Whoops! I hadn’t intended to let a whole year pass between blog posts.
In my defense – last year I was nearly 6 months pregnant, and in October gave birth to a gorgeous little boy. So, understandably, many things have taken a back seat.
However, it’s officially my 10 year blog anniversary, so I couldn’t let the occasion pass! Just like last year, I haven’t been organised enough to make a cake, so instead I have a savoury cauliflower cake instead.
After I got my hands on a copy of Jamie’s America (thanks to the buying efforts of April) I flipped through the book with a slight sinking feeling.
I like Jamie, and I like some of his books, but when I looked through this particular one, I thought, “I’m never going to cook anything out of this.” đ
Note: This is a scheduled post while I’m away, so replies to comments and emails will be slow. Enjoy!
I have a terrible habit of buying ingredients just because I’ve never seen them for sale before. I have no idea what to do with them and no plans for using them. My mind just goes “Oooooh,” and before I know it, I’m leaving the shop with it.
That’s how I ended up with a bag of kataifi pastry that sat around in the fridge for a month. Every time I saw it, I thought to myself, “Must cook that up.” But of course, once I closed the fridge, all thoughts of it disappeared.
Do you like beetroot? I love it any way â fresh, cooked, canned (yes, I know), in burgers, in cakes, in soup, in salads. And after being inspired to create this recipe by Nigel Slater, I now also love it in meatballs.
Sure, beetroot can be a pain in the arse because it stains almost everything, but theyâre also rich in vitamins, carbs and proteins. They do have a very high sugar content â about 10% of a beetroot is sugar – but fortunately itâs released slowly into the body.
Cookbook Challenge 2011: Fortnight 5
Theme: Outdoors
Recipe: Mini lamb pies
From: Arabesque
Oh no! Iâm late for last fortnightâs Cookbook Challenge theme, which was âoutdoorsâ. I cooked my dish, which we took to the Avalon Airshow, but ran out of time to write the post and edit photos. Still, here I am – better late than never.
Because I had planned to take my dish to the Airshow, I needed something that I could make ahead of time, that would be okay eaten cold. I decided to make mini lamb pies, from Arabesque, to add to a little picnic that I packed for the day.
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For the first International Incident Party for 2011, we’re all about hot dogs. True to form, I’ve left it to the very last minute and was up early this morning to finish cooking, assembling and photographing my dish. However, the cats were super happy to see me so early and lots of purring and head butting ensured. Awwness! (Though they were probably happier that they were being fed early rather than at seeing me!)
Cookbook Challenge: Week 31
Theme: French
Recipe: Pissaladiere
From: The Australian Women’s Weekly “Kitchen”
Dear Cookbook Challengers in Melbourne! See the end of this post for details of a meet up!
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is French, and initially I was stumped. What could I make for French week that would be fairly easy and only involved ingredients already in my pantry?
But after a bit more thinking, I realised there’s TONS of things that come from French cooking! I almost made a dessert (it was a toss up between brulee or clafoutis) but, despite all the sweet things on this blog, I don’t actually have a huge sweet tooth. (Lots of sweet things make an appearance here because they’re easier to photograph…..! Confession time!) So rather than dessert, I made pissaladiere – an onion and anchovy tart.
The recipe I followed for the pissaladiere had a bread type base, although I believe pastry can also be used. The topping is made from a rather large amount of slowly cooked onions, on to which anchovy fillets and olives are placed. Oh. Notice anything missing on mine? I ran out of olives so mine is sans olives!
Despite the missing olives, the pissaladiere was DELICIOUS. There’s something about the combination of the bready base, sweet onions and the salty fishiness of the anchovies that really did it for me. I know lots of people don’t like anchovies, but gosh it’s worth acquiring the taste for them, just so you can eat pissaladiere!
And now an announcement for all Cookbook Challengers in Melbourne! April and I have been discussing a meet up and we have decided on a date. It’ll be a potluck lunch on Sunday 11 July – with the theme being Spanish (which is the theme for the week after – so if you come, you get to tick off your dish for the following week!). Email me or comment on this post if you’re interested. And if you’re a lapsed Cookbook Challenger, perhaps this could be the motivation to get back into it?! đ
See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.
Pissaladiere
From AWW Kitchen
Serves 6
50g butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 large onions (600g), peeled and sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bay leaf
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 tablespoon baby capers, rinsed
3/4 cup (110g) self-raising flour
3/4 cup (11g) plain flour
30g butter, extra
3/4 cup (180ml) buttermilk
20 drained anchovy fillets, halved lengthways
1/2 cup (90g) small seeded black olives
Heat the butter and oil in a large saucepan over low heat and add the onions, garlic, bay leaf and thyme. Cover the pot and let the mixture cook gently for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want the onions to be soft but not browned.
Let the mixture cook uncovered for a further 10 minutes. Remove the bay leaf and thyme, and stir in the capers.
Preheat the oven to 220°C and oil an oven tray.
Make the base by sifting the flours into a large bowl. Rub in the extra butter, and then stir in the buttermilk to form a soft dough (mine needed more flour). Turn the dough on to a lightly floured surface and knead until it is smooth.
