Donna Hay Chocolate Chunk Cookie Mix

I was a little disappointed with these, I have to say. They just didn't quite measure up to what I was hoping for. The cookies were dry but not crispy and they had a flavour that wasn't quite packet-mix but wasn't quite right. They were nice cookies, but something didn't quite work.

Despite this, D wanted to try the Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookie Mix so we gave that a whirl. When I was mixing everything together the mix was dry and crumbly, much like the chocolate chunk cookies. I didn't want the triple chocolate cookies to turn out like their less-chocolate brothers, so I added another egg. When that didn't give me the consistency I was looking for, I added some vegetable oil. That gave me a more scoopable cookie mixture and did increase the cooking time substantially, but the end product was so much better. Instead of a dry, crumbly cookie it was a cakey, fudgy chocolate present.

It's possible that a dry and crumbly cookie was what Donna was aiming for, but I found the chocolate chunk cookies to be messy and the flavour was off. The adapted triple chocolate cookies tasted fantastic and the texture was perfect for me. They were road tested on D and my co-workers and the triple chocolate cookies were the favourite by far. In fact, D liked them so much he bought me another packet and told me to make them again, but I had to leave a decent number of cookies at home (normally I take everything to work so we don't eat it all).

If we do decide to make $12 biscuits again, I might try substituting the vegetable oil with a little less melted butter and see what that does. Experimentation is fun (but in this case, quite expensive).

Thai Beef Salad

I love a good Thai Beef Salad. I love the gorgeous Thai flavours against the crispness of the leaves and meatiness of steak. I learned how to make an authentic Yum Nua when I took a Thai cooking class last year, but somehow I've managed to misplace my recipe and notes. I must try looking for them again...

Anyway, I love Thai Beef Salad. I recently expanded my Donna Hay recipe book collection and bought Modern Classics 1 and saw her simple recipe. I couldn't resist trying it out.

I loved it. The flavours were nicely melded together and were very smooth. It was a nice balance with the fish sauce and the lime, and neither flavour overpowered the other. Some salads that I have tasted had stronger flavours which I don't always like and I do tend to mute my flavours a little bit when making the salad especially since D doesn't like fish sauce.

It was a nice simple recipe, very easy to pull together. It's now my go-to beef salad recipe until I find my Yum Nua recipe!

Thai Beef Salad
from Modern Classics Book 1 by Donna Hay

650g rump steak
150g salad greens
2 small red onions, finely sliced
10 kaffir lime leaves, shredded
3 large mild chillies, seeded and shredded
2/3 cup coriander leaves
2/3 cup mint leaves
2/3 cup basil leaves (I omitted the basil)

Dressing

1 tsp soy sauce
2 tbs fish sauce
2 tbs lime juice
2 tbs brown sugar or palm sugar (I used brown sugar, I didn't like it as much using palm)

Cook the steak to your liking and set aside to rest. After resting, slice thinly.

Combine the salad greens, onions, kaffir lime leaves, chilli, coriander, mint and basil in a bowl and toss lightly.

Combine the dressing ingredients in a small bowl. Add the sliced steak to the salad greens and pour over dressing. Serve.

Sometimes I like to add the chillies to the dressing and sometimes I will marinate the cooked steak strips in some of the dressing to really get the flavour. If I'm taking the salad for lunch, I will put the steak, salad and dressing in separate containers and combine just before serving.

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.

Simple eggcup sushi

I bought the Pasta, Rice and Noodles book from Donna Hay's Simple Essentials series and I was drawn to these simple sushi balls. I've been craving some good sushi.

They were so easy and so good. I'm not normally a fan of smoked salmon (I prefer it raw), but it really worked with these. It was hard to leave some for lunch! I've made Donna's recipe for sushi rice my go-to recipe. I really love the balance of flavours and it's not as sweet as the bought sushi seasoning.

Sushi Rice
from Donna Hay Simple Essentials: Pasta Rice and Noodles p21

Makes 4 cups

1 2/3 cups sushi rice
1 3/4 cups water
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 1/2 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Rinse the rice under running water for 5 minutes

In a small saucepan combine rice and water. Cover and bring to the boil for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat and simmer for a further 10 minutes or until most of the water is absorbed. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for another 10 minutes.

Combine the vinegar, sugar and salt. Spread the cooked rice over the base of a large, non-metallic, shallow dish and sprinkle with the vinegar mixture. Stir with a spatula in a cutting motion for 5 minutes or until cool to touch.

