I grew up watching many sitcom families celebrate Christmas in the utmost traditional way possible – chestnuts roasting by the fire, carols, snow, roast turkey and stuffing. Naturally, I wanted all of that. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that Christmas in Sydney occurs in the summertime, where none of those traditions make sense. Santa would lose pounds under the weight of all that red wooly fabric. Reindeers could collapse from heat exhaustion. Frosty the Snowman would be the guy in a truck playing Greensleeves down your street.

Still, our family persisted. Breaking point might have come perhaps, when we came over for Christmas one year and mom had the air-conditioning on full blast while trying to roast a turkey. We worked our way through the bird and all it’s trimmings in a relative comfort of a powerful air conditioner, but it was hard work stepping back into the harsh 35+’C heat of the outside world. Something had to give. Next year, mom declared that it was going to be a turkey-free zone. Since then, it has been a happy gathering of fresh salads, oysters, sashimi, and the odd leg of cold glazed ham (with a few extra bits to take home and consume in increasingly creative ways – ham sandwiches, ham omelettes, ham fried rice, ham …).

I made some gravlax recently, that reminded me of our Christmas cold lunches – light, refreshing and tasty. It is gravlax “by default” because when I started this recipe, I didn’t want to cure a whole side of salmon. Instead, I bought a single portion and scaled down the ingredients accordingly. The thing I forgot to consider, was that such a small portion of fish would not require the same curing time. When it came to slicing and tasting, I found it a bit too salty, and remedied this by cleaning off the excess salt and marinating the cured fish in a good splash of verjuice. A day later and the slices of fish were absolutely perfect. We had this with thin toasted bread and some tomato salsa. Maybe I should have cured a whole side afterall!

Gravlax, or Gravadlax, is traditionally a Scandinavian dish, and literally means “salmon from the grave”, when it used to be preserved by burying the fish in the sand. These days it is merely marinated in salt, dill and sugar, with variations such as vodka and beetroot juice creeping into recipes I have spied in some books. My recipe comes from the very interesting book, Preserved, by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton.

Gravlax :

1 salmon fillet, skin on

For every 1 kg salmon you need :
50g coarse sea salt
50g granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon freshly milled black pepper
zest of 2 lemons
50g roughly chopped fresh dill

Trim the salmon fillet and remove the rib and pin bones.

Place the salmon in a shallow dish, skin side down. Cover it with the curing ingredients and rub them thoroughly in. This isn’t exactly traditional, but cover the dish with a layer of clingfilm. Place a heavy chopping board or a smaller board weighed down with a pile of plates on the surface of the clingfilm and put it all in the fridge. Compressing the salmon helps to create a firmer, drier gravadlax.

After 24 hours, pour off the excess liquid and turn the salmon over. Return it to the fridge, weigh it down again and leave for another 24 hours.

The gravadlax is now ready. Uncarved, it will keep for another 5 days. To serve it, take a long, sharp knife and slice the fish diagonally, starting at the tail end. Greasing the knife with a smidgen of oil will make the carving easier. Gravadlax is delicious served with hot blinis and creme fraiche mixed with mustard.

(This is my contribution to Nihowera’s Mid-Winter Christmas Feast for 2007.)

A couple of evenings ago, B announced that he had bought a TV. A TV? But, but, we have a TV! Yes, but this one is much bigger, he says. How much bigger, I ask. He tells me. Wah. Why do we need such a large TV? What are you compensating for? Small eyes?, I counter, with narrowed eyes.

You see, I drool at the sight of large plasma screens, as much as anyone else, but the thought of owning one of them frightens me a little. Being so big, it doubles as a room feature and screams, “I have no life! TV IS my life”.

It’s like when you’re at a party and you’re talking to a new acquaintance, asking them what television programs they like. You hope they’ll bring up your current favourites, like Heroes, Entourage, The Chaser and it turns out the conversation killer is so against the culture of the box that he doesn’t even own a TV. Oh, well,… we’ve recently bought a 48inch flatscreen plasma TV behemoth of a thing, now let’s change the subject!

Also, I’m one of those nonsensical people who stay attached to old things. I can buy a new toothbrush and still be using the old one to the point where the bristles aren’t brushing anymore – more like stroking the teeth gently. Might as well have been brushing my teeth with my finger, the way people do when they forget to pack a toothbrush. I love our old TV. It has been completely faithful and problem free. It’s just really hard..to..let….go. Old things are comforting. As comforting as a big bowl of hot dumplings in winter.

(see, I can segue as well as Anna Coren!)

Johanna of The Passionate Cook has chosen Dumplings as the latest WTSIM theme. Golden syrup dumplings, yeasted fritters, gnocchi, pierogi, takoyaki, samosas, gow gees, I love them all!

