Mastering the mysteries of potato salad

For our Christmas Day buffet, I made potato salad. It was a great success, and I was looking forward to eating the leftovers on Boxing Day - but it was so cold and wet I didn't feel like it, and bought a supermarket pouch of soup instead (because I can't be bothered making any). Still, I learnt a lot of interesting things in pursuit of potato salad mastery, so I thought I'd share the essentials with you, plus a recipe,  because today the sun is out and it feels like salad weather again.

1. Good potato salad requires potatoes that are neither under-cooked nor over-cooked. Starting the potatoes in boiling water is a bad idea, because the outside overcooks before the inside is even warm. So always start the potatoes in cold water.
2. Adding 1 tablespoon of rice or white vinegar per litre of cooking water, as well as salt, both seasons the potatoes and helps to prevent over-cooking.
3. Because potato salad is eaten cold, it needs more seasoning than potatoes served hot. Adding more some seasoning to the hot drained potatoes is much more effective than waiting until they're cold.
4. Mayonnaise needs to be added later when the potatoes are cold, and you can add a bit more vinegar at this stage too, along with pepper.

If you really want to know every detail of the science behind all this, complete with the cellular construction of potatoes and pictures using green dye to show how seasoning gets in, go here.
The Food Lab guy's final word:

Two tablespoons of vinegar in the cooking water, another to dress the hot potatoes, and a final two in the mayonnaise mixture add plenty of layered brightness. Mayonnaise—be it storebought or homemade—is a must... By stirring the salad vigorously, you can bash off the corners of the potatoes, which get mashed up and extend the amount of creamy dressing to tender potato chunks. For heat I add a few tablespoons of whole grain mustard.

Okay, so here's my NZ adaptation of the 'Classic Potato Salad' recipe provided by Serious Eats to go with the lab report:

1.5 kg smallish boiling potatoes
2 litres cold water
2 Tbsps salt
2 Tbsps sugar
2 Tbsps rice or white vinegar

Add potatoes, salt, sugar and vinegar to water in a large saucepan. Bring to boil, reduce to a slow boil and cook until done (test for doneness after about 10 minutes' slow boiling - mine took about 20 minutes to cook through). Drain, peel and cut into chunks (not too small or they'll go mushy).

2 Tbsps vinegar

Transfer warm cut up potatoes to rimmed baking sheet. Spread into an even layer, then sprinkle with vinegar. Allow to cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes.

·                          

·      Add extras according to preference - the quantities depend on how many potatoes you're using, but the potatoes should prevail:
      
      Original recipe
      Finely diced celery

·           Finely diced red onion

·           Finely sliced green parts of spring onions
      1/4 cup chopped cornichons (tiny gherkins)
      Finely chopped Italian parsley
     
      Some NZ extras or alternatives:
      Hard-boiled eggs, chopped
      Corn kernels (cut from a cob microwaved for 3 minutes)
      Finely diced shallots (milder than the red onion)
      Capers instead of cornichons
      Finely chopped fresh chives

Mix gently into cut up potatoes, then add:
      Bought or home-made mayonnaise 
      (Not too much, it shouldn't be overwhelming. For super-easy home-made mayonnaise, go here. I made it with the finely chopped garlic, but leave that out if you don't like it.)

Taste and mix in gently, according to preference:
      Grainy mustard
      A little more vinegar or a little lemon juice

Chill for a few hours or overnight - take out of fridge an hour before serving.

Those who know my blog well will recognise that once again, I took the photo only after we'd eaten most of the potato salad!

Chocolate truffle cake

My son was born on 12 December, a bit close to Christmas, but of course he likes to have his birthday properly celebrated.  This year he planned to have friends round for afternoon tea. As it happens, I was at my friend Joan's birthday afternoon tea a few weeks ago, and she had made a remarkably delicious chocolate cake - not one of those great big high ones, but a much denser, fudgy, chocolatey creation I knew my son would love. (After extensive research, he has decided his favourite cafe chocolate cake is Aro Street Cafe's Chocolate Nemesis - another dense, fudgy number.)   
            So I asked for the recipe. In the usual fashion, it was given to Joan by Chris, who knew it as Lilly's Truffle Cake, so it's clearly been passed on to a number of eager bakers. Not that I ever really call myself a baker - what attracted me to this recipe, apart from its deliciousness, was how easy it looked to make. On Saturday, I made it for Sunday afternoon.  

Lilly’s Chocolate Truffle Cake

(Joan's comments in brackets, and mine added in italics. Easily doubled to make a larger cake. In fact I added one third of each quantity, making a cake 25% larger, to fit my 22 cm tin - my quantities in brackets.)

200 g (270g) dark chocolate (Whittaker's Dark Ghana, what else!)

180 g (240 g) sugar

180 g (240g) butter

3 (4) rounded tablespoons ground almonds (almond meal); or flour; or for a slightly lighter cake, self raising flour
(I used 3 rounded Tbsps almond meal and 1 Tbsp self-raising flour - this worked well.)

