Rum Balls

My Gran wouldn’t have used imitation rum or rum essence and neither should you. She would have put out just a few on a pretty plate, with a few tiny squares of Cherry Ripe slice and a few Christmas-tree-shaped biscuits (each with a cachou on the top for a star) and then given me the job of offering the plate around, a job that made me feel infinitely valued and loved and made me envious of her talent in the kitchen.

A few crafty ways to make sure all your hard work (ahem) is not in vain; the plate needs to be a modest size so that the offering doesn’t look stingy, with the scarcity of treats available they are guaranteed to vanish quickly. A piled-up plate gives people the option of “take it or leave it”, because they can see that there’ll still be some left later. Also giving the plate to a small child to offer around, people will be more likely again to take something as they don’t want to see the child disappointed. 

250g sweet biscuits (using a mixture of different biscuits can make these more interesting. Try using chocolate cream biccies and scraping out the filling.)

3 tablespoons condensed milk (You might have to add another one as you go if the mixture dries out and stops collecting coconut when you roll them)

1 cup coconut

3 tablespoons cocoa

1/4 cup rum

extra coconut

Put the biscuits in a plastic bag and batter with a rolling pin, don’t crush them in a blender as the texture will be lost. Mix all ingredients and roll into small balls and roll in coconut. When forming them try to make them such a size that people can elegantly pop a whole one in the mouth, instead of taking bites. This way people are also likely to desire more than one. Refrigerate on a lined tray to set.

Make up a mixed plate of delectable treats and give a small child the job of offering the plate around, they’ll thank you later.

Caramel Crunch Oreos

Oreos are not part of my childhood memories, but each time I have one I feel like they should be. My Nan used to always have a Family-sized Packet of Arnotts Cream Biscuits in her cupboard and I would take the Shortbread Creams, prise them open and scrape out the cream filling with my teeth. Oreos are one of the few bought biscuits that I will eat, not just out of politeness. 

Having said that, you can often take something in its basic form and improve upon it. Think of Swiss Rolls and their transformation into a trifle. Think of Butternut Snaps and cheesecake base. You see? So why not take a humble Oreo, dip it in caramel, roll in granulated nuts and then, once that's set, dip in melted dark chocolate? Here's the caramel;

2 tabs golden syrup

3/4 cup sugar

125g butter

Melt ingredients together in a small saucepan over low heat. Simmer for five minutes or until slightly darkened in colour and syrupy. Err on the side of underdone because it will continue to cook a bit in the hot pan as you start dipping the Oreos. This is also good, with the nuts, turned through air-popped popcorn until everything is sticky and coated.

Serve your finished Oreos with a glass of ice cold milk, slumped in front of a Hallmark Special.

Blondies

If I was asked to bake anything for teenaged girls again, these would be my immediate reaction. They disappeared faster than I could have imagined possible. Even though I undercooked them and thought they were going to be a complete disaster I was well rewarded with compliments, heavy sighs and general yummy noises. I would even be so bold as to suggest that these might have a secret combination of chemicals which cures PMS.

180g white chocolate

125g butter

1 ¾ cups caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla

4 eggs

1 ⅔ cups plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

Melt chocolate and butter together in pan over low heat (Don’t worry too much if it “curdles”, just throw the sugar in and keep going with the recipe.) Take off heat and add sugar and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time mixing in well. Lastly add flour and baking powder. Pour into square cake pan and bake at 170 C for 45-60 mins.

Serve warm, with and smile and plenty of printed copies of the recipe to hand out. Guaranteed to help you make friends quickly.

American Pie

I don't know whether it's all the American blogs I read or whether it's just a phase I'm going through, but lately I find myself drawn toward distinctly American tastes. I've got a growing pile of "Things To Try" which includes, and I never thought I'd say this, Pumpkin Pie! For Aussies, pumpkin is dinner, not dessert. I'm pretty sure my family would think I was going mental if I even mentioned it, but I can't help feeling I might be missing out on something, never having had the sweet stuff.

I'm also curiously drawn to the combination of maple syrup and bacon, and the saccharin-sweet "Meet Me in St. Louis". I wonder whether it might not just be that Christmas is in the air, joy and goodwill abound and my tastes and temperament are generally leaning to sweetness.

Here's my first foray into what I consider "American" food. Pie, in my mind, is quintessentially American, especially sweet pie. It conjures up images of a '50s style diner, pastel uniforms, frilly aprons, paper hats, bitter coffee and the smell of burning fat in the air.

Shell:

125g unsalted butter, cubed

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ tab sugar

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup buttermilk, cold

Toss butter into flour and put in the freezer for 20 minutes. Use a food processor to cut the butter into the flour. Add sugar and salt. Gradually pour in buttermilk, just until the pastry comes together. Turn onto a bench, rapidly work the dough into a disc, wrap in gladwrap and place in the fridge for at least an hour. Roll out and use pastry to line a springform cake pan. Lots of people worry about pastry but the trick is to only roll the dough out once if you can, then patch the base together. The more shaggy and patchy it is the more homespun and welcoming the pie and the more ultimately delightful the pastry. Return to fridge to chill while you get on with the filling.

Filling:

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

2 tabs flour

125g melted butter, slightly cooled.

1 cup buttermilk

2 teaspoons vanilla

rind of ½ a lemon, finely grated

Beat eggs slightly, add sugar and flour and mix until creamy. Add melted butter, buttermilk and vanilla extract. Bake at 170°C for about an hour or until the custard is set. It will still jiggle a little bit once it’s set. Leave to cool in tin, eventually, carefully, slowly and gently transfer to a plate or cake stand and refrigerate.

Blackberry Sauce

½ cup blackberry jam, seedless/strained

1 tab Triple Sec

Heat up the jam in a saucepan over low heat, remove from heat, whisk in Triple Sec. You can pour the sauce, hot, over the pie when you serve it or you can pour it on the cold pie, as a final layer, and refrigerate.

Full English

I wouldn't dare to try to explain how to cook a Full English Breakfast. For me it's always about hovering by the stove in my pyjamas, a cup of strong coffee, quick hands, hot plates and a warm oven that's recently been used to quickly warm some pre-breakfast croissants. And the rule is; there ain't no rules! I do things in the order from longest cooking to shortest, eggs right at the end because I like them runny. Everything (except the beans) is cooked one after the other in the one pan and stashed in the oven as it's done. Here's your ingredients list:

Sausages - Whatever you like, from cheap supermarket ones to fancy gourmet ones. Whatever you buy, give them a little twist in the middle and voila! Chipolatas!

Bacon - Or prosciutto. England has the best, fattiest, tastiest bacon. The stuff they call "streaky" bacon here is not a patch on England's common-or-garden supermarket bacon. Believe me.

Black Pudding - I know, I know, but in small doses...

Heinz Beans - As Alan Davies says, "Why can't all beans be like Heinz beans?"

Mushrooms - Let them absorb the fat from all the meat, and add a little butter for good measure. Try to get something with a bit of flavour, like Swiss brown.

Eggs - Free range obviously, preferably from your own flock.

Toast - Wholegrain. In a shop they'd give you white, but I rarely have it at home. Besides you can feel a bit virtuous when you have wholegrain bread with all this excess.

Serve with a glass of bubbly and a come hither smile...

Cheesecakelets

So last night I finally got around to making these. My excuse is that before I've always looked at the recipe in Nigella's "Feast" and thought "Well, I'd have to buy cottage cheese..." but since the diet, we've had cottage cheese in the house almost constantly because it's so low in fat. (Which means that if you make these and you substitute sweetener for the sugar you can actually get away with eating quite a good size serving!)

They are a little unusual at first, if you're expecting normal pikelets. Once you get used to the idea, you can really appreciate their allusion to baked cheesecake. For those of us who are chronic-cheesecake-craving sufferers these are a blessing from the heavens!

Another good thing about these is that because you're making little pikelet-sized bites, you can actually cook all the batter up relatively quickly, whereas I find pancakes slow because I can only really concentrate on one at a time. Maybe it's just me.

225g cottage cheese, try to get as much cheese and as little liquid as possible when you're scooping it out.

3 eggs

50g flour

2 tabs caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk all the ingredients together and cook tablespoonfuls in a hot frypan. They'll take probably just under a minute to firm up underneath and then flip them and give them about 30 seconds before turning onto a plate and serving immediately with fresh raspberries and raspberry ripple ice cream. Delicious.

Stock

Well, I felt like the proverbial Domestic Goddess as I put my tired self to bed last night! As well as the requisite chicken korma for dinner there was a steaming loaf of freshly baked seedy bread and three litres of stock. Allow me to explain...

Over the last four months I have been collecting up chicken bones and scraps in the freezer for a day when I would have enough to make stock. (I realise this sounds completely gross.) However I did not account for the fact that by the time I had enough bones the weather would be heating up and not ideal conditions for boiling up massive stock pots on the hob! With yesterday’s cold snap, I though I best seize the moment and get on with it. 

The first time I made stock I really enjoyed the process, chunking things up, throwing them in a pot and simmering away. The result is so delicate, it’s a whole different product to the powdered stuff, it actually has flavour rather than just salt. You find yourself getting really selective about what to cook, you don’t want all this effort to go to waste! Where’s a recipe for a nice clear soup, or a subtle risotto? Something where you’ll really notice the difference.

I usually make the stock “recipe” in Nigella Lawson’s “How to Eat”, just because it was the first stock I ever made and I’m comfortable with it. Last time I made Maggie Beer’s Golden Chicken Stock from “Maggie’s Harvest” which was also delicious. But this time I didn’t feel up to roasting up all the ingredients in the oven first, and besides I didn’t have any vegies to roast! So I hit the Delicious magazines and found the recipe for a stock we made last year when making Chicken Korma Pies. The ingredients list was short and sweet and that won me over.

approximately 2kg of chicken bones 

2 leeks, white part, roughly sliced

3 bay leaves

1 tsp salt

4 cm of fresh ginger, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, crushed with the flat blade of a knife

Don’t bother peeling the ginger or garlic, put all ingredients in a big stock pot, cover with water and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer for an hour. Remove from heat and strain immediately into a bowl. I strained it through one of my husband’s hankies which removed all the murky muck that usually accumulates in the bottom of the bowl. Put in the fridge.

The next day remove the solidified fat from the top, (I’ve kept this and put it in the freezer to make dumplings with) and scoop into plastic bags or containers and freeze. I usually make 1 or 2 cup sizes so you can easily get what you need for a recipe.

Christmas Pud

This weekend I am making a Christmas pudding. It’s a task I approach with trepidation as my last Christmas pudding was a complete disaster. Let’s just say it’s an unpleasant task digging for $20-worth of $2 coins in a mouldy Christmas pud...

But for all that, I am looking forward to it and hoping that this year it will be much better. This year, for example, I have taken the recipe of an only recently-desceased-relative-by-marriage, who was still making this pudding well into her eighties. I consider it a tried and tried and tried and true recipe!

I have also bought a set of antique silver pudding charms to add to the mix, a very excited purchase on rubylane.com though I hasten to add, these were NOT an impulse buy as I have been on the lookout for a set since I bought “Nigella Christmas”.

So the fruit is soaking, charms at the ready, and off we go!

500g sultanas

375g raisins

3 tabs brandy / whisky (we had brandy in the house)

1/2 cup orange juice (I bought an orange and squeezed this fresh because orange juice is not something we keep in the house. Are you starting to get the picture?)

250g butter

250g brown sugar

rind of one orange

rind of one lemon

4 eggs

1 cup plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

Mix fruit, orange juice and brandy and leave to soak overnight. Mine’s been soaking for two nights so far, I don’t think it matters, when I make a fruitcake I soak it for a week.)

Put a large saucepan of water on the boil. Cream butter, sugar and ring, add eggs and stir in fruit, dry ingredients and breadcrumbs. Line pudding basin with a glad bag and place pudding mixture in this. Leave a good three inches before tying up bag very securely. Place the basin in the saucepan. Make sure to keep checking that the boiling water comes up to three quarters the height of the bowl at all times. Simmer, covered, for five hours.

Mousakka

*Be warned, this is not a “genuine” Mousakka, the real one has Aubergines in it which I can’t stand.

When I first read this recipe I was really worried about the combination of flavours, each in any other dish wouldn’t have bothered me, but mint with tomatoes? Upon tasting, I found it surprisingly familiar and comforting. The mint isn’t overpowering and it’s something I can easily imagine my whole family eating, though we have never eaten much in the way of Middle Eastern cuisine.

Mint is another herb I have tended to shy away from, I think it’s because growing up we had mint and violets in every corner of our garden (That’s the thing with mint, if requires strong discipline) and yet my parents never used it in cooking so I grew up thinking it was nothing special. When we moved into our new place a lot of my herbs died from neglect in those busy moving days, which dramatically reduced my scope for culinary experimentation. Imagine my joy when I wandered into the garden one dewy morn and saw some cheeky mint peeping under my fence from the neighbour’s yard.

500g minced beef (heart smart, naturally)

3 cloves garlic, minced

a handful of mint leaves, finely chopped

400mL passata

200g Greek yoghurt

2 zucchinis

Brown the mince in a casserole dish over medium heat. Add the mint and garlic and stir for a few minutes then add the passata. Cook this over a low-medium heat, uncovered, until the sauce has reduced right down.

While your sauce is reducing, slice the zucchinis into long thing strips and grill for a couple of minutes, until they’re nice and floppy, but not falling apart. I do mine in a George Forman grill, but you could easily do them in a non-stick fry pan or under the grill.

Stir the yoghurt through the mince sauce and then layer the meat and zucchini in a shallow dish like a lasagne. Bake in a moderate oven for about 20 minutes, then serve.

Tonight I’m serving mine with Lebanese bread and honey carrots.

Vietnamese Shaking Beef

No, I have no idea what the name means either, my only inkling was that it might be something to do with the speed of the cooking, the beef is still “moo-ing” when it’s done.

Being on a diet, you never quite get used to the deeply pitying stares of your colleagues, especially when it really has been an education for my senses! I’ve never really been a fan of ginger before this diet but now my tastebuds positively dance when they see fresh ginger in a recipe. I find it amazing how refreshing and punchy fresh ginger is, and yet dried ginger lends itself so well to sweetness. It really is a versatile ingredient and I’ve started making sure we always have fresh ginger in the house now.

400g lean beef, cut into 1cm cubes

2 tabs soy sauce

1 tab oyster sauce

4cm piece of ginger, grated

black pepper

4 garlic cloves, grated

a few coriander leaves to garnish

Mix soy sauce, oyster sauce and ginger and marinate beef in it for 30 minutes. Heat up a wok and fry the garlic, when it is just beginning to brown throw in the beef and stir over high heat until it is sealed on all sides.

Serve with a sprinkle of coriander.*

*Okay, because the diet is no-carb I don’t say “and rice or noodles” but obviously it would be perfectly natural for you to do so.

Apple Pie

So, curiously and almost devilishly soon after starting our diet we sat down in front of the telly and channel-surfed to “Britain’s Best Dish”. That’s the thing with diets, the moment you make the pledge to eat less, somewhere someone seems to conspire to make you eat more. Anyway...

I have a terrible sweet tooth and a weakness for desserts and the way the judges raved about John Blenkinsop’s apple pie gave me a desperate compulsion to make it. I printed the recipe at work and stashed it away, ready for the point when we reached our goal weight.

Finally, the day had come, and I put together the pie to finish off our Asian-Spiced Pork Belly dinner. I was not disappointed, read on:

filling
900g of Granny Smith apples (peeled, cored, chopped into about 12ths, placed in pan of salted water to prevent from turning brown until ready to use. I say 12ths because I like it chunky and homespun, with still a little bite in the apples. Go smaller if you want it more stewed.)
3 tsp quince jelly
lemon juice
caster sugar
(Quantities of quince jelly, sugar and lemon juice will depend on the apples used so make sure you taste the filling before putting it in the pie.)

pastry
250g self raising flour
85g lard, cut into cubes
85g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
200mL sour milk (2-3 days in warm kitchen. Weird I know, hey I don’t make the rules...)

Vanilla ice cream to serve

Drain the water put apples in pan over medium heat and add quince jelly and part cook for about ten minutes. Add the lemon juice and sugar to taste. Drain and set aside to cool.

Put flour and fat into a food processor bowl and stick in the freezer for 20 minutes. This helps to stop the pastry overheating when you work with it and stops the fat melting into the flour. Blitz the mixture to rub the fat into the flour. Add the milk slowly, just enough so that the pastry comes together.

Dust the work surface and rolling pin with flour and put on 2/3 of dough. I rolled this pastry out once and then patched it together in a springform tin. The original recipe has you rolling it out, and folding it up a few times, which I think would actually be an ok idea as the pie crumbled when I served it (though it tasted magnificent!) I was just nervous about doing this because my kitchen was so warm from baking the meat and overworked pastry dough is tough and boring, but I think this dough would actually take a bit of abuse.

Put the apple onto base leaving clear edge around and brush with sour milk to ‘glue’ the lid on. For the lid, roll out the remaining pastry and lay on top, along with any other off-cuts of pastry (what else are you going to use it for? And the more pastry the better, I say!) Shave off some more butter with a potato peeler and dot this on top of the dough. Glaze top with sour milk and sprinkle with sugar and give a couple of jabs with a fork so steam can escape.

Place in oven for 35 - 45 minutes at 210 degrees Celsius until the pastry is a rich, golden brown. It is important not to under cook the pastry.

I served this with whipped cream which was wonderful (especially after having no cream for five weeks!) but next time I make it I want my hot piece of apple pie with freezing-cold-rock-solid-vanilla ice cream.

A Picnic Club

Days like today make me long to pack up a thermos of cocoa, some honey sandwiches and a big tea cake and go off into a pine forest for a teddy-bears’ picnic. The sun is shining but it would be far too chilly in the dense shade to enjoy the company of teddy bears and the brisk wind would surely spoil our fun, so perhaps it would be better to enjoy a hillside picnic where we could bask in the sun with our hats over our eyes and wait for the cool dew of dusk to send us scurrying home to our beds.

I picture tartan rugs and huge wicker baskets groaning with goodness, as well as frisbees and cricket bats for everyone else. I would take a good book and perhaps some sewing and sit in the sun under the shade of a wide-brimmed hat and watch everyone else, occasionally kissing my lover’s forehead as he rested his head on my lap.

Sadly I am not usually the picnicking type, I always pick the wrong day to become enamoured with the idea, when it is pouring rain or when I haven’t the necessary leisure to enjoy it. And I never know what food to take, a sandwich seems too everyday, but anything else seems too much trouble to transport to be really pleasurable on arrival.

I read recently about someone starting a picnic club, which I imagine to have little membership badges and a newsletter full of appropriate recipes, or even just combinations, for perfect picnics. It’s something I’d definitely be interested in but I must wait for the scent of spring to waft upon me before I can truly begin planning my fantasy picnic again.

Mulled Wine and Mince Pies

Cafe des Deux Moulins

I love the way that alliteration and assonance tie together this poetic winter feast! These treats are also tied together by the rather Christmassy combination of spices, citrus, booze and sugar. All of these are designed to fortify us through the winter season, the logic of which is irrefutable to me;

- spices to excite the palate of otherwise fairly dull and stodgy winter veg

- citrus for vitamin c and immunity

- booze for warmth and jollity

- and sugar for energy, essential roundness of figure and general sweetness in the face of bitter weather.

These scents, wafting through the air, awaken my senses and take me back to our recent holiday in the UK. With the cold snap well and truly upon us I keep expecting twinkly lights and carols and I feel sad for us Southern-Hemisphere-Dwellers who aren’t bright enough to rearrange our religious feasts so that they correspond logically with the seasons. It just doesn’t make sense to stuff ourselves with a Christmas feast in Summer when we don’t need an extra layer of pudginess to keep us warm and then celebrate the festival of Easter in Autumn when all is dying off around us.

All credit to Jamie Oliver for taking a more is more attitude toward spice combinations, I was wary of the inclusion of a vanilla pod, thinking it would just confuse things but I have experienced a full conversion. The vanilla is a really a mellowing influence and befriends the sweetness in the recipe to make it all the more festive.

1 orange

1 lemon

250g caster sugar

6 cloves

1 cinnamon stick

3 bay leaves

10 to 12 gratings of a whole nutmeg

1 whole vanilla pod, halved lengthwise

2 star anise

2 bottles of red wine (something half decent, preferably with a high alcohol content)

Peel your orange and lemon into a saucepan with a potato peeler. Put in the sugar, orange juice and all the other spices EXCEPT the star anise, then add a little wine to cover the sugar and put the saucepan over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved.

Bring the mixture to the boil and keep it rolling for about 4 to 5 minutes, to create a flavoured syrup. Once it’s reduced, turn down the heat a bit, pop in your star anise and pour in the rest of the wine. Heat it only until it’s warm enough to drink, you don’t want it to boil or you’ll evaporate all the fun off!

Ladle into glasses and sip while indulging in Christmassy movies in front of an open wood fire.

The Vegie Patch

Pride

Several weeks ago in our garden we pulled up a carrot. We had decided that they must be nearly ready, seeing some distinctly orange carrot top forcing itself out of the earth. In visions of Beatrix Potter-like perfection we yanked it out only to be disappointed by it’s size. It was about the size of a lady’s thumb and we decided to ignore the carrots for a few more weeks because they were obviously growing a little slower than expected.

Today we endured the same sort of nervous anticipation as we saw a rather promisingly large carrot top protruding from the dirt. In danger of getting our hopes up, we began to dig down beside it, as our soil is very dense and clay-y we were ever-nervous of snapping it off. We both had a go at digging and eventually, in a moment of pride and excitement, I finally prised it out of the earth!

It was slightly less perfect than a supermarket carrot, but as we scrubbed the dirt away it revealed a brilliant, youthful orange colour, quite unlike any mass produced carrot I’ve ever seen. We are so proud of it at the moment that our brains are going wild trying to think of a recipe suitable to enjoy it!

In my mind, seeing this one carrot finally grow to a decent size, ready for eating has given me a deeper appreciation for vegetables and their production process and I wonder how much land is being used in unsustainable ways, either by over-farming or under-farming. I can understand the pressure on farmers and the reasons for GM crops and research, today we’ve pulled up one big carrot but the rest still look pretty puny.

But I also feel that this is a basic human process that everyone should be aware of. After all it isn’t effortful, you put some seeds in the ground, water and watch, it’s not hard and the rewards are great.

Crepes

The truth about crepes is that they’re nowhere near as difficult as you think they’re going to be. Because they’re so thin they take no time at all to cook and, unlike pancakes, they never come out gooey in the middle and even flipping them is easier, as you’re about to find out. The only issue I’ve had with crepes is trying to get them nice and big and round, for some reason I’m always leaning toward stinginess with the batter and so they tend to come out in slightly odd shapes. This however is a minor concern as it has no impact on taste.

And speaking of taste, as a kid I always liked my pancakes with lemon and sugar (More sugar! More sugar!) but last weekend we discovered something new... LIME and sugar! There is no turning back!

110g plain flour

a pinch of salt

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon oil (something light and flavourless)

290mL milk

caster sugar and lime wedges for serving

Whisk everything together in a jug, adding milk until it reaches the consistency of thin cream and put it in the fridge for half an hour. This is similar to the bread making process and will allow the yeast in the flour to develop and bind the ingredients together in a more elastic batter. Without this step your crepes will crumble and refuse to turn successfully.

Heat up your frying pan to a medium to high heat and wipe it with a little oil. The oil in the batter should make them less likely to stick anyway and if you have a non-stick pan this probably isn’t strictly necessary, but I am not afraid of fat and so adding a smear of oil doesn’t worry me.

Pour your batter into the hot pan, lifting and tilting to cover the whole base of the pan. Within a few seconds the edges will be drying and curling and this is your cue to turn it over. Leave it for a few seconds more just to set the other side then turn out onto a piece of paper towel.

Serve as soon as possible (being so thin they don’t hold their heat for very long) with a squeeze of lime and a sprinkling of caster sugar, rolled up for presentation. My sister and I ate ours from our hands while still standing at the stove!

It's all about presentation

Bollywood Camel

I bought a camel shaped cookie cutter partly because I was stunned by the absurdity of such an unattractive animal being made into a yummy cookie and partly because I wanted to use them for Christmas cookies. I thought they’d be a really original way to celebrate the Epiphany.

It has sat unused in my drawer for longer than I care to admit and finally these past holidays I made some gingerbread and put it to good use. The results speak for themselves.

Brr! It's cold in here...

With the weather finally cooling off it’s a time to stock the freezer and go into semi-hibernation, especially if you have the appropriate DVD collection to support such a venture. Perhaps it’s a result of growing up in small town a long way from supermarkets, or because of my slightly squirrelly tendencies, but I always feel somewhat calm if I can picture a freezer full of meals or even potential meals.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those modern ladies with a freezer full of lean cuisine and half a carton of lite white in the fridge, I have a snaplock bag fetish and a domestically dutiful streak. I feel it is obligatory to have the means to provide something nourishing at the click of my fingers. This means at best having the ingredients to feed a group of four at the ring of the telephone, and at least having a meal for one at the last lazy minute.

Of course my fiance has no idea the bounty I have been building for him over the holidays, dated and labelled snaplock bags filled with cookies, soups, pasta bake and leftover homemade pizza, so that he won’t feel so neglected when I go back to work. I feel an overwhelming sense of pride at the prospect of “having it all”, being a career girl with a well fed family.

The Simple Life

Simple food and sunshine, secrets to good health.

Too often people get sucked into thinking that certain foods are passé. I cannot abide this kind of snobbishness, I want only food that tastes good and I don’t care if it is “so yesterday”. The most comforting feasts are usually those that are passed down from generation to generation, those that are tried and true and perfected beyond mere reliability to absolute certainty of pleasing results.

The meal above was our lunch a few days ago, toasted cheese sandwiches with Dijon mustard and mum’s homemade mayonnaise, and Heinz tomato soup, heated up on the stove with a spoonful of sour cream dolloped in. A feast made with little more effort than staring into the pantry and waiting for a meal to suggest itself with the ingredients present there.

Whilst I might feel embarrassed to serve it to guests, and you won’t find the recipe in a fancy book, (just as you won’t find the recipe for beans on toast or a boiled egg with toasted soldiers) this is the food that we eat on a regular basis. And for good reason too, it was utterly delicious, every morsel of it gobbled up and seconds suggested.

Rocky Road

A perfect picnic

The thing with your everyday, common-or-garden rocky road is that any old goose can melt chocolate and stir in marshmallows, that’s not an overly taxing task. And to throw in a few nuts or glacé cherries, well whoopdeedo! The Hummingbird Bakery version, which I sampled at their Portobello Road store in December, is startlingly creative but so obvious you’ll wish you had thought of it first.

There’s only one problem with most rocky road recipes and that is that they include far too much chocolate. This makes them a bit neater looks-wise, but that advantage will be counteracted by the fact that it will be nearly impossible to cut. The Hummingbird book wants you to use 1.4kg of chocolate, and what with all the other ingredients I just can’t justify that kind of extravagance for myself, even in the face of debilitating cravings. The good news is that you don’t actually need that much chocolate, try to see it as just the glue holding things together. Here’s my take on the original;

400g of dark chocolate, melted and slightly cooled (I don’t go for all that double-boiler nonsense, I just put the chocolate in a saucepan on a very low heat and stand vigilantly over it, taking it off when there are still a few small lumps floating around in the mix.)

200g Maltesers

250g marshmallows

200g Mars bars, chopped

100g dried apricots, chopped

100g raisins

100g cornflakes

chocolate sprinkles for decoration

Stir all ingredients together, except the sprinkles, with grim determination until everything is coated in chocolate. It will feel as if it’s never going to work but stick with it and you will be rewarded. Spread onto a baking tray, lined with baking paper. Less chocolate sticks to baking paper and we want as much as possible of our ingredients available for consumption in the end product!

While it’s still a bit melty, decorate with chocolate sprinkles. These seem like an unnecessary garnish but they cover a myriad of sins and act as a fabulous distraction from the otherwise, let’s face it, not-altogether-appealing look of the rocky road. Pop it in the fridge for a few hours and then chop up and serve to unsuspecting guests. Don’t brag, just wait for them to discover all the treats on their own.

So much time...

With the beginning of the holidays upon us, I feel have a lot more time on my hands to spend in the kitchen and I can experiment and enjoy the process of creating.

And so, with the door to possibilities wide open, we have decided to try making our own cider. I say “we” because the idea comes from my fiancé, though I have gone through fads and phases of wanting to make my own spirits as they did in the good ol’ days or, at the opposing extreme, own my own vineyard. But I think that’s a perfectly normal fantasy, especially if you drink as much wine as we do! Now we’ll get a chance to see whether the creation of alcohol is part of my wide range of talents, or if perhaps I should just stick to consuming.

Of course there is the potential for major catastrophe and we all know the stories of explosions, poisoning, or just downright undrinkable swill, unimaginable frustration and utter despair after several months of tentatively gleeful anticipation.

But if all goes well, as we have every right to hope that it will, we shall be very pleased with ourselves and perhaps we’ll even have the courage to try making our own beer.

Is this a sad picture?

The Accuser

For years I wanted a cake stand, so that it might sit on my bench, proclaiming welcome to all who entered my home. Unfortunately it seems that it wasn’t as practical as I had hoped. Instead of proclaiming emphatic welcomes to my visitors, it seems to glare accusingly at me and accost me for not being more domestic.

I still love it, I just love it more when it’s full of cake.

It seems that there are many items in my kitchen which spend very little time in use. The tiny blowtorch used for crème brûlée has been used only a handful of times, the salad spinner is in the top of a rarely opened cupboard and I feel that my ever growing collection of cookie cutters, while ambitious, indulges a ridiculous fantasy life. All these things laze in my cupboards, sleepily basking in light when the doors are opened, yet deep inside knowing that their time has not come.

I can always see the importance of having good basics, sharp knives, saucepans that heat evenly and enough plates to serve the meal on, but I find that it’s the extras that make cooking truly enjoyable. I find that having these things in my cupboard, enhances my freedom to explore. When I read a recipe that calls for an electric whisk, I become more confident as I know I am equipped to take on the job, and when I read a decadent cake recipe I become more seduced by the opportunity to use my beautiful cake stand.

KFC without the "F"

Yes, it hardly seems believable, but below I print a recipe that bears a striking resemblance to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Only Healthy.

Now let’s not kid ourselves here, this is hardly the real thing. Anyone expecting the grease-slicked grin of contentment that comes from gnawing the flesh off a bucket of original recipe and washing it down with gallons of fizzy might be slightly disappointed by the promise that this recipe seems to make.

If however, you’ve been politely declining invitations to dine at the Colonel’s establishment whilst patting your seemingly ever-expanding waistline as an excuse, this might just help to satisfy those cravings in the meantime.

16 chicken drumsticks (you can do this with chicken wings too for nibbles at a party)

500 mL buttermilk

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp Cajun seasoning

1 tsp paprika

1 tab oil

Soak the chicken drumsticks in buttermilk. This can be done up to two days ahead, or as little as a couple of hours.

Preheat your oven to 180℃ and move the drumsticks into a different container or plastic bag, shaking and squeezing as much as possible of the buttermilk off, then put the flour and seasonings in and give everything a good shake.

Spread oil over the bottom of a big roasting dish and place all the chicken pieces in. Bake for about an hour or until they’re nice and brown and crispy lookin. Drumsticks have enough fat to keep them moist so if you overcook a bit they’ll just become more tender. Check them at about the 45 minute mark, sometimes they’ll appear a bit floury on top, if this happens I pour a bit of the fat out of the dish into a jug and pour over the dry bits. Don’t turn them as this will just mess up the crispiness of the coating

Serve with mashed potato and gravy and coleslaw for authenticity, and provide fingerbowls with slices of lemon to make it classy.

Bringing home the bacon

Maria's, best breakfast in Beckenham.

Glorious, fatty, salty bacon! I love it in so many things that I try to keep a few rashers in the freezer at all times, lest the mood for bacon strike and I turn, Mother Hubbard-like, to a sadly deprived store.

On a recent visit to the UK I ate my fair share of English breakfasts, sampling the wares of many different venues. At first bite in London, I suspected maybe I was just ravenously hungry. The second time I mused that it was just the sweet taste of a well-deserved holiday. But upon returning to Australia it became undeniably clear that the quality of bacon here is (even in high-end delis, as opposed to the quality of even supermarket bacon in the UK) bitterly disappointing!

It’s hard to put one’s finger on exactly what it is that makes good bacon good and sub-standard bacon utterly abysmal. From those mouth-watering-sizzly-pop memories of London it has something to do with the ratios of fat and salt, the crucial elements of bacon. The UK bacon feels different as you peel the fine ribbons of it from the packet. In contrast ours crumbles and flakes. The meat and fat of UK bacon are almost indistinguishably flavoursome, whereas here the fat becomes hard and the meat seems waterlogged and tasteless,

Oh how I long for just one more rasher of bacony goodness! How I kick myself for not being more grateful at the time! The bacon here is an attention-seeking bore compared to its friendly ancestors in the north!

Roast Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary

Rosemary flowering in our garden

This weekend I made roast lamb, though there is nothing remarkable in that. I do it almost every week as, I am sure, do many Aussie families. I’ve not yet landed on the perfect roast lamb recipe but I have done it several ways and the recipe that follows is one of my favourite combinations.

To a novice cook, a roast might look like a daunting prospect. One might imagine medieval banquet tables, groaning with food. The truth is a far cry from this because a roast is a most simple and comforting thing to cook. There’s a little bit of staggered preparation and then you may go on your merry way while your home fills with gorgeous Sunday scent.

Below are the only ingredients I’m going to insist on, add whatever other vegies you like. I like sweet potato, onion and beetroot roasted, and some steamed greens as well. I feed six with this recipe, but obviously with more vegies you could make it go further.

1.5 kg leg of lamb
30 cm sprig rosemary, strip the leaves off the stalk (if you’re getting it from a supermarket go home and plant a bush, the difference in flavour is astonishing)
about 6 average sized garlic cloves, quartered
1/2 cup red wine (If you don’t have that lying around, you really should open a new bottle for this, not just because it is so essential to the flavour, but just because any excuse to open a bottle of red is a good thing!)
2 tabs extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper
6 potatoes, cut into 3rds
1 tab honey
1 tab soy sauce
2 tabs flour
2 cups beef stock

Preheat your oven to 180℃ while you prepare the lamb. Put it in a baking dish and make 16 slits, about 2 cm deep, in the top. Into each press 1/4 clove of garlic with 6 or so leaves of rosemary then pour over 1/4 cup of red wine and 1 tablespoon olive oil. I rub the olive oil in a bit but there really is no need, sprinkle on a bit of salt and pepper and put the leg in the oven.

About half an hour later, when you’ve had a glass of red and a second scan of the Sunday paper, get started on the roast vegetables. Cut them all up so they’re around the same size, throwing them in a plastic bag as you go. Pour in the other tablespoon of olive oil, and give a quick grind of salt and pepper. If you’ve still got a few leaves of rosemary lying around, throw them in too then give everything a good shake so it’s covered in oil, pour them into a baking tray and make sure everything has a rounded-side-down (if the flat side is down they will stick to the tray and make a big mess and deprive you of half your vegetables when you go to serve.) and pop this in the oven.

The roast should take about 2 hours in total, by which time your roast veg will also be done. Give the leg a jab with a skewer a few times in different places, it’s good if the juices run clear on the outsides but it’s still a bit bloody and rare in the middle. Take it out, set it aside to rest with a tent of al-foil over it and get on with your gravy. (This is a good time to steam your vegies as well.)

Pour most of the fat out (we keep an empty tin can in the freezer for this purpose) and then throw the flour in the baking dish and stir it around to absorb what’s left. Put the dish on the stove on a medium/low heat and pour in the beef stock, honey, soy sauce and remaining red wine. You’ll need to simmer this, stirring for 5 minutes or so til it thickens up and becomes a good consistency. I strain mine into a jug when it’s done.

The final and possibly most stressful job is serving. I like to heat the plates in the oven as it cools, this takes most of the stress out of serving as I know the meal is not going to get cold as I wait for the last vegies to cook, or quickly reheat the gravy. It’s also handy if you can get someone else to carve for you. Your table needs mint jelly to accompany this and maybe some sour cream for the potatoes if you have it to hand.

Try to muster up a flustered and stressed demeanour as you sit down to eat your meal, you wouldn’t want your guests to know that such a delicious dinner was a breeze for their hostess!