Diet? What diet?

I was reading through some random blogs and found a recipe for chocolate peanut butter cups. It was a Nigella recipe too! My boss had recently gone a trip to America and had brought back some Reese's peanut butter cups (and Hershey's Kisses and lots of other American sweeties) and I loved them. Since I haven't found the official ones here (although I haven't looked that hard) I thought I might try and make them.

Chocolate-peanut-butter-cups
Nigella Lawson, Feast, courtesy of BBC Food

Ingredients

For the base
50g/2oz soft dark brown sugar
200g/7oz icing sugar
50g/2oz butter, softened
200g/7oz smooth peanut butter (not wholenut)
For the topping
200g/7oz milk chocolate
100g/3½oz dark chocolate
gold buttons and edible gold stars to decorate, or other decorations of your choice

Method

1. For the base, place all the ingredients for the base in the bowl of a food processor. Blend the mixture until the mixture takes on a sandy texture.
2. Place 48 gold petit four cases in sets of miniature tart tins or mini-muffin tins (each indent about 4.5cm/1¾in in diameter).
3. Use one teaspoon of the base mixture to fill the bases of the petit four cases. Press the sandy mixture down into the cases as best you can to form a layer at the bottom of each paper case.
4. Place the milk chocolate and dark chocolate together into a heatproof bowl. Suspend the bowl over a pan of simmering water (the water should not touch the bottom of the bowl). Melt the chocolate gently while stirring.
5. Spoon teaspoonfuls of the melted chocolate onto the top of each of the sandy bases of the petit four cases.
6. Decorate the tops of the chocolate covered peanut butter cups with either a gold button or gold star in the middle of each and transfer them to the fridge. Let them set in the fridge, for about half an hour.
7. To serve, arrange the chocolate peanut butter cups in their cases on a clean plate.

They are decadently yummy. I think I ruined it for myself though by buying low fat peanut butter, because the bases didn't hold together. They stayed pretty sandy. I don't care, I'm eating them, even though they are terrible messy and you can't just brush any crumbs away because you'll end up with big peanut butter smear (or that could just be because I'm a bit clumsy when it comes to these things)


I halved the recipe too, thinking that 48 would be way too much of a chocolate indulgence, but even the halved recipe made heaps. I made 43. However, halving the chocolate topping didn't give me enough to drizzle, unless I was drizzling to thickly (I don't care if I was! They are good!). I ended up making the topping according to the recipe and not halving it at all.

Next time I'll try either full fat peanut butter or adding more butter. I'm tossing up whether the do the chocolate topping too, because I really only like it because of the sweet peanut-y taste, the chocolate is just there. I think some little peanut butter/sugar squares would taste pretty good too.

Another salad

Pumpkin and Asparagus Salad
Thanks to Binny for this recipe

1/2 pumpkin, cubed
1 large capsicum, cubed
1 bunch asparagus spears, trimmed
1 packet mixed lettuce leaves
1 block Danish feta, cubed

For the dressing
4 tbs olive oil
1 tbs lemon zest
2 tbs oregano leaves, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C, and roast the pumpkin pieces for approximately 1 hour. Half an hour before the pumpkin is ready, place the capsicums into the oven on the second shelf and let them roast for the remaining half an hour.

Blanch the asparagus by microwaving the spears for 2 minutes on high for thick spears (1 1/2 mins of high for thinner spears). Once cooked, refresh asparagus in iced water.

Assemble the salad by placing the lettuce on a serving tray and arranging the pumpkin, capsicum and feta on top.

Place all the dressing ingredients into a jar or bottle and shake well. Drizzle over the salad just before serving.


This salad is amazing. It's my perfect salad at the moment. I love it. Even DD loves it, which is amazing considering there's quite a bit of green in there. Thank you Binny!!!

