Lady Lunchalot

I’ve have been meaning to make marmalade for ages and finally, I have a few jars of marmalade cooling on the kitchen bench.

Marmalade is pretty easy to make. I used a recipe from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess as a guide. Use seville oranges - they’re in season now so they’re pretty cheap, and they ensure that the marmalade remains clear rather than becoming murky while it’s cooking.

Boil the oranges whole until they become quite squishy and then chop them very finely, removing the pips. Boil the pips in some of the water you boiled the oranges in.

While the pips are boiling, add sugar and the juice from a few lemons. You can add other flavourings too, like ginger or alcohol. Pour the pip water in and boil the lot for about 15 minutes, then pour into sterilised jars.

I’ve still got enough oranges left over for another batch, so tomorrow night I might do a fancy version. We have a bottle of brandy tucked away, maybe brandy and orange? How would quince and orange go together? Or maybe I could pick up some cranberries from somewhere. Are they in season?

I’ve been a bit experiemental tonight. I made a casserole of some chicken breast I had in the fridge, mixed with some fresh blood oranges and chunks of fennel.

It was very quick. I just greased a casserole dish, juiced and zested a few blood oranges, chopped up a fennel bulb and mixed it all together.

I love blood oranges. They’re so dramatic. Did you know they originated from a mutation in an orange grove in Malta? My mother also originated in Malta, though presumably not from a mutation…

I chose a beautiful female fennel from the Vic Markets the other day. You can tell the difference between male and female fennel bulbs, because male ones are more oblong-shaped and female ones are nice and round. Female fennel has a softer flavour and is more versatile - you can eat them raw or cooked, whereas the male ones taste so sharp they are too harsh for eating raw.

Blood oranges are the perfect pairing for fennel. They have a deep flavour and sweetness that cuts right through the liquoriceness of the fennel.

I’m making a pot of chicken stock to use up the veggies from the weekend’s cooking frenzy.

I love making chicken stock. If I am feeling sick I always make chicken soup, and it always makes me feel better. Though I am not sure whether it’s eating the soup or making the soup that makes me feel so good.

Home-made stocks are excellent to keep on hand. They freeze really easily and are a great low-fat way to add flavour to anything from stir-fries, to soups, to pasta sauces. They also ensure that no food goes to waste when you are cooking. In fact, if I am having a major cookup, I often keep the veg scraps aside to use in a stock later.

When I was at the Vic markets the other day I picked up a bag of chicken frames for $1. This is the basis of the soup. You just throw in some raw chicken bones into a big pot, and add any vegetables like carrots, onion, or whatever you have on hand. Today I used two carrots, a leek, a big onion, some leftover parsley (just chuck that in whole), some garlic and celery. remember you don’t have to use the “good bits’ of the veg. Just pop the whole lot in there - leaves, stalks and all.

Steer clear of using potatoes, or anything that might make your stock cloudy.

Cover the lot with water and bring it to the boil, then turn it down to a simmer and let it go for a few hours. You can top it up with more water along the way if you like. Give it a skim with a slotted spoon every now and then to remove the scum that gathers around the top.

When it’s done, strain it through a colander (or a sheet of muslin if you’re feeling really fancy) into another pot or bowl to remove the bones and vegetables.

Then let the pot cool and put it in the fridge overnight. The fat will float to the surface and congeal. Skim this off, and then put the stock in freezer containers or ice cube trays and freeze it until you need it.

Hello Blogathon supporters,

I’ve finally woken up after a solid 12 hours sleep.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Your support over the weekend was fantastic! Altogether we raised $1158.40 for World Vision. Woo hoo!

In total the 285 people who took part in Blogathon 2006 raised almost $100,000 for charities worldwide. It has been a really fun event, where bloggers get to indulge in their favourite hobbies for 24 hours while raising money for a good cause.

So here’s a list of some ways World Vision might use the money we have raised:

Well done!

Soon you’ll be receiving a Blogathon email directing you to the World Vision site where you can make your donation.

Thank you again. I look forward to seeing you around at ladylunchalot.com in the future.

In the meantime, happy eating!

Lady Lunchalot

This is my official last post in Blogathon 2006. I’ve written a blog entry every 30 minutes for the past 24 hours. I haven’t slept (except for a quick 20 minutes of shut-eye a couple of hours ago) and I have thought of little else except for all things culinary for most of this time.

I have written 49 food blogs in 24 hours.

I have cooked and shared the following dishes:

• Lamb tagine with quinces
• Quince and apple chutney
• Spinach, ricotta and parsley pie
• Bagels
• Roasted beetroot dip
• Lasagne
• Chocolate brownies

I have raised $1,158.40 for World Vision Australia (officially $990.40, but a few people are yet to verify their pledges).

I’ve met lots of wonderful people all blogging to help their selected worthy causes. And I seem to have made a lot of them hungry!

I also have a lot of dishes to do : (

I am exhausted. It’s 11pm Sunday night. I am going to bed now.

Bon appetit.

My culinary career has not exactly been a series of five-star performances. I thought I’d share some of the near-lethal lowlights of my time in the kitchen. Thankfully it has been many, many years since I have almost killed anyone with my cooking!

A near-miss with mercury poisoning:

When I was a kid I stuck our family thermometer in a bolognese sauce because I wanted to see how hot it was. It shattered, leaving glass and a slick of mercury floating in the sauce. I almost gave my entire family mercury poisoning because I was so scared I would get in trouble for breaking the thermometer that I didn’t want to tell anyone!

Surprise breakfast:

I remember being quite little and making bacon and eggs for breakfast as a surprise for my mum. The bacon wasn’t turning out just like mum’s (I was undercooking it) so I kept on feeding it to the dog and trying another few rashers until I got it right. I never got it right, and I ended up feeding about 2kg of bacon to our golden retriever, who vomited the whole lot up all over the driveway. Needless to say, Mum loved the surprise.

Tin can projectiles:

When I was 15, I blew up a brand new stove. Yes, I actually exploded the whole thing. I left a can of something boiling in water, and the pressure built up in the can until it exploded, ricocheting off the ceiling (where it left a can-shaped indentation in the plaster) and shattering the glass top of the stove. The explosion was so loud I thought a car had driven through the front of our house.

I think these stories are a great testament to my mum. She taught me how to cook, and you can see that the woman has the patience of a saint. (Though you should have seen that vein in her neck bulge when I blew up the kitchen).

Cooking is one of my greatest pleasures, and it’s the type of pleasure that I can share with others. If I hadn’t been encouraged to keep on cooking and learning about food (despite the heavy-metal poisoning risks, trips to the vet, and unexpected kitchen renovations) there’s no way I would have as much fun with it as I do today.

It’s incredible how easy cooking is really. I’ve always been surprised when people compliment my cooking. I’ve never considered myself a good cook. It’s just that I am a person who actually cooks and gives it a go, rather than just thinking it all seems like too much work and never trying in the first place.

And of course, the more you cook, the better you get. You learn the rules of the game over time, which teach you how to correct yourself if one of your meals starts to go astray. Like today, I was melting the chocolate for the brownies over a very low heat even though the recipe didn’t say that, because I know from bitter experience how easily chocolate can burn.

So my advice for people who want to cook is to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty in the kitchen.

I adore cookbooks. I rarely follow the recipes, but I just love flicking through them.

Some of my tried and true favourites are:

• Gourmet Traveller Magazine. O bought me a subscription last Christmas and I love it.
• Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. This is the Australian cooking bible.
• Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess, and Feast. I think Nigella is just the best thing ever. I am sooo jealous of her pantry.
• Delicious Magazine
• Cuisine Magazine, from New Zealand. This is a truly outstanding food magazine.

Pies are one of the most comforting foods around. There’s nothing you can’t out in them: sweet, savoury, or anything in between. Here are a few pies I’d like to make:

• Pecan pie
• Guiness beef pie
• Traditional English pork pies
• A good old fashioned apple pie. Though I have made these thousands of times before. Dead easy and quick.

I’d intended to make a pie today, but exhaustion got the better of me. This Blogathon has really rekindled my love of a good cookup (not that the flames had burned that low or anything) so I think maybe I’ll have a few themed cookups in the not-too-distant future.

American recipes really stand out to me. I often have trouble relating to them. I don’t know whether it’s because I don’t recognise some of the ingredients, or whether the flavours just seem different to an Australian palate.

In American recipes the ingredients seem so pre-packaged and branded. I remember looking for a recipe for an orange cake recently and finding a recipe that listed “one packet of yellow cake mix” as the first ingredient.

And the flavour combinations generally seem so much sweeter than for an Australian palate. Has anyone else had this experience?