Seafood bonanza

The abalone season here in Perth runs for one hour on a Sunday morning over five weeks. Yep, there is limited opportunity to bag your catch. In previous years it has been a six week season - this year it has been reduced to five due to an increased number of licences.

I am always interested to read the news reports of the opening season, as invariably there are one or two who make the headlines with the excessive amount that they have attempted to exceed the quota!

I have been told that it is not worth trying to cheat as the guys from Fisheries are super keen and make sure that they check everyone as they leave the water. It is good that most people stick to the rules and it means that there will (hopefully) be abalone for us to enjoy in years to come!

To cook up abalone, you need to clean them up, cut off the digestive tract (or poo canal as my grandfather would have probably called it!) and slice them thinly. C then bashes them with a meat mallet until the muscle breaks. They can then be shallow fried quickly and eaten fresh. We like to coat them in a thin layer of flour and cracked pepper before they are fried, and squeeze lemon juice on them once they are cooked. Yummy!

Ricotta and coconut flatcakes with banana and honey

I bought ricotta yesterday and this morning I woke up wanting to eat banana and ricotta hotcakes. I was fairly sure that I had a recipe somewhere and dug up Ginger and ricotta flatcakes with fresh honeycomb out of home food by Murdoch Books. The recipe required me to separate the eggs and beat up the eggs whites, which sounds like too much effort on a Sunday morning, so normally I would avoid it and try something simpler. I was eager enough for the flatcakes though so I persevered!

I decided to halve the recipe though as it was only me eating - the original served four! There was a minor setback though - halfway through pouring the wet ingredients into the dry I realised why it seemed like there was too much - I had forgotten to halve the amount of milk. Oops. I ended up adding more flour and ground ginger to compensate.

Here is the recipe, with correct proportions.

1/2 cup (75g) wholemeal plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
2 eggs, separated
250g ricotta cheese
165mL milk
2 bananans, sliced
yummy honey (unprocessed)

Sift the flour, baking powder, ginger and caster sugar into a medium bowl. Stir in the coconut, then mix in the combined egg yolks, milk and 175g of the ricotta cheese. Mix until smooth

Beat the eggs whites to soft peaks, then fold into the pancake mixture.

Heat your preferred pancake cooking pan over a low heat. Grease with butter. Pour 1/4 cup of batter onto the pan. Cook until bubbles form on the surface of the hotcake. Flip and cook the other side. Keep going until you run out of batter!

Stack three pancakes onto a plate and top with ricotta and sliced banana; drizzle over with honey and serve. Eat fresh and hot and enjoy!

Notes

• the recipe calls for flaked coconut (toasted) but I only had desiccated


• the honey that I used is White Gum from The House of Honey. They had a stall at the WA Pavillion at the Royal Show this year and E and I sampled their wares. I like to buy local and unprocessed honey. The different flavours are fantastic too - so much more interesting than the bland processed squeezy jar stuff you can get at the supermarket.
  

New food processor

I finally committed myself to a new food processor! I am very excited. It will replace Mum's Breville Beast that I have been borrowing for the last few years.

What I am getting is a black Kitchenaid Food Processor. It comes with three different sized bowls and a few different blades. I think that there will be more than enough to keep me occupied and out of trouble for a while!!

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Nigella's breakast bars

I finally got around to making Nigella's Breakfast Bars. I have been eyeing them off for some months now and have had all of the ingredients to make them cluttering up the pantry.

I did make a few adjustments, although I kept the proportions of ingredients the same.

395g tin condensed milk
250g rolled oats
75g desiccated coconut
100g dried dates
125g mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame)
125g walnuts and almonds

Preheat the oven to 130C. Grease and line a 23 x 33 x 4cm baking tray.

Warm the condensed milk in a small pan. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl and add the warmed condensed milk.

Spread the mixture into the tray and smooth the surface.

Bake for an hour. Remove from the oven and sit for 15 minutes. Cut into bars.

Notes
- Next time I need to cook the bars for longer. The tops seemd cooked but the bottoms were still rather sticky.
- Yum! The three ingredients that I most notice are the dates, the sesame seeds and the condensed milk, and not necessarily in that order.

Purple beans!

Our first crop of (purple) beans from our garden. We bought a three bean mix and took our chances. Of the seeds that we planted, all but one that sprouted gave us the purple beans! I have planted some more and we shall see if we can produce the other two colours.

Despite the colour they definitely taste like beans, and when they are steamed they lose their purple hue.

Pancakes for one

I thought that I might change from the usual weekend porridge, and made myself a pancake feast! Pancakes are very easy - you need three ingredients for the batter - but do need a little patience, and not too great a hunger, to cook.

1/2 cup wholemeal plain flour
1 egg
1 cup milk (approximately)

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl to make a batter. This mix should be fairly runny. The wholemeal flour requires more liquid than using plain white flour.

Sit batter for half an hour before using.

Heat a pan on a low heat. Grease pan as required with butter.

Pour 1/4 cup of batter onto the pan and allow to spread to a wonky pancake shape. Bubbles should form on the pancake. Cook until these pop and then turn over the pancake.

Once the pancake is cooked, pop onto a plate lined with kitchen paper and cover with a second plate to keep the pancake warm.

Practice makes perfect in getting the heat right and the length of cooking time.

Serve with cut strawberries, banana, caster sugar and fresh lime (or lemon) juice.

A Garden in the City

A few weeks ago I was intrigued to discover the Urban Orchard in the Perth Cultural Centre.

According to the official website, the "...planter boxes are made from recycled waste from other parts of the building works, the plants are managed organically and will be harvested and planted seasonally. This is the embodiment of sustainable community gardening and is a resource for all."

I think that this is such a great idea. The fruit trees and vegetables and herbs are available for all to use and I hope that is is used in a positive way. It is great to bring food production so close to the city.