February 2, 2009: Douple-striped pasta

How to make that tasty tomato-striped pasta even more stripey?

With stripey pasta! It's from Mediterranean Wholesalers.

Though it loses some of its vibrancy during cooking, it's still a pretty variation on the dried pasta I usually rely on.

Bloggers can't stand the heat and get out of the kitchen

This Saturday's food bloggers' bbq has been cancelled.

Yes, it sucks, but you know what would suck more? Barbecuing our way through a windy 43-degree day.

The good news is that Duncan's already taking votes on an alternative date to meet up, gobble and gab about all things edible and blogable. Head over to Syrup & Tang to lobby for your preferred date and I'll see you when the wind changes!

February 1, 2009: Watermelon sorbet

I was hardly going to invite people over for dinner without offering dessert, and this spate of hot weather called for sorbet. It's been years since I've tried to churn up a sorbet, even though perfecting lemon sorbet was one of my main aims when I initially bought an icecream maker. Back then I experimented many times with different quantities of lemon juice, sugar syrup, and soaking lemon rind but never did I get the taste and texture right simultaneously - often I failed on both counts!

If anyone could help, I figured, it would be David Lebovitz. Before travelling to the markets on Saturday morning I flipped through the sorbet section of The Perfect Scoop, making notes on all the fruity concoctions that might be seasonal. It was a long shopping list: "Buy 1kg cherries 1 lemon OR 8 limes OR 6 lemons OR 8 plums 1 punnet raspberries OR..." When I spotted the watermelons in the organic section of the markets I was sold, regardless of the (steep!) price of the lime I'd also need to churn up Lebovitz's watermelon sorbet. It's accompanied in the book by an irresistibly cute picture - the sorbet has been frozen into iceblock molds, and what looks like the melon's black seeds scattered throughout the sorbet are actually miniature choc chips.

Now choc chips are another blemish on my record of icecream making. When frozen, they don't taste like much, and I've never found a brand or technique that overcomes this. I half-heartedly checked out a couple of shops for mini choc chips but found only coloured sugar-coated ones; all I was after was a tablespoon or so of the critters anyway. Then I remembered the half-cup of cocoa nibs still in the pantry and decided to give them a go. They looked sadly like broken shards of watermelon seed stirred through the sorbet and my first experimental taste was more grit than flavour. But, ultimately, they really worked in this sorbet; the cocoa flavour asserted itself well through the cold.

Other than these seed substitutes, the watermelon is augmented with lime, vodka and, of course, sugar. Yet none of these ingredients really stand out; they just serve to heighten the watermelonyness of it all. And that's all you need. Well, that and the occasional crunchy hit of cocoa, nib-style.


Watermelon sorbet
(based on watermelon sorbetto from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz)

~2kg watermelon (including rind)
100g sugar
pinch of salt
juice of half a lime
2 cap-fulls vodka
1 generous tablespoon cocoa nibs

Cut the rind away from the watermelon, slice it into large chunks, and do your best to pick out the seeds. In two or three shifts, puree the watermelon in a food processor. Though David didn't mention it, I then strained the watermelon, pushing out as much liquid as I could, and discarded the seed-riddled pulp. (But try retaining the pulp and tell me what the sorbet's like!) Either way you're after about 3 cups of juice.

Put 1/2 cup of the juice in a small saucepan with the sugar and salt and warm the mixture, stirring, until the sugar's completely dissolved. Take the sugar syrup off the heat and stir it back into the rest of the watermelon juice. Add the lime juice and vodka, and refrigerate the mixture until it's very cold.

Churn the sorbet in an ice-cream maker, adding the cocoa nibs just a minute before switching it off.

February 1, 2009: Tempeh tacos and black beans

The last week of January was not one for cooking. With a string of record-breakingly hot days and only myself to feed, I nipped into the kitchen only long enough to fetch crackers and cheese, fruit, or my umpteenth refill of iced water. By the weekend I was ready for cooking and company so I offered a vaguely Mexican-themed Sunday night meal to Mike, Jo, Marty and Alana. They responded enthusiastically with beer (some with chilli!) and in Jo's case, white wine sangria.

On Saturday morning I picked out some recipes and hit the markets. Beer-marinated tempeh, coleslaw, black beans, lime-yoghurt sauce and smokin' hot chipotle-onion sauce; all taken from Veganomicon. I was able to prepare almost everything in advance, just frying the tempeh, reheating the beans and chopping up the fresh stuff while my guests crunched on corn chips.

