mutteringhousewife

November 13, 2012

Orange and Poppyseed Friands

The cupboard is bare, so what shall I make? I know, raspberry slice. But I’ve already blogged about that, so lucky for you I’m also making orange and poppyseed friands at the special request of the Horror who very kindly didn’t give his piano teacher a nervous breakdown yesterday. It makes a nice change not to have to reconstruct the poor man before sending him on his way.

Friands are based on almond meal and icing sugar. You can get almond meal at the supermarket most of the time, but sometimes you find that only slivered almonds are available, and then only in a one kilo bag. You take them to the checkout and spend some quality time noticing that the pink lady behind you seems to not only have applied her own fake eyelashes, but to have actually made them herself out of what appears to be black cotton and hairspray. These are harsh economic times, my friends.

You can convert your slivered almonds into almond meal quite easily with the cup attachment on your stick mixture. At least, you could if you hadn’t fractured it while trying to convince it that it was just as good as a Thermomix. Failing that, a blender will also do an adequate job, though the resulting meal won’t be as homogeneous as one would like. It’s OK, though, we’re not making macarons.

With your fingers, mix in a bowl the dry ingredients. These are one cup of almond meal, one and two thirds of a cup of sifted icing sugar, three quarters of a cup of plain flour, half a teaspoon of baking powder, the shredded zest of two oranges and a tablespoon of poppyseeds. Mix in five egg whites, then 125 grams of melted butter. You can then spoon the mixture into very well buttered and floured friand tins, or make life easy for yourself and use paper muffin cases. These don’t rise very much, so if using the friand tins you can fill them nearly all the way up so they do that cute little break in the middle as they rise out of the tin.

This is the only flavoured friand recipe I’ve found (Donna Hay again) all other so called flavours just have bits of fruit piled on top. The flavouring has to be dry not to mess up the recipe. I guess you could use dried fruit, but isn’t very friand like. I’m working on a pistachio one, but the Horror thinks I have a way to go. It’s tricky, because every time I buy shelled pistachios they get all eaten. You can also use three eggs instead of five egg whites in this recipe, it’s a little richer. You could use other citrus zest too, but not lime, whenever I use lime zest it goes all brown and chewy.

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November 12, 2012

What I’ve learnt about Sewing

I’ve done it, I’ve finished the damned things. Six soldiers costumes are on their way to the Muffet’s school and it’s only fair that I share with you some of the things that I’ve learned.

A quick recap for those of you who haven’t been following me like a bloodhound. My dear daughter volunteered me to help with sewing for the school play. I fronted up to the main instigator of this outrage, Mrs Gray, and sweetly informed her that I was rather good at sewing in straight lines and did she have any togas for me to hem? She handed me a bag of material, a very complicated set of patterns, fixed me with a steely glare, returned my sweet smile and said “May the force be with you”. For further accounts of my subsequent misadventures, see here.

So the first thing, dear reader, is to identify your motivation. In this case, impress Mrs Gray. But there are many more practical things I have learned about sewing.
Static electricity can be a good substitute for pins.
Don’t wear drapey clothing while sewing unless you’d like to incorporate it into the costume.

Cotton batting is a tasty source of fibre.
An RSL style carpet is excellent for hiding stains and dog hair, but it does mean the only way you’ll find a dropped pin is by stepping on it.
Turn off your sewing machine while you’re away from it otherwise your dog will sit on the pedal and give himself a fright.
If you’re sewing after dinner, you will sew a sleeve on upside down or a badge to your pyjamas. Factor this into your timing.
If you want to use some material scraps from a pile your late elderly cat used to sleep on, no amount of washing and hanging it in the sun will get out the smell. Just chuck it.
Resist the urge to admonish your children with pins in your mouth.

Pets can be useful to stop your material from flying away.
That clunking sound means the top thread has come off the hook thingy that goes up and down.
Sewing a ribbon or some scalloped felt over your seams is an excellent way of disguising the fact that you haven’t measured anything.

It’s a bit hard to tell from this shot, but this tunic was doomed. It did teach me three valuable lessons. Don’t let the dog sit on your sewing shortly after he’s been eating grass. You need to sew the wrong side to the wrong side OR the right side to the right side, not one of each. And if you’ve given yourself a break from sewing by ironing the school shirts, you need to turn the iron back down if you’re going to press the seams on your polyester tunic. It didn’t actually set the smoke detector off, but it did attract the attention of the children who, as always, were very forthright in their advice.

A hot glue gun is a useful alternative to hand sewing.
Your sharp scissors are under your daughter’s desk.

It’s easy to make wire closures for your armour if you have a set of jewellery making tools and five years experience making clasps for necklaces.
Finally, with a great deal of patience and coffee and moaning to friends and an enormous amount of muttering, you can teach yourself to sew and deliver six soldiers costumes a whole two weeks before the performance.

Now I don’t know if I want to get in and sew something for myself or sell my machine on eBay. I should probably give it a few weeks before I do anything rash.

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November 9, 2012

Jewellery with a theme

The Moose’s school colours are black and white, and I have noticed that his teachers often dress in these colours. He has had two women help him enormously this year, so I’m going to be making black and white jewellery for them in appreciation of having to put up with the little so and so.

I have been spurred on by the fact that I’m going to a fundraising dinner tomorrow for which the theme is black and white. Jewellery always needs a test drive, so today I made a black and white pendant to wear once, then gift to the Moose’s mentor. If it survives the test drive.

It’s made with Swarovski crystal, Czech glass, Japanese delica size 15s and a gemstone called howlite. I normally net across these pendants like I have on the other pendant in this shot, but I don’t think I will for this one, it’s dramatic enough as it is. I wonder if I’ll have time to pump out some black and white earrings between basketball and tennis games tomorrow plus a Messiah rehearsal? I could if I kept them simple, but we all know how that will end.

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November 8, 2012

More sorbet

When your sister leaves a bag of elderly bananas hooked onto your front door handle, your first impulse is to make some banana bread. But I’ve had an idea fermenting in my head since my friend Kath suggested adding condensed milk to my strawberry sorbet recipe, and now was the time to try it out.

First, a passing mention of the strawberry sorbet. I have discovered, in my attempts to replicate the effects of a Thermomix with items I have lying around, that my blender can’t really crush ice. Nor can it cope with frozen strawberries. However, if you let the strawberries thaw out, then blend them with the white of an egg and fifty grams each of icing sugar and condensed milk, you get an even better sorbet than the one I had a go at a few weeks ago.

Here’s what I did yesterday. Place in a blender the remains of two bananas, the juice of a lemon, a teaspoon of cinnamon and about a third of a can of condensed milk (I realise this isn’t SI units, but I was on a roll and forgot to weigh it). Blend. Freeze.

It’s amazingly creamy and has a very intense banana flavour, too much for the boys who will only eat banana in cake form. I don’t think you’d actually call it a sorbet, but it isn’t an ice cream either.
It will be up to the Muffet and I to finish this batch. I think it would be even better done in those plastic ice block forms you can get. The Muffet also suggests dipping them in chocolate, which is a very fine idea.

I did also have enough for banana bread, but that’s a whole other blog.

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November 7, 2012

Smashed Potatoes

Potatoes, butter and salt. Sometimes cheese. There are so many ways to combine this sublime collection of ingredients that there are whole cook books dedicated to the pursuit – not any of which are in my collection. I have some vague feeling that I read about this method in a newspaper article by Jill Dupleix, back in the days when newspapers were made of paper instead of pixels. Remember that?

This would probably work for most varieties of potato, but I prefer cocktail potatoes because of the smaller insides to jacket ratio. I work on about three potatoes per child. Boil them until you can stab them through quite easily and their little skins are starting to split like startled frankfurters. Drain them, then put them back in the pot with some slices of butter and toss them around until they are coated. Dump them onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, or not if you have someone else doing the washing up. Get out your potato masher and gently smash them.

Don’t go overboard, you want them to retain their identities for serving purposes. Actually, they taste just fine even if you smash them to smithereens but that makes them harder to serve. Sprinkle them with Himalayan salt that has been infused with hand pressed alkaline kale powder. Bake at 180 degrees for about half an hour, or until it’s all crispy.

Actually, only do that second last bit if you’re a complete prat.

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November 6, 2012

Singing

Why are Australians embarrassed to sing? If they like it as a kid they’re mercilessly teased until they can escape to a performing arts school or the Conservatorium. If they must sing because they’ve formed a rock band at school, then the boys will croak or scream and the girls will do that intensely irritating breathy little girl thing that’s so regrettably prevalent at the moment. Yes I am easily irritated, thank you for asking.

Singing is ridiculously good for you and I don’t want to hear this nonsense of I can’t sing. Everyone can sing. Some better than others, for sure, but all you need is to want to and the ability to hear yourself, and sometimes you may need a singing teacher or singing friend to help you with that. It doesn’t matter what you sing, sing along to the radio (especially the ABC fanfare, that’s very stirring), join a choir, and at this time of the year you should sing Christmas carols. That appears to be the only mildly acceptable form of Australian public singing, so take advantage of it.

