In my kitchen: July 2020

Where does the time go? I truly cannot believe we are halfway through 2020! Covid has made me so aware of how many things in my life I feel grateful for.


In my little garden....

Many of my Mr Peas have been eaten by bugs, slugs and snails, also grasshoppers.. but there has been the occasional adorable snow pea.

The radishes have been maturing, though the soil seems to fall away from the tops of them and they get eaten by various things. I finally grew enough radish and lettuce for a salad!


On the baking front...

I produced the most gorgeous loaf I have made for quite some time. This was flavoured with the aquafaba from soaking black beans, and ground / roasted black sesame .

This adorable rose-shaped challah was made with my friend's 9 year old daughter, who greedily stuffed each of the strands with chocolate chips that oozed everywhere when the challah was cut. I don't think I'd ever realised how much children love getting involved in baking!

I made these sourdough tangzhong cat buns (Kim Joy's recipe) as a special gift for my friend. Though this did take quite a lot of time and effort, I enjoyed every step of the way! I would totally make these again. According to my friend, they stayed soft and fluffy for days afterwards.


Onto the Food and Music series...

The other violinist in the quartet is quite a talented cook and she rustled up this delicious goat tagine. My favourites in the tagine are the blanched almonds and the apricots which become lusciously soft and infused with tagine spices.

We had a feast of the tagine, falafels (so bloody hard to grind!!) and pide. This was served with Schubert's Rosamunde string quartet and a special pianist also joined us to play Elena Katz Chernin's The Offering. It is really worth taking a listen to this wonderful modern Australian work with contrasting movements full of life and joy.

The violist made this dinner of beef stew with Yorkshire puddings. There's something intensely satisfying about poking a hole in the puddings and ladling warm rich stew all over them. We also enjoyed shelling the peas together - a fun group activity. We ate this wonderful meal with Beethoven's Op 18. No. 3 (particularly adore the slow movement), a little bit of the 2nd Razumovsky quartet and Faure's piano quartet after dinner.

I also got a bit obsessed with the idea of making a lattice crust for apple pie, so I ended up doing it two nights in a row. This one was the more pretty one. My friend L was visiting from the Gold Coast and we played some violin-piano duets together after this pie - including Beethoven's 5th violin sonata Spring (must be an all time favourite) and some piano 6 hand music with her mum (Rachmaninov's Romances for 6 hands).

Finally, Barney my sourdough turned 3 and we celebrated his birthday with the Merewether ensemble with Beethoven's wind quintet Op. 16! Barney was born on my kitchen benchtop in Darwin, and it's incredible just how far he has come in 3 years. He has produced countless loaves, taught me the virtues of patience and acceptance, and brought so much joy to my life. I stopped counting how many children he has now, but it must be over 50 - he lives in every state & territory of Australia and in 3 other countries (China, Canada and US). Happy Birthday Barney!


I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen series - thanks for hosting Sherry!