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

This morning saw us down at the Abbotsford Convent as part of the first national Slow Food, A Taste of Slow – Australia 2006, festival. First off, our usual stop at the Collingwood Children’s Market on what was forecasted to be an overcast day with showers. As you can see however, the sunny blue sky held sway. Get ready now for loads of photos!

The animals at the Collingwood Children’s Farm always has lots of young visitors:

You wouldn’t think by looking around that we were just 5 minutes drive from the city centre:

Brightly coloured pasta:

Green eggs with ham anyone? (or is that duck egg blue?):

Golden and dark sultanas, currants, almonds, pepitas:

The BEST butter made fresh at The Dairy Shop. They cut it like cheese for tastings!:

Try the ‘Dark Nut Cove’ with roasted hazelnuts, pistachio, caramelised sugar & fine dark couveture chocolate from Cocoa Rhapsody:

Get yourself a coffee here but don’t be fooled into joining the queue for the pancakes next door. The high demand often has them churning out golden brown pancakes that are uncooked in the middle:

At the Abbotsford Convent, we started with freshly shucked oysters. Mmmm:

The Convent Bakery with delicious artisanal breads baked in the woodfired masonry ovens built in 1901:

Egg and bacon roll with relish!

Cheeses & honey from Tasmania:

We picked up a jar of tangy, piquant Desert Lime Jam which we are hoping to put to good use in a jam drop cookie soon:

Stephanie Alexander signing copies of her new children’s cookbook:

The spring market garden planted by children from Stephanie’s Kitchen Garden. The produce was harvested and turned into salads for this weekend’s activities:

A gentle giant – bull mastiff:

If you were not able to make it today, come down for the final day of the Abbotsford Convent Weekend tomorrow from 10am – 5pm to enjoy some great food.

Abbotsford Convent, St Heliers Street, Abbotsford. $12 entry fee.

  

The day started off promisingly enough despite the weather report warning of impending showers and so, with grey clouds looming, A. & I bravely set out from our hotel at The Rocks in Sydney’s CBD. Following Helen’s impeccable and detailed instructions to “head down George Street (away from the Opera House and towards Chinatown) until you get to Market Street (walk = 17min or bus it). Turn right at Market Street and continue down the hill, up the ramp and along the pedestrian bridge over the water”, A. & I found the Good Living Growers Market in Pyrmont with no trouble at all.

 

With great foresight, we headed straight to the coffee stall to pick up one cup of coffee and one sweet milky tea. It started drizzling as we stood in line for our hot drinks, then two stalls further on, it poured! We took shelter under a large unbrella that the busker had set up, happily nursing our hot drinks. Hey, being Melburnians we’re used to the weather being unpredictable.

The rain let up not too long after and we were able to browse through the market stalls quite freely, sampling Pink Lady apples, lamb burgers, spiced macadamias, dried fruit & nuts, cheeses, honey, olive oils and the odd french pastry or two (okay, we had one whole escargot and palmier):

 

 

 

  

  

 

 

Amongst other things, we ‘somehow’ (read ‘courtesy of A.’) ended up with a bag of apples. What’s the big deal with that, right? Well, we were heading back to Melbourne the following day and Victoria has strict rules about bringing in fruit from interstate. I don’t think we’ve eaten quite so many apples in one and a half days before.

Having had our fill at the market, A. & I , made our way towards the Sydney Fish Market on Bank Street, Pyrmont. It was still early enough in the day for the market to be relateively quiet. I expected the market to be a lot bigger than it actually was so it didn’t take us long to look around and decide that next time we would stay somewhere with cooking facilities. We had an early lunch of tuna kebab and, of course, grilled fish and golden chips. 

Melbourne has certainly been churning out the festivals & events while the Commonwealth Games are on. On the weekend, mum & I strolled up to Carlton Gardens where the Victorian Producers Market had been set up, next to the heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building.

There were lots of local produce on show and on sale but we didn’t pick up much as most of these stalls are the same ones that participate at the farmers markets around town but it was a beautiful day for wandering through, sampling and smelling and chatting.

There were even some prehistoric creatures keeping us company as we checked out what they were cooking on stage:

Obviously, I was not the only one who thought that it was a good idea to check out this event.

On Monday, I also popped down to the Culinary Pro Am competition they are holding. Kind of like Iron Chef without the quirky host and the terribly bad but hlarious voiceovers. I watched one of my hero-chefs, George Calombaris, who is about to open his new restaurant The Press Club in a few months, take on and defeat Teage Ezard with his Cypriot-inspired dishes. Check it out if you are in the city area – the finals are coming up on Saturday.

The Bredel Market in Strasbourg consisted of a number of undercover stalls that sold bredel, bredel and more bredel. This stall was an exception as they were demonstrating how to bake kugelhopf, a light yeasted bread that usually contain raisins and lemon peel and is topped with almonds. The ones they were making on this day contained chocolate chips.

Our compact digital camera broke down while we were in Prague. Although A. was finally able to fix it so that we could take some photos with it at a later stage (ie. I had to place my hand under the lens as I turned on the camera in case in it fell off, then soom to a certain point in order to focus), at this point we were shooting with a Kodak disposable camera (gasp!). When I took photos of the white-haired gentleman who was shaping the bread, he couldn’t believe that I was using a disposable camera because he hadn’t seen one in ages!

