Marshmallow treats

My office will be participating in the Biggest Morning Tea (a charity fundraiser) this week, so I've made a huge pile of these to take along ...

200 grams butter
1 tin sweetened condensed milk
4 teaspoons cocoa
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
0.5 cup brown sugar
2 x 200 gram packets malt biscuits, crushed
marshmallows
desiccated coconut

Melt first five ingredients together and mix in the biscuit crumbs. Form balls around halved marshmallows, and roll balls in coconut. Chill and enjoy.

Sorta like lasagne, but without the pasta

I've raved before about the wonderful free recipe cards provided by the Sydney Markets. They're full of fabulous ways to use seasonal fruit and veges. This eggplant 'lasagne', which I made for the first time recently, is just gorgeous!

Click on the image to be taken to a pdf of the
recipe on the Sydney Markets site

I may have overdone the basil (in a spirit of waste not, want not) as mine looked like this:

Soooo yummy! Give it a go ...

(Re)discovering seeded mustard

We've had breakfast at Ellacure twice now, and both times I ordered a side serving of Hollandaise sauce. Ellacure's Hollandaise has a special piquancy as it contains seeded mustard. Yum! This reminded me to start using mustard again in cooking. It adds a spicy kick and an interesting texture.

This is the mustard I'm currently using at home. It is from

Dijon in France, but of course there are also local suppliers.

Milawa Mustards from Victoria are excellent

I've swished a generous spoonful of mustard through tonight's potato salad:

Mmmmm!

Perpetual student? Hell yeah!

Two exciting milestones occurred today ... this is my 200th post since starting the blog in July 2005, and the blog reached 20,000 hits a couple of hours ago! Cool bananas. In case you're wondering, the two posts on wattalapam (the recipe here, and more musings here) still get far more hits than anything else. Together they account for about for about half the traffic the blog has ever had! Anyway ... on to today's thoughts ...

Growing up in a series of small towns in New Zealand, I didn't have many educated role models. My teachers had degrees of course, but I was too shy to speak to them about the future. Maybe some of my friends' parents had degrees too. In any case, no one in my immediate world had even completed high school, and my parents were hostile to the idea of me doing so. 'You don't want to end up a perpetual student', my dad said, circling job vacancies for unskilled school leavers. The thing was, I did want to become a perpetual student. I just didn't know it then, and didn't know that one person's 'perpetual student' is another person's 'lifelong learner'. Lifelong learning sounds much more positive, don't you think?

Anyway, I was an obedient child and left school at 16 to start an office job, as I had no other visible options. (Well, single motherhood was a popular choice among my high school cohort ...) Fortunately, I was accepted into a part time correspondence course at a university and achieved my undergraduate degree over seven years while working full time. Phew. Several more university qualifications have followed ... I guess education is addictive.

In the almost thirty years since leaving school I've also done dozens of shorter courses. From driving (yet another skill my parents chose not to impart to their daughters); to pottery, silver jewellery making, sewing and woodworking (reminding me how inartistic I am); to anthropology, French, Bahasa Indonesia, chemistry and forensics; to various courses in food hygiene, cooking and cheese making. Guess I'm officially a course junkie! One of the blogs I follow recently had a lovely article on how and why to become a lifelong learner, which lists lots of good reasons we should all keep learning. Apparently it makes us more interesting, independent, healthy and satisfied. The article also has some great links to free online course providers.

Three cheers for lifelong learning.

Fennel au gratin

Pardon my possibly dodgy French, but 'fennel au gratin' sounds a little more elegant than 'fennel with a cheesy crust'! Fennel is an odd-looking vegetable with a crisp white bulb and feathery green leaves. It has a slightly aniseed-y taste, and is in season right now (autumn) here in Canberra.

Fresh fennel looks like this ...

... and my cooked version looks like this

To make this delicious side dish, you'll need fresh fennel, parmesan cheese, and pepper and salt to taste. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Wash the fennel and discard outer layers if they're dry or discoloured. Chop the bulb and leaves into bite-sized chunks, and zap in a covered dish in the microwave for a couple of minutes to soften. Then lay the fennel flat in the bottom of an oven dish, sprinkle with grated parmesan and salt and pepper, and bake for about half an hour. Enjoy!

Yes yes yes! Feijoas are back

My favourite fruit is once again available in my favourite shop. Feijoas (also known as pineapple guavas, as their flavour is like a combination of the two) are only available for about a month each year, so don't miss out.

