Bill's Apple & Rhubarb Pie

Busy, busy day at work today. I felt like I barely had time to turn around. I was so tired mid-afternoon but had a small banana as a pick-me-up and felt much better after that. Even if the banana did cost heaven and earth. We are really starting to feel the effect of of the devastation from cyclone Yasi in far north Queensland. I did even think to look at the price before I bought them and for 4 small bananas it cost $5.70! It was just what I needed though. However next time I think I will need to buy some thing else. While bananas are my preferred fruit I will not pay huge amounts for them.

Speaking of paying large amounts for fruit, I paid an outrageous sum of money for some rhubarb to make this fabulous pie. I love rhubarb and I have some planted in the garden but it just doesn't seem to be doing any good. I hope that it will grow and produce at some stage. The price paid for the rhubarb was worth it for this terrific pie. My grandmother gave me some freshly picked granny smith apples from their tree so I invited them up for dinner a couple of weekends ago. I had planned on making a couple of Bill's recipes on the night but I was unable to get a nice whole fish to do make what I wanted. Plus the pie wouldn't really go with a fish meal. Instead I decided to go with Jamie Oliver's Moorish Pork Chops. They were really nice, except for the fact that I overcooked them slightly and they ended up a bit dry. My grandparents thought they were fine but for me a touch dry. My grandmother was particularly taken with the bean dish that went with them. 

Bill's pie was a big hit too, although the pastry was so crumbly and it fell apart as soon as I looked at it let alone cut it. Plus the edges browned way too much. When I make my regular apple pie, actually most fruit pies, I don't normally cook the filling first. I have always had a lot of success doing it that way. That is the way that my mum always did pies and is the way that my mum's mother did it too. I was curious as to how this one would turn out and I was quite impressed with the results. It tasted so good. My apples were very tart, in fact they were too tart to eat uncooked, if you apples are okay to eat fresh I would probably reduce the amount of sugar a bit. I would also recommend making this pie the day before you want to serve it. I made it on the day and as I said before the pastry was so crumbly but the next day it cut perfectly and didn't fall apart. Definitely much easier to handle the next day. The pastry was also very hard to handle when attempting to roll out. I would definitely recommend rolling out between two pieces of baking paper to make it easier to move it. Over all, this recipe is definitely a keeper. 

Apple & Rhubarb Pie 

Ingredients

• 1kg Granny Smiths, peeled, cored and finely sliced
• juice and zest of 1 lemon
• 50g butter, cut into small pieces
• 300g rhubarb, chopped
• 300g catser sugar
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 1 tspn ground cinnamon
• 1 qty shortcrust pastry (recipe below)
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar for sprinkling

Method:

• Toss the apples with the lemon juice and zest.  
• Melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium heat.  
• Add the apples and cook for 5 minutes, or until softened slightly.  
• Add the rhubarb and the sugar and cook for 1 minute further.  
• Add the flour and cinnamon, stir gently to combine.  Allow to cool.
• Place 2/3 of the pastry between two pieces of baking paper and roll out until 4mm thick.  
• Lightly press into a 23cm pie tin and refrigerate while the filling is cooling.  
• Preheat the oven to 200c.
• Spread the apples & rhubarb evenly in the pie shell.
• Roll out remaining pastry in between baking paper until 4mm thick.  
• Cover pie with rolled pastry. Trim, press edges of the pie firmly together and crimp the outer rim with your fingertips. Cut a couple of holes in the top crust.  
• Sprinkle with caster sugar.  
• Bake the pie for 1 hour or until the crust is golden brown. (Watch closely from about 45 minutes it browns quickly)

Shortcrust Pastry 

Ingredients:

• 4 cups plain flour
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 360g unsalted butter, cubed
• 1/2 cup cream

Method:

• Place flour, icing sugar, salt and butter in food processor and process until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.  
• Add just enough cream for mixture to form a ball.  
• Divide pastry into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap & refrigerate for 30 minutes before using.

Bill's Prawn and Chilli Linguine

I am tired tonight. It was a long day a work and I bought some lasagne for lunch that gave me terrible heartburn so I haven't felt the best this afternoon. Will go back to tuna salad sandwich tomorrow, see I do like some seafood. lol 

Just a quick post of a quick recipe. This was a very quick and easily made dinner. With it I kicked off making some of the seafood recipes in this lovely book. At least this was one where I could easily get all the ingredients. However, I wasn't all that keen on it. The flavours weren't bad but I just found it oily. At first I thought that I could just reduce the amount of oil in the recipe but realised that without all the oil it would be dry. I don't think that I will be making this one again. It is just not to my taste. 

Prawn & Chilli Linguine

Ingredients: 

• 250g linguine
• 4 tablespoons olive oil 
• 10 green prawns, peeled & deveined
• sea salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 small red chillies, finely chopped
• 25g butter
• 50g rocket, washed & dried

Method:

• Cook linguine in rapidly boiling salted water according to packet instructions. Drain well. 
• Heat oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat, add prawns, season with salt & pepper then cook for 1 minute. 
• Add garlic & chillies & cook for another minute. 
• Add butter and reduce heat to low.
• Add the rocket & linguine & toss until pasta is well coated.

Baked Peaches with Vanilla Ice Cream & Caramel Sauce

It is late but I have a headache and ear ache tonight and I just can't sleep so thought I would get another post done. It is hard to believe that it is already March. It really does seem like this year is flying by. I am not sure why as I really haven't been that busy.

There are two things that I have become concerned about with making all of the recipes in Bills Sydney Food. The first is the amount of sweet/dessert recipes there are. There are quite a few sweet breakfasts as well as desserts for both lunch and dinner. I do like dessert but I really don't eat it that often and I am starting to wonder about making all of them before the end of the year. I guess that I will just have to see how I go. The second concern is the amount of seafood recipes in the book and the availability of said seafood to make these dishes. I have said before that I am not overly keen on seafood but I do want to add more of it to my diet. The main problem though is the access. Although I did find out recently that you can order whole fish through one of the local butchers. I may have to try that with a couple of the recipes that use whole fish. I will have to invite people when I do that though as I will definitely need more than one person to eat a whole fish. 

This was a really quick little dessert to make. The sauce wasn't as easy as I first thought that it was going to be but it did work out in the end, I cooled the sugar syrup too much and it hardened when I added the cream. I had to gently reheat it to get it all to melt again but it did eventually work. I really liked the peaches and would definitely do them again but probably would worry about the caramel sauce. 

Baked Peaches with Vanilla Ice Cream & Caramel Sauce

Ingredients 

• 4 peaches, halved and stoned 
• 2 tbsp brown sugar 

Pre-heat oven to 220 C. 

Sprinkle cut side of peaches with sugar and bake for 15 minutes or until soft. 

Cool slightly. 

Caramel sauce

• 3/4 c sugar 
• 1/4 c water
• 3/4 c cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice 

Combine sugar and water in a saucepan over a low heat stirring until sugar has dissolved. 

Bring to a boil and cook, without stirring, until it turns a golden colour. 

Place bottom of saucepan in a sink of cold water to stop the cooking (I don't think I would do this next time). 

Once slightly cooled add cream carefully. When it stops foaming up add lemon juice and stir until smooth.

February 2011 - Chicken, Cashew & Mint Salad

I have been trying to write this blog post, or any blog post, for a couple of days but I just seem to have a bit of writers block at the moment. It is so frustrating when I have so many things to post about. It doesn't help that I am still not feeling very well. I am so tired all the time and cannot seem to concentrate for any length of time. I hope that things pick up soon. I am really sick of not having the energy to do anything. Perhaps when it starts to cool down a bit. I am getting pretty sick of the days being over 30 C. It really seems to have affected me more this year than any other. It is hot and sticky again tonight. It looked so much like it was going to rain all day but nothing has come of it. We really do need so again very soon. I am sure that all the farmers are getting pretty desperate for some too. Unfortunately it never seems to be just right. Things were looking so good last year and then we got so much rain during harvest and which wiped out crops, not we are getting rain to keep the newly seeded crops growing. Can't seem to win. 

I struggled to find something in this issue of Delicious to make. There were plenty of nice looking things, some of the "Aussie" dishes geared towards Australia Day celebrations looked nice but none really caught my fancy. I really wanted to make one of Matthew Evans' recipes. I really like him and what he is doing. The prawns with roasted cauliflower sounded really good but cauliflower isn't in season here yet. I might give it a go when they start to come in though. The picture of the Banana & Macadamia Sour Cream Pie looked so inviting but I just didn't want to make any more sweet things. Since being unwell I seem to have put back on some weight so I am trying to limit the amount of sweets I eat, especially when I don't have people around to eat them. 

