kids kicking arse, and winning

Let me start with some banality. It's Australia Day, the day that marks either the arrival of British settlers in Australia, or the day that marks the start of genocide, murder, rape and pillage. Depending on your point of view. Having just re-read last year's 26 January post, I am saddened to note that my fellow countrymen have not adopted my flag-phobia. I went to a BBQ today, hosted by a kind and lovely work colleague and the flags were everywhere. She is certainly no fascist, but it still worries me.

So, today I ate BBQ and a silly amount of dip and crisps and olives and things and now I feel quite unwell. You'd think after 39 years I would have learnt? Apparently not.

Back at home, tired and full and lazy I went into blog-o-sphere, and at Joy the Baker, whom I like incredibly for her style, her generosity of spirit and killer catering tendencies, I noted that Joy is nominated for a 2010 Bloggie. However I do not mention this to encourage you to vote for Joy - this is up to you - but because I checked out some of the other blogs up for a gong.

When We Were Beautiful is up in the music blog category, written by a young guy in Southampton, who like lots of young guys everywhere is into his tunes, and not necessarily the tunes that big record companies want him to be into. They want to him to be into Australian Idol winners, or the next boy band, because these are cheap eats, which require no sustainability, investment or thought. Those of you who have lived in the UK will know that which one of this quick bites ends up at the Number 1 spot on the charts on 25 December any year is a bit of a big deal and the pundits will debate who will occupy the 'top spot' from about mid November. Last year the latest X-factor winner was highly touted.

Until.

Some guy in Essex started an online campaign to get Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name Of to the top spot. And won!!!! More than a decade after it was released this catchy, funky, heavy protest song that shouts 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me' more times that most draft offices would care to count made it to the number one spot.

I must say, dear readers, this took me to my happy spot. You may have known this for some time and have been in your happy spot for so long that the floors need mopping, but this is very new for me. What a victory for us all, and how wonderful that someone thought to stand up against the corporations in such a very, very, very public way and won. There can't be a soul in Britain who doesn't know about this, what a fantastic way to bring the concepts of artistic integrity and mass consumption into every lounge room and work space. Not to mention the message of RATM's song in the first place, which unfortunately just as relevant today as when the track was first released.

This song is best listened to LOUD and somewhere where you can jump around and swing your hair about (if you have as much hair as me of course). Please enjoy this immensely!



PS: I was just called by the sound of a significant appeal to the lounge room to find that Pakistan have six out (and a ripper little clean bowl by Clinton McKay). Pakistan need 118 of 90 balls or there abouts. This could a heart racing fight. But I suspect it won't be. Again.

end of the long weekend

well it's 9.15 on monday evening, and this will be my last what did you eat today? post for easter. mine should be more along the lines of what didn't i eat. i'm almost looking forward to getting back to work so i don't need to eat three full meals a day anymore.

almost

i skipped breakfast today. breakfast is normally my favourite meal of the day, and one i really enjoy going out for, but i figured i didn't need it this time. particularly as i didn't get up until after 10am and i was going out for lunch

my first job when i arrived at my mother's was to chop the chillies for the piri piri sauce - oh, and to drink a glass of champagne - sorry, sparking white


this was mixed with lemon juice, garlic powder and olive oil and quite frankly would knock the socks off of even the most hardened spice eater. truly.

this is the chicken before it was cooked. it's marinated in a coriander base, and this is what the piri piri looked like once it was done

... ... ... and this is what the chicken looked like after it had been on the barbeque for about 30 minutes. it was truly delicious. it was smokey and flavoursome, but the meat was soft and tender. we ate it with indian bread and a couple of salads and a dab of the aforementioned killer sauce. isn't she cute? she looks like she's about to do some little dance. the chicken dance most likely. tee hee.


and this is a random shot of some deranged looking macrame owl that my mother has hanging by the outdoor table. my grandmother made it a million year ago, and this seems to be it's final resting place. no doubt it keeps the evil spirits away!!


to finish lunch off we had a small slice (and it was small) of flour-less chocolate cake, that had been made to the recipe of a french friend of my mothers. oh yes, and the second bottle of sparkling wine. hic!


