Briyani

The latest blog subject of my archive trawling is Fooderati. Of course, not living in Sydney means that I have to dream about visiting the exciting places Melissa blogs about but I can make her recipes. She posted her recipe Josh's Mum's Chicken Briyani and my interest was piqued. Mostly because I have been wanting to find something savoury I can take to work for lunch for my work colleagues, but also because I love briyani. I tagged it with the intention of coming back to it soon.

The other night D and I battled the Christmas Eve crowds at the bottle shop and at the market and realised that we hadn't planned anything for dinner. We are trying to be good with our money and not buy things unnecessarily so we decided to make do with what we had at home. We were considering halving our Christmas roasts and having half on Christmas Eve and the other half on Boxing Day, but I had a rotten headache (can wearing a santa hat all day give you a headache? I don't know where it came from) and didn't want to heat the house up with the oven. I told D that I wanted something with rice, so we thought we could borrow a little bit of the Christmas ham, dice it up and have fried rice. Then we got home and I noticed Melissa's recipe in my delicious toolbar.

We had to play with the briyani recipe to fit our available ingredients. Nothing Earth-shattering, we just had to use ham instead of chicken, sour cream instead of yoghurt etc. It was great fun to make, I love dishes that use lots and lots of spices. The smell is so refreshing. It was very tasty too, everything worked so well together. We'll definately make this again, maybe even with chicken next time.

Interestingly enough, I discovered that 8oz basmati rice equals one cup of rice for my rice cooker. Fun!

Ham Briyani
adapted from this recipe on Fooderati.

8oz basmati rice, rinsed
2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
150g diced ham pieces
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
a pinch of nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp turmeric
3/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp sugar
salt and black pepper

For garnishing:
1 tbsp fried onions
1 tbsp caramelised onions

Cook the rice in a rice cooker.

In a large saucepan or casserole with a tight fitting lid heat the oil and fry the ham, onion, ginger and garlic for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add all the ground spices and stir again for a few seconds.

Add the sour cream and stir for one minute, then add the sugar and stir again. Check seasoning.
Put the rice on top then cover the saucepan with foil or a damp tea towel and put the lid on tightly.

Reduce the heat to low and cook undisturbed for 5 minutes.

Uncover, sprinkle with the garnishes and serve.


Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.

Mini Baileys Cheesecakes

There was a stall at the Good Food and Wine Show celebrating the new Baileys with Coffee. They weren't selling anything, they were just handing out little sample glasses. I have never had anything against Baileys, but up until now it hasn't really been anything that I wanted to drink. I did enjoy the new Baileys though and I bought a bottle in the leadup to Christmas.

I told my mother that I had bought a bottle and mentioned that I was looking for something to make for our work Christmas Breakup (delayed posting, I know, but I really am writing this in December because I have so much to tell you all) and she said I should make mini Baileys cheesecakes with my Baileys. Mum's internet hasn't been working for months because she hasn't gotten around to calling their helpdesk, so the best she could do was vaguely point me in the direction of Taste.com.au. A quick search found this recipe which Mum said was the one.

It was really easy, almost guiltily so. I doubled the recipe because I had a 250g tub of cream cheese and because I was intending to feed a crowd, but doubling the amount of Baileys made it very very strong. Not strong alcohol-wise, but strong in Baileys smell. Next time I would cut down on the amount of Baileys. I used crushed chocolate ripple biscuits mixed with some melted butter for the base rather than the chocolate cake recommended. I liked the contrasting textures of the creamy cheesecake and the crumbly biscuit base, but I think the base was a little too crumbly with the two tablespoons of butter I used and next time I will use more butter.

I made these in mini-cupcake pans so they were bite-sized, but this made getting the right ratio of biscuit to cheesecake quite difficult. Ideally I would have liked one third biscuit to two thirds cheesecake, if not a quarter biscuit to three quarters cheesecake but it was just too difficult with the tiny pans. They ended up being about half-half. I also found that they needed longer than the 10 minutes in the oven to set. The first pan was in the oven for 15 minutes and they couldn't be unmoulded cleanly once they were cooled in the fridge because they were still quite runny. The second tray I left in the oven for 20 minutes and they worked much better. This could be because my oven is terrible, but still keep an eye on them even if your oven isn't cantankerous.

Despite the strong Baileys smell, they were very tasty. D only got to try two at home because they all went in to work, so he has asked me to make them again so he can have some more. I'll be happy to try again, because I think they can be much more refined than they turned out this time.


Mini Baileys Cheesecakes
adapted from Good Taste Magazine as posted on Taste.com.au

1 packet Arnotts Choc Ripple Biscuits
2 tbs butter, melted
250g cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tbs brown sugar
2 eggs
4 tbs Baileys with a hint of Coffee Irish Cream liqueur
Cocoa powder, to serve

Preheat oven to 150°C. Grease a mini-cupcake or mini-muffin pan lightly. I got 48 mini-cupcake sized cheesecakes from this recipe, or 24 mini-muffin sized ones.

Process the cookies in a food processor until they resemble fine crumbs. Mix with melted butter and press into the base of the pans.

Use an electric beater to beat cream cheese and sugar until combined. Add the egg and beat until combined. Use a metal spoon to fold in the Baileys. Spoon the cream-cheese mixture among pans.

Bake in oven for 10 minutes or until just set. Remove from oven and set aside for 30 minutes to cool and set completely. Dust with cocoa powder to serve.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.

Chocolate Croissants

The last couple of weekends, D has bought a chocolate croissant from a stall at the markets. He has enjoyed them, but they don't quite live up to the chocolate croissants he can buy at a cafe near his work.

He was eating one of these while I was watching Nigella Express, and Nigella started making her version of chocolate croissants. The particular croissant being eaten was a little light on its chocolate inside and D grumbled 'if we made our own there'd be chocolate inside'. I showed him the recipe and asked if he'd be interested. He was interested, particularly about the part where he could choose his own chocolate, so Sunday morning we visited our local Zone Fresh for the ingredients.


That's it. Well, and an egg, but otherwise all there is to it is a packet of puff pastry and some chocolate. We weren't sure whether to go with milk chocolate or dark chocolate so we decided to do half with milk and half with dark. The milk chocolate won the taste test as the dark is just a little too bitter and there's no sweetness coming from the pastry to offset it.


All you need to do is to cut your pastry into squares. Nigella said 6 squares, but 6 squares looked too big for me so I went for 9. Plus, the pastry's dimensions divided by 3 neatly. After you have squares, cut them in half diagonally.


Next, place your chocolate on the widest part of the triangle. My chocolates were a little too big, so I cut them in half. Then you roll them up, starting from the widest part and trying to make them look similar to a croissant. Place them on a lined baking tray and then brush with beaten egg. I sprinkled a little sugar over the top for a little extra sweetness.


Finally, bake them in a preheated 220 degree C oven for about 15 minutes (mine needed 20) until they are golden and puffy.


D's final word? These are better than the croissants at the markets and he would eat these over them any day, but they are not better than the croissant he can get from the place near his work. I liked them because they weren't too sweet and they didn't have the sticky danishy glaze that can sometimes overpower the chocolate inside. Actually, it probably overpowers the chocolate inside because the chocolate inside is nearly non-existent. These had a very good pastry to chocolate ratio.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.

Mexican Scrambled Eggs

I watched a fair bit of Nigella Express one Sunday morning and one of the recipes that caught D's eye were these Mexican Scrambled Eggs. In fact, he was so intrigued that he wanted to have them for dinner that night.

After a quick trip to the corner store for eggs, this dinner came together in minutes. It was very easy and very tasty. We served it with some oven baked hash browns and were both very full at the end of it.

Mexican Scrambled Eggs
from Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson

2 tbs vegetable oil
2 soft corn tortillas
1 tomato, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 spring onion, roughly chopped
1 tsp chilli paste
4 eggs beaten
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Heat the oil in a heavy-based frying pan. Roll up the corn tortillas in a sausage shape and then snip them into strips with a pair of scissors straight into the hot oil. (I did mine over the cutting board and then cut the strips into thirds, simply because the strips seemed too long).

Fry the tortilla strips for a few minutes until crisp and golden, and then remove to a bowl.

Add the chopped tomato, spring onion and chilli paste to the pan and turn about for a minute or so.

Put the tortilla strips back into the pan and add the beaten eggs and salt. Move everything about as you do when scrambling eggs.

Once the eggs are setting, remove the pan from the heat and continue stirring until the eggs are done to your liking.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.

Sesame Peanut Noodles

I returned to work in early December after just over two months at home sick. My first week was only a short one to build up my strength, but I was still very excited for my first weekend. I can't say that we did anything to write home to Mum about, but we did go to a new market and I did a lot of things that I hadn't been able to do for a while and I enjoyed every bit of it.

It was pretty hot, so Saturday afternoon was spent at home, actively vegging out. How do you actively veg out? Well, it involved doing chores and moving about, and it was opposed to my previous two months of being able to do neither. D was a wonderful help in that time, I should add. He washed and cleaned and vaccuumed and did a great job. I'm sure he's regretting it now, because I know he can do it and I'm asking him to help out with other things that I used to have to do by myself. He hasn't been too cranky about it though.

Anyway, during my Saturday afternoon chores I noticed that Nigella Express was on ABC. I was in and out of the room at the time, but it piqued my interest and I wanted to watch it properly. I have a few Nigella DVDs but I didn't think that I had Nigella Express on DVD. I was excited for a moment, as D kept asking me what I wanted for Christmas and I didn't know what to tell him, but a quick dig in amongst our DVD collection unearthed a copy of Nigella Express, still in its shrink wrap.

Sunday was very hot too. D had bought me the Masterchef Masterclass DVD as a going back to work present, so I had two cooking DVDs ready to watch while I did nearly three months worth of filing. The Masterclass DVD was a little disappointing, as it was just the Masterclass episodes and had no special features or recipes. Since I had recorded each episode of the Masterchef series, I already had these episodes. In hindsight, we both thought that the cookbook would have been a better buy. Masterclass being a bit of a dud, I changed DVDs and started watching Nigella.

Nigella makes no secret that the recipes in Nigella Express aren't really the healthiest recipes out there, but she says that she's not advocating that you cook them every meal. These are fast tasty recipes for the times that you need an express way out. This particular recipe is a good example, as there's a little bit of oil and great big couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter. It's very very tasty though, and I like to think that loading it up with vegies makes it a little better.

If you've read my blog for more than a few posts, chances are that you know I like noodle salads. It does appear that clicking on my noodle related posts doesn't really reflect this, but trust me, the few noodle salad recipes that are listed there have been made a lot. An awful lot. Particularly this one. And this one. In fact, I've gone for weeks having nothing but these salads for my work lunches. I'm always on the lookout for a quick noodle salad that can be taken to work for lunch. If it's not quick, it needs to keep well in the fridge. This one is a keeper. I made up a big batch on Sunday night and it fed me quite happily throughout the week. Since there is a bit of oil in it, I kept the portions small and bulked up the rest of my lunch with fruit and salad.

It's really good. I found that as written, the sauce tasted too much like straight peanut butter but after adding some dark soy sauce it melted into a nice satay-like dressing. I say satay-like as there was an added almost vinegary taste and I'm not exactly sure where it came from. It was good though, really woke up the tastebuds at lunchtime.


The dressing is made with a tablespoon of this and a tablespoon of that. I halved the recipe for the salad, but because of the measurements needed for the dressing, I made the dressing as written. I then forgot I halved the rest of the recipe and added all the dressing to the halved salad, which meant mine were quite peanut-y. It bordered on gluggy, but it didn't quite get there. When I make this again, which I intend to do this afternoon, I will be careful not to repeat the same mistake. I do have a half teaspoon measure around here somewhere...

Update: I've made the recipe again this time as written. I still felt it needed an added tablespoon dark soy sauce, but now with a full bowl of salad and noodles the dressing is much lighter and there is no glugginess.

It appears that I did not trust my knowledge of food when I first got this book (which would have been only just before I started this blog) as I have noted next to where the recipe requires 125g mangetout that this means snow peas. Thanks, past me. Where on earth did you learn that it was okay to write on books???? I can't imagine myself ever writing on a book, so I must have really doubted my ability to remember that mangetout meant snowpeas. This is the UK release so I don't know if past me would have also felt the need to remind me that cilantro is coriander or arugula is rocket.

Sesame Peanut Noodles
from Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson

For the dressing

1 x 15ml tbs sesame oil
1 x 15ml tbs garlic oil
1 x 15ml tbs soy sauce
2 x 15ml tbs sweet chilli sauce
100g smooth peanut butter
2 x 15ml tbs line juice
(I also added 1-2 tbs dark soy sauce)

For the salad

150g snow peas
150g bean sprouts
1 red capsicum, deseeded and cut into small strips
2 spring onions, finely sliced
2 x 275g packets ready-prepared egg noodles
20g sesame seeds
4 x 15ml tbs chopped fresh coriander

Whisk together all the dressing ingredients in a bowl or jug.

Put the snowpeas, bean sprouts, capsicum, spring onions and noodles into a bowl.

Pour the dressing over them and mix thoroughly to coat everything well.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds and chopped coriander and pack up as needed.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.

Radish and Sesame Soy Noodle Salad

This is another recipe from Ching He-Huang's Chinese Food Made Easy. I love noodle salads and I normally don't mind radishes so I thought I'd give this a try. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to use the bottle of black rice vinegar sitting unopened in my pantry.

Well, I loved the dressing and I loved the taste of the noodles with the dressing. I couldn't toss the salad to evenly distribute everything to save my life, but I managed with some creative serving. I didn't love the radish. I've only ever served radish sliced pretty thinly and these large wedges were just too sharp to work with the salad. I think that radishes you are meant to use in this salad should be sweeter, but my radishes were anything but sweet. In hindsight, I probably should have tried one before I chopped them all up, but I've never had a radish that could qualify as tasting sweet so I never realised that there are ones like that out there. Hindsight research is 20/20. I probably could have saved it by retrieving the radish chunks and slicing them thinly, but it was too much work. Luckily, my poor tossing skills meant I could retrieve a majority of the noodles, so I ended up just eating noodles and dressing. Both are very tasty.

Radish and Sesame Soy Noodle Salad
from Chinese Food Made Easy by Ching He-Huang

200g cooked whole wheat noodles or cooked brown rice, drizzled with groundnut oil
200g red radish, washed and quartered
½ cucumber, halved lengthways, deseeded and diced
1 small handful of black sesame seeds or toasted sesame or health seeds
fresh coriander sprigs to garnish

For the sesame soy dressing

3 tablespoons light soy sauce
3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
3 tablespoons chinkiang black rice vinegar or balsamic vinegar

Prepare the noodles, radishes and cucumber and place in the fridge to chill for at least 1 hour.
Combine all the ingredients for the dressing in a bowl.
To serve, place the noodles in a large dish, layer with some radish and cucumber and scatter over the black sesame seeds. Spoon the dressing over the dish, garnish with coriander sprigs and serve immediately.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.

Mexican Dinner Party!

D's favourite meal at the moment is nachos made with beef machaca. He was so excited about it that he asked if he could have some of his workmates around for dinner, since he'd talked about it so much that they wanted to try it too. The night grew from there.

As we invited a few more people to come, I decided that we needed to expand the menu a little bit. Nachos are great, but since it was turning into a little dinner party I thought a little variety was in order. I browsed through countless Mexican websites and online cookbooks, looking for recipes that preferably could be prepared in advance and didn't require any obscure or hard to find ingredients.

In the end, the menu consisted of adaptations of beef machaca, pico de gallo salsa, Mexican rice, Mexican restaurant salad and grilled corn with chilli lime butter. Throw in some Mexican beer and good conversation, it made for an awesome night. We live on the other side of town from most of our friends, so we don't have people at our place very often. This dinner party of ten people was the most people we've ever had in our house at one time. We've decided that it went so well that we'll have to make it a regularly occuring event, except now that I'm back at work we haven't worked out how regularly it will happen.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of things once people started arriving and the food got laid out, so there are no pictures of the corn or the finished salad or the beef machaca and salsa. There are photos of the things I made in advance though!

Everything was wonderful and completely worthy of being made again. Maybe not all at once though.

See this post for the recipes for the beef machaca and pico de gallo salsa. We made an awful lot of the beef machaca, it filled my 5L slow cooker!


Mexican Rice
adapted from Pot Scrubber's recipe on Recipezaar

This rice is fantastic. It has the most amazing flavour and it's really moreish. It's great by itself or mixed with some beef machaca and sour cream, plus it can be made in advance or even frozen and then reheated to be as good as new. I've made this twice, using tinned tomatoes the first time and then some leftover jarred salsa the second time. I think the jarred salsa worked a little better because it added some more heat that I don't get from using chilli sauce in place of actual chillis, plus you get the added flavours from the capsicum pieces. I've posted my recipe using the salsa below, but see the link above for the original recipe using fresh or canned tomatoes.


1 jar bought salsa - medium heat
1 cup tomato passata (or as needed)
1 medium white onion
a dash or three of sriracha chilli sauce
2 cups long grain white rice
1/3 cup canola oil
4 minced garlic cloves
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup fresh coriander, minced
1 lime

Adjust rack to middle position and preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Process salsa and onion in processor or blender until pureed and thoroughly smooth. Transfer mixture to measuring cup and add passata to make two cups.


Place rice in a fine mesh strainer and rinse under cold running water until water runs clear- about 1 1/2 minutes.Shake rice vigorously to remove excess water.This step removes the starch from the rice so it will not stick. (the recipe says that you must do this or your rice will not be dry and fluffy, but I forgot the second time I made this and still had dry and fluffy rice. This may just be luck, so rinse your rice just in case)

Heat oil in heavy bottomed ovensafe 12 inch straight sided sautee pan or Dutch oven with tight fitting lid over medium high heat about 2 minutes. Drop a few rice grains in and if they sizzle then it is ready. Add rice and fry stirring until rice is light golden and translucent, about 6-8 minutes.


Reduce heat to medium, add garlic and sriracha sauce and cook, stirring constantly until fragrant, about 1 1/2 minutes.

Stir in broth, pureed mixture and salt. Increase heat to medium high, and bring to a boil.


Cover pan and transfer pan to oven to bake until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender, 30-35 minutes.Stir well after 15 minutes.

Stir in coriander and pass lime wedges separately.

Mexican Restaurant Salad Dressing
adapted from cookiedog's recipe on Recipezaar


I only made the coriander sour cream dressing from this recipe and served it with some cos lettuce and cucumber as I just wanted a nice gentle side salad to give some more freshness to the nachos. I was going to add some avocado and feta, but my avocado turned out to be far too underripe so I decided not to add either. The dressing was a winner though, beautifully flavoured and full bodied. I'm going to make it again to use in pitas and wraps for lunch. I love the colour too, what an amazing green!

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 cup stemmed coarsely chopped fresh cilantro (about 1/2 bunch)
a dash or two of sriracha chilli sauce
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

Put the lime juice, olive oil, mayonnaise, sour cream, cilantro, jalapeno, garlic, cumin, chili powder, and Parmesan in the container of a blender or food processor; process until smooth.

Refrigerate until ready to use.

Grilled Corn with Chilli Lime Butter
adapted from Chef Kate's recipe on Recipezaar

I played around with this recipe a little bit before the party. I have no idea if anything I added was authentic Mexican, but I have my spices that I love and I added them with abandon. When I tested this recipe, I was a little less careless and the only changes I made was to use canned corn and no lime zest, so I can say the recipe is great, but I did love what came out of my playing around. See the link above for the recipe as written.

1 400g can corn kernels
3 tablespoons butter
dash of canola oil
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
dash or two of sriracha chilli sauce

Heat a medium frying pan to a medium high heat. Add butter and canola and melt.

Add chilli powder, cumin and paprika and stir until fragrant.

Add the corn and stir until well heated and coated in the spicy butter.