This is part of the 2010 christmas dinner I cooked for friends in Santiago de Compostela, Spain (LAST YEAR. oops). I was craving Japanese aubergine/eggplants, one of my favourite Japanese restaurant dishes, and while in Sydney I can go down almost any suburb main street to sate this craving, Santi is not so big on multi-culti food availability — to do some catching up, I’ve been living between Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain and Sydney, Australia for the past year and a half, back and forward.

Por que no have Japanese for christmas dinner, while in Spain?  ; )

These aubergines are everything aubergines are good at being – luscious, soft, moreish, the skins go crispy, the sweet miso is foiled by earthy flesh and spiky spring onions, it’s quite simply, que rico. I searched around for some recipes, though it didn’t help a great deal – Asian ingredients in Santi are rare, little gems hidden only if you know where to look, or stumble by accident (a tienda chino in la Zona Nueva had, hidden amongst granny undies and fly swatters, some rice noodles, sambal and fish sauce. choice). I’d sourced some sesame oil and other bits and bobs from trips to Cortes Ingles, or travels to La Coruna or Portugal, but I was winging it, big time.

Bastardised Miso Aubergines

Para bonita Monika y Carlos (con besos!) y para personas que quieren cocinar Japones en Santiago:  Por pasta de Miso marchar/buscar el piqueno alimentos naturales en Rua Nova!  : )

Slice some aubergines – 1/4 or 1/6 lengthways or smaller, depending on the size of the aubergine. Aesthetically pleasing. toss in a little vegetable oil, lay out on a shallow baking dish skin side down, in lovely rows of wedges. chuck them in a very hot oven. say 220 celcius. they’ll be doing their thing in there for about 40 mins, depending on how hot your oven goes and how big your aubergines are. we don’t know this stuff, we’ll just see how done they are when they’re done, ok?

while those babies do their thing, let’s make a miso sauce. I was winging it in a country with limited asian ingredients available – you can too! or you can google a recipe for Nasu Dengaku, go flipando tio at your neighbourhood asian grocer and get your authentic on.. up to you! This is what I did, and I was pretty happy with the bastardised-make do flavour: In a small saucepan mix some (if possible, white) miso paste, water, a dash of fish sauce, some sugar/honey, some sesame oil and some soy sauce. heat, taste, adjust, add and amend ingredients until you have a rich, pleasant, sweet, savoury sauce with a thick but running consistency. Insert usual apology for never giving exact quantities in my ‘recipes’. lo siento.

When your aubergines are deliciously crispy / grilled outside / a little smokey / soft inside, generously pour a thin drizzle of the miso sauce over the slices, and sprinkle with sesame seeds. grill for another couple of minutes, sprinkle with some finely sliced spring onion <scallion/green onion/shallot whatever you call those things where you come from>. Serve hot. maybe on rice. be happy.

que rico!

Flourless! Gluten-free! Orange Cake / Tarta de Naranja – sin gluten!

this is a beautiful cake, and flourless, for all your gluten-unfriendly friends. Instructions sound funny, but it works, and it’s wonderful. I’ve never made this without people weeping with joy and demanding the recipe.. which I’ve been promising to post on this blog for a loooooong time, and here it finally is. lo siento. 

In a saucepan, cover 2 oranges (whole!) in water and boil for 15 minutes, change the water and boil for another 15 minutes. I have forgotten to change the water, and I did not die, but there you go, that’s what you’re supposed to do. Once the oranges have cooled enough to handle, or heck, if you’re impatient in a rush and have asbestos fingers and are being careful, chop those hot beasts up into tiny pieces — i like to cut in half middle-ways, flick out the pips if there’s lots and they’re big, then get chopping — either with a food processor, a stick blender, or a big knife. It’s really ok if you’re not blitzing this to a pulp. yes the whole orange, except the pips, if you wanna flick them out. which you don’t have to.

In a mixing bowl beat 3 eggs and 3/4 cup of castor sugar, then add 2 cups of almond meal, 1 tsp of baking powder and the orange mess. Pour into a springform baking pan, or any other baking vestibule for that matter. Bake in a low oven 170 celcius, for about 1 hour. or until something sharp poked into the cake comes out clean.

Meanwhile, fun with a few more oranges: 4 or 5 oranges + 1 lime (optional!) will be way sufficient for this — zest 2 oranges and the lime (or a lemon) and juice all the fruit. In a small saucepan, heat these things – zest and juice, with 1 cup of castor sugar. You made a syrup! Life is good.

Once the cake is baked, pour the syrup over the hot cake, if you’re the stabbing type, make some perforations in your cake first. Cool as long as you can wait, serve with soft-whipped fresh cream and slices/segments of various orange and orange-y citris — mandarins, tangelos, whatever you like.

of course, eat this with a much bigger dollop of cream. small dollop for photographing of cake purposes only.

Enjoy!

Peregrino menus are served at many bars, restaurants and cafes along the camino, and generally range in price from 7.50 to 12 euro. Most I ate hit the 8 euro mark, and include wine (usually a bottle between each 2 pilgrims), a basket full of bread and a choice of a first, second and dessert course. Obviously, the quality, quantity and range of options varied incredibly, but all-in-all we eat well on the camino. A combination of simple food well done, lots of exercise in the elements and the resulting hunger, and camino camaraderie; I had some beautiful meals, shared with beautiful people.

These photos don’t do due justice, nor represent the whole peregrino menu experience, although you get a bit of an idea about the style of meals. Meat and potatoes rule. Green veges don’t take centre stage, if they even get a dance routine at all. I don’t have a photo of ‘spaghettis’ but that was another peregrino menu staple: just spaghetti with tomato frito.

hello carb and protein loading! sweet!

So, PILGRIM, CHOOSE YOUR MENU! (often the wise method of choosing is to look at your neighbouring tables and pick the plate you like the look of)

PRIMERO:

hearty meat and bean soup

it was prime asparagus season when I was walking (note - serving for 5 or so)

ensalada mixta .. believe me they were not all as sufficiantly fancy as this (serving for 1!)

hitting Galicia and having famous Caldo Galego in muy frio O Cebriero!

SECONDO:

fish and chips!

hearty. carby. meaty.

chicken and chips!

lamb and ... (you get the idea) chips!

POSTRE:

ice cream, wafers

missing from the postre gallery is Flan. admittedly I’m not a big flan fan, but I’ll update this post with a pic, as it’s a menu staple. Also, yogurt pottles and pieces of fruit. I won’t upload pix of these, I believe you know what they look like

So, Pilgrim, what will you have?

the pre-amble: I’m in Spain, doing fieldwork. the first stage of my 6 9 months here included walking from France, 800km, across the top of Spain. The Camino Frances of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the Way of St James. It took me 7 weeks, though it can be walked in much less time, because I was thinking a lot, I was walking slowly, and I was stopping to smell the roses, including hammocks and bob marley in the garden, a 2-day medieval jousting festival, cubano jam session, and weeks of the most spontaneous and free and open walking and laughing and eating and conversation with wonderful people. It would be hard to overstate what an amazing experience it was.. and is.

So, the food. we’ll start with bocadillos – sandwiches – because these were often the start of the day. Pan, jamon, queso, huevos. Bread, ham, cheese, eggs. I ate a lot of these ingredients on the camino, add tomate and that was it, the daily staples, especially when walking through tiny tiny villages early in the morning, that may be all you can get at the bar, and the bar is the only place to get anything. Pan, queso, jamon (or chorizo, or salami) are also easy to carry, so you can make your own breakfast or lunch on the road. There were so many many bocadillos, there were endless omelette bocs and patatas tortilla bocs and all kinds of variations of pan, jamon, queso, huevos. but you don’t need to see them all I think.. here are just a couple

jamon y queso bocadillo, at the bar for breakfast. this may even be on the 2nd day walking, a few km down the road from Ronscesvalles. I don't know how I even got up that morning.

I made this bocadillo with the last of the cumin gouda I'd bought in France. It had been a hard, but lovely day - so much mud caking onto our boots! but the sun was finally shining, and we'd arrived at the albergue. very happy.

skipping ahead 7 weeks of bocadillos, to a boc at the the end of the world, Finisterre. chips on your sandwich, at the beach.. priceless.

In the meantime, menulog would like to cheer you, my dear starved puku readers, up by offering a sweet discount on some cosy winter home delivery, y’all (well, y’all who are in Australia, anyway). you don’t need to get out of your trashypants and ugg boots!