3 (4) eggs

Icing sugar to dredge

Set oven to 200 degrees (190 fan bake).

Break chocolate into squares and place in microwave suitable bowl.  Add the butter and sugar.  

Heat by pulsing in the microwave until it just melts, stirring between pulses to even the heat.  Stop as soon as it melts so it doesn’t get cooked.

Transfer to a food processor. Blend again by whirring for 30 seconds, then add almond meal, or flour, and whirr again.   

Add eggs one at a time, whirring until everything is mixed.

 Grease a 20 cm (22 cm) round cake tin and flour.  (I lazily use cooking paper.)

(I lined my loose-bottomed tin with baking paper and it worked perfectly.)  

Pour the mixture into the centre of the tin, spread towards edges, and bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Reduce heat to 150 degrees (140 fan bake) and continue cooking a further 30 minutes.  
(Joan: In my oven I do it for only  20 minutes, as the longer time dries it out too much.)
(Anne: As I was making a larger, slightly thicker cake, I found it did take close to 30 minutes.) 

The centre shouldn’t dry out, and the top should be a little cracked and crusty. 
Undercooking is better than overcooking. An inserted skewer or thin knife should come out with a little bit of sticky inside clinging to it.

Leave in tin to cool.  

Transfer to plate by inverting onto one plate and then onto the cake plate. Dredge with icing sugar.  
(Jonathan insisted on having ganache icing, made with 150 ml cream heated just to scalding point, then poured over 150 g of broken-up chocolate pieces (more Whittaker's) in a bowl and stirred thoroughly until chocolate has melted and ganache is dark. Leave to cool in fridge for about an hour until thick enough to spread over cake.)

Joan: Raspberry coulis is great with this ... as well as, of course ... cream!  (Or yoghourt!)

Anne: Jonathan had both, and he also spread sliced strawberries over the top of the iced cake. His friends were very impressed and asked if he had bought it - but of course he pointed out that his mother had made it.  It's extremely rich, so only slender pieces were required - which was just as well, because there was some left for me later (he knew this was a condition of my making it!). Definitely worth the effort...

Very easy Dutch apple cake

Last weekend was, in case you've forgotten, election night. Harvey and I always used to select who we invited to watch the results very carefully. They not only had to share our political persuasion, they also had to be quietly devoted to watching the results. Jonathan deserted me for his own friends, so I had my neighbour over early on, then a close friend joined us.
      I planned to have soup and then finger food for later, but I also wanted to make a cake. As apples are one of the few well-priced fruits around, I thought a Dutch apple cake would be good - but I couldn't find my old recipe. No problem - one quick search online for "Dutch apple cake NZ" (local baking recipes usually work best) and I found exactly what I wanted. The use of melted butter makes it very easy to mix, and thanks to the cinnamon and sugar topping, it doesn't need icing.

Sue's Dutch Apple Cake

Adapted slightly from http://www.tuigarden.co.nz/recipe/sues-dutch-apple-cake

(I don't know who this Sue is - the site says "This apple cake is a favourite supplied by Gemma from the Tui Team.") 

2 eggs

½ cup sugar

125g melted butter

1 c self-raising flour

zested rind of 1 lemon

3 medium apples, peeled and chopped up (my apples weren't very tart, so I added a couple of tablespoons of of juice from the zested lemon)

1 Tbsps cinnamon and 1/3 c sugar, mixed together for sprinkling on top (you may not need all this, but I like it quite thick).

Prepare cake tin, greasing the sides and lining the base with bake paper. (The recipe recommends a ring tin, which gives a higher cake. I used a square tin, lined entirely with bake paper, for a shallow cake which cut into neat squares.)

Set oven to 180C bake (or 170C fanbake).

Melt the butter (a Pyrex jug works well, in the oven or the microwave) and leave it to cool.

Beat the eggs and the sugar together in a largeish bowl, then add the melted butter.

Add the self-raising flour, lemon rind and apples to the mixture, and mix to combine. 

Pour into prepared cake tin. 

Sprinkle with a generous amount of the cinnamon and sugar.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, until a skewer or thin knife blade inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Serve with plain whipped cream or yoghurt.

This is really good, quite light and yet very moist - a cross between cake and dessert. Once again (sigh) I didn’t get a decent photo before most of the cake got eaten, and I couldn’t copy the one that came with the original recipe.  So here are a couple of photos I found online – the first is a similar cake, and the other is exactly the recipe above, but from the Chelsea Sugar site. 

Mine looked like a cross between the two. I don't think the Chelsea one has been mixed properly, because the apple seems to be all at the bottom, but the topping looks right. 

Fillo feta rolls for a Middle Eastern feast

Last week came one of the highlights of my culinary year. Ali and Lynn both have their birthdays near the end of July, and as we're all keen cooks and gourmets, we always get together for a themed feast. (Last year it was Spain - see here and here.) This year I had a new edition of Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food (my third, I've worn out the first two) and was giving a copy to Ali, so a Middle Eastern feast would work beautifully.
     
We had it at my place and each of us produced a starter and a main, and I also made dessert. Ali, the bread queen, made Turkish pide bread, herb fritters with haloumi, and grilled eggplant with labneh and za'ahtar. Lynn made red pepper and walnut dip and Morroccan couscous with chicken. I made yoghurt with cucumber and garlic, fillo feta rolls, and lamb and apricot stew with spiced basmati rice. For dessert I made our favourite orange and almond cake, with sliced oranges in syrup. (You may well think this sounds a lot, for lunch for three, and it was. We always cook too much - but we don't care, because we get wonderful leftovers.)
            I need to collect their recipes to share, but for now I thought it would be good to post the feta rolls. In my memoir I wrote about discovering fillo (or filo) pastries in Albania:

Rosia took the greatest pride in her byrek, small crisp three-cornered parcels of golden brown filo pastry filled with meat or cheese. But much as we loved them, we asked for them only if we were giving a proper party or coming back from a holiday, because the filo didn’t come in neat packets. Rosia and Hurimai pushed back the rugs and furniture in the sitting room and spread a white sheet over the marble tiles. They each took one end of a long thin dowel and delicately rolled out the dough into one great layer, so thin you could see through it.

The Albanian name, byrek or burek, comes from the Turkish börek described by Roden - she says the cheese one is the most popular. But her recipe is for rolls rather than Rosia's triangles. I did think about attempting the triangles, but the little cigar-shaped rolls are easier.
        As you'll see from the photo below, because of the rather broken sheets of fillo, and because there were only three of us, I was lazy and used all the filling to make three medium and three larger ones, rather than a lot of little ones - easier, and you get more filling in each one.

Sigara böregi
Little cheese rolls
(fSlightly adapted from Claudia Roden, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, 2001)
Makes 16 little rolls (in theory!)

200 g feta cheese
(I got a genuine Greek one at the Mediterranean Warehouse, but Zany Zeus in Wellington also makes a very good one. If your block is wrapped in plastic, blot it well with kitchen paper before using.)
1 egg, lightly beaten
3-4 Tbsps finely chopped mint, flat parsley, or dill
8 thin sheets fillo pastry
(I could only find Edmonds, which is very thin and tends to break when unrolled. Roden recommends using 4 sheets of a thicker one, but I don't think it's obtainable here. However, I found that using two thin sheets together worked fine.)
4-6 Tbsps melted butter or oil

Take out the frozen fillo to defrost while you make the filling. (I found I had to defrost the whole packet, but could quickly refreeze the leftovers.)
Preheat oven to 190C, or 180C fan bake.
Spread a large oven sheet with baking paper.

Filling: Mash the feta well with a fork and mix it thoroughly with the beaten egg and herbs.

Assembly: Using 2 sheets of fillo together, cut them into rectangles, each about 30 cm by 10 cm. (You are meant to get 16 of these rectangles.) Pile these on top of each other as you cut them so that they don't dry out. (It helps to have ready a damp teatowel to cover them as you go.)
Lay out one pair of thin rectangles. Brush the top sheet with melted butter or oil. Take a heaped teaspoon of the filling and place it at one end of the strip in a thin sausage shape, about 2 cm from the three edges (see diagram).
Roll up the sheets with the filling inside, like rolling a cigarette. When you've rolled about a third of the way along the strip, turn in the sides to trap the filling. (Brushing on a bit of extra butter or oil is useful to help them stick.) Continue to roll with the sides turned in. Repeat with the remaining rectangles of fillo.

Lay the rolls close to each other on the baking paper, with the ends of rolled fillo underneath, and brush the tops and sides with melted butter or oil.

Baking: Place oven sheet with rolls at the middle of the preheated oven or slightly above. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the rolls are crisp and golden. Serve hot. (If necessary they can be reheated later - mine were.)

It was such a pleasure to bite into these and recapture a favourite taste of Albanian life. So now I plan to make the larger rolls again, to serve for dinner with salad...

Tartology: Leek and blue cheese tart

For my birthday lunch, deferred until June (I like to spread it out), Ali served me an absolutely perfect leek and blue cheese tart. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo, but I was determined to have a go myself, so she gave me the recipe.
         Today I managed to do it. Not quite as perfectly trimmed around the edges as hers (she gives clever instructions for dong this AFTER the case is blind-baked, but I carelessly missed that bit), and it could perhaps have done with slightly longer cooking  to set the filling a fraction more - but my oven tends to run hotter than hers, so I had to take it out slightly early to stop it going too brown on top. Otherwise - well, it really was pretty good.

