When I told the children about this month's Daring Cook's challenge, they rejoiced...
They love their noodles...
This month, Steph from StephFood challenged us to come up with some simple noodles dish, out of our own food culture, making noodles from scratch. She has attached some recipes of different types of noodles here.
Our family, most of the hand made noodles are fettuccini or linguini, so this is the take one of this wonderful challenge:
Fettuccini with Giant Meat Balls
The Meat Balls - Rissoles
Beef mince
Sausage mince
onion - minced
carrot - grated
white bread crumbs
salt & pepper
mixed dry herbs
egg
Ground white pepper
Mix the ingredients and rolled it in bread crumbs, this is the same simple recipe for rissoles and we use it as big meat balls with passata,, parsley, bocconcini.
Now for the fettucini.
That's the simple part as we make them at least once a month - I wish we had more time to make more of them.
300g 00 flour or plain flour mixed with 1/3 semolina
3 large eggs
a pinch of salt
bit of extra virgin olive oil.
Make a well with the flour and salt and crack in the eggs.
Mix and form the dough, knead, wrap in cling film and rest the dough in the fridge for about an hour.
Use our trust worthy pasta maker...
dust with some plain four and I usually hang them up before cooking in slightly salted boiling water.
Drain in colander, and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil.
Serve with the giant meat balls.
Grate some parmesan cheese - happy children!
I've made more noodles during the challenge month, and will post later.
We love apple strudels, and I do try to make different varieties of bread, loaves and cakes (the not so sweet versions) for our breakfast.
And we have quite a lot of delicious apples now, new season, juicy, and just right for a lot of apple bread, cake, pie, whatever.
So this is my Apple Strudel Bread, or a Yeasted Apple Pie.
The dough is the normal sweet bread dough:
400g bread flour
220ml milk
1 egg
50g butter
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
For the Filling:
2 Granny Smith apples, thinly sliced
60g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp nutmeg powder
Make the bread dough as usual and set aside to proof, cover by damp cloth.
Meanwhile, add sugar and spice to the apple slices and let it sit aside to develop flavour.
Once dough is proofed to double, roll out into a rectangle, as it's a yeasted pie, or a bread, it doesn't have to be that thin. Brush on a bit of melted butter, place the apple sliced on the pastry and roll up like a log, brush on melted butter as you roll.
I fold it into a ring and place it on slightly greased tray. Let it proof for another 45 minutes to an hour
Brush on egg wash and bake in pre-heated 180C oven for 35-40 minutes...
We had a big lunch whilst out shopping yesterday, so last night's dinner, I decided to go light. After all, it has been a cold winter and we had a little too many stews and we need to shed a few pounds.
Got some beautiful Australian king prawns, so I decided to use it for dinner.
I must admit we usually have our prawns cooked with shells but this time, they are just too nice so i decided to clean the prawns, and use the heads and shells to do a nice little bisque.
Creamy Coconut Prawn Soup with Crusty Sour Dough Bread
For 4 serves, use 750-800g of fresh prawns.
For the bisque:
1/2 cup of white wine
6-7 black pepper corn
half of onion
1 clove of garlic
2 pieces orange peels
juice of half of a lemon
olive oil
salt
parsley stems
Heat oil in pan and brown the onion and garlic, add the prawn shells and heads, and let them heat through and press to release flavours. Add wine, lemon juice, salt, pepper corn and orange peels, and let it cook to relase more flavour. Add a bit of water.
Once it's done, pass through sieve and you get that golden thick liquid.
For the coconut veggie soup:
2 Large desiree potatos, peeled and diced
1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
diced half of red onion
bit of olive oil
1 can of light coconut milk
Heat up the oil to sweat the onion a bit, add the veggies and cook them through a bit, but don't let them brown. Add coconut milk and prawn bisque, season the soup, and let the veggies cook through.
When soup is cooked, add the peeled and cleaned prawns to the pan. Stir a bit, as the prawns cook really quickly.
Serve with chopped parsley and lemon juice and a bit of zest, and toasted crusted bread.
This makes a nice entree, or a light meal.
Preserving season again... from home produce.
We have a good producing lemon tree and a grapefruit tree, with plenty of water this year, they have been doing extremely well.
I've used a lot of lemons this year, lemon curd, preserved lemon and lots of lemon cakes. I have been giving lemons away, neighbours, friends, people at work.
What do I do with the grapefruits?
I have been juicing them, but I thought I have read from somewhere, that they are alright to be made into marmalades.
Checked a few recipes, I think I'm alright, although I don't think the skin is very nice, so I used orange peel intead.
I didn't measure to the exact, but roughly, about 1.5kgs cleaned grapefruit chunks, peeled, cut off as much of the white bits of the skin, and de-pitted and middle tough bits cut away.
2kgs of sugar
cleaned and sliced peels of 3 small oranges
1/2 cup of light corn syrup
2 tbsp maple syrup - I might be too hooked onto the maple flavour
1.5 cup of water
25g of Jam Setta (with Pectin)
The fruits were very juicy and didn't need a lot of water. I boiled the water with the fruit first and then add sugar as I go. Then the other flavours. After it boiled down and almost ready, I stirred in the Jam Setta.
End up with 3 big jars (around 500g each) of marmalade. I did use the recycled bottles, boiled the lids and bottles to get rid of the germs etc. Once boiled and cooled, press down the top button of the lid, and it's sealed as the pop top stayed down...
Preserving is really easy, and home made jams are much tastier..
My favourite potato side dish, is a gratin.
It's everything against the waistline, but it's just soooo good.
Simple, tasty, creamy, and you don't need to do much if you serve it with a roast, the creamy sauce from the gratin, is a great compliment to the roast, especially for simple roasts like a roast chicken, goes well with the white sauce.
My favourite gratin recipe, simple easy one, has always been Neil Perry's version.
500g potatoes thinly sliced.
Melt some butter and grease the baking tray (I used a quiche dish)
Lay the slices nicely and evenly on the tray, spread a bit of salt and pepper once each layer is done.
Lay potatos just under the top of the tray.
Put on some dulops of butter and pour over around 250ml of fresh cream, just enough to cover the potatoes.
Some times, I spread on a bit of mozerella cheese but this time, I reckon this is rich enough.
In 140C oven for about an hour, and mean time, roast the chicken.
Chicken was washed and cleaned and left uncoverred in the fridge overnight. Rub on some salt and olive oil.
Serve with steamed greens.
I love crusty bread, and I love rye bread, and of course making them using my trust worthy sourdough starter, always works a treat.
It's not a lot of kneading for ciabattas, so this is good when I'm feeling a little lazy. My own recipe, was too lazy even to check the books, turned out fine. I made 2 loaves out of yesterday-today's dough.
100% Sourdough Rye Ciabatta
Dough first day:
100g rye flour
250g bread flour
300ml water
30ml olive oil
100g 100% hydrated sourdough starter - plain flour
pinch of salt.
It's a very runny dough when mix together. There's not much kneading involved. Dough was put in a covered big rectangular tub with lid, and set aside for proofing. Check dough and fold each time during the first couple of hours. It's cold winter here so it's over night proofing.
Second Day:
100g flour (50g rye, 50g plain flour)
20ml olive oil.
The dough should've proofed to more than doubled. Fold the flour and oil into the dough into the tub, and leave it to proof again for another couple of hours.
Take dough out of the tub, on a well floured bench top, add on a bit more dry flour on top, and coat around, gentley stretch (cut into 2 loaves in this occasion) and shape. I like rough shapes, so I leave it as is. The shapes of both loaves were rough and quite flat, and I left them straight onto the floured trays (I normally use pizza trays for my crusty breads) to proof, cover with slight damp cloth.
After a couple of hours proofing, preheat oven to 230C. The loaves puffed up a lot during the baking in the hot hot oven.
Bake for 20-25 minutes...
Cut and serve...
Lovely bread. Great with olive oil by itself, or mop up the last bit of the yummy soup - it is winter.
My mother in law's favourite flavour, lemon and coconut.
I made this cake to bring over to her home during our last visit.
It's a bit more moist than the normal chiffon cake because of the butter cream icing.
I didn't do it the same way how I do the normal butter cream, but this one is a bit more runny.
Lemon Chiffon Cake with Lemon Butter Sauce
For the Cake:
Zest of a small Lemon Myer
3 egg yolks
4 egg whites
100g SR flour
50g dessicated coconut
50ml canola oil
2 tbsp organic full cream yoghurt
150g castor sugar
For the icing:
80g butter
juce and zest of a small lemon
handful of dessicated coconut
100g sugar
Method
1. Beat room temperature egg whites till a bit ribbony and slowly add in 50g of sugar, whip until soft peaks.
2. Beat room temperature egg yolks with the rest of sugar, until pale and fluffy and slowly drip in the canola oil. It will be very creamy.
3. Sift in the flour to the yolk mixture and mix till smooth, then fold in the egg whites, half egg whites into the yolk mixture and mix well, and then spoon them back to the egg white bowl and mix well until really smooth, fold in the yoghurt and the lemon zest and dessicated coconut.
4. Put in a alliminum ring mould (I haven't got angel food cake mould, I would use one if I have one) and bake in preheated oven in 180C heat, for about 35-40 minutes.
5. Once cake is done, slowly using the knife to release the sides of the cake (I did oil the bottom as it's not the right tin) and let it cool on rack.
6. Make the lemon butter sauce. Put lemon juice in with the sugar in a small saucepan and bring it to boil, let it melt and wait until the soft boil stage - around 110C.
7. take the syrup off heat, stir in the butter, until it's a smooth butter sauce. Add in the rest of the zest and dessicated coconut...
8. Let sauce cool down a bit and spoon over the cake, let it drip with a more rustic look and make sure the sauce coat as much as you can - it makes the cake more moist than a normal chiffon cake.
MIL took it to her gathering with her friends and the cake got good review...
