the dudes from ardmona have created some new tinned tomato flavours, and the marketing fairies thought the puku might like to test them out. which I did.

I like ardmona, especially because their old marketing campaign used ‘rich and thick’ tag in a cute (and apparently highly successful) way, and also because their tinned tomatoes are rich and thick. philosophically however, I prefer tomatoes without all the additions, so started buying less rich and thick brands, because they had tomatoes, salt, water in the can, and nothing else. But free tomatoes are free tomatoes, and considering the various other substances (like jagerbombs? oportos @4am?) that have been going into my temple, I think a little thickening agent 205 isn’t going to kill me.

rich and thick

the tomatoes are still rich and thick, but now they have flavours. again, not something I normally go for, but I thought they were nicely balanced and flavourful – more punch than plain toms, way less ‘i can’t cook, and eat everything out of cans’ than a lot of preflavoured / packaged foods.

I made paella – first a test paella with chicken, chorizo, squid and fish (pictured), then a party paella with chorizo and chicken (not pictured, I was too busy wearing fishnets, drinking and assisting with magic tricks).

you add the tomatoes, saffron and some more water, and walk away. score.

This, as with pretty much all the food cooked for the puku, is my interpretation of paella. I don’t remember if I ever used a recipe, or just cobbled together what I thought would work, based on eating it, seeing it cooked, and just generally being interested in food – if you’re the kind of person often with cookbooks on your bedside table, you will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Paella

Put large pinch of saffron threads in warm/hot water to soak. In a paella pan, or large frying pan – or really conveniently, a large electric wok (thank you mama, 5 years on, it really is an awesome appliance) – with strong olive oil fry off sliced chorizo sausage, with some chopped chicken (I prefer thigh), adding sliced onion and smashed garlic once beginning to brown.  chuck in some chopped capsicum (any colour/s), add some paprika, salt, pepper, touch of cayenne, a bay leaf or two and stir. now add the rice* and then toss in the saffron water + threads, the tinned tomatoes, and some water (want total liquid to be roughly double the measure of rice). combine well, lower heat and leave the whole thing alone, lidded if your pan has a lid, for 10-15 mins. seriously. don’t stir it.

if adding seafood (calamari, prawns, mussels, fish, go for your life), do this while its all still quite liquidy (<10 mins), gently press the seafood into the rice in a pretty pattern, or just chuck it in, stir vaguely (without disturbing the bottom of the pan!) and bung the lid back on. I like to chuck in some lemon wedges here, and add peas at that point too, if adding peas. throw some fresh chopped parsley on top, once the liquid is absorbed, a tasty crust should be formed on the bottom of the rice. this is why you need to leave the paella alone. and why it is awesome. hope you have a non-stick pan. eat.

* yeah, I am not great at providing quantities, sorry. also, I always make Way Too Much Food, suffering as I do from Over Caterers Anxiety syndrome. this is ok, since paella goes nicely in fridge for lunches, or just invite lots of friends round. so: how much rice to use? for one tin of tomatoes (400g) I put 2 large glasses of uncooked rice, and about 3 large glasses of water, plus saffron water. it doesn’t really matter what size glass you use, paella is pretty forgiving. if it’s too dry before rice is cooked, add bit more liquid. if too liquid, cook bit longer. easy. that was a party feeding maybe 15, with other foods. if making at home for quiet flat dinner, I use 1 glass of rice, and there are quantious leftovers.

mmm, mmmm, le tasty

ps. sorry about the absences. it’s been a crazy year. have internets set up at home again, and am actually spending some time there now, and 1st year of ph.d is done.. more pukuing is on the cards! xz

in the wake of channel ten’s Masterchef “surprise hit” (I’m sure ten weren’t so surprised, since they put it in a prime spot 5 nights a week and marketed the shit out of it), Australia seems to be in the grips of cooking/food mania. well, that was according to Tracy Grimjaw and her pals/rivals in the general outrage daily tabloid journalism shows, who seemed to be going on for several weeks about people cooking at home as if it was the latest fad craze. lol. people cooking food – can you imagine that!?

