Chocolate Potatoes

Choose your own adventure!

2008-08-31T18:54:00.002+10:00

Today's blog is all about you! Today you get to provide the fabulously entertaining and inspiring backstory to my recipe! Do it here, do it at home, do it in your head! Whatever! Here is the recipe............

Devilled Chicken

500g chicken tenderloins
1/3 tsp curry powder
1 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs tomato paste
3 tbs brown sugar
30g butter, cut into pieces
Shallots/green onions, thinly sliced

Mix sauce ingredients. Pour over chicken and mix through. Cover with foil and bake for 30-40 minutes at 180ºC.

Red Tuna Pasta

2008-06-25T18:50:00.007+10:00

When I was a teenager, I was responsible for cooking dinner once a week for the whole family. I think the first meal I learned to cook was spaghetti bolognaise (which I think was the same for everyone!) I used to get very frustrated because my parents wouldn't give me exact amounts. "Put some basil in", they would say. "Exactly how much?" I would plead, knowing the answer in advance. "Some", would be the helpful response!

Now I am the one with the dodgy measurements. While I have included measurements in the following recipe, don't trust them! If they seem like too much, or too little, go with what you think suits you and your audience. I have made this hundred of times since I was a teenager, and I never use a recipe so I daresay it changes every time I make it.

This is one of my absolute favourite every-day, weeknight, easy pantry meals. I always have tuna, tomatoes and pasta in the pantry, and the vegetables can be changed to whatever you have in the fridge. (You might notice, however, that there is a mixture of penne and trivelle because I didn't have quite enough trivelle. And no backup bag in the pantry! The horror!)

As you can see, there is a dirty big pile of vegetables there, so this meal makes me feel quite virtuous. Lots of healthy veges, low GI pasta, omega-3 rich tuna, and a cheesy calcium boost. I would even recommend this tuna dish for non-seafood eating people, because the tuna flavour doesn't stand out. I asked GKGK about this, (he is quite happy to eat tuna) and his problem was more about the vegetables standing out! I think he would be quite happy if it just had mushrooms and cheese in it. Hopeless. My kids love it too - although that's not really saying much, because they love all food. Anyway, give it a go. You won't be disappointed!

Red Tuna Pasta

1 tbs olive oil
440g tin tuna in springwater
2 x 400g tin tomatoes
1 tbs dried oregano
2 cups trivelle (spiral pasta)
½ cup grated tasty cheese
1 small onion, chopped

Other vegetables as desired, for example:
2 sticks celery, sliced

1 carrot, sliced
1 zucchini, sliced
3 mushrooms, sliced
2 yellow squash, chopped
1 red capsicum, chopped
½ cup broccoli, chopped into small-medium florets
½ cup cauliflower, chopped into small-medium florets
Handful of beans, topped and tailed and chopped in half

Cook pasta in plenty of salted boiling water
Heat oil in wok or large frying pan.
Stir fry onions until translucent
Add remaining vegetables. Stir fry until almost cooked
Add tomatoes
Season with salt and cracked black pepper
Add oregano
Mix through. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.
Add tuna, mix through

Once pasta is cooked, drain and add to wok.
Mix through.
Add grated cheese and mix until cheese is melted

Assorted Sweetlings!

2008-06-18T14:44:00.002+10:00

We were having a quiet at-home day yesterday, and I knew I was going to be having some friends over for morning tea today, so of course, it was time for lots of baking! Any excuse, and my friends aren't exactly going to complain!

I got busy with three new sweet recipes. On the left are some coconut macaroons. I have tried a few different macaroon recipes, and none seem to be quite what I want. The only small problem is that I don't actually know what it is that I want, which makes finding it quite difficult. I'm sure though, that once I do find it, it will knock me over with its fabulousness. These ones are different to the dense macaroons you can get. They are pretty much just a meringue with coconut mixed in. Not that that is a problem considering my meringue addiction issues. Some macaroons just get made by randomly mixing the ingredients together. For these, I had to whip egg whites and then gradually add sugar - blah blah blah - all that normal meringue stuff. They turned out pretty well though, and they got good reviews from a tough audience. (ummmmmm.... that's not quite true. That audience will scoff ANYTHING!)

In the middle of the photo you will see some Brownie Roll-out Cookies. I have been eyeing these off for a while now. The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen, one of the many food blogs I am addicted to. I used unsalted butter, and then forgot to put some salt in, so they weren't quite as good as they could have been, but I still give them 9/10. They were really really good. My friends were lucky there were any left. Straight out of the oven, salt or no salt, they were irresistable!

Last but not least, we have some almond bread. I am not familar with the site the recipe came from - I just typed almond bread in google and that's one that came up. I have always liked almond bread, which I thought was the same as biscotti. I tried to make some a little while ago, using a biscotti recipe, and I was quite disappointed. I have since found out that almond bread and biscotti, are in fact, quite different. They use the same twice-baked technique, but biscotti use whole eggs and almond bread has only egg whites. This is actually quite convenient for me because my freezer is full of containers of 3 egg whites. Every time I make ice-cream, it uses 6 egg yolks, so I freeze the whites in batches of 3. Why 3? This makes the perfect number of meringues to fit on one oven tray! And look at that recipe! 3 egg whites! It was meant to be!

I was pretty happy with this almond bread. The cloves and the orange peel really made it great. (although 1/2 tbs cloves seemed like too much so I only put in 1 tsp). I once heard Jamie Oliver say something along the lines of "You can put one of these in the top of a dessert, and you can then charge £8 for £4 dessert". So if you come to my house for dessert, these will now be in the top of everything and you can pay by cheque or cash.

BBQ Lamb Lump

2008-06-16T09:26:00.001+10:00

Wow! Happy Birthday Chocolate Potatoes!! It certainly doesn't seem like it, but I have now been doing this blog for 1 year. Scary!

In order to celebrate this blog's birthday, we decided to get a new BBQ. Actually, that's not even remotely true! The last one started shooting flames out the front so it had to go! The new one is a schmick stainless steel number, and we got a bit excited and got the rotisserie and also a smoker box and some hickory chips. I think we've had a BBQ almost every day since we got it, and I have used it more often than GKGK. We've done all the usual stuff, which in this house is steak and then steak with a side of steak (with some sausages for the kidlets), which have all gone well, and I've also done some chicken pieces and even a whole snapper.

GKGK insisted we try a roast on the second night we had it, so we put half a leg of lamb on a rack, and I put together a mix for the basting/drip tray to go underneath it, with high hopes for some tasty gravy. We were quite unrealistic though, because we expected that the thermometer on the lid would actually be accurate. Outrageous! After about half an hour, I went to check on everything. The thermometer read 180ºC, and I was expecting some good looking, half-cooked dinner. Instead, I found a good load of CHARCOAL! I grabbed my oven thermometer to see what on earth was going on, and it appears that the temperature inside the BBQ is about 50-70 degrees higher than what the gauge on the lid says. Great.

So the veges were pretty much burnt and inedible, but the outer two thirds of the meat were pretty good. (The inside was totally raw!) A quick inspection of the dripping tray saw nothing but charcoal so the gravy came from a packet! Even so, we weren't totally disheartened by this, so the following weekend, we decided to take the plunge and go for the big rotisserie.

I went to the butcher to work out what lump of meat we should do, while GKGK put the rotisserie together. I came home, very proud owner of a 2kg leg of lamb that the butcher had tied so it would cook evenly, only to find that there was a piece missing from the rotisserie, so we had to go back to the BBQ shop to get it. I was starting to think that the oven was the only way to go for roasts. But GKGK finally fixed the rotisserie, we got the lamb going, and from there, everything went swimmingly!

My one complaint with GKGK’s bbqs in the past, is that he never bastes. Well, with the rotisserie, he has finally started, so now he calls himself “the master baster”!

Passionfruit Slice

2008-06-15T08:29:00.004+10:00

When we were on holidays a while ago, I went to a bakery, probably just to get some bread, but I was easily distracted by a fabulous looking passionfruit slice in the display. I asked them whether it was like a cheesecake, or like a custard and they actually told me it was condensed milk. I was so surprised. Firstly, because bakeries are pretty cagey about what's in their products - probably because it's just trans fat and processed sugar and they don't want you to realise just how bad it all is. Secondly, because if it was any good, the condensed milk would probably make it very easy to make. So I gave the slice a try and it was beautiful! (Condensed milk - of course it was!)

When I got home, I was straight to google to find a recipe! It would appear that there are quite a few passionfruit slice recipes using condensed milk, but this one looked the easiest. And it really is very very easy. The ratio of reward to effort here is massive! As you know, I am normally an advocate of using from-scratch ingredients, but the few times I have made this, I have been extra lazy and have used not only tinned passionfruit, but also bottled lemon juice. Oh the shame of it all! But who cares! It's great!

http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/Passionfruit-Slice-L281.html

People and Vehicle Cookies

2008-06-12T12:24:00.006+10:00

What a slacker! It's been a month since I have posted. I'll churn out a couple over the next few days to keep you well fed.

The other day I was out shopping at Kids Central (cool toys! sale! woohoo!) looking for a present for Boof's upcoming birthday. In my wanderings I came across the playdough section. Normally I would walk straight past, because I really hate playdough. All that supervision and cleaning just drive me crazy. But for some strange reason, my eye was caught by a tub of cutters. Maybe I didn't actually realize it was the playdough section. All I saw was cutters and my skewed brain immediately thought... COOKIES!!! Now some of you may think I couldn't possibly need any more cookie cutters, but you could not possibly be more wrong. Everyone needs more cookie cutters. Anyway, these ones were special and different! And they were only $1.99 for 15 cutters! Well, not really, but anyway.

As you can see from the photos, the cutters leave an indent in the top of the cookie so you actually get some features. Most cutters I have seen just have the outline. It's very cool. Boof helped me make them, but I think he was more excited about eating large quantities of both dough and baked cookies. Shapes are irrelevant. JUST GIVE ME COOKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The people were interesting. The set has mum, dad, the kids and the grandparents. I think there is no mum in the photo because the facial features didn't stay in the cookies once I baked them. You have to roll the dough pretty thick in order to get some of the features and the mum ones were the hardest. (I just used the Wilton roll-out cookie dough recipe)

You could probably dress them up with icing - after all, the lines are already there for you to follow! I just left them plain though. I like the idea of having home made cookies hanging around to give to the boys, although they never really seem to hang around that long!

Pan fried cod with basil dressing and roasted vegetable quinoa

2008-05-19T09:53:00.005+10:00

I am still going hard in my less-processed-food-more-vegetables-and-grains quest. One of the grains I have discovered that I really like is quinoa (pronounced keen-WAH). You cook it and use it just like rice, but it tastes earthier, and it has a different texture. It's also gluten-free which is good to remember for my father-in-law!
I'm also trying to include more fish in our diet, but I often find it hard to think of different ways to cook it. This dressing is great, because unlike a sauce, it requires no cooking, and it also means that all you have to do is simply pan fry the fish (or even cook it on the BBQ) and you still get a tasty meal that seems like it took lots of effort! I used the basil in the tube for this. I know it's processed, but I managed to kill my basil plant, and I didn't want to buy a whole bunch. The tubes are great because you can keep them in the freezer. The basil just squeezes out easily, even though it is frozen. (It's probably because it's full of weird chemicals, but I'll cope with that for now!)
You really should give this one a go. It's different and tasty and looks impressive. If you don't like fish, just use chicken. Sorry there's no photo, it all got eaten way to quickly!

Pan fried cod with basil dressing and roasted vegetable quinoa
Serves 4

4 pieces cod (or other fish of your choice, or even chicken if you so choose)

For the quinoa:
¾ cup quinoa, rinsed and drained
1 ½ cups chicken stock
Olive oil
1 large tomato, diced
1 large zucchini, diced
Pumpkin, peeled and diced (as much as you like)
1 tbs fresh thyme leaves
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
Salt
1 large handful baby spinach

For the dressing:
½ tsp minced garlic (just reserve a little bit from the vegetables)
1 tbs minced basil
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
½ tbs red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Place tomato, zucchini, pumpkin, garlic and thyme in a baking tray. Sprinkle with salt and drizzle with olive oil. Mix well. Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked to your liking.
Place the quinoa and stock in a saucepan. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to very low, simmer for 10 minutes with the lid on. Remove from heat. Leave to stand with the lid on for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the dressing: whisk all ingredients together. Season to taste.
Meanwhile, cook the fish.
Heat frypan to high. Spray with olive oil. Brown the fish on both sides, then transfer pan to oven to finish cooking. This will take anywhere from 5-15 minutes depending on how thick your fish is. (A chicken breast will take around 15 minutes)
Once the vegetables and quinoa are cooked, add the quinoa to the vegetable pan, along with the spinach. Mix well then return to the oven for 3 minutes for the spinach to wilt.

Serve the quinoa, topped with a piece of fish, drizzled with the dressing.

No-knead Bread

2008-05-08T15:19:00.004+10:00

You HAVE to get this book. Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Look at that loaf! It really didn't take me long at all (and no, I didn't just drive down the road to the bakery!) If I didn't try to do the pain d'epi (the one in the picture) and just went with a boule, it really would only take 5 minutes (of your active time). It takes time for the rising and the baking, but in terms of you in the kitchen, up to the elbows in dough, flour flying everywhere, you really could get away with 5 minutes. And think of all those dodgy dodginesses that are in packaged bread these days. As PorkChop would say, ALL GONE! Whoohoooo! I LOVE this bread!

(it goes perfectly with the soups from the last post!)

Soup's Up!

2008-05-08T14:31:00.007+10:00

I love winter - just because of all the soups. Not that you can't have soup in summer, but when it's cold outside, there is nothing better than tucking in to a big bowl of home made soup. No-one else in my family is particularly fond of soup. This would usually annoy me, like it does with mashed potatoes for examples. No-one else in my family particularly likes the mash (I know, this post is starting to make them sound like FREAKS! No soup? No mash? I agree. Freaks). I often miss out on the mash because I couldn't be bothered making it just for me when I know I am going to have make something else for the family. But no such problems with soup!

