Category: Uncategorized

Cookbook Club – Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals – Trapani-style Rigatoni

Rigatoni 3

I’m back!

My little boy is now eight months old and is a lovely, friendly smiling little boy most of the time (though we are teething at the moment so we have a lot of Jekyll/Hyde moments). I’ve recently found myself doing quite a lot of cooking that then gets pureed or mashed and frozen for him, but not so much cooking that involves trying new recipes for me.

However, I have been taking part in a cookbook club that I started with a few friends after we were inspired by this article (click here to read). What is a cookbook club? It is a group of friends (or a group of people who love to cook and/or eat) who meet up regularly to share food they have cooked. At each meeting, everyone brings along a dish cooked from the same cookbook (chosen in advance so you don’t replicate dishes). It is a great opportunity to try dishes you might otherwise not have cooked, as well as using the cookbooks you own (or discovering new ones). You also get to meet new people (friends of friends) who you already know have a shared interest in food, cooking and eating! click here to read more

myfood4 Comments

Eggs with chorizo, beans and tomatoes

Eggs with tomato and chorizo

I often find that at the end of a busy weekend, often involving cooking/baking,  rehearsals and all the household chores that need to be done, I just want something simply like egg and chips or similar for dinner. This is a great dish for those nights. It is really simple and quick to make, but has heaps of flavour and with the addition of the beans is very filling. It would also be great for breakfast/brunch as well.

Using chorizo is a great “cheat” to get a heap of flavour without having to add spices to it. These recipes often have capsicum in them, however I don’t actually like capsicum so I have left it out, but you could add it in with the chorizo if you wanted to use it.

Chick here for the recipe

myfood2 Comments

Jamie Oliver’s Meatballs Alla Norma

 

Meatballs alla normaI just realised it has been a month since my last post! Where has the time gone? In my defence, when I haven’t been at work for most of the last month I’ve either been at rehearsal, travelling to rehearsal, working on my songs and lines or trying to recover from rehearsals for the local musical I am currently involved with that opens in a week and a half. It is the most challenging role I have played in my 15 years of involvement in community theatre and it has taken up a lot of my spare time. It is just as well Jerome is currently visiting his family in France as I haven’t been home much.

Before Jerome left for his trip, I was looking through one of my books by Jamie Oliver, Save with Jamie and his Meatballs alla Norma recipe caught my eye for three reasons:

  • it was quite stormy that night so I wanted to cook something warm and comforting;
  • I had never actually cooked with polenta before; and
  • I don’t cook a lot of eggplant and was looking for different recipes to use it in.

I have to admit that I didn’t really like this recipe. I found that there were too many fennel seeds in it for me (I don’t really like aniseed flavours), however Jerome really liked it so it wasn’t a failure. It was just that the aniseed flavours dominated a bit too much for me. The recipe also uses three different pans so it makes a bit of washing up. If I made it again I would make and cook the meatballs first, then reuse the same pan to make the sauce to save on a bit of washing up.

 

Continue reading “Jamie Oliver’s Meatballs Alla Norma” →

myfoodLeave a comment

Individual Small Cakes Class – Sweet Artist Academy

Individual cakes class

I am very glad that it is a long weekend here in Western Australia. Some weekends are just so full of activities that I often feel like I need an extra day to just be at home, do all the chores around the house and recover from my weekend. This weekend has certainly been like that, although it has been very enjoyable.

In addition to a rehearsal on Sunday for a local musical I will be playing a lead role in that will be on in July, on Saturday I attended an all day class at the Sweet Artist Academy – Patisserie Training Centre in Joondalup Western Australia. It was my first time at Sweet Artist Academy, and I will certainly be going back again.

The Sweet Artist Academy is run by Patrick Vuaillat with a number of one day courses available on weekdays or weekends including chocolate work, sugar work, pastries, cakes, bread, cake decorating, macarons and even more. Patrick, originally from France and with over 35 years in the pastry industry, started an apprenticeship in pastry at the age of 15 and has worked as a pastry chef all over the world before falling in love with Perth and starting his on patisserie which he ran for 16 years before setting up the Sweet Artist Academy. Loving baking and patisserie as I do, I was thrilled to find someone with so much experience offering classes in Perth and was really looking forward to my class. Click here for more

myfood1 Comment

Happy Mother’s Day – Hot Chocolate Spoons

Hot choc spoons

Happy (Australian) Mother’s Day! Just a very quick post as I have been baking most of the weekend so that I can spoil my Mum with high tea this afternoon, and I have to leave soon to get to my parent’s house.

My Mum has her birthday, Mother’s Day and wedding anniversary within the same week and I always try to make it special for her. Hopefully she will enjoy all my baked treats (I’ll update this post with links to what I have baked later…my Mum reads my blog and I don’t want to spoil the surprise).

However, these are not part of the high tea today. I actually made these for my Mum for Easter, however they make a great edible gift any time of the year and are great for chocoholics. It is more of an idea than a recipe. As such I haven’t given quantities, you can make as few or as many as you like based on the size of your moulds and the amount of chocolate you use. I first saw these in a magazine last year and have seen them in quite a few since then (too many to reference). I haven’t used them myself yet to make hot chocolate; however Mum has said they work really well, with the chocolate melting into the hot milk to make hot chocolate perfectly. So next time you are in search of a gift, why not give these a go?

Click here for the recipe

myfoodLeave a comment

Happy Easter – Hot cross bun inspired cupcakes

 Hot cross bun cupcakes

 

Happy Easter everybody! I hope you are all having a lovely relaxing long weekend and enjoying time with family, friends and good food (especially for all the chocoholics out there).

I remember how excited I would get as a child waiting for it to be light enough so my brother and I could get up and go on our Easter egg hunt. We would stay at our Nanna’s house every Easter. She lived in a small two bedroom unit and had an amazing courtyard garden, full of hanging baskets and pot plants that made great hiding places for Easter eggs. We had a great time, although our poor Nanna didn’t get much sleep with us up at first light and awake long before that.

These days, my favourite Easter food isn’t the chocolate eggs but hot cross buns. I love the smell of the spices when they are cooking (though I don’t like them with citrus peel in), and they are just delicious eaten warm with some butter/margarine and maybe some honey. Last year I had a go at making my own at home (recipe here). So this year I decided to try something different…cupcakes inspired by the spices I love in my hot cross buns. They turned out pretty good, although they don’t taste exactly like hot cross buns. But the spices and orange zest in the cake are lovely and the creamy tart cream cheese frosting makes a nice contrast. I left the sultanas/fruit peel out however you could easily add it in either to the cake mix, frosting or both. I was also going to drizzle the top with honey, but my honey was crystallised and honestly they don’t need to be any sweeter.

So here is my recipe for hot cross bun inspired cupcakes. Happy Easter!

Click here for the recipe

myfood7 Comments