more coming, but recipes & links from today below:
GREEN IS GOOD – by Miss September
The month of green and what better recipe to have is Salsa Verde. Add lemons as much as possible to reduce those gluts.
Indulge in blood oranges they are so good.
Salsa Verde means in Italian “green sauce”. Drizzle it over meat, fish or just a platter of seasonal vegetables it is great. It also has flexibility in the ingredients so you can use up left overs in the fridge to create it.
Basically the best combination is parsley, mint and basil but I often add fennel leaves and spinach and celery. If you have some anchovies in the fridge add a few of these. You can add as much garlic as you like but be careful to balance this so you can taste the freshness of your herbs and their own distinct flavor.
Recipes Alison Drover , Fork in the Field
SALSA VERDE
• 2 shallots, finely diced and soaked in a tablespoon of red wine vinegar for 30 minutes
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp small capers
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
• 1/3 cup chopped chives
• 1/3 cup mint leaves
• extra virgin olive oil
• 1 lemon zested.
Put all green items in the blender add lemon juice and olive oil and blend together. If you sauce is a little thick add a few tables spoons of warm water and test as you go. A salsa verde should be smooth and tangy but not too much garlic.
KALE & BANANA SMOOTHIE
Serves 2
• 2 cups milk
• 6 kale leaves, removed from the center stalk
• 2 frozen bananas or whatever you have available
• 2 tablespoons honey
• Cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon tahini or peanut butter if you have this left over
• parsley – about 3 tablespoons
Add kale and milk to the blender, and blend until there are no large bits of kale. Add banana and honey, and all other ingredients blend until smooth.
PRIMAVERA SALAD WITH SALSA VERDE
• 4 blood oranges – cut of the top and bottom take off the peel by slicing from the top down and going around the orange so that you keep the round shape but remove the white pith. Cut the orange across ways so you have even slices
• 10 kiplfler potatoes – cooked so they can be leftovers from a meal
• Bunch of rocket
• Fennel bulb washed and then remove the green stalk and fronds and slice finely so they are like shavings
• 1 lemon zested finely over the salad
• 1 /2 cup pecans or macadamias
Additions: add other green that you may have left over or growing watercress, radicchio
Take a large platter slice potatoes across ways but randomly so you have different textures in the salad. Add your greens ie rocket, top with fennel and the zest lemon over the salad. Arrange your slices of orange over the salad.
Scatter pecans or your choice of nuts over the salad.
Drizzle salad with salsa verde or serve on the side
ASPARAGUS WITH CODDLED EGGS
If asparagus is not ready wait for this one until late September
Tip – excuse the pun have everything ready as to go as fresh is best
2 pots of boiling water one for eggs and one for asparagus. The eggs form the basis of your warm dressing so you need to be organized.
• 60ml vinegar –
• 8 large organic or free range eggs
• 80ml extra virgin olive oil – local is best
• 16 pieces of asparagus
• salt pepper
• lemon thyme
Pop eggs into the water for 4 minutes only. You want the eggs to be runny inside but white on the outside. Take a clean tea towel and scoop out the content of the egg into a bowl. This is going to be your dressing. Add the anchovy dressing and then drizzle in the oil and salt and pepper.
Cook your asparagus in the boiling water for about 5 minutes and then check it. It should be firm but not crunchy otherwise too acidic.
Remove asparagus from the water and place in bowl otherwise they keep on cooking in the hot water.
Take asparagus arrange on a platter drizzle with your egg dressing and then grate your lemon zest over it.
Yum!
BELLY BULLETIN
The month of October will be filled with a mass of food events all over NSW, part of the Crave food festival. Many are in Sydney, but quite a few will be held in regional NSW. Go to www.cravesydney.com for full details but here are a few that caught my eyes.
October 14; 5.30-9am – Breakfast on Bondi beach as the sun comes up with thousands of other toast lovers. The music is free – A dawn welcome followed by a full orchestra and soprano Lorina Gore – principal artist for Opera Australia. BYO breakfast, pre-purchase or buy it from surf-side food stalls.
Locally, Byron at Byron chef Gavin Hughes is leading free tours of the Byron Farmers Market. Learn how to select and cook your produce. Since arriving in Byron in 2003 Gavin has been a passionate advocate for the region’s produce and its creators. The tour meeting point is at the Northern entrance to the market, closest to the Police station at 8am. No bookings required. Every Thursday in October, 8 to 9 am.
Sample – A Taste Of Northern NSW – Local growers, producers and chefs from the whole region will gather at the Bangalow showground for 12 hours of local flavours. There will be tasting plates from more than 30 restaurants, more than 100 local exhibitors, live music, celebrity cooking demonstrations and more – Saturday October 6; 8am-8pm
If you haven’t had enough of tasty food writers at the Byron Writers Festival & belly lately, check out Food & Words, a one day food writers’ festival at The Mint, Macquarie Street, Sydney October 13, 10am-4.30pm
Advertised as ‘the crema of the Australian food writing community getting together for a lively day of discussion and debate on all things to do with food and words (and quality writing, domesticity, sustainability, history, cooking and more).’ Half of the writers seem to be from this area, and the festival is put together by writer, journalist, & member of the extreme cheesemakers’ club Barbara Sweeney, so it should be good.
The program includes :
Charlotte Wood on oysters,
Belinda Jeffery on the zen of baking,
Gay Bilson on the question of How Much Food Does a Man Need?
Mungo MacCallum on how, where and why to picnic
Chef Alex Herbert and Publisher Catherine Milne on what goes into creating a cookbook ;
Librarian Simon Cootes on quirky cooking and food ephemera from State Library of NSW.
Dee Nolan on food on the road, Laila Ellmoos on fruit and nut stalls
Ewan McEoin on big ideas/small producers
For lunch, you have the choice of bringing your own picnic or ordering a packed picnic ($40) when you purchase your ticket. Full day ticket $155 (includes morning/afternoon tea)
If you have been disappointed at the recent local elections, maybe you need to learn from Barack Obama & just seduce the voters with your home brewed beer. More than 12,000 people signed a petition asking for the White House’s special brew on the “We the People” page of the White House web site, which is dedicated to grassroots petitions. Mr Obama has been taking the beer with him on the campaign trail. According to ABC online, people will vote for the person they would most like to have a beer with. Or maybe that’s just journalists. The beer is made with honey “tapped from the first ever bee-hive” in the White House garden. Go to the the White House blog for the complete recipes & brewing video .
Have you ever eaten pigeon? Young ones turn up as ‘squab’ on restaurant menus. They have been part of the diet in Southern Europe & North Africa for many centuries. Disappearing now as a food, possibly because of health concerns, or just squeamishness. A provincial official in Argentina has been suspended over his proposal to feed children pigeon meat to counteract a surge in the bird population.Oscar De Allende, an official at the local environment ministry responsible for wildlife, was suspended over his “controversial statements on pigeon consumption,” Cordoba governor Jose Manuel de la Sota said in a statement. Earlier this week Mr De Allende proposed that Paicor, a government program for distributing food and clothing to poor students, serve pigeon meat at public schools. “We estimate we have 600 million (pigeons) in Cordoba,” Mr De Allende told a local radio station. “Let’s consider that pigeons are an abundant resource, not a pest. The woodpigeon “columba palumbus’ is the largest & best to eat according to the Oxford Companion to Food. A bit fatter than the regular pigeons.