Quick Meatball Pasta Bake

One of the byproducts of winter is, of course, winter colds and flu.  And my now longer commute seems to have given me more opportunities to catch said colds and flu.  So, having succumbed, I spent yesterday at home on the sofa feeling sorry for myself and using my weight in tissues.  I roused myself an hour before Hubby came home though, in order to have something warm ready and waiting for him when he got in from work.

Last weekend we'd made the trip to Ikea, and along with many possibly unnecessary purchases we made, was a kilo bag of frozen swedish meatballs.  I figured a pasta bake with those would be the ultimate simple dinner.

I fried off some green onions with a heaped teaspoon of garlic, then popped in half the bag of meatballs.  Once browned off, I added in dried basil, oregano, chilli powder and lots of paprika (I like paprika).  I let it cook off for just a moment, then added half a tin of tomato paste, two cans of diced tomatoes, a good slug of Worcestershire sauce and some salt and pepper.  Then more dried basil.  Then half a capsicum, roughly chopped, a handful of broccoli florets and a double handful of roughly chopped mushrooms.  Can I just say, it's VERY difficult to work out what's missing from a dish when your sense of taste and smell don't work.  By the time Hubby got home, I was mixing the meatballs and sauce with pasta to and putting it into casserole dish, and he assured me it smelled great.  I topped it all off with lots of grated cheese, and slices of boccocini we happened to have in the fridge.

Because everything was already cooked, it only needed to stay in the oven long enough to melt the cheese and get it nice and brown on top.

It looked great, and it certainly made a great warming dinner.  Unfortunately, due to illness, I couldn't taste it, but Hubby assured me it tasted as good as it looked.  Midweek dinner win!

Fruity Beef Casserole

Now the weather has cooled, and I've conquered my fear of meals that take hours to cook with this recipe, I'm loving the idea of cooking lots and lots of warming stews and casseroles as easy meals for the colder nights.  I stumbled on this recipe last Friday, and having grown up with my folks making sweet curries, thought that this would be pretty good.

I will admit... I did tweak the recipe.  I halved the amount of beef, and made it up with diced potato, an extra carrot, cauliflower and a heap of mushrooms.

I started out by browning the meat off in an oven proof casserole dish in a little oil, and then pulled it out of the pan.

 

Next, I added the onion and let it cook for a couple of minutes until it had softened.

Then I threw in the carrot, potato, cauliflower, garlic, tomato paste, flour and chilli powder.  I got a bit carried away with the chilli powder and put in about twice as much as the recipe called for.  

 

I didn't have any lemon, so instead of lemon rind, I had to just use lemon juice.  Next I added beef stock and, instead of plum jam, 1/2 a cup of asian plum marinade sauce.  Then I put the meat back in, and topped the dish up with stock to make sure the meat was just covered.  Then I added salt and pepper and brought the pot to the boil, at which point I put the lid on the dish and popped it in the oven.

Now, I had actually started preparing this fairly early in the afternoon, so, with a lot of time to let it cook, I only heated the oven to about 100/120 (it's hard to be sure with our oven missing numbers on the dial) and let it cook for three and a half hours.  At that point, I pulled it out of the oven and threw in a big handful of mushrooms and put it back in the oven.

I let it all cook for another half hour or so, and then pulled it out of the oven all ready to serve with lots of crusty bread.

I will admit that both Hubby and I had our tastebuds a bit confused when we ate this.  On the one hand, there was the chilli and on the other hand, the fruity plum.  It was part asian, part casserole, part sweet.  It wasn't bad, but we just couldn't quite reconcile the flavours.  Having said that, we both took the left overs for lunch at work the next day and it was like a totally different casserole.  As Hubby said, it was almost like it needed overnight to 'settle'.  It was the PERFECT winter lunch with some crusty bread to mop it up with.  I think I will be making this regularly on a Sunday, for the purposes of easy winter work lunches.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

One of my mates, who also happens to be a work colleague, has a tradition that I think is truly fabulous. She bakes cupcakes for her friends for their birthday.  You even get to pick what cupcakes she'll make from her fabulous, enormous book of cupcake recipes.  Last year she baked me chocolate rocky road cupcakes that both looked and tasted beyond decadent.

Now, my accomplished cupcake baking friend has a big birthday coming up next week, and for unavoidable reasons, I can't go to her party to celebrate it, so in the spirit of all fairness, have offered to be the cupcake baker for HER.  With one small exception..... she doesn't get to pick the type of cupcake.  Although I did tell her what I was planning to bake so she could veto it if needed.

What does all this have to do with red velvet cupcakes?  Well, I've been reading a number of cooking blogs recently, and red velvet cake keeps coming up.  I've never had one, and I was desperate to see what all the fuss was about.  In order to be fully prepared for next week's cupcake baking extravaganza, I decided to have a practice run on Saturday, and to have a delicious treat for morning tea with a guest on Sunday.  How hard could it be, I figured.  HA.

I found a do-able looking recipe on a blog I've been having fun reading, and on Saturday afternoon, I printed out the recipe, wrapped an apron round me, got all the ingredients out and made a start.

Can I just say now, that if I want to keep making things like this (and I really, REALLY do!), then I now desperately need either a Kitchenaid type device or a food processor.  Really.  Do you know what happens when you try to cream butter with a bowl of sugar with a hand mixer?  It goes everywhere.  And the butter gets all stuck in the blades.  I was a little perplexed by this.  After cleaning all the sugar up, I changed tack and mixed it with a wooden spoon instead.

Once it started to look combined and fluffy, I picked my hand mixer up and then, with some trepidation, turned it back in while slowly adding in a large, lightly beaten egg.

The next step is to add cocoa powder, vanilla extract and 20mL of red food dye into a small bowl.  Now, to be fair, the idea of using 20mL of food colouring in a recipe was a bit daunting, so I made sure I'd bought some natural food dye rather than artificial stuff (call me silly, but while in general I have no problem with artificial colouring and preservatives, it didn't cost me anymore to make the change, and a friend gave me a hot tip on it).  I mixed it all in the bowl until it came together as a thick, very dark coloured paste.

Once combined, I added the paste to the butter, sugar and egg mixed and mixed it until the colour was evenly distributed through the batter.

Next, I slowly added half the buttermilk while the mixer was on a slow speed.  This was a little messy, but not as bad as the butter/sugar attempt.  Then I slowly added half the flour.  Then the second half of the buttermilk and then finished off the with the flour.  While simple to do, this step drove my patience to the limit.  I so badly just wanted to tip all the milk in and whizz it.... and the same with the flour.  But I stuck to my guns and carefully and slowly mixed it all in, sure that there was a good reason for the sedate pace, which I just didn't know.

Once it was all combined and the mixture was combined, I added the salt, bicarb and vinegar.  I have to admit, after watching the bicarb and vinegar fizz before I turned the mixer back on, I was at that point, very interested in how this cupcake was going to turn out.

After a couple of minutes of mixing, I spooned the mixture into patty cases I'd put in a muffin tin.  Unfortunately, I only have one six-muffin muffin tin, so in an effort for perfection, I had to cook my cupcakes in two lots.  I very carefully made sure the cases were only 2/3's full (we've all had cupcake overflow before) and then popped them in the oven for 20 minutes.

I'd just like to say now, the oven in our new house is AWESOME.  All my cupcakes were cooked perfectly - unlike the oven in our old flat, which heated more on one side than the other.

While my cupcakes were cooling, I decided to tackle the cream cheese frosting.  I'd left the cream cheese out of the fridge for a couple of hours so it was nice and soft (and the butter) and got stuck straight into sifting the icing sugar into a bowl and then popped in the butter, cubed into smallish pieces.  Bracing myself, I put the hand mixer into the bowl and turned it on.  Icing sugar went everywhere.  I turned the mixer off, cleaned up the sugar and took up my wooden spoon.  Hubby happened into the kitchen as I was doing this, and kindly offered to have a go.  He took up the mixer, put it back in the bowl and turned it on.  Unfortunately the spoon was still in the bowl.  The mixer flung it across the kitchen in a rain of butter and icing sugar.  Hubby acknowledged that this was, indeed, trickier than it looked.  He scooped up as much of the sugar and butter as he could, popped it in the bowl and, covering more of the bowl with his spare hand than I could (small hands), turned the mixer on again, assuring me that kitchens were made to get dirty.  Eventually the butter and sugar were creamed together and Hubby left me to add the cream cheese and a little bit of food colouring.  It really did look good when it was all combined.

I just used a spatula to ice the cupcakes - and even though it was a bit rough and ready, I thought they looked great.  As for the taste... the vinegar and bicarb just seemed to give the cupcakes enough zing to avoid the over-sweet taste a lot of iced cakes can have.  The cupcakes were light, fluffy and very morish... and have disappeared VERY quickly (although they lasted four days in an airtight container).  They were an absolute hit with my Hubby, who is much more of a savoury person.  Lets hope they turn out this well when I bake them for my friend next week!

