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By clare, September 24, 2009

Roasting a chook when you have a rotisserie in the oven (as I am fortunate to have in my current home) is the best way to eat chicken in my book.  Succulent inside, crispy skin outside and cooked to perfection in both the breast and legs.  Last night I had friends for dinner and cooked a chook on the rotisserie that had been rubbed with baharat spice mix (my version that I’m still experimenting on) and filled with a carrot, oregano, baharat, garlic and couscous stuffing.  The juices of the chicken dripped down onto the roasting pumpkin and potatoes below, leaving them caramelised with soft centres and crispy edges.

There will be a section in my cookbook about roasting chicken, and so far I have over 20 recipes for different ways to stuff, rub and marinate a roast chook, so I may need to do some editing….

© Clare Richards 2009

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By clare, September 24, 2009

The nature of recipe development means things don’t always go to plan or work out perfectly first time.  There is experimentation, adjustments, experimentation, adjustments until either the idea is ditched, or it works.  I’ve been playing around with making strawberry jam without adding commercial pectin, and without using additional fruits that don’t grow here in the tropics (eg. apples).

My first batch tasted great but was quite runny – not so runny as to qualify as strawberry sauce, but still a bit too runny to be a jam for using on toast.  So it occurred to me to play around with making a cheesecake or ice cream with it.  I threw together what I thought might be a good combination of ingredients, and it turned out beautifully.  I guess you could use a well set jam to make this, but I’ve been making it with various runny jams (strawberry, orange, cumquat) in my pantry, and it works well, so here’s the recipe:

Jam cheesecake

600ml thickened cream

250g cream cheese

1 1/2 cups sweet jam, or 2 cups tart jam (eg. marmalade)

1 tbsp gelatine powder dissolved in 1/2 cup boiling water

Dice the cream cheese up into smaller cubes and add to the bowl of a food processor along with the jam.  Process until well combined.  Dissolve gelatine into 1/2 cup boiling water over heat and keep stirring until all lumps and gone, then add to food processor and combine.  Whip cream to firm peaks then add to food processor and process until well combined.  Pour mix into a container and refrigerate.  Once cooled you can also put this into the freezer if you want, in which case it becomes a semifreddo style ice cream dessert.

I serve this dessert in slices.  I set the mix in two 750ml rectangular containers.  With the frozen version I slip the block out of the container and onto a plate and cut the slices needed with a bread knife, then return the remainder to the freezer.  With the fridge version I cut slices directly in the container and then coax them out with the tip of the knife.  Great to serve with a tumble of fresh fruit on top.

© Clare Richards 2009

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By clare, September 21, 2009

pippis © Clare Richards 2009

Yesterday The Plumber and I went to one of the local coarse sand beaches to gather pippis to make fettuccine alla vongole.  This particular beach has an abundant population of pippis.  We started scanning the tide line on the lookout for their little air bubbles in the sand or to see them tumbling in the wash of the tide, and found a patch almost immediately.

I’ve found the best way to work is in a team, with one person standing just below the high wash mark and shuffling into the sand with their hands or feet, and the other person standing below them.  This way, the top person can grab any that are dredged out of the sand beneath their feet / hands, and the second person can grab those that get tumbled into the water by the wash.

So, within half an hour we had a good haul of pippis to take home.

The next phase is cleansing them of sand so you don’t end up with a crunchy meal.  Do this by putting them into a bucket of fresh water as soon as they’ve been gathered, and fill another bucket with sea water to take home.  Leave them in the fresh water for an hour or two, then drain it off and leave them dry for an hour in a cool place covered by a damp towel.  Then place them back into sea water, and they will then open up and suck lots of sea water in and out and so cleanse themselves.  Finally, place them into the fridge in their sea water until you are ready to cook.

Pippis are mostly used for bait here in Australia and some people can’t be bothered with them because of their small amount of meat.  I love their sweet sea flavour and they make the most divine pasta sauce, which tastes all the better for having gathered them yourself on a blue sky day from the local beach.

Fettuccine alla vongole

(equipment: need one pasta pot, one deep sided frypan or wide saucepan, and three bowls for sorting cooked pippis)

for two generous serves

enough uncooked pasta for two people

about 2 kg (7 – 8 cups) fresh pippis in their shells

1 cm slice butter (about 50g / 1/4 cup)

1 tbsp olive oil

2 heaped tbsp fresh thyme

2 tbsp finely chopped Italian parsley

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh tarragon

2 finely sliced cloves garlic

1 tsp salt for cooking pasta

1 cup dry white wine

3/4 to 1 cup sour cream

Melt butter and add olive oil, then add garlic and thyme, cook briefly until garlic softens but before it goes golden or brown, then immediately add a batch of pippis and a glass of dry white wine, turn heat to high, put on lid and hold down to increase heat and steaming.  (Meanwhile, put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta.)  Steam pippis for 1 – 3 minutes in small batches, just until all pippis are open, then remove each batch from pan with a skimmer into a bowl and place the next batch in the pan.

Put pasta into boiling water with 1 tsp salt.  Keep an eye on pasta while completing the next step of removing meat from pippis.  Remove pasta from heat and strain when al dente, reserving some liquid (in case it is needed at the end to thin the pippi sauce).

Remove all flesh from the pippi shells and reserve flesh into a bowl.  Strain cooking juice through muslin in a sieve to catch any remaining grit.  Pour strained pippi juices into frypan and bring to a rolling boil, add wine and reduce to about 1 cup liquid.    Reduce heat to medium and add half of fresh parsley and tarragon then 3/4 cup sour cream and mix until incorporated.

Add pippi meat and heat for another minute or so until pippis are warmed.  Taste for salt and season if needed (shouldn’t need to due to sea water in the pippis).  If the sauce is too thick add a little bit more white wine or some cooking water from the pasta.  Then add fettuccine to pan and mix through until well coated with sauce.

Remove from heat, serve into two bowls, garnish with remaining parsley and tarragon and serve.  Can add some finely grated parmesan, or a little bit of finely sliced fresh chilli, but I generally find the flavours of this dish are perfect without adding anything further.

© Clare Richards 2009

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By clare, September 20, 2009

A new batch of figs this afternoon from the same tree, which may be the last as there are few left on the branches.  There are now more fruit on the ground than on the tree; a mottled purple and brown carpet of decaying bounty.  Across the grass is another tree with fruit coming on, so I will be supplied for a while longer.

This week I had a wonderful afternoon gathering green mangos with a friend.  Mango trees are everywhere in Cairns.  Some were planted originally by cane farmers or households long gone, some by public authorities, others feral survivors that have sprung up from the fruits dropped by fruit bats, or tumbled down seasonal creeks by the rush of wet season waters to sprout life away from their parent.

Because we have such a wet Wet season, Cairns is criss-crossed by wide drains, permanent creeks and seasonal flow channels.   It is most often in these places that the mango trees grow, providing seasonally abundant crops to the public.  To me, the scent of masses of overripe and rotting mangos is one of the signature aromas of the wet season, drifting in amongst the smell of rain and wet foilage as I walk streets and green spaces.  Word is that we may have an early and big wet season this year, so the rain may be here soon.

© Clare Richards 2009

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By clare, September 17, 2009

I live at the base of the forested range that sweeps up from coastal Cairns to Kuranda at the ridge and then out across the high plateau that is the Atherton Tablelands.  So across from my home, just past the few blocks not yet carved up and sold, the forest begins, rainforest.

At night I am sometimes half-woken by the sound of dingoes howling across the range to each other, and mid-afternoon this week when a brief shower of rain swept through, they starting calling out to each other.  I walk daily on the edge of this wilderness, keeping an eye out for taipans and wild pigs as I go, and looking for wallabies coming out onto the open ground to feast on the grass.

Yesterday I noticed that the indigenous fig trees (I’m sorry I don’t know their proper name, when I have it I will post it here) were in fruit, and the fruits were ripe.  I dodged the green ants to try one.  Apart from the robust amount of seed they contain, they have a lovely flavour, subtle, and between fig and strawberry.

So today I returned to do some harvesting, mindful of the highly protective green ants, spiders, and as always keeping an eye out for signs of snakes.

So now I have my harvest…

…and I will be trying them stuffed with a few different things for dessert tonight.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

PS. Stuffed with strawberry jam and cream cheese, or chilli sambal and cream cheese, or on their own (sans seeds) they are very more-ish.

© Clare Richards 2009