Prawns and Snowpeas with Wasabi Cream Sauce

Okay, NOW we're talkin'. This was a complete wing and I was so happy with how it turned out. This is really, really great and I think you should absolutely try it.

You'll need;

500g prawns, shelled
200g pasta shells
two big handfulls snowpeas, chopped
200ml cream
1 tbspn fresh REAL wasabi - not the green stuff you get from asian stores. There's a great company in NZ that does an awesome wasabi.
1 clove crushed garlic
2 tbspns mirin
1 finely chopped tomato
2 tbspns extra virgin olive oil.
salt to season.

Cook your pasta according to directions. Put the chopped snowpeas in the cooking water with the pasta for the last minute or so of cooking to blanch them. Drain the pasta and snowpeas, then put the olive oil and garlic in the saucepan and return to heat. Let the garlic infuse the oil, then pour in the cream. Add the wasabi, mirin, tomato and bring to a simmer. Season, then stir in the prawns and snowpeas. Serves two very happy people.

Smoked Salmon and Rocket Super Salad

I don't like rocket, usually. It's just a little too bitter. A friend of mine says it tastes like poison, and I have to agree.

However, this salad is so freakin' delicious I have to make the exception, here. Try it - I dare you.

You will need;

150g rocket
200g smoked salmon
1 handful capers
3 good quality salad tomatoes
300ml good quality fresh ceasar salad dressing
handful shaved parmesan
1 thinly sliced spanish onion
1 packet of crispy noodles (this is the big secret)

You could add avocado as a variation.

Simply toss it all in a bowl and serve.

Baked Vegetables with Pruscuito and Creamy Caper and Cherry Tomato sauce.

Whooaaahh! This was simply the most delicious thing I've made in ages. The sauce... I just wanted to drink the sauce...

Anyhoo, this is what you'll need...

Pre-heat oven to 180C

1 celeriac,
1 sweet potato,
1 swede, all peeled and diced into 2cm cubes.
150g finely shredded pruscuito
200ml cream
1 tspn dijon mustard
1 clove crushed garlic
1 tbspn capers
100g cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 good handful of finely grated Parmesan
Olive oil

Put the diced vegetables and pruscuito into a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and put into the oven for 30-35 minutes until the vegetables are soft and the pruscuito crispy.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, place the cream, capers, garlic, mustard, and tomatoes and bring to a simmer, pressing down on the cherry tomatoes to release some juice into the sauce. When simmering, add the Parmesan, stirring, until the mixture is thick and saucy. Season.

Arrange the cooked vegetables in a serving bowl, and drizzle over the sauce. Serves two.

Fettuccini with Mushrooms and Truffle

Okay, okay so it's truffle. I swore I'd never put anything that was weird or pretentious here, but I simply couldn't resist - and the reason is that it's delicious. I don't mean that kind of Madagascan-lemur-kidney oh gosh it's so rare it must be good tasty, but really great. Truffles are expensive because they are freakin' AWESOME. Ahem.

Okay, rationalization aside, here's the recipe.

You'll need:

200g fettucini
150ml cream
150g mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 clove crushed garlic
25ml truffle oil (get the good stuff, with truffle bits floating in it)
10g butter
good handful of Parmesan
olive oil

In a frypan, get the butter frothing with a couple of glugs of the olive oil. Toss in the mushrooms and cook until very tender and rich. Set aside in a warm place. Meanwhile, cook your pasta.

When the pasta's done (saving a bit of the cooking water), put the cream, garlic and truffle oil in the pan and bring to a simmer. Grate your Parmesan into the simmering mixture until you get a lovely creamy sauce. Season.

Add the pasta and mushrooms, and toss until coated. Add a couple of glugs of the cooking oil to keep it from getting too gluey. Serves 2. A very happy 2.

Smoked salmon and avocado oreccette

This was a complete throw together of everything that was left in the fridge, but turned out really lovely.

You'll need;

1 avocado diced
100g smoked salmon, chopped into small strips.
150ml cream
50g parmsan
1 red chile, chopped finely
1 crushed garlic clove
handful parsley chopped
300g oreccette pasta (or whatever)
2 tomatoes (I used kumatos), chopped finely
Extra virgin Olive oil.
3 anchovies

Cook your pasta according to directions. Drain and set aside.

In the same saucepan (love this aspect) put in a few glugs of olive oil, the anchovies, chile, garlic and stir for a minute. Add the tomates and heat through. Pour in the cream and heat until just simmering, and shave in the parmesan. Season now.

Stir through the pasta, smoked salmon, avocado and parsley. Serve to rapturous appaluse.

Pistachio, rose and cinnamon brittle

Okay, okay - it's been a while since the last update. I just haven't made anything that I thought was blog-worthy. Hey, it happens:-)

This was a great experiment. I'd made a maple and pecan brittle which was yummy, but this was particularly interesting.

You'll need:

1 cup brown or raw sugar
1 cup corn syrup
4 tablespoons rosewater
300g shelled pistachios
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon red food dye
1 tbspn baking soda

Put the sugar in a saucepan with a couple of tablespoons of water over high heat, and stir till dissolved. Pour in the corn syrup and rosewater.

This is the tricky bit. I've never had a sugar thermometer that was in any way reliable, so I use the old water test. Once your toffee has been heating for a few minutes, drop a teaspoon of the mixture into some cold water. If the toffee goes instantly brittle, you're there. Simple as that.

When you are getting close, drop in the pistachios, food dye and the cinnamon and stir. I put the dye in just to give the brittle the slightest warm hue to offset the green pistachios, but you can omit this if you like. Stir in the baking soda - this is essential to getting brittle that breaks cleanly and doesn't pull out your fillings.

Turn out the mixture onto a sheet of baking paper, spread into a thin layer and let cool. Eat, eat, eat!!

Schnitzel Pamigiana with bacon cabbage and mash

There's been a bit of a hiatus in posts, so I thought I'd better get something in. Honestly the past few weeks have been a bit barren at home in a gastronomic sense. Plenty of good cooking, just nothing new.

This is a great recipe for schnitzel. We have a lot of leftover veal as our 3 year old loves it but can only eat so much. Stay tuned for lots of recipes involving veal:-)

You will need;

- 500g veal
- 3 eggs
- flour
- parmesan
- breadcrumbs
- butter
- olive oil
- capers
- juice of 1 lemon
- 100g bacon finely chopped
- half a cabbage
- Worcestershire sauce
- 3 large potatoes
- garlic, salt pepper

First thing to do is get your schnitzels done. Mix your breadcrumbs with finely grated parmesan. Dip your veal in plain flour, then egg, then the breadcrumb/cheese mix. Set aside.

In a large frypan, cook your bacon till crisp. While the bacon is frying, grate your cabbage and out into a saucepan of boiling water for a couple of minutes till soft. Drain well, then put the cabbage into the frypan with the butter and Worcestershire sauce. Make sure you deglaze the pan and get all the bacony goodness. Set this aside in a warm place.

I'm not going to tell you how to make the mash - you should know all about that already:-)

Put a few glugs of olive oil into the frypan and drop in your schnitzel. Cook till golden and set aside.

Now this is the cool part.

Put a few more glugs of oil into the pan, then drop in your butter till it foams. Add a tablespoon of capers. Swirl this around for a moment to let the flavours develop. Then add the lemon juice. Drizzle this over your schnitzel and serve. Your life will never be the same. All other schnitzels will tremble before this one.

Penne with Pruscuito and Caramelized Tomatoes

This pretty much blew my mind.
After a trip to the Paesenella Deli in Haberfield with fellow food-o-phile Amelia, I came away with more interesting and exotic things than I knew what to do with - so I put a few into a pasta to see what would happen. I was lucky enough to get half a kilo of pruscuito off-cuts for a fiver, which really got my cogs turning. This is what I came up with. Be warned - it's extremely sweet and rich, so smallish servings.

You'll need;

- 100g chopped pruscuito
- 100g caramelised tomato (yum!)
- 1 crushed garlic clove
- half a sliced spanish onion
- olive oil
- 200ml cream
- 200g penne pasta

While your penne is cooking in salted, boiling water, put your pruscuito, onion and garlic in a heavy frypan and cook over medium heat for six-or-seven minutes. Deglaze the pan with a splash of water. Add the cream and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the caramelized tomatoes and stir until fragrant. Toss through the penne and serve. Be prepared for lots of surprised expressions followed by looks of delight.

Parmesan Chips

Now this is pretty durn scrumcious.

It's basically oven-baked chips, with a crunchy parmesan coating. Yes, it's at least as yummy as it sounds.

You'll need;

- 4 large potatoes (I use Lady Cristl)
- 1/2 cup of grated Pamesan cheese(use a microplane to get it fluffy)
- 30g of plain flour
- Sea Salt (Or, if you are really, really evil, Chicken Salt:-)
- Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200C. Cut your potatoes into chips, put them into a saucepan of cold, salted water and bring to the boil. Boil them for about 4 minutes, then drain and let the last water evaporate.

Put the parmesan, flour and salt into a plastic bag. Add the potatoes and toss until evenly coated. Drizzle a large oven dish with the oil, and arrange the potatoes on it. Let it cook for ten minutes, turn the chips carefully, then bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until golden and crunchy. Serve with just about everything.

Smoooooth Coconut, Lime and Custard Apple Rice Pudding

This is a morph between a found recipe and something created due to Custard Apples being in season right now.

You will need;

1 large custard apple
100g of rice (I used jasmine)
400ml of light coconut milk
200ml of regular cows milk
a handful of raisins
a little vanilla (use good quality stuff, not imitation for God's sake)
1/2 a cup of castor sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lime
cinnamon for dusting

Put the coconut milk, cow's milk, sugar, rice, vanilla, raisins into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce to a low simmer and let it sit for and hour. Stir in your Custard Apple. Now, I had a bit of inspiration at the end - I squeezed in the juice of half a lime, and it really added that something that was lacking. Serve. Yes, it's that simple.

Chicken, Potato and Leek Soup

This was originally a straight Potato and Leek soup, but morphed into something else.

You will need;

4 thighs of chicken
2 litres of chicken stock
6 potatoes
1 stick of celery
1 leek
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tub of sour cream
2 brown onions

Fry your chickens in a little olive oil until cooked. Let cool slightly and chop finely. Set aside.

Saute your celery, leek, onion and potato until soft. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Add chicken, and whiz with a hand blender or put into a food processor in batches. Mix in sour cream just before serving. Garnish with chopped chives.

Cream, Garlic and Mustard Sauce

This was a real quickie, and I'm fantasizing that I invented it. It's delicious.

You'll need;

70ml cream
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/2 good-quality beef stock cube

After cooking the meat of your choice (we had Kangaroo), deglaze the pan with a couple of tablespoons water. Add the cream, garlic and stock. The mustard is quite salty, so don't be tempted to add too much salt. Unless you're an ancient Roman whose salt-taste is impaired by lead-poisoning from bad plumbing:-) Bring to a simmer, and serve over the meat.

Eggplant and Haloumi Stack with Garlic and Thyme Sauce

This really turned out well. It was a marvelous throw-together of things we had in the fridge, and it all sat together nicely. Serves two.

You'll need;

1 eggplant, sliced
250g haloumi
4 large mushrooms
100ml cream
a few sprigs of thyme
1 crushed garlic clove
1 teaspoon butter
olive oil

First, salt your eggplant slices and leave to sit for a while to leach out the bitterness. Pre-warm your oven to about 150C. Put a couple of glugs of olive oil into a wide pan and fry your eggplant till mostly done. Place the eggplant onto an oven tray and put into the oven to keep warm.

Next, put your thinly sliced haloumi into the pan and cook until golden. Take the eggplant out of the oven and arrange them with the haloumi into 2 stacks of alternate layers, while cooking the mushrooms.

When the mushrooms are almost done, put them onto the stack of eggplant and haloumi and return them to the oven.

Put your butter and a glug of olive oil into the pan, let it foam. Add the garlic and thyme, cook for a few seconds to let it flavor the oil then add the cream. Let this simmer for a moment while you take the eggplant from the oven and arrange them on plates. DO NOT be tempted to season the sauce - the haloumi is really salty and any more will have you drinking water (or equivalent) all night.

Pour the sauce over the stack and serve.

Mushroom Fettuccini with Nutmeg and Chilli

This is one of my old reliable favourites. If you can get really fresh and tasty mushrooms, this is utterly wonderful. Serves four.

You'll need;

200ml cream
500g mushrooms of your choosing
good handful chopped parsley
1 long red chilli, finely chopped
a couple of pinches of fresh-ground nutmeg
two good handfuls of finely grated Parmesan
200g fettuccini
a glug of olive oil

In a wide, hot pan put in your olive oil and mushrooms to cook. Personally, I like well-cooked mushrooms, but you can do them to your preference. While these are cooking, get your fettuccini on the boil. Try to co-ordinate your mushrooms to finish a couple of minutes before the pasta.

When your mushrooms are cooked, take them out of the pan and set aside in a warm place. Put your cream, chilli and nutmeg into the pan, stirring.

Now, I really think you should grate your nutmeg fresh, not the pre-powdered stuff. If you haven't got a micro-plane, get one - it'll change your life. Not only is it easier to grate stuff like nutmeg, it'll make your grated parmesan light and fluffy and easy to melt.

When your cream is nice and hot, slowly add the parmesan, stirring, and allow to melt into cheesy goodness. Season.

Drain your fresh-cooked pasta, and add to the parmesan sauce, toss with the mushrooms and parsley, and serve.

Retro Raspberry Sponge Cake

This sucker took a few tries. Apparently sponge cakes are renowned for being tricky, but I didn't know this when I started. I baked two frisbees before my dear friend Amelia furnished me with a good recipe that pretty much turned out perfectly.

For the cake:

4 medium sized eggs (freshest possible)
1 cup plain flour
1 rounded teaspoon baking powder
1 rounded teaspoon butter
4 tbspn water
1 cup sugar
1 tspn good quality vanilla

for the filling:

1 carton plain cream
1/4 cup of sugar
1 tspn vanilla
1 cup raspberries

Separate the eggs, which should be at room temperature. Beat egg whites until frothy, gradually add sugar, beating all the time. Slowly add egg yolks when sugar is dissolved (approx 8 mins beating with an electric beater). Sift dry ingredients together at least 3 times. Sift into egg mixture and fold carefully by hand. Heat butter and water on stove until it comes to the boil. Add to sponge mixture with vanilla and fold in thoroughly.

Place mixture in two 18c greased and floured sandwich tins. Bake for 20 mins in preheated 200C oven.

While the sponge is cooking, whip your cream with the sugar and vanilla. Put it in the fridge to cool.

When the sponge is cooked and cold, slather one of them with cream. Arrange some raspberries across it then slather more cream on the top. This should prevent the raspberries from making the sponge soggy. Put the second sponge on top, slather with more cream and a circle of raspberries and you're good to go....

Pan-fried Gnocchi with Zucchini and Pancetta

Hooray! We have pictures! I'll try to include pics from now on.

This is simply fantastic. I can't remember where I got it from, but it is absolutely delicious.

I'm not really a huge gnocchi fan, but the frying thing really adds a lot. This is a real crowd pleaser, and very filling. It's a little fiddly, but my God it's worth it. Serves four.

You will need;

-500g of gnochhi
-2 zucchinis, coarsly grated
-200g of peas
-100g of pancetta, chopped
- 1 brown onion, finely chopped
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
- olive oil
- 1 tbsp of butter
- ricotta, to serve

Put a few glugs of oil, the garlic, onion and pancetta into a hot pan and fry until soft - about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, put your gnocchi on to boil. Try to time it so the onion and the gnocchi finish at the same time.

When your onion and gnocchi is done, put the onion aside in a warm place and drain the gnocchi. Drizzle some more oil into the pan and add the gnocchi, cooking and tossing until it has a lovely golden coating.

Add the zucchini, peas, onion and butter to the gnocchi and toss on the heat for a few minutes until cooked.

Serve on warm plates with a dob of ricotta on top.

Fettuccini de Elinoria

This dish was invented by my wonderful Sister-in-Law. It's so simple yet clever, and is unbelievably tasty. Serves two or three.

You'll need;

- 1 jar of anchovy-stuffed green olives.
- good handful of Parmesan cheese
- a handful of good-quality cheddar
- a couple of glugs of olive oil
- 200g of fettuccine

First, get your pasta on the boil. While it's cooking, drain the liquid from the jar of anchovy-stuffed olives and set it aside. Slice each olive in half.

When your pasta is cooked and drained, put the pasta saucepan back on the stove and add a couple of glugs of olive oil and the olives. Toss them around on the heat for a bit until they're aromatic. Put the pasta back into the pot and toss with the olives.

Get the reserved liquid from the jar of olives and sprinkle it over the pasta. Add the cheeses and toss until they start to soften and serve.

The whole thing takes about 15 minutes and if you get good-quality olives it's magic. You can try all sorts of variations - it's a very flexible dish.

Chicken Soup with Zucchini Ribbons

So there you have half a BBQ chicken, leftover from a picnic or a Tuesday night lazy dinner. So many possibilities. Here's something that lets you use the whole damn thing. Serves three or four depending on leftovers.

You'll need;

- At least half a whole leftover BBQ chicken.
- 1.5 litres filtered water.
- 1.2 teaspoon chili flakes
- 2 zucchinis
- 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon fresh ground fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon fresh or dried oregano
- white pepper and salt to season
- 200g shell pasta or equivalent

First, strip the flesh of the chicken and set it aside. Put the skin, stuffing and bones in a pot with the filtered water and bring to the boil. I like to use filtered water for soups - especially if your tap water doesn't taste particularly nice. Let the stock simmer for at bit. Pop in the fennel seeds, chili flakes, oregano, salt and white pepper. Simmer for about ten minutes or more.

Meanwhile, get a potato peeler and slice the zucchini length-ways into thin ribbons about 1mm thick.

Take the stock off the stove and strain the bones out and discard. Put it back on the stove and add the pasta. Let this cook - depending on the directions for the pasta.

Once the pasta's cooked, add the chicken meat and let this heat. Add the zucchini ribbons and the white wine vinegar. The zucchini should cook almost instantly, but still retain a bit of crunch.

Serve with crusty bread and bask in the satisfaction of using every last bit of chook.

Pork Sausages with Exploding Grapes

This is so simple yet effective, and it's incredibly moreish. Serves four.

You'll need;

500g of good pork sausages.
200g of seedless green grapes.

In a hot frypan, get your sausages going. After a minute or two, add the grapes and give it a toss.

After a couple of minutes, the grapes will start to pop, showering the sausages with sweet grape juice, and it will begin to caramelise on their surface. Hmmm - yum.

When the sausages are cooked, arrange them on a pile of garlic potato mash and drizzle with the grapes and any pan juices.

Totally Drinkable Salad Dressing.

Whenever I make this, I can't resist taking a few sips - it's just so delicious. For me it's the perfect salad dressing, and it goes with just about everything.

You'll need the following;

3 parts Grapeseed oil
2 parts Good quality Balsamic vinegar
1 part Mirin
1 part Good quality Soy Sauce (Kikkoman is the best IMO)
1 part Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Now, the exact proportions you can fiddle with to your taste, but generally the Grapeseed oil is the base, and I tend to put more of this in. But the rest you can experiment with. Just combine in a small container and give it a good shake. It's really smooth, sweet and tart.

Eat-till-you-burst Bean Salad

This is one of those wonderful experiments that came from necessity and resulted in something really lovely. It's a deceptively simple bean salad that people seem to want to eat until stomach rupture. You have been warned.

You'll need;

1 can of mixed beans, rinsed.
2 cups of hot, fresh-cooked Jasmine rice.
1/2 cup of shallots.
2 vine-ripened tomatoes, finely chopped.
a couple of glugs of extra-virgin olive oil.
a tablespoon of good quality white wine vinegar
a teaspoon of fresh-ground fennel seeds.
a pinch of fresh or dried oregano

Simply toss everything together while the rice is still warm and season. There is something about the warmness of the rice, the tartness of the vinegar and the fennel that combine to create an intense more-ishness.

Kangaroo with Mushrooms and Sweet Potato Mash

Well, I thought I'd start this out Blog out by detailing recipes as they happen. There'll be a lot of recipes that are from other places, as well as my own creations - and a few things in between. I'm sure the tone will evolve over time...

So! Today was a really lovely Kangaroo fillet on top of sweet potato mash, whole large mushrooms as a side with a red wine jus. It was very, very tasty. I really prefer a kangaroo fillet to even a good quality cow steak. The texture is incredible, it's much cheaper and better for you, apparently. Sorry there are no pictures for this one - will get some next time.

Now, spuds are the only thing I microwave in preference to boiling as it keeps the flavor and texture intact, as well as keeping the potatoes from getting too waterlogged.

Peel and dice one medium sweet potato. Microwave on high for about 5 or 6 minutes until tender.

Meanwhile, bring a third of a cup of milk and a tablespoon of butter to a simmer in a saucepan. Add half a clove of crushed garlic. Season to taste with salt and ground black pepper. Add sweet potatoes to milk and mash. Keep warm on the stove.

In a hot frypan, add a tablespoon of oil (I use rice bran or Camellia Tea oil for a lovely smoky flavor) and throw in the (room temperature) kangaroo fillets. Cook for a couple of minutes on a side until it's done to your preference.

Don't be too tempted to cook until it's well-done, even if you like your beef that way. Roo really hates being over-cooked and, rare, it doesn't have that gelatinous texture that rare beef does. Give it a go - keep it pink in the middle.

After about the first turn-over of the fillet, put your large whole mushrooms (minus stalks) in the pan to cook alongside the steak. Sprinkle with sea salt and ground pepper.

Take your Roo out when done, and wrap them in foil to sit for a few minutes. Let your mushrooms sit in the pan a little longer. When done, take them out and put them on your warmed plates.

Now, warming your plates is pretty important, especially in the winter months. I just run them under the hot water tap for a few seconds to take the chill off them.

Working quickly lest your mushrooms go cold, pour a third of a cup of good red wine and a little water into the saucepan. As it's frothing, deglaze the pan with a wooden spoon, getting all the lovely crunchy bits from the pan. Put in half a beef stockcube, a knob of butter (or the cholesterol reducing stuff, ahem) and a little salt and pepper. Add a teaspoon of cornflour and stir, cooking for a minute or two until thickened.

Put a good amount of mash on your warmed plate, arrange the Roo on top and put the mushrooms to the side. Drizzle the lot with your red wine jus and tuck in.

For variation you could add a little maple syrup to the sweet potato mash.