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Monthly Archives: July 2020

Peach Pudding

Posted on July 31, 2020 by The quirk and the cool


I’m a big fan of late night radio – perfect for an insomniac. Recently I heard an interview with Alistair Wise from the bakery Sweet Envy in Hobart here in Australia.

Alistair was talking about winter puddings, a timely topic for our current chilly Southern Hemisphere weather.

Alistair gave a favourite recipe, off the cuff, to Philip Clark, the presenter of Night Life, a national nightly radio program. He called it ”Apple Novel“ – a simple pudding made with apples, poaching liquid and a butter/sugar/flour mix.

I jotted down the quantities and promptly set about making it a few days later. It was so easy and really sensational! I’ve made it twice with pears, and this time I made it with peaches.

Peaches are definitely out of season in Sydney. While shopping at Harris Farm Markets, I picked up some absolutely beautiful peaches from the US. I don’t know what variety they were, they were huge, sweet and very juicy!

So they made their way into my latest version of Apple Novel, now called Peach Pudding.


This dessert can be made with apples, pears or any stone fruit. And I really think you could use tinned pears, peaches or apricots – the advantage being you can use the tinned juice as the liquid in the pudding.

I used apple juice in my peach version, as the peaches didn’t need poaching.

This is such an easy recipe! You can mix it up in 5 minutes, put it into the oven and voila, your pudding is ready to eat in half an hour!

I’ve tweaked the original recipe, cutting down on the sugar somewhat.

Great recipe, easy make!

Ingredients 

3 large peaches*

100g self raising flour

50g butter cut into small pieces

100g caster sugar

250ml apple juice (or any other fruit juice)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Cut the peaches into quarters. Lay the peach quarters into a baking dish. I used a shallow cast iron pan.

Tip the self raising flour, butter pieces and caster sugar into a bowl and rub together into a breadcrumb consistency, a bit like making pastry. Add the apple juice and roughly mix together. The mixture should look curdled, but that’s ok as you’re not looking for a cake mixture consistency.

Pour the mixture over the peaches. Put into the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until the pudding is brown on top.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly. When you serve the pudding, there will be a lovely baked layer on top, and underneath soft fruit in a thick sauce.

Serve with thick cream or ice cream. Delicious served warm or even cold. And so easy!

*You could use apples or fresh pears, but you will need to poach them to cook them partially. You can then use the poaching liquid as the liquid in the batter.

 

 

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Ham and Leek Pot Pies

Posted on July 24, 2020 by The quirk and the cool


I’m making lots of pies this winter, as well as sampling the pies of a couple of of really good bakeries. My local Bourke Street Bakery makes some beautiful beef pies, packed full of beef and encased in excellent pastry. Very yummy if you’re in a hurry and can’t rustle up your own.

I posted this pot pie recipe last year. It’s such a simple one to make as the filling takes no time. I made it recently, this time making ham and leek pasties instead of pies.

So here is the recipe from last year.

”I had some chunky ham pieces and a leek in the fridge so decided that they would be the basis for some simple pies. I also had a lovely washed rind cheese, soft and melting, that I thought would go beautifully with the ham and leek. I’m a huge fan of nuts, so it was a no-brainer that I decided to put some walnuts in the pies as well. They added a lovely crunch and texture to the pies  All these ingredients were stirred into a white sauce, piled into the bowls, topped with puffpastry and baked in the oven.

I recommend using a good bought butter puff pastry for the recipe.

The recipe makes two substantial deep bowl pies. You could double the quantities for a larger pie in a conventional pie dish.”

Ingredients

1 large leek
A knob of butter to cook the leek
Salt
200g ham chunks
50g any soft washed rind cheese
A small handful of walnuts or to taste

White sauce
25g butter
25g plain flour
600ml milk
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 sheets of butter puff pastry or about 180g from a block of puff pastry

1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for glazing

Method

Cut the leek into small slices. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the leek with a good pinch or two of salt. Cook on a low temperature until the leek slices are soft, about 10-15 minutes.

Chop the ham into bite sized pieces and roughly slice the cheese. Chop any whole walnuts into smaller pieces.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.

For the white sauce, melt the butter in a medium, heavy bottomed saucepan. Add the flour and stir for 1-2 minutes, to make sure the raw flour taste is cooked out.

It’s important to do this and the subsequent stirring in of the milk with a wooden spoon.

Gradually stir in about a third of the milk, making sure the milk is incorporated and there are no floury lumps. When the sauce has noticeably thickened, add another third of the milk and repeat the process. Add the last third of the milk and cook until the sauce is nice and thick. Simmer gently for 5 minutes and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Stir the ham, leek, cheese and walnuts into the white sauce in the saucepan. Pile the mixture into the individual bowls.

Cut out circles of puff pastry that are larger than the diameter of the bowls and will be enough to completely cover the tops. Brush the tops of pies with the beaten egg.


Place in the preheated oven and cook for about 20 minutes until the top of the pies are golden brown and puffed up.

Serve piping hot straight from the bowls!

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Lemon Yoghurt Sheet Cake

Posted on July 16, 2020 by The quirk and the cool

 




I was debating whether this was a sheet cake or a traybake. I guess it’s the former, as it’s more a cake than a “slice”, the Australian version of a traybake, and baked as a sheet in a 13” x 9” cake pan.

