On the hunt for protein ...?

We all need more chick peace in our lives

(sign spotted in Sri Lanka in 2023)

I've been doing boot camp classes for almost ten years and they're great fun. I started doing them, at my then workplace, as a way to regain strength after fracturing my humerus in 2015, and enjoyed the classes so much that I continued attending even after I left that job eight years ago. (Funnily, a bunch of other regular attendees are also ex-employees. Or even spouses of ex-employees :-)

Anyway, some of the group are doing a February protein challenge where they are trying to consume extra quantities of protein this month. The mid-exercise conversation today turned to how to reach the goal, which got me thinking about recipes that might be packed with protein. I'm not much of a meat eater so dishes featuring legumes, nuts, soy and dairy products sprang to mind. Here are a few meatless ideas that might boost protein intake:

Asparagus with Hollandaise sauce

Cheese souffle

Chickpea delight

Dal makhani

Lentil, cauliflower and sweet potato soup

Mushroom, lentil and rice casserole

Nachos

Palak paneer

Peacamole dip

Rocket and haloumi salad

Shakshuka

Spanish omelette

Sri Lankan lentil curry

Tandoori tofu salad

Teriyaki tofu and veges

Vegetarian shepherd's pie

Zucchini, basil and feta fritters

and for dessert …

Chocolate cheesecake

Orange and almond cake

Portuguese tarts

Wattalapam

Enjoy!

Feijoa smoothie

It's feijoa season! The feijioa – sometimes nicknamed pineapple guava due to its pineapple-y flavour and guava-ish texture – is well known and easy to find in New Zealand but not so common here in Australia. I have two feijoa trees but, sadly, they've never produced fruit. Our neighbour has a large tree that presses up against our fence, though, and I gratefully receive any fruit that falls over the fence or rolls underneath it :-)

Mostly I eat the feijoas simply by halving them and scooping out the flesh, but today I experimented and made a smoothie. Four small feijoas, a couple of tablespoons of coconut yoghurt, and some iced water. Delicious!

We're off to New Zealand in two weeks and I'm hoping feijoas will still be available there. NZ feijoas are gigantic and plentiful. Fingers crossed ...

Brekkie @ Highroad

Well, well, well. I'd never been to Highroad in Dickson before. Not for any deep and meaningful reason, but simply because Canberra has soooo many fabulous eateries it's hard to try them all. Anyway, my friend Michelle invited me to Highroad for breakfast today. What a treat. It was delicious. We started with coffee and hot chocolate then Michelle had:

Tropical chia pudding with coconut milk, rhubarb,

dried apple, pineapple, citrus peel and strawberry foam

and I had:

Tzatziki eggs: fresh cucumber, poached eggs,

radish, sumac, evoo*, chilli oil and focaccia

Nom nom! My dish was reminiscent of the Turkish Eggs served at Stepping Stone (another wonderful find in Dickson). We ended the meal with (ahem) more coffee and hot chocolate, to give us an excuse to keep sitting there and chatting. Nice to catch up. It had been a while. Anyway, recommended! Thanks Michelle.

* yep, I googled evoo. Turns out it means extra virgin olive oil :-)

Breakfast fit for a king (or sultan)

Black [purple] sticky rice is one of my favourite desserts. I thought it was Thai but we saw it on heaps of breakfast bars in Java. Yum! The breakfast buffet at our Yogyakarta hotel was amazing – in fact, ALL the hotel breakfasts were spectacular – and included both sticky rice with coconut cream, and people dispensing (left) magical elixirs and (right) traditional music:

Anyway, to the recipe! 

 

Purple rice pudding … the home made version

While the rice is called 'black' when you buy it, it turns a lovely purple colour when cooked.