Tobie Puttock

We went to the Good Food and Wine Show last weekend and saw Tobie Puttock give a demonstration in the celebrity theatre. We were pretty close, and he was very cool to watch. One of the dishes he made was a freshly picked crab, white asparagus and baby fennel salad. It sounded really good and I wanted to give it a try. In the information guide they give you the recipe for most of the dishes made in the celebrity theatre, which was good because I had forgotten a lot of it by the time we got home.

freshly picked crab, white asparagus and baby fennel salad
Tobie Puttock, Good Food and Wine Show 2007

300g freshly picked crab or picked crab from your local fishmonger (I used canned *blush*)
zest and juice of one lemon
1 small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 bunch white or green asparagus, about 6 spears
small handful celery leaves
10 mint leaves, roughly torn
small handful parsley leaves, roughly chopped
good quality extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Pleace the crab into a bowl with chopped chilli, a pinch of salt and pepper and a splash of olive oil. Mix with a spoon and set aside.

Soak the fennel in iced water.

Cook the asparagus in boiling salted water. Once they are all al dente remove with a slotted spoon and refresh in cold iced water.

Remove the fennel and asparagus from the water and pat dry with kitchen paper. Toos them in a bowl with celery and parsley leaves, torn mint, lemon zest and a small amount of the lemon juice.

Arrange the dressed asparagus and fennel on a plate and scatter the dressed crab over the top. Finally scatter the fennel tops over and serve.


Tobie made it slightly different in the demonstration. He grilled the asparagus rather than blanching it and he just used undressed crab with no chilli. I did it the way I remember him doing it rather than the way it's written above, but there wasn't that much difference. It's interesting to note too that the picture accompanying the recipe in the information guide has lots of little extras that aren't in the recipe, so I'm guessing it's really one of the "this recipe is a guide only" kind of recipe.

I really liked it. The aniseed flavour of the fennel went so well with the lemon and mint, it was a beautiful harmony of flavours. I didn't really notice the crab much, the flavour was overpowered by the rest of the salad but that might be because I used the tinned stuff. Next time I don't think I'll even bother with the crab - it was delicious without it.

Ducks!

Our new(ish) house backs onto a river/creek type thing and every so often we get some visitors of the duck variety. I swear that the other morning I saw ducklings, so DD and I went down to look. We couldn't see the ducklings, but we said hello to the ducks.

Baking

I had a lovely Sunday morning baking last week. I made Sponge Drops and Rosebud Madeleines from Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess and a batch of madeleines au miel (honey madeleines) from The Roux Brothers on Patisserie.

I didn't really like the Rosebud Madeleines, which were flavoured with rosewater. I felt that the rosewater taste was just too overpowering and I felt like I was eating some kind of pot pourri. Or something that had been sitting in pot pourri. If I was going to make them again I would definately halve the rosewater, if not quarter it, but I really love the honey madeleines so I think that if I get the urge for madeleines it will be to them that I will go.

I have made the honey madeleines before, but this time I have a madeleine tray, so they look much more authentic. Although, I only have one tray and the two batches of madeleines which each made two trays worth, I was washing and rinsing and drying and refilling that tray over and over and over again!

The sponge drops were lovely. They are a light sponge batter dropped onto a baking sheet (or in my case, some greased baking paper) which is then sandwiched together with whipped cream and jam and some berry compote leftover from my semolina cake.


These went down a treat with the boys. DD discovered them on the cooling rack and then ate half the batch before I could stop him. I hadn't even whipped the cream yet, he just took a drop, put some jam on it and then drizzled the not-even-thickened cream over it.


I had to make another batch after that, because having just 3 finished drops seemed too anticlimactic. Luckily, they are really easy to make.

They were lovely, nice and light and sweet and wonderful. Nigella says that "the lightness of the sponge together with the cool fatness of the cream and juicy sweetness of the berries [...] make these completely seductive". Who am I to argue with Nigella?

Chocolate cake

A few weeks ago I was pestering my mother for a particular chocolate cake recipe which she'd lost. She made up for it though by giving me three or four other chocolate cake recipes to try. (I still want that recipe, Mum!!)

The one I ended up making was a boiled chocolate cake, where the mix is boiled first before adding the eggs and flour, which makes for a really moist cake.

