Get your buns in the oven: SBS Food Online

Get your buns in the oven: SBS
"The weather is cooling, the leaves are turning and the long hot days of summer are receding into the distance. In Australia this can only mean one thing... Easter is on its way and with it, hot cross buns."

Writes Jane de Graaff 
Read the full article on SBS here.


Note: Article featured at www.sbs.com.au/food

With special thanks to Tony Dench and the team at Dench Bakers in Melbourne for allowing me to see how the pro's do it.

Introduction to Cupping at Market Lane: Broadsheet

Intro to Cupping at Market Lane:


We were lucky enough to get along to an Introduction to Cupping at Market Lane for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Here's how it works.

By: Jane de Graaff
Images: Julia Atkinson


Note: Article featured at the brilliant www.broadsheet.com.au 

Last Minute, But Not Too Late:

Last Minute But Not Too Late: Melbourne Food & Wine Festival


Melbourne Food and Wine Festival: We've chosen some great last minute events that there's still time to catch.
By: Jane de Graaff


Note: article featured at www.broadsheet.com.au 

Melbourne Food & Wine Festival: So much to taste, so little time...

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival: so much to taste, so little time...


There's no doubt about it, the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is big this year. 
But Broadsheet has got you covered writes Jane de Graaff.


Note: article featured at www.broadsheet.com.au 

Finger lickin' Chinese chicken:

Occasionally when I have a little free-range bird on hand I'll be thinking roast chicken, but not the usual rosemary and lemon with veg type deal.
Sometimes the little chook calls for a treatment that is a little more pungent, a little more spiced, a little more.. exotic (to me anyway).
This is where the trusty soy sauce comes in handy. It's one of those things that I panic without. What can I say... me and salt- it's a long romance- so here comes the Chinese chicken.

Ingredients:

• 1 x 1kg chicken - washed and patted dry
• 1 Tablespoon seasame oil
• 1/4 cup soy sauce - you can vary it up with light & dark combos
• 1 Tablespoon oyster sauce
• 1/2 Tablespoon Chinese five spice
• 2 cloves of garlic - finely sliced and a little smashed
• A good slug of shaoxing/Chinese cooking wine
• A healthy grind of fresh cracked pepper
• Fresh or powdered ginger to taste - I like it quite gingery

Method:

Mix all the ingredients except for the chicken in a bowl and make sure they are well combined- no one likes chunks of powdered ginger- whisking is good. Then place the washed chicken in a glass bowl and pour the marinade over. Tip a little into the cavity too and rub it around to get the flavour inside and out. Cover the dish tightly and place it in the fridge for a few hours or until ready to cook.

Thoroughly preheat the oven to 180degC. Place the chicken on a wire rack over a dish of hot water- using boiling water helps to get it up to temp and to keep the oven hot. 

Roast on the middle rack of your oven for about 45mins, basting with left over marinate every 15mins or so.

Turn the chicken and place back in the oven until cooked through, maybe another half an hour, basting as before. Just before you're done, turn the gorgeous chicken right side up again to let it crisp up a little. 

Take it out of the oven and allow the chicken to rest, covered, for ten mins or so. 

Serves with wilted bok choy and steamed lotus root, or any lovely Asian greens that take your fancy. 

Just as easy as a roast chicken, but just a little bit different.

Tomato Paste - save the season!

I don't have a one track cooking heritage. I don't have a cultural tradition that I savour and salvage and store away.
For anyone who's followed my bits here and there, I am slowly discovering my Dutch heritage- but it's a slow process owing to Holland's lack of 'wow' factor on the world culinary stage and a family that has not had the hugest focus on their Dutch roots.
On my mothers side (Aussie, Scottish, possibly Jewish) we have little traditions of our own- but they are more family tradition grown from a love of exploratory and intrepid cooking than closely guarded, heritage specific cooking traditons passed on.
But I am NOT complaining- more marveling at the places where we find connection and tipping my hat to the friends who willingly hand on their own food culture traditions at my (I'm sure often prying) insistence.
In the meantime I start up little practices of my own- wonderous culinary gems gathered willy nilly from the things I love and have a great desire to know more about.
Today I am glowing with the red jewels of the tomato season. Kilos of them heap on my kitchen bench. And in an effort to make the most of this and stock my own little larder- I am making tomato paste.
Why bother I hear you ask, when buying the stuff is so convenient and cheap? It's simple really. I like to know where my food comes from and what's in it above and beyond colouring and preservative #60214378 etc. To this end hear the pot sizzle and steam away on the stove and watch the wet goodness reduce to a brick red thickness.

