Archive for December, 2007

WHB #112 : Spring Onions and Soba Noodles

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Simona from Bricole is hosting this week’s WHB, and it’s been warm enough today for me to be craving a big bowl of cold Soba noodles with spring onions. Spring onions, scallions or shallots. Even gibbons or cibies, if you’re Welsh or Scottish. By whatever other name you might know them as, they are still that member of the allum family that I love for that fresh, mild onion flavour, as a garnish in potato salads, scattered over steamed fish and white-cooked chicken, rolled up in peking duck pancakes and tossed through my favourite bastardised version of a cold soba noodle dish.

A favourite dish I have almost on a weekly basis is Soba noodles – both the plain buckwheat and green tea types – dressed cold in a soy based sauce, with plenty of aforementioned spring onions, black sesame seeds, thinly sliced cucumber, crispy deep fried eschallots and shredded chicken or poached salmon. It’s a refreshing bowlful of Summer that takes no time at all to prepare. Even better, you can make it ahead and keep it chilled (further allowing the noodles to soak up the flavours of the sauce) until you want to eat it. Just the ticket, when it’s a hot day and the last thing you want to be doing is standing behind a hot stove.

Nigella Lawson’s Soba Noodle recipe is a good place to start, when wanting to make this dish. I usually customise it according to my preferences, by including a dash of cooking sake and a bit of wasabi or chilli for added kick.

Soba Noodles with Sesame Seeds :
(Serves 4 as part of a meal; or 2 when eaten, gratifyingly, as they are.)

75g sesame seeds
salt
250g soba noodles
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
5 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons sesame oil
5 spring onions

Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over a high heat until they look golden brown, and tip them into a bowl.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil and add some salt. Put in the soba noodles and cook them for about 6 minutes (or according to packet instructions) until they are tender but not mushy. Have a bowl of iced water waiting to plunge them into after draining.

In the bowl you are going to serve them in, mix the vinegar, soy sauce, honey and oil. Then finely slice the spring onions and put them into the bowl with the cooled, drained noodles and mix together thoroughly before adding the sesame seeds and tossing again.

Leave the sesame seed noodles for about half an hour to let the flavours develop, although this is not absolutely necessary or sometimes even possible.

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Think spice, think Panforte!

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Last Christmas was all about mince tarts, but this year I’ve fallen in love all over again with that spicy, fruity and nutty Italian treat, panforte. Literally meaning “strong bread”, it is also known as Siena cake; named after that region of Italy where is it considered a speciality. The best panforte I’ve ever tried, was made by a chef I used to work with. He would make huge batches of it to be sold during Christmas, and I recall watching him struggle with stirring the honey syrup into the flour, spices, fruit and nuts. The trick with making panforte is to stir the ingredients together quickly while still warm before it starts to set too much – which can be problematic when making a large batch. He was straining so hard there was literally sweat pouring down his brow and it almost looked as though either the wooden spoon he was using, or his arm, would give at any moment. But the toil was not in vain, because once cooked and sliced, the rest of us would bicker over the delicious off-cuts. It was so tasty that if we needed to come to blows in order to get the biggest pieces, I’m sure I would’ve been the first to throw a punch.

The December theme for Sunita’s Think Spice event is cinnamon, one of my favourite spices, and also a spice which features in panforte.

Unlike most traditional panforte recipes, this one from Belinda Jeffery’s Mix & Bake is easier as it doesn’t involve taking the honey/sugar syrup up to a soft-ball stage. The end result is delicious, but is also slightly softer than the chewy panforte I’m used to. This could quite possibly have been due to my use of very soft, reconstituted-style dried figs, so don’t let that deter you from trying out this simple recipe.

