Radish and Sesame Soy Noodle Salad

This is another recipe from Ching He-Huang's Chinese Food Made Easy. I love noodle salads and I normally don't mind radishes so I thought I'd give this a try. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to use the bottle of black rice vinegar sitting unopened in my pantry.

Well, I loved the dressing and I loved the taste of the noodles with the dressing. I couldn't toss the salad to evenly distribute everything to save my life, but I managed with some creative serving. I didn't love the radish. I've only ever served radish sliced pretty thinly and these large wedges were just too sharp to work with the salad. I think that radishes you are meant to use in this salad should be sweeter, but my radishes were anything but sweet. In hindsight, I probably should have tried one before I chopped them all up, but I've never had a radish that could qualify as tasting sweet so I never realised that there are ones like that out there. Hindsight research is 20/20. I probably could have saved it by retrieving the radish chunks and slicing them thinly, but it was too much work. Luckily, my poor tossing skills meant I could retrieve a majority of the noodles, so I ended up just eating noodles and dressing. Both are very tasty.

Radish and Sesame Soy Noodle Salad
from Chinese Food Made Easy by Ching He-Huang

200g cooked whole wheat noodles or cooked brown rice, drizzled with groundnut oil
200g red radish, washed and quartered
½ cucumber, halved lengthways, deseeded and diced
1 small handful of black sesame seeds or toasted sesame or health seeds
fresh coriander sprigs to garnish

For the sesame soy dressing

3 tablespoons light soy sauce
3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
3 tablespoons chinkiang black rice vinegar or balsamic vinegar

Prepare the noodles, radishes and cucumber and place in the fridge to chill for at least 1 hour.
Combine all the ingredients for the dressing in a bowl.
To serve, place the noodles in a large dish, layer with some radish and cucumber and scatter over the black sesame seeds. Spoon the dressing over the dish, garnish with coriander sprigs and serve immediately.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in December 2009.

Mexican Dinner Party!

D's favourite meal at the moment is nachos made with beef machaca. He was so excited about it that he asked if he could have some of his workmates around for dinner, since he'd talked about it so much that they wanted to try it too. The night grew from there.

As we invited a few more people to come, I decided that we needed to expand the menu a little bit. Nachos are great, but since it was turning into a little dinner party I thought a little variety was in order. I browsed through countless Mexican websites and online cookbooks, looking for recipes that preferably could be prepared in advance and didn't require any obscure or hard to find ingredients.

In the end, the menu consisted of adaptations of beef machaca, pico de gallo salsa, Mexican rice, Mexican restaurant salad and grilled corn with chilli lime butter. Throw in some Mexican beer and good conversation, it made for an awesome night. We live on the other side of town from most of our friends, so we don't have people at our place very often. This dinner party of ten people was the most people we've ever had in our house at one time. We've decided that it went so well that we'll have to make it a regularly occuring event, except now that I'm back at work we haven't worked out how regularly it will happen.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of things once people started arriving and the food got laid out, so there are no pictures of the corn or the finished salad or the beef machaca and salsa. There are photos of the things I made in advance though!

Everything was wonderful and completely worthy of being made again. Maybe not all at once though.

See this post for the recipes for the beef machaca and pico de gallo salsa. We made an awful lot of the beef machaca, it filled my 5L slow cooker!


Mexican Rice
adapted from Pot Scrubber's recipe on Recipezaar

This rice is fantastic. It has the most amazing flavour and it's really moreish. It's great by itself or mixed with some beef machaca and sour cream, plus it can be made in advance or even frozen and then reheated to be as good as new. I've made this twice, using tinned tomatoes the first time and then some leftover jarred salsa the second time. I think the jarred salsa worked a little better because it added some more heat that I don't get from using chilli sauce in place of actual chillis, plus you get the added flavours from the capsicum pieces. I've posted my recipe using the salsa below, but see the link above for the original recipe using fresh or canned tomatoes.


1 jar bought salsa - medium heat
1 cup tomato passata (or as needed)
1 medium white onion
a dash or three of sriracha chilli sauce
2 cups long grain white rice
1/3 cup canola oil
4 minced garlic cloves
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup fresh coriander, minced
1 lime

Adjust rack to middle position and preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Process salsa and onion in processor or blender until pureed and thoroughly smooth. Transfer mixture to measuring cup and add passata to make two cups.


Place rice in a fine mesh strainer and rinse under cold running water until water runs clear- about 1 1/2 minutes.Shake rice vigorously to remove excess water.This step removes the starch from the rice so it will not stick. (the recipe says that you must do this or your rice will not be dry and fluffy, but I forgot the second time I made this and still had dry and fluffy rice. This may just be luck, so rinse your rice just in case)

Heat oil in heavy bottomed ovensafe 12 inch straight sided sautee pan or Dutch oven with tight fitting lid over medium high heat about 2 minutes. Drop a few rice grains in and if they sizzle then it is ready. Add rice and fry stirring until rice is light golden and translucent, about 6-8 minutes.


Reduce heat to medium, add garlic and sriracha sauce and cook, stirring constantly until fragrant, about 1 1/2 minutes.

Stir in broth, pureed mixture and salt. Increase heat to medium high, and bring to a boil.


Cover pan and transfer pan to oven to bake until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender, 30-35 minutes.Stir well after 15 minutes.

Stir in coriander and pass lime wedges separately.

Mexican Restaurant Salad Dressing
adapted from cookiedog's recipe on Recipezaar


I only made the coriander sour cream dressing from this recipe and served it with some cos lettuce and cucumber as I just wanted a nice gentle side salad to give some more freshness to the nachos. I was going to add some avocado and feta, but my avocado turned out to be far too underripe so I decided not to add either. The dressing was a winner though, beautifully flavoured and full bodied. I'm going to make it again to use in pitas and wraps for lunch. I love the colour too, what an amazing green!

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 cup stemmed coarsely chopped fresh cilantro (about 1/2 bunch)
a dash or two of sriracha chilli sauce
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

Put the lime juice, olive oil, mayonnaise, sour cream, cilantro, jalapeno, garlic, cumin, chili powder, and Parmesan in the container of a blender or food processor; process until smooth.

Refrigerate until ready to use.

Grilled Corn with Chilli Lime Butter
adapted from Chef Kate's recipe on Recipezaar

I played around with this recipe a little bit before the party. I have no idea if anything I added was authentic Mexican, but I have my spices that I love and I added them with abandon. When I tested this recipe, I was a little less careless and the only changes I made was to use canned corn and no lime zest, so I can say the recipe is great, but I did love what came out of my playing around. See the link above for the recipe as written.

1 400g can corn kernels
3 tablespoons butter
dash of canola oil
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
dash or two of sriracha chilli sauce

Heat a medium frying pan to a medium high heat. Add butter and canola and melt.

Add chilli powder, cumin and paprika and stir until fragrant.

Add the corn and stir until well heated and coated in the spicy butter.

Chocolate Idiot Cake

a slice of the baby tasting cake

I don't know about you, but when I'm browsing through food blogs and I come across a recipe called a Chocolate Idiot Cake, I have to make that cake and I have to make that cake pretty much straight away. Even if the recipe wasn't from fabulous pastry chef David Lebovitz. Since the recipe was from fabulous pastry chef David Lebovitz, I grabbed my laptop and headed straight for the kitchen.

I wasn't just aimlessly baking, we did have plans to go to a friend's house for dinner but due a scheduling conflict we were only going to be able to make it for dessert so we volunteered to bring something. David says that this cake, in addition to being idiot-proof, can keep for several days when well wrapped in the fridge. Since I was making this the day before, the cake just kept getting more and more perfect.

Well, there was a small complication. D loves flourless chocolate cake and he was a little disappointed that he wouldn't get to taste it until the next day. I felt sorry for him and since my springform tin is a little smaller than the 23cm tin recommended, I made him a second, tiny 11cm version to taste.

The cake was so easy to make, and each step looked so pretty I had to take lots of photos. The cake, once cooked, is rich and creamy and fabulous. It melts in your mouth and has an almost mousse-like texture to it. D liked it, but thought that even a small slice of the big cake might be too rich. I disagreed, it was a thin slice of chocolate heaven which matched perfectly with the whipped cream. Who could want for more?

Unfortunately, we hosted a dinner party that night and the well-wrapped cake for the next day met with an unfortunate accident when some beer bottles fell on it and squashed it. I can't tell you how disappointed I am that I had to keep it and eat it myself. I really can't.

Head on over to David's blog where you can find the recipe posted here.