Anyway, channel 7 wants a a piece of the action and is rolling up their sleeves (of course television networks have sleeves, and sure, they can roll them up) and getting their hands dirty with new reality cooking competition show My Kitchen Rules. and as with Masterchef, they’re casting for entrants/characters/personalities. are you the next Julie or Poh? huh, punk, are you? well, actually, are you and your friend? yeah.. this is competing teams of two, so channel 7 can have both Poh and Julie win! take that, ten!

the casting agents, who’ve sent me two releases now (sorry casting peeps, I’ve been a slack blogger), are being pretty tight lipped with any details or further info and their application form on the website is one of those ones where you have to fill in and submit the first section before you get to the next one so I can’t even have a sticky beak around, but what I gather for now is that My Kitchen Rules will be somehow a competition between the states – the national championships of doubles reality tv cooking, if you will – and you somehow do the cook-offs in your own home kitchen. well, presumably the more presentable kitchen of the team mates.

this being reality tv, I bloody hope they would come round and help you spruce the place up a bit anyway, maybe with some well placed kitchenaid appliances and replacing your cookbooks/spices/food from the limited storage of your kitchen with, you know, totally useful stuff like a couple of tiny empty matching coloured vases, like they do on all the patronising reno-makeover reality shows… and hey, since they ask you to supply a photo of yourself, but not of your kitchen, perhaps they will… ?

anyway, does your kitchen rule? are you and/or your friend: cute / have a good sob story (um, I mean connection with the Austrayian public) / have an engaging personality / own a stupid collection of hats / can actually cook???? are you searching for your 15 mins of fame (we don’t even know what the proposed grand prize for MKR is!!) , and don’t mind filling out an application without being able to read through it before you start? here are the the terms and conditions which are otherwise located at the very end of the aforementioned application process. just in case you’d like to read them before you apply
if MKR sounds like your bag: you should go here immediately and sign up!

this puku post was proudly brought to you by this random old piece of onion I saw on the footpath on my way to work, and couldn’t resist taking a photo of.

random pretty decaying street onion. word.

Check out these rice paper rolls. They’re made completely free of any common allergy/irritation foodthings! seriously!

rice paper rolls

miss n is on one of those ‘let’s find out which food thing/s is making you sick’ elimination diets, under the close care and supervision of her dietitian. She’s currently in stage 1, basically meaning: she can’t eat anything. well, you know, none of the fun stuff like cheese, wheat, soy, spices, strongly colours fruit and vege (her only fruit is pear. oh humble pear, methinks miss n will never be able to look at you again once she is through this) etc etc etc. but I love a challenge, so I invited her over for dinner!

Allergy / Elimination Diet Friendly Rice Paper Rolls

saute some chopped leeks, brussel sprouts, celery, green beans, drained tinned bamboo shoots, and chopped garlic in a little sunflower oil, with a tiny sprinkle of salt, until cooked bit still crunchy.

slice and toss some iceberg lettuce, celery and green/spring onions, and here I would have added fresh mung bean sprouts, but decided mine looked a bit too unfresh to eat.

chop some salted cashews.

assemble!

fill a large wide bowl/pan with recently boiled water, and keep the kettle handy to re-boil and top up the bowl. one at a time, submerse a rice paper sheet in the hot water for 5 seconds and carefully and quickly remove (with fingers if you possess asbestos hands like me, with tongs if you have 100% human appendages) and place flat on a plate. working quickly, make a little pile of the salad and sauted vege, and sprinkle with cashews, then wrap and roll:

there are a hundred ways of rolling these up (and you can buy either square or round paper) but in general: fold one long side (along filling), do a roll, fold the two sides in, roll the rest tightly. wry and work quickly, and place the rolled rolls onto a large plate as you go, try not to pile them up or pack the plate too closely or they’ll stick to each other.

stop rolling when you run out of one or another key component, or your friends insist you stop rolling because dude, you’ve made 5 million of them now, we WILL have enough to eat! that is, unless they’re eating as you roll (which is quite unsocial of them) in which case they will probably chain you to the kitchen counter to keep the supply up. you can circumvent this by not preparing, or t least not providing, the dipping sauce until you’re ready to stop rolling and get dipping and eating yourself.

Allergy-friendly dipping sauce: whisk / stir together some crushed garlic, sugar, salt, citric acid powder, water and sunflower oil, until the flavours are balanced and the sauce is dipping consistency. sorry, precise quantities are so not my strong point.

dip and eat!

dip or (to avoid loosing your roll filling when you double dip) drip and eat!

Notes on allergy-friendlyness and ingredient choices: I worked from the list of allowable and to-be-avoided foodthings as provided to miss n by her supervising dietitian. This does not, obviously, mean that no one will be allergic/intolerant to any of the ingredients listed above, or that I’m suggesting you stop eating any other foodthings than those included. If she had been allowed to eat them, I would so have included some coriander and mint in the salad, and some ginger, sesame oil and used fresh lemon/lime juice in the dipping sauce… but I was making something for a girlfriend who is currently a bit restricted in what she’s eating, and these still rocked! If you or a friend have other or different food restrictions, just substitute substitute substitute! and if you can eat whatever the hell you want, then make these anyway, and just add whatever the hell you want!

one bonny saturday, several weeks ago, I threw caution (and the fact I’d had no sleep and too many jagerbombs the night before) to the wind, and accepted both an invitation, and last minute offer of lift, to Canbrrrr to attend a party. There was a bonfire. there was a live band in the garden. there was ridiculously too much food and drink, but also a chance to don apron and cook with miss c, always an extreme pleasure.

prep-ing a few greens - in mr j's awesomely retro kitchen

nick carves the slow-bbq'ed garlic-studded organic lamb

feast, in low light action

apple cake and stewed prunes

we forgot to add the roasted pears when serving the cake

miss c, certified fellow sufferer of Over-Caterers Anxiety syndrome - yes, that is 2 x stockpots filled with roasted pumpkin / root vege soup

I ate too much, it was cold, we lay on the rug in front of the heater talking late into the night.

it was swell.

the end.

Canbrrrians don't handle their drinks. literally!

miss c, mr j and I ate at The Flying Squirrel one frigid Saturday night, and it was delicious. we sat outside under the heater, drank beer / a ‘marg’ (as our charming & hot waitperson familiarly called the margarita), and ate little plates of wonderful, adventurous and tasty morsels.

cheese, crackers, figs = bffs

green papaya salad, blistered green beans, garlic prawns etc

Absolute outstanding dish was the pumpkin ravioli with thai red curry sauce and macadamia and coconut sprinkles, omg, it was amazing.

pumpkin ravioli with thai red curry sauce and macadamia and coconut sprinkles = omg! delicious! awesometown!

oh, the tuna was pretty completely amazing too.

tuna (pink in inside) with chargrilled capsicum and aoli

so, basically, go there. as soon as you can. and order everything.

A little parcel was swiftly delivered to the office last week: a gift of some Green & Black’s chocolates to have a play with. Awesome. How did they know I love free chocolate?

Some bars of goodness: Green and Black's organic and fairtrade deliciousness!

Having guests to dinner on Thursday night, I did some browsing through the cookbooks… perhaps chocolate pots? not enough setting time.. nothing where chocolate would be overly disguised, this is lush organic chocolate here, people!… maybe self-saucing puddings? With a vague idea, flatemate Gen and I set off for a morning of errands, first stop, the newly opened Surry Hills Library and Community Centre (oh, how do I love thee? let me count the ways! I am unashamedly: 1. a big fan of public buildings, 2. a public servant to the core, 3. fanatical about sustainably and well designed spaces, and 4. my father’s daughter) for some free WIFI and general archi-philia. If you haven’t been yet, go, immediately. I mean, if you’re in Sydney and are into that kind of thing

Anyway, at the Library Gen found a copy of the Divine Heavenly Chocolate Recipes with a Heart by Linda Collister for Divine Chocolates, which has a whole section on Brownies, and our mind was made. Brownies would allow the Green & Black’s chocolate to shine through, and I could use both the 70% and the white chocolate in one dessert, with no fussy layering or 2 batters! AND, I could bring out my new (old?) 1940’s swift-whip – Miss C and I recently became the proud owners of a matching pair of apple green handled swift-whips circa 1940 and 1950 respectively (see this ad!), and I was itching for an opportunity to try mine out! Brownies: the solution to so many of life’s problems, as already discussed previously on the puku… what can’t brownies do?!

getting my Swift-Whip on

I checked out the Divine book and studied their recipes, but didn’t follow any – theirs varied so much in ratios of chocolate bar to eggs to flour etc I felt pretty confidant making my own way.

Green & Black’s 70% Brownie with White Chocolate and Macadamia

Melt a 100g bar of Green and Black’s 70% chocolate and set aside. cream 125g softened butter with 250g sugar (sure, use castor if you’re into it), add pinch of salt, dash of vanilla essence and 3 eggs, then the chocolate, and whip swiftly (if you have the right tool, that is).

