Cold weather dipping

The promised birthday fondue happened this week, with a minimum of traditional style fondue eating guests in attendance. The quandary I had was what to serve as appetisers and desserts. My old fondue book, published in 1970 (in Australia) recommends cherries ‘a la kirsch,’ and various other fruits in combination with other types of alcohol. No mention of appetisers but it is recommended that you drink a glass of kirsch halfway through the meal. Only in the 70’s could you get away with thinking that bread cheese and alcohol was a balanced meal! Knowing Amita would heartily endorse this philosophy, I quickly hid the cookbook.

Poking around in the pantry, I pondered that as fondue was a cold weather meal, it would make sense to pair it with seasonal produce. Pecans, olives and Granny Smith apples are abundant at the moment. Warming food seemed to be the order of the day so I started with olives baked in red wine - a recipe I posted here this time last year. With the pecans I tried a recipe I had been told about by my friend Tova. It was one of those that had been enjoyed by her family for years. It didn’t really have quantities or times but sounded easy.

Here is what I did:

Roasted pecans in their shells

Pecans in shells

Sea salt

In a mortar and pestle or with a rolling pin, gently crack a split in the shell of each nut while preheating the oven to 180C.

Dissolve about 2 tsp of sea salt in a litre of warm water. You need enough brine to cover the nuts.

Soak the nuts, in their shells, in the brine for 5-10 minutes.

Drain.

Place the nuts on a baking tray.

Bake until the nuts have begun to toast, they will give off a nice toasty smell. Shake them once or twice during cooking.

Serve warm and let people shell their own.

These are really delicious as the nuts are soft, sweet and warm. Next time I would add a little more salt but you could have some on the side for serving.

For dessert, I stuffed some of the apples with some more pecans, processed with butter, home dried figs and brown sugar with cinnamon, baked and served with double cream for those too weak to refuse it!

It was a lovely meal and quick to prepare, the longest job was washing the greens for my salad which I had to make to reassure myself that everyone had eaten wisely as well as generously. I am happy to report there were no fondue fork injuries suffered!

Eat well,

nirala

Something fishy going on

It is a family tradition that if you are at home for your birthday, you get to choose what we have for dinner. Amita is predictable as his favourite meal in the whole world is fondue. He likes to eat it in the traditional Swiss way, simply bread and cheese. After cracking two ceramic fondue pots, one birthday I bought him -  a smaller Le Creuset (son of the blue pot)   that fits perfectly on the burner.

I threaten to fall into a swoon if I can’t eat something green at every meal and contaminating the fondue with any vegetable, except possibly potatoes, is frowned upon. The other serious problem is inviting guests for a fondue as he loathes sharing it. So that is one: an unhappy cook (not recommended) and two: guests duelling with fondue forks over a hot pot (also not recommended.)

After some delicate negotiation, he decided to choose something else – Bouillabaisse, a traditional fisherman’s soup from the Mediterranean cooked in one pot. I had never cooked it before and dived into Elizabeth David who in two and a half pages of text, gave stern warnings about not overcooking the different seafood but no indications of specifics. I eventually found a recipe from a well known chef on the internet and set off to buy about a million dollars worth of seafood. When I began to follow the recipe, I realised it had been posted without checking and was very hard to follow

At least I already had the pot and as we have been having cold nights, the wood stove is lit every evening and is perfect for a long slow simmer.

A good fish stock is absolutely critical to a good bouillabaisse and is expensive to buy as it comes in 375ml containers.

This is my version:

Fantastic Fish Stock

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 carrot, thinly sliced

1 stalk of celery, leaves included, finely sliced

1 leek, thinly sliced

3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

One wing of barramundi, a large fish head, some prawn heads, whole cleaned fish or a combination of what you have.

A whole fish, head on, cleaned and chopped up roughly (I used perch)

3 large tomatoes, diced

2 Tbsp tomato paste

2 handfuls of flat leaf parsley

2 bay leaves

1 orange, zested (with a peeler into strips) and juiced

1 lemon, zested (ditto) and juiced

½ C olive oil

1 tsp black peppercorns

Sauté the vegetables, except the tomatoes, in the olive oil over a medium heat until they begin to colour.

Add the fish and brown.

Add the tomatoes, bay leaves, orange, lemon and parsley and cook till softened then add the tomato paste.

Cover with water, bring to the boil and simmer for a minimum of two hours or longer. If cooking the stock over a couple of days, make sure that it is bought to a rolling boil each time before reducing the heat to a simmer.

If you are making soup, leave the lid on to retain the maximum flavour. If you want to freeze it, you can reduce it by simmering without a lid after straining.

Strain through a sieve and add salt to taste.

Freeze in 500ml containers until required.

Happy cooking,

nirala

Ps. The soup was amazing. I dished it up before bringing to the table so we managed to avoid any disagreements over the number of prawns and mussels and other tasty bits in each bowl. I was far too busy to take a photograph of the finished dish!