More Bill

Another Bill Granger recipe, this time, a most delicious pudding. We had friends over for dinner on Saturday night and I wanted to make a pudding that was easy but delicious. My favourite puddings are actually the old fashioned kind like chocolate self saucing and apple crumble, so I had a look through some books and found Bill’s recipe for Banana Butterscotch Pudding – a sort of banana and caramel self saucing pudding.

For the main we had roast chicken which I had butterflied by cutting down either side of the backbone to remove it, then spreading the chicken flat. If you’re not fussed about stuffing this is the best way to roast a chicken (this is actually the first time I have done it) as it only takes an hour and you get a really juicy, succulent bird. I rubbed the flesh and with a mixture of cayenne pepper, salt and ground cumin. I served it with a chickpea and baby spinach salad with a yoghurt dressing and rice pilaf.

The pudding really complimented the main. I actually found the pudding to improve a bit on sitting, as the caramel sauce firmed up a bit. This is a very quick and easy dessert to prepare and was great to be able to pop into the oven as soon as the chicken came out. I served it with thickened cream, but it would be great with ice cream. You can find the recipe here.

Steamed Puddings with Caramel Sauce

We have been on dinner party overload at our house of late. I guess after 8 months of not having anyone over, and then lots of friends wanting to come to see our new house, it’s a probable outcome. The pudding pictured above was one had when friends were over a couple of weeks ago.

For nibbles when they arrived, I had marinated some olives, had a dish of salted mixed nuts and made a delicious pea and feta dip which we had with mini grissini. I was actually a bit disappointed with the main, which was another recipe from Dish – chicken pieces stuffed with Italian sausage and cooked in a tomato and onion sauce, with crispy roast potatoes and a green salad. The chicken was nice for an everyday meal but didn’t seem quite special enough for a dinner party.

Pudding was very yummy though. The pudding was pumpkin and chocolate individual steamed puddings with a caramel sauce. The recipe is a Julie Le Clerc one that I pulled out of your home and garden magazine when she was the food editor (which tells you how long I have held onto the recipe for – it must be at least 8 years I think!). I love pumpkin, chocolate, steamed pudding and caramel all on their own, so the combination was going to be a great one for me and it was.

The puddings used steamed, mashed pumpkin which keeps the puddings very moist. The highlight for me was the caramel sauce – I love caramel anything and I eventually had to throw the rest of the sauce out as I kept going back to the fridge and dipping my spoon in!!

Pumpkin & Chocolate Puddings with Caramel Sauce (adapted from a Julie Le Clerc recipe – makes 6)

1/3 c rice bran oil
1/3 c raw sugar
1 egg
¾ c mashed pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp each baking powder and baking soda
¼ c wholewheat flour
½ c plain flour
½ c chopped dark chocolate

• Beat oil and sugar together, then beat in egg until thick and pale.
• Mix in pumpkin, vanilla and spices and then dry ingredients and lastly the chocolate.
• Spoon into 6 greased ramekins and bake for 25-30 minutes at 170c or until a sharp knife comes out clean
• Serve with the following caramel sauce:

100g butte
½ c cream
1 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla

• Combine ingredients in a small saucepan and stir over a gentle heat until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves
• Increase heat and boil for two minutes or until syrupy

Dinner Party Delights

Our first dinner party in our new house was a couple of weeks ago. It was a pretty casual affair – my two youngest sisters were up from Napier for the weekend, so it was us, them, one of their boyfriend’s and a young friend from work and her boyfriend who are about the same age as my youngest sister. We have just had our dining room chairs re-covered in a gorgeous bright turquoise fabric, so this was the first time sitting on those as well.

My youngest sister organised nibbles. The main was a roast of beef which I rubbed with dried mustard powder, salt and pepper before roasting. With that we had a yummy roast pumpkin and baby spinach salad with a tahini and yoghurt dressing and cous cous studded with dried cranberries, pine nuts, almonds and chopped coriander.

Pudding was my favourite part though. It was the tart pictured above, a caramel berry crumble tart. This pudding encompassed some of my favourite things – raspberries, caramel and crumble. Yum! The recipe is one that I pulled out of Delicious magazine a very long time ago. I can’t remember the writer whose recipe it is – other than that she is a Scottish lady called Sue someone. I did adapt the recipe slightly, making my own caramel rather than using store bought (I did this by microwaving in small bursts, ½ a tin of condensed milk, 1 tbsp each of brown sugar and golden syrup and about 25g butter), and using raspberries rather then the brambles specified in the recipe (I don’t think you can get those here). When I make this again (and I will as it was so delicious) I would use brown sugar rather than raw sugar, as the raw sugar granules were a bit big and left the texture of the crumble a little crunchy I thought.

Oh, and here is a sneak preview of our not quite finished kitchen. Still waiting on a few things to complete it, but it is so functional – I am loving it!!



If you love berries, caramel and crumble as much as I do, this is a must try recipe.

Caramel Berry Crumble Tart

• Line a tart tin with your favourite shortcrust pastry recipe (you don’t need to pre-cook the tart shell)
• Fill with 300g dulche de leuche (or use my caramel recipe above, cooled)
• Scatter over 1 cup berries of your choice (I used frozen and they were fine)
• Top with crumble made with 75g flour, 50g rolled oats, 75g raw sugar (I would use brown next time) with 75g butter rubbed in
• Bake at 180c for 35-40 minutes until golden

The yummiest pudding

Wednesday was my husband’s birthday. I normally make him a cake, but this year with one thing and another I didn’t – he did say he didn’t want one, but that is no excuse! He also wanted me to cook his favourite meal rather than go out for dinner, so we had nibbles of smoked mussels with fabulous bread and oil, a main of pork fillet with a roast vegetable salad of kumara, red onions, carrots and baby spinach, with roasted apples and pudding was his favourite apple crumble.



I wanted to make the apple crumble a little bit special, and a while ago I found this Rachel Allen recipe for toffee, apple and almond crumble. You make a caramel sauce which you mix in with the apples, then top with a buttery, almondy crumble topping. Absolutely delicious. I love apple crumble too – but I like the crumble far more than the apple part, not being a huge lover of stewed fruit! Caramel sauce was a great addition too. The last time I made fruit crumble, I followed Annabel Langbein’s advice to make double the crumble mixture and freeze half for another time. But I ended up throwing the frozen half out, as I couldn’t stop myself from going to the freezer and eating the frozen, raw crumble mixture.

This toffee apple pudding is possible one of the most delicious puddings I have ever tasted. I really do recommend it. We had it with yoghurt which was fabulous. Cream would also be good. You can find the recipe for the toffee apple crumble here.

A steamed pudding to start Winter

It’s always nice to have pudding when you have people staying. It seems to make the occasion of eating dinner, more of an event. So most nights while my in-laws have been here, we have had pudding (we ate the TWD tiramisu cake for a couple of nights!). On Wednesday night I made meatballs with a tamarind sauce and pilaf from Bill Granger’s latest book which I treated myself to earlier in the week. I love Bill’s food – it is easy to prepare, simple and fresh, but still has Wow factor. The meatballs were great and the tamarind gave a lovely sharpness to the sauce.

I wanted to make something quick for pudding and looking through my recipe box, I spotted a recipe for golden syrup steamed pudding that I had ripped out of a Delicious magazine quite a while ago. The recipe comes from John Burton Race, a celebrity chef who I don’t really know a lot about. It is an incredibly easy recipe to prepare quickly (it took me about 5 minutes max to put it together). If you don’t have golden syrup, you could use treacle or honey. I don’t think I would use molasses as that would be too strong. Golden syrup is a pantry staple in New Zealand though, and golden syrup steamed pudding is a good old kiwi favourite.

I made four individual puddings using this recipe, and I didn’t bother properly steaming the puddings in a bain marie like I would if I had more time. They still worked perfectly.

Golden Syrup Steamed Pudding (adapted from John Burton Race in Delicious Magazine)

4 dsp golden syrup
175g self raising flour
75g butter
50g sugar
Zest of one lemon
1 egg
100ml milk

• Combine sugar, flour and lemon zest. Rub in butter (I find the best way to do this is to grate the butter into the flour).
• Combine the milk and egg and then mix into the butter and flour mixture
• Grease 4 small pudding ramekins and pop a dsp of golden syrup into each. Evenly divide the pudding mixture between the two ramekins. Cover the tops loosely with tin foil.
• Pop on a tray into a pre-heated oven at 180c and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
• Invert onto serving plates (I slip a pallet knife round them first to loosen) and served with whipped cream or ice cream

Catching up woth Dorie....

I think I only have about 5 recipes to make that either were made before I joined Tuesdays With Dorie, or where I have missed a challenge (I have missed three challenges over the 8 months I have been a member). I made one of these recipes, hidden berry cream cheese torte, on Saturday when my cousin and his young family came for a bbq. Our current accommodation is pretty small and doesn’t really lend itself to entertaining, but we did manage to fit everyone in for a bbq.

