vegetarian

An Abundance of Artichokes

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

It’s a terrible thing, having excess gourmet vegetables. We are in our usual springtime artichoke excess. It’s not unusual for us to eat eight or nine artichokes five days out of seven.

A quick online search shows artichokes currently selling for anywhere from US$3 to 10 per pound (that’s NZ$9-31/kg). Given we easily eat a kilo per meal…Well, you get the idea. If we had to pay for them, we couldn’t afford them.

Of course, the problem remains–what do you do with that many artichokes? We preserve quite a few for use at other times of the year, but that still leaves plenty to enjoy during the season.

We eat a lot of artichokes in risotto, pasta, pizza, and gratins. The other day, I tried a new way of preparing them–crusted with parmesan and baked.

It’s simple, if a bit time-consuming (it would be trivial if you simply bought canned or frozen artichokes).

First, prepare the artichokes: snap off the outer leaves, peel the base and stem, trim off the top 1/3 of the leaves, remove the choke and any spines on the inner leaves, and cut the remaining heart into wedges. Drop wedges into a bowl of lemon juice and water as you go to avoid browning. Drain and steam for 3-5 minutes, until just tender, but not falling apart.

Then prepare the breading: mix in a medium bowl 1 cup bread crumbs, 1 cup grated parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp paprika, 1/8 tsp cayenne, and black pepper to taste.

In another bowl, beat two eggs.

Dredge the artichoke wedges first in the egg, then in the breading to coat thoroughly. Arrange in one layer on an oiled baking sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes at 190°C (375°F) until brown.

I served them plain, but they would be lovely with a dipping sauce like aioli or skordalia. They made a delicious accompaniment to the tiropitas (spinach and feta triangles) and salad that rounded out the meal.

Restaurant Review: Crazy Corner Cuisine

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“I e-mailed you a picture. I want a blog.”

I find it difficult to blog about a meal I haven’t cooked myself. I can’t give you a recipe or even a detailed ingredient list.

So I’ll have to blog as though I went to a restaurant for a fine meal…

I walked into Sedgemere’s finest vegetarian restaurant, Crazy Corner Cuisine, early–my reservation wasn’t until six–but I was ushered into the lounge and encouraged to relax with a book while I waited. As I reclined in a delightful window seat overlooking the restaurant’s herb gardens, the wonderful aroma of my meal wafted through the restaurant.

Crazy Corner isn’t your usual restaurant, where the meal is prepared behind closed doors. At Crazy Corner, the chef consults with the patrons, tweaking the meal to suit their tastes. In fact, on this visit to Crazy Corner, I was given a colander and allowed to enter the restaurant’s garden to pick my own salad.

Crazy Corner Cuisine grows nearly all the vegetables used in the restaurant, so you can be sure that whatever you eat, only the freshest ingredients are used.

On this visit, dinner included a beautiful polenta ‘lasagna’–layers of herb-filled polenta and thick lentil stew rich in mushrooms and spinach generously topped with cheese and baked to perfection. The portions were generous, and the side salad was the perfect foil to the hearty lasagna. The meal was accompanied by an excellent New Zealand Merlot.

I have to put in a good word for the kitchen staff, too. Though quite young, they cleared the table efficiently and I heard them industriously washing dishes as I left.

The whole experience was delightful and relaxing. I highly recommend a visit to Crazy Corner Cuisine the next time you’re in Sedgemere.

Nettle Season

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It’s stinging nettle season and, as I’ve mentioned before, my garden is host to an irritating quantity of nettle—quite literally.

But though it is a stinging weed, I’ll admit to a certain fascination with nettle. Look at the stinging hairs (trichomes) under the microscope, and you’ll find beautifully wicked structures like fine hypodermic needles. Those syringes are full of an irritating mix of acetylcholine, histamine, serotonin, moroidin, leukotrienes, and formic acid to irritate your skin.

But the triggering mechanism for the trichomes depends upon turgor (water pressure), so once a nettle wilts, it can’t sting.

And once it wilts, nettle is an incredibly useful plant. It is edible and quite nutritious for both humans and livestock. The cooked greens are used in traditional dishes throughout the Northern Hemisphere where it is native.

