In my kitchen: August 2019

In the depths of winter, it is almost impossible to recall the lightheartedness of summer. Once in a while, there will be a day where the lunchtime sun is warm enough to soothe our weary souls. On other days there are heartwarming foods…

It is just perfect weather now for soup. This one I made with silverbeet stalks, chickpeas and lovely tightly curled pasta from a market in Budapest. With a generous base of paprika and chilli, this was so rich and warming topped with some cheese. The rustic handpainted bowl is from a roadside stall in Romania.

 This sourdough scroll worked out so well for a lazy afternoon tea. I stuffed it with fig jam and butter cookie crumbs. Pulling apart those warm buttery strands was heavenly...  the 3 of us demolished the whole thing. 

I tried Not QuiteNigella’s Biang Biang noodle recipe – they worked out a treat! I didn’t eat them with the recipe sauce, instead opting for a light smattering of vegetables and a spoonful of chilli oil. The next day I ate them in soup, also delicious!

Nothing like hot steaming dumplings in winter! I love how the dough relaxes and becomes supple during resting, and become so much easier to roll after an hour or so. These were stuffed with pork, chinese cabbage, green capsicum and flavoured with ginger and coriander. Another time I also made some with kim chi, my favourite filling. 

I'm also in love with sprinkles I bought from Japan, here served simply on top of cold tofu. 

Onto my Food and Music series...

I made these sourdough fruit buns for the Merewether ensemble. They are basically the hot cross bun recipe without the crosses. I ran out of time to glaze them so the crust set a bit hard, but they still served up nicely with a bit of butter.  We played Mozart’s Clarinet quintet in A major, a few Handel arrangements for wind & strings and also Mozart’s Kegelstatt trio. 

 

My string quartet had a French themed dinner where we ate the most delicious boeuf bourgignon, fluffy Parisian mashed potatoes and veggies along with Barney sourdough baguettes. 

There was also an incredible cherry clafoutis which served as my impromptu birthday cake. We enjoyed this absolute feast along with some French favourites, the Faure piano quartet in C minor and the rich and wonderful Debussy string quartet Op. 11.

Last week it was my turn to make dinner for the quartet and we decided on pasta. Of course it was impossible to incorporate sourdough into pasta, so I made fresh egg pasta. I had no idea fresh pasta was so “easy” to make! It certainly is simple in recipe, I used the 100g flour to 1 egg ratio. There were a few blunders, like when the egg refused to stay inside the flour well and threatened to escape to the floor. 

Then we covered the cellist’s entire kitchen with flour whilst rolling out the pasta, heaps of fun! 

The strands that got stuck to each other got accidentally rerolled into Australia. We are a patriotic quartet.

These turned out so well, springy with just the right amount of bite. We ate this with a simple mushroom lentil tomato & red wine based sauce. On this night we played all our favourites, because sadly we won’t be meeting for the next few weeks while a few of us are busy with travels. There was Dvorak’s American quartet, Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and finally our favourite Beethoven, Op 18 no. 4 in C minor. I adore C minor! For dessert we played a little of Mendelssohn’s Piano trio no. 2 in C minor.

I took this lovely loaf to a piano meetup where a dozen people came together to share their love of the piano. The music was so diverse ranging from the Beatles to serious heavy Chopin works. I performed the Brahms’ Op. 118 Intermezzo in A major and Chopin’s Nocturne Op 9 no. 2.

It has been very slow in the garden because of the chill, with the exception of these baby bok choy that grow year around. We also have lots of coriander that is battling on.

My father is away at the moment but he left me a pumpkin, which I've enjoyed as an ornament on my dining table along with some lovely flowers from his garden.

That's it for this month, thanks for sharing in the food and extra thanks to Sherry for hosting the In My Kitchen series.