Fish Patties

I take it back, quinoa does not agree with me as much as I thought it did. I think I've been off grains and grain-like things long enough to really feel them if I indulge. Although it did give me the perfect opportunity to use the word "borborygmi", for which much can be forgiven. Might try that recipe with riced cauliflower for me next time instead.

Lunch today was fish patties. I had Mackerel and Sweet Potato Patties on the menu plan, except the elder daughter has an aversion to sweet potato. Also that recipe involves steaming the sweet potato first and my steamer saucepans were both occupied (ie. waiting to be washed up). So I went for my other recipe, which is one of the "Stick everything in the food processor and whizz" ilk and thus required me to do the extra washing up afterwards rather than before. This recipe works with pretty much any vege which you can grate or shred into it and is therefore a useful bottom-of-the-vege-crisper day staple.

2 onions, quartered
1 carrot, grated
2 large cauliflower florets
broccoli stem, grated
handful of cabbage
1 tin mackerel in oil, drained
1 tin sardines in oil, drained
3-4 tbsp quick oats
3-4 tbsp ground almonds (or use all almonds)
2 eggs

Chop all the veges finely then add the rest of the ingredients. Splodge dessert spoonfuls of mix into patties. I cook mine in my large sandwich press, which is pretty much the only use said sandwich press gets now we don't eat bread. This quantity made 20 small patties, of which the five of us polished off 14, served with a big salad. Be warned it will probably stink out the kitchen while cooking; at least it did according to my elder daughter, who pointedly wandered in and out holding her nose.

Bibimbap

Or, Korean mixed rice with assorted vegetables and meat. New recipe tried on the guinea pigs family today for lunch - or in my case breakfast, since I've gone back to intermittent fasting until 12pm - and was a great hit with the four out of five of us who tried it. (For those keeping score at home, we have lost a housemate since the beginning of the year, but temporarily scored a teenager home for the holidays). This is one of those handy recipes served buffet-style, which in a house with kids is known as “Look, just eat the stuff you like and don't whinge about the stuff you don't, okay?”. At this time of year, it also usefully fits under “add extra protein to things by breaking a few eggs in somewhere”. Although I currently have two mums off the lay and a broody hen sitting on most of the output of the rest of the flock, so I'm having to *gasp* buy eggs occasionally. And it was handy because I had leftover rice from last night so didn't have to cook any.

I originally heard about this on a blog somewhere and noted down the name, then forgot where I'd seen the original. So this morning I googled for recipes and read about half a dozen to get the general idea, then put something together to fit what I had in the fridge and what I know my family eats. I gather this is one of those highly-customisable recipes where this is the general procedure in any case.

Meat

coconut oil

1 small onion, finely diced

250g mince

grated zucchini (yes, I have a lot of zucchini to use up)

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

slosh in a bit of fish sauce and soy sauce near the end, to taste

Vegetables

½ carrot, grated

½ red capsicum, thinly sliced

raw cabbage, shredded

cucumber, thinly sliced

more shredded cabbage, sauteed in coconut oil and a bit more fish sauce 

Or whatever you happen to have in the fridge. My kids like raw veg more than cooked so that's what I put out, but feel free to steam or saute anything if you prefer.

leftover rice, reheated

4 runny fried eggs

chopped peanuts (this didn't occur in any of the recipes I read but appears to be an indispensable accompaniment to any Eastern-inspired mince-and-salad combo as far as my family is concerned)

sweet chilli sauce (ditto)

The cooking of the mince I imagine is fairly obvious. Prepare the veges while the meat is doing its thing, then the assemblage is basically thus: put everything on table, serve yourself whatever you like into a bowl, put a fried egg on top, and gleefully mix it all up into a moosh. Except nobody had done the washing up this morning so there were no bowls, but it worked almost as well with plates. Which were almost licked clean. Will definitely make again.

Odds and Sods Muffins

These are adapted from a recipe by Alison Holst, which is my go-to recipe for sweet muffins. We make porridge for breakfast a couple of times a week,and the kids randomly eat or leave it depending on the phase of the moon, so there are always leftovers. Which is not a big deal, it's a few cents worth of ingredients and the pigs are always happy to take care of leftovers, but as of Wednesday this week we won't have pigs and anyway I don't like waste even if it is waste which is eventually recycled into bacon. Sometimes Dylan puts leftover porridge in bread, so I tried incorporating it into muffins. You can't tell it's there at all, but it makes them lovely and moist.

