“Food must do more than just be filling”

Really enjoyed watching this 3 part documentary, on my favourite subjects – food, history and England. So interesting to watch (and makes you want to rush off and roast some eggs!).

 

Happy Historical Fooding!

Jumpin’ Jezebel(le)….

I had a spur of the moment brunch yesterday, whilst wandering the antique/coffee strip at the historic town of Guildford. It is only 15 minutes drive from me, but I went there by train, as it is their monthly craft market day and I expected parking to be an issue. I have never been to this market before, and was expecting big things….only to be pretty disappointed. It was just one room (the old town hall) with about a dozen stalls selling value-priced but not very exciting stuff. I could easily have found a parking space as well, but it was still nice to just wander up and down browsing – there are several antique/curio/collectibles shops and an excellent secondhand book shop – always worth a delve into.

As usual I had a book with me, so I decided to stop and have an early lunch at Jezebelle, a fairly new tapas bar/cafe. It was too early for tapas so I had brekky instead, which was absolutely delicious. I had the “hot smoked salmon cake, poached eggs & avocado”. There were 2 eggs, perfectly poached, except a bit cold by the time I finished mucking about taking photos haha, but that was my own fault and I am quite happy with cold food anyway. The salmon cakes (x2) were baked rather than fried, so not greasy and kind of like a mini hashbrown/frittata thing. The dish didn’t come with bread apparently so I asked for some rye toast with it, and this came with a tomato/onion salsa on top that was quite spicy and blended perfectly with the other flavours.

I had English Breakfast tea (it was the silk bags from Tea Drop, who seem to have a completely monopoly on coffee shop/restaurant supplying here in WA these days – it is nice tea, but I would prefer it a little stronger – I don’t think they put enough tea in the bags) and a glass of house sparkling. After all, it says on the menu that champagne is okay to drink any time, as it is always 12.00pm somewhere. I took them at their word.

The decor here is very modern – posh toilets! – and the service was good. The staff were all “young and hip” and very friendly. There was a family group arriving at the same time as me, and they were the customers from hell – they asked to be moved to a different table 3 times (just to be painful, as there was nothing wrong with any of the seating/view/light/temperature arrangements and you could choose to sit outside or inside) – I could see the poor staff doing their best to please them and no doubt wishing they would just go away! Thankfully, this lot only had coffees and didn’t stay all that long, as they were loud and had snivelling whiny kids with them, right behind me. When you are alone with a good book and have ‘been there, done that’ you don’t want rude, noisy kids mucking up your quiet Sunday morning! That’s my ‘old person rant’ over with anyway lol.

Prices were comparable to elsewhere in Perth: $16 for my main dish which is pretty good considering there was no charge for the toast (not sure if that was a mistake or not) and $4.50 for the tea. The only thing I realised when I got home and checked the bill, was that they actually charged me $18 for a premium glass of champers, when I asked for the house sparkling which should have cost $9.00. The reason I didn’t notice at the time, was that 1) I thought they were charging me extra for my toast, and 2) I had a 25% off discount by using the Entertainment card, so in my head I thought the total was about right, at the time. Hmmm, well my fault for not checking the bill properly at the time I suppose.

Had I been there a bit later in the day, there is live music from 1-3pm on Sundays, which would have been very nice alongside a few tapas dishes.

Happy Brunching!

Fruitilicious Muffin Break

I am amazed at how great these dairy-free Fruit Cocktail Muffins taste – this recipe is from the 4 Ingredients: Kids recipe book, and in fact only has 3 ingredients in it! I wasn’t expecting too much of this, but it turned out brilliantly. Mind you, the blurb in the book says “these are ideal for breakfast when in a hurry” …..well, considering the sugar content from the caster sugar and the fruit/liquid, I’m not sure I’d encourage children to eat this in place of other breakfast options – but certainly as a supremely easy morning tea or after school snack this is ideal.

Kids could easily make these themselves with very little assistance, and all you need is to have a can of fruit cocktail in the pantry and you can whip them up and have them in the oven in literally 2 minutes.

For a more decadent version, I might add some choc bits next time. And a bit of cinnamon in the mixture would be good. Or if you have any leftover tiny Easter eggs lying around (unlikely I know!), you could press one into the centre of each muffin before cooking – caramel-filled eggs would be even better.

I’ve frozen some to see how they taste when thawed – possibly they’ll be quite dry and might need butter or jam spread on them. And I’ve realised just how similar this recipe is to the Pineapple Cake I’ve made before – in fact, almost identical – so that means you could easily substitute a particular fruit in this (or the cake recipe), rather than the mixed fruit cocktail. Lots of scope!

Fruit Cocktail Muffins

2 cups SR flour

1 cup caster sugar

410 gm can fruit cocktail, undrained

Preheat oven to 150C (140C for fan forced). Grease or line a 12-capacity muffin pan.

Sift flour and sugar into a large bowl and stir well.

Add the undrained fruit cocktail an stir until just combined (if a little dry, add 1 tbsp milk).

Spoon into muffin pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops of golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Makes 12.

Happy Sweet Fooding!

Spaghetti Cupcakes

I had a go at making these last week for a quick dinner after work. This was SO easy and I thought for sure it would be a winner, but for me the flavours didn’t quite work. I found it too greasy tasting, and mine did not come out as perfect looking – in fact they sunk when cooling down, into concave little cheesey blobs really. I had trouble getting them out of the tin, despite it being non-stick and oiled, and the taste just didn’t do anything for me. I ended up scraping it all into the bin and ordering a szechuan prawn Crust pizza instead!

I do think this is a great recipe for kids to make though, and I think little taste buds would enjoy the flavours more than I did.

Happy Fooding!

Eggs In a Basket!

Last week I shared with you my (well, not mine, but my friend’s) Italian Bread Baskets, and mentioned that the options for other fillings were endless. Well, I’ve had a go at serving poached eggs in them (using Poachies, which I am totally hooked on) – and it worked really well!

One with smoked salmon (that one’s mine of course) and one topped with red casicum strips – what a great serving idea, and it only took a few minutes to trim/flatten/bake the bread pieces. Don’t they look great!

Happy Fooding!

“I Feel Like a Posh Git” !!!

Hehe I had a good laugh watching an old episode of The Cook & The Chef this week. I love this show, which has finished now, but I’ve been borrowing the series one season at a time, from my library. I love the interaction between Maggie Beer and Simon Bryant, and although I have been fast-forwarding through some episodes, the truffle-focused one I had to watch from start to finish. What a hoot!

I tried to find video of these amazing looking truffle scrambled eggs, with champagne splashed through the egg – what an awesome idea! Couldn’t find the video to share with you, but here is a link to the recipe. Mind you, at the current price of $2,500 a kg for our local Manjimup truffles (which is what they’ve used here), I expect I’ll be using a few drops of truffle oil instead of the real thing!

The episode is from Series 2, if you’re able to find it locally.

Quote from this episode:

Maggie: Can’t you just smell the scent of the forest?

Simon: I can smell the scent of very rich people.

!!! Happy Fooding!

Play With Poachies….and Win Win Win!

Have you seen these little goodies?! At $4.99 for a packet of 20, being a kitchen gadget freak I just had to have a go. I read a few reviews, and basically agree with them – that these are handy, but not really “necessary” to make a good poached egg. Fun to play around with though!

Sorry about the quality of the photos, but it is very difficult to take photos of something with steam coming off it, and I couldn’t exactly say stop, you can’t eat your egg until I’ve let it cool down a lot so I can take photos!

The instructions said to place each egg in the bag just before placing in the water. I was thinking OH that’s silly, surely I could line them all up in glasses and have the eggs broken into them ready for plunging ; however, as soon as I broke the first one into the bag I realised the method behind their madness – the bags are actually porous (if that’s the right word to use about paper) and the egg starts to wet the paper and soak through immediately, so you do really have to break the egg into the bag then quickly plunge the bag into the water, as it says to do. I was quite nervous, as with this kind of thing you have to do it all quite fast if you want the eggs to all be cooked at the same time.

The big plus from my point of view, and the reason why I might continue to use these Poachies, is this….. usually when you poach eggs, once you break them all (say 3 or 4) into the pan, there is no way of telling which egg has been in there longer – a few seconds does make a difference as to how well done the egg is. And I like mine semi-hard, not super runny. I don’t mind a bit of oozy yolk, but I don’t like them totally “soft” like most people seem to. Once eggs are broken into the boiling water, you cannot control where they bob around and they all look the same on the outside, so it’s impossible to tell which is the one you placed in the water a minute after the others.

With the Poachies I just marked one of them with a black blob of pen (which you can see in the top pic), so that I immediately could recognise it as the one that had cooked the longest – brilliant! Kids could write their name on each bag, so this is a fun way of cooking with kids too.

The eggs came out a not-so-perfect shape, but they did slide out of the bags as easily as the instructions indicated, and they tasted terrific, just like any other poached egg. There were also no wasted bits of egg white being lost in the boiling water – it was all nicely contained in one place and could not escape.

I used leftover cornbread to make the toast – delicious!

Definitely an ok way of doing poached eggs, and whilst the bags are single-use and hence not so economical, one packet of 20 will last quite a while and works out to 25 cents a go, so I don’t think that’s too bad. They’re a UK product, and if you’re looking for them here in Oz, Woolworths/Big W has the rights to them at the moment – I thought they’d be in the foil/wrap area, but I actually found them in with the kitchen utensils. I looked them up and it seems in the US they’re marketed as Poachets under the Lakeland brand, but it’s the same product.

Here’s the official Poachies video if you would like to see how the professionals do it haha:

I have a packet of Poachies to give away, so if you’d like to “be in it to win it”, just leave a comment below (or like the post if you’re reading this on fb), and I’ll draw a winner on 8th September to celebrate Spring & Father’s Day. It’s not a humungous giveaway, but just something to encourage you to have a play around. Happy to post anywhere in the world, so please enter and encourage your friends to as well!

Happy Fooding!

Good Old Fritter Batter

This week I had a pang for corn fritters……haven’t made these for years and so I looked up my old school cookbook from, ahem, many years ago. It is still a cookery bible of sorts, for me, and I often go back to it, despite its now-falling-apart condition. It is completely food splattered and well loved! I found my handwritten corn fritter instructions underneath the “fritter batter” recipe and made a batch of these to have cold (because that’s the kind of gal I am).

Simple and basic…..and yummy for brekky, cold, spread with a little cream cheese and topped with a slice of silverside (corned beef).

Corn Fritters

2 cups self-raising flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 2/3 cup water

1/4 cup milk

1/2 tsp dried basil

425 gm can corn kernels, drained

Sift flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre, and gradually add the water, blending with a hand held blender (or use a food processor, or a wooden spoon if you have no choice but you’ll get a sore arm!).

Blend until the mixture is nice and smooth, then add the milk and blend further until nice and glossy.

Add corn kernels and basil, and mix well. Refrigerate for an hour or so.

Pour large tablespoonfuls of mixture into greased egg rings in a little olive oil heated in a pan (I use the oil spray so it isn’t too oily); cook until bubbling on top. Remove rings, flip over and press down with the back of an egg-flip or spatula, and cook for about 1 minute more or until cooked through. Drain onto paper towels and serve hot or cold.

Makes 18.

Happy Fooding!

Beautiful Banana Bread

This is my tried and true banana bread recipe – not TOO sweet, lower in fat than most versions, and perfect for using up those over-ripe mushy bananas. I like to eat it toasted with Vegemite on it – YES I know this is completely weird – but try it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Banana Bread

1 3/4 cups SR flour

1/4 cup plain flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 eggs, lightly beaten

50 gms butter, melted

2-3 overripe bananas, mashed with a fork

optional – 1/2 cup walnuts

Preheat oven to 160C and line a loaf tin with baking powder. Sift flours and cinnamon into a large bowl; stir in the sugar and make a well in the centre.

In a separate bowl, mix the milk, eggs, melted butter, mashed banana and walnuts if using, and stir until well combined.

Add the banana mixture to the dry ingredients, and stir until just combined (don’t overmix).

Spoon into prepared tin and bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Remove from oven and set aside to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Cut into slices to serve.

(Note: my oven is super super super hot – if your banana bread takes a bit long to be properly cooked, have the oven at 180C instead)

Happy Fooding!

Vegemite, avo & walnuts!

Let’s Get Fluffy!

Here is a verbal translation of how to make the gorgeously fluffy pancakes I had recently; these were luscious and I was thinking mmmm this would make a great mixture for pikelets.

Sift together 3/4 cup SR flour and a pinch of baking powder.

In a separate bowl, place 3/4 cup milk, 2 tbsp + 1 tsp castor sugar and 1 1/2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, and whisk together. Put aside, covered, in a warm place for about 10-15 minutes until the mixture curdles.

Add 1 egg to the milk mixture; whisk well.  Add 1/2 tsp pure vanilla essence, and whisk again.

Now add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together until a smooth batter is formed.

Heat a bit of butter in a frying pan over medium heat (preferably a stainless steel one – don’t use non-stick as it gets too hot too quickly and the pancakes will burn), and spoon about 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan. Cook until bubbles form, then carefully flip over and cook the other side very briefly.

Serve with your choice of lemon, sugar, maple syrup, jam and/or cream.

This quantity is not huge; it made 4 pancakes, or would probably make 12-16 small pikelets……the flavour was really light and fluffy.

Happy Fooding!