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!

guns for show, knives for a pro

Posted by trish on Jul 11, 2011 in Eat | 6 comments

Several weeks ago my good friend Clare taught me to debone a chicken, and the most important thing I learned during that lesson is that it is essential to have a decent knife.

You can’t debone a chicken with anything you’ve already got lying around in your drawer unless you’re a chef with a good set of knives or your mother is a chef and she bought you a set for your 21st and she still comes over regularly to sharpen them for you.  I meet neither of these criteria so for that lesson I borrowed one of Clare’s knives.

Clare and I were going to blog the deboning of the chicken for the HerCanberra website (she’s a contributor) but there were more than 100 step-by-step photos so now we’re thinking we might do a video instead… stay tuned.

My Dad is a champion knife-sharpener and some of my earliest memories are of him sharpening mum’s knives for her in the kitchen when I was growing up.  I learned to cut herbs and slice tomatoes and fillet fish using sharp knives in my mother’s kitchen.

When PJ and I got married we received a knife block with some pretty good knives, but fifteen years later they’ve been well and truly superceded by new and improved knife technology.  A few years ago I bought one good Australian-made Furi knife for PJ for Christmas and that kept me going for a while but after Clare’s chicken deboning lesson I came to the realisation that my kit needs updating.  Clare also came to that realisation and look what she and her husband Anthony got me for my 40th:

This is a boning knife.  It’s bloody sharp.  It’s a Kasumi which, according to the box, is a VG-10 Super Stainless Steel High Carbon 32 Layers Fine Stainless Steel Made in Seki, Japan.  I tried it out on a tomato.  I’m not even kidding, the tomato fell apart into five perfect slices just as I was sliding this thing out of its box.  This is a very, very special knife and I’m not nearly well enough qualified to use it.  But I’ll try.

Clare’s informed opinion that my knife collection needed updating was all it took to get me onto Peter’s of Kensington online to order a new set.  I couldn’t help myself.  Besides, they were on sale: $225 down from $599.  With a free sharpener.

These are Furi knives.  Like I said, I’ve got one of them (it’s a great big knife called the East/West Knife – it’s great for chopping vegetables) so I know they’re good.  Clare’s advice was to go to the store and ‘try them out’ which means to see how they feel in your hand – the weight, the balance, the shape etc are all important.  I use a Furi serrated knife at work to chop through enormous foccacia rolls and I’m pretty happy with it, so I took a chance and ordered the whole block.  But yes, it’s good advice to go and see how they feel.

So anyway the point of this entire post is to inspire you to buy yourself a decent knife, or maybe a whole set of knives.  Cooking is so much more pleasurable if you are using good quality equipment and it all starts with an excellent – and very sharp – knife.You’re more likely to chop off a finger using a blunt knife, by the way.  Blunt knives slip against the carrot rather than slice right into it, and it’s the slipping that’ll get your finger.

PS Who got the movie reference in the title?

basics

Posted by trish on Jul 7, 2011 in Eat | 1 comment

There’s a butcher who comes to the Farmers’ Markets only a few times a year, and he sells the most incredible beef.  I try to stock up on steaks when he’s in town, and last time he came he talked me into buying a couple of kilos of veal shanks to make Osso Bucco.  I’m so glad he did.  I really think the success of this dish is in the quality of the meat, so find yourself a good butcher.  If you’re in Canberra and you want to order some of Ian’s fantastic beef, you can get in touch with him via his website and find out when he’ll next be in town.  I’ve never tasted better steak in my life, and it feels good to be buying from a farmer who has such enormous respect for his animals and for Natural Farming techniques.

Sorry if you’re a vegetarian.

The pieces are cross-sections of the shank – the lower leg – of the animal.  I’ve made lamb shanks plenty of times but this is the first time I’ve cooked veal shanks.  The shanks I bought at the market were really thick and meaty – I’ve seen veal shanks at the supermarket and they aren’t particularly impressive. I never buy meat at the supermarket anymore.

Here’s what I learned about veal shanks: they have a membrane around them.  Each slice seems to be wrapped in a tight skin, a bit like you find on a slice of salami that hasn’t had its wrapper taken off.  You need to cut through this membrane at 1-2cm intervals around the slice of salami so that, when you’re cooking it and the membrane shrinks, the slice doesn’t curl up but instead lies flat.  You’ll need a sharp knife, and keep your fingers out of the way.

Once you’ve done that, you can make osso bucco like you’d make just about any casserole.  The thing with osso bucco is that the marrow from inside the bone adds a level of richness to the gravy that is other-worldly.  I’m not kidding, this was so delicious.

I think I had about ten pieces of veal, which was enough to feed six hungry people and have a little bit leftover for a couple of meat pies which I’m going to make for dinner tonight.  There was a fair bit of gravy left over so I tipped that into a big pot of bolognese sauce that was bubbling away on the stove.  Yum.

Veal shanks come in different sizes, so you might find it’s easier to buy two small pieces per person, or one large one per person.

(sorry this shot is out of focus… I hate trying to take pictures at night in my kitchen, the lighting is terrible and I don’t like to use the flash so I end up with a slow shutter speed.  But – look at the marbling in that meat.  And you can see the cuts I’ve made in the membrane on the piece on the right.)

This could be done in a slow-cooker (brown the meat first before adding to the pot) or you could cook the ingredients in a frying pan before transfering to an oven-proof dish (with a lid).  I used Le Pot.

There are a million variations of this recipe, but this is how I did it and it was delicious.

OSSO BUCCO

Serves 6-8

8 Veal shanks

1 large brown onion, finely chopped

1 celery stick, finely chopped

1 carrots, finely diced

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1/2 cup plain flour

Olive Oil

2 x 400g tins crushed tomatoes

1 cup chicken or veal or beef stock (I used beef, out of a packet)

200ml dry white wine

Two large pieces of lemon rind

Gremolata to serve:

1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf/continental parsley

the rest of the lemon rind from that lemon, finely grated

1 garlic clove, crushed (optional – I find it a bit strong)

Preheat oven to 160 C.

Put the flour in a large freezer bag and toss the veal pieces in it to coat.  Shake off the excess flour and stack them up on a plate.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a large heavy-based pan over a medium heat .  Brown the veal a few pieces at a time, get them nice and brown and then put aside and keep warm under some aluminium foil on another plate.  When you have cooked all the veal, add a little more olive oil to the pot and add the chopped vegies.  Stir 5-10 minutes or until soft.

Add the wine and let it bubble up for a minute and reduce.  Keep stirring the pot, this will lift any bits that are stuck to the base of the pot – aka “de-glazing”.

Return the veal pieces to the pot, laying them flat in a couple of layers, squish them in if you need to.  Pour over the wine, stock and the tomatoes, adding a little extra water if you need to in order to bring the liquid level up so the veal is covered.  Tuck the lemon rind in amongst the veal.  Put the lid on and pop it in the oven (or turn the slow cooker on LOW).

Cook in the oven for two hours.  With half an hour to go steam some greens and make some mashed potato (or if like me you can’t be bothered cut thick slices of Italian bread).  The meat should be falling off the bones, if not you can cook for a little longer, and add some more water if you need to.

Combine the parsley and grated lemon zest in a bowl, and sprinkle this over the veal as you dish it up.

le macaron

Posted by trish on Jul 3, 2011 in Eat | 9 comments

As you may have seen, my 40th birthday cake was a Macaron Cake, made by Owen of Dream Cuisine.  Our good friends Clare & Anthony had to leave the party before the cake was served, and since Anthony told me he’d never had a macaron before I told him to swipe one off the cake while it was out in the kitchen being dismantled and dished up.  We had plans today to meet Clare & Anthony for lunch, so yesterday I was at the Farmers’ Markets and stopped by Owen’s stall to thank him for the cake, and while I was there I picked up a selection of macarons to take to lunch today.

Except I forgot to take them, didn’t I.

It’s best to enjoy macarons within a day or two of picking them up.  I may never see Clare & Anthony again, ever.  I mean, they live south of the lake.  So really there’s only one thing for it.

Cherry & Chocolate.

Lavender and Honey.

Pecan and honey with salted caramel filling.

Pistachio and Lime

Lemon.  Light and crisp on the outside, gooey and creamy on the inside.  Oh my.

I cannot tell you which one I loved the most.  It would be like asking to choose between my children.  I love them all equally.

how to cook

Posted by trish on Jun 30, 2011 in Eat | 1 comment

The cafe I work in serves their pies, quiches and fritattas with a little side salad.  Sometimes it’s a simple green salad with a little vineagrette, but usually we give customers a couple of scoops of our salad-of-the-day.  Today we had two choices, and one of my customers asked for a taste of each.  After lunch I caught her writing the list of ingredients on a napkin.  She admitted that she’s not a particularly adventurous cook but the flavour combination in the salad had inspired her to have a go.  Then she said she never knows what herbs go with things, and that she needs to find a book that lists all the uses for different herbs (she grows them in her garden, but doesn’t know how to cook them.)  I asked her if she had a copy of Stephanie Alexander’s ‘The Cook’s Companion’ and she said she hadn’t heard of it.  Stephanie devotes a chapter to every ingredient (just shy of  120 in her first edition) and helpfully lists all the other things that each ingredient goes well with.

The Cooks Companion (2nd Ed. 2004)

I have the 1st Ed, 1996.

She said she has recipe books, but only cooks the things she knows how to cook – over and over again – and doesn’t try new things because she lacks the confidence to give it a go.  We are a cooking school as well as a Cafe so of course I told her about our classes, and she said “oh, I thought it was just for kids!”

It’s interesting, in this day and age of celebrity chefs and Masterchef and foodie magazines with extensive How To sections – and cooking blogs! – that there are still people out there for whom cooking is a bit of a mystery.  But I think they just need to be shown how to do it.  Not by watching a chef on television – because they make everything look really easy, and they do it too quickly, and in Nigella’s case the camera is usually focused on her cleavage and not the pot – and not by reading a recipe in a book or a magazine.  You need somebody standing beside you, showing you how to do each thing, how to judge cooking times and what to do if you make a mistake and how you can take little shortcuts in the kitchen that will save you time and energy…  In short, you need to grow up in a house where somebody is a decent cook and you need to help them in the kitchen as much as possible.

My mum is a great cook, and although I didn’t do a lot of cooking in her kitchen (I stirred things, or put the leg of lamb in the oven when she asked me to) I must have learned a few things along the way because when I moved out of home I was able to follow a recipe and not chop any limbs off while dicing onions.  Learning to cook a whole meal, with meat and vegetables that came out of different pots and took varying lengths of time to prepare, was a slow process and I can recall a few meals where the meat was overdone or the mashed potatoes particularly lumpy.  But I had enough confidence to give most things a go and over the years I’ve only had a couple of epic failures.  One in particular, involving smoked salmon and a jar of artichoke hearts.  But I laughed it off and made a mental note not to try that again.

Our cooking classes are for people of all skill levels but I would be surprised if the woman I chatted with today signed herself up for any of them; I don’t think she’d believe she could do it.  Isn’t that a shame?

Here’s what she jotted down on her napkin, or thereabouts:

Green Salad:

Broccolini (cut into 5cm lengths)

Green beans

Asparagus

Sun dried tomatoes

Pine nuts

Seeded mustard

I suggested she steam the vegetables or plunge them into a pot of boiling water for a minute, then immediately rinse under cold water to stop them cooking and preserve the green.  She’d never heard of that way of cooking vegetables, she’s always just boiled them until they’re soft.  And she’d never cooked broccolini – “it’s one of those things that I always see at the supermarket and wonder what on earth people use it for.”

Sometimes I feel like I’ve got so much more to learn in the kitchen, and other days I realise I’m doing alright.

40!

Posted by trish on Jun 27, 2011 in Eat | 7 comments

What a weekend!!

For my 40th birthday I decided on an intimate dinner with my closest friends on Saturday night, then lunch with family on Sunday.I invited around 35 people to dinner and almost everyone could come – one couple are overseas at the moment, and another couldn’t make it at the last minute because of an unwell baby boy at home.  I picked my favourite restaurant – Grazing at The Royal Hotel, Gundaroo – and they gave us ‘The Stables’ which is a large separate building at the rear of the Hotel which, obviously, once housed the horses.

The dining table stretched from one corner to the other, diagonally.  The table was decorated with the yellow tulips and mini gerberas I had bought from the Farmers’ Markets that morning, plus about 30 little tea-light candles, branches from my parents’ lemon tree (complete with lemons) and ivy from my parents’ backyard fence.

We ate an entree and a main course:

Entree:

Croquette of pork shoulder, cheek & smoked hock served with garden rocket, pickled pear & toasted hazelnut salad, sage mayo and Harden honey syrup

Herbed pasta filled with scallop and blue swimmer crab topped with a hazelnut parsley ‘picada’, chive verjus and salmon pearl emulsion

Main Course:

Coq au Vin spatchcock with Murrumbateman mushrooms, garden thyme, mini onions and potato skordalia made from our rosemary and garlic infused olive oil

Grain fed beef strip loin served oven roasted with beetroot and Yass olive oil ‘salsa’, pressed Wagyu, creamy onion puree and potato croquette

And for dessert we had this:

This is a Macaroon Cake, made by the fabulous Owen from Dream Cuisine.  This cake (and the two lemon curd tarts I had at lunch the next day) were a gift from my friend Allan and his wife, Charley.

After the main course PJ and I planned to say a few words.  He spoke for a few minutes, just long enough to reduce me to happy-tears and make a few jokes about being nine months older than he is.  Then my friend Nina jumped up to tell us about a tradition that the family she married into follows on special birthdays – everyone at the table has to stand up and tell all those gathered two things they like most about the birthday girl or boy.  They have to name one personality trait, and one physical attribute.  She asked everyone in the room to join in the tradition.

Can you even imagine how incredible it is to hear your friends, who have known you so well and for so long, tell you how much they appreciate you?  It was one of the most emotional, overwhelming and uplifting experiences of my life.  It was like a living funeral – everyone saying nice things about you while you’re still alive to hear it.

Here’s a picture of me with my dear friend Brooke.  The first time I ever got drunk was with Brooke.  I don’t know whose idea it was to climb up into my treehouse to drink that bottle of Southern Comfort but it made for an hilarious descent.

(Can you see the watch I’m wearing?  That was my birthday gift from my darling husband.  He chose it.  I love it.)

After the love-fest was over, I got up and said whatever came to mind in that moment – I was feeling very humbled and grateful.  Everybody in that room has inspired me in some way at some point in my life, through their words or actions or both, and I absolutely credit them with the person I am at this age.  I have been so blessed to have such great friends!  And… they really like me too!

But I totally forgot to mention PJ.  After I sat down all I could think was that Hilary Swank had forgotten to thank her husband after she won the Oscar and they ended up divorced!  So after dessert was served I stood up on my chair and told everyone how much I love him, and a whole lot of other stuff that I can’t remember because it was completely unscripted and straight from the heart.(I really wanted to post a picture of him but he’s too shy).

It was SUCH a great night!  I had a wonderful time, my friends all met each other and got along famously, and the girls all took turns to cuddle Allan and Charley’s two week old baby, Joseph, who seemed to sleep through all the noise and excitement.  I wonder where I’ll be when he’s turning 40?

easy pasta sauce

Posted by trish on Jun 23, 2011 in Eat | 0 comments

This is what’s for dinner tonight.  I’ve cooked it before, so this recipe and pictures might look vaguely familiar.  Well, it bears repeating.  It’s delicious.  And EASY.  I’m just going to have to start calling Jill Dupleix Aunty Jill – I use so many of her recipes.  It’s because she’s brilliant.

This version of her recipe is slightly different to the one I’ve been using (taken out of delicious. magazine YEARS ago.)  The earlier version doesn’t have milk or cream in it, but I’ll start using it because this is quite an intensely-flavoured sauce and the cream would settle it down a bit.

Jill Dupleix’s Spicy Sausage Pasta

6 small pork sausages or 3 large – make sure they’re good ones from your local butcher. Pork & Fennel (“Italian-style”) are particularly good, but you might like to get some spicier ones.

1 small onion, peeled

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

6 tbsp milk

400 g canned plum tomatoes

1 tsp sugar

pinch of grated nutmeg

sea saltf

reshly ground black pepper

500 g penne, rigatoni or similar short tube pasta

2 tbsp cream (optional)

freshly grated parmigiano

Slit open the skin of the sausages, and remove the meat, discarding the skins (I wear latex gloves to do this). Finely slice the onion. Heat the olive oil and butter in a frypan and gently cook the onion for 5 or 6 minutes until soft but still white. Pinch the meat into the pan and fry, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until it is cooked but not browned.

Add the milk and very gently simmer, stirring, for 5 minutes. Roughly chop the tomatoes and add them, with their juices, to the meat. Add the sugar, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until it is al dente, tender but still firm to the bite.

Add the cream to the sauce, and stir through, gently heating it through. Drain the pasta, toss well and serve with grated parmigiano.

Le Pot

Posted by trish on Jun 20, 2011 in Eat | 6 comments

I use this is a lot during these cooler months.  I love cooking whole chickens in it, and diced beef, and risotto, and soup, and bolognese sauce.  It’s a great pot for cooking a lot of different things and if you have a spare $294 you can get one from Peter’s of Kensington on sale at the moment (rrp $469).  I know that sounds like a hideous amount of money but remember – it’s all in the cost per use.  I reckon I’ve got mine down to a dollar a go and that’s only taken me ten years.  Yeah, that doesn’t really work, does it.  Ask me again in another ten years.

Tonight I’m going to make what I think is one of the most delicious (and easy) ways to cook a whole chicken.  The hardest part about this recipe, really, is carving up the chook afterwards, but the breast meat pulls so easily off the rib cage and the legs/thighs fall away from the body in such a way that you don’t actually need to understand the anatomy of the chicken.  I think that’s what put me off roasting chickens for so long – not knowing how to carve the thing once it was cooked.  Turns out it’s really not that hard, especially if you’ve got two kids who’ll  share a breast, a husband who wants the other one, and you’re happy (very happy) to have a drumstick and a thigh.

Skye Gyngell’s Pot-Roasted Chicken with Sage & Butternut Pumpkin

1 free-range organic chicken

1 lemon, halved

1 small bunch of sage

3 fresh bay leaves

2tbsp mild extra-virgin olive oil

2 red onions, peeled and quartered

5 cloves of garlic, peeled but left whole

1 butternut squash, peeled and chopped into rough chunks

2 tins of good-quality chopped tomatoes

2tbsp crème fraîche

Sea-salt and freshly ground black pepper

Start by generously seasoning the chicken all over. Insert the lemon, half of the sage and one of the bay leaves into it (having first removed the little pillows of fat found just inside the cavity).

Place the casserole dish on a medium heat and pour in the olive oil. When it’s hot and slightly smoking, put the chicken in and brown lightly all over. This will take a little bit of time. Turn the chicken every now and then to make sure it goes an even, golden brown all over. Once brown, remove it from the pan and set aside.

Pour off the excess oil, add the onions, season with a pinch of salt and cook until tender. This should take about 5 minutes. Next add the garlic and the rest of the sage and bay leaves. Cook for a further 5 minutes, then add the squash.

Add the tomatoes and stir once or twice, then return the chicken to the pan, so that it nestles among the vegetables. Put the lid on, turn down the heat to medium-low and cook for about 45 minutes. The breasts do not need to be completely submerged in the liquid; they will happily steam cook – and remain all the more tender for it.

Once the chicken is cooked, add the crème fraîche and adjust the seasoning. It should be slightly sweet, sagey and very comforting in flavour. At home we eat this dish with farro or creamy mashed potato, and a simple green salad dressed with olive oil and lemon.

Soup!

Posted by trish on Jun 17, 2011 in Eat | 8 comments

There’s nothing better than soup on a grey, wintery day – even better if it’s bright green.

This is what’s for dinner tonight.

Nigel Slater’s Soup of Broccoli & Bacon

200g smoked streaky bacon

3 smallish potatoes

1.5 litres chicken or ham stock

300g broccoli, purple sprouting or other dark calabrese

150ml milk

Peel the onion, chop it roughly and soften it in the butter in a deep pan. I never let it colour, preferring to keep it pale and translucent. Stir in half the bacon, snipped into short lengths (keep six short pieces for later), then the potatoes, scrubbed and cut into small pieces. Let the ingredients marry with as little colour as possible, then pour in the stock and bring to the boil, adding salt and pepper as you go. Turn the heat down so that the mixture simmers gently for 15 to 20 minutes or so, until the potatoes will collapse against slight pressure from the back of a spoon.

Introduce the greens, trimmed of any exceptionally tough stalks, and simmer for 10 minutes. The greens should still live up to their name.

Pour in the milk, simmer briefly, then process the mixture in a blender till smooth, checking the seasoning.

Grill the remaining bacon until crisp, then serve the soup in warm bowls, each with a piece of crisp bacon on its surface.

basics

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

I bought two cauliflowers at the Farmers’ Markets this weekend – they cost me five bucks.  This recipe is from Stephanie Alexander’s “The Cook’s Companion” and is officially the cheapest, easiest soup recipe in my arsenal. And, it’s delicious.

CAULIFLOWER SOUP aka MUFF’S SOUP

1 cauliflower, cut into pieces, including the stem

1 litre fat-free Chicken Stock

1 teaspoon vegemite

freshly ground black pepper

freshly chopped parsley

freshly grated parmesan cheese

Cook the cauliflower in stock until tender.  Add vegemite and stir until dissolved.  Puree cauliflower and stock, then check seasoning.  Stir in parsley.  Serve, and pass the grated parmesan (be generous with it).

* Stephanie credits a friend – presumably ‘Muff’ – for the recipe, saying that she described it as the perfect dieter’s dinner.  So, that’s a bonus.

basics

Posted by trish on Jun 11, 2011 in Eat | 2 comments

This afternoon I’m making four different kinds of soup – five, if you count the pot of chicken stock on the stove.  My tummy has felt a little delicate since the infamous weekend with the girls (reminder: I ate and drank a lot of everything that I avoided on the detox) so I have decided that soup is for dinner for the next couple of weeks.  Also, I found a dress to wear to my 40th and it requires me to gain no weight between now and the party.  I have reached what I think is my ideal weight; if I lose any more it’s going to start coming off my boobs and as PJ will attest that will never do.  And the dress requires cleavage.

Vegetable soups are really easy.  My recipe usually goes something like this:

1 litre home-made chicken stock (not too flavourful; I’ve made that mistake and pumpkin soup that tastes like chicken is pretty unpleasant)

500g – 1kg chopped up vegetable (carrot or pumpkin or cauliflower or sweet potato)

One medium onion or a couple of leeks, chopped

Couple of tablespoons of butter

Two cloves of garlic, crushed.

Method:Melt the butter, fry the onion + garlic until soft, add the vegies, stir for a couple of minutes to coat in butter, then add the chicken stock (preferably hot), bring to boil, reduce to simmer, simmer until veg is soft, hold back a cup of liquid, blend the rest of it in the pot with a stick blender, adding back the liquid as required to reach desired consistency.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

See? Dead easy.

So I’ve been looking up recipes for soup because the recipe above will give you something pretty dull.  Like those steamed veggies I always serve with the meat at dinnertime, vegetable soup can really benefit from a bit of extra flavour.

Today I am making:

Cauliflower soup with Vegemite

Carrot soup with Orange

Roast Pumpkin Soup with cumin and nutmeg

Broccoli Soup with prosciutto and almonds

I’ll post the recipes over the coming weeks.  If you’re in a hurry you could google each of them and find them in several different places online.

Here’s the pumpkin before it went into the oven.  Love that colour.

While that’s roasting, I’ll be making chicken stock.

Here’s how I make mine:

BASIC CHICKEN STOCK

One roast organic chicken, meat removed OR buy a couple of ‘chicken frames’ from the deli, roast them in a hot oven for about twenty minutes to get them lovely and brown and crispy OR save all the bones next time you get a BBQ’d chook from the supermarket.

One onion, chopped in half, skin still on OR a leek

Half a bunch of parsley

One carrot

One potato

One stick of celery

A dozen black peppercorns

Put the chicken bones and all the vegies into your biggest saucepan and cover with cold water.  Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for at least two hours.  Skim anything nasty-looking that floats to the top.

Strain the stock through a fine sieve (remove all the big bits with a pair of bbq tongs first, then pour the liquid through a strainer into another pot.)

Heat this liquid over high heat to reduce, if you want a stronger-flavoured stock.

Allow to cool before pouring into 500ml or 1L containers and freezing.

(If you can, cool the stock in one pot in the fridge overnight, then the next morning you can gently lift the solidified fat off the top before straining your new, low-fat stock into containers).

basics

Posted by trish on Jun 5, 2011 in Eat | 1 comment

This is dead-easy.  Take a piece of thick fish (I used Blue Grenadier) and top it with a herb-y, lemon-y, crunchy breadcrumb crust and serve on a dollop of creamy mashed potato.

This is a huge piece of fish – that’s a regular-size cutting board.  The fish is about an inch thick at the thickest point.

Blue Grendadier is one of my favourite types of fish.  It always sells out very quickly at the Farmers’ Markets so you need to be there at 7am if you want some.

Lemon zest…

The herb breadcrumb mixture…

Spread it over the top, nice and thickly…

I can’t even tell you how delicious this is.  It’s quite rich with the crust.  The serve above turned out to be too much for me.  I should’ve had less mash

Jill Dupleix, you’re a genius.

4 skinless fish fillets, say 180g each (I did the whole side of fish in one piece then cut it up to serve, which added to the cooking time)

1 tbsp Dijon mustard* (I didn’t include this, my kids don’t like mustard)

4 tbsp fresh white breadcrumbs (I used day-old pane casa – Italian Bread)

2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves

1 tbsp thyme leaves

2 tsp grated lemon zest

Sea salt and pepper

1⁄2 tsp cayenne pepper (didn’t include, too spicy for kids)

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Heat oven to 200C.

Trim the fish neatly and place on a foil-lined baking tray. (oil it too so the fish doesn’t stick)

Spread the tops lightly with mustard.

Mix the breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, lemon zest, sea salt, pepper, cayenne and olive oil in a small bowl until mushy.  Spread on top of the fish, patting to fit the shape.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or longer, depending on the thickness of the fish.

Sneaky Masterchef

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

There was quite a lot of roasted cauliflower left over after dinner the other night, and then last night there was left-over brocolli, and I had about 400gm of extra chicken thigh fillets that weren’t going to be needed for a curry.  Leftovers aren’t normally very fancy in our house but this time I decided to put in a bit of effort and… voila!

(still searching for the picture – sorry)

I didn’t really know how to make a pie, to be honest.  I’ve never made one using puff pastry, for starters.  And I knew it would need some kind of gravy or sauce but since I was using leftovers I’d need to make that separately.  So I very cleverly Googled “chicken and vegetable pie” and this is what came up:

Valli Little’s Chicken and Vegetable pies, from delicious. magazine, July 2003, p82

I varied it a little…

LEFTOVER PIE CHICKEN AND VEGETABLE PIES

(Makes about four large or six regular-sized pies.)

veg on the side

Posted by trish on May 30, 2011 in Eat | 3 comments

Our evening meal often consists of ‘meat and three veg’.  The meat might be salmon, or a bbq’d butterflied leg of lamb, or a roast chicken (we never have lamb chops, and I rarely buy steak) and then the three vegetables will be potatoes (mashed or steamed or baked in their skins), carrots/peas (microwaved), or if we’re having a roast I’ll add pumpkin, sweet potato and onions to the baking dish.  If I’m in a good mood, I’ll steam some brocolli and/or cauliflower and then bake it in a shallow dish with a white cheese sauce over the top like my mum used to.

I very rarely prepare any extra vegetable as a “side dish” like you might see in a restaurant:  Green beans with slivered toasted almonds, Baby chat potatoes with rock salt and rosemary, Dutch carrots with parsley butter, and so on.  I just cook them in the simplest way possible and stick them on the plate. Fairly boring.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to add some extra flavour to the evening meal and so from now on I’m going to try to do that.  Tonight’s roast chicken will be served with roasted cauliflower with lemon and mustard sauce… and microwaved broccoli and peas.

Baby steps.

Mmm… butter:

ROAST CAULIFLOWER

Take a whole cauliflower, trim the leaves off, and then slice it in 3cm slices as though it were a round loaf of bread.  Place the slices in a baking dish, something wide and shallow.  Add about 1/4 cup of water, then drizzle the cauliflower with olive oil and add salt and pepper.  Place in an oven at 200C for about 20 minutes or until it’s looking nice and golden-brown.

Toss a small handful of slivered almonds around in a dry, hot frying pan.  Don’t let them burn, you just want them toasted.  Remove from the heat and tip them into a bowl to cool.

Melt an unhealthy amount of butter (80g) in the same frying pan and add one clove of garlic, crushed.  Stir, let the butter start to foam, and the garlic start to cook.  Add to the frying pan the juice of half a lemon, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a couple of tablespoons of hot water and whisk until combined.  Add the toasted almonds, stir again, keep warm.

When the cauliflower is done, drizzle with the lemony buttery almondy sauce.

(I didn’t take a photo – sorry).