Cooking Eating Storytelling
Mussels Cooked in White Wine & Parsley… Imagine sitting by the water with a bottle of Moët and a big bowl of freshly cooked mussels to graze on… this is what you call a great day!
Fishing rods poised, ready to catch a lovely bream to have for dinner – Holiday’s don’t get much better than this.
Sun soakingly delicious… Blondie
As simple as this dish looks, this bruschetta mix was a whole weekend’s labour of LOVE! Yes it took me a whole weekend to do!
Let me explain…the mushroom bruschetta mix you are looking at comprises of oyster, swiss brown and shiitake mushrooms. They have all been lightly smoked using hickory chips, dehydrated overnight and re-hydrated prior to cooking.
This isn’t your average bruschetta mix, it’s what I will call heaven on sourdough, if there ever was such a thing!
So why all the effort? Mushrooms are yummy on their own, however I wanted to experiment and take them to the next level. Ever since I was a little girl I remember that mum would slow dry her slippery jacks or saffron’s in the oven overnight, the house would be filled with the most amazing aroma, the drying process would accentuate the flavour of the mushroom giving them a much richer and deeper flavour. Did I just sound like Manu from the Continental Stock commercial???
I know I sound like I am bragging but my efforts paid off! I cannot begin to explain the taste sensation. Smoking the mushrooms gave them that meaty, hearty taste without the meat!
Ohhhh and the tiny drizzle of Walsh’s Homemade Wild Cherry Brandy sauce took it to another dimension, honestly out of this world!
It took a whole weekend to cook but ohhh so worth it!
With love from a self-professed mushroom addict…a.k.a Bella
PS…a huge thank you to the ABC’s The Cook & the Chef for providing inspiration and base ideas for this recipe.
One of the most traditional of traditions for a Finn is the making of joulutorttu – finnish prune tarts.
These are a labour of love if you choose to make your own jam and dough. The pastry needs to be made the day before and left overnight in the fridge. The Prunes in Port and Spice Syrup can be made weeks prior… just make sure you make enough so you can have them on ice cream!
You can use any jam of your choice but traditionally it’s a prune jam.
These are wonderful and festive, Christmas just isn’t Christmas till these come out.
Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!
Blondie 🙂
Shiitake and Pork Spring Rolls… One of my favourite recipe books at the moment is Thai Street Food by David Thompson. It’s a massive book both in content and actual size, brimming with gorgeous Thai recipes and stunning photography.
I often go through stages of food styles and my latest one is Thai – although this one has been going on for a while – as soon as there is a warm day I find myself drawn back into the heady aroma of Asian cooking.
This is my first attempt at this one, well, it’s my first attempt at spring rolls so I was quite surprised at how difficult it was to separate the spring roll sheets, but was equally surprised at just how stretchy they were. I was certain I was going to tear them to pieces trying to pull them apart, and I wasn’t being at all gentle!
I got 8 large spring rolls from this recipe so when I do them again I will be at least tripling the ingredients just so I have leftovers to freeze. I like to have emergency rations for when family or friends drop around or to take with me when it’s my family doing the drop-ins.
Happy folding!
Blondie
Soft Shell Crab in a Sesame Tempura – This recipe is now one of my all-time favourite dishes to make as it is so simple and the prep involved is really quick and easy, but you end up with a simply stunning dish both in taste and in presentation.
I have served soft shell crab twice so far, in the Blondie/Bella dinner party nights that we hold for each other’s families every 6 weeks or so. The first version was this recipe but I threw some coriander into the batter for a bit of Thai inspiration – I named that dinner ‘All Thaied Up’.
As you can guess from the title, it was a Thai/Asian theme. There were 3 courses (4 really, but dessert was a purchased pistachio ice cream when my peanut ice cream didn’t work out so it’s not included as a course). Just prior to this dinner party two fellow makeup artist friends took me out to Longrain here in Sydney, for a belated birthday dinner. The night was the hottest night on record for Sydney – it was still 33 degrees at midnight! People were walking around with their shirts lifted off their bodies and skirts hitched up just to try and cool down. It was a funny sight in Sydney at night, especially in Surry Hills. Anyway, I was so inspired by Longrain that I purchased Martin Boetz’ book, Longrain: Modern Thai Food, and set forth to recreate some of his dishes (by the way, the Ginger Rogers cocktail is an absolute MUST! Although it’s unfortunately not in the book)
The first course for my dinner was the Light Red Curry of Angus Beef, the second course was the Peanut Curry of Grilled Beef (I did it with lamb) and the third was the Sesame and Coriander Soft Shell Crab (not a Longrain recipe). The fourth was going to be his (Martin’s) Peanut Ice Cream, which was just sooooo amazing, but the recipe isn’t in his book so it was purely guess work – which failed! But my soft shell crab was fantastic! I served it with 2 dipping sauces, a sweet chili sauce, and a ginger and soy sauce.
If you are brave enough you can purchase live crabs, but I’m not! I get my soft shell crab from an Asian mini mart in Chatswood. They come frozen in a nice little box of about 10 or so, with each crab neatly put into a plastic sleeve which means I always has some in the freezer for emergencies!
Blondie
Karjalanpiirakat – Finnish Karelian Pies are a delicious, creamy rice filling encased in a thin rye bread and then topped with an egg and butter mixture. I realise that it may not come across as particularly inviting, but they certainly are a joy to eat.
Karelian Pies are one of the most traditional of Finnish dishes and are in fact a protected dish by the European Union.
These pies are eaten at most gatherings that my Nana holds, with a friend of hers now the designated Karelian Pie maker for her and probably a majority of the Finnish community in Canberra.
I have only just come to learn the reason that Nana doesn’t make them herself, and that is because the first time she did made them, Grandpa had said to her, “If this is the best you can do, then don’t bother making them again”.
My husband is amazed that he lived past that point!
The number one key to making these is to make the rye base as thin as possible… and then go thinner.
Number two is to make sure there is enough salt in the rice mixture otherwise it will be just too bland.
These are a process of love, enjoy it – Blondie 🙂