Stuffed Capsicums

Proper post about these to come soon, but first, a question:

DD wants to know if there are any other bloggers out there that blog about their dinner while eating it?

Waterfall Beef Salad

I've been voraciously devouring episodes of Food Safari on DVD recently. I want to try so many things. So far the only thing I had tried was my own version of coconut rice after watching the Malaysian episode. Today I watched the Thai episode and loved the look of the Waterfall Beef Salad. I didn't stay completely true to the recipe, and mine turned out less like a salad and more like a herby marinade, but it was still really good. Because it wasn't much of a salad, I served it over steamed jasmine rice with some julienned capsicum, baby spinach leaves and bean sprouts.

I found that the fish sauce was very very powerful, and the lime and palm sugar really couldn't cut through it. I added more palm sugar and lime to try and balance it out, then when that didn't work tried adding caster sugar, and then when that didn't work added some soy. I found that it really needed that extra to get a balance of flavour. Maybe I should be off looking at the Vietnamese recipes...

Waterfall Beef Salad
adapted from Thai Food Safari

3 x 200g pieces sirloin steak
6 tbs fish sauce
9 tbs fresh lime sauce
3 tbs palm sugar
2 tbs caster sugar
3 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs finely chopped coriander
1 large shallot, finely sliced
1/2 medium onion, finely sliced
handful of mint leaves
3 tbs toasted ground rice
1 large chilli, sliced

Toasting the rice:
Put 1/3 cup of jasmine rice, 2 kaffir lime leaves and a stalk of lemongrass in a large flat pan and toast over high heat until the rice goes golden brown, keeping the ingredients moving constantly. Ground the rice in a spice grinder. I used the processor attachment of my stick blender, and it turned out pretty well. It didn't get the fine grains you would get from a spice grinder, but it did get small enough to give a nice crunch to the salad.

Cook the steak, ideally to medium-rare on a heavy based pan with no oil, and slice carefully into thin strips.

Mix the fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, caster sugar and soy sauce until the sugar has dissolved. Add the beef strips. Add the coriander, spring onions, onion, mint leaves and ground rice and mix well.

Next Day Update: I've been dreaming of the flavour of this all today. It just leaves this beautiful taste on your tongue and in your mind - so fresh and vibrant. I think the memory of it is just as good as eating it.

Lots of cheese pasta bake

I have been working partial days, so I have been quite happily watching almost daily installments of Ready, Steady, Cook and Huey's Cooking Adventures. (I have also been guilty of scheduling my bi-weekly physio appointments around RSC *hangs head in shame*).

I used to really love Huey on Healthy Wealthy and Wise and on the earlier episodes of Cooking Adventures, I thought the food he cooked was easy and delicious and was in reach of the home cook who wanted to explore ingredients and tastes or just try something different without taking too much time or effort. I do think he's sold out a bit now. I was a little put off with him endorsing Jenny Craig after he put so much emphasis on the healthfulness of the food he cooked, but now I have grown a bit and am battling my own weight problem I do understand a little better that sometimes you need a bit more than just healthy cooking. You don't necessarily have to endorse it though.

I also disliked it when he restricted all his recipes to his "Huey's Cooking Club", which is still quite expensive at $40 per year or $24.95 per six months (for example, ATK/Cook's Illustrated is only US$24.95 per year). This was quite a while ago, and we were still relatively new to the internet and paying this much for access to his recipes didn't really sit well with us, especially as his recipes were moving away from the home food and more towards a restaurant style, which wasn't what I wanted to do in my home kitchen. A few years on, now I appreciate his recipes more as I've learned more about food and ingredients, but his recipes mostly aren't what I'd think of when I want to cook something.

These little prejudices I've held onto for quite a few years, but my recent one is just how extreme his product placement is. In the current shows you are lucky to see three dishes cooked, mostly it is only two as the last ten minutes of any show is the little Cenovis infomercial. Now, I like Kikkoman soy sauce as much as the next person, but I don't need it shoved in my face everytime he uses it. It doesn't bother me when Nigella insists that only Maldon salt will do, because I take that as it just being her preference that only Maldon salt will do. Huey, on the other hand, comes across like an advertising feature in a magazine.

Anyway, this was meant to be a post about my Four Cheese Pasta Bake but turned into a rant about Huey. So, in case you managed to stay with me this far, I will get onto the food. In an episode of Huey's Cooking Adventures he made a Four Cheese Pasta Bake. I wasn't really paying all that much attention at the time, but I remember that he made a roux and then added lots of different cheeses and he made a point that the reason this pasta bake was wonderful was because you could use any different combination of cheeses and as such, the pasta bake would be different each time. He also said that it was a great way to get rid of all the cheeses you had lying around in the fridge.

That was as much as I remembered, and Google was unable to help me along any further. So, I went recipe foraging, looking for any pasta bake that had lots of cheese in a bechamel sauce. In the end I found a nice little roux instruction on Just Hungry and made it up as I went along. This is not something I do often, I like the guidance and structure of a recipe because I am not very imaginative when it comes to flavour and not very knowledgeable when it comes to technique, but last night I threw caution to the wind and ended up with this:

Or two of these actually. I went a little overboard on the cheese.

I love cheese, but luckily for my above mentioned weight problem I don't eat very much of it. That being said, I love to try it, and there is always heaps of various cheeses floating around our fridge (see here and here - this is the normal state of my fridge when it comes to cheese). When it came to making this, I pulled all the cheeses out and got to grating. This is when it turned from a Four Cheese Pasta Bake to a Lots of Cheese Pasta Bake. In the mix there were: taleggio, parmesan, sharp cheddar, mozzarella, fontina and pecorino.

This made about four cups of cheese, which meant I needed a lot of bechamel sauce, which meant I ended up cooking two casserole dishes full of pasta bake. Luckily it tastes good.

In terms of cooking, it was very easy. Make your roux from flour and butter, add warmed milk steeped with a bay leaf and whole cloves to make the sauce and mix in the cheese until it begins to melt. Once the cheese had started melting it was the most glorious feeling standing there stirring through its thick, viscous gloopiness. Tip the sauce over ready cooked pasta in a baking dish with some salt and pepper and mix. You could top it with breadcrumbs or more cheese, but I had dumped all my cheese into the sauce, so I just left it as is.

It was deliciously rich and very yummy. Small servings were called for though - DD went back for more and ended up feeling a little bit ill.

Pecan pie

While I was butchering a family recipe for the Torta Meringata con Mele, I was actually doing another family recipe justice with this Pecan Pie.

At work, I share an office with K and A. This recipe is K's favourite cake/pie - her mother makes it for birthdays and celebrations and she had told A and I all about how wonderful it was. A told her that she needed to bring one in so that we could verify her claims and on her last birthday she did so. It was the most intriguing thing I have ever tasted. It had an almost crispy, crunchy base like nothing I had ever tasted and it was decadently topped with lashings of whipped cream. It didn't have a dough base (thank goodness for me) and it wasn't buttery or creamy or custardy or anything else I'd expect from a normal pecan pie. It also lived up to everything K had ever said about it, so I immediately asked if her mother would be willing to give me the recipe.

It took a few months, but K's mother did send through the recipe. I haven't asked if I can post it, so unfortunately I won't be sharing it until I get permission.

K was managing a major project which had its last (and arguably biggest) milestone over the Easter weekend, so I made the pie for her to celebrate the success if everything went well or to give her a nice surprise if it didn't. As it happened, it did succeed, but I think she got a nice surprise anyway.

I warned her beforehand not to be too disappointed if it didn't taste like her mother's, but apparently I did quite well and it lived up to the title of the recipe: Food for the Gods!

Torta Meringata con Mele

I was browsing through Haalo's beautifully photographed blog, Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and found this recipe for Torta Meringata con Mele, which her mother used to make. I am a little embarrassed to tarnish this recipe with my poor attempt, but when you consider my previous failure with pastry I think it turned out quite well for something I made. So please forgive me, Haalo and Haalo's mother - you might not want to continue reading!

The base of this torta is a sweet dough known as Pasta Frolla, the recipe for which also comes from Haalo's blog. It's very easy, just a mix of flour, sugar, butter and egg whizzed in a food processor. Unlike my last attempt, where I completely gave up on the homemade stuff, used bought stuff and still managed to mess it up, this one turned out reasonably similar to what it was supposed to be. I was quite chuffed when I wrapped it up and put it to rest in the fridge.

The apple mix is wonderfully light and gentle, thanks to grated apple and whisked egg whites. It was just beautiful and I loved the taste. I did have a problem with separating my eggs that morning though and I think there was a little bit of yolk that sneaked into my whites, because I couldn't get them to stiffen. This was a pretty big problem because whisked eggs whites are not only needed for the filling but also for the luscious meringue topping. So, something to improve upon next time.

The other thing I will have to learn to stop doing with baking is scaling a recipe without scaling the tin/dish that it cooks in. I halved this recipe, because DD doesn't like cooked apples and that meant it would only be me that would eat it, however I only own one tart tin and it was way too big. This meant the dough only just covered the bottom, and the meringue topping was not nearly enough to cover the top of the tart. I realised that only putting meringue topping on enough of the tart so that I could take a photo was quite silly, so I ended up whisking extra egg whites to cover the top fully.

I also don't think I prepared the pastry base well enough, as it was quite soggy at the base. I will read more and learn before I try again, because I do seem to be stumbling blindly around my pastry preparation.

However, despite my shortcomings, the tart tasted amazingly delicious. I didn't mind at all when DD tried it and decided he didn't like it, because then I got to eat his piece.

Spoilers

I'll blog more about these later because I want to take more photos of the bottom one and the top one is going to work tomorrow and isn't finished, but here is a little tidbit of what's to come.

Top: Pecan Pie using a family recipe from one of my workmates
Bottom: Torta Meringata con Mele (meringue cake with apples) from Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once

Whisk wars

Nigella whisk (back), $2 whisk (front)

I'm still trying to justify paying $20 for another one of Nigella's cream whisks after a quite exhausting (though obviously not exhaustive) search through the internet and in kitchenware stores throughout Brisbane and then finding them in Wheel and Barrow for $2 after I had ordered the expensive one.

Well, today I think I found something!

The $2 whisk's wire coils are not fixed to the base, meaning that the coils tend to move around and bunch up to one side of the whisk. Nigella's, on the other hand, is fixed, so the coils stay put.

Ingenious!

(I won't mention the propensity for the Nigella whisk to be too top heavy and fall out of bowls if they are not deep enough and fling whatever you happen to be mixing all over the kitchen bench, because the $2 whisk doesn't do that, and it really annoys me whenever it happens)

Candy!

Tonight I was a little bored. I was tired, my back hurt and I was randomly clicking links trying to find something to read. I ended up at Pinky's blog The Poison Doughnut. I love her blog, every time I go there I discover something new, and I love finding out about all the food stores and delis and places I never knew existed in Brisbane.

Tom's Confectionery Warehouse is a huge shed full of of chocolate, lollies and pretty much anything that has sugar in it. There's plenty of sugar free stuff too, though. Their website claims that they are the largest range of lollies, confectionery, chocolates, gift baskets, Easter eggs and Christmas sweets, and I don't doubt it. It was awesome, with things I hadn't seen for years and others I'd never seen before. The Poison Doughnut post about Tom's can be found here.

Tom's is open 24 hours a day until Easter Sunday (normally they are open from 8am to 9pm), so DD and I figured that what better to cure my boredom than a spontaneous trip to candyland? At 6:30pm on Good Friday, this was the carpark:


When we left about 40 minutes later, it was even busier. There were heaps of people there! We are by ourselves this Easter, and I am fairly picky about my chocolate so DD and I weren't really going to do the egg thing. However, this place did do well in persuading me to change my mind.

Our stash can be seen above. It was only $30 too!!

Pizza stone

I love homemade pizzas. I like that I can choose what kind of toppings and what kind of cheese and how much sauce and so on. I hardly ever do it, because pizza is normally a quick-fix meal and I don't think making a pizza dough counts as a quick-fix meal.

We bought some frozen baby pizza bases last weekend and I've been happily indulging in homemade pizza. Then we went to Wheel and Barrow and they had a big pizza-related display, with pizza paddles and cutters and recipe books and electric pizza makers. So, I bought myself a pizza stone and it's great. Pizza stone and frozen bases makes for a yummy pizza, although not really quick because the stone needs to heat for 15 minutes. It's still good!

I also bought a delbor whisk. I have a similar one from Nigella Lawson's Living Kitchen range and I adore it. I use it all the time, and find that it's always in use. I wanted a second one and had a difficult time in finding it, because Nigella calls hers a "cream whisk", and no one else calls them that. I went to so many kitchenware stores and even visited the hospitality stores, but couldn't find one (I obviously didn't go to Wheel and Barrow, though)

I ended up buying another Nigella one online, but the whisk itself was $9.95 and the shipping was $10, so I effectively bought a $20 whisk. I was happy with that, until I found this one at Wheel and Barrow. For $1.95. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.

Festive Fusilli

The last time I made Nigella's Festive Fusilli was very soon after I bought Nigella Express, but I remember that we all liked it. At the time I didn't have vodka so I had to do something strange with rum essence and tomato paste to get a nice flavour.

This time I did have some vodka, and I was really surprised at how much depth it added to the flavour. Really really surprised. It was good. Again, I didn't have any semi-dried or sunblush tomatoes, so I used diced. I also pan fried a little pancetta and sprinkled it over the top.

It's a very rich dish, but oh so good.

Festive Fusilli
from 'Nigella Express' by Nigella Lawson

You can think of this either as a soakingup end-of-party meal for the hard core who managed to stay the course, or as a festive but unfussy supper you can get together quickly after some seasonal gettogether or outing.

Should you be lucky enough to have any left over, this is a superb post-party breakfast forked straight from a container in the fridge.

And by 'sunblush' tomatoes, I mean those ones that are halfway between fresh and dried and come soaked in a seasoned oil in deli-counters.

1kg fusilli or other short pasta of your choice
600g sunblush tomatoes in seasoned oil
80ml vodka
2 tsp Maldon salt or 1 tsp table salt
2 tsp sugar
250g mascarpone
40g (2 x 20g packets) curly parsley, chopped
Flaked Parmesan to serve

1 Put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta.

2 Take about 150g of the sunblush tomatoes and chop them finely. I use my mezzaluna here, as you can really mulch them.

3 Put the chopped tomatoes into a bowl with the remaining tomatoes, along with the vodka, salt and sugar. Leave to steep while you cook the fusilli.

4 Cook the pasta according to packet instructions, then drain and put back in the pan with the mascarpone, mixing well over low to medium heat.

5 Tip the steeped tomato mixture and half the chopped parsley into the pan, mixing well.

6 Pour into a bowl and sprinkle with Parmesan flakes and the remaining parsley.

Serves 10-12

Where to go when the chocolate craving gets too much.

Sometimes I turn to chocolate to make me feel better. Nigella's babycakes, to be exact. I've only had three in that time, but I've also made two batches of chocolate cookies (both of which I did take to work and share around), so while I haven't been a giant pig, I have had a bit more chocolate than I normally like to have for my waistline.

So, I present to you my substitute: a Weight Watchers Double Chocolate Steamed Pudding with two teaspoons of vanilla bean ice cream.

Kuta Cafe at Mt Coot-tha

This morning we went to Mt Coot-tha for some exploring. It's been quite some time since DD and I have been to the lookout. In fact, the last time was during the weekend that I first met DD, so it was a little nostalgic. For me, anyway.

We stopped for breakfast at the Kuta Cafe. We weren't expecting them to be open, but we were very happy they were as it was a fantastic meal enjoyed by both of us.

They have a very simple breakfast menu with the only options being bacon and eggs, ham and cheese croissant, muffins, raison toast or a Devonshire tea with prices ranging from $3.90 for the muffins to $18.90 for the Kuta breakfast combo. They have a great array of gourmet paninis, and light meals for lunches and dinner also available.

DD and I both went for the Kuta breakfast combo for $18.90 (or $20.80, there's a 10% surcharge on public holidays). This is a huge plate of fried eggs, bacons, mushrooms, tomato, hash browns and toast with your choice of tea or coffee (or hot chocolate, in my case) and fresh orange juice.

Unfortunately for the little mushrooms sauteed lightly in garlic and butter, DD and I both don't like mushrooms and these were left behind. DD hates tomatoes, so he added his tomato to the mushrooms.

The rest of the meal was delicious. The fried eggs were cooked to perfection with the whites just set and the yolk oozingly runny when you pierce it. The hash browns were beautifully crispy with a fluffy inside and there was not a speck of oil to be seen. The bacon was lightly cooked, which is how I like it. I'm not a crispy bacon fan. The bread was lightly toasted, with a crisp outer coat but still with a soft inside, perfect for soaking up the juices. All together, it was wonderful and we are already planning on going back.

