Afternoon tea

Brownies

I’m developing a few easy recipes for one of my home made Christmas recipes. I am making brownies and oat cookies in a jar, all the dry ingredients will be in the jar and all the recipient has to do is melt some butter and add an egg or two to the ingredients, follow the baking instructions and  enjoy the fruits of their labour….. it’s almost cheatingJ

The first batch of the brownies were excellent, i just think they needed some nuts. I'll keep you posted on the success of these recipes/gifts.

Quiche

I have never been a big fan of quiche, the pastry is never quite to my taste. In a bid to better understand why the bottoms of quiches are so soggy I attempted to make two quiches with different pastry styles. I made one with Maggie Beer’s sour cream pastry and one with a short crust.

Sour Cream Pastry - Spinach and Fetta Quiche.

For the filling of the spinach I used about 1 bunch of silver beat to 250 grams of fetta and 6 eggs.

The sour cream pastry was not blind baked, it was set in the freezer for 30 minutes then the filling was poured in and it was baked at 160°C for about 45 minutes.

The shortcrust quiche was flatter and it’s filling was made up of sautéed radish, asparagus, leek, garlic and carrot. I mixed the sautéed spring vegetables with some parmesan and 10 eggs.

The shortcrust was blind baked for 20 minutes first on 180°C then allowed to cool. I poured in the filling and cooked it t 160°C for about 30-35 minutes.

I much preferred the sour cream pastry, the sides turned into a flaky crispy delight but the base was still to soggy for my liking……… perhaps I just don’t like quiche????

Creme Brulee

I went out to dinner with my handsome boyfriend the other night and I won’t mention the name of the restaurant as I am not a food critic and I really enjoy going there but they must have a new chef because the food was down right cooky. The enjoyable side affect of not enjoying your dinner however is that there is plenty of room for dessert. We were served a crème brulee unlike any other I’d seen in that it was cooked in a bowl instead of a ramekin. We liked it so much that I had to try it at home. This is my attempt at the crème brulee.

Poached Quail Eggs with Spicy Tomatoes and Spinach

I topped this breakfast with some buttery sage and mushrooms..... Very yummy.

Quail eggs are so delicate and this is the first time I have poached them. Their whites are much stringer than chicken egg whites, when cooked the slightly chewy whites perfectly encase the soft sweet yolks. I just love these eggs!

Radish Salad

I was watering my garden the other day and saw some wonderful flashes of red beneath the green foliage I was watering. They were my first radishes. It was a hot day and these radishes were just the thing I needed to make a crisp peppery salad to go with dinner which would be alfresco.

The salad I made was quite simple; I used some fresh dark green leaves from the garden with the finely sliced radish and dressed it with olive oil and verjuice. You could serve this salad with anything really but I chose a nice piece of fish with lime and pepper.

Perhaps with a side of asparagus with smoked almonds and butter.........

Pear and Blueberry Loaf

I found some pears looking a little worse for ware in the fruit bowl yesterday so after a horrible afternoon that drove me to my kitchen they were a little gift from heaven. In an effort to hide away from the rest of the world, presumably in a cloud of butter and sugar, I used said pairs to create this lovely pear and blueberry loaf. what a treat......

Ingredients:

3 soft pairs

2 cups frozen blueberries

2 cups plain flour

1 cup almond meal

3 teaspoons of baking powder

100g butter

2 tablespoons of brown sugar

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons of maple syrup

Method:

Chop and remove the core from the pears then mash them in a large mixing bowl. add the sugar, molasses and maple syrup to the pears then melt the butter and pour it over the mixture and give it a good stir.

Sift in the flour and baking powder over the fruit mixture and stir it in then stir in the almond meal. Pop the frozen berries into the mix and fold them through.

pour the mix into a lined large loaf tin and bake at 150°C for about 40-45 minutes. the loaf needs to spring back when touched in the centre but a skewer needn't come out clean. You can add some nuts to the top as I have done but it will be quite lovely without it.

Brunch

I love lazy Sundays when breakfast turns into lunch. Today it was poached eggs with fresh tomato and basil.

Raspberry and White Chocolate cupcakes

Fridays at work have turned into a routine Cake Day. I bake of course. Today after not so subtle hints from my colleagues, it was raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes.

Thai Style Trout with Broccoli Salad

This dish was really light and tasty, the only thing I would have changes was the pasta in the salad. It would have benefited from maybe some soba noodles or udon noodles, anything really that had a hint of an Asian heritage. The Italian pasta spirals stuck out like a sore thumb but they were only added as they were left over from the children’s dinner and I was feeling lazy.   

Ingredients:

Fish:

2 Trout fillets

1 thumb size piece of ginger

1 bulb of spring garlic (save the tops of the garlic for the salad)

1 lime

Salad:

1 small head of broccoli

1 hand full of beetroot leaves (you can use a different dark green salad leaf if you like)

1 cup of cooked soba noodles

The top of a spring garlic bulb

Dressing:

2 tablespoons of soy

1 teaspoon of palm sugar

2 teaspoons of sesame oil

Juice of 2 limes

Method:

Fish:

Place one each piece of fish onto a large square of aluminium foil. Peel and very finely slice the ginger and garlic, sprinkle it over the fish. Slice the lime into about 6 round slices and layer those over the garlic and ginger. Season the fish with cracked pepper then wrap the fish up in a little bundle with the foil making sure there are no wholes in the foil. Pop each parcel into the oven at 180°C for about 10 minutes.

Dressing:

Grate the palm sugar and pop it into a small bowl. Add the lime juice first and stir up the sugar until it dissolves. Once the sugar has dissolved add the rest of the ingredients and mix them all up.

Salad:

Blanch the broccoli then rinse it in cold water. Finely slice the spring garlic top. In a large mixing bowl add the broccoli, beetroot leaves, chopped spring garlic, cooked noodles and dressing. Give it all a mix by hand making sure everything has a nice coat of dressing.

Put a generous mound of salad on the plate and carefully remove the fish from the foil to serve it with the salad. Enjoy!

Spinach Filo

Well what a busy couple of weeks. It’s not that I haven’t cooked but have been unable to post the recipes so this one will be one of several catch up posts I make over today. Last weekend was the Italian Festival at Leichhardt. I routinely run the cooking tent where a chef demonstrates some Italian recipes for the crowd and introduces some local Nonas who also share their recipes. It’s a good day and the crowd are well fed and entertained. This year the chef gave me some fantastic Italian cheeses to go home and experiment with so firstly I would like to share my spinach filo I made. I used the Ricotta Salata cheese, it’s a hard salted ricotta which can be grated.

I had to make spinach filo as my wonderful garden has once again filled with leafy greens. I have English spinach in abundance. I have listed a recipe below but remember mine is all from the garden so exact amounts I’m unsure of, I’ve tried to round it up or down to even bunches you would get at your fruit and veg shop.

Ingredients:

1 packet of filo

2 bunches of English spinach

1 bunch of basil

½ bunch of mint

Zest of one lime

2 cups of grated Ricotta salata cheese

1 egg

Method:

Wash and dry the spinach and herbs then chop them roughly and throw them into a large mixing bowl. Add the grated cheese lime zest and egg and mix by hand until everything is coated in egg.

Use about 5 sheets of filo per roll. You can oil or butter in between each sheet if you like, I find the easiest way to do this is use the spray olive oil and spray each sheet then carefully lay the next sheet on to the oiled one, continuing until you have five sheets. If you are more health conscious you can leave the oil out all together and it will still be a nice filo.

Place half of the mixture onto your pastry length ways; brush the edges with milk to help seal the roll. Fold each side in then roll the filo into a log and place it on a baking tray and cook at 180°C for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

the Ricotta Salata was a lovely point of difference in the filo, i make this recipe often but use feta  or soft ricotta. This cheese kept the filling firm and somehow less oily. I liked it and will source this cheese again.