Strasbourg, a city that used to belong to Germany but is now part of France, is well known for its French-German cuisine. In addition to hosting France’s oldest Christmas market, this lovely city is also the birth place of Christmas trees, the tradition of cutting and decorating of which began in the 1600s.

Having heard about the beauty of their hometown from P & S, who are themselves currently living in Australia, we decided to spend the week before Christmas here. We stayed in a quaint and extremely pretty section known as La Petite France, whose timbered houses could have come straight out of a fairy tale. I felt like Gretel (of Hansel & Gretel fame) and was mightily tempted to try breaking off bits of the gingerbread-like houses to see how they would taste! La Petite France can be accessed by any one of the many bridges that cross the Ill River. In the photo below, you will see the pedestrian bridge that has been roped off and rotated 90 degrees to allow the boat through:

The most well-known Christmas market in Strasbourg is probably the one held under the imposing gaze of St Nicholas cathedral, but it is by no means the only one. We visited at least five other markets around the city area, some small and others large and one, the Bredel Market, which sold nothing but bredel (cookies), kugelhopf and pain d’epice.

We spent our time in Strasbourg wandering the streets, especially the elaborately decorated ones around St Nicholas (one had Baccarat chandeliers hanging overhead for the length of it). We drank vin chaud, pomme d’epice or jus d’orange chaud and ate crepes, the most delicious of which was the one served with lashings of caramel made with salted butter. Here’s a picture of the Raclette Crepe that A had for lunch:

We also had to try the Alsatian Tarte Flambee, also known as Flammekueche, a thin crust pizza topped with with bacon, onion and a creamy fromage blanc that is baked in a wood-fire oven (thanks for the suggestion, Fab!):

At the other end of the market, we spotted rows and rows of Christmas trees that were being sold to residents to put up at home & to decorate:

One of my favourite sights was of the men capturing the trees and trussing them up like prisoners:

We also spotted another type of Christmas tree but unfortunately we didn’t think one would make it home whole:

Gingerbread decorations and other goodies:

When we were in Belgium on our last trip, we missed out on trying waffles even though they were being sold on every street corner. Since returning home, we have heard from friends that Belgian waffles are pretty amazing.

Recently, an article on Belgian waffles appeared in our local paper and it included a list of the best places in Melbourne for these sweet, buttery delights. We have yet to check out these places back home, but seeing this Belgian-owned stand at Staromestke Namesti in Prague reminded me of the experience that we did not have.

These particular waffles are like giant versions of the Dutch stroopwaffles – thin, crispy waffles biscuits (cookies) with a caramel filling. The closely-guarded recipe for both the waffle dough and the buttery caramel was perfected by the guy’s grandfather, who passed it onto his father, who then passed it onto him. He hopes to pass the tradition onto his own children in the future.

The waffle is made by pressing the dough into the waffle iron and cooking until done. The waffle then gets lifted out and carefully sliced horizontally through the middle in preparation for the caramel (this needs a light hand and some practice!). After spreading the caramel onto one half of the waffle, the top half is quickly slapped back on.

These waffles were so delicious when eaten immediately while still warm with the caramel oozing out with every bite. Perfect for a cold and snowy winter’s night.

The captivatingly smoky aroma from this roast pork stopped us dead in our tracks and had us watching the guy hacking chunks of meat off the roast to serve hungry passers-by. We had spotted this stall the day before but had been lured away by the the scent of cinnamon and almonds wafting through the market. Judging by the number of people having dinner here, however, we figured that we could not pass it by a second time.

So, a hunk was carved out for us and served with the ubiquitous Prague sourdough and a dollop of mustard and ketchup. The meat was moist and tender and oh-so-delicious in its saltiness. This was definitely better quality meat than the stuffed old bohemian piglet (although that was fun to eat) and really easy to cut into bite-sized pieces after having been roasted for such a length of time.

Well, the Praguers certainly seem to like their pork! Most of the meat we came across at the market stalls were some form or other of pig. This Stuffed Old Bohemian Piglet (an oxymoron, right?) sounded and looked interesting. The meat was already shredded and was being cooked on the grill. And just to prove that it really was pork, they had the top half of the piglet sitting on the chopping board beside the grill – how attractive! The shredded meat was stuffed into a hotdog roll and we squirted mayonnaise on top (as recommended by the stallholder). The verdict? Delicious!

After our snack, we wandered to the Old Town Square in the heart of the city where the biggest Christmas Market in town is held. The atmosphere here feels so much celebratory than home with stalls selling gingerbread, Christmas decorations, roasted chesnuts, candied almonds and so on. There is a large Christmas tree in the middle of the square and a nativity scene in front of it. Everyone is rugged up in thick jackets and scarves, wandering around with paper cups of mulled wine or grog (hot rum) in their mittened hands.

We came across an unusual-looking traditional Czech pastry called Trdlo. The stallholder told us that the word ‘trdlo’ means crazy – I guess because the bread is loopy? Any other ideas?

Anyway, the dough is wrapped around a steel rolling pin, baked over open flames then rolled in sugar, vanilla, rushed almonds and cinnamon while it’s stil hot. Deliciously warm and fragrant but the bread is just a tad on the doughy side for us (as with most of the bread here, we find). It seems very popular here though – I wonder if you can only find it at this time of year?