The art of eating artichokes.

I can't tell you how excited I was when Krista asked if I wanted to join her for lunch and then told me she was making artichokes with hollondaise sauce. I have never cooked or eaten an artichoke and I was eager to learn. I have had it in dips before, but never in it's original form and it can look somewhat intimidating!

The website Simply Recipes gives a great instruction on how to eat them, so you will find tips there very useful. When I got there the artichokes were boiling away madly. Their stems and tops had been cut off and the tips of the bottom petals that were sharp had been trimmed back. They boiled for about 45mins. Only once I was eating them and said I could taste something citrussy did she tell me that she had put a half lime and tangerine into the water as they were boiling. Genius! I think Simply Recipes calls for a lemon, you can add all manner of things to help flavour it. The hollondaise sauce was egg yolks and melted butter that she whisked over a steaming pan. You can also just dip them in melted butter, I think this would be delicious too!

This is what the artichoke looks like before you start eating it. You take it apart a petal at a time and eat the fleshy, lighter part at the base of the petal. You do this by scraping it between your top and bottom teeth. Sounds strange but I love the kind of food that you have to work for, crab being a prime example!

You keep peeling the petals away and eating them.

The very centre is pink/purple. The closer to the centre you get the more of the petal you can eat.

In the very centre you will find this. The artichoke is a thistle after all! Using a spoon scrape the wispy part out (called the choke) and you will be left with a basket or bowl shape. You can see half of it exposed here. This basket is actually the heart of the artichoke. Eat the basket! Yum!

And if eating the artichoke wasn't good enough, look at the absolutely stunning pile of petals that was left behind after. So beautiful! What a glorious Summers' day lunch.

Semi frozen lemon mousse with blueberry swirl and drinks.

This is a continuation of the Saganaki post - it was all one evenings dining but I felt that the food deserved it's own entry........

So I was busy at work and feeling that it was a waste of money to buy a dessert to take over when I could buy ingredients and make one. I had an hour and half at home to make one before I was meant to be at dinner, so I got thinking. Quick desserts? Summer desserts? Lemon mousse came to mind. On the way home I picked up cream and lemons and blueberries, because blueberries go so well with lemon. Thankfully we now have internet because the first thing I did was Google 'lemon mousse' and browse through some recipes for a good one, and a fast one. Epicurious had the answer. Though my half dozen eggs weren't enough for the recipe (yikes!) so I ran back out to buy more and got cracking on dessert.

It was really easy.

1 cup sugar ( I only had brown sugar and I used just under a cup because I don't like things too sweet)

3/4 cup lemon juice

1 1/2tbsp lemon zest

6 yolks

2 eggs

Mix these in a metal bowl over simmering water. Whisk until it thickens and the internal temperature is 160degrees (this took longer than I thought it would and at one point I thought about taking it off early but it did eventually reach the temp). Cool and whisk occasionally. I cooled it by sitting it in some cold water in the sink initially and then putting it in the fridge. Time was of the essence to me.

You also beat 1 1/2 cups of cream.

Once the lemon curd mixture is cool, add a small amount of the whipped cream to it to lighten it and then add the rest and fold it in. It is so beautiful, this light yellow with streaks of darker yellow where it didn't mix in. The Epicurious recipe has you serve the mousse with whipped cream on top and then fruit. I decided otherwise.

I had blueberries to go with it. In my mind I was going to gently cook them and make a form of coulis which I would drizzle into the mousse and swirl it around and it would look beautiful with the dark purple streaking through the yellows. I put half a pint of berries in a small pan with the juice of half a lemon and a spoon of sugar and let them come to the boil then simmer for a minute or so. Then I mashed them with a potato masher! And put the pan in the freezer for rapid cooling.

I wasn't sure what adding this liquidy stuff (once it was cool!) would do to my mousse but anyway. I made pockets in the mousse and dropped some blueberry stuff in and then dragged it around with a knife in swirls. It pretty much went through the whole dish which was fine. It ended up in the freezer at dinner through lack of space on the fridge and when we ate it it was semi frozen. I had taken it out and mixed it a few times as you would if you were making ice cream. It was amazing, even though I say so myself. There is something to be said about fresh lemons and berries in a creamy, cold form. It was still tart and crisp.

We had dessert with a drink of Xante, which is pear and vanilla flavoured Congnac.

It is so delicious, but really strong, I managed a few sips of it, then traded it off for some more dessert!

Krista has these frozen champagne grapes in the freezer which were great as ice cubes or as decoration.

We rounded out the evening with tea. Mulberry Magic tea from Davids' Tea. If you ever thought that there was a limited variety of tea you were wrong, this place has walls and walls of teas, full of flowers and fruit and all kinds of things. This one is mulberry leaves and macadamia nuts and it was divine. It almost tasted sweet, from the nuts, which is my one complaint with those kinds of teas, that they don't taste the way they smell. But this one did.

Me thinks a trip to Davids' Tea is in the forseeable future. This was fine dining at it's finest. All el fresco with candles and beautiful china! What a treat!

Saganaki with Kefalotyri cheese.

How beautiful does that look?! Yep, I know, and it tasted just as amazing!

I was round at my old neighbours place for dinner on Saturday, it is nice to be back in the same neck of the woods and to be close to old friends. We had been discussing during the week about what we wanted to eat and neither of us could come up with anything until the day before when Krista text me to say she had found the cheese that the Greeks light on fire and yell Opa! Greek it was. She found some lovely slouvaki skewers at Kensington Market at the same time. I was bringing some salad stuff and was in charge of dessert but because I was working that day I worried that I would have to opt for a bought dessert or maybe just some really nice chocolate from a new chocolate shop. They make chocolate the old fashioned way with just cocoa and sugar! It is very tasty! I digress, as per usual. Saganaki.

So she had this beautiful hard cheese called Kefalotyri. Apparently there are a few cheeses that you can use to make this. They got a cast iron pan heating on the bbq until it was smoking hot. In the mean time, Krista cut the cheese and ran it under the tap. Instead of patting it dry she tossed it in flour. It then got fried in oil in the really hot pan and put straight onto our plates.

We didn't flame ours, but we did drizzle it with fresh lemon juice and olive oil and top it with tomatoes, olives, oregano and cracked pepper. It was delicious. The cheese is really firm, and salty, with crisp edges from being fried. It didn't 'squeak' against your teeth like haloumi does. It is a must! I can't wait to eat this again.

Cream of Buckwheat.

My new favourite thing is cream of buckwheat. Yum! I found it while looking for a breakfast cereal that didn't have wheat in it. I am also eating less carbs and buckwheat is a complex carb so it is better one to eat in general. It seems to be another of those extremely good for you foods along with my old favourite quinoa! It is actually the seed of a fruit rather than a cereal or grain and is very popular for it's gluten free properties. You can find it in noodles (soba) or pancakes and it is even used in making gluten free beer. I did some Googling of it and there was lots of positive things to find.

It was easy enough to make this 'porridge'; bringing some milk or water to the boil, adding the buckwheat, returning to the boil, reducing heat, simmering for set amount of time. No problems! It is actually smoother than oatmeal porridge which I was really pleased about. I used to love Cream of Wheat, and this was getting pretty close to that. I also make corn porridge occasionally but I find it takes a lot of cooking.

It is a great way to start the day, I put a little brown sugar on it and it's good to go! Very filling and keeps you full for a long time.

Pan seared tuna and cold rolls.

The next meal I made in the new place was more adventurous because I had been grocery shopping and because I actually had some food cravings to address. The cravings were mainly for cold food - fresh, crisp veggies and some seafood. Can you tell that a trip for sushi would have cured this? Well, that it would, but I needed to cook! I would have been happy with the cold rolls on their own but I came across some tuna steaks and I have never cooked tuna before so I thought I would give it a go! I had also been reading Small Food and was inspired by some of the recipes in there.

The casing for your cold rolls is rice paper.I found this with the help of a friend in the Ethnic food aisle at the grocery store. The packaging does a very good job of telling you what to do so don't worry if you have never used it before (like me). I set about getting my fillings ready.