Leek and blue cheese tart 

(River Cottage, with Ali's tweaks)

For the pastry:

250g plain flour

125g unsalted butter, cut into little chunks

A pinch of sea salt

1 yolk of a medium egg

25-50ml cold milk (I needed slightly more to make the pastry stick together properly)

For the filling:

·        2 large or 3 medium leeks (about 500g), trimmed of tough green leaves, washed and sliced into 1cm rounds

·        A knob of unsalted butter

·        Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

·        100g good blue cheese, grated or crumbled

·         2 medium eggs

·         2 medium egg yolks 

       300ml cream

      First make the pastry: Put the flour, butter and salt in a food processor and pulse until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk, then pour in the milk in a gradual stream. Watch carefully and stop adding the milk as soon as the dough starts to come together. 

      Turn out and knead lightly a couple of times, then wrap in cling film. Chill for 30 minutes. Take out pastry and leave until you can roll it easily (but it's still firm). Line the pastry case with a big enough piece of baking paper to have it sticking out enough to lift it out easily later. On a lightly floured surface, roll the pastry out quite thinly and use to line a 25cm loose-based tart tin, letting the excess pastry hang over the edges.Chill for 30 minutes. 

Preheat oven to 170°C. (I set mine on Bake, without the fan, for this stage. If your oven runs a bit cool you may need to set it at 180°C.)

      Prepare the filling: Put the leeks into a saucepan with 100ml water, the butter and some salt and pepper. Bring to a low simmer, then cover and cook gently, stirring once or twice, for about 10 minutes, until just tender. Drain well, reserving the cooking liquor.   

  

     

Fill tart case with baking beans and place in the centre of the oven. Bake blind for 20 minutes. Take the tart out of the oven, remove the paper and beans, lightly prick the base all over with a fork and return to the oven for 5 minutes, until the base is dry but not too coloured. (Mine looked a bit too pale, so I shifted the setting to Fan Bake for this stage and for the rest of the cooking.) Carefully trim off the excess pastry with a small, sharp knife. 

Turn the oven temperature up to 180°C (170°C may be better if you are using Fan Bake).

Put the eggs and egg yolks, cream and leek liquor in a bowl and beat until smooth. Season to taste.

Spread the well-drained cooked leeks in the tart case and cover with the grated/crumbled cheese.

Pour the egg mixture over the leeks and cheese. Put the tart back into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes. The custard should be just set when you gently shake the tin. 

Ali and I both use Mary Berry's trick to get the outer rim of the tart case off easily. 

Let the tart cool a little. Rest the base on a flat-bottomed upside-down bowl or small saucepan, which needs to be a little smaller than the base. 

Use a sharp knife to gently free any bits of the edge that are sticking to the rim. Then ease the rim down to the bench, leaving the tart sitting neatly on its base. 

Serve warm or cool (but not chilled).  All you need with this is a simple salad, but you can add crusty bread and butter if you're really hungry. 

Between us my son and I ate half tonight, leaving half for tomorrow - brilliant.

Dispelling the myths of food poverty

I wrote this blog for the Child Poverty Action Group, so I thought I would share it with you here. In what they tell me is a remarkably short time, it's had 1710 views on their blogsite.

The New Testament can be spot-on. As usual, the 2017 Budget handed out considerable amounts to those that hath at least a moderate amount already, and only a few scraps to those that hath hardly anything.

Post-Budget, I've been thinking about poverty and food. There's a mountain of research to show that when it's incredibly hard to make ends meet, it's food that takes the hit, because it's the only flexible expense. That's why some kids go to school without lunches, or maybe even without breakfast.

But whenever the food of the poor is discussed in the media, the scornful comments flood in, trying to demonise and place blame on struggling parents. You often see comments such as, "It's so easy to stock up on specials/cook up a pot of soup/make cheap school lunches/come up with simple healthy meals," and: "When we had very little money, we managed perfectly well - why can't they?"

If I suddenly found myself on a very strict food budget - the kind where you spend your whole time in the supermarket worrying about whether you'll be able to pay for what you put in the trolley - I would probably be able to manage pretty well too. But the ability to do that depends on a whole range of factors, most of which have very little to do with my own worthiness or work ethic.

One: Basic income security. Ever since my first marriage there's been enough coming in to cover the bills, the food, and emergencies. Apart from a few times very early on, I haven't had to worry about whether I'd have enough to cover the total at the checkout. And I've always been able to pay the bills for the power and gas I need to cook. Things are so different now. Thousands of families with at least one parent in paid work don't earn enough to meet their basic needs, or never know what they'll earn from one week to the next. And benefits are no longer designed to keep you out of poverty - they keep you in it.

Two: Good housing with a well-equipped, workable kitchen. Our first son was seven and had a little brother by the time we managed to buy a house. But before that we had little trouble finding a series of Auckland flats to rent that were secure, dry, quiet, affordable and had workable kitchens. And we didn't have to share them with other people. I've never once had to cope with damp, freezing, mouldy or overcrowded homes with shockingly bad kitchens - let alone live in a garage or a car, with no kitchen at all. And I've never been unable to afford basic equipment like a big soup pot.

