I married one of the few Dutch men on the planet who doesn’t like cheese. Yes, Tom won’t eat it. I don’t know why. I suspect he had some horror cheese experience earlier on in life. Who knows. It’s hard to believe really, considering his parents would probably die from withdrawal symptoms if you took cheese out of their diet.

Even worse than that, he doesn’t like mushrooms. That really limits the repertoire a bit. Regardless, I have started to cook mushrooms now and again, and I figure that he and the rest of the family can just pick them out if they don’t like them. I like them, and I don’t see why I should go without all the time.

It’s when you have friends coming around that you can splash out and rustle up something that you don’t get to have very often, and for me, this is the dish. Inspired by the Squire’s Loft steakhouse, I made my own version of their Fetta and Garlic Mushrooms. And it’s pretty easy and great to have as a vegetarian option.

Ingredients

• A bag of your favourite mushrooms
• 250g block of fetta
• 3 to 4 large cloves of garlic
• Olive oil to drizzle
• A bunch of fresh Parsley, chopped

What you will need

• Stove top/oven dish
• Garlic press

What to do

1. Brush the mushrooms clean
2. Place them with their stalks upright in a dish
3. Crush 3 to 4 large cloves of garlic over the mushrooms
4. Crumble the fetta over the mushrooms
5. Sprinkle the chopped parsley over as well
6. Drizzle with olive oil
7. To cook, you can heat the mushrooms on the stovetop to soften, and then place under the grill to brown the fetta slightly.

Must be eaten with really good friends who will still love you even with your garlic breath. This dish is totally delishious!

Oh I know, you have been waiting on the edge of your seats with baited breath wondering how the compost heap has been going? Well, I have to say that it hasn’t got as hot, hot, hot as I was hoping. So much so that I didn’t even stick the thermometer in it, as it was completely cool. I turned the heap over yesterday, and their is a little decomposition happening, but it’s not as much as I would have hoped.

I then ran up and down the lane with a shovel and rake and picked up all the dried leaves etc and added them to my heap. Hopefully that will get some microbial action happening. Watch this space for more rotten action!

I have long been an advocate of butter – as opposed to margarine. I don’t see what the lure is behind a man made concoction when compared to something natural. I personally believe that even though butter contains fat, that our bodies are better designed to absorb, burn and then excrete natural foods rather than laboratory ones.

I used to think the margarine adds on television were a bit of a laugh too – some mum serving up veges with a knob of Meadow Lea on top, smiling lovingly at her family – with the slogan – You ought to be congratulated. What a load of crock! Also, on the packaging they really push that fact that Margarine is “Polyunsaturated”. Sure, your average mum majored in inorganic Chemistry and totally get’s what that means. For some reason if it sounds high tech and complicated, we love it. Oh…that must be better. Right? Allowing such propaganda in food advertising makes the whole industry look like it is a joke.

Instead, real food, the food that Grandma used to make, just doesn’t have the same sexy edge retail edge. You can’t make that sound complex or sophisticated, but that is the standard I crave, the goal I seek. I want to eat real food like Nan did when she was a girl. Stuff that hasn’t been sprayed or tampered with, had the fibre removed and then wonder-soft fibre added back in or genetically modified to be bigger and more tasteless than ever before.

I listened to a very interesting webcast a few months ago – by chance more than anything because Amber was sick (take them to creche and they just get one thing after another). Working women online did a series of webcasts every Thursday at 10am (not a time I am normally near a PC with sound) with a different guest speaker every week.

The week I got to listen in the speaker was Cyndi O’Meara – a nutritionist who advocates essentially food that is as close to it’s natural source. Of course, we have all heard this time and time again, and it makes perfect sense that our bodies will better absorb food from a more natural source than a laboratory concoction. However, Cyndi goes one step further by having done her research and understanding what our bodies really need, and what some of the ‘laboratory foods’ really do. It helps people like myself to make changes if I can understand the ‘why’ – and this needs to be from a trusted source.

So, after listening to Cyndi talk, I purchased her book Changing Habits, Changing Lives. Cyndi is an advocator for eating real butter, real food, sugar, using real ingredients, and not being sucked in by the marketing on food products. She spends much of her time teaching you about additives, and understanding how to read and understand food labels. Much of what she says goes against what you hear in the news these days about what you should be eating, and yet, it makes much more sense. If you go to Cyndi’s website, it has a ‘weight loss’ focus, which I guess is an issue for many people. I am not really interested in a 21 day weight loss diet. But I am interested in what she has to say about food, and cooking utensils, additives and preservatives and food supplements. I would highly recommend her book.

