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Saturday Arvos

Nothing quite like a Saturday or more exact a Saturday Arvo. Spent the arvo picking Basil leaves for “normal” Genovese pesto and Lemon Basil leaves which I think will become a pesto with a bite to it, in the way of chillies and a decent dash of lemon juice. mmm just thinking about the idea now, I can just see a bowl of rice noodles with a bit of the pesto, some cashews and perhaps some steamed Asian greens.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting on a milk crate in the back yard listening to some fine Australian music, chopping up tomatoes and capsicums to go in the dehydrator. In a day or two we will have the most gorgeous semi-dried tomatoes. Some of which will get used to make a tomato pesto. Gee do you think I might like pesto? Really though how can you not. Just a handful of ingredients, a bit of love and tasting and you end up with the most flavoursome “sauce/paste” that can be used in/on just about anything.

Saturday arvos are also about mowing the lawn. Which I did this arvo.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, cutting out snippets for books or exhibitions that we want to check out. Speaking of exhibitions to be checked out, it is only 22 more sleeps till the Andy Warhol retrospective opens at GOMA and to say I am excited would be an understatement :). The even cooler thing? Andy Warhol or more precisely 300 of his works are only coming to Brisbane, they are not going to those two cities down south who always talk about their capital C Culture. Yay for GOMA :D. I am so looking forward to the Andy Warhol retrospective and I have a good feeling that it won’t disappoint me as much as the Guggenheim in Melbourne did. 22 sleeps also till the big opening bash which is going to feature some of Brisbane’s finest artists including Robert Forster, Adele Pickvance & Dylan McCormack doing a bunch of Velvet Underground songs. The even better part? tickets are only $25. They go on sale on Monday – I am getting some for sure 😀

I have just finished my last run through my photos from the De Jah Groove/Cool Calm Collective/Heavyweight Champions/The Colour gig last night (which was a pretty darn decent night) before I send them off to the marvellous batcher. I started using Lightroom a month or so ago and it has sped up my processing so much. I dump the photos, walk away and let it import them/render previews (takes a while on my beast), come back flick through and mark my rejects and give a rating to the photos I have narrowed down, flick through to make sure they all look ok and then off to the batcher they go. Lightroom is nice.

For a change I am also listening to 4MBS Classic FM at the moment and the most delightful piece has has just finished playing (Brahm’s Hungarian Dancers 1-10) everything else has also been quite delightful.

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Basil

A year ago or pehaps a little longer if you had asked me my feelings about Basil I would have made gagging noises about my distaste for it as I had often had meals where my father had used a pretty heavy hand cooking with dried Basil. Then one day I picked up a bunch of fresh sweet Basil at the markets and made pesto. I haven’t looked back since then. Now I can’t get enough of that Basil taste and in fact if it was taken away from me I don’t know how I would cope.

I have a Greek Basil plant in my garden which has provided me with my fresh basil fix over the winter and in a few weeks I will have an abundant supply of Sweet Basil to keep me going over the summer.

I made my first Sweet Basil Pesto of the season tonight with some Basil that I picked up at the markets on the weekend. Whilst Greek and Sweet Basil both have that Basily taste they so many different levels to them. The Greek is a much more peppery plant I feel and as it is that Pesto I am used to tasting, I kept on adding more and more pepper to the Sweet Basil Pesto tonight as it was tasting too green. Lol. The adventures of Pesto. For Lunch tomorrow I will have Cous Cous, Chicken and Pesto. mmmmmm yummo.

Here is the Sweet Basil waiting to be planted. Waiting to give me hours of Basil Bliss in the kitchen 😀
Basil & Thyme with some Flash Goodness

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Sunday in Brisbane

Sunday, Mum and I spent the day doing some cultural sight seeing around inner Brisbane. We started off at Southbank before getting on the City Cat down to the Powerhouse to check out the new photography exhibit (not the biggest fan of it) and then back on the City Cat to Bulimba to the Queensland Centre for Photography where my Aunt is currently exhibiting some work.

Chocolate Concord, River Bend Books, Bulimba

Then we met up with Georgie for a quick stroll on Oxford St, a browse at Riverbend books and a bite to eat (the above picture, which we split into three parts). Then it was back on the cross river ferry to Tenerife and the bus into the Valley where we browsed in Mod Cons and then finally the bus home.

A very nice day indeed.

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Perfect Sundays

Today was a nice day. One of those days where you are doubly happy to be living in this wonderful world. The sort of day where you forget about the troubles. I woke this morning at 5:30am and after laying there for 30mins I could not get back to sleep. I decided I may as well get up and face the day. I went into the kitchen and started the process of making some olive oil bread. I was using fresh yeast for the first time as well so that was fun. Once I had made the dough and left it to rise, I headed down to the Nundah markets which is very small affair of a few produce stalls and some other knick knacks. I was hoping to get some basil to make a big batch of pesto but was out of luck. I did however pick up some nice tomatoes which I will use for dinner tomorrow night.

