Oaty Blue Cheese and Thyme crackers

This is one of my favourite recipes, particularly at Christmas time.  You can freeze the mixture in rolls once made, then defrost, slice and bake when required.  If you slice them thickly they will be more like savoury biscuits. They tend to be crumbly, but ever so delicious.  You really do need a food processor to make this recipe. 

I'm thinking of making some blue cheese this week for Christmas time.  Last year I made a huge wheel of blue cheese and wedges of it made fantastic gifts.  I used the rest to make these delicious crackers.

Oaty Blue Cheese and Thyme crackers.

1 cup plain flour
½ cup instant rolled oats
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
50g blue cheese
120g butter
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice

• Preheat the oven to 175°C (you may like to turn it on when you chill the recipe below).  In the bowl of a food processor combine the flour, oats, baking powder and salt and pulse together to combine. Make sure that the oats are well blended into the flour.

• Add the thyme, blue cheese, butter and lemon juice and pulse until the mixture is 
well combined and forms a ball.

• Transfer the mixture to a clean surface and shape it into a firm log, about 4-5cm in diameter. Wrap the log in cling film and chill for at least 30 minutes.
• Roll in poppy seeds.

• Cut the log into thin slices, about 5mm thick, and arrange them evenly on lined trays (do not cook on baking racks - the cheese in the crackers will make the mixture stick to the racks). Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until they are golden, you may want to flip them over at ten minutes to make sure both sides have a good colour.

• Leave the biscuits to cool for 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. 

Variant: 

Use 50g grated parmesan and 1 tsp fresh diced rosemary instead of blue cheese and thyme.

Inspired by Issue 68, food magazine.

How I made Apple Cider Vinegar

I've been so busy with the garden over the last few months and my lack of blog posts made me think that I was cooking less.  I have been doing a lot of cooking - but mostly making things from recipes I've already posted.  It is really nice to have a 'critical mass' of recipes that represent my family's meals.

I have though been doing a fair amount of preserving.  I currently crave a food dehydrator and tonight I start my first attempt at dehydrating using our oven.  I've made my usual autumn jams/ jellies and the chest freezer we purchased prior to my hospitalisation last year is full of tomato soup, frozen berries and blanched vegetables.

We have been picking and eating a lot of apples so I was very pleased to make my own apple cider vinegar.  It costs about ten dollars for 250ml from our supermarket so having made a litre for very little work made me very happy!

How I made Apple Cider Vinegar is based on three to four minutes of clicking through dozens of websites.  I was inspired by a post on the Wellington Garden Share Facebook page.

How I made Apple Cider Vinegar.

Day one, week one.

Get a very clean glass or plastic food safe container (I used a ten litre glass jar).  Sterilise (I used the Iodopher that came with my cheese making kit).

Fill the glass jar with apple peels and cores (more peels than cores).  Cover with water.  (You may wish to put a plate or something over top of the peels to keep them below the water.  Add a teaspoon of sugar. Put a muslin over the top of the container and secure with a rubber band.

Put in a consistently warm place out of direct sunlight (I put next to the fridge on the floor).  

Shake gently each day.

Week two or three

After a week or two you should notice signs of fermentation (fizzy or bubbly).  Strain the mixture into a clean bowl, clean the original container and put the strained contents back inside.  You should have a weak, fermented apple juice.  Add the mother (the cloudy bit or jelly like bit) from a purchased jar of fermented apple cider vinegar.  Try not to use a metal utensil.  Many sites claim that metal might somehow deactivate the mother, but none I read gave a plausible explanation.

Leave in a consistently warm place out of direct sunlight.  Cover with a muslin (do this until you are sure that fermentation has ended, otherwise the lid might pop/ explode off.

Week three to five

After a week or two you should notice that the mother is increasing in size.  There should be no other signs of fermentation.  When the mother is quite thick and gelatinous and covering most of the surface of the vinegar you can remove it.  Put the mother into a clean glass jar and add about half a cup of vinegar - you can then reuse it for other vinegar making.

Bottle the apple cider vinegar and leave for another couple of weeks to age. It should smell and taste vinegary - mine is also a glorious pink colour and has a definite smell of apple. Glorious.

Warning:

Do not use this vinegar for preserves.  Recipes for preserving rely on known ingredients and it is hard to know from batch to batch exactly what the composition of the final apple cider vinegar is.  For example, some websites mention testing the ph level to determine if the vinegar is acidic enough for preserving.  I think with preserves it is best to be safe and use commercial products.  Use this vinegar in water for a drink or for dressings.

