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I was horrified at reading Melissa’s post (thanks for the link, Mary) last weekend about being told by America’s Test Kitchen that they did not allow their recipes to be modified in print because they are tested they up to 100 times. The implication that there is one perfect version of any recipe seems ridiculous, esp, potato salad which was the recipe Melissa had posted. We all have different preferences, different kitchens, and different diets, as I have written about before. No matter how many times you test a recipe for potato salad, my sister and I will always disagree on a perfect version because she loves bacon and boiled egg in hers and I will not eat either of these ingredients. This doesn’t mean we can’t each have versions that are perfect to each of us.

There are now 278 comments in reply to Melissa’s post which shows it has really hit a nerve in the blogging community. There is a lot of respect on blogs for not reproducing recipes verbatim – but the idea that you should not cite your sources of inspiration when you adapt a recipe seems wrong. Unfortunately, this is what America’s Test Kitchen seems to imply. But my experience of blogging is that we like to give credit where credit is due.

I like blogging because I like the interactive sharing of recipes. Melissa’s experience led her to read up on copyright. What she found is that a list of ingredients is not copyrighted, but the methods re copyrighted if they have literary merit (eg ‘bring to the boil’ does not but ‘watch the little bubbles rise to the surface of the water like a school of dolphins coming up for air’ does).

I know there are bloggers who will only write up a recipe if they have modified the ingredients but I find that, even if I use the same list of ingredients, my method often is slightly different (and I always rewrite the method in my own style). I agree with Neen, that we are promoting the magazines or cookbooks. After all, even if I really wanted to, I would not be able to cook everything out of a magazine or a cookbook.

It seemed even sadder to read this last weekend because it was the Melbourne bloggers meet at Lentil as Anything in Abbotsford (followed by a drink at Handsome Steve’s Bar), organised by AOF. It was a relaxed get-together of a group of friendly and generous people. This is much more the spirit of blogging than America’s Test Kitchen. Fortunately for me I have much more to do with the former group than the latter and will continue to share recipes.

Which brings me to today’s recipe. I had made this Spanish Vegetable Casserole before reading Melissa’s post but had been pondering issues of reproducing it. I found the recipe in a Tesco magazine when I lived in Edinburgh probably about 6 or 7 years ago. I had been thinking that there shouldn’t be problems with putting recipes from this magazine on the net because it is so unlikely that most people would be able to find a copy of it, apart from in charity shops and doctors’ waiting rooms in the UK. Magazines are the ephemera of the publishing world and I really like how blogs dredge up old recipes that I would never find, because I didn’t buy the magazine at the time.

It is not just magazines where recipes are hard to find. Blogging has made me aware that there are local cookbooks which are hard to find outside Australia, and many cookbooks go out of print all too fast. (If you don’t believe me on this last point, check out this article on cookbook collecting in The Age newspaper last week.) Besides, my experience has been that I have been more likely to find out about and buy new cookbooks since starting blogging, and my reading of other blogs suggests I am not alone.

My second point, raised by the Spanish Vegetable Casserole, is the issue of modifying recipes. It calls for the addition of two pears. (As an aside, I have never thought of pears as particularly Spanish and was curious as to whether anyone knows of other savoury Spanish recipes with pears in them.) I love eating fresh pears but am a little dubious about cooked pears, which may be one of the reasons it took me so long to try this recipe, but I was curious. Now I have made it, I would only add one pear next time, because the pears added a considerable amount of sweetness to the sauce. But again, this is personal preference, rather than an imperfection in the recipe. I think I added more stock the second night we ate it but I would recommend this as a good hearty winter stew.

Spanish Vegetable Casserole
(adapted from Tesco Magazine)
Serves 4

2 tbsp olive oil
1 Spanish onion, sliced
500g new potatoes, halved
1 tbsp paprika (I used mild but hot or smoked could also be used)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
180g green beans, trimmed and halved
1-2 firm pears, cored and roughly chopped
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
400g tin of chickpeas, drained
1 tsp vegie stock powder
300ml water
Seasoning

Fry onion in oil in a large saucepan for a few minutes over low to medium heat til translucent. Add potatoes, paprika and garlic. Stir for about 1-2 minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes or til potatoes are tender. Season and serve with bread or rice.

On the stereo:
An Embassy to Gaius: Thanatos

A new cookbook arrived in my mail box recently. Actually it was second hand but new to me and came courtesy of Rachel of the Crispy Cook. She has kindly decided to ask bloggers to put their names down each month to go into a draw for a nominated second hand cookbook from her Old Saratoga Books store. Oh how wonderful to have a shop of old books! If I ever had the pleasure, I hope I would be as generous as Rachel. And if you want to find gluten free bloggers she has an impressive list of GF blogs.

The book that I ‘won’ was Vegetarian Dishes from Around the World by Rose Elliot. This was published in 1981 before anyone discovered that we had our own recipes in Australia. Or maybe Rose just thought Antipodeans such rabid carnivores that she didn’t expect to find any vegetarian recipes in our midst. Sorry, had to have a whinge about that. Otherwise this is a great cookbook that I have been pouring over in anticipation of making many of the recipes.

I am probably getting a bit old in that 1981 doesn’t seem that far away but this book has a little of the earnest, fusty olde worlde vegetarian about it. I have quite a few Rose Elliot’s books, as you can see on my cookbook list (which needs updating). This is an American edition so, unlike most of my other copies of her books, this is written with cup measures. But it does not make it seem any less British.

There are not too many other cookbook authors that I feel quite as passionate about. When I first became vegetarian I was advised to get a copy of her Vegetarian Cookery if possible. So it is interesting to note some of the personal tit-bits – such as that she was brought up vegetarian – and some of her preferences – for lots of colour in a meal.

The round the world theme is interesting. It seems more about finding comfort elsewhere than challenges. But then I suspect this is from a time when exotica such as Thai curry paste and miso were not everyday items in supermarkets. Indeed, her coverage of Asia seems limited to China and India. And as someone who has never understood the allure of French cooking, I find her praise of wonderful French vegetable dishes perplexing. She stresses the need for protein in a meal but this often seems to be cheese and eggs. Unlike some of Rose Elliot’s more recent books, this seems to hail from a time when life (and the pantry) was much simpler.

The first dish I chose to make is paella. Here is the moment to say that this book has no photos. So there were none of those lovely images of bright yellow rice with dark plump olives and the colourful jumble of peas, carrot and capsicum. Quite fortunate as the remains of the saffron in my pantry were a little dusty and did not produce much in the way of colour. Perhaps that is why I needed stock and not just salt for a little flavour. E chose to have his with tabasco sauce and cheese but I enjoyed mine as it came from the pot.

Like the book, the paella did not seem terribly exotic but tasted of wholesome goodness with brown rice and lots of vegies. I made a few changes to the recipe. I had chickpeas where she had roasted almonds and I added a few olives at the end but didn’t have as many as I had thought. Not a dish to transport you to the sunny shores of Spain, but one to make you feel you are doing something good for your body. And one to make me grateful to Rachel for her generosity in sending this book my way!

Paella
(adapted from Rose Eliot)
Serves 6

2 red onions, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
375ml (1½ cups) brown rice, rinsed
1 litre (about 3 ¾ cups) water
1 packet saffron (I used what I had left)
3 tsp vegie stock powder
Black pepper
2 large carrots, chopped
1 tin (400g) chickpeas, drained
1 large red pepper, sliced in rings
4 tomatoes, chopped (peeling is optional)
1 cup (250ml) frozen green peas
Handful black olives (chopping is optional)
Juice of ½ small lemon

Heat oil in large heavy based stockpot and fry onions on low heat for about 10 minutes till soft but not browned. Stir in garlic, rice, water, saffron, stock powder, carrots, chickpeas and some black pepper. Bring to the boil and reduce heat. Cover and simmer. After30 minutes scatter with peppers, peas and tomatoes. Cover and return to simmer for a further 10 minutes. If, unlike me, you have time and read the recipe properly, Rose advises to remove from the heat and leave covered an additional 15 minutes before fluffing rice with a fork. I just stirred and served without the recommended wait.

On the stereo:
The Ghost Sonata: Tuxedo Moon

This title is not quite accurate. It is actually the lemon juice in the tabouli that came from our tree but I figured it is close enough.

We bought the two citrus trees in December. The lemon tree has thrived and the lime tree is hanging in there. One person told me if the trees are allowed to grow fruit in their first few years, they wont do well, and another told me that growing fruit in their first year would help. I don’t know the first thing about gardening and decided to grow a couple of lemons when the tree was blossoming. It has been most enjoyable watching the maturing of two large yellow lemons that were harvested last weekend.

I use lemon in my cooking but I am not a huge fan of lemons, especially in dessert. In fact, lemon meringue pie, lemon tart and lemon pudding would rank among the easiest desserts for me to refuse. So it is unfortunate to have our own lemons come at a time when have been given lemon from a few others’ lemon trees. We are slowly making our way through them. I have been adding them to casseroles and to steamed vegetables. But how to feature our first harvest?

E came up with an idea for our lemons last weekend. I had been out and about on Saturday and was driving home along Sydney Road thinking about what to have for dinner when I was struck by a yen for falafel after seeing this post of Lucy’s. She is a woman who appreciates the simplicity of a falafel meal.

Ever since my mum and I did a bakery tour of Sydney Road earlier this year, I have felt I should make the most of some of the excellent food available locally. Yet, my timing is usually off. I either have too much bread in the house, or have plans for dinner or it is too much effort to head out to the treasures of Sydney Road when it is warm and cosy in the house. But driving past these places as I headed home for dinner, I felt I had to seize the opportunity.

The first place I stopped at was a Middle Eastern grocery we had visited on the tour. But as I found a park, the closed sign went up. So I drove on and found the Saray (188 Sydney Road, Coburg) where I have eaten before. I bought falafel, hummus, tabouli and Turkish bread. It made a delicious easy dinner. Made me wonder why we don’t do this more.

We even had leftovers but not quite enough. E, who loves parsley, polished off the lemony tabouli. ‘Why don’t you make some?’ he asked. Now I have posted tabouli (also spelt tabbouleh or tabouleh) recipes before - beetroot and pomegranate and green bean and broccoli – but I have never posted the basic tabouli you could buy anywhere on Sydney Road. So to please E, to feature our homegrown lemons and to make sure we had enough for a second meal, I made some parsley and tomato tabouli.

