The theme for the Cookbook Challenge last week was “muffins”, so I turned to the trusty AWW Bake as it has a whole chapter on muffins. Despite the entire chapter, nothing really took my fancy. Perhaps there’s still a lingering obsession with cupcakes, and muffins just seem unrefined and boring by comparison?
In Bake, there were a lot of recipes for savoury muffins, but I had already decided I wanted to make sweet ones. There were also quite a few recipes with berries and banana, neither of which I wanted to use. In the end, I finally decided on citrus poppy seed muffins. It was a pretty good choice because it’s a really easy recipe to put together. All the ingredients get thrown into an electric mixer and voila! Muffin batter! I think it took me longer to line the muffin trays with baking paper.
As you can see in the pictures, these have quite a cakey texture, unlike most other muffins. They definitely need a good amount of citrus rind – don’t skimp on the rind if you make them. It’s also far too easy to over bake them. Mine tasted okay when they were warm from the oven, but the next day they seemed a bit dry. Ahh well. It was okay when washed down with a cup of tea but I’m not sure if they’re good enough to warrant another try. So many muffins in the world, and so little time!
Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan.
In an electric mixer, beat the butter, citrus rind, sugar, eggs, flour and milk until combined. Increase the speed to medium and beat until the colour of the mixture is paler. Stir in the poppyseeds and spoon the mixture into the muffin tin.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until a skewer in the middle comes out clean. Stand the muffins int he pan for 5 minutes, and then tip out on to a wire rack to cool.
Recipe: Japanese Mushroom Noodles From: Lighten Up
A very quick post for the Cookbook Challenge this week. I have a lot to do tonight because Alastair and I are off to Sydney tomorrow evening for a long weekend. His cousin is sailing in a regatta, so we are going up to watch him (hopefully) win!
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “Japanese” and I needed something that was quick, easy and preferably healthy. I chose to make Japanese mushroom noodles from Lighten Up, which fit all those requirements.
I wanted to use different mushrooms, such as enoki and oyster, but there are no Asian grocery stores near my work, and I didn’t have time to go anywhere else to get any. So I only had Portobello mushrooms in my noodles but I added a can of baby corn so it wasn’t too boring.
This meal was really simple to put together – perfect for a busy weeknight. And now, I better get off the internet and get stuff done! Back next week!
Update: See what everyone else made at the round up on My Food Trail.
Japanese mushroom noodles
From: Lighten Up
Serves 4
4 dried shitake mushrooms 250g dried udon noodles 200g fresh Japanese mushrooms eg enoki, oyster (I only had Portobello mushrooms) 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 tablespoon finely shredded fresh ginger sea salt and pepper 1 tablespoon miso paste 1 tablespoon mirin 2 tablespoons soy sauce chives to finish
Soak the dried shitake in a cup of boiling water for at least 30 minutes. Drain, reserving the water. Remove the stalks and discard. Slice the caps finely.
Cook the udon noodles in salted water for 8 minutes, or until tender. Drain and set aside.
Trim the fresh mushrooms and slice them thickly.
Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the ginger and the fresh and dried mushrooms. Cook on a medium-low heat for a few minutes, or until soft.
Stir in the reserved water from the mushroom, apart from three tablespoons. Season with salt and pepper and let it simmer for a few minutes.
Put the miso paste in a small bowl and whisk in the three tablespoons of hot reserved mushroom water. Add this, and the mirin and soy to the mushrooms.
Toss with the drained noodles and serve scattered with chives.
Oh, it’s Valentine’s Day! And Chinese New Year! Rather aptly, this week’s theme for the Cookbook Challenge is “love” and this week I’m breaking out a Nigel Slater recipe because I love his book, Tender. and I love his writing.
This week I made a moist, chocolate beetroot cake, which also fits in with the theme because beetroots are red, and red is the colour of luuuuuuuuuuurve. Additionally, everyone loves chocolate, and any people who are non-chocolate lovers are not worth knowing (only kidding, you non-chocolate lovers! I still love you!).
The first step to making this cake is to cook some beetroots until soft. Once that is done, it’s no more difficult to put together than any other moist chocolate cake (unless you’re particularly clumsy and are at risk of staining your kitchen red!). There are some strange steps in the recipe that I didn’t quite understand – 200g of chocolate is melted in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, but the recipe specifies not to stir it. Later, once the chocolate is almost melted (but not stirred!), hot espresso is poured over, and butter is added. This is left to soften, and then it is stirred later. Why is this? Why can’t the chocolate and butter be melted together and stirred? If there’s a good reason for it, I’d like to know!
The other part that confused me is the egg whites. In the recipe, the egg whites are whipped until stiff, and then sugar is folded into the whites. This is then added into the chocolate mixture, and finally the flour is folded in. Most cake recipes have you fold in the egg whites last, so you don’t lose the air that you so carefully whipped in. In the end, I deviated from the recipe and folded my egg whites through last. But if there is a good reason for the former method, I would like to know what it is!
I don’t think my folding through the egg whites last affected my cake negatively. I also baked it for a bit longer than the recipe specified and it still seemed to come out fine, if you ignore the big ass crack. Nigel says about this cake: “This is a seductive cake, deeply moist and tempting.”
It is moist, indeed. Really, really moist. But anyone who tells you that you can’t taste the beetroot in it is a big fat liar. I didn’t think that the beetroot was “subtle or elusive”, I thought that it screamed beetroot. The cake is a very dark purple brown, unlike plain chocolate cake, and the beetroot added an earthy, tanginess to it that I was unsure about. Nevertheless, even though I didn’t think I particularly liked it, I found that I went back for another spoonful… and another… and another.
Hmmpt. Perhaps that’s why it was described as seductive. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.
Update: I ate a piece of cake the day after I baked it, and the beetroot wasn’t as pronounced. It’s moist like a mud cake, but didn’t seem as heavy. So I’ve decided that this cake is REALLY REALLY REALLY good! In fact, I think it’s one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve ever made.
If you’d like to make this cake – check out the recipe here. PS: the cake photo on the website is NOT of the chocolate beetroot cake. It’s a beetroot seed cake in the book.
Eggs are stupid, Eggs are dumb, So take the eggs And stick em up your……..
😀
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “eggs” and I actually don’t think eggs are stupid nor dumb. I love eggs! My favourite way of eating them is poached, with a still oozy yolk. Which is probably why I decided on this recipe.
For the theme this week, I made fresh pasta (with eggs) and turned the pasta into oozy egg ravioli. Double the egginess right there. I think I remember seeing this ravioli on the Fifteen reality show, and I remember it looking very impressive.
The recipe involves first making the pasta, and then rolling it out (or putting it through a pasta machine) into thin sheets. A tablespoon of seasoned ricotta is placed down, and an egg yolk is placed on top.
Here’s one ravioli ready for the top sheet of pasta – look at that beautiful yolk. After the yolk is placed, the ravioli is sealed, and then cooked for a few minutes, before being covered in a butter sauce and topped with some pepper and a smattering of parmesan.
While making the ravioli isn’t complicated, it is a bit of effort putting them together. You have to be quite careful not to break the egg yolks – I broke two, gaaaah. The only change I made from the recipe was to put some sage leaves into the butter.
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Ideally, only cooking the pasta for a few minutes will leave the yolk still runny. And ahhh yes, so it did. It does look good with the gooey yolk. I’m not sure I would bother making them again, but I’m glad I tried it at least once!
Check out the recipe for making fresh pasta and also the oozy egg ravioli here (the pasta recipe is the second one down, and the ravioli is the last recipe) – saves me from having to type it out!
Recipe: Persian jewelled rice with chicken From: The Jewish Kitchen by Clarissa Hyman
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “mixed”, which is a fairly open theme. I had a few ideas for things I could do for this week. I thought that I could make something that had different textures, or a dish that had a mixture of sweet and savoury. I also thought about making something that needed a mixer as part of the preparation, or cooking something that involved mixed berries.
In the end, I decided to do this Persian jewelled rice with chicken. It fits into the “mixed” theme, because the dish has a mixture of dried fruit, as well as being a mixture of sweet and savoury.
I had great intentions of cooking this dish in the late afternoon, so that by the time it was cooked, it would still be bright enough to take photos, and then I could exercise before dinner (it’s habit, I must exercise at the same time on my exercise days otherwise it doesn’t happen!). My good intentions were almost dashed by the fact that I ended up having a nana nap on the couch for a couple of hours….. and by the time I got off the couch, the cool change had kicked in and storm clouds had gathered over the house, cutting out a lot of light.
Fortunately, I didn’t need as much time as I had thought to cook the dish, and there was still enough light to take photos, despite the rain. Phew. Glad I didn’t end up regretting that nana nap, because really, is there anything better than a nap in the arvo??
The recipe itself was a bit of a kerfuffle. It seemed overly complicated for what is essentially cooked rice mixed with chopped up chicken and pieces of dried fruit. I did follow the recipe when making it, but it would be different if I were to do it my way. My way would involve cooking the rice by absorption method, and once cooked, mixing in the cooked chicken and dried fruit. It would be less complicated and take much less time!
I was a bit worried that the rice would end up far too sweet (check out the part where carrots are simmered in water and 200g of sugar!) but it was fine. With all the dried fruit, there were definite sweet parts to it, but not overly so. The nuts and the chicken helped balance it out.
I’m not sure that I would bother following the recipe again, although I did like the idea of the rice studded with bits of coloured fruit. Like I said, it seemed overly complicated and while it was tasty, it wasn’t tasty enough to be worth all that effort!
Update: See the round up for this week at My Food Trail.
Persian jewelled rice with chicken
From The Jewish Kitchen by Clarissa Hyman
Serves 6
500g basmati rice 1.5kg roasting chicken, jointed salt 2 large onions, chopped finely shredded rind of 1 large orange (I used lemon) 2 large carrots, cut into fine slivers 200g sugar 4 tablespoons sunflower oil 150g raisins 150g dried barberries or cherries (I used cranberries) 150g dried apricots, chopped into small pieces a few strands of saffron, dissolved in 2 tablespoons hot water (optional) shredded almonds and chopped pistachios to garnish
Rinse the rice well, and leave it to soak in cold, salted water for a few hours.
In a non-stick pan, place the chicken and one of the chopped onions. Sprinkle in a little salt and then cover and cook over a very low heat (don’t add any water). Let it cook for about 45 minutes. The chicken will simmer in its own fat and juices. Cool, then bone and skin the chicken and cut into small pieces. Set aside, and reserve any juices from the chicken.
Next, place the orange rind, carrots and sugar in a pot, and cover with 300ml water. Boil for 10 minutes and then drain.
In a frying pan, cook the other onion in half the oil until translucent, then add the raisins, barberries and apricots. Cook for a few minutes, then add the orange and carrot mixture. Drain, and set aside.
In a large non-stick or heavy based saucepan, bring 1.5 litres of water to the boil. Add 1 tablespoon salt, and then add the drained rice. Bring it back to the boil and then lower the heat to a gentle simmer. Let the rice simmer for 3 minutes and then drain. Rinse with tepid water and shake gently into the sieve to keep the grains separate. Set aside.
Wash out the pan, and add the rest of the oil. Swirl the oil around so it covers some of the sides as well as the bottom.
With your hands, sprinkle in a layer of rice (this helps to aerate it). Top the rice with some chicken, then fruit. Continue with the layers, trying to build up into a conical shape, and finish with a layer of rice. Poke a few holes through the rice with the end of a wooden spoon.
Drizzle over the reserved chicken juices, the remaining oil and the saffron. Cover the pot with a clean tea towel, then a tight lid, and cook for 1-2 minutes on a high heat. Then reduce the heat to very low and let it “steam” for a further 40 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat and leave to stand for five minutes before lifting off the lid. Serve in a mound on a large platter, garnished with almonds and pistachios (I just mixed mine all through the rice).
Recipe: Iced beetroot soup From: Jill Dupleix’s Lighten Up
Argh! I’m late for (last week’s) Cookbook Challenge! Despite knowing what I was going to make at the beginning of the week, I’m still late with it! In my defense though, I was going to do it in the weekend but ended up spending all day Saturday painting the walls of our bottom floor. I thought that I would be able to squeeze in some quick cooking on the day, but the painting took much longer than I thought, despite getting up early (7:30am on a SATURDAY, thank you very much). We were out on Saturday night, and out all day on Sunday, so there was no opportunity to do my Cookbook Challenge recipe.
I did take yesterday (the day before Australia Day) off, but guess what I spent it doing? More painting! I painted the lower stairway, and again that took all day. Anyway, here I am finally, only a couple of days late. Thank goodness today is a public holiday!
The theme for Week 10 is “cool” and guess what? Unlike the past five weeks, I didn’t do a sweet recipe! Instead, I did a chilled beetroot soup. I can’t say I’ve ever had a beetroot soup before, much less a cold one, so had zero expectations of this one.
Well I’m pleased to say that the soup is very good and would be very refreshing on a hot day. It’s quite spicy with the shallots and raw garlic (warning, it tends to hang around for a bit afterwards!), while still being sweet and earthy. Plus it’s a gorgeous ruby-red colour. It could be the prettiest soup ever!
After making the soup, I still have half a bunch of beetroot left. I wonder what I should do with it. Perhaps I could work it into this week’s theme (mixed)…?
Update: See the round up for this week at My Food Trail.
Iced beetroot soup
From Jill Dupleix’s Lighten Up
Serves 6 to 8
3 shallots 2 celery stalks (I didn’t have any and left this out) 500g beetroot, cooked and peeled 2 garlic cloves, crushed 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 300ml vegetable stock or water sea salt and pepper 1 tablespoon horseradish cream 100g thick Greek yoghurt chives to finish
Roughly chop the shallots, celery and the beetroot and mix with the crushed garlic, wine vinegar and olive oil.
Cover and leave it to marinate for a couple of hours or overnight.
Place the beetroot mixture into a blend and blend to a smooth puree. Add the stock, salt and pepper and blend again until smooth.
Chill until ready to serve.
Stir the horseradish cream with the yoghurt. When ready to serve, add a dollop of the horseradish yoghurt on top of the soup, grind over some pepper and spear with a chive.
Cookbook Challenge: Week 9
Theme: Berry
Recipe: Blueberry and coconut muffins From: Australian Women’s Weekly “Kitchen”
So guess what the theme is this week for the Cookbook Challenge? Berry. And guess who did berry pancakes LAST week? Yep, genius over here!
Obviously I don’t plan my weekly recipes in advance. If I had been clever, I would’ve done the pancakes this week and found a different recipe for the sweet week. But I didn’t, so I spent a bit of time this weekend looking for another berry recipe. I figured that I was going to bake something, since I didn’t fancy my chances of finding a savoury recipe that also incorporated berries.
And muffins it was! These muffins were pretty easy to put together, although the batter was extremely thick. Taste wise, they’re not a light, fluffy cake-like muffin – the coconut gives them a chewy, heavy texture that is vaguely similar to a scone. I’m not really selling them, I know, but let me tell you that they are strangely moreish. I ate one, and another, and another…. I hate to tell you how many I ate today (FOUR, for goodness sake).
Preheat the oven to 200°C and grease or line a 12 hole muffin tin.
In a food processor, pulse the chopped butter and caster sugar until it resembles large breadcrumbs.
Sift the flours into a large bowl (add in any stuff from the wholemeal flour that couldn’t make it through the sieve), and add the butter mixture. Add the buttermilk, egg, desiccated coconut and blueberries. Mix until just combined.
Spoon the mixture into the muffin tin holes and bake for about 20 minutes, or until a skewer in the centre comes out come. Stand the muffins in the tin for five minutes, and then remove on to a wire rack to cool.
Recipe: Berry buttermilk pancakes From: Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “sweet” and I decided to make pancakes. What is sweeter than a leisurely Sunday breakfast of pancakes with the one you love? Not much, I think!
The Cook’s Companion suggests preparing the batter the night before, up to the stage before adding the egg whites, for a quick breakfast. Great idea, although preparing the batter from scratch doesn’t actually take all that long. It’s the cooking that takes the longest, though there are machines to help with that…..
The original recipe didn’t specify any sugar to be added to the pancake batter, so I included a tablespoon of caster sugar. Even with the additional sugar, these pancakes aren’t very sweet – smothering them in maple syrup is a definite requirement. They are beautifully fluffy though and definitely worth the effort.
And a tip – don’t be tempted to just throw your berries into the batter before cooking, unless you don’t mind irregular sized pancakes. I made three perfect round pancakes before I got bored and threw all the blackberries into the batter. After that, all the pancakes were interestingly shaped! Oh well. Judging by the five pancakes Alastair scoffed down, the strange shapes didn’t detract from the taste!
Update: See the round up for this week at My Food Trail.
Berry buttermilk pancakes
Adapted from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion
Makes 18 pancakes
3 eggs, separated 2 cups buttermilk 60g butter, melted 300g plain flour, sifted 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon caster sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda, sifted extra butter or oil spray About a cup of fresh berries
Beat the egg yolks well and then whisk in the buttermilk and melted butter.
Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and fold in.
Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and fold into the batter.
Heat a frying pan and lightly grease. Ladle in 1/4 cup of batter and scatter some berries over the uncooked batter. When bubbles form, flip with a spatula and cook the other side before transferring to a plate. Repeat until all the pancakes are ready.
Serve with additional fresh berries and maple syrup.
Hello 2010! It felt like it was only the other day when I did the Christmas Cookbook Challenge post, and now it’s time for the next one AND it’s a brand new year! Wow!
We had a quiet BBQ at home for New Years Eve. The theme this week for the Cookbook Challenge is “soft” so for dessert I made chocolate mousse to tick off my Challenge recipe. I actually can’t believe that we’re seven weeks in, and I have managed to do a recipe each week AND post it on time. If anyone is considering joining in but is worried about whether they’ll be able to keep up – if I can do it, you can too.
I’m not a huge chocolate eater, but I do like very dark chocolate, so most of the chocolate I buy is 70% cocoa. That’s what I used to make this mousse, and unfortunately it was probably a mistake! The mousse is basically just chocolate and eggs (and a bit of brandy) so it was SUPER SUPER rich, and none of us could finish a whole serve. It didn’t help that we had all just eaten a big bowl of Dany’s rocky road ice cream. Doh!
The two good thing about the recipe is that it’s incredibly simple, and it doesn’t use cream. If you want to try it, I would recommend using chocolate with a lower cocoa percentage. And don’t eat a big bowl of ice cream beforehand!
Update: See what everyone else made this week at My Food Trail.
Chocolate mousse
From Gorgeous Desserts
Serves 6
250g dark chocolate (about 50% cocoa is recommended), broken into pieces 6 medium eggs, separated 2 tablespoons brandy or strong black coffee
Melt the chocolate in a large bowl set over a pot of simmering water. When melted, set aside for a few minutes so that it’s not too hot, and then stir in the egg yolks and brandy/coffee.
In another bowl, whisk the egg whites with an electric mixer until stiff. Fold a couple of tablespoons of egg whites into the chocolate mixture, and then fold in the remainder of the egg whites in two goes.
Transfer the mousse to a serving bowl or individual glasses. Cover with cling firm and chill for several hours or overnight until firm.
Mine were decorated with a dusting of icing sugar, cocoa and a few chocolate covered coffee beans.
Recipe: Gourmet Rocky Road Adapted from: The Australian Women’s Weekly Food We Love
2nd recipe: Pickled and spiced cherries From: Danks Street Depot
Well, that’s Christmas ticked off for another year. We had a great one, and this year it was our 6th annual Orphans’ Christmas spent with Dany and Scott. It was a super fun day with lots of food, booze and frivolity.
Since it was Christmas this week, it was also the theme for the Cookbook Challenge. I made two recipes specifically for the Challenge – rocky road and pickled and spiced cherries.
What’s specifically Christmasy about rocky road? I’m not sure, but it was in the Christmas Fare section of the AWW Food We Love! Rather than follow the recipe exactly, I played with the quantities of the different ingredients, and I threw in dried cranberries, because cranberries are Christmasy – right?
White chocolate was used in the rocky road, and I’m not a big fan of white chocolate because it tends to be so sweet. Unfortunately the rocky road ended up super sweet – I felt like I was going to go into a sugar coma just by eating a small piece! If I tried it again, I would use dark chocolate and less marshmallow to cut down on the sickliness. I must admit that the white chocolate, Turkish delight and pistachios did look very pretty though.
My other recipe was pickled and spiced cherries. These cherries are supposed to be an accompaniment to ham, but although there was ham (made by Dany) we somehow neglected to eat it – must have been because there was so much food already! The cherries were very tart due to the vinegar, but they were also strongly spiced with the cloves, cardamon and star anise. They were quite interesting, and I wonder what they would be like with ham. Perhaps I’ll have to try them again next year!
Grease a 8cm x 26cm bar cake tin and line the base and sides with baking paper.
Combine the marshmallows, turkish delight, almonds, pistachios and cranberries in a large bowl. Working quickly, add the melted chocolate and stir to combine.
Spread the mixture into the prepared pan and push down firmly to flatten the top. Refrigerate until set and then cut into small pieces. Pickled and spiced cherries
Adapted from the Danks Street Depot
Fills a 1.25 litre jar
500g cherries, left intact with the stems on 375ml red wine vinegar 250g soft brown sugar 3 cloves 3 juniper berries 2 allspice berries 1/2 star anise the peel and juice of half a lemon, peel cut into strips 1/2 stick of cinnamon 1 green cardamom pod
Rinse the cherries, discarding any less than perfect ones.
Place all the other ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Let the mixture boil for 5 minutes and then add the cherries. Cook the cherries for a further 5 minutes before removing from the heat and allowing it to sit overnight.
Transfer everything into sterilised jars. The cherries will keep for months.
