Impromptu Dinner Triumph

It gave me a little bit of a shock when I logged on tonight and saw how long it's been since my last post.  And it gave me pause as well.  I achieved a lot over the Christmas period in the kitchen, from tackling my first pavlova, making Adriano Zumbo's choc orange macarons with a friend, moreish roast beetroot, mint and feta salad and endless bbq fare.  So why didn't I blog about it all?  Possibly because I'm the last great procrastinator.  And because time always seems in short supply.  But I still felt, as I moved into the new year, that this blog (neglected as it may be on occasion) has actually seen me, for the most part, achieve what I set out to achieve.  Learning how to be a good home cook.  Or at least a capable one.

Yesterday my Sis-In-Law paid an impromptu visit so Hubby could install her new car stereo.  None of us were sure how long it would take, or how much of the day she would be spend with us.  But in the true spirit of 'it's the unplanned events that turn out to be the most fun', her lovely partner came and joined us, and they ended up staying the night.  I could wax lyrical about our prowess on Band Hero as a team, but instead I'll tell you about the food I cooked on the spur of the moment.

The best thing, for me, is that I did this BY MYSELF.  And I didn't get cranky half way though, or give up the ghost, or sulk the whole time cause I was stuck in the kitchen while everyone else was busy elsewhere.  Oh no.  For the first time, from the very beginning, to when we sat down to eat, I enjoyed every minute of providing a great meal for my family.  Something that I very much feel is going to be my signature meal.

What did I make?  Spaghetti Bolognese, with fresh home made pasta.  The sauce is my take on a version my Mum used to make when I was a kid.  I actually remade her version a couple of years ago and was amazed at how bland it was compared to what I eat as an adult, but to her credit, at the time it was a good, filling, tasty meal the whole family would eat.

I make it by browning off 1/2 kg of kangaroo mince with a diced onion, garlic (as much as you like).  Next I add in LOTS of paprika (I like paprika), two beef stock cubes, some chilli powder (but you could use fresh chilli) and give it a good stir.  Liquid ingredients go in next - a good slug of Worcestershire sauce, a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste (I buy those little tins and use the whole thing), and two tins of diced tomatoes.  You can throw in some red wine too, and I often do, but last night I didn't have a bottle open.  Lastly, I threw in some diced up veggies (whatever you have in the fridge - I had mushroom, capsicum, zucchini and carrot, but I've put everything from green beans to broccoli in it), gave it all a good stir through and left it on a medium-high heat for about ten minutes before turning it down onto low.

While I was getting the sauce off, I thought to myself that it was probably a good opportunity to bust out a quick dessert as well, so I grabbed a house warming gift from a very good friend called '500 Cupcakes'.  My plan was to whip up some plain cupcakes, then mix a little water with some icing sugar, dip the top of the cupcakes in the mixture, then dip them in dessicated coconut.  For some reason I always have a big jar of dessicated coconut in the pantry that NEVER gets used.... anyway.  The vanilla cupcake recipe in the book was super easy, I had all the ingredients and they looked gorgeous iced (as well as making the kitchen smell heavenly).

Once I had the mixture in the tins, and while waiting for the oven to get hot, I made a start on my pasta dough.  I was so proud of myself for this - I knew that the pasta dough needed to rest for 20 mins once I'd got it all together, and I knew that the cupcakes would take about 20 mins to cook.  So I cracked four eggs in a well around 500g of flour and started incorporating the eggs into the flour.  Usually I make half, or a third this much pasta, and it certainly was a bit more time consuming to get the dough together, but I got there in the end!  So I popped my ball of dough in a floured bowl, drapped a tea towel over it, bunged my cupcakes in the oven and set the oven timer to twenty minutes.

After 15 minutes my cupcakes came out of the oven and five minutes after that, I started the laborious job of rolling out my pasta.  It's only really laborious because we don't have a bench with enough 'overhang' to clamp the machine to, so instead it gets clamped to a little foldy table from Ikea, which wobbles all over the place while I work.  But I got there in the end, while simultaneously covering myself, the floor, the work benches and all three of my onlookers/assistants in copious amounts of flour.

The last step was getting the pasta in a pot of boiling water to cook for a few minutes (harder than it looked - Hubby accidentally turned the hot plate for the water down not once but twice, which dramatically increased the time it took to get boiling), getting the sauce nice and hot, then getting it into a dish and onto the table.  At the last minute, Hubby sorted out some garlic toast to go with my meal, and I'm glad he did - I hadn't even thought about it.

The pasta was an absolute win.  There is something just right about fresh made pasta.  It tastes so much better, and the sauce went really well with it too.  There was something very homey about the whole thing - a huge dish of pasta on the table, lots of red wine, and a table surrounded with family.  And lucky me - there's plenty left for dinner mid-week, and a couple of cupcakes left over too!

Best Celebration Cake - Take 2

Last weekend was my Mother-in-law's birthday, which, as usual, snuck up on Hubby and I without warning.  We went down to northern NSW for her birthday party - a BBQ at their home.  A BBQ with my parents-in-law is no ordinary affair, after all, my Father-In-Law is a chef and seems to love putting on an awsome spread.

My contribution to the cause was to take down a birthday cake for MIL.  What cake?  Well, to be honest, it was an excuse for me to have another go at smitten kitchen's gorgeous yellow cake.

Despite a momentary set back when I realised we didn't have any caster sugar (thank you neighbours!), preparing the cake went much more smoothly this time around.  Taking my lessons from my first attempt, I didn't overfill the cake pans this time and I also baked them separately.  I still felt like they would NEVER ACTUALLY FINISH baking though... but it's funny what an extra five minutes will do, and soon I had two round cakes and six cupcakes (I had to do SOMETHING with the extra batter) cooling on a rack.

Can I say now, that I am absolutely addicted to the dark chocolate and sour cream icing?  Honesty, it's icing for grown ups in that you get the full chocolate hit without the icing being overbearingly sweet.  Once the icing was ready, I trimmed up the cakes and set to icing them.

This time round I put much more icing between the cakes (that was a bit of a fail last time), and put a thin coat all over the cake, left it for a moment to 'set' and then put another coating over the top.  It worked a treat and looked far more polished this time than last time around.  Perhaps I'm getting the hang of this icing lark?

It traveled fairly well down the coast in a plastic container (Hubby even put a seat belt round the container so it wouldn't move in the car, and I maneuvered the window shade over the top to keep the sun off).

After dinner I finished it off with crumbled up flake and a few sparklers in place of candles - VOILA!

Duck Eggs - Version 1

One of the many things I've learnt from my husband over the last few years is an appreciation for out of the ordinary ingredients.  Through his strenuous coaxing (or, lets face it, occassional bullying), I've tried lots of things that I would never have considered putting in my mouth, from snails in France to horse in Italy and lots of things in between.

Last weekend my Sister-In-Law and her lovely partner took me to the Rocklea Markets.  Closed for months due to the flooding earlier this year here in Brisbane, it's become a regular ritual for them to go at the crack of dawn every couple of Saturdays.

I'm glad I went with two experienced market goers - the sheer amount of fresh fruit and veg (amoung other things) was absolutely staggering, and a concerted effort of scouting the stalls and determining where the freshest and cheapest items were was more than a one man job.

As we wandered amoung the mountains of veggies and fruit, Sis-In-Law pointed out a table set amidst the chaos selling boxes of duck eggs.  She started eating them while working in the UK, and has often told me that they make the creamiest, most amazing scrambled eggs.  Overlooking the steep price tag, and taking stock of Hubbies love to try new things, I bought a box.

The next morning, I left Hubby in charge of toast and sides and set about making scrambled duck eggs for a lazy Sunday breakfast. 

Let me say now.... I love duck - I will hone in on it if we're eating out and it's on the menu and there's never a mouthful left.  In Munich, I gorged on duck in an Oktoberfest beer tent.  It's one of my favourite foods.  So the thought never even crossed my mind that I would have any kind of issue with duck eggs.  After all, the only difference seemed to be that the eggs were bigger, and the shells a pristine white.

The problem arose when I cracked the eggs into a dish.  I was taken absolutely off guard by the strangely pungent smell of the raw eggs, and so began the loss of my nerve.  The eggs went into the  pan with diced bacon, mushroom and onion and cooked up just like chicken eggs, so again, there should have been no issue.  However, when I plated the eggs up (which I did overcook a little in my nervousness), I noticed the colour.  Oh so subtle, but definitely a different shade of yellow from a chicken egg.... with the slightest hint of green.  By now, my nerve has slunk out of the kitchen and out the front door without a backwards glance.  But I manned up and sat down to breakfast and, under the watchful gaze of Hubby, tucked into my much talked about duck eggs. 

They absolutely didn't taste any different from chicken eggs.  Really.  Maybe, at a push, I could say they tasted a bit creamier.  But, with a blindfold on, I couldn't have told the difference.  So why did I struggle to eat them?  Absolutely ridiculous, and proof that the picky child I was is still lurking inside me somewhere.

Microwave Strawberry Jam

One of my friends can only be described as the REAL domestic goddess.  While she and her husband lived in Australia, going to dinner at her house was inspiring - she always seemed completely unflappable and completely in control in the kitchen, even when catering for 30 or so people.

Not only that, be she seemed to have found the time to learn how to do EVERYTHING.  This clever lady makes amazing christmas dinners, puddings, wedding cakes and most importantly of all for today, jam.

My friend has returned to her home in the UK now, but still inspires me with her facebook posts.  Recently, she put up a few posts about the plethora of jam she was making, which I thought was incredible.  My understanding was that jam is really hard to make, hard to get to set and the idea of sterilizing jars seemed overly complicated, so I was in complete awe.

Last Sunday I had a heap of week old strawberries in my fridge (I'd been traveling for work, so hadn't got them eaten up), so I very tentatively did a search on taste.com for strawberry recipes to use them up with.

Feeling very brave, and with some encouragement from Hubby, I found this recipe here, which seemed unbelievably simple.  The additional commentary from other readers was very helpful too.

I weighed out all my strawberries - turned out I had about 340g rather than the 500g in the recipe.  I also didn't have the required lemon, but I did have a squeezy bottle of lemon juice we use to cook with, so that went in instead.  Can I just now that lemon, strawberries and sugar all in a bowl together smell AWESOME.  Then it was just a case of cooking the jam in a microwave for 15 minutes.

The most difficult thing about the whole process was simply patience.  I didn't have a 3L microwavable container (mine was about half that), which meant standing over the microwave, stopping it and giving it a stir to cool down every time it threatened to spill over the top.  That worked out to be roughly every minute, to minute and a half, and you have to watch it like a hawk.  The one moment I was distracted, sticky strawberry goo went everywhere.

I had no idea how to sterilize a jar, but Hubby told me to boil the kettle, fill a clean jam jar with boiling water for a few minutes (and the lid too) and then tip the water out and pour the hot jam in.  My 340-ish grams of strawberries made just enough to fill one 284g jam jar, with one spoonful left over.  I screwed the lid on, tipped it upside down and left it for two minutes, then turned it right way up to cool.

Amazingly enough, while I was doing that, the solitary spoonful left in the microwave container cooled down.... and SET with no extra effort from me whatsoever.  I figured that meant that the jam in the jar would set too when it cooled down, and did a celebratory jig in my kitchen while eating that triumphant spoonful.

What also amazed me, was that as the jar cooled down, THE SEAL ON THE TOP OF THE LID SEALED PROPERLY!  Regardless of whether I had sterilized my jar 'properly' or not, it seemed that I had still gotten it vacuum sealed.  For some reason, that makes me unbelievably excited.

We cracked into the jam a little to soon - it hadn't fully cooled down, so it hadn't quite set, but the crumpets Hubby bought for breakfast just looked too good not to spoon my jam onto.  We've actually eaten more jam this week than we ever normally would SIMPLY BECAUSE IT TASTES SO GOOD.  The remaining jam did set properly, and we have nearly finished the jar.... perhaps I need to get more strawberries and start again?

The Herb Garden

For as long as I can remember, Hubby and I have dreamed and talked of the day when we would own our own house, have a yard and then build a veggie patch in it.

Six months ago we bought our house.  We have our yard.  But still, we are yet to build a veggie patch.  It's a pretty daunting task for two completely inexperienced gardeners!

Last weekend we finally bit the bullet and made a start.

The previous owner had built a planter box next to our patio, so all we had to do was buy a truckload of new potting mix, dynamic lifter and blood and bone to bring it back to life.  We turned the soil already in it over, and mixed in our new purchases to really build the soil up.

Our next job was to fill it up.  From the above picture, I know the planter box looks very empty.... but let me assure you that it's not!

The six little seedlings in the far right are strawberry plants.  I love strawberries, and I am super excited about the idea of growing my own.

The other row of seedlings in the middle are half thyme and half sage.  In between the strawberries and the other row are endless seeds - two different types of parsley, chives, coriander and oregano.  The space to the far left is all basil.  We like basil, so we've planted LOADS.  I'm desperately hoping all our little seeds grow - I'd rather have to thin then out then admit defeat!  Hopefully in the next week or so we'll start to see them poking up!

Mexican Veggie Soup

Not too long ago, my Sis put me onto a very basic, simple veggie soup recipe.  It's actually a Weight Watchers recipe (zero points to boot!).  She put me onto it because, like many other people, we were running short on easy, fast, healthy meals to take to work for lunch.

The basic, 6 serve recipe calls for:-
- 2 carrots, chopped into 1cm pieces
- 2 zucchini, chopped into 1cm pieces
- 2 celery stalks, chopped into 1cm pieces
- 1 capsicum, chopped into 1cm pieces
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 2 x 400g diced tomatoes
- 1L of chicken stock

Basically, you then stick it all into a big pot, bring it to the boil, then simmer it for 20 minutes and you're done.  I make this with no more than a chopping board, knife and the pot itself (and a can opener of course), which makes for easy cleaning after.

Now, while I love my veggies, and I love this for lunch because it is a GREAT way to get some serious veggie serves into you, this recipe is dull beyond belief.  When I first made it, I added in chilli powder and crushed garlic just to give it pep.  That actually turned out pretty good, because the chilli developed over the course of the week - so every day the soup was a bit spicier.  The I started putting a can of five bean mix into it at the end, because Hubby and I both noticed that by about 3pm, we were STARVING and the bit of carbs helped us stay fuller longer (that did, of course, up the WW points, but over six serves, you're still looking at less than a point a serve).

Last week I decided to mix it up a bit more.  We'd had nachos as a treat for dinner the night before, and that got me thinking.  How can I make this soup into a vegetarian, chilli con carne-esq meal?

I threw in my regular veggies as above, and then I added in mushroom and green beans (they needed eating up).  I threw in a heap of paprika (have I mentioned I love paprika?), chilli powder, cumin and garlic to try and get that 'Mexican' flavour.  Then I added in a big handful of roughly chopped black olives.  Once it was just about cooked, I threw in a can of five bean mix (I wanted kidney beans, but we didn't have any!).

I was a bit unsure about whether I had hit the mark on this - for instance, a can of corn in here would have probably helped a lot, and it just missed meat.  Really, it needed some meat in there.  But the next day at work, I got an unexpected phone call.  This soup was such a win that my Hubby rang me from his office just to tell me how good it was.  Lunch time win?  I think so.

Best Birthday Cake

For some time now, I have been completely in love with the smitten kitchen blog.  I check it every morning for updates, new posts, and if there aren't any, rely on the awfully clever 'Surprise Me' button for a recipe fix.

Somehow or another though, I've become fixated on one recipe in particular.  Deb's Best Birthday Cake in fact.  I find myself continually drawn to that recipe, even though I rarely have a reason to bake a whole cake, cannot in fact remember the last time I made a whole cake and somehow suspect I have never actually baked a whole cake greater than one layer and without the use of a packet mix....

So when Hubby decided to have a BBQ recently with our neighbours, his sister and a couple of other close friends, I jumped at the chance to provide a dessert, without perhaps realizing the level of sheer panic I would induce in myself at trying to get it made and the house in a state to receive visitors in one morning (this also involved me closing a cupboard door on my head that left an impressive lump on my temple, but that's another story).

After my more recent endless cupcake escapades, Hubby had scoured ebay to get me an affordable Kenwood, which is now my prized possession.  Armed with this, and what I thought was PLENTY of time, I got stuck into making my masterpiece.

 Can I just say now, that I REALLY enjoyed making this cake.  I really, really wish that it was the only job I had to do that morning, because I have to admit, the slightest timing hitch was going to really interfere with me finishing on time.

The only problem I really had with the whole thing, was getting the two cakes (my fab Neighbour lent me a second cake tin) to actually bake all the way through.  THEY JUST WOULDN'T!  And the end result was, that I actually burnt the bottom of both cakes.  Fortunately, when I trimmed them to make them all flat and level, I trimmed off the burnt bottom.  Does anyone have any advice on this one?

I was a little scared about assembling the cake - as I've mentioned before, I have never made a 'big' cake.  Or any kind of multi-layer cake.  Cutting each cake in half was a bit nerve-wracking, but I got there in the end! 

Successfully icing the cake was a bit tricky too.  By the time I was actually icing, a few guests had arrived and were cheering me along which I found very helpful.  In the end, while the icing job certainly doesn't look particularly professional, I argued that I was going for a more 'rustic' look.  I just wish I had put HEAPS more in between the layers.

  

As you can see from the above photo, my cake was definitely overcooked.  But I took IMMENSE satisfaction out of baking something so out of the ordinary for a everyday BBQ.  And surely my icing skills can only get better?