Beetroot Pasta with 2 green sauce ideas

Seeing as how much my darling loves to eat pasta, and there being a sale at a kitchen store, we finally decided to buy yet another appliance - a pasta machine! Turns out for the recipe I tried, I didn't really need one - just a rolling pin and a knife. I used it anyway though to save on some rolling after all that laborious kneading - more on that in a minute.

So the first recipe I decided to try was from Diane Seed's 'More Great Italian Pasta'. Awhile ago I picked up a couple of her beautifully illustrated cookbooks at a second-hand store. I have no doubt that she manages fine with the recipe she provided, but it proved a bit of a waste of time for me, so I'm going to give you my adapted recipe of her Beetroot Tagliatelle.
Her recipe said to work together a pasta dough until smooth then mix in a cooked, pureed beetroot. You should have seen my hands! Covered with sticky pink gluey stuff with these little red lumps - one beetroot wasn't enough to work in my blender - and even scraped out with a spatula into bowl and mashed with a potato masher didn't get it 'pureed' exactly. Finally I managed to get it re-kneaded then rolled into these pretty pink sheets but I decided next time to add the beetroot with the eggs at the beginning. Another thing I decided was that while pretty little tangled nests of tagliatelle were all very um, curly, it really didn't seem worth the effort and fettucine using the machine's attachment was my choice the second time around.
See how it's just rolled up and sliced? Then the background shows little piles of drying tagliatelle. Kinda fiddly.


So Here's a beetroot pasta recipe (serves 6)

600g (1 lb 4 oz) flour
3 eggs
pinch salt
2 T olive oil
about 200g drained, tinned beetroot / 2 peeled and cooked beetroots

In a large bowl put flour and salt. Make a well in the middle.
In a blender or food processor, whizz together the eggs, oil and beetroot. Pour this liquidy mixture into the well in the flour. Mix together with a metal spoon then tip out contents onto a clean, floured workbench and 'work together' - squeezing, kneading and punching, gathering up all the loose crumbs until it comes together as a ball. It shouldn't be too sticky - add more flour as necessary so that your hands stay clean as you knead it. Continue kneading until smooth, soft and springy.
Divide the ball into four pieces and roll out into rectangles no wider that your pasta machine. To do this I first rolled 'sausage' shapes with my hands then using a rolling pin, rolled along them. Dust each sheet with flour on both sides (so that it moves cleanly and easily through the machine) and hang from pasta dryer.Feed the rectangles, one at a time, through the pasta machine at it's highest (thickest) setting. Do this twice then cut each sheet in half so that the finished pasta doesn't end up too long. Keep the sheets hanging on the dryer when you are not using them so that they don't stick together. Adjust the pasta machine to the next thinest setting and pass each sheet through again. (Keep doing this until you have reached the thickness/thinness that suits you). Then pass the sheets through the fettucine cutter attachment and hang your pasta to dry - ready for you to cook and add sauce. I will add Diane's tips for filled pasta when I get around to trying to make those!


Leek Sauce
from Diane Seed's 'More Great Italian Pasta'

See how in this photo the pink colour has just about disappeared? Not enough beetroot first time around. The sauce (and pasta) was delicious, though!

30 g (1oz) butter
3 leeks, sliced into fine rings (remember to always wash leeks well to remove sand)
200 ml (7 fl oz) cream
salt
black pepper
70 g (2 1/4 oz) freshly grated parmesan cheese

Melt the butter in a pan, add the leeks and gently cook them until soft.
Pour in the cream, season to taste and gently cook for 15 minutes.
Cook your pasta in boiling salted water till al dente. Drain and stir in the cheese then the sauce. Serve at once.


Rose's bright green sauce
invented tonight by moi



500g frozen peas
enough boiling water to cover said peas in a pot
5 sage leaves, chopped / 1 t dried sage
4 T cream (or use some pasta cooking water)
salt
1 bulb of garlic, roasted whole
'Garnish' ingredients:
3 beetroots, peeled, chopped and roasted in aluminium foil.
100g soft blue cheese (or goats cheese would be fab if you can afford it)
flat-leaf parsley

wrap beetroot in aluminium foil, put in ovenproof dish. Add the garlic bulb on top/ beside foil package in dish (do not unwrap the bulb's natural 'paper' covering. Roast in oven till soft (I took the garlic out before the beetroot).

In a bowl or pot, put the frozen peas and cover with boiling water. Leave to just soft (don't cook at all) then drain. In a blender, put peas, roast garlic cloves (unwrapped now!), sage and enough cream or water to make a sauce (add a little at a time as you whizz the mix). When you put on the pasta to cook, gently heat this sauce. You want it to be hot but still have that great bright green colour.

When pasta is al dente, drain, return to pot with a little olive oil and the roast beetroot. Toss together so the beetroot can impart some more of its reddness! Serve pasta in bowls or plates with a spoonful of the green sauce on top then a couple of slices of blue cheese (melts wonderfully) and parsley.

Corn Chowder

Another great recipe from Celia Brooks Brown's 'World Vegetarian Classics' It's creamy, filling and of course very tasty! I liked adding the corn kernels at the end as they keep their colour, flavour and add some nice texture.
The only thing I did different was to add some grilled red pepper (capsicum) on top - because they were on special and I liked the colour!

So here is her recipe representing New England, USA (interestingly, representing NZ was also corn - corn fritters)

Corn Chowder
Serves 6

4 fresh corn-on-the-cob (ears of fresh corn)
500ml/ 16 fl oz/ 2 cups water
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
2 T olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 t dried sage, crushed
1 t fresh thyme leaves or 1/2 t dried thyme
1 medium carrot, chopped
2 celery sticks (stalks) chopped
1 large potato, peeled and chopped
200g/ 7 oz/ generous 3/4 c cream cheese
125 ml/ 4 fl oz/ 1/2 c milk

In a large bowl, stand each corn-on-the-cob upright and strip the kernels by cutting downwards with a sharp knife, set aside. Place the stripped cobs in a large saucepan and add the water, a generous sprinkle of salt and the bay leaves. Bring to the boil and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Discard the cobs and bay leaves.

Heat the oil in a separate saucepan. Add the onion and cook until translucent (soft and becoming see-through). Add the herbs and remaining vegetables and cook for about 5 minutes, or until softened. Add the cob stock and simmer until the potato is collapsing. Meanwhile, place the corn kernels in another saucepan amd pour in enough cold water to barely cover. Bring to the boil and cook for two minutes. Do not drain; set aside.

Add the cream cheese and milk to the soup mixture, then puree until smooth, ideally with a hand-held blender. Stir in the corn kernels with their cooking liquid. Give the chowder one more whizz if desired, to break up corn kernels slightly. Reheat and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

Here I Am - Biutiful

Our local cinema, Luna, happens to be a very good one. They play mainly arthouse movies, not just Hollywood blockbusters. If I was earning more I would go there several times a week but failing that, we also visit the video store a lot and catch some decent movies on SBS channels. They do at least two cool things though, this cinema, which gets me there more than I otherwise might manage on my wages. First, they have cheap Mondays where it's 2 movies for $11, and the second is that they have media screenings, to which they give free tickets to some influential local businesses, like our bookstore (we fight amongst ourselves for these) :) Hence, this week I've been to see two movies - Biutiful and Here I Am. The Second movie in the double billing was Howl which Luc was just not up for (nor about 1/3 of the audience who walked out - whether it was because it was slow, a school night or obscene, I'm not entirely sure) so I'll rent that one another day.

Both the films I saw deal with the underprivileged in first-world countries. Living in Australia can be like a dream for a Kiwi (NZer) like me - better wages than at home, gorgeous weather, friendly people, excellent amenities and so many opportunities. But not everyone has such an easy time in Australia. I find it ironic and pretty sick that a NZer like me gets treated better and has significantly more opportunities than many Aboriginal Australians as the film 'Here I Am' reminded me. Conversely, it is both locals and immigrants who struggle in 'Biutiful'.

I came out of both movies moved, feeling really lucky to be in the situation I am and determined to try not to forget that so often. I was grateful when the Salvation Army came door-knocking for donations and gave me a little way to help people needing a bit of support. Our society though......

So, Biutiful.



Barcelona is a city I wanted to visit specifically for its beauty. You won't see that in this movie. The characters in this film live in a Barcelona that is ugly inside and out. The film centres on the ties of family - however imperfect - and the families we make in our communities. Uxbal puts his children above all else and risks so much just for the humble life they share together. His livelihood is earned outside of the law and introduces us the an underground Barcelona - an underground of immigrant exploitation and entrepreneurship that exists in many cities around the world. The plight of these illegal workers is shown mainly through Uxbal's treatment of them than by letting us get to know them - they are mainly kept as outsiders.






With a magnificent performance by Javier Bardem in the central role of Uxbal, as well as a complex and gritty plot, Biutiful is really a film worth watching. I only noticed afterwards that this film is by a director whose film Amorres Perros (2000) I was also really impressed by.



Here I Am




A new Australian film about a group of urban Aboriginal women living in a women's shelter. In particular, it is the story of Karen, a woman in her twenties who has just been released from prison as she faces life back in the city and her three months on parole. What happened before these three months is only suggested and what happens afterwards is up to the audience to guess. While these characters are Aboriginal and does deal with the fact that Aboriginies are shockingly over-represtented in prisons, the themes of being dragged down by your past and what motivates us to move forward, are fairly universal. I thought the acting was some of the best acting I've seen in Australian films - credit goes to the decision to cast mainly 'real' women, not trained actors. I did find the range between tortured and serene performances of the main actor a bit hard to buy at times but that is probably the director trying to show how the character of Karen was struggling to adapt to an appropriate manner with threatening authority figures.

I liked this film, it was a good character story, had a lot of humour and was a film that made you think. The treatment is neither too Hollywood fairytale-ish nor too slap in the face gritty and depressing. It shows a reality from which there is potential for characters who can accept where they are and look at where to go from there.

Bulgar Pilaf with Tahini Sauce

I love a well-stocked kitchen. I don't like having to go shopping for every meal, I like to 'stock up' on things, as everyone who has lived with me can attest. To make the dukkah the other day, for example, I didn't even have to think - Do I have lots of nuts, seeds and spices? I just knew because we always do. Some things though, I buy in inspired moments in ethnic food shops and sometimes forget what I had thought of making with them - a large jar of mango powder being one such great idea. So I have many pretty jars of spices which mainly regularly get used and refilled, and then a few large jars of dried beans and grains which can risk becoming merely ornamental. So occasionally I get around to making something with these - and today's recipe uses some chunky bulgar I wanted to try before I forgot what it was.

I made this by looking in the fridge and cupboards and also from inspiration from a couple of recipes including one by the same title in 'Vegetarian Dishes From Across The Middle East' - in fact, my main changes were using lentils instead of chickpeas and cooking it all in vegetable stock, not water. I had some 'stock' in the freezer which was technically fresh vegetable juice - I juiced celery, parsley and the carrot tops from our bunch of baby carrots. I checked it out and yes, eating carrot tops is not only possible, but supposed to be very good for liver cleansing being good sources of chlorophyl, vitamin K and potassium - according to The Carrot Museum, whose website even has recipes for how to use them.

Pilaf ingredients
1/2 c brown lentils (or 1 can)
3/4 c large-grain bulgar, rinsed
Aprox 2 c veg stock (or half/half with water, depending on the strength of the stock)
2 med carrots, peeled and diced
1 small red pepper diced (reserve a few pieces for garnish)
1 small green pepper diced (reserve a few pieces for garnish)
1 small red onion, sliced
1/2 t chilli powder
2 T olive oil

(NB, if you are using already soft canned lentils, add these when the bulgar is cooked) Put everything in rice-cooker / saucepan / slowcooker and cook till the bulgar is soft. While it is cooking, mix up this simple but yummy sauce. Serve a scoop of the pilaf with the sauce and some fresh pepper and parsley on top. I also made a simple salad of mixed greens, basil leaves and a chopped tamarillo.

Sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 c water
1/2 c tahini paste

Garnish
reserved diced green and red pepper
2 T chopped parsley

Mezze

Here are some delicious, and actually pretty healthy vegan recipes great for snacks and parties. I cheat and buy my bread from Middle Eastern stores or kebab shops (where they bake their own) but if I ever get good at making bread, I'll post a recipe for that too!



Sun-dried Tomato Pesto, Babaganoush, Hummus bi Tahina. I've also got recipes for Dolmades/Blor (stuffed grape leaves) and Dhukka (spicy ground nut mix). Recipes follow!

Sun-dried Tomato Pesto

When the folks were visiting, we went for lunch at the Gypsy Tapas House in Fremantle. It was a lovely day with live jazz music (Mum bought their CD!), and delish tapas like the brocolli with sundried tomato and walnut pesto. I wanted to make it at home but they wouldn't tell me how (fair enough) so I looked online and had a go, using the ingedients pictured. Turns out that wasn't nearly enough tomato for the colour or flavour I remember, so I've adapted it to something more similar to the gypsies version.



1 large garlic clove, roughly chopped
1 c fresh basil leaves
3/4 cup walnuts
2 T water
400g (about a tall jar's worth) sun-dried tomatoes (or use about half this amount and add in 5 T tomato passato)
1/2 t sea salt
1/4 t fresh ground black pepper
1/3 c extra virgin olive oil.

In a food procesor or blender, whizz everything apart from the olive oil. When you have processed it to a smooth paste you can mix in the olive oil. Serve with steamed brocolli florets or brushetta / thick slices of toast.

Hummus

Hummus has been a part of just about every social gathering I've been to, and certainly all the even vaguely hippy parties in New Zealand, so I'm sure you all have a tried-and-true version. Never-the-less, I'm including one here as Israeli friends I've met here in Perth insist I'm never using enough tahini (and yet they are disgusted I can eat it straight, like peanut butter, on toast).

Recipe from Claudia Roden's 'A Middle Eastern Feast'
Ingredients
250g (8oz) chickpeas, soaked overnight (or cheat and use a tin)
juice of 2-3 lemons, or to taste
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
salt
150gm (5 oz) (1/2 c?) tahini
garnish
1 T olive oil
1 t paprika

Boil soaked chickpeas in fresh water for about an hour, or until they are soft. The cooking time will depend on their age and quality. Drain them, reserving the cooking water, and set aside a few whole ones to garnish the dish. Blend to a puree in a food processor or blender, adding the lemon juice and a little of the cooking water. Add the remaining ingredients and blend to a creamy paste, adding more water if necessary. Keep tasting and adjusting the seasoning, adding more lemon juice, garlic or salt if necessary.
This is one of the dishes which, for centuries, have been traditionally decorated in the same manner. Pour the cream into a flat serving dish and dribble a little red paprika mixed with olive oil over the surface. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and arrange a decorative pattern of whole chickpeas on top. Serve as a dip with Arab bread or pitta.

Dukkah

Dukkah
Amazingly, we have good old Alison Holst to thank for introducing this one to our family. Her 'Very Easy Vegetarian Cookbook' gave us a few gems, including this yummy...thing. For anyone who hasn't tried it, how do I explain it? Not poetically, it would seem. So straight-forwardly: it's a mixture of chopped nuts, seeds and spices. What you do is serve it with fresh flatbread or Turkish bread (or Lawley's Bakery olive ciabatta is good too). Rip off a hunk of bread, dip it first in the olive oil then into the spicy nut mix. It's just really good.

Alison's ingredients for 2 Cups of Dukkah:
1/2 c sesame seeds
1/2 c sunflower seeds
1/2 c pumpkin seeds
1 cup almonds
1/4 c cumin seeds
1/4 c coriander seeds
1 1/2 t rock salt
1 T (ground) paprika
1 1/2 t (ground) turmeric

Grind to grainy texture (not powder!) in a food processor or nut and spice grinder. Do it in batches to get a consistent texture (so mixture at the bottom of the blender doesn't turn to powder before the top half has started to be ground).
Store in airtight containers in a cool, dark cupboard to preserve quality and flavour. Will keep for up to three months.

Dolmades / Blor

Dolmades
The first dolmades I remember eating were canned ones as pre-dinner nibbles at my sister's Wellington flat - probably from the FourSquare down the road. I've only made these a few times (because I'm lazy when it comes to pre-dinner nibbles), but they seem pretty forgiving, esp if you choose a big enough grape leaf. Now, you can easily use fresh vine leaves from your or your neighbours house (most houses in our Italian/Greek settled neighbourhood have grapevines) but if it's Autumn or you just don't have a vine, then middle-eastern or generic 'ethnic' food wharehouses will happily sell you leaves - either flat in a vacum sealed pack or annoyingly rolled in jars. For these ones I had a jar.


To make these dolmades, I filled them with left-over fruit, nut and spice seasoned quinoa I had in the freezer (from the stuffed-tomatoes I made the other day). I thawed it out in the oven on a low shelf (while eggplant was grilling) and then just filled and rolled the leaves, stacked them into the steamer and cooked in the ricecooker.


To make the Dolmades / Blor
Spread a grape leaf out flat, smooth side down and veins uppermost. You will be left with small cigar-shaped parcels.


Either steam in rice cooker or do the following:
Use some leftover leaves to line the bottom of a medium sized saucepan - this helps prevent burning. Pack the dolmades carefully and closely into the saucepan in layers, then place a plate on top to cover as many of them as possible. Hold it down with a small weight - this will prevent it moving around while cooking and so coming undone.

Here is an alternative filling recipe from Arto der Haroutunian's 'Vegetarian Dishes From Across The Middle East'

Derevi Blor (grape leaves stuffed with onions and rice)
2/3 c olive oil
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 green pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
3/4 c long-grain rice, thoroughly washed in cold water and drained
1 1/2 T tomato puree
1 t salt
1/2 t chilli powder
1 t allspice
1/3 c chopped almonds
1 T chopped parsley

Sauce
1 T tomato puree
5-8 c water
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 t salt
1/2 t chilli powder
3 T lemon juice

Method
Heat oil in a large saucepan over moderate heat. Add the sliced onions and green pepper and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring, occasionally, until the onions are soft but not brown.
Stir in the washed rice, tomato puree, salt, chilli powder and allspice and cook gently for a further 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent the rice sticking to the pan. remove the pan from the heat, stir in the chopped almonds and parsley, turn into a large bowl and leave to cool.

When you have wrapped them and put them on to cook, mix the ingredients for the sauce together and pour into the saucepan - they should cover the dolmades completely. If it doesn't, add a little more water. Bring the sauce to a boil, lower the heat and simmer 1 1/2 - 2 hours.
Remove the pan from the heat, take off the weight and plate and remove dolmades to test if the leaf is tender. If so, allow to cool, remove from the saucepan and arrange on a plate.
Serve with bread and pickles. This recipe makes enough for 6-8 people.

Babaganoush

You know how eggplants are like, one of my favourite things of all? Well, one of the easiest ways to cook it, and one where it won't try and soak up a whole pan of cooking oil, is to roast it or flame grill it. I usually go for roasting it in the oven as it's dead easy - just put it in the oven (in a pan to catch any escaping juices) and just leave it till the whole thing is black and collapsing. The best thing about doing it this way - or even better, the flame grilled way, is that the eggplant takes on this wonderful smoky flavour and the flesh is just super soft and perfect for pureeing into diving but dreary-coloured Babaganoush. The name alone is worth our admiration and will forgive the greyish colour, but just wait till you try it with some bread or fresh vegetables - just magic.



Today I'm also giving you recipes for a few other mezze type dishes I like to make - or more specifically, like to eat. The dolmades are a little more fiddly than the other dishes but it doesn't take too long if you just make a few like I did. If you make a heap for a party, get some good music on or get someone to help you so you don't die of boredom.