So, let's take it from the top with my latest love, tempeh. Unfortunately, this incarnation was merely meh. Though my tempeh had marinated for hours in a potent mix of beer, lime juice, soy sauce and spices, the freshly fried strips tasted of tempeh, nothing more. They still made a pleasant and mild taco filling, but I suspect I could achieve the same effect by just stir-frying the strips in a little peanut oil.

Its accompaniments fared better. The coleslaw seemed an odd choice and I was a little apprehensive that the other eaters might avoid it. (Let's face it, vegetables don't get much less cool than cabbage.) Yet it won the first favourable remark! To be fair, this recipe is no mayonnaise mush - the shredded cabbage and carrot are dressed more elegantly in apple cider vinegar, a couple of minced pickled jalapenos, and some salt and pepper.

The evening's cooling condiment was the lime crema. All it takes is plain yoghurt (soy for the vegan version), a handful of coriander, the juice of a lime, a dash of salt, and a hearty whizz in the food processor. Only the most committed coriander-hater could turn up their nose at this one.

These black beans were the first dish to be completely gobbled up; their flavour belies their simplicity. To make them, you bring two drained cans of black beans, 3 cups of water, a halved onion and 2 bay leaves to boil. Let 'em simmer for 40 minutes, fish out the onion and bay leaves and you're done! Actually I found that my beans didn't want to break down at all, so I gave them an encouraging little mash to get the thicker consistency you see above.

Isa and Terry must be made of sterner stuff than I; there is no way I could handle this quantity of smokin' chipotle-onion sauce on such a modest serve of black beans. Even so, it's a gem of a recipe (I've included it below) - smoky, savoury and super-spicy - and we all gleefully spooned it onto our tortillas, some with heavier hands than others.

Even with a little hiccup or two and a couple of tweaks on my part, it's those Veganomiconers who deserve mad props for another stellar line-up of savoury dishes. Methinks it's time to start trialling those cookies and desserts tucked away at the back of this book.



Chipotle-onion sauce

1 large onion, diced finely
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 chipotle chillis in adobo, minced
2 tablespoons adobo sauce (from the chipotles)

Put the onion, garlic and olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook them, stirring occasionally to prevent the onion from sticking, until the onion is very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the chipotles and adobo sauce, stir through thoroughly, and cook for just 30 seconds more. Allow the sauce to cool, then whizz it briefly in a food processor to obtain a chunky sauce.

January, 2009: Assorted Indian groceries

Redcliffe's come a long way since I grew up there - it now boasts its own Indian grocery! My mum raided their shelves at Christmas time and picked out a few treats for Michael and I, wrapping them up in a cheerful ecosilk bag. Throughout January we've enjoyed slowly making our way through them...

First on trial was this khatta mitha mix. I think khatta mitha means 'sweet and sour' which is certainly how it tastes - though chilli is listed as an ingredient, it's barely hot at all. The mix of legumes isn't quite as crunchy as we'd like, though it improves when stored in the fridge!

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How would you pronounce Grapetiser? Combining 'grape' and 'appetiser' into a single trademark doesn't quite work. Never mind, carbonating grape juice does work - it's delicious.

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These badam halwa come individually wrapped. They're extremely sweet (65.99% sugar, in fact!) with a gelatinous texture (don't worry, the jellifying ingredients are plant-based). I expected them to be milky but they're not at all; more like a firmer, more dense piece of Turkish delight.

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This packet of farari chevda-tikha has the sweet and sour flavours of the khatta mitha, with a little more chilli besides. It's mostly made up of crispy fried potatoes and dotted with sultanas and peanuts.

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Finally, there are Jelly Tots (again, with a vegetarian gelling agent). Though the colours alleged to represent different flavours (orange, lemon, lime, grape and 'tutti frutti'), they taste mostly of sugar.

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It's been fun snacking our way through this bag of treats that we'd be unlikely to buy for ourselves. We probably won't be making any of them regular additions to our diet, but I'll be regularly appreciating the bag - unlike the ubiquitous 'green bags', it scrunches down perfectly into my backpack each workday, ready to be filled with more mundane groceries on my evening walk home.