So special

My only known allergy is to Penicillin and although I am intolerant to a number of things, none of them fall under the category of food so never before have I ticked the box of special dietary requirements...until this week-end.

On saturday afternoon, along with a few friends, I went to a High Tea party to celebrate a friend's birthday. He is not gay, he just likes the more sophisticated things in life. He also made a grander entrance than he might have liked, hoping across the floor of the fancy Victoria Room with what he discovered later to be a broken foot.

High Tea is not a code for beer. It really means Tea accompanied with some delicious morsels of sweet and savory foods presented on an elegant tiered platter. Scones with cream and jam on the bottom, mini cheesecakes, red velvet cupcakes and fruit tartlets in the middle and little sandwiches on top. Well, that's if you're not special because I got my little sandwiches on my very own little plate on the side. I even got more than everybody else's allowance. The only downside was that my sandwiches were exactly the same but without the meat. Cucumber and cream cheese sandwich anyone?

If that wasn't enough to make me feel "different", just a few hours later, I had to tackle the quintessential pub meal, an icon of the Australian food scene. Over the years, I have built a reputation for ordering almost exclusively the burger. I usually scan the menu in search of it without bothering to read about other options. So when the time came to order food, and I had read the whole menu in search of a vegetarian friendly meal, my options were limited to say the least. I could have wedges, chips or a platter of dips. In a feat of despair, I asked Chris to order the wedges for me but he convinced me to negotiate with the bar tender in the hope I could have something a bit more meal-ish. In the end, we settled on a chickpea fritter burger which was the closest thing to a veggie burger. It worked out pretty well with my only punishment for annoying the staff with my special needs being that I was given the two bottoms of the bun while Emma, with her more traditional beef burger, enjoyed both tops...

All in all, it was a successful vegie day despite the obstacles and maybe I was dealt an extra challenging day to make up for the accidental concealed bacon I had the night before. As far as I am concerned, I came out of the week-end with a clean slate!

Tajine style pumpkin and chickpea bake

So here's a tasty little invention which might help you forget about meat for a minute...

INGREDIENTS

1 brown onion - chopped finely
2/3 cloves of garlic - crushed
1/2 tsp tajine mix spices
1 butternut pumpkin (or other type) - cut into chunks - boiled for 5 minutes or just softening
1 can diced tomatoes
200g frozen spinach
1 can chickpeas

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 180C.

In a large frypan, heat up a good lug of olive oil. Fry onion and garlic until onion softens. Add tajine spices and fry until fragrant.

Add the pumpkin to the pan for a few minutes until coated in spice mix. Remove from pan and pour into a lightly oiled baking dish.

Pour can of tomatoes and frozen spinach into frypan. Stir until the spinach is unfrozen. Pour mixture into baking dish.

Add chickpeas to baking dish and some water to almost cover.

Bake for 30/40 minutes until pumpkin is cooked through.

Serve with couscous and enjoy!

To meat or not to meat?

I'll start by saying that after a little over 2 meat-free weeks, I am very happy with the experience to date. I can't say I have had any cravings for it. More the opposite actually and I think that is because I have been feeling really light this week and my brain has decided to associate meat with feelings of heaviness. I have felt full of energy and positive. This could have to do with many things but in a time when life could seem a little bit overwhelming and challenging, I have been feeling great and have decided that this new diet might be responsible, at least to some extent.

Therefore, I think that the month of June and after will be a breeze on a personal level. I assumed that the trickier part would on a social level and I have been surprised by how easily the people around me are dealing with it. Surprisingly, most people seem to have made the decision not to use what I may have said about Vegetarianism against me and I am grateful. Yes, there was a time when I couldn't understand how to cook something without meat or why anyone would want to eat it. The lesson is "only a fool never changes his mind", "treat others as you want to be treated" and the old "never say never".

Nevertheless, it is a "coming out" of sorts. I am not about to call myself a true vegetarian. I am definitely only experimenting at the moment but still, I do feel that to go back and start eating meat straight away would be kinda lame and if I do use my joker, it will be because I have thought it through and through.

