Milo Biscuits

Thanks Mum!

Ingredients

• 125g butter
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
  
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cup self-raising flour (I used whole-meal and it worked well)
  
• 1/2 cup milo

First I beat the butter with the sugar and vanilla, then add the egg once it were mixed. Then I added the sifted flour and milo. I made them into balls and flattened them with a fork on a baking tray. They were cooked for 15 mins at 180C.

Chile Con Queso

My favourite Mexican dip!

Chile Con Queso

Ingredients

• 2 tubs cream cheese
• 1 red onion
• 4 chilies, red or green
• 1 tin tomatoes

I sliced up the onion and chilies and placed them in a saucepan with the tinned tomatoes, and cooked until warm. I then added the cream cheese and stirred until it had kind of melted through. I kept it on the heat until all the large pieces of cream cheese were mixed in. It can be served either hot or cold, this is a pretty large portion and could be kept in the fridge for about 3 days. Eat with corn chips!! So easy and delicious!

Vegan comfort

Somehow this blog has been vegetarian so far - I haven't even cooked meat at home for over a month. This takes it even further with it being my first true vegan dish. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan but I enjoy cooking in this way, as I'm not actually very good at cooking meat! This is a wonderful lentil recipe from Smitten Kitchen which falls into the vegan and comfort food categories. Om nom nom. It was also relatively easy to prepare - just make sure you leave enough time to cook the lentils... I didn't and we ended up eating them a little before their prime. But it still turned out pretty well I'd say!

Stewed lentils with tomatoes

2 teaspoons olive oil
2 cups large-diced yellow onions (2 onions)
2 cups large-diced carrots (1 really big carrot!)
1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
1 800g can whole plum tomatoes
1 cup French green lentils (400g)
2 cups vegetable stock
2 teaspoons mild curry powder
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

I fried the onions and carrots in olive oil until the onions started to brown, then added the garlic and cooked for a further minute. I then added the tomatoes, lentils, stock, curry powder, thyme, salt and pepper and cooked for about 40 minutes - until the lentils were tender and nice. I then added the vinegar and served.

I would probably advise maybe 3/4 tablespoon of vinegar in future as it was a little overpowering.

Banana bread/cake

Our local greengrocer was having a huge sale on bananas about a month ago... While I don't actually like fresh bananas I totally couldn't pass up this offer for the prospects of cake baking! I froze all the bananas as soon as I got home and have been using them gradually for baking... which is fun when you already have all the ingredients and don't have to go out!

I found a relatively simple recipe on Smitten Kitchen and reproduced it using what ingredients we had - for instance, I ground my own cloves then passed them through a sieve before baking. We also had no nutmeg so I added a little more cinnamon instead.

Ingredients:
5 small ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted salted butter
3/4 to 1 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of ground cloves
1 1/2 cup of flour

First I defrosted and smashed the bananas, then mixed them in with the melted butter. I added the brown sugar, beaten egg, vanilla essence, cinnamon and ground cloves, and mixed around with a wooden spoon. I then sifted the baking powder on top of this mix and stirred it in. The flour went in last and I stirred it until it was a relatively thick consistency and all the ingredients were uniformly distributed. I greased the edges of a bread tin (20cm x 10cm - but smaller might be better in future) and put the mix in, spreading it out as evenly as possible. I then baked at 175C for 45mins - or until a tester comes out clean - and turned out onto a plate.

Best served buttered!

French toast mod. #1

I love french toast. Absolutely love it. When I was little we used to have french toast sandwiches with cheese in the middle and this is a kind of modification to that.


Ingredients for 1 sandwich:
2 slices of fresh bread
1 teaspoon of butter/margarine
1 teaspoon of grated Gruyere cheese
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 egg
1/8 cup milk
Pepper and salt to taste

First I whisked the egg and milk together until fully combined, then chop the thyme and mix with the cheese. Add a little salt and pepper to this if you like. Next I wet the bread all over with the egg mix like with normal french toast. I melted the butter on the pan and then put the
first slice of bread on. I covered this with the thyme and cheese then put the other slice on top. Once the bottom was sufficiently cooked, I flipped the sandwich over and cooked the other side until also crispy. And then I ate it in record time.

Vegetarian dinner with my folks!

Tonight Mum, Dad and my little brother came over for dinner! I don't often cook for more than 2-3 people, but it turned out pretty well and I have leftovers for work which is always a perk! I have been cooking vegetarian a lot lately, so I thought I'd continue by making a pumpkin soup and onion tart. I got the recipes from smitten kitchen again... waiting until I get some verjuice before I continue on with Maggie Beer's book as almost everything in that book requires verjuice. Anyway, onto the recipes!

Butternut Pumpkin Soup:
Made about 6 portions...

Ingredients:
125g butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 large garlic cloves, chopped
1L chicken stock (animal content free)
1kg butternut pumpkin
1 teaspoons minced fresh thyme
1 teaspoons minced fresh sage
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 cup cream

First I prepped the pumpkin, garlic and onion by cutting the pumpkin into small pieces, and dicing the onion and garlic. Next I melted the butter in a heavy based saucepan, and fried the onion and garlic until they were clear. I then added all the stock, pumpkin, and herbs, and brought the mixture to the boil and simmered on a medium heat until the pumpkin was nice and tender. Once the pumpkin was cooked I turned off the heat and took the pieces of pumpkin out and blended them until smooth, which could then be added back to the stock. After returning the pureed pumpkin, I whisked the soup until it had thickened sufficiently, then added the cream. And it's done! I served it with little bread rolls with Gruyere cheese melted on top AND the following onion tart - which was probably my favourite part of the meal!

Onion Tart:
Makes 1 tart (1 sheet of frozen puff pastry)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon mustard
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
500g onions
1 sheet puff pastry
1/3 cup shaved Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 190C.
So I got my lovely boy to slice the onion for me (as my eyes are way too sensitive) and kept it aside ready for frying. I added the olive oil to the frying pan and, once hot, added the fennel seeds and sauteed for just less than 1 minute. I then added the onion and cooked until the onion started to caramelise - YUM. While the onion was cooking I spread a thin layer of the mustard over the pastry. Once the onion was done I put it over the mustard and covered with the Parmesan. Now into the oven for about 15-20 minutes or until the puff pastry looks nice and golden. Oh man, we have extra onion cut and I am totally making this again tomorrow night!

STRAWBERRY JAM

I've never made jam before and I kinda winged it this time too. I guess the recipe was adapted from Maggie's Harvest, which describes an apricot jam. Well I didn't have kilos of apricots, I had a kilo of strawberries though!

Ingredients:
1kg over-ripe strawberries
150ml water
300g caster sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

I cooked the strawberries in the water for about 10mins until all the strawberries were sufficiently mashed up. I then added the lemon juice and sugar gradually and stirred until it was dissolved. I cooked this for about 40mins total, at first on a high temperature, then on a low temperature. Basically you just want it to be as viscous as possible.



While the jam was cooking I sterilized the jar I wanted to use (i.e. the only jar in our household not filled with random spices.) Just for your info, I did this by washing the jar in warm soapy water, rinsing, then putting it in the oven at 120C for at least 15mins.

I put the jam into the jar as soon as it came out of the oven... so it was super hot. I'm not sure if that was a good idea, but I wanted it to be as sterile as possible. To cool it down you can run a closed bottle under cold tap water. I'll just wait then pop it into the fridge before bed