and you might think that this was enough food for tot day. really truly it was. but if course i had dinner plans! so i caught a bus into the city (there was no way i had the energy to ride my bike) and went to my friend mirror mirror's new flat. she's just launched herself into the world of chinese language newspapers and is working from home and it's driving her nuts!

we did the short walk to china town to a new place, well not that new but i hadn't been there yet! we started off with szechuan bean jelly and cucumber in peanut sauce. doesn't sound very appetising i know but you spread your wings when you have a lot of chinese friends and this is something i actually quite like a lot. managed to talk her out of the ox tripe and tongue salad.

then we had a thing that she orders all the time but i don't know the name of it. it's a beef and rice noodle and bean sprout sort of thing in a spicy soup that you eat with rice. i an normally famed amongst the chinese for really being able to pack away the food (that's why you're so fat they all tell me in that delicate way that the chinese are so famous for), but tonight it was commented that i hardly ate anything. because i didn't. it was delicious tho. oh, yes and there were also chestnut and sesame seed pastries. i will have to try them again one day when i have more fortitude!!!

so there we have it. easter is over and i am fully cooked and eaten out. and only about 2 mini eggs (although we did have some white rabbit lollies at the lights yesterday).

i'm up at 6 tomorrow and off to the gallery for this year's art show, so i'm now off to sleepy bobos. there are two cats already on the bed that are calling my name.......

saturday lunch

normally i wouldn't make lunch a post all of it's own, but the end of it was really good.

Lady Miss Fi came for lunch, and it was just lamb fillets marinated in lemon and garlic and rosemary, bbq'd and sliced thinly over salad with a yoghurt dressing.

but i though i'd make a cake for desert. one to get rid of some of the stuff i had hanging around from other baking escapades.

Raspberry and pistachio yoghurt cake
ingredients
2 cups self raising flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
100g melted butter
2 eggs
1 cup natural yoghurt
1 cup frozen raspberries

for the crumble
1/4 brown sugar
60g butter, chilled
1/2 self raising flour

pistachio ripple
50g crushed pistachio
1 tblspn brown sugar
1/4 tspn cinnamon powder

method

• preheat oven to 170 degrees, and butter and line a springform tin (20cm)
• make the crumble by rubbing all the ingredients together with the tips of your fingers. place in the fridge
• sift cake flour into a bowl and add in sugar
• add yoghurt and eggs to saucepan you've melted the butter in (just melt it, it doesn't have to be a bubbling inferno), and whisk to combine.
• pour the eggy, yoghurty butter mix into the flour
• put approximately half the batter into the cake tin, sprinkle liberally with the nut mix and the cover with the rest of the batter.
  
• press the raspberries into the top of the cake batter, so they sit flush with the top of the cake
  
• spread the crumble mix on top
• bake 55-60 minutes.
• dust with icing sugar, serve warm.

this is a variation on a recipe anyway, but the batter was a little thick, so i put about 1 1/2 tablespoons of ricotta in it as well.

very, very nice. rich, moist, berry and nutty. i put a spoonful of yoghurt on the side to serve. will certainly be making this one again!

bbq chicken tandoori kebabs

tonight i was supposed to be in on my own, but like most well laid plans, it came to and end very quickly, following a call from my friend M.

luckily this morning i put some chicken on to marinade, so she's coming around for bbq chicken tandoori kebabs. these are really, really delicious. the yoghurt in the marinade softens the meat but also keeps it beautiful and moist on the bbq, while the heat cooks the spices and gives a exotic smokey flavour. of course they'd be better done in a tandoor, maybe when i re do my back garden i can put one in (i already have plans for a wood fired oven).

anyway, i got this recipe from the fabulous SBS Food Safari website.

Tandoori Chicken Kebabs
for the marinade combine:
200g natural yoghurt
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated finely
1 tbsp garlic, grated finely
1 tbsp tandoori paste
½ tsp tandoori food colouring (optional)
2 tsp cumin seeds, ground
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1 ½ tsp salt
½ tsp chilli powder
½ tsp turmeric powder

I use this quantity of marinade for about a kilogram of chicken, obviously choose the cut that you like best. if you're worried about fat, use breasts, if you're worried about taste use thighs ;-) . the meat needs to be cut into standard sized chunks, so that they cook evenly through, and small enough that they absorb all of the flavour, as well as making good mouth sized little piece of joy. i normally marinade overnight, but today i put these on before work and i'm sure they'll be deeeeelicious. i really love these, i cook them all the time.

i bbq mine. obviously a tandoor oven is the best way, but even placing them in a very hot oven, or even on a stove-top grill would work too.

normally i serve them with aloo parantha.

Aloo Parantha
take a handfull of plain flour for each parantha (not too big a one, see how precise i am with my kitchen measurements)
a HEAPED teaspoon of yoghurt per parantha
salt
add milk enough to form a pliable dough, kneed a couple of times.

make a filling by mixing mashed potato, finely diced red onion and chopped fresh corriander, in a ratio that makes you happy.

make a ball of dough for each prantha and using the palm of your hand push it out to form a fairly thin disk. place enough of the filling in so that you can comfortably enclose it in dough, making little buns. then roll out into disks of bread. the filling will break through the dough at this stage, this is fine as long as the dough:filling ratio is high enough that it all stays together. fry these in a really hot, well greased pan, turning a couple of times. the bread needs to cook through but the fat from the yoghurt and the milk will make them lovely golden and crispy. if i'm looking for an instant heart attack (as opposed to one a couple of years from now) i brush them with melted ghee and add them to the bbq with the kebabs.

tonight however we just ate ours wrapped up in pita bread with a little salad and a simple sauce of plain yoghurt,chopped fresh mint, salt and pepper and a little white wine vinegar.


and in this is what i love about this type of food, and cooking. there's no exact measurements, it's a 'handful' of this and 'the ratio that makes you happy'. because after all that's why we bother cooking isn't it? it's not just to have something to eat - because then we'd just have toast. or to give our bodies nutrition - because then it would be fruit and veg 24/7. it's about feeling at one with the food, and the generations of people who have cooked it before us (and for most of us women it's the women who have cooked it before us. fancy pants restaurant food is dominated by male chefs. heartwarming homecooked food is dominated by women). and it's about giving those we care about something good to eat, to make them as happy as cooking it made us.

mercy, this started as a kebab recipe but has got very sooky lala (as BBITW would say).

anyway, if you read this and cook the kebabs i'd love to know if they make you happy too

money's too tight for steak

this has been truely shitty week. too much work, not enough folk and me to work it out.

came home tonight and had a big fat steak, cooked on my new bbq




have been very good but tonight tucked into my old friend queen vic. there was very little left in the bottle










which is a good thing, coz tomorrow i get to see arcade fire. too excitement.

sticky keys

i am getting grease all over my keyboard!

several years ago my brother got a big bbq from one of those hire places for a party - the kind you see at sausage sizzles. they forgot to ask for it back and we neglected to return it, so it wasn't actually stealing. if they'd asked we would have happily taken it back! but anyway, now the bbq is mine. and in honour of australia day i had fran and fiona around for a bbq, indian style.




i've been looking for an excuse to cook mutabak, which i saw on the cook and the chef. needless to say there isn't a photo of mine on here, because they look nothing like the ones on this site. i was worried about not being able to get the dough thin enough, but sitting the balls in oil makes them really easy to roll out. also makes your kitchen table really, really oily. but they look great in the bowl, the photo doesn't show it well, but it looks like they're in a pond of golden mirrors.

had a lovely time making dahl, and kebabs (tandoori chicken and coriander lamb) and sauces for the kebabs and aloo parantha. enough food to feed a small army. these are the kebabs i had left after we had eaten and i'd given both fran and fiona some to take home. so i will be having left overs for dinner every night this week. and i have a thai curry in the fridge left over from friday night, and dumpling filling! i should also try to have some fruit and vegetables along the way (other than garlic, onion and ginger that is).

I should have taken a photo of everything on the table, because i was really pleased with the way it turned out, but we were eating outside and there just wasn't enough light. anyway now i am eating the last of the murtabak and hoping the dishes will have done themselves by the time i'm done!