Chocolate, Community and Choices

Posted on August 10, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

I’ll let you in on a little secret. This place here, is my number one place to eat out. It doesn’t happen often, actually hardly at all really, but when it does…oh it’s bliss. Sheer bliss.

While this blog is not about food reviewing (and never will be) I can’t help but want to stand on my pedestal and shout…”you really should go there!”

Once in that blue moon period when I do go out, I want to go somewhere that holds similar beliefs to me. Going somewhere where the selling points of a dish are “Salmon from Alaska, oranges from Malta, cheese from Turkey and wine to wash it all down with from Italy”. Nope, it just doesn’t cut it for me, I’m seriously not interested. Tell me the bacon is from a small scale farmer a few hours away, the milk is from the outskirts of Sydney, the eggs are organic and the plated greens were grown three metres away in the small backyard. Now that’s going to make me sit up and pay attention.

Also add to it being some of the best tasting food I’ve ever tasted and I will be scrambling for any opportunity to get a table again.

Now when time ticks by and life gets in the way, their cookbook will be tiding me over. The pages talk of how they started, seasonal eating, not wasting anything and community– all topics of which I’ll happily devour every page, (which is includes this rather tasty Chocolate Beetroot Brownie.)

beetroot brownie || cityhippyfarmgirl

Coming back for a moment, to that wonderful C word that I love so much- community. It’s important to me here in blogland. It’s important to me in ‘real life’ and is also one of the big things that has struck me every time I’ve been lucky enough to eat there. (And it really is a privilege to eat out , for anyone!) Community is something that really seems to jump out at you, even just walking down the street. You can tell that this is a close knit area that really looks out for each other, (which also includes famed sourdough legend, Iggy’s just a few doors down.)

Living in a big city, if you are lucky enough to be in the position of choosing to go out for a meal, then considering where your dollar is going just makes sense. It makes wonderful sense. Combine a little chocolate and community in with those choices and you have yourself a pretty great combination I think.

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Tell me, what are some of your favourite community minded places (or books) to eat or hang out at?

Love, Lavender…and well, pickles

Posted on August 3, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Getting a daikon in my vegetable box was met with a little ooooh, now what might I do with that? I’d never cooked with them before, hadn’t seen any recipes and quite possibly I wasn’t sure I’d even eaten any before either. Hooray for delivered vegetable boxes I say, because it completely gets you out of any cooking ruts you might have accidently fallen into. It’s now a vegetable I actively seek as, in this super simple pickle form, well it’s quite delicious.

Little sprigs of lavender are constantly gracing my kitchen window sill. We have a prolific bush out front that produces and produces. Easily adding a little purple distraction to an other wise messy and cluttered tiny kitchen. Distractions like these are most welcome.

Now it had been awhile since I had made Sri Lankan Love Cake. Quite awhile. My love for anything Sri Lankan orientated hadn’t dwindled since I had last baked it, so there was a certain amount of nostalgic mixing on putting the cake together. I had scrubbing elephants in a river to think of, small beach side swinging hammocks to fondly recall and food. Rather a lot of delicious food, that really is something else.

Love Cake recipes seem to vary a fair bit, and as I’ve never actually eaten anyone else’s Love Cake, (sounds slightly raunchy doesn’t it) I’m really not sure how my version (s) compare. Online recipes seem to have rather a lot of eggs, which I haven’t used quite so much here. I have tweaked it a little bit since the last time I baked it though, and using the rose petals rather than rose water. I like this edition a little better and visually, well it’s hard to take a bad picture if something is sprinkled in icing sugar and showered in rose petals….I think even a sausage would look good with that combination.

Sri Lankan Love Cake recipe || cityhippyfarmgirl copy

Love Cake

150 gms crushed cashew nuts (cadjunuts)

150g semolina

2 eggs

4 egg whites

150g sugar

150g softened butter

2 tbls rose petals

1 1/2 tbls brandy

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cardamom

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Cream butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, brandy, rose petals, spices and cashew nuts. Fold through semolina.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks appear and fold into mixture. Cook in a square tin, greased and lined with paper, (or well greased bundt tin as I have here). Bake at 180C for approximately 25-35 minutes or until golden.

Pumpkin and Jerusalem Artichoke Soup- ELC #6

Posted on July 31, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

On a weekend out of the city recently, there was talk of visiting a local farmers market. I quite like talk like that, even if I’m the one who initiates the talk (ahem).

So to market we went. Buying up on some lovely locally grown organic vegetables, a succulent for $2, and a chopping board. Now I’d been on the look out for a little board quite awhile now. Time was passing, calendar pages were changing their years and still, I hadn’t found quite the ‘right’ board. I knew they were easy enough to make, but I just didn’t have access to any decent wood.

