Rhonda Bracey: At Random

It was a baking day this afternoon – I have a lot of frozen lemon juice to use up! So first cab off the rank was Lemon Muffins.

I haven’t made these before so it was a bit of an experiment, and to add interest, I added some chopped dried apricots and a handful of dried banana chips. I thought of adding poppyseed, but I didn’t have any! I used the same Canadian recipe book that I use for my blueberry muffins.

Here’s the recipe (I doubled everything to use up more lemon juice and eggs!):

• 2 cups all-purpose flour (plain flour for Australians)
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• grated rind of 1 or 2 lemons

1. Combine the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.
2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and rind and beaten eggs.
3. Stir egg mixture into dry until well moistened.
4. Fill muffin cups, sprinkle tops with remaining sugar.
5. Bake in 400F oven (about 180C) until lightly browned.

Where do I start? This is just such a *great* sting, and the pity of it is that the person being stung (we’ll call him “X”) probably will never realise it, and the person who is behind the sting (we’ll call him “Y”) will probably never get to see X’s reaction. Nonetheless, it’s a great sting…

To understand the nuances, it helps if you know something about Australian wine, particularly the reverence in which Penfolds Grange Hermitage is held. And it helps to know that both X and Y like their red wine, and both profess to know quite a bit about it. Ready?

X worked with Y for some years. Last year, X brought in a case of ‘vin ordinaire’ red – a Pinot Noir – to have for Friday afternoon drinks. The wine was *very* ordinary, to say the least (some thought it cheap and nasty… especially “nasty”), and we were all very glad when the last bottle was finally finished. But it really wasn’t – X had held back a bottle and gave it to Y as his “secret Santa” gift at the company Christmas party, to great guffaws of laughter from the rest of us who knew how much Y hated that wine.

A few weeks ago, X resigned from the company and we had a farewell lunch for him. Y couldn’t be at the lunch as he was on company business somewhere in the world. The company gave X two pairs of Reidel red wine glasses – a beautiful gift, and especially fitting for someone who likes wine. And Y, through the Managing Director, gave X a bottle of 1987 Penfolds Grange Hermitage! A magnificent gift by anyone’s standards. All at our restaurant table – including X – were most impressed. And some of us were surprised at the enormity of this gift as we didn’t think that X and Y really got along all that well.

(Sidenote: For those who don’t know, a single bottle of 1987 Grange sells for between $200 and $400 Australian dollars, depending on where you buy it. We’re not talking cheap wine here!)

Time marches on… Y is away from work on various things for a few weeks. And today he and I are both in the office together, where he tells me the story of the Grange he gave to X. I’ll cut to the chase:

• Y stored the gifted bottle of ‘cheap and nasty’ wine on a ledge in his shed, in direct sun, for 10 months.
• Y very carefully opened a bottle of 1987 Grange and shared it with his wife (cut the seal super carefully, removed the cork as carefully).
• Y just left an inch or so of wine and sediment in the bottle.

You see where I’m going with this, right?

Y then poured the bottle of ‘cheap and nasty’ into the Grange bottle, recorked it, and glued the seal very carefully so you wouldn’t notice that he’d tampered with the wine. He then gift wrapped the “Grange” and gave it to the Managing Director to give to X.

X called Y this week to thank him most profusely and humbly for such a magnificent gift.

Now, where will this story end? Well, it hasn’t ended yet – and no-one knows quite how it will end as there are a number of scenarios that could play out, none of which we’ll probably ever know about. X could:

• Lay the “Grange” down for another 10 years before opening it…
• Open it on a very special occasion with his wife, and/or friends…
• Get permission to take it to a very swanky restaurant and have it opened there…
• Take it to one of the free top-up days that Penfolds conducts in the capital cities of Australia each year and get the wine checked… (now wouldn’t we love to be a fly on the wall for that!)
• Sell the “Grange” on eBay…
• Give Y a bottle of Henschke’s Hill of Grace for this Christmas!

Such sweet revenge! And so carefully planned!

Hmmm… guess you can tell that strawberries are just coming in to season here! Here’s my recipe for a strawberry smoothie (or strawberry milkshake, if you prefer to call it that).

All ingredients are approximate – adjust portions to suit your taste.

Into a blender, add the following:

• 20+ washed and hulled strawberries
• About a cup of Greek-style creamy yoghurt
• About 2 cups of milk
• About a tablespoon of honey
• About 2 teaspoons of powdered malt (optional)

Blend together for a minute, or until you get a nice frothy mix. Pour into glasses and sprinkle with a dash of nutmeg (optional).

I use this same recipe for pretty much any fruit smoothie – banana, apricot, peach, etc. Just change the fruit according to the season.

I have no idea if this is what they’re called, but that’s the name that our friends on Vancouver Island used when I first tried these delicious strawberries there a few years ago.  They are SO simple to make and SO delicious, and are a delightfully decadent dessert!

What you need:

• Fresh whole strawberries (leave the hull/leaves on – you’ll need this to pick up the strawberry)
• Dark brown sugar (the type that’s quite moist)
• Either: creamy Greek-style yoghurt (my preference), sour cream, or real, thick cream

What you do:

1. Put some brown sugar and yoghurt into separate small bowls and give a bowl to each guest, along with a bowl or plate of whole strawberries.
2. Pick up a strawberry by its stalk/leaves, dip it into the yoghurt, then dip it into the sugar.
3. Tip into your mouth and ENJOY the taste of the sweet and tart and fruit all mixed  in together!
4. Repeat as often as you want!

I’ve written about blueberry muffins before, and the Canadian recipe I use to make mine. I’m back in the groove again, and made some more earlier this week. They’re nearly all gone now (my husband *loves* them), so another batch will get made later today.

Here are the ones I made earlier this week – this time with frozen blueberries, which means the mix isn’t as purple as the ones made from canned blueberries:

When a customer complains in a restaurant, a few things can happen – and I’ve probably experienced most – from downright rudeness to ignoring you to taking an amount off the bill. Ultimately, the memory of the meal is overshadowed by how the complaint was dealt with; it also determines whether or not you’ll return to that establishment.

Today a group from work had lunch at The Olive Tree in West Perth to farewell one of the team who is moving on to another job. I ordered the Chicken Caesar Salad which was some $5 more than the regular Caesar. I expected about half a chicken breast’s worth of chicken on the salad. Some places give you more, but about half is usual. It took a while before I found my first piece of chicken (and this was NOT a large bowl), and it was about the size of teaspoon. Hmmm… So I started looking for more chicken and decided to count how many pieces I found as they seemed to be lacking in quantity. Five. Five lousy small cubes of chicken. And for that I was expected to pay an extra $5.

So I complained. Not loudly, not aggressively, but I complained to the waitress who came to take my chinaware. She said she’d get the manager (yeah, right!). But a few minutes later the manager arrived. I told her the situation, she apologised profusely, explained that there is usually a large amount of chicken in the Chicken Caesar, and asked what they could do to make up for this. Before I had a chance to reply, she offered a complimentary bottle of wine to the table, which we could either drink now or take away. Well, I don’t care where the wine comes from, there’s a pretty good chance it’s worth more than $5, so I took up her offer straight away… and scored a bottle of Margaret River red for next week’s Friday afternoon drinks at the office.

Would I go back again? Certainly! She handled the complaint with aplomb, with no hesitation or excuses. And ultimately that’s what a good experience – a good service – is all about.

At certain times of the year, friends and colleagues who have lemon trees end up with way more fruit than they can possibly use. So I’m always a willing recipient of any lemons that they’re giving away, and have been known to come home with bags of them!

So what do I do with all those lemons? Well, I rarely use them straight off. I “squeeze and freeze” them, ready for use later in the year for any recipe that requires fresh lemon juice.

Because I don’t have anything fancy for squeezing them – just my dear departed Nana’s old glass juicer – I microwave the lemons for 1 minute (2 at a time), then cut them in half and squeeze them using her juicer. Microwaving makes the flesh slightly softer and seems to release the juice better. All I know is that I get more juice out of a lemon I’ve microwaved briefly than I do out of those I don’t!

After squeezing them, I put the juice, pulp, and seeds through a strainer, then pour the juice into ice cube trays. I usually get between 2 and 5 teaspoons of juice per ice cube. Once frozen, I break out the lemon ice cubes, put them into Zip Lock bags, then pop the bags back in the freezer.

Voila! Instant fresh lemon juice all year round whenever I need it! One lemon ice cube popped into a cup of green tea first thing in the morning is very refreshing, and lemon ice cubes added to water in summer time is just as delightful.

The Name: I made a variety of Pumpkin Soup for a dinner party when we were visiting friends in Monterey, California a couple of years back (2005). The host, David, tasted it, turned to my husband and said “I’ll give you two mules for her!” My husband, said “No way!”, to which David increased the offer to “Seven mules!” After my husband explained that he didn’t want to trade me, and besides, he’d have a hard time getting seven mules onto a Qantas flight to Australia, David decided to just eat the soup and stop the trading. Everyone went back for seconds until it was all gone – I was pleased, as this was a soup made with pumpkin, an ingredient that Americans typically use in sweet dishes, not savoury ones. The name has stuck and I now refer to this soup as “Seven Mules Soup”.

The Soup: Like all good soups, there’s no hard and fast recipe. Every time I make it, it is a little different, depending on the ingredients I have to hand. Subsitute according to your own tastes! And like all good soups, I tend to make a lot at once and freeze it. If you intend freezing it, DON’T add the cream/sour cream/yoghurt/coconut cream until you’ve thawed it out and reheated it.

Ingredients

• Chicken stock (I usually make my own from raw chicken carcasses and add goodies such as onions, mushrooms, celery, and lots of chilli! If you want a bit of Thai flavour, add some lemon grass, ginger, and coriander. Australians: You can get five chicken carcasses for $2 from Lenards poultry stores.)
• Pumpkin (I usually use Butternut, Jap, or Kent; don’t use Queensland Blue – it’s way too hard to cut! Americans: You call it Squash, so use Butternut Squash)
• Cream (You can use real full cream [very rich!], sour cream, natural yoghurt, Greek yoghurt, and/or coconut cream – or any combination of these! My most recent preference is a combination of Greek yoghurt + coconut milk powder. A word about yoghurt – no fruit yoghurts!!)
• Chicken breast fillet (optional – if you use real chicken in the stock you may not need this)
• Fresh coriander (cilantro for the Americans)

Method

1. Heat the chicken stock to boiling (Note: If you make real stock, make it a few days beforehand so you can skim off any chicken fat, pull the cooked flesh off the bones, then add the flesh back into the stock discarding the fat and the bones.)
2. Once the stock is heated, add the peeled and chopped pumpkin (approx 1 inch cubes) and simmer until the pumpkin is tender. Add chilli if you like it and you haven’t already added it to the chicken stock. Add any Thai ingredients too if you didn’t include them in the stock – lemon grass, ginger, coriander, garlic.
3. Let it cool – I usually let it cool overnight.
4. Blend the pumpkin/stock mix until it is fine (you *did* remove those chicken bones from the stock earlier, huh?)

At this point you can now freeze the pumpkin soup base for later use, or you can go ahead and finish off the soup ready for serving…

Prior to serving

1. Cube the chicken breast and lightly fry it in a pan to brown it all over, then continue cooking it until it is cooked through. Drain any fat.
2. Reheat the blended pumpkin soup base until it boils, then simmer.
3. In a small bowl, add a big dollop of one of the creams/yoghurts etc. If you’re using coconut milk powder, blend it with the cream now.
4. Take a small amount of the hot soup mix out of the pot (about 1/2 a cup) and mix it into the bowl with the cream making sure that you incorporate it all; use a small whisk – it’s easier than a fork or spoon. Repeat with another 1/2 cup of soup, and maybe another. You want a cream mix that is quite liquid and that won’t separate when you add it to the soup, which is why you do this step.
5. Drizzle the cream mix into the soup, stirring all the time.
6. Let the soup *just* come to the boil again and turn off the heat. If the cream mix has separated, use a whisk to incorporate it again, or throw it into the blender again and blitz it.
7. Pour the soup into hot bowls.
8. Add a few cubes of cooked chicken to each bowl, then add a dollop of cream/sour cream/yoghurt and swirl it around; garnish with some chopped coriander.
9. Serve piping hot with crusty bread (Californians – heat up some fresh crusty sourdough in the oven!)

This all sounds complicated and a lot to do, but it’s really very simple. The hardest thing for me was trying to write it down – I just make this soup so naturally that I never bother thinking about it too much!

Come summer time when it’s more like margarita weather, I’m going to have to try this recipe for Frozen Margaritas:

Fill a blender with ice. Add 1.25 cups of fresh lime juice, 1 cup of good quality tequila, 1/3 cup of Cointreau (or Triple Sec – the Cointreau sounds good!), 1/3 cup of granulated suger. Blend until slushy!

Rim the glass with lime and salt, serve with a wedge of lime.

Mmmm….