A Few of My Favourite Things !

I’ve always wanted to try cooking with zucchini flowers but I’ve also always chickened out at the last minute. Not today though. Today, we visited the Abootsford Convent market and we happened to stop by one of the stalls to ask if they were selling mulberries. Only ones that had gone mouldy unfortunately but they did have zucchini flowers, 10 heads of which came home with us.

What to do with them though? We didn’t have any ricotta or fetta but I remembered some home-made babaganoush and parmagiano reggiano sitting in the fridge. So, our zucchini flowers were filled with a mixture of these two ingredients before being battered and fried. A sprinkle of fleur de sel from Ginny together with some lemon wedges on the side and voila! Serve and eat immediately!

While the boys were enjoying the zucchini flowers, I prepared the salad. While browsing at a book sale a couple of days ago, I was instantly smitten by the beauty of Julie Le Clerc’s cookbook ‘Taking Tea in the Medina’. The vibrant photo of this particular cucumber and fennel salad scattered with torn mint leaves and pomegranate seeds made me buy the book. Thumbs up for this salad. The pomegranate seeds are a little pale but they were revived from the depths of our freezer so you will have to forgive them for looking a little anaemic.

I also grilled some chicken thighs which had been marinated in a Jamaican Jerk spice mix for about 30 min. The thighs were basted with a sauce of brandy, lime and more of the spice mix while grilling. Serve with a wedge of lime.

Battered Zucchini Flowers

3 egg yolks
2-3 tbs flour
1/2 cup cold mineral water

3 egg whites

1. Remove stamen from centre of flower, wash gently in cold water and pat dry
2. Fill flowers with mixture of babaganoush and shaved parmagiano reggiano
2. Beat the egg yolks with flour. Season with salt & pepper then add mineral water and mix until smooth
3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold into egg yolk mixture.
4. Dip flowers into batter and shallow fry for a few minutes on each side until golden brown.
5. Sprinkle with salt and serve, with a side of lemon wedges, straight away

If you’ve ever seen Bill Granger on TV or in a photo, the first thing you would notice is his boyish smile – the whitest, most perfect teeth set off by tanned, tanned skin. I hear that he is promoting a new Macleans toothpaste and you can definitely see why they would love him.

I’ve never owned any of Bill’s cookbooks but I have enjoyed ricotta hot cakes and scrambled eggs at bills in Surrey Hills and his Banana Bread is one of my favourite things to bake. However, I hear that Every Day is pretty good.

This morning, on my way into work, I saw posters outside Angus & Robertson announcing that he was doing signings. There was a desk set up and books all ready to be signed on the table…and not a single soul around. Then Bill came up the stairs and walked behind the desk. And still, no one around, no one rushing up to get thier book signed. Well, I didn’t want him to feel like nobody loved him so what else could I do but head on up?

Well, actually, the truth is that A. was with me and said ‘Why don’t you get the book?’ So I did, autograph and all. And Bill comes across in person exactly the way he looks in photos – completely lovely and sweet.

A. tried to take a photo of us together with his phone but as you can see it was WAY too bright…or maybe that’s just Bill’s radiant smile.

We have been home for more than 2 weeks now and I still have not posted anything from our Malaysian holiday. Why not? Well, we had so much wonderful food that I have no idea where to begin. How’s that for an excuse?

I suppose I could start with one of our more memorable meals. Our two week visit coincided with two festivals, one of them being Diwali (Deepavali) the Hindu Festival of Lights. Deepavali is celebrated as a public holiday in Malaysia and traditionally small earthen lamps are lit to commemorate the victory of brightness over darkness, good over evil. The city was decorated brightly for this festival and we saw a number of colourful images like these in the shopping centres:

The night before the Indian community went on holiday, we visited a banana leaf restaurant with some new blogosphere friends. K.L. from Masak Masak had kindly offered to show us around when she found out that we were visiting. We made plans to dine at this restaurant but instead of just meeting there, K.L. and her boyfriend came all the way into the city to pick us up – typical Malaysian hospitality!

After selecting a few marinated seafood items that we wanted to try, we sat at the table in front of our banana leaf plates. The waiters then start piling white rice, pickled vegetables and potato curry onto the leaf – as you can see, my waiter got carried away scooping rice onto my ‘plate’ while I was busy taking photos!

A trio of curry sauces – fish, chicken & dahl – served in silver canisters are also placed on the table for you to pour over the rice at your leisure. We were also served papadums and deep fried bitter gourd (if I remember correctly).

We had a prawn curry, fried calamari, two types of fish and roe. We managed to eat all this without any cutlery, trying very hard to neatly mould rice, sticky with curry sauce, with the fingers of our right hand and manouvering it into our mouths.

A. & I both thought the deep-fried roe was fantastic in all its salty and crunchy goodness!

Here is an ‘after’ shot:

Thanks, K.L. & Y., for being so generous with your time