I found the recipe on Taste.com, an Australian website that gives recipes from many of the local foodie magazines. But even a basic foodie recipe needed some minar adjustments, based on what is in the fridge. I didn’t use mint, not having any on hand, but if you have a backyard full of mint, I would recommend it. This tabouli didn’t have quite as much herbs as the Saray version but I was pleased with the taste. It was lovely with the soft Turkish bread, smooth hummus and substantial falafels.

If you are not lucky enough to have a wealth of Middle Eastern Shops close by you might like to visit recipes I have posted for hummus and falafels. If you would like more ideas for herbs in salads and soups, then I suggest you head over to Holler’s No Crouton’s Required event round-up at Tinned Tomatoes.

Tabouli
(Adapted from Emma Braz’s recipe in Super Food Ideas - November 2006, p 60)
Serves 2-4

¼ cup burghul (cracked wheat)
¼ cup plus 1 tbsp vegetable stock
2 generous handfuls parsley, chopped
¼ cup mint leaves, chopped (optional)
1 tomato, diced
1 spring onion, finely sliced
2 teaspoons olive oil
½ lemon, juiced

Place burghul in a small bowl. Pour hot stockover burghul and cover for 10 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and mix. Season with salt and pepper.

On the stereo:
Rip it up and start again: post punk 1978-1974: compiled by Simon Reynolds

When I saw Cindy making these chickpea cutlets on Where’s the Beef?, I was curious. Apparently these are everywhere in the world of vegan blogging, but it seems they originated with Isa and Terry in Veganomicon and were posted by them on Chow.com.

But what interested me most was the gluten flour that Cindy had bought at Allergy Block in Carlton. I keep seeing vital wheat gluten in recipes and not really understood what it was. But when I saw I could buy it at a local health food store, I had to find out. These chickpea cutlets and a loaf of bread were a good way to explore this new substance. As I began to make the cutlets I read I was meant to knead the mixture till gluten strings formed. Huh? But once I did the kneading, even though it was a weird texture to knead, it made sense. Lo and behold, the gluten strings appeared. I took a photo of them because it was so weird.

This has opened up a whole world of new possibilities. Now I can try making my own vegetarian sausages, which means not always having to buy them from the supermarket. I dislike seitan (satan?) which is made from this wheat gluten so I am a little wary of it but am fascinated by the way it held the burger together with a hint of stretch in the texture. Isa and Terry say it is ‘vegan food you can eat with a steak knife’. True. But these burgers taste so much better than steak (a personal viewpoint I know).

The vital wheat gluten is not the only challenge in the ingredients list. I was a little unsure of putting so much soy sauce in but the end result is tasty rather than salty. I also don’t know what is meant by paprika – does it mean mild, hot or smoked. I suspect you could use any of these and get quite different tasting burgers. I decided to go with the gentle flavour of mild paprika. I also didn’t get my burgers as nicely golden brown as Cindy but they still tasted great. They were lovely with leftover pasta the first night, and with salad, corn and toast the second night.

Oh and if you want to check out what fellow Melbourne vegetarian bloggers, Cindy and Michael from Where’s the Beef?, are eating at the moment, you will find that they are not posting many recipes right now. They are too busy experiencing the delights of the UK, including Edinburgh. I am enjoying a bit of armchair (deskchair?) travel and recommend you head over too if you like travel photos with a bit of food in the mix.

Chickpea cutlets
(adapted from Chow.com via Where’s the Beef?)
Serves 4

400g tin of chickpeas, drained (about 1 cup cooked)
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup wheat gluten or gluten flour
½ cup breadcrumbs
¼ cup vegie stock or water
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon dried mixed herbs
zest of ½ medium lemon (about ½ teaspoon)
½ teaspoon mild paprika
shake of cayenne pepper
extra oil for frying or greasing

Mash the chickpeas and oil together in a bowl until all chickpeas are smashed into a smoothish mixture. Add the remaining ingredients and mix till a smooth dough forms. Knead the dough for about 3 minutes, until gluten strings form. Divide the dough into four pieces and flatten them into patties, 1.5 cm thick (or thinner).

Bake or fry them. For both golden crunch and health, the best option is to fry in a little oil for 2-3 minutes or til golden on both sides and then bake a further 15 minutes at 180 C to cook through.

On the stereo:
Among My Swan: Mazzie Star

I have a favourite cassoulet recipe I have been wanting to share on my blog all winter but when I made it a few months back, E complained about the powderiness of the topping. Then I happened across a piece on cassoulet by Waverley Root in Mark Kurlansky’s Choice Cuts: a miscellany of food writing. Waverley Root explained that there is a tradition that the crust should be broken seven times during cooking. The top photo shows how my epiphany about breaking the crust changed the texture and appearance from my below ‘powdery topping’.

Of course, being vegetarian, I am well aware that I am often reinventing meat-centric traditions. Cassoulet comes from France, the land of rich meaty meals. Even so I was quite horrified at the traditional recipes which included pork sausages, pork, goose, duck, and sometimes mutton. Enough to turn anyone vegetarian!

