218/656 - Date and walnut biscuits

 

Social media is great for connecting with new people and I regularly chat with strangers online, usually about all things food! But until a couple of months ago I never imagined I would be busily mailing sweet treats to three people I had never met. Enter The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap.

The rules of the swap were simple; make three dozen cookies and send 12 to each of your selected matches. I made 37 of these beautiful biscuits (an extra one for tasting of course!) and sent them off to Amanda from Chewtown, Faaiza from Modest Munchies and Erin from Cut the cookie. It's a nerve-wracking thing sending your cooking to foodies you have never met! 

In return I was lucky enough to receive three wonderful packages myself. Two varieties of  beautiful shortbread from Sara of Belly Rumbles, three varieties of traditional Chinese cookies from V Vien of We Dare Food and cranberry and white chocolate cookies from Daisy of Never too Sweet. A whole lot of yum going on in this house at the moment!  

I used some old Leunig wrapping paper to wrap my cookie gifts. I have been hanging on to it for years waiting for the right time to use it and this felt like a special enough occasion.  

I normally don't post recipes, but of course I have made an exception this time so that the deliciousness of these biscuits can be experienced by all. 

Date and Walnut biscuits 

250g dates, stoned

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

75g butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

3 tbsp sour cream

175g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Preheat oven to 180° C (350° F) and grease baking trays, or line them with baking paper. Cut dates into pieces using scissors (I used a knife) and mix with walnuts. Cream butter and sugar (in a thermomix if you have one!) and beat in eggs until light, then beat in sour cream. Mix a third of the flour into the dates and nuts to coat them well. (I spent some time making sure all of the date pieces had been separated and coated at this point.) Combine remaining ingredients and stir into egg mixture with dates and nuts. Drop spoonfuls of batter onto baking trays. Bake for about 10 minutes until browned. Cool on a wire rack.

What a fabulous experience. Many thanks to Love and Olive Oil for making this fun Christmas activity possible. Bring on Cookie Swap 2013!

217/656 - Walnut spread

It's hot, hot, hot here in Melbourne at the moment and last night required a cold drink and a lovely little cold snack to go with it.

I decided to make walnut spread and was happy to follow Stephanie's suggestion of including a whopping hunk of blue cheese into the mix. The resulting spread was a bit garlicky for my taste (there was a whole head of garlic in there!) and so I added extra walnut oil, walnuts and plenty of extra cheese. 

Apart from the fact that my I woke up this morning with icky, spicy garlic mouth, I would definitely make this dip again. Next time with a bit less garlic and probably with the addition of some crisp green pear slices for spreading and dipping. 

Mmmm... 

My beautiful walnut oil

216/656 - Raw beetroot and yoghurt salad

I love raw food, not only because it's good for you, but also because it is always so beautifully and naturally coloured.

Stephanie has several no-cook recipes in this book which are incredibly quick and easy to create. On the night I made this Trev was making hamburgers and I decided to have mine deconstructed and sans bun. 

While Trev worked on making his delectable signature burger patties, I was chopping capsicum, lettuce, tomato and herbs to lighten the meal. To make the salad I simply threw a raw beetroot, herbs and lemon juice into the thermomix and blitzed. So much easier than grating! The yummy pink pile was then dropped onto a mound of natural yoghurt and oh my, what a combination! 

My hamburger with the lot (including fried egg and onions!) was absolutely amazing and I didn't miss the bun at all. 

215/656 - Chinese soy dipping sauce

My family love prawns, especially freshly steamed ones. We could happily eat them plain, dipped in a sauce, smeared with mayonnaise, sprinkled with herbs; really any variation you can throw at us we would be in to.  

On this day we were all getting peckish in the afternoon. I threw on some prawns to steam and while they were cooking I whipped up this lovely sauce. Soft brown sugar, white rice vinegar, a knob of fresh ginger (blitzed in the thermomix) and light soy. If I make this again I think I would also add some chopped fresh chilli and maybe some fresh coriander, if only to make it more attractive!  

Three of us (not Jules!) loved the sauce and even enjoyed the remainder tipped over our salad at dinner. 

214/656 - Cantaloupe ice-cream

I remember many (many) years ago when my Dad used to buy our vanilla ice-cream in boxes, and each little oblong serve was individually wrapped in paper. As I was putting this ice-cream on the plate it reminded me of those neat little ice-cream blocks, and I wondered when they disappeared from the shops.

