cobbled together

Oops, only two weeks old and already the blog is being neglected like an ugly child. Sickness has certainly been getting in the way of other stuff. Oh, and a bit of disco fever, porno style action and text-flirting. Yeah, it’s spring and even a sore throat can’t take the gleeful sting off a bit of interest from a cutie.

Saturday was the triumphant feast of The Black Pearl trivia team. I staggered home at 5 feeling completely retarded and wondering if I could cook. Cooking turned out to be the easy bit – dinner party conversation was much more of a challenge.

Sandy made pasta with oven roasted tomato sauce. Much better than I expected. He quartered the tomatoes and then poked a sliver of garlic into each one. Roasted them forever and mixed them with olives and more garlic. I made a vegetable cobbler because I’ve always wondered what the hell a cobbler is. It was from the Crank’s Bible, which I got from library but might have to steal. So the cobbler was chunky vegies cooked up with lots of shallots and covered in a rich creamy sauce. I don’t normally go for creamy sauce but this one worked. Then you put all these rounds of a cornmeal scone dough on top and bake it – so it’s kind of a pie but you can mop up the sauce with the scones. Very cute and quite the impressive party dish.

The other joy of Saturday night was the pebre that Pilar brought. It’s a Chilean salsa and we ate it on bread but she said they eat it on everything – rice, in soups, on beans etc. I’ve looked at some recipes but the basic thing seems to be lots of coriander, parsley, garlic, red or spring onion, garlic, lots of lime juice and some chilli. Mince it up with some tomato and you will be in pebre heaven.

Looking for a chocolate souffle recipe for bindi. Let me know if you have a trustworthy one.

Other great finds of the week – bbc1xtra is the bbc’s black music station and you can listen online. I’m hooked.

Token Olympic comment: we were watching the ping pong final (Korea/China) and Sandy said "they won't let queers marry because it cheapens the institution of marriage but they'll let ping pong into the Olympics." People keep making comments about different sports (baseball, lawn bowls, ping pong) and how they shouldn't be in the games but all sports seem kind of ludicrous and underserving of this much attention. Greco-Roman wrestling was definitely way more weird to watch - so much doggy pose action.

weed fritters... sweetie.. pumpkin

feeling glum. death - fairly close and quite distant. trying to find the words for a bereaved friend. a friend too far away for me to look after, or cook for. also, reading: How to end the war of 1948: Israel/Palestine which ain't helping my mood. I'm going to write something once I've finished it - it's lethal. but i promised food writing and I have been cooking. so...

weed fritters
it was gloriously sunny yesterday. me and gab were gardening - about as good as a suburban afternoon at home can get. picked some weeds (dandelion and nettle) to make the greek recipe I'd been wanting to try for a while: hortakeftedes. (horta=wild greens, keftedes = fritters)
lou wouldn't eat them, everyone else was pretty into them. afterall - who cares if they're weeds, they're fried! tom was way impressed though - kept saying "you cooked the weeds!" they woulda been awesome with beer in the sun. or as part of some lush mezze spread with olives and dips.
if you want to try you can use your own weeds, or beetroot tops, spinach.. whatever. i saw an old guy picking weeds on an empty block in braebrook today. he looked like the same guy I once saw picking weeds from our front yard in footscray. i wanted to stop and ask him how he cooked them but I was running late.

250g plain flour
60g polenta
2 egg yolks, beaten up
0.25 cup soy milk
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
weeds (about 250g)
yoghurt

* mix the flour, polenta, milk and egg yolks together in a bowl - it's very dry so of course i got carried away and added heaps of milk.. but later the greens add wetness so resist.
* leave it somewhere peaceful to rest for 30 minutes.
* cook your weeds in boiling salted for 10 minutes with the garlic.
* drain and rinse in cold water. drain well.
* add garlic and greens to the floury mixture.
* season with salt and pepper and stir well.
* heat about 1cm of olive oil in a heavy frypan
* shape mixture into fritters - add flour if too wet.
* fry 5 minutes on each side or until golden.
* serve with yoghurt and cold beer.

pumpkin scones.
well, i feel a little betrayed by flo. supposedly the pumpkin scones recipe is the one she served prince charles.. the one i made as a child. but it didn't really work. they didn't rise enough. "embarassing", as nell said. it didn't help that i kinda burnt them because i was frying fritters. today i added more baking powder to the mix and they were more like i remembered - fluffy, orange and doughy with just that hint of bicarb taste that tom says defines a scone. definite tea party material. texta says they're too sweet but tom eats them with golden syrup on top. it's hard to please the housies.
here's the recipe:

1 tablespoon butter
0.5 cup sugar
0.25 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup cold mashed pumpkin
2 - 2.25 cups self raising flour, sifted
(i added half a teaspoon of baking powder today. you could go as high as a teaspoon)

* preheat your oven very hot (225 - 250C)
* beat butter, sugar, salt with electric mixer
* add egg, then pumpkin.
* stir in flour by hand
* turn onto floured board and press or roll out not too thin - maybe an inch.
* cut into circles with a cup
* place on heated floured tray
* cook on top shelf of the oven for 15 minutes or so.

too high from chocolate overload

bindy and me have long talked about doing a chocolate crawl. today was the warm-up.

koko black (royal arcade, city).
this is my new favourite treat place. it's totally snobby which just adds its appeal. as bindy said - they make you feel like you're not worthy of their chocolate. great staff uniforms. any place that calls itself a "belgian chocolate lounge" better have the goods to go with the attitude and they do.

the hand made individual chocolates are awesome - better than a whole block of lindt. the dark choc earl grey praline and the cinnamon and gingerbread are both damn fine. you can watch them being made by their belgian "chief chocolatier" in the front window. bindy was especially taken by the sliding tray that comes out of the display cabinet with all the little chocs on it - kind of like a jewellers. we were there for the hot chocolate though and it didn't disappoint. thick but not gluggy. made with chocolate not cocoa powder. very smooth and very chocolatey. if you go when it's not too busy you can sit in big fancy armchairs upstairs and look down over everyone in the arcade.

max 'the stoopid bald man' brenner
we thought we might do some reconaissance for our full tour so we headed over to QV to check out max brenner's. this place is like the starbucks of chocolate - telling you all about their special blends while being totally fast foody and full of merchandise. the lines were out the door and the service took forever. so we were ill disposed already and the hot chocolates didn't cheer us up. watery and over sweet. nice crockery can't save you max. especially when bindy described the 'hug' cup i was drinking from as a chamberpot. it did have a very vaginal shape. bindy had a suckao - where you mix chocolate buds and milk together over a tea light burner. nice gimmick but it tasted waxy to me. the burner kept blowing out and bindy got very bored - making your own is way overrated.

if max brenner is "creating a new chocolate culture in the world" then i'm worried for the world. oh, that's right - i already am worried for the world. they were playing "feelingssss" for god sake. the best bit was when bindy got chocolate on her nose and looked really cute. she wants to go back to check out their souffle and the danish toffee chocolate that the girl next to us was having (she said it was very rich and chocolatey) but i'm not sure i want to visit max again anytime soon.

other exciting news - dropped into the city library and checked out their cookbook range - heaps of good stuff. copied out flo bjielke petersen's pumpkin scone recipe. we used to make them all the time when i was little until the tea towel with the recipe printed on it went missing. i'll post the recipe once i've had a chance to test it.

this is bad but..

trying to keep some regular posts up.
wasting too much time at work.
listening to too many of texta's mum's jokes.
so here it is - a joke. courtesy of azara jokes

Isaac was sitting at a table in his favourite restaurant waiting for his meal when he called over his waiter.
"Yes?" asked the busy waiter.
"Are you sure you're the waiter I ordered from?" asked Isaac.
"Why do you ask?" replied the waiter.
"Because I was expecting a much older man by now." replied Isaac.

That comic genius comes courtesy of Eli, New Jersey, USA

On a different note - I'm going to try making loukamades this weekend if I'm not too hungover.
Very excited.

matricide at lunch

on the way to lunch with my workmates Helen tells us that Dawn Fraser killed her mother.*

"how would you feel?" - Simon
"everyone's fantasy - just not everyone gets to realise it." says Helen

I love working with Lacanian therapists.

*It was in a car crash and she was driving. According to her autobiography she didn't know until doing the research for the book because the doctors had always told her that her mother had a heart attack before the impact.

honey cake

so i surrender to the urge to start a blog.

the impetus - a small chocolate covered piece of honey cake.

yup, i'm thinking the central theme of this place will be food - my major obsession. i wanted to call it "stuffed" so i could change the theme to taxidermy when i got bored but it seemed too obvious. also, i'm not sure i'll ever get bored of food.

so, the cake. a small cube of moist, gingery honey cake the colour of a dark rye bread. covered in thick dark chocolate. only two bites in it. too damn perfect. made me wonder why in all the year's of going to glick's i've never eaten any sweets. sure, their eggplant dip rates as my favourite spread ever, and their bagels always satisfy... but still... the cake was so good that after eating the piece i initially bought, sarah had to run back in and buy a dozen more.

and while i'm talking about all things jewish (food being my major link to my cultural heritage - as if being jewish is just a privileged position from which to judge bagels) joe's piece Israel's Liberal Apologists has some excellent data on anti-Palestinian media bias taken from a book called Bad News from Israel. Makes me think again how necessary some information about colonial history really is. crucial. scary that people think the Palestinians are "occupiers" but not surprising I suppose. been thinking hard lately about where some of the horrible frustrated energy i feel around palestine/israel can be usefully put. suggestions welcome. lately i'm leaning towards a poster series. tried to re-join 'jews for a just peace' but they don't seem to exist in melbourne anymore.

oh, and thanks to lou for the impetus to finally try the cakes at glick's