Christmas Part 2

We had another family Christmas celebration last week. It's been lovely to have several days of celebration - especially so early in the season!
As I had organised a turkey for the last time, I decided to create a more modern menu this week and serve beef with salads and roast potatoes.
H'o'M fired up the BBQ and we roasted a rib of beef - think lamb rack but much much bigger! To prepare the beef I simply seasoned the whole cut with salt and pepper and that was that! So easy, but with a 'good' cut of beef there is very little that it needs to enhance the flavours.

I made a 'roast pumpkin and spinach' salad. I've made this salad before and it's very tasty. Next time though I think a handful of toasted pine nuts would add to the dish - a little extra crunch ;-)
I also made my own balsamic dressing rather than buy it from the market. I mixed a little extra virgin olive oil with some red wine as well as the obligatory balsamic vinegar in a jar and shook it until they all emulsified! I didn't make very much of it to be honest because I'm actually not a big fan of the dressed salads. I find that dressings tend to make everything soggy!

1½kg pumpkin, peeled and cubed
2 punnets cherry tomatoes, halved
garlic cooking spray
200g green beans, trimmed and halved
150g baby spinach leaves
350g feta cheese, crumbled
4 tbs Balsamic Dressing

Preheat oven to 200°C. Place the pumpkin and tomatoes in two separate baking dishes and spray both with garlic spray (tomatoes should be cut side up). Bake the pumpkin for 15 minutes, then add the tomatoes to the oven and bake both for a further 30 minutes, or until the pumpkin is golden and tender. Set aside to cool.Cook the beans in boiling water until tender, drain and cool under cold water. Drain.
To serve, arrange the spinach leaves on a platter and top with the pumpkin, tomatoes, beans and feta cheese. Drizzle with the balsamic dressing.

Mum bought over a salad too. Hers was a green salad made of lettuce, avocado, spring onions, avocado and for a dash of colour she sliced up some red capsicum and added it to the top! A very pretty dish!

Last celebration I made some Pancetta stuffing and didn't get to eat it because - well I forgot about it! So, this week I decided to make some more but this time remember to eat them! 

I know you're not supposed to have stuffing with beef, but 'it's my party and I"ll have stuffing if I want to' ;-)
They were a huge success and I could have made twice as many and they would have all been eaten! Thanks to you Donna Hay! 

individual pancetta stuffing

2½ cups (175g) fresh breadcrumbs
1 brown onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
¼ cup (40g) toasted pine nuts
½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
100g butter
sea salt and cracked black pepper
12 slices pancetta, halved

Preheat oven to 180°C. Place the breadcrumbs, onion, garlic, pine nuts, parsley, lemon rind, butter, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix well to combine. 
Line 2 x 12-hole lightly greased mini-muffin tins with pancetta and fill with the breadcrumb mixture. Press down and smooth the top. 
Bake for 6−8 minutes or until the pancetta is crispy and the stuffing is cooked through.

Next time I made these bit sized morsels - after all I still have one more Christmas celebration this year - I would definitely mince the parsley a little smaller and as it seemed that every pine nut made it's way to the top of the stuffing and got a little burnt when cooking, I would mix it more evenly before cooking!

It was a lovely day outside for this celebration day, so we had had our nibbles and present opening on the back veranda. The boys played cricket, jumped on the trampoline and after the present opening even got to throw some water balloons at each other! 

The adults meanwhile, drank champagne, chatted and opened presents while nibbling on Turkish bread dipped in lime infused olive oil and my dukkah!

 Clearly the kids enjoyed the dukkah too :-) 


I made a non-alcoholic punch for us all to share too. There was once a recipe I followed, but now it's just a matter of tasting the mixture and blindly trusting that 'The Force' has been with me! It's always different and always disappears, so I think it usually tastes good. It's a mix of 

• orange juice
• pineapple juice
• dry ginger ale
• passionfruit pulp
• apple cider
• lemon juice
• soda water and loads of ice - often in the shape of stars, hearts or snowmen! 

