You know you’re a parent when Christmas feels to you like like it’s approaching at the speed of light but to the small people in your life there’s clearly more than an eternity still to wait. It’s definitely time to start thinking food. It’s also time to start considering the annual logistical challenge of getting a large pine tree into our shoebox of a house, but that’s another story. Porchetta is really the ultimate festive roast beast to me. We had a beautiful boutique porchetta purchased from a deli in Lygon St for our wedding spread and I’ve been a big fan ever since. I’ve since fiddled around with a few recipes and have finally got a method sorted that seems to work consistently well for me. It takes a while to cook but is otherwise dead simple. This will definitely be appearing at Christmas lunch this year, probably with a lentil salad. » Read more: Porchetta
Archive for November, 2009
Porchetta
November 16th, 2009Rose geranium peaches
November 16th, 2009There used to be two things that my mum would regularly commission from me for breakfast on Christmas morning. The first (strawberry daiquiris) has been banned from Riches family festive proceedings since 2006 due to the fact that everyone was so smashed by 10.00 a.m. that Christmas lunch became all but impossible. We now have a vastly more civilised Campari and orange and / or champagne cocktail while we open presents which seems to make it easier to get to the post – pudding glass of Benedictine.The other thing is my peaches poached in rose geranium syrup. » Read more: Rose geranium peaches
Parker Hill prawns
November 8th, 2009Look, basically any time you’ve got prawns in one hand and a beer in the other you can safely say that life is pretty much as good as it gets. We took advantage of the pre-emptive burst of summer to go camping for the night down at Cape Otway. I swung past the fisherman’s co-op on Saturday morning and grabbed a bag of prawns. Now these were nothing fancy – just a kilo bag of peeled, green frozen prawns but you know,they’re pretty good and they kept the six pack of Asahi in the esky chilled to perfection. » Read more: Parker Hill prawns
Dried fish fun
November 6th, 2009No recipe today, folks, but just some general musings about the joy of the Asian grocery. Personally I can’t imagine living anywhere else than Apollo Bay but the facts have to be faced – the Asian cook faces some severe challenges down here (no insult intended to Nick’s IGA on the Main Street which has a good selection of basic stock). Anyway, we were in Geelong today which meant a long overdue trip to the Asian grocery. » Read more: Dried fish fun
Cambodian lime and black pepper sauce
November 4th, 2009I haven’t done much traveling, but since the kids were born we have managed to get to south east Asia a couple of times. Our first trip was to Siem Reap in Cambodia, the town outside the temple complexes of Angkor. I loved the Cambodian food – very delicate and fragrant and not too heavy on the “big” flavours of ginger, chili and garlic (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I also have to admit that I’m crazy for that whole Asian / European colonial thing – all amazing architecture, dark furniture and lazy ceiling fans which parts of Siem Reap have in abundance. Drinking huge iced glasses of sweet lime juice in the midday heat in this kind of environment is just my sort of decadence. » Read more: Cambodian lime and black pepper sauce
Vietnamese chicken (or tofu) and mango stir fry
November 3rd, 2009So mum and dad flew out to Singapore yesterday to stay with my brother. Dad is a south east asian stir fry master and in his absence I have kindly organised to babysit his favourite cookbook “Green Mangoes and Lemongrass” by Wendy Hutton and published by Periplus. Tonight I tried my first recipe out of this, a chicken stir fry with mangoes, cashews, snow peas and tomatoes. Basically it’s a very subtle and quite sophisticated sweet and sour and was very popular all around (most particularly with Alex (5) and I, I think). The pool of sauce at the bottom of the plate was an absolute sensation and finished with the taste of lime and black pepper which sent me straight back to Cambodia and memories of eating at a street stall in the pouring rain outside the Bayon temple. » Read more: Vietnamese chicken (or tofu) and mango stir fry
