making dukkah

dukkah has as many variations as you like. i used hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds and sesame seeds, as well as the usual spices: coriander seeds, cumin seeds, pepper corns then himalayn rock salt, a little dried thyme. all roasted up then ground in a coarse kind of way.





roughly:
1 cup hazelnuts
1 cup pistachios
1 cup almonds
1 and a half cups sesame seeds
1 third cup coriander seeds
1 third cup cumin seeds
1 heaped tabsp peppercorns
1 heaped tabsp salt (you may need more later)
1 teasp dried thyme

roast the nuts in a moderate oven for around 10 minutes (don't burn them). you can rub of the skins of the hazelnuts in a tea towel.
roast the spices and the sesame seeds too (i did it in the oven at the same time as the nuts)
in a food processor or blender grind the nuts then the seeds and spices, add more salt and more salt if necessary. mix in the dried thyme. into clean jars with it all and keep at room temperature.

recycling t-shirts. making long, long, long strips.

i seem to be able to wreck a white t-shirt quicker than you can say 'dog's breakfast'. think emptying the wormfarm, lifting a bags of mushroom compost, grating beetroot, making chilli jam, wrestling with the dogs. you get the picture. so i have a stash of nearly new but stained white shirts in my cupboard.
so i decided to crochet me up a bath mat with them.
do you know how to cut a long strip of fabric out of a t-shirt (or any tube for that matter)? so easy and so clever.

how to cut an "endless strip"

cut across the chest level with the bottom of the arm holes to form a rectangular shape that is a tube.



rotate so seams are at the top and bottom

fold bottom seam up towards the top seam, nearly in half, but not quite. allow a few centimetres between the top seam and the bottom that you have folded up.


cut in a vertical direction from bottom to nearly the top, leaving the top seam intact though. the width of the strips is up to you. i cut mine about 1 to 1.5cm wide.


shake out the strips so they hang like a long fringe.


slide your hand or arm through the tube where the seam in intact at the top.


with scissors cut level with the seam diagonally from the far edge to the first cut.


continue cutting diagonally between each pair of cuts. in this way you create an endless strip.

at the last cut simply cut to the edge of the fabric.


gather the long strip into a ball.

is the wooden spoon mightier than the pen and the sword?

i spend an inordinate amount of time cooking. just as well i love it. at least most of the time.

our week's menu:
monday was homemade pesto that olympia made with penne and a good green salad.

tuesday was a really traditional shepherd's pie. comfort food. with buttered zuccini.

wednesday was homemade corned beef with potato fry up in oil and rosemary and garlic with salad.

thursday we had isabel and martin stay over on their way between melbourne and brisbane looking at an 80ft yacht in lavender bay. and i made a huge one-plate thai-style salad with cold chicken breast that had been poached in coconut milk, charred prawns, barbecue-cooked pumpkin and mango caramelised with palm sugar. various salad greens and herbs with a dressing of pish sauce, garlic palm sugar, lime juice and fresh kaffir lime leaves shredded through it all.

last night we had paula and paul (she of our permaculture consultation and the proposed development of bobo creek, and he of one of life's more memorably excellent dinners - he is a chef as well as an architect). despite the heat i had cooked (slow and long) an enormous amount of lamb shoulder with salt and rosemary and garlic, with lots of roast and steamed veg and mint in my own apple jelly. delicious. then our juicer served as a dispenser for frozen yogurt/boysenberries/frozen banana and very berry jam. wow!

saturday being a day off i have made 10kg of really lovely apple jelly and the beginning of a double batch of very berry jam.

how does your garden grow?

i'll keep posting pictures of my raised beds and we can keep track of the growth of various green things.


late tomatoes and assorted lettuce.


little beetroot and some tiny rocket leaves


the highest bed is full of little chilli seedlings that i managed to sprout during the heatwave.

sourdough english muffins

now, i really don't like what passes for muffins these days. overblown and tasteless cupcakes as far as i'm concerned. and i'm not a huge fan of proper muffins - of the english variety.
but.
homemade sourdough english-style muffins or griddle cakes as we think we'll call them are a different thing altogether. and hot of the griddle. with lashings of butter and our own jam? yep, now you're talking. and a cup of tea of course. they are also a great way to avoid having to toss out the excess sourdough starter each time you feed her.

so here's how.

take a cup of starter and feed it with 2 cups of flour (i use strong bakers flour) and a cup of water or milk. mix and leave out overnight.

next morning mix the dough down and add about half a cup of flour, some honey or sugar and about 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 and a half teaspoons of bicarb soda or baking powder. mix and form a soft, moist dough. knead for a few minutes and add more flour if it's too sticky. roll or press out to about 2cm in thickness.

cut with a biscuit or scone cutter into rounds. place each piece on parchment paper which has been sprinkled with semolina or corn meal. sprinkle more over the top of the muffins.

let these rest for 45 minutes or more.

warm a heavy griddle or frypan. not too hot.

place muffins without letting them touch each other.

cook for about 5 minutes on each side. they will puff up nicely and the sides should look less doughy by the time they are ready.

cool a little before you split them apart with the tines of a fork.


butter and i would suggest our lyrebird pear and vanilla jam. and a cup of irish breakfast tea.

making tortellini

those are the capable hands of 16 year old olympia who whipped up a batch of delicious tortellini with me for dinner the other night.


here's the recipe:
for the filling
finely chopped bacon, fried with finely chopped onion and mixed with pesto or herbs or spinach and lots of black pepper.

for the pasta dough
we used 500g strong flour and 5 large eggs.
heap the flour on the bench and make a well into which you break the eggs. mix in with a fork and scoop the whole lot together and knead well. you want a firm but smooth dough.

here's how
divide in four pieces and roughly form each into a sausage shape. pass each piece through a pasta machine on a wide setting and then again on a thinner one. you want past about a mm in thickness. we used the width of the strip to form our rather large square shapes.
wet around the edges of each square and put a teaspoon of the filling on each. fold corner to corner to form a triangle and press the dough around to hold the filling nicely. roll the fat edge over one turn and then grab all the pointy corners at either end of the roll and pull them to each other, pressing them together.
put them on some parchment sprinkled with flour.
boil plenty of water with some salt and pop in the tortellini. they need about 4 minutes.
i melted some butter nearly browned and tossed in some sage leaves to pour onto the drained tortellini. yummy.

jam making

pete and i have been busy on the jam front, building up stock. although the weather was unbearably hot we went to the flemington markets and bought chillis, capsicums, lemons, blood plums and peaches, and cooked all weekend.
here are some capsicums roasting for capsicum relish. our new favourite:

amazing birthday

i turned 49 on tuesday. yes, it's a shock to the system to even have to type in
those numbers. but i had a great birthday. pete and the girls and my parents pooled together and got me a glorious and sexy new computer. a macbook. newest edition. and an ipod. then michael who was up from melbourne and who is possibly one of the most awesome people in the entire universe, came for japanese dinner with us and paid for it too!
here she is: