This recipe started when I found some orphaned ouzo hanging out in a pantry. My days at Maha taught me that arak (Middle Eastern ouzo) can make a lovely dressing for a watermelon salad, so I triangulated that information and came up with this little summer’s night delight. It makes for a lush rosy mixture that can be made into a granita or a sorbet.
Serves 8 – 12
500g fresh strawberries, hulled
500g seedless watermelon
juice of 1 large lemon
up to 200g icing sugar
60ml ouzo
mint leaves to garnish (optional)
In a food processor, blitz all of the ingredients (except for the mint) at a slow speed until it’s a smooth liquid and check for sweetness. For an unfussy granita, pour into tupperware and place in the freezer for a few hours before removing and stirring. Depending on the temperature of your freezer and how soon you’ll be serving the granita, you’ll need to play around with if and when to fridge or freeze it. For a sorbet, pour the mixture into an ice cream machine and churn according to instructions. Serve in short glasses with a mint leaf.
Another late summer essential is tomato sauce. I’m not talking condiment here, I’m talking sugo. Until now, I’d been well-versed in the old blanche, peel, blitz and boil methodology (deseeding was tiresome). It took an Englishman with floppy hair to suggest otherwise (this one
Method 1: purée
Makes about a litre depending on tomatoes
1.5kg Roma tomatoes
2 cloves Australian garlic, crushed with some salt
freshly ground black pepper
50ml extra virgin olive oil
Cut tomatoes in half and place in a baking tray with cut side up. Splash on the other ingredients then roast in 180°C oven for 35-45 minutes, until soft, browning and oozing. Remove, allow to cool slightly, then rub the tray contents through a sieve, discarding the seeds and skin that get left behind.
Quinoa pilaf
Quinoa is à la mode right now with its whole urfood thing going for it, so who am I to skip it.
Serves 3-4
1 quantity of the above tomato purée
1 cup dry quinoa
a big splash of extra virgin olive oil
1 onion
2 carrots, sliced (optional)
1 red capsicum, cut in chunks (optional)
2 small zucchini, cut in chunks (optional)
Heat the oil in a heavy-based saucepan and gently fry the onion until soft. Add the carrots and capsicum (if using) and then a few minutes later add the quinoa and tomato purée. Stir well and simmer. The quinoa should take around 15min to soften (the white ‘tails’ become more prominent) so add the zucchini (or any other vegetables you might be using instead) as required.
Method 2: sugo
Makes just over a litre depending on tomatoes
1.5kg Roma tomatoes
2 cloves Australian garlic, crushed with some salt
freshly ground black pepper
50ml extra virgin olive oil
a mixed bunch of parsley, basil and oregano leaves
Cut tomatoes in half and place in a baking tray with cut side up. Splash on the other ingredients then roast in 180°C oven for 35-45 minutes, until soft, browning and oozing. Remove, allow to cool slightly, then blitz it all in a food processor. The result should be a thick, rich, slightly smoky sugo that’s a perfect base for strong tomato sauces like puttanesca or amatriciana.
Rampant basil in the garden is one summer glut that’s always welcome. Basil pesto makes sense at no other time. Recipes don’t really differ that markedly, but this one is based on Tessa Kiros’ Tuscan recipe in Twelve
1/2 cup macadamias
1/4 cup walnuts
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 fat cloves of Australian garlic, crushed
60g pecorino, grated
90g parmesan, grated (grate extra for serving on pasta)
as much basil as you can fit in your food processor (2-3 large bunches)
Lightly toast the nuts in a pan. Then pound or blitz it all to a coarse paste.
Why anyone buys tzatziki is beyond me. If push comes to shove, you can make it with nothing more than yoghurt, cucumber and garlic and still have it taste better than the bought stuff. I never really measure anything while I make it because I enjoy tasting it to see how it’s shaping up, so treat this as a guide.
Serves 8 as a meze
2 cloves of Australian garlic
a sprinkle of salt
1 Lebanese cucumber, peeled and coarsely grated
extra virgin olive oil (optional)
juice of half a lemon
around 750g Greek yoghurt
small handful of mint (or dill), finely chopped
Peel and finely chop the garlic. On the cutting board, sprinkle salt over the garlic and then use the flat of the knife to mash it into a paste. Having grated the cucumber, squeeze the water out of it between the palms of your hand or in a sieve. Place the garlic paste and drained cucumber in a bowl and mix well with a fork. I add a splash of seriously good extra virgin olive oil at this stage because I like the grassiness it adds, but don’t do it unless it’s oil good enough to take intravenously. Add two thirds of the yoghurt and a splash of the lemon juice and mix well. Taste (a subjective thing, but check for the balance between the garlic’s heat, the yoghurt’s cool and the lemon’s acidity). Add the rest of the yoghurt and lemon juice to taste. Add the mint, mix and taste again. Refrigerate or serve with bread to dip or as an accompaniment to a meal, especially something like roast lamb.
