355/984 - Zucchini patties

When I was a much younger cook, patties used to make me nervous. I was forever worried that they wouldn't bind and that the insides wouldn't be cooked. As such, I avoided patties like the plague, and would opt to bake dishes rather than fry them where ever possible. Obviously I have come a long way since then...

I followed this recipe quite closely, except for the omission of the parsley (I need to get some back in the garden!) and I only used two zucchini as they were BIG ones! I am not exactly sure if I used the recommended amount of flour as I didn't measure, but instead sprinkled it into the mixture until it looked just right. 

These little beauties were filled with zucchini (obviously), cheese (yum!) and lovely little surprises like mint and spring onion. These were amazing both warm and cold and as the last one was polished off today I kicked myself for not doubling the mixture.

354/984 - Royal icing

You didn't think I would make gingerbread without royal icing did you?

Of course I forgot to pay attention to the recipe (shock, horror) and accidentally made a full batch of royal icing rather than a half. I spread the icing as thick as I dared and then froze what I couldn't squish onto the biscuits. I am not exactly sure if royal icing will freeze well - I guess only time will tell! 

No doubt due to the thickness of the application, the icing has still not quite fully set, but is absolutely yummy and so we don't mind at all.  

Back in March last year I had my least productive month of this challenge, racking up only four completed recipes. After a very slow start this month, I was determined not to repeat such a dismal performance and so royal icing represents number five for August. 

Some personalised biscuits I made
for my sister and her little ones.

353/984 - Nat's gingerbread

It has been a long time since I have made gingerbread...and I have never made gingerbread as amazing as this!

I loved the array of spices in this recipe and got quite a surprise to see white pepper in the list of ingredients. Before I wrapped the dough into a neat rectangle ready for overnight refrigeration, I couldn't resist stealing a small amount to nibble on. I have never understood the concept of eating cookie/biscuit dough...until now. I could have happily eaten the entire block with a big jug of milk. Only common sense, and the desire to eat the finished product, stopped me.

With life getting in the way, this dough sat in the fridge for two nights before I got around to making these sweet little gingerbread biscuits. Once the dough was rolled, I pulled out my tin of biscuit cutters and was shocked to see the distinct absence of a gingerbread-man shaped cutter. What kind of baking mother was I to be devoid of such an essential tool? 

Once I got over my surprise, I spied these sweet little shapes and realised that the smaller I made the biscuits, the less volume of biscuit my boys were likely to eat. 

The biscuits were sweet, but with a fabulously spicy after taste. Yet another classic recipe wonderfully represented in The Cook's Companion.

The fabulous spices.

Dough, wrapped and
ready for the fridge.

352/984 - Apple yeast sugar tart

For the last few months I have been regularly baking friendship cakes for my family. While they have all been amazing, I thought it was time to try out a different dessert!

I don't know why, but this recipe has never appealed to me. Perhaps it is the word "yeast" in the title that put me off, not being an ingredient that when named, gets my mouth watering. 

The crust was easier than pastry to make, mixed and kneaded like bread dough and left to rise. It was then pressed into the flan tin, where it puffed up again prior to the addition of the apples. I cut the apples into sixteenths rather than eights given that they were on the larger side. 

I accidentally set the oven to fan-forced and so after the first ten minutes of cooking my crust was already toasty and brown. I covered the tart with foil for the remainder of the cooking time, but of course this meant that the cream did not caramelise as it should have. 

Enter the blowtorch! 

We absolutely loved this tart and it was declared one of the best I have made. The crust was amazing and worked beautifully with the perfectly cooked apples. Love, love, loved this!

351/984 - Chickpea soup with mint and lemon

It has been a quiet month for Stephanie recipes! 

Last night I served up this beautiful chickpea soup with some freshly baked bread. The fennel seed in the bread was a wonderful, refreshing lift that worked beautifully with the slightly tart flavour of the soup. I didn't have any parsley (gardening incident, don't ask) but had plenty of mint to sprinkle on top. I also added a big dollop of Greek yoghurt to each bowl.

I loved this, but after two soups with lemon being rejected by the two older males in my family (the avgolemono was also a fizzer) I have decided I will save the lemony soups for times when I am alone with my little one.

Entrée (yes, soup was the main!) was my first attempt at eggplant parmesan chips which I can confidently say were a winner, given that we ate two eggplants in less than ten minutes. Not bad for children who apparently don't like eggplant. 

Lovely parmesan eggplant chips

Buckwheat loaf with linseed,
chia and fennel seed. 

350/984 - Quatre épices

Due to our love of Asian food, I have cooked many times with Chinese Five-spice. Last night, however, was my first conscious encounter with French four-spice, otherwise known as quatre épices. 

Stephanie's version contained nutmeg, ground ginger, black peppercorns and cloves. The only changes I made were to replace one third of the black pepper with white (I love white pepper!) and also to substantially reduce the quantity. 

I contemplated making this spice mix manually but then realised how much I would resent the nutmeg after having to grate it by hand which would have taken f-o-r-e-v-e-r. So into the thermomix went the raw spices, and seconds later my quatre épices was born. 

I roughly divided the recipe by around seven, and used the entire amount to flavour one kilo of pork for lovely baked pork balls, to which I also added some fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs, an egg and a good pinch of salt. 

I just ate the last couple of pork balls straight from the fridge (read: classy Sunday morning breakfast) and loved the peppery zing and nutmeg/ginger after taste. 

Oh and did I mention that this was recipe number 350?

349/984 - Bashed neeps

Bashed neeps. Honestly is that the sweetest and most obscure name for a recipe you have ever heard?

Apparently "neep" is the British term for a swede, which is exactly what this recipe was made from. The boys were dubious, with Henry thinking I was trying to pass off some soft polenta as something completely different. He really is still scarred from the last, slightly under-seasoned, soft polenta incident.  

I ordinarily love swede, but I must confess my love for it grew exponentially after tasting it this way! So simple, but so lovely. The swede is boiled and mashed and then mixed with butter (quite a bit), white pepper (one of my favourite things!) and a pinch of ground ginger. 

Such a lovely alternative to mashed potato and the family gave it six very happy thumbs up. 

348/984 - Classic cheese soufflé

I have been playing around with goat's milk this week; using it in scrambled eggs, bread, mashed pumpkin and last night in this lovely little cheese soufflé.  

The recipe directed me to make one big soufflé that was to be divided between the four of us, but I decided it would be nicer (and easier) to make individual serves. 

I forgot to run my thumb around the edges and may have overfilled the ramekins (I was determined to fit it all in!) which meant my soufflés puffed up like nobody's business...but I think they look rather pretty like this! They were light and airy and oh so cheesy.

I can highly recommend this as quite a simple dinner (really!) and definitely a winner with goat's milk.

346&347/984 - Classic corned beef with mustard sauce (and sauce ravigote)

My husband is a man with an old fashioned sense about him. He still calls the pictures the flicks, loves old movies (Ben Hur, The great escape, every Bond film ever made), old music (Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey) and classic old dishes such as corned beef.   

So I made this with him in mind. 

I decided this was a Sunday dish given the hours of cooking I knew it would require and also because I knew I wanted to make the mustard sauce and sauce ravigote to be served alongside. 

The dish was very well received although feedback included a question around whether the carrots (yellow and orange, pretty hey?) should have been steamed separately rather than cooked in the salty stock, given the overall saltiness of the dish. I liked it as it was but it is food for thought for anybody else thinking about taking this recipe on. 

I thought this was a wonderful dish and was thrilled to find that I was left with enough stock to make a risotto this week. We also loved the little pickling onions and my littlest son was most amused to see his onion "do a poo" as the middle slid out when he stabbed it with a fork. 

For the record the mustard sauce was wonderful (and easy) and the sauce ravigote was incredible with the meat. A highly recommended trio indeed.

345/984 - No mess polenta

I confess, the Cook's Companion challenge is a hybrid. When I upgraded to the rainbow book and updated my recipe spreadsheet (go ahead, you can laugh) I realised Stephanie had decided to drop a number of recipes from the orange book when publishing the new one. 

Being a person that values integrity, I just couldn't bring myself to continue without keeping all of the cross over recipes from the orange book in the challenge. It just wouldn't have felt as if I had TRULY finished when I got to the end. This recipe is one that actually did make it to the new book, but it is no longer listed as an actual recipe. But in my challenge it still counts!

Cooking polenta in this way is so simple, but it still takes some time. The polenta sits in a bowl over a simmering saucepan and is covered with foil and stirred every twenty minutes. The first night we ate this I served it as is, sprinkled with parmesan, salt and pepper. The boys were not impressed.

The second night I was determined to redeem myself. The polenta was quite firmly set and so I blended it with fresh rosemary, parmesan and a good dollop of truffle oil. I spread the new concoction in a tray and baked it at 180°C until it was set. 

The boys were thrilled! 

I took some squares to work for a colleague to taste because he had said that he had not tried truffles before. I realise truffle oil is not the same as fresh but I thought it would give him the general idea. He declared it to be the best polenta he had ever eaten. 

Tick!

A very enjoyable three years...

This week I ticked over three years since 'The Cook's Companion Challenge' began. What a ride it has been!

As I do each year, I thought I would list some of the little things that have happened along the way. In the last three years I have:

  - cooked at least one recipe from 97 of the 123 chapters

  - had wonderful conversations with people I would otherwise have never met

  - begun to cook from the margin as well as the main recipes, with 53 micro recipes completed

  - finished cooking everything in two chapters (prawns and broccoli)

  - maintained my average of cooking a main recipe from the Cook's Companion every three days

  - finally cooked more than one third of the recipes in the basics chapter, with 14 of 37 complete

  - had more than 40,000 hits to the blog

My cooking and blogging keeps me sane in the midst of an otherwise busy life, and to date has been the most fulfilling "hobby" I have adopted. 

As always, thank you to everybody who is still riding this crazy cooking wave with me.

344/984 - Mint and spring onion chutney

As per my very organised menu planner for this week, last night's dinner was flathead tails and coleslaw with this beautiful mint chutney.

The chutney was so simple to make, although my youngest and I did spend some time carefully picking the mint leaves and washing them to remove any grit. We discovered that one cup of mint leaves equates to an entire bunch of mint once it is squished flat. 

I threw all of the ingredients (mint, spring onion, chillies, garlic, soft brown sugar, salt, garam masala) into the thermomix and blitzed them to a pulp. I was a bit concerned that the result was a bit salty for my taste and added just enough of the lemon and lime juice to even out the flavour. My chutney was quite wet and so I didn't add any water at all. 

Within moments of sitting down to eat, our plates looked incredibly messy, with all of us wanting to coat both fish and coleslaw with this amazing chutney. 

Love, love, loved this and will definitely be making it to go with salads, fish and possibly even lamb. 

Yummo.

Week 2 menu planner.
I am so organised at the moment I don't recognise myself.

343/984 - Pasta e fagioli

This meal took a couple of days to prepare, but it was fabulous and absolutely worth it! 

Last weekend I decided that, as a family with two working parents, we were nowhere near organised enough when it came to planning and cooking our weekday meals. A few years ago my sister gave me a menu planner in my Christmas stocking and so I dug it out and started planning!

Once I had picked the recipes, I allocated one to each day, matching the preparation requirements with our anticipated availability for each evening. One shop on Sunday and a planner stuck on the fridge rounded out the preparations. 

So far this new process has worked brilliantly and I have loved coming home from work knowing what I will be making for dinner and not having to figure out what we have in the fridge. 

I used dried borlotti beans for this recipe and so I soaked the beans on Sunday night and cooked them on Monday night. By Tuesday night I had most of the ingredients pre-cut and so dinner was a snap. The bacon made this dish absolutely fabulous and the final drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle of parmesan made for a perfect finish. 

A big dish of leftovers was the icing on the cake x

Our week, organised!

342/984 - Carrot pudding

Yet another way Stephanie has found to make vegetables taste amazing!

This lovely little "pudding" was served alongside a wonderful roast chicken last night and was sweet and beautiful and everything I had hoped for. The onion, celery and garlic were sautéed and then mixed with shredded carrot, breadcrumbs, raisins, fresh oregano, egg, salt and pepper. All of this was squished into an oiled pie dish and then topped with pine nuts and a generous drizzle of olive oil.

I used the thermomix to whiz up my breadcrumbs, blitz the carrot and then to combine all of the ingredients. Have I mentioned how much I love my thermomix?

I used a mix of yellow and orange carrots in my pudding which I think produced a lovely light colour. It was so easy to make, so pretty and kept it's shape so beautifully I am thinking that I might use this recipe for dinner parties, making little moulded individual serves.

The kids were sceptical but after one mouthful I certainly did not hear any complaints. A wonderful success from yet another recipe that may not have caught my attention were it not for this challenge. 

341/984 - Parsnip and curry soup

I purchased a pile of beautiful parsnips and a bunch of coriander on my way home last night with this lovely soup in mind. To be honest I had way too many parsnips, even thought they were quite small, and so decided to roughly double the recipe to make sure we all had plenty to feast on. 

Remembering that I had frozen some home-made curry paste in ice cube trays I was keen to see if was still as lovely as the day I made it. I was pleased with the flavour and was mentally high-fiving myself for keeping some for a rainy day.

When it came time to douse the parsnips I decided to add minimal water and to only blend the soup to a point where it remained a little chunky.  

Strewn with coriander and paired with a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, this made for a beautiful Friday night meal and was a lovely first dabble in the chapter o' parsnips. 

340/984 - Tom's mushroom soup

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to acquire some foraged pine forest mushrooms from my local organic store, Terra Madre.

The mushrooms were served at a recent dinner party using Stephanie's recipe that married these lovely things with garlic, cream and parsley. Not wanting to waste the remainder of my purchase (we bought quite a lot!), I decided to use them in Tom's mushroom soup.

The first batch of mushrooms I cooked with were gently cleaned with a pastry brush and a wet paper towel to ready them for frying. Given this lot were to be used in a soup I decided to unceremoniously dump them in a bowl of water to wash away the debris. A much faster process and it did the job!

I adored the flavour the pine mushrooms added to this recipe, adding an earthy twang to what would I think would already have been a fabulous concoction. 

It's difficult to see the grated nutmeg over the top in this picture (brown on brown!), but its addition to the soup was amazing. Now I am interested to make this with recipe with everyday mushrooms to see if it is still wonderful.

339/984 - Coconut custards

This was definitely not a Masterchef moment... The custards had trouble coming out and weren't the prettiest thing I have ever seen, but they tasted great!

I brushed the moulds with coconut oil which may have had something to do with my custards getting wedged inside. When I finally coaxed them onto the plates, they were topped with berry coulis and a few tiny basil leaves. Also on the plate were some smashed date balls and a coconut tuile, which could have been made a little daintier but also tasted lovely. 

The date balls were my best ones yet and while I am probably forgetting some ingredients they included; dates, dried figs, cardamom, cloves, almonds, goji berries, white chia seeds and wheatgerm. Loved the freshness of the cardamom! Somebody asked me why I keep both white and black chia seeds in my spice drawer and I told them the truth; I use whichever one will look prettiest with the recipe! Black to go in breads and white to offset things such as these dark little date balls.  

I will definitely make these custards again, loving the sweetness of the palm sugar with the coconut. A bit awkward in the plating but otherwise a winner.

Date balls with sparkly white chia seeds

338/984 - Pine forest mushrooms with garlic, cream and parsley

I was busy planning a dinner party menu when my local organic store announced on Facebook that they were to receive a load of locally foraged wild pine forest mushrooms. 

I have always wondered where on earth I was going to find the mushrooms for this recipe and so excitedly added it to my dinner party menu, hoping the store would still have some in stock when I went in. 

I have mentioned before that on the day of my dinner parties I send Trev out to shop. What I didn't mention is that he is very resistant to entering what is probably the busiest organic shop on earth at peak shopping hour. Enter my lovely retired stepfather. One phone call later and I knew that the collection of said mushrooms was in safe hands. No doubt this sounds very lazy on my part, but I had lots of cooking to do! 

The mushrooms arrived covered in dirt and pine needles. I gently cleaned the six I required for dinner with a paper towel and a soft pastry brush which took a-a-a-g-e-s but I finally got there. I even fried up a little one as a tester to make sure there was no locked in grit I had missed. I was pleased to note the wonderful flavour, even without salt, pepper or garlic. 

On the night of the dinner party these were sliced at the last minute and cooked in garlic, cream and parsley. I loved the taste and will definitely be heading back for more when they are available. Stay tuned for a post of the soup I made with the remainder! Yum...

337/984 - Coconut tuile biscuits

These little pringle-like biscuits are actually quite a lot of fun to make. 

I added them to last week's dinner party dessert course, always looking for some kind of crunch or texture to put on the plate. Baked in the oven for only eight minutes, they are cooled slightly and then laid over a rolling pin so that they resemble a little old fashioned roof tile (tuile in French). 

The first batch I made were delicious and slightly chewy, but I preferred the second batch even more, which I suspect were a little closer to how they were supposed to turn out; crunchy and crispy and leaving guests with their hand in the tin seeking a second and third helping!

336/984 - Mushrooms en papillote

These lovely mushrooms were served as a part of last weekend's dinner party, at which I decided to serve a deconstructed burger for main and planned the plate with my favourite burger ingredients in mind. 

We have a bit of a dinner party routine in our house; first comes the menu planning, then I write out all of the ingredients I need and Trev heads out to the shop to pick them up. While he is out I begin to plan my cooking schedule for the day and start to tackle the basics (pastry, pasta dough, breads). We really do have this down to a fine art! At least I thought we did...

Unfortunately on this day as I wrote out my list of required ingredients, I got distracted halfway through the recipe as I pondered the perfect mix of mushrooms for the meal. Whilst off in a daydream, I somehow completely forgot to write out the ingredients from the second half of the list.

Later in the day as I began to prepare the mushrooms, I was amused to see cream and tarragon on the list of ingredients, knowing full well that I did not have either of these things in my house. Not particularly worried, I simply substituted the cream for Greek yoghurt and the parsley and tarragon for a mix of woolly thyme, oregano and garlic chives.

The mushrooms I used (and can highly recommend!) were oyster, enoki and button. I thought the enoki were particularly fabulous. I absolutely loved the mushrooms cooked this way and actually think the yoghurt tasted incredible. What a great little accident!

Served with potato cubes, kale chips,
baked egg with tomato and parmesan wafer
and home-made burger patty.

My little mushroom packages.

335/984 - Charcoal-grilled ginger prawns

Prawn lollipops for dinner? They were so sweet they might as well have been!

The marinade for this dish contained so many lovely things including kecap manis which was first introduced to me by my lovely friend Lani. The kids adore every dish that it contains because it is sweet, sweet, sweet! I replaced the peanut oil with coconut oil which of course was a wonderful substitute, but other than that stayed true to the recipe. 

Whenever I feel a marinade or sauce is particularly decadent, I tend to fill the rest of the plate with raw vegetables, which is exactly what we did on this night. We all agreed that the result was wonderful. 

That is the second chapter done and dusted! We are a bit sad to see the last of the prawn dishes and are hoping to see prawns pop up in another chapter soon. 

334/984 - Chilli and lime sauce

With the most beautiful barramundi to cook for dinner, I was looking for a way to prepare it that would be acceptable to the slightly fussy five year old who was joining us. 

We decided to wrap the fish in foil, with lemon juice and slices, and cook it in the chiminea. We served the fish, beautifully steamed and silky smooth, with rice and this beautiful chilli and lime sauce, which of course my fussy little guest could omit from her plate. There was no way we could have let her try this sauce anyway, with the added jalapeño giving it an amazing kick. 

One of the changes I made to this recipe was to add a whole peeled lime to the mix, rather than just the lime juice. I figured if I was to be blending everything together we might as well get the goodness of the entire fruit!

The only down side to this recipe was removing my contact lenses in the evening with hands that were apparently still covered in chilli juice. Yikes. 

333/984 - Polenta pancakes

What a lovely addition to our special breakfast plate!

The boys tried the wonderful combination of polenta pancake, bacon and maple syrup for the first time this morning and fell in love! I omitted the syrup from my breakfast but was blown away by how simple these pancakes are to make, and how tasty! 

Apart from whisking the egg whites in the KitchenAid (because why would I do it by hand if I don't need to?), this was a one bowl deal and took around 5 minutes to put together.  

I used coarse polenta and so being used to eating smooth pancakes, my favourite thing about these was the wonderful texture. I am thrilled that there were leftovers and look forward to snacking on these as the day goes on.

332/984 - Chinese-style trotters with ginger and black rice vinegar

It was piggy feet for dinner in our house tonight! 

I had quite a busy day planned and so I made a quick dash to the local organic grocer this morning for a pile of ginger which was to be used to flavour this lovely recipe. Stephanie mentioned that the taste of ginger in the finished product could be alarmingly strong for some people and so I reduced the amount from 500 grams to 350 just in case.

I used a tip that was kindly shared recently by a fellow foodie, Miss Food Fairy, which was to use a spoon rather than a peeler to remove the skin from the ginger. It rubs away very easily and certainly saves a lot of waste. Thanks Miss Food Fairy for that one!

I actually had to boil this quite hard for the final two hours to ensure the liquid reduced into a lovely rich syrup. I even transferred the trotters into a wider saucepan for the final thirty minutes to encourage the reduction of fluid. Needless to say, my kitchen was a crazy big mess by the time tonight's dinner was complete. Thankfully I had a couple of helpful small boys by my side for the horrendous clean up. 

We all loved this dish, and according to the lovely lady at Terra Madre, the source of my ginger and other lovely vegetables, it was very good for us too. Who knew that cooking cartilage would be beneficial to the health of our own cartilage. If my boys grow old without a sign of arthritis perhaps we can thank my love of cooking trotters for that. 

331/984 - Marinated mussels

Mussels on a Monday night? Yes please!

We bought these on the weekend from Western Port mussels and while I almost gave in to Trev's request and cooked these with chorizo (our favourite combination!), I thought I would try marinating them which seemed a little bit healthier. 

I decided that if I was going to marinate the mussels then I didn't really need to add anything to the wine when I steamed them. To be honest I was being a bit lazy but I still thought my logic was sound. The mussels went into the pan to steam (after a rigorous de-bearding session!), and then I popped them all out of their shells and mixed them with good olive oil, spring onions, beautiful Australian Harvest horseradish vinegar and almost a whole bunch of chopped curly leaf parsley. 

I let this sit for a bit and then we added them to piles of rocket on our plates. We ate this alongside raw vegetables and for a touch of decadence, a chunk of "Fermier" cheese from L'Artisan Organic Cheese Timboon which if you look closely you can spy peeping out from behind my little pile of rocket. Who said good cheese had to be eaten after a meal? 

A very satisfying dinner indeed.

330/984 - Erna's red cabbage with apple

This cabbage was bought with a lovely fresh, raw salad in mind....but then I found this! 

I halved this recipe and the amount was enough for four people with leftovers. I realised (too late) that we didn't have any cider vinegar and so instead used our beautiful organic horseradish vinegar from Australian Harvest for the final stage of cooking. The result was fantastic and I plan to make the same substitution when I marinate our mussels for dinner tonight (stay tuned for the post!).

This rounded out a lovely healthy dinner of chicken poached in master stock, feta, cucumber, tomato and grated carrot with lemon juice.

The only complaint was from Trev who contested the apple to carrot ratio...until he realised I had loaded most of the apples onto my own plate. 

Whoops.