1 cup glutinous black rice
800 ml water
piece of pandan leaf
1 tbsp palm sugar
coconut milk
small pinch of salt

Wash the rice and place in a saucepan. Add the water and bring to the boil, then simmer gently with the pandan leaf, covered, for 40 to 60 minutes. Stir occasionally, and more frequently as the mixture thickens. After about 30 minutes, start testing for softness. Add extra water if necessary. When the rice is pleasantly soft (it will still be a little chewy) add the sugar and continue cooking for about five minutes. Remove the pandan leaf, pour into small bowls and leave to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature with lightly salted coconut milk, or ice cream. Slivers of fresh coconut add flavour and texture.

Notes: glutinous black rice, pandan leaves and palm sugar are available from many Southeast Asian grocers. This freezes well. Despite the name, glutinous rice does not contain gluten.

Pomegranates are back in season. Yaaay!

Four months ago a brief but violent storm caused havoc at our place. For a few minutes the neighbourhood was a mass of flying vegetation. A large tree branch came through a window and another falling tree crushed the roof of our newish shed. The insurance claim was approved but we're still waiting for the shed to be repaired. Until that happens, I've been trying to minimise the amount of food in our fridge and freezer, as apparently the builders will need to switch off the electricity for several days, and we and the contents of our freezer will need to go elsewhere. As someone who really likes having a freezer full of curries, dals, soups and casseroles, I've found this quite challenging. Anyway, Andrew pointed out that maybe I've accidentally jinxed the building work by using up all the food in the freezer. Maybe, if I start filling it up again, the work will actually get done …? So tonight I'm making a pumpkin, eggplant and zucchini rendang, and sometime soon I'll make a pumpkin and pomegranate stew. All these things are currently in season and in stock locally. Autumn vegetables are amazing.

Pomegranates are delicious! Messy to eat but worth the effort. I avoid buying them for most of the year as they're often imported and I want to avoid the food miles, so it's always exciting when locally grown ones appear in the shops. I planted a pomegranate tree a couple of years ago; while it seems quite healthy, it has yet to bear fruit. Ah well.

Here's my recipe for the vegetarian Persian stew fesenjān (or fesenjoon). I cobbled this recipe together from several available on the web. The main alteration made (again because I prefer to use local rather than imported ingredients where possible) was to use pecans instead of the traditional walnuts.

1 large onion, chopped
olive oil
0.5 teaspoon turmeric
0.5 teaspoon cinnamon
half a pumpkin, cubed
one large eggplant, cubed
2 cups vegetable stock
0.5 cup pomegranate molasses (try Middle Eastern grocery shops or delis)
1 cup pecan nuts, roasted and roughly chopped
seeds from a fresh pomegranate
fresh parsley, chopped

Heat the oil in a large pot and add the onion. Cook until translucent, then add the spices and cook a little longer. Add the pumpkin and eggplant chunks and stir till they're coated in the spices. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and add the pomegranate molasses and pecans. Simmer for about twenty minutes. Garnish with pomegranate seeds and parsley to serve. This recipe makes about six or seven portions. Freeze leftovers for another day.

Salted caramel ice cream

Nom nom! We discovered this recipe a couple of years ago when some rellies made it for Christmas Day. Super easy and super delicious. We've been having some unseasonably hot weather lately in Canberra – it should be autumn [fall] but feels like summer – so I made a batch of salted caramel ice cream earlier today.

600 ml fresh cream (or 500 ml plant-based alternative *)
380 grams caramel filling
salt, to taste

Whip the cream until firm. Mix in the caramel and salt. Freeze. Enjoy!

Here are some other flavours of home made ice cream you may like to try (no fancy devices required):

avocado, lime and ginger
Bailey's and macadamia [or other nuts]
basil, lime and honey
banana and cacao nibs
brandied fruit and nuts
chilli chocolate
coconut and cacao nibs
coffee and cardamom
green tea
Kahlúa and pecan [or other nuts]
rocky road
strawberry

Happy (southern) autumn.

* Today I used Flora 100% plant-based thickened cream instead of dairy cream. I'm a bit torn about this stuff. On the one hand, it is dairy-free, so suitable for people with physical or philosophical intolerances to dairy products. On the other hand, it's a bit of a chemical cocktail and is imported from Germany. Taste- and texture-wise, though, it is indistinguishable from cream. 

