baked bean brunch for the vegetarian soul

It will probably come as a surprise to people out there who have noticed the heavy meat content on this blog, but once upon a time we were actually vegetarian. I was vegetarian for about 6+ years, while the other became vegetarian when he met me - for a couple of years or so. We even tried being vegan for a year. When I was vego I used to eat stuff like this all the time. It’s simple but very yummy, and quite healthy. Here’s what you’ll need to make it, and how. Serves one ravenous person, or two hungry people.

Ingredients

Bread, sliced
Cottage cheese
Lettuce leaves
1 regular can of baked beans
2 field mushrooms, sliced into medium-sized pieces
6 grape tomatoes, sliced in half (you could use cherry tomatoes instead, or even a normal sized tomato diced)
a little olive oil for frying

Method

1. Put some olive oil in a pan, and fry the sliced mushrooms until nicely cooked. You want them heated through to the point they aren’t raw anymore, but not overcooked so they shrink and get really small & dark. You want some juicyness to burst out when you bite into them.
2. Add the tin of beans to the pan and stir.
3. When the beans have heated through, turn down the heat to low, and add the sliced tomatoes & stir through. Stir occasionally and allow tomatoes to heat through & soften a little.
4. Meanwhile, toast some slices of bread. When done, put them on a plate and spread with cottage cheese.
5. Rinse some lettuce leaves, drain, and place on top of the bread.
6. Give the bean mixture a stir, then spoon onto the lettuce.
7. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

baking challenge #1: the croissant, part 2

Well, they look a bit like croissants!!

Nah. They turned out pretty well considering.

Croissants are funny things. You launch into making them, thinking ‘oh my god, this is going to be SO hard’, but in fact it’s not what you think. It actually doesn’t take much energy to make them, moreso just time. The perfect time to make them would be when you’re home for the day, doing something like.. cleaning the house, and/or cooking a roast. Because after the initial process of mixing the ingredients together, it’s really just a repeated and very simple process of rolling, folding and refrigerating.

When I make them again - which will be soon, because I halved the ingredients in the recipe (to save on waste if I stuffed them up) and at any rate the ingredients cost barely anything - I will probably make a few changes to how I went about making them.

For one, I tended to use a bit too much flour on the bench when I was rolling them. I think this made the outside a bit dry and floury when they were cooked. Next time I think I’ll just use a tiny bit of flour, if any. The mixture wasn’t hugely sticky anyway - it was a bit of overkill on my part.

Secondly, they didn’t rise as much as I wanted them to. I think this is probably mostly because of the weather - it is pretty cold right now - and also I used dried yeast rather than fresh (which the recipe asked for). I think next time I’ll try activating my dry stuff first by putting it in some tepid water with some honey. I reckon this should do the trick.

Thirdly, I don’t think I’ll roll the pastry as thinly in the final step - the step before cutting it into triangles and folding into the croissant shape. I think if it had been a touch thicker they would have kept their shape better when I rolled them, and wouldn’t have been fatter and shorter, rather than long and skinny.

And lastly, I think I’ll slice my final rolled peice of pastry into many more triangles than I did. I cut it into 8. I reckon that I could have cut those peices in half again. If they rose properly, they would be the ideal size I think.

Anyway, with those points aside, I think they turned out pretty well for my first shot. The boy ’schwein reckons they’re the best he’s had - which is in some ways true - they do taste really good homemade, fresh from the oven and spread with butter and apricot jam - but they do need to be tweaked. Not the recipe, just my baking habits & knowledge. They were edible though, and not burnt, so that’s an achievement in itself I think, for now!

Here’s the recipe I used, and recommend. Once you read through it and get a grasp of the general method, you’ll see too that it’s actually quite straightforward.

As I think I said in my previous post, it’s taken from the book: “Patisserie” by Aaron Maree (1994).

CROISSANT

Ingredients

1 & 3/4 cups cold milk
1 egg
3 teaspoons sugar
30g fresh compressed yeast
6 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
500g unsalted butter
1 & 1/4 cups plain flour

Method

1. In a bowl, mix cold milk with egg, sugar and yeast and stir until well combined.
2. Add flour and salt to the liquid and mix until a dough is formed.
3. Knead the yeast dough for 5 minutes on a lightly floured surface and then allow to rest, covered, for 10 minutes.
4. Mix butter and extra flour together lightly and quickly until both are combined. Do not cream butter, simply mix lightly until a dough is formed. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
5. Roll dough into a large square. Press the chilled butter mixture into the centre of the dough square. Pull each of the four corners up and over the butter mixture so that it is totally enclosed within the dough.
6. Refrigerate the dough for a further 30 minutes.
7. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to triple its original length, then mark and fold into thirds.
8. Rest dough in refrigerator for 20 minutes, then once again roll out to triple its original length and fold into thirds.
9. Rest dough another 20 minutes in the refrigerator, then form a further threefold and place back in refrigerator.
10. Roll dough out to 5mm (1/4 inch) in thickness and form a long oblong shape.
11. Cut straight down the centre of the dough and then cut each half into individual triangles.
12. Roll the crossaints, starting at the large end and rolling towards the pointed end, curving the croissants so that they are crescent-shaped.
13. Place on a baking sheet.
14. Place the sheets of croissants in a warm place for 30-40 minutes or until double in size.
15. Bake at 200C (400F) for 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown.
16. Allow croissants to cool slightly before serving.

Good luck and enjoy!

baking challenge #1: the croissant

Welcome to the first installment of my personal weekly baking challenge!

Why a baking challenge, you ask? Well, simply put, I currently suck at baking. I don’t often have the patience, tend to improvise too much, look for too many shortcuts, and generally just burn everything I put in the oven (my recent blueberry muffin attempt being one source of inspiration to change my ways! :P)

At 22 I think it’s time I put in some real effort and learned to bake properly. It’s affordable, yummy (if done right), and fun (if done right), not to mention a good way of spending a Sunday arvo. Plus if you’re good at it, you can potentially bribe people with your awesome baked stuff.

So here goes.

Right this minute I’m in the middle of my first ever attempt at making croissants.

I got the recipe from a book off our shelf - ‘Patisserie’ by Aaron Maree.

I was just about to say ‘looks simple enough’, but I don’t want to jinx my attempt.

I’m determined to find success in making these - a good one seems to cost way too much from our local bakery considering the very basic ingredients involved. And making them in bulk means freezing leftovers - always handy for sleepy weekend brekkies & brunches.

I’ll update this post later tonight with the outcome!

Wish me luck!

blueberry muffins for mum and me

I received a Mother’s Day -themed newsletter from recipezaar today, which featured a fantastic looking picture for “Melt in Your Mouth Blueberry Muffins”. I followed the link trail to find the recipe, and was stoked to see that it was really really simple. I generally suck at baking, and my oven burns pretty much everything that goes in it, so my baking mantra is ‘the simpler the better!’

I haven’t ever made blueberry muffins before, but I’ve eaten them now and again at cafe’s and the like. They are always a bit sticky and gooey for me, and as such a bit on the heavy side. For this reason I have to admit I’ve never found them that appetizing. They’re often also either too sweet or too bland. These are all reasons why I’ve probably never made them.

This recipe is amazing though. It goes to show that the best things in life are often the most simple. I am so impressed. I made this batch tonight to test them out, with the plan to make some more on Saturday to give to our Mums on Sunday. I’m glad I decided on doing that now, because it turns out that in an attempt to brown the tops a little bit more, I left the grill on too long and they got a bit tooo brown. I was sitting right in front of the damn oven, too, but our oven doesn’t have a glass window on the door, so it’s hard to monitor what you’re baking without letting the heat out.

Anyway, although I was sure they were burnt, they actually aren’t. They’re just well coloured!

The consistency is absolutely beautiful, you take a bite and its all melty and perfect, and the blueberries are sooo good. It doesn’ stick to your teeth like most blueberry muffins do; but its not too dry or bready either. It’s hard to explain - it’s just perfect. I will definitely make these again - and perhaps alternate what berries I put in now and then, for some variety.

