On air on bayfm 99.9 on June 6, 2011

A belly full of temptations – Ms June  tempted us with apples and silverbeet and the other good things in season in June, I dreamt of Australian  truffles, and found out how to get a truffle dog, and we found out what sustainably grown food really means.

COMMUNITY GARDENS SURVEY BY TARA BAKER AT SOUTHERN CROSS UNI

https://scuau.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9ubtlzfLcBV57ms

An invitation to participate in important research!  Do you support the establishment of community food gardens within the
Northern Rivers?   You are invited to participate in a region wide online survey taking no more  than 5 – 10 minutes of your time.

Southern Cross University Bachelor of Environmental Science with Honours  candidate, Kara Baker, is currently seeking input from community members, regarding the attitudes towards the establishment of community food gardens.
She is interested in hearing from local community members from the Northern   Rivers region in order to determine the likely community support for new  garden establishment throughout the region.   The survey is anonymous and you do not have to answer all questions if you do  not want to or can’t.   The survey closes 5pm, Thursday 30th June 2011.
The results of this research will form a part of Kara’s Honours thesis and  may also be published.
If you have any questions   Kara Baker, k.baker.11@scu.edu.au

MISS JUNE’S RECIPES (BY Alison Drover)

Silverbeet, sweetpotato and goats fetta pies

Serves 6
Cooking Time Prep time 45 mins, cook 1 hr 20 mins (plus resting, cooling)

120 ml  olive oil
4  onions, thinly sliced
8 oregano sprigs
2 tbsp  Vinegar
2  sweet potatoes (about 480gm each), coarsely chopped
2  fresh bay leaves
2  garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 bunch  silverbeet, trimmed, coarsely chopped
150 gm  goat’s feta – look for Nimbin orange feta at the market as this adds great flavor

For brushing:  Eggwash

To serve:  green salad

Cream cheese pastry
400 gm (2¾ cup)  plain flour, sieved
170 gm  cold unsalted butter, coarsely chopped
140 gm  cold cream cheese, coarsely chopped
30 ml  white vinegar
¼ tsp  baking powder

Place all the ingredients for pastry into the food processor, pulse ingredients adding 30ml iced water in a food processor until coarse crumbs form. Turn onto a work surface and push dough with the heel of your hand to bring together. Shape into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap, refrigerate to rest (1-2 hours).

Meanwhile, heat half the oil in a large saucepan over low-medium heat, add onion and four thyme sprigs and sauté, stirring occasionally, until onion is very tender and light golden (30-45 minutes). Add vinegar and stir until evaporated (30 seconds-1 minute), season to taste and set aside.

Meanwhile, combine sweet potato, bay leaves and remaining thyme sprigs in a large saucepan, cover with cold water, bring to the boil over medium-high heat, then simmer until tender (30-40 minutes). Drain well (discard herbs), then process in a food processor until smooth, season to taste and set aside.

Heat remaining oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, add garlic and sauté until beginning to soften (1-2 minutes), then add silverbeet and 2 tbsp water, cover with a lid and toss occasionally until wilted (1-2 minutes). Drain well, squeeze out excess water, season to taste and spread on a tray to cool to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 190C. Divide pastry into 6 pieces. Working with one piece at a time, roll out on a sheet of baking paper into 3mm-thick rounds. Spread each circle with sweet potato purée, leaving a 1.5cm border. Top with onion mixture, scatter with silverbeet and feta. Brush edges of pastry with eggwash, then fold and pleat to create an open pie. Transfer pies to oven trays lined with baking paper, brush pastry with eggwash and bake, swapping trays halfway through baking, until golden and cooked through (15-25 minutes). Rest for 5 minutes, then serve with a green salad.

Baked Apples with honey, pecans – homemade real egg custard

4 (or 1 for each person)  large apples
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of honey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice – zest first
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup of pecans

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Wash all apples. Core apple to within a 1/2 or 1/4 inch from the bottom of the apple.
Peel and remove skin from top one fourth of apple.
Half way down apple, thinly score through the skin. Make score completely around entire outside of apple to help keep apples from spliting.
Place apples in baking dish.
Mix water and lemon juice together. Fill each apple with approximately 1 tablespoon of this mixture. Pour remaining mixture into baking dish.
Place 1/4 of butter in each apple.
Mix pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon, butter together. Fill the center of each apple with a portion of the mixed ingredients.
Prior to baking, spoon liquid from bottom of  baking dish into each apple.
Bake uncovered 45 minutes or until apples are soft. Every so often open the oven and pour  juices over  while baking.

Fresh Organic Egg Custard

Ingredients

1 fresh vanilla pod

500ml full-fat milk

5 organic free-range egg yolks

80g caster sugar

Make sure you use the best milk possible which makes sense as this is the basis of custard. Look for Country Valley at your Farmers Market and read all about how happy their cows are.

Pour full-fat milk into a heavy-based saucepan. Split a vanilla pod, scrape out the seeds and add the seeds and pod to the pan. Bring just to the boil, then remove from the heat. Set aside until required.

2. Put egg yolks into a large bowl with golden caster sugar. Using a hand whisk, whisk until thick and pale.

3. Pour the vanilla-infused milk through a sieve onto the whisked egg yolk and sugar mixture, stirring well. Discard the pod (the seeds will fall through into the custard). Quickly wash out the pan and return the mixture to the clean, dry pan.

4. Return the pan to a low heat and cook slowly, do not let it boil or raise the heat, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. This will take about 10 minutes.

Use a finger and drag it through through the custard on the spoon: if it leaves a straight, clear line, it’s ready.

Custard requires patience and cooking slowy over low heat stirring at the same speed until it thickens and it coats the back of a wooden spoon. Boiling point is the enemy once you have added the eggs, so always keep the temperature of the custard just below the boil.

If it boils, the eggs will begin to separate, much as they would if you were making scrambled eggs. If this happens, you may be able to save the custard by quickly straining the egg mixture through a sieve into a blender and whizzing it until smooth. You may then reheat it with a little blended cornflour and milk to help it stabilise, but all this will depend on how far it has curdled in the first place. It will only take about 8 minutes to cook, and remember: a fresh egg custard thickens only to something akin to fresh pouring double cream.

She’ ll be apples or pears cake ­
80 g unsalted butter
190g sugar
1 organic free range egg
Zest from one large lemon
185ml cream liquid
1 1/3 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 pears 2 apples or all apples or all pears
1 tsp cinnamon

20 g melted butter
60 raw sugar

Preheat oven to around 350 F

Cream butter and sugar together ­ making sure it is white and fluffy not
greasy. Add the egg, lemon zest, cinnamon beat for few minutes ­ do not
over beat as you are making a batter mixture for the cake.Add the cream and
mix. Note to cook ­ sometimes it looks like it is curdling do not worry it all
comes together at the end.
Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and the beat until smooth.

Peel and core apples and pears ­ cut them into thin wedges like you see in
the pastry shops on the top of tarts. Brush the fruit with melted butter and
sprinkle with sugar and arrnage in a fan like pattern around the top of the
cake. Sprinkle with remaining sugar.

Bake for around 1 hour ­ check on it by inserting a skewer into the cake and
it should come out clean. The fruit will brown and caramelise with the
sugar.

This is a great winter cake for dessert and even better surrounded by warm
organic custard.

SUSTAINABLE FARMS

I played part of a talk by Greg Reid from Industry and Investment NSW, given at the recent Sustainable Agriculture forums.

Here is a whole lot more from his talk.

TRUFFLES

If you have a very special friend with a birthday coming up, or several deserving friends, this may be the year to spoil them with Australian truffles. Truffles, the vegetable not the chocolate, look like  potatoes with a really bad skin condition and smell and taste like sex and garlic and roses and fallen autumn leaves. The season is just starting and goes until early August, and it looks like a very good year.  We have been growing truffles in Oz for about 15 years.  There are now growers in every state except the Northern Territory – even in Queensland, which is surprising because they need cold winters.  There is a good website,  www.trufflegrowers.com.au/
that can tell you everything about growing and using truffles.  You can even find out where to buy Australian truffle dogs.  You can get fresh truffles by mail order, a 50 gram one the size of a large chook egg will cost you about 150 dollars, but that is enough to make 10 to 15 main courses for those deserving friends.
There are more and more countries trying to grow truffles, from China, to the UK, New Zealand and Chile.  They are grown by infecting trees with truffle spores, which are a type of fungus.  Scientists have just discovered that there are boy truffles and girl truffles, which may explain why many attempts to grow them failed.  Maybe with truffles you need both.  In Europe truffles were traditionally found in secret patches under oak and hazelnut groves, but apparently a lot of the people who knew where to find them were killed in WW2, or moved to the cities after the war.  Pity they didn’t leave a treasure map.
If you ate out in the 90s you would have tasted truffle oil, it was everywhere, but almost all of it is made with artificial truffle flavour, real truffles are both more delicate and more intense.

According to the Australian Truffle Growers Association:

Truffles go with anything as they are a flavour enhancer (they contain glutamic acid!  like msg but natural I suppose) and have the ‘umami’, or savoury taste.
Truffles go best with simple dishes involving eggs, mushrooms, chicken, pasta, potatoes,risotto, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac.
They have a great affinity for fats, any fats, which retain the aroma.

In Australia we only grow black truffles, which can be cooked.  I think white Alba truffles from Northern Italy are much better, but I am a bit biased as I was born in Alba.  White truffles are best just sliced very thinly, raw on top of quite plain dishes to enjoy the true truffle scent, but I think if you are using truffles for the first time that is the best thing to do with the black ones too.  They are great on scrambled eggs or egg pasta with an egg and parmesan sauce, or in the ultimate mashed potatoes.

I have just found this recipe for Italian style dumplings with ricotta and pea shoots, which looks delicious with or without lots of truffles.  And unlike truffles, there were fresh pea tips at the Byron farmers market today. And of course beautiful local ricotta.  Yum.

EDIBLE QUOTES

There are looots of quotes about truffles!  The French writers Colette and Alexandre Dumas were certainly fans.

“The most learned men have been questioned as to the nature of this tuber, and after two thousand years of argument and discussion their answer is the same as it was on the first day: we do not know. The truffles themselves have been interrogated, and have answered simply: eat us and praise the Lord.”
Alexandre Dumas

“[Truffles] can, on certain occasions, make women more tender and men more lovable.”
Alexandre Dumas

If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

MUSIC

Manteca : Dizzy Gillespie, Funky Lowlives remix

Juke Box : Fred Buscaglione

Hearts and Minds : Pigram Brothers

Interlude : Pigram Brothers

The truffle song : Johann Strauss II and Panforte

The Truffle shuffle : Million Dolla Records

Home on the Wave : Love Connection and Pets with Pets

Love and chocolate truffles, sister T