I am interested in both growing and cooking food.

Growing food is primordial—civilisation started because nomads in the Fertile Crescent wanted to look after their cereal (precursors of wheat, rye and oats) crops so they could be assured of a steady supply of. . .beer!

That at least is an arguable proposition. The nomadic hunter–gatherer lifestyle in the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates would have been quite satisfactory. But once they realised barley etc could be used to make beer well, that was different! No wonder Iraq is littered with some of the oldest ruins and relics anywhere!

Gardening, using manure, compost and mulch—hey locking up carbon. Heritage fruit and vege varieties are just so much more robust and tasty than crappy hybrids. Chooks don’t just provide chicken manure you know—they also lay eggs! Eggs much tastier than any you can buy!

Cooking or brewing beer (same thing, pretty much) provides a lot more than “petrol for the body” as some sports coach twit once said. Great food you prepare nourishes the soul, brings families. communities together.

There is nothing more political than food!

These are fantastic! Bought Thai Red Curry Paste and a food processor mean the work to make them is pretty minimal. I bought a little deep fryer from Woolies, about $60, making the deep frying very safe. (I worked in Q branch when I was in the APS, the number of fires in married quarters from chip fryers was pretty high  no worries with this little fryer (thermostat goes up to 190°C, not hot enough for spring rolls but fine for most other foods.)

FISH CAKES WITH CUCUMBER RELISH
Great served cold!

300g of some sturdy fish: snapper or flathead etc, or deep sea bream if snapper etc too expensive
8 kaffir lime leaves (a kaffir lime leaf is the big and the little leaf)
2tbsp red curry paste
1 egg
2tbsp thai fish sauce
1tsp sugar
2tbsp tapioca or cornflour
1 tbsp chopped coriander leaves (cilantro)
60g finely sliced french or snake beans

For the cucumber relish (make this first to chill)
4 tbsp rice wine vinegar (or other white vinegar if you don't want to be authentic, slob!)
4 tbsp water to dissolve 1/4 cup granulated vinegar: thai is all sweet/sour)
1 head pickled garlick (from Chinese s/mart)
chunk fresh ginger root
1 cucumber cut into thin batons (sticks, moron!)
4 shallots (the little onion-y things. not scallions which you call spring onions)

Mix mix the vinegar (you just couldn't get the rice wine vinegar could you, loser?) water and sugar in a small pan on medium heat, stir until sugar dissolved THEN cool it, dummy! Not yourself, sheesh, the water-sugar-vinegar whatsit!
Get the head of garlick, separate the cloves and slice them finely. Add sliced shallots and cucumber batons, then add the vinegar-water-sugar thingy.
Put all that in the fridge.

Thinly slice (gotta be thin or these leaves will slice your oesophagus wide open!) 3 kaffir lime leaves
Put chunks of the fish, curry paste and egg into blender then blend! To a smooth paste
Put in a bowl and whack in the fish sauce, tapioca flour, sliced kaffir lime leaves and beans.
Mix well and shape mix into cakes 5cm across and not too thick, unlike your spotty selves!
Deep fry in batches (unless you have the world's biggest smacking deepfryer) in 190C oil. Takes about 4-5 minutes if you have oil temp right! Nice and brown. Drain on paper towels and keep hot!
Serve with the relish: you forgot about the cucumber relish, didn't you? Putz! And decorate with the other 5 kaffir lime leaves.

Too lazy to get kaffir lime leaves? (knew you were) Add a squeeze of lime or lemon juice to the fish etc.

St George of the Garden wrote on Nov 14^th, 2013 at 8:15am:


The relish sounds delicious and I'm going to make it. I always keep a bottle of rice wine vinegar in the fridge for sushi rolls, which I don't eat, but the family does.

I love pickles though and for my own use, I would probably cut the cucumber into fine slices rather than batons, although the batons would come in handy for the sushi rolls.

I don't have a deep frier, so would probably give the fish cakes a miss. Shallow frying would leave the fish cakes soggy. Maybe they could be baked instead?

Forgot to mention: the Wild Oz stall (Adelaide Central Market) finally had wild boar ribs! yeah!

Sunday the offset smoker will be fired up: feral pig ribs, feral camel fillet, feral goat backstrap! (NEVER buy farmed goat, feral goat is not “goaty.”)

That's an easy recipe Neferti. I'm going to try it this weekend. The recipe doesn't call for lightly precooking the pasty and apples separately which makes me wonder how the apples cook properly.

I'd like a glaze on the apples too - so maybe a sprinkle of brown sugar might help?

I'll experiment anyway and if I stuff up - I'll follow the recipe next time.

Those apples don’t look like cooking apples, mantra, unless they are Jonathons (look too small for that) so I suspect the recipe uses eating apples which cook much quicker.

St George of the Garden wrote on Nov 16^th, 2013 at 9:40am:


I'll try Neferti's galette recipe first. It uses Granny Smiths, but it looks lighter with a more simple recipe. I've got some gala's so I'll use those instead of the granny's.



1 (25 x 25cm) puff pastry sheet
2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, thinly sliced
2 tbs melted butter
2 tbs caster sugar
Honey, to serve

Preheat the oven to 180°C.


Cut four 12cm circles from the puff pastry. Place on a lightly buttered baking tray.


Place the apples, overlapping, on top of the pastry. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.


Bake for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden. To serve, drizzle with honey.

mantra wrote on Nov 16^th, 2013 at 9:51am:


Sorry Mantra, the pictures did look a little alike. The Galette is easier and I was surprised that puff pastry would turn out so crisp and crunchy with the apple topping. Nice hot and even cold as a snack.

The other recipe is good, too, but more of a cake.

I have been experimenting with French and Italian cooking so will post some of those main course recipes, eventually.  Unfortunately, I cannot eat highly spiced food but lots of garlic, etc is OK, just cannot handle curry or chilli, so you might like to try a few recipes that I have.  If you have any recipe to share, please do so.