The bbq was pretty simple – marinated steak, a beetroot and bulghar wheat salad and an asparagus, avocado, almond and spinach salad with a raspberry dressing, then the torte for pudding. The torte is like a light cheesecake – a lovely shortbread style base covered with thick jam (I used my own home made blackberry) and a cheesecake topping which is lightened by the addition of cottage cheese. I made 2/3 of the recipe and made it in a rectangular tart tin. I didn’t need all the cheesecake filling, so I poured that into a small ramekin and baked it. It was delicious.

The torte was yummy – even my cousin’s two year old son had a piece. I served it with whipped cream, but as I took the photo of the torte the next morning, the cream looks a bit over whipped – it wasn’t at the time.

Almond and Jam Tart

Yet another posting about my in-laws stay! I never make pudding when it is just the two of us, but when we have people to stay, I always like to make the effort and my in-laws loved this tart! I made this for pudding on Saturday night.

For our main we had roast free range chicken with an Israeli cous cous salad (Israeli cous cous mixed with fresh herbs, chopped preserved lemon and chopped almonds) and an asparagus (yes, it’s that time of year again!!), baby spinach, blue cheese and pecan salad. My in-laws are in their 60s and so are of the meat and three veg generation – I always like to make them something that I don’t think that they would usually have at home – hence the introduction to Israeli cous cous.

Pudding was of the more traditional variety – an almond and jam tart. I adapted a recipe which was published in Donna Hay magazine about a year ago. The tart is a short crust base (you could use store bought, but I used some sweet shortcrust pastry which I had in the freezer left over from a Dorie Greenspan recipe) with an almond frangipane filling, topped with jam and then more pastry. I used my pastry wheel to cut strips of pastry for the topping which looked quite nice. I made the tart in a rectangular loose bottom tart tin.

The jam I used was some home made blueberry and apple jam which I made last year, but you could use any – raspberry would be nice as would plum. The tart was delicious warm served with whipped cream, but was equally nice the next day for morning tea.

Almond and Jam Tart (adapted from Donna Hay magazine)

Shortcrust pastry to line the tart tin
1 c ground almonds
¼ c sugar
½ c flour
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
75g melted butter
1 c jam of your choice
beaten egg yolk and raw sugar for sprinkling

· Roll out ¾ pastry to line a 15x30cm tart tin
· Combine ground almonds, sugar, flour, egg, vanilla and melted butter and spread over tart base.
· Bake at 180c for 15 minutes or until golden
· Spread jam over almond mixture, roll out rest of pastry and cut into strips or shapes and place over top of jam
Paint beaten egg yolk over the pastry and sprinkle with raw sugar

Friends for Dinner

At Christmas time we were given two hams on the bone. We used one over Christmas and put the other one in the freezer. We remembered about it a few weeks ago and so thought we better have some friends over for dinner to eat it up. We did that last weekend.

The guests bought nibbles, but I also opened a jar of olives and made some roasted spiced nuts to snack on as pre-dinner nibbles. I simply tossed some raw mixed nuts (walnuts, pecans, almonds and brazil nuts) with some tumeric, cumin powder, salt a little oil and my secret ingredient of about ½ tbsp of brown sugar. You then roast them in the oven at 180c for about 12-15 minutes. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.

I studded them ham with cloves and glazed it with a mixture of marmalade, brandy and orange zest and juice. It was delicious. My mum has always glazed our Christmas ham with pineapple juice and brown sugar, but I really liked the tang of the marmalade glaze. We had the ham with a delicious roast pumpkin, orange and hazelnut salad (tossed through greens) and cous cous to which I added roasted cashew nuts, almonds, drained chickpeas, fresh herbs, sliced roasted red peppers and some ground cumin. Cous cous is great for entertaining as it doesn’t have to be piping hot when you serve it – room temperature is better.



Pudding was delicious. I made the plum and cardamom steamed puddings pictured above. The recipe was a Ray McVinnie recipe from Cuisine. I made the puddings in individual ramekins. You put a spoon of plum jam and some drained, canned plums in the base and then made a cardamom and ground almond sponge to go on top. They were served with orange custard which was flavoured with orange zest and orange blossom water. I also served whipped cream on the side. I made the full recipe and I got 10 mini puddings, so you could easily just make 2/3 of the recipe. When I make individual steamed puddings, I put them in a roasting dish, pour boiling water to come about half way up the sides and then put tin foil over the whole dish (spray the tin foil with an oil spray) and put in the oven for about 25 minutes.

If you love steamed pudding you need to make these as they are one of the nicest I have made. They freeze really well too – just cover well with gladwrap and pop in the freezer. They defrost successfully in the microwave. Find the recipe here.