So do try the recipe out - you won’t be disappointed! Great served with a cuppa

22 years of good food

After the turbulence of the weekend, my birthday didn’t really turn out as I had planned, but overall it proved to be one of the most memorable, albeit very laid back. The boy ’schwein woke at 5.15am for work, and before leaving made me a breakfast of the best homemade granola with a small jug of milk and a bowl of King Island Dairy yoghurt. I was so impressed - his granola is good! If he wants to make me that every day, I won’t complain!! Then he brought me a warm plate, fresh from the oven, with two croissants from the local bakery which he filled with honey ham, Swiss cheese, and Dijon mustard. Although I was initially a bit grumpy because I had to wake up at 6, everything tasted fantastic and I felt very spoilt.

The house was in dire need of a clean, so seeing I was up early I decided to tidy up, which eventually got extended to a full-blown dust, vacuum & mop. Then I gave the cat a bath, gave the bathroom a scrub, and then a shower for myself. Because I started so early it was all done by 10am!

We had initially planned to go out for lunch, so he came home from work early. But after the huge breakfast I wasn’t really hungry enough. So instead we stayed home. We bought some organic potatoes and 2 leeks from the supermarket the other day, and it was a chilly enough for something warm, so I decided on a dinner of potato and leek soup. It turned out really really well, and tasted pretty luxurious once topped with a slice of bread and cheese, and toasted under the grill.

Today we continued the birthday celebrations with an extravagant afternoon tea with his Mum (who also had a birthday recently) & her partner. We made homemade scones with strawberry jam and whipped cream, and bought a coffee & walnut cake, and another cake that was kind of like a giant Swiss pastry filled with custard and walnuts. With a few plungers of good coffee, a few cruisy records on in the background, and some great conversation, it turned out to be a nice and relaxing arvo for all.

Ah, the power of food to make things seem brighter.

Potato & Leek Soup

1. 1 medium saucepan - fill 2/3 with potatoes, roughly cubed; cover with water; boil until softened.
2. Tip out 1/2 the water, and replace with approx 1 litre milk.
3. In a separate pan, saute finely sliced leeks in some butter until translucent. When ready add to potatoes.
4. Add 2 stock cubes.
5. Use a potato masher to break up the potatoes.
6. Cook and mash until soup is thickened - by this time the potatoes have broken up enough to no longer be lumpy.
7. Add salt and white pepper to taste.
8. Ladel into bowls. Top with a peice of crusty bread, sprinkled with a generous amount of grated cheese and a crackling of pepper.
9. Toast under grill.
10. Serve and enjoy!

eggs benedict, the cheats way

We’ve had eggs benedict for brunch 2 days in a row now. It’s pretty damn good. And with this portion size, it pretty much gets breakfast, lunch and dinner out of the way in one hit! In this version, we used packet hollandaise sauce, which was made from oil rather than butter. This made it a lot lighter than usual. That said, we didn’t put much on because it’s pretty rich (and also ‘cos we didn’t have much left!). Because I made up this plate for an early lunch, I added a cheese slice underneath the egg. This was a bit of overkill in hindsight. I served it with ham lightly pan-fried in olive oil. The alfalfa sprouts were a magnificent touch; they really cut through the creamyness and made it taste a lot healthier. A bit of cracked pepper on the sauced eggs was a nice touch. All served on a base of multigrain bread, it was very yummy dish. Although not quite the same as the real stuff, I have to recommend the packet versions of hollandaise sauce - it’s a lot quicker and more convenient. We got ours from Coles, and although I can’t remember the brand name, it was in a black packet, and endorsed by some kind of Chef (i.e. one of those chefs who have brought out a food line). All up this dish only took me about 10 minutes to whip up, so in this sense not having the real sauce was a good trade-off. I’m sure Gordon Ramsay would kill me, but in his words “f*ck me” if I’m going to spend my time off making hollandaise sauce!

Poaching eggs is a simple process, and very fast to do if you know how. Put the kettle on. Put a shallow saucepan on the stove. When boiled, pour the kettle into the saucepan until there’s about 2-3 inches of water in it. Add a capful of vinegar - white, brown or cidar are all suitable. Turn on the heat to medium. When the water comes to a fast simmer, turn the water down a touch. Use a fork to swirl the water to make a whirl in it. Crack an egg in to the whirl, close to the surface of the water. Do it slowly so the white stays in contact with the yolk. The fresher the egg, the better. Repeat for as many eggs as you want. Keep the water on a slow simmer until whites are cooked and quite solid, and yolks to your liking. Make sure to drain on the spatula for a few seconds before transferring to your toast. There’s nothing worse than soggy toast!

