A Few of My Favourite Things !

Knowing that I would home close to dinner time, I decided to put the bread machine to work today making some pizza dough. Actually, it was the presence of La Latteria’s Scamorza Bianca that inspired me to make pizza tonight, truth be told. Good thing I was organised as I arrived home to a text message that my boys had decided to walk down to the local supermarket and needed a lift back.

My 3 year old helped me shape out the dough and to dollop on some tomato paste (he quickly started licking the spoon after that). Then he helped me to layer on the red pepper marmalade, anchovies and cheese on one pizza, while tasting everything multiple times, and olives and cheese on the other. I’m not sure whether more cheese went onto the pizza or into his mouth. While the pizzas were baking, I washed the rocket and sliced the tomatoes and these went on top of the second pizza when it came out.

Dinner was a blast. I think my 3 year old had about five slices and my 1 year old was also trying to get in on the act, having some of the cheesy crusty bits. In fact, he was still trying to put food into his mouth when hubby was trying desperately to get him cleaned up as it was about 20 minutes past his usual bedtime!

Pizza Dough (takes 50 minutes in bread machine):
200ml water
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
2.5 cups flour (I used 1.5 cups plain flour and 1 cup wholemeal)
1.5 tsp yeast

Shape dough out, layer on pizza topping, bake at highest temperature for about 8-10 minutes.

My 3.5 year old, EJ, is fairly happy to eat most foods but like most children, he seems to have an innate dislike for any *green* foods. Fortunately for me, he does like broccoli and cauliflower so I try to capitalise on this. I’ve bee cooking a lot of soups this season but had not really thought about serving him soup until he started at kindergarten two weeks ago and they served chicken and corn soup as part of lunch. So, why not make him a cauliflower soup and we can all enjoy it together?

I don’t always buy organic fruits and vegetables but I just feel that it’s more important to do so with broccoli and cauliflower, knowing through a friend who used to grow vegetables commercially that a lot of pesticide is used on these crops. It seems to be trickier to wash away any chemicals from the tight florets so I try to ensure these are organically grown.

I always cut the head of cauliflower into florets before cleaning. Then I simmer it in a pot of water until soft, season it with salt & pepper (I like using white for a bit more of a bite), then add a spoonful of bechamel (white sauce). Yesterday, instead of the bechamel, I added a cup full of sago which had been soaked in water for about 20 minutes and cooked until they became clear. EJ loves sago pudding and he was equally delighted when I told him this was a cauliflower and sago soup. It serves to thicken the soup slightly and also adds a lovely textural surprise to each mouthful. Last night, it was served with some cheesy cauliflower and leftover risotto.

My little boy has turned one!

Some days seem to go so slowly when you have a little baby to care for, but now I can hardly even remember what it was like to hold my newborn. He’s crawling after his big brother as fast as he can and almost ready to take his first steps. His first word, spoken this week, was ‘Bella’ – my beautiful Russian Blue cat who has just been adopted by my brother & his girlfriend.

We celebrated with family this weekend and I wanted to make a special cake for him. There was something about a robot cake that seemed appropriate, so I baked two square cakes using the Buttermilk Birthday Cake recipe from Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess and Planet Cake’s Vanilla Cupcake recipe. The buttermilk cake is a cinch to work with when you need to cut shapes out. A couple of rectangular blocks pieced together and I had the beginnings of a robot sitting down. He was propped up against the vanilla cake and I used this for the birthday message. The worst part about decorating children’s cakes is having so many leftover lollies (mine usually end up in the bin otherwise they might end up in my mouth). I wrote the message by piping melted chocolate onto baking paper and allowing it to set before placing the letters individually on the cake. This way any mistakes can easily be corrected.

I’ve been a fan of cake pops since seeing them on Bakerella’s (who has just received a kidney transplant from her mum) site. Watching her tutorial, I thought you needed candy melts to make them so I didn’t bother as I thought these weren’t available in Australia (although I have found them since). For Zac’s birthday, however, I really wanted to try making them. Out of sheer laziness, I searched for a one-pot chocolate cake to bake but ended up with this one. I used G&B’s 70% dark chocolate and wanted to devour the entire cake before it even had a chance to cool down. After crumbling the cake, I mixed in some peanut butter frosting adapted from Smitten Kitchen (which I’ve converted to metric measurements below). After shaping the mixture into even, golf ball sizes, a chopstick dipped in melted chocolate was inserted into each. These were left to harden in the fridge before being dipped entirely in dark chocolate, then drizzled with white chocolate. They looked beautiful in makeshift vases of jars and tasted like a decadent brownie. Not too messy to eat either!

