Cauliflower soup

Inspired by the spicy lentil soup that Chad made, I thought that I would try a recipe from the AWW Soup Plus cookbook. The Cauliflower soup stood out for me, and it seemed quite simple so what could go wrong?

I confess to feeling skeptical about the flavours, the ingredients are fairly basic and I was concerned that the flavour in the meal was from the bacon and cheese toasts that you prepare to serve as an accompaniment.

Sadly, I was right and this soup is bland. It tastes like pureed and watered down cauliflower. Personally I prefer my cauliflower with lashings of cheese.

There is leftover stale bread and hopefully I can make some jarlsberg cheesies to go with it... but I have such a huge pot of the soup that I do now know how I will make it through the whole lot. Maybe add some bacon??

1 tablespoon oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 large onion, chopped
1kg cauliflower, chopped coarsely
1 large potato, chopped finely
750mL chicken stock
750mL water

Heat oil in a saucepan. Fry onion and garlic until onion is translucent. Do not brown!

Add cauliflower, potato, stock and water. Bring to the boil and turn down the heat. Simmer for 15 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.

Turn off the heat and stand for 10 minutes. Blend soup and serve.

Chcolate cupcakes with White chocolate icing

Mum and I made my favourite chocolate cupcakes in honour of my friend SH's baby shower. In lieu of the normal coffee buttercream I wanted to find a simpler icing. SH is generally unable to eat cream so a ganache was out, pregancy overruled a cream cheese icing and so I searched for a white chocolate icing.

I found this recipe and thought that I would give it a crack!

30g white chocolate
1 tablespoon water
115g icing sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Place chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, and melt.

Turn off the heat and gradually add the icing sugar, water and essence, stirring as you go.

Reheat icing as needed.

Notes
- The icing cooled pretty quickly so the last few cakes just crumbled when Mum tried to ice them.
- Yum. But I would still like to find a recipe for icing that looks a little prettier.

Fair trade fondue

Last night a few girlfriends joined me for chocolate fondue! Everyone brings something to dip, and I organise chocolate and pull out my fondue pots.

I had initially thought that I would buy special chocolate - usually I have a stash of Cadbury's chocolate in my cupboard and use that - but I thought I might buy Lindt or similar. That all changed when I went to the Oxfam Shop in search of a birthday present and decided that I would buy fair trade for the fondue.

We started with the dark chocolate and finished with the milk chocolate. Note to self - two 200g blocks of chocolate is about right for five hungry women.

I shall try to make an effort to replenish my stocks with fair trade chocolate. The Oxfam Shop is close to work so I have a ready source of fair trade products including chocolate, coffee and teas.

Pastry weights

My sister is such a sweetheart. She bought me these pastry weights. No excuses now for me to make bad pastry, and I can throw away the soup mix that I have been using!

Any suggestions for a tart E?

Macarons at last!

Macarons seem to have become popular recently. After seeing Poh’s Kitchen and Emmanuel and Poh make macarons of different flavours, Chad expressed curiosity in tasting them.

I promised to bring him macarons home next time I saw them and we happened to wander past Cacao selling macarons in Melbourne's GPO. We selected four different flavours (short mac, tangy lemon, pistachio, hazelnut praline), all nicely presented in a box, and proceeded to taste.

I am not sure what he was expecting them to taste like. I know he thought that they would be harder, rather than the soft meringue that he experienced. He wasn’t that impressed though, and now that he has tried them he has satisfied his curiosity.

Unfortunately he liked them well enough to eat his share!

Macarons could be the answer to my egg white dilemma...

The Burger Bistro

Last Friday I caught up for lunch with a couple of my workmates at The Burger Bistro. I have often walked past and noticed it being quite popular. I have also noticed the prices and so never bothered to stop before now.

It is an intimate space (ie small) and we did well to get there just before twelve and grab ourselves seats. The burgers came out in a constant stream from the kitchen, and I enviously watched the bowls of chips flow past as we waited for our lunch.

My order was the Lamburghini. It promised so much, and failed to deliver for me. The burger itself was lovely and fresh, but I found the flavours to be very bland. The product description was hand made West Australian premium lamb patty seasoned with fennel & cumin with a shredded beetroot & orange zest tzatziki on a bed of our usual salads. For $16 I would have liked my tzatziki to zing! I consoled myself in the thought that the reason why the lamb had no flavour was because there was very little fat in it.

The burgers that I think the boys had were the chatchi’s chilli chorizo burger and the big smoke.


So... if someone suggested that we eat there, I would give it another shot. The bread used for the buns was great and the salads and all the food was was fresh, something that I do not normally associate with my workday lunch. I might just think a little harder about what I order and try the classic beef burger!

Cantina

E and I went to Mount Lawley after our outing to Made on the Left on Sunday, and amidst all of our shopping we stopped for lunch at Cantina. I believe that Cantina is E's favourite restaurant and she dines there often (E??).

She strongly recommended the gnocchi, but in the end she opted for a risotto of mushroom and brussel sprouts and I munched on penne with prawns and mussels. We shared a caramlised pear salad. The food was excellent and we cleaned our plates!

We finished the meal with a divine panna cotta and poached pears. The texture of the panna cotta was silken and we fought for the last morsel on the plate.

Steak. Pasta. Spinach. Mushrooms

I like a simple dinner. Tasty food and easy to throw together with fresh ingredients.

Scutti's is a great place to get fresh ingredients. The fresh pasta that they sell includes Mancini's, made in Kelmscott with no preservatives.

Add butter to a frypan. Brown slices of steak. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and keep warm.

Cook sliced mushrooms in the same pan until the liquid is release. Add a splosh of red wine or sherry.

Add sour cream to the pan. Return the steak to the pan and add the spinach and cooked pasta. Heat through until spinach is wilted and serve.

Caramel Slice

I have been meaning to make Caramel Slice for a while. It is one of those slices that are good to stash in the freezer and take to work for morning tea! On this occasion however most of the slice has ended up as the snack for Chad’s workmates on their handover day. Granted, he did help to make it...

The recipe that I use is from the AWW Cafe Cakes mini recipe book. This book was the very first I bought from that series and all of the recipes that I have tried have delivered. When I first used to make the recipe I used a slice tray that was much larger than the recipe called for. I found that there was not enough caramel to go around and so I used to double the caramel recipe and make a thicker layer than usual. Yum!

Base
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup dessicated coconut
125g butter

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Melt butter and mix into the dry ingredients. Press into a lined and greased slice tray, 20cm x 30cm. Bake for 15 minutes at 180C.

Filling
400g condensed milk
30g butter
2 Tablespoons golden syrup

Place ingredients in a small saucepan and cook over a low heat. Stir continuously to ensure the caramel does not burn. Cook for approximately 15 minutes or until golden.

Pour hot topping over hot base and bake for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven. Cool.

Topping
125g chocolate
30g butter

Break chocolate into small pieces and place chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl. Stir over a pot of simmering water until melted.

Pour melted chocolate topping over the caramel slice. Leave to cool at room temperature and cut into pieces when cooled.

Winter Soups

Last week Chad told me that he was the soup king... in his honour I bought him a cookbook! I started small, and got the Australian Women's Weekly mini book Soup Plus. It has lots of lovely soup recipes, with many asian inspired, as well as accompaniments and stocks. I thought that it would be a great go to book for ideas as well as to encourage us to make out own stocks.

The first recipe he made for us was curry and lime lentil soup. Yum! He used a red curry paste (the recipe was not specific) and it was spicy and sour and extremely tasty. The lime was noticeable and it cut through the heat of the curry. Mmmm...

With soups we will make a pot and enjoy the soup for the next few days. I love my soups chunky and Chad likes his smooth. We compromise by cutting the ingredients quite small.


Image 1

All the tools for pretty cupcakes!

E and I had a wander around Fremantle today. I always like to poke my nose into the Home Provedore, and especially the section dedicated to cupcakes and cake decorating. Every time I go in there it seems like they have added more and more interesting items related to cake decorating and cupcakes. Possibly it is because I never noticed previously, rather than there being new products...

Today I noticed that along with a great range of cupcake wrappers, they also have silicone moulds for flowers and a variety of ready made icings and decorations. The next special occasion that calls for cupcakes I plan to head into Freo and buy some icing flowers for decoration.

If I get keen and want to make my own, then the following website could be of use.
Hints and moulds Lynart
More moulds and tips at Earl Craft 'n' Cake

here