Ingredients:
1 quantity leftover porridge (can be anything up to about 1.5 cups)
2c plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2/3 cups brown sugar, sifted if you can be arsed
1 tsp cinnamon
currants (I add more or less depending on how much porridge there is)
choc chips (optional but OMG)
3/4 cup liquid
75mL bland-tasting oil
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence (optional)

Drain the porridge. Combine dry ingredients and stir well, then stir the porridge into it and break up any lumps. Whisk up the liquid ingredients, stir through the dry ingredients as briefly as possible, and lop into muffin trays and bake. My oven, which is non-fan forced and thus deeply idiosyncratic, cooks these best at around 200C provided I remember to swap shelves halfway so the bottoms don't burn, but if yours is fan-forced try 180C instead.

Without the choc chips these are really yummy with jam and butter or cream, like scones.

Chickpea, Tofu and Walnut Burgers

2 onions, quartered

6 mushrooms

1 tub of firm tofu

1 tbsp paprika

2 cans chickpeas OR 2 ½ cups cooked chickpeas

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 eggs

~1 cup wheatgerm

125g walnut crumbs

In a food processor, roughly chop the onions and mushrooms. Add tofu, paprika, chickpeas, Worcestershire sauce and process. Add the eggs and about half the wheatgerm with the engine running, and process until mixture has come together, but stop before it turns into a smooth paste. Scrape the mixture into a bowl, and stir in the walnut crumbs and enough of the wheatgerm to make the mixture thick but not dry. Cook for about eight minutes each side, or until brown.

I made ours in our two sandwich presses and they were perfect, holding together really well but still moist and flavourful inside. This might be a good one to feed to the kids' friends or family members who are a bit dubious about meatless cooking – with the paprika tinting it pink it looks remarkably like a real meat burger and the mushroom gives it a bit of a meaty texture. Everyone in our house devoured it, including Mr I-Don't-Liiiike-That, who had seconds (hence why the first thing I did after finishing my dinner was to write down this recipe so I can reproduce it!). 

I suspect that this recipe could be made vegan fairly easily, possibly with the addition of some soy flour. It's the tofu which makes the vegetarian versions stick together, since if I make it with just the eggs they fall apart. 

Hey ho, another change

This blog has become pretty erratic. I blame the acquisition of a life. This cottage farming bizzo dramatically lessens the allotment of sitting-on-arse-blogging time, who knew?

Anyway, latest news on the farm front is that we have a house cow. The two pigs we acquired a couple of months ago are not immediately contributing to the food supply, but the cow is another matter! So in the immediate future, this blog will probably move towards chronicling my attempt to find more lower-carb vegetarian dairy recipes. Lower-carb meaning not containing pasta, potatoes, rice or flour, which is a big ask in itself, and vegetarian because the point is to replace other sources of protein with our own produce. Meeting both of these requirements is actually quite tricky, especially since it will be a while until we can start incorporating any cheeses which require ageing. But since we can now provide pretty much all of our own yoghurt, butter, cream, sour cream and milk as well as paneer, haloumi, mozzarella and ricotta, there are still quite a few options out there. I just need to find them (and remember to write them down here).

Housemate Dylan is the dairy queen, so I'm not going to be sharing much of the actual basic recipes for any of the above, more what I then do with them. And hopefully, it will be really cool to watch this blog become more of a chronicle of how much of our own produce we can live off, as the garden becomes more productive and we add more animals. I, for one, am really really looking forward to the day when our Saturday morning ritual of Eggs Benedict is made with our own butter, eggs and ham!

Hunza Pie

Tonight's dinner was so magnificent I have to write down the particular variation on the recipe so I can hopefully recreate it. Hunza Pie is one of my mother's old standbys, and one of my favourite winter comfort foods. I've seen a number of variations using potatoes in the filling or pastry above or below, but my mother's was always a quiche-like combination of brown rice, silverbeet, cheese and eggs in a pastry shell, topped with sliced tomatoes and more grated cheese. Nom.

Today's effort at recreating it achieved an amazing flavour by gently cooking down the shredded silverbeet in melted butter and olive oil, together with onion and garlic, and with a slug of balsamic vinegar added. The pastry was dead easy, done in the food processor and crisp despite not bothering with blind-baking - in fact, if you have a food processor you can do a lot of the prep in it and save washing up. I served the pie with baked potatoes for a perfect winter meal.


Hunza Pie

1c uncooked brown rice
1c wholemeal plain flour
3/4c plain flour
125g butter, chilled and diced
3-4 tbsp cold water
1 bunch silverbeet
3-4 small onions
2-3 cloves garlic, finely diced
~1tbsp butter
~1-2 tsp olive oil
~1-2 tsp balsamic vinegar
~1 tsp oregano
freshly ground black pepper
4 eggs
~1c grated cheese
2 tomatoes, sliced

Cook the rice in two cups of water in a covered saucepan. While it's burbling gently away, put the flours and butter in the food processor and pulse until it looks like breadcrumbs. With motor running, add tablespoons of water down the tube until the pastry comes together. Give it to your daughter so she can roll it into a ball and stash it in the freezer to cool (you can stick it in the fridge, but we don't have one, hence the freezer).

After the pastry has rested a bit, flour a work surface and roll it out to fit a large deep pie dish*. Meanwhile, ask your offspring to rip up the silverbeet and cram it into the food processor. Add a couple of roughly chopped onions, and whizz briefly (don't pulverise it). Melt a hunk o' butter (depending on how nervous you feel about the amount of butter in the pastry) in a big frypan, and add enough olive oil to stop it from burning. Gently fry the garlic for a minute or two, then add the silverbeet and onion and cook til the silverbeet reduces a bit. Slosh in some balsamic vinegar and add the oregano and pepper. When the silverbeet is starting to darken and wilt, add the rice and stir to combine, then quickly toss through half of the cheese and turn into the pastry case. Whizz up the eggs in the food processor and pour over, then top the pie with tomato slices and the rest of the cheese. Cook for around 35-45 minutes.

 * Mine was 25cms across and 4cms deep - if yours is smaller reduce the amount of filling, and you'll have some leftovers from the pastry unless you reserve a third of it for topping the pie, as in the original recipe I adapted this from.

The Couldn't Be Arseds

I had an attack tonight. I think it's the first one since we got here, and given how much I've been cooking, it was probably overdue. And we ate all the leftovers for lunch, and I've stopped buying Things In Jars for these moments, so there was only one solution: breakfast for dinner!

Since we don't have a microwave down here, it resulted in a lot of washing up, but it was very delicious. We had scrambled eggs (just eggs scrambled in butter, since I had no cream), fried onion rings, fried tomatoes, a scattering of bacon pieces, and baked beans, on toast. And now that we've digested a while, Mr Bat is making pancakes (the big fat fluffy American hotcakes), to be served with maple syrup or lemon juice and sugar. Nom.

What do you do if you're having an attack of the Couldn't Be Arseds? Does someone else cook, or do you have simple standbys?

Mama Zabetta's Spicy Greens

This recipe is from Witch in the Kitchen: magical cooking for all seasons by Cait Johnson, which I only just bought and thus is not on my potential cull pile, but I figured I hadn't made a recipe from it yet so I should probably blog one anyway. The cookbook is divided into sections for each of the eight major pagan festivals and contains lots of other suggestions for crafts and rituals as well as seasonally-inspired recipes. I love it and foresee it getting a lot of use!

My menu plan for the week had vegetable fritters down for one night, so I moved it to Monday night, since I do the fruit and vege shopping on the weekend, and added the stir-fried greens recipe as a side. I made brown rice and corn fritters, which my kids devoured as though they hadn't been fed for a week, but the stir-fried greens weren't as much of a hit with them (although we adults ate the lot). The two smaller ones insisted on cutting up the silverbeet for me, which meant that Miss K at least tried "her" greens and seemed to like them, but she didn't touch the other vegetables. I thought they were very yummy indeed, and it's definitely my kind of recipe, since it contains lots of "add whatever you like here" and "chuck in another slosh of this until it looks right". And half the fun of this book is in the author's editorialising throughout the recipes, which I'm leaving out for brevity. But here are the bones of the dish.

Mama Zabetta's Spicy Stir-fried Greens with Nuts and Seeds



Ingredients
2-3 tbsp olive oil
Onions, chopped
Garlic cloves, chopped
Dried mustard (I didn't have any)
Chilli or pepper flakes
Assorted slower cooking vegetables: I had zucchini, celery and green capsicum
Shoyu or tamari (I had mushroom soy sauce)
Dry red wine (optional)
Assorted faster cooking vegetables: I had silverbeet (swiss chard)
Toasted sesame seeds or sunflower seeds
Cashew, pecan or almond pieces
Toasted sesame oil (I didn't have any)
Fresh parsley, chopped (I had coriander)

Heat some oil in a large frying pan or wok. Add the onions, garlic, chilli or pepper flakes and dried mustard. Stir occasionally til onion is golden and tender. Chop your slower cooking vegetables, and add with a slug of soy sauce and red wine (if using). Stir and add olive oil occasionally. [I added about a tablespoon of honey as well]. When everything is just crisp-tender, add the faster cooking vegetables and continue to cook for just another couple of minutes, until the greens are just wilted.

Add a handful or so of toasted sesame seeds or sunflower seeds and either cashew, pecan or almond pieces [I dry-fried a saucerful of sunflower seeds, slivered almonds and pine nuts, and served separately at the table]. Drizzle with toasted sesame oil and serve topped with chopped fresh parsley [or coriander, if you remember, which I didn't] over a bed of your favourite cooked grain.



I served it as a side to my rice fritters, which are the easiest thing in the world to make and somehow turn brown rice into a magnificent dish which Ms I Hate Brown Rice, Actually will devour. You can add tuna for a non-vego audience and they are even better. I served them with a dollop of sour cream and some sweet chilli sauce on top, but Ms B insisted on eating them with tartare sauce like she used to when she ate the tuna patties, and they were still yummy.

1 cup brown rice, cooked and cooled slightly
1 cup corn kernels
1 cup grated cheese
salt and pepper
2 eggs
1-2 tbsp flour to bind

Combine. Drop tablespoonfuls into a frying pan over medium heat and flatten. Turn them over when they're cooked on one side, then stick them on a plate in the oven to keep warm while you fry the rest. Try and secure some for your own plate before your offspring devour them all and then fight over the crumbs.

Gado Gado

This is another one from The Vegetarian Gourmet. It was kind of a cheat, since I've made it before, but by the time I'd discarded four other cookbooks because I didn't have the ingredients or hadn't left myself enough time, it was this or just flinging something together, and I didn't want to fall in a heap on the second day of my challenge!

Gado Gado is a very useful "bottom of the vege crisper" recipe, since you just pull out any vegetables you've got and whack peanut sauce on them. Mmm, peanut sauce... I added noodles to the suggested list of foods to serve, and cooked up enough hard boiled eggs for everyone to have one (or, in the case of the kids, two). I'll give the recipe for peanut sauce as written, because I actually followed it with only one substitution due to missing ingredients, but just tell you what veges we had instead of giving you the suggested ones. You can use whatever you want, or whatever needs to be cleared out of the fridge before you go shopping.

My nearly-5yo also had enormous fun with this recipe. She peeled veges for me, then cleared the table (because she wanted it to be "pretty" for the photographs) and assembled most of the veges on the platter by herself. She did not, however, eat the peanut sauce, which kind of made it less like gado gado than a big plate of vegies, noodles and eggs, although she didn't seem to mind this.

Vegetable Salad with Peanut Sauce (Gado Gado)



Sauce
oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 - 1 1/2 tsp chilli powder (I used a bit less than 1/4 because I am a wimp)
1 medium onion, finely diced
225g crunchy peanut butter
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar (because I didn't have any lemon juice)
450mL water

Heat the oil in a saucepan and saute the onion until golden. Add the garlic and chilli and fry until fragrant. Add the peanuts, brown sugar, and rice wine vinegar or lemon juice and stir to combine, then gradually stir in the water. Bring it to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened but remains thin enough to pour. Keep the sauce hot on a very low burner while you finish preparing the vegetables.

Vegetables platter
1 small red and 1 small green capsicum, sliced
about two cups of shredded won bok
1 tin of baby corn, or use fresh
1 medium zucchini, cut into 2 inch long sticks
1/4 cauliflower, cut into florets
1 medium sweet potato, cut into 2 inch long sticks
2 small carrots, cut into 2 inch long sticks
3 cakes of rice vermicelli
hard boiled eggs (optional)

I didn't blanch the capsicum or won bok, although Scott suggests doing so for some vegetables, because I could not be arsed. I steamed the sweet potato and carrots until almost tender, then added the cauliflower for a couple of minutes, then the zucchini for another couple of minutes.



Boil the noodles for a few minutes until cooked, then drain and put in the middle of the platter. Arrange all the vegetables in piles around the edge of the platter. Pour the sauce over the vegetables, or serve in a separate bowl. We gave everybody a hard boiled egg each, although Scott suggests using 1 egg as a garnish. Omit entirely for a fabulous vegan meal!



Verdict

It was bloody marvellous. Two out of two recipes from this book have been roaring successes: I think this book is going on the "keepers" pile!