aka R’acquel

Tried The Queer Chef’s Harlot Salmon with Bacon Thongs last night. My husband was really thrilled to receive a gourmet meal and devoured his entire portion of it. Nice to try something different, and also go out of my own comfort bubble as I’ve never used salmon before and was turned off from it the first day i smelt one “fresh” out of a tin. I was really suprised by how much better it tasted fresh from the deli. Some parting shots of my feats in the kitchen last night.

Say Cheese (philadelphia, not thrush)! Spices were mashed into philly, then stuffed into a classic Hollywood smile.

Wrapped in bacon and turned back into a fish. Like, grrrrrrr!

Served with home made coleslaw, though my husband calls it “slorr”.

Forgot to wear gloves, but my kitchen soap did a fantastic job of dealing with the afterbreath of handling salmon. I’m going to try this with chicken next time!

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It’s slowly verging towards Newtown Mum’s 4th birthday in May. I found these old photos of the checkerboard cake I made for it’s second birthday which was celebrated at the Newtown Cemetery.

When my brother in law saw this photo this morning, it gave him a sudden craving for chocolate! =D The checkerboard cake has always been an incredible success with the guests, especially upon cutting the cake up because people are expecting a standard old boring cake underneath, but with this sort of cake, - they get a very interesting surprise instead!

The concept came to me via my bargain basement find of the Le Cordon Bleu Dessert Techniques book, which has been an incredible source of inspiration for amazing ways to create incredible looking eye-candy. This one used a combination of vanilla & chocolate cake strips, glued together with raspberry mousse - but the kind of combos that you can do with this idea are endless! You can do a circular version if you have concentric circle cutters in different sizes, but as i don’t have any, it’s far too complex and the standard square or rectangle version is effective enough to make people scream very loudly at the parties anyway!

The recipe for the “glue” is very easy, and can also act as a very simple fruit mousse as well.

Ingredients
450ml sweetened fruit puree - it can be anything!
1tbsp (15g) gelatin
300 ml double cream

Method
1. Dissolve the gelatin into the puree and leave it until it begins to ’set’.

I tend to dissolve it in a small amount of hot water before i add it to the puree and use 2tbsp gelatin to make the glue stronger (the brand i get here just seems to be too weak for the task). You can spice & fire things up with the puree by soaking fruit in flavoured liquour, so do consider the use of more gelatin if you add more liquid into the equation. You can put it in the fridge to speed up the setting process.

2. Beat & bash the cream up (erm…whip it!) until you can make it stand into mountain peaks, then fold the fruit puree into it. It’s consistency should be like butter cream, easy to spread on the cake with a knife so don’t pour all the puree into it if it’s begining to get too runny. You can still glue the cake if it’s a little runny, it just makes the application onto the cake more difficult and messy.

To serve as mousse - put it into nice glass jars or bowls & leave it to set in the fridge.

If you’re using it as glue to put the cake together, construct your cake on a sheet of “Glad Wrap” (what we call the plastic wrapping stuff you use to cover food with over here). Apply the glue to all sides that need to be stuck together. When you finish building it, wrap the plastic around the cake very snuggly and then put it into the fridge to set overnight. You’ll find yourself with a fairly solid lump of checkerboard cake in the morning, ready to dress in any kind of icing or ganache of your choice. If you’ve done a good job with the glue, you’ll get a nice solid slice of cake as you cut it! ;D

I’m a big fan of the chocolate, vanilla & raspberry combo, but would love to see pictures of other combos if anyone dares to try something like this at home. ;D

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The captain saved my life last night, i swear.

DILEMMA: Planned visit to my parent’s place - i must bake something, but i don’t have the time to make a crazy cheesecake like dis ‘an dat! Don’t know what dis ‘an dat means? Then go visit the Irish Church Lady to find out!

LIGHT BULB MOMENT: Mrs.Lifecruiser’s Swedish Cinnamon Buns… perfect!