Last night was a good test actually. After a long day of driving from Newcastle to Albury, we walked into the kitchen to find a slow cooked chicken casserole nicely simmering away. A few hours earlier I had told Chris in the car that although I was enjoying it, a slow cooked meal could well be what tips me over the edge. Well, turns out, I didn't even wince. It smelled delicious and I'm sure it tasted just as good but I felt just as happy tucking into my vegetarian tajine, which Chris' mum got the ingredients for in a last minute dash after our very short notice announcement of my new regime...oops. I made it up by cooking it myself while Chris' parents were away.

In fact it was so good that I'll be enjoying the leftovers tonight while everyone gets stuck into a juicy roast beef around me. Manouf!

My Meat-Free June Challenge...

Hi everyone,

I am back on this blog, as opposed to that blog or even this other blog to introduce you to a self-inflicted and not terribly rational challenge. This month, I am going meat-free. I therefore fall under the category of ovo-lacto vegetarians because there is nothing in this world that could make me give cheese up.

Why? I can hear you asking yourself...Well, dunno. Just felt like it really. If I must delve a little bit deeper into my intentions, it probably stems from a couple of reasons:

1- We didn't have that much meat during our travels and I realised that I didn't miss it quite as much as I would have expected.

2- At the moment, Australia is in such a way that meat of any kind of quality is extremely dear and therefore, I would rather pick quality over quantity. Although, in this case, I am picking neither.

3- I want to observe and pay attention to changes to my body and mind this modified diet might incur.

4- The effects of the meat industry on our fragile planet is pretty major...

This is how I rate my chances at achieving success in the short-term (ie. June):

1- Hopefully, my will power alone will get me over the line. Will power is something I believe I have but feel the need to test at the moment. Just so you know, I am giving myself one Joker to use when I see fit. Maybe tomorrow, maybe never...

2- I love legumes! (lentils, chickpeas, beans...)

3- We have recently been buying our fresh produce from the Newcastle Farmer's market. The quality of the fruit and vegetables means that it is conceivable to create a dish around those rather than a meal being all about the meat.

Long term :

1- I will probably re-introduce fish into my diet.

2- I will probably eat meat occasionally, just because sometimes, being a vegetarian is a pain.

3- Tofu can only go so far...

But for now, I am sticking to it and will pop onto the soup chef once in a while to share some thoughts, recipes and whatever else I can think of...

Until then, Wish me luck, feel free to join me or just give a few words of encouragement,

Cheers, L.

Tip for today: There are heaps of websites like this one which tell you what is in season at the moment. Buying seasonally means that you will pay less money and have better produce, with better taste and more nutrients.

Christmas dinner, oh yeah!

This year, we spent Christmas in Nice and after spending it 3 times in a row in Australia (which was also super delicious but different), I was excited to get the whole French menu bonanza again! It had been a while and it was worth the wait.

Yum!! But of course, what would be the point of Christmas without the good company which made it to Nice despite snowstorms in Paris and having to cross the Atlantic Ocean to be here. This Christmas wouldn't have been the same without Mothe & Lolo, Papa, Paulu & Marco, Jeremy, Bastien, Sandrine & little Lena, Bonne-maman, Bon-papa & Pierrot, my darling husband Chris and yours dearest, the Soup Chef.

Is there anything with a better goodness to easiness ratio than a roast?

Yesterday, chris went skiing and I figured that he would be feeling like a good warm and filling dinner. Besides, a full on tartiflette with a whole reblochon, I couldn't think of anything better than a roast to greet him with the appropriate amount of domestic godessness.

The thing that makes a roast hard to beat is that it's so incredibly easy to prepare while still being exciting and lip-smacking good. You can feed quite a few people and it doesn't need to be expensive at all.

I bought a 1kg pork roast. Usually, I would just rub it with some herbs and olive oil, stick a few garlic cloves into the meat, stick it in the oven with a few veggies and be done with it. This time, I decided to make it a bit more exciting so I looked up "Pork roast mustard" on google and came across a really good mustard and honey marinade recipe. It barely requires any ingredients and is delicious. Once the ingredients for the marinade are combined in a small bowl, all you have to do is cut a few slits into the roast and apply the marinade generously on the meat and between the slits so that it is really everywhere. It will create a deliciously hot, sweet & sticky layer of crispiness on top and soak into all of your vegetables. A good rule is to bake for 1/2 hour for 500 grams of meat. To check that it is cooked throughout, insert a knife into the middle. If the juice comes out quite clear, then it should be cooked.