Dinner for Foodie Friend

In the weekend one of my law school friends was up from Wellington and came over for dinner on Saturday night. Susan is a fellow “foodie” and so of course I felt a bit of pressure to perform!! I wanted to make something fairly simple but tasty. I decided to go with chicken and then gave my husband four options to pick from for dessert.



We started with nibbles. I mentioned last week that at the food show I bought some natural, coloured olives. I put these in a bowl and served them alongside some mini wholemeal scones (which I had made a month or so ago and frozen – I re-toasted them in the oven to give them that “just came out of the oven” crispness) topped with quince jelly (home made of course!) and blue cheese. I thought the olives were nice but my husband (in front of our guest!) proclaimed that he didn’t think the olives were all that great. Thanks!



For our main I used a recipe from Dish magazine for pistachio stuffed chicken with lentil salad. This was chicken marylands (ie the thigh and drumstick) filled with a stuffing of good quality chicken sausages mixed with pistachio nuts and herbs, rolled and wrapped in streaky bacon. My butcher kindly cut up some marylands for me, but didn’t completely take out the thigh bone. My husband is actually a butcher by trade (he hasn’t worked as one since before I met him, but a butcher is certainly a handy person to have around!), so I was waiting for him to come and bone the rest of the chicken for me. He was also in the process of dismantling our garage (yes, our new house starts soon!) and I couldn’t wait any longer, so boned the chicken myself. I followed the bone as my husband told me to do and I did a pretty good job!

The chicken was great – the green chunks of the pistachios really made it! And it was perfect with the lentil salad (puy lentils with tomato, herbs and a vinaigrette) and green beans.

As I said, pudding was my husband’s choice – he wanted something chocolatey and chose Julie Le Clerc’s jaffa puddings. These little chocolate and orange puddings were delicious and very rich! I used 72% chocolate and dutched cocoa which I really think added to the intensity! I actually scaled down the recipe to ¾ of the original and still got 6 decent sized puddings. The puddings were meant to be served with a jaffa sauce of chocolate, cream and cointreau, but they seemed rich enough by themselves. Instead I served them with candied oranges which I made last year – very thinly sliced oranges cooked in a vanilla sugar syrup. Provided you keep them in a sterilised, well sealed jar in the fridge, they will keep forever. I think these are one of my favourite puddings.



Jaffa Puddings (from the Julie Le Clerc magazine – I made ¾ of this recipe to get 6 ramekins)

150g butter
200g dark chocolate
1/3 c cocoa
1 1/3 c brown sugar
zest and juice of one orange
1 c ground almonds
4 eggs, separated

· Melt chocolate and butter together
· Stir together cocoa, brown sugar, zest and juice, ground almonds and egg yolks
· Stir in chocolate mixture
· Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, then gently fold into chocolate mixture
Spoon into greased ramekins and bake at 160c for 25-30 minutes until firm.

mid winter dinner party

When Mum and Dad were here last week we had friends over for dinner. It was a week night so I did a roast of sirloin which is always nice and easy to prepare and cook. I rubbed it with a mix of horseradish and balsamic before roasting for about 50 minutes.

I served it with cous cous and green beans. A lot of people find cous cous bland, but if you dress it up right, it is delicious. I added cubes of roasted pumpkin to mine as well toasted, slivered almonds. I also added a teaspoon of cinnamon, lots of lemon zest and juice and a drizzle of good olive oil. I always season cous cous well – it can take quite a lot of salt (I always use sea salt).

For pudding we had individual golden syrup and raspberry steamed puddings. The recipe comes from Dish magazine. These puddings are lovely and light. They have the juice and zest of a lime which gives a zingy contrast to the sweetness of the golden syrup. The raspberries add a little interest, but unfortunately mine turned a dark colour so didn’t have the vivid red of raspberries as a contrast. I also forgot to fold the extra raspberries into the pudding batter, but they still tasted good. Having your own little pudding is a great thing at a dinner party – it means know worries in cutting up a pudding evenly and does look like you have gone to a little more effort, whether or not that is true! And, golden syrup steamed pudding is a real old fashioned favourite that just about everyone enjoys!!

