Beautiful Chicago

I started this blog to write about food and life. While traveling cooking is largely an impossibility, unless you have a kitchen. So this is the time to explore destinations and foods consumed along the way.

Destination, destination, destination. The northern hemisphere is moving into a new season. Chicago is displaying its transformation through the leaves on the trees changing to magnificent colours.  The sun still warms your back but the breeze off Lake Michigan is slightly cooler. All a beautiful combination.

Chicago is a beautiful comforting and easy city. It is home to some magnificent art and sculptures, such as Cloud Gate, the "bean", by Anish Kapoor found in Millenium Park and looks like a drop of liquid mercury. Also in Millenium Park is Crown Fountain, 2 glass brick water fountain towers. Both have moving images displayed through the towers. The water becomes a cooling pond for people in hot weather.

 

When it comes to food there is a strong philosophy regarding neurogastronomy. This is the idea of food not only providing nutrients to enhance brain function, but also presentation of food can alter our mood. Without realising it, a Japanese restaurant falls into this category; an understated slightly out-of-town place. The menu is left field of traditional, but the combinations and presentation are simply stunning. Yuzu sushi and robata grill started the evening with water in old glass jars, filed with lemon and cucumber. With 16 different sushi roll combinations, all come presented uniquely. Take for example one with soft shell crab, avocado, crab, cucumber, spicy mayonnaise and rolled in toasted coconut.

So my apologies for not having a recipe or food update. The notion behind neurogastronomy is intriguing. So much research and anecdotal evidence demonstrates that what we eat can have many effects on how we feel and our health. So in other words....you really are what you eat!!

I also want to pay my respects to the person who has made it possible for me and thousands of others to blog let alone have easy communication with our loved ones. Steve Jobs.

Decadent Delights

Food has become a creative passion for the culinary industry. When we dine out we assess how the food is presented and plated up and the art of gastronomy is so much about choosing to put ingredients together that not only compliment in flavour but also visually. Whenever the invention of a recipe comes about, it is often derived from positive food experiences.

Making little parcels of delights was the mission for the week. The famous doughnut is a forbidden food. But what if we can create a doughnut that is not as guilt ridden as the typically purchased type. This recipe is baked so the fat the doughnut would usually be cooked in cannot be absorbed by the dough. Therefore, reducing the fat content of the doughnut. And I love the non-traditionally influenced foods, we often refer to as fusions. So combining unusal flavours was the influence.

The dough needed to be influenced by a subtle flavour - lemon was the choice. It is refreshing and easy to use.

But what goes in the centre os a doughnut is the key. It needs to surprise you as you bite into the warm dough and squirt an arousing flavour into your mouth. Considering the dough has a hint of lemon it would be worth doing something citrus in the centre. 

Instead, I wanted to combine a different flavour that would also compliment the lemon. So I decided to try turkish delight in the centre. As it heats up it would slightly melt like a jam. The intense pistachio and rose water flavours would be reduced by the lemon in the dough. Sweet versus bitter.

Baked Turkish Delight Doughnuts

750g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 sachet (7g) yeast
Rind of 2 lemons
30g melted butter
250ml low fat milk
80ml butter milk
2 eggs

Place the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and combine. Combine the wet ingredients separately.

While the mixer is on slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. Once all combined leave the mixing on a moderate speed for 5 minutes. Until the dough becomes elastic.

Lightly oil a bowl and place the dough in the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to sit in a warm place for 1-1.5 hours.

Remove the dough from the bowl and roll into a 5mm thickness. Make 24 rounds about 8 cm each. Place 12 rounds on a baking paper lined tray. Place a small amount of turkish delight in the centre and cover with another round, sealing the edges together. Allow to stand covered for another 1-1.5 hours.

Heat the oven to 190 degrees celsius and bake the doughnuts for 10 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and brush some melted butter over the top and cover with icing sugar.

Sweets and Roses

I read a great article today about the importance of the cake. Symbolically and socially cake is and has been for centuries part of togetherness. It cannot be a birthday without a cake, you often meet a friend for coffee and cake, visiting a grandparent often involves sitting down to cake and family activities include baking a cake. This can often end in disaster as to who is going to like the bowl or spoon. The sweet foods provide us with comfort and a sense of simple pleasure. Using fruit to provide flavour, sweeten or colour a cake is what can make the end product even more appetising.