I started singing fairly recently. I just wanted to get out of the house one evening a week, to even up the score with my husband’s soccer training. I did classical piano for many years so can read music, but hadn’t sung with a choir at all. I was very lucky in my choice of choirmaster, because he hustled me into the Sydney University Graduate Choir which sings exactly the kind of complicated music I love. He also convinced me that I could sing. At first, I didn’t believe him, but after a few months it became true. I’m going to plug this choir right now because on November the 18th we’re singing Handel’s Messiah at the Sydney Town Hall, for more details click here. It’s a wonderful experience and even my kids like it (we do it every two years), so come along for your yearly classical music dose.

I’m having some mates over tonight for a spot of singing and we’re going to have a go at singing Christmas Carols in parts. They’re going to be getting Once in Royal David’s City, which they’d better like because I asked for suggestions and didn’t get any. Have a go at getting your friends together for some carol singing, and if they’re too shy, come over to my place. It’s good for your core strength, your lung capacity, your soul, and it’s even better in a group. I love it.

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November 5, 2012

Chicken Stock

I can’t believe that people are charging fourteen bucks a litre for chicken stock. I can’t believe people are paying it! Do you know how much it costs you to make your own? So close to zero I can’t even be bothered working it out. It’ll take maybe ten minutes of your time, and most of that is bagging it. You must make chicken stock!

There’s a zillion recipes for chicken stock on the internet, possibly even a zillion and a half, so you can pick one that looks good to you. Many are a lot fancier than the one I’m making today, but this is your basic add it to couscous or a stirfry stock, although it’s also an excellent soup base.

You need a chicken carcass. You’ll find that you have one if you can’t be bothered cooking and go and get chicken and chips. Or if you’ve roasted a chicken. Save all the bones and skin and bits that people won’t eat in a bowl in the fridge. You’ll also need some flavoursome vegetables, the classic three are celery, carrot and onion. You don’t need to peel them or chop them neatly, and they can be in pretty much any state. The celery I’m using today is the leaves and inner bit of a bunch I bought for the kids to dip into peanut butter. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. You can use any limp carrots you find at the bottom of the crisper. You don’t have to peel the onion, just chop it roughly. Put approximately one each of those three veg in a large saucepan (or just the tops of one bunch of celery) and if you’re feeling fancy sautee them in a bit of butter until they have brown bits on them. I really wasn’t in the mood today, so I didn’t. Chuck in the chicken carcass and skin and fill the saucepan about three quarters full of water. Bring to the boil and simmer covered for quite a long time, an hour minimum if you lack planning ability and rather feel like chicken noodle soup for dinner, three or four hours if you’re hanging about the house sewing soldier’s tunics and paying musicians.

You can add other flavours to the stock, today I’ve shaken in some peppercorns and a clove of garlic. I’ve also put in those incredibly desiccated bay leaves that even the nicer spice brands put out, I’m never terribly convinced they’ll add much flavour. About fifteen minutes before you have to go pick up the kids, strain the stock into a large bowl. Leave the bits in the strainer to hang over the bowl to drip while you’re out. When you get home, stick the bowl in the fridge.

The next day you can skim off the fat and bag the stock. I seem to use about half a cup at a time, so I’ll measure half cups into little ziplock freezer bags. Put those in the freezer. If you are that kind of person you can write the date and contents on the bag. Some days I am that person, some days not. Now how easy was that?

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November 2, 2012

Cake Decorating

If one of your friends suddenly turns mummy blogger then you know you’re going to be fodder the moment you do anything interesting with them. Today it was my introduction to cake decorating and as if that isn’t something I should be sharing then I don’t know what is.

I generally focus more on how my baked goods taste than what they look like. I slap icing on birthday cakes mainly because I’m the one that gets to lick the bowl, but that’s as far as it goes. You could call my style rustic, if you were being polite. It turns out that there’s a whole world of pretty out there that can go on top of your homemade deliciousness and also that a whole lot of people rather like it. So when my good friend and neighbour who also happens to be such a good cook that she can make sparkly macarons without breaking a sweat offers to demonstrate basic cake decorating to a group of mortals, I’m so in.

We gathered at another neighbour’s recently renovated house which is so perfect and clean and gleaming it just makes me cry a little inside. I’m good at the feeding the family side of housewifery and slowly improving on the end of year play costume making front, but tidying and cleaning aren’t my strong points. It was a shame to clutter up her shining benchtop with balls of fondant and rolling pins and sparkle powder and gel colours, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

Hours of mucking around with playdough with your preschool kids will stand you in good stead for cake decorating. You can get the fondant from the supermarket – I had a look at the do it yourself version and it is possible, but only if you are able to work quickly which means lots of experience. You should use gel colours to colour it, but I did find that they leave a slight chemical taste. I wonder if I’m the first person to want to use natural colours? One of the girls suggests that this may not be the case, but the natural ones make you feel good and don’t really work. Isn’t this often the way? Perhaps I should go for all white decorations.

At its most basic, you just roll out the fondant really really thin. You can either cut out a circle to cover a cupcake (that has previously had a glue of ganache or hot jam applied), and or cut shapes and letters out. I was very tempted to photograph all of the pages in the Planet Cake book the guru brought along for ideas for pirate faces, cheeky monkeys, Mr Men and the like. You can also make 3D shapes, this stuff really does have a similar consistency to playdough. Pity birthday season is over in this house, but it does give me plenty of time to practise for next year. First, though, a visit to the cake decorating section of the local kitchen shop for sparkle powder.

Remind me not to blog after the family has got home, if it has been a little disjointed it’s because I haven’t been able to get half a sentence out without being required to go and look at something, remove a knot from hair, deny a request and tell children every five minutes that I still haven’t decided what’s for dinner. If they ask me again, they’re getting quinoa. But they can have a fondant flower for dessert.

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November 1, 2012

Not Coca Cola Syrup

When one has given up a glass of wine with dinner during the week for whatever reason, it may be that you’re thinking of your schoolgirl figure, it may be that your husband has gone on a health kick and you’ve decided to be uncharacteristically supportive rather than making his favourite biscuits all the time, where was I? Oh yes, one still feels the need to have something a little special with dinner as a reward for not skinning anyone alive during the day. What I’ve been in the mood for lately and have only just got around to making today is homemade cola.

This is one of those more complicated recipes that you have to be full of energy and optimism to make. You need such fancy things as a Microplane grater (the fine one) and some muslin. I started off with the classic recipe published by the New York Times last year, which I could make you go and look up, but I guess I’ll be kind and list it here. Then I’ll tell you what I actually did.

Ingredients:
Grated zest of two oranges
Grated zest of one large or two small limes
Grated zest of a lemon
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 point of a star anise, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried lavender flowers
2 teaspoons minced ginger
A one and a half inch piece of vanilla pod, split
1/4 teaspoon citric acid
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Method:
Bung everything except the sugar and citric acid in a saucepan with two cups of water. Simmer gently covered for twenty minutes. Place the sugar and citric acid in a bowl, top with a sieve lined with a double layer of muslin. Pour the concoction through the sieve and squeeze all the fluid out. Stir the syrup while it’s still hot to dissolve the sugar. To serve you put a quarter of a cup of syrup in a tall glass and top up with soda water.

This is a pretty good recipe as it stands. There’s a bit of a treasure hunt involved for ingredients, but once you have them you have a summer’s worth of cola. I get out the Microplane first and do the zesting, the nutmeg and the ginger straight into the saucepan. Today I used a large pink grapefruit instead of the two oranges, and I think I prefer it. I use half a cinnamon stick in place of the pinch in the recipe. I felt that it needed a little more gravitas, so added a tablespoon of ground coffee to the saucepan as well. I also use a full teaspoon of citric acid, I think it makes it zippier. I simmer it for about an hour, which probably doesn’t make a great deal of difference.

Now I should go and make a citrus syrup to use up all the nude fruit I have left. That may have to wait until tomorrow, I’ve run out of puff and still have two more armored vests to make.

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October 31, 2012

Cornbread

Sometimes the day just gets away from you and you find yourself in the car with a couple of starving boys demanding to know what delectable treat you’ve whipped up for afternoon tea. What you do is hold them off for twenty minutes with yesterday’s strawberry sorbet while you mix up some cornbread.

I was given this recipe by a Korean colleague of my husband’s, but really only started making it after we got back from the US last year. Over there it’s a thing you serve as a meal’s carbohydrate, like mashed potatoes, which I still can’t bring myself to do. I do like to make this recipe and put it into mini muffin cups, that way it will get taken in lunch boxes by my crumb averse children. Makes about sixteen mini muffins.

What you’re supposed to do is mix together one cup of flour, one cup of yellow cornmeal or polenta, four teaspoons of baking powder, a third of a cup of sugar and a pinch of salt. Then you’re supposed to beat in an egg and add up to a half a cup of milk, enough to make a stiff batter. Then you stir in a quarter of a cup of oil. But because I was being nagged fairly thoroughly I just dumped everything in the bowl and mixed it up and scooped it into mini muffin cups. Done after about fifteen minutes at 180 degrees.

You can also scrape it into a baking paper lined lamington tin and bake it for a bit longer for your more traditional shape. I’m sorely tempted to skip the sugar next time and substitute grated Parmesan cheese. Let me know if you try it before I do. It may interest you to know that while Parmesan cheese can be grated effortlessly in a Thermomix, it just makes a stick mixer make whiny noises. I can’t be bothered trying it in a blender. In case you were wondering.

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