I am happy to do away with the meat but I love the traditions. Cassoulet is said to have originated in the 14th Century in Castelnaudary in the south of France during the Hundred Years War. During a siege, the Provost Marshall apparently made this by putting all foods into a communal dish that was so hearty it gave the army courage face the surrounding British army. I can’t help thinking there wouldn’t have been many animals left in the village. But of course it is not a tradition without its doubters.

So much debate arose over the origins of cassoulet that Prosper Montagné of Larousse Gastronomique decreed in 1929 that “God the father is the cassoulet of Castelnaudary, God the Son that of Carcassonne, and the Holy Spirit that of Toulouse.” It is also claimed that the true spirit of the dish is not in the town that created it, but in the magic of the sharing. Indeed it does seem like a dish that could feed a village.

A quick search of the web showed that this is a dish to be taken seriously and slowly. In France there is an Academy of the Cassoulet. I suspect they would be none too forgiving of a vegetarian version. More open to a vegetarian version is a chap called John Whiting who spends a week preparing cassoulet for his birthday dinner each year. Makes Julia Child’s 3 day version seem quick and easy. Whiting includes a vegan version in his notes full of wonderful flavours such as roasted vegies, sun dried tomatoes, wine.

Now I appreciate his version because I have done some searching for vegetarian version and many just seem to be beans, carrots and celery. Isn’t this just taking out the meat? I protest that a proper vegetarian version must include textures and flavours which impart some of the richness that meat gives to a dish. It doesn’t take much imagination.

Traditional versions seem to include bean layers and meat layers. But there are debates about what meat and whether to include breadcrumbs on top. In fact there are so many versions that Whiting says that “if you go into an isolated Languedoc village and ask fifty housewives how to make a cassoulet, you will get at least fifty-one recipes.” You can easily find many recipes that include the traditional, the casual, without breadcrumbs, and without meat on the web.

According to Waverley Root, traditionally cassoulet would continually simmer in the pot – he quoted Anatole France who claimed the cassoulet he used to eat in his favourite establishment in Paris has been cooking for 20 years. When I told E about this, he thought it sounded like his sort of dish because there would be no washing up.

The version that I have been making for a few years is one I found on the internet and sadly am not able to credit because I have not been able to find it again. It is far superior to many versions I have found because it is packed with an interesting combination of vegetables and legumes. I would advise that the cheese and breadcrumbs are optional because it tastes so good without them but I do enjoy the creaminess when they are stirred in. It will not appeal to those who don’t like chopping veggies but once the veggies are prepared there isn’t much else to do apart from a little stirring. It is worth the effort and much quicker than 3 days or even a week. This recipe lasts E and myself for almost a week and is a complete meal.

I am sending this recipe to Equal Opportunity Kitchen’s Tried Tested and True recipe event. I thought this would be a good dish as they are asking for a health-promoting dish which is a lighter version of the original. Then I saw that they are judging recipes on visual appeal. Cassoulet is meant to be a blackened stew in a burn-out pot so I am sure they will appreciate that the appeal is in the tasting not the viewing!

Vegetarian Cassoulet
Serves 6-8

1 tbsp oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 fennel bulb, chopped
3 large carrots, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1 medium aubergine (eggplant), chopped
150g mushrooms, chopped
6 tomatoes, chopped
3 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp mixed dried herbs (eg rosemary, sage, thyme)
1 bay leaf
1 glass white wine
¼ pint (about 150ml) vegetable stock
1 can cannellini beans, drained (or other white beans)
125g red lentils
5 tbsp chopped parsley
175g parmesan cheese, grated
175g breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large stockpot (preferably an ovenproof one like my le creuset stockpot) over low heat and add onions, garlic and fennel. Cook, stirring frequently for 20-30 minutes or til browned. NB The time while the onions brown is ideal to chop up the remaining vegetables.

Add carrots, celery, aubergine, mushrooms, tomatoes, tomato puree, mixed herbs, bay leaf, white wine, stock. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 10-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beans and lentils and simmer for about 10 minutes.

If your stockpot isn’t ovenproof, transfer to a large casserole dish. Scatter cassoulet with a mixture of parsley, parmesan and breadcrumbs. (You can keep some aside for later if you wish.) Place casserole dish or ovenproof stockpot in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes at a moderate heat (180-200 C).

Remove dish from oven and use a wooden spoon to break the crust and stir into cassoulet. If you wish, you could scatter with some reserved parmesan and breadcrumbs mixture after stirring. Return to the oven for about 20 minutes. This time is fairly flexible and could be extended if you wanted to try breaking the crust seven times! John Whiting advises it is best if made a day ahead and the leftovers were definitely excellent!

On the stereo:
Way Out: Alessandra Celletti

I think it would be safe to say that I have baked more bread this winter than in any previous winter. I am on a mission to bake more bread. One day I will finally graduate to sourdough baking but for now the yeasted bread is tasting just fine.

So I am interested in finding tasty and easy bread recipes. Susan’s regular Yeast Spotting at Wild Yeast is a good place to start looking. I have also been interested in Celine’s bread baking at Have Cake Will Travel. She has posted some good quirky ones lately like her peanut butter bread. But what has really fascinated me has been her addition of ‘vital wheat gluten’. I finally have discovered what I think is the local equivalent – gluten flour – thanks to Cindy. Of course I had to try it. I think I am right in claiming that it makes ordinary cake flour into strong high-gluten bread flour.

