Category Archives: Perfect Picnic Food

Rose & Pistachio Browned Butter Baklava & A Persian Feast for the New Year

My friend M had her birthday recently. What I didn’t realise was that her birthday is the same date as my our wedding anniversary so when we booked our trip to New Zealand months ago I didn’t realise that we’d be missing out on her birthday. She is such a good friend that she postponed her birthday celebration until we returned. She was having a celebration where a friend of hers Sara, a lovely lady that makes all manner of fantastic Persian delicacies, was making the food for her. So in turn I offered to make dessert for her and I have been dying to try and make a Baklava. I was inspired by Alejandra’s delicious Orange Hazelnut baklava and adapted her recipe.

I adore this dessert, it’s so sweet, sticky and delicious. I wanted to make something that fit the occasion and a flavouring such as rose and pistachio immediately sprang to mind. It’s one of my favourite combinations – if you’re a regular reader you’ll see evidence of my obsession with rose. While I was clarifying the butter I wondered if somehow browned butter would work. Browned butter is wonderfully aromatic with its nutty aroma so what better way to enhance the nutty flavour of a Baklava than using browned butter instead of regular melted butter.

I was nervous, this was my first time making baklava properly. I don’t usually do unusual things for events such as this where other people are tasting my food-certainly I felt out on a limb making baklava for the first time already but when you’re out on a branch, you may as well enjoy your time on the edge. The key to not having a soggy baklava is that the syrup and he pastry must be at opposite temperatures. Either you pour cold syrup over the hot baklava or warm syrup over the cold baklava. I chose the former as the timing suited me to make the syrup the night before and store it in the fridge.

Zereshk Polo Ba Zaferon: Saffron rice with berries

Tadige Nan: crunchy bread

Today is also the day for Persian New Year (at 10pm to be precise) which is what I learned from talking to Sara. We were lucky to try these fantastic dishes which she painstakingly made over 2 days. We were dining with Sara & Shahram; Dean and Penny; Esan and Ellie, Laura and of course M and her boys.

Khoreshte Gheyme Bademjan: Eggplant and lentils with tomato

Shirin Polo: Saffron rice with meatballs

Sara made Persian rice studded with berries, saffron rice with mini meatballs, a delicious eggplant bake with a lentil-ey bean, a rice, egg and chicken layered dish and gorgeously crunchy bread. We feel absolutely spoilt by all of the delicious food. “Sale No Mobarak” or Happy New Year in Persian!

Tachine Morgh: Rice layered with chicken and egg

And did the baklava work? Thankfully it worked a treat. The baklava was crunchy with a light aroma of rose and the ultimate compliment came from the Persian and Iranian guests Sara and Ellie who were very complimentary about it. And like an actress drawn to the drama, or a moth to the flame I am a ham when it comes to food and compliments like that only spur me on and encourage me to enjoy my time out on the proverbial limb.

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Creme Brulee Fudge: A Tale of Three Fudges

How much do I love thee reader? A lot apparently, making 3 batches of fudge, in order to find a good, reliable recipe that anyone, anytime could produce. After writing about the delicious Crème Brûlée fudge we had in Arrowtown, New Zealand, I had readers asking for a recipe and I was also curious to have some for myself. What I didn’t realise is that the sugary stuff is more temperamental than a macaron. I think I’m a moderately skilled cook but when my first two batches failed I started to get despondent, then angry. I’m sure that alongside 7 stages of grief, there are 7 stages to fudge failure and I can really understand why the word “Fudge!!” is uttered as an expletive to some. Apparently, the weather can affect fudge making and canny experienced fudge makers will not bother to make it if the weather is humid or rainy. And even then there’s no guarantee that it will work. And I am living proof. I even bought myself a sugar thermometer to aid me in my pursuit of Creme Brulee fudge.

“Patience dear” is an oft repeated phrase around me. I am the most impatient person that I know. For me, it has to happen right now, then then and right there. I often have the Veruca Salt song “I Want It Now” ringing in my ears. One thing that forces patience on me is fudge making. Waiting until all of the sugar has dissolved on a low heat to stirring it constantly instead of running off to check your computer, the waiting for the soft ball stage to materialise-all things that requires a measure of patience that I don’t seem to have.

1st lot, delicious but unset

Like Goldilocks (or should I call myself Ravenlocks?), my first batch wasn’t right. With orders to test for soft ball using iced water (which I did, much like when I did it for the marshmallow) and orders to beat it straight away from Nigella the whole thing turned out grainy due to the partial crystallisation of the sugar when I stirred it during the crucial cooling process and it didn’t set properly due to the humid weather although I have to admit, flavour-wise, it tasted great.

My second lot once I bought the sugar thermometer was creamier, due to waiting for the temperature to drop to 40C which took 1.5 hours. It also didn’t set. And I know people will say that it’s because I didn’t reach the soft ball stage but I disagree, I did as I watched the thermometer like a hawk. This fudge however was gorgeously creamy and ungrainy so had it set, it would have been perfection.