Butter a springform pan and dust with cocoa. I'm so proud of my dusting job

Eggs and sugar whisked together

Chocolate and butter melted together, so beautifully glossy

Chocolate mixture whisked into the eggs and sugar

Ready to go in the water bath

The baby cake cooling

Baby cake ready for tasting

Chicken Chow Mien

Mum loves the show Chinese Food Made Easy by Ching He-Huang on Lifestyle Food. She was telling me all about it on the phone one day and we both went to the Lifestyle Food website to look at her recipes.

I love Chinese food and I liked Ching's idea that you can recreate classic Chinese takeaway dishes easily at home, plus they have the added benefit of being healthier and often cheaper. While this kind of thing is easy to say, they can't always support it in their recipes. I was willing to give it a try though and started with her recipe for Chicken Chow Mein. I love chow mein, so I thought it would be good recipe to start the test with.

After a small bit of chopping and measuring, I had everything assembled and ready to go. D prepared the noodles, we heated up our wok and went to work.

I have to admit, sometimes I don't devote as much time to my mise en place as I should. When I was sick, I had no option but to make sure I had everything ready before I started anything, because I couldn't move well enough to get things. It really is the better way to cook, a bit of time before you start saves you in the long run.

Anyway, back to this recipe. From start to finish, cooking took no more than 10 minutes. D topped the dishes with some non-traditional dried onions which actually worked really well. It was much fresher than Chinese takeaway chow mein, much lighter too. Sometimes takeaway chow mein can get quite gluggy, but this wasn't really a saucy stir-fry so there was no glugginess. The five spice added a nice kick. It was quite filling too. We were both very impressed and D has asked if we can have it again soon.

I recently received an email with a discount code for the Book Depository UK and they had some of Ching's books on special, so I ordered Chinese Food in Minutes. While it doesn't bode well for her book sales, I think her better recipes are the ones posted on the Lifestyle Food website. This one is one of the better ones.

Chicken Chow Mien
from Chinese Food Made Easy by Ching He-Huang

150g medium egg noodles
toasted sesame oil
300g skinless chicken breast fillets, sliced into strips
a dash of dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon five-spice powder
1 tablespoon cornflour
2 tablespoons groundnut oil
1 red capsicum, deseeded and finely sliced
150g bean sprouts
1 large spring onion, sliced lengthways
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
finely ground black pepper

Cook the noodles for 3 minutes in a pan of boiling water until al dente or as per the packet instructions. Drain, then run them under cold running water and drain again. Drizzle with a few splashes of sesame oil and toss through to prevent them from sticking.

Season the chicken with a splash of dark soy sauce, the five-spice powder and chilli sauce, if using, mix well. Coat lightly with the cornflour.

Heat a wok over a high heat, add the groundnut oil and heat until smoking, then add the chicken and stir-fry for 2–3 minutes until cooked.

Add the capsicum and stir-fry for 1 minute, then add the bean sprouts and spring onion and stir-fry for less than 1 minute. Add the cooked noodles and season with the light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon sesame oil and ground black pepper. Stir well and serve immediately.

Cheesy Gnocchi Bolognaise

I'm not all that fond of gnocchi, but D loves it. If we're having a pasta dish, sometimes we will cook pasta for me and gnocchi for him so he can indulge and I don't have to have any.

I came across this recipe for gnocchi bolognaise and pointed it out to D, who wanted to have it for dinner immediately. I thought it might be a good recipe for me to try gnocchi again because it was prepared differently and the gnocchi to meat ratio was quite low. We also chose to use gnocchi filled with spinach and ricotta to further cut down the gnocci to everything else ratio.

It's quite straightforward, just a simple bolognaise sauce which is prepared and then transferred to a casserole dish. I stirred through some ricotta and grated cheddar cheese to make it creamier. Top with cooked gnocchi and then sprinkle over more grated cheese and voila, cheesy gnocchi bolognaise.

D loved it. I didn't mind it either actually, I liked the filled gnocchi, I'd never tried it like that before. Plus the bolognaise was nicely flavoured and everything worked well together. D thought the gnocchi to everything else ratio was too low, so we tried it again this time using normal unfilled gnocchi and a larger packet. This was too much gnocchi for me and I didn't like it. D didn't mind this so much, as that meant there was more for him.


Cheesy Gnocchi Bolognaise
from Super Food Ideas November 2006 posted on Taste.com.au

1 tbs olive oil
1 brown onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
750g lean beef mince
600ml bottle Italian tomato pasta sauce (I used passata)
625g packet fresh gnocchi
150g grated cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes or until soft. Increase heat to medium-high. Add mince. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up mince, for 5 minutes or until browned.

Add pasta sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes or until sauce thickens.

Meanwhile, cook gnocchi in a saucepan of boiling, salted water for 3 minutes or until partially cooked. Drain. Spoon bolognaise into a lightly-greased, 6cm deep, 24x30cm baking dish. Top with gnocchi and sprinkle with cheese. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbling at the edges.

Spicy Fried Chicken Wings

This is another recipe from BBC2's The Best. I love chicken wings. I'm not normally one for messy things like eating off the bone or eating with my fingers, but I'll make an exception for a good flavoured chicken wing. These spicy fried chicken wings are most definately good flavoured chicken wings. D is most decidely anti-bone in all things and even he liked these (although he did ask if I could make them with chicken breast meat next time). What's even better is that these wings are cooked in the oven, which means I don't need to confront my fear of deep-frying to enjoy them.

Silvana serves these chicken wings with a mango salsa, but they don't need it. They are very good all by themselves and this means that you get to cut half the steps out of the recipe. The spicy coating gets its spiced from Cajun seasoning, which I didn't have in my pantry. I made some using this recipe from Recipezaar and they turned out wonderfully.

The chicken still gets a satisfyingly crispy coating even when cooked in the oven. I don't think I'll ever contemplate deep-frying chicken to get that crispiness again, this was just as good if not better and was much easier. I've made it twice since my first attempt and I find that if you cut the chicken wings at all the joints and cook the bits individually they are easier to eat, and since you're cutting the tips off anyway it's next to no extra work.

These are so good I've bought some emergency chicken wings to keep in the freezer ready for the next time I want a spicy chicken fix.


Spicy Fried Chicken Wings
adapted from The Best Cookbook and this recipe from Recipezaar

Cajun Seasoning
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin (not in the original recipe, I just love cumin)
1 tsp ground black pepper

6 large chicken wings
2 tbs plain white flour
1 1/2 tsp Cajun seasoning
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp table salt

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Using a strong pair of scissors, cut the chicken wings at each joint, discard the wing tips or set aside to make chicken stock.

Combine the Cajun seasoning ingredients and mix well.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, Cajun seasoning, paprika and salt. Toss the wings in the seasoned flavour and arrange on a wire rack. Place on a baking sheet and roast for 25-30 minutes, until crisp and golden brown. Turn wings over halfway through the cooking time.

Breakfast Bake

Normally when my mum visits we eat out quite often. In fact, there have been some visits where we haven't eaten a meal at home for her entire visit. When she visited for the Good Food and Wine Show, both she and I had been sick for a time beforehand and she was having to watch the food she was eating and I wasn't up to going out, so for the first time, we ate every breakfast and dinner at home.

Mum loves to cook and I am a little bit disappointed that I only discovered how much I enjoy it as well after I left home and she was too far away for us to enjoy it together. She's also much better at it than I am, I am far more likely to not cook something that didn't work the first time because I need to practice the skills than I am to actually practice the skills. I'm not very good at cooking steaks, although I have gotten much better after I started cheating by using the stove to get a nice crust on the outside and then throwing the frypan into the oven to cook the inside. Mum, on the other hand, can cook them perfectly in the frypan. She did use our electric frypan rather than our stove, so maybe it's the stove's fault that I can't cook steaks? Anyway, we had the best steak meal thanks to Mum's cooking.

Funnily enough, this post has nothing to do with Mum's steak dinner. It actually doesn't have anything to do with Mum's cooking at all, except that Mum's cooking inspired me to try this dish. How did she do that? Well, in a recent Super Food Ideas, they had an advertisement showing a recipe for a variation on ouefs en concotte, where you lined a ramekin with ham, dropped in a spoonful of ricotta mixed with some grated cheese and chives, topped it with an egg and then baked it in the oven. Mum made it for us for breakfast one day and it was awesome. She too had trouble with our oven, we had to finish cooking it in a water bath on the stove. It didn't matter though, because they were amazingly tasty. After she left, I had it for breakfast nearly every day until the ham ran out.