Curcubit surprise

My determination that we would be self sufficient with vegetables this summer means that we have a lot of vegetables available to eat.  I'm not sure we got to self sufficiency - but we got close.  The money saved on buying vegetables (and we did go five or six days at a time without buying vegetables) was spent on summer stone fruit!  While my boysenberries, strawberries and blackberries have all performed well, they do not keep us in fruit.

What did change was a determination to find recipes that fit the ingredients in the garden

I cooked these courgette and scallopini in a herbed mustard vinaigrette.  I just put the lid on top and baked them in the oven.  The reason I called this recipe 'curcubit surprise' is that I had no idea I was growing scallopini, let alone white ones.  I was checking on my mad pumpkin patch when I realised that the group of baby pumpkins were in fact scallopini.  Alas, because they had reached a very large size I think that the plant has produced only one crop and then died.  Still, it was good for a few days of odd shaped vegetables.  I think I also prefer the American name for scallopini - patty pan squash.

Last summer I had two courgette plants and was annoyed that I had no glut of courgettes.  I thought that the plants were slightly unproductive due to being grown in containers.  This year I have five courgette plants, two green and three yellow.  They came from a mixed pack.  The yellow courgettes seem to grow more slowly than the green ones, and produce nowhere near as much.  Still no glut.  I can't work out though if we just eat a lot of courgettes?  Since our stand by meal option is usually some kind of stir fry, we can easily grow through two or three in each stir fry, a few times a week.  I was really hoping to freeze a lot for winter, and to have so many that I would be forced to make things like chocolate zucchini cake or beg friends to take them off our hands.

Another curcubit in the mixture above is crookneck squash.  I planted many of these seeds and got two small plants.  Mine didn't get very big, and I only got maybe ten off both plants.  If they get very big they turn into squash with a hard, warty skin.  You then have to bake them, as the skin isn't soft enough to eat.  Only one of mine made it to this size, mainly because I gave up hope that the plant would produce anything.  I can't work out if they were just in a bad location, or if they just aren't big producers.  I'll give them another year!

I have learnt a good lesson - one which I suspect most gardeners know through common sense.  Don't through the potting mix from your non-germinated pumpkin seed wantonly through the garden.  As of this evening it appears that I will have thirteen pumpkins.  I only deliberately planted three plants, four have just sprung up and one I swear was supposed to be a cucumber plant is actually a buttercup pumpkin plant. Sigh. Still, the pansies that grew from the same method are very cheerful.

I did later find the cucumber plant - I planted it in the communal vegetable garden I share with my neighbours.  I nearly cried I was so thrilled to see a cucumber and not another blinking pumpkin.  It was delicious.  The second one is on my kitchen bench, and I will probably eat it this evening rather than subjecting it to refrigeration.

Last summer I went crazy with peas: snow peas, sno peas, capucijner peas and garden peas.  This year belonged to the curcubit.  I think next summer will be beans.

Cucumber

Isn't it beautiful?

Beetroot Tart Tartin

I've been enjoying Hugh Fernley-Wittingstall's Veg TV programme and managed to have a good read of the lovely cookbook that accompanies the series.  On seeing this recipe I knew it would only be a matter of time before I made his recipe for Beetroot Tart Tartin.

My garden has been very productive this summer, and so I had plenty of these beautiful beetroot chioggia to use.  They look like candy canes!  The children were quite bemused by the presentation of these vegetables - surprised enough to try them!  Both ate a surprising amount (for my oldest a surprising amount is more than one mouthful of something new).  Next time I will try and arrange to have all baby beets.

Post Christmas sales

We found a good use for half off Christmas decorations - fairy mobiles. We found sticks at the park and the children chose decorations. If you are an adult and focused it will take five minutes to make. We managed to fill in nearly thirty minutes doing this with children aged three-nine.

Candy cane meringues, mince pies and Christmas craft.

Chocolate mint truffles rolled in pistachio crumbs.

I recently looked back on my blog to last year to try and find which recipes I'd used for steam pudding and Christmas mince - and had some attractive photos but no actual clues as to what recipes I'd used.  This year I used Hugh Fearnly-Whittingsall's recipe.  I had no ginger cordial like the recipe specified but did have some gingerbread spiced syrup from Starbucks which substituted rather nicely.  I then used my trusty Edmond's Cookbook to create the steamed puddings.  Steam pudding always seems like a really stupid idea for a summer Christmas when you boil the damn things for four hours (note, that is the FIRST boil, you boil it again on the day).  This year I'm going to put some of the Christmas mince in some vanilla ice-cream - terrine style.  Perhaps add some orange zest to the ice cream......

Delicious mince pies, pastry recipe from an old tea towel of all things.

Our advent calendar last year was full of little chocolates.  This year I really wanted the children to get a bit more out of the Christmas countdown so I've put in little activities, including a few to try and get them to learn about more about helping others.  Those ones haven't gone down so well, but I'm hoping if I repeat them every year they will start to look forward to them as part of the Christmas build up.  Today we are off to pick a book at the Children's Bookshop that Altrusa will distribute to needy families.  Yesterday we got out all the paints and stamps and made metres of wrapping paper.  One rainy Sunday two years ago I bought a box of brown wrapping paper from Warehouse Stationary and it is still going strong!!

Gift wrapping paper

I think that these are my favourite home made Christmas present this year - they are so cute, and so easy.  I often find it hard to believe that something as delicious as meringues is made from eggs and caster sugar.  Nothing else.  You can add vanilla for flavour or a pinch of tartaric acid to help with the beating (and make them appear slightly whiter) but they are not necessary.  For Christmas presents though, food colouring made an appearance.

I painted stripes all the way around the piping bag I used.  The first few meringues had no colour, but after that they were all perfect - they remind me of candy canes.  If you like it then a drop or two of peppermint essence would really Christmas-ify them!

Paint stripes on your piping bag to get the candy cane effect.

I'm not cooking Christmas dinner this year - my Mum is.  It is hard for me to let go of being in charge of such arrangements as I love the hunt for great recipes.  But, a small part of me is very happy not to need to do all that cooking and planning.  As a result, the presents are all purchased/ made and I have more time for crafting and gardening.  Score.

Merry Christmas.

The hard work pays off.

All of a sudden we can eat from the garden every day.  And sometimes all of our veges for a particular meal are from the garden.  It feels amazing.

White carrot, courgette, calendula, lettuce, strawberries. 

Our rather large raspberry bushes turned out not to be raspberries.  But boysenberries are equally welcome!!!

It has long been a dream of mine to harvest enough garlic to create a garlic plait.  On harvesting the garlic, which was an unnamed variety from Commonsense Organics I learnt that it is Pearl Garlic.  I think I'll search out a different variety next year as I will get through the Pearl Garlic quickly (it is just one large bulb).

The garden does requite a fair amount of attention at the moment, but it is worth it.  The deep freezer is full of frozen herb pestos, homemade cordials and soon it should be full of frozen beans and courgette as well.  So sweet. Each year I garden it becomes more cost-effective (particularly with the berries and fruit trees).

I'm off to create a lovely picnic dinner of garden salad, white carrot, calendula, cucumber (I bought this but should have my own in a fortnight) and parsley pesto roast chicken.  I'm really enjoying this year's Christmas parties!

Hamburgers from scratch.

I'm starting to get better so cooking a lot more. Having a lot of thinking time allows for elaborate meal planning. I'm slowly starting to incorporate stuff from the garden, but, apart from herbs and spring onions there isn't much ready yet.

The other day I decided to make hamburgers from scratch. I figured it would be a project that would easily last the day. 

I was super pleased with the result.

The hamburger buns were beautiful. I proved them under the heat pump and they rose superbly. I made two little ones for younger eaters.

I found the lid of my Easiyo yoghurt maker the perfect mould for the hamburger patties, and a jam jar lid was great for small kiddy patties. The mince patties included sage, spring onion and parsley from the garden.  

We had potato wedges sprinkled with stock powder to accompany. The girls liked the meal a lot, although my youngest objected to the poppy seeds on the top of the buns - she was worried they would grow in her tummy!

The first moments of the school holidays.

School pickup yesterday was fun. The children and most of the parents seemed happy and I'm sure the teachers were thrilled. My six year old wanted to do every planned holiday activity STRAIGHT AWAY. I conceded with an art activity.

I can't remember where I saw this idea, it is hardly novel. I collected river stones, bought test pots and used sharpie pens to write on the stones.

It was great fun. As usual, I had to recognise that my daughter had her own decoration ideas and she started off with elaborate, multi colour stones that were for 'decoration, not labelling.' She neatly wrote some plant names, adding love hearts or 'polish' (gold paint) here and there.

We also made some decoy strawberries. I read in an article somewhere that a family used decoy rock berries to misdirect birds or to hide amongst real ones to give birds a fright if they try to nibble on them. They are cute regardless and fun to make!

Again, we used a sharpie pen for detail.  The stones were then sprayed with clear varnish to protect the writing. Be careful about spraying, too close and the pen may run. Spraying from 30 cm is good.

Third Annual Chocolate Festival

This year I was very pleased to be invited once again to attend the opening of Wellington's annual chocolate festival.  Last year I was quite overwhelmed to attend, as the festival was also the start of the New Zealand Food Blogger's conference and also the first time I'd spent time away from my youngest.  Given I've spent a lot of this year sick, and have only regained the ability to eat chocolate quite recently the invitation was gratefully received.

The festival opened with a toast - with chocolate ganache pots, instead of champagne. The festival was noticeably bigger than last year - a lot more small chocolate makers.  It also seemed better attended - it was very busy by the time I left. I wonder if last year the festival was swallowed up by Wellington On a Plate, held at the same time? This year there was just enough time to feel sad that Wellington On a Plate had ended when it came time for the festival. A special thing about this year's festival is an emphasis on fair trade chocolate and detailed package labelling of bean type and country of origin.

The festival has lots of fun elements - I regret not staying long enough for chocolate bingo (using chocolate bingo pieces and receiving chocolate as a prize).  I made sure that I left the perennial chocolate fountain to the end - last year delicious warm chocolate landed on my dress, leaving me with a distinctive stain for the rest of the day.  For a further $10 festival attendees could make four little ganache pots (as above) and take them home in a small clear box.  Mayor Ceila Wade-Brown was the first to have a go and very kindly shared out her creations.  Food and hospitality students volunteered to assist the public with making the ganache pots - and I was surprised to learn that some of these students were from Auckland, having made their own way to the conference.

The bit that I loved the most had to be all the new flavour combinations - La Petite Chocolat had matcha flavoured bars and some amazing ginger and mandarin chocolate.  My favourite flavour, salted caramel appeared in a couple of stalls, including local producer Bohemein.  Big Bad Wolf had a very appealing sausage with a mole (chocolate) sauce.

Chocolate is an amazing food.  While reading the packaging notes of White Rabbit Cacao's Venezuela Mantuano Dark Chocolate 72% Cacao bar I noted that you could taste 'complex berry fruits and stone fruit.'  The chocolate did have a strong raspberry taste to me.  During the Food Blogger's conference last year we had a chocolate masterclass where we learnt the elements of chocolate tasting.  Great chocolate hints at other tastes (unlike most commercial chocolates which often taste strongly of sugar).  Of the chocolate I have tasted so far the White Rabbit Cacao is my favourite - shiny, with a good snap and the delicious berry flavours.  It actually seems mean to write about it without sharing the chocolate with readers!  I'll stop writing!

The most special part of the day was catching up with other food bloggers.  Long ago conversations were remembered and memories of last years conference were discussed amongst sampling from the trade stalls. I've spent a lot of time thinking about food blogging today.  There are a lot of food bloggers from last year who no longer blog.  Lives change, focus changes.  There are also a lot of new food bloggers.  I love blogs.  I love reading what people find interesting.  Blogging is a great way to share passions, to inform, to keep a record of special times.  I have no idea how long I'll keep blogging at Make-Do Mum, but I suspect as long as there are fun food events and food experiments to conduct, I'll be writing for a while to come.


Disclaimer: I was an invited guest to the festival and received a gift bag containing products or vouchers from most of the businesses I mentioned above.  I've done my best to be honest and mention only those stands and products that I was most interested in.

Garden: the best laid plans and rehab gardening

Earlier this year I became a tad garden crazed.  It helped having a single tomato plant produce 666 individual cherry tomatoes.  I kept a tally of everything I harvested and the long warm autumn encouraged the mass planting of seeds.  I was determined to produce a lot of winter vegetables.

I got sick so at the end of May I planted the biggest seedlings in the garden and left the rest to die.  I planted the garlic very early and figured a few extra weeks couldn't hurt. Three months passed.  The first thing I checked when I got home from the hospital was the state of the garden.  The big storm in June was not kind to many of my plants in the front garden.  There was growth, but it was very small.  As I write most of the stuff that went in my garden in May is only getting close to producing anything now.  The exceptions were bok choi and Chinese cabbage - two vegetables I was specifically told not to eat on discharge!  Ironic.

I've been a bit bored recuperating.  I want to do stuff, but don't have the energy.  I do though have the energy for elaborate garden planning.  I'm on my third draft.  I've also been planting a few seeds.  By a few I mean:

• Sweetcorn
• Black popcorn
• Heritage large tomatoes
• Heritage cherry tomatoes
• Big Red tomatoes
• Sun cherry tomatoes
• Pumpkin
• Jersey Bennie Potatoes
• Courgette
• Apple Cucumber
• Watermelon - Ice Cream and Sun, Moon and Stars.
• Rainbow carrots
• Broccoli Romanesco
• Rockmelon
• Lettuce
• Dwarf Beans
• Red Cabbage
• Lettuce
• Capsicums
• Magenta Spreen
• Zinnias, Larkspurs, pansies, calendula, marigolds
• Coriander and Basil

And since it is too cold outside for most of these seeds I am gardening inside.  My bathroom (very warm room) and the spare room have become a nursery. 

The top of the cupboard is perfect for growing corn.

The bathroom sink is, fortunately, wide.  The left side.

We go through a lot of eggs in this house and I'm finding the containers useful

I'm sure that there will be space for everything (finger's crossed).

I am determined not to plant things out too late this year - a fatal error in previous years.  When I feel sure that we have passed the stage where frosts will come then I will be cheerfully filling in the garden.  My aim is to have one whole week this summer where I do not have to buy any veges or fruit.  The plum tree that I bought for $5 earlier this year is covered in blossom and my blackberry and raspberry canes are looking promising.  We have a huge amount of strawberry plants and this should be the year when we finally get some feijoas. I think a week without buying fruit or vegetables is a real possibility.

Pink flower sushi for six year olds.

Isn't this pretty?  Well, pretty to a six year old at least. My oldest loves eating sushi, and her favourite is salmon nigiri.  But making fresh salmon nigiri everyday for her lunch is unlikely to happen, mainly because no one else wants to eat quite as much salmon as she does.  This sushi flower though has ingredients that we do generally have: ham and egg.

I had colouring dramas.  I wanted to use beetroot as my colouring agent but didn't want boiled beetroot flavoured rice.  I was not getting a bright enough pink with the beetroot juice I'd made so added a small amount of ordinary red food colouring.  No matter how much I mixed it I could not get uniform coloured rice.  Next time I would add the colouring the sushi vinegar, or use more highly concentrated beetroot juice.  The beetroot juice was at least evenly colouring the rice, just not deeply colouring it.

Very coincidentally, a Japanese friend and his family popped over to visit while I was making these 'flowers.'  I was worried about adding too much liquid to the finished rice as I didn't want it to be too gluggy. He said that it was typical to use a little less liquid when making Japanese rice for sushi to allow for the sushi vinegar that you put in at the end.  I'll remember this tip for next time.

Pink sushi flowers:

(this recipe assumes that you know how to roll sushi - you should watch a tutorial on You tube if you are unsure).

Prepared Japanese sushi rice
Sushi vinegar
Concentrated beetroot juice or red food colouring
Two eggs
Soy sauce
Thin slices of ham
Sheets of nori
Pickled ginger (if desired)

Mix up two eggs with a teaspoon of soy sauce and spread thinly over a frying pan.  When cooked through, remove from heat and cool on a tablecloth. Take a sheet of nori and place on a sushi mat.  Place the omelette in the centre.  You can either cover the omelette with thin slices of ham (as I did) or tear ham into small pieces and place randomly over the omelette (this gives a slightly different effect when rolling).  If you want to use pickled ginger as well as or in place of the omelette you can add it here.  Tightly roll this mixture and place to one side.

Add the sushi vinegar (with the food colouring) to prepared rice (look at the back of the sushi vinegar bottle to determine how much is needed for your amount of rice).  Stir through thoroughly. Spread evenly over the sheet of nori.  Place the egg and ham nori roll on top and roll together.  Use a sharp knife to cut into slices.

Variation ideas:

• I think adding black sesame seeds to the pink rice would also look good, I might try this next time.
• I'd be tempted to try using baby spinach, and might in fact omit using a separate sheet of nori for the egg and ham in favour of baby spinach.
• Japanese food stores apparently have a fish based food colouring you can use as well.

Reviews and pineapple flower cupcakes

Take a look at these beautiful pineapple flowers.  I've never eaten dried pineapple before but, wow, it is delicious.  This recipe, for pineapple,coconut and lime cupcakes caught my eye while I was reviewing  'Alice in Bakingland' by Alice Arndell.  It is a beautiful book to just look through, and these pineapple flowers grabbed my attention.  This batch was a trial for my husband's workplace.  During my recent illness they were very kind, giving my husband heaps of time off, and sending home a lot of meals for the freezer.  Unfortunately, the batch didn't quite make it there! Visitors and time passing meant that they were gratefully received at home!  I'll make another batch, I swear!

Absent for a lame reason and my very dull recent food experiences.