Gathering myself together I came across a food proof, weather proof and method proof recipe for fudge which involved using marshmallows. It’s easier and quicker and miraculously set pretty much straight away, Even better was that it had a gorgeous creaminess. Flavour-wise I do think I preferred the first two but only by a small amount. The relative ease and reliability of this recipe means that it’s the winner for me.

I’ve also given you the recipe for the other two fudges should you wish to try them. Perhaps given the right weather where you are and a certain planetary alignment and your astrological moon in the correct position, it may set for you (just consider yourself warned ;) ). In any case, bruleeing the stuff is easy, in fact I don’t know why it isn’t done more often. Just sprinkle with a little sugar (fudge contains enough of the stuff anyway so only a bit is needed) and blowtorch to you heart’s content, being careful not to set the paper or oiled foil on fire. It’s not exactly like the Remarkable Sweet Shop stuff in Arrowtown, New Zealand but it’s fabulously good and will win friends and influence people.

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Champagne and Rose Petal Marshmallows

There are often signs that one should not step foot in the kitchen. This morning, I received one. I was closing a kitchen cupboard door when the whole door came crashing down onto the ground shattering everything in its path. Luckily my irreplaceable china was safe in the credenza but as luck would have it some rather loved china was broken in the process. This made me wary after that. Is this the universe’s way of telling me to stay out of the kitchen?

Then there was the other not so subtle hint when I was reading the recipe I had planned to make. I had no sugar thermometer. I asked my twitter friends if anyone had made Marshmallows without a sugar thermometer before. The answers ranged from No to Yes but only if you get to know the soft and hard ball stages. The crucial piece of information came from the blogger Passion4 Eating who gave me this very helpful site which, if you don’t have a sugar thermometer, you should read before starting to avoid any confusion. Which I did very quickly and I set a bowl of cold water in the fridge to standby.

Despite the clear warning signals, and despite my nervousness, somehow these gorgeous Marshmallows worked. They are as light as a whisper, sweet nothings to be treasured on lazy days. These gorgeous fine bone china white cubes are dusted with freshly fallen sugar snow and topped with pink rose petals. I gave one to my husband who had never tried home-made marshmallows before and his face registered confusion “Is it meant to be so … light? Aren’t they firmer?”. And then he went on to eat more, and more, and more. And then there were none.

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Pissaladière

Now stay with me, I know half of your turned off your lights when you saw the addition of anchovies. But believe me when I say that this particular recipe is not strongly fishy. In fact the anchovies provide the salt and the caramelised onion provide the sweet. Onions are one of those vegetables that I dislike in the raw format but adore in the cooked format.

The onion take quite a while to caramelise, about an hour in fact, but you don’t have to stand over them stirring. For the first 5 minutes you might want to push them around the saucepan just to make sure that all of the slices get enough heat and butter but for the next 30 minutes after that you can pretty much leave it alone and get away with stirring it two or three times. That doesn’t mean that I’d recommend you leave and do the shopping, I wouldn’t go that far, although a spot of online shopping is most definitely recommended and isn’t that why god invented online shopping?

For some reason whenever I make this in Summer, I need to ensure that the windows are all closed. Flies love the sweet smell of caramelising onions.The caramelised onions can be made ahead of time and stored in an airtight container for 2-3 days so all you need to do before you have guests coming over is to assemble it which takes about 10 minutes and can be done while the oven is preheating.

The taste of the Pissaladière is certainly something delicious and a force to be reckoned with. Even those who normally shun onions, olives and anchovies find themselves ditching their prejudices with every delicious, crunchy bite.

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Mortadella, ricotta and olive pie: an Italo Anglo Pie

One of the best things about food blogging is meeting fellow bloggers. Case in point is Christie from Fig & Cherry who has proved to be a great blogging friend and a lot of fun to hang out with. We have a lot in common, from obviously loving food,  Dexter, pillow menus, hotels to being bossy chatterboxes.  So when she read about our visit to Dunes, we got to talking and she mentioned that she hadn’t been to Palm Beach before. It seemed a tragedy for a Sydney-Sider so we sought to rectify this as soon as possible. However the weather gods decided to not let us have our picnic in the end. Such is the crazy weather that we’ve been having lately.

I was watching Food Safari’s episode on England and was fascinated by the way they made Pork Pies. I had one whilst in London and it was delicious, particularly the pastry (just don’t look at the nutritional information, you’ll think it’s a misprint but I’m afraid not!). I had heard that the traditional way to make English pastry for things such as Steak and Kidney pie is through using Suet ( the hard fat around the kidneys and loins in beef and sheep) but I had yet to cook with it. Sure it wasn’t in anyway healthy but I figure a few times eating it in your lifetime can’t hurt. But I dipped a trepidatious toe in the Suet pool by buying a Suet mix where I simply added flour, cold water and salt to create the pastry. If it worked, I’d look at ordering some from the butcher’s. Because I was pressed for time as I was making this on a Friday I took some shortcuts with the pastry and frozen spinach.

We woke on the Saturday morning to a light howling of wind and an overcast day. It seemed that today was not going to be the day to go to Palm Beach so we made alternate plans. As for the fate of this pie? It was my husband’s lunch, well received, and eaten picnic style with his hands. Just in front of a computer.

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