Latest news with #roasting
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Meera Sodha's vegan recipe for soy, sake and sesame oil-braised aubergines
Here are two things about aubergines that you may not know: first, they are giant berries (!) and, second, they're roughly 92% water. The latter is important, because to get this mighty berry to reach its delicious potential, we need to dehydrate it (that is, remove as much water as possible and then hit it with lots of flavour). You could fry it, but, when the weather is lovely, I prefer hands-free cooking, which means roasting it. In this recipe, after roasting, I've used one of my favourite braising liquids – a mix of soy sauce, sake and sesame – to bring the aubergine back to life. Cooking sake can be bought in larger supermarkets and Chinese grocery stores (if you can't find it, use a nice drinking sake that will go nicely with the meal instead). Cook the rice before starting on the aubergines and cover it with a lid – it will stay warm for an hour. Prep 10 min Cook 35 min Serves 43 large or 4 medium aubergines (1.1kg)4 tbsp sunflower oil, or rapeseed oil5 tbsp light soy sauce¼ tsp fine sea salt6 tbsp cooking sake2 tsp light brown sugar2 tsp seasoned rice vinegar5 tbsp toasted sesame oil3cm x 3cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced1 red bird's eye chilli, slit lengthways100g spring onions, halved across the belly, then cut lengthways into long, thin strips (and rinsed, if need be)Toasted sesame seeds, to finishCooked plain rice, to serve Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7, and line two large trays with baking paper. Trim the tops off the aubergines, then cut each one into eight long wedges. Put these in a bowl with the sunflower oil, toss with your hands to coat, then lay the wedges side by side on the oven trays. Bake for 25 minutes, until soft. Meanwhile, make the braising liquid. In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, a quarter-teaspoon of salt, the sake, brown sugar, rice vinegar and three tablespoons of toasted sesame oil. Put the remaining two tablespoons of sesame oil in a small frying pan on a medium to low heat and, once hot, add the ginger, garlic and chilli, and fry for two minutes, until pale golden. Add the spring onions, stir for a minute, then add the soy and sake mixture, take off the heat and mix well. When the aubergines have had their 25 minutes, transfer them to a smaller, lipped baking tray, laying the wedges on top of each other. Stir the braising liquid again, then pour it all over the aubergines and shake the tin to make sure all the aubergines are covered. Roast for a further 10 minutes, sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve with rice alongside.
SBS Australia
17-05-2025
- Business
- SBS Australia
Inside the move to shake up Australia's $2.5 billion coffee industry
Tibor Pinci with his homegrown coffee beans. Source: SBS / Allan Lee Tibor Pinci is holding a flamethrower at the rotating barrel of a repurposed cement mixer where green coffee beans are slowly turning brown. "We call this an open roaster," Pinci said with a wide grin. "It involves a lot of precision because in just seconds the beans can be overdone." Pinci knows from experience by the sound of the beans popping exactly when to stop. "The coffee it makes will have an incredible full aroma, without the bitterness," he said. Born in then-Yugoslavia, Pinci migrated to Australia in 1981. Initially, he lived in Sydney and worked as a baker among other roles, finally moving north and starting his coffee plantation 18 years ago in the hills above Coffs Harbour. "I bought a nice little place here. It's only one hectare, but I have planted around 3,000 trees now," said Pinci, who is now in his 70s. "I handpick all my cherries when they're beautifully ripe. "The coffee we sell here is completely different to the usual big roasters." Small plantations like Pinci's are multiplying in Australia, as global coffee prices soar. Yet locally grown coffee beans make up just a fraction of Australia's US$1.64 billion ($2.5 billion) coffee market. And that figure is expected to reach US$2.17 billion ($3.35 billion) by 2030. Tobias Kretzschmar, a professor of plant breeding and genetics at the Southern Cross University, said: "We are looking at around 500 tonnes of [Australian coffee bean] production at the moment compared with around 100,000 tonnes of imported green beans." As a result, most of the coffee sold in Australia is brewed from imported beans, mainly Arabica sourced from Brazil. On 22 April, Rabobank predicted a 13.6 per cent drop