FAQ, Magill Road

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date of visit:  Saturday 23 July 2011

We were off early this morning, puttering about all over the countryside ticking off some DIY and house decorating chores. Our usual leisurely weekend routine (be woken by cats around 0600, be woken by baby around 0730, eventually feed selves around 1100) was disrupted and before we knew it it was time for coffee and cake. OK – in my world, it’s ALWAYS time for coffee and cake, but this morning even Andy felt the need for caffeine and sugar.

And there, fortuitously, just over the road, was a café called FAQ. It’s a lovely bright and clean space, decorated in white and green. Even the high chair in the corner matched the rest of the décor. There wasn’t a massive selection of cakes and pâtisserie but there was enough. I chose a chocolate fudge biscuit and Andy went for vanilla slice (apparently the king of cakes). We ordered a couple of coffees.

The cakes came out quickly but the coffees took an absolute age. Hardly apt for a café which claims to be Fresh And Quick. While we were waiting Andy polished off his vanilla slice and I made my way through most of my biscuit. While we were eating our cakes we were approached by a rather dour lady, carrying plates, who uttered “Soup?”. Yeah – because most people go into a café and order sweets to go on with before their soup arrives …

Even Andy, whose patience far exceeds mine, started to look around wondering where our coffees were. They did eventually arrive and they were pretty good (Andy actually described his long black as ‘very good’ – I’m starting to sound like I was in a bad mood this morning, which I wasn’t).

The door of FAQ was home to a flyer: they’re after staff with coffee experience. Let’s hope new staff members are happy, cheerful types, who can make a coffee quickly and can manage tables.

FAQ
161 Magill Road, Stepney, SA, 5069
phone: +61 8 8362 1127

Dahl Makhani

- Alex 1 Comment

dahl makhni

I love lentils.  I don’t understand how people can NOT like them:  they’re versatile, tasty, cheap and extremely good for you.  I get really cross when I hear people say how difficult it is to feed a family proper food cheaply because they’re clearly not making enough, creative use of lentils.

That said, this recipe is the antithesis of all of the above. It makes use of black lentils which can be a little tricky to track down, it contains a ton of cream and butter, making it neither healthy nor particularly cheap. But it tastes amazing. I was first introduced to this type of dahl by the excellent Shabab restaurant in Leeds. The restaurant was across the road from Andy’s flat so I ordered more than my fair share of dahl makhani both as takeaway and in house. It was pretty much all I ate there (paired with a naan bread and a pint of Cobra).

My recipe comes from the excellent Curry. It’s not identical to that produced by Shabab but it’s close and it tastes excellent. As with Shabab’s, it’s best served with a naan bread and the lager of your choice. That does for supper for a greedy couple, but you can always serve as part of a larger meal.

NOTE: you do need to start this day before!

Take 250g of black lentils (urad) and soak them in lukewarm water overnight (we bought ours from the New India Market on South Road at Darlington).

Drain and rinse the lentils, and in a saucepan cover them with about 1½ litres of fresh water. Bring them to the boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook for about an hour. Keep an eye on the lentils – they’ll need a stir and you don’t want to over cook them and turn them into a mush.

Once the lentils are cooked, add 1tsp each of garlic and ginger pastes, 1½ tsp of salt (don’t leave this out – lentils without salt is just wrong!), and red chilli powder to taste (about 2 tsp gives the finished product some good heat). Simmer for a little longer and then add 2 tbsp of tomato paste and (wait for it) 150g of lightly salted butter (if you use unsalted you’ll just need to add more salt when you adjust the seasoning).

Stir in the butter and keep stirring until the lentils become thick and creamy. If you wander off now you’ll likely end up with a split mix and I doubt very much you want to eat lentils with a slick of melted butter floating on top …

Finish by stirring in 1 tsp of garam masala, a generous pinch of ground fenugreek leaves (methi) – if you have them (we almost never do) and finish with 4 tbsp of cream (get pure cream, don’t use anything with a thickener in it). Check the seasoning and serve immediately.

