On air on bayfm 99.9 community radio Byron Bay on 5 November 2011
In the grand tradition of how many people can you squeeze into a Mini, seven bellysisters seven were in the studio today for the first of our summer season bigger better bellys.
And since a studio filled with bellysisters is likely to be a pretty crazy place anyway, today’s belly was all about improvising and making do with kitchen tools and ingredients. And we had plenty of help from our delicious listeners, who called with lots of stories of improvising with kitchen tools and ingredients, encouraged by a prizes donated by lovely Bangalow Farmers Market stallholders.
If the prize had been given to the most peculiar entry, the listener who used dental floss to get a stuck cake out of the tin would have won unanimously. And our favourite internet suggestions were using a flat rock if you don’t have a mortar and pestle, and someone called Wharf on a fishing website who had a healthy orange juice for breakfast when camping, then poaches an egg using the empty orange half on the coals. Genius.
LISTEN to a few of the interesting ways your neighbours have fun and improvise with food. Sometimes because they are alone on a small boat charting the coat and living off the land, sometimes just to see if two things that look good together taste good together too.
Bangalow Farmers Market improvisers
Sister Rasela collects a few improvisers
And then we had a visit by Dr Siggy Fried, out and proud bad cook, who improvises on improvising, and believes on lashings of tomato sauce as a most effective way to fix unfortunate flavour developments in your cooking. The bellysisters advise you to be extremely cautious when following any of Dr Siggy’s advice. It has been known to lead to divorce, sudden loss of friends and severe intestinal discomfort. and that’s just the entree.
EASY AS PIE WITH DEANNA – RANDOM BAKING
Sister Deanna, our fabulous home baker, who always gets her dough, is continuing her ‘Easy as Pie’ series with some “random baking”. This time it involves delicious big bags of mulberries. But Deanna regularly is showered with large gifts of fruit, which the giver is kinda sorta hoping will come back baked into something delicious. So she experiments a lot, and often with fruit that she has hardly seen before.
BUTTERMILK SCONES – by Deanna Sudmals
2 ½ cups self raising flour
1 tbsp caster sugar
¼ tsp salt
40g butter-chilled and chopped into small pieces
1 ¼ cups buttermilk
Preheat the oven to 220 degrees/200 fan-forced
Mix flour and sugar in bowl, rub in butter with finger tips
Make a well in the middle of the mixture and add buttermilk. Cut the buttermilk through the mixture with a knife till comes together in a sticky soft dough.
Gently knead on a floured surface until it is smooth, but do not over-mix or the dough will be tough!
Spread dough out to 2cm thickness, and using a dough cutter (I lost mine so I used a floured glass) to cut out rounds from the dough. Carefully knead scraps together and cut as many rounds as you can out of the dough.
Place on a baking sheet covered in baking paper and brush tops with milk.
Bake for about 12-15 minutes until tops are browned
Serve with jam and cream!
MULBERRY JAM – by Deanna Sudmals
8 cups fresh mulberries
1 package of jam setter (OR 2 tsp lemon rind and 2 tablespoons lemon juice)
4 ½ cups white sugar
Wash and hull the mulberries, removing stems and leaves (a tedious process that results in purple hands-but worth it!)
Crush the fruit a bit (whole mulberries are quite large)
Cook the mulberries in a large covered pot for approx. 10 minutes on a low simmer.
Mix the jam setter with about ¼ cup sugar
Add jam setter to the mulberries and heat on a medium/high heat stirring often.
Bring to a full boil.
Add the rest of the sugar and bring the mixture back to the boil, removing “foam” from the surface
To test if thickened, take a cold metal tablespoon (I keep one in the freezer) and scoop a spoonful of jam, leaving it to cool on the spoon. If it is set then you are good to go. If not, (which happened to me) you can add more jam setter OR…what I did was add lemon juice (high in pectin) and bring back to the boil until it achieves a desired consistency.
Pour hot jam into clean, sterilized jars, and turn upside down to seal. Once cooled, turn them right side up and you will see the lid “pop down” and seal.
Yum
Recipe adapted from/inspired by www.pickyourown.org/mulberryjam.htm
IN SEASON IN NOVEMBER
This week Miss November came to see me (and my noisy cat) in the garden, so I have a recording for you of the best fruit and vegetables of the month, followed by Alison’s recollections of some improvised but very good recipes. I;m still not sure about using peoples’ wall hangings to make dessert though.
Recipes by Miss November Fork in the Field – www.forkinthefield.com
ZUCCHINI AND MINT FRITTERS – or whatever you improvise with (corn and coriander, pea and spinach…)
• 4 zucchini
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp. plain flour
• red chilli
• mint
• lemon zest
• 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
Take 4 zucchini matchstick them and then toss them with 1 egg yolk, 1 tbsp. plain flour, a deseeded red chilli, the chopped leaves from a bunch of mint, lemon zest and Parmesan; scrunch together. Whip the egg white with a pinch of salt until stiff and fold into the mixture. Shape into patties and fry.
Serve with a green salad and ideally a salsa verde sauce drizzled over or just with a squeeze of lemon.
POACHED NECTARINES in left over wine, lavender & lemon zest , with smashed toffee shards – ideally pecans or macadamias (local of course)
• 1 1/2 cups water, room temperature
• 1 cup wine rose, or whatever you have available champagne.
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• A handful of lavender
• 1 large piece of lemon zest
• 4 – 6 Nectarines, halved (I used 4)
Tips
Use firm, slightly under ripe fruits – they hold their shape well and stand less chance of disintegrating. Also the flavoured syrup compensates for the slight tartness of the under ripe fruit, balancing it out very nicely
Use a wine that has mild, clean flavours so it acts as the canvas (soaking up flavours) rather than the paint
Watch so you don’t over poach the fruits or they’ll soften incredibly
How to
Place the wine, 1 1/2 cups water and sugar in a wide bottomed saucepan, stirring to dissolve the sugar slightly then place the pan on the stove over medium heat and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes and then reduce the heat, leaving the syrup to simmer gently.
Drop half the lavender leaves into the syrup, and then gently place the nectarine halves cut side down into the syrup. Poach for about 3 minutes and then gently turn over using a slotted spoon. Continue poaching for an additional 3 – 4 minutes, until soft (cooking time will depend on softness/ripeness of fruit). Carefully prick the cut side of the peaches to check for tenderness. The peels should be wrinkling up as well. You may cook the nectarines in two batches if all the halves will not fit in the pan at once.
Remove the nectarines s to a plate with a slotted spoon. When they are cool enough to handle, gently slide the skins off and discard. Add the rest of the herb leaves to the syrup and bring to a boil; boil until reduced by about half. Pour any juices that have collected on the plate with the nectarines into the syrup. Leave to cool to room temperature.
The nectarines can be covered with plastic wrap and kept at room temperature for several hours till ready to serve or refrigerated for at least a week.
Place 1 cup (220g) sugar and 1/4 cup (3 tablespoons) water in a saucepan or pan over low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Increase heat to medium. Without stirring, cook for 3-4 minutes until a light golden caramel. Remove from heat otherwise the caramel will darken too much. Sprinkle over nuts and then set aside for 15 minutes to cool completely. Break into shards, which can be used to garnish your nectarines or can be used on top of ice cream. (You can do this a day ahead, then store in an airtight container.)
love and chocolate covered bellysisters,
Sister T
