the red kitchen

The good pizza

the good pizza, originally uploaded by kitschenette.

The pizza recipe from The River Cottage Family cookbook is excellent - I've made it every week since I got the book at Christmas. The recipe itself is simple, and I'm sure it's not so different to other pizza recipes, but, well, I'm particularly enamoured of this one at the moment. I think it's the teaspoon of sugar and no salt in the tomato sauce that does the trick. Last night I made this pizza and we had a pizza picnic in front of the telly watching this, complete with picnic blanket and paper napkins. The kiddies loved it.

Spinach-o-rama

I've had a request for the recipe for Max's favourite spinach, but I'm ashamed to say it ain't much of a recipe...I just chucked it together and it tasted good, so hooray!

I don't usually do much with spinach, except sometimes make spinach and feta filo parcels when I come across good filo pastry (hard to find here). I just assumed that the kiddies didn't like it. However, Max ate it for lunch at kindy a couple of weeks ago, and came home declaring that he liked spinach, and when could we have it for dinner?

So, here is the recipe for Max's Favourite Garlicky Buttery Lemony Spinach:

Spinach - thawed, if frozen; wilted and squeezed dry if fresh (I used frozen)
Butter
Milk
Clove of garlic
Lemon juice to taste
Salt and pepper
Sprinkle of nutmeg

How

- Melt a knob of butter in a saucepan. Toss in the spinach and stir to distribute the buttery goodness.
- Continue to cook over a medium heat, then add a little milk, to stop it drying up.
- Add the finely chopped or crushed clove of garlic, and keep stirring for a couple fo minutes to cook the garlic (raw garlic makes me nauseous).
- Add a squeeze or two of lemon juice to taste: the spinach should be buttery and garlicky with just a hint of lemon. Not only does the lemon taste good, the vitamin C in it also helps your body to absorb the iron from the spinach.
- Season well: VERY IMPORTANT. Even if you usually avoid adding salt to your child's food, this is one time when you need to throw that rule out the window if you want your kiddie to eat it. Unseasoned spinach is VERY BORING (even I think so). So, season and taste to your liking.
- Just before serving, add the nutmeg and another nobble of butter to get it all gleaming and rich and delicious.
- Note: don't cook too long - you want the spinach a lovely vivid green, not a limp greenish weedy mess. And, try not to have too much liquid, although you do want it to be moist, not dry. Somewhere in between is perfect. Some toasted pinenuts would be yummy sprinkled on top, too.

I hope this helps to spread the joy of spinach a little further around the world. Long live spinach!

Bulging bellies

My kids are such gobbly guts. Tonight they stuffed themselves so full at dinner time that later, when they had their bath together, they exclaimed and squealed over their bulging bellies. Even I was surprised.

I do love seeing my kids eat well. I feel a kind of motherly pride in nourishing my progeny. Tonight I roasted some chicken pieces in olive oil and lemon juice until crispy and crackling outside, tender and moist inside, then made a gravy* with the pan juicies. A creamy garlic mash and some plain steamed broccoli and raw carrots (my kids' favourite veges, on the table practically every night, boring but good) and we were ready, set, go! Very good. If only I had a glass of red wine to go with it. However, after Tuesday night, when I imbibed an unprecendented 2 glasses of red wine and suffered a subsequent hangover (pathetic! I'm such a cheap drunk) the entire next day, I am going easy on the booze.

Max and Lolly love a little lake of gravy in their mound of mash. The back of a spoon is used to make a deep hollow in the mash, and a spoonful of gravy is carefully deposited. Woe betide the careless gravy-giver who accidentally releases the flood!

Berry good

For dessert I had promised Max I would make some of his favourite berry sauce to eat with fresh fruit, but we were so stuffed full that I didn't bother. Max loves this sauce with a passion. When he spies a box of frozen berries (berries aren't readily available at the moment, it's the middle of winter, remember? frozen is good) his face lights up like a Christmas tree. Today at lunchtime he spotted the box of frozen raspberries in the fridge. He was so excited he took the box out of the fridge and put it next to him on the table while he ate, gazing lovingly at it the whole while.