This does reheat well (making it perfect for work lunch the next day). I’ve never tried freezing it but both the cream and the quantity of butter make me feel that that might not be such a great idea. And to be honest, we’ve never had any problems polishing this off!

Jamie Oliver’s Feta and Spinach Pie

- Alex 3 Comments

Feta & Spinach Pie

It’s been some pretty horrid weather in Adelaide recently – cold (especially when you don’t have central heating) and wet (yep – the washing’s been hanging on the line for about a week) so what was in order for Sunday night supper was something quick and HOT.

There was another constraint: the huge pile of feta cheese in our fridge that had been bought to make a Greek salad to take to a BBQ that we subsequently couldn’t attend.

Salad out of the question, the natural mate of feta is spinach and I remembered seeing Jamie Oliver do a feta and spinach pie as part of his 30 Minute Meals.

My approach took quite a significant departure from his – mainly because we had less spinach and I suspect a considerably larger pan. As a side note, never ever buy Woolworths Own Brand frozen spinach: not only is it from China but our packet was mostly stalk. It really irritates me that I’m yet to locate an Australian grown frozen spinach. If you know of one, let me know!

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

In a pan, toast off a generous handful of pinenuts – pay attention to them and don’t let them burn!

In a bowl, whisk 4 eggs before adding about 200g of crumbled (or finely diced) feta. If you buy your feta from the supermarket you will most likely find that the deli counter sells a selection and you can buy Australian feta much much more cheaply than you’ll buy anything that’s prepackaged. At our supermarket, the deli product is also much better than the packaged stuff, so it’s a win all round.

Add the pine nuts, a pinch of oregano, a pinch of cayenne pepper, a grating of nutmeg, black pepper to taste and a glug of olive oil (if you want to measure, probably about 1tbsp). Finish by adding the zest of about half a lemon. Don’t miss the lemon zest!

Cook the spinach off in a pan. If you’re using frozen spinach (I used a 250g pack) you want to cook the water out, and if you’re using fresh, you want to wilt it so it’s soft. Allow the spinach to cool a little and then stir into the egg mix.

The bit I really like about this recipe is Jamie’s approach to the filo pastry. You know how working with filo can be a real bore … keep it covered with a damp towel, melt butter and brush the sheets and generally spend all afternoon faffing about. None of that with Jamie (well, we’d hardly expect that, would we?).

Take a large sheet of baking paper, sprinkle it with olive oil and then rub the oil all over it. Layer the baking paper with your filo pastry, rubbing olive oil between the layers (do this with your hands – it is so much quicker than trying to use a brush). Now, overall you want at least three layers of pastry but you’re likely to have to overlap sheets to cover the whole of the paper. Try to keep the overlapping to a sensible minimum though – you don’t want 6 (or even 9) sheets of pastry in some parts and only three in others.

When the baking paper is covered, pick the whole lot up and put it in a large, high sided frying pan. There should be a generous overhang. Pour the egg mixture in to the pastry case and fold the overhanging pastry away from the paper and across the top of your pie. You don’t need to fold it neatly – allow it to finish with bits of pastry sticking up: that looks kind of cool.

Now, cook the pie for a few minutes on the stove so that the bottom starts to cook and crisp up. Literally, we are talking about a few minutes here … don’t do what I did, which was wander off and start doing other things, because the pastry can (and will!) start to burn quite easily. Then put the pan in the oven to finish cooking – it will take about 20 minutes and the pastry should turn golden.

Because the pie is cooked on baking paper, it will be easy to slide off on to a plate. However, if, like me, you need to do some surgery on the base, it’s just as easy to flip the pie over. Fortunately, the layers of filo pastry and a palette knife meant I could remove the burnt bits easily, leaving us with a very tasty dinner. Had the base been shortcrust there’s no way I could have rescued our dinner!

Andy rightly pointed out that this would be brilliant made in smaller pans for an entrée and I think you could definitely do something canapé sized using something like a minced pie tin.

The most important thing though is not to skip on the lemon zest – this noticeably lifts the flavour of the whole dish. With all the cheese and egg having a little something cut through that richness is just perfect.