Three: Cheap fresh food. When we got back from working in Britain in 1976, I was so thrilled to be able to buy such good food for so little every week. Over the last thirty years the enormous increase in the real price of fresh food in New Zealand has been phenomenal. We're one of the few countries that imposes GST on it all. When I have overseas visitors, they're shocked by how much fresh food costs here - especially considering how much of it we produce. And if you buy something which is supposed to be fresh but very quickly goes off, it's a total loss. So you'll stick to heavily processed but utterly reliable food instead. Junk food is so much cheaper - if I were chronically poor, I'd be buying it too.

Four: Experience and education. As I explained in The Colour of Food, when I married at the age of 19 and promptly had a baby, I could barely cook at all. Now, I know a hundred ways to make a cheap, filling, reasonably healthy meal, but back then I didn't have a clue. Luckily I'd grown up with a mother who was a good cook, and so was my mother-in-law. And new recipes for exotic but cheap one-dish creations like spaghetti bolognese were just starting to appear in magazines I could afford to buy, so I could learn quickly. This is so far from the case for many parents nowadays.

Five: Food access. For me, shops selling a good range of food have always been within fairly easy reach, even when we didn’t have a car. That's just not the case for hundreds of people now. You try providing bargain-price healthy meals week after week when it takes a huge effort just to get to the nearest supermarket. Easy to reach food shops in poorer and rural areas charge more and may not stock much in the way of decent food.

Six: A good store of extras. What makes cheap, basic healthy food tasty is being able to add all the little extras - spices, lemon juice, vinegar, stock. I have all these in abundance, all the time. If you're on a tight food budget, you can't afford them.

Seven: A buffer fund. If something essential breaks down - the fridge, the stove, the car - I can afford to put it right without having to go begging to Work and Income or an invisible landlord. If I see good specials - often multibuys - I can afford to stock up, and I've got the room to store them safely and securely. When you're juggling your money so precariously that any extra spending one week will mean there's nothing left the week after, this is impossible. 

I don't think there can be anything much more soul-destroying than being responsible for providing your family with food every day, in circumstances that make doing that a constant struggle. So next time you read yet another shocking story in the media about families going without decent healthy food, please pause and have a good think about their reality, which may be very different from yours. Then find out how you can support moves to change it for good.

Pretty fast pumpkin soup

I do have a good excuse, sort of, for not posting here as often as I intend to. My son is back at university and spends a great deal of time meticulously crafting his essays on this computer. Both of us find the big desktop much more comfortable to write on than a dinky laptop, let alone an iPad.
       Anyway, today he's out, so I decided it was high time to pass on my new idea for winter. Well, fairly new. I did think it up myself, but somewhere someone else (👧) has undoubtedly thought of it first. It's very simple, warming, delicious, and the most gorgeous colour. It's also really cheap to make - my little grey pumpkin was $1 at the Victoria St market. You'll find two earlier pumpkin soup posts here and here.
        For the spicy curry flavour, I used my last tablespoon of red curry paste and about half a cup of some leftover butter chicken sauce. Totally inauthentic, I know, but tidy, thrifty, and it worked perfectly. If you want to concoct your own spice mixture, go right ahead, but make sure it has a red-ish colour.

Pretty fast pumpkin soup  
(This serves four - increase quantities to get a bigger pot of soup)

1 small pumpkin, or a cut piece to give roughly the same amount of flesh
1 large or two smaller carrots
2 Tbs red curry paste (or something similar - how much you use depends on how spicy you like it)
knob of butter for frying
juice of one medium lemon or lime
half a medium tin of coconut milk
enough extra coconut milk, or milk or cream, to dilute at the end as required (you can also put a blob of plain yoghurt in each bowl after serving)
something green and finely chopped to serve on top - coriander is good, or chives, spring onion, parsley
naan bread/poppadum/lightly toasted tortillas/any other kind of bread you fancy

Using a large knife, cut the pumpkin into pieces roughly the size of your two cupped hands.
Arrange pieces in a large shallow glass or ceramic dish that will fit in your microwave.
Add half a cup of water to dish, cover, and microwave until pumpkin is semi-soft.
Let pieces cool enough to handle. Leaving the water in the dish, remove each piece, peel it and remove seeds and fibrous centre flesh. Cut any very large pieces in half.
Peel and trim the carrot(s) and cut them lengthwise, then cut into small short sticks.
Melt the butter gently in a large suacepan and gently fry whatever spices or spice paste you are using for a couple of minutes. (If it's something prepared (like my leftover butter chicken sauce) just melt the butter.)
Add the pumpkin, carrot and the water from the pumpkin dish. Add enough extra water to almost cover the vegetables.
Bring to boil, then turn heat down to a medium simmer. Cook until vegetables are soft. (Don't wander off and leave it, as I'm inclined to do - it will burn.)
Taste to see if it needs more salt. If you wish, add pepper (white pepper looks better) and/or a dash of hot sauce (like Kaitaia Fire).
Add lemon or lime juice to taste.
When it has all cooled a bit, puree with a hand blender or in a food processor until smooth. If it is too thick to puree, add a little milk.
Return to saucepan, stir in the half-tin of coconut milk, reheat gently and cook for a few minutes. Check seasoning. Add enough extra coconut milk (or milk or cream) to get the texture you want, without spoiling the vibrant colour, check seasoning again and reheat gently.
Serve with green stuff to sprinkle on and yoghurt to stir in, as well as the warm bread.

I was so greedy, I didn't remember to take the photo until I'd nearly finished my bowlful. Sorry about that.

Anzac biscuits: the true story

What else could turn up on the blog today but Anzac biscuits? I wrote about them back in April 2011, just a few months after Harvey died, and gave Lois Daish's recipe (below).
        They've stayed firmly in our repertoire of national recipes not only because of their historical associations, but also because they're distinctive, easy to make, and delicious. However, as is often the case, there's a good deal of confusion about their history.
         

Anzac troops at Gallipoli did get a kind of biscuit as a major part of their appallingly inadequate diet. (To see just how bad it was, have a look at this remarkable 2013 article.) They were sometimes referred to as "the ship's ANZAC biscuit", but they had nothing to do with the ones we know now. They were made in Britain, so by the time they got to Gallipoli they were rock hard and bone dry. 

Aussie soldier Sydney Loch recalled trying to eat them:

“For supper we had nothing more than those tough square biscuits given to us as rations – they were so hard a man could break his teeth on them.  I had three days provisions with me, but was warned that they might have to last for five days.  So I took care not to dip too deeply into my provision bag.  Someone offered me the bottom of a can of tea, which helped to wash those tough biscuits down.”

(Loch, Sydney. To Hell and Back: The banned account of Gallipoli, Sydney, NSW: Harper Collins, 2007, p.89.)

A New Zealand army biscuit sometimes turned up with reinforcement drafts, and the first historian of Gallipoli, Major Fred Waite, noted that it was much better: white, easy to eat and pleasant tasting.
            The idea that Gallipoli soldiers were sent Anzac biscuits baked by New Zealand women is a myth, although the Army Museum says there is some evidence that "a rolled oats biscuit was sent to troops on the Western Front, although this was not widespread". 
             Dozens of what came to be called Anzac biscuits were indeed baked here. But instead of being sent overseas, most were "sold and consumed at fetes, galas, parades and other public events at home, to raise funds for the war effort".

              Dr Helen Leach, emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Otago, is the recognised authority on the traditional Anzac biscuit (as well as pavlova). In 2014 the Aussies tried to claim that they had found the first published recipe (1921, in the Melbourne Argus). But Helen (I can call her that, as I have the pleasure of knowing her) points out that a remarkably similar recipe for "Anzac Crispies" was published in New Zealand in 1919, in the eighth edition of the St Andrew's Cookery Book. 

               She believes that feelings were running so high after the 1915 Gallipoli landing that Red Cross women on fund-raising stalls back in New Zealand probably changed the name of already existing "rolled oat crispies" to boost sales. I reckon this is by far the most convincing explanation of how the name came about.

Anzac biscuits 
(from A Good Year, Lois Daish, 2005)

170g caster sugar
130g flour
100g rolled oats
60g dessicated coconut
100g butter
3 tablespoons golden syrup
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
4 tablespoons boiling water

- Preheat oven to 160C (on fanbake if you have it) and line two baking trays with baking paper.
- Put sugar, flour, oats a nd coconut into a large bowl and mix well.
- Put butter and golden syrup in a small pot over gentle heat until melted.
- Put baking soda in a cup and pour the boiling water over it. Stir until dissolved and add to melted butter and syrup.
- Pour this hot fluffy mixture into the dry ingredients and stir very thoroughly.
- Use your hand to form the slightly crumbly mixture into a mass. Form balls about the size of a small walnut and place onto the lined trays, leaving enough room for spreading. Press each ball lightly with a fork and put in the oven. (A friend told me to dip the fork in water first so it doesn't stick to the biscuits.)
- After 5 minutes, open the oven and you'll see that the biscuits have flattened and puffed up. Give each tray a gentle bang to deflate the biscuits - you may need to do this again after another minute or two. (Actually, mine didn't seem to puff up, but I did make them too big and I think I was a bit light on the flour, they really spread out.)
- Total baking time about 10 minutes."When ready", says Lois, "the biscuits will be a light chestnut brown and will still feel slightly soft when pressed." 
- Take out of the oven, leave to cool for a minute or two, then transfer to a rack to harden and cool. (I just carefully lift off the whole sheet of baking paper and put that on the rack with the biscuits still on it.)
- Store in an airtight container. 

Super Simple Sydney Special

I've got the book group coming here tomorrow night, so today I made an old-fashioned slice, Sydney Special. I have no idea where the name comes from. I got the recipe close to fifty years ago from Chris Else's sister Bridget - she and my sister, Susan, were the bridesmaids at our wedding. It used to be a great stand-by for hungry children. I haven't made it for years, partly because I don't usually have any cornflakes, but there was a small bag of them in the pantry so I thought I'd give it a go. It's so easy, it would be a good thing for kids to make themselves.

Sydney Special
(Bridget Else, now Gill)

1 cup cornflakes
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 dessertspoons cocoa
3/4 cup brown sugar
150g melted butter
Your favourite icing - chocolate is good (as long as it's made with real chocolate), but peppermint or coffee would work well too.

Set oven to 180C/170C fan bake.
Mix all dry ingredients together. Add melted butter and mix well.
Press into a sponge roll tin/shallow baking tin lined with baking paper.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.
Near the end of the baking, mix icing - for chocolate, melt squares of Whittaker's Dark Ghana in the microwave  and mix it with enough icing sugar, and a little milk, to give a thick but fluid consistency, ready for spreading.
Take out slice, cool a little and cut into squares or little bars.
Spread some icing on each square and leave to cool and harden before putting away. (This is less messy than icing the whole block before you cut it up, and marginally healthier, as it uses about a third less icing.)

So there you are. I actually made double the quantity so I'd have enough for me, Jonathan and our neighbour Frances, as well as for the book group. I think I slightly over-baked it - it was a bit crunchier than I remembered - but yummy all the same. Why are there three missing in the photo? Because we had to test them, of  course, and Jonathan needed two to be sure they were okay.

Mediterranean medley

 I'm appalled to see how long it is since I've done a new post here. Of course I have been cooking, rather a lot, because my son needs decent dinners more than ever - he's juggling part-time teaching and university.  And I seem to have had more than usual to deal with - the groups I belong to have all sprung into action lately, requiring me to do things (all involving writing), rather than just being supportive. So I've had lots of practice at concocting appealing meals which don't require much effort. 
         Saturday night's dinner worked pretty well. I'm calling it "Mediterranean medley" as a kind of homage to those cringeworthy titles so beloved of 1970s magazine recipes stepping out into the then unknown (to most of us) world of foreign food. It was loosely based on Middle Eastern dishes - Jonathan's really keen on them, and I've loved them ever since I discovered Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food in 1972. Here's what I wrote about it in my memoir:

Nancy Spain and Katharine Whitehorn had provided the absolute basics I needed to know, but there was much more to it than that: they were real writers who persuaded me that I could be, like them, a woman writer who cooked properly. In terms of food, Claudia Roden was on another plane altogether. She opened my eyes to a different kind of authenticity, based on intimate knowledge and love of what she was describing. For the first time, I began to understand fully what food, cooking and eating were about.

Only part of what I made on Saturday could be described as authentic, but taken as a whole it worked very well. We had hummus, Greek salad with feta, cucumber, tomato and olives, cucumber with garlic and yoghurt, and pita pockets spread with hummus and garlic mayo (bought) and filled with grilled Angus beef burgers and finely chopped cabbage salad. (Cabbage salad is entirely absent from Claudia Roden's book, but I had a large cabbage and no lettuce, so a bit of invention was called for.)

The hummus I usually make is the most basic kind - and the cheapest (much cheaper than bought hummus, and nicer). I see I've never put the recipe up on the blog, so here it is. Claudia's begins with cooking the chick peas, but thankfully there's no need to do that now - the tinned ones are fine, though you do need to rinse them well.

Hummus
(Adapted from A New Book of Middle Eastern Food)

1 450g tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 tsp cumin (optional)
2 large cloves garlic
50-90 ml fresh lemon juice
50 ml olive oil
salt to taste
warm pita bread to serve

Put the garlic in a blender or food processor and process to chop it finely.
Scrape down the bowl and add the chickpeas, cumin, half the lemon juice, half the olive oil and a little salt. Process and taste.
Add more lemon juice, oil and salt until you have the texture and taste you like (it should taste both lemony and a little salty, but not too much so). If it's still a bit thick, you can add a dash of water.
You can serve it with little black olives, a dribble of olive oil or some finely chopped parsley on top.

You can experiment with adding other flavours - ginger, sun-dried tomato - but I really prefer it plain. People often think you need tahina (sesame seed paste)to make hummus, but it's fine (and a good bit cheaper) without it. (Tahina gets a rather rancid taste quite quickly in the fridge, so don't be tempted to save by buying a large amount,as I once did). If you do want to add it, here's a later version of Roden's recipe.

