Spring has arrived. Taking Chloe the dog on our normal route through the park – not a leisure park, but one for people to throw things around and have them brought back by exuberantly hairy creatures – I was affronted by three separate couples slothfully arranged across the paddock. The sun has come out armed with all its seductive powers and Melburnians, as always, are helpless.

So why am I making soup?

Green lentil and silver beet soup
(Adapted from The Greens Cookbook)

I started writing about this soup before it was finished, before I’d even tasted it. That’s because it came from the Greens restaurant in San Francisco, the makers of my all-time favourite cookbook Fields of Greens – the kind of book where everything works, everything tastes good, every time. Except the Lasagne with Mushroom-Port Sauce.

225g green lentils
1.75 litres water (plus any tomato juice – see below)
1 bay leaf
1 stalk celery, sliced thinly (I didn’t have celery so I substituted some of the delicate inner stalks of the silver beet)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Combine lentils, water, bay leaf, celery and salt in a soup pot. Bring to the boil and then reduce heat slightly and cook at a slow boil while you make the soffritto.

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tablespoons parsley (I used basil)
3 tomatoes chopped – juices reserved for stock above (fresh is lovely, but canned is fine)

Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and salt and cook over medium-high heat for a few minutes. Add the garlic and herbs and cook gently until the onion is soft. Add the tomatoes and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Add this soffritto to the lentils and cook until the lentils are soft and the soup is as thick as you like. I cooked mine for quite a while because I don’t like it too brothy.

1 bunch (450g) silver beet, spinach or sorrel, washed, destemmed and chopped into strips
Red wine or sherry vinegar, to taste

A few minutes before serving, add the silver beet to the soup and cook gently until just tender (more for silver beet, less for spinach and sorrel).

Add the vinegar to taste (start with a small splash – it should have a bite but not be vinegary. If that makes sense). Turn off the heat.

Leave to cool for a few minutes to release and intensify the flavours. Service with black pepper and parmesan or crème fraiche. I only had cream (this cream) and it was delicious.

********

Soup is swell; nourishing and soothing, satisfying not stonewalling, swanky and homely. So be darned to thee lovely warmth on my skin, I’m swilling soup.

David Lebovitz is one of my favourite bloggers. He also worked as a pastry chef at Chez Panisse, where I did a two month “internship” way back in 1999. Every Tuesday and Thursday I would work in the beautiful mahogany-framed kitchen and help make apricot and cherry upside-down cakes, snappy ginger cookies, and the famous Clay’s chocolate ice-cream (made with butter!).

One time, I had to separate 72 eggs into a white plastic bucket. Trembling, I used a little ramekin to separate each white first. The pastry chef asked me what I was doing. I explained to him, as if he were a child,  that I was concerned about ruining the batch with a drop of the ember yolk. He smiled and walked on.

This Zucchini, Almond and Olive Oil cake has nothing at all to do with Chez Panisse. David Lebovitz does have something to do with this cake though and I saw this on his blog a week or so ago. I wouldn’t ordinarily repeat a recipe from someone else’s blog. But this is a green cake (vert-vert=green). It’s a little bit nutritious which I like. And insanely delicious which I also like. The cake sparkles with bright flecks of green, heady with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves, bathed in a lip smacking sweet-tart lemon sugar glaze.

It’s moist. It’s delicious. It’s …

]]> http://vert-vert.com/?feed=rss2&p=1220 2 http://vert-vert.com/?p=1125 http://vert-vert.com/?p=1125#comments Sun, 23 May 2010 08:32:20 +0000 Brea http://vert-vert.com/?p=1125

(lovely botanical tea towel by Memi Designs)

One of my favourite things to do on a day off (or a day on) is to buy a food magazine and read it from cover to cover. Sometimes as I read through a recipe I visualise the process of cooking it from start to finish, imagining each ingredient and the potential fragrance as flavours start to develop. I imagine eating too – taste, texture and bite.

Mostly what I am look out for though, when I read these magazines, is something different – a combination of flavours or a way of cooking that intrigues me. And when it’s simple, meat and dairy free, and involves one trip to the farmers’ market, well that’s a happy moment.

This potato and zucchini stew was one such moment. Its loveliness is in its simplicity: potato, zucchini, garlic, parsley, olive oil and salt. A little chopping, then some layering. Leave it alone for half an hour and it’s done.

