Category Archives: cooking

8 New Clay Tests

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I have been using the warm weather. In-between rain storms. To dry out some of my new batches of single-stone porcelain clay test batches. The 50 litre batch of 12 month aged porcelain slip is now almost stiff enough. It should have been ready to lift off the drying bed a couple of days ago, but with this last series of rain storms, the atmosphere has been very humid lately, so we have slow drying weather. The mornings start with a heavy mist that doesn’t burn off until later in the morning when the sun get up.

I have used the plaster tubs to dry out some small batches and I now have 7 different new clays to test and throw. They are all just about the same on the wheel, not a great deal of difference. I have dug out a bag of special ‘vintage’ porcelain from my clay store. I don’t have a date on the bag, but reference to my clay-making diary tells me that it was made in 199o! This is the oldest clay in my cellar at 26 years of age. It has stiffened a bit too much to be throwable now, so I have to dampen it down a little. I’m amazed how well it throws. The reason that I put it away in the first place was because it was so short that it was unusable. Now after 25 years of ageing, it throws like a normal porcelain. It does have a slightly peculiar ‘grainy’ texture though. A little bit odd for such a finely milled clay. Some sort of bio-chemical change has taken place in the intervening years of ageing.

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I remember co-responding with Harry Davis back in the 80’s. He asked me if I had any experience with clays that went grainy after long periods of ageing. He had left clay in his clay store while he went away for 10 years and worked up in Izcuchaka in the Peruvian Andes on his and May’s private aid project. When he returned, all his clay had changed texture and become grainy. I hadn’t experienced anything like it at that time. I wasn’t old enough to have clay laid down for ten years at that time! Now I am, and I suspect that it is some sort of aggregation of the microscopic clay particles into larger flocs over extremely long periods of time. This happens in slip if left in a slightly acid condition. So, perhaps it’s possible in the plastic state as well?

Of these 7 different bodies, there are 7 different colours, from iron stained yellow, through to almost white. Of the bodies that I have made from my ‘bai tunze’ single-stone porcelain stone. There are variations in colour due to the fact that there are veins of iron running through the rock. I crush the stones through the large, primary jaw crusher  and then spend some time sorting and separating the iron-stained pieces from the white material, these are them processed separately to give yellow, cream and grey clay body mixes.

The iron stained bodies respond well to the wood firing by flashing to a mahogany red colour, where the paler coloured mixes flash in the wood kiln to a pale pink to crimson colour. All the milled stone body mixes grow a series of organic algae and/or fungus come moulds of some sort or another. The clear plastic bags that I store them in turn green and/or buff/brown where daylight can get to them. A little bit off-putting, but it seems to increase workability/plasticity rather than decrease it over longer periods of time. I’m not saying that the presence of algal growth increases plasticity, but the time spent ageing the clay increases the plasticity and the algal growth is a natural sign of this extended time taken.

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Because I don’t add anything to my milled local porcelain stone bodies, except a small amount of bentonite and the slightly acidic tanninised tank water. The whole thing is alive with all sorts of organic material from both the natural stone and the water. It’s a living thing! It doesn’t happen straight away, but over time stuff grows in there where-ever the conditions are right.

Commercial clay doesn’t do this. I recently opened a bag of commercially prepared paper clay to find that it smelled of ‘dettol’ antiseptic fluid. Nothing is going to grow in that! I’m an organic gardener and I am trying to live a simple, creative, organic life. If green algal mould is the result in the bags of clay, so be it. At least I know that it is alive, and not dead and even possibly toxic.

One of the batches of my ball milled baitunze, batch JV15db, was milled for a little longer than usual to get it extra fine. However, I seem to have milled it a bit too long this time, 16 hrs. I suspect that this was too long, because when I threw my first bowl out of it, it shrank and cracked in the base where it was thickest. This has happened once before. I will have to blend it with a coarse milled batch now to reduce the shrinkage a little.