How to eat a feijoa? Some people make them into

jams or marmalades, but I prefer to slice them in half,

scoop out the flesh and eat it raw. Yum!

Crème brûlée

1 cup cream
1/4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean, split
4 (extra) tablespoons caster sugar

Place cream and vanilla bean in saucepan and bring to boil. Remove vanilla bean and allow to cool 15 minutes. Whisk egg yolks with sugar until well combined. Pour cream mixture into egg mixture and combine well. (Some recipes say to strain the mixture at this stage; I prefer not to as it's fun to see the tiny vanilla bean seeds in the finished dessert.) Pour into four ramekins, place them in a baking dish and add enough cold water to come up halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake at 160 degrees C for about one hour. Cool at room temperature. Refrigerate until cold. Sprinkle one tablespoon of caster sugar on to top of each custard and grill (or use blowtorch) to heat the sugar until it caramelises. Serve warm or cold.

I don't have a blowtorch – culinary or otherwise – but get

pretty good results by grilling the desserts for about five minutes

You can vary this recipe in many ways ... for example, by placing some fruit (passion fruit pulp, or mandarin segments, say) in the bottom of the ramekins before pouring the cream mixture in. Or you could leave the vanilla out, and add either a tablespoon of Japanese (matcha) green tea powder or a tablespoon of instant coffee to the warm cream to make green tea or coffee flavoured crème brûlée.

Annual culinary number crunch

For several years now I've been recording what I cook at home (in a Excel spreadsheet – how nerdy is that?) and doing an annual number crunch to find out what we've been eating. The results from 2011–2012 are here, 2010–2011 are here, and 2009–2010 are here. This year's list is a bit underwhelming. Think it may be time I diversified a bit! Anyway, here's what we ate the most:

pasta and sauce (various pasta and various sauces, whether bought or home made)
vegetable omelette (whether Spanish or with seasonal vegetables)
potato salad
BLTs
hearty vegetable soup
pasta and (home made) pesto
Shakshuka

There have been a few new entrants to the menu lately – avocado macaroni cheese and all manner of vegetable omelettes, for example – but I need to try some more new recipes, or maybe trawl the spreadsheet to be reminded of some old favourites.

No matter what I make, cooking is still a joy. I've been away from home for several weeks lately – on holiday, at a course, at a conference, and showing a friend around Sydney – and felt quite discombobulated being away from cooking facilities. Some people find mindfulness in meditation ... I find it in cooking! And housework. (Don't tell anyone. It is very unfashionable to enjoy cleaning one's own house.)

Friday night treat ... Stuffed baked potatoes

Like my recipe for camembert tarts, I think of this as a Friday night novelty food. It doesn't exactly cover all the food groups, but is delicious and celebratory. Hey, the weekend is just around the corner!

You'll need some large potatoes, grated cheese (cheddar, or whatever you like) and pepper and salt to taste.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (about 350 degrees F). Scrub the outsides of the potatoes and prick them with a fork. Bake potatoes for about twenty minutes, or long enough for their skins to toughen a little. Then pop them in the microwave and cook for about ten minutes, until they're soft in the middle. Remove them from the microwave and slice through the top. Scoop the white part of each potato out and mash it with cheese, pepper and salt. Return the cheesy potato mixture to the potato skins, and return them to the oven to reheat (about twenty minutes or so).

Eat and enjoy!

Not the most photogenic of meals ... but it does taste

good! Tonight I used feta cheese.

Outing myself as an equalist

Recently a younger colleague said she wouldn't call herself a feminist. She's smart, sassy, independent, and has a PhD and a penchant for trekking in Nepal. A perfect example of everything feminism has achieved, if you ask me!

Although I grew up in the 1980s, it may as well have been the 1950s in my family and in the small New Zealand towns I grew up in. My parents made it very clear that my sister and me, as mere females, would not be educated beyond the minimum, and needn't get any high and mighty ideas about university or careers. My dad spoke of getting us 'married off'. (Seriously.) Accordingly we both left school at sixteen to start full time jobs and start paying our parents for the privilege of living under their roof. We don't have any brothers so can't really say whether they would have been treated differently – allowed to finish school or encouraged to get a trade or profession – but I suspect things would have different for boys. There was an all-pervading attitude that girls were inferior and deserved less.