I have no problems letting him eat berry sauce til it comes out of his ears, because really, it's hardly even a sauce. Really it's just sieved berries. I don't add sugar or anything else except maybe some fresh orange juice and zest when I making blackberry sauce. In fact, he prefers it sour. The one time I added some icing sugar he turned his nose up at it and said it tasted 'funny'. It's an excellent way to get kids to eat a whole lot of extremely nutritious berries. Last Sunday we had a friend over for dinner and I made raspberry sauce as well as custard to pour over fresh fruit. The sauce boats were licked clean. 1 kg of raspberries eaten in about 10 minutes.

Once you have a jar of berry sauce in your fridge it's amazing how useful it can be. The dessert possibilities are obvious - with icecream, with chocolate cake and ice-cream, with custard or panna cotta or creme brulee, maybe even a swirl in a meringue, trifle, fool etc etc. The fresh acidic sourness and slight sweetness of berries are the perfect foil for creams and custards.

Also consider a swirl in breakfast yoghurt and muesli, in smoothies or muffins, or simply with a ripe juicy mango and a sliced banana. Endless possibilities.

Tomorrow I will make Max a happy boy. We'll make raspberry sauce together and  make some yummy little thing for dessert.  More bulging bellies!

* isn't 'gravy' the most awful word? Conjures up an image of a congealed, thick, lumpy brown mess to me. Luckily our gravy tonight was none of the above. Except brown.

Soup kitchen

It's cold. We didn't get the snow the forecasters predicted, but it's certainly cold enough. But, the skies are clear and blue, so I'm happy. As long as it isn't cold AND grey I can cope.

Soup for dinner tonight - potato and leek, with cubes of day-old bread tossed in garlic oil and parmesan and roasted til crispy.

I love sauteeing leeks in lots of butter. I like to squish the pieces with the back of the wooden spoon until the inner circles slide and slither out into the buttery juices.

Cold outside, warm inside, and the house smells soupy good. A nice start to the weekend.

Toadfood

Happy happy joy joy....marinated tofu (or toadfood, as Max calls it) with egg noodles for dinner tonight.

Tried and Tested Kitchen: Corn Cakes

The Test Kitchen hasn't been too, errm, testy lately, so I thought I'd entertain you with some old favourites - Bill Granger's Corn Cakes (ok, so he calls them Sweetcorn Fritters). 

These are big favourites in the Kitschenette household. Quick and easy and delicious. Usually I roast some tomatoes in balsamic vinegar and olive oil to go with them, as the corn cakes soak up the vinegary juices fantastically. A splodge of a good mayonnaise (home-made or otherwise, maybe with some lime juice to sparkle it up) on the side, maybe some proscuitto or Bunderfleisch (raw dried meat, popular in Swissyland), slices of ripe avocado - gosh, what a great meal. Oh, and a bit of leafy greenery never goes astray, either.

At some stage I used to add some grated zucchini to the mix as well, but I found that it tended to make the fritters/cakes soggy and heavy. So now I do without it, and the result is much better, and lighter. Also, Bill specifies the addition of capsicum to the vege mix, but I DESPISE capsicum, so I skip it. They taste much better capsicum-free.

jam-ing; bean-ing; chocolate chipper-ing

still here. sorry the red kitchen has been a little quiet of late. i've been either too exhausted to post or had no time to post.

nonetheless, the kitschenette kitchen has been humming with activity. since bruno has been away i've been baking and jam-ming away almost every night! gotta keep busy so that the silence of the household (once the kiddies are asleep of course) doesn't deafen me.

in the last few days i've made double batches of the great chocolate chippers from a couple of weeks back, this time using chopped up dime bars (these were FANTASTIC, properly chewy and caramelly with half melted chocolate and toffee), banana cake, a double batch of zopf, and two batches of strawberry and vanilla jam. and a big pot of chilli beans (max's favourite meal, with rice and yoghurt) is currently simmering away nicely on the stovetop now. no pics, unfortunately, because bruno has taken the camera to milan with him. bummer.

