nOt jUsT dEsSeRts

Creating a special birthday cake

2009-08-16T21:23:00.003+10:00

No recipe for this cake. I was tasked with taking the cake to my brother in law's lunch to celebrate his 50th birthday so this was my creation. I will try and remember - it was a while ago in June. I actually hand drew some plans for this cake on some parchment and drew a cross section of it and everything. I gave the plan to Kevin so its such a shame I didn't take a photograph of the plan for this post.

Paul and Elliot asked why I did the plan and I said I just love a touch of whimsy and luckily so did Kevin and Leanne who are going to frame the plan.

The cake is two discs of almond meringue covered with kahlua cream and sandwiched between two layers of chocolate and coffee cake - then the whole cake is covered with a dark chocolate ganache. It took me ages to decide what to make and loads of internet research and I was inspired so many of the Daring Bakers out there. I simply cannot remember which chocolate cake recipe I used in the end. It is truly a one of a kind cake for a special person.

Chewy Chocolate chip cookies - dark chocolate and cranberry and white chocolate and macadamia

2009-08-16T17:56:00.002+10:00

1 and a half cups of plain flour
1/2 to 3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

cup brown sugar firmly packed
1/2 cup castor sugar

175 grams of butter (room temperature - but still firm)
1 egg and 1 egg yolk beaten

100 grams chocolate chunks
100 grams chocolate chips
50 grams dried cranberries

Heat oven to 160degrees and place rack in bottom 3rd of the oven - mine is just below the middle.

Cream butter and sugar on slow for about 3 mins do not overbeat - I read it makes a difference! Add the beaten egg and yolk and beat till combined again but once combined stop. I have read that overbeating may affect the mixture so I stopped when I considered that the additions were combined well in.

Sift plain flour, cocoa, salt, baking soda together and add to this mixture to the creamed butter, sugar and eggs and on slow combine.

With a wooden spoon stir in chocolate and cranberries. Drop large dessert spoonfuls on baking trays lined with baking paper - I only do four at a time to allow for spreading.

They seem to take about 14 mins to cook in my oven. For the first 7 mins I cook them on the higher tray and then move them to the lower tray for the final 7 mins. When moving them in I put the second tray on top.

The cookies should spread and look a little harder around the edges and not be too soft when you remove them from the oven. Let them cool for about 5 mins on tray before moving to a rack. If you turn them over and the just seem to be undercooked you can pop them back into the oven for a couple more minutes but watch them carefully this is often the difference between soft and chewy and crisp.

For white chocolate and macadamia cookies
Use 2 cups of plain flour (omit the cocoa - but I am going to try a cocoa version next time)
200 grams of white chocolate chopped into chunks
125grams of raw macadamia

Follow the recipe for above.

Sometimes I use most of the ingredients cold - because I have a kitchenaid it can cream the butter quite well and I tend to be impatient - I also keep my flour in the freezer so it tends to make the mixture cold anyway.

If you use all room temperature ingredients then again I have read that you should refrigerate the dough for half an hour before using it. I refrigerated half the white chocolate cookie dough - to test if t here was a difference and I thought those cookies were a little higher than the non-refrigerated dough ones.

Piece of cake - Labor Day

2009-05-04T13:53:00.003+10:00

I might be jinxed, because my home computer has frozen and not allowed me to finish this post. I had to move to Paul's Mac and I am not at all used to using a Mac. This weekend so far I have made, Anzac biscuits with a drizzle of choc fudge, mini choc chip muffins, poached breast of chicken with salsa verde, green beans and preserved lemon wholemeal couscous and now this cake.

I was inspired by a Donna Hay lemon and yoghurt cake that my friend Carly told me she had made the other day. I decided to make an orange and ricotta almond torte. This is what I put in it:

125grams unsalted butter (room temperature)

1 cup raw organic sugar

2 eggs

1 cup ricotta

zest of one orange

juice of half an orange

1 and a half cups of almond meal

1/2 cup of self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Turn on oven to 180 degrees. Butter, flour and line a 20 cm cake tin. Beat butter and sugar till creamy add one egg at a time beating well after each egg and then add the zest. Next add th ricotta, almond meal, flour and baking powder and stir through, then mix in the orange juice.

Now for baking I will have to take you through the trials and tribulations. The DH version of lemon and yoghurt cake calls for 45 min at 180 c.

Because this cake will be dense due to the almond meal I decided to try to bake for 50 mins, then I checked with a wooden skewer to make sure it is cooked through before removing. However, I found mine really browned on top quickly so I turned it down from 180 to about 160 - I have a hot oven though.

When I took it out and cooled it for 10 mins I removed it from the pan and found the bottom of the cake in the middle a little wet so I put on a flat tray and returned to the oven for another 20 mins on 160 degrees celcius. I think because this is such a dense mixture you do have to cook it for longer on a lower temperature. It was lovely and moist when Elliot had the first slice.

Ideally I think it would be nice with a lovely dollop of greek yoghurt on the side and maybe a strawberry.

2009-05-02T15:48:00.001+10:00

Oh happy day, I finally have a personal computer with Picasa on it and my photographs loaded onto it so I can load a photograph without to much hassle. Its only been years.....

This beautiful cake comes from this fabulous book.

It is the Apple and maple cake and for good measure I added some caramelised walnuts for some sweet crunchy texture. Quite a rustic cake and not too sweet. I won't repeat the recipe because if you don't have this cook book then I hope this cake is the reason you think about buying it. I got mine from UK Amazon with the current exchange rate its very reasonable compared to the price you can pay in $A.

Mini Spelt Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

2009-01-28T20:58:00.003+10:00

I used to only bake chocolate goodies for Elliot for school but now with Gabi no longer at day care I can make some chocolate treats they both can have. (Gabi’s day care banned chocolate).

I happen to think that a bit of chocolate at school will trigger some good endorphins so I hope that having a little chocolate cupcake will be something that makes them feel happy for the rest of the day.

Last year I introduced more organic produce into our diet, and this year I am trying to incorporate more whole foods into our lifestyle. I use one of the best priced organic companies in Brisbane for my products at www.organicaddiction.com.au if I had not found this company I may not have made the switch so easily as their produce is competitively priced.

I have used whole grains and organic products in this recipe because of our life style changes. I like to bake treats rather than buy them because you know what’s in it and there are no preservatives and those rules should apply whether you use organic products or not.

If you are not able to use organic or spelt products, then use white flour instead.

I think you could replace the spelt with either self-raising flour or plain flour with 1 teaspoon of baking powder – they will be lighter than these ones made with spelt. This recipe is an adaptation of my cupcake recipe – but I made some changes in order to work with the density of the spelt flour.

Mini Spelt Chocolate chip cupcakes

125 grams butter

½ cup organic raw sugar (or caster sugar)

2 organic-free range eggs

¼ cup *Cacao powder

1 and ¼ cups spelt flour

2 tablespoons sour cream

Dash of milk

120grams chocolate chips

Pre- heat oven to 170 (my oven is hot so I cooked about 150 degrees and used the middle rack)

Cream butter and sugar till white and light in texture (approximately 5 minutes). Add one egg at a time beating thoroughly after each one.

Mix through cacao powder and spelt flour. Add sour cream. The texture will be quite thick a this stage, so you need to add the sour cream and then the dash of milk to thin it out a little. I was aiming for texture that was not runny so that if you take a spoonful of the mixture it will not run off the spoon but fall off slowly and require a little assistance.

Line a 12 cup mini muffin pan with mini cupcake papers.

Place teaspoons full into paper liner – filling right to top and a tiny bit extra of the mixture on top as this flour will not rise.

Leave in oven for up to 20 mins but check around 15 mins – use wooden skewer and if it comes out clean they are ready. I think mine took about 18 mins

Makes approximately 30 mini muffins.

My experiences with spelt flour: it is quite a dense flour so this time I decided not to add any baking powder. I previously made some normal sized cupcakes and used a bit more sugar (3/4 cup) and baking powder (1 teaspoon). When I made it with the extra additions it took me ages to be sure the cake was cooked in the middle and the top had risen cracked then formed a hard shell – so they didn’t look as attractive as these little mini ones.

I also decided to reduce the sugar to ½ cup to make them a bit healthier as the aim was to provide a treat for the children but not go too heavy on the sugar as the chocolate should be the highlight here.

* I chose to use cacao powder rather than cocoa as part of our lifestyle changes as cacao is said to have more anti-oxidants than regular cocoa. Again if you are unable to use cacao – then cocoa can be used instead.

My spiced mango chutney

2009-01-27T20:50:00.001+10:00

Well Blogger is decidedly odd, I have tried several times over the past couple of weeks to upload a post of our Christmas lunch, but it just isn't happening. So I thought I would try ploading this photograph (even though I have already posted it to Lifestyle food's website) something new when blogger gets me down.

I don't think my Christmas lunch will be posted here so instead I am going to move on with this recipe:

Ingredients:

2 large RE2E Mangoes (or 4 small mangoes) preferably not quite ripe
4 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 shallots finely chopped
1 small white onion finely diced
1 red chillie seeds removed finely diced
3cm piece of ginger finely diced
2 cloves of garlic smashed
1 cup brown sugar
400mls white or malt vinegar
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
3 whole cardomum
1/4 teaspoon whole mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
2 star anise
ground pepper
salt

Cut mangoes into large dice.
Grind the cardomum, mustard seeds and fennel seeds in a pestle or mortar.
In a saucepan, saute shallots, onion, chillie, ginger and garlic in some sunflower oil for about 10 mins till onion is softened.
Add the mangoes, ground spices and star anise and stir in throughly. Next add sugar and mix till dissolved. Finally add the vinegar, pepper and salt to taste. Leave to simmer for up to 45mins. Stop cooking early if the pieces of mango start to lose its shape too much - you want the chutney to have some chunkiness to it and not became a jam.
I bought some glass jars from Coles/Woolies and washed them out thoroughly then filled them with some boiled water to sterilise them . Remove water and let dry naturally.
I made quite a bit of chutney, so much so I was able to give one bottle away as part of a birthday gift and another to a friend who was envious of my birthday friend receiving a bottle. Both friends said they loved the chutney. In fact so did I - I will never buy mango chutney from a shop again!

One word of warning, one of my jars cracked when adding the boiling water, I think that I should have washed them in very warm water first to heat up the glass and reduce the chance of it cracking when under heat. Ways to serve as a side dish for Indian curry, on a turkey sandwich, on a lentil burger, with some grilled fish or chicken.

Zucchini and pistachio spice cake - late virtual hug

2008-12-08T19:46:00.010+10:00

I missed the weekend of virtual hugs for Barbara, but that doesn't mean I still didn't want to send one to Barbara from me and my girl with this cake made with lots of good fresh ingredients and made from the loads of organic zucchini I have been buying lately from my friends who have me buying lots more organic produce these days.

It started with my wanting to reduce the amount of pesticides in my families life. I am happy to say from an organic perspective we now mostly eat organic, pasta, rice, milk, eggs, fruit, vegetables, chicken, beef, pork and I also bake with organic flour, sugar etc.

This beautiful cake is topped with a lovely fresh lime cream cheese frosting. The cake itself tastes of cardamom and mixed spice and lovely bites of pistachios. The recipe is one from the Delicious magazine and can be found at one of my favourite websites at Taste.

I think this cake makes a great virtual hug to Barbara because it is filled with lots and lots of organic goodies prepared with love and care to share with all those I love.

Baking to me means caring and sharing. For my children I hope I am creating memories of a loving mother who wanted to make her children happy and healthy. Because I work full time I hope my children will remember less about the mother who wasn't there in the afternoon, and more about the mother who remembered them everyday and showed it each day when they opened their lunches and found a special treat I made for them, and one extra to share with their closest friends.

I am not the mother who drops them off regularly, goes on the excursions, reads to the class, or participates in tuck shop, but I am the mother who wanted to provide them with beautiful things to taste and remember as a highlight of their day, its my love letter to them.

My beautiful son on his tenth birthday last month. A cheesecake lover I made him one of his absolute favourites and all time classic - a new york cheesecake courtesty of Taste once again.

Lumberjack Cake

2008-11-09T17:55:00.006+10:00

A friend on facebook recently pointed me in the direction of this lovely and rustic looking cake.

I did some googling and found a number of recipes with variations on the amount of sugar, green apples and dates and eggs.

The first recipe I found on a favourite blog. I made it for Melbourne Cup day and it was quite a hit satisfying all our cravings for a sweet hit in the afternoon. The first one I made I served with the caramel sauce and cream.

Today I went for simplicity and varied the quantities on the sugar, eggs and apples. So my version of the cake is so:

For the cake

200grams of dates chopped

1 cup of hot water

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

125grams of butter softened

1 cup castor sugar

1/2 tsp of vanilla paste

1 egg

2 green apples, peeled and diced

1 1/2 cups plain flour

For the topping

3/4 cup shredded coconut

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons of butter

Turn on the oven to 180 degrees (160 fan forced).

Place chopped dates, hot water and bicarb of soda in a non-metallic bowl and leave till cool.

Butter and flour a square pan or a round one and line with baking paper. Mine was a large round one about 26 cm in diameter.

In another bowl, cream sugar and butter till pale and fluffy, add lightly beaten egg and vanilla and mix through. Then add flour, date mixture and apples alternately till combined.Transfer to baking pan.

Cook for 45mins or until skewer inserted in middle comes out dry.

While cake is cooking, combine topping ingredients in a small saucepan till butter melts.

Remove cake from oven and spread over the topping. Return to the oven for 15 mins until topping is brown.

Cut when cool and serve with cream.

P.S the beautiful yellow day lilly is from our front garden. Its taken nearly a year but they have finally flowered and are gorgeous. Gabi cut off two to give to Di our lovely neighbour as a thank-you for the beautiful hibiscus that she scored from her last weekend.

Paul's duck salad

2008-11-02T20:50:00.003+10:00

A very, very, very late evening for us last night cooking a Thai feast. We started with pork rice rolls, and chicken spring rolls and Thai Mojitos, then we had this duck salad, the Thai red lamb shank curry from the previous post, a cucumber salad and then a trio of desserts - coconut creme caramel, mango and lemongrass tart and vanilla bean icecream. A marathon of cooking, eating and entertaining hence why I will leave it till later this week to post the recipe for the duck salad a Paul special. Our guests left at 2am and I got up at 5am that morning to track down the many ingredients. It was a breeze to actually serve as we did all the preparation in advance.

I couldn't resist posting the picture of the beautiful hibiscus as well. Paul and Gabi went next door for a swim and while there the lovely Di (our neighbour) went to cut two of her hibiscus for her own purposes. Gabi has a sharp eye and immediately asked for one, while I am happy to have one, I feel sorry for Di having to give it up to Gabi. However Gabi does have a good eye and appreciates natures beauty so its not being wasted with us and indeed being imortalised on the internet!.

Gabi's 5th birthday - Pirates and Fairies party

2008-10-30T20:13:00.002+10:00

Birthday cake from Vanilla pod

Smartie cookie new recipe

Lemon iced biscuits

Fairy cupcakes

We had a big weekend preparing for the invasion of fairies and pirates - I think I was remarkably restrained in my food preparations. The Menu: Mini Quiche (I bought the baked pastry cases from Coles) my MIL brought the sandwiches, Cupcakes, the biscuits above, a fruit platter, bannana bread, lemon and poppy seed cake (damn forgot to get a photograph of) and that was it.

I used a new recipe for the cupcakes some of them were coconut ones, but I wasn't happy with it so I won't post it as I won't use it again.

The iced biscuits though were great and a nice change from ginger bread men.

Ingredients 250 g chilled unsalted butter, chopped

2 cups plain flour

3/4 cup caster sugar

1 egg

Pure icing sugar

lemon juice

Preheat oven to 180degrees c

In food processer mix the butter and flour until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add sugar and mix to combine. Add egg and continue to process until mix comes together. Knead on floured surface for a few minutes until smooth. Divide in half and wrap in cling wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Line baking trays with baking paper. Roll out dough on a floured surface to half a centimetre thickness and use cookie cutters of your choice.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until light golden - I went for paler biscuits.

Gabi didn't like the lemon flavour so some were not iced and then later I decided to only use the pure icing sugar and milk. You need the icing to go hard quickly on these cookies so pure icing sugar not icing mixture is what you should aim to use. If you make the lemon icing use 1/2 cup icing sugar sifted to 2 tablespoons lemon juice.

The Smartie cookies are based on the chocolate chip cookie recipe using smarties instead of chocolate chips.

Lamb shank red curry

2008-10-25T21:42:00.002+10:00

I can't tell you how this was made, I wasn't at home when it was made by Paul and our good friend Kim who is a fabulous cook. It was the most delicious curry I have eaten in my entire life - yes it was that good. I will ask Paul to tell me how they made it and post it - I would hate to think that I will never have that fabulous flavour in my mouth again. I can tell you how she made the rice it was very simple and fool proof.

One cup of rice to one and a half cups of water - rinse the rice first if you like and drain then add the required water - so two cups would mean three cups etc. Also add a touch of salt.

Bring to the boil without a lid - then as soon as it boils reduce down to the lowest temperature you can get - seal the lid with two paper hand towels between the lid and the pan - this will help absorption of the water. Leave on low for 20minutes, then turn off . Don't remove the lid during this time and leave standing for another ten minutes off the heat before removing the lid. When you take the lid off its ready to serve.

Random scallop dish

2008-10-25T21:34:00.002+10:00

This dish is the result of an evening dining with my sister-in-law. She had some scallops left over from the dinner she cooked for us and was unimpressed so gave the remainder to Paul and me.

I promptly cooked them for lunch. As I recall it was a leek and wood smoked bacon sauce with a dash of cream and some organic olive oil drizzled over for good measure. The scallops were very simply grilled on my flat grill.

It was pretty darn good.

Oh in the back ground is some beautiful garlic turkish bread I get from the Rocklea markets - first I lightly grilled it and then we used it to mop up the sauce on the plate. A hint of dill is the last embellishment

Nigella's New Year's day hangover pasta.

2007-01-25T21:54:00.000+10:00

So called because on New Year's day I decided this was the pasta to fill that seemingly empty feeling I have in my stomach after an evening of indulging in lots of wine and food.

I found this recipe in an old Delicious magazine and was intrigued by the use of fresh tomatoes rather than ones which had been cooked and cooked. I did embellish however, with some leftovers from the night before, note the caviar and sour cream.

Nigella's title for this pasta is: Spaghetti al sugo crudo (spaghetti with raw tomato sauce)

I kg of ripe tomatoes
1 tsp caster sugar
1 garlic clove
1/2 cup (125ml) extra virgin olive oil
400 grams spaghetti

Blanch the tomatoes in hot water for a few mintues i.e. cut a small cross in the base of the tomato, put them in a bowl pour over some boiling water leave sit.

Drain, then peel away the skin starting at the cross. Halve the toms, and deseed. Cut out the cores, then chop the remaining flesh finely. Put them in a bowl add the sugar with some sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bruise the garlic with the flat edge of a knife. Peet then add the smashed clove and the oil to the toms. Beat with a little whisk to make everything come together as a sauce. Cover with cling wrap and leave at room temperature for 30 minutes to 8 hours. (30 mins if your desparately hungover!)

Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water - drain. Remove the garlic clove and discard OR NOT - toss the tomato mixture into the hot spaghetti. Work the sauce through the pasta, so that is evenly coated, and serve immediately.

Scallops and Pork Belly

2007-01-25T21:42:00.000+10:00

Okay, so I know its no longer fashionable, but a follower of fashion I have yet to become! I just like this combination and I really don't get to dine out that often so P and I are not over it and have made our own version of this dish.

We have made the dish twice this year already, once for our NYE marathon dinner and another dinner where I invited over a couple of friends from work with their partners. I am pretty happy with the result both times. For an entree for four we used just under a kilo and scored it into about 12 square pieces (3 each as above) probably 15 all up (and had those other pieces as extras if needed).

While at restaurants I have tried versions of this dish in which I would describe the pork as being slow cooked, however P and I decided we like our pork belly rind nice and crispy, so we scored the the rind into squares. Then we marinated the piece of pork belly overnight. We made sure the marinade only wet the meat and kept the top dry. The marinade was made of simple asian flavours of oyster sauce, soy sauce & sesame oil.

We removed the pork belly from the marinade then dried the top with some kitchen towels and rubbed in some sea salt. After that we roasted the piece for a couple of hours. First at 160 degrees celcius for about an hour and a half and then whacked the oven up to 200 degrees and gave it a burst of heat for half an hour. In the event the top is not nice and crackly, you can always turn the grill on instead for 10 minutes or so.

We used about 4 scallops per person and grilled them in a pan, we have also done them on our electric bbq which is another good option for getting them nice and brown. They didn't take long to cook a scant couple of minutes.

With the remainder of the marinade we put that in a saucepan and reduced it to a nice sticky sauce that we could drizzle over the final dish when serving.

Mmmmm... planning to make this dish again soon.

Christmas Day entree: Mudcrab, prawn & rocket salad.

2007-01-12T14:14:00.000+10:00

You wouldn't think it, but here at the LL household I have been cooking up a storm, homemade ice-creams, cakes, duck salads, handmade duck ravioli, a wagyu rump roast, double lamb cutlets, scallop and pork belly, the list goes on.

But of course all this frenetic activity meant guests in the evening and that doesn't bode well for taking good photographs I am afraid I just don't have the equipment for the necessary lighting!

But I will do the best I can as some photographs have been taken although not all are worth publishing I am afraid.

This one taken on Christmas day captures the essence of an Australian Christmas entree suitable for a warmish day on the Sunshine coast. My mother and I purchased some huge mud crabs, oysters and prawns to have prior to the roast pork, goose fat potatoes and simple salads.

In the gourmet desert that my mother calls her home, I concocted a dressing of olive oil, fish sauce, soy sauce and fresh lime & red chillies and as I said several times that day, pity she didn't have any fresh ginger I could have finely grated into the dressing (well that would have worked if only I had remembered to take my great micro plane!) Oh well twas' still a fine little starter.

Food glorious food 2006

2006-12-14T12:25:00.000+10:00

While I notice that some food bloggers have prepared calenders this year, I decided that my amateur work is not worthy of such focus and decided instead that I would make a collage of some of the food I prepared in 2006.

I recognise that the year is not over yet and christmas banquets have yet to be done, but I usually do one separate Christmas Collage in any case so that will come later.

*PS click on the photograph to enlarge for details!

Smarty Pants Cookies

2006-12-14T09:35:00.000+10:00

These are the cookies I made Elliot to take to school as part of the end of year celebration feast he is enjoying today. I was supposed to make cake, but I started worrying about refrigeration and although they were using eskies etc. I thought it would be less trouble to make this lovely Smarty Pants cookies although as you can probably tell I actually used M&Ms I asked P to buy smarties and this is what I get - what is that saying "Never send a man....! .

I became a bit anal with the colour of the M&Ms I put on the cookies although the results of that are not reflected here exactly, what is reflected is that in the end due to my being anal i.e. ensuring I put a different coloured M&M on each biscuit in the exact same order, I was left with way too many blue ones. So these are the cookies that didn't make it to the feast and decided to keep at home, cos you know how much 8 years will care that I put a different coloured M&M on each biscuit in the exact same order.

Anway the recipe incorporated almonds which I substituted coconut for, the reason being that there are too many kids out there with nut allergies so it is better to avoid that problem with group feasts at school. I found them a little sweet for my taste as well I think next time I will cut down on the sugar. Other tips include making sure you don't do too many at once or they will spread and join up and then you will have to cut them apart, also make sure you use a small ball of dough so that proportionately the cookies and the amount of smarties don't look odd and finally a lighter coloured cookie is better looking than a golden one - so 10 mins and a bit lower temp than the recommended 180 c.

This is a very much Elliot cooking story today, because the background picture to this photograph involves some of the art work that he took home yesterday. I am loving the progress they are making with their artistic work at school. I may use some other interesting pieces for some recipes - I thought this piece went perfectly with these predominantly blue coloured M&M cookies.

Smartie PantsIngredients:
125g butter,
½ cup caster sugar,
½ cup brown sugar lightly packed,
½ tsp vanilla extract,
1 egg lightly beaten,
1 ¾ cup self-raising flour sifted,
½ tsp salt,
¼ cup slivered almonds,

180g Smarties©

Steps: Preheat oven to moderate, 180 degrees Celsius. Cream together the butter, sugars and vanilla using electric beaters until combined. Add lightly beaten egg, and beat until smooth. Mix in sifted flours and salt with a wooden spoon. Add slivered almonds and mix until combined. Shape tablespoonfuls of mixture into balls, and place onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Flatten gently, then press smarties into the surface. Leave about an inch between cookies as they do expand upon baking. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden

Christmas Fare 2006

2006-12-10T21:43:00.000+10:00

Here is a sample of my 2006 Christmas food gifts.

I am making iced lemon cookies and rocky road. I will also make gingerbread later this week. Elliot is taking the lemon cookies (which I have wrapped in cellophane) to school for his classmates I thought they could double as decorations if they make them to the tree.

Gabriella helped make the star cards - I went to Office Works and bought large and small red circle stickers and some stiff paper. Gabriella stuck the stickers on and Elliot traced the star shape on the back, I cut it out. We are becoming a real family Christmas affair these days.

Recipe for Lemon Cookies:

100 grams of unsalted butter
100 grams of castor sugar
225gram plain flour
zest of one lemon
1 egg

Preheat oven to 180c.

Beat the butter and sugar till nice and creamy and then add the egg and beat for another few minutes.

Stir in the lemon zest and incorporate flour till it forms a dough. Use extra flour to knead the dough together so it not so soft. Take 1/4 of the dough and roll out on some silicone baker paper, then begin cutting shapes - trees and stars for Elliot's class, and hearts for our friends.

Bake for approximately 10 to 15 mins, it is supposed to be golden but I found mine were darkening around the edges before they ever became golden so I preferred them pale.

I decorated the heart ones with silver and gold cashous. If you want to turn them into decorations, before you bake them make a hole in the cut out dough with a wooden skewer.

I then iced them with the same icing I use for gingerbread men. If you have left over icing - transfer to a dish then cover it will some plastic pressing down on the surface so it doesn't dry out.

My traditional gingerbread recipe

2006-12-10T09:39:00.000+10:00

350 grams plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda (or baking powder)
2 teaspoons ground ginger
100 grams unsalted butter
175 grams brown sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons golden syrup

Preheat oven to 170 degrees.

Line baking trays with silicone baking paper. Sift flour, bicarb and ginger into a large bowl.

Rub in butter until mixture resembles breadcrumbs then rub in the sugar. Beat egg and syrup together and stir into flour mixture, mixing lightly to form a smooth dough. Rest in the refridgerator for 30 minutes.

On a floured surface rollout dough to 4-5mm thickness.
Cut into shapes and transfer to baking tins.
Bake for 12-15 mins or until golden brown.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly on trays.

Transfer to wire racks to cool completely then ice.

Icing
200 grams of icing sugar
1 egg white
1 tablespoon lemon juice.

Beat the egg white until soft peaks form and gradually beat in the icing sugar followed by the lemon juice. Ice the biscuits and decorate with silver/coloured cashous for buttons.

Hints: It is easier to roll out the dough on the silicone baking paper that you line the tins with. So remove the paper from the baking tins, roll out the dough, cut out the desired shapes, take away excess dough and then put the baking paper back into the baking trays.

That way you don't accidentally break any of the arms etc. As you can see I decided to use the snowman shape and the stars. The snowman makes a large biscuit enough really for two people to share. I think I averaged about 30 stars and 8-10 snowman per batch.

With the stars, I found because they are so small they baked really quickly maybe five minutes, though I really just kept a close eye on them. The larger biscuits took about 10 minutes really.

Baked cookies

When in a hurry I haven't rested the dough and not had any problems - sometimes it is best to start with everything very cold i.e. flour in the freezer etc and that helps keeping the dough malleable.

Iced cookies:

Packaged cookies 2004

Christmas Fare 2005

Packaging Christmas 2005

I also baked some lemon cookies last night because Elliot thought his class wouldn't like the ginger - this is not a strong ginger flavour he is just being picky and being the overcompensating working mother I am I made him different biscuits which I must say I am very happy with anyway.

I am also making some Rocky Road today so tune in for some piccies of all the christmas fare which I will update some time today.

T&T's Wedding Cake

2006-12-09T15:13:00.000+10:00

This is the cupcake wedding cake I put together for my good friend's wedding. I baked 130 chocolate sour cream cupcakes with a chocolate sourcream ganache last Friday night. At 5.30am Saturday morning I was up tracking down the roses.

I found the recipe for Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake in Nigella Lawson's Feast and the ganache recipe from Rose Berembaum's Cake Bible. I chose the ganache as I knew it would withstand being baked, transported and kept at room temperature quite well before making it to the airconditioned room.

T chose the stand which typically of T she used because it has sentimental value as it was made by her mother's father - it was a very simple three-tiered wooden stand and beside the cake stand she had her parents and her husband's parents wedding photographs a lovely touch and works terribly well when your parents are not divorced or remarried!

I am told everyone enjoyed the cakes, not surprisingly I couldn't stomach a single cupcake having baked and iced them all. It was quite nerve wracking not being a professional baker, but I think that lots of lovely fresh flowers can be very forgiving.

One other good thing that came from this commission was that I finally bit the bullet and have dispensed with my 10 year old Sunbeam handbeater for my gorgeous red hot KitchenAid, all the better to bake lots of batches of christmas cookies!

One more shot of the whole cake stand:

While the groom preferred chocolate mudcake, my research lead me to prefer a recipe which did not involve melting approximatley 4 kgs of chocolate or baking the cupcakes twice the time it would take for this recipe. I guess I got a bit practical and chose a recipe that could be mixed in one big hit and take 15mins per batch of 24 as this meant I could have at least 5 hours sleep instead of no sleep if I went with the mudcake recipe.

Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake

200 g plain flour
200g castor sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
40g best quality cocoa

175 grams unsalted butter
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
150ml sour cream

Have all ingredients at room temperature and preheat oven to 180 c.

Put all the cake ingredients into a food processor (or the KitchenAid) and mix until you have a smooth, thick batter.

Place spoonfuls in cupcake liners and bake for approx 15mins. I used a double batch and it made about 40 cupcakes!

Sour Cream Ganache.

Its very important that the sour cream is room temperature or the ganache will lump and become dull - it happened to me once!

340 grams of bittersweet chocolate
400grams of sour cream

Melt the chocolate in the microwave (on a lower power) check every minute or so. If dish feels warm transfer to another bowl. Add the sour cream and stir with a rubber spatula until uniform in colour.

If the ganache is refrigerated - soften by placing the bowl in a water bath or a microwave for few seconds stirring gently.

Prawn and Corn Fritters

2006-10-21T18:38:00.001+10:00

I know this is too late for the Hay Hay Its Donna Day and F is for Fritter competetion. That I thought of them last week, and then saw some prawns for about $10 a kilo it was a fait acompli .

I just had to make these fritters this weekend. My mother's prawn and corn fritters are the most morish ones I have ever eaten and were probably the first. The batter uses finely minced, onion, garlic and ginger these three ingredients being the basis of nearly all my mother's traditional cooking.

The batter itself - a gorgeous mixture of mouthwatering prawns and sweet corn niblets.

Lightly frying and puffing up.

Recipe: I have provided one earlier with a very plain photograph and like all of my mother's recipes I know the ingredients but make it up as I go along.

1 egg
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
2cm piece of ginger
300ml milk

2 cups plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 x. 400gram can of corn niblets
650 grams of medium size prawns

In my food processor, I finely chopped the onion, ginger and garlic. I changed the blade to the soft blade and then added the egg, flour and baking powder and milk and pulsed a few times. I removed the batter from the processor bowl and put it into a larger one and mixed through the corn and prawns. I added some sea salt at this point.

Gently heat (medium flame) some canola oil in a fry pan and when hot, add large spoonfuls of batter. Flip after a few minutes and keep them in a warmed oven while you cook the rest.

These are lovely served with a salad and lots of lemon.

However, I remember my mother also liked to serve them with some fluffy white rice.

In their glory.

Apple fritters and vanilla ice-cream scattered with pariya rose petals and a drizzle of maple syrup

2006-10-15T16:16:00.000+10:00

When I knew Hay Hay its Donna Day was coming up and the theme was fritters I knew it was time for me to enter the fray - it is my first foodie internet event/competition. I tend to shy away from competition, too scared of losing too scared of winning is the way I think of them. When I analyse this, I am quite sure I learned this lesson a very hard way when I was 16 years old, from my blonde and buxom best friend who as it turned out wasn't just very competitive with me at English. When she saw that I was interested in a boy at school she did her best - i.e. battered her eyelashes at him and I ran a very poor second.

Anyway I digress from a lesson learned long ago and onto happier things. Originally I had thoughts of preparing a family fritter "Corn and prawn fritters." I did a post on them a long time ago as part of a banquet based on family recipes when I first began this blog. I also gave some thought to revisiting some pea and haloumi fritters I did about three months ago but failed to post as my photography of them was quite appalling.
Late this afternoon I realised I hadn't bought the prawns or the haloumi I needed for those two fritters so I had to quickly consider something else. Two of the concepts I decided to keep in mind when coming up with a new fritter for which I would have the ingredients readily at hand was "traditional" and "family".
For the "family" part, I chose the plate pictured to serve the dessert on. The plate was recently given to me by my mother and it was from her mother. I don't think it is a fancy, smanchy brand name piece it simply states at the back "Made in Japan" but the fact it was from a woman to whom I am closely related and have never met and yet this woman means so much to my mother I thought it was perfect to use today. There are 2 of these plates and are rarely used by me but when I do, it is always with some reverence.

The recipe for the fritters is my concoction of a few recipes that can be found scattered on the internet. When making up the recipe I wanted to use rings of sliced apple, and a thick, airy, batter. As a result I think they look almost like doughnuts, indeed that's what Elliot thought they were.
Recipe:
1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons vanilla castor sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

canola oil for deep frying

3 Braeburn apples(for approximately 4 serves)

Cinnamon Icing sugar for dusting

Maple syrup

Vanilla icecream

The apple of choice for us lately is the Braeburn, which is crisp, slightly tart & yet sweet. The perfect size for Elliot's lunch box, if it were too big there would be too much wastage as he would be throwing it away as there isn't time to eat a big apple and play Mum!

Out of the couple of dozen or so we have eaten over the past month only 1 or 2 have been on the floury side so pretty good percentages all up as far as I am concerned. I chose a couple of these apples for the fritters and cut them into rings. I made them about 1 cm wide and cut the core out of the centre.

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar and nutmeg. Add the egg and milk and beat with a whisk until well combined. The mixture should be quite thick. Leave to stand for about 20 minutes.

In a deep saucepan, heat some canola oil over a medium heat. I checked my oil was hot enough by dropping a tiny bit of the batter in and see if the oil did its trick.

Dip the apple rings in the batter and add them to the heated oil. I did mine one by one as I used my smallest saucepan the bigger the saucepan the more you could do at once but probably no more than 3 is the best idea.

My oil was a bit too hot so I had to work very quickly ensuring the fritters were obtaining an even colour and then removing them to a plate topped with baking paper to drain. I knew the apple wouldn't be as cooked as I wanted but I also didn't want them to burn. So next time I think keep the oil on a lower heat or I thought I might microwave the apples for a couple of minutes before battering and frying.

I am so sick of editing this post but another good idea would have been to put these in a warmed oven at 100 degrees celcius for about 10 minutes so they would have cooked through and warmed the apple more.

To serve: I dusted the fritters with some icing sugar I had added some cinnamon to, and drizzled maple syrup over the ice-cream and fritters. Finally I scattered my lovely Pariya roses I got from the Essential Ingredient in Melbourne all over the plate. The roses provide the most gorgeous perfume to this dessert.

Update:

I made these fritters again with the left over batter last night and given that the first time I was trying to make, photograph and post within hours of the competition closing ,I was afforded a more leisurely approach and the finished product was much improved.

I used 2 braeburn apples and after I sliced them into rings I microwaved them for 2 minutes. So they were perfect on the inside. I moderated the heat of my oil better this time not too hot, produced fritters perfectly cooked through, (without resorting to the oven) so it meant I had a crispy outside as well.

It cannot be stated enough, just how well the combination of the Pariya roses and maple syrup enhance this dessert through the combination of flavour and fragrance!
For the full round-up of F is for Fritter for Hay Hay Its Donna Day head to Milk and Cookies after the 22 October for voting. The very talented jenjen will be announcing a winner soon after that.

Toasted Banana Bread

2006-10-15T09:50:00.000+10:00

What a revelation I had this week at one of my favourite coffee shops. I ordered some banana bread with my coffee and I was asked whether I needed some butter. I have never had butter on it before but I thought instead of dismissing the concept out-of-hand I asked for the butter to be served on the side.

Once the bread was served to me I was surprised to find the bread had been toasted. I guess the reason I was so surprised is that I have always really considered that banana bread was a misnoma and it is really a a cake or better served as a muffin and when asked thought it better accompanied cream cheese frosting than butter. I mean there isn't any yeast in banana bread that I know of - is there?

I figure actually toasting banana bread is not a surprise to many , but for me the uninitiated into the joys of actually toasting the banana bread I have to say it was one of the most satisfying foodie revelations I have had to date.

So yesterday I decided to track down a very basic banana bread recipe, baked it last night, toasted it under my Breville flat sandwich maker, dusted it with some icing sugar and served it with some vanilla ice-cream, maple syrup and toasted walnuts.

For the purpose of this post this morning I decided to simply toast the bread and present it in much the same way as it was served to me earlier in the week. On that day, the toasted BB made a very satisfying 10.30am morning tea especially when I hadn't the time for breakfast earlier that day and portion control over the butter meant it was relatively healthy.

I think the recipe below is quite excellent - as it is low fat. I decided to use the simplest and most dense version I could find with no nuts or other embellishments. Indeed I noticed that many of the reviewers for the BB decided to take this super healthy version and add a naughty thing to it, like chocolate chips or healthier things like nuts!

From my experience this BB recipe could do with extra moisture and recommend adding more mashed banana or apple sauce.

Having read all of the reviews for the recipe I also think based on the majority of them that next time I would do the following:
* halve the amount of sugar or substitute white sugar with brown sugar
* use half wholemeal and half white flour
*add pecans or walnuts

Basic low fat Banana Bread from this site :
2 cups plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)
1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 170° c.
2. With some canola cooking spray I sprayed the inside of a loaf tin.
3. Sift the flours and salt together and set aside.
4. I really don't like the 1/2 cup measure for things so I cut a piece of butter that looked approximately like 1/2 cup and with a hand beater beat the butter and sugar and vanilla together until light and creamy (approx 3 minutes - longer for me due to not letting the butter soften).
5. I then beat in one egg at a time beating well after each egg.
6. Then beat in the yoghurt (I only had the kids full fat vanilla) and the mashed banana.
7. After that I gently mixed the flour through the creamy banana mix.
8. Pour into loaf tin and bake for approximately one hour.

Measures of success:
*Inserting a wooden skewer that comes out clean proving it is baked through.
*A big crack down the middle of the loaf due to the operation of the baking soda
*Light to medium browning with crispy outside crust which will soften the next day

Other thoughts:
*The other versions of the BB from the website sounded fantastic too, coconut would toast very well if added to the recipe.
*I saw that Chocolate and Zucchini had a recipe for BB with Cranberries, I haven't yet found a fresh cranberry but am willing to give the dried versions a go.
*It is worth paying $12.00 a kilo for 4 bananas to try the other versions - those cheaper bananas I posted about earlier are few and far between.
*One of the things I am finding it difficult to succeed in lately, taking a photograph of the finished product without one of my children's hands appearing in it no matter how many times I tell them to wait!

Yes, we have some bananas - we have some bananas today!

2006-10-05T09:54:00.000+10:00

Seriously - months of being a bananaless household and this week I have them coming out of our ears. While prices remain high in supermarkets and green grocers i.e. $14.00 per kilo, bargains can be found at the weekend markets and the roadside it seems.

My mother sent some home with the kiddies that she got at her local market for about $5.00 per kilo. This bunch of beauties was dropped off at my place this morning by a friend who stopped on her way to work and bought them from a road-side vendor for $4.50 for two kilos!

I am wondering whether to let some go nice and ripe to make some banana bread - I think its a must. P is dreaming of pancakes and bananas, maple syrup and pecans for dessert tonight with my mother's riper bananas.

Isn't it bizarre how we react to one of our staples becoming a rarity, I can almost empathise with those folks on Survivor- except of course their access to everything is extremely restricted.

Risotto Bianco - with pesto

2006-10-01T18:45:00.000+10:00

Two cuisines inspire me the most, Italian and Japanese. I have been leafing through the latest Delicious trying to work out how to track down Edamame and Wakame and at the same time, checking out Jamie Oliver's Italy and became mesmerised by his white risotto.

So due to the fact we are sans children this weekend (and week in fact), I decided to make this risotto but what also compelled me to cook it was the fact that I was making pesto anyway.

I have nearly always considered risotto part of my winter/autumn repertoire but with the addition of the pesto I started to consider the possibilities, a tiny course of white risotto and pesto before some grilled quail perhaps and then a pork dish. I am considering a menu consisting number of small dishes because of the dinner we had on Friday night.

A good friend of P's invited us over to meet his new partner and she also loves to cook so they were keen to try out a number of dishes on us. We started with some olives, cheese etc. The first course was a very small bowl of pumpkin soup. They asked us what we thought the secret ingredient was, I thought wasabi as I could taste mustard flavours in fact it was tomato. Who'd have thunk it!

They then served us some ravioli which they had made and filled with spinach and ricotta and made a lovely tomato sauce, parmesan and basil all really lovely light flavours.

Then there was some lemon sorbet. And finally a whole spatchcock and sweet potato salad. Finally there was a toblerone mousse - really we were very spoiled I think and I must say they are excellent cooks! I look forward to returning the favour which got me to thinking about this risotto as one of my courses.

My pesto is usually made in a mortar and pestle. A handful of toasted pinenuts, one clove of garlic a good handful of grated parmesan and three handfulls of basil leaves. Give it all a good bash and pour in some extra virgin olive oil and keep bashing it till you get it to the consistency you like your pestos (I am assuming that there are no pesto virgins out there!) but I don't like my pesto too coarse and dry as you can see.

Jamie's recipe called for onion, garlic and celery and white wine and warmed stock. I used half an onion, no celery (would have used it if I had it) , 2 cloves of garlic and about 1 litre of stock, a big splash of white wine and about 1 cup of aborio rice.

Heat the stock in a saucepan and keep it gently simmering.

Finely dice the onion and smash your garlic. Then in my saute saucepan I heated up a big splash of extra virgin and a knob of butter and when that was nice and bubbly I added the onion and garlic and sauteed on a moderate heat till transparent. Then add the rice and stir for a few minutes till the rice is coated with the butter/oil and looks nice and glossy next add the white wine.

When the wine has cooked out of the rice, add the first ladle of stock and a good pinch of salt. Keep the heat on simmer. Keep adding the stock ladle by ladle, but making sure in between each ladle you are constantly turning the rice and incorporating each ladle of stock prior to adding the next one.

I tend to find that this process takes up to 20 minutes. After 15 minutes, taste the rice, add more salt if necessary and if the rice is still not cooked keep adding the stock and turning the rice. The mixture will become creamier and creamier. The rice is cooked when it is mostly soft and only a subtle bite is left in the middle. Have a boiled kettle handy if the rice isn't cooked by the time you run out of stock and add some hot water.

Remove from heat and add a knob of butter and a good handful of grated Parmesan. Put on the lid and let sit for 2 minutes. Mine didn't look as oozy as Jamies. I can only think the way for me to get it like his is once it is cooked, add one last ladle full of stock/water and then mix it through gently and take it immediately off the heat so as not to incorporate or evaporate the stock into rice as I had been previously doing till this point.

Hmmm think I will give that method a whirl next time.

Serve it immediately, with a big dollop of pesto, some extra pinenuts and fresh basil scattered on top and a few dashes of extra v.

Yes I know overdid it on the number photographs but I am feeling very indecisive today!

A birthday cake for P & R and R's wife

2006-09-24T21:39:00.000+10:00

Nigella's Rococoa Cake

(Warning this cake needs over-night refrigeration prior to topping with chocolate glaze!)

I made this cake for P's birthday he shares with his brother R and while she doesn't share the same birthday, it was also for R's wife T.

In our family because there are so many birthdays we have to get together at a convenient time and share a few. P & R are twins so of course that means 2 with one blow and T's was around the same time. I made the cake for P to take to a lunch at his sister's place one Sunday and I couldn't go to it. Being the start of 3 weeks of hell at work at the time, I stayed home without interruption and wrote some submissions.

I have been wanting to make this cake for years when I first saw it in Feasts but a few things were stopping me, like sourcing the decorations and the three pages of instructions were quite intimidating. However for me, nothing could have been further from the truth in terms of actually making and assembling this cake it all came together beautifully, even though I didn't quite get the decorations right.

I actually needed gold cachous and did find them, but was dissuaded from buying them after I discovered a very small packet cost just under $10. I also needed to have nibbed pistachios. I ended buying shelled pistachios and tried my best to display their verdant insides to the world as best I could.

I now have the right colour cachous (my trip to Melbourne) but I still don't have the right pistachios oh well... means I have to make this cake again.

The cake itself was a very easily made chocolate sponge then it became a rum tiramisu topped with a luscious chocolate glaze. I have found that Nigella's chocolate cakes so far have all proved very easy to make and this one was similar to the Chocolate Malteser Cake in the same book.

For the cake:
50g plain flour
50g cornflour
40g cocoa
4 eggs separated
150g caster sugar
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Butter and line the bottom of a 23 cm springform tin. Sift together the flour and cornflour, and add the cocoa, pushing it through the sieve. Whisk the separated egg yolks with half of the sugar - until the mixture becomes pale and moussy.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until firm, then whisk in the remaining sugar, one spoonful at a time, until you have gleaming white peaks. Gently fold in the yolk mixture into the whites, and then add the flour, cornflour and cocoa, folding gently again until combined. Pour this moussy liquid into the tin and bake for 30 mins. The cake will be almost silicon-springy on top. Unclip the tin and let the cake cool on a rack, right side up.

For the Rum-Espresso syrup
100 g castor sugar
60ml water
125ml strong coffee (or 125ml hot water and 2 teasp instant coffee powder)
60ml rum (I used less about half as much alcohol)

Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a small saucepan and let it bubble for just under a minute before taking the pan off the heat and adding the coffee and the rum. Stir- just with a fork - pour the hot syrup into a bowl and let it cool.

For the filling:
3 egg yolks
70g castor sugar
80ml dark rum
250g mascarpone cheese
250ml double cream

Put the yolks, sugar and rum into bowl that will fit over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Whisk (hand beater) until the mixture has thickened airily and the lift the bowl off the pan and let it sit on a cold surface while you whisk for another few minutes to help it cool down. Don't worry too much about whether it is thick enough, the marscapone and cream will give it the extra body to fill the cake later.

Make sure this mixture is quite cool before mixing through the marscapone. Softly whip the cream in a separate bowl and beat or fold that into the filling as well.

To assemble:

Cut the cake into 3 layers - thin slices. Brush a 23 cm springform tin with some of the syrup and then layer a third of the cake, laid horizontally, to line the bottom of the tin. Brush with syrup to dampen the cake and seal the joins.

Spread the layer of cake with half of the zabaglione using a rubber spatula and a light hand to coat evenly, and then add another layer of cake slices to cover. Dribble again or brush with the syrup until the cake is damp as before, and then spread over the final half of the filling.

Cover with the final third of the cake slices and drip, pour or brush over the syrup to give the cake a smoothish layer, which can be iced later; if the cake is damp, there's no need to drench it.

Put the cake covered with clingfilm, in the fridge overnight to set. You can ice the cake and return it to the fridge (although it will make the glaze dulish)

Icing
100g caster sugar
60ml or 4 tablespoons golden syrup
60ml dark rum
1 teaspoon instant coffee
150g best quality dark chocolate, chopped very small.

Put the sugar, syrup, rum and espresso powder into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, swirling it around so that the chocolate melts in the hot liquid. Leave for a few minutes and then whisk everything together in the pan (just using a little hand whisk) to make a smooth shiny glaze. Moving quickly, run a small spatula or thin knife blade around the inside of your cake tin. Spring open the tin, taking care with the sides as the cake will damp and delicate. Sit the cake on a plate or stand (don't move it from the tin's base - it will deconstruct!) and pour over the icing, letting it dribble here and there. You may need to ease it over the top of the cake while it is still malleable. The glaze will set quite quickly, as the cake will be quite cold and the finish will be ruined if you try and spread the icing too long after your initial pouring.

Scatter with gold sprinkles, nibbed or chopped pistachios.

Well the effort for me was in repeating that recipe here ( I have just found the energy to re-edit all the spelling mistakes out) because given it was made over two days I didn't find it too onerous. It was also a huge hit, so well worth the effort.

Rain, Sunday, shopping and scones

2006-09-10T21:19:00.000+10:00

Scones, jam & cream and some gabi fingers on the side

Apart from all the posting I have been doing today I also decided to go shopping. I went to my fav delis on Deshon Street East Brisbane, and picked up things like half a huge wedge of brie, some Italian Grana Padano, our chillie sauces which eggs for brekky are boring without, some pastizzis (pea and anchovy plus some apple ones), pappadums and parathas and because I needed some coriander for the curries tonight, I had to spend $10 to use my credit card and bought "The Grange" Boysenberry jam.

Once home, due to my searching of food blogs this morning, I couldn't quite forget Vicious Anges' use of a Bill Granger recipe for scones. Being a Bill Granger fan I would have to say his recipes are never fail I had to give them a go. Considering two other things I had made this weekend were a flop, I needed one sure fire hit. I messed up some apricot slice, I burnt every single apricot piece but not the biscuit strangely enough. And the ice-cream slice, well the slice wasn't as cold as it should have been when I sandwiched the icecream which meant I lost a lot of great icecream due to melting from the heat.

I am happy to say these scones redeemed me:

Preheat oven to 220c

11/2 cups of plain flour
1 tablespoon icing sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
250mls milk
30g melted butter

Makes about 8-10.

Sift the dry ingredients and add the other two slightly mix together, ditch the spoon and use your hands and bring dough together. Once together move to floured surface and knead gently. Roll out to about 3cm deep and using a 5cm round object like a glass cut out circles in the dough and move to a tray which you have either greased or being slack like me put some baking paper on.

Push the bits of dough back together roll out again and cut scones - do this again till dough is finished.

Put in the oven for about 20 mins, or 15 if your stupid oven is as hot as mine.

I served mine with lashings of whipped cream, said jam purchased above and for a touch of the traditional some fresh strawberries. Elliot couldn't wait to get his mouth on them. I made some tea with real leaves and poured tea for all of us and served it in the K&K "good room". It was sweet!

2006-09-10T21:17:00.000+10:00

Eager for some scones

Girl Overboard

2006-09-10T19:36:00.000+10:00

Pizza Fritta (Fried pizza)

Okay I don't post for months, there are some who have wiped me completely I don't blame them.

But hey I am actually doing this for me so if per chance someone wanders by then, well I hope they find something new that appeals.

I made these fried pizzas one night for a dinner we served to P's cousin and her husband. The full meal involved some gorgeous lamb shanks and couscous, I think the lamb shanks had some mediterraneon flavours, harrissa and preserved lemons and prunes etc. Deeeevine. Oh and a Torte Della Nona (recipe in another 4 months - Ha Ha Ha - oops I may not be joking!)

I didn't want to do starters and an entree as such so I opted for some fried pizzas which Jamie Oliver's Italy cookbook inspired.

I have been making my own pizza dough for some time now. The recipe is via this blog

Pizza Dough , courtesy of The River Cottage Family Cookbook.
Dough:

500g bread flour
2 tsp salt
1 sachet dry yeast (fast-action)
2 Tbsp olive oil + more for greasing the bowl
2 tsp honey or sugar300 ml (approx) of warm water

Put a small pan of water in the oven. Turn the oven to about 150 c. for about 15 mins then switch the oven off. (All will be revealed this will save lots of time in the long run)

Mix the flour, yeast and salt into a big mixing bowl. Mix olive oil and sugar/honey into a mixing jug and top up with warm water to just over 300 ml. Stir well to dissolve the sugar/honey.

Make a well in the centre of the flour and slowly pour in the oily water. Mix and then knead until soft and elastic.

Wash out the mixing bowl and brush with olive oil. Place the dough inside the bowl and cover with alfoil. Put the dough in the oven (which has been switched off). Leave in this nice humid environment for about 20 - 30 mins and check - remove when the dough has doubled in size.

Tip the dough onto a floured surface and knead for about 5 mins.

Turn your grill on really high.

I decided to make the pizzas rustic like jamie so I divided the pizza dough into about 6 balls and rolled and stretched it out - no perfect circles thanks.

Heat up some olive oil in a heavy fry pan, my Le Crueset frypan was perfect for this. Place the pizza dough in the pan and cook on high about 30 seconds on each side.

Remove from pan and place on a tray - then keep it simple with the toppings.

I nearly always use passata for the base (too lazy to make a sauce) and mainly boccincini for the cheese. Then use some fresh basil, sometimes pepperoni, anchovies and sometimes some spinach, prawns and pesto.

When topped move tray under the grill and cook under cheese is bubbling.

My experiences with home-made pizza: the fried pizzas are great for serving to guests as a starter where you prep before guests arrive as the pizzas can be grilled quite quickly and served.

I have found that nothing works better for a nice crisp base then an electric pizza oven, I hope Santa brings me one for Christmas. I got to try my father-in-laws recently. The pizza cooks quite quickly about 5mins but you do have to be on top of it all as the dough has to be rolled out and put on the pizza oven then topped.

So the family are eating while your working but it is worth the crisp base, which I just cannot get in the traditional oven.

Chocolate Malteser Cake

2006-09-10T19:35:00.000+10:00

Chocolate Milo cake

I made this cake for work some time ago. It is from Feast and is Nigella's Chocolate Malteser cake. I decided not to use Horlicks and used Milo instead, and thought it turned out pretty well anyway.

Here it is with my message made by melting chocolate in a little zip lock bag and snipping off the edge and writing on some grease proof paper:

I would have to say that this is one of the easiests cakes I have ever made and they looked pretty perfect when they came out. The kiddies loved this cake when I made it the second time with just the maltesers so it will no doubt become a standard.

Here goes:

150g soft light brown sugar
100 g caster sugar
3 eggs
175ml milk
15g butter
2 tablespoons Milo (or Horlicks)
175g plain flour
25g cocoa, sieved
1 teasp baking powder
1/2 teasp bicarb soda

Sweet stuff for the middle and the top:
25o g icing sugar
1 teasp cocoa
45g Milo
125g soft unsalted butter
2 tbsp boiling water
80 g Maltesers

Preheat ovn to 170c. Butter and lline two 20cm loose bottomed sandwich tins ( i didn't use loose bottomed pans and I thought it turned out well)

Weight out dry ingredients. Heat the milk, butter and milo in a saucepan until the butter melts, and it hot but not boiling. Whisk together the sugars and eggs till light and frothy, beat in the hot Milo mixture and then fold in the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb of soda. Divide the cake batter evenly between the two tins and bake in the oven for 25 mins, by which timethe cakes should have risen and will spring back when pressed gently. Let them cool on a rack for about 5-10 mins then turn out of their tins.

In a food processor, add the icing sugar, cocoa and milo, blitz then add the boiling water until you have a smooth buttercream. Sandwich the cold sponges with half the buttercream, then ice the top with what is left, creating a swirly to rather than a smooth surface. Stud the outside with maltesers.

Goose fat potatoes

2006-09-10T19:34:00.000+10:00

Nigella's perfect potatoes

1 jar of goose fat
About 1 kilo of medium potatoes
2 tbls semolina

I found the goose fat in a deli only $14 a jar! Peel the potatoes and cut each one into three by cutting off each end at a slant so you are left with a triangle in the middle.
Put the potatoes into salted cold water in a saucepan and bring to a boil - cook for 4 mins. Drain the potatoes in a colander and then tip back into the saucepan, sprinkling with the semolina and some salt. Shake the potatoes around to coat them well and, with the lid clamped on, given the tin a good shake so their edges are fuzzy.

Empty the goose fat into a large roasting tin and heat in the oven until very hot. Then tip the semolina potatoes carefully into the hot fat and roast in the oven for an hour or so until they are darkly golden and crispy, turning them over about halfway through.

Nigella says you can drain off the oil and let them sit in the pan in the oven till the last minute.

My very first roast beef and yorkshire pudding

2006-09-10T19:32:00.000+10:00

This winter I finally got to make a roast beef. Some good friends left to go live in Tassie so to appropriately farewell them, I decided to do the most classic of all roasts. I bought an expensive rib on the bone. I almost didn't post about it, mainly because the roast is overdone - I really wanted medium rare, but it was well-done.

Nevermind it was pretty fantastic, expensive meat means you never really make a mistake.

I have to say that this roast took alot of planning due to the timing of the various ingredients. One smallish oven though means alot of juggling. The beef approximately 60 mins on high, yorkhire puddings 20 mins on high, the roast potatoes 88 mins on high (44 mins per kilo), green beans and an red onion gravy (made earlier) all from Nigella of course.

Given the state of the meat, I think it is really only worth giving the recipe for the yorkshire puddings and the roast potatoes.

Yorkshire pudding (from Feast)

324 ml semi skimmed milk ( i used full cream I don't think it made a difference)
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
250g plain flour
12 x 1/4 teaspoons beef dripping or vege shortening. (I found the dripping about $1 so why not!)

Whisk the milk, eggs and salt well and let stand for 15 min, then whisk in the flour and let stand till you need it.

Cook at the highest temperature. Put a muffin tin in the oven to heat up a good 10-15 mins, with a 1/4 teasp of drippin in each compartment.

When the pan and the fat is hot, pour in the pudding batter for 15-20mins or until they have puffed up gloriously so Nigella says.

2006-09-10T11:04:00.000+10:00

Lea's 40th birthday lunch

It is not the spring morning I thought it would be when I planned yesterday to make some brunch and head with P and the kiddies to our nearest park. The plan was, to lay down with the Sunday paper and watch the kiddies scamper around the playground.

Instead the strangely grey day has prompted me to spend some time on my much neglected posting while I have a nice butter chicken curry simmering gently on the stove - an Elliot special request for dinner this evening. I have felt quite guilty as word keeps getting back to me that more and more people at work now read this food blog.

I keep telling them I am still cooking and baking just not getting this far and choosing pictures, posting and writing. When was the best time for me to be doing this, the past four weeks while we have been in caretaker mode at work. Doesn't mean we don't have things to do, just means we don't have as many things to do at once!

This collage is of a lunch I had about two weeks ago at my place. I was on holidays after having returned from Melbourne and the Sunshine Coast and had the energy to spend my weekend cleaning and planning and cooking.

The entire lunch was as follows: Antipasto brought by one of my lovely sister-in-laws. It makes life so much easier when your feeding 12 adults and 5 kiddies (we were missing 4 kiddies who spent the day doing something else). My brother-in-law brought some sausages and we did a sausage sizzle for the kiddies. These lunches are for the kids to play and the adults to indulge in gourmet delights. Because once all those kiddies are together they focus on playing and the birthday cake.

The kids are welcome to the adult food but really they are way too busy and don't bother us at all. If your worried about their eating, don't. These family functions are not to force vegies into them that's what discrete family dinners are about away from the glare of the public. They often enjoy the Antipasto anyway so never go hungry on the day.

I wanted to make it super easy - so I bought a huge butterflied leg of lamb (about 2.3kg) the day before, and in my pestle and mortar bashed up lots of garlic, sea salt, pepper and rosemary and olive oil and rubbed it all over the lamb. It stayed in its marinade overnight. Then the next morning I removed it from the fridge and brought it back to room temp, before P took it to be barbecued. It was great for a group because one its cooked you thinly slice and serve with salad and potatoes and in this case a gorgeous mint pesto. Sorry no piccies of the lamb or the pesto, but I will write down the recipe for the pesto because I will definately be doing that one again.

The potatoes for this lunch were my Greek potatoes that I have done many times previously. The thing about Greek potatoes is that while the potatoes are in your oven baking they send out waves of gorgeous carmelising onion and garlic, whetting the appetites of all those arriving.

I was feeling particularly springy and decided to make the asparagus and egg salad from this month's Delicious magazine. A true hit, that salad went in the blink of an eye! In addition there was a simple garden salad.

Finally I got to make Nigella's Winter Plum Cake - because one of the principal reasons for going to Melbourne was buying Billington's golden icing sugar something I have found difficult to source here.

In order to have something appealing for the kiddies for dessert I made the cup cakes as well.

Gabi and Winter Plum Cake

2006-09-10T11:00:00.001+10:00

I was inspired by Niki making this cake some time ago, and waited till I could get the brown icing sugar for this cake before I made it.

Winter Plum Cake (How To Be A Domestic Goddess - Nigella Lawson)

575g tin of red plums - I can't find them so I used the approximately same amount from a 1 kilogram bottle of Goulbourn Valley red plums
125 grams self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
75 grams ground almonds
125 grams butter, softened
125 grams light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 scant teaspoon almond essence

20 cm Springform cake tin.

For the icing:160 grams unrefined icing sugar1-2 tablespoons hot water

Preheat oven to 170 c (mine is very hot so I had used about 150).

Line and grease the cake tin. I am so lazy when it comes to this part I have taken to spraying the sides with canola oil and it works just as well!

Drain the plums, remove the stones and broke them up in the process and leave in a sieve to drain.

Mix the flour, baking powder and ground almonds.

Cream the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour mixture after each one.

Beat in the almond essence ( I think the essence is optional) then fold in the rest of the flour mixture and the drained, chopped plums. Turn into the prepared tin and bake for about 1 - 1 1/4 hours ( I only went to 45 mins its this super hot oven of mine!).

Remove from oven, cool in its tin for about 10 minutes, then turn onto the rack.

When cool, ice with brown-sugar icing. Mix the sieved icing sugar with water till you have a caramel-coloured shiny paste. A word about this icing sugar, Nigella says that no other icing sugar works so I took her at her word and refused to make it prior and I think it was well worth the wait.

Pour over the top of the cake to cover thinly, and leave to drip down the sides - I couldn't resist using some gold cachous also purchased at the Essential Ingredient in Melbourne. I found some gold ones at a store here but they were so expensive I gave them a miss.

I also added some dried rose petals (dare I say also obtained in Melbourne at the Essential Ingredient). When I took this cake to work recently it had a distinctly Middle Eastern flavour due to the almonds and rose petals which worked quite well.

asparagus, egg & anchovy salad

2006-09-10T11:00:00.000+10:00

Asparagus, egg and anchovy salad courtesy of Bill Granger in Delicious Magazine

Soft boil three eggs. Blanch two bunches of asparagus in some salted water for 2-3 minutes, then plunge into cold water.

Arrange asparagus and eggs on platter. Finely chop about 4-6 anchovey fillets and scatter over eggs and asparagus. Make dressing from 2 tbs olive oil, 1 tbs of lemon juice and 1 tsp Dijon mustard - whisk together, season to taste. Drizzle over assembled salad prior to serving. Finely chop chives and garnish salad.

Mint pesto

2 bunches of mint (it was such a hit I wish I would have doubled this)
parmesan cheese
garlic
canola or olive oil *

Unfortunately I don't measure my ingredients for pesto. I just grab my pestle and mortar and fill it with the mint leaves, grate about 1/4 cup of parmesan and 1 large clove of garlic.

With the toasted pine nuts, I guess I added about 3 tablespoons. Generously splashed some oil in and started bashing away. Sometimes I want a runny pesto with a finer grind sometimes I do not.

This pesto was fairly thick and coarse, my brother-in-law was bashing it while I oversaw it.

If I had have made it all myself I think would have thinned it a little more with some oil.

*(I don't necessarily think you always need to use olive oil for pestos. I am fairly fickle when I am making them I switch between canola and olive. I think if I want the herb flavour to be truly the principle one, I tend to use canola)

2006-05-20T17:55:00.000+10:00

spatchcock

Rocky Road

2006-04-25T12:35:00.000+10:00

Another Easter of way too many chocolate bunnies and eggs for the kiddies, so what to do with the excess. Last year it was chocolate chip cookies, but this year I decided to create this rocky road. I haven't a clue about the quantity, let me see...

two gigantic football eggs,
2 doz small chocolate egg size eggs,
two bunnies,
other assorted eggs & bunnies

all melted in a large bowl on a low heat in the microwave. Once melted I added:

Shredded coconut - approximately half a packet;
a packet of unsalted peanuts 200grams?;
turkish delight - about 200 grams (could have done with more of this too!);
marshmallows 1/3 of a very large packet (should have used more).

I lined a 9cm cheesecake tin with a freezer bag which I cut in half and poured my RR into that and rechilled in the fridge for about an hour. I turned it out on to a board and chopped into into nice big chunks.

Those chocolate eggs are much more palatable now and very morish - maybe I shouldn't have found something that we enjoy more than plain chocoate.

Fish Pie

2006-04-22T21:01:00.000+10:00

Easter Sunday Fish Pie

I spent last Sunday night at my mother's place. I decided that as she had looked after my children for the week, I would make at least two meals in return for the favour. The first meal on Saturday night was home-made pizza, and the second meal was this Fish Pie.

I found the recipe for this pie, some time ago, in Nigel Slater's appetite and kept waiting for the exact right time to make it. Well, the exact right time should really have been Good Friday, however we had to go to a birthday party and not being strict observers we ate what was on offer, which happened to include non-fish dishes.

So I took the next opportunity and late Sunday afternoon, started work on this pie. It uses smoked cod, mussels and some gorgeous big prawns that mother bought. Being the wonderful comfort food that it is of course it used some creamy mash potato. I decided to combine my mash potato with some mashed pumpkin as well. I also embellished the top of the pie, with some left over baby mozzarella, and anchovies from the previous evening's pizza toppings.

It was a lovely meal, served simply with the peas, and I managed to cut down on the time consuming steps by using some frozen New Zealand mussel meat rather than the fresh ones in the shell. I think it is to be enjoyed with a lovely musty white wine, but not that night unfortunately for us.

I thought that this pie was a rather heavier and more comforting version of the seafood chowder I made not long ago. Except you bake it and put the potato on to much like a cottage/shepherd's pie. I have decided my winter repertoire will have to include either of these dishes from now on as they certainly satisfy my desire for seafood and lots of it. I probably get the seafood urge about every eight to twelve weeks - and it has to be a seafood marinara - blanc of course, or now the chowder or the pie.

Recipe (adapted from Nigel Slater's appetite)

Mussels (500g frozen NZ mussel meat)
white wine ( a glass full)
smoked cod 1 kg
bay leaves 2-3
milk 500ml
butter 50g
plain flour 4 tablespoons
parsley
green prawns 500g peeled

potatoes - 4 large
butter

I defrosted and cooked my mussel meat in the white wine for about 5 minutes. Remove the mussels and reserved the white wine.

Put the smoked cod into a saucepan with the bay leaves and added milk and some water to cover the fish. I brought the fish and milk to the boil and then let it simmer for 5 minutes.

Test the fish by seeing if the flesh can be easily pulled from the skin and then remove the fish from the milk and pulled the flesh apart into large chunks, check for and remove bones and skin. Set the fish aside and reserve the milk.

Peel the potatoes, and cut into large chunks. Boil the potatoes in some salted water till they can be pierced easily with a fork. Mash the potatoes adding some butter and the reserved fish cooked milk, mash till fluffy. I also mashed some pumpkin and combined it with some potato to give it some structure.

Melt some butter in large pot (suitable for the oven and stovetop) Stir in the flour, letting it cook over a low to moderate heat until it is biscuit coloured and nutty. Pour in the wine reserved from cooking the mussels, and the rest of the milk from the smoked cod, then leave to simmer with a regular stir to stop it catching, for ten minutes.

Turn on the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Add the fish, mussels and prawns to the large pot and grind in lots of black pepper, check seasoning and add some sea salt if necessary. Add some finely chopped Italian parsley - I like lots.

Pile the mash on top of the fish mixture. It will sink a little, but the top can be smoothed with the flat side of a spoon.

I topped mine with a few anchovies and the baby mozzarella and baked for about 50 minutes. It is to be expected that the luscious seafood sauce will ooze and bubble to the top of the pie.

Serve simply with some peas.

Fish Pie

Nanaimo Bars

2006-04-17T13:45:00.000+10:00

I have been tempted to make these Nanaimo Bars for ages. I found them on my favourite place on the web its certainly becoming a habit. Then I have had the ingredients in the cupboard for about four weeks but I guess the main impetus for finally making them, has been the fact that my sister and her son are in Vancouver at the moment.

Her visit is bringing back memories of when P and I were in Vancouver and when I first tried this slice. I can recall it was very sweet, I guess that means it fulfils its purpose. But I have always thought that maybe something is missing, like peanut butter or caramel. Nevertheless I will make them again, I love that they are such a regional slice that few people will get to try here in Brisbane or remember them unless they have spent a little time in British Columbia as we did.

The link above will get you through to the recipe, however as this is a reference resource for me too I will replicate the recipe.

Nanaimo Bars
Ingredients bottom layer:
1/2 cup (1 stick) (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 to 1/2 cup castor sugar
1/3 cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa
1 large egg, beaten
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups (200 grams) Granita crumbs
1 cup (65 grams) dessicated coconut
1/2 cup (50 grams) pecans, coarsely chopped

Method bottom layer :In a saucepan over low heat, melt the butter. Stir in the sugar and cocoa powder and then gradually whisk in the beaten egg. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens (1 - 2 minutes). Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract, biscuit crumbs, coconut, and chopped nuts. Press the mixture evenly into the prepared pan. Cover and refrigerate until firm (about an hour).

Ingredients Filling:
1/4 cup (56 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 - 3 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons vanilla custard powder
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups (230 grams) icing sugar

Method filling: Cream the butter. Beat in the remaining ingredients. If the mixture is too thick to spread, add a little more milk. Spread the filling over the bottom layer, cover, and refrigerate until firm (about 30 minutes).

Ingredients topping :
4 ounces (115 grams) semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon (14 grams) unsalted butter/copha

Butter (or use a cooking spray) a 9 x 9 inch (23 x 23 cm) pan.

Method top layer : In the microwave melt the chocolate and butter/copha. Spread over the filling and refrigerate.

TO SERVE: To prevent the chocolate from cracking, using a sharp knife, bring the squares to room temperature before cutting.

2006-04-17T13:44:00.000+10:00

Soft Polenta, parmesan and baby spinach.

Chorizos and broad bean with ciabatta

2006-03-13T04:49:00.000+10:00

This is one of those anti-pasti dishes, I made during our month long entertaining stint recently. It was a huge hit with my FIL and it served as our entree along with a host of other tasty treats for a couple of the feasts.

I found the recipe in a book I received from my SIL, about 4 years ago and it is one of those books that I have found it difficult to find inspiration, but no more I think it is all a matter of timing, and last summer it was all about mediterranean style starters from this book "The Mediterranean Collection" by Louise Pickford.

250 g shelled broad beans fresh (or 1 packet frozen broad beans)
125g spicy chorizo sausage
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon chopped dill
1 tablespoon chopped mint
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

I also used about 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika.

I had to use frozen broad beans rather than fresh, so it was a matter of taking the outer shell from the beans - and a frozen packet is quite a few more than the fresh I think?

Cut the sausage into slices about 5mm(1/4inch) thick. Heat the oil in a frying pan, ad the garlic and fry gently for 2-3 minutes until softened, then discard. Increase the heat, add the sliced chorizo and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes, until it is golden and has released some of its oil.

Stir in the beans and cook for a further 2-3 minutes then add the herbs, squeeze over the lemon juice and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve warm with some freshly baked turkish bread.

Too much panettone - Bread and Butter pudding

2006-03-11T22:25:00.000+10:00

I actually made this B&B pudding about 2 months ago, when I tried to finish off the seemlingly never ending loaf of panettone I had purchased at Christmas.

I was the only one who enjoyed using the panettone as french toast, so in order to finish it up, I had to find another way to serve it.

As it turned out, again I was the only one to enjoy this dessert. P and Elliot not being big baked bread fans and all, and Gabriella - well she is just down right fussy at times.

The recipe was one I just decided to make up and I drew my inspiration from Nigella and "Feasts".

The pudding had a lovely orange flavour which was due to the orange peel component in the pannetone. All up I thought if you love this style of comfort dessert it is well worth making.

My B&B

butter for greasing
8-10 slices of panettone
butter for the panettone
The Grainge Raspberry jam (the best as far as I am concerned)
2 tablespoons caster sugar
6 eggs
500 mls double cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla essence
250 mls milk
1/4 cup of sultanas (not an option if your me)

Preheat the oven to 170c.

Butter a 2 litre dish.

Spread the pannetone with butter and jam. Place the pannetone in the dish and squish it all into the layer.

In a bowl whisk the sugar, eggs, cream and milk add the vanilla essence. Pour over pannetone and leave to stand 15mins.

Reduce the oven to 150c and bake for 45 mins - 60 minutes. Before taking out of the oven check that the custard has just set.

Best served warm with some vanilla ice-cream.

Sunday morning banana bread.

2006-03-05T15:08:00.000+10:00

Making some time to browse on the internet + 3 ripe bananas = Sunday morning banana bread .

It was my turn to get up at 6.30am with Gabi (and today was actually a sleep-in for her) so what else to do but make use of my extra time making this banana bread that I found on my latest favourite baking resource.

As usual, while the recipe (below) is to be credited to the Joy of Baking website I have replicated it here for my future reference.

While baking the bread, I was a little disappointed that I didn't think of substituting wholemeal flour for the white flour and brown sugar for the refined sugar. In the end because once I started thinking about the brown sugar and couldn't stop, I decided to make a coconut and brown sugar concoction to add to the top of the cake. It was lovely and did smell extra scrumptious while baking, but in retrospect it is something I think you could add the top in the last 20 minutes. It made eating the cake a little messier. I also added lots of pecans (as suggested) to mine as I love, love, love them at the moment.

My only other hint, is to watch the timing, I was in danger of letting mine be on the dry side.

But when I came home this afternoon after a few hours at work, my fears of a dry bread were not realised because while I was away, with the rainy weather the boys indulged themselves in a game of Risk and quite a few slices of banana bread. I think there is about one quarter of the loaf left. So much for school lunches.

Recipe for Banana Bread
1 3/4 cups (245 grams) plain flour
3/4 cup (150 grams) castor sugar
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup (115 grams) toasted walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped (optional- not for me)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
8 tablespoons (113 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 very ripe large bananas (approximately 1 pound or 454 grams), mashed well (about 1-1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Garnish:
large banana, sliced (Optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place oven rack to middle position. Butter and flour (or spray with a non stick vegetable/flour spray) the bottom and sides of an 8-cup loaf pan (9 x 5 x 3 inch) (23 x 13 x 8 cm). Set aside.

Place the pecans on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes or until lightly toasted. Let cool and then chop coarsely.

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nuts. Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, lightly fold the wet ingredients (banana mixture) into the dry ingredients until just combined and batter is thick and chunky. (The important thing is not to over mix the batter. You do not want it smooth. Over mixing the batter will yield tough, rubbery muffins or breads.)

Scrape batter into prepared pan and place the slices of banana on top of the batter for garnish. Bake until bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 to 60 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool and then remove the bread from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 1 loaf which will be eaten in less than 8 hours if left on a rainy day with three hungry young men and a board game to occupy themselves.

Healthy and tasty competition

2006-03-04T20:28:00.000+10:00

My pork cutlet

I bought some of these lovely *pork loin cutlets a few weeks ago. One night when I had worked late (a habit recently) I came home after 7pm and P had waited for me so he could cook us both a lovely meal.

Some gorgeous pork loin cutlets which he had rubbed with marinade that he had smashed together in our mortar consisting of garlic, rosemary, thyme, olive oil, pepper and salt He then rubbed the marinade on the cutlets and left them for a few hours (he probably didn't mean to leave them that long I think it was just because he was waiting for me). He cooked the cutlets in our saute pan. He removed the cutlets and deglazed the pan with some white wine and vegetable stock. He threw in some sage at the very last moment.

Finally he garnished the cutlets with some ground roasted pinenuts and served them on a scrumptious mash with a simple green salad. P's pork cutlet is pictured below.

He then challenged me to cook him a pork cutlet in return.

So it tonight I was up to the challenge. In reply, also brandishing my saute pan and mortar and pestle, I smashed some whole white peppercorns and coriander seeds and added some sea salt. I then pressed this mixture onto the cutlets that I had coated with extra virgin olive oil.

I let them sit for half an hour or so, while I prepared the potatoes. Some thinly sliced baby potatoes baked in an *unctuous anchovy and garlic cream sauce.

A simple rocket and Parmesan salad on the side, plus for good measure blanched green beans with some goats cheese.

With some extra virgin olive oil in the saute pan and 2 cloves of crushed garlic I sauteed the cutlets till they were golden occassionally putting on the lid of the pan so I would capture some juices. While I let the pork rest I deglazed the pan with some lemon juice and white wine and a knob of butter - I too threw in some sage at the last moment. I checked the seasoning and added a touch more sea salt. Then served the cutlets with a big spoonful of the jus.

We had a brief discussion tonight about who won the competition, given we had both produced cutlets which were moist, tender and juicy I said that I didn't know how either of us could lose.

*( Nigel & Nigella word)
*I must add we have both been inspired of late by the Nigel Slater and his fabulous "Appetite".

2006-03-04T20:27:00.000+10:00

P's pork chop

Lemon Cookies

2006-02-18T11:45:00.000+10:00

A recent direction to this website helped me to discover and make these cookies. While I am loathe to participate in Valentine's day I did end up taking a plate of them to work on that day to share with my colleagues.

In noticed that when a person is queried about whether he or she or their partner participates in Valentines day, the most common response is "Yes because we want to eat some chocolate" so I guess in essence I too am one of the masses because I too used Valentine's day as the reason for making these cookies. But if I am truly honest I love the whimsy of the heart shape and pink icing any day and really wanted to make them anyway.

Personally I hope that anyone else wanting to make them doesn't have to wait for 12 months to next Valentines Day because they are really lovely to make and eat any time.

While you can find the recipe on "Joy of Baking" I have also replicated the recipe here. One thing worthy of noting, is that the butter icing while very tasty is not so good in Brisbane while it is humid so I mainly had to keep them in the fridge and eventually I opted for a chocolate icing without as much butter so I could send a few to school in lunch boxes for my nephew and son. Chocolate ones pictured below (with some Afghans which I will post about in due course).

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Zest of 1 large lemon
2 1/4 cups (315 grams) all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Frosting:
2 cups (230 grams) confectioners sugar (icing or powdered sugar), sifted
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk or light cream

Assorted food colors (if desired)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in centre of oven.

Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

For Cookies: Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Add to the butter and egg mixture and beat until combined. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and, with a floured rolling pan, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/2 inch (1.25 cm).

Using cut the dough into shapes. Save the scraps and reroll. Transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheet, spacing them a few inches apart.
Bake for approximately 8-10 minutes time will vary depending on the size and shape of cookies) or until the bottoms of the cookies are lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the centre of a cookie comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
Once the cookies have completely cooled, frost with icing.

For Frosting: In an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth and well blended. Add the vanilla extract. With the mixer on low speed, gradually beat in the sugar. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the milk and beat on high speed until frosting is light and fluffy (about 3-4 minutes). Add a little more milk or sugar, if needed. Tint the frosting with desired food color

Makes about 18 - 2 1/2 inch (6 cm) cookies.

"A simple cake to serve with summer fruit"

2006-02-13T19:39:00.000+10:00

This weekend we didn't host any lunches or dinners so it was high time to catch up on some baking. This cake is one of the goodies I got to make. I baked so Elliot could take some goodies to school and this cake I brought to work today to celebrate two birthdays for some of my team members, one birthday last week and one today.

The photograph below is how I decided to serve my cake, with double cream and peaches and nectarine poached in vanilla syrup. It was a hit!
When I would first opened the cake carrier, we were hit by the fragrance of zested lime, and then the richness of peach. The cake itself has a smooth velvet texture (due to the ground almonds) punctuated by small pieces of dried peach.

For some time I have been wanting to bake a cake that I research and choose myself. I am hoping this cake might serve as inspiration for someone else to try to make. I am usually on the receiving end, being inspired by so many of the wonderful food blogs out there, just for once I want to be derivative of one source rather than two.

Since Christmas last year I have acquired a few new cookbooks; "Simply Bill" Bill Granger , "How to be a domestic goddess"Nigella Lawson, Jill Dupleix "Very Simple Food" and Nigel Slater's "Appetite" plus a subscription to the very excellent "Delicious". I spent a bit of time pouring over recipe books in search of, for a change, a non-chocolate cake. Summer fruit and stone fruit in particular abound at the moment at marvelous prices so I wanted to make something that would also incorporate peaches and nectarines.

I had made some of Nigel's dishes over the past few weeks so I thought, his recipes usually only consist of four or five ingredients and are fuss-free. You would think with a title like this "a simple cake to serve with summer fruit" and in addition qualified with Nigel's comment "absurdly easy to make" how could I go wrong . One other thing I like about his recipes are the slight variations he lists for each dish - so you can certainly play to some extent with his recipes but he suggests that the basic elements for cake should be adhered to. One of the reasons why I keep to recipes with cakes is I consider baking to be first and foremost a science.

Well having made this cake, I have to say that I think the title is a tad misleading because this cake involves are a number of steps and processes, it starts very familiarly - creaming butter and sugar, but there is also processing dried fruit, lightly beating four eggs, zesting and squeezing the juice of a lemon, combining flour and ground almonds then incorporation of the lightly beaten eggs a bit at a time, combining the flour a third at the time.... well I think you have the picture and you will hear all about it in the instructions.

butter 250g
caster sugar 250g
a lemon - organic or unwaxed
ground almonds 75 g
plain flour 100g
soft-dried apricots - 100g (I used some dried peaches I had in the pantry instead)
eggs- 4 large free range, lightly beaten

A shallow 23cm cake tin (I used a deeper 20 cm cake tin as I did not have the required one) the base lined with baking parchment. Set the oven at 180C/Gas 4.

Grate the zest from the lemon and squeeze its juice. Mix the ground almonds and flour together, then whiz the apricots in a food processor until they are very finely chopped. Nigel suggests that the the dried fruit be finer than candied peel - almost but not quite a puree. While I didn't get my dried peaches that fine, I don't think it was to the detriment of the texture of the cake at all.

Beat the butter and sugar in an electric mixer until white and fluffy. Add the lightly beaten eggs to the butter and sugar mixture a little at a time, with the beater on slow. Turn the machine off and add the lemon zest and a third of the almonds and flour, then turn the mixer on slow until the dry ingredients are incorporated. Add the second and then the third lot of almonds and flour, switching the machine off each time. If you do this too quickly you will end up with a heavy cake.

Lastly, with the machine still on slow, mix in the lemon juice and the apricots. Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin with a spatula, gently smooth the top as you go and bake the cake till firm to touch. Nigel suggested about 35 minutes, mine took a little bit longer due to the deeper cake tin probably 10 minutes more. Test the cake by inserting a thin metal skewer into the centre; if it comes out clean, without any cake mixture attached then the cake is ready otherwise bake a bit longer.

Nigel suggests running a palette knife around the edge of the tin and turning the cake out on to icing sugared greaseproof paper. Peel off the lining paper, then flip the cake back on to a plate.

I, however, cooled the cake on a rack then made a thin white icing and let it drip slowly at whim down the side of the cake ("run carelessly" is Nigel's instruction) .

I also decided to add the extra embellishment of the zested lime, though next time I would wait for the icing to set before adding it to the top. I thought it might look a bit like I put some herb or grass bits on top, but everyone at work really liked the lime touch.

Nigel suggested that the cake is wonderful served with poached fruit, especially pears, greengages (don't know what they are), apricots or rhubarb - or with thick yoghurt.

Having now made and eaten the cake, I am wondering whether Nigel meant "simple" as in simple flavours there is nothing complex about the flavour of this cake. I find the smell of citrus evocative and whets my appetite - I served it with the poached fruit a little more complex with its vanilla syrup, my friends who were not even keen on the fruit tried it and thought it a wonderful addition.

The verdict: ultimately this not so simple cake is worth every bit of effort.

Warmed Turkish Bread, olive oil and dukkah

2006-02-09T18:01:00.000+10:00

Very, very little effort is involved here.

Use a big splash of extra virgin olive oil and put out some dukkah that you bought from a great deli. You could make the dukkah but really there is so much of it being made so well out there by different people for the various delis all over town, why bother I say.

Buy some turkish bread and reheat for 10 minutes in the oven or under a grill and cut into cubes. Serve with drinks as an appetizer.

Prosciutto wrapped figs with gorgonzola and torn basil.

2006-02-09T17:59:00.000+10:00

This is one food combination I actually crave. So given that I was and the figs were looking good I was able to satisfy this craving last week. Fresh figs from my favourite fruit and vegetable shop and thinly sliced prosciutto and gorgonzola from the attached delicatessen. Fresh basil torn into pieces.

Slice the figs into eighth's and cut a small piece of gorgonzola. Wrap a piece of prosciutto (which has been cut into half lengthways) around the fig and gorgonzola. Serve as Anti pasti.

Also the figs, gorgonzola, basil and prosciutto make a great salad when combined with baby spinach. I usually made a balsalmic vinaigrette to go with the salad. Great with a veal cutlet sauteed in sage butter.

Berry Trifle

2006-02-08T20:14:00.000+10:00

Preparing Berry Trifle for Feast No. 4

Last Sunday, having been inspired by my latest purchase Nigel Slater's Appetite, I decided to make Berry Trifle for our dessert. I decided that Nigel and I are completely in synchronicity when it comes to our approach to trife (did I mean trife as a play on words for "life"? My friend at work asked me when she read this post - I guess so but it wasn't intended!). I like Nigel, prefer to use a bought cake and while he buys his custard, I make mine from a custard powder so the approach is very much a pedestrian one.

What I did take from Nigel though and incorporated into my recipe was the combining of whipped cream into the custard used for the layers.

Recipe
1 unfilled sponge cake (cut into 1 cm cubes)
1 punnet of raspberries
1 punnet of strawberries
1 punnet of blueberries
berry coulis
500ml of whipping cream
1.5 litres of cold custard
dessert wine or sherry
extra whipped cream for a topping
flaked almonds (toasted)

For the berry coulis: I pureed a semi-thawed packet of frozen mixed berries and add 1/4 cup of sugar and warm in a pan on the stove. Let cool and strain through a fine sieve to remove the seeds.

For the custard: I made mine from some Fowlers Custard powder. In a jug/bowl mix thoroughly about 3 heaped tablespoons of the custard powder with about 1/2 cup of the milk . Put the remainder of the milk in a med-large saucepan and gently bring to the boil on the stove. I added sugar (about 1/2 cup) to the milk and stirred to dissolve the sugar.

Once the milk came to the boil I whisked through the custard powder/milk mixture till the custard became quite thick. Leave the custard to cool. In fact you could even make it the day before.

In a separate bowl whip the cream until soft peaks form, it should not be stiff. I then decided to take some of the custard out from the larger bowl and combine it with an equal amount of whipped cream in a smaller bowl. I thought that the combining of the cream with the custard made a very luscious mousse-like custard, which will give the trifle a velvet texture rather than the gell texture that thick custard when cold is want to do.

In a trifle bowl or the bottom of some glasses (this quantity made about 6 huge red wine glasses full) place a few pieces of sponge and soak with some coulis and dessert wine/sherry, top with a few of each of the berries. Top with a few centimetres of the cream and custard mixture. Begin the layers again, sponge, coulis, sherry, berries then custard etc. Leave some room near the top of the glass or bowl and make sure you end with a custard layer.

Just prior to serving top with whipped cream and toasted flaked almonds.

From the table

To the mouth

Cheese biscuits

2006-02-04T10:56:00.000+10:00

Okay, okay, there actually has been heaps of kitchen action in the Lushlife household for the past three weeks, just no time to photograph and write about them. Counting tomorrow it will be the fourth major feast we will have prepared in the past three weekends.

The first weekend, we prepared a barbecued butterflied lamb which turned out so well we would definitely prepare it again, dessert that night was a disaster of monumental proportions, a failed chocolate mousse and some successful hazelnut meringue. (The hazelnut meringue morphed into an ice-cream sandwhich drizzled with the chocolate sauce - which was the separated chocolate mousse- egads!)

24 hours after that dinner, the failed chocolate mousse was restored to it's intended glory (if you get the gist) after a gentle reheating and re-chilling. We enjoyed the mousse after the more pedestrian dinners which are a feature of our working week.

Some of the other highlights of that feast (which I will identify as Feast 1) that I intend to record here eventually, are the making of a Romesco sauce this link is of a different version to the one I made but it will give you the idea). This is one of those foodie recipes you have never heard of then like some kind of existential coincidence it pops up everytime you open a cookbook, magazine or search the recipes on a blog you have never searched on before, much like the Bellini which has become a fixture of late in the late, summer afternoons in our backyard, with our other latest semi-permanent physical fixture being a badminton net.

Last weekend (Feast 3), it was Bellinis with a blood orange twist, chorizos and garlic broadbeans with dill and mint, marscapone and gorgonzola stuffed pepperdews, dukkah, turkish bread, Persian feta, pesto & tapenade and the cheese biscuits above (belatedly getting to point of this post) Oh!- and the badminton and the kiddies and a couple of our most wonderful friends.

Back to the cheese biscuits. Just before Christmas last year, we had a huge dinner at a good friend's place (and in fact whom I credit with providing me with the recipe for the main course I produced for Feast No. 3 and I will publish later) one of the couples was tasked with bringing the Antipasti and she arrived with beautiful marscapone and pesto dips, gorgeous brie and these melt in your mouth shortbread cheese biscuits. She had not made them but sourced them from one of our town's finest baked good providores. Once I had tried one I couldn't forget them and I was determined to find a recipe for something like them which I am glad to say only took me a little more than a month from the first taste. I think that the bought ones had a higher butter content than mine but nevertheless I am more than happy with the product I have made in any case.

The recipe source: my every so handy little book of Small Food (snack-sized bites to share with friends) by Murdoch Books.

Recipe
1 cup (125g) plain flour
2 tablespoons self-raising flour
1 teaspoon curry powder (optional - I decided against it)
125g butter
1/2 cup (50g) Parmesan
2/3 cup grated cheddar
20g crumbled blue-vein cheese
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 cup (25g) finely grated Parmesan extra

Place the flours, curry powder and butter in a food processor. Process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the cheeses and the lemon juice. Bring the mixture together into a ball. Roll into a 30cm (or two logs). Wrap in plastic and chill for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to moderately hot 200c (400FGas 6) Slice into 5mm slices (although I thought thicker was better and opted for just under 1 cm) Reshape, if necessary. Place on baking paper-lined oven tray, allowing some room for spreading. Sprinkle tops with Parmesan. Bake for 15minutes, or until biscuits are golden. Cool on trays. Makes plenty (40+)

I have to say I did prefer them thicker and not so crispy, so you could get a big cheesy buttery mouthful, perfect topped with some Persian feta or pesto or tapenade.

Yea - a post I have done it . Oh and by the way Tomara and Brenton or Tom if you do find my website this weekend or at another time, please be kind enough to leave me a comment!

New Years Eve dinner

2006-01-01T12:34:00.000+10:00

New Years Evening ambience

Strawberry and peaches with balsalmic zabaglione courtesy Mario Batali

Because I assisted my brother-in-law with making this dessert last night I feel entitled to share it in my blog. It was very simple to prepare, I cut the fruit and separated the eggs and he did the rest.

It was a marvellous revelation when first tasting the balsalmic zabaglione, almost as mind blowing as when I first tried balsalmic strawberries. This is one dessert that I will most definately be serving soon as I am already plagued by thoughts of its intoxicatingly caramel velvety luciousness contrasting with the cool sweet flesh of the ripe peaches.

I have cheated and photographed the recipe below, I was too tired to copy it out by hand this morning, we did see the New Year in minus the cheese course as we ended up having 5 courses starting with some Chorizo and Cheese Puffs with some pulped white peaches and Italian champagne - Bellinis I think. Then we had Gordon Ramsey's Caesar Salad with fresh Anchovies (quite expensive my SIL told me $70 a kilo, a small tub set them back $20 and they need to think of ways to use it today)

We then had some handmade tortellini, filled with chicken and veal in a turkey broth and lots of authentic parmesan. After a little rest ( all the sparkling and wine went to my head) I needed to cool down and prepare myself for the main course, which was escallopes of rolled veal filled with pecorino and sage in a tomato and olive ragu, with green beans and simple mash.

I decided not to fit in the mash in order preserve some room for the final course. We drank P's final Wynn's Michael 1999 - very big on the mulberry flavour I thought, and went quite well with the ragu for the veal.

With the zabaglione, my BIL decided to use double cream which he said whipped extremely quickly and extra thickly. It was the whipped double cream which I thought was responsible for the velvet texture of the zabaglione. Although he didn't allow it to chill for 30minutes it still had a thick custard texture, however I think I would prepare this dessert in advance if I were to do it. My BIL tends to do things from scratch on the night with the guests in attendance, I tend not to as I am always worried I will have had too much to drink and forget an integral step.

recipe

All 5 courses we had for New Years Eve:

2005-12-29T09:13:00.000+10:00

Traditional Trifle

Kind comments from KP, have prompted me to finish this post, with the addition of the recipe. I must say I have thought twice about whether I would share the recipe with anyone, as it is so basic, but it is always a hit and I have been designated the traditional trife maker for some time now, so it must be good despite its unpretentious ingredients.

I first encountered this recipe when I was 16/17 years of age at a school camp in the Gold Coast hinterland, my former typing and shorthand teacher showed me how to make it. Being a custard lover, I use this recipe because it doesn't include jelly in it.

Here goes:

I think the most important ingredient for a trifle, is the bowl you use, I bought this Krosno, 3 litre bowl a few years ago and have never looked back, most people who get to delve into its depths nearly always exclaim at its attractiveness and their reluctance to spoil the presentation nevertheless it all disappears.

You need:
2 packets of the jam rollettes
Sherry
Fosters custard powder
1 and a half litres of milk
1/2 cup sugar (as per custard instructions)

Tinned peaches
whipping cream
toasted flaked almonds

I begin by making the custard as per the instructions on the packet, I really don't see the point in making custard from a recipe when I am using tinned peaches and jam rolletes - why go glamour on the custard!

Slice the jam rolls and line the bottom of the bowl and up the side about one row. Splash the sherry liberally over the cake, then line the bottom of the cake with some peaches. Top with custard to the level of the first row of the cake. Then line the custard with more cake then peaches making sure you make a row of peaches visable on the outside of the bowl, before lining the outside of the bowl with another row of sliced jam rolls. Fill with custard.

You could continue layering in this manner (remember to splash the sherry over any new cake you add!) though it is largely dependent on the size of your bowl, but remember to leave room for a final huge layer of whipped cream topped with flaked almonds which should be added to the trifle just prior to it being served.

Some tips:

I make the trife the day before it is served to let the sherry soak into the cake.

Make the custard thicker than the packet instructions i.e. maybe add a few more tablespoons of custard powder than is recommended.

When whipping the cream, add vanilla extract and icing sugar (about 1/2 cup for 600mls).

Okay there it is, my secret foodie shame a dish I have basically assembled only. Still I love this trifle and while it is completely bogus, I will make it every Christmas till the day I die.

2005-12-27T17:57:00.000+10:00

contents of Christmas goodie box: Iced gingerbread and Cranberry, pecan and white chocolate cookies.

2005-12-27T17:54:00.000+10:00

My gift of christmas goodies this year

2005-12-27T17:53:00.000+10:00

Christmas day food collage

A reason to bake - I do need one!

2005-11-13T21:22:00.000+10:00

It was because my sister bought me this little cookie spatular(sp?) that I decided to bake the pumpkin rock cakes with brown butter icing found at Esurientes. Well that and the fact I had to stay home with Elliot while he was sick for the 5th day in a row, I did however find out why he was so sick - Glandular Fever!

I knew I had a piece of pumpkin I hadn't used so it had to be these rock cakes. I was surprised though how many ingredients were in the recipe I kept having to come back and forward from my pantry to the computer. Now that is a new thing to consider in kitchen design three paces from your desktop screen to the pantry, the stove, sink and bench top!

I am not keen on sultanas too (like Niki) and decided to use some dried cranberries instead, I also decied to use pecans and walnuts as I keep a mix of them to use on my cereal most mornings.

Loving the collage!

Ingredients (Makes ~50)
125g / 4 oz butter, softened
150g / 5 oz plain flour
175 g / 6 oz soft brown sugar, lightly packed
225g / 8 oz canned pumpkin or cooked pumpkin
1 medium egg, beaten
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
125 g / 4 oz wholemeal flour
75g /3 oz pecans or walnuts, roughly chopped
100g / 3 1/2 oz raisins
50g / 2 oz butter
225g / 8 oz icing sugar
2-3 tbsp milk

I cooked my pumpkin and mashed it with a fork.

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375 F. Lightly oil a baking sheet.

2. Using an electric beaer, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the plain flour, sugar, pumpkin, beaten egg, and beat with the mixer until mixed well.

3. Stir in the ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon on the vanilla essence and then sift in the baking powder, bicarb of soda and grated nutmeg. Beat the mixture until combined well, scraping down the sides of the bowl.

4. Add the wholemeal flour, chopped nuts and raisins to the mixture and fold in with a metal spoon or rubber spatula until mixed thoroughly together.

5. Place teaspoonfuls about 5 cm/2 in apart on to the baking sheet. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are firm.

6. Remove biscuits from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat, until pale and just turning golden brown.

7. Remove from the heat. Add the sugar, remaining vanilla essence and milk, stirring. Drizzle over the cooled cookies and serve.

I found that my icing was too runny and had to leave it in the fridge for a while the icing also never completely set which I put down to it having butter so transporting these dudes was not without some hazard. I also used an organic icing sugar while in search of the unrefined icing sugar I discovered the organic icing sugar and decided to give it a whirl - I think it simply results in different coloured icing sugar though along with the brown butter it was always going to have a different colour anyway.

Biscuits

Smoked trout with potato salad

2005-11-13T21:12:00.000+10:00

I am having lots more fun lately mucking around with Picasa so I felt better about posting the recipe for this salad from Bill Granger's Sydney Food even though I wasn't entirely happy with my photography.

I have made this salad twice this week, and it is a wonderful entree so easy to prepare and serve and actually quite light and fresh with it's creamy lemon mayonnaise combined with the silky and rich smoked trout. You can make the dressing and mayonnaise in advance and cut up most other ingredients so prior to serving you need only boil the potatoes and assemble the salad.

Ingredients
100 ml (3 1/2 oz) extra virgin olive oil
50 ml (1 3/4 oz) lemon juice
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic crushed with a little sea salt
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped mint
1/2 cup chopped italian parsely
1/4 cup finely sliced spring (green) onions
1 stalk celery, diced
1 tablespoon baby capers
500g (1 lb) unpeeled waxy potatoes (chats or kipflers)
250 g smoked rainbow trout (skin and bones removed)
to serve - lemon mayonnaise

Place olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl and whisk until combined. Stir in herbs, spring onions, celery and caperss.

Cook potatoes in a large saucepan full of salted boiling water until tender when pierced with a knife. Drian and allow to cool for 5 minutes before peeling and slicing. Add potatoes to dressing while still warm. Stir gently to combine.

Divide potato salad among four plates, top with flaked smoked trout and drizzle with lemon mayonnaise.

Lemon Mayonnaise
1 egg yolk
50 ml ( 1 3/4 fl oz) lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon
sea salt
freshly ground black peper
100ml (3 1/3 fl oz) canol or other mild oil

Place egg yolk, lemon juice and zest, salt and pepper in a bowl (or food processor) and whisk until combined. Add the oil drop by drop, whisking constantly. When the sauce start to thicken, add the oil in a steady stream until fully incorporated. If the mayonnaise is too thick, thin with a tablespoon of warm water. Keeps in refrigerator for 5 days.

P.S. I used some curly lettuce too.

23rd post 5th line

2005-11-05T20:07:00.000+10:00

I am awake this morning at 5.00am wondering what we are going to cook for an extra-special dinner tonight. And I thought I would do this meme as well, though I have another meme I have started and yet to finish!

So what was the fifth line:

"To get through one of these efforts means loads of stamina."

Oh so true today. We have only half formed the ideas for the dinner and it is going to be lots of work:

Appetizers
To drink: Moet
To eat: Smoked salmon on chive blini & Rare roast lamb on tapanade bruschetta

To drink: A Hollick Sauvignon Blanc
First course: Smoked trout and kipfler salad

To drink: A Pinot Noir
Main: Hand-made peking duck ravioli with asparagus and broccolini

Dessert wine: Cheese Course
Yet to be decided a creamy french brie and crusty bread.

Dessert: Raspberry Souffle

Okay I started the above on October 8 and I have finally returned to this post and am able to say that as things turned out, the entree was perfect and very little work was involved. Unfortunately I have no photographs of that dinner. In the end we did not make the dessert and had the cheeses instead due our having to make the pasta from scratch - which basically took the entire day!

November 6 - I finally get to return to this post having just farewelled our lunch guests - but this time I have photographs of the lunch we served so I wanted to post about it in its entirety. With this lunch I decided that I didn't want to prepare an entree so I decided to go into a bit more detail with the starters to have with the champagne. One canape I just cannot go past is the herbed pikelet - it is so easy to prepare and the results are very rewarding visually.

Herbed pikelets with smoked salmon, creme fraiche, capers, lemon and chives

I found the recipe for these pikelets in my littlest but handiest book called Small Food (snack-sized bits to share with friends) by Murdock Books. There are always things that I can pick from this book to serve to guests with champagne on arrival. Sometimes when I get that little bit stressed I almost call off making these pikelets off, but thank goodness I don't because they always make great first impressions

Herbed pikelet
1 cup self-raising flour
2 eggs lightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsely
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh sage

Topping
smoked salmon
caper
creme fraiche
lemon

Sift the flour into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Gradually add the combined egges and milk, mixing the flour in slowly. When the flour is incorporated, add the parsely and sage and season well. Whisk until a smooth batter forms.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat and spray with cooking oil spray. Drop heaped teaspoons of batter into the pan and flatten them to give 5cm circles. Cook until bubbles appear in the surface of the pikelet, then turn and brown the other side. Lift out to cool on a wire rack.

To top - take thin slices of salmon and cut into 1 cm wide strips and curl into a rosette. Drop half a teaspoon of creme fraiche on the pikelet then place rosette of salmon, a caper and a very small thin slice of lemon. Arrange chives on top.

Prosciutto and zucchini bruschetta (from a previous post)

Chilli and basil prawns with rocket bruschetta

With the bruschetta - I usually rub the toast with a clove of garlic and drizzle some extra virgin oil on top prior to placing the topping. These were green prawns that we marinated in basil oil, chilli and garlic and briefly sauteed prior to serving on top of the rocket - easy peasy.

Main
Braised belly of pork in a rich glaze, truffled mash, asparagus and wilted spinach.

This main was incredibly easy to make. It is the first time I have worked with pork belly. I had been impressed a couple weeks early when my sister roasted a pork belly so I decided to see what else I could do with it. I found this recipe on the web and it is from Gordon Ramsey - it was F.A.N.T.A.S.T.I.C the reduction which I spooned over the top really made it. I served it with a truffled mash - I used dutch cream potatoes, lots of cream and butter and after mixing through the truffle oil, for good measure I drizzled some basil oil over the top too.

