Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn!

Now that the debilitating migraine-inducing humid summer weather is (hopefully) finally gone, and autumn has officially started with end of Daylight Saving, I can enjoy sharing some more food and nutrition ideas with you. I promised more apple recipes in my last post, but not today. Today, in salute to the end of summer, I give an easily adapted leek frittata, and pear and raspberry bread.

Leeks are available all year round, but psychologically, feel more like an autumn food to me. Others may disagree, but it's when the heat and humidity start to ebb that I remember the pleasures of leeks. Related to garlic and onions, leeks offer all the health benefits of garlic, including antioxidants and antibiotic properties, but are milder and sweeter in flavour. Leeks were favoured by the Egyptians when they were building pyramids, and the Welsh have a leek as their national symbol. Perhaps it's the Welsh in me from my grandfather that makes me love the leek!

Pear and raspberry bread has become very popular on the Sydney cafe scene, so I determined to make some myself. I don't claim this recipe as an original so much as an amalgam of the various recipes I found on the web. Mine uses frozen raspberries, as fresh ones have such a short season and are ridiculously expensive, unless you live in a raspberry growing area, or have raspberry bushes in your garden. Frozen raspberries are not as delicious as fresh picked ones still warm from the sun, but they are an adequate substitute that you can have year round. Raspberries have good levels of Vitamin C, even the frozen ones. My only gripe with the frozen ones is they go purple when baked!,

So, to the recipes:

Leek Frittata
The name 'frittata' is a bit of a misnomer, as I actually bake it in a 26x16x5cm (10x61/4x2inch) pyrex lasagne dish. It's an adaptation of a frittata recipe from the early 90s; I gave up trying to fry it, as I always made a mess! The beauty of this recipe is you can substitute the cheese with whatever you have in the fridge or feel like eating - extra tasty cheddar, Swiss, fetta, whatever takes your fancy. Ditto with the zucchinis. I often swap them with celery, a flavour that goes well with leeks. You can also substitute the herbs. I like dill, but try oregano, marjoram or tarragon. Be adventurous!

• A good slurp of olive oil
• 3 small leeks or 2 large ones, thinly sliced
• 2 medium zucchinis (courgettes), julienned (matchsticks)
• at least 1 clove of garlic , chopped fine
• 5 eggs lightly beaten
 • 11/2 cups milk, or milk and yoghurt blend
 • 4 tablesp freshly grated Parmesan cheese (NOT the packaged powdered stuff!)
 • 4 tablesp of another cheese, cubed (cubes can be as large or small as you like)
 • 2 tablesp plain (all purpose) flour with a good pinch of baking powder
 • salt and pepper to taste (white pepper is better than black in this pale dish)
• 2 teasp dried dill

Sauté the leeks in the oil, until starting to soften, cover and cook on low for 10 minutes. Add your garlic and julienned zucchini, stir, and cook covered for another 10 minutes. If substituting celery for the zucchini, sautée it with the leeks, and make sure all vegetables are very soft before you do the next step.

Tip into a large bowl and leave to cool. When cool, mix in the cheeses and herbs.
In a large bowl or glass jug, mix the flour carefully with a little of the milk to make a smooth paste. Stir in the beaten eggs. Add the rest of the milk and the seasonings, stirring well to eliminate any lumps.

Spread the cheesy vegetable mix over the base of your oiled dish, pour in the milkand eggs, and stir gently until well combined.

Bake in the middle of a 180C (350F) oven for 25-30 minutes. at the 25 minute mark, test with a skewer to see how close to cooked it is. It should be slightly runny in the middle. If so, turn the oven off for the last 5 minutes to avoid overcooking.

Leave to cool completely before you attempt to cut it; this allows it to firm up.

Sue's Gluten-free Café-style Pear & Raspberry Bread
This is yummy toasted and spread with butter or smooth ricotta, and makes a great breakfast loaf. (Toast under a griller, not in a pop-up toaster - it will stick and burn.)

• 4 medium cooking pears, peeled, cored and grated or chopped fine.
 • 1 tablesp lemon juice
• 3 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
 • 1 teasp bicarb (baking soda) and 1/2 teasp baking powder
 • 3/4 cup melted butter
 • 3 eggs
 • 2 teasp vanilla essence
 • 2 tablesp milk
 • 1/2 cup frozen raspberries (or fresh, if you can)
 • 3/4 cup sugar, preferably brown, but raw or white are good

Grate or chop pears and toss in the lemon juice to prevent them browning. make sure all the juice from the pears goes in the bowl.

Sift together the dry ingredients. Whisk together the eggs, milk and vanilla, add the melted butter and whisk until blended.

Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, add the pears and mix until combined, but do not overmix. Fold in the raspberries.

Pour batter into a greased and lined large loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake in 180C (350F) oven for an hour, checking with a skewer at the 55 minute mark. You might need to reduce the temperature a few degrees if the top is browned but the inside is not yet cooked.

Leave cake in its pan for at least 15 minutes to cool and firm before removing it. Place on a rack to cool completely before cutting.
Buon Appetito!

The Aussie Apple for Australia Day

Musing on Australia Day about what is the typical Aussie fruit I thought bananas – no; mangoes – no; pineapples – no; Granny Smith apples – yes! The Granny Smith is the apple Australia gave the world. It’s great for cooking with, ultra-reliable, and it’s also crisp, crunchy and slightly tart – perfect to bite into on a hot summer day.

Apples are not seasonal in high summer, but with controlled atmosphere storage, (cool storage), we can have crisp, juicy apples pretty much all year round. And with the new, smaller, varieties of what my family call “Granny Miffs,” (a N-W coast Tasmanian pronunciation), you can have big ones for cooking and small ones for munching.

As a proud Tasmanian, I always understood the Granny Smith originated in the apple-growing areas of the Huon Valley, a self-seeded tree, mutated from apples tossed out by early settlers or explorers, (maybe even Bass & Flinders during their circumnavigation of the island), and discovered by a local woman, the eponymous ‘Granny Smith’, some time in the 1830s or 40s, long before her NSW namesake claimed the triumph. Alas, I can find no documentary evidence to back up this lovely legend! You can read about the ‘real’ Granny Smith here.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

Granny Smith’s great-granddaughter Edna Spurway certainly thought so. She lived to 101, and was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald as attributing her longevity to “good genes and lots of apples”.

What we now know is some of the reasons why a daily apple is so good for our health. Some 85 different studies have found that apples’ high levels of powerful antioxidants help protect the eater against cell-damaging free radicals, which could contribute to various cancers, cardiovascular disease, T2 diabetes and even asthma.

It’s amazing, but one standard apple contains more antioxidant power than one orange, half a punnet of blueberries or a cup of strawberries. Apples also contain useful amounts of calcium, potassium, iron and zinc, and on top of all that, they’re low GI. Plus, it’s much easier to walk out the door biting into a crisp juicy apple, with the juice spurting down your chin, than to eat the equivalent amount of strawberries or blueberries on the run. Even an orange has to be peeled!

Granny Smith – the world’s favourite cooking apple

I’m not sure if that’s 100 per cent correct; there maybe some regional apple varieties in other parts of the world that cooks swear by, but in Australia it’s certainly true. So, to the recipes:

Granny’s Apple Crumble

No, not Granny Smith’s, but my version of how I think my Scottish grandmother made apple crumble. She was an excellent cook, but she never shared her recipes, so when I came to make apple crumble for my young family after she'd died, I had to recreate it from taste memory, (with a little help from the English Women’s Weekly on rubbing the butter into the flour).

4 large green cooking apples
3 or 4 cloves, or ¼ teasp ground cloves
½ - 1 teasp ground cinnamon
About ½ cup of water.

Thinly slice the peeled and cored apples, place in a large saucepan with the spices and cover with the water. Be sparing with the water, you don't want the apples to become too sloppy. Stew gently until they are only just cooked. Stir in just enough sugar to taste – not too sweet. Put stewed fruit into a large oven-proof dish or lasagna dish.

Topping:
125 grams (4 oz) butter or margarine
½ cup of soft brown sugar
1 cup of plain (all purpose) flour
1 cup of instant rolled oats (quick cooking or microwaveable oats)

In a large bowl put the flour and the butter, cut into tiny cubes. Rub the butter into the flour using your finger-tips, until the mixture is like small breadcrumbs. This is messy work, but quite fun, and the rubbing action aerates the mixture. (Don’t use a food processor unless you’re absolutely pushed for time!) Stir in the brown sugar and the rolled oats, keeping the mixture as light as you can.

Spread the topping over the stewed apple; try to use a dish that enables you to have quite a thick crumble topping. Bake at 190C (375F) for 25-30 minutes, until crumble is golden brown. Serve warm or cold with cream, yoghurt or icecream.
Serves 4

Options: You can vary the crumble topping by replacing the oats or about 1/3 of the flour with coconut or any crunchy breakfast cereal. Using gluten-free flour and removing the oats makes it safe for coeliacs and people with gluten-intolerance. You could also replace the apple with any other stewed fruit or even tinned (canned) fruit or frozen berries, but then it wouldn’t be a traditional apple crumble! But still delicious.


More apple recipes to come!

Buon Appetito!

Almonds and Pears

“Almonds and pears” – sounds like something out of an old nursery rhyme, or maybe some Cockney rhyming slang. But it isn’t either of those, it’s two ingredients that are cheap, plentiful and healthy, which combine together beautifully in many recipes, especially cakes and cookies.

I’ve told you about pears – ‘the gift of the gods’ and why pears are counted in the top 100 healthiest foods.

But what about almonds? The humble ‘nut’ (botanically, it’s a ‘drupe’ not a nut, but who’s counting?) of a tree related to peaches and apricots, with the most glorious blossom in early spring, the almond has been revered for thousands of years as a symbol of fertility and happiness. When you see the white froth of almond blossom, you know spring is just around the corner.

Believed to have originated in the North of Africa and western Asia, almonds are now grown in many countries with a Mediterranean climate, including Australia. Australia is the world’s third-largest producer of almonds, after California and Spain. No wonder we can always get fresh almonds relatively cheaply!

Almonds can be bought as plain raw nuts, roasted, blanched, blanched and slivered or flaked, or as almond meal. Because the Omega-3 and Omega-6 content can be damaged by high heat, it’s preferable to dry roast the nuts yourself, instead of buying commercially roasted almonds. Put them in a single layer on a baking tray and roast for about 20 minutes in a low oven (no higher than 100C or 212F).

Almonds’ high nutritional value

Because of their subtle flavour, almonds can combine with almost any other food But it’s not their versatility that includes them in the ‘healthiest foods’ – these nuts are actually given ‘qualified health claim’ status by the United States’ Food & Drug Administration in recognition of the health benefits of eating almonds every day.

For such a small item, an almond packs a mighty nutritional punch. As well as their high protein content, almonds have monounsaturated fat, Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, fibre, and as much calcium as cow’s milk, along with good amounts of Vitamins A, C, E and D, all the B vitamins, folate and Vitamin K. Then there's the minerals: copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium and zinc.

So, to the recipes: Pear and Almond Cake

Almonds combine beautifully with pears in this cake, which can double as dessert, warmed slightly and served with cream, icecream or yoghurt. Or you can toast slices and spread with soft butter.

2 cups sugar
3 cups pears, peeled and diced,
2 cups plain (all purpose) flour and baking powder to raise,
1 teasp bicarb (baking soda)
1 teasp salt
2 teasp cinnamon
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup oil or melted butter
2 teasp vanilla essence
1 cup slivered almonds

Mix together the pear pieces and sugar and leave for 20 minutes or so to develop juices.

Sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon and raising agents, then add rest of the ingredients and stir well. Bake in a greased large square tin or a Bundt pan at 180C (350 F) for 1 hour.

Ginger and Almond Cookies

Remember to make the dough well ahead of when you want these cookies, as it has to sit in the fridge for several hours to firm up before baking.

¾ cup (190 g/6 ounces) of softened butter
1 cup packed, soft brown sugar
2 tablesp light molasses, honey or Golden Syrup
1 egg
1½ teasp baking powder
½ teasp salt
1 teasp fresh ginger, grated finely, or at least 1 teasp ground ginger (more if you prefer)
1¼ cup plain (all purpose) flour
1 cup ground almonds (almond meal)
48 blanched whole almonds (cheaper to blanch your own.)

In a large bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in molasses/honey/Golden Syrup, the egg and ginger. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, then mix into sugar and butter mixture until you have a soft dough.

Form the dough into two logs, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate several hours or overnight. Meanwhile, blanch your almonds, if you haven’t bought ready blanched ones. Put them in a heatproof bowl, pour hot, (not quite boiling) water over them and leave to cool, when you can slip the skins off.

Cut the dough in slices and shape these into walnut sized balls. Put about 2" apart on a greased cookie sheet, and press a blanched almond into centre of each ball, flattening them slightly. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in a 175C (350F) oven until lightly browned on bottom.

Makes about 4 dozen.

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!

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!

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!

Limes and Seasons

Continuing my meditation on eating locally, seasonally and sustainably - with recipes.

To read the first half of this meditation, go to Local and Seasonal

To continue the theme of eating locally and sustainably, here's how some inner-city denizens tackled the challenge. They might not produce enough to feed all of them all the time, but at least they have the pleasure of adding home-grownh produce to their meals.

Sustainability in a city street
Photo courtesy Saim Ali


With the support of Sydney City Council, residents of the inner-city of Chippendale have planted garden beds at the ends of residential streets. These were originally a guerrilla garden effort, but luckily for the residents, the Council saw sense and gave them support to build more.

Making the Most of What's Available

We might not be able to dig up inner-urban streets, or find a bit of waste ground, or forage from the local park, but we can buy what produce is in season, when it’s tasty and cheap, and make the most of it.

Since it’s the end of summer, I recently converted 12 really cheap limes into lime marmalade and a refreshing lime drink. The marmalade took 24 hours, the drink, five minutes.

Limes, like lemons, are high in vitamin C; they also contain small amounts of vitamins A, B, and E, folate and pantothenic acid, plus the minerals boron, copper, iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc and a tiny amount of sodium.

To the Recipes

Although the vitamin C will be destroyed by the long boiling in making marmalade, all the other elements and the tangy flavour will reman.

Lime Marmalade

This recipe is from a 1970s English paperback, long out of print: Let’s Preserve It, by Beryl Wood. If you can find it, it’s a delight, and has helpful hints about making jams, jellies and relishes. I use it about once a year.

• 1lb (500 gms) of limes (about 6)
• 2 ½ pints (1400 ml)of water
• 2 ½ lbs (just over a kilogram) of fine white sugar
• Jam pan – a preserving pan bought from a kitchen store, or a stock pot, or a large, heavy bottomed saucepan. It must be big enough that your boiling sugar mixture does not boil over.

Makes about 5 medium jars

Finely cut the limes – this is vital as lime peel is amazingly tough to cook. Put the lime slices in the jam pan with the water, cover and leave overnight.

At least 2 hours before you’re ready to make marmalade, start cooking the lime slices. Bring the water to the boil, and simmer covered, for at least 1 ½ hours, or until the peel is soft.

When the peel is almost ready, rinse out your jam jars and put in a low oven to dry and warm up. Add the sugar to the simmering peel, stir until it is all dissolved, then bring the heat up to high.

Boil rapidly for about 20 minutes until your marmalade is setting. Test by dropping a small amount onto a cold saucer – it should gel, and wrinkle to the touch, or divide and not run together if you pull a finger through it. Remove your pan from the heat while testing for set so as not to over-boil your marmalade.

Fill your jars and seal while hot and wipe clean with a damp cloth.

Lime Drink

• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 teasp sugar or to taste
• 350 ml (approx) iced water, soda water or lemonade.

Mix together juice and sugar, stirring vigorously; dilute with iced water.

It is possible to make lime cordial by boiling sugar and water to make a syrup, but it’s not worth the effort unless you’re making enough for a party or a picnic.

Buon Appetito!

Making the Most of Mangos

"Let me tell you 'bout my mango..."
Some time in the mid-80s or maybe early 90s, there was a sexy Calypso-style song on the radio, that started "Let me tell you 'bout my man-go.." I don't remember any more, but it certainly tied mangos and warm sultry weather together in my mind, long before I ever got to taste the luscious fruit.