A few months ago this blog abruptly stopped.  Turns out that my family history of bowel cancer became a personal history of bowel cancer.  There was little time to reflect - the two weeks after my colonoscopy were filled with further investigations and serious medical conversations (if you are being evaluated for cancer ALWAYS take a support person to appointments) and then the verdict.  It was the very earliest of stages, and due to a condition called serrated polyposis syndrome I would need my large bowel and rectum removed.  Straight away.  Testing during surgery would determine if oncology treatment was required.  From the verdict to the surgery we had four weeks to arrange a nanny, extra childcare, freeze meals (we bought a chest freezer) and organise everything. It was a manic time, quite horrid and so busy I barely gave the consequences of the surgery much thought.

The surgery was meant to take place in two parts.  The first would remove the large bowel and rectum, then use the small bowel to create a pouch (the new rectum) and also create a temporary stoma to allow everything to heal. The second, eight weeks later, would remove the stoma, reconnect everything and be the end of my treatment.

The first operation went well, but the small bowel didn't quite stretch enough for an easy stoma.  The doctors felt that I wouldn't be able to manage this stoma myself, so the operation was bought forward two weeks.  I managed to get a post op infection, probably from the central line in my neck so stayed in hospital for two weeks. The stoma failed right around two weeks, and became infected as poo leaked into the area.  It was very unglamorous.  The second operation went well, and I was glad that I had no more operations in my future.  Except, the wound was quite infected, and I spent a further three and half weeks in hospital with some funky temperatures, four more trips to theatre to clean the wound and mostly unable to eat due to a very unhappy bowel.

My hospital food experiences included: not eating at all (for days at a time), eating the 'low residue' (no fibre) diet and for a few days receiving nutrition through a PICC line into my arm.

I've been at home for three weeks and am very weak.  I'm not cooking and have no food experiments planned!  The monotony of the low residue diet continues (there is ONE green vegetable in my OK to eat list) and I could cheerfully never eat cauliflower again.  My bowel will take around six months to adjust to the new set up.  Fingers crossed, because I spend a fair amount of time in the bathroom at the moment.

As I get better, I'm sure I will be up to blogging again.  I love the people I've met through blogging, the experiences I've had (including reviewing cookbooks) and keeping track of my family's day to day life. As it is, I am currently feeling tortured whenever a new issue of Cuisine magazine arrives and we are working our way through dozens of donated frozen meals!  We have been excellently supported, and I'm grateful things were caught at an early stage.

Stormtrooper Easter Eggs

My Mum used to make Easter Eggs for my sister and I each year.  While we were allowed to come along on the chocolate purchasing trip, my Mum made the eggs secretly, and hid them until Easter Monday.  We loved getting the eggs, and my favourite was the 'big one' - a rabbit pulling a basket.  When we were both a bit older Mum taught us how to make them ourselves and taught us many of the techniques.

I've got some friends intrigued by these little beauties:

I used an edible ink pen to add the black detailing.

so I thought I'd add some chocolate making tips.

Making your own Easter Eggs:

• You need chocolate candy melts (available from craft stores/ Spotlight) or very high quality chocolate (such as you would buy from a speciality chocolate shop.  If you use chocolate from the supermarket it is unlikely to result in glossy chocolate shapes, and gets that greyish 'bloom' that comes from old, poor quality chocolate.  If you buy from the store melt blocks of eating chocolate rather than chocolate buttons.
• You need moulds to make shapes.  If you are making these with children consider your shapes carefully: shallow moulds use less chocolate (these storm trooper heads probably use about 5 Tbsp of chocolate - quite a bit really.  You also want shapes that are less likely to break (I made some cute Lego men shapes - but they are very delicate and break easily).  I prefer the hard clear plastic moulds that I used growing up - I find the silicone ones a little tricky for removing the chocolates and because they are bendy they are more difficult to manoeuvre into the freezer. You also can't see if there are any air bubbles in the silicone moulds.
• You need a double boiler arrangement.  Be incredibly careful doing this, heat the water on a medium heat then place a bowl with the chocolate inside.  There must be no possibility of water splashing into the bowl - the smallest drop will turn your chocolate gritty and hard.  Additionally, once it has melted you need to remove it from the boiler - if overheated it can go very gritty, or get the 'bloom' very easily once set.
• If you have children then letting them help will be messy.  I made a couple of batches of eggs first, then let the children go for it.  They tend to accidentally spill the chocolate while transferring to the moulds, then use their fingers to clean up the mess.  Dried chocolate is painful to clean up - I used a pastry knife to chip it off the bench.
• After filling the moulds tap them gently a few times to remove air bubbles.  If you have clear moulds you can check underneath to see if there are any visible air bubble.s
• Place the filled moulds in the freezer for 5-10 minutes to set the chocolate.  When the chocolate is ready it will come out of the mould very easily.  Do not forget about it in the freezer - it will develop wet condensation which will effect the quality of the chocolate.
• You can buy egg moulds and can either make them hollow (swirl the chocolate around the mould and tip out the extra) or fill them.  You can join them to another matching egg mould either while making them (I used to fill one side of the mould with chocolate, join to the matching side, clip pegs around the edges and then shake) or 'glue' them together with chocolate when both sides are made.
• You can buy flavourings and colouring for chocolate.  Do not use normal food colouring in chocolate as it has the same effect as adding water to the chocolate - not good.  Buy powder colouring.  You can buy flavours and fillings - I scooped a dollop of salted caramel butter inside an egg I made - awesome!

Christmas BBQ for lovely old friends: post-marinated rump steak, bacon wraps and macerated fruit salad

*****I've spent the last few weeks struck down by cryptosporidium - so not up to eating, and trying to avoid cooking.  This is a post I've had waiting to finish for awhile, and I'm making the pear, haloumi, sage and bacon wraps tonight.*****


My husband and I have lots of lovely friends and last Christmas we were particularly excited to see two friends back from three years overseas.  There was challenging conversation, great news, gossip, laughs and yummy food.

I have one long standing BBQ favourite - a Nigella Lawson recipe. Basically you marinate the meat AFTER cooking - and the flavour is amazing.  The best thing is that it uses beef rump steak, which isn't that expensive, but the way in which you cook it means that you have tender, garlicky/ lemony beef that goes nicely over rice or a salad.

I researched Christmas recipes intensively last year - I like to make old favourites each year (which is why we did the Nigella turkey brine and had new potatoes) but I figure I'll never learn anything making the same recipes.  So I got together all the Christmas magazines and researched recipes. My new favourite Christmas BBQ dish (and one we have eaten at least fortnightly all summer is)  pear, haloumi and sage streaky bacon wraps.  I saw this in the December Women's Weekly.  It is a Jo Seager recipe, you can probably guess the process from the description! The pear goes all deliciously soft and the haloumi heats beautifully.  I will post about making haloumi later on - it is my new favourite cheese, and very easy to make.

A few years ago I came across a recipe for Macerated Fruit Salad.  I made it one rainy Christmas with fruit my in-laws brought with them from up North. This was the first year though that summer has been hot enough where I live to pull off this dessert at Christmas time.  I like this because it tastes like very, very fresh fruit salad - familiar, but special.

Macerated fruit salad

One punnet of strawberries, hulled and quartered
One punnet of strawberries, hulled.
Four nectarines, stoned and thinly sliced
One cup red grapes, halved
Juice of two oranges
Two TBSP caster sugar
One TBSP vanilla syrup

Mix together and chill for a couple of hours before serving.

Pear Upside Down Cake

I posted this recipe accidentally prior to editing so it was very rough looking!

I've been doing a crazy amount of preserving lately and, after finding a few local pear trees, ended up with a lot of pears.  I'm kind of a nervous preserver - I think all the warnings about sterility and botulism are kind of off-putting.  So I've decided to use the jars of pears as quickly as possible.  You could use fresh pears in this recipe, but I think preserved pears are really delicious.  

I made this recipe the first time when I was sick and needed to fill in the time with my two year old. I figured it had enough ingredients to keep her busy for awhile.  I didn't though feel much like eating, so took out a sliver.  It was a delicious, moist cake with just the perfect amount of ginger.  It feels like an 'adult' cake for me - made for a special morning tea perhaps.

This recipe is also made mainly in a food processor.  If you don't have one you could just use a stick blender.

Pear Upside Down Cake

Topping

40g melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 TBSP Golden Syrup
3 firm ripe pears, peeled, cored and sliced into eighths (I used pears that I had preserved)

Cake mix

2 cups self raising flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup natural yoghurt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup plain oil
2 tsp ground ginger

Pre-heat oven to 170C.  Line a 23cm cake tin with baking paper.  For the topping combine the butter, sugar and syrup.  Spread over the base of the cake tin.  Arrange pear slices over top of the mixture.

In a food processor combine all cake mix ingredients.  When smooth (it may take a couple of minutes) pour over the pears and bake for 45-50 mins or until puffed and golden.  It is important to test the mixture with a skewer as I found appearances were quite deceptive with this recipe.  Rest for ten minutes in the cake tin before inverting onto a serving plate.

Using up the blackberry products

I don't often pull out all the stops for dinner, weekday dinners usually being rather stressful.  There is something about trying to pull together dinner when children are demanding attention, you have to persuade them to eat (because they are tired) and you get comments like 'that's not my favourite' or 'yuck.'

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I enjoy cooking (for adults).  I figured that it was the end of a long week and we deserved a yummy meal.  It makes a nice replacement for going out on Valentine's Day.

All the work I've done in the garden this summer is starting to pay off.  This meal really demonstrates it - lots of herbs, garlic herb butter (home-made butter from teaching the children about food science and garlic from one of my two successful bulbs), blackberry vinegar, cherry tomato sauce and blackberry cordial.  I've been so happy with the amount of food we have preserved this year - either in jars, as products like vinegar or cordial or just frozen waiting to be used.


The cherry tomato sauce is a funny story.  I accidentally 'invented' tomato sauce (ketchup)!  While it is not an original invention, I did wonder if this is how tomato sauce was originally invented. It doesn't seem to be, but I did learn that the phrase 'tomato sauce' is limited to Commonwealth countries - in other parts of the world tomato sauce is what we tend to call pasta sauce .  I'd hoped to lightly cook the cherry tomatoes with some blackberry vinegar to have as a side dish.  It was initially too tart, so I added a little sugar and cooked at a high heat.  Unsurprisingly tomato, vinegar, sugar and seasoning is tomato sauce! Delicious!

Yummy meal.  The beer bread with garlic butter was delicious.

Horribly out of focus picture, but I really wanted to show the colour of the dressing.

This photo looked better on my phone!  I mixed blackberry vinegar, olive oil, poppy seeds and seasoning to make a nice dressing for these baby cucumbers.

The cherry tomato side dish that turned into tomato sauce!  Since the tomatoes were very ripe and full of pectin the addition of heat and sugar made them kind of 'jammy' - delicious.

Valentine's mocktail: blackberry cordial mixed with sparkling grape juice

Garden harvest 2013 (January)

Somewhere along the way I've become a gardening nerd.  In the seven years that I have lived in this house I have indifferently gardened.  While we were still renters we did very little and then four years ago I started adding a bag of compost and mulch to the garden each year.  I've focused on growing vegetables but my desire to get a lot of variety means that I would grow too little of one thing.

This year I was organised.  I ordered the King's seed catalogue and planned in advance.  I even drew a little plan on the back of an envelope.  When the trees were harvested at the rear of our property it revealed new sunlight opportunities - we can now grow vegetables and fruit that require extra sunlight hours.  I dug two new gardens at the front of our house.  I read a lot, mostly anything by Linda Hallinan.

On holiday earlier this month I managed to get through about eighteen months worth of NZ Gardener magazines.  I'm ready!

I've planted the basics: lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries and carrots but also heritage varieties of peas, Picton Sno and Capucijners.  I learned how to get the best out of the indifferent berry bushes we have - and produced two raspberries and have about thirty blackberries ripening.  On the recommendation of a neighbour I planted courgettes and enjoy getting a new courgette to eat every three or four days.  I'm starting to get results from my rhubarb.  I've planted complimentary flowers to attract bees and have even started seed saving. I tend to take twice daily looks at the garden (this is how I know that I am obsessive).  I love ripping laterals from tomato plants.  I love that I know what laterals are.  And I love that tomato laterals will just sprout roots if you stick them in the ground.

Tomatoes ready for dehydrating and eventual freezing.

My children are starting to enjoy the garden.  Digging for jersey bennie potatoes with the children was a lot of fun - they enjoyed the treasure hunt and the youngest loved washing them in a bucket of water.  I produced a lot of strawberries - but the youngest loves them, as well as my three year old neighbour so they became experts at looking for and eating warm, ripe berries.  I barely rescued enough for a pot of jam. This evening they helped me to pull up carrots.  We brought them inside and rinsed them, then sliced them thinly for eating.  My oldest had hers on a cruskit cracker of all things. 

I'm loving making meals of the food from the garden.  Tonight we had the last of the jersey bennies and a salad including lettuce and carrots from the garden with our meal.  In the next couple of months I should be harvesting cucumbers for pickling, miniature red cabbages, bok choi and a lot of tomatoes.  A serious amount.

In a previous post I mentioned a concern about garden costs.  I'm keeping a running total of expenditure and I'll try and see how that balances out at the end of the year.

January:

• Courgettes = 7
• Strawberries = 6
• Tomaccio tomatoes = 17
• Lettuce = harvested leaves three times
• Blackberries = scrumped 30 cups worth
• Carrots = 20
• Rhubarb = 3 cups worth, stewed
• Garlic Bulb = 1 (not an awesome amount but 100% better than previous year)
• Herbs = I've harvested parsley and thyme three times.

Tomaccio - it is hard to see but there are about 185 tomatoes on here!