Roll Your Own Sushi

A really kid-friendly meal is Te Maki Zushi (literally “Hand Rolled Sushi”) or Roll Your Own Sushi. It’s a favourite of my nephews and many other kids (and adults!) who come to visit. We just lay a whole lot of fillings out in the middle of the table, put out a couple of big bowls of rice with several spoons, lots of Nori seaweed, soy sauce (or tamari) for dipping, wasabi for those who like a bit of “bite”. Dinner guests then take a sheet of Nori, put some rice on it, put the fillings they like on it, roughly roll it up, dip it and eat it!

Perfect Pizza!

Filippa pulled out this recipe from Nourishing Traditions for the pizza dough and the topping is a favorite of mine that I have used for years.  The pizza dough was exceptional!  Of course it doesn’t taste like normal pizza dough but the flavour was delicious!  We had our parents round for lunch and even they were impressed.

The theory behind pre-soaking the flour in the yoghurt is that it begins a fermentation process that starts to break down the gluten making the grain more digestible.

The topping combo is a die-hard fave of mine.  I used to use it in a café I worked in and I have trotted it out at many dinner parties and bbqs.  The blue cheese on it is a winner and seems to be liked even by many who are not blue cheese fans.

Sushi

Taiji enjoying raw fish

Here is my 4 year old son Taiji (in his favourite Super-T outfit!) enjoying a quickly put-together sushi dinner. When we mention sushi or sashimi, his eyes light up and he delights in going to the fishmonger with us to buy the fish. It’s so easy to cook up a bit of rice and spread it onto a sheet of nori seaweed. I don’t bother with the usual sushi vinegar flavourings as they usually contain nasties like MSG and I can’t be bothered doing it the proper way with rice vinegar, mirin, sake and salt. Taiji doesn’t know any different anyway! For him, sushi is just something with rice wrapped in nori. Tonight he had ebi (prawn) and raw salmon.

Crispy Skinned Chicken, Apple, Walnut and Kefir Cheese Stuffing, Herb and White Wine Gravy

Filippa and I are always looking for new ways to use the kefir cheese and this one works well. Its slightly sour flavour is a good balance for the sweet of the apple and the smoky sage. Roast chicken was always one of my favourite dinners as a child and is a favourite of my children as well.  The aroma of it cooking, the salty crunchy skin, interesting stuffing, roast veggies, lashings of gravy – it is easy to feel soothed here amongst family and friends and nourishing food.

Kefir

Aaah, kefir! I could wax lyrical about this marvelous health giving drink but I’ll spare you the rave and get to the point. The key to good health is your gut and the key to a good, healthy gut is the micro-organisms that live in the gut. Kefir is a very powerful probiotic drink that can repopulate your gut with all the good bugs. Traditional diets throughout the world all included some form of fermented foods:

Japan – tsukemono (pickled vegetables), miso, soy sauce, natto
Germany – saurkraut
Ukraine – beet kvass
Korea – kimchee
Thailand – fermented fish sauce

And the list goes on and on and on. Yoghurt is probably the most well-known fermented food (besides wine and beer!). Kefir is like yoghurt but the difference is that it has over 30 different micro-organisms compared to only 2 or 3 in most types of yoghurt. Basically, it is a very powerful probiotic yoghurt drink and a lot cheaper than most of the probiotic products that you buy off the shelf in health food shops.

Kefir is a very traditional drink that is consumed all through the Caucasus from Russia through to Iran. Ask any Iranian, Turkish, Russian etc and they know what you are referring to. My friend who spent a lot of time travelling in this region says you can buy it everywhere. Traditionally it was kept in a goatskin bag that hung at the entrance to people’s houses. As people passed in and out of the house, they would give the bag a shake (as this helps the fermentation process). It’s quite sour and on its own, it can be a bit of an acquired taste so most westerners tend to turn it into smoothies by blending other things with it.

Beet Kvass

Beet Kvass is a traditional Ukrainian fermented beetroot drink.  Beetroot is packed with vitamins and minerals –  and a couple of glasses of the kvass “is an excellent blood tonic, promotes regularity, aids digestion, alkalizes the blood, cleanses the liver and is a good treatment for kidney stones and other ailments.”  (Nourishing Traditions, p 608).  It’s a great accompaniment to your meal.

I won’t lie to you – this one is not for everyone!  Filippa and I luuuuurve it!!  It’s true – call us weird, call us old-fashioned or try it and maybe you will too!  When I first moved into Casa Araki, we would sip it decorously with our dinner out of wine glasses.  All pretensions to sophistication have long since been dropped and now we happily guzzle from large tumblers.

Every dinner we share with others we take the opportunity to educate our friends on the amazing health benefits of this fermented beetroot drink and sit back watching with interest as they sip it suspiciously. Truthfully, we haven’t made many converts – perhaps it’s a bit of an acquired taste.  Funnily enough our most successful convert to date has been Kayo (Filippa’s 10 month old) who drinks it with relish, hooting happily between sips and kicking her legs with excitement in anticipation of the next sip.

King Prawns and prosciutto with a lime and mango glaze

Recipe:

12 King Prawns with tails on

4 slices of prosciutto

Sear on bbq or hot plate just before serving

Glaze

1 Tablespoon good quality Mango Chutney

1 Tablespoon Lime Juice

1 teaspoon Fish Sauce

lime zest

mix together and heat gently just before serving

1/4 of red cabbage head

1 carrot

1 red capsicum

1 yellow capsicum

1/2 cup fresh coriander leaves

Finely shred red cabbage, julienne vegetables, mix altogether and add dressing.

Dressing

1 Tablespoon Lime Juice

1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce

1/2 teaspoon palm sugar

1 Tablespoon Sesame Oil

Dissolve sugar into lime juice then add other ingredients.

Arrange salad on plate, place seared prawns and proscuitto on top, spoon over glaze.  Garnish with fresh coriander and finely sliced chilli.

Boxing Day Feast

The picture is of my dad’s birthday cake on Boxing Day. My memories of his birthday through my childhood always involve some exquisite duck dish with an appropriately gourmet starter such as cold cherry soup or lobster salad – something cool and refreshing to sparkle and entice the taste buds in Melbourne’s sweltering summers. 

When Foodie meets Health Nut

I’ve always been a bit nutrition and health obsessed. (“a bit? hah!” I hear my friends and family say). Well, yes, very obsessed. And you can’t be nutrition-obsessed without being at least a bit of a foodie. I’m a latent foodie but I wasn’t born with my sister Deborah’s coveted cooking skills, inherited from our mother who is also an extraordinary cook. Me, I cook by the recipe and still manage to stuff it up. I do have some mouth-watering successes from time to time but, basically, I just don’t have the natural knack that they’ve got. Mum says it’s just experience but I do think there is an inborn talent that goes with it. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been into health – and healthy food doesn’t always naturally go hand in hand with yummy. Perhaps if I had started out a foodie and into cooking like Deb and then gone healthy later, I might have developed into a gourmet cook but it was the other way around for me and being a vegetarian and on-and-off vegan didn’t help either. Health and nutrition have always come first for me, but now the foodie life is growing on me and I’ve been delighted to discover that real food is healthy food and it doesn’t have to entail a plate of mung bean sprouts.