Italy

I haven't posted for ages because 1. I have been ridiculously busy getting ready for and doing Peats Ridge Festival with our corn fritters, and 2. I have been in Italy visiting Sophie, who has been in Lecce studying for the past year and Olympia who's here with her sister for a few weeks mini Grand Tour. I'll fill in the details soon.

Polar Pouches

We recently received our order of 10,000 laminated, clear, spouted pouches from China. It was a bit of an ordeal to get them, but it all worked out nicely thanks to my new pen-pal, Rory Yang. 10,000 is a lot, but we are getting through them.
For now we are filling them with our homemade cordials - either blood orange, or lemon/orange. We lightly freeze them and served them that way - icy, icy cold and they are much appreciated on a hot day at the markets.
I am now dreaming up other fillings...iced coffee, chocolate milk, strawberry milk, caramel malted milk...lemon iced tea, ginger iced tea....lemon barley cordial... smoothies and lassis...healthy drinks with chia seeds and so many more ideas. I can't wait.
Here are some pictures of their launch at Marrickville Markets:

Making a film clip for "Homeward Bound"

I'm beginning a project I've been looking forward to - the film clip for our recording of a trad. folk song known as Homeward Bound, or sometimes, Lady Franklin's Lament. It tells the sad tale of John F's ill-fated voyage to map the North-West passage.
I want to use our puppets, Twiggie and Sticks as well as shadow puppets and stopmotion animation. Hmmm. Hope I'm not biting off too much.
I am running a facebook page documenting it's progress, and I'll try and keep up-to-date here too.

Spring visit to Bobo Creek

 

 

two dogs and two lovely daughters in the car

dawn from the deck

a big beauty down by the creek

jessie watching for wallabies

A stamp for Fritter House

I cut a little rubber stamp for our fritter stall.

Neglected blog...

The trouble with Facebook is that I tend to neglect my blogs.
So, of late we have been visited by our dear darling Nicki who lived with us for two years while she attended senior school here. She had a year at McDonald College and then did Year 12 at IGS (where Rosie went).  We had a lot of fun with her and now she really is part of the family.
She was out recently touring with the amazing Nitin Sawhney. The concert at the Opera House was beautiful and Nicki really shone.
She stayed on after the tour and had two lovely intimate gigs with Rosie and band at a cute little venue in Marrickville.
Here are a couple of pics of them rehearsing and performing:

Fritters at Splendour

Well, we had a splendidly muddy old time in Byron Bay on the last weekend of July. It was warmer than Sydney and wetter too. The middle of the Festival saw the skies open and the ground white with hail, which quickly turned to mud. The gumboot sellers were in mercenary heaven.

Our fritters were popular and we were busy each afternoon and late into the evening.

Here are some photos:

New banner and old banner.

Our girls. Tarika, Rosie and Izzy. Worked so well and so hard!

Fritter House pics

All the trimmings!
Bacon, meatballs, avocado aioli, tomato relish, fresh herbs, parmesan, basil olive oil drizzle.
Yum.

fritter developments

 Pete has been wanting to serve bacon with the fritters for ages. We finally got our act together and another barbecue so the bacon is separate from the vegetarian fritters. We are trying to think of a good name for "the Bacon" as well as for "the Meatballs" as we are serving yummy meatballs on the fritters too.

our new varieties

 

new signage on chalkboards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cold day moisturiser

It's a horrible cold, wet day. The Monday of a long weekend. Tragic really. So I  made some simple and lovely moisturiser to cheers me up. (After cream of mushroom soup for Pete, and cheese on toast for Izzy)
In one beaker I combined and melted:
20g apricot kernel oil
20g jojoba oil
20g cocoa butter
15g glycerin
and 1.5 tablespoon emulsifying wax

In a larger beaker I measured 225g water (I used distilled water and added some green tea extract)

I poured the oil mix into the water with a stick blender running. Then gently mixed in some essential oils - clary sage, lemon myrtle, cedarwood, rose geranium and a little palmarosa.

It made four small jars full and smells divine.

