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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on canvas. Inspired by the flatness of poster art and the childlike fun of the artwork of Australia's much loved Michael Leunig. I like the idea of the eating paddock to plate, or in this case, garden to pie. Look how fresh this Spring pie is. The plants are still growing!!

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The meatless meals recipe - Spring Pot Pie

It's not as much work as it seems! Don't be put off by the long recipe. This is really a straightforward pot pie where the actual vegetable filling can be flexible. Most of the flavour is in the stock which then makes a thick filling sauce and a pea sauce for topping. This is one of those recipes good for using up all sorts of odds and ends from the garden or left over in the fridge.

For 4 individual pot pies when served with mash

Stock

6 peppercorns
4 bay leaves
8-10 large fresh sage leaves, finely chopped (about 2 teaspoons) Dried sage is far stronger than fresh so use far far less if substituting
2" fresh rosemary
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
Liquid volume should total 1L:
1 tablespoon / 20ml olive oil
1 tablespoon / 20ml lemon juice
1 tablespoon / 20ml white wine vinegar
1 cup dry white wine
690ml water

Pie Filling

1 small-medium parsnip
2 cups finely shredded silverbeet or cabbage
1 leek or medium-large onion, chopped or sliced
240g cooked beans
1 small turnip or swede, chopped
1 1/2 medium carrots, sliced or diced

Thick Stock Sauce

1 cup stock liquid (after cooking)
1 tablespoon cornflour

Pea Sauce

2 cups peas
2 tablespoons fresh mint
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
2/3 cup / 180ml stock liquid (after cooking)


500g shortcrust or puff pastry for pie lining and lid


Put stock ingredients in a pot with a lid on.
Simmer gently for 15 minutes.
Add pie filling ingredients to the pot.
Simmer gently for another 15 minutes. Keep the lid on.
Test that veg are done and keep simmering if necessary.
Grease pie dishes with olive oil.
Line with pastry.
Strain pie filling ingredients. KEEP THE STOCK LIQUID. Remove bay leaves and rosemary stalk.
Fill pies.
Using 1 cup of stock liquid, make a thick stock sauce by whisking in 1 tablespoon of cornflour to thicken.
Pour equal amounts of the thick stock sauce into each pie.
Put pastry lids on the pies.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes at 180c to cook the pastry.
Make the pea sauce by putting cooked peas, mint, parsley and stock into a blender and whizzing until smooth.

Serve pot pies with pea sauce and mashed potato.

Zesty. Rich. Satisfying. Leisurely.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on marine ply panel - no framing required. A surreal sight floating past on a summers day.

Original painting on your wall.

Find out what this painting would look like on your wall before buying. Email me a photo of your space and I'll Photoshop it into size and place to help you decide if it's right for you.

Original artwork can be purchased in the Official Art Store. This particular piece is dry and available right now for $AU150. Email me (fi at wherefishsing dot com) to express your interest.

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The recipe

Once upon a time I lived in a shared rented house with a friend whose recreation mostly consisted of drinking and whose friends were probably alcoholics. I was a student and seeing these guys drink a slab of beer each on the weekend and hearing about them getting their name engraved on the bar for some drinking feat or other was just normal. This particular house had a lemon tree in the backyard. One weekend, I'm telling the tale of how I had just chased some kid who was collecting lemons without asking, over the six foot fence and out of the yard. I would have said yes had he bothered with common courtesty and helped him gather them, but just hopping over the fence was outrageous to me. My friend becomes all fired up about the overload of lemons on the tree, and excitedly asks the little group of his drinking buddies and I, 'What do you do with loads of lemons?'. We all look at each other and say together, 'Tequila!'. Cue shocked expression and pure disappointment from our alcohol friendly questioner, 'Nooooo, LEMON MERIGUE PIE!!!!'.

LMP is one of those recipes that is far more susceptable than most to the experience and knack of the cook. Recipes are only ever guides or roadmaps due to variations in oven and stove temperatures, ambient temperatures, seasonality of the ingredients, the size and material of the cooking pot (and some might say which way the wind is blowing and what the cook ate for breakfast). Unfortunately this dish is renowned as a tricky one and for good reason. Your familiarity with your stove and oven will be tested and the more meringues you have whipped the better you will be at gauging when the foam is ready to cook. Rest assured, that no matter how many times you have to practice this to get it spot on, the tests that might look a little wonky will taste great.


1 pre-baked short crust pastry case of 9" diameter - the pastry needs to be cooked before the filling is added as there is not enough baking time or heat to cook it once the pie is assembled and in the oven.

4 tablespoons arrowroot / tapioca flour - use arrowroot instead of cornflour as it is stronger, has less taste and is transparent instead of cloudy.
3/4 cup / 180ml water
1/3 cup / 60g butter
1 cup sugar or more to taste
5 eggs, separated into yolks and whites - room temperature eggs are best as they whip up into meringue faster than cold ones. Also fresh eggs make a smaller but stable foam, while older ones (more than 3-4 days) make a large unstable foam. Take your pick.
3 medium sized lemons - you need all the zest and juice. Handy hint - zest first!
10 tablespoons castor sugar for the meringue - use castor sugar as it is a small sized grain and dissolves quickly into the meringue. Less sugar can be used but the meringue will be correspondingly less stable.
2 1/2 teaspoons cornflour or arrowroot - a tiny bit of this in the meringue traps moisture and reduces beading.
rounded 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar - this strengthens the meringue foam and reduces the amount of  shrinking.


Pre-bake (bake blind) your pastry case and leave it in the baking tin.
Get/leave the oven on so it will be at 190C /325F when the pie is assembled.

For the lemon filling:
In a pot, blend the arrowroot and water.
Add the cup of sugar, egg YOLKS only, and the lemon zest and juice and mix together. A small whisk is really handy for this. Make sure the the yolks are well mixed in before the next step or you end up with eggy threads throughout the lemon filling (harmless but odd).
Then put the butter in the pot and begin heating. Once you start heating this mix do not pause or stop or it will not set. Stir frequently.
As soon as most of the sugar has dissolved, taste and add more sugar to this mix if you prefer it sweeter. I like this quite tart as the meringue is quite sweet.
Now, heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture boils. Again, a small whisk is ideal for the stirring.
Turn the heat down to medium and keep stirring while the mix cooks for one minute. It should become impossibly thick.
Take it off the heat and let it cool slightly for a few minutes, then pour the mix into the pre-baked pastry case.

To make the meringue topping:
Combine the castor sugar, cornflour/arrowroot and cream of tartar. 
In a scrupulously clean bowl (no oil or fats allowed or your egg whites just won't whip up into fluffy heaven), beat the egg whites into a coarse foam.
Once you start whipping the whites, do not pause or stop.
Now begin adding the sugar mix, one tablespoon at a time. Don't start with the sugar in with the whites or the whipping time will be doubled.
Cautiously add the sugar because if it's added too quickly it won't dissolve. A tablespoon at a time, whip until mostly dissolved, then add more. Rubbing the meringue between two fingers will tell you how much the sugar has dissolved. You can feel the grains.
Finally, whip the egg whites until they are stiff. You know they are stiff when you can make little mountains (peaks) and they stay standing up with no flopping over of their tips. Or when an upsidedown spoonful stays on the spoon. Or when tracks spooned through the meringue stay put indefinately. If the meringue starts to lose it's gloss while you are whipping, stop! That is the sign of over whipping.
When the meringue is ready - pile it on top of the hot lemon mix in the pastry case. The heat of the filling helps cook the meringue from the bottom and a properly cooked meringue does not weep and form a pool of liquid on top of the lemon filling leading to the meringue sliding off the lemon.
Also make sure the filling is entirely covered and the pastry meets the meringue all the way round to make a complete seal. This helps to stop the meringue shrinking.
Bake immediately to set the meringue at 190C for 25 minutes or until the meringue on top has browned lightly. A long baking at a low temperature means the meringue will hold up better, though all meringue will shrink a bit.

Resist eating instantly - LET THE PIE COOL FOR AT LEAST THREE HOURS, PREFERABLY FOUR, BEFORE CUTTING INTO IT OR ALL YOU WILL GET IS RUNAWAY LEMON SLUDGE. I know from sad experience.

Makes enough for you to be decadent with 5-7 friends.

Unusual. Easy. Light. Leisurely.

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen.  The spaghetti squash is, to me, a cartoon of a vegetable. It always makes me giggle. It's an amusing absurdity, a cheeky poke at serious food. In Japan it's name translates as golden thread melon, which is a supurb description. Here the golden thread melon has cheekily unspurled itself in squiggles all over this painting.

