Gingerbread Toffee

I picked these Gingerbread toffees up on a visit to Ikea. I think they are beautiful, but I haven't tried one yet. They are too cute to eat!!!

Homemade Gozlemes

I was missing the beautiful Turkish Gozlemes from the various markets around Sydney, so I thought I might try and make some myself to soothe my craving. I didn't think that mine would be anywhere near as nice as theirs are, but I was hoping I could get something resembling the fabulous taste I remembered.

The dough was so easy. Haalo from Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once posted the recipe she found on the Australian Women's Weekly website and there were only three ingredients. Dough and I generally aren't friends, but this one seemed to work for me.

For the spicy mince filling I used a recipe posted on 43things.com. It wasn't as wonderful as I remembered, but it was still very very good. I added some thin slices of provolone and grilled them in our sandwich press. It did need seasoning though, so don't forget if you give these a try. DD loved them and gave them the thumbs up.

Gozleme
Adapted from AWW and 43things.com

For the dough

200g plain yogurt
pinch salt
250g self-raising flour (approximately)

For the filling

½ kg minced beef
2 cloves minced garlic
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp paprika (hot or mild)
1 medium carrot grated
½ cup of pureed tomato or juice
olive oil for frying

eat yogurt and salt together in a large bowl until smooth. Gradually add flour until you have a stiff dough. Tip onto a lightly floured bench and gradually knead dough, incorporating any remaining flour until dough is soft and only slightly sticky. Transfer to a clean bowl and stand covered for 30 minutes.

On a floured surface, split dough into 4 equal sized round pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a 30cm circle.

Place some of the filling sparingly over half of the dough. Fold dough over and seal edges with a fork. Repeat this process with remaining dough.

Heat your sandwich press and line with baking paper. Cook until cheese has melted and the dough is golden. Serve with lemon wedges

Breakfast at Cafe XS

We stopped for breakfast before braving the post-Christmas sales on the Monday after Christmas, because we thought we would need the sustenance. We like Cafe XS because they make nice stuff and it's really cheap. We each had the above and a hot drink and it was less than $30. It would probably be cheaper to make it at home, but since we were out, it was a great deal.

Gordon Ramsay's Pasta with Crab

In my pre-Christmas seafood buying I also picked up a packet of fresh-frozen crab meat from the fishmonger. My mother was buying whole crabs for Christmas and I wanted some too, but not enough to go through shelling and stuff, so crab meat! Then I didn't eat it until after Christmas. When I realised that it had defrosted and I had to use it soon I went on a recipe search looking for something yummy to make with my crab. I came across this Gordon Ramsay recipe as posted on Food TV Blog. It was a recipe on his television show The F-Word.

It was really easy and looks fantastic. It tasted pretty good too. DD doesn't eat seafood and I was making him a simple tomato sauce to have with his pasta, but he watched me getting everything ready and asked for a crab-less version of this instead. We both loved it, the flavours just work so well together. DD even asked for this (the crab-less version) as his birthday dinner because it was his favourite pasta.

I used a mild fat chilli because that was all I had, but I added some chilli flakes to increase the chilli flavour. I also used minced garlic because I didn't have any fresh. I don't think the dish suffered because of these at all.

Gordon Ramsay's Pasta with Crab
from The F-Word Season 1 Episode 6 as posted on Food TV Blog

100ml olive oil
1 medium-hot red chilli de-seeded and finely chopped
1 fat garlic clove, finely chopped
3 pared strips of lemon zest, finely chopped
225g freshly cooked white crab meat
2 tbs chopped fresh flatleaf parsley

Put the olive oil, chilli, garlic and lemon zest into a small pan and put over a gentle heat until it begins to sizzle. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Bring a large saucepan of well-salted water to the boil. Add the linguine and cook for 8-9 minutes, or until al dente. Drain well and set aside.

Tip the chilli and lemon mixture into the pan the pasta was in, then add the lemon juice and season. Heat until sizzling, then add the linguine and crab meat to the pan and toss gently over a medium heat to warm the crab through.

Add the parsley, season, and serve immediately with lemon wedges.

Christmas Lunch

DD and I were on our own for Christmas this year, but we tried to do a very miniature version of a Christmas banquet and I think we did pretty well. We had a variety of meats: a small rolled turkey roast from the freezer section of the supermarket, a small roll of smoked ham, a quarter of a chicken and my prawns and then some sides: my nanna's cucumber salad, a green salad with buttermilk dressing from Smitten Kitchen; Yorkshire puddings from Recipezaar; roast onions and Nigella's roast potatoes.

Unfortunately I did have a small failure with Nigella's potatoes and I let them boil for too long, meaning they fell apart when I bruised them. They tasted fantastic after they came out of the oven, but they were more like a really thick hash brown consistency. We both really liked them, but I promised DD I would make the potatoes properly another time.

Christmas Prawns

There's no real story with these guys, I just think they look beautiful. Red and glossy and fresh and beautiful. They are getting ready to be Christmas lunch. (I can't remember what kind of prawns they are)

Easy Christmas Trifle

I finished work a little bit earlier than usual on Christmas Eve and I was really excited, because it meant I could go to the fish market and see if I could get some seafood for Christmas lunch and to the supermarket to get some extra goodies. On the way I was speaking to my mother and she mentioned that they were having a trifle with their Christmas lunch and my brain started ticking. I found some madeira cake and custard in the supermarket and started to get more excited, but found I'd forgotten the jelly which meant I had to stop at my local IGA to get some, because once you've gone past the cake, custard and cream you can't stop the trifle train.

I love trifle, but have it very rarely because I'm a little picky about how it should be made. I don't like soggy cake in trifle, so I don't soak the cake in anything. I also don't like fruit in it, so mine tends to be pretty basic.

Step 1 (not including making the jelly)

Put the cubed cake and cubed jelly into a bowl (my jelly was a little delicate and fell apart)


Pour over the custard (next time I need to make sure I get thick custard, the runny stuff I accidentally bought was the reason it wasn't as successful as I hoped.


Then add your whipped cream and grate some chocolate over the top. I whipped my cream with a tiny bit of vanilla.

DD said that he didn't like trifle, but he did want to try some just in case. After he tasted it he said that he thought trifle had to have fruit in it and that was what he didn't like. He loved this fruit-free version.

Christmas Breakfast

Bill Granger's scrambled eggs (with a little bit of chives added) sprinkled with grated cheddar, crispy bacon and sourdough spread with Gympie Farm salted butter. Yum!

I've never made Bill Granger's eggs before. I've tasted them at bills Woollahra but I've never tried cooking them. I think I look at the 1/3 cup of cream and my waistline and move on. But it was Christmas Day and if there ever was a time to celebrate food then that was it. The cream made the beaten egg mix so thick you couldn't see the yolks of the eggs. They are dangerously good. So good that you are tempted to eat them again even with the 1/3 cup of cream. I'm trying to resist.

Gozleme

We love the Turkish Gozlemes you can get at the markets in Sydney and I was very excited to see a gozleme stand at the New Farm markets before Christmas. They aren't quite as good as the ones you get in Sydney, the dough is a little thicker, the mince isn't quite as tasty and there's no lemon wedges, but they do satisfy a gozleme craving. And they are still very good, I am just comparing them to ones I enjoyed that little bit more.

Ginger and sesame rice with poached chicken

I found this recipe while randomly googling Bill Granger one day. I bookmarked it, and then never made it. I would keep looking back at it thinking how much I would like to try it, but never cooking it. I've rectified this now, and I can't believe it took me so long because it's so good.

I didn't really read through the recipe when I bookmarked it and for some reason I thought it was just a steamed rice base, but it's actually a more of a pilaf. It's very very easy and also high in protein and relatively low in fat. It could use more vegetables to make it a little bit more balanced, but that's something I'll fix next time.

The sesame flavour comes sesame oil and is very subtle. The ginger flavour shines through, but everything is very gentle and comforting. We both really liked it.

Ginger and sesame rice with poached chicken
from Bill Granger as posted on smh.com.au

1 tbsp peanut oil
2 tsp sesame oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp freshly grated ginger
250g jasmine rice
500ml (2 cups) chicken stock
250g skinless chicken breast, cut into thin escalopes
Finely sliced long green shallots
Freshly chopped red chilli
Soy sauce

Heat the peanut oil and sesame oil in a medium saucepan over a medium-low heat. Add the onion and stir occasionally for 5-6 minutes or until the onion is soft. Add the garlic and ginger and stir for 2 minutes more.

Add the rice and stir to coat the grains of rice in the oil. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Place the chicken in a single layer on top of the rice. Cover again and simmer for a further 7-8 minutes or until rice is just tender and chicken is cooked through.

Remove from heat and set aside with lid on for a further 5 minutes.

Serve topped with sliced shallots, chilli and drizzle with soy sauce.

Isreali Couscous Salad

I used to make this salad heaps a while ago, but for some reason I stopped. I don't know why, because it's awesome and filled with all good things, like feta and olives and Israeli couscous. The picture doesn't do it justice, unfortunately. The salad is alive with colour.

I like to add some lettuce to it and it becomes a very very tasty lunch.

See here for the recipe.

Feta Salsa

I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen and I really really wanted to make it. I wasn't going to though, thinking that there would never be an occasion where it would get eaten. Then I couldn't get it out of my head and I found myself buying feta and olives at the supermarket. I told myself it was really for my Israeli couscous salad, but I was thinking of this.

I forgot the sundried tomatoes, but it was still amazing. DD loved it and even put it on his hotdog in lieu of sauce. It was so good that when the time came for me to make something for my work Christmas lunch, I decided to make a big batch (with sundried tomatoes this time).

It may not look all that appetizing, but it was hugely tasty. So yummy! I made some homemade crisps by sprinkling some tortillas with olive oil and fresh rosemary and baking them until crisp.

The recipe for this fantastic feta salsa can be found over at Smitten Kitchen.

Dinosaur Rock Cupcakes

The last time I made these I loved them. They were fantastic. This time something was missing. There wasn't the same depth of flavour as there was last time, I think it might have something to do with my cocoa, as my recent batch of World Peace Cookies didn't have quite the chocolateyness they've had previously.

Maybe it was the choice of frosting. I used a chocolate buttercream as opposed to the Swiss meringue buttercream I used last time. Last time the frosting was very light and I think that worked really well with the cake. Perhaps the lack of chocolate flavour in the cake was because it was overpowered by the frosting. I'm not sure, but they didn't really work for me this time.

They are a fantastic cupcake though, I think this was just a bad batch.

See here for the recipe for the cupcakes and here for the recipe for the frosting.

Market Morning Cupcakes

I love these orange and poppyseed cupcakes from the The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook. I don't know why I don't make them more often. They are lovely and light and I love them with a cup of tea or by themselves. They are not too sweet that you can't enjoy them as a slightly guilty alternative to breakfast.

The last time I made these I made a few notes. I grated my lemon zest and thirded the amount of poppyseeds in the recipes. I also wasn't as lazy and kept them all cupcake sized. I think they are much better for my waistline in a smaller size.

See here for the recipe.

Brown Butter Brown Sugar Shorties

I love Deb from Smitten Kitchen's taste in cookies. I think that if I were slightly more skilled in the culinary arts, I would try each and every one of her recipes.

These brown butter brown sugar shorties looked pretty easy and I'm intrigued by brown butter. Everything that has brown butter in it looks very tasty but I've never been able to make it work when I try. I thought I would give it another go with these cookies.

I don't think that I browned the butter enough though, as there was no trace of the taste in the finished cookie. So, I'm not sure what I did wrong. The cookies turned out quite boring actually, very plain and simple. It may have been that I made them at the same time as I made a batch of World Peace Cookies and no cookie can compete with those for my top cookie.

See Smitten Kitchen here for the recipe.