Roast tomato pasta

A simple, weeknight meal.

Just some roasted cherry tomatoes stirred into some anchovies, chilli, oil and vinegar, tossed through some cooked spagetti.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when a "weeknight meal" from a cookbook is actually suitable for a weeknight meal for working people.

Belated Mother's Day

Our family eventually got around to celebrating Mother's Day a couple of weeks late, and enjoyed a dinner at newly opened St Katherine's.  While I would normally opt for the banquet menu, my family has some dietary requirements, so we chose some meals individually.

A pide with peppered figs

Some salad (possibly my favourite thing except dessert)

Calamari

the "disgusting" dessert - inspired by chocolate bars!

Tomato soup

While I appreciate that the soup may not be as red as you would normally expect a tomato soup, but it tastes fantastic and is made with a carrot, celery and onion base and roasted roma tomatoes, topped with some basil and slightly melted bocconcini.

The bocconcini is melted by putting it in the oven for a few minutes and then into steaming hot soup, and it melts through the soup slowly - a neat twist!

Chocoholic, who me?

Well maybe G is the chocoholic, because I bought him a voucher (for 2 people) to go on a Chocolate Lover's tour of Melbourne - complete with sticker that qualified us for a 10% discount on purchases on the day!

We started at Haigh's, in the Royal Arcade, and sampled pastilles and mango truffles.  The dark pastilles are quite "milky" (that is, they have a lowish content of cocoa compared to some of the "dark" chocolate available commercially).  In the end, most people preferred the dark because it was a little more intense than the milk, but not like a 75% cocoa which is not very sweet or creamy.

We moved on to T2 for a chocolate and tea tasting - the strawberry tisane really worked with the milk chocolate.

We stopped in at Deva for some chocolate art, peered in at the chocolate maker at Koko Black...

And not being full of sweet treats, finished the afternoon off with a coffee and some churros.

Cheesymite scrolls

I love a cheesymite scroll, but it does seem a little expensive to purchase from the chain bakeries.  Instead, I knew there would be a successful recipe somewhere online.  And there was - dolcidoll's recipe.

 

To get there, of course I needed to get vegemite all over my hands! In all seriousness, spreading hard vegemite onto soft pastry with a knife is very difficult and it is far easier to melt the vegemite and then spread it using your hands (and more fun too).

 

It almost resembled a swiss roll, but was far easier to roll than cake. 

They were delicious hot out of the oven, and I had to stop G from eating more than 1.

Currently craving Food Fest 365!

I read a post on Saveur about National Eggs Benedict Day.  Not entirely sure which "nation" was celebrating this day, but I was keen to jump on the bandwagon.

Food Fest 365!, by Yvan Lemoine, is the officially fun food holiday cook book - a different holiday food for every day. 

For those of you who also enjoy eggs benedict you will have to wait until April 17 to celebrate the day, but you can eat eggs benedict any other day without the celebration!

In anticipation of purchasing the book, G and I decided to join in the national celebration, and enjoyed a slight variations on the eggs bene - smoked salmon instead of ham!

Toasted English muffins, smoked salmon, poached eggs, hollandaise and cracked pepper - delicious!

Haloumi bruschetta

This, like the wellingtons and the steak with welsh rarebit, was in the Tuesday Night Dinners section of the Delicious magazine.  This recipe is actually doable on a Tuesday night, after work, in my opinion.

Toast, haloumi and some cooked down tomatoes and chorizo.  Done!

Cupcakes all over

I guess it's not news that I love cupcakes - making them, decorating them, eating them and looking at beautiful pictures of them.  So when I saw these super cute tea towels at Ikea I had to snap them up!

Mini beef wellington

This was in the Tuesday Night Dinners section, but perhaps only really appropriate for someone who finishes work earlier than I do...  However, the wellingtons looked enticing, and I was keen to give them a go.   These kinds of dishes always start out messily, mixing herbs and spices in with the mince by hand (G's job).

My strengths are more, shall we say, decorative.   So yes, I made the wellingtons complete with the lattice pastry.

I was supposed to line the pastry with proscuitto before adding the mince mixture but I forgot, and didn't miss it.  Served with some roast vegetables, because I couldn't face a meal without a vegetable!

Cake balls

Have I waxed lyrical about Bakerella before?  The website is aweinspiring and of course I had to grab the book when it came out, admittedly some time last year.  I have flicked through the book quite regularly, and was resigned to trying to recreate the cake pops using white chocolate and oil based food colouring.

After moving to Melbourne I started shopping at Cake Deco and found the requisite candy melts.  The day I went to the shop I could choose between red, green, white with sparkles, pink and pale blue.  I was thrilled!

So using a madeira cake, some homemade butter cream, the candy melts and hundreds & thousands, I made my first batch of cake balls.

Success!  Next, cake POPS!