561/1038 - Chestnut soup

It has been almost a year since my youngest and I started doing our weekly shop at the Queen Victoria Market. We still adore our special morning together and still have our firm favourites when it comes to stall holders. We buy almost all of our fruit from Shane's Fruit and a couple of weeks ago he had the most beautiful looking chestnuts that I just could not resist. 

Chestnuts have such a wonderfully gentle flavour and I am sure I would eat them more often if it were not for the s-l-o-w peeling process! Chestnuts are the only nut which require cooking before being edible and so there is no getting away from some form of preparation. In the past I have always enjoyed them roasted and so this is the first time I have boiled and peeled half a kilo in one sitting. Not a fun prospect! 

I have a Thermomix on my bench which is largely used for grinding, blending and making dough. It is very rarely used to cook a meal but when making a soup that is to be blended, it just makes sense to dirty only one appliance! I will admit to omitting the sieving step when making this soup, being very happy with the texture the Thermomix created. 

I loved that my husband all but turned his nose up when I told him what I had made because I knew he would absolutely adore the taste. He did. 

Even better than the soup was pairing it with freshly baked home made bread which had been painted with olive oil and fried in a pan. 

Life is good. Fattening but good x

560/1038 - Imam Bayildi

My boys are pretty amazing with what they will eat. They have happily sat through dégustation menus that would make most adults baulk. Duck & calf tongues, liver on a stick, sea urchins,  air-dried emu, squid ink congee; they have devoured it all. 

Of course there are small gaps in their gastronomic repertoire. One of the favourite memories I have is of my youngest dining at Brae (brilliant, brilliant meal) and eating his way through their incredibly diverse and challenging dégustation. Until he got to the dessert where he ate his way around the berries. Seriously. Raw kangaroo not a problem at all. Berries? No thanks. My children are definitely not predictable! 

Eggplant continues to be a vegetable on the "not loving it so much" list and as such I put this meal together with some trepidation. In order to create a meal with balance (read: pairing it with something they would definitely eat) I decided to cook up some beef mince with capsicum and a pre-packaged sauce that one of the boys had chosen when we visited Casa Iberica on a recent Magical Mystery Tour*.  

The dinner was an absolute success, with both meat and eggplants being devoured happily. I adored this recipe and of course have to give some of the credit to our favourite vegetable vendor at the Queen Victoria Market. Everything we buy from them has a sweetness that you just don't find in old and long-stored vegetables from the supermarket. 

Another win and five recipes blogged this month. Not outstanding but better than last year! x

*Shameless plug! Magical Mystery Tours are a new service I have recently launched via my little business, a Fork for your Oyster - Words & Music. If you want to know more (and how you can win a free one before 1/5/17) you can find the info here.

We don't eat much pre-made food, but this was good!

559/1038 - Salsa Romesco

This salsa is seriously good. So good, in fact, that I almost cried when the last little bit had been scooped from the bowl. 

There is something very special about the taste of smoky grilled vegetables and this salsa was all about dragging every bit of flavour from the chilli, peppers, tomato and garlic which were made fabulous via a stint under a very hot griller.

This sauce was first served at a dinner party with boiled eggs and flatbreads, alongside my signature dish, chorizo lasagne. It was also devoured as a dip and then finally used over the top of this very decadent breakfast of flatbread, poached eggs, crispy bacon, basil and nasturtium leaves.

I was planning to pull out my smoker to add an extra bit of hickory flavour to the sauce but it disappeared before I got around to it. Something for next time...and there will definitely be a next time! x

558/1038 - Yoghurt and pistachio cake with rosewater ice-cream

This cake is fabulous!!

It's a shame this picture doesn't accurately capture the gentle "green-ness" of this lovely little pistachio flavoured dessert. Such a simple cake to make and the egg white (which I clearly didn't blend completely!) lifted the cake to a lightness which saw each mouthful dissolving as it was eaten. 

We ate this cake with friends at the end of another fabulous dinner party. Trev made the ice-cream and I asked his permission to add some rosewater to the mixture, knowing it would work beautifully with the pistachio. It may seem odd that I asked permission but I firmly believe in respecting other people's kitchen endeavours. You just don't outsource the ice-cream making and then play with the flavour willy-nilly! 

The rosewater was an inspired addition and of course I couldn't help adding just a drop or two of pink food colouring to the mix. Pretty, no? 

I have said it before but will say it again. If you don't have this book, you simply MUST rush out and buy it. So many fabulous recipes and this was yet another one that I can't wait to make again x

557/1038 - Saffron pears

My husband's clients often surprise him with treats and little bits and pieces. A couple of weeks ago he brought home a gorgeous pile of apples and pears fresh from the orchard. Needless to say, they didn't last long! The last three pears were crying out to be poached and we are now all BIG fans of this style of cooking. 

If I am honest, the pears had gone a little soft by the time I made this and so I was thrilled to see that they were able to hold up throughout this long, although gentle, cooking process.  

It was wins all around with this recipe. With an enormous lemon verbena plant in my herb garden, I loved finding yet another use for its lovely, fragrant leaves. 

Incredibly, all four of us enjoyed these poached pears. Two were never in doubt, but the surprises of the day were my youngest (not a pear fan) and the fact that my usual intolerance to pears appeared to be mitigated by the poaching process. 

Love, love, love x

556/1038 - Chicken curry puffs

This recipe took D-A-A-A-Y-S to complete. Not because it's particularly complicated, but because I made the pastry, put it in the fridge to chill overnight and then took forever to get around to making the filling. There was one day that the filling almost happened and then I realised I was out of onions and so the little puffs were further delayed. 

I don't know if it was the three days chilling, but whatever the reason, this pastry was FABULOUS! It had peanut butter in it (weird, I know!) and it had the most incredibly wonderful peanutty aftertaste as well as being quite firm and not at all flaky. While I do realise this pastry was designed to be deep fried, I am just coming off a two month shoulder injury and quite frankly, my newly rounded waistline was crying out for me to oven bake them instead. 

I may have rolled the pastry a bit thin (I made eighteen rather than twelve) but it still held together beautifully. It may well have been a different story had I dropped them in hot oil...

Another recipe to love and I will definitely be making this pastry over and over again x