If you are trying to avoid dairy products, you could make most of the ice creams listed above with plant-based cream and coconut-based condensed milk.

Lunch @ KOTO

It was a couple of weeks ago now, but I recently had lunch with two friends at KOTO in Barton, Canberra (across the road from Old Parliament House, a.k.a. the Museum of Australian Democracy). KOTO had been in the news lately, as a relative newcomer to the Canberra fine dining scene. 

It was more upmarket than the lunch places my friends and I usually frequent … and it was excellent. The tasting menu (at $160 pp) seemed eye-wateringly expensive, and also a bit too fishy for our tastes, so we ordered off the a la carte menu. We shared:

Edamame

Agedashi tofu

Kinoko (mushrooms)

Cauliflower

Lamb cutlets

… and the décor was delightful too:

The whole meal cost less than $100 for three of us and we were all satisfied. No room for dessert! The food and service and ambience at KOTO were fabulous. Recommended :-)

Brekkie @ Stepping Stone Dickson

A couple of weeks ago, a local editor friend introduced me to Stepping Stone at Dickson. It's the second 'branch' of a social enterprise designed to help migrant and refugee women gain skills and work experience; the first was at Strathnairn Arts Centre. Andrew and I usually take ourselves out to breakfast on a Sunday but went on Saturday this week instead as Stepping Stone is closed on Sundays and Mondays. The café has a gorgeous vegetarian menu. We both ordered off the specials board today but will have to return as there were at least three other things on the menu I wanted to try.

We started with coffee …

Then Andrew had:

Granola with fruit, nuts and yoghurt

And Karin had:

Turkish eggs (Çılbır) with yoghurt, chilli oil and sourdough

Great food, great service, and a good cause. Yum! It's a lovely spot.

Recipes for (temporarily) abandoned blokes

The spring Lifeline Bookfair was held over the weekend and, to my delight, conversation in my boot camp group today was about what books people had bought! The bookfair is a Canberra institution and raises money for an excellent cause so it's always great to hear people have enjoyed it. Particularly as Andrew and I have volunteered behind the scenes for 17 years or so. 

Anyway, one of the guys in the group described a cookbook he'd purchased. It sounded awesome. Dinner party recipes in categories such as 'recipes for dull people' and 'recipes for abandoned men'. Oh my goodness. I didn't find out if the recipes for abandoned men were for the permanently abandoned or those whose partners might eventually return. (More details please, Michael.)

The discussion inspired this blog post. Andrew and I have been together for about 32 years and (to my shame) I've never really let him spread his wings in the kitchen. I like cooking and tend to take over. However, I'm off to Sri Lanka for 2.5 weeks in November – the country has been at the top of my bucket list since I was seven – and will be leaving Andrew at home. It's not the first time I've gone somewhere exotic and left him behind – Timor-Leste in 2018 was amazing – but maybe he'd like some recipe ideas for when I'm away? Just in case, here goes …

Chunky avocado salsa

Curries (with a little help from the good folk of Byron Bay)

Lots of salad ideas

Pea and tofu soup

Ratatouille

Simple pizza from scratch

Seasonal stir fry

Shakshuka

Spanish omelette

Teriyaki tofu and veges

Enjoy!

P.S. my apricot tree has blossoms :-)

Lunch @ Banana Leaf

I've been a bit, um, obsessed by Sri Lankan food, and all things Sri Lankan, for many years. So when my friend Jacqui suggested we go to Banana Leaf in the Canberra CBD to celebrate our birthdays (hers in May, mine in July) I jumped at the chance. It was delicious.

Jacqui had:

Sri Lankan style rice and fish curry

and I had:

Vegetarian kottu rotti

and we were too full for dessert (though the desserts, cocktails and mocktails all looked fabulous) so we followed up with a chilli- and cinnamon-spiked hot chocolate each:

Recommended!

