Parmesan crusted blue eye

Another successful Bill dinner - just for me (G was away, so he missed out).  A side note, I wouldn't recommend turning grainy bread into breadcrumbs for this dish - that is why there are darker brown spots on the crust!

There are a couple of things that make me sad about this dish.

1. The fish still had scales on it and it ended up being easier to mangle the fish and get the skin off rather than try and get the scales off. 
2. Why doesn't it look as pretty as Bill's???

Breast cancer cupcakes

G had a bake-off to raise funds for breast cancer research a couple of weeks ago and these little beauties came second!

Just my regular vanilla cupcakes, with some choc chips thrown in.  Iced with pink butter cream and pink ribbons!

September, October, November Delicious

The months have been flying by and some of you may be wondering why I haven't mentioned any recipes from September or October Delicious. 

I moved house - but not only house, I moved cities and jobs, and although I redirected my mail I never received the October issue.

During September I wasn't staying in my house, but I was couch (and spare bedroom) surfing.  I never had the groceries for more than one meal ahead, and didn't have access to all my kitchen equipment. So I let September slide...

However, November Delicious really excites me! 

Doesn't that cake just look delicious!  Although, imagine trying to cut it!

Corn fritters and (fish) with olive relish.

I was pretty excited to make these corn fritters, having had the pleasure of eating these in Bill's restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney.

Strangely, the fritters are in the dinner section of Bill's Food - so I made them for dinner one night and then cooked the other half of the batter for breakfast the next morning (because I really believe these are delicious for breakfast!)

My interpretation of the fritters involved combining them with salmon with olive relish (supposed to be tuna, another recipe from Bill's Food).

The salmon? Well the only tuna available was super amazing sashimi grade tuna which was exorbitantly expennsive - in fact, too expensive to cook so I cooked salmon.

The corn fritters in the fry pan for breakfast the next morning.  I served these with some pan fried tomatoes and herbs.  YUM!

Baked risotto

As I have mentioned, I don't cook risotto.  In fact, I recently had a job interview where we discussed my inexplicable inability to cook a risotto.  I seriously have no idea why - I am good at following a recipe and I have enough patience to do most kinds of cake decorating.  Anyway, it falls to G to make the risottos in our house - even the baked ones.  It was also an excuse to break out the paella pan, because I don't have a casserole dish.

This tomato and zucchini baked risotto covered in herbs and parmesan was just scrumptious.

Wedding food taste testing

So G definitely enjoyed the cake taste testing, but we were both looking forward to the food and wine taste testing session at our venue, The Willows.

We were one of 4 couples taste testing but we were the only ones taste testing for a cocktail party.  We definitely got some jealous looks from the other tables as they could only try a couple of things each, whereas we had what looked like a bountiful spread of canapes.  I should say it looked like and was a bountiful spread!

The tuna tartare is at the front next to the sauce - not terribly attractive but my favourite!

We were a little confused when we saw the tart on this plate (with the tomato in the middle) as it had been advertised as cold, but came warm  That was a good move on the chef's part - the pastry was just wonderful and the filling was nice warm.

The satay was yum, and the meatballs (though unattractive) were delicious too.  The chorizo (far back right corner of the plate) just tasted like the top of a pizza without a base.

Of course, even though we have chosen a wedding cake, we couldn't resist trying some dessert canapes!

Bill's Food

I've owned Bill Granger's boks for a while, and have really only cooked out of one of them previously - you may recall a number of posts I did about Open Kitchen.

Right now I have decided to focus on Bill's Food.  I also own Bill's Sydney Food (which I didn't feel was appropriate as I have just moved to Melbourne!) and Holiday.

As you can probably tell from the dog-earred tags on the book in the picture below, I have been considering cooking from this book for a while.  I think it is typical Bill - a nicely divided book with breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and dessert recipes.  I am particularly excited about cooking corn fritters - which I have had the pleasure of eating for breakfast in Bill's restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney.