Not a Spanish Omelette

November 13, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Continuing with the egg theme…because I’m getting three a day now, and hardly know what to do with them all…

My husband introduced me to this dish before we were even married. He called it a Spanish omelette.

It is not a Spanish omelette. It’s more akin to a Texas omelette, but without the beans.

But it’s not even really that.

But whatever you call it, it’s good! And simple to make.

Chunks of roast potatoes topped with scrambled eggs and a thick spicy tomato sauce.

This dish can be served at any time of day, and can take on whatever flavours you want in the tomato sauce. This week, I made a sauce rich with an entire colander full of spinach, fistfuls of fresh basil and oregano, and heavy in paprika (including some smoked paprika, too). Sometimes I steer the sauce toward Central America, with cilantro, sometimes toward Greece with feta cheese and olives. The potatoes and egg are flexible, and will happily nestle under whatever you pour on top.

Best of all, it tastes like junk food, but is packed with nutrients and leaves you feeling satisfied. A real stick-to-your-ribs sort of meal.

Scromelettes

November 12, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

messy but good

I know there are many people who add things to their scrambled eggs, but for me, scrambled eggs have always been nothing but eggs and a little milk. If I wanted to add things to my eggs, I made an omelette.

Though I’m not particularly fond of eggs, I’m quite good at making omelettes, thanks to a summer job through my teen years that had me cooking breakfasts for hungry actors at the PA Renaissance Faire.

But the other day I exceeded my omelette abilities. I had so many yummy vegetables and so much cheese to put in our omelettes that I knew the egg wouldn’t hold it all.

So instead I made what we called “scromelettes”—scrambled eggs with omelette fillings mixed in. The result was delicious, if not so pretty as a perfectly folded omelette. Beyond the bonus of being able to use more filling, I was pleased to realise I could sauté longer-cooking ingredients before putting the egg into the pan, ensuring that everything was perfectly cooked.

Would I serve scromelettes to company? Probably not, but they’re a great option for times when your omelette just won’t all fit in a neat package.

Favourite Kitchen Tools: Scholtès stove

November 11, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I prepared our dinner mid-afternoon and tossed it into the oven on delayed bake so we could come home this evening after piano lessons to a hot meal, and I figured that it was time for another Favourite Kitchen Tools post.

When we remodelled the kitchen years ago, we went for the cheaper flooring and cabinetry options, but we splurged when it came to the stove. It is the most-used tool in the kitchen, after all. It has been worth every cent. The previous stove was a barely functional old thing that had a habit of electrocuting mice (ztztztzztztzt…Is that burning fur I smell?—it was awful!).

We cook and bake a lot. We do a lot of preserving. We make cheese. We needed a nice cook top and a big oven.

At the risk of sounding like a salesman (that really isn’t my intent)…We settled on the budget-blowing Scholtès made by the Italian company Indesit—90 cm wide, 5 gas burners, and an electric oven. We’ve worked the cook top and the oven hard in the past seven years, and it has done pretty much everything we’ve asked of it. Many days during summer I have all five burners going at once, and I appreciate being able to slide my biggest sheet pans easily into the large oven. It has had its troubles—the display unit has had to be replaced twice. (Turns out it gets cooked by the heat of the oven if you don’t leave the door open once you turn it off.) The tiny burner in the centre of the large central burner doesn’t work terribly well anymore. And the front panel and oven door are made of a supremely difficult to clean stainless steel—no matter what I do, it looks filthy.

Oh, and the operating manual is written in French and Italian…illustrating just how rusty my high school French is after 27 years!

Still, I love my stove. I am particularly glad we chose to go with a gas cook top. I love the way the gas responds to my cooking needs, and I especially love the fact I can cook dinner when the power is out!

Oh yeah, and on nights like tonight, when I can’t be home to cook dinner, the delayed bake is a life-saver!

Too Hot To Eat

November 10, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

It was 32°C (90°F) when we got home today. Too hot to eat a hot meal. So it was salads and cheese for dinner.

A luscious green salad of spring lettuces.

A hearty lentil salad with Israeli couscous, dried tomato, spring onion and fresh herbs.

Homemade feta on Mommy’s Magical Crackers.

A perfect summer meal!

What’s your perfect summer meal?

(ch)Eating from the garden

November 9, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Sometimes it feels like cheating.

I came home today tired and not feeling like cooking. I had 16 litres of milk that needed to be made into cheese waiting for me in the fridge. Dinner was going to be a slap-dash affair cooked in the wait times during cheese making. I didn’t expect much.

But with vegetables so fresh they’re still photosynthesizing as they go into the pot, herbs snipped moments before cooking, and homemade cheese on hand, even a thrown together meal is bound to be something special.

