Crab Quiche Extraordinaire!

Seriously, I am very disappointed in the internet's selection of inspired crab quiche recipes. I have never made a quiche before by myself and so, when I was recently gifted with some lovely fresh mud crab, I went looking for a base recipe to start me off.  Everything was lousy.  Here is what I decided to do!

INGREDIENTS:

Pastry:

• 3.5 cups spelt flour
• 250g butter
• 2 table spoons cold water
• 2 cold eggs

Filling:

• 5 eggs 
• 2 spring onions (sliced on diagonal)
• 2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 cup fresh cooked mud crab flesh (or other crab!)
• 1 small wheel of Camembert 
• 1/2 cup double cream
• Rind of a lemon
• 1 celery stalk (thinly sliced on diagonal)
• 1 small sweet potato (thinly sliced)
• 3 good handfuls or so of spinach leaves
• 1 handful of chopped fresh parsley
• 1 handful of chopped fresh dill
• 1/2 nutmeg, grated
• Pinch each of salt and pepper
• Drizzle of olive oil

METHOD:

Pastry:

1. Throw all ingredients in food processor and blitz in short bursts until combined!
2. Roll together into a ball and place in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour
3. Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius
4. Roll out on lightly floured surface to desired thickness (mine was about 0.5cm thick and, even after lining a large flan dish, I had enough left over to line another small flan and use for something else) :)
5. Grease a large flan dish and line with pastry.  Prick some air holes in pastry and weigh down with rice or other grain/weight and bake for 10-15 minutes

Quiche

1. Gently fry the shallots, garlic, celery and sweet potato in the olive oil for a few minutes until softened on a medium heat.
2. Add the spinach and cover, cooking on a low heat until spinach is wilted.
3. Spread the cooked vegetables over the baked pastry.
4. Sprinkle the crab meat over the vegetables.
5. Beat eggs in a bowl and add the cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg, herbs, lemon rind and Camembert.
6. Add the egg mix to the flan dish.
7. Grate a little table cheese on the top
8. Bake for half an hour at 180 degrees Celsius.

My Magical Mango Smoothie

Goodness, I've been so slack!  I've been making lots of lovely things but have been to lazy to post them.  Tsk tsk, I deserve a smack.  Or two.

OH HOW FUNNY!  Believe it or not, but just after I typed that Petey came in and delivered said smack without even knowing what I was writing.  Good work.

In other news, somewhere between my last post and here, the seasons changed and Summer crept in!  Oh, Summer, how I love thee!  Despite my intense love of food, I love how you decrease my appetite so that I can enjoy the lighter meals with satisfaction.  Today's breakfast was time for the first smoothie of the season and what better base flavour for a smoothie than mango!

INGREDIENTS:

• Ripe Bowen mangoes x 2
• Lady finger banana 
• Grapefruit (this provides the liquid element rather than milk or ice)
• Chia seeds (1 tablespoon-ish)
• Natural yoghurt (1/4 cup-ish)
• Seeds of green cardamom pods (5 pods)

METHOD:

1. Fry cardamom pods in dry pan over high heat until you can smell them.
2. Peel mangoes, remove flesh and put in blender.  People have various methods of removing flesh from mangoes but I find it easiest to just hold it over a big dish and use my hands to squeeze everything off the seed manually.  Seriously more fun and more efficient!
3. Peel banana, chop and add to blender.
4. Cut skin and pith off grapefruit, chop roughly, remove seeds and add to blender.
5. Extract seeds from cardamom pods and add to blender.
6. Add yoghurt and chia seeds to blender.
7. Blitz it to hell for a good minute or two.
8. Serves two!

Roast Chook on a Thai Fling

Seriously, who's had a good old Sunday roast and covered it in Thai or other Asian flavours?! I recommend it! This is a really rough recipe because you don't need any thing exact to make this wonderful. I'll just give you the gist of what I did.

Just take a chook (or if there's only two of you, a half bird is enough, that's what I did) and marinade it the day before in a paste of garlic, ginger, chili and lemongrass with a little oil and lime juice. Seal the bird in a fry pan briefly and transfer it to the oven and bake it at 200 degrees celcius until half cooked (maybe 45minutes?).

Halve some carrots and peel a couple of small onions and roll them in the left over oil of the frying pan before adding to the oven tray to bake.

When the chook and carrots/onion are cooked, remove from the oven to rest the meat. Slice up some green beans and broccoli (yes, slice that stem into long thin wedges, don't just use the florets - the stem rocks!) and julienne a big knob of ginger. Using the original fry pan with left over flavours from sealing the chicken, stir fry these together (or use whatever vegetables you like, capsicum would be lovely). When the pan gets dry, add a little water, some fish sauce and a few shakes of Tabasco sauce. I might be crazy but I also threw in a hint of balsamic vinegar. When the greens are perfectly vibrant, remove from the heat.

Divide the rested chicken among the plates with the vegetables, and tip the saucy juices from the greens fry up over them. Oh yeah. This is so simple and surprisingly awesome. Since I was feeling like I needed something awesome fast, very little thought has gone into this but I felt it was good enough to share. Maybe I'll get creative next time and make a proper Thai roast with all the spices...

Chickpea and Cabbage Soup

What do you do with a quarter of a cabbage and not much else? You make soup. Cabbage soup?! Are you serious? Um... Yes, if you use your not-much-else and make it delicious. I just made this up an hour ago and I love it! If you don't like the acidity, maybe you might like to temper it with a little sugar? (pft. just take it.) Ready? Here we go!

If having this as a main, I suggest heavy rye sourdough (maybe with melted parmesan on it if you're not vegan!) to soak up the liquidy goodness.

INGREDIENTS:

• Olive oil
  
• 1 onion (diced)
  
• 3 cloves garlic (diced)
  
• 5 Roma tomatoes (diced)
  
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 lemon (juiced)
• 1/2 cup dried chickpeas (soaked overnight, then boiled until cooked)
• 1/2 cup cooking water from the chickpeas
• 2 cups vegetable stock
  
• 1 - 2 tsp sweet paprika
• 1/4 of a cabbage (finely chopped)
• Big double handful of torn fresh basil leaves
• 1 handful of finely chopped fresh parsley
• Cracked black pepper

METHOD:

• Heat a good swig of olive oil in a medium soup pot and fry onion until clear
• Add garlic and bay, fry until fragrant
  
• Add tomatoes and paprika, fry for a minute or two
• Add cooked chickpeas, chickpea water, stock, lemon juice and cabbage - bring to the boil and then reduce to a slow simmer until cabbage is well cooked.
• Take off the heat and stir in torn basil.
• Serves four as an appertiser or two as a main with chopped parsley and pepper on top.

Moong Dal

Just because one's bank account is starving is no reason for you to! Dal is cheap, easy, nourishing, comforting and can even be delicious (particularly left overs on rye sourdough toast the next day). Obviously you can use whatever leafy vegetables you like in this if you do not have cabbage and spinach on hand. Kale would be awesome.

It is important to serve lentils with brown rice so that you get the benefits of complete protein - anyway, brown rice gives a much better texture and flavour to the dish! If brown rice just doesn't look appetising to you, throw a few teaspoons of tumeric into the cooking water to make it more jolly!

INGREDIENTS:

• Rice bran oil or ghee for frying
• 1.25 cups split moong/mung beans (thoroughly washed)
• 2 or 3 fresh green chilies
• 1 cup of tamarind water
• 6 cloves of garlic (crushed)
• Fresh ginger (thumb-length-ish chunk, finely chopped)
• 1 onion (diced)
  
• 2 tsp tumeric powder
• 3 tsp brown mustard seeds
• 3 tsp cumin seeds
• 6 - 10 curry leaves
• Pinch of asafoetida powder
  
• 1 carrot (diced)
• 1 celery stalk (diced)
• 3 cups of wombok or other cabbage (finely sliced)
• Spinach (couple of handfuls of leaves)
• Bunch of coriander leaf/stem (roughly chopped)

METHOD:

1. Head oil/ghee in a pot and fry curry leaves and mustard seeds until they begin to pop.
2. Add cumin seeds and onion, gently frying until clear
3. Add lentils, carrot, celery, ginger, garlic, tumeric, asafoetita, and chili and stir fry for a couple of minutes.
4. Cover with water (let water level sit about an inch above the contents of the pot), bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer.
   
5. Add cabbage about 15 minutes into cooking when dal is half cooked and continue simmering with lid on until dal is mushy and water is mostly absorbed.
6. Turn off heat and stir in tamarind water, spinach and coriander leaves.

This is wonderful served on brown rice with spicy pappadums and a simple raita. Mmmmmm!

Coconut and Banana Biscuits

This is a recipe that I simply MUST share. This one I found somewhere in the internet and wrote down and have used often however I can no longer find where I originally found it. If this is your recipe, let me know! I love it!

These little bickies keep really well and are so satisfying when you just need a little something. No sugar, no flour and completely vegan. Unfortunately they're not gluten-free due to the oats... but some people who are only slightly gluten sensitive can still tolerate oats!  I've tried them with rolled spelt instead of oats and they are delicious too! Healthy AND delicious. What's not to love?

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 large ripe bananas (mashed)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence (if you can try to use real vanilla bean paste for a far superior result!)
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 2 cups rolled oats (use rolled spelt if gluten intolerant)
• 2/3 cup almond meal (even better with macadamia and walnut meals)
• 1/3 cup shredded coconut (I've done it with fresh coconut and that is seriously ace!)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• OPTIONAL: 200g dark choc bits (I just rough chop a block of Green and Black's 70 or 80%)

METHOD:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius
2. Combine banana, vanilla, and coconut oil
3. Combine coconut, oats, almond meal, cinnamon, salt and baking powder
4. Stir dry ingredients into wet
5. Fold in chocolate bits
6. Drop a tablespoon or two of mixture in dollops on a lined baking tray and bake for 12-14 minutes.

Yum. Seriously. And this is coming from a woman who isn't fond of the taste of banana at all! ;)

A hot date with myself

Me: "ahh, that was so nice, thanks for the hot date today!"
Myself: "aw it was sweet. anytime babe. you're so pleasant to waste an afternoon with."
I: *wink* "same time next week then?"

Mental health days. They're good for you. Today I took myself to the park and spent a few hours lazing in the sunshine, staring at clouds, listening to birds, playing progressive metal, eating fresh Lebanese salad, reading a book, dreaming, washing my feet in the creek and watching the eels feeding. I had the pleasure of hanging out with some of my favourite locals including cormorants, maned ducks, currawongs, kookaburras, crows, butcher birds and magpies. Birds make me so happy! :) Also had the pleasure(?) of finding at least 3 types of spiders and 3 types of ants constantly crawling on my legs. Found two more spiders crawling out of my hair and shoes once I got home. Nice one.

It was so therapeutic just to lay on the earth and get all grounded in the sunshine. Wandering though the creek afterward I felt refreshed and cleansed. This is a good thing - it's been a rollercoaster week!

For the first time in my life, I can honestly and suddenly recognise how it feels to actually be a woman with a hormonal cycle. Mine's a bit whack at the moment, as I have just recently gone off the pill for the first time in about 10 years (since I was a teen). My poor body has taken a beating from that thing. I have noticed already that my nigh enormous breasts have actually shrunk slightly which is a bit of a relief. For the past 10 years they have been slowly slowly working their way up to the mighty F cup they are today. I really never want to go beyond F! I have also noticed some weight drop off recently which is a pleasant surprise, seeing as I have not made a single change in my lifestyle to encourage this. Nothing drastic mind you, but definitely something. Perhaps I had mild chronic oedema?