For dinner we try yet another variation of ratatouille with todays pick of  French beans, we par-boil them, so that they are still crisp and then add them into the mix of ingredients from the garden. I partially BarBQ the egg plants and zucchinis while grilling some long yellow capsicums. Janine reduces a boiler full of very ripe tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil and basil. We finish it off in the flat flan-pan, then pop it under the grill and melt some grated cheese topping to a golden yellow/brown crispy finish.
This is what we have, so this is what we eat.
Best wishes from the algal greenie and his all greenie gal
Steve

Sour Dough Clay

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We try to allow ourselves a little time ‘off’ over the summer from the usual on-going procession of jobs. This year we had two lots of relatives visiting, so that was a good excuse to not do any other work for a week or two. Then I taught a Master Class in fine throwing and turning techniques up in Sydney for a week. So now it’s back to work. The very real work of essential property maintenance and more clay making while the weather is hot.

I have been spending time over the summer to prepare ‘clay’ for the coming year. When I say ‘clay’, what I mean by ‘clay’ and what other potters understand from that term are completely different things. I have been crushing and grinding my local porcelain stone down to a fine powder and then ball milling it into a fine impalpable stone paste with a little bentonite to make my native bai-tunze porcelain body. It isn’t plastic and sticky like most potters clay. This wet rock dust is just that. Wet rock dust. It needs a long time weathering and souring to develop any sense of cohesiveness and plasticity. The 15% of illite clay mineral that is present in the stone, gives it some similarities to the weathered ’sericite’ mica bodies of the orient. Illite is closely linked to fine weathered mica minerals, so it does give it some plastic qualities after a few years of ageing.
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I’m constantly trying new ways to see if I can improve the workability of my local stone somewhat, but there isn’t much that you can do with non-plastic rock dust. Other than to add some kaolin and bentonite, which is what I already do and what I saw them doing in the porcelain clay factory in Arita.
Same problem, same solution!
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This last year I experimented with another approach to plasticising my rock dust. This time last year, I set aside one 50 litre batch of ball milled porcelain stone slip, and instead of stiffening it on the drying bed, then setting it aside to ‘age’ in a plastic state. I have tried to leave it to settle, flocculate and ‘age’ in the slip state. This produced a very interesting result. The slip developed some sort of ’skin’ on its surface, but below the clear water that appeared above the slip as it settled. This ‘growth’ of skin must be some sort of living material like algae or something similar? I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was quite strong, as I was able to depress a bulge down into it to get the bucket into the barrel to drain off the water from the top. The skin didn’t break and allowed me to recover all the surface water without disturbing the clay below. It even held together well as I lifted it up off the surface of the slip underneath. There was some greenish algae-like growth around the edges of the bucket, where light could get in. This isn’t unusual, as I get loads of green algal-like growth in my clay bags that are set aside to ‘age’. I make my bodies from natural stone powders that I grind myself and I use mostly naturally acidic tannin infused water from the water tanks connected to the pottery roof. Tannin is well documented to be beneficial to plasticising clay materials, as is maintaining an acid pH to counter the natural release of alkalis from the broken down stone fragments as they are ball milled. The overall effect of these natural ingredients is that there is no chlorinated water used in its production and no sterilisation of the powders or any heat treatment of any kind, so the clay is still alive with whatever organics there where in it in the first place.
I’ve kept the ’skin’ to investigate further. I may be able to use it like a sour-dough starter to inoculate the next experimental batch of porcelain body?
When I started to mix the settled and aged slip, it was very viscous and then when I poured it out onto the drying bed and scraped out the bucket, my fingers started to stick together with the extreme viscosity of the slip. I haven’t felt anything quite like this from porcelain slip before. I once had a bucket of porcelain glaze that I kept for special purposes, and then didn’t use for a few years. When I open the bucket and stirred it up. It had set to a stiff gel and took a bit of effort to stir. My fingers stuck together with the viscosity of the glaze at this time too. Ageing has this plasticising effect and is a good thing to do if you can afford the time. I’m 64, so I don’t have a lot of time to do these kinds of experiments over the very long term. I’m keen to see how this specially aged liquid slip batch of porcelain body develops and throws this time next year.
Only time will tell.
Summer is also a time of fresh garden salads and veggie BBQs. We have a lot of tomatoes, zucchini, aubergines and basil at the moment, so every meal is some sort of variation on ratatouille. Baked, poached, pan-fried, BBQ’d and/or grilled. I’m trying to keep it varied and interesting in lots of different ways.
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Best wishes from all-natural, sour-dough, clay-boy

East Meets West, West Eats Meat

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Having not eaten any meat for 4 months, we have suddenly gone from sublime to ridiculous, famine to feast, from sashimi to steak.

Xmas has come and gone and we spent a quiet day together, as our son is the sous chef at Biota dining. The only 2 hat restaurant in the Southern Highlands. He did Xmas lunch for 160, so started at dawn and finally finished at 9pm.

We had our family get-together Xmas lunch on Boxing Day. We envisaged a small meal of vegetables from our organic garden with a little meat, almost as a side dish, cooked in the outside wood fired oven and enjoyed outside, under the shade of the grape vines. This wasn’t to be, as our son turned up with a barron of beef and half a pig, which he set about butchering into sections of ribs and pork belly.

He made a rolled pork belly roast stuffed with trimmings and herbs from the garden, with loads of roasted garlic and we roasted this slowly during the day at the back of the oven.

Geordie slowly roasted the 5 point rack of 90 day aged beef, very gently over an extended period. This became our lunch along with our usual BBQ’d garden vegetables.

The rolled roast and ribs, along with half a dozen pizzas, went to the village musicians who turned up later in the evening.

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We braised the full rack of pork ribs in a mix of last summers preserved tomato sugo, red wine, cloves and star anise, onions, with garden herbs and bay leaves. This was simmered in the lightly stoked oven for a long time until very tender and then the sauce was drained and strained, and then added back to the pan with the addition of a few spoons fun of our fruit jelly to sweeten it and gell it up. This was poured back over the ribs to finish them to a sweet, fragrant, tender, sticky perfection. Yum!

I’ve never cooked a full side of pork ribs before, as there are only two of us here, there isn’t much need and we don’t usually eat so much meat. But it’s Xmas, the season of excess, and tonight we have the Village Musicians meeting here for their extended ‘session’. We hosted them here last month as well and they seemed to like it, so we invited them back. It just turns out to be the night of boxing day. So I stoke up the oven when they arrive and we sit under the grape vines and listen to their songs, while I bake 6 pizzas and finish off the ribs.

Now it’s time for a day ‘off’ and a little snooze.

No Meat for 4 months

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Through the cooler months of the year we plan to eat some red meat about once a month, but after I returned from China in May, where I had meat in everything. It seemed that every meal I chose seemed to contain some small amount of meat or more probably offal. I got a bit over it, so I thought that I’d skip meat for a while. Then when I was working in Japan in August. I seemed to get invited to a lot of BBQ’s or  ‘celebration’ meals that involved red meat. This was quite an eye opener for me, as I remember when I first went to study in Japan in the early 80’s, I hardly saw any meat for sale, never mind eating any. Now, 5 trips and 35 years later. The supermarket fridge displays are loaded with just as much red meat as there is fish. How things have changed.

Since I have returned, I haven’t been to the butchers at all. It’s now 4 months since I had any meat. I just haven’t felt like I needed any. I’m NOT a vegetarian. I eat what my body tells me that I feel like eating. That is mostly fish and fresh vegetables.

So, at the weekend I was over at the Village Hall, where I am one of the trustees. We were there for the Village Xmas Party. At some point I casually mentioned to my neighbour John, that this fund-raising sausage sandwich was the first ‘supposedly’ red meat that I’d had in months. I’m giving the local butcher the benefit of the doubt here in crediting him with actually putting some small quantity of meat in his sausages, although from the pale creamy/yellow colour of them. I can only imagine what else might be in there, and I’m pretty certain that it isn’t meat. At the butchers, I notice that those pale anemic things are called sausages, while the red meat filled intestine tubes all have other exotic names like ‘bratwurst and salsiccia’.  I asked why and was told that it is illegal to call anything with that much meat in it a sausage. The laws governing ‘sausages’ are strict and you can’t put very much meat in them. I didn’t dare ask what is actually in them, but I suppose that it is mostly fat, gristle and bread crumbs?

Anyway, My neighbour John was shocked, appalled and quite taken aback at this fact and looked at me after my ‘confession’ with that pitying look that said “You poor, hapless, tragic bastard”! He was polite in not actually saying that to my face. But his face said it all. He asked me, “What do you eat when you aren’t eating raw vegetables then”? I told him that I fast 2 days a week!

His eyes rolled back in his head!

He said. “Come to dinner tomorrow night and I’ll feed you up”!

We duly turned up with our bottle of red wine. A very nice one in fact, and were treated to an exceptionally nice meal of medium rare, fillet steak in pepper cream sauce, served with a side of diced peppers and mushrooms stir fried in butter and mash potato made with lashings of salt, butter and parsley. It was sensational! John knows his steak. He also knows how to ‘read’ me. He knows I don’t often eat red meat and along with that he guessed I rarely buy cream, I never use salt and hardly ever use much butter. And he is right. So he decided to slam dunk me with the full trifecta.

And I’m glad he did. It was delicious.

In our turn, we invited them over for a nice salad and a glass of rain water, or maybe a few slices of sashimi and a bowl of green tea!

Best wishes from the now, very well fed, poor, hapless, tragic bastard.

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Finally, the rain comes

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We have had a week of swelteringly hot days, all up in the high 30s. Yesterday was 39oC way too hot to work out side, so we got up very early and got started working by 6am. We gave up and came inside at 11.00 am. It was just too hot. We have been watering the vegetables morning and night, but they are still suffering. Many of the plants like beans, celery and  cucumbers have dead, dried patches on their leaves.

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But at least they are still alive, so that is success. I gave the sweet basil its first hair cut. I tip pruned all the florets that were trying to flower and filled a large basket with the leaves. I like to make a kind of pesto-like paste. to go into the freezer, so that there will always be basil to add to sauces later in the year. We also make real pesto with garlic, pine nuts and parmigiano cheese, but what I’m making here now is just basil, garlic, a little salt and olive oil paste. It freezes well and keeps all year, so that when I need some basil flavouring in winter, I can open the freezer and take out the tub of this frozen basil paste, tap it upside down to drop it out of the container and then slice off a block of almost fresh basil concentrate. Beautifully green and flavourful. The rest is returned to the freezer for later.

I’ve been known to make up to six or seven of these half litre containers during the summer. As long as I never let the basil flower and keep pinching out the growing tips, the plants seem to thicken up and keep producing more leaves. Once you let them set flowers, they stop growing.

This stuff is fantastic. I love it. It’s one of there few things that we keep in our small freezer section of our fridge. Because it isn’t cooked, we can’t preserve it any other way, other than drying the leaves, which I have also done, but dried leaves are different. This stuff is magic. So intense. The little bit of garlic and salt really brings it to life. And it is surprisingly easy to slice from the block when frozen. Having very little water content and being mostly oil, it doesn’t set hard like ice, but more sort of leathery?

All the mid season peaches are now gone. We only have one tree of late peaches yet to come on. It is netted and we wait for them to ripen. All the berries are now over with over 20 kilos picked this year and safely all preserved, vacuum sealed and stored in the pantry. This recent heat wave has brought on the plums and they are just wonderful, sweet and tangy with that fabulous combination of acid and sugar that make your mouth water. We eat the first of them straight from the tree. Such a great taste, warmed by the sun, the juice trickles down our chins. They are mouth waveringly good. There are too many ripening all at once, so Janine has been stewing them and we have them for breakfast with a little yoghurt.

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We are in direct competition with all the birds at this time of year. The Lovely and hard working Janine has been moving the nets around and bagging some of the fruit, keeping one step ahead of the birds, while I have been so busy with orders. It’s a lot of work, but worth it. Having beautiful fresh, organic, clean food that we have grown ourselves, is a major part of our enterprise here.

We work outside very early and then again in the late afternoon and evening. Working inside during the heat of the day. Janine has mown the stone fruit orchard and I have mown the citrus grove and vegetable garden. Everything is looking good and now the heat is over for the time being with a cool change arriving and bringing with it some beautiful, cooling rain. I emptied the rain gauge this morning and we have had 33 mm. Just enough to flow down and top up the dam for a few more weeks of hand watering. The combination of cooler temperatures and soaking rain will bring all the plants back to life and put on a growth spurt.