So, to finally get to the point of this post, the ham ran out. I couldn't have my ouefs en concotte for breakfast. I had been browsing through my cooking magazines and I had bookmarked a recipe for a breakfast bake in the October edition of recipes+. I had all the ingredients to make that, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I liked the idea, but the execution let the dish down a bit. My oven played its usual tricks and so by the time the egg white was fully cooked the yolk was hard and so the dish turned out to be very very dry. The flavours were good, but the dryness made it quite difficult to eat. The tomatoes couldn't quite save it, unfortunately. It has potential, but I can't work out how I can change the cooking to save the eggs. Maybe cook everything else in the oven and then add poached eggs or fried eggs over easy after? Hmm.

I like the idea of having a substantial breakfast like this. If only I had time in the mornings...

Breakfast Bake
from recipes+ October p18

(I thirded this recipe and made some adjustments to the cooking temperature and times to accommodate my sucky oven, below is the recipe as written in the magazine with no alterations)

6 thick slices sourdough bread, roughly torn
1 medium red capsicum, cut into 2cm pieces
1 medium yellow capsicum, thickly sliced
1 large red onion, halved, cut into wedges
250g cherry tomatoes
olive oil cooking spray
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
150g fresh low-fat ricotta
6 eggs, at room temperature

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Combine bread, capsicum, onion and tomatoes in a roasting pan. Spray with oil, season with salt and pepper and toss to combine.

Bake for 15 minutes or until vegetables are tender, turning bread and vegetables halfway through cooking. Remove from oven.

Make 6 indents in mixture. Sprinkle parsley over the bread and vegetables. Dot with ricotta. Carefully crack an egg into each indent. Bake for 7-10 minutes or until eggs are cooked. Serve at once.

Tortilla Sandwich

I've mentioned before how much I love BBC2's 2002 show The Best. I recently borrowed a copy of the cookbook from the library and tried my best to get through as many recipes as possible before I had to return it. Unfortunately, I didn't get to make as many as I wanted, so I may have to visit the library again soon.

This was inspired by Silvana Franco's Chilli Cheese Tortilla Sandwich, which won the best sandwich. She uses sweet chilli sauce, jarlsberg cheese and parma ham dotted with some basil leaves, but I didn't have any of that. Mine ended up being much much richer and probably ten times more unhealthy. I used some leftover beef machaca, cheddar cheese and some Subway southwest sauce.

It's easy, simply heat a non-stick frying pan and add a flour tortilla. Add your fillings and then top with another tortilla and heat until the bottom is crisp. Flip the stack over and cook for another minute or so until the other side is crisp. You can also add more fillings topped with another tortilla at this stage, just flip once the bottom is crisp and then cook for another minute. You can keep layering like this as much as you like.

I love this idea. It's very versatile and the crispy tortillas add such a nice texture to the finished sandwich.

Mmm... Subway

I have a strange affection for a steak and cheese sub with Southwest Sauce from Subway. I don't have it often because I know that it can't be good for you, but I have tried to replicate it at home. I've accepted that I'm not going to be able to replicate the yummy bread, but I was determined to try and replicate the sauce. I've tried other pre-made Southwest sauces, but none of them worked. I've tried making my own, sourcing chipotle chillis from online and finding the perfect horseradish cream, but they didn't quite get there. I gave up after a little while and moved onto other obsessions.

It didn't stay away for long. Soon, the thought came wriggling back into my head. That sub tastes really good, it went. My brain agreed with the thought. It does taste really good. I would like to taste that again.

Then my dear darling sister (who works at Subway) procured the above plastic bag of orange deliciousness for me and sent it down with our mother on her recent visit. Thanks S!!!

I'm determined not to look at the ingredients and just enjoy it. The bag is quite massive though, I'm not sure if I'll be able to eat nearly a litre of the stuff before February and I'm sure my arteries will thank me for that.

Gyoza

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Pita Bread

I have been taking pita breads with a variety of fillings to work for lunch lately. I like that the pita isn't as doughy as bread and is quite substantial and tasty and I find it so much more enjoyable stuffing a pita than making a sandwich. I was preparing to head back to work after the Christmas break and I had forgotten to buy pitas for my lunch, so I decided to try and make my own using Deb's recipe on Smitten Kitchen.

The dough was incredibly easy to pull together and I got to use the dough hook for my mixer for the first time. It was very cool watching the hook knead the dough. I was a little too impatient to wait for the full recommended rising time, so I sneakily tore off a small ball of dough to give it a try.


I didn't use the oven/pizza stone method simply because it's so hot here at the moment and the thought of turning on the oven was enough to make you sweat. I tried it on the stovetop but I couldn't get them to puff. I tried again, this time making sure my dough was moist but still no puff. It looked like it was going to or had a little bit, but there was no pocket. I thought about firing up the oven to see if it made a difference, but these made the tastiest flat breads I just slathered them with some hummus and was very very happy. I'll take a salad to work instead.

Scones

Once I'd made my kaya I wasn't quite sure how to use it. As I mentioned in my last post, I had an idea to pair the jam with scones as a sweet jam is a perfect match for scones.


I have a favourite scone recipe which I posted about here but I haven't made it for a long time. I haven't tried making them in the oven in this house but I didn't think that there would be a problem. As it turned out, there was a little problem.


Their bottoms were burned! My oven does heat quite erratically and I have had problems with the heat distribution before, but I have found that if I use the top shelf on the highest level (my oven heats from the bottom) things are okay. Obviously, this logic didn't work for my delicate scones. I'm not quite sure how to fix it because I don't want to sacrifice the heat needed to make them rise? Just in case you're wondering, I do have an oven thermometer in there measuring the heat and it isn't too hot so I just don't know what's wrong with the damn thing.

Other than their black bottoms, the scones turned out really well. I couldn't serve them as they were and I wanted to take them to work, so I cut the burnt bit off each scone with a bread knife. Hey, they still taste the same. :-)

Kaya

It's funny how sometimes you can read about something different on a blog, something that you've never seen before and then all of a sudden, all the blogs you read have a post on this something different and it makes you curious about what it tastes like. Or maybe this just happens to me. This particular something different was kaya, a coconut-egg jam popular in Malaysia and Singapore (according to Wikipedia). Almost Bourdain has a wonderfully informative post about it here.

Ellie's post also has a nice and simple recipe for making kaya, so I decided to give it a try myself and put my curiousity to rest.

I didn't have any pandan leaves, so I used some pandan essence in its place. This made my jam green! It was so much fun cooking something so gloriously green. D came over at one point and looked in the pan and then gave me quite a sceptical look. I had to show him the Wikipedia article linked about to prove that kaya can also be green. I still don't think he was convinced.

Luckily I was so tickled to be cooking something green, because it did take a long time to thicken and change consistency and it definately needed to be stirred almost constantly. Ellie said that it normally takes 25-30 minutes, but mine took a little longer. In hindsight, I think I needed a little bit more heat.

I really enjoyed it. It is quite sweet, so I only needed the smallest amount. I did try having my kaya on toast with some butter, but I don't like butter on toast when it's combined with another spread, so this didn't really work for me. Kaya on toast without the butter worked better.

Best was having kaya spread on scones. The sweetness of the kaya really worked well with the butteryness of the scones and it looked quite interesting too.

Doughnut Peaches

I found these doughnut peaches in a far-away Woolworths and couldn't resist buying them after reading about them on so many blogs lately. When it comes to peaches and nectarines, I've always been nectarine girl all the way and I never really liked peaches, but I think that's been because I've never tried a white peach. Or one of these babies.

They are amazing, full of flavour and so juicy. I have not seen them since my visit to the far-away Woolworths, not at any of our grocers or at the markets. Is it a climate thing? Is it too hot for doughnut peaches up here? Are they going out of season? I hope that there isn't a reason and that I am just not looking hard enough, because I really enjoyed them.

I tried being fancy with some of them and cut them in half, topped them with some beaten egg whites and sugar and put them under the grill to give them a meringue hat, but I burned the meringue. I've bought some more (regular) peaches so I can try again, but for now I'm just sharing how much I love doughnut peaches.

Baked Risotto - an easy alternative to Slow Cooked Risotto

I get many hits on my blog from people looking for the recipe for Slow Cooker Risotto, but I find that we make this baked risotto much more often. It's just as easy, if not easier, and it can be ready in less than half the time.

We typically go for a risotto al formaggio which is sometimes perked up by the addition of some chorizo or, in this case, leftover Christmas ham. The only part of this recipe that can be considered work is the dicing of the onion and perhaps the gently fry of the onion and some garlic in oil before adding the rice. I do keep to the more traditional risotto instructions at the beginning right up to the point where you deglaze the frypan of onions, garlic and rice with some white wine. Then all that needs to be done is to tumble the rice mixture into an ovenproof dish, cover it with some stock and put it in the oven for about half an hour. When it's finished, all that needs to be added is some butter and grated parmesan and you're done. It's fantastic.

The choice of rice is the key to making this baked risotto work so well. In order to get that lovely creamy texture, a good quality carnaroli or vialone nano rice should be used. These rices are much higher in starch which means that they will still become nice and creamy without constant stirring to release the starches. Arborio rice will work, but because it isn't as starchy the finished risotto won't get to be as creamy. I used carnaroli for this one.

Although this is very much a "set and forget" for most of the oven process, do start checking on it 5 or 10 minutes before time. My cantankerous oven cooked the above for 40 minutes, but it was slightly overdone. Not overcooked, which I think the carnaroli helps with since it's supposed to be hard to overcook, just that it had taken up too much of the stock. I like my risotto to be a little more gloopy.

Baked Risotto
a recipe by me

2 tbs olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 cup white wine (I normally just eyeball it, more won't hurt it)
1 cup carnaroli or vialone nano rice
2-3 cups chicken stock
1 tbs butter
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius and lightly grease an ovenproof dish that has a lid. I use my pyrex casserole dish. If you don't have a dish with a lid, you can cover the dish tightly with foil.

Heat the oil in a frypan over medium heat and add onions and garlic. Fry gently until the onions soften but don't let them brown. Add the rice and mix well, so all the rice grains are covered in the oily onions. Add the wine and cook, stirring, until the wine has been absorbed.


Place the rice/garlic/onion/wine mixture into the ovenproof dish and cover with stock. I generally only need 2 cups of stock to cook the rice and I reserve the rest for if the rice is absorbing the stock too fast or if it is too dry at the end of cooking. You may need more if you are using a larger dish.


Cover and cook for 30 minutes, or until rice is cooked and stock is absorbed. I stir halfway to make sure there is enough stock.

Once rice is cooked give it a stir to activate the starches. Add the butter and cheese and stir well.


If you want to add extras like our leftover Christmas ham, fry them up in the same frypan you used for the onions/rice while the rice is cooking and add them along with the butter and cheese.


Easy and delicious.

Fun with chicken

I have issues touching raw chicken. I don't like the feel of it, I don't like how it makes my hands feel afterwards no matter how many times I wash them. I don't like the mess it makes on the board or my knives. I really have issues. Unfortunately for me, I happen to like eating chicken. D loves chicken and it's the meat we eat most often. I tend to buy a lot of pre-cut chicken pieces. On the rare occasions that I do have to touch/cut chicken, we keep food grade handling gloves on hand.

When you take my issues into account and add to them the fact D doesn't like dark meat or meat on the bone, we are limited in the kinds of recipes that we can make.

I first handled a whole chicken carcass in June last year after watching George make a roast chicken on Masterchef. We really wanted to try it, so I pushed my distaste aside and learned how to remove the crown from the rest of the chicken. I was reasonably successful, and the roast was awesome, but I haven't tried again.

Over the Christmas holidays I found quite a few recipes I wanted to try that I couldn't work out how to adapt to our oddities, so we bought another whole chicken. There are only two of us, so even a small whole chicken is too large for us so I needed to halve it somehow.

I was watching Bill Granger's Bill's Food on DVD and Bill butterflied a whole chicken. I watched him and thought to myself, I can do that. I was determined. I wasn't even going to use food handling gloves. I got up and fetched the chicken from the fridge and removed it from its rapping and was grossed out. I persevered, washing the carcass under the tap. Calling it a carcass probably isn't helping me overcome my issues.

Anyway, while washing I discovered that the innards were still inside the chicken. Grossed out again. And slightly disturbed that the last chicken we bought was innards free... is it or is it not supposed to have its insides still inside? Still, I removed the innards and carried on. Washing it really REALLY well. After its bath and a patting down with kitchen towel, it didn't feel as gross to touch, so I attacked it with a cleaver. I removed the spine and opened it up (washing the inside again) and then turned it over and flatted it down and then cut it into two halves.

This post is purely because I am so proud of myself for successfully cutting a chicken in half. I know, it's sad, but I am. We won't talk about the number of times I've washed my hands since then or the really weird tight nasty feeling they have. I'll have to keep working on that.

Cake Balls

Behold my finished cake balls!! I may have gone into raptures over the tres leches cake, but my colleagues adored these little chocolatey cakey nuggets.

I blogged about my first attempt at making cake balls, which wasn't satisfying, in this previous post. In that attempt I used a packet mix cake to try and minimise the effort, but it didn't work out that well. So, this time I used one of the red velvet cakes.

To make the balls, you take a cooled cake and crumble it into a bowl. Stir through some icing and then roll the mix into balls. One approx 8" round cake still makes a lot of balls.


Pop them in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Then, you roll them in melted chocolate.

I used this recipe from Bakerella as my inspiration, and she recommends melting the chocolate a little at a time to stop the chocolate cooling and thickening while you work. I followed her advice and it was much easier.

They were quite fiddly to roll and I had to stop a few times because I was losing patience with the whole thing. Despite this, they turned out quite well.

As I mentioned above, my colleagues loved these. I didn't mind them, but I didn't love them. I didn't think that the flavour of the cake and frosting came across and it just became a gooey centred sweet. My colleagues, on the other hand, were raving about them to other people and I was having frequent visitors to my office saying "I hear you have these chocolate balls that are awesome?". Heh. A few of my colleagues even asked for the recipe. This is the first time that's ever happened.

As good as they were, I still prefer my tres leches cake.

Thanks to a huge backlog of posts, the posting of this recipe has been a little delayed. It was originally made in September 2009.

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Happy New Year to you all, I hope 2010 brings you only good things.

It's D's birthday today and he chose to have a banana cake as his birthday cake. I sent him a few recipes to choose between and he picked this one from Taste.com.au, but I think it was because of the cream cheese frosting.

Although the cake tastes delicious, it was a nightmare to make. It took twice as long to cook as stated (probably because of my oven), it stuck to the inside of my (well greased, non-stick) springform tin once it was cooked and it promptly broke into pieces after I ran a knife around the edge of the tin and tried to release it. I figured that it may have had something to do with my impatience as it was nearing midnight and I was getting tired and cranky, but when I had frosting troubles this morning too I have decided that this cake does not like me.

It is really humid here in Brisbane at the moment. It's hot too, but not terribly so. I softened my butter and cream cheese to room temperature and made the icing as directed but once the icing sugar had been added it was so runny that I left the milk out entirely. I put it in the fridge to harden a little before frosting the cake, but as soon as I started spreading it melted again and became a gooey mess that dripped from the cake. The first piece that I tried to photograph starting leaning to the side as the frosting started inching its way off the cake and ended up falling over. D had that piece. I worked a bit quicker on the second picture and managed to catch it before it too fell over, but I'm not all that happy with the pictures.

Despite the problems I had making it, D was very happy with his cake. He said it was delicious and he loves the cream cheese icing. He had a second piece before retiring to his computer to play with one of his birthday presents - a new iPod nano. Happy Birthday D!

UPDATE: I have just tried another piece of this cake 3 days later and it's much much nicer. The whole cake has firmed up from being in the fridge and the banana flavour really comes across and matches very nicely with the cream cheese icing. I possibly have also repressed the memory of making it, which is letting me enjoy it more. There's now only one piece left, I should probably leave that for the birthday boy...


Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
from Taste.com.au

125g butter, at room temperature
315g (1 1/2 cups) caster sugar
1 1/4 cups mashed overripe banana (about 2 large bananas)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
100ml buttermilk
225g (1 1/2 cups) self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Cream cheese frosting
125g cream cheese, at room temperature
50g unsalted butter, at room temperature
230g (1 1/2 cups) icing sugar mixture

Preheat oven to 180°C. Brush a round 20cm (base measurement) cake pan with melted butter to grease. Line the base and side of the pan with non-stick baking paper.

Place the butter, sugar, banana, eggs and vanilla in the bowl of a food processor, and process for 2 minutes or until well combined. Add the buttermilk and process until combined.

Add the flour and bicarbonate of soda, and process until just combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Shake the pan to settle the mixture. Bake in oven for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Set aside in the pan for 10 minutes to cool slightly, before transferring the cake to a wire rack to cool completely.

Meanwhile, to make the cream cheese frosting, use an electric beater to beat the cream cheese and butter in a bowl until well combined. Add the icing sugar and beat until well combined.

Place the cake on a serving plate. Spread the cream cheese frosting over the top of the cake.