Choco-Hoto Pots

A few weeks ago now, we had our first overnight visitors in our new home and, as such, our first dinner party.

I let Hubby handle the cooking on this one, what with it being his parents that were visiting, and settled into a comfortable role of picking new bottles of wine and making sure everyone had full glasses.  However I did make a move into the kitchen for the purposes of dessert.

A number of years ago now I gave my sister a Nigella Lawson book for Christmas, and in it I could remember the most decadent little individual chocolate cakes that were super easy to make.  They were called choco-hoto pots, and a quick internet search soon gave me the recipe, and away I went.
 
To start with, I got the oven cranking, and then melted about 3/4 cup of dark chocolate with the butter.

While that was melting, I combined 2 eggs, 3/4 cup of caster sugar, 3 tablespoons of flour, then added the now cooled chocolate/butter mixture.  Once combined, I stirred in 1/2 cup of white chocolate pieces.

Next I spooned the mixture into four buttered ramekins and popped the whole lot in the oven for about 20 minutes. 

What comes out is hard and cracked on the top, but break the surface and you have the most fabulous, goey melty chocolate pudding.  Hubby had made a vanilla ice cream to accompany it, and I'm glad he did - it's super rich and the ice cream cut through that.  End result?  Easy awesomeness.

Steak with All the Trimmings

Last night, Hubby had two good pieces of steak for dinner.  He had big plans of potato bake, vegetable gratin and pepper sauce.  That was until we happened to catch an episode of Jamie's Thirty Minute Meals - the one where he cooks a faux roast beef dinner in thirty minutes. Perhaps it was the wine we were drinking while we watched it, but by the end we were both inspired to give the sides a crack, to serve along with our wine.

First things first, Hubby turned the oven on to about 200 - 220 degrees Celcius.  Then, while Hubby got busy slicing carrots and onions, I peeled and sliced up two medium sized potatoes into 2cm square cubes (ish) and then popped them into a saucepan to boil.

Next the carrots got popped into another saucepan with a good big dollop of honey (in place of sugar), a bit of olive oil, tarragon, thyme and rosemary.

While the these were bubbling away, we popped a muffin tin into the oven and I got started on the batter for the yorkies.  It was simple - one cup of plain flour, one cup of milk, a good pinch of salt and an egg.  A good hard whisk til the batter was smooth and it was ready to go.

We cracked the oven open, poured olive oil into the muffin tins, then shut it up tight again.  By this point, our potatoes were pretty well ready to go, so I tipped them out of the saucepan and left them to sit in a colander for a few minutes as per Jamie's instructions.  Then they got tipped into a fry pan on full whack with some olive oil.  Quite a lot of olive oil actually - I have teeny tiny burns up my arms and wrists from being burnt by them.  Still, I persevered,  Hubby turned down the heat from me and we three in some garlic cloves, rosemary and thyme, then gave it all a good shake around.

While that was busy sizzling away, Hubby opened the oven door and we spooned the yorkie batter into the tin then shut the oven back up again.

Next step was the steak.  I had honestly thought that Hubby would handle this bit - what with how he's quite good at cooking steak, and I can only overcook them (which is criminal).  But Hubby decided it was a good opportunity to give me a crash course.  We got the pan smoking hot, poured in some olive oil and then put on the two pieces of steak.  Hubby's hot tip was, once I had put the two pieces of steak on the pan, was to then lift them and put them back down again and leave them to cook.

The whole time the steak was cooking, the potatoes got regular turns and by the time the steak was medium rare (or so I thought - turns out it was medium well) they looked like this:-

By this point, I was pretty excited.  We took the steak off the heat and let it rest, then started making the gravy in the pan the steak was in.  Lots of onion, olive oil, a tablespoon of flour, a good glass of red wine (and it was GOOD red wine) and some of the garlic from the potatoes went into the pan, along with a good lug of stock. 

Next step was to retrieve the yorkies from the oven.  They looked AWESOME in the muffin tin... but unfortunately using the Christmas-shaped muffin tin was a huge mistake - we couldn't get them out of the tin!  Hubby managed eventually, but they were a bit mangled (still tasty though).  That particular muffin tin has now gone in the bin.

This entire meal was a success, but I have to say, the potatoes were an absolute standout.  Crisp and crunchy on the outside, they were gloriously fluffy on the inside.  We've both agreed that these potatoes DEMAND to be part of our regular menu.  And to think it was all done on stove top and not in the oven!  The yorkies were great (though mangled), the gravy brilliant and the carrots sweet and delicious.  I am seriously impressed and now very seriously considering adding Jamie's Thirty Minute Meals to my book collection.