Cake heaven

I think I may have gone to cake heaven. It's a Semolina Cake with Berry Compote. I found this little wonder in the Nov/Dec issue of Recipes +, in the Health Bites section of all places. It's listed as being diabetic-friendly, low in fat and low GI. All this in a cake? It turned out beautifully, I loved it so much. You really should try it, so here's the recipe.

Semolina Cake with Berry Compote
From Recipes + magazine, Nov/Dec 2007, p 76

Serves 8
Preparation: 10 min
Cooking: 25 min

80g reduced-fat margarine
80g reduced-fat fresh ricotta
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tbs finely grated lemon zest
2 eggs
1/2 cup self-raising flour
2/3 cup coarse semolina
1/2 cup almond meal
1 tbs brandy
Berry Compote, to serve (recipe follows)
low-fat yoghurt, to serve

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan forced. Grease an 18cm round cake pan, line the base with baking paper.

2. Using an electric mixer, beat margarine with ricotta, sugar and zest until smooth and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition (mixture may look curdled). Sift flour with semolina and almond meak, returning any coarse nuts to the sifted mixture. Fold into egg mixture until well combined. Fold in brandy. Spoon mixture into pan and level the surface.

3. Bake for 25 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool for 5 minutes in pan, turn out onto a wire rack, turn upright and cool completely. Serve in thin wedges with berry compote and yoghurt.

Berry Compote

Serves 8
Preparation: 2 minutes + 30 minutes to macerate

300g frozen berries
1 1/2 tbs caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
2 tsp brandy (optional)

Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix to combine. Let stand for at least 30 minutes until sugar dissolves. Stir before serving.

Nutrition per serve (with compote) 1369kj; 12g fat (4g saturated); 3g fibre.

I was drawn to this recipe while reading at work today and made a list of things I'd need to buy to make it which included fresh ricotta, semolina and yoghurt. DD took me out to the local Zone Fresh Gourmet Market to pick them out tonight after he played his video game. From my list, the only things they had were the ricotta and some Star chicken stock cubes. They had no semolina, no good yoghurt, no almond meal. Normally they are so good!

Luck was with me though, because I had suspected that I had some semolina at home, but I was pretty sure there wasn't much there. I was right, there wasn't much there. In fact, it was about 1/2 cm less than 2/3 cup I needed. It was okay, I just made up the difference with almond meal.

I used brandy essence in place of real brandy. DD opened the bottle, gave it a sniff and then informed me "it smells like brandy". Duh.

It's a fantastic cake - light and lovely and delicate. I enjoyed it so much. The berry compote isn't bad either. Yum!

No photo week :-(

except for this one, that is

I started off this week cooking Szechuan Noodles with Spicy Beef Sauce (the only recipe with a photo, see above). It was quite interesting, because I've never had a non-tomato based meat dish over spaghetti before. It's gotten heaps of good reviews, but I found it to be too heavy a dish. I felt ill after eating it, not because it tasted bad, but because it was a really heavy, almost gluggy sauce. I don't know about this one. It tasted really good, but I don't think that's enough to make me want to try it again.

It was easy enough to make. Brown some beef mince in a frypan, then remove and drain. Saute some onions, garlic, fresh ginger and some dry chilli flakes in some sesame oil until tender. Add some cornflour mixed with beef stock, some hoisin sauce and soy sauce to the pan and bring to the boil, stirring constantly. Stir in the mince, then serve over pasta.

I do wonder if my problems came from the hoisin sauce I was using. I bought this jar of hoisin from an Asian supermarket in Chinatown and it is really thick. I don't use hoisin often, but I suspect that the normal supermarket bought stuff is actually more liquid. Or I could be confusing it with something else, so I don't know.

Monday night was a completely different story. Dinner was so good that clouds parted and bells rang out and the kitchen was flooded in brilliant beams of sunlight. Well, not really, but dinner was good.

Next up was Easy Low Fat Chicken Souvlaki with Tzatziki. First, you marinate some chicken breasts (I used stir-fry chicken strips) in 1 cup buttermilk, 2 tbs honey, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp dried basil and 4 crushed garlic cloves overnight. Apparently the original recipe had lemon added too, and I was going to try it with lemon but I forgot. I also forgot to marinate it overnight, so mine only had an hour. It did not effect the flavour.

After the chicken has marinated, simply grill it over a low heat or broil in the oven. I should have broiled it in the oven, but I didn't think about that until later, so I cooked it in a frypan on the stove, draining off the juices every so often.

The tzatziki was just as easy and so delicious. The recipe calls for 4 cups of Greek yoghurt, I halved the recipe and used two and it made heaps. I couldn't use it all, which was really disappointing. I tried hard, even going so far as drizzling it over some salads.

This tzatziki has the requisite cucumber, greek yoghurt and garlic, but also uses red wine vinegar and some dried mint. It was the best tzatziki I've ever tasted.

We had the souvlaki and tzatziki in wraps with lettuce, and I sprinkled some lemon juice over the chicken.

Tuesday was Macaroni and Cheese. It was a quick version, using a roux as a base and then just using the cheese roux as a sauce for the pasta. I hated it. I couldn't eat it. It was awful. I don't know what it was, because it is very similar to the Creamy Garlic Penne and I liked that. I didn't use nasty cheese, it was just a normal cheddar and I ate some of it before adding it to the sauce. DD, on the other hand, claimed to have enjoyed it.

On Wednesday we were back on the pasta bandwagon with Pasta Amatriciana. It's another fairly simple dish, simply saute some onion, garlic and chopped bacon in a pan, add some white wine and boil for a bit, and then add some pureed tomatoes and water. Throw in some chilli flakes, and then simmer for half an hour.

It was really nice. I used really cheap bacon bits from the supermarket (*blushes*) and they smelled pretty nasty when I cooked them, so I must admit I was surprised it turned out as good as it did. I took it to work the next day for lunch, and it tasted even better. I will definately cook this again, but with better quality bacon.

Only four new recipes this week. We repeated Chinese Brown Sauce Chicken with great success on another night, and had an absolutely horrendous experience with takeaway on another night (I'll put up a separate post about that one). I've gotten some new magazines today, so I'm going to go look for some non-Recipezaar ideas. I've also given in to temptation and ordered Nigella Express from Amazon.co.uk, and I have Jill Dupleix's Lighten Up and Linda Collister's Quick Breads on order too, so hopefully lots of cooking to come!

Quick Strawberry Tiramisu

I was reading a forum thread somewhere about mascarpone cheese and everyone was talking about how wonderful it was and all the things you could do with it. I've never cooked with it before, so when I went to the market the other day I picked up a tub.

I love tiramisu, so it was the obvious choice to experiment with. I didn't want anything too fiddly though, so I tried a Quick Strawberry Tiramisu from Super Food Ideas magazine.


Quick Strawberry Tiramisu, serves 4

From Super Food Ideas October 2007, p91

200g mascarpone cheese
1 1/2 tbs icing sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
1 tbs boiling water
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup marsala
250 g strawberries, hulled and cut in half lengthways
8 sponge finger biscuits
mint leaves to serve

Place mascarpone and icing sugar into a bowl. Using a wooden spoon, beat until smooth and combined.

Combine coffee powder and boiling water in a cup. Stir until coffee is dissolved. Combine the coffee mixture, brown sugar and marsala in a medium pan. Cook, stirring, over a medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes or until sugar is dissolved.

Reduce heat to medium-low. Add strawberries. Cook, stirring gently, for 1 minute or until strawberries are slightly softened. Remove from heat and set aside for 10 minutes to cool slightly.

Arrange biscuits on plates. Drizzle with syrup from the pan. Top with mascarpone mixture, strawberries and mint. Drizzle with syrup again and serve.

It was very good, but I did feel a little ill afterward. I didn't think I had that big a serve (certainly less than a quarter), but maybe I'll have a smaller one next time.

Feta and Olive-Stuffed Flatbread

Not so flat flatbread

Hooray for successful bread recipes!! I have a love hate relationship with bread. I love to eat it, I love to bake it, but it hates it when I try to bake it. My successful bread recipes have only been successful when baked in the breadmaker.

I must not be a very good kneader, because it just doesn't rise and I end up with a big brick of a loaf or little rocks of rolls.

This time I tried something different with this Feta-Olive Stuffed Flatbread. I used the dough setting on the breadmaker (earthshattering, I know, but I've never used it before and I've had the damn thing for 2 years). Anyway, the breadmaker kneads better than I do, because the dough rose all the way out of the pan. It was very cool, and I was very excited.

So, enough about my baking failings, and on with the recipe. The dough was made with your typical yeast, sugar, flour, oil, water but also had some natural yoghurt added. It turned out lovely and pliable, and so soft. I just wanted to play with it. The filling was simple mix of crumbled feta, chopped olives, mint, coriander and shallots. My confidence was soaring thanks to the success with the dough (well, thanks to the breadmaker's success with the dough), so I deviated from the recipe and added half a smoked chicken breast. I'm a bit iffy with olives. I kind of like them sometimes, but I'm not a big fan - I don't know what it is. So I cut back on the olives and substituted the chicken. I broke out the food processor to chop everything, because I used 98% fat free feta and it just wouldn't crumble, and once I started I decided to do everything in there. I ended up with heaps of filling, way more than I needed.

I was called away just before it was ready to go in the oven, and was gone about 40 minutes. I came back and the bread had continued rising on its tray. I know that bread is supposed to do this, but my breads never have, and I got all excited again.

The flatbread turned out huge. Thinking back, I probably could have made two, splitting the dough and then used more of the filling. The only reason I made it the size it was was because it was as big as the tray. I'll think more about it next time.

It was very nice. I enjoyed it a lot. I made it for me because DD doesn't like olives and isn't a big fan of feta either, but he gave it a try. As it turned out, he really liked it. He had a piece before dinner and then, quite oddly, ate another piece with our French Dip Beef Roast, dipping it in the juices.

I had heaps left over though, and since I wasn't sure if it could be frozen, they had to be thrown out because I couldn't eat them quick enough. The pieces were great to take to work, they tasted best at room temperature and were a great snack. I will make it again, but I think I will try and halve it and research a bit to see if the pieces can be frozen.

Last week's rundown: brown sauce chicken and bistecca alla fiorentina and a lazy photographer

I'm sorry, but I did forget to take pictures of these two.

Bistecca alla Fiorentina

We don't eat steak very often and when we do, it's generally very simple steak and chips type meals. I was looking forward to trying something new, especially with the lemon because it something completely different to anything I'd done before.

It was really easy too - take your t-bone steaks, oil them lightly and then sprinkle them with some lemon juice and pepper. Sear them on both sides in a hot pan. Once seared, rub a cut clove of garlic along the bone and then cook the steaks to your liking.

Serve it with a lemon parsley butter - some softened butter mixed with the juice of half a lemon and some chopped flatleaf parsley.

The steaks came out cooked perfectly, but it was more a fluke than any testament to my skills and were just lovely. The lemon gave the steak a nice light flavour. It was really good.

Chinese Brown Sauce Chicken

This meal actually got bumped off the meal plan, because when I told DD that I'd had Nando's for lunch on the day I was supposed to make it, he got a Nando's craving and we ended up having Nando's instead. (I know, twice in one day - I couldn't finish dinner). I still had everything ready to make this, so I made it for Saturday lunch.

It was quite easy. Just brown the chicken and remove from pan, add the sauce ingredients and mix, then put the chicken back in and simmer until cooked. At the end, add some cornflour to thicken the sauce and serve over rice.

The chicken was nicely flavoured and sauce was great. So great that while I waiting for it to cook I was dipping bread into the simmering pan just to get the taste. I was lazy this time and used whole breasts which I cut up on serving, next time I will cut the fillets a little smaller and thinner so they are an even size. I also would have liked the sauce to be a bit thicker, so I might wait a bit longer before adding the chicken back in to simmer to let the liquid reduce a bit.

The boys really liked this one too.

Last week's rundown: beef roast, sesame chicken and yakitori

French Dip Roast Beef

This is the first crockpot recipe I have tried for a long time. The ones I made before have been improvised and always seemed to turn out with an excess of liquid, so I was glad to have a recipe to work off this time.

It was really easy - just put some chuck steak in the slow cooker with some soy sauce, a beef stock cube and some dried herbs and cook on low for 7-8 hours.

We had it with some soft bread rolls. I thought the soy sauce flavour was this was a bit strong. I would have preferred a bit more of a subtle flavour. Next time I might halve the soy and make up the liquid with beef stock. The boys liked it, though.

Imperial Chinese Sesame Chicken

My goodness. This recipe (well, my making of it) made the worst mess of my kitchen. It was crazy! It also took a long time to cook. Luckily, it turned out really good, tasted great and everyone loved it.

Firstly, you needed to brine the chicken strips in salty water for about 15. Then, add 5 tablespoons of cornflour and mix well. You then fry the cornfloury brined chicken strips until the outside goes crispy. Now, I don't know what I did or didn't do, but I didn't get anything even remotely resembling a crispy skin, and I left the chicken in there for longer than I was really comfortable with. I did get some crispiness from the bits that stuck the bottom of the pan, but that wasn't until after the 6 or so batches of chicken had been in and out of the oil, so maybe my oil wasn't hot enough?

The sauce was really really good. It was very yummy and had a fantastic flavour and I'm going to be making it again, and probably often. I would only make the sauce again though - I would cook the chicken normally (i.e not fry it) next time. The author recommends doubling the sauce, and I completely agree.

Yakitori


These were really easy to make. It was my first time making kebabs though, and my cubes were unfortunately not consistent in size, so it made it a little bit difficult to cook at first. I solved this by not very delicately smooshing them down so they were all touching the grill. I used our George Foreman-esque (it's just a cheap version) grill to cook them, but found it would only fit three at at time (the recipe made 8). I wasn't really enthused about cooking them in batches, so I threw the remaining 6 into a frypan. When it came time to baste, the sauce of course stayed in the bottom of the frypan and made just a bit less authentic.

They turned out well though, even though they were more braised then grilled, and the bottom of the skewers became all sticky, so I removed the meat etc before serving.

This month's delicious.

This month's delicious. magazine has got some wonderful light recipes. I've given two a try and they both turned out really well. I've got post-it notes all through the rest of the magazine with all the others I have to try next.

The first was Jamie Oliver's Avocado, Pancetta and Pine Nut Salad (above). It's so simple, just fry some pancetta until crispy, then lightly toast your pine nuts. Put both into a bowl, mix in some baby spinach leaves and avocado slices and dress with a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. It was great.

I was very lucky to get some beautiful avocadoes from my local market. I'm terrible with avocados, I know what I'm supposed to look for in a ripe one, but I can never put it into practice. This time I got lucky. I got two and they were both awesome.

My next recipe was the Master Muesli Recipe from the Toasted Muesli section. I have tried making my own muesli before but I haven't had much success. I liked this one because it was a dry muesli, not one soaked in apple juice or something. I've tried these soaked ones before and they have never been good, I haven't liked them at all. Plus, this one had maple syrup as its main syrup, with honey as a backup. I haven't found a honey I really like yet, so I'm a bit fussy with things with a honey taste. I love maple syrup though.

So, I went into this with high hopes. It didn't disappoint.

It was fairly straightforward. You mix some maple syrup, honey and grapeseed oil in a pan over low heat until combined, then pour the mix over some oats, almonds and brazil nuts (I used a mix of pecans and cashews instead) and then bake until toasted and golden. Once the oat mix has cooled, mix it with some linseed meal (I used an LSA mix), pepitas, sunflower seeds, goji berries and dried apple. At the very last, add some flaxseed oil and stir until well combined. Yum!!!

This week's plan

It's an all Recipezaar week!

French Dip Roast Beef
Imperial Chinese Restaurant Sesame Chicken
Yakitori
Chinese Brown Sauce Chicken
Bistecca alla Fiorentina

I'm also hoping to do some experimenting today with either one or all of:

Rosemary Garlic Focaccia
Feta and Olive Stuffed Flatbread
Easy Chapatis (Flatbread)
Greek Flatbread and
Breakfast Couscous

I have a plan

Last week I made up a meal plan to put on the fridge so everyone knows what meals we are having for dinner. I know this is not inventive at all, and that plenty of people have done this before me, but I'm only just discovering how cool it is. It makes everything so easy!

Anyway, last week's meal plan included a couple of Recipezaar recipes that turned out really good. No photos, I'm sorry - I was slacking.

First off was Creamy Garlic Penne Pasta. My goodness, this was awesome! I love creamy pastas but my waist does not, so I was very excited to try this. It is probably only marginally better than a creamy pasta, but marginally better is still better than nothing.

The sauce is based on a bechamel sauce, with garlic added to the butter before the flour is added. Once the sauce has thickend, then it's just a simple matter of adding some parmesan, parsley flakes and salt and pepper. It's then served over some nicely cooked penne.

It's so simple and easy, and it turns out absolutely delicious. We've already repeated this dish, in fact, DD refused to go out for dinner last night because he wanted to have this. It was on the meal plan for Friday but got bumped because we bought a beautiful wagyu beef pie from a butcher we found when we got lost taking a shortcut. So, he didn't get it on Friday and didn't want to miss out, so I had to make it last night.

The other Recipezaar recipe from last week was a dish called Japanese Mum's Chicken. This recipe has had so many fantastic reviews, and has even been the most favourite recipe on the whole site quite a few times, so I was quite excited to try it. Especially since I had never thought of balsamic vinegar being something used in Japanese cooking (I know better now though).

It's also pretty simple. Just simmer some chicken drumsticks (though I used breasts, DD won't eat dark meat or meat on the bone) in some water, balsamic vinegar and soy sauce with some sugar, garlic and chilli. Turn the chicken frequently while the sauce reduces, remove it when cooked and let the sauce boil down to a sticky yummy glaze.

Even though it is simple, I managed to burn the glaze the first time I tried. Although all the reviewers praise this dish for being something you can leave alone at the stove, it probably wasn't a good time to leave when the sauce is just about ready. I was pretty disappointed, because I tasted it as it cooked down and it was pretty tasty. DD tried to help suggest something we could have instead, but I had my heart set on this so I pulled out another pan and tried the sauce a second time. The second time was a charm, and it worked out beautifully, although I babysat it constantly in fear of a repeat performance.

It was lovely, the chicken was perfectly cooked and not harmed in the slightest by my sauce mishap, the sauce was drizzled over and added a lovely flavour to the rice. It was really really good, definately deserving of all it's wonderful reviews!

Lazy lazy

I haven't updated for a while because we've been moving (bleh) and then starting to unpack (bleh - and there's still boxes everywhere!) and most of the food I've been cooking has been stuff from Recipezaar. I was thinking though that even Recipezaar recipes should warrant their own post, because some of them have been so awesome.

This blurry little plate is called Funky Chicken with Sesame Noodles and I gave it a try because it had heaps of good reviews. It was pretty good. The sesame dressing coats the noodles perfectly and it's just a subtle sesame taste, although I did cut down on the amount of sesame oil and sesame seeds I added.

The chicken is marinated in a lovely marinade with soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, garlic, brown sugar and ginger and then lightly sauteed. It was really lovely.

I went a bit Japanese the next night, with Crisp Panko Chicken Cutlets with Tonkatsu Sauce. These were also really well received, everyone loved them. The panko just adds this really lovely flavour to the chicken, and the tonkatsu - wow! It was the perfect consistency and it had the nicest bite to it. The only thing that would stop me from making this again is that it took ages. It took ages to crumb the chicken and then it took ages to fry the chicken. I only have a small pan and it will only fit about four pieces in it without overcrowding, and there were at least 30 pieces. I felt like I was in the kitchen all night. I really enjoyed it though, but next time I won't make as many. I had used 3 full chicken fillets which I cut into little escalopes, but that was too much. We didn't eat it all that night, it doesn't reheat well, so I won't do that many again.

There is no picture for this one because it was even blurrier than the funky chicken picture, so I'm leaving it out.

The last recipe of this series was Chicken and Pasta in White Wine Garlic Sauce. This came about because I had chicken and pasta for dinner, but didn't know what to do with it. So, I searched chicken and pasta and found this one.


It was chicken, water, white wine, a can of diced tomatoes, some oil, some onion, some oregano, thyme, rosemary, basil, a bayleaf and some garlic simmered together for about 15 minutes and then served over linguine. Easy!

This dish had potential, but I found that 1 cup of white wine just gave this overpowering wine taste to it. I loved the consistency of the sauce and the chicken turned out beautifully. Next time I'll cut down on the wine and add some chicken stock instead.