mutteringhousewife

September 21, 2012

Mixed Peel

When the weather gets warmer I start thinking about making fruitcake. Cut that out, mine’s really nice, not sticky or cloyingly sweet, and it doesn’t have nuts or brandy in it. I’ve made converts out of non fruitcake eaters. Alas, not my children, when they see me making a fruitcake they say “great, why can’t you make a cake that we actually like?”. I’ll keep making them eat it and in five or six years they’ll start to see it my way. Parenting is about patience.

I was going to wait until after the school holidays for the first step in my fruitcake, but serendipity stepped in. The first step is to make your own mixed peel, because the stuff you buy is dull dull dull. I make mine with grapefruit and orange peel, although today there’s a lemon in there too because I’m running the pantry down before we go away. My daughter and her friend walked the dogs around the block (a fairly rare occurrence, and the dogs are still lying on the floor recovering) and found bags of grapefruit on a front fence around the corner with a sign on them saying “free to a good home”, or something of that nature. Clearly a sign for me to make mixed peel. It’s really easy.

Peel one grapefruit and two oranges (or one orange and a lemon, if that’s what you happen to have) with a sharp knife, you should include the pith in this exercise, unlike when zesting citrus. Chop the peel up until it looks like this:

Bung it in a saucepan and cover it with water. Bring the lot to the boil and boil for about five minutes, or for about the time it takes to check Facebook and empty the dishwasher. Strain, discarding the water, and do it again. Strain again, and return just the peel to the saucepan with two cups of water and one cup of caster sugar. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the peel is translucent. I can’t remember how long this is, because I haven’t done it since last year, but a good twenty minutes or so. I then drain it and put the sticky mess of peel in Tupperware and into the fridge. It makes enough for about two fruitcakes. I reserve the syrup in a separate container, intending to use it something else, but I generally end up throwing it out after a couple of months. I clearly need to make more cocktails.

You’ll get the actual fruitcake recipe some other time, but I’m off on holidays. It may be that I find our travels to be sufficiently amusing to document, it may not. I may not be able to wrestle the iPad from my husband during our moments of leisure. So don’t hold your breath, and I’ll be back muttering again in a couple of weeks.

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September 20, 2012

Jewellery as Restitution

My sister says that most people who blog have some kind of mental illness. Do you think social awkwardness counts? We have a situation that is causing me much discomfort, and I’m trying to assuage that discomfort by making a necklace, but I guess it all depends on your perspective.

We’re going up the coast next week, and my husband knows a lady who quit finance to live by this particular beach and run a Malaysian restaurant with her husband. My husband asked her for a motel recommendation in her town, and she responded by saying that her family was popping back to Malaysia for a bit and we were welcome to use her house and car. That’s very nice and everything, but it turns out that she is actually leaving her husband behind to run the restaurant, and he is included with the house. He has also been instructed to pick us up from the airport, and she’s not taking no for an answer. Doesn’t that sound like a situation? I’m of shy and retiring disposition, I three fairly loud children, and I’m going to be staying in a house with a restaurant running man who’s English isn’t terribly fluent and the few times I’ve met him he has been enthusiastically engaged with a karaoke machine.

The very least I can do is to make the lady of the house a necklace. That’s what I do in times of stress. I know I should actually be making something for the husband, as he’s the one having to put up with us, but that’s not where my talents lie and where would I even start? I should have begun this weeks ago.

It’s a herringbone spiral rope made with size eleven seed beads, stitched one at a time. That length is how much I’ve managed to do today, in between doing the choir banking, taking the piccolo for a grease and oil change, treating the dog’s ears for a fungal infection, buying milk, picking up the kids from school, and starting another necklace for my daughter to wear to a wedding we’ll be attending. I’m sure I can finish it by Sunday night.

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September 19, 2012

Nepalese Porridge

Back in the early days of our marriage we would have an annual conversation. It was very short, and it went like this. “Shall we start a family this year, or travel somewhere exotic?”. It’s amazing we ever had children at all, really. One year we went trekking in Nepal.

Nepal, as you would know or imagine, is a very different country to Australia, but the first thing that strikes you is that it’s almost completely vertical. Coming from a wide brown land, this is a bit of a shock, because it means that to get anywhere you need to go up stairs, often for hours at a time. I had hoped that all those stairs would have a slimming effect on my rather large calves, but no, they just got very ropy. Camp was made every night on small patches of grass bordered by a cliff face on one side and a sheer drop on the other by unfailingly cheerful porters. After making camp they would immediately set up tiny camp stoves and produce delicious meals of vegetables and lentils and rice, and sometimes a chicken that had been seeing the sights from a basket on the cook’s back. All a little lost on me, it was in Nepal I discovered that I don’t really digest lentils.

Breakfast was often a hot porridge, and after tasting it I couldn’t believe we don’t do it this way here. I made some this morning. I’m putting in a photo of the uncooked ingredients, because after it’s cooked, it looks a lot like porridge which makes for a rather uninteresting photo.

Chop up a small green apple and put it in a small saucepan. Add a quarter of a cup of chopped hazelnuts and a quarter of a cup of flaked coconut, two cups of oats and two cups of water. As it happens, I got everything except the water from Honest to Goodness, they have a stall at the Orange Grove Markets. Put on the stove and stir until the water is absorbed. It makes enough for two, or one really hungry person. I sprinkled it with cinnamon sugar, but you could put a cinnamon stick in while cooking. It was a little spartan, you may want to add sultanas, which would start bringing into Bircher Muesli territory, but it’s all breakfast. My husband said he prefers it plain. My family is a tough audience.

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September 18, 2012

Corn Fritters

Tonight is one of those nights when the man of the house is out. This means the rest of us kick off our shoes and don’t put them away and eat in front of the TV, sometimes without using utensils. Something I started making for the kids when they were very little is corn fritters, and they still often want them on a Tuesday night. It’s really just a savory pikelet, and if that’s enough information for you then feel free to move in with the rest of your day. If not, here’s how it’s done.

If you’re not living somewhere where it’s springtime, get yourself a 410 gram tin of corn. It always seemed like an odd measurement to me, I presume it has been converted from bushels at some point. If you have access to the spring glut of fresh corn, get yourself a few cobs and start slicing the kernels off. This isn’t a job I enjoy, as they bounce everywhere, but I guess that means the dogs get some fibre in their diet. Two or three cobs should do, it’s a very rough recipe.

Transfer the corn to a bowl and mix in two eggs. Also some grated parmesan cheese, I always have some left over from a previous night’s pasta, so anything from a quarter to a half a cup can go in. I don’t let the Moose see, as he has this odd belief that he doesn’t like melted cheese. He’s wrong, of course, everyone likes melted cheese. Then you stir in a cup of plain flour and two teaspoons of baking powder. Then as much milk as will make a thick batter. Don’t ask me how much that is, you should be able to stir it pretty easily, but it shouldn’t be runny.

You can do that much a couple of hours ahead of time, for instance before picking up the kids from school. At eating them time, heat up a frying pan over moderate heat and melt some butter in it. I think butter makes it crispier than oil. Start hoiking in soup spoons of batter. When bubbles start appearing on top, turn them over. You’ll need more butter for every pan full. Repeat until all batter is gone, at which point you turn to the plate you’ve been putting them on to find it empty. It doesn’t really make enough to feed three growing children, so you should also plan to find some leftover fried rice in the freezer to fill up the corners. Or cook them some cobs of corn, it’s really cheap at the moment. You can never get too much corn, just ask any American.

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September 17, 2012

Fete Season

September in Sydney is usually a month of unrelenting fine weather, so if you’re in a really organized school P&C you will plan your school fete for then. If you’re in one of those P&Cs that are taken by surprise by spring, you’ll be having your fete in November, and risk getting it rained on.

On the weekend I attended an excellent example of a public school fete, but one that only really had about an hour’s entertainment for me in it, half of which I spent looking for my son. It got me wondering what I really like in a fete.