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I bought a kilo of live mussels from the fish-truck man, so we are having mussel and vegetable soup for lunch. I usually just do the simple favourite, mussels in white wine, but as we have so many beautiful vegetables at the moment, I make a combination of green peppers, green and yellow zucchinis, red shallots and fresh sweet basil sauce. I bring it all to life with a jar of our preserved tomato passata concentrate from March. This batch was made with tiny yellow tomatoes, onions, capsicum, garlic and olive oil.

I cook it off and add the mussels to the boiling broth. It fills the kitchen with its steamy fragrance. It’s a great indulgence, but we  have earned it. Everything except the mussels from our own labours in the garden.

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The First Tomatoes of the Year, Ratatouille

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Yesterday, we harvested the first ripe tomatoes of the year. This is only the second time that we have managed to get ripe tomatoes before Xmas. The only other time was last year. Global warming, What global warming?

We also made our first pickings of our large green capsicums and smaller yellow banana capsicums, added to the sweet basil and yellow and green zucchinis, we have the makings of the first ratatouille of the summer. The egg plants bushes oblige us with the first few small aubergines and suddenly, there is our dinner in a basket.

The weather is very hot now 39 0C during the day. Our friends in Adelaide have had 4 days in a row of  41,42,43 and 41 oC. Way too hot to be able to work effectively outside. I make clay while the sun shines, inside under cover of a roof, but still sweltering. Porcelain slip dries very well on the drying bed in this weather. It’s a good time to make single-stone porcelain.

In the evening we sit outside and cook our produce, Ratatouille with the addition of a small jar of last years concentrated tomato, onion and basil ‘sugo’. I lightly brown our new-season onions in olive oil and then add in our crushed garlic. The roughly diced vegetables are added and turned in the oil a few times to coat them, then the sugo is added and the lid placed on to allow it all to simmer and soften for a few minutes.

We sit and chat into the cool of the evening. A nice chilled glass of rosé goes very well with this simple, fresh and very delicious Post Modern Peasants repast. The flavour of summer!

We have really earned this meal. We started making this meal three months ago, when we spread the compost and planted the seedlings. Now it’s payback time. It explodes in our mouths and takes us back to last summer. I can feel myself starting to relax into the idea of taking a little time off over the solstice break. This is a well earned, beautiful moment.

I am grateful!

 

It’s a Busy Time of Year

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I have only just delivered the last kiln off the factory floor and now I’m back in there welding up the next one. I want to get into and out of the galvanisers before Xmas, so that I can work on it over the summer break, so as to get a head start on next years orders. The galvanisers shut down for a month over the summer as does the local steel supply yard, and many other businesses as well.

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I have the next frame all tacked up already. I can cut the sections and start to weld the bones of it together while the old faithful automatic hacksaw does it’s job, slowly and relentlessly.

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When I made my first kiln. I cut all the steel out with a hacksaw blade by hand. It took two days. I don’t think that I’ve been so bored in all my life. When that initial kiln was sold, the first thing that I did was to spend my profits on a 4″ angle grinder and this wonderful old ‘chug-a-lug’ cast iron automatic hacksaw. It has been the most important thing that I have ever bought, with the possible exception of my home. It has worked continuously and reliably for 35 years. All I have ever had to replace are the blades, about once a year. It is such a fantastic invention. It cuts while I weld. and the angle grinder cleans up the edges.

I don’t want to get caught with no options, so I’m getting in early, as early as I can and doing all the welding and ordering of parts now. Then I will have the luxury of setting my own agenda of work and relaxation over the summer. We have relatives visiting from inter state and also from overseas, so we’ll be busy relaxing as well as working.

There a lot of veggies starting to bolt in the sudden heat, so we are try to eat them as fast as we can. i made a risotto last night with lots of garden produce. I used leeks instead of onions because that is what we have plenty of just now, and loads of fresh veggies, so much so that the result wasn’t really a risotto, as it only contained half cup of carnaroli rice, but a large bowlful of carrots, zucchinis and some mushrooms.

