(Friday night dinner) Claypot King

A sneaky little dumpling dinner on Swanston St. Super cheap and very tasty, although the claypots were probably better than the dumplings.

Mushroom and pancetta muffins

Another pork recipe for the girl who doesn't really eat pork - whoops!  These ones are made with yoghurt, so they are a nice and moist muffin.

200g flour + 2tsp baking powder + 1/2 tsp bicarb soda
50 g parmesan
25g toasted pine nuts
2 eggs
250g greek yoghurt
200g mushroom
4 slices of pancetta (we used spicy)

Cook the mushrooms and pancetta in olive oil.  Mix all the dry ingredients together then stir in the wet ingredients, followed by the cooked ingredients.

Bake at 200 degrees for 15 mins.

Carrot and mint risotto

A Jamie, of course.  Basically a normal risotto with carrot and mint, topped with extra mint leaves or some mint pesto (my favourite way to use up extra herbs is to make pesto)

Side note, we made it again, this time with purple carrots, and the risotto ended up SERIOUSLY purple.

Jamie's filo tarts

I know, I know, there are a hundred million* recipes for filo tarts.

Many people will have their own egg to cream ratio for a quiche, but I tend to go for 1 egg = 200ml thin cream.  But filo pastry is flimsy, and reacts differently.  So when I saw a Jamie recipe, I thought it was worth a try!

In Jamie's version, for 16 quiches, there is a very different ratio - 6 eggs = 150ml double cream (which in Australia is pouring cream).  Mixed with onion, garlic, 400g spinach and 200g fetta = a great recipe for a min filo quiche.

* a hundred million may or may not be an exaggeration!

The easiest, delicious sweet treat ever!

This is a fairly common recipe in the interwebs, and I have seen it described as "saltine toffee" or "cracker toffee" but the most appropriate description was "toffee crack" - describing both the texture and the effect!

Preheat oven to 180 (celcius) and line a baking tray with saladas or some other salty dry biscuit.  

Melt 125grams butter and stir in 1 cup (packed) brown sugar.  Bring to boil and let boil for a few minutes.

Pour over saladas and place tray in oven for 5-8 minutes.  It should be seriously bubbling!

Take tray out and let sit for a minute.  Then tip on choc buds and spread, using a rubber spatula.

Into the fridge to set, then a spectacular, delicious, addictive sweet treat will be in your hands - try not to eat it all at once!  G is rationing it for me...

Fried rice paper?

Why yes, I did fry some rice paper.  After mashing 1 pack of firm tofu with an egg, some herbs and spices and a little veg (snow peas and corn).

I wrapped the parcels in 2 layers of rice paper (that had been soaked in warm water for a few seconds) and then shallow fried for 3 mins each side - trying to balance the oil so it was hot enough to sizzle but not hot enough to blacken!

Seriously, amazing.

Seven seeds cupcakes

Deceptively large and not too sweet. Perhaps not chocolatey enough? That's a personal decision and I think a little more chocolate wouldn't go astray. Also, the cake was *just* moist enough. I purchased and ate in the afternoon, but any later and I would have to call it dry.

George's weird lamb neck and yoghurt

I love watching Food Safari on SBS, but usually I enjoy it for the exotic locales, recipes and accents of the guest chefs!  I am rarely tempted to cook a recipe from Food Safari.  However, when I saw a very old episode (so old that George Colombaris had long, curly hair), I decided I would try to make his weird lamb necks baked in yoghurt concoction. (Unfortunately no link to the recipe, as I can't find it on the Food Safari website.)

It was tasty, but not fun to make or serve - I should have known that when I couldn't get the boned lamb necks George's recipe required I should have walked away.  The butcher looked at me like I was insane to ask him to bone lamb necks as he politely declined.  Which left me with the task.  Which I couldn't figure out (there are lots of bones), so I had to adapt the recipe to cook whole.

 

The yoghurt turned quite cheese-like was delicious, but it was quite off putting to cook yoghurt by just pouring it over the meat. 

A dismal cobbler

While there was nothing wrong with the taste, particularly when it was covered in cream or ice cream, this was a very dissatisfying recipe.

The finishing touch - which was unfortunately the best part.

The cobbler looked flat going into the required size pie dish, but I was hopeful...

Hopes were dashed by the flatness of the "cobbler"!

Biscuit epic fail

Wow, disaster!  This dough was supposed to be firm enough to roll out and cut using cookie cutters. 

 

I made the dough and wrapped it and put it in the fridge for an hour.  Shortly before the hour was up I opened up a fairly large bag of cookie cutters and started selecting some shapes...  Imagine my disappointment when I tried to roll out the dough and failed!

I had to wet my hands and scrape balls of the dough off the greaseproof paper, then lightly squash them once they were on the baking tray. 

The biscuits tasted fine, but were fairly hard and definitely on the sweet side.  Not even going to link to the recipe, but it was originally from an Australian Women's Weekly, so I thought I was safe!

Lesson: when a cookie dough calls for only 60grams of flour DO NOT MAKE those biscuits!