In My Kitchen, August 2023

 In our part of the world, the Tropical Queensland Winter is such a great time to cook, eat and be merry,  to garden, read great books, listen to music, play the piano, and attend concerts etc. There are lots of favourite pursuits competing for my time, however cooking in my kitchen is my happy place when the weather is nice and cool. Our garden thinks it's Spring already, as the temperatures by Winter standards have been quite warm. I'm still slightly under the influence of my recent French experience, so I'm still sharing with you a few treasures and memories from the two months I was over there with my son and his family.

Here are some of my favourite French foodie things that I brought back with me. Some authentic dried mixed herbs from Provence, and French Orange flower water, Eau de fleur d'oranger. I bought the orange water in a lovely kitchen shop at the Polygon shopping centre in Montpellier, and the French love to include orange water in their cake baking. I also love the blue bottle that it's in. Myrtille told me that it is one of the favourite ingredients in French cakes.

France is famous for it's nougat and it's chocolate. I bought quite a lot of nougat over there which I gave away as gifts, and I also bought a few boxes of this quite touristy chocolate, which is very nice chocolate. One Saturday night after dinner at Matthew and Myrtille's home in Montpellier, I produced a box of these individually wrapped chocolates for dessert. The children were so excited and had a lovely time taking turns to select a chocolate in their favourite wrapper and enjoy the chocolate. The adults were quite excited as well, and of course we gave the children first preference with their favourite wrappers. Hugo who loves the Eiffel Tower chose that wrapper first. It was lot of fun with many rewards. I bought the chocolate and the nougat at Galleries Lafayette in the Polygon shopping complex, one of my favourite shopping haunts, which to me was like the Myer of Montpellier.

This is the cover of the Free supermarket recipe guide which Matthew gave to me one day over there, whilst telling me that his French speaking teacher told him that reading this booklet is one of the best ways to learn the French written language. I was on board as it is about food and includes some French recipes. I'm looking forward to making a few dishes from this at a slightly later date, with the aid of Google translate when needed. 

Beautiful fresh produce available in the supermarket

I found this little recipe book in a French bookstore. The recipes are based on biscuits which are sold over there, but I'm sure I can adapt them to biscuits we find on our shelves. It was a good size for packing too, which was part of the attraction.

Only a couple of weeks ago we had a bee drama resulting in Mr. HRK being taken by ambulance to the Emergency department at our local hospital. Poor darling was very carefully harvesting some honey from the beehive, only a few frames, and 5 bees crawled in under his gloves and stung him. Normally he doesn't wear gloves at all and doesn't get stung. However, this time he did wear gloves as he needed to check the brood box and thought they might get a little angry. Within 30 minutes he was showing symptoms of anaphylactic shock. I called the ambulance, and they were here in 8 minutes. The paramedics were absolutely wonderful. They gave him a shot of adrenaline, and then took him to hospital in the back of the ambulance. I was really emotional watching him noticeably shaking from the adrenaline and being taken to hospital. When I settled down, I followed shortly after with a few things he might need. He recovered fairly quickly, and after many tests were taken, we were home by 11.30 pm that evening. So now we have big decisions to make, whether or not to keep the beehive. It is so disappointing though, as we have invested so much into that beehive, with also a lot of rewards, none of them financial though. We don't sell our beautiful honey. I can't help but wonder how an apiarist whose livelihood is dependent on beekeeping would cope with this. We now have three epipens in case this emergency occurs again.

A frame full of beautiful honey and honeycomb

Scraping the frame for honey in our kitchen as the anaphylactic symptoms started becoming evident. Mr. HRK turned as white as a ghost and felt very faint as his blood pressure plummeted. 

This could be the last batch of honey from our hive. 

Who doesn't love Fried Rice? This bowl of Fried Rice was delicious. Most of you who are reading this post are foodies I would think, and I'm sure you would agree that Fried Rice has to be one of the easiest dishes to quickly bring together that there is. There isn't a strict list of ingredients, but I think it must include eggs cooked as an omelette and chopped up, onion or shallot, finely chopped bacon or chicken or pork, peas, capsicum, and of course rice that has been precooked and chilled in the refrigerator. Sauces such as soy sauce or oyster sauce or both are essential.  It's a great way to use up leftovers, and finely chopped vegetables lurking in the vegetable crisper drawer of the refrigerator. Rice still isn't that expensive, and enough fried rice can be made to feed a large family, or an army as they say, and kids love it. This is just one dish that could inexpensively stretch the budget for families doing it tough.

Fried rice before adding the soy and oyster sauces.

A salmon curry never disappoints.

I'm really in a ginger frenzy right now. It seems most sweet things I bake contain ginger, probably because we harvested all of our ginger recently (last IMK post). We do love ginger. This vintage style  Ginger, Coconut and Lemon slice was delicious.  Here's the link to the recipe if you feel inspired to bake a very quick, delicious and easy slice.

Two days ago I made a batch of my Sweet Chilli Jam, no ginger in that though, but perhaps there could be.  Winter in Australia might not seem the best time of year to make this as chillies are a Summer crop, however I have a large bag of frozen chillies in my freezer from last Summer's crop in our garden needing to be used. This batch also needs 3 large red capsicums, and right now, capsicums are very cheap. At under $3.00 a kilo on a good day, it's much more economical to make this jam now rather than in Summer when the capsicums can rise to over $10.00 a kilo. Sweet Chilli Jam is a delicious and colourful condiment to serve with a cheese platter, and it is really easy to make. My friends in parts of the Northern Hemisphere might have access to lots of summer chillies right now, and this is such a wonderful condiment to have in your refrigerator. It compliments so many dishes beautifully. I keep meaning to rewrite my previous post on this jam, but if you would like to make some, you can find the recipe here. It's been one of the most popular recipes on my blog. It's included in my recipe post, but when handling 30 chillies to make this jam, gloves must be worn. My food processor chops up the chillies, onions, capsicums and garlic perfectly.

I bought these lovely little pots, suitable for serving hummus, or dips with a cheese platter and drinks. The Nob Creek Pottery at Byfield, just past Yeppoon on the Capricorn Coast in Central Queensland has a whole range of this design, the feature being the lovely blue glaze. We were there just a couple of weeks ago. There's also a very nice cafe nearby where we bought some lunch. Dare I say it, we had the best Chicken Parmigiana we have ever eaten, not that we order it very often but it was so very good.

This container of Earl Grey tea is from the Nerada tea plantation on the Atherton Tableland where we frequently visit when in Cairns. Just a heads up that it will feature in one of my recipes shortly.

This flattened Belhaven Scottish Ale bottle is my curveball this time. I found it again the other day and now it's hanging on the wall in our kitchen. We bought this during an overseas trip to Dunbar in Scotland, fondly called Sunny Dunny by the Scots, because it's the sunniest place in Scotland. Mr. HRK remembers all of these important titbits of information. We had some lovely friends living there who travelled to Mackay where we live now, for a teacher exchange for 12 months. Lawrence gave me the recipe for his delicious vegetarian Rustic Spinach, Feta and Halloumi Pie which has been very popular on my blog and at our dining table. We had a lovely holiday in Dunbar with Lawrence and Alice and their children. The sun shone most of the time. My ancestors on my Mum's side were the Scottish Dudgeons, and Dudgeons owned the Belhaven Brewery way back in 1719 (possibly under another name) with the Hunter family, hence the connection and why we visited, and why we bought this Scottish Ale bottle as a memento. We really hope they were a branch of my Dudgeons who also owned taverns and liked a wee drop, no doubt, although my Great Great Grandfather who was the well known Scottish  landscape artist, Thomas Dudgeon, was by reputation a teetotaller.

This is my lovely Cattleya orchid I am showcasing this month. She's outside on our patio table right now, so that I can look at her beautiful flowers from my kitchen window.

This photo below is just to show you that she has produced three flowers.

These white Lillies also make a beautiful show.

This is my August submission to the In My Kitchen series, where bloggers from around the world can participate and showcase what's been happening in their kitchens, and other interesting stuff,  for the month. It's hosted by the fabulous Sherry from Sherry's Pickings.

I could keep going, but I think that's probably enough for one post, and it's lunch time. Lentil soup is on the menu.

Thanks for dropping by.

Warmest wishes

Pauline x