I recall when I was a school girl, I went to a Catholic girls school with approximately 1000 girls. When I started school I clearly recall a few overweight school girls because in those days (back in the early 80′s) an overweight kid was the minority. And we had ‘Milk bars’ that lured us in on the way home, hot chips were a treat I frequented often. Mum would always make us three rounds of sandwiches, a baked biscuit, a piece of fruit, some dried apricots. When we got home, dinner was mostly cooked at home, and most of the ingredients were grown by Dad in his community garden plot alongside the Tullamarine freeway. When it comes to desserts, Mum would pull out all of the stops, and desserts can range from a Lemon Meringue Pie to Cheesecake – oh the list goes on and on and on.

I recall when I was in year 12, sitting with my friends Sally and Louise, devouring my three rounds of sandwiches. I had a girl come up to me, touch my upper arm, and said: “Those are the arms of an anorexic”. Clearly she was blind, or trying to help me confess that yes, the three rounds of sandwiches were just a front, and secretly I was purging them down the big white telephone. In reality, I was eating like a horse, had a metabolism that was on fire, and couldn’t wait to get my next feed.

Clearly our food has changed since those days, and so many children and adolescents appear to have weight issues. I have mostly maintained the sort of diet I had as a child, and where I have veered from it and gone for convenience, I have noticed my weight creep.

Reading Cyndi’s book it has helped me understand why, and understanding why makes it so much easier to then change your practices. Where possible for us it is now home grown, organic, or made from scratch. When I buy something, I am looking at the labels and choosing differently. And I now really value something that I know rather than giving that away to someone else for conveniences sake.

So….back to butter. I know that butter isn’t hard to make, but I have never done it. I went home for dinner the other day and was excited about making butter, and Mum’s response was oh, we used to do that all the time…and onto the next topic. It’s such an non-event for her generation. I was so excited and proud of the fact that I had turned cream I had carefully siphoned off the top of the milk into butter I could hardly contain myself. Looks like my generation really missed out on the basics.

So how do you do it? A really good web-video by Professor Robert Kramph helps explain the whole process.

Ingredients

• Cream (mine is from a real cow, but if yours isn’t – just make sure it has no additives of any sort)
• Pinch of salt (optional)

What you will need

• A well sealed jar
• Cream allowed to sour for a few hours

What to do

• If you need to, siphon the cream off from the milk (I used a turkey baster after experimenting unsuccessfully with other things)
• Place the cream in a jar and leave on the bench for 12 or so hours until the cream starts to sour (or better still, don’t throw out your sour cream)
• Shake the jar for 3.5 minutes – the butter will eventually separate from the buttermilk
• When the butter is formed, pour off the butter milk off and set it aside (it’s great for smoothies, cooking, bread baking)
• Press the buttermilk out of the butter, to do this you can wash the butter in cold water. This prevents it from going rancid
• You can eat the butter straight, or lightly salt it and pat it into shape and refrigerate it for up to one week.

Few things rival the sort of bread you can buy in France. In Australia, there is now a growing artisan bakery movement, and these days I can buy beautiful bread not far from home, but we have never been able to make anything at home that competes….until now.

The recipe comes from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Making Classic Breads with the Cutting-edge Techniques of a Bread Master. This is the best bread book we have by far, and from it you can learn how to make the most wonderful of breads without being a master. I would be so cheeky as to say that the best bread recipe in the book is this one – Pain a l’Ancienne. Although its name suggests that it is an ancient type of bread, it is the exact opposite. The technique used is quite different to how most of us view making bread (if we have any preconceived notions at all).

Firstly, it doesn’t involve warming the yeast – instead you mix the yeast using ice cold water, and then let it prove in the fridge for 1 to 2 days. During this time the delayed fermentation of the sugars in the flour mean that the bread develops a wonderful crust (as shown above), but is fluffy and white and non-yeasty tasting on the inside. When it comes out of the oven, you just have to get out the butter and eat it.

The other great thing for us is that because this dough spends time in the fridge, we have a few going at a time, and when we need bread, take it out, rest it on the counter for a few hours, cook it and then eat it. It’s easier than normal bread.

Last Sunday some friends came around for wood-fired pizzas. Tom served this bread with dips before lunch. By the time lunch came around no one was hungry – and the bread was all gone.

