J and I rarely have big breakfasts, however a few weekends ago we were in the mood. I had some mango in the freezer that needed to be used, so I decided to throw together some mango pancakes.
My inspiration came from a Women’s Weekly recipe for apple and cinnamon pancakes with maple syrup, found in “GoodFoodFast”. Here is the recipe with my adaptations. It’s actually fairly healthy if you don’t have ice cream!
Ingredients - 1 cup self-raising flour
- 0.25 cup Firmly packed brown sugar
- 0.5 cup Skim milk
- 1 Egg yolk
- 0.5 cup Coarsely chopped mango
- 2 egg whites
- 1 cup Mango to serve
- 1 cup cup Ice cream to serve
- 2 tbsps Maple syrup to serve
Directions
- Combine flour in a large bowl with sugar, milk, egg yolk and chopped mango.
- Beat egg whites in a clean bowl with an electric mixer on the highest speed, until soft peaks form.
- Gently fold egg whites into the flour mixture.
- Heat a fry pan over medium heat - grease if not non-stick.
- Pour about 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake.
- Cook until bubbles form on the top. Flip and brown on the other side until cooked through.
- Serve pancakes with mango, ice cream and maple syrup.
I love to entertain as I love to cook for people. However, I am often overly ambitious, and my perfectionist nature makes me difficult to please. So, of course, when I entertained for 6 people (including myself) I hopelessly over catered and spent all weekend in the kitchen! Next time I would probably cut back on the number of dishes I put together.
This gathering was Spanish themed, so I prepared about 8 different tapas dishes. All of my tapas dishes for the evening came from a book called “From Tapas to Meze” by Joanne Weir. I’ve had this book for years but haven’t made a lot from it. It is split up into countries and simply focuses on “small bites”. All my recipes were adapted from the Spanish section.
I will only put in a couple of recipes, which represent the best of the bunch.
Firstly we have Spanish meatballs. These were probably the easiest dish to prepare and I was very happy with the final product. Little morsels of deliciousness!
Ingredients - 500 gs Beef mince
- 500 gs Pork mince
- 1 cup Dried breadcrumbs
- 3 cloves Garlic minced
- 2 tbsps Parsley chopped
- 1.5 tsps Coriander seeds ground
- 0.5 tsp Nutmeg
- 0.5 tsp Cumin
- pinch Cayenne
- 0.5 tsp Salt
- 0.25 tsp Black pepper ground
Directions
- Preheat oven to about 170*C. Grease a baking tray (I used baking paper).
- In a bowl, combine all ingredients.
- Form the mixture into small meatballs (about 1 inch/2 cm). You should get about 30+ meatballs.
- Place on the baking tray and bake in the oven until cooked through, about 20-25 minutes.
- Remove from oven and serve.
Secondly, stewed chickpeas with chorizo. This dish is a bit more time consuming, but not much of that is actual hands on labour – it just takes a while to cook. This was very tasty, and the quality of the final dish will directly correlate with the quality of the chorizo that you use.
Details
- :
10 min - :
120 min - :
2 h, 10 min
Ingredients - 2 cups Dried chickpeas
- 1 small Yellow onion quartered
- 3 Cloves
- 1 Bay leaf
- 1 Cinnamon stick
- 1 pinch Dried thyme
- 6 sprigs Parsley
- 3 tbsps Olive oil
- 1 medium Yellow onion chopped
- 3 cloves Garlic minced
- 2 Chorizo Prick with fork
- 1 pinch Salt
- 1 pinch Pepper
Directions
- Drain soaked chickpeas.
- Place in saucepan with quartered onion, cloves, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, thyme, parsley and enough water to cover by 2 inches.
- Simmer, uncovered, over medium heat until the skins just begin to crack and the beans are tender. This takes about 40 to 45 minutes.
- Discard the onion, cinnamon stick, bay leaf, parsley and cloves. Reserve chickpeas with the cooking liquid.
- In a large frying pan, warm the oil over a medium heat.
- Add the chopped onion, garlic and whole chorizo.
- Cook, stirring occasionally and rotating the chorizo sausages, until the onion is soft, about 7 minutes. Be careful not to have the temperature up too high or you will burn your garlic!
- Add the chickpeas and cooking liquid and simmer slowly over a medium to low heat until the liquid is almost gone. This takes about 40 minutes.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Remove the chorizo from the pan and slice on the diagonal into thin slices. Return to the chickpeas and heat thoroughly for another 3 to 4 minutes until hot. Serve warm.
One of my favourite food blogs is Smitten Kitchen. The food pictures are amazing and I’ve yet to make a recipe I didn’t enjoy.
J and I cook nearly every night, but often the weeknight recipes aren’t that exciting. However, on Tuesday we had mushrooms and rhubarb that needed to be used, so I turned to the interweb for inspiration.
Both of these recipes are available in full on Smitten Kitchen.
For our main course we enjoyed Mushroom Bourguignon. This recipe is vegetarian unless you use beef stock like we did! I also added celery in with the carrot and onion – I think it added nice texture and it’s pretty hard to go wrong with onion, carrot and celery – I believe that’s considered the holy trinity in some parts! If you like mushrooms give this a try – I promise you won’t miss the meat!
Our decedant dessert was Rhubarb Cobbler. This was phenomenal. I actually halved the “cobbler” dough and I found that was plenty. We got two nights dessert out of this one, but we might be gluttons 
I have never made cobbler before – we’re more used to crumbles in my familiy. I was very impressed with the dense yet moist texture of the “biscuits” that cover the rhubarb. The dough comes together so quickly and easily if you have a food processor. The rhubarb is cooked with plenty of sugar to counteract the tartness. Served with a scoop of vanilla bean icecream this was a delight to my tastebuds. It was quite a treat and I will definitely make again, maybe with different fruit.
In English, it translates to casserole-roasted chicken with bacon, onions and potatoes – far less pretty!
This was my second attempt at a recipe from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. I do not normally mind time-consuming recipes, so long as the end result is worth it. My one comment so-far on the recipes is that often they involve steps that seem fussy or unnecessary. But maybe I’m just doing it wrong?
This recipe is a bit more time consuming – each element has to be prepared before being combine in the casserole. However, I think it’s worth doing for the potatoes alone! I’ve suggested a few shortcuts that I think wouldn’t compromise the end result too much.
The chicken remains succulent and tender through this method of cooking. The potatoes are little ovals of deliciousness – they literally fall apart on your fork, but have been infused with the butter, bacon and herbs. I ate the lion’s share of potatoes when I made this…but I do love my carbs! The juices in the pan would be great mopped up with a thick slice of rustic bread.
Overall, I think this recipe is worth the effort. It’s French cooking at its best – simple ingredients, slow cooking and LOTS of butter.
Details
- :
30 min - :
240 min - :
4 h, 30 min
- 3 mediums Bacon rashers, diced
- 1 tbsp Butter
- 1 whole Chicken (vary your cooking time according to size)
- 3 mediums Onions, whole and peeled
- 10 smalls Potatoes, peeled and cut into large thick ovals
- 3 tbsps Butter
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1 medium Herb bouquet with 4 parsley sprigs, 1/2 bay leaf, 1/4 tsp thyme, tied in washed cheesecloth
Directions
- In a large casserole dish (I used our dutch oven. Whatever dish you use must have a lid) saute bacon in 1 tbsp of butter until very lightly browned. Remove to a side dish but leave the butter/fat liquid in the dish.
- Add some oil to the pan (this will stop the butter from burning).
- Brown the chicken in the hot fat. Start by putting the chicken in breast down. Brown for about 3 minutes. The butter should be hot but not burning.
- Turn the chicken on on side - Julia recommends using wooden spoons or a towel. I can vouch from experience that metal tongs are far from ideal!
- Continue browning by first turning the chicken on its back then onto the other side. You want the chicken to be nice and golden all over, particularly on the breast and legs. The process takes between 10 and 15 minutes.
- Remove the chicken to a side dish and then pour the fat out of the dish (I don't know how necessary this is - if your butter isn't burnt I don't see why you can keep that as it will have lots of flavour.
- Preheat the oven to about 160*C but remember this depends upon your oven. Our oven was not very hot so we needed to turn the temperature up further.
