(March 2, 2010 – 20:19)
This is my favourite breakfast ever. It’s it’s a bit like Mexican huevos rancheros or Berber omelette. If you wanted, you could add a drizzle of chilli oil at the end to really spice it up, but the pinch of cumin already in the recipe does it for me.
Moroccan poached eggs. Serves two.
- 1½ tsp whole cumin seeds
- virgin olive oil
- 4-6 shoots green onion, sliced
- 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
- 4 large, ripe tomatoes, chopped, or one 400g can
- 1 cup stock or water
- 1½ tsp sugar
- 4 large eggs
- handful each of fresh continental parsley and chives, roughly chopped
- grilled ciabatta or sourdough, to serve
Heat a heavy skillet or sauté pan over medium flame, and dry roast the cumin seeds for a minute, until they’re beautifully fragrant. Add green onions and garlic, and sauté in olive oil until soft and beginning to brown. Add tomato, sugar and stock, and simmer for fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomato is beginning to break down and the mixture has thickened a little. Season. Make a few depressions in the surface of the tomato sauce, and break the eggs onto them. Poach for another few minutes, until eggs are done to your liking. You might need to add a little more stock, if things are in danger of burning. Top generously with parsley and chives, and serve with grilled bread and a drizzle of olive oil. Yum.
Edit: just remembered that this recipe is mostly inspired by a breakfast in Casa Moro: the second cookbook, by Sam & Sam Clark.
(February 22, 2010 – 01:15)
Last night Hannah and I put together a little party to welcome her back to Australia, to introduce her to my friends, and to introduce my friends to hers.
The food went down well. We made rice paper rolls, baba ganoush, hummous and a carrot dip, served with with grilled Turkish bread and crudités.
Carrot and cumin dip
This dip is is fragrant, sweet, and smooth.
- 6 large carrots (about 750g)
- ½ cup virgin olive oil
- 4 large cloves garlic, or to taste, peeled
- 3 tsp whole cumin seeds, and extra to garnish
Peel and roughly chop the carrots, and steam or microwave, covered, until very soft (about ten minutes at 800W). Meanwhile, add garlic cloves and oil to a small skillet and fry over medium heat until fragrant. Add cumin to hot oil and cook for a further minute. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes before adding contents to food processor. Add steamed carrot, and blend until smooth. Season well and garnish with a pinch of whole cumin. Serve warm with grilled bread.
Hummous with parsley
An easy improvisation on a familiar and delicious theme.
- 400g can of chickpeas, drained
- 1½ tbsp unhulled tahini
- handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
- 1 clove garlic, peeled
- ½ cup virgin olive oil
- juice of one lime
Combine all ingredients in food processor and blend until combined. Smooth or a little chunky – completely up to you. Season and serve with a drizzle of good olive oil and crudités.
Baba ganoush
- 2 medium aubergines/eggplant (about 1 kg)
- 1 tbsp unhulled tahini
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled
- ¼ cup virgin olive oil
- juice of one (juicy) lime
Grill or barbeque aubergines, whole, until skin is black, blistered and crisp, and the whole fruit is very soft. Carefully peel, discarding skin, and add flesh to food processor with remaining ingredients. Blend until combined, and season well. Serve warm with Turkish bread.
(February 12, 2010 – 12:59)
Hannah is moving to Australia tonight. We’re probably having ramen for tea, and I’ve been making some of the ingredients in advance. The stock is on the simmer, and the tea eggs have just come out of their broth. These eggs are beautifully marbled and delicately infused with the taste of tea and spices. They’re great as a snack on their own, or as a topping for noodles or rice.
Tea eggs are super easy to make – as simple as boiling eggs, cracking the shells, and re-boiling them in a darkly-stained broth.
Chinese tea eggs
- ½ doz. free-range eggs
- 1 tbsp black tea leaves
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
- 1 tsp Chinese five-spice
Hard-boil eggs in a medium-sized saucepan. They should be ready five or six minutes after the water comes to the boil. Remove eggs from water and leave until cool enough to handle (or run them under cold water). Once you can touch the eggs, gently crack them all over by rolling on your benchtop or tapping with a teaspoon. Return the eggs to the saucepan of water, along with tea, soy, rice wine and five-spice powder. Simmer gently for half an hour, then allow to cool. Refrigerate eggs in the broth for at least 24 hours before serving.
By Sam
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Posted in Blogs, Recipes, photography
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Tagged asian, chinese, eggs, food, hannah, love, ramen, tea, tea eggs
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(February 5, 2010 – 02:56)
It’s one week exactly until Hannah arrives home.
I spent last weekend in Townsville, partly to see Dad, and partly so that I’d make it to Althea’s 21st. It’d been raining for quite a few days before I got there, but on my last day, just before I was due at the airport, we drove to the top of Castle Hill and enjoyed the sunshine.
Back in Brisbane, I’ve been renovating furniture, repairing my bicycle and shooting headshots with Anna:
… and in the biggest and best news, my cousin Mary and her husband Andrew had a beautiful baby boy, Vincent. I can’t wait to meet him!