It can be used to make a vegetarian rennet for cheesemaking, and is used to flavour and decorate some cheeses. I’ve made nettle rennet myself as a substitute for commercial rennet when I’ve run out.

Nettles can be used to make tea, cordial and beer.

The fibrous stems can be used to make linen-like textiles. The roots can be used to make a yellow dye.

Fed to chickens, nettle is an effective egg colourant, which may explain the deep orange colour of my chickens’ egg yolks at this time of year.

All in all, stinging nettles don’t deserve their bad reputation. Like many of our weeds, they’re useful plants that we’ve forgotten how to use.

Who’s Debbie?

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

We pulled a jar of chutney from the cabinet a few days ago, and it inspired hours of speculation.

Who is Debbie? My husband made the chutney, and he labeled it, but no one can remember why it’s called Debbie’s chutney. Did someone named Debbie give us some fruit that was used in the chutney? Is Debbie an acronym for something? Delicious black boy [peach] interesting experiment? Is it a description of what’s in it? December berries?

The truth is, no one remembers. Which is a shame—I’m sure it’s a good story.

Many of our preserves and homemade products have names that tell a story, or describe what went into them. Just a few memorable ones:

Strawgooberry Jam—strawberry and gooseberry jam

Brewcurgooberry Jam—black currant, strawberry, red currant, and gooseberry jam.

Windfall Chutney—made from not-quite-ripe apples that blew down in a storm.

Black Daze of May—a dark beer brewed during a May several years ago when it rained continuously.

Baby Butt Bitter—a beer brewed many years ago during the potty training phase of one of the children.

Non-Dillicious Pickles—a batch of dill pickles that I forgot to put dill into (they were actually quite good)

Ginpricot Jam—apricot and ginger jam

Taumutu Squeak—mozzarella cheese that hasn’t quite worked properly and can’t be stretched, but squeaks when you bite into it

And, of course, Summer Soup—soup made of all the late summer vegetables.

So…

Who the hell is Debbie?

Lemon Meringue Pie

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I had extra pie dough from making a quiche earlier in the week, a bunch of lemons that needed to be used, and tons of eggs. What could I do but make lemon meringue pie?

I don’t think I’ve ever actually made lemon meringue pie before. It seems a gross oversight on my part, though not entirely surprising—I’m not fond of meringue, so it wouldn’t be the first thing I’d ever think of doing with lemons.

But, hey there’s a first time for everything, and the rest of the family loves meringue. So lemon meringue pie it was.

And it was very good—a study in textures and colours, with wobbly bright yellow custard underneath and foamy egg whites on top, nestled in a crunchy crust.

Would I make it again? Maybe occasionally, but it will never be one of my regular desserts. Even with the pie dough already made, it was nearly an hour from the start of the process to putting the pie in the oven. I don’t mind spending that sort of time on a dessert now and again, but every week? I can get my sweet fix much more easily than that.

And so, now I’m dreaming of a nice, whip-it-together in-a-few-minutes pan of brownies…

Funny Fruit

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Some days you just have to be silly.

Half way through cooking yesterday’s dinner, I felt it was incomplete. It need a little something extra. Something light and fresh. By the time I thought this, it was already dark outside. I didn’t feel like picking a salad in the dark, so I thought I might make a fruit salad.

But neither the bananas, nor the pears in the fruit bowl were ripe yet, and that left just apples and mandarines. Pretty boring fruit salad.

How could I make plain old apples exciting?

Turn them into swans, of course!

I found instructions for these fun little fruit birds on the Curious Little Kid blog. Hers are much prettier than mine, but mine got a laugh at the table all the same. They turned boring apples into an exciting side dish.

Homemade Oreo Cookies

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I’ve had a hankering for my ice cream sandwich cookies for weeks, but it’s midwinter—who wants to eat ice cream sandwiches?

But yesterday I had an idea. What if I turned those same cookies into homemade Oreos?

Oh. Yes.

I took my ice cream sandwich cookie dough and, rolled it out a bit thinner than I do for ice cream sandwiches. Instead of cutting it into rectangles, I cut circles with a cookie cutter. I baked them for 8 minutes at 190ºC (375ºF), and then let them cool completely on a rack.

When cool, I stuck them together with the following icing:

60 g (1/4 cup) softened butter
60 g (1/4 cup) Olivani at room temperature (shortening will work, for those in the US)
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups icing (confectioners) sugar

Beat butter and Olivani until smooth and light. Add vanilla and beat thoroughly. Sift confectioners sugar over the butter mixture and beat until smooth.

The icing was too soft at first and tended to squeeze out of the cookie when we bit into them, but it hardened overnight into the perfect Oreo filling consistency. I found this quantity of icing perfect for the number of cookies, but if you like double-stuff Oreos, make twice as much filling.

It has been decades since I last ate a real Oreo cookie, so I can’t say whether they are exactly like Oreos or not. But they are FANTASTIC!

Cinnamon Biscuits

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The line between biscuits (in the American sense of the word) and scones is a blurry one—add an egg and little sugar to a biscuit and, hey presto, you’ve got a scone! Take away the egg from a scone and, voila, you’ve got biscuits!

This morning, wanting scones but facing an egg shortage, I found myself improvising. The biscuit variation I came up with was absolutely marvellous, particularly when eaten with a dollop of honey.

This is a giant Sunday morning quantity of biscuits—enough for breakfast for four, plus extra snacking through the day. Easily halved, if you’re not feeling like Sunday decadence.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3 Tbsp brown sugar
125g (8 Tbsp) cold butter
1 1/2 cups milk

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Stir in milk. Briefly knead dough, just until smooth. Roll to 1.5 – 2 cm (1/2 – 3/4 inch) thickness and cut into squares, rounds, or whatever biscuity shape you like. Bake on an ungreased sheet at 210ºC (425ºF) for about 15 minutes, until browned.

Nostalgic Baking

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I made Irish soda bread to go with dinner today. As I mixed up the dough, I remembered making soda bread back when the kids were preschoolers. The recipe I have is easily quartered, so I would make a full batch, and each of the kids would make their own quarter-sized loaf. It didn’t even require any calculations—I simply gave them a smaller measuring cup (1/4-cup and 1/4 tsp to my one-cup and 1 tsp measures) and they could follow the recipe just like I did.

They loved baking their very own loaf, and then seeing it next to their plate at the dinner table.

Of course, these days, the teenagers are less keen on baking the bread and more keen on eating it, but I reckon one day they might make their own Irish soda bread again and remember making mini-loaves with Mum.

The recipe I use comes from Beard on Bread, by James Beard. I don’t know if this wonderful little cookbook is still in print, but I encourage you to find a copy—if you’ve never made bread before, Beard will walk you through it. If you’re a seasoned baker, Beard’s comprehensive selection of recipes will give you plenty to riff off as you experiment.

3 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups buttermilk

Combine dry ingredients. Mix in enough buttermilk to make a soft dough. Knead on a lightly floured board for 2-3 minutes. Form a round loaf and place on a buttered baking sheet. Cut a cross in the top with a sharp knife. Bake at 190ºC (375ºF) for 40-45 minutes.

Trying New Things

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I regularly check out cookbooks from the local library. I enjoy trying new recipes and getting inspiration for new dishes.

I’ve gotten some fabulous recipes from library books.

I’ve also gotten some duds.

In winter, I gravitate toward the baking books, so when I saw the book, 500 Cupcakes on the library shelf, I checked it out without even opening it.

The first recipe I scribbled down and tried was mint chocolate cupcakes. Everyone in the family loves chocolate bars with mint, so why not a cupcake?

I had my first misgivings as I was mixing up the batter. The recipe called for only 1/4 cup of cocoa. Surely a chocolate cupcake should have more cocoa, I thought.

But I don’t bake with mint often, and I decided to trust the recipe on quantities—I would hate to get the balance off and not be able to taste the mint over the chocolate.

Unfortunately, I should have gone with my gut feeling on the chocolate. The resulting cupcakes are simply not chocolaty enough to stand up to the strong mint flavour. They’re not awful, but after the whole family weighed in on them, I wrote “meh” on the recipe.

Oh, we’ll eat them all. They’re not that bad. But I won’t be making them again, at least not by the recipe.

Still, it wasn’t a wasted exercise. Every time I try a new recipe, I learn. That’s worth eating some lacklustre cupcakes now and again.