This is a favourite lunch during summer. The recipe gets tweaked every time depending on what’s in the fridge and, therefore, doesn’t always resemble a traditional fattoush. Indeed, on one key point I always fiddle with the Lebanese standard — the bread. Fattoush is traditionally served with toasted pita bread (khoubz) in the salad but because we tend to eat this salad by itself for lunch, with no other accompaniments, we tend to crave a bit of leavened bread in there, hence the Turkish pide. If you’re looking for a more authentic recipe, check out Tess Mallos’ seminal Middle East Cookbook
Serves 2
1 clove of Australian garlic
half teaspoon salt
juice of 1 lemon
60ml extra virgin olive oil
freshly ground black pepper
4 ripe tomatoes
1 Lebanese cucumber
half a red capsicum
half a red onion (or half a cup spring onion)
a few leaves of cos lettuce (optional)
half a cup parsley leaves
half a cup mint leaves
half a large Turkish pide
Make the dressing first. Crush the garlic into a measuring cup or jar and add the salt. Stir together into a paste and then add the lemon juice, oil and pepper. Stir to emulsify.
Chop tomatoes, cucumber and capsicum into chunks. Roughly shred the lettuce and finely chop the onion. Cut the pide open horizontally and place under the grill until lightly browned. Cut the toasted bread into bite-sized chunks. Finely chop the parsley and mint and toss all the above with the dressing in a large bowl.
Sometimes the lure of a minimal ingredient list really gets the better of me. This comes (barely adapted) from the River Cafe Cook Book and the brevity of it was appealing but I can’t say it’s something I’m going to make again. Not that it didn’t turn out well — it’s just insanely rich, quite stupidly expensive to make and essentially a great big flavoursome wad of fat on a plate (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Anyway, if that seems like a fun night out rather than Type II diabetes, carry on!
Serves 16 at least
400g bitter chocolate, broken into pieces*
900ml double cream, at room temperature**
cocoa for dusting
Line a 25cm cake tin with Glad wrap (if it’s a spring form, all the better). Slowly melt the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water. Don’t stir the chocolate and don’t let the bowl touch the water. Thanks to a coolish ambient temperature, the top of my chocolate stubbornly retained the shape of the pieces even though it was melted and the rest was liquid underneath. Rather than stirring the chocolate, I simply pierced the top ’skin’ with a skewer to check that the chocolate was liquid underneath. Once liquid, allow the chocolate to cool ever so slightly. Meanwhile, whip the cream in a large bowl until it can form very soft peaks (be careful not to over do it). Add a large spoonful of the whipped cream to the bowl of chocolate and fold in quickly until there are no white streaks visible. Then quickly transfer the contents of the chocolate bowl into the bowl of whipped cream and fold everything together. You should have a lustrous milk-chocolate-coloured batter to pour into the lined cake tin. Chill for at least 2 hours, then invert onto a plate or do a sneaky slide and pray if you have a spring form to get the top looking all swirly like I did. Dust with cocoa and cut with a sharp knife.
* I went with good 70% cocoa Fair Trade stuff … there’s no point skimping on quality when there’s only two ingredients at work.
** none of that half-arsed thickened cream, this is all about having at least 50g of fat per 100g serving … check the “nutrition” information on the cream tubs.
The blueberry glut has largely been dealt with. Many of them have been eaten fresh and some have been frozen for later use. AF made some muffins yesterday and methinks I’ll concoct a clafoutis for tomorrow night. But today was all about jam.
Almost 5 years ago, I tried making lemon marmalade with a swag of lemons I ganked after climbing a neighbour’s fence. Alas, I cooked it too long, not having a thermometer, and I renounced jamming there and then. Nevertheless, the call to jam was undeniable and I took time to consult the oracle … but the CWA cookery book doesn’t have a single effing entry on blueberries. Anyway, this is approximately what I came up with…
Makes about 7 cups jam
6 cups fresh blueberries
4 cups sugar
juice of 1 lemon
40g pectin
Don’t wash the blueberries but do remove manky looking ones, stems etc. Crush or blitz half the blueberries, then put them in a very big pot (jam bubbles up like crazy when it’s cooking so you don’t want the ingredients to sit even halfway up the walls before cooking). Add the other blueberries whole along with the rest of the ingredients. Heat slowly til the sugar has dissolved then crank up the heat and boil them intensely for 5-7 minutes depending on how runny or set you like your jam. There’s plenty of thorough info on all the vagaries of pectin, jars and sterilisation on the web and on the back of pectin packets, so I won’t go into that here.
We picked around 12kg of blueberries today from a friend’s property. The blueberry bushes have been there for decades and are now completely untended, unwatered, unpruned and unsprayed. With dozens of rows of bushes, we barely scratched the surface. Having eaten around 2kg with our hands, the next few days will involve trying to work out how the hell to use them all. Stay tuned.
A great market day lunch. Straight from the monger to the pot. It all takes 15 min tops.
Serves 2 to 3
a big splash of extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves Australian garlic chopped finely
1 can diced tomato
1 kg fresh Tassie mussels debearded
plenty of chopped parsley
bread to mop up with
In a deep stainless steel pot, fry the garlic in oil until just golden, add tomatoes and cook for a minute or two until that tomato is practically krumping with bubbles. Add the cleaned mussels in one go (not too violently) and slam on the lid. Leave for 6 minutes. Add chopped parsley at the end, stir through and then ladle mussels and the attendant juices into big bowls. Provide napkins and a bowl for shells, it’s gloriously messy stuff. If you have enough bread, you could eat the whole dish without cutlery.