Sad closure of local manufacturer

A few years ago I discovered Standardknit, a knit fabric manufacturer located in Botany. As well as catering to businesses, home sewers could go to their stock service showroom and buy fabrics by the metre (although one could only buy lengths of 5 metres or more... how terrible to be forced to buy such quantities!).

Sadly, they have had to cease manufacturing although their stock service is still open until their stock is cleared.

I managed to buy two rolls, one of organic cotton 1*1 rib in white, and another of light weight cotton single jersey in natural. Lovely though it is to have these on hand, I will miss their cheerful service and the ready availability of so many plain knit fabrics in wonderful colours. It is so rare to be able to buy locally manufactured fabrics and know that they were made under Australian working conditions.

Bacon and Tomato Soup

Olive oil
2 small or one large onion, coarsely chopped
3-4 rashers of bacon, chopped
1 carrot, grated
2 tins of whole tomatoes
1-2 cups vegetable stock
2 tsp smoked sweet paprika

Sauté onion and bacon in olive oil for 10 mins over medium heat until onion is translucent and bacon fat is mostly rendered.
Add grated carrot and cook briefly
Cut stalks out of tomatoes and add to saucepan
Add vegetable stock and paprika.
Cook on low heat for 20 minutes.
Blitz with a a stick blender.
Reheat a bit and serve with excellent bread.

Bolognese Sauce

I was virtuous on Sunday afternoon and cooked a Bolognese sauce for freezing and future consumption. I now have 12 little packages of sauce solidifying in the freezer and a satisfying feeling.

Ingredients:

• 2 large or 3 medium onions
• 2 - 3 cloves garlic
• 2 zucchini
• 2 carrots
• 300g mushrooms (any type)
• 3 - 4 anchovies in oil
• 500g beef mince
• 500g pork mince
• 750ml passata
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
• 2 tsp vegetable stock, vegetable stock powder or cube
• olive oil

Preparation:

• Chop onions roughly
• Squish garlic in garlic squisher
• Grate zucchini, carrot and mushrooms (a food processor is helpful here)
• Heat oil in a large frying pan or stovetop-safe casserole dish
• Brown meat in batches, remove to a separate plate or bowl
• Add a little more oil to pan and lower heat
• Cook onion over medium heat until translucent
• Add garlic and cook approx 1 minute
• Add spices and cook for 10 - 20 seconds
• Add anchovies and cook for approx 1 minute, breaking down with your spoon / spatula thingy
• Deglaze pan with a bit of passata if necessary
• Add grated vegetables to pan and cook down for a couple of minutes
• Add browned meat to pan and mix in
• Add vegetable stock gloop, powder or crumbled cube (do not dilute in water, this adds too much liquid)
• Add passata to pan and stir in, bring to boil
• Add pepper as required
• Cook, uncovered, for 1 - 2 hours over slow heat, just bubbling
• Makes approx 2.4 kg, approx 12 servings

Notes:

• This always tastes better the next day.
• The anchovies and the vegetable stock help add the middle notes to this sauce, which I found so hard to do when I first started cooking it. Red wine can also help with this, should you have any around, but it does add a lot of liquid. I like a dryish sauce, particularly for freezing as it tends to weep and separate when you defrost it, otherwise.
• Grating the vegetables not only deepens the flavour, it hides them from those children (and grown-ups) who have an aversion to visible vegetable matter, and improves the texture after defrosting.

This weekend's version had *lots* of swiss brown mushrooms, because I happened to have a lot around. It's resulted in a lovely dark colour and deep flavour.

Vegetable Stock Concentrate

Since becoming intolerant to wheat, corn and soy, I've had increasing difficulty finding a stock concentrate which doesn't contain any of these. While I understand the move to replace chemical thickeners with cornflour, it leaves me with a problem.

While I could make a traditional vegetable or meat stock and freeze it, I have limited space in my freezer and rely heavily on stock concentrates for soups and flavor in other recipes. Thankfully, I was able to use the power of the interwebs to find out that you can make vegetable stock concentrate at home.

I was originally looking for a recipe which would give me a powder, but after some reading I realized that a gloop would be easier to obtain and no more trouble to keep. Many of the recipes assume you have a thermomix, and it would doubtless be easier if I did. However, it is still perfectly possible to make stock concentrate with the aid of a food processor and a saucepan.

The theory behind this is that more surface area gives you more flavour. The finer you chop your vegetables, the more surface area you are exposing to the cooking process. This also works well for putting vegetables in spag bol, for instance: next time grate your carrot, zucchini and mushroom before you add them to the frying pan. It also helps you disguise them from children who have an aversion to vegetable matter :-)

This is loosely based on this recipe.
Ingredients:

Approx 1.25kg of vegetables which could be something like:

• 1 brown onion
• 1 bunch parsley, stalks and all
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tomatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 turnip
• 200g mushrooms
• 170g celery stalk

Plus

• 1 glug olive oil
• 125g salt

Preparation:

1. Chop onion roughly.
2. Squish garlic in a garlic squisher or chop roughly
3. Peel and de-seed tomatoes.
4. Put prepared onion, garlic and tomatoes with parsley in food processor with a blade and chop.
5. Peel carrots and turnip if they look dirty enough. Cut to a size that will fit through the feed tube of your food processor.
6. Clean mushrooms if they are especially dirty.
7. Destring celery
8. Put carrots, turnip, mushrooms and celery through a course grating attachment. Yes, bits will get stuck. This is fine. If you don't have a grating attachment on you food processor, you can do this all just by chopping with the blade although it does make the most unholy racket.