Then I came across ‘The Man at the Markets’, a man who who knew his chopping boards, and every tiny piece of the different woods behind them. After a general chit chat about the weather and the local area, we started talking about the boards he had for sale. Giving each one a run down on the type of wood it was and how to look after them, and what I was going to do with it.

It was this little one that caught my eye though, asking him about it, it turns out it was from an old skirting board from an equally old house just a short distance away from the markets. You can still see the nail holes if you look closely.

It seems I had found my board. It was locally made, recycled, looked good and seemed to fit pretty well with the pumpkin soup I had planned to serve with it. (What type of wood it is, I’m embarrassed to say I have no idea. The man did tell me, but it seems I forgot as soon as I stepped out of the market area….lovely wood I think it’s called now.)

Where is my food coming from?

Pumpkin- Red Bank, Eurobodalla

Jerusalem Artichoke- (Crave Natural, Apple Tree Flat)

Creme Fraiche- (Pepe Saya, Sydney)

Interested in taking the challenge?

Just how local is local? Well this depends entirely on you. Only you know how you and your family eat. Raise the bar just a little from what you already do. If making sure the majority of your meal includes solely food produced in your country, than make that your challenge. If you want to make it a little trickier, go for produced in the same state…trickier still within 160km.

My aim is to really know where my food is coming from for at least one meal a month, (where I will be posting here in the last week of the month).

Eat Local Challenge #5

Eat Local Challenge #4

Eat Local Challenge #3

Eat Local Challenge #2

Eat Local Challenge #1

The Stars Dance Again

Posted on July 23, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Soon our school will be holding it’s annual school disco again. Flicking through my archive of short stories, I was reminded of this post. That little almost convulsing dancing boy I still see in the playground from time to time. He’s bigger now and probably doesn’t even remember that intense dance-off he once did. I did though, and it still gave me a chuckle just reading about it.

In honour of school disco’s and the joy of uninhibited dancing, I made a few more of those dancing star biscuits.

lemon vanilla stars

200g softened butter

150g sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp lemon rind

225g plain flour

squeeze of half a lemon

Cream butter and sugar, add vanilla and lemon. Then mix through the flour. Roll between two sheets of baking paper, and chill a little in the fridge.

Cut out stars and bake at 170C for about 15 minutes.

This dough also freezes easily into a log, just cut off rounds to bake as you need them.

school disco essentials…surely

Date and Pecan Sourdough

Posted on July 13, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

I like knowing what the date is. Life with three small people seems to be a whirl wind of calendars, times and places to be. All those things would be a bit of a mess without knowing what the date was.

I also like my dates to be surrounded by a square, a calendar with big squares for me to scribble things on. There is not much point in me putting things in my phone as I invariably check it only after the activity or appointment is that I’ve just missed, (and I still don’t like to be that enslaved to technology anyway.) If there is enslavement to be had, I much prefer it to be with my kitchen calendar, with the big quares.

Put it on the calendar; I have been known to shriek out.

Why wasn’t it on the calendar? I demand.

Checking those little squares for where I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing is part of my obligatory morning routine. Never in a studious, calm fashion where I neatly check off things as they go by. No, it’s done as I close the fridge with my foot. Toss the second school lunch box to the bench, reach for the cup of tepid tea on my left and yell out; have you cleaned your teeth yet!? That’s when I do my laser scanning eye over the appropriate square and silently hope I haven’t forgotten to add something on this particular date.

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How about you? How do you keep track of the date and all the things going on your life?

Date and Pecan Sourdough

400g refreshed starter (100%)

300g wholemeal spelt flour

450g flour

550mls water

200g chopped medjool dates

100g pecan halves

1/2 tsp dark malt flour

2 tsp salt

Mix all your ingredients together except your salt. Mixing for about 6 minutes. Now leave it. Go find something else to do for about 40 minutes.

Add your salt and mix again for about another 6 minutes or if by hand until you get a smooth dough.

Put it back in the bowl and leave it for about an hour.

Dough out on to the bench, and do a three way fold. Back in the bowl for another hour or so. Divide the dough in two and then do a three way fold with the two portions. Leave them on the bench for twenty minutes or so.

Shape it. Laying it on lined trays, banetton baskets or tins, cover it and prove for 1-3 hours. Bake at 220C with steam.

custard tart vs chocolate pudding

Posted on July 6, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

I recently made a chocolate self saucing pudding.

It was fairly forgettable really.

Prompted from a chat on instagram, I wanted to revisit my early teen winning staple. And I really mean staple. I made those chocolate puddings on a weekly basis at one stage. Fueled by my love of anything dessert orientated and driven by a new found kitchen freedom that one seems to acquire after a certain period of time that has passed of proving yourself. Yep, I could bake them alright, and along with it feed my hungry mouthed siblings all through the long winter months. (Which weren’t particularly long, but it does sound more dramatic.)

The question was, would I be doing the same for my own children? Would the humble self saucing chocolate pudding become a family favourite as it once was mine?

Errr, no. No it won’t be.

I made it. It was pleasant, and that was about it. It seems my chocolate pudding days go no further. After 20 plus years of not making it, it seems my palate has completely changed. No longer sated by a simple concoction of self-raising flour, sugar, and cocoa. It really just didn’t do anything for me.

Now I could adapt a recipe, make it my own. Throw some more ingredients in there that are more attune to what our young family enjoys, however I probably won’t… as instead I revisited the humble custard tart.

And that dear people, was well worth the revisit.

Given that I have a long held history with custard anything, it would have been a shame if this one didn’t cut it. At times in my younger life I may have been held up by custard. It’s not the first time I’ve mentioned the love for custard on the blog, (nor probably the last.) But what I will mention is the tart disappeared far quicker than the chocolate pudding, which unfortunately seemed to quietly whither within the fridge over a period of days.

This recipe isn’t very complicated. There is no resting of pastry, no straining of custard, and if you feel like that second slice…I say go right ahead.

Custard Tart

Pastry

180g cold cubed butter

50g icing sugar

1 egg

250g plain flour

In a blender pulse, butter, flour and sugar together until it forms bread crumbs. Drop an egg in and a give it a quick whizz. Pop the mixture out on to a lightly floured bench top and gently knead until the dough comes together. Between two baking sheets, roll it out to about .5cm thickness. Plop the dough into your greased pie or tart dish, keeping one side of the baking paper on there. With the baking paper side up, add pie weights or something to weigh the pastry casing down- bake blind for about 20-15 minutes or until golden at 180C.

Custard

600mls milk

2 tsps vanilla

4 egg yolks

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup cornflour

50g melted butter

nutmeg

Add all ingredients except milk and nutmeg together to form a paste like consistency. In a pot over medium heat, add all of the paste and slowly add the milk, stirring continually. Keep stirring until the custard just comes together and then take it off the heat. (If by chance you get side tracked, and your custard gets a little lumpy- wizz it with a hand held mixer- voila! smooth custard.)

Pour custard into the tart shell and grate a little fresh nutmeg over the top.

Eat with enthusiasm and noisy laughter.

Carrot Top Pesto -ELC #5

Posted on June 25, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

The day I found out I could eat the tops of carrots was a bit of an exciting one.

“You can eat them!” I cried.

“Excellent.” He said, in a less than thinking it really was excellent, voice.

I pushed that lack of enthusiasm to the side as I was carrying more than enough excitability for this one to carry us both. Carrot tops eh? Who knew, actually it turns out lots of people knew, and I was just a bit slow on the uptake. So that’s why they quite often sell bunches of carrots with the tops still on… I just thought they were trying to keep the carrots looking au natural.

What would I make with them? How would they taste? And would I get it by the rest of the family?

Carrot Top Pesto

Bunch of carrot tops, washed and finally chopped.

A couple of cloves of garlic

Juice of a lemon

Enough olive oil to get a good pesto like consistency.

Pop it all into a hand held mixer, and pulse.

With Carrot Top Pesto made, what was I going to eat with it? I had some potatoes that were whispering to be popped into the oven with some rosemary, and that looked like it could be it. Too simple? Surprisingly no. Mr Chocolate drizzled his with some Pukara balsamic vinegar, (which gave it an extra zing) and not a murmur of objection was to be heard about the ‘different’ pesto.

The following day I had more of the potatoes and pesto together, leaving out the snow pea shoots, (which just quietly I feel are a bit of a chore to eat.) Delicious, seriously delicious. I kept taking another bite just to makes sure. Armed with an empty bowl and green speckled lips, I decided that yes, carrot top pesto was indeed a winner.

A local, frugal, seasonal winner.

How about you? Have you made any food discoveries lately? Ever made carrot top pesto? Do you think snow pea shoots are a bit of chore to eat as well?

Where did my food come from?

Carrots- Rita’s Farm, Kemps Creek 50km

Sebago Potato- Naturally Grown, Naturally Better, Crookwell 240km

Snow Pea Shoots- Lin’s Organics, Londonderry 60km

Rosemary- My courtyard

Lemon- My parents in law’s backyard

Interested in taking the challenge?

My aim is to really know where my food is coming from for at least one meal a month, (where I will be posting here in the last week of the month).

