Asparagus Pudding

A little while ago Marion and I had an afternoon of cooking - our first Uncle Arch cooking in a long time.

First up we cooked a savoury dish. As always we like to use produce from the Fruitloop shop. That week we had a massive pile of Asparagus and when I first read the recipe my reaction was - that's a little wrong. It intrigued me to want to make it.

With help from Jameson Marion mixed up the pudding batter.

I try to be faithful to the recipe the first time even if it means frying the bacon in 2 ounces of butter.

However our sister housewife had actually not specified the type of flour to use. Normally one makes the assumption that when the flour is not specified it means plain flour. Not in this case.

Our pudding came out flat. My cooking consultant, Mum, advised me that puddings are generally made with self-raising flour. But that doesn't mean a bit of photo styling can't make it look good!

Verdict

While it didn't rise it tasted quite nice. Was that the use of bacon? After my discussion with Mum I made it again with self raising flour and it rose amazingly but probably could have done with less cooking. It had the texture of a pudding but with a salty savoury flavour.

It's been a long time between ... posts

Due to holidays, job offers, job changes and new job starts it has been awhile between posts. I have been in the kitchen but not to make anything from Uncle Arch's cookbook. This will be remedied tomorrow with a cooking session with my co-conspirator Marion.

Recipes as a commentary on politics

Saturday we had the Federal Election - a bit of a debacle. In honour of the event I was planning to cook something from the Cookbook. I had a look through and found "Canberra Charms" a strange take on the cream puff. You fill them with an appetising combination of cold hard boiled egg, small dice of beetroot and a sprinkling of ground nuts.

What has more caught my fancy and more indicative of the state of affairs at the moment - Canberra Custard. I am planning to make it for Thursday night at my sister Marie's place. It is a simple vanilla custard with stale sponge cake soaked in before cooking and then scattered with almonds. I leave the metaphors to you.

Meat Loaf by Any Other Name

After a few lovely cakes it's time to do a savoury dish. My friend Fran (Miss Alison Regrets) and I were going out to see The Eels so I cooked dinner before we went up to the Enmore Theatre. I flicked through the Meat Section (page 55). Having decided against Savory Sheep's Tounges,Cow's Foot Jelly Brawn or Kidney Omelet, I chose to do Canelon of Beef. While it sounds fancy it really is just Meatloaf.

I have my grandma Quinn's mincer so I decided to be at one with my sister housewives and use it rather than buy pre-minced blade steak. The mincer is very old - patent information on the handle refers to 1897. Mum got it after grandma died in 1981 and she would use it for making breadcrumbs.  The clamp doesn't fit on my bench so I put it onto a chopping board and tried to weigh the chopping board down. It was a bit of a struggle as the chopping board would move around. However, I got a lovely mince out of it - it took about 20 minutes to do 1kg while the potatoes were boiling.

Making mince meat

I seem to always miss an ingredient - this time it was the bacon - the other day it was salt. I found this out just after I had shaped it into its long roll. So I chopped it up and massaged it into the roll and popped it in the oven.

Canelon of Beef - ready to go in the oven

Making Gravy
My idea of brown gravy:
Chop half an onion and one clove of garlic finely, sweat with 1tbs of butter in a fry pan. Add a large teaspoon of Vegemite and a cup of stock. Simmer for a few minutes and then add a 1tbs of flour (blended with water) to thicken. Simmer. Add water to reach desired consistency. Add black pepper to taste.

The cooked product

Served on one of Uncle Arch's embroideries

Verdict

This recipe was simple although a bit of prep as I didn't have mash potato lying around and I insisted on mincing the meat. I also needed to make breadcrumbs. To make easier you could purchased minced meat. I probably could have asked for that to be done at the butcher. It makes rather a lot - feed a family of four easily with leftovers. It would be easy to halve the recipe. I am going to pop my leftovers in the freezer.

