Wednesday, October 31, 2007

If dessert is a dilemma, pair a treat with coffee or sweet wine. Share your suggestions.

If dessert is a dilemma, pair a treat with coffee or sweet wine. Share your suggestions.

If dessert is a dilemma, pair a treat with coffee or sweet wine.

The aperitif hour enables us to review the day and anticipate dinner. But the sweet treat at the end of a meal - a biscuit or wafer with a sweeter-style wine - seems a vanishing pleasure.

I recall the children's poem, "Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse," but then memory fails me but for "visions of sugarplums danced" somewhere. Sugarplums sound luscious and exciting - when I found a US recipe (in an old issue of Saveur magazine), I had to try them. They need no cooking at all and are a perfect way to combine dried fruit with almonds.

From Spain come borrachuelos, feather-light, orange-scented fried wafers - dust them with icing sugar and cinnamon or pile them on a platter to crunch with a creamy dessert
In Florence, pastry shops carry a bewildering array of small, baked biscotti, each distinctively flavoured, some round, some cut as fingers, some in rings, some sweet and some savoury, some twice-cooked. The most famous biscotti of all - from the town of Prato, not far from Florence - are sold packaged in a rich, cobalt-blue paper bag and tied with blue string.

My recipe, from an Italian friend's mother, produces delectable biscotti. If you cannot face a dessert, have a small glass of vin santo ("holy wine") and a plate of biscotti di Prato for dunking.

Vin santo is made from grapes that are hung to dry for months, then crushed to yield a small amount of astonishingly intense juice that is aged in barrels before blending and bottling. Look for it at good local wine stores.

Posted by Monika Jansch at 4:09 PM | Comments 0

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Thank you for smoking

Thank you for smoking

I have always loved anything that's smoked - nuts, garlic, pork, beef, cheese and particularly seafood. Originally used as a way of preserving food, smoking remains a technique for adding flavour. And what fabulous flavours they are - dusky, complex and exciting. The tar-like substances from wood smoke are deposited on the food and the flavour penetrates. It's particularly useful for fatty foods as a resistant layer is formed, sealing it from the air and averting rancidity. The smoky flavour also cuts through the richness of fatty foods.

The discovery is likely to have resulted when meat or fish was hung over a fire to accelerate the drying process, with the pleasant flavour a lucky side effect. Smoking has been practised in many parts of the world and goes back as early as 3500BC. Smoking over an open fire is effective but better results are achieved by using an enclosed space to concentrate the smoke.

Fish can be cold-smoked (usually in temperatures not above 29 degrees Fahrenheit) or hot-smoked (temperatures can be well above 100 degrees) when the fish is partly or entirely cooked.

Many choices of wood are available (hard woods are best), with each lending a different flavour to what is being smoked. Jeremy and I use a small electric smoker for trout or kingfish. It's incredibly easy to use and allows great control. A simple smoking box filled with wood chips and sitting in an enclosed barbecue is another type of apparatus suitable for domestic use.

There's an easier way.

The Chinese are renowned for tea smoking and in some provinces it's an everyday feature of the diet. The method is very simple - all you need is a wok, cover, steaming rack, foil, rice, brown sugar and, of course, tea.

Posted by Monika Jansch at 11:16 AM | Comments 1

Spring is in the air - and so is the smell of freshly made pies for your hamper.

Spring is in the air - and so is the smell of freshly made pies for your hamper.

With spring well and truly here, I am motivated to spend more time outdoors. Not just staring at my newly replanted garden, which is very exciting after eight months of watching the old one wither or be trampled upon; not just enjoying the bright morning sky as I walk, relishing the scent of prunus, pittosporum and lemon-scented gum; but starting to plan picnics to parks and bushland. For some, it is the time of the year to consider packing a picnic to take to the race track.

Elizabeth David has a marvellous introduction to the chapter on picnics in her book, Summer Cooking. She describes unlikely picnics with butlers, footmen, fine china, silver, tables and tablecloths; and describes, by contrast, a time she and her friends had happily shopped at a French country market and had arrived at the picnic spot with salami, anchovies, olives and cheese to find their friends unloading firewood, potatoes, cutlets, skewers, and frying pans, and, later, ice-cream from a thermos.

David does approve of Edwardian picnic hampers, although admitting that "they do have an aura of lavish gallivantings and ancient Rolls Royces ... about them".

Picnics can be spontaneous decisions with little time for planning. My staples would then be hard-boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, bread and cheese, apples and maybe some chocolate.

Nothing drippy, or fragile, or greasy, or too difficult to carry in a day-pack. And all able to be eaten sitting on a log, without plates and without knives and forks. I would have to have a paper twist of sea salt for the eggs and tomatoes, though.

But one can plan a picnic and make special things.

Few people can resist homemade pies and here are recipes for three of my favourites. All are firm enough to travel well and substantial enough to form the focus of the picnic lunch.

Everyone has their own version of egg and bacon pie. I have to eat egg and bacon pie cold - I really do not like it hot or even warm.

Jamaican patties are ubiquitous at roadside stalls on the island, usually enjoyed with Red Stripe beer. The ones I remember from many years ago were served warm (mind you everything was warm; there was little refrigeration and the temperature was in the 30s). The highly coloured pastry was golden with turmeric and the beef filling was not just warm - it was very hot, with plenty of chopped Scotch Bonnet peppers. My version here is not so fierce.

Then I have a recipe for Malaysian-style chicken and coconut curry puffs. Another street-stall speciality, these little pies are best deep-fried and served warm, or certainly not refrigerated.

For picnics they can be baked and wrapped while still warm in a dry, clean cloth.

Substantial pies are good accompanied with appropriate pickles or chutneys and easy-to-eat, chunky salads.

Fennel slices are delicious, as are small carrots or washed radishes. One of the best combinations is a vaguely Greek-style salad, wedges of tomato with cucumber chunks, black olives, chopped capsicum, chopped spring onion and plenty of fresh parsley and basil.

Take an olive oil-and-vinegar dressing in a small screw-top jar. Or buy a really crunchy iceberg lettuce, cut out the core and soak it in water for 10 minutes then drain it well and carry it to the picnic in a sealed container and carefully peel off the leaves and wrap them around boiled asparagus.

Traditionalists will also pack a thermos of tea and a cake.

What are your picnic staples?

Posted by Monika Jansch at 11:09 AM | Comments 0