Cooks Club - April 2014

So it is a little late to be encouraging you head on to participate since it closed about 30 minutes ago. However there is a much loved Taste recipe in that so hopefully we will get some additional pics from those who this is a regular meal in their house.

For the April I decided to take on the the Chicken Satay burgers they are raved about by the people on the forum so I decided that i just needed to join in the fun, They were incredibly easy to make. I didn't realise the sauce needed to cool so. It got put off a day.

I was really pleased with the result. the satay is fabulous and i am sure that it could be used in any number of dishes.

I infact used the leftover chick meat and fashioned them into meatballs, thinned the sauce down with some stock, added vegetable and I had another dinner and lunch meals. I was really impressed with how well this worked.  

April 2014 - Carrot Cake

Okay, so this was really a bit of a cheat. I had recipes marked to try but it just never seemed to happen and it was coming up to the end of the month so I just had to get something done. I wanted something sweet so I decided on the carrot cake. I wanted more of a slice type thing so I cooked it in my slab tin and it was just perfect. I didn't make the candied carrot to go with it nor did I make the carrot and pecan recipe that was also there. I topped it with cream cheese frosting. I really did cheat on this one because I went to buy some cream cheese and there was a tub of ready made cream cheese frosting with a hint of lemon that is put out by Philly. I figured that I would try it out and it is really quite nice. I was surprised actually. I really like the cake, not too sweet and not too oily. Nice and light and moist. I also loved the fact that the carrots were finely grated. When the carrot is coarsely grated it doesn't blend in as nicely. The fine grate blended through perfectly and produced such a lovely crumb. I will always fine grate from now on in fact this will be the go to carrot cake. 

Before I post the recipe I will just say that I want, really really want, to make the Kangaroo kofta with warrigal greens, beetroot and feta. The only reason I didn't is the recipe has "dried native pepperberry" in it and I don't have that. I will get it though and make them. I can't get the warrigal greens either but the recipe gives the substitute as spinach. Once I find the pepperberry I will definitely make it. 

Carrot Cake 

by Valli Little - delicious magazine April 2014

 3 eggs

175 ml sunflower oil (I used rice bran)

180 g brown sugar

3 carrots (finely grated), mine were small so I used 4

180 g self-raising flour
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 c walnuts, chopped (I didn't add)

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease & line 23 cm pan.
Mix eggs, oil & brown sugar. Add carrots & stir to combine.
Mix dry ingredients and add to wet ingredients. Stir until just combined. Add walnuts if using.
Pour into cake pan and bake 35 - 40 min.
(My slab pan was done in 20 min)

March 2014 - Mint & yoghurt ice cream

Okay, so I said that I was going to blog about Jamie Oliver's rhubarb sorbet. I don't know what happened. I did everything just as the recipe but Jamie's was a perfect pink colour and was almost translucent. Even allowing for photo retouching it looked awesome. Well, mine turned into a hideous purple/grey/dark red mass. It was so thick that it didn't really churn and it didn't really taste all that good. I mean if something tastes good, like really good, you can forgive the aesthetics of it but when the taste isn't there well, yes it is just a mass. I have no idea what went wrong. I am rather unhappy about the whole thing as rhubarb is expensive and there are so many other things I could have done with it that I would have loved. 

Anyway, at the same time that I was mixing up the rhubarb sorbet I also did the mix for Debbie Major's Mint & yoghurt ice cream and it was awesome. I basically did the whole thing in the thermomix, which yay me for using it more. I couldn't wait to serve it up so it is still rather soft. I used my cookie scoop to dish it up. It was so refreshing. I had never really thought of using either fresh mint or yoghurt in an ice cream but it was really very good. I have found that after further freezer it that it seems to be a little crumbly it doesn't want to scoop nicely. However, it still tastes wonderful so I am forgive the crumbliness. It still has a lovely mouth feel so I am happy. 

Bake Club - Brownies

This month over on Taste.com.au Bake Club Challenge one of the recipe options is brownies. I was going to a friends place for a bbq one evening so I decided that I would whip up the brownies to take with me. Due to the number of people I made a double batch. It worked really well although too quite a while to cook and wasn't as done as I would have liked in the middle but still pretty good. Everyone at the bbq thought that they were pretty good. I did have some leftover but slowly ate them without taking a photo so, unfortunately, I just had to make them again. lol 

The second time I made them I used my individual brownie pan which is awesome as you get that lovely brownie edge the whole way around. These are wonderful dense, rich and fudgy brownies and destined to be my new favourite brownie recipe. As long as you use a good quality chocolate they are just perfect. I served them with some frozen raspberries that I had thawed and mashed with a little caster sugar and some double cream. 

March 2014 - Lamb & Mint meatball tagine with chermoula

The last couple of issues I have struggled to find something that I have really wanted to make from the issues. Initially I wondered if it was because of changes with delicious magazine however I realised it was more about my apathy for cooking. I have mainly been doing sustenance cooking, mainly pretty boring food that keeps me going. There has also been quite a bit of snackish meals and take away. All in all I had lost my desire to cook. Not surprisingly it has happened at a time when I am quite anxious and stressed in life. The stress and anxiety are still hanging around but I decided that I need to start doing the good things that will make it all easier, eat/sleep/exercise. So, I have been swimming again over the past week. I finally cooked a good meal tonight. Sleep...well... it is usually my downfall but I am trying. 

When looking at this delicious magazine I decided to focus exactly on what was in it. To focus on stuff that is full of flavour and colour or something a bit different. A number of recipes really caught my eye. The first is Jamie Oliver's Rhurbarb sorbet with pistachio brittle. It is just such an unusual combination. I have the mix for the sorbet chilling in the fridge to be churned tomorrow. I am not going to make the brittle. I really hate making toffee things I always burn myself with the bloody stuff. Plus pistachios are insanely expensive. 

I am also really keen on making the Pork belly with caramelised pears and pickled kohlrabi. Now when I first saw this recipe I thought that it would be awesome to make but didn't think that I had any chance of getting kohlrabi here so had pretty much decided that I wouldn't get to make that one. However I walked into the supermarket the other day and there was some kohlrabi and I grabbed on and will make this one on the weekend. 

I decided to start with making the Lamb & mint meatball tagine with chermoula. It was very easy and so very good. It was such a complex meld of flavours but it was just balanced perfectly. I did manage to cook the meatballs a bit long as I didn't get the rice on soon enough but there was enough sauce that it didn't matter. My lamb mince was very lean so I think that they may have been a little dry from that as well. I used my thermomix to make the chermoula. I really haven't been using it very much. Perhaps getting back into cooking can also mean starting to use my thermomix more. I am finding myself forgetting just how easily it can do things and that it is easy to clean. So time to start doing more with it.