Simple eggcup sushi
from Donna Hay Simple Essentials: Pasta Rice and Noodles p54

1 quantity sushi rice
600g smoked salmon slices
Japanese mayonnaise
soy sauce, to serve

Line an eggcup with plastic wrap. Place a slice of salmon around the inside of the eggcup. Spread a small amount of mayonnaise along the inside of the salmon. Press the sushi rice firmly into the eggcup, ensuring that the rice comes right to the top. Turn the sushi out onto a serving platter. Repeat with the remaining rice and salmon. Serve with soy.

Blood Orange Curd

Blood oranges have been popping up at the farmers' markets recently. I've never tried them before so I bought a couple. They sat on the bench through all the bustle of moving, looking at me reproachfully. Just before the kitchen went into boxes, I found a recipe for a tart filled with blood orange curd in a Donna Hay Magazine.

I didn't make the actual tart, just the curd to use my oranges.

There were two large stalls selling blood oranges at the farmers' market I bought these from, and the ones I ended up buying weren't as gloriously red as the ones from the other store. As you can see above, these were only motley. The juice turned out a beautiful colour though, so bright and vibrant!


I stole some of the juice and served it diluted with soda water for a bit of a refresher. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was yum!!!

The blood orange curd was really easy to make too. I don't think I let it thicken for long enough, as it was a bit on the runny side. The recipe says to serve the tarts with cream, but I felt that the curd was creamy enough to hold up on its own. The flavour was nice and subtle.

The curd was one of the few things in the refrigerator that was transferred to the new house. I'm still working out the lighting for the pictures. While the kitchen seems very bright, the photos seem to be turning out really really dark. You can still get the idea though.


Blood Orange Curd
From Donna Hay Magazine Aug/Sep 2008 p150

6 egg yolks
1/2 cup (125ml) blood orange juice, strained
1 1/2 tbs lemon juice
3/4 cup (165g) caster sugar
70g cold butter, chopped

Place the egg yolks, orange juice, lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and whisk to combine. Cook, stirring constantly, for 8-10 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat and gradually add the butter, stirring well after each addition. Pour into a bowl, press some plastic wrap or baking paper onto the surface so it is completely covered and refrigerate for 1 hour or until thickened.

Soy-Simmered Chicken

This is another fabulously easy recipe from Donna Hay. It takes perhaps 10-15 minutes from start to finish, and it's very tasty. The Asian flavours are really nice and pronounced and the sauce is perfect over boiled rice. It smells amazing too.

Soy-Simmered Chicken
from Modern Classics Book 1 by Donna Hay

2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbs shredded ginger
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tbs brown sugar
1/2 cup Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
4 chicken breast fillets

Place the sesame oil, ginger, soy sauce, sugar, Chinese cooking wine, star anise and cinnamon stick in a frying pan over medium-low heat and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken and cook for 6-7 minutes each side or until cooked through. Serve on plates with sauce from the pan, steamed greens and rice.

Smoky Grilled Chicken and Crispy Fennel Salad

I decided to go through a lot of my old magazines refreshing my memory about recipes I wanted to try back then and looking for new recipes I want to try now. I have only recently got into Donna Hay, but I found two of her magazines from last year, both of which are full of recipes I want to try.

This recipe comes from the "crunchy salad" section, but since DD isn't too keen on salad, I cooked some chips for him to have on the side.

The chicken and dressing were very nice, but they were completely overshadowed by the awesomeness that was the fennel. I loved the fennel so much that the rest of the meal was completely forgotten. Fennel is amazing fried. Absolutely fantastic.

Smoky grilled chicken and crispy fennel salad
from Donna Hay Magazine Oct/Nov 2007, p 128

500g chicken breast minute steaks
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp smoky ground paprika
2 tsp fennel seeds
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup rice flour (I used cornflour)
2 eggwhites, lightly beaten (I used one egg, lightly beaten)
vegetable oil for shallow-frying
2 baby cos lettuces, cut into wedges
sherry dressing
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp caster sugar
sea salt and cracked black pepper

To make the sherry dressing, place the vinegar, oil, sugar, salt and pepper into a bowl and stir to combine. Set aside.

Place the chicken, garlic, paprika, fennel seeds and oil in a bowl and toss well to combine. Heat a large nonstick frying pan over high heat and cook the chicken for 2-3 minutes each side or until cooked through. Set aside and keep warm.

Place the flour, salt and pepper in a bowl. Dip the fennel into the eggwhite and press into the flour mixture. Heat 2cm of oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Shallow fry the fennel in batches for 2 minutes or until golden. Drain on absorbent paper. Arrange on plates with the chicken and baby cos and spoon over the sherry dressing to serve.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I love grilled cheese sandwiches. I have studied the America's Test Kitchen study on them and discovered a method that I follow religiously to get a nicely melted inside and a crispy but not burned outside. Sometimes, though, I do feel that they need something more to make them perfect. Maybe the cheese I use isn't strong enough, maybe I should add mustard. All these possibilities that I rarely try because even though my sandwiches aren't perfect, they are pretty darn good.

I bought a new Donna Hay book the other day and in the soup chapter was an intriguing recipe for toasted cheese sandwiches using cheddar cheese, sour cream and Dijon mustard. The whole idea of putting sour cream on a cheese sandwich was quite intriguing to me so I had to give it a try the next day.

It's really easy and after the first try you don't even have to measure, just add stuff until you get a nice colour and consistency.

I used some Brumby's ciabatta and brushed the outside with melted butter (ATK tip #1) rather than spreading it with butter because it's not as messy and it's easier to evenly coat the bread. I cooked it over a relatively low heat (ATK tip #2) so that the heat had a chance to really get in and melt the cheese without overtoasting/burning the bread.

It was awesome. Easily the best grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had. The sour cream melts with the cheese into an oozy gooey inside and the mustard gives it that little bit of extra kick that the mildness of the cheese needs. It was creamy and decadent, but I used low fat cheese and low fat sour cream so it most certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Toasted Cheese Sandwiches
adapted from Donna Hay Modern Classics Book 1, p36

1 1/3 cups grated cheddar cheese
1/3 cup sour cream
2 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
sea salt and cracked black pepper
4 slices bread
melted butter

Mix the cheese, sour cream, mustard, salt and pepper in a bowl. Spread onto half of the bread slices and top with the other half of the bread slices. Brush the outside with melted butter. Cook the sandwiches in a non stick frying pan over a medium-low heat until the bread is crisp and golden brown (this can take 5-10 minutes each side), flipping back to the first side to reheat and crisp, about 15 seconds.

S'mores

I loved to read all the American teen books when I was a kid and s'mores came up more than once. I've always been curious as to what they tasted like, because everyone in the books thought they were magic.

The latest Donna Hay magazine had the most gorgeous picture of s'mores on the front and a recipe which included making your own biscuit from scratch (because what is a graham cracker?). I had some Ghirardelli dark chocolate squares tempting me so I thought I would give it a try.

Before I even got to the s'more part, I fell in love with the biscuit batter. This was the most divine biscuit batter I had ever tasted, dangerously so. I could have gotten another 2 biscuits from what I left in the bowl "for cleaning".

I'm not a big fan of lots of chocolate chips in biscuits, I like them sparse and far between because chocolate chips as they are are too big a chunk of chocolate. Ideally, I should have put them in the food processor for a bit and chopped them down in size, but I was lazy, so I just halved the amount of chocolate chips required. I only used milk chocolate because that was all I had.

I also left the oats out of my second try. On my first try I did add them, but I think my oats had gone stale because they were horrible. This (and only having half of the chocolate chips) meant that my biscuit dough was more of a biscuit batter.

I overcooked the second batch. I set the timer for 12 minutes and then forgot about it, but I definately should have checked at 10. They were still good though. I am going to pretend that I meant to do it this way and I'm calling them 'snaps' instead of biscuits. They are crispily chewy on the outside and nicely chewy on the inside. DD really liked them.

The s'more part was a little underwhelming, truth be told. On my first try (see the first picture), I had way too much chocolate. This is why the picture is still of it on the baking paper - the chocolate was going everywhere! I had only used one marshmallow and the dark chocolate overpowered everything. The next time I used two marshallows and half a square of chocolate which worked better, but I didn't really like it. It tasted like a chocolate coated marshmallow lolly and didn't have the toasty melted taste I was hoping for.

The biscuits are fantastic though.

Chocolate and Oat S'mores
from Donna Hay Magazine Winter 2008, p92

125g butter, softened
1 1/2 cups (220g) brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 1/2 cups (225g) plain flour, sifted
1/2 tsp baking powder, sifted
100g dark chocolate chips
100g milk chocolate chips
1/3 cup (30g) rolled oats
20 pieces of dark chocolate
20 marsmallows

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8 to 10 minutes or until light and creamy. Add the egg and beat until well combined. Add the flour and baking powder and beat until just combined. Fold through the dark and milk chocolate chips and rolled oats. Roll tablespoons of the mixture and place on baking trays lined with non-stick baking paper, leaving space between them to spread. Flatten slightly and bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden. Cool on trays.

To assemble, place the biscuits bottom side up on a tray. Top half with a piece of chocolate and the other half with a marshmallow. Bake until the chocolate and marshmallows are starting to melt. Sandwich the halves together and serve.

Sweet chilli and lime chicken

Another quick and easy dinner from Donna: sweet chilli and lime chicken. The idea behind it is to marinate your chicken in chilli jam/sauce/paste, oil, lime juice and garlic and then cook it on a chargrill pan or BBQ. That's it. Nothing else involved, unless you count steaming the rice and Chinese greens Donna recommends serving with it.

I chose a sweet chilli sauce for ours, because I'm a little sensitive to hot things and I just cooked it in a normal frypan. It worked really really well, the sweet chilli thickened to almost a glazey consistency and coated the chicken perfectly. Everything stayed nice and moist. The only thing was that the lime was quite subtle and I like a stronger lime flavour. I would increase the lime juice and maybe add some zest next time. It was really good and since it only used half a bottle of sweet chilli sauce, I have enough to make it again!

Lime and Chilli Chicken
adapted from Donna Hay Magazine Winter 2008, p 45

1/4 cup vegetable oil (Donna says to use 1/3 cup but I reduced this to a little under 1/4 cup)
2/3 cup sweet chilli sauce
1/3 cup lime juice
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1kg chicken breast fillets, cut into strips (Donna says to use trimmed thigh fillets)
steamed rice to serve

Place oil, sweet chilli sauce, lime juice and garlic in a non-metallic bowl and stir to combine. Place the chicken in a bowl with half of the marinade and toss to coat. Set aside for 5 minutes.

Heat a frypan over high heat. Cook the chicken until cooked through. Spoon over the remaining marinade and serve with steamed rice.

Serves 4.

Cheat's Chorizo Paella

One fine Sunday I felt the urge to bake cupcakes. Not just one lot of cupcakes, but lots and lots of cupcakes. It was going to be a Crazy Cupcake Sunday (more on that later).

Halfway through Crazy Cupcake Sunday, I was buzzing a bit thanks to lots of sugar, chocolate, butter, caramel sauce, cream cheese, eggs... and thought 'I need something seriously savoury, stat!'. I had my latest Donna Hay magazine out on the counter with the intention of trying her recipe for s'mores (more on that later too) and though a nice sausagey rice would be the perfect foil to my sugar high.

This was very very simple. Donna calls it an everyday easy one-pot wonder and I completely agree. I mean, I managed to cook this one while trying to manage two cupcake batters which were making around 60 cupcakes in one 12-hole cupcake pan. I know, I should have bought two.

It is lovely and light. I used half a csabai smoked sausage bought from the Swiss Gourmet Deli which meant the chorizo flavour wasn't as strong as it could have been but in this situation it was really good as there was nothing really overpowering in it. It's quite tomato-y though, but I think that might be because of the mildness of the sausage. A stronger sausage may have cut through the tomato a bit. It was still very comforting, and the feta melted into lovely creamy little blobs which was a nice surprise throughout the dish.

Cheats Chorizo Paella
from Donna Hay Magazine Winter 2008, p64

1 tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 chorizo sausage, sliced
1 cup (200g) medium grain rice
2 cups (200ml) chicken stock
1 x 400g crushed tomatoes
1/2 cup coriander leaves
100g feta, crumbled.

Heat the oil in a large, deep frying pan over high heat. Add the garlic, onion and chorizo and cook for 4-5 minutes or until browned. Add the rice, stock and tomato, cover, reduce heat to low and cook for a further 15 minutes or until stock is absorbed and rice is al dente. Stir through the coriander and feta to serve.

Donna says that this serves two, but DD and I got lunch that day and I got two work lunches out of this.