Steamed Golden Syrup and Raspberry Puddings (from Dish magazine)

100g butter
100g sugar
2 eggs
zest and juice of 1 lime
1/3 c plain yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla
175g self raising flour
3 c frozen raspberries
6 tbsp golden syrup

· Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time
· Stir in lime zest and juice, yoghurt and vanilla
· Gently fold in the dry ingredients and 2 cups of raspberries.
· Spoon 1 tbsp golden syrup into each of 6 greased ramekins. Top with a few of the remaining raspberries and then divide batter between ramekins
· Place greased foil over the top of each ramekin, place in a roasting dish and fill with enough boiling water to come half way up the sides of the ramekins
· Bake at 200c for 25-35 minutes until firm
To serve, run a knife around each pudding and up-end onto a serving plate

Warming Winter Dinner

My brother in law and his girlfriend came to stay on Sunday night. It’s great to have a valid opportunity to make pudding! I hadn’t really thought about nibbles, so quickly made a dip using half a bottle of marinated artichoke hearts, cannellini beans, lemon juice, parmesan and basil leaves. We had that with some little crispbread crackers and wine while I got on with making dinner.

For the main I roasted a beautiful free range chicken. I stuffed it with a mixture of bulghur wheat, olives, walnuts and sage. We had it with a simple rice pilaf flavoured with white wine and bay, a spinach and red pepper salad and wee mini pumpkins which I cut in half and roasted with a mix of maple syrup, walnuts and pine nuts in the cavity (adapted from a recipe in the Autumn Donna Hay magazine). I love pumpkin and the maple syrup and nuts were the perfect accompaniment.

Pudding was these little apricot and ginger caramel puddings. The recipe is from Taste magazine and you can find it here. The puddings are almost like little steamed puddings – there is a fudgy caramel sauce with dried apricots and crystallised ginger in the bottom (or on top once turned out) and then a caramel flavoured sponge. I made 8 little puddings from the recipe and have frozen half of them. We had them whipped cream. It’s not often that I find something a bit sweet, but I did find the caramel in the bottom very sweet and a bit sugary. I don’t think that I stirred the caramel enough to help the sugar properly dissolve, so if you are going to make them, make sure the sugar is dissolved before spooning your caramel into your basins.

This was a great menu for a cold winter’s night.

TWD - Mixed Berry Cobbler

The TWD recipe this week of mixed berry cobbler was picked by Beth of Our Sweet Life. I have never made cobbler before. In NZ we tend to make crumbles rather than cobblers. I had read on the comments that some of the TWDers thought the recipe too bland, so I kept that in mind when making it.



I decided to make only 1/3 of the recipe which worked quite well. I made it in a small ceramic dish, using frozen blueberries and raspberries as the base. Dividing the recipe by 3 meant that there was only 1 tbsp of sugar in the topping. Bearing in mind the comments that it wasn’t sweet enough, I added another tbsp of sugar, effectively doubling the sugar in the topping. I cooked the pudding for about 25 minutes.



I really liked the pudding. I ate mine with thickened cream. It was delicious straight out of the oven when the topping was lovely and crunchy. I tried a spoonful from the fridge this morning, but it didn’t taste as good as cold crumble. I am not sure that I am a cobbler convertee, but it was nice for a change. See what the other TWDers thought here.



Following on from yesterday, today’s Rockin’ Girl Blogger award goes to a fellow TWDer, Stephanie of A Whisk and Spoon. Stephanie is my blogging idol! She writes fabulously, is a great cook and takes the most awesome photos. Thanks for being so inspiring Stephanie!

Winter Dinner Party

On Saturday night we had friends over for dinner. While it doesn’t get all that cold in Auckland, sometimes it is nice to have a real heart warming dinner, so that was my theme for the meal – a real winter warmer. For nibbles we had the gruyere gougeres that I mentioned earlier in the week, together with olives which I roasted with some orange peel, garlic and cumin and fennel seeds.

The main was a delicious beef casserole. I marinated the beef in red wine, garlic and bay leaves overnight, then slow cooked it, adding olives, thick carrot slices and baby onions in the last 45 minutes. We had it with agria potatoes, baked, smashed a little, drizzled with oil and balsamic vinegar and baked a little longer (idea from the Julie Le Clerc magazine) and green beans. I am not a huge red meat eater, but the little onions slow cooked in the red wine gravy were just delicious!

I am sorry about the dreadful photo of pudding, but it was just too good not to blog about. Pudding was a macadamia and golden syrup pudding with dulche de leuche ice-cream. The macadamia pudding recipe came from Dish magazine and the ice-cream is a Belinda Jeffrey recipe that was published in Delicious magazine. This was so good! I love steamed pudding and the macadamia slice had that steamed pudding taste but is conveniently baked in a cake tin. You make a caramel sauce, put it in the bottom of the cake tin, sprinkle with macadamias and then top with a golden syrup sponge. Yum!

