Hearty Winter Casseroles - Boeuf Bourgignon

August has just begun and at last we’re on the downhill run to Spring. But it is still winter, and August is the month when the old saying “as the days grow longer, the cold grows stronger” holds true. So, despite sunny days in Sydney that can reach 21C at midday, there are still chilly nights and gloomy grey days, (especially in Melbourne and Tasmania), and that means warming winter stews.

Stews and casseroles are interchangeable terms. Technically, a casserole is cooked in a casserole dish in the oven, while a stew simmers gently on the top of the stove. But really, they are interchangeable, the main point to remember is to cook slowly and gently. You can use a crockpot or slow cooker, a casserole or a stewpot, but DO NOT use a pressure cooker! Pressure cooking a stew results in tough meat and bland flavours and is a waste of good ingredients.

In an earlier post I wrote in praise of meat as a treat, not as something to be had every day. In that post, I talked about lamb – my favourite meat, and one of the world’s 100 healthiest foods.

So this time I’m focusing on beef – actually stewing steak and gravy beef, (sorry, I don’t know the equivalent US term). Australia is fortunate to have high quality meat that is relatively inexpensive, and stewing steak and the slightly fattier gravy beef are budget pleasing cuts. They are cheap, incredibly nourishing, and respond best to slow, gentle cooking, melting into tenderness and creating rich flavours with the other ingredients.

What’s so good about beef?

• High quality protein with all the essential amino acids in one package in relatively large amounts. One hundred grams of beef contains approximately 33 grams of protein.
• Iron, specifically haem iron, the easiest one to absorb. Iron is so essential for avoiding anaemia, and for enabling the blood's red cells to carry oxygen around the body. That 100 grams provides a hefty three to four milligrams of iron.
• Vitamins B1, B2, B6 and B12, zinc, selenium and phosphorus – good amounts of these essential vitamins and minerals.
• Tryptophan, the “feel good” food element. Tryptophan is an amino acid that works as a precursor to serotonin, the neurotransmitter that regulates sleep, appetite and mood. Foods rich in tryptophan are said to be “good mood foods”. Beef has tryptophan in spades – 100 grams contains about 0.33 grams.

So to the recipe: Boeuf Bourgignon

This is not the upmarket version that Guillaume Brahimi prepares, but a more budget conscious, down-to-earth casserole that’s probably nearer the French peasant original. As the name suggests, the meat was originally cooked in Burgundy. Since appellation contrôlée, we can no longer buy Burgundy in Australia, so choose a hearty red wine such as a cabernet-merlot or cabernet shiraz blend. Even a good cask wine will serve the purpose.

1kg (2 lb) stewing steak cut into 4cm (1½ inch) cubes
125 gm (4 oz) streaky bacon, cut into strips
1 carrot, sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 (or more) garlic clove smashed or chopped
1 teasp salt and ¼teasp ground black pepper
1 tablesp plain flour
500 ml (2 cups) red wine
250 ml (1 cup) beef stock (or chicken stock)
2 tablesp tomato puree
½ tsp thyme
1 bay leaf

16 small button onions or shallots peeled
60 gm (2 oz) butter
2 tablesp olive oil
375 gm (12 oz) button mushrooms

Put the flour with the salt and pepper into a large paper or plastic bag, and shake gently to mix. Drop in the beef cubes, a few at a time and shake to coat the meat with seasoned flour. Keep the bag firmly closed as you shake, you don’t want flour flying all over the kitchen and you!

If your casserole is safe to use on the stovetop, fry the bacon strips in it until the fat is rendered out and the pieces are crisp. Use a large frying pan if you can’t fry with the casserole. (The frying pan needs to be big enough to hold the meat, vegetables, stock and wine.) Take out the bacon, leaving the fat in the pan.

Add a big slurp of oil and heat until sizzling, throw in the meat cubes in batches so as not to crowd them, and brown all over. Set aside with the bacon. Now add the carrot and chopped onion and fry briefly.

Put the bacon and meat back into the casserole/frying pan, add the tomato puree, thyme, bay leaf and garlic, then pour in the red wine and stock. Bring the mixture to a rolling boil, stirring as it boils, and turn down to a low simmer. Allow it to simmer gently for five minutes to cook off all the alcohol, then transfer casserole to a preheated 160C (325F) oven. Cook for 3 to 4 hours.

Meanwhile, prepare the mushrooms and shallots. Heat up half the butter & olive oil in a small saucepan and sauté the onions or shallots for about 10 minutes until softened and brown. Set aside and repeat with rest of the butter and oil and the button mushrooms.

When the meat is tender, pour off as much of the liquid as you can from the casserole into a saucepan. Pop the cooked onions/shallots and mushrooms into the casserole, tucking them in around the meat. Bring the cooking juices to a boil, and simmer until reduced to about a third. Pour back into the casserole.

Serve with potatoes, either steamed or mashed and creamy, and steamed green vegetables.
Serves 4.

Another Beef Casserole in the next post!

Buon Appetito!

Pumpkins and Pears

It’s midwinter in Sydney – pale blue sky, sunshine, temperatures around 15-17C (60F), despite a chilly wind. Local councils are planning mid-winter festivities for the school holidays, with ice rinks in the parks or on the main streets. Meanwhile, up in the Blue Mountains they’re enjoying real winter – 100 kilometre/hour winds bringing trees crashing down on train lines, power outages, and sleet or even snow when the wind drops.

So, clearly it’s time for some winter comfort food! Keeping with our seasonal and affordable theme, I’m thinking pumpkin soup and a pear dessert. Pumpkins are one of nature’s wonder foods. They grow by themselves – a handful of seeds from a shop-bought pumpkin will transform into vines sprawling over your compost heap, backyard or balcony, and a minimum of two, and probably many more, pumpkins to last through winter and into spring.

No room for opportunistic pumpkins? No worries! At this time of year, all varieties of this giant squash – Queensland Blue, Jap, Butternuts and Golden Nuggets – are cheap as chips at the greengrocers. Butternuts are more expensive, perhaps for their thinner skin, but the other varieties keep better.

Golden Colour = Carotene

What are pumpkins good for, apart from cheapness and staying power? In a word, carotene. Pumpkins’ golden yellow-coloured flesh shows they are full of health-promoting carotenoids, including alpha and beta carotene, (precursor to vitamin A) – powerful antioxidants to combat free radicals that damage cell structure and DNA.

The really dark orange-fleshed pumpkins, such as butternut, also contain luteine, another form of carotene which is helpful in protecting the heart and for men, the prostate gland.

Pumpkin seeds, which many people like to eat roasted and salted, are high in protein, oil and B vitamins, and make a great garnish for vegetarian dishes. Don’t bother roasting the seeds of Queensland Blue – I found out the hard way they are virtually inedible, and even cockatoos disdain them!

Pears – Gift of the Gods


According to The World’s Healthiest Foods , pears were once known as “the gift of the gods”, but which gods is not explained. They are, however, a gift for people with food allergies, as pears are one of the few fruits no-one gets a bad reaction to, and can be eaten on a food elimination diet. Also, like their cousins, apples, they’re versatile, working well in sweet and savoury dishes.

Everyone knows pears are a good source of fibre, which plays a role in managing cholesterol levels, but they have other goodies as well. Despite their subtle flavour, they're a good source of Vitamin C, and also copper. Both help to protect against free radical damage and stimulate the immune system, vital in winter, with colds and flu around.

Beurre Bosc pears (sometimes pronounced Burey Bosk) are small brown pears that are best stewed or otherwise cooked. The bigger green ones are Packhams or Williams. They’re the cheap winter varieties. Green pears will ripen, even in winter, over a week or so in a fruit bowl, or in a paper bag if you’re in a hurry, and can be eaten fresh. You can buy lovely little red or gold coloured pear varietiess at famers’ markets, delicious to eat in a winter salad, if your budget stretches that far.

So, to the recipes

I would guess every Australian likes pumpkin soup, and most people know roughly how to make it. So here’s a variation I came across recently that neatly combines the two ps:

Pumpkin and Pear Soup

2 cups peeled pumpkin, cubed
2 cups peeled pears, cubed
1 leek, thoroughly washed and chopped roughly,
4 cups chicken stock or water
2 teasp grated fresh ginger (or 1 teasp ground ginger)
sea salt & white pepper to taste
¼ of a pear, peeled, cored & sliced thinly as a garnish (optional)

Put all the ingredients (except the garnish) in a large heavy-based pot, and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes, or until the pumpkin and pears are soft. Puree in blender or with a stick processor, and adjust the seasonings.