the strawberry jam is really pretty, a beautiful glowing red. i first tasted strawberry and vanilla jam at a great little cafe in erskineville called bitton (i think it has now moved, gotten bigger and more famous) with my friend adamski. i bought a jar to take home and was delighted to find half a vanilla bean in the middle. if i remember correctly though, the jam itself was a little overcooked, brownish red rather than a bright fresh red. strawberries are in plentiful supply here at the moment, and quite cheap, so i bought a kilo and cooked them all up in sugar, with the juice of a lemon and a vanilla bean thrown in. the result was so wonderfully warm, and fragrant and delicious that i had to give a few jars away to share around the goodness. so i had to make another batch to replenish our sadly depleted jam stock (because we were in oz last summer i missed out on the last half of the jam-making season, when all the plums and blackberries are ripe). so, so good. max has declared it his new favourite jam (mr jam afficianado).

today is cold and gray, AGAIN. time for a pot of beans to warm the cockles of the heart. max will be happy to have his favourite meal, one that i KNOW he likes, after the disastrous lunch i made yesterday. reminder to self: cooked avocado tastes VILE. i know this, but i accidentally over-heated the simple pasta with avocado and tomato after i had tossed the green and red bits through. what is it about avocado that makes it taste so great raw and so disgusting when warmed? be warned!

lazybones

it's been hard to muster up much enthusiasm for cooking this past week. bruno was in basel all week, madly trying to get ready for this, so i was flying solo at home with the grommets 24/7. at the end of each day it was all i could do to flop down, exhausted, in front of the telly. and by friday, i was a wreck. no end in sight, though, for at least the next two weeks (wail!), until the damn exhibition is finished. i quake at the thought of what type of screeching harpy i will be by then....

sometimes i just wish there was some kind of decent take-away around here. i'm having a moment of oz-nostalgia, so indulge me a moment while i fondly recall the many excellent take-aways i enjoyed whilst living there....so cheap! so good! so....everywhere! i have vivid happy memories of the great japanese take-away in dolphin st in coogee, which we used to frequent at last twice a week (vegetarian udon with tofu, sesame glass noodles, miso soup, rice, sushi box...mmmm, all for under $20), as well as hapy chef in chinatown for awesome laksas, agadashi tofu, miso and rice at a sushi place in newtown that i can't remember the name of, even the ubiquitous chain of indian take-away places (there were a couple in newtown along king st, although i can't remember the name of those, either). oh! and fish and chips. how could i forget fish n chips? sitting on the steps at coogee beach scoffing fish n chips from chish n fips with our neighbours, sarah, sim and jasper (just a babe in a sling then), max on his trike and seagulls flying everywhere.

*sigh* ah, yes, those were the days when i didn't have to cook or prepare practically every single meal that is consumed by this family (with odd nights off when bruno cooks or we go to his parents place for dinner, or the occasional lunch or coffee out somewhere). some evenings i absolutely dread the thought of having to make a meal for all of us. me, i'd be happy with an apple and a cup of tea. bruno too. but since i have kiddies, i feel a pressure to provide something a little more nutritionally adequate. just my luck, my kids aren't keen on any of the fast-ish foods that are available to me here - baked beans (what kid doesn't like baked beans!), toast, sandwiches (even if i could cut the bread thinly and evenly enough - the sliced bread you get here is the long-life bomb-shelter version which i wouldn't touch with a barge pole), fresh ravioli etc etc. pasta usually always goes down well, but by the time you boil the water and then cook said pasta, it's hardly fast food. lola has usually had a melt-down on the floor by then.

so in my lethargic, exhausted state, i've lately been making up a gigantic pot of basic tomato sauce - onions, garlic, olive oil, sugo or tinned chopped tomatoes, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a spoon or so of sugar, whatever veges are in the fridge, some fresh or dried basil or oregano depending on what i've got around. sometimes i add some speck, or tuna, or a frozen cube or two of spinach, or capers, or red kidney beans. i've found that this sauce can be the basis for many a lazybones meal. how many meals you can stretch it out for depends entirely on how big yr pot of sauce is, and how willing yr family is to eat a tomato-based meal yet AGAIN.

some suggestions:

- basic sauce + pasta (varying shapes and sizes to fool family into thinking it is a different meal every time!) + parmesan etc. speck makes this a tastier pasta sauce.

