Chilli and Parsley Condiment

 

One of the things I have found gastronomically annoying about having children – and there's been more than a few – has been the absence of chillies in our diet. I was never a huge chilli eater, and during pregnancy and breastfeeding I couldn't stomach them at all. But when I was ready to introduce a little heat back into my diet, I realised my kids couldn't tolerate the things. Damn.

Other friends facing the same dilemma came up with different solutions. Mark chops a chilli and puts it on a saucer at the dining table, then sprinkles it on his dinner, but that's too raw for me. Naomi often prepares two or even three variations on a meal (one spicy); but I'm way too lazy. Marty gets a lot of takeaway, but our household has so many food intolerances and fussinesses that takeaway usually feels too hard for us. I resigned myself to the idea that I wasn't going to be eating many chillies for a long, long time.

Then earlier this year I spotted a most excellent chilli and garlic condiment. I had tried variations on this theme, and none were quite what I was looking for, but this was fantastic! I blobbed it on my lunchtime scrambled eggs while my four year old had hers plain; I dumped it in my leftover minestrone; I stirred it through pasta sauce to give it a lift; I scraped a little on quesadillas to cut through the cheese.

Within days I had finished the jar; and I faced a dilemma. While I was willing to buy it once and give it a go, this sauce came from Calabria. I didn't really want to keep purchasing an expensive product which had travelled over land and sea; the cost! the air miles! But then I was given a bag of home grown chillies. I got to wondering just how hard it was to make a chilli and garlic condiment; with a bag of free chillies, I had no excuse not to give it a go. So I whizzed up the chillies with garlic and covered them with olive oil; I did another batch with parsley and garlic, and it's great stuff. The condiment takes no time to make, keeps in the fridge for weeks, has a zillion uses, and if it's made with chillies from the garden and a local olive oil, requires no air miles at all.

While it feels a little late to be writing about chillies from the garden – it's almost winter – I notice three neighbours have ripe chillies in their front yards this week. I take this as a sign that they are still in season, and so with no further ado, I offer you… chilli condiment.

Chilli and Parsley Condiment - 6 fresh long red chillies - 6 big stems of lovely flat leaf parsley - 2 cloves garlic - sea salt - olive oil How you make this depends on your tolerance for heat. For everyday food, I prefer things warm, not blazingly hot. Therefore, I top the chillies, slit them open, and scrape out the seeds and membranes. If you prefer numb lips and the back of your head blown off, leave the seeds and membranes intact. Throw the chillies, parsley, garlic and a hefty pinch of salt into a food processor and pulse-chop until you have a rough sauce. The parsley should still be in tiny squares; the chillies in teeny-tiny dice; and it should all be studded with little lumps of garlic. Scrape it into a very clean glass jar, and cover with olive oil. Gently ease out any air bubbles with a flexible knife or a small spatula; add more olive oil if necessary to cover the surface. Screw on the lid, pop it in the fridge, and you're ready to jazz up absolutely anything. Well, maybe not breakfast cereal. Version two: Omit the parsley, and up the garlic to 6 cloves. It has more heat, and is also very good! (Backyard: chillies, parsley. Local: garlic, olive oil. Northern Victoria: salt.)

Gluten Free Quick and Easy Concentrated Veggie Stock

 

What, you might well ask, is that jar of disgusting khaki paste in the photograph?

Is it some sort of slop fed to babies, or the results that come out several hours later? Is it a particularly ugly parsley pesto? Is it a raw vegan punishment for those who ate too much meat in a previous life?

No, my friends, it is none of these things. Instead, it is pure genius: concentrated veggie stock.

I often make my own liquid veggie stock, a golden brew simmered for hours and stored in the freezer in cup-sized portions for later use. But there are times when I need flavour without liquid; and that’s when I turn to this concentrated stock.

It has none of the metallic overtones of commercial veggie stocks, none of the gluten, and no MSG. It’s just veggies and herbs cooked to a paste and preserved with a bucket of salt. Start with a tablespoon or so, added to curries, soups or stews, then add more if needed.

Thanks to Mandi who told me about it, and her brother Simon who had the flash of pure genius. I should add that they both put a tomato in their stock, but at this time of the year, when tomatoes come from Whoop-Whoop, I leave it out.