Bon appetit!

listless.. indecisive.. maybe it’s the weather

list·less /ˈlɪstlɪs/
–adjective
having or showing little or no interest in anything; languid; spiritless; indifferent: a listless mood; a listless handshake.
[Origin: 1400–50; late ME lystles.]

Related forms
list·less·ly, adverb
list·less·ness, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Day off.

Slept late.

It’s cold.

I need a drink.

Hmm.. lychees. Great look.

Bad shape.

Maybe I should bake.

No. Something savoury.

Yeah, and I have this too.

Hmm.. can’t be bothered. Maybe a salad.

Nah. Too cold. Maybe soup.

Hmm.. maybe later. This will do.

Needs sugar.

Back to the doona.

food blog of the week #17

Well, this isn’t really a blog I guess… but it’s still a noteworthy food-related website worthy of a review, so welcome to the 17th installment of food blog thingo of the week!

I’m not quite sure how it was that originally I stumbled across Road Food, but it has to be one of the most interesting places on the web - even if you live outside of the U.S.

What is roadfood, you ask? On the website it’s summed up as “Great regional meals along highways, in small towns and in city neighborhoods. It is sleeves-up food made by cooks, bakers, pitmasters, and sandwich-makers who are America’s culinary folk artists. Roadfood is almost always informal and inexpensive; and the best Roadfood restaurants are colorful places enjoyed by locals (and savvy travelers) for their character as well as their menu.”

To be completely honest, some of the dishes featured on the site make you feel grateful you don’t spend much time on the road. Indeed, some make you think your own diet - albeit in need of improvement - isn’t actually too bad in the scheme of things. But the occasional meal actually makes you feel quite envious that in the U.S. you can be fed so well for so little money. - Particularly if you’re Australian and you’re used to an on-the-road diet of pricey yet well-aged chicko rolls, cornjacks, dim sims, chips and toasted sandwiches - i.e. most things that contain bread, breadcrumbs or batter and can be fried in large amounts of stinky old reused oil. Even the more substantial meals are generally pretty boring, not to mention low quality and value for money.

Looking through the different food-logs of the different states it also seems that more road meals in the U.S. seem to be made from scratch compared to over here. Yes, the fried components are still very common, but there are more one-pot type meals like stews and broths, and more sauces. What you get generally reflects how much you spend, too, which I think is quite fair compared to here. It also just looks yummier (well, sometimes, anyway - I’m pretty open minded, but stuff like this, this and this makes me wonder!) Here are some great examples!

Large plate of wedges, US$3

 

12 Chicken wings, US$8

 

Halibut & chips - US$14

Taco salad - US$6

California Breakfast - US$9

 

 Chicken pot pie - US$5

 

Onion rings - US$3

Chicken and dumplings - US$5

Belgian waffle - US$4

Zip Burger & fries - US$5

Lemon cheese pie - US$2

And violin-playing ’schwein’s to boot!

the day after boxing day bubbles and squeaks

Today we decided to make a hash for brunch, in an attempt to dispose of the final remnants of Christmas lunch. Some people would call it a hash, others would call it ‘bubble and squeak’. Overall it’s just a mishmash of all the leftovers from a roast dinner, with a couple of additions to bulk and bind it. Ours included leftover duck, turkey, ham, steak, potatoes, carrots, peas, and squash. To this we added some coarsely mashed potatoes and a little salt and pepper to season, and a well beaten egg. It was then fried up in a pan (using a small amount of the leftover duck fat) until a nice crust developed. Delicious served with leftover gravy!

Enjoy!

i love sausage rolls, one meat pie and a choc milk baby

Yes, just a meat pie OR a sausage roll would have been sufficient. Both seemed like junk food heaven, but in hindsight this was slightly ambitious.

I would have preferred choc milk but banana was on special.

Overall I’d rate this meal… 6/10 on price ($6.05), and 5.5/10 on taste.

I should have just made a sandwich.

 

P.S. If you’re not old school enough to understand the title of this post, go listen to this: