More Bento

I have been really enjoying playing with my bentos lately. I love the flavours in Japanese cooking and everything has been so tasty and filling. I've been able to use my gorgeous little bento boxes to cut down on my lunchtime portion sizes as well, which is awesome!

I've been browsing through bento suppliers online and wanting so many of the cute things, but with the current state of the Australian dollar being what it is, I haven't indulged. I went to ebay and checked out what was available from Australian sellers and found a great little set which included a bento box, chopsticks, a fork, a bag, an elastic to hold it all together and some fun accessories. There were all sorts of things, but the coolest was these little animal soy sauce containers and a little rabbit onigiri/rice mould.

I had the weirdest lunch the day I got it in the mail, because I had to have something that used all the fun things. I had some smoked salmon sushi rolls with soy in the little bottle, some plain rice moulded into the rabbit, some potato salad because it was what I had in the fridge and some boiled carrots so I could use my flower shaped vegetable cutter.

Not exactly healthy, but I had fun.

Chicken Kilpatrick

I wandered past a Lenards store the other day and they were selling chicken kilpatricks, which was a combination of bacon, camembert and worcestershire sauce wrapped inside a chicken breast fillet. I thought that was a really cool idea, so DD and I decided to save some money, buy the ingredients and try and make them ourselves.

I mixed some softened camembert, chopped bacon and a dash of worcestershire sauce together and rolled it up in pounded chicken breast fillets and secured my little parcels with skewers. I bathed them in more worcestershire and baked them in a 200 degree C oven, turning and basting every 10 or so minutes until the chicken was cooked through.

Unfortunately, they didn't come out of the oven looking very photogenic, but they tasted pretty good. The camembert melted which disappointed me a little, because I really didn't make the connection that camembert was cheese and cheese melts when it gets hot. Sometimes I have really dumb moments. The melted camembert worked out quite well though, as it mixed with the worcestershire sauce and really kept the chicken moist and flavourful.

It was quite a good result for an experiment, I was really happy with how it turned out.

Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Deb from Smitten Kitchen has mentioned salted caramel a few times recently on her blog and it has inspired me to make something salted caramel related. I chose to make salted caramel ice cream from a recipe posted on the beautiful blog Orangette.

Deb says that true French caramel is dark and complex because it's cooked longer (to a dark copper colour). The longer cooking time takes away the sticky sweet taste of more commercial caramels. She says that a dark caramel is nutty with a trace of bitterness. My ice cream tastes nutty with a trace of bitterness and I thought "Eureka!" when I read her post, because it meant I hadn't messed up.

The ice cream was wonderfully bittersweet. It's a very grown up ice cream, very rich but oh so amazing. I think next time I will add a little bit more salt, while the caramel is fantastic, a few more bursts of saltiness would make it sublime. Orangette suggests to sprinkle fleur de sel over the top of the scoops before serving. I did this with my second bowl, and it is definately worth doing. So good.

It was very easy to make as well. Caramel scares me, as I am quite uncomfortable cooking something that is only ready when it's dancing on the very precipe between success and ruin. I was a lot worried when I saw the ratio of sugar to corn syrup in the saucepan, but I relaxed a little when everything started to look the way it was supposed to.

The recipe actually says to remove the pan from the heat before you add the egg yolks, but one of the commenters below the post has mentioned that they returned the pan to the heat to thicken the mix. I heated my egg yolks, not for any real reason but I do like the consistency of a custard base. I didn't let the mix thicken as much as I normally would, leaving it still quite thin when I strained it and left it to cool. After it had cooled, I popped it into my ice cream maker, let it churn for a bit and then transferred it to the freezer to harden.


Isn't it an amazing colour?? It is spectacular ice cream, unlike any I've ever had before. It's divine.

Check out Orangette for the recipe.

One-Pan Sage-and-Onion Chicken and Sausage

While I was looking around for a carbonara recipe I came across this recipe from Nigella Lawson. I thought it looked interesting so I showed it to DD and he thought it looked interesting, so we abandoned plans to have a chicken stir-fry for one of our meals and we gave Nigella's One-Pan Sage-and-Onion Chicken and Sausage recipe a try.

It has quite a few reader reviews on the Food Network site. Lots of them are very enthusiastic, others less so. I read through a few of them and made a few tweaks to the method. Lots of reviewers felt that the amount of oil (half a cup) was way too much and made the dish really greasy. I halved the recipe and used an eighth of a cup of oil. It was fine, not oily at all.

I also was using chicken breast fillet pieces without bones or skin, so I was a little apprehensive about the cooking time. Some reviewers complained that the chicken really dried out. So, I put the sausages into the oven on their own for about ten or so minutes, took them out and turned them over, put them back in for about five minutes before I added the chicken and onion and the marinade. This meant that I could base the cooking time on how long it took to cook the chicken and not worry about the sausages. It was done in about 23 minutes after adding the chicken. Nigella says to cook it for 1 hour and 15 min, but there was no way mine was going to need anywhere near that long.

It was great. I love the flavour combination of English mustard and worcestershire sauce. I love Nigella's Sake Steak and Rice recipe which uses it too. This recipe is a little more of a complex with the addition of lemon. We served it with some steamed rice on the side.

Next time I will increase the amount of worcestershire sauce - it got a little lost in the mustard and lemon. I will also cook the sausages for a little bit longer on their own. They were cooked at the end, but I would have liked them a little bit more cooked. We'll definately be making this again though.

One Pan Sage and Onion Chicken and Sausage
adapted from Nigella Feasts by Nigella Lawson

1 large onion
30ml grapeseed oil
2 teaspoons English mustard
1 tablespoon dried sage (I used ground sage)
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 lemon
2 1/2 chicken breast fillets, cut into thirds
4 sausages, cut in half
2 tablespoons fresh sage leaves

Peel and cut the onion into eighths, and put into a freezer bag with the oil, mustard, dried sage, a good grinding of pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Cut lemon in half, squeeze juice into bag, and then cut the halves into eighths and add them. Squidge everything around to mix (the mustard needs help to combine) and then add the chicken pieces. Leave to marinade in the refrigerator overnight, or for up to 2 days.

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Allow the chicken to come to room temperature in its marinade.

Place the sausages into the roasting tin and put into the oven. After 10 minutes, turn the sausages over and return to the oven for a further 10-15 minutes.

Remove the roasting tin from the oven and rrange the chicken pieces in a roasting tin with the marinade, including all the bits and pieces, and tuck the sausages around them. Sprinkle the fresh sage leaves over the chicken and sausages and then put the tin into the oven to cook for 20-25 minutes. Turn the sausages and chicken over half way through to color them evenly.

Arrange the chicken and sausages on a large platter.

Stir-fried noodles with beef

Please forgive the blurry photo, I only took one because I was so hungry that I didn't stop to check the camera first!

We've changed our regular grocery shop from Coles/Woolworths and have started to frequent IGA. Now that we've moved, the local Woolworths is always so busy. DD and I both don't like places where you have to fight the crowds, and Woolworths is not that great a store that it's worth pushing and shoving just to get your groceries done. IGA, on the other hand, is like a ghost store. We buy our fresh fruits and vegetables from the markets, so we don't have to worry about that. IGA's not really any more or less expensive that Woolworths, and while you may not have the range of fancy stuff that Woolworths offers (like the bakery and extensive deli) most of that stuff isn't part of our budget anymore anyway. We will, every six or so shops, go to a Coles or a Woolworths to get the stuff that IGA doesn't stock (like Mi Goreng noodles) but generally, IGA is fine for our groceries.

I say generally because there are a few things that aren't great. We've never been lucky enough to find a great butcher (or any butcher for that matter), so we use supermarket meat. I like the convenience of ready-cut stir fry packs and we've never had a problem using them before, but the beef stir-fry cuts from IGA aren't really working out for us. The meat always turns out tough and chewy and it's not due to overcooking. The last time this happened, I realised that when you buy the stir-fry packs you don't know what type of beef you're getting and I decided that I wasn't saving anything by buying the pre-cut stuff.

So, this time I bought some scotch fillets (in bulk, on special) and cut them into strips myself. It made a world of difference. The meat was tender and juicy and tasted awesome, even without the sauce. I'm definately going to keep doing this.

The recipe is from Bills Granger's book, Simply Bill and it's a simple beef and noodle dish. It's supposed to be served with sugar snap peas but we ended up cooking this at the end of the week and I'd already used all the vegetables. It's really yummy and simple and it is so versatile, you could add all sorts of stuff to it.

Stir-fried Noodles with Beef
from Simply Bill by Bill Granger

3 tbs oyster sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
1 1/2 tbs dry sherry
3 tbs chicken stock
2 tsp sugar
1 tbs light-flavoured oil
400g beef fillet or rump, sliced
4cm piece of fresh ginger, julienned or grated
250g fresh egg noodles, cooked and drained

Stir together the oyster sauce, soy sauce, sherry, stock and sugar in a small bowl.

Heat a wok or large frying pan over high heat. Add the oil and, when smoking, stir-fry the beef and ginger in two batches, cooking for 1 minute until it is sealed and browned. Return all the beef to the pan and add the sauce. Cook for 1 minute until the sauce has thickened slightly.

Add the noodles to the wok and toss together.

Carbonara

I came home one night during the week feeling like eating a nice bowl of carbonara. I don't eat carbonara often but I had fond memories of one I had made a long time ago. It wasn't before I started this blog, but it was one that I didn't blog about because I couldn't find the recipe anywhere.

There are more recipes for carbonara than you can count floating around on the internet, so it wasn't a simple task looking for another recipe. In the end I went with a recipe from the blog Two Yolks. Matt makes the most amazing looking pasta dishes.

It tasted lovely, just like carbonara should. Unfortunately, I had undercooked the pasta and that did mar the dish slightly, but I enjoyed it all the same. DD isn't a fan of carbonara made just with egg yolk, so he didn't finish his.

Have a look at Matt's blog, Two Yolks, for the recipe.

Presentation is everything...

This is a Smoked Salmon and Avocado Salad ordered by A when we went out for lunch. It was huge, but it was the presentation that I thought was cool. It's like a little salmon house! Poor A had to wait until I had found my camera in the depths of my handbag and snapped a picture before she could eat.

The presentation was a little deceptive though, as there was a lot of salad in that mould. In case you're interested, the salad was made from Tasmanian smoked salmon, fresh avocado with mixed lettuce leaves, spanish onion, roasted capsicum, finished with a white balsamic dressing.

Gingered Chicken with Noodles

This recipe comes from Jamie Oliver's cookbook Jamie's Dinners. I used to really enjoy Jamie Oliver in the early seasons of The Naked Chef, but as he's developed he started putting me off. I don't like watching him now, even though he's trying to do good things.

Anyway, I do own two Jamie Oliver cookbooks and they just don't get used. I made an effort to flip through Jamie's Dinners while making a meal plan and decided to give his recipe for Ginger Chicken with Noodles a try.

The recipe in the book serves one. I didn't read this bit and felt guilty because after my dinner and lunch there was only the smallest serve left for DD, who was sick in bed. Luckily he wasn't feeling up to a large meal and it all worked out for the best.

It was really nice. Everything was lovely, light and flavourful. The ginger and five-spice worked really well together and it was great light meal.

Gingered Chicken with Noodles
from Jamie's Dinners by Jamie Oliver

Serves 1

115g dried medium egg noodles (I used thin Hokkien noodles)
olive oil spray
1 free-range, organic chicken breast cut into strips
thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thingly sliced
1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced (I used chilli flakes because I didn't have fresh chillies)
1 tsp five-spice
3 spring onions, finely sliced
a dash of soy sauce
1 tbs runny honey
small handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 a lemon

Drop the noodles into a pan of boiling water and cook according to the packet instructions. Drain well.

Heat a frying pan over medium high heat and spray with cooking spray. Toss the chicken, ginger and chilli together then add the five spice. Once the chicken is browned, add the spring onions, soy sauce and honey.

Add the noodles and coriander to the chicken. Season to taste and serve immediately with a squeeze of lemon.

Oreo Balls

One of my friends from my old job is an amazing baker/cook. She would bring in the most wonderful goodies. One of the goodies she brought in were these little balls of decadent chocolatey goodness made from Oreos and cream cheese and some white chocolate. They were rich and creamy - death by chocolate. I asked about the recipe and M said that all there was to it was 2 packets of Oreos and a packet of cream cheese blended together and then dipped in white chocolate.

In the interests of exploring all kinds of food for this food blog, I had to try to make them myself. For research purposes only, you understand.

I did try to make myself believe that they weren't that unhealthy by using light cream cheese. It didn't work, and it probably didn't help the balls either as the light cream cheese's higher water content made the mix a little bit too runny.

They are very easy to make. As I said, my mixture really was a bit runny, I really needed a few more biscuits or I should have added less cream cheese. I think that this wouldn't have been a problem if I had used full fat cream cheese. Because of the runniness, the mix wouldn't roll into balls. I dolloped teaspoon sized spoonfuls onto a tray and put them in the fridge for a few hours to harden up and then I was able to roll them properly.


When I took the balls out to re-roll them, I tasted one and boy, was it sweet. I don't know if that might be a by-product of the light cream cheese too, because M's were nowhere near as sweet as mine were. They were so sweet that you really couldn't eat a ball the size that I had them, so I halved them.

After the balls were rolled, you dip them into melted white chocolate. I'm not normally a fan of white chocolate, I'm not sure why exactly. It's just not really something I would choose to eat. Strangely enought, it turns out that I am a fan of melted white chocolate. Something changes in the taste of white chocolate when it is melted and it becomes so good!!! It's a pity that it goes back to tasting like normal white chocolate when it hardens.

I ran out of white chocolate just before the end of the balls so I rolled the rest in some unsweetened Dutch cocoa. I preferred the ones rolled in cocoa more because the bitterness of the cocoa offset the crazy sweetness of the ball itself. DD loved the white chocolate dipped ones. These were really tasty, but I'm sure our waistlines will appreciate it if I don't make these again for a little while.

Pan Roasted Scallops with Salsa

More from Gordon Ramsay's Cookalong Live, this is Pan Roasted Scallops with Salsa. I was a bit bold after my success in cooking fish in front of DD that I pushed it a bit further and tried cooking scallops too.

The dish is really good. The tomatoes and the olives and herbs all work so well together. I did feel that there was a little bit too high an olive to tomato ratio, but I'm not that big an olive fan. The scallops were fabulously meaty and were much better than I thought they would be, given that I bought them on special (display only) from Coles on a Sunday morning and had a small failure in the quick, hot cooking bit. This was my first time cooking scallops and while I thought I had seasoned them quite liberally, they really needed more seasoning. Something to remember for next time.

Pan Roasted Scallops with Tomato and Herb Salsa
from Gordon Ramsay's Cookalong Live Special

4 tbsp Olive oil
200g cherry tomatoes
80g pitted, drained black olives
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 bunch coriander, leaves only
1/2 bunch basil leaves
1 lemon, juiced
12 scallops (hand dived if you can get them), coral removed (I really doubt mine were "hand dived")

First, place a small saucepan over a gentle heat and add 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Chop the cherry tomatoes in half and add to the oil. Add the pitted black olives, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and stir over a low heat for 1-2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Hold the stalks of the coriander and basil together and slice down with a sharp knife to shave off the leaves. Discard the stalks, gently roll the coriander and basil leaves into a ball and chop. Add the coriander and basil to the salsa and stir to combine.

Roll the lemon on a chopping board to soften it and release the juices and then chop in half. Add the juice of half a lemon to the pan, stir and set the salsa aside to allow the flavours to infuse.

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over a high heat until smoking hot and then add one tablespoon of olive oil. Lay the scallops out on a board, pat dry with kitchen paper and then season one side with salt and pepper.

Think of the frying pan as a clock face and add the largest scallop (seasoned side down) in the twelve o’clock position. Continue adding the scallops clockwise working your way round 1,2 3 etc until you get to 12 again. Season the unseasoned side of the scallops and after 1-2 minutes or when the underside is turning golden brown, with a palette knife or spatula, flip over the scallops starting with the scallop you placed in the twelve o’clock position. Squeeze the other half of the lemon over the scallops and give the pan a good shake to ensure even cooking.

After 1-2 minutes or when the scallops are golden brown on all sides, tip the pan onto a plate lined with kitchen paper to absorb the excess oil.

To serve, lay out four small plates and place a large spoonful of the salsa in the middle of each plate, arrange 3 scallops on each plate and serve immediately (or do as I did and pile the whole thing onto one serving plate).

Fish and Chips

UPDATE: I've just seen on Channel 4's website that Cookalong Live is now a series!!!! I wish I lived in the UK.

The story behind this is actually quite convoluted and I've noticed that my last two posts have been quite rambling, so I'll keep this one more to the point of food.

Long story short, I found a copy of Gordon Ramsay's Cookalong Live to watch online and I thought it was the best idea. Did you know that apparently Gordon and Channel Nine have come to an agreement to film one for Australian TV? It's very exciting! Anyway, I loved watching the UK version and I really wanted to try the recipes. I hadn't planned on trying them on this particular day but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

I bought some lovely whiting fillets from the fish counter of a supermarket because I was too lazy to drive to the fishmonger. Even worse, they were on sale and only display stock was left. The food snob in me was beaten down by the lazy person and I bought the cheap supermarket fish. The food snob had to pull its head in though, because the fish turned out to be beautiful and fresh and tasty.