Ingredients
1 whole pork belly joint, about 1kg
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 carrot, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, chopped
1 celery stick, chopped
a head of garlic or 6 fat garlic cloves, peeled
100ml sherry vinegar
200ml soy sauce
1.5 litres brown chicken stock
5 star anise
20 coriander seeds
10 white peppercorns
10 black peppercorns

To prepare the pork, use a sharp filleting knife to cut off the skin, leaving a thin layer of fat about 5mm thick. Remove the rib bones and discard. Even out the thickness by taking a slice from any thicker areas and placing where meat is thinner. You should now have an even sheet of boned pork belly. Roll this up quite firmly and tie into a neat, even-shaped roll. (I did none of this I got my butcher to do it!)

Heat a shallow flameproof cast-iron casserole or deep saute pan (with lid) until you feel a strong heat rising. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and brown the pork joint, turning until caramelised all over. Remove to a plate.

Add the remaining olive oil to the pan and saute the vegetables and garlic for about 5 minutes.
Deglaze with the sherry vinegar and cook until reduced by half, then return the pork joint to the pan, placing it on top of the vegetables. Pour in the soy sauce and stock, then add the whole spices. Bring to the boil and partially cover the pan. Braise slowly over a low heat, or in the oven at 170°C, Gas 3.

I took the lid off for the last 45 minutes.

Cook for 2- 3 hours, basting occasionally with the pan juices, until the meat feels very tender. To test, push a metal skewer into the middle of the joint; there should be a little resistance.

Lift out the meat and set aside to rest on a warmed plate. Strain the pan juices into a pan and bubble to reduce to a glossy brown glaze.

To serve, remove the string and cut the pork roll into portions, or thick slices. Arrange on warmed plates and surround with wilted spinach and steamed asparagus. Serve with pomme puree.

Dessert
Chocolate cloud cake and strawberries

Of course Niki inspired me to make this it is Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Cloud Cake. I am resigned to the fact that eventually I will end up baking every single cake that Niki and Nigella has done or will do though it will take some time as I need reasons to bake and don't do so indiscriminately - I am so happy I finally had a reason to bake this one.

Ingredients:

250g dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids *

125g unsalted butter, softened

6 eggs: 2 whole, 4 separated

175g caster sugar

2 tablespoons Cointreau (optional)

grated zest of 1 orange (optional)

23cm springform cake tin

For the cream topping:500ml double cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon Cointreau (optional)**

half teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4. Line the bottom of the cake tin with baking parchment. Melt the chocolate either in a double boiler or a microwave, and then let the butter melt in the warm chocolate. Beat the 2 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks with 75g of the caster sugar, then gently add the chocolate mixture, the Cointreau and orange zest.#

In another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until foamy, then gradually add the 100g of sugar and whisk until the whites are holding their shape but not too stiff. Lighten the chocolate mixture with a dollop of egg whites, and then fold in the rest of the whites. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake is risen and cracked and the centre is no longer wobbly. Cool the cake in its tin on a wire rack; the middle will sink as it cools. When you are ready to eat, place the still tin-bound cake on a cake stand or plate for serving and carefully remove the cake from its tin. Don't worry about cracks or rough edges: it's the crater look we're going for here. Whip the cream until it's soft and then add the vanilla and Cointreau and continue whisking until the cream is firm but not stiff. Fill the crater of the cake with the whipped cream, easing it out gently towards the edges of the cake, and dust the top lightly with cocoa powder pushed through a tea-strainer. Serves 8-12

My extra notes
*I used two 100g Lindt 70% bars of chocolate and I don’t think the 50g made a huge difference

**I used brandy instead of cointreau and I also used the orange zest

#(I didn’t know how long to beat at this stage so I decided to beat the eggs and sugar till the mixture was creamy and thick)

2005-11-05T17:29:00.000+10:00

Melbourne Cup - cupcakes

I love my recipe for the cupcakes it basically involves throwing everything together and beating it up, which is exactly what I did on Melbourne Cup eve evening in order to bake and decorate some 80 plus cup cakes for our Pink Thai themed lunch.

The cup cakes went down a treat our pink theme went particularly well - I just remembered I lost at the track but managed to pick up the best dressed at the office! I was particularly proud of the men who donned their best pink bits to participate the office was particularly pretty instead of drab that day. Funnily enough though the next day we three women from my team turned up the next day head to toe in black. Maybe it was the memories of celebrity head played on the day that made us think we better turn up and look like we mean business again!

Cup Cakes

125g. butter, cut into small cubes
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup milk

Icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
2 heaped teaspoons butter
lemon juice

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180deg.C. Line a 12 cup patty cake or muffin tin with paper cases.

2. Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat with electric mixer until ingredients are just combined. Scrape down with spatula and beat again until the mixture is thick and has lightened in colour.

3. Place about 1 1/2 tablespoons of mixture into each patty case and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden and the cakes spring back when gently pressed on the top. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

4. Combined icing sugar and butter in food process and process until well mixed. Add lemon juice, a little at a time, until icing is of spreadable consistency. Using a small icing palette or spatula, top each cake with icing and decorate as desired with silver or coloured cachous, chocolate sprinkles or hundreds and thousands or marshmallows cut into thirds width ways with some good kitchen shears.

A tale of two slices

2005-09-18T16:43:00.000+10:00

It was the lemon slice show-cased here so beautifully that drew me back to making another slice. And it was the last drink of the evening - a passionfruit flavoured cocktail at the Lychee Lounge two weeks ago called the "Pavlova" that made me want to bake the Coconut and Passionfruit Slice from Bill Granger’s "Sydney Food".

The texture of this slice is more custard-like compared with the lemon slice, as this slice has eggs and cream as the main influences over the texture and it was the ricotta which exerted a influence over the cheese-cake like quality of the lemon slice. I am comparing because I like to know what might be expected from each slice.

The ingredients for the Coconut and Passionfruit slice remind me of a cocktail too, a modified pina colada - passionfruit instead of pineapple and minus the white rum. I wouldn’t mind turning this slice into a cocktail this summer.

Lemon and Ricotta slice

Coconut and passionfruit slice

Coconut and Passionfruit Slice

Pastry
125g (4oz) butter
½ cup caster (superfine) sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1½ cup plain (all-purpose) flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt

Filling
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup shredded coconut
1 ½ cup (12fl oz) cream
1/3 cup plain flour
160ml (5 ½ fl oz) coconut milk
juice and zest of 1 lemon
½ cup (4fl oz) passionfruit
Preheat the oven to 180 c (350F).

Pastry
Beat butter and sugar in bowl until light and creamy, add egg and vanilla essence and beat well. Add sifted flour, baking powder and salt, and stir until combined and the mixture forms a sticky dough.
Flour hands and press pastry evenly into the base of a greased and baking paper-lined tin ( 23cm x 23cm/ 9x9inch) Bake pasty base in oven for 15 minutes

Filling
Place eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk until pale. Add coconut, flour, cream, coconut milk, lemon juice, zest and passionfruit pulp, and stir to combine. Pour filling over pastry base in the tin. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely in the tin.

When cool, slice into squares. Makes 20 square.

bruschetta con zucchini e leg ham

2005-09-04T21:33:00.000+10:00

I bought some gorgeous Italian pane yesterday, and we ate some of it mopping up the sauce on the veal that P made last night and then again for breakfast today. I let P sleep in of course and kept the children quiet, while I juiced about 20 cold oranges.

I then prepared a saute of fresh tomato and shallot and fried up some crispy bacon and made a herb omelette and filled it with rocket and chilli feta and served it with the toasted pane. I made P a nice flat white and woke him at 9am and let the children give him his gift and then lead him to the table which was set and had the paper ready for his perusal.

After breakfast I cleaned up and took the children shopping while P took some time to finish the paper on the lounge in the sun on the deck. When I returned I made the self-frosting cupcakes below. After that I thought, I have to use this marvellous pane again for lunch. I have made this bruschetta once a long time ago, but I have always remembered how much I enjoyed it. Before there was Nigella, there was Jamie and before there was Jamie there was the River Cafe girls, Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers. This recipe is from the Green book ( I also have yellow and blue and use them for inspiration when planning special dinners) which has many, many fantastic recipes for vegetables. The recipe actually calls for prosciutto and I tell you if I had remembered to buy some while I was out earlier I would have made it that way, but ham had to do and it was still very tasty, and the photograph doesn't do the zucchini, lemon and herb mixture justice at all.

Here is the recipe:

1.5 kg small firm zucchini, trimmed
3 tablespoons fresh marjoram leaves
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsely leaves
1 tablespoon fresh mint leaves
1 thick-skinned lemon, washed
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled, 2 finely chopped
Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 slices sourdough bread
extra virgin olive oil
18 slices prosciutto di parma or ham

Cut the zucchini in half lengthways and then in half again. Slice across into rough dice. Chop the herbs together. Peel the lemon, remove any white pith, then finely chop the peel ( or zest with a microplane if you have one).

Heat the oil in a thick-bottomed saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. Add the chopped garlic and a few seconds later the zucchini. Stir to combine, keeping the heat up high. When the zucchini are beginning to brown, add half the herbs and salt. Put on the lid, lower the heat slightly, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave for a further 10 minutes with the lid on.

Add the remaining herbs and half the lemon peel to the zucchini mixture. Season with salt and pepper.

Grill the bread on both sides, rub with the whole garlic clove on one side only and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Spoon over the zucchini, sprinkle with the remaining lemon peel and serve with the prosciuto.

Self-frosting cupcakes

2005-09-04T21:30:00.000+10:00

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise to many that I had to give these cupcakes a go, there are few food bloggers that haven't!

Anyway these are my efforts, I would appreciate a grading on the swirling I would give me a C+ when compared with many of the efforts on the various foodie sites like Barbara's, Niki's, Nic's, and chichajo's.

That doesn't mean however, that we should be comparing and grading our goods, these swirls are much like the food writers who produced them and are as individual as we are all -and that is despite our wanting to bake each other's goods;)because as it is said "copying is the sincerest form of flattery".

It also reminds me of a conversation I had earlier in the week when a very good friend was being very complimentary about my food blog and encouraging me to do further things with it and I replied to her that I am not a chef and am entirely derivative so I couldn't see how my work would stand out from anyone else's, and there were people on the net doing far better than I was though I am just happy in my little corner of the net doing my thang for myself as much as anyone else.

Anyway for my own sake I will post the recipe here too though variations and hints can be found on any of the above sites should I be the one to lead you into temptation..

140 grams butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
200 grams sifted plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
~1/3 cup Nutella (or other chocolate peanut butter spread), slightly warmed

Preheat oven to 165C.
Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.
Cream together butter and sugar until light, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Don't worry if the batter doesn't look smooth. Add vanilla.

Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no flour remains ( I was lazy and used my electric beater for this part). I added a splash of milk here to loosen the batter very slightly as suggested by Niki.

Fill each muffin liner with batter. They should be 3/4 full (seemed to much for my cakes as those ones overflowed so I tried half for a smaller neater looking result). Top each cake with 1 1/2 tsp chocolate spread (again I used just less than a small teaspoonful).

Swirl the spread in with a toothpick or knife point ( I used a wooden skewer) making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the spread. When I made the mistake of too much chocolate I put a small dob of batter on top and blended that in, cheating probably, but alls fair..when trying to get those damn swirls on top I say.

Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Strangely enough I made 15 though the recipe says you should produce 12. They were enjoyed by one and all.

One last aerial shot of those swirls before you give me the grade if you please!

Chilli and garlic peas

2005-09-04T21:26:00.000+10:00

I made a special trip on the weekend to pick up these peas from a shop that a colleague at work told me about. It's an Indian food store and it is in a shopping centre which I rarely frequent but thought I would try and do my weekly shop there. I found it difficult to say the least. I must be getting older as I found it increasingly difficult as I went into each isle of the Action supermarket and couldn't find the things I was used to find in the place I usually find them at the Coles or the Woolworths shops I tend to use.

I was also disappointed with the butcher outside the supermarket as I was after some veal for a dish that P wanted to make that night, one of his specialities, thinly pounded veal wrapped in prosciutto and filled with boccincini, fresh oregano and lemon oil. I found the butcher's veal at an excellent price $14.99 per kilogram however I simply did not think that it was veal - I would call it yearling it was far to deep a colour to be veal, I almost wanted to tell him that I was happy to purchase it on the basis that it was yearling but felt gyped that he was calling it veal. I wouldn't mind paying more if he actually could provide veal in fact I would pay more! Nevertheless I purchased the ~~veal~~ yearling and took it home and said to P not to consider it veal and on that basis we enjoyed our meal.

I also just couldn't finish my shop in this centre and had to pack it in purchase what I had so far and drive to my usual shopping centre. Ah familiarity... I can't believe I how much I need it in shopping aisles.

Back to the peas, they were worth the trip and I could imagine eating them on a hot afternoon while drinking a Corona with a bit of lime in the neck of the bottle, like the complete tosser that I can be when I want to be..

Farmers' markets goods

2005-09-04T15:07:00.000+10:00

Pistachio and macadamia brownie

I went to the Farmer's markets last Saturday morning as usual, 6amish and when it starts getting light around 5am I will be going at 5.30am. I like to avoid the crowds and the parking problems that come with attending later.

Apart from my usual purchases which includes, the rice and polenta loaf from Sol Breads, the free range and organic eggs, flowers and herbs to pot and some herbs to eat, I sometimes treat the ~~kids~~,myself and buy some sweet treaties. One of my favourite stalls is a bakery one called Le Sebastian which apart from having irresistible goods has a young man with an equally irresistable French accent and if he is not busy I cheekily get him to tell me what is on offer without any intention of buying more than I actually have in mind.

Some of the things I have purchased have included the raspberry and almond croissants, the buttery shortbread biscuits sandwiched with strawberry or lemon cream ( a steal at 3 for $2!) and these gorgeous brownies (another steal at $3), which I actually do take home and offer to the children after they have their freshly boiled egg and ciabatta toast. This bakery also does beautiful sour dough bread and on occassion I have purchased a loaf for a special dinner.

Last week I also found the gorgeous and whimsical white chocolate brownie (below) with the enchanting candy pink icing ($2 each!). They were not as rich as the dark chocolate brownie and had quite an intense vanilla flavour I would probably purchase them again, however Elliot wasn't so keen on the icing with the sugar crystals on top.

It has taken me years but I have finally learned some restraint when shopping at the Farmer's markets and I don't buy smoked trout, dips, cheeses, breads and meats (Gungel pork, mandalong lamb, spatchcock, duck etc) there every time, just when I really, really need too. I will probably post next week about some delicious fudge I have been buying there too, I can't this time because I didn't photograph it before all of it was consumed!

2005-09-04T15:06:00.000+10:00

White chocolate brownies with candy pink icing.

Chocolate Orange Cake

2005-08-23T20:40:00.000+10:00

Word can't describe how lovely this cake actually is, light, moist, decadent, everyone who tried it raved. I made this cake on the Brisbane Exhibition Show day during my prolific afternoon of baking and cooking, referred to in the next post.

Inspired by Niki's gorgeous cake combined with the fact that I had just purchased Nigella Lawson's Feast the day before made my baking this cake a fate accomplii.

I decided to take to work to treat my colleagues and they expressed their appreciation prolifically, so it will be more cake for them another day.

I decided to use Niki's lovely ganache to the top and everyone who tried it said they couldn't imagine the cake without it. I will have to make sure that next time, I let the ganache cool some more before applying to the cake. I will leave you to discover the recipe for the ganache on Niki's blog but I will add the recipe for the cake here for posterity:

1 large navel orange (approx 400g)
6 eggs
1 heaped tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200g ground salmonds
250g caster sugar
50g cocoa
orange peel for decoration if wanted

Preheat the oven to 180c. Butter and line a 20cm springform tin.

Put the whole orange in a pan with cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft. Drain and, when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big pips. Then pulp everything- pith, peel and all - in a food processor.

Add the eggs, baking powder, bicarb of soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mixture, but still slightly knobbly with the flecks of pureed orange.

Pour into the tin and bake for an hour by which time the cake tester should come out clean. Check after 45minutes in case you need to cover with foil to prevent the cake burning before it is cooked through or it may just need less than an hour depending on the oven.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin, on a cooling rack.

Make ganache as per Niki's recipe however make sure you leave to cool and thicken. I put mine on prematurely and lost quite a bit of ganache as it spilled onto the plate when still runny.

Zest some orange peel and decorate.

Flourless chocolate and orange cake.

2005-08-23T20:39:00.000+10:00

Cranberry, white chocolate and pecan cookies

I had a very prolific Wednesday afternoon in the kitchen last week during our public holiday for the Brisbane Exhibition. I made sushi, minted pea soup, butter chicken, a flourless chocolate and orange cake (see above) and two batches of these cookies.

I was inspired to cook after purchasing Nigella Lawson's Feast from the ABC Shop for the price of $40. God I love a bargain.

First up I had to make these cookies as up until now I have only been making Bill Granger's Chocolate Chip Cookies which are fantastic but I really need to stretch my repartoire.

These biscuits are lovely, smooth white chocolate, brown sugar for the chewy caramelisation and then cruncy pecans and piquant craisins a great combination.

As usual I made a double batch and then promptly gave lots away. I also didn't do the resting in the fridge I just forgot so I don't think it will make any difference if you do or don't. I made sure most of my biscuits were pale golden as I don't like the white chocolate to be burnt or the cookies to be too hard.

Elliot enjoyed helping me by cutting the chocolate, pecans and craisins. I was taking photographs he then tried to get into every one, of course because I asked him to step aside at first, his feelings were hurt, so by the time I invited him to participate he had spat the dummy and this photograph is the result.

Cranberry and White chocolate Cookies
140g flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt 75g rolled oats
125g soft unsalted butter
75g dark sugar
100g caster sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla
75g dried cranberries
50g pecans roughly chopped
140g white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 180c

Measure out flour, baking powder and rolled oats into a bowl.

Put the butter and sugars into another bowl and beat together until creamy then beat in the egg and vanilla. Beat in the flour, baking powder, salt and oat mixture and then fold in the cranberries, chopped pecans and chocolate chips or white chocolate, chopped into small dice. Set the bowl of biscuit dough in the fridge for 10 –15 minutes.

Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into a ball with your hands, and then place them on a lined or greased baking tray, and squish the dough balls down with a fork. Cook for 15 minutes, when ready, the cookies will be tinged a pale gold, but be too soft to lift immediately off the tray, so leave the tray on a cool surface and let them harden for 5 minutes. Remove with a spatula or whatever to cool fully on a wire rack.

Cheesy Mac

2005-08-06T20:53:00.000+10:00

Macaroni Cheese

To me the most wonderful comfort food involves pasta and cheese and pork i.e. pasta carbonara would have to be my all-time favourite but macaroni cheese would have to be close for uncomplicated food served hot and fast.

I used a recipe from the wonderful Delicious magazine as made by Jill Dupleix:

300g macaroni or other short pasta
2 thick slices (250g) leg ham, chopped
2 tbs dried breadcrumbs
1 tbs grated parmesan

Sauce
50g unsalted butter
1/3 cup (50g)plain flour
600ml milk, heated
1 cup (75g) parmesan
1 cup (75g) grated guyere or cheddar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp paprika

Preheat the over to 200c
Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water till al dente and drain.

Melt butter over low heat and sprinkle with the flour and sir well with a wooden spoon for 3 minutes to cook out the flour taste. Add half the milk, stirring well, until the sauce thickens. Gradually add remaining milk, stirring until thick but still runny. Stir for a further minute, then add the cheeses, mustard, paprika, sea salt and pepper, and simmer for 5 minutes, adding a little more milk or water if too thick. Stir in ham.

Arrange a layer of pasta in the base of four individual 2 cup (500ml) buttered ovenproof dishes (or 1 large 30cm x 20cm dish), then spoon on plenty of sauce, more pasta, then more sauce. Stir gently then scatter tops with the bread crumbs and paremsan. Bake for 30minutes until bubbling and brown.

Fresh Tuna, prawns, avocado on brown sushi rice.

2005-08-06T20:51:00.000+10:00

I simply cannot resist the lure of lovely fresh red tuna. While out grocery shopping I found it and as soon as I saw it started to think of making some sushi maki as soon as I returned home. Alas, once home I realised that I should have bought some nori as well so I had to invent this dish instead.

I used brown rice which doesn't have the requisite starch that you need for making sushi maki so it was probably a good idea to have it in a bowl. There really isn't much of a recipe as such for this dish. I simply boiled the brown rice and when it was ready I added some sweetened vinegar and tossed through. I use white vinegar about 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt. I didn't make that much rice probably only a cup full as sushi rice does not keep.

I cut some of the most perfect looking avocado and peeled some of the prawns I brought home from shopping as well. I mixed some tamari and wasabi and drizzled it over my concoction and I would have to say it satisfied my desire for a sushi like dish. I have since rectified my mistake of not having any nori at hand and took a trip to China town last week, and purchased 50 sheets for $5.00 so I can have sushi whenever I like.

I can't wait to get back to China town I need to have a closer look at some of the many sauces they have in stock and want to buy some coconut vinegar - I need to know how to use it too and I am looking forward to finding out.

Honey-roasted pumpkin and spinach risotto

2005-07-28T19:26:00.000+10:00

This was my dinner tonight and my dinner alone, P is not a big fan of rice dishes and no meat,unfortunately for him as far as I am concerned.

I found the recipe in my friend's copy of this magazine. I have always thought this was a quality foodie magazine, but the latest issue has convinced me that a subscription is definately in order.

I found at least four things I must cook, the first is out of the way, being the risotto for tonight's dinner. On the weekend I want to give the red roast duck curry a whirl. For a dinner with my in-laws date yet to be determined I think I can safely say I won't be able to beat the dessert on the cover, brownie pudding with chocolate sauce. And for a mid-week vegetarian soup next week I really must try the minted pea soup.

I thought the risotto turned out very well and I loved the honey flavoured pumpkin mixed with the lemon and yoghurt. However I did alter the recipe as it used mascarpone instead of yoghurt and italian parsley instead of baby spinach and I also embellished with some dried chillies.

So I will present the recipe as provided in the article with my alternatives and additions in italics. Because if I had mascarpone on hand I bloody well would have used it!

Serves 4-6
900g pumpkin, cut into 1cm cubes
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2tbs honey, plus extra to drizzle
850ml vegetable stock
1 onion, chopped
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
2cm piece of ginger grated
1 cup arborio rice
2/3cup white wine
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, plus extra to garnish (baby spinach)
2 tbs mascarpone, plus extra to serve (plain yoghurt)

Preheat the over to 220c
Lay pumpkin in an even layer on a large baking tray and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of oil. Season with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, then remove and drizzle with 1/2 teaspoon of honey, tossing well to coat each piece. Roast for a further 15 minutes until cooked and golden.

Place stock in a saucepn and keep at a simmer over low heat.

Heat remaining tablespoon of oil in a large heavy-based pan over low heat. Add onion and stir for 2-3 minutes until soft. Add celery and cook for 1 minute, then add ginger and rice and cook for a further minute, stirring to coat grains. At this point I smashed two dried red chillies in my pestle and mortar and added them to the rice.

Increase heat to medium-low, add wine and cook until absorbed. Add stock a ladleful at a time, allowing each to be absorbed before adding the next. Continue for 15 minutes or until rice is cooked but still firm to the bite

(It took me at least 30 minutes which has always been a standard time for making risotto for me. I like my risotto reasonably wet as well so when I add the last ladleful of stock it is not to be completely incorporated into the rice but allow a bit of a gravy to develop).

Add lemon juice, pumpkin and parsley (baby spinach). Season, then stir in mascarpone (I omitted this step for the yoghurt as I thought with the lemon it would be tangy enough and it didn't need more from the yoghurt. Also I decided not to season as I went a bit heavy on the salt on the pumpkin. When I tipped the roasted pumpkin into the risotto it came with seasoned olive oil and honey juices which really added quite a bit of flavour).

Serve with a dollop of mascarpone (yoghurt), a drizzle of honey (damn forgot to do that!) and extra parsley.

A "special" meal. Roast chicken and greek potatoes.

2005-07-24T10:16:00.000+10:00

Sunday morning - such a change from two weeks ago, a reprieve from Gabriella and I get to wake up at 7.45am instead of 6.30am and another reprieve and I decide to cook one breakfast for absolutely everyone. Bill Granger's scrambled eggs, bacon and fried Turish bread - very indulgent as I usually steer clear of dairy, red meat and wheat bread.

This weekend I have been pleasantly pleased with having obtained some ingredients "on special" however I thought the meal I produced with them has so far been quite special (I also bought some chicken legs and yellow peas, I am marinating the chicken legs for tandoori chicken, and preparing the peas for a dahl).

I love a bargain and must tell what I paid for my ingredients the 2 kg cornfed chicken was $5.99 and had to be used by Saturday, and the 1.5kg packet of pontiac potatoes were $1.40.

Very basic ingredients and this is how I prepared them for the final dinner of the week long celebration of P's birthday:
The chicken I decided to stuff with a gluten-free mixture of toasted pinenuts, chopped apricot, coucous, shallot and a piece of crumbled gluten-free bread mixed together with one egg.

On the outside of the chicken I used my pestle and mortar to pound some basil leaves, garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper and generously coated every nook and cranny of my lovely yellow chicken.

The potatoes are prepared via a recipe from my sister and is called Greek Potatoes. The gorgeous pre-preparation colours of red, white and green give way to the delicious caramel colours below and what has been scrumptiously carmelised are the potatoes cut into halves (and sometimes quartered if large), roughly cut chunks of red onion and roughly smashed bulbs garlic. The dish is seasoned with ground pepper and salt and liberally coated with olive oil and the juice of one lemon. Then water is added to about halfway mark of the dish. Lots of fresh oregano is scattered throughout the potatoes.Due to the water the potatoes require a fair bit of baking to reduce and carmelise.

I put the potatoes in a hot oven with the chicken, for about one and a half hours and made sure I turned them occassionally and kept an eye on them to ensure they did not dry prematurely or burn.

The finished chicken.

The Greek potatoes in all of their caramelised goodness:

Finally the plated product.

I decided to keep the green vegetables simple and I sauteed some onion and bacon and added some chicken stock, green beans and celery.

When making gravy I always roast my meat on a rack and in the roasting tray keep some water. After I remove the meat from the rack to rest, I pour the remaining juices into a saucepan and usually thicken with some flour, however this time I used cornflour I was trying to keep to my gluten-free theme.

Coffee and Chocolate Fudge cake

2005-07-19T22:04:00.000+10:00

Coffee and Chocolate Fudge cake.

I found the recipe for this cake on this fabulous weblog and I am completely in awe and enamoured of Niki's cake making and decorating skills. Niki's recipe can be found in her index under chocolate cake (note to self must make time to work on my index - I have started really)!

Some of the high points about this cake - I used chocolate coated bailey's coffee beans on top and flavoured the chocolate fudge with kahlua and caramelised walnuts are THE BEST and were not that hard to make!

Another little lesson I would like to pass on. This cake was made by me on Sunday morning for the celebration of a number of family birthdays and I was quietly very pleased with myself and quite confident after having taken a few dozen photographs of my latest accomplishment. But then......... what is the saying "with pride comes a fall". I was feeling sooooo confident I thought quite stupidly that I could push the cake on it's plate into the inverted tupperware cake box lid - alas it was not to be. As stable as stiffly whipped coffee cream can be on a very cold day in Brisbane in mid July it was not stiff enough to support my vainglorious efforts and the cake actually ended up looking somewhat different just prior to being transported to the actual party. I decided not to be so vain as to not have any photographic evidence of my folly and a photograph would serve as a timely reminder that I can still have some lessons to learn about confidence and complacency.

Very easy upside down pear and caramel cake

2005-07-19T22:02:00.000+10:00

I had to decide very quickly on Friday afternoon what dessert I would make and take to our friend's place for dinner. I did not want to waste time shopping or making pastry so this was the best product I could come up with the ingredients on hand - brown sugar, walnuts and a tin of pears. I thought a pudding would suit the cold evening as well then remembered how people enjoyed eating this pudding-like pear cake with caramel sauce all rolled into one last time I made it.

I made it once many years ago but was unable to find the same recipe I found this recipe on the internet at this address. I decided to dot some walnuts throughout the bottom of the cake as well. It smells divine whilst baking all that caramelly goodness. The other thing is that it is quite a big cake and would serve 8 people quite easily. It is also a cake which is quite lovely served warm with ice-cream and cream and extra caramel sauce though I didn't remember about the need for extra caramel sauce till later that night.

Despite the link above I will repeat the recipe here in case that link ever dies.

Pear Caramel Cake

Ingredients
340g unsalted butter
175g brown sugar
4 ripe pears (or one tin of pears)
300g caster sugar
3 eggs
250g plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder
1½ tsp ground mixed spice
250ml milk

Method
Melt 170g butter in a heavy based saucepan over low heat. Pour into a prepared 26cm round springform pan. Sprinkle brown sugar over melted butter.

Peel, core and cut pears into thick slices arranging over the base of the pan, slightly overlapping. ( A small tin of pears works very well too)

Beat remaining butter and caster sugar using an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Sift flour, baking powder and spices into bowl and fold in.

Fold in milk and mix gently by hand to form a smooth batter. Spread batter over pears being careful not to move any. Bake in a pre-heated 180 C oven for 1 hour. Cool for 10 minutes in pan, invert onto a serving plate and serve immediately.

Mini whisk

2005-07-10T10:35:00.000+10:00

Mini whisk - my best gadget friend in the kitchen this morning.

I love this mini whisk! This morning it was there for me when I needed some assistance.

A few minutes ago, just after 10am I mentioned to P that since I had been up since 6.15am this morning with Gabriella, I had managed to cook and serve about 5 different things:

1. Peanut butter on mult-grain toast with some warmed milk and a glass of pear juice - Gabriella.

2. Smoked salmon and cream cheese omelette with a splash of hollandaise on toast for my nephew Mason and myself. Soy milk flat whites for me.

3. Boiled egg for Elliot.

4. Coconut crumpets and lemon butter for my sister and a much later second course for Mason and me.

5. Fried egg on pan-fried ham with avocado and pesto on toast and a side of grilled tomato for P and a couple of flat whites.

What else do you do on Sunday morning from 6.30am, when the wind is blowing an icy gale outside? My making some hot breakfasts seemed like the best answer.

Back to my sad little mini whisk, I think he should be much happier given how much I enjoy using him i.e. for the omelette, for uncurdling my lemon butter, for reconstituting my hollandaise (which had separated on being re-warmed). I also use him for dressings, gravys and much more.

My day ahead involves domestic duties and planning a roast pork for dinner tonight. I have yet to figure out how I want some sage to feature in the pork. I also get to have some delicious seafood chowder for lunch.

I then have to think about my dinner and lunches for next week, as during the week I have a gluten free, no red meat and a mainly dairy-free, mostly vegetarian diet. Obviously I splurge on the weekend - well I think 2 days of treats is better for me then 7 days!

So to prevent me having to cook 2 different dinners every night (because P refuses to adopt a meat-free dining working week!) when I really don't have the time, I try to make myself a big batch of vegetable soup, last week it was a pureed cauliflower with a dollop ofbasil and walnut pesto for a few nights.

I was also heavily into pumpkin. One night I sauteed some diced pumpkin in nutmeg, cinnamon and ground cloves to which I added some soy,chillie and honey marinated tofu - this was eaten with brown rice and some english spinach. Another night it was soba noodles tossed in sesame oil, peanut oil and chillie (inspired by delicious days) More adventures with tofu involved a slightly curried version, again the tofu had been marinated - in soy,lime juice and curry powder was then stir fried with shallots, slivered almonds, carrots and dried apricots and served on basmati rice.

I am thinking this week there will be more pumpkin, brown rice, soba noodles, rice noodles, broccoli, zucchini and tofu to feature. I should be doing up a soup but I can't decide what sort maybe a batch of red lentil and vegetable soup -though I wouldn't mind trying a yellow split pea soup for a change. Who knows plenty to mull over.

Oops nearly forgot I will also have to stew some pears in some brown sugar and spices to add to my pecans which I put over my porridge in the morning.

Serve of seafood and pumpkin chowder

2005-07-10T09:38:00.000+10:00

Serve of seafood and pumpkin chowder

Some very good friends of mine recently brought a huge bowl of seafood chowder to share with me at work. It was a white creamy soup, jam packed with lots of lovely seafood – scallops, calamari, mussels and prawns being the predominant ingredients.

It was the most gorgeous comfort food to imbibe on a chilly day and as I wanted to make some this evening I tracked down a few recipes on the internet and did some adapting to my tastes. I would say my biggest influence though was the clam chowder recipe from Larouse.

Some of the recipes I located used potatoes, I am not a huge fan of the texture of potatoes in a soup plus I prefer to steer clear of them so I substituted pumpkin for potato. I didn’t use a lot of pumpkin just enough to provide an golden/orange tone to the colour of the soup.

I also used cream, though I dabbled with the thought of light carnation milk but then when I had purchased such gorgeous seafood I think some light tinned cream just wouldn't do my chowder justice plus it's not like I make seafood chowder every weekend.... maybe that will change.

1 medium onion
3 rashers bacon diced
1 red/green capsicum
3 stalks celery
small piece of pumpkin
few dried red chillies finely diced

1.5 litres vegetable stock*
salt and pepper
Italian Parsley

lots of mussels (12)
couple of dozen green prawns,
3 -4 tubes of cleaned calamari cut into strips,
couple of dozen scallops,
1 fillet white flesh fish

300mls cream**
40 grams butter
40 grams of plain flour (I think? I used 3 heaped wooden spoonfuls not a flat wooden spoon hope that helps)

Remove the rind from the bacon and simmer the bacon in water for a few minutes then drain and dice.

Add the diced bacon to the finely diced onion, capsicum, celery, pumpkin and red chillies and saute in some garlic infused olive oil for 5 - 10 minutes, do not allow the ingredients to brown. Add the vegetable stock and simmer for 20 minutes. (I didn't do it, but in retrospect I think a liberal splash of white wine wouldn't have hurt at this stage)

While the vegetable stock is simmering, in a separate saucepan melt the butter but don't allow it to brown then add the plain flour stirring it until it mixes into a smooth paste. Stir the flour and butter in the saucepan on medium heat for 3 minutes then remove the saucepan from the heat and add the cream, mixing until smooth and there are no lumps.

Add the roux to the vegetable stock and mix through thoroughly until the chowder is heated through. Add the seafood and mix in thoroughly. I then turned the chowder off and let it stand till I was ready to serve.

When I reheated the chowder I did so until the seafood flesh was firm. I then seasoned with salt and white pepper. Prior to serving the chowder I scattered some finely chopped Italian Parsley over it.

I also decided to serve the chowder with some garlic bread which I made from some long bread rolls cut in half with lashings of garlic butter dotted with some parsley. The garlic butter I quickly mashed together with my pestle and mortar and then toasted the bread under the grill (broiler).

*I decided against using a fish stock and I used vegetable stock instead. My reason being, that I didn't want an intense seafood flavour from the start, I wanted the flavour from the seafood I was adding to eventually infuse the chowder as I reheated it prior to serving. **I found that the chowder became thin on reheating so I found myself quickly thickening again with a cornflour paste which I had made with milk. I think the thickness of the chowder is a personal preference, in this case I wanted something that was about the thickness of a custard which in turn made the soup extremely filling.

2005-07-09T16:37:00.000+10:00

Pot of seafood and pumpkin chowder

Lemon - Almond Butter Cake

2005-07-06T13:00:00.000+10:00

I found the recipe for this cake in the New York Times in the Dining and Wine section on the on-line version of this publication a few years ago. I made this cake last night and it is continuing with my passion for lemon flavoured desserts and lemon butter.

The last time I made this cake was 2002 and baked it to take to work nd share with colleagues and that is exactly what I did again today. It was still as good as I remembered.

As with most recipes from U.S publications the measurements are somewhat unfamiliar to us Antipodes. One day I hope to convert it to grams for convenience sake but that doesn't mean it isn't that difficult to work with the recipe below just a bit fiddly:

Lemon-Almond Butter Cake
(adapted from ‘in the Hands of a Chef")

For the lemon curd
Grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
3/8 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar (I use a half a cup - no big deal about being exact!)
4 extra-large eggs
6 tablespoons unsalted butter cubed

For the cake
9 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
1 cup plus 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 extra large eggs
½ cup ground toasted almonds
2 tablespoons toasted sliced almonds
About ½ cup heavy cream for garnish
1 tablespoon almond liqueur (optional)

For the curd – combine zest, juice, sugar and eggs in a heatproof bowl, and beat well. Add butter, and place over a saucepan full of simmering water. Cook, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, until mixture thickens into curd, about 5 minutes. Strain into a bowl, and press plastic wrap onto suface to keep skin from forming. Refrigerate until cool, at least 1 ½ hours.

Heat oven to 350 degrees (I didn't convert exactly and decided to use about 180 degrees C ).

Grease 9 inch springform pan with 1 tablespoon butter, and dust with 1 tablespoon flour, shaking out excess. I also used some silicone paper on the base of the pan.

With an electric mixer, cream the remaining butter and 1 cup sugar together until light and fluffy.

Sift together the remaining flour, baking powder and salt, and stir in. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs until they start to foam. Do not over beat or the cake will be tough.

Add eggs and ground almonds to batter and mix well. Scrape batter into the prepared pan, drop 8 individual tablespoons of lemon curd around the perimeter of the batter, leaving a 1 inch border, and taking care to space drops evenly.

Drop 3 to 4 tablespoons of curd in the centre of the batter. Refrigerate remaining curd for another use. Sprinkle the cake with toasted almonds and 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar, depending on taste.

Bake until cake is toasty brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the cake (not the curd) comes out clean, about 40 minutes.

Let cool on rack 10 minutes, then remove side of pan, and cool completely. Whip cream with almond liqueur. Present cake at table and offer whipped cream on the side.

Some of my experiences with this recipe - I used an 8 inch pan and was only able to fit six tablespoons of curd about the perimeter of the pan and drop two in the middle.

The sprinkle of sugar isn't really necessary - given the one cup in the batter. I haven't thought it necessary to use the almond essence in the whipped cream but do think the whipped cream is essential with such a dense cake.

2005-07-06T12:50:00.000+10:00

More cake

Quick canapes

2005-07-06T12:45:00.000+10:00

I made these canapes on Sunday night before P's mother and grandmother came for some roast lamb. We didn't have lunch so I decided to serve something very light to cut our appetites before serving the main course so I had to come up with whatever I happened to have on hand.

There are only two types of canapes here - one is smoked salmon,caper, chives and sour cream and the other is blue cheese, walnut and pear. I served the salmon on some little toasts I made by cutting out some circles of bread (I used multi-grain because that's all we had but any bread is fine) brushing the circles with some garlic oil on both side and putting on a tray in the oven for 5 minutes till crisp. The cheese is served on a falwasser cracker.

I actually quite like the idea of serving an assortment of canapes before a main course in the place of an entree however most the time if it is a leisurely dinner I will do about 4-6 only to have with some champagne over the years between my sister-in-law and her husband and P and I we have come up some tasty morsels.

Roast pork

2005-07-03T14:39:00.000+10:00

Traditional Roast pork

I made this roast pork some time ago, I think since then there has also been a roast chicken and a roast lamb. But this one was the only one I had the chance to photograph. It is very simple in its appearance which is in fact what I was aiming for. I am no expert in roasting having only ventured into making a roast by myself after my good friend P and his English ex-pat wife stayed with us and treated us to roast pork and roast beef with yorkshire pudding last winter.

They really got me over my apprehension about roasting I have also viewed it as quite a logistical nightmare, ensuring everything was golden brown, meat perfectly cooked and presented piping hot to the table with a steamy jug of gravy.

I have reached my idealised roast heights yet, but I am getting there and am moving out of entirely novice territory. I have made a habit of roasting at least once on the weekend now that it is cool. Roast pork and crackling is one of P's favourites. I have fallen into a habit of roasting a minimum of vegetables, potato, carrots, pumpkin. This time I added parsnip and some baked garlic. For green vegetables I simply use some frozen baby peas and I make my gravy from the drippings left in the baking tray.

I also bake my meat on a rack and ensure there is water in the base of the tray at all times so the meat is never dry. When roasting pork I rub the pieces with olive oil and salt and pepper.

Hasselback is my preferred style of potato. The Hasselback potato involves cutting a peeled potato in half and using small slices almost all the way through the potato. I employ a hint that I read somewhere which ensures that you don't end up cutting too far through the potato and end up with quarters instead. I line the half potato between two chop sticks and that way the chop sticks form a barrier and prevent the knife slicing through.

I have become better with browning my vegetables since taking this last photgraph as my son insists on "golden roast potatoes". Last week when roasting some lamb, I par-cooked the hasselback potatoes in the microwave and coated them with some seasoned plain flour and splashed some garlic infused olive oil over them. Plus I cooked them on baking paper.

With the pumpkin and carrots I also coated them with seasoned flour splashed them with the garlic infused olive oil and cooked them on baking paper and put them in some time after the potatoes so I could ensure the pumpkin was not over cooked.

What I love about my adventures with roasting is that I am becoming much more expert at roasting the vegetables in conjunction with the meat and being able to serve an entirely warm meal to everyone at the table. I have always had so much trouble coordinating the final parts of the roast but practice in roasting appears to truly make perfect or at least better.

My ambition is to do that roast beef with my own yorkshire pudding I feel that will be the true test of my roasting skills, I would love to hear of anyone's adventures with roasting beef and what a good cut to use is, plus any hints on yorkshire puddings.

Coconut crumpets with lemon butter

2005-07-03T12:04:00.000+10:00

This morning I just had to finally make the coconut crumpets I have up until now only been able to purchase. I think they turned out pretty well, though I made way too many for just P and I and I had to freeze the remainder. Nevertheless, it was much easier than I imagined. I made the lemon butter while the mixture was standing so it was a little warmer than it should have been, but it was still damn good.

Coconut crumpets with lemon butter
(Makes two dozen crumpet in egg rings)

INGREDIENTS
1 sachet (7g) dried instant yeast or 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of yeast
3 cups (450g) plain flour
1/2 cup of shredded coconut
1 teaspoon sugar
250ml milk
375ml water
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

METHOD
Sift yeast, flour and sugar into medium bowl.
Heat milk and water together in small saucepan, or microwave, until it reaches blood temperature. Whisk milk mixture gradually into flour mixture until a smooth batter is formed. Cover, allow to stand 1 hour. (Heat oven to 200 degrees C then turn off and let the mixture stand in there for one hour or until doubled in volume)

When ready to cook, stir in salt and bicarbonate of soda. Heat heavy pan (my le creuset pan was perfect) until a small knob of butter browns and burns within 10 seconds. Wipe burnt butter off pan.

Make sure batter is consistency of pouring cream. If it is too runny it will run out of the moulds, if too thick, the bubbles that form and characterise a crumpet will not form. If too thin, thicken with a little extra flour. If too thick, thin with a little warm water. It is best to try cooking one crumpet before altering the consistency as you will have a better guide of what is too thick or too thin.Place egg rings, biscuit cutters or muffin rings onto pan. Spray lightly with spray oil to lightly coat. Spoon 2-3 tablespoons mixture into rings or cutters. Do not fill too full as mixture will burn before it cooks through. You may have to reduce temperature if bases are burning before tops have dried out.Cook crumpet without moving until bubbles have formed on the surface and the top has a dried out look. Flip egg ring and crumpet to cook top. Allow to cook only briefly to lightly brown the top.

Allow to cook only briefly to lightly brown the tops. Eat immediately with butter and home-made jam or honey, or caramelised bananas or lemon butter.

Lemon butter
I have learned how to use my microwave to make lemon butter and hollandaise sauce so it is extremely quick and easy.

In a small bowl add two eggs, ¼ cup of caster sugar, and the juice and zest of one lemon and whisk together. In a separate bowl, melt 3 tablespoons of butter in the microwave. Add the melted butter to the egg mixture and whisk again. Place in the oven then on half or three-quarter power level begin cooking for 3 minutes checking every 30 to 45 seconds and whisking again. Lemon butter is done when it is a thick consistency.
You could strain the butter to remove the zest, however I am a big fan of the zest and never bother straining. Cover the mixture with plastic wrap pressing down on the surface of the mixture so a skin will not form and put in the refrigerator to cool.

Smoked salmon,eggs and hollandaise

2005-07-03T07:02:00.000+10:00

This photograph is of Paul's eggs I like mine with baby spinach too.

An old post I am finally up-dating with some details.

This hollandaise was made on soy butter, a small gesture to reduce the impact of the cholestorol laden nature of this breakfast indulgence.

2 toasted crumpets
avocado on each toasted crumpet or pesto if you have some handy
smoked salmon for each crumpet
2 poached eggs for each crumpet
hollandaise sauce
freshly ground pepper

I like to poach my eggs in a large saute pan of hot water (with a dash of vinegar in the just simmering water) by breaking the egg onto a saucer then swirling the hot water with a spoon and sliding in the egg. Using this method I am able to cook 4 eggs fairly quickly.

I make the hollandaise in the microwave and my measurements are a bit slap dash.

Put 2 egg yolks in a medium bowl, add some white pepper and sea salt to taste (just a pinch) and 2 tablespoons of white vinegar and whisk together till combined. In a separate bowl melt about 80 grams of butter in the microwave and add to the egg mixture and combine with a whisk.

Then on either 1/2 power or 3/4 power place the egg and butter mixture in the microwave and in short bursts (45second and less as you progress) cook the mixture - taking it out at intervals and whisking. The mixture is done when it is like a thick pouring custard.

2005-07-02T10:59:00.000+10:00

Mmmm cinnamon rolls.

Recipe courtesy of Small Hands
4 1/2 - 5 C (unbleached/organic, if doable) flour
4 teaspons active dry yeast (2 packages)
3/4 C milk
1/2 C water
1/2 C vegetable shortening (I used copha and some soy margerine)
1/2 C sugar (I used caster sugar)
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, room temperature

Measure 1 3/4 C flour into yr large mixer bowl. Add yeast and blend. Measure milk, water, shortening, sugar, and salt into saucepan. Blend. Heat until warm (blood temperature)

Pour into flour/yeast mixture. Add eggs. Beat 30 seconds with electric mixer at low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 more minutes at high speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Stop mixer.Gradually stir in more flour (by hand) to make a soft dough. It will be rather sticky. Knead on lightly floured board or counter until nice an' smooth, about 5-10 minutes (it's good exercise!!). Cover with bowl or pan and let rest for 20 minutes. Shape as desired.

Cut the hunk of dough in half, roll out one of the halves until it's flat and rectangular and large, brush it with butter, sprinkle it with a cinnamon/sugar mixture, add raisins (sometimes), and roll it up.
Then cut off the ends and cut the rest into 1 inch wide slices. They usually fit nicely into 2 9" greased cake pans. Then put them in a warm oven (usually warm it to 100 degrees C for a few minutes, then turn it off) with a pan of hot water under them and a foil tent over them and let them rise for 40 minutes, or until doubled.Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

Ice these with icing sugar after they've cooled off.

Cool them on a rack. When they're cool, you can wrap them in foil, and freeze. Just warm them in a 100 degree C oven for about 45 minutes to re-serve.

The recipe is from a cookbook called Homemade Bread, published by the Farm Journal people in 1969.

2005-06-10T19:50:00.001+10:00

Especially for you.

2005-06-10T19:50:00.000+10:00

White chocolate and raspberry muffins and chocolate chip cookies courtesy of Bill Granger via The Red Kitchen.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (Bill Granger's Sydney Food)

125g (4 oz) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cup tightly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups chocolate bits (sometimes I use a combination of milk, dark and white)

Preheat oven to 180c (350F) Place butter and sugar iin a bowl and beat until light and creamy. Add vanilla and egg and stir to combine. Stir in the sifted flour, baking powder and salt until just combined. Fold through chocoate chips.

Place spoonfuls of cookie mixture on a greased and lined baking tray, allowing room for spreading. Cook for 15-20 minutes, until they turn pale gold. (Less in a hot oven like mine!)

Allow to cool on the tray for 15 minutes before placing biscuits on a wire rack to cool further. Makes 16 though I double the recipe and appear to make about 40 or so (minus the warm ones which get eaten straight away and any dark coloured batches I think should not appear with the rest!)

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins
2 cups self-raising flour
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
zest of 1 lemon
90g. unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup white choc chips
150g. frozen raspberries (1/2 box)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 deg.C.
Grease a muffin tin well with butter or spray oil.
2. Sift flour into a large bowl and stir in the sugars to mix evenly.
In another bowl mix together the egg, lemon zest, butter, buttermilk, milk and choc chips and add to the flour mixture with the raspberries.

Spoon into muffin tin and bake for about 20 minutes (less for mini muffins) or until golden.

Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 12 big/24 mini muffins.

Lentil and vegetable soup topped with yoghurt and dairy-free pesto.

2005-06-10T19:49:00.001+10:00

Brown lentil and vegetable soup topped with yoghurt and pesto (no dairy)
2 cups of brown lentils soaked overnight
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
4 cm piece ginger
4 sticks of celery
2 carrots
piece of broccoli (200 grams)
1 large zucchini
1 litre vegetable stock

Rinse (about 4 times and pick out any rubbishy looking stuff) then soak the lentils overnight. The next day drain off the water. Put lentils in a large saucepan and cover with water and simmer till lentils soften approximately 30 minutes (not too sure about that time I think it would be wise to keep checking every 10 minutes??)*

In a heavy-bottomed pan, saute finely diced onion, garlic and ginger for 3 minutes. Finely dice the celery, carrots and zucchini then add to onions and stir briefly. Add the lentils from the other pan (don’t discard the water) Add the stock to top up and season with freshly ground pepper and some sea salt.

Cook for 10 more minutes on a gentle simmer so that vegetables become tender but not mushy. Add the broccoli cut into small flowerlets,

Serve in a bowl topped with plain yoghurt and .................

My dairy-free pesto

In a mortar grind 2 cloves of garlic a pinch of salt some cracked pepper and 30 grams of pine nuts with two big handfuls of fresh basil. Drizzle in some olive oil a bit at a time until it reaches a nice paste but the overall texture should still be fairly rough.

You can keep the pesto in a container for up to a week. The yoghurt combined with the pesto also makes a lovely salad dressing

* What I have learned about lentils, brown lentils hold their shape unlike red lentils, which soften quickly and lose that lovely red colour.

I like to use curry powders with the red lentil soups and have the brown lentils with lots of green vegetables. I think I added some frozen spinach to this soup which made it look even healthier.

If you don’t add the ginger to the soup first up, it is also good if you grate some fresh ginger over the top of the soup once you have served it up then topp it with the yoghurt.

2005-06-10T19:49:00.000+10:00

Herb omlette with soy cream cheese, baby spinach on pumpkin and corn spelt fritters.

2005-06-10T19:46:00.000+10:00

Posts to follow - I am hoping this will be impetus for me to actually do something this long weekend.

Blueberry Buckwheat mini muffins
1 cup buckwheat flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cup milk
1 cup rice flour
1/2 box of blueberries
2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Into a bowl mix flours, sugar, cream of tartar & baking soda. Mix milk & egg, add dry ingredients and blueberries, mix until just combined.

Fill greased muffin cups 3/4ths full and bake at 180 deg C, for 10-15 minutes.

Slow cooked lamb shanks with mashed dutch cream potatoes and zucchinis sauteed in butter, garlic and lemon zest.

2005-06-08T20:02:00.000+10:00

Sunday night comfort food

It has finely been cool enough to make me want to reach for my Le Cruset Dutch Oven and makes some comfort food – and enjoy once again some of the food groups I have been depriving myself of.

I have been cooking these lamb shanks since Elliot was a toddler. It is one of my favourite recipes and I have the River Café Cook book to thank for it. It is due to the same cook book I have the highest regard for the humble zucchini.

Unfortunately it is also the very same cookbook that I will forever associate Ossobucco in Bianco ( ossobucco which omits tomatoes and includes anchovies) with one of my handful of migranes. I think I will tempt fate after all these years and try this recipe this weekend.

Back to the recipe for the slow-cooked lamb shanks.

Shinco di Agnello
6 small lamb shanks
plain flour for dusting
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 red onions, peeled and finely sliced
a handful of chopped rosemary leaves
4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
175ml (6fl oz) balsamic vinegar
300ml (10 fl oz) red wine

Preheat the oven to 200c/400f (or you can cook on the stove)

Dust the lamb shanks with seasoned flour.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan with a lid, heat the oil and brown the shanks on all sides then remove. Lower the heat, add the onions and cook for about 10-15 minutes until light brown. Add the rosemary and garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. Raise the heat and add the balsamic vinegar and the wine. Reduce for a couple of minutes
Return the shanks to the pan reduce the heat and cover with a piece of moistened greaseproof paper and lid. Cook in the oven for about 2-21/2 hours or alternatively on top of the stove.

Check the shanks from time to time, basting with the juices or adding more wine if they look too dry. Serve whole, with the juices.

My notes on recipe variations:

You can actually use 8 lamb shanks and extra red onions.

You can top up with beef stock for extra juice as well.

Skim off fat from top before serving

Add some cannellini beans to juices just prior to serving.

My sauteed zucchinis

Using a mandolin thinly slice zucchinis. In a frypan add a dash of olive oil and one finely diced garlic and saute for one minute add zucchini, dash of vegetable stock, cracked pepper and zest of one lemon. Heat for 3 minutes and serve on the side of lamb shanks.

Making it up as I go along.

2005-04-05T21:54:00.000+10:00

Ricotta and feta cheese cannelloni with a pork, tomato and basil sugo.

Recently I had quite a bit of danish feta in the refrigerator and initially when thinking how to reduce the amount, I thought I would use the feta along with some ricotta and spinach to make spanakopita. That was when the idea of using the feta began to morph into the "what about making a cannelloni dish".

This made me ponder why it is I have never cooked a pasta dish with cannelloni. Once I started to think about how I hadn't cooked such a dish, I couldn't stop thinking about the type of cannelloni I would cook. I admit I do know that basically cannelloni could be stuffed with ricotta and served with a tomato sauce.

Now I had decided it was my turn to some cannelloni, for the first time in my entire life I didn't consult a cookbook or the internet about what a cannelloni dish is and even what makes a definitive cannelloni dish. Just for once I decided to make up my own combination.

It was based on my penchant for particular flavours at this point in time, i.e. lemon oil, feta and ricotta. I decided to stuff the cannelloni with some combined feta, ricotta and chopped chives ( I meant to use the spinach and actually forgot!) and some vigourous dashes of lemon oil and salt and pepper.

I lay the stuffed cannelloni in a rectangular glass pyrex dish and began to make a fresh tomato based sauce by sauteeing some finely diced onion and lots of garlic in some olive oil. I added some with ripe deseeded and deskinned tomatoes, vegetable stock, and some tomato paste, salt, cracked pepper and sprinkle of sugar.

Soon I began to think about the minced pork that I had in the freezer and decided that I would add the defrosted pork mince to the fresh tomato sauce. Once the sauce was prepared, I grated some parmesan and added it to some already grated mozzarella (that I usually reserve for pizzas)in the fridge .

I spread a layer of the cheese on top of the stuffed cannelloni then a thick layer of the pork and tomato sauce. I finished with a layer of cheese. I baked the cannelloni in a moderate oven for about 30-40 minutes until the top was golden brown.

When serving the cannelloin I topped it with some more freshly grated parmesan and torn fresh basil.

Come to think of it I probably should have drizzled some more lemon oil over the plated product!

And another ingredient which I began to wonder about was whether pine nuts would have gone well in the lemon, ricotta and feta stuffing?

I also thought the sauce was a little drier than I wanted, though P thought it was perfectly fine. If I were to make this dish again I would be tempted to make a bechamel and put a layer of bechamel sauce on the bottom of the dish.

Who knows I don't even know if there will be a next time!

2005-03-15T20:30:00.000+10:00

Can't resist posting a photograph of my second tart (recipe courtesy of the Red Kitchen), a peach one this time and I didn't even burn it!

2005-03-06T22:59:00.000+10:00

I finally prepared some garlic infused oil to dabble with. I have used a light olive oil instead of anything too fruity and strong. I plan to use the oil for salad dressings, marinating and bruschetta. I used an empty wine bottle. As I use the oil I will top it up. It is a quite an unusal dessert wine bottle and I will post a picture of it next.

2005-03-06T22:47:00.000+10:00

The dessert wine bottle of garlic infused oil.

Saturday and Sunday dinner.

2005-03-06T22:01:00.000+10:00

Oops forgot to take a photo of main course. This is a nectarine tart courtesy of the Queen of sweeties, Kitschenette via the Red Kitchen.

Saturday night we were invited to our friend's J and C to see their new innercity home. We decided it would be sans children and had P's mother mind the children overnight - that's two Saturday evenings in a row we have come home to an empty house. We have been really enjoying it!

They prepared a dinner so lovely that we had to replicate the main course on Sunday to thank P's mother for minding the kiddies.

J uses the same cookbook that I have been for years, Mirrabella Food (Eating simply, eating well) by Guy Mirrabella. This time he prepared some very simply barbecued fish fillets, with a salsa verde and simple potato, onion and tomato bake.

Unfortunately he made an error with the fish - althought it was very tough, it was still very tasty I still managed to eat it all:) The recipe called for whole King George Whiting and he used Sweet Lip instead.

I was talking to my fish guy today and he said that it was probably not the best grade of fish and something that was being passed off as Sweet Lip. I ended up buying some whiting fillets and a piece of dory which my fish guy said that I should give a go. They were perfect, nice and tender.

J also prepared a rather complicated dessert which involved caramelised banana. I am not a huge fan of bananas in desserts, however this particular concocotion was an exception. He served the caramelised banana atop of ricotta mixed with lemon zest on a circle of puff pastry that had been baked earlier. There was also a citrus syrup and vanilla icecream on the side. Although we thought we were too full after the first two courses and the cheese we ate with our cocktails, we managed to fit it all in.

P and I both thought our mistake was that we gorged on the cheese J offered first up. A cheshire with a thread of blue, and a Organic Timboon soft cheese coated in pepper. They then served a pumpkin soup with delicious bread. So quite heavy to start really and we should have eaten less of the cheese, but all delicious and we couldn't help ourselves none the less.

Back to the menu we created for tonight. We decided to start with char-grilled vegetables and sour dough. I made a feta, garlic, ricotta, mint and lemon oil mixture that was stuffed into two yellow peppers and generously spread on the toast. Later I prepared the toast with different combinations, of the vegetables/ricotta mix/parmesan/basil.

We prepared the same main course but this time with whiting and dory. And for dessert I used my most useful reference another person's recipe - tried and true Nectarine Tart. I decided I had to use my blue cast iron skillet again and made a sweet short crust pastry and then added the custard and nectarines it could not have been any easier.

I thought I would share the recipe I use for the sweet short crust pastry as it is really so simple. It is time consuming mainly because of all the resting and blind baking. But I was doing lots of other things in between so it wasn't really too much of a hassle.

Sweet short crust pastry

2 cups of plain (all-purpose) flour
3/4 cup of icing sugar
175 grams of unsalted butter
2 egg yolks
1 - 2 tablespoon of ice cold water.

In a blender add chopped butter, egg yolks and dry ingredients. Begin to blend and add the water a bit at a time until the pastry begins to form on the blade. When the pastry has almost come together, remove from the bowl and knead lightly (do not over work) for 2 minutes and then wrap in plastic and leave in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Remove roll out pastry. I usually roll it out onto baking paper and then slide into the pan. Then I use the same baking paper for the blind baking. Bake the shell for 20 minutes at 180 degrees, then remove the rice and baking paper from the tin/skillet. Then brush with an egg yolk and bake for 10 minutes more.

Unfortunately my fan-force oven is a little strong and my crust got a little too dark, better luck next weekend when we prepare dinner for P's cousin and his wife and another couple who are mutual friends of P and his cousin - more dinner preparation decisions but at least I know what to do for dessert!

The rest of the tart recipe was exactly as explained via The Red Kitchen above.

2005-03-06T21:59:00.000+10:00

Chargrilled feta and ricotta stuffed yellow peppers, zucchini, eggplant and yellow, red and green capsicum.

2005-03-06T21:57:00.000+10:00

Char grilled sour dough, parmesan and basil plus...chargrilled vegetables, drizzled with garlic infused oil and lemon infused oil.

2005-03-06T21:55:00.000+10:00

Saturday Morning 9am.

We birthed and very soon after ate, our first Dutch baby. It was easily the quickest and most pain-free birth I have been involved in, I didn't even need drugs! Very delicious.

My 10 inch skillet worked well and inspired me to continue using it this weekend.

Dutch babies

2005-03-03T22:46:00.000+10:00

Found via The Red Kitchen, these beautiful breakfast creations, Dutch Babies from the fabulous Orangette, oh how humbled I feel about my spot on the web in the face of a dedicated food blogger.

I am now consumed by thoughts of trying these new breakfast delicacies, but the only cast iron frypans I have are enormous. I wonder if I should just make the biggest Dutch baby in the world?

2005-03-02T20:14:00.000+10:00

Cooked pizza.

Every Wednesday is turning into our pizza night. This is due to Wednesday evening turning into a mad rush whereby we have to pick up both the children return home before getting Elliot to soccer training by 6pm. By the time P and Elliot return it is 7.30pm so a dinner that doesn't involve lingering at the dinner table is best because it is a long, long day for Elzaman.

We make the pizzas on some bought bases and use the Bazzar brand wholemeal bases or wholemeal lebanese bread for a healthier option than take-away pizza. My sister introduced me to the joys of grilled vegetables on pizzas with walnut and basil pesto too - zucchini, sweet potato, pumpkin, eggplant, mozzarella lovely.

However Wednesday night is a standard night, some pepperoni, olives, and anything else that might be chilling in the fridge, red onion, pesto, anchovies, ham, bacon, semi dried tomato it may end up on our Wednesday night standard pizza.

The tomato base is just Dolmios or Raguletto. Sometimes we need some easy standards this happens to be one of them.