I had a spare cantaloupe in the fridge and so bought some cream with this recipe in mind. I was very amused when Trev told me that a second cantaloupe had been delivered to the house, and that he had helpfully cut them both into small pieces, ready to eat. What he did not realise is that this ice-cream needed to be frozen inside the intact rind. Off to the shops I went for a third cantaloupe!

Getting off the topic just slightly, I had so much cantaloupe to use up that I decided to create a new smoothie. Take some vanilla yoghurt, piles of cantaloupe, about 6 strawberries, a handful of mint and a tiny piece of ginger, blend, and then add a handful of slivered almonds for crunch. Yummm..... 

Back to the ice-cream! It was very easy to make; the major challenges were a) willing the chooks to lay as I was two eggs short (they obliged) and b) purchasing ANOTHER bottle of alcohol. Honestly for a light drinker my liquor cabinet has never looked so good! Kirsch this time, and in the past Stephanie's recipes have required brandy, spiced rum, white rum, cognac... I think I feel a cocktail party coming on. And a black forest cake to use up the Kirsch! 

Served with fresh strawberries, cherries, Holy Goat fromage frais and mint this was the perfect summer dessert. Even better than ice-cream served in little paper packages. 

213/656 - Salade Niçoise

The great weather we have been having has provided us with plenty of beautiful lettuce and so I took the opportunity to try out another Stephanie salad!     

Salade Niçoise contains so many of my favourite things; olives, anchovies, hard boiled eggs and of course loads of fresh vegetables but the kicker for the family was the boiled potatoes. How good is eating a salad and then actually feeling full afterwards?

I included the optional wine vinegar in the dressing and may have slung on a couple of extra anchovies. I boiled the beans, but only for about 10 seconds so they were fresh and snappy.  

Lovely.

212/656 - Spanakopita

Hooray, another chapter finished!

My mum had a crazy amount of spinach growing and so I took a load off her hands and turned it into spanakopita. It was very easy to make, but anybody who has made this before will see that I did not follow the instructions re tucking the pastry neatly down the sides. I think it looks prettier this way, but to be honest it looks like this because I was being a little bit lazy...  

With three chapters down I have decided I should be sharing at least one learning from each, and so I am going to backtrack a bit here;

1. Rabbit chapter (completed April 2012). My learning: A rabbit that is fresh will have a glistening liver. I dare anybody to ask for a liver inspection when they are purchasing! I suspect that would not go down well with the butcher.
2. Bread chapter (completed September 2012). My learning: Spraying the loaf with water while it is baking will make your crusts crustier! 
3. Spinach. My learning: Spinach was first cultivated by the Persians. A fact to share with fussy children to make this tricky vegetable sound more exotic and tempting. 

So much more than just a cookbook.

211/656 - Jenny's caesar salad

Who doesn't love a caesar salad? 

This is a lovely version of what is a favourite salad for many people. I have only made this a few times, but each time I am thrilled with the taste, in particular the glorious dressing and the many interesting bits and pieces that are thrown in to ensure this is not a dieters meal! 

The dressing calls for a half cup of olive oil, however I have found a quarter of a cup to be plenty. Amusingly I ended up tipping the other quarter cup into the pan as I was frying my croutons as I seemed to run out of lovely fats as I was attempting to make them lovely and crisp. It was worth it, they were fabulous! 

Fried bacon bits, crispy croutons, gooey eggs, freshly grated parmesan (actually pulverised in the Thermomix!) and the list goes on! If you like a caesar salad I guarantee you will love this version.

210/656 - Pork sausages with sage and tomato

Henry and I went on a bit of a food hunt yesterday and ended up at Cannings Free Range butchers in Hawthorn. I loved the store, very neat and well laid out, and of course they had an amazing array of meat. But my favourite element was the flat caps worn by the butchers which made me feel as if I had stepped back in time. This experience was beautifully topped off when I was handed my (rather heavy) paper bag of purchases. How fabulous, environmentally friendly and stylish to boot!   

Stephanie suggests pricking and parboiling sausages before they are fried and I thought I would give this a go, liking the idea that the insides might have a better chance of being cooked correctly if I followed this method. Trev was mildly mortified that I was going to prick them and it brought back memories of an article I once read in which the author was similarly devastated to discover that Stephanie was a pricker. Personally I don't see what all of the fuss is about, having no strong feelings on either side of the sausage preparation debate.  

After downing a particularly gorgeous salad for entrée (post to come later) I convinced Trev that we needed only one pork sausage each for our main course. I did cook four as the recipe suggested but of course everybody knows an odd number looks better in a photograph!  

Once parboiled, the sausages were cooked with sage leaves and tomatoes that had been seeded, peeled and chopped. The result was absolutely sensational and as well as loving the tomato sauce I suspect this had quite a bit to do with the wonderful quality of the meat.   

I am very pleased I had the foresight to buy additional sausages to freeze, and am very much looking forward to a second round of this dish in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I am interested to hear from anybody with particularly strong views on the art of sausage preparation!

209/656 - Mushroom tartlets

I do love an excuse to make some home made pastry. 

Last Sunday was baking day and I had picked up some lovely Swiss Browns at the Fairfield Farmers' Market the day before that I knew must be put to good use! To be honest I did plan the purchase in advance as I am on a mission to complete at least one recipe from each chapter (challenge within a challenge?) and surprisingly had not yet cooked a mushroom recipe. 83 chapters sampled, only 31 until I can say I have sampled them all! Hello tripe and kidneys...

The gorgeous mushrooms were sautéed with cream and spices, and then put inside lovely shortcrust pastry lined patty tins. Whilst I thought the flavour of these really lovely, I did find the pastry to mushroom ratio a bit off, with the pastry dominating just a little. I even had some pastry left over so if I made this again I think I would definitely double the mushroom mixture so I could stuff more of the little suckers in.  

Overall a very nice recipe. But if you don't alter the quantities, just make sure your pastry is fabulous.

208/656 - Trotters with velouté sauce

How timely to be talking about gorgeous free range pork as the Animals Australia "Make It Possible" campaign is in full swing. If you haven't already watched their campaign video on factory farming, do yourself a favour. On a much more positive note, I made a couple of purchases from Bundarra Berkshires on the weekend. I cannot rave enough about how wonderful and sweet their pork tastes and I am so pleased that my first go at cooking trotters was done with the feet of one of their very happy pigs.

The trotters needed to be cooked for four hours and so this recipe was a two day effort. So on Sunday night I was expecting a simple meal, having only to make the velouté sauce. What I didn't expect was the one man tug o'war that ensued as I attempted to pull the cooked trotters from the jellied stock. It was as I imagine a cowboy would feel, having to pull his horse from quicksand. 

I have no idea if the skin was supposed to be part of the plan, but one look and I decided I wasn't brave enough to eat it. Quite frankly I think I was brave cooking trotters in the first place! I gave the skin to our very happy dog and proceeded to pull every bit of meat I could from the bones. The chopped meat and velouté sauce were then popped into the oven to reheat for serving. 

Stephanie advised that this concoction would be fabulous on toast and I just happened to have a lovely fresh loaf available, not long out of the oven. I could not believe how much the kids enjoyed this! Plates were cleaned in record time and I even caught them scraping away at the gratin dish making sure there was not a skerrick left. 

With four trotters recipes left to make it's a lucky thing it was so popular.

206&207/656 - Roast squab with Janni's barley stuffing & simple squab sauce

I am a huge advocate of meat eaters keeping in touch with the reality of where their food comes from, always acutely aware that a little living soul has died for my gastronomic pleasure. So I was quite surprised at how confronted I was when I realised my little raw pigeon still had it's head attached! I got through the beheading unscathed but for a brief moment I did re-evaluate my dietary choices.    

I decided to cook only one little pigeon for this meal as it was just the kids and I for dinner and we are usually happy with smallish meat portions alongside a truckload of vegetables. I didn't reduce the amount of stuffing  I made however, as I had an inkling it would be fabulous and I gave myself a little pat on the back as I added it to the next morning's omelette. It was a fabulous stuffing, rich with lemon and  butter and the smell emanating from my kitchen as it was slow cooking in the oven was out of this world.

The squab sauce was also incredible, rich and decadent and I poured the leftovers over the following nights roast chicken, with the family's eagle eyes making sure I doled it out evenly! It was definitely a lick the plate kind of sauce (no, I didn't) and one I am sure I will make again when I have some bird offcuts on hand.    

If you missed it before, I am still singing the song made famous by Bert on Sesame Street...

♫ Doin' the (coo coo) p-i-geon

Dancing a little smidgeon 

Of the kind of ballet
Sweeps me away...

The little piles of extra stuffing were well received!

205/656 - Fennel with simple cheese sauce

Isn't it wonderful when you put a dish on the table and everybody falls in love with it? I served a healthy helping of this decadent fennel bake to each of the boys and one by one they uttered a surprised little grunt and reached to the bowl for a second helping! 

It's ironic that cheese sauce is one of the first things my mother taught me to cook, and yet I almost managed to mess up this very simple version! I made a roux with the butter and flour and then added my warm milk. I felt that the result was a bit thin and so tried to add some more flour to the mix but inevitably ended up with a lumpy sauce! A quick sieve later and I had perfect (and slightly thicker) sauce once again. Once the beautiful Gruyère was added, the sauce was poured over blanched fennel and popped into the oven.  

This was not a difficult dish by any means, but sometimes it's the simple things that make my little family happy. 

204/656 - Pineapple and lime juice salsa

Pineapple salsa is yummy! 

We ate this warm little salsa with barbecued prawns, freshly baked bread and an enormous salad. Amongst all of that wonderful food it was still the absolute stand out dish on the table. It had a gentle bite to it, thanks to the sambal oelek, and the lime juice gave it lovely zing.  

It was so nice I ate the leftovers straight out of the container as a snack the next day. I had to laugh when I caught Henry rummaging through the fridge looking for it, and had to break the news that I got to it first.  

Guilt has got the better of me and I will be making another batch this weekend.

203/656 - Jerusalem artichoke soup

I love the fact that Jerusalem artichokes do not come from Jerusalem. Even more amusing is that they are not even artichokes. As the Food Companion International magazine did for kangaroo meat, I think there should be a competition calling for a new name for this long misrepresented tuber. 

Name aside, I have a soft spot for anything with a nutty flavour (including nuts) and so was looking forward to trying out this soup. It was simple enough but I confess I fell down a little when I reached the straining stage. I used a strainer that was clearly not adequate for the job so while the soup that passed through was creamy and amazing, some of the mash remained on the wrong side of the strainer, lumpy and defiant.  

It was evening and a work night so I must confess I gave in to the stubborn little pile of mash and decided to keep the unstrained portion aside, to be served the next evening alongside a lamb roast.  

There was option to use either stock or milk as the soup base and I opted for milk, which according to my youngest made the soup "creamy and delicious". Sprinkled with freshly grated nutmeg and thyme (no chives on hand I am afraid) it was absolutely wonderful.  

And the mash was great too. 

202/656 - Vietnamese chicken and mint salad

Seriously how many more fabulous recipes can there be in this book?!  

I am lucky enough to be married to a man who can put absolutely anything on the barbecue and make it taste delicious. The recipe required two cooked chicken breasts and so I sent Trev outside to work his magic while I put the rest of the salad and the dressing together.

I decided to forego the fried shallots, which were optional anyway, and also left off the coriander that was supposed to be sprinkled on top. The omission of the coriander was not intentional and can be blamed on the chutney of one post past, which used all of the coriander I had. 

Even sans coriander and shallots, I loved, loved, loved this salad! I highly recommend lovely charred chicken straight from the barbecue for extra flavour, but I suspect this salad would be sensational no matter how the chicken was cooked. 

201/656 - Mint and yoghurt chutney

A lovely big bunch of mint arrived with my weekly vegetable delivery and so of course I buried my nose in the mint chapter to see what I could find!      

This was the first of the two mint based recipes I decided would work beautifully with our weekend plans. Although technically a chutney, I actually made this with the idea of using it as a dip. It was absolutely fabulous and the coriander was a beautiful earthy offset to the significant pile of refreshing, freshly chopped mint. 

What a healthy and delightfully yummy little snack of raw vegetables, fresh herbs and lovely creamy Greek yoghurt. The boys put away their body weight in capsicum, celery and carrot thanks to this dip so I am calling it a definite winner.

200/656 - Pecan pie

Recipe number 200, how fabulous is that!  

I am thrilled to have achieved this milestone with a dessert that we all absolutely adored. Of course the kids could not work out why Trev and I were so amused by the name of this pie until I showed them the clip from the movie. Of course if you were born before 1985 you did not need to click that link to know which movie I was talking about!

I made a special trip to the South Melbourne market for the pecans but other than that I had all of the ingredients in the pantry. When I put the filling together it was very wobbly which I am starting to get quite a complex about! What on earth is it with me and wobbly fillings?!

As per the soupy cheesecake I had to cover this in foil and extend the cooking time until I felt the filling had firmed up to a reasonable point. 

We ate this with vanilla ice cream and it was so good that when I suggested I might take a few pieces in to work Henry looked at me in absolute horror. So my colleagues missed out this time, but my family were very proud to "partake of my pecan pie". Funny voices and all.

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.