I thawed some frozen cooked shrimp and finely cut some cucumber (with the seeds removed), carrots and green onions. I also had some bean sprouts and avocado. I made a dipping sauce with some sweet chilli sauce, fish sauce and lime juice. Be careful with fish sauce, it is really strong and can take over a dish in a matter of drops if you put too much in. The dipping sauce was wonderful, sweet, spicy, sour, all the good things!

Now that the fillings were ready I turned my attention back to the rice paper. The sheets are round as you can see in the picture. They are stiff, so you need to soak them in warm water for 5-10 seconds then put them on a damp towel so that they don't stick. I had a rubber trivet/heat proof mat which I thought would work just fine and it did. You work with one at a time. I put a little of everything in the centre of the paper and by the time I went to roll it the paper had softened even more and was easily manipulated. You roll it like a taco, with one end tucked in and the other end open.

Under instruction from the packaging I laid my rolls on lettuce leaves and covered them with a damp towel (or face cloth in my case!) and left them while I cooked the tuna. This stops them from drying out.You can make cold rolls ahead of time and keep them in the fridge for a while.

I rubbed the tuna with olive oil, salt and pepper then placed it in a smoking hot pan. I learnt from Chef Stu to oil the meat rather than the pan, amongst a multitude of other useful tips! I reiterate that I have never cooked tuna before. I also know that you shouldn't eat it raw unless it is sushi grade tuna. This made me a little nervous about leaving it as rare as I wanted it to be. I seared both sides until they were a rich brown colour and then went on to lightly brown the edges as well. In hind sight, the last step may not have been necessary as the fish was medium well by the time I ate it. However, you can never be too careful and with fish just from the local grocery store (rather than fish monger), better play it safe than sorry. 

I added a side of soya sauce with chilli in it for dipping the fish in. It was a wonderful meal, so fresh, so full of goodness, so many bold flavours and textures! So filling as well. The tuna is like a real steak, make no mistake that because it is fish it will be light. It was heavy and dense. Small portions!!!!!

It felt so good to sit and eat a meal that took lots of attention to detail to make and that was all new to me! And even better that it was a success.

Chunky vegetable soup.

Apologies for being absent for so long, and I say this to myself as much as anyone else because I have really suffered from the lack of contact with my culinary world! I can tell that my soul suffers when I don't cook! I am pleased to announce that we are now comfortably ensconsed in our new home after a haze of apartment hunting, finding, moving, unpacking, furniture buying and utility set ups. We finally got internet this morning, hence the hasty visit to the blog! Right, that said, lets move on the real reason we are here, food!

The first meal I made in our new place was vegetable soup. I had a fridge full of odds and ends of vegetables that we had dragged around from place to place with us and I had had enough of them! One time solution to odds and ends is soup. You can do this with anything that you have in your fridge, no need to use exactly what I had. I had a couple of onions, a zucchini, some mushrooms, several carrots, some squash (1/2), cabbage (1/4-1/3) and celery. The only things I used that weren't from the crisper in my fridge were a can of diced tomatoes and a chicken stock cube, and water from the tap! And pepper!

I cut up the onions and fried them in the bottom of a pan with some olive oil. I added to this cm cubes of squash and let them fry along too. After they had had a head start I added the can of diced tomatoes and then the rest of the vegetables cut up, a stock cube, a cup of water and some pepper. And I let it cook. Easy. There was enough salt from the stock cube I found. You could use broth if you had any instead of the stock cube. It cooked for maybe 20minutes, check on it and see when your biggest chunks of veg are cooked, which in my case were the squash cubes. It is then ready to eat. My husband put some chilli sauce on it for a kick which was very tasty.

I could have eaten this soup every day! I loved it. So simple, so easy, you know everything in it is good for you! It was a complete lunch, or a good half of any meal. I kept it in the fridge in a container and it would heat up in a bowl in minutes, so handy! I will also add that I made it so thick and chunky that it could really be vegetables with a little bit of liquid rather than a soup., but you can adjust that with how much water you add! It was the perfect starting meal in a home where we lacked all basics in the kitchen.