Fold through 100g plain flour, a cup of macadamia pieces (raw, unsalted ones – though actually salted would be interesting too… or of course, use any other nut you like) and a chunkily chopped 100g bar of Green and Black’s White Chocolate, which is deliciously flecked, creamy and fragrant, not at all like the bleached waxy blocks you normally see. TRY not to eat too much of the batter, try to stop everyone else (Karin!) eating too much of the batter. It is a really delicious batter!

Blob into a shallow baking tray (I used my previously mentioned 31×25cm trusty Willow lamington tray) and vaguely spread it out evenly. Bake @ 180 degrees C for 20 minutes, or until nicely crusty on top, but better to undercook and have a fudgy brownie than overcook and have a dry one. Err on the side of fudgy, people!

Serve to guests warm, with cream – swiftly whipped with a generous zesting of lemon and a tiny touch of icing sugar – and then give up, because the rest will now be consumed, in ever decreasing sized squares, while standing guiltily in the open fridge door… and if you live in a house of 5, as I do, make sure to get up as early as you can to do your naturally lit photography, because it will be gone within 24 hours, guaranteed

check out those chunks of white chocolate and macadamia!

Verdict: I LOVED the chocolates (nibbled the 70% and white, still have to try the milk and maya gold – anyone tried?), and loved them in the brownie.. I’d decided not to use any cocoa in the brownie batter so the chocolate at hand could shine, and I was pretty surprised just how intensely chocolately the brownies were, especially with only 1 x 100g block. Both bars were really highly fragrant on unwrapping too, and as mentioned above, the white chocolate was really completely unlike the white chocolate one is used to.. flecked through with vanilla and darkly creamy.. mmm… so delicious eating chocolate, but also performed very well in baking!

I also love the Green&Blacks fairtrade and organic -ness, and although I try to reduce the carbon footprint and all, and so would generally prefer not to be eating chocolate flown from the other side of the globe (made in the UK), I think some exceptions can be made now and then, right? We were discussing the whole food travel conundrum at a party on Saturday night, and decided that the distance limit could be flexible, depending on how much of a treat the food was and how far you would actually be willing to drive to gather it yourself – eg, pumpkins, fruit, dairy, bread, meat etc try and keep it as closely grown as possible, but for a real treat – say mangoes, truffles or spiced cider or handmade hot chocolate? yeah, you might drive 300km… especially if there was also going to be a great party (post coming soon). Anyway, based on this taster, I think Green&Blacks might well be worth a chunk of my carbon allowance from time to time! xxx

About two years ago, I started a draft of a post with this very name; Kiki had had her heart broken and asked me to post on the puku with some heartmending foods.. I thought I’d do something comforting, and then ask you all to tell us what your go-to comfort food was. Sorry Kiki, I never got this past the draft, until now.

I’ve written this post in my head about a hundred times over in the past couple of months, but the words are harder to find than I thought they would be now that I’m sitting here ready to write it. It’s quite simple really (and many of you already know): In March, Tom and I broke up, divided and packed up our 7 years of shared life, and said goodbye.

It broke my heart, completely and utterly and painfully. This probably needs no elaboration for most people – broken hearts are not so uncommon. But a smashed open open heart is nevertheless open, and openness is such a blessed state to be in. So, I let myself be brokenhearted, and here I am. Of course there a SO much more to that story, both gutwrenching and soulsoaring, but essentially, that’s where I’ve been the last few months. Thank you for still dropping by

As for Food for the Brokenhearted, I really wasn’t interested in any of the comfort foods I had thought would be Brokenhearted Food. I had my kitchen in boxes, unpacked in the new place, for weeks – in fact much of it is still packed. nibbling on fetta, sourdough, rocket and tomatoes led to.. boiling pasta: the first sign of cooking.

Then some real Food for the Brokenhearted: escape. I canceled meetings, got on a plane and met friends in Townsville for 10 days. I went to a tropical island (my tropical island! also OUR tropical island, but that’s ok too),

this bay is one of my favourite places on earth

I walked, I lay in the sun, I swam, I talked and cried and drank and laughed. This is Food for the Brokenhearted.

And we at pineapples on the balcony of our A-Frame.

Thank you Miss C for the invite/prompt, and everyone in the Ville for the aroha, laughs, beds and shoulders. And everyone in Sydney/London/NZ/Germany/Finland etc etc etc for the same over the past few months too – love you so much!