Babaganoush
I'm pretty sure it was my old school friend Josey who introduced this to me when we were at uni in Wellington. That's right - carpet-hung, cushion-strewn kebab shops were a real excitement after having no such luxuries in our home town. I actually miss Wellington kebabs - the felafel at the Perth ones seems to be dry and over-spiced for my liking. But I'm not giving a felafel recipe today (another day, ok?) I just got on a babaganoush-related tangent.



1 eggplant
big dollop (2 T?) tahini- I use the un-hulled stuff
juice of 1 lemon
parsley and olives or tomato slices to garnish

Cook eggplant at the top of a hot oven (grill setting if poss) until the skin is blistered and black and they are soft - I turned mine over just once while it was cooking. Or you can cook on BBQ grill or over charcoal - very good. Peel them - the skin, once slit with a knife will come off very easily. Discard the skin. Rinse the flesh and squeeze out as much of the juice as possible. Chop roughly. (In the photo you can see I've chopped before drying out juice - it looks a bit like dead octopus don't you think?



Put the flesh in a food processor or blender with the crushed garlic and a little salt. Add the tahini and lemon juice alternately, blending a few seconds in between each addition. TASTE! Add more of whatever you think it needs and possibly a pinch of cumin, if you like. Pour this 'cream' out into a bowl and garnish with the parsley and olives or tomato slices. In the photo here I just added olive oil which was really unnecessary and later (top photo) when we'd eaten some and I put the remainder in a bowl with parsley.

Google it

Exciting looking feature - google recipe search!

Stop. Motion. (eh?)

Two cool music videos for you today. One composed entirely from still images (stop motion); the other is all motion - taken in a single shot.

From the Future Shorts (warning: link starts audio) I went to the other night, Canada once again gives me reason to go "pretty good, eh?" I don't know, Canada is a good egg. Like a creative cousin that's not too stuck up and that you can admire and even consider going flatting with. Canadians I've met are usually fun loving so it's hard not to have fun with them and love them right back. This music video from Montreal's 'Monogrenade' is more wonder-ful than fun, a nostalgic tune I haven't learnt the words to yet.




Now nostalgia for my Kiwiland with this one from the Phoenix Foundation (who you might have heard on the soundtrack to Eagle Vs Shark and starring director Taika Waititi - whose latest, Boy, you should watch - it'll make you crack up). This song's not bad, eh?

Wasted on the young?

More of a nice music video than story, this is not a teenage angst film - it's a celebration of hanging out with friends (and of having the time to hang out with your friends). It brings back some good memories - not that all teenage memories were of bouncy social times - I wouldn't actually want to be a teenager again. But I do miss getting to hang out every day - so much free time. As an adult even if you have free time, it's not usually when all your friends do. We hardly see our cool new flatmate because we work just about opposite shifts. But today, I did have a lovely socialising Sunday - doing a fun photoshoot with a friend then dinner with friends this evening. No skateboarding but there was hulahooping this weekend :)

Oh, the water

This surf-photographer and writer has inspired me so much with this film. Not to surf yet, but it just fills me with joy to see someone else's vision of the nature that they love. Thank you so much, Ayesha, for sharing this with me. I hope one day I can make something of this quality to share some of the nature I love.




Mickey Smith, from Cornwall, UK, seems like an awesome creative guy and, born the same year as me, he's certainly making the most of his life. - I'm inspired to do more with my life and my camera after watching this. Whether you'll be able to understand the creative spoken word element of this film is another thing - his accent is rather strong (and lovely). Thanks too to Allan Wilson, Director of Photography, for the amazing cinematography.

Enjoy

Dolsot Bibimbap

Bibimbap is one of my very favourite meals. I used to eat it just about every single day when I lived in Seoul. Eating out is the thing to do in Korea - often to socialise at lunchtime with co-workers, but for me, working weird shifts, I often ate alone, something unheard of for Koreans it seems. Although I loved the days when I had company, I would always enjoy eating out when I had something as delicious as this to indulge it. Back then, I never tried to make it at home because basically cooking, esp when garlic is involved, is not the best idea when you live in a one room apartment with the stove 2m from your bed. Anyway, when surrounded by reasonably priced and excellent restaurants, I'm happy to leave it to the pros.

If you get the chance, do visit South Korea. Not only does it have delicious food, but it is beautiful - even Seoul is surrounded by wooded hills. The culture has both modern and traditional elements tourists will enjoy.


This colourful dish can be made many ways - many restaurants have their own way of doing it with particular vegetable combinations. Dolsot bibimbap (the winter version) is served in a large stone bowl that I think is heated on a stove. I haven't found these wonderfully heavy bowls for sale here so I have made mine with some earthenware lidded pots I have which I preheat in the oven. Bibimbap is usually also topped with bulgogi (thinly-sliced beef) though of course I get mine without. I do usually go for the egg on top though. The egg in summer is usually fried while for the winter version of this dish, shown here, it would be cracked straight onto the hot rice, too cook as the sizzling bowl is brought to your name. Who doesn't love the excitement of sizzling dishes delivered to your table? You can make normal bibimbap and in the summer use more raw ingredients like beanspouts, lettuce and grated carrot but on cold days the crackling rice and warm vegetables of the dolsot version is just the thing.

What I love most about this dish is the morish spicy Gochujang sauce - a chile paste you can buy from Korean food stores - or, if you are lucky, the Asian food aisle of the supermarket. I had to visit 5 Asian shops before I found this last time - not because they didn't stock it, but because I was doing my shopping at the wrong time and they had all sold out!

Here is a picture of what I used to make it for a cold rainy day yesterday. The green packet is yummy salty seasoned Korean seaweed and the bottle is Asian seasame oil. Usually I would use carrots but thanks to our juicer we had run out. Parsnip made a sweet and earthy alternative to both carrot and the bracken fronds my favourite bibimpap restaurant used (which I haven't found here).

Dolsot Bibimbap

Get all your vegetables washed and chopped first of all, then you can just cook them, one after the other, in the same pan (less dishes to wash). All the vegetable toppings can be at room temperature but the rice must be fresh and hot.



I'm going to give you directions to make enough for 4 people but you can adjust quantities to suit.

Ingredients:

8 shiitake or other mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
1-2 bunches of spinach, trimmed and rinsed well.
1 parsnip and 1 small carrot / 2 med carrots jullienned
1 med / 3/4 large zucchini
8 small sheets Korean seaweed (seasoned laver) cut into strips with scissors
1-4 cloves garlic (depending how much you love it), thinly sliced

1 /18 ozpacket of firm tofu, dried in (paper) towels, sliced into 2cm strips
2 t tamari

spray vegetable oil for cooking
1 t or less of Asian seasame oil for seasoning (strong flavour)

4 cups of fresh cooked rice.

-I used brown rice as I love the flavour but I'm not the best at cooking it - it likes to spit and bubble over from my rice cooker (any tips appreciated) so I keep my eye on it, adding water gradually to avoid big boil-overs. About halfway through cooking I added a handful of black rice which apart from probably being nutritious and all, dyes the rice a wonderful purple colour! White Korean rice is very yummy too - I love the smell of it cooking, but today I'm giving you this especially healthy and nurturing version.



Method

1) put the rice on in the rice cooker. If you have earthenware bowls and want to make this dolsot version, preheat your oven now too - you can put the bowls in so they heat up with the oven.

2) heat a frying pan and spray with a little oil, add the tofu, season with the tamari and fry tofu till golden brown on each side. Remove and set aside, leaving pan on heat.

3) spray frying pan with oil and add zucchini. saute until soft but firm - about 2 minutes.

4) now add mushrooms to pan, spraying on both sides. When they are partially cooked, add the garlic. Don't cook too long - about 3 minutes, you want them soft and starting to brown but not all shrivelled.

5) remove the mushrooms, leaving most of the garlic slices if poss. Add just a splash of water then put the spinach in, letting it steam just long enough so the leaves are just wilted, about a minute or two. Transfer immediately to a colander, rinse with cold water and squeeze water from the spinach. (or with perfect timing and perfect sprinkle of water, the spinach may be just softened enough to skip this 'rescue' step). Combine garlicky spinach with a few drops of seasame oil - a little goes a long way.

6) add parsnip / carrot to frying pan with further dash of water - just enough to stop them sticking to the pan. Saute until limp, about 3 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and set aside.

7) when rice is cooked, transfer 1 cup of cooked rice into each bowl - remember to use good oven mits if removing hot bowls from the oven. Cover bowls and put back in oven to let the edges crisp up.

8) while the rice is in the oven, mix up the following paste:

Yangnyeom Gochujang

Makes about 1/2 cup

4 T Korean chile paste (gochujang)
2 T Asian seasame oil
1 T tamari / light soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T (toasted) seasame seeds
1 green onion, chopped
1 T Korean malt syrup (mool yut) or sugar - I leave this out and it's still great

Combine in a small bowl to serve with your bibimpap (let everyone add their own, so they can have it as spicy as they like). If you want to make this paste in advance (or you have left-over), it will keep in a well-sealed container in the fridge for about a week.

9) Test your rice bowls - when the edges are starting to stick and go crunchy, it's ready to add the toppings and serve.
Now stack the seaweed sheets and slice into three strips. We do this last to keep the seaweed crispy. Arrange the vegetables, including seaweed on top of the rice in each bowl, separating the colours for best visual appeal. If you especially enjoy seasame oil, you can drizzle a few drops on each bowl and if you want to add an egg, you can do this now. Serve with the yangnyeom gochujang and any side dishes you may like - last night we had seasoned roast pumpkin. Another day I'll share some other Korean side dish ideas.

10) When people have been served and added the amount of paste they wanted, they mix everything together in their bowl with a metal spoon. Yes, this is one Korean dish that is usually eaten with a spoon, not chopsticks!


"jal meokkesseumnida!"

Easy-As Pie

My favourite vegetables are technically fruit - tomatoes and eggplant. While I've been delighted by the cheapness and the year-long abundance of eggplants here in Perth, tomatoes are a different matter. Oh they're there all year - but even when it's the proper season for them - in the words of Nick Cave: "I think it's well understood, tomatoes, they just aint no good."

So ok, he was talking about people, not tomatoes, but if you know the song and its tone of lament, you'll get an idea about my feelings of disapointment in the tomatoes of today and my nostalgia for a time when they had taste. Like September. September we went to France and Luc's mum made tomato salad with large plump tomatoes from her garden. Yeah, that's RIGHT, WE remember, my taste-buds screamed, tomatoes used to taste like this! THIS is why you liked them - not their hard-to-cut smoothness, not their please-blanch-and-peel recipes nor their seeds nor their bitterness. It was TASTE, and taste is mostly why I love cooking and also red wine.

Half the reason I once moved to Chile was red wine, the other half was Pablo Neruda, a nobel prize-winning poet. And this is what he had to say about tomatoes:
Ode to Tomatoes

Sadly even with Perth's endless summer the tomatoes are mainly hard, pale and tasteless. But still I love them, I can't deny them, I'll always love them till the day that I die. So what to do? My garden having failed to produce any tomatoes (despite being quite good at growing tall tomato plants), I have settled for eating grape tomatoes if I want them fresh, or, as in this recipe, baking them to bring out the flavour - it really does WONDERS!

Sometimes I just cut them in half and stick them on a tray in the oven, but here I've made more substantial stuffed tomatoes. They are good with rice, wild rice and other grains too. Here I've used red quinoa - partly because it was there to be used, and partly because it's supposed to be a great protein source.





Stuffed Baked Tomatoes
1 large tomato per person
approx 1 T quinoa (prob still too much) per person
vegetable stock (liquid) enough to cover quinoa in pan/rice cooker
1 t per tomato of LSA mix (Linseed, Sunflower and Almond)
Scattering of your choice of fruit and nuts like:
-dates
-figs
-raisins
-currants
-pine nuts
-almonds
-walnuts
Sprinkling of spices like
-cinnamon
-sumac
-paprika
-allspice

Using steady hands and a knife you trust (small paring knives or those cheap $7 Victorinox ones are good) slice around the top of each tomato leaving a few cm uncut to act as a hinge for this tomato lid. Use a strong metal spoon to cut through the 'ribs' inside the tomato (the part anchoring all the seeds to the walls ). Scoop out the ribs and seeds so you are left with an empty bowl shell. (the insides can be stored and used later in a tomato sauce etc).
Put quinoa in a rice cooker, cover with liquid vegetable stock, turn on rice cooker and leave to do its thing. You'll know when quinoa is done because curly white tails appear and the quinoa won't be hard anymore). When the quinoa is cooked, mix in the fruit, nuts and spices (with a rice-cooker-safe tool of course!).

That's right, my tripod is not so smooth. I'll get a decent tripod one day, just you wait.

I also made one of Luc's favourites - Leek tart,


and a madeup invention, babaganoush pie. We had half an eggplant in the fridge so I roasted it in the oven till it turned black and the structure collapsed. This is a good thing. When you roast eggplant in the oven or over an open flame or BBQ, it becomes really soft (without having to fry in oil!) and best of all, it gets this delicious smoky flavour. All you do it when it's cooked is to peel the skin off (it comes off very nicely) and chop up the flesh into chunks and mix with some garlic, felafel spice mix and tahini and this will make a very nice small pie filling.

Ode to Tomatoes

By Pablo Neruda


The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like a tomato,
its juice runs
through the streets.
In December, unabated,
the tomato
invades the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes its ease
on countertops, among glasses,
butter dishes, blue salt cellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it: the knife sinks
into living flesh,
red viscera a cool
sun, profound, inexhaustible,
populates the salads of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we pour oil,
essential child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding of the day,
parsley hoists its flag,
potatoes bubble vigorously,
the aroma of the roast
knocks at the door, it's time!
come on! and, on
the table, at the midpoint of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile star, displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit, no husk, no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

Rain

by Hone Tuwhare (NZ)

Rain
I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

Folk Gifts from the ABC

You know how there's nothing to watch on TV? Well, there IS a pretty good radio channel - ABC's Dig music and yesterday I caught a cover version of Joni Mitchell's River. It's an ever so folky version by Angus Stone, so if you don't like Angus Stone or folky guitar, well, I'll have something you'll like another day.

River


Actually, I DID see something good on TV. Most things I like are from just two networks - SBS for foreign movies like Volver, Monsieur Ibrahim, Goodbye Lenin and Memories of Murder, and their simple but usually interesting Global Village documentary series.

ABC can have some good stuff too though, like this video I saw on TV the other day:
Waltz for Richard

I now love this sister act named "First Aid Kit". Just the medicine!

Think Cheese, Think Peas, Think CHEESY PEAS!

I bet when you were thinking cheese you weren't thinking Indian Paneer cheese. Well I was.

