Swiss Army Kitchen

August 1, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

My husband and I try to maintain good kitchen utensils and appliances. Our kitchen is well-stocked with mixing bowls, spatulas, knives, and measuring cups. We have a cutting board for every occasion. We have a high-quality tool for every task in the kitchen.

Except one.

We don’t have a single decent can opener.

We used to have two—one each from our pre-marriage days. Neither one worked well, but we limped along with them for 23 years. Last Christmas I decided that, though we don’t use a can opener very often, we deserved a new one. Guess who got a can opener in his stocking?

I happily threw away the two old ones, only to fish one back out of the rubbish when we found that the new one was absolutely useless.

That quarter-century old opener has been growing progressively worse in the past months (I think it knows I threw it away, and it’s bitter about that). Now, instead of reaching for the kitchen drawer when I want to open a can, I’m going to my purse—the can opener on my Swiss Army knife is vastly superior to the one in the kitchen.

One of these days, I’ll try buying another.

Until then, the Swiss Army knife is my new best kitchen tool…

This Shouldn’t Work

July 20, 2016July 6, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Our family is vegetarian, but we don’t go in for veganism. We like our cheese, eggs and milk. A lot.

But sometimes, curiosity gets the better of us.

My husband made hummus the other day, and tried something really weird with the water he boiled the chick peas in.

He made meringues with it.

Yep. Meringues. Who’d have thought.

Turns out, the bean water (call it aquafaba if you want it to sound gourmet) foams up when beaten, just like egg whites do.

The meringues came out crisp, and melt in your mouth just like a meringue should.

There is a slight beany aftertaste to them, but I prefer it to the eggy aftertaste of egg-based meringues. In fact, I dislike meringues as a rule, because of the egg flavour, so these were a real bonus for me. And spread them with lemon curd or Nutella, and that bean flavour is covered up nicely.

Completely crazy, and absolutely wonderful!

If you want to try your own bean-water meringues, there are lots of recipes on line. My husband was inspired by this article and recipe in Slate.

Vegetarian Sloppy Joes

June 30, 2016July 2, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

My family loves tofu meatballs, so any tofu I buy usually ends up in spaghetti with meatballs. But I enjoy tofu in many forms. Vegetarian sloppy joes comes in a close second to meatballs for me. This is a winter-friendly recipe, using canned tomatoes and dried herbs, but there’s no reason you couldn’t make it with fresh tomatoes and herbs in season.

300 g firm tofu, crumbled
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
8 button mushrooms, finely chopped
1 can chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground fennel
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp mild mustard
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
salt and black pepper to taste

Sauté the tofu in the oil until it begins to brown. Add the onions and paprikas and continue to sauté until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and mushrooms. When the mushrooms begin releasing their moisture, add the remainder of the ingredients. Cover and bring to a boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer for at least 30 minutes. You may need to uncover the pot during the last 10 minutes or so to allow some of the moisture to boil off.

Serve on Mum’s Fluffy Buns.

Don’t be George Bush: Eat Broccoli

June 5, 2016May 31, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

As the cooler weather finally hits, we slip into winter eating. That means the stored foods like pumpkins and potatoes, but it also means the cool-weather crops, like broccoli.

Broccoli gets a bad rap, and anyone who has ever eaten overcooked, mushy broccoli has my sympathy. But it’s worth giving broccoli a second chance, even if your first experiences with it were less than delicious. Because it can be grown year-round here, it is a staple in our diet.

Broccoli can be good raw, lightly cooked, or well cooked—it’s all a matter of choosing the right level of cooking for the dish. Here are some diverse and delicious ways to eat this maligned vegetable:

Add raw or very lightly steamed broccoli to a green salad.

Dip raw broccoli florets in your favourite cheese dip.

Lightly steam long broccoli spears and serve with butter, salt, and a squeeze of fresh lemon.

Add chopped broccoli to pizza or pasta sauce, or layer it into a potato gratin.

If you’re feeling adventuresome, make a broccoli soufflé—the broccoli, cheese, and egg combination is delicious.

Marinate and grill long broccoli spears.

Roast broccoli florets along with other vegetables in the oven.

Fabulous Fennel

May 31, 2016May 31, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

There’s not a lot coming out of the garden at the moment. The summer crops are pretty well finished (though we’re still scrounging the odd pepper or eggplant from the tunnel house), and the winter crops barely had a chance, with the hot dry weather we’ve had until last week. But among the few crops that are available right now is fennel.

This little-used vegetable is versatile and delicious in the kitchen, and attractive and useful in the garden. Leaves, seeds, and bulb are all edible.

Fennel grows year-round here, though the cooler months are when we appreciate it most. I plant it in both spring and autumn, but it seeds in readily, and we eat as many volunteer fennel as we do planted ones.

Fennel has a mild anise flavour that goes well with many other vegetables. When raw, the flavour is refreshing and numbing.

Raw fennel, sliced thin, makes a crisp and refreshing addition to salads. Or it can make a salad all on its own.

It can be braised and eaten as a side dish, or chopped and added to stews or casseroles. It goes particularly well with potatoes in a cheesy gratin, and makes a delightful risotto.

Fennel leaves can be added to salads and stews, even if the bulbs aren’t ready to harvest.

The ground seeds make a zesty addition to burgers, chai, and cookies, too! Or just crunch a few between your teeth after a meal to sweeten your breath.

In the garden, fennel’s big yellow flower heads attract all sorts of beneficial insects that help keep pests in check, and when the plants get too big and rangy, I can feed them to the goats, who love fennel as much as I do.

Corn Chips

May 30, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 4 Comments

Usually, when I want tortilla chips, I first make tortillas, then cut them into wedges, brush them with oil and bake them. It makes absolutely divine chips, but it’s rather labour intensive.

Last night my husband made a vat of chilli for dinner, and I gave in to my craving for chips. Instead of the usual tortilla chips, I made these simple corn chips. They take almost no time to mix up, and are quite good, though fragile. There wasn’t a single crumb left by the time the meal was over.

1 cup cornmeal

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

2 T dry milk powder

½ cup water

¼ cup vegetable oil

Combine the dry ingredients. Add the water and oil, and mix well.

Grease two large baking sheets. Divide the dough in two, and roll each half out quite thin (about 2mm) directly onto the sheet. The dough will be very oily, but you may need to dust your rolling pin with flour to keep it from sticking. Cut into triangles.

Bake on fan bake for 12-15 minutes at 175°C. Remove from the pan when they are browned, and cool completely on a wire rack.

If you’re a fan of flavoured chips, you might add paprika, smoked paprika, chilli powder, or finely grated parmesan cheese to these chips.

Don’t try to use these in nachos—because they are baked, they turn to mush when smothered in toppings.

Pumpkin Pie for Breakfast?

May 29, 2016May 29, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments

I made a variation on my standard pancake recipe this morning—pumpkin pancakes.

They were good—moist and heavier than plain pancakes. A bit like eating pumpkin pie for breakfast. Mmmmm! This recipe makes a huge stack of pancakes—enjoy!

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup cornmeal

3/8 cup sugar

3 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp cloves

½ tsp ginger

3 eggs

2 cups cooked, pureed pumpkin flesh

2 cups milk

6 Tbsp butter, melted

Combine flours, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices in a medium bowl. Whisk together eggs, pumpkin, milk and melted butter in a large bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and stir just until combined. You may need to add more milk to get the right consistency if your pumpkin is particularly dry (mine was, and I added another ¼ cup).

Fry on a preheated griddle or frying pan, as for normal pancakes.

A Five-Alarm Waffle

May 16, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

We love waffles at our house, but I make them only occasionally. There are two reasons for this—I don’t get to eat breakfast with everyone else when I make waffles, as I’m stuck tending the iron, and waffles have a tendency to set off the smoke alarms.

A well-seasoned waffle iron is…frankly, disgusting. It’s covered in a perfect layer of burnt butter. Unfortunately, that butter smokes every time you use the iron.

Even if I turn the extractor fan on, the smoke alarms go off.

So I’ve learned I can only make waffles on days it will be warm enough to open all the windows at 6.30 am. A good breeze blowing through clears the smoke and prevents the alarms from going off.

That usually means waffles only in summer, but since it’s been unusually warm, I decided to make pumpkin spice waffles on Sunday.

The morning was warm, so I opened the windows and turned on the extractor fan.

But the air was so still, the smoke hung indoors.

My son wasn’t yet out of bed when the alarms went off…

Well, no one was late for breakfast, at least.

Here’s a double recipe, so you’ll have waffles left over for breakfasts all week.

2 cups all purpose flour

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp ground cloves

2 cups cooked, mashed pumpkin

4 large eggs, separated

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 ½ cups milk

200g butter, melted

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, egg yolks, and brown sugar. Add the milk and whisk until the sugar dissolves. Gradually whisk in the butter.

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry and mix just until all the flour is moistened.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Fold the egg whites into the batter.

This batter is thick, and you will need to spread it with a spatula to get it evenly spread in the waffle iron.

Try them with warm applesauce!

Chick Pea Salad

May 10, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

Who would have thought we’d still be eating tomatoes and eggplant in mid-May?

But since we are, my husband made baba ghanoush on Sunday, and we had a lovely Mediterranean meal of baba ghanoush, freshly baked bread, homemade goat cheeses, and chick pea salad.

I looked at a number of chick pea salad recipes on-line, then ignored them all and used what we had in the garden. The result was quite lovely.

1 cup dry chick peas

1 sweet red pepper, chopped

2-3 medium tomatoes, chopped

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

12 large black olives

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and black pepper to taste

Cook the chick peas until tender, and allow to cool. Drain. Mix the chick peas, tomato, pepper, parsley and olives in a bowl. In a small bowl, whisk oil, vinegars, salt and pepper. Toss the salad with the oil and vinegar.

This salad holds up reasonably well to refrigeration (I just ate the last of it for lunch today, two days later, and it was still good), but is best eaten at room temperature on the first day.

Pumpkin Ricotta Lasagne

April 21, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

Yesterday I made a large batch of ricotta, and then wanted to use some of it in dinner. I also had in the fridge some leftover pumpkin galette filling from dinner a few days ago. And over the weekend, I had made some pepper oil to use with pasta.

What came out of it all was a pumpkin ricotta lasagne that was an absolute hit.

I can’t even begin to give you a recipe. It would start with, “Make too much pumpkin galette filling on Saturday, pepper oil on Sunday, and a vat of goat milk ricotta on Wednesday…”

But the final assembly followed this recipe, and yielded a beautiful white and orange striped dish that kept its form well when cut. It would have been perfect for a dinner party, served with a leafy green salad. Perfect, because we didn’t even eat half of it—it’s much denser than a normal lasagne, and would have easily fed five more people.