In the Australian Gourmet Traveller, where I found this, it was described as part of a regional Italian feast and marked as a side dish, but I thought it the most interesting thing on the page.

By the time it was done, the edges of the potatoes had disintegrated into the liquid and salt to create an addictive creaminess. The parsley imparts a surprising amount of flavour and the sliced garlic gives more balanced earthiness than sharpness to draw all of these subtle points together. And that’s exactly what works about this dish. No one ingredient dominates, each retains its own character. A dish of wonderful proportions, unless like me you manage to eat half a pot of the stuff.

Realistically, it probably began over a cleansing ale – as most of my big decisions appear to.

We were a family of dreamers growing up; my mum, brother and I would conspire together, the three of us, dreaming our immediate futures. When I was 9 we visited beach-laden Byron Bay for a holiday. Within three months we owned 4 acres of paradise and a blue heeler named Alaska. When I was 12, we sat around the dinner table and talked of moving to Paris. Within 6 months we were in California (sort of like Paris). We were movers, shifters, ideas people.

Deciding to open a cafe was easy. Of course we would run a gorgeous and thriving cafe. We’d take turns cooking and serving so we would only need to be there, say, two or three days a week. In the meantime, the business would grow and within 6 months we would sell it. (I know this sounds haphazard and flippant. But that’s how things were – and at times it was a lot of fun.)

The cafe, I don’t remember it being so fun. My brother and his wife must have found the bottom of their glass, because they exited quickly, leaving my mum and I to keep things moving.

The food was simple and homely. Little Japanese bento lunch boxes with brown rice sushi, chilled soba noodle soup and grilled pumpkin. Potato and chickpea curries, ratatouille, black bean burritos. Cakes, of course. This Pear and Polenta cake.

It’s hard to know exactly how a cake can change you. But when I found this cake, my life changed. It was different to those light-weight blonde hussies I’d had before, all delicate and sickening. Here was a cake that felt satisfying and wholesome, without losing its tenderness.

For the past 10 years I have carried the recipe for this cake with me around the world; long after our little cafe dream had ended. It is messily hand written on a lined A4 sheet of paper. It’s ripped into almost four pieces even, and I’ve stuck it in a plastic sleeve. Brown with stains and time, and on the back a killer oatmeal cookie recipe.

Pear and Polenta Cake
Adapted from The Sugar Club Cookbook

Demerera sugar is made up of big hearty sugar crystals, translucent and light brown in colour. You could in a pinch replace it with raw sugar.

There are four eggs in this recipe, so make sure they are fresh, large, and the chickens who laid them had a chance to stretch their legs a little.

385g demerera sugar
4 eggs
1 vanilla pod
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup chardonnay (I have sometimes substituted apple or pear juice, or even water)
300g plain flour
125g polenta (corn meal)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
4-6 pears

Preheat your oven to 180C / 350F.

Line a 9″ (22.5cm) loose-bottom cake pan with baking paper. Evenly sprinkle 3 tablespoons of the sugar over the paper. Peel, core and cut the pears into sixths. Fan the pear segments over the sugared paper.

Beat the eggs, sugar and seeds from the vanilla pod for 1 minute. They should be fluffy and pale. Add the oil and the wine and beat for another 30 seconds.

Sift the flour, polenta and baking powder into a bowl. Add to the wet ingredients and mix well.

Pour the batter into the pan (it will be slightly runny). Bake for 1 hour. After 30 minutes, put a piece of foil over the cake and continue baking. I have often had to bake this cake for up to another half an hour, so just keep cooking until a skewer inserted into the middle just comes out clean.

Let the cake rest in the pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Turn out onto a plate.

While the cake is resting, make the syrup.

Lemon sugar syrup
2 cups caster sugar
1/2 cup water
Juice and zest of 2 lemons

Choose a heavy based medium saucepan for making the syrup. The trick is to not turn the sugar into some sort of crystallised sculpture. This can (and will) happen when the mixture is disturbed too much during cooking.

Bring the water and sugar to a boil. Stir gently to dissolve the sugar, but once the sugar has almost dissolved stop stirring. Then just let it do its thing. Do not leave the room! Keep cooking until it is golden in colour. Add the zest and juice of the lemons and stir until combined. Pour the syrup over the still-warm cake.

Serve alone, with a rich tangy yoghurt or heavy cream.

I made Cranberry-rosemary Florentine Bars for presents last Christmas. Boxed and bagged in pretty red and white striped attire,  they looked innocent enough – someone even thought they were Tim-Tams. Hidden inside, however, lay complex and confounding layers of flavour that would prove divisive.

On Christmas day, my Aunt bit into a tiny square, the corners of her mouth set to anticipated joy. Within moments the corners had slipped – like a puppeteer losing grip of its puppet, and her eyes widened in a strange and frightened realisation as she grappled for a good ten minutes with her conflicted taste buds. In the end,  judging by the amount of nose upturning, or upturned nosing?, she just couldn’t get there.

Other reactions were softer. Some loved them; others said nothing.

The two stand out flavours here are rosemary and Tasmanian leatherwood honey. It’s just that you need a lot of rosemary. Like really a lot. And if you’ve never tried leatherwood honey, it’s quite floral. In another context, yes, you might be judicious with these two ingredients. Here, well, it’s the flagrant fragrance of the two which inexplicably draws the whole thing together. Chewy, sweet, woody, crunchy, silky, chocolatey – it’s magic.

Watching my Aunt struggle with her own senses was completely fascinating, even a little inspiring, and I began thinking about these battens in a new way. They weren’t there to please and placate like most sweets, built for a neutral palate, attempting to appeal to everyone.

There is no ambiguity in these chocolates, no softening of the flavour line, and definitely no hand holding. Their function is more about engagement on a visceral level than comfort food.

I think they’re incredible. But, in a way, I kind of hope you don’t.

Cranberry-Rosemary Florentine Bars
Created by Adriano Zumbo (Sydney-based pastry chef)
Source: Australian Gourmet Traveler, December 2009

The bars are made up of two layers – an almond, honey caramel base layer and a rosemary ganache top layer – which are set, sliced and dipped in dark chocolate. There’s nothing too technical about the whole process (although dipping in the chocolate did prove messy and many rejects went into my *mouth* bin).

Almond honey caramel:
125g flaked almonds
150g Tasmanian leatherwood honey
100ml pouring cream (approx 35% fat)
35g liquid glucose
15g glacé cherries, finely chopped
35g dried cranberries, finely chopped (plus 16 whole for serving)

Preheat oven to 180C.

Toast the almonds on a baking sheet, stirring occasionally, until golden (5-7 minutes). Set aside. Combine the honey, cream and glucose in a saucepan over medium-high heat until combined, and then cook until mixture reaches 123C on a sugar thermometer (10-12 minutes). Stir in almonds, cranberries and cherries, and spoon into a 22cm-square cake pan lined with baking paper.  Smooth the top by dipping an offset spatula under hot water, drying, and running it firmly over the surface. Refrigerate until set (1-2 hours).

Rosemary sablé
25g caster sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons rosemary leaves
50g plain flour
35g cold unsalted butter, diced
2 teaspoons lightly beaten egg

Reduce oven to 160C.

Process the sugar and rosemary in a food processor until finely chopped. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Add the flour and butter and rub it in with your fingertips until fine crumbs form. Add the egg, mixing until a dough just comes together (don’t overwork it) and then flatten the dough into a square. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate to rest (1-2 hours). Roll out on a lightly floured surface to 7mm thick, cut into 1cm squares and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake until golden (10-15 minutes), cool completely and coarsely crush. Set aside 16 pieces for garnish.

White chocolate ganache
1/4 cup pouring cream (35% fat)
1/2 cup loosely packed rosemary leaves
115g good quality white chocolate, very finely chopped
20g pistachio kernels, finely crushed
1 teaspoon liquid glucose
25g softened butter

Blend the cream and rosemary leaves in a food processor to break down the leaves. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat. Remove from the heat and steep for 20 minutes. Bring the mixture to the boil again. Combine the white chocolate, ground pistachios and glucose in a bowl, strain the cream mixture over this and let sit for a minute or so. Stir until smooth, then stir in the butter and fold in the rosemary sablé .

Pour the ganache over the set almond layer. Smooth the top – again by using an offset spatula dipped in hot water. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until completely set (6 hours or overnight).

When set, remove from the fridge and carefully turn out onto a work surface. Cut into 16 pieces; 3cm x 9cm bars.

Chocolate coating
350g dark chocolate, finely chopped

Although the original recipe says to simply melt the chocolate and dip the bars, I found that they came out with a dull surface. So, I tempered. If you can’t be bothered with tempering, simply melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water.

Once the chocolate has melted, quickly drop one bar in. I found it easiest to use two forks for this; one to fish the bar out, the other for support as I let the excess chocolate run back into the bowl.

Carefully place the bars onto a tray lined with baking paper. Decorate each with a rosemary leaf, pistachio, cranberry and a shard of rosemary sablé. Refrigerate until set.

:: These bars will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days, if well sealed ::

Cooking notes:

• To make these you need a candy or sugar thermometer. You can buy pretty cheap ones in cooking supply stores. The ones that hang onto the edge of the saucepan are the most convenient, but I used a hand-held one and it was fine.

• Use good quality ingredients (especially the nuts,  fruits and chocolate).

There is strong re-growth in this area, and charred and seemingly dead trees have the brightest green shooting from their trunks. My friend’s garden is starting to take off, after months and months of tending, with beautiful blooming flowers to keep this little gnome company.

As we were leaving in the early evening – that time of year when the light stretches out until 8 or 9 – my friend’s brother told us to take some poppy pods home. I immediately raced down to where the poppies were most rampant and grabbed as many as the bottom half of my red polofleece would hold (it being red having nothing to do with anything really).

I haven’t tasted fresh poppyseeds before. And I probably never will again. The brown ones, not quite dried, are bitter and actually quite awful. Now if you shake the pod and hear a rattle of seeds, this is the sign that they are ready to eat. These seeds, they were something else. With an almost almond-tone, their flavour was perfectly subtle and delicate.

I originally thought I’d make some sort of elegant brussel sprout (is that a paradox?), cream and poppyseed dish, but the poor pods just sat in the bowl for two weeks becoming more and more decrepit while neither brussel sprout nor cream set foot in my home. Then yesterday I was having a “cake craving” moment and remembered recent talk of an orange poppyseed cake. After a bit of good old fashioned internet searching I found just the recipe I was looking for with sour cream, a syrup and lots of poppyseeds.

Light and moist, with that beautiful sticky orange/lemon syrup, we ate it warm from the oven with a splash of heavy cream which was quickly ravaged by the cake.

I made two thirds of the original recipe and baked it in a 20cm (8″) pan, which I think is a perfect size for this. I also increased the zest because I was in a particularly acrid mood. When I make this next time I’ll increase the poppyseeds even more. If you like an indecent amount of poppyseeds in your cake, I would recommend this. If you like a decently laden poppyseed cake, but not over the top, then leave well alone.

There’s nothing noble about using poppyseeds from Kinglake in this cake. It’s still just a cake after all, a simple pleasure for sure, but no more. But through the process of working in the garden, picking the poppy pods, and eventually sharing this cake with others, I have been reminded of the beauty of Kinglake, and the courage of those who lived there.

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Orange & Poppyseed Cake
Adapted from Good Taste, August 1998

Makes 1 20cm cake

120g butter, softened
110g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp finely grated orange rind
1 1/2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
2 eggs, separated (at room temperature)
200g sour cream
175g plain flour, sifted (I used flour with a protein content of 9.5%; a soft flour)
2 tsp baking powder
70g poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F) and grease a 20cm (8″) pan.

Cream the butter, sugar, and zests until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes.

Add the egg yolks, beating well after each addition. Then add the sour cream and beat until combined. Don’t be concerned by sour cream lumps. These will disappear in the final product.

Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the creamed mixture with the poppyseeds. Stir with a macho wooden spoon just until all of the flour has been incorporated.

Beat the egg whites to a firm peak, and fold into your batter. Pour into greased pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick (or a skewer in my case) inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Rest in tin for 10 minutes (not you, the cake. har). Meanwhile, make the syrup…

2 tsp finely grated orange rind
2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
80mls fresh orange juice
40mls fresh lemon juice
110g caster sugar

Put all the ingredients into a small saucepan and stir over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Turn cake out onto a plate, and pour the warm syrup over the top.

:: Serve warm with heavy cream draped all over ::

Two years in a row I have had the honour of making the pies for our annual Australian-American thanksgiving celebration. Our family, along with two others, have carried out this tradition for over 25 years and the making of the pies has always been a most solemn affair.

My Godfather passed the pumpkin pie baton to me three Thanksgivings ago. Opting for excess at all turns, and calling on the inner spirit of my American ancestors, I decided to bake a pecan pie too. I had also recently taken a pastry class and was feeling a bit shwanky about my new short-crust chops.