Cooking:

1. Heat oil in a saucepan, hot but not smoking.
2. Add everything to the saucepan (it doesn't seem to matter if you add salt now or later).
3. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 30 mins or so, until everything looks cooked. Nothing should be in the least bit crunchy.
4. Take off heat and cool a little.
5. Put through the food processor with the blade until you get a browny-green gloop. Gloop colour will vary with ingredients.
6. Store in a glass or plastic container in your fridge, avoid metal containers due to the salt content.

Use approx 1 heaped tsp per 500ml water, remembering that it is about 10% salt.

Pirate Pants

... are what all the cool ladies are wearing to bed this summer.




Pirate Pants 1 and Pirate Pants 2

 
Some while ago I made my other half two pairs of woven cotton sleep shorts. A slightly shorter while ago, the pair made out of very light cotton decided to rip, leaving only one pair of sleep s.horts, which puts a bit of urgency on the washing/drying cycle. So I bought some random cotton jersey with a skull-and-crossbones motif on the grounds that jersey would be easier to run up a pair of sleep shorts in (I'm fussy about woven sleep shorts: they have to have french seams, since the main purpose of sleep shorts is comfort. Jersey ones have an overlocked seam right side out). I quickly put them together and handed them over, and sighed a sigh of relief... only to discover that they were so comfortable that my other half now refused to wear the surviving woven cotton pair.

So over the break I put together a plain red pair with pirate patches from the leftover fabric of pirate pants no. 1, and we now have two pairs of sleep shorts in circulation again. Yay! The patches on the centre back seam are to ensure that they go on the right way around. Sometimes when you're sleepy it can be difficult to figure out which way is the right way...

I don't know the pattern: my mother in law makes beautiful sleep pants for all her children, born and acquired, and I copied our size onto cardboard one day so that I could have a template. I'm guessing something like Simplicity 4889.

I made myself a very sedate long grey pair to replace a pair of elderly flannel ones which now have rips on the back thighs from seam to seam and are somewhat less comfortable and more drafty than they used to be.

Christmas Cherry Cake

This is traditionally made at Christmas in my family - because we live in the southern hemisphere and Christmas is in mid-summer. Nothern hemisphere residents might find this a little difficult, or at the least very expensive to make at Christmas. I believe the recipe might be a clafouti, but whatever it is, it's delicious.

Pastry
2 cups plain flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp baking power
pinch salt
4oz butter

Filling
1.5 lb cherries
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 egg yolks
1 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 400 F / 200 C.

Pastry
Sift flour, sugar, baking power and salt togther into a bowl. Cut in butter and rub in (or use a food processor). This will not make a dough, but a sandy, crumbly mixture. Press into an 8" square or 25cm diameter baking tin. No, it will not fall apart. Promise.

Filling
Stem and pit the cherries (I recommend the Cherry Chomper by Talisman Designs. It looks like a toy, works like a dream and is so much easier on the hands than the pincer-style ones)
Place fruit on uncooked base. Mix together cinnamon and sugar, sprinkle over cherries.
Bake in a hot oven (400 F, 200 C) for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix together the egg yolks and sour cream. Pour over the cherries after they have cooked for 15 minutes, then cook for a further 30 minutes.

Serve cold. Guard jealously.

I can't eat wheat, so I'm trying this with Rowie's sweet shortcrust pastry mix as a base.

Thai Red Curry Kedgeree

Watching Jamie's Christmas, I was inspired to make a kedgeree with what I had in the cupboard, which turned out to be:

Olive oil
1 large brown onion
1 clove garlic
1.5ish heaped teaspoons of thai red curry paste
2 - 3 cups cooked rice
1 bunch coriander
2 eggs
100g smoked trout

Chop onion roughly, cook over medium heat in olive oil until translucent. Chop garlic finely or put through garlic crusher, add and cook for a minute. Add thai red curry paste, and mix together, cooking for a few minutes. Add more olive oil if the curry paste is too dry.
Add rice, adding some water if the rice has dried out a bit (I was using leftover takeaway rice), and stir until rice is nicely curried.
Reserving a few leaves for garnish, chop corainder roughly, getting finer when the stalk gets bigger. Stir into rice. Turn heat down to medium low and let cook for 10 - 15 minutes. Try to not to stir too much if you like crispy bits.
While the rice mixture is cooking, hard-boil two eggs. Peel, chop in quarters and add to rice mixture.
Chop or flake smoked fish roughly, add to rice at the very end and stir through until warmed.

Later update: adding roughly grated ginger (about 1.5 cm) and using thai yellow curry paste are also to be recommended.

Eat while watching more cooking shows for inspiration.