Peanut Butter Frosting (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

1. Beat cream cheese and butter together until light and fluffy
2. Gradually add icing sugar and beat until light and fluffy
3. Beat in peanut butter until thoroughly blended

I first came across quinoa in 2006 through Heidi Swanson’s blog and the first recipe that I tried was her lemon-scented quinoa salad. 5 years on, I’m still a fan of this thing that I keep calling a grain, but it’s actually the seed of the plant that we eat.

While many of my friends may have heard of it or tried it at a restaurant, I don’t think many would have it as a pantry staple. However, I love its nutty-crunch so much that there’s usually a pack lying around somewhere in mine. It’s just as easy to cook as rice or pasta – two cups of water to one cup of quinoa and simmer until the curlique pops out as the germ separates from the seed. Then it’s a matter of dressing it like a salad.

For first timers, here’s my amazing red quinoa salad recipe:

1. Cook 1 cup of organic red quinoa in 2 cups water until tender
2. Thinly slice a green zucchini and grill until soft with edges are crispy
3. Steam a bowl of cubed pumpkin until tender
4. Simmer a clove of garlic in milk for 15 min then mash
5. Cut up some small cubes of chèvre and pit a few olives and halve some black russian tomatoes
6. Toss all ingredients together and season to taste with salt & pepper and a dash of olive oil

I made this with my 3 year old for dinner last night and I thought it was fantastic. He took one look and told me “I don’t like the brown things” before pushing the bowl right off the table! He had two serves after that so either he agreed with me or decided that it wasn’t worth going hungry for the night. Anyway, try it and tell me what YOU think.

My three year old son called a ‘deer‘ a ‘quesadilla‘ by mistake the other day.

As you can tell we’ve been talking Mexican food of late (well, this post is late but seeing as Melbourne is treating us to some lovely sunshine this week, you can let it slide can’t you?). Maybe it’s the plethora of tortilla and burrito wraps that are cropping up all over the place that’s inspiring us, or maybe it’s the cool freshness of the salsas that we look forward to on hot summer days. Either way, this food is right down my alley. I love foods that you have to use your hands to eat with and even more so when you have to assemble it yourself. I think eating with your fingers makes food taste different though I do try to avoid picking off food straight off shared plates when we have company.

And so it was that A & I cooked turkey tacos for my family using leftover turkey from our Christmas Feast (yes this post is late, isn’t it?). The turkey was diced and cooked with some onions, garlic, diced tomatoes, ground cumin, salt & pepper then sprinkled with coriander at the end.

This was accompanied by three types of salsas:

1. Tomato, red onion, mint
2. Lychee and avocado
3. Peach, capsicum, cucumber, red onion

The dressings were loosely based on some recipes I pulled out of a magazine, but for the life of me I can’t find the sheet right now. Well, there are loads of recipes you can trawl the internet for or just experiment with vinegar (sherry, cider), garlic, coriander leaves, lime/lemon juice, salt & pepper. It was just lovely to be able to use some summer stone fruits to make the salsas colourful and appetising. Mum used to tell me that you should try to have a bit of red, a bit of green and a bit of yellow in the dish. That way you won’t end up with a brown dish, and these dishes are anything but.

YumTable from Madewell Enterprises on Vimeo.

Daily deal sites have really taken off and I subscribe to a few of them. It does cross my mind whether anyone still pays full price for a massage or facial when you can get anywhere from 60% upwards off a treatment through these sites. Of course, the trick is waiting until a deal comes up for your neck of the woods and then trying to get a booking once you have purchased the deal. I just made use of some of my vouchers yesterday and I had too book for June and August. That’s far too long to wait for a facial or massage, especially for someone like me – I just want everything NOW. Because of this, I have only purchased one restaurant-related deal so far. I just don’t plan that far in advance for meals and, whilst I will book weeks ahead for special occasions, I would much rather be able to just decide on the day depending on what cuisine I feel like. For me, apps like Urban Spoon or Yelp (when overseas) have been the best way to locate good eating options.