Original artwork can be purchased in the Official Art Store. This particular piece is currently drying and will be available shortly for $AU150. You are welcome to arrange to come and look at paintings, just contact me.

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The meatless meals recipe

A small example of a spaghetti squash or vegetable spaghetti. They are usually around 20cm or 8" long.

Vegetable spaghetti was big in the 1970's. If you've never cooked it before, the flesh falls apart into spaghetti strands as it comes out of the shell with no coaxing needed at all. It can just be boiled and served as a gluten free or paleo diet spaghetti, but.... well, it doesn't have a strong flavour and boiling it doesn't do it any real favours. Like tofu, it soaks up the taste (and juices) of whatever it's cooked with, so I prefer tomato juice and spices over water. Stuffing the spaghetti squash makes use of this tendency. Serving it with plenty of sauce would work too. This particular stuffing is Lebanese inspired, mild and fresh, with a satisfying 'every mouthful is different' blend of rough chopped ingredients.

By the way, if you can grow pumpkins, you can grow vegetable spaghetti. Same family, same vigorous and prolific tendencies. Just save the seed from one before you cook it.

one spaghetti squash approximately 20cm long and 12cm in diameter

dash of oil

To make the filling:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 large onion, minced or sliced fine
200g tomato, finely diced
1 3/4 cups cooked lentils
2 tablespoons crushed nuts
1/2 teaspoon treacle or honey
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/2 teaspoon allspice powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh dill
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
optional squeeze of lemon juice

Cut the ends off the spaghetti squash, then cut it in half, down the middle of it's longest side.

Scoop out the seeds.

Place both halves face down on an oiled oven tray and bake at 190C / 375F for 40 minutes.

To make the filling, soften the onion in a frypan with a little oil.

Then also soften the tomato in with the onion.

When these are done, put the lentils, nuts, honey, cinnamon, allspice, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl with the softened onion and tomato. 

After 40 minutes of baking, remove the spaghetti squash from the oven, scrape all the flesh out into a large mixing bowl, making sure to keep the shell intact.

Mix the vegetable spaghetti and the stuffing together.

Put this mix back into the shells of the spaghetti squash.

Continue baking at the same temperature for another 20 minutes.

Top with dill, parsley and mint before serving (and a squeeze of lemon juice if you please).

This will make a meal for 4 with the addition of a salad or roast potatoes or similar side dish. It looks like a lot of food but it's quite light and not quite enough to be filling on it's own.

Versatile. Thrifty. Leisurely. Unusual.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. You may know by now that I am quite a fan of rock art, petroglyphs and ancient Neolithic symbols. Onion jam, which starts out as a very large pile of rings of our ancient onion friend, seemed a perfect excuse to explore the ancient symbols of spirals and concentric rings.








Did you know you can download images of the paintings for your own personal (not commercial) use? Computer wallpaper, Facebook profile picture, yes you can. Find your favourite painting on Flickr, go to actions, view all sizes, download the size you want to your device, set it as your wallpaper or profile. And tell your friends where it came from :)

Original artwork can be purchased in the Official Art Store. This particular piece is currently drying and will be available shortly for $150. To find out exactly when that is, get on the mailing list, yellow box top left.

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The meatless meals recipe

There are so many cooking notes to go with this. I made at least ten versions, testing out all sorts of variables. Where do I start?

Ok first, the onions. It doesn't matter which colour you use. The long slow cooking is the real secret to this recipe. Red onions do give a fuller deeper rich colour, as you may expect, but the flavour is most affected by thoroughly caramelising whichever onions you use.

Sweetener. Either white or brown sugar in the quantities given works well, but avoid honey as it's sweetness is too unpredictable. One version I did was sickly with just 1/4 cup of honey. That is not right. Honey is usually less sweet than sugar, but this is not reliable.

Vinegars. Balsamic vinegar gives the most robust and flavoursome onion jam by far of all the variations I tried. If you prefer something milder, I recommend red wine which was easily the tastiest of the milder variations. Then there is white wine (untested), white wine vinegar (insipid), apple cider vinegar (really weak flavour with no depth), red wine vinegar (ok, a bit weak and lacking in flavour depth), malt vinegar (good - mild but acceptable), or sherry (really weak flavour with no depth). If you decide to use one of the weaker flavoured vinegars, cutting back the sugar a little seems to help them in the taste department.