As I've said before, DD doesn't like seafood. He also hates the smell of it so I do try to not cook with it for me (who adores seafood) when he is around. This time I had a craving which couldn't be ignored, so I tried to cook it secretly so he didn't know. As it turned out, the fish was so fresh that there was no fishy smell and he didn't have a problem with it, which is great!

The fish I lightly coated in seasoned flour and pan fried. Simple, but very tasty.

The chips are Gordon Ramsay's chilli chips from Cookalong Live. Very easy too. Keep the skin on the potatoes, boil them for a bit to soften, toss them with oil, salt, pepper and chilli flakes then put them into the oven on a really hot tray. They were perfect.

It was a simple lunch, but it was quite possibly the best fish and chips ever.

Chilli Chips
from Gordon Ramsay's Cookalong Live Special

4 large Desiree potatoes
2 tbs grapeseed oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
a generous pinch of chilli flakes

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celcius.

Fill a large pan with boiling water, add a pinch of salt and place over a high heat. Cut each potato in half lengthways and then place the cut side down onto the board. Cut each half potato into 1cm thick wedges.

Add the potato wedges to the boiling water, bring to the boil again and boil for 3 minutes. Drain in a colander and then place the colander sitting over the pan, off the heat, to allow the wedges to dry further. Add the oil, salt, pepper and chilli flakes and toss well to coat.

Tip the wedges into a large baking tray (big enough so that the wedges sit in one layer so they crisp up evenly) and shake the tray until they are evenly spread out. Place the tray in the oven and cook for 30 minutes or until golden brown and crisp. Shake the tray once or twice during cooking to ensure even cooking.

Stir-fried Chicken with Peanuts and Basil

For my birthday a couple years ago my workmates gave me some cookbooks, one of which was a book about step-by-step Thai cooking. At the time I wasn't really all that into Thai flavours, but I pulled this book out after I had taken the Thai cooking class. The book is packed with amazing looking recipes and I can't wait to try so many of them.

This particular recipe came from a two page spread about Quick Stir-fries. I love a good chicken and basil stir-fry and there's a place in Brisbane called Star Chow that makes an amazing version. It's out of this world good. The cookbook had two recipes on this spread that included chicken and basil. One also had corn as an ingredient, but DD doesn't like corn so I looked to the other one, which was the Stir-fried Chicken with Peanuts and Basil.

It's really easy, so very very easy. It's almost as good as Star Chow, which means it is very very good. The taste almost explosive in that every bite is full of the most amazing combination of flavours. The first time I made it, I found DD in the kitchen scraping up the bits of chicken and peanuts left in the pan because he loved the taste. It was so good that I had to tell my mother about it and insist she try it. She did try it and, like a good food blogger's mum, she even took a photo of it for me.


Mum also really enjoyed it. She added more vegetables to her version and she says that the basil really lifted and lightened the dish.

Stir-fried Chicken with Peanuts and Basil
adapted from Thai Cookbook Step by Step

4 chicken breast fillets
1 tbs Thai green curry paste (there is a recipe in the book for the curry paste, but I used a good quality commercial version)
125g trimmed snow peas
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tsp soft brown sugar
80g chopped roasted peanuts
30g fresh basil leaves

Slice the chicken into small thin pieces. Combine with the curry paste and mix well. Combine the fish sauce and brown sugar together in a small bowl or cup and mix well.

Heat 1 tbs oil in a wok or frying pan. Add the chicken in 2 batches and stir-fry each batch for 3 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Transfer to a plate.

Add the snow peas to the wok and toss. Cover with a lid and steam for one minutes. Return the chicken to the wok and add the fish sauce and brown sugar mix and the peanuts and basil leaves. Toss gently and serve with steamed rice.

Twice-Cooked Crispy Chicken

We've been trying to stick to a budget recently and part of that process was making a meal plan (and sticking to it!) so that you only bought what you needed when grocery shopping and weren't buying anything and everything that catches the eye. (I'm a terrible grocery shopper. I want to try so many things. DD says that I'm not really embracing our new financial situation).

Anyway, making a meal plan is something I've tried before and I do really like having the structure and I really like knowing that I've got everything I need before I start cooking. There's no "I'm too tired to think of something". The problem I have is actually making the meal plan. I always seem to leave it until right before bedtime on a Friday night (grocery shopping happens on Saturday morning) when I'm so sleepy that having to stop and think makes me a little cranky. DD is starting to help more and more with suggestions which does make it easier. I think what I might do is have a second list next to the grocery list on the fridge to put meal ideas on. Then when it comes times for the plan, the ideas part is mostly done and it's just the logistics to do. I like working out logistics.