The juice was orange juice from Daily Juice, my favourite orange juice. It came in a huge cup too - it was a giant juice. DD's cappucino was, in his words, "not too bad, I would drink again". My hot chocolate was lovely, nice and chocolatey without being too rich.

There were only a few people there, but the service was exceptionally fast. We got our juices straight away, our hot drinks soon after and our meals after a nice pause to enjoy our coffee/hot chocolate. The view (see the first photo) was wonderful, the day was flawless and the whole experience was really enjoyable and relaxing.

I found this review from The Courier Mail after our visit and they had quite a bit to say about the breakfast, and it wasn't particularly favourable. I'm pleased to say that we found that we found nothing inedible about our breakfast, so perhaps it varies on the day. That being said, we enjoyed ours so much we'll risk going back.

Kuta Cafe at Brisbane Lookout
Sir Samuel Griffith Dr
Mt Coot-tha
Ph 07 3367 2568
www.brisbanelookout.com

Revelation

Oh lemon curd, where have you been all my life?

Well, obviously it's been around, as many food bloggers have sang its praises, though, alas, I had never tasted its wonderfully subtle lemony goodness. I love lemons and limes and I'd even gone so far as to buy a jar of lemon curd which was waiting for me, patient and unassuming, in the fridge, but I had never tasted it. I don't remember having a lemon tart or anything similar involving lemon curd either, so now that I have realised the wonder that is lemon curd, I rue that I have spent so long deprived of it.

Dramatic enough for you? To put it simply, I fell in love with lemon curd after tasting it for the first time this afternoon. Now, that's just not nearly as romantic as the feelings I had when I had my first bite and don't do it justice, so my first paragraph needs to stay.

I was reading through the archives of Not Quite Nigella's blog this afternoon and in a post somewhere (forgive me, I can't remember which one), she spoke about lemon curd. Obviously, whatever she said was so inspirational that I had to try mine. Since I am a little bit of a foodie (can you tell?) I had to make something so that I could try it in style. What's that you say? I can put it on toast? Bite your tongue! Something as mundane as toast just would not do for one's first taste of lemon curd. It had to be scones.

Wow, it seems I am a little theatrical today. Like a girl with her first love (sorry DD) I am in a swoon, dreaming of when I can next meet with my divine lemon curd... okay, I'll stop now.

Anyway, scones. I have a foolproof and much loved recipe that I always use for scones, but I had some Gympie Farm buttermilk in the fridge that needs to be used, so I went looking for a buttermilk scone recipe. I was sure I saw one in Dorie Greenspan's 'Baking: from my kitchen to yours', but I couldn't find it. Recipezaar came to the rescue, with a simple recipe for scones using the food processor. I've never used my food processor for scones before, as I've always relied upon my hands for rubbing in the butter and working the dough. I must admit, I don't like getting dough on my hands (it's too sticky - I hang my head in shame in front of the baking community) so I was quite happy to leave it to the mixer and later, a fork.

The instructions were to pulse the dry ingredients in the food processor and then add the butter, pulse until the butter is in hazelnut sized chunks. When I pulsed - and I didn't do it for long - and then checked, the butter had completely disappeared and I had the fine breadcrumb-like texture. You then add the buttermilk, mixing with a fork until "a shaggy mess" forms. Well, my shaggy mess was much too wet and I had to add flour to make it workable. It was really hard to tell the dough was too moist until I went to divide it up. So, I think that despite the fact I have to get my hands dirty it is worthwhile doing these kinds of things by hand. I was worried that the processor had overworked the flour and I wouldn't have added all the buttermilk if I was working the dough by hand, but you live and learn. And in the end, the scones turned out great. I skipped the freezer stage and baked for only ten minutes and the scones suffered no ill-effects.

They are sweeter than my normal scone, they have a taste that's reminiscent of a sweet tart pastry, thus perfect for lemon curd! They are light and fluffy and very soft. These are not a dense scone. I wonder at how they would stand up to the classic jam and cream combination - I feel that the softness of the scone and the softness of the cream is just a little too similar in texture and - in my infinite wisdom without trying them - I think that a more robust scone would be needed for a Devonshire tea.

These scones and lemon curd together were ambrosia. Salted butter worked well too, unsalted not as well.

Mean Chef's Buttermilk Scones
Adapted from newspapergal of Recipezaar

3 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup unsalted butter, very cold, cut in 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup buttermilk (or more if needed)
melted butter
sugar

Put dry ingredients in food processor, pulse to mix.

Add butter, pulse until butter is in pieces about the size of a hazelnut.

Transfer to a bowl, pour in buttermilk and mix with a fork until a shaggy mass forms.

Roll out until dough is approx 1/2 inch thick and cut into rounds.

Place on parchment lined sheet pan and freeze for 20 minutes.

Remove from freezer, brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for about 12 minutes at 200 degrees Celcius.

We have a strangely orange-tinted light in our dining room. Great for mood lighting, not so great for food pics.

What is one to do with a lovely bag of small potatoes? I have no idea what kind of potato they were, but they were lovely and cute and small. So, I roasted them. Second question, who needs a recipe for roast potatoes? Well, even I can manage to roast potatoes on my own, and if I really need guidance, Nigella has quite a few. This recipe I found on Recipezaar, which has been quite absent from this blog of late - this baking thing has really gotten a hold on me. I loved this way of roasting potatoes, they came out perfectly done and beautifully crispy. I had left the skins on and this made them even crispier. Yum!

Best Roast Potatoes Ever
Adapted from Mrs B of Recipezaar.

1kg potatoes
2tbs goose fat
2tbs vegetable oil
3-4 bay leaves (optional)
sea salt (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400 F, 200 C, gas mark 6; peel the potatoes and cut them into evenly sized halves or chunks (my note: I left mine peeled)

Put the potatoes into a large saucepan, cover with cold salted water and bring to the boil; drain the water off as soon as it comes to the boil - this step isn’t to cook the potatoes: it heats them through so they start roasting more quickly - return the potatoes to the hot pan and dry them over the heat (it is important that the potatoes are dry for roasting, otherwise they are likely to stick to the baking tray).

Slide a large baking tray into the oven to heat up for a few minutes, add the vegetable fat to the potatoes in the hot pan and let it melt; turn the potatoes in the melted fat until they are shiny and well coated, then tip them onto the hot baking tray.

Place the tray in the oven for about 45 minutes; add the bay leaves, if using.

15 minutes into the cooking time; turn and baste the potatoes a few times during cooking.

To serve, lift the potatoes from the baking tray with a slotted spoon, sprinkle with sea salt if desired: NOTE - if you are unable to serve the potatoes immediately, do not cover them (they’ll loose their crispiness); instead keep them warm in the oven until you are ready.

Thick and Chewy Double Chocolate Cookies

After indulging in Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies recently, I have been hankering for more. However, I am lazy and wanted a relatively effortless cookie. I can't say I found a recipe that was as effortless as I wanted, but it did soothe the angry voice inside me demanding a rich, chewy, chocolatey cookie fix.

I recently joined America's Test Kitchen TV OnDemand, as I am obsessive about almost all cooking related shows and this is heaps better than YouTube. As I was thinking about cookies, an email from ATK popped into my inbox with a link to some other type of biscuit, so I clicked it and went off on a merry little search exploring all things cookie in ATK-land. It was quite amusing to DD that once I clicked on the biscuit recipe it dawned on me that it was an American biscuit - aka a scone - and I exclaimed aloud in disappointment. I moved past this though and found the cookie section.

The (perhaps slightly lofty) goal of ATK with these cookies was to find a recipe in which

... the first bite of the cookie would reveal a center of hot fudge sauce, the texture would call to mind chocolate bread pudding, and the overall flavor would be of deep and complex chocolate.

When I read that, I was a little doubtful. However, I did have quite a bit of semisweet chocolate knocking about in my pantry (which included two half-opened packets - one is better quality than the other, so I half and half them) and everything else was easy to hand, so I gave them a try.
Firstly, right at the end of the recipe ATK warns you "Size Matters! The balls of raw dough should be able the size of a golf ball. Don't skimp". The recipe is supposed to make about 3 1/2 dozen cookies, I halved it and made 2 dozen, so mine were a little smaller than a golfball. They were around the dessert spoonful sized and they still turned out huge. I like my rich, chocolatey cookies in smaller doses, so next time I'll make them maybe half the size.

The sizing thing is the only thing I could possibly find wrong with these cookies. They were definately more chewy than the World Peace Cookies, and I found they held together much better than their World Peace inducing counterparts - I had found that Dorie's cookies would crumble as you ate them. The ATK cookies weren't quite as divine when you paired them with a nice glass of milk - Dorie's cookies and milk equalled something close to heaven, but you could quite easily eat more of the ATK ones, which is both good and bad. I think that if you could make Nigella's Molten Chocolate Babycakes into a cookie, they would be something much like these America's Test Kitchen cookies. If that's not enough to make you try them, then I don't know what will!

Thick and Chewy Double Chocolate Cookies
Adapted from America's Test Kitchen / Cook's Illustrated

1 cup unbleached all-purpose (plain) flour
1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp table salt
225g semisweet (dark) chocolate, chopped
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp instant coffee or espresso powder
72g (5 tbs) unsalted butter, softened but still firm
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl; set aside. Melt chocolate in medium heatproof bowl set over pan of almost-simmering water, stirring once or twice, until smooth; remove from heat. Beat eggs and vanilla lightly with fork, sprinkle coffee powder over to dissolve, and set aside.

In bowl of standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment (or with hand mixer), beat butter at medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 5 seconds (15 seconds with hand mixer). Beat in sugars until combined, about 45 seconds (1 1/2 minutes with hand mixer); mixture will look granular. Reduce speed to low and gradually beat in egg mixture until incorporated, about 45 seconds (1 1/2 minutes with hand mixer). Add chocolate in steady stream and beat until combined, about 40 seconds (1 minute with hand mixer). Scrape bottom and sides of bowl with rubber spatula. With mixer at low speed, add flour mixture and mix until combined, about 40 seconds (1 minute with hand mixer). Do not overbeat. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature until consistency is scoopable and fudgelike, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Leaving about 1 1/2-inches between each ball, scoop dough onto parchment-lined cookie sheets with 1 3/4-inch diameter ice cream scoop.

Bake cookies until edges have just begun to set but centers are still very soft, about 10 minutes, turning cookie sheets from front to back and switching from top to bottom racks halfway through baking.

Cool cookies on sheets about 10 minutes, slide parchment with cookies onto wire rack and cool to room temperature; remove with wide metal spatula.

Lesson learned

No matter how eager you are to indulge in a Molten Chocolate Babycake courtesy of Nigella, don't think that you can save yourself the minute or so that it would take you to properly butter the ramekin by using "I can't believe it's not butter" spray (or similar) instead. It tastes terrible!!!

My chocolate fix was a little tainted by my shortcutting. Never again.

World Peace Cookies

This picture would look much better on a lighter background. Next time, I think :)

I've heard and read some wonderful things about Dorie Greenspan's book, 'Baking: From My Home To Yours', so I decided to take advantage of the excellent exchange rate and purchased it through Amazon. It arrived last week and I've been having a wonderful time reading through it. I love her comments on the recipes and hints and tips - I love cookbooks where the author is talking to you in the book, rather than just reciting recipes. It's a fantastic book, and I'm only about a quarter of the way through!

I broke the book in by making the World Peace Cookies. I felt like a chocolate cookie, and what better cookie to make than one which could quite possibly bring about world peace?

This cookie is a member of the sablé family, which meant nothing to me until I realised it was essentially another word for shortbread. I love shortbread. In addition to their wonderfully deep chocolatey richness, there is supposed to be a surprising sensation of saltiness. I say supposed to be, simply because the saltiness I tasted in the dough didn't really carry over into the cooked cookie. Next time, I will use sea salt instead of my "lite" salt, because there will definately be a next time.

These cookies are also my very first slice and bake cookies. I know that this isn't really a big milestone, but I've never made any like these before and I was excited.

World Peace Cookies
from 'Baking: from my home to yours" by Dorie Greenspan

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature (155g)
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon fleur de sel or ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate (140g), chopped into chips, or a generous ¾ cup store-bought mini chocolate chips

Makes about 36 cookies

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more.

Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and your kitchen from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. Take a peek — if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of times more; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough — for the best texture, work the dough as little as possible once the flour is added, and don’t be concerned if the dough looks a little crumbly. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you’ve frozen the dough, you needn’t defrost it before baking — just slice the logs into cookies and bake the cookies 1 minute longer.)

GETTING READY TO BAKE: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Working with a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1/2 inch thick. (The rounds are likely to crack as you’re cutting them — don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between them.

Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes — they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, but that’s just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room temperature.

SERVING: The cookies can be eaten when they are warm or at room temperature — I prefer them at room temperature, when the textural difference between the crumbly cookie and the chocolate bits is greatest — and are best suited to cold milk or hot coffee.

STORING: Packed airtight, cookies will keep at room temperature for up to 3 days; they can be frozen for up to 2 months.

Doughnut french toast

My affair with Nigella continues with this Doughnut French Toast. I had a craving for doughnuts, which is a little strange for me because I'm not a doughnut person. I had been reading JenJen's blog Milk and Cookies and I wanted to try the Baked Nutmeg and Cinnamon Doughnuts. However, I wasn't in the mood for fussing around with yeast, so I tried Nigella instead.

It's ridiculously easy, but after I'd made it I realised that I hate french toast. The soggy inside just turns me off completely. I'm not a fan of any kind of soggy bread, in any form, at any time. It's just unfortunate that I didn't remember this until afterwards.

Doughnut French Toast
from 'Nigella Express' by Nigella Lawson

2 eggs
1/2 cup full fat milk
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 slices from a small white loaf or 2 slices from a large white loaf, each large slice cut in half
1-ounce butter, plus a drop flavourless oil, for frying
1/4 cup sugar

Beat the eggs with the milk and vanilla in a wide shallow bowl.

Soak the bread halves in the eggy mixture for 5 minutes a side.

Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan/skillet, fry the egg-soaked bread until golden and scorched in parts on both sides.

Put the sugar onto a plate and then dredge the cooked bread until coated like a sugared doughnut.

Sticky toffee sauce

More Nigella. Did you know that there are three recipes for a sticky toffee sauce in Nigella Feasts? Okay, one is a variation, but there are two different recipes? I wanted the sticky toffee sauce she has over icecream in the 'Comfort Food' episode, but of course, I started making the other one.

It was still okay, the main difference was that the toffee sauce I wanted had more brown sugar and cream, so I just added cream to the other one and it still turned out fantastic. However, it is really sugar heavy and I swear I had a toothache after I finished my dish of ice cream and sauce. However, if a sugary toffee-y warm fudgy sauce over your ice cream gets you excited, give this a try.

Sticky Toffee Sauce
from 'Nigella Feasts' by Nigella Lawson

3/4 cup plus 1 tbs soft dark brown sugar
2 tbs dark corn syrup or golden syrup
3/4 stick unsalted butter
2/3 cup heavy cream

Put the sugar, syrup and butter in a pan and slowly bring to a boil, allowing the butter to melt and the sugar to dissolve. Let the mixture bubble for a couple of minutes before carefully adding the cream. Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes or until the sauce is thick, sticky and glossy.

Aromatic lamb meatballs

I have been watching Nigella Feasts on DVD and it's been giving me lots of cooking ideas. I was watching the "Exotic Evening" episode and apart from coveting almost every item of kitchenware she owned I also wanted to try her Aromatic Lamb Meatballs. I hit a small bump in the road when the supermarket had no minced lamb, which was rather strange. I did find some lovely fresh-minced lamb at our local Zone Fresh the next day though so there was only the smallest of delays.

Nigella says to fry these, but I hate to fry so I oven baked them for maybe 10/15 minutes at 180 degrees celcius. I think the oven was too hot though because they did end up being rather dry. The flavour wasn't as pronounced as I hoped it would be with cinnamon, cumin and allspice. I love cumin and could barely taste it. I ended up making some quick tomato chutney (thanks Recipes Plus!) to go with it, but both were less than satisfying.

A little off the topic of meatballs, but the other day DD, my mother and I went to breakfast at Fleet Street, which is a lovely tea-room style restaurant which is part of the Pig 'n Whistle at Indooroopilly. As part of their big breakfast they had this wonderfully spicy tomato relish and I have been hankering after another taste of it ever since. I think I will email them and ask, actually.

Anyway, so I thought this lovely spicy relish would go perfectly with my slightly flavourless meatballs and I went off on a search looking for a replica recipe. I didn't find one, but what I did find was one that was quick and easy and I had the ingredients in my pantry. Essentially, it was onions, tomatoes, garlic, balsamic, barbecue sauce, sugar and turmeric, but it tasted far too heavily of balsamic. I added more barbecue to try to balance it, but it didn't really work. It was a bit of a failure all round.


Aromatic Lamb Meatballs
from 'Nigella Feasts' by Nigella Lawson

450g minced lamb
1/4 cup finely chopped scallions
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp salt
3 tbs semolina
1 egg
vegetable oil, for frying

Put the lamb into a bowl and add the scallions. Sprinkle over the spices, salt and semolina and then beat the egg and add it to the bowl. Work everything together thoroughly with your hands, and then cover with plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator for half an hour.

Line a baking sheet with plastic wrap and scoop out a scant teaspoon of the mixture. Roll in your hands to form the meatball and place them on the lined baking sheet. Have a bowl of cold water beside you to dampen your hands with; this helps them not get too sticky for rolling the meatballs.

When you are ready to cook them, heat about 1/2 inch of oil in a frying pan. Line another baking sheet with kitchen towel, and when the oil is hot, fry the meatballs in batches without overcrowding the pan. Cook them for about a minute a side, or until golden brown all over.

Nigella says that she normally gets between 75-78 meatballs out of a batch. My meatballs must have been a little larger, I only got 67.

Quick Tomato Relish
from Recipes +, Mar/Apr 2008

1 tbs cooking oil
1/2 small red onion, very thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 punnet (250g) cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 tbs barbecue sauce
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp sugar
pinch ground turmeric (optional)

Heat oil in a small saucepan over moderate heat. Cook and stir onion for 3 minutes or until soft. Add garlic and tomato; cook for 2-3 minutes or until tomato begins to soften.

Stir in barbecue sauce, vinegar, sugar and turmeric. Season with salt and black pepper. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes or until relish thickens.

Another healthy lunch

Funnily enough, it is exactly the same as the healthy lunch below but with steak rather than fish and without lime. It was just as tasty though.

Healthy lunch

My life has been a little slow this week, because I am stuck at home resting my back. My excitement has been in the form of: Monday - doctor and physio; Tuesday - doctor; today - physio; tomorrow - doctor; Friday - hopefully I get to try and go back to work. So I've been adding to all of this excitement mainly by baking desserts, but yesterday DD was nice enough to let me stop and get some salt and pepper calamari (or was it lemon pepper? I can't remember) from The Fishmonger's Wife after my doctors appointment for lunch.

While we were there I spied some lemongrass snapper in their fresh fish display. I have been wanting to try this snapper for a long time, but everytime I ask for it we seem to be in a snapper shortage and they don't have it. Yesterday they did, so I bought a fresh fillet for my lunch today.

I love snapper. It's a yummy fish. I love most fish actually, but DD is not a seafood fan so I don't eat it very often. This one in particular had lovely delicate flavours. I cooked it until it was just cooked through and it flaked beautifully when I tested it. I served it over a salad of baby spinach, watercress and bean sprouts with a light splash of roasted garlic vinaigrette and a squeeze of lime.

Bored with minced beef

Last night we had some minced beef set out for dinner. DD loves Spicy Szechuan Beef and wants to have it every time we buy mince. As I've said before, I find that dish pretty heavy and even though I've gotten quite practiced at it now, I still feel it's fairly stodgy. So I went looking for something lighter.

While I was searching I was quite curious about what I would find. I mean, when you think of a light dish it very rarely involves mince beef. Then I found a recipe for Spiced Beef Rice Noodles on taste.com.au from an old edition of Super Food Ideas.

It had a small amount of mince browned in garlic and ginger infused oil before being sprinkled with some Chinese five-spice and kecap manis. It's then mixed with some shredded Chinese cabbage (wombok) and rice noodles and sprinkled over with coriander. I love Chinese five spice, so I was pretty excited about the recipe anyway but it turned out really really well. I only used a very small amount of mince and I substituted the rice noodles for soba noodles and I didn't have cabbage, but it was lovely and exactly what I was after - a flavourful light mince dish. It's definately one I'll make again. The recipe below serves four, I amended it to serve me, but I didn't measure anything and just eyeballed everything and it still turned out great. Maybe a touch more kecap manis next time though. I also added a squeeze of lime when serving. I highly recommend that extra step.

Spiced Beef Rice Noodles
from Super Food Ideas, May 2006 p35

serves 4

250g packet rice stick noodles (I used soba noodles)
1 tbs vegetable oil (I used grapeseed oil)
3 garlic cloves, crushed (I used minced garlic)
1cm piece ginger, peeled and finely grated (I used minced ginger)
550g beef mince
2 tsp Chinese five spice
1/4 cup kecap manis
1/4 cup Chinese cabbage (wombok), roughly shredded
1 cup coriander leaves
(I also added a squeeze of lime before serving)

Place noodles in a large heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Stand for 5 minutes or until just tender. Drain.

Heat a wok over medium-high heat until hot. Add oil, garlic and ginger. Stir-fry for 1 minute or until aromatic. Add mince. Stir-fry for 5 minutes or until browned. Add five spice and kecap manis. Stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes or until thickened slightly.

Add cabbage and noodles to wok. Stir-fry for 1 minute or until cabbage is wilted and noodles warmed through. Top with coriander and serve.

Jumbleberry Crumble

Now for another post on sweet sweet comfort food, in the form of Jumbleberry Crumble from Nigella Express. I recently discovered that there is heaps of Nigella videos on YouTube, which is fantastic because I would love to see her new show but as I am cable-less and for some reason no one out there in DVD land thinks that we would like to see all shows and all seasons of the same show (I'm looking at you, Bill Granger) on DVD. I would buy them!

Since that didn't make much sense, I wish that instead of just releasing one season of Nigella Bites and Nigella Feasts (I don't count Nigella's Christmas Bites) and just releasing season two of Bills Food on DVD, that they would release them all. If anyone knows if they have released them all and I'm just missing out, please let me know.

