Pasta

This is a pasta dish I made the other night. It is orecchiette with cauliflower, mint, peas & breadcrumbs (panko) & the recipe can be found here. The recipe featured in a recent Delicious magazine & it came from Matt Moran. I liked the look of it's simplicity as well as the fact that it was a bit different from the usual pasta recipes I cook up. I didnt use any panko as I couldnt get my hands on any in the time I needed. I love orecchiete pasta, it's chewiness is really very tasty & it feels more substantial than say spaghetti or penne therefore I tend to eat less in a serve which is a great thing. A great dish for that occasional pasta indulgence.

Fabulous Broad Beans

The last few weeks I have been busy trying out new recipes with my fabulous broad bean patch. My firm favourite is still smashed beans on toast, where you smash them in a mortar & pestle with parmesan, oilive oil, salt & pepper & then heap them on top of grilled sourdough rubbed with garlic. The crop is dwindling & the bush looks a bit mangy so not many more beans for this season which is sad, I love them & in particular I love the shelling process, I find it quite relaxing & this year I've had a very interested little helper in Chloe which makes it even more fun. We sit at the bench with a big bowl in front of us & just go for it, it doesn't seem like a chore that way at all.

Anyway last night I made the above salad which I didnt have high hopes for yet it turned out a treat. It is a recipe from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Dinners - Moroccan Broad Bean salad with yoghurt & crunchy bits. It's basically beans double podded dressed with lemoin juice, olive oil, mint & salt & Pepper. These sit on a bed of yoghurt & are topped with fried red onion, cumin & breadcrumbs. Sounds a bit weird but the flavour combo was delicious. I served this along side some simple grilled chicken which I had marinated in olive oil, lemon juice & oregano. A fantastic meal for a warm pre-summers night.

Masterchef Masterclass at Home

Above is George Calombaris Open Beef Kofta from Season 1 of Masterchef. I made it for dinner a couple of weeks ago & loved it even though I now have a bit of an aversion to George himself thanks to his thoughts on food bloggers which I'm sure you are all aware of.

Not being a food stylist myself, you will note that my photo looks nothing like the photo on the website, the only thing I left out were the deep fried shallots to serve, let's face it who could be bothered when cooking a quick dinner after a hard days work in the garden.

Anyway as I said, this was delicious, light, tangy & yet enough to satisfy not just myself but Michael with the mans appetite & it will be made again. I will however pick on the recipe a bit. To start with the recipe states that it serves 2 & makes 1 kofta. It suggests using a 22cm round flat bread which then has 500g of mince loaded on top plus all the other bits & pieces & is only cooked briefly in the frying pan & then grilled for 4-5 minutes. Now if you ask me all of that mince piled on 1 pita bread would be mighty thick & unappealing to me & I cant see it cooking sufficiently in the time given. I actually made 5 pitta's with the above quantities & they fed the 2 of us for 2 nights & were perfect that way.

So tell me, has anyone else tried this recipe or what do you think of the recipe as is?

Court Jester Cafe Brunswick

A visit from Michael's sister Julie called for a visit to my favourite new cafe, Court Jester's in Breese st in Brunswick. The place can be found in a back street behind Sydney Rd opposite a huge construction site. In a warehouse you will find a big open space with one long communal table down the middle with old couches & computer ports scattered around the edges. As well as being a cafe serving fantastic Polish cuisine, the place doubles as an Art Gallery. The guys running the place use recipes handed down in their families to make delicious dishes such as pierogi which I absolutey love & miss oh so much since my Gran died (I am way too lazy to make them myself even though I watched her a thousand times), cabbage rolls, borscht & many others. They do brunch all day & lunch from 11am. I just love the fact that they are so close to me & serve food that is very rare to find out, especially around my area.

This weekend I fancied some eggs so had the poached eggs with marinated avocado, horseradish mayonaise, dench toast & a side of Polish sausgae, another old favourite - fantabulous! Coffee is great, prices are good & they seem to tolerate Chloe running around like a lunatic, there are even old colouring books & jars of textas to amuse the littlies.

Look the place up & pay them a visit, you wont be disappointed I promise.

Happy Birthday Maya

Saturday was Maya's 4th birthday party which was held at Quarries Park in Clifton Hill which I had never even heard of let alone been to before. Great park, HUGE playground that we will be visiting again very soon, Chloe loved it so much that she cried all the way home as she wanted to go back.

Took along some treats for the kids, cupcakes with a rosewater icing & sugar stars & chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing & smarties. Chloe did the smartie decorating & had an excellent time, apparently I am now 'the best' mum. Good fun in the kitchen now that she is interested & wants to help out all the time, let's hope she loves cooking as much as her mum. Anyway I thought all the little girls would go for the cute pink girly cakes but no, everyone pounced on the chocolate, in the end the pink ones were eaten mostly by adults, will keep in mind for the next kids party.

Chocolate Ginger Chews & Strawberry Picking

Here is a photo of the lovely chocolate ginger chews from the latest issue of Donna Hay magazine, minus the sugar coating which I figured they would not need being sweet enough for my taste already. For anyone who loves a choc/ginger combo, these are a hit though the ginger is not all that strong which has some advantages in that little people like them too, disadvantage, little people like them too so less for me. Below is a pic of Chloe after eating a chew picking some fresh strawberries to wash it down with. You cant see our first 2 luscious red stawberries as they are hidden under the foliage, fingers crossed lots more to come. Actually my mum has just built me a strawberry patch by the back french doors with 7 strawberry plants, if that flourishes I will be very happy indeed.

Pearl Couscous 2 Ways

I was lucky enough to get my hands on some of the Blu Gourmet Pearl Couscous thanks to Liz over at Haystac. Also included were a bunch of recipes by Gabriel Gate who is endorsing the product. So I thought I would give a couple a go. I have eaten this large sized version of couscous before though have not bought it or cooked with it so was unsure how it would compare to the 'normal' small sized grain. I tried out the Couscous with Peas & Parmesan (above) to have as a side dish & also the Couscous & Vegetable cheesy bake (below) which I thought Chloe would appreciate seeing as that it contained a vegetable she actually loves & consents to eat & one of her favourite foods, cheese!

I loved both dishes & was impressed with the couscous, it had a lovely silky soft texture and it held all of the other ingredients together. In the veggie bake I was worried it would not be substantial enough as a meal on it's own as I would never serve the small couscous in this way yet the increase in size seems to deal with that entirely & it was a satisfying & delicious meal.

In comparing it to the normal couscous I use I would say that they are totally different, the texture, preparation required & even flavour as the smaller version seems to take on more of the flavours it is mixed with and the large seems to have a flavour all of it's own.

I will definitely buy it again & try out some more of the recipes as well as some of my own ideas though it wont replace it's little sister as I feel each has there own place on the menu.

Nice Surprise

Look what I was lucky enough to find in the mail this week. I had sent Michael the link as an idea for a future xmas or bday pressie, he figured he'd forget so bought it there & then for the discounted price of $89.99, yep thats right RRP is $125.00 I believe.

Two of my great loves all combined in the one book, cooking & the garden. The book is huge, over 700 pages full of useful tips on growing a whole lot of fruit & veg plus recipes to cook with each. It's not a book you can flick through from start to finish so I will have fun browsing for now & looking up all of my crop as I harvest & plant for some ideas & new info.

Very inspiring, just from reading the intro I now want to do so much more & a worm farm is now on my xmas list!

Friday lunch for 2

To end the week off I had a friend over for lunch today. We sometimes go out for lunch which is nice though sometimes I prefer to stay at home, both have their advantages. Going out with the kids means not having to worry about preparing lunch on a weekday with no help from Michael with the littlies, though I cant really relax fully when out with Chloe pestering me with questions & requests to dance or play with her the whole time! Staying home means that I can relax a little more once the guests arrive & I really do love to cook so even though it takes a very planned approach & nothing too difficult or time consuming in case someone wakes up screaming for a feed at a crucial moment, who says you cant still prepare something nice.

Today I started off early this morning cooking a Lemon Poppy Seed cake from the Hungry Girls cookbook. It's pretty much a butter/egg/sugar & yoghurt combo soaked with a lemon syrup while still hot & in the pan which makes for a very moist & lemony cake, I enjoyed this though would be tempted to add even more than the 3 teaspoons of poppy seeds in the recipe as I love them so much.

Then lunch was a warm potato salad with smoked trout from Bill Granger's Sydney Food. I have to say the potato salad was delicious even though I think the dressing could have stretched to double the potatoes which could then stretch it to feed the 4 people that the recipe actually suggests it feeds. We did get good serving sizes & I wont be needing much for dinner but there is no way the 500g of potatoes could stretch to feed any 4 people I know, which shows what sort of appetite all of my friends have, yes we all love our food!

Relaxing tonight & then off to a wedding tomorrow with hopefully a bit of football squeezed in between the long Greek Orthodox ceremony & the reception.

GO SAINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!