Blood Orange and Blossom Cordial

This recipe is modified from Fouad Mum's recipe he posted on The Food Blog. Although I didn't have real orange blossoms to work with, in my first attempt I tried this with hand squeezed oranges. The next time round, I decided to snazz it up even more and used blood oranges to get the beautiful red colour. Here's the recipe:

4 cups of blood orange juice (you'll need somewhere between 3 to 3.5 kg of oranges)
8 cups of boiling water
2 tsp orange blossom water
1.5 kg of sugar (and even a little more might not go astray!)
1 tsp citric acid
The rind of 4 lemons plus their juice

Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water and keep boiling for another 5-10 minutes with the lemon rind and then let it steep for a further 5 minutes. Let it cool a bit so you don't cook the orange juice so you might as well juice the oranges in the meantime.

Juice the oranges to make at least 4 cups. I double-strained the juice through a fine sieve to remove most of the orange bits. No point wasting the lemons so juice those and add that in as well.

Add the blood orange juice, lemon juice and citric acid to the sugar mix and stir well. Finally, add the orange blossom water. You'll find the orange blossom water contains a lot of oils so it floats and doesn't mix too well so you need to be aware of this otherwise the first bottle of cordial will have much more orange blossom water in it that the last bottle.

I sterilised the bottles in the oven by placing them in a cool oven, bringing the heat up to 160C and left it there for 5 minutes before turning off the heat and letting the bottles cool. The bottle tops were sterilise separately by boiling them in water for 10 minutes.

I found that the cordial needed to be added at a ratio of about 1 to 4 (or even 3) with water as it is not anywhere as sweet as store bought cordials. It's good with lots of ice.

Some things to try next time are: use mandarins or tangelos instead of oranges, maybe try pureed and then strained mangoes or strawberries when they are in season, oh, and what about blood plums. The possibilities are endless!

Summer Lunch

After a long respite, I'm finally back and posting some meals I cooked in the past few months. Summer kicked off with a party for plenty and here were some of the dishes we ate.

In order of appearance, there is Lemon Infused Olive Oil, Herb Coated Labna, Dukkah, Baba Ghanouj, Carrot and Orange Salad, Spinach and Ricotta Roll, Flourless Orange and Almond Cake.


Baba Ghanouj
The recipe for baba ghanouj comes from the Lebanese episode of Food Safari. I was a little skeptical that just charring the eggplant over an open flame would cook it properly but it gave the dip a smokey taste which went well with the creamy texture.

2-3 medium sized eggplant
1½ tbsp tahini
1 tbsp lemon juice
1-2 cloves garlic
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp paprika
Parsley, finely chopped
Tomato, finely diced

Grill the whole eggplants over an open gas flame, turning with tongs until the skin is evenly blackened. Do worry if it looks a mess, you'll peel the charred skin off shortly. Soak in cold water for about 10 min to cool.

After soaking, peel off the blacked skin and leave to drain in a colander for 15 minutes. Whizz up the pulp in a food processor with tahini, lemon, garlic and salt until creamy.

Place the mixture in a serving bowl and make a well in the centre just deep enough for the oil to be poured in. Sprinkle paprika, parsley and tomato on top.


Carrot and Orange Salad
This recipe came from the Moroccan episode of Food Safari. I had great hopes for this but it turned out too sweet and really didn't get much attention from anyone at the lunch so I don't know if I'd recommend it. If you are interested, you can find the recipe here.


Spinach and Ricotta Roll
Can't remember where I got this recipe from. I'll have to do a search.


Flourless Orange and Almond Cake
This comes from the Jewish episode of Food Safari. It's an amazingly moist flourless cake great for the gluten intolerant and lovers of desserts. The following is lifted from the Food Safari website with some minor comments added:

2 oranges
6 eggs
250g caster sugar
250g almond meal
1tsp baking powder
Extra caster sugar for dusting before baking
Icing sugar for dusting after baking
Margarine or oil spray (for greasing the pan)

Wash oranges and place unpeeled, in a pot of boiling water for 2 hours. I suspect that it could be cooked for much shorter but haven't tried this. Drain the water and allow the oranges to cool. This can be done ahead of time.

Preheat oven to 190°C.

Break 6 eggs into a mixing bowl or blender. Add caster sugar and beat or blend together. Place the two oranges into the egg mix. Break up the oranges and then blend together to a smooth consistency. Add the almond meal and baking powder and blend.

Grease a 20 cm spring form baking pan with margarine (or vegetable oil spray) and dust with caster sugar. Pour batter into the pan and sprinkle caster sugar on top and bake for 1 hour to an hour and a half or until the top is golden brown.

It's best to leave the cake overnight to set, but people don't often tell you this step. Dust with sugar before serving.

Garden Bean Salad

This is a great recipe that came from the Good Weekend. Blanch the following for about 1-2 minutes each in separate batches:

• Broad beans (double shell them after blanching)
• Borlotti beans
• French beans
• Spring onion bulbs

You could also use: butter beans, snake beans, snow peas, ... The borlotti beans came from my brother's garden.

Make a dressing by finely chopping brown shallots and macerating them in a good red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar for 15 minutes. Give them a good squeeze so that the sharpness of the shallots get broken down. Add a pinch of salt and sugar, olive oil and if you have it, some walnut oil.

Dress the salad and then top with toasted walnuts and goat's curd. If you want to really impress, also top with some edible flowers like bean or pea flowers.

Cheat's Spinach and Ricotta Open Lasagne

I've seen a few cooking shows that use wonton wrappers in a lasagne. Well, it just doesn't quite taste right. When you bite in, it tastes like you're having an eastern meal until you get to the ricotta and spinach when you get a clash with the west. Maybe gowgee wrappers would work better.

It's a shame since the spinach came from my brother's garden and the ricotta from Paesanella in Haberfield.

Potato Salad and Radish Omelette

Just getting rid of some potatoes. Need to find a better mayonnaise or try making my own next time...

Freestyle Fritters

It seems you can make fritters from anything. For this, I had some left over potato, parsnip and carrot mash. I dumped in a tin of corn kernels, some flour, an egg and some parsley.

Peach and Blackcurrent Filo

Filo and puff pastry are great for making simple desserts. All I did with this is put a heap of layers of filo down brushing every odd sheet with melted butter, then spread some blackcurrent jam on top and cover with peaches, then add more layers of filo. Bake at around 180C for 20 minutes.