The Cookbook Challenge Week 28 - Breakfast - Crumpets & Dead Man Espresso - 3 - V

I was thrilled to open the latest issue of delicious magazine to see my old colleague Luke Mutton smiling up at me from within its pages. Luke and his gorgeous wife Kylie opened their cafe Dead Man Espresso last year and have been the talk of the town ever since. Congrats you guys and keep up the good work!

The article included a recipe for crumpets and strawberry and rosella jam so what better way to catch up on my Cookbook Challenge-ing than by making them? I didn't do the jam but I did take a certain pride in being able to say I made crumpets and tack "from scratch" on the end of it!

The method is very easy but I had to wait a little longer than an hour for the batter to double because it's been really cold lately and my kitchen was pretty icy. I ended up putting the bowl next to the oven so it could warm up a bit and let the yeast do its thing.

The batter is very thick and it kind of snaps when you spoon it into the egg rings. I realised after cooking two rounds that once you flip the crumpets you can get the rings off and cook two lots of crumpets at time. You'd be at the stove for about a year otherwise!
Make sure you grease the rings too and be very careful when flipping and taking them off because they are HOT.


Ingredients - makes 18

3 cups plain flour, sifted
7gm sachet dry active yeast
300ml milk
250ml hot water
Melted unsalted butter

In a very large bowl mix the yeast and flour together. Mix the milk in a jug with the water and then pour into the bowl in a steady stream, mixing well to combine all the ingredients. Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel or cloth and stand in a warm, draft-free place for about an hour or until the batter doubles in size.
In a non-stick pan brush on some melted butter, put your greased egg rings into the pan on a medium heat and then spoon two tablespoons of batter into each ring. Cook for 6-7 minutes on each side until they are golden and cooked through.
To serve cut the crumpets in half (this is where the holes live) and toast. Smother in lashings of butter and jam and eat immediately.
The crumpets can be wrapped in foil and frozen.

Enjoy!

Taste of Melbourne Festival 26th - 29th August

Mr Tea just had to roll me home with a stick after attending the opening of Taste of Melbourne tonight! The festival is running all weekend and is showcasing some of the city's best restaurants, as well as lots of local food and wine producers.

Libertine smoked duck, apple and walnut rillettes

You buy 'crowns' to pay for your food and then create your ultimate degustation meal. My two top picks are the shredded duck confit en croute from Libertine and the Wagyu beef cigars with artichoke tapenade and horseradish from Stokehouse.

Stokehouse Wagyu cigars

The Longrain bar are mixing cocktails on the spot and the Ping Pong with fresh lychees certainly is the business.

Longrain yellow curry with cucumber relish

For those in Melbourne who plan to visit - take your time, try the Pinot Rose from Yering Station and don't get too full to quickly; just remember those crowns are equal to $1 each and you'll drop a bundle before you know it!

The Palace Wagyu burger

Special thanks to Ellie at Kitchen Wench and the generous people at Green & Black's Organic for the ticket.

Mr Wolf vanilla pannacotta with blood orange jelly & pear cider

Enjoy!

Offer! $10 Off at Menulog!

Whose turn is it to cook dinner? Who cares! You can have the night off, order online and have something delivered via the Menulog website. It's easy! You just put in your postcode, pick the restaurant and peruse the menu.


The website will show the estimated delivery time for your area; all you have to do is click on the delicious little morsels you want to eat, choose your payment method and then wait to hear the doorbell (or go and pick up your food).

Sound good? Good! If you would like to try out Menulog here is a tricksy little code you can use with your first order and get $10 off. Hooray! The voucher code is 7225B47

Have a nice evening not cooking (and please check out the boring small print below or the terms and conditions of using the voucher).

Enjoy!

Get $10 off on your first delivery order using this voucher code:7225B47
Note: Available for participating restaurants only which display the “accepts vouchers” sign
The voucher is valid until Dec. 31, 2010
Must be used for a minimum purchase of $20

Bangers & Mash (Toad in the Hole) - 2 - $

I saw my first spray of blossoms this week! That means spring is coming!

Obviously I'm not a fan of cold weather; the only good thing about it, for me, is cooking warming comfort food. So now that mother nature is shooing away the cold I am making the most of the last few days of winter and busting out my fave chilly night recipes.

