Pasta de la What’s In The Fridge

Posted by trish on Feb 1, 2012 in Eat | 1 comment

Penne with Broccoli, Peas, Pine Nuts, Goats Cheese Feta and some leftover herb/breadcrumb mix from when I made Cheat’s Chicken Parmagiana.

This actually turned out quite well.  I made a egg/cream sauce, so it was like a carbonara (one egg, 20oml of Philadelphia Cream For Cooking, whisked together).

While the pasta was cooking I toasted the pinenuts a frying pan and when they were done I removed them and toasted the breadcrumbs in the same pan.

I steamed the broccoli separately but in hingsight I could have tossed the florets and the frozen peas into the boiling penne when it had a couple of minutes left to cook.

After I strained the pasta/veg, I put it back in the pot and poured the egg/cream over it and tossed it gently until the sauce had coated everything.

I chopped the big cubes of marinated goats cheese feta into bits and sprinkled it on top.

I reckon this would be sensational if you started by pan-frying some pancetta or really good bacon.

Curried couscous

Posted by trish on Jan 15, 2012 in Eat | 1 comment

I’ve blogged this recipe before but it’s in the archives so I thought I’d put it up again, given the time of year.  This is a great salad to serve with bbq’d chicken or lamb.  My kids can make it, and they love to eat it.  And whenever I serve it up to guests, they ask for the recipe.

It comes from this book, which I first saw on the kitchen shelf of my American by-marriage-aunt, Susie.  When I went to New York in 2004 I bought myself a copy of it, and it falls open to this recipe.

Ina Garten (aka The Barefoot Contessa) – she has a website with more recipes!

Curried Couscous

1 1/2 cups couscous

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1/4 cup plain yoghurt

1/4 cup good olive oil

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon curry powder

1/4 teaspoon ground tumeric

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

half cut grated carrot

half cup minced fresh flat leaf parsley (Continental or Italian)

half a cup dried currants

1/4 cup blanched, sliced almonds (pine nuts are also good)

2 spring onions (scallions) thinly sliced, white and green parts

1/4 finely diced red onion

Place the couscous in a medium bowl.  Melt the butter in the boiling water and pour over the couscous.  Cover tightly and allow the couscous to soak for five minutes.  Fluff with a fork.

Whisk together the yoghurt, olive oil, vinegar, curry, tumeric, salt and pepper.  Pour over the fluffed couscous and mix well with a fork.  Add the carrots, parsley, currants, almonds, spring onions and red onions, mix well and taste for seasoning.  Serve at room temperature.

Simple Salmon

Posted by trish on Jan 12, 2012 in Eat | 3 comments

I’m pretty fussy when it comes to where I buy fruit & veg, fish, meat and chicken from. At some time or another I have bought some of all these things and they have been such poor quality or so far beyond their use-by/best-before date that I’ve had to throw them away, and that bothers me more than just about anything (yes, I try to get refunds/exchanges whenever possible). So most of the time I stick to a couple of trusted suppliers and tend to shy away from the big supermarkets and bulk-buying butchers.

I’m particularly fussy when it comes to fish, but when I was at Costco the other day they had some salmon that was labelled as packed on that day. And it looked pretty good. I took a chance and bought a whole side of salmon, skinned and pin-boned. I think I paid about $30/kg for it, which is good.

Well, it was delicious. Definitely fresh, and the flavour was superb. I cut it up into 180g pieces, wrapped each one in a couple of slices of prosciutto, pan-seared them for two minutes on each side then finished off in the oven for about 7 minutes to cook them right through.  Since the oven was on, we had them with roasted kipfler potatoes and a quick green salad.

foodie mosaic

Posted by trish on Jan 3, 2012 in Eat | 0 comments

My twitter/blogging friend Helen inspired me to make a mosaic out of all the recipes I made and blogged about last year.  I got to 20 and fell asleep at the keyboard.  Also, as I was going back through all of these I was fixing up the formatting that had been mucked about by that script virus attack my blog suffered last year.

Now I need to post the links to each of these recipes… someday…

Helen not only did the mosaic properly, but her mosaic is of 30 things she KNITTED and CROCHETED which makes her the winner of the Who Has More Creative Energy contest.  She’s actually quite awesome, in fact.

pasta with prawns & rocket

Posted by trish on Oct 26, 2011 in Eat | 0 comments

The weekend that PJ took the girls to the coast to watch whales, I stayed home to host a Girls’ Weekend with several of my old school friends who are all turning 40 this year.  We booked in the weekend sometime last year when I discovered that there was a very cool date coming up – 7,8,9/10/11 (sorry, that doesn’t really work for you Americans who write it MM/DD/YYYY – oh well).  We talked about what we might get up to in order to appropriately mark the occasion of our 40th Birthdays and in the end Nina’s suggestion to stay in, cook dinner and drink excellent wine got the most votes.  So that’s what we did.  And here’s what she cooked:

JAMIE OLIVER’S SPAGHETTI CON GAMBERETTI E RUCOLA

(SPAGHETTI WITH PRAWNS & ROCKET)

Serves 4.

455g dried spaghetti

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1-2 dried red chillis, crumbled (Nina used a fresh one, the rebel)

400g peeled raw prawns

1 small wineglass of white wine (that’s about 200ml, I reckon)

2 heaped tablespoons of sun-dried tomato puree, or 6 sun-dried tomatoes blitzed in a blender

zest and juice of 1 lemon

2 handfuls of rocket, roughly chopped

Cook your spaghetti in a large pan of salted boiling water according to packet instructions.  Meanwhile, heat 3 good lugs of extra virgin olive oil in a large fying pan and toss in the garlic and chilli.

As the garlic begins to colour, add the prawns and saute them for a minute.  Add the white wine and the tomato puree and simmer for a couple of minutes.

When the pasta is ready, drain it in a colander, reserving a little of the cooking water.  Toss the spaghetti with the sauce, squeeze in the lemon juice, add half the chopped rocket, adding a little of the reserved cooking water if you want to loosen the sauce a bit, and correct the seasoning.

Divide between 4 plates and sprinkle with grated lemon zest and the rest of the rocket leaves.

Can I just say – the lemon zest makes this dish.  Yum.

basics

Posted by trish on Oct 22, 2011 in Eat | 0 comments

When the weather is a bit cooler we have risotto a couple of times each month. When the weather starts to warm up we have it less frequently, but with spring vegetables.  Asparagus is perfect for risotto.

I always use the bones from a roast chicken to make stock which I then freeze, ready to use for risotto.  I’ve been using the same basic recipe for risotto for years but changing the ingredients I add to it.  I’m sure this method would horrify some risotto purists but it works for us so I continue to do it this way.  One day I might branch out and make a different basic risotto, but we all love this one so much I can’t really see the point.

My risotto is basically made with rice and chicken stock, with other stuff added.  The kids’ favourite is leek, chicken and roast pumpkin.  I recently made this version (pictured) with asparagus and fetta.  Peas and prawns are delicious.  There are a million combinations, just think about what pasta ingredients or pizza toppings you like and thrown them in (though less is more… two or three flavour combinations should suffice).  You can cook the meat and vegetables separately beforehand then add them when the rice is almost cooked to reheat them through.

RISOTTO WITH ASPARAGUS & FETTA

At least 4 cups homemade chicken or vegetable stock, simmering on the stove

2 cups Arborio rice

2 leeks, finely sliced (or one brown onion if that’s all you have)

2 garlic cloves, crushed

one bunch of asparagus spears, stalks finely sliced.   If you prefer larger pieces, pre-cook them and set aside.

100g crumbled fetta + extra for garnishing.

60g butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

Heat the stock in a pot on the stove and allow to simmer.  Put the kettle on to boil as well so you have some more hot liquid ready if you need it later.

Heat the olive oil and butter in a heavy based saucepan over medium heat.  Add the leeks and garlic and stir with a wooden spoon until softened.

Add the rice and stir to coat in buttery goodness.  Stir for 1-2 minutes.(You could add a glass of white wine at this point if you like, then keep going with the recipe after the liquid has been absorbed).

Add the stock to the rice about 1 cup at a time, stirring well after each edition.  The heat should be not so high that the liquid quickly bubbles up and evaporates; you want the rice to absorb it.  Aim for what looks like a gentle simmer.

When all the stock has been used up, taste a couple of grains of rice and see if they’re cooked yet.  They should be al dente, with a bit of bite.  If not, add hot water from the kettle half a cup at a time until the rice is cooked.

Add the fetta and stir through to melt.  Taste for seasoning.

Add the asparagus and stir.  Divide onto plates, sprinkle with the remaining fetta and asparagus spear tops if you’ve got them set aside.  Drizzle with a little olive oil if you like.

pancakes my way

Posted by trish on Oct 15, 2011 in Eat | 3 comments

Years of making pancakes on a Sunday morning for the pancake-loving second daughter in my life has taught me a couple of things.  First, it’s possible to under-cook a pancake and serve it up with a wet, squishy middle.  Second, pancake batter tastes remarkably better with a bit of sugar and/or some vanilla bean paste.  And third, you can get them extra-fluffy and light if you let the batter sit for half an hour after you’ve mixed it before you cook them up.

My Pancake Recipe (which is actually Donna Hay’s Pancake Recipe, slightly tweaked)

This makes about eight 15cm-diameter pancakes.

Add an extra cup of flour, an extra egg, an extra teaspoon of baking powder and some more milk to make 12-16 pancakes.

2 cups plain flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

2 eggs

75g butter

1 1/2 to 2 cups milk (or 1 cup milk plus buttermilk OR cream OR Philadelphia Cream For Cooking)

1/3 cup white sugar

splash of vanilla or equivalent amount of vanilla bean paste

Put the butter into the frying pan you’ll use to cook the pancakes and melt it over a low heat.  Meanwhile, combine the milk, eggs and vanilla before adding to the dry ingredients.  When that is all mixed in, add the melted butter and stir thoroughly to incorporate into the batter.  You won’t need to oil the pan any further, in fact you might want to wipe it out with some paper towel before cooking the first pancake.

I like the pancake batter to be thin enough to pour easily from the jug, but not so thin that they spread out immediately in the pan and you end up with a crepe.  Experiment with the batter until you get it how you like it.

Make sure the pancakes cook properly.  Don’t flip it over until the large bubbles have formed and then popped, and then don’t remove from heat until you’ve had a peek underneath to check it’s nice and brown (the pancakes in the first picture were undercooked by my impatient daughter).  Better to overcook slightly than undercook, I always say.

Serve with berries and vanilla yoghurt and drizzled with maple syrup.

salad

Posted by trish on Oct 13, 2011 in Eat | 0 comments

I had several of my school friends over for the weekend for a combined 40th birthday celebration (sooo much blog fodder) and Nina made this salad for dinner on Saturday night.  It’s from ‘Jamie’s Italy’ by Jamie Oliver, and it’s called Insalata Amalfitana – Amalfi salad.

This summer I am going to try very hard not to serve up the usual combination of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and capsicum.  I am going to try instead to find the most unusual combination of ingredients and see how that goes over with the family.  This salad was generally well received by the kids, and enthusiastically gobbled up by the grown-ups.You need lovely sweet oranges for this one.

JAMIE OLIVER’S INSALATA AMALFITANA

1 bulb fennel, washed

1 red onion, peeled

1 cucumber

a large handful of radishes, with tops, washed.

optional: a small handful of ice cubes

1 tablespoon good-quality herb or red-wine vinegar

good-quality extra-virgin olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 oranges, peeled, segmented and pips removed

Remove the herby tops from the fennel and put them to one side, then trim the fennel at both ends and, if need be, lose the outside layer – it’s sometimes a bit dry.  Split the fennel in half and slice lengthways as finely as possible.  Put into a large bowl.  Remove both ends of the onion, then half it and slice it as finely as possible.  Slice the cucumber finely.  When it comes to the radishes, leave about 1cm of stalk on them.  Then slice a little off each radish, roll it on to the flat edge and finely slice.

If you want to throw a few ice cubes in the bowl and toss them together with everything, bizarrely enough this does cause the veg to go even crunchier.  Just keep them in there for a few minutes.  The cowboy way of doing this is to add the veg to iced water, but if you’ve ever done that then yes, the veg goes crunchy, but most of the flavour drains into the water.

Remove the ice cubes from the sliced vegetables. In a bowl mix together 2 tablespoons of good herb or red wine vinegar and 6 or so tablespoons of a good quality extra virgin olive oil.  Mix well, then taste.  You might want to add a little extra vinegar, depending on how sweet your oranges are.  Taste and season with salt and pepper.  Dress the salad with this and then add the orange segments and any juice.  Toss a few times, then divide between your plates and sprinkle wit hthe saved fennel tops.  Serve straight away.

muddy chocolate cake

Posted by trish on Oct 2, 2011 in Eat | 2 comments

I have used this recipe for Chocolate Mud Cake every time I’ve needed a really good chocolate cake for a special occasion.  The cake looks light and airy, but the first mouthful is intense and moist and very, very rich.  I only make it for special occasions because, to be honest, it’s a bit fiddly to put together.  But it is sooo worth the effort.  Give it a try next time you’ve got the inlaws coming for dinner and you need something to serve with all the new season berries.  Add a dollop of thick cream and you’ve got dessert.  You don’t need icing or ganache or anything else… just the cake.  Yum.

I don’t have a picture of this one, presented on a plate, because PJ took this – in its tin and wrapped in paper and Gladwrap – to the coast this weekend for the boys’ annual Footy Grand Final Weekend which happened to coincide with the 40th birthday of one of his best mates, Hugh, whom we went to high school and college with.  Happy Birthday Shug! Hope you enjoyed the cake!

‘Muddy Chocolate Cake’

from the marie claire book ‘flavours’ by Donna Hay (2000)

300g (10oz) dark couverture chocolate, chopped

250g (8 oz) butter

5 eggs, separated

1/4 cup caster (superfine) sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup self-raising flour

berries, to serve.

Preheat the oven to 130C (260F). Yes, that’s quite low.

Place the chocolate and butter in a saucepan and stir over low heat until melted and smooth.  Set aside.

Place the egg yolks in the bowl of an electric mixer with the sugar and vanilla and beat until the mixture is thick and pale.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Fold* the chocolate mixture into the egg yolk mixture, sift the flour over the top and gently fold through.

Carefully fold the egg whites through the mixture and then pour in a 20cm (8 in) round cake tin,  lined with non-stick baking paper.**Bake for 75 minutes or until the cake is firm.  Cool in the tin.

Serve the cake with berries.  Serves 8-10.

The flavour and texture of this cake are best when it is served at room temperature, not chilled.

*Folding is one of those weird cooking techniques that makes you really nervous that you’re doing it wrong.  The point of folding is to maintain the air content in whatever it is you’re mixing.  The egg yolks will be quite light and airy, and if you beat the chocolate into the egg yolks you’ll beat all that air out of it.  Same goes with the egg whites.  So get a big wooden spoon or a large spatula, and try to stir in a way that lifts the mixture up and over itself, using big swooping light strokes that go up and over rather than around and around in the bowl.  The egg whites are tricky to mix in, and you’ll wonder how on earth it is possible to incorporate all that egg whitey-foam… just keep going.  You’ll end up with a really lovely moussey-light batter.  I fold the chocolate into the egg yolk gradually – if you can, get someone else to pour it into the yolks in a thin stream as you are folding, I think that just seems to make it easier for it all to mix together evenly.  Also,  I worry that the chocolate might still be warm enough to turn the eggs into scrambled eggs, so adding the chocolate in a thin stream means you don’t hit the eggs with a sudden wave of heat.

**I also spray the tin with cooking spray before I add the paper.  It’s an extra guarantee that the cake won’t stick, but it also helps to adhere the paper to the bottom and sides of the tin which is useful because that stuff has a tendency to want to roll back up again.I’ve been making this recipe in a 10 inch cake tin which serves 10-12 generously.  Obviously I increase the quantities of everything:

450g chocolate

375g butter

7 eggs

1/4 plus 1/8 cup of sugar

180g self-raising flour

80-90 minutes cooking time.

Saucy Spice Company

Posted by trish on Sep 20, 2011 in Eat | 4 comments

Foodie friends Andrew & Raewyn gave us a box of spices as a house-warming present.

I’ve seen these in shops before, but never tried them.

Mmm… Moroccan Lamb Tagine! Beef Massaman! Butter Chicken and Beef Rendang!I had some chicken in the fridge, so the first one I made was Rangoon Lime Chicken.

I love the packaging.

This is what’s inside; a little cellophane package of yumminess.The exhaust fan above our stove is on the fritz, so I opted to cook this outside on the wok-burner attached to our BBQ.

It was very easy.  Heat the oil, seal the chicken pieces, toss in the spices, mix it all about, add a few extra bits (the full recipe is enclosed in the pack) and simmer for half an hour.  I steamed some broccolini and made some basmati rice to go with it.  It was definitely ‘medium’ spicy; too spicy for the kids, perfect for PJ and I.  I’m going to visit their website and see what they’ve got in the ‘mild’ category.

It was delicious, and I can understand why it made it into the ‘Favourites’ box.

The kids have requested the Butter Chicken next.  I’m curious to see how it compares with the Butter Chicken I’ve been making for the past couple of years.

cookies part 3

Posted by trish on Aug 30, 2011 in Eat | 6 comments

The dough has spent about 60 hours ‘resting’.  Last night,  I took it out of the fridge so it could come to room temperature.  This morning, while the kids were eating breakfast and getting ready for school, I cooked three more batches.They were about 30g each, and I cooked the first batch at 180C for 10 minutes.

The next ones I cooked for 10 minutes, but I turned the oven down to 160C (I have a fan-forced Smeg oven)

Perfect, except I forgot the salt.

Cookie nirvana!

These are a much more manageable size.  30g is about a tablespoon and a bit.  And these are about the size of my palm, rather than the size of my foot which is how they would have turned out if I’d followed the recipe.  Also, I don’t believe they need to be cooked for 18-20 minutes, but you’ll need to experiment with your own oven.  These are still quite squishy in the middle, but they are definitely lightly crisp on the outside.  And the colour is good.  By tomorrow, they’ll be extra-chewy (the first batch have become delightfully chewy after 24 hours in an air-tight box).

So… the Recipe:  Here it is, cut&pasted from Kate’s blog.

My comments are in green.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

2 cups minus 2 Tbsp. (8 ½ oz.) cake flour

1 2/3 cups (8 ½ oz.) bread flour (I used plain flour)

1 ¼ tsp. baking soda

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

1 ½ tsp. coarse salt, such as kosher

2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups; 10 oz.) unsalted butter, softened (310g of butter)

1 ¼ cups (10 oz.) light brown sugar (I used dark brown, and that definitely makes darker cookies)

1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. (8 oz.) granulated sugar (this is just good old white sugar)

2 large eggs

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 ¼ pounds bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks, preferably about 60% cacao content, such as Ghirardelli (available now at your local CostCo! Whooppee!)

Sea salt or kosher salt for garnishing

Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk well; then set aside.

Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low; then add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined.

(Unless you have a plastic guard that sits around the rim of the bowl, this will make a big mess at first, with flour flying everywhere. I found that carefully holding a dish towel around the top of the bowl helped a lot.)

Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly to incorporate. Press plastic wrap against the dough, and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. The dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F. Remove the bowl of dough from the refrigerator, and allow it to soften slightly (this will take a long time to soften… allow an hour.  It’s almost worth dividing the mixture into half or thirds, and defrosting only as much as you’ll need).

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.  Using a standard-size ice cream scoop – mine holds about 3 fluid ounces, or about 1/3 cup – scoop six mounds of dough onto the baking sheet, making sure to space them evenly.(This makes SuperSize cookies. Be warned, these cookies are very, very rich)

Sprinkle lightly with sea salt, and bake until golden brown but still soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies onto the rack to cool a bit more.

cookie story

Posted by trish on Aug 29, 2011 in Eat | 3 comments

The recipe called for 3 and a half ounce mounds of cookie dough.  That’s about 75 grams.  A decent handful.  I decided that was too much, and reduced it to 50 grams.  They were still pretty enormous.

This is one 50gm ball, sitting on my iPhone.  See how big?  Huge.

(It took ages for the cookie dough to soften after being in the fridge – it was as hard as butter, not surprisingly.  Eventually I used an icecream scoop and moulded them into balls, but I wonder if it would have been better to bring the batter to room temperature before trying to scoop it out?  But then, wouldn’t they spread out even more during cooking?  Not sure…)

The chocolate chips melted into the dough.

I think the recipe intended for them to keep their shape; I think perhaps I just used the wrong kind of chocolate.

They spread out a lot, more than I expected them to, especially as I’d put them into the oven as barely-flattened balls.  They became quite thin, which is not my preference.  I like thick, chunky cookies.

I made a few batches from the same dough, all the same size, but adjusting the cooking time.  I can’t understand how you could cook these for 18-20 minutes without cremating them.  And the less time I cooked them, the better they looked.

The kids ate them while still very warm.

So, the verdict?

They are delicious.  They are too thin for my liking, but the flavour is pretty amazing.  I used very good quality chocolate (Lindt, bittersweet, 58% couverture) but I have since found a bag of “bittersweet chocolate chips for cooking” from Costco, which I think will be much better in terms of keeping their shape.

The cookies have a light, crisp shell and are definitely soft and chewy in the middle – but again, too thin.  I like my cookies to be much thicker and rounder, and this is what I’ll be hoping to achieve with the 48-hours batch.

The salt on top is absolutely divine.  The kids were fairly unimpressed with the salt but I think it really brings out the flavour of the chocolate.  My friend Ann agreed with me, so, the Defence rests.

I’ve made about a dozen, and I reckon I’ve got enough dough for two dozen more.  I’m going to bake much smaller cookies (30gm) and will cook them for 10-12 minutes.  I’ll let you know how they turn out.

1.25 pounds

Posted by trish on Aug 27, 2011 in Eat | 6 comments

The chocolate chip cookies I’m blogging/making this weekend (and let’s not kid around here… these chocolate chip cookies are absolutely worth three blog posts and a dozen or more Tweets) come from an American recipe.  I saw the quantity of chocolate chips (1 and 1/4 pounds) and figured that was somewhere in the vicinity of 600gm.  In fact, it’s a bit under that.  So I bought a 1kg bag of 64% bittersweet Lindt chocolate pieces and set about turning them into Chocolate Chips.  Three hours later I had small pieces and the added bonus of chocolate under my fingernails.

Here’s the dough, ready to go into the fridge.  I really didn’t think there would be enough dough in that bowl to swallow up all those chocolate chips but, well, you can see for yourself.  I’m now feeling more optimistic that there will be enough appetite in me to swallow up all the chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Posted by trish on Aug 25, 2011 in Eat | 2 comments

The other day a recipe on Pinterest caught my eye… It was called

The Only Chocolate Chip Cookie I Will Ever Need To Know How To Make For The Rest Of My Life.

Actually, the title was in ALL CAPS which is why it probably leapt out at me.  But then I read the recipe, and thought… oh yeah, baby.

Except, it’s one of those American recipes that askes for ounces of stuff.  And sticks of butter.  And cake flour.  And a pound and a quarter of bittersweet chocolate discs.  So… complicated.  Too complicated for me to bother with.And then today I was at the local supermarket and lookit lookit!

So I’ve been inspired to make these cookies.  But you’ll have to wait, because the recipe says you have to chill the cookie dough for at least 24 hours, and 36 if you can stand it.  So I’m going to do that, and then I shall report back.

If you want to join me in this culinary adventure, and you have access to cake flour and bittersweet chocolate disks and a set of kitchen scales that can help you out with the ounces, here’s the recipe.

And here’s a picture to whet your appetite.

(thanks to For Me, For You by Kate Miss for the recipe and the photo!)

easy as pie

Posted by trish on Aug 23, 2011 in Eat | 3 comments

My friend Ann gave me this recipe ages and ages ago, and I finally made it this week because I’m trying to cook more vegetarian meals.  And there’s nothing better than a vegetarian meal that also contains three different kinds of cheese.  Am I right?

Let me start by saying that this pie is ridiculously easy and yet it looks so impressive.  My mother used to make spinach pie the traditional way – you know, layers and layers of filo pastry with armfuls (arms-full?) of spinach she’d brought in from the garden.  Clearly that woman had too much time on her hands, what with her four children.

I took a quick look at Ann’s recipe and decided that there would be enough for a couple of pies if I just added another egg and a little more cheese.  Turns out I was right.  This is one of those recipes that can be tweaked quite a bit, ingredients-wise, just as long as you maintain the egg/milk : filling ratio.  I reckon you could do this as a quiche lorraine using bacon, perhaps some mushrooms, throw in some baby spinach… just maintain that egg/milk quantity so you do actually end up with something that looks vaguely pie-ish.

So this is Ann’s recipe with a couple of tweaks.  Thanks Ann!

ANN’S COUNTRY SPINACH AND FETA PIE

(serves 6 as an entree, or 4 for dinner)

250g packet frozen spinach, thawed (zap frozen spinach in microwave on high for 4 mins then strain in sieve to drain away the water)

3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

100g feta cheese, crumbled

100g haloumi cheese, roughly chopped

2 shallots or green onions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed

3 eggs

1/2 cup cream (or milk)

Preheat oven to 200 C.

Line two oven trays with baking paper.

Squeeze excess liquid from spinach.  In a medium bowl, combine the spinach, parmesan, feta, haloumi, shallots, garlic and nutmeg.  Stir well.

In a small jug, whisk the eggs and milk/cream together.  Season with salt and pepper if you like.

Place a pastry sheet on each tray.  Trim the corners to make a circle.  Divide the spinach mixture in half and put half in the middle of each pastry round, then flatten out with the back of a fork, leaving a 4cm border all the way around.

Fold the sides of the pastry up around the filling to encase.

At first, I just folded four sides up and pinched the corners.  This is wrong, I think.  You should fold up a little at a time, squeezing the pastry together so it’s sorta pleated.)  Then fill each pie with the egg/milk mixture.  You might need to coax the egg into the corners.Here’s a picture since I suck at giving descriptions:

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden.  Actually, this took about 15 minutes in my oven, so if I were you I’d check it after 15 and see how it looks.

A few minutes after you take it out of the oven it will expel most of the hot air that makes it looks so light and fluffy in the middle, and you’ll be left with something that looks much more like a rustic quiche than a country pie.  I’m pretty sure the taste is still as good.

Go forth and bake!

Cheat’s Chicken Parmigiana

Posted by trish on Aug 14, 2011 in Eat | 3 comments

I made this the other night after finding it on page 85 of this month’s delicious. magazine.  It was easy, and delicious.

First, make your tasty breadcrumbs. (hint: this just about makes enough for two meals; store extra in the freezer for next time).

Then, make your tasty tomato sauce topping.

Next, start cooking your chicken breast fillets.

Then assemble everything, and pop it in the oven.  See? Easy.

I’ve never made chicken parmigiana, or anything parmigiana, so I have no idea what aspect of this recipe makes it “cheating”.

CHEAT’S CHICKEN PARMIGIANA (serves 4)

1/3 cup olive oil

2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf (Continental) parsley

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tbs tomato paste

1 tsp fennel seeds (I didn’t have these)

1 small red chilli (I omitted this too)

400g can chopped tomatoes

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

pinch of caster sugar

4 x 170g chicken breast fillets

4 bocconcini, sliced

Steamed broccolini, to serve

Preheat oven to 200 C.

Place 2 tbs oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add breadcrumbs and cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes until golden.  Cool slightly, then season.  Fold through 2 tbs each parsely and parmesan, then remove from pan and set aside.

In the same pan, heat 1 tbs oil over med-high heat.  Cook onion and garlic, stirring, for 2-3 minutes until soft.  Add tomato paste, fennel and chilli, then cook for 1 minute or until fragrant.  Add tomato, Worcestershire, sugar and 60ml water, then simmer, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes or until thick.  Taste for seasoning… I used a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and about a tablespoon of sugar in the end.

At this point, I steamed some broccolini in the microwave until just-done.  Then I found some slivered almonds in the pantry (I had searched unsuccessfully for pine nuts).  I heated a frying pan over medium heat, tossed the almonds in and let them toast for a couple of minutes until they started to brown then I turned the heat off and left them for a while…

Heat remaining 1 tbs oil in an ovenproof frying pan over med-high heat (if you don’t have something that will go from the stovetop to the oven, just cook in the frying pan then transfer to an oven-proof dish).

Season the chicken and cook for 5 minutes, then turn and cook for a further 2 minutes until just golden.

Transfer to the oven and bake for 5 minutes…. I put some lemon-infused olive oil into the frying pan with the almonds and heated it up again.  When the oil was hot, I tossed in the broccolini…

…I put the now-hot veggies in a serving dish for everyone to help themselves to at the table.

Back to the chicken…

Spoon over sauce and top with bocconcini and remaining parmesan, then cook for a further 2-3 minutes until chicken is cooked through and the cheese is melted.

I forgot to take a photo of it in the baking dish with the breadcrumbs on top.

Slice chicken and arrange on plates.  (I skipped the slicing part).

Add some tasty greens and voila!

ladies who lunch

Posted by trish on Aug 9, 2011 in Eat | 4 comments

My friend Clare, the one with the chef qualifications and the one who taught me how to debone a chicken and who bought me a Kasumi boning knife for my 40th – that Clare – came around for lunch today which of course inspired me to make something delicious and ultimately very impressive.

Behold Bill Granger’s spicy roast pumpkin salad with feta and olives.

This was SO easy. And with my new and improved north-facing kitchen I no longer have to struggle to get enough light for taking photos.  Suddenly, everything I cook looks even better.

I halved the ingredients to serve two people, and didn’t really measure the fetta or count the olives.  I mean, who does that?

BILL GRANGER’S SPICY ROAST PUMPKIN SALAD

(from his book, bill’s food)

3 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

800g pumpkin, cut into 2cm cubes

100g baby English spinach leaves

150g marinated feta, drained and crumbled

20 Kalamata olives, pitted.

DRESSING

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

60ml (1/4 cup) extra virgin olive oil

1 eschallot, finely sliced

Preheat oven to 200 C.

Place the olive oil, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper in a bowl and stir to combine.  Add the pumplin and stir to coat.  Transfer to a roasting tin and bake for 30 minutes, or until the pumpkin is tender and slightly caramelized.

Whisk all the dressing ingredients together in a bowl until combined.

Divide the spinach leaves among four serving plates and scatter pumpkin, feta and olives over the top.  Drizzle each salad with dressing.  (Or, put all the salad ingredients + dressing into a big bowl, turn it over a few times to get it all mixed together and serve at the table on a big plate that everyone can help themselves to.)

Serves 4

New digs

Posted by trish on Aug 4, 2011 in Blog, Eat | 2 comments

Years ago I read some advice for ambitious young university graduates going into their first jobs.  It said to dress for the job you want to have, not the job you do have.  So even if you’re just the office admin assistant (which I was, for a while) you should invest in a couple of good suits and well-made shoes so you look like you mean business.  The mere act of getting dressed like your boss in the morning will lift you up a little bit higher, give you that extra confidence, and will ultimately help you on your way.  Also?  People will take you more seriously. 

If ya wanna be taken serious, ya got have serious hair.

PJ and I have discovered that this new house is like a brand new suit.  We feel happier, more energised, more optimistic and just ‘lighter’ when we are here.  I have new energy for my novel and for my Top Secret project, and PJ has his own venture on the boil that has suddenly taken a mammoth leap forward since we moved here.  It’s like we’ve been stuck in a house-rut as well as a life-rut, if that makes sense, and now that we are out of there we suddenly feel just so much more alive, and things are happening again whereas they had previously seemed a bit stalled.  It’s like the world has been waiting for us to take this step and now that we have, all this positive energy.

Can’t you just hear the choirs singing?

On a smaller scale, my new and vastly improved kitchen has got me cooking up a storm.  I made yo-yo biscuits yesterday.  The recipe said to bake them for 8-10 minutes, but my oven did it in 7.  I’m telling you, things are looking up.

YO-YO BISCUITS WITH LEMON ICING FILLING

200g unsalted butter, softened

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/3 cup icing sugar, sifted

2 cups plain flour, sifted

Lemon Icing:

1 cup icing sugar, sifted

20g unsalted butter, softened

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 180 (350F).

Place the butter, vanilla and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8-10 minutes or until creamy and pale.  Add the flour and beat until a smooth dough forms.  Roll teaspoons of the mixture into balls, place on baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper and press with a fork.  Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden.  Cool on wire racks.

To make the icing, place the sugar, butter and lemon juice in a bowl and stir well until smooth.  Spread half of the biscuits with lemon icing and sandwich with the remaining biscuits to serve.  Makes 30.

And here’s what I learned from making them:

It doesn’t make 30.  In order to get each biscuit exactly the same size, I weighed each teaspoonful of dough (16g each).  This gave me about 34 biscuits, which equals 17 little biscuit sandwiches.  To get 30, you’d need 60 biscuits, and with this quantity of dough you’re talking about very little biscuits.  Which would be fine, but they wouldn’t take as long to cook.

When you’ve sandwiched them together, put them back on your cooling rack, not onto a plate where they’ll tip over and slide apart.  The rack should keep them upright.

You can’t pop a whole one into your mouth and expect to be able to swallow it after a few chews.  This thing will fill your mouth with the most delicious sawdust ever and you’ll be gagging, reaching for a glass of milk.  Best to break them in half and then nibble.  Actually, these might even be better just served as single biscuits with a drizzle of lemon icing (slightly runnier than the thick, peanut-butter-consistency you need for this recipe).

unpalatable

Posted by trish on Jul 21, 2011 in Eat | 4 comments

When I was a kid I went for a sleep-over at somebody else’s house and for dinner that night was served something that I could barely force myself to eat.  I was old enough to know that it was impolite to refuse a meal, so I ate it.  But I can’t recall what it was. 

You may not remember the shape of the light but you will remain dazzled forever (Clive James).

On Tuesday night we had dinner at the hostel we stayed at near the ski fields that will be remembered in all its awful detail for the rest of our lives.

It was advertised as ‘curried chicken.’  In fact, it was very small, almost undetectable pieces of shredded chicken, with about a tablespoon’s worth of diced carrots and beans, swimming in a gelatinous white sauce that had been flavoured with something that made it vaguely spicey but not at all curry-like before being poured over an entire plateful of overcooked white rice.  There was a single floret of broccoli in the centre and then, dotted around the plate – for no apparent reason – were half a dozen walnut-sized dumplings.

Dinner the previous night had included an entree of a pretty decent chicken and sweetcorn soup.  I suspect the chef had found himself with a large quantity of soup left over and figured he could thicken it up with a bit of cornflour, chuck in some veggies and add a spoonful of out-of-date curry powder.  In fact, I’m 99% sure that’s what he did.

Madeleine couldn’t eat it, and I could hardly blame her.  It was really unpleasant on so many levels, not to mention the fact that it was obviously devoid of any nutritional value – the vegetables had been so overcooked as to be barely holding themselves together.  She was so ashamed at her lack of appetite that she actually left the table at the end of the meal so that she wouldn’t be there to face the chef or the waitress when they returned to clear the plates.  I ate as much of mine as I possibly could so as not to upset the staff but with every bite I wished I had ordered the alternative; a home-made meat pie with a massive serve of vegetables and chips that the people on the next table were devouring with smug glee.

There were plenty of people in the communal dining room who seemed to be quite happy with their Curried Chicken.  I don’t know what that says about the other people but there’s an offensive over-generalisation to be made here.

There was one family who struggled to eat theirs, but they managed – I overheard the mother tell the kids that “you have to have the rice but you don’t have to eat anything green or yellow.

“The chef had no doubt cottoned-on to the type of guests his hostel attracted, and so wasn’t bothering to put too much effort into the meals.  The kids meal on the second night was chips and nuggets and dim sims.  Not a pea or carrot in sight.  Why would you bother dishing it up if the kids aren’t going to eat it and the parents aren’t going to care?  For a chef, that particular job must be incredibly demoralising.

basics

Posted by trish on Jul 14, 2011 in Eat | 1 comment

I’ve got about three versions of this recipe in my enormous recipe file, but until now I have never actually got around to making it.  I seriously don’t know what’s taken me so long.

This is one of those recipes that is really easy, very quick, and ridiculously tasty – get the best quality ingredients you can find. I bought some excellent bacon at the Farmers’ Markets a few weeks ago, froze it in 300g portions, and I’ve been using it bit by bit since then and the flavour is really amazing.  You’ll never buy it from the supermarket again.  Supermarket bacon tastes crap.

If you have all your ingredients prepped and ready to go, it takes less than ten minutes to cook.  So you have to work fast.  (This is a Jamie Oliver recipe,  I think!)

PENNE WITH BROCOLLI & BACON

Serves 4.

350g penne, orrichette or whatever you have on hand.

2 large heads of broccoli or two bunches broccolini – chopped into bite-sizes pieces.  (If using broccolini, use the stems as well!)

6 slices short-cut bacon, cut into 1cm-wide strips (variation: pancetta)

2 cloves of garlic, squashed but kept mostly whole

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 slices day-old ciabatta or other woodfired bread – use a food processor to blitz into crumbs.

Half a cup of grated parmesan cheese, plus a little extra.

1.  Put the water for the pasta on to boil and start preparing the broccoli, bacon and bread.

2.  In a frying pan over medium heat, heat the olive oil and fry the bacon until it is starting to get nice and crispy.  Tip the pan so the oil drains to one side and remove the bacon onto a plate lined with paper towel.

The water is probably boiling by now, so tip the pasta in.  Set a timer to tell you when it’s got two minutes left to cook (ie penne takes about 8 minutes, so set a timer for 6 mins)

3.  Let the oil heat up again before adding the garlic.  Allow to cook for a couple of minutes but don’t let it burn.  You’re just trying to flavour the oil with the garlic.  When it’s done, remove and discard.

4.  Let the oil warm up again and tip the breadcrumbs into the frying pan.  Stir around so they absorb the oil.  (optional extra: toss in half a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes… I reckon the same quantity of lemon zest would also be nice).

5.  When the timer goes off, tip the broccoli into the pot with the pasta and reset the timer for two minutes.

6.  The breadcrumbs should be getting nicely brown and crispy by now.  Remove from the heat and tip them into a bowl.

7.  When the pasta/broccoli is ready, use a coffee cup to take half a cup of the cooking liquid from the pot and set aside.  Drain the pasta in a colander then return it to the pot over a very low heat.  Toss the bacon into and stir it all around; if it needs a bit of loosening up add some of the cooking liquid.  Add the parmesan cheese and keep tossing to coat.

8.  Divide the pasta into four bowls and top each bowl with a generous sprinkling of the breadcrumbs and even more parmesan cheese. Eat!