Roasted butternut pumpkin with sage & macadamias

November 24, 2022

   

So here's the 'heftier side' we ate with our rhubarb-smothered haloumi: roasted butternut pumpkin topped with macadamia nuts, green olives and sage, all toasted in butter. (As with the fennel cacciatore, I chose green over kalamata olives as a personal preference.) Sage, butter and pumpkin are a pretty common combination, and I loved the extra toasty crunch of macadamias and piquance of olives in this version. The pumpkin's baking time was all I needed to get the haloumi recipe together, and we got two colourful and satisfying meals out of these two dishes for two people.

The red of the rhubarb and tomatoes, plus the green and gold here have me thinking that these two dishes could work well for a vegetarian Christmas meal. We'll definitely come back to both of them, regardless of what's on the menu on the 25th.

Roasted butternut pumpkin with sage & macadamias

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

1 butternut pumpkin

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

~1/3 cup olive oil

100g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

80g butter

50g green olives, halved and pits removed

1 handful fresh sage leaves

Preheat an oven to 190°C. Line a large baking tray with paper.

Carefully slice the pumpkin in half lengthways. Scoop out the seeds. In the remaining hollow, mix together the sugar, salt and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Rub this mixture into the cut side of the pumpkin. Place the pumpkin pieces onto the baking tray, cut side down. Roast for 40-50 minutes, until tender.

When the pumpkin has about 15 minutes to go, place the macadamias, olives, butter, 1 teaspoon olive oil and sage leaves into a small saucepan. Heat, stirring regularly, until the butter is melted, the macadamias are golden and the sage is a bit crispy. 

To serve, spoon the macadamia-butter mixture over the cut-side-up pumpkin halves.

Haloumi with roasted rhubarb & tomatoes

November 24, 2022

   

Haloumi is so tasty straight up that I'm rarely inclined to do anything extra or new with it. We typically just tuck it into Turkish bread sandwiches with roasted veges, and sometimes put it in a salad. This In Praise of Veg recipe is another fantastic option that's just barely any extra effort: fried haloumi pieces topped with a sweet and sour medley of roasted rhubarb, sliced shallots and cherry tomatoes in red wine vinegar. It would make an excellent light meal with just a green salad on the side, but we ate it with a heftier side dish that will appear in my next post.

Haloumi with roasted rhubarb & tomatoes

(a recipe from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

4 rhubarb stalks (about 250g)

2 French shallots, thinly sliced

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

100g cherry tomatoes, halved

200g haloumi, sliced into 1cm thick pieces

2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat an oven to 190°C. Line a baking tray with paper.

Wash and trim the rhubarb stalks. Cut them into 4cm lengths, and cut any thicker pieces in half lengthways so that they're all a similar size. Place them on the baking tray, along with the sliced shallots. Spread over the sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper and mix everything to combine. Cover the tray with foil and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the rhubarb is tender but still holding its shape.

Place the tomatoes in a bowl and pour the roasted rhubarb mixture over the top, so that the heat transfers to the tomatoes.

Fry the haloumi slices in the olive oil, until they're golden on each side. Serve the haloumi with the rhubarb mixture and all of its juices spooned on top.

Coconut sago sundaes

November 19-20, 2022

   

I can smell the mangos every time I visit our local fruit'n'veg shop lately, so I knew it was time to have a go at the coconut sago with lemongrass curd and fresh mango in In Praise of Veg.

I'll say up front that this is a recipe I'm happy to have made once, but I'm unlikely to return to it. Here's why:

• The kitchen mess. I knew this recipe would take time, but it also took heaps of dishes and a bunch of straining, leaving two distinct piles of slimey lemongrass to clean up.
• It's more time sensitive than I expected. This looks like something you could make hours before serving, and indeed I made a couple parts a day early. But this caused the sago to swell up and the coconut cream to harden - the texture really wasn't what Zaslavsky intended. My garnishing lime zest lost its... zest. On the other hand, you do need to get started 2-3 hours before you intend to serve it.
• Eggs. Three yolks and a whole egg? Weird. I don't love separating eggs, and I don't love dealing with the leftovers. (Though I will admit that this choc-date-almond meringue is a good solution for 3 egg whites, and I used it.)
• I couldn't taste the lemongrass, even though I used more than twice the recommended amount.

So, it was all a bit much effort, and didn't serve the lemongrass flavour I was hoping for. That said, the lime curd was a hit! It's a lovely smooth contrast to the bubbly sago. (I long for a vegan-friendly alternative to get away from those egg yolks, but I haven't achieved it yet.) And we're so ready for the taste of summer we get from mangos. These sundaes skated into the right space - successful enough that I wasn't mad about the effort I put into them, but not so mind-blowing that I'll go to the trouble again.

