operation beautiful

operation beautiful. simple.

my first notes. now i can’t stop

stars in her eyes

cheese stars, apple stars and berry-coconut-pikelet stars.  everything at morning tea time tastes better if it’s star shaped.  and it tastes more betterer still if you can dip it.  but we ran out of yogurt and the new batch isn’t done yet.

i used the Edmonds Pikelet recipe and added quater cup coconut (“what are those hairy bits?”) and quarter cup of frozen berries. last time i tried to use at least some wholemeal flour my pikelets were little heavy frisbees…any ideas??

and, like the mothers all over the would who exist solely on cornflakes dropped on the floor, this was what my morning tea looked like

1 cup plain flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup dessicated coconut
1/4 cup frozen berries
ask toddler to mix flour, baking powder, salt & coconut while you beat egg and sugar til it’s thick.  pour the egg mix into the flour mix and add the berries.  don’t mix too much and then fry them up

 

 

10 minute slow food dinner

slow cooker spaghetti bolognese + 1 minute ciabatta

i made the bolognese this morning, with the addition of celery, carrots, spinach and cinnamon.  mixed up the super quick bread dough (with one third wholemeal flour) which i covered and left beside the slow cooker for the day.  when i came home all i had to do was put the dough on a tray to cook in a hot oven for 25 minutes and cook up my pasta. pretty happy with that.

the bread was a big surprise, no kneading, just mix, leave and plonk on the tray. i wasn’t expecting much, but it was all aces.

retro apricot slice

apparently everyone but me remembers this slice from when their mums took them to a ‘coffee shop’ for a ham sammie and a raro.  i don’t.  i tried it for the first time a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t believe i’d missed out. so good.  so good in fact that i ate an awful lot of it and felt a bit yuk.  But then i got the recipe, came home, sent him to the shop for wine biscuits and made more (but i added coconut).  ONE piece is perfect with a coffee (or if you are nursing like me, a pretend coffee). i wouldn’t give it to your kids though, unless you like them bouncing off walls. 

Emma’s Apricot Slice

125g Butter
1/2 tin condensed milk
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup dessicated coconut
1 pkt crushed wine biscuits
1 cup dried apricots roughly chopped

Melt butter, sugar and condensed milk. Take off heat, add apricots, coconut and biscuits.
Press into a tin and set in fridge. Cut when cold.

yeah, as if i can have just one piece.

turkish-ish

This weekend we went Turkish. Well, Turkish-ish. Turkish Pizza boats filled with spiced 5 hour lamb & caramelised onions served with homemade hummus. We call them Turkish Pizza Boats, because that’s what we both thought they were, but when we tried to find a recipe, i think maybe we both had no idea what we were talking about, so we winged it.

The Turkish Pide i made to use a base for our pizza boats was beautiful. It tasted like Turkish bread (isn’t that a silly thing to say), i think it was the olive oil and sesame seed combo on top.  The hummus was really good, but maybe my chickpeas could have been softer because my little critic declared “i don’t like this hummus, it’s got gross in it”. Hubby was in charge of the lamb and used some leg steaks which he slow cooked all afternoon in cinnamon, cloves, paprika, cumin & garlic and then shredded. The caramelised onions were a total ‘mare. I burnt the first lot, but the second ones made with a wee bit of oil, sugar and apple cider vinegar were sticky and sweet.

Hummus

2&half Cups cooked chickpeas (you should reserve cooking liquid to use in the hummus – but i forgot to)
Juice of 2 lemons
3 cloves garlic
3 Tablespoons Tahini (i used unhulled)
Olive oil
Put chickpeas, juice, garlic, tahini, half cup of cooking liquid (or in my case water) and half a cup of oil in the blender and give it a whizz. Stir and whizz and drizzle in more olive oil til you have the consistency you are after. I used about a cup of oil and about three quarters cup of water.

Pide

2 tsp dried yeast
2 cups white flour
2 cups luke warm water
Combine these in a bowl (i give them a whisk) and stand in a warm spot for 30 minutes
2 cups white flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
2 teaspoons salt
One third cup olive oil
Sesame Seeds
Sift these flours into a bowl, stir in salt and then the ‘sponge’ you made with the yeast mix. Mix in half the oil and knead until smooth and elastic.  nearlyMabel helped with this bit and the dough seemed to come together really nicely without too much additional flour. Place in oiled bowl, covered and stand in warm spot for an hour.
Divide the dough into 8 and roll into ovals. Stand for 20 minutes before baking brushed with oil and sprinkled with sesame seeds at 220C for 8-10 minutes.

To make our pizza boats we took an unproofed oval, spooned a strip of caramelised onions down the middle, a layer of the lamb, a few chunks of feta, a sprinkle of cheese then folded up the sides and pinched in the ends to make a boat. That’s the best i can explain it, baked them in the same hot oven as the bread and they were super good. Even if the hummus did have gross in it.

I wasn’t going to show you a picture because my food photography (as you can see) is  a bit poo.  But,  i couldn’t find a much better picture so…hopefully this doesn’t put you off your dinner.

ciabatta

faced with a freezing morning, a room full of toys, a boy who won’t sleep, an ironing mountain which is a danger and a girl wearing her contrary pants i did what i always do when i don’t know where to start…i baked. some people surf the web, or answer the phones to telemarketers but i round up nearlyMabel, we put on our aprons, pop bBoy in his bumbo to watch, turn on the oven and make even more mess.

i had an excuse, pumpkin/ginger/coconut soup for lunch required fresh ciabatta right? yeah, no, probably not but i was procrastinating so it seemed a good idea at the time. i used this quick easy ciabatta recipe which seemed pretty failure proof. i used 100gm of wholemeal flour and didn’t measure my yeast beacause i just chucked in the dregs but it came out well. nearlyMabel did a good job of mixing the dry ingredients by hand (apparently there was also a secret instruction for 2 year olds along the lines of ‘sprinkle generously on carpet til your mum notices’).

the dough is so wierd and squidgy that if i hadn’t noticed the instruction that said to ‘pour’ the dough once it had risen i would have thought i had some kind of runny mess on my hands.  and since i let it rise in the bathroom by the towel rail a runny mess wan’t all that out of the question.  transferring the dough from the benchtop to the tray was, ahhuumm, a challenge(?) so my loaf wasn’t quite the perfect shape, but the taste was all good.

yep, hot bread dripping with melted butter. i was not only procrastinating, but putting on some winter ‘condition’ at the same time

taking a break

they smell sooooooo good

wahoo! they arrived.  they are going in the easter hunt so it’s not all chocolate and carnage.

these crayons smell so good, just like beeswax candles…mmmmm…and the shape is super cool.  i got them through here and they came all wrapped in a wee package with a little ‘zine to look at and some choc to eat while i tested the crayons. thank you Louise