friday still life - motion blur

motion blur, originally uploaded by various brennemans.

Recipe Wednesday - Coconut cream pie

Whenever I bake there are certain things I gather together, it is really quite ritualistic.

I like to have time and not be rushed. For me when I make pie I always take out my Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book, printed in 1950. I remember having to walk through my mother in-laws house after she'd passed away in the United States two years ago. It was as she'd left it, a book unfinished by her favourite chair her spectacles in the bathroom.

I had never been to this apartment before, I had visited her in a different house. Looking out her kitchen window I could see the cold winter sky she'd written about with the feeling of snow. I imagined the cookies and snikerdoodles she said she had baked. Her kitchen was tiny, but laid out well. I could see the words she would have had clear in her mind as they scrawled onto the Christmas card we had received only two months before.

We were here to divide her things I knew the most important things for me to cherish her memory would be cookbooks, utensils, linen, blankets. This cookbook was one of the things I took as well as a sifter, rolling pin, measuring cups and mixing bowls. I wanted to have these things to share with my children so they could touch the things her hands had touched hundreds of times before.

We always talk about her when we bake, Eliza loves to sift the flour turning the little bead on the handle. She talks of Gramma the most, funny as she never had the chance to meet her. I think though that there is a very strong bond between them. Eliza was only 19 months old when we made our journey to see Aaron's mum, tried to let her see her smallest grandchild at least once. It was in vain though. I tell her how much Gramma wanted to see her to meet the little girl she'd spoken to and heard so much about. I have since had another baby girl and she too is getting up on the stool and wanting to mix and stir. I will tell her all about her Gramma too.

The recipe for the coconut custard filling comes from the Betty Crocker book mentioned above. The pastry recipe comes from the "Jamie does..." book. I use this as I find it to be just right and his directions are easy to follow.

Coconut cream pie

For the pastry.

250g plain flour,plus extra for dusting
50g icing sugar
125g good quality unsalted cold butter,cut into cubes
1 large egg beaten
a splash of milk
oil to grease the pie dish

You can make your pastry by hand or with a food processor. From a height seive your flour and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl. Using your fingertips work the butter into the flour and icing sugar until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.Add the egg and milk and gently work it together using your hands till you have a ball.Don't overwork the pastry too much or it will become chewy and elastic. (if you have used a food processor, turn it off as soon as it just comes together. Take it out and then gently bring it all together.Sprinkle some flour on your work surface, and pat the ball into a thick flat round. Sprinkle with a little more flour, then wrap the pastry in clingfilm and pop into the fridge to rest for 30 minutes. Dust a clean surface and a rolling pin with flour, and carefully roll out your pastry, turning and dusting it every so often,until you've got a circle about 0.5cm thick. Roll the pastry over the rolling pin, then unroll it onto the greased pie dish, making sure you push it to the sides. Trim the excess pastry and use it to patch any holes, then prick the base of the case with a fork,cover with clingfilm and pop into the freezer for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180 deg.

Meanwhile make your coconut custard filling.

Coconut custard filling
Mix in a saucepan....................2/3  cup sugar
                                     1/2 tsp of salt
                                     2 1/2 tbsp cornflour
                                     1 tbsp plain flour

Stir in gradually....................3 cups of full cream milk. 

cook over a moderate
heat stirring constantly
until mixture thickens and boils.
Boil for 1 min. Remove from heat.
Slowly stir half the mixture
into.................................3 egg yolks lightly
                                        beaten.

Then blend into hot mixture into 
saucepan. boil for 1 min more, stir
constantly. Remove from heat and
blend in.............................1 tbsp butter
                                     1 1/2 tsp vanilla.

Now blend in ........................3/4 cup shredded coconut.

Allow to cool, drape a damp tea towel over the top to prevent a skin forming.

Back to the pie shell.   

....................................500ml of thickened cream

                                    2 tbsp caster sugar

                                    vanilla

                                    1/2 cup shredded coconut.


Take a large piece of baking paper and lay it into the uncooked pastry case. Take some uncooked rice, beans or baking beads if you are lucky enough to have them, fill the case right to the top.and blind bake for 10 min in your hot oven. Carefully remove the rice, beans or beads and the baking paper. Be very careful here I have dropped these before and they went everywhere, I am still finding beads.
The shell needs another 10min to cook,it needs to be firm and almost biscuit like. remove and allow to cool.

