Emergency Winter Food for Children

After last year, where I took 45 (officially noted) days of sick leave (which felt like double or triple that amount), it has been very busy at work. I have child care constraints at the moment (is everyone in Europe or is it just my imagination?) so I have had to be creative with the last minute pick up from after school care.  With complaining \ hungry \ tired children, getting them fed \ bathed all in time to go to bed at 7 pm is a bit of a challenge.

(How amazing is the colour of this camellia? Instagram and its Bad Photography Concealing Filters love my camellias!)

Fast food is a must.   I am a night before person, which means that I try to  have dinner ready to go in the fridge the day before if I am not going to be there to cook it slowly.  So so much easier that way. 
  
But last week disaster struck - my daughter had a friend coming for a sleepover and the food had been prescribed in advance (spaghetti bolognese, white bread only, Tic Tacs and icy poles because she doesn't like ice-cream) and at the last minute I had neglected to defrost the pasta sauce. So I turned to my emergency bolognese sauce. 

Emergency Bol Sauce for Screaming Children


Ingredients
2 - 4 high quality pork sausages or chipolatas (not with fennel or chilli)
some butter
Splash of milk
A cup of tomato passata
3/4 cup of stock

Method

Squeeze the porky meat out of the sausage casings.   Gently melt the butter in a fry pan, add a splash of olive oil and some crushed garlic if you want.   Fry the sausage meat, breaking it up with a fork.   When the sausage meat is lightly browned and broken into even tiny bits, put in a splash of milk (sounds gross but Italians do it and it keeps the meat moist).  When the milk has bubbled down, add the passata and chicken stock. At first it will be runny, that is fine.  Cook it down until the sauce has the consistency you want. I like my bol sauce a bit runny and not dried out.

Serve proudly with spaghetti and Parmesan.

When I first went to Paris in 1992, my lovely friend Penny took me for hot chocolate at Angelina's Tearooms in the Rivoli.  The hot chocolate blew my mind, so much better than the watery cocoa I had previously had.   There are a number of different ways to recreate proper hot chocolate, but I like this the most.  It is quick and not messy.   I have forgotten where I got this from, possibly Orangette.   Only proviso is that you really do need a stick blender to get it smooth and frothy. 

Semi Authentic Super Quick Hot Chocolate

Ingredients (this serves two, can easily be doubled)
2 cups of milk
2 tablespoons of water
1 1/2 tablespoons of caster sugar
a handful of chocolate chips which is about 1/4 cup.  Or more to taste but these won't melt as well. 

Method

Put the milk, water and sugar in a saucepan.  Heat gently.   Watch it, when milk boils over it is horrible and messy.  When it is just about to boil there will be little bubbles around the edge.   Take it off the heat and put in the chocolate chips.   Assuming your pot has high sides you can do the next step in the pot.  Get your stick blender and whizz away.  The movement and heat will melt the chocolate, and the mixture will become frothy and smooth and thick.

Drink and enjoy.  

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Back from the Nether World of Castles

I have spent the last 3 or so days and 4 very long nights half dead in bed from stomach flu, which I could have done without.  If you were to ask me what is the very worst thing about having children I would have to say 'being sick' because it is so hard to recover from anything when you have to attend to their every need and that, combined with guilt that you are not attending to their every need in a remotely satisfactory way, renders the whole experience twice as bad.  Mind you I was fully delirious for one whole day so I didn't much notice how hungry they were.  (Only joking, I did have a husband who can in theory look after them.  But to this day one of my fears which cannot be stilled is the fear of becoming chronically ill.   Who would make sure that the children are really okay?)

I did manage to do a lot of this though:

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (with some weak tea)

Kate Morton is now an 'Internationally Best Selling' author, trumpet her publishers.  Her first two books also received the little golden 'Great Read' sticker handed out by the Australian Women's Weekly which usually guarantees mega sales. It also connotes girly chick lit whirlwind slightly bitter romance. And her work is better than that.  Still pretty fruity in its language, perhaps searching for the less well known word when the ordinary one would do just fine, it's true, but I have loved all her books, resonant with secrets, dark English houses, overgrown gardens, pre and post War romances, and the tragedies and misunderstandings of family relationships.   

Have you ever wondered about your mother's life before she married and had you? I have, and like most people I have never really broached the topic with her.  The Distant Hours explores the life of the heroine's mother as an evacuee to a castle located (I think) in Surrey which was inhabited by three sisters and their mad brilliant writer father in the depths of World War 2 and the secrets the sisters then keep there for 50 years. 

Here is Kate Morton at her desk at home in Brisbane.  Yes she is Australian, but writes so well about England.

photo via The Australian

And most wonderfully The Distant Hours features a castle with a tower and a filled in moat.   Kate Morton recently said in an interview 'I wanted to write something that made me feel so enveloped by a story that the real world dissolves around me'.   I would say that is the secret to all great writing, that transportation into another world, and another point of view.

 

Whilst Kate Morton was apparently inspired by Sissinghurst Castle in her depiction of the fictional Milderhurst Castle, I pictured this castle as the home of the Blythe sisters, Juniper, Persephone and Seraphina.  This is Herstmonceux Castle (Tudor, constructed from 1441) at Bexhill in Sussex, taken I suspect, before it was refurbished. It now houses an outpost of Canada's Queen's University.   

How I wanted to live in a castle when I was little.  And the Distant Hours made me think back to some other favourite castle books.  

I read Dodie Smith's 'I Capture the Castle' many years ago, and when the film was released in 2003 I rushed off to see it by myself.   The film was set here, at Manorbier Castle (Norman, constructed from 1140) in West Wales, a castle which has now, like so many others, fallen into disrepair.

No post about English castles in books would be complete without Malory Towers.   I have read that the real life inspiration for Malory Towers, the four towered school in Cornwall, was this castle, Lulworth Castle (built in 1610) in Dorset.   Isn't it funny that as a child I so fervently wanted to go to boarding school. I probably would have hated it, but the idea of school in a stone castle was just so exciting.

I do often wonder if Brideshead Revisited would have died a quiet 20th century death were it not for the BBC TV series from the early 1980s.  After all, I have to say I found the book a bit turgid.  Far away, at Melbourne University at the time of the TV series, people got up in boaters and blazers channeled Sebastian Flyte in their every utterance.  But the setting, in this, the castle of all castles, Castle Howard in North Yorkshire (built from 1699 to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh), makes up for almost everything else.   

Other castles of my dreams? I prefer them craggy and stormy, like this one, Eilean Donan Castle (originally built in early 13th century as a defence against the Vikings):

Have I missed any other great castle books?

(Photo of Manorbier Castle by Stephen J Franklin)

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(Short) Story of a Pavlova

As I mentioned here, I am pretty happy cooking with eggs.  Even without a beater.  And pavlova I love especially.   I did not know this until pretty much just now, but apparently pavlova, named after Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, originated in New Zealand, not Australia.    So that is another thing, like Russell Crowe, that we Australians have inappropriately taken from the Kiwis and claimed for our own.  Okay, you can have Russell back. 

This week I made mini pavlovas for the children.  By mini I don't mean bite size.  I mean the size of a large burger.   The first one I made and finished had such a pitifully short life I thought I would share its journey.  

The very best thing about pavlova is the transformation of the egg whites from clear liquid to these satiny pillows.   It is an amazing chemical reaction to the beating and air. 

The critical ingredient in a pavlova is cornflour (or cornstarch).  This is what makes the pavlova soft and marshmallowy on the inside (unlike a meringue which is crisp all the way through). 

 This recipe makes enough for 4 mini pavlovas of about 10 cm diameter. 

You can also roast the strawberries for the topping (not for very long however) but for this one I used fresh ones from Western Australia. 

Here is my son tentatively touching the cream trying to work out how to eat it. 

Here he is having another go.   He then asked me to cut it up into chunks for ease (and speed) of eating. 

Exactly three minutes later, this was the result.   From bowl to mouth?   About 60 minutes.  

He enjoyed it so much that I forgot it was only half an hour until dinner.   Not surprising then that he wasn't that interested in eating any dinner.  Mind you, this is my week for negligent mothering.   On the weekend the last nappy in the house broke when I was putting it on and rather than go out to buy more I gaffer taped it together for the night.    Sometimes I do feel like I am running a not very good quality and possibly about to be de-registered creche.  

Ingredients

4 egg whites (room temperature is best)
pinch of salt
250 g caster sugar
2 tsp of cornflour
1 tsp of white wine vinegar

For topping - whipped cream, vanilla essence and strawberries OR passion fruit seeds OR mango. I feel very strongly that pavlova should not have a mixed fruit salad on the top. 

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees. 

Using an electric beater, beat the egg whites and the salt together in a clean bowl on a tea towel until reasonably firm and shiny peaks form. 

Beat in the sugar, a spoonful at a time until all is incorporated. 

Fold through the cornflour and vinegar.

Place a sheet of baking paper on an oven tray and using a metal spoon, scoop 4 evenly sized spoonfuls of mixture onto the sheet.   They should be about 10 cm across. 

Place in the oven and then immediately turn down oven to 150 degrees.  Let cook for about 30 - 40 minutes until the outside is crisp and slightly browned. Turn of the oven and let sit for a further half an hour.
To assemble, put a plate over the pavlova base and gently invert.  Whip cream and add a drop of vanilla essence. Spoon cream over the top and then place fruit topping over in a nice pattern.

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