Gluten Free Quick and Easy Concentrated Veggie Stock - 2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped - 4 or 5 sticks of celery, leaves and all, roughly chopped - 1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped - 1 clove garlic, peeled - 5 mushrooms, roughly chopped - a big bunch of parsley, including the smaller stems, roughly chopped - an inch or so of rosemary, needles stripped from the stem - a sprig of thyme - 2 bay leaves - olive oil - 100g sea salt Place all the veggies and herbs into a food processor or blender. Pulse-chop until it looks like pesto. Warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan. Scrape the whizzed veggies into the pan, and bring to a slow boil. Let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, or longer if you like (the longer you cook it, the deeper the flavour). Stir regularly to ensure it doesn’t stick. When it no longer smells like raw carrot juice and most of the liquid has evaporated, add the salt. Cook for a few more minutes, stirring constantly, until the salt has dissolved. Scrape it into a jar, and store it in your fridge. It keeps for weeks. Use a tablespoon or so where you would otherwise use a stock cube. (Miss Cleverpants (ie me) thought she’d turn it into stock cubes via an ice cube tray, but the salt prevents it from freezing. So keep it in a jar in the fridge as instructed. The salt will preserve it.) (Backyard: parsley, rosemary, thyme, bay. Melbourne outskirts: celery, garlic, mushrooms. Victoria: olive oil, salt. Somewhere in Australia: onion, carrots.)

Chicken Meatballs with a Spectacular Marjoram Sauce

 

The funniest book I read last year was Lily Brett's You Gotta Have Balls (also published as Uncomfortably Close). Ruth Rothwax longs for a group of supportive women with whom she can meet regularly and talk about empowerment and mutual cooperation. Instead, she gets an ageing father, Edek; his enormously busty Lycra-clad Polish girlfriend, Zofia; and Zofia's weedy hanger-on, Walentyna. Among other skills, Zofia has an incredible knack with balls: meatballs, chicken balls, vegetable balls and, one presumes, Edek's balls.

Like so many good comic novels, You Gotta Have Balls has a serious side. Edek is a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and much of the book is about the ramifications sixty years later. Edek is determined to live exuberantly. For him, each day is a bonus and he is open to all the wonderful possibilities life holds. On the other hand, Ruth, a child of survivors, is earnest and hardworking, stifling her emotions and preferences in overcompensation for all her parents went through. Like the children of so many survivors, good fortune, and life in general, weigh heavily on her; and Brett explores the tensions between the generations gently and well.

However, she really shines in the comic passages. As I read page after page of Edek urging Ruth to try the balls (you gotta have these balls, Ruthie, these balls are unbelievable), I found myself collapsed with laughter at a cafe in Lygon Street, wiping the tears from my eyes and being looked at rather snootily by the unamused patrons at the next table. I can't be entirely sure what annoyed them most: perhaps it was my sitting alone or my grotty clothes? Or could it have been the great snorts of badly suppressed laughter that rudely punctuated their interminable boasting about their holidays?

Whatever it was, it caused a stir and the waitress came over to check that I was okay. She had never, she said, seen anyone laugh at a book like that; but somewhat unbelievably she didn't write down the title. If I saw someone guffawing in a public place over a book, especially someone who wasn't drinking, I would have run over and made sure I had the title down pat.

Maybe laughing aloud at a book is weird and the incurious waitress is more the norm, yet I know which I prefer. Anyway, it can be useful. Years ago, I had to sit in the passports office for several hours. I had with me Neal Stephenson's The Big U, also hilarious, and as I read and laughed and read some more, the section I was sitting in cleared out and I found myself alone in an otherwise crowded waiting room. For that matter, if you ever want a compartment of four seats to yourself on the tram, I can recommend reading a funny book, and laughing – or breastfeeding, of course.

