Holy flying airplanes, Batman!

I'm going to be away for a few weeks, traveling overseas to visit family. There won't be any posts while I'm away. I promise I'll catch up when I'm back.

Meanwhile, happy cooking and see in you can take in a banquet or two while I'm gone. :-)

What about you? Any plans to travel in the near future? What's your favorite holiday destination? Is it sunny? Is it by the beach or up in the mountains? Snow or surf?

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd

F-F-F-Friday - The Boy’s Role in Matching Wine with Dinner

I'd like you to give a big, wonderful, "hot as" welcome to my darling - The Boy!!!! He's very kindly agreed to take some time out of his busy schedule (I had to remind him!) to write a guest post for me. You've heard me talk about our dinner parties and the wine The Boy likes to serve with them. Here's his perspective on the proceedings.

A red? A white? No? Both!

When my ‘Girl’ is planning a dinner party for several couples or as part of her ‘Singles and Strays’ functions, I look forward to selecting what wines to drink and consider it both a privilege and a responsibility to make sure the wines match the people and food. My main challenge frankly is to provide a great drinking experience to compliment, but not over-shadow the eating experience. Personally this is harder than it should be for me because my love for great wine and ability to enjoy wine on its own (“make sure the food does not get in the way, or forget the damn food”) tends to always push me in the direction of selecting great wines regardless of the food and situation. Therefore, I need to take a subordinate position to make sure the food is the featured part of dinner, not the wine.

The Boy in his cellar ... aka The Man Cave

We usually try to firm up the menu and guest list 2 – 3 days ahead of time to ensure the wines are accessible and properly prepared. I keep about 150 bottles of wine in our apartment, but a larger and more diverse cellar exists in at Wine-Ark about 15 minutes away, and often requires a trip to achieve the ideal line-up. To come up with the wine list for the evening, I answer a few important questions, including:

• How many courses will we have and how many people? (usually 6 – 8 people and 3 – 4 courses, and possibly 5 – 6 dishes)
• What is the general food theme for the evening and what are the particular dishes?
• How mature is the wine palate of the people attending?
• What events and other dinners are the guests (and us) involved in the night before or after? (Should this evening be the week’s highlight or more subdued?)

Regardless of the theme and specific courses, I try to follow a simple formula as follows:

• Start with a wine upon arrival (may be on its own while we stand and chat or served with a tapa or two). This is usually a sparkling wine, moscato, or a more exotic blend (such as a shiraz / semillon spritzed wine)
• Have a white (if it matches) or lighter red with entrees
• Based on the main course, several bottles of red wine and possibly a white
• With desert, finishing off the reds and providing an assortment of desert wines, usually including a sweet white desert wine, and an assortment of ports, muscats and other liqueurs

In general, I try to serve as many different wines as the size of the crowd will allow, never serving more than one bottle of the same wine. I also try to provide a diverse set of wines to ensure there is something that everyone will like and to provide variety for those who like a lot of different wine.

I also try to have a line-up which allows comparison of styles, vintages, regional differences, and price range for people to learn a little and appreciate the many different wines available to them. (The purpose of the dinner party is to enjoy the people, the food and the wine – not critique, compare or judge the wine: for that, every three months or so, we have a larger group of people and wines as a wine tasting where the wine is the dominant theme and the food is secondary). I also always only serve wine from my own cellar so as to have some history and a story to tell for each wine. When guests bring wine as they often do, I put it away for personal consumption later or to serve up at a future dinner. Often, the bottles that guest bring need to be cellared for at least several more years before hitting the proper drinking age. And finally, I try to always find a wine which ‘surprises’ or is quite a unique experience. This may be a $15 bottle of wine which drinks like a $50 bottle of wine, or an alternative grape such as a durif, tannat, or malbec.

I do my best to provide stand-out wines, but it is always with the intent of complimenting, not over-shadowing my Girl’s great food.

Wasn't that a wonderful post? I'm so glad The Boy took the time to write this up. I had an idea that he put a lot of thought into selecting the wines for the night, but I really had no real idea until he articulated it like this. Thank you, darling. You're welcome back anytime. 

On another note, The Boy is going to be starting up his very own wine blog very soon. I'll keep you posted and provide a link when it's up and running.

Now on to you ... do you like a glass of wine or something else with dinner? What do you serve for your dinner parties? Do you plan ahead what drinks will be available for your guests to drink? Do you have any favorites yourself?

