, to par cook it.

Pumpkin, pearl barley and miso braise

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1/2  small Jap pumpkin, cut into 2cm wedges

1 cup pearl barley, soaked overnight in cold water, drained

1L chicken stock

1 tbsp mirin

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1 heaped tbsp shiro miso

300g silken tofu, cut into 2cm cubes

4 spring onions, cut into 4cm lengths

1 sheet nori

Combine stock, mirin, soy, vinegar and miso in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer, whisking to dissolve miso.

Heat oil in a large heavy based casserole and brown pumpkin in batches. Return to pan and add barley and stock mixture. Simmer for 25-30 mins or until pumpkin is tender.

Add onion and tofu and simmer until tofu is warm.

Serve hot, garnish with crumbled, toasted nori.

Golden Granola

This is the granola that has cured my breakfast aversion. Not that I ever had anything against the 11 o'clock weekend brunch kind of affair. It was more specifically a cereal aversion, the midweek 'must eat something before running out the door' kind of breakfast that was not my cup of tea. In that case, a cup of tea was more my cup of tea. As a child I would sneakily rinse a clean bowl and spoon to fool (not very successfully) my parents into thinking I'd broken my fast. For someone so into food it seems strange that I was so willing to forgo any chance to dine. Various health kicks as an adult failed to convince me of the merits of muesli, some of the blame at least must go to sultanas, which I find, I cannot quite say why, utterly revolting. Truth be told, I cannot think of anything worse than munching on a mouthful of dry, raw oats; I am not a cow and do not like the feeling of chewing my cud.

So I began making this muesli not for myself but for my boyfriend. The muesli I was buying for him was, apparently, delicious, and at about $8.00 a breakfast it would want to be! I thought I could do much better at a fraction of the cost. Once I had made it, filling the house with a delectable biscuity fug,  I found myself munching on handfuls of the stuff at random moments throughout the day. Giving in to the inevitable, I soon made it a integral part of my morning routine.

The quick oats may seem a strange addition. I discovered by accident, one day when I ran out of the regular, that the quick oats clump up with all the seeds and honey, forming crunchy little biscuity nuggets that improve the granola tenfold. You can really put any grains, seeds or nuts you like, granola is after all a very personal thing, we are all much too fragile and childlike in the morning to be challenged. I like to sometimes swap the macadamias for hazelnuts and when we go camping I add dried cranberries and peaches.

Granola

400g rolled oats

400g quick porridge oats

200g macadamia nuts

300g raw almonds

50g linseed

80g coconut flakes

60g pepitas

60g sunflower seeds

60g sesame seeds

60g poppy seeds

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup apple juice

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup honey

zest of one orange

Preheat oven to 180°C. Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. 

Place juice, oil, honey and zest in a saucepan and heat gently until honey is melted. Pour over dry ingredients and mix well.

Spread evenly over 2 deep roasting trays and bake for 30-45mins or until evenly golden brown and crunchy. Stir  and rotate trays every 5 mins or so to prevent edges burning and to brown evenly. 

Cool and store in airtight jars for up to 2 weeks. Serve with natural yoghurt, milk and fresh fruit.