I swear man, these things rock. You really have to bake them and then feel really guilty for eating far too many of them afterwards. They sure do go nice with the morning coffee tho! {phwoar!}

Actually - i was downstairs working… thinking that i was going to go to bed, until i realised that my kitchen still needed cleaning up and then i faced this risen mound on my kitchen bench forgetting about the Swedish Buns!

They sat on my bench for a few hours and it was about 11C cold last night - so the rising action of the yeast was notably paused!

A few adjustments to the original recipe - i only had about 40g of yeast on me. I put a little more sugar compared to last time. Mrs.Lifecruiser measures her solids in litres so at 150ml - i’m just assuming that i fill my measuring jar with sugar until it reaches the 150ml line. I pumped it up to about 200ml - as the first ones i made could’ve done with a bit more sugar.

The next stupid thing i did was use less butter - 150g - i had that much butter left, so as i’m melting it - i’m thinking,

“Oh shit! There’s not enough nutella so how can i do the cinnamon one without any butter left?!”

So that’s why it ended up with only 100g of fat in it. I was scared it would’ve ruined the recipe, but it didn’t!

So - facing the need to address the dough when i needed to go to sleep!

My son asked if he could help me make them, and this is what he did straight after he asked that question…

It was thankfully a very discreet lick, barely touching the dough. *lol*

I clearly didn’t have enough Nutella for the job, but i smeared all the remaining contents of the jar anyway. Then i pulled out the blackberry jam and smeared heaps of it on top! Why not? Maybe it could work! (and it did!)

Last time, i didn’t manage to make as many buns as Mrs.Lifecruiser could, so it made me wonder if i rolled the dough the wrong way. Instead of up & down, i did it sideways, so i could get a longer sausage! I managed 15 from half of the dough, the other half is still in my fridge.

The dilemma of the cold dough was solved by tossing this lot into the oven while it was heating up, just to warm it up a bit and it helped to puff them up when i took it out of the oven!

This time, when i put them into the oven to bake them - i stood in front of the oven to WATCH it, beause my first trial - i didn’t believe these things could cook in 5-10 minutes and nearly burnt them. It actually took about 12 minutes to get them just-right for the second round - but my oven was at about 220C (as i was in such a rush to go to bed!)

The bowl just had to be in the shape of a boat huh?

Our car breaks down, so no trip to my folks place and there’s only 3 buns left at the moment. I guess they’ll just have to go down well with the morning coffee tomorrow!

UPDATE: …only one left for tomorrow morning!

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A delightful pasta dish, which i knabbed from my darlin’ mother in law one Christmas. Another quick ‘throw together’ number. This is prone to being a little too heavy on the waist if you allow it, but this variant of the recipe has cut back on the fat content considerably. We’ve ruled out the use of pasta as a staple meal here, but it’s nice to cook this one up, every once in a blue moon.

recipe serves about 2 adults & 1 child as a main, or 4 people as a side.

INGREDIENTS
25g butter
60g slithered almonds
6 pieces of bacon diced (that fat round part without the fat)
100ml lite cream
1/2 bunch basil, chopped or torn
4-6 stalks of spring onion, finely chopped
166.666g pasta (1/3 of a 500g packet =P)
parmesan cheese (optional)

METHOD
1. Boil pasta, drain & set aside.
2. Brown almond slithers in butter on moderate heat - be careful not to burn them as the cooking process can continue even when you pull the pot away from the stove. Pull away from heat as they start to tan - then gently heat until browned & set aside.
3. Cook bacon (preferably in a nonstick pan) until crispy, set aside to drain on paper towel
4. Toss & stir almonds, bacon, basil, spring onions & cream into the pasta & serve. Add parmesan cheese if you wish.

This is usually served cold for Christmas. Add ingredients to cold pasta just before serving, to preserve the “crunch” factor. The cream may be replaced with the use of a light white sauce instead.

Afiyet Olsun!

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One of those long-time recipes that mum always used to cook. It’s one of those meals that always gives us a great zing & physical ‘high’ - also fantastic to eat during times of sickness with colds & flu too. What i love about this meal, is how it has a way of saying,

“Enjoy the balance as the lemon sings, I am at peace.”