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd

Lamb cutlets and salad ... a very simple dinner

I can't believe that it's Wednesday again! I'm working on a schedule of posting Sunday / Monday, Wednesday, Friday - which gives me 3 posts and week and I have to admit, it feels very frequent. Not only have I just posted and I turn around, it's time to post again. :-) Where does all the time go?

I recently did one of those simple dinners that did not require much thought or effort at all.

I looked around in the freezer and found a lovely four-pack of some lamb cutlets that were already marinated in a rosemary sauce. I took it out of the freezer (but I had to dig to the bottom of the shelf for it - that's where the effort came from!! LOL) and defrosted it early on in the afternoon.

The meal for the night? Pan fried lamb cutlets and side salad.

When it came time to eat, I heated up a saucepan and tossed in some olive oil. Put the lamb into the pan and let it cook. I also sprinkled some salt and pepper onto the lamb for some added seasoning, because I just roll like that.

While the lamb was cooking (I did turn it over a few times so it didn't burn) I pulled out a four lettuce salad leaf mix that I got from the grocery store and tossed it with some light Caesar dressing. That's all I did with the green stuff. Added some flavor but kept it simple.

After the salad was done, I stuck a meat thermometer into the cooking lamb cutlets and watched it until it got to about 68 degrees C and took the lamb off the heat.

Then, it was on the plate with some of the salad and mint sauce on the side, and it was ready to eat.

As simple as this meal was, I learned a few things that might have made it a little better.

• I should have used a square grill pan so that the juices (and fat) did not collect at the bottom of the pan and the meat did not sit in it. Plus, you get those lovely charred lines across the meat that look wonderful. Cooking it this way though, I can only turn the meat once because I do not want to end up with funky criss-crossed lines across the meat.
• I should have taken the meat off the heat at about 62 degrees C and let it rest for about 5 minutes before serving it. Yes, even for such a small piece of meat as the lamb cutlet. It was a little stringy when I cut into it, from the meat still being too tight from cooking.

We accompanied the meal with a 1995 Yarra Yerring Dry Red Number 1, which was a superb wine. It went beautifully with the lamb.

What do you do when you want a simple meal that you cook up at home in a hurry? Do you cook or do you order take out? What's your favorite quick cook meal? Do share. 



© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd

Video updates

We interrupt the regularly scheduled program with this update ... :-)

I've just updated two older posts with videos - one to show how to make the recipe and the other just for fun.

Caramel ice cream

Cooking for Blokes

As other videos come along, I will continue to update posts with them and let you know when I've done it. 

I hope you enjoy the videos and find them helpful.

What about you? Watch any good videos lately? Movies? TV? 



© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd
 

I cook for you ... and it's cauliflower soup

Sometimes it helps to stop and smell the roses, or in my case, to be grateful and thankful for the blessings in my life. I'll try not to wax on about it but I'm really grateful to The Boy when it comes to my cooking.

When I first got the idea that I wanted to learn how to cook (better), The Boy was supremely supportive. He did not quibble over the cost of the course or the time it took me away from him. In fact, he did not quibble at all. He just encouraged me to go ahead and do it.

Once I started the classes, he was all for me cooking food that he could match wines with. Then, when I decided to start cooking for the boys on a regular basis, he jumped right in and got excited about matching food with wines. He would regularly ask me what I'm cooking to see what wines he could pull out of the cellar for the meal.

He's been a great supporter too, telling friends and colleagues alike about my cooking (maybe a little too enthusiastic, since he told some people whom I didn't want knowing about the cooking ... ah well ...). He's also been generous with his praises and providing constructive feedback about what worked and what didn't. That said, he's super easy to please and to feed, so there hasn't been much negative feedback at all.

On top of that, he's also scouting out cooking supply stores, cookbook aisles in bookstores, hanging around patiently while I browse down aisles and aisles of cooking gadgets, gizmos, books and such.

So yeah, I'm dedicating an entire post to waxing lyrical over how wonderful The Boy is, but really, he deserves it. :-) I cook for you ...