Eat Local Challenge #4

Eat Local Challenge #3

Eat Local Challenge #2

Eat Local Challenge #1

Cauliflower Curry- Frugal Friday

Posted on June 20, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

The good thing about having a blog is that you can see how you have changed over time. Looking back on your words, thoughts, photos and certainly for me, my recipes. Sometimes I feel those recipes need a little shake up.

Now come winter time, this dish (or a variation of it) often turns up on our dinner table. It’s easy, it’s seasonal, it’s super frugal and it deserved a better picture than this one from three years ago.

easy cauliflower curry recipe || cityhippyfarmgirl

Cauliflower Curry

1/2 a large head of cauliflower

3 potatoes

3 sticks of celery

6 cloves of garlic

1 finely chopped onion

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp curry powder ( a bit old school, but I like it)

400mls coconut milk

Dry fry the spices, onion, garlic (fresh chilli if you are feeling bold) and celery in a little vegetable oil. When they smell delicious, add the coconut milk. Let it simmer for a bit and then add your potatoes and cauliflower. Pop the lid of the pot on and cook it until they are as soft as you like.

Sticky Ginger Ninja Cake

Posted on June 9, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Why I was experimenting with my recipes just a few hours before I was to present a dessert type dish to a bunch of unknown (and known) people, I’m really not sure.

Why not stick with a well worn recipe that I knew inside and out? (Well where’s the fun in that I say?)

This recipe came out of the title really. I’d already named it before I had even made it. I knew I had pears to be used. I knew ginger is a winner with it, as I regularly make something similar. But sticky. I wanted it sticky. A little more flavoursome, and maybe just a little ninja-esque. (Well ninja rhyming with ginger, seemed close enough.)

I did also have lofty ideas of making a ninja’s face out of dusted icing sugar on each tiny square of cake, but sometimes even I have limits in complicating things just before we are due to go out.

Sticky Ginger Ninja Cake

150g sourdough starter

150g softened butter

150g brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp powdered ginger

2 beaten eggs

3 tbls molasses

250mls of pureed peeled and cored soft pears

150g self raising flour

75g wholemeal spelt flour

extra brown sugar to sprinkle on top

uncrystallised ginger pieces

Cream butter and sugar together. Then add vanilla, ginger, beaten eggs and molasses. Fold through pear puree, sourdough starter, wholemeal spelt and finally the self raising flour. Sprinkle the cake with extra brown sugar and press uncrystallised ginger pieces within the uncooked batter. Bake at 180C until golden and smells like a sticky ginger ninja kitchen.

in the mess of my kitchen lies…

Posted on June 3, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

sticky cupboard doors and splattered bench tops,

but look beyond that and you’ll find

a few jars of lime marmalade

Apple and sultana dough ready to be divided into rolls. Easy thing to go into lunch boxes for small ravernous people.

Tea. Not just any tea either but Christmas Tea. Now I’m not known for straying from my favourite tea, (as it’s the best and why would I?) But Christmas Tea? Well I had to give it a crack didn’t I. And bought in one of the best country bakeries I’ve been to in Nimmitabel.

The winter staple of Apple Crumble is back. Taking pictures of said apple crumble must be done in haste. Or small airplanes are discarded and sticky little fingers attack. And quickly too.

Seasonal pears are lining up.

And if I wanted to avoid the mess inside, I just send it outside… I do love eating outside. All the rules are left at the backdoor. I like that.

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What’s been happening in your kitchen lately?

Linking in with the kitchen Queen Celia.

That’s just not vegetarian- ELC #4

Posted on May 28, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

You’ll probably never find me getting nostaligic over a medium rare steak. It’s unlikely I’ll be looking forward to a dinner of sticky ribs. And just quietly I think roasted lamb tastes like a shearing shed. Meals round these parts are mostly vegetarian, and I like that.

However, just occasionally I feel like something, just a little something on the meatier side- heavily doused in a heady aroma of spices mind you.

Now goat isn’t my normal choice, but I’d made a curry before from it and had really liked the results. My slight, ever so slight issue with making a curry was local spices. Yes, there really wasn’t any. Could I get enough of a curry like taste from the fresh ginger, garlic and turmeric?*

Yes, I could. Combined with the roasted tomatoes and capsicums- which had intensified their flavours in the oven, it really was quite flavourful. The lime gave an added zing to it, and I quietly high-fived myself for keeping it all local, while still making a curry.

One thing that did come about from cooking this dish was my absolute respect for the ancient spice trade. No wonder they were traded like gold. (A new found respect for moderately sized spice rack too.)

*Next time I also know where to source some local curry leaves.

Goat Curry

700g chopped goat leg

(Booma Boers, Dorrigo)

finger of tumeric