Homemade Tomato Paste:

Ingredients

• 2.5kg super ripe tomatoes 
• 1/4 cup of olive oil - extra virgin is always best

Method:

Wash and chop the tomatoes into rough chunks. Heat the oil in a large soup pot and add the tomatoes. Cook the tomatoes covered for 10mins and then give a good stir. The y should be breaking up and have released a lot of liquid. Make sure the liquid is boiling and leave it to cook uncovered for a further 20mins. Allow to cool slightly and then using a stick blender, puree the tomato mixture until nice and smooth. I cover the top of the pot with a cloth so that hot liquid doesn't splash up and burn me. Some people like to run the mixture through a sieve here to remove seeds and skins, but I like to leave these in for a chunkier paste. 

Thoroughly heat the oven to 150degC. Lightly oil a large flat baking tray that will hold the tomato mixture and then pour it all into the tray.

Put the tray in the oven and cook it for roughly 3 hours, turning it over with a spatula every 30mins or so to make sure the moisture is removed evenly and you don't end up with over dried scabby bits- eewe. You'll see it slowly begin to thicken until it is a paste, just monitor it towards the end until it reaches the paste consistency you like.

Then spoon it into sterilised jars (check the Jam post for simple tips on sterilising jars) and top with a little oil to seal. Store in a cool, dry place -or the back of the fridge if you have room- until needed for pizzas, pasta sauces and soup flavour boosters once these balmy days are gone!

There you go- homemade tomato paste with no nasties- at a total of about $2 for 4 jars!!

It's more about flavour than cost, but if you do it at the right time of year, it's a damn sight cheaper and better than the last mad rush at the supermarket.

Note: Please excuse the undecorated bottle caps- I've run out of fabric, but not cooking initiative, and so I plough on regardless of the lack of frills!

I am a bandycoot! Neighbourhood figs:

Patience listened to my muffled giggles down the phone line; "You've been bandy-whating?"
"Bandy-cooting!" I reply, stuffing my bag of ill gotten gains into the boot of the car. "I'll be there in 5 minutes to get you." I disconnected, jammed the keys in the ignition and sped away from the scene of the crime!
Just to put it all into perspective, I was running late to collect him (Patience with a capital 'P') from some late-night work because I had decided that I was going to do something that had been niggling at me for weeks. I was going bandycooting!
Let me explain- bandycooting isn't quite what it sounds like, especially if you think it sounds like I am packing heat and hunting bandycoots. Oh no.
Bandycooting is acutally the rather poetic name given to people who (in the world wars) stole fruit and veggies from other people's backyards and crop patches during the night.
Snowdroppers stole other peoples underwear and clothes from the washing-line.
Bandycooters stole the food they were growing to try and make rations go further.
In fact, I am reliably informed by my mother (who takes tours for the Sydney Historic Houses Trust) that to be suspected of 'badycooting' was the worst kind of shadow you could cast on a persons good name in these times- after all, if other people had put in the hard work to grow their own supplies, why hadn't you?

Just to be clear, I wasn't technically a total bandycoot. I wasn't climbing fences onto private land and raiding the hard work of the unsuspecting backyard gardener. We have out own little hard-won plot of veg and I know how much it would hurt if someone pillaged our tiny crop.
I was being a little more thoughtful in my 'cooting'- raiding an unloved local tree for suburban figs. This tree sits by the side of the main road, on public land outside an office block and is just groaning with fruit.
In fact it is begging for people like me to stop by and unload it of it's juicy burden- after all, if we don't it just ends up as half-eaten bat-bitten rot on the roadside.
But don't worry, there's plenty of fruit higher up for the batties to continue feasting on, it's a tall tree.
What is discovered when I got to the tree under cover of darkness was twofold.
1.) I am not a very good bandycooter- having neglected to change out of my sparkly metallic silver top and hence standing out like a reflective beacon in the night (so much for being inconspicuous).
2.) I wasn't being quite as resourceful or as innovative as I thought, someone had beaten me to the punch and much of the ripe fruit from lower branches was gone... this wasn't the work of bats.

Still, I was there and I wasn't leaving without my prize! So I jumped and jiggled, reached and stretched to net what was ripe and within my grasp. I managed to gather a neat little pile of about 10 beautiful, sticky-ripe figs... and they were subsequently delicious!
Sure it mightn't have been the biggest haul, but it was certainly one of the more satisfying. I'm even keeping one little figgy to see if I can strike a tree of my own. You never know, might be my tree that's causing a little roadside joy in the future.
In the meantime I'm keeping an eye on that tree for the next round of fruit. Just as soon as the green ones come good I'm hoping I'll get in first for the harvest, and considering I saw a little old woman out there in broad daylight just a few days ago, I won't be so shy about it either!