Fast forward a few years. I left that oppressive world, put myself through a degree (and then a couple more), and life is good. I have a job I love, a bank account to call my own, and a partner who treats me as an equal. I'm incredibly aware that had past generations of women not fought for basic rights – the rights to vote, to attend university, to obtain and retain employment, and to control their fertility – I could not have had such a rewarding and satisfying life.

So, back to my friend, the non-feminist. It has become fashionable for younger women to say 'I'm not a feminist', and seemingly fail to acknowledge our foremothers' efforts to achieve equality between the genders. I'm usually a meek and mild person, but I had to challenge her statement. She explained that it wasn't so much the concept of equality she objected to (phew!) but the word itself. She thinks the 'femin' at the start of 'feminism' is somehow anti-male. An interesting point, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater! Perhaps we just need a more inclusive term for people (male and female) who support equal rights. How about 'equalist'?

Postcard from Fremantle

This week I'm in Fremantle, Western Australia, for the 6th IPEd National Editors Conference. I won't waffle on about the conference – there are numerous bloggers and tweeters doing that already – but wanted to share a few pics of this lovely maritime village. It's only about half an hour from Perth, yet feels like a country town.

At Moore & Moore Cafe on Henry Street

Wonderfully quirky!

Couldn't resist visiting Old Shanghai, which is like a
Singapore-style hawker centre in downtown Freo ...

... for roti and a potato curry. Twice!

There's some fabulous architecture here. This is 

the Esplanade Hotel, where the conference is being held

I'd heard of yarn bombing ... but flax bombing?

The conference is excellent. Congratulations to all the organisers and presenters.

Out of the mouths of babes

This evening we went to dinner at some friends' place. We have a regular arrangement where one of us makes the main course and the other dessert, and vice versa next time. Tonight it was my turn to provide dessert, and I made a cardamom-spiced rice pudding:

Recipe here, if you're interested!

Anyway, our friends have three small boys, and are attempting to get them to try new flavours. Fair enough! Thomas (aged six) proclaimed 'it makes my throat burn' and 'dessert is supposed to be yummy'. Daniel (aged four) was speechless. Mark (aged three) said 'I can't eat this'.

Thankfully, most of the adults enjoyed the dessert ... and I have sufficient self esteem not to take all the rejections personally! Any suggestions for what I should make next time?

P.S. apparently it's not just me. A.A. Milne wrote a delightful poem about kids who reject rice pudding.

Brekkie @ Janek's Café, Bowral

We usually try to stop in Bowral for coffee (and maybe a meal) when driving between Sydney and Canberra. It's a good place to stretch legs and there are plenty of cafés to choose from. Janek's Café in Corbett Plaza, Wingecaribee Street, has some delicious all-day breakfast offerings.

He had:

The English breakfast ... fried eggs, bacon, pork sausage, bubble and

squeak, house made baked beans, brown sauce and

an English muffin, and a long black

Comments: the highlight was the home made baked beans. Lots of brown sauce to go with the sausages and bacon! Coffee was excellent.

She had:

Eggs Benedict with fresh Atlantic salmon

and avocado, and a flat white

Comments: lashings of Hollandaise! Yum. It was a nice change to try this dish with fresh rather than smoked salmon, and the avocado added an extra creaminess. The coffee hit the spot.

We liked it. Don't forget to pack an extra jumper if you're passing through Bowral ... it may be a charming wee town, but it's often chilly there!

Avocado macaroni cheese

My favourite colour is kelly green. Now, I don't want to call it an obsession, but over the years I've amassed a green raincoat, a green backpack, a green bracelet, some green tops ... you get the idea. (I try not to wear them all at once.) I also like cooking and eating green food! Have you tried my peacamole, green tea ice cream or crème brulée, or avocado, lime and ginger ice cream? All are delicious, nutritious, and delightfully green.

Anyway, my friend Lisa recently recommended a recipe for avocado macaroni cheese (or 'mac and cheese', as the Americans would have it). Lisa's recipe sounded delicious but a bit fiddly. It had lots of ingredients, such as coriander [cilantro] and lime juice. I decided to try something simpler ... simply adding a mashed avocado to the cheese sauce before combining it with the cooked pasta. Seriously YUMMO.

Try it. I dare you! Oh, and if anyone wants a recipe for macaroni cheese (home made, not from a packet mix) please say so. I'd be happy to post one here.

Noooooooooooo!

Apparently Google Reader is being axed on 1 July. Very, very disappointed to hear this. Does anyone know a suitable alternative for reading RSS feeds?