645/1038 - Yorkshire puddings

Yorkshire puddings are something I have never quite understood. First of all, because they are called puddings. And they are not sweet. Which is a little weird. Secondly, because they are random little rounds of pastry to be eaten with a roast dinner. Sorry, what? 

So last night was my very first experience with the humble Yorkshire pudding. They were dead simple to make so I wasn't too worried about the fact that I was unlikely to enjoy the experience. I was nonplussed. And then came the moment that I tried a little bit of pudding with a piece of roast beef. Oh, oh, oh I get it now!! One mouthful took me straight back to the Beef Wellington I made around ten years ago and everything about these little puddings finally made sense. 

Pastry and beef. Who knew? Well every person in England, obviously. 

And now me. 

Repeat performances guaranteed. 

644/1038 - Simple clear beetroot soup

Wonderful, wonderful soup! 

Something I learned while making this is that the inside of a freshly boiled beetroot is hotter than lava spewed from a volcano. My boys call me Khaleesi because I am generally able to handle heat that most people would find unbearable, but even I had to wait for the raging insides to cool down before I could handle them for any length of time. 

A lovely little mixture of sour cream and herbs is mixed into the soup before eating and as well as turning the concoction a gorgeous shade of light pink, the taste of the soup becomes sweet and incredibly moreish. I used fresh parsley and chives but confess to adding dried dill because it was all I had. I am so pleased I did though, because the dill was the best bit! 

The addition of the beetroot leaves was absolutely brilliant and I was surprised to discover that they taste just like silverbeet. Even though the names of both vegetables have beet in them. Still surprised. 

We all know I hate waste and so the strained beetroot was added to our pasta sauce tonight. I say pasta sauce, but in reality I was making soup. After blitzing the soup, I decided to add some pasta, added added a bit too much and then had to laugh as I watched it suck all of the liquid out of my soup as it cooked. So pasta sauce it was. Thankfully, it was incredibly delicious as well as just a little bit pink. 

How lovely.

643/1038 - Roasted fillet of beef for a party

A mid-week roast dinner? Yes please! 

I had a backyard full of tradies today and so spent the day cooking so that I could keep an eye on what they were doing...hopefully without making it look too obvious!

My husband usually smokes our beef roasts outside on the chiminea (which taste amazing!) and so this is the first one I have cooked in some time. The recipe looks terribly complex but if you skip the making of the red wine sauce it is actually not too onerous. 

Interestingly, the mushrooms are boiled in buttery water; a method I have not tried before. They turned out beautifully so I now have a new way to prepare mushrooms other than roasting, steaming or frying in butter. Given that I didn't make the sauce, I decided to boil down the mushroomy, buttery water to a paste and add it to the meat juices. I used mirin to boil the meat juices from the pan and so the resulting sauce was full of flavour with a slight sweetness to it. Given that I can no longer drink red wine (yes, shattering) I found this concoction to be a wonderful alternative to the red wine sauce.

Apart from the carrots, everything in the picture is a part of the recipe, with the spinach being cooked down in a knob of fabulous parsley butter (a method I highly recommend) and the potatoes simply scrubbed, oiled and roasted.  

The tradies are back tomorrow which means another day of cooking. On the menu? Chicken liver pâté, kale chips, chicken san choy bau and vanilla ice-cream. Not to be served together. 

642/1038 - Patrizia's castagnaccio (but with bunya nuts)

Given that castagna means chestnut I did feel a little guilty substituting the chestnut flour for Bunya nut flour in this recipe. What a lovely way to use up the bunya nuts, though!

I was recently reading the diary of Governor Hunter, written around the time of the landing of  the first fleet, and he described what could have only been a bunya nut.

"There is likewise a nut, which had violent effects on those who ate it unprepared: the natives soak it in water for seven or eight days, changing the water every day; and at the expiration of that time they roast it in the embers; but the kernel is taken out of the hard shell with which it is enclosed, previous to its being put into the water: it is nearly equal to the chestnut in goodness."

Interesting, no?

Apart from the fact that I made the flour from scratch (read: boiling, peeling, dehydrating, blitzing) the castagnaccio was very fast to make. It was interesting that I needed to add quite a bit of extra water and still didn't quite get the mixture to a porridge like state. I can only assume that the properties of bunya nut flour are quite different to that of chestnut flour even if they do taste practically the same.   

The only thing I would change if I made this again is to increase the number of raisins I threw in (we didn't have sultanas) as they add a really beautiful sweetness to the slice. We have discovered, however, that the castagnaccio is sensational with a drizzle of honey, therefore slight lack of sweetness crisis averted! 

After a weekend of partying (yes, me!) this gentle bout of cooking was a lovely way to finish a fun but quite exhausting weekend. 

Beautiful bunya nuts

641/1038 - Damien's toasted almond rice

Two recipes in a matter of days - I wonder if anybody can tell I am on holidays?

This was another one of those absolute gems that we all fell in love with after the first bite. It was creamy, crunchy and had the most incredible flavour thanks to the toasted almonds, vanilla bean and perhaps also the coconut sugar I used in place of regular sugar. The coconut sugar was also responsible for turning the dessert a beautiful light brown colour and I am fairly sure also added to the incredible caramel smell that wafted up at me as the rice was almost finished cooking.

The mixture was supposed to be left to simmer but mine developed quite a decent lumpy skin after about fifteen minutes so I decided to stay and stir it until it was done. It was probably for this reason that it took a bit longer than thirty minutes to cook, maybe closer to thirty five. It's easy to know when the rice is ready because all of a sudden the mixture seems to thicken perfectly. 

As I am wont to do, I experienced a complete brain fade as I was finalising the recipe and instead of reserving half of the toasted almonds to scatter on top, the whole lot got tipped in and stirred through. Of course toasting more was not a problem and I was completely fine with the extra nuttiness. I never have flaked almonds in the house and so always replace them with slivered almonds which I love because they provide a fabulous crunch.

Either we are dainty eaters or this recipe is very generous. I halved it and so it should have served four but I could easily have fed six happy people with the amount it made. With a second night of this fabulous dessert looming, I am definitely not complaining! 

640/1038 - Queen of puddings

What better way to use up old crusts than in this wonderful pudding! 

We keep our bread in the freezer and because the boys don't love crusts in their sandwiches, we have many packets floating about with one or two crusts left in each. I was hoping to use more, but I think this recipe helped us to get rid of three or four which is a good start! 

Hiding under the gorgeous meringue is a layer of home-made apricot jam (yes we still have plenty!) and below that, a good amount of custardy pudding. It is a very sweet dessert so I am pleased I split  it into the recommended six serves rather than four. 

Study has finished for now (which means lots of cooking!) and so just for fun I thought I would share the top ten interesting things I learned this study period. 

1. Mugshots from the 1920s were infinitely more stylish than they are today.

2. The phrase “Reading the riot act” comes from old British law that made it illegal for twelve or more people to congregate in a public area. An official actually had to go out and read the act aloud to the group which included an order that they had one hour to disperse. Failure to do so resulted in a charge punishable by death. 

3. On the upside, prisoners who were sentenced to death were allowed to stop at the pub for one final drink on their way to the gallows. Seriously. 

4. The meaning of the phrase: “Rule of Thumb” actually has a pretty awful origin. It comes from a statement made by a judge that moderate beating of your wife was OK as long as the stick was less than the diameter of your thumb. Good to see they at least put limits on the accepted barbarity. 

5. Because Australia was the dumping ground for British convicts, there was a joke in England that the kangaroo’s pouch was designed by pickpockets. 

6. One of those convicts, Amelia Beard, had an amusing piece written about her in the newspaper after she assaulted a policeman. Apparently, she “commenced a volley of abusive language against him, accompanied with a pantomimic exhibition of talons and legs, which left most remarkable notice of her visitations upon his person.” So, she swore, kicked, scratched and left the policeman with visible injuries. Early 19th century was definitely a more interesting time, linguistically. 

7. A couple of years ago there was a proposal to arm the police in London and the police voted against it, with 20% saying they would actually quit if they were forced to carry a gun. I am also a firm believer that guns beget guns so kudos to the British police. 

8. Jail as punishment wasn’t really a thing in Britain until the mid-19th century. There was a model prison built in 1842 which kept prisoners in their cells almost all day every day. When they did leave, they had their faces masked to ensure they could not interact with any other prisoners who might corrupt them. Not surprisingly, they found that “a disconcerting number of them were going insane”.

9. In the early 19th century the word prostitute was bandied about willy-nilly. If you were single and consorted with men, you were a prostitute. If you were single and co-habitated with a man, you were a prostitute. And, of course if you were a sex-worker you were also a prostitute. Of course, men were just called men no matter what they did. Not much has changed in this regard. 

10. There is good evidence that Ned Kelly did not actually say the words, “Such is life” prior to his hanging. Apparently, making stuff up to sell papers is not a new phenomenon. Who knew?

638 & 639/1038 - Nut meringue cake with buttercream filling

Mother's Day is not a huge deal in our house, with me reminding the kids every year that I don't want or need a present. They are obliged, however, to hang out with me for at least part of the day and then I don't mind if we all go our separate ways. Such is life with independent teenage boys. 

So, tomorrow they will head over to my own Mum's place with me to enjoy a homemade lunch. As always, my effort goes into cooking rather than buying yet another present to add to the pile of things filling our already cluttered houses. Dessert will be this beautiful layered cake, complete with three nutty meringues stacked one on top of the other, filled and topped with the most incredibly decadent buttercream and topped with toasted almonds. 

It all sounds rather complicated but actually it was incredibly fast to make. Only one of the layers ended up with a slight split in it, but therein lies one of the joys of making a cake which will be completely hidden under a slathering of buttery goodness. 

Apparently making this cake the day before is a good thing, with the topping seeping it's way into the meringue layers and tasting its best on day two. Of course, this means that I have had to be content with staring at it longingly...and to appease my craving, helping myself to a couple of well sized spoonfuls of the leftover filling. Butter and sweet - what a combination. 

Exams are looming and so this is likely to be the last post for May, hence my desire to combine two recipes in one post.  

Until June! 

637/1038 - Irish stew

A warming stew is just what the doctor ordered after a disappointing and chilly night at the football. We adore lamb in our house and this recipe makes an incredibly tasty dish from what is quite an ordinary cut of meat. We did enjoy the stew as it came on Sunday (which was wonderful!) but my family will never say no to some home-made pastry and so these gorgeous pies were the result of our leftovers being made even more fabulous.

The cooking options for the stew were in the oven or on the stove top. I opted for stove top as I do like to check progress from time to time and lifting the lid is a whole lot easier than dragging a full rondeau in and out of the oven. Insert my awkwardness and the stove top was a very sensible option!

The recipe called for three cups of water (or stock, but lamb stock is hard to find!) but somehow my rondeau was completely full and so I put in much, much more in order to cover the ingredients. Because of this, I cooked it mostly lid off so that the excess water could evaporate. It also meant that I spent some time today reducing the juices so that the pies wouldn't run everywhere. But the taste was AMAZING and so I don't think my heavy handedness on the liquid pouring was too much of a problem.

Because I used (lots of) water and not stock, I had to adjust the flavour slightly, which I did with a good dash of hot sauce and a decent slurp of Worcestershire sauce.

Just fabulous. 

Irish stew as it comes

636/1038 - Quandong and berry sponge pudding

Quandongs really are a wonderful fruit and I am so pleased I have an enormous bag of the dried variety to play around with. This was the first time I have tried rehydrating them and while the flavour was still fabulous, it was a little more subdued. 

I decided to pair the quandongs with strawberries and was pleased to discover that they are a really lovely combination. The sponge topping was very simple, but if you are using a deeper dish with less width as I did, the cooking time will be much longer than what is recommended.

We are in the middle of about a million fabulous projects right now but I am also feeling supremely guilty for having slowed this challenge to only one recipe per month. I calculated my finish time based on this pace, realised the challenge would take more than thirty years to complete and promptly pulled The Cook's Companion off the shelf and searched for a recipe to make immediately. 

Feeling industrious, I also made two batches of ice-cream to serve with the pudding; one vanilla and one wattleseed which is pictured above in the shape of a slightly sad and melted scoop, suffering under the bright lights of our dining room. Even slightly melted, it paired beautifully with the pudding.

So there it is - the first recipe for May and completed only two days in. Hopefully more to come soon! 

635/1038 - Sesame and coriander dukkah

This lovely dukkah represents my desperation to cook a challenge recipe before this crazy month is behind us. It has been a mad time in my house, with serious technical issues wreaking havoc on what was previously a very organised trimester of study. So, after completing my third assignment (again!), today was a day of rest, cooking and pottering. 

Every one of the spices was toasted before being ground and as a result the flavour of the dukkah was absolutely amazing. We have already eaten it with olive oil and Turkish bread and tonight's dinner was dukkah crusted chicken with baked brussels sprouts and guacamole.

The very best part about this recipe was testing out a new method I have discovered for peeling hazelnuts. Instead of roasting and rubbing, you simply blanch them in water with bi-carb soda and the skins peel off perfectly! For one third of a cup of hazelnuts, I used one and a half cups of water and two tablespoons of bi-carb. A revelation!

I am pleased that this recipe made plenty as I think it might be my go to snack for a little while. And I do believe there is a toast, avocado, boiled egg and dukkah breakfast awaiting me in the very near future.

634/1038 - Wattleseed gnocchi

Finally...more bushfood!

I have made Roman style semolina gnocchi before, but this version has the incredible addition of roasted and ground wattleseed, which interestingly has a coffee-like smell. I was a bit worried that the gnocchi would taste like coffee but instead it simply added a lovely depth to the flavour. 

I will be honest and admit that it didn't appear to set perfectly and so rather than giving up on it, decided to bake it in one piece and to cut it once it was cooked. I am so pleased I did! Except for the minimum two hour resting time, this is a quick and fabulous dish that would make a lovely addition to a roast dinner.

Prior to making this gnocchi, cooking, and therefore challenge recipes, had come to a standstill in my kitchen. Early last week, I dislocated my extensor tendon and while the tendon is fine, it is the ruptured ligament, supposed to be holding said tendon in place, which is taking its sweet time to heal.

With many physical tasks unavailable to me, I amused myself instead with the different perspective my new-found one-handedness provided. Below are my top 10 observations.

1. The time taken to complete most tasks is doubled, but so is the joy in completing them. Putting my pants on without assistance is now an event to be recognised and celebrated.

2. When you find yourself partially incapacitated, you discover quite quickly if your family will step up. From taking on morning porridge duties to making sure all of the necessary jars are open in the morning (I use a lot of hair product), after initial resistance my family have impressed me with their willingness to help.

3. If you like your hands to be very dry after washing (including in-between fingers) doing this with a towel one-handed is quite difficult. Enter my trusty hairdryer which now resides on the bathroom sink acting as a very effective hand dryer.

4. When your second hand is also temporarily compromised, straws are your friend. I am not a fan of plastic straws and so have a set of the stainless variety. While they are a fabulous option for the environment, it is important they not be approached too quickly if you prefer your teeth intact. A lesson I learned very quickly!

5. Speaking of teeth, more can be done with teeth than you can imagine; from operating zips to tearing open band-aid packets. Not methods I would be likely to use in public, but perfectly acceptable in the privacy of my home.

6. Studying with one hand (provided your preferred hand is not affected) is still completely possible and in fact, is the task I am able to complete with minimal change. Needless to say, I am way ahead in my studies right now, and yes, my one-handed typing is becoming impressively fast.

7. For somebody who cuts their own hair (yes, I am aware this is weird), the lesson learned is not to put off a much-needed haircut! I am currently sporting an enormously bushy head of hair and still don’t trust a professional to touch it. It appears that public engagements will be cancelled for some time.

8. I have always run hands-free on the cross-trainer which amuses my husband no end. I like to run on the back end of the pedals which means that, being five foot two, there is no way I can reach the handles comfortably. This style of running hands-free has come in very handy this week, preventing me from becoming a complete couch potato.

9. Where there is a will there is a way. Although I am unable to hang washing on the line with pegs (I am determined, not a magician) I have today managed to hang an entire load one handed onto our very large washing rack, which I also assembled with one hand. Not much is impossible if you want it badly enough.

10. I discovered that if the onion/garlic/bacon chopping is done by someone else, a pretty fabulous bolognese can be made with one hand. The execution was not perfect; grated nutmeg was never going to happen and I did accidentally pull the thyme out of the ground with the roots attached (whoops) but otherwise the result was surprisingly good.

I almost managed this recipe on my own, requiring assistance for only a couple of small tasks which included pouring the semolina into the milk as I whisked and taking the tray of gnocchi out of the oven. Stay tuned for (hopefully) more one-handed recipes soon. 

633/1038 - Ajo blanco - white gazpacho from Malaga

I have spoken before of our friend with the incredible garden. He has previously provided us with herbs, fresh trout from his aquaponics set up and various vegetables which we have always put to good use. Yesterday's gift was these unbelievable wine grapes which smelled like nothing I have smelled before; almost as if they contained some kind of exotic perfume. I must have put these beautiful grapes to my nose at least twenty times to inhale the incredible aroma. 

I immediately took a look to see which recipe would inform our dinner and am so pleased I found this one! Gazpacho is served cold and so putting it together was a breeze...if you don't count the disclocated thumb I suffered when I closed the lid of the thermomix. But that's another, and completely boring, story.

Thinking I would need to purchase the Spanish sherry vinegar, I was surprised to find this bottle at the back of my pantry, amusingly propping up a shelf which had lost one of those annoying little pegs which plug into the wall holding it up. Sometimes I think perhaps I do have too many specialty ingredients in my house! 

As much as I adored the flavour of this soup, unfortunately it contained a ridiculous amount of ingredients to which I am intolerant. It has been a very long time since I have ingested milk in its natural form and was taken by surprise when I began nodding off as I attempted to create this blog post last night. I was absolutely kicking myself that I didn't think to froth the milk before I included it as the frothing process stretches the protein in the milk and stops me from having a sleepy reaction. No matter. One strong coffee later I was at least able to stay awake for the rest of the evening and revel in the fact that this soup was absolutely fabulous. 

The most incredible smelling wine grapes

632/1038 - Cream dressing for strongly flavoured firm salad leaves

I have no idea if I have mentioned it before (memory is not what it used to be!) but Monday night is burger night in our house. No matter how quiet our weekends have been I always seem to be exhausted on a Monday. It is therefore probably no surprise that my husband's offer to make burgers for us on a weekly basis was music to my ears!

Two of our family members eat burgers the traditional way; inside a bun and piled as high as a large mouth will accommodate. The other half eat them deconstructed and sans bun. This dressed cos was the perfect accompaniment to the beautiful but rich beefy patty topped with fried egg, cheese and fried onion.

This was the first night in a long while I have allowed cheese on my burger given that cheese is one of the foods which provokes an unwanted reaction. The main problem with cheese is that it completely saps my energy (weird, I know!) but because I did not have any study planned this was not an issue. Of course I did need to go to bed shortly after dinner but the fabulous taste was more than worth it.

The dressing included an incredible combination of cream, red wine vinegar, dijon, lots of crushed garlic, olive oil and, because I am now in love with the flavour, mountain pepper. Too often we eat our vegetables and salad undressed (because it's good for you!) but last night saw my little family devour almost two heads of cos due to the wonderful taste of the dressing. A mammoth effort and a tribute to this wonderful little recipe. 

631/1038 - Bunya nut and pumpkin soup

Realising I finally had a moment to myself, I decided to crack out another of my bush foods; this time the humble bunya nut. 

The bunya nut comes from the bunya pine and drops to the ground encased in an enormous green cone, along with many, many kilograms of its buddies. The pods inside are peeled to reveal the bunya nut which, like chestnuts, needs to be boiled or roasted and then peeled. Enter my trusty Stanley knife! After a thirty minute boil the flesh came away easily from the skin which was a huge relief given that I had thawed exactly the required amount.

Bunya nuts before they are peeled

I decided to roast the pumpkin instead of boiling it as I wanted to make sure the soup had plenty of flavour. Because of this, I decided that the soup boil time was not necessary and decided to simply sauté and blend the firm ingredients, add the water (half of the recommended amount) and adjust the seasoning after only a few minutes on the heat.

Some beautiful mountain pepper which had been gathered by my gorgeous in-laws was finally dry enough to grind and so a good pinch of this was added for flavour along with a tiny handful of dried saltbush.

Of course some roasted pumpkin seeds never go astray and I couldn't resist harvesting them as I dissected the pumpkin. My trusty dehydrator is so handy for getting rid of the excess moisture from the seeds before roasting but this process can also be done in a very low oven or simply by leaving them to air-dry if time is not an issue.

We were unexpectedly invited to a dinner party last night and so this soup was shared with more people than expected. I was quietly pleased when one of the diners asked if the soup was based on a lovely chicken stock, knowing that no stock had been used and that all of the flavour came from the beautiful batch of ingredients.

With a huge bag of bunya nuts in the freezer, this fabulous soup will definitely be on the repeat list. Meanwhile, today will see the rest of the roast pumpkin turned into mini pumpkin cupcakes.

Thanks be to an incredible cultivar!

Roasted pumpkin seeds for topping 

630/1038 - Poached apricots

It appears I have started and finished the apricot chapter in record time. 

As well as an absolute ton of the best jam I have ever made, we now also have an enormous jar of poached apricots in the fridge. I actually made them last month but have only just pulled my head up from my study to write this post. (Last exam was yesterday, hurrah!)

Poached fruit is so very versatile and so far I have eaten it with ice-cream, alongside my fresh apricot tart and now as an addition to my morning smoothie. This particular concoction had a strawberry, banana and soy milk base and was topped with dried quandong, coconut, poached apricot and a sprinkle of chia seeds. Of course it was absolutely delicious! 

With the addition of  a (large-ish) splash of French brandy in the apricots, I had to warn my son regarding eating apricots before driving as he is on a 00 blood alcohol restriction right now. The brandy is a necessary addition though, providing the most wonderful, and slightly surprising, flavour.

That's 26 of 125 chapters DONE! 

629/1038 - Fresh apricot tart

Of course we did more with my friend's apricots than simply make jam!

In addition to the incredible fresh apricots used in this tart, there is also a good amount of the jam included which was used to glaze the fruit. 

Given how easy this was to make it would almost have been criminal not to take the time to make it with fresh pastry. We also ate it with some home-made vanilla ice-cream to round out the completely made from scratch theme of this lovely dessert. Caramelised, sweet, delicious and eaten less than 24 hours after the fruit was picked. I am not sure dessert gets any better than this!  

As always, I am in the midst of playing mad catch up with my study due to a fabulous Christmas holidays spent with my little family. Mini-breaks, mini-renovations and lots of relaxing has been the order of this holiday period...and I am paying for this joy with some serious cramming at my desk. As well as neglecting my study, I have also been relatively absent from my beloved kitchen which should change in a couple of weeks time. Bush foods here we come! In the meantime, I thought I should at least stop for a moment to give my blog a little bit of (rushed) love.  

If you can get your hands on some apricots fresh from the tree, I highly recommend making this beautiful tart. 

628/1038 - Apricot jam

Oh, the hardship of having to help a friend use up her ripe apricots!

Incredibly, this is the first apricot recipe I have made. Actually, it should not be too much of a surprise for others who have severe FODMAP intolerances as apricots are definitely not my body's best friend. Eaten when cooked and in small quantities the reaction is not too bad but downing an entire fresh apricot would unfortunately have me in more pain than the enjoyment of eating it was worth.

But this jam!

This jam now represents happiness for me each morning. The flavour of the fruit, which was still on the tree less than a day prior to becoming a preserve, is simply marvellous. Stephanie advised that the flavour would be compromised if the jam was made in large batches due to the increased cooking time and so although I doubled the recipe, I divided the ingredients into two pots. It was very interesting to observe the far superior performance of my beautiful copper pot, which takes any concoction to a very high heat in record time. 

Given the lowish level of pectin in apricots, turning them into a lovely, goopy jam can be tricky. The thickening method generally employed for apricot jam is to add a good amount of apricot kernels to the pot. The fact that the kernels contain cyanide makes me appropriately wary and so I was only comfortable throwing in the ones I didn't accidentally split with the mallet. I did add the split kernels, but they were constrained in a mesh bag which I hung on the side of the pot. To make absolutely sure my jam would thicken to the required consistency, I also added a handful of chia seeds to each pot as they are renowned for their gelling quality. The resulting thickness was absolutely spot on. 

Doubling the recipe made us a LOT of jam and so it appears I will have many, many days of breakfast happiness ahead.

Love. 

Warrigal Greens pappardelle

I have been fascinated by bush foods since our trek to Uluru a few years ago, having attended a bush foods masterclass with a couple of the locals. My lovely husband remembered this and bought me a huge pile of ingredients from Taste Australia Bush Food Shop for Christmas. 

Tonight was my first foray into bush food wonderland. 

It would have been difficult to decide what to cook first except that the Warrigal greens arrived fresh and so the choice was fairly obvious. It is always confronting when you realise that an ingredient you are about to use is quite toxic in its raw form. Some websites recommended blanching it for three minutes and The Cook's Companion recommended five. Given the possibility I could poison my family if I didn't cook it well enough, I opted for five and then rinsed it very, very well. The smell as it was cooking reminded me very much of silverbeet which was lovely and familiar. 

After having the life squeezed out of it to remove all moisture, I threw it in the thermomix and blended it well. The recipe in the Cook's Companion required only a half cup of fresh Warrigal greens but I decided I was not in the mood to cook two different things so I blended the entire bunch. I think I started with around 500 grams before the stems were removed. At this point I realised that I would be going "off-recipe" and threw in about four cups of flour. When blitzed, I was thrilled to realise that I had created my very own green flour. I am kicking myself now for not taking a picture! 

Having made pasta many, many times I added the eggs by eye; ending up with four or five eggs and another four yolks in the mixture before I was happy with the consistency. 

Running out of energy, the pasta ended up resting overnight instead of for the required hour. Honestly the best pasta making tip I think I could ever give is to rest the pasta in the fridge (sealed in cling film) for at least thirty minutes and if flavoured, at least an hour. It makes rolling it out a breeze. 

I hand cut the pappardelle which kept things nice and rustic. We were thrilled with the taste which was beautiful and fresh and the texture of the pasta was absolutely spot on which I did not expect given the amount of greens in there. 

Look out for some more bush food action over the coming weeks and months. 

Hanging out to dry

627/1038 - Rouille

Well look at that, I slipped in another one before Christmas! 

Beautiful fish in the fridge plus needing to roast some peppers anyway equals an easy and tasty fish dinner. When I first tasted the rouille I was a bit worried as the taste of the potato was quite strong. I needn't have worried. Once it was paired with the fish (and the vegetables!) the flavour was absolutely perfect.

I absolutely love Stephanie's instruction to wrap the grilled peppers in a tea towels before they are peeled. They sweat perfectly and the peel comes straight off every time. There is nothing difficult about this recipe and even though rouille is actually supposed to be eaten in fish soup, it goes beautifully with just about everything else, too.

As well as having a lovely dinner to enjoy, tonight is a very special night for us. As I mentioned in my previous post, what is Christmas eve eve for everybody else is actually the night before Christmas for my little family. I am so very excited this year as I am completely organised present-wise and I even managed to hand in two law assignments in the midst of the madness. On top of that I am REALLY happy with the presents I have organised for everybody and even better than that I have had each of my family members tell me that I will love what they bought for me. 

How am I ever going to sleep tonight?

Ready for Christmas!

626/1038 - Aunt Peggy's powder puffs

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! 

If I am honest, Christmas used to feel like a bit of a chore. It used to start with a ridiculously early start and opening presents with the kids (I loved that bit!) but then we undertook what felt like the never-ending trek from one house to another to satisfy all of our family commitments. It was simply exhausting. And on top of that, we had to disappoint our kids who just wanted to sit in their pyjamas and play with their new things. I was always a HUGE advocate for creating our own Christmas day but my husband would have none of it. Christmas was the 25th of December and that was that. 

Until it wasn't. 

I have no idea how I convinced him, but one year he agreed to try my idea and have our own Christmas day on the 24th. I have LOVED Christmas ever since! We play carols, drink egg nog, open our presents and sit around in our pyjamas all day playing with our new things. It is simply fabulous. And even better, there is one less day to wait to open our presents. Win, win!  

So with the house looking absolutely gorgeous, I am ready for this Christmas 2018 to come! Last night I thought I would do a bit of pre-festive cooking and had my first go at these powder puffs. I have always wondered what a powder puff would taste like and now I know it is kind of like a yoyo but much, much softer. Like having your own personal mini filled sponge.

One thing I DID learn the hard way was not to stack them away on top of one another because they have a tendency to stick to one another. A smarter way would have been to stack them away already sandwiched in pairs and with a small piece of baking paper in between each pair. Mine tasted fantastic but they didn't all look pretty like this one. As they say, looks are not everything.  

With an assignment due next Friday and plenty of Christmas shopping yet to do, I am wondering if this might be my final post for 2018. Just in case it is, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! 

May the rest of your year (and all of 2019) be wonderful x

625/1038 - Persian sugar-pickled garlic

OK, so this picture is from BEFORE the garlic was pickled...but it looked much prettier this way! 

My mum buys her garlic from Patrice Newell's garlic farm and then very generously shares it with me. It is delicious and of course much, much better for you than garlic which is imported and sprayed. I decided to pickle some as it is so beautiful that I just hate the thought of not getting through it before it is no longer fresh. 

The smell of the garlic pickling has permeated my house (which I am completely OK with) but my husband thinks it smells as if I have cooked up a batch of pepper spray. While I don't agree with his assessment, I can confirm that catching an eyeful of the steam as it boiled caused a small amount of pain. Even so, I think the smell is quite lovely.

Apparently the pickled garlic will last as long as fifteen years so I am very pleased to report that this, unlike some other things I have made, will not go off in my fridge. I am not sure of the stats in Australia, but apparently American families throw out between 14 and 25 percent of the food they buy, which is nothing short of astonishing. While I am nowhere near that bad, I do feel a pang of guilt whenever I have to toss something that is past its date or has simply festered in my fridge or pantry for too long. 

Unfortunately for impatient me, these sweet and smelly little cloves need to sit for a whole month before we can eat them. Once this wait time has elapsed, we will enjoy them as we do our pickled ginger; randomly scattered on meat and vegetables alike. 

Can. not. wait. 

Pickled!

624/1038 - Asparagus custards

It was election day on Saturday and for the first time in many years I actually headed to the polls with my husband, having foregone the opportunity to vote early due to his promise that we would head down together. I am not a big fan of waiting in line but have found I don't mind it nearly so much if I have company. 

The little polling booth we attended was sadly devoid of democracy sausages and so this was our special treat for the day instead. I do love asparagus and this custard was very lovely...and very rich! I couldn't help feeling that they would have gone very well with a big juicy steak and so this is probably what we will pair them with next time. On this occasion the pairing was with a lovely and crackly roast pork so I didn't hear too many complaints.

Of course it would have been more impressive to photograph a perfectly turned out custard but I tried a couple of times and they just didn't want to play ball. No matter, they tasted just as good straight from the moulds. 

...and just like that, another chapter is finished! That's twenty-four down now with a measly one hundred and one to go. 

623/1038 - Watermelon granita

The timing of this dessert couldn't have been better, providing me with a lovely sweet finish to my meal but at the same time keeping me (loosely) on track to being able to fit comfortably in my jeans some time in the foreseeable future. A concert with friends next week has provided extra motivation for this goal. 

Of course, this recipe was put on the list to assist with the project we are currently undertaking which we have affectionately named "operation watermelon". I have vowed that unless we demolish this entire fruit without any wastage it will be the last time I buy a watermelon in its entirety. With the aim of creating easy watermelon access, I spent some time on day one scooping all of the flesh into a container. So far so good.

I actually created this recipe in the manner described in the book, even though I have a whizz-bang ice-cream machine and could just as easily have churned it. But there is something about the texture that is created when granita is scraped with a fork that I do like very much. Sometimes the manual way really is the best. But of course the tray does take up an inordinate amount of space in our indoor freezer.

I type and type and have just realised I have not yet commented on the taste! This granita is simply perfect on its own, with the sweetness of the watermelon perfectly offsetting the tartness of the lime juice. Even better, I made a round of mojitos with the leftover sugar syrup (which were fabulous by the way!)

...and in the spirit of celebrating every possible milestone, this recipe represents sixty percent of the challenge complete! It only took seven and half years to get here...

Mojito made with the extra sugar syrup

622/1038 - Gelo di melone

In some language, somewhere, I am fairly sure that watermelon means summer...

With a hankering for a taste of my favourite summer juice, watermelon and pineapple, I lugged home an entire melon and then realised that we had enough for a LOT of juice! Expect to see at least one more watermelon recipe after this one. 

This dessert was very fast to make and tasted incredible but if I am honest, didn't quite set the way it should have. It didn't matter. The watermelon combined with rosewater was a heavenly combination and we all agreed that this would be fabulous with a bowl of homemade vanilla ice-cream. 

I quite liked the amount the recipe made, with just the right amount of sweetness in each serve. The pistachios were a lovely addition, too.

After what has been a relatively slow start to this eighth year of the challenge (from mid-July) November has been quite a productive month!

621/1038 - Stephanie's chicken Provençale

When an animal dies for our culinary pleasure, it is only right that their little bodies be treated with respect. It was with this thought in mind that I experienced a flood of guilt as I jointed this poor little chicken, devoid of the deft skill required for such a delicate job. Massacring aside, I did ended up with my ten pieces and also a little sack of meaty bones ready to be made into stock. 

This dinner topped off a lovely day of catch ups, coffee and champagne and so of course that meant I was completely exhausted and in absolutely no state to post this until after a decent night's sleep. 

Possibly the most time-consuming element of this dish was taking the skin off the peppers. I usually trim the seeds and spines from the peppers before I put them under the grill but absent-mindedly skipped this step on this occasion which meant I had seeds EVERYWHERE as I removed the skins. Not ideal. Messy. Not to be repeated. 

Having said that, I do adore the sweet, sweet taste of a grilled pepper and this dish was a sensation because of it. Of course my home-cured olives also had a special part to play! 

There is something deeply satisfying about using an entire chicken and knowing that as well as saving money, every little bit of the bird has been used. I could be wrong, but I also think the various pieces taste better than when they are bought pre-cut. 

This was, quite simply, a sensational dish and I will be making it again (and again and again).

It is now breakfast time and I think there are some leftovers calling my name...

620/1038 - Braised celery

With absolutely no inspiration regarding what to cook for dinner tonight, I employed a technique I like to call "the Masterchef method". It sounds fancy but in reality it is sending my husband out to the chest freezer and telling him to pick a cut of meat. Today's meat choice was a bag of pork ribs and so dinner ended up being pork rib soup and braised celery served with steamed rice. Everything was served in the same bowl but the soup didn't make the cut for the photograph due to it's quite ordinary brownish hue. 

My husband is not a celery fan but will eat it if it is sufficiently disguised or apparently, braised. This method of cooking celery is simply fabulous and reduces the strength of the flavour so that it becomes palatable even to non-celery fans.

I was keen to reduce the sauce but was a bit worried about overcooking the celery. After a short time on the stove top I took the celery out and sped up with the thickening process with a good pinch of cornflour. 

Dinner was lovely and I made a mountain of food so that's tomorrow night sorted, too. I do have to make dessert though as we polished off the last of the red velvet cupcakes I made in memory of a beautiful friend who was supposed to have enjoyed them this week for his birthday. Bittersweet, indeed.

With plenty of leftover cream cheese icing in the fridge, tomorrow is looking a lot like a carrot cake kind of day...

Super fluffy red velvet cupcakes

619/1038 - Plum sauce marinade for lamb or pork

With a roast pork on hand, this plum sauce marinade couldn't have come at a better time. 

We LOVE a good roast pork and my husband and I have both reached the stage of creating consistently good crackle. Recently I was out of cooking circulation for almost a month as I wrestled with study/assignment/exam related matters. It appears I was out of the kitchen a touch too long because once things died down I put a beautifully crackled pork roast on the table (the one before this one) and the boys told me that it was fantastic and asked if their Dad had snuck home to cook it. I had to laugh but then reminded them that I CAN cook. How easily they forget...

So while I treated the skin side of tonight's roast with the regular oil and salt combo, every inch of the meat was slathered with this delectable marinade. I halved the mixture and still had plenty left over so I decided to cover the carrots in it too (which was a fabulous idea by the way!)

To complete the decadence of the meal, and to use up some leftover cream, I thought I would throw together some scalloped potatoes as well. This all sounds lovely but of course as I was creating all of this I completely forgot about the fact that since my prolonged swot period I still can't fit into my favourite jeans. This was made very clear to me as I attempted to get dressed to go out and see The Living End on Monday night (who were FABULOUS by the way) and had to pick my outfit based on what I thought I could get away with and also what would not spontaneously burst open on the night. 

Oh well. As they say, life is too short. Eat ALL of the food. 

As is evidenced by the dreadful photo above, as dinner came together everything seemed to happen at once and the ability to stop and take a decent photo escaped me. Life is just like that sometimes. 

But at least we ate all the food! Highly recommended and a great way to use up a bit more of last week's lovely plum sauce.  

618/1038 - Plum sauce

Soooo...plum sauce! 

This beautiful meal was based around Stephanie's plum sauce which I just knew had to be used in Peking duck parcels. The sauce was made a week ago but had to be left to mature so I have been dying for today to arrive! 

I decided it would be prudent to third the recipe as two litres of plum sauce was likely to last us a lot longer than I was comfortable having to store it in my fridge. Only having a small amount of white wine vinegar on hand I thought it would also be a good idea to top up with a plum vinegar I had bought from the Asian grocer. Unfortunately the plum vinegar has a very strong and quite unusual taste and the final result just didn't taste quite right. Enter a few good handfuls of coconut sugar, a squeeze of vanilla paste and a decent splash of lemon juice and the flavour was absolutely perfect.

Move forward one week and it was Peking duck time! Yesterday morning started with the creation of a lovely little orange and carrot salad which was to be the healthy element of our special dinner. The salad was followed by the assembly of mandarin pancakes which are generally not a big deal to put together. Unfortunately I had something of a brain fade and decided to stack the raw pancakes on top of one another which of course stuck together in the most annoying way. I have made these so many times before and I have no idea what made me think that stacking them while raw would be a good idea. Fortunately only a couple of them had to be re-rolled so the disaster was not a major one.

After the  pancakes were made it was duck time! I rubbed the duck with a mix of Chinese 5-spice and salt and cooked it in a very hot oven, turning it regularly. Once it was cooked I had my lovely family helping to shred the meat from the bones which meant that in no time we were making our own little parcels filled with plum sauce, chives, cucumber, duck and even a little bit of the orange and carrot salad.

Just fabulous.

Carrot and orange salad

617/1038 - Kitchen garden soup with tiny herb omelettes

Today has been a pretty ordinary day. 

Generally cooking and good food make me feel better, so I set about putting this beautiful soup together, all the while trying to convince myself that the culinary therapy was working. Sadly, it did not. 

There is a novel (and now also a movie) called 'Like Water for Chocolate'. The main character is a wonderful cook and loves to feed people. Somehow, perhaps magically, her moods are always transferred to her diners through her cooking. If she was feeling sad, the diners, after eating, would also feel sad. I do like to think my cooking is magical but given how incredibly wonderful this soup was, I am fairly sure I don't have the power to transfer my moods through food. 

The edible portion of my garden has recently been given a lot of love and so all of the herbs in the soup and the omelette were fresh and aromatic and imparted the most wonderful depth to the meal. I followed the recipe religiously, except for the part where I was supposed to strain the soup. Of course, anybody who follows my blog will know that this is largely due to the fact that I don't like waste but if I am honest is also because I am not always very good at doing what I am told. 

To ensure nobody got a mouthful of anything revolting, I removed the bay leaf and the strands of stripped thyme sprigs before I threw the soup in the blender. The result was an incredibly flavourful soup with plenty of tiny crunchy bits thanks to the pods from the sugar snap peas. 

The omelettes were also pretty fabulous, although the last couple were cooked on a heat that was a bit too high and so were a tiny bit raw in the middle. Nothing that a quick zap in the microwave couldn't fix! 

This was the second last recipe of the pea chapter and I am really not sure how it escaped my attention for so long. A lovely, lovely recipe and one I am very pleased I did not halve. 

616/1038 - Queen Mab's puddings

In amongst the madness that is our household I have implemented a range of systems and processes which ensure the place runs smoothly. By far one of my favourites is the fact that I make my youngest breakfast in bed every weekday. How on earth is that a system I hear you ask. Let me explain. 

Go back twelve months and you would see a teenager who sleeps so deeply that he doesn't even wake to the SONOS system blaring music into his contented little ears. Then add a mother who despises tardiness and so I would be up and down the stairs multiple times attempting to rouse my dreamy boy. To no avail. Enter the morning porridge routine. 

I realised that this boy loves his sleep but also that he loves food even more. So I tried making him porridge (which takes all of five minutes on the stove top) and waving it under his nose. Voila - a teenager who wakes on the first try. So now instead of going up and down the stairs multiple times I take up a steaming bowl of oats and my job is done. No raised voices, no wasted effort. Perfect.

In the spirit of keeping the peace, I made two of these little puddings fruit free, again for my youngest. He will eat a couple of fruits and almost every vegetable there is and so his dislike for dried fruit bothers me not.

To ensure his pudding was fruit free I simply added the fruit to the tins and then poured the custard on top. This is also the way I make mini savoury egg bites; filling first and then egg on top to make sure everybody gets their share of the good stuff!

And talking of puddings...how good are these? Wobbly like a panna cotta and with the most beautiful dusky flavour from the bay leaves. I don't know if I took my custard far enough and so about five minutes after this picture was taken this beautiful little pudding split in half and collapsed on the plate. Of course this would not have happened if I had eaten it straight away and not spent an age trying to find the best photographic angle.

Chapter number twenty three, bay leaves, is now complete! What a lovely way to finish.

My tips for this beautiful recipe:

• A small serving is ample. I halved the recipe and still split the mixture between 8 small moulds
• If you don't have almond oil, any nut oil would probably do (I used macadamia)
• As Stephanie suggests, it is lovely served with poached fruit (I opted for pear) 
• If you don't have an hour to poach your pear, cut it into slices and it will be done in less than half the time