199/656 - Stir-fried cellophane noodles with prawns

It was Jules's turn to choose a recipe and true to form he went straight for the pasta and noodles. Once he had scanned the chapter and accepted there was not a second lasagne recipe in there, he chose this very noodle-y dish. Sometimes I wonder if I should be putting some energy into writing a recipe book dedicated to lasagne. There must be a million versions and I am sure Jules would be keen to road test every one!  

Jules helped with the preparation of this recipe, cutting the dry noodles into lengths and peeling shallots. When he had finished, he thanked me for cooking with him and ran outside to play, calling over his shoulder, "Thanks Mum you can finish it. Now blog about me please." It made me wonder if I could begin using my blog as an incentive for good behaviour, promising more airplay to the better behaved child. No doubt a terrible parenting tactic but food for thought nonetheless. 

We like prawns and we love noodles, and I am pleased to report that this dish was even tastier than expected. In addition to the tablespoon that went into the wok, I added a few drops of extra fish sauce to each of our bowls to further enhance the flavour. 

Another one down, one more until I reach my double century. For a person who tends to get sidetracked mid project/hobby/task (look something shiny!) I am quite amazed I have made it this far and still with a full head of steam. 

Onward and upward!

198/656 - Chocolate hedgehog

This was possibly the biscuit-iest chocolate hedgehog in history! 

I work in an office with fellow lovers of food and so I whipped up this little treat to take in and share for morning tea.  When I say whipped up, what I really mean is that at 8 o'clock at night I got started on this recipe, and in between breaking my biscuits into almost identically sized pieces (a bit OCD I know) and getting distracted with other things, it was near 10pm by the time I had finished. 

I did become a doubting Thomas mid-recipe and prepared a second cake tin, not convinced my mixture would squash into only one. As it happens the mixture did fit, and I squashed the life out of it with a flat bottomed container to ensure it would not dissolve into a crumbly mess when it was cut. 

The squashing worked; the hedgehog was lovely and not too chocolatey and did not fall apart at all. The icing was the best bit, spiked with rum and the perfect soft finish to a very solid and crisp base.  

The only negative to this hedgehog was the realisation that there are now only two chocolate recipes left to make. 

Devastating. 

197/656 - Chinese-style glazed livers

This week, as a special treat, I handed my Stephanie* over to Henry and asked if he would like to select a liver recipe for me to make. I am aware of how unconventional this sounds and I do get pleasure from the fact that my son can be engaged in this very unusual way. Henry was very excited and took his task quite seriously. Like his mother he is a very decisive decision maker and it took only a matter of minutes before he selected these Chinese-style glazed livers. 

It is fairly safe to say I would not have thought of cooking this recipe IN A MILLION YEARS had I not taken this challenge. Honestly, chicken livers served on toothpicks? Sounds hideous. 

For this recipe I had to make a special dash to Victoria Street to pick up some black rice vinegar and dark soy. While I was at my favourite little grocer I was absolutely thrilled to discover some other gems in stock including quail eggs, shimeji mushrooms and mooncakes. Yes it is mooncake time! I was so excited I bought four of them. If anybody is looking for a recommendation, the lotus paste variety with salted egg yolks are the best. But I digress. 

I made these glazed livers today and they were so absolutely fabulous that Henry, Jules and I polished off the entire half kilo in less than 10 minutes. I could not believe my ears when Jules asked if we could leave the last two so he could have a special pasta dinner with liver on top! 

I can not believe I am saying this, but I will definitely be making these again. Amazing. 

*My Stephanie being of course the orange bible that is The Cook's Companion. When you cook with it as often as I do it becomes simply "My Stephanie", as in "Where on earth have I put my Stephanie?" or "I am a bit worried that my Stephanie will fall apart before I complete this challenge"... 

Jules' very special pasta dinner

196/656 - Pork rillettes

I had a health check at work the other day and my cholesterol was up. Not a lot, but I was shocked because I have always passed these mini health checks with flying colours. The nurse explained that I could be experiencing a temporary spike, and asked if I had been eating any particularly fatty foods of late. At this point my worry began to fade. In my mind I was replaying a wonderful country terrine, our newly discovered cheesy toast with egg yolk and truffle oil snack and of course these wonderful pork rillettes.

Rillettes are made by salting pork belly and then cooking it slowly in the oven until it is swimming in fat. The cooked pork is shredded and the lovely liquid fat is poured back over the top of the meat. I actually couldn't bring myself to tip all of the fat back in and gave the remainder to our very lucky (and very skinny) dog.  

The finished product can be stored for quite some time...unless it is made in our house! We loved it so much we ate it for dinner two nights running, alongside piles of vegetables and left over caramelised onions. I am not sure rillettes are supposed to be eaten in this way but I certainly had a very happy family at the dinner table. 

194&195/656 - Stephanie's famous steak sandwich with caramelised onions

It was Fathers Day last Sunday and Trev was treated to...well absolutely nothing actually because I was sick and didn't have the energy to cook. To make up for my lack of effort on his big day, I decided to move Fathers Day back a week and out came Stephanie's famous steak sandwich for dinner last night.

I can not imagine another version of a steak sandwich that would a) take this long to make, or b) be this amazingly good! There were actually three recipes in one here, but as I have already made the fast red-wine sauce I could only claim two recipes in this post. 

The caramelised onions were cooked in oil with a bay leaf and rosemary, and ended up brown, sweet and frightfully good. There are still some in the fridge and I have already conjured up a number of different ways I would like to eat them in the coming days. I can already vouch for caramelised onions on toast!

The red wine sauce was lovely again this time, and was even more amazing with the addition of some just cooked buttery mushrooms. I made it with Mornington Peninsula Shiraz, possibly a little ritzy for a sauce but it tasted great so was worth the decadence.  

The final assembly included;

• home-made bread, grilled on one side and then oiled and grilled on the other side. Crunchy, lovely and worth the extra effort
• cooked chopped spinach, squeezed to within an inch of its life
• two pieces of scotch fillet steak, oiled, seasoned and cooked medium rare 
• a large handful of caramelised onion. This stuff is addictive!
• red wine sauce and buttery mushrooms 

Guilt for being sick on Fathers Day? Gone. 

193/656 - Spinach and ricotta gnocchi

I had plans to entertain a vegetarian friend for lunch last weekend and so spent the evening prior scanning the Cook's Companion to see what I could find that was both meat free and suitable for lunch.

Spinach and ricotta gnocchi sounded like a good, safe choice but I did wonder if it would be special enough to serve to my guests. I did not pre-read the recipe (surprise, surprise!) and so left it waaaay too late to drain the ricotta and of course did not have time to leave my mixture in the fridge overnight. I did manage to put it into the fridge for an hour or so which seemed to firm it up a little but of course it was still too wet to roll. 

I took a huge risk and added enough flour to the mix so that I could roll it into little gnocchi shapes. Because I doubled the recipe I swear it felt like the never-ending gnocchi. Embarrassingly my guests arrived and I was still covered in flour and ricotta, so Trev amused everybody with drinks and a tour of the house (and garden, and chook shed...) while I got myself sorted.

The gnocchi was nice of course, but what was truly spectacular was the burnt butter and sage sauce. Oh. My. Goodness. Crispy little sage leaves in a puddle of nutty burnt butter. If that's not enough to make you go weak I don't know what is.   

If you could not be bothered making this gnocchi (although I would recommend giving it a go), do yourself a favour and at least make the sauce. And serve it on anything you like. It's bound to make it taste amazing. 

Stats and progress to date

 

Sometimes it's nice to stop in the middle of a project, stand back a little with your thumb in the air and check how things are travelling. 

I am a lover of stats and I like to share this love with others. Ad nauseam. So instead of another cooking adventure, today I share with you my progress...stats style! 

To date I have... 

• ...not yet broken the back of the basics chapter, with only 6 of 22 recipes completed
• ...completely cooked my way through 2 chapters out of 114 (rabbit and bread, in that order!)
• ...cooked at least one recipe from 78 of these 114 chapters 
• ...cooked 6 of the 15 recipes that have the word "simple" or simplest" in the title
• ...13 chapters that are almost complete, with only 1 recipe left to make
• ...made 11 of the 23 beautiful sweet cakes. Loving that there are still 12 to bake!
• ...not yet repeated 3 of the 9 recipes that I had already cooked pre-challenge. I can't believe I had only cooked 9 recipes, what a wasted book it was back then.
• ...cooked, enjoyed and blogged about 193 out of 656 recipes (I still have one sneaky recipe from last weekend that has not yet been written about!)

So there it is, boring but true. I have no idea if these stats are interesting to anybody other than myself but on the upside, writing this kept me amused and out of trouble for at least 30 minutes.

192/656 - Honey cheesecake

Oh deary me, I could get very, very fat just from the mere fact that I am now aware of the existence of this recipe. 

Honey cheesecake sounds innocent enough. But put together a light and fluffy body, a sweet sugar cinnamon topping and a lovely home-made shortcrust pastry and you have a dessert that can (and did) disappear in record time. 

There was a moment in time, believe it or not, that I did not think I would have a cheesecake to put on the table! This recipe was supposed to contain full cream cottage cheese and I went on a last minute dash for ingredients just prior to cooking. This of course meant that my choice of cheese was confined to the selection available at my local. I could not believe my eyes when I realised that the 8 different brands of cottage cheese on the shelf were ALL low fat! Worried that I was dooming my cheesecake before the pastry had even been blind baked, I nervously picked up the creamiest looking one and hoped for the best. 

Things did not get better when I combined the ingredients for the filling. The result looked more like churned milk than the smooth cream Stephanie described. A little bit of cursing may have followed this step. Muttered under my breath and out of the earshot of children, but there were definitely bad, worried words. 

I gingerly sprinkled my cinnamon sugar mix over the top of the wobbling liquid and put it in the oven hoping for the best. I had a fair idea the filling would get there in the end when I felt the edges beginning to firm up, but was aware that this was likely to take much longer than the allotted 30 minutes. Some foil over the top prevented my lovely pastry from burning to a crisp while I patiently waited for my soup to turn into a cheesecake.  

Success! The cheesecake firmed up, although it did swell rather alarmingly on one side. Thankfully it flattened out before I took it to the table, and the result was so lovely and light I am wondering if the low fat cottage cheese may have been a blessing in disguise!  

191/656 - Panzanella

Bread in salad. I will admit I needed convincing.  

It is always an interesting experiment, testing out an unfamiliar recipe when catering for guests. It is even more interesting when you do not necessarily have faith it will work!

The first step to this salad was to break the bread apart and sprinkle it with some water. I confess I did not actually do this. As I was chopping the tomatoes I realised they had such an incredible amount of juice I decided to use this to soften my bread instead. 

Not only was the bread absolutely fabulous in this salad, but it also created a really interesting texture; soft sponges filled with lovely juices, working beautifully alongside the crunchy bits. I briefly considered halving the amount of olive oil in the dressing but as I tentatively poured, I realised that as usual Stephanie is a lady who knows what she is talking about. It really was quite a big salad and of course there was all that lovely bread in there waiting to be doused! 

Everybody loved the salad and amusingly the bread was my favourite element! That and the basil. Loved the basil. 

190/656 - Simple country terrine

Second out of the blocks for my requested recipes was the simple country terrine. Aptly named, this really was so very easy to put together. 

Henry has been obsessed with the liver chapter in this book for some time now. I have been hearing a lot of, "When will you be buying some liver Mum?" and, "Which liver recipe are you going to do first mum?" Needless to say Henry was THRILLED to learn that the terrine was to have a generous handful of chicken livers thrown in. So the new question last week was, "Are you sure we will be able to TASTE the liver in there Mum?" I know I say it a lot, but I am so proud of my gastronomically adventurous children! At least I can be fairly sure they won't be taking their girlfriends on a first date to Maccas.  

I had the choice between chicken and rabbit to put in this carnivores dream of a terrine (along with the chicken livers and pork belly) and I could not resist choosing rabbit, knowing the flavour would be so much richer.  Once the liver had been cooked (until it had just stiffened, who knew that was the gauge for nicely cooked liver?) and the onions stewed, I basically had to stuff everything together in my Nan's gorgeous terrine press. 

With piles of fatty, yummy meat inside, and a few other bits of course, the terrine was then baked in the oven in a dangerous little water bath*. Then it was on with the specially designed clamp and into the fridge for a night of cooling. 

How many ways can one eat a terrine? As a tasty (meaty) entrée, spread on a pizza or chopped up through a garden salad. You name it, I tried it. Every one was a winner, made especially wonderful due to the amazing taste of the liver! I am not sure if the success of this terrine will satisfy Henry's yearning for offal, or spark a flurry of new requests. 

Only time will tell.  

*Not dangerous to most but I fear it's only a matter of time before one of these ends up all over my legs on its way out of the oven. Creative I am, co-ordinated I am not.

This terrine press was made for my grandmother by a friend 

who worked in a foundry. We have never seen another one like it, and it has 

become one of those special heirlooms now treasured by the cooks in my family.

189/656 - Springtime pea custards

This week I threw out a challenge, asking for suggestions as to which Stephanie recipe I should tackle next. The challenge was taken up by the lovely Jen from Off Her Block and so in very unorthodox Sunday night fashion I was busy making pea custards to go with tonight's dinner. 

Chervil was one of the ingredients required for this recipe, and so I went on a quest to see if any of my lovely local shops might have some. I knew I was in trouble when I was in my local hip and funky organic store, and the shop assistant actually thought I had asked if she stocked gerbils. Indeed. In the end I gave up and used parsley instead. 

I would have loved to post a picture of my gorgeous turned out little green custard, nestled between my rabbit and my vegetables. But alas each custard broke down the middle as I turned it out. It seems I greased the sides of the dishes very well but neglected the bottoms, to which my little custards clung for dear life as they were hung upside down and jiggled. Gently at first, and then more vigorously. And we will not even discuss my attempt at beurre blanc. Let's just say I will be posting a much more successful version of that when I am not in ridiculous Sunday night rush mode.

On the upside, the pea custards were fabulous and I enjoyed mine with both my rabbit and my steamed vegetables. I absolutely loved the creamy texture (double-sieved, of course it was creamy!) and nobody in my little family cared that they dropped on to the plates in two pieces. 

Jen made a second request this week which was the country terrine. This was also created in my kitchen today and is presently resting in the fridge waiting for its big unveiling tomorrow night. Fingers crossed it comes out in one piece. 

188/656 - Caramelised carrot

As mentioned in my last post it was a pizza kind of weekend for us.* I thought I would go out on a limb and whip up some caramelised carrot which may sound weird, but I added some chorizo to the equation which I am confident turned what could have been a slightly off the wall concept into a very acceptable pizza topping. 

Stephanie recommended mortadella sausage as an optional extra to the caramelised carrots, and I would have complied had I been inclined to leave the house. But I was feeling very, very lazy and we are a chorizo kind of family and rarely run out of the stuff, so chorizo it was. I was very happy with the outcome and it seems my guests were too! Only one pizza sitting was required to polish this lot off. 

Carrots on pizza. What on earth will I get away with next? 

*I guess I am now "outed" as to how long it takes me to post my achievements!  Although I assume people are not too surprised to hear that most of my cooking actually occurs on weekends...

187/656 - Sweet and sour peppers

There are seven peppers in this recipe and I must admit I was tempted to halve this quantity. The only thing that stopped me was Stephanie's footnote that assured me the cooked peppers would last for 3-4 days in the fridge. I was very hopeful that we would figure out enough ways to use them in that time before they became scraps for the chooks. 

What I did not expect was how good these would be on top of a pizza! We entertained guests on both Saturday and Sunday night and unfortunately I was lacking the energy reserves required to pull off something fancy in the dinner stakes. So pizza it was, and this particular topping was very popular and was polished off quite early into the second pizza sitting. 

The recipe advises to adjust with more balsamic, sugar or salt once the cooking is complete and I found I needed to add quite a few splashes of extra balsamic to mine as the cooked peppers were very, very sweet. 

I would definitely recommend this for a pizza topping or simply as a lovely little side dish. And I guarantee they will not last 3-4 days, especially if you have friends over for pizza. 

186/656 - Twice-cooked zucchini soufflés

We have friends with whom we share a very special bond and in many ways they feel like an extended part of our little family. Given that we are too busy with our respective families to catch up on Christmas day, we decided to create a special day in the middle of the year that is completely focussed on our merged family of eight. It is not about presents (although amusingly we all spent the day wishing one another Merry Christmas!) but is definitely all about eating, laughing and bonding as only a made up family can. 

Zucchini soufflés were just one of my contributions to the table at this years celebration. I was able to perform the first cooking at home the night before which meant all I had to do on the day was douse my little puffy friends in cream and throw them back in the oven for a second cooking. A perfect dish that can be pre-prepared and so easily heated to perfection just as you need them! 

These were a winner for three reasons; They tasted creamy and wonderful, were a snap to make, and of course I just loved announcing the arrival of a twice-cooked soufflé because there is nothing better than a dish that impresses before it even hits the table. 

185/656 - Middle Eastern cauliflower fritters

I know I said I rarely deep fry...yet here we are again!

I had to laugh at the fact that the recipe for these fritters was very, very short and yet somehow I managed to take FOREVER to make these! I was feeling rather lazy and so I thermomixed, rather than grated the cauliflower. In my defence I doubled the recipe and so the thought of manually grating loads of cauliflower was way too much for me given that this was yet another late night cooking session. 

It's always difficult getting the amounts right for recipes such as these. I underestimated the size of my vegetables and used three heads of cauliflower instead of two, which turned out to be quite some way from being correct. In the end I left a pile of it out (Muff's soup anybody?) and added an additional egg to help bind my mixture together. When rolling the fritters I found there was a tricky little balance between a ball that was too wet, and one that was too dry and falling apart.  

Once my balls were rolled (not too wet, not too dry!) I decided they needed some time in the fridge so that I could be confident they would not break apart when fried. I left them in overnight and was thrilled to find that they were quite firm and fried perfectly the next day. As well as being a fabulously yummy little snack that was enjoyed by adults and children alike, I discovered they were also wonderful spread on hot toast.  

Another fabulous success but maybe the last of the fried food for just a little while. 

184/656 - Chocolate amaretti puddings

Now here's a recipe I don't think I will be doing again. I am still unsure if there was an error in the list of ingredients or if the problem was a user error given that I; a) had Trev assisting me (no offence Trev. It's just that too many cooks...) and b) was making these puddings quite late at night. 

To be fair, the end result was very yummy and I certainly did not hear any complaints from the dining party. I served these with Madagascan vanilla bean ice cream and the room went very quiet as dessert was consumed. 

The execution of this recipe was what left me unconvinced. One of the steps was to soak crumbled amaretti biscuits in milk and cream. The resulting mixture was very, very wet and not at all what I expected. It was the final step of folding the whipped egg whites through the chocolate mixture that convinced me there was something very wrong. How on earth do you fold egg whites through liquid? 

I continued to crumble amaretti biscuits into my chocolate mixture until I think I may have quadrupled the suggested amount, but at least ended up with a much thicker mixture that was able to accept the egg whites without killing the air in them completely.  

The finished puddings were very small and flat and I was even more concerned about this. Luckily I had made two extra puddings and so Trev and I fell on our swords and entered the uncharted area that was the pudding taste test.  

The puddings were actually really lovely, with a nice little bitter kick from the amaretti biscuits. Not surprising really given how many I added to my mixture! There was also a toffee base under the chocolate layer which  made the puddings quite interesting to eat.  

I was flicking through my friend's rainbow version of this book yesterday hoping to get an answer to the mystery of my little flat puddings as I had read that there were some recipe adjustments made in the later version. To my surprise I could not find it listed in there at all. 

Happy to chalk this one up as one of life's little cooking mysteries then. 

183/656 - Quail with dried figs and olives

Number two recipe for my favourite little bird! 

There were a couple of cheats going on in the execution of this recipe. First of all I knew Trev was going to be away when I made this and so I decided to halve the quantities and cook only two quail. The bigger cheat though was that I did not soak my dried figs in wine overnight, but instead used pre-marinated baby figs (which was a decadent and wonderful choice by the way!). 

I absolutely love working with little quail. It reminds me a lot of buying baby clothes for the first time and being fascinated by the impossibly small size of every piece. Similarly I love the miniature little legs and wings on quail, being so used to working with sturdy chickens with legs that fit in the palm of your hand rather than resting snugly on two fingers. 

This was a very simple recipe but with really gorgeous flavours. Although I did not need to pre-soak my figs I certainly still added the wine to the recipe. The resulting sauce was rich but not overly so. Cooking the quail in the sauce on the stove top and then in the oven meant that the flavours completely permeated the birds and so every bite of meat was nothing short of glorious.   

And what is it about me and parsley? As per usual I had a little pile of parsley chopped but forgot to scatter it over the top of the dish until after we had started to eat. We added it late (better than never!) and it was indeed a positive addition to this already very tasty meal.  

When cleaning the plates I noticed amongst the pile of ravaged bones a weeny little wishbone that was just crying out to be washed and wished upon. 

The boys made their respective wishes while clutching this fragile little bone, and when they pulled, the top broke off completely and flew across the room. We decided this meant that both of their wishes would come true. One of the few times in life when there was no winner and no loser. 

How very nice.  

182/656 - Italian black olive paste

I think that maybe Stephanie was ahead of her time when she wrote this book, correctly predicting the delight that whip-up concoctions such as this would provide to people in this modern era of instant gratification. 

Prior to making this paste I had baked a loaf of bread which, having made so many, I can now just about do with my eyes closed. On this occasion however I might have done well to open them just a little bit because my gorgeous, fluffy, seed-dotted loaf came out of the oven looking spectacular, but was in fact disastrously devoid of salt.

For those who have not had the misfortune of eating saltless bread, I have only one thing to say. Don't do it! Bland, bland, bland, even in the case of my gorgeous signature loaf which is packed with seeds and herbs. The shimmering silver lining to this little black tasteless cloud was gorgeously salty Italian black olive paste! Once the disastrous bread had been toasted and slathered with this tasty purple paste my little accident was rescued and my new favourite snack was born. 

As well as being great on toast, this would also be wonderful served on a cheese platter or atop a lovely bowl of pasta. 

Bellissimo indeed.

181/656 - Lemon tart

Dead simple to prepare + impressive looking result = FABULOUS recipe! 

Of course I made the pastry for this tart (shortcrust is now my thing!) but if packet pastry were to be used, this is honestly such a fast recipe you could whip it up in between entrée and main and it would be baked and ready for dessert. 

I learned a very helpful pastry tip while making this. I decided to make a double batch of shortcrust on this day, with one lot to be put in the freezer ready for another day (and possibly also to be used as a prop for a photo shoot but that's another story). I split the pastry in half and was attempting to roll it out and get perfect coverage over my flan tin, and as usual I couldn't quite get the shape right and was pulling bits from here and there to even things up. Then I had the idea to add in a small handful of pastry from the second batch. 

Perfect! The pastry rolled out slightly too big and I was able to trim it and put the off cuts back from whence they came. For the life of me I can't work out why I have never thought of doing that before.  The added bonus of course being that I will always be left with a spare batch of pastry in the freezer.  

I wasn't sure if the lemons I used were big enough and so I added an extra two ice cubes of juice and a small handful of extra zest (from my pre-zested frozen stash!). I was so glad I did, we love a tart tart in my house and this definitely delivered. 

I did not sprinkle my lovely tart with icing sugar, worried it would detract from the wonderful zing. I did, however serve this with a good dollop of double cream. 

Wow. 

Some extra filling baked in a mini muffin tin is a
great way to have a taste of the finished product
without cutting the tart!

180/656 - Sautéd silverbeet with olive oil, pine nuts and currants

This recipe is a perfect example of what The Cook's Companion is all about. 

A simple stir fry of silverbeet, pine nuts and currants and a basic vegetable is turned into a very tasty side dish. We ate this as a part of a simple mid-week meal with sausages and mash. A definite upgrade on the three veg that might have accompanied our meal otherwise.

Something to watch is that after a bit of a stint in the fridge I found the currants had grown some decent flavour legs and had increased the overall sweetness a bit too much for my liking. Of course flavour is a very personal thing and I was overwhelmingly outvoted when I mentioned this to my family who were loving the unexpected sugar hit! On the day it was made however the balance was perfect.

For anybody with fussy children who won't eat their greens, I can highly recommend this as a great way of sweetening them up! Just don't forget to plan a day or so ahead to let the currants do their thing. 

179/656 - Pine nut and meat pastries

I love cooking and it is a rare thing to hear me complain about a cooking process, no matter how time consuming or complicated it may be. But I must confess I have a particularly negative attitude when it comes to working with filo.

Filo has never been my friend. I am either busy ripping the sheets in half (not on purpose), or I get distracted while working and forget to cover it, letting piles go dry on the bench. My other filo party trick is to pull out a frozen pack of this evil pastry, and then unfold the sheets before they are ready, ripping the entire packs worth down the middle. And usually not even in a straight line. I realise that with more care I could avoid these issues. I am generally a very careful person, but for whatever reason filo continues to be my nemesis.   

Refusing to be beaten by a packet of paper thin pastry, I outsmarted my filo demons and made sure I had double the required quantity on hand before making this recipe. As I rolled up my little meaty triangles I smiled to myself each time I ripped a filo sheet in half, calmly selecting a new sheet from the massive pile I had on hand. Jules my little pastry monster was happy to assist with the digestive disposal of some of my accidents, and the happy chickens ended up with the rest. 

This cooking challenge will see me making shortcrust, lard and puff pastry but thankfully not filo. No doubt the challenge will throw up a few hurdles along the way but I am not sure I would have made it over that one unscathed. 

178/656 - Gazpacho

I realise tomatoes are technically no longer in season, but the beautiful red truss tomatoes I bought for this recipe looked so gorgeous I could not go past them! 

Even though it is winter and the weather is not anywhere near warm, my family have all enjoyed this fresh, vibrant cold soup. It has been such a lovely change from the heavy food we have been eating lately. One batch provided us with several nights of healthy entrée, made even more so because the ingredients have remained lovely and raw. 

As well as enjoying the taste, our colds (but probably not our friends) have been loving the amount of raw garlic this soup has had us consume this week. In the words of Lisa Simpson, "I made enough gazpacho for all!" 

177/656 - Patafla from Provence

Patafla from Provence (try saying that quickly three times!) is a lovely little picnic basket filler made by slicing a baguette in two, pulling out the insides, mixing it with all sorts of brightly coloured bits and then trying to stuff it all back in!  

I realise the job of stuffing would have been much simpler had I purchased a baguette of decent width (or indeed made it myself!) however sometimes we just need to work with what we have. 

Once full, the two pieces were put back together and bound tightly with cling film.  

Of course I took pictures before I wrapped mine up, knowing that it was entirely possible I would have nothing decent to photograph at the other end if it fell apart on opening!

The patafla is supposed to be refrigerated overnight, however for various reasons mine remained in the fridge, unloved and uncut for two nights. I don't think the extra night did it too much harm but there was definitely an extra sogginess to the bread which was probably not ideal. 

It was very edible and incredibly tasty but I will definitely stick to the recipe and make sure it is eaten the day after wrapping if I make this again. 

176/656 - Sweet marjoram and mozzarella fritters

Talk about a heart attack waiting to happen! 

Deep frying little balls of cheese is not something I would do on a regular basis, but my oh my what a decadent beer snack these turned out to be. The boys descended like a little pack of vultures on the finished product, each letting out a contented sigh after their first bite. Their excitement may well have been based on the fact that I never usually deep fry anything, however these fritters were so good I do believe they were worthy of said happy noises.

Crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside, I will be making these fritters again for both party snacks and also as straight out bribes for my children when I have some particularly dirty jobs that need doing around the house. 

175/656 - Pea shoots with crab meat

Fried pea shoots. Definitely not a concept I would have thought of on my own.    

I found this little recipe in the pea chapter and was very keen to see what fried pea shoots tasted like, but was also interested in the gorgeous sounding crab concoction that was to be served on top.  

The fried shoots were great, the heat really bringing out their lovely flavour. And the crab...oh the crab. I think my eyeballs may have rolled back into my head just a little bit as I was eating this. The flavour was amazing with a capital A, and if anybody out there is planning to make this dish I have a very important amendment to make to this recipe. White pepper is not optional. If you have any on hand, don't even consider leaving it out.  

I promise you won't regret it.  

174/656 - Spicy hazelnut fingers

It was my sister's birthday last week. My sister is one of those people who not only remembers the birthday of every person she has ever met, but she also backs this up with well thought out presents and a birthday card that has been obviously hand-picked.   

I would like to say this attention to birthdays and special occasions runs in the family but sadly this is not the case.  I have been known to let the birthdays of my children sail by present-less when they were too small to know the difference (I can practically hear the gasps from new mothers), and regularly get caught out missing the birthdays of people that are close to me (again, sorry Emily). Luckily my friends and family are aware that this is entirely due to my drifting brain and nothing at all to do with how much I actually love them. Receiving a text from my brother reading, "Happy birthday to me" is now something of an expected event come August.  

So this year I made sure I was on the ball for my sister's birthday. We went to see Annie (fifth row from the front!) and ate a wonderful meal together complete with our mum for company and pink champagne to make it a perfect girls night out. The only problem with my plan was that this wonderful evening occurred four weeks before Jane's actual birthday. 

Hence this recipe! I decided that since I had delivered on a well thought out (although very early) birthday present, it was only fitting that my supplementary gift should be lovingly hand-made. Of course now I am a week late given the drawn out saga that was my candied lemon rind, but I know my efforts will be well received once Jane takes a bite of these glorious biscuits.  

I didn't use an icing piper to shape these little fingers as my mixture turned out a bit thicker than expected and I was able to simply roll the mixture into little sausages. The thick mixture was due to my double-dipped lemon rind that was so incredibly hard it would have taken me all day to chop it finely with a knife. Enter the thermomix and say hello to chopped, but also slightly ground candied rind.

Yummy home-made biscuits and a blog post dedicated to my lovely sister; I think I may have redeemed myself in the birthday stakes even if I am a week late. 

173/656 - Candied peel

I have a love/hate relationship with lemons. 

I love everything about the way lemons taste. I love their versatility and of course I love the ridiculous amount of ways in which lemons can enhance a dish. What I don't like about lemons is that I often have them given to me in large quantities and, whilst I do use a good number of them, the last handful always seem to go off and I am left pulling dusty green balls from the bottom of my crisper. Never a pleasant experience. 

My gorgeous friend Emily, who has an enormous lemon tree of which I am extremely envious, bestowed upon me a bulging bag of fruit and I made a vow to put every last lemon to good use. So last weekend I propped myself at the bench and juiced, zested and candied until I was spent. I now have a freezer stuffed with frozen blocks of juice and pre-grated zest and am feeling mighty organised and ever so pleased that no lemon was wasted in the process. 

The candied lemons were on the stove at the same time as my lovely gumbo, and so being slightly distracted and a bit dizzy due to hunger (see previous post) I think I took them off the heat a bit too soon.  After a day or two on the rack they had dried nicely but were nowhere near as sweet as I had hoped. Luckily I had kept the lemony sugar syrup they were cooked in (it was great on pancakes too!) and used it to give my rind a lovely, sugary second dip. 

A few days in the dehydrator later and my candied rind is finally dried, very sweet and ready to be baked inside something amazing.