mountain masala

Foodie crawl and Paella

So, my foodie crawl the other day took me to El Choto Spanish Deli on Port Rd near the Entertainment Centre, where I got some paella rice (calasaprro), smoked paprika, a 3kg tin of chorizo, canned poblano chilles, then to the Persian Supermarket nearby where I bought barberries, date syurp and date paste, then to Gaganis Brothers' huge warehouse in Hindmarsh. I didn't have much time so I mainly bought some spices and a new pizza stone and serving board. Next it was Chile Mojo on Magill Rd, St Morris for some bottles of chilli sauce, dried chillies and liquid smoke. A quick stop at House in Norwood to buy a little gnocchi making paddle, and then off to the Adelaide Central Markets for gow gee pastry, pomegranate syrup (forgot to buy it at the Persian supermarket), assorted mushrooms and other stuff. Most of this is not the kind of stuff you'd buy every week...

After that I had to make paella, so I picked up some chicken and a few prawns to add to the imported chorizo. Beautiful.

Mushroom Ragout

I took myself on a quick foodie crawl of Adelaide on Tuesday and picked up a bunch of weird and wonderful products, including a bunch of different mushrooms that were on sale at the Central Markets. So I did a version of Kylie Kwong's italian-style mushroom ragout from her book "Heart and Soul". Here's my version with notes on hers.

Place the following into a pan.

2-3 small onions, thinly sliced (I used red onions, she uses 4 salad onions)
8 cloves garlic
1 tbsp sea salt

Add the following mushrooms on top (she uses 200g button, 100g oyster, 150g shitake, 100g swiss brown)

I had button, shitake and oyster - not sure what quantitites.

Top with 125g unsalted butter, diced, 1/2 cup extra virgin oile oil and a pinch of cracked white pepper.

Cook on high heat for 5 mins without stirring. Add 1/2 cup white wine and extra mushrooms (she has 100g enoki and 100g black cloud ear fungus - I had bought some fine little yellow french things so I added those instead).

Stir to combine and simmer on lower heat for 5 mins, uncoveres. Stir through 1/2 chopped flat leaf parsley to serve.

We ate this with a nice piece of steak and topped both with some good shaved parmesan. Very tasty indeed.

new music

yes, it's that time again, when I fearlessly go into the uncharted waters of music both new and old....

on CD

Mumford & Sons - "Babel" - love it. just as good as the first album.

Bruce Springsteen - "Wrecking Ball" - I have to admit that I was feeling a bit 'over' Bruce, but this album is sensational!

David Bowie - "The Next Day" - some excellent stuff and the rest may grow on me...

 

from emusic.com

Arlo Guthrie - "Arlo Guthrie", "Hobo's Lullaby", "Washington County" - having just seen the man in concert I'm going for his back catalogue... such a great songwriter.

Josh Ritter - "The Beast In Its Tracks" - another great singer/songwriter. The post-divorce album...

Billy Bragg - "Tooth & Nail" - they just keep coming...

Kate Nash - "Girl Talk" - poppy, rocky

Bonobo - "Animal Magic", "One Offs Remixes and B Sides" - back catalogue eletronica

Efterklang - "Tripper" - more electronic and acoustic/orchestral stuff... thanks to jonny for his new music post

Phosphorescent - "Here's To Taking It Easy" - as catchy as Bright Eyes or Ryan Adams

Samantha Crain - "Kid Face" - both original and familiar, lovely reflective folky stuff

Seth Lakeman - "Tales From The Barrel House" - I got this to make up for missing his tour. lively, spirited folk from western England

Lau - "Race The Loser" - I got this to make up for missing them as well! fabulous Scottish folk trio

 

from NoiseTrade - the following free till the end of March

The Autumn Film - "Tha Ship and The Sea", "The Grey EP", "8 Track Tape". Free sample here. Think "Sixpence None The Richer."

Page CXVI - "Hymns i - IV" (4 albums), "B Sides/C Sides", "Lullabies", "Re:Hymns"

and free on NoiseTrade anytime...

Samantha Crain - "An Introduction to Samantha Crain"

Resurrection is coming...

Quinoa Salad

Salad of quinoa, tomato, red onion, snow peas, radicchio, parsley, basil, chilli, lemon juice, olive oil. The original recipe that I adapted is here.

And here's the crustless smoked salmon and vegetable quiche that went with it... Quiche recipe here - although I added extra ingredients which turned it into more of a pie...

Assembly Christian Education Review

I'm at the Uniting Church's national Assembly Standing Committee this weekend, where yesterday I presented the report and proposals of my two years of research regarding the future of Christian Education in the Uniting Church. This was an internal report, and I don't know whether it will be circulated more widely. However, my ongoing PhD research will develop the work further and have some kinds of publication outcomes.

The good news is that the ASC accepted all of the proposals with only minor amendments. I can't reproduce them here yet until the minutes of the meeting are confirmed. However, I can say that the ASC affirmed that Christian Education is part of the role of the Assembly, adopted a vision statement about CE for the Assembly, agreed to some principles about how it would be enacted, agreed to consider how CE is embedded in the work of agencies and how some great collaboration might be pursued, agreed to appoint a senior staff person in CE, and agreed to develop a new mandate for a new Working Group.

Proposals about a staff PD and Working Group mandate will be developed and brought to ASC in July, presumably then with a Working Group appointed in th second half of the year and a committee appointed to advertise, interview and recommend a staff appointment (presumably starting 2014). In my view this is a fantastic result for the Assembly.

We had spent the morning doing some broad prioritising for the Assembly in the short-term in the light of budget issues. It was very affirming in the light of the content my report that the top three percevied priorities were seen to be (1) reorienting Assembly work to more directly resource 'local expressions of faith' (2) education (both lay and ordained) (3) facilitating cross-boundary synod work. Without unpacking these here, they picked up on key themes in my report about the Assembly working differently.

They also agreed to thank me for my work and gave me a nice bottle of wine and a box that I can open when I get home.

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

Thanks to Chris Lockley for this.

Date and Spinach Salad

Salad of spinach and rocket leaves, dates, sliced red onion, toasted almond, fried pita bread, sumac, chilli, vinegar/lemon juice/olive oil and salt.

Roast Roo, Beetroot and Walnut Salad with Couscous

I just received the fantastic Jerusalem cookbook in the mail from The Book Depository. I'd read lots of good reviews and seen a copy over Christmas. This continues to expand my interest in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food. First up there are lots of wonderful salad and vegetable dishes. Although some of them would cause allergy problems in our household, thereare still plenty of great combinations of both common and unusual foods. eg. roasted sweet potatoes and fresh figs, fattoush, baby spinach sald with dates and almonds, roast butternut squash + red onion + tahini + za'atar, fava bean kuku, pureed beets with yoghurt and za'atar, chermoula eggplant with bulgur and yoghurt (as an aside we've just started making our own yoghurt). Also a number of stuffed vegetable recipes (some with meat). Not surprisingly, the meat recipes feature poultry and lamb...

So last night I christened the book with this meal.

The rolled kangaroo roast was store bought. Nicely herbed. The couscous had dried cranberries and balsamic onion folded through it (don't stir or the vinegar makes the couscous go a horrible brown). And the following salad from the book.

Spicy beet, leek and walnut salad
600g beetroot baked in foil, peeled and cut into wedges
Leeks cut into 10 cm lenghts, gently simmered for 10 mins then cut into long strips.

Dressing
Mix together the following:
1 cup chopped walmuts
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 tsp chilli flakes (I forgot...)
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 tbsp tamarind water
1/2 tsp walnut oil
2 1/2 tsp peanut oil (due to allergies here I used olive oil for both)
1 tsp salt

Toss beets and leeks separately in dressing and some chopped coriander leaves. Serve on rocket (I used baby spinach leaves).

Option: add pomegranate seeds. We didn't have any. I could have drizzled some pomegranate syrup, I suppose.

Great and simple salad.

Community Development and Communities of Practice

I've very excited to see what Uniting Communities are doing in relation to community development, and their emerging work around communities of practice. Apart from the fact that I've been reading about communities of practice for my research of late, I have an interest in community development as mission that goes back to the mid-1990's when I worked on The Queen's Trust Project for students-at-risk. Chris Hawke introduced me to  "With Head, Heart and Hand" by Anthony Kelly and Sandra Sewell. Then the work of the Search Institute on "Healthy Communities, Healthy Youth" gave me some frameworks for working on this, which proved useful when I was living in Horsham and linked to some church and community youth projects there.(The Search 'assets' are different from the ABCD process, although they share some underlying principles in terms of community engagement.)

In my early days at College we partnered with the Mission Resourcing Network, and Rob Stoner and I designed and facilitated a 12-month peer learning experience for ministers called "Mustard Seeds", based on mission as community development. This was a mixed success, but very worthwhile overall I think. And we uncovered some great resources (including the Canadian Community Development Handbook - free PDF here, plus The Partnerships Handbook here, plus the Facilitator's Guide here) and tried to create a helpful peer learning process.

In my research I've connected with some congregations and proejcts that see community development as local mission - that is, seeking the well-being of the local community as part of "your will be done on earth as in heaven". This is church seeking to serve in a way that builds relationships within the local community and seeks to help the local community develop its strengths and capacities and find its voice. This has been exciting and inspiring, and has fuelled my interest in how mission is (re)shaping discipleship.

I have struggled to see how to apply this in the congregation that I attend, partly because it is not my 'local' community, and guess the other part has been busy-ness. but I remain strongly committed to exploring this and empowering others to do so. Looking forward to connecting with this Adelaide initiative and seeing where it leads me.

BTW check out the Australian Bank of Ideas resources page.