For the garnish, gently heat a couple of tablespoons of butter in a shallow pan and saute the pear slices until golden brown.
Serves 4

Pears with Cardamom Cream

This recipe heightens the somewhat bland taste of stewed pears with apple cider and lemon zest, and the subtle spiciness of the rich cardamom cream.

5 firm (not hard) pears, peeled, cored & sliced thinly
3 cups of apple cider (alcoholic or not, as preferred)*
zest of 2 lemons

Simmer gently until pears are soft but not mushy.
* Ginger beer could be used instead of cider.

5 egg yolks
2 cups milk (dairy or soy)
2 tablesp caster sugar
1 vanilla pod, split
3 cardamom pods, crushed.

Scrape the vanilla seeds into the milk, add the pod and cardamoms, and heat gently for five minutes to infuse the flavours. In a large bowl, beat together the egg yolks and sugar.

Add the warm milk gradually, whisking it into the eggs, then pour it back into the saucepan. Continue cooking over a low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Serve over the stewed pears
Serves 4

Buon Appetito!

Stocking Up for Winter

With the colder weather upon us, at least in the southern hemisphere, it’s time to think about simple warming foods like soups and stews that use fresh ingredients complemented by what you’ve got stashed in your pantry and freezer.

As well as a recipe for chicken stock, I’m going to tell you a way to preserve garlic, a tasty mushroom spread, and the easiest way to keep fresh ginger fresh

Making Stock

As discussed in my previous post, good home-made stock is a great basis for just about any type of soup, and can also add a depth of flavour to stews, casseroles and gravy. Making stock takes time, but it’s pretty easy, and the results, as well as being full of minerals and flavour, are much cheaper than the ready-made stuff. You need to allow time for the stock to cook, and time to drain it, so it’s a good idea to start the night before. You also need a deep enough stockpot to take up to six litres of liquid, plus all your meat and vegetables. It’s best if it’s a heavy based one, but I’ve managed for several years with a cheap stainless steel pot that always feels too light, but does the job.

It's possible to make beef stock, but that involves a LOT more time and some very big bones, so I very seldom make it. Chicken stock is a great all-rounder. It's also possible to make a vegetable stock, but it isn't worth the effort - it doesn't keep well, and it's easy enough to make fresh each time.

Basic Chicken Stock

2 kilos (5 lbs) of chicken necks (very little meat) or chicken drumsticks (lots of meat)
large handful of salt,
3 or 4 bay leaves
8-10 black peppercorns
Celery leaves
3 large onions, skin on, cut in half
4 carrots chopped in quarters
3 or 4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tablesp white wine or vinegar (helps to dissolve the minerals in the bones)
5 litres of cold water.

Put all the ingredients in your stockpot, bring to the boil and allow to boil vigorously for 10 minutes, then turn down and simmer for an hour. If using the chicken drumsticks, now is the time to pull them out and strip of all the meat, then throw the bones back in and simmer for another 45 minutes. The chicken necks can just be simmered for the whole time. Keep an eye on the pot that you don’t lose too much liquid from evaporation.

When the simmering is done, turn off and allow to cool slightly while you put together your draining set up. You need a large colander, balanced over a pot big enough to take the approximately 3½ litres of stock. Pour the contents of the stockpot careful into the colander, scooping all the solids in as well. Cover and leave for a couple of hours, overnight is good, for every drop of goodness to drip through.

Throw all the solids into your compost bin, put the stock back on the stove and bring to the boil. Let it boil vigorously for at least five minutes to sterilise it, then pack it while hot into freezer containers. Any fat in the stock will rise to the surface and solidify in the freezer, and can be scraped off before you use your delicious and nutritious stock.

Hint: Keep a bread bag in the freezer and every time you prepare vegetables for a dish, put the trimmings in the bag. (Don’t use potatoes or potato peelings, they make the stock taste muddy.) Tops and tails of carrots, the outer skin of onions, the coarse ends of celery, and in particular celery leaves, are all good, and provide the basic aromatics for your stock. When you buy a bunch of celery, cut the leaves off immediately to stop the plant transpiring and losing its crispness. The leaves add valuable minerals – calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium – as well as flavour to your stock.

Keeping garlic in the freezer

Recently my local greengrocer had an over-supply of garlic and was offering 5 heads for $1. That’s way more garlic than I usually buy, especially in this rainy weather, when I’ve had garlic – the natural antibiotic – go mouldy! But I reasoned it should be possible to freeze garlic, and after a bit of Googling, I found several suggestions. Here’s my favourite. It takes a bit of chopping, but you have instant garlic.

Chop the garlic cloves roughly and put in the blender or food processor with some oil – about 1/3 cup to a cup of chopped garlic. This is vague I know, but it’s a matter of how much oil you think is just right. You don’t want it too runny but not too dry, as the oil helps prevent the garlic drying out. Whizz the mixture until it looks chopped enough for you. Decant into small airtight containers, label and freeze.

The neat thing about this method is that the mixture doesn’t freeze completely solid. It’s easy to scoop out as little or as much as you want without thawing the garlic. If you’re the sort of person who uses lots of garlic butter, simply replace the oil with butter. I would increase the proportion of butter to garlic, probably to 1:1. It’s all a matter of taste. Either way, you get all garlic’s health benefits – the antioxidants and polyphenols – especially allicin – that protect the heart and circulatory system and lower LDL cholesterol. To say nothing of it’s magnificent flavour!

Savoury mushroom spread

The same greengrocer had an abundance of white mushrooms, also very cheap, so I bought about 1 kilo (2lbs). As mushrooms are very light, you can imagine what a large lot that was. What I had in mind was a similar trick to preserving the garlic – some way to freeze the shrooms so they would be delicious when defrosted. I found this recipe in an old paperback on preserving. It was intended for wild fungi picked in the early morning from a dew-laden field, but it worked just as well for my cheap urban shrooms.

4 cups chopped mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion
At least 1 clove garlic, chopped fine or minced
1 tablesp olive oil
1 teasp soy sauce
1 teasp dried savory or rosemary
1/2 teasp dried thyme or oregano
1/4 teasp nutmeg
1/8 teasp black pepper
a few grinds of coarse sea salt

Sauté the onion and garlic gently in the oil. When the onion starts to soften, add the mushrooms and cook over low heat for about 5 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer about 10 more minutes over low heat.

Decant the hot mixture into small air-tight containers, label and freeze. This is good on toast, as a sauce for steak, chops, sausages – anything that would be improved with a dollop of mushrooms. It goes well in an omelette, and is handy for boosting the flavour of soups and casseroles.

Freezer-fresh ginger
Keeping ginger in the freezer is ridiculously easy. Simply cut the ginger rhizome into chunks about the size you would normally use. Leave the skin on, and wrap each chunk in cling wrap, then drop the chunks into a ziplock bag, or a handy bread bag. You can peel and grate or chop your ginger chunk while it's still frozen. (Don't defrost it - it goes soggy and uncooperative.)

Winter Warmers

Winter has come to Sydney a week early, according to the Weather Bureau. In Australia, we don’t worry about seasons changing with the solstices, summer begins on December 1, and winter on June 1. This year, the cold, grey and very windy weather (including snow mountain ranges in southern NSW and Victoria), prompted the Bureau to shift the season back a week. Time for thick woolly jumpers (sweaters), heaters and hot water bottles. And warming winter dishes.

Super Soups

Apologies for the alliteration, I seem to have been infected with the alliterative bug! But I do think soups are super! A good home-made soup makes a filling and nourishing meal with the addition of a slice or two of toast, warm muffins or crusty bread. So, two recipes today are warming soups bungful of flavour and nutrition. But first, a note about making stock.

All soups taste better and have more minerals and other vital nutrients, if made with home-made stock. Making stock is one of those chores that fills the kitchen (and your whole place if you have a small flat like mine) with savoury steam and the sense of job worth doing. Stock keeps well in the freezer, so you have it on hand to whip up a soup or add depth of flavour to a casserole. (I’ll give a recipe for making chicken stock in my next post.)