- Whilst the oven is preheating, boil and salt a pot of water. Drop in the whole onions and boil for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside. As I used normal onions rather than baby ones, I cut them into quarters at this point.
- Put your potatoes in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil. Drain immediately. This just par-boils the potatoes and removes some of the starch.
- In your casserole dish heat the 3tbs of butter, or add a tbsp to your existing butter mixture, until foaming. Add the drained potatoes and roll them around over a moderate heat for about 2 minutes - this helps evaporate the moisture.
- Move the potatoes to the edges of the pot then salt the browned chicken and then place it breast up in the casserole dish. It will rest amongst the potatoes.
- Scatter the bacon and onions over the potatoes. Add the herb bouquet (I didn't bother with the cheesecloth, just added the herbs in whole and picked them out at the end).
- Baste all the ingredients with the butter in the casserole dish, cover the chicken with alfoil and then put the lid on the casserole dish.
- Heat the casserole on top of the stove until the contents are sizzling, then place in the middle level of the oven and roast (Julia suggests this will only take about 1hr20 mins - as I said, ours took nearly 3!)
- You should keep an eye on the chicken and baste with the juices a few times. The chicken should be done when the juices run clear.
- Serve with green beans and carrots.
Risotto would have to be one of my favourite meals. I love mushrooms and I don’t think you can go past a good mushroom risotto. It’s often the thing I’m most drawn to on Italian menus.
However, when I don’t have mushrooms, I like to play around with my ingredients a bit. This time around I made a very easy and quick pumpkin, corn and chicken risotto. I realise now that this made for a very yellow photo! I hope you like the recipe anyway.
A lot of people have this perception that risotto is hard or very time consuming. I think this is a bit of a fallacy – it’s not difficult at all, but it is a bit time consuming and you do need to hover around the stove gradually stirring in the stock until it is absorbed. I am a fan of this method of cooking risotto, but it’s just not practical in summer. So this is my fallback recipe when I want the comfort of risotto, without having to sweat over the hot stove!
Be warned, this doesn’t produce a risotto with the same texture as if you used the traditional method. But I still love it. I found the chicken added a nice textural difference, and the corn and pumpkin added a gentle sweetness. This recipe is cooked without butter, so it is actually quite healthy. However, if you’re feeling decadent feel free to stir in a spoon of butter once the risotto has finished cooking.
- 3 cups Vegetable stock
- 1/4 cup Dry white wine
- 1 tbsp Finely grated lemon rind
- 1 medium Brown onion, finely chopped
- 2 cloves Garlic, finely chopped or crushed
- 1 Chicken breast
- 200 gs Pumpkin
- 1 medium Ear of corn, kernels removed
- 1 1/2 cups Aborio rice
- 2 tbsps Lemon juice
- 1 cup Water
- 100 gs Baby spinach leaves, torn
- 1/2 cup Finely grated parmesan cheese
- 2 tbsps Sage, finely shredded
Directions
- First, I browned the chicken separately. I find this enhances the flavour. I set it aside until later.
- Heat 1 tbs of stock with wine and lemon rind in a large saucepan.
- Add the onion and garlice and cook, stirring, on a medium heat until the onion softens. You don't want the temperature too high here as it will burn the onion and garlic - the idea is gentle cooking.
- Add the chicken, mushrooms, capsicum, corn (or anything else you feel will be tasty) and cook stirring for another 5 minutes.
- Stir in the rice, juice, water and remaining stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat.
- Simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes until rice is cooked.
- Before serving, stir in spinach, cheese and sage.
- Serve with salad and crusty bread if you so desire.
This recipe is a cracker! It’s incredibly rich though, so cut small slices!
I based my recipe on this. The only differences were:
- I used milk arrowroot biscuits instead of Nice biscuits;
- I omitted the lemon rind (but used the lemon juice);
- And of course, I added Toblerone. I used a large block – I whizzed it in the new food processor (thanks John, Kay and Lucy!) and then mixed half of the chunks through before I folded in the egg whites. The other half I sprinkled on top after I refrigerated the cake. However, my cake was still warm when I put the Toblerone on top, so it went kind of gooey and melted – an effect I actually really liked.
If you like cheesecake, and don’t mind dirtying a few bowls, definitely try this recipe!
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