WTF is menulog? its a sweet online restaurant delivery guide. I actually used menulog site as a case study in an e-marketing elective I took a few years ago, I like the idea, the site works nicely and its one of those win-win sites that are monetised and promote businesses, while actually make searching for things (in this case, what you’re gonna have delivered to your house for dinner when you just can’t be assed cooking tonight) easier for the user, not harder. you can search via postcode, via cuisine, and the site gives an indication of delivery times, you can look at the menu, you can make an order for later. sweet.

Anyway, have a look around the site and see what you think.. menulog has over 20,000 restaurants listed, obviously, metro centres are better covered, so, great for Syd, Melb peeps.

So, the deal: you get $10 off your first delivery order over $20 (with participating restaurants – they’ll have a “accepts vouchers” tag on their page)

Just use this code in your online order: B8AEA6

voucher valid until 31 December 2010 (man, what a great date, hey?!)

I haven’t given it a try myself – don’t think anyone in the Sydney metro delivers to Santiago de Compostela – but I’d be keen to hear feedback from anyone in Oz if you do give it a try! and why not – hey, it’s free money, dudes!

besos mi amigos, will now get onto editing photos immediately for a mega post coming up. promise. here is a teaser.

do you know what this is?? first correct answer wins.. me making this for them, when we are next in the same place. muy bueno!

a mystery, no so mysterious, very delicious. do you know the name?

I found fresh yeast @ Norton Street Grocer, Bondi Junction. They keep it in the deli cabinets, with the cheese, FYI. They have it, even if they say they don’t. go to the cheese display and look for a big bowl filled with tiny individually wrapped blocks of yeast, they look like the lush soap samples you sometimes get when you buy lots of stuff from lush! eerrr, I mean IF. if you buy lots of stuff from lush…

So I had leftover dough from making pizza all weekend for the canadian, but only a little bit, and people were coming for dinner, and I was making a lamb and cous cous meal, and since Paula had shown me how to make pita and said it was really really easy, and they take like 4 minutes to bake, I gave it a go. You guys, pita is really really easy and they take like 4 minutes to bake.

make a basic bread dough. you know, some flour, some yeast, some water. I don’t know how much – I read a guide somewhere that suggested 15-25g fresh yeast to 500g flour, so I used about 20g with warm water and some sugar till it bubbled and did the yeast thing.. then add to flour, + more water to bready-doughy consistency, knead knead knead, rise rise rise, knead knead knead… if using fresh yeast, you will have to be patient, fresh yeast is slower than instant yeast. This made enough dough for a weekend of some 3 pizzas and then a little stack of pitas.

rolling little dough balls...

For the pitas, pre-heat oven AND a flat baking tray. nice and hot. form and roll out small circles of dough, and place them, nicely floured, on the hot tray, and into the hot oven. leave the oven light on, and peer in, watching, hopping and clapping as they rise, form a bubble pocket, brown on top and puff down again… in less than 4 minutes! repeat until your pile of pitas is sufficient. serve to captivated and enthralled dining companions to stuff, spread, dip etc to their heart’s content.

rising....

... rising ...

... rising!!!

OMG, so exciting!

stack!

seriously, so easy to make. 4 minutes. word.

I made these with Sweet William gluten- and dairy-free chocolate so that miss n and my pumpkin jojo could both eat them. I thought Sweet William was not too bad to nibble, and that in something like this you wouldn’t know the difference from ‘normal’ chocolate at all, so horray if you are gluten- and diary-free but missing chocolate! I’d be most interested to hear other brands and opinions on g-f and d-f chocs in the comments. Substitute other nuts or no nuts if you don’t like or don’t have any pecans.

Peanutbutter Cookies with chocolate and Pecans

combine well, in a large-ish bowl: 250g (about 1 cup, but god, don’t measure it out, just look at how many grams your jar is, and approximate – 500gm jar = dollop out half the jar) peanutbutter of your choosing (check gluten and dairy-free status if important), one large egg, a cup of sugar (brown, white, raw, whatevs), drops of vanilla essence, a teaspoon of baking soda. incorporate some roughly chopped chocolate and pecans. roll into balls, (optional: now roll in caster sugar – I didn’t in this batch but did in the afore-linked previous batch), top with a pecan, bake at about 180 degrees C, for 15 mins or so.. or until a little browned on top, but still chewy inside. These are like lava: they’ll stay molten and oozy and fall apart while hot, but stiffen on cooling, so let them cool before packing off to eat. these are also heaven fridge-cold – chewy and delicious.

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

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.

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!

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!