Roll the dough into a rectangular shape that is about 25cm x 35cm. Place on to the tray.
Spread the onion mixture over the dough, up to the edges. Top with the anchovy fillets, placing them in a diamond pattern. Put an olive in the middle of each diamond.
Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the base is crisp.
I found out a “neat” thing today – chestnuts explode! Fortunately, I have a lovely husband who is currently cleaning my oven while I sit on the couch. If I had bothered to google roasting chestnuts before I popped them into the oven, I would’ve found out that I should’ve cut them first. Whoops!
On Saturday, the highly entertaining PG kindly hosted the second Bloggers Banquet. Oooooh pressure! What do you cook for people who love food and know a lot about it? I had a feeling that there would be lots of sweet items, so I went down the savoury route.
One of my items was bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese. I’ve owned a copy of Richard Bertinet’s Crust (not an affiliate link) for a couple of months, and so far all I have made are bagels. To be fair though, none of the bread recipes in this book are quick and easy. This was my second attempt at the bagel recipe, and initially it all seemed to be going rather well. The starter dough fermented in the fridge for a day, and then on Friday night I added the rest of the ingredients and worked the dough as instructed. The dough started to come together and was very light and lively. I let it rest for 30 minutes, then separated it into small balls and shaped into bagels. The bagels then proved for an hour.
When I came back to them, the bagels had risen but seemed a bit limp. But I was too far gone by this stage and had to keep going – the bagels got a brief boiling then baking. They tasted okay (I think), and had the chewy texture, but they were a bit flaccid and some were wrinkly.
Obviously I haven’t quite mastered the art of bagel making yet, but I will keep trying!
Fortunately I had another item to redeem myself! The recipe for the tarts is from Cuisine.com.au and the shortcrust pastry recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. My bread making skills are a bit lacking, but at least I can make pastry! It was 11pm by the time I rolled out the pastry, and despite the late hour and my haphazardness, the pastry was still light and slightly flakey.
Onion tartlet recipe from Cuisine.com.au.
Shortcrust pastry
From Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion
Will line up to a 26cm tin
180g unsalted butter
240g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup water
Remove butter from refrigerator 30 minutes before making pastry.
Sift flour and salt onto a marble pastry slab or workbench.
Chop buter into smallish pieces and toss lightly in flour.
Lightly rub to combine partly.
Make a well in centre and pour in water.
Using a pastry scraper, work water into flour until you have a very rough heap of buttery lumps of dough.
Using the heel of your hand, quickly smear pastry away from your across the workbench. It will combine lightly.
Gather together, then press quickly into a flat cake and dust with a little flour.
Wrap pastry in plastic film and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.
When required, roll out pastry, dusting generously with flour as necessary.
Line your required tin and blind bake.
This was another item I brought to our orphan’s Christmas. The recipe makes about twice the amount of pâtĂŠ required, so you could double the pikelet recipe. The original only gives you around 20 pikelets. The cookbook said about 30, but I don’t know what kind of planet they were on. I only managed 19 from my batter, which actually suited me because I didn’t want too many pikelets considering I was bringing other stuff too.
I really tried to avoid making too much food this year. I didn’t want to be eating leftovers for days or having to throw stuff out.
My only leftovers this year was a bit of tuna pâtÊ and a small amount of seared beef (coming up in my next post). I ate the left over tuna pâtÊ in a toasted sandwich. I love tuna toasted sandwiches!
Ingredients
Instructions
Notes
Adapted from Kitchen Classics: sweet and savoury bites
Broccoli has been one of my favourite vegetables for several years. This winter though, I’ve been turning away from it in favour of it’s close relative, the cauliflower.
Last week, having both cauliflower and broccoli in my vegetable crisper, I wanted to find a way to eat them both. I often do stir fry, occasionally some roast vegies, and I wanted something a bit different. Something with a bit more oomph.
After mulling over it for half a day, a light bulb went on in my head. How about fritters? A google search soon threw up a couple of recipes for a very basic cauliflower fritter. I decided to sex it up by adding some roasted cumin seeds, which gave them an aromatic, peppery edge.
We ate the fritters wrapped in flat pita bread and with home made hummus (recipe from taste.com.au here). The following day, the three of us stood around the kitchen bench and ate them cold. Gosh they were good.
Next time I make these I will skip the flour and dip them in egg and dried breadcrumbs instead. I suggest you try that rather than following my recipe and rolling in flour.
Cauliflower and broccoli fritters
Serves 4
600g cauliflower
400g broccoli
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Fresh breadcrumbs
Flour
Salt & pepper
Wash the cauliflower and broccoli and cut into small florets. In separate pots, boil the florets until tender in well salted water. Drain the vegetables, transfer to a bowl and mash.
In a dry frying pan, lightly toast the cumin seeds over medium heat. Crush in a mortar and pestle and tip into the cauliflower and broccoli mixture.
Add the garlic and egg, and season well with salt and pepper. Work in enough breadcrumbs to obtain a fairly stiff mixture (possibly about 3/4 cup? I didn’t keep track…).
Wet your hands and form the mixture into balls then roll them in flour. Heat a frying pan on medium heat and fry the fritters until golden.
Drain them on absorbent paper and serve.