in Brazil's 2025-2026 coffee crop to 38.1 million bags, citing dry weather in key Arabica-growing areas that significantly reduced flowering. At the same time, rising global financial market volatility — partly fuelled by trade tensions between the United States and China and fears of an economic slowdown — is adding to price instability, compounding the impact of supply-side pressures. Paul Joules, an agriculture research analyst from Rabobank, said: "In April, we did see Arabica prices ease slightly but, nonetheless, on a year-on-year basis, we're still seeing prices around 100 per cent higher." The surge in global coffee prices also adds an incentive for Australian growers to experiment with local production. Scientists at Southern Cross University are trialling a range of coffee trees to determine which varieties have the potential for large-scale local production. "We are part of a big project with World Coffee Research, which is trialling 20 to 30 coffee varieties all around the globe," Kretzschmar said. "So, we piggybacked that global project and we have 25 varieties in Australia so far, coming from around 11 countries: Some are Asian, some African and some South American." To succeed here, coffee trees must be able to thrive to local conditions. "Our aim for Australia is to find new varieties that are better suited for this environment and better suited for the mechanised conditions of coffee farming in Australia," Kretzschmar said. Most coffee crops are grown in Queensland or northern NSW, where warm weather and rain create challenges. "Growers put their money on a variety that's much too vigorous for this environment; it just keeps growing," he said. "Regular pruning means a lot of work. And if the tree is stressed, it won't produce [a coffee crop] the next year. "So, that means the old varieties require a lot of work and suffer yield losses." Could smaller trees be the answer? After five years of trials, Kretzschmar thinks so. "We are looking at semi-dwarf varieties that are more easily machine harvested," he said. "The next stage is to take two or three promising varieties that we believe can outcompete the current varieties and trial them at scale." Scientists are also experimenting with coffee styles to find flavours with mass appeal. For clues, Ben Liu, a researcher from Southern Cross University, turned to a unique taste wheel. "Our coffee character wheel basically helps our panel members describe the taste, the flavour, or mouthfeel," Liu said. "We run a very large coffee panel multiple times. We collect around 6,000 different coffee descriptors from these panel members. "For example, the acidity, the body, the aftertaste. "Based on those characters of the coffee, we can get a better understanding when we're actually tasting coffee." Locally grown coffee offers additional benefits — importing beans from Brazil contributes significantly to the industry's carbon footprint. "You can get your zero-mile coffee in Byron Bay from someone that grows it, ferments it, roasts it and produces it," Kretzschmar said. "This gives you a cup of coffee that was produced within sight of where you're sitting." Coffs Harbour cafe owner Kim Towner uses locally grown produce at her business, Happy Frog Cafe. "I wanted to buy as close to home as I could, and it's just a win-win all around for everybody," she said. "It has been a real passion of mine since I first went into the cafe business. "Growers get paid fairly for it. We know that it hasn't had to travel across the ocean. "And if we can source from our local area, we can make a big difference to how we look after the planet." Pinci is proud to supply to local outlets. "Australian coffee tastes completely different, probably because of the climate which creates a beautiful bean. "And the coffee does not have any bitterness, which is why my customers love it. "That, and of course, the precision roasting with the little flamethrower," he said. Watch now Follow Small Business Secrets Share this with family and friends
SBS Australia
16-05-2025
- General
- SBS Australia
Home-grown coffee is Tibor's passion, precision-roasted by flamethrower