In homage to Edek and Zofia and laughing in public places, here is my recipe for balls. What follows is a very plain chicken meatball; the ball is no more than a vehicle for the scrumptious marjoram sauce, which is not quite salsa verde and not quite salsa agresto but certainly sits in the range of both these lovely sauces. Marjoram is a sweet and delicate herb whose flavour is greatly diminished by cooking. So there is a little marjoram in the balls (think of it as a preliminary whisper), and a great deal of marjoram in the sauce (a fanfare of trumpets and a clashing of cymbals). Put them together, and you have music in your mouth.

The sauce is also good eaten with other meats and felafel; it can even be used as a strong dip. It tastes best the day you make it. The meatballs are enough for two meals for our family, so I make a half quantity of the sauce fresh for each meal. It takes about three minutes, hardly an effort.

Chicken Meatballs with Marjoram Sauce The Balls - 500g chicken mince - 1 large red onion - ⅓ cup marjoram - good pinch of salt - olive oil Chop the onion and marjoram, or pulse chop them in the food processor, until they are very fine. Do not let them go to mush as you want a little texture. Mix them with the mince and a good pinch of salt, using your hands to knead it all through. Form the mixture into small balls, 1½ to 2 tbs of mixture per ball. The balls will, if anything like mine, always resemble 3D trapezoids; clearly, I don't have the knack. You should get 16 to 20, depending on how large you make each one, of course. Place the balls onto a tray, cover with plastic film, and refrigerate until you are ready to cook. To cook the balls, warm the olive oil in a wide skillet over medium heat. When it is reasonably hot, place the balls close together in the pan; they should all fit. Cook without moving them until the bases are golden. Then using a thin egg slide or similar, gently scrape under each ball and turn it onto one side. Continue to cook and turn, cook and turn, for about 15 minutes. When all the sides are golden, cut the largest ball open (like a good tailor, I'm assuming your balls are not identical) and check that it is cooked through. Keep them in a warm oven until you are ready to serve. The Sauce - 10 to 12 sage leaves, preferably from the tips of the plant - 20 stalks flat leaf parsley - two small handfuls of sweet marjoram - 8 walnut halves - 2 fat cloves of garlic - 2 tbs balsamic vinegar - 6 tbs olive oil - a good pinch of sea salt Ensure the herbs are clean and dry. Chop off the bottom half of the parsley stalks and discard. (Keep the top ends of the stalks as these are less fibrous but very tasty; no need to pick all the leaves off.) Peel the garlic. Throw all the ingredients into the small bowl of a food processor (or chop very finely) and whizz. Check for acidity; you may need a little more oil or vinegar. Scrape the sauce into a small bowl. It will be very thick and nubbly. This is enough sauce for all the balls; halve it if you intend to eat only half the balls today. If you are making the balls for a party, form smaller balls and cook for less time; then arrange the balls in a single layer on a platter, and dot each ball with a delicious blob of sauce. The Marjoram Sauce is adapted from a recipe in the intelligent, absorbing and absolutely delicious The Original Mediterranean Cuisine: Medieval Recipes for Today by Barbara Santich, which is, sadly for you, out of print. (Local: onion, marjoram, sage, parsley, walnuts, garlic, olive oil. Mysterious provenance, but free range and chemical free: chicken mince. Not so local: balsamic vinegar, salt.)

Salsa Agresto

Every now and then, I experience a minor miracle: a food that my three children all like. Currently there are ten things on the list, and it is, indeed, a literal list, a dog-eared square of yellow card on our fridge naming the dinners my children have agreed to eat without fussing.

For the record, they are green pie, green tart, rice and lentils, pasta puttanesca (no chilli), pasta with olive and parsley sauce, pasta with tuna and peas, fried rice, tortillas with beans and guacamole, and couscous with chickpeas, cranberries and pine nuts. They will also eat homemade pizza they have topped themselves with olives and capers. It's not a very local list, and I struggle to find local foods that all three enjoy.

But this week, the miracle: salsa agresto! Salsa agresto is a sauce made from nuts, parsley and verjuice. It's principally used on meats and poultry, but I pretended it was a pasta sauce, tossed it through noodles and sprinkled it with parmesan. Boy, was it good.

It reminded me of a favourite salad I used to eat at a restaurant in DC made with fresh greens, and topped with homemade falafel balls, fresh grapes and toasted almonds. This was like eating the best bits of the salad in every mouthful.