Here's a RECIPE for a soup that I made for The Boy the other day. It's truffle cauliflower soup. The Boy was waxing lyrical over the soup. He called it "the best soup in the world" to which I demurred on the title, after which he claimed "the best cauliflower soup in the world". I don't think it's quite that level of greatness but it pleases me no end that The Boy is enthusiastic about my food.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole cauliflower, cut into pieces
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• Olive oil
• 4 cups chicken stock (or vegetable stock, if you prefer)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Truffle oil
• Parsley, finely chopped

Instructions:

• Heat some olive oil in a large pot
• Put in onions to sautee, after a few minutes add garlic and continue to sautee until onions are translucent
• Add cauliflower and sautee for a few minutes until slightly cooked
• Cover pot with lid and cook cauliflower for 5 or some minutes, until onions brown slightly
• Pour in stock and bring to boil
• Reduce heat to simmer, cover and simmer for 30 - 40 minutes
• Turn off heat
• Either in a food processor (let the soup cool a little if you are doing it this way) or with a stick blender, blitz the soup until it is a thick creamy consistency and there are no more chunks of cauliflower or onion
• Return to heat and add salt and pepper to taste
• Heat through and serve into bowls
• Drizzle a swirl of truffle oil into the centre of the bowl and sprinkle with parsley to garnish
• Serve and enjoy

This is about the size for cutting the cauliflower into

The soup turned out very tasty and quite rich. The cauliflower really came into it's own, particularly since it was a super fresh cauliflower that I bought at a farmer stall. I think the cauliflower came out of the garden patch that morning. Here's a few things to note:

This is about the size the onion should be chopped into

• I was generous with the garlic when I said 4 cloves and that's because I like garlic - a lot! If you're not so keen on garlic, use less. However, I do think that the garlic added a lot of depth to the flavor, and the soup did not taste garlicky at all.
• I was also extremely generous with the pepper so that there was a lot of heat from the pepper coming through. If you don't like the heat or having it too peppery, ease back on the pepper.
• I used white finely ground pepper instead of black and instead of grinding it myself into the pot to season as I wanted to maintain that lovely, creamy texture of the soup without having black, flecky bits of pepper floating around in the soup. That's purely for aesthetics purposes only, so if you prefer freshly cracked pepper, go for it.
• And finally, I prefer chicken stock to vegetable stock for the soup base - always do. I think that the chicken stock adds a depth to the flavor that you don't get from vegetable stock, so if you're not vegetarian, go with the chicken stock. If you are using a vegetable stock, try adding a vegetable stock booster. That will help with the flavor.

The Boy, barbarian that he is, crushed up some crackers into the soup. Sometimes, he can be so American!

What about you? Is there anyone in your life that you're especially grateful for, for whatever reason? Anyone who'd cause you to wax lyrical over? or just want to acknowledge because of the impact they have in your life? Have you said "thank you" or "I love you" lately to that special person? 



© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd

F-F-F-Friday - Edible flowers

Welcome to the first of my guests posts for the F-F-F-Friday feature. I'm so excited about having a guest blogger here today and I hope it's the start of many others to come.

I want to say a BIG thank you to Heike Hagenguth, who has so kindly agreed to guest on the blog today. Heike is here to tell us about Edible Flowers. So without any further ado, I'm going to let you hear from Heike ...

Bouquet of Edible Flowers by Heike Hagenguth

The art of creating culinary sensations from fragrant flowers and aromatic herbs has always been a special highlight of many oriental cuisines. In some Asian countries flowers not only play a decorative part in food presentation, but also enrich recipes with their flavors and seasoning characters. In Europe, cooking with flowers was popular until the Middle Ages but was then slowly forgotten when new spices and flavors arrived from the Orient.

Nowadays chefs inspired by Asian cuisine and its decorative food presentation have revived this beautiful and extraordinary style of cooking, making use of the richness and variety of flowers and herbs growing throughout the four seasons, like Mulberry, Chives, Wine, Roses, Zucchini, Basil, Gladiolus, Cress, Carnation, Pumpkin, Lavender, Marjoram, Sunflower, Chrysanthemum, Oregano, Dahlia, Mint, Cranes Bill and many more. The aromas of these flowers vary in a wide range from nut-like to sweet, which can lead to interesting combinations of flavors in the food.

When you integrate flowers in your cooking it is very important to only use flowers that have not been treated with pesticides. As most of flowers are grown for decoration purposes, it might take some time to find a vegetable vendor or flower producer who is able to deliver seasonal flowers that didn't undergo chemical treatment. Never use flowers from the local flower shop, but look for a reliable source to ensure high quality. One should be aware that some persons could be allergic to certain flowers and should be prepared to inform guests about all the ingredients in the dish. Most of the edible flowers have a positive digestive and health effect. Especially those with yellow, red and orange petals work as antioxidants fighting free radicals because of their colour-giving substances. Yet the quantities of these substances are so small that the flowers cannot be considered as anti-cancer foods.

From appetizer to dessert a whole menu can be created with flowers: iced petals and buds can be used for decorating elegant wedding cakes, while ice cubes with frozen petals, small buds or leaves inside add a Mediterranean touch to cool summer drinks. Sugar can be scented with roses or mint to add a special flavor to beverages and pastries. Rose butter and dips with flowers not only delight the eye but also refine the taste to a fragrant gourmet experience. Salads with petals are colorful and offer a new experience as the fragrance of the petals mixes with the aroma of the different ingredients and the vinegar. Fried Zucchini and Mulberry flowers are not only decorative on every buffet but are also a crispy delicacy and can be served with other appetizers. And a swimming rose in a glass of Sharbat makes a marriage proposal even more special.

Flowers aromatize vinegar, oil, juices, wine and water. They can be used as an ingredient to sauces, soups and creams to enhance almost any food. Chopped, they can be added to vinaigrette and spreads. Chopped and mixed with oil, some flowers release their pigments and can be used to color foods e.g., rice or pastries, instead of the more expensive saffron. Some essences like rose water, lavender water or tulip essences can be bought ready-made. Always check the label to see if the ingredients are all natural, or if artificial flavors and colors were added.

Edible flowers have a delicate texture and a fine scent. In order to maintain this quality and keep the appearance of the petals, flowers are best kept in the refrigerator and only prepared and added to the food prior to serving. When using the petals only, they are best plucked directly before use. Whole buds can be kept fresh in a bowl of water. Before use, the pedicel and all green sepals must be removed. Stamen and pistil taste bitter in some flowers; therefore it is always better to remove them as well. Shaking the flowers carefully upside-down removes hidden insects. Flowers can also be washed in cold water to clean them. A short shower with boiling water enhances the taste of bitter-herb flowers like Chrysanthemum.

Here are some RECIPES for various edible flowers:

RECIPE for Rose Butter

Ingredients:

• 8 tsp of clean, chopped rose petals
• 250 g Soft butter

Instructions:

• Mix and stir thoroughly.
• Cover and keep at room temperature for some hours, then fill into an air tight container; keep in the fridge for another two days before use.

Note: Can be used for cakes or as a spread on white bread. Good for two weeks.

RECIPE for Iced Flowers

Ingredients:

• 1 Egg white
• 100 g Fine sugar
• Buds of flowers, e.g. roses, jasmine, violets

Instructions:

• Stir egg white, use a brush with natural hair to cover flowers with a thin layer of egg white, sprinkle flowers with sugar and shake carefully to remove extra quantities.
• Dry for 2-3 days on a grill in the warm kitchen, then store in an air-tight container.
• Separate layers with wax paper.

Note: Can be used for decoration of cakes and desserts.

RECIPE for Flower Ice Cubes

Ingredients:

• Traditional ice cube tray
• Water
• Small flower buds, petals, leaves

Instructions:

• Put one piece into each space on the ice cube tray.
• Deep freeze and serve with cold beverages.

RECIPE for Cress Salad

Ingredients for salad:

• 50 g Radicchio
• ½ Frisée Salad
• Nasturtium (cress) leaves and flowers
• 8 Chopped mushrooms
• 20 g Pine seeds

Ingredients for marinade:

• 2 tsp Balsamic Vinegar
• 2 tsp Olive Oil
• 1 Dash Maple Syrup
• Salt
• Pepper

Instructions:

• Wash and mix radicchio, frisée, cress leaves and flowers, and mushrooms.
• Roast pine seeds and spread over the salad.
• Mix the marinade thoroughly and spread.
• Decorate with a large Nasturtium flower.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this post as much as I have. For those of you who are interested in finding out more about edible flowers, Heike has also provided us with some reading resources.

Please join me in thanking Heike for visiting with us today.

Also, I am always looking for contributors to the blog. Anyone interested in guest blogging for me, do leave a comment with your email address and I'll follow up with you. The topics are very open and it does not necessarily have to be about cooking or food. I would welcome your contributions.

Further Reading:
Edible Flowers - From Garden to Palate, by Cathy Wilkinson Barash
The Edible Flower Garden, by Rosalind Creasy
Edible Flowers - A Kitchen Companion With Recipes, by Kitty Morse
Edible Flowers - Desserts and Drinks, by Cathy Wilkinson Barash
Edible Flowers, by Cathy Brown



© This work is copyrighted to Heike Hagenguth, Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd