Smoked Trout, Orange and Quinoa Salad

 

Some Tuesdays, eating last night's leftovers with the floor crunchy underfoot, the washing nagging at me, and the four year old chatting, just won't cut it. You see, my partner looks after her for a few hours while I read with schoolkids, study and write. Lunch, then, is an early pit stop between volunteer work and Deep Thoughts – but our four year old wants to play with me. So some Tuesdays, as much as I love her, I stay out and have a bit of peace and quiet instead.

Sometimes I'll go downtown, grab sushi then head to the State Library – although it can be rather difficult to (a) find a desk and (b) read, since always one or two people are chatting and in the otherwise studious silence that lone conversation drives me crazy.

Other times I seek peace and quiet in the bustle of a coffee shop, and in the general din am able to eat, read and write. Just around the corner from our house is 'the red door place'. More properly known as l'atelier de Monsieur Truffe (351 Lygon Street, East Brunswick) it's a chocolate shop and café rolled into one. My partner will do anything for one of their hot chocolates; my kids will do anything for their toasted brioche served with grated chocolate and salt; and I think their salads are wonderful.

L'atelier recently had a smoked trout, orange and quinoa salad on the menu, and after inhaling it one lunch time I've been playing with the combination at home. I've made it bigger, simpler, and just the thing for a one-dish dinner on a warm night. The most fiddly aspect is collecting and cleaning the salad greens – and if you buy washed greens (gasp!), then it will be quicker still.

Most quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) comes from South America; however, some Tasmanian farmers are now growing it. Tasmania may not be quite local for Melbourne but it's pretty close, and quinoa is, they say, a superfood.

It's only a fairly recent addition to the domestic kitchen, as evidenced by a scene in Offspring. A character is trying a host of new things. She does yoga in the park; she tweets; she shoves a great forkful of quinoa into her mouth... then spits out the lot in a great disgusted puff across the room.* It's pretty much what I did the first time, too.

So a couple of notes. One, quinoa has a bitter coating on the surface of the grain, so it must be rinsed very well before cooking. Rinse, rinse, rinse, and only then put it into the pan to cook. You can cook it in a saucepan like rice; or even use a rice cooker if you don't want to pay it any mind.

Two, unlike rice quinoa doesn't taste inoffensively bland by itself; eaten plain, it is not delicious. So don't cook it and serve it in a great mound on the side of the plate. Quinoa should be eaten with other things. It absorbs flavours beautifully, so always serve it with a stew or in a salad with a good dressing.

As to why you'd serve a grain that requires rinsing and isn't delicious alone? Well, it's very high in protein, iron and magnesium; high in fibre; gluten free; and fun to look at. The grains puff into little spirals which I think are very cute! And it has a strength of flavour which goes well with a juicy melange, and can form the backbone of a substantial salad.

Between the quinoa and the smoked trout, this salad is certainly substantial. And why nasturtiums? The bright petals echo the orange segments and make it look like a party, so pretty that even my kids will eat it. They also give the salad a slight peppery tang. Nasturtiums are flowering all over Melbourne this month. If you don't have any in your garden, ask your neighbours or, better, go for a stroll along a creek. You'll find some soon enough and, if you're lucky, a little peace and quiet too.

Smoked Trout, Orange and Quinoa Salad - 1 cup quinoa - 1 smoked trout - 2 oranges - 1 small salad onion - 4-6 cups loosely packed baby salad greens (I use a combination of rocket (arugula), baby mallow, baby rainbow chard and salad burnet; but you can make it with just lettuces if you wish.) - 4-6 nasturtium flowers, if you have them - a few stems of mint - pinch of salt, pepper - olive oil First, prepare the quinoa. Rinse it very thoroughly in a fine sieve, drain it, then place it in a saucepan with 2 cups of water. Cover, bring to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 10 minutes or until it is cooked but still has a little bite. Remove the lid, fluff the quinoa with a fork, and allow it to cool a little while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Flake the trout. I find it easiest to use my fingers, but if you wish to be more refined, use two forks to gently pull the flesh from the bones. Zest the oranges – easiest with a Microplane. Sorry for the product placement, but nothing else does the job half so well. Finely chop the salad onion, then fork it and the zest through the quinoa. Juice one of the oranges. Combine the juice with two tablespoons of olive oil, a good pinch of salt, and pepper if you wish. Taste. If it requires more zing, add the juice of half of the remaining orange. Remove the pith from what remains of that latter orange (a half or a whole, depending on how juicy the first orange was), then cut the flesh into little segments. Pull the mint leaves from their stems, and tear into smaller pieces. Gently pull the nasturtium petals from the base. Either use them whole, or slice them into ribbons using a very sharp knife. Keep one or two flowers for garnish. Tip the quinoa mixture into a large salad bowl. Drizzle with half the dressing, and mix and toss with a fork to combine. Now add everything else bar the whole nasturtiums. Using your hands, lightly mix and toss the salad until all is thoroughly combined. Lick your fingers, wash your hands, then garnish the salad with the nasturtium flowers and serve. (*Thanks to Chris who told me about this scene, and tested the salad first.) (Backyard: salad leaves, salad onion, nasturtium flowers, mint. Yarra Valley: smoked trout. From the local food box: oranges. Grampians: olive oil. Northern Victoria: salt. Interstate (Tasmania): quinoa.)