REALLY healthy bread

I get the bread-baking bug badly sometimes. In between, my stoic and dependable sourdough starter hangs out in the fridge until I need her. (and then knead her!)
Pete and I are trying a lower GI diet in order to stay healthy and (hopefully) trim up a little. So everything is even more whole grain and less processed and much less sweet. But. Much more delicious. (So says Olympia) We are enjoying it and I do enjoy a culinary challenge.

the dough

the finished loaf

Hence the healthy bread.

the flours:
sourdough starter
wholemeal wheat flour
rye flour
barley flour
unbleached wheat flour

Soaked overnight and roughly ground/pulverised:
whole wheat berries
brown lentils
red lentils
black-eyed peas
amaranth
chia seeds (black and white)
quinoa

And:
honey
salt
a little yeast

I let the dough sit for a long time - nearly a whole 24 hours, until it had lifted a fair bit, then kneaded it again and shaped it into two tins. They, too, sat a long while for the second proof. Then about 45 minutes in a medium to hot oven.

It is a really nice, dense and moist loaf.

Try throwing this lot together...

I have been wanting to try this for ages (see if you can guess what it makes).
I had tried to make some plum paste (you know, like quince paste) and, despite actually following a recipe, it overcooked and now is like a dark mass of caramelly, plummy taffy. So, that was the inspiration for adding these other things to it:

Ingredients
overcooked plum paste (if you don't have any, then you could use golden syrup or brown sugar or even caramelise some sugar yourself)
date syrup
tamarind extract
pomegranate molasses
molasses
malt vinegar
white vinegar
cinnamon quills
cardamom pods
star anise
mustard seed
mace
ground nutmeg
ground tumeric
dried chilli (whole)
pepper corns
salt
garlic cloves
onion
ginger
anchovies


Combine all (sorry I can't remember how much of each, but it is not rocket science)
Heat and then blend coarsely
Pour through sieve, then collect the debris and mix with a little water or vinegar, heat again and sieve a second time to try and get the most out of this pungent, aromatic sludge.
Allow to sit in a covered crock to "mature"
Bottle.

It is, as you probably guessed, Worcestershire sauce. Amazingly delicious and easy to make.

the bottled sauce

Great balls of -!?

We have been extra busy lately developing a new line for our market stall and (more importantly) for festivals. Being veterans of the music festival catering scene, we reckon we need a hearty main meal option on our menu. I mean there were people at the National Folk Festival (Canberra at Easter) that told us they had our fritters five times, but there are only so many times over three or four days that you can eat corn fritters. Even if they are "the best fritters I've ever had" AND "better than Bill's". True quotes.
Anyway, Pete, being the blokey bloke that he is has been on and on with the "Meat, we need a meat dish" mantra. This is ironic because in the R&D stage of said meat dish he suggested we try "meatless May" in order to be healthy and perhaps even shed a few grams. So, here we were cooking all these delicious things and not able to taste them. Thanks must go to Izzy and Olympia for their help.
I can reveal that the meat dish is MEATBALLS SERVED WITH FRESH-BAKED SOURDOUGH FOCACCIA!!!! How does that sound?
Actually it is a pretty damn good feed. Four or five plump and moist balls blanketed in a velvety rich tomato sugo (that's Italian for sauce - thanks Sophie), served in a paper bio-cup with two big wedges of hot crusty focaccia and garnished with some chopped herbs and tasty parmesan cheese.

Sourdough prooving an ready to go

Anthony at the Markets, tasting for us.

New banners.

Fresh focaccia cooked in a gas-fired pizza oven.

More or less what it looks like.

Corn Fritters...

Our faithful corn fritters continue to do really well. People love them. They love the fact that the fritters alone taste great and kids can eat them. They love the gluten-free nature of them. They love the homemade-ness of everything that is piled on top.
The Morocco (roast capsicum relish, minted yoghurt, lemon-garlic aioli and dukkah) continues to be the favourite. But the Fiesta (chilli jam, sour cream, lemon-garlic aioli and caramelised balsamic with maple syrup) has many loyal fans.
Here are some corn fritters pics to remind us how lovely they are: