Chocolates? Yum!

 

At Easter I overindulged a bit after my daughter-in-law Michelle bought me a box of Belle Fleur chocolates: beautiful to look at and simply delicious to eat. Despite the French name, these chocolates are local from Belle Fleur’s Darling Street, Rozelle shop in Sydney, near where Michelle works. When I contacted the company, they promptly told me their story and sent the appealing photos you see here.

In following up, I caught a glimpse of a growing boutique industry in specialty chocolate making here in Australia; a promising cocoa-growing industry in Mossman in north Queensland; and a move towards the production of high-quality cocoa beans on the islands of Vanuatu. Yes, fine chocolates are becoming a ‘home and local’ product.

Let me tell you the story of Belle Fleur. Claire ter Heerdt was prompt in getting back to me to say that Belle Fleur is a small family business, started in 1984 by her father, Jan ter Heerdt. Jan had moved from Belgium to Australia in the 1970s and begun working in the restaurant business. His father, Bernard, would come to Australia on visits and show Jan how to make Belgian-style handmade chocolates. Jan left the restaurant business and started Belle Fleur in 1984. Now Claire has trained under him and become a fourth-generation chocolatier. 

Belle Fleur uses locally sourced ingredients such as wattle seed, macadamias and blue gum honey with the chocolate imported from Belgium.

At Koko Black in Melbourne there is a similar story of expertise and adventure. It began with the dream of Shane Hills to become a pioneer chocolatier and he moved to Solingen in Germany to learn the art of making chocolate from beans. Shane continued his quest in Bruges, in Belgium, where he met skilled chocolatier Dries Cnockaert. Dries was interested enough in Shane’s ideas to come to Melbourne to help him create the start of Koko Black’s signature chocolates. Their first chocolate salon opened in 2003 and has grown into a Melbourne enterprise employing 350 people. Koko Black recently moved to Sydney, with one of their salons in the beautiful Strand Arcade in the city. 

From Koko Black it’s only a short stroll past the Strand boutiques to Haigh’s Chocolates, an Adelaide  specialty firm of chocolatiers whose story goes back 100 years to when Alfred E. Haigh established the business on 1^st May, 1915. Not just a South Australian institution, Haigh’s are today Australia’s oldest and best-established makers of specialty chocolates, producing over 250 varieties.

Haigh’s are committed to sustainable cocoa farming and have become involved in improving the quality of cocoa beans grown on the islands of Vanuatu, our Pacific neighbours. Cocoa has been grown in Vanuatu for many years and the raw beans generally sold on the Singapore market for mass-produced chocolate. Now, with recent Australian involvement, Vanuatu growers are being introduced to farming beans to meet the requirements of a high-quality specialty market.

In north Queensland, too, cocoa growing is now an increasing specialty. Local farmers such as the Puglisi family have invested in trees and found cocoa ‘surprisingly quite easy to grow’. At the Puglisi farm adjacent to the Daintree forest, wild pigs used to be a problem in the sugar cane. But apparently the pigs have no interest in cocoa trees. 

People in north Queensland do, however. The farmers, already sugar cane growers, have invested in cocoa trees as they see diversification as an investment in the future. There has been early development finance from the Federal, Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australian governments and, initially, from Cadbury Schweppes.

Today, local growers have joined into the cooperative Daintree Estates and produce their own single-origin, estate-origin cocoa and chocolate, from beans fermented and dried on one of the estates. The growers are committed to sustainable farming and use local sugar and dairy ingredients in their finished products. The investment is already providing a boost to local Mossman businesses and communities.  A chocolate, anyone?

 

The meaning of Easter

 

Easter is the most important occasion in the Christian year. On Good Friday we mark the death of Jesus on the cross, and on Sunday, Easter Day, we celebrate His resurrection, His triumph over death. These events are so extraordinary they are almost beyond our normal, human understanding of how things should be.

The apostle John wrote in the New Testament section of the Bible that, ‘God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ 

John was a fisherman in Galilee whose life was completely transformed by his meeting and following Jesus. John became a foundation member of the early church and one of Christianity’s great teachers. Indeed John is among the world’s most successful, most-read authors – along with Paul and Peter, his fellow Christian leaders.  

The quote from John that I used is my favourite, an older translation into English from the Koine Greek that was extensively used in the time of Jesus, 2,000 years ago. There are other translations, all very similar and all with exactly the same meaning.

They tell us that God loves us human beings so much that he took the extraordinary step of sending Jesus, His Son, to live a human life to teach us how he wanted us to live, to show us how by His example, and finally to die for us. Jesus took the punishment for our wrong behaviour (all of it!) – wilful bad behaviour that separates us from God – so that we can be reconciled to God and become members of His family.