What does this have to do with Donna Hay's Twice-Cooked Crispy Chicken? Well, it was late one Friday night and I was trying to think of six meals that would be relatively easy, didn't have expensive ingredients and didn't use anything fresh that wouldn't keep until the end of the week (I have a particular problem with basil and coriander. Anything using those two has to be cooked on a Monday or Tuesday or the herbs aren't as nice as they could be. See, logistics!). I had a pile of cookbooks next to me and I ended up pulling out Donna Hay's Simple Essentials:Chicken.

This recipe poaches the chicken in an Asian-style liquid with ingredients like soy sauce, Chinese rice wine, star anise and a cinnamon stick. I love poached chicken. DD does not like any other cuts of chicken other than breast fillets but I love moist juicy chicken and I don't care what part it comes from. I found that a nicely poached breast fillet can give me my juicy chicken fix. Chicken baked in a foil pouch in the oven does it pretty well too. Once the chicken has been poached it is left to dry and then it is cooked in a frying pan over a medium high heat and allowed to crisp up.

Our standard cut of chicken is boneless skinless breast fillets and because our chicken had no skin, there was nothing to crisp. All the frying really did was dry the chicken out. I was very careful because there was no skin on the chicken and didn't fry it for anywhere near the 5 minutes Donna says to, but it still was enough to dry it out.

The flavour was great though, nice and light. It wasn't enough to make me want to cook it again though. I can get the same flavour combination from other recipes. However, one day I may return to it with a proper cut of chicken, but it won't be for a while.

If anybody has any success trying the recipe properly, let me know how you found it.

Twice-Cooked Crispy Chicken
from Donna Hay Simple Essentials: Chicken p72

1/4 cup (60ml) soy sauce
1/4 cup (60ml) Chinese rice wine
2 tbs brown sugar
1 cup (250ml) chicken stock
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
4 x 200g chicken breast fillets, skin on
2 tbs peanut oil

Combine all ingredients from the soy sauce to the cinnamon stick in a large pan over medium heat. Allow to simmer for 4 minutes. Add the chicken and cook for 3 minutes of each side. Drain the chicken on a wire rack and allow to dry. Heat a clean large non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the oil and the chicken, skin side down, and cook for 4 minutes or until the skin is very crisp. Turn and cook for 1 minute or until heated through. Slice and serve with steamed greens.

Tiramisu Cupcakes

When DD and I first moved in to our new house, we had a few things that we needed to organise and it meant that we made a quite a few trips to the local Bunnings. One day, we decided to mix it up and go to a different Bunnings and we found a lovely little fresh food store and deli. They had a great selection of gourmet lines and I bought some savoiardi biscuits and mascarpone.

Once we had returned home (and put the cupboard together), I was browsing through blogs and I came across these Tiramisu Cupcakes from Amicus Cupcake. I was intrigued and I had to try them.

They were very different from the usual cupcake, they were light and airy from the whisked egg whites. These were the first things I baked in the oven in our new house. I'm not a big fan of the oven, but these seemed to have turned out okay.

After baking the cupcakes, icing sugar, espresso coffee, cocoa and water is combined to make a thick mocha syrup which is drizzled over the cakes. Finally, they are iced with a mascarpone frosting - mascarpone, icing sugar, marsala and cream.

I loved the airy cake and the mascarpone cream, but I didn't really like the coffee syrup. I'm not a big coffee drinker and I am very fussy about bitter-tasting coffee. This tasted bitter, and in hindsight I probably could have increased the icing sugar to sweeten it, but I didn't taste it early enough. DD liked them lots and he was quite put out when I disposed of the excess cupcakes.

Please see Amicus Cupcake for the recipe for Tiramisu Cupcakes.

I made a traditional tiramisu after the cupcakes, because I did still have to use my savoiardi biscuits. I amended my go-to recipe (from Food Safari) to use the mascarpone cream from the tiramisu cupcake recipe because the mascarpone cream is awesome. I did have to buy some more mascarpone to complete the tiramisu and learned a lesson in quality. I bought a cheaper brand from a mainstream supermarket and it tasted bad - so different to what I had purchased from the deli. The creaminess and flavour were completely missing and it had a slightly iffy taste about it. This time I did add more icing sugar, but it still didn't disguise the difference. Next time I'll spend the extra dollar or two and get the good quality brand.

Dry-Fried Sichuan Beef

Our adventures with Sichuan pepper continue...

I nearly set fire to the kitchen making this dish. I was heating the oil and left it alone a little too long and the oil had a little explosion. DD and I immediately decided to forgo the cooking in oil bit and we made do with cooking spray.

It was a little dry to be served just with rice, but a drizzle of soy sauce helped that. I made a new batch of Sichuan pepper and salt and this batch was much better. The dish was really nice and flavourful.

I used stir-fry strips for this, but I'm starting to realise that I'm paying for the time I save not having to cut up a beef fillet with not the best quality of meat. I never thought about it before, but you don't get to choose your cut of meat when you buy the prepared stuff and who knows where it comes from? This batch in particular was really chewy. I didn't overcook it, if anything I undercooked it because I was still scared of the stove from the little explosion.

I think I would like to try this dish again. Even though I did enjoy the flavour, I didn't enjoy the cooking or the eating. I'll give it another go with a proper cut of meat and no oil!

Dry-Fried Sichuan Beef
Adapted from "Simple Chinese Cooking" by Kylie Kwong.

500g beef stir-fry strips
cooking spray
2 large red chillies, finely sliced
1 tbs finely diced ginger
3 garlic cloves, finely diced
2 tbs hoisin sauce
2 tsp Sichuan pepper and salt
1 cup finely sliced spring onions
1/2 cup finely shredded iceberg lettuce leaves

Heat a non-stick frying pan coated in cooking spray over a high heat. Stir fry the beef in batches for one minute. Remove the beef from the pan.

Wipe out any extra oil or juices from the pan and reapply cooking spray. Stir the chilli, ginger and garlic over a medium heat for 30 seconds. Be very careful the garlic does not burn. You may wish to add a little bit of vegetable oil to the pan for this stage. Add the beef and the hoisin sauce and stirfry for until beef is cooked. Add Sichuan pepper and salt and stir through. Add spring onions.

Serve with a sprinkle of Sichuan pepper and salt and top with lettuce.

Stir-fried Chicken Fillets with Honey and Ginger

I love Chinese five-spice. I love the flavour it gives to things and I get excited whenever I see it used in a recipe. I have been known to go searching for recipes specifically using five-spice because I have a hankering for the flavour. This time I didn't go searching, but I was excited to see this chicken recipe in Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking .

Unfortunately, my chicken didn't caramalise like Kylie's did, and it had a distinct grainy texture. This may or may not have been because I used minced ginger in the marinade. It tasted great though. The five spice came through strongly (I like that) and the chicken was packed full of great flavour. Mine was a little dry because I didn't think to save the sauce and drizzle it over everything, but I'll remember for next time. Next time too I might add a bit more honey. I don't know if I made a mistake in the recipe or my exuberant five-spice adding overtook the honey flavour, but I didn't get any in the final dish.

It's definately one to try again, it has great potential and even if I did stuff up this time, it still tasted great. It will be nice to get it perfect though.

Stir-Fried Chicken Fillets with Honey and Ginger
Adapted from "Simple Chinese Cooking" by Kylie Kwong.

500g chicken breast fillets, cut into strips
cooking spray
1 tbs light soy sauce

Marinade
1/4 cup honey
2 tbs light soy sauce
2 tbs shao hsing wine
2 tbs finely diced ginger
1 tbs oyster sauce
2 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tsp five-spice powder
1/2 tsp sesame oil

Combine all marinade ingredients in a bowl with the chicken and marinate, covered, overnight in the fridge.

Spray a large non-stick frying pan or wok with cooking spray and heat to a high temp. Add the chicken in batches and stir fry to brown. Once all the chicken has been lightly browned, add all the chicken to the pan with the soy sauce and stir fry until the chicken is cooked through.

Chicken for bento

I went looking through Just Bento for other types of chicken for my bento boxes. I love teriyaki chicken, but you can't have it every day. So I found two to try. Miso chicken and Simply pan-fried salted chicken.

I didn't have any miso, so I used a miso soup mix (shh, don't tell anyone). It was amazing though. It had a great flavour and the chicken was really tender. It was a different flavour too, which is great - I love finding ways to make chicken different.


The Simply pan-fried salted chicken was okay, by comparison. It was most likely due to the fact that I used skinless breast fillets rather than skin-on thigh fillets. It's good to know though because I won't try this with breast fillets again.

