Bridget's onion and feta cheese tart

Caramelised onion + puff pastry + salty feta = delicious!

Very simple, very effective, and combined with a good salad, a great meal.

The recipe is easy, and a little time consuming.  You have to chop up all the onions, which generally involves crying, and then caramelise the onions - all up that took 35 minutes to do about 350gram of sliced onions.  The actual recipe in the book calls for 1 kg of onions, and serves 6.  I was after a tart that would serve 2, so I had to chop a lot less onions.  I guess if I had done a kilogram the cooking would have taken the same amount of time (in a larger saucepan), but I would have needed more time for chopping!

Once the onions were caramelised I threw them on my scored, parmesan covered pieces of puff pastry and baked it.  I just threw on the chopped feta and some mint (not oregano, as I didn't have oregano) and served it. 

Palmiers

I love to make palmiers (also known as Elephant Ears) - however, I can never get mine to look as good as I have seen in shops, so I usually dip them half in chocolate (I can cover up the less attractive side).

Yesterday I made palmiers, and dipped them in white chocolate - my friend loves white chocolate.  I got a lot of compliments!  At least 2 people described them as 'phenomonal', which is almost embarrassing given how easy they really are.

My original recipe came from Dyann Bakes - her (no longer active) blog can be found here.  She used to star in a video podcast that I thought was pretty good.  She only did less than 20 episodes, and finished in early 2008.  However, her on screen manner was good, and her recipes aren't 'fashionable' so the old episodes are still good today (in my opinion).

Anyway - 'the recipe':

• Defrost a sheet of puff pastry
• Cover in sugar
• Fold top into the middle, bottom to the middle and then fold the top over the bottom 
• Fridge for 30 minutes
• Slice and bake
• Once cool, dip in chocolate (optional)

I love to serve them with strawberries dipped in chocolate. 

Cupcake stand

A couple of Christmases ago G's parents and siblings gave me a bundle of cupcake/baking stuff as a gift.  Included in the bundle is my cupcake stand, that holds 18 cakes.  Obviously, you don't always need to make 18 cupcakes - 1 batch makes 12 or 13 cakes, and that is plenty (for most occasions).

However, when there is an opportunity that calls for more than 12 cakes, I love to pull out my cupcake stand.  Last Easter we celebrated with Geoff's extended family - so with all his family being there - plus a few extras - I make plenty of cakes and was able to show off my stand!

There are so many different brands, styles, heights and colours of stands available, and you should choose one that you like.  I like this simple white one - some of the more ornate ones are beautiful, they look like wrought iron, but I think the simple one is good for pretty much any situation.

Spagetti with proscuitto and egg

When you read this recipe you will think 'oh, this is just fancy carbonara', and really, that is correct - except that it tastes much better than carbonara (in my opinion).

It's pretty simple really.  Cook some pasta (or spagetti, whatever you have) until done.  Pan fry some garlic (and I added spring onion), and then add the proscuitto. 

Remove the pan from the heat and toss in the drained pasta, throw in a whole egg, and stir so the heat of the pasta cooks the egg.

Top with greenery to make your photograph extra pretty, and eat while sitting on a balcony on a balmy late summer evening!

Apricot slice

Bill Granger and I must have different sized lamington tins - his recipe calls for 14 apricots, whereas I only needed 6 1/2, and I could not fit the 4 rows of 7 halves he suggests, rather my tin fit 3 rows of 5.

The other difficulty, also presumably connected to the size of the lamington tin, was that mine took 10 minutes longer to cook than Bill said.  I assume this is because the same amount of mixture was piled higher (in a smaller tin). 

The end result was delicious - see for yourself!

Ocean Trout with smashed potatoes (and tartare sauce)

Firstly, there was no tartare sauce -  G does not like cornichons so couldn't make it.  I substituted some Simon Johnson hollondaise, which was delicious.

The recipe was super easy, and mostly done in the oven.  Cook the potatoes, smash the potatoes, bake the potatoes, bake the potatoes for a bit longer while the trout is in the same pan.

I left out the 'bush spices' - I read that on the ingredients list and, at the time, I didn't realise you could buy a spice blend called 'bush spices' in the supermarket.  I just used a cajun spice blend I already had.

Result - a delicious meal, that looks pretty decent too.

'Open Kitchen' by Bill Granger

At the moment I have three 'books of the moment' - you already know about Cheesecakes of the World and I am counting my monthly Delicious magazine as a book - but I have added Bill Granger's 'Open Kitchen' to the mix. 

Published in 2003, Bill's Open Kitchen is Bill Granger's third book and he has gone on to write a further four books.  Open Kitchen is divided into (mostly) sensible divisions of breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and dessert.

I say 'mostly' sensible as some of the recipes suggested for a lazy weekend lunch would work equally well for a mid-week dinner, though certainly not a mid-week lunch!  The afternoon tea/dessert division works.  In the afternoon tea section are mostly cakes, whereas the desserts are puddings, or frozen treats.

Each recipe is a whole meal, although I tend to add a salad to every dinner, and is beautifully photographed.  The presentation is pretty, and achievable.

I have written a long list of recipes that I want to try from this book - I hope you will all enjoy looking at the results almost as much as G and I enjoy tasting them!