Lady Lunchalot

I’ve been under the weather lately and have had no appetite at all for the past ten days.

So unfortunately I have no interesting gastronomic morsels to report, except to thank the lovely Clarkasoris for the delicious chicken soup. It was the ultimate comfort food.

Hopefully my appetite will have resurfaced by the weekend.

O and I are in the process of renovating our house, and this includes a whole new kitchen and living area. I’ve been working on the kitchen design in my head for ages, but it’s getting close to crunch time and we need to pick a kitchen and lock down a plan.

Some things I’ve included in the design are:

• A hole in the kitchen bench with a chute to a small bin underneath so I can collect kitchen scraps for the compost bin outside.
• A big hanging pot rack over the bench.
• A portion of the benchtop in stone for rolling pastry.
• An appliance cupboard for the glorious Kitchen Aid mixer.
• One of those beautiful big enamel French provincial trough sinks.
• Drawers for pots and pans, instead of cupboards.
• A walk in pantry. (This should be number 1 on the list. I’ve always wanted one of these).
• Plate racks for storing platters.

So I thought I’d ask all the food lovers out there what you like most about your kitchen?

Ok, I admit it. This morning was one of my weirder foodie moments.

Last night I had a terrible night’s sleep. There was a mosquito in our room, and I am a magnet for mosquitos. I tried staying under the covers so I wouldn’t become a mozzie smorgasbord, but it was really hot and between the infernal mosquito drone buzzing by my face as soon as I managed to nod off for a few seconds and the constant itch of the bites on my feet, I had a really rotten night of it.

So by 5.30am I was exhausted, yet wide awake, and I did the only sane thing that a Melbourne food lover can do at that ungodly hour. I went to the Vic Markets.

There’s something really special about watching a city wake up. I was driving along Footscray Road watching the sun come up behind the city and I had one of those Disneyesque good-to-be-alive moments. By the time I got to the markets it was already buzzing, so I dragged out my granny trolley to join in the growing throng of early-bird shoppers. Were they all insomniac foodies like me?

First I did a lap of the fruit and veg shed just to get in the mood. I love the smells of this shed in summer. Within a few feet my nose could smell everything from piles of ripe mangoes to bushels of sharply-scented coriander. And there’s so many bargains around in summer. I couldn’t go past a pile of elephantine blood plums at $3 a kilo, or 10 pendulous passionfruits for $2.

Next up was the seafood section. I’ve had this idea of a whole fish cooked on our new barbie for a while, and Zoe is coming over for lunch tomorrow so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I bought a beautiful big schnapper that could easily feed four people for $13.

By the time I got home with my granny trolley bulging at the seams, I was dying to cook something so I decided to make some passionfruit curd with those beautiful passionfruits.

I’ve always had a soft spot for passionfruit. Besides the fact that it is a key garnish on my favourite dessert (pavlova), we used to have a passionfruit vine along our back fence when I was a kid. One of my fondest childhood memories is biting through the skin with a big crack before sucking out all the sweet, tangy pulp still warm from the sun.

Stephanie’s Bible was the best place for a recipe. She recommends melting 60g of butter with half a cup of sugar before mixing in the pulp of six passionfruit with two beaten eggs. Stir constantly over a very low heat until thick, and then pour into sterilised jars.

Needless to say, it’s delicious and very fattening. And the part that makes it REALLY fattening is that it made me realise there must be a passionfruit sponge cake lurking somewhere in my not-too-distant future.

The only sad thing about passionfruit curd (besides what it can do to my hips) is that it only lasts a couple of weeks. So it’s not a true preserve which means that delicious fresh passionfruity tang is still destined to be enjoyed only in summer.

A friend recently emailed me a really interesting site that appeals to both the food geek and the web geek in me.

Group Recipes enables you to do the usual posting, sharing and rating recipes. But it also has some really cool stuff, like Roger the Recipe Robot, a taste algorithm calculator that predicts whether you will like a particular recipe, or whether you have compatible food tastes to another member. You can also explore recipes by taste, mood, photo, ingredients, uniqueness, rating, and your compatibility according to Roger.

To celebrate their launch they’re running a competition to win a new kitchen. I don’t know anyone who loves food who wouldn’t want to win that, so you can sign up to Group Recipes and enter for yourself (you’ll also be helping me get a few more entries!). Competition aside, it looks like quite an interesting site and definitely worth checking out.