At the base of the sauce lies verjuice*, which contributes a clear fruity flavour. Ordinarily I'd substitute something else; unlike lemons, verjuice doesn't grow on my neighbour's tree. However, the verjuice is what makes it. Its sweetness rounds out the flavours beautifully; straight lemon juice or vinegar would be too sharp. In any case, the word 'agresto' refers to grape juice, so without verjuice Salsa Agresto would have to be called something else.

The almonds were from our tree; the walnuts, local. If you are going to make this sauce, ensure you too are using fresh local almonds and walnuts. They're easy to find in the organic shops. Most imported nuts are rancid and will make your sauce sour and deeply unpleasant.

I based my sauce on a recipe in Maggie's Harvest. Maggie uses a combination of parsley and basil, but in my garden we don't see any basil until the parsley has well and truly gone to seed. In any case, I think the flavours of parsley, walnuts and almonds are quite enough, so I left the basil out.

Once the sauce was made, I reserved what we needed for one meal. The rest I placed in a very clean jar, covered it with a blanket of olive oil, and popped in the fridge. It should keep there for at least a week. We ate it with pasta; it would also go well with poultry, falafel or roasted root vegetables.

*Note: Verjuice contains sulphites; I realised this when I wandered around grumpily tight-chested for a couple of hours after the meal, then finally thought to check the bottle. If you, like me, are mildly sensitive to sulphites, consider warming the verjuice then simmering it uncovered for a few minutes. The heat will break down the sulphites into sulphur dioxide, which will evaporate (this is why you need to leave the lid of the saucepan off). Allow it to cool, then proceed with the recipe.

Of course, if you are highly sensitive to sulphites, cook something else; or try substituting half water, half lemon juice with a pinch of sugar, and adjust to taste; or even press your own grape juice from unripe grapes, which, in fact, is what I intend to do later this year as some of our grapes make a lovely juice, and the very thought of that delicate flavour as the base of this nutty sauce makes my mouth water even now.

Salsa Agresto - ½ cup freshly shelled walnuts - ½ cup freshly shelled almonds - 1½ packed cups flat-leaf parsley - 1 clove garlic - ½ tsp salt - ½ cup verjuice - about ½ cup olive oil Preheat the oven to 200°C. Roast the almonds and walnuts on a baking tray for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring from time to time. Remove from the oven when they smell lightly toasted. Rub any loose skins off the walnuts with a tea towel, and leave to cool. Place the parsley, garlic, salt and nuts in a food processor and whizz. Slowly add the verjuice, then enough olive oil to loosen it up. Check for seasoning, and serve. Adapted from a recipe in Maggie's Harvest by Maggie Beer. (Local: walnuts, almonds, garlic, parsley, olive oil. Not too far away: verjuice. Not local: salt.)

Buckwheat Noodles with Lentils and Carrots

When I was 14, my mother went back to work with a vengeance. She had been working from home before then, forever talking on the phone cradled against her neck as she stirred pasta sauce or chopped onions.

But suddenly she was out of the house twelve or more hours a day. After about a year of two minute noodles and Dad's valiant attempts at cooking, I realised it was time for me to learn to cook – but like all good teenagers, I announced that if I was going to cook, then I was going to do it my way. This meant vegetarian.

Looking back, I realise I've been cooking almost completely vegetarian for twenty years now. Early days were mostly pasta, with a few forays into just plain gross; I particularly remember a fairly putrid recipe for bolognese sauce made from mashed tofu. I tried it once, but really there is no excuse. It was – and is – a horrible thing to do to tofu.

Now I have developed my own style and range of recipes, heavy on the pulses and leafy greens. But as much as I hate to admit it, even after all these years of vegetarian cooking and eating I still find it difficult to feel perfectly satisfied with a veggie meal. It's hard to achieve the complexity of flavours and textures that make meat so special.

However, I do have a shortlist of perfectly balanced, utterly satisfying meals. This pasta is one of them. The leek and carrots add a light sweetness, complementing the earthiness of the lentils, chard and buckwheat. Whether or not you add the cheese is up to you; but I find that the chévre is the difference between pretty good and spectacular.

