High-Tea Princesses

This time last week I was in the throes of preparing to cater for my niece's 7th birthday party. Last week, right about now, in fact, I was studying the shelves at Woolworth's Indooroopilly, hesitating between the standard packet of Dollar Sprinkles and the fairy-themed one. At that point I hadn't fully decided on how I was going to manage to decorate the requested princess cake. I knew I was going to attempt to fashion a semblance of a princess atop a coconut cake using icing and my cheap cake decoration piping set, but as to the details of the glitter and sparkles, well, I was making those up in the supermarket.

I had offered to host my niece's birthday party a month ago, after my family had celebrated my sister's birthday at a garden centre cafe. While the garden centre's cafe was perfectly fine, as we discussed Hannah's forthcoming birthday, most of us still had memories of the over-priced outing that was my mother's birthday a few months earlier: $45 for an average high-tea amongst some very pretty decor. The decor, while lovely, certainly wasn't worth $15 dollars more than the usual price of a high-tea in these parts.

I'm not certain why my family has this high-tea obsession. Something to do with coming from England and wanting to play at being the Ladies we're not, I suppose. Or perhaps it's an excuse to eat way too many cakes, the sandwiches merely being a face-saving preliminary. Yes, the latter is more likely. Anyway, it seems the older members of this family have had a corrupting influence on the youngest member, since Hannah now associates all birthday celebrations with fancy, miniature cakes, delicate sandwiches and champagne-flutes of sparkling apple juice. When I volunteered to host her family party--her mother's side of her family, anyway--Hannah put her own twist on the occasion and requested tiaras and sparkles. And since I'm a total push-over when it comes to my niece, I was determined to throw the best princess-themed party I could.

For the necessary preliminaries, before the sweet and cake consumption could begin, I fashioned two kinds of sandwiches with two variations to accommodate less sophisticated palates:

Roast Beef Sandwiches With And Without Dijon Mustard


Prawn And Sour Cream Sandwiches With And Without Dill

In addition to the sandwiches, I assembled--what I like to believe is my own invention--the salad skewer, consisting of Hannah's favourite salad vegetables:

Hannah's Salad Skewers

It only occurred to me afterward that I could have added carrots to the skewers (if they would go on) and call them Traffic Light Kebabs or something equally cheesy. Speaking of which, Hannah's mother provided cheese and biscuits and Cheezles to round out the savoury course of the high-tea. Along with the savouries, the adults sipped sparkling wine, while Hannah had us all toasting along with every second sip of her sparkling apple juice.

While we changed the empty savoury plates for those filled with sweet things, I took orders for tea and coffee and Sippa straws from everyone.

Once we were settled again, we tucked into caramel and chocolate tarts made by my other sister, Hannah's Auntie V, and some marshmallows and strawberries on toothpicks. For this course, my contribution was in the princess theme:

Frog Prince Jelly Cups

Of course, we all had to kiss the frogs to see if they would, in a puff of smoke, turn into handsome princes. Alas and alack! No such magic occurred, so we consoled ourselves by taking a digestive break and playing some games. Everyone got a present in the new-fangled-self-esteem-building version of pass the parcel: small stationery items from Smiggle. And then we all laughed uproariously as Hannah kept steering the cow she was riding in a game on Wii into trees and fences.

Finally, it was time for the birthday cake.

I didn't take photos during its construction, but I snapped key moments in the decoration process:

Blueprint

Preliminary Sketch


Princess Cake

In spite of my trepidation about decorating the cake, I'm very pleased to report that Hannah loved it along with the rest of the party. Her joy was infectious and I think we all had our best high-tea ever!

The Other Red Meat

While I was in Melbourne I went to a bookshop I had only previously read about: Books for Cooks. Ever since I first read about this shop on Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, I have known that I could while away an entire day there, perhaps a week if I had nothing else to do. I didn't spend quite that long there, but I did fulfill the other expectations I had for my behaviour: I ran from bookshelf to bookshelf, picking up one book, followed by another, and another, before finally having to sit down, wipe the drool from my chin, and have a deep think about the merits of the books I wanted relative to my budget.

I'll talk about the whole heady experience in more depth when I finally get around to completing the promised Melbourne posts, but for now let me tell you what I'm cooking for dinner tonight. Seasoned Chopped Beef (Picadillo) is a recipe from one of the books I bought at Books for Cooks, The New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. It's the filling for Minced Beef Tacos (Taco de Picadillo) I'll be eating.

Ortiz instructs you to use half of the following recipe for Picadillo:

Brown 900g of minced lean beef in a large frying pan. I used that other red meat, kangaroo, because I can't really bring myself to buy beef at the supermarket anymore. I'll eat beef when I'm out, but between what I have access to and what I can afford, kangaroo is a more ethical, environmental, and cost-effective choice for me. Add 2 finely chopped onions and 1 clove of garlic, also chopped. When these are cooked add the following: 2 green cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped; 450g tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped--I made half the recipe and just added a drained tin of tomatoes here; 3 tinned or fresh jalapeno chillies, seeded and chopped--again I went for the tinned; 1/2 cup of seedless raisins; 12 pimiento-stuffed olives, halved--I only had jalapeno stuffed olives, but I figured they weren't out of place in this recipe; 1/4 tsp each of ground cinnamon and cloves--I just threw in a whole clove that I accidentally crunched on later; and finally, salt and pepper to taste.


Simmer over a low heat for 20mins. When this is done you can sprinkle it with 1/4 cup of slivered almonds that you've fried in a bit of oil--I missed this touch since I didn't have any slivered almonds and didn't feel like the trouble of blanching, chopping and frying regular almonds. I'd bother if someone other than me was eating this.

So that's the filling for the tacos.

The Tacos de Picadillo are just a matter of assembly. I used some small, soft tortillas and filled them with the Picadillo, added some Salsa Verde Mexicana Picante, and some shredded ice-berg lettuce that came in this week's organic fruit and vege box. Ortiz recommends guacamole as well, but as I didn't have any avocado, I substituted with some Greek yoghurt--I didn't have any sour cream either.


I should mention that while the recipe book has recipes for both tortillas and the salsa verde I went for the pre-made and tinned varieties. I don't think I'll be too hard on myself for not making tortillas from scratch. As for the salsa verde, it's a case of lack of availability of the key ingredient, tomatillo, the green tomatoes that seem to be used extensively in Mexican cooking. The closest I could find to this ingredient in my, admittedly, rather short search was an enormous tin of them, as big as those Golden Circle juice tins. On that shopping expedition, I went for the much smaller tin of ready made salsa. It seems to be quite simple, consisting of the tomatilloes, serrano chillies, onions, and coriander, to comprise a rather refreshing sauce.

Overall, I found this to be a really tasty meal. I hope I haven't come across as too flaky in my lack of purity about all the substitutions. I used to be really up tight about such things, but ever since the woman at the Indian Grocers advised me that 'you cook with what you have', I've felt a whole lot freer about making substitutions. Maybe what's worrying me is that I used tinned things instead of fresh, but again, needs must.

When I first flicked through the book in Books for Cooks, I thought that the ingredients would be a bit more accessible than they've proved to be so far. Much of my decision to get the book was based upon the use of pineapple and banana and other sub-tropical ingredients readily available in South East Queensland. I was intrigued by the use of fruit throughout--and perhaps it's no surprise that I've since learnt that the used of fruit derives from the Spanish influence on Mexican cuisine via the Moorish influence on Spanish cuisine. Here I like to think that my use of kangaroo adds an Australian influence to Mexican cuisine.

Another reason I bought the book was because there's a fellow post-graduate at uni who is Mexican, and on the subject of Mexican food in Brisbane, Australia even, she is dismissive. 'Tex-Mex' she sniffs when people ask her about Mexican food in restaurants. Her response has long piqued my curiosity because it made me aware that of course all I know of Mexican food is Tex-Mex, exemplified by the 'Mexican' section in the supermarket that consists entirely of Old El Paso products.

I guess at the moment I'm sort of stuck between wanting to know more about Mexican food and being faced with the trouble of getting the ingredients. I don't think I'm ready to give up just yet, because clearly there's a whole lot more to know--about all the varieties of chilli alone. First, I'll be a bit more concerted in my efforts to find suppliers in Brisbane or who deliver to Brisbane.

Chicken Tonight and Mushrooms for the Next Two Days

I'm waiting for my dinner to cook. It's chicken, Super Tasty Spanish Roast Chicken, in fact. Since it's a Jamie Oliver recipe from Jamie's Dinners, you all probably have the recipe so don't need me to replicate it here.

I'm also making some Real Mushroom Soup from the same recipe book, although my substitutions have rendered it Swiss Brown Mushroom Soup, rather than the 'authentic' wild varieties gathered in the English or Italian countryside.

In combination, both of these will be lunch and dinner over the next two or three days. I took a mobile phone photo of the chicken before it went into the oven, dotted with chorizo and stuffed up the nether regions with a couple of hot lemons and some parsley stalks, but I haven't taken the time to transfer the images to my laptop just yet.

What I do have on my laptop right now are some photos of another meal that I prepared quite some time ago. I only discovered these photos fairly recently; I'd completely forgotten about them, but it's clear that I had intended to blog the recipe since the photos are of the step-by-step variety. Such attention on my part to documenting the preparation process is fortuitous because just as I managed to forget about the photos, I also forgot the origins of the recipe I prepared and recorded so diligently.

So, here's a photo-recipe for salad. Coincidentally, it also has chicken and mushrooms as feature ingredients:

Dried wood ear mushrooms, reconstituted. I don't think that many are actually required.

Sliced spring onions. Looks like one, maybe two. Whaddya reckon?

Peeled Lebanese cucumber. Fluorescent glow optional.

Here I seem to have sliced the mushrooms and added some chopped coriander.

That looks like some julienned celery on the left. I do know that chicken on the right is poached thigh, because that's what I tend to buy. The recipe probably asked for breast meat.

I'm guessing: soy sauce, maybe fish sauce, peanut oil, a dash of sesame oil, dried chilli? It's the kind of thing you can probably make up.

Toss it all about. Fresh, crispy, tasty.

Beautiful Zucchini Green Soup

Winter is soup time. Here are the various stages of one I made a few weeks back. It's Zucchini, Pea, and Bacon and you can find the recipe here.

I used frozen rather than fresh peas because I had the former and none of the latter. My version was probably a bit more weighted with zucchini rather than peas because, well, I have a tendency to get a bit excited when I see nice fresh produce, and these zucchinis looked particularly good.


I'm proud to say that the mint you spy floating on top of the soup there was grown in my very own garden. I've also been able to harvest enough rocket lately to add leaves to a lentil, feta, and roast beetroot salad, as well as pack a bacon and tomato sandwich with enough greenery to make one of my daily servings of vegetables.


This is the cappuccino stage of the soup. All that froth came up while I was blending the soup. I think if I held onto that froth I could serve it at $15 a pop in a fancy restaurant as part of a degustation menu: wood smoked bacon, fresh pea, and baby zucchini cappuccino.


Here's the final version, as I ate it. The bacon and mint garnish sank into the bowl, and the olive oil drizzling doesn't exactly form any kind of pleasing pattern. Oh well. I documented my thoughts on bad food photography over at Zoe's some time ago. Go and have a look if you're interested.

Rhubarb, Rhubarb

And strawberries. A delicious topping for tonight's creamy rice, a perfect winter dessert.