Gettin' more exotic

I've been obsessed with Asian foods (the spicier, the better) since I was a kid, and as an adult have had the pleasure of visiting various Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Japan and Timor-Leste). As well as eating at Asian restaurants as often as my waistline and budget will permit, I've experimented with many dishes at home, and even taken cooking classes in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and Australia to help hone my skills. I haven't, however, visited anywhere in the Middle East. Just when I was thinking it was time to explore the cultures and cuisines of that part of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and any travel plans, however vague, ground to a halt.

But when one door closes, another opens …? The pandemic has seen many businesses switch to online selling – and has caused others to spot and fill a niche – and that's how I stumbled across Exotic Bazaar. The company is based in Queensland and makes a delightful range of Persian, Moroccan and Turkish recipe bases, spices, condiments, and cake mixes. Apparently they started by selling ingredients at community markets and branched out into internet sales. I bought a Middle Eastern feast pack (pictured above) about six months ago and enjoyed everything so much I've ordered additional recipe bases and cake mixes since then. It's been fun to veer sideways in my food obsession, to travel a little further west …

Update: Sunday 25 June 2023

The first time I made a Persian Love Cake, using the ingredients and recipe in the box shown above, I used a baking tin that was too small. The cake mixture rose up the sides, flowed over the top, and was partially lost. After that I purchased a larger silicone cake baking mould and recent attempts have been more successful. Here's the cake I made yesterday to take to our friends' place for dessert tonight:

Of course, you don't have to buy a pre-packaged cake mix to make this sort of cake. The recipe shown here, from Recipe Tin Eats, also works well, if you don't mind tracking down the more unusual ingredients rather than having them land on your doorstep.

My desert island food

About a month ago, while sitting in a tiny, suburban Indian restaurant in Christchurch, New Zealand, I had a revelation. A eureka moment, if you will. I realised that, if I could only eat one dish for the rest of my life, I would want it to be palak paneer. It's vegetarian, delicious, creamy, spicy and contains plenty of fibre and vitamins and protein. Possibly the perfect food. I almost invariably order palak paneer when I go to an Indian restaurant (is this boring of me? perhaps ...) and have never been disappointed. It's also easy to make at home. My recipe is here, and if you'd prefer it to be vegan rather than vegetarian you could replace the paneer with cubes of tofu.

This is the palak paneer we ate that night at Pepper Bridge Indian Restaurant. 

That's all. Just wanted to share the news.

Brekkie and brunch @ Eighty/Twenty

In the 21 years since Andrew and I moved to Canberra the city has grown a LOT. When we arrived the population was about 310,000; now it's closer to 470,000. Alongside Canberra's population growth and building boom there's been massive expansion in options for eating out. One-off little cafes tucked away in suburbs are branching out and being replicated in other suburbs. Even our favourite local spot U&Co. (in Kaleen) now has a branch in Amaroo.

Anyway, my friend Elizabeth and I have a looong tradition of taking each other out for breakfast or brunch around our respective birthdays. Elizabeth celebrated a birthday recently and opted for Eighty/Twenty in Braddon for her birthday brunch. We'd been there before – and also to the Kingston branch – but I only realised this week that it's now in six suburbs plus another two express (takeaway only) locations. Wow! Eighty/Twenty has a delicious menu and this week (a little accidentally) I ended up eating there twice.

Brunch with Elizabeth in Braddon included:

Prana sticky chai on Bonsoy

For Elizabeth: Vegan buckwheat waffles (which were also gluten free)

For Karin: Chermoula lamb

and when Andrew saw the pics from my meal with Elizabeth, he suggested we go to Eighty/Twenty in Belconnen for breakfast today. We enjoyed:

Soy flat white

Long black

For Andrew: Granola bowl with fresh fruit

For Karin: Vego eggs benedict with mushrooms and avocado

All very yummy and both locations have plenty of outdoor seating for those of us who are still trying not to catch COVID-19.

Coconut. Is there anything it can't do?

