Peach flowers

It is that time of the year again. The peach tree is in bloom. I am looking forward to lots of fruit this season. They are small and sweet and do not last too long once they are ripe.

Jamie's roast chicken

Earlier this week I felt like eating roast chicken. We had lamb out so I made do with a lamb stew and saved up the chicken roast until Sunday evening!

I did a quick search of my cookbooks and failed to find a roast chicken recipe, so I turned to the internet and Jamie Oliver for some inspiration. I used his recipe for Roast chicken with lemon and rosemary.

1.2kg free range chicken
900g potatoes
1 large lemon
1 bulb garlic, broken into cloves
handful lemon thyme
olive oil
handful rosemary sprigs, leaves picked
1 carrot


Boil a large pot of water. Preheat oven to 190C.

Cut the potato into golfball sized pieces and cook with the whole lemon and garlic cloves for 12 minutes.

Drain and allow to steam dry for one minute, then remove the lemon and garlic. Return the potato to the pan and toss. According to JO this will help to crisp up the potatoes when they are roasted.

Stab the lemon ten times. Pat the chicken down with kitchen paper and rub it with olive oil. Put the garlic cloves, lemon and thyme into the cavity. Place the chicken on a rack in a roasting tray and bake for 35 minutes.

Remove chicken and rack from the tray. Add the potato, carrot and rosemary leaves and coat with the fat in the tray. Replace the chicken and rack into the tray and bake for a further 35 minutes.

Notes
- JO = Jamie Oliver
- lemon, thyme and garlic all fresh from the garden!
- I skipped the part where JO salts the chicken
- As soon as I placed the lemon in the water I could smell it
- Far too many potatoes! This meal would feed four. JO suggests 2kg of potatoes for the recipe and I used less than half and still think it was too many.

Beety

Beetroot from our garden! Chad has been nagging me for a while to eat it, and this week he pulled out a couple to force me to cook them.

It has been sitting in the garden for a little too long! I steamed the beetroot and they were a little bit bland and woody.

I think I need some more interesting recipes.

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?