It's one reason local growers are busy planting, as ................ explains. That's the sound of a gas-powered flame thrower firing into a rotating concrete mixer. But it's not concrete that's going round and round - it's coffee beans. Born in Yugoslavia, Hungarian migrant Tibor Pinci has developed his own unique way of roasting green coffee beans at his small plantation in the hills above Coffs Harbour in Northern New South Wales. He knows from the sound of the beans popping exactly when to stop - a few seconds too long, and the batch is spoiled. 'We call it an open roaster. So that one, tumbling it, and of course you go with the flame in there, and that involves a lot of precision, because it can be just overdone or underdone in a few seconds.' There are around 500 coffee growers in Australia, many of them in northern New South Wales and Queensland. As global coffee prices soar, small plantations like Tibor's are multiplying. He describes his as a 'hobby farm', but he's still producing 500 kilograms of roasted coffee a year. A baker by profession, his first attempts at growing coffee plants weren't encouraging when they lived in Sydney. 'So coffee starts growing, comes winter, they die. So it happened about three times before I find out they don't like frost. So in the end, I got about a thousand little seedlings, and I brought it up here to Coffs, because my wife is from Coffs, so my mother-in-law is here. And I said, just look after them, water them once a week, and should be all right. So months later, we came back, and the trees were like a couple of foot tall.' The process is quite laborious. 'I handpick all my cherries when they're beautifully ripe. We dry the cherries as well, because we're making the coffee berry tea out of that one, then the beans get dried and then before I roast, they get hulled it means the white shell comes off to get the green bean and then the green bean can be roasted.' Tibor's customers say they love the full aroma of his coffee with no bitterness. At Southern Cross University in Lismore, researchers are trying to figure that out. Professor Tobias Kretzschmar says coffee growing is not new to Australia 'As far as I'm aware, coffee arrived pretty much with the first fleet and there's been attempts since to establish an industry and it's been thriving in the last 20 to 30 years.' While producers are happy with the quality of the coffee, he says to make the industry more sustainable, they're researching other varieties of coffee bush more suited to Australia. 'The problem they're having is they put their money on a variety that's much too vigorous for this environment. Keeps growing. It's one of the older varieties that's not dwarfing like the new ones, meaning every couple of years the growers will have to prune it. The tree is stressed, won't produce the next year. So a lot of work and yield losses affiliated with the old varieties.' He says a key part of their research is finding out what makes Australian coffee different. That's where his colleague, Dr Ben Liu comes in: 'So we're doing analysis on coffee, trying to understand the flavour and the taste of coffee. At the same time, trying to actually create a chemical fingerprint for our coffee. That means when you have a good cup of coffee or bad cup of coffee, you don't know what's going on there. If you can do a chemical analysis, you know what's in there. So next time you can keep producing a good cup of coffee.' He says coffees grown in Queensland and New South Wales have their own individual flavour characteristics. 'Can be a big difference from farm to farm. Just for example, some of the farms produce coffee. in the far north of Queensland. They produce more traditional coffee flavour, like a cocoa and nutty, those coffee flavour. Here, in the subtropical area in northern New South Wales or southeast Queensland, our coffee tend to actually smell and taste more like fruity and juicy.' At Tibor's farm, nothing is wasted. He sells roasted beans online and at the Sunday morning market in Coffs Harbour. And he makes tea from the dried berries, and flour from the hull of the beans, all full of healthy antioxidants. As for the flavour - Tibor simply knows what his customers like: 'The coffee what we have here is just completely different from the ordinary big roasters, and that probably involves our climate, firstly, that we've got an amazing climate, gives a beautiful bean and of course the precision roasting with the little flame thrower. '
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
For a better smoothie, turn on the oven
I'm in a season of life where I no longer make health resolutions focused on subtraction. No more cutting carbs, no more vilifying sugar. Instead, I'm leaning toward abundance: more vegetables, more water, more sleep, more walking just to feel the air on my face. More of the things that make my body feel like it's on my side. But abundance, I've learned, requires planning. These days, my refrigerator resembles a kind of produce altar: deli tubs filled with chopped vegetables for dipping, and trays of roasted eggplant, red pepper and onion — silky with olive oil, oregano and salt — ready to be layered onto sandwiches or folded into scrambled eggs. Fruit, though, remained a blind spot. I'm not someone who eats an apple on the way out the door. Bananas are often left to languish in tote bags; berries go soft in their cartons. So I began roasting it. On Sunday afternoons, I scatter halved strawberries or blueberries across a parchment-lined baking sheet, drizzle them with honey or maple syrup, and roast them until their edges bubble and the whole kitchen smells like jam. Stored in small containers, they're ideal spooned over yogurt or swirled into oatmeal. And then, one morning, I added a scoop to a smoothie — and something shifted. It began with peaches. Early ones: still slightly firm, with just enough fragrance to hint at what they might become. I halved them, added a splash of vanilla, a drizzle of honey, a pinch of sea salt, and roasted them until their edges browned and the juices pooled in syrupy puddles. The next day, I blended a few roasted halves with frozen banana, coconut milk and more cinnamon than seemed strictly necessary. The result didn't taste like breakfast. It tasted like something you might find in a glass bottle at a café where the music is low, the lighting flattering, and the smoothie menu handwritten in cursive. But there I was—barefoot in the kitchen, drinking it from a plastic blender cup, my dog looking on with mild suspicion. I drank that peach-and-coconut milk smoothie nearly every day for two weeks, surprised each morning to find myself willing — eager, even — to dirty the blender again. That kind of enthusiasm is rare in weekday routines, and it made me curious. If roasted peaches could do this, what else might transform with a little heat? From there, I started experimenting: berries, stone fruit, apple slices blanketed in cinnamon and clove. I discovered, over time, that most fruits benefit from the same treatment I give my vegetables — roasted until their flavors concentrate and their textures soften into something spoonable, or blendable or snackable straight from the tray. Eventually, a loose formula emerged. On weekends, I set aside a little time for a fruit roast: a simple, satisfying act of care that requires little more than a sheet pan and a hot oven. I toss fruit with a neutral oil; coconut and avocado are my go-tos, though I've found that olive oil does lovely, surprising things to blackberries. I add a sprinkle of flaky sea salt, a drizzle of sweetener (maple syrup, honey, agave, even brown sugar), and whatever warm spices I have on hand. Cinnamon, cardamom, clove, ginger — all are welcome here. There's no need to measure, really. This is more about instinct and scent, about creating a tray of fruit that looks like it could be the filling for a pie or the topping for a tart, but will instead be tucked away in deli containers and folded into the fabric of the week. For something that tastes like vacation in a glass, roast sliced peaches in melted coconut oil, a drizzle of honey, a generous dusting of cinnamon and a whisper of flaky sea salt. Store them in a container in the fridge. When you're ready to blend, combine a few roasted slices with canned coconut cream, a spoonful of whole-milk yogurt (or coconut yogurt, if you want to double down), frozen banana, and more cinnamon. It's creamy, fragrant, and just decadent enough to feel like you're getting away with something. Toss blueberries with a little avocado oil and maple syrup, then roast until they collapse into dark, jammy puddles. Once cool, store in the fridge until smoothie time. Blend with frozen banana, a handful of frozen blueberries, a chunk of fresh or frozen ginger (those little ginger cubes from Trader Joe's work beautifully), almond milk, and a tablespoon or two of tahini. The result is earthy, zingy, and unexpectedly luxurious. Slice apples and roast them with avocado oil, brown sugar, and enough baking spices to make your kitchen smell like fall—cinnamon, cardamom, clove and ginger are all fair game. When you're ready for breakfast, blend the roasted apples with a scoop of rolled oats, a spoonful of yogurt, a pour of almond milk, and more cinnamon. It's like apple pie in smoothie form, but with enough fiber to feel vaguely virtuous. I'm not saying roasted fruit will change your life. But it might get you to eat breakfast three days in a row. It might make your fridge smell like jam. And it might turn your Tuesday smoothie into something that feels just a little more worth waking up for.
