Chilli While They Last

Further trimming my cooking magazine collection, I set upon the Gourmet Travellers from 2005. Gourmet Traveller is a beautiful magazine (with a very average website) but I have rarely cooked from my issues. When I spied a Masterclass focussed on Mexico I decided to make the lima bean and chicken chilli verde for Sunday dinner and leftovers. As luck would have it I was able to buy a cheap kilo of anaheim chiles at the trash and treasure market at the Jamison Center on Sunday; now the frosts have started it's probably the last of the local peppers for the season.

This chilli tastes light and is deliciously spicy, perfect for an autumn eve, it's good served with sour cream, lots of fresh coriander and parsley, and steamed rice or some warm flour tortillas.

Lima Bean and Chicken Chilli Verde
Adapted from a recipe by Kathleen Gandy in Gourmet Traveller January 2005
Serves 6

250 g dried lima beans, soaked overnight
500 g fresh anaheim chillies
1 kg skinless chicken thighs cut into 2 cm cubes
Plain flour for dusting the chicken pieces
4 tbsp extra light olive oil
2 jalapeño chillies
1 large brown onion
3 cloves of garlic
400g tin of tomatoes
2 sprigs each of oregano and thyme
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 dried bay leaf
1 1/2 cups of chicken stock

Place the soaked lima beans in a large pot of fresh water and bring to the boil, cook for 30 minutes or until the beans are soft; drain and set aside.

Remove the stalks from the anaheim chillies, then place them under a grill on high. When the skin has blistered on one side, rotate the chillies. When they are charred all-over remove them from the grill and wrap them in cling wrap. While the chillies sweat, seed and dice the jalapeño chillies and dice the onions and garlic. Open the cling wrap parcel of chillies and slide the charred skin off the chilli, you can also remove some of the seeds; roughly chop the skinless chillies.

Toss the diced chicken with seasoned flour to coat. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large (28 cm) pot over a medium heat, then add a third of the chicken and cook for 3-4 minutes or until browned, then remove and set aside. Repeat twice with the remainder of the chicken.

Add the remaining oil to the pan, then add the chillies, onion and garlic and cook over a low-medium heat for 5-6 minutes or until softened. Crush and add tomatoes, herb and stock and increase the heat to bring the mixture to the boil. Return the chicken to the pan and add the drained lima beans. Decrease the heat to low and cook with the lid on for 20 minutes, season with salt and pepper and cook for a further 20 minutes with the lid off to allow the sauce to thicken.

Best Banana Bread

This recipe comes from C. Thiel of North Albury, New South Wales. I clipped it from a New Idea or a Women's Weekly in the 90s; it's one of the three banana bread recipes I use, each has different textural properties. This loaf is full of bits of fruit and nuts and is a little bit spicy and not too sweet; the dried fruits and nuts can easily modified to use up bits and pieces from the pantry. If it doesn't all get eaten during the week leftovers can be frozen.

Best Banana Bread
Adapted from a recipe by C. Thiel

140 g of raw sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
125 g mashed banana
1/2 tsp mixed spice or a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and all spice
120 g chopped walnuts
2 tbsp shredded coconut
3/4 cup sultanas or raisins
190 g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp of milk

Grease a 15 x 25 cm loaf pan then line with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Mash the banana in a large bowl, add the sugar, egg, spices, nuts, coconut and sultanas and mix to incorporate. Add the dry ingredients and milk in two stages.

Spread the mixture evenly into the prepared pan, bake for 45 minutes or until cooked when tested. Let the loaf stand for five minutes in the tin, then turn on to a wire rack to cool.

Cookbook Shopping

I have a bad case of procrastinators diligence; instead of devoting my time to career making activities, I am compulsively planning and pricing additions to my cookbook library for the next 5 years in exhaustive detail. Memories of a Cuban Kitchen by Mary Urrutia Randelman, Bengali Cooking by Chitrita Banerji and Quick and Easy Tsukemono by Ikuko Hisamatsu and many others have become items of great importance.

Recently launched Australian price comparison site Booko has been a great aid to my compulsive searching and list compilation. You search the site by title, author or ISBN and it retrieves prices and the cost of shipping from an impressive list of book sellers. You can compile a cart of books that gives you a running total of your bill and also accounts for things like free shipping after x dollars offered by some retailers.

For cookbooks, the UK based Book Depository (offers free international shipping), the charitable American retailer Better World Books (cheap carbon neutral shipping) and Australia's Fishpond usually come out cheapest; I even managed to score a copy of the lauded Australian reference The Cook's Companion for less that $60 from Fishpond (it's back to around $110 now). In my experience books will take longer to get to you from Fishpond than the other two.

Booko, bookmark it and don't buy books online without it.

Sorrel

My unofficial new years resolution for 2009 was to try new foods. This week's find was a bunch of just-picked of sorrel from the local Sunday markets. I used it in a simple breakfast, I removed the stalks and cut the leaved into ribbons and folded though an omelette until the leaved were just wilted. I served the omelette over a small pile of home fries. The tartness of the leaves really complemented the eggs and fried potatoes beautifully.

I will buy it again. Or I might try and forage for some as this vegetable is a common weed in most of eastern Australia. This video shows how to identify it in the wild.



Inspiration for our next meeting:
*Salmon with Sorrel Sauce
*Sorrel Tart

For the Zucchini Sceptic

I couldn't resist a big bag of late-summer zucchini from the market this morning. With a weekly lunch box gap to fill, I went back to my feed reader for inspiration. I've further modified a recipe for zucchini loaf that started in this months delicious magazine and made it to me via the Canberra Cook. I further reduced the sugar as she suggested, used a walnut and canola oil mixture and added some drak chocolate and it came out with moorish loaf with a hint of sweetness that even swayed the zucchini sceptic in the house.

Zucchini Loaf
Serves 10-12
Adapted from the Canberra Cook and delicious magazine March 2009

400 g self-raising flour
200 ml vegetable/nut oil
1 heaped tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
115 g white sugar
115 g brown sugar
3 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
500 g zucchini, grated
90 g walnuts
40 g dark chocolate, chopped


Preheat oven to 150°C; line a large bread tin (mine is 29 x 10 x 13 cm) with baking paper.

In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients except the flour and oil. Add the oil and mix well, then fold in the flour gently.

Pour into the loaf tin, and bake for 90 minutes, or until a testing skewer comes out clean. Cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack.