Lamb curry and saffron rice
Henceforth, No Fuss Food will feature as a category on my other blog, Caro & Co. I’ll still post here, but the bulk of my food writing can now be found over at Caro & Co. I hope you’ll stop by and say hello sometime!
Best,
Caro
We arrived back from the farm last night with a bucket of onions, three very dirty dogs and some milk which was on the turn. The cupboard in Sydney was well and truly bare, so come 5.00pm it was hard to find any inspiration on what to cook let alone muster the enthusiasm to stand over the stove. After ratting around in the pantry and freezer I found some slightly squished hamburger mince, a few wilted snow peas, some rubbery old potatoes, three eggs, one carrot and a jar of fig jam from my local providore. Sigh, what to do?
Inexplicably, at that very moment, my son announced that he wanted to make dinner. After checking his temperature, and ascertaining that he was, indeed, in fine health, this is what he decided upon.
Hamburgers sitting on top of raw grated carrot and sliced snow peas, mashed potatoes on the side, all covered in onion gravy. Super thinking my son! He made it with little interference from me. Here’s his clever twist on a simple and delicious onion gravy. I guarantee your kids will love it and might even want to have a go at making it themselves…
ANGUS’ ONION AND JAM GRAVY
Serves 4. Prep time 10 minutes. Cooking time 20-30 minutes
You will need:
Method:
Peel and cut the onions in half, then slice as finely as your child’s proficiency will allow. Put the oil in a heavy based pan, add the onions and swirl to coat. Cook on a medium heat until just softened then add a good pinch of pepper and salt, the stock and the jam. Turn down to simmer, stirring occasionally. The mixture will eventually reduce to a gloopy, sweet mass of goodness. Serve warm alongside any kind of cooked red meat. Or let it cool and serve with some stinky blue cheese. Or create a little nest with some puff pastry, pile on the oniony goodness sprinkle with feta and sliced black olives and bake for 10-15 minutes until pasty is golden. Or layer under your potato topping if making Shepherds Pie for a surprise hit of sweetness…..
How do you inspire your kids to get into the kitchen? Does bribery work? Or did they form an early love of creating with food? Do they actually have any clue where the kitchen is? I’d love to hear your experiences on encouraging kids to get active in the kitchen.
Until next time.
Grace and I found a small red cabbage at the back of the fridge last week. It always interests me just how long members of the Brassica family can last if stored properly. It had been there for weeks.
So we set upon making an easy and colourful coleslaw to use it up. Depending on your child’s proficiency with knives, they can make this delicious dish from start to finish. It takes no more than half an hour. Here’s how we did it.
Red Cabbage and Craisin Coleslaw (Serves 4-6)
Dressing:
Place the sliced cabbage, apple and celeriac (and carrot) into a large bowl and toss to combine.
For the dressing, put all the ingredients in a jar and shake to mix thoroughly. Taste. Adjust or add more or less of each ingredient until you’re happy with consistency and flavour. Pour over the salad, mix to combine and serve.
We ate this served with a grilled pork cutlet and a little fresh Rocket (Arugula). However it would also be delicious with left over ham, swordfish fillets or a NY-cut steak. Delicious!
A glass of wooded Chardonnay matches the meal perfectly.
Until next time…
Crumble has to be one of the easiest desserts in the world. What I like most about it though, is that young kids can be involved in every stage of its preparation and always love the eating of it too. Visit Caro and Co for how this particular crumble and its quirky name came about.
This particular recipe doesn’t use the standard apple or rhubarb. Instead my friend Lily Horseman and I made it up using the fruits we had to hand; including beautiful peaches, seedless red grapes, gooseberries and plums. If you don’t have these, simply substitute with others such as green apple, rhubarb or have a go using pear, quince or firm red berries such as blackberries.
Serves 6-8
You will need:
If your fruit is tart, add the sugar to it and mix together until the fruit is coated. Skip this if you think your fruit has adequate sweetness of its own.
In a bowl, mix the cinnamon, rolled oats, sultanas and flour together until well combined. Add the melted butter and stir until you have formed a mixture that is neither too wet, nor too dry. It should have the consistency to only just hold itself together if you roll it in your hands. Too much butter? Add a little more rolled oats. Too dry? Add a little more butter.
Place your fruit in an ovenproof dish and arrange until the base of the dish is covered by about a two- inch layer of fruit. Then simply add a layer of the crumble (about an inches worth) over the fruit.
Place in the oven and bake for around 20-25 minutes or until the crumble is golden.
Serve immediately with a dollop of quality vanilla ice-cream and/or some pouring cream.
Delicious!
Looks like an ad for Masterfoods!
This is a big favourite in our home at the moment.
We are lucky enough to grow our own spring lambs and I currently have around 5 or 6 shoulders in the freezer waiting to be eaten. We always keep a few lambs back for our own use, with the rest going off to market when the time is right. I’m sorry to anyone who finds this slightly disturbing, but as primary producers, it is what we do and how we ensure that our farm “washes its face”. All our animals live a good life in large lush paddocks. I’m really proud of the approach we take to managing our property as sustainably and as gently as we can. But I digress. Back to this easy and delicious recipe. As I’ve said over at Beetroot and Blossoms, it is quite possibly the most perfect meal for a Sunday lunch. It will serve around 6 people (that is, if they’re not all hulking great, starving men). It is best prepared a day ahead as are the quinces. There’s a link below to a fab recipe for them.