The other day I was lucky enough to be given some fabulous home-made paneer so I took it home and used one of my recipe books to make a Mutter Paneer - a paneer and pea curry. Waay too much turmeric and not nearly enough tomato for my liking, so today, I made a better one. My version uses lots of tomato of course, and whole seeds ground in a mortar and pestle (hard cassia bark first) but use powdered spices if you haven't got anything to grind with. I suggest you DO make your own paneer - it's not only a million times better that the packet stuff but is cheaper too (only $2 something for 2 litres of milk these days). It's also very easy to make - all you need is a little time ahead - about half an hour to drain and about an hour to let it firm in the fridge.




For the paneer:
2 litres of full-cream milk
1/3 cup / (80ml) lemon juice (or vinegar if you don't have any lemons)

In a large saucepan, bring the milk to the boil, stir in the lemon juice and turn off the heat. Stir with a wooden spoon 1-2 minutes as it curdles (separating into pale yellow liquid - whey, and small white solids - curds) If it doesn't curdle within a minute or so, add some more lemon juice and keep stirring. Line a colander with a clean tea-towel (or muslin if you have it), pour all the contents of the pan in and run some cold water through it. Leave 10 - 30 minutes for the whey (the yellowy liquid part) to drain off. What remains is the curd. Wrap the towel around this and form into a block by patting with your hands. Put the wrapped block onto a plate and put a plate / wooden board or nice and heavy like a saucepan filled with water on top of it and leave in the fridge - the longer you leave it the better, but you can use it after 40 mins. Voila! - You've made paneer!



For the curry paste:
2 onions, chopped
6-8 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 t fresh ginger, grated
2 pieces of cassia bark (or cinnamon quills or 1-2 t cinnamon powder)
1 t cumin seeds
1 t fennel seeds
1 t coriander seeds
1 t cardamom seeds (lightly crush about 6 green cardamom pods and scrape out seeds)
4 whole cloves
3 dried red chillies / 1 t chilli flakes
1 t paprika

Either place everything in a spice grinder and grind till smooth or do it the work-out way using a mortar and pestle.



Rest of the ingredients:
800g pureed tomatoes (use a blender or food processor and whizz)
500g frozen peas (covered with boiling water and left in covered bowl to soften)
2 T vegetable oil
1-2 t garam masala
1/4 t ground turmeric
1-4 T cream / 6 T milk
fresh coriander leaves to garnish.

When you're ready to start putting the dish together, get the paneer out of the fridge, unwrap and cut into 2cm cubes. Now, most recipes ask you to fry the cubes of paneer but I prefer to leave them as is. If you want to fry them first, take a big heavy based saucepan and fill 1/3 full of oil and heat till 180 degrees (or until a cube of bread browns in 15 seconds). Cook the paneer in batches for 2 min per batch, or until golden. Drain on paper towels.

Heat the 2 T oil in a large saucepan, add the curry paste and cook over medium heat for 4 minutes, or until fragrant. Add the pureed tomato, powdered spices and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the cream then add the peas and paneer and cook a further 3 minutes. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot with rice and / or wholemeal paratha.

Serves 6. Can be frozen.

I thought we would be together forever

I wanted to share this excellent short film as most people probably won't bump into it at their video-shop - yes, I still go to video stores. This one I actually watched at a friend's movie night. She's also studying film so I bought her a Wholphin short film DVD and the following film was on it. It is pretty long for a short film (18 mins), so watch it when you have time to settle in and enjoy:

Plastic Bag

Cauliflower & Olive Soup

Here's another yummy soup as it's slowly getting Autumny here. This one comes from Paul Gayler's Little Book of Soups. It doesn't look too flash in the picture - not just because it's not in a nice dark coloured bowl -we oughta get some of those one day :), but also because the photo was taken by my flatmate on her phone - but the fact she wanted to record it shows that this soup was destined for great things - like your kitchen!

Ingredients:
1 medium cauliflower, cut into florets
3 T virgin olive oil (the tasty stuff)
10g unsalted butter
1 onion, chopped
1 small leek, white part only (in second photo I made a soup using both so it looks greenish), chopped
750ml vegetable stock
150ml full-fat milk
85ml double cream (I'm pretty sure I used single and it was fine)
6 black olives, stoned, rinsed, dried and finely chopped (I did no such thing; I used our leftover mixed green and black marinated, pitted olives from the supermarket, chopped roughly. Olives with the stones in DO have better flavour but it's more work to cut out the stones. Up to you depending on the time you have and how much of a purist you feel like being).
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 T chopped chives


Method:

Blanch the cauliflower florets in a pan of boiling salted water for 2 minutes, then drain well.

In a large pan, heat 1 T of the oil with the butter, add the onion and leek and sweat until tender. Pour in the stock and milk and bring to the boil. Add the cauliflower, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes until the cauliflower is almost pureed. Place in a blender or food processor and blitz until smooth. Return to the pan, add the double cream and olives and lightly season to taste - remember the olives are already salty.

To serve, pour into soup bowls, drizzle over the remaining olive oil and sprinkle over the chives (you can also add a little chopped olive for colour)

I served this with crusty homemade garlic bread - after all, I live with Frenchies!