Girl eats world

ISRAEL: Green Shakshuka | PORTUGAL: Portuguese Custard Tarts SCOTLAND: Sardines & Bloody Marys | FRANCE: Oven-baked Camembert & Witlof Walnut Salad | MOROCCO: Chocolate & Almond Balls | SRI LANKA: Coconut Chicken Curry | PERU: Crab & Nasturtium Sandwiches with Radish & Green Apple Remoulade | JAPAN: Green Tea Glazed Cheesecakes | EGYPT: Basbousa | SOUTH INDIA: Kerala-style Prawn & Fish Curry

ISRAEL

Green shakshuka

I’ve started making green shakshuka, a healthier variation of the famous Israeli dish that traditionally includes tomatoes and peppers, and sometimes meat. It’s a super easy breakfast/brunch dish that only requires one pan. In goes anything and everything green – broccoli, peas, spinach, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, kale, mint and parsley, plus cumin and paprika. Remove from the oven when the eggs have plenty of wobble left.

Thirty years ago I volunteered on Kibbutz Shoval, a Jewish settlement in the Negev Desert near Beersheba. It had a plantation of pecan nuts, grapefruit and range orchards, a large dairy with 400 milking cows, and 5000 acres of grain crops.

My arrival into Israel on 2 August 1990 coincided with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Israel was never expected to play a major role in hostilities in the Gulf so for the most part it was business as usual. I divided my time between the numerous hen houses (3am start), peeling room (prepping vegetables for 350 kibbutzniks) and the clothes factory. It was hard dirty work and I lived in a very basic room. The experience is not for everyone, but I had the time of my life.

Best paired with: Salt, harissa powder, feta, flatbreads.

Recipe

PORTUGAL

Portuguese custard tarts

Made from scratch (!) my pasteis de nata (Portuguese tarts). A baked masterpiece, even though I didn’t have a thermometer to accurately gauge the custard and working with the dough was a test of extreme patience. The butter wasn’t evenly layered, there were air pockets and it was folded far from neatly, but I got them to look authentic – like the crispy, flaky, nicely browned tarts from Lisbon.

I’ve since learnt that the secret to getting the tarts to brown quickly and evenly is high and sufficient radiating heat, which you can achieve by using red bricks to make two layers above and under the muffin pans. Bricks take a long time to pre-heat and they are a hassle to move in and out of the oven, but it might just be worth it.

Best paired with: Coffee (preferably black) or Moscatel sherry.

Recipe

SCOTLAND

Sardines & Bloody Marys

I grew up eating pilchards on toast – a classic British lunch-time snack. We would mash them up with a fork (a bit cat-foody!), spread the mix thickly on white bread and place under the grill. I still enjoy sardines on a cold day, although I’d prefer to be eating them fresh from a charcoal grill on a Mediterranean beach.

Because #isolationloaf is a thing now, I made my own crusty bread, peeled open a tin of sardines (essentially the same as pilchards, just smaller), laid them whole on my sliced crusty toast, added Sicilian olives, lemon, coriander leaves and walnuts.

Best paired with: A full-flavoured, pre-noon vodka-soaked celery-sticked Bloody Mary - or two!

Recipe (variation)

FRANCE

Oven-baked Camembert & witlof walnut salad

I had a craving for cheese. French cheese. A few hours later, voilà! Gooey oven-baked Camembert with garlic and home-grown rosemary plus a bitter, crunchy witlof salad with walnuts. (If given a choice, I'd prefer to eat my cheese with a hunk of bread while resting under a tree in the southwest of France – cheese etiquette be damned!)

I’ll readily pay squillions of dollars for good cheese but I baulked at the price of my witlof. It’s not imported – supplies are available from hydroponic growers in Victoria – but it’s so expensive because it’s a costly, notoriously difficult crop to grow requiring two successive cultivation periods and a great deal of hand labour.

Best paired with: Sourdough and Riesling.

Cheese recipe

Witlof recipe (variation)

MOROCCO

Moroccan chocolate & almond balls

Sweet treats filled with little shots of dark dates and crystallised ginger, served with fresh, hot Moroccan mint tea.

Even to this day, I find the ceremonial tea-making ritual relaxing. It conjures memories of a trip to Morocco in 1997 when I took a truck ride up to the Berber mountain village of Imlil and climbed Mt Toubkal. I fell ill afterwards and cocooned myself at Hotel Etoile with woollen blankets and thermals. A few days later I was well enough to share a leopard-skin seat in a wild taxi ride with two European rock climbers into Morocco’s majestic Todra Gorge through a valley thick with technicolour palmeraies and Berber villages.

Best paired with: Juicy mandarins.

Recipe (variation)

SRI LANKA

Coconut chicken curry

I was stoked with my rich, earthy Sri Lankan coconut chicken curry with oven-roasted pumpkin and toasted pine nuts (no cashews on hand).

Embarrassingly, I’ve just learnt that edible pine nuts grow in pine cones in the northern hemisphere, which is why they come in small, very expensive packets. I followed the recipe (sort of), tossing in plenty of cloves, fennel, cumin and red chillies and scored a big high-five from the little people.

Best paired with: A pickled beetroot sambol would have brightened this dish but it went by the wayside once I’d opened the wine!

Recipe (variation)

PERU*

Crab & nasturtium sandwiches with a radish & green apple remoulade

I really wanted to make this a proper crab sandwich, with blue swimmers. But I bought inferior pre-packed stuff instead and regretfully missed out on twisting the claws, scooping out the fresh meat and saving the shells for a bisque.

The crunchy remoulade discoloured slightly because I didn’t immediately toss it with lemon juice. Watercress is a good substitute for the pricey flowers but I wanted the explosion of colour and tangy taste of the butterfly-like nasturtium blossoms.

If I grow my own plants, I could harvest them for nasturtium pizza, nasturtium omelette, nasturtium fritters and nasturtium pesto!

Best paired with: Plenty of crusty bread and Pinot Gris – especially complementary for crab when it's served cold.

* The garden nasturtiums that are grown today descend from species native to Peru.

Recipe

JAPAN

Green-tea glazed cheesecakes

Practising a Zen state of mind by making these delicate cheesecakes. Skill level required: ‘Ace’. This is a fiddly recipe. Studying the science of gelatin in advance highly recommended!

I first made these for my book club host back in 2016 following our adventure on the Hakuba ski slopes. I had to source everything – the ¾-cup springform cake pans, the black sesame seeds, the gelatin, the matcha. It took me much longer than 1 hour and 10 mins to bake, whisk, and assemble all the elements.

There are many good reasons to visit Japan – hot pots, sashimi, pickles, soba, edamame, and the deadly blowfish! A drink at the legendary Kamiya Bar. Robot cabaret in the Kabukicho red-light district. An early morning visit to a sumo training stable. The Sensoji Temple. Shopping in Nakamise Street. Bathing in hot volcanic spring water. Immaculately vacuumed subway stations. The neon lights and futuristic toilets.

Best paired with: Sakura tea (which is made by preserving cherry blossoms in salt and plum vinegar) or a good sake.

Recipe

EGYPT

Basbousa – semolina cake drenched in rosewater & lemon syrup

This decadent semolina cake literally translates as “just a kiss”. Basbousa is a much-loved desert and common in pastry shops throughout Cairo.

Takes me back to the chaos and car horns and backgammon-clacking, chess-playing, shisha-smoking locals. Thick sludgy coffee at tea houses in the Bazaar. The 1930s faded grandeur of The Windsor – a venerable Cairo institution. Ali-Hassan al-Hatti – a relic with chandeliers and old, old waiters. The Barrel Bar – a popular rendezvous.

Best paired with: Orange ice cream (if you have the inclination to make it) or thick whipped cream.

Recipe

SOUTH INDIA

Kerala-style prawn and fish curry

I adore prawns. Not skewered on a BBQ or drowning in a retro prawn cocktail. Simmering in a pot with tamarind, ginger, creamy coconut milk, fenugreek powder, green chillies and curry leaves. Then served with hot steaming rice or chapattis.

50 days in India equates to a lot of curries. Don’t skip the coastal state of Kerala – tea plantations, cool backwaters, sunny beaches and Ayurvedic massages.

Best paired with: Flatbread and a light, aromatic white wine.

Recipe

Enjoy xx