In the end I decided to go with the one recipe that really grabbed me, Bill Granger's Prawn, Cashew & Mint salad with Sweet Chilli Dressing. I had been trying to avoid making Bill's recipes from Delicious given that I am already making everything from Sydney Food. However, this really was the one recipe that grabbed. When I went to make it I couldn't get any decent prawns so I decided to make it with chicken instead. It was very nice. The dressing was particularly fantastic. Although I did reduce the amount a bit. I also only used about half of the noodles. I think that the whole 200 g would be way too much. I still ended up getting 2 main meals and 2 lunches out of it so no shortage. I grated the carrot instead of fiddling around with cutting into matchsticks, I think it would have been much better if I had of cut it into matchsticks. After marinading in the rice vinegar the grated carrot seemed to stick together in clumps rather than disperse through the salad well. I would also cut the cabbage a bit more finely. Some of it was find but some was a bit chunky. Overall, it was excellent and I will definitely be making this one again. 

Chicken, Cashew & Mint Salad with Sweet Chilli Dressing

Ingredients 

• 2 tbsp caster sugar 
• 2 tbsp rice vinegar 
• 1 large carrot, cut into matchsticks 
• 100 g dried vermicelli noodles, soaked 
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil 
• 1 chicken breast, cooked and shredded
• 1/4 small red cabbage, shredded 
• Large handful of mint leaves, roughly chopped 
• 1/3 c cashews, lightly toasted, chopped 

Method: 

• Combine sugar, vinegar & carrot and leave to marinate for 20 minutes. 
• Toss noodles with sesame oil. 
• Drain carrot and add to noodles with the chicken meat, cabbage, mint, nuts & dressing (recipe to follow). Toss to combine, then serve. 

 Sweet Chilli Dressing

• 2 tsp chilli paste (or 1 long red chilli finely chopped) 
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 1/4 c caster sugar 
• 1/4 c rice vinegar 
• 2 tbsp lime juice 
• 1 tbsp fish sauce 

Method: 

• Combine chilli, garlic, ginger, sugar and vinegar in a saucepan over a medium heat. 
• Stir until sugar dissolves.
• Simmer until reduced by half. 
• Cool then add lime juice and fish sauce. 
• Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. 

Bill's Ricotta and Tomato Tart

I woke up one morning 5 days ago with a large red mark on my face. It looked rather strange so I got squeezed in at the doctor. She wasn't really sure what it was but thought probably some kind of infection so put me on antibiotics. I ended up having to go home from work early that day. Luckily the next day was Wednesday and my day off work. I was okay in the morning but slept most of the afternoon away. I did manage to work the next day but it looked like it was spreading so I toddled off to the doctor again but she didn't want me to change anything but to come back the next day. By the end of the work day I was completely wrecked and my boss told me not to come in the next day. It was a relief not to have to get up and go to work yesterday. I went back to the doctor. Some of the redness had gone down and there was a clear lump so she thought that perhaps I had been bitten by a spider during the night. No change to the medication, just keep on with it and I should be okay. I, again, slept most of the afternoon away. It has been an unpleasant experience and I am still feeling pretty awful. I hope I am okay by Monday.

This is one of my catching up on things long past made. Part of what I love so much about this cook book is that it is divided up into breakfast, lunch and dinner. Although most of the lunch & dinner recipes can be flipped around easily. I was in the supermarket one day and came across a 1 kg package of fresh ricotta reduced in price and remembering Bill's fabulous looking Ricotta and Tomato Tart I decided to get it and make it. Bill gives a recipe for a rough puff pastry but being short of time and tired on the day I really didn't feel like making pastry so I used some frozen sheets of puff pastry. Since I was using these I decided that it was best to put it all in a pie dish rather than attempting a free-form pie. I really enjoyed this. It was a lot lighter than a traditional quiche but still substantial enough to make a main meal. It would be rather plain without the tomato, I think that the addition of some sautéed onion to the mix would make a real difference. I did actually use the rocket, I decided to put aside my normal aversion to it as I knew that the peppery taste would help. It was lovely hot for dinner but just as good cold for lunch the next day. This one will definitely be going into the rotation for lunches. 

Ricotta and Tomato Tart 

Ingredients 

• 2 medium ripe tomatoes, finely sliced
• 2 c ricotta
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/4 c cream
• 1/4 c finely grated Parmesan
• 1 c rocket, finely shredded

Method:

• Pre-heat oven to 200 C. 
• Line greased pie dish with two sheets of thawed puff pastry, overlapping so completely cover the dish. 
• Mix together ricotta, eggs, cream, parmasean and season with salt and black pepper.
• Fold in the rocket and then spoon mixture into prepared pie shell. 
• Layer the thinly sliced tomatoes over the cheese mixture, overlapping them slightly. 
• Bake for 35-40 minutes (or until crust is golden and middle is set).
• Allow to rest for about 15 minutes before slicing.
• Serve with a green salad.