February 2018 Recipe Redux : Nan-E Babari

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It’s that time of the month my friends for the Recipe Redux Challenge. Drum roll please….Bake Some Bread. Turn on your ovens! Be it tried and true traditional yeast bread, or one of the new trendy protein-added breads, show us what you’re baking.

Bwahahaha.

Seriously, it’s summer in Australia. It’s like 38 degrees (nearly 100 F) and my house does not have air conditioning. The last thing I’m going to do is turn on the oven. That’s one excuse. The other is that I happen to live less than 100 m from two of the best bakeries in Sydney. I am spoilt for choice with Maggio’s Italian Bakery and Victoire Boulangerie serving up my daily bread. I don’t have to bake bread. Other than cinnamon scrolls, you can’t get a decent cinnamon scroll in this country so I make my own but that’s a story for another time.

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Just some of the delicacies at my local bakery. Lucky me I have two to choose from!

Keep on reading!

Fast Food Hit: Maple Sausage Rolls

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I love a sausage roll. Let me rephrase that, I have learned to love a sausage roll.  These are quintessentially Australian, I’ve never encountered them on my global travels anywhere else.  The closest thing that I ever had to one was a “pig in a blanket”. But those do not hold a candle to a well made sausage roll. Savoury, slightly sweet sausage mince is baked encased in pastry, either puff or a flakey short crust.  The best ones are found at the local bakery and you should get there around 11 am to get them fresh from the oven.  The worst are either the frozen nuggets doused in sauce (ketchup) served at kids birthday parties or the ones sold at the counter of the servo which have been sitting in the warmer for untold hours. You should just walk, no run, away from those. Keep on reading!

Cauliflower Soup

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About 20 years ago my sister gave me a pressure cooker for Christmas. My response was “Hey, it’s a pressure cooker?!?” cue forced smile. She laughed at me and said “You know, you are going to love it.”. That was a dubious endorsement as my sister is not known for her culinary skills. She also provided me with a copy of Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure, which by the way is still in print. Keep on reading!

Chocolate Three Ways: Migraineur’s Hot Fudge, Blondies and Chocolate Mousse

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I’m a bit late getting posts out this weekend. It’s been one of those weeks. Actually a couple of weeks. We’ve been suffering through a series of migraines. It’s exhausting for Stuart to have them every other day. As for me, it’s a struggle to figure out what is causing them so we can stop the migraines. It took a while, but we finally determined the offending food item and have stopped consuming it. Ta da! The migraine beast is back on its leash.

The migraines were caused by food that had been grown in contaminated soil. Food security is a complicated component of the migraine puzzle. I’ll discuss the science in future blog posts. For now let’s get back to something more enjoyable, chocolate.

One of the challenges I faced as a step-parent was creating a unique birthday tradition for the boys. It needed to be different from the bio-parent’s celebration, but familiar enough to be fun. I went for cake, chocolate of course. Keep on reading!

Migraineur’s Crostoni: A Trigger Free Replacement for Crackers and Dippers

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We were on a family road trip discovering California. Stuart, the three boys, myself and #1 son’s high school friend, Izi, who just happened to be in California were making a day trip to Joshua Tree National Park. Stuart and I, like many in our generation, are massive U2 fans. It wasn’t hard for me to convince four teenagers for whom the album Joshua Tree is part of the soundtrack of their childhood that we should visit the park. My personal mission was to recreate the album cover with my four boys. Keep on reading!

Migraineur’s Lament of Hidden MSG

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According to the International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition, MSG, the abbreviation for monosodium glutamate, is defined as a causative agent of headaches. Unfortunately, the most recent review of the scientific studies on humans found no correlation between MSG and headaches. The authors believe that the relatively few number of studies, only 10, combined some poor experimental design means that further research is needed to determine if MSG causes headaches.

Well that’s good, because just about every migraineur will tell you that MSG is a trigger. Keep on reading!