This easy Quorn based Pad Thai dish was not quite as flavoursome as it could be, and the egg made it look a bit gluggy – not like the perfect bowl of rice noodles featured on the website! It is also not of the same WOW Factor quality as the yummy Salmon Pad Thai recipe that I absolutely adore making. It was satisfactory enough however. With the addition of some extra chilli or other sauces, maybe some chopped bok choy, and perhaps 1 egg instead of 2 next time, it is a great dish for after work when you just want to collapse in a chair with a bowl of something and a glass of wine.
Actually, the glass of wine goes without saying, no matter what the meal…..
I used cashews instead of peanuts, as I don’t like peanuts much. My local Coles supermarket has this great new thing called Scoop & Weigh, where you measure out your own nuts, fruits, seeds etc and weigh the little bag on a self-serve scales, then print out your own barcode sticker, just like the girls behind the deli! I’m having fun buying lots of bits & pieces, just cos’ I can! It’s so cool, just like playing shops when I was 6…..
I added extra spring onion to the dish, and lots of coriander, for which a quantity wasn’t specified. I also added some lime zest, mainly because I paid $2 for one lime so I was determined to use every bit of it. Why do I not have any friends with a lime tree in their garden….
Cauliflower is so cheap here right now! It has a very short “cheap” season here in WA, and for most of the year is expensive, so I’ve made the most of the current availability.
I had a recipe from somewhere online, can’t remember where, for really easy cauliflower fritter things, and intended to make those tonight for dinner. I haven’t been cooking much lately, just working and coming home tired and really just haven’t been bothered, a lot of the time – but this morning I was super organised and had the cauliflower all cut up ready to go, before I left home.
So…..instead, I placed the mixture in a baking dish and topped with a few slices of tomato and some parmesan cheese, and baked for 20 minutes. It was absolutely delicious – actually quite spicy from the cayenne pepper, which had much more of a peppery kick than I expected it to.
I guess this is more of a side dish, the way I ended up making it – but I just piled a heap in a bowl and ate it with a spoon for my dinner lol. Good stuff.
Cauliflower Gratin
1 head cauliflower, cut into large florets
2 eggs
1/3 cup tasty/cheddar cheese, grated
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
60 gms parmesan cheese, grated
1 tomato, sliced
Cook the cauliflower in boiling water until tender – about 10 mins. Drain, mash and add the eggs, cheese, breadcrumbs and cayenne pepper.
Place mixture in a lightly greased baking dish (I used a square ceramic dish 20 cm x 20 cm approx).
Top with tomato slices and parmesan cheese.
Bake at 180C for 25 minutes until top is golden and bubbling.
I know there are a LOT of versions of this yummy quiche dish. It’s such a great standby recipe to whip up when zucchinis are plentiful – lovely cold or hot, cut into squares as an appetizer or in larger serves as a main course. I’ve made versions with carrot or pumpkin in as well, coriander instead of parsley, and I’ved used polenta instead of flour, for a gluten-free version.
This is my “basic” recipe, which comes from my aunt and is the one I’ve been making since Zucchini Slice became trendy about 20 years ago (or longer – don’t know where all those years went).
Zucchini Slice
2 cups grated zucchini
3 spring onions, finely chopped
1 cup grated tasty cheese
1 cup SR flour
1/3 cup olive oil
4 eggs
cracked pepper, to taste
3 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Spoon into a 20 x 30cm dish lined with baking paper, and level the top. Bake in 200C (190C for fan forced) for 20-25 minutes, until a light golden colour on top and just firm to touch. Cool in the tin and cut into squares.
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.
I’m in Melbourne now, for Christmas with the family, and am more in party mode than cooking mode! Lots of socialising and catching up with people going on this week. I have cooked one meal for my mum and son, my delicious and sooooooo easy Beef Rendang, but apart from that I’ve been eating out or having a sandwich.
I’ve had a lovely lunch at Red Fire Lounge (see pic below of yummy calamari stirfry with hokkien noodles – the calamari was ultra-tender and it was a HUGE serving, no way could I eat it all), and a wonderful brunch in the sun at Barmah Park Winery, complete with champagne at 10.00 in the morning!! It is Christmas, after all, and I’m on holidays. In fact, my friend and I spent 3 hours there yackety-yacking, and the waitress asked if we’d then like to order lunch as well lol. I’ve eaten there before but never ordered from the breakfast menu, and it was divine. Sitting outside on the verandah, looking out at the vineyard – supremely relaxing and fun.
Mum and I have written our grocery shopping list for this weekend, and we’re pretty well organised, so it should be fairly stress-free. We will do most of our cooking and a lot of other preparation on Christmas Eve, so that on Christmas Day it’s all just a matter of throwing a few easy things together and slicing things up. Chilled out and relaxed, is the aim.
The Christmas ham is all ready to be hacked into, and I’m sure that will happen in the next day or so – after all, it’s so huge there will be more than enough for Christmas Day (along with roast turkey, rolled/stuffed pork and a myriad of vegies and salads….not to mention nibbles and dips beforehand and LOTS of desserts later on….let’s face it, it’s just one big food-fest ALL day!!).
So…whilst I might not be doing too much actual cooking this week, I’m certainly doing some fabulous eating!
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.
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!
This frittata was SO easy, I was very impressed. It is based on a recipe from the new River Cottage Veg cookbook, and this particular recipe was recommended to me by a work colleague.
The vegies you use are completely up to you, and I didn’t have the right size baking dish as most of mine are currently still packed (and will remain so while I am living where I am at the moment – no room to put them anywhere!). This is a very forgiving dish though – you could make it in a dish of any shape or size I reckon and it would still come out fine.
 I do love roast beetroot and it was perfect in this; I was thinking maybe I’d make one just with beetroot and pumpkin next time, as the two go well together and the colours look great too.
Roast Veg Frittata
~600 gms mixed Winter veg (I used beetroot, pumpkin, carrot & potato), cut into 2-3cm chunks
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil (or use olive oil spray)
7-8 eggs
3 spring onions, chopped
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme
cracked pepper, to taste
30 gms parmesan cheese, finely grated
Preheat oven to 190C.
Toss the vegies in a bowl with oil and garlic, then spread out on a baking tray. Roast for about 40 minutes, until vegies are all tender and starting to caramelise in places.
Beat the eggs together with the herbs and cracked pepper.
Transfer the vegies to a 23cm square ovenproof dish, and pour the egg mixture evenly over. Scatter the parmesan cheese over the top and return to the oven for 20 minutes, until the egg is all set and the top is puffed up and starting to colour.
Serve warm or cold.
Serves 6
The original recipe called for the vegies to be roasted in the ovenproof dish, and then the egg mixture simply poured over the top; however, I wanted to spread my vegies out more, so I have cooked them on a separate oven tray first and then transferred to the final dish. I do think this would be a great party or picnic dish, as you could quite easily double it and make it in a large lasagne type dish, and cut it into small squares. A good one to make ahead too, as it’s yummy cold (I should know, I had a leftover bit for brekky the next day!).
Don’t forget to enter the Poachies giveaway, by liking my previous post!
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?
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!
Salmon & Avocado 