Ingredients

• 6 cups unbleached organic bread flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 3/4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 2 1/4 cups plus (make extra and add as needed) ice cold water
• Semolina flour for dusting

What you will need

• Electric mixer with a dough hook (this dough is very wet so it’s hard to do by hand)
• Large bowl – lightly oiled
• Dough cutter
• Pizza stone
• Ovenproof dish for the base of the oven

What to do

1. Combine the flour, yeast, salt and 2 1/4 cups of ice water in the electric mixer and mix on low for 2 minutes
2. Then mix on a more medium speed for 6 minutes
3. The dough should stick to the bottom of the bowl but be free from the sides. If not, add more flour or water to adjust the dough consistency
4. Add the dough to the large oiled bowl
5. Cover with plastic wrap
6. Refrigerate – at least overnight, and at the longest for 2 days

When ready to cook the dough

1. When you take the dough out, check the dough has risen. It won’t have doubled in size, but should have risen slightly
2. Leave the dough bowl out for 2 – 3 hours until it has doubled in size (pre-refrigerated size)
3. When it has doubled, sprinkle the counter with bread flour (be very liberal)
4. Gently transfer the dough to the counter
5. Sprinkle flour on top of the dough
6. Very gently roll the dough in the sprinkled flour – but try not to degas it too much, gently rolling and stretching it (until it is about 8 inches long)
7. Using a dough cutter or pastry cutter, cut the dough in half length wise
8. Do this for each half until you have 4 baguettes (or you can make a bigger loaf if you wish)

Prepare to cook

1. Prepare the oven – I turn it on has high as it can go (250 degrees C), and have a pizza stone a mid-level
2. Have a water dish at the bottom of the oven
3. When the oven is hot, add a cup of boiling water into the oven dish to create steam and shut the oven
4. Gently lift the dough onto a heavily floured wooden board
5. Score the dough with a knife deeply along the length as common for baguettes
6. Add the dough onto the pizza stone and quickly shut the oven
7. The dough will rise quickly with the steam
8. Leave for 6-8 minutes, and then open the oven and turn the bread around. Most of the steam will escape – which you want, as you now want the dough to form a crust
9. Cook for another 12 minutes. To tell if the bread is ready, it is good to stick a thermometer into the centre of the bread. If the temperature is 80-90 degrees C, then it’s good to go
10. Cool on a rack or if you can’t wait, just break open and eat!

We went out for breakfast this morning – a rare treat at the moment – and I know why. Somebody (very small who shall remain nameless) is very determined to stand in a high chair, scream, and snatch things off surrounding tables. Sure, I don’t expect much else from a 10 month old, but it is trying, especially when you are trying to minimise the noise to the rest of the diners who envisaged a relaxing morning. I rescued my cappuccino from the lightening quick reflexes of said person, and put all the salt and pepper shakers out of the way. Spoons were flung, plates grabbed, raspberry muffin was distributed around the highchair in a mile wide radius. But was it all worth it? Well yes. Definitely.

We went to Replete on Barkers Rd in Hawthorn. We have driven past many a time, and there is usually a queue out the front – which is why I noticed them. I mean who queues for a cooked breakfast…honestly? I vowed to Tom that I would never queue for breakfast, nor nightclubs. Not that I am going to be going to any nightclubs anytime soon.

A few weeks ago I went to Replete for the first time with some work colleagues. I had Corn Fritters with crispy bacon, avocado salsa, sour cream, sweet chilli sauce and relish. It was amazing, and so too was most other stuff on their menu. It’s rare to be at a restaurant and feeling indecisive because it all looks too good.  Today, guess what, I had the same again! I am so predictable. I wanted to take Tom because a) it’s really hard to describe food to someone else and b) we hardly ever go out – so it was a nice treat for an otherwise quiet weekend.

The thing I like about businesses like Replete is that they make all their food themselves, and they sell things on the side, such as cutneys, biscotti etc. I also noticed Lemon curd for sale for a tasty $4.50, and wondered what really was in Lemon curd.

Then in the afternoon, while getting up close and personal with the compost, I noticed a neighbours lemon tree that hangs over the lane with some low hanging fruit, so I helped myself to a few. So, armed with fresh unadulterated lemons and the appetite for lemon curd this has had me trawling through recipe books and the internet this afternoon trying to find the perfect recipe.