It is kind of exciting tracking my new menstrual cycle (my real menstrual cycle) for the first time. It has been a bit crazy which is to be expected. Some loops are a little short, some a few weeks too long. I think it is starting to settle though. Keen to see how it ends up aligning moonwise. The main thing I have noticed however, is that I have suddenly acquired spontaneous fragility in my emotional states. This is the scary stuff. I'm finding myself reacting completely irrationally, being overly sensitive, feeling particularly insecure and even having little teary eyed moments for no good reason. It is strange being aware of these reactions; it is as though I am outside of my body looking at it, and watching it do things I don't particularly approve of. Then suddenly I'm back in my body and everything switches suddenly back to being fine and I wonder what on earth I was upset about. Perhaps that is even a valid idea, that disrupted hormones might have the power to not only do make chemical changes but energetically alter. It really does feel like I progressively loose touch with reality over time and then when I finally go to town with a wild reaction, I notice that I'm hovering above my own body and forcibly kick myself back in. Perhaps my erratic hormones are disturbing the energetic pattern of my body so much that my consciousness is not sure how to hold onto it as well?

Perhaps I should have a glass of wine now and shut up before I get too carried away with this. ;)

<3

Raspberry Dessert!

This is a light and approachable desert that is pretty easy to whip up and very summertime friendly! I don't have a very sweet tooth which is why I've designed this to be just slightly tart. If you like it sweeeeeeet(!) just add more sugar. Also, I did not have any chocolate when I made them but I strongly recommend (lots) of dark chocolate shavings on the top. Yeah!

I think these turned out so fine that I will experiment with other, more exciting flavours including rose & mint or lime & coconut... can't wait to have an excuse to invent them! Let me know if you make any awesome flavour varieties of these.

INGREDIENTS:

1 tbsp gelatin

2 egg whites

400g Greek yoghurt

100g raspberries (plus extra to stack on top!

3 tbsp lemon juice

4 tsp sugar

Dribble of vanilla essence

Dark chocolate shavings (Green and Black's Organic 70% highly recommended!)

METHOD:

1. Blitz the yoghurt, raspberries and vanilla
2. Wisk the egg white to stiff peaks
3. Wisk the sugar into the egg whites until glossy
4. Melt the gelatin into the lemon juice in a heat safe bowl over a pot of boiling water
5. Mix the lemon juice into the yoghurt
6. Fold the egg whites into the yoghurt
7. Pour into 4 pretty dessert glasses (I used martini glasses)
8. Refrigerate until set (mine were ready about 5 hours later)
9. Stack extra raspberries in top of glass and cover with chocolate shavings. Divine!

Pollo alla Cacciatora

Here is a delightful piece of Italian flavour for the cooler times of the year. Apparently, originally, this hunter's style dish was made without tomatoes, relying mostly on the chicken/rabbit, wine, mushrooms, herbs and probably olives (what Italian hunter in their right mind went out without olives and wine??). My take on the dish is decidedly un-Italian in its complexity and long list of ingredients but the result is unashamedly good curl-up-by-the-fire comfort food!

There is the option to make this as hot or as mild as you like. The mild option involves a mild Italian sausage and the seeds scraped out of the chilies; the hot option means a hot Italian sausage and seeds in the chilies; the very hot option would probably involve not frying the chilies and just throwing them straight into the pot with the olives etc. Just tweek this however suits your mood.

Also, I used chicky for this recipe, but I imagine it would be wonderful with rabbit. I shall try it with rabby later in the year!

INGREDIENTS:

Sauce:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion - finely chopped
• 5 cloves garlic - squished up
• 5 roma tomatoes
• 1 cup torn basil
• 1 tsp sugar
• Pinch of salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 3 tbsp lemon juice

The rest of it:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 stalks of celery (you can dice/slice/chunk up these vegetables to whatever level of texture you like to have)
• 1 carrot
• 1 capsicum
• Red chilies (however many you dig)
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 6 chicken thighs (or, even better, just get a whole chook and cleave it into 8 pieces, with bones!)
• 2 field mushrooms
• 1 cup kalamata olives (pitted)
• 2 tsp capers (washed)
• 1 Italian cacciatore sausage (skin removed, sliced)
• Wedge of preserved lemon (washed)
• 1 cup white wine
• Oregano/Rosemary/Thyme (whatever you've got/like)
• Cannellini beans (I cheated and used a tin here - you can soak and cook if you're an organised bunny ;) )
• Some anchovy fillets (I didn't count - let's say between 6 and 8? or whatever you want)
• Fresh Italian parsley (a bunch, roughly chopped - yes that includes the stems. Why wouldn't you use the stems? The stems are delicious, delicious, delicious. DO it.)

METHOD:

Preheat your oven - about 180°C

Sauce:

1. Put the tomatoes under a hot grill until skin starts to blacken, then turn to do the other side, then remove from grill to cool. When cool enough, peel the skin off, remove the core and roughly chop.
2. Fry the onion with the oil in a lidded pan over a low heat - about 10 minutes or so.
3. Stir in garlic and basil, replace lid and fry for another few minutes
4. Add the tomatoes, sugar, wine, and lemon juice, replace the lid and simmer half an hour-ish (if anything starts to burn, your heat is too high; you should not need to caretake this process too much).
5. Pour the sauce into a big oven pot.

Other bits:

1. Add more oil to the same pan you just used and seal those chicky pieces to keep their juices intact. Once lightly browned on each side, add them to the oven pot with the sauce.
2. Straight into the same pan, add the capsicum, celery, carrot, bay and chili. Place a lid on the pan and turn it down to sweat the vege for a while and get the sweetness factor happening. After a few minutes, toss the mushroom though, take the lid off, and let it all fry a few minutes.
3. While this is happening, add all other ingredients except parsley straight into the oven pot.
4. Add the pan veges to the oven pot and gently toss the ingredients all around.
5. Get a lid on that baby and put her in the oven for a couple of hours.
6. Stir though the parsley just before serving with either crusty sourdough or polenta!
   

The meat should be absolutely tender and come away from the bone naturally (if you have boned pieces which I recommend).

Buon appetito! x x x

Murgh Makhini (Butter Chicken)

Last week I had a hankering for butter chicken. While I go out for Indian regularly, I have not ordered butter chicken for many years as, upon arrival to my palate, it always disappoints. I find it overly rich and often lacking actual flavour. It was time to make the butter chicken I've always dreamed of - only I had no idea how!

After some recipe research, I was disappointed at the amount of what I would call lazy and lousy recipes. They tend to rely heavily on cream, sugar and salt and employ little in the way of spices. Gods forbid they include a vegetable! So I cobbled together a recipe prototype with a little (lot of) creative licence and gave it a whirl only to find the resulting dish 'nice'. 'Nice' just doesn't cut it. In fact, I strongly dislike 'nice'. Tonight I tweaked that prototype and came up with 'freaking delicious'. I enjoy 'freaking delicious'. Here it is:

(Keep in mind my measurements are estimated - I generally measure spices by sight as I store them in dark bottles and just tip them into my hand as I go. My advice when in doubt: go for more!)

INGREDIENTS:

• 5 chicken thighs (diced into medium sized chunks)
  

• 7 cloves garlic
• thumb-sized piece fresh ginger
• pinch salt
• 2 tsp Kashmiri chili powder (or paprika)
  
• 2 tsp tumeric powder
• tbsp rice bran oil

• 2 tsp corriander seed
• 2 tsp cumin seed
• 7 green cardamom pods
• 5 cloves

• tbsp ghee or butter
  
• 3 tsp cumin seed
• 1 tsp fenugreek seed
  
• 1 brown onion (diced)
• 4 large tomatoes (diced)
• 2-3 green chilies (chopped) (or however many of whatever kind you have on hand)
  
• 1 carrot (diced)
• 1/2 cup tamarind water
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup plain yoghurt
• 1/2 cup gram flour (chickpea flour)
• long twig of fresh curry leaves
• green vegetables of choice (I used a bunch of brocolini (chopped) and a cup or so of frozen baby peas)

PREPARATION

1. Marinade: Use a mortar and pestle to make a paste of the garlic, ginger and salt. Add the tumeric, Kashmiri chili powder and oil. Rub this into the chicky thighs. mmm yeah. Let the babies rest somewhere for an hour or so.
   
2. Tamarind Water: Put a good tablespoon or so of tamarind pulp in bowl with half a cup of boiling water and let it steep for a while, breaking up the pulp as much as possible. Strain all the watery goodness just before cooking.
   
3. Garum Masala: Dry fry the corriander, cumin, cardamom pods and cloves. Extract the seeds from the cardamom pods and throw away the shell. Pound all this up in a mortar and pestle to make a powder. Smells goooood!
4. Beat the gram flour into the yoghurt to make an incorporated paste and set aside.
   

COOKING

1. Seal pasty chicky thighs in two batches with a little extra oil if necessary in a hot pan. Once sealed, remove to a plate to await their next exciting role.
2. Add butter/ghee to same pan (hopefully with good brown flavour stuck to the bottom of the pan now). Quickly fry the remaining cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds then add the onion and turn down the heat before the flavour coating left over from the chicken starts to burn. If it's getting black fast, skip to the next step asap!
   
3. Deglaze the pot with the tomatos and tamarind water. Add the chili, carrot, garum masala, honey and cinnamon. Place a lid on the pot and simmer for a while (basically until the tomato starts to break down and the carrot is soft).
   
4. Remove your cinnamon quill. Get out your blitz stick (or use a blender) and blitz the shit outta that sauce. Smooooooth!
5. Replace your cinnamon quill. Add the sealed chicken, curry leaves and hot water. Simmer with a lid until the chicken is cooked though.
6. Add the yoghurt and gram flour combo attack and stir in the green veges. Another 5 minutes of simmer and you're THERE!

I don't tend to make Indian breads unless I'm entertaining so I just served mine with plain brown rice. It was fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. You can be fabulous too.

Opening

I declare this blog open.

After perfecting my own amazing butter chicken recipe this afternoon, I decided it was high time I shared my recipes with the world. Life is too short not to eat well every day - and it is so easy! However, I do find it hard to restrict myself to a single topic of conversation. Personally, cooking is like a kind of alchemy, and that alchemy is no different to other creative activities I employ to bring about nourishment of my body, mind or spirit. Food, good food, made with the earth in mind, love in heart and sharing in spirit, can and should nourish the entire being that we are. There is such magik in food; anything we add to our bodies brings about a process of transformation and, hopefully creation.

Suddenly I find it difficult to distinguish between such topics as nourishment (food, cooking, recipes), spirituality (magik, meditation, philosophy), creativity (art, sewing, magik), health (herbs, food, medicine, exercise, meditation), relationships (love, sex, dinner parties, sharing)... do you see all the possibilities for cross-overs that I do? To me, sometimes, all of these become the same thing. I struggled to come up with a title for this blog that would encompass all of these topics without it becoming too wordy. Salt is a very powerful word for me which covers much of what I have just mentioned. I do not feel the need to really go into it at this stage.

Suffice to say that salt covers the nourishment stuff; the stuff of the Earth that we reap; the wu wei of the Dao. Paper covers the craftier stuff; the creation; the transformation and alchemy; the process. Kisses are the sweet nectar that make life so pleasant; energetic intimacy and exchange.

Plus it just has a nice ring to it. ;) Welcome to my journey. Come with. <3