Thanks to Jasmin, and based on your wonderfully informative feedback, Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea has received a facelift and a layout reorganisation. Hopefully, it will be easier than ever before to find what you seek and give you some extra eye-candy along with the mouthwatering Autumn/Winter catalogue of recipes to be published. As always, don’t be shy to use the poll system to let us know how we are going. Thanks for your visit!
With all of the recent talk about civil unrest, economic uncertainty and the loss of jobs and natural disasters in our booming world – especially where we are directly involved or know of family members in the crisis – it isn’t surprising that we might feel a little run down. When we feel tired, we are less inclined to create meals for ourselves that are balanced and full of the essential qualities that we need to pick ourselves up again, energize or blood and mind, and so we instead resort to the quick and easy option. Would you give a sick patient a hamburger to eat on top of his or her antibiotics or would you consider it a priority to provide a more satisfying and creatively inspired meal? Junk food? No way! If I’m on deathrow or on my deathbed, you can rest assured that I wouldn’t ask for anything other than a trough of garden-fresh vegetables and a few fillets of Barramundi in a sacred sauce of epic proportions. Okay, maybe we’re getting a bit exorbitant!
Nevertheless, I am constantly amazed to see how the citizens of the city are still able to pick themselves up from their worries and exhibit a kind of joie de vivre – on a macroscopic and microscopic scale from worldwide to household, and notice the tranquil and charming change of season that April brings. I am often reminded and often think fondly of the transition period however brief, in which the air is energised with a breath of creative vitality at the coming of changing hands of weather. At the time of writing, Sydney has stepped down from its zenith in the heart of summer (that persistent and merciless heat holding out long past its expiry) and is now given to an icy thrill upon the winds.
New blades of grass are appearing over those once scorched patches of parched earth like the head of a bald man without his sunscreen, the riverside is awake with the gurgling and bubbling of aquatic life and the trees are shedding cells of life from the branches in typical Autumnal fashion. Whoever said that Autumn and winter are the bleakest of months was misguided in their appropriation of the chilly tempest and the shedding of old life, for now the forces of nature are at work to bathe itself and indulge in the richness of casting pollen, the succulence of new roots teething at the drops of fluid meandering through the soil and of course, the mysterious patterns embedded in the ‘falling leaf’ of oak trees, maples and liquid ambers.
But what has this all got to do with food, you ask? The simplest answer to this is that all of our natural produce is nurtured and sourced from nature, just as we are sourced and nurtured from that amorphous element of this material plane. It all occurred to me as I passed by a cityscape garden on my way home earlier this week and was overjoyed to see the Council taking matters seriously and the simplest and most easily overlooked way; instead of finding a host of adorning plants and flowers, ripping up slabs of concrete for lamp-posts and carparks, I stooped over to gather a small bush of herbs and chilli that I would later integrate into my cooking. This garden perch was beside a newly constructed bicycle mounter, facing a new fountain, beneath a canopied promenade and opposite a cafe bursting with lunch-time activity. And why not? I’m overjoyed to see something happening in the business-and-productivity centred city, which is slowly being broken down from the inside-out, with some of the most minute actions making more ‘noise’ than the drastic forms of protest that haven’t gotten us so far in recent times.
If you’ve been behind the kitchen stove lately, scratching your head about what to cook, I have an unusually bright feeling that it’s because you are torn about what to cook in the face of the turbulent changes of weather that has lately been so indecisive between its warm and its cool days. Perhaps you just miss those wonderful flavours of summer that are soon to be fleeting to the post-$5/kg mark at the green grocer.
This month I wanted to display a household favourite and also illuminate some new uses for those ‘in-between’ vegetables that rarely make it to our table in the course of the average week. When was the last time (or any time at all) you ever sliced and fried a leek with bird’s eye chilli paste, sea salt, red garlic and wild thyme? Did you also add a squeeze of fresh lemon (or lime, for the merrier of heart) and pop in a dollop of quality olive oil, some fresh cracked black pepper and a pinch of paprika? To this wonderful frying mixture that is already making your eyes and mouth water, had a temptation come over you to use this shallow-frying recipe for a delicious cut of steak, or in the focus of this current recipe, a butcher-fresh chicken breast or two, coated in egg-and-flour?
Give this recipe a try with a starter of freshly arranged fennel, drizzled with warm oil, decorated with home pickled olives, cherry grape tomatoes and caramelized onion — for the sake of cleansing the palate and making a hungry stomach even more appetised, and you will see how quickly a simple meal can be “jazzed” up into a revolutionary tour de force of the kitchen! Moving your hips around and beating while listening to a track of Coltrane’s “On Green Dolphin Street” or Billie Holiday’s “I Can’t Get Started” is preferable, but not necessary.
INGREDIENTS
700g chicken breast fillet
2 large eggs
2 metric cups white flour
70mL pure olive oil
6 cloves garlic, diced
splash vinegar (preferably grape or Balsamic)
1 leek, washed, peeled and finely sliced
1 small lemon, juiced
punnet of black and green olives
oregano, black pepper and salt
1. Preheat frying pan on high heat. Ready a pair of tongs and a plate with absorbent paper.
2. Remove all excess fat from chicken breast. Slice each breast lengthwise and seperate into thinner fillets. Lightly score each fillet in several locations.
3. Prepare a shallow bowl with the olive oil and season with herbs, spices and salt. Add chopped garlic and stir.
4. Slice leek and place portion into mixing bowl and remainder into pan. Fry until colour and texture changes.
5. Thoroughly douse each individual fillet in mixture, pressing firmly as you go and flipping sides. Flour each fillet thoroughly and place aside.
6. Pour oil from mixture into the frying pan and distribute evenly. Add the fillet pieces enough to cover the base of the pan at one time and turn each fillet whilst cooking only once.
Hi Simona, thanks for stopping by. Look forward to your contributing post :)
One of my favourite dinners! :P
The Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea project found its roots when it was plucked excitedly from the garden, washed briskly in a basin of water and lovingly left out to dry in a soothing marinade of vision and ambition ... More »
The Food of Italy, Kay Halsey
The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban & Silvano Serventi
The Silver Spoon, Phaidon Press
Jamie's Italy, Jamie Oliver
Italian Country Cooking, Loukie Werle
La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain, Penelope Casas
Looking good!
Great layout – good work!