That's a spicy meatball

Yesterday was the most hungover I'd been in a long time - the kind of groaning, stumbling, incoherent pain that only a night at home in front of the fire watching Iron Chef can lessen. Thursday night was work drinks to mark the end of the financial year, at Movida. Sangria, and lots of it. Thankfully also some really substantial finger food, otherwise it would have been a pretty pukey Friday at work. Friday night Fat Boy and I went to Libertine for dinner with friends who are visiting from London. They had free babysitting for the night, so purportedly were ready to get smashed, but come midnight they were melting apologetically into a cab home. Yawn! We bumped into one of our housemates at Rrose Bar and ended up getting spackers like teenagers until it was home time. So yesterday = headache.

Last night I was craving something meaty, salty and just a little spicy, but equally something that could be made from the contents of the fridge and pantry. I settled on meatballs. (Incidentally, we have the most outrageous surplus of minced beef at the moment - it always seems like a good idea at Vic Markets and then it sits uneaten at the back of the freezer for 3 months). The key to the deliciousness of these meatballs is in dry roasting whole cumin seeds and then grinding them in a mortar and pestle. It gives a fragrant, lemony tang to the meatballs which is perfectly complemented by the piquancy of the vinegar sauce. I served them over soba noodles but in retrospect it would have made the whole thing slightly too stodgy for non-hungover consumption. I'd serve it just with a salad next time.

Boungigaz (serves 4)

(Adapted from the 1988 Marie Claire cookbook, "Cuisine Extraordinaire")

1 kg minced beef
4 eggs
2 tbsp paprika
1 tbs whole cumin seeds
pinch ground cinnamon
handful of coriander leaves, finely chopped
1 tbsp dried marjoram
2 tbsp breadcrumb
1 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
pinch of dried ground chillies
3 tbsp white vinegar

Dry fry the cumin seeds until fragrant and starting to colour, then pound them with a mortar and pestle until finely ground.

Mix together the minced beef, 2 eggs, herbs and spices and breadcrumbs. Add a few tablespoonfuls of cold water and knead it like a bread dough to form a smooth, firm mixture. Leave it to stand for 30 minutes in the refrigerator, then shape the mixture into small balls with your fingers. Keep a small bowl of water handy to rinse your fingers if they get sticky.
Heat the olive oil, chicken stock and ground chillies in a large frying pan with a tight-fitting lid, over a fairly high heat. When it begins to bowl, put the meatballs into the pan in a single layer - the chicken stock should come about halfway up the sides of the meatballs - add more chicken stock if not. Put the lid on the frying pan and leave to steam until meatballs are cooked all the way through (7-10 min).
Transfer the meatballs to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm. Whisk the remaining 2 eggs with vinegar, turn the heat in the frying pan down to a minimum and pour the mixture into the cooking juices, stirring continuously. Cook for a minute, stirring the whole time. When sauce has thickened slightly, put the meatballs back in the pan and shake to distribute them evenly in the sauce. Serve sprinkled with fresh coriander.

On irrational phobias and beef ragu

I have several completely irrational phobias - the kind that give me paranoid cold sweats, yet are based on nothing more than my own fecund imagination.

I am convinced, for example, that if I step on a tram rail while crossing the road, I will be instantly electrocuted. Rather more solipsistically, I cannot shake the fear whenever I smile and exchange pleasanties with a console operator at a Coles Express in the city, that my friendliness during our brief conversation (and implicitly, of course, my heart-stopping beauty) will fire in him an erotomaniacal obsession with me which will inspire him to stalk me till I go mad, lose my job and have to move back to Sydney.

Another fear which haunts me is that, if I eat a bowl of pasta for dinner, I will immediately swell up to the size of a house and have to start wearing mu-mus. Last night, I heroically decided to face my fear and made beef ragu and spaghettini. However - and somewhere in this is an unhelpful psychological lesson, have no doubt - at the gym today I weighed myself and discovered I've gained 2 kg. Leaving aside the fact that I had not weighed myself in 3 weeks and had eaten icecream and beer for dinner the previous evening, I can draw only one conclusion. Pasta, no matter how delicious and comforting its guise, cannot be trusted.

At any rate, the beef ragu was delicious and almost worth the incident at the scales. It takes a long, long time to cook but I promise it's worth it.

Beef Ragu
(recipe adapted from http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/egg/egg0297/beefragu.html)

2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 carrot, finely diced
500g beef mince
1 1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cup milk
400g tin passata
1 cup water

Heat the oil over a medium heat and add the onion, carrot and celery. When the onion starts sticking to the bottom and turning brown, stir in the beef. As it releases its juices, use a wooden spoon to loosen the stuck bits of onion on the pan.

Once the meat juices have evaporated (10 to 15 minutes), don't stir, let the meat form a crust on the bottom. Just before the crust burns, add the wine. Stir again with your wooden spoon, scraping up and dissolving the crust. Adjust the heat so the wine just simmers.

When the wine has evaporated and a new crust forms on the bottom of the pan, add the milk, stir up the crust with the wooden spoon and then let the milk simmer and evaporate. Finally, when the pan is dry again, add the tomatoes and water. Stir well, lower the heat to a very gentle simmer and cover. Let it simmer, covered, for about 45 min. Check it from time to time so it doesn't burn - add water if necessary.

Femme Fatale Gingerbread

There are Mystery Girls and there are Femmes Fatale.

From yesterday's A2, Philippa Hawker's review of the Nancy Drew movie, "An Inconvenient Sleuth":

"A Mystery Girl is a solver of puzzles and a challenger, in her own way, of the status quo. She is the child who questions the parents' actions, who refuses to consent to or accomodate the darker compromises of the adult world. She is defined by naivety and curiosity, a volatile and unsettling mix. She usually appears to be well-behaved and conformist, yet is frequently reckless, driven by the need to know. This can be seen, to some extent, as the curiosity of the child who has not yet been initiated into the adult world, who lacks sexual experience but is overburdened with curiosity about it. Sometimes she stumbles, unwittingly, into a single, overwhelming mystery; sometimes she makes a habit of coming across crimes and puzzles.
"The Mystery Girl is the opposite of the femme fatale, the archetypal figure of female enigma - knowing, duplicitous and dangerous, using and manipulating her sexual power. The femme fatale is often doomed to death; the plucky Mystery Girl generally survives. The two characters are not necessarily antagonists, however; the Mystery Girl sometimes finds herself trying to help a femme fatale or untangle a puzzle that involves a compromised female figure. This is the case, for example, in the new Nancy Drew movie..."

Of course, these kinds of dichotomies are often more trouble than they're worth, but I couldn't help thinking of the Veronica Mars vs Jessica Rabbit binary this morning as I was making this date and ginger loaf. Like the classic femme fatale, she is immaculate-looking, dark and fragrant. She is sweet but with a spiciness that hints at a deeper mystery (is that a hint of black pepper?). And, like all great mistresses of the dark art of seduction, she meets the stickiest of endings.

Femme Fatale Gingerbread (adapted from Margaret Fulton)

185g butter
1 1/2 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp black pepper
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup golden syrup
1 large egg
3 cups plain flour
1 cup milk + 1 tsp bicarb soda, dissolved together over a gentle heat
1 cup chopped pitted dates

Preheat oven to 170C and line a loaf tin. Cream the butter with the spices and ginger until very soft. Gradually add the sugar, beating until smooth. Add the golden syrup and mix in well. Lightly beat the egg and add gradually, beating until it is thoroughly incorporated. Sift the flour and fold into the basic mixture alternatively with the milk. Fold in the dates. Pour into the tin and bake for 1 hr 20 min or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the tin and cool on a cake rack.

On learning precision

From "Kitchen", by Banana Yoshimoto:

"Looking out the window as the evening wind came through the screen door, a remnant of pale blue stretching over the hot sky, we ate boiled pork, cold Chinese noodles, cucumber salad. I cooked for them: she who made a fuss over everything I did; he who ate vast quantities in silence.
"Complicated omelets, beautifully shaped vegetables cooked in broth, tempura - it took a fair amount of work to be able to make those things. Because my biggest flaw is lack of precision, it didn't occur to me that dishes turn out badly or well in proportion to one's attention to detail. For example, if I put something in the oven before it had come to temperature, or if I got the steam going before I had everything chopped, that sort of triviality (or so I thought) was precisely reflected in the colour and shape of the final product. Which surprised me. Although that kind of cooking made my dinners no worse than those of the average housewife, they by no means resembled the illustrations in the books.
"There was only one way to learn: I tried making anything and everything, and I tried to do it right. I would carefully wipe out the bowls, replace the caps on the spices every time, calmly chart out the steps in advance, and when I began to make myself crazy with irritation I would stop what I was doing and take a few deep breaths. At first my impatience would lead me to the brink of despair, but when I finally learned to correct my mistakes coolly, it was truly as if I had somehow reformed my own slapdash character. Or so I felt (of course, it wasn't true)...
"I was not afraid of burns or scars; I didn't suffer from sleepless nights. Every day I thrilled with pleasure at the challenges tomorrow would bring. Memorising the recipe, I would make carrot cakes that included a bit of my soul. At the supermakret I would stare at a bright red tomato, loving it for dear life. Having known such joy, there was no going back."