Apart from cinnamon, my panforte also contained cardamom, black pepper, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cocoa powder and an assortment of fruits (dried and glace) and toasted nuts, bound together by a pungent Tasmanian Leatherwood honey. The original recipe is as follows:

Barbara Lowery’s Pecan and Macadamia Panforte :
(recipe from Belinda Jeffery’s Mix & Bake)

edible rice paper or baking paper, for lining
75g plain flour
50g Dutch-processed cocoa, sifted
1 teaspoon each ground cardamom and cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white or black pepper
200g dried figs, coarsely chopped
1 cup coarsely chopped glace fruits, such as apricots, pineapple and cherries
140g roasted pecans, coarsely chopped
75g roasted macadamias, coarsely chopped
160g whole blanched almonds
80g unsalted butter
110g castor sugar
180g honey
icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat your oven to 180’C. Butter a shallow 22cm round cake tin and line the base and sides with edible rice paper or baking paper.

In a large bowl, use a balloon whisk to thoroughly mix together the flour, cocoa, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper. Add the figs, glace fruit, pecans and macadamias and mix them thoroughly together.

Tip the almonds onto a baking tray and roast them for about 5 minutes or until they’re pale brown. Timing is important in the next step as the almonds need to be hot when you use them.

Meanwhile, put the butter, sugar and honey into a small saucepan over low-medium heat. Warm them gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, then stop stirring and bring the mixture just to the boil.

Immediately tip the hot roasted almonds and the hot syrup into the fruit and nut mixture. Quickly mix them together until they’re well combined. You need to be somewhat speedy here as the syrup and almonds must be hot so that everything mixes together easily; if they’re cool the mixture tends to harden and clump together.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and use a palette knife or the back of a spoon to press down and flatten it out evenly.

Bake for 30 minutes; at this stage it will still appear somewhat soft when pressed (don’t worry – this is as it should be as it firms up considerably once it cools). Cool the panforte in the tin on a wire rack. Once it’s cool, turn the panforte out and remove any baking paper (the rice paper is edible and can stay put, just trim it if it sits up above the edge of the panforte).

If serving immediately, dust the panforte with icing sugar and cut as much as you want into narrow wedges. Tightly wrap any leftover panforte in plastic film and foil (or put it in an airtight container) and store it in the fridge, where it will keep for weeks.

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When change goes bad / Tokyo 2007 : Sunday in the Park II

When you’re rushing around, working in a kitchen surrounded by a constant assault of smells – from bubbling stocks, sizzling onions and 100 panfried steaks, to buttery pastries fluttering from the oven and 10 litres of freshly made chocolate sauce – you don’t often feel all that hungry, believe it or not. It’s usually not til I’ve left work that I realise I’m ravenously hungry. Today was no different, and I thought I would treat myself to a pretzel from my favourite one-stop-pretzel-shop, Luneburger.

If not for having to make the trek up pedestrian-unfriendly George Street to the QVB, I would probably eat Luneburger pretzels every day. When I got to the shop, my legs were wobbling from hunger, but I realised I had no money, and couldn’t find an ATM nearby. So I ducked into the nearby Woolworths and tried to find something to buy in order to get some money out from the cash register. Inconceivably, there was nothing I wanted to get, and indecision was eating away at my stomach lining. Finally I settled on a chocolate bar, got the money out, and rushed back to Luneburger. There was a generous number of glistening pretzels on display. However, they looked a bit smaller, lacked their signature sprinkling of rock salt, and were shrunken and wrinkly, rather than full and puffed, like the arms of Mr. America. Chief Baker’s day off? I wondered. Nevermind, one pretzel please! The girl behind the counter held up a pretzel and said, “These are different today. They don’t have salt on them, and there’s butter inside instead”. Stomach growling, I stared at her blankly. There’s what inside? “Butter. There’s butter inside.” She pointed patiently at the pretzel. There’s butter inside? I repeated stupidly, not quite computing that there would be no glorious, much longed for pretzel, to be had today. “Yes, butter”. Still unable to process the information, I declined to buy the sinister alien butter filled pretzel and walked away, all the while my mind was screaming, why why why with the butter?

On the train home, I unwrapped the damn chocolate bar and ate that instead.

More pictures, as promised, from Yoyogi Park and surrounds. One of the bands playing that day had an amusing name. Unfortunately I can’t recall what it is exactly, only that it involved the word Hedgehog, which is in itself, an amusing word.

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