Spices. A clove or two of garlic, a couple of chillis, and olives are other spices that are sometimes added to onion jam. Whatever floats your boat. I didn't like any of these variations.

1-4 tablespoons olive or canola oil, as required to prevent sticking
550-580g onion slices - about 4 large onions of any colour (white, brown or red)
1/4 cup white sugar or 3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 x 5cm stick cinnamon
2-3 star anise, or a few big pinches of ground nutmeg if you detest anise flavour

Cook the onions long and slow in a pan with enough oil to prevent them sticking. Stir frequently. Do not let them burn or crisp at any stage. Keep cooking. They need to be FULLY softened with absolutely no crunch whatsoever. If in doubt, keep cooking. I find this stage takes at least 20 minutes.

Then add in the sugar, vinegar and spices.

Keep cooking long and slow, stirring as needed, until the onions have fully caramelised into one dark sweet sticky mass. I find this takes about an hour.
Again, if in doubt, keep on cooking.

Makes about 1 cup of onion jam. Keep in a container in the fridge. It improves with age :)

Enjoy as an accompaniment to cheese or roast tomatoes (OMG!). Use it wherever you might use chutney. It tends to pair very well with eggs, cheese and tomatoes, and in some instances, potatoes and pumpkin.

Hearty. Thrifty. Leisurely. Easy.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on linen. Thanks to cold snowy nights and the possibly true or possibly fictitious history of shepherds pie being the dish of shepherds (as in tending a flock of sheep or indeed eating them!) when coming down from the mountains into the village. Also well and truly inspired by Chagall's 'I and the Village' shown below, thanks to the sheep, village and mountains shared by both the shepherds pie myth and the painting.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

Middle of winter. Lashings of mashed potato. Hearty filling beans. Veg and herbs all simmered together in beer until meltable. How good does this sound?

To cook this recipe you will need a lidded casserole dish that can hold more than 1.2L or 2 pints of liquid, or be prepared to clean the bottom of your oven of all the burnt on overflow.

Filling:
2 onions, diced
1 carrot, diced
1/2 cup diced celeriac or 2 stalks celery, sliced
1 tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup dried lentils or split peas (not the little red ones as they just turn into mush)
1/2 cup grains, ie rice (barley is not ideal as it doesn't always cook in time)
2 tablespoons plain flour
2 teaspoons sugar

These liquids need to total 1L:
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
around 330ml beer
stock

Topping:
800g potato
milk and butter to taste for mash

Melt the butter and sweat (lid on) the onion, carrot and celery/celeriac with the salt for around 10 minutes until these are all soft.
Take off the heat and add all the other filling ingredients and stir well.
Then add the liquids and stir well.
Bake in the oven for 1 hour at 160C with the lid on.
Meanwhile, boil, drain and mash the potato, adding milk and butter as you like.
Add the potato topping to the filling.
Place back in the oven minus the lid for another 30 minutes.

Serves 4. 

Versatile. Leisurely. Easy. Moreish.

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Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on canvas. Again inspired by the paintings of Paul Klee. This time it's his paintings from about 1915 to about 1925 which are purely abstract and composed of coloured rectangles. According to Wikipedia, 'The colored rectangle became his basic building block, what some scholars associate with a musical note, which Klee combined with other colored blocks to create a color harmony analogous to a musical composition. His selection of a particular color palette emulates a musical key. Sometimes he uses complementary pairs of colors, and other times “dissonant” colors, again reflecting his connection with musicality.'

Well I'm not connecting this artwork to music. As you know, it's connected to food. In particular, the rectangular strips of tofu and their tasty golden brown tones of this recipe.

By the way, all the food painting artwork is available to own in the Official Art Store.

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The meatless meals recipe

When I was living in London I became friends with a lovely South Korean by the name of So-Young. When I went to visit her in her home outside London where she was studying, this is one of the dishes she had prepared. It made quite an impression on me and for a year or so I was asking for the recipe. I gather that this was seen as a bit strange as this dish for Koreans is a bit like cooking toast for Westerners. It's just something you do all the time, no recipe required. Anyway, we did end up doing a little recipe swap. Yay - tofu strips for chocolate cake! This is So-Young's recipe with quantities added and put into my words.