Seafood Pilaf, or, The best kind of fish is a well-cooked one

Between the ages of 14 anf 16 I worked Saturdays at Pyrmont Fish Markets in Sydney. My job was divided between serving self-consciously picky yet totally clueless wannabe-foodie customers ("oooh! it's not quite the right shade of turqoise! what star sign was it caught under?") and gutting buckets of baby octopus, the innards of which would slop down the front of my apron and into my gumboots where they would remain for all of my 8 hour shift. I never quite decided on which was the worst task, but it was clear from the start that octopus duty left me smelling more repulsive than any amount of brown-nosing tossbags ever could. Most of my attitudes to men, sex and hygiene can be explained by the long succession of Saturday nights on which, after dousing myself in industrial detergent and scrubbing myself frantically with a lemon, I would engage in some awkward fumbling with a blushing lad whose caresses would at some point inevitably taper off as he asked: "Um, what's that smell?" At that delicate age, there is simply nothing more harrowing than to realise you smell like fish, and - trust me - no convincing way of explaining that the source is not your fanny.

I still steer largely clear of fish markets, and delegate most of my seafood purchases to Fat Boy, who doesn't seem to mind nearly as much. That said, I love cooking seafood - no doubt in retaliation against their species for ruining my formative sexual experiences. Here is a gorgeous pilaf I made last night. It's spicy, creamy, fresh and colourful. I took the leftovers to work today and the aromas from the microwave made me some friends. I put Nile Perch and King Prawns in it, which were all Safeway had going at 10pm on a Tuesday night, but you can put in whatever takes your fancy.


Seafood Pilaf

3 tbsp peanut oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1 birds' eye chilli, seeds removed and chopped finely
1 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 cups basmati rice
1 tbsp fish sauce
juice of 4 limes
400ml can coconut milk (you can substitute light coconut milk I suppose, but where's the fun in that?)
1 1/2 cups fish stock
400g fillet firm white fish, cut into large cubes
12 large green prawns, peeled and deveined with tails intact
handful coriander leaves

Heat oil in a saucepan and cook onion with garlic until softened but not coloured. Stir in ginger, chilli, turmeric, rice, fish sauce, lime juice, coconut milk and stock and bring to the boil. Cover tightly and simmer 10 min.

Remove cover and stir in fish and prawns. Cover and simmer gently a further 10 min to cook fish. All liquid should be absorned and the rice perfectly cooked. Scatter artfully with coriander and serve.

Well-written blogs are all alike. Every poorly-written blog is poorly-written in its own way.

And Couscoussou is, without question, destined to be badly- and irregularly-written in a quite original way.

Couscoussou is the old French name for cous cous and I liked it as a blog title because it melded the North African and French cuisine I love. (Plus it's just a generally very pretty word.) And I had originally intended to start things off with my favourite couscous dish as would be appropriate, but that just ain't happening today. I've been given two days off in lieu for having been pounded with some very long hours over the last few weeks - I'm just about to head out to check out Burning Books, which sells 2nd hand Japanese books, then I'm off to Carlton to get my NSW drivers licence transferred to Victoria, then I'm heading to the markets to get some snapper for a pilaf which I'm making for dinner.

As delicious compensation for absence of cous cous from opening post, I thought I'd start off proceedings with my mother's recipe for Corn Cakes with Roasted Tomatoes, which I made a couple of Sundays ago when the first thing Fat Boy said upon opening his eyes was "can you make those corn cakes your mum does?". Which earnt him serious brownie points in the good-boyfriend stakes.



Corn Cakes with Roasted Tomatoes a la Mere (serves 2, generously)

Mix together:
4 beaten eggs
2/3 cup flour
tin corn kernels, drained
one crumbled chicken stock cube
1 tsp mixed dried herbs
salt & pepper to taste
chopped shallots

This should be a very thick batter which is not at all runny - the idea is that you can put a blob of it in the pan and it won't run all over the place.

Halve 4 roma tomates, place cut-side-up in a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic and sprinkle with salt, pepper and a little brown sugar. Roast in a medium oven for 25 min or until soft, squishy and caramelised on top.

Shallow fry large spoonfuls of the batter in butter until golden and cooked through - note that the density of the batter means that you have to cook them longer at a lower heat than you would normal pancakes.

Serve corncakes piled on plates topped with roasted romatoes and shredded basil. Orange juice, coffee and crossword on the side.