Simple Orange Cake

 

Fridays mornings are ‘time off’. My four year old is at kinder for three! whole! hours!, and I, in theory, write – but life usually intervenes. Last week I spent the time doing laundry; working my way through a backlog of mail, bills and paperwork; washing the dishes; admiring the crab apple tree just about to bloom; and baking a couple of cakes, muttering all the while.

Kinder fetes, school afternoon teas: when will they learn that modern families rarely bake? A friend of mine told me that her brother-in-law always bought cakes or biccies from the supermarket to give to the school cake stalls. Late at night, he’d unwrap them and carefully arrange them on the plastic plate. Then, labelling laws being what they are even for a community cake stall, he’d painstakingly write out all the ingredients including the food additives thus: ‘flour, sugar, cocoa, vegetable oil, emulsifier 471, preservative 282’. Not the sort of thing I’d be falling over myself to buy, I must say!

Then again, I’ve talked to other parents who recommend particular brands of cookies as having no artificial additives; thus, when copied out on the cake stall label, they appear homemade and perfectly pure. Oh, the illusions we live by.

I haven’t quite come to that; I still bake, if with a sigh. And with the glut of oranges at winter’s end, I made the easiest orange cake recipe I know, Stephanie Alexander’s Afternoon Tea Orange Cake. I need to substitute gluten free flour for the wheat flour; I always add a pinch of salt to my cakes; and I cook it in a loaf pan. Otherwise, I follow her recipe. It’s just the thing for early spring, when the fruit bowl is full of oranges and the view out the window is of blossom.

Simple Orange Cake - 1 orange - 2 eggs - 125g softened unsalted butter - ¼ cup caster sugar - 225g self raising flour(real or gluten free) - pinch of salt Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a loaf tin with baking paper. Zest then juice the orange. Place all ingredients into a food processor and whizz until thoroughly combined. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out with a few minuscule crumbs attached. Let cool for five to ten minutes in the tin, then remove to a cake rack to cool completely - although it is absolutely superb served warm! Alexander recommends an orange icing, but it’s not something I can be bothered with, myself. If you want the recipe for that, buy the book; it’s the modern Australian kitchen bible. (Backyard: eggs. Local: oranges. Victoria: butter, salt. Queensland: sugar. General supermarket mystery: GF flour.

Bracken Fiddleheads with Butter and Truffle Salt

 

Life was a little dull, and I wanted a thrill. So I went to a friend’s country block to pick young bracken, a food I have never sampled and have read about only on the internet. As you can see, I get my thrills quite easily these days.

The day was magnificent. We sat at the top of the hill and watched the weather sweep in hour after hour: sun, rain, hail, sleet, wet snow, dry powder – we got the lot. Great bands of clouds rushed across the sky; snow fell through a rainbow; and every form of precipitation dumped down on us.

 

Between showers, we picked juvenile bracken. We chose firm fresh looking stems, some still bent like a horseshoe, others upright but not yet unfurled. And when the next bout of weather swept in, we dashed back to the partial shelter of the tumbledown shack, warmed our tootsies by the roaring fire, and admired the show through the broken windows.

 

A day or so later, in a house with a complete roof and intact glazing, I prepared the bracken. I was slightly nervous, as bracken contains a known carcinogen; then again, so does red meat. So I washed it, blanched it, dumped it in an ice bath, soaked it, sautéd it, and served it up with a hint of truffles, as instructed. And then I discovered that none of us like it much. It was strong, nutty, but really not that great. Unusually for our family, we didn’t even finish the plateful. Meh.

As we have never eaten bracken before, I have no idea where the problem lies. Is Australian bracken unsavoury? Did I cook it badly? Or do we, quite simply, not like bracken? One day, I will travel overseas and sample bracken abroad. Until then, I will ponder these mysteries, and get my thrills via the weather instead.

If you want to try bracken yourself, click here. The link has a balanced discussion regarding bracken’s carcinogenic properties, and describes how to prepare it to minimise them. I followed the instructions and recipe in the link, but in place of truffle butter I used unsalted butter and truffle salt (a birthday present). I didn’t like it much, but perhaps you’ll fare better. If you have tried Australian bracken, please let me know how you cooked it, and what you think!

 

Nettle Soup

 

Once in a moment of supreme confidence, the sun warming my back and a light breeze whispering in my ear, I grasped a nettle firmly with my bare hand. As the old English rhyme goes,

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains

'Tis the same with common natures:
Use 'em kindly, they rebel;
But be rough as nutmeg-graters,
And the rogues obey you well.

• Aaron Hill (1685-1750)
  

Perhaps this rhyme holds true for soft, often rained-upon English nettles; or perhaps I, quite simply, lacked mettle. Either way, I'm sorry to report that I yelped, and spent the next half hour picking practically invisible stinging hairs out of my palm. So much for English folklore.

Another piece of folklore is that dock leaves will calm a nettle's sting; and where nettles grow, so will you find dock. I'm not sure, however, that English dock grows in Australia, and indigenous dock is rarely to be seen near a nettle patch; - and I don't think it works anyway.

Thus I advise you to pick your nettles carefully, with rubber gloves. At this time of year, when I'm going near my favourite nettle patch (that is, at kinder drop off), I have been known to slip my gardening gloves into my bag ready to glean. I may look eccentric, but picking nettles in a public place has certainly led to many interesting conversations; most recently, such a chat led someone to refer me to a prolific prickly pear cactus leaning over a nearby laneway, which I will check out this summer with gratitude.

As I was preparing this, I left a bowl of dusty nettles soaking in the sink. My cousin wandered in and plucked some out for a nibble, unaware. I gasped but, lucky her, she picked out young shoots and felt the sting only as a little heat in her mouth. The stings dissolve with cooking, but if you are making this soup, you would do well to advise any visiting cousins to keep their hands to themselves until all is cooked.

As for why you would make it, let me list the reasons: local, sustainable, economical, useful; also, nutritional. Nettles are so full of vitamins and minerals that several saints – Celtic Christian and Tibetan Buddhist – survived on nothing but nettle soup for many years; you might as well get some of that goodness for yourself.

Nettles do have a very strong green flavour, which I and my cousin rather like, but others may find it a little challenging. I have discovered, however, that if there is a fresh banana coconut cake cooling on the bench, young children will demolish their bowl of soup with scarcely a demurral, so desperate are they for some cakey goodness. A word to the wise...

Nettle Soup - at least 500g stinging nettles - 3 fist-sized potatoes (I used Dutch cream) - 2 tbs butter (or use all olive oil if you prefer) - 2 tbs olive oil - 1 onion - 3 sticks celery - 3 cloves garlic - 750ml stock (chicken or vegetable) - extra virgin olive oil or yogurt, to serve - salt Don a pair of rubber gloves, and strip the nettle leaves from the stalks. Wash well in several changes of water. Peel and chop the potatoes. Place them into a bowl containing a cup of water so that (a) they don't brown and (b) you get a starchy water to thicken the soup. Warm the olive oil in a soup pot. Add the onion, and cook gently until it is translucent. Add the celery and garlic, and cook until soft. Throw in the potatoes and their starchy water, and the stock. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are very soft. Add the nettles and cook for a few more minutes. Remove the soup from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Blend in batches until it is velvety. Check for salt. Serve with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, or a dollop of yogurt, or just as is. Most recipes for nettle and potato soup follow similar lines. I adapted this from a recipe in Tobie Puttock's Italian Local, which includes the excellent suggestion of using the potato water to thicken the soup. (Melbourne region: nettles, potatoes, celery. Geelong: onion. Grampians: olive oil. Gippsland: yogurt. No more specific than Victoria: garlic, butter, salt. Mixed sources: chicken stock.)

Plum Clafouti with Almond Meal

 

Ah, the British. We take what we want, we twist it out of all recognition, then we claim it as our own. As genocidal as this pattern has been for other cultures, on the plus side it has led to some great food. Kedgeree is one classic example; chicken tikka masala is quite probably another, although there is some debate over whether it was invented in Glasgow or Delhi.

The recipe which follows is a third. Made with cherries and white flour, we could call it 'clafoutis', or, more commonly in English, 'clafouti'. Made with other fruit and white flour, we'd properly call it a 'flaugnarde'. But gluten intolerant arrogant English bastardiser that I am, I make it with plums and almond meal – and I have no idea what I should call the resultant dish! Yet like a typically imperious colonialist, and because many of you are at least vaguely familiar with clafouti and will get a general idea of the nature of the dish from the use of the word, I will continue to refer to it as such. It certainly sounds better than 'soft eggy plum pudding thingy'.

Whatever it should be called, this dish is perfect for a sunny Sunday breakfast in the early spring when the chickens are back on the lay, and a few bottles of plums remain in the preserves cupboard. I've used much more fruit than is usually indicated because I wanted every bite to drip with plums; the batter does little more than bind the plums together.

