Breakfast Jaffle-pie

So, previously I have walked you through making a blackberry jaffle-pie in a jaffle maker. This particular way of cooking really appeals to me since there’s so many variable fillings you can put in, as I’m sure you’ve worked out for yourselves. I’m going to take you through a breakfast jaffle pastie because it’s a filling combination you might not otherwise consider. This particular effort owes itself to another of my breakfast favourites, the basil/fetta omlette. The omelette is basically what it says it is, basil leaves and chopped fetta scrambled up with eggs and served with some toast and a hash brown or two. Adapting it to a jaffle maker was going to take a little thought. Being honest, I will tell you that this recipe is easy, but quick it is not. Save it for a weekend when you have the time to fluff around making something a bit special.  You need a sheet of puff pastry (or more, depending on how many of these you intend to make- one sheet does two pasties) out of the freezer and softening while you get together your other ingredients- an egg, a leaf of spinach, some fetta and some pinenuts.

The first thing you need is the leaf of spinach. If you have a garden, walk up and get one (which is what I do) or otherwise you need to have bought some spinach ahead of time. Use the rest of it to make a quiche or something, we only need one leaf here. Boil your kettle, and tear your leaf into smallish pieces; if you aren’t sure how big you want them, err on the side of smaller. Put the pieces in a bowl, pour boiling water over them, and chuck a saucer or plate on top to keep the heat in, then walk away and leave it.

While your spinach is cooking, chop up your fetta nice and small. Maybe half centimetre strips-ish? Again, err on the small side. By the time you’ve done that your puff pastry should be soft enough to put in the jaffle maker. A critical point here- normally, you would preheat your jaffle maker before cooking things in it. DO NOT PREHEAT for this. Your pastry will be cooked before you get a chance to put your fillings in. Put it in (half will be on the iron and half sort of hanging off), and then with a spoon or your fingers, push the pastry down into the concave bits so that you have a little scoop to put things in. Not preheating also helps with the not-burning-your-fingers bit here. The point of this, as you can see above, is so your egg will sit in there nicely and not ooze everywhere. If you have all your other bits and pieces prepared, you can probably turn on your jaffle maker to start is heating at this point. Check your spinach before you do though, as timing is important to getting maximum tastiness.

Check your spinach, it should be just nicely blanched (which is to say a tiny bit undercooked). If it isn’t, give it a bit longer or refresh with new hot water. Once it’s ready, strain it, and then squeeze the excess water out with your hands (be careful, it will still be quite hot), then disperse it around on top of your egg. I should point out that as I was making this for me alone, I have a different flavour in the other space- basil, parmesan and mushroom. If I was making it for someone else as well, I’d obviously have to do the same thing in both spots.

Next put in your fetta and pinenuts. Be generous with them, they’re your main sources of flavour here. Now, just fold the other half of the pastry over and close the lid on your jaffle maker to let it cook. The trick with this is the egg. You really want to keep the yolk just a little bit liquid (soft boiled-ish) but you still want it heated through. I got it wrong once and the yolk was still cold… ergh…

The best way to do it is to turn the jaffle maker off when it looks roughly like the above. Leave it in the jaffle maker so it continues to cook with the remaining heat, but with the power off it’s going to cook the outside faster and only heat the inside so you cook the pastry and leave your egg soft. Once the pastry’s looking cooked, haul it out and serve.

The results are delightful. There are so many more combinations you can do with an egg, because it means that you don’t necessarily have to rely on spreads, chutneys or cheese for moisture. I’m even thinking of putting hollondaise sauce in one with some double smoked ham and seeing how that comes out. Happy experimenting!

A Food Tour of Hartley

I’m not sure if visiting two establishments really counts as a food tour, but when you travel from Sydney to Hartley it feels like a tour. You get to travel over the Blue Mountains, where you can stop at lookouts to view the sandstone peaks. From the top of the mountains you wind steeply down Victoria Pass. This is the route that was taken by the explorers Blaxland, Lawson and Wentorth, and today it remains the main pass through the mountains. There are some interesting old stone bridges paralleling the modern road which are worth looking at, although these aren’t particularly well sign posted. When you get to the bottom of the pass you will reach Hartley, and this is where my mini food tour takes place.

Since Hartley is just down from Victoria Pass, it’s more of a valley in the mountains than part of the Western Plains. When you drive through Hartley there are two things to notice, apple orchards and galleries. Usually I hurtle through Hartley to some destination further West, but I have made a few stops in Hartley and that’s how I discovered the Talisman Gallery and Adam’s Shed.

The Talisman Gallery has been in Hartley for a while now. The art is metalwork, including mirrors, candelabras and statues. Some are finished shiny silver, and others have a shimmering black metallic sheen. My favourite piece at the gallery is the Goddess Mirror. I had one made for my 21st birthday and when I visit the gallery it still stands out as my favourite mirror. Unfortunately I don’t dare drill a hole in the wall while I’m renting, so it has to hang at my parents’ place.

The cafe is a newer addition to the Talisman Gallery that is very popular. It’s only open from Thursday to Sunday for lunch and dinner. We dropped in on a Friday night, and discovered that there were no tables available because of a big birthday party. We were disappointed not to be able to sit amongst the art, with the heat of the wood-fired oven, but we settled for take away.

We shared a roast pumpkin and goat’s cheese pizza. The pumpkin was beautifully soft and sweet, and went well with the tangy goats cheese. The swirl of olive tapenade was pretty, but didn’t have a noticeable flavour. Most of the pizza bases are made on the premises, but the gluten free ones are brought in to avoid contamination problems in the small space. I’ve been trying to choose which gluten free pizza bases I like best, and this was a thin one with a good texture.

Adam’s Shed is my other Hartley favourite. They sell local wines, cheeses, olives, honeys and preserves. There are wine tastings too. Out the back there’s a farm supply section that sells giant bags of animal feed and irrigation parts and all kinds of other mysterious things. I’m a tourist though, so I’m here for the food. I picked up a bottle of olives from Forbes, some marinated fetta from Mudgee and a dozen Hartley eggs. I couldn’t resist a giant tea towel chequered with cows either.

Whether you’re on your way West, or you’re looking for a nice day trip, Hartley is an excellent destination for foodies. I’ll certainly be stopping there again soon.

Talisman Gallery and Cafe
2360 Great Western Hwy
Little Hartley, NSW

The Mystery Vegetable

Alloronan has a pretty impressive veggie patch. She planted out a variety of summer vegetables, but perhaps her most prolific plants were the accidental ones. The tomato harvest after moving the compost heap was great. She got a jap pumpkin and a very nice rockmelon from the same source. Strangely though, the most mysterious vegetable wasn’t a child of the compost. It was a ring-in which grew from a perfectly ordinary packet of zucchini seeds. All its siblings grew into regular black zucchinis. This seed grew up to produce a mystery vegetable. At first we thought it was a butternut pumpkin. That was until we opened it. Then we discovered it was not a pumpkin at all. The flesh is pale green like a honey dew and the middle is soft and full of seeds like zucchini. The Rural Artist thinks it might be a gramma. I wonder if it is one of the parents the seed companies use to make their hybrid plants. It’s hard to imagine it as a parent to a zucchini though.

In spite of the vegetable being a mystery, I was determined to eat it. It seems that American’s refer to everything from zucchini to pumpkins as squash. That should mean you can cook them all in much the same way. You can stuff and bake zucchinis, squash or pumpkin. I decided that was what I would do with our mystery vegetable. It was very easy to hollow out, more like a zucchini than a pumpkin. I pre-baked the shells for a while to soften them. In the meantime I fried the innards with onion and olives. I added silverbeet, pine nuts, fresh basil and fetta to the mix. When the vegetable shells were soft I filled them and baked them for a little longer.

The result was a very pleasant Mediterranean flavoured stuffed vegetable. The flesh was easy to scoop out from the tough skin. In flavour it was not at all like a pumpkin, but tasted pretty similar to a zucchini or a button squash. I think you could stuff any of these vegetables with a spinach, fetta and olive filling quite successfully. Mystery vegetables on the other hand are a rare treat.

If anyone has seen one of these vegetables before let me know what you think it is. I’ve done a little research into grammas now, and I think it refers to more than a single vegetable. I had heard of grammas before and I knew that they were a type of pumpkin that could be used to make gramma pie (which is sweet like pumpkin pie). Interestingly my googling mostly brought up Australian sites. On hearing this James immediately sent me to the Macquarie Dictionary (subscription required) which defines gramma:

noun NSW a type of pumpkin, Cucurbita moschata, the fruit of which is elongated and has an orange flesh and skin.

It is interesting that they think the term is regionalised to NSW, especially since the best information I have found so far is from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries. They have a fact sheet on the commercial production of pumpkins and grammas. They say that the things we call pumpkins come from two species, Cucurbita maxima (pumpkins) and Cucurbita moschata (grammas). Jarrahdales and Queensland Blues are pumpkins while Butternuts and Japs are grammas. Grammas seem to grow on a smaller plant and have a shorter storage period. Apparently the two species will cross-pollinate readily with each other but not with other cucurbits (e.g. melons, cucumbers and zucchini).

That pretty well satisfies my curiosity on grammas, except for the pertinent question of what a gramma pie tastes like.

Lentil and fetta salad

A barbeque at the beach is a great way to celebrate the end of the year. If everyone brings a plate you can have quite a diverse lunch. I had promised to make a salad, but I wanted it to be substantial since I might have trouble finding gluten free things to eat. Looking for inspiration I turned to Not Quite Nigella. Her lentil and chorizo salad sounded good, tasty and filling. Chorizo was out though if I was going to please the vegetarians. I decided on fetta as a vegetarian alternative and added some vegetables for a bit of colour. Spinach is compulsory for me at the moment since it’s growing so well in the garden.

Do you like my rice cake plate? Our forgetfulness with paper plates was a bonus for the environment, but I wish I’d had a spoon to eat the salad. Here’s the recipe for you.

Ingredients
2 tins of brown lentils
1 onion
1 red capsicum
2 flat mushrooms
3 leaves of silverbeet
rosemary, bay and thyme leaves
olive oil for cooking
1 piece of greek fetta

Method
Heat a little olive oil and fry the onion with the herbs. When the onion is done add the mushrooms and cook until soft. Briefly cook the spinach until wilted. At this stage you can take the pan off the heat. Rinse the lentils and drain them before you add them. Add the diced capsicum raw for more colour and crunch. The cubes of fetta should be added last so that they don’t break up when you’re stirring.

I’ll leave you with some photos of the other creations at the picnic. The custard tarts were very popular.

The cream puffs had two different fillings, both custard and chocolate.

In all we had a very nice lunch in a pretty location. A great way to end the year.