Star Anise

Sunday 8.55am

I was feeling lazy. Nicola had asked for Sweet and Sour Pork for tea but I just wanted something I could put in the oven and forget until it was ready. Spare Ribs popped into my head as the answer, served with plain boiled rice and a simple crunchy green salad of lettuce and cucumber perhaps, perfect. I found a recipe in Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries that sounded good but required some of these things in the picture – Star Anise. I have only ever seen these in books and have always imagined them to be so hugely expensive that I have always substituted Fennel seeds instead. But seeing as I had to go out for the pork anyway . . . . .

The local supermarket didn’t have any so it was off to the delicatessen - Boldersons for a look, I could have coffee and watch the posh people at the same time. And there they were, nestling in little cellophane packets amongst all the other spices and only $1.90 a packet ! Pretty as they are, the thing about anise is the smell and flavour so once seated with my coffee (and lemon cake) I had to open the packet to investigate. And the intensity of that smell just blew me away. The purity of it was just incredible, fennel is nice but the seeds have a sort of musty or dusty smell in comparison. I am not sure what the other customers must have thought, but like a cat rolling in catmint, I was instantly hooked and repeatedly had to have another hit. Happiness.

Life is never dull when you have spices

Carrot, Cardamon and Coconut soup

Sunday 2.22pm

This is just such a, well there is no other word for it, pretty soup. Pale orange in colour, delicately scented, smooth in texture, just pretty really. I have a recipe for a delicious carrot cake by Madhur Jaffrey that has Indian spices in it and cardamom features heavily, so why not a soup I thought and of course if you are going down the soft creamy route then coconut milk would be an ideal companion.

- start with half an onion and a small clove of garlic, and one or two green cardamom pods gently fried till soft.

- Add in two or three carrots chopped and mix around

- Then a pint and a quarter of half strength vegetable stock

- Simmer until the carrots are soft, half an hour or so

- Fish out the cardamom pods if you like, I left them in, and liquidize it all

This of course gives Carrot and Cardamon soup which is very nice but I went that little bit further and added a small amount of coconut milk, no more than 100ml or so (taste it) – you do not want to overpower with coconut. The rest of the tin I put in a couple of pots and popped in the freezer to see if it will freeze for some other time.

With two pods I thought the cardamom flavour was quite strong and would probably try one pod next time, but Nicola said she could not taste it at all. Mind you she is bunged up with flu at the moment.

We had ours with toast cos there is a lot of bread to eat up but better I think would be some sort of thin, slightly crispy flatbread or potato cake, perhaps next time.

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