Caramel Apple Pudding

Yum. This is amazingly simple, amazingly yummy and just right for those cold nights leading from Spring into Summer. Enjoy.

Caramel apple pudding

< style="font-family: arial;">1.33 cups plain flour (250 grams)
2 tspn baking powder
5 large golden delicious or granny smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced 1 cm thick
250 g caster sugar
200ml milk
150 g unsalted butter, melted
2 eggs beaten
1 cup light muscovado sugar or light brown sugar
0.5 cup golden syrup
icing sugar and thick cream

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Lightly buttre a 2.5 litre baking dish.

Place apples in the prepared dish. Sift flour and baking powder into the bowl of an eledtic mixer and add caster sugar, milk, butter and egg, ythen beat until pale. Spread mixture over the apples.

Place muscovado sugar, golden syrup and 30 0ml water in a saucepan. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to the boil without stirring. Pour over the pudding batter then bake for 30 – 35 minutes or until the top is golden.

Carrot Pachadi

Well, I was convinced to post my Carrot Pachadi here. Along with an article that I wrote to go with it for a magazine that is published by a friend. Enjoy!

Carrot Pachadi
There is a thing about Summer in South Australia that is extraordinarily special. Hot dry days, skies streaked with clouds, early mornings made in heaven and evenings made for the beach. Days are made for eating outside, eating with friends and … well, just eating.

This recipe is one of my current favourites – an Indian Pachadi, similar to a Raita, made with yoghurt. It can be eaten as a salad or as an accompaniment to curries. It takes about 10 minutes maximum to make, so is a great last-minute addition to anything – it is particularly good to whip up for that last minute invitation to a BBQ somewhere. Take the recipe with you because people will want it.

The curry leaves are essential, so make sure that you keep some fresh ones in the freezer, or, at a pinch, some dried ones in the cupboard. Buy them from the Indian Bazaar in Market Street opposite the Central Market, or in any of the Asian Shops in the Central Market.

Asofoetida powder is a highly pungent powder used extensively in North Indian cuisine as a replacement for garlic and onions. It has wonderful health giving properties. Use a pinch only at a time and it is good to fry it in some oil, butter or ghee before adding to a dish. Pick it up at the Indian Bazaar when you grab some curry leaves.

Black mustard seeds are much different to yellow mustard seeds – they have a wonderful nutty flavour and the addition to the carrots – along with the curry leaves – makes the dish. From the Indian Bazaar again although they may be available more generally.

Indians fry some spices in ghee and add to food immediately before serving because some spices exuded their taste into oil better than into water. Ghee, if you have not used it before, is a clarified butter that you can make at home (see my web site) but most people purchase it. Supermarkets have it now days, but if you are going to the Indian Bazaar, pick some up there as well. It is a wonderful cooking medium that is much much healthier than margarine, butter or oil.

I find that the chillies, coriander and mint are flexible. Sometimes I add a little chilli, sometimes a lot. Sometimes I use a chilli oil instead, or fry a chilli with the mustard seeds and discard before adding to the carrots. I have used parsley instead of coriander, or a mixture of mint and parsley.

300 ml full fat yoghurt
2 medium carrots, grated
celtic sea salt to taste
0.5 Tblspn vegetable oil
1 tspn black mustard seeds
1 red chilli, optional
0.25 tspn asafoetida powder
fresh curry leaves, or dried ones at a pinch
fresh coriander or mint leaves, chopped

Whisk the yoghurt until it thickens a little. Not all yoghurts will thicken easily – if it does not respond to the whisking, don’t despair. It is equally as good, just use a little less. Add the grated carrot and salt. Mix well.
Heat the ghee in a frying pan and add the mustard seeds. Fry them until they begin to pop and then add the chillies, asafoetida powder and curry leaves. Move them around the pan for 15 – 30 seconds and then pour over the carrots. Finally, stir through the chopped coriander or mint leaves.

Sucker for Raitas - Gajjar Raita

I am just a sucker for raitas. Not many know that the ubiquitous cucumber and yoghurt raita is not the only raita around! But there are hundreds!

The task of a raita is to add a cooling accompanyment to a curry. Nevertheless, I often use raitas with western food as a salad, usually on a hot hot summers day. They never fail to excite with their difference and their slight tang of India.

Try one today. There is a great one on my website using carrot and yoghurt. Here is another carrot one, but without the yoghurt. Both the carrot and the lemon juice help to control the fire of curries. It is not generally known that lemon juice has that property - you can even add it to a too hot curry to temper it down (or stir in some yoghurt).

