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By clare, February 8, 2012

This is a flavoursome, fresh pasta sauce which goes well with the taro gnocchi mentioned in the adjacent post.  It is gluten free and dairy free but thanks to the pumpkin seed meal and olive oil has a creamy texture.

It can also be used as a salsa or dip, or added to tacos, tortillas or salad rolls.

The celery seed salt is a recipe I’ve posted here.

If you want to deepen the red colour of the sauce, add a teaspoon of annatto/achiote powder.

The ripe mamey sapote adds a sweet intense back-note to the flavour, similar to tomato paste.  Mamey sapote pulp freezes well, so if you have a very ripe fruit, consider freezing it in small batches to use when needed as a tomato paste substitute.  My tropical reference cookbook, tropical cuisine: cooking in clare’s kitchen, has a section in the encyclopaedia which goes into detail about the selection, ripening, preparation, storage and culinary uses of mamey sapote.

fresh tomato and pumpkin seed pasta sauce

Fresh tomato and pumpkin seed pasta sauce

1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, ground finely

1 1/2 teaspoons celery seed salt

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary (about 2 tips)

1/4 cup finely sliced sweet basil (about 3 sprigs)

12 garlic chive leaves, finely chopped (substitute with onion chives if needed)

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup very ripe mamey sapote pulp (substitute quality tomato paste if you don’t have mamey sapote)

2 medium tomatoes, briefly blanched, peeled and finely diced

2 teaspoons lime juice (about 1/2 a lime)

Mix all ingredients together, cover, and leave to stand at room temperature for an hour or so for flavours to develop prior to serving.  Makes about 2 1/2 – 3 cups of sauce, enough for 2 – 3 people when used as a pasta sauce.

(C) Clare Richards 2012

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By clare, February 8, 2012

If you need to avoid gluten, eggs or dairy, or if you simply have taro available, then this is such a simple recipe and produces soft pillows of gnocchi-ness, the perfect canvas for your favourite pasta sauce.

cooked taro 'gnocchi'

This recipe works best with a large taro corm as that allows for a greater number of similarly shaped ‘gnocchi’ pieces.

taro gnocchi boiling

Cut slices about 2cm thick per person across the taro corm and peel the rough outer skin off thoroughly.

Cut into batons about 2cm across, then cut each baton into sections about 3cm long each (the segments on the outer edges will obviously have a slight curve on one side).

Allow about 8-10 ‘gnocchi’ pieces per person.  If you are using a very large taro corm, one slice will produce about this many pieces.

Bring a very generous amount of water to the boil and season well with salt (about 2-3 teaspoons worth).

Add the taro and keep the water on a rolling boil (as per image above) for between 15 – 20 minutes, depending on the size of your pieces and the dryness of the taro.  The ‘gnocchi’ are done when a fine skewer easily penetrates through one of the largest pieces.

Drain immediately and serve with your favourite pasta sauce.

My recipe for fresh tomato and pumpkin seed pasta sauce follows.

(C) Clare Richards 2012.

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By clare, February 5, 2012

Celery seed is well known for its beneficial effects on gout and arthritis, both of which are tendencies in our family.

I love the intense celery flavour of celery seed – the seed not of the common garden celery but of a wild cousin, Apium graveolens.  So it is both a culinary pleasure and a preventative measure to make regular use of home made celery seed salt.

I make an intensely flavoured version of celery salt, by simply combining one quantity of celery seed with one quantity of quality salt (I use Murray River flaky salt).

Because celery seeds can be bitter they need to be lightly roasted, but only briefly and in a mildly heated cast iron pan as they are so tiny they will burn quickly.  Just put them in the pan until they begin to be fragrant, then immediately tip out onto a clean plate and shake around to cool them down.  Grind them, either in a mortar and pestle or in a spice grinder, then add the salt and grind both together to a fine consistency.

Use wherever you would use ordinary salt.  Celery seed salt is great to dip crudites and hard boiled eggs into, and fills out the flavour of stocks, stews and sauces.

(C) Clare Richards 2012

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By clare, February 1, 2012

Coconut palm juice

Hot?
It’s been humid, still and hot here in Cairns.  All the rain we should be getting seems to be landing on flood-battered South East Queensland.  So we’re all hot, and some wetter than others.

I thought I’d mention this drink because it is the BEST thirst quencher.  I’ve encountered several brands and they all seem to taste similar, with the big tip being to go for the ones bottled in brown glass, not plastic or cans.

Serve with ice and a good squeeze of lime juice

Coconut palm juice is 100% coconut palm syrup from the flowers of the coconut palm.

It has a flavour somewhere between pandan and hazelnuts.  Serve it super-chilled over some ice with a good squeeze of fresh lime juice (about 1 tablespoon or a little more).  The lime helps to balance the sweetness and the slightly earthy pandan edge to it’s flavour and really accentuates the hazelnut flavour.

A friend remarked when tasting it for the first time that he thought it was Frangelico, the Italian hazelnut liqueur.

Look for it in your local Asian grocery store.

For an extra kick at sundown, add a dash of quality mellow rum to see in the (hopefully!) balmy night…

(C) Clare Richards 2012

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By clare, January 18, 2012

Butter, butter, butter (C) Clare Richards

I’ve just had a fabulous time making butter from the voluptuous Jersey cream from Misty Mountain Farms (sister company of the biodynamic producer, Mungalli).  Made two batches from their two litre bottles – one was normal salted butter, the other I cultured gently with the addition of two teaspoons of their yoghurt and left it to mature for 3 days in the fridge.

Both batches made about 900g of butter each from the 2 litres of cream, with about 900ml of buttermilk left for pancake making.  That makes it the same price to make homemade butter from this exquisite cream as buying the plain brand Tasmanian butter from the supermarket.  So if you see their cream in stock, look at the massive two litre bottle with a butter maker’s eye, as it is great value.

Both butters are so more-ish they’re (mostly) stacked away in the freezer.  I was surprised that it remains quite spreadable in the fridge.  Apparently this is due to having worked the butter in VERY cold water.  If you work it in warmer water, the butter ends up harder – a contrary result.

I worked with the butter making method given by Darina Allen whose cookbook Forgotten Skills of Cooking is on my wish list

Next batch I buy I’ll be making some ghee to see how that goes…

(C) Clare Richards 2012