Lemon curd is basically lemon butter. It can be used on scones, or as a breakfast spread. You can make curd out of other things, such as lime, oranges or raspberry’s. Curd is not the same as jam, as it has eggs in it, it will only last for about a week. But if you are using in a dessert, or on scones, then why would you want to keep it for longer?

I made the recipe below, and am pretty happy with it. Hope you like it.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• finely grated zest of 2 lemons
• 3/4 cup organic raw sugar
• 56 grams butter
• 1 passion fruit – optional

What you will need

• Double boiler
• Whisk
• Grater
• Juicer
• 1 or 2 sterilised jars (total of about 330mls)
• 1 sieve – optional (if you don’t like lemon rind in your curd then use the sieve)

What to do

1. Whisk the eggs, sugar and lemon juice together
2. Place over the double boiler and stir continuously for about 10 mins or until the mixture thickens
3. Remove from the heat
4. If you wish, you can sieve out any big bits of lemon pulp at this stage. I don’t mind them
5. And add the zest, butter and passion fruit
6. Stir until the butter has melted
7. If you wish, sieve out the zest before placing the curd in jars

The curd will thicken when cooled.

Refrigerate and use within the week.

Dessert option

• Fold the curd with pure whipped cream and serve with fresh fruit

It’s day 6, and after a busy week of work and getting home at dusk, I haven’t ventured out to view my decomposing experiment (see The fine art of composting). It’s winter, and we have had some of the best rain this week that Melbourne has seen for a while, country Victoria has seen the best rain it has had for 14 years. The compost is therefore moist!

The heap has settled, and is noticeably lower than last Sunday.

I can notice some decomposing action, but it’s not hot hot hot. It’s definitely not steaming (and I won’t be throwing in the cow in yet). Temperature wise, we are just tipping over 20 degrees. Looks like I will need to get the pitchfork out tomorrow to work and stir things up a bit.

Till next time – for some more riveting composting action…. Wow – you know your life is really, really exciting when you start to follow the decomposition of scraps in your back lane. Surely it can’t get any more action packed than this!

Yesterday (Sunday), my local permaculture group gathered for our monthly meeting. This month’s topic was on Composting. I put my hand up this time to host the event, because I don’t grow many fruit trees etc, or have chickens or an amazing vege patch (like some I have seen), but one thing I can do is decompose things. Well…I can sort of decompose them, which is why I am interested in knowing how to do it even better.

Ross and Wendy Mather from St Andrews were our presenters, and they have had many years experience growing their own food and making their own compost,  and for the dry clayey soils in St Andrews, this is an essential skill. Ross and Wendy also present to local councils and the like about the art and science of composting.

So, firstly, one of the big tips I got out of today was the following – one very good reason to compost is that if you put any scraps in your rubbish, and then they get buried under piles of trash and plastic and old washing machines etc, and bulldozed over with soil at the tip, it creates anaerobic conditions (basically meaning there is no oxygen) and this creates methane, which is about 5 times worse than Carbon dioxide (which causes the greenhouse effects). So, not composting and turning a blind eye creates an even bigger problem.

And a second great reason to compost is that your soil loves it, and all the worms and microbes in the soil will rejoice, and your plants will grow, and you will live happily ever after (you get the drift).

So, what can you compost. Well, in the past I was leaving citrus peels and onions out of the compost, and certainly not adding meat or cheese (my compost was vegan), but apparently you can compost anything that has been living in your lifetime (as long as you don’t try to compost a whole cow in your tumble bin you should be right). So that’s good news. I hate throwing organic matter in the bin.

Also, another rule is that if you compost anything – break it up into smaller pieces and this will speed up the process (for instance a whole cow will take some time to decompose, whereas in pieces it will take way less time).

I have also been pretty random with my composting, not really paying much attention to the ratios of what I add, but I have discovered today that I need to pay more attention to the science. And here are the rules – which are simple (and my brain likes simple).

Ingredients

1. Start with one bucket of food scraps, or freshly cut grass or weeds.
2. To this, add a similar amount of nitrogen filled substance (manure, guinea pig poo, hair, toe nail clippings, comfrey leaves). As it is hard to tell what nitrogen filled substances look like – think of it this way. If it’s fresh and green (fresh manure) then it’s high in Nitrogen. If it’s been around for a long time, it’s most likely lost it’s nitrogen.
3. To this put two parts of carbon filled substance on top of this (ie two small buckets of straw, dried grass, paper, dried leaves, sawdust, sugarcane or mulch).
4. And when you build your compost, think lasagna – one layer of green, one layer of dry, and so on.