I'm not sure what the Korean name for this dish is. I call it tofu strips which is not the most imaginative title, but it does describe it in a 'call a spade a spade' sort of way. So-Young has recently posted me an absolute gem of a book called 'Invitation to Korean Cuisine' by Han Youngsil. In there is a recipe for Braised Pan Fried Bean Curd. It's basically the same dish! Use whichever name you prefer.

250g firm tofu
1/2 small to medium onion, sliced fine
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1-2 teaspoons sugar, to taste
a sprinkling of salt, to taste (remember that soy sauce is quite salty)
about 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 spring onions, chopped
1-2 tablespoons peanut or sesame oil
chilli to taste

Slice tofu into your favourite shape. Pieces about 1/2 to 1cm thick are good.
Use the oil and lightly fry the tofu pieces until gold but not brown on both sides with a sprinkling of salt.
Remove the tofu from the pan.
Turn the heat right down low.
Lay the onion in the bottom of the pan and place the tofu on top.
Sprinkle with the sugar, garlic and chilli and cover with the spring onion.
Carefully drizzle the tofu pieces with soy sauce. Get as much on the tofu, as opposed to in the pan, as possible.
Cook long and slow until the spring onion begins to wilt.
Taste test and adjust the sugar, salt, soy sauce and chilli to your preference.
Keep cooking slowly until the spring onion has fully wilted.

Serve on top of stir fried veg and rice or noodles and it will make 4 meals. Or use as tofu burgers for 2. Or just snack on it by itself.

Fun. Moreish. Leisurely. Fingerfood.

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on canvas. Heavily influenced by kawaii (super-cute) Japanese cartoon animals. If you look closely you may see the giant gyoza in the background.

Nowhere as difficult to make as you might first imagine, but gyoza are a little bit of work (well worth it I say).

Gyoza are a type of dumpling also known as pot-stickers. They are partly steamed and partly fried and very delicious. Especially with an evening of beer, chatting and friends around to help. Usually they are served as an appetiser or snack, but seriously, if you're going to go to the effort of making them, it's worthwhile to make an entire meal of them. No one will complain.

Remember to get a packet or two of wrappers. Wonton, jiaozi or gyoza.

The filling:

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon sherry or sake or mirin

1 teaspoon sesame oil

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1 cup or 50g of finely shredded and chopped chinese cabbage

6 spring onions, white and green parts chopped fine

3/4 cup or 50g finely chopped tempeh

3/4 cup finely chopped shitake mushrooms - equivalent to 20g dried shitake mushrooms that need to be rehydrated for 30mins and squeezed mostly dry or 80g of already rehydrated shitake mushrooms that have been squeezed mostly dry.

If you are feeling lazy, the ingredients can be put in a blender together. This is much quicker than chopping everything up fine, but the final texture is not as good and you end up with less gyoza (about 30 instead of 38).

Mix all the ingredients together very well. You don't want any clumps of ginger or salt! It's easiest if the ingredients are put in a bowl one by one in the order given and mixed thoroughly after every addition.

Now for some photos. This part is quite simple, just tricky to explain in words only.

It's quickest to work in batches. I can fit about a dozen into my pan, so that's how many I prepare at once.

Take your plain gyoza wrapper...

and take a rounded teaspoon of filling...

and place the filling on one half of the wrapper, leaving a border around the edge. Do not overfill!

Dip your fingers in water...

and wet all around the edges of the wrapper. This is so it will stick together when folded in half.

Now fold the empty half over the filling...

and press down in the middle...

and all around the edges. Done! Then repeat for all of them.

Now for the cooking. It will need to be done in batches according to how many you can fit in your frypan.

So, put enough sesame or peanut oil in the bottom of your frypan to prevent the gyoza from sticking.

When the pan is HOT place the gyoza in the pan and wriggle them about to help stop them sticking.

Fry until golden on one side.

Then throw 1/3 cup or 80ml water into the pan to steam them. Immediately put a lid on the pan.

Leave them for 3 minutes - time it.

Remove lid and remove tasty gyoza to a plate to be scoffed.

Serve with dipping sauce. Hoisin or sweet chilli or soy sauce or chilli sauce all work well. So does this one:

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon mirin

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1/2 spring onion, white part only finely chopped

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon chilli paste to taste

Mix all the ingredients in the dipping bowl.

This recipe makes 38 gyoza. Which is a light meal for 2 or a decent meal for 1.

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More vegetarian cookbook goodies

Need help with conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.

Want to check out more vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.

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