Veggieotto, with a little rice added. Cooked in fish stock from the bones of our dinner from a few nights ago.

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We are now picking from our 3rd tree of peaces. Well protected by plastic bird netting. We get all the fruit form these trees. they are the newer low chill varieties that we have been forced to grow now. These are the third generation of peach trees that we have grown here now over the 40 years of our Post Modern Peasant Enterprise. Modern varieties of peach trees seem to have a productive life here of 15 years. The Lovely decides to make a peach cobbler for desert to follow our veggieotto.

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We have also made our first large pick of young berries. Up until now, we have been eating what we picked each day, but the season is suddenly in full swing now, so we get up very early and go out to do the harvesting before it gets too hot. We spend 3/4 of an hour and pick 7 kgs in one go. They are really coming on. The lovely Lady of Household Management, Ms Janine Beeton, can’t be beat’n when it comes to household frugality. She has them all sorted, cleaned, steamed and bottled by mid morning, while I’m cutting steel. The vector of post modern peasantry and petit-capitalism.

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It’s a busy time of year.

Aioli

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As we have an excess of fresh garlic just at the moment. I decided to make aioli sauce as the accompaniment to the steamed fish and new potatoes that we are having for dinner.

Aioli is a very ancient form of sauce, a bit like mayonnaise, but flavoured with garlic. It’s a great addition to lots of meals. Tonight we are having fresh ‘Ling’ off the fish truck that comes up to the Highlands from the coast, 3 days a week. He arrives at 6.00am and is sold out by 1.00 or 2.00 pm. I get there just in time to get the last piece of ling and some fresh mussels.

I decide to steam the Ling with a few drops of olive oil, to stop it sticking, then add a few fresh leaves off the Kaffier lime tree on top. I deglaze with a crisp white wine and serve it with our steamed new potatoes and  zucchini, picked fresh from the garden.

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We have both green and yellow zucchinis at the moment. They are the first of the summer vegetables to come into full production so early on the  the season. It’s still late spring. It isn’t even summer yet, but we have just had our first 40+oC day for the season. It forces us to be out watering both morning and night to keep the young summer vegetables from drying out and being set back.

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I peel and then crush the cloves of one small knob of our fresh garlic, then add the juice of half a lemon, one egg yolk from our son Geordie’s chickens and whisk it all up together into a mucilarge. I then proceed to add just a few drops of olive oil to the mix, a few drops at a time while whisking with the other hand. This continues until a thick white, bulked-up consistency is achieved. It takes quite a lot of oil to bring this about.. Don’t worry if it takes a long time, just keep on adding a few more drops of the oil at a time. Don’t get frustrated and add too much in one go. To make a mayonnaise-like emulsification sauce, you need to be patient. Just add a few drops at a time and keep whisking. It will eventually emulsify.

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This is a very ancient recipe, dating back into prehistory. It is to be found all over the south of Spain, France and northern Italy. It was apparently, originally, just a mix of garlic and olive oil to begin with. It was later found that the addition of a little egg yolk, stabilised the emulsion and thickened it considerably. It benefits from the addition of a little salt and some freshly ground pepper to taste.

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Rick Stein has suggested that the garlic be crushed with the side of a large chef’s knife and then chopped fine, crushed again with the side of the knife and very fine chopped and worked into a paste. A rather nice craftsman-like way to do it. I like it. For those without the patience or the knife skills, a garlic press works well enough. I actually like  it to be a little chunky and rustic. I also like it to have a lot of garlic in it.

Anyone can buy that anonymous, mild, made not-to-offend, finely milled, bland paste from the supermarket. It has too much salt and is loaded with preservative. What I’m making here is real life food, home grown, home made, organic, rough, chunky and strong flavoured.

However it is made, it is just right NOW at this time of year, when the garlic is so fresh and oily. Later in the year when it dries out and goes rather leathery, it just isn’t the same. At this time of year, aioli is a great accompaniment for lots of things that we grow and eat. It goes very well with fish and potatoes.

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Aioli probably lasts quite a long time in the fridge, but we’ve never managed to keep it long enough to find out. It’s deliciously piquant.

We haven’t had any red meat since August, I’m starting to think that it would be nice to have a couple of lamb cutlets with aioli.

Panforte

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During our open studio weekends, I made Panforte to serve to guests that stayed on for coffee. Sometimes, however, we were so busy that I didn’t get time for chat and coffee, being constantly engaged in discussing pots,  glazes, forms and firing techniques at the wrapping bench. So two cakes lasted the whole weekend, instead of the usual ten minutes.

I was taught to make panforte with a very simple recipe. It isn’t really a cake, it’s something closer to a bread, but with lots of spices and a little sweetness. The ones that are commercially available here from Italy are a lot sweeter and much softer than this rather traditional version.

I suspect that there are as many different recipes for Sienna cake as there are housewives that cook it in Sienna. However, after watching a recent cooking show from Italy with interviews with some of the locals, it was teased out that in the new/modern Italian household of 2 parents and 1 child, with both parents working, there isn’t a lot of home cooking going on any more. That has been left mostly to Nona. The microwave and pre-packs reign supreme these days in modern busy households , just as they do in Australia.

So here is my variation on an old fashioned, not so sweet, rather chewy, recipe for Panforte. It’s not so surprising that I think that it is a little like a sweet kind of bread, as the name panforte means ‘bread-strong ‘. I think that the strong part refers to the fragrance and flavours of the spices?

I was originally taught to use;

1 cup of flour

1 cup of almonds

1 cup of dried fruit

and one cup of honey – So easy to remember!

What could be more wholesome, natural and simple? Well, that is what attracted me to the recipe, but I found it a little lacking in dried fruit and way too sweet for my taste. So I altered it over time, a little bit at a time, slowly arriving at the following recipe, which I currently use.

1 cup of flour

1 cup of almonds, crushed with the side of a large knife or roughly sliced

1 cup of dried apricots, roughly sliced

1 cup of glacé cherries

1 cup of tiny dried currents

1 cup of other mixed dried fruits and candied peel. I made my own dried candied peel. It keeps really well in the fridge and last for ages. see;

Fruits of the Solstice

1/4 cup of honey, which is then topped up with hot water and dissolved. I use local bush honey. We used to use our own when we had the bees. Sometimes I use Tasmanian ‘Leatherwood’ honey, as it is particularly fragrant and compliments the other spices.

There is a concoction of dried spices added to the mix, and these are not weighed or really measured. I suppose that they may have been once upon a time, but I’ve completely lost track of what that might have been.

These days I add a generous shake or small spoon full of some or all of the following;

Cinnamon powder. This is the most important, so more of this. Maybe 2 level tea spoons. Then there is powdered cloves, also important, but very strong, so a lot less is added. Maybe half to one teaspoon, then there is ginger, nutmeg and mixed spice. Mix and match as you think fit.

All the dry ingredients and spices except the honey water, are dry mixed together in a large hand made pottery mixing bowl.

As soon as the warm honey water is mixed in, stir it all together well to incorporate all the dry fruit and flour, so that it is homogenous. Do this quickly because as the mixture cools down, it starts to ‘set’ as the honey become more viscous, then it becomes harder to pour it out in the the baking ring.

I made a few stainless steel baking rings, some for my sons restaurant, and a few for us. I keep giving them away and making more. I use a ring that is about 200 mm dia and 20mm high.

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Grease a baking tray and the rings. I use olive oil to avoid using butter. I like butter. No! I love butter, but I’d rather enjoy my small allocation of butter in other ways. Olive oil works well in this way and the strength of the spices masks any minimal olive flavour residue.

I sprinkle a 50/50 mixture of flour and icing sugar, mixed with some cinnamon and clove powder onto the tray and pour the soft cake mixture into the ring onto of the flour mix. Use any left over mix to sprinkle on top.

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Bake for about 40 minutes at 180oC. Check if it’s done by inserting a knife. Allow it to cool on a wire rack, then wrap it up in lunch-wrap paper. It keeps for ages in the fridge, but only if you forget about it. Otherwise it gets eaten very quickly, as it is very popular.

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It’s a lovely special treat that I make a couple of times a year, so as to keep it special.