The ice-cream was the first ice-cream I have made in my ice-cream maker that didn’t require an egg based custard. It is basically milk and cream with dulche de leuche stirred through, then processed and frozen. When a recipe calls for dulche de leuche I usually buy a can of caramelised condensed milk. This time the supermarket didn’t have any, so I boiled a tin of condensed milk for 2 hours – I forgot how much more delicious than the store bought stuff! The flavour of the ice-cream went perfectly with the pudding!

Macadamia Toffee Pudding (Dish magazine)

1 c demeara sugar
¼ c water
100g macadamia nuts, copped
115g butter
½ c sugar
½ c golden syrup
2 eggs
½ tsp vanilla
1 ½ c flour
1 tsp baking powder

· Combine demeara sugar and water over low heat, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes
· Pour toffee over base of lined 24cm square cake tin and sprinkle with macadamia nuts
· Cream butter and sugar, then add golden syrup and eggs one at a time
· Stir in the vanilla and dry ingredients
· Spoon pudding over toffee and bake at 180c for 25 minutes or until cooked through
Invert plate over cake tin and gently lift pan from the cake as soon as it is out of the oven

Quince Puddings

Last week we had friends over for dinner. Mid-week entertaining can be hard as you only have limited time to prepare. Some things you can prepare in advance, but it is good to have something that can cook in less than an hour. I had made a yoghurt and herb dip the night before which we had with pita crisps for nibbles. Our main was a boned lamb roast which I stuffed with a mixture of breadcrumbs, mint, pine nuts, dried apricots and cinnamon. We had it with cous cous and a really yummy salad which was rocket leaves, peas, mint leaves and feta with a honey, lemon juice and olive oil dressing tossed through.



Pudding was these little quince sponge puddings. They were so yummy. I made individual serves, as I think it is an easy way of making a simple dessert look as though you have gone to a bit more effort. The sponge in this pudding is more like steam pudding than the lighter fruit sponge Mum used to make from the Edmonds book. Instead of quince you could use any canned or bottled fruit – Black Doris Plums would be nice. I served the puddings with whipped cream and quince syrup but custard would also be nice.



Quince Puddings

125g butter
2/3 c sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tsp vanilla paste
1 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp mixed spice
1 ½ c cooked fruit and ½ c syrup

· Cream butter and sugar; mix in egg and then rest of ingredients
· Spoon fruit and some of its syrup into 6 greased ramekins
Spoon sponge mixture over fruit and bake for 20 minutes at 180c

Old Friends for Dinner

At Savour last week I bumped into an old friend. Hilary ran (and still does run) the kitchen in the hostel where I lived in my first year at university at Otago and where I was a kitchen hand for the 5 years that I was there. She was also a good friend of my aunty who died nearly nine years ago. I hadn’t seen Hilary since the funeral and it was so wonderful to see her. I asked her and her husband to come to our house for dinner on Saturday night. I wanted to make something delicious for the person who had been responsible for feeding me all those years ago!



I started with a cheese platter – not something I normally do for nibbles. I had been given a bag of guavas and had made guava jelly in the afternoon and it seemed the perfect thing to go with blue cheese. I bought a wedge of Danish blue and it went on the platter with brie, emmental from the new Kaimai cheese factory, the guava jelly and fig and almond preserve that I had made earlier in the year. I also made some mini oat scones and had those with crackers. It was a lovely cheese board and I was right – the guava jelly went perfectly with the blue cheese!

The main was roast sirloin with a red wine and onion sauce. I know I seem to cook a lot of roast beef when we have guests, but we have access to export quality sirloin, so there is always plenty in the freezer. This time I served it with soft polenta with parmesan and a rocket salad tossed with toasted almonds, slices persimmon, avocado and a lemon honey mustard dressing. It was great!



Dessert was the piece de resistance however. You may recall that I bottled some quinces a couple of months ago. I opened them on Saturday and made the most delicious quince and frangipane tart which is a Natalia Schamroth recipe from Cuisine. You can get the recipe here. The tart was divine – a lovely crisp pastry shell filled with almond frangipane and the quince. I served it with thickened cream and quince glaze. Quince glaze is something I have made in the past and bottled. It is basically a thick quince syrup using the whole quince fruit and sugar. You strain the liquid off the cooked quince and bottle it. It is delicious as a sauce to go with pudding or used to glaze a chicken etc. This tart was so yummy. You could use other preserved or canned fruit such as plums or apricots in place of the quince. We enjoyed our catch up and our meal.



I have also been awarded the yummy blog award from cakelaw – another foodie lawyer! Thanks so much cakelaw – it is a complete honour and I am delighted you enjoy my blog. I also have to pass this award onto four other food bloggers. It is hard to pick only four as there are so many that continue to inspire me, but I pass this on to:

Steph from A Whisk and Spoon – I am so inspired by Steph’s perfect baking and amazing photos. She is a real inspiration!

Rebecca from Ezra Pound Cake – Rebecca’s food is yummy and her writing style is just lovely – funny and readable

Anne from Simply Anne’s – Anne’s attention to detail is amazing! I wish I had her patience and skill

Rebekka from Maple Sugar Desserts – Rebekka makes and decorates the most beautiful looking cakes. I would love a one on one lesson from her!!!

A Taste of Yellow!

Barbara from Winos and Foodies is hosting an annual LIVE STRONG with a taste of yellow blog challenge. The idea is to create something yellow and blog about in order to celebrate those who have battled and are battling with cancer. Live Strong is promoted by Lance Armstrong who of course, had his own battle with cancer. Incidentally I saw him when we followed a bit of the tour de France in 2004. He is a machine!!

My aunty is actually battling cancer at the moment, but so far it looks like a successful battle!! She is just about to finish her chemo and the outlook is good!! Aunty Margaret lives in Dunedin, so she couldn’t get to eat the yellow food, but this blog entry is dedicated to her!

I debated for a while as to what to make for the taste of yellow challenge. Something lemony seemed obvious and we were having friends over for dinner on Saturday night, so I thought a lemony pudding would be good. Also, I wanted to use my ice cream maker again, so the perfect option was this lemon rice pudding with cinnamon ice-cream, a Ray McVinnie recipe from Cuisine.

For nibbles we had some lovely ciabatta with olive oil and pesto (store bought, Naked Organics brand – I love it!), some green olives I had roasted and marinated and little pastries using the one sheet of puff pastry I had left in the freezer, topped with quince paste and blue cheese.

For the main, I rubbed a large piece of Scotch fillet with balsamic vinegar and horseradish and roasted it in the oven and served it with red wine sauce, little crunchy roast potatoes (trick to these was using Agria potatoes – my favourite floury variety, lots of chopped rosemary and a sprinkling of semolina which gave a lovely crusty outside) and a rocket salad with spiced nuts, apple and a drizzle of walnut oil.



Then for the yellow food! Pudding was delicious. The rice pudding was a baked one and had lots of lemon zest plus lemon juice drizzled over at the end. I had only made rice pudding in a pot before and I think once in little ramekins in the oven. I remember my grandma making baked rice pudding and sago in the oven and I always used to hate the skin that formed on top. I tried to stir my pudding a lot so that it didn’t form a really obvious skin. The pudding was lovely – the rice had melted into the mily custard and the cinnamon ice-cream was the perfect accompaniment. The recipe called for half milk and half cream, but I used all whole fat milk.



The ice-cream was a basic egg yolk, cream and milk mixture except you didn’t have to cook the custard before churning. The addition of cinnamon was delicious. To serve with the pudding, I drizzled over some of this delicious cinnamon and apple syrup which I bought at the Lyttleton farmers market last year. The lovely lady who makes the syrup also does a selection of other delicious syrups, jams and pastes and markets them under the name peninsular preserves. The syrup is absolutely delicious, capturing the flavour of cinnamon apples in a liquid! Really beautiful on the ice-cream even without the rice pudding!

Unfortunately I didn’t get a good photo of the finished result, but if you look at the recipe on the cuisine web site you will see a lovely photo and that is just what mine looked like.

Thanks also to Morven from Food, Art and Random Thoughts for sending me the yellow LiveStrong bracelet!

Hay, Hay, It's clafoutis

The Hay Hay It’s Donna Day challenge for April was chosen by Bron Marshall ( a fellow Nzer). The choice was clafoutis, which is a French batter pudding traditionally made with cherries. I actually used the flavours that Bron suggested of plum and chocolate, as that was actually a Donna Hay recipe that I had spotted a while ago and had on my to do list to make.



On Monday night we had good friends up from Invercargill, so I made the clafoutis for pudding. Our main was Moroccan chicken with an orange and mint salsa from Dish magazine, with apricot and almond pilaf and rocket salad, then the clafoutis to follow. The clafoutis batter is made from a little bit of flour, eggs and cream. I always feel a bit funny about making things solely with cream, so I used lite cream and whole cream milk. Rather than fresh plums, I used canned plums and the batter is poured round the plums in a shallow dish. I then put chunks of chocolate into the batter and baked it.



The dessert has an interesting texture – you almost expect it to be sponge like, but it is actually quite dense. The chunks of chocolate were delicious little surprises – melting when the pudding was hot and lovely chunks when cold the next day. We had it with thickened cream, but it is just as nice eaten cold out of the fridge the next day! You can see the recipe on Bron’s blog.

TWD - lemon cream pie

The TWD challenge this week was lemon cream tart. This was absolutely divine! It was like a lemon curd pie, but rather than the butter of the curd added when cooking the curd, it was emulsified into the curd, like making mayonnaise.

I made my tart in two stages, as I wanted to take it down to Napier for the girls’ weekend. On Thursday night I made the lemon cream and the pastry. Lemons are not in season in NZ at the moment, so it is hard to find nice juicy ones. I had to juice about 7 lemons to get the right amount of juice. Dorie’s instructions regarding temperature of the curd were quite specific. I know that some other TWD bakers couldn’t get their curd up to the right temperature, but I had no problem, using a metal bowl which seems to be the key. The amount of butter in the curd was a little bit terrifying, but my lemon cream came together into a beautiful sweet but tart creamy mass.

The pastry came together really well, and my taste of the raw mixture confirmed that it was yummy – made with icing sugar, so sweet like shortbread. I took my cold lemon cream, uncooked pastry and tart tin down to Napier and assembled the tart on Saturday night. The tart dough rolled out beautifully and baked up lovely and crisp. The tart assembled looked divine and got rave reviews from my Mum and sisters. We had it with thickened cream. Another Dorie success!!!

Friends for dinner

Over Easter we had some friends over for probably the last bbq of the year. I have had so many other things to post about lately, that I haven’t got round to posting about this until now. We had a delicious meal. Pretty basic nibbles to start with of spinach and cannellini bean dip with Turkish bread. The main was beautiful lamb done on the bbq. I adapted a recipe from Dish magazine that basically smothered one side of a butterflied leg of lamb with a herb and parmesan mixture. It was bbqed for about 25 minutes. With that we had a delicious Israeli cous cous, dried apricot and parsley salad (also adapted from Dish) and a rocket salad with feta and figs baked in a little balsamic vinegar. Really yummy!

A friend had given me a big bag of feijoas earlier in the week, so for pudding I made these little frangipane feijoa tarts – basically puff pastry circles (I used Edmonds pre-made pastry as I find it rises better than other brands), spread with frangipane (I used ground macadamia nuts instead of almonds for a change) and then topped with sliced feijoas.

The tarts were nice, but nothing startling. However, I served them with home made vanilla ice cream (second outing for my ice-cream machine!) which I swirled with dulche de leuche (well, caramelised condensed milk which I think is pretty much the same thing!). That was a real highlight. The ice cream went really well with the crispness of the pastry and the tartness of the feijoas. I really enjoy ice cream making – just need to start having a few more dinner parties!! We weren’t going to have many in the 1970s house as it’s not really designed for entertaining, but I love cooking for people too much not to!!!!

Lemon curd cheesecake

A couple of weeks ago we had a work bbq and I was on the social committee that organised it. We all had food items we had to prepare and I volunteered to do the pudding by myself, seeing as sweet stuff is my favourite thing to make. I decided to do sweet platters, making four different items, cutting them into small pieces and then presenting them nicely on large white platters. They looked gorgeous!! The other things I put on the platter were some of the marshmallow that I put in my marshmallow cupcakes, chocolate brownie and some ginger truffles.

The recipe was from an old Donna Hay magazine. It is the perfect thing to make if you have to take a dessert that is easy to cut and can feed a lot of people. It is a traditional biscuit base, and then a basic cheesecake recipe swirled with lemon curd. It makes a big 20 x 30cm slice, and there are no edges to worry about. I adapted the recipe a little, leaving out the ground almonds in the base, and using a whole 250g packet of sweet biscuits to crush, as I don’t think that the 175g in the recipe would have covered the base of the tin enough. I also used natural yoghurt rather than sour cream – it was just what I had in the fridge.




I made my own lemon curd, but you could use bought. I actually make my lemon curd in the microwave – I have never had a failure yet! The trick is to blend it in the food processor for about 30 seconds after it’s final cooking. This makes it really creamy and smooth.

This is a fabulous recipe – very easy and yet quite impressive!



Lemon Cheesecake Slice (adapted Donna Hay)

250g sweet biscuits, crushed (eg wine biscuits)
100g melted butter
1 c lemon curd
600g cream cheese, softened
¾ c natural yoghurt
2 eggs
1 c castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla

· Mix together crushed biscuits and melted butter and press into a 20 x 30cm tin lined with baking paper; refrigerate until firm
· Process cream cheese, yoghurt, eggs, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Pour over biscuit base.
· Spoon over cream cheese mix and spoon on lemon curd. Swirl with a knife
· Bake at 160 for 30 minutes or until set
Chill before slicing