Feigenbaum

Having waxed lyrical in an earlier post about the wonders of house cows, I now need to vent about the problems of cheeky calves. When I got up this morning and looked out the kitchen window, there was Rosie – out of her paddock and effectively in our back garden munching on grass. While Rosie’s mum, Suki, will follow me around and can easily be coaxed back into her paddock with a bucket of feed, Rosie is another story.

Once the kids were breakfasted, dressed, lunches made, bags packed and strapped into the car, I attempted to get Rosie back into her paddock. By that stage, she was trampling my husband’s magnificent vegetable patch and I was slipping around long wet grass in crocs trying to herd her out. In frustration, I threw a stick at her. It was a lost cause. To my shame, I went into the house, called my husband and burst into tears. Farm girl, you have a long way to go.

And Rosie? Your days are numbered.

I have been watching a bit of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s latest TV series, River Cottage Every Day. I have long been a devotee to his philosophies around food and its production and use. And I love his good honest recipes.

Today I find myself at home from work looking after my two-year-old son, who has a cold. With no dough for bread in the house. So, inspired by Hugh, I thought I would make a quick soda bread for our lunch, based on the recipe given in the most recent episode for Apple, Guinness and Cheese Soda Bread. The real recipe can be found here. Mine can be followed below.

Preheat oven to 230C. Mix all ingredients in a bowl until they just come together – as you would when making muffins or scones. This can be done by hand or in a stand mixer. I used my kitchenaid because Solly was asleep in my arms at the time. Shape into a slightly domed patty on a lined baking tray. Sprinkle a bit of extra cheese on top. Bake for about 20mins or until nicely golden and smelling delicious.

Amazing eaten warm with good butter. Very comforting on a cold day when you have a snotty nose.

The quantities above make for a very satisfying lunch with leftovers for a mama and her sick boy.

To me, low fat, pasteurised, homogonised milk is like day-time television. Totally banal and uninteresting, and definitely not something that nourishes the mind, body and soul. When I lived in Melbourne, I coveted raw 100% Jersey Aphrodite Bath Milk. I would scuttle off with the glass bottle (too good to share), spoon the thick cream off the top and eat it, and then savour the first few sips of milk that was still so creamy and felt so luscious in my mouth.

There is big debate about the potential health risks/benefits associated with consuming raw milk. I don’t intend to get into that debate here. I just want to do my own thing.

Which is why, as a belated family Christmas present, my husband and I bought two sweet little Dexter cows in January. Dexters are the smallest naturally occurring breed of cattle and are true dual-purpose animals – producing beautiful milk as well as beef. Thus their name: beefy little milkers. They also calve easily and have lovely temperaments, which is perfect for our young family.

We are blessed in Tasmania to have a growing number of top-quality Dexter studs and an active Dexter Cattle Promotion Group in Tasmania, which is affiliated with Dexter Cattle Australia Inc. (DCAI). Our cows come from Andrea at Goldshaft Dexter Stud. They have stolen our hearts, but not our appetites. We will keep Suki for milking (she has the most beautiful temperament) and put her in calf each year (one for the freezer).

Introducing Suki and her calf Rosie…

I have dabbled with making yoghurt and ricotta cheese before but look forward to expanding my dairy-making activities hopefully in the next year once Suki has fresh milk again after calving.

It was my husband’s 30th birthday a couple of weeks ago and we had a BBQ with friends to celebrate. But Joel, being the quiet reserved type, told me I wasn’t allowed to bake a cake and make a spectacle of him. I tried to restrain myself. I really did. But it goes against the Jewish genes. So I worked around it. I had only promised not to bake a cake. This is what I made…

No, I didn’t serve my guests soil. Or leaves.

It is actually a chocolate tiramisu semifreddo (although there wasn’t anything semi about it as the chest freezer where I hid it from Joel is VERY cold – it was spoon-bendingly frozen). I used the recipes for savoiardi (single quantity) and tiramisu semifreddo (double quantity) given in earlier posts. It was then topped with crushed Oreo biscuits, which look extraordinarily like potting mix. I got the idea from a post on one of my favourite totally non-pretentious food blogs – Pioneer Woman Cooks.

After cake, the kids climbed the tree…

And, of course, what is a day on the farm without some fun with my horse, Bella…

All in all, a lovely day. And the best thing? I got away with the not-birthday-cake!

Photo credits: I was too busy running around and drinking on the day, so thank you to beautiful Melissa, Dean and the kids for the photo record of the party!

