Christmas baking with DH

Well, I am proud to say that I have once again taken up Donna Hay and begun to stumble along with it. This Christmas has been so crazy and great in terms of what I have been cooking. I have never really been into Christmas baking by myself. I used to do baking with my mum each Christmas but since I got married I’m afraid it kind of fell by the wayside particularly as most of our Christmas’ have been somewhere else other than home. But this year I have had a break through and I have DH mag to thank for it, mostly. It has actually been last year’s Christmas cookbook that I have been using as I only received this years cookbook this morning, so it was a little late in coming but that is the mail service in this country for you.

I have successfully mastered gingerbread, which I have never ever really liked before but can now say that it is quite delicious and very easy to make. Biscotti making is also a first for me and once again simple and easy and very, very yummy! Tonight I made Lemon, Ginger Chicken from the 2010 Christmas Dec/Jan edition, wow what a an amazing recipe. I think it will be going to the proverbial pool room for family favourites and so incredibly easy too! For our first Christmas party for the year I am going to try and make Roasted Potatoes with Green beans and Speck.

No recipes this time but the roasted potatoes were fantastic! And I just finished making Cinnamon and Cherry Biscotti from last years mag. Definitely worth the very little effort it takes to make. Yum, Yum, Yum.

spicy beef tortillas

My hubby is away at present and I am very much looking forward to his return, not only because I miss him but because he is shopping and will be able to bring back some things that we just cannot get here. One of the things he is bringing back is pesto! I am so excited, cause then I can cook some of the recipes that need pesto (Yay!!). We don’t have any fresh basil here so there is no way to make it.
I absolutely love tortillas, I always have some in the freezer (the homemade kind, not the bought kind). They are the best things to pull out for breakfast, lunch or tea. So, now that I have confessed my undying love for tortilla’s you will understand why I chose this recipe to tryout. It is totally easy and only takes about 10 min to whip up.
Now, I realise that I have gotten a bit verbose in some of my previous posts, so I will endeavour to keep the chatter to a minimum.
This lovely little dish is found on page 66 of DH mag, issue 52. What you will need is: olive oil, beef mince, onion, chilli, smoked paprika. I have to confess that my smoked paprika is about a gazillion years old, hence the dish wasn’t as tasty as it should have been.
I have just discovered these little spice cubes called chipolte, it is a Mexican chilli, and they are amazing! A friend in America sent them to me and they are incredible. I was sort of picturing the dish to taste a bit more like it would with chipolte in it.
Tomato paste is next and then tomato puree, now I am a bit confuse about this wording cause in brackets after tomato puree she has put tomato sauce. In my book tomato sauce and tomato puree are nothing alike, what’s the deal? I used tinned whole tomatoes chopped up finely. Cook all these ingredients up together, seasoning with sea salt, no comment and cracked pepper. Tortillas, of course and tomato and coriander salsa make the up the rest of this delicious serving. YUM!

frangipane and lemon tart

The new DH mag finally came in the post. Actually, I think I should have been pleasantly surprised at the speed that it got here. But anyway, what matters is that it is now here and I had loads of fun looking through it. The new issue 52, is all about entertaining, now that sounds like it will be packed with healthy stuff. NOT! On the front cover are chocolate-layered espresso jellies, talk about decadent. And I so want to take a crack at making them.

There is a section in this isse on short crust pastry and a whole spreadsheet with different tarts. My first reaction was, “I am going to have to make that chocolate ganache tart.” To which my husband screwed up his nose and said. “Yuck!” So that idea was out the window. I love frangipanis, they are my absolute favourite flower, so when I saw frangipane and lemon tart I thought, brilliant! I just looked up the word frangipane and it is an almond flavoured cream or paste but the reason that it so resembles the word frangipani is because the perfume of the frangipani flower was said to have been used to flavour the almond cream. Go figure. So there is a connection after all. How cool, dictionaries are a wonder.

Frangipane and Lemon tart was such an amazingly easy thing to make and is so gorgeous so sink ones teeth into. My husband and I were discussing the flavour and because I hadn’t used frangipani blossoms to add to the almond paste it really is quite mild, almost something that you can’t quite put your finger on, but definitely worth another bite. The short crust pastry, which of course you have to make, is divine, so buttery, so crispy, so delicious!

The How to Cook Short Crust Pastry section starts on page 54 of DH mag issue 52. Although it takes a little while to make, taking it in and out of the fridge and oven the basic principle is quite simple. Using a food processor makes the whole progression a cinch. Pop the butter, flour, icing sugar, of which I didn’t have any so I just used raw sugar, egg yolks and iced water into the lovely mixing machine, let it do its thing and whala.

It now goes into the fridge to let it firm up a bit, roll it out and pop it into your tart tin. I actually had to refrigerate it again after I rolled it out and before I baked it simply because it is soo incredibly hot here, the pastry was just going too mushy. I didn’t have one of those tart tins either, so I used my quiche dish and it worked like a charm. Now comes the part I never quite understood. One has to bake the pastry case, which is filled with weights for about half the baking time and then the weights come off for the rest of it. I was always under the false impression that the weights were to keep the pastry from bubbling. This might be the case for some pastry’s however with this particular one, the blind baking, as it is called actually helps the crust to cook nice and crisp. Don’t ask me how, I have no idea.

Now your pastry case is done and on to the filling.

Turn to page 58 and you will find the frangipane and lemon tart recipe. Now I made a bit of a mistake with this one. It calls for lemon rind to get popped into the pastry but of course I didn’t read all the instructions first and got a bit carried away so I had baked my pastry case before realising that I hadn’t put any lemon rind into it. Instead I added the lemon rind to the frangipane and it tasted just fine to me.

Butter, sugar, egg, egg yolk, almond meal, flour are mixed up together to form the frangipane paste. This is then placed inside the pastry case and flaked almonds are sprinkled on top. I used slivered almonds. Then it all goes into the oven again, simply divine.

Now my one problem with using all those egg yolks was all of a sudden I had 4 egg whites just hanging around. What does one do with egg whites? Well I won’t go into details but I tried to make yet another DH creation from a past issue, mini chocolate sponges with coffee meringue icing. Total disaster! I don’t know what I did wrong but nothing turned out right. My sponge was a flat pancake with a stack of eggs congealed on the bottom and my gorgeous coffee meringue icing was a blow your socks off, frothy mess. Ah well, such is life.

sweet potato and chickpea soup

Sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes are everywhere! This is a country brimming with sweet potatoes. And you know, when you’re in a place that has an abundance of something, how you never really get around to enjoying the full experience of being totally immersed in that something, until you leave and look back and go, “Wow, what an opportunity wasted!” So, in light of this truth I have decided that I will not waste being in a country where sweet potato is so readily available. I really love sweet potato, I grew up on the stuff, I missed the stuff when I was back in Australia, where it is so incredibly expensive and now I will eat it and relish the experience.

Well, maybe that was a little over the top but I am sure you know exactly what I mean. I grew up in Indonesia and the amount of times we’d go out to this gorgeous Indonesian restaurant, with amazing food and my friends would scour the menu for hamburgers. Hello!!

So, know that you know what I am neurotic about, lets talk about this mouth-watering soup. Found in DH mag issue 51, page 115 with a gorgeous photo, this soup is simple, speedy and splendiferous. I am hoping that my new issue of DH mag is coming on the plane this afternoon, on the mail/vegie run. I was hoping for it last week, but alas it did not arrive, so I’ll not hold my breath but will wait in cautious anticipation.

Anyway back to the soup. What you will need is: sweet potatoes, of course, garlic cloves, I didn’t have any of these, I used crushed garlic instead and it seemed to work just fine; onions, ground cumin and olive oil, which, of course I used canola oil. Mix all these ingredients together. Oh, by the way the sweet potato does need to be peeled and chopped. Plonk it all on an oven tray and into the oven until cooked. Than in a large saucepan add chicken stock, water and chickpeas along with your baked sweet potato, whiz it all up until it is smooth, put it back on the stove (try not to get eaten by gecko’s while typing on the computer) add some more chickpeas and serve with yoghurt and coriander.

So there you have it. So easy, so fast, so scrumptious, and I even have my own photo to put with the post, though not, of course as beautiful as the one in the mag.

crunchy herbed fish and potatoes

I love finding new fish recipes. We have the most amazing barramundi here and it is so great finding recipes that compliment the fish. Barramundi is a great fish as it doesn’t really have that strong fishy smell or taste. It is also nice and firm, which makes it easy to cook with.

We get our barramundi flown in from a fish factory down south. The fillets can be enormous. Last time we got a box, they forgot to individually wrap the fillets and let me tell you a ten-kilogram box of barramundi fillets isn’t what you want arriving in one big chunk. One Saturday we defrosted it just enough for us to pull the fillets apart, all on the kitchen bench. It’s a good thing barramundi isn’t too smelly!

The recipe is incredibly simple and tasty; my husband loved it and said that I could make it again! I served it with a nice green salad. You can find the recipe is on page 70 of Donna Hay magazine, issue 51.

Here is what you need: potatoes sliced thinly, I didn’t have potatoes, so I used sweet potatoes instead; olive oil, lemon thyme leaves, salt and pepper. No fresh lemon and thyme leaves available unfortunately but I used dried thyme and it tasted fantastic. So you toss all those together and put it on a baking tray and into the oven. When the potatoes are a bit golden you place the fish on top. Next you combine fresh breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley, I used dried parsley for this as well. Crumble it all over the fish and put it back into the oven until the fish is cooked.

Now just a quick note on the cooking. I found that you really need to make sure the potatoes are done pretty well before you pop the fish on top, the fish causes the potatoes that are directly underneath it not to cook as fast as the rest of them. I ended up with some still quite crunchy potatoes, which wasn’t ideal.

chocolate sandwiches

Ok, so I am a bit ashamed that I needed DH mag to give me the inspiration to stick nutella on bread and toast it. But that is indeed what happened here. On page 43 of issue 51, in the Cheats + Quick Fixes, Short Cuts section, you can find, chocolate sandwiches.

What you will need is baguette slices, I used my humble homemade wholemeal bread. There is no way I am going to find baguettes here unless I make them, which I might do one day. Spread these, on one side with softened butter or, if you are me, margarine. Then spread the unbuttered sides with chocolate-hazelnut spread. Why she doesn’t just say nutella is beyond me, but you get the general idea. Then, I just love this. Donna Hay says to heat a non-stick fry pan, yay for her!! I am so glad that she didn’t say, now plug in your sandwich maker.

So you cook the sandwiches on the frypan until golden. Now this part is very important, don’t jump right in and take a whopping big bite even though you might be tempted, because these little guys are incredibly hot when they first come off the fry pan. Practice a little self-control and wait a bit before you hoover it.

Enjoy the crunchy golden toast oozing with rich chocolate hazelnut delight.

jam coconut slice

This little beauty once again attests to the ease and brilliance of the humble slice. I made this when my father in law came for a visit the other week and it not only fed him and us several times but was also perfect for a nice morning tea with friends.
This baby can be found on page 146 of DH mag issue 51.

Once again the base is a rather simple but delectably important part of the whole. You will need; castor sugar, desiccated coconut, plain flour and melted butter. Of these four ingredients I can only claim that I had two, which fit the bill entirely. Yes, you guess it. I had to substitute raw sugar for the castor sugar and margarine for the butter. I don’t reckon it made any difference. So you combine the above ingredients, press them into a slice tin and bake it.
Next you spread your jam on top of the cooled base. This recipe says raspberry, I used strawberry and I reckon any type of jam would do, probably not marmalade though, but I might be wrong.

For the topping one needs shredded coconut. Now for this one I did something a little out of the box, but it would be considered completely normal here. I used freshly scrapped coconut. I would do the same thing again next time, but I think first I would toast the coconut. It was a bit too moist and the slice was rather messy to eat. The second ingredient is eggwhites. Mix those together, pop it on top of the jam and whack it back in the oven until done.

Hmmm Yum!!

chocolate caramel slice

This amazingly rich and incredibly delicious slice was so easy to make. It survived the hot tropics, a two hour flight and then I took it to a picnic lunch and everyone loved it! Of course you can only have once piece before you start feeling sick, but that means you can share it with more people :^)

The base is nice and firm without being too crunchy but still having a crust texture. The caramel centre is so silky and sticky sweet and topped off with a hard chocolate coating, it is kind of hard to keep it all together when you biting into it but that just makes the experience all the more enjoyable. Probably not a slice to take on ones first date though, if you are trying to impress the person with your refined eating style.

So what one needs for this indulgence is first, a DH mag, issue 51, which has a whole section on slices. I have decided that I love slices, they are very easy to make and you don’t have to roll out individual cookies and they still feed a tribe, without it having to concoct a special occasion, that one feels one needs for cake. Turn to page 146 and you’ll find the recipe.

Starting off at the base of the slice with plain flour, sifted of course, this has become very important to me living here. Sifting flour not only insures that I don’t get rock hard lumps as I have had to keep the flour in the freezer until I use it, but it also gives me peace of mind that some poor person isn’t going to crunch into a weevil. Desiccated coconut, is the next key ingredient to this base, I think the coconut really adds flavour and texture to the base. Brown sugar and melted butter hold it all together, mix all these up and press them into a slice tray. Then you have to bake it so that it becomes all lovely and crusty.

Now for the caramel filling, this is the easiest part, you take golden syrup, butter and sweetened condensed milk, melt them all together on the stove and then pour it over the cooked base and pop it all back in the oven. Now just make sure that you don’t over cook the caramel. I made the mistake of trusting the temperature dial on my oven, which doesn’t work and when I checked the slice the caramel was bubbling away furiously at an incredibly hot temperature.

The topping is great; chocolate and vegetable oil. Melting chocolate has always been a bit tricky for me, but I think the oil really helps in this case but you still have to keep a close eye on it.

Now you put the topping on the slice when it is fully cold from being in the fridge, this helps the chocolate to set fast. So, what I did was as soon as I put the topping on I took a sharp knife and cut the slice up so that I was cutting into soft chocolate coating and not a crunchy hard one that would snap.

And there you have it, a delectable sticky mess, make sure you take some wet wipes with you on the picnic!

doughnuts with chocolate fudge sauce

These were amazing and so fun to make. I love dropping things into hot oil and watching them deep fry!

I was feeling pretty rotten the day I made these and the fact that they actually turned out ok is a testament to the ease of this recipe. I also made it at a ridiculous time of day, right before dinner, so of course our appetites were spoiled because they have to be eaten straight away! But I was thinking that it is so great to be able to just do things like make doughnuts just before dinner and not have to worry about kids and such. Our little tacker is only 8mnths so no worries there. I guess we won’t be able to do this kind of thing for much longer though.

Anyway down to business. This recipe can be found on page 107 of DH mag, issue 50, in the location section. What you will need for this delicious indulgence is; butter, once again I had this key ingredient still left over from my chocolate cake attempt the other week, so yay for me, water and vanilla extract. You place all these into a saucepan and then boil them together until the butter is melted, then as fast as you can pop in plain flour, watch out for the bubbling effect when placing flour into boiling water! It took me completely by surprise and I almost had an accident, baking powder and sugar. Mix these up and then plop the now quite sold mixture into a food processor and whizz in a couple eggs. These are all very basic ingredients, which I happened to have (phew).

Whilst this is all happening, put enough oil for deep frying, into a large saucepan and heat it up slowly. Spoon the dough into a piping bag, or if you are like me and don’t have one put it into a zip lock back, squish the dough down into one of the corners and snip the corner off with scissors. Now, into the hot oil you want to pipe lengths of the mix, not to long. Now you have the satisfaction of watching as they turn a golden brown colour. Drain them on some paper towel and serve with the chocolate fudge sauce.

No I have to confess that mine didn’t actually turn out perfect on the first go. I didn’t cook them long enough and they were still squidgy in the middle. So when it says golden brown, what it actually means is that they have to go quite dark, a very burnished gold. I actually popped mine back into the hot oil to cook some more once I discovered my mistake and they were better the second time around.

For the chocolate fudge sauce all you need is dark chocolate, try and use something a bit better then Black & Gold cooking chocolate. As it was all I had it was a must for me and it didn’t taste half bad, but better chocolate would have made it so much more enjoyable and lets face it a lot more yummy! Next ingredient you’ll need is cream and vanilla extract. Place these altogether in a saucepan and stir over low heat until chocolate is melted.

I have stacks of the fudge sauce left over so I guess that means another round of doughnuts to perfect my deep frying technique. I will not be complaining and neither will my husband. Scrumptious, can’t you just tell from the picture!!

chocolate buttermilk layer cake

Ok, so the first thing that I wanted to do when I saw the cover of the 50^th issue of DH Mag was to eat the cake on the front cover, the whole thing. Which may have been more of an indication of my emotional state at the time. But boy did it look delicious. So, it has been my goal, since I first saw it to one day take a crack at making it. Well I did it!! I actually made this gorgeous cake. And, I tell you what, it is absolutely delicious. Way to go Donna!! The cake is really, really, really rich, so you only need a small bit but even when cutting it up in small bits, the cake is four layers for crying out loud, so you can’t really ever get a small bit.

The taste was sensational, but trying to assemble the thing was a complete nightmare and disaster. I am blaming the heat and humidity of course, nothing to do with my lack of skill in this area.

Next time I make it, if I am still living in this incredibly hot/humid place, I am going to refrigerate the individual cake layers and the frosting. Then to assemble it, I will make a cardboard cylinder to construct the cake within, pop it back into the fridge after building it and then, when it is firm, take it out, remove the cylinder, quickly take a picture of it, cut it and pop it back into the fridge.

So here is what you need for this amazing creation, which is on page 156 of DH mag, issue 50; water, hmmm yep got plenty of that. As we get about 8 meters of rain a year here, there is no short supply. Butter is next on the list and I bought butter last time we were in the big smoke just for this cake, cause I know that there really is a difference when making cakes with butter as opposed to settling for marg. So I splashed out and bought the butter, yum. Cocoa is an easy one, I am never without cocoa, it is a must in my pantry. You pop these ingredients in a small saucepan and heat them up till the butter melts.

Next comes the dry ingredients; flour, baking soda and sugar, no worries on all of those, though of course I didn’t have castor sugar, but using raw sugar instead didn’t seem to make a difference. You whisk the choc mixture into the dry ingredients and then add eggs and buttermilk. Now, I have to pause here, cause even though I know it is called chocolate buttermilk layer cake and obviously buttermilk is a key ingredient there is a serious shortage of buttermilk in this country, as in, “I have never ever seen it in the shops!” But I got a tip from another cookbook called, “The Perfect Cookbook”, that if you mix half milk and half yogurt you can call that buttermilk, so that is what I did and it still tasted great. And last ingredient for the cake mix was vanilla extract. You whisk all the ingredients together. Now, make sure you use the right cup measurements, cause about the time I thought I was finished and thinking that, “boy this cake is incredibly moist.” I realised that I had used 1/3 cup measurements instead of ½ cup measurements (doh!). And I am so thankful that I discovered this or else it just would have been a complete flop.

So you divide the mix into two cake tins and pop them into the oven.

While they are cooking or while the cakes are cooling or whenever, it is time to make up the chocolate cream cheese frosting! Totally decadent, I know and even more decadent is that this recipe calls for 500g of cream cheese!! Whoa, usually I use 250g but no, this recipe had to take it up a step. Sidebar, you can freeze cream cheese if you are going to use it for something where you whip it up again or else the freezing does tend to make the cream cheese go all crumbly. Besides the enormous amount of cream cheese, the frosting also calls for butter, icing sugar and cocoa. Whisk these all up in a food processor until it is a light and fluffy deliciously chocolaty and cream mix.

Now for the incredibly tricky part that I failed dismally at, but no fear it still tastes gorgeous and friends will love you anyway and will all want to come round for avo tea.

You need to cut each cake in half, so you have four layers. Now, a great way to do this is to use dental floss. Strange, I know but a friend taught me how to do this and it is so way easier than trying to cut it. So you take the dental floss in both hands making sure that it is long enough to cut through the entire cake horizontally. Place the floss very carefully smack in the middle of the cake and slowly run it through the centre until you have halved your cake. Simple.

Now place your layers on top of one another, careful to put about a quarter of the frosting between each layer and of course ending up with frosting on the top. Amazing!!

Don’t do what I did and; one, not cut off the tiny peaks that form on the top of each cake, two use incredibly runny icing with on top of incredibly moist cakes and three attempt to layer them without doing some serious forethought about the construction process, the instructions in the DH mag do not really give much help to amateurs on this one.

Good luck, it is a winner!! I’d definitely make this one again.

PS I just got the new DH mag but I need to make one last thing out of the last issue before I start on the new on. However, this doesn’t mean that I won’t be taking a peak at it. How exciting!!

Butterflied Chicken

I have always wanted to try this, probably ever since I saw some famous chef doing it on a cooking show earlier in my life. So I was very happy to discover that Donna wanted me to do it in this issue of her mag :^)

I realise that I have been a bit remiss lately in my postings but I do have a rather valid excuse. I was away, with no internet. And I am telling the truth, not trying to make up an excuse like Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail.” Having come back a week ago I have only now really settled back into routine enough to do something extra. Being a mum really throws everything completely out of whack.

Oh, complete baking disaster today. I was trying to make cinnamon scrolls and decided to have a go at a new recipe that I was given by a friend. Of course I thought, this should work, she was able to make delicious cinnamon scrolls here with this recipe, I should too, right? Ha. Don’t you love those recipes that call for approximately x amount of flour, warning you in neat little parenthesis that you might possibly need some more. Oh my gosh!! Three added cups later!! I don’t know what I am going to do with all that dough rising so serenely on my stove. I think I’ll be able to make cinnamon scrolls, savoury scrolls, some dinner rolls and maybe a loaf or two of bread. What a joke. I am never using that recipe ever again!! Unless of course they turn out really nicely :^)

So here it is “garlic and thyme roasted chicken,” page 62 of issue 50. You will need; butter, which of course, if you know me by now will know that I substitute with margarine. Crushed garlic is not a problem, thyme leaves, I do not have in abundance but I do have dried thyme so I used that. Looking back I probably would use fresh stuff the next time cause the chicken really wasn’t that tasty, maybe fresh thyme would add just a little bit more pizaz. Sea salt and cracked pepper, well, you know my stance on sea salt so I went with normal salt and ground pepper. A whole chicken butterflied, yep had that one. Now I didn’t actually butterfly it myself, my wonderful husband did. I had a cut on my hand, that is my excuse and I am sticking with it. He did a great job of butterflying it. And Donna Hay describes the whole process so well on page 61. Basically what you do is you cut out the backbone and then squash it down so everything is sticking out the sides and it’s half the thickness it was before.

A lemon and olive oil are the last things you will need. Now I didn’t have any olive oil so I used sunflower oil instead. I am so excited cause I actually have olive oil now and I am going to make a DH recipe tonight from a back issue that is so delicious but I don’t think I’ll write about it cause I am trying to only blog about recipes in current issues. Speaking of which, I am waiting with baited breath for the next one to come!

So what you do with all this ingredients is you take the butter, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper and mix it all together and then shove it under the skin of the chicken breast. There is no dainty way of doing this. This technique, says Maggie Beer is to help keep the breast from getting to dry. A problem that I have time and time again and even doing this technique, I still can’t eat my roast chicken without gravy.

After doing that, put the chicken on the baking try with more thyme, the lemon and olive oil.

Put it all in the oven, brushing with the juices halfway through and whala a lovely roast chicken in about half the time and you don’t have to really worry that it isn’t cooked through.

I did very much like this way of cooking the chook but I really think the flavours weren’t all that strong and that is possibly because of my lack of fresh ingredients. I really wanted to make the butterflied chicken recipe right next to the thyme one but I didn't have any red wine vinegar and that seemed to me to be a key ingredient. Beggars can’t be choosers and we have to use what we’ve got.

strawberry swirl semifreddo

I actually got up the courage to make this incredible dessert the other afternoon!

I have to admit that I was putting it off a bit. I was nervous about wrecking the whole thing and because the ingredients in it are rather precious and in short supply here, I didn’t want to have to throw it all down the drain. But it turns out that semifreddo isn’t as scary as I first thought. It is in fact quite simple to make and incredibly delicious, I dare you to give it a go, you won’t regret it.

This recipe is in an earlier issue of DH mag, issue 49, page 146. This is the dish featured on the cover and it is as scrumptious as it looks.

What you will need are; lots of eggs, not a problem as the box of 12 egg cartons arrived safely on the plane and the fridge, in which they are stored was working, so they were fine.

Vanilla extract is next. Now I was a bit naughty on this one, I used vanilla bean. I know that vanilla bean is the strongest type of vanilla and extract is the weakest, but it turned out great, so I don’t really understand why the recipe only called for extract. Plus, here I can get vanilla bean for way cheaper then vanilla extract (shocking I know) so I was being economical.

Next on the list is caster sugar, I of course don’t have any, but raw sugar worked just as well as it is dissolved anyway.

You pop all these ingredients into a bowl over simmering water and then beat it for what seems like forever, until it’s all thick and creamy. And then you take it off the heat and whip it up again for another eon, until the mix has cooled down.

The next step is whisking the cream, this is really hard to get fresh here, so instead I used UHT. With UHT cream you have to pop it in the fridge 24 hours before you use it or else it won’t whip up and sometimes even after it’s been refrigerated it still won’t whip up, so it’s a bit of a gamble but mine worked a treat. You then fold the cream into the incredibly whipped up vanilla mixture.

Now I didn’t have any redcurrants but they are just a garnish, so not really that big of a deal.

The really easy part of making this icy, creamy dessert comes next and that includes strawberries, which if you have read my other posts will know what a nightmare those were to get, and icing sugar. Puree those two ingredients together and then swirl it through the cream mixture. Last but not least, pop it into the freezer.

One thing I learned from this experience is that if you aren’t careful all the strawberries will go straight to the bottom and the cream will sit on top. I’m not sure how to rectify this situation but my advice to you and what I am going to do next time, because there for sure will be a next time with this baby, is to freeze the mixture for a couple hours and then swirl it again. I think that should help to get an even spread of strawberries and semifreddo quite nicely.

As most people know strawberries and chocolate make an incredible combination. I recommend that this semifreddo be consumed with copious amounts of chocolate or by itself.

Enjoy, this one is a winner.

PARMESAN SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH PROSCIUTTO TOAST

Well I have been on a journey of learning how to cook scrambled eggs. In the past I never really thought much about my scrambled eggs. I just whisked up eggs with milk and maybe herbs, vegies, cheese and whatever else took my fancy at the time. Plonked it all in the fry pan and cooked it up. Usually, I over cook my scrambled eggs and I never really minded well-done scrambled eggs. That is, until I watched Maggie Beer and Simon Bryant cooking scrambled eggs in and episode of “The Cook and The Chef.” I know, I know, I am mixing my cooking media’s now. Ah well, I love cooking; recipes, cooking shows, magazines etc. etc. And I reckon, if it makes you cook better, it doesn’t matter what it is.

So Maggie and Simon were very insistent that one does not overcook ones scrambled eggs and it was very helpful to actually watch them cook the eggs. With DHM, the only drawback is you can’t actually watch them cook the recipe, so one misses out on the details. Maggie and Simon helped me make Donna’s recipe correctly. Thanks guys my scrambled eggs are changed forever.

So what one needs for this recipe is sliced baguette, well since the only bread available in my kitchen is what I bake in the bread-maker, I used wholemeal toast slices.

Prosciutto, I was non-existent, but I did have some bacon, which worked a treat.

No cherry tomatoes, I’m afraid and I couldn’t even use a normal tomato as it was my last one and hubby suggested I keep it for something else and it made a good lunch today, so that was a good idea. Thanks love.

I also skipped drizzling with olive oil and salt and peppering it obviously as I didn’t have the tomatoes. However, the bread topped with bacon did go in the oven to crisp up.

Now for the infamous scrambled eggs.

A whopping five eggs for two people!! Whoa, talk about decadent.

Cream, which I have never in my life used on scrambled eggs and, which Maggie reckons she never uses anything else.

Parmesan cheese, woo hoo I did have some and it was even mainland Parmesan and not just the Kraft powdered stuff. No can do for the fresh stuff I’m afraid.

Now, this next ingredient is rather an interesting one. Sea salt flakes seem to be all the rage now a days but I have heard, that because they don’t have iodine people are starting to have iodine deficiencies. Interesting huh. So I used normal iodized salt instead, mostly because I have no sea salt flakes but also because I am a bit concerned with my iodine intake, don’t really want to end up with a goitre.

I have to admit that I didn’t cook the eggs in butter, as I didn’t have any, but I used margarine instead, seemed to turn out ok.

So I cooked them Maggie and Simon style, well it was probably more my interpretation of what they did. They probably would have cringed, and served up the eggs with my crispy toast and bacon.

It was incredibly yummy, incredibly rich and incredibly filling. I have to admit, I felt a bit sick afterwards. The recipe says it is to serve two, but really I think it could have done four very nicely.

No picture of this meal unfortunately, as it just didn’t really look that great, but it tasted sensational.

Yay, for learning how to cook great scrambled eggs!! Though I think I’ll stick with cooking mine with milk and not cream. It was a bit too rich for my poor tummy.

sticky beef noodles with bok choy

Well this meal was actually cooked last week, which is a testament to how incredibly run off my feet I feel at the present, and my husband cooked it as well. He is a wonderful cook and the meal was delicious.

We have found though, that sometimes food, which is styled a certain way for photo’s isn’t really that easy to eat. So we had to modify the recipe instructions a little bit and next time I think we’ll modify it even more for easy eating. If you are able to see the picture of this particular dish on page 70 of DHM issue 50, you’ll see what I mean. The dish does look incredibly yummy, very aesthetically pleasing in the, hence we made it but actually trying to chomp down on half a bok choy is not really that easy and cutting up a beef steak while trying to avoid eviscerating the noodles is a bit of a nightmare. So next time the steak will be cut into strips and bok choy likewise distributed into bite size portions.

So for this recipe, one needs: soy sauce, tick; brown sugar, grated ginger and vegetable oil, all not a problem. Sirloin steak was not available in our freezer stock of beef cuts so we just used some rump steak. Udon noodles were also in short supply, we only had maggie noodles in stock. Which is what happens when every other type of noodle in the store costs twice the price we are willing to pay for it. Anyway we have found maggie noodles to be an adequate replacement for our stir-fry requirements. Onions and chilli were not a problem, however, I did not have roasted peanuts and no fresh coriander leaves but thanks so a very generous friend from Australia I did have dried coriander leaves, which work quite well as a substitute.

All in all I think we did exceptionally well with ratio of ingredients that we did have in comparison to what we were lacking and the dish turned out fantastically, it was incredibly tasty and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good stir-fry recipe. I even have a picture of it. This is a first for me and I’m not sure how we’ll go putting the photo on the page but we’ll give it a shot.

herb and lemon roasted chicken

Yes, I am very proud that I have made two DH recipes in one week and am going to subsequently post this before my own deadline runs out (YESSSS!) Well, I did get on the DH website and found out that the 'weddings' issue, my first DH mag was issue four. I also found out that, sadly the first ever issue is sold out. So “no go” on getting that one unfortunately.

Last night I made this gorgeous meal for some good doctor friends of ours. It is very tasty and incredibly easy to knock together.

I am going to digress for a bit, I hope that you’ll forgive me. One thing that I have recently learned about DH mag, that has rather rocked my world, is that Donna does not make up all the recipes! Shocking, I know. I rather naively thought, or rather didn’t think that Donna had an endless store of recipes in her brilliant brain, which she logged into every other month and filled up the mag. Ah well. The truth comes out. So this recipe, which is on page 77 of Issue 50, is by someone named Jane Collins. Of course Jane's name is in incredible small print up the spine of page while Donna's is in huge bold letters on front of the mag. I am sure lots of people unwittingly just give Donna credit for everything.

It requires olive oil, which sadly I do not have, as it is incredibly expensive here and so must substitute all olive oil with canola oil or something like it, terrible I know. Chicken is something that is in abundance here and I had a packet of chicken bits called meaty bites, not the dog food, which were indeed quite meaty and they did the trick. Skin on and bone in, worked a treat as the skin crisped up very nicely in the initial frying of the chicken before popping it into the oven with the rest of the ingredients. Potatoes come next and I have an abundance of those, so not a problem at all. Capers are the ingredients in this recipe that I am most proud of. I do have capers and was so pleased to be able to finally use them. I was afraid that after having discovered them in a tiny store, ignoring the incredibly high price that was asked and having opened them a few weeks back; I would never find another recipe to use them in. But this one required ¼ cup and so I happily used quite a few. Garlic and oregano I do have, though it isn’t fresh oregano, which I am sure Jane would have preferred me to use. I find that dried herbs work wonders though and are for the most part a very good substitute. Now dry white wine I do not have but I used vinegar, lemon juice and water, which I think was a stroke of brilliance. Of course chicken stock was not a problem and I was please to note that my bullion cube was not as hard as a rock and I could crumble it very easily. Whack it all in the oven at 200 degrees and Wha La.

So there you have it, very simple, very tasty and just a really great meal.

lemon cake with passionfruit syrup

The new Donna Hay Mag got to me on Thursday. Wow what an amazing front cover. Yum!! I think I’ll have to give the chocolate buttermilk cake a go. Congratulations to Donna Hay for this 50th birthday issue. I remember my first Donna Hay was one I picked up outside a newsagents for $2!! It was a wedding issue. It just happened to be around the time I was planning my own wedding, talk about fate, or maybe just coincidence. I think I'm going to have to get on the DH website and check out what issue it was, number that is. I'd love to get my hands on the first ever issue and see how things have changed.

I have decided that I need to be more decisive about this whole blogging thing. I haven’t posted anything in over a month. So, henceforth I shall endeavour to cook and write something at least once a week. Which, in reality means I will need to work really hard to do it once a week.

I haven’t given up on the semi-freddo dream yet. I’ve got the strawberries in the freezer and eggs are coming quite regularly. I am now just waiting on someone who needs to be here when I make it as I am pretty sure this will be a once off deal. Particularly since I had to order like a gazillion strawberries to actually get a good amount that didn’t squish on the way here.

Lemon cake with passionfruit syrup, which apparently appeared first in the 4^th issue of Donna Hay is the gorgeous creation I attempted this afternoon in 100 percent humidity. I have to say it is pretty delicious and can be found in the new 50th issue on page 17.

So it starts off with castor sugar and butter, hmmm sorry no go on either of those, but I did use raw sugar and marg (sorry Donna). Eggs I did have, no sour cream unfortunately but I did happen to have yoghurt (yay for forward planning - or in my case, luck). Yoghurt is my sour cream, goes great with baked potatoes, burritos etc and worked a treat in this cake. I was in luck with lemons (side bar – it takes a whole bunch of lemons to get 1tbs of lemon rind but only 11/2 lemons to get ¼ cups of lemon juice. So what in the heck am I supposed to do with all those rind less lemons?). Flour and baking powder, not a problem, I did have to sift the flour for lumps and make sure I used the good baking powder and not the cheap nasty stuff. Chuck it all in the food processor, I love my food processor and thanks to super glue it still works. Note to self, stacking dishes is hazardous to thin plastic nobby thing-a-majigs essential for electrical appliances to work. Whacked it in the oven and it came out gorgeous and beautiful, I almost cried.

Next came the passionfruit syrup. This step was easy as; passionfruit pulp, sugar and water, no worries mate.

Serving it up for dessert with whipped UHT cream (nice!!)

I found the Julie/Julia project online. I was very impressed that it was actually real!! Who knew? I am reading it in my, put toothpicks between my eyelids half hour of 9:30-10pm. This is after my husband has gone to bed and while I wait until it is time to feed the baby and before I collapse in bed completely and utterly exhausted from the day. I have realised, not recently mind, that living here is hard. It is harder then living in Australia. My husband puts it like this, “ Sitting here is like walking in Australia.” That is how hard it is. Everything, and I am not exaggerating, takes twice the effort.

So tonight it is fish, well I only have two meats in the freezer, chicken or fish and last night we had vegetarian so I had better cook some sort of meat or else my meat loving husband will not be happy.

Lemony Fish Cakes p. 50 from this months Donna Hay Mag. I have never made fish cakes before and have always been rather afraid of them but fascinated at the same time. I am afraid that they will flop. I haven’t had too good a record of pattie type things that one shallow fries. Mine always seem to just fall to pieces and I end up having little bits of chard stuff floating all over the fry pan. So we’ll see how it goes.

This recipe requires: mashed potato, a bit of a problem because I don’t actually have potatoes at present but I do have sweet potato, so I reckon that should do the trick, flaked salmon or trout, Hmmm well I have barramundi and nothing else so I just have to use what I have. Lemon rind, got those in spades, one egg, good cause I only have one egg in the fridge, more had better show up on the plane this avo, and last but not least the good old pinch of salt and a bit of pepper, not a worry (hopefully water soaked salt will do cause that is what I have got).

I hope to serve it with a salad, if my vegies show up today, if not. I’m not sure what I’ll serve it with. I think I have a zucchini, a capsicum and some cucumbers in the fridge, I’ll figure something out.

Well it turns out that substituting sweet potato for potato in the lemony fish cakes was not such a brilliant plan after all. The sweet potato here tends to go dry when boiled up for some reason, so I should have probably added a little milk. The rest of the process when fine and they looked delicious and tasted yummy as well if a little dry. The barramundi worked well, though I think trout or salmon would have had a stronger taste so it is a good thing I served it with honey mustard mayonnaise and not just straight mayonnaise.

So I did serve it with salad and it was just fine and dandy. My vegies did show up, hence the half sweet potato/ half potato mix. And guess what!! The eggs showed as well, which was a good thing as I got out too much fish, had to double the recipe and so needed another egg.

All in all though I think it was a successful dinner. So yay for Donna Hay and yay for my lemony fish cakes not turning into mushy burnt bits in the shallow frying process.

Oh Donna

Well I had a thought about what to do with this blog. Actually, it was a thought hatched by my husband and a good friend of mine, and inspired of course by a fairly recent movie. Hopefully it will be fun.

I live in a rather remote part of this lovely earth and am very blessed with V-SAT for my internet.

I shop for my food every two months, putting mostly everything in the freezer to make it mould and ant proof. I get my vegetables flown down from the highlands each week, along with the vegies comes the eggs, which sometimes get left behind.

I love Donna Hay magazine and now, because of some very generous friends (thanks MAG), am a subscriber. Every two months I get said magazine and drool over the “real” food that is pictured and read through each recipe longingly looking for one that I could possibly make here. Surprisingly I have been able to successfully make a number of recipes, some with minor adjustments and they don’t turn out half bad.

To make myself take more advantage of these magazines, which I love and to give myself some accountability, I am going to attempt to make as many of the recipes as possible from these magazines that come my way.

So every two months or so (the mail isn’t too reliable here) I shall scour each magazine and see what I can do. Then I will write about it here in this blog, my triumphs and my, umm, downfalls I guess.

As a mother of a 5 mnth, old whose life is already quite chaotic and stressful trying to live in another country and raise a child, I am not going to make more work for myself, it is to be fun. So I won’t put a number on the recipes I will be attempting, I’ll just see what I can do.

I have actually already mentioned on recipe that I was able to make. The, ‘Coconut pancakes with banana and passionfruit’, in my opening post were courtesy of this months, ‘Donna Hay Mag, issue 49 Feb/March 2010 “Summer Cool, p. 86.”’ All three of those ingredients are in abundance here. I didn’t have the caster sugar but the sugar I used, which in Aussie speak is the equivalent of raw sugar, was just fine.

Note to self; must ask for fresh strawberries to be sent down on next weeks plane. I want to attempt to make, ‘strawberry swirl semifreddo’. I have to keep telling my husband that it has nothing to do with Freddo Frogs.

Hopefully the eggs will make it down this week, it’s a bit hard being eggless.

I still have no idea what I am cooking for dinner. It is 3:40 in the afternoon, incredibly hot mind, the baby has just gone back to sleep (ah blessed silence) Food is in a bit of short supply at the present as we haven’t been shopping for over 2 mnths now. Maybe on Saturday (cross fingers) we’ll hit the nearest decent grocery shop, which happens to be down the rocky, dusty, windy road, 3 hours away or a 20 min flight. I’ll take the flight option thanks, particularly as my husband will be doing the flying.

If people are looking you may as well wave

Here is my blog. I'm not sure what it is going to be about but it will be by me. I was waiting for something incredibly brilliant to write for my first entry but have decided to settle for just writing something.

It's Sunday morning, bright and sunny, already the day is turning into a scorcher, normal for this time of year. Kids are down at the river and it is only 9:30 in the morning. I can see the mountains in the distance which mean there are hardly any clouds in the sky. I'm sitting under a fan eating coconut pancakes with banana ice-cream and passionfruit, perfect for a hot morning in the tropics.