New digs

I decided I wanted to start blogging again, but I think this time it’ll be a little different. It’s not only about cooking. My new blog is at www.thingsforboys.com and while there’s still going to be cooking on it, it’ll also have some crafting and hopefully DIY. I love providing for my boys, so now you can see what I do.

Well, the blog has basically fallen by the wayside...and with good reason...this little man has arrived. He takes up all of my time, so for the moment, the blog has been forgotten.

I hope everyone has enjoyed the recipes we've put on the blog and I'm sure we'll return to it soon, but for the moment it will be silent.

Merry Christmas!

Fennel Bread

I'd been wanting to make some bread for a while and the idea of fennel bread, really got my tastebuds going. The bread started off nicely, but the loaves didn't rise very well the second time, going out rather than up. So while they didn't turn out looking great, they did taste very nice.

Fennel Bread (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Fennel Seed Breadsticks, pg 438
makes 2 small loaves

tiny pinch saffron
1 cup warm water
2 tsp dried yeast
2 tsp salt
250g plain flour
125g semolina flour
2 tsp fennel seeds

Sweet Corn Soup

Whenever hubby is sent to the supermarket unsupervised, there are a few things he always 'accidentally' comes home with... chocolate, berries, toy yoghurts (those chilled custardy treats for kids) and sweet corn if it's summer. Seeing as we had a few cobs in the fridge, I thought I'd do something different with them, so went through Stephanie and found a recipe for Sweet Corn Soup. It sounded nice and simple and I was interested to see how it would taste as the only corn soup I've ever had has always been the Chinese version.

This soup was easy enough to whip up, although passing it through a sieve did take a little while, but was definitely worth the effort as the soup was beautifully silky. The ingredient list is quite short, so you really do need to use the best produce for this one; It's not a recipe for canned corn.

Sweet Corn Soup (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Sweetcorn Soup with Spiced Butter, pg 350
serves 4 as a starter

40g butter
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 litre water
kernels from 4 corn cobs
salt

Red Cabbage with Apple

I've had this recipe marked to test out for a while, so when hubby said he wanted sausages for dinner, I thought I would finally get around to cooking this up. Unsurprisingly, this tasted a lot like cabbage...a bit too much for me. I think I was hoping it would have a bit more going on, but given the short list of ingredients, I shouldn't be surprised with how it turned out. It was nice, but I think I'm more of a fresh cabbage person than a boiled cabbage person now that I've tested this out.

Red Cabbage with Apple
adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, pg 215
serves 6

1/4 cup water
1 red cabbage, sliced, washed and drained
4 tbsp brown sugar
pinch salt
2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
100g butter, cubed



Put water, cabbage, sugar and salt into a heavy based pan. Add apple, cover and cook on lowest heat for 1 hour.

Take off the lid, and stir the apple through the cabbage. Add the vinegar and butter. Cook, covered for another 15 minutes and stir once more. The butter should give the cabbage a nice shine.

Thai Beef Salad

On the weekend, hubby came back from 2 weeks overseas. This was great as I was sick of talking to myself and making dinners for one. With all the family and work functions he'd be going to, he was craving something light to eat. I flicked around the book and came across the recipe for Thai Beef Salad. I've made Thai Beef Salad before, but have always made it up as I went along. It always turns out pretty much the same, so I thought that by following a recipe, I could see if there are improvements to my usual one to be made.

Surprisingly, this was heaps nicer than the one I usually make! Surprising as I thought the one I usually make was pretty good, but this was fantastic! The marinade gave the steak an extra flavour boost and made it taste more bbq'd, and the additions of garlic and spring onion to the dressing really pepped it up!

Thai Beef Salad (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Thai Style Beef Salad, pg 157
serves 2

1 x 400g rump steak
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 capsicum, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 small cucumber, cut into quarters and sliced
handful mint leaves, chopped
handful coriander leaves (I use the stems too), chopped
handful cashews (peanuts would be nice too), toasted
your choice of noodles (I used 2 cakes wholewheat egg noodles)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Well, not really, but in our house it certainly smells like it! Apparently Selfridges are opening their Christmas Shop this weekend, only 140 days before Christmas! Crazy! Anyway, I was more interested in the culinary side of Christmas. I had a craving for some fruit cake, but didn't want to wait the week or so it usually takes to make one. Luckily, Stephanie delivered with a recipe for Boil and Bake Fruit Cake. It was quick and easy to make and had a lovely gingerbread flavour, thanks to the dried ginger. The only thing I thought it was lacking was some glace cherries, but that's a personal preference, because I love them. Next time I make this, and there will be a next time, I'll chuck a handful of the cherries in too.

Recipe and directions can be found on my new blog thingsforboys, Here.

We stored a quarter of the cake on a plate wrapped in cling wrap. It was fine sitting on the bench, and was still nice and moist when we ate it a few days later. I have frozen half of the cake, mainly so we couldn't eat it and the other quarter was eaten as soon as the cake had cooled. Sure, it sounds like a lot of cake for 2 people to eat, but what can I say, I'm pregnant?! Yeah, I'll blame that.

Potato and Spinach Soup

Once again, we had some spinach in the fridge that need to be used up. I was at the market earlier in the day and spotted some delicious looking, freshly baked bread, so decided to make a soup to go with it. It turned out to be a fairly warm day, so a hearty soup probably wasn't the best choice.

One word of caution: because of the high potato content of the soup, don't overblend the soup as it may turn out gluey. Ours was slightly on the gluey side...not good!

I didn't bother peeling the potatoes, because they were very small, and I find the skin adds a nice 'potatoey' flavour to the soup. I cooked this in my 22cm Le Creuset pot.

Potato and Spinach Soup (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, pg 927
serves 4

2 onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 tbsp oil
500g potatoes, cut into chunks
stock (I just used some powdered vegetable stock)
120g baby spinach
1 tsp ground cumin
salt
pepper

Bircher Muesli

I love bircher muesli. It's so refreshing and you really feel good after eating a bowl of it. During Lent, when we can't have any dairy, this is usually what I have for breakfast instead of cereal and milk. As long as I remember to get the mixture going the night before, we're all good. We pretty much always have everything on hand and at its most basic can be made with just oats and water, although I don't think it would taste that good.

Stephanie's original recipe uses the oats with water, lemon and honey as the base. I did try this, but found it a little bland, and prefer to make it with fruit juice. My favourite is apple juice, but any juice can be used. I also like to mix up the fruit, using nuts, seeds, shredded coconut...whatever is going really! The original recipe also adds a grated apple, which I think is optional when using fruit juice, but it is nice to put something in there, whether it's a grated apple, pear or even some stewed fruit in winter. Again, I find the yoghurt optional and think it's pretty good without it.

The picture at the bottom shows the muesli as made to Stephanie's original recipe. The recipe given below, is the way I like to eat it and is shown in the main picture. Mind you, it's not really a recipe, more of a starting point.

Bircher Muesli (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Bircher Muesli, pg 79
serves 2

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup cloudy apple juice
1/4 cup craisins
raspberries and yoghurt to serve

Madeleines

Madeleines are something that I had never eaten before, but just knew I would love. On our trip to Paris, I made a special detour to a cooking store just to pick up a madeleine tin. I liked the idea of getting the tin in Paris for the quintessential French cake. A madeleine however, is not quite a cake, not quite a biscuit...it's somewhere in the middle. Made of sponge batter, the cakes are pillowy soft on the inside with a nice crisp outside.



For my first attempt, these turned out pretty well and a few of them even got the nice dome on the tops. I think they could probably have been a little lighter in texture, so next time I will whisk the eggs a bit longer. The honey flavour was very light and I had to really think about it to be able to taste it. I'm looking forward to making many, many more of these.

Honey Madeleines (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Honey Madeleines, pg 498
makes 20 - 24 regular madeleines

90g butter, plus 20g extra for coating the tin
1/2 tbsp honey
2 eggs
1/3 cup castor sugar
1 tbsp brown sugar
tiny pinch salt
90g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

An evening at River Cottage with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall

My fantastic hubby decided to totally spoil me for my birthday and got us tickets to River Cottage. My birthday was a month ago, so I had been waiting excitedly for our trip.

We headed off on our way and sadly the weather started to turn. Just as we arrived it started spitting. We parked in the carpark at the top of the farm and hopped into the trailer being pulled by a big blue tractor to take us down the steep path to the farm (see pic 1 below). The trailer was a bit foggy so it was hard to see out the windows, but I managed to catch a glimpse of River Cottage and the garden (see pic 3 below). It is just as beautiful as in the TV show.



We headed inside, where chairs were setup conference style for the cooking demonstration part of the evening. There was also a handy mirror above the cooking bench (see pic 2 above). Hugh came out and greeted us all. He was just as charming as I imagined he'd be and I think hubby was almost as keen to run away with him as I was. He walked us through the four courses we'd be eating and cooked up a serve of each one.

Chilli con Carne

I had been feeling a little tired lately, so decided that a week of red meat dinners to boost my iron would hopefully sort me out. I had a flick through Stephanie, but nothing from the beef or lamb sections really took my fancy. In the dried beans section, I came across the recipe for chilli con carne and thought I would give that a go.

Chilli Con Carne
adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, pg 137
serves 4

Welcome Back Lidia / Wintery Pumpkin Soup

Hi Everyone, it's been such a long time since I've posted on this blog. Apologies all round. Finally, we are in the new house and unpacked, and the renovations are about to commence. My poor Stephanie book has hardly been touched, but it does take pride of place in my bookshelf with all my other cookbooks. Still using it regularly as a reference, but we have hardly had an opportunity to cook too much in the past month. Fortunately, I still had a recipe or two saved up my sleeve for when I had the time to post them.

This Pumpkin Soup recipe inspired me a bit. I love pumpkin soup ordinarily, but I have always liked spicy food, so the combination of the Asian flavours and spice, along with the creaminess of the pumpkin soup base and the coconut milk, well, I was in heaven. I have always found that adding spice to a soup intensifies the heat tenfold, I'm not sure why, but soups always taste extra spicy.

I made a few tweaks to the recipe (of course) but this was mainly because I wanted a lower in fat version, without compromising on taste too much. The main difference is that I chose to use good old Carnation Light and Creamy Coconut Milk instead of coconut milk. It's only about 3% fat, and it adds the delicious hint of coconut without the heaviness of regular coconut milk. For a weeknight dinner, it's important to keep the fat content reasonably low, otherwise I would be the size of a house!

Allan & Michele's Asian Inspired Pumpkin Soup (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, pg 800

Strawberries on my mind

Before coming to the UK, I thought the only fruit and veg you could get here were potatoes, carrots, apples and pears. Boy was I wrong! The selection of fruit and veg is fantastic, even at the supermarkets and there is a great range of organic prduce too!



Summer is in full swing, and luckily for me, so is strawberry season! The selection of varieties available is fantastic and I have not yet been disappointed. I can walk in to some supermarkets and smell them from the door. We have been eating kilos and kilos of them and I'm sure the baby will be quite the strawberry fan too, given the amount of them I have been eating. They seem to come a lot smaller here than back in Melbourne, which I like as they're super sweet and picture perfect. This is a quick fruit dip that I whipped up to enjoy with some strawberries on a picnic.

Chocolate Hazelnut Dip for Fruit
makes about 2/3 cup

1/3 cup Nutella
100g fromage frais

Apple and Blueberry Muffins

Lately, the blueberries have been in abundance and nice and cheap, so I thought I'd make some muffins for snack time. I like muffins that aren't too sweet...that's what cupcakes are for. That way, you can have them for breakfast or afternoon tea without feeling like you've indulged too much. I only managed to get 11 muffins out of the recipe, but I think my cupcake cases are bigger than the average.

Apple and Blueberry Muffins (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Basic Muffins, pg 40
makes 12

240g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1 tbsp honey
1 apple
125g blueberries
raw sugar, optional

Picnic Time

The weather has warmed up a bit lately, so one afternoon I decided we should embrace the British way, and while we didn't sunbake in our underwear in a public place, which is apparently not at all weird, we went on a picnic in the local park. I went to the shops and picked up a picnic rug and other supplies and then went home to make our dinner. Being pregnant can make picnic food a little tricky, so I settled on a quiche which was still warm from the oven when we sat down on the new rug to devour it. We had the quiche with potato salad, green salad and some fresh fruit for dessert. This recipe is only very loosely based on a recipe from Stephanie, as I wasn't really sure where to start, but the ingredients are quite different.

Bacon and Onion Quiche (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Quiche Lorraine, pg 114
Serves 6

2 medium onions
olive oil
6 thick rashers bacon
375g puff pastry, thawed ready to use
6 eggs
2 tbsp milk
salt
pepper

en Français

The blog has been very quiet for the past few weeks, and with good reason. Lidia has moved house so aside from the fact that all her cooking gear has been packed in boxes, she also has no internet. I have been travelling a bit, which has meant I have not been doing my blog homework. Hubby went back to Melbourne for 2 weeks on business and while he was gone, I went up to visit the family. Last weekend we went to Paris, which had been booked for a while. We met up with hubby's cousin and her husband on their honeymoon. It was an action packed weekend with a lot of tourist attractions squeezed in, but we made time for more culinary escapades. I managed to get to a few cookware shops and bought a madeleine tin. They're such iconic little French cakes that I loved the thought of having a 'French' tin. I also bought a book on molecular gastronomy and while it's in French, so I can't read it, the pictures are enough, although I think I'll give some translation a go one day.

Spanakopita

Hubby had to go back to Melbourne for a week or so, and I decided to go up and stay with the family rather than be a hermit. In the process of cleaning out the fridge, I decided to make some spanakopita rolls. These are strong and cheesy and great for lunch, dinner, or a snack. The original recipe calls for 2 eggs to be added to the mixture, but I forgot to put them in. It tasted pretty good with out them.

Spanakopita (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, pg 928
makes 12

1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
150g baby spinach, chopped
2 tbsp chopped mint
2tbsp chopped parsley
pinch nutmeg
125g fetta crumbled
125g ricotta
50g freshly grated pecorino
40g butter, melted
12 sheets filo

Chocolate Healing

I was feeling a bit homesick lately, and nothing cures an emotional ailment quite like chocolate. I love the crunch of nuts or chocolate chips in brownies and when I couldn't find any choc chips, I went with walnuts. I have a standard brownie recipe that I always use, but I had never actually tried the recipe from Stephanie, so was keen to give it a go. Boy have I been missing out! These brownies were rich and chocolately, with a nice bitter tang from using cocoa instead of melted chocolate. I prefer to use cocoa, because I hate melting chocolate, but that's because I'm lazy. The walnuts provided a nice crunch to these gooey brownies. I have to admit that I didn't really follow the method for these, but they turned out great. This is now my go-to brownie recipe.

Walnut Brownies (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie's Double Chocolate Brownies, pg 311

180g butter
100g plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup dutch cocoa
1 1/4 cups golden castor sugar (you can use regular castor sugar)
pinch salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups walnuts (you can use any nuts or choc chips)

Lois's Almond and Orange Biscuits

Ok, so now it seems that I am responding to requests. Kirsten, this one's for you. This was what I took to her place last weekend, and she sent me a text asking for the ingredients, so it was about time I blogged it! I was having a baking frenzy at the weekend, so the oven was already going, and these were ready in an instant. They were great to eat when warm, and once the syrup had soaked into them, they were even better. I think they can still be eaten without the syrup, as hubby confirmed, but I honestly didn't try them without, so I cannot be the judge of it.

I found that the almond meal makes the mix a bit dense, and hard to roll out, but if I wet my hands a bit, it was really easy to roll into shape. I was probably too precious in getting a nice shape to them, but in the end they get coated with the icing sugar so it hides any imperfections. I think these would also work with other citrus flavours, especially lemon. I think I may have to try that one next!

Lois's Almond and Orange Biscuits (Printable Recipe)
adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, pg 617

375g finely ground almonds (I used almond meal)
1 tablespoon plain flour (I used gluten free)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 egg
icing sugar for coating