(January 12, 2010 – 07:00)
I arrived home in Brisbane to find myself waist-deep in a few varieties of basil. They’re all potted in water-storing pots, which means they survived a month with no watering at all, until the rain started after Christmas. A surplus of basil means only one thing:
Almond Pesto
- 1½ cups raw almond kernels
- 1 cup virgin olive oil
- 150g parmesan reggiano, chopped or grated
- 4-5 cloves of garlic
- armful of fresh basil – I used a fairly even mix of Greek, Genovese and Thai.
- salt and course-milled black pepper to season
Wash and shake dry basil. Pluck leaves and add to a food processor with parmesan and half the oil, and process until just combined. Toast almonds until fragrant, then add to food processor. Sauté coarsely chopped garlic in remaining oil until just soft. Add oil and garlic to food processor and process until well mixed – you may need more oil to get sufficient smoothness. I like mine fairly chunky, although biting into a large piece of almost-raw garlic can ruin your date. Serve warm on grilled ciabatta, mixed with pasta for alla genovese, or store under oil in the refrigerator.
By Sam
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Posted in Blogs, Recipes
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Tagged almond, australia, basil, brisbane, food, garlic, home, italian, pesto, recipe, summer
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(January 9, 2010 – 23:47)
I’ve just spent the last five weeks with the girl I love, in my favourite city in the world. Bliss.
We did lots of the usual couple things we’ve been unable to do for the ten months since I moved to Brisbane: dates, movies, falling over in the snow. We’ve built snowmen, cooked meals together and gone hiking. We even made it to London for a long weekend in the big city:
Britain isn’t getting any warmer. I left Edinburgh at five in the morning, trudging through half a foot of snow and -10°C temperatures. Thirty-eight hours later (via Dublin, Abu Dhabi and Singapore) I emerged into a balmy 30°C Brisbane morning, still wearing thermals and a coat. Oops.
I’ll miss the snowmen:
(and the snow in general, I guess),
I’ll miss my beautiful city:
But most of all, I’ll miss my Hannah:
Five weeks and counting ’til she’s home.
By Sam
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Posted in Blogs, photography
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Tagged christmas, couple, edinburgh, england, hannah, hogmanay, ice, london, love, new years, scotland, snow, travel, UK
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(November 29, 2009 – 18:27)
I was a little nervous about Belfast after lasts month’s attempted bombings. I arrived after dark, and having spent all day travelling, settled in for an early night. I woke early and spent several quiet hours walking around the city centre. Sunday morning is a quiet time for Belfast – the only other person I saw was a German tourist following a similar route. Even the 24 hour Tesco is closed until one in the afternoon.
It’s a bizarre feeling walking though a city that has such a violent recent history. It reminds me a little of Sarajevo, but with fresher wounds. The “peace line”, a three-mile wall dividing the Falls Road and Shankill neighbourhoods, still stands, though the tanks guarding the gates have been gone a decade. The police stations are heavily fortified and shelter a legion of armoured cars. Republican and Unionist propaganda and graffiti covers the walls of the working class suburbs, and there’s barely a city block that doesn’t fly at least one Union Jack, Tricolour or St. George Cross.
Still, the people are as cheerful and friendly as anywhere else on this island, with accents equal parts entertaining and unintelligible.
Just don’t talk religion or politics.
The Ulster photoset is here.
(November 29, 2009 – 18:18)
Days without getting soaked to the bone: zero.
Wednesday saw me on a bus through County Clare and the Burren, bound towards the Cliffs of Moher, towering more than a hundred metres over the Atlantic ocean. I’ve gotten used to forecasts like “Maximum of 0ºC, humidity at 100%,” but the wind off the Atlantic was still a surprise. It was strong enough to drag spray up the cliff face and onto us poor, shivering tourists. Still, a beautiful sight, and it was lovely to reacquaint myself with the Atlantic.
The Burren is a limestone karst landscape covering a few hundred square kilometres of Co. Clare, packed full of neolithic tombs, livestock and little else. According to Edmund Ludlow the Burren is “country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him…… and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”
Photoset for Galway and Co. Clare is here.
(November 28, 2009 – 03:01)
With typically good timing I came down with a fever just as I reached Galway, Ireland’s party capital. I soldiered through yesterday, with a daytrip through The Burren and the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare (photos to come), but today has been all about bed rest. Oh, and scones. There’s only so many hours one can lie warm in bed before the urge to battle through wind, rain and subzero temperatures to the nearest Tesco, in order to procure baking soda, becomes overwhelming.
Buttermilk scones
Makes about eight medium sized scones.
- 2 cups plain flour
- 3 tsp baking soda
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 40g butter, cubed
- 1 cup buttermilk
- ¼ cup water
- jam and whipped cream, to serve
Preheat oven to 180ºC. Sift together flour, sugar and baking soda. Add butter, rubbing into mixture with fingertips until crumbly consistency. Add buttermilk and water, and stir until just combined. Spoon onto a greased tray. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until firm and just crisp on the outside. Serve with whipped Irish cream and strawberry jam.
I would have taken photos, but we ate them too quickly.
(November 25, 2009 – 19:36)