Trying to find compatible flavours is experimentation. However, if you follow particular cultural cuisines you will often get it right. Combining flowers and fruits or flowers and spices can make for an exhilarating mix. A common middle eastern combination is rose and berry fruits. 

These delicious delights can be made into one big cake or small bite size parcels.


Meringues with Rose Water Cream and Berries

6 egg whites
200g icing sugar
200ml cream
2 tsp rose water
1 punnet strawberries, diced
1/2 cup shelled pistachios, crushed

Beat the egg whites until firm peaks form. Slowly add the icing sugar while the eggs are still beating. On an oven tray lined with baking paper make 12 circles (8cm diameter). Bake for 1 hour 45 minutes at 80 degrees celsius. Once baked leave to cool in the oven.

On a second tray, prepare the same as above, but sprinkle with pistachios. Bake as above.

Beat the cream and rose water until thickened. Place cream on the plain meringue and cover with strawberries. Place the pistachio covered meringue on top.

An Inspirational Kitchen Garden

An outing to Heidi Museum of Modern Art was more than I expected, even though it is one of my favourite haunts in Melbourne. We went to see the Callum Morton exhibition: In Memoriam. Stepping into someones creative space gives me an injection of inspirational motivation. Art and food nurture my soul. On arrival to Heidi we thought we had arrived at the wrong place. We were welcomed by a Le Pine funeral sign; we followed the right directions, I have been many times before, had Heidi been converted? Apparently Callum Morton was reluctant to do a retrospective as he believed there is a sense of associated death; the museum as mausoleum.

Wandering through the magnificent building, built in 1963, the exhibition was fantastic and was a mixture of works that took inspiration from the site. The show is sensory evoking as you get caught up in the pieces both visually and emotionally. While there, it was the perfect opportunity for a light lunch at Cafe Vue.

 




































The most unexpected part of the day, was seeing the magnificent kitchen garden in the grounds. At the moment massive cauliflowers, lots of variety of lettuces and herbs galore. This was enough to inspire me to go home and make something using flavoursome vegetables and herbs. So I decided to make a passata from scratch. I can use this base for soups, pasta sauces, pizza bases and my preference eggplant moussaka.

Passata

16 tomatoes (of which they can be a variety truss, vine, cherry)

Handful of lightly torn basil

Handful of lightly torn oregano

Olive oil

1 onion finely chopped

1 tin chopped tomatoes

3 cups white wine vinegar

3 tbs agave syrup

1 tsp sweet paprika

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Cut the tomatoes in half and lay them on a baking tray. Drizzle oil and lightly ripped basil and oregano over the tomatoes. Bake at 220 degrees for 40 minutes. 

In a heavy saucepan, cook the onion until golden. When the tomatoes are ready add them to the onions with all the other ingredients. Allow to simmer until sauce is reduced. This may take 20-30 minutes. 

This makes 1 litre of passata and can be frozen to be used later. 

The Sweet Smell of Spring

So much of how we feel is about what we eat and who we eat it with. Your favourite food makes you feel a certain way. It can make you reminisce, like the childhood smell of honey suckle. New foods and new sensations can make for a memorable experience. There is a beautiful change in the air. The flowers on the side of the road are blooming. 

With the change in the air, I thought it would be great to try a new recipe. Up for the challenge? I decided to bake a tart to welcome the change in weather. Not only is this tart gluten free, it is also dairy and sugar free...and a great spring flavour.

Gluten free Pear and Almond tart with Passionfruit Yoghurt

Pastry

1/2 cup oil
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
2 cups gluten free flour
1 lemon juiced
Zest of 1 lemon  

Place all ingredients in a blender and mix until a dough forms. Form the dough into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap and flatten it a bit with your hand. Refrigerate the dough for about 1 hour.

Roll out the dough to about 3mm thickness and fill the tart mold (20 cm diameter) with it. If the dough cracks, don't worry, just pinch it back together. It might happen if it's too cold. Blind bake the shell for 20-25 minutes at 180 degrees or until shell is golden.

Filling

1 pear

2 eggs

3 tbs olive oil

3 tbs honey

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup almond meal

3/4 cup gluten free flour 

Slice the pear into very fine slices. Place the slices vertically fanned in the tart shell. Beat the rest of the ingredients together until well mixed. Pour the mixture over the pear.

Bake the tart for 35-40minutes at 180 degrees or until the top is golden brown. 

Mix traditional greek yoghurt with passionfruit  and serve with a slice of tart. If you want to be creative and make lavender yoghurt, the combination with this tart would be delicious!