Tag Archives: oranges

Red Cross & kitchen secrets

It’s a special belly today, celebrating 100 years of the Red Cross with a bit of history and a call to arms – get thee to a kitchen, and bake a cake.  And then I will bring you a wonderful session from the recent Byron Bay Writers Festival, ‘Kitchen Confidential’, with Simon Marnie, Christine Manfield, Steve Snow and Jim Hearne.  Find out what chefs really think of customers and critics, dusts and foams, why you should really invite a chef to dinner, and much much more.

 

The Red Cross in Bangalow is looking for local cooks who can contribute a cake by this Friday, August 15.  They are looking for 100 cakes, and hopefully will get even more.  So get along and support them by buying a cake too.

The BIG CAKE BAKE is a Red Cross fundraiser.  Take your cake, or cupcakes, to the Bangalow RSL Hall, Station Street by 8.30am for judging (or just donate a cake, you don’t need to compete).  Or go along and eat cake!  $5 for a slice of cake and a coffee or tea, from 10 am.  Call Trisha for more info on 0429 882525.

Today’s guest, Trisha Bleakley, has kindly contributed her own seasonal cake recipe to get you inspired.

 

MANDARIN AND ALMOND CAKE RECIPE – GLUTEN FREE

 

3 mandarins (large) or 4 medium washed
250 g caster sugar, plus extra for dusting
6 eggs
250 g almond meal
1 tsp baking powder
icing sugar, to serve
Cook's notes
Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection),
reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1
teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All
herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All
vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are
55-60 g, unless specified.

Instructions

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Wash the mandarins and cook in the
boiling water for 2 hours. Drain, allow to cool to room temperature, then
puree. This step can be done ahead of time.

Preheat the oven to 160°C. Grease and line a 22 cm spring form cake tin
with baking paper. Beat the eggs and caster until well combined. Stir in
the mandarin puree followed by the almond meal and baking powder. Pour the
batter into the prepared tin and dust the top with extra caster sugar. Bake
for 1–1¼ hours, until the top is golden and a skewer inserted into the
centre comes out clean.

Allow to cool in the tin. Dust with icing sugar, cut into slices and serve.

Tips

You can replace the mandarins with 2 oranges (Large)
If citrus is not in season you can use tinned mandarins, puree
Substitute almond meal for hazelnut meal (but it does give it a stronger
flavour)

16 August 2010 – e-books,love and polenta

A pretty crazy show on day one of our major subscriber drive aka radiothon.  Sister T was answering phones for the previous show, Andrew Davie’s luscious Lighthouse Lounge, chatting up subscribers, and she ain’t a morning girl (why do you think we’re sponsored by a coffee company?)  Sister B had been to the gim for the first time in a loooong time and looked like she had been run over by a cement mixer.  And our lovely guest, presenter Karin Kolbe from Bayfm’s ‘the spin cycle’, is learning to surf.

She had all the glory ot standing up and all the pain of a solid fall in a few short seconds, and turned up full of painkillers.  But also full of beans, great info on her and TOOT’s (Train on our Tracks) campaign to bring back train transport, which would also make our food more sustainable.  And on where e-publishing,  is going, as she is a publisher and ‘internetty person’.  We look forwards ot electronic cookbooks with a stack of extra features as soon as publishers and authors get more creative.  And she shared her favourite, tried and tested cake recipe, from a tattered exercise book – with alphabetical tabs though, obviously an organised woman.

POLENTA AND YOGHURT CAKE

Ingredients :

300 g. plain yoghurt

100 g. polenta

grated rind of 1 orange

125 g. softened,chopped unsalted butter

220 g. caster sugar

3 eggs

200 g. self raising flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

85 g. chopped raisins

80 g pine nuts [or try macadamias in our area – n.d.sr.T]

citrus syrup :

1 lemon and 1 orange (preferably organic)

200 g. caster sugar

30 mL Cointreau (more is more, says Karin)

and cream to serve!

KK says that this cake is magic because first off you put the yoghurt and polenta and grated rind together to chat for an hour in a bowl.

Heat oven to 180C.

Toast nuts well in a little olive oil in a pan on low heat, it makes them come alive, but careful not to let them burn.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well. Sift together the flour and bicarbonate and fold gently into the butter mixture. Toss the raisins in a tbs of flour. Add yoghurt/polenta mix to batter, fold in nuts and raisins.

Butter and flour a 2 litre/21 cm kugelhopf (holey) cake mould. Pour in cake batter and cook 30-45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

While the cake cooks, make the citrus syrup.

Make small threads of zest from the orange and lemon and juice them. Put all ingredients except Cointreau in a saucepan, bring to the boil, lower heat and reduce volume by half. Turn off heat and add Cointreau.

To assemble, turn cake onto a rack for 10 minutes, then slide onto a plate and and pour hot syrup on top. Serve with cream.

Don't you love those spattered old recipe collections? Instead of star ratings they have spatter & scribble ratings


WHAT’S ON

for farmer’s and weekend markets please go to our markets page, but here’s a couple of other local events:

Organic farm share meetings – remember the people from herdshare, who were in the news a while ago with their scheme to own a bit of a cow so you can have your own organic, maybe even raw, milk – now calling themselves farm share

info meetings

NORTHERN NSW

Murwillumbah – Mon Aug 16, 7pm to 8:30pm

South Golden Beach – Fri Aug 20, 1pm to 2:30pm

Broken Head – Fri Aug 20, 6pm to 7:30pm

more info on website – http://organicfarmshare.com

BARISTA COURSE
TUESDAY 17th OF AUGUST
4.00PM TO 7.00PM
$75 call the Byron Youth Service – 6685 7777

Thanks again to everyone who subscribed to Bayfm today – we are getting together a few tasty bits and pieces for a post radiothon draw for belly supporters, and anyone listening on the first show after radiothon.  Also while you call in, tell the volunteer answering the phone if you’d like to go on the belly listeners page that we are assembling, leave an email address and the sisters will get in touch.

To go in the big prize draw you need to call (02) 6680 7999 by the morning of 29 August 2010.

Details on bayfm site.


LOVE FOOD

whole and split nutmeg

In honour of the ‘love your radio’ fortnight we are talking love foods for 2 weeks – keeping it seasonal for the Australian winter, unlike the summery Valentine Day recipes – and we wanted to change a bit from the constant oysters, strawberries and chocolate that our lovers serve us up.  Did you know you can make sexy pumpkin soup?   Just add freshly grated nutmeg at the beginning of cooking.  Nutmeg was considered an aphrodisiac by the Arabs and the Chinese.  Apparently you can also rub nutmeg oil on the genitals to ‘excite sexual passion’, but you might just give yourself a nasty rash.  I put a few drops of mace (the covering of the nutmeg ) essential oil in the bath a few years ago and had to get out very quickly.