Buckwheat Noodles with Lentils and Carrots - 270g soba (Hakubaku noodles are from Ballarat) - ½ cups green lentils (mine are from Horsham) - 1 bay leaf - ¼ tsp salt - olive oil - 1 clove garlic, smashed with the side of the knife blade then finely chopped - 1 leek, white part only, quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced - 1 stalk celery, diced small - 2 carrots, diced small - 1 bunch chard or kale, or a mixture - 5 stems flat-leaf parsley - 150g chévre (optional. Meredith Dairy's goat chévre is perfect) Sort the lentils, then cover them with cold water, add the bay leaf and salt, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes or so, until they are tender. Check regularly to see if they're done. As soon as they're soft, drain them into strainer set over a bowl. Retain the cooking water. Gently warm a good swirl of olive oil in a wide skillet with the garlic and a pinch of salt. (The salt prevents the garlic from sticking and burning.) Add the leeks, and sauté; then the celery and carrots. Leave them to cook over medium heat while you wash the chard or kale. Remove the tough stems, then slice the leaves into narrow ribbons. Add them to the skillet with the drained lentils. Measure the lentil cooking water, and top up with water, if necessary, to make ¾ cup of liquid. Pour it into the skillet, then cover and leave to cook gently for 30 minutes or so, or until the carrots are soft. Stir from time to time. Add a little more water if necessary to prevent the vegetables from sticking, and to ensure there is a little sauce at the end. While the vegetables are cooking, bring a large pot of water to the boil. When the vegetables are tender, cook the soba according to the directions on the packet. Place into a large serving bowl, and add the vegetables and parsley. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, and mix gently but well. Serve as is, or with little knobs of chévre tossed through the noodles. Pass the pepper grinder. Adapted from a recipe by Deborah Madison in The Greens Cookbook. (Local: noodles, garlic, leek, celery, carrot, chard, kale, parsley, bay leaf, olive oil, chévre. Victorian: lentils.)

Tuna Steaks with Salsa Verde

 

In an extraordinary boon to our local eating, a friend of ours caught a 122 kilogram tuna last weekend! So we have been the grateful recipients of some spectacularly fresh fish.

Tuna has very dense flesh – it's more like meat than fish. It goes well with strong flavours and grills beautifully.

So, because I'm a cooking coward, we didn't make sashimi. Instead, I seared the tuna on a cast iron grill pan and served it with Salsa Verde. The interior of the tuna was ruby red, softening out to a lighter pink near the surface. The grill lines gave the exterior a lovely texture and taste, and the whole just melted in my mouth.

It was so good, even my kids ate it. Or was it the Salsa Verde that they liked? Possibly - they slathered Salsa Verde everywhere, even over the easy peasy potato wedges that I served on the side.

Tuna Steaks with Salsa Verde - one or two tuna steaks, about an inch thick (ask the fishmonger about the provenance of the fish, or make a fishing friend. You can also download a sustainable seafood guide here.) - large bunch of flat-leaf parsley - some mint - 2 or 3 cornichons - 1 tbs capers - 6 to 8 anchovies - 1 tsp Dijon mustard - 1 clove garlic - the juice of a lemon (red wine vinegar is traditional, but it's lovely with lemon and lemons are local) - olive oil - extra lemon, to serve Heat the griddle pan. While it is heating, throw the ingredients for Salsa Verde into a food processor. Add a slosh of olive oil and whizz until combined – a little nubble is fine. Taste and adjust for sharpness, and season. (Of course, you can always chop the herbs, cornichons, capers, anchovies and garlic by hand, then stir in the mustard, lemon and olive oil.) Rub the tuna with salt and oil, and place on the very hot grill. Leave for four minutes. Flip the tuna carefully and cook on the other side for 2 minutes if you like it very rare (recommended), 3 minutes if you like just a thread of pinkness (still pretty good), and 4 minutes if you want it to taste like canned tuna (to which I say, what's the point?). Serve immediately with the Salsa Verde and some extra lemon wedges on the side. (Backyard: parsley, mint, lemon. Local: tuna, garlic. Non-local: cornichons, capers, anchovies, Dijon, salt.)