I have a new favourite bread. This one is sooo good I’ve made it half a dozen times over now. My last favourite was Seedy Sourdough Crispbread, and it’s still up there – I’ve been making a batch most weekends – but this dense, malty, well-textured, chocolatey rye bread is totally addictive.
The thing I am finding about the Tuesday Night Vego Challenge is that the range of healthy, from scratch, vegetarian dinners you can make in half an hour is much bigger if you put a bit of pre-thinking into it. Proving dough, soaking beans, salting eggplant all take only minutes to do, but you have to do them ahead of time.
Sadly this isn’t one of my better examples of photography! I’ve been waiting all year to post this recipe. Chili con Kanga is good on its own, but this time of year there is a little window of time when avocados, limes and coriander are all in season together, and the salsa with it makes it sensational.
I love my kitchen. It has a great big central kitchen bench in the middle of an otherwise very compact space (in a very compact house). I means cooking can be a social activity – several people can chop and stir and roll and fill at once. Kids can sit up at a stool and be involved, and if they play it right get to listen in on adult conversations.
We have bulk chilis at this peak of the chili season. I’m not a huge fan of preserving – I’m lucky enough to live in a climate where if we eat seasonally, we can eat fresh all year round. Freezing takes lots of electricity, canning takes lots of work, and most preserves have more sugar or salt than I really need. But of course there are exceptions!
Just because they look like party food doesn’t mean they can’t be really healthy, low fat, midweek dinner food. And I love the social aspect of all just sitting round the table sharing one platter, rather than individual plates. Everyone has their own favourites. Conversation flows. It’s nice.
I think there’s only one trick to pita bread. The oven has to be really really hot. Really.
If you don’t grow endamame, you can find them frozen in Asian grocers apparently. They’re a traditional Japanese favourite. Or you could substitute beans or peas just cooked until they are al dente, or anything really – besides the endamame, it’s the dressing that makes it.
These are my favourite capsicums these days. I call them supermarket flats, just because the seed originally came from some capsicums I bought in the supermarket. I picked them up hoping they might be non-hybrid and got lucky. I think they are actually Baby Reds, and they are doing brilliantly for me – a sweet, crunchy, thick walled, fruit fly resistant, small capsicum that bears well and long.
The kangaroo mince in our local supermarket comes from South Australia. It’s really unfortunate. Coz otherwise it fits every criteria for the Witches Kitchen definitions of good, good and good.