Ballas

There are a few of the Donna Hay dishes my family in Ballas were keen to help me eat, so a trip there last night called for some serious pre-work in the kitchen!

Firstly, because life is short - I made the sweet things ;-) 'Lemon curd squares',  was first on the agenda. I started it at 7am as it had to be cooked a couple of times and then 2 hours resting time in the fridge post cooking. As I wasn't sure how our day would pan out time wise, I thought it best to get started early.
Can I just tell you how much I love the food processor we have at our little holiday house. It makes short work of so many things. Made the pastry for this dish in a snap.... love it!!!!!!

I was a little concerned at first that the pastry mixture was too crumbly to stick together as a base. It was not moist at all. However, Donna told me in the bible that I shouldn't worry if the pastry looked too crumbly as it would all come together in the baking. So I didn't, and it did ;-)

After all the eggs and extra yolks I used in the 'lemon curd squares', I had several egg whites left over. Now, a few months ago, I made some 'lemon meringue cupcakes' (not from the bible but I'm sure Donna won't mind) for Rachie's 18th birthday party. They were quite the success in Ballas, and with so many lemons from the farm still in the bowl, and spare egg white, what else would I do but make these cupcakes again! Lovely!

Both sweet concoctions were very successful to taste. A tart lemony tang cut through the sweet sugary taste of the 'lemon curd slice', and this time the 'lemon meringue cupcakes' were a much better result. The cupcake itself was really yummy and not as dry as previously.

So on to the savouries....

'Tomato and meatball soup' was the next requested dish.  I mixed up some meatballs with veal and pork mince and loads of basil, then fried them up before simmering them together with some stock, tomatoes onion, pasta and garlic. "No problems then?" I hear you say. Well just two very minor ones.... Firstly, I accidentally picked up penne instead of macaroni from the pantry and before I realized my error, had poured 1/3 of the required pasta into the soup. The remaining 2/3 were macaroni though, so no big deal, but I would certainly lose points for presentation! Two different shaped and different sized pastas???
Secondly, on the way to Ballas the soup actually lost all it's 'soupiness'  and became just 'pasta with meatballs'! Of course adding a little more stock or water just before reheating would solve this thickness problem for sure.
Lochstar tells me the dish tasted yummy though and really, that's the main thing!!

For the final course, 'baked pea risotto with prosciutto' was on the menu. This caused quite a bit of angst really. Initially all was going well - couldn't have been better in fact. I was cooking in a different kitchen - with more equipment than our little beach house - so had a pot big enough for the 600g of arborio rice required (refer to lamb shanks), I had precut all the ingredients so when it came time to cook I was just tossing things in the pot like a pro, while still being part of conversations and imbibing wine!
However, after the required baking time, the risotto was still so full of liquid I thought it was going to be the first great disaster of the challenge....and in public no less! It was really risotto soup, no doubt! There was much frenzied discussion in the kitchen about the best way to solve this obvious 'cock up', but in the end I decided to persevere with Donna's instructions (sometimes ya just gotta have faith, right) and low and behold, after doing just what I was instructed, the stock was all gone, the rice was cooked and the dish was lovely!
A discussion was also held on the prosciutto and when it should be added to said dish and in fact whether raw or cooked prosciutto was the thing! Once again I looked to Donna to answer all queries and as she hadn't stated to cook the prosciutto - I didn't. I also mixed it into the risotto pre serving rather than on individual plates.
Once served and being eaten, there were lots of murmurs through full mouths, of how good the meal tasted and, everyone went back for second servings. Always a good sign.









PS the extra peppermint slice was appreciated here in ballas for sure!