Eggs, rabbits and all that

 

Phew … I’ve just read my way through a plethora of online information about Easter eggs and bunnies. There’s certainly a lot of choice out there.  And it’s clear that we people have seen eggs as symbolising new life, fertility and re-birth for a long way back into our history.

I read that engraved, decorated ostrich eggs dating back 60,000 years have been found in Africa. I also read that for thousands of years, Iranians and other cultures have decorated eggs at Nowruz, the Iranian New Year that falls on the Spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. My favourite example of ‘significant’ eggs is their appearance in the magnificent Etruscan murals in Italy, a legacy of the Etruscan settlements there.

Rabbits have been much-loved too. The stories that they are prolific little breeders seem to be well supported by respectable online data. And because rabbits and hares have large families of young in the spring, they too have become for us symbols of spring, birth and fertility.

It appears to have been a universal trend. Evidently, in Aztec mythology a god referred to as Two Rabbits represented fertility, parties and drunkenness.

Where did the Easter bunny come from? Well it seems to have been, at first, an Easter hare, with written references dating back to 1682 in Georg Franck von Franckenau’s work De ovis paschalibus. The Easter hare, I read, originated among German Lutherans as a creature that played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient at the start of Eastertide. A canny device! The hare apparently brought presents to the good ones.

There are no Easter eggs or bunnies in the Bible. The New Testament section of the Bible –which tells us about the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and the foundation of the Christian church – has nothing whatsoever about them.

Although Christians enjoy a ‘choccy’ Easter egg as much as anyone, it seems clear that Easter eggs and the Easter bunny really come from our human love of symbolism, charming ritual and enticing things to eat. We seem to have brought eggs and rabbits into the religious festivities just because we love them.

It also seems that in various ways, Church tradition has indulged us in this. I came across a prayer for the blessing of Easter eggs, and church traditions around beautifully coloured and decorated eggs. I can still remember enjoying an Easter breakfast at home with coloured boiled eggs – thanks to red food colouring – that were much more interesting to eat with toast fingers than plain old, straight-from-the-carton eggs. A bit of symbolism? We love it.

The name Easter. I found quite a bit about this, too, while I was looking up eggs and rabbits. It seems that in most of the non-English-speaking world, this major Christian feast is known by names derived from the Greek and Latin Pascha.  

The English word Easter came into use with, or maybe about, the time of the venerated Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede (673-735AD) in England. It appears to derive from the Teutonic goddess Eastra (this is a debated spelling) and from thence way back to Queen Ishtar or Semiramis in ancient Mesopotamia. Maybe the name Pascha has something going for it.

Persian Spiced Lamb Shoulder

 

 

Roast Lamb for Easter Day (Easter Sunday) can become a tradition. To help mark this day as special, why not share a meal with family and friends as part of the occasion. My thanks for this recipe and photo to Meat & Livestock Australia.

It serves: 6-8

Preparation: 20 minutes

Cooking: 1 hour 

1 lamb shoulder, deboned and trimmed of fat (1.2kg) (butterfly leg or shoulder)

6 cloves garlic, chopped

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon harissa paste (or 1 teaspoon chilli powder)

1 tablespoon olive oil

¼ cup raisins

½ butternut pumpkin, cut into 2cm slices

8 baby eggplant, halved lengthways

3 bunches baby heirloom carrots, peeled, stalks trimmed to 4cm 

Cranberry and Kale Quinoa

(pictured right)

1 cup quinoa

3 cups Tuscan kale (cavalo nero) or spinach, finely shredded

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons orange juice

¼ cup dried cranberries

¼ cup mint leaves 

Greek yoghurt and pomegranate seeds, to serve

1. Preheat oven to 200◦C fan forced.
2. Place garlic, cinnamon, lemon zest and juice, harissa and oil in a large bowl and mix to combine. Spread half the mixture all over the lamb. Sprinkle raisins over the inside of the lamb and roll up into a log. Tie firmly with kitchen string at 2cm intervals to enclose.
3. Place lamb in a roasting tray and toss pumpkin, eggplant and carrots in the remaining paste and place around the lamb.
4. Roast lamb in oven for 40 minutes or until starting to brown, then reduce temperature to 160◦C and cook for 20 minutes per kilo of lamb for medium or until cooked to your liking. Rest for 10-15 minutes, remove string and slice.
5. For quinoa, cook according to packet directions. Place kale on top of quinoa to steam for the last 5 minutes of cooking and replace lid.  Stir kale through quinoa.  Add olive oil, orange juice and cranberries and stir to combine. Scatter with mint just before serving.
6. Serve with sliced lamb, yoghurt and pomegranate seeds.

Tips

1. Make your own harissa by making a paste of red chilli and garlic with a splash of vinegar. Keep covered in oil in the fridge.
2. Get your butcher to debone the lamb shoulder for you, then take the bones home and add them to your next soup for flavour.
3. Try couscous instead of quinoa, or wild rice mixed with basmati rice.
4. Marinate the lamb overnight for extra flavour and tenderness. 

For expert advice about roasting meat, please visit the Meat & Livestock Australia website http://www.beefandlamb.com.au/Learn/Cooking_tips/Roasting/How_to_roast#sthash.2QxsgqLb.dpuf

 

A great baked dinner

 

How satisfying it is to share an old-fashioned baked dinner with your family and friends. It’s a perfect way to celebrate a special occasion and Easter Day – or Easter Sunday – certainly is special.  The roasted meat, the golden baked vegetables … oh, I could go on. They create the festive mood like few other foods.

My daughter-in-law Michelle is brilliant with roasts, they come out perfect every time.  I’m less good at them and less confident, so I turned to Matthew Dwyer, Digital Marketing Program Manager at Meat & Livestock Australia for some expert advice. And he came up with the goods. You’ll see the experts’ tips he provided set out below.

Good news, there is also a LambRoast Smartphone App to help you get it right. Find it via the website www.beefandlamb.com.au

But before we get down to basics, I’d like to say a little thank you to Reuben & Moore at the food court in Westfield in Sydney’s CBD. My daughter Marisa, grand-daughter Fern (owner of Pussycat) and friend Anita ate there the other day. And of all the food court choices, I put mine as the yummiest. It’s a personal opinion, of course, but I chose Reuben & Moore’s baked ham and vegetables with a slurp of gravy. It was delicious! The old-fashioned baked dinner takes a lot of beating.

Matthew Dwyer of Meat & Livestock Australia also sent me a recipe for Persian Spiced Lamb Shoulder to share with you, plus a beautiful photo. You'll find them separately just above these tips.  And now, please read on for the expert tips to achieving the perfect roast. Happy eating.

Simple steps that are the basis for all roasts

Step 1 – Preheat the oven in line with the type of cut you are roasting (see our chart below), depending on the weight of the roast. Brush it lightly with oil. Season with salt, pepper and any flavourings.

Step 2 – Place the roast on a rack in a roasting dish. Raising the roast allows the heat to circulate, browning it evenly.

Step 3 – Different cuts require different cooking times per fixed weight (see our chart below). For ease and accuracy use a meat thermometer.

Step 4 – Remove roast when cooked to desired degree. Transfer to a plate, cover loosely with foil and rest for 10-20 minutes before carving. Carve the roast across the grain to ensure tenderness.

Roasting tips

Take the roast from the fridge about 15-20 minutes before cooking. This will take the chill out of the meat and allow it to cook more evenly. If you like rare or medium rare meat, and the roast is without a bone it’s a good idea to do this. Never stand meat in direct sunlight, standing the meat in a cool kitchen (covered) for a short period of time (no longer than 20 mins) before cooking is fine.

Use a roasting dish that is close to the size of the roast you are cooking. Place the roast on a rack in a roasting dish. Raising the roast allows it to brown evenly. Placing the roast on a bed of vegies (cut into sticks) or trimmed meat bones is another way to raise the roast. The exception is bone-in roasts like a standing rib roast; the natural arc of the bones raises the meat from the base of the roasting dish removing the need to raise it off the pan.

• Cook for the calculated time, baste the roast occasionally. Use the juices in the roasting dish to baste the roast as it cooks. Add a little stock to the dish if there’s only a small amount of pan juices. Or make a baste to give your roast extra flavour (see below).
• Check the temperature (or ‘doneness) about 10 minutes before the estimated cooking is up. Take larger roasts out of the oven just short of the goal, as the larger roasts and bone in roasts tend to cook further and go up just a little in temperature (and therefore, doneness) as they rest.
• Always allow the roast to rest before serving.  This gives the juices in the meat a chance to redistribute, giving a moister and more tender result. Transfer to a plate, cover loosely with foil and rest for 10-20 minutes before carving. 

Suggested roasting times Use these recommendations as a guide at the start of the cooking time. 

ROASTING CHART – times per 500g
BEEF
	Temp	Rare 60ºC	Medium 65-70ºC	Well Done 75ºC
Rib eye/scotch fillet, rump, sirloin, fillet/tenderloin, standing rib roast, rolled rib beef roast	200ºC	15 -20 min	20 -25 min	25 -30 min
Silverside (uncorned), blade, round, topside, eye round, oyster blade	160ºC	20 -25 min	25 -30 min	30 -35 min
LAMB
	Temp	Rare	Medium	Well Done
Eye of loin/backstrap, lamb round, topside roasts, mini roast, lamb rump	220ºC	15-20 mins	20-25 min	25-30 min
Rack of lamb, four rib roast, crown roast	200ºC	20-25 min	30-35 min	40-45 min
Loin (boned and rolled), Leg or shoulder (bone in), easy carve leg or shoulder	180ºC	20-25 min	25-30 min	30-35 min
VEAL
	Temp	Rare	Medium	Well Done
Fillet, rack, leg, loin/eye of loin, rump, shoulder, boned and rolled loin, breast	200ºC	15-20 min	20-25 min	25-30 min

Cooked to your liking… judge your roasts degree of doneness.
The internal temperature for:

• Rare 60ºC
• Medium rare 60-65ºC
• Medium 65-70ºC 
• Medium well done 70ºC 
• Well done 75ºC

Do I really need a meat thermometer?
There are lots of variables involved when roasting meats and judging to see it it’s ready or not. Variables like the cut, size, shape and thickness of the meat. To take out all of the guesswork use a meat thermometer. It’s the easiest and most accurate way to tell if it’s ready.

Inexpensive leave-in style thermometers are available from kitchenware shops, supermarkets and selected butcher stores. Place the thermometer in the roast before cooking. Insert it into the middle of the thickest part of the roast away from any bone.

You can also use tongs to test the roast’s doneness.
Gently prod or squeeze the roast – rare is very soft, medium rare is soft, medium is springy but soft, medium well is firm and well done is very firm. For more information on testing doneness using tongs or your fingertips go to How to tell when meat is ready or 'done'.

- See more at: http://www.beefandlamb.com.au/Learn/Cooking_tips/Roasting/How_to_roast#sthash.2QxsgqLb.dpuf

Rosie Batty and iMatter

I could have stood and cheered when Rosie Batty was named Australian of the Year.  What a shining example of courage she is! Rosie is rising above her personal tragedy to speak out for all sufferers of family violence: people across the nation who need support, recognition and help.

I’m sure February is a very painful month for Rosie and my heart goes out to her as she remembers her son Luke. Rosie is scheduled to appear on ABC TV’s Q&A this coming Monday, 23 February, and I will be cheering for her from home.

The Doncare iMatter app she launched only a few days ago sounds like a brilliant way to help young women identify the sort of controlling behaviour that leads to violence. Doncare’s clinical director Carmel O’Brien describes it as ‘like driving lessons for relationships’. There are images, clips, quizzes and articles.

Vulnerable people need this help. No one chooses to be abused, they simply do not recognise the danger signs - until it is too late. So late that their self-esteem is crushed and they can’t get away. Or they can escape, but with difficulty and at great risk.

Most, but not all, victims of abusive relationships are women. But the tragedy is that there are also child victims. These are the children of violent partnerships who grow up to believe that abuse us normal – or even a sign of love. What a tragic delusion!

I care particularly about this as my novel ‘Finding Felicity’ deals with domestic violence: the causes and lead-up, the effects (especially psychological) and the very real dangers. I put a lot of thought and care into ‘Finding Felicity’ and signed a contract with Australian publisher Horizon Publishing Group last September. I’m looking forward to its appearance on bookshelves.

I’d like to think that it gives insight into what can go wrong with relationships and how – and offer the hope of dealing with them ‘in the best way possible’.

 

Summer Pasta

 

Let me share with you one of the quick and easy meals I’ve enjoyed recently. I love food, but I’m rather lazy when it comes to complicated dishes.  This simple one is my variation on a well-known theme and, the first time I prepared it, I cooked ‘by eye’ – as I often do.  So please feel free to use your own judgement as you go along.  

The dish relies on the combining of smoked salmon, with fresh, barely-cooked baby Roma tomatoes and the asparagus, but with the added tang of garlic, olive oil and lemon. Buon appetito!

Helen’s Easy Pasta Fresca

Serves 2

Spiral or penne pasta for 2 people

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 fat clove garlic, chopped

1 bunch fresh asparagus

1 dessertspoon lemon juice

A little pepper and salt

4 baby Roma tomatoes, halved

70g smoked salmon

30g feta cheese, cubed

A few fresh basil leaves, rinsed, torn

Cook pasta in boiling salted water until al dente. Chop tough ends off asparagus; discard ends, slice asparagus finely. Chop garlic. Heat oil in small pan, lightly fry garlic in oil until fragrant; add sliced asparagus and stir-fry 3-4 minutes until al dente. Add lemon juice to asparagus with a little pepper and hint of salt; stir and set aside. This mix forms the flavour base of the dish.

Meanwhile, lightly grill tomatoes 2-3 minutes until just beginning to cook; remove tomatoes from grill. Slice smoked salmon.

Drain cooked pasta; place in serving bowls; top with asparagus mix, tomatoes, feta and salmon. Dust with extra pepper; toss, decorate with basil leaves and serve.