After lunch we also had a birthday cake as there are two birthdays fast approaching which we won't be together to share. A flourless chocolate cake was the cake of preference this year. I made  a raspberry coulis to pour over the top and with some double cream and/or ice cream, we were all set for the dessert!

A lovely day! 

Cornbread!

It was MFM again - I know I know it's Thursday already but I've been busy!

This week I made the vegetarian chilli again because it was really good last time, but for a bit of excitement I made my first ever corn bread! We used to eat this a bit in restaurants when we lived in California - mainly with Mexican food - but I had never baked it myself.

H'o'M and I had been shopping recently at a funky little grocer/deli/provedore in Geelong and found some 'proper' polenta, not the instant kind, but real polenta!!! I have been wanting to try baking cornbread myself for a while now and Monday seemed like the perfect time.

All the stars were aligned and clearly I was meant to make cornbread!

The results were good!!

It even tasted good today when I toasted it and had it with the left over chilli for lunch! 

Christmas

We have already had a few get togethers for Christmas so far this year - with a few more to come -  before we head overseas for another northern hemisphere festive season 


Saturday was the first family one and I have spend many hours thinking of, rejecting and finally deciding on various recipes for the menu. I finally came up with what I thought could be a workable menu - a mix of recipes I knew and recipes I wanted to make. Of course family members contributed their specialities and all in all it worked out a treat.


For the meat, we roasted a whole turkey - This was my second time - the first one being when we had visitors for a Thanksgiving dinner in America. 
It always seems a little daunting to roast a turkey, I think it's because it's just so big and the amount of time it needs to cook is also quite intimidating. There is also a tendency for turkey to get very dry and tough very quickly, as it's such a lean meat, which also adds a layer of pressure when cooking it that no-one really needs ;-)


However regardless of all that there is something quite satisfying when one takes the cooked turkey out of the oven to rest. It's so big and browned and smells really good! 


Here are some strategies I have adopted to counter the intimidation factor of a roast turkey:

• place the turkey in a roasting rack and pour water in the base of the tray. This helps with the moisture and also creates some juices for the gravy! 
• baste, baste, baste. Every 30-40 minutes I basted with the water in the base of the pan and also with some melted butter to keep as much moisture in the bird as possible...I'd like to thank my 8 year old niece here for her invaluable help as wielder of the basting brush! 
• stuffing - don't use it! Bake the stuffing in a separate bowl
• place cut up lemon, and onion in the cavity of the turkey to aid in moisture retention and to add a little flavour
• watch the time carefully and don't over cook or you'll suffer the dryness factor! 

Everyone was seeemingly happy with the results and there was very little left over.  


I also made some 'individual pancetta stuffings'. Very cute little numbers that I made last week and froze. They thawed beautifully and were very tasty. Unfortunately we forgot about them, so the crew ate them for supper that night. 


I baked some individual Christmas cakes too. Little muffin sized cakes.

The recipe called for the cakes to be baked in a Bain-marie once they were mixed and placed in the  muffin tins. Problem here ... our beach house doesn't have a baking tin big enough to fit the muffin tray! Almost a disaster til I remembered I had some of those individual silicon muffin cups. They could be placed in the Bain-marie easily. 
Phew - disaster averted again! 

I would defnitely make these cakes again as they were fun to make but as I don't actually like Christmas cake, I can't tell you with any first hand knowledge how successful they were. H'o'M says they were tasty but quite dense - supposedly not a bad thing in a Christmas cake. 
They did look pretty on the plate as my 8 yr old helper and I dusted them with icing sugar to create a star and then she arranged them on the tray as a flower ;-)




A dukkah was made for the nibbling part of the day too. Once again I thank the kitchen gods for the food processer here at the beach house as it makes such short work of pulsing up nuts. 


Dukkah:

150g sesame seeds

55g whole blanched almonds

50g shelled pistachio nuts

1/3 cup ground coriander

¼ cup ground cumin

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 220C

Roast sesame, almonds and pistachios separately for 10 minutes or until browned lightly. Cool

Process almonds and pistachios until fine.

Transfer to a bowl and add sesame, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper. Mix well


I do love dipping Turkish bread into dukkah. 




With the amazing decorations, the salads, potato skewers and desserts provided by the rest of the family, we had quite the meal! 

Now, what will I cook for the next one ;-)

Spinach

It's Meat Free Monday again (or as H'o'M has taken to calling it - Muck Monday) - man it comes around quickly ;-)

I have a recipe in my trusty laptop called 'spinach quiche with quinoa base', which sounded just perfect for tonight's meal! I have wanted to cook it for ages because of the quinoa base. It's such a funky grain!

So, I duly cooked my quinoa, added it to flour, LSA and some fresh basil to make a crust. I pureed my tofu and spinach together with various other spices, put them together and baked it in the oven for 30 minutes.

Mmmmm, well it was not great to be honest. We both ate it, but there were no rave reviews, and as you can see in the photo below, neither the top or the bottom crust set very well at all!

But, as we all know ....

 'It's not easy being green'

'Messert'

Off to dinner over at mum's house tonight and I said I'd make dessert or as our nephew Loch used to say 'messert'! 


After trawling through the recipes I have at hand on my faithful little white laptop and thinking about the ingredients here in the cupboard/fridge - who wants to go to the market unnecessarily after all - I decided on a crumble! Always a favourite with H'o'M... regularly asked for and rarely produced ;-)


I have loads of apples here - have I told you of my obsession with apples? - while the last time we were at the farm we came home with a bag of rhubarb that I have only just remembered. 
With such amazing ingredients at hand, clearly it'll be an apple/rhubarb crumble tonight! 


This is the crumble recipe I have decided to use tonight

• 1 bunch rhubarb, cut into 2cm pieces
• 3 Pink Lady apples, peeled, cored and sliced
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• finely grated rind and juice of 1 orange
• 
  
• 3/4 cup self-raising flour, sifted
• 3/4 cup homemade granola - see here for recipe
• 100g butter, chilled, cubed
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup pecans, roughly chopped
• 
  
• A few changes are being made to the recipe that I originally looked at. It asked for Granny Smith apples but as I only ever buy Pink Lady apples, that is all there is to use. I know most baking asks for Granny Smiths as they keep their shape so well when baking, but I'm happy with the taste of Pink Lady and less defined shapes!
• I also swapped the muesli dictated for my own homemade granola and finally ... just because I'm me... I definitely won't be using 100g of butter! I'll add just what feels comfortable at the time. 

Now that I'm reading it properly too, there is a slight issue with making this or in fact any sort of crumble tonight at all ... I have no brown sugar left! Mmmmm!? 
I do have plenty of raw caster sugar though, and seeing as that is golden and not white, I'll just use that and see how it all turns out!

So sorry...

... it's been a while between blogs!

It seems the kitchen gods have had their backs to me recently. Now, I have been cooking - don't get me wrong - but there has just been nothing of interest as a result of that cooking! Hence no blogging! I guess - like most things - the cooking muse arrives in cycles!

Over the past few weeks I have cooked and baked meals and treats as required;

• lemon meringue cupcakes and chocolate chip biscuits for a studying yr 12 student
• three different types of curry for a 'we'll bring dinner' night with some friends
• kangaroo sausages (kanga banga) on the BBQ
• various curries both Thai and Indian for our dinners
• tagines
• pasta sauces both vegetarian and full of various types of meat
• yo yo biscuits 
• frittatas
• quesadillas

but no new and interesting recipes!

So sorry dear blog readers - if indeed there are any of you out there! I do solemnly swear that I will do better!! 

I promise!