Spicy Red Lentil Soup

Lentils are ideal for quick winter dishes like soups and dhals, as they need no soaking before cooking. Although relatively bland themselves, they soak up spices and aromatic flavours. They are high in easily digested fibre, have good amounts of protein and folate, and a surprisingly amount of antioxidants. As one of the first foods cultivated by humans, you’d have to say lentils have proved their worth!

The lentils used in this recipe are red, but the soup turns a beautiful yellow from the turmeric. It is not hot; the spices add subtle flavour, not heat. If you want it hot, add 1-2 teasp red chili powder to the spice mix.

1 cup red lentils
2 onions, chopped
1-2 sticks of celery, chopped,
garlic, chopped fine, at least 2 teasp
2 carrots chopped into cubes
large slurp of oil, preferably olive oil
1½ teasp turmeric powder
1 teasp cumin powder
salt and pepper to taste
5 cups of stock (chicken, beef or vegetable)

Heat the oil gently in a heavy bottomed saucepan and sauté all the vegetables except the garlic for 7-10 minutes. Turn up the heat and add the spices and garlic, stirring to release the flavours. Add the lentils and mix together to coat the lentils completely with the spices.

Pour in the stock, bring to the boil, lower heat and simmer for about 40 minutes. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. Simmer gently another 5-10 minutes before serving. Superb with a dollop of yoghurt or sour cream, quite delicious without.
Serves 4

Aigo Buido (Provençal garlic soup)

This quick and aromatic soup is great for fighting off winter colds, or just for making you feel full of vigour. It’s from an old recipe I cut out of a magazine 30-odd years ago, so I don’t know who to credit for it – apart from the Provençal people themselves. Only make it if you like lots of garlic! Garlic can truly be considered a wonder food. It’s an excellent source of Vitamin C and other antioxidants, it acts as a natural antibiotic and it stimulates to the immune system.

At least 6 large garlic cloves minced or chopped very fine
6 cups of stock
1 teasp salt
½ teasp dried thyme or oregano
1 bay leaf
4 fresh sage leaves chopped
1 egg
2 tablesp chopped parsley

Bring the stock to the boil, add the garlic, herbs (except parsley) and salt and simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Beat the egg in a small bowl with a tablesp of cold water. Add a ladleful of hot stock and stir together, then pour back into the hot stock. Serve at once, topped with the chopped parsley, and eat with crusty bread or dry toast croutons.
Serves 4

Buon Appetito!

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!

Mmmarvelous mushrooms!

It’s early Spring here in Australia and so, naturally, we’re enjoying a return to winter with cold grey days, rain and gusty winds. Thank goodness, another winter specialty is hanging around – mushrooms. Especially the big flat meaty ones. These are just the final maturing of the little white cap mushrooms grown commercially, but they have by far he best flavour, rich, dark, strong, and work equally well with beef or lamb in hearty winter stews or as a dish in their own right.

As well as the commonly available button mushrooms in all stages from tightly closed to the wide open ‘flat mushrooms’, mushroom lovers can enjoy portobellos, swiss brown, oyster, shiitake, enoki, chestnut, crimini and other exotic varieties, as well as the highly prized and hugely expensive truffle. Regardless of the variety, all mushrooms contain health giving vitamins and minerals along with their tempting flavours.

What’s good about mushrooms? Antioxidants!

Mushrooms are a surprising source of antioxidants. Eating mushrooms regularly can boost your immune system and these fungi have even been credited by some researchers as helping to fight cancers, thanks to their high antioxidant content. Japanese mushrooms are also believed to help lower blood pressure.

The specific antioxidant in mushrooms is L-ergothioneine, also found in wheatgerm and chicken livers. Mushrooms have about 12 times as much L-ergothioneine as wheat germ and four times more than chicken liver. What’s more, this powerful antioxidant is not destroyed when mushrooms are cooked.

Mushrooms also contain valuable amounts of the mineral selenium. Working together with vitamin E, selenium ensures the proper functioning of numerous vital antioxidant systems throughout the body.

Selenium’s antioxidant activity is helpful in protecting colon cells from cancer-causing toxins, and is also credited with decreasing asthma and arthritis symptoms and in the prevention of heart disease. In addition, selenium is involved in DNA repair, associated with a reduced risk for cancer.

B vitamins, valuable minerals and protein

All mushrooms are an excellent source of riboflavin (vitamin B2), niacin (vitamin B3), pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), as well as the minerals selenium, copper, zinc, iron, manganese, potassium and phosphorus. Mushrooms’ B vitamin content is a boost for vegans who, as a result of a restricted diet compared to vegetarians and omnivores, often struggle getting enough of these vitamins.

Both iron and copper are necessary for the body to synthesis haemoglobin to carry oxygen around in the blood. These two minerals are also quite difficult for non-meat eaters to get enough of, so mushrooms are a valuable addition to vegan or vegetarian meals

While mushrooms are not particularly high in protein at around 3 per cent by weight, they combine well with other animal and vegetable proteins to increase the total protein intake.

Cheap mushrooms as good as expensive varieties

While the World’s 100 Healthiest Foods lists exotic mushrooms such as crimini and shiitake, French food chemists at the Institut National de la Recherche Agrinomique have shown that ordinary commercial button mushrooms have as much or even more anti-oxidant activity as more expensive varieties.

Lead researcher and co-author of the paper published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Jean-Michel Savoie commented: "It can be reasonably assumed that white button mushrooms have as much, if not more, radical scavenging power as mushrooms currently touted for their health benefit. The good thing is button mushrooms are available all year round, are cheap and may be an excellent source of nutrition as part of a healthy diet."

Not only that, you can even buy mushroom kits and grow your own!

So, to the recipes. As mushrooms have a place in both omnivore and non-meat eating diets, I’m offering both options – a basic cream of mushroom soup and an easy baked fish and mushrooms.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

60g butter or 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
600 grams (about 20 ounces) of cap mushrooms, sliced
about 5 tablesp of plain (all purpose) flour
1.25 litre (5 cups) vegetable stock (or water plus 2 stock cubes)
1/2 cup light cream* OR 1 egg beaten up in 1/4 cup of milk*
about 5 tablesp of chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
salt & ground black pepper

Heat the butter or oil in a large heavy saucepan over medium-high. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring often, for three or four minutes or until soft. Then add the chopped mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or so until the mushrooms are tender. Remove 1/4 cup of mushrooms and set aside.

Add the flour to remaining mushrooms and cook, stirring for two minutes. Gradually add the stock, stirring constantly until all the stock has been added and bring to the boil. Lower the heat to simmering and cook the soup, uncovered, for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from the heat, and blend in a food processor or with a stick blender until smooth. Return to the saucepan over low heat. Stir in the cream* and parsley. Heat over medium-low heat until slightly thickened.

Season with salt and pepper, ladle into bowls and serve topped with reserved mushrooms and more parsley, if liked. Serves 4 as a starter.

*Vegans: I’m sorry, you’ll have to work out how to substitute the cream.

Baked Fish and Mushrooms

4 fresh or frozen fish fillets (about 500 grams or a pound), ½ to ¾ inch thick
2 tablesp butter or oil
1 ½ cups sliced fresh mushrooms
2 small or one large onion, sliced
1 teasp snipped fresh tarragon or thyme, (or ¼ teaspoon dried tarragon or thyme, crushed)
juice of ½ small lemon

Thaw fish, if frozen. Rinse and pat dry with paper towels. Cut into serving-size pieces, if necessary and arrange in a rectangular baking dish, turning under thin edges, so all pieces are approximately the same thickness. Sprinkle with salt.

In a small saucepan melt butter or oil; add the mushrooms, sliced onions, and dried herbs, if using. Cook over medium heat until mushrooms and onions are tender.

Spread mushroom mixture evenly over fish pieces and sprinkle with any fresh herbs. Squeeze over a little lemon juice. Cover with foil or a lid and bake in a hot oven (220C, 450F) for between 12-18 minutes, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Sprinkle more lemon juice and more fresh herbs if you have them, and serve with steamed buttered vegetables. Serves 4

Buon Appetito!

Would you like some zucchinis?

When my children were young we were trying, fairly unsuccessfully, to live an alternative and self-sustaining lifestyle in a dairying and vegetable-growing area of rural Tasmania. Our farmlet was surrounded by huge vegetable paddocks of growers supplying the big frozen vegetable companies, but thanks to a silted up spring, broken pipes and no money to fix them, we could barely grow anything.

Fortunately, our friends on other small holdings in the district were both productive and generous, and we were frequently offered bounty from their gardens. Tomatoes, lettuce, pumpkin, potatoes, parsnips, swedes (a small turnip). One offer we came to dread was “Would you like some zucchinis?” “Some”, in this case, generally being an understatement. Zucchinis (courgettes) are very easy to grow, given water and sunshine, and they are very prolific, even a small patch producing a glut rather than moderation. We became very inventive in ways of using them, even attempting deep-fried zucchini chips, and thank goodness our chooks would happily eat any discarded experiment and repay us with eggs.

I was reminded of this time in our lives when a friend and I were offered a bag of cheap zucchinis at the local greengrocers. Not so much offered, as had them pressed on us, with many exclamations of affection, by the Italian greengrocer. Having avoided zucchinis for most of the 20 years since our rural experience, I actually had to look for a recipe to deal with this unexpected bounty!

One of the world's oldest vegetables

People have been eating zucchinis for thousands of years, probably because of their ease of growing and their generous cropping. Apparently they are one of the oldest families of vegetables that humans have domesticated, after their appearance in the Americas. (Zucchinis are botanically a fruit, as evidenced by the seeds insde them, but are generally considered a vegetable.) However, it was when they were taken up by the Italians, Greeks, Turks and Lebanese that zucchinis took off, becoming an important part of many European and Middle Eastern cuisines, as their mild flavour combines well with herbs, spices and other strongly flavoured ingredients.

While zucchinis are not in the top 100 healthy foods, they do provide some useful vitamins and minerals and a tiny amount of protein. As well as similar amounts of Vitamin C as potatoes, they provide some calcium, folate, potassium, manganese and vitamin A, all of which would contribute to a healthy diet if the vegetable was eaten regularly. In fact, they play a part in the healthy Mediterranean Diet. Like most vegetables, they contain no fat, no starch and are low in calories. And if you can’t grow them yourself, they are usually one of the cheapest veggies to buy.

Zucchini recipes

So, to the recipes. There are lots of delicious dishes using zucchinis together with stronger flavours, such as the colourful ratatouille. However, I decided to focus on zucchini’s own delicate flavour, and today being a grey and wintry day, chose to make a quick and easy zucchini soup. I modified the recipe I found to make it a little tangier, but resisted the urge to add any animal protein, so this is a vegetarian and vegan recipe. Omnivores may like to add sausage, bacon, and/or cheese, but the ‘naked’ soup is delicious in its own right.

Zucchini Soup

A big slurp of olive oil (about 2 tablesp)
1 brown onion, finely chopped
2 or more garlic cloves, chopped
750 grams (1½ pounds/about 7) zucchini, grated
1 celery stalk, chopped fine
500 ml (2 cups) water, vegetable stock or chicken stock
½ teasp cumin
salt and white pepper to taste

In a large heavy saucepan sauté onion and celery gently in oil for about five minutes, until softening. Add the garlic and sauté for a couple of minutes. Then add cumin and fry gently for a minute.

Tip the grated zucchini into the pot and stir to mix with the other ingredients. Add the salt and pepper. Pour in the liquid and bring to the boil. (If using plain water, either add extra salt and pepper, or dissolve 2 stock cubes in the water before adding.) When the soup is boiling, cover, turn down heat and simmer for about 8 minutes.

Take the soup from the heat and blend in a food processor or with a stick blender until smooth. It should be a pale green with tiny dark green speckles. Adjust seasonings and reheat for a few minutes before serving. A dollop of sour cream or Greek-style yoghurt can be added to each bowl for extra richness.

Serves 4

If I hadn’t made the soup, I’d have baked some Zucchini Herb Muffins.

1 cup zucchini, grated
1 or more garlic cloves, crushed
1 cup of herbs, chopped fine – basil, parsley, chives, oregano, whatever you have
Salt and pepper to taste
2 eggs, lightly beaten,
2 tablesp oil
1 cup milk or milk and yoghurt mixed
2 cups plain (all purpose) flour and baking powder to make 2 cups SR

Sift flour and baking powder together. In another, larger bowl, combine all other ingredients and mix well together. Stir in flour until just mixed.

Line muffin tray with paper pans and 2/3rds fill with mixture. Bake at 180C (350F) for 15-20 minutes.

Makes 12

Buon Appetito!