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Archive for the ‘Food & Friends’ Category

Five To Share

Posted in Food & Friends, Gluten Free, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 1, 2011| 72 Comments »

If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.

– Buddha

We feed a lot of people, because we can.

We send loaves of bread to the neighbours, deliver baked treats to our local shopkeepers, and take chocolates on visits to our family GP.  We routinely bake for the school orchestra, attend Parent-Teacher interviews with brownies wrapped in parchment paper, and arrive with afternoon tea for our favourite stallholders at Flemington Markets.

Perhaps you’ve thought about taking a plate of cookies to work, or offering the local fruiterer a sample of your latest baked wares, but have always been too shy or reserved to actually do it.

If that’s the case, let me encourage you to give it a go this festive season!  Here are five of our favourite recipes to get you started…

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Butterscotch Bars

This is the recipe that started it all – the first universally popular treat that I ever baked.  I reckon I’ve made this recipe a hundred times.  It’s incredibly versatile – perfect for afternoon tea, as a gift for almost every occasion, and it’s a great cake stall item for the school fête.  Come up with your own combination of chocolate and nut add-ins, and make this recipe uniquely yours.

Click here for the recipe

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Toffee Bars

I’ve only recently come back to these after a long hiatus, but since then I’ve baked them three times.  They’re incredibly easy to make, and the ingredients are always on standby in our pantry.  The recipe makes a large number of bars, so there’s plenty to go around.  Use the best dark chocolate you can find, and whatever nuts you have on hand.

Click here for the recipe

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Supernatural Brownies

This Nick Malgieri recipe makes the list because it tastes wonderful, doesn’t require an electric mixer, and best of all, makes a double-sized batch of brownies. I tweaked the original methodology just a little to make these even easier.  They’re super quick too – I once timed myself and found that mixing up the batter took a leisurely 13 minutes and 25 seconds.

Click here for the recipe

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Freezer Shortbread Cookies

One of the earliest recipes we blogged, these shortbread cookies are my mother’s favourites.  The rolls store in the freezer for months, and can be thawed and baked at short notice.  Again, the toppings on the cookies can be varied to suit your personal preference – a couple of my variations are included below.  I’d love to see any new ones you come up with!

Chai Shortbread Cookies…

Chocolate and Ginger Shortbread…

Click here for the freezer dough recipe

Click here for the Chocolate and Ginger version

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Little Chocolate Cakes

Like the other four recipes, this one is simple to make, but has the added advantage of being gluten-free.  Within days of the original blog post, our friends Heidi, Joanna and Lisa had whipped these little cakes up in their own kitchens – it’s that kind of recipe.  Dust the tops generously with icing sugar – it always adds a festive touch!

Click here for the recipe

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Sharing the food from our kitchen brings us enormous joy and great satisfaction.

I know most of my fellow bloggers feel the same way, and I’d love to know who you share your culinary creations with.  And thank you to everyone who is still reading this blog after nearly three years – it’s been a pleasure to share our kitchen with all of you too!

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Baking Frenzy

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , , , on November 28, 2011| 83 Comments »

We’ve had a solid week of rain in Sydney.

I’m not exaggerating – we only had 45 minutes of Spring sunshine last week, which led to a mild case of cabin fever and culminated in a manic baking frenzy.  I made several batches of chestnut flour brownies – they’re gluten-free, simple to bake and perhaps just a little too easy to eat!

I also whisked up a batch of Anna’s Canelés – the only time a silicone baking mould ever gets used in our kitchen. I made big ones…

…and baby ones, all flavoured with a hint of dark rum…

A wet week necessitates lots of custard (according to my Pete), which resulted in a glut of egg whites. I turned some of them into friands – these blackberry and Valrhona chocolate ones are a variation on our original recipe.  The red wrappers were very cheery…

…and matched the rosy filling!

The remaining four egg whites were turned into a baby pavlova…

…which was topped with whipped cream, strawberries, kiwi fruit and a drizzle of vanilla syrup just before serving.

Serendipitously, Nic at Dining with a Stud is hosting the Great Australian Pavlova Blog Hop.  Nothing marks the start of summer in Australia like a pavlova…

The sun finally returned on Saturday afternoon, and we were able to head out to inspect our soggy garden.  Thankfully it was mostly intact, although parts of it were very muddy!

How’s the weather in your part of the world?

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Big Boy Loves Me

Posted in Food & Friends, Musings on November 19, 2011| 37 Comments »

When my children were little, I loved them so much that it would occasionally cause my heart to ache.  I’m not speaking metaphorically either – sometimes the feeling would be so overwhelming that I’d actually feel physical discomfort.

They were so loving and trusting and perfect that I never wanted them to grow up.  I couldn’t imagine what kind of relationship I might have with them as adults.

Of course, they did grow up, and they’ve enriched our lives in the process, beyond anything we could ever have dreamed of.

Big Boy is now eighteen. Every Friday morning, he heads into town to do a couple of hours paid work for his Auntie Kate.  It’s not much, but it gives him a tiny bit of spending money.

Around midday, I’ll get a phone call…

“Mum, have you sorted anything for lunch yet?”

“Not yet, what did you have in mind?”

“Would you like a pork roll?”

And then Big Boy, one of the great loves of my life, will spend $5 of his hard-earned money and buy me a pork salad roll from the Vietnamese bakery.  It’s full of processed mystery meat, heartburn-inducing chilli, and a strange, unidentifiable pâté, encased in a crusty white bread roll.

I devour it with enormous enthusiasm.

With every bite, I think to myself…“Big Boy loves me.”

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Duchess of Spotswood

Posted in Food & Friends, tagged on November 16, 2011| 46 Comments »

Pete and I were in Melbourne last weekend for Sarah’s memorial service.

On Sunday morning, our friends David and Maree took us to a cafe in Spotswood, which boasted a most unusual breakfast menu (click on the photo above, plus this link, for a better look). Situated in a former industrial area, this little venue was hidden in a quiet line of mostly closed shops.  The place was packed.

I had an inkling of what was to come when the waitress informed us that the specials of the day were crumbed lambs’ brains with gentlemen’s relish (not made from naughty body parts, although I did ask), and home-smoked trumpeter. The breakfast menu offered black pudding, Cumberland sausage, yabbies, ox tongue, field mushrooms, pig’s jowls and more.

Pete had the Poetry (In Motion), a selection of prunes, walnuts, orange zest and yoghurt, served with homemade oat biscuits…

I couldn’t go past their signature Duchess of Pork dish.  In true Miss Piggy fashion, I also ordered a side of the most amazing black pudding I’d ever tasted.  The Duchess was a delectable concoction of shredded and reassembled crispy pig’s jowl served with fried eggs, truffle sauce and a thick slab of sourdough toast…

Maree ordered the Prince of Wales, a warm cured salmon fillet plated on a bed of asparagus, watercress and spinach, and served with potato bread and poached eggs…

Dave ordered the King’s Woodcock (not the Full English as I mistakenly wrote earlier – my pedantic friend has rung to correct me). It came with scrambled eggs, chutney and lamb sausages, and a side order of homemade black pudding (Dave also said that I had to point out that the black pudding was made inhouse)…

Melbourne is a long way from Sydney, but we might need to fly down again just to try out a few more dishes from this wonderful menu!

. . . . .

Duchess of Spotswood
87 Hudsons Road
Spotswood   VIC  3015
Phone (03) 9391 6016

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Garlic Scapes

Posted in Food & Friends, Recipes, tagged , , , on November 11, 2011| 73 Comments »

Treasure!

That’s what I thought when the garlic scapes arrived.  Up until now, we’d only read about these – we’d never actually had any to play with.  Scapes are the “flower” stalks of garlic plants and interestingly, only certain varieties produce them.  I say “flower”, but in fact the head of the scape is a cluster of miniature cloves.

Our grower friends Ian and Diana recently cut the scapes off their garlic bulbs – a necessary process to ensure the plant doesn’t divert all its energy into flowering rather than forming cloves.  Di, bless her, arrived with a huge bag full for me…

A week later, Uncle Steve (Pete’s brother) dropped off another bag of scapes, although these were obviously from a different variety of garlic.  Whereas Diana’s were curled, these were straight…

As you can see, the heads are jam-packed with bulbils…

The entire scape is edible, although the tops were very garlicky indeed!  The stalks have a milder, but still very distinct, and very fresh, garlic flavour and aroma.

I didn’t want to waste this fabulous bounty, so I washed, chopped and froze about a third of the scapes…

Others were added to stirfries and stews for a gentle garlic kick.  The remainder were pulsed in the food processor with flaked almonds, salt and olive oil to create a delicious scape pistou – so called because unlike pesto, it doesn’t have any cheese added…

I’ve been stirring this garlicky paste into everything from pasta (and then I do add cheese) to fried rice.  It also makes a delicious dip spread over thin slices of sourdough.

I was right, wasn’t I?  It really was treasure.

PS. Have a look at what Linda’s doing with her homegrown scapes!

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