So that’s it. It’s not rocket surgery, but it will take me to be a bit more methodical in building my compost. In the past I threw in the scraps, I threw in some guinea pig manure, but my compost usually looks like swelch.

So next time I waltz outside with my scraps and put them in the compost bin, I also need to add some guinea pig poop, and double the amount I have just added with some dry ‘carbon filled’ materials. Also add a bit of water (maybe half of a container of water to keep it moist). Then let the microbes do their thing.

Turn and don’t turn

So, what next? Do you wait for 6 months, do you turn your compost on a daily basis? Well, here’s some of the information I gleamed yesterday.

Ross and Wendy discussed different techniques – whether you rotate the compost or just leave it, and what I learnt from this is you can do either of these things, rotating the compost may increase the process. Personally, I am happy to wait, glass of Sav blanc in hand and watch my rotating compost bin swinging in the breeze than expend too much energy.

Our composting demo

As part of yesterday’s training, Ross and Wendy built a compost sample in the back lane. Butting up against a local building (ACER), there is a makeshift garden established by ACER staff. We found some cardboard boxes to give the compost structure, and Ross and Wendy put some sticks in the bottom of the boxes to aerate the compost heap.

Then they put layer and layer of weeds, manure and straw/paper/sawdust on top.

I am going to take photo’s over the next few weeks and add them to this blog to review the progress, until the temperature is down and we have some nice soil. So here goes:

Day 1 – Sunday 8th August

Nothing much to report except the existance of a compost heap. I had to put a note on it for the ACER guys…or else they would really be wondering.

Day 2 – Monday 9th August

Spoken to the ACER guy and he loves the fact that a compost heap has sprung in his lane way. I took the temperature today, and at 16 degrees C, there isn’t any microbe action yet.

Stay turned for more stinking action!

Jump to Day 6.

I recall mum making a dish when I was young with chicken and red peppers, and I had a real fanging for it the other day (even though it’s probably been a good 25 years since I have eaten it). Mum called it Chicken Pepperoni – which is clearly not right because hers didn’t have any pepperoni in it, and if you search the web for that you come up with something completely different. 25 years ago, I guess that name might have been very Gour-met, very Classy.

Anyway, I found a few recipes online, and this one looks the closest to it. Then I tested the recipe, and have made a few tweaks here and there.

The verdict – yummy, and also very versatile (gotta love that). We had this with steamed vegetables, you can have it with rice, crusty bread, penne pasta, cous cous, oh the list just goes on. The next time I try this recipe, I might try roasting the peppers first to really caramelise the skins and bring out more flavour.

When I went to get the ingredients, the free range chookins were on sale, and there were 9 red peppers in a bag marked down to $2. The tinned tomatoes I got on wholesale for $1 for 800g, and the other ingredients were in the pantry. So all in all, I got at least 4 dinners and a few lunches for $20. Absolutely have to love that sort of a bargain.

Ingredients

• 2 table spoons of olive oil
• 1 whole chicken cut into 8 small pieces – I prefer to buy a whole chicken these days – it’s more economical and also the bones add flavour
• 3-4 cloves of garlic crushed
• 1 onion chopped finely
• 1 onion cut into rings
• 75g ham finely diced
• 4 red peppers sliced
• 1 800g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 3-4 teaspoons of paprika
• 1-2 dried chillies (I made double this recipe, and for the kids, no chilli, for us, 3 chillies = bliss)
• 1 bay leaf
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 bunch chopped fresh parsley and/or coriander (I used both)

What you will need

• Medium sized frypan

What to do

• Heat the oil in the fry pan, and add the chicken pieces. Cook on both sides until they become golden
• Remove the chicken and place in the casserole dish
• Add the onion, garlic and cook until the onion becomes glassy
• Optional – roast the peppers to caramelise the flavours on the skin (note I haven’t done this, but I think it will really enhance the pepper flavour)
• Add the ham and the peppers into the onions and sweat down
• Add this to the casserole dish
• Add the tinned tomato to the casserole dish, the paprika, the chilli and the bay leaf
• Add salt and pepper to taste and remove the bay leaf.
• I added chopped fresh herbs at the end, so that their vigorous colour is maintained.

Serves 6, with left overs.