Warm Pistachio Cupcakes

The latest issue of Delicious featured this recipe of Shannon Bennet of Vue de monde fame. How could I resist trying them out when apparently he sells more than 100 of them a week in his café. Especially after last week when I was treated to a most amazing experience of dinner at his famed restaurant, all I can say is wow and you have to check it our for yourself (when your budget allows!) as my humble words could in no way express how fantastic the night was. The cupcakes were beautiful, very moist & quite unusual as you can see from the ingredient list, not your typical cupcake mix. One note though, they are very adult & the 2 children who tried them didn’t think they were that special at all & in fact wouldn’t eat them after the first mouthful. Oh and I think I went a bit overboard on the green food coloring, the effect is supposed to be more subtle than my fluoro green alien slime impersonation.

Warm Pistachio Cupcakes

130g shelled unsalted pistachios rubbed in a tea towel to remove skins, plus 12 shelled pistachios to garnish.
100g unsalted butter, softened
85g caster sugar
75g good quality marzipan (min 50% nuts), chopped
2 eggs
1 tablespoon kirsch
2 drops vanilla extract
30g semolina
250g ready made icing
2-3 drops green food colouring

Preheat oven to 170c. Line a 12 hole, 1/3 cup capacity (80ml) muffin pan with patty cases.
Place 100g of the peeled pistachios on a food processor and blend for 1-2 minutes until they are very finely ground (almost a powder). Remove 1 tablespoon ground pistachios & set aside. Transfer the remainder to the bowl of an electric mixer with the butter, sugar, chopped marzipan & a pinch of salt. Beat well until the lumps are removed & you have a smooth paste. Add the eggs one at a time, beating continuously, ensuring the mix doesn’t stick to the side of the bowl & is thoroughly combined. Roughly chop the remaining 30g of pistachios and beat into the mixture. Beat in the kirsch, vanilla & semolina until combined. Divide evenly among patty cases & bake for 25 minutes or until form to the touch. Remove & cool slightly in the tray.Gently warm the icing in a saucepan over low heat, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon until melted & smooth. Stir in the food colouring. Working quickly, spoon icing onto cakes. Place a pistachio on top of the icing & dust with reserved ground pistachios

Gingerlee, East Brunsiwck

Sunday morning Michael & I took Chloe for an early morning walk to check out Gingerlee, a new café on Lygon street in East Brunswick. The breakfast menu had a few items on it with quite a Middle Eastern feel, it was quite interesting offering dishes from toasted apricot & walnut bread, poached eggs with slow braised field mushrooms, Persian feta, avocado & lemon to the home made baked bean tagine that Michael had & the Syrian style French toast, orange blossom syrup, honey labne, stewed rhubarb & pistachios that I ordered. Mine was sensational, I could have eaten 2 plates full, the toast on first impressions could have been too sweet but as soon as you team it with the yoghurt it was perfect, as I said, absolutely luscious & nice to have something different to the usual suspects that appear on most breakfast menus. Michael enjoyed his beans though not as much as I did my dish, he said there was a flavour in there (couldn’t name it) that didn’t quite sit right with him, it did look good though especially when they brought it out in the tagine, lid & all before uncovering at the table. All in all another great addition to this strip. Also I would like to note that on the way home I stopped at Sugardough for some bread & noticed they now sell bomboloni too, custard, jam, apricot jam & chocolate flavoured & I’ pleased to say that after tasting the custard filled variety it is even better than Dench’s – in my opinion only of course – I love this bakery.

Gingerlee
Ph: +613 9380 4430
Fax: +613 9380 4436
117 Lygon Street
East Brunswick
Email: rebeccadietrich@gingerlee.com.au
www.gingerlee.com.au

White Chocolate & Pistachio Biscuits

Taking a break from apples I made these scrumptious biscuits for the girls to snack on after brunch with a coffee. The recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess. It is surprisingly quick to make, the only time consuming part the shelling of the pistachios – though you can buy them pre-shelled to save time if you want. The end result is a slightly chewy biscuit made quite rich & tasty thanks to the brown sugar, with chunks of white chocolate & pistachios that are incredible. Anyway as you can tell I love them, hope the girls do too. I made exactly 36 as the recipe suggested with 12 to a tray, think this should be cut down to 9 a tray & done in four batches as they did melt into each other with this many per tray.

White Chocolate & Pistachio Biscuits

100g soft unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
100g soft brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
150g plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
100g ground pistachios
125g whole pistachios
125g white chocolate, chopped
2 baking sheets, lined

Preheat oven to 180c.