Boiled Chocolate Cake

1 ½ cup sugar
4 oz butter
1 cup water
2 tbs cocoa
½ tsp carb soda

Put in a stock pot on the stove and bring to a boil. As soon as it starts to boil, then turn right down and then simmer for 5 minutes. Take it off the heat and let it cool slightly.

Once cooled, add 2 beaten eggs and 1 ½ cups self raising flour. Mix well and pour it into a large greased roasting pan which has been lined with foil.

Bake for 40 min on 375 degrees F.

I can't remember where Mum said this recipe came from, but it was very good regardless. The odd wavy look on the side of the cake came from me being lazy and not trimming the baking paper down to fit the tin. I like it, I think it gives a nice interesting look to it.

Good Food and Wine Show 2007

The Good Food and Wine Show came to Brisbane this weekend, and DD came with me to check it out. I've read on other blogs that it hasn't been as good this year as previous years, but since this is DD's and my first we weren't sure what to expect.

It was very cool though. We only went to one show at the Celebrity Theatre. We saw Tobie Puttock make a Pot roasted veal, tuna, caper and anchovy sauce, a salad of fresh picked crab, white asparagus and baby fennel and fried pastry crostoli. He puts on a good show, and I look forward to hopefully having Foxtel by the time his new show premieres next year.

We didn't go to any of the other demonstrations, just because DD had to be home by 1:30 to raid with his guild in World of Warcraft. Plus, there was nothing really that jumped out at me. The celebrity theatre was different, there were a few that I would have liked to see, and I'm tossing up whether I should go back again tomorrow and just see the celebrity shows.

We are not big wine drinkers, so we didn't really go in for any of the wine stalls, but there was heaps of them! We did get to try some Frangelico and a margarita slushie though.

We tried lots of lovely food things too, everything from chocolates to quark cheese and enjoyed ourselves immensely.


We did get some stuff though - mostly show bags. I got a delicious. showbag (and a subscription) and a Super Food Ideas showbag, not really because of what was in them, but because I like showbags :-) . We also got a gorgeous bottle of caramlised balsamic vinegar - it was like heaven in a bottle. And, of course, we got some cookies, licorice and puffed rice snacks in butter chicken and Thai flavour.


I also got this lovely knife and mezzaluna set from the Furi stand. I'm very excited.


It was very cool, we had a great time. Can't wait for next year! (Or tomorrow, I haven't made up my mind yet)

Nigella Express

In October the anticipation of Nigella's new book, Nigella Express, got to me and I bought it from Amazon.co.uk.

I love so many recipes in this book!! I've only made a few, though.

Hokey Pokey

I was seduced by her description of it: "It's wonderful eaten in golden shards or crumbled into the best vanilla ice cream" and that it can be used a substitute for a Crunchie bar in another recipe. I love Crunchies.

I don't think I spread thin enough, as mine remained quite chewy. It tasted very good though, but I could only eat the smallest bit before it just got too chewy and gooey and I started being scared for my teeth, and I disposed of the rest.

Chocolate Macaroons

I had bought an expensive 1kg bag of almond meal for another recipe and had much left over, so I thought I'd give these a try. They are really easy, just mix 2 egg whites with 200g ground almonds and 30g cocoa powder and 175g icing sugar and bake in a 200 degree oven.

I don't think I cooked mine long enough though, as when they came out of the oven they were still pretty squishy, and they didn't harden up like Nigella says they should. I tried one, it was like eating the raw dough, so I ended up throwing these out.

Maybe I'll try again another day.

Other failures

Now, when I say failures I really mean more of a less-successful venture.

I also tried making Breakfast Bars from the Get Up and Go chapter and Moonblush Tomatoes from the Quick Quick Slow chapter. I'm not sure what happened to the breakfast bars, they were wonderfully tasting before I cooked them, but they seemed to lose their appeal once they came out of the oven. The Moonblush Tomatoes failed on cooking. These are tomatoes roasted very slowly at a very low heat by preheating the oven and then turning it off and leaving the tomatoes in the switched off oven overnight. It turns out that my oven doesn't hold its heat like Nigella's does. I woke up the next morning to a dish of very very uncooked tomatoes.