Gajjar Raita

2 tspn ghee, or you can use olive or canola oil	3 large carrots, grated	0.5 tspn brown mustard seeds
2 Tbspn lemon juice	1 small red chilli, broken or cut in half lenthwise	0.25 tspn celtic sea salt

Heat the ghee or oil and fry the mustard seeds until they pop. Immediately add the chilli and then the grated carrot. Remove the ingredients from the heat without further cooking. Add the lemon juice and salt. Serve at room temperature (and you can remove the chilli!).

Enjoy!

The making of teas

Herbal tea is a wonderful drink. Not every having been much of a tea drinker and always interested in herbs and lotions and potions, about 6 years ago I started to regularly drink home made herbal tea.

Now, I approach making herbal tea like making a stock - there are three main considerations:

1. ingredients that will provide the maximum and most pleasant flavour
2. a little bit of intuition about what combination of things will make excellent tea
3. access to ingredients.

I guess I started when I lived in Sydney, and had access easily to a great range of ingredients - both most excellent blends of herbs to be drunk on thier own or mixed with others, and to fresh, dried, elemental herbs - things like red clover, marigold leaves, a magnificent range of mints etc etc.

These days, no longer in Sydney and only average blends available locally, I souce some ingredients via the net, buy some whenever in Sydney, grow a lot myself and have extended my range by including all sorts of Asian things from the local Asian shops, and incorporate some spices.

Here is my general method:
Start with ginger. Depending on the pot, put in 2 - 10 slices of FRESH ginger. Add other ingredients depending on your mood, add boiling water and maybe some high quality honey, wait 2 or 3 minutes and pour. You can fill the pot again and again with boiling water without need to refresh the ingredients.

My best simple basic tea is ginger alone or ginger with fresh lemon grass (or freshly dried lemongrass if you must). Add kaffir lime leaves (1 or 2) if you have them. Delicious.

Build up from there. Add any dried herb - rosemary is good, small amounts of thyme, even a sprig of parsley is surprising excellent. Lots of mint. It was a suprise to me initially that herbs we think of as "savoury" ie would not be good in teas, really work well - parsley, rosemary, basil, for example. Just keep their proportion smaller than other ingredients. (But on reflection, basil is GREAT in fruit salads, so why would it not be great in tea?)

Vary by adding dried red dates from the Chinese Market, or those little dried rose buds.

If you have access to good range of freshly dried herbs, roots and flowers, grab a range of them and keep them on hand to add a teaspoon here, a teaspoon there. Above all, avoid those dried things that look like they were dried before the Ark sailed!

Spices that go well are cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, a couple of black pepper corns (yes, really) nutmeg, star anise and cinnamon etc.

You can add genchami (sp?) the Japanese popped rice tea, or roobos the South African root. You can even add a pinch of black or green tea.

Dried licquorish is also great.

So go wild. Develop your sense of what makes a good tea for you. Experiment. My place is so well known for its teas, and my visitors expect nothing else. No coffee (although i drink it once or twice per day) or alcohol. They just want TEA.

Today my tea was simple - fresh ginger, kaffir lime, cardamom leaf, parsley leaf, and mint - all from my balcony pot garden except for the ginger which was from an organic shop. Added my favourite honey which I keep only for tea making. I am on my second pot already!

Enjoy!

November Loves.

Love love love..... Sunshine and hot weather! flowers. green grass. India - oh my god, India. Innerness. Friends.

Sago is back in fashion!

Remember sago - that lumpy stuff that we ate as kids. Tasteless but oh so cheap to cook. Well, it is back! Borrowing from the cuisines of SE Asia, sago is now a yummy, sweet dessert for summer (cold or chilled) or winter (hot). Try this one. Great for any time, even for kids arriving home from school.

Pandan (pandanus) leaves and fresh kaffir lime leaves are available from good Asian supermarkets. They are not entirely necessary to this dish, but add a subtle Asian flavour to it. If you are lucky enough to have cardamon plants growing, add a cardomon leaf to the boiling water instead. If you want more information about pandan or kaffir or cardamom, go to my dictionary.

Growing your own plants is so easy. I have a kaffir lime plant in a pot, about 8 feet tall and flowering this year for the first time. Not that the limes are anything to write home about, but it is exciting nevertheless. And I have cardamon growing in a pot. It doesn't flower but the leaves are used in anything from teas to curries to rice to desserts. Yum.

Also on my balcony in pots are several different kinds of mints, parsley, curry leaf, thyme, basil, rosemary and sage. So much better fresh, and always available.

Tropical Coconut Sago Pudding

220g sago	170g brown sugar	approx 150 - 200g can coconut milk	water to cover - around 4 cups
Pandan leaves (optional)	very ripe sweet bananas or other tropical fruits	fresh kaffir lime leaves or lemon/lime rind (optional)

Boil the water in a large pot. Put the sugar and pandan (pandanus) leaves into the boiling water, and add the sago. Stir periodically so that the sago does not stick to the bottom of the pan.

Keep the water boiling and cook until the sago is transparent - about 30 to 40 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the coconut milk. You can also stir through most of the fruit cut into chunks.

Serve it hot or cold or chilled in the fridge. Top with the remainder of the fruit and some shredded fresh kaffir lime leaves or finely grated lemon or lime peel.

Enjoy!

Dal Makhani

The story of dal makhani goes like this:

Some time ago in Bangalore, India, I had a dal makhani to die for. It was just a room service meal ordered as I was very busy at the time, yet it made me sink back into my couch with a wonderful smile on my face - as if I had died and gone to Dal Heaven.

I rang through to the kitchen and asked for the recipe. Oh what hilarity that caused in the kitchen - much laughter and giggles, and simply hours later, I received a typed up recipe from the chef at the Taj in Bangalore. It is the most wonderous dish, full of butter and cream and takes some time, so a dish for special occasions.

Recently I wanted to make it again, so off to the wonderful Asian Bazzar in Market Street in Adelaide to get my beans. I knew that I needed 3 different beans but could not recall them. I asked the wonderful indian man if he could help me. "But of course madam. You need Kidney beans, chana dal and urad dal." Then he proceeded to write out his recipe from memory! Here it is. It is just as yummy as the other recipe, which you can find on my web site, but lots simpler. Go for it!

Indian Bazzar's Dal Makhani
Use 1.5 cups of urad dal,
0.5 cups of chana dal,
0.5 cups of red kidney beans
1 - 2 onions
2 - 3 cloves garlic
large knob of ginger
chilli or curry powder
celtic sea salt
bunch coriander
2 ripe tomatoes
3 - 4 Tblsp tomato paste
2 - 4 Tblsp ghee or butter
30 ml cream

Soak the beans overnight.

Cook the beans until tender with 1 onion, 1 knob of ginger, 2 - 3 cloves of garlic, 1/2 red chilli or your favourite curry mix (use a good one) to taste, all chopped finely, and salt (use only celtic sea salt for superior flavour). Don't use too much chilli or curry. You want a tang, but don't want it to be really hot. If I am being a purist, I will add the salt and curry mix for the last 1/2 of cooking time. But some days I don't want to be a purist.

Cook until well done and just a little mushy. The length depends on your beans - and urad dal takes a long time to cook. I have been known to cook it for 2 hours on very low heat, but maybe 1 hour on a simmer will be fine. Mash some of the beans on the side of the saucepan or use a stick blender (but don't mush too many - you still want the bean texture).

Stir through 3 - 4 Tblspn tomato paste, the same amount of ghee or butter, 25 - 30 ml of cream and adjust the seasonings. Heat through, and stir through half a bunch of coriander (chopped) and some tomato, chopped into chunks. I love curry leaves quickly fried in butter and added to the dal as well. Serve with rice and wait for the "Yum"s.

You can serve this as part of an Indian meal, but more and more these days I do Fusion Cooking - I could serve this with a nice salad of greens, tomato and onion, perhaps cucumber and bean sprouts. Not much dressing on it, and certainly not too acidic. No vinegar - use lemon or lime and not much of it. You could shred some kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass and sprinkle thorugh the salad as well.

Continue. Enjoy.

Welcome

Welcome to Jennifer Harvey's Food Matters, an extension of her old site, and to her yet to be developed new site. recipes.foodmatters.info.

This is a food without meat. It serves to introduce people to great food that is not based on meat and to assist vegetarians eat delicious food that is simple and easy to prepare at home. Trust me, I am a stickler for taste and good food, so nothing inferior passes through my kitchen. Try some of the recipes, and hints, and definitely I hope that you enjoy the blog of my life.

As you will see with my old site, it really began as a blog all those years ago, when blogging was not "in". The site developed so much that it just became too difficult to manage, being a simple site technologically speaking, and also I "turned" vegetarian, a journey of several years. So gradually I will convert the old site to the new site. That also might be a journey of several years ......... grin.

The years since I started my food site have seen an enormous personal journey for me. I am no longer who I was, but I am still the same me. Hope it makes sense.

Well, continue. Enjoy. Eat well, healthily and tasty! Yum!