I first decided to make kimchi after buying David Chang’s Momofuku, a cheffy cookbook that for once lived up to the hype. I’m not often prone to food and food celebrity crazes, but the #momofukurage campaign started by would-be diners at Chang’s first Sydney appearance suckered me in and I’m glad I succumbed.

I’d been interested in Korean food for a while, having picked up Chang Sun-young’s A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes at the “fill a bag for $10″ stage of the Lifeline Bookfair one year. It’s a great introductory book written by a woman whose sons have emigrated to America. It gently leads you through some fundamentals of both Korean home cooking … and what it might be like to have a Korean Mother-in-Law. From the epilogue, “Tales of my mother in law”:

I think she has written this cookbook for me instead of chiding me for my failures. It is her gentle way of teaching the family tradition and cooking to her sons and daughters in law who live far apart from her. I must confess that Mother’s particularities in cooking caused me quite a bit of stress. I thought she was obsessed with food and complained that her attitude was breaking the balance among food, clothing and shelter for our family. I vowed that I would not be like her, but unbeknownst to myself, I must have been brainwashed because I find myself thinking of cooking ever more often. My suspicion is confirmed by my friends who comment on my cooking, saying “like mother-in-law, like daughter-in-law”.

As you’d expect, Chang Sun-young has some pretty firm ideas about kimchi, including:

• a woman’s cookery and hostessing skills can safely be judged by tasting her kimchi
• it is a sign of a lack of care to buy kimchi
• leave your kimchi on the bench for a day or two to start ripening – refrigerating it before it has had a chance to start fermenting will make it unpalatable and “frost-bitten”

Her recipe involves brining the chopped cabbages before salting and combining with the other ingredients, which include ginger, garlic, green onions, red pepper powder and finely chopped fresh or frozen shrimp. She notes that a more traditional method involves using cabbages that are halved or quartered and rubbing the other ingredients between the leaves, and that if you’re putting up winter kimchi in pottery urns buried in the backyard, that’s the way you should do it.

If you are contemplating such a backyard full of kimchi , Michael J Pettid’s scholarly but readable Korean Cuisine: An Illustrated History has an account of the traditional autumn p’umasi where families would gather to process the 100 – 150 heads of cabbage that were the minimum needed to see each through a long winter of little or no fresh vegetables in pre-modern Korea. If you’re interested in fermentation in general, Sandor Katz’s site is a brilliant place to start, and his book Wild Fermentation has a vegetarian kimchi recipe.

Like most homely and centuries-old foodstuffs, you can take considerably more leeway than a Korean Mother-in-law might allow when you make your own; Chang for instance has adapted his mother’s recipe by starting the fermentation in the fridge and using more sugar. He describes the level of fermentation that takes him to his kimchi happy place:

There’s a point, after about two weeks, where the bacteria that are fermenting the kimchi start producing CO2 and the kimchi takes on a prickly mouthfeel, like the feeling of letting the bubbles in a soft drink pop on your tongue.

Gill was a little alarmed that her jar of kimchi had started bubbling so she should be in a good position to describe that for us!

As a rule I make a mixed kimchi using a variety of vegetables. There is ALWAYS some in the house, or Owen gives me wounded looks when he can’t have his favourite cheddar, kimchi and kewpie mayonnaise sandwiches. When I was making some to take to Melbourne, I found a note on the fridge that said “All kimchi is to remain in Canberra. No kimchi is to be taken to Melbourne”. It is quite addictive, and a little each day does seem to do good things to your insides. Once you’ve made it, you can find lots of delicious things to do with it at Ellie’s site.

crazybrave’s kimchi, adapted from David Chang’s recipe

Tips on ingredients:

It’s really important to use a Korean red pepper/chilli powder, which can be much harder to obtain than Chinese versions. Canberrans can go to the Korean grocery where Impact Comics used to be downstairs in Garema Place, which is the only store where I’ve found it here – even Asiana in the Canberra Centre, otherwise excellent for Korean ingredients, only seems to have the Chinese version.

Most of the other ingredients I use are from the Food Co-op and I’m convinced that minimally refined salt and sugar make a difference. I use a very mineral-rich but carbon-unfriendly damp grey Celtic sea salt and rapadura sugar.

I haven’t been able to find the jarred salted shrimp that Chang recommends, so often throw in a dash of stinky Vietnamese fish sauce, mam nem. It and the seaweed I add are enough to get the level of brininess to my taste. And I use a Korean light soy sauce because the Taiwanese sauces I otherwise use seem a bit heavy in kimchi.

First step:

• 1 head of wombok, or any other nice cabbage you fancy, chopped in one inch pieces
• 2 long daikon, sliced thinly into medallions with a mandolin

Toss vegetables with 2 tablespoons salt and 2 tablespoons sugar and leave in a covered container in a cool place overnight. You may wish to move all your sheets and towels to convert your linen press into a fermenting cupboard, but then again you may not.

Second step:

In the biggest bowl you own, or a clean bucket, combine:

• 20 minced cloves of garlic (less at this time of year when garlic is out of season)
• a finger length piece of ginger, minced
• 1/2 cup Korean chilli powder (kochukaru)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup fish sauce (I use Megachef)
• 1/4 cup Korean light soy sauce (usukuchi)
• a splash of mam nem

Add water until there is movement in the mix, but stop before it gets too thin. Then add:

• 1/2 cup of green onions cut in 2 cm pieces
• 2 or 3 carrots, peeled and cut into medallions with a mandoline (I peel mine with a wavy Thai peeler for kicks)
• a handful of hijiki or another thinly sliced sea vegetable such as arame

Third step:

Drain cabbage and daikon, and add to the mix. Pack into clean jars. Leave in the linen closet overnight, and then refrigerate.

Eat with everything.

Easy is good, because I am not diligent in the garden (or many other places, if you really want to know). I am prone to fits and starts and sometimes ignore things. I’m not always cooking so I don’t get to things in time. In the garden, this forgetfulness can have spectacular results.

These Hollow Crown parsnips looked so pretty in the vege patch that I was loth to dig them up, but maybe I shoulda done it sooner, because they got a bit … large (that’s a full size 1940s sink they are sitting on). Notice the rather ladylike limbs on the top one? I did wonder if these were really mandrakes (or ladydrakes), but luckily they did not scream when cooked. Parsnips get a bad rap, as this story about Don Burke ripping Donna Hay a new one for daring to promote them reveals. He is wrong. Parsnips are delicious. Which doesn’t explain why I ignored them so comprehensively they grew legs.

But then my marrows got into a similar state, as you can see with this cucumber, modelled by my lovely assistant Aaron, who adores cucumbers but is not sure about this one.

I’ve blogged about the advantages of overgrown zucchinis before, but I love baby beets and slender parsnips, roasted with brown sugar and balsamic, so there’s really no accounting for letting things go to this extent.

Yet this neglect has had benign – nay, wonderful – results. OK, if you ever saw a parsnip the size and shape of the ones above in a shop, you would never buy it, and neither you should. It would be tough, woody of heart and bitter of taste, because it would have endured long periods in transit and storage. But when taken straight from the earth (with a giant fork and a lot of grunting), even massive parsnips are sweet, juicy and yielding. I casseroled some with a jointed chook, a cup of white wine, preserved lemon and a bit of sage and tarragon and the result was a sauce that looked like I’d added a cup of cream to it. I nearly died of pleasure eating it. I also made them into a vegan soup with vege stock and white wine – they smelled apple sweet. 

Same goes for the beetroot, which were so overgrown they stood up out of the ground but united heaven and earth when cooked into a soup with coriander and served with a dollop of tart yoghurt. But again, you wouldn’t buy beetroot like that in a shop. You’d surmise it would be past its peak of perfection, but you would be wrong.

It’s made me think a lot about how aesthetic notions of shop-ready produce lead to waste. What do the farmers do with the produce that does not meet Coles-Woollies specifications because it is too big, too small or looks like mandrake? I suppose some goes to canneries, but precious little would be returned to the earth via compost.

Growing to order can also afflict home gardeners, to their cost. If we only eat when vegetables reach a defined size, we miss the early tenderness of baby vegetables and shorten the eating season. If you cut the head off a cabbage or silverbeet or lettuce you kill it, but if you harvest outside leaves as you need them it will bear for months and months - over the course of a year a bunch of kale will become a palm tree. Peas and beans produce longer if harvested constantly, so it makes even more sense to pick early and often. If you leave things in the ground there is always something to salvage when you are hungry. And although most gardening books would tell you beetroots and parsnips take a lot of space, the fact is I’ve gotten almost six months of eating from stuffing a couple of dozen plants into a square metre of garden, and have not tired of either food. You see, even the instructions on seed packets guide you to producing shop-ready vegetables.

My slack gardening habits have led me to an epiphany. It’s time to break free from supermarket values. Don’t follow the directions on the seed packet but overplant and eat as you thin – the plants left over will fatten in the extra space and be there when you want them. Eat the leaf the caterpillar has chomped on, grow the artichokes to see their beauty, let the beets and parsnips stay in the ground until you are good and ready for them and save your harvesting energy for turning summer peaches into bellinis or racing the autumn frosts to tuck the tender things into the really deep freeze.

A gathering of disparate friends in a small suburban kitchen on a cold winter’s night (a thick frost had formed on the cars outside even before we had finished mains) was the perfect occasion to bust out a bit of beet action in the form of a borsch. What I love about this particular recipe is the degree to which each guest can nuance the taste and texture of their bowl to suit their mood. Feeling like a little tart? Add a bit more sour cream. Need to carbo-load for the ten minute walk to the shops in the morning? Add some potatoes. Your razor-sharp wit getting in the way of small talk with the cutie sitting next to you? Add a little dill. Served with a cheese board of cheddar, stinky blue, organic figs, dried apricots and roasted almonds, and a choice of fluffy white or fruit loaf, this went down a treat.

Two cattle dogs wrestling under the table and oodles of red wine added considerably to the pleasure of the borsch and the general chaotic atmosphere of the evening. The conceptual-artist-turned-art-blogger hypnotised my puppy, and then called the independent-activist-documentary-filmmaker on her paranoia about all things ‘nano’. At the other end of the table myself and another anthropologist grooved to some Italian lounge jazz, while an expert in Taiwanese art tried to get her head around the difficulties of building houses in remote Aboriginal communities being explained by a bureaucrat in a position to know. The only time the ruckus died down was when the historian of Jewish Lithuanian execution sites shocked us all with a detailed account of how to identify mass graves using ground penetrating radar.

If it sounds like I’m bragging about how interesting my dining pals were it is because I am. They are all ace individuals whose munificent friendship, along with the borsch and the wine, helped to take the chill off my winter blues for at least another day.

Luscious Borsch

Ingredients

6 beetroots
Veggie stock to taste
1 large onion
2 sticks of celery
Lemon or vinegar
Dill
Parsley
4 boiled eggs, chopped into chunks
4 boiled potatoes, chopped in to chunks
Sour cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Trim and boil the beetroots for half an hour or so, until tender. Cool, skin and dice into small cubes. Brown finely chopped onions with celery, add beetroot and stock and bring to the boil. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer for twenty minutes. Add finely chopped dill and juice of one lemon, or a tablespoon or so of vinegar, and simmer for another ten or until done. Puree, and if too thick add a little water.

Serve hot. Provide sides of chopped boiled potato, sour cream, more dill, chopped parsley, and chopped boiled eggs (or anything else you think might go well – pickles? chives?) and add these to your bowl with generous whimsy reflecting the mood of the moment.

This is approximately how much stuff you need to demystify your average Asian grocery store, with the addition of a bonus Hairy McClary backpack full of nappies, wipes, toddler snacks and a cold drink. If your car is getting fixed, you’ll be needing a large hand truck. Fortunately I didn’t have far to go.

When you get there you’ll need tables to fill up with all manner of until-now mysterious things, like giant packets of fungus and small jars of stinky fermented tofu, bundles of greens, jars full of bark, tiny bottles of mustard oil so pungent it burns your nasal hairs, etc, etc.

I think one reason why some people are cautious about buying things from an Asian grocery store is that so much stuff is packaged, and if you don’t know what it is, or what the thing you want looks like, it gets confusing. So we ripped open all the plastic and set about rehydrating, sniffing, poking and tasting.

I wish someone had mentioned my hair before they started taking pictures, but there you go.

We rehydrated four different kinds of dried fungus and compared them, observing that the (relatively) expensive white capped shiitakes absorbed more water, became much softer and more luscious and had an altogether more savoury and appealing smell than the cheaper brown ones, that black cloud ear (also called wood mushroom) was a “texture food” because it didn’t really have a lot to offer in the taste department but that on the other hand there’s something pretty special about white fungus.

Many of the women were very familiar with tofu, but some had never cooked with or eaten it, so we opened up some silken, firm, puffs and pressed five spice tofu – I forgot the tofu sheets – and talked about what kinds of uses they have and what they weren’t good for. Unfortunately I couldn’t bring some of the really good locally made tofu (by Shanghai Yulin Tofu) because I hadn’t been able to get to the shop.

We passed around dishes of light and dark soy sauce, and talked about what the hell that meant. We sniffed black vinegar, and rice vinegar and Chianking vinegar. We had a go at the Shaoxing wine, which Anglifed recipes often suggest can be substituted for with sherry. Well, why would you when a flash bottle costs about $8 and is MUCH better than sherry.

By this stage we were getting pretty hungry, so started to whip up some food. I explained that you only need a cheap wok from the Chinese shop, but that it must be seasoned properly. The claypot dish I had intended to make went belly up because there was a concealed switch to turn the oven on, but we ended up stir-frying the topping so we could taste it anyway.

Basic leafy Chinese veg stir-fry

The NSW Government has standardised names and published a pictorial guide to Asian vegetables. Personally I’m sad to see the end of the hairy melon, but that’s progress I suppose. Clicking the veggie’s name in the guide will give you a bigger image, alternative names and cooking information

Ingredients

• non-stingy splash of corn or peanut oil (not olive, it doesn’t handle the necessary intense heat well)
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed in a theatrical fashion with the flate of a cleaver from shoulder height down onto the chopping board
• 1 bunch leafy greens like kang kong or amaranthen choy
• light soy sauce (I like Kimlan best, then Pearl River Bridge)
• Chinkiang vinegar (Gold Plum brand is the best, but has been hard to find recently)

Method

• Wash your greens and trim into 5 cm lengths
• Turn the exhaust fan on
• Heat the empty wok hot, hot, hot until smoke is rising
• splash in oil, quickly followed by garlic
• push the garlic around quickly with a big flat spatula/wooden spoon for about 30 seconds
• As soon as you can smell the garlic, toss in the greens
• push, push, push them around to coat them with garlicky oil
• throw in a splash or two of soy sauce and push around for a minute or two more – the stems should be crispy and the leaves soft but not “melted”
• take off the heat and add a splash or two of Chinkiang vinegar

Fuchsia Dunlop’s Ma Po Tofu

It makes a huge difference to roast and grind the Sichuanese peppercorns fresh each time. We passed around some raw and toasted peppercorns so the women could see the difference themselves. We also chewed one to get the “numb and tingling” effect that they’re known for. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle to grind them, put them in a teatowel and give them a good bash with something heavy, like the end of a cleaver, a rolling pin or a can of beans.

Ingredients

• 1 block of silken tofu
• 6 stems green garlic (garlic chia), or green onions aka “shallots”
• 150 g beef mince (although we used pork)
• 2 tablespoons Sichuanese broad bean chilli sauce (look for one that uses broad beans, not soy beans. Ideally, the ingredients list reads something like “broad beans, chilli, flour, salt”
• 1 tablespoon soaked salted black beans
• 1 cup chicken stock
• a pinch of sugar, a splash of soy
• 2 teaspoons potato starch in enough water to make a slurry (cornflour is fine; you don’t need to use either if you like a slightly runnier sauce)
• roasted and ground Sichuan peppercorns

Method

• Cut tofu into squares (you can do this while it’s still in the packet) and set aside. If feasible, rest in it just boiled salted water for a few minutes.
• Cut the green garlic stems into “horses ears” – 2 cm long slices on a sharp diagonal.
• Measure everything else out into little bowls or dishes and line them up next to the stove.

• Turn on the exhaust fan. Heat the wok on high heat and add 4 tablespoons oil (1/3 cup). It might seem a lot, but remember that Chinese food is served from a shared dish on the table, and you leave the oil in the serving bowl.)
• Add the mince and cook until it has brown crunchy edges.

• Lower heat to medium, and add chilli bean paste. Stir quickly, then add the black beans. Mash up a few with your stirring tool. If you’re keen, add a couple of teaspoons of ground dried chilli now.
• Have a bit of a cough. If you added the ground chillies, have a sip of water as well.

• Add the stock and then the tofu. Move everything around gently so that the tofu gets coated. If you don’t want the pieces to break up, be careful.   You don’t need to move fast here, it’s not stir fry.
• Add a pinch of sugar and a couple of splashes of soy and leave for a few minutes to simmer.

• Stir in the green garlic and after a couple of minutes, add the starch slurry.  Let it thicken for a couple of minutes.
• Scatter Sichuan peppercorns on top to serve.

Dry fried green beans – vegan and omnivore versions

To make this substantial enough as a meal on its own with rice, you can add some smoked or five-spice pressed tofu, cut into slivers of a similar size to the beans. We did because the packet was open and because I wanted the vegetarians to stop looking sad.

Ingredients

• 300 g snake beans cut into 5 cm lengths (green beans are fine)
• 75 g soaked and finely chopped shiitake mushrooms (or use a mix including some soaked and finely chopped white fungus and black fungus, aka black cloud ear, which we did because we’d been inspecting them all) or the same weight of pork mince
• 2 teaspoons light soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons Shaoxing wine
• 1 tablespoon Tianjin preserved vegetable (finely chopped if not already shredded; it often comes in a squat little brown crock with a plastic lid)
• Sesame oil

Method

• Turn the exhaust fan on
• Heat the empty wok hot, hot, hot until smoke is rising
• Splash in oil, then the beans.  Move them around until they start to blister and get black spots – five minutes or so. They should start to get a smoky and slightly sweet smell.  Set them aside.

• Heat the wok again over a high flame and add more oil.  Add pork mince or mushrooms and stir fry for a minute, splashing in the wine and soy.
• Add Tianjin preserved vegetable and mix; add the reserved beans.
• Put in a bowl or plate and drizzle a little sesame oil on top.

Claypot pork with dried shiitakes, red dates and dried sausage

Claypots are cheap and surprisingly useful, but any heavy pot with a lid will do. If you’re using a claypot for the first time, soak it in a bucket of water for 24 hours (the lid, too). For subsequent uses, soak it for an hour or chuck it in a bucket in the morning to use in the evening. I have made this in one big claypot or two smaller ones.

Ingredients

• About 500 g pork, with some fat and lean meat (ie, 750 g chops with bones and some fat removed and sliced into pieces about 4 cm by 2 cm by ½ cm)
• 4 large shiitakes, stems removed and soaked in hot water for ten minutes then sliced
• handful dried Chinese red dates (aka jujubes, and not a true date – leave out rather than use other dates)
• 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (or use Sherry, but as Shaoxing wine is tastier and cheaper, go buy a bottle – get Golden Pagoda brand if you can)
• 1 teaspoon roasted sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of ginger in fine matchsticks
• 2 tsp potato starch (cornflour is fine)
• 4 green onions or garlic stems, cut into 3 cm lengths on an angle
• 3 chinese sausages, cut inot ½ slices on an angle (so they look like ovals)
• 2 pinches sugar
• 300 g jasmine rice
• two generous cups of chicken stock

Method

• Marinate all but the rice and stock for an hour or more.  You can make the mix the night or morning before.

• Wash the rice really well and drain. Put it in the claypot with a pinch of salt stock. Homemade stock is best, but use a liquid one in preference to powders. If using a bought stock, check if you need the salt.
• Bring it up to boil, put the lid on and turn down as low as you can. I use a heat diffuser on an electric hotplate, but the hotplate itself would be fine. Don’t muck about checking it, it’ll be fine without you.

• After ten minutes, stir fry the marinated mix in a hot wok with some oil until nearly cooked (less than 5 minutes). Splash in a little stock and maybe an extra splash of soy.
• While still very hot, spread it on top of the rice and put the lid back on for 10 minutes.
• It will be very tender and the fat will have a slightly jelly-like consistency.  Eat with a stir fried green veg.

Black Bean Sauce

This recipe is for beans, but can be adapted for most anything you fancy.

Ingredients

• about 500 g green beans or snake beans, topped & tailed and cut into 4 cm pieces
• 3-4 cloves garlic, chopped fine (as much as you like)
• 2 tablespoons fermented black beans (salted black beans) soaked and drained
• 1 tablespoon clear rice vinegar
• light soy sauce
• teaspoon of potato starch (or cornflour) mixed to a slurry with a little water
• pinch of sugar
• 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine

Method

• Follow the first three steps in the dry fried green bean recipe above, reserving beans.
• Heat wok on high heat, when smoking add oil.
• Add garlic and black beans and toss about.
• Return beans to pan, and add a splash of vinegar and a pinch of salt.
• When veg is all hot again, stir in 1 – 2 tablespoons of stock (or water) .
• Take off the heat and drizzle them with sesame oil.

It was really good fun, and I got lots of good feedback. Nancy of Roving Lemon’s Big Adventure came along to the session, and blogged about it here. Even better, two members of the group cooked stir fries for dinner that night.

In my (reasonably broad) experience of men, each likes to have their Signature Dish, a culinary piece that they’ve stumbled upon or invented (or mother used to make) and have tweaked to make it utterly Theirs. It is carried with them through the years, brought out to impress the chicks, and then served to the family proudly over the years and passed down from father to son etc etc… ok, maybe that last bit’s an exaggeration, but most of it rings true, no?

Best Beloved is a enthusiastic but slightly nervous cook. He travels widely in the foodie universe, but never without a guidebook. This following dish is one of the very few things he will cook without a recipe; it is a family favourite, and went nameless until I decided to blog it, upon which Bumblebee decided that it should be called Mount Yum. Before this, it was always know as ‘your/my chicken/nut dish’.

To celebrate the fact that it is made without a recipe on the bench, I will not be providing ingredient quantities. You need to think about how much each person can eat and provide enough of everything to divide between the number of people eating. There’s no right or wrong; substitutions are not only welcome, but encouraged. There are endless possibilities. Best Beloved rarely strays from his favourite combination, but the other day we had no pine nuts and I persuaded him to use slivered almonds rather than popping down to the shop. Lo! It worked! (Sigh.)

Please excuse the crockery, we’re waiting for it all to break. If BB had known I was doing this before he started, he would have brought out his collection of 60s Poole pottery!

Ingredients

• Breast of chicken, cut into chunks. You could also substitute firm tofu for the chicken.
• Rice (Jasmine is juicier, Basmati works well, brown would be nice)
• A green vegetable able to be wilted (we use baby spinach)
• Avocado
• Pine nuts (or a kind of nut)
• Yogurt, plain
• Lemon juice (or lime)
• Garlic, crushed
• Fresh coriander (or basil)

Method

Marinate the chicken chunks in the juice of the lemon/lime along with a handful of shredded coriander and a crushed clove or two of garlic. Leave for at least one hour, all day is good if you think of it in time.

Cook your rice whichever way you do. We use a very cheap but effective rice cooker. Do everything else while the rice is cooking, which is about 15 minutes?

Mash the avocado, get out the greens, chop a heap of coriander and set aside.

Stir fry the chicken in batches, marinade and all, until brown and juicy. Set aside and keep warm. Have a small pot of water heating to boil while you do this.

After you’ve taken the chicken out, add the nuts to the wok/frypan and roast them slightly in the pan juices/leavings. Set aside.

Wilt the green veg in the boiling water: doesn’t take long, just use tongs and dip the leaves in and out. Set aside in a warm bowl.

By now your rice should be cooked. This is when you build the mountain…

Each plate gets:

• a bed of rice (size of bed can vary between stomach capacities)
• a blanket of greens
• a splodge of mashed avocado

• a serve of chicken pieces/tofu chunks (Best Beloved likes his meat, so there’s probably more than necessary shown here)

• a scattering of nuts
• a thick topping of plain thick yoghurt

And:

Mount Yum!

Enjoy demolishing it.

Kathryn Elliot of Limes & Lycopene is running another Pantry Challenge, inviting readers to rustle up something tasty from a list of staple ingredients.

I wasn’t able to participate last time , and was happy to see the launch of round two until I noticed she’d taken vinegar off the list! No vinegar! And no lemon juice! But I decided to do it anyway, and to do it without buying anything for the meal.

A meal from the pantry can be something knocked up in a few minutes, but that’s not the only way to make something quickly. In this case, I prepared a couple of elements in the morning and assembled it all in just a few minutes at night.

Here’s the ingredients list, with the ones I used in bold:

Mograbieh Dinner Salad

1. Olive oil
2. Tinned tomatoes
3. Tinned legumes or beans
4. Soy sauce
5. Frozen vegetables
6. Flour
7. Pasta or rice
8. Tinned fish
9. Eggs
10. Bread
11. Olives
12. Meat from the freezer
13. Fresh onions
14. One spice or spice mix
15. One dried herb or herb mix

Notes

I used a good plain olive oil, red onions and frozen edamame (soy beans). In the “pasta or rice” category, I used mograbieh. It’s also sold as “Israeli couscous”, but the grains are much bigger than couscous. Although it looks a bit like a grain, it’s a wheat-and-water pasta. When I lived in the inner west of Sydney I’d sometimes buy fresh mograbieh (with a few chickpeas in the packet) in Lakemba. The advice was to sweat a finely sliced onion, turn the mograbieh in the oil and add hot stock, bring to a boil and then cover and simmer for a bit less than 15 minutes. When it’s for a salad such as this, you might want to drain (and maybe even rinse) the mograbieh to stop it being too unctuous. I didn’t use frozen meat, but only because I had some fresh meat in the fridge. Defrosted meat would be fine.

If you’re only allowed one spice blend, go straight to the “top of the shop”, ras el hanout. The name indicates that it’s the most superior blend by the big boss of the particular establishment you’re buying it from. I can remember reading in Christine Manfield’s 1995 Paramount Cooking that it was divine but unavailable in Australia. It’s now available at lots of places, including online from Herbie’s Spices in Sydney. The one I used was from Peter Watson, bought at a Portuguese deli here in Canberra, and comprising bay leaves, thyme, black peppercorns, nutmeg, ground cloves, cinnamon, coriander seeds, mace, cardamom, ginger, cumin seeds, allspice, turmeric, aniseed and cayenne. If you can’t find it, or can’t be stuffed looking, you could follow Manfield’s substitution suggestion of “a mild, yellow, spicy curry powder”.

Ingredients

Quantities are for three adults or two adults and two smallish kids.

2 Tbsp olive oil plus extra
2-3 onions, red if you have them on hand
3 free range chicken thighs
ras el hanout or a sweet and spicy yellow curry powder
1 cup mograbieh/Israeli cous cous
375 g packet of frozen edamame
1/2 cup black olives

Method

Generously rub ras el hanout into chicken thighs and leave them on a rack or in one of those tupperware thingies with the plastic rack inside. Don’t be stingy with the ras el hanout because this is the only seasoning in the dish and it’s got a lot of weight to carry. Leaving the chicken for five minutes is good, overnight is great. If you don’t want meat, it can also be used with tempeh or drained and pressed firm tofu. The process (and a brilliant recipe) is at Lucy’s Nourish Me. I find the fresh local tofu I get (from Shanghai Yulin at Choku Bai Jo or the EPIC Farmer’s Market) doesn’t need draining, but tofu from the supermarket or Asian grocery probably will.

Slice two or three purple onions thinly and cook them very slowly in some olive oil until they are “the colour of amber and soft enough to crush between thumb and finger“. (I ♥ Nigel Slater bad.) Of course if it’s a work night, you can just add a pinch of brown sugar and use a slightly higher heat. You’ll have fried onions rather than caramelised ones, but you’ll have dinner on the table before 9 pm which I find aids digestion and also domestic harmony. If you have time on the weekend, make a big batch and you can use them in things all through the week – in pastas, on sandwiches and pizzas, on top of grains and so on. There’s a recipe from Skye Gyngell’s A Year in My Kitchen, although you might want to read these cautionary words first ( I had the same problems that Joanna describes when I made them.)

Add measured mograbieh into a saucepan with a pinch of salt and a cup and a half of boiling water from the kettle. Cook hard for about 10 – 12 minutes, rinse and drain well.

Cook the edamame in boiling water for about 6 – 7 minutes and drain. If you’ve bought edamame in the pod, shell it and make a mental note to buy the podded sort next time.

Combine the mograbieh and edamame in a serving bowl. I like a low, wide one best. You can leave the dish in the fridge until dinner if that suits. When you’re ready, cook the chicken under the grill or in a cast iron pan in a little olive oil, rest it and slice thinly. Combine the mograbieh, edamame, caramelised onions and chicken. If there isn’t enough oil from the onions, add a little more then grind over some black pepper and serve.

If you’re not doing a “pantry challenge” in the formal sense, just making dinner out of what’s at home, you can get a bit more elaborate.

I added all the shooting tops of a coriander plant I don’t want to go to seed yet – you can use whichever of your leafy green herbs is bolting. I also added some thinly sliced radish and blanched asparagus; pretty much any veg you have in the crisper will do, but make sure the pieces are small enough to make sense with the rest of the ingredients. This time I forgot the olives, but next time will use the small semi-dried black ones we get from nearby Homeleigh Grove.

The caramelised onions mean this salad doesn’t need a dressing, particularly if you’ve remembered the olives. But I mixed a clove of garlic, a pinch of salt and the juice and rind of half a lemon into about half a cup of thick yoghurt anyway. If I’d had a ripe pomegranate, I would have sprinkled some juicy seeds over the top.

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.

Neither does the child eat vegetables. As a baby he was an all-organic superstar who chowed down on avocado, chomped through bowls of pumpkin and lapped up beans and salad and carrots. But as time wore on, vegetables were gradually excluded from his diet. All those books that say you just have to keep offering veges and they’ll soon enough accept them are WRONG. He doesn’t even like potato, unless it comes fried. If allowed, he would live on Easy Mac, pasta and pesto, pasta and cheese and two minute noodles. It has to be white or yellow to be accepted and he is seven.

