Weekend breakfasts. Fresh bread, eggs, coffee. I love the weekends when I actually have time to indulge in these rituals. When I can, I get up to the screams of the neighbour’s small irritating child running down the street outside our bedroom window, and head down to Bourke St Bakery for a plain sourdough. I grab some milk for the other half, and the papers. I get back and make sure there’s enough coffee ground for the both of us. I then start the debate: Boiled eggs? Another botched attempt at poached? Hmm, leftover 1/4 of capsicum, leftover red onion and chilli? Hmm, baked spanish eggs? Yeah.
Finely diced 1/2 red onion Finely sliced 1/2 red chilli Finely diced 1/2 -1/4 capsicum crushed garlic 1 cube homemade tomato paste (recipe to follow) 1 chopped tomato chilli flakes small amount of stock (I keep stock frozen in cubes) smoked sweet paprika 2 eggs sourdough toast to serve Pre heat grill on medium-high Throw in a small oven safe frypan the onion, capsicum, chilli & garlic and saute over medium-high heat till soft
Add the chopped tomato, and let reduce down for a little while
Then add the tomato sauce, and the stock and continue to simmer until it thickens a little
Add 1/4 teaspoon of paprika, and a pinch of chilli flakes, taste again and season with salt and pepper to taste
Create two little spaces in the sauce and carefully crack your eggs into them
Turn down the heat and cook till the whites are turning white
Throw under pre heated grill for a couple of minutes until the yolks are set to your liking
Serve with toasted sourdough
The inspiration for this sauce/paste is from Wendy Gornall of the Pickled Pear B&B that I’ve had the pleasure of staying in a few years back when I was traveling down to Bega/Merimbula for work regularly over a period of months. Travelling for work on your own can be excruciatingly boring and lonely, but I always looked forward to heading down to Bega to visit with these interesting people and superb cooks! Wendy always had some homemade tomato sauce around and it seriously livened up every dish it was served with. She generously provided me with her recipe, but this is my simpler take on it. This amount is reasonably small, it equals about 1 ice cube tray with a tiny bit left over. Double it, or even triple it to have a ready store of this useful sauce in the freezer.
1kg cherry tomatoes or any kind of small tasty tomatoes 1 large Spanish (red) onion 4-5 small-medium cloves of garlic, unpeeled olive oil salt & pepper Line a couple of roasting trays with baking paper. Use trays with sides so the juices don’t run everywhere
Chop all the tomatoes in half, and throw in the trays
Peel and halve the onion, then cut into crescents, throw into tray
Don’t peel the garlic cloves, just chuck them in whole
Use about a tablespoon of olive oil on one tray’s worth
Roast in a slow (150°C-170°C) oven for about an hour or so.
Keep checking until they look lovely and cooked and wrinkled, and smell amazing.
When they’re ready, first grab the garlic cloves and squeeze the insides out into a large, deep bowl or food processor. Throw in the roast tomatoes and onions.
Process or use a stick blender until you get a reasonably smooth consistency. Taste and then add salt and pepper as required.
Freeze in an ice cube tray and store. I use this is as a thickener in tomato dishes, for pizza bases, I’ve added anchovies and balsamic and used as a pasta sauce
Wendy’s original recipe is as follows:
- 2 kg red tomatoes
- 2 big onions, roughly chopped
- 12 garlic cloves (1 head) whole
- 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt and another of black pepper
- handful of fresh basil leaves
- 1/2 tin anchovies, drained
- 2 teaspoons capers
Follow the directions as per above, bake in oven for 1 hour or until onions are slightly brown. Remove from oven and cool.
Add balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt & pepper, anchovies, basil and capers and blend.
Use hot or cold.
A bunch of us had been trying to organise a mini food tour of Five Dock by our friend Carmel for ages, and finally the appointed day rolled around. A gorgeously bright and sunny Sydney Winter day all 6 of us met on the main strip on the Great North Road. First stop: Ranieri’s Continental Delicatessen. This bustling, packed to the rafters deli is an Italophile food lovers heaven. Oils, pasta, cheese, canned goods, cold meats, sweets, dried fruit, coffee, you name it, they have it!
We’re welcomed by Joseph Ranieri, 3rd generation of this family business, who gives us a tasting of various cheeses, cold meats and oils. Clockwise from the top, a beautiful hot salami, a chicken unlike I’d never had before, nothing like the supermarket chicken meat I’d had as a child, bresaola with crumbled Parmesan, a squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of excellent extra virgin olive oil…I kept coming back for this one! And lastly some Mortadella.
I love Schnitzel. I especially love the Jaeger Schnitzel at Una’s with it’s plate sized portions, dreamy mushroom sauce and delicious rösti. But it’s not an everyday food. A fact that saddens me greatly. So how to do Schnitzel without the kilojoules while staying tasty? BAKE IT!
The cooking caper, and more particularly attempting to cook a recipe from every one of my cook books, seems to be back on track with my enforced time at home. The bung knee has really limited my ability to get out and about, especially since my Physiotherapist has demanded that I only walk for 15 minutes at a time. The joy in this is that I’m spending less money (though my boyfriend disagrees) and spending more time at home cooking and resting.
My last night in Wellington, and the end of the conference I attended. I had to be up at sparrow’s fart. Actually that’s a lie. Before sparrow’s fart at approximately 3:30am to get the 6am flight back to Sydney. Woe is me!
So myself, and two others, a visitor from the UK and a Local, decamped for food. After visiting The Matterhorn, the hip restaurant and bar on my first night, The Local suggested we hit Chow for dinner for something different. We hurried over quick smart, as in comparison to the other days, it was COLD. But it was still quite early for dinner, so The Local took us into The Library, a gorgeous funky little bar adjoining Chow.
