Colour-change your Menu to Autumn Tones

Autumn has just arrived in Australia, and I feel as though I have emerged from a long hibernation. Now at last the cooler weather is starting and I’m beginning to feel alive again, and looking forward to being creative with the season’s foods.

Those intervening months have seen floods, cyclones, droughts and bushfires in various food producing parts of the continent, which as well as causing pain and loss to the people affected, also means some fruits and vegetables are scarcer and more expensive than normal. But, the canny shopper can generally find a bargain, especially if they don’t mind surface blemishes, or produce that needs to be eaten or preserved quickly. As ever, the rule is “don’t go with a specific food item or recipe in mind, go and see what produce is cheap and plentiful, and base your meal around it.”

Autumn – a colourful season for produce

Summer’s on its way out, and so are all the tropical fruits, berries and stone fruits. No more mangos! Some summer fruits are lingering, but no longer at their peak – late ripening plums and the last of the melons. Rockmelon & honeydew melon are still sweet and relatively cheap, so farewell summer with a melon bowl.

But in their place is a colourful cornucopia of autumn fruits: many varieties of apples and pears, nashis, grapes – red, black and green, figs – purple and white, an abundance of limes, passionfruit, oranges, tamarillos, cumquats and persimmons. All of them packed with Vitamin C and other antioxidants, fruit sugars, fibre and flavour!

Veg it up in Autumn

Glorious as the autumn fruits are, they don’t have it all to themselves. There are lots of colourful, tasty and healthy vegetables waiting for the discerning cook to choose them.

For end of season salads before the weather demands warm meals there are Fuerte avocadoes with their deep green glossy skin darkening to a purplish brown as they ripen, red, green and yellow capsicums, cucumbers and late season tomatoes.

Autumn veggies are some my favourites, coming as I did from a cold climate state. Pumpkins come into their own in Autumn, and when the weather gets cold enough, I’ll be making pumpkin soup with my home-made chicken stock. That warm golden hue comes from pumpkin's rich supply of alpha- and beta-carotenes. Pumpkin also goes remarkably well with lamb or chicken in a slow cooked casserole, or as the old Aussie favourite: lamb chops with mashed pumpkin, peas and potato. Or roasted in the oven either with a lamb roast, or in a baking dish with onions, garlic, potatoes, some olive oil, sea salt, black pepper and rosemary stems. The smell as they’re cooking is positively aphrodisiacal!

Other veggies offer themselves for creative colourful and flavour-rich dishes – shiny purple eggplants (aubergines), for example, appear in Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Egyptian, Indian, and probably lots of other nationalities’ cuisines, usually with onions, tomatoes and garlic. Leeks and zucchini are also wonderful mixers, adding their own gentle flavours to soups, casseroles, quiche fillings, omelettes and bean dishes.

Mushrooms are in their element in autumn – the delightfully named ‘Slipper Jack’ which grows in pine forests and is related to porcini, is available at gourmet greengrocers. But for the mushroom lover on a budget, the standard white mushroom is wide open as big meaty flat caps, great for grilling or roasting, stuffed with a breadcrumbs, thyme, garlic and olive oil.

Then there’s sweet corn. Available all year round frozen or tinned, these are nothing like fresh sweet corn. Corn on the cob is a childhood favourite, simply boiled or steamed and slathered with butter or olive oil. The butter runs down your chin, the corn skin gets stuck between your teeth, the corn cob burns your fingers – the experience is sheer messy fun!

So, to the recipes:

One for the meat-eaters among us, and one for the vegetarians. I’ve adapted a Lebanese recipe for stirfried chicken strips marinated in lime juice, by adding julienned pumpkin.

Chicken with lime and spices

4 chicken breast fillets, or 8 chicken thigh fillets (thigh fillets have more flavour and are usually cheaper than chicken breast)
3 tablesp freshly squeezed lime juice
3 tablesp olive oil
1 teasp ground coriander
1 teasp ground cumin
½ teasp turmeric powder
at least 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
A chunk of pumpkin about half the quantity of the chicken pieces, cut into julienne strips

Cut the fillets into thin strips and marinate in 1 tablesp of the oil, with the lime juice and spices. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour, longer if possible.

Heat remaining oil in wok or heavy frying pan. Stirfry the chicken strips for about 5 minutes, add the julienned pumpkin continue stirfrying until both are cooked, about another 5 minutes.

Serve in pita bread or on rice, garnished with the fresh mint and with hummus and or salad on the side.
Serves 4-6

And from my 40-year-old Greek cookbook, comes this Greco-Turkish eggplant dish, Imam Bayaldi.
Imam Bayaldi

1 kg (2lbs) small to medium eggplants
6 ripe tomatoes, or 1 large tin tomato pieces
4 onions, chopped fine
4 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1 tablesp parsley, chopped
1 teasp sugar,
1 cup olive oil (you may not need all this)

Cut the eggplants in half and spoon out the seeds and most of the pulp, leaving a thin layer inside the shell. Discard seeds, and put the pulp in a dish. Sprinkle salt inside the shells, and stand upside down in a colander for 30 minutes. Either fry eggplant shells gently, or cook in boiling water, until cooked but still firm.

Mix together chopped onions, garlic, tomatoes, sugar, parsley and eggplant pulp, and season with salt and pepper. Gently fry the mixture in about ½ cup of oil. Allow mixture to cool and stuff into the shells. (If the mixture is too sloppy, firm it up with breadcrumbs or ground almonds.) Drizzle a little more oil over the top

Pack the filled shells into a wide bottomed pan or baking dish and either cook gently on top of the stove or in a medium-low oven for 45 minutes. Leave to cool and serve at room temperature or warm.
Serves 4-6


Buon Appetito!

Ironing out Anaemia

Every body needs dietary iron to build healthy red blood cells and mitochondria (‘cellular power plants') producing energy.

Iron is vital for producing healthy red blood cells (erythrocytes) which help carry oxygen around the body. As well as haemoglobin, iron is needed for myoglobin, another oxygen-carrying molecule, which distributes oxygen to muscles cells, especially to skeletal muscles and to the heart.

It also helps keep the immune system strong and helps the body produce energy from the foods eaten, through chemical reactions from enzymes produced via the mitochondria.

Too little iron and you can become anaemic, lethargic, susceptible to infections, dizziness and headaches. Really low levels of iron can make you unable to concentrate and can contribute to depression.

Women Need More Iron than Men

Women between the stages of puberty and menopause need higher levels of iron than men of equivalent age, to replace the iron lost through menstrual blood. Pregnant women can be at risk of anaemia if they don’t watch their iron levels, as the developing foetus draws on the mother’s iron for its developmental needs. Breast feeding mothers also need to increase their iron intake.

People who donate blood regularly, elderly people, vegetarians, and children are often unaware of being low in dietary iron. Young children, especially, need adequate iron levels as their rapidly growing bodies consume iron to build muscle and blood cells.

Men, on the other hand, as they don’t lose blood each month, bear children or lactate, are at risk of having too much iron. Chronic iron overload, or excessive iron storage, can cause loss of appetite, fatigue, weight loss, headaches, bronze or grey hue to the skin, dizziness, nausea, and shortness of breath. Too much iron has been suggested as a factor in heart disease, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.

Which Iron Do You Eat?

There are two sorts of iron the body can absorb and use – haem iron and non-haem iron. Haem iron is found only in meat, as it is derived from the haemoglobin and myoglobin in animal tissues. Non-haem iron is found in plant foods and dairy products.

Vegetarians and vegans will be dependent on non-haem iron for all their dietary iron, so it’s important to eat as wide a range of foods as possible to maximise iron intake.

Good Sources of Iron

Excellent food sources of iron include chard (our green friend, silverbeet), spinach, thyme, and, surprisingly, turmeric. A good reason to eat lots of golden curries.

Very good sources include parsley, romaine lettuce, blackstrap molasses, tofu, mustard greens, turnip greens, string beans and shiitake mushrooms.

Good sources of iron include beef, lamb, offal (liver, kidneys, heart), lentils, cocoa powder, eggs, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, venison, garbanzo beans, broccoli, leeks and kelp.

Be aware that cooking with iron cookware will add iron to food, so for men, watch out for iron toxicity from that steak sizzling on the hot iron plate!

Vitamin C and Non-haem Iron

Non-haem iron is harder for the body to absorb than haem iron. A combination of haem and non-haem iron in the same meal – eg red meat and green vegetables – makes the non-haem iron more easily absorbed.

However, vegetarians and vegans are dependent entirely on non-haem iron, so as well as eating a wide choice of foods, they should make sure they have adequate Vitamin C and copper in the meal to maximise their iron absorption.

Vitamin C is easy – just add tomatoes, orange slices or capsicum (bell peppers) to a salad, or a squirt of fresh lemon juice over steamed green vegetables.

Copper and Iron

Copper assists the body to metabolise iron to create haemoglobin and myoglobin. Unfortunately, it is another of those minerals that many people are likely to be low on, and some sources suggest that anaemia is actually the result of a copper deficiency.

However, there is no indication that cooking with a copper pan, like my favourite omelette pan, will add copper to the diet!

The best sources of dietary copper other than seafood and offal are nuts, yeast, bran and cocoa powder.

So, to the recipes. As the weather is heading through autumn to winter here in Australia, I’m going for home cooking of distinctly British origin – an old-fashioned lamb chop stew, known as Lancashire Hotpot, and a chocolate self-saucing pudding.

Lancashire Hotpot

1kg (2 pounds) of lamb cutlets
2 lamb kidneys, peeled, cored and sliced
4 medium onions, sliced
250 grams (1/2 a pound) of mushrooms, sliced
750 grams (1 & ½ pounds) potatoes, scrubbed & sliced thin
1 tablesp flour, seasoned with salt & pepper
500 ml (3/4 pint) of stock, or warm water plus 2 stock cubes or Worcester Sauce

Trim any fat off the chops and coat them and the kidney slices in seasoned flour. Place layers of meat, onions, kidneys, mushrooms and potatoes in a large casserole, finishing with a layer of potatoes.

Pour over the stock, and bake, covered in a moderate oven (180C, 350F) for two hours. Remove the lid and cook for another half hour to brown the potato topping.

Serve with carrots or pumpkin and a green vegetables such as beans, Brussels sprouts, broccoli or spinach. Sprinkle servings with chopped parsley for extra Vitamin C and iron.

Serves 4

Self-Saucing Chocolate Fruit Pudding

This would be a great winter pud to have after the Lancashire Hotpot – real comfort food. It would also be a nice treat after a vegetarian meal such as rice and dhal, although vegans would need to make some changes to this recipe. Both the cocoa powder and the dried fruit provide iron, and cocoa contributes copper and antioxidants.

½ cup milk
60 grams (2 ounces) butter or margarine
¾ cup caster sugar
1 teasp vanilla essence
1 cup self-raising flour, or plain (all purpose flour) and baking powder
¼ cup dried fruit – sultanas, currants or mixed dried fruit
1 tablesp cocoa powder
¾ cup brown sugar
2 cups boiling water
1 extra tablesp cocoa

Sift together flour (baking powder), cocoa and caster sugar. Stir in dried fruit to coat fruit completely.

In a small saucepan or a glass jug in the microwave, melt together the butter and milk, stir in the vanilla essence.

Combine the liquids and the flour mixture until just mixed and pour into a greased 6-cup casserole dish.

Sift the extra cocoa and brown sugar over the pudding. Slowly pour the boiling water over the mixture.

Bake in moderate oven (180C, 350F) for 30-40 minutes, until a skewer in the centre comes out clean (apart from the sauce).

Serves 6 (or 4 with left-overs for breakfast).

Buon Appetito!

Local and Seasonal

A meditation on some ways of eating sustainably

While I've been buying fresh produce from my local farmer's market and trying to nurture some green vegetables and herbs on my tiny balcony, I’ve noticed an interesting trend on television and in the foodie magazines I sub-edit. It seems top of the line chefs have fallen in love not with only seasonal foods, but the gratification of growing and in some cases, breeding organic produce for themselves. Of course, if they run restaurants or bistros, they can’t produce enough for their commercial kitchens, but have to source local growers of the esoteric produce they’ve discovered.

Because not only are some of these chefs sudden converts to the joys of growing veggies and fruit – being food specialists they naturally fall for the rarer or old fashioned heritage produce.

This month I’ve subbed articles with gardening chefs extolling the joys of purple carrots, heirloom tomatoes in every shade from pale yellow to bright orange, beetroot that aren’t magenta in colour, but warm gold, or even a parsnip off-white. Except that cream-coloured parsnip is rather passé – they also come in a range of hues similar to non-orange carrots.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mamichan/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Starting from Scratch

Paralleling this trend is the one where food lovers, who may or may not have a connection to commercial cooking, decide to start from scratch producing food the pre-industrial way. It may have started with Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall and his delightful attempts to show ordinary English folk how to feed themselves sustainably and seasonally from tiny patches of waste land, hedgerows and local parks.

But he’s not alone – ex-UK marine Monty Halls, lived for six months on the West Coast of Scotland at Beachcomber Cottage, an old crofter’s cottage, where he grew vegetables for the first time and attempted to survive by hunting and fishing (and the odd cappuccino in the village café).

In Australia, ex-Sydney restaurant critic Matthew Evans moved to Tasmania, to a small farm to plant vegetables, keep chickens, goats and a dairy cow, and generally enjoy the good life away from the city crowds and smog.

So what has this to do with the real world of sourcing and cooking healthy food, given that most of us can’t flee to a beautiful but relatively isolated spot and live for a year or so on our bank account while we reinvent agriculture? Some inner-city denizens may have one answer.

Continued on Limes and Seasons

Calcium – moo-ve away from dairy and still have strong bones

As an older woman in a family where the women have typically fine bones and tend to develop osteoarthritis and even osteoporosis, I’ve been aware for many years of the need for adequate calcium in my diet.

But it isn’t just older women who need sufficient calcium circulating in their blood for physiological functions like blood clotting, nerve conduction, muscle contraction, enzyme activity, and cell membrane function. We all need it, from babies to elderlies, boys and men as well as girls and women.

Pregnant women need to get enough calcium for their own body's needs, as well as those of the baby developing inside her. And young children need plenty of calcium in the first five years of life to build their growing bones and teeth, as well as their central nervous systems.

And when it comes to building strong bones, the more calcium laid down before the age of 35, the better structure there will be to deal with later deprivations. After about 35, the depletions are greater than the additions when it comes to calcium and bones.

Although it’s well-known that women are at risk of osteoporosis after menopause, when oestrogen’s protective power is removed, it’s not so well-known that men can get osteoporosis, too. In either case, when the dietary intake of calcium is too low to maintain normal blood levels of calcium, the body draws on calcium stored in the bones to maintain normal blood concentrations, and after many years, this can lead to osteoporosis.

However, our bones can be strengthened right through to old age with a good calcium-rich diet and resistance exercises.

Cheese, Yoghurt, Milk (and Dairy Milk Chocolate)

Dairy farmers, food manufacturers and chocolate companies would like us to believe that dairy products are the best sources of calcium. And, as one who grew up in a dairying state that produces some of the world’s finest cheeses and ‘gourmet’ cream, and who still has a soft spot for dairy farmers (and for a chocolate company that promotes the “glass and a half of full-cream dairy milk in every block”), I have to admit they have a point.

But dairy products are not the best sources of calcium, and they are generally high in fat – at least all the good tasting ones are! Then there’s the problem of lactose–intolerant people and vegans. How are they to get enough calcium without going to supplements?

Strangely enough – the same way as dairy cows do!

Eat Green for Good Calcium Intake

I’m not suggesting we all get down and attempt to graze our lawns or the grass in our local park, but it turns out that bright green and dark green vegetables are the best way to eat calcium.

There are some non-green foods (apart from dairy), but green is go when you’re chasing calcium.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crobj/ / CC BY 2.0

Excellent sources of calcium include spinach, turnip greens, mustard greens and collard greens. Very good sources include Swiss chard (silverbeet), kale, basil, thyme, and, surprisingly, peppermint leaves.

(For an in-depth look at the health benefits of Swiss chard, see my article Swiss Chard - Phytonutrient Power for Diabetic and Bone Health. )

Good calcium sources include romaine lettuce, celery, broccoli, fennel, cabbage, green beans, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, oregano, rosemary, parsley, kombu, and kelp.

Non-green foods that have surprising amounts of calcium are blackstrap molasses, almonds, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, sesame seeds, garlic, tofu, oranges, summer squash, crimini mushrooms, dill seed, cinnamon and dried figs.

So, to the recipes. Although I’ve just finished up the last of a delicious home-made spanakopitta, in which lots of dark green silverbeet combined with three types of cheese for a calcium-rich savoury dish, I won’t give that recipe, as it would discriminate against people who don’t eat dairy. Instead, I offer these:

Stir-Fried Green Vegetables with Tofu and Almonds

This is a basic stir-fry in which you use as many different green vegs as you have in the fridge, together with garlic, ginger, tofu and almonds. All the quantities are estimates.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yosoynuts/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

• About 500 grams (1 lb) of green vegs – broccoli, broccolini, bok choy, choy sum, spinach, silverbeet, washed dried, stems cut into similar sized pieces, & leaves roughly torn
• 2 cloves of garlic or more if you like it, crushed,
• 250 grams (8 oz) firm tofu, in small cubes,
• 2 teasp finely grated fresh ginger,
• 1 tablesp soy sauce or tamari
• About 2 tablesp cooking oil (a biggish slurp)
• 1 teasp sesame oil
• 2 tablespoon of almonds, can be blanched & slivered or left whole

Heat the oil in the wok and add the ginger and garlic. Cook over high heat for a minute, stirring. Add tofu cubes and stir-fry for about 3 minutes. Remove tofu with a slotted spoon and keep warm.
Add the vegetable stems to the hot oil and stirfry for one to two minutes (no more). Add the leaves and wilt them in the hot oil. Toss in the almonds. Toss the tofu cubes back in and pour over the soy sauce/tamari and the sesame oil. Toss all together to combine and serve immediately on steamed rice or noodles.
Serves 4

Provençal Parsley Soup

This is one to make if you have masses of parsley growing in your garden, or have just bought a huge bunch of it at the market. This is another with estimates for quantities.

• About 800 grams (1½ lb) mashing potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
• A very large bunch of parsley – at least several handfuls when chopped
• About 2 tablesp butter or olive oil
• Garlic (optional, but if using, put in at least 2 cloves, crushed)
• Stock to just cover potatoes, with more kept hot
• Salt & pepper

Cook potatoes in as little stock as possible until soft enough to mash. Mash or puree with the garlic and the butter/olive oil. Mix in the chopped parsley, and simmer with a little extra stock for five to 10 minutes.
Adjust seasonings, add more hot stock if soup seems too thick. Serve with crusty bread.
Serves 4

Buon Appetito!