INGREDIENTS
* 4-6 chicken drumsticks (legs) - fatty skin taken off
[NB - Chicken legs must be used for this recipe. No other piece of the chicken seems to make the soup taste this good.]
* 3 L water? (enough to cover the legs in a large pot)
* a good handful of rosinni pasta or noodles
[NB - rosinni is a style of pasta that looks like small pieces of rice]
* squeezed juice of 1 lemon
* salt/pepper to taste

METHOD
1. Toss legs into a large pot, fill with water, throw in a big pinch of salt.
2. Boil for 30-60minutes, until water reduces down to a level to serve the family. The longer you boil, the better - the meat should fall off the bone very easily.
3. Remove legs from the pot, pull off the meat and set aside in a bowl.
4. Taste test here for salt, add pepper, add rosinni or noodles. If there’s not enough ’soup’ and you’ve boiled it down too much, you can add more water here.
5. Cook until the rossini or noodles are done.
6. Add lemon juice, allow it to stir in & serve!

The juice on it’s own makes a fantastic stock and can be set aside in the freezer for later use

Afiyet Olsun!

How do i translate this Turkish title?

KIRMIZI - means the colour red
Biberli - hot? with a pepper?
yogurt - yoghurt. As for it’s pronounciation - the “soft G” has always been tricky for me to explain. Just try to pronounce the word “yoghurt” without the “GH” in the middle of it - i think that will be close. lol

Red Hot(with peppered) Yoghurt Recipe? I guess that’s close enough but my family refers to this dish as “Spag Yog”. An abbreviation of spaghetti with yoghurt, though we usually use macaroni for the meal.

The ‘heat’ in this dish is the Garlic… and i love that spice with yoghurt all the time. If there is any pepper involved in this, it’s the red paprika. I believe this sauce is used in the Iskender Kebab in particular, but i learnt the use of this with pasta from my mother.

Ok, time for the sexy picture - because I always prefer seeing sexy pictures when i look up recipes.

I didn’t enjoy this meal as a kid at all - but these days, i love it. This is always a great health-boosting meal for us that gives a great “kick”.

INGREDIENTS

- 4-6 cloves garlic, crushed/minced
- 500g natural yoghurt (i enjoy Dairy Farmers or Pauls low fat varieties)
- 500g pasta/spaghetti
- 1tb salt
- 25g butter (a knob)
- 1 tb paprika

METHOD

1. Yoghurt Sauce - crush garlic & mix it well into the tub of yoghurt - set aside in the fridge. (The longer you keep this mix in the fridge, the flavour of the garlic infuses more deeply into the yoghurt.)

2. Boil pasta with salt - it’s important that the pasta has that salty bite to it rather than just plain.

3. When the pasta has been boiled, drain and then serve into bowls.

4. Spoon garlic+yoghurt mix onto the pasta.

5. Paprika Sauce - melt butter in a seperate pan and then add the paprika. The paprika will begin to foam up, and this is when you must remove the pan away from the heat ASAP (before it burns, otherwise the paprika will taste too bitter if it burns)

6. Pour the butter/paprika over the yoghurt over the bowls as pictured in the photo above.

Enjoy, but please be careful of eating something like this before a very hot date you plan to kiss (unless they enjoy the garlic breath)!

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Thanks to Mrs.Lifecruiser for the recipe. My mouth was watering when i first read about these and it was a pleasure to try and create it in my kitchen.

At first, i was curious to see just how much this dough would rise. It’s the most amount of yeast i’ve ever used in my entire life!

I was impressed after the first 30mnutes, thought i’d let it go until the full 40min and this is what happened.

My son had fun helping me punch this big fat mushroom.

For the first one, i did the cinnamon filling.

The second one, i thought it would be cool to try out the hazelnut filling suggestion - so i used nutella.

Here’s what they looked like before the oven. I couldn’t believe they would take only 5-10minutes to cook and almost burnt them! Pulled out of the oven in the nick of time!

 

Cinnamon.

 

Nutella.

Slightly over-cooked i think. Looking forward to next time with sultana, apple, cinnamon & custard filling

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