It was also just such a lovely morning, Mum and Pabbi were at Tangalooma for their wedding anniversary, the guests of the Palsson Guest House (read my brother and his friends) were still fast asleep. It was just me, the overcast sky outside, the kitchen, a cup of Nature’s Cuppa Ceylon Tea and Macca on the radio. Macca and Australia All Over on a Sunday morning is something that I have grown up with. I know I often talk about how much I love listening to the ABC but Macca and Australia All Over is something extra special. Listening to people call in from all across this wide brown land and from around the world about what they are doing is just a great thing on a Sunday morning. Also just listening to Macca in general, he has such a great personality. I read the papers, had some breakfast, tended to my bread and just soaked up the overcast sky and the drizzle. I didn’t make a plain olive oil loaf but folded two cloves of finely chopped garlic into the dough as I formed it. Which when I got it in the oven made the kitchen smell wonderful, that mixing of the yeasty smell with garlic, just so yummy.

Once the bread was cooked I grabbed it out of the oven, wrapped it in a tea towel and headed over to Georgie’s house. Georgie and her boyfriend left Brisbane at Christmas to do their last semester of uni at University of Toronto before tripping across the world. They got home just over a week ago and even though we have spoken on the phone a few times, it was great to spend the afternoon hanging out looking at photos/videos, chatting, laughing, cooking and laughing some more. As well as chatting to her parents, boyfriend and playing with the cats and dog.

Today has been overcast for most of the day and raining for most of that. Which made it perfect weather for staying inside cooking in the kitchen. As opposed to going for a walk or browsing the shops on Oxford St. Staying inside cooking is what we did. We made a very tasty spiced pumpkin coconut soup with prawns for a late lunch which went very well with the bread. Then for afternoon tea we made a berry slice 🙂

It is bed time for me now as I have my last 5am start at work in the morning, oh I look forward to starting at 7!

Of course no post is ever quite complete without a photo and as I didn’t take any this afternoon at Georgie’s, here is one from the other week when the film festival was on.

The bridge

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Lemon Meringue Pie

First off, every time I see Meringue written/typed I think of Merengue or more precisely Pintame or Sauvemente by Elvis Crespo and my feet start tapping. Ok now that I have that out of the way.

I have never actually had Lemon Meringue Pie before, sorry correction I have no recollections of eating it in the past but Mum says she made it a bit when I was a wee kid so I quite possibly have eaten it before. Nevertheless when I was pulling Bush Lemons off the tree on the side of the road, I knew that the the first thing I was going to make was Lemon Meringue Pie.

Like any good Australian, this recipe comes from The Australian Women’s Weekly Cooking Class Cookbook, our version is at least 29 years old as Mum’s maiden name is written in the front. This book though is a classic and many of our favourite recipes are from it.

I didn’t use the pastry recipe supplied but my last pastry disc from the Chocolate Mascarpone Tart and that pastry worked quite well.

_MG_7771

Lemon Meringue Pie
The Australian Women’s Weekly Cooking Class Cookbook

Filling
4TBSP plain flour
4TBSP corn flour
3/4C lemon juice
lemon zest from the juiced lemons
1C sugar
90g butter, in small cubes
4 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1 1/4C water

Meringue
4 egg whites
2TBSP water
pinch salt
3/4C castor sugar

Line a 9″(23cm) pie plate with your preferred pastry. Decorate the edges with your finger, prick base with fork, line with a disc of baking paper and cover with rice, beans or baking weights. Cook in a 180°C oven for 10-15 minutes or until it is lightly browned. Leave to cool.

Dissolve the cornflour in a portion of the water so that it is smooth. In a saucepan combine the sifted flours, lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar and water. Stir till smooth over a moderate heat until the mixture boils and thickens, it must boil. Reduce the heat and stir for a further 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in butter and egg yolks, keep stirring till the butter is melted. Leave to cool.

Spread the cooled filling into the pastry shell. Beat the egg whites, salt and water on high speed till soft peaks form. Keep beating at high speed and gradually pour in the sugar until the sugar has dissolved (you can tell this by dipping your finger in the mixture and rubbing it against your thumb, it should be smooth). Spoon on top of the pie, spreading it evenly on top. Peak or rib the meringue decoratively with a knife or a spatula.

Bake in a 160-180°C oven for 5-10 minutes or until the meringue has just lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool. It is easiest to slice this with a normal dinner knife dipped in hot water.

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Grandmum’s Cheesecake

Grandmum's cheesecake 1

As we were driving home from our Mackay trip, Mum noted a bush lemon tree by the side of the road laden with lemons. I promptly did a u-turn on the road and went back to the tree to pick a fewlemons. There is nothing quite like bush lemons and for the rest of the day I could smell the lemon oil on my fingers, our car too was perfumed with the delicate scent of lemons. It was quite a treat. Later on that day I picked up 5 limes and 5 meyer lemons for $1 at a farm gate stall on the Gympie-Tin Can Bay Rd. We have had quite a few lemon treats since we returned and this is the first one to be posted 🙂

This recipe is one my Grandmother used to make(hence the title) and was made by my mother with the photographs by me of course.

Grandmum’s Cheesecake
Grandmum's cheesecake 3

Ingredients
Crust
250g Arnott’s Scotch Fingers, crushed
45g Copha, melted
45g margarine/butter, melted

Filling
250g cream cheese
400g sweetened condensed milk
1/3c fresh lemon juice
1tbsp gelatine dissolved in 1/4c hot water

Make a crumb crust with the scotch fingers, copha marg/butter. Press into the base of a 7″x11″ Lamington tin and refrigerate.
Beat 250g cream cheese till soft, beat in the remaining ingredients. Pour into the prepared crust and chill till set..
Serve with strawberries, passion fruit or just chomp down on a piece as it is.