Along with tomatoes, mangos represent summer to me. Specifically, the long, hot, Australian summer. Growing up in Tasmania, which has a more English climate than mainland Australia (or some would say more Irish and others, more Scottish), summers were fairly short, and Christmas could often be cold and drizzly, or occasionally snowing. Fresh cherries were the seasonal fruit to look forward to at Christmas and the start of summer. I didn’t taste mangos until I was in my 40s. And when I did, I fell in love!

Now I live in Sydney, I can indulge myself with mangos each summer – truly a seasonal delight!

Now, mangos may not be on the list of the The Top ten Good Mood Foods, or even in the list of worlds’ 100 healthiest foods (a list compiled in the US, where mangos are apparently considered exotic), but for my money they are both a very healthy fruit, and better still, an amazing mood lifter.

Who could not feel joyous eating a fresh mango, with its luscious aroma and sweet juicy flesh, the juice dripping down your face and hands – truly sensual experience! When I first read about mangos as a child, the advice on eating these fragrant and mythical fruit – surely the Golden Apples of the Hesperides – was to “sit in a cool bath, so the juice can drip over you and be washed off.”

What Mangos Add to a Healthy Diet

Australian nutritionist Catherine Saxelby votes in favour of the mango as part of a healthy diet (assuming you live somewhere that mangos are cheap and easily available in season).

With their bright golden-yellow colour, mangos are high in beta-carotene and other carotenoids, so they’re a good source of vitamin A. Apart from their flavour, that’s probably their main claim to nutrition fame.

They also offer good levels of vitamin C and potassium, and smaller amounts of other vitamins and minerals, plus a tiny amount of protein.

Golden-yellow is a good colour to add to the rainbow on your plate.

Eating and Cooking with Mangos


The best way to eat a mango is au naturel – whether or not you choose to sit in a bath. By au naturel, I mean straight from the skin in chunks, or in a fruit salad.

Mango puree makes fabulous icecream, sorbets and mousses, so if you can get a large quantity of mangos cheap during the peak season (December and January), it’s worth the mess of cutting up and freezing them for later use.

Mango chunks and mango puree work well to make sauces and accompaniments for chicken, pork and fish dishes.

Mangos can also be bought frozen or canned, and o course, there is always wonderfully hot and flavourful Indian mango chutney! You could make your own if you can get enough mangos that are not fully ripe.


So, to the recipes. First up is one I’ve used with variations for several years – a simple mango sauce for stir-fried pork or chicken. I haven’t tried it with tofu, as a vegetarian alternative, but I’m willing to bet it would do something magical to that meat alternative.

Mango Stirfry Sauce

• ¼ cup lime or lemon juice
• ¼ cup sweet chilli sauce
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons hoi sin sauce
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 500g chicken or pork stirfry strips
• 1 onion, cut into wedges or rings
• 200g broccoli or broccolini, cut into small florets
• 400g bok choy leaves or baby spinach, or small silverbeet leaves torn roughly,
• any other small vegs like baby corn, capsicum strips, snowpeas, whatever you have that will cook quickly & not overcook
• pulp or chunks of 2 medium mangoes,
• fresh mint leaves and/or fresh coriander leaves for garnish

Mix together the mango chunks/pulp with the citrus juice and sauces in a glass bowl.

Heat the oil in a wok, stirfry the onion and meat, until meat is just cooked. Take meat out and put aside.

Throw in all the vegetables, starting with the biggest or most solid, leaving the leaves till last. Stirfy quickly until vegs are just done but still crispy.

Add the meat and sauce. Bring back to the boil, simmer for a couple of minutes. Serve or steamed rice or rice noodles, and top with torn mint and coriander. A dollop of yoghurt on the side is good as well.

Serves 4

Mango Icecream

I’ve found a mango icecream recipe I’d love to make, if only I had an icecream machine. I’m not a great icecream fan, but homemade icecream is another seasonal treat that I enjoy occasionally.

This one uses yoghurt and no eggs, is so quite different in flavour and texture from a rich custardy icecream. I could make it with the wonderful yoghurt I get from the farmers’ market, if I could work out how to churn it.

Buon appetito!