Finding Jane

Very exciting times.

About 10 years ago, I started a project called Urban Driftwood. It began as a collection of writing, poetry and short stories, and grew into a mix of word and image, comprising photos and paintings that I put together from local (Wellington) artists. We had a great collection, but then the realities of life, work, and trying to get an independent publication funded and distributed put all our plans to rest. Urban Driftwood went on the shelf.

In the intervening years, I lost touch with all but a few of the artists and photographers who had contributed work. I even lost touch with one of the writers, Jane. Now and then the project would re-emerge, but other than a redrafting, nothing much ever happened. I was uncomfortable going ahead with the project if I wasn't in touch with the contributors, so after a review and a polish, Urban got saved under a new file name and put aside again.

Last year I discovered Lulu.com. Suddenly, internet-based Publish-On-Demand services had made a project like Urban viable. It came back off the shelf. The only way I could make a go of it now was by working with only the material I had from the people I still had contact with. So we went back, and we cut, with a very large pair of scissors. All the visuals were discarded, other than the cover image, which had been provided by Steve, one of the writers. It was tough, but I had to cut Jane from the writing ensemble.

We generated a new draft, and new covers, and we were a few formatting tweaks away from uploading Urban to Lulu and doing something with it at long last. I even went out and took photos of driftwood, and put out an email poll on the best colour for the cover. Although we had put together a fairly passable piece of work, I felt that dropping Jane's writing had lost some essential, balancing perspective from the overall concept of Urban Driftwood. This may have been because the other three writers (myself, Morgue, and Steve) are all male, and a female point of view amidst the clamour of angsty young men should never be ignored. Time has a way of moving quickly, though, and its already August. Still we haven't finalised Urban and printed an inaugural run. Was there a reason?

Then by chance I spotted a familiar name on Facebook, and I got excited. I chased that name, and found Jane. The right Jane, no less, and hopefully she's still keen to be a part of the longest surviving project I have on my shelf.

I'm suddenly very excited about Urban Driftwood again!

Crockpot Mince

Sounds good, eh?

This was one of those mornings when I knew that I wanted dinner to be ready when I got home. C was taking Isaac up the line for the day and wouldn't be home til around 5, and I didn't want to get home and have to start cooking. So as I made my breakfast I got dinner ready. It still feels strange to be chopping onions and carrots before the sun's even up, but it was worth it.

Not my most tasty of meals, largely because the grey matter is still pretty much grey at that time of day, but with a little thought, probably a grating of nutmeg, a splash of sweet chilli sauce, some tomato paste, and maybe some mushrooms to go in at the end, it would be great. But this is easy, and in the middle of the week, that's what matters.

Crockpot Mince

(Serves 4)

Into the Crockpot, mix up the following:
600g Beef Mince
1 Chopped Onion
5 Peeled Garlic Cloves, gently crushed with the flat edge of a knife
1 Sliced Carrot
1 Can of Chopped Tomatoes
2 lugs of Worcester Sauce
Freshly Ground Salt & Pepper
1 T dried Italian Herbs
2 dried Bay Leaves

Turn the Crockpot on to low and leave for 6-8 hours. Stir a couple of times toward the end to break up any lumps of mince.

Serve with pasta or rice, steamed veges, freshly grated parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.

Zesty Crumbed Chicken

There's a funny thing you'll find when looking through old 70s Cookbooks. Its called the 70s. Crikey, but they had some funny ideas back then. It seemed that nothing couldn't be pureed or moussed or blended or jellied. Some of the things that they did to fish were just wrong.

Anyway, I had a few old books from that dark period of culinary history, and I decided a while back that there must be some value in them, even if the recipes themselves ought to be microwaved on high for several days, and their ashes spread over the vege patch. So I scoured through the old books and salvaged a handful of recipes to try, or at least adapt. What follows is an adaption.

Before I get to the nuts and bolts, I found it very interesting that in this particular book (No, I can't give its title as it has been recycled many months ago now) there was a particular interest in turning home cooking into a healthy experience. Apparently in the 70s they worried about this a lot. What I saw was the removal of many ingredients that were considered "BAD" (egg, butter), and replaced them with things deemed "GOOD" (yoghurt, margarine). Then, because no-one knew any better, they would go and line the baking tray with aluminium foil, and undo all that hard work. Of course, with the hindsight of 15 years of research into the dangers of cooking with aluminium (and plastic, for that matter, not to mention margarine), none of us now would be silly enough to do that. Would we?

So with this in mind, and not quite having a baking dish with a tray big enough to complete the final stage of this meal, I got all crazy and layered a bunch of ramekins on the bottom of a baking dish with some baking paper on top of them so that the fat could drain away. It sort of worked. Sort of. Of course, I'll be grinning on the other side of my face in 20 years when they tell us how bad cooking with baking paper is, and how only those crazy folk in the good old 00s would have ever done that...

Disclaimer: Freshly Ground takes no responsibility for the number of dishes this meal generates.

Zesty Crumbed Chicken

Makes 5 servings

Defrost enough Chicken Pieces for 5 people (about 1 - 1.5kg). Remove the skin and pat dry.

In a large bowl, mix up 3 eggs, 5 crushed garlic cloves, freshly ground salt and pepper, 1 t dried thyme or 1 T fresh thyme leaves, and 1 t dried tarragon leaves. In a pie dish or similar, mix up 1 C of breadcrumbs and 2 crushed weetbix or similar, with the grated zest of half an orange and 1 small lemon, and 3 T of grated fresh parmesan.

Coat the chicken pieces in flour. Dip each piece in the egg mixture, coating thoroughly, then place in the crumb. Coat and turn, ensuring that the whole piece is well covered. Place on a plate and repeat until all the chicken is crumbed. Put in the fridge for at least 20 mins to allow the crumb to bind to the chicken. (This is the bit that it was worth keeping the recipe for - you'd laugh if you knew how much I had already changed.) Preheat oven to 200C.

Heat a layer of oil in a heavy pan. Place the chicken in the hot oil 2 pieces at a time and brown; about 5 minutes a side. Keep the chicken moving so it doesn't stick, and ensure there is enough oil in the pan that it doesn't burn. This is not a Heart Foundation Tick meal (Although apparently Milo is now). When all the chicken is in your baking tray (as described above or on a tray if you have one), place in the oven on bake for about 45 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Serve with a side of fried rice, some steamed carrot, broccoli and cauli and some fried courgettes with wilted silverbeet, if that's what takes your fancy.

The Politics of Dependence

It's an election year. Now, I have no plans to make this site political, but a thought did occur to me on the way home.

For fear of bringing the full terrifying weight of the Electoral Finance Act down on my head, no parties will be named in this post.

It seems that we have a major party who would be happy for the bulk of the population to depend on the government. And there is another party who would like everyone to depend on the business sector. There are several smaller parties who advocate various positions in between these two. But it seems to me that there is only one party who continue to push for people's right to depend on themselves, and to suggest that the government ought to be willing to support such endeavours.

When we were in Melbourne last year, I noticed that the Victoria State government was paying a rebate of 50% of all costs to people who were installing their own rainwater catchment systems and solar panels (Please, correct me if I'm wrong - there's nothing worse than the fall from a high horse when you're not really in the saddle). Here, it will cost a minimum of about $3000 to retrofit a small solar water heating system in an existing home (its cheaper if you install when a house is being built). Then, if you qualify, the government will pay you up to $500 towards the cost of interest on a loan to pay for said solar water heating system. Which is a start, but is it enough to convince people that its worth the investment?

People need to be encouraged to do more for themselves and to rely less on either A) the government, or B) the consumer market, but the costs of becoming even marginally self-sufficient are awfully prohibitive. Also, the long-term effects of such a societal change are at odds with the overall agendas of both the major parties in this country (and probably in most countries, to be fair). Increased self-sufficiency, while better for the planet, the small community and the individual, is detrimental to the mass triumvirate institution of bureaucracy, industry and corporate greed. If people learn to look after themselves a little better, we won't need the massive machine that grinds away consuming our energy and absorbing our productivity.

There should be one issue that matters more this year than we've ever admitted to before now, and that is the simple fact of how we can best be at balance with our planet in a time of rampant consumerism and depleting resources. Just a little something to chew on as the election campaign gets underway.

And that's me for politics for now. If it takes your fancy, you can always follow some of the links on the right for more comprehensive coverage.

Homemade Jelly - This is not a Misprint

It has been mentioned that I really ought to balance out all those mains with some desserts, so here we go.

This comes courtesy of Gran in Wanganui. There's a lot to be said for paring things back to how they used to be done, before we had all these convenience products on the shelf. For a start, making jelly from scratch, you know exactly what's going into your dessert, and there are no artificial colours or flavours to be seen. On the downside, this is a bit time-consuming and by far more work than just pouring boiling water into a bowl of jelly crystals, but the results are fantastic.

