Cassata for gleegans

September 22-23, 2011

I've recently had an inexplicable yearning for cassata. I do typically get geared up for icecream in Spring but cassata doesn't hold any special significance for me... I'd barely even eaten it before my calendar had me making one two years ago. And it involves glace fruit, which I've long hated. Yet it seems I might be developing a taste for those sickly sweet, gaudily coloured 'fruits'.

I impatiently prepared this vegan, gluten-free version on a quiet night at home by myself. You can see that the layers aren't as neatly formed as they should be. I still think it looks pretty festive, if misshapen.

The vegan, gluten-free cookies at the supermarket didn't take my fancy so I skipped them and doubled the almonds instead. No regrets. If the dairy-free angle on this dessert bothers you, let me say that I've been pleasantly surprised by So Good Vanilla Bliss. It's no gourmet blend but it's a convincing substitute for your average Peter or Paul. Once the chocolate, fruit and nuts are mixed through it's rather good indeed.

Cassata for gleegans
(adapted from this recipe)

1/4 cup glace fruit, chopped
1 tablespoon brandy
150mL coconut milk
1 teaspoon castor sugar
1 L vegan vanilla icecream (I used So Good Vanilla Bliss) 
60g dark chocolate
2 teaspoons margarine
1 teaspoon cocoa
60g slivered almonds

In a small bowl, stir together the fruit and brandy and let them stand for 10 minutes. Line a loaf tin with baking paper. Beat together the coconut milk and sugar by hand, then fold in the brandied fruit. Pour them into the loaf tin, checking that the fruit is evenly distributed and it's reasonably smooth on top. Put the tin in the freezer to firm up that first layer.

Allow half of the vanilla icecream to soften at room temperature. In a medium-sized saucepan, gently melt the chocolate and margarine together, then allow the mixture to cool. When the icecream's softened stir it, along with the sifted cocoa, into the chocolate - the chocolate should harden up and create a choc-chip effect. Retreive the loaf tin from the freezer, spread this chocolate layer over the first one, and return the cake tin to the freezer for about 15 minutes. Take the remaining half-litre of vanilla icecream out to soften.

When the second layer of icecream in the loaf tin has begun to firm up, spread over the remaining softened vanilla icecream and return the cake tin to the freezer.

Toast the almond slivers gently in a dry pan (I found a little spray oil helped). Press the almonds into the top layer of the cassata and freeze it until firm, at least 4 hours.

To serve, gently but firmly slice the cassata using a wet knife.

December 6, 2009: White Christmas

As I've discussed and demonstrated in previous years, I'm not one for Christmas traditions. The family group I spend the day with seems to get less traditional with each passing year, and consequently the customs of Christmas have been adapted or rejected along the way. I don't miss the traditional food - the monstrous hams, spiced biscuits and heavy puddings - so seasonally inappropriate, and nostalgic for a wintery European Christmas that few of us have even experienced.

One curious Christmas tradition is White Christmas slice. Though its name hints this it's another import from the Northern Hemisphere, this confection actually seems to be an Antipodean original. Super-sweet with icing sugar and (ergh!) glace cherries, White Christmas was very much on the periphery of my childhood Christmases. (I don't think my mum likes glace cherries any more than I do.) When it popped up as the December calendar recipe, I decided to try my hand at an alterna-Christmas recipe as well as honouring the original version.

The first thing to go, of course, was the glace cherries - and in with the dried ones I love so well. I'm not so into sultanas, either, so I introduced some dried cranberries to the mix. I find copha kinda disturbing so I replaced it with some less refined coconut oil. And remembering how super-sweet this slice typically is, I halved the quantity of icing sugar. Then I thought I'd try going the whole vegan hog by using coconut milk powder instead of its dairy analogue. This didn't work out quite so well as I'd hoped - the coconut milk powder I found at my local supermarket contains added sodium caseinate, a milk protein, and so does the soy milk powder. (Vegans - any tips on better brands or methods for replacing milk powder?). The resulting mixture was a lot mushier than the traditional batch, so I upped the quantities of 'milk' powder and rice bubbles.

So how'd they fare? Well, they both need maximum refrigeration to stay solid, with the coconut-oil based slice being the meltier of the two. In direct comparison, my 'improved' version was missing a little something - salt, I think. (Where the saltiness comes from in the original recipe I don't know. The dairy milk powder, perhaps?) And the traditional version tasted like... being a kid at Christmas. In spite of all the components I wanted rid of, I actually enjoyed eating this one a little more. Huh! Maybe there's a little more of the traditionalist in me than I thought.

White Christmas

Traditional
1/2 cup glace cherries, chopped
1 cup sultanas
2/3 cup dried apricots, chopped
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup milk powder
1 1/2 cups rice bubbles
250g copha

Alterna-style
1 cup cherries, chopped
1/2 cup cranberries, chopped
1/4 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/2 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 1/2 cups coconut milk powder
2 1/2 cups rice bubbles
250g coconut oil

Line a baking tray with paper.

In a large bowl, stir together all the ingredients except for the copha/coconut oil.

Melt the copha/coconut oil in a small saucepan, pour it over the dry ingredients and mix well.

Press the mixture into the baking tray, smoothing over the top with the back of a spoon. Cover and refrigerate the slice until set. Cut it into small squares (no more than an inch each side!).

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Purple Goddess has been writing some nice posts about traditions. You can read them here, here and here.

And while you're at it, check out the gift goodies that Another Outspoken Female and Fat Feminist Foodie have been making.

December 2, 2009: Juicy summer fruits

I have not been a good calendar cooker this last month - it's taken me until the first couple of days of December to prepare November's recipe! Initially I put it off because I hadn't seen any nice summer stone fruits about, then things got wildly sociable and there wasn't much home cooking or fruit buying going on.

What was worse than my tardiness was my inability to follow a simple recipe. Skewer fruit, coat fruit with melted butter and sugar, fry and eat - how hard can it be? Well, if it's undertaken in the latter hours of a weeknight, that's challenge enough. Brushing melted butter onto the fruit shish-kebabs was a little messy but rolling them in sugar was much, much worse. Things reached crisis point when I realised that my skewers were too long to fit in the frypan. Argh! I de-skewered the fruit into the pan, chucked in the remaining butter and sugar, and let it all bubble away for a few minutes while I calmed the heck down. When the fruit was tender I transferred it to bowls, and gave the sauce a minute more to reduce. Once the sauce was done it was into the bowls too, followed by a scoop of icecream. It wasn't shish-kebabs, but it was tasty.


Fruit shish-kebabs (or fruit shish-kerfuffle)

2 peaches
2 apricots
8 strawberries
30g butter, melted
1/3 cup raw sugar
vanilla ice cream, to serve

The official method: Slice up the fruit and slide the pieces onto skewers. Preheat a frypan (big enough for the skewers to fit inside!). Brush the fruit skewers with melted butter, then roll them in the sugar. Cook them for 5 minutes on each side, then serve them warm with icecream.

The late-and-lazy method: Preheat a frypan and melt the butter in it. Slice up the fruit and add it to the pan; sprinkle over the sugar. Cook the fruit, stirring occasionally, until tender. Remove the fruit into serving bowls and cook the juices down to a thicker sauce. Pour the juices over the fruit. Served topped with icecream.

October 27, 2009: Baked mushrooms with herbed fetta

I dealt with October's calendar recipe only in the last few days of the month. While I knew I'd like these baked mushrooms - topped with cherry tomatoes and pine nuts and served with marinated fetta - I suspected they wouldn't well suit Michael's long-term tomato issues and newfound cutlery-operation challenges. This was pretty much the case, though we both enjoyed the meal more than I expected at the outset.

For the tomato-lovers amongst us, these are terrific. Cherry tomatoes get wedged into the large mushrooms and as they bake, the tomatoes' skins puncture while the flesh sweetens and almost melts. It nearly but not quite falls into the acceptable category of 'tomato sauce', with Michael compelled to set aside the last couple of tomatoes on his plate. At least he agreed that the marinated fetta was a winner - I used lemon thyme rather than the standard stuff and can highly recommend it. If I made these again, I'd use a little less fetta and crumble it over the tomatoes rather than serving it, uncooked, on the side. For the anti-tomato brigade, I'd be interested to try slotting in olives and whole garlic cloves instead. I'd probably add a splash of balsamic vinegar across the board, too.

Baked mushrooms with herbed fetta

150g fetta, diced
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon fresh lemon thyme leaves, plus 4 extra sprigs
1/3 cup olive oil
4 large field mushrooms
16 cherry tomatoes
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
salt and pepper

Place the fetta cubes in a shallow dish. Sprinkle over the rosemary and thyme leaves, crack over some pepper, and pour over the olive oil. Allow the fetta to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Break off four pieces of baking paper, each roughly 30cm square. Put a mushroom at the centre of each one. Put four cherry tomatoes and a sprig of thyme on each mushroom. Sprinkle over some salt, pepper and a little of the oil from the fetta. Wrap the mushrooms up in the baking paper and bake them for 40 minutes. Unwrap the mushrooms and transfer them to plates, sprinkle over the pine nuts, and serve the fetta alongside.

September 5, 2009: Cassata

Nothing gets me onto a calendar recipe quicker than the promise of icecream! This cassata is a triple-layered dessert made primarily of vanilla icecream, and I decided to churn my own rather than softening a tub of pre-bought stuff. Since just Michael and I would be doing most of the eating on our own, I halved the recipe and still had enough to enjoy over about 10 days.

Cassata typically features glace fruits, though Michael and I agreed that we'd prefer ordinary mixed dried fruit. Either way the fruit is soaked in brandy, making for a colourful and sweet first layer. I've had limited success using choc chips in icecream (they usually become hard and flavourless) so I was curious to try the recommended method - chocolate is melted with a little butter, allowed to cool, and then some of the vanilla icecream is stirred in, making for some quick-set chocolatey chunks. Though the icecream froze a bit hard, the flavour was there and this was Michael's and my favourite part of the dessert. (Next time I'll try stirring the chocolate through a larger proportion of ice-cream for a thicker, milder chocolate layer.)

After a sizable layer of plain vanilla icecream, there's a topping of slivered almonds and crushed biscuits (I used a couple of the ginger drop biscuits I'd baked earlier). The recipe suggests decorating the top with extra whipped cream but you probably know by now that that's not really my style. Besides, this cassata's pretty enough once you've cut a slice through those icecream layers.


Cassata

1 litre vanilla icecream (I used the vanilla component of this recipe)
1/4 cup chopped mixed glace or dried fruit
1 tablespoon brandy
150mL cream
1 teaspoon castor sugar
60g dark chocolate
2 teaspoons butter
1 teaspoon cocoa
30g slivered almonds
30g dry biscuits

If you're making the vanilla icecream from scratch, put the canister in the freezer and prepare the custard a day ahead.

Either churn you prepared vanilla custard or take your pre-bought vanilla icecream out of the freezer to soften. In a small bowl, stir together the fruit and brandy and let them stand for 10 minutes. Line a cake tin with foil or baking paper. Whip the cream and sugar together, then fold in the brandied fruit. Pour it into the cake tin and smooth it over a little. Put the cake tin in the freezer to firm up that first layer.

In a medium-sized saucepan, gently melt the chocolate and butter together, then allow the mixture to cool. When the icecream's ready stir some of it, along with the sifted cocoa, into the chocolate - the chocolate should harden up and create a choc-chip effect. (The original recipe suggests using a half-cup of the icecream for this step, but I'd use half of the vanilla icecream next time, I think.) Retreive the cake tin from the freezer, spread this chocolate layer over the first one, and return the cake tin to the freezer for about 15 minutes. When the second layer of icecream has begun to firm up, spread over the remaining vanilla icecream and return the cake tin to the freezer.

Toast the almond slivers gently in a dry pan. Crumble in the biscuits and lightly toast them. Press the almonds and crumbs into the top layer of the cassata and freeze it until firm.

To serve, gently but firmly slice the cassata using a wet knife.

August 27, 2009: Pumpkin, ricotta and pine nut ravioli with yoghurt sauce

Before I'd even begun making August's calendar recipe, I knew I'd enjoy the flavours. The pumpkin, ricotta and pine nut ravioli filling bears a striking resemblance to some canneloni filling I ad-libbed and blogged a few years ago. One key difference is the use of mint here instead of basil, and its a refreshing alternative.

I embarked on this dinner with a little trepidation, too, due to a previous experience. I once used wonton wrappers to make ravioli, finding them awkward to assemble and somewhat unpleasant in texture. On her blog, Haalo helpfully pointed out the difference between wonton and gow gee wrappers, so I was able to carefully track down the latter from a local grocer. They're round, and perhaps a little thicker. Though there were a couple of nerve-wracking moments along the way these were quite successful. I still think I'd revert to canneloni shells if I made these again.

The one major change I'd make, though, is to the garlic. None of it is cooked in this recipe, and it has a stinging pungency that overwhelms the meal (and your digestive system for hours, even days, later). All you'd need to do to tame it is throw the skin-on cloves into the oven with the pumpkin. I've made this change to the recipe below, since I expect that most eaters would prefer to taste the ravioli this way.

Pumpkin, ricotta and pine nut ravioli with yoghurt dressing

350g pumpkin
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves garlic, skin on
60g pine nuts
50g ricotta
pinch nutmeg
24 gow gee garlic wrappers
100mL Greek-style yoghurt
1 teaspoon mint, finely chopped plus extra for garnish
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 190ºC and place a baking tray in the oven to heat up.

Peel the pumpkin and cut it into 8 slices. In a bowl, lightly coat the pumpkin slices with the olive oil and season them. Remove the hot tray from the oven, arrange the pumpkin slices and the garlic cloves on it, and return the tray to the oven. Bake until tender, turning the pumpkin once - we baked ours for roughly 15 minutes, turning at the 10-minute mark (the garlic may take less time). While they're baking, gently dry-roast the pine nuts in a frypan.

Set half the pumpkin aside (we kept it warm in the now-turned-off oven), and mash the other half of the pumpkin. Peel and mince the garlic. Stir the ricotta, half of the pine nuts, two thirds of the garlic and the nutmeg into the mashed pumpkin.

Set out half of the gow gee wrappers on a clean bench and a small bowl of water to the side. Place a teaspoon of pumpkin filling in the centre of each wrapper. Lightly brush the edges of each wrapper with water and place a second wrapper on top, pressing down the edges to seal in the filling, and pushing out as much air as possible.

For the dressing, whisk together the remaining garlic, yoghurt and mint. Chop the remaining pumpkin into bite-sized pieces.

Bring a large saucepan of water to boil and gently place the ravioli in it. Cook them for about 3 minutes, or until they float to the surface. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon and arrange them on plates. Spoon over the yoghurt dressing, scatter over the pumpkin pieces and remaining pine nuts, then garnish with more mint.

July 9, 2009: Butterscotch sultana duff and frozen yoghurt

I was a little surprised that our recent request for warming winter recipes didn't yield any comforting desserts! Never mind - that other regular feature, the Calendar Recipe, provided just the thing for July. I'm not familiar with duffs and a brief browse around the internet hasn't got me knowing them much better - they seem generally to be steamed or baked puddings, though they might also be cookies or pastries.

This particular recipe had me wondering if duffs are a product of hard times: it's egg-free and contains very little butter (though other online versions contain plenty of both). There is admittedly plenty of sugar involved, yet the sweetness comes equally from sultanas. What I found most unusual about the recipe was its consistency as I prepared it. The dough is quite stiff, like a biscuit dough, and sat barely an inch deep in my casserole dish. Meanwhile the butterscotch sauce is extremely watery and much larger in volume than the pudding dough! Over the hour that it baked, the dough absorbed much of the liquid and the butterscotch sauce thickened. The pudding rose almost to the top of the dish before subsiding again as it cooled (check out the tide lines in the photograph above!).

So, this duff here is essentially a self-saucing pudding. The cake is quite coarse (presumably from the lack of fat) and becomes quite tough as it cools so is best eaten freshly baked or patiently reheated. However the sauce and dried fruit provide plenty of moist sweetness - any sultana lover will be pleased to dig into this on a cold night.

The recipe recommends serving the duff with ice-cream or vanilla custard. Instead I decided to try the vanilla frozen yoghurt from The Perfect Scoop - it's a ridiculously simple mixture of natural yoghurt, sugar and vanilla. While I loved the flavour, this iced confection came out a little powdery and not quite scoopable. Still, there's plenty of weeks ahead to perfect this for summer, right?

Butterscotch sultana duff

1 1/3 cups plain flour
2 2/3 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup sultanas
1/2 cup milk
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups boiling water

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a large casserole dish.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir through the sugar and raisins, then mix in the milk to form a stiff dough. Spread the dough evenly over the base of the casserole dish.

Stir together the brown sugar, butter and boiling water until the sugar has dissolved and the butter has melted. Gently and slowly pour it into the casserole dish. Bake the lot for 45-60 minutes, until the pudding is cooked through.


Vanilla frozen yoghurt
(based on the recipe in The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz)

500g natural yoghurt
2/3 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Thoroughly stir together the ingredients in a bowl, until the sugar has dissolved. Chill the mixture for an hour or two before churning it in an ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

June 16, 2009: Sauerkraut chowder

June's calendar recipe promised to be a winter warmer - sauerkraut chowder. Utterly different to the soups that Michael and I typically make, it features potatoes, onion and, of course, sauerkraut. It gets its creaminess from evaporated milk and cream cheese and the flavour is pepped up with a little horseradish (I used more of the horseradish cream that we bought for a previous calendar recipe). It's definitely a filling and rich brew. It'll be a while before I'm brave enough to plonk an entire block of cream cheese into soup again, but I'd like to transfer the evaporated milk idea to other recipes.

Sauerkraut chowder

3-4 large potatoes
water
1 medium onion
400g can or jar of sauerkraut
~300mL evaporated milk
250g cream cheese
2 teaspoons horseradish cream, or to taste
salt and pepper

Chop the potatoes into bite-size pieces, leaving the skin on. Place the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover them with water. Chop the onion and add it to the pot. Bring the soup to the boil and cook the vegetables until the potatoes are tender.

Stir in the sauerkraut, evaporated milk and cream cheese, continuing to stir until the cream cheese has melted and blended in. Season with horseradish, salt and pepper to taste.

Cover the soup and simmer it on low heat for 30 minutes before serving.

April 29-May 2, 2009: White chocolate brownies

Over April and May, Robyn pulled a little trick in the calendar she made for me. Choosing a recipe too long to fit on one page, she revealed the tantalising list of ingredients for white chocolate brownies in April, leaving me hanging until May to actually see the preparation method! This actually worked out well - I baked the brownies late in April for a tea party held on the first weekend in May.

As you can see from the photo, this brownie isn't without cocoa solids. In fact, there's almost half a kilo of three different kinds of chocolate in the smallish tray I baked. The batter, which contains some of this chocolate, serves as little more than a binder for the chocolate chunks. As a consequence this is one of the firmest and least fudgy brownies I've sampled. That didn't affect its popularity, though - the 24 modest pieces that I cut this into had completely disappeared before I left the party.

A quirk of the original recipe was the inclusion of 125g plain flour and 40g self-raising flour. I don't keep self-raising flour in my pantry since it can be substituted with a combination of plain flour and baking powder. By my scrawled estimations, this recipe is requesting 164g plain flour and just a gram of baking powder (give or take, uh, a gram). I humoured my batter with that pinch of baking powder, but given that our favourite brownie recipe doesn't include any leavening, I suspect these can safely be baked without it.

White chocolate brownies

125g butter
150g milk chocolate
50g dark chocolate
1/2 cup castor sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
165g plain flour
125g white chocolate, chopped
125g milk chocolate, chopped

Preheat over to 170°C. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin with paper.

In a medium-sized saucepan over low heat, melt the butter, first 150g milk chocolate and the dark chocolate. Remove the saucepan from the heat and allow it to cool for about 10 minutes.

Whisk the sugar and eggs into the melted chocolate butter. Thoroughly stir through the flour, then fold through the chopped chocolate. Pour the brownie batter into the cake tin, smoothing over the top. Bake for about 30 minutes, testing with a skewer.

March 9, 2009: Lime mayonnaise

Here's a calendar recipe that's right up my alley - lime mayonnaise. I love mayonnaise on burgers and sandwiches, and chips dipped in aioli would rate as one of my favourite foods; back in my pre-veg days, battered fish with tartare sauce would have rated as highly. However, after a weekend of (over)indulgence, we needed to scale back a bit and I decided to team this lime mayonnaise with oven-baked tofu 'fish' bites. The freshest half of the plate features mixed green leaves and a coleslaw recipe from Veganomicon with bonus radishes.

As if lime juice and zest aren't enough pep, this condiment also includes horseradish and mustard. Fresh horseradish root isn't quite in season so we took the second option listed and bought horseradish cream from the supermarket. I've not tried horseradish before but it's in the same plant family as mustard and wasabi - it has that same acidic heat that punches you in the nose. The only other alteration I made to this recipe was downsizing - the original ingredient list added up to over a litre of mayo!


Lime mayonnaise

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup light sour cream
juice and zest of 1 lime
1 teaspoon horseradish cream
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Whisk all the ingredients together and refrigerate until serving.

February 15, 2009: Parmesan herb risotto cake

February's dish from our 2009 recipe calendar came under the heading Picnic in the Park, and indeed this risotto cake would be ideal for packing with a blanket and bottle of wine and enjoying on a mild summer night. (Unfortunately it wasn't suitable for our upcoming picnic dinner - more on that in a few posts' time.) Though it's tasty warm, it slices more smoothly once it's cooled down, and it wouldn't be too difficult to carry atop the picnic basket if kept in its springform tin. Fresh herbs and sun-dried tomatoes provide bursts of flavour, but most of all it's a rich concoction of eggs, cream and two kinds of cheese.

The recipe, however, provided some cause for confusion. The first ingredient listed in the original recipe is "2 x 250g packets arborio rice risotto base" - what, I asked myself, is that? Do I simply mix in 500g of uncooked arborio rice? Make up a risotto separately and plonk in 500g of that? The 'packets' part had me thinking that perhaps I was supposed to use a packet-mix risotto from the supermarket. But should I cook it up by the box's instructions or just stir in the dried mix? Does the 250g refer to the dry weight or the reconstituted weight? Argh! There didn't seem enough liquid in the recipe to properly cook the rice so I took what I thought was the middle road, buying and reconstituting two 145g packets of mushroom and garlic risotto. These seemed to provide the right amount of substance for the cake. I was impressed by the fluffy texture of the packet-mix risotto, though the flavour was very salty on its own.

Given the early preparation required to cook the risotto before making the cake, I probably won't remake this often but the recipe did reward my efforts with eight generous servings, each requiring little more than a handful of rocket to call it a meal.

Parmesan herb risotto cake

2 x 145g packets risotto mix
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 zucchini, sliced into thin rounds
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup light thickened cream
2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup ricotta, crumbled
pepper, to taste

Cook the risotto according to the accompanying instructions and allow it to cool, perhaps storing it in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 180°C; grease a springform pan. Transfer the risotto to a large mixing bowl; add the garlic, zucchini, eggs, cream, basil, parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, 1/3 cup of the parmesan and a generous grinding of pepper. Mix it all together well then pour it into the springform pan, smoothing over the top a little. Sprinkle the top with the ricotta and remaining parmesan.

Bake the risotto cake for 40 minutes or until set.

January 4, 2009: Spicy eggplant and potatoes

Our first installment with a new recipe calendar! An eggplant and potato curry is just our kinda meal, this one made easier than our usual efforts since it involves a jar of Kan-Tong. Unfortunately this is where we got a little too blasé in the supermarket. Firstly, our can o'curry included some extra potato chunks. Second and worse, we discovered once home that it contained shrimp paste. We forged on, but won't be repeating this dish with that brand. As an aside, dear reader, is there a brand of vegetarian curry paste that's won your loyalty? I think we need to adopt one... or two. Maybe four.

With all that canned curry going on, this was probably the least spicy such dish we've ever made. But it was enlivened by my spontaneous addition of some leftover fried tempeh. I'm usually not a big tempeh fan, finding it a bit dense and dry, but here it really came into its own - it willingly soaked up the sauce and supplied a nutty new texture. Though this meal didn't blow our minds or our mouths, it's a promising launching point for some fine future meals.


Spicy eggplant and potatoes

1 medium eggplant
2 large potatoes
2 onions
1/4 cup peanut oil
1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
360g jar massaman curry
1 tablespoon fresh coriander, to garnish

Chop the eggplant and potatoes into 1 inch cubes; peel the onions and slice them into eighths.

Heat the oil in a wok and stir-fry the potatoes, onion, garlic and ginger for 5 minutes. Add the eggplant and stir-fry for a further 5 minutes. Pour in the curry and stir it all together. Bring it to the boil, then simmer for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Garnish with coriander leaves.

December 11, 2008: My edible birthday

On turning 28, my friend, colleague and fellow maths-nerd Alana reminded me that my new age is a perfect number. As if that's not enough to be pleased about, take a look at the food-themed gifts I've been treated to, to celebrate the occasion.

This cute card arrived in the mail from my brother, Liam.

Michael's mum, Robyn, posted me this brand new recipe calendar to replace the 2008 World In Your Kitchen Calendar that she bought us for Christmas last year. This time she designed and printed her own calendar full of vegetarian recipes! I'm impressed and mighty chuffed that she went to that effort - you can be sure that this blog will document us testing each recipe throughout the year.

Yes, it's Veganomicon! The ultimate reference for vegan cooking, source of the fabulous chickpea cutlet. Michael picked it out after a little internet research, and offered to cook me my choice of dinner from it on Friday night. I can't wait to get my teeth into more of these cruelty-free recipes in the coming weeks and months.

But he didn't stop there. Michael also tucked away some sweet little earrings and badges amongst a bag full of newspaper. The newspaper concealed this vintage drink set! I'll swizzle up Pimm's punch all summer, if only the weather warms up.

My December birthday melds most agreeably into Christmas. I spent the afternoon lazing around a barbecue and playing bocce with my lab-mates while in Dr Who-themed costume - that's what passes for an office Christmas party 'round these parts. And I think there's at least one more fabulous food-themed gift on its way to me. During the planning and parties of these few weeks, I'm looking forward to my turn to do the giving.