Just in case you want to try to make and these, I'll post the recipe at the end of the post.

Some successes

Rapid Ragu


I love a savoury mince dish - love love love!!!! - so I really wanted to try this. It's a simple one bowl affair of garlic oil, cubed pancetta, lamb mince, caramalized onions (I didn't have any, so mine left this out), marsala, a can of chopped tomatoes, some green lentils and water. You brown the pancetta and lamb and then put everything in a simmer for 20 minutes and serve topped with cheese.

It was wonderful, lovely and tasty. My only problem was that the lentils were still hard inside, and it made it a little bit harder to eat. When I repeat this dish, I'm not quite sure what I'll do, but I'll work something out to make sure the lentils are cooked properly.

Festive Fusilli


This turned out great, but I substituted a couple of the key ingredients for something else, I can only imagine how good it would be if I made it as written.

It is supposed to be cooked pasta tossed with marscarpone cheese and then mixed with a sauce of semi-dried tomatoes, vodka, Maldon salt and sugar and topped with some chopped flat leaf parsley.

I didn't have semi-dried tomatoes, so I used a can of diced tomatoes. I didn't have vodka, so I went to my little book of substitutions and it suggested using rum instead. I didn't have rum, but I did have rum essence, so I used that. After the sauce had steeped for a while, I felt it was very sweet, so I added a tablespoon of tomato paste.

It was really good. Everyone loved it. The flavours were amazing. Very very good.

Pollo alla Cacciatora


This is in the Hey Presto chapter. It's another one pot dish and it was so easy.

Fry some pancetta cubes, sliced spring onions and chopped rosemary in some garlic oil, add some cubed chicken pieces (I used breast, Nigella says thigh) and celery salt, and brown. Add some wine, bubble off the alcohol, then add some tinned tomatoes, bay leaves and sugar and simmer.

While it was doing it's thing, I made some rice. Nigella says to add cannelini beans, but I'm not a big fan and DD hates them, so I left them out.

It was great, hearty and flavourful. We loved it.

Moonblush Tomatoes
from 'Nigella Express' by Nigella Lawson

500g (about 24) on-the-vine cherry or other baby tomatoes
2 tsp Maldon salt or 1 tsp table salt
1/4 tsp sugar
1 tsp dried thyme
2 x 15ml tablespoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celcius

Cut the tomatoes in half and sit them cut side up in an ovenproof dish. Sprinkle with the salt, sugar, thyme and olive oil.

Put them in the oven, and immediately turn it off. Leave the tomatoes in the oven overnight or for a day without opening the door.

New Mixer

I made the last payment on my personal loan in September, and I hadn't allocated the payment amount to another place in the budget when October rolled around, so DD let me buy a present with it. I have been wanting a Kitchenaid mixer for a long time, but I'm not the best saver, so it's not likely that I'll have a spare $600 lying around any time soon, so I had to buy a cheaper alternative. I bought a Sunbeam Mixmaster Compact Pro, which has dough hooks and a detachable mixer and was only $120.

It's much better than the old $20 one I bought from The Warehouse on a whim one day (don't roll your eyes - I couldn't afford a bigger one then!!!).

I broke the new one in by making a pavlova from The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander. (I've had this book for a good 5 or 6 months now, and I'm still only up to 'coriander' while reading it front-to-back).

I topped it with some whipped cream (also from the mixer) and DD and I enjoyed it a lot. It was very sweet though. DD ate quite a bit, but I only had a small slice and felt a little pavlova-d out after that. In the interests of our waistlines, we threw about 2/3 of it away.

The mixer was good, but I did find that in a recipe that calls for only 3 egg whites to be beaten the beaters just didn't reach far enough into the bowl. I had to detach the mixer until the egg whites had expanded enough for me to use the machine again. It was very disappointing, to be honest.

I haven't used it since, but I have recently purchased Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess from Amazon and I'm sure I'll find plenty of things to use it with.

Calzones

I have a recipe book over at Recipezaar entitled "Different things to try" and I've been trying to cook more of these "different" foods to expand my cooking knowledge. When I say different, I just mean things I've never eaten before and I'm curious about - nothing too different!!

For example, when you read books based in the US or watch a US TV show they sometimes refer to things you just don't eat in Australia, but it makes you curious. Cornbread was one of these. It intrigued me. I tried a cornbread recipe from Marie Claire Breakfast and it was awful, all gritty and nasty, so these experiments don't always turn out. I still want to try another recipe though.

Calzones were another thing I've always heard of but had never tried. I had a couple of recipes in my cookbook:

A bread machine calzone recipe
An easy peezy pizza dough recipe
And another recipe for a BBQ chicken calzone that I can't find at the moment.

I didn't really feel like a chicken pizza-type thing, but I like the BBQ idea, so I decided to give the bread machine calzone recipe a go and a meatlovers-type filling for it. I didn't make my BBQ sauce either and just used a bottle of BBQ flavoured bought pizza sauce.

I made these fairly late on a Saturday afternoon before we had friends over for dinner and I really don't think my attention was there, and they didn't turn out all that well. I didn't roll out the dough enough, so they were all doughy and not enough filling.

I tried again the next day using the easy peezy dough. I fired up the breadmaker and set it to work and this time really tried to focus on making proper parcels (thanks to Google, which found me a little step-by-step instruction guide, which I have lost the link to).

They turned out a little bigger than I would have liked, but I didn't think the filling would fit properly in a smaller parcel. The dough made nine fairly large calzones.

In our new house we have an oven that's a little bit smaller than the ones I'm used to and I'm still trying to find my optimal shelf levels. I stuffed up this one, and the ones on the top shelf were just too close to the top of the oven.

I didn't want to waste them though, because I only had three on the other tray, so I just turned them over and readjusted the height of their tray and tried again.

Only two leaked!!!

They freeze quite well too, and I've been reheating them in the oven.

While they weren't bad, they weren't what I was expecting either. I think I would like something a lot more saucy than these were, and I still think that it was too much dough not enough inside. And there was no way I could have rolled that dough out anymore or stuffed any more filling in.

I would still like to try a professional one but I don't think I'd make these again. Neither of the boys ate any of them, and were much more excited about the little pizza subs I made to use up the rest of the meat/cheese filling (just some halved hotdog rolls with pizza sauce topped with the meat and cheese and put in the oven with the calzones until the cheese melts).

In hindsight, I think I was more excited about the pizza subs in the end too.

Fattoush

DD and I stopped at a random fruit market while driving the other day, just to check it out. The produce was fairly ordinary, but they had the nicest looking Lebanese flatbreads for sale. I bought some ready to try a recipe for Fattoush that I found over at Recipezaar.

It's a pretty simple (yet substantial!) salad: carrot, cos lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, radishes, spring onion, flat leaf parsley and red capsicum dressed with a garlic, olive oil and sumac dressing, plus some flatbread toasted in the oven until crisp and broken up into little pieces.

I took it to work for lunch with the salad in a big bowl, a little jar of dressing and a little sandwich bag with the broken flatbread and just threw it all together at lunchtime. Yum!

The sumac adds a really lovely flavour and the salad is so fresh and light. I made it a second time soon after and actually added more sumac by sprinkling it over the salad AND having it in the dressing. Both were good ;-)

It's a perfect, healthy, yummy lunch.

Insalata Caprese

Please excuse the blurry photo

I was exploring some random food blogs a little while ago and came across Feed Me! I'm Hungry!! and this Insalata Caprese recipe. I saved it to bookmarks and then unfortunately, forgot about it. I came across two weekends ago and just happened to have a tub of bocconcini in the fridge, and some fresh vine-ripenened cherry tomatoes.

It was very nice and fresh, but next time I'll add some more basil and hope for some sweeter tomatoes, these ones were a bit tart.