Ginger Fried Rice

It was the leading picture in Deb's post on Ginger Fried Rice that sold the recipe for me. Gorgeous grains of rice lightly coated with a glisten of oil and soft ribbons of leek covered with oozing egg yolk blanket by the fried egg and finished with crispy pieces of fried ginger and garlic. I had to make it, even though D doesn't like leeks.

I promised him he wouldn't even know and told him to think of them as a very mildly flavoured onion. He said that if he was supposed to think of them as onions then why couldn't I use onions. I asked him to just try it.

He did try it and liked it so much that we had it for dinner the following night too. The flavours all work together so well. It's such a comforting dish, easy to eat and so tasty. It works with or without the egg and with or without the fried ginger/onions and it reheats really really well. It's amazing.

Thanks so much Deb, I love this dish!

Visit this post Ginger Fried Rice at Smitten Kitchen for the recipe.

Salted Caramel Frosting

Okay, so this icing did not turn out like it the picture. I don't know what I did and it tastes fantastic, but it doesn't look very appetising at all. I followed the recipe for Salted Caramel Frosting on Chow.com to the letter, except I probably took my caramel off a little early. I'm a bit skittish when it comes to candy-making. I've never had an icing recipe turn out like this?

I did not read the comments before I tried the recipe and I probably should have. Many commenters have suggested cutting back the butter and increasing the caramel. Some have also said it was too salty.

Personally, I didn't specifically notice the fattiness due to the butter until I read it on the comments. Then I realised that it was quite fatty. It didn't bother me at the time as the awful consistency of my icing did not allow me to pipe it onto my cupcakes and I had to spread. I'm much more conservative with the amount of icing I use when I spread than when I pipe, so each cupcake had a pretty mimimal amount of icing. The consistency also made it extremely hard to spread, so that may have helped too.

I thought that there was a nice caramel flavour present in the icing, but it was very subtle. Doubling the caramel may have assisted with the spreadability. I haven't decided if I'll make this again, but if I do I will double the caramel.

As for saltiness, my icing wasn't too salty. That being said, I wouldn't have wanted it to be any saltier. I used fleur de sel in the amounts specified in the recipe, so I can definitely see how it could be too salty using kosher salt.

I enjoyed the icing and it paired really well with the Chocolate Malted Cupcakes, but I am really perplexed as to what I did to get the consistency so wrong. I may have to try it again just to see if it does this again.

Chocolate Malted Cupcakes

I love a good malt flavour. I love it in these cookies and these cookies, but I also just love a good cup of Ovaltine too.

I found this recipe for Chocolate Malted Cupcakes on Taste and Tell via foodgawker and had to give them a try. The cake itself is a lovely moist chocolate cake and the icing is just divine.

I filled my cupcake wrappers by transferring the cake mix to a jug and pouring. The recipe says to fill 3/4 full, but either my measurements were wrong (entirely possible) or my cake rose more than expected, I did have about half of the cupcakes come out with little domes. They rose unevenly too which I blame my oven for. The rest were perfect. I didn't mind because when I cut the domes off the offending cupcakes I kept them aside as a cook's treat.

I halved the recipe for the icing and still managed to ice about two-thirds of the batch. The rest of the cupcakes I frosted with a salted caramel frosting from Chow.com.

As much I love a good salted caramel, nothing can beat the original. They are ranked very high on my favourite cupcake list.

If you would like to try them yourself, see this post Chocolate Malted Cupcakes on Taste and Tell.

McCain Sweet Potato Chips

On 19th July 2010, this blog will be three years old. I can't say that the blog has brought me fame and fortune (not that it was ever intended to) but it has been fun. It's been the best excuse to go exploring various providores and markets and also to try different foods and learn new things. Thank you to all of the people who come here and read about my little adventures.

Recently, the people at McCain very kindly provided me with some sample packets of their new Sweet Potato Fries to try. No one has ever asked me to sample their products before, so I was very excited.


D and I love sweet potato. The texture and the flavour are all there. D also loves the sweet potato fries you can get from burger restaurants like Burger Urge and the now defunct Chimis. We have tried making sweet potato fries at home in the oven but have never been able to get a crispy chip. We've tried parboiling, all different types of temperatures, different kinds of cuts, different ways to distribute the chips on the tray... We've been able to get a nice roasted sweet potato in the shape of a chip, but that's about as far as we've gotten. So, we've had quite a bit of experience in trying to find a nice sweet potato chip.

The McCain Sweet Potato Superfries come in two varieties, the straight cut and the crinkle cut. They are designed to be cooked in the oven like the other varieties of Superfries, which makes them very convenient. Both varieties only require 15-20 minutes in a 230 degree C oven, which straight away makes them quicker than preparing fresh sweet potatoes.

In terms of other comparisons, the Sweet Potato Superfries are higher in fat than their regular potato counterparts (unless you buy the beer battered ones). They also have a few additional ingredients like canola oils, potato and tapioca starch and baking powder and also some additional sugars. The Superfries are 76% sweet potato.


After 20 minutes in the oven both trays of fries were starting to colour nicely. You could get a more even colour if the fries were more evenly distributed on the trays. My oven is pretty crap so I left them for a few more minutes but I think they could probably do with a little longer.

The winners for us were definitely the crinkle cut. They got nicely crispy on the outside with their soft orange sweet potato centre. The straight cut didn't really measure up for us, staying pretty much like roasted sweet potato and the chips we make ourselves. If I was going for a roasted sweet potato chip, I'd just use fresh sweet potato and not worry about the additional ingredients or higher fat content.

We will buy the crinkle cut chips again though. We loved them. In fact, D saw them at the supermarket and bought the three packets remaining in the freezer so that we would have some stored away if the product doesn't catch on.

While McCain did provide the samples for us to try, the opinions are my own. We really did like the crinkle cut Superfries!

Measuring spoons

I love measuring cups and spoons. I like to say I collect them, but it's really that I just can't help myself when I see a cute set or a sleek looking set or any other set.

I bought a new set of measuring spoons yesterday and when I got home I dug out all the other spoons I have in my kitchen. I'm sure there are more, but about 6 months ago I did a kitchen cull and boxed up all of my lesser used kitchen items. These are just the sets that live in my kitchen drawers.


My favourite is this one from Nigella Lawson's Living Kitchen range. I don't use them often as they are a bit heavy and they are a little awkward to level. They are just so pretty.


My most used sets are these three. The black and blue ones have the standard15ml tablespoon measures and the white one has the Australian 20ml tablespoon. They are all rounded which does annoy me as the spoons don't fit into my spice jars but somehow these three are the first ones I reach for.


These Breville measuring spoon sets are pretty cool. The smaller spoons do fit into my spice jars but they are very brittle. I broke the tablespoon measure on the white set not two days after I first bought them. I really liked them and didn't want to risk them so I put them in the drawer out of regular usage. I've since bought another set but I'm still a little wary of them, so they don't get a lot of use.


These Cuisina spoons have never been used. I had to buy them because they were so adorable. Each spoon has a little pouring spout but I don't know if this would make the spoon a little more fidgety to use.

I also have quite a collection of measuring cups, but I'll pull them out another time.

The Breakfast Salad

I'm trying to get more vegetables in my diet by incorporating them into more meals other than lunch and dinner. I love fruit and my snacks tend towards the fruity variety, but I'm now trying to replace a majority of those fruit snacks with vegetable based ones. I hadn't really thought about breakfast, but then I came across this Breakfast Salad on Culinate via foodgawker.

I loved the idea of having a fresh, cool and herby salad topped with a gooey poached egg and creamy goat cheese. All the textures really appealed to me and I've already told you how proud I am that I can now poach eggs.

Cindy spoke to my own heart saying that she loves this salad using cucumbers, capsicums and ripe tomato. It was a perfect combination for me. I added some mint, basil and parsley because I was chopping them for my lunch, but I forgot to toss the vegetables with a little flaxseed oil and rice wine vinegar. I can definitely say I didn't miss it. I do have to make this again and try it properly with some roasted sunflower seeds, but it's currently the dead of winter and this salad is supposed to utilise the vegetables at the peak of their prime.

I'm sure this could be adapted to winter vegetables, I may have to give it a try and see what happens.

See this post The Breakfast Salad on Culinate for the recipe.

Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies

My forays into homemade hollandaise left me with a surplus of egg whites. As much as I enjoy the odd meringue and Eaton's Mess, most of my favourite recipes tend to be the whole egg or egg yolk kind so I do have this surplus fairly often.

So, what does one do with a surplus of egg whites? Well, firstly you type "what to do with leftover egg white" into Google to find informative posts on Gourmet Sleuth and David Lebovitz's blog. It was David's blog that directed me to the recipe for Chocolate Angel Food Cake, which helped me use the 8 leftover eggs whites from making Momofuku's Crack Pie. This time nothing piqued my interest. It was pure luck (also known as foodgawker) that made me stumble upon this recipe for 30 Calorie Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies from Dozen Flours.

These beautifully marshmallowy crispy cookies are light and marvellous and apparently are only 30 calories per cookies. I have to say that I don't believe it - nothing that tastes that good can be only 30 calories!! I don't care if they aren't 30 calories, they are worth the indulgence.

I have never really been a fan of meringue cookies. I've found the textures to be quite lacklustre or too much like a meringue. If I wanted a meringue I would have made one!! This recipe though it something completely different. These cookies are divine. Crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside like something out of a candy commercial, they are intensely chocolatey. This may be because I used my special Callebaut dark cocoa my mother bought me for my birthday, but whatever it was it worked! I also chopped some Lindt Dessert 70% Cocoa Specialty Cooking Chocolate instead of chocolate chips (can you see the calorie count increasing here?).

I'm a big fan of Nestle Plaistowe 63% Cocoa Couverture Chocolate in baking. It's my favourite and its incomparable to any of the other cooking chocolate readily available in supermarkets. In fact, I have been known to choose it over Callebaut chocolate blocks. I'm always open to new chocolate though, so when I saw the Lindt blocks hitting the shelves I had to give them a try. Unfortunately for my old faithful Nestle, I think the Lindt did have the edge. It had a smoother, creamier finish to it. I'd still happily use the cheaper Nestle but my local supermarkets seem to be phasing it out in place of the other (and in my opinion, inferior) Plaistowe chocolates.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get one or the other when I need it to bake. I'm stocking up just in case.

Back to the recipe, it was very easy and it made heaps. The recipe states that you will get 5 1/2 dozen cookies out of one mix and that sounds pretty accurate. I can only bake one tray at a time in my oven and I was baking these for a while.

Everyone loved this biscuits. They are so light and fluffy yet rich and chocolatey at the same time. I definitely have to make them again. Since I've just bought myself a blow torch and have big intentions of making lots and lots of creme brulee, I'm sure I'll have plenty of egg whites to use up.

See this post 30 Calorie Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies on Dozen Flours for the recipe.

Random Photo

This is one of my favourite food pictures. Unfortunately, it was taken by D and not me so I can't take any credit for it. It was also completely spontaneous and taken with my iPhone while we were out for dinner one night. Not only was it very photogenic, it was tasty too!

Couscous Tabouli

I don't mind the little snippets Channel 72 have in between their kitchen shows. I think they come from Better Homes and Gardens? Anyway, in one segment their cook/chef was cooking a budget BBQ or something, but he made this couscous tabouli.

I originally wrote this post a little while ago, but I clearly didn't press save. I visited my blog this morning and saw that there was a pitiful excuse for a post accompanying the picture, so my apologies to everyone. I'm going to try and rewrite my post, but my memory might be a little fuzzy.

So, I like watching the little Better Homes and Gardens (allegedly) snippets on Channel 72. Some of the recipes don't really appeal, but sometimes there are nice simple recipes that make you think 'I have to try that'.

I love tabouli, but I don't often make it myself. I'm lazy and I really like the flavour balance in the deli stuff. It's yum. This particular tabouli appeals to the lazy part of me because it doesn't require you to soak bulgur or anything like that. It uses couscous as its grain instead. I love couscous and I really had to try this recipe so I could see what the difference was.

It's incredibly easy. Just take 250g of couscous and pour over 250ml boiling water. Cover tightly for five or so minutes and then fluff with a fork. Check to make sure your couscous is ready, because mine wasn't. I found that 250ml of water seemed quite a small amount for the volume of couscous. I'm not sure if my crunchy couscous stemmed from not enough water or not enough cooking time. Once the couscous is ready, add 2 tbs butter and a pinch of salt and combine gently.

Then you chop 2 bunches of flat leaf parsley, 1 bunch of mint, 1 tomato and 1 red onion and mix them all together with the couscous. Dress to taste with lemon juice and olive oil.

I did like this but I did make some errors which impacted on how much I enjoyed it. Firstly, as I said, I undercooked my couscous. It was really hard to move past the hard little grains. It was a stupid mistake. Secondly, I didn't chop my parsley fine enough. I'm not a huge fan of the taste of flat leaf parsley and with the larger cuts the grassy flavour was a bit strong. All the bad things out of the way, it definitely had promise and I will give it another try. It well deserves a second chance.