So with my new packet of gluten flour, I set out to try one of Celine’s bread recipes. In my searching I was delighted to find that although she has a bread machine, she has really helpful instructions on how to convert a bread machine recipe for those of us without such technical help.

The recipe I chose was an Oatmeal Beer Bread. I tried to follow Celine’s recipe but she called for oatmeal stout and all I could find was a more ordinary barley and wheat stout. Of course I didn’t need to use the whole bottle so E drank the remainder.

He amused me by reminiscing about stout while he drank half a glass of the stuff. Apparently he first drank stout when he was taken on a school outing to a pub in his last year of school. This made me laugh. No wonder the Scots know how to drink if they teach them at school. He did protest that it was extra-cirricular activitives - but really! Then he the told me that stout is an old lady’s drink and Ena Shaples from beloved British soap, Coronation Street, enjoyed a pint of stout. Well, I always thought it was a manly drink and that ‘girls’ drank fizzy lager. But according to the Corre Blog is often prescribed to new mothers and the sick because of its additional value. Well, my dad does say he could have a can of guiness for a meal!

Back to the bread. Celine’s method was by bread machine so I had an opportunity to find that her conversions to a hand method worked well. And the bread was soft and had a good texture. But when I asked E how it was he replied, ‘stouty’. I was surprised at how strongly you can smell the stout in the bread. I am still swithering about if I like that or not. One moment I think I will use a lighter beer next time, and the next moment I think I really enjoy the added flavour and will stick with stout. I’m not complaining. I have been enjoying it for breakfast this week. It toasts up a treat!

(PS. I am particularly pleased to get this post up because I had it written a few days ago and for 2 or 3 days running my internet connection has been so bad I couldn’t post it. Most displeased!)

Oatmeal Beer Bread
(adapted from Betty Crocker’s Bread Machine Cookbook via Celine)
makes 1 small loaf: a 20cm loaf tin

2 tsp (7g) dried yeast
3 tbsp brown sugar
¼ cup lukewarm water
1 cup lukewarm flat oatmeal stout or other beer
2 tbsp softened butter or margarine
2 cups bread flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
½ cup rolled oats
2 tbsp soy milk powder [optional, I didn’t use]
4 tsp vital wheat gluten or gluten flour [optional, I did use]
1¼ tsp sea salt

Proof the yeast by mixing it with the sugar, stout and warm water in a bowl and setting aside for about 10 minutes. It should start to go just a little foamy. I did this in the large mixing bowl I used to mix the dough but you could do it in a small bowl and spend the 10 minutes placing the remaining ingredients in the large bowl.

Mix remaining ingredients with the yeast mixture to form a shaggy dough. Knead on a lightly floured board for about 7-10 minutes til the texture of an ear lobe. My dough was very sticky and needed quite a lot of flour as I kneaded. Place the dough in the bowl (I didn’t grease the bowl in deference to my friend Yaz’s claim that it impedes growth) and cover with a damp tea towel. Set aside in a warm place about 90 minutes or until doubled in size.

Punch down and shape to form a loaf. Place in a lightly greased small loaf tin (mine is about 20 x 13cm). Cover and set aside in warm place for about 60 minutes or til doubled in size. Bake 30-40 minutes (I think mine baked 30 minutes and then I returned it to the oven out of the tin for another 10 minutes so the crust could toughen up a little.)

Remove from tin once the bread is baked and cool on a rack before slicing.

On the stereo:
A Rush of Blood to the Head: Coldplay

If you have read my recent pumpkin post, you will know that I have been giving this vegetable a considerable amount of thought lately. Tonight I continue my musings but in a different vein.

On the weekend I was listening to Helen Razer on ABC 774. She was talking about a newspaper report that the South Australian state government has instructed teachers to warn children not to imitate the risky behaviour of characters in fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and Hansel and Gretel. Seems like political correctness gone mad!

But it got me wondering about what warnings would be on pumpkins if we really did believe fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Warning: May turn into a coach if fairy godmothers in the vicinity. It worked for Cinderella, but imagine starting to cook your pumpkin for dinner and some pesky fairy godmother waves her wand and your pumpkin is off to the ball. Most inconvenient. Although maybe there would be some young girls who would buy a pumpkin in the belief that it was necessary to meet her Prince Charming.

Or should young women be warned against marrying men called Peter who liked pumpkins? This got me thinking about Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. I have always thought the lines ‘so he put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well’ meant he imprisoned her in a pumpkin. But then I was thinking maybe it was not such a bad life because it does say he kept her ‘very well’.

Maybe it means that due to the real estate crisis, he just couldn’t afford a home and finally found a large old pumpkin shell where they lived happily ever after, hacking off a piece of pumpkin for dinner every now and again. E told me it was a silly idea but I said if James could live inside a giant peach why not a pumpkin. You only need to read about the pumpkin growing competitions to see it is quite believable.

Oh and one more little esoteric piece of information. As a lover of pumpkin, I almost was a Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater because I would have been called Peter if I had been born a boy. So I have good reason to defend him.