Then this week, I learned about a new website, “Yum Table“, that provides live deals for restaurants. I have been busy checking out what deals are available in my area and they range from ’25% off the bill if you’re out before 7pm’ (good for me with two children) to ‘buy one, get one main meal free’ to ‘complimentary glass of wine’. The booking is made online and you get an SMS confirmation once it goes through. It looks like you can plan up to 2 days in advance for your day/night out and that would suit m perfectly. It seems like a good way for restaurants to attract diners on slower nights too and I’m sure the better the deal, the better the response they will get.

I was all ready to make a booking today for a local place that I’ve been wanting to visit for some time now but after a second look, realised that the restaurant offering the deal was ‘The Living Room‘ in Templestowe and not ‘Living Room‘, Malvern. Guess I’ll be making some suggestions of restaurants to add!

I have been sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation of their iPhone app and installed it as soon as it launched.I think we may be heading to Fenix soon…or Lulo…or…I’m terribly bad at making these kinds of decisions!

(On a side note, I also love the teaser video!)

I was wondering aloud what type of cake to bake for my 3 year old’s birthday party when he suggested a strawberry cake. Not The Wiggles or a dinosaur or a car. No, he really wanted a strawberry cake.

I used the basic vanilla cake recipe from my recently acquired Planet Cake book to bake a round cake and a bundt cake. I scraped the beans from a whole vanilla pod instead of using extract and I think it it elevates the flavour to a whole new level.

After baking, both cakes were halved and sandwiched with warmed marmalade (with all the chunky bits removed) then I stacked the bundt cake on top of the round one to create a dome. The hole in the middle was filled with blueberries and black cherries before lightly whipped cream was applied and smoothed. Decorating the cake was super easy – thinly sliced strawberries spiralling from the base to a top crowned with a single strawberry and bright yellow stars piped around the base and the top. I really love the way the design has come off – stylish and elegant. Maybe too elegant for a 3 year old party?

My son’s favourite bedtime book currently is Annabel Karmel’s ‘Mummy and Me Cookbook‘ so I made the blueberry and lemon cheesecakes (minus the blueberries). Taking inspiration from these, I piped the lion’s mane then added the face with fudge icing.

My boy also loves cheese sandwiches, so I pulled out my round cookie cutters to cut out the mane from bread and the face from sliced cheese. A smear of vegemite to colour the mane then the face drawn in with fudge icing again Easy!

If you are serving popcorn cones at a kids party, be prepared to vacuum up stray kernels from the couch and carpet. Oh, and to pick them up from behind the bed and cupboards for the next week or so.

The lions would have been lonely by themselves so I made some clowns to keep them company. These featured in A’s birthday party a few years back but this time I made marble cupcakes instead of using using Nigella’s Burnt Butter cupcake recipe. I had piped the mouths the night before only to find that the gel icing ran onto the butter icing overnight. So mum cleverly and painstakingly cut little think strip from the edge of canteloupe slices to create new little smiley mouths for them. What a great job!

Happy 3rd Birthday to my little darling…

I love having a quick & easy recipe that you can turn to when you have one of those days. It happened to be one of those days for us yesterday, getting back from visiting the in-laws late then having to prep and cook dinner, get my boys (being hubby & toddler) to the table cleaned and ready to eat, as well as feed, change and put down the baby within the space of about 45 minutes.

While the pot of water was on the boil, I shelled and de-veined the Red Spot prawns then chopped about 5 cloves of garlic (yes, my boys wanted a lot of garlic!). The garlic and prawns were sauteed for a few minutes until the prawns had just turned opaque then removed from the heat. When the pasta was al-dente, the strands were tossed into the saucepan with the prawns and a little pasta cooking water to soak up all the garlicky flavours.

The idea is to then serve and eat but when I can’t seem to get everyone to the table at the same time….uh oh, that’s when I get nasty!

My son has been requesting that we make this for weeks now. So, out came his apron and chef’s hat, potato masher and rolling pin. Measure, pour, nibble, measure, pour, mix, nibble, mix, stuff a handful of raisins and dried apricots when you think mum’s not looking, oven, drizzle G&B 70% dark chocolate….voila!

Plate from Anthropolgie and recipe from Annabel Karmel.

My quick cooking tip for today is

Leave a wooden spoon across the top of the pot to prevent the water from boiling over when cooking pasta.