Beetroot Tzatziki

Who would have thought making a dip was so easy ... lol ... i have always bought dip thinking they were too hard to make. Well i was wrong. Last night for dinner we had Lamb and Feta Kofta with Beetroot Tzatziki, and we all loved it. I don't imagine that this is the authentic recipe given that it uses canned beetroot, but it turns out so yummy I am sure we can gloss over that part .. ENJOY !

Beetroot Tzatziki

225g can sliced beetroot, drained
90g (1/3cup) Greek style natural yoghurt
2tbs chopped fresh mint
1 small french shallot, chopped
1 garlic clove

Process the beetroot, yoghurt, mint, shallot and garlic in the food processor until smooth.





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Easy Basil Pesto

As we have nut allergies in our house, its almost impossible to buy Basil Pesto over the counter because of the nut content ... so for the first time I have made it myself. It was so easy :) ... Even though this recipe has nuts in it, I have just omitted them. I am sure it won't taste like traditional Pesto should, but everyone loved it ... We had the pesto with Fish and roasted cherry tomatoes and red onions ... ENJOY !

Basil Pesto

2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Ramano cheese
1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts
3 medium sized garlic cloves, minced
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Combine the basil in with the pine nuts, pulse a few times in a food processor. ( If you are using walnuts instead of pine nuts and they are not already chopped, pulse them a few times first, before adding the basil.) Add the garlic, pulse a few times more.

2. Slowly add the olive oil in a constant stream while the food processor is on. Stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor with a rubber spatula. Add the grated cheese and pulse again until blended. Add a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Makes 1 cup.

Next time I think i will grate the cheese a little finer, the photo shows I put in a little more parmesan than the recipe said :)

Recipe from www.simplyrecipes.com

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Really Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies

The kids are home for the holidays and baking is always a popular activity and this recipe is so easy the kids can definitely get in there and help. So with flour everywhere, the extra choc chips tasted and the spoons and beaters licked here is our result :) ENJOY !




The recipe ..

125g unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups tightly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 180 c. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and beat until light and creamy. Add vanilla and egg and stir to combine. Stir in the sifted flour, baking powder and salt until just combined. Fold through chocolate chips.

Place spoonfuls of cookie mixture on a greased and lined baking tray, allowing room for spreading. Cook for 15-20 mintues, until they turn pale gold.

Allow to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before placing biscuits on a wire rack to cool further. Makes 16.






Recipe from Bill Granger ..... “Bills Sydney Food”


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Tarts ....

Here is the Fruit Mince Tart/Pies recipe ... Its very easy, even the pastry part, if you really don't think you can do the pastry, Woolworths (and other supermarkets I assume) sell pastry shells that you could use instead. Also another recipe I tried out on unsuspecting guests on Sunday :) .. Baked Orange and Ricotta Tarts. These were just as easy, although there is pastry involved again. And take note of the 2tablespoons of Icing suger in the pastry of the ricotta tarts, not 2 cups like I put in the first time lol ..


Christmas Mince Pies

2 cups Plain Flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
185g unsalted butter, chopped
1/4 cup caster sugar
1-2 tbsp lemon juice or iced water
1 cup fruit mincemeat (see additional recipe)
1 eggwhite, lightly beaten
Icing supgar to dust

1 Preheat oven to 200c. Grease 2 x 12 hole patty tins (muffin tins are a too deep as I found out) To make pastry, sift flour and baking powder into a bowl. Rub in butter using fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar. Add egg yolks and enough lemon juice or iced water to bring the ingredients together to form a dough.

2. Knead dough gently on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Halve dough, wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Roll out one of the pastry parcels between two sheets of baking paper until 3-5 mm thick. Using a 6.5cm round cutter, cut out 12 rounds. Place the rounds into the prepared tins. Spoon 2 tsp of fruit mince into each. Reserve scraps for decorating the tops; reknead, wrap and chill until required. Repeat the process with second portion of dough, fillng remaining patty tin.

3. Reroll reserved scraps of pastry and cut into small stars. Top each pie with a star and brush with eggwhite. Bake for 20 minutes until golden. Leave to cool, completely in the pans. Serve warm or at room temperature, dusted with a little icing sugar, if desired.

This recipe is from Home Beautiful December 09 issue

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Baked Orange and Ricotta Tartlets

Melted butter for greasing
2 cups of plain flour
2 tbsp pure icing sugar
125g butter, cubed
1 egg, lightly beaten
Extra flour for kneading
Extra 1 egg, ightly beaten
Pure icing sugar sifted for dusting

Filling

250g fresh ricotta
1/4 icing sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
Finely grated rind of 1 Orange
1 tsp orange essence ( I couldn’t find the essence anywhere so I used the juice of
1/2 an orange ... I am sure the taste would be different but they tasted great with the juice)
1 tbsp plain flour


1. Preheat oven to 200c. Brush 12 hole patty cake tin with melted butter. Process flour and icing sugar in a food processor for 30 seconds. Add butter and process until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg and process until dough comes together. Transfer dough to a lightly floured surface and gently knead. Form dough in to 2cm thick disc; wrap in baking paper and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

2. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to 5mm thick and cut out 12 rounds using a round fluted 8 cm biscuit cutter. Line each hole of prepared tin with a round. Prick base of each pastry shell with a fork and put tin in freezer for 5 mintues. Form Pastry scraps into a disc and reserve for later use. Put tin in oven and bake for 10 minutes or until light and golden. Stand tin on wire rack to cool. Reduce oven to 180c.

3. To make orange filling, put ricotta and icing sugar in a medium bowl, add egg, orange rind, essence and flour and whisk to combine. Spoon ricotta mixture into each cooled pastry shell.

4. Roll out reserved pastry until 5mm thick. Cut pastry into 5mm wide strips. Cut strips long enough to reach from one side of tarts to the other. Top each tart with 2 pastry strips, to form a cross. Brush pastry with extra egg. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until ricoota mixture is form and crosses are golden. Trasfer to a wire rack to cool. When cold, dust with icing sugar and serve.


This recipe looks long and involved but really, its not...


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Christmas is coming ...

The is one of my favourite times of the year ... I love the whole build up, the kids excitement is infectious :) ... One of the best parts of christmas is the cooking and baking .... I don't often venture down the route of making my own mince pies, but this I have :) AND I am organised .. its December 1st and the Fruit mincemeat is made. What I failed to read in the recipe was that it made a generous portion, so we may be eating Fruit mincemeat till Easter lol :) The recipe is a Margaret Fulton recipe, so you know it will all work out :) So here is the recipe for Fruitmince and the Fruitmince Pies recipe is to follow ... ENJOY !

Fruit Mincemeat


3 cups of Raisins
3 cups of currants
3 cups of sultanas
3/4 cup blanched almonds, chopped
2 large cooking apples (such as granny smith), grated
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
150g melted butter
3/4 sup brandy or rum
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 oranges, zest grated and juiced

1. Process dried fruit and almonds in batches in a food processor. Pulse to coarsely chop ( I actually didn’t do this as I wasn’t including the almonds, I just added the fruit as is). Spoon into a bowl and combine with grated apple, sugar, butter, brandy or run, spices and orange rind and juice.

2. Cover and chill, stirring daily, for at least 2 days before use.

Note: This recipe makes a generous quantity of fruit mincemeat. If a smaller quantity is required, the recipe can be halved.



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Fish in Coconut milk ..

This past Sunday we had a great afternoon with some friends, the kids had a great time playing and swimming ... don't you just love summer :) .. We cooked the usual sausages for the kids and some yummy teriyaki marinade steaks, but this time I thought we would have some fish. Not on the BBQ, something easy I could do mostly before people arrived .. This recipe was a hit .. and I will definitely be cooking it again as a weekly meal. Enjoy ... This recipe was from the Good Taste Magazine Christmas 09 issue ...


Fish poached in Coconut milk with pineapple & crispy noodles


2 x 270ml cans coconut milk
60ml (1/4 cup) fish sauce
1 tbs mild red curry paste
4 fresh kaffir lime leaves
2 x 1cm-thick slices fresh ginger
1 stem lemon grass, halved lengthways, bruised
650g white fish fillets, cut into pieces
200g (1 cup) chopped fresh pineapple
1 cup of fresh mint leaves
1 cup fresh coriander leaves
50g (1/2 cup) Changs Original Fried Noodles
2 shallots, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 long fresh chilli halved, seeded, thinly slices

1. Combine coconut milk, fish sauce, curry paste, lime leaves, ginger and lemon grass in a wok over high heat. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium. Simmer for 5 minutes or until liquid thickens slightly.

2. Reduce heat to low. Add the fish and simmer, covered, for 3-4 minutes or until just cooked through. Stir in the pineapple.

3. Use a slotted spoon to divide fish and pineapple amoung serving dishes. Spoon over some poaching liquid. Top with the mint, coriander, noodles, shallot and chilli.


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A Lunch with Friends ....

Last weekend I had lunch with some old friends and some new friends :) .. of course a love of photography had bought us together, and team that together with food we had a fabulous lunch with many camera's documenting the day... It always seems to take me the longest to get any photo up on the sites, so, finally, here are my shots for the day. My offering for the lunch was the Strawberry and Blueberry Tart. I got this recipe from Masterchef Australia. It was cooked in one of the masterclasses, but as a Rasberry Tart. Since raspberries are expensive at the moment I improvised :) The Tart was so easy to make yet it makes quite an impact .. the recipe is below ..












Strawberry and Blueberry Tart

450ml thickened cream (I have used the light version but I think thats why it turns out a bit too runny)
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla bean paste (believe me it makes a difference)
1/4 cup of icing sugar, plus extra to serve
3-4 punnets of strawberries and blueberries (or raspberries as the original recipe asks for)

Pastry

2 1/4 cups plain flour
1/4 cup icing sugar
125g butter, softened
2 x 59g eggs

1. For sweet crust pastry, combine flour and icing sugar in food processor, process to combine. Add butter and process to fine crumbly texture. Add eggs and process until pastry comes together. Knead lightly on floured surface until base is smooth, pat the top to flatten slightly then wrap in baking paper and refrigerate for 20 mintues or until firm enough to roll out.

2. Preheat oven to 200 c (180 c fan forced)

3. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface, use pastry to line base and side of 3cm deep, 24cm loose based tart tin. Trim off any excess pastry, prick the base all over with a fork, then refrigerate for 10 mintues.

4. Place sheet of baking paper over the pastry and three quarters fill with raw rice or beans. Bake blind for 15 mintues or until edges are light golden. Remove paper and rice and bake further 10 minutes or until base is dry and pastry golden. Set aside to cool in tin. Transfer pastry case to serving plate.

5. Whip the cream, vanilla and icing sugar together until thick. Spoon whipped cream into pastry case then spread evenly. Scatter with your chosen fruit and sprinkle with icing sugar.

If you are pushed for time, sweet shortcrust pastry shells can be bought from the supermarket, they just tend to be a bit thick, but it saves heaps of time.


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