Entries Tagged 'Wannabe chef' ↓

Now then – what are we going to do with this bunch of leaves? Looks a bit like horse food.

Might be similar to silver beet but the leaves are much thicker. Wholefoods had a big pile of ‘healthy greens’ with this being listed at the top so we wanted to take a closer look – they had a recipe tied onto them so that made it easier, a rice, ham and collard greens concoction.  We looked up collard greens on Wikipedia (thankfully we were cooking them on the day before Wikipedia went down to protest SOPA … hopefully by the time you’re reading this it will still be there) for some more info about them after I said they smelled a bit like cabbage when I started cutting them and apparently ‘cabbage plant’ is a common term and indeed the leaves are very healthy – vitamin C, fiber etc.

So we followed the recipe to chop them up and put them in a pot with rice, ham and chicken stock.

Simmered away for 25 mins and ta daaaa – a hearty, risotto-type dish, tasted quite meaty and the greens didn’t have an overwhelming flavor, hard to explain but cauliflowerish. Not bad, but not sure if we’d have it again. Plus our gas elements are incredibly frustrating and don’t quite go low enough that everything didn’t boil dry and stick to the bottom of the pot.

We didn’t eat fish n chips much in New Zealand but lately The Mister has been feeling like some so decided to make them himself. We had to get some non-olive oil, he chose canola, and then figure out what the fish is here. The nice man in the supermarket picked some firm fish but none of the names are familiar to us. Well, there was halibut but we couldn’t remember if that’s the fish we remember from our childhood’s as being used by bait the last time either of our father’s fished!

I was fixated on keeping the place aired – I left The Mister to do the cooking but wasn’t so keen on the ‘huge pot of boiling oil’ but the recipe he had only need 1cm of oil so there wasn’t much splattering and nothing caught fire! I hurried some creamed spinach together and it was a delicious meal!

I asked my new friend the Bay Bridge on Twitter (yes, a tweeting bridge) if there were New Year fireworks in the harbor – he replied that they were right overhead!

We decided to stay awake this year so invited Kara over for dinner and a show, and dressed up a bit.

We had pulled pork and I made lemon meringue pie from scratch – hot on the heels of the successful non-tanty pastry for Xmas fruit mince pies I thought I would try a full-sized pastry based pie. It was touch and go with the pastry being a little crumbly and I had to patch the sides once I got the pastry into the dish but other than my lemon filling being runny and my meringue not being anywhere as fluffy and high as Mother’s it worked out fine!

After being worried earlier in the day that the 2 towering apartment buildings out our window were going to block the fireworks we were very exited to see that we could actually see most of them! They were good and noisy and went on for 15 minutes with lots of whooping in the streets below. It was freezing out on the balcony taking photos. Traffic on the bridge slowed down and everyone on the fireworks side slowed to a crawl and the cop cars with their loud speakers that came along to shout at them to keep moving didn’t have much luck!

We opened some orange and green fortune cookies to start out the year.

Happy New Year everyone!

With The Mister being a bit snuffly between Christmas and New Year it was the perfect opportunity to have some potato-based comfort food. These little treats were in the Cuisines Magazine years ago and are great to eat on the couch in front of the telly – not sure of their proper name but we call them Mash Toasts! (Garlic & parsley mash on grilled ciabatta, sprinkled with parmesan.)

I just can’t figure out where to get short pastry from here. Actually I see no evidence that it actually exists so I don’t even know if you can buy it or it’s just that I’m looking in the wrong places. Actually flaky pastry is a bit of a challenge too – it comes in ready shaped large pie shells for making fruit pies, sometimes you can buy frozen 2 sheets of flat round flaky pastry that you can push into your own pie dish and claim homemade, but no such thing as flaky or short crust pie sheets. I know I know, I should really make my own, if the Orange Niece can do it, then I should be able to. However, no kitchen whiz here so if I attempted it, it would be totally by hand. I had brought the one remaining jar of 2010 Xmas fruit mince with us and really wanted to do some Christmas baking. With The Mister not being a fan of shortbread (but he’ll eat fermented fruit? go figure!) that left me with really wanting to make Xmas fruit mince pies. (Which you also can’t buy over here so no mini pies from Aro Bake for us this year!)

So I attempted it the pastry. Bought a rolling pin ’specially. Now we all know I’m not the most patient of cooks and this was probably my 3rd go at making pastry, totally by hand. I remained pretty calm actually and after wrapping it up in plastic to put in the fridge I took it into the lounge to show The Mister … as I was about to exclaim how proud I was of my efforts I realized I didn’t have any cookie cutters to make the little rounds! Had to scratch around the kitchen to find 2 things of slightly different sizes that would fit into the muffin tins … came up with the plastic lid off the cocoa and a wine glass – the first couple of attempts at rolling and cutting produced some raggedly thick rounds but I got better with practice! (Remembering Mother’s word to stop fiddling with the dough!)

I managed to squeeze out 18 rounds, with a fair amount of fiddling so expected the pastry to be quite hard and not very shortcake like at all.

Bit of faffing about and concern as to how long to cook them for in the gas oven but they turned out great! Didn’t last long after a few days of taking them to work for morning tea.

This year’s dinner was a lot smaller than our previous 5, only having 3 people in attendance but this time it was so much more real being here in the States! Of course we missed our New Zealand urban family but it was very cool shopping in Wholefoods and seeing all the Thanksgiving stuff and the whole country having a long weekend off centered around women in the kitchen and men on the couch … yes The Mister turned on the football just to live the real experience! Plus it was cold outside so it was lovely family time inside.

We invited Kara over at this important family time when she was so far away from hers so I was a bit nervous about how genuine our feast would be! Instead of a whole turkey for 3 we got a breast and stuffed it like Bev did a few years ago at Christmas and it turned out OK although the stuffing was more under the skin than making a nice ripple pattern through the middle!

The usual menu – but it impressed Kara

Thanksgiving Dinner 2011
Roast turkey breast stuffed with cranberry wild rice
Homemade cranberry sauce
Kumara & orange gratin
Coleslaw
Apple pie & cream

Look Mother – Brussels sprouts!!

Cooked for Cousin Grant on Sunday night (no sprouts!) – I felt so tiny next to his giant oven! Kumara, bacon & feta salad went down a treat!

Made our first tiramisu since moving to San Francisco on Saturday. The only thing missing was a tiny sieve for sprinkling the cocoa on the top. Also, the egg yolks here, even though they claim to be organic and from free and happy chickens, are a kind of fluoro yellow, not the almost orange color of free range egg yolks in New Zealand.

It came out well. It had perhaps a slightly watery taste because I had to use strong plunger coffee rather than espresso. But it still tasted excellent and impressed our restaurant owner guest.

I also realised when I needed the recipe for making this, that I only had my dog-eared recipe originally printed from the Internet in 1997 when Geo-cities still existed!

So it’s about time I put it here for safe-keeping. The original site has gone I’d say, but the recipe is nice and basic and now that I live in America, I see it’s actually from the back of the Bel Gioioso pack of mascarpone! My personal tips in perfecting this over the years – go fairly heavy-handed on the brandy (cognac gives quite a different, sweeter flavor that I’m not so keen on), use 3 shots of espresso making up about a cup of coffee liquid, and definitely make it at least 24 hours in advance for a truly alcoholic coffee hit.

Tiramisu

• 3 eggs,  yolks and whites separated
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 8 oz/225g mascarpone
• 20 sponge fingers / lady fingers
• 1 cup espresso or strong coffee
• 2 tbsp brandy (or Cognac)
• Cocoa for sprinkling

Combine 3 egg yolks, 1 tbsp espresso, sugar, and brandy into a large mixing bowl – beat (electric) 2 to 3 minutes (I always give it the full beating at every stage as it ensures a smooth and fluffy filling). Add the mascarpone and beat 3 to 5 minutes until consistency is smooth.
In another bowl, combine 3 egg whites and a pinch of sugar – beat until mixture forms stiff peaks. Gently fold into mascarpone mixture.
Pour half of the remaining cup of espresso into a flat dish, dip one side of each sponge finger in coffee, and layer on bottom of serving dish, coffee side down. Spread 1/2 the mascarpone mixture on top and sprinkle with cocoa. Repeat once more. (The original recipe seemed to indicate that you could achieve 3 layers, but with the dish I use (oblong) and the size of one packet of sponge fingers, 2 layers works fine.)

Refrigerate for at least 24 hours.

Had our first proper cook-up and friends over for dinner last night. Spent rather a lot of the weekend sourcing port, pork shoulder, purple cabbage and a flame proof casserole but we did! Also reunited with the deliciously soft potato buns.

Wa la – pulled pork buns with caramelized onions and coleslaw. A tried and tested favourite but we haven’t cooked for Bev and Dan in ages so they hadn’t had it yet and it was a good option to make with not many cooking appliances, dishes and cutlery!

It’s Labor Day here in the States but we were caught out and didn’t plan to have today off. Plus it’s a big meeting day with the team in New Zealand. No matter – off to New York later in the week so will just swap our day off for then!

Jam Off 2011 has been and gone – a great crowd this year at the New Dowse in Lower Hutt as part of the Craft 2.0 fair with Important Judges, An MC, and A Rival With Pink Hair … here’s how it went down (& here’s where it all started last year).

We started out the morning by getting the competition box out of the pantry and blind tasting the 4 contenders with Mother and Father who’d travelled down especially for the event.

We strapped The Mister and his jam into the back of the 4WD, perfect for a trip out of the city and up the valley.

Judging was taken very seriously by Al Brown (of Logan Brown fame) and Kelda Hains (Nikau Gallery Cafe).

There was a public tasting where the many supporters could try the various jams and leave their tasting stick in front of the jar they liked the best, while the judges decided on the top 5 for the public competition. The Mister had a jar in the line up and it seemed to collect a few sticks. It was great to see so many people getting into it!

The winner of the public competition was Don from Lower Hutt with some secretive plum jam that he was quite reluctant to tell anyone about – however he seemed pretty chuffed to win – the judges swayed by his use of a good old Agee jar!

Next up was a the competition between these 2 – a do-over of their ‘little’ competition last year!

A few nerves behind the scenes

A bit of ‘mine’s better than yours’ talk to put each other off … while the judges collaborated in the background …

The the winner was announced – The Mister!

Then there was the People’s Choice Award … The Mister’s jam got the most sticks!!! He was ecstatic!

But was disqualified!! WAAAAA – he objected!

The judges decided that there were just too many people from Xero there and that there was some conspiracy afoot to get the most sticks placed in front of his jar of jam – not true! People loved his jam!

A great-spirited afternoon and The Mister and Mrs Jam-off are still good friends.

Thanks friends, family, colleagues, ex-colleagues, board members, cafe owners and strangers who came along to take part and support The Mister. And if you were lucky enough to be given a jar of this year’s jam, treasure it if you’ve got any left, it’s award-winning stuff!