Wow! What a year. So much happened in 2011 that I didn’t make a blog entry after January. The biggest thing to happen was we sold our house in town with the transformed garden and bought a bigger garden (3.5 acres) just out of Exeter in the beautiful West Tamar Valley. So enthused were we by the principles of homesteading and self-sufficiency, we had to take it further. More vegetables, more fruit, more preserving, more baking, more animals, more blissful space…

Here is a snapshot of 2011.

I can’t wait to see what 2012 brings.

We used to live in Melbourne. My husband and I met in a sharehouse on Lygon Street in North Carlton when we were both postgraduate students at Melbourne Uni. We wooed each other with food and used to breakfast on lattes and croissants at 6am at Brunetti’s on Faraday Street nearly every day. Ahh, those were the days.

Then we got pregnant with our first child and left the sharehouse to rent a flat surrounded by concrete in Brunswick (the next suburb away from the city). The Italian greengrocer at the Sparkly Bear went from calling me segnorita to segnora and my husband attempted to grow cucumbers in the concrete carpark.

When our baby was born we moved further north away from the city to a house in Northcote that we rented from a friend who was studying overseas. It had a small garden where my husband grew herbs and peppinos and a silvery, feathery variety wormwood that I loved.

And we found ourselves faced with a dilemma. Exhausting postgraduate work and lengthy commutes for Joel (despite living in a suburb that was considered fairly central), loneliness and isolation for me at home with the baby, rising rental prices and rental competition, small garden…generally speaking, a lifestyle that was causing us more unhappiness than it was happiness. So, instead of screaming at each other and giving up, we decided to make some drastic changes.

We moved to Launceston in Tasmania. My husband quit his PhD in molecular biology and went back to first year to study Architecture. I got a job in an art gallery and finished my Masters. Then I got a job at the University of Tasmania and we bought our first house.

How glorious that felt. When we moved in the whole back yard – all 550m2 of it was couch grass (see below).

We spent the next two years juggling work, study, a toddler and a new baby, while steadily working on the house and garden. My husband dug it all out by hand and created vegetable beds and we planted over a dozen fruit trees and numerous varieties of berries. We found happiness.

Rhubarb

Garlic

Corn

Corn Ears

Seedlings

French Sorrel

Marigold

Broccolini

Radish

Snow peas

Comfrey Leeks

Bok Choy

Raspberries and Red Clover

Tomato plants

Perennial Russell Lupins

(Joel generally shows no interest in growing plants that you can’t eat – but if they are nitrogen fixes, well that’s another story)

Henrietta – peering through an espaliered damson plum

Loganberries

Carrot seedlings

Onions

Thank you Oswald Street – we have loved you.

I love grissini and made them for a party I attended on the weekend to accompany a couple of dips. They were an experiment but I was very happy with the results – they were slim, golden and crisp (if a little fiddly to prepare).

I used the lean dough formula given earlier in the post titled ‘Theme and Variations’. To create grissini, I rolled the dough out thinly into a rectangle, brushed it with beaten egg and sprinkled it liberally with poppy and sesame seeds. I then cut the dough into strips about the width of my finger and twisted them as I placed them on baking sheets lined with baking paper. They took about 10mins to bake in a hot oven.

‘Strong bread’ in translation, panforte is a wonderful Italian Christmas cake that keeps for ages. I have read that soldiers used to carry it in their pockets because it had excellent keeping properties and was firm enough not to fall apart. It is very easy to make and can be done well in advance. A fantastic treat to have on hand at Christmas time – it can be pulled out and served with coffee or an Italian liqueur when visitors pop around.

Some say that a panforte should contain seventeen different ingredients to represent the seventeen Contrade within the city walls of Siena – the town regarded as the home of panforte. In my recipe, below, I have followed this tradition.

Preheat the oven at 180°C and butter a round cake tin and line the bottom with baking paper.

Mix together the flour, cocoa, spices, fruits and nuts in a bowl.

Heat the honey, butter and sugar to boiling in a saucepan, then pour over the fruit and nut mixture. Work together quickly – as the mixture cools it will become hard to stir. When the ingredients are well combined, scrape into a round tin and smooth the top.

Bake for 30mins. The cake will firm up as it cools.

My first Christmas post and we are already well into January. I just have to share some of the delights I enjoyed over Christmas and Boxing Day.

The first was a Christmas breakfast – conceived and prepared by my wonderful husband, who has a first class sweet tooth. As you will see from the photograph below, it is a trait shared by our son.

Fried Pandoro Nutella Sandwiches

The recipe is simple. Slice an Italian Pandoro and sandwich together with a very liberal spread of nutella. Fry in butter.

We enjoyed these with champagne and orange juice. It felt so wonderful to be well and truly tipsy by 6.30am and made the hysteria of Christmas with two children under five and a puppy not only bearable but a bundle of laughs. We will definitely be repeating this next year.

One of the wonderful things about the Christmas holidays is not having to leave the house by 8am – it gives so much more time for baking bread. Over my 10 days of reclusive holidaying in the home I played around with some quick direct method doughs with my brand new and much coveted empire red kitchenaid. While my husband said he preferred the breads I make that have a much longer fermentation time, my children loved them. I must admit that I found the uncomplicated flavours and clean finish a refreshing change.

Theme – Lean White Bread

Note: The percentages in brackets are bakers’ percentages – and relate to the total flour weight (not total dough weight). This helps you scale the recipe up or down. When I refer to yeast, I mean active dried yeast and not fresh – to use this recipe with fresh yeast, alter the ratio to 2% fresh yeast.

Method:

Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl then pour over the water.

In a mixer, mix on low speed until the ingredients have combined then increase the speed to med-low for 5-10mins. Pull dough out of bowl and form into a ball by hand then place in a clean, lightly oiled bowl to rise. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp tea towel to prevent the surface from drying out.

By hand, mix the ingredients together and knead by folding the dough over and over – a 70% hydration dough such as this one is too wet to knead the traditional way. With repeated vigorous foldings, it will come together to form a soft, silky dough. When kneaded, form into a ball and place in a clean, lightly oiled bowl to rise. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a damp tea towel to prevent the surface from drying out.

Leave to rise until doubled in size – the time will vary depending on ambient room temperature but I find 1.5 – 2 hours usually does the trick.

Take the dough out of the bowl and shape into a round. Place it in a floured banneton or proofing basket. If you don’t have one, place it on a square of baking paper and sit in a small pie dish with sides to stop the round from spreading out too much. Let it proof until well risen – maybe another 30-60 mins.

Preheat the oven to the max and place a cast iron pot with water in the bottom and a lid in the oven to heat up.

If the shaped dough was proofed in a banneton, invert onto a sheet of baking paper. Take the cast iron pot out of the oven and lower the shaped dough carefully into the pot, holding the sides of the baking paper. Replace the lid and bake in the oven for 30mins. Remove the lid and back for a further 20-30mins, depending on the strength of your oven and/or your desired crust colouration.

Leave to cool on a rack before cutting and eating – if you can manage to.

Variation 1 – Golden Polenta and Olive Oil Bread

Note: I had intended to use fine polenta but found I only had coarse in the pantry. I actually loved the texture it lended to the bread, which had a beautiful golden colour.

Method: as for Theme, above.

Variation 2 – Honey and Tea Bread

Note: I loved this bread. The flavour of the tea doesn’t come through (I’d like to work on a formula where it does) but it gives the bread an extraordinary colour. The baked loaf has a lovely soft and tender crumb, which is slightly sweet due to the addition of the honey, and a beautiful shiny crust.

Method: as for Theme, above.

Variation 3 – Honey and Sesame Bread

Note: I absolutely loved this bread and it smells wonderful coming out of the oven – a heady combination of honey, sesame and wheat. It has a lot of sesame seeds in it but it doesn’t taste like a heavy, seeded bread.

Method: as for Theme, above. The sesame seeds are added to the initial mix of flour, salt, yeast.

Variation 4 – Figgy Fruit Bread

Note: My quest for the ultimate fruit bread continues – this one is the best so far.

Method: Make the dough by mixing together all the ingredients except the fruit. Let it rise in a bowl as for Theme, above.

When the dough has roughly doubled in size, turn it out onto a floured workbench and roll it into a rectangle to a thickness of about 5-10mm. If it starts to resist rolling and springs back, just let it sit untouched on the bench for a few minutes so that the gluten relaxes. You will then be able to roll it out some more.

Once rolled, sprinkle the surface of the dough with the fruit. Then roll it up like a log and place in a lightly oiled loaf pan. Set it aside to proof and preheat the oven to about 220°C – not as hot as for the Theme.

Bake the loaf in the tin for approx. 40mins. When you bring it out of the oven, turn the loaf onto a rack and brush the top with honey to glaze.

A variation of the above, is to brush the surface of the rolled out rectangle of dough with softened or melted butter prior to adding the fruit. This will keep the layers of dough separated during the bake so you can see the way the loaf has been rolled after baking. I really like this variation but the unbuttered version is probably better if you have toast in mind.