Almond meal replaces regular flour, as almonds and plums are a delightful match. Between the extra fruit and the almond meal, the dish is much more moist than a regular clafouti, but the resulting heaviness is very satisfying: it will ward off any winter chills which still wreath through the morning air. If, however, you want a lighter clafouti, reduce the amount of fruit and replace some of the almond meal with coconut flour; click here for a more standard recipe.

Plum Clafouti with Almond Meal - unsalted butter - approximately 2 cups quartered bottled plums, or fresh plums quartered and lightly stewed (this is the equivalent of a Fowlers #20 Jar; for notes on bottling plums, click here - 4 eggs - 1¼ cups almond meal - 1¼ cups milk (low fat is fine) - 1 tbs sugar - 1/2 tsp proper vanilla essence (none of that thin chemical stuff) - a pinch of salt Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 24cm porcelain tart dish. Drain the fruit well. Drink the juice if you like; it's rather yummy. Place the other ingredients into a food processor or blender. Whizz until all is light and frothy. Pour the batter into the greased dish, then gently spoon the plums over the batter. Slip into the oven, and bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until it is golden. Serve warm or cold. Adapted from a formula by Mollie Katzen in the now out of print Still Life with Menu. (Local: plums, eggs, milk. Not local: butter, sugar, almond meal, vanilla essence, salt.)

Cashew Cream with Rosewater and Pistachios

 

One of the most scrumptious treats you can possibly eat is znoud el sit: a blob of clotted cream wrapped in filo pastry, deep fried, drowned in rosewater and sugar syrup, and sprinkled with pistachios. It’s just the thing for a mid afternoon pick me up when partnered with a very strong short black, or three.

Arabic speaking friends told me the name translates to ‘ladies’ arm muscle’ which I understood to be some sexy little bicep, and I have spent many a lazy afternoon downing pastries and coffee, dreaming of Scheherazade and marble screens, the buzz of the harem, and scented orange groves alive with elegant fountains.

However, in the interests of this post I have just spent a few disillusioning minutes on the internet, discovering that znoud el sit might more properly be translated as ‘fat ladies’ arms’ or even ‘underarm of the grandmother’. So much for toned biceps. Yet on mature reflection I must admit that, in texture, znoud el sit do in fact somewhat evoke the droopy bit that dangles under one’s arm, commonly known in these parts as a fedoobedah – and so this ultimate comfort food, a soft yielding pastry scented with rosewater, is indeed remarkably reminiscent of a powdery old lady who might just give you a hug.

You can buy these evil delectable treats at Balha’s, 761 Sydney Road, Brunswick. Balha’s was once a tiny hole in the wall kind of shop; now it is a temple to Lebanese pastry stocking pistachio barma, ma’mul maad (dates in semolina) and dozens of other spectacular treats. If you’re not too worried about your waistline, you absolutely must visit. Just don’t go during Ramadan or Eid, or you’ll be in line for hours.

I live way too close to Balha’s for safety; like a drowning woman, I hold fast to the idea that resisting temptation makes one stronger. And as I have no wish to become the sort of woman whose fedoobedahs remind everyone of pastry, whether by their appearance or by their suggestion of how much pastry I have in fact eaten, I resist the siren call, and instead have looked for a way to pay homage to znoud el sit, indulgence in which won’t require open heart surgery.

One night recently, as we were eating cashew cream piled over bottled fruit, I found myself thinking about the texture of the cream in znoud el sit... and inspiration struck.

The next evening, I made a cashew cream flavoured with rosewater and chopped pistachios, and we demolished it in minutes. It was spectacular. Understand, this is not mock clotted cream; it is, however, a Very Good Thing in itself, and my kind of homage. Even better, this cream is gluten free, lactose free, sugar free and vegan – about the opposite end of the food spectrum to znoud el sit. It’s not, alas, local or seasonal; but I’ve been serving it with last year’s bottled plums from the tree, both those in red wine and those in a light sugar syrup, and I figure that’s a good enough excuse to post it here.

Cashew Cream with Rosewater and Pistachios - 1 1/2 cups raw cashews - 2 tbs agave syrup - sea salt - rosewater, to taste - a small handful of raw unsalted pistachios, chopped, to serve Place the cashews into a bowl and cover them with water. Leave to soak for two or so hours. Drain and rinse. Place the cashews into a blender with the agave syrup, a good pinch of salt, and 1/4 cup water and whizz like billy-o, or until it is completely smooth. Add the rosewater. Start with half a teaspoon, and add more little by little until it tastes good to you. Add a little more water if you want a thinner cream. Scrape into a bowl or dish. Sprinkle with chopped pistachios. (Local: salt. Fair trade: agave syrup. Organic: cashews. Nothing too ethical, but you don’t need much: rosewater, pistachios.)

Background image of roses from Botanica's Roses.

Nettles

No one
but me in a quiet

Nowhere
that empty square
between fence and curb and

Nothing
grows just weeds and dirt but

Know-how
whispers, Dinner.