For the past year or so I've been buying decadent and delicious granola from my local organic shop, Choku Bai Jo. It's … very moreish. But I felt like something was missing. That something turned out to be Aldi's organic coconut flakes:

The coconut morsels make my daily muesli and yoghurt even better. And that got me thinking about coconut more broadly. It's very versatile! I use it (whether desiccated, shredded, flaked, powdered, in 'milk' or 'cream' form, as oil, or as part of another product such as condensed [coconut] milk) all the time. If you enjoy this magical substance too, here are some ideas you may like:

Breakfast

Nutty maple granola

Coconut risotto

Lunch/Dinner

Vegetable laksa
Pumpkin soup with drizzled coriander pesto
Sri Lankan lentil curry
Coconut split pea soup
Pumpkin and pea curry
Vanuatu salad
Chickpea delight
Potato and pea curry
Tofu in lemongrass coconut milk
Thai green eggplant curry
Bagus mushroom soup

Byron Bay curries

Sweet stuff
Coconut ice cream (or rocky road ice cream)
Chocolate nut cake
Black rice pudding
Chocolate echidna slice
Marshmallow treats
Wattalapam
Lolly cake

Coconut jelly

Enjoy!

Salted caramel ice cream. Oh my!

Super easy, super delicious. I've been making all sorts of easy ice creams for years, and tried a new variant at a family Christmas lunch on Sunday. Oh my goodness. You have to try this.

600 ml fresh cream
380 grams caramel filling
salt, to taste

Whip the cream until firm. Mix in the caramel and salt. Freeze. Enjoy!

Here are some other flavours of home made ice cream you may like to try (no fancy devices required):

avocado, lime and ginger
Bailey's and macadamia [or other nuts]
basil, lime and honey
banana and cacao nibs
brandied fruit and nuts
chilli chocolate
coconut and cacao nibs
coffee and cardamom
green tea
Kahlúa and pecan [or other nuts]
rocky road
strawberry

Happy (southern) summer.

Magical spicy things in jars

Just a quick note to rave about two wonderful spicy delights I've discovered recently.

Crispy Chilli Oil by Chotto Motto

I bought a jar of this stuff while in Daylesford, Victoria, a few months ago. It took a while before I worked out what to do with it, but it's MAGNIFICENT with scrambled eggs, feta cheese and chopped spinach.

Gaga's Raw Vegan Kimchi

Nom nom! I've been using this to make kimchi and cheese jaffles. A perfect Friday night dinner treat.

Enjoy :-)

Peacamole dip (like guacamole but with peas instead of avocados)

300 grams shelled green peas, frozen or fresh but not canned
small bunch fresh coriander
2 tablespoons whole almond butter (like peanut butter but made with unblanched almonds; look for it at natural foods stores)
1 clove garlic, minced (optional)
dash Tabasco sauce
salt and black pepper, to taste

Steam the peas until tender and allow to cool.

If you're using fresh coriander, pluck the leaves and set aside.

In the bowl of a food processor or blender, combine the peas, almond butter, coriander, garlic if using, Tabasco sauce, a little salt and some pepper. Process until smooth. If the mixture is a bit too thick for the blade of the food processor to mix properly, add a little water, one teaspoon at a time, until soft enough to mix.

Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve with pieces of multigrain crispbread. The dip can be made a day ahead and kept in the fridge in an airtight container; it will keep for two to three days.

Jazz up your scrambled eggs with some avocado salsa

For years I've been making avocado salsa wraps for dinners and picnic lunches. The salsa is quite damp so if you do decide to take this recipe to a picnic, it's best to carry the salsa and wraps separately and assemble at your destination.

Anyway! Recently, Andrew and I went to brekkie at a local café. The menu and faces appeared to have changed so we suspect it's under new management. I tried something off the specials board and it was delicious. It turned out to be a new twist on my old favourite avocado recipe. I tried replicating it at home a few days later and it worked well:

For the salsa (adjust quantities to fit your needs and tastes)

avocados
spring onions
tomatoes
fresh lime juice
fresh coriander (optional)
garlic (optional)
chilli (optional)

Chop ingredients roughly, combine and refrigerate till the flavours have mingled. 

