Entries Tagged 'Food for Babies and Children' ↓

This summer I am having the biggest adventure ever and going to Asia for the very first time. It’s my 40th birthday present to myself, and although I initially planned the trip as a running away affair, I eventually decided to take the little one with me. Only problem is, he doesn’t like chilli.

I can understand that. I wasn’t raised to eat chilli, being Tasmanian as well as growing up in the house of a 10 pound pom with serious issues with flavour. It wasn’t really a feature of cooking in the student houses I’d lived in and I remember arriving in Sydney and perusing Thai and Sichuan Chinese restaurant menus in desperation, because everything seemed to have more chilli in it than I could bear.

My awakening was a Thai beef salad that hurt so much to eat it made my face burn purple and caused fat oily tears to roll down my cheeks but, once the 90 seconds of agony passed the flavour was so exquisite that you were prepared to do it all again. I never looked back, although I remain bemused by friends, particularly blokes, who seem to have permanently destroyed their tastebuds by overdosing on chilli. Nor would I ever eat an entire dorset naga. This Aussie bloke reckons it destroyed his sense of taste for 36 hours. Why would you do that?

The other extreme is, of course no chilli at all, and it has been hard living with a boy who is determined to avoid spice. He did make a concerted effort when he was five (announcing ‘I’m going to change my life’). Like most New Year’s resolutions, it didn’t last. But now we have to get into serious training, otherwise he’ll be stuck with Chinese food in Thailand, and what a shame that would be.

Fortunately he is prepared to take on the chilli challenge. Last week I bought a green chilli, and chopped the end off it for him. He ate it, apprehensively, but survived and was prepared to go one step further. My fingers were laden with the juice from the seeds so I placed one finger lightly on his tongue, and watched while he went ‘phwoar!’ and realised, for the first time, that chilli is joyous, as well as painful. Now he sees chillis in the supermarket and wonders …

We’re so excited about the trip, and I know that nothing we make here will ever taste as good as it does over there. I also know we can’t really prepare for the blasts of chilli to come and there will be tears – mine as well as his. But we’ve enjoyed upping the chilli ante and there have been some cool experiments, including chilli chocolate. One of those experiments, which I was inspired to make following a discussion on this blog about caramelising onions, was this nice quick chilli sambal. It involves my favourite chilli sauce, sambal oelek, which I love for its saltiness, particularly when blended with things like tempeh and Vietnamese mint.

Quick chilli onion sambal
Take two onions and slice them very thinly. Warm a tablespoon of sesame or peanut oil in a heavy saucepan. Add the onions and cook, covered, on a slow-moderate heat for at least 10 minutes until they go transparent and are beginning to brown. Take the lid off the pot, step up the heat a bit and add a tablespoon of brown sugar (or palm sugar) and a tablespoon of sambal oelek. Sit with it and cook it off until it’s a nice rich sticky, orangey brown, gloopy mess (don’t let it catch and burn). You end up with this;

The sugar and salt counter each other perfectly. It makes a terrific sauce for fish, or alongside spuds – it would be very good with tofu or tempeh. I also ate it with Francis Xavier Holden’s beef curry and it was fine. Obviously, if you want it properly hot, doubling the sambal oelek doubles the heat, and the onion can take it. Not sure the seven year old can …

What a wonderful opportunity for temporary insanity a child’s birthday party throws up for the modern parent. Eleven months of the year I could care less for the making, baking and lunchbox fussing that is supposed to come with child ownership, but a birthday party is SHOWTIME. It’s when you get all your crafty ya yas out because, dammit, people are watching. And if I could make one other parent think for just a second that I enjoy nothing more than making sugar paste effigies of Garfield and sewing up darling little costumes then it’s all been a worthwhile charade.

This year, Isaac (recently 6) decided upon a Transformers party. The theme, IMO, just gives you something to work with for cakes and invitations and is a good cue for presents when parents find themselves standing bewildered in the Kmart toy aisles. So a Transformers cake was planned, and it was at some very early stage of the cake planning that a mental picture of the sort of cake you can only realise with fondant was formed in my mind and nothing could be done to dislodge it.

I’ve been quietly obsessed with fondant cakes since forever. It’s food! But it looks like modelling clay! And you can make anything out of it! Then eat it! You could make a futuristic miniature city out of fondant then go stomping through it like Godzilla, randomly taking a bite out of people and buildings as the mood takes you. Despite visiting the Royal Melbourne Show for years just to see the decorated cakes and having unfettered access to all the relevant retail outlets, I had never actually taken the next step: I had never planned and created a fondant iced cake. It had just never occurred to me.

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Today my sister, her partner Anne and their kids Ciara and Reece joined us for The Eating of The Hare. They took our bigger boy out to lunch and Owy went to cricket, so I had a couple of hours of uninterrupted kitchen time to potter while our smaller boy slept. There is nothing nicer than feeding people that you care about, and to be feeding them food which they’d been responsible for increased the pleasure. Anne is a bit of a spoiler, so things kicked off with spiders made with sexy ice cream and Cascade soft drinks:

I’m not sure if that’s sharing or territorial pissing that you’re seeing in that picture, but that’s five year old boys for you.

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I know this is a cooking blog, but for me cooking and gardening go hand in hand. Growing food inspires me to cook, and my desire to eat good food sends me into the garden. I’ll get to the cooking bit, but not before I ramble over the garden (rambling over the garden then heading into the kitchen is a habit of mine).

Over the years I have moved a lot, and had many herb and vegetable gardens. Building them has proven to be an essential part of my settling into any new place, even if the landscape is not ideal. I have gardened in tight spots, in pots and sour soil, dealt with overshadowing, put up with short term leases and, in the first home I owned, accommodated the tendency of my then partner to steal the best spots for spiky grevilleas.

My garden tends to reflect my mental state. If it flourishes there is every chance I am procrastinating mightily, but my soul is mending. The reverse applies. The garden in my last house fell over and decayed because I got too busy writing a PhD, but my relationship was also withering on the vine. In the year that passed between moving out and buying my new house I had no garden – just a few styrofoam pots. I didn’t even have a compost heap. Now I have a new house, Maxholme, and this is the backyard, as it appeared on my first day of ownership.

It’s a 611 square metre blank slate, so the work begins to build a garden that reflects who I am – a woman on the very brink of turning 40, with no inclination to please anyone other than myself and my hungry child. A blank slate suits me very well indeed, and I will fill it with food. In these days of financial uncertainty and mortgage stress it is quite fashionable to be worrying about food security, but that doesn’t matter one jot to me, I’d be planting food anyway.

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Our camping trip was character building, as they so often are. Don’t get me wrong, it was fab and the kids were delirious with pleasure. It was just character building as well.

I did very much enjoy my camp kitchen. The most successful camping food I made was quesadillas with corn, canned black beans, red capsicum and cheese, with a bonus squeeze of lime juice and red chilli oil on top for the grown ups. The most successful camping meal, however, was the two dozen Tathra oysters and bottle of champy we ate lying about in the heat of the early afternoon on the second day. The oysters are nowhere near their best at this time of year, of course, but still deliciously creamy with that slightly metallic tang. They’re sold from a minuscule shop out the back of a house, but when the owners are not there, you leave your $9/dozen in the honesty box and help yourself from the fridge. Then you listen to your six year old demand oysters from the backseat all the way back to the camping ground.

We had another great meal on the way home, at the heritage listed Royal Hotel in Cooma. The kids had been cooped up in the car, so although the footpath tables looked lovely we asked if we could eat up on the balcony upstairs so we didn’t have to chase them too much. The barman laughed and said we were welcome, but they “hadn’t done anything with it”. I don’t know why you’d want to – a huge wooden floored balcony with cast iron railings and a view of the Rivers outlet store. Digging around afterwards I found that the hotel was built in 1858 and the verandas added in 1900. They are the only ones in Cooma to have survived the demolish and modernise frenzy of the 1950s.

The food was good country pub grub. The menu was soon to change for the warmer weather, but we were in time for a delicious lamb shank with good mash and hand cut fresh veggies, only slightly overcooked, and a proper country hamburger with crispy non-greasy chips. Sage insisted on nuggets’n'chips, and eventually found some use for the nuggets.

The Royal Hotel is on the corner of Sharp and Lambie Streets, a couple of blocks off the main drag. It was honest, solid food in a very pleasant environment. There’s a run of the mill little dining room downstairs, and shady tables outside. Nothing on the menu is over about $16, and our two meals, two large Reschs and food and drink for the kids came to $44. Lambie Street, the first settled street in town, has eleven heritage listed buildings and makes for a very pleasant post prandial stroll.

I have a strange variety of child. He is unceasingly articulate, disarmingly good at reading and bright in very many ways, although, admittedly, not in mathematics. For this last I blame his parents, who both have PhDs in the humanities. My child is also uncommonly tall, with shining hair, white teeth and peachy skin and is actually quite good at sport, despite his parental burdens.

I am not biased, all this is true, being recounted simply for the purpose of remarking upon how children manage to grow themselves up without much in the way of nutrition. For my child achieves all these miracles without meat, unless it comes in the form of a sausage or chicken drumstick. He was once offered a deluxe cut of wagyu beef, cooked just for him, and rejected it. He doesn’t like fruit either, at least not much. He manages bananas and loves stone fruit and watermelon and a nice pink lady apple, but rejects most other things, including strawberries.

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Rachel of Thus Bakes Zarathustra is presently sojourning with a bunch of Yankee pointyheads in pursuit of her PhD. Writing at TBZ’s previous incarnation she said:

… The thing is the next day I came home from the library starving and sick of books, and there was a bowl of carrot and avocado salad in the fridge and this cake, and I ate it and I felt a rush of righteous maturity akin to flossing my teeth or getting a pap smear.

We all need that feeling sometimes, don’t we?

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Five weeks now without a car, although the insurance company promises me it’ll be fixed on Wednesday. Promises, promises.

Having no car, even in Canberra, even in winter, has been absolutely fine until this last week when I’d already been sick for a week when both the kids got really crook. Bit of a bugger walking a five year old home from the doctor and having to wait while he vomits because he’s been coughing so hard. Could be worse, of course, as no-one has cancer (we hope) and everyone has all their limbs, but I felt sorry for the little bugger all the same.

So on Saturday morning I pounced on my dear friend Steevy when he dropped by IN HIS CAR and inveigled him into taking us to Choku Bai Jo. It was lovely to see Cristy, Paul and Lily there, even though I had to confess that I was buying a bunch of baby turnips just because they were tiny! (the largest nearly an inch wide) and cute! although I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

Pasta with baby turnips, bacon and turnip greens

This needs about 10 minutes preparation time and up to 15 minutes to cook, depending on the pasta you choose (wholemeal spirals for us). Will serve 3 adults or 2 adults and two kids.

Ingredients

1 bunch baby turnips, washed thoroughly with the greens cut into 3-4 cm lengths.
2 rashers bacon
2 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped
fresh flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
toasted walnut fragments
romano cheese, grated finely
black pepper
a sturdy pasta that you like

Preparation

Put on a big pot of water to boil.

I’d planned to leave a little of the stems on the turnip bulbs, Japanese-style but was defeated by the tiny grit filled folds of stem and cleanly beheaded them before slicing each one into two or three thick slices. Go with whatever you’ve got the patience for.

Parboil the turnips for a minute or so and retrieve them. Add the turnip greens to the pot for just a minute and drain them, then add salt and the pasta to the pot.

Chop the bacon into 1 cm slices and fry gently. I only had that poxy flabby packet bacon – thanks, Dad – so cooked it veerrrrrrry slowly until it had crisped gently and then splashed on some some Camellia Oil. I have fallen in love with Camellia Oil thanks (again) to Fuchsia Dunlop – it’s earthy, peppery and delicious. Add in the crushed garlic and turnips and after a few minutes stir through the greens. In just a minute the pasta will be ready, and you can throw some in the pan.

Serving

Serve in a nice deep bowl, and sprinkle generously with parsley and walnuts and a bit less generously with cheese and pepper. The turnips are mellow and subtle, the greens are zingy and delicious and the pasta gives you enough energy to chase children all afternoon. Ann, you may omit the bacon, but then you’d want to add some salt.

So now I have to work out what to do with the cavolo nero (aka Tuscan kale, black kale or dinosaur kale) that was the other thing I couldn’t resist …