I whipped up a pasta from whatever was on hand in the garden and could be picked in 6 minutes, threw in some feta cheese and a handful of olives, and had a meal I would have happily served to company.

You just can’t help but eat well when you’re eating out of the garden.

I can, can you?

November 8, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Faced with 45 artichokes, there’s really only one thing to do—pull out the pressure canner, and bottle them up for later.

We thought long and hard before buying a pressure canner years ago—it was expensive, and signalled a whole new level of commitment to preserving than a simple water bath canner.

And then, of course, there are all the horror stories about exploding pressure canners. When the canner arrived, emblazoned with more warning stickers than a case of TNT, it didn’t alleviate my concerns.

But now I can’t imagine being without it. We can preserve so much more of what we grow, and not everything needs to be pickled to be preserved.

Pressure canning changes vegetables—the high pressure and temperature destroys their structure and basically turns them to mush. I wouldn’t want to subsist on pressure canned vegetables.

But our summer soup

LINK provides a burst of summer flavour, and wonderfully convenient instant meals through the winter. A few jars of canned green beans mean we can make our favourite Indian charcharis any time of the year. And canned artichokes add incredible flavour to pizzas, regardless of their texture. We could freeze these things, of course, but especially here where the power goes out with such frequency, having some of our preserved food not dependent on a continuous supply of electricity is a good idea. It also saves room in the freezer for those things that really don’t do well in the canner—berries, corn, peas, and of course the bread and baked goods from our baking days.

Feta Cheese

November 3, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

Feta draining the kitchen.

I’m making one of my favourite cheeses this evening—feta. It’s the cheese that inspired me to get goats in the first place.

When we lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, there was a Greek deli just a couple of miles from home—Spiros (a quick Google tells me that Spiros is no longer open). Spiros sold several different feta cheeses, half a dozen types of olives, and all manner of other Mediterranean foods. We almost always had a block of feta from Spiros in the fridge.

When we moved to New Zealand, I was dismayed at the lack of good feta available. When we needed some livestock to keep the paddocks under control (just until we got around to planting the trees…that was 10 years ago), I chose goats so that I could make proper feta.

I was not disappointed by my decision. Feta made from goat milk, and processed just right to get the crumbly texture I like…divine!

We use feta in many ways. Because it is strongly flavoured and very salty, a little goes a long way, and more is wonderfully decadent. We add it to pasta, gratins, and pizza. It browns beautifully in the oven, and the “toasty bits” are everyone’s favourites. It is, of course, an essential ingredient in Greek salad, and also goes well with lentils and grains. And it can be marinated in olive oil and herbs for an incredible pop-it-in-your-mouth snack or appetizer.

And it’s one of the easiest cheeses to make!

Hand and Foot

November 2, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Hand and Foot always goes hand-in-hand with food.

Hand and foot is a 4-person card came similar to Canasta, and played with 4 decks of cards. The game was introduced to me by my husband’s family. Indeed, I think it must have been written into the marriage agreement somewhere—will learn Hand and Food and agree to play whenever called upon.

The game is a good mix of luck, skill, and partner compatibility, so it works well as an evening’s entertainment at home or when visiting relatives.

Best of all, it is always accompanied by food—usually decadent and seasonally appropriate food. Cookies in the winter, ice cream in summer, strawberry shortcake in spring or pumpkin pie in the fall.

You might win or lose the game, but you always end happy and well-fed.

Mint

October 27, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Mint doesn’t like the dry soil of my herb garden…so it’s only a minor weed there.

And as weeds go, mint is a wonderful one—delicious in all sorts of drinks and dishes, both sweet and savoury.

My all-time favourite way to use mint is in Mrs. Cassel’s mint tea. Mrs. Cassel was a friend of my grandmother, and I remember nothing about her except for her tea recipe—orange juice and mint tea, well-sweetened and served over ice—summer in a glass!

In winter, a hot cup of mint tea is a great pick-me-up, especially when you have a cold.

Mint leaves, cut into strips, perk up any salad, and of course are essential to tabbouli and many other Mediterranean dishes.

And the most important use of mint—homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream! Special thanks to my husband and daughter who made this treat yesterday!

Pak Choi

October 26, 2015October 23, 2015 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Pak Choi, also known as Bok Choi or Chinese cabbage, is another of the early brassicas we enjoy in springtime.

Pak choi is best as an ingredient in stir fries. Lighly fried, it is crunchy and nutty, a bit like cabbage. It also imparts a glossy sheen to all the vegetables in a stir fry.

Pak choi’s origins go back at least 2000 years in China, and it is usually used with oriental spices. But pak choi is versatile. We also use it in pasta and even on pizza (where it is odd, but not bad).

Like most brassicas, pak choi doesn’t like heat or drought, and bolts once things heat up in summer. So we enjoy it while it lasts!