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Buckotto

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We have had a couple of very good week ends of Open Studio, with lots of visitors and good sales. This is the best Open Studio that we have participated in. The Open Studio Trail has been operating now for about 10 years and we have participated in 5 of them. We would have been involved in more of them, but they fell on times when we we’re away or unable to take part for one reason or another . So this has been good for us to see a strong response to our domestic pots.

It has been frenetic, but very good. we are looking forward to a slightly easier and quieter time for the next little while. We have a lot of other small, deferred jobs to catch up on, as well as a kiln to finish building. It has been sitting in stasis for the past two weeks while we concentrated on the pottery.

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The Lovely has been busy dealing with the new garlic. We have had it spread out to dry all over the place from in the sun on the front verandah to the kitchen floor in front of the big window. The best of it is all peeled and plaited now and hung up in the kitchen to finish drying. We have 10 plaits holding anything from 15 to 20 knobs and another equal number of knobs that were too far gone to be able to plait and they are currently stored loose in wicker baskets in the kitchen window to finish drying along with the last of the broad beans.

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I love the fresh, oily, new season garlic. It just pops out of its soft skin so easily. I have been eating garlic sandwiches, made with heavy, dark rye bread. A dusting of veggie salt and freshly ground pepper and it’s all I need. There is only a month or so where it stays like this, so fresh and wet and oily. Once it dries out and the skin becomes papery, then the magic is gone and it becomes just plain ordinary garlic for the next 6 months, until it declines into its older, leathery dried out state with green shoots. This is when it is time to replant the next crop.

We save the largest and strongest bulbs for planting out for next seasons supply. These go back into the ground around about March, as soon as there is any sign of a green shoot. I usually see a few wild shoots appearing in the garden at this time. Some rogue cloves that have escaped captivity. They set the agenda, when they shoot up out of the ground, it’s time to replant the next years crop. We can still keep on eating the remainder of our stock from the kitchen plaits until it is all used up. We rarely last out the year, usually falling short by a month or two, but this year we made it right to the end by buying a plait from one of the members of our local ‘Seed Savers Group’.

We have had a few changes in the weather with a few warm days following some rain and the first of the spring crop of Safron milk-cap mushrooms (Lactarius deliciosus,) has appeared in the garden. They grow in conjunction with pine trees, and as we have some magnificent Caribbean pines growing beside our house, we get a good supply of these lovely wild mushrooms all through the year, but mainly in spring and autumn. This one may end up in a risotto for dinner.

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I have recently been experimenting with making a variation on risotto using buckwheat. I bought a kilo of organically grown buckwheat and have been finding ways of using it. I originally bought it to make my own ‘soba’ noodles. However, ‘buckotto’ has turned out to be my favourite use for it.

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We have plenty of beetroot, carrots, broad beans and zucchinis at the moment, so tonights dinner will be pink veggie buckotto. I make it just like any other risotto, by first slow heating some finely chopped onion in good olive oil and later adding some of our garlic. Cooking them though for some time so that they are soft, translucent and glowing, but not browned or burnt. Add a cup of the small triangular buckwheat grains to the mix and stir till coated with oil. I add a cup of white wine and add in the various sliced up vegetables in order of required cooking time, stirring often. Today, I have a pan of fish stock on the go to keep the mixture lubricated. I also have a few jars of our own preserved tomato passata left in the pantry from last summer, so I add in half a small jar of this and a slab of frozen basil pesto from the freezer.

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We only have a very small freezer attached to the top of our small domestic fridge. We have chosen not to own a separate freezer to save using electrical power unnecessarily. When we preserve our summer excess from the garden we do it by cooking and vacuum sealing the produce in glass ‘Vacola” jars. Basil pesto of course, isn’t cooked, so it is one of the few things that go in the freezer. I made 7 tubs of the stuff last summer. It’s great to be able to go to the freezer and grab a chunk of distilled summer garden essence and add it to a meal so much later in the year.

I keep the dish moving, so that it won’t stick as it thickens up. it’s a beautiful, rich vegetable flavour with a creamy texture and some chewy vegetable chunks.

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A great meal for a late spring evening. Ever so simple. Quick and easy and very tasty.

I believe that it is even quite healthy.