The coffee was good, a very important thing in any inner west fete. There was a fairy floss machine that filled the surrounding air with glittering sugar dust, you could have saved your money and just stood beside it inhaling for about ten minutes. The food stalls were really impressive, I got some sushi, some fried rice and some Pad Thai to take home so I wouldn’t have to cook dinner, and they were all fantastic. There was an excellent fresh produce stall all sourced from the school’s kitchen garden, something that should be mandatory in any school with an extra patch of grass.

There was a second had clothes stall with a rather disturbing table full of second hand swimmers. I don’t know about you, but I wear my swimmers until the elastic gives and members of the public start complaining about the transparency of my attire, so there are many odd things about second hand bathers for me. I gave it a wide berth. I always like to look at the second hand books, but this time the stall just made me wonder why all of these books were bought in the first place? I would have had a guess that the parent population of this school were fairly highly educated, yet their tastes seemed to veer towards weight and enormous metallic lettering in choosing literature. I was briefly tempted by a book entitled Teach Yourself Modern Hebrew, but my self improvement list is full up.

The music presented by the student population was pretty good. I was pleased to hear a recorder group playing something mediaeval, accompanied by a keyboard tastefully set to harpsichord. The band played pieces it was possible to recognize. There was an excellent young lady with a very mature voice who accompanied herself on the guitar.

And yet I felt like I was looking for something that wasn’t there. Maybe fetes need to get in some outside stallholders, and not just ones who’ve ordered a pallet load of plastic tat. I want to be able to buy a hippie handbag, or a hand knitted vest, or, ideally, a pair of chenille shorts. Or maybe I should just accept that they’re not markets, they’re a fundraiser for the kiddies and I should go buy a handful of tickets to the chocolate wheel. Perhaps I’ll win a pair of chenille shorts.

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September 14, 2012

In the beginning was the Breadmaker

At some point in every housewife’s life she gets the urge to make her own bread. This sets her off on a lifetime’s journey in quest of the perfect loaf which I shall occasionally chronicle here. My journey began with a bread maker.

We may have got it as a wedding present, I can’t remember, but at some point early in our married life we acquired a bread maker. It’s a pretty simple machine. There’s a rectangular bucket at the bottom of which is a paddle that does all the hard work. You fill this up with the ingredients, insert the bucket into the machine, set it going and in the morning you have hot fresh bread. The very first morning the hot fresh bread slides easily out of the bucket and off the paddle, but never again.

There are many problems with making bread this way. I never like the shape of the loaf, the cross section was too large, the crust was too chewy. The loaf in itself was OK, especially if you’d added all the ingredients. I used to put it on last thing at night, and because it only had very few ingredients I’d do it from memory which meant that we’d sometimes end up with a bucket of well mixed ingredients that hadn’t turned into bread. You had to make sure that the paddle was inserted correctly and the bucket was locked into the machine, otherwise sludge would ensue. The machine was quite noisy, so I had it on the back verandah, not a desirable location first thing in the morning in the winter months.

What finally made me give it up was the paddle. It was always firmly embedded in the end of the bread. So you’d eat your way to the end of the loaf, then push the paddle out and wash it for the next loaf. Or alternatively, get to the end of the loaf and throw it in the bin. If this happened on bin night, it meant a trip to the creepy appliance shop up the road which was always inexplicably stacked to the roof with toasters. How could anyone hope to sell that many toasters? But they were always happy to get me in a new bread maker paddle.

The last time this happened I gave up. It was time for me to start making my own bread by hand, the next step on the Bread Journey. Anyone who makes bread ends up turning it into a journey, try it yourself and see if you can stop with the first method you try. What prompted me to dig up this story from the vault is something that the dogs dug out of the compost bin today while searching for a rat.

The last of the bread maker paddles. Another excellent reason to compost.

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September 13, 2012

Pumpkin Pasta Sauce

I was absurdly pleased this weekend to be the recipient of a small but perfectly formed pumpkin. I did ask the giver why she was donating this pumpkin to me and she replied that it was because she had two. That seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

I could, and have, baked bits of it. I can’t blog about that, a child could bake pumpkin, not that they would because then they’d have to eat it. What I’m going to do tonight is make it into a sauce to go on top of the fresh pasta I’ve just bought from Peppe’s. Here’s a picture of the ingredients.

