Baked Marinated King Oyster Mushrooms

How do you use King Oyster Mushrooms? We love them – they are easily purchased in Asian shops if you can’t find them in your regular grocery. Slice these giant beauties and marinate them before cooking – forming a heavenly caramelisation of the marinade. The stems, how cute they are when sliced, and they look amazing placed on a plate on their own.

I have had a dish similar to this in Thailand, where the mushrooms are served on blocks of the softest tofu you can ever imagine.

King Oyster Mushrooms are also known as King Trumpet Mushrooms, Trumpet Royale and Eryngii.

Pilafs, pulaos, pulau, mixed rice dishes – many names for a delicious technique for smartening up a plain grain (usually but not always rice) to use as a flavoursome side dish. It can be simple – just a few spices added – or a complex layering of flavours. They are usually without a dressing although they are sometimes topped with a dollop of yoghurt.

Yoghurt can be baked, but it isn’t often seen – sadly, in my honest opinion.

This recipe, from Irfan Orga’s 1956 book Cooking with Yoghurt, takes the most unusual of ingredient – Brussels Sprouts – covers them in yoghurt and bakes them. It is the most intriguing of dishes.

Even though a lemony yoghurt sauce is sometimes made with sprouts, I have never seen one that bakes them with yoghurt. It is a dish that reflects its mid-last-century origins, but nice enough to have in your repertoire of Brussels Sprouts recipes.

Plus I am always on the lookout for oven baked dishes that I can cook in Winter to warm the kitchen.

One of the precious gifts of Spring is Broad Beans. If you do not grow your own you miss the young, tender pods, no more than, say, 8cm long. Often smaller. Sweet with the grassy taste of Spring, these need not be podded or peeled – they can be used as they are.

If you are not so lucky, purchase them from your green grocer and always look for the younger pods. Remove the beans from the pods, scald them for a few minutes, and then remove the outer peel of each bean. Perfect! You can even buy frozen broad beans.

This simple salad pairs the beans with tomatoes and parmesan, a classic pairing, easy to prepare, delightful to eat. Even if the parmesan is a bit hard

Broad beans are particularly good with parmesan, but it can be replaced with a creamy Persian feta. Cut into cubes and toss with the salad.

Garlic chips are also wonderful when add to the salad.

Beetroot. Earthy, versatile, raw or cooked, beetroot is a colourful and delicious addition to our table.

Not the best looking sambol, but fresh and delish.

Mint Sambol is a Sri Lankan fresh chutney recipe akin to Pachadis or Thogayals of South India. It takes lots of mint leaves, some onion, garlic and chilli and grinds them with sultanas and coconut for sweetness, and lime juice for tang. It is a great accompaniment to rice or any Indian or Sri Lankan spicy dish. (Also as a spread in a salad sandwich, dolloped into soups or on haloumi or other such things.)

You can make it finely blended or chunky.

The recipe is from #SriLankanFlavours, by #ChannaDassanayaka.

Roasted Eggplant with Special Miso Sauce

The thing about #SpecialMisoSauce* is that it is rich and dark and almost overwhelming in its deep flavours, so it is perfect for dishes in which you want the sort of umami that things like fish sauce or anchovies usually provide. Not that it tastes the same but it does have that same affinity for certain ingredients.

And we all know just how well miso pairs with eggplant anyway – it is a classic combination in the miso-loving parts of the world. So in this dish we brought together eggplants and the Special Miso Sauce for wonderful results and a very simple dish.

*Click on the hashtag link to see where to get the recipe.

Here is another of my loved rustic soups. It is a health-boost in a bowl, this soup. I usually don’t make it until later in the Wintery cough-and-cold season, but if it seems a bad season I make it early. It was a staple during lockdowns.

Chickpea Soup with Parsley and Turmeric.

Saffron Rasayana for the Weary

Are you weary? Stressed? In need of some relaxation? I have a rasayana for you – saffron in milk with honey and ghee. Always use less honey than ghee in the recipe. Amazingly, this drink relaxes and destresses. You feel your breath ease and deepen and worries vanish.

The art and science of #rasayana is about lengthening the lifespan, and individual rasayana recipes can be considered as tonics or something that enhances well being. Rasayanas not only include food but behaviours and practices.

I have been lying in bed this morning – a cool morning of Autumn where it is nice to be sipping coffee and reading under the warm blankets. I have been watching the sky as I read, wondering what kind of day it will be, and it has varied from blue with clouds, to dark and stormy, and back to clouds without patches of sky. Such are the joys of our Australian weather. We watch the sky in Summer to see what heat levels we need to endure during the day, in Autumn we watch the sky for much needed rain, in Winter it is about how cold and wet it will be, and in Spring we wait for the first warm to hot day to arrive.

So it is heading towards Winter and the soup pot has emerged from the depths of the cupboard again. We made an awesome spicy tomato soup the other day, quite Indian in style, and today we turn towards Italy and the simple but awesome products that come out of kitchens.

I have heard the food of Tuscany particularly is called Poor Man’s Food, that is, food that is made from locally grown produce without fanciness or pretension. Exactly my kind of food. I remain a country girl at heart despite living in various cities for the majority of my life. The influence of those first 15 – 20 years never leaves you.

The recipe for this soup is from Ilva, a Nordic gal married to an Italian and living in Tuscany. She ran a very successful blog back in the day, but eventually specialised in food photography.https://www.instagram.com/ilvaberetta/

Her recipes were always simple, with a focus on making the ingredients shine. I loved them.

Für den #schiffssamstag
( for #shipsaturday )

A few days ago I had a chat here and we talked about the wonderfully poor color reproduction of the old Kodak VR films, I dived deep into my archive and found this old maritime night photography, which I took on March 2007 with the #Minolta #Dynax700si on (exoired) #KodakVR400:

Look, @roguemusiclab: xtra for you!

#maritimephotography #nightexposure #nachtaufnahme #KodakVR400plus #35mmfilm #MinoltaDynax #LateAtNight #35mmphotography #filmisnotdead #photography #analogphotography #grainisgood #FilmIsMoreFun

This is a lovely mash of potatoes and sweet potatoes, and it can be made with either just potatoes or just sweet potatoes. It is simple to make once they are cooked – the mash is mixed with chilli, onion and spices. Delicious.

It is a Podimas – a peeled and mashed vegetable, tempered with spices, green chillies and onion. Podimas means "mash" in Tamil. It is a traditional type of Poriyal.

When Winter comes, we are suddenly looking for tomato (and other) sauces to make soup out of, add to lentil braises, vegetable stews, gratins, dipping sauces, and other dishes. Luckily I often make several of these each Autumn so that they are frozen, ready for the first Wintery dish that needs them.

Some of these sauces are the sort of sauce that you put on your (vegetarian) bangers and mash or over your BBQ’d veggies and patties. But the other purpose of these sauces is to add flavour to dishes, or form the base for soups, other sauces, and dipping sauces for snacks.

I have about 7 or so different tomato sauce/puree recipes that get repeated. Autumn is ideal to make them - tomatoes are at their best, especially if home grown. You can, of course, bottle /preserve them instead of freezing.

Today's blast from the past from my kitchen is one of the rare Indian non-dessert recipes that uses milk. This recipe is one that can substitute the milk for coconut milk if that is more to your taste. I like it either way, or with a mix of milk and coconut milk.

In India, milk is usually reserved for desserts, and in Ayurveda the consumption of milk with vegetables is not encouraged. In this recipe, I imagine that home cooks would use milk thickened with rice flour in place of coconut milk if that was not available.

It is best made with Indian tender pumpkin, but I have also made it with a number of our pumpkin varieties and quite love it. It is a very simple dish – pumpkin, seasoned, in milk with a simple tadka. But simple is best, no?

The recipe is one of #MeenakshiAmmal’s from the first volume of her cook books #CookAndSee – very traditional Tamil recipes.

Mushrooms and Peas | Khumbe Matar

One of the classic dishes of India is mushrooms and peas in a tomato gravy.

I often make it with a range of mushrooms – brown mushrooms, baby mushrooms, sliced king oyster mushrooms and even shimeji mushrooms. It gives a mix of textures and flavours.

Here I have also topped the dish with finely sliced snow peas. It adds crunch and freshness to the dish without confusing the “pea” taste.

Matki and Gotu Kola Salad with Coconut

Gotu Kola aka Pennywort is a bit of a super food with amazing properties - also some side effects so do your research before using. Occasionally I can find bunches at the local Asia grocery – a joy because it is used across Sri Lanka and India. In Sri Lanka a sambal is made, but this dish is a step further, a salad with a base of Moth Beans (Matki).

It is very easy to make and matki takes under 30 mins to cook, so you can make the salad in the morning while you are pottering around getting ready for work, and then it is ready to have with dinner when you get home.

Recently I found a gotu kola plant and now have it growing at home - it does well in a dampish, partly shaded environment.

I have also made this dish with nasturtium leaves, parsley or coriander in place of the gotu kola. Other ingredients include onion, green chilli, lemon zest, grated coconut, and lime juice.