This post introduces Freshly Ground's Dessert Chef extraodinaire, who shall hereafter be known as C. In case you haven't guessed already, I'm not really a dessert kind of guy. But I did read a recipe for some yummy pear tarts just recently, and they might make it here yet. Watch this space.

Lemon Jelly

Ingredients (4 Servings):
3/4 Cup Sugar
1 1/2 T Gelatine
2 Cups Cold Water
2 Lemons
1 Mandarin

Stir the sugar and gelatine in a saucepan. Add cold water, stir again and leave to stand while you peel the skin from the lemons and mandarin with a potato peeler, being careful not to peel off the white pith. Drop the peel into the gelatine mixture, then heat until it comes to the boil and the gelatine dissolves. Remove form the heat. Squeeze the fruit, which should yield 1/4 to 1/2 Cup of juice. Add this to the pot, along with any pulp and seeds, stir well, then pour the jelly through a fine sieve into the dish in which it will set. Allow to cool before placing in the fridge to set.
We had this, and I have to say it was the best jelly I've ever tasted. And I like jelly. Based on this, you can make so many variations. Raspberries will be on the menu when they're in season.

Creamy Dhukka Beef Stew

Its not a Slow Cooker Stew this time. I've not been 100% happy with my stew results in the Slow Cooker, although I've been stoked with Lamb Knuckles and Chicken. Today we had a bit of tenderised beef steak, and while this in not generally considered ideal for stewing, I was listening to the radio a couple of weeks back and listened in utter astonishment as Jeremy Jones provided a recipe for Beef Stroganoff made with fillet steak. That's just crazy! I thought. But in all fairness, if you have no time and plenty of money it sounds reasonable enough, and I haven't actually tried it myself. And since we had a frying steak on a stewy day (in more than one sense of the word) I decided I'd have a go at making a stew that might not need several hours cooking. Prep and cooking time was under 2 hours, and it probably could've been shorter.

You can find dhukka in middle eastern or Mediterranean groceries, or follow the link for a recipe that I haven't tried.If you're lucky enough to live in Wellington, Christchurch or Nelson, the Mediterranean Food Warehouse usually stocks a nice blend, along with lots of other goodies (not a sponsored plug!).

Creamy Dhukka Beef Stew

Finely chop half a head of garlic, 1 onion and 2 carrots. Heat some oil in a medium sized pot and soften these . Add 1/2t of blended curry powder to the veges and toss. When the curry has mixed through the veges, add about 3T of Cider Vinegar and reduce to a simmer for about 5 minutes.

Chop 600g of tenderised steak into chunks and season in a bowl with freshly ground salt and pepper, olive oil and a liberal coating of dhukka. Stand aside. Remove the onion mixture from the pot and heat a bit more oil. When the oil is hot, brown off the meat in a couple of batches. When you've finished the meat, heat the pot again and deglaze with a mixture of about 1/8 Cup of balsamic vinegar and 1T of honey. Reduce the glaze by half, then return the meat to the pot. Toss well in the glaze, then return the onions to the pot. Mix well. Add a can of chopped tomatoes, bring to a gentle bubble and reduce to a gentle simmer for 1 to 1&1/2 hours. In the last half hour add some veges to the stew. Over a pot of boiling water, steam a few florets of brocolli and cauliflower. I did ours over a pot of kumera and lovely new potatoes bought fresh from the market on Saturday morning, boiled up with a sprig of mint out of the garden and some peeled lemon rind (thanks, lemon tree!). When the broco and cauli are hot, pop them in the stew and mix through. Then add 1/4 Cup of cream and stir through thoroughly. Increase the heat to reduce the stew a bit, allowing about 5 mins for the cream to thicken, and dish with the potatoes and kumera. Lovely stuff.

Cooking up New Features

The lovely people at Google have been kind enough to provide me with a custom search bar, which you will see if you take a look to the right of this post and down a bit (or up, as time goes by...). I have set this Foodie Googlie up to only search for things relating to food, cooking, recipes and suchlike. Give it a go! See if its as good as I imagine it might be.

I've also added a few live feed options down the side a bit too, but I really don't know what this does. I suspect it means that when I update Freshly Ground, you will somehow be informed.

It was also recommended that I join the Technorati, though I am likewise ignorant of exactly what this has really meant for me as a blogger and citizen of cyberspace. But as the advice came from a well-trusted source, I, well, trusted it. Please, if you like Freshly Ground, take a moment to fave me (I hope it only takes a moment, anyway). I currently rank about 1.9 billionth in the world, so any advance on that would be encouraging.

And while you're about it, rememer the Free Rice page. Go donate some food to hungry people and expand your brain power at the same time.