I’ve made this one before, this is how it goes.

Chop the pancetta (I’ve got 100g, and you could use bacon if you don’t live in an Italian neighbourhood). Start frying it in a medium saucepan while you chop the celery and onion. It doesn’t matter what kind of onion, I’m using French shallots because they’re quite mild and sweet. I have used green onions and been scolded thoroughly by my sister who says they’re an Asian onion and you can’t go mixing cuisines like that. She may have neglected to notice that we live in Australia and that’s exactly what we do, so don’t listen to her.

Pop the celery and onion in with the pancetta. If you think it’s a bit dry, slug in some olive oil. I also put in garlic at this point. A local nonna told me that Italians don’t put chopped garlic in, they slice a clove in half and put it in, then remove it before serving, so give that a go. When it’s all starting to smell rather tasty, throw in quite a lot of chopped pumpkin and a cup of chicken stock. Yes, I do make my own, why, does that annoy you? Have you seen the price of decent chicken stock? Making your own takes very little time and is practically free, and I’ll be going into that another day.

Place a lid on the saucepan and go help your children with their homework and get the washing in. Also, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil, so that when you want to cook your pasta you don’t have to wait. I don’t bother with salt or oil. After about half an hour you should be able to poke a knife through your pumpkin pieces pretty easily. That’s when you should start cooking the pasta. Fresh pasta only takes a few minutes to cook, but you do need to stab at it with a fork to stop it sticking together. Back to the sauce. You could either squash up the sauce with a wooden spoon, which is what I do because I like it chunky. Or zip it with the stick mixer, which is one of the few electrical gadgets I have in the kitchen. If it’s too runny, let it boil uncovered for a few minutes longer while stirring it (unless you like scrubbing burnt pumpkin off pots). At the very last moment, stir through a good handful of chopped parsley, it tends to lose its oomph if cooked too long. If you’re not concerned about your schoolgirl figure, you could also stir in some sour cream, but I really don’t think it needs it. A sprinkling of parmesan is all I put on it after serving it up.

Tonight I’m going to bribe the children to try some. Wish me luck.

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September 12, 2012

Excellent Earrings

I may have found the perfect earrings. Not in a shop of course, you can only get cheap plastic or vastly overpriced earrings in shops. I started out beading by making my own earrings, it’s very very very easy. These ones aren’t very easy, but I have been beading for some years now.

I must pay more attention to my backgrounds when I take a photo.

These are dangly, very neat looking and light. You can go nuts with the colours, because there are six in each dangle. I’ve been averaging a pair a day, and still want to make some in pink, in purple, in green, maybe a gold and cream. What I should actually be doing is some pendants I’ve been asked to make by a choir member and teacher’s end of year gifts, procrastination is my favourite way of doing things. If you want to make them yourself, have a look in the August/September edition of Beadwork magazine and look for the necklace that looks like a harlequin’s ruff. Why they did that to these terrific components, I don’t understand, they’re much better upside down as earrings.

My daughter tells me that she needs a pair of these for her teacher’s birthday. I don’t remember birthday present for teachers being part of the school arrangements, and besides, the ones she’s chosen (the red and orange ones) go perfectly with a crazy top my sister made me buy from French Connection. With a roll of the eyes and a yoink, they’re gone. Of course I can always make another pair. I’ll start on the pendants tomorrow.

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September 11, 2012

Choc Chip Banana Cake

I don’t think two posts counts as a recurring theme, but I need to use up some bananas. My husband alleges that he eats bananas all the time, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it. I sometimes give one to the Muffet on her way to school when she’s been too busy in the hour since she woke up to eat breakfast. Lying on the floor singing, losing your shoes and bothering your brothers takes up a lot of time.

As it turns out, it appears that you can slap together any old combination of bananas, sugar, butter, eggs and flour and you’ll end up with some kind of cake. I pick a recipe from a school fundraiser cookbook that I have and give it a whirl. Remind me to take you on a tour of my cookbooks some time, sublime to the ridiculous just about covers it.