Coconut sago sundaes

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

coconut sago

150g dried white sago pearls or seed tapioca

green part of 3 lemongrass stems

400mL can coconut cream

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon caster sugar

lime curd

white part of 3 lemongrass stems, chopped

zest of 3 limes

1/2 cup lime juice

1/2 cup caster sugar

3 egg yolks

1 whole egg

80g butter, diced

topping

diced mango, or other fresh fruit

lime zest

Place 12 cups water in a very large saucepan and bring it to the boil. Add the sago. Smash around the green lemongrass stems a bit and add them too. Simmer the sago over medium heat for 20-30 minutes, until soft and almost clear. Discard the lemongrass and drain the sago, rinsing it with cold water.

In a medium bowl, stir together the coconut cream, salt and sugar. Stir through the sago and refrigerate the mixture for an hour. (Note that if you store it overnight, like I did, the sago will expand further and the coconut fat will become more firm.)

Place the chopped white lemongrass in a small saucepan with the lime zest, lime juice and sugar. Bring it just to the boil, then turn off the heat and let the mixture infuse for 20 minutes. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan. Over low heat, whisk in the egg yolks and whole egg, and continuously stir until the mixture thickens to a custard. Pour the mixture into a food processor or blender and let it sit for 5 minutes or so to cool a bit. Commence blending, and gradually add in the butter chunks. Keep blending until the mixture is completely smooth. Spoon the curd into the bottom of four serving glasses and refrigerate for at least an hour (storing this overnight won't do it any harm).

When you're ready to serve the sundaes, spoon the sago mixture over the curd in the glasses, then garnish with chopped fruit and lime zest.

Fennel cacciatore with polenta dumplings

November 17, 2022

   

I think of fennel as a winter vegetable, but I recently noticed a couple of fennel recipes pop up (one was definitely this salad on I Spy Plum Pie) and learned that it sticks around through spring. This allowed me to try the fennel cacciatore recipe in In Praise of Veg, which I'd mentally filed away for next year.

This is another neat case of dropping a simple dumpling dough on top of a bubbling main meal. Here it's cheesy polenta dollops on top of a tomato-sauced fennel base! If you own the kind of casserole dish that can also be used on the stovetop, it's also a one-pot-wonder. I don't; instead I seared the fennel in two batches in a cast-iron frypan, transferred them to a larger frypan to simmer in their tomato sauce, and transferred them again to a baking dish to cook the dumplings through.

That sounds like a lot of effort, but it really was fine (perhaps Michael, who washed up, would disagree). My polenta-water mixture didn't entirely meld, yet it puffed up well in the oven; its texture was unsurprisingly a little coarse. I used green olives instead of kalamata out of personal preference, and forgot to buy pitted ones. In future, I'd use crushed instead of whole tomatoes and remove the cores of the fennel bulbs for a more even texture.

The recipe made four decent servings - enough to feel satisfied, and gone before we had a chance to become bored with it. I hope we'll remember to revisit it when fennel season rolls around again.

Fennel cacciatore with polenta dumplings

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

1 cup polenta

3-4 medium fennel bulbs, stalks and fronds trimmed

2 tablespoons olive oil

3/4 cup pitted olives

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

400g can tomatoes

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 sprigs rosemary

grated parmesan, to garnish

Place the polenta in a small-medium bowl and stir in 1 cup water. Set the mixture aside to meld.

Cut the bulbs into big, chunky quarters; remove the cores if you like. Heat the olive oil up in a frypan over medium heat. Add the fennel and sear it on each side. Turn down the heat and add the olives and garlic, stirring for just a minute or two. Pour in the canned tomatoes plus at least a half-can of water, smashing up the tomatoes a bit if they need it. Sprinkle over the sugar and salt, and simmer everything for 10 minutes. Start heating up an oven to 190°C during the simmer.

When the mixture is done simmering, carefully transfer it to a high-walled baking tray. Drop tablespoonfuls of the polenta mixture onto the top to form dumplings. Cover the dish with foil or a lid and bake for 40 minutes. Retrieve the tray from the oven and remove the covering. Turn the oven up to 220°C. Sprinkle the parmesan over the cacciatore and add the rosemary sprigs. Bake uncovered for 5 more minutes, then serve.

Nico's

November 12, 2022

   

During my many lockdown walks through Fitzroy, I noticed lots of people loitering around a bright blue sandwich shop; more recently Michael noticed the same phenomenon in Brunswick. It looks like Nico's veg*n options have expanded with time and we've joined the queue for a couple of weekend lunches this month.

Up on the right is the most notable veg*n option, the vegan schnitzel ($15). The schnitzel looks deceptively thin within such a stacked sandwich, but there's actually plenty to sink your teeth into and it has an ultra-crispy crumbing. And don't let the volume of cos lettuce lead you to thinking that this will be bland: it's a festival of condiments with salad cream, nori, koji chimichurri, dill pickles and basil. There's a standard slice of plasticky vegan cheese too.

Nico's salad sandwich ($13, pictured above left) is stuffed to bursting with butter lettuce, cucumber, red onion (OK, I picked this out), tomato, sprouts, dill pickles and a sharp cheddar. It had me nostalgic for the salad sandwiches I'd make at my grandparents' place as a kid, and that I've had since in country bakeries, even though none of those have included sesame tofu dressing, Kewpie mayo, and koji chimichurri like this one.

Both sandwiches used a sourdough loaf that was super-soft, but hardy enough to hold the fillings together. The last vegetarian option that we've yet to try is a truffle mushroom melt ($16) - we haven't been ready for the richness of black truffle paste and two kinds of cheese.

Between Nico's and Rusty's, I wonder if there's a little sandwich trend rising (with Smith & Deli well ahead of the curve). Perhaps it's the natural blend of the decade-old reign of the burger and more recent wellness kicks. I'm more interested in this than either of those predecessors! And even if it's just a little local coincidence, I like it. 

   

____________

Nico's

1 Piera St, Brunswick East

menu

https://www.nicos.melbourne/

Accessibility: Nico's has a wide, flat entry. Furniture is a series of medium-spaced, medium-height tables and backless stools located outdoors. We ordered, paid and picked up our food from a medium-height counter. We didn't seek out toilets.

Silverbeet khachapuri

November 6, 2022

   

My friend Erin and I recently traded some things that we can't/won't use anymore, and thus I've acquired three new cookbooks. I want to be realistic about how well I might use these books, too, so I've flicked through each one and bookmarked the recipes I'm most excited to make. (There are plenty more that I'd be excited to eat if somebody else cooked them, but I'm strictly ignoring those!)

This recipe for silverbeet khachapuri is one of the more effortful ones in Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg, but it looked so good that it earned a bookmark. I was in self-imposed kind-of-sick isolation on the weekend, and had enough energy to make a Sunday project of the khachapuri.

Khachapuri are Georgian cheese breads - this version boasts three kinds of cheese, sautéed onion and silverbeet, and a baked egg, all baked into a bread dough that's enriched with milk and eggs. I tried to stay true to the recipe, but ended up using almost an extra cup of flour in my very sticky bread dough and an extra-large bunch of silverbeet. I was intrigued by the fenugreek sprinkle on the original version (and I've included it below), but it wasn't convenient for me this time and I used some oregano-sesame salt instead.

As you can see from the photo above, the results are spectacular, and I especially liked this with a squeeze of lime. The recipe makes far more than the two of us can eat in a sitting, so we made use of Zaslavsky's best tip: you can half-bake the khachapuri, store them in the fridge, then just add the egg and do the final bake when you're ready for seconds.

Silverbeet khachapuri

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg) 

dough

1 cup milk, lukewarm

7g sachet instant dried yeast

1/2 teaspoon sugar

3-4 cups bread flour, plus extra for dusting 

2 eggs

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

sesame seeds

filling

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, diced

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

leaves from 1 bunch silverbeet (265-300g), chopped

200g cottage cheese

200-250g mozzarella, grated

200g feta

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground fenugreek

4 eggs

to serve

40g butter

lemon wedges

Stir together the milk, yeast and sugar in a bowl and set them aside to let the powders dissolve. Place 25g of the flour and 100mL of water into a small saucepan and stir them over medium heat until thickened. Take them off the heat and allow them to cool slightly. Whisk the olive oil and 1 egg into the milk-yeast mixture, then whisk in the flour slurry.

In a large bowl, stir together 3 cups of flour with the salt. Slowly pour in the milk mixture and stir until well combined. Continue to knead the mixture to form a dough, adding flour as needed (Zaslavsky assures us that this dough cannot be overworked!). It's ready when the dough springs back from a finger-poke. Drip a little olive oil in a clean large bowl, roll the dough around to lightly coat it, then place a tea towel over the top and let the dough rest in a warm place for an hour.

Use this time to make the filling. Pour the olive oil into a frypan set over medium heat and add the onion. Cook the onion for around 10 minutes, mostly with the lid on, until it's well softened but not browned. Add the garlic and silverbeet, give everything a stir, then pop the lid back on to cook for 5-10 minutes, until the silverbeet has reduced. Transfer the silverbeet mixture to a large bowl. Stir through the cottage cheese, then the mozzarella, then crumble over the feta and stir everything to combine. 

Preheat an oven to 240°C. The aim next is to make four khachapuri, and I laid out one sheet of baking paper for each one. Lightly flour one sheet. Punch down the dough and take a quarter of it to roll out on this sheet. Roll out the dough to roughly a 17cm x 35cm rectangle, continuing to sprinkle flour as needed to keep everything from sticking. Spoon a quarter of the silverbeet-cheese filling onto the dough, spreading it out but leaving 1cm clear on the long sides and 1-2 inches clear on the short sides. Gather the long sides in towards the filling, allowing some of the filling to be captured under the dough. Pinch together and twist the short sides to form an overall boat shape. Cover the khachapuri with a tea towel to prove for a further 15 minutes, and work your way through the remaining three.

Use the baking paper sheets to carefully transfer however many khachapuri you can fit onto baking trays. Beat one egg and brush it onto the visible dough, then sprinkle the egg wash with sesame seeds. Sprinkle the khachapuri fillings with salt and fenugreek. Turn the oven down to 180°C and bake the khachapuri for 10-15 minutes, until the crusts are just starting to turn golden.

Press the base of a 1/3 cup measuring cup into the centre of the khachapuri filling to form a little well. Crack an egg into a glass and gently pour it into the well, repeating for the other half-baked khachapuri. Return them to the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the eggs are just set and the crust is thoroughly golden brown. (Repeat the baking process with any khachapuri you couldn't yet fit into your oven.)

Serve the khachapuri with a 10g slab of butter melting on top, and a wedge of lemon on the side.    

White bean soup with pesto dumplings

November 5, 2022

   

We've been home-cooking plenty in the past few months - it's just been focused on tried and true recipes more than anything new. But I was moved to browse my soup-tagged bookmarks this week when Michael came down with a cold, and he picked out this Heidi Swanson recipe for white bean soup with pesto dumplings.

Dumplings sound comforting but also like a lot of effort; I'm happy to report that only the first point is true in this recipe! They're just a simple floury batter that's dropped directly into the soup one big spoonful at a time, with no fiddly rolling or folding in their construction. An egg (and possibly the pesto available to you) get in the way of this being vegan, but I agree with Swanson that the egg could simply be substituted with a bit of extra liquid as it's not supplying crucial binding here. 

The soup itself is a simple mixture dotted with onion, carrots and white beans, thickened with a lot of flour. The flavour is really governed by your choice of herbs and pesto. I reckon that a bit of lemon rind, parmesan or nooch in the dumpling batter would brighten up the dish; I notice that Swanson included lemongrass in her herb mix and that probably served a similar purpose. In the bowl, the soft scone-like dumplings dominate the broth - they're perfect sick-time food and something we'll enjoy while well in winter too.

White bean soup with pesto herb dumplings

(a recipe from 101 Cookbooks)

soup

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced finely

2 carrots, diced

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

5 cups water or vegetable stock

salt, to taste

1 x 400g can cannellini beans, drained

dumplings

1 egg

2 tablespoons pesto

1 cup milk (Swanson used almond; I used soy)

1 cup chopped herbs, plus more for garnish (I used chives, parsley and dill)

1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat up the oil in a very large saucepan and sauté the onions and carrots until tender, about 5-7 minutes. Stir in the caraway seeds and flour and continue stirring for a couple of minutes to gently toast the flour. Add the water/stock and salt and bring it all to a gentle simmer, stirring regularly until thickened. Add the beans and continue to gently simmer and occasionally stir the soup while you prepare the dumplings.

In a small-medium bowl, whisk together the egg, pesto and milk until well mixed. Fold in the herbs. In a separate medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Pour in the egg-herb liquid and mix until just combined. Drop generous tablespoonfuls of the dumpling mixture into the soup. (Swanson warns us several times not to be tempted to go larger! And she's right, they do expand.) Cover the saucepan and simmer the dumplings for around 7 minutes; gently flip them over in the soup and give them another 7 minutes of covered cooking. Serve garnished with the extra chopped herbs.