But onto my recipe which is a humble jumble of roast vegies and sausages. I found the idea on Hippolyra’s Fuss Free Flavours. It was a nice variation on a Jill Dupleix recipe of roast onions, tomatoes and sausages which I have enjoyed a few times. Of course I use vegetarian sausages and liked the idea of adding the moistness of pumpkin because the vego sausages are drier than the meaty kind. It worked a treat and was as delicious as it was easy.

This is a great recipe for a night when you want to just sit back and relax while dinner cooks. Hippolyra made it while on holidays and says it is also very handy when cooking in a strange kitchen because it just requires one tray. First night we had it with roast potatoes but the leftovers were thrown into a pasta sauce. And of course, like Hippolyra, you could substitute meat sausages for the veggie ones, if that’s your thing!

Pumpkin and Sausage Roast
(adapted from Fuss Free Flavours)
Serves 4

660 pumpkin, peeled and diced
6 veggie sausages (I used tomato and onion), roughly chopped
1 red onion, peeled and cut in wedges
250g cherry tomatoes
1 red pepper, roughly sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Sprig of rosemary (optional – I didn’t use)
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Place pumpkin, sausages and onion (and rosemary if using) in roasting dish and toss with a little olive oil and salt. Bake for about 20 minutes at 200 C. Add remaining ingredients and toss to mix. Bake an additional 40-60 minutes until the pumpkin starts to feel soft and mushy when you stir it. The sausages should crisp up a little. (I was moving trays between shelves in the oven so my timing is not terribly scientific.)

On the stereo:
LMT Label Sampler CDR Spring 2008 – Various Artists

Food blogging seems an odd activity sometimes when we spend so much time sharing recipes and meals and yet never tasting each other’s food. Photos and words have to work hard to compensate.

So I thought it would be interesting (or some might say indulgent) to give you some insight into my photos when I was tagged by both Pixie of You Say Tomahto, I Say Tomayto and Helen of Food Stories for my top ten food photos. I am no expert and my camera is just a point-and-click Canon Powershot A85. Nevertheless, it was not an easy task to pick just 10 photos from 278 posts, even accounting for some spectacularly dodgy photos. These are not necessarily my favourite recipes but are some of my most successful and meaningful photos.

1. Giraffe Birthday Cake
Strangely enough, one of my favourite photos on my blog does not come anywhere near my favourite things to eat. The cake tasted ordinary. The photo was spectacular. My green giraffe birthday cake was the picture I had always wanted for my avatar. I had looked for the right picture but sometimes it isn’t out there and you just have to make it yourself. And did I mention how much I love green!

2. Birthday afternoon tea
My birthday afternoon tea this year allowed me to indulge in baking some favourite treats – chocolate walnut fudge cake, grubs and cheesey almond muffins, plus grapes and Wendy’s lovely green apple tea. Of course I like the colours and textures of the spread as well. This photo is taken during the day at our kitchen table which has plenty of light in summer during the day. Wish I could say the same of the evenings.

3. Reconciliation Dinner
I love a good theme meal and created a dinner to celebrate last year’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ Reconciliation Week. I used my childhood barbeques for inspiration and had my first foray into experimenting with Australian indigenous herbs and spices. I presented dinner so it looked like the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flag.

4. Winter Solstice Dinner
Last year’s winter solstice dinner was based on the sort of roast dinner my mum used to make, with my nut roast where her roast beef would have been. It is always a pleasure to have the table spread with interesting food, and to have an opportunity to use some of the good serving dishes. E and I often light a small candle while we eat dinner but it is less often that we light up a candelabra. This candelabra is one I bought cheaply as a student and lit at many a share house dinner party. I took the photo at our kitchen table where we eat. Unfortunately it is in a dark corner of our house and not very conducive to food photography in the evening.

5. Peanut Stew with Colourful Vegies
Stews and casseroles taste delicious but they really like look like a pile of mud. My Peanut Stew with Bananas tasted really interesting but you wouldn’t have known it to look at it. I used the time honored trick of adding a garnish. Then I was lucky to find some purple cauliflower which looked so cheerful with some broccoli on the border. I was particularly pleased to pep up the photo because it was for my very first blog event. I also like photographing my dishes with the side vegetables because it gives additional colour and context. This photo is taken in the kitchen directly under the fluorescent light – one of my favourite places for photos when I don’t have any natural light.

6. Mole with Tacos
This photo of my borlotti bean mole with roast pumpkin and silverbeet had the same problem as the above stew. Fantastic flavours but looks like dark mush. So I liked this ‘action’ photo of me holding it in a filled taco. You don’t see much of the mole but that doesn’t matter. You see how it is eaten and in the background is the spread of dishes of accompaniments. This photo is taken in the backyard in summer when we ate outside a lot and had long hours of daylight for photography.

7. Still Life with Fruit
Much as I love chocolate, this picture was really all about the fruit. Fresh fruit is one of the most beautiful images in the kitchen. But I still thought some linen and a gorgeous bowl would add pleasing colour and contrast. The bowl was purchased in Istanbul about 10 years ago and is the one I usually keep my fruit in. The condensed milk fudge sauce was also delicious but it was cold in this photo so I could shoot in daylight, rather than warm and gooey for dipping chunks of fruit in.

8. Vampire Birthday Cake
Another of my favourite novelty cakes is the vampire cake because E requested it for his birthday last year and I created it without any template to follow. I had been thinking of starting a blog and this was the tipping point. I wanted to share it partly because I was proud of it and partly to share it with others. I hope that it will give some guidance to others like me who are asked to make a vampire birthday cake. This was my first blog entry and unlike the giraffe cake, the actual cake recipe was one of my favourite gluten free cakes I have made.

9. Posh Butter Biscuits
Biscuits and cookies come into a category of seen-one-seen-them-all (see here if you don’t know what I mean by biscuits). They are not that attractive alone and need context or props. I always enjoy seeing how bloggers present them. I like this picture of Butter biscuits with cocoa nibs and candied orange because I think it gives a feeling of airy lightness which is echoed in the taste of the biscuits. It also gives me some satisfaction because when I baked these biscuits they all spread and stuck together in odd shapes but I managed to stack them in such a way that they looked like lovely round biscuits. Was anyone fooled?

10. Pancakes for Brunch
One of the joys of posting about brunch foods is that there is lots of daylight for photographs. You can see this in my photo of oaty pancakes with berries. I also like it because the close-up shows the texture of the pancakes and the light captures the lovely deep reds of the berries.

I am not going to tag anyone but would welcome hearing from anyone who is interested in doing a top ten of their photos.

When my sister Francesca lived in London in the mid-1990s, we asked for requests for foods from home (Melbourne) when a friend was visiting her. Among other things, she asked for a tin of pumpkin soup because it was so hard to find. I was astounded. Surely pumpkin soup was an everyday food!

Later, when I lived in the UK I learnt that while pumpkin is like mother’s milk to an Australian, it is pig feed in the UK. Pumpkin soup in Australian cafes is often jazzed up with exotic spices but in the UK the very idea of pumpkin soup seems exotic.

Indeed in Europe pumpkins were a curiosity when brought back from the Americas in the 1500s. Perhaps this is why they features in fairy tales (Cinderella) and nursery rhymes (Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater). The name comes from ‘pepon’, a greek word for large melon. Pumpkins are a fruit which are part of the squash family. Not just a fruit but a berry, albeit the only one with such a hard outer shell.

So it should be no surprise to find that it seems to be used like a fruit for cakes and pies in the USA. Pumpkins originated in the Americas. Seeds have been found in Mexico from 7000-5500 BC. The English colonists ate so much of this fruit that the port of Boston was once known as Pumpkinshire. Pumpkin pie, jack o’ lanterns and pumpkin festivals have become part of the way of American life. Apparently 99% of pumpkins are sold for decoration but I think this must be only in America.

In Australia there is so much more to pumpkins than fairytales and festive food. I grew up eating pumpkin mashed or roasted beside my vegies, or in soups, casseroles and curries. We use them when baking scones, bread and biscuits. And I highly recommend them in quiche, burgers, mole, dips, risotto, pasta, cornbread, salads, chutney, pancakes and smoothies. Pumpkins are moist and sweet with a willingness to adapt to any dish. We even have pumpkin kitchen tips such as using pumpkin to thicken a stew or dusting leftover raw pumpkin with pepper to keep it fresh.

Pumpkins are available year round in all shapes. I buy it in large wedges and never see it sold as a puree in tins (as seems to be common in America). You need a good heavy chef’s knife to cut through it and a small knife to scrape out the seeds. Wiki says that most pumpkins have orange or yellow skins but most pumpkins I buy have dark grey or green skin.

When I was young we mostly ate was the large grey/blue-skinned Queensland Blue (photo above) and if we were feeling fancy we might have had a Butternut Pumpkin (which is known as Butternut Squash in other countries). Now Kent and Jap pumpkins (right hand photo) with their bright orange flesh and dark green skin are popular with shoppers, including myself. I took the top photo at a farmers market of heirloom pumpkins, which made me wonder if anyone had considered naming pumpkins after a giraffe.

So this has left me asking the question: where has the Australian love of pumpkins for dinner come from? When so many of our food habits come from America and Britain, why do we treat pumpkins as a regular vegetable rather than as pie fodder or pig feed? Have I discovered something that is uniquely Australian? Not an easy question to answer. It got me searching historic cookbooks, reading One Continuous Picnic and engaged in conversation with booksellers.

Michael Symons’ history of food in Australia, One Continuous Picnic, was the source of greatest insight into Australia’s love affair with pumpkins. The first mention of them in the book is on pp 34-35. In 1830 Alexander Harris describes the bounty of small Hawkesbury farmers. He says that the pumpkins were ‘as big as a large bucket’ and the chief vegetable in most households. It is mentioned again on p 107 in a childhood reminiscence of pumpkins appearing day after day in the 1850s. Then on p 164 there is a mention of pumpkin as one of the vegetables being recommended to be boiled on the side by a 1930s cookbook. It’s not much.

I decided the best way to find out the history of how Australians when pumpkins became popular was to search historic cookbooks. A 1970s history Two Hundred Years of Australian Cooking by Babette Hayes gives a disturbingly fascinating recipe and photo of possum cooked in pumpkin which seems to be from colonial Australia. Philip E Muskett, who wrote The Art of Living in Australia in 1893, gives a recipe for pumpkin soup (but so do British vegetarian cookbooks from the same era so it does not prove it is uniquely Australian). There is no mention of it at all in my Green and Gold Cookbook (c 1940s).

I find that pumpkin often gets paired with marrow. Marrow? Squash? Pumpkin? What is the difference? This is not my area of expertise but I have noticed that often American and Brits say squash where I would say pumpkin (eg butternut) so I think some confusion arises here. Colin Spencer says that pumpkins and marrows are part of the squash family. I always thought marrows and squash was softer than pumpkins.

In the 1950s/1960s Australian Cookery of Today Illustrated which gives recipes for steaming and stuffing marrows or pumpkins as well as jam, scones and tarts made from pumpkin. A Sanitarium recipe book from early 1950s gives recipes for pumpkin scones and pumpkin fritters which are sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Strangely enough this recipe is repeated in the Vegetarian section of a 1955 Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union (PMWU) of Victoria cookbook.

Very little mention of pumpkin soup and then on 4 October in 1961 there is an article in the Australian Women’s Weekly with a list of old time favourites that have been passed down the generations. At the top of the list is cream of pumpkin soup. Pumpkin soup also gets a place in The Women’s Weekly Best Ever Recipes (c1980s).

So I don’t really have any answers, but I do have more questions. I’ve had fun searching but I felt I finally had to stop and write. I have a few hunches. Colin Spencer’s comment that marrows (read ‘pumpkins’) are native to temperate and tropical climates suggests the Australian climate was just right for them. I once went to a student house that I had been told had a vegetable garden and it was merely an out of control pumpkin vine. But Denis Cotter describes pumpkin as ‘so damn useful’ and boldly claims that they grow so well in Ireland that they might have become part of the Irish culinary tradition if they had been discovered earlier.

I love Colin Spencer’s description of the colour as the pumpkin’s ‘greatest quality – that’s fiery russet or Van Gogh orange sets the table aflame’. He also says that large pumpkins were a common sight in London’s markets in the Nineteenth Century and that it was used to bulk out bread. Is this possibly where our love of pumpkin scones originated? I also found some fun facts about pumpkins including that they were once believed to cure snake bite and remove freckles, which also could have been quite useful in Australia.

Before I tell you about my recipe, I will lastly just mention the more modern appearances of pumpkins in our culture. The band Smashing Pumpkins, Jack the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town in The Nightmare before Christmas, and The Great Pumpkin who haunts Linus van Pelt in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Surprisingly Shakespeare mentioned the vegetable with the old spelling in the Merry Wives of Windsor (c1600): ‘Go to, then: we’ll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we’ll teach him to know turtles from jays’. I don’t know what it means but he doesn’t sound like a fan of the stuff.

It seemed obvious that the recipe to post here was pumpkin soup. As I said above, it is something I grew up with. I originally decided I would post a recipe for pumpkin and lentil soup but it was too watery. I decided to go back to a basic recipe. I tried just pureeing pumpkin and onion in stock and it tasted just like pureed pumpkin. Too basic! So I looked for a recipe like we used to eat – no fancy vegies or spices added. The key seemed to be to add some potato. I also added some cream because I had some needing to be used but I found it made it quite rich. The result was delicious and velvety.

In the course of my searching pumpkin soup recipes I came across lots of ideas for flavourings so I thought I would list these to show just how versatile this recipe could be if you fancy something different. But I do recommend this recipe which is just what I suspect my ancestors might have cooked or eaten in a city café.

Pumpkin Soup
(Adapted from Best Recipes and Go for 2&5)
serves 4-6

1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
750g Jap pumpkin, peeled and diced
250g potatoes, diced
3½ cups stock (or water)
60 ml thickened cream (or yoghurt or coconut milk)
Salt and Pepper
Nutmeg to serve

- Place all ingredients, except cream, in a large saucepan.
- Simmer until vegetables are tender.
- Remove from heat.
- Blend with a stick blender until smooth.
- Add cream and stir through (do not boil after adding cream).
- Season to taste.
- Serve with a garnish of freshly grated nutmeg

Variations:
- Method variations: make a roux to thicken the soup, roast the pumpkin for deeper flavour, mash or leave pumpkin in chunks for more texture
- Liquids: coconut milk, white wine, cream, yoghurt, buttermilk, sour cream, milk
- Flavourings: nutmeg, chives, rosemary, tarragon, cumin, coriander, bacon/facon, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, tahini, tomato paste, chicken noodle soup, lemon grass, chilli, curry powder, nut butters, parsley, sage
- Vegetables/fruits: corn, cauliflower, tomato, apple, sweet potato, potato, leeks
- Textures: lentils, beans, rice, pasta, wild rice, quinoa, walnuts, peanut butter
- Garnishes: chives, parsley, nutmegs, pears coated in maple syrup

And because I feel that our worldview of pumpkin is not know as well outside Australia, I am sending this to Simona from Briciole who is hosting Weekend Herb Blogging this week, the event founded by Kalyn from Kalyn’s Kitchen.

On the stereo:
Country Songs for the Aussie Bloke – 30 Tracks and that’s No Crap: Various Artists