As my friend Simon pointed out I didn't say what it tasted like. It was surprisingly tasty given the lack of flavourings - only salt and pepper. The gravy was just lovely on top and did add a lot to the taste of the overall dish. The meatloaf had a dense texture and so two small slices were more than enough. It has also lived on in toasted sandwiches at work and has not lost any of its flavour.

Scotch Macaroons

Cousin Marion had a day without one of our favourite toddlers - Jimmy Rocket. So she cooked up a batch of the Scotch Macaroons.



Thank you to our sister housewife Cameo from Bundaberg for this recipe.


From Marion:
When I had mixed all the ingredients, I found that the mixture was too runny (perhaps our eggs were large.. perhaps as I had done half/half whole rolled oats/quick oats... ) so I added a few tablespoons of flour.

I went with 190  for my "fairly hot oven"

Made 30 large bickies

Verdict:
Just took them out of oven now.. yum, not too sweet .. but have a nutty caramelly taste.

All ready for Jimmy Rocket to come home to eat.

Recipe of the Week: Banana Cake with Jelly Sauce

I am in a food co-op with a group of friends. We go out to the markets once a fortnight and get our fruit and veg for next to nothing. Cousin Marion wrote an article about it recently. Sometimes you get too many of a particular fruit/veg or you are out too much and when you get home you are greeted by the smell of bananas going off. I decided I would look for a recipe to use up my bananas. I found two columns of banana recipes to choose from. Banana Cream Pie, Banana Pudding, Banana Suprises, Baked Bananas with Rice

One for the breakfast menu:

Banana Rolls

Cut bananas and peel, wrap each in a piece of bacon and dip in eggs and crumbs
Cook in a quick oven for 10 minutes.

From a sister housewife in NZ.

Today I have made

Banana Cake with Jelly Sauce

A very simple recipe from our sister housewife AEG in Seven Hills, NSW. I whipped it together in about five minutes. However, It took closer to 45 minutes to cook not 15 as the recipe suggests.

Preparing the Cake

the cake in it's love heart tin

Jameson waiting for Mummy to go "chop chop" with the CAKE!

Marion enjoying a slice of cake in the sun.

I made the cake before going to the first Sydney Rock and Roll Markets today. A very sunny and warm afternoon. A lady pounced on me asking where I got the cake - "from my kitchen" was my response. Food was in short supply. Marion and I are planning to see if we can do a cake stall at the next market.

Verdict: The cake itself was not sweet - only two tablespoons of sugar and simple in taste but that was because of all the bananas on top that caramelised and were very sweet. It was very light in texture even though it was only mixed together. Curiously no butter in the recipe.

Where did it all start

I grew up hearing stories about Great Uncle Arch. We always had a table cloth that was embroidered by him on our table. He was an Uncle by marriage (Great Aunt Bertha) on my Mum's side. He had been injured in the first world war and had taken up needlework. He enjoyed cooking. He built the house next to where my Mum grew up. He was friends with an Australian author - whose name escapes my right now. He used to give Arch signed copies of his books with inscriptions like "thanks for the peaches".

Mum inherited a lot of stuff from Arch and Bertha when they passed away in the 1960s. When I was sixteen Mum asked me to grab her scrapbook from the recipe cupboard and I found this amazing 1930s Collins diary in beautiful condition. I opened it up and found it was full of recipes that had been sorted and grouped and indexed. They were carefully stuck in. I was fascinated and promptly took the book away for 'safekeeping'. I had a failed attempted at a recipe for Sham Champagne. While I for years never made anything from it I treasured it and loved looking at the crazy combination of jams, the recipes for sheep's head stew and beer from pea shells.

People have often suggested turning it into a cookbook and so I have decided to use the format of a blog to start the process. I hope to make a recipe a week and some of my other family are going to join in and see if we can't test a number of recipes and see how 1930/40s cooking translates to the 21st Century.

I made a Golden Syrup Sponge Cake, which is so lovely and simple I didn't change at all. It takes 15 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook. A lovely recipe for the last minute guests. My cousin Marion has made honey from pineapple skins - it was rather amazing.

Bear with my while I learn to blog!