Knock Knock special feature - Romanesco Cauliflower.

Dear Valued Customer,

How are you? This week is a very nice box. We hope you enjoy it.

Here is a small feature on a very special vegetable included in your box called the Romanesco Cauliflower.



This is an exquisite and unique example of the Fibonacci sequence, where the entire cauliflower is in a logarithmic spiral, which is then made up consecutively smaller buds that are then made of even smaller spirals.

This gives the vegetable an extraterrestrial appearance. These patterns often appear in crop circles.





This is Fibonacci numbers represented graphically:



It is very commonly represented in nature, for example, in pine cones, seashells, etc.

The romanesco cauliflower is a little more tender than the average variety, so you don't need to cook it quite as long, but you can still use it in the same way you normally would.

People often feed them to children as ‘tiny Christmas trees.’

This is my favourite way to eat cauliflower, roasted with tahini sauce:

Ingredients
1 cauliflower, broken into florets
¼ cup olive oil
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon tahini paste
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons water
juice of 1 lemon
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Method
Heat oven to 200 degrees. In a mixing bowl, toss cauliflower with oil, salt and pepper until well coated. Spread in a single layer on baking sheet and roast, stirring and turning once or twice, until cauliflower is tender and crispy brown in spots, about 45 minutes.
While cauliflower is roasting, puree tahini paste, water, lemon juice, garlic, parsley in a blender until well combined.
Remove cauliflower from oven and immediately transfer to a serving bowl. Pour tahini over the cauliflower and toss to combine.
Delicious!

Have a nice week
Sincerely,
Kathryn Barron
(Knock Knock Organics – vice president)

Pomegranate Stir Fry

Hi everyone.

Tonight, I created a game fit for Master Chef - The Pretension Test. Probably every two weeks or so I throw something stupid in whatever I'm cooking and it works about half of the time; it's almost always something that if you tried really hard, you could imagine seeing on a fancy restaurant's menu. For example, pomegranate stir fry. Hence, The Pretension Test.

I was cooking a NY Steak (which, as an aside, was my first successful meat cooking ever - as in a perfectly cooked steak), and I wanted a decent side to go with it. I decided to make a stir fry and chopped some basic ingredients up ready to go. While it was on the stove I threw in some extras for kicks and it turned out to be so good that I thought I'd share it here.

NY Steak with Pomegranate, Beer and Kecap Manis stir fry


Ingredients (the below is for one person, so multiply accordingly):

One hefty steak
A bit of broccoli
One squash
Some ginger
3 shallots
1 carrot
A splash of beer
Rice vinegar
Kecap Manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)
Half a pomegranate
English Spinach
Chili of your choice
Olive or Rice Oil

Any vegetables are fine, of course.

Firstly, I heated up the BBQ. The secrets to cooking good steak on the BBQ are to get that grill hot and to only turn the steak once - one way to check when it's ready to turn it (if you want medium rare) is to leave it one side down til blood comes through on the top, then flip it. Watch the sides til it's brown down the whole side. I don't know how to explain it better than that, but you can usually tell.

Chop the vegetables up and get a pan on the heat with some olive oil. Rub olive oil over the steak then put it on the BBQ. Back to the stove, throw in the ginger (also garlic and onion if you'd like it). Once that's a bit cooked, add the vegetables (everything except the spinach). After a little while, I threw in some pickled Hoyt's Mild Peppers and the seeds and juice of half a pomegranate followed by a splash of beer, a splash of vinegar and probably 2 tablespoons of kecap manis (regular soy sauce will be OK, too). When the vegetables are pretty much cooked, throw the spinach in and turn the heat off -stir it through and tend to your steak.



I served the steak with this stir fry and a teaspoon of hot english mustard (because I can't imagine eating meat without it).

The stir fry above will work with a lot of things obviously, not just meat - it would be great as it is with tofu or tempeh or mock meat added to make it a meal.

It's one of those wanky meals with savoury fruit thing going on but it really was delicious. Let me know of any crazy combinations you try?

Kurt

Vegetable Soup, but good

Yes, I know - it's easy to scoff at the idea of a vegetable soup because they're often pretty ordinary, but it's really easy to make a delicious one. The below recipe is just one example, and was made to use up some vegetables that we had bulk of (and we used this stock as a base).

Roast Beetroot, Fennel, Jerusalem Artichoke, Potato and Obi (Kumera) Soup with Leek, Obi Chips and Ricotta


Ingredients

Equal or close to equal parts of each root vegetable, but really whichever vegetables you'd like ie: Beetroot, Jerusalem Artichoke, Potato, Kumera, Pumpkin, Carrot, Turnip, Parsnip, etc
A bit of extra Potato, Kumera or Pumpkin for chips
3 or 4 cloves of garlic
1 big onion
4 shallots (save a bit for garnish)
1 leek
Ginger or other flavours that you like
2 cups of stock
A small amount of ricotta or cream or sour cream
Olive Oil
Seasoning - salt and pepper

Pre-heat your oven to 180 celsius. Coarsely chop your vegetables and roast them - everything except the onion, shallots and the leek (yes, roasting the garlic rules). Fry the onion and leek until they start to clear, then add the shallots for a little while. Also add anything like ginger or chili or whatever you dig that will suit the vegetables that you're using. While this is cooking, shallow fry some kumera, pumpkin or potato chips in a bit of olive oil to use as garnish.

Put everything into the processor then gradually add stock until it reaches the consistency that you like. Once you have done this, add it back into the pot to re-heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste and feel free to add spices that you like. Serve it in a bowl and add a dollop of ricotta, then top it with the chips and sprinkle the shallots over the top.

This is pretty loose, but that's just how soup rolls! I always like roasting soup ingredients when possible, as it adds an extra complexity to the flavour.

Yup, seriously.

Enjoy.

Kurt

Orange and Almond Cake with Orange Syrup

If you, like me, don't LOVE oranges, then this is the cake for you. In fact, even if you don't usually like Orange Cake you'll probably still like this one. It's not too overpowering, and has a really amazing texture.

You will need a food processor or a blender, though.

Orange and Almond Cake with Orange Syrup


From now on, known as PacMan Cake
Cake Ingredients:

2 oranges
3 eggs
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 cups almond meal
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

For the syrup (optional, but recommended):

1 orange
1/2 cup caster sugar

Pre-heat your oven ti 170 celsius, and grease a cake tin (20cm is good). Clean the skin of the oranges and place them in a big pot, whole. Cover them with water and put a bowl over them to keep them under the water (Kat's idea). Bring to the boil and cook for 15 minutes. Drain the water, put the oranges back in the same amount of water and repeat. This re-cook will help remove any bitterness from the orange peel.

Drain the oranges and chop them coarsely, removing any seeds.

Place the chopped oranges in a blender with a splash of cold water and pulse until smooth.

In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar with an electric beater or with a hand beater + super strength until thick and pale. Add the orange, almond meal, flour and baking powder and fold to combine.

Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Set aside for 15 minutes to cool while you make the syrup.

To make the syrup: Finely grate the rind of the whole orange, then juice it. Boil the rind for 5 minutes in a a little water in a saucepan to soften, then drain and return the boiled rind to the pan. Add the orange juice and sugar and heat on low stirring constantly for about 3 minutes until the sugar dissolves and it becomes syrupy.

Gently poke holes all over the top of the cake with a skewer and then spoon over the syrup. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Keep it covered out of the fridge - at this time of year (winter) it will last 4 days or so. If it's summer, keep it in the fridge because of the eggs.

Yummo!

Kurt

Lasagna with INSERT FAVOURITE FOOD HERE

I haven't made a lasagna in years, and made one last night that I really actually loved! I thought that I'd share the recipe here, but preface it with the fact that you can put whatever you want in it. Just remember that if it's something tuff, like pumpkin or potato or kumera or cauliflower, then cook it a bit first or you'll have a crunchy lasagne.

So here is the recipe for:

3 cheese Lasagna with squash, obi, silverbeet, red peppers, mushroom, fetta and black beans

That's just what we had in the fridge, you dig?

