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.)

Lebanese Style Chopped Salad with Sumac (and how to turn it into Fattoush)

 

Who wouldn't love living here? We've been at our new house just a few months, and already the neighbours are handing food over the fence. On a recent Saturday afternoon I was knee-deep in dirt, happily digging out couch grass. I still had bed hair. And then my reverie was interrupted by a deep 'yo!'. I looked up and saw a great hand waggling a loaf of pita at me; the pita was wrapped around a dozen kefta skewers. 'My mum said your kids like these,' said the unidentifiable eyes barely skimming the fence.

When one's neighbours have eight adult sons, all married with children, and most who come to eat at mum's at least one night a week, one tends to lose track of who has come to visit and whose eyes might be attached to the kefta-holding-hand. But the eyes grinned at me; so I smoothed down my bed hair to no effect, grinned back, and whisked the kefta out of his hands while they were still hot. They were fragrant with cinnamon and parsley, flecked with tomato, warm and juicy, and delicious. Lucky kids. They wolfed them down in seconds.

My fussy daughter – there's always one – has now added Fatima's kefta to the list of meats she will eat. This list consists, in its entirety, of plain sausages 'if they're the ones I like' (the organic GF ones from our local butcher meet her standard, thank god, but nothing too greasy or too thick or too thin or too spicy or too dry); bacon 'if it's not too crispy and not too soft, just a little bit please, and only from that farm' (yes, she can taste if the bacon is from a particular farm which will make her useful in the food industry in fifteen years' time, but makes it expensive to keep her now); sausage rolls 'but only Viv's' (Viv lives 70 miles away, somewhat inconvenient); and Fatima's kefta.

Given she also loathes eggs and fish and is not convinced about chicken (she only likes the skin, and only when roasted), and we have soy and shellfish allergies in the house (good grief!) I have latched onto kefta as a refreshing change from expensive sausages, very expensive bacon, chickpeas, and lentils. But my neighbours offers them only sporadically, and I don't know them well enough to beg for more, so I've been trying to make my own.

So far, I'm told, the results have been 'too bland, not like Fatima's'. I pointed out to my seven year old that Fatima has probably been making kefta once a week for forty years, which would mean she's practiced some 2,000 times; I've made it twice in two months. My daughter has to give me a few more goes to get it right before she can criticise. And bland? Huh.

My kefta isn't bad, but I agree that it's nowhere near Fatima's. I'll keep practicing. In the meantime, I can report that I've come up with the perfect salad to go with it, and now is the time to make it, what with those very end of season capsicums, cucumbers and tomatoes. The vegetables are chopped small and dressed with lemon juice and sumac. Juicy, sour, fragrant: it goes down a treat. Although my seven year old would prefer it had no green capsicum.

Lebanese Style Chopped Salad with Sumac (and how to turn it into Fattoush) - 2 green capsicums (bell peppers) - 4 Lebanese cucumbers - 2 tomatoes - 2 spring onions - generous bunch of mint - a bunch of Italian flat-leaf parsley (a good 10 stalks) - 2 tbs olive oil - the juice of a lemon - 3 tsp sumac - sea salt Sprinkle a good pinch of sea salt in the base of a salad bowl, then squeeze in the lemon. The juice will dissolve the salt. Add the olive oil. If the cucumbers are Lebanese, chop them. If they're home grown and the seeds have grown a bit large, deseed them. And if you're substituting English cucumbers, peel and deseed them before chopping. Phew. Chop the other vegetables into small even dice, about a centimetre square. Throw them into the bowl. Chop the herbs coarsely; make sure you still have nice bits of mint and parsley identifiable. Throw them into the bowl, too. Sprinkle in the sumac, then toss gently but well. Serve immediately, while everything is still crunchy. You can turn this into fattoush merely by adding some stale pita bread, cut into small wedges, at the last minute. If you like your bread crisp, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle it with sumac, and toast it in a moderate oven for one to two minutes. Break it up, sprinkle it over the salad, and eat immediately. (Garden: parsley, mint. A friend of a friend's garden – thanks Jen and Raheem! – tomatoes, cucumbers. A neighbour's tree: lemons. Local veg box: green capsicum (bell peppers). Grampians: olive oil. Northern Victoria: salt. Imported, but it's small and flavourful: sumac.)