A matcha made in heaven

And a good tip to limit food waste.

Hello, What’s Cookers (hrmm, we may need a better nickname. I’ll work on it).

I’m back home in my own kitchen. The sun is mostly shining, the seasons are changing and everything is coming ALIVE.

As promised, we’ll be taking a culinary (and as it turns out, entirely vegetarian) trip to Spain and Italy for our second last installment of What’s Cooking Around the World. This special has actually been quite a smooth cooking journey, but I did encounter a few bumps in the road this time round.

We’re gonna do our bit to tackle food waste (and save a few dollars in the process). I have two reading recommendations. Oh and also, I ate red dumplings and I need to talk about it.

Let’s jump right in.

What’s cooking around the world: Spain & Italy

Two stops on our whirlwind world tour this week. Honeys, we’re off to the Med.

A Spanish classic

I LOVE LOVE LOVE seafood paella, but as previously mentioned, not everyone in my household eats fruits de mer (sob). So, we’re going veggie. As we more commonly do, here on What’s Cooking.

For this, I’m turning to a recipe in the original Smith & Daughters Cookbook, by Shannon Martinez and Mo Wyse.

What the paella is SUPPOSED to look like.

Mine turned out rather… wet lol.

It’s apparently an old family recipe of Martinez’s and I reckon her ancestors may be rolling in their graves. I think I quite simply put too much stock in – the recipe calls for 1.25L and I may have added a bit more than that by accident, oops.

I left it a little longer than instructed in the oven but it just wouldn’t dry out. Oh well. It may make a nice risotto-type thing?

I would like to have another crack at it and perhaps grill something delicious to throw on top. Maybe some prawnies. Yum, yum.

An Italian dessert, sort of

For dessert, we’re stepping foot in Italy. That being said, I also kinda wanted to keep the Japanese thread from the last edition of this newsletter flowing throughout this fortnights. There’s a reason. Let me explain.

I don’t drink coffee, largely because I don’t like the taste. It’s not really something I’m mad about, but there are a few things that I get denied due to this, which can be upsetting.

One is participating Melbourne’s “coffee culture”, which sometimes looks quite fun, if not a little wanky at times (in a good way!).

The second is espresso martinis. They seem to be the cocktail most commonly poured from tap these days and I want in.

The third is tiramisu. Man, it looks TASTY but I just can't go near the stuff. You know how some people can’t eat coriander (or cilantro if you’re playing Stateside) because it tastes like soap to them? That’s kinda what coffee is for me. Except it doesn’t taste like soap. It tastes like yuck.

But I’ll tell you what is delicious. Tea. Specifically matcha green tea.

So. Yeah. We’re making matcha tiramisu. Traditional tiramisu calls for raw eggs, but I decided to chicken out and use this vegan recipe instead.

I already have most of the ingredients in the house (had to go buy a bottle of whisky though, so sad about this) and anything I didn’t have on hand was easy to grab from the local supermarket. Apart from pastry flour, but I made my own.

Same as last time; I’ll share a few observations from this recipe:

• This recipe is… unclear in some spots. For example, dried fruit (what dried fruit? It is never specified) is listed as an ingredient for the cake base, but there’s no instruction on when to add it. A comment on the post raising this question this remains unanswered. I decided to omit this ingredient entirely.

• As mentioned, I did add the optional whisky; keeping it local with Starward Two Fold.

• Vegan cream is tricky in general to get right and I just couldn’t get mine to thicken. I ended up popping the vegan cream in the fridge for ten minutes before layering on, and chucking more cashews in the matcha cream, which gave it a bit more texture. I used maple syrup rather than agave nectar, which may had have an impact. It wasn’t a disaster, just slightly frustrating for awhile.

• I didn’t bake the base long enough the first time (a theme this week) but another ten minutes in the oven made it solid enough to soak in the matcha/hot water/whisky mix. Yum.

• I wish I’d used taller glasses, or had ramekins. Actually have moments quite regularly where I long for ramekins, must add them to the shopping list!

• I had to freeze them overnight, which kinda made them look like candles. I think once thawed out a little they may come across a tiny bit more fluffier and delicate.

• Despite all this, I’m not mad at how this turned out. They look cute and are quite tasty. I had some leftover matcha cream, so I might have another crack at this over the next couple of weeks.

This is starting to feel like an episode of Nailed It!

How to avoid food waste: fortnightly tip

Hello new section! How exciting.

Food waste is a massive problem worldwide and something I’ve personally dedicated a lot of head and kitchen space to.

According to Australian charity Foodbank:

“Australia currently creates more than 7.6 million tonnes of food waste each year – enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Grounds nine times.”

This is not good, you guys.

So, to do at least a little bit to help, each fortnight What’s Cooking will share an easy tip on avoiding food waste. And even more helpfully, often these tips can save you a little extra $$.

First up: what can you do with discarded apple peels and cores?

Why, you can use them to make your very own apple cider vinegar.

ACV is a bit of a wunderkid, in that it has a multitude of uses; both internal and external.

