Gluten Free Sugar Free Lamington Bars

 

Back in the 50's, an older friend of mine used to visit the prisoners at the Fremantle Jail with her school; the girls were to cheer up the prisoners. They'd sing and put on plays, and then serve afternoon tea. And they'd play terrible pranks. One regarded lamingtons. The girls would cut up bathroom sponges, bind them together with shaving cream, and ice them as usual. An unsuspecting prisoner would take a big rubbery bite, pause... then roar with laughter. What good sports they were, says my friend.

These days it's very hard to imagine a school sending a group of girls to visit a men's prison bearing cake; and even harder to imagine prisoners roaring with laughter when the best looking bit of food they've seen all year turns out to be a sham. But perhaps it didn't really matter. The 'lamingtons' were iced and coconutted as usual – and as everyone knows, the outside is the only part of the lamington worth eating. The sponge is invariably dry, something to politely mumble one's way through rather than actively enjoy.

Thinking about this, it occurred to me to fiddle around with the date-paste-bar idea and turn it into the outside of a lamington. I admit it's not a local seasonal food, but my justification for putting the recipe on this blog is two-fold. One, it's an incredibly quick, easy and healthy snack food that requires no packaging, very useful for lunchboxes. Two, we are about to move house and I'm cooking my way through the depths of the pantry; this is a great way to use up dried coconut, and date paste!

Unapologetically, then, I present to you: lamington bars. Lovely in a lunch box; delightful cut into squares and served with a short black or a hot tea; and not a bathroom sponge or shred of gluten in sight.

Gluten Free Sugar Free Lamington Bars - 180g date paste - 4 tbs unsweetened cocoa - 2 tbs cacao nibs - 60g coconut shreds - pinch of salt - water, as needed The date paste should be moist enough to work with; however, if it seems dry and hard, soak it in water for an hour before using. You can use the soaking water to sweeten a smoothie. Combine the first five ingredients in the large bowl of a food processor. Whizz for several minutes, until it forms small glossy pebbles. If the mixture is struggling to come together, slowly dribble in up to a tablespoon of water, a drop at a time, until it has combined. Tip half the mixture into a small dish; I use a ceramic dish 10cm x 18cm (4" x 7") bought at an op shop for just this purpose. Using the back of a metal spoon, press the mixture firmly into the dish. Tip in the rest of the mixture, and press the whole into a solid smooth slab. Cover with gladwrap and place in the fridge for several hours to harden up. When you are ready to serve, cut using a heavy knife. I slice mine crosswise into ten narrow bars ready for school lunches; or into squares for a sweet little something to share. (Ingredients from all over the world, but a bought bar would be similar, only with more chemicals and packaging.)

(aka Australian Food Magic)

Almond Coconut Bars

 

For a short time, my sister shared a house with a model. Skinny as a rake, the woman subsisted on boiled eggs, coconut oil and vitamin pills. It's not the sort of diet I would recommend; for one, I can't imagine the state of her bowels.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had a few months ago. My marriage was going through an arid patch, as relationships well into their second decade sometimes do, and I said to a friend rather airily, 'I could imagine having an affair, except of course for my vows.'

My friend looked at me wide-eyed, then collapsed laughing. She had heard, you see, not 'vows' but 'bowels' and had been overwhelmed momentarily by appalling thoughts regarding the state of mine.

Ghastly. But let us return to the model housemate, so to speak, and the coconut oil. According to many foodie types, when eaten in conjunction with more than boiled eggs it is actually good for you; and, in moderation, can help you lose weight. That is, I suppose, why she ate it. The arguments go on for pages, so I won't bore you with them here; suffice it to say that I was mulling over the purported health properties of coconut oil when I saw this jar of the stuff at my local shop:

 

Years ago, I wrote a column in which I suggested that the reason many people make consumer choices which keep others in slave-like conditions is that they do not connect the dots between a woman in a special economic zone in China, who works and lives in appalling conditions, and the t-shirt hanging on a rack at the local mall. Yet here was a jar of coconut oil showing, I presume, the sort of person who benefits when I buy fair trade. It connects the dots.

So I bought the coconut oil and sat it on a shelf in my pantry so that it catches my eye every time I open the door – and every time I see it, ten times a day, I find myself grinning. The woman's face makes me happy, and if that isn't an advertisement for fair trade socially sustainable products, even if they are from regions afar, then I don't know what is!

I left it there for a while, just to keep smiling, but I hadn't quite worked out what to do with it when my investigations took a surprising turn. Rather unexpectedly, I fell in love. Nothing to do with the long relationship; instead, I fell in love with, rather disastrously, a six dollar chocolate bar. It is one of those things free of everything: sugar, gluten, dairy – EXCEPT TASTE. It contains mostly almonds and various forms of coconut (coconut oil, shredded coconut), and is coated with cacao sweetened with coconut sugar. Even writing about it makes me drool.

Eco it is not. It is made in the US, and I shudder to think of the air miles of the coconut from somewhere tropical being shunted somewhere north, formulated into bars, then sent over the Pacific to Australia. It is clearly over-packaged. And it is, rather obviously, insanely expensive. A late-night google revealed that I can buy a box of 72 bars for a heavily discounted rate, but I prefer not to look like the side of a house before I turn 40 and thus I have restrained myself. But oh! that bar. It is not oversweet; instead, it is very, very satisfying and keeps me going for hours. From time to time I lash out and buy a single bar, hoovering it up in seconds – but then it occurred to me to try and make something similar.

So I looked around a bit more, and found these almond power bars (or words to that effect). They are nothing like the commercial bar, nor are they trying to be, but they have the same effect. Being choc-full of nuts and, if one believes the rhetoric about coconut oil, healthy fats, one of these keeps me on an even keel for hours. I eat one just before school pick up, and the slow steady release of energy helps me stay calm with the kids right up until dinner time.

I may not look like my sister's former housemate, and nor would I ever want to; yet this is the sort of food that helps me feel like a model mum: on an even keel, energetic, and happy.

 

Almond Coconut Bars - 1 cup almonds - 1 cup brazil nuts - ½ cup LSA - ½ cup shredded coconut - ½ cup almond butter - a good pinch of salt - ½ cup coconut oil - 1 tbs honey - 2 tsp proper vanilla essence (none of that nasty chemical stuff) - about 75g dark chocolate, optional Put the nuts, LSA, shredded coconut, almond butter and salt into a food processor. Pulse it to combine. Melt the coconut oil over low heat. Add the honey and vanilla to the oil, and stir together, then drizzle it all into the nut mixture. Pulse again until you have a coarse paste. The easiest thing here is to tip it all into a baking dish about 10cm x 10cm, pressing down with the back of a metal spoon to pack it in. Refrigerate for an hour or so. Slice with a warm knife into bars / squares / whatever takes your fancy. Store in the fridge. If, however, you like fiddling around, drop the mixture into silicon cups. I use a dozen silicon cupcake cups, filled less than a half (a full cupcake of this mix is enough to go crusading) plus a silicon ice cube tray in the shape of hearts. Keep the cups in a muffin tray so they retain their shape while being formed. Drop some mixture into each shape, then press down with the back of a metal spoon to pack it in. Place in the fridge for an hour to harden. You can pop the little shapes out of the ice cube tray and into a container for storage; and just place the cupcake shapes, silicon wrappers and all, into the container too. Store in the fridge. Optional: When the mix has set, melt the chocolate over very low heat. Stir constantly to ensure it doesn't catch and burn. Drizzle the chocolate over the bars / patties / whatever, then return them to the fridge to harden the chocolate. These make a great lunchbox snack, and they chase away the mid afternoon doldrums a treat. Of course, you can play with the nuts and the nut butter – macadamias, hazelnuts and pure almonds are all delicious. Tweaked from a recipe found here, which is based on a recipe found here which is in turn based on a recipe found here. (Backyard: almonds. Brunswick: honey. Way away, but apparently organic, shade grown and preserving both the Amazonian rainforest and a traditional way of life: brazil nuts. Wimmera: salt. Sumatra: coconut oil in an eco peco fair trade post-tsunami project. Organic but afar: shredded coconut, almond butter (must make my own one of these days). Organic fair trade: chocolate. Australian sourced but no more specific: LSA.)

Vine Leaf Bhaji (Pakorhas)

 

I would have grown up in a boring suburban home but for the influence of the church over my mother. She was a bright girl; and in the fifties, as every conservative Christian knew, bright girls didn’t marry. Instead, they because missionaries. My mother showed no interest in nursing but quickly proved herself a linguist, and so it was clear to all and sundry that she would go translate bibles somewhere. I never worked out whether she herself had really wanted to do this; all I know is that she told me she used to kneel every night and pray, ‘Anywhere but Africa, God, anywhere but Africa.’ Why Africa didn’t appeal is a mystery to me; but there you go.

When she was nineteen, as part of her discernment process she travelled to India to visit missionary friends. In her bag she smuggled boxes and boxes of tampons, then unavailable in India; and under the tampons, a replacement fender for a small van. The van belonged to the missionaries, who had inadvertently collided with, and killed, a holy cow. It was a hit and run. Nobody but the missionaries knew who had done it – to hit a cow in those parts at those times meant your life was forfeit.

My mother’s friends didn’t really want to give up their lives for a pagan cow that had been sitting in the middle of the road just around a sharp bend, but there were telltale marks on their fender. So the van was in hiding until they could replace the fender; there was nowhere they could get a new fender without exciting comment; and so my mother was smuggling one in from Australia.

She was stopped at customs and asked to open her very large and surprisingly heavy bag. The first things to be questioned were the tampons. The customs officer opened a box, pulled one out, unwrapped it, and held it aloft. Clearly mystified, he asked her, in sign language, what it was; and in sign language, the terribly shy girl of nineteen communicated by pointing at the moon, at women, crossing out men, and finally miming the insertion of a tampon. The customs official turned bright pink, zipped up her bag, and urgently waved her through. Thus the fender was delivered safely and the missionaries lived happily ever after.

***

My mother never became a missionary. Instead, she married, had kids, and fought her way to become a minister (priest), one of the first Baptist women in Australia to be so ordained. But she did extend her cooking repertoire to Indian food. Chappatis, bhaji (also known as pakorhas), rice and dal, aloo gobi, brinjal bartha, chicken curry, banana pickle, various chatnis – all these appeared regularly at the family dinner table.

When I cook them now, they taste of home, perhaps even more than the standard fare of the early 80’s that she also served: lamb chops, tuna mornay, beef stews.

 

And now it’s early April. The larger leaves on the grapevine are turning red even as the smaller leaves at the ends of the stems are still soft, fresh, and bright lime green. It’s our last chance for vine leaves, so this week I pruned back some of the long straggly stems, picked off the young leaves, dipped them in bhaji batter and shallow fried them. The leaves cooked in seconds, the batter puffed and golden around them. Each hot crisp bite melted in the mouth; the kids loved them; and I remembered these stories about my mother.

Vine Leaf Bhaji (Pakorhas) - ¼ cup chickpea (besan) flour - ¼ cup rice flour - ¼ tsp turmeric - 1/8 tsp bicarb soda - ½ tsp salt - 20 or so fresh young vine leaves - flavourless vegetable oil (not olive oil; enough to shallow fry) Pick the vine leaves and pinch out the base of the stem. Wash if necessary, and pat dry very carefully as any drops of water left on the leaf can cause the oil to spit. Sift the flours, turmeric, bicarb and salt together. Make a well, and add the water in a thin trickle, whisking all the time to ensure a smooth batter. Gradually incorporate all the flour from the sides of the bowl into the batter. It should have the consistency of thin cream. Warm a couple of inches of canola or other flavourless vegetable oil (not olive) in a deep pan. It is ready when a mustard seed added to the oil pops. Dip a leaf into the batter, dab it against the side of the bowl to remove any excess batter, and drop it into the oil. It will float. Cook for about ten seconds, or until the underside is puffed and golden. Flip and cook for another few seconds, then remove. Drain on scrunched up paper bags. Don’t use paper towel, as that will render your lovely crispy bites soggy. Sprinkle with extra salt if you wish, and demolish. Don’t burn your tongue! Very good with beer (or more properly with some sort of dal and rice). If you wish to save the oil, I find that letting it cool then running it through a paper coffee filter placed in a funnel cleans it enough for a second use. Adapted from a recipe in Madhur Jaffrey’s magnificent tour of regional Indian cooking, A Taste of India. Sadly, it is out of print, but her Ultimate Curry Bible looks very tempting! Recipe easily doubled or quadrupled; there is just a limit to how much fried food I will make, and that limit is very low. Incidentally, I also tried baby chard leaves, but while they were still good, they were so juicy that they lacked the requisite crispiness. I’d recommend you stick to vine or other thin leaves: sorrel, or baby spinach perhaps. You can also use this batter for thinly sliced vegetables: potatoes and potato skins, pumpkin, cauliflower, eggplant, zucchini, and even squash flowers. But I like it best with leaves. (Backyard: vine leaves. Victoria: canola oil (non GMO). Somewhere in Australia: chickpea flour, salt. From many miles away: brown rice flour, turmeric. A complete mystery: bicarb soda.)

Potatoes Za’tar

 

The people in this house form a very complicated Venn diagram when it comes to food preferences. One will eat fish, but not meat; one will eat chicken, but no other meat or fish bar canned tuna. One will eat potatoes; two scream if anything like a potato appears on the table. Four will eat bread and pasta, but one (me) has discovered that gluten is at the root of all her health problems. And so it goes.

Which is why I am so grateful for small things, like za'tar. It is one of the few foods that every person in the house absolutely loves. Spelled zatar, za'tar, za'atar and goodness knows how many other ways, it can refer to a herb (variously oregano, marjoram, thyme, hyssop or another herb) and also to a spice mix made with one or a combination of those herbs. The spice mix, which is what we love, contains za'tar herbs, toasted sesame seeds and salt; and sometimes also sumac.

 

If you've ever eaten Lebanese pizza crusted with oregano and sesame, that's za'tar. We buy the mix by the scoop out of a bin at the local middle eastern importers. The easiest way to eat it is to dip bread in olive oil, then in the za'tar, rather as one eats dukkah.

It's also a great way to spice up leftover pita. I mix one part zatar with one part olive oil, smear the paste on pita triangles, then pop them in the oven for a few minutes or until the zatar is bubbling. Eaten warm or cold, it makes a great snack for hungry kids. Za'tar is rumoured to be brain food, so bread and za'tar is a good choice for breakfast on a school day, or just before doing homework!

Lately, too, I've been eating za'tar on potatoes. Smearing potatoes with olive oil and za'tar, then baking them, has proved to be very simple and delicious. And if the potatoes are served alongside pita za'tar for the kids then, in an unusual feeling of unity necessary for my sense of family wellbeing, our Venn circles do, in a small way, very slightly overlap.

Potatoes Za'tar - six medium sized potatoes - 2 tbs za'tar - 2 tbs olive oil Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Wash the potatoes and peel if necessary. Halve the potatoes lengthwise, or slice them into inch thick rounds. Place the potatoes into a steamer basket. Steam for seven to eight minutes or until a knife slips in easily. Remove from the heat. Mix the za'tar and olive oil in a small bowl. Place the potatoes on a baking tray, then smear them with the za'tar mix. Pop them in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the edges of the potatoes are turning golden and the za'tar is well and truly bubbling. (Victoria: potatoes, olive oil. From many miles away but you don't need much: za'tar.)

Kale Crisps

 

Eat your greens! Well, I do love greens and I do eat a lot of them in salad, in horta and in pie. But every now and then I just don't feel like a great pile of leaves mounded on my plate, and that's when I fool about with kale.

Kale is such a sturdy vegetable that it can be, effectively, chipped. That is, it can be baked with oil and salt, and a bit of chilli perhaps, and turned into a delightfully flaky nutty flavoured thing. For this chips-not-chocolate girl, kale crisps are perfect for an afternoon snack, with an evening beer, or anytime really.

Sure, I can buy wildly expensive packages of kale chips, but why would I when they are a doddle to make and cheap as, well, chips?

Kale Crisps - 1 bunch black kale aka cavolo nero or Tuscan kale - olive oil - chilli flakes (optional. I often do two batches, one with chilli for me, and one without for the kids.) - salt Preheat the oven to 180°. Position an oven shelf near the top of the oven. Wash and dry the kale. Cut out the thick central stems, and chop the leaves into bite size pieces. Drizzle olive oil into a large bowl. Sprinkle in chilli flakes to taste (start with about ¼ tsp) and a large pinch of salt. Throw the leaves into the bowl and toss with your hands until they have a slight sheen from the olive oil, and the salt and chilli flakes are evenly distributed. Line a baking tray with silicon or baking paper, and place the leaves in a single layer on the tray. Slide the tray into the top shelf of the oven. Check after 12 minutes; if they are not yet crisp and slightly golden, give them another couple of minutes in the oven. Remove from the oven. Serve warm or cold. Kale crisps do not stay crisp terribly long, so either eat them immediately or, as soon as they are cool, place them into an airtight container lined with paper towel or similar to absorb any residual moisture. In lieu of chilli flakes you could use some sort of spice mix. Experiment! (Local: kale, olive oil. Not so local: chilli flakes, salt.)

Dolmades

 

My earliest memory is that of food. When I was a year and a half old, my parents went to Nepal for three months to have a few adventures and visit a few friends, and I tagged along. And if I let my mind slip sideways and approach the memory as I would a skittish stray cat, I can remember sitting on a stone wall, the roughness of the stones pressing into my thighs, and eating a mandarin. The mandarin is large in my baby hands, and beside me I can see the pattern of my beloved friend Gwen’s brown tweed skirt.

My second oldest memory is of swinging my legs from the neighbour’s kitchen bench and having olives popped into my mouth. My neighbours were Greek and I spent hours there every week watching George make endless tiny cups of thick black coffee and Tina cook up a storm. For a long time, my parents were puzzled by my birdlike appetite and burgeoning size until they realised quite how much the neighbours fed me.

There’s nothing like fresh Greek food. Eating it takes me right back to George and Tina’s vinyl chairs and seventies brown kitchen, and the view out to their grapevine. Behind the vine was a fire pit, dug into the lawn for the Paschal lamb; thinking of that lamb makes my mouth water even now.

Three decades later, I am drifting through old memories as I cook up a storm in my own kitchen and gaze out into our own grapevine. It’s the time of year when vines go a-roaming. New shoots sprawl abundantly, looking for something to catch on to, and so, before heat burns and fungi attack, it is time to make dolmades.

 

Dolmades are quite simply vine leaves stuffed with rice and other goodies. I fill mine with fresh herbs, and use the leaves from our vines. While you can certainly buy preserved vine leaves, fresh vine leaves are a whole ‘nother thing: they taste light and sweet and clean.

For this recipe, you need about fifty vine leaves the size of a Cornish woman’s hand, that is, my hand – or what is probably about the size of your palm. Obviously if your leaves are larger, you will need less; smaller, you will need more. Don’t strip the leaves off the vine one by one, as this will weaken the vine. Instead, remove a long unwanted shoot, then strip the leaves off that.

If you don’t have a grapevine of your own, there are plenty throwing two and three metre long shoots into the laneways. If you decide to glean such shoots, respect the vine and the owner. Take clippers, and cut a couple of good long stems to the fence line – don’t just shred the leaves off, don’t go over the fence line, and take only what you can use. When I'm out walking, I carry a stout pair of scissors in my bag to collect herbs and greens and no one has ever done anything but smile and nod as they see me carefully snipping fennel tops, parsley, bay leaves and all the other goodies that grow for free.

I may not be Greek, but George and Tina gave me an early education in food and I have taken on the mantle of gleaning and eating great quantities of herbs and bitter greens, vine leaves and fennel tops. And as I do so, I think of my old neighbours with gratitude.

Dolmades - about 50 fresh vine leaves - 150g long grain white rice - about 350g brown onions - ½ cup fennel tops - ⅓ cup parsley, about 10 – 12 stalks - ¼ cup mint - 150ml olive oil - a lemon - salt First, select your vine leaves. For the rolls, choose those which are whole. Reserve any torn leaves for lining the pan. With your thumbnail and forefinger, snip the stem from the base of the leaf. Wash well. Bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil. (I use the same wide frypan that I will later use to cook the dolmades). In batches, drop in the leaves and hold them under the water for a bare minute, then fish them out and let them drain in a colander. They will change from bright green to khaki in that time. Place the rice in a medium sized bowl and cover with cold water. Let it soak for fifteen minutes, then drain it in a sieve and rinse well. While the rice is soaking, chop the onions very finely. The onions hold the rice grains apart and give the dolmades a delicate lightness, so keep them small but do not grate them or pulverize them in a food processor. You do not want a mush! Chop the fennel, mint and parsley. Mix the rice with the onions, the herbs, 75ml olive oil and half the lemon juice. Line the base of a wide heavy based frypan – you may as well use the same pan as was used for blanching – with vine leaves. Start with the holey ones. Now take a blanched vine leaf and lay it flat. Place a heaped teaspoon of filling at the base of the leaf – and use a bit of common sense here: a large leaf may need more filling; a small one, less – and then form it into a rough tube. Roll the vine leaf once, fold in either side, and continue rolling to the end. Place it in the frypan.   Pack the dolmades tightly together. When you have run out of filling, drizzle the rest of the olive oil and lemon juice over the dolmades. Gently place a plate upside down on top of the dolmades to hold them in place, then pour 250ml hot water into the pan. Cover and cook over very low heat. After 40 minutes, fish one out and test it. If it’s a bit crunchy, give it another five minutes, otherwise turn off the heat. Let them cool a little in the pan. Take the dolmades out and arrange them on a plate. Serve warm or cold with slices of lemon. While they keep in the fridge for several days, they do lose some of their delicate texture and herbal sprightliness. They are best the same day – although even two days later they are far and away better than any commercial dolmades I’ve eaten! Adapted from a recipe in the wonderful book, Greek Food, by Rena Salaman. Every recipe is preceded by a history of the dish and her fond memories of growing up in Greece. This is a lovely read, and the recipes are scrumptious! Sadly, it is out of print – but her later cookbooks may be worth a look. (Backyard or gleaned locally: vine leaves, mint, fennel tops, parsley, lemon. Local: onions, olive oil. Somewhere in Australia: rice, salt.)

 

Farinata

 

How delightful it is to discover a new comfort food! I had always thought comfort foods were those carbohydrates first eaten during early childhood, with their deeply familiar flavours and their taste of home, like good bread with salted butter; or really fresh stretchy pita; or burning hot chips, crisp and salty on the outside, soft and mealy within. These are pleasure enough – but one of the joys of being an adult is that I keep finding new foods to add to the list!

I’ve always liked Lebanese pastries, but when I first bit into the spelt version of the haloumi pie at Mankoushe on Lygon Street, I knew I had discovered the perfect dish. Hot, salty, cheesy, with the deep slaty taste of spelt, heat blistered, and brushed with olive oil: this is comfort food at its best – and is, perhaps, why the Mankoushe boys, dishes themselves, wave whenever we go by: we are their best customers.

Even more recently, I discovered farinata. Farinata is a thick chickpea flour pancake flecked with salt and rosemary. It is that perfect combination of hot and crisp at the edges and mealy inside; and it is savoury, filling, and flavourful. Even better, it is so quick and simple to make that it is a wonder it is not more widely known; the only step that takes any time at all is leaving it to soak for a couple of hours.

I’m so enamoured with farinata that I’ve been making it twice a week for dinner, with a couple of hefty salads on the side. It’s best served hot straight from the pan; but even eaten the next day, whether cold or warmed in the microwave, it is still good.

Farinata doesn’t have to be eaten at dinner. According to Skye Gyngell in her lovely book My Favourite Ingredients, farinata is the traditional breakfast food for Genoese fisherman. I, however, struggle to eat breakfast any later than the time it takes me to shuffle down the hall to the kitchen, so I am yet to find out whether it’s good just then. However, like all salty foods farinata cries out for beer, and I’m looking forward to warmer weather and drinkies in our complete mess of a garden with a slice of farinata in one hand, and a cold beer in the other.

The ingredients are not quite local (I am not sure which bit of Australia provides the chickpea flour in the organic shop), but it is so good that I can’t help but include it in this blog. If you need an excuse to cook a non-local food, farinata is gluten free, sugar free, vegan, and economical. And because pricing completely fails to take into account the distance food has travelled, if you use an imported chickpea flour (also known as besan flour, and readily available in Indian and Pakistani shops), it will be even cheaper.

In Liguria, farinata is made in a large zinc lined copper pan. As I am not Ligurian and don’t have a great pile of specialist cooking equipment, I have adapted the recipe for my thick bottomed stainless steel frying pan 30cm (12”) in diameter. Whatever pan you use, make sure it can go into the oven.

Farinata - 150g chickpea flour (also sold as besan flour) - 500ml lukewarm water - a very hefty pinch of sea salt - ¼ cup plus a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil - a long stem of rosemary Place the chickpea flour and a pinch of salt into a large bowl. If the flour is very lumpy, sieve it; otherwise press out any lumps with a whisk. Make a well in the centre. Gradually add the water, whisking constantly as you slowly incorporate the flour; you should end up with a runny yellow batter. Leave it to sit for 2 to 4 hours. (I have eaten farinata under the guise of chickpea fritters at several bars and been left with an unpleasant grainy texture on the back of my teeth, like a scone that lacks the necessary pinch of sugar. Leaving it to sit and very slightly ferment seems to fix this problem.) Pick the leaves from the rosemary. Place an oven rack in the top half of the oven (not the topmost row, but the one below it), and preheat the oven to 225°C (450°F). Stir ¼ cup olive oil into the batter. Place the frying pan on the stovetop, and heat the tablespoon of oil until it is just beginning to smoke. Pour in the batter – it will frill up at the sides like a frittata – and scatter it with rosemary. Gently slide the pan into the oven. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, until the edges are crisp, the top is golden, and the middle is perfectly mealy. Sprinkle with extra salt flakes, and serve immediately. This makes enough for a bunch of people to have a taste, four or five people to eat with other things, or for two hungry greedy people to demolish with gusto. Gyngell recommends eating farinata topped with flecks of sweet gorgonzola... sounds good, but I haven’t tried it! She also has a recipe for farinata, but I prefer the thinner batter used above. From a recipe in the The River Cafe Cook Book Green, adapted to home cooking conditions and equipment. (Backyard: rosemary. Local: olive oil. Somewhere in Australia: chickpea flour. Not so local: salt.)

Homemade Lärabars

I've had my winter break, and now I'm back. I feel I should be reporting on some great food revelation, but it's just been a month of simple food eaten with very little fuss. I polished off the last of the persimmons from a friend's tree, and have come to love them. I left them to blet, that is, go extremely soft; and when they felt like nothing more than a fragile bag of heaviness – sadly, the only descriptive word that comes to mind is 'testicular' – I ate them with a spoon; they were deliciously jammy and fragrant. We've also demolished mountains of apples, potatoes, celeriac, lentils, walnuts and kale. I was delighted to find Victorian hazelnuts at CERES, and we've thrown them into the mix of nuts eaten at our house.

It's been a good break. Over the holidays, my schoolgirls got back into the habit of making their own lunches; and when they went back to school, decided that it was a habit they wanted to keep. When they announced this, I thought carefully for about three milliseconds – then I frowned deeply, sighed heavily, and said 'I suppose so. Yes.'

Internally, I flipped cartwheels and held a parade; to them I said sternly, 'Now this will take some planning. I'll plan on the weekend. You can start Monday.'

I thought it would be good to start on a high note, so over the weekend I found all the school food odds and ends and grouped them in the pantry at kid height: dried fruit and nuts; small cans of tuna; their favourite crackers; corn cakes; and some fancy healthy treats. I bought squishy white bread, their preferred sandwich option, alas; punnets of cherry tomatoes even though it's July; sliced ham; and anything else that might tickle their fancy. And I made a version of Lärabars.

Lärabars are, I gather, a high energy and reasonably healthy bar available in the States. I make no claim for originality here; I only know about them since a fabulous French food blogger provided a recipe and, once I tweaked the method so that the nuts were chunkier and the spices more evenly distributed, my girls thought the results were really something special. Fundamentally, they are nothing more than date paste combined with cocoa, raw cacoa nibs, and a heap of nuts and/or dried fruit. This month, the Victorian hazelnuts combined nicely with the almonds from our tree; and the local combination outweighed any air mile guilt I felt about buying date paste from Syria.

We cut them not into bars, but into chunks: thick inch-wide squares chock full of dried fruit and nuts, enough to keep a young girl going at playtime. And so the school lunch experiment began.

It's been fascinating. I've quietly lurked beside the refrigerator and watched my five-year-old, who 'hates' any sort of fruit, cheerfully choose a kiwifruit and pack it into a box with a fancy spoon; and bring home the skin scraped clean. This is the same child who has wailed whenever I have suggested such a thing; who has, in fact, rejected any fruit except organic raspberries when they are $14 a punnet, which naturally I refuse to buy.

She also 'hates' tuna, but has happily packed and devoured several cans now she thinks I'm not looking. My seven-year-old can't stand it when I use salted butter, but in her own lunch it appears to be a necessity, along with a small tub of olives and tomatoes, and perhaps some gooseberries from our shrub. I've decided that I will turn a blind eye to whatever they pack, although I may choose not to replenish certain supplies for a while; and I noticed one girl pack four dill pickles for her lunch one day. None came home. Perhaps they are currency in the schoolyard, just as, a couple of months ago, I discovered my seven-year-old was swapping tamarillos from our tree for untold junk food.

Who can fathom the ways of children? Not I. All I can do is provide a few recipes that might make them happy; and in this spirit, here's my interpretation of Chocolate & Zucchini's interpretation of Lärabars.

Homemade Lärabars - 150g date paste - 100g hazelnuts and/or almonds and/or other dried fruit or nuts - 3 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder - ½ tsp cardamom - ¼ tsp cinnamon - pinch salt - 1 tbs cacao nibs Lightly oil a dish about 11cm x 18cm (4½" x 7") with unflavoured vegetable oil (not olive oil). Whizz the date paste with the cocoa, cardamom, cinnamon and salt in a food processor until it resembles tiny moist pebbles. Throw in the cacao nibs and nuts, and pulse chop until all is roughly combined. Scrape the mixture into the oiled dish, then cover with grease proof paper. Using the back of a metal spoon and a rocking motion, compress the mixture through the paper until it has compacted nicely. Seal the container, and place in the fridge overnight to firm up. The next day, slice it into chunks or bars or whatever shape makes you happy. Note: First I tried using a takeaway container, but the pressure needed to compress the bar split the plastic. So I sought and found a suitably sized dish in the op shop; I am sure you will too! (Victorian: almonds, hazelnuts, salt. Not local but fair trade: cocoa, cacao nibs. From many, many miles away: date paste, cardamom, cinnamon.)

Chocolate Chestnut Spread

 

My daughters are big fans of an overly sweetened nut paste, which has got me thinking. We sometimes buy a certain chocolate hazelnut spread ('half the fat of peanut butter') as a school holiday treat. Right now it's the middle of term, but I wondered if I could fiddle around with chestnuts and make a spread that contained no vegetable oil, and far more nuts than sugar, sort of a not-school-holiday treat.

Chestnuts are naturally mealy, so they're a great candidate for a spread-type-of-thing. Recipes for chestnut jam abound; but they usually call for one part sugar to one part chestnut meats, a ratio I find rather sickly. Instead, I warmed puréed chestnuts with cocoa and sugar, tweaking proportions until it tasted just right: rich, nutty, chocolately, and certainly not too sweet. It went down a treat at the after school munchies, and powered a good long session in the garden – including naked trampolining at 14°C, I might add – before nightfall.*

As I used the medium disc of the food mill, the paste is slightly textured; if you want a perfectly smooth paste, use the finest disc of the food mill and perhaps drizzle in a little unflavoured vegetable oil until it looks glossy.

Chocolate Chestnut Spread - 300g fresh chestnuts in their shells, to make about 200g chestnut meats - 4 tbs cocoa - 4 tbs sugar - 1 tsp vanilla - ½ tsp salt First, prepare the chestnuts. Hold a chestnut flat side down on a sturdy chopping board. Place the tip of a sharp knife at the top of the nut, and lever it downwards so that the nut is bisected from top to bottom, but the knife does not cut through the shell on the flat side. (This is far more straightforward than it sounds.) Place the chestnut into a bowl. When all the chestnuts have been treated thus, place the bowl of chestnuts into the freezer for ten minutes. Bring a pot of water to the boil. When the ten minutes is up, remove the chestnuts from the freezer and slide them into the rapidly boiling water. Boil for eight minutes. Turn the heat down as low as possible. Remove several chestnuts from the barely simmering water with a slotted spoon, and quickly pop each nut half out of its shell and skin (or peel it). Continue until you have liberated all the nuts. Work fast, because as the nut cools the skin reattaches itself very firmly. If one or two chestnuts will not easily relinquish their skin, just slice it off rather than send yourself batty trying to peel it. Now the chestnuts are ready, and here you can pause for a day or two to suck your scalded fingers and recover, or, bless your soul, continue. Place the cocoa, sugar, vanilla and salt into a saucepan. Slowly add ¾ cup hot water, stirring, to make a paste. Now push the chestnuts through the medium disc of a food mill directly into the pan. (If you don't have a food mill, purée them in a food processor or beat the crap out of them with a potato masher and scrape into the saucepan.) Turn the heat on low, and, using a wooden spoon, beat the chestnuts into the cocoa paste. Cook over low heat for ten minutes, stirring constantly, until all is amalgamated and the cocoa smells cooked. You may need to add a little more hot water. Scrape the paste into a 310g jam jar, using a small spatula to ease it in and to press out any air bubbles. There will be enough left in the saucepan for a couple of tester slices of bread. As it does not contain as much sugar as a normal jam, eat quickly, and store it in the fridge. *Don't panic. The trampolinist has a good decade to go before she hits puberty, and is too short to be seen over the fence. (Local: chestnuts. Not local but fair trade: cocoa, vanilla. Other: sugar, salt.)

 

 

Spinach Thing

On the weekend there was a warmth in the air that I haven't felt for months. I lay in the grass and soaked up rays like a lizard, and realised that spring is finally coming. We spent the first three months of this year in the northern hemisphere, so we've had two winters. And after ten months of grey skies and rain; after four months of niggling coughs and colds and two hefty bouts of gastro; after the death of two grandparents and after marking the tenth anniversary of my mother's death; well, it's time. Time for warm breezes, apple blossom, and a little sunlight on my face.

And time for an end to strong winter greens; this week, I saw bunches of soft sweet spinach appearing in the shops.

We often make a green pie – a filo pie packed with leafy greens and herbs. But when I want a less cluttered taste – just spinach, onions and chévre, the perfect trio layered in a simple filo envelope – this does the trick.

As it's not quite a pie, nor a tart, nor a slice, I call it a thing.

Spinach Thing - 4 small or 2 large brown onions - 1 bunch spinach, washed and trimmed of its stalks - 150g soft cheese (Meredith Dairy's chévre is breathtakingly good, but you could also use a feta) - ½ pkt filo - 50g or so unsalted butter - olive oil - salt Remove the filo from the fridge at least two hours before you want to use it. Check the instructions on the packet for exact times. Preheat the oven to 180C. Halve the onions lengthwise, then continue slicing them lengthwise into reasonably wide crescents, about ½ cm wide. Warm a good slosh of oil in a skillet and add the onions. Stir well, and cook briskly medium-high heat, stirring often, until they are a lovely golden colour but still have shape and form. Do not let them stick or brown. This method of cooking will render the onions sweet and fruity. Tip the onions into a bowl. Turn down the heat, add the whole spinach leaves to the skillet, clap the lid on and let wilt. Melt the butter in a small pan over the stove, or explode it in the microwave. Brush a large flat tray (mine is 28cm x 44cm; 11" x 17") with melted butter. Lay two sheets of filo flat on the tray. Brush with butter, add two more layers, and so on until you have 8 layers. Scatter the onions over the filo. Drape the spinach over the onions, using your fingers to unfurl the leaves and spread them evenly. Crumble the chévre with your fingers as you scatter it over the spinach; different sized pieces make it interesting. Gently place another two layers of filo over the cheese. Brush with butter, taking care not to rip the pastry as you pass over the bumps, and alternate double layers of filo with butter until you have another 8 layers. Brush the final layer with butter. Slip into the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until the filo is golden. Let rest for five minutes, then cut into squares and serve warm. Inspired by a spinach thing sold at Big Harvest in Elgin Street, Carlton. I think they call it 'pie'. (Local: onions, spinach, chévre, olive oil. Made locally from unspecified ingredients: butter, filo. Not local: salt.)

Scones

 

I love Mondays. Grandpa picks up my six-year-old from school, the four- and not-quite-two-year-olds sleep, and I get to do stuff. Actually, I doze on the couch, fluff around on the computer and bring in the washing, but it's lovely just the same.

When everyone's home and the younger girls have woken, we're ravenous. And having been saved an hour and twenty minutes by not doing the school run (ever walked a mile with a four-year-old?), I graciously donate 15 minutes to making scones.

As they come out of the oven, kids and Grandpa rush to the table and choose a plate from our op shop collection: sprinkled with flowers, pink with blue polka dots, cornflowers and butterflies, or blue peacocks. They open the honey and the jam and wait for the cloth-covered board bearing its hot little bundles of puff straight from the oven.

"Wooooow!" says the toddler. "Yum!" says everyone else as they break open their scones and the steam swirls up.

O wonderful me!

Scones are very easy to make, but if you bash them around and moon about, they will be stodgy. The trick to making little clouds of pleasure is to be light and quick. Don't mix them, but combine with a knife; don't knead them with the ball of your hand, but with your fingers; don't roll them out, but pat them down gently. And get them into the oven as fast as you can!

This quantity makes 8 or 9 medium-sized scones. They don't keep well. If you do have leftovers, you can re-heat them in the microwave – but it's better to invite a neighbour over, or Grandpa, and demolish the lot in one sitting.

If you want to make more, make two batches – you can move quicker and faster and they will come out lighter than if you make them all in one big batch.

Scones - 2 generous cups self raising flour - pinch sugar - 1 tbs butter - 1 scant cup sour milk. (The best scones are made from milk which has soured slightly. You can use off milk, off yogurt, off cream thinned with water, or buttermilk. If you don't have any sour dairy, use milk but squeeze a little lemon juice into it before you start. You can even use soy milk – it's a very forgiving recipe.) - butter and/or cream and/or honey and/or jam to serve Preheat the oven to 220C. Whisk a pinch of sugar into the flour, then rub in the butter. Make a well and add all the milk (cream, yogurt, soy milk) at once. Using a knife (I have an ancient flexible bone-handled knife which is perfect), combine the milk and flour with a slicing motion, then turn the mixture onto a lightly floured bench and knead lightly until fully combined. Gently pat into a disc about an inch thick. Using a scone cutter, cut out your scones; or use a knife and slice it into wedges. If you use the cutter, gather up the remaining dough and lightly shape into extra scones. Don't use a glass to cut them out, as it will compress the dough and make the scones stodgy. Place scones on a greased tray, or a tray lined with a silicon baking sheet. Brush gently with milk and slip into the oven for 9 or 10 minutes, depending on your oven. To check they're cooked, tap one on the bottom. They are ready when they sound hollow. Bundle them into a clean tea towel to keep them warm, and eat as soon as possible with butter and honey, jam and cream, honey and cream, just butter, butter and jam... oh, just gobble them all up! (Local: flour if you're lucky, milk, honey, jam, cream. Somewhere in Victoria: butter. Non-local: sugar.)

Toasted Almonds

 

In my supermarket, a pack of imported salted nuts can cost a small fortune. Yet the poor things have passed through a factory to be drenched in salt and preservative, stuffed into a stifling little bag and sent across the ocean far far from their mother tree, only to arrive here homesick and tasting of jetlag.

But we have local beer. We need local snacks. What are we to do?

Lucky me, we have an almond tree and we finally picked the last of this year's crop. We collected 7½ kilos, unshelled, from the small neglected tree in our inner suburban backyard. As I was on my hands and knees looking for stray nuts in the undergrowth, I found myself impulsively pressing my hands against the trunk and saying, 'thank you'.

If you don't have an almond tree, plant one.

While you're waiting for your first crop, you can easily find locally grown almonds in organic food shops. They are usually sold shelled but not blanched (ie peeled). However, it doesn't take long to blanch them yourself – and if you have any young children hanging around, their nimble little fingers will make light work of the job.

Once the almonds are blanched, you can make the most local snack of all in less time than it takes to walk to the supermarket.

Toasted Almonds - 1 cup almonds, shelled - a drizzle of olive oil - a good pinch of salt Boil the kettle. Place the almonds in a small bowl, cover with boiling water, and leave to sit for five minutes. Remove a few almonds at a time and pop them out of their skins, then leave on a tea towel to dry. Heat the oil in a wide skillet. Throw in the almonds and toss and shake the pan to toast them evenly. They are done when they smell good. Salt and serve, hot, tepid or cold. The children in our house forbid the cooking of anything spicy, but if you like a little heat, add a crumbled dried chilli to your almonds with the salt. (Backyard: almonds. Local: olive oil. Murray River: salt.)