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.

Jamie's Beef and Ale Stew

As I mentioned in my previous post, Hubby and I are currently up to our necks in moving and setting up home in our new house.  As I've only lived in apartments since leaving home over ten years ago, having an entire house and yard at our disposal seems both a little overwhelming, and incredibly decadent.

On Wednesday last week, I waved Hubby goodbye in the morning and worked from home while waiting on a furniture delivery.  As he left for work, I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to cook anything out of the ordinary (read, easy stir fry most likely) for dinner however within a couple of hours my sister had emailed a recipe through to me that had me ready to get out the chopping board and fire up the stove top.

My sister is a huge Jamie Oliver fan, and had stumbled across Jamie's Beef and Ale Stew in his Ministry for Food cookbook.  After a quick read through the recipe, I realised that I had EVERYTHING I NEEDED to make this recipe right now, with the exception of the Ale... or Guinness... or Stout that you need.  So once my beautiful new tall boy was delivered, I reasoned that even though working from home, I still deserved a lunch break and nipped to my nearest liquor store.

This recipe is INCREDIBLY simple to make.  The only thing you need is plenty of time to just let it sit on the stove (mine sat simmering for three and a half hours).  It's taken me serious time to get over my 'oh this is too hard' attitude to cooking things that need hours and hours - and now that I've made that logical jump to 'it may need hours, but I don't have to actually DO anything to it for those hours' I feel much happier.

Step one is to cut up the veges you need for the stew - because I didn't have quite enough meat, I supplemented with extra carrot, celery and mushrooms (more on the rooms later).  You need at least two stalks of the celery, 2 medium onions and 2 carrots, all roughly chopped.  You throw these into a casserole dish on a medium heat on your stove top with a good load of olive oil (Jamie says 'two lugs') along with three bay leaves and let it cook for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, add 500g of diced beef (the cheaper the cut the better), a tablespoon of plain flour, a can of diced tomatoes and then 500ml of Guinness, Ale of Stout.  Give it all a good stir, then bring it to the boil, pop the lid on and simmer if for three hours.

After three hours, I took the lid off the pot, threw in a big handful of mushrooms (my personal tweak), a slug of Worcester sauce and some diced garlic (my sister's idea) and then left it with the lid off for half an hour or so.

We ate it pretty simply - straight in a bowl, with lots of crusty bread slathered with butter.  I was really pleased with it for lots of reasons.  The meat just fell apart the way it should, the veges were soft and fabulous and the mushrooms had soaked up plenty of sauce.  Plus, for minimal effort, I felt like supreme domestic goddess.

When I make this again (and I think I will), I will definitely make a few changes.  Firstly, it was a bit too bland for us.  I still think a little bit of chilli powder to give it a bit of warm would be a good idea.  I also think I should have put in more garlic.  The mushrooms were a definite win.... but I also think throwing in a handful of new potatoes would be brilliant.  But other than that, it was super easy to make, used ingredients we generally have in the house and was great comfort food.  Plus the leftovers made a fab lunch the next day.

Inspiration - Bar Barossa

My blog has been SHAMEFULLY neglected.  But I have a good reason.  Hubby and I are smack bang in the middle of moving house.  So no internet, no computer, no cooking, no nothing while we get straight.

But in the interests of blogging, I have at least been inspired by cooking, if unable to create myself.

Today at work we had a team building lunch, organised by me (approved of heartily by my manager), so therefore at the restaurant of my choice.

We went to Bar Barossa, for what turned out to be one of the LONGEST work lunches I have been to in years.  The decor is fabulous, if a little cosy in the corner we were in, the wine list extensive and the food divine.  If anything was going to inspire me in the kitchen, this was going to be it.  Unfortunately for me I FORGOT my awesome little camera, but my manager came to the rescue with the camera on her blackberry.

Entree:-

For entree I had one of my favourite meals - mussels in a tomato, lemon and onion sauce, with crusty bread to mop it all up with at the end.  The mussels were HUGE and melt in the mouth, and the sauce was amazing.

Main:-

Did I mention I love steak?  And I love it medium rare.  If it's not pink in the middle, I'm not interested.  This eye fillet was to die for, and so was the mushroom sauce and beer-battered onion rings.

Dessert:-

What kind of fabulous lunch out would it be without making room for dessert?  While all the ladies were a little disappointed with the lack of chocolate-related choices... none of us could fault this delicious white chocolate and macadamia tart, with vanilla bean cream, strawberries, and my favourite touch - pink fairy floss.  Can anyone tell me how to make chocolate pastry so I can try to recreate this at home?