For vegetables, you can use whatever you like, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, onion, garlic cloves in their skin, beetroot, parsnip, carrots etc... Cut them into chunks, toss them with oil to coat and then put them into the same baking dish as the meat. Once the meat is ready, you can remove it and turn the oven heat up a little bit for 10 or 15 minutes to give the vegetables a nice crisp. Once they are cooked, season them with salt, pepper, herbs. It doesn't hurt to also boil or steam a few green beans as a side.

Honey and mustard glazing

(for 1.5 kg pork roast)

1/4 cup honey

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tbsp black pepper (this is somewhat optional, you can obviously reduce the amount)

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed

1/2 teaspoon salt

Who would be crazy enough to invite a chef for dinner?

Recenlty, the Alliance Francaise has been providing most of our social events. A couple weeks ago, they organised a party to celebrate the yearly arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau, a French tradition marking the first bottled wine of the year. The wine is not especially great but it is usually a good occasion to get a little bit tipsy. On that occasion, we hung out with a group from Chris's French class and had a good time so we thought we would keep riding this wave of "outside worldness" and organised a dinner at home the following week.

Friday came quickly enough but we were well organised. We had planned a menu, had all the ingredients and got to work a little bit after lunch as to avoid any flustered panic later. It is only when the meat for the "Daube Nicoise" (a meat and red wine stew) persisted in remaining hard and chewy after 2 1/2 hours of simmering that I realised how dumb and illogical it is to invite a chef for dinner...

Yes, people who learn French can also have a life outside of the Alliance Francaise and as it happens, one of our guests is a talented (and remarkably thin) chef from Serbia. Luckily, the other guests distinguish themselves in other fields but still, the pressure to perform was high and that, for a soup chef can lead to all sorts of overwhelming feelings. Nevertheless, we kept our cool and eventually, after many hours of simmering in a bath of red wine, the meat did soften up and the Daube came out quite nicely. We served it with some fresh pasta and green beans. Although not very high on presentation, this dish was convivial, plentiful and just what you need on a cold winter night (it's getting really cold here).

Of course, we followed that by a delicious and very popular cheese platter but the "coup de Grace" came with dessert. Following yet another one of Rosa's recipes, although with some variations, I had prepared a "Pear tart with hazelnut and honey". It was really delicious and perfect for a cold night. We served it with a little bit of cream on the side and it wasn't long until everyone was fighting over the last crumbs in the dish. We finished the meal with some coffee and the nougat Magdalena, the chef, had brought over from her own home cooking experiments.

In conclusion, Do not be detered by the foolishness of inviting a chef to taste your cooking. Although intimidating, many good things come out of it such as :

- the home-made goodie they will bring over, in this case Nougat,

- the incomparable feeling of having a chef ask you for a recipe,

- no one else does it and so you will seem not only brave but also really nice,

- and of course, they might return the favour!

Daube Nicoise

(serves 8)

1.5 kg of beef for stews, cut into 3cm chunks

3 tbsp olive oil

2 or 3 yellow onions, chopped coarsely

3 or 4 tomatoes, chopped finely

4 or 5 carrots, sliced coarsely

3 garlic cloves, sliced finely

the zest from one orange

dried herbs (laurel, thyme, rosemary)

2 cloves

some salt & pepper

50 cl. of red wine

300 gr. mushrooms, sliced of quartered

In a large saucepan, heat the oil and brown the beef on all sides in batches. Remove from the pan.

Add the onion and tomatoes and cook until onion softens. Add carrots, garlic, orange zest, the dried herbs, the cloves, some salt and pepper to taste. Add the wine and if necessary a little bit of water to cover. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered for 2 to 3 hours or until meat has softened. Stir from time to time. Add the mushrooms about half-way through the cooking.

Serve with some fresh pasta, or gnocchi and some greens on the side. This recipe is even better reheated the next day so make sure you make enough for some leftovers!