For the scrambled eggs (this quantity worked for two people for dinner)

6 eggs
1 tablespoon butter
pepper and salt, to taste

Scramble eggs in your preferred way. (I use the microwave but others may prefer a saucepan.)

Spoon scrambled eggs onto plates and top with avocado salsa. You wouldn't think eggs and lime juice would work together, but they do …

NZ yams in Canberra. At last!

It's been an adventure. Ever since moving to Australia from New Zealand, more than thirty years ago, I've missed yams. While yam is often used as a generic word for sweet potatoes, here I mean oca or Oxalis tuberosa. It's a small, pinkish, finger-shaped sweet potato that melts in the mouth when added to a roast dinner. While it's possible to buy many NZ groceries in Australia (at the supermarket or via mail order) I craved, and couldn't find, NZ yams for a long time. 

In 2018, I discovered that an online garden store in Queensland was selling yam plants by mail order so I ordered three (very expensive) plants, which arrived safely but died soon after. Later in 2018 I ordered ten yam tubers from an online garden store in Victoria. They produced foliage but the plants didn't survive the Canberra summer. After a year off to ponder my failures, I bought yet more tubers (nine, this time) from Queensland in 2020. Once again, they sprouted foliage but produced no yams. 

What was I doing wrong?

When, in 2021, I found that Feijoa Addiction in Brisbane was selling 5 kg boxes of yams by mail order, I bought 5 kg. Then another 5 kg! They were delicious. Given all my failures in growing them, I intended to eat rather than plant the whole 10 kg. But a couple of green-thumbed friends suggested we should each plant a few at our respective houses and see if anyone could successfully grow yams in and around Canberra. So I shared little bags of yams with five friends and also put some tubers aside to plant at my place. Here's a rough timeline:

August 2021: purchased yams

October 2021: planted yams in pots

November 2021: foliage appeared

December 2021: planted the yam plants in four different locations

(with different exposure to the elements) around the house

(above and below) June 2022: success! We have yams

The yam plants in shady spots on the southern side of the house produced tubers (1.2 kg in total) whereas the plants in sunnier places on the western and northern sides of the house produced none. My guess is that the reason those plants failed (and previous years' plants failed) was that I planted them in full sun and they cooked in the ground. D'oh. It also seems important to plant them in mounds of soil so there's plenty of room for the wee tubers to develop.

Delighted to finally have some home grown yams. Last night I made a vego roast dinner with pumpkin, onions, yams and broccoli. Yum.

Mincecraft and Aunty Bri

Many, many years ago I studied at Massey University, in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Well, when I say I studied there, it was mostly as an 'extramural' or external student, so I didn't spend much time at the actual campus. My degree was spread over seven years of part-time study (and full-time work) and I attended the campus a couple of weeks per year to participate in lectures and schmooze with fellow extramural students.

Anyway! Massey's student newspaper was called Chaff. The Macquarie Dictionary defines chaff as:

the husks of grains and grasses separated from the seed

and I guess the name was derived from Massey's previous identity as an agricultural college. It wasn't unusual to see Massey students wearing gumboots to class. My favourite thing in Chaff was Aunty Bri's advice column. It was hilarious. When I spotted Aunty Bri's Cook Book and Guide to Flatting Life in the university bookshop circa 1990 I couldn't resist buying a copy. It remains a treasure to this day.

Aunty Bri's book is a guide to negotiating life with flatmates but also contains heaps of simple, cheap recipes. Some of the recipes are philosophical rather than edible and many of the (edible) recipes involve mince. When I think of Aunty Bri, I think of mince. I don't cook much meat these days, but if you do, and you're trying to think what to make for dinner tonight, here are some of my mince recipes (no, not stolen from Aunty Bri):

Chinese dumplings
deconstructed samosas
Greek-style meatballs with tomato sauce and olives

If you, like me, are getting less carnivorous in your old age, there's always the plant-based option …