I never have butter at room temperature, although not for any good reason – my Nanna used to keep butter in a covered ceramic butter dish on the kitchen bench and it was always fine. Especially if you go through scads of it, like I do. However.

What you do is put your 125 grams of butter in a metal mixing dish and put it in the oven at 50 degrees while you go and hang out the washing. When you come back, add to it half a cup of caster sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla and beat with a fork until creamy. Or stick it in your Kitchen Aid if you’re a fancy pants with a giant marble clad kitchen. Beat in two eggs, one at a time. Squash in two overripe bananas and mash them in until there aren’t any bits for your fussy nine year old to complain about. Gently fold in 2 cups of plain flour and 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Or 2 cups of self raising flour if you haven’t been listening. Stir in half a cup of milk. Actually, I stirred in a quarter of a cup of sour cream and quarter of a cup of milk, and I’ll bet a half a cup of buttermilk would be pretty good too. Stir in 125 chocolate chips – nice ones, don’t even think of using supermarket ones you cheapskate.

Scrape mixture into a loaf tin lined with baking paper. Baking paper revolutionized my life, I go through metres of it. Bake for about thirty five minutes at 160 degrees, and make sure you test it with a skewer, because banana fudge is not a thing.

I’m definitely adding this one to the repertoire. It wouldn’t quite be sweet enough without the chocolate chips, it’s light and moist with a crunchy crust and I’d seriously consider adding about a third of a cup of coconut flakes next time if it wasn’t for fear of audience backlash. You may not have such an exacting customer base.

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September 10, 2012

There must be the perfect strawberry muffin recipe somewhere

Strawberries are sucking me in. They’re red and shiny and cheap. I keep buying them. Yet they’re often a little disappointing, and the kids are over them anyway like the fickle butterflies that they are. It’s very sad watching a punned of strawberries grow little beards and gently disintegrate on the kitchen bench top. One solution would be to stop buying the wretched things, but my peasant genes keep shouting Fruit! Cheap! Buy it!.

There’s a plethora of lemon recipes out there, but very few for strawberries that aren’t just chop them up and place them decoratively on top of something that doesn’t actually contain strawberries. I have made a strawberry lemonade, which I may share with you one day when I’ve run out of other housewifery things to blog about. I really want to make them into muffins, and as you’ve been following me like a bloodhound, you’ll know I’ve had a stab at a recipe that was fairly unsuccessful. They were quite nice, light and tangy, but the kids object to bits in their baked goods.

This means cooking the strawberries first. Take a punnet of strawberries, chop them up, bung them in a saucepan over low heat, put the lid on and leave them. My pots are fancy non stick ones, so if you’re worried about sticking, you could whack a small amount of butter in there too. After about half an hour you should be able to mash them up with a wooden spoon. I got about a cup of cooked strawberry mush.

Next I need a muffin recipe that has a wet component in it. For their own inexplicable reasons, Americans regard the pumpkin as a fruit you should shove into all kinds of baked goods. Sounds gross to me, but it does mean there are a few pumpkin muffin recipes out there. I found a likely one, and changed it completely. Here’s what I did.

Beat together 2 eggs, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1/2 cup of brown sugar because I think it tastes more interesting than white, and 1/3 cup of wheat germ because I’d like to pretend this is a healthy recipe. Also, I like wheat germ. Add the strawberry mush. If you can’t be bothered waiting for it to cool down, the stuff will start cooking, so work fast with the rest of it. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of plain flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Mix until smooth, but don’t beat it because you just don’t do that with muffins, they don’t like it.

Spoon the mixture into a greased twelve unit muffin tray. Actually, I put them in paper muffin cups, because I hate washing up muffin trays. Bake at 180 degrees for about fifteen minutes. They came out pretty well, kids were initially concerned about the brown colour, but that was from the brown sugar. They haven’t all been eaten yet, and are still pretty good after three days. I think next time I’ll put in a teaspoon of vanilla, and possibly a touch more sugar.

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