Choc Brownie Cupcakes & more

Ok so am starting to get a bit tired & slowing down a bit though the kitchen is still managing to produce lots of goodies. Today I made these fantastic Choc brownie cupcakes, recipe by Curtis Stone, featired in delicious magazine, recipe can be found here, just add strawberries on top.

I like brownies however I find they can be a bit boring, these however have all the gooey fudginess of a brownie with the added bonus of a delicious chocolate, cream cheese frosting & to top it off a juicy sweet strawberry on top, yum & none of the kids or mums who came over to eat them today complained too hard either. When they came out of the oven I was a bot worried as they had spread over the top & collapsed a bit. I just plonked the broken pieces on top & covered with the frosting & all was solved.

Also this week I was inspired by Master chef Australia to make a souffle. I have been sort of watching the show & while I dont think its a great cooking competition & is really more of a personality contest, I still enjoy the cooking bits like the master classes where I have actually picked up a tip or 2. Anyway instead of sticking to a simple chocolate souffle I chose a mango/choc souffle from my Green & Black's chocolate cookbook. It was nice but after all of the effort I had to put in, including burning out one pot as I left the room while the syrup was boiling down & forgot about it (that would be the pregnancy absent mindedness kicking in) until I smelt something suspicious & smoky coming from the kitchen, using the kitchen aid, food processor plus several pots & pans not to mention the souffle ramekins, I dont think I will be rushing to make this again. It was fun to allow myself the luxury of making something more complicated & messy for a change though as with Chloe this doesnt happen very often these days.

On the dinner front I have cooked everything from a lovely veal osso bucco, a quick tuna pasta bake and some surprisingly nice chicken, pumpkin & carrot rice balls from a kids book to try & entice Chloe into eating something other than bread, dairy & fruit - it worked so I was impressed.

Dinner tonight will be a simple chicken & spinach soup - food for the soul.

Old vs New & Friends for lunch

I just remember that I have now been back in my home for a few weeks now & haven’t shown you the photos of the new kitchen. So I thought I would show you not only my beautiful fresh, crisp, sparkly new & very workable white kitchen , but also what I was working with before the extension, my very old, sorta cute, grey & pink very unuser friendly kitchen, so here they are.

The new kitchen has inspired me to invite many people over for lunches, coffee, dinner & you name it as I cant do enough cooking now it seems. This week a few of the girls plus their kiddies came over for lunch. To start with I whipped up Nigella’s smoked trout pate which I have made previously & cant seem to get enough of. This was followed by a very simple yet delicious Onion & Feta Cheese Tart from by new book, Bill Granger’s Open Kitchen, as you can see I still cant seem to get away from tarts for lunch, I have a big thing for pastry at the moment & this was another good one, the hardest part being slicing up 1kg of onions! To top it off a nice autumn Pear & Hazelnut torta from Delicious magazine, I think it was the previous issue, April’s? Just the sort of cake I am loving at the moment, lots of gorgeous ripe fruit & a nut base so not too sickly or cakey.

I still have plans for lots more cooking & entertaining at least until my energy dries up before No 2 comes along in early July, so fingers crossed it doesn’t happen too soon.

A week of birthday baking & celebrations

This week started off with Michael’s birthday on Saturday, so what better way to start off a weekend/birthday than with a special breakfast. Michael wanted a nice manly dish so no pancakes or anything sweet & ‘girly’, I’m afraid. So I made these scrumptious Potato & Feta Pancakes from Bill Granger’s Sydney Food. As I have said before I love his breakfast recipes in particular even though if I watch him on the tele I find him a bit off putting & cheesy, which is good as Michael just bought me another one of his books full of new brekky’s to try for my birthday. Anyway I have a thing for hash browns, even (shock horror) the Macca’s fake kind though I need to be hungover or pregnant before I allow myself to indulge in that particular variety. So this recipe was a treat, the addition of feta, which every other mouthful melted through the golden crispy potatoey goodness was sensational. To top off the mans breakfast I had to of course include meat, bacon, ottway free range bacon & no less. Even Chloe loved the pancakes so the celebrations stared off a success.

Lunch at the Fairfield boathouse on a beautiful sunny autumn afternoon followed by a bit of row, row, row your boating & duck feeding was a nice way to relax away the afternoon. Dinner I’m ashamed to say was simply cake – Nigella’s Chcocolate Orange Cake from Feast which contained 2 whole oranges, 6 eggs, almond meal, no flour, was very moist & almost a meal in itself. Some candles and a quick rendition of Happy Birthday was all this needed to be served with.

Sunday we had a day of pottering around the house, getting the vegetable gardens ready for planting out, painting some cupboards, etc & working off all of Saturdays indulgences. I did bake a batch of blueberry & raspberry friends to take to work for my birthday though – I love a friend & as they are made with nut meal (in this case almond) I find they stay fresher longer than say your traditional muffin, if making them advance. Sorry about the blurry photo but for the life of me I cant work out how to take a photo of anything covered in icing sugar that doesn’t blur, any suggestions? They went down a treat even though I couldn’t convince most of the guys that a friend was in fact any different to a muffin & not just a fancy name.

Today it was my birthday & even though a) I had to work & b) I am really a bit over cake by now, I decided I couldn’t let the day go by without making myself a quick cake to celebrate. As I had to whip it up before work I made Nigella’s Retro Cherry cheesecake from Express & no kidding I have made easy cheesecakes before but this was incredible, I almost felt like I hadn’t made it, it was so easy! Very, very delicious too.

Off to dinner at L’osteria on Nicholson st in North Fiztroy for a quiet dinner with the family tonight, they do some lovely home cooked Italian food & seem to accept kids running around too so will be a nice way to top off the celebrations & then bring on Mothers day this Sunday!

Lunching & more baking

Well I promised more baking & here it is. Today I had Megan & Thomas over for a relaxing lunch, my first lunch invitees in the new place. For lunch I threw together some bacon, egg & feta tarts, the recipe is in the latest Delicious mag. I used South Cape Persian feta which I absolutely adore, has anyone out there tired it, I love it & could go through buckets of the stuff if it weren’t so expensive? In fact the best way to eat it, I believe is simply smothered on some fresh bread, thanks to Megan (another Megan) for introducing us! Anyway back to the tarts, really easy & I loved them, it was basically some puff pastry filled with crisp bacon, feta, an egg & topped with parmesan all baked in the oven for a short time. I served it with a roast cherry tomato, basil & rocket salad.

For desert I made a Sour Lemon Cake from the latest Donna Hay, the cake was delicious & moist though it did need patching together with the icing as it stuck to the tin, suspect this is the old crappy tin’s fault & not my favourite new oven’s. Again I made the cake with traditional bake function & baked the tarts with fan forced which seemed to do the trick, I think that fan forced just cooks too quick for cakes & you can sometimes end up with the end result being a little overcooked & dry.

A lovely way to spend a sunny autumn day & it is so cute to see the kids finally playing together a bit though there are still a lot of snatches & tears to get through yet. At least now they kiss & make up.

More baking to follow soon & I might even cook something on the stove top too!

Welcome home me & first cake out of the oven

I know it’s been a while since you last heard from me. Since then I have been busy, busy, busy! We have finally moved back in to our newly renovated & extended house & I am very excited to say the least. It’s been a week and a half & everything is pretty much unpacked, we just have a few odds & ends to sort out, ie hanging pictures, finding the perfect spot for everything & ebaying all my old junk that people love to buy. This long weekend I hope to get stuck into the garden too, there is a lot of work to do, including getting my veggie beds ready for some Winter planting, I have some 5 color silverbeet, coriander & nasturtiums to get going amongst other things.

I also managed to bake my first cake. It took me a week before I had time to actually unpack the oven shelving, etc & put it all together for the inaugural cake bake. I made a delicious Limoncello Plum Tart from Australian Good Food Magazine. I chose traditional bake rather than fan forced & it seemed to do the trick. There are so many options on the new oven that I don’t quite know what will work best for what, the manual recommends traditional for baking so I will stick with that for now unless people have any other suggestions. The cake was delicious & also gave me my first burn from the oven, can you believe it, first go, it must be those clumsy pregnancy hormones in action.

The next few weeks should see in a marathon of baking now that the drought has been broken, I have many people to entertain & show through the new house before the new arrival comes along & makes entertaining once more near impossible (for the short term at least). Bookmarked I already have a sour lemon cake, banana & maple muffins and a date, pecan & chocolate torte. Hope to show you the results soon

Mid Week Dinner with the inlaws

Once a fortnight, Michaels parents come over for dinner which means I am catering for 8 people after I finish work. This is much easier in Winter when hearty stews can be thrown together, left to bubble away & easily stretch to 8 people. In summer I find it more of a challenge & lately haven’t been inspired by my results all that much. This weeks dinner however was really good. I made Jamie Oliver’s Italian ham & spinach tart from Jamie at home & it was pretty amazing, the pastry was lovely & the addition of rosemary lent that little bit extra I thought. I’m no pastry snob & quite often use frozen pastry especially when in a hurry but really there is no comparison to home made. It’s really not that difficult or time consuming either apart from the fact that you have to freeze/refrigerate in between steps. To make things easier I made the pastry on the weekend & froze it so I just had to thaw it out & roll it before blind baking & filling. The filling for the tart was quite different to the norm too, using sour cream (or crème fraiche as the recipe specifies if you want to spend that little extra and can find it), instead of normal pouring cream. The contrast between the savoury pastry, sweet, slow cooked red onions & the tangy creamy, cheesy filling was perfect. If you have access to the book/recipe, please try this one out.

I also loved making this & upon pondering what is my favourite cooking method I have come to the conclusion that baking definitely wins, whether it be savoury or sweet, I find it very satisfying, second comes anything sweet & third all of the other savoury dishes out there. This decision might be influenced by the fact that I’m pregnant now & love all things sweet, cant really muster up any enthusiasm for eating any sort of meat & just haven’t been that interested in cooking dinner at all which of course is quite different to my normal self.

For dessert I knocked up these strawberry cheese cakes perfect for a hot summers day when you don’t want to turn the oven on (though I did use mine a little for the tart this night).

Individual Strawberry cheesecakes

200g butternut snaps
150g butter, melted
500g philly cream cheese, softened
80g icing sugar
250ml thickened cream
4 teaspoons vanilla essence

Fresh strawberries to serve

Grease & line 8 x ½ cup capacity muffin tins. Crush the biscuits in a food processor until they resemble fine breadcrumbs, add melted butter & combine. Press this mixture into the tins & refrigerate until firm.

Beat remaining ingredients for 8-10 minutes until smooth & creamy. Fill cases with cheese mixture, top with strawberries, remove from tins & remove paper & serve.

Happy 2nd Birthday Chloe!

Chloe’s 2^nd birthday is this Friday & to celebrate we gave her a nice little party on Valentines Day to celebrate.

Without about 30 or so guests plus little people to cater for I went the bbq option as I thought it would be the easiest & give me the most time to enjoy everything too. Some of my homemade smoked trout dip (which is now my favourite), hummus, Mexican dip, olives & stuffed bell peppers kept everyone happy nibbling until the ‘meat’ course. I kept it very simple too with a range of sausages & home made hamburgers, some corn cobs on the grill & a few salads on the side. This way I could concentrate on knocking up some fabulous desserts in the morning.

The main attraction was Nigella’s Chocolate Raspberry heart cake which is from Feast, the Valentines Day chapter no less. Mind you, the cake was chosen for the chocolate (Chloe's favourite food of all ) & wow factors rather than the coincidence that the party was also on Valentines day. It looked great & lots of little hands were trying to get their hands on it but we managed to save it for Chloe & the candles to get to first, as you can see from the photo she was quite happy & I was happy it turned out so well too.

I also made a batch of fairy cakes which went down well with the kids who don’t seem to need anything fancy & for the adults I made this fabulous lemon & blueberry trifle, definitely my favourite for the day. I think trifle is hugely underrated & people have notions in their head of trifles of the old days with custard & jelly & not necessarily any good. With some quality ingredients, not only does trifle taste wonderful, have endless possibilities for flavour variations, but its also damn easy to make, this one is staying on my ‘for keeps’ recipe folder to be made again for sure

For now Chloe is happy spending her birthday week playing on her 8 in one double slide/playset we hired for a week for the party & waiting for more presents & chocolate cake on her ‘real birthday’ this Friday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEAUTIFUL GIRL

Update

In case you're all wondering why I have been so slack lately, for one, check out the photos, this is where we are from week 1 to week 13 in the house rennos, that is Chloe & Michael standing in my kitchen to be (getting installed next week, WOOHOO). As you can imagine its been a whirlwind of shopping for house fixtures, ie ovens, stove, fridge, bathroom stuff, laundry, light fittings, door handles, just to name a few items & madly juggling builders, people for quotes, deliveries, etc

For two, I am actually as they would say 'in the family way' again so as those of you who have experienced it would know, food hasnt been a priority unless of course you mean trying desperately to feed my baby some healthy foods & not just a diet of ice cream, chocolate & cake.

I am starting to feel a lot better now though & promise to try & share some more cooking with you soon. It's Chloes second bday party coming up next month & we are having a bit of a shindig out at my parents so no doubt there will be lots of goodies, just have to remember to get the old camera out....

Smoked Trout Heaven

For years I have been buying the smoked trout dip from the deli down at Barkly Square in Brunswick & I’m yet to meet a person who doesn’t absolutely love it, its very addictive. Well I finally have found a recipe that’s incredibly even better than the deli version & oh so easy to prepare, though I’m not sure if it works out any cheaper. From memory its abt $22.00 per kilo from the deli, which works out to abt $12.00 for a fullish small tub. The piece of lemon pepper smoked trout I bought to use in the dip (funnily enough also from the deli at Barkly Square) was $8.95 so once you add in the extras not much difference. Does anyone else make their own smoked trout dip, maybe its always been this easy & I just haven’t tried it before? For those who are interested the recipe I used came from Nigella’s Express though I used lemon pepper flavoured smoked trout which gave it a lovely zing & omitted the cayenne pepper as I felt it didn’t need it. Fantastic served with some fresh bread or crackers & a lovely Christmas Eve nibble enjoyed by all

My first ever broad bean harvest

Way back a few months ago I planted some teeny tiny seeds in my new veggie patch. I have never grown broad beans before so had no idea what to expect. In the photos you can see they did very well & towered over Chloe. The beans in the photos are at about the time I picked my first batch which it turned out still had a way to go. The beans were still quite small & there was not much yield for all of the hard work of double podding, yet they were still too big to eat after only one podding as they had formed the tough bitter outer skin already. For example I used 500g one day to make some broad bean fritters, I halved the recipe & was still supposed to get about 8 yet after all my work ended up with one measly (though delicious) fritter!

A couple of weeks later & we had already moved out to my mums when I picked most of the rest which were now quite big. I had over 5kgs of the beauties. I used some fresh in salads, some simply blanched, dressed with olive oil, lemon juice & herbs served with fish, some in this lovely fresh pasta pictured, more on a delicious bruschetta and then single podded & froze a few for future use. I love them & even though my mum & some others cant see how I can be bothered, I think it’s a labour of love & enjoy sitting down quietly podding away, the end result of eating something so fresh & wholesome from your own garden is definitely worth it for me.

In front of the beans you can see I am growing some leeks, when I planted them I had no idea they took 9 months to grow, so will be keeping my eye on them when I do my weekly inspections of the works to the house, cant wait to start cooking them all up too & have my eye on heaps of delish looking recipes as well as some old faves waiting to be recreated. Also pictured to the right are some beets which were delicious & have already finished off all of the sugar snap & snow peas, not bad for my first crop me thinks. Cant wait to move back in & start the next batch, I still have a whole world of summer veg to experiment with.

Weekend Brekky in the Sun

Michael, Chloe & I had a pretty relaxed Grand Final day, no rowdy parties & drinking all day for us so I thought I would start the day with a leisurely breakfast which we ate outside in the sun given the beautiful weather. I made these fantastic Egg & Bacon Pies with an Oat pastry that I saw Maggie whip up on The Cook & The Chef, the recipe can be found here. I didn’t have any spring form tins of that size so just made them in pie dishes which was fine although I couldn’t serve them out of the dish so they might not have looked as pretty. I used Ottway pork free range bacon which I buy from the deli at Barkly square & in my opinion is the best tasting bacon out there & I wouldn’t make my brekky with anything else. Some fresh free range eggs & chives from the garden finished it off & well you can probably see from the photo how delicious they were, mmmm as I type I wish I had another sitting in front of me right now! Luckily Chloe was more interested in going to the park afterwards & hasn’t quite caught onto the magic of bacon & eggs just yet so we got to eat them all to ourselves too.

Welcome Spring & a lunch to celebrate with friends

Hasn’t the weather just been gorgeous lately? I am so happy the sun has been shining, the heater has been turned off & Chloe & I can finally spend a lot more time outdoors, not that the bad weather ever stopped her from wanting to go outside, she would spend every waking moment outdoors, rain or shine if she could.

So the other day in some beautiful sunny & windy (can do without that part) weather Sim & Maya came over for lunch & a catch up. I cooked these delicious vegetarian tarts for lunch & made a batch of these fantastic cookies for the girls to munch on afterwards. Chloe is finally at the age where she sort of lets me cook now, especially anything containing chocolate as I bribe her with promises of spoon licking at the end. The tarts were form a recent mag, sorry cant remember if it was Delicious or Donna Hay. As you can see from the pic of Chloe they were very much appreciated.

Roasted tomato, basil & goats cheese tart

Serves 2

1 red onion, chopped
2 roma tomatoes sliced
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
200g goats cheese
¼ cup (50g) fresh ricotta
2 tablespoons chopped basil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
sea salt & cracked black pepper
1 sheet puff pastry
extra virgin olive oil for drizzling

Preheat oven to 200c. Combine onion, tomato, garlic & oil in a baking dish. Roast for 25 minutes until softened. Combine the cheeses, basil, lemon, salt & pepper & roasted garlic in a bowl. Cut pastry sheet in half & score edges with a knife to make a border. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper, spread over cheese mixture, top with tomato mixture, drizzle with oil & bake for 15 minutes or until pastry is puffed & golden.

Oaty Choc Chip Cookies

Makes about 25

125g unsalted butter, softened
½ cup (110g) caster sugar
½ cup firmly packed (100g) brown sugar
½ tspn vanilla extract
1 egg
1 ¼ cups (110g) rolled oats
1 cup (150g) plain flour
½ tspn baking powder
½ tspn bicarb of soda
175g good quality dark chocolate, chopped

Preheat oven to 170c. Line 3 baking trays with baking paper.

Cream butter, sugars & vanilla until pale & thick. Beat in egg until just combined. Fold in oats. Sift over flour, baking powder, soda & ½ teaspoon salt over mixture & fold in. Mix in the chocolate.

Place balls of about 1 heaped tablespoon of dough on trays about 4cm apart. Flatten slightly then bake for approx 10 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool so biscuits can crisp up.

More baking – Chocolate Banana Coconut Bread

After my recent dry spell I’ve been doing a lot of baking once again. Last week I made this scrumptious loaf. Kikimiss highly recommended the recipe which can be found here. Firstly it’s incredibly easy to make, you really just stir everything together, no beating, whipping or processing required & then place in the oven for a good hour or so while you watch it rise & smell the delicious aroma of fresh baking fill the house. Secondly its really fabulous, I love banana bread with chocolate thrown in & the added coconut gives it a fantastic texture & added depth of flavour. Being me I had to tuck into it while it was still warm & it was nice but I wouldn’t rave about it, however when it cooled down completely I just adored it. This is strange for me as I usually find these sorts of cakes/breads taste better while warm. Lastly I didn’t bother with the cream cheese as suggested but feel free to give it a go, I don’t think it needed it at all. Bake away & enjoy

Pumpkin Scones

For those that have been wondering, for the last month or two I have been cooking some wonderful food, I just haven’t been all that inspired to write about it in between running around sorting out house plans, working, playing with Chloe & freezing through this long winter. Especially at night when dinner is cooked & there is no good light to photograph, we usually just dig right in before even thinking about the potential to show everyone what we have been eating. So there has been lots of slow cooking as you would expect, soups, pasta & other soul warming dishes perfect for winter.

Last weekend I had an itch to bake, I’m sure it had been at least 2 weeks since my last effort & trying to be a teensy bit healthy for Chloe’s sake, I decided on pumpkin scones, they still have the butter & sugar but the pumpkin gave them good brownie points so that I was happy for Chloe to munch away. I’ve never made pumpkin scones before & I was very pleasantly surprised, they were lovely & sweet & the hint of nutmeg gave them a delicious aroma. I cant say mine rose as much as the ones in the recipe picture though it didn’t seem to make a difference, they were very delicious & Chloe loved them too which is always a surprise as she seems to only enjoy one food group at the moment – hot ‘chippies’!

Pumpkin Scones (Florence Bjelke-Petersen's recipe as published in Gourmet Traveller)

250g peeled jarrahdale or QLD blue pumpkin, cut into 3cm pieces
300g (2 cups) self raising flour)
½ tspn ground nutmeg
75g (1/3 cup) pure icing sugar, sifted
40g butter, softened
1 egg yolk
Milk for brushing

Preheat oven to 200c. Place pumpkin in a steamer over a saucepan of boiling water, cover & steam until tender (about 15 minutes), then transfer to an oven tray and bake for about 10 minutes to fry out. Cool, then pass through a coarse sieve.

Sift flour, nutmeg and 1 tspn salt into a bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat icing sugar & butter until pale & fluffy, add egg yolk and beat to combine. Using a wooden spoon, stir in pumpkin, then half the flour mixture and, using your hands, bring together to make a dough, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently until smooth (dough should still be a little sticky).

Roll out to 2cm thick and using a 5.5cm diameter cutter dipped in flour, cut rounds from dough and transfer to a lightly greased oven tray. Re-roll scraps & repeat. Brush tops with milk and bake until golden & sound hollow when tapped (10-15 minutes). Serve hot or at room temperature with butter.

Weekend Brunch

I’ve had a bit of a sweet breakfast craving thing going on lately so when I caught up with Rach this weekend I thought I would make it brunch so I could try out a recipe I have had my eye on for a while. This sweet French toast that I whipped up was based on a recipe in Delicious magazine, it is a recipe from Sydney café Two Good Eggs. If the rest of their food is as good as this turned out then I recommend all you Sydney siders pay a visit soon. I didn’t have any blackberries handy so I made a blueberry sauce instead, after all banana & blueberry is a fantastic combination too. It was pretty impressive & the thing I liked was that unlike the usual pan fried French toast, once you pop it in the oven you can forget about it until its time to slice up & serve. Very delicious.

Banana stuffed French toast with berry sauce

4 eggs
240ml pure (thin) cream
1 load sourdough bread
2 bananas, thickly sliced on an angle
Thick Greek-style yoghurt, toasted almond flakes & pure maple syrup, to serve

Berry sauce
100g fresh or thawed frozen blackberries or blueberries

Preheat oven to 200c. Line a baking tray with baking paper & grease well.

For the sauce, place berries, sugar & ¼ cup (60ml) water in a small pan over medium low heat. Stir to dissolve sugar, then simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside until needed.

Place the eggs & cream in a bowl & whisk until combined, transfer to a large jug. Trim the ends off the bread & slice into 8 even slices – not touching the bottom. Tuck 2-3 banana slices into every second cut. Place the loaf into a large dish & slowly pour the egg mix over the loaf, being sure to pour between all the slices for proper soaking. Pour any excess batter back in jug & repeat until all absorbed. Transfer to the tray & bake for 30 minutes or until golden.

Cut into 4 sandwiches & serve with a dollop of yoghurt, nuts, maple syrup & berry sauce.

Long Weekend Dinner Party

The long weekend meant that I had some spare time on my hands so what better way to spend it then by slaving for a day in the kitchen so I could have friends over for dinner? For some this might seem too much like hard work yet is the perfect way to spend a day for me. Everything turned out lovely even though I don’t think dessert quite came together as per the recipe.

To start with we had a Caramelised leek, chevre & sage tart, the recipe was in a recent Gourmet Traveller & can be found here. I love the combination of leek & goats cheese & have made many different variations on this classic recipe over the years, this one was particularly good & I got to use some fresh sage from my newish herb garden.

Next up was a warming Basque Style Seafood stew from Allan Campion & Michele Curtis’ book ‘Food with Friends’. I love this book as most of the recipes are quite simple yet impressive at the same time. This one was brilliant in that you make the base first & then all you need to do when your guests are there is heat it up & add the seafood so there is not too much time wasted in the kitchen where you might miss out on the potentially juicy conversation in the other room! The smoky paprika, saffron & red onions really gave it a Spanish flavour & some crusty bread to mop up the juices made it more than enough to fill our bellies to bursting.

Desserts were these warm chocolate-espresso fondants also from Gourmet Traveller, the recipe again can be found on-line here. Again most of the prep was done in advance so I just had to put them together before baking in the oven and in the end although they tasted pretty good I don’t think it quite worked for me, the batter was very thick & as a result the sides didnt seal properly around the oozy centre & they also didn’t rise much so I only got 4 puddings where the recipe stated 6 & I used a smaller mould than stated. Still as I said, delish though I wont be making this one again.

For those of you who would love to try the stew which I very highly recommend, here is the recipe, note - I omitted the crabs & I only added half of the almonds which I think was heaps.

Basque-style seafood stew

Serves 6-8

60ml (1/4 cup) olive oil
2 Spanish onions, diced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
2 small red chillies, deseeded & diced
2-3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon smoky paprika
12 saffron threads, infused in 2 tablespoons boiling water
250ml (1 cup) white wine
750ml (3 cups) chicken or fish stock
1 x 400g can tomatoes
500g pipis or mussels
500g firm white fish fillets, cut into chunks
18 green prawns, peeled & de-veined
2 red capsicum, roasted, peeled & sliced
150g blanched almonds, chopped
salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Heat a large heavy based saucepan over medium heat. Add oil & onion & cook for 4-5 minutes until soft. Add garlic & chillies & cook for 1-2 minutes until fragrant. Add bay leaves, paprika, saffron & white wine. Bring to the boil & reduce by half. Add stock & tomatoes, bring to the boil, then reduce heat & simmer for 15 minutes. Set aside until ready to serve.

Wash pipis or mussels & remove beards. If using live crabs, freeze for 1 hour to put them to sleep. Cut each crab into quarters, leaving claws attached. Rinse each piece under cold running water to remove innards. Drain well & refrigerate until needed along with fish & prawns.

Reheat sauce, check seasoning, add capsicum & almonds. Once boiling, add crabs, cook for 3 minutes & then add pipis or mussels and prawns. Cook for 2 minutes then add fish & cook for 1 minute. Season to taste. Sprinkle with parsley, serve in large bowls with crusty bread to mop up all of the juices.

Miso Ramen with Five Spice Roast Pork

Here is a warming, quick & healthy meal just perfect for a cold midweek dinner. Everything is prepared in the time it takes the pork to cook & then its really just throwing things into the pot at different stages, I couldn’t believe how easy it was & thought it was sure to be a disaster as it seemed too simple, yet it was delicious & my parents even raved about it, they are big fans of asian style soups & since a recent bout of food poisoning have been too scared to eat any out lately. My only concern was that the miso I used had msg in it, do they all & is it really all that bad for you, it didn’t seem to have any ill effects on us last night?

Miso ramen with 5 spice roast pork (based on a recipe from Delicious)

600g pork tenderloin fillet
sesame oil
1 tspn ground coriander
1 tspn five spice powder
2.5 litres salt reduced chicken stock
200g dried thin egg noodles
4 large mushrooms, sliced
2 x 18g sachets miso soup paste
Bunch baby bok choy
Soy sauce to aste
2 spring onions, thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 200c. Rub the pork fillet with a few drops of sesame oil & then coat with the blended coriander, five spice & salt & freshly ground black pepper. Place in a roasting pan, then roast for 20-25 minutes until cooked through. Cover with foil & rest for 5 minutes, then slice thinly.

Bring the stock to the boil in a large saucepan over high heat. Add noodles & mushrooms, then reduce heat to medium & simmer for 2 minutes. Stir in the miso, then the bok choy & simmer for a further 2 minutes or until greens are just wilted. Stir in soy sauce to taste. Divide the noodles & vegetables among 4 bowls & top with sliced pork. Ladle the soup on top & add a few drops of sesame oil to each. Garnish with spring onions.

Biscuit Time

It seems like lately it’s been cakes, cakes & more cakes & way too much chocolate, so much so that in fact I am a bit sick of chocolate & cant believe I am even saying that! So to put matters right I baked some biscuits for Megan’s visit this week. I had a little left over lemon curd that had been sitting in the fridge for ages which I was dying to use up & for the rest of the biscuits I opened a jar of sunny ridge strawberry jam which we bought from the farm on our recent long weekend away, super sweet & yum. Tasty bickies with a choice of sweet or tangy too so something to suit everyone (with a sweet tooth that is!)

Lemon Curd & Jam Biscuits

180g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
1 ½ tspns vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups (300g) plain flour, sifted
½ teaspoon baking powder
Lemon Curd
Jam

Preheat oven to 180c. Place the butter, sugar & vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer & beat until light & creamy. Add the egg & beat well. Stir through the flour & baking powder & mix to form a dough. Roll 2 teaspoons of the mixture into balls & place on baking paper lined trays leaving space between each to spread. Press deep dents into each with the back of a spoon & fill with either curd or jam. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Moroccan loveliness

This tagine I made for dinner the other night was not only easy but it really tasted delicious, my mum even loved it despite the fact that it had fresh coriander in it which she swears she hates (obviously I didn’t tell her I’d snuck it in until she decided she loved it). The spice paste was so simple yet seemed to give the tomatoes a very tangy flavour, definitely the saffron & lemon juice working wonders there I think. The addition of the eggs at the end was unique for me, I have never made a tagine like this before & it finished off the dish nicely lifting it beyond the ordinary every day, though having said that it is perfect for a simple week night dinner. I served this with some simple couscous.

Kofta Tagine (Recipe by Ben O’Donoghue published in Delicious)

1 large red onion, grated
500g lamb mince
2 tblspn chopped flat leaf parsley
2 tspn ground coriander
2 tbspn olive oil
800g canned chopped tomatoes
4 eggs
Coriander leaves, to serve

Spice paste

1 garlic clove
1-2 tbsn finely chopped coriander root
½ red onion, grated
1 tspn groun cumin
2 small pinches saffron threads
Juice of 1 lemon

For paste, pound garlic to a puree with a pinch of salt using a mortar & pestle. Add all other ingredients except juice, then work into a paste. Stir in juice & set aside.

Mix onion, mince, parsley & ground coriander well with salt & pepper. Use hands to shape into 12 balls. Heat oil in a heavy based pan over medium heat. Add meatballs and brown all over, then remove & set aside. Add paste & stir for 1 minute until aromatic. Return meatballs to pan, add tomato & simmer over low heat for 30 minutes until meatballs are cooked & sauce has thickened. Carefully crack eggs on top for a few minutes until cooked through. Serve with coriander.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I had another birthday yesterday & to celebrate I made this luscious cake that I saw Maggie Beer whip up on the Cook & the Chef, it is very decadent containing orange zest, whisky soaked raisins, a LOT of very rich chocolate & almonds just to name a few of the ingredients. I went to The Retreat for dinner with the family which was nice & relaxing, for a change there was no mad running around after work cooking & causing chaos in the kitchen & best of all no dishes for anyone.