Koko Black, and Stone Tools

Having a sweet tooth is an advantage for a hunter gatherer. On that sort of diet sweet foods, and calories, are difficult to find. These days a sweet tooth is not so useful, but I’m always looking for excuses to indulge mine. A day outdoors, investigating remnants of tool making by hunters, is the perfect excuse to say you’ve burned enough calories to earn a sweet treat.

For a Chocoholic Sydneysider one of the best sweet treats in Canberra is Koko Black. First though, we had to earn our chocolate by exercising. Luckily we had the pleasure of doing this in springtime in Namadgi National Park. We were looking for Aboriginal stone tool making sites.

The remnants of stone tool making are flakes which have split off from the tool when it was being shaped. The site we visited was located on a sunny granite outcrop above a creek, but the flakes were from a fine-grained igneous rock. The raw materials for the tools must have been mined elsewhere.

Our fearless leader lead us to the site using his antique GPS. Dating to the 1990s it even predated graphics. You needed a separate compass to use the bearing the GPS unit calculated for you.

Back in Canberra we had worked up our appetites, so after dinner we headed to Koko Black. The Chocolate Icecream Martini is hard to resist, with it’s intensely flavoured icecream served with fudge sauce and an artistic chocolate curl.

The Chocolate Tart is very rich, and accompanied by a contrasting orange cream.

Leaving without visiting the chocolate counter was impossible, and I came home with a little paper bag of goodies. My old favourite Baileys was a must, and the new honey ganache turned out to be good too. Most impressive though, was the rum and raisin, which managed to taste very fruity without actually containing any chewy bits. It might be my new favourite.

It’s nice to get your sugar fix as honey ganache, rather than having to gather wild honey. Being a hunter gatherer can’t have been easy. At springtime in Canberra the bees are feasting on wattle, but I’m glad I’m not the one who has to rob them of their honey.

Koko Black
Canberra Centre
Bunda St
City ACT

Ratings (out of 5 snorts)

Price	3 snorts
Taste	4 snorts
Service	4 snorts
Atmosphere	3 snorts

Chorizo Cups

Many many months ago (possibly years) I went to a party at house of the Reader, who is the Male of the Species’ sister. She is an amazing cook, and she served these… things, I never got around to asking her either what they were or asking for the recipe, though I certainly meant to because I would love to be able to make them myself. Anyway, it’s now ages later and I felt it would be a bit awkward asking the Reader now, not to mention that she might not even know what I was talking about. Also, where’s the challenge in just having the recipe? I decided to reverse engineer them from what I remembered being in them, and see if I could come up with something that, even if it wasn’t precisely the same, was at least similar and tasty! So, I started off with doing a basic mix of what I specifically remembered being in it, figuring that if it didn’t work I’d just keep experimenting. However, having tested it I think I’ve got something pretty good, so here is the result.

I started off with the mix for the innards. I took two onions, sliced them, and then started caramelising them in a whole lot of butter. Once they were fairly there, I threw in a generous pinch of salt and cracked pepper. I gave it a little longer, and then I added a red capsicum, sliced finely into long strips. When I say finely, I mean about the depth of a single layer of onion since they’re much thicker in terms of depth than onion. Once it’s well cooked, add a teaspoon of brown sugar and a teaspoon of soy sauce. Stir that through thoroughly. Now you add your chorizo. Since this was just an experiment, I used cheapskate chorizos (uncooked) from Coles- if I ever make it for an actual event I’ll use good ones from the deli. Still, pretty good even with low class chorizo. So, cut it in half lenthways, and then into half circles. Stir that through your mix and let it cook a bit, and it should come out looking something like this. Yes, I cooked it in a wok (I cook practically everything in a wok )

Now, to keep yourself busy while you’re letting it caramelise at various stages you can do the next part. With this size of mix, you need two sheets of puff pastry, which makes 8. Get yourself a muffin tray, and grease the holes with a little butter- you really need to do this, so that they come out easily and don’t break up when you pull them out. Now, cut your pastry into square quarters, and push it gently into the muffin holes, folding the pastry where it needs it and allowing the tops and corners to stick up. (There’s more than 8 in the photo, because the shots are from the second attempt when I made a bigger mix ’cause I ate all the of first lot).

Have your oven preheated to 200C, and throw them in for 10-12 minutes. Done! Wasn’t that easy? They’re great for parties because they’re filling, but still fingerfood. Once they’ve been cooked they should be firm enough to pull out onto cooling racks without collapsing. Of course, depending on how fast you eat them, this may never be a problem. I somehow don’t think it’ll ever come up for me . Many thanks to the Reader for the idea- I suppose now I should contact her for the recipe and see how close I got to the original!

P.S. Apparently I was very close- the only differences are that she doesn’t add brown sugar and soy, and fries the chorizo in a separate pan to allow it to get a little crispy.

Chocolate Gingerbread Cake

The chocolate cake hall of fame sounds like exactly the kind of museum I’d like to visit. Sadly it isn’t really a place, but a chapter in Nigella Lawson’s book Feast. It’s not as good as a room full of cakes, but it’s a good read.

Flicking through the hall of fame it can be hard to decide what to bake, but I was happy with my choice. When I read Nigella’s description of her chocolate gingerbread as a “glottally thickening wodge”, I knew that the cake would be beautifully moist. It’s the kind of recipe that’s perfect to adapt for a gluten free cake. I’ve used a combination of almond meal and a gluten free flour blend in my version.

This cake keeps well because it’s so moist. It even travels well because the icing sets firm, making it less vulnerable to damage during transport. The only thing that stops it from being perfectly presentable is the slicing. This cake is moist and rich, and it will stick to your knife. The crumbs are sticky and black, chocolatey and spicy. Eat this cake with people who recognise taste over looks, and who won’t fight you for knife-licking rights.

Chocolate Gingerbread Cake
Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Feast (my version is gluten free and uses Australian sized tablespoons)

Ingredients for the cake
To heat together
175g butter
125g brown sugar
1 1/2 tabs caster sugar
200g golden syrup
200g treacle
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger

To add next
1 1/4 tsp bicarb soda
1 1/2 tabs water
2 eggs
1 cup milk
150g almond meal
125g gluten free plain flour
40g cocoa
175g choc chips

Ingredients for the icing
250g icing sugar
30g butter
1 tab cocoa
60mL milk

Method
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celcius. Line two springform pans (22cm round) with baking paper. Choose a large enough saucepan to contain all the ingredients so that the entire recipe can be prepared in this.

Melt together the butter, sugars, golden syrup, treacle, cloves, cinnamon and ginger.

Dissolve the bicarb soda in the water in a small cup.

Take the saucepan off the heat and beat in the eggs, milk and the bicarb dissolved in water.

Sift in the flour, almond meal and cocoa, and stir to combine. Finally stir in the chocolate chips.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two springform pans.

Bake for about 40 minutes until risen and set on top. Cool in the tin.

When cool prepare the icing by melting together the butter, cocoa and milk. Then sift in the icing sugar. Spread over the top of each cake.

No Dig Gardening

No dig gardening sounds like a bit of a misnomer when you apply it to pots, since they don’t usually require digging anyway. This method isn’t simply way to avoid digging though. It’s a way to create soil. It involves layering nitrogen rich and carbon rich organic materials alternately to make compost.

In my pots I used pea straw as my carbon rich material, alternating with nitrogen rich mushroom compost. Manure is another good nitrogen layer. I supplemented this with a handful of blood and bone and some seaweed (which was a gift from a friend with a lakefront house). To start the process the materials are layered alternately into the pot, with the carbon rich mulch layers about 5 cm thick and the nitrogen rich layers just thick enough to cover the straw.

In time the layers of mulch and manure will compost into a very rich soil. The only problem with the composting is that the volume in the pots will sink considerably over time, so top them up with new layers as they sink.

Spring is a very exciting time in the garden, as you harvest the last of your winter crops and plan your new plantings for summer. This spring I’ve had some great results from my no dig pots, with my pea plants climbing right along the balcony. Pea flowers have such a fragile beauty, and the sweet crunch of sugar snap peas has been a delight. I’ve eaten a lot of them straight off the vine!

While you’re enjoying your spring harvest, it’s time to plan what you want to be harvesting around Christmas time. In Sydney it is warm enough to start planning (and planting) your summer garden. Currently in my germination box are Tiny Tim Tomatoes, Jimmy Nardello Capsicum, Lemon Cucumber and Purple King Beans. When I’m growing seedlings I often swap with Alloronan so we can try more varieties. She recently gave me a baby rhubarb in a pot big enough for it to grow to full size. I hope it will be an edible present soon.

I hope you’re enjoying spring. Remember to admire the flowers in your garden, and your neighbours’ gardens, and enjoy the last of your winter veggies. It’s also time to plan for summer, so have fun with your seed catalogues and let me know what you’re up to.

Resources
Fact sheet on No Dig Gardening from the Watershed
More elaborate version from Gardening Australia.

Crème Caramel

When you’re learning a new language there’s usually a lesson on food quite early in the course. Food vocabulary is really important when you get to your destination, since you’ll want to buy meals quite frequently. Food lessons give you an insight into culture too. Applying these lessons needn’t wait until you travel overseas – why not visit a restaurant or bake a treat to get into the swing of things?

James has been learning French, which has turned out to be an excellent source of food inspiration. A listening exercise gave us a crêpe recipe, and the resulting spinach and fetta crêpes made a great change from pasta and rice for dinner. To follow up from a French main you need a delicious dessert, and crème caramel is a perfect choice.

Crème caramel is a baked custard with caramel sauce. This one is rich and eggy, with a simple caramel sauce. After reading this month’s Donna Hay magazine I’d be tempted to try some flavour variations, particularly an orange version. It’s nice to start simple though, and traditional crème caramel is beautifully smooth and fulfilling.

Crème Caramel
Recipe adapted from the Hampden Park Public School 30th Anniversary Cookbook.

Ingredients for the sauce
1 1/4 cups caster sugar
1/3 cup water

Ingredients for the custard
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup thickened cream (we used light cream)
4 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
2 tabs golden syrup

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160 ^∘C
2. Heat caster sugar and water until dissolved, then increase the heat and boil without stirring for 5-8 minutes or until golden.
3. Pour evenly between 8 half-cup ramekins and allow to set.
4. Combine milk and cream in a saucepan and heat to a simmer without boiling. Remove from heat.
5. Whisk eggs, yolks, brown sugar and golden syrup together in a heat-proof bowl.
6. Gradually whisk the the warmed milk mixture into the egg mixture.
7. Pour this over the caramel in the ramekins.
8. Put the ramekins in a large baking tray and fill with hot water to half-way up the ramekins.
9. Cover with foil and bake for 40-45 mins until the custards have set.
10. Allow to cool before serving.