Summer is the season for Brazilian Cherries and there are bushes of them all over Brisbane just bursting with fruit. The bright red cherries contrast beautifully against the dark green leaves so they are very easy to spot.  I have seen them along the train line and other public areas.  On a morning walk in December we came across a bush laden with them out the front of Wynnum North State School. Continue reading…

There were plenty of lemons and limes at the farmers market this week. Feeling inspired by the Gourmet Farmer and the 100-Mile diet, and also keen to start filling our pantry, I thought I would try my hand at a bit of preserving. I have been stocking up on jars from garage sales in preparation.

This morning I made a small batch of preserved lemons. There are a lot of recipes online but I chose to use Ottolenghi’s recipe because they added rosemary and chili which I thought would look nice in the jars as well as add great flavour. It was very quick to prepare; now we just have to be patient and wait four weeks until we can try them.

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After an amazing 10 days in Japan, our heads are still spinning from the bright lights, fast trains and general craziness of it all. We started in Tokyo, then hit the slopes in Nozawa Onsen and finished off with a cultural fix in Kyoto.

The food in Japan was amazing everywhere we went, from the cheap and cheerful Onigiri at train stations, to a big warming bowl of soba on the slopes, to the rowdy tavern atmosphere of an izakaya. There are so many places to eat and as you can see in our pictures, we ate our way around the country.

We were given a great introduction to the food culture at the start of our trip by attending two of Elizabeth Andoh’s cooking classes. Elizabeth is an amazing women with an intimate knowledge of Japanese culture and food. We purchased her cookbook so we will hopefully be preparing some tasty Japanese meals in the future. Continue reading…

I just made these Greek-style roast potatoes to accompany Lakshmi’s famous (to me) buttermilk-thyme fried kalamari. I recommend you try the potatoes — so yummy!  The kalamari recipe is simple: clean and slice up the squid, marinate in buttermilk, batter in flour, thyme, salt and pepper, and fry. Yum!   Serve with a nice greek salad.

Reminds me of a great taverna in Patmos… (images after the break) Continue reading…

After a hard Easter weekend of work on our Mountain property we decided to treat ourselves to a day a of wine tasting in Stanthorpe (AKA the Granite Belt). The drive from Kyogle to Stanthorpe is quite enjoyable. You see a dramatic change in landscape as soon as you cross over McKellar Range. The terrain out west is more typically Australian — quite dry with lots of gum trees. Continue reading…

As we have mentioned once before one of our favourite cookbooks is Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries, which takes the reader on a 12-month journey through Nigel’s seasonal home cooking.  The book is beautiful, with descriptive writing, full page images and high quality paper. To make it even better every recipe we have ever cooked from it turns out great. The dishes are never too complicated; instead their sensational tastes rely on fresh, seasonal ingredients. Our great friends Angus and Elizabeth gave the cookbook to Mark for his 30th Birthday and we think about them every time we cook from it.

Despite the recipes being based on English seasons we still cook many of its recipes here in Australia, including this amazing chocolate cake, which can be baked all year round. I have baked this cake several times now and each time it impresses everyone who tastes it. I served it at our Earth Hour party last night and lots of people asked for the recipe, so here it is. Enjoy! Continue reading…

This weekend I made the best pancakes that I think I have ever made. The secret ingredient is buttermilk; I can’t believe I haven’t caught onto this sooner. We served these light and fluffy pancakes with fresh banana, figs and maple syrup. Continue reading for the recipe.

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For our Earth Hour party this weekend I made something I haven’t made in years: North Carolina barbecue.  Barbecue in the United States varies widely across regions.  In North Carolina, when you say “barbecue”, by definition you mean pork (unless you qualify it by naming another kind of meat).  Typically this is slow-roasted and smoked pork with a vinegar-based sauce.   Note that in NC the word “barbecue” never refers to the apparatus you use to cook the meat like it does here in Australia (although the word my have its origins in the apparatus).  It is also seldom used as a verb.

When I was living in Chapel Hill, NC, my friends and I had a tradition of having an annual “Pig Pickin’” every autumn. We only actually roasted a whole pig once.  After that we learned that it’s much easier to just roast pork shoulders.  It’s a little more expensive, but you get a lot more meat of higher quality and you don’t have to deal with the remains of the carcass.

This year I only cooked for about 10-15 people, so I only needed two boneless pork shoulders, each about 1.1 Kg (2.4 lbs).  I smoke-roasted the shoulders one at a time on our Weber charcoal grill using a technique that my mom developed.  The resulting barbecue is smoky and succulent.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to find pork whose provenance was known and transparent, so I have no idea if these pigs were ethically raised or raised in a factory farm.  I’ve made a vow recently to only buy meat for which I know these details (we already eat only free-range chicken and eggs), so the next time will be different.

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This New Year’s Eve we decided to get away from all the hustle and bustle. We picked up our friends Nat and Mike from Caloundra and drove into the sun to find a camping ground. We made our way to Boreen Point which has bushland camping on the shore of the largest lake on the Noosa River – Lake Cootharaba. We stayed at Elanda Point camp grounds which is lovely and shady and has its own resident kangaroos. The campsite has great amenities, but my big complaint is that in spite of their location in a beautiful natural area they do not recycle. At times like Christmas and NYE tonnes of waste are created and sadly, it was all sent to landfill.

The weather was absolutely scorching and unfortunately there was no relief to be found in shallow lake Cootharaba, which felt like a hot bath. Continue reading…