Deliciousness.

Some recent cooking highlights!

Ottolenghi's Plenty is an amazing cookbook - one of my favourites. The recipes are generally not particularly simple but the amazing flavour combinations are worth the extra time/effort/ingredients that are called for. A dish I've cooked a few times now is the soba noodle salad with eggplant and mango. It's amazing, and great for dinner parties. The recipe can be found all over the internet, e.g. 101 Cookbooks.



A swiss cheese and tomato tart from taste.com.au. A simple and tasty recipe. As suggested in the comments I doubled some of the filling ingredients, although didn't quite cook it as long as I should have because of this. Next time!



Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible is my number one favourite cookbook. Almost every recipe that I've tried (more than 10 now) has been spectacular, and I've used it so much since I bought it a few months ago that it's almost permanently stationed on my cookbook stand. The royal chicken korma below is one of my favourites.



Not much in the way of cooking was involved here, but this was a very delicious cheese! (from the Wursthaus).



What tasty things have you been cooking recently?

Christmas baking

This year I've been pretty organised and have done a fair bit of Christmas baking already - hurrah!

I've made two tropical Christmas puddings based on this recipe, one for my work Christmas barbecue and one for family. I'm not a massive pudding fan but these smell amazing and I can't wait to try them. Making puddings requires a lot of dedication: this recipe involved 6 hours of boiling time per pudding.



I've also made a spiced whisky fruitcake based on this recipe. I varied the dried fruits a bit (using up leftovers from the pudding recipe). I'm pretty sure my dad, who loves both fruitcake and whiskey, is going to appreciate this one!



Bring on Christmas!

Momofuku adventures: pork buns and crack pie

I purchased David Chang's book Momofuku a year ago after reading all sorts of fabulous things about his recipes across a whole heap of food blogs. So far I've only made two dishes (they tend to be fairly involved!), but definitely plan to do more soon.

Pork buns
The recipe for these delicious morsels can also be seen online here. In the book, Chang recommends buying pre-made steamed buns but I thought they were a lot of fun to make and definitely worth the effort. I followed the recipes for the buns and pickled cucumber to the letter (although I found that just folding the rolled-out bun dough in half was easier than using a chopstick). Instead of pork belly I slow-cooked a pork shoulder and sliced that up.

Here's the bun dough after the second rise, ready for steaming:



Post-steaming and splitting:



Assembled, with hoisin sauce, pork, pickled cucumber and spring onions:



Delicious!

I did re-steam the leftover buns after keeping them in the fridge overnight, and wasn't as happy about how they turned out - they were a bit sticky rather than soft and pillowy. Chang recommends freezing them (and steaming from frozen) - perhaps I should have frozen them instead of refrigerating?

Crack pie:
This has got to be the unhealthiest dessert EVER! Check out the recipe - it's basically just a whole lot of sugar, butter and egg yolks, with some heavy cream thrown in for good measure. You make a giant cookie, crumble it up to make two pie bases, and then fill them with a crazy mixture. This recipe was actually the main reason that I bought the book - but it's not in it! Instead Momofuku Milk Bar will have the sweets recipes, including crack pie and all sorts of other goodies. I'll definitely be adding this to my cookbook collection when it's released later this year.

Here's one pie prior to baking:


And the result - it doesn't look like much but it has to be tasted to be believed. Dust the top with some icing sugar and serve it up to sweet-toothed friends!

A pretty amazing dal

I love dal and have been experimenting with a few different recipes lately. This particular one is my favourite so far, and is adapted from a recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. It's a South Indian style, and the finishing touch of adding the curry leaves and mustard seeds in ghee is what sets it apart - it wouldn't be the same without this step!

Fresh curry leaves can be hard to find in Hobart, but Spice World in the Bank Arcade usually have them. They have an amazing, nutty aroma that I can't get enough of. They can be frozen, and this is nearly as good as fresh. I don't think that dried curry leaves are worth using though, as the flavour is just not there.

This recipe is great with rice, or creamy polenta.

Ingredients:
90g mung dal (red lentils)
90g toovar dal (split pigeon peas)
pinch asafetida (optional)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp fresh ginger, minced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 shallot, very finely diced
1 green chilli, finely diced
1 tsp salt
Silverbeet or spinach (optional)
2 tbs ghee (or olive oil)
1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
2 tsp dried red chilli flakes
10 fresh or frozen curry leaves
3 tbs coriander leaves, chopped

Wash the dal well, then drain.
Add the dal plus 1 litre of water to a large saucepan and bring to the boil without boiling over.
Skim off any scum that rises.
Add the asafetida, cayenne pepper, turmeric, ginger, garlic, shallots, green chilli and salt.
Stir well then reduce the heat so that it's lightly simmering.
Cover partially with a lid and stir occasionally until the dal is tender (up to an hour), then turn off the heat.
If you include silverbeet, roughly chop it and mix it in after 45 minutes. If using spinach, add it when you turn off the heat.
Add the ghee to a frypan and heat.
Add the mustard seeds and chilli flakes and stir quickly.
Crush the curry leaves in your hand and add to the frypan.
Stir very briefly then quickly tip the contents of the frypan into the dal.
Mix together, then immediately cover with a lid and let it sit for several minutes.
Add the coriander and then stir briefly before serving.

In the kitchen

A few bits and pieces that I have cooked in recent weeks.

Polenta with mushrooms, based on this recipe, but without the fennel and cheese. It was nice, but it definitely needed a sauce or chutney to offset the dryness of the polenta.



Cauliflower, potato and bacon soup, based on this recipe (but I used a whole small cauliflower). J's biggest food hate is cauliflower but he enjoyed this soup!



Cheesey homemade pizza using my new favourite dough recipe from here:



And from warmer days when things like tomatoes were still in season: homemade green tomato mustard pickles. I used my dad's recipe that I adore and made a couple of batches, this is one of them:



Spiced apple, pear and plum chutney. All the fruit came from our backyard!



Summer blackberries picked from the side of the road on the way to Binalong Bay. They were beautifully plump and sweet as-is, no alterations or recipe needed!

Sausage, lentil and silverbeet casserole with polenta

Adapted from this Taste.com.au recipe, I added silverbeet, used tinned lentils instead of dried, and tinned tomatoes instead of fresh. The polenta is simple: boil 2 cups of water with 2 cups of milk, remove from the heat, add 1 cup of polenta, whisk lots, season to taste (usually 1 tsp of salt is about right), then let it sit for at least 10 minutes.

It was a comforting and very winter-appropriate dish.



p.s. can anyone else see the smiley face in the sausage at the bottom??

Thai pumpkin soup

This recipe was adapted from My Table by Pete Evans, which is another great cookbook with a wide variety of great recipes. This soup is full of flavour and contains lots of good things to help fight off winter colds.

Ingredients:
1 tbs oil
3/4 cup diced leek
3 tbs finely diced lemongrass
1 red chilli, finely diced
1 tbs ginger, finely diced
1 kaffir lime leaf, julienned
1 bunch of coriander, stems and roots chopped, leaves reserved
4 garlic cloves, finely diced
1kg pumpkin, peeled and cubed
1 tin (400ml) coconut milk
500ml vegetable stock
zest of one orange

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.
Add the leek, lemongrass, chilli, ginger, lime leaf, coriander stems and roots and garlic.
Fry until fragrant, but don't allow it to brown.
Add the pumpkin, coconut milk, stock and orange zest plus 150ml water and bring to the boil.
Reduce heat slightly and cook for about 30 minutes or until the pumpkin has softened.
Blend the soup with a stick mixer (or blender or food processor).
Season with salt and pepper and serve with a sprinkle of coriander and chilli flakes, and a dollop of cream, sour cream or even yoghurt (whatever you have handy!)

Green pancakes

My new favourite cookbook is Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty. I've been reading lots about this vegetarian book on blogs such as Where's the Beef? and Cook Almost Anything, and read his posts on The Guardian website and knew that I had to get my hands on a copy. It's an amazing book that I'm sure even the most dedicated meateater would find it hard to resist. It's not full of lentil/chickpea/bean recipes, rather it puts all sorts of vegetables to amazing and delicious-sounding uses. Once a Waitress has a great post about it.

This is the first recipe that I've cooked from the book, and it definitely won't be the last! I adapted it slightly by using silverbeet instead of spinach, halving the recipe, leaving out the whisked egg white at the end, and I didn't serve it witht the suggested lime butter. The pancakes were very fast and easy to prepare and tasted simply fantastic. The recipe is completely adaptable to any leafy vegetables that you have handy.

Ingredients:
125g silverbeet, washed
55g self-raising flour
1/2 tbs baking powder
1 egg
25g butter, melted
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
75ml milk
50g spring onions, finely sliced
1 green chilli, finely diced
olive oil for frying

Wilt the silverbeet in a frypan with a splash of water.
Remove to drain in a sieve, and when cool, squeeze out as much water as you can with your hands then finely chop.
Put the flour, baking powder, egg, butter, salt, cumin and milk into a bowl and whisk until smooth.
Add the spring onions, chillies and silverbeet and mix in.
Add a dash of olive oil to a non-stick frypan and turn on to medium-high.
Spoon ~2 tablespoons of batter into the frypan and shape into a circle around 1cm thick.
Cook for about 2 mins each side, until golden.
Continue making and cooking pancakes until the batter is all used (I made 3 pancakes, more than enough for one person for dinner)

Red wine and mushroom risotto

Using this recipe as inspiration, I made my first ever red wine risotto (I do white wine ones quite regularly). It was fantastic - will definitely cook it again.

Ingredients:
1.25 litres chicken or vegetable stock
2 tablespoons olive oil
80g butter
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cups risotto rice
200ml red wine
75g finely grated parmesan, plus extra, to serve
200g mushrooms, thickly sliced. I used a mixture of brown and oyster.
2 teaspoons thyme leaves (fresh is best)
5 large leaves of silverbeet, center stems discarded (could substitute spinach, kale, beetroot greens or any other leafy greens you need to use up)

Place the stock in a saucepan and bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and keep at a gentle simmer.
Heat oil and half of the butter in a heavy-based pan over medium heat
Add rice and cook for 2 minutes until well coated in onion mixture.
Add wine and simmer until almost evaporated.
Add the stock to the pan, a ladleful at a time while stirring continuously, allowing the stock to be absorbed before adding the next.
When you have about 1 cup of stock left, stir in the parmesan and season with salt and pepper.
Remove pan from heat, stir in remaining stock, cover pan and set aside while you cook the mushrooms.
Heat remaining butter in a large non-stick frying pan over high heat until foaming.
Add garlic and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes.
Add mushrooms and thyme cook until the mushrooms are soft and golden.
Add silverbeet and cook until wilted.
Serve the risotto topped with the mushroom mixture and cheese.

Basil, garlic and chilli bread

Adapted from this recipe. Texturally it's the best loaf of bread I've ever baked, thanks to my Kitchenaid doing the kneading work and my new proper bread tin. Yay! The flavour is pretty good too, though maybe needs a little bit more salt.

Matar paneer (Indian paneer and peas)

I used my paneer in a curry loosely based on this Taste.com.au recipe. This is a perfect weeknight dinner recipe - it's fast, easy, healthy and other than the paneer, uses ingredients that are always in my pantry.

Ingredients:
200g paneer
60g ghee
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tsp fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tin crushed tomatoes
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen peas
1 cup fresh or frozen beans (I used a combination of both)
1/2 tsp garam masala

Dice the paneer into cubes.
Heat half of the ghee in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and fry the paneer until golden.
Add the remaining ghee in same pan over medium heat and cook garlic and ginger for one minute.
Stir in all spices except garam masala and cook one minute.
Add the tomatoes, fill the tin with water and add this as well, then cook for 5 minutes.
Stir in the chickpeas, peas, beans and paneer, and cook, partially covered, for a further 15 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Stir in the garam masala and serve with either rice or Indian bread such as naan.

Paneer (cookbook challenge #2)

The theme for week two of the cookbook challenge is citrus. I decided to put a spin on this and make paneer, where lemon is a crucial ingredient when making the cheese (although other acidic ingredients such as vinegar can also be used).

It's a pretty simple process but results in a delicious fresh cheese that is tastier than what you can buy at the supermarket (and probably cheaper too, depending on the milk price).

Ingredients:
2L of good quality, full cream milk, unhomogenised is ideal. I used Ashgrove's Green milk.
1/8 cup lemon juice

Heat the milk in a heavy-based saucepan until it is almost boiling.
Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice.
Place back on the heat briefly while gently stirring the milk.
Remove from the heat as soon as curds start forming, cover the saucepan, and set it aside for 5 to 10 minutes.
Line a colander with cheesecloth (and place a bowl underneath if you wish to collect the whey - it's great for watering roses and rhododendrons)
Use a slotted spoon to gently transfer most of the curds from the saucepan into the cheesecloth.
Pour the remaining curds and liquid through the cheesecloth.
Gather the edges of the cheesecloth and twist it tightly to squeeze out more liquid.
Place a saucer on top of the twisted parcel and weigh it down with heavy cans or jars.
Leave to drain for at least 30 minutes.
Remove the cheese from the cloth, wrap with damp paper towel then place in the fridge in an airtight container.
Leave overnight before using.



After adding the lemon juice to the milk:



The finished paneer after resting overnight - I got 290g cheese out of 2L milk:



I used the cheese in a really tasty curry, the recipe is posted here

Icecream at home, Cold Rock style

What do you do when you move house and are no longer 4 minutes walk from Cold Rock, and you've also come to the conclusion that it's really expensive, despite being delicious? Make it yourself!
A friend told me that Kmart were selling marble blocks plus scoops for $12 - bargain.

Step 1: get the marble slab out of the freezer, add a scoop of a favourite icecream (Cadbury flake) then top with mix-ins of choice (Twirl, Mars Bar and Toblerone).



Step 2: mix



Step 3: nom!

Pickled cherries and cherry jam (cookbook challenge #1)

The Cookbook Challenge is back! This year we are only doing recipes fortnightly, so I hope that I'll do a better job of keeping up with the challenge. There's a forum for all the posts and themes.

The theme for the first challenge is stonefruit. I was lucky enough to get a 5kg box of cherries for $10, and so decided to preserve them.



I found a recipe in Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion called pickled cherries. I added a couple of extra spices to the mix (star anise and cinnamon), and in hindsight I would have liked to have used red wine vinegar (or perhaps spike it with some pinot) so that it would be a nice rich red colour. Next time!

Ingredients:
700g sugar
850ml white wine vinegar
24 black peppercorns
12 cloves
6 bay leaves
6 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 unpeeled clove of garlic
1kg cherries, rinsed and stems trimmed to 1cm long.

Dissolve sugar in vinegar in a large saucepan over gentle heat.
Add all other ingredients except cherries and simmer for 10 minutes.
Allow syrup to cool.
Pack fruit into hot, sterilised jars.
Pour syrup over fruit and seal.

The mix smelled great but it will be a while before I know how it went, as the cherries should be left for a few weeks before opening.



I also made my first-ever batch of jam using the rest of the cherries. I had a bit of trouble getting this jam to set, and overcooked it a little. It has a bit of a smoky smell - but still tastes great!

Christmas eats, 2010

My parents spent Christmas with J and I, and a feast was had!

I cooked this Night before Christmas cake for my dad, leaving off the icing and adding some raisins to the mix. It was tasty, especially after a couple of days, but I had two problems: one was that all the fruit sank to the bottom (not enough flour in the recipe to hold the raisins that I added?), and the other was that all the nuts on top made it particularly hard to slice (despite looking pretty spectacular).



The centrepiece of Christmas lunch was a roast duck (which I forgot to photograph!). It was served with the port and cherry sauce from a cookbook challenge entry.



Thit heo kho tieu (five-spice caramel pork) was delicious, and made the house smell wonderful all morning while it was cooking.



On the side we had my old favourite pumpkin, spinach and pine nut salad.



And roast carrots, potatoes and beetroot.



Lightly steamed beans tossed in lemon olive oil.



Mum made a glazed ham.



Which was served with a simply brilliant raspberry and apple sauce.



My plate of lunch shows the duck:



For dessert I made a pavlova, which was topped with berries from my parent's garden.



Mum bought a Christmas pudding from the Trevallyn Gourmet Bakery in Launceston, which was wonderful with some brandy double cream.



Later in the afternoon we got stuck into some simply amazing cheese that J bought. The two soft cheeses on the left were some of the best I have ever tasted.

Cookbook challenge, week 48: Brioche

I am so far behind in the cookbook challenge that it's not funny! Things have been a bit too busy to do a lot of new cooking lately, and so I've been sticking to old and familiar recipes. Never mind, I will catch up on the challenges eventually.

The theme for week 48 was bread. I've tried cooking various breads semi-regularly, but without much success in yeast breads (flatbreads, Indian breads are easier!). My plan is to do an Adult Education breadmaking class sometime to try and figure out where I am going wrong - maybe not letting it rise for long enough or not kneading well enough - the new Kitchenaid helps with the kneading part, at least!

I decided to make a fruit brioche for the challenge, and used a recipe from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion.

Ingredients:
250g plain flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp instant dried yeast
1/2 cup milk
1 tbs sugar
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
75g softened butter
75g dried fruit (I used raisins and cranberries)
1 tbs brandy

Warm milk and sugar slightly, stirring, until sugar has dissolved, then allow to cool a little.
Mix brandy and fruit and set aside.
Mix flour, salt and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook.
Combine egg yolks and warm milk.
Make a well in the flour, then pour in liquid and mix to a dough.
Work until dough forms a smooth ball, about 10 minutes.
Continue beating while adding butter in two lots, until the dough is smooth and shiny (add a little more flour or milk if not right).
Cover bowl with a clean cloth and leave dough to double in size for about 2 hours.
Knock back dough and briefly knead in the fruit mixture.
Shape into a loaf and allow to rise for another hour.
Bake at 180ºC for 30 minutes, then tip out of the tin onto a baking tray and bake for a further ten minutes.
Cool before eating.

It's nice. Not amazing, but nice.

Cookbook challenge, week 44 : San choy bau

Week 44's theme was Chinese, and I found that I have an unfortunate lack of Chinese recipes and cookbooks. Thankfully I found this dish in a Delicious. magazine; the original recipe is on the Taste website.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup dried shiitake mushrooms
1 tbs peanut oil
1/2 tbs grated fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small red chilli, finely diced
300g chicken mince
2 tbs oyster sauce, plus extra to drizzle
2 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup chopped coriander leaves
8-12 large lettuce leaves, to serve (iceberg is preferable, but I only had baby cos)

Place the dried mushrooms in a bowl and cover with boiling water.
Set aside for 15 minutes to soak, then drain.
Dice into small pieces.
Heat oil in a wok over medium-high heat.
Add the mushrooms, ginger, garlic and chilli and cook for a minute.
Add the chicken mince and continue tossing in the wok until the chicken is cooked through.
Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce and lemon juice, and cook for a further 2 minutes until the sauces are combined.
Remove from heat and stir in the coriander leaves, before serving in the lettuce leaves.
Drizzle with a little more oyster sauce and serve immediately.

These turned out really well. Cos lettuce isn't ideal for serving these in but did the job! The original recipe didn't specify any chilli but adding it gave the mince a real buzz. I really enjoyed these but J wasn't so keen, saying that they were "spicy but bland"... men!