Lemon and yoghurt go well together and create a moist cake, and topped with a lemon glaze makes it extra lemony!

Ingredients

Cake batter:

250g butter, softened 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

250g caster sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

3 free-range eggs

250g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

100g Greek yoghurt

Juice of half a lemon

1 tablespoon milk

Lemon glaze:

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Enough icing sugar to make a thin but spreadable icing

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C or 160 degrees C fan-forced.  

Line a 13” x 9” cake pan with baking paper. Beat butter, vanilla and sugar in a food processor until well creamed.

Add the lemon zest. Beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in the flour and baking powder, the yoghurt and the lemon juice, in 2 batches. Stir in the tablespoon of milk.

Spread mixture into the pan. Bake about 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the cake  comes out clean. 

Cool in the pan, then turn the sheet cake out onto a wire rack.

For the glaze, mix the lemon juice with enough icing sugar to make a spreadable glaze. It’s rather hard to say how much, just keep adding icing sugar a little at a time until you get the right consistency.

Spread on top of the sheet cake, no need to be too precise, this is more of a glaze than an icing and should drip down the cake.

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Ottolenghi’s Roasted Chicken and Clementines

Posted on July 10, 2020 by The quirk and the cool



I’m revisiting an Ottolenghi recipe I cooked a while back in 2017. Firstly, because it’s a great recipe for cooking up a one pan chicken dish, but mostly because clementines are now available in Australia!

Back then, I substituted mandarins for clementines, and that worked well. But now we can can buy them locally. And I also have my very own miniature clementine tree growing in my courtyard garden!

The original Ottolenghi recipe “Roasted Chicken with Clementines and Arak” is from his beautiful book Jerusalem.

I made some variations to the dish, which I mention here. I’m not a big fan of anything aniseed, so I used cumquat brandy instead of an aniseed liqueur. An orange liqueur, or ordinary brandy, would be fine too. For the same reason, I substituted shallots for the fennel bulbs.  I also cut down on the sugar in the recipe.

Ingredients

100ml orange liqueur or any good brandy (or Arak in the original recipe)
4 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp grain mustard
1.5 tbsp light brown sugar
6 shallots (or 2 medium fennel bulbs as in original)
8 chicken thighs with the skin and on the bone
4 clementines unpeeled, sliced horizontally into slices  (or mandarins if you can’t get clementines)
1 tbsp thyme leaves
2 tsp fennel seeds, slightly crushed
Salt and black pepper

Method

Put the liqueur/brandy, olive oil, orange and lemon juices, musard and brown sugar in a large bowl with 2 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper. Whisk well and set aside.

Peel the shallots and add to the bowl, with the chicken pieces, clementine slices, thyme and fennel seeds. Stir well to make sure the marinade covers the chicken pices.

Leave to marinate in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Transfer the chicken and its marinade to a baking dish that’s large enough to fit everything  in a one layer.  The chicken should be skin-side  up.

Put the baking dish in the oven and roast for 35 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is brown and cooked through. Remove the dish from the oven.

Ottenenghi suggests removing the chicken, clementine slices and shallots to a serving plate, while you reduce the cooking liquid in a small saucepan. The sauce is then poured over the chicken.

I served the chicken straight from the baking dish at the table as I like the idea of serving chicken and juices all in one.

A great dish – super easy and utterly delicious!

Clementine tree ready for planting.

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Make Your Own Burgers

Posted on July 2, 2020 by The quirk and the cool



During lockdown, I mostly cooked, because that’s what I love to do! However I have to admit to having a couple of excellent take away burgers from my local pub. Very delicious. But recently I have  made burgers at home, with lots of trimmings. The recipe is great because the burgers are oven baked, easy to make and relatively healthy.

The recipe is freely adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Botham Burgers from “The Return of the Naked Chef”.  The recipe makes four medium sized burgers.

For the burger:

Ingredients

500g minced beef, preferably organic

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

1 free-range egg

1 handful of fresh breadcrumbs

1/2 heaped teaspoon of Dijon mustard

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 slices of cheddar cheese

The other 1/2 onion, cut into rings

For the bits and pieces that go with the burgers:

4 soft bread rolls

Handful of baby gherkins

Cherry tomatoes

Sun dried tomatoes

Any green leaves you fancy – rocket is always good

Avocado slices

2 teaspoons American mustard

2 teaspoons tomato ketchup or 2 teaspoons tomato chutney

Method

Preheat the oven to 210 degrees C fan-forced.

Scrunch all the ingredients together. Use the breadcrumbs as required to bind the mixture. Divide into 4, then lightly mould and pack each burger together into burger shapes. Place the burgers on a baking tray along with the onion rings. Place in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. The burgers should still be pink in the middle – cook for a few minutes longer if you want them more well done.

Just before they are done, place a slice of cheese on top of each burger and place back in the oven for a minute to just melt the cheese.

To serve:

Cut rolls in half and place on a plate. Place a burger with its slice of melted cheese on top of half of a bread roll. Squeeze some mustard and tomato ketchup on top, or spoon some tomato chutney onto the bread roll before you add the burger. Now add any of the bits and pieces as you fancy, using my suggestions or making up your own. I definitely recommend scattering the charred onion rings on top of the burger, really tasty!

I did a couple of different combinations on different nights.

A really delicious and easy meal and equally as good as take away!

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