Ingredients:

One packet of dry lasagna sheets (we were lucky to have some of the curly edged ones)
NB: Obviously it is best to make your own pasta, but you have to be (a) patient, and (b) very careful when using home made pasta sheets in lasanga because it's often a bit shit.
4 big mushrooms
1 big red pepper
6 small squash
1 big sweet potato/kumera/obi/any other root vegetable
a few bunches of silverbeet, de-stalked (or would that be stalked?)
half a can of black beans left over from breakfast (optional)
200g packet of fetta
1 egg (optional)
a bucketload of mozzarella
some parmesan

Sauce ingredients:

So as not to cheat, I will admit that we used some of Kat's mom's delicious red sauce that she'd made a few nights earlier. I will get her recipe on this blog some day but for now, just do something like the following:

2 big onions
5 cloves of garlic
1 or 2 fresh red chilis
2 x 750ml jar of tomato puree
Some can or fresh tomato, too

This will allow you to go nuts on the sauce, which is wise.



First of all, pre-heat your oven to 180 celsius, then get your sauce on its way. The best way in my opinion is to fry up the onion, garlic and chili until the onion starts to go clear. Then, dump it in a food processor or blender with the tomato and pulp it ( this is optional - you can always leave it chunky and skip the blending bit). Put this back on the stove to simmer while you get to the rest of your treats.

NB: I recommend cooking 2 or 3 times as much sauce and freezing what's left for later - then, if you're too busy to cook one night and need something quick you don't have to eat something shitty, just boil some pasta and defrost some sauce!

Slice all of your vegetables really fine and as long as you can, as each will be spread out in a layer and so the longer the pieces, the better.

For the above ingredients, I pre-cooked a few. Firstly, I quartered and seeded the pepper, then threw it under the grill in our stove with pretty high heat to char. If you have a gas stove, just put the whole thing over the flame of a burner, turning regularly. The trick is to burn it, but don't burn it - get my drift?

Then, after slicing the kumera really fine, I baked it for about 15 minutes - it doesn't need to be cooked properly, just softened as it will cook more in the final stage. Once the kumera is cooked, bump the oven up to 200 celsius for the lasagna.

By now, you're pretty much ready to start building this thing. Grab a baking dish - I really like using a pyrex one for things like this.

ALWAYS lay a level of sauce at the bottom, If you start with pasta or vegetables, they will burn and stick and not only will they taste gross but you'll be spending the next 24 hours cleaning the dish.

So, lay a level of your sauce down. From here on in it's creativity time and you can really go nuts. Actually, it really doesn't matter how you do it as long as the cheese ends up on top. I think I got 3 levels of pasta out of one packet and it went something like this:

Sauce
Pasta (break the sheets up to the right sized pieces to fit the shape of the dish)
Sauce
Squash
Mushroom
Pasta
Sauce
Kumera
Red Pepper
Pasta
Sauce
Silverbeet
Black beans
Fetta (I mixed an egg through the fetta first)
Sauce
Mozzarella to cover
A sprinkle of parmesan
Some fresh chopped parsley to garnish.

Cover the whole thing in foil (trying to keep it loose enough that the cheese won't stick to it), then bake that sucker for 30 - 35 minutes. The way to see if it's cooked is to cut into it with a cutlery knife, nothing too sharp - if there's resistance, then the pasta needs longer. If it sails through, you have lasagna.

This amount will serve probably 8 people with a salad or garlic bread (recipe coming), or between 2 you can eat some, freeze some, and take some for work or school the next day.

Delicious, for real.

xKurt

Making Stock and Using Your Old Vegetables

We have been really enjoying the mixed fruit and vegetable boxes, and cooking sooo much amazing food at home. Even so, we still have a few things going brown in the fridge draw every few weeks. While we do have a compost (and dogs who will eat pretty much anything), I think it's best to try and eat as much of what we get as possible.

If it's left a bit too long to make something nice and fresh out of it, why not make a stock? It's really easy, and doesn't take very long at all. You can use pretty much anything in a vegetable stock (even some fruit, if you're that way inclined), but imagine how it will taste before adding strong flavoured produce. I recently made one with fennel stalks in it which was incredible - but whatever you use it in later on has to suit the flavour of stock you have, so be mindful.

Seeing as you won't be eating the vegetables, you don't need to spend any time on preparing or cutting them properly - just whack them into chunks. Put them in a big pot and add enough water to cover them. You can also use washed peels and trimmings of vegetables that you have used in other dishes.

I always throw in some whole black peppercorns and bay leaves from the garden (or dry work really well, too). I sometimes add salt, but all of these are optional. You can add whatever you like to flavour your stock - some other ideas are chili, spices and fresh herbs such as rosemary and thyme.

Heat the water to boiling, then reduce the heat and cook for about an hour - don't cook past the point of the vegetables becoming really soggy, as your stock will only taste as good as the vegetables in it.


Stock pot on the right, almost ready to add to the soup happening on the left. This soup recipe will be added the the blog shortly.

If you eat chicken, next time you buy some to cook buy a whole one and use the skeleton and cartilage in a stock (or chuck the whole thing in there and turn half way through). You can also use meat bones to make a meaty stock (I recommend still using vegetables as well).

When your stock has cooked for long enough, simply strain it and put it in a jar for use in pretty much anything! Use it as a base for soup, in a stir fry or curry, a risotto - anything that you add water too, just add your stock instead for extra flavour.

Now what to do with the soggy vegetable left overs? Unless you have an enclosed compost, I wouldn't recommend adding it as cooked food can attract vermin. If you have dogs (and haven't used anything harmful to them in your stock, ie: onion), do what we do and mix it through some cooked rice and meat - it's great for them and even if they're fussy eaters, they'll probably eat it along with the meat.

Otherwise, if you have a garden, a Bokashi bucket is a great way to dispose of cooked scraps as well as meat and dairy leftovers. Here is some info on Bokashi.

Does anyone have any other ideas for getting rid of cooked waste?

Thanks for reading, please leave any suggestions in the comments box or email me with any questions: kurt AT knockknock DOT com DOT au.

Happy eating!
xKurt

Banana and Raspberry Bread

Oh this is the best! And it's actually another way to use food that is on its way out. If you don't get through your bananas, don't throw them away - make this delicious banana bread! It is so good and can be eaten for breakfast or dessert!

Banana and Raspberry Bread

Banana and Raspberry Bread as sweet as you like it

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar (the original recipe was for 1 cup, so bump it up of you like the sweet stuff)

2 ripe bananas, mashed with a fork

1 ripe banana sliced lengthways for the top

2 eggs

2 cups of all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon of water

1/2 - 1 cup of chopped nuts- pecans are best, but walnuts or whatevernuts are also good.

1 teaspoon of vanilla

3/4 cup of raspberries (we've been using frozen ones)

Pre-heat your oven to 180 celsius. Cream the butter and sugar - the butter will need to be at room temperature. If your butter is cold and you can't be bothered waiting, just melt it and smash the sugar through it no one will know. Add the mashed bananas and beat together - just with a fork will do.

Add the eggs, flour, baking soda and water and mix. Then mix through the nuts and vanilla, and finally the raspberries (so that they stay chunky). This is the bit for kicks - if you're feeling adventurous, add whatever you like at this point: chunks of chocolate, other fruit (pear s good), anything that you think ill suit.

Put the mix in a bread pan or cake pan then lay the sliced banana over the whole top of the loaf - even sprinkle some raspberries over it for laughs, if you think that kind of thing is funny.

Bake the bread for about an hour - actually, check the centre at about 55 minutes with a skewer or knife and if it comes out with dough on it put it back in. Make sure you don't confuse some gooey banana for dough, though, yo! This is one of those fantastic recipes when basically when you smell it, it's ready.

Cut a slice and grill/toast it for breakfast with butter and whatever else you like (jam, peanut butter, honey, Nutella (!) - just butter is usually enough though), or toast it and serve it with ice cream or yoghurt for dessert.

Yum!

xKurt

PS Did you try this recipe? Please leave comments and tips when you do!