Saturday 2 October 2021

In My Kitchen: October 2021

September just about flew past! It's been a strange time - on one hand, I love the lockdown because I am a naturally introspective person, on the other hand I'm really missing the social contact with other human beings.  

In the garden... 

I have been eating turnips every day - the turnip patch has gotten out of control and overtaken the entire veggie patch. One day I took a photo of this one because I thought he looked like a man sitting on the chair. My favourite lunch now involves a turnip addition to whatever I'm eating - I saute the root part of the turnip in a little olive oil and wilt the greens. It's quite a nice way to introduce more veggies!  

My sugar snaps and snow peas have been excellent this year - I've been having them everyday practically and it's such a treat. My favourite way to eat them is in a stir fry with tofu and other veggies, here with also a smattering of my own coriander.  

I don't eat salad every day but my small patch of rocket and radicchio serves me well for when I feel like salad. I usually pick a whole lot, wash and spin them then store them in the fridge for a quick boost of salad. 

In the kitchen... 

Here are the white oyster mushrooms from the kit I got for my birthday - they grow super fast! I found them incredibly tender and more-ish, nothing like a simple stir fry with some sugar snaps from the garden, a little bit of ginger and some sesame oil. 



This was one of the Masterchef challenges - a black forest cake with a hazelnut praline mousse. It was SO complicated to make and took two of us three hours (the recipe card said 40 min prep and 1 hr cooking - what liars!) It was absolutely delicious though so huge we could only manage a tiny slice each. 


This was the end of the Apple Project. I celebrated Rosh Hashanah with my vegan friend and made her this vegan challah - it was from an excellent recipe featuring the Yudane method.


I stuffed it with apples sweetened with maple syrup. It was so soft and fluffy, excellent recipe indeed!


I made this quiche with some rainbow chard from my own garden - I blanched the rainbow chard and dunked it into ice water to preserve the colour. The little blobs are roast pumpkin,  it kind of looks like a rhubarb and apricot tart! 


And with the rest of the tart pastry I made these little tarts with a simple ricotta custard filling and fresh berries, yum!


The new baking project...
 
I'm doing a new project now where I am baking my way through a "Pains de France" tea towel that I bought last year - I'm baking a different bread every weekend. 

Boule de Campagne - "Countryside bread"

Baguette épi - baguette cut into a wheat stalk shape 

Regular baguette


This was probably the fanciest thing I made this month, a Couronne Bourdelaise (crown bread), which worked really well as soft tear apart rolls. I have found the key is to read French recipes (or watch French youtube videos) - they really are excellent baguette recipes

Finally... the curveball


I'm fortunate to work in a hospital looking out onto bushland. Often on lunch breaks I go for long walks around the hospital campus and one day I saw this beautiful kookaburra. Gotta love his hairstyle! He was so calm, just checking everyone out. I'm sad to say that with the new hospital precinct development, they will lose their hospital home and probably be displaced onto adjacent bushland. 

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

12 comments:

  1. Spectacular breads you made this month! I love your tea-towel challenge. I wish you would post a photo of the entire tea towel.

    best... mae at maefood.blogspot.com

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    1. Definitely Mae next month I'll put up a picture of the tea towel along with the rest of the projects :)

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  2. Wow, you are very talented cook and baker. The breads are absolutely beautiful.

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    1. Thanks for your encouragement Bernadette! I really enjoy baking because it is a kind of relaxation for me :)

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  3. Your breads are beautiful! And I love the quiche, I did think the orange mounds were apricots.

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    1. Thanks Liz - I did think as soon as I pulled it out of the oven that the pumpkin looked like apricots :) and indeed quite a few friends thought the same

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  4. what wonderful stuff you have here. all those beautiful breads. and the black forest cake looks superb. did you make it the original way with the shortcrust base? You rarely see it that way. thanks for joining in this month. love all your produce too - but turnips?:-)
    cheers
    sherry

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    1. The black forest cake was a Coles recipe - chocolate sponge was the cake layers, wedged with hazelnut praline mousse, mountains of chocolate cream and cherry syrup & more cherries! It was a sugar fest, like I think there must have been half a kilo of sugar in the whole cake (horrified). And yes, turnips, I love turnips :)

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  5. Your baking always amazes me and your garden seems to produce lovely harvest. I'd love a slice of that magnificent cake and one of that lovely challah. And love your little friendly kookaburra - I miss all the trees and bird life outside my office while I am still working from home!

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    1. Trees are really the best aren't they? I think they connect us to the real world.. my theory is that humans need trees because we spent so many years sleeping under them!

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  6. I'm loving the breads and dessert. Also, that's a great looking stir fry.
    I'd love to see a kookaburra!

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    1. Thanks for dropping by Tina, kookaburras are amazing indeed - their call is so deep and resounding, it feels like they are as old as the land that we are on. Though the land has changed beyond recognition, they are still here, and sometimes when you see them perched on electricity poles you wonder if they think they are trees!

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