Hummus bi Tahina

From Arabesque, Clauda Roden

1 450g tin of chickpeas

2 lemons, juice of

3 Tbsps tahini

3 garlic cloves

Salt

4 Tbsps olive oil

Garnish:

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp ground cumin

2 sprigs parsley, finely chopped

Process the garlic in a blender or food processor until finely chopped.

Drain the chickpeas and rinse well.

Add to the garlic, then add the lemon juice, tahina, garlic, olive oil, and salt.

Process to form a smooth texture.

Taste to check. If it is too thick, or not well flavoured enough, add a little more lemon juice and/or olive oil or salt.

Serve on a flat plate, garnished with a dribble of olive oil, a dusting of paprika and ground cumin (this is usually done in the shape of a cross) and a little parsley.

Serve with warm pita bread for dipping.

Simple home-made Caesar salad dressing and mayonnaise

When I did a Caesar salad post back in 2012, it was very well received.  My cos lettuce crop this year has been a complete failure, but when my lovely neighbour Helen gave me a bag of fresh cos leaves from her garden this week, my first thought was Caesar salad.
         I knew we'd run out of Paul Newman Caesar dressing, so I trotted off with it on my shopping list - and then completely overlooked buying it. I have an excuse - I was distracted by Jonathan's plea for a supermarket steak and kidney pie, which he had a sudden yen for. Only they don't actually make those family pies any more, apparently. Countdown had pale mince ones, and New World had some not-very-appetising steak and cheese ones. But they also had a posh (and much more expensive) version with Angus steak and red onions. In the modern fashion, the label featured a prominent list of what it did NOT contain: no palm oil (good on them), no MSG (surely you wouldn't expect that in a pie anyway?), no preservatives, artificial colouring or flavouring. So we'll give it a go tomorrow night. [PS - it was okay, but not worth buying again.]
         I had no intention of going back out for the dressing, so I decided I'd look up a recipe online, because (thanks to Mr Newman) I've never actually made it before. It was the usual story with a classic creation: ten different recipes, all claiming to be authentic and all featuring a roughly similar list of ingredients, only in differing quantities and combined by different methods.
         They all include grated Parmesan, though some prefer to leave it out of the actual dressing and just toss it with the undressed lettuce first, and most add more Parmesan on top at the end.  (It tastes very much better to get a piece and grate it yourself, rather than using the kind sold already grated, which is really not worth eating. A piece of Parmesan is expensive, but you don't need a lot, and it lasts for a long time in the fridge.)
          After extensive research, I settled for a slightly adapted version of the recipe offered by Serious Eats. To start with, it gives by far the best background, based on Julia Child's childhood memories of Caesar salad and very good sources from the restaurant where it's said to have originated (see my previous post). It has all the basic ingredients, but doesn't contain any harsh vinegar (which, judging by Paul's, I think would be too strong). It uses a stick blender, which I know will work because my friend Ali has given me a brilliant mayonnaise recipe using one (see below). And it brings up the problem I've had with olive oil tasting bitter when you use a blender, and explains how to avoid it. Genius. I'll probably still keep Paul's handy when pressed for time, but now I can do it myself - very satisfying.

Caesar salad dressing
(Serious Eats)
1 egg yolk

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

2 to 6 anchovies

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 large clove garlic, crushed

¼ cup canola oil

¼ cup virgin olive oil

1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Combine egg yolk, lemon juice, anchovies, Worcestershire sauce, crushed garlic, and 1/4 cup parmesan cheese in the bottom of a cup or beaker that just fits the head of a stick blender. With blender running, slowly drizzle in canola oil* until a smooth emulsion forms. (Or do it all at once - it still seems to thicken nicely.) Transfer mixture to a medium bowl. Whisking constantly, slowly drizzle in extra virgin olive oil. Season to taste generously with salt and pepper.

* "Just as with a regular mayonnaise, you don't want to use extra-virgin olive oil with an electric blender. It causes the olive oil to break down and turn bitter. Instead, use a neutral oil like canola to begin your emulsion. Then, when it's stable, whisk in the extra-virgin by hand."

Mayonnaise in a moment
Adapted from Ali's version, with a different combination of oils. She says, "This  is Alison Holst's recipe, which we've been using for years (the garlic is our addition).” She points out that you can add your own variations, such as different vinegars, using more or less garlic, or none, or stirring in finely chopped tarragon at the very end. Excellent for potato salad.

1 egg
2/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil - mild flavour works best
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp salt
several grinds of black pepper
Optional: 1-2 garlic cloves, chopped

Place all ingredients except the olive oil in the container of your stick blender and process for 8-10 seconds, moving the blender gently up and down to make sure all the oil is incorporated. Put mayonnaise in a bowl and slowly add the olive oil, whisking it in by hand. OR for a very mild mayonnaise, you can use all canola oil (or another vegetable oil) and omit this last addition.