See you next winter bangers...

Tonight I made bangers and mash. Do you love bangers and mash? I do! It's another thing I fell in love with whilst living in the UK. The way it is served over there is with creamy mash and onion gravy. You can substitute the gravy for a red wine jus or any other rich type of sauce that will suit your sausages.
This week I found out my butcher has started making his own sausages so I bought some pork and fennel and duck and cinnamon ones to try. They were very rich in flavour and there was a little too much spice in the duck ones for me, but not bad for a first attempt.

When I make bangers and mash I grill the bangers very slowly and make mash the good old fashioned way - a splash of milk, a bit of butter, a some hard core elbow grease. I really get into it and reckon my potatoes are as creamy as using fancy machines or sieves.

Smooth, creamy, tatties

You can find a lovely onion gravy recipe over here and it's a good link because there's also a Toad in the Hole recipe like I mentioned when making the Yorkshire puddings earlier this week (you could use always use Jamie's pud recipe and this method). More last minute winter-warmers than you can poke a snag at!

Enjoy!

The Cookbook Challenge Weeks 36 & 39 - Comfort Food & TV Chefs - Giant Yorkshire Puddings - 2 - $ - V

It's almost embarrassing posting this Cookbook Challenge! I am so behind but I am partly blaming it on the fact that Melbourne is having back-to-back festivals and just about every friend of mine has a birthday in August, so it's been very busy!

I know Jamie Oliver cops a bit of stick but I quite like his recipes; they have never failed for me and I admire his energy and ambitions when it comes to changing the way people eat for the better.

I saw Jamie make these Giant Yorkshire Puddings on telly when I lived in London but I have never tried them before now. I got introduced to the Yorkie when I moved to the UK and whenever I was feeling homesick over there I would always go for a roast on a Sunday because it reminded me of my mum.

Traditionally served with roast beef these golden pastries could go with any roast or any food where the mopping up of gravy is going to be involved! It is also the same batter you use for making Toad-in-the-Hole.

This recipe appears in Jamie's book The Naked Chef 2 and it is superb. If you search online you will see just how many people swear by this method.

Ingredients

285 ml milk
115gms plain flour
pinch salt
3 eggs
vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 220C degrees.
Mix the batter ingredients together and let it rest for 10 minutes
Preheat a Yorkshire pudding tray or muffin tin and put 1cm of oil in each section. After the 10 minutes divide the batter into the tray (I found using a ladle good for this).
Cook for around 15 to 20 minutes until crisp and puffy, don't open the oven door or they won't rise.

I cooked my Yorkies while my roast beef was resting and took the veg out too so they didn't burn. Because I am still learning how to drive my new oven I put the puddings a shelf too high up and they were a little too brown on top, but nothing serving them upside down in the gravy couldn't fix!

Enjoy!

Triple R Radiothon & Chang's Chocolate Spiders - 1 - $ - V

When I lived away from Melbourne for four years, there were two things that I would miss every single morning - not being able to get a decent cup of coffee and not being able to listen to Breakfasters on radio station Triple R.
Until I moved overseas, I didn't realise what a luxury it is to have community radio; I'd been tuning into The Rs since I was 13 and just thought that everyone had it as good as me. Not so! Now, 21 years later, I'm still listening and very grateful that I live in a community that have people willing to volunteer their time in order to broadcast 24-7.

The annual Radiothon is on at the moment and is the perfect time to subscribe to the station in order to keep this great self-funded institution running. There's loads of prizes to win and even if you don't live in Melbourne, thanks to the magic of the internets, you can stream Triple R anytime and listen to quality programs or download the podcasts for free. There's something for everyone on the grid (foodies in particular tune in to Eat It every Sunday and Suzie Morris-Ashton's Diet Schmiet every Tuesday on Breakfasters) and when you subscribe you get the chance to attend subscriber-only live to air music performances, exclusive film screenings and receive a copies of The Trip magazine.

Cameron Smith, Adrian Richardson (La Luna Bistro) & Shannon Bennett (Vue de Monde) at the Triple R BBQ day outside broadcast

I received my copy of The Trip last week and was reminded of The Bogan Banquet ideas that Breakfasters came up with back in May. Being of good bogan stock I thought it a fitting homage to my favourite show to bring you Chang's Chocolate Spiders. For my version I used dark chocolate and found that it took about 1 minute to melt the chocolate. I also only got about 20 spiders from the recipe.

You can subscribe to Triple R anytime by phoning 9388 1027 or online. Now that spiders are set I'm off to renew my subscription and pop the top on a West Coast Island Cooler...

Enjoy!

Reader Recipe - Cheese and Onion Bread- 1 - $ - V

Luckily this afternoon I found an email from the lovely Erica at Recycled Fashion with a recipe to share. It's lucky because I had a little bit too much sake at the fantastic Ichi Ni last night and the likelihood of me making any food worth blogging about today is not too high! Although perhaps a Top 10 of hangover food could be something worth writing about...

However, I digress. Erica has a love of op-shop cookbook collecting just like I do and she found a real gem recently - The Vegemite Cookbook. Thank you Erica for sharing your rainy day baking and photos with us!


Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of milk
1tbs Vegemite (Marmite would probably do just as well)
3 1/4 cups self-raising flour
250gm grated tasty cheese
1/2 cup chopped spring onions
(Erica also added some corn to hers which I think is a clever addition)

Preheat oven to 200C degrees.
Warm 1/2 cup milk in a pot and dissolve the Vegemite in it. Combine the flour, cheese, spring onions and remaining milk in a bowl. Stir in the Vegemite milk and mix all ingredients until well combined. Divide the dough into three portions.
On a lightly floured surface make three rounds and then place them side by side in a lightly greased loaf tin.
Bake for 55-60 minutes or until golden brown.

Enjoy!

Review Cruzao Arepa Bar - $$ - V

There are so many places to eat on Brunswick Street but because I work on the strip I get a little tired of being spoilt for choice and a bit bored with what's on offer. Sucks to be me with all this good food around! The newest kid on our block is Cruzao Arepa Bar and I was very curious to check out the Venezuelan food in the hope of finding a new lunch option.

The bar serves arepas which are flat breads made from corn meal and stuffed with yummy fillings and then grilled. Kind of like a quesadilla but the bread is thicker. There are also nibbles called pasapalos that are for sharing while you down a mojito or Cuba libre and try decide which arepa to choose.

A group of us went for dinner and were the only people in there on what was a pretty foul Melbourne night. It was a little chilly in the bar but nothing some white rum couldn't fix. It was also quite dark (apologies for the photos) and the music a little bit too loud; had it been a full house it wouldn't have mattered.
The waiter-cum-bartender was really friendly and gave us a run down of the menu and what an arepa is. He suggested we start with some pasapalos so we opted for the tostones which are discs of fried plantain served with aioli dipping sauce and grated cheese on top. The garlic sauce was really creamy and not overpowering and the tostones crispy and hot.

We also chose the tequenos which are bread sticks stuffed with cheese and fried (are you sensing a pattern here?). There are 10 served in a an enamel bucket and by the time I whipped the camera out there were only 3 left. These little babies are good! Crispy, salty and cheesy; I could have eaten a whole bucket on my own!

While we were enjoying our starters, a Latin version of Catweasal came bounding out of the kitchen to chat to us. Eyla is one of the owners of the bar and is obviously very excited about bringing arepas to Melbourne. Having never tried them before I asked if they were for sharing. He explained that most people would order one each but he said if we wanted to try all the different ones it was no problem and he got the chef to cut them in half for us as he reckoned it would be too messy if we tried.
There were 6 of us and 7 arepas listed on the menu so we tried all of them except the cheese and avocado one. My favourite was the slow cooked black beans with feta cheese, followed closely by the roasted pork marinated in garlic and red wine. The menu said they were served with a salad but ours just came with more tostones. Everyone was two mojitos in by this stage so the lack of vegetables didn't really matter.

The arepas are really tasty and I liked the char-grilled flavour of the bread. You eat them with your hands, much like a sandwich, and as such there is no cutlery on the tables. The food is definitely more snack-style or better suited to lunch rather than dinner, but this is a bar after all and not a restaurant.
I can definitely picture myself here with a hair-of-the-dog beer and a bowl of taquenos to get rid of a hangover; or popping in to line the stomach and get the party started for a night out in Fitzroy.

The best bit though was the price. We were full and only had to pay $12.50 each for the food - a bargain! I have a feeling arepas will be my new lunch choice on Brunswick Street.




Enjoy!

Mediterranean Chicken Sandwich Mix - 1 - $

Now that MIFF has finished and normal-life programming has resumed, I'm cooking again and came up with another little sanger mix that I thought I'd share with you.

I made risotto for dinner and had a chicken breast spare that couldn't be re-frozen so I thought it best to grill it and add a few things that I had in the fridge; that way nothing was wasted and the next day's lunch sorted. Hooray!


Ingredients - makes 2 sandwiches

1 chicken breast, grilled
4-6 semi dried tomatoes
flat leaf parsley
1-2 tsp pesto
1-2tbs mayonnaise

Finely chop all ingredients and put in a bowl. Add the wet ingredients and stir well (be sure to start with the lesser amount and add more if need be). Season with salt and pepper and smear onto a fresh ciabatta roll with some rocket and a slice of cheese if you fancy.
That's it!

Enjoy!

Popcorn & MIFF - 1 - $ - V

Well hello! Apologies for the lack of posts this week but I have spent most of my evenings sitting in a dark room and not cooking much food at all. That's because I have been watching as many movies as I can jam in during the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

It's been a case of uber time management and grabbing snacks, cups of tea and glasses of vino in between dashing from one session to another. The movies wind up today which is a good thing I think because my eyes are just about square! This year's festival has had a fantastic program and apart from seeing loads of flicks I also got to see some craft queens as well as Her Royal Feminist Germaine Greer in the flesh!
My fave movie was Bill Cunningham New York - a documentary about the 80 year-old photographer. This film is a must-see for anyone who loves fashion, photography or New York and is truly poignant and inspirational. I laughed, I cried and I wanted to buy even more shoes!


With one session to go tonight and not a lot of food in the house I thought it best to bring you a guide to everyone's favourite movie snack - POPCORN! Next time you head out to the cinema or drive-in don't buy that hideous uranium yellow stuff - make your own! It's too easy, it's about a million times cheaper and there are so many different things you can put on it...

Popping The Corn

Before...

I find it's best to use a pot that is the same size as your hotplate so that you get even heat distribution for the little kernels to do their thing. If your hotplates are small and you need lots of popcorn it's best to make several batches that all work out, rather than one giant one that's half burnt.

It's a tough job but someone's gotta do it...

You need enough oil to just cover the bottom of the pot in a thin layer. You can use just plain old canola or vegetable oil because it's function is conducting heat, not making a taste sensation.
Put the pot on a very high heat and let the oil heat up. Throw in a couple of sacrificial kernels to check the temperature and when they magically explode it's time to pour in enough kernels to cover the bottom of the pot in a single layer. Put a lid on and wait for the popping to start. Once it becomes rapid turn the heat down slightly and give the pot a shake every few seconds so that the unpopped kernels can drop down to the bottom of the pot.

And we're off!

Once the popping subsides take the pot immediately off the heat. The kernels that didn't explode have had their chance, so don't burn the ones that fulfilled their popping destiny.
Now it's time to add your favourite popcorn topping...


Toppings

There's so many to choose from so here's a few suggestions; some obvious and some perhaps not so obvious. If you have a favourite please leave it in the comments below...

• Melted butter
• Salt - my current pick would have to be Hawaiian Black Lava
• Icing sugar
• Shredded coconut
  
• A combo of salt and sugar
• Cayenne pepper for a little heat
• Paprika
• Finely grated Parmesan or other hard cheese

The ultimate way to serve popcorn though would have to be covered in crunchy caramel. Head over to Not Quite Nigella to see Lorraine's beautiful photos and how-to guide for this version.

Enjoy!

STREAT Guest Spot - Meatless Monday - V

Today I am guest blogger over at STREAT - hooray!

If you click on over you can learn all about Meatless Monday and the power you have to make a change in the world...


If you're going meatless today here is my favourite vegetarian recipe - Cauliflower Dahl.

Enjoy!