Putting it all together.
Fill the pie shell with the cool or slightly warm custard. Refrigerate this with some clingfilm over the top, for 30 min. In the meantime whip up 500ml of thickened cream sweetened with 2 tbsp of sugar and a dash of vanilla.
In a warm oven 160 deg toast up 1/2 cup of shredded coconut.(From personal experience be careful here, it takes about 5 minutes. I made 3 lots before it was perfectly toasted. Nobody likes burnt coconut.)

Top the pie with the whipped cream and scatter the toasted coconut on top. If you can let it cool and set for an hour you will have a nicely set easy to cut pie.

Now put the kettle on for some tea, and enjoy your slice of pie.
 

rhubarb, coconut, and linen

I have been sleeping on linen pillowcases. 

I had always heard it was a lovely thing to have, linen pillowcases.  Now I know it's true. They've been through the wash once and feel soft and lovely, they will feel even better as they age. I made them sunflower yellow of course, yellow is still my current affair.  I had really wanted to do a tutorial on making pillowcases but am a little afraid to venture into that realm just yet.

After that I was in a pillowcase mood.  I picked through my bags (and bags, and bags!) of remnants and found this beautiful embroidered fabric with a touch of orange. It was so calling out to be teamed with natural linen and a fun sugar-and-spice dotty rusty orange cotton. I loved this mix, just divine, it made for a perfect cushion cover. I decided I want to make a dozen or so and just change them as I please. There is too much good fabric here to waste and too many cushions in my house.

This didn't come from nothing, though: I have been swooning over my recently purchased Linen, Wool, Cotton (a Japanese book which has been translated to English) by the same publisher who has just released Meet Me at Mike's in the UK. I am finding myself just buying metres and metres of linen without even a cause or specific project. I cannot resist this book makes everything look so simple and clean, granted the pictures make me think of a slower, more restful, existence.

When I have not been sewing I have actually been cooking more. The weather here has been very  temperamental, and if it's too humid or too rainy, either way it makes me want to cook. 

Today for example was just the perfect cold weather for Stewed rhubarb in orange and Agave syrup, mmmm. I also baked my favourite coconut cake from Women's weekly "Old Fashioned Favourites" book. We love this cake, I have made two twice this week that's how good it is. 

There are three things in this house we all love, rice, coconut and chocolate, anybody with kids will know that you all liking the same thing is a rarity. So Friday I also made coconut cream pie, my my me ohhh my, pie is so good. Why on earth do we leave it all to the yanks? Thankfully I am married to one and love the tradition of Pie of thanksgiving of Halloween even though that one is stolen.  (The holiday, not the pie.) 

Why do we not have pie cafes here, I mean there are so many incredibly delicious combinations. I am a wanna-be café owner, the café in my head has old glass cabinets with copper rims filled with pie on pastel cake stands. Just underneath this and at child height, big glass jars filled with sweets: coconut ice, honeycomb, honey joys, and sesame brittle. I would wear a patchwork apron, and always smell sweet and coco-nutty.

There are many cafes in my head, though.  If it ever come down to it, I would struggle to choose between selling pies and selling one-handed breakfast burrito for breast-feeding mothers.  I reckon that's an idea whose time has come!

friday still life

we miss you, originally uploaded by various brennemans.

I hereby declare Recipe Wednesday!

Sticky Balsamic beets with Greek basil and cottage cheese
 
3 large beetroot

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar(aged is all the better)

olive oil 1/4 cup

thyme sprigs

Greek basil small bunch washed and dried

zest of 1 lemon

cottage cheese

sea salt and pepper

Cut the beets into quarters or smaller, get yourself a good sheet of foil and lay it in baking dish.

Arrange beets, toss them in the olive oil add the few lugs of balsamic and thyme sprigs.

Fold over the foil like an envelope, making sure juices stay in.

During cooking check them and re-toss them adding more oil or balsamic if needed.

Roast for 1 and 1/4 hour on 190 deg c. or till beets are tender and beautiful.

Remove from foil saving all those yummy juices. Plate it onto your platter and when warm dollop over cottage cheese drizzled with more olive oil salt and pepper. Garnish with torn basil leaves and lemon zest.

Enjoy.

Another summer recipe, just to kick off my first Recipe Wednesday:

Summer pasta with Eggplant and pangritata

I have to share my most excellent pasta dish using my one home grown eggplant and my lovely neighbours gorgeous mortgage lifter tomato.( I hope that is correct, she will correct me if I am wrong)

I simply grilled the eggplant, then tossed it through pasta adding
 fresh tomato,
Kalamata olives
Basil leaves
Pangitata
shaved parmasan
cracked black pepper
Balsamic Vinegar*
olive oil

I also dressed the pasta with balsamic vinegar  and olive oil  *My tip* (look for 4 leaves on the bottle of vinegar and made in Modena, this is a  sweeter more syrupy grade of balsamic, and great with parmasan) 

 

Pangritata.

*My tip* I love this one. I keep a day old roll in the freezer and take it out frozen and grate it, it's easy and I always have breadcrumbs on hand. Also it's frozen so it's easy to grate.

1 cup of fresh breadcrumbs*
3 tablespoons of olive oil 
4 garlic cloves
1/2 red chilli deseeded and finely chopped
several sprigs of thyme
(parsley would be great I didn't have any in the garden)
Grana padano parmasan cheese handful.

in a frying pan heat the oil, add the minced garlic, herbs and chilli, cook for 1 minute add the breadcrumbs coat well with all the oil. If you need more oil add it. The breadcrumbs need to be crispy. take off the heat add the parmasan.

*you could use anchovy as well just fry it off till melted in the first step.






 

The long brunch

yoghurt focus, by various brennemans.

We have a long-standing brunch tradition at my place, every Sunday morning. There was a time when people showed up every weekend, but of late we'd had mostly quiet ones. Today's began with some stewed garden plums mum had given me. When halved and stoned you can add what you like, we used Orange rind and the juice of one orange, Cointreau, cinnamon and raw sugar. Some natural yoghurt to go with. A friend had also bought along some stewed dried fruits these too were yummy.

Aaron had already made some lovely simple scrambled eggs on toast with avocado and fried cherry tomatoes for an earlier drop-in of a work colleague. Being a Sunday she'd already done an 8 km walk and was ravenous, she'd even rung ahead to warn us to have something laid out.  When she arrived  I started to fuss with dishes, but Aaron ordered us to take a seat and eat, so we both did.

Some homemade crumpets by more friends went over well. I had made up some banana bread with our glut of bananas.  We are in a panic here for the price of Bananas, we know they are set to rise dramatically when supplies run out, due to the recent cyclone.  So we're eating them with both hands while we can. Two cakes were slowly consumed whist sipping tea and coffee.  Some savoury muffins were also laid out, but I missed out on these so I cannot tell you what they were.

As the morning wore on groups arrived, the front yard a temporary parking place for bikes. It made me think for a moment I really love life right now. How nice to spend an afternoon this way, and to have been fortunate to do it outdoors today was so nice.

It is a well known fact amongst friends of ours that my man poaches a mean egg and, well, there was a little challenge placed upon me today. Thus the pained look on Aaron's face when I offered to go in to make the eggs, see I am an all round better cook than he however he still reigns supreme in the brunch department.

I was going to make some indonesian eggs, there are especially a hit if brunch has fallen into the "-unch" end. However the lack of rice in the house meant I needed an alternate plan. I thought a tortilla with creamy green onion scrambled eggs, bacon cooked with some fresh chilli, just picked garden tomato and avocado. Having everybody basking out in the sunshine in the backyard meant some quiet all to myself kitchen time. That was the real reason I accepted the challenge, not to prove I could make eggs!

I sprang into chef mode: Sandwich press on, two pans going, eggs being scrambled, bacon on, tomato salsa prep... all happening, no interruptions.

The filling was just perfect to wrap in the tortilla and toast till crispy. A squeeze of lime juice just to tickle the taste buds and a dash of sea salt that really bring it all together. It needed a little side salad of greens in lemon and olive oil, to just unashamedly use your fingers and stuff into the hot burrito as you ate and a little dollop of sour cream. There was even some tallying up of how many were had and who could have the last one, I guess that means they were good. I am sorry there are no photos, they were all gone before I could get a shot.

Aaron was short on inspiration for sweets, so he passed parts of the library around and asked for suggestions.

There was a collective shutting of cookbooks when I announced "I think I'll make Brownies." I hadn't realised it but they were deciding on a dessert to end the afternoon on. Brownie and vanilla ice cream it was, much to Eliza and Circe's delight. What a pleasant afternoon we had, I need more of these. I am already thinking next weekend.

still life friday

danger: toppling, originally uploaded by various brennemans.