Some of these include:

• salad dressing (see some tips below on how to flavour your homemade ACV so it is yum yum)

• all-purpose cleaner (pair 1 cup water with 1/2 cup ACV)

• mix with water and gargle to soothe a sore throat

• trap fruit flies

• as a face toner (1 part apple cider vinegar to 2 parts water)

• help poach eggs (white vinegar is also great for this)

• as a hair rinse (I tried this years ago but it made me smell like a salad. A DELICIOUS SALAD, but still.)

• for pickling! I’ve been doing a fair bit of this lately, hence why I am inspired to share this recipe.

So many uses! So why not try your hand at making your own apple scrap vinegar?

Here’s how:

1. Gather the scraps from your apples over a period of time – find a corner of your freezer and pop them in there until you’ve accumulated about a jar full.

2. Fill a sterlised glass jar (20 mins in the oven at 120°C) with apple scraps and cover with water. Add sugar or honey.

3. Weigh the scraps down with another jar lid. Cover the jar with its own lid (loosely) or chuck some fabric over the top and tie a couple of rubber bands around it. This lets air escape as the concoction ferments.

4. Let sit for 2-3 weeks as the sugars work their magic. Then, drain out the apple cores (give to backyard chooks or pop into your compost/green bin).

5. The jar can sit for another two weeks or so – it will only get stronger in flavour. Yum. So powerful.

Et voilà. You have created your own ACV.

You can now go forth and use it freely in whatever you wish, or add some other ingredients – lavender, garlic, citrus peel, chilli, basil, thyme, rosemary, etc – for extra flavour if you’re using this for cooking/salad dressing.

You may also notice a blob forming in your liquid as it ferments. Congrats, you are now the proud parent of a scoby… which you can use to create more ACV. And so the glorious, gelatinous cycle continues.

What’s cooking: other good reviews

• We need to talk about these red dumplings. They are specifically mud crab, prawn and scallop dumplings from Light Years Asian Bar & Diner; there are venues in a few places in NSW and QLD, but these were specifically from the Newcastle venue. I’ve had some pretty delicious dumplings in my life (xiao long bao remains a favourite, so much so that I tried to ruin them completely for myself by making them) and these are definitely up there. And why they’re red, I don’t exactly know, but I ain’t mad about it.

• Has anyone else been watching the dumpster fire that is And Just Like That? I was secretly (and now publicly) thrilled to see that the SATC ‘spin-off’ has been renewed for a third season. Look, it’s not the best show that was ever made and makes a mockery out of its groundbreaking predecessor. But it is indeed entertaining to watch, so long as you compartmentalise as a fan of SATC, pretending it has absolutely nothing to do with the original series.

• From the telly box, to the silver screen - if you’re at all a fan of horror, you should read this excellent retrospective my friend Fish wrote on the Texas Chain Saw/Chainsaw Massacre. There are somehow nine films in this franchise, of varying quality. The first is a masterpiece, the rest? Well. I believe I’ve seen only four of the nine and am especially keen to visit the second film, which was, can you believe it, banned in Australia until as recently (if we can still say that) as 2006.

What’s cooked: bad reviews

• This is kinda a bad review but also not entirely. Bad because I was sick last week, but while convalescing, I read two quite enjoyable books, by local authors. West Girls (Laura Elizabeth Woollett) and But The Girl (Jessica Zhan Mei Yu). West Girls is a rather delicious mix of alternative POV chapters, almost vignettes. The central thread being decades in the life of the ethnically ambiguous Luna Lewis, who launches an international modelling career, rebranding as part-Asian Luna Lu (very much reminiscent of Yellowface!). But The Girl follows protagonist ‘Girl’, or rather her stream of consciousness, as she attempts to write a ‘postcolonial’ novel while on an artist residency in Scotland. A lot of writing she does not do, but there are interesting musings on racism, inter-generational trauma and the often guilt-riddled push and pull of familial love.

• It’s ‘sprinter’ in Melbourne (the season between spring and winter) and the mostly unusually good weather means everyone is out mowing their lawns, gardening and the like when the Boy and I go for our lunchtime walks. This means I’ve been subject to a tirade of HAHA WHO’S WALKING WHO?! when I’ve been out and about in the ‘hood. Disguised as a ‘joke’, it always sounds sexist, as there’s no way a lady like myself can handle walking a big, hulking dog, right? Part of the reason it pisses me off to hear this again and again is that a) it’s usually said when the Boy is walking placidly beside me (don’t get me wrong, he can be a real jerk on lead, but 9/10 times is behaving when we encounter this nonsense), b) dude – I lift, and c) I asked my boyfriend, who handles half the dog walks, if anyone has ever said this to him and… NOT EVEN ONCE. Anyway, I’m sick of smiling back and being polite when people say this, because really, it’s just rude. If you think up any zingers I can store for later inevitable use, please share in the comments.

That’s it for this fortnight. We’ll see out What’s Cooking Around the World with a delicious Dutch snack.

Stay well and well-fed.

-Celine

Know of a friend who may enjoy this newsletter? Please forward this post on! And remember, likes are loved (by both moi and internet algorithms).