So back in Sydney (via a funeral in NZ), boiling pasta expends to sauteing something, a little foray of popping something in the oven (vegetables coated in miso), discussing blogging again, starting to read about food again, and digging through the boxes for a microplane, and then finally baking trays, I surprise Miss C with a text that I am baking and running late to meet her.

I’m baking, I’m taking photos, I am here. Thank you for being here too.

xxxxx z

Before we start with the puku-ing again, lets all get down and loose to some songs about food!

First: Tabbouli.

admit it, you danced along.

now, lets have some hummus with that, o?

and now put on your hoodies so we can go out for some burek!

do you love broccoli? not as much as this chick, methinks!

and just to top it off – that banana and his peanut butter jelly. you will actually want to kill me if you watch this one. seriously, go forth at your own peril.

So, any others out there??

Here is an overview of a few of the things we whipped up while holidaying in Bright. With friends dropping in, there were 7 to 11 people for meals, which does require some forethought.

I actually love cooking for lots of people (suffering from Over Caterers Anxiety notwithstanding), and we found so many tasty things along our daily adventures to feature on the menu, and it is great fun cooking with friends – we would see something at a market or farm gate shop and start thinking about what we could turn it into later

These are in no particular order, and just photos. If anyone would like some sort of recipe, leave a comment and I will see if I can expand somewhat, but this post was going to be huge if I added more text!

Also, if somehow you haven’t heard already, this part of Australia has suffered a huge tradgedy the last couple of weeks – the worst bushfires in Australia’s recorded history. The loss of lives, both human and wildlife, is incredibly devastating. The ecological, social and economic impacts will go on long after the tv cameras have retreated, and it’s such a complicated issue – no easy answer, no simple solution. My heart goes out to those who have suffered – if you would like to donate money you can go to the Australian Red Cross or Wildlife Victoria.

Artichoke, fetta and hand-chopped basil pesto pasta

hot-smoked fly-caught trout...

.. flaked into sourcream, onion, parsley, lemon zest and juice, salt and pepper...

...and becomes the freshest smoked trout dip in the universe

this lamb was slow roasted with wild fennel, garlic and lemon

yep, we pretty much had cheese for dinner (don't worry, we had wine too!)

mushroom, tomato and spicy sausage pizza

yellow corgette, bacon and brie pizza; potato, herb and blue cheese pizza

the view from the house was terrible, too

grilled herbed farmed trout...

.. goes awful with asparagus, mash and mustard-dressed spinich

constructing picnic sandwiches

another terrible day in the Alps - Falls Creek picnic spot

a meat and 2 veg dinner.. delicious local potatoes = delicious potato salad

POM Wonderful – it’s that cute curvaceous bottle of ruby red you might have seen on the supermarket chilled juice shelf recently – yep, the bottle that looks like a kind of harajuku-Betty Boop-Babushka doll – I just want to whack on some thick curly eyelashes and cupids bow lips! hhhmmmm.. I think that’s enough package fetishism for now

So, the marketing company looking after POM Wonderful in Oz/Sydney sent me an email and asked if I’d be interested in receiving some POM to try. I said yes – hello: a) I love free stuff! b) I love pomergranates! c) the bottle is so cute! (see above) d) I’ve been watching the promotional stuff POM has been doing OS (recipe comps, youtube video comps etc) and am interested in how companies are attempting to use social media to market products (although I am happy to be well, well, well out of the media-marketing game now!).

I wanted to try POM a few different ways, but first up we subject her to the Tropical Survival Treatment: fill blender with ice, add ingredient x, chuck in a whole knife peeled lime, flick switch to 3:ICE setting, blitz.

We then topped the glasses with a jeweled handful of fresh pomegranate seeds (also POM brand – get your market cornering on!). Very refreshing – I like that POM Wonderful is not too sweet.

pomergranate squared, lime, ice. hard to top

Then we added vodka for the second glass.

did I say hard to top? since when has vodka NOT improved a slushie?

Check out what other Sydney (and further afield) foodbloggers did with their bottles of POM (I wasn’t really surprised to see ice and booze featuring – how hot has it been lately?!)

Chocolate Suze

Spicy Icecream

Jenius

Not Quite Nigella

Fig and Cherry

Sarah Cooks

I guess great (and hot) minds think alike, hey?

I have another POM treatment I want to try, but I am currently laid low with the flu (man I hate summer colds and flus!) so it will have to wait until I can stand up without swaying later in the week.