Cloudy, with a chance of meatballs

Or rather, non-meatballs, as it happens.  I get a recipe emailed to me each day from Mindfood - they're always beautiful ideas, using heaps of cool ingredients, but often not something that's easy to make work under the 'family dinner when everyone tumbles back into the house at 5pm' category.  So, more often than not, I enjoy perusing them, but ultimately they get deleted from my consciousness.  Not, however, yesterday...

Spinach and cheese balls.  Sounds kind of gross, I thought, as I started to skim through yesterday's inbox offering.  But, keep reading I did.  Hmmm, spinach and cottage cheese, I thought.  We have those in the garden/fridge and they need eating.  Further on, I did read.  And discovered that these were a tasty, vegetarian take on the classic meatballs cooked in a tomato sauce.  Yum!  We were having a pork roast for dinner, so I made a batch of these as one of our vegetables.  I was supposed to add mushrooms, but didn't have any, however next time I'll make the effort to get some - I think it would have added something that was missing.  And lots of fresh herbs - my bad, can't believe I forgot them.  But regardless, these were tasty, and a great side dish, or as a main.  Buon appetito!      

60 g spinach leaves

10 g butter

1/2 onion, chopped finely (or one small one)

1 clove garlic, crushed

100 g mushrooms, diced

1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs

1/2 cup fresh herbs, chopped

100 g cottage cheese

1 egg

1/2 cup tasty cheese

400 g can tomatoes (or smashed up frozen ones, leftover from summer)

can tomato puree, or good couple squeezes tomato sauce

1/4 cup toasted seeds (I used sunflower, pumpkin and sesame)

1. Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Wash spinach as place in a large bowl.  Cover with boiling water for a minute, or until starting to wilt.  Place in cold water.  Drain and squeeze out as much water as possible.  Finely chop and set aside.  
2. Saute onion in butter.  Add garlic and mushrooms.  Place in large bowl to cool.  
3. Add all ingredients except the tomatoes and seeds to the bowl.  Mix thoroughly. 
4. Pour tomatoes into ovenproof dish.  Roll golfball-sized balls of mixture and place in the dish with tomatoes.  
5. Sprinkle liberally with seeds and bake for 20 minutes with foil covering.  
6. Remove foil and bake for 10 more minutes, then grill until golden.  

NB: This served 6 adults as a side dish (3 balls each), so would probably be fine for 3 main meals.  I would probably have some rice and steamed vegetables or something with it too though, if serving as a main.  

Super-saucy chocola-la

You can't beat a nice warm dessert after a meal on a bleak, wintery night.  It doesn't matter if it's ginger, steamed, chocolate or apple crumble, there's just something about it that takes the edge off and makes the chill retreat just a little farther from the door.  

We don't eat a lot of desserts, as generally have no room left after dinner, but sometimes you just get a hankering for one.  Or, as in this case, see a recipe whilst flicking through the obligatory holiday Woman's Day.  

The trick, I have discovered, is that self-saucing puddings need a lot more sauce than the recipe advises (the one in the picture was really yum, but needed more sauce.  Thankfully we had plenty of cream!).  So I have doubled the sauce and listed below.  Bon appetit mes amis!  

1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
2 tbsp cocoa
3/4 cup sugar
75g butter melted and cooled
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
Cream (oh yes, yum yum yum!)
Choc sauce - 2 tbsp cocoa, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 cups boiling water

1. Grease 8 cup dish (I used a casserole-sized one, but smaller would have been probably been a bit better). Turn oven on to 180 degrees celcius.  
2. Combine dry ingredients.
3. Whisk wet ingredients, combine with the dry and pour into dish. 
4. Sprinkle sauce cocoa and sugar over top of pudding batter.  Pour boiling water over. 
5. Cook at for half hour.
6. Serve with pouring or whipped cream.  You could serve with a nice caramel custard too, and some fresh strawberries.  Yum!! 

Just a spoonful o' sugar...

Cookies.  Biscuits.  Tasty morsels of awesomeness.  Call them what you will, but I think we're fairly universal in our love for them.  They pick you up when you're flagging mid-afternoon in the office; they make the sitting down and eating part of lunchtime at school fun; they're portable for those long car trips when virtually all parents have resorted to bribery at some time or another.  

I made some cinnamon and coconut anzac biscuits last week, which I've been thoroughly enjoying, but decided it was time to break out some more choc chips, for the younger members of our family.  Harry loves them with mini m&ms, so that's what I used, but any chocolate will do.  

125 g butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup castor sugar (or regular, or raw)

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1 egg 

1 3/4 cups SR flour (or same amount normal flour + 3 tsp baking powder)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup choc chips

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Grease or line baking trays.
2. Beat butter, sugars and vanilla together until creamy (well, as creamy os brown sugar will go). Add egg and beat together. 
3. Pour flour and salt in (sift it, if you can be bothered) and mix well.  Mix in choc chips. 
4. Roll little balls of dough (about golfball size or a little smaller) onto tray and press to flatten slightly.  
5. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until golden.  

NB: Makes a good 40 biscuits - I make about 24, then freeze the rest of the dough, and then I've got enough dough in the freezer to whip up another dozen or so when we need them.  

SR = self-raising flour

Menage-a-salmon

KB and I have always had a bit of a laugh about the prevalence of 'meat'-two-ways in restaurants.  Duck two ways, lamb two ways - it's a current trend, and one that eateries seem to have really latched onto as a way to give their menus a little bit of je ne sais quoi.  That's right, just throwing that in there, so I seem a little pretentious and trend-setting too.  

Anyhoo, tonight our little kitchen (big enough for two, not really for three) is giving up the teasing and jumping on the band wagon.  Salmon two ways...  

We have two pieces of salmon, both will be seared in the pan, then transferred to the oven to bake, until they're done to our liking (cooked all through, though if you prefer them still red in the centre, just take them out earlier).  

One has been brushed with a marinade (prior to going in the pan) - horseradish, tamarind chutney and peanut butter.  We had it last night on our stirfried chicken and it was so good we saved some for tonight.   

The other will be friend au naturel and then topped with a panko crumb before going into the oven.  The crumb is a personal preference thing, but ours has panko crumbs (obviously), grated parmasan, chopped capers, salt, pepper and freshly toasted sesame and sunflower seeds.  To toast the seeds (we toasted quite a few, so could save some in a jar for future use, they keep really well) just pour however many you want to toast into a pan and put on the stovetop - no oil.  I toast mine over a medium heat and it seems that nothing is happening for AGES.  But be patient - once they start browning they will cook really fast, so be on hand to move them round, to stop them burning.  

And that's about it - bake for about 15 minutes at 150 degrees (or more, or less, depending how you want your fish).  We're having them tonight with roasted mini new potatoes (the tiny tinys that came from the summer crop) and a fresh tomato, loads of fresh herbs, cucumber, red onion and apple salsa, drizzled with lemon juice (tastes great and stops the apple from browning, or from oxidising, if I'm being pretentious).  Bon appetit!   

All roads lead to Wellington

Well, not entirely true.  Only two roads lead to Wellington, something that would prove problematic should a natural disaster occur.  However, I digress.  

We had some leftover sheets of pastry recently, from a bout of pie-making, so thought 'hey - what about beef wellingtons?'.  I hadn't had these for absolutely years, not since I was a kid and Mum used to sometimes make them for dinner parties.  Her ones were always tasty, and I knew the key was not putting too big a slab of meat inside - you want to have a good meat:pastry ratio.  

So, we decided to stick with the traditional beef ('cause I can't see why you couldn't have chicken, lamb, or simply a vegetable filling), but with plenty of onion and mushrooms in with it, to heighten the flavour of the meat.  So, I panfried a small piece (about the size of my palm) of sirloin - salted, peppered, and beaten a bit too, to make sure it was tender.  Place that on a sheet of pastry big enough to fold over the meat (and whatever else you throw in there) and close around the edges.  If you're adding other bits in, do this now too.  We gave the onion and 'shrooms a wee fry too (in butter, of course!).  Press edges of the pastry down and brush with egg - this'll give the wellington a nice golden sheen when its done.  Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes, or until it's the right colour.  

Now, traditionally a beef wellington has a layer of pâté on the beef, but that sounded too rich a parcel for me.  But if you're feeling traditional and want to invoke the shade of the 1st Duke of Wellington (his favourite dish, according to some sources), then grab your fav fois gras and get cooking!  

go bananas with some mini muffin madness

These little gems are the tastiest banana muffins I've ever made.  I've made loads before, but these ones, with soft brown sugar in place of regular or raw sugar, are super tasty and light.  I've made mini ones for one reason - they're a better size for school lunches and almost-one-year-olds.  This made 36 mini muffins, so should keep us going for a few days!  

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup chocolate chips (or a few more)

3/4 cup mashed banana

1/2 cup oil

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 180°c and grease mini muffin tray.
2. Mix dry ingredients in bowl. 
3. In another bowl beat egg, stir in oil and milk, then mix in the banana. 
4. Combine dry and wet ingredients.  Spoon into muffin trays and bake for about 10-12 minutes.  
5. Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes before removing to wire racks to cool. 

Return to the village chicken - summer mixer # 2

Back in 2010 I blogged about a childhood favourite, resurrected in my mind by a chance meeting with a Rick Stein recipe book - Sticky chook.  Recent parlays with family in the UK has once again got me on the chicken train.  Sticky chicken drumsticks are such a winner.  Easy, tasty, kids love them, the list goes on.  The only downside is you get very sticky fingers eating them, but that's hardly a deal-breaker (hell, who am I kidding, for some that would be a deal-maker!).  

So anyhoo, having seen photos of Mark and Cindy's chicken culinary creations, I decided it was time our rotisserie had it's turn too (ha ha, no pun intended, but loving it!).  To give a nod to the season, we had ours with zucchini from the garden and fresh, summery salsa.  For the salsa I combined a small diced red onion, cherry tomatoes, corn (cooked on cob, then stripped), one nectarine chopped into small pieces and mint and basil.  It was kick ass, colourful and smelled great too.  The only thing is that next time I'd look for a way to bind the salsa together a bit more - perhaps a little oil, or balsamic.  Or a mix of those two?  Enjoy, summer mixer numero dos!