Cream together the butter & sugars until soft & almost moussy. Add the vanilla & the egg, then the flour and bicarb. Don’t worry if the mixture looks almost curdled after you’ve beaten in the egg. When you’ve got a smooth, thick dough, add the nuts & chocolate and mix to combine.

Pinch of pieces of dough & roll them into walnut sized balls in your hands. Place these, generously spaced, onto the baking sheets, and put in the oven for 10-12 minutes, by which time the biscuits should be a pale gold around the edges.

Leave to set for a couple of minutes on the baking sheets before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

Makes about 36

Bar Lourinha - Spanish Tapas in Melbourne

Bar Lourinha is a wonderful newish Spanish/Portuguese style bar tucked away in Little Collins street run by Matt McConnell, ex Berardo's Noosa, Diningroom 211, Hairy Canary. The bar is tiny, with a couple of communal tables and a bar surrounded by tall bar stools to sit & while away the night on. There’s also a little couch area at the frnt area which is where we chose to sat, being preggers I didn’t fancy houts on a ba stool this time! The décor worked for me, an odd mix of paintings, a lit up reindeer on the wall, and odd bits & pieces, not overly crowded.

The drinks menu had plenty on offer, though sadly I didn’t get to sample any of the promised delights, no cocktails, no apertifs, etc, just a bottle of wine for us to share, which was very nice indeed though I cant remember what it was as the girls did the choosing tonight assisted by our very friendly & knowledgeable waitress. The food menu consists of maybe 15 or so sharing dishes which all sound mouth watering, very hard to choose really. There were 3 of us gilrs eating last night & the dishes we chose were more than enough to satusify our appetities. While choosing our fare we had a plate of cracked grren olives which were very good. Then we started with the yellowtail kingfish "pancetta", salt cured and dressed with lemon oil, fresh thyme and slivers of red onion, a great melt in your mouth dish with the onions & dressing proving just ther ight amount of flavour for the delicate fish slices. Next was a plate of vine grilled sardines over a fennel salad, followed by a great salad of buffalo mozzarella with crispy jamon – how can you go wrong with these two ingedients – it was superb. This was followed by some delicious roasted mushrroms in a creamy garlic sauce.

To finish off with we had the par-cooked, whole smoked chorizo sausage finished over brandy spirit flamed at the table. A couple of minutes on the flames (which sadly my photo hasn’t picked up very well) and our sausage is done & ready to eat, it was fabulous, nice & spicy & love that flame grilled taste & quite a produciton really!

After all of this we still had a little room for dessert of course, there was no way I was missing out on churros. So we shared the churros (long sugar coated Spanish doughnuts which have to be sampled if you have never tasted these delights before), they were served with a caramel type flavoured dipping sauce rather than the usual chocolate I have normally seen, fantastic & I could have had the whole serve to myself. We also tried a dish of pomegranate crema (? Think this is what it was called) with a pistachio praline, again delightful.

All in all this place highly impressed me & is one to keep card handy for.

Bar Lourinha
37 Little Collins Street
Melbourne
03 9663 7890
Mon-Wed, noon-11pm; Thu and Fri, noon-1am; Sat, 4pm-1am
www.barlourinha.com.au

Saffron Scented Chicken Pilaf

Apologies if the cooking is a bit light on lately, I am too busy going to Christmas parties & enjoying other peoples efforts so not much time for the home kitchen. It is making a nice change I must say. So last night I did my first bit of cooking for the week. This lovely & simple rice dish from rom Nigella Lawson, Forever Summer , was perfect for a quick mid week fix, the chicken flavours after marinating in yoghurt, lemon & cinamon were spectacular - dont think I have tried this flavouring before & the subtle & exotic flavours in the rice, cardoman, nuts, saffron, etc were beautiful.

Saffron Scented Chicken Pilaf

500g chicken breast, cut into approx 2 x 1cm pieces
1 x 200g tub Greek yoghurt
juice of half a lemon
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon saffron threads
1 litre chicken stock
15g unsalted butter
2-3 tablespoons groundnut oil
500g basmati rice
3-4 cardamom pods, bruised
juice and zest of 1 lemon
50g cashew nuts
50g flaked almonds
25g pine nuts
3-4 tablespoons shelled pistachio nuts
small bunch fresh parsley, chopped

Marinate the chicken in the yoghurt, lemon and cinnamon for about an hour. Soak the saffron threads in the chicken stock.

Over medium heat, in large pan with a lid, melt the butter along with 1 tablespoon oil and add the rice, stirring it to coat gently. Pur in the saffron & chicken stock, add the cardamom pods, lemon juice & zest & bring the pan to the boil, then put on the lid & turn down to very low heat for about 10-15 minutes, by which time the rice should have absorbed & the liquid cooked through.

While the rice is cooking, shake the excess marinade off the chicken using a sieve. Then fry the meat in a hot pan with the remaining spoonful or so of oil, do in batches if necessary.

When the rice is cooked, take it off the heat & fork through the chicken pieces. Toast the nuts except pistachios, by shaking in an oil free frypan until they begin to colour. Add to the pilaf along with chopped parsley & top with chopped pistachios.

Ladro

Last night I went along to the Melbourne Affordable Art show with some girlfriends & had a magnificent time admiring most of the work, laughing in disbelief at others & not understanding the rest! Managed to pick up a piece I am very happy with too so as soon as that decision was made we started on some champagne while wandering around, lucky I had no money left by then as it all looks like the perfect piece for the lounge room wall after 2 glasses of bubbly!

So after working up quite an appetite wandering around & spending all my pennies we headed down to Yeltza for a glass of wine while waiting for our 9.30 table at Ladro which I managed to get them to squeeze us in for. Yeltza was a hive of activity & even the main bar area was becoming packed by the time we left, Thursday night was up & running. I hear they have a great beer garden hidden out the back where you can get some great food, will have to remember to check it out next summer. Great place for a drink anytime of night though.

Next was Ladro, this was the 3rd time I’ve been & finally I managed to bring my camera along. To start with we had some marinated mushrooms which are divine. We couldn’t have the stuffed olives which are to die for as they have been taken off the menu, when I demanded to know why it was explained that they were so good that they couldn’t get people to order any of their other appetisers so they had to go, can you believe it, hopefully they will come back one day? Next I ordered the same thing I have had each time I’ve been as I cant go past it, Duck Ravioli with a lentil sauce (sorry about the blurry photo again!), I love duck, love ravioli, love lentils so have can I not order this, next time I promise to try very hard so I can sample some of their other dishes which I’m sure are all fantastic too. The ravioli is superb, very simple flavours & not rich at all yet in all works wonderfully together. The girls shared the puttanesca pizza which was topped with tomato sauce, cherry tomatoes, anchovies, capers & olives, very good. The pizza are huge, the base is ultra thin & crispy & cooked to perfection in a wood fired oven. The girls were kind enough to share some with me (as I did mine with them) & tasted very yum. On the side we had a mixed leaf salad as there were some specimens included that I was yet to try, chicory, radicchio, rocket, fennel & witlof, think that was all, very nice & simple with a light dressing. I had never seen chicory before & we couldn’t identify it so our lovely friendly very knowledgeable waiter pointed it out for us & even bought us out a whole leaf which you can see I took a photo of for all those others out there as ignorant as me. Was nice, a bit on the bitter side along with the radicchio but mixed with the rest was not too much for me. This was all washed down with some nice Italian Chianti that was recommended.

Anyway after all this food you would think that we would be stuffed right? Wrong, we did a lot of walking around that exhibition floor so dessert to share was called for, a small piece of pistachio nougat & crepes filled with vanilla custard & peaches finished off the night perfectly.

The place is nice & cozy with a modern look & very warm on a cold blustery night like it was & I will say it again our waiter was perfect, attentive, funny & had an answer for us on anything we needed to know & we were an inquisitive bunch last night let me tell you. If you haven’t been seriously give it a go, just remember to book ahead as its very small & always packed

Ladro
224 Gertrude Street
Fitzroy VIC 3065
Ph: 9415 7575

BBM4 Finally arrives

Sarah from Cooking with the headhunter sent me my wonderful BBM4 package which I rec'd today.

Sarah with the help of her kids went to a huge effort putting this together. The theme being music, Sarah put together 9 discs for me, each disc representing a different genre of music, in Sarah words we have, 80’s new wave, Old school punk/Hardcore, Alternative-ish, Guilty pleasures from modern rock, Classical, New Agey, Techo/Trance & lastly Electronica/Dance. The reason for so many discs is that she is a huge music fan & couldn’t narrow it down to 1 or 2 songs from each genre. Scanning through I probably know about half the songs or bands so really looking forward to listening to them all properly.

On the food front I rec’d a box of home made jellies & Jams, pinot grigio jelly made by Sarah & mint jelly, Gooseberry jam & blueberry jam made by her mum, have never tried gooseberry jam or pinot grigio jelly so cant wait for the tasting & sure they will all be wonderful. Also rec’d were some South Bend Chocolate co., chocolate in milk & dark, & some Claeys old fashioned hard candies in root beer & horesehound flavour, can someone please tell me what horsehound is??? Something I have never seen in Australia. Tried one of the horse flavoured ones last night & it was very nice, not too sweet with a lovely subtle flavour (nothing like horse at all J). A jar of local blueberry honey was also included & some Jones soda, these look fantastic, they are all natural juices with vitamins, without added preservatives, flavours or colors, the labels are so cute & the flavours I got were Bada Bing – Natural Cherry & loganberry, D’Peach mode – natural peach & tangelo & Berry white – strawberry, cherry & grapefruit, how good do they sound? Also inc was a bag of rolled barley, some home made decorations, a Paula Deen magazine & a home made pistachio-apricot blondie which is delicious.

Thank you so much Sarah & kids for the huge effort & looking fwd to trying it all out!

Fragrant Green Chicken Curry – Sunday 28th Jan 06

Sunday night I cooked up a curry from Jamie Oliver’s original ‘The Naked Chef’ cookbook, the flavours were very fresh & it was very simple to make. I have cooked various curries from his different cookbooks & they are all fantastic so this is another winner to add to the collection. He suggested serving with his chunky coconut, tomato, cucumber & lime relish which I sort of did apart from the fact that I could not buy coconut anywhere yesterday so it was minus the coconut. I have since been told that coconuts are too old at the moment, will have to try & remember - no coconuts in January!!! Still it was nice to have something fresh to serve on the side. Sorry the photo once again doesnt do the curry justice, I find curries generally arent that photographic at any time (for me the amateur photographer anyway).

Fragrant Green Chicken Curry

4 skinless chicken breasts, each cut into 5 pieces
1 x 400ml tin coconut milk
1 handful chopped pistachio nuts

Green Curry Paste

6 spring onions, washed & trimmed
4-6 medium green chillies, deseeded & finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon fresh root ginger, peeled & finely chopped
1 tablespoon coriander seeds, pounded or crushed
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Salt & pepper to taste
Handful of lime leaves, torn
2 lemon grass stalks, trimmed back & finely chopped
2 good handfuls fresh basil on the stalk
3 good handfuls fresh coriander on the stalk
3 tablespoons olive oil
zest & juice of 4 limes

Put all the curry paste ingredients in a food processor and whiz to a smooth green paste. Marinate the chicken in a little of the paste for 30 minutes, then add a little oil & chicken pieces to a hot pan. Fry for 4 minutes, thenad the remainder of the paste. Stir in the coconut milk, bring to the boil & simmer for 8 minutes until the chicken is cooked. Season to taste.

Sprinkle with the pistachios & some coriander leaves & serve with steamed rice

WhyNot @ Byron Friday November 18th 2005

For our last night in town we headed out to Why Not where we decided to sit out on the back on one of the lounges & do tapas & cocktails. The lounge area is very asian inspired with large wooden couches covered in bright cushions with some really interesting art work on the walls by Evan Malcolm, we kicked our shoes off, lounged back & ordered up our tapas & cocktails.

I love the idea of eating like this, lots of teeny little dishes allowing you to taste so much more on a single night & still be able to walk out afterwards. We started with some big fat juicy black olives & pistachios, some dips - a homemade guacamole & a smoky eggplant dip which was to die for & not like any dip I have tried before, wish I had that recipe! We also had some antipasto, & caperberries which I also love & would love to see on more menus, artichokes, fetta, semi dried tomatoes & lots of toasted bread. This was washed down with a cosmopolitan, they have this great deal where you can order any tapas item & a cocktail for $15.00 which we planned to take advantage of. We were off to a very good start.

Next up we had some Chilli salt baby octopus & coconut mussels, these were fantastic, esp the coconut broth the mussels were served in, quite different. This lot was washed down with a bellini

Next up were some very tasty Grilled thai prawns & tuna with daikon & ponzu. The ponzu was not something i had eaten or heard of before & was quite interesting, almost potato like, wouldn't say it wasnt nice but I also wont be rushing out to buy any in a hurry

We finished it all of with a lovely cheese platter

A great relaxing way to enjoy our last night in this lovely place