You will need:
Method:
Simple, tasty and we guarantee you’ll struggle to find any leftovers.
Last week I pinched half a dozen quinces from a neighbour’s tree and then set about procrastinating about whether to stew them or make some jam or paste. I love eating quinces in any form, but they are fussy buggers, so preparing and cooking them is not something I enjoy. And then poof! My mother appeared at the back door. Given I have a prejudicial view that it is a “grandma job” to make jams, I thrust the hairy fruit in her direction and set off to look for some muslin. She spent the entire afternoon making the most glorious jam. My admiration increased when I realised she hadn’t followed a recipe.
The next night I used one of the jars to cheat with Tarte Tatin. Here’s what I did. There’s no mucking about melting butter and sugar and poaching the apples as the quince jam does all this for you. It is virtually fool proof. Truly a case of No Fuss Food at its finest.
You will need:
Method:
Preheat oven to 180c. Spray a large shallow casserole dish with the oil and place the sliced apple in a pattern in the dish until covered with apples. Spread the entire jar of quince jam over the top of the apples, spreading out as evenly as possible without dislodging or moving the apples at the base. Completely cover with the a layer of puff pastry. Give the pastry a light spray with the oil (or you can melt some butter and brush it over the pastry, but that’s too much like hard work). Put the dish in the oven (without a lid) and cook for 20/25 minutes or until the pastry is golden.
Place a large flat round serving dish on top of the casserole dish and invert. The tarte tatin should fall gently onto the plate, holding its form as it does so. The syrupy goodness that is the quince jam will instantly begin to seep down into the pastry making it totally irresistible. Serve immediately so the pastry still has a bit of its crunch, with a dollop of cream atop, or if you wish to be completely wicked some quality vanilla ice cream as well. Enjoy!
It poured this morning. Listening to rain fall on our tin roof always sends me to the kitchen. There’s something about cooking whilst listening to the constant thrum of rain that just feels right. But what to cook? We’ve been eating our pantry down in anticipation of our move to the farm in a couple of weeks. You can read about that here including my latest run-in with some hungry mice.
Meantime, I remembered the 1kg of Patrice Newell’s divine locally grown biodynamic garlic sitting patiently waiting for me, in a dry, dark corner of the pantry. Perfect! My 9 year old daughter Grace and I decided on garlic soup. To her mind, drinking this rich, tasty broth will ensure no visits by vampires and will also stave off colds and flu for some time to come. I like her logic. Any pungency is lost (by softly poaching the garlic) and replaced with a delicious sweet and nutty flavour. We guarantee it will tempt the fussiest of children.
We used a fabulous (and easy) recipe by Heidi Swanson over at 101 Cookbooks, who in turn had adapted it from an original recipe in Richard Olney’s world-renowned The French Menu Cookbook. Many thanks and a big *hat tip* to Heidi. Grace and I made a couple of tiny changes too. Here’s how we did it.
Richard Olney’s Garlic Soup Recipe (makes about 4 cups)
4 cups of water
1 bay leaf
2 sage leaves
3/4 teaspoon fresh thyme
12 medium cloves fresh garlic, smash-peeled and roughly chopped
1tsp sea salt
Binding pommade
1 whole egg
2 egg yolks
1 and a half ounces freshly grated parmesan cheese
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup EVOO
Half a loaf of day-old crusty bread
A little more olive oil to drizzle. We garnished our version with a couple of sprigs of flowering thyme and a baby nasturtium leaf.
Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan and add the bay leaf, sage, thyme, garlic and salt. Reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes. Strain into a bowl, remove the bay and sage leaves from the strainer and return the broth and garlic back to the saucepan, off the heat. Taste and add more salt if needed.
With a fork, whisk the egg, egg yolks, cheese and pepper together in a bowl until creamy. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, beating all the time, then add (slowly, slowly), continuing to whisk, a large ladleful of the broth. Stir the contents of the bowl into the garlic broth and whisk it continuously over low-medium heat until it thickens slightly. Olney states, “just long enough to no longer be water.” Heidi on the other hand “usually lets it go a wee-bit beyond that – until it is the consistency of half and half (pouring) cream”. I’m with Heidi.
Place a handful of torn bread chunks into the bottom of 4 soup bowls and pour the soup over the bread. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil and serve immediately. We served our garnished with some flowering thyme sprigs and a small nasturtium leaf.
NB. We doubled quantities as we are feeding 10 people.
Garlic can be a strong taste for young palates, particularly if you’re using the horrid, imported garlic sold in most supermarkets and green grocers. Imported garlic is generally old and can be quite bitter. Yukky stuff. So I encourage you to support local farmers by buying fresh garlic when seasonally available (summer months through to early autumn). Better still, if you have a little space in the garden, try growing it yourself. Fresh garlic is, by its very nature, juicier and sweeter. It also stores very well.
