Gingerbread and Champagne Marshmallows
They both went down quite well amongst the people in the street with no real clear favorite. The champagne flavour was quite subtle but there nonetheless and the gingerbread tasted just like you’d expect, just more fluffy in texture.
Zucchini Ribbon Pickles
Frankly, even though the other dishes tasted good they all looked pretty average in the pictures so with the one final zucchini I had left I dug around and found, via The Kitchn, a Martha Stewart recipe for zucchini ribbon pickles. I hadn’t made these things for years! Perfect. I scaled down the recipe quite drastically since I only had one zucchini left but here’s my take on it, scaled back up for you.
UPDATE: Jeanne has posted the roundup of this month’s theme. Thanks again Jeanne. I love Joanna from The Passionate Cook’s Courgette and Thyme Croustades with Parmesan Cream. Yummo.
Walloon Biscuits
From: Luther
Subject: Re: Something to sweeten your weekend?
Date: 24 October 2008 10:48:49 PM
To: Will
This weekend's cooking challenge: Belgian biscuits. =P
From: Will
Subject: Re: Something to sweeten your weekend?
Date: 24 October 2008 11:23:41 PM
To: Luther
Belgian biscuits?
From: Luther
Subject: Re: Something to sweeten your weekend?
Date: 24 October 2008 11:58:29 PM
To: Will
Made from real Belgians! (Mind you, at this rate they'll eventually be called Walloon biscuits... depending upon your knowledge of world affairs. =)
http://www.chelsea.co.nz/ViewRecipe.aspx?id=711
From: Will
Subject: Re: Something to sweeten your weekend?
Date: 25 October 2008 2:22:23 AM
To: Luther
I'll see what I can come up with :D
Belgian Biscuits
For once, I had a healthy breakfast
The texture of this was pretty interesting with the soft succulant fruit and sticky honey and the chewy turkish bread and it’s carbonised toasted edges it made of a quite satisfying meal. It just goes to show that simple fresh fruit is really worth while.
Turkish toast with banana and
strawberries, honey and mint
That's not strawberry blond! He's a ginger!
About to be eaten ginger
The wonderful people at Gingerbread Folk make organic,
free range gingerbread people, house kits, flowers, christmas
decorations and custom made gingers for special and corporate
events. Keeping the environmentaly concious theme they even package
their individual bloodnuts in compostable plastic!
As they’re made of all natural ingredients there aren’t any
preservatives in them so don’t expect to keep these for months on
end like you can with commercial ginger bread (next christmas,
check the expiary date on the gingerbread in supermarkets, it can
keep for years, that can’t be good). Lucky they’re tasty and beg to
be gobbled.
Oatmeal and Blueberry Cookies
Not long afterwards they invited me to their house for dinner to meet some of the other people from the street. It was a dinner party, a real dinner party with linen table cloths, napkins and the good silver.
Oatmeal and Blueberry Cookies
As a thank-you I thought I’d make a
small batch of cookies for them, but what? They had to be
wholesome, they were a gift for a neighbor afterall and you can’t
get any more wholesome than oatmeal cookies but of course I had to
jazz it up a little. Forget the raisins. Blueberries were the go! I
was going to use dried cherries but I couldn’t find them anywhere.
Of course the week after I found them at David Jones.
To give them a bit of extra depth you don’t usually find in oatmeal
cookies I used rolled oats and rolled rye that have an earthier
flavour that isn’t overpowering. If you cant find or cant be
bothered, just use all oat.
Oatmeal and Blueberry
Cookies - makes 24
150
grams unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup of brown sugar
⅓ castor sugar
1 large egg
¾ cups of rolled oats
¾ cups of rolled rye
¾ cups of flour
1 teaspoon of bicarb
½ teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 cups of dried blueberries (or any other dried fruit)
Preheat your oven to 200ºC. Beat together the butter and sugars
until they are light and fluffy. It won’t be as pale as regular
creamed butter and sugar because of the brown sugar so don’t worry
about that. On a lower speed, add the egg and vanilla. Sift the
flour and mix in the dry ingredients.
When well combined, but not over mixed, place dessert spoonfuls of
the mix on a greased or properly lined baking tray about 4 or 5 cm
apart. Learn from my mistake - if you use cookie sheets be prepared
for the excess butter melting out of the cookies and going all over
the place!
If you’ve got an even temp oven, bake two sheets at a time for 12
minutes. Mine isn’t so good so I did 1 sheet at a time checking
after 10 min and rotating the tray.
Thyme for Some Nuts
Hot Roasted Hazelnuts with
Thyme
Hot Roasted Hazelnuts with Thyme - Makes 2
Cups
2 Cups of Hazelnuts
2 Tablespoons of fresh thyme
½ Tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
Heat the oven to 200ºC and roast the hazelnuts until brown, about
10-15 minutes. Keep checking so they don’t burn. When they’re done,
cover with a tea towel and let them steam and cool. Rub the skins
off and place in a frying pan. Turn up the heat and add the oil and
thyme and warm through.
Balls, Meat and Tarts
Hot Guy and the Dykes on
Bikes
Marching Boys - Mardi Gras
'08
For the balls, who else could I turn to
except Jamie Oliver? I took
his spiced doughnut recipe and to simplify things I made doughnut
balls instead of the traditional shape. I was pretty happy the way
they turned out, very light and puffed into almost perfect spheres
when they fried. It took a little bit of time and effort but they
were great. The dough was so soft and silky it was a pleasure to
work with, particularly because I was worried that it'd even turn
out. I don't usually have any milk in my house and I forgot to get
some at the store so I took a gamble and watered down some plain
yoghurt. It seemed to do the trick.
Doughnut Balls
As for the meat I stopped at Hudson Meats and picked up some
moroccan lamb burgers, american bbq ribs and some honey soy chicken
drummetts. I hope I didn't smoke out my neighbors too much. There
were a few other people having bbq's so I don't think it really
mattered.
Moroccan Lamb Burger
Then there was the tart, a very simple
tomato and cheese tart using ready made puff pastry. It took all of
5 minutes prep time and 12 minutes to cook. Using two sheets of
puff pastry, I used one as a base and cut thumb width strips from a
second one and used those as an edge, two layers worked just about
right. Once the sides were built up I grated in some mozzarella and
parmesan, layered with sliced tomato and seasoned with salt, pepper
and a bit of dried oregano. Popped in the oven for 12 minutes and
it was done. I think it tasted better when it was cold and looked
like it'd have held up well for a picnic.
Tomato and Mozarella Tart
Cheese On Toast
Grilled to perfection on a slice of kalamata olive sourdough with thyme and jarlsberg seasoned lightly with a twist of fresh ground black pepper and sea salt it’s about as good as I’ve ever had cheese on toast. The creamy soft and slightly sweet cheese is well balanced with the sourdough and the saltiness of its olives, with the thyme giving it a beautiful yet subtle aroma.
Cheese on toast was one of the first things I was allowed to make unsupervised as a child; albeit not as nice in retrospect as the picture above. My first attempts usually involved a piece of toasted white bread and a plastic-yellow cheese single, grilled until the surface puffed up into a little pillow and all of the actual (ahem) cheese was gooey inside. Of course you could never wait for it to cool down enough and you’d bite into it and get a mouthful of molten cheese so there was always a sense of danger about it all really.
Depending on the shape and how you cut your sourdough you can end up with nice long slices or shorter ones like these, depending on how much you want as your snack. From there, lightly toast the bread on both sides then top with enough jarlsberg to completely cover the bread in a thin layer. Pick some fresh thyme leaves and scatter over the cheese along with some ground black pepper and salt. Grill until the cheese has slightly melted. Wait a moment to cool, unless you live dangerously, slice, and enjoy with a good book.
Optional of course, feel free to add some more flavour under the cheese. Some honey ham to compliment the mild-sweet of the jarlsberg or perhaps some baby spinach to add some green.