Resist the urge to eat the plain cooked pastry. Mostly. You can have a nibble.

Pastry = 150g plain flour, 75g cold butter, cubed, pinch of salt, water. Mix the flour and salt, then rub the butter in so it goes all crumbly. Add just enough water to bind it all together and make a pastry. You’ve seen pastry before; you know the sort of thing.

Pastry pasted with pesto! Lol.

Press your pastry into a pie dish, prick it with a fork and bake it at 180°C for 20-30 minutes. BAM. Piecrust done. Brush it with pesto.

Tier 1.

BAM. Roast eggplant.

Tier 2.

BAM. Roast capsicum.

Tier 3 because why not?

DOUBLE BAM. Sundried tomatoes and crumbled feta.

The unifying power of eggs.

BAM. Pour some mixed eggs over those suckas (6, to be precise).

The final and most glorious BAM.

Bake it for about 30 minutes. That right there is a big ol’ pie of awesome. Healthy breakfast; packable lunch; delicious, full of vegetables and protein, all-round nice guy quiche. BAM.

Pause for applause.

To recap:

1. Got 10 balls of red cotton for an Xmas present: the balls turned out to have 48,000,000 metres of yarn each, so I made two tanks and an Everlasting Bagstopper.
2. The bagstopper rocks on; the two tanks shrank in such a way that they no longer fitted. BOO. I wore them anyway, persuading myself Nobody Will Notice.
3. Eventually wanted to make a dress: decided the red was perfect and the tanks were dead in the water anyway. UNRAVEL PARTY!
4. Unravelled, washed, loosened, reballed.
5. Cast on! Made meself a dress, with the enchanting name of
   111-3 tailored dress in ”Safran” with lace pattern and crochet borders.
6. This took me 8 weeks and was waaaaay too big. I was swimming in it. Before I had a chance to start convincing myself It Was Fine, Nobody Will Notice, I unravelled. I like knitting, I like knitting, I like knitting.
7. Cast on again, January 1. Cast off January 27. BOOYEAH! That’s some wicked fast knitting right there, dudes.
8. Block, dry: wear to brunch.

Look! Look at this!

Holy cow a porch mushroom!

Cavorting with delight about dress and mushroom.

Is that another mushroom?

“]

[Action shot

Big Red Pot

Okay, maybe not more. The wok and the enormous mixing bowl probably are equal contenders. But I love that dern pot. Originally bought for the purposes of making no-knead bread (you heat a big, cast-iron core like this baby in the oven for a while before the bread dough is ready, then sling the dough in and the lid keeps the steam in and you end up with a beautiful crispy crust) (note to self: cook that bread ASAP), there is very little this pot doesn’t do now. Couscous, pasta, soup, rice, curries: it does it all. Stovetop, barbecue, oven, anywhere good times are had. Lately it’s been getting a lot of exercise serving my other big red love at the moment:

Rat-a-tat-red

Ratatouille. Through an odd set of circumstances we needn’t go into right now (although it involved a gnome, some compromising photos and me being in the right place at the right time), I ended up with an abundance of zucchini and eggplants. When life gives you lemons, you make preserved lemons. When life gives you shitloads of the nightshade family, you make ratatouille. My ratatouille recipe is beautifully simple: roughly chop eggplants, zucchini, capsicum and onions and tumble into your big red pot. Add a cup or so of pitted olives if you have them. Then add two tins of tomatoes, and a generous mix of the herbs and spices that fire your big red love. If you’re me, it’s paprika, cumin seeds, white pepper, salt and more paprika; then you go out and snip some thyme, basil, parsley and marjoram from the garden. Quantities are a little vague: chop up enough to stop said herbs going to seed. Mix well, then add more spices and herbs because you’ve just realised how much ratatouille you’ve made. Seriously, one eggplant, one zucchini, one onion and one capsicum doesn’t seem like much until you get chopping, then it pulls some weird loaves-and-fishes shit and BAM you’ve got a big red pot of big red everything.

Mix well — throw in an empty-tomato-tin’s worth of water for good measure — and put the big red lid on your big red pot. Bake it for about two hours or until you have to go do something outside the house and switch the oven on. Once hot, my big red pot will keep on baking for quite some time after the oven is switched off.

I’ve been making truckloads of this stuff. It freezes really well, so an awkward abundance is magically transformed into stockpiled provisions. We’ve used it:

• puréed as a pizza sauce;
• tossed with pasta;
• mixed with black beans and chillies for burrito frijoles;
• tossed into shakshouka;
• as a cold salsa on wraps;
• served with crusty bread as a fantastic meal all by itself.

Seriously, about twenty minutes’ chopping, then ignore it in the oven for two hours, and you’ve got meals for over a week. Awesome. Tonight I came home and M had taken it to the next level of big red glory:

Oh my big red stars...

Layer ratatouille with lasagna sheets and cheesy sauce, then top with cheese and bake for an hour and you have a lush hot lasagna fit for a bethini.

A brief snap before the elusive lasagna disappears into its natural habitat...

Holy crap, so awesome. You wouldn’t believe how lush, flavoursome, cheesy and delicious this was. The noodles cooked to a firm perfection, the provolone savoury and stringy, the ratatouille thick and rich. Big red love.

Oh, while we’re talking about big red loves:

Red red red red red red red

Recycled Red Redux rolls readily on! Nearly up to the waist already.

And so the legend was born. Inspired by Napoleon Dynamite, a friend of the awesome ilk invented the Dang Quesadilla.

Take yourself some tortillas — homemade unless you’re a lazyboneroo, and I’ll get to that in a sec — and spread half with chopped banana and a crumbly sharp cheese. Fold each tortilla over itself and fry or grill until the cheese is hot and melted and the banana hot. Then top with tomato salsa and sliced avocado and tangy yoghurt (if you’re not me, you can go right ahead and have sour cream there: if you’re me, sour cream = puking).

Sweet quesadilla skills

Take a bite. Holy cow, that’s some good quesadilla right there. The sweetness of the bananas mixes with the sharp salty cheese and adds depth to the salsa and avocado. And the textures are an incredible blend: melted cheese, soft banana and avocado, salsa and crunchy tortillas. It’s crazy-happy-good stuff. Seriously delicious. Do it! Do it nooooow! And make me one.

Now, about those tortillas: why aren’t you making your own, dag-blast-it? They’re super easy and a gazillion times better than store-bought, I’m telling you. For two really big tortillas: take a cup of plain flour, a teaspoon or so of baking powder and a generous teaspoon of salt. Add boiling water, a little at a time, working it into a dough. You want it damp enough to keep together, but not so damp that you get bits of dough stuck to you while handling it. Adjust with a kiss more flour if you need to. Knead it on the bench for a wee while, until it feels thick, cohesive and even: the longer you knead it, the more likely you’ll end up with soft, chewy tortillas. Leave it to rest for a bit; maybe ten to twenty minutes. Then divide into two balls and roll them out super-flat and super-thin. (Pro tip: spray a bit of cooking oil on the bench before rolling them out — it makes the super-thin target just a bit easier.) Dry fry, until those distinctive dalmation spots come up: flip and fry the other side. Give your tortillas a second on a plate wrapped in a plastic bag, or wrapped up in a teatowel — they’re a bit stiff when you first get them out of the pan, and the steam will soften them. Aw yeah. The only real disadvantage is that once you start making your own, you discover the store-bought ones smell weird. Seriously.

Make yourself a Dang Quesadilla!

Now, I hear or imagine you asking, what if you’re the sort of poor unfortunate who is sans cherries? Or, as the French say, sans cerises? Say, for example, the cherry season has ended with its usual suddenness. Now making Clafoutis is no longer a clever way of indulging in the abundance of cherries you’ve got cluttering up the fridge, it’s a million-dollar luxury (note: cherries now cost a million dollars). So what do you do, what DO you DO?

Why, those aren't cherries!

Don’t pop your monocle, bro: that up there is the start of a Flognarde. (Current crowd favourite for best word EVAH 2012.) A Flognarde is a Clafoutis made with anything other than cherries.

Delicious close up of non-cherries. And also some cherries.

Word got out among the bird community that the cherries were ripe: I picked a kilo bag, and then five days later went back and only got nine cherries. Nine. Those birds work fast when they want something. So I pitted my nine last cherries and then moved on to the next abundant fruit in my fruitiverse: the plums. Last year was our first summer in the house, and I was delighted, nay, ecstatic, to discover half a dozen plum trees: greengages, red plums, mirabelles (I think), and a mysterious mini-plum. This year I knew where to stand when the plums started to fall. The mirabelles — yellow skin and flesh clingstones — are particularly abundant, so into the bowl they went, chopped and pitted. I sprinkled the lot with sugar and sherry and let it stand while I had lunch, then poured the custard batter over it: 3 eggs, 60g flour, 60g sugar, dash of vanilla essence, teaspoon of baking powder, and ½ cup of soy milk. Mix it all up and pour over the fruit. Sprinkle some chopped toasted almonds over the top and bake for around an hour:

Pronounced: flog-NAARRRRD

And there’s your Flognarde! If you use moo milk instead of soy milk, use more: I used less because soy milk thickens differently and more slowly. The original recipe, from Athena Plichta‘s blog, uses 300ml of moo milk. I found using that much soy milk made it damn near impossible to set — soy milk lacks the slight fat content of moo milk, which contributes to the setting process as it cooks.

Soy or moo: dude, it’s goooood.

Somewhat squished from enthusiasm, but good.

It’s not a Clafoutis, so don’t expect it to taste like one. It’s a Flognarde, baby! It doesn’t have to meet your Clafoutis expectations! It’s busy being fantastic ALL BY ITSELF. I think this would be Flognarde Aux Prunes (Avec Cerises), but now we’re just being fancy. Perhaps too fancy for our own good.

You could do Flognarde with lots of fruits: any kind of berry would be fantastic; tropical fruits like mango might be a little weird; apple might be a little boring but okay. I think this would work really, really well with apricots: oh man, yes, that would be terrific. I’m dribbling a little just thinking about it. (I also dribble when I’m not thinking at all, so it can be hard to tell. Don’t feel bad.)

Need something tasty? Why not FLOGNARDE?

This gets a million thumbs up. Or it will soon: please send your thumbs to Million Thumbs Up Campaign, GPO Box 230000, Spoonfullyville.

This is one awesome sweater.

Pattern: Gytha by Jennifer Appleby, via Twist Collective.

Mods: Two colours — black and purple, oh yes oh yes oh yes — rather than a zillion. (Four.) Didn’t worry about the button at the neck, partly because I didn’t have any buttons to suit and also because I like it better without.

Did you get the hem? Can they see the hem?

Yarn: Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 8 ply — a workhorse yarn that machine-washes really well, doesn’t seem to shrink or bleed and has good stitch definition. Black and purple. (Sorry, Raven and Plum.)

This pattern rocks really hard. Seriously hard. Really clear and well-explained, nice big charts and so forth — this is the first thing I’ve knit from the Twist Collective and it’s caramelising my onions something fierce, if you know what I mean.

I can smell something good over there.

Practically knit itself. Weird. Awesome.

I'm going to find out what that smell was. Take a walking-away shot.

Meanwhile, the laundry has sprung into sprouthood! It’s been two weeks and the sprouts are incredible. Week one:

boi-oi-oi-oi-oing

…and…

whoa, beets!

…and…

I cannot think of a better use for home hydroponics than basil, can you?

But then I forgot about them for a week. Can’t do the washing while I’m on stilts, so I haven’t needed to go to the laundry much. This morning I hobbled in and WHOA:

BROCCOLI GO BOOM

…AND…

HOLY CRAP TOMATOES

Which is completely awesome! Having learned a trick or two from the wily cuttlefish, who lays a bajillion eggs in the hopes of securing two babies, I planted every tomato seed I had in the hopes of securing, say, six plants. I decided that if I had more, I’d give them away to folks. Now it looks like I might have a mighty forest of tomatoes on my hands. (This is one of three trays of tomato seedlings. And by tray, I mean cut-up milk carton.)

****METAPHOR ALERT**** So while I’m hobbling about, trying not to think about how I can’t mow the zooming lawn and can’t dig up the last of last year’s vegetables (man, you want bang for your seed-planting buck, plant silverbeet!), sprouts are flourishing and my leg is mending quietly in the background. It’s hard to feel the progress, but I know it’s happening.

And talk about easy! Holy nuts, they’re straightforward. Pastry, filling, pastry: BAM. If you use frozen pastry, you’re laughing. I did not, and I was still chuckling. I made a very simple sweetcrust pastry (which, if I’m honest, could’ve used more sugar):

- 200g plain white flour
- 50g white sugar
- 125g butter, cut into small cubes
- some cold water

Mix the flour and sugar, then use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour until the lot is all crumbly and evenly-distributed. Add cold water, a trickle at a time, enough to bring it all together into a firm, soft dough. Not too sticky, not too dry. Shove it in the fridge while you have lunch so that it can chill.

Whole and unspoiled...but therefore imperfect.

Isn’t it beautiful? That’s an M, although it looks like a 3. Or a bird. Let’s say it’s all three and that will solve any arguments.

While the raw dough was chilling, and after I had some lunch, I cooked some apples. I used four, but you could easily use as many as eight and have a much plumper pie. Or you could use apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, berries — that’s the lovely thing about pies. Like a big, sweet, stiff sandwich, the filling options are infinite. Anyway, four medium-sized apples, peeled, cored and finely sliced, which I simmered in lemon juice and a couple of tablespoons of cinnamon sugar (I think it would work out to roughly two tablespoons of sugar to one of cinnamon, and a generous serve of lemon juice), with about ½ to ¾ cup of water. (I just nuked it in the microwave for ten minutes or so: that did the trick.) Once they were cooked, I drained them.

While the apples were cooling, I rolled out half the pastry and lined a medium-sized pie dish (actually the bottom of the tagine, but who’s asking?) with it, then baked at 180°C for twenty minutes. Which was about seven minutes too long: it came out very brown. Filled it with the cooked, drained apples, then topped with the remainder of the pastry, rolled out nice and thin. Brush the top with milk, then bake for about fifteen to twenty minutes. DONE. CHOP!

Hiyaaaaa!

Actually, it’s best if you let it sit for a while before you cut into it: about half an hour is enough that you won’t burn your mouth when you bite into it. If you’re serving it with ice cream, you can probably start carving after just ten minutes, but you should expect it to melt said ice cream. Here’s M, unable to sustain patience any longer, serving a slice:

Blades of fury!

Ooooh, I forgot: before I put the top layer of pastry on the apples, I put blobs of fig jam here and there on the apples. That made for a delicious surprise when I had my slice. I recommend it.

Afternoon tea. A beautiful place to be.

See, using four apples, I ended up with a pretty slim-line pie. That’s fine, dandy and delicious, but it’s not necessarily an eye-grabbing, cherry-popping show-stopper.  If you really want to wow ‘em (whoever ‘em are) you might want to increase the fruit content so you get that fat domed pie thing happening. Even so, this is a damned tasty snack or breakfast (it will almost certainly be breakfast). I don’t make pies often…but now I’m thinking I should change that. I really like the idea of a breakfast pie, with a muesli/crumble topping instead of a second layer of pastry. Served with yoghurt and honey! Yes. YES.  This is going to be mega.

As I mentioned previously, if anyone can persuade me to rock the slow-rise bread, it’s Bertinet. Having let my lush, silken dough rise for 90 minutes, it was time for shaping. I took about two-thirds of the enormous dough the recipe produced and divided it into ten lumps. After a short rest, these lumps became noodles, all soft and squodgy:

Squidgy and snug

I’ll spare you the more phallic photos. You’re welcome. Then came another 90-minute rise. From kneading, these babies were rising for over three hours. You’d be amazed how quickly three hours flies past when you spend the whole time fantasising about how great your bread is going to be. (Also knitting and reading the Internet, but the fantasising made up a significant proportion.)

so patient...

After the second round of rising, it was in-the-oven time! This was a bit tricky: the shortage unique combination of trays in the house meant I had to come up with a way of getting ten baguettes into the oven, swiftly and without bending any of them, without being able to simply lay them out in neat distribution on flat trays. I managed, although I must admit, the ones on the bottom of the oven got a short, arresting lesson on the impact of oven racks on slow-rise dough (as did I). No matter.

Yes. YES.

See? No matter. These are the creme de la creme des baguettes: they rose, calm and uninterrupted, in a deep baking dish. Perfect. But I gotta tell ya: picking the best of this batch of baguettes was a bit academic. It was like trying to choose between…actually, I haven’t got a good metaphor for this. It was like trying to distinguish between 97.3% perfection and 97.5% perfection…except they were all perfect. Check out this crust:

Crust close up for your salivary stimulation

You see? That’s three baguettes, lined up. Could you pick one over the others? No, of course you couldn’t. I will say they could have done with deeper slashes: I sliced them all before putting them in the oven, but the razor is getting a bit dull and it’s hard to cut deep enough on the first slice. The result is that they bloom beautifully, but not quite enough and often burst out the sides as well (I have this problem with sandwich loaves, too):

Bursting through the crumb - bursting with WIN!

But so what? Don’t they look gorgeous?

Golden.

We just ate two baguettes for dinner (we had other stuff, too, but mostly the whole meal was built around the baguettes), and that picture still makes me hungry. I didn’t take a photo because I was busy stuffing my face, but the crumb is mega fine: the crust crunchy and light, the crumb soft and flavoursome. This is a fantastic dough.

Family photo! Everyone in! Bunch up!

Baguettes are beautiful. Baguettes are the new black. Baguettes are WIN. I’m so proud.

But the dough from Bertinet’s recipe doesn’t just make ten baguettes: it makes ten baguettes plus a loaf. Whatever happened to that guy? Stay tuned…

I’m pretty damn sure you don’t need a guacamole recipe, because you probably know how to make guacamole. And even if you didn’t, the Internet is shrieking with guacamole recipes. But I’ll tell you this: preserved lemons make guacamole freaking incredible. (Probably all the salt and lemon, d’ya think?) Seriously delicious. Ridiculously delicious. This is all we had for dinner delicious. (That’s half a fib: I also had a martini.)

Hard to photograph when you're quivering with desire. DESIRE...

Avocado. Chillies. Purple onion. Red capsicum. Preserved lemon. That’s it. BAM: serve with slices of capsicum, tortilla chips or whatever you like to dip in stuff and eat off.

Vegetables come in rainbows too!

That’s right, Skittles: I’ve got your rainbow right here. We’ll probably have this again for breakfast. In fact, we’ll probably keep having this as long as our avocado supply holds out.