In My Kitchen, November 2022

 I am looking forward to Christmas so much this year, it will be a Summer's Christmas at the beach for us, sun and surf, can't wait.  With the promise of catching up with family and friends as a bonus. Next week, it's time to start soaking the fruit for the traditional Christmas cake and Plum Pudding, always my Mother's recipes, I don't deviate from those, I think that Christmas time is a wonderful time for some traditional cooking. These are the recipes I'll be using If you are interested. 

Christmas Cake This mixture can also be baked as smaller cakes, and I have a post up for those as well.

Plum Pudding

I made a delicious Salade Nicoise, where using les mains to mix all of the ingredients is the secret according to the chef on French Food Safari. I'll be posting this recipe soon hopefully. I'm travelling to France next year, so I'm immersing myself in French food and culture when I can.

This is before all of the ingredients were mixed together with les mains

What I've been baking:

Continuing with the French theme, I made a Cherry Clafoutis, which is un flan delicieux.

Recently when a neighbour popped over for a cup of coffee I made this Middle Eastern style Date and Walnut Loaf with a hint of chocolate.

The recipe for Nigella Lawson's Honey and Chocolate cake can be found at this link. It was delicious. I was inspired by the honey from our backyard beehive to make this cake.

This is the latest honey harvest from our hive. We've had a few problems with our hive during swarm season in October which hopefully is back on track now. That story and the recipe for the Honey and Chocolate cake are on the same post. I'm sure that stories about our hive and the bees will continue in future posts I write.

I've had Silvia Colloca's recipe book, Love Laugh Bake on my bookshelf for a while, and a Mahjong friend made one of her chocolate cakes for us all the other day, which isn't in this book, but was amazing. So I've been pouring through her book, and made the Hazlenut Brownie slice, but with Almond Meal, instead of  Hazlenut meal, and of course we had to have a wee taste, and it's delicious. It's destined for dinner with friends tonight. It is also one of those recipes that can turn into a cake as well. Recipe to follow shortly I hope. Silvia is such a talented lady, and an opera singer as well.

The weather was unseasonably cold and rainy so I made these delicious and economical individual Cottage pies, 13 of them actually. You can find the recipe here.

We've been spending a lot of time in our garden, and some capsicum seeds I planted in August have grown into quite mature plants, with small capsicums starting to grow on some of the bushes. Capsicums are always expensive to buy, so I'm looking forward to being able to use them in the kitchen in all kinds of ways. I think there might be a variety of shapes and sizes with these, but they are all from caps I bought at the markets, and they aren't like the large capsicum varieties sold in supermarkets. They are smaller and sweeter. I dried the seeds and waited until Winter to plant them in a new garden that Mr. HRK dug for us. They benefit from the morning sun so I have high hopes for them, and hoping the bugs and beetles don't take a liking to them.  We have 23 plants, after pulling out a few to make room for all of them. I think all of the seeds I planted must have germinated, I always plant more seeds than we need just in case. That should be enough plants don't you think, tee hee?

It's a long garden, with some flowering Cuphea plants up one end for the Bees to enjoy.

During October, we participated in the Aussie Backyard BIRD COUNT, which was a lot of fun. Between 4.30 and 5.30 pm each day we sat outside in our courtyard for 20 minutes at a time, sometimes with a glass of wine and identified the birds that frequented our bird bath, and recorded them on the Aussie Bird Count app. I can't find our total stats, as the app has been closed but we managed to record all of the species that visit our yard. 

We now have a female Spotted Dove which participated in our Bird Count, (I know that for sure!) nesting in our Golden Penda tree just outside our back kitchen door and she is sitting on two baby chicks. I can mention this because the nest is so close to the kitchen. The only problem is that we are in and out of the door quite often during the day and she gets spooked very easily, as she was when I took this photo. We are very careful now not to frighten her too much but she seems to be used to us coming and going. Other doves have nested in those trees, not always with great results, so fingers crossed for this little lady. She seems very protected there from the many predators.

This is my November submission to the #IMK series hosted by Sherry. Each month bloggers from around the world gather to share what is new in their kitchen.  I don't buy a lot of new stuff anymore, but I love cooking and baking. I hope you enjoy some of my recipes and stories.

Hoping the rest of November treats you well.

Warm wishes

Pauline

Thai Style Vegetable Green Curry, a Meat Free Monday recipe

I often cook a green chicken curry with some vegetables included especially if I have eggplant needing to be used, but this time, using the Five Tastes Green Curry Paste in a vegetarian version I was so thrilled with the amazing flavour of this curry, minus the chicken. Thai food is a very popular cuisine in Australia, partly due to our proximity to South East Asia, our climate, and the ease with which we can grow many fresh Asian herbs and vegetables. It just tastes so very good. 

Tasty Turkish-Style Tabbouleh

I made this Tabbouleh with quinoa as that is what I had on hand and it needed to be used, however wholemeal  couscous works just as beautifully. Quinoa is a delicious alternative. It's the time for salads here in the tropics, but then salads are popular and healthy anywhere and at anytime of the year aren't they? This salad choice came about as our Lebanese cucumbers have started bearing cucumbers (our first attempt at these), the mint and parsley are going gangbusters, and Mr. HRK with secateurs in hand, drastically pruned back the parsley so rather than let it go to waste, Tabbouleh came to mind. 

I try to base my meal choices on what we have growing or what is already in the pantry, without needing regular excursions to the supermarket for one or two items.

Home grown Lebanese cucumbers

Cooking cakes and sweets is a different matter. There are some items that just need to be purchased when I run out of them, as a cake recipe is pretty exacting.



Ingredients:

1/2 cup rinsed quinoa (tri-colour for impact if you like), or wholemeal couscous
150 ml chicken stock for extra flavour, (just water will also work well)
1 Lebanese cucumber, deseeded and diced
3-4 vine-ripened tomatoes, cut into 1 cm dice (I used 4 Roma tomatoes)
3 spring onions, green ends only, finely chopped
1/2 cup mint leaves, rinsed and patted dry
1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, or about 1/2 bunch, rinsed and patted dry
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (not the stuff out of the bottle)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Add a crushed garlic clove if you like, but not necessary
*A large avocado cut into 1 cm dice can replace the cucumber

Method:

If using quinoa:- Place the stock in a small saucepan, add the quinoa and bring to the boil over high heat. Reduce heat, and simmer for 10 minutes or until tender to taste. Remove from the heat,and stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork and leave it to cool.

If using couscous:- Place the stock in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Place the couscous in a heatproof bowl and add the stock to the bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate or something plastic free (preferably), to store the heat, and stand for 5 minutes. Use a fork to fluff it up and to separate the grains. Season it slightly to your taste, and set it aside until cool.

Gather the bunch of parsley, form into a tight bundle in your hand and finely shred the leaves with a sharp knife.

Do the same thing with the mint leaves.

My coriander in our raised garden is still growing well, so a little bit of that went into the salad as well.



Add the cooled grain, quinoa or couscous to the rest of the ingredients, and mix through gently.



Making The dressing:

In a smallish bowl, gradually whisk the olive oil into the lemon juice and garlic (if using) until it starts to thicken slightly and emulsifies. Stir the dressing through the tabbouleh ingredients and season with a little salt and ground black pepper if it needs it. A little salt will really develop the flavours.

Serving options:
For an easy meal, delicious just with a boiled egg
For a more substantial and complete meal if entertaining, serve with hummus, pitta bread and sliced lamb or lamb cutlets

On a nutritional note, eating salads like tabbouleh is a healthy alternative, as the herbs, parsley, and mint are rich in sources of Vitamin K and C, some beta-carotene, folate and flavonoids.  I feel better already.......

The Aussie Backyard Bird Count

And now for some twitching. We've been participating in the Aussie Backyard Bird Count this past week.  I think today is the last day and it's been great fun. It's too hard for me to take photos of the birds at the same time as I am entering the data into the phone app, however we have submitted 8 Checklists, Sighted 22 species, and sighted 204 birds just in our suburban backyard. So Mr. HRK and I take our chairs to the courtyard late in the afternoon, settle in with a cup of coffee and wait for the birds to start their afternoon pilgrimage to the Bird bath and then back to the Golden Penda tree and the Paperbark tree. We've had a couple of challenges differentiating between species, such as the female Australasian Figged and the female Blue-faced Honeyeater but I think we have given fairly accurate statistics of what we have seen which will paint a picture of the birds in our area for Bird Life Australia.

Highlights for us were: 23 Australasian Figbirds, 1 Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike,1 Nankeen Kestrel, 1 Whiskered Bulbul, 1 Rufous Fantail, 4 Torresian Imperial-Pigeons and 62 Rainbow Lorikeets. Except for the Lorikeets, these are ones we don't see very often.

A light lunch at home, Tabbouleh, stuffed capsicum, and a boiled egg, the lettuce is coming:)

Have a happy week my friends and keep smiling,

Bye for now,

Pauline