Thanks again to Maki from Just Bento for the great recipes.

One bowl brownies

I had a chocolate craving recently and for some reason brownies were all that I could think of. Although I have enjoyed many a brownie I've never made them myself. Deb over at Smitten Kitchen assures that brownies are pretty much indestructable. (Hmm, maybe "no bad from-scratch brownies" are slightly different from "indestructable"). Anyway, so with these words of wisdom to bloster my confidence (it's only the second time baking in the new oven), I headed off to try the One-Bowl Brownie. I liked the whole "one bowl" idea.

I happily threw everything (at the required times) into the one bowl, and had a taste. I didn't have the best quality dark chocolate to add and I found the mix was really sweet. Really sweet. So I threw caution (and measuring implements) to the wind and started adding stuff. I added some dutch cocoa to deepen the chocolatey flavour and some coffee granules because I love the chocolate/coffee combination. It wasn't enough coffee to make a mocha flavour, just enough to really bring out the chocolate.

My plans started going awry in the cooking stage. Every brownie recipe I've ever seen has warned you not to over cook the brownies, so I was very skittish around the still-unfamiliar oven. Deb says that the brownies are ready when a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out with fudgy crumbs, but my toothpicks came out with fudgy crumbs even when the brownies weren't ready. I attacked the brownies with a knife to see inside the first time I checked (at 30 minutes) and it definately wasn't ready, so I put it back in for 7 or so minutes. DD thinks they were still underdone. I'm not sure. Is there an easier way to know when brownies are ready?

A side note on my oven: it doesn't have a clear door. I hate it. I like being able to see what's going on inside, but now I can't do that unless I open the oven and then it immediately loses so much heat that it takes forever to come back up to temperature. Grr.

Anyway, issues aside, the brownies tasted amazing. I sent them to work with DD and he said everyone really enjoyed them, which is very cool. Head on over to Smitten Kitchen for the recipe.

Vegetables for Bento

More bento vegetables! Clockwise from top left: Japanese potato salad, French green beans with carrot and ginger, Stir-fried cabbage with garlic and balsamic vinegar (minus cranberries) and carrot kinpira.

The beans and cabbage were first time tries and while the beans are awesome, the cabbage was less so. I much prefer my cabbage fresh in a salad and I'm not really all that much a fan of balsamic as a dominant flavour, so I didn't really go in for this.

I mentioned in my last bento vegetables post that DD really liked the carrot kinpirra. This time he came over to have a look and he asked if I could make him a bento box too. I warned him that his bento would have vegetables in it and said he had to try some of the beans and potato salad to see if he liked them. He agreed, so I made him a tasting plate (including a little onigiri with some chicken that I made for him specially while making my tuna ones).


He ate everything on his tasting plate and said he liked them all. I was so excited that I served up some beans and carrots with our steak dinner that night. The only down side to this was that my big batch of vegetables which was supposed to last me all week was all gone by Tuesday. It was worth it though, DD really liked his bento, we both ate an awful lot of vegetables and I've found some more easy recipes to lunchtime bento.


I also made some tuna salad rice sandwiches for lunches.

Onigiri

I was getting really creative with my bentos and I decided to branch out into trying onigiri. There is spectacular how to on Just Hungry which I followed to the letter. I put some tuna salad into my onigiri. They were really tasty. I've tried to make these again since then but I can't recreate how good my first ones were. I think the ones above were beginner's luck.

More Bento

As much as I enjoyed my simple bento the other day, I'm sure I'd get sick of the chicken/rice/potato salad combo pretty soon. I also didn't want to have too much of the starches - there was quite a bit of rice in my first bento. So, I went back to Just Bento looking for something else to fill my bento. The photos above are my experiments.

The top is a 1 egg tamagoyaki (Japanese omelette), which I attempted to fold in the traditional way (I failed). It tasted great, I love the flavour the soy gave to the egg. Mine was really soft though and I didn't know how it would hold up until lunch, so DD and I ate it straight away.

The second is an easy sugarfree carrot kinpira, which was a winner all around. It was easy to cook (once I learned how to julienne with my mandolin) and tasted great. It held up really well in the bento and was just a yummy at lunchtime on Monday as it was on Sunday night while I prepared it. Maki says that this will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of days, so I made a big batch so it can be a bento staple this week.

The carrot kinpira also deserves a HUGE mention because DD really liked it. DD isn't a big vegetable eater, so I was really excited to find a way to prepare vegetables in a way that he likes.