That year the pecan pie was the star. The pumpkin pie, from one of my favourite books Chez Panisse Desserts, lacked that certain spice weight that my Godfather’s version has. The pecan pie on the other hand was sticky, rich, not overly sweet and delicious.

Last year, I got another crack at it and resorted to using my Godfather’s ‘tried-and-true’ recipe from The Joy of Cooking. This will be amazing! I excitedly sighed in relief. But it was not to be. Once again, the pecan pie drew rapturous applause (without the clapping) whereas the pumpkin pie suffered the humiliation of ‘this-is-nice’ remarks.

This year, when the list came through, next to my name sat two lonely words. pecan. pie. The pumpkin pie had been removed from my guard.

Truth be told, my Godfather does make the best pumpkin pie – a rich, creamy spice-haven of pumpkin encased by a crunchy shell. It’s good. And my pecan pie came out perfectly and garnered reviews of “best ever pecan pie”. So I settled down.

I don’t usually go wild for pecans. They seem to turn rancid more quickly than other nuts, perhaps because they’re not as popular and sit forlorn in their plastic mansions. They also have a tangy, dry sort of quality I don’t like. As it stands the Pecan doesn’t do it for me. But, combine it with a rich raw-sugar caramel, instill in it a sense of cinnamon, clove and peppercorn, and bake it until sticky and golden and you have a sort of dolled-up version of the pecan. Sort of like how I feel when I’ve put on a nice dress, slapped on some lippy, and strapped myself into a pair of sheer stockings.

I feel I might have misrepresented my legs with above picture. I did not mean to make a visual  connection between the above picture and my legs.

This recipe comes from an unlikely place – a book called Authentic Mexican, by the highly regarded chef Rick Bayless. Based around a shortcrust, flakey pastry, the core ingredients are piloncillo – an unrefined  sugar – cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon and soured cream. The sharpness of the sugar, spices and corn syrup is mellowed by the cream and butter, making for a gooey, eggy custard and snappy little caramel pecans. Rich, sweet, but not sickly, this is one to remember. Especially if you’re trying for some rapturous non-clapping applause.

Mexican Pecan Pie

Adapted from Rick Bayless’ Authentic Mexican & Damien Pignolet’s French

Pastry
I like to use an unsweetened shortcrust pastry here, as the filling is sweet enough. I use this recipe. Damien says it makes enough for 2 tarts, however I generally need more than half the recipe to fill my loose-bottomed 9″ fluted pan*.

Once the dough has chilled for 20 minutes, dust your bench and rolling pin with flour, and roll pastry out to 5mm. You can either drape the pastry over the rolling pin and unroll over the tart pan, or gently fold the circle in half and half again to form a conical shape. Lift this and place the point in the centre of your tart pan, then unwrap. Loosen the dough around the edges and let it nestle back into the tin, pressing gently until there are no gaps or bubbles. Trim the excess pastry, leaving about 1.5 cm of overhang. Fold this back into the tin, keeping the edge raised slightly above the rim. With floured fingers, compress the walls of the tart to achieve an even thickness. Prick the bottom of the shell all over with a fork. Wrap any excess dough and refrigerate for later. Line the pastry shell with aluminium foil and place in the freezer for 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 190C (375F).

Fill the pastry shell with pastry weights, rice or dried beans and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the walls of the tart are somewhat set. Remove the foil and continue to bake until the tart is lightly coloured. Turn the oven down to 170C (325F) and continue to bake until nicely coloured, a pale caramel colour. The tart base should be cooked through and when tapped sound hollow. There’s nothing worse than a soggy bottom.

Once the shell is cooked, remove and check for cracks or holes. Fill any cracks with the leftover dough, to protect the filling from seeping**. Brush the entire shell with the egg yolk and put back into the oven for a few minutes to set.

While your shell is resting, make the filling.

Filling
Piloncillo is a unrefined brown sugar, easy to find in South American or Spanish grocery stores, or sold as rapadura in health food stores.

130g (4.5 Oz) piloncillo, chopped (or you can substitute 2/3 cup packed brown sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons molasses)
1/2 cup clear corn syrup
2.5 cm (1″) cinnamon stick
4 cloves
8 peppercorns, coarsely ground
6 tablespoons*** unsalted butter, diced
3 tablespoons Mexican cream or good quality sour cream
1 1/2 cups (155g or 5.5 Oz) pecans
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon flour

Place the piloncillo (or raw sugar and molasses if using), cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, and corn syrup in a medium saucepan, add 1/3 cup water, cover and bring to a simmer. Stir, uncovered, until all of the sugar has dissolved. Continue simmering for about 10 minutes, or until reduced to 1 cup. Strain the syrup through a fine-meshed sieve and stir in the chopped butter and the cream, until the mixture is smooth. Let it cool, stirring occasionally to prevent a skin from forming.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolk, eggs, vanilla and flour. Stir into the cooled caramel mixture.

Once you have removed your tart shell, and with the oven still at 170C (325F), toast the pecans on a baking sheet for about 10-15 minutes, or until toasted through. You want a nice nutty flavour to them without taking them too far.

Spread the pecans over the lukewarm tart shell. Pour in enough filling to come almost up to the sides of the shell, but if you want a “perfect” tart make sure none of the filling seeps over the edges. Gently press the pecans into the syrup so that the tops are slightly moistened. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the filling is set, and no longer jiggles when shaken gently.

:: Serve warm or at room temperature with cream, ice-cream or even in his birthday suit ::

*I have also made 5″ and 11″ versions of this with equally delicious success.
**When the filling seeps it can actually produce an outstanding toffee crust! I might elaborate on this another day.
***This recipe uses US tablespoons, which measure 15ml. Australian tablespoons measure 20ml.

A recent obsession with Six Feet Under has had absolutely nothing to do with it. So we have been spending a dangerous amount of time in that funeral home, but I like to think we’re ploughing through the series, in this way, so that we can quickly reclaim our lives and get back to being incredibly-ish productive human beings.

And so long as we have glasses of iced water to moisten our sleep-deprived throats, a piece of jammy lemon-strawberry cake to shuffle into our mouths, and a cutely neurotic dog to snuggle up to, I’d say we’re doing okay.

Not all of our serial obsessions exist in the dark and spongey existence of the worn red couch. Last Thursday a group of friends came to our house to watch* two episodes of Mad Men, which made for an excellent excuse to spend two hours disrobing artichokes, chaperoning polenta, and pouring increasingly generous glasses of an $18 bottle of Riesling I bought for cooking.

* I use that term lightly; it’s a raucous affair in which poor Pete Campbell gets unfairly harangued and we collectively sigh over Red. oh Red.

Tomatoes turned on their sweet charm for the oven, providing a scarlet sea for the crispy, creamy polenta wedges to set sail, amidst a wreckage of marinated tomato, artichoke, olive and thyme, under a fine mist of Fontina. Wow, can these metaphors get any more peculiar.

Along with a spunky salad of home grown greens, asparagus and Parmesan from the spunky Mikaela, and a hunk of really decent garlic bread from Footscray, vitriol subsided for half an hour as we happily ate.

6 bottles of wine, a cartridge of beer, and two dozen delicious Mann-made Florentines later, we packed them all off into their cars and onto their bikes, late for a school night, waving goodbye from the warmly lit porch, and put ourselves, Pete Campbell, and his harsh critics, to rest.

And then we snuck over to the couch to, well, yes, to sit there and talk to some nice neighbours called the Fishers…

Polenta Baked with Artichokes, Tomatoes and Olives
Adapted from Fields of Greens by Deborah Madison

While writing this out, I realised how complex it looks. It’s definitely not a “fast” meal, but a really beautiful dish to make for a dinner party, or on a lazy day, as it is satisfying and has an elegant richness to it without an excessive use of cheese.  The artichokes are a little awkward at first but once you get into the swing of things they’re really easy and so very worth the effort.

For the Tomato Sauce:

You can use any good homemade tomato sauce here. We like to buy those mega cans of tomatoes and make big batches which we put in the freezer and pull out when we need a quick pasta sauce, or a bake…

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion chopped, about two cups
6 cloves garlic
2 x 400g cans of tomatoes
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil and fry the onion for 5-7 minutes, or until translucent. Add the garlic, 1 teaspoon salt and a grind of pepper and fry for another 20 seconds. Pour the tomatoes in and give it a really good stir to fuse the flavours. Slow simmer the sauce for a long time,  about an hour, or until it tastes sweet and robust. Add more salt and pepper if needed, along with a good glug of olive oil of course.

Makes about 4 cups

For the Polenta:

The general rule of thumb for polenta (not instant) is 4 to 1, water to polenta. You don’t have to put cheese and butter in at the end, but it does make it extra delicious and creamy.

1 1/2 cups polenta
6 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Parmesan cheese (optional but recommended)
4 tablespoons butter (optional but recommended)
Cayenne pepper (optional)

Bring the water to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the salt and carefully whisk in the polenta. With a wooden spoon, stir frequently to protect the polenta from lumps. I tend to give it a really good stir every few minutes, each time bringing it back to a creamy consistency. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan when stirring so it doesn’t stick too much.

After about 20-25 minutes, or when the polenta is really thick and comes away from the side of the pan, take it off the heat and stir in the butter and cheese, adding salt, pepper and cayenne as needed.

Pour into a lightly oiled rectangular pan, about 9 x 13 inches, even the top with a spatula or knife and allow to set. Once it has cooled completely, you can cut it into 12 squares and each square half diagonally to make 24 triangles. Set aside.

For the Rest:

4 medium artichokes, trimmed and sliced into 4-6 pieces*
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup dry white wine (I used a dry Riesling. Try to avoid sweet or fruity wines)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
4 garlic cloves, chooped
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
1 teaspoon chopped fresh marjoram (I didn’t have this, so I left it out)
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
12 olives, like Niçoise or Kalamata, pitted and roughly chopped
100g Fontina cheese, grated
50g Parmesan cheese, grated

Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the drained artichokes, 1/4 teaspoon salt and a few pinches of pepper. Sauté for about 10 minutes or until tender. Add the wine, lemon juice and half the garlic. Simmer for about two minutes, then add more salt, pepper and lemon juice if needed.

While the artichokes are cooking, marinate the fresh tomatoes with 1 tablespoon olive oil, the remaining garlic,  fresh herbs, 1/4 teaspoon salt and some pepper. When the artichokes are ready, toss them together with the tomatoes and the olives.

To Bake:

Preheat oven to 190° C  (375° F).

Pour 2 cups of tomato sauce into a rectangular baking dish (use the same one as for the polenta) and arrange the polenta triangles upright in the dish. They should all fit, with a bit of clever maneuvering.

Distribute the marinated tomatoes, artichokes and olives evenly into the polenta’s nooks and crannies. Sprinkle the Fontina and Parmesan over the top.

Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 10 – 15 minutes or until golden and bubbly.

Serves 6

:: Delicious served with a fresh salad and some garlic bread warm from the oven ::

*There are lots of helpful online guides to trimming artichokes. Here‘s a good one (start from Step 5).

But this blog started from an idea that steeped and bubbled, scratched at my mind, turned me into an obsessive food blog reader and, once it took hold, was too difficult to ignore. And, like most things I do, three months and some days passed before I was able to sit here and make something of it.

vert-vert literally means green-green in French – pronounced like you were calming a screaming baby, there-there, with a touch of phlegm thrown in at the ends. I like to leave the phlegm off.

vert-vert was also Monet’s favourite cake. A ridiculous layered sloth of a thing, rich with pistachio buttercream and shimmering with a spinach-extracted green fondant. There’s something fitting about its odd components that make sense to me and this blog. Desserts which can assert themselves as nutrient-rich and decadent will always make me sit up and pay attention.

It began in 1997 with a pear and polenta cake, parading a moist, but dense, golden cornmeal interior,  intense lemon spark and a light hint of chardonnay, turning my 19-year-old understanding of cake completely on its head. Cream-filled sponge, you’re so dead to me-ish.

Then a carrot tart I had in California 5 years ago. Made by my dear friend’s husband, a feisty and impetuous Italian man, who would slam a bottle of (unasked for) ketchup on the table at every meal and spit out “you Americans want this with everything!” Luckily, he was a wonderful cook. He made a bright carrot tart, with a buttery base and sweet grated carrot filling, nothing savoury about it, yet not trying to hide it’s roots (har har) like a carrot cake.

But vert-vert intrigued me the most. So daringly green, using over 1/4 kilogram of spinach for its colour palette, and so over-the-top with its buttercreamy, fondanty recklessness. Once I recover the recipe – presently killing time in a country-town library – I’ll post it here.

In the meantime, thanks for joining me on this new blog-venture!