A Nasty Christmas?

Today is January the 4th, time to get back to work for many of us. Living in a tourist town, the time to walk, swim, shop and drink coffee is before ten in the morning. The summer crowds begin to gather then, driving me to head for home and settle down to work.

Last year was a particularly good year for nasturtiums in the garden. Now you have all opened your Christmas presents and I won't be spoiling the surprise, I can share how I made them.
Theses recipes are from 'Cooking with Flowers'...coming soon!

Nasturtium Vinegar

Fill a jar with the reddest nasturtium flowers you can find.

Top up with good white wine vinegar and put lid on.

Allow to steep for a week.

Strain and bottle.

Pickled Nasturtium Pods

Fill a jar with young nasturtium seeds, they need to be small and green. If they are pale and hard, they are too old to pickle and will turn out like ball bearings, leave them for next years crop of plants.

Cover with water.

Rinse each day for 3 days.

The water will smell dreadful, it is the bitter principles leaching out.

Day 4, place in a sieve to drain and dry slightly before returning to the jar.

Top up the jar with cider vinegar to cover the seeds and replace lid.

Leave a week or more before using as a great substitute for capers. 

So, that as the present...
Here's the recipe that went with it:

Nasturtium Dressing

1 egg yolk

1 tsp  French mustard

2 tsp sugar

2 Tbsp nasturtium vinegar

2 drops of Tabasco

Salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in a food processor or with a stick blender.

Sunflower or grape seed oil

Gradually drizzle in until the mixture thickens.

2Tbsp pickled nasturtium seeds, chopped fine

1 small gherkin, chopped fine

1-2 tsp finely chopped fresh lemon thyme

Serve with seafood, potatoes or as a salad dressing.

If you would like to see it a stronger shade of pink, chop 4 red nasturtium flowers and stir through. Stir again before serving OR mix in 2 tsp of tomato sauce if flowers aren’t available.

Mothers Day...

I have just read a list entitled 'What real mother's want for Mother's Day.' It was the usual mixture of the mundane and the ridiculous.

Mother's are forever. Whether you are six or sixty, each May, we are presented with the dilemma of how to acknowledge our mother.
 
Nowadays it is a reminder of how much time she has played that role for me and an attempt to show my thanks for the advice always on the end of the phone; all those clothes washed; lifts to the station and the endless meals shopped for, cooked, served and cleaned up afterwards.

As my mother ages, I find our roles are beginning to reverse and I often take the role of caregiver. While she was visiting recently and I was cooking dinner for everyone, I overheard her remark to a friend that I was 'a treasure.' That she has the same opinion of me that I have for her is the best gift this 'real woman' could receive.

I hope all you mothers (and fathers) receive one as welcome,

Happy Mother's Day,
nirala

P.S Fresh flowers, tickets to tropical islands and phone calls are also welcome at my place!

Not so scrappy after all

Behind my armchair I have a mountain of bags and boxes that are no longer hidden. They threaten to topple over the back and I fear that this would be the end of my yarn buying for a while. They contain various yarns for projects in progress, leftovers from projects past and for projects not yet imagined. I am a compulsive collector hoarder of craft materials and shiny things.

My daughter recently gave birth to our fourth grandchild. I have always welcomed the new babies with a handmade cot blanket. Never knowing the sex in advance, they have always been patchwork, multicoloured and bright. With a recurring family allergy to wool, they are usually made from cotton and bamboo or ramie blends of yarn. I can’t throw away the smallest pieces, the colours are so lovely, and these balls are a great way to recycle scraps. They are soft to touch and lightweight and they wipe clean with a damp cloth. The youngest children have either a ball or a cot toy made from off cuts and others have gone to jugglers and other peoples cats.

This is what you’ll need:

Newspaper

5 ply wool or knitting cotton scraps

A ball of scrap wool and a bodkin

Method:

1. Scrunch up the newspaper into tight balls. One double spread of The Australian is enough to create a large ball, a quarter of a sheet, the smallest.

2. Take the scrap ball of wool and begin to wind it around the newspaper ball, taking care to keep the ball as round as possible until the newspaper has disappeared under an even layer of wool. Tuck in the end securely. You should now have something that looks like a ball of wool.

3. Using the bodkin and a 5 ply thread, begin to chain stitch around the ball, fixing the stitches into the wool. When you come to the end of a piece of thread, finish it by threading a few running stitches across the winds of wool.

4.If you find that the wool is slipping as you embroider it, you can run some lines of running stitches over them at any time to help keep them in place.

5. Continue to embroider close rows of chain stitch to cover the ball. If you want to hang the finished ball, leave the ends of three rows as loose thread in the same spot and plait them together when the ball is finished. Trim any loose ends.

6. The balls are easily reshaped by rolling in your hand as you are working, so don’t worry too much if they don’t seem completely round.

During the last few difficult weeks, the process of making these little balls, their soothing roundness and the comforting repetition of the simple task of embroidery have allowed me a place of calm, of softness and quiet normalcy. They now fill a bowl on the table, their bright colours a happy focus in a time of sadness.

nirala

Tukmaria: sacred seed

On a recent shopping trip, I was bemused when my beloved returned home with three 100g bags of basil seed. Pulling the crumpled shopping list from his pocket, he pointed, ‘See, there!’ The line above said fennel seed, so of course I had meant basil seed too, hadn't I?
What to do with all this seed? He had found it at the Indian shop. The owner obviously knew his stock for the packets were labelled as ‘Tukmaria’, with basil seed underneath in small type. After a search on the computer I was totally hysterical in front of an Indian cooking video of a very jolly man who was cooking sweet dishes to attract love. Whoever responded would have had to have had a serious sugar addiction coupled to a very blasé attitude to weight gain!
Back to the seeds... The tiny black teardrop shaped seeds are also known by various names: sabza, subza, takmaria, tukmaria, tukhamaria, falooda, selasih (Malay/Indonesian) or hột é (Vietnamese.) In India it is used in Muslim and Buddhist cuisine and as a medicinal herb. The use of Sacred Basil is restricted by Hindus as it has a sacred association to the god Vishnu. Basil seed also appears in the cuisine of Indonesia, Thailand, Iran and Afghanistan. The two varieties I have found from which the seeds are harvested for culinary use are Sacred Basil, ocimum sanctum and Hairy Basil, ocimum canum. I don’t know if common Sweet Basil works in the same way.
The seeds themselves have little or no flavour. What they do have is the ability to soak up water to create a jelly rather like tapioca. As the little black seeds look like tadpoles hatching, there is also a textural similarity to caviar with a crunchy centre. Reputed to have cooling properties, they are mainly used to thicken drinks and desserts. In Iran they are teamed with lemon juice, in Vietnam with either young coconut milk or water flavoured with palm sugar. The most common use is in the Indian recipe for Falooda.
Depending on what recipe you choose, falooda can be as simple as a milkshake or as elaborate as a Knickerbocker Glory. The Hari Krishna cookbook has a version that contains jelly and custard as well as the more traditional ingredients of milk, ice cream, noodles and rose syrup. All the recipes contained massive amounts of sugar, so I have taken some elements from a few recipes. It is a quick and easy dessert that looks impressive. Feel free to adjust the amount of sweetener to suit your own palate.


FaloodaI tsp basil seed (tukmaria)
1 litre milk
2 pinches of powdered cardamom
1 Tbsp sugar
1½ C rose syrup
1 litre vanilla ice cream
Chopped nuts to garnish( pistachios look nice)

Soak the basil seed in one cup of water for at least half an hour to swell.
Heat the milk until it boils, remove from the heat and add ½ cup rose syrup, the cardamom and the sugar, mix well and chill in the refrigerator.
Strain the water from the basil seeds and add them to the cooled milk.
Whisk in ½ C ice cream until dissolved. At this stage you can store in a covered jug in the refrigerator until needed.
To serve, in a tall glass for each person, place a scoop of vanilla ice cream and one or two teaspoons of rose syrup. Top up with the well stirred milk mixture and garnish with chopped nuts.

Serve with a long spoon and a straw.

You can thicken with a little corn flour when boiling the milk or serve with a spoonful of Falooda sev noodles in the bottom of the glass. Falooda sev is available at Asian stores. This recipe will serve 8-12 people depending on the size of your glasses. You can keep any remaining milk mixture in the refrigerator for a couple of days.
I made my own rose syrup. If you can’t find any, use half a teaspoon of rosewater in half a cup of corn syrup or mild honey with a little red food colour if required.
Children love the pink sweetness of this dessert. I created a little kit for Christmas gifts which included seed, rose syrup and rosewater with the recipe. However, I still have 2 bags of seed in the pantry so more research is needed!

Enjoy,

nirala