I saw a recipe for a yogurt soup with dumplings in a recent issue of Gourmet Traveller magazine and was intrigued enough to want to attempt it. For one thing, I’d never had yogurt soup before, let alone hot yogurt soup. Also this was my first time hearing of these dumplings called mante – which are, according to the recipe, “traditional Armenian pasta parcels filled with spiced meat and usually served with a yogurt sauce”.

Sold.

A few things I did have to change when I made this. For the life of me, I couldn’t find any plain pistachios when I went grocery shopping that day, so I substituted with toasted almonds instead, which still tasted good in my opinion. Also, I found the quantity of yogurt soup was perfect for serving, but not quite so for simmering the raw dumplings, so I ended up cooking them in water.

Overall, a very tasty and heart-warming way to start a meal.

Now, is there anyone out there who’s interested in a second-hand Phillips TV?

Hot Yogurt Soup with Chicken and Pistachio Mante :
(recipe by Joseph Abboud from Rumi)

750ml natural yogurt
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 tablespoon cooked short grain rice
1/2 teaspoon dried mint
Extra-virgin olive oil, to serve
Lebanese bread, to serve

Mante :

100g minced chicken
20g coarsely chopped pistachios
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
18 8cm-diameter round wonton wrappers

For mante, combine all ingredients except wonton wrappers in a bowl and season to taste with sea salt. Place a heaped teaspoon of filling in the centre of each wonton wrapper, brush edges with water, fold wrapper in half and join ends together, pressing to seal.

Whisk together yogurt, egg yolk, cornflour, rice and mint in a bowl, pour into a large saucepan and bring to a simmer (do not let it boil) over medium heat. Add mante and cook for 3 minutes, or until mante float to surface. Ladle soup into bowls, drizzle with olive oil and serve with Lebanese bread.

The wet weather had left me hankering for a nice big piece of chocolate cake, accompanied by an equally large pot of tea. I have my standard list of favourite, never-fail chocolate cake recipes, but wanted to try something new this time. George’s Chocolate Nut Cake, a recipe from Stephanie’s Cook’s Companion, was the result. Wishing I had chestnut flour on hand, but settling for the almond meal already in the cupboard, this cake turned out light but very moist, with that wonderful lick of alcohol becoming more pronounced the next day.

If one cake is good, then two is a tastebud tango, I decided. Armed with a handful of mandarins, the obvious way to transform them into wedges of cake was to utilise Nigella’s Clementine Cake recipe. What are clementines anyway, but a type of mandarin. And what is Nigella’s recipe, but a variation on Claudia Roden’s Middle Eastern Orange cake; an oft mentioned, much loved and much copied recipe. What has previously stopped me from making this cake has been that starting paragraph that goes something along the lines of, “Boil your oranges for two hours..”

Originating from South East Asia (like myself), mandarins are one of my favourite fruits. Like all citrus fruits, they are high in vitamin C. This fruit has loose, easy to peel skin (the dried form of which can commonly be found in chinese grocery shops) and sweet juicy segments. When I was growing up, I remember mandarins featuring heavily during Chinese New Year celebrations. This, I’ve been told, is because, apart from symbolising health and happiness, the chinese word for “mandarin” is also phonetically similar to that of “gold”.

So if you can get past the 2 hours of boiling that is required to kick start this recipe, I assure you, the results are well worth the wait. I quite like the idea of using the whole mandarin, harnessing all it’s citrussy flavour. Cooking the fruit first enables it to be blended completely with the rest of the ingredients and eliminates the bitterness of the pith. This mandarin cake is immensely pleasing in an aromatic, moist and flavoursome way, and is my contribution to this week’s WHB, hosted by Paulchens Foodblog.

Mandarin Cake :

3 mandarins (about 375g total weight)
6 eggs
225g sugar
250g ground almonds
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

Put the mandarins in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each mandarin in half and remove the pips. Blitz the mandarins in a food processor. Add the remaining ingredients and process to combine.

Preheat the oven to 190ºC. Pour the cake mixture into a buttered and lined 21cm tin and bake for an hour, when a skewer will come out clean; you’ll probably have to cover with foil or greaseproof after about 40 minutes to stop the top burning. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin before removing.

George’s Chocolate Nut Cake :

250g chestnut flour, ground hazelnuts or ground almonds
1/2 cup Dutch cocoa
9 eggs, separated
350g castor sugar
30ml cold espresso coffee
60ml tokay, muscat or other fortified wine
1 tablespoon pure vanilla
50ml olive oil
grated zest 1 lemon
small pinch of ground cinnamon
small pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 150’C. Lightly grease a 26cm springform tin. Sift chestnut flour and cocoa into a bowl. Beat egg yolks with sugar until thick and pale. Lightly fold flour mixture into egg mixture. Add coffee, half the tokay, vanilla, olive oil, lemon zest and spices and fold in carefully. Beat egg whites to soft, creamy peaks and fold in gently. Bake in prepared tin for about 40 minutes until cake still seems a little moist in the middle. Allow cake to cool in tin for a few minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Moisten the cake with remaining tokay before serving.