Right now I am super full, and EXTREMELY inspired to get back into my own kitchen.  Now if only I could finish unpacking!

Pancake Stacker

 Last weekend one of my besties had a housewarming party at her lovely new home.  Because she lives on the opposite side of the city to Hubby and I, we stayed the night, and the next morning I made pancakes for breakfast for everyone.  I used the pancake recipe from Serge Dansereau's 'French Kitchen', but I suspect that this is a recipe that changes very little from one recipe book to another.

I started by sifting 250g of self-raising flour and then adding 2 tablespoons of baking powder and a pinch of salt.

Next, I added 500mL of milk (I used low fat milk and they still tasted great).

The final ingredients are two eggs, which I whisked and then poured into the mixture.

Finally, you whisk the whole lot until it makes a smooth batter.  Next time, when I get to this stage, I'm going to add some sliced up fresh fruit (like blueberries).

My bestie has the MOST amazing kitchen gadget ever.  It's a Sunbeam Reversa-Grill.  The most awesome things about it are that you get a totally maintained heat, fast AND you can make more than one pancake at a time.  I'm in pancake-making heaven.  Each pancake is a quarter of  a cup of batter, and once the top starts bubbling, you flip them over and cook the other side until golden.

Voila!  A perfect stack of light, fluffy, perfectly cooked pancakes!

The final touches for perfection (to me anyway) - a scoop of good quality ice cream and REAL maple syrup (no maple-flavoured syrup for me!).  I promise, it's worth the extra money for real maple syrup.

Macaroon Madness - Part 2

I realise I have been slack with my postings over the last two weeks - but not because I haven't been spending time in the kitchen!


I had intended to make Hubby a plate of macaroon's as a Valentines Day gift... but neither of us was well that week, so the baking got a little delayed.  For the first time in a while I had the kitchen all to myself when I set out on my second macaroon attempt, and I was very hopeful of producing a better result.

I started out, once again, by weighing out and sifting all of my dry ingredients, and then put them aside while I got cracking on the eggs.  

Three egg whites get whisked until they form soft peaks, and then you pop in some caster sugar and whisk away until the sugar is dissolved.  I love how glossy and incredibly white this mixture gets, although I get the feeling that I should have whisked them a little longer, and got the mix really stiff.

Next I folded in the dry ingredients until well combined.  To be honest, this is probably my least favourite step - because I worry that I'm going to 'overwork' the mixture and loose the lightness.

Now for my second piping bag attempt.  I felt a little more comfortable this time around - and got the mixture INTO the piping bag with far less mess than the last time which made me feel better.   I will note though, I'm still having trouble getting the mixture OUT of the piping bag.  I know it's just practice, but I'm still getting 'peaks' when I try to finish piping a macaroon out.  This time round though, because my mixture was a little more runny, the 'peaks' did settle into the macaroon so I did have more smooth, round shapes.

This time I didn't dust the macaroons with cocoa before I put them in the oven, I just left them for 20 minutes (per the recipe) and then popped them in the oven.  Now, the recipe says 20 minutes in the oven.  I think this is wrong.  In my parents-in-law oven last time, 15 minutes was too long.  I'm aware that one side of our oven cooks hotter than the other, so I popped the macaroons in the oven for eight minutes, then opened the oven, rotated all the trays and left them for another eight.  While I was on the right track, this was still a little too long.  I'm starting to think they only need ten minutes all up.

Once everything was out of the oven, I set to work on the ganache.  I didn't have sufficient dark chocolate for the recipe, so I supplemented with some Lindt milk chocolate with hazelnuts in I happened to have in the fridge (why not?).

I popped the cream on the stove on a medium heat until it just started boiling, then took it off the heat and threw in the chocolate and stirred til it all melted.  I have to admit - I'm now a big fan of supplementing the dark chocolate with a portion of milk chocolate.  It just seemed to give the ganache a smoother, less bitter taste.  Then the ganache went into the fridge for about an hour to cool down and get to a good spreading consistency.

The final step was to spread the ganache onto one half of a macaroon and sandwich the other one on, and then resist the temptation to eat the left over ganache out of the saucepan (which I did!  It's so hard to let chocolate go, but I can't just eat it melted out of a saucepan...).

These tasted awesome, and the consistency was SO CLOSE to being right.  I'm not sure what it is I'm doing wrong, but they just don't look like macaroons.  I even bought some to remind myself of how they should look:-

I think my two biggest problems this time were - I didn't whisk the egg whites long enough and I left them in the oven just a minute or two too long.  At least my co-workers enjoyed them when I took them into the office the next day!

Carb-a-licious

In early December, one of my besties and I went to a cooking class held at the Ginger Factory in Yandina on the Sunshine Coast.  The class was absolutely brilliant, and we both went away with some new tricks and also, some reassurance that some of the lines our respective others were selling us on food were actually right.

The chef that ran the class is Erik Van Alphen, and he was funny, insightful and deeply passionate about food, which was highly contagious.  The fact that he subscribes to my 'don't cook without a glass of wine next to you' philosophy only made me like him more.  Especially when he put me in charge of pouring it.

Recently I've been working some big hours at my day job, and Hubby has very much been holding the fort at home.  In an effort to thank him for looking after me, and our day to day chores, I decided to crack out one of Erik's recipe's last night.  The recipe is a Tagliatelle Carbonara, but I decided to make fettuccine instead (I prefer it).

To make the pasta, I started with 250g of 00 flour.  Erik explained in the class that it's very important to use 00 flour if you can get it, because the gluten level is different from plain flour, and lends itself to pasta making, whereas plain flour is better for baking.

I tipped the flour onto my kitchen benchtop, made a well in the middle and poured in two eggs, which I had already whisked up.

Next I slowly worked the flour into the egg, and then kneaded away until all the flour and egg was combined and I had a nice smooth dough.  It didn't take as long as I thought it might, and I have to admit, it was quite therapeutic...  Then I popped it into a lightly floured container and covered it with a tea towel and left it alone for 20 minutes.

While I was busy kneading, Hubby jumped into the kitchen and finely sliced up a heap of parsley, a couple of cloves of garlic and about 100g of speck.  The recipe calls for pancetta or bacon... but we love speck and we had some, so we used it.

 

Next I whisked up three eggs, added some salt, pepper, 50ml of cream and a heap of grated parmesan.  The recipe calls for about half a cup, but I probably used more than that (I love cheese, I just can't help myself).

Next was my favourite bit - actually making the pasta.  I cut the dough up into fist-sized pieces, sprinkled it with cornflour and got stuck in. 

The pasta maker was a Christmas present from my parents-in-law.  They've had it for years and never used it, and lucky me, it's actually made in Italy, rather than some cheap machine I probably would have bought but for their generosity.

So to make my pasta, I fed a piece through the machine on the widest setting, then folded it over and fed it through again, then folded it over and fed it through a third time.  After that, I fed it through twice on each setting until I got to setting five.  We tried for setting six, but the dough started to look stretched and like it was going to break.  Hubby thought it could have done with some more flour to stop it sticking, but we decided to just roll it through the cutting attachment and leave it at that.  I have to admit, a second set of hands at this stage is very, very helpful.

A little bit of pasta goes a long way, so at this point I was very glad I had halved the recipe before I started - even this much pasta is too much for two (unless you want to eat til your sick of course).  There was something IMMENSELY satisfying about having made this pasta myself.

While the water for the pasta came to the boil, I popped the speck and garlic in a pan with some olive oil and fried it off until it was crispy.  Yes, that is smoke.  No, I didn't set the fire alarm off.  Or burn the speck.  Or burn myself.  Perhaps next time I won't use such a high heat....

Once the water was boiling, Hubby dropped the pasta in for me and we let it bubble away for about five minutes.  It would have been quicker with a bigger pot, but you have to use what you've got.

Because I had more cooked pasta than we needed, instead of pouring the sauce into the pot,  I transferred the pasta I wanted into my fry pan (which I'd taken off the heat) and stirred the speck through.  Then I poured in the egg and parmesan mix and the parsley and stirred like crazy.  You need to get everything off the heat because otherwise you'll end up with pasta and cheesy scrambled egg.  The pasta is hot enough to cook the egg, and as long as you give it a good stir as you go, no scrambled egg.

In the class, Erik taught me how to make a pasta nest when presenting.... but I didn't get the hang of it then and I haven't got the hang of it yet... but still, with an extra sprinkle of parmesan, salt and pepper over the top, this meal turned out AWESOME.

This is the end result.  As a side, Hubby made a salad of lettuce, basil, tomato, bocconcini and sliced up crusty olive bread which was topped off with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  I thought this was rather nice, given it was meant to be a thank you dinner for him and he still ended up in the kitchen somehow...

I love this recipe.  I love that it was the result of a class I loved (and will be going to more of).  I love that it was so simple.  It was easy, tasty and I think you can tinker as much as you like (next time, mushrooms and chicken pieces, I reckon).  Nothing beats freshly made pasta, and making it just isn't hard.  I maybe wouldn't make it mid-week given time restraints, but it certainly is going to be a regular in our house.