This is very hard on me, because I like to think I am a Good Mum. In those dim days when the child was an aching abstract want rather than an actual gaping maw I cherished Earth Mother fantasies of pottering around the vege garden gathering fresh things that I and my toddler would take home and (switch to Nigella Lawson fantasies) whip into amazingness, his shining head resting on mine as we contemplated our artistry.

Alas, and alack. The bloody kid doesn’t like vegetables and thinks that vegetable gardens offer one thing and one thing only – opportunities to uproot things. These days he’s matured a little and actually will spend time with me in the garden, but only because I recently installed the world’s biggest trampoline. He’s not really into cooking either, although he is quite partial to collecting eggs from the chooks and to eating omelettes made from their eggs. But again, that’s white and yellow food.

So, I am obliged to play cunning tricks upon him to ensure he gets some vitamins and minerals. This soup is my favourite. It’s almost pure vegetable, and he doesn’t suspect a thing! Part of the trick is calling it what it looks like, rather than what is in it. But it’s a truly lovely late winter/early spring dish and perfect for grown up dinner parties, as well as kids’ tea time. It’s substantial, but takes no more than 45 minutes to cook. What could be better?

WHITE SOUP

Essentials:

1 cauliflower, pure of heart (and aren’t they lush at this time of year?)
1 leek (only the white and light green bits) or one onion
1 good sized bulb of fennel (not the leaves or stems)
1 litre of stock (chicken or vege, depending on your inclinations)
a good slosh of organic full cream milk/soy

Optionals (what you have or what looks nice):
coupla spuds
coupla parsnips
a turnip

To make the soup, slice the onion or leek and sweat it in some butter. It’s really important you don’t brown it! Then cut the fennel into quarters and then fairly thin slices (fennel is tough and sometimes woody and needs long cooking, especially the root base in the centre). Sweat the fennel while you cut up the cauli. Peel the other veges, slice and dice them and chuck them in. Once it’s all in the pot, add the stock and simmer the lot for about 20 minutes, or until all the veges are looking a bit see through.

Use either a blender or a hand blender to reduce the entire saucepan’s worth to a light puree, and thin it down to your tastes with the milk. If you are not diet conscious, and let’s face it, few of those who frequent this site are, you can finish it off with a splodge of cream. Depending on the shade of your stock, it will be either light brown or pure white. It’s goes well with parmesan, and would look very nice garnished with some sage in burnt butter, or with fresh versions of almost any herbs you like. These are hypotheticals, for I dare not garnish. He might suspect it’s got vegetables in it!

DISCLAIMER: White soup does not work on all children. The child of my Moisty will not eat anything white, although he is also seven. Maybe he would like Ampersand Duck’s beetroot risotto?

DISCLAIMER 2: No political aspirations were harmed in the preparation of this post. As far as I know.

This recipe is going viral. I found Dupleix’s original recipe here, via this wee Scottish blog (love the header), and another one on a Brazilian blog, the Technicolor Kitchen. In this incarnation it’s called Crash-hot potatoes.

But wait- there’s more! there’s an international dispute surrounding this recipe, no less. Did Dupleix steal Florentine chef Michael Chiarello’s Potatoes Da Delfina? No, it seems. Jill spills the beans here to blogger Trish at Light Sweet Crude. (H/T to Zoe.)

Get enough small, round floury potatoes to cover the base of a roasting pan or pyrex dish. You could use chats, new or whatever name your greengrocer gives to little’uns. If you don’t have this type of potato I suppose there is no law against cutting up bigger ones, it just won’t look as posh. Get the oven going berserk – 220 celsius or even hotter.

Boil the potatoes until they’re cooked, but not terribly soft. Drain them and tip them into the roasting pan so they’re kind of jostling together. You only want one layer.

Press a potato masher down on each potato so it bursts slightly. Don’t mash them – just break them a little. They should all be crowded together and touching each other.

Drizzle all of them with some EVOO, then sprinkle coarse sea or rock salt and fresh rosemary over the lot. How much EVOO is up to you. I like lots, but YMMV.

Incinerate in the hot oven for maybe fifteen-twenty minutes until the broken tops of the potatoes are golden brown and crusty and the interiors have done with any unfinished cooking business. You’re after soft, fluffy spuds with a salty baked crust. Too easy.