- basic sauce + pasta sheets + cheesy white sauce = lasagna

- basic sauce + polenta (soft or grilled - for grilled, cook polenta according to instructions, brush a baking tray or the base of a springform cake tin - what i use - with oila nd smooth on the polenta. brush with olive oil and grill under high heat under golden brown and crispy. good finger food for older babies, too). add some blue or other soft cheese for grown-ups.

- basic sauce + pizza dough + sundry toppings + cheese = pizza! i make up a big double batch of pizza dough every once in a while, use some and freeze the rest. the dough is also excellent to have on hand for some quick breadsticks (roll in either fine semolina, finely grated cheese, or seeds of some sort). my kids love these breadsticks and love to eat them with a small pot of guacamole each for dipping. see below for recipe.

- basic sauce + pizza dough = calzones. roll out dough nto a rough circle, place a small amount of filling in the centre and fold over one side of the dough. seal by pressing the edges together and folding over again. bake until brown and risen nicely.

- basic sauce + red kidney beans + rice + natural yoghurt. both bruno and max love this. 

- basic sauce + stock + adjusted seasonings + good bread = quick vege soup

- basic sauce + browned chicken pieces (simmered for a long time, particularly good with a speck-y sauce) + pasta/rice = chicken stewy thing.

...and so on and so on.

it's kind of depressing for the taste-buds, and indeed there are many nights when i crave some more 'adult' foods, but at the moment i'm in no mood to hear 'is this all we're having for dinner?', or ' i don't like this', or 'can i just have an apple?' after i've slaved away making something 'interesting'.

yes, i want my kids to be exposed to lots of different tastes, textures, flavour sensations etc BUT i don't want to be getting up in the night to hungry kids who've eaten no dinner, or waking up to grumpy grommets who are STARVING and must have food NOW because they only picked at dinner last night. so i'm sticking to my 'safe' store of meals which i know will at least be tolerated, if not eaten.

some day in the future we will break free of the (albeit comforting) bonds of the tomato-based meal...we have to!

weekend eats

i know it's tuesday, almost wednesday, but here's some stuff we ate over the weekend:

a tarte tatin, courtesy of orangette via saucy. i have to admit it didn't turn out very aesthetically pleasing. my apple configuration was very haphazard, and the slices migrated around in the sticky caramel, but no matter. it tasted wonderful. with some thick oozing double cream from lac de la gruyere, not a flake of pastry nor a translucent piece of apple was left. i am going to try it again this friday evening, when we have some friends around for dinner. this time i want it to look perfect!

sunday kitchen sink dinner. asparagus, brie and smoked trout frittata. surprisingly good for a slapdash dinner. even the kiddies loved it - lola had 3 (small) slices! often kids like stronger tastes than grown-ups give them credit for, i find.

i also made some yummy fat buttermilk pancakes for brekkie on sunday morning (no time for pics, sorry, too busy stuffing my face). i am finding quite a few uses for the carton of buttermilk in my fridge left over from my last banana cake frenzy. we ate them with cream cheese (so evil, soooo good), a soft, rosy pink quince jam (rather than jelly) made by bruno's mother, and fresh strawberries. 

>>>

we've got a busy weekend ahead. friends for dinner on friday night (maybe vietnamese rice wraps?), easter brunch on sunday with bruno's family, and the usual trillion small meals and snacks in between. shops are closed over the holiday break so i will have to do some judicious shopping and planning - never my forte. i shall also be making a small mountain of zopf for all those we know and love - my poor arm muscles!!!

more cheese, please

the kitschenette household has just this last weekend consumed such vast quantities of cheese that it surely must be seeping from each and every pore by now (eeew). we've eaten:

- goats cheese, lemon and green olive tartlets

- an excellent totally cheesy fondue. we had the wonderful angus visiting us from nz, and also roman, who had finally returned from far-flung travels. we wanted to give angus a real swissy fondue experience. 

- berry cheesecakes

- boiled potatoes with various cheeses plus this weird schabziger butter stuff (a sort of cheesy herb butter which is particularly redolent of the cheesy stuff between a new born babe's toes after a few days without a bath : ) )

i think i'm all cheesed out.

cheesy crust: at the end of the fondue a deliciously cheesy crust will develop at the bottom of the caquelon. anyone left standing after so much cheese consumption gets the bonus prize of the cheesy crust.

berry cheesecakes