Anyway, I was browsing through YouTube and came across a snippet of Nigella making this Jumbleberry Crumble. It's a fantastic quick dessert, because you can make the crumble in advance, freeze it and pull it out whenever you like. It's made even easier by using frozen berries and it really just a quick assembly of ingredients and then into the oven.


Jumbleberry Crumble
from 'Nigella Express' by Nigella Lawson

For the crumble topping:

100g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
50g cold butter cut into small cubes
3 x 15ml demerara sugar

Put the flour and baking powder into a bowl and rub in the cubes of butter, using your fingers, until you have a mixture like coarse sand.

Stir in the sugar and then put into a freezer bag to freeze

This mixture is enough to make 4 jumbleberry crumbles in the cups and about 8 ramekins

For 1 crumble in a cup (approx 300ml capacity)

100g frozen summer fruits
1 teaspoon cornflour
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or regular sugar and a drop of vanilla
75g frozen crumble topping

For 1 crumble in a ramekin (approx 125ml capacity)

50g frozen summer fruits
1/2 teaspoon cornflour
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or regular sugar and a drop of vanilla
30g frozen crumble topping

Preheat the oven to 220C. Put the summer fruits in either a cup or ramekin and sprinkle the cornflour and sugar over the top. Stir around a little.

Sprinkle the frozen crumble topping over the fruit and bake the cup for 20 minutes and the ramekin for 15 minutes.

Easy easy! And very delicious.

Comfort food

Ihaws searching for comfort food one day, so I prepared the batter for Nigella's Molten Chocolate Babycakes. I've read lots about these wonderous pots of chocolate lava and how fantastic they are but I have never tried them myself. Recently I had purchased a bag of good quality couverture 60% chocolate, I had to break in my new custard cups and I've been watching Nigella's latest DVD release so all the signs were there telling me to make these.

They were ridiculously easy for how much enjoyment you get from eating them. I did forget to line the bottom of my ramekin though, and that did mean that it was difficult to get the cake out, plus I found it difficult to lift up the inverted ramekin because I couldn't get a grip on it. So, once I got it out, it didn't look very appetizing, so you only get a picture of it in it's custard cup.

I had halved the recipe and kept the batter in the fridge to be turned into solitary delights when I was feeling a little down. Below is the recipe I used, but you can find the official recipe with accurate measurements (which makes 6) here.



Molten Chocolate Babycakes
from 'How to Be a Domestic Goddess' by Nigella Lawson

Makes 3 small puddings

25g soft unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
175g best dark chocolate
75g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten with a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
25g plain or Italian 00 flour

3 individual pudding moulds, buttered
baking parchment

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius. Line the base of the pudding moulds with baking parchment.

Melt the chocolate and let it cool slightly. Cream together the butter and sugar, and gradually beat in the eggs and salt, then the vanilla. Now add the flour, and when it is all smoothly combined scrape in the cooled chocolate, blending it to a smooth batter.

Divide the batter between the moulds and place on a tray in the oven. Cook for 10-12 minutes (add 2 minutes if you had prepared them in advance and they are fridge cold) and as soon as you take them out of the oven, tip them out onto small plates or shallow bowls. Serve with whipped cream, creme fraiche or ice cream.

Cheese

Roquefort Papillon and Taleggio courtesy of the Cheese Room at Jones the Grocer in Indooroopilly.

Jones the Grocer also provided a little tub of basil and feta dip that I have been compulsively eating with roasted garlic bagel crisps.

Laksa

My mum has just been for a flying visit, coming down just for the weekend. While we did take her out for dinner one night, we made dinner at home yesterday and whipped up some laksa.

Mum had found a recipe in a food magazine but I don't think we followed it.

For a great (although not very authentic - there were a lot of vegetables) laksa, all you need is:

chicken breast
laksa paste
light coconut milk
chicken stock cube
boiling water
1 tbs tomato paste
spring onions, chopped
carrots, julienned
snow peas, cut into thirds
bok choy, chopped
bean sprouts
coriander, chopped
red chilli, chopped
rice noodles, rehydrated in boiling water and then drained well
lime wedges, to serve

Brown the chicken breasts with some of the laksa paste until just cooked through. Remove from pan.

Add the spring onions, carrots and laksa paste to the pan and cook until softened slightly. Add coconut milk and tomato paste (more for colour than flavour). Let it simmer for a little bit until carrot cooks through. Add the coriander, snow peas, bok choy stalks and chicken and let the flavours infuse.

Add rice noodles to bowls then top with some boy choy leaves and bean sprouts (I like to keep them crunchy) and then spoon the laksa over the top. Sprinkle with more coriander, some chopped chilli and serve with lime wedges and crusty bread.

Bigné

Yesterday Pennisi's Cuisine in Woolloongabba had a celebration of Italian food, the name of which I have embarrassingly forgotten. They had some wonderful Italian opera (courtesy of one gentlemen with the most beautiful voice) and an array of lovely Italian fare to taste. There was some pecorino cheese, a pasta salad with olives and a few other things I can't remember, some cream filled biscuits, some San Pellegrino mineral water and these fabulous pastries known as bigné.

It was fantastic to see how many people turned out for a visit, I'm so glad it was successful and I hope they do it again. In fact, there were so many people wandering around their relatively small store that DD decided it was too crowded and chose to wait in the car. He wouldn't even try any of the food!

I fell in love with the pastries, which are exceeding simple to make, as the choux pastry shell comes pre-made and you can buy it from Pennisi's. All you need is your pastry shells, some fresh creamy ricotta and some sugar and the rest is up to you. I chose to copy the ones I had yesterday and added some vanilla and chocolate chips.

Simply mix your ricotta until smooth, add in sugar to taste and then stir in your extras. Fill the pastry cases and enjoy!