I make up big batches of whatever weird and wonderful flavours take my fancy, and then freeze them in individual serves. I don't have to worry about anyone else's picky tastebuds, and they are all ready for me to pick and choose each day for lunch, with whatever my tastebuds are demanding. My mother loves soup too, so if she happens to drop in for lunch during winter, she is very happy with the smorgasbord waiting for her in my freezer. The photo shows what my freezer looks like at the moment. Colour, colour everywhere! Clockwise from the top: Green bean and almond; White sweet potato with peanut butter; Broccoli and cheese; Spicy roasted vegetable; Roasted tomato and garlic. Yum!

The white sweet potato I posted about earlier. I won't be making it again.

The green bean and almond comes from this book: Breakfast Lunch Tea by Rose Carrarini. The colour is absolutely revolting, but if you can get over that, the flavour is fantastic. It won "New Soup of the Year" for 2007. (This is the personal soup competition I hold each year. Soups from all over the world vie for my prestigious trophy.)

The broccoli and cheese sounds like a strange combination but again, great flavour. I adapted the recipe from none other than my secret flame, Bill Granger.

Spicy roasted vegetable may have won New Soup of the Year in 2006, but I can't remember. I had a similar version at the RSL of all places, and I liked it so much I went home and made up my own. I was surprised at how easy it was to get it tasting so good. It's basically just every root vegetable you have in the house, along with an onion and some garlic, thrown around with some olive oil and spices, and then roasted. Once the veges are all soft and gooey and there's some good caramelisation happening, just blend the whole lot up with some water or stock. They probably just use all the leftover roast vegetables from the night before at the RSL, but mine is full of fresh tastiness and hopefully not full over left-overs bacteria! Maybe I should have thought of that before I had it that day. Oh well. That was 2 years ago and I'm still here.

Last but not least is Roasted Tomato and Garlic. This is a new one - I have only made two batches so far, and it is definitely a strong contender for New Soup of the Year for 2008. This one is super simple - even easier than the roasted vegetable because there's no peeling! All I did was cut some roma tomatoes in half and lay them out in a baking pan, throw in a good handful of unpeeled garlic cloves, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and then roast for and hour or so. I blended the whole lot up along with the some sage (in the first batch) and basil (in the second) and some pepper and then scoffed it. Oh actually, before I blended, I squeezed all the garlic out and discarded the skins. OH MY GOD. How good is roasted garlic? MMMmmmmmmm. People get scared of garlic, but when it's roasted like that, it's smooth and mellow and so incredibly tasty. I think I may have done the same thing for the roasted vege soup. Can't remember, but thinking about it now, it would seem like an exceptionally good idea.

So the only real recipe you get today is for the Broccoli. The sweet potato is unsatisfactory, the bean and almond is in the book, the tomato and the vege are too easy to even qualify for a real recipe, so broccoli it is.

Broccoli Soup
Adapted from delicious magazine, recipe by Bill Granger

1 large onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 heads broccoli, broken up into florets, stems roughly diced
1 large potato, peeled and diced
Chicken stock, enough to just cover the broccoli
Grated cheddar cheese
1 tbs grated parmesan
Salt and pepper

Heat large stock pot over medium heat. Add oil and onion and fry gently until onion is translucent.
Add garlic, cooked for a further minute
Add broccoli and potato, increase heat to high and cook for 3 minutes, stirring often.
Add stock and bring to the boil
Simmer for 10-15 minutes, until broccoli and potato are soft.
Allow to cool slightly
Blend in food processor or blender (for smoother soup)
Return to the pan over low heat
Add cheese and season to taste
Stir until cheese melts

Bill put cream in his, which is probably exceptionally tasty, but I like to avoid freezing soups which have dairy in them. Apparently they curdle when you reheat them. Apparently they also cause strange growth around your waistline.

Market Day!

2008-04-02T20:29:00.013+11:00

I'm on a bit of a thing at the moment (yes, another one!). I'm trying to reduce the amount of processed foods in our diet, and I am also thinking about going a bit organic. I say "a bit" because I think it will be quite difficult to go fully organic, and I also don't know if I really want to - being seriously lazy and all that. I am quite happy with the (non-organic) fruit and vegetables I get from Martellis, and as far as being a one-stop greengrocer they are definitely the place to go. They have everything you could possibly need, including some organic items. For every item, they specify which country it was grown in, but there are only a few items that have the location of the producer within Australia. Strawberries are one such item, and I'm guessing this is just because the producer has their own label on the punnet. Not so helpful with zucchinis and carrots!

One of the other parts of my thing is trying to eat food which has not travelled so far. One of the great products Martelli's introduced me to was free-range eggs from Kellyville, which is only one suburb away. I'm not going to eggs from much closer unless I have the chooks in my own backyard! I have been buying these eggs for about a year, and feeling good about them, but I have also been reading a bit about free range eggs which has raised a couple of little niggles in the back of my mind which make me think it might not be as good as it is made out to be. It appears that you can legally label your eggs free-range as long as your chickens have access to the outdoors. This means you can put a poxy little door in one end of your shed, and even if your chickens never go out that poxy door, you can still say that they are free-range because they could go outside if they had the initiative to push their way through the thousand other chickens in their shed. And those farms whose chickens actually do go outside, but only to scratch around in a big pile of empty dirt with no grass anywhere in site? Still free range.

I was really hoping for something different. You know those pastoral images on the packaging of anything that's supposed to be natural - lush green grass, black and white cows contentedly grazing, chickens happily pecking, that's what I was hoping to find in suburban Sydney! So it was with some trepidation that I thought I would go to the Kellyville farm for a bit of a visit. I love the idea of being able to get locally produced, free range eggs with very little effort on my part. It's good to be able to do something good for yourself and the environment and still be lazy! And I was definitely not disappointed! There were the chickens, happily pecking around in lots of green grass, with plenty of room to flap and squawk and carry on like chickens generally should. As much as I am not the chicken expert, they seemed happy enough to me!

I was also very pleased to find out that this particular farm not only grow their own vegetables, which they sell to the public, but most of them are also organic! So I bought a whole jap pumpkin (which you can see in one of the photos above), some honey, a cucumber, and some roma tomatoes, which even though they are at the end of their season were absolutely beautiful! I'm pretty excited about this farm. It's only a 10 minute drive from home, and I think it will really help us to be more in touch with what is in season, and therefore eat food that is more tasty and more healthy.

In addition to my Kellyville jaunts, I am also going to make some more effort to go to some of the farmers markets. Last weekend I went to the Pyrmont Growers Market, and got lots of exciting things as you can see from the photos above. I'm very excited about the start of apple season. I think apples would be one of my top 5 foods! I got a few different varieties from a few different producers, and GKGK told me last night they are some of the best apples he has ever tasted! That oozy schmoozy cheese you can see is brie from SOMEONE. Unfortunately, I was very silly and didn't get any information from the producer, so now I have no idea who they are, so I can't easily get more. It is so smooth and so full flavoured, I almost ate the whole piece the minute I got home. The lavender came from a flower seller who was packing up and wanted to get rid of his remaining stock. I only paid $2 for it, and I have since remembered a lavender shortbread recipe I have tagged somewhere, so I am going to dry it and bake it!

I got lots of other exciting food but I'll blog about them later. For the moment, I just had to get my "thing" out there and spread my excitement about the Kellyville farm!

Scali Bread

2008-03-31T14:55:00.006+11:00

Very excited. Very very excited. Check out my bread I made!!!

There is something deeply satisfying about making your own bread from scratch. I think it's because bread is just such a basic food, such a fundamental staple. If you can cook bread, then you're set. The whole world could fall over, but I could still eat my own fresh bread! I think there is also quite a big slosh of vanity in there too. Bread is often considered too difficult for people to make at home, and a lot of people who are quite good home cooks would never even bother trying to make it. So I like to think I can justify my little ego boost and say "yes, I made this!"

I may have mentioned this before, but I started on the bread path about 12 months ago. I even named last year the Year of the Loaf. That turned out to be a lot more wishful thinking than than reality! I made a few different breads last year - though nothing that really smacked me over the head with wonder. Lots of 6s and 7s (again) and a couple of 8s, but no smashing star.

This year I have gone hard, and I think I might even name 2008 the Year of Yeast. This is good because it gives me a bit more flexibility! The tiny cinnamon scrolls, the two different monkey breads - all yeast based baked items, but not really bread in a traditional sense. They were all well and truly worth the effort though, and made me a lot more comfortable with both yeast, and also with the idea of starting the dough the night before. So this recent effort, which required an actual "starter" didn't really seem all that daunting.

The most difficult parts of this recipe were the sheer length of each rise, and also the whole braiding thing. The braiding turned out to be fairly straightforward, and the rising times were long, but I had factored that in so it didn't turn out to be a big deal. I think part of the reason this came together so well was due to the fantastic efforts of the people at King Arthur Flour. Their blog sets out the whole recipe with a step-by-step photo tutorial.

The loaf turned out beautifully, although I would (naturally!) make a few small changes next time. It was a bit browner than I prefer, so I would tent it with foil for the last 10 minutes or so. I would also make sure I used the window pane test when mixing the dough. I forgot to do it this time and I think maybe it was a bit under-mixed. I would also leave a portion of the loaf without seeds (sorry Mum!). All in all though, it was great! At least 8/10, maybe even 9 !!! Woohooo!! Maybe I can break the 6 & 7 hoodooo!

Maple Granola Bars

2008-03-28T16:36:00.010+11:00

So what were my other 6 & 7 recipes? Well this one definitely qualifies as a 7, not a 6 so that's a good start! This one is a granola bar from my new favourite cookbook The New Wholegrain Cookbook. I am trying to incorporate some slightly healthier foods in our diet, particularly some wholegrains, and this book got good reviews on amazon, so of course I had to get it! So far I have tried two recipes, and they have both been good. The reason they are not excellent, fabulous, fantastic, is because they use wholegrains! I like my food full of processed flour, sugar and butter, and these are not!

As far as healthier, wholegrainier food goes, these bars are pretty good. They still have a good whack of sugar in them with brown sugar and maple syrup, and the fat is just the canola and the peanut butter. They come together quickly and easily which is always a bonus. The recipe in the book is pretty basic, so I added some dried blueberries and dried apple. I think I probably would make these again, with whatever dried fruit was on hand, and also maybe with some nuts and /or seeds. I could also try swapping some or all of the maple syrup for honey - seeing as maple syrup is so ridiculously expensive.

Ooh look. I've done it again. I've said I'll make these again, but with lots of changes. I think though that with this recipe (as opposed to the soup recipe in my previous post), the changes improve what is already a pretty good recipe. It's just adding extra bits in to make it better. I think with the soup recipe, the changes were trying to hide some fundamental imbalances in the texture. That's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking with it.

Maple Cinnamon Granola Bars

Adapted from "The New Wholegrains Cookbook" by Robin Asbell

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup rice flakes or rice bubbles

1/4 cup whole wheat plain flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup dried blueberries

1/4 cup finely chopped dried apple

1/4 cup skim milk powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 tbs canola

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Lightly grease a 20cm square cake tin. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, rice bubbles, flour, sugar, milk powder, cinnamon and salt. In a small bowl whisk together the peanut butter, maple syrup, vanilla and canola until smooth.

Stir mixtures together, along with the dried fruit, and mix until well combined, using your hands if necessary.

Scrape mixture into the pan and press out flat. Bake for 20 minutes. Using knife or bench scraper, cut into squares or bars. Return to oven for 5 minutes.

Let cool completely in pan before removing.

White Sweet Potato Soup

2008-03-28T16:09:00.004+11:00

I hate 6 and 7 recipes. Today has been a real 6 and 7 day. I tried 3 new recipes today, and each of them would only rate 6 or 7 out of 10. I hate that. They're the kind of recipes where you think .."it's good...maybe I would make it again...but I would have to change this...and that...." and then you think, maybe if I need to make that many changes, I probably should take the hint and not bother again at all. It's a bit frustrating when all 3 of today's recipes ended up that way.

The first was a soup recipe I have been eyeing off for a while. It sounded really interesting, with lots of ingredients I like. It was the winner in some kraft recipe competition I think. Anyway, I went with purple sweet potato - which is really just white sweet potato in disguise - and left out the chili. It all came together quite nicely, and I was pretty excited, until I tasted it! The combination of sweet potato and peanut butter resulted in this extra-sweet, extra smooth, quite un-savoury soup, which had a real fatty mouthfeel. Not really what I am looking for in a soup. So after a bit of stuffing around, I decided it needed ACID! So out came the white wine vinegar. That really helped, so a few more tablespoons went in, along with a really good dash of salt and pepper. It seemed quite good then, and I left it to cool while I went about my other cooking business.

I came back a little while later and the whole thing had, like, set or something. It was very strange. When I ran the spoon through it, it resembled the texture of jelly-like peanut butter. Again, not quite what I am looking for in a soup! So I reheated it, and added some extra water. Then I added some extra water. Then I added some extra water! I like my soups thick, but this was ridiculous! Eventually it seemed like a reasonable consistency, so I served it up for the photo. Originally the chives were just a decorative touch, but when I went to eat it, it really needed the chives. The oniony-ness of the chives helped cut through the smooth fatty texture.

So would I make it again? Really not sure. I would definitely use less peanut butter, - even after I changed the amount of sweet potato from 300g to 900g (without changing the peanut butter) it was definitely too peanut butter-ish. It is soup after all. I think it probably missed the chilli too, so maybe I would add some tabasco or something. I would also definitely include the white wine vinegar. Too many changes to make again? Probably. Let's just see if I get through the leftovers in the freezer and we'll go from there!

Do you like the photo though? I am trying to actually learn some stuff about food photography so I need to know if my photos are improving!

Ricotta Hotcakes

2008-03-12T12:12:00.009+11:00

How is it that I can't even flip a pikelet? I love pikelets. I make them quite a bit. But when it comes to the flipping, I am just so massively unco.

Look at this mess.....

See how in the middle of the three of them is just a big smodge of uncooked mixture? (this photo actually makes it look much less dodgy than it looks in real life) How on earth does this happen?

WELL, today I have an excuse. A fabulous tasty excuse! For a while I have been eyeing off a recipe for ricotta hotcakes. Not just any recipe mind you, BILL'S recipe!! My plan is to cook up a big batch, then freeze them in smaller batches so I can have them ready for quick snacks for the boys. I haven't made them before, but the whole ricotta thing made me think that maybe they were a bit healthier than the basic pikelet.

So I dutifully went out and got my ricotta, and then got all ready this morning to do the cooking, and then realized the recipe required me to separate 4 eggs and whip the whites until firm peaks formed. What a pain in the butt! I didn't bother reading the recipe the whole way through before I got the ricotta - serves me right! I probably wouldn't have made them if I realised they were so much more work than my tried and true pikelets! But then I would have missed out!!!

They are SO. MUCH. better than standard pikelets! They are light and fluffy and soft and tender and light years ahead of my now-second-best pikelet recipe!! And that is my excuse for the mess in my frypan! Because they are so soft and tender, they are extremely difficult to flip. Or maybe it's just because I'm unco! Who cares!!!!!! These are well worth the effort and the mess!

Ricotta Hotcakes

(adapted from Bill Granger)

1 1/3 cups ricotta

3/4 cup milk

4 eggs, separated

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch salt

2 tbs caster sugar

butter, for frying

Place ricotta, milk and egg yolks in a bowl. Stir to combine.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Add to the ricotta mixture and mix until just combined.

Place egg whites in a clean dry bowl and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites through batter in two batches.

Heat a large frypan over low-medium heat. Add a small dob of butter and swirl around. Drop in 3 tbs mixture per hotcake into the pan. Cook for 2 minutes or until undersides are golden. Turn and cook until other side is golden and hotcakes are cooked through.

Bill doesn't have sugar in his recipe, and suggests you serve these with bananas and honeycomb butter. Honeycomb butter - sure, but bananas? Come on Bill. That's just gross!

I like mine perfectly plain, and that's how the kiddies will get them - which is why I added some sugar into the recipe. Although I daresay a SLATHER of maple syrup would be more than satisfactory!

Penne with Prosciutto, Tuna and Mushrooms

2008-03-05T18:53:00.005+11:00

I finally got off my butt and decided it was time to organise my big box of printed recipes. These are a wide and varied collection of recipes I have picked up over time but have never actually cooked. Once I have cooked a recipe, and if it is a keeper, I type it up and keep it electronically. I then cook it a few more times, and give it a few good tweaks. If, after all of that, it is STILL a keeper, it then gets printed out and added to THE BOOK.

THE BOOK is actually 3 display books - one for sweet stuff, one for mains, and one for everything else. I am seriously considering getting all the recipes that are good enough to make it to the book printed out in a real book - but that's for another day! For the moment, I thought it was a sufficient achievement to sort out the stacks of paper.

One of the recipes I came across in my sorting was something I must have printed out from the allrecipes.com recipe of the day email. I don't usually print them out - just tag them for later, so I must have been inspired to cook this, but for some reason didn't, and then it just got lost in the big blue recipe box. It's actually from 2006, so you can see how often the recipe box gets sorted!

Of course, being a main, I tweaked it as I went along. GKGK has issues with too much lemon flavour, so I replaced the lemon juice with balsamic vinegar. I also used prosciutto instead of pancetta, but this is only because I bought the wrong thing at the deli! I love prosciutto, so the substitution isn't really a problem. It's just prosciutto itself. The first line of the recipe says to fry the prosciutto til crisp, then leave aside until the rest of the dish cooked. How much crispy salty LUSCIOUS prosciutto do you think I had left at the end of the cooking? Hmmmmmm. I should have locked it up so I couldn't get to it!

We all liked this one. GKGK said he would definitely eat it again, so next time, I will just get more prosciutto!

Penne with Prosciutto, Tuna and Mushrooms
Olive oil
6 slices prosciutto, sliced into strips
1 small onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
5 mushrooms, sliced
1/3 cup white wine
1/4 cup frozen green peas
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 big handfuls baby spinach
180g tin tuna, drained
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
Freshly grated parmesan
Penne (or whatever pasta works for you!)

Cook the pasta as per the packet instructions
While the pasta is cooking, heat 1 tbs olive oil in a frypan over medium heat. Add prosciutto and cook until crispy. Set aside on paper towel. Try not to eat it all.
Return pan to medium heat. Add 2 tbs olive oil. Add onion and cook until soft. Add garlic, cook for one minute. Add mushrooms. Cook until they begin to give off juices.
Add wine. Turn heat up to high. Cook until wine has reduced by half.
Reduce heat to medium low. Stir in peas, tomatoes, vinegar and flake in lemon. Mix well.
Season with salt and pepper.
Add spinach and cook until wilted.
Add parmesan and prosciutto and stir through.
Once the pasta is cooked, drain and mix with the tuna mixture.
Serve with extra parmesan on top, if desired.

That pork dinner

2008-02-29T20:36:00.004+11:00

The in-laws came over for dinner a few weeks ago, and about an hour before they were due to arrive, I still hadn't decided what to cook for dinner. FIL is gluten-intolerant, and that was my excuse for being indecisive. It doesn't really make much difference with a main meal - it's easy enough to use rice or potato instead of pasta, but it's not so easy to get the flour out of cake or pudding!

Anyway, GKGK came up with the idea of "that pork dinner". I don't often serve pork to visitors because some people can be a bit thingy about pork. I think for the most part, it's probably all in their head, or they've only ever had the pork that Aunty Flo used to serve at Christmas that had been in the oven for forty days and forty nights. People forgive a dried out steak - "he forgot to turn it, just give me some sauce", but poorly cooked pork? "I don't like pork, it's dry". And they never eat it again.

Anyway, GKGK had to decide what his parents would eat, and pork it was. And they loved it! It's actually one of our standard dinners - albeit one that's fairly high up the everyday dinner tree! It's really different, it's fairly healthy and its easy and tasty. I originally got the recipe from delicious magazine, but of course I felt compelled to tweak it! The trick is not to overcook the pork. A tiny bit of pink is GOOD. If you can't cope with that, fine, but don't cook it til it's leather, or a pigskin handbag or something!

Pork Cutlets with Roasted Fennel and Apple
Adapted from Delicious June 2006

2 fennel bulbs, trimmed and thickly sliced
2 small red onions, cut into wedges
1 red apple, skin on, cored, cut into wedges
1 tbs white wine vinegar
2 tbs olive oil
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
1 tbs roughly chopped rosemary
4 x 200g French-trimmed pork cutlets
1 cup baby spinach leaves
1-2 tbs brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 200ºC
Toss the fennel, onion and apple with the vinegars and 1 tbs of the olive oil. Sprinkle with rosemary and season with salt and pepper.
Roast in the oven for 30 minutes or until the fennel and onion are tender.
Meanwhile, rub the pork cutlets all over with ¼ teaspoon each of salt and pepper.
Heat the remaining oil in an ovenproof frypan over high heat. When very hot, cook the pork for 2 minutes each side or until brown. During the last 5 minutes of vegetable cooking time, transfer pork to oven to finish cooking.
Remove the vegetables from the oven, add the spinach and brown sugar and toss gently to combine and wilt spinach.
Serve vegetables topped with pork cutlets and drizzled with pan juices.

I like to serve this with roast potatoes and/or pumpkin.

Cheese and garlic monkey bread

2008-02-28T12:18:00.012+11:00

After the wild success of the cinnamon monkey bread, I thought it would be good to try a savoury version. How hard could it be? Actually, not hard at all! I started off with the same base recipe, just with a few small changes. I intended to reduce the amount of sugar, but actually forgot! (The whole thing ended up a little bit sweet, but it wasn't really a problem, although I would definitely reduce the sugar next time). I also added about 1/3 cup finely grated parmesan into the dough. I made the dough the night before and whacked it in the fridge.

The above photo is the dough before it went in the fridge. The below photo is the next morning, after it had been sitting on the bench for about 1 1/2 hours. Lovely and puffy!

I then made up a mixture of finely grated parmesan, finely grated cheddar, oregano, powdered garlic (very dodgy, I know, but this was just a "concept trial"!) salt and pepper. I cut up the dough the same as the previous batch, but instead of rolling the balls in milk, I rolled them in olive oil, then dipped them in the cheese mix. Here they are, sitting on the bench for their second rising.

Here they are, all puffy and excited about being baked!

Here they are after being baked, and getting stuck in the pan, and being pulled out in bits and pieces!

It didn't affect the taste - they were absolutely beautiful! But I think next time, I might roll the balls in olive oil, then put them in the tins, then sprinkle the cheese mixture in and around them, because it was the cheese that stuck to the pans (even though I greased them). I also think it would be SO MUCH better if I used roasted garlic. mmmmmm! Friends and family all loved them - just as much as the cinnamon ones. So I am very excited about having 2 brand new recipes to add to my repertoire!

Monkey Bread

2008-02-22T14:29:00.002+11:00

One of my favourites blogs is from the bakers at King Arthur Flour. As much as I love all the other food blogs I read, this one really shows the advantage of being written by people who bake for a living!

One of their recent posts was for something called monkey bread. I have never heard of this before, but after reading through and looking at the photos (they always have heaps of very helpful ones throughout the recipe), I decided it would definitely be a good thing to cook for the girls today. It's a bit like those pull-aparts you used to be able to get from Bakers Delight, except it's sweet.

I made the dough last night and put it in the fridge. GKGK kindly took it out for me at 6am this morning, so by the time I had got up and had breakfast, it was beautiful and puffy and ready for the next step. Making the dough is not difficult - but I did find it hard to know when it was kneaded enough. I also needed a fair bit more flour than the recipe said - which is something I often find with KA recipes. This might be due to different environmental factors, such as humidity, or it might be something to do with the flour itself. Or it might be because I don't know what I am doing and just keep adding flour when I really don't need to!

Anyway, aside from those little problems the rest of it all came together very easily, and by the time it had done its second rising and been baked, my friends were here, and were all very happy to eat it straight out of the oven!

Everyone loved it and demanded the recipe! So here it is... Monkey Bread from King Arthur Flour

Lovin' Bill

2008-01-27T09:29:00.001+11:00

I have a confession to make. I'm having a secret affair with a man named Bill. Well, at least with his books. Is that weird?!!!? Of course not!

We had our next recipe from Bill Granger "Holiday" the other night. YUM again!!! I really expected to like this one because I like all the ingredients, but I was a bit surprised because GKGK really like it too, and even Boof scoffed it all down!

We had veal with balsamic vinegar, pine nut and currant sauce, and parmesan baked potato chips. I fully expected the potatoes would be good. Who wouldn't love crispy fried squares of potato covered in cheese? So that wasn't a big deal really. I may find myself making them every day from now, but still, it's not like its heart-stoppingly new and surprising.

The veal however, was quite a surprise. It was very easy to do, and the pine nuts and currants made it quite different, and very tasty. This recipe I didn't change at all, so I won't publish it here, but I will say this: GET THE BOOK!!! It's definitely worth the money.

Onion Gravy

2008-01-27T09:11:00.000+11:00

What kind of idiot manages to cut their finger like that? How did I achieve that shape? I have no idea. I was testing out my new knife, and apparently I have not quite worked out the feel and balance of it yet. I was very lucky that my super-fast sporty reflexes allowed me to stop in time to avoid slicing right through my finger. Freaky. Or freak, more like it.

And now onto further dodginess on my part, I did not make my self imposed cookbook purchase ban! I caved, and got Bill Granger's "Holiday" on the 30th of December. I held out and didn't look at it until the 31st, but I guess you either make it or you don't. And I didn't!! But I was on holidays, and it was worth it, so I don't feel even the remotest bit bad about it!

I tried my first two recipes from it tonight. We had roast chicken with torn bread stuffing and onion gravy, and tomato and zucchini gratin. I am really not a big fan of stuffing. In the past, I have found it to be either dry and dull, or moist and eerily reminiscent of under-cooked chicken. So I just avoid it now. However, all my Christmas magazine reading is perhaps starting to pick away at my stuffing prejudice. There are so many recipes for exceptionally tasty-sounding stuffings, with all sorts of combinations of ingredients, so I'm thinking maybe I need to open my mind and give stuffing another chance! Bill to the rescue!

The stuffing in this one has onions, mushrooms and sage (such an underrated herb - I love it). It was OK - not fabulous though. It certainly hasn't made me a stuffing convert, but it hasn't turned me off either. The gratin was pretty good. It's not really GKGK's thing (it has vegetables in it) so it's hard to get a reasonable opinion from him, but I quite liked it. He said he thought it was great when it was smothered in the onion gravy! We all agreed that the onion gravy was excellent. Boof kept asking for more and more. GKGK said that the whole meal was the best new recipe I have made in ages, which is actually quite an achievement! Of course, I changed the gravy recipe slightly! I really like Bill, but there's always room for improvement!

Onion Gravy

Good with roast chicken.

1 tbs butter

1 large onion, finely diced

1/4 cup white wine

1 1/2 tbs plain flour

500ml hot chicken stock

2 tbs cream

Heat a frying pan over medium low heat. Add butter and onion and cook for 10 minutes until golden brown and caramelized. Add flour. Stir until any liquid is absorbed. Add wine. Turn heat up and simmer, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add stock. Bring to the boil. Simmer until sauce thickens. Stir in the cream. Add any pan juices from the chicken, or extra stock or water if the gravy is too thick.

Italian Pistachio Cookies

2008-01-23T09:12:00.000+11:00

Well, I tried. I went all out and ground the pistachios myself, but the cookies did not even come close to the ones from Dolci Dolci. They did not even come close to my inital batch of almond ones. Oh well. It's just $4000 worth of pistachios.

Not really! But still, it was disappointing. I think there were a couple of problems. Firstly, I used my little mini blender thingy to grind the pistachios and I don't think it ground them fine enough. IF (and that's a very tentative if) I was to try the cookies again, I would have to lug out the big food processor or the blender to get a much finer pistachio meal. You could really see, taste and feel little bits of nut, which wasn't the case in the almond ones, and it's definitely not the texture I was aiming for.

Also, I was going to use half almond meal and half pistachio meal, but I forgot about that plan until I had made the mixture! As it turned out, I had to add some almond meal anyway, because the mixture was a lot moister than the almond one, but that was only about 25% of the pistachio meal.

Considering the signficance of these problems (these are nut-based biscuits, and I stuffed up the nuts!), I probaby should have known these wouldn't work out how I had hoped, so maybe I should try them again and actually apply enough effort and thought! There's also a similar recipe in the same book, so maybe I'll try that instead. If I get my act together, I'll let you know!

The very exciting thing about these cookies though is that they were the model for testing my new image software. Hope you like the picture! It looked nothing like that when I took it! Oh the joys of technology!

Macadamia and Raspberry Blondies

2008-01-18T12:15:00.000+11:00

I often feel a bit disillusioned with the whole cooking-new-things thing. I like to try a lot of new recipes, but very few of them overwhelm me with the urge to make them again. Sometimes I think that there must be no new recipes out there that are any good at all, and I should just stick with my tried and true favourites. As much as GKGK likes my baking expeditions, this probably wouldn’t bother him much, being the change-phobe that he is. I recently made one of our old favourites – raspberry and macadamia blondies. He was so excited I was surprised he didn’t inhale the whole batch in one big gulp! These blondies are the perfect poster-child for staying with the old-but-good. They are dense and moist, and the sweetness is almost too much, except for the perfect balance of the tart raspberries. You could probably serve these for dessert with a nice big scoop of vanilla ice-cream (home made of course!), but don’t make them too far in advance, because there won’t be any left!

Macadamia and Raspberry Blondies

125g butter, chopped
200g white chocolate, chopped
165g caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten lightly
110g plain flour
75g self raising flour
100g white chocolate, chopped, extra
75g macadamias, toasted (optional), coarsely chopped
150g fresh or frozen raspberries

Pre-heat the oven to 180Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin.
In a large bowl in the microwave, melt together the butter and the 200g white chocolate.
Add the caster sugar, eggs, and flours and mix well.
Add the extra chocolate and macadamias and mix.
Add the raspberries and mix very gently until just combined.
Spread into prepared tin. Bake for 50 minutes or until firm.
Leave in the tin to cool. Cut into squares or triangles.

Italian Almond Cookies (Amaretti)

2008-01-09T11:35:00.000+11:00

It's the height of rudeness, I tell you. Taylor's Patisserie (they of the 500m drive down the road to the nienish tart) have shut down over Christmas. Fair enough. Have a break. You have served me well so far. But 3 weeks? 3 weeks? Did someone forget to tell you that you are running a business??

Taylors have forced my hand. Because they have been shut for so long, I was forced to get some sweet temptations from Dolci Dolci. I have a soft spot for all Italian food, and Dolci Dolci just make the fabulous sweet stuff. And oh my! It is very very good! The other day I was doing some quiet child-free shopping, and I decided a milkshake would be a nice little addition to my shopping experience. I happened to be near Dolci Dolci so I thought I would just get one from there. Of course, whilst I was standing at the counter waiting for my milkshake, all their irresistable cannoli, cakes and cookies were softly calling me, begging me to eat them. Their cannoli are to die for. I would love to be able to replicate them at home, but my one and only attempt resulted in some very unappetising deep-fried cardboard. On this particular day though, I felt drawn to something a little different. I am on a bit of a pistachio thing at the moment, so I went with the pistachio and almond cookie. I was well and truly happy with my selection!

It had a golden crunchy crust, coated in flaked almonds. The inside, which was green (!) was moist and chewy and pistachio-y. There was just the right amount of almond flavour (sometimes I think chefs get a bit over excited with the almond extract), and the whole thing came together just perfectly.

So of course, when I got home, I thought, I can do that! But I might need a new Italian cookbook!!! So I jumped on amazon to see what I could find, but I seemed to be struggling. Every cookbook has ricotta cheesecake, most have cannoli, but finding the right recipe for these little cookies was proving a challenge. Then I remembered that I actually already have some Italian cookbooks, so maybe I should start with those rather than more compulsive shopping! "The Silver Spoon" was a disappointment, it focuses more on savoury stuff, but "The Italian Baker" came to the rescue! In hindsight, I should probably have just gone straight to this book with a title like that, but I like to take any opportunity to consider more cookbooks!

I found that the Italian name for these cookies is Amaretti. The traditional recipe is from the Lombard region of Italy and is for a crisp macaroon-ish type cookie. The chewy ones (which are the ones I was looking for) are from Piedmont. I thought I would start with a plain almond one first, just to make sure it gave me the right texture. Once I had that right, then I would move on to using pistachios. Pistachios are significantly more expensive than almonds, and unlike almonds, you can't easily get ground pistachios, so I would actually have to grind them myself. And that is just way too much effort and way too much washing up! Naturally, I changed the recipe slightly (once again, they were way over excited with the almond essence), and I was extremely happy with the outcome!!! Crisp and lightly golden on the outside; chewy, dense and moist on the inside, and just enough almond flavour without that overpowering alcoholic-type flavour you sometimes get with these type of things. GKGK thought they were excellent, although he did suggest maybe they should have chocolate in them!!! Foolish boy! I'll let you know how I go with the pistachio ones!

Italian Almond Cookies

Adapted from "The Italian Baker" by Carol Field

200g almond meal

200g caster sugar

2 egg whites

1/4 tsp almond essence

Icing sugar

Mix the almonds with the sugar in a mixing bowl. Add the egg whites and essence and mix thoroughly. Roll into balls approximately 3cm in diameter. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper leaving some room for spreading. Flatten slightly and sprinkle with icing sugar. Let stand at room temperature for 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 150ºC/300ºF. Bake until very light golden brown, approximately 20 minutes. Cool on racks. Store in an airtight container.

Christmas Party

2008-01-06T11:28:00.000+11:00

AAaaah! Our Christmas party is finally over. As much as I love putting on the whole thing, by the time all has been said and done, I need a good rest. I don’t have to do much for our family events on Christmas Day itself – we are only responsible for taking juice to GKGK’s family breakfast, and I made ice-cream in advance for my family’s dinner. Both events are at the Grandparents’ houses, so there is very little work for me. So our Christmas party we have with our friends every year is the big effort for me. I start planning it months in advance, and I work like a madman in the preceding days, fitting in lots of cooking and other preparations with cleaning and looking after two little tackers!

It was strange on Christmas Eve. We had our party the night before. I ducked down the road to the shops, and I wondered why on earth there were all these people running around, stressing out and buying all this food. After all, my Christmas responsibilities were over! Aah, but the rest of the people were going hard, their efforts only just beginning!

Normally, we try to offload all the kiddies, and have a proper sit-down dinner, with roast turkey and ham and all the bits and pieces. I decided this year that it was too hard for everyone to get babysitting at this time of the year, so we went with a late afternoon/early evening dinner with 11 adults and 12 kids!

We started off with all the usual suspects, chips, dips, lollies, and lots of carrot sticks for our freaky children. We then moved on to some parmesan chicken schnitzel bites, (recipe below) and some famous sausage rolls.

For the main course we had leg ham off the bone, chicken legs marinated in BBQ sauce, prawns, bread, potatoes, my favourite Jamie Oliver pumpkin prosciutto and rocket salad, and my new favourite vegetables – served with an apple cider vinegar dressing, topped with goats cheese and chopped up pistachios. Exceptionally tasty and a good way to get GKGK to eat a few more vegetables. It’s from one of my newest cookbooks – Lighten Up by Jill Dupleix. (Don’t worry, I was given it for my birthday - before my self-imposed cookbook ban). It’s the only thing I have made from it so far, but on looking through, I can see so many good recipes, it will be a good candidate for Cookbook of the Year for 2008!

Dessert was a very tasty frozen mars bar mousse. It came from delicious magazine. I made it when my family came over for dinner a few weeks ago, and because it was so easy and could be made in advance, it was the perfect choice for the Christmas party. (We went to the Wiggles concert that morning, so time was somewhat limited!) (The recipe is not on the delicious website yet, I will post the link once it's there)

All in all, it was a great party. Everything went smoothly, the kids all had a great time, and of course, my darling children woke us up about 40 times that night because they were way too overexcited and over tired. Oh well. We will still probably do it all again next year!

Best Cookbooks of 2007

2007-12-22T21:06:00.001+11:00

As some of you may know, I have a slight cookbook addiction (amongst others). I find myself getting on a bit of a theme and suddenly I have (accidentally) just bought 5 new books on bread. I think I have more cookbooks than everyone else I know put together! It’s nothing to do with me, though. I have a perfectly reasonable amount of cookbooks, perhaps not even enough. It’s just that everyone I know is slack. It’s nothing to do with my issues. (I’ll be right back, just have to blistex).

Actually, I have put myself on a ban until at least 1 January. No more cookbooks. I am still allowed to get all my standard monthly cooking magazines (and all the special Christmas ones!) – just no books! Only 10 sleeps to go! Wooohooo! You should see the size of my amazon wishlist!

I thought I should share the benefits of my addiction with you all, and let you know my absolute favourites for 2007. These are the books that I think even the most part-time home cook should definitely have. I have included their amazon links so you can order them today!

2007 Grand Champion: “The Perfect Scoop” David Lebovitz
This is a book all about ice cream. Nothing more, nothing less, just everything ice cream! (including sorbets, granitas and gelatos; and sauces, add-ins and cones). This is a seriously cool book ! (haha!) The photography is great and the recipes are better. It has a huge range of weird and wonderful flavours, as well as all the classics. You could spend the next few years trying them all out! My favourite part of this book is the basic ice cream method. I have made a few different ice creams before but this method gives me the creamiest, tastiest ice cream (the only problem is that it uses heaps of bowls!). 10/10 Love this book. Get it NOW!

Second Place: “Everyday” Bill Granger (not available on amazon - just get it at k-mart!)
Bill Granger has been hanging around for quite a while now and I have never really got into him. Earlier this year though, I received a freebie DVD (with my delicious magazine subscription!!!) which had him doing 3 recipes from his new book. I loved all of them! It also happened that around the same time, my friend FattyBoombah had got the new book and absolutely loved it. So of course, I felt compelled to get it, and I was definitely rewarded! For sheer ease of access, his recipes are 10/10. The methods are straightforward, they use straightforward ingredients, and they turn out how they are supposed to. This is a great book to help you with ideas for weeknight dinners and weekend entertaining. It’s so good, I felt compelled to go out and get 2 more of his earlier books! (Which are also great, but this is the best). I am having some severe issues trying to restrain myself from getting his newest one, “Holiday”, which was recently released. I am going on holidays soon, and I like to have the odd new cookbook to look at, so it will be interesting to see if I can last til my self-imposed deadline!!!

Third Place: “Whole Grain Baking” King Arthur Flour
King Arthur Flour is a baking company from Vermont, USA. I think I have written about them in a previous post. They have quite a few big baking tomes, but this one caught my eye this year, because I decided it was probably time for us to incorporate some marginally healthier foods in our diet. I was hoping this would be a way to get some whole grains happening without compromising my love of white flour baked goods! And it has been quite successful! What I love most about this book is the whole encyclopaedia-type thing it has happening. The structure of the book makes it an excellent reference, and it is well and truly aimed at the home cook. Whilst there are a lot of American-style ingredients which are not necessarily available in exactly the same form in Australia, there are no poshy-weirdo things which are downright annoying. All the baking bases are covered, and all the recipes I have made to date have been great. I am very tempted to get their baking book which just uses white flour!!!

Honourable Mentions:
A few others could also take a handy place on your bookshelf:
“Jamie at Home” Jamie Oliver – the usual Jamie stuff. I got my fabulous 4 hour lamb shoulder from here. (K-mart)
“Mix and Bake” Belinda Jeffery – great Aussie baking. (K-mart)
“Just a Bite” Gale Gand – fabulous desserts

Happy Reading!

Gingerbread Train

2007-12-20T18:37:00.000+11:00

In previous years, I have made a gingerbread house and a gingerbread tree so this year it was time for a gingerbread train! Boof and PorkChop love trains, so it made it an easy choice. The only problem is keeping Boof's little hands away from it until we are ready to eat it!

I used the design from Family Fun's website: http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/special/feature/ff1106-gingerbread-train/ but I used the gingerbread recipe from the Wilton website: http://www.wilton.com/recipes/recipesandprojects/Xmas/gingerbread.cfm. I replaced the molasses with golden syrup and the shortening with butter. I also needed a bit more flour. I have used this recipe quite a few times - it is fabulously flexible and forgiving! I love that you don't need to cream the butter and sugar, and also there is no need to refrigerate the dough. That requires way to much forward planning for me! I like to be able to make a decision on the spur of the moment to make some gingerbread and go ahead and do so in the minimum time possible! It makes quite a soft cookie, but I guess you could add more flour and cook for a longer time if you wanted something more crispy. It tastes great plain, but the addition of royal icing makes it beautiful!!!

As I trawled through the net to find the best gingerbread train, I came across a new tip which could apply for any roll-out cookie, but was particularly useful for the large pieces of gingerbread which formed the train. When you roll out the dough, roll it out between two sheets of baking paper, to the size of your baking tray (just cut off any excess and save for the next roll). Then transfer the sheet of baking paper (with the dough on it) to your baking tray, then cut out the shapes, but leave them right where they are and just remove the excess dough. It is so much better because you don't have to worry about the cut shape sticking to the bench, or the paper, or losing the right shape when you move it. It's also heaps quicker because you don't have to stuff around with flouring spatulas and the like to move the shapes. I LOVE this method! I think I will use it for any dough shapes I have to cut out from now on!

I also used this dough to make some Christmas cookies using my new Wilton push n print cutter. They probably could be smaller, but they were still pretty good. I decorated the snowflake ones with some of my royal icing which looked nice. I think you can get quite elaborate, but I was way too lazy!

Snowman Christmas Cake

2007-12-13T12:18:00.000+11:00

I love Christmas. I get a little bit excited in the kitchen when Christmas comes around. I like to do a bit of cake decorating here and there - not too much though - I find it quite complicated and time consuming, which is difficult when you have 2 little tackers pulling at your pants all day long. This year I just did one cake for mum. She likes to have a fruit cake each Christmas, so she baked that, then gave me half to decorate. We both wanted something simple this year, so we went with this snowman theme. I love the colours - they're a bit different to the standard red and green and they go well with the whole winter/snowman theme. Perfect for an Australian summer Christmas!

You may recall the Noah's Ark cake I made for PorkChop's 1st birthday. The cake is sitting on a shelf in our dining room. I love it so much I just can't bring myself to cut it! The cake itself would be quite dodgy by now, but the animals are made from rolled icing so technically they should last forever. There is one small problem with this plan though, and that is Boof. Boof has inherited a double-batch of sugar craving from both his parents. This means that things like bright yellow tiger heads made from icing are perfectly acceptable breakfast foods. The other day, as I woke, he greeted me while chewing on something bright yellow. I couldn't work out what it was that he was eating, so I did a scan of the kitchen, the pantry, the office, the lounge room, and then the dining room. This was when I noticed that the Noah's Ark cake was now missing 2 tiger heads! I asked him where they were and he quite proudly said "in my mouth, in my tummy. You can't get them in my tummy". Lovely. So impressed. And he was absolutely revolting that day. Another small example of the power of artificial food colouring!

Bailey's Balls

2007-12-09T20:57:00.000+11:00

Everyone has a recipe for these, but I forced my friend Princess to try this particular batch the other day and she DEMANDED the recipe! (she only wants it because its very very easy!) These little balls sometimes come under the guise of rumballs, or chocolate balls. I am not a fan of rum, so up until now I have made them with Frangelico (YUM!).

A few years ago I did a test batch which I divided up into 4 - one with Frangelico and rolled in chocolate sprinkles, one with Frangelico rolled in coconut, one with no alcohol in sprinkles, and one with no alcohol in coconut. The Frangelico with sprinkles was definitely the best - even GKGK agreed and he cannot stand the slightest taste of alcohol. The tiny bit that's in there just adds that little bit extra flavour.

Anyway, last year I saw some Baileys Balls at a farmers' market and of course I had to give them a go. They were great, but a ridiculous rip off for something you can make so easily at home. (Also, I'm not really sure how someone making Baileys Balls qualifies as a farmer!) So I made them last week, and they turned out perfectly. And as with a lot of my favourite recipes, they freeze beautifully so they are a great thing to make in advance for Christmas. You can whip them out with a flourish and exclaim how tired you are from making all these fresh and perfect sweets for your guests! There is only one small problem with this plan. Because they have alcohol in them, they don't freeze solid, and they don't really need to be defrosted. So if you happen to have a 3pm munchie attack, and you remember that you have some in the freezer, you can just quickly sneak a hand and grab one or seven, and quickly scoff them down without anyone being the wiser. Then when you go to the freezer at your Christmas party, all ready with your flourish, you may find that you have NONE!

Bailey's Balls

1 packet (250g) Arnott's Marie biscuits*

1 tin sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup dessicated coconut

4 tbs cocoa powder

1-2 tbs Baileys (or other liqueur of your choice)

1 packet chocolate sprinkles **

Blend the biscuits in a food processor. ***

In a bowl, mix the biscuits, milk, coconut, cocoa powder and Baileys until all ingredients are moistened.

Wet your hands, then roll the mixture into balls. (Whatever size you want. Personally, I don't think bigger is necessarily better).

Roll the balls in the sprinkles.

Refrigerate or freeze after taste testing several.

* This is not some subconscious promotion for my previous employer, but I think these are the best biscuits to use. I've tried arrowroots, morning coffee and malt, but I think these give a nice soft ball. My mum actually prefers to use Weet-bix. If that's the way you want to go, substitute the biscuits with 8 weet-bix. (My mum also adds 1 cup mixed dried fruit, which is good too)

** Beware, not all chocolate sprinkles are created equal. You need to get the thin ones in the packet, not the thick ones in the tube. The thick ones don't stick very well. HOWEVER, the thick ones in the tube also come in caramel. I have had previous success with a combination of the thin chocolate ones with some thick caramel ones thrown in for extra flavour.

***If the thought of getting a food processor out just for the sake of mushing one packet of biscuits, (with all that subsquent washing up) is just too much for you, you can put the biscuits in a plastic bag and beat them up with a rolling pin. I have done this before. It sounds like a good plan, but it's really not. You don't get a nice even crumb and it takes a lot longer than you think. I think its actually quicker with the machine. It's also infinitely more lazy which suits me just fine.

Totally Tasty Teeny Tiny Cinnamon Rolls

2007-12-07T12:52:00.001+11:00

I just caught up with some friends and got bashed for not blogging enough - which is probably fair, but in my defence, the cranberry scone post was physically published after the meat post, but I mucked up the dates. So it actually hasn't been quite as long as you might think looking back over the dates.

Aah, but that's just all excuses. The real reason is that I am just slack!!! Consider this.... I like to think of myself as a decent home cook, someone who spends almost every waking minute thinking about food. However, when it came to Boof's upcoming Christmas party at pre-school, I was so slack, I volunteered to bring jelly beans. Yes, jelly beans. They put up a list of all the things they would like parents to supply - there were lots of fun things, like fairy bread and cupcakes, but slack old me chose jelly beans. So there you have it. No good excuses. Not even any creative excuses. Just plain old slackness!

HOWEVER, I do have an exceptional recipe for you to try! Of course, it's not MY recipe - I'm way too slack for that, but it is a good recipe! It's for "Totally Tasty Teeny Tiny Cinnamon Rolls" and it comes from Muffin at Ooh you tasty little things.... I made these for some friends the other day, and we ate them straight out of the oven! They were very very good! The girls and I made a serious dent in the batch, and GKGK has since polished off the entire remainder! Good food does not last long in this house. (That's PorkChop's chubby little hand trying desperately to reach the treasure!)

If you do decide to make them, a couple of things I did differently (of course, there had to be some)..I needed more flour in order to get a decent dough; I skipped adding almond or orange flavouring or colouring in either the filling or the icing; and I only used 2 cups of icing sugar. This made more than enough icing - the 4 cups suggested would be an insane amount! I also needed to add some water to the icing to get it liquid enough to drizzle.
It's a bit time consuming with all the waiting for rising, but they are well worth the effort!

MEAT

2007-11-19T19:05:00.000+11:00

It's been all about the meat this weekend - and how good is that!
On Saturday night GKGK and I went out for dinner for our wedding anniversary (MIL stayed at our place and looked after the kids - woohooo!). We went to Kingsley's Steak House on King St in the city. Now before you get all just-another-steak-restaurant-so-what?, this is not some dodgy suburban steak house with peanuts on the floor and the standard range of chicken wings, ribs and steak with diane sauce. This is a decent restaurant which is all about the STEAK! Normally, I would go to a restaurant, scan the menu, and very often just go straight for the steak. But that was never happening here! One page of the menu covered entrees, sides and mains and the next page only covered STEAK! It actually made it really hard to choose because there were just so many excellent options!

We considered the 1kg t-bone, but after the chef held one up for us to check out the size, we decided maybe that was just a little bit too large! GKGK ended up with the Havericks Dry Aged 450g sirloin on bone and I went with the 350g Angus Rib-Eye. One word summed it all up - YUM!! We were so full from all that meat that we didn't even have dessert (until much later, but that's another story!)

We would both highly recommend Kingley's for people who like their meat, but if you like your 50g minute steak well done, this is probably not the place for you!

BUT WAIT! The meat weekend didn't end there! Last night I had 14 members of my family over for dinner. Nothing like an easy Sunday night! My brother W(h)ine is visiting from New York, and he is on a mission to eat as much lamb as possible while he is here. A few weeks ago I tried a slow-cooked lamb shoulder from Jamie Oliver's new book - Jamie at Home. It was tasty, and easy, and good for a crowd, so I decided it was perfect for W(h)ine's dinner. The very best bit is that it cooks for 4 hours! 4 hours? How can that be a good thing, I hear you ask. Well, all four of those hours require absolutely no attention from me! Once it's in the oven, it's all done! So at 2pm yesterday, I whacked it in then went shopping! So much for slaving in the kitchen! (Apparently, GKGK cooked dinner, because he was the one at home while the lamb was in the oven. Wow. All the makings of a celebrity chef there.)

The lamb is excellent. Because it has cooked for so long, the meat just falls off the bone. It is so tender it just melts! It is also cooked with 1 whole bulb of garlic per shoulder so there are lots of roasted caramelized garlic cloves to suck on. So good! The only fiddly bit is making the sauce at the end, but considering the rest of the benefits when you're feeding a crowd, I think I can cope with that.

So if any of you are coming here in the next little while in a big group, there's a good chance you'll find lamb shoulder on your plate!

Cranberry and Choc Chip Scones

2007-11-14T13:40:00.000+11:00

There are two words that come out at this time of year that I think might just be my two favourite words in the whole English language. They form quite an American phrase, and they are not necessarily two words Australians would put together - although they are two words that individually, Australians love VERY MUCH! So what are these two fabulous words?!??!

HOLIDAY BAKING!!!!

Each year, I feel some strange compulsion to buy all the magazines that come out with any form of Christmas theme. As much as I love all my Australian cooking magazines, when it comes to baking for Christmas, the US has some absolute gems! So far this year I have got one which is called (wait for it)...Holiday Baking. (It was my favourite last year). I also have one which I think is called Christmas Cookies. I can't quite remember its name though because my mother stole it and HAS NOT YET RETURNED IT. I also like the Australian Better Homes and Gardens Christmas special - last year they were the generous providers of the mini caramel pecan tart recipe - YUM!

So when friends were coming over for morning tea today, I took some inspiration from these magazines and decided to go with some American style scones. They're very similar to our scones, but instead of rolling out the dough and cutting them out with a round cutter, you just pat the dough out into a rectangle, cut it up into squares then cut the squares into triangles. It's much easier than mucking around with the cutter and it also means you don't have any dough scraps that need to be re-kneaded and re-rolled (which results in tougher scones).

This recipe is also a little tiny bit healthier than normal because it uses wholemeal flour, and it's got dried cranberries in it. The original recipe (from King Arthur Flour Wholegrain Baking) called for dried cherries, but they cost about $50 per cherry and strangely enough, I didn't have any in the cupboard!

I was a bit tentative, but they actually turned out pretty damn good! Boof managed to eat 2 of them before our friends even arrived, and while he hasn't yet met a cake he doesn't like, that's still quite an achievement! So have a go. They are easy and tasty!

Cranberry and Choc Chip Scones

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup plain flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

125 g cold unsalted butter

3/4 cup dried cranberries

3/4 cup choc chips

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

2 tsp vanilla extract

Milk, for brushing the tops

Preheat the oven to . Lightly grease a baking sheet or line it with baking paper.

Whisk together the flours, sugars, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

Using a fork or pastry blender, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Add the cranberries and the chocolate chips and stir with a fork until just combined.

Whisk together the egg, buttermilk, and vanilla in a separate bowl or large measuring jug. Add, all at once, to dry ingredients, and stir lightly and quickly with a fork until the dough is evenly moistened. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead two or three times.

Pat the dough into a rectangle 20cm wide by 25cm long: it should be about 2cm thick. Cut the dough in half lengthwise then in quarters across its width with a lightly greased bakers bench knife. Cut each resulting rectangle in half diagonally to make a wedge shape.

Transfer the scones to a baking sheet. Brush the tops with milk and sprinkle the tops with coarse sugar. Bake until scones are puffed and golden brown, 22 to 25 minutes.

Serve warm.

Sausage Rolls

2007-11-14T13:24:00.000+11:00

Look at that! A pile of golden crunchy taste sensations!!!

If there was only one item of food people knew me for, it would be these sausage rolls. My mum got the recipe out of some (forgotten) cookbook many years ago, and after some tweaking then, we have made them again and again and again. Over the past 10 or 15 years, we have probably made 5000 individual sausage rolls. They are that good!

Husbands, fathers and brothers have harassed us for bigger ones, (or have even tried to make them themselves (scoff!)), but they are just not as good. This size gives the perfect balance of pastry to filling.

And the very best part is that they freeze beautifully, so mum and I, as we have done so many times before, had a sausage roll day last week. We whipped up about 150 of them in preparation for Christmas, plus or minus the 20 or 30 I gobbled down for lunch!

Now I COULD give you the recipe for these golden treasures, but, I am not going to! This post is a very special post dedicated to my brother-in-law - DirtySOD. He has been harassing me for the last 6 months for some of these tasty morsels. I have given him 3 warnings, but he has continued to whinge and whine like a 3 year old (I can make this comparison from direct experience), so this photo is as close as he is going to get to these PERFECT CREATIONS!!!

So unfortunately, because of his carryon, the rest of you have to miss out on the recipe, because otherwise he could go and make them himself!

Chicken corn and zucchini soup

2007-11-06T14:41:00.000+11:00

Sorry I’ve been so slack. There’s been a fair bit of dodgy sickness in this house over the last couple of weeks, and talking, writing, even thinking about food has not been a priority! And for me, that’s really saying something. Anyway, enough with the excuses!

One of my new soups this winter was zucchini, corn and bacon. It is so easy and so tasty – perfect to whip up for lunch at the last minute. Because it was perfectly good, just the way it was, of course I had to go and change it! I go through these phases where there is a kind of taste-flavour thing floating around in the back of my head. It’s a bit annoying but it’s also quite handy because it’s what seems to inspire me to create new recipes (or at least change existing ones!). Over winter I had this filling-soup-with-rice-in-it thing happening, but I never really got around to cooking anything like it. I also had the zucchini corn and bacon soup which kept popping up in my head, demanding to be made again and again and again, so when the weather looked so nasty today, I decided it was finally time for my 2 head-space-flavour thingies to meet!

I started off with the basics for the zucchini soup, but I just added a bit of extra stock so the rice would cook properly. I also added some chicken to give it a bit of extra filling-ness, and I threw in some fresh thyme that was languishing at the bottom of the fridge, doing its best to become dried thyme. While the soup was cooking, I was a bit concerned that maybe I was wrecking a perfectly decent recipe, but oh no! It was great! It was thick and filling, and super tasty. The creamed corn makes it seem, well, creamy! It actually came out a bit casserole-ish, but that’s good, because it will work well for PorkChop’s dinner. So I am a pretty happy camper this afternoon! I love a good tasty creative lunch followed by a good bit of blogging!

Chicken, zucchini and corn soup

1 tbs olive oil
2 green onions, chopped, green bits reserved
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 full bacon rasher, chopped
2 zucchini, chopped
200g tin creamed corn
125g tin corn kernels, drained
2 cups chicken stock
½ cup white rice
3 chicken tenderloins, sliced
Pepper

Heat large saucepan over medium heat.
Add oil, onions, garlic, and bacon.
Cook until onions are softened and bacon is slightly crisp.
Add zucchini and cook for 2 minutes.
Add corns, pepper and stock and bring to the boil.
Add rice.
Simmer for 10 minutes.
Add chicken.
Cook for a further 5 minutes or until rice and chicken are cooked.

The International Year of the Potato

2007-10-20T10:15:00.000+10:00

Can you believe this? The world is FINALLY coming around to my way of thinking. It has taken the powers that be a long time to realise, but eventually, it just had to happen.... 2008 will be the International Year of the Potato.
Hmmmmmm, I think someone has been making some potato home-brew or something!

Another Warm Salad!

2007-10-17T16:40:00.000+10:00

Lately I've been trying to be a but healthier by increasing my fruit and vegetable intake, and one of my "things" I've still got happening is the warm salad. I must admit, I am starting from a very low base of fruit and veg, so anything is an increase, really! Just to prove this is so, today, I ate (just one or two!) choc chip cookies and an egg jaffle. Not a green bit in sight!

However the other day, I was feeling a little more creative, so I decided to whip up another warm salad. I was feeling kind of pumpkin-y, or chicken-y or something, I wasn't really sure. So I did the old open-the-fridge-and-stare thing until I was inspired.

I was going to go with pumpkin, but I had half a kumera left, so I started with that. I also like to have a bit of protein to keep me a bit fuller, (in the vain hope that I will have 17 chocolates after lunch instead of my usual 25), so I threw in some chicken, and I was also feeling a bit Moroccan, so I thought I would have some couscous and some spices. Couscous is just pasta, really, so it's probably not even remotely Moroccan, but it always seems to be floating around somewhere in Moroccan recipes, so I officially deem it Moroccan!

My taste buds must have been having some sort of decision making crisis, because I rubbed the chicken with the Moroccan spices, but also made a maple syrup lemon mustard dressing! The dressing got put aside in the fridge for some other day and some other warm salad so I'll write about it once I have eaten it!

Couscous Chicken Salad

1/4 cup couscous

1/4 cup hot chicken stock

Small handful toasted flaked almonds

Small handful currants

1/2 kumera, peeled and diced

2 chicken tenderloins

1 tbs moroccan spice mix

Handful baby spinach

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degC. Spray the kumera with olive oil. Roast for 20-30 minutes or until browned to your liking.

Pour the stock over the couscous and set aside for 5 minutes.

Pour boiling water over the spinach, leave for one minute, drain, rinse with cold water, then drain again very well.

Add the spinach, currants and almonds to the couscous, mix well.

Spray chicken with olive oil then sprinkle over the spice mix.

Heat a small frypan over medium-high heat. Spray with olive oil.

Cook chicken until just done.

Mix hot kumera with couscous mix. Serve topped with chicken.

Super Snack: Scrambled Eggs with Salsa

2007-10-11T14:59:00.000+10:00

One of the benefits of getting older is that your taste buds die off. (It must be true if a website with this name says so.. http://www.supermarketguru.com/page.cfm/299 ) Some of you may not necessarily see this as a benefit but just think - this allows you to eat all those strongly flavoured foods you thought were yuck when you were a kid! Think of avocado and mushrooms. Before….ewwwww! But now…..wooohooo!

Avocado is something I have only just started to enjoy. This is because all those sleepless nights are drastically ageing me and killing off my taste buds at a far more rapid rate, thus allowing me to eat this slimy green mush. This is not really the greatest theory, because PorkChop eats avocado, but it will do.

Anyway, I think avocado is healthy – good fats and all that – so it fits into my new health regime. This very stringent new regime involves me abstaining from any junk food until after 9 o’clock. (in the morning, of course). Today I managed to get all the way to 9:15am before cracking the marshmallows. I foolishly left them beside the computer from my post-dinner sugar hit last night, so they were still there this morning, softly calling my name. But I digress. Back to avocado.

One of my current favourite snacks is scrambled eggs with salsa. It’s one of those things you can have at 3pm to tide you over until dinner. The eggs give you that protein-filling-you-up-ness and the salsa cuts the richness of the eggs with a good burst of sharp flavour. It also adds to your vegetable score for the day! It’s also very tasty! It would be good for breakfast or even lunch with some toast or bread (followed by a croissant to wash it all down).

Two little tips for new players…
Maybe everyone else knows this, but because I am new to avocado, I only recently found out that it is the stone that keeps the avocado from going brown. So when you cut open your avocado, leave the stone in the half you are not going to use, cover with glad wrap and keep in the fridge. I always thought you had to put lemon juice on, but that is totally unnecessary.
My other fabulous tip for today - when you cook scrambled eggs, if you salt them before you cook them, they will be tough. I don’t know if this is true or not and I can’t remember where I read it, but it seems reasonable, so I go with it, and my scrambled eggs seem pretty good (according to me!)

Scrambled Eggs with Salsa
Serves 1

1 small roma tomato, seeds removed, diced
½ small tin corn kernels, drained
½ avocado, skin removed, chopped
1 green onion/shallot/scallion, chopped
Squeeze lemon or lime juice
Salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients together for the salsa. Serve with scrambled eggs! (You don’t really need a recipe for scrambled eggs, do you?!?!)

Away

2007-10-10T19:57:00.000+10:00

It's been a bit light on in the old post department this week - probably because I was away enjoying some quality time with the family. There is nothing better than being woken up at 5am by two children demanding attention and breakfast! Love it!

Anyway, just a short one today. For the most part I absolutely cannot stand all those smarmy lovey dovey the-world-is-beautiful type emails. As a general rule, if you send them, I will delete them. I will never send them on and I will never respond. But one came today with a great line at the bottom that I thought everyone should spend some serious time reflecting upon....

save the planet...... it's the only one with chocolate

2007-10-01T07:27:00.000+10:00

I started doing cake decorating about 2 years ago. I’m certainly no professional, but I really enjoy it. Since the very beginning, the one cake I have wanted to make is Noah’s Ark. So a few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and make one for PorkChop’s birthday. I was talking about it with my friend Mopik and she commented that I really should do the best possible job considering it’s the cake I always wanted to make. No pressure there!!!

The animals can largely be made in advance, except for a few ears and tails which need to be molded to fit in and around the other animals, so over the past few weeks, when the kids had gone to bed and I wasn’t too tired, I made pigs and pandas and giraffes! I baked the cake a few weeks ago and put it in the freezer so I could carve the ark shape out of it. I just rented a cake tin - $2.75 to rent for one day, $45 to buy it outright – the decision was easy.

On Friday, Mum came over to help with PorkChop (Boof was at pre-school) while I constructed the ark. It actually came together much easier than I thought – it still took ages though! Each plank was cut and stuck on individually so that was a bit time consuming, and I wasn’t really happy with the roof in the original picture so I changed that, and I made a few extra small animals.

I love food, and I love to cook but I am not the most co-ordinated crafty person in the world, so I am absolutely over the moon with the results!!

Caramel Popcorn

2007-09-28T20:43:00.000+10:00

We are having PorkChop's first birthday party on Sunday. It is incredibly strange to think that he is going to be one. I still look at his birth photos and almost cry! (which is even stranger really!)

His first year has totally run us over with all its illnesses! We have had at least one of us sick almost constantly since March. Boof was sick last week, PorkChop, GKGK and I all got sick from Boof, but we seem to be over it now, so hopefully we can all hold out for 2 more days so we can at least have PorkChop's party on time! After all, we can't possibly have it next weekend, because THE RACE is on. (We are a car house, not a football house!)

Anyway, mum came over today to help look after PorkChop while I decorated the cake. PorkChop obviously understood the gravity of the situation, and slept from 8:30am til 12! That left mum with not much looking after to do, so I got her cracking on the caramel popcorn. It's fabulous stuff - you can make it days in advance and it's still great on the day.

Mum made one batch, but it looked a bit small, so we decided that we probably needed another batch. This was an excellent idea, because the whole problem with making caramel popcorn in advance, is that it gets eaten in advance! It is so incredibly addictive. It's light and sweet, and you don't even realise that all of its own accord, your arm has just reached out and taken your 14th handful, and maybe you should probably stop now. I must admit, a good chunk of the popcorn mum made today is now nowhere to be seen! But don't worry partygoers, there's still plenty and I have hidden it away where I am not constantly looking at it, so there should be at least a handful left for Sunday!

This is not my secret recipe. I think have mentioned it before when I made it for Boof’s birthday – the recipe is off the back of the popcorn packet! (I omit the nuts though – so maybe I’ll claim it as my own after all!)

Caramel Popcorn

½ cup popcorn kernels
5 tbs oil
125g butter
¾ cup sugar
2 tbs honey

In a large saucepan (much larger than you think, compared to the ½ cup kernels), slowly heat the oil over medium heat. Drop in a couple of kernels, and once they start slowly spinning, the oil is hot enough. Add the remaining kernels, put the lid on, and give it all a good shake. Cook, giving a shake every now and again, until the popping stops. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

In a medium saucepan, heat the sugar, honey and butter. Stir until butter has melted and sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil. Boil for 5 minutes or until mixture is a deep golden caramel colour (or whatever colour you like your caramel).

Quickly pour caramel over popcorn and mix well until caramel is evenly spread throughout. Spread out over a baking sheet lined with baking paper to cool. Once cool, break into small pieces.

It really does taste better once it has cooled, but if you are anything like me (and my mum) you will probably burn your mouth trying to shovel it in while it is still hot! (I am going to be sooooo in trouble for writing that!)

Blog Code Names!

2007-09-21T13:35:00.001+10:00

Just a little note: for those of you in my life who are complaining about not having your blog code name yet, you need to do something which inspires me to write about you! Otherwise I have no need to give you a code name! Be bold! Cook me something which demands my attention and forces me to wax lyrical about you all over my blog! It's not up to me, it's up to YOU!

Patty Cakes

2007-09-20T13:45:00.000+10:00

The other day, I was having my standard Friday catch up with the girls (FattyBoomBah, Mrs F and ButterLover), and they were hassling me for a patty cake recipe. What kind of dodgy food blogger would I be if I didn’t have a decent patty cake recipe?!?! More importantly, what kind of cooking mother would I be if I didn’t have a decent quick and easy patty cake recipe!?

I love this recipe. You don’t need to remember to get the butter out of the fridge to let it soften, everything goes in at once, and while it does use an electric mixer, the whole mixing process takes about 1 minute. I whipped up some more today because I wanted to test out a few things. I got some of those mini silicon patty cases (in pretty colours, see!) and I wanted to see if they were any good. I also wanted to test out some smaller cakes for PorkChop’s upcoming party, and I also wanted to test out my new cake flour – to see if it made my cakes any softer.

So off I went this morning, with 2 kids snapping at my heels the whole time. I forgot to use unsalted butter, I put too much butter in, I forgot to change the setting on the oven, and once I had put them in the oven, I realized I had introduced way too many variables to find out whether the new flour made any difference at all! Doesn’t matter! They still tasted great! I think the unsalted butter really does make a difference to the taste, but don’t worry if you only have salted – we managed to scoff them this morning without any problems!

The silicon cases seemed to work pretty well. The cakes weren't quite as golden brown as usual, and the silicon may have something to do with this. Also, they domed up quite high in the centre but not on the edges - kind of like a bell shape, so maybe the edges were well and truly stuck to the silicon and found it hard to rise. Then again, they came out very easily and I didn't grease them at all. This is a very big thing for me because I am a slack greaser and I want everything to just fall out its tin with minimal effort! So the silicon is great for that. I haven't washed them yet, not that there was much cake left in them, but if that proves traumatic, I'll auction them off the highest bidder!

Patty Cakes
(adapted from Australian Women’s Weekly)

125g unsalted butter, chopped
1 tsp vanilla essence
¾ cup (165g) caster sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ cups (225g) SR flour
½ cup (125ml) milk

Combine all ingredients in medium bowl of electric mixer. Beat on low speed until ingredients are combined. Beat on medium speed until mixture is smooth and changed in colour. Drop 1 ½ tbs mixture into paper cases. Bake in moderate oven about 18 minutes. Turn onto wire rack to cool.

The original recipe said this makes 24. I reckon it makes about 18 – and fairly small cakes too. I always find that I am making more than 18 for parties and stuff, so I scale on the basis of 1 egg = 9 cakes and then go from there. This morning I used 1 egg and it made 24 of the little cakes in the silicon cases. I recommend cooking small ones that size for about 10 minutes.

Taylors Patisserie has opened!

2007-09-19T14:03:00.000+10:00

Taylors Patisserie has opened! It actually opened last week, but I have been slack and haven’t posted. On their first day we tried the stuff in the photo: a nienish tart, a berry almondine and a Portuguese custard tart. All were excellent! Since then, we have also had a mini face cake, a pineapple tart, a donut and a croissant. (That’s actually a scary list when you consider the place has only been open 8 days! I promise I don’t usually eat that many cakes – it’s just cause it’s new and I have to try it out!)

While the nienish tart’s success was very close to my heart, today was the biggest test of all – the sponge cake. David’s Cakes make the very best sponge cakes, so it was going to be a massive challenge for Taylors to live up to that standard. I bought a passionfruit sponge today, to share with some friends. I had all my fingers and toes crossed, hoping it was going to reach those same lofty heights. And the verdict………..

10/10!!! Everyone loved it! I am never attempting sponge ever again! I have a 7-day-a-week supply 500 metres from my front door. Wooohoooo!!!

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Mini Friands

2007-09-15T20:56:00.000+10:00

Lately, I have been trying out some recipes for my gluten-intolerant father-in-law. We have the PorkChop’s first birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, and I like to have a range of sweet things for everyone to munch on. I think we need some new gluten free things other than meringues and caramel fudge. (I don’t need anything in life other than meringues, but some people are just plain weird and want cakes and sausage rolls and stuff. Hmmmmmm... maybe I should change the name of this blog............)

The latest delicious magazine came with a recipe for gluten-free fruit and nut loaves, so I thought I would give them a try. (The recipe doesn't appear to be on their website just yet). They were pretty good for a gluten free baked good, although they were a bit dry – however this may not be the fault of the recipe. It is more likely it had something to do with the fact that the recipe asked for 250g yoghurt, but I only had 200g, so I just went with that ! (and didn’t make any corresponding adjustments) Oh well! It was just a test run. GKGK still managed to eat most of them (the recipe made about 48 - that was too much even for him!)

It got me thinking though. The recipe was quite similar to a friand recipe, and I really was after something with a chocolate flavour, so I thought I would apply some of the gluten-free ideas to my standard friand recipe, and just add chocolate! The whole friand thing also proved quite useful because it used a lot of egg whites. I am on a bit of an icecream kick at the moment, so I have egg whites falling out my bum and I need to do something other than meringue. (or do I?)

So this morning I baked some gluten-free chocolate chip mini friands and served them up to some friends, and all 24 are well and truly gone! There was not even chance for a photo! So it would appear that the recipe was a success – they all demanded copies – so here it is!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Mini Friands
Makes approx 24 mini friands or 6 normal sized friands

105g butter, melted and cooled
120g icing sugar
30g rice flour (or plain flour if you have no gluten issues)
30g cocoa powder
75g almond meal
3 egg whites
100g white choc chips

Pre-heat the oven to 180° C. Grease a 24-hole mini muffin tin.
Sift icing sugar, almond meal and flour. Lightly beat egg whites until frothy, but not stiff.
Fold into dry ingredients. Add cooled butter and mix.
Add the choc chips and mix.
Fill the tins almost to the top.
Bake for 13-14 minutes or until a skewer in the centre comes out clean.
Allow to rest in pan for 5 minutes before cooling on a wire rack.
If making normal sized friands, bake for approximately 20 minutes.
If you want to take a photo of them, do it before they are GONE!

Warm Chicken Salad

2007-09-08T14:04:00.001+10:00

I seem to be having some weird lunch salad thing happening. My body has been telling me to eat salad quite a few times in the last week or so - it's all the extra poundage from Turtles Crossing I think! Anyway, I have been doing as instructed, and I have made one salad 3 different times, 3 different ways! It's a great way to create something new. I just stood in front of the fridge, picked some random stuff and threw it all together. It actually worked out really well, and, dare I say it, healthy. Eeewwww!

There's no real recipe. I generally peel, chop and construct til it looks like there's enough in the plate. But I can give you a list of the ingredients.

The first one came about because GKGK and Boof wanted satay chicken for lunch. So we marinated some chicken tenderloins in satay sauce (from a bottle, nothing creative there) and threw them on the BBQ. I also couldn't go past some BBQ'ed onions, so they went on too. The salad bit contained: watercress, carrot, snow peas, tomatoes, pineapple, corn and avocado. I was way too lazy that day to make a dressing, so I just used one out of a bottle - olive oil, balsamic and lemon juice or something like that. (It's actually very good, so I have used that for all the salads.) The chicken and the onion ended up on top of the salad, with some parmesan shaved over the top, and it was tasty tasty tasty! Easy, healthy, and tasty!

The second one came about when Peace and her family came around for lunch. Because I was making a salad for everyone, and we were barbecuing other meat, I left out the chicken, as well as the onions and parmesan. I may have also left out the carrot - I can't remember. I jazzed it up with some very finely sliced eschallot, (As Jamie says, no-one in their right mind likes big chunks of raw onion in their salad) then dressed it with the same dressing. Peace absolutely loved it and demanded the recipe.

The third one came about today. I ate a lot of junk on the weekend, so I had to have another salad. (hmmmmm.... seems to be a theme there somewhere!) Same basic idea, slightly different to keep things interesting! I didn't have any chicken today, so I thought I could have some protein in the form of bacon and eggs! I had previously bought some organic free range eggs from the butcher to bake with, without looking in the pack, and as it turns out, each egg is a totally different size, so I don't think they would give me the best results for baking. So they have to be eaten in things like this! The base salad bits today were: tomato, corn, pineapple, snow peas, carrot, paremsan and cucumber (a new addition). I left out watercress and avocado - for no good reason other than I was sick of chopping by then. Today's new bits were some diced bacon, fried til it was crispy, and a poached egg. Unfortunately, Boof had a toilet incident while the egg was poaching, so it was way overcooked and I couldn't be bothered cooking another one. The dressing was the same.

Today's wasn't quite as good. Maybe I'm just over these particular ingredients. Maybe it would have been better if the egg was cooked right. I think maybe it was the onions. The barbecued onions added so much fantastic flavour to the first one. I think I would try to include them again in the future.

Anyway, it was all a good lesson. In order to be creative and find something new, just stand in front of the fridge and see what you can see!

PS: for those who read my previous post about the new cake shop down the road, I am hoping the shop is finished and I can go there this afternoon and get my very first nienish tart. I have everything crossed hoping they are just as good as Davids!

Very Good News and Very Bad News!

2007-09-06T20:30:00.001+10:00

The bakery at the shops down the road is currently being refurbished. They have said it will take one week. That seems very quick to me, but go ahead, please, take one week, because I want my fresh rolls back!

Anyway, while I was down there today visiting the butcher, I happened to walk past the bakery. I noticed a man standing out the front wearing a t-shirt bearing the name of my absolute favourite bakery/cake shop - David's Cakes - which is about 20 minutes drive away. He looked like he was somehow involved in the refurbishment, and exciting little thoughts started dancing around in my head. What if? Could it possibly be? Maybe...just maybe...they were going to open a branch here right under my very nose! I walked past, then I stopped, and had another look. Should I ask? Surely they wouldn't mind if an interested customer asked a quick question. Being the nosy and impatient person that I am, I decided the question was essential. I held my breath, and asked. Could it possibly be?

No, was the answer. Disappointment swelled. I acknowledged his shirt, hence the reason for my question. Well actually, he said, he is indeed taking over this bakery, and as it so happens, he is wearing that particular shirt because he worked at David's Cakes for 14 years and he expects his bakery, right here on my very street, will be about the same!!!

I swooned, I yelped, I almost died! My favourite nienish tarts, now 500m from my front door.

Which is where the very bad news comes in. Do you realise how much weight I am going to put on?!?!?!

Rosti with Smoked Salmon, Poached Egg and Hollandaise

2007-09-02T21:01:00.000+10:00

Last weekend we had the annual migration to Turtles Crossing. Turtles Crossing is a very big house just near Forster, about 3 hours drive north of Sydney. We are up to our fourth visit now, and the only thing that has changed is the number of children. The adults have now officially been overtaken. We had 11 adults and this year, 12 children! All in one house! (It's a very big house!) I think we were all a bit sceptical this year - we thought maybe there were just too many children and this year would be the last year, but it all worked out beautifully.

Every family has a turn at cooking either a dinner or a breakfast. This year, I volunteered us for a breakfast. GKGK doesn't get a say what we do, because he doesn't cook. I must must say though, this year he helped out quite a bit. I think he probably had an ulterior motive - but this is a family blog so I won't go there!

Anyway, I don't think I've ever cooked breakfast for a big group before, and I didn't want to do the standard bacon and eggs, so obviously I needed to get some more cookbooks!! Amazon helped me out as per usual, with two breakfast/brunch cookbooks to get my creative juices flowing. I finally decided on a variation of eggs benedict, along with some apple crumble and some spiced date pastries.

For the apple crumble, I used GKGK's standard family recipe that they have for breakfast every Christmas. It's out of the Australian Women's Weekly Barbecue cookbook, so I can't put it up here. (Yes, work that one out! Apple crumble, cooked in the oven, in a barbecue cookbook!) Initially, everyone struggled with the whole crumble-for-breakfast thing, but they were hungry and it was sweet and tasty so they got over it quick enough!

For the spiced date pastries, I used a recipe from donna hay magazine. I'm not sure I would call them pastries. They're really just a scone-ish dough, rolled out flat then sprinkled with mixed spice and sugar, then rolled up and sliced up into scrolls. The magazine said to cook them in baking paper in individual muffin tins, but that sounded like way too much work to cut up all that paper so I just threw them all in a baking dish together. And I have to say, they were excellent! Unfortunately though, I was unprepared for their excellentness and I didn't make enough. They were good in my trial run at home but they turned out much better the second time around. I can't believe I undercatered. I think I must be someone else masquerading as me.

The piece de resistance was the eggs. I can't have any meal without potatoes coming in somewhere, so I started off with some potato rosti. Nothing fancy, no eggs or flour or anything to take away from that perfect potato flavour. On top of that, some rocket for a bit of colour and bite. Then an option - smoked salmon for the snobs, ham for the knobs who don't like seafood. A poached egg came next - I used those little poaching doovalackies that stand up in a saucepan. For the hollandaise, I had my cheat's version ready to go (It's a holiday. I wasn't going to stand there for half an hour whisking butter in). I also bought a jar just in case my version didn't work, but I was really hoping mine would perform, because I thought the jar one was dodgy. And of course, we sprinkled some chives on top to make it pretty. Which of course, makes you ask - where are the photos??? I only took photos of the first two serves, and they don't really look that pretty at all, so they're not going up here! But here is the recipe. Make it yourself and take your own photos! (Unless it all gets scoffed before you get the chance for the photo!)

Rosti with Smoked Salmon, Poached Egg and Cheats Hollandaise
Serves 1

Rosti
1 medium potato, peeled and grated
1 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
Salt and pepper

Hollandaise
1 egg yolk
1/2 tbs lemon juice
40g melted butter, hot

Smoked salmon or leg ham off the bone
Rocket
1 or 2 fresh eggs
Chives, chopped

For the hollandaise, blend the egg yolk and lemon juice in a blender. With the blender running, drizzle in the butter until sauce is slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent a skin forming.

For the rosti, squeeze all the moisture out of the potato. Season generously with salt and pepper. Heat a frying pan to medium. Add the butter and oil. Squeeze handfuls of potato together and place in the pan. Flatten out with a spatula or egg flip. Cook until golden brown, then flip and repeat for other side. You should get 2 rosti from one medium potato. Drain on paper towel.

While the rosti are cooking, poach the egg. Put the poaching doovalacky (that's its technical name) in a saucepan of water. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat so that there are no bubbles breaking the surface of the water. This is below a simmer. Break the egg into a teacup or small bowl first, then slip the egg into the poacher. If you crack it directly into the poacher, you are much more likely to get egg white all through the water rather than in the poacher. Gently lower the poacher into the water. Cook until soft or firm, as you like.

Construct your breakfast. Rosti, rocket, salmon/ham, egg, hollandaise, chives.

Eat!

Note: I just noticed there is a recipe almost exactly the same as this on taste.com.au. But this hollandaise is better than that one!!!

Sick Sick Sick: Catch up baking

2007-08-18T11:06:00.000+10:00

Sick sick sick. That has been my house for the last few weeks. It has been an absolute joy. Boof* goes to daycare 2 days a week and GKGK likes to blame every illness that ever besets us on this fact. He even went as far as suggesting that it wasn't worth sending him because we all just get sick. But in reality, I probably bring all the diseases home from all those dirty trolleys I push around when I do all that shopping for food, cookbooks and kitchen equipment. And if GKGK wants to stay at home and look after Boof on my two "days off" (never mind the other child hanging around at home) then he is more than welcome to do so. We'll just look forward to a whole new batch of sicknesses when Boof goes to school. (Apparently the first two years your oldest child goes to school or preschool are when you will get the most sicknesses. So we're not even half way. Great.)

Anyway, enough of the whining - on with the food. It's very hard to cook when you're either in bed or you have a cannula in your wrist, so not much happened for a few weeks. But once I could go two minutes without coughing up a lung, I felt the dire need to bake. So bake I did. Only none of the baking was really all that great. Quite disappointing really, when you aren't allowed to do something for weeks, and then when you are, it doesn't quite meet expectations. Anyway, I made coconut macaroons, and caramel macadamia slice. The texture of the macaroons was pretty good, but they weren't anywhere near sweet enough (I was aiming for sickly sweet!) and they weren't moist enough. But they were pleasantly crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. I got the recipe here. If you don't want sickly sweet, this might be the perfect recipe for you!

The caramel macadamia slice is kind of like every other caramel slice except the base is a cheat's base made with morning coffee biscuits, and of course it has macadamias in it. I obviously wasn't quite switched on when I made the decision to make this, because I only realised halfway through that this was just a glorified caramel slice, and I don't even like caramel slice. Work that one out. Maybe all the antibiotics stole what was left of my brain. At least this turned out sickly sweet and rich. The dark chocolate on top overpowers the rest of the flavours, but the whole thing hits the spot in terms of a choco/sugar hit. I got the recipe on the masterfoods website. There's actually quite a few good things on this site. The ginger honey and choc chip cookies are beautiful. I could eat them everyday!

Hopefully the sicknesses are gone and we can get back to some nice regular posts soon!

*Due to some anatomical irregularities, BallBoy will now be known as Boof. This is due to his large mass of boofy hair that we can do absolutely nothing with unless we shave it. Which we will not do. He has his parents to blame for his dodgy hair genes. I am sure he will remind us of this regularly when he is a teenager.

Food for Kids: Pork and Apple Stew

2007-07-25T20:48:00.000+10:00

As you may know, I've got a thing about cooking for my kids rather than buying baby food. It's just one of those things. I didn't manage to breast feed them, but at least I can give them decent food now!!
This is a really easy dish which is good for toddlers right down to babies who have just started on solids. It freezes well, and it's a good way to introduce kids to pork, because of the sweetness. Not that it's really a problem for PorkChop. He eats absolutely everything I put in front of him. He had his first sandwich today (vegemite - eeewww!) and you would never know he hadn't had one before. He hoed it down with no gagging at all. He is just an eating machine!! We thought BallBoy was pretty good with his food, but PorkChop leaves him for dead! So I guess that makes this a very appropriate recipe!

Pork and Apple Stew for Kiddies
250g pork fillet, diced
1 tbs olive oil
½ leek, white part only, trimmed, washed and finely sliced
1 small kumera, peeled and finely diced
1 potato, peeled and finely diced
1 apple, peeled and finely diced
600ml chicken stock

In a sauté pan with a lid, heat ½tbs oil. Brown pork. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add remaining oil to pan. Saute leek until soft. Add potato, kumera and apple. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring regularly.
Add pork and chicken stock to pan. Bring to the boil, then simmer on low heat with the lid on for 30 minutes or until everything is soft.
Allow to cool slightly then puree (or mash, or chop finely, whatever is right for your child)
Add cooled boiled water if mixture is too dry or thick.

BallBoy's 3rd Birthday Party: The Train Cake!

2007-07-23T10:10:00.000+10:00

The train cake!!!! Woohooo!!! I have always wanted to make the train cake, and seeing that BallBoy loves Thomas the Tank Engine so much, this was the perfect birthday for it! He loved watching me make it - he kept asking if he could eat it! It didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped. I used chocolate cake, and the brown crumbs ended up all through the icing. I followed the recipe (fairly) closely, and there was not enough icing. It could have been better if I had made more icing, but I was too lazy. Also, I would have had trouble getting the colours the same and I absolutely hate colouring icing because I am so clumsy and end up with little drops of colour all over the kitchen. (The drops then tend to reappear for the next week or so - once they were on the bottom of GKGK's sock and he walked colour all around the kitchen!)

The only thing that matters though, is that BallBoy absolutely loved the cake. He said it was his favourite part of the day! We let him loose once we had sung Happy Birthday. He picked off all the smarties, the other lollies and the mint slices. He kept coming back all afternoon trying to sneak more bits off it (ably assisted by his aunties!)

This was the menu:
Chocolate Birthday Cake
Lemonade scones (see previous post)
Meringues
Chicken drumettes (from the butcher down the road)
Mini pizzas (made them myself on slices of baguette - too easy, too tasty and they freeze well, which is something I am always looking for - because I like to make things ahead of time)
Mars Bar Slice
Caramel popcorn (the recipe is on the back of the popcorn packet - not microwave popcorn - just the basic kernels - you wouldn't believe how ridiculously addictive this is, even if you don't really like popcorn!)
And lollies and chips of course!!!

And we had a lolly hunt for the kiddies - they went psycho!

All in all, a great day - BallBoy had the best birthday he's ever had!

Ballboy's 3rd Birthday: Lemonade Scones

2007-07-18T18:47:00.000+10:00

.Mmmmm.......meringues!!! I know the title of this post is Lemonade Scones, but we're having the family bash for Ballboy and GKGK's birthdays this weekend. I thought meringues would be good as they can be whipped up in advance - although there is a VERY BIG risk that I will eat the entire batch before Sunday - but I can't do that because I need as much time as possible, not only because I have to make the cake, but to read HARRY POTTER!!!!!!! Unfortunately, GKGK is working on Saturday. I was hoping I could convince him to look after the boys all day while I went out, bought the book right on 9:01am, then spent the whole day reading! I could probably have it all read and be home by 5pm. I think that's entirely fair and reasonable. Somehow though, he thinks it's more important for him to go to work. Very mixed up priorities if you ask me.

Anyway, so I can't eat the meringues because I don't have time to make more, and I had to make them during sleep time today so that BallBoy didn't see them. He absolutely loves them too (finally something he shares with his mother!). He calls them "rens". Every time I walk past the oven, I see them. They're softly calling "eat me....eat me.....eat me". So I thought I would share the photo with you so you can hear them calling too!!! (Of course, there are 2 that look a bit wonky, so I'll have to test them to make sure they're OK.....)

But anyway, onto today's recipe!!! I was thinking maybe some lemonade scones would be good for the birthday party. It's an afternoon tea party, and scones are always good, and lemonade scones are better than good because they're just so easy. (Hopefully I will have finished reading Harry before about midday Sunday, because then I'll have to start getting ready!)

Lemonade Scones

1 cup pure cream

1 cup lemonade

3 cups self raising flour

pinch of salt

flour, for dusting

jam and cream to serve

Preheat oven to 200°C or 180°C fan forced. Lightly flour a baking tray. Place all ingredients in a bowl. Mix lightly until combined. Scrape onto a floured surface. Knead lightly and shape into a rectangle about 3 cm high. Cut out with a 5cm scone cutter. Lightly dust with flour and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the top is browned. Serve with jam and cream. Eat!

Kids Birthdays: Mini Meatballs

2007-07-09T13:11:00.001+10:00

We had our Mothers Group joint 3rd birthday party on the weekend. My contribution was mini meatballs. I got this recipe from Mrs F, who (I think) got it from the newspaper. As with any good recipe, it has undergone some tweaking, and it is now a bit healthier than the original. Whilst making things healthier may seem like a strange thing for me to aim for, the idea is to hide some vegetables in something that kids will eat. The only problem is that the bbq sauce is full of salt, which is not great for the kidlets, but if that's what it takes to get them to eat vegetables, well you need to decide if the trade-off is worth it! I should add that the adults seem to enjoy these just as much so don't think they are just kids food! (Also, I haven't tested it out, but I think they would probably freeze quite well if you wanted to make them in advance).

Mini Meatballs
500g pork and veal mince
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1 zucchini, grated
1 cup baby spinach leaves
2 tbs bbq sauce
2 tsp dijon mustard
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
1/3 cup grated cheddar or mozarella (or a combination of the two)

Preheat oven to 210 C. Place spinach in a heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Set aside for 2mins, then rinse under cold water. Drain and squeeze out excess water. Chop spinach.
Place spinach and all other ingredients into a bowl. Mix until combined. Roll spoonfuls of mixture into walnut size balls. Place on a tray lined with baking paper.
Bake for 15mins or until cooked through.

Winter Lunch: Lamb and Mushroom Salad with Poached Egg

2007-07-09T12:40:00.000+10:00

I overdid the sweet things on the weekend, so I thought a salad might be the way to go for lunch today. The only problem is that today is a very cold wet wintery day, so my salad had to have some warm bits in it to combat the horrible weather outside.

This is one of my new "things" at the moment - warm lunch salads. It's a good way to get more vegetables in, and if you do it right, it can be a very fulfilling lunch that might just help keep the munchies away. I looked through my salad book, "tossed", for some inspiration using some ingredients I knew I had. I had some leftover lamb leg steaks which we barbequed for dinner last night, and I wanted to use my new egg poacher, so I started from there, took some inspiration from the book then added whatever else was in the fridge.

This is not the world's healthiest salad. It's full of veges but I cooked the mushrooms in butter and the bagelettes (which are store bought) are definitely not low in fat, so with the lamb and the egg, it ended up being fairly heavy. It probably needs an apple for dessert just to help it all digest!

Lamb and Mushroom salad with poached egg

Handful baby spinach
5 snow peas, chopped
1 roma tomato, chopped
Handful button mushrooms
1 egg
1 lamb leg steak
Handful garlic bagelettes

Dressing
2 tbs lemon thyme olive oil
1/2 tbs red wine vinegar
Pinch brown sugar
Salt and pepper

Lightly saute the mushrooms in some butter or olive oil (or to be healthier, just a spray of olive oil)
Poach the egg
While the egg and mushrooms are cooking, place spinach, snow peas and tomato in a bowl or plate.
Make the dressing
Reheat the lamb and slice into thin strips. Place on top of spinach.
Add the mushrooms.
Drizzle dressing over salad.
Top with bagelettes and poached egg.

New Baby!!!! - Fiori di Sicilia Muffins

2007-07-04T08:36:00.000+10:00

FattyBoomBah finally decided to pop out her baby! This time she managed to go all the way to 38 weeks (last time she only managed 34 weeks!) A gorgeous little boy with lots of thick dark hair has joined our menagerie of children!
It is customary for us to provide baked goods to the mother of a newborn whilst they are in hospital. The breast feeding at midnight (and 1 am, and 2 am and 3am......) can make you very very hungry, so I thought muffins would be good. They fill you up without being too sweet and sugary. I also needed to try one of my very new and very exciting purchases, and muffins were a good way to test it.
A few months ago, I found a baking magazine put out by King Arthur Flour in a local newsagent. King Arthur Flour is a baking supplies company located in Vermont, USA, so I was quite (pleasantly) surprised to see their magazine so close to home! I actually visited them about 6 years ago - I was visiting my brother, who was living in Vermont at the time, and my sister-in-law took me there. At the time, I didn't realise the potential of the place, so unfortunately, I didn't make the most of it with lots of interesting purchases!
They have a fabulous range of baking supplies - things like speciality flours, ingredients and pre-mixes, as well as baking equipment. Of course, being on the other side of the world makes it ridiculously expensive to have their products delivered (not to mention half of them are banned from importation in Australia), but I did find two little items that I couldn't resist. One is maple flavour - not syrup, flavour. I have been looking for this in Australia for a couple of years and have not been able to find it, so I was quite excited to see it. The other was a flavouring called Fiori di Sicilia, which is a combination of vanilla and citrus. The people from King Arthur Flour raved about it in their magazine, and I was swayed by their sales pitch! So I spoke with AQIS to make sure I could import it (and the maple flavour) and so a couple of weeks later it arrived!
I thought a basic muffin recipe would be a good place to test it out as there are not a lot of competing flavours, and it turned out fabulous! It's very subtle but you can definitely notice something. You can't necessarily identify exactly what the flavour is, but it gave the muffins a real zing!

This is the basic recipe. If you can get your hands on the flavouring, go for it!
Basic Choc Chip Muffins
2 cups (300g) self raising flour
2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
3/4 cup (140g) white choc chips
1/3 cup (80g) dark choc chips
60g butter, melted
3/4 cup (180ml) milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 tsp fiori di sicilia

Preheat oven to 190 C. Grease 3 x 12 hole mini muffin pans.
Mix all ingredients together. (Who doesn't love that line in a recipe!)
Spoon mixture into prepared pans. Bake for 15 minutes or until a skewer in the centre comes out clean.

Girly Afternoon Tea: Lemon Meringue Pie

2007-06-29T15:56:00.000+10:00

The girls came over for afternoon tea today. Mrs F needed some chocolate-flavoured emotional support so we scoffed that in the form of Mars Bar slice! There is nothing more rewarding than emotional eating - especially when the recipe includes 6 Mars Bars!!!

I thought we could probably do with some other food-based support so we also had some mini lemon meringue pies and some mini quiches. (Following my love of mini food)

Everyone knows Mars Bar Slice so I won't bore you with a recipe for it - although some people's recipes are better than others. I have to thank FattyBoomBah for her little trick with the Mars Bars (I can't tell you the trick - it's her secret).

So today I thought I would include a recipe for the lemon filling for lemon meringue pie. The rest is easy - just use bought tart cases or bought pastry and make you own. The meringue is just 1/4 cup caster sugar per egg white. This filling is good because it is not too tart - i like my tarts sweet, not tart!

Lemon Meringue Pie Filling
1/2 cup (75g) cornflour
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
125ml lemon juice
310ml water
2 tsp grated lemon rind
3 egg yolks
60g butter

Combine cornflour and sugar in pan, gradually blend in juice and water, stir until smooth. Stir over heat until mixture boils and thickens. (Mixture should be very thick). Reduce heat, simmer, stirring vigorously for 30 seconds. Remove from heat, quickly add lemon rind, yolks and butter, stir until butter is melted. Cover, cool.

Mixture freezes well. Make sure you bring it almost to the boil when reheating, and stir thoroughly.

In Law Dinner Part 2: Pilaf

2007-06-27T15:41:00.001+10:00

So what did I do for the big in-law dinner? Well I cheated with the whole meat part.....I got some marinated chicken from one of my favourite butchers, along with some of his tasty sausages, and some plain old lamb leg steaks, all of which GKGK barbecued!! I also did my standard pilaf - which is perfect for GKGK's Dad who is gluten intolerant. Everyone who has had this pilaf loves it (it's probably not a proper pilaf, but I'm sticking with the name!)

Pilaf
Serves 2: ( as a decent sized accompaniment)

1/2 cup basmati rice
1 cup stock
Handful currants
Handful slivered almonds, toasted (you can toast them while the rice is cooking)
Handful baby spinach leaves.

Put the rice and stock in a saucepan. Bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to very low. Simmer for 10 minutes with the lid on. Turn off the heat. Leave with the lid on for 5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and mix through. Replace lid and leave until spinach has wilted (approx 2 minutes).

Eat!

The big in-law dinner: Whole Baked Pumpkin

2007-06-24T07:25:00.000+10:00

All of GKGK's family came over for dinner last night - complete with kids, which BallBoy just LOVES! He goes absolutely crazy running around with his cousins. I asked all my sisters-inlaw to bring something along so that I didn't have to cook so much.

Blondie brought a garden salad - nothing different there, but a big meal like this doesn't seem complete without one. Fire brought her special pasta salad, which I have requested from her many times. It's even good the next day, heated up! (which is the only way GKGK will eat it - that way, it is pasta, rather than salad!) I have made a special request for the recipe - we'll see if it comes!
Peace brought a whole baked stuffed pumpkin, which is something new for me. She has cooked it quite a few times now, and it's just fabulous. It's not something I would normally cook. She got the recipe from delicious magazine - which i subscribe to - so I would have seen the recipe, but I probably just turned the page and thought it wasn't for me!! I guess this is a lesson to be more open-minded! You can get the recipe online at www.taste.com.au/recipes/3427/whole+baked+pumpkin. delicious magazine have very kindly listed all their recipes on this website, along with all the recipes from magazines from the same publisher. It makes it very handy when you remember a recipe you read, but you can't remember which month you saw it.
And what did I do for the dinner? Well that can be the subject of another post!

Chocolate and Zucchini Cake

2007-06-15T20:50:00.003+10:00

My current favourite food blog is chocolateandzucchini.com. Lately I've been feeling the need to bake something for the family which has at least some form of vegetable in it, so Clotilde's blog was definitely the place to go. I decided to go with the eponymous chocolate and zucchini cake, and we were definitely not disappointed. Even GKGK (the ultimate vege-phobe) was more than happy to eat half the cake! You couldn't see any zucchini in the baked cake, so there was no risk of seeing any scary green bits. This is the place to go... http://www.chocolateandzucchini.com/

Pork with Mustard Maple Sauce

2007-06-14T13:59:00.001+10:00

Wow. My first ever post on my first ever blog. A whole lot to say and no-one to read it!
I just had a tasty "leftovers lunch". Pork with mustard maple sauce with some saffron rice. This was a new recipe we tried last night. I'm giving it 8/10. I forgot to ask GKGK what he gave it, but he said he would definitely eat it again, just not every week (which I agree with). The recipe came from BBC Good Food magazine, but you can get it on their website....http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3941/panfried-pork-with-maple-and-mustard-sauce.jsp