Fat little dumplings

Betty, my lovely grandma, turned 89 last week. We didn’t see her on her actual birthday, as she was visiting in Windsor, but she did come over to our place yesterday for some lunch. I decided to keep it pretty simple, because Gran is old and doesn’t seem to like “fancy” meals that involve garlic, chilli, or (gasp!) fresh herbs. She does have a penchant for sweet things though, and will often forego a full meal in order to have room in her tummy for dessert. I think I get my sweet tooth from her. So, anyway, we slow roasted some lamb and potatoes, and had a layered meringue with mango and passionfruit and mascarpone for dessert.

We got the recipe for the lamb and potatoes from an ace Greek cookbook called Vefa’s Kitchen that we scored at Christmas. It is MASSIVE, quite weighty, and so far we have only trialled one recipe, but successfully so. The lamb is so easy to do, you just rub it with lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper, bung on some olive oil, and pop it into a very slow oven for 3-4 hours. In the last hour, you add the potatoes, with lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper plus some knobs of butter, and increase the heat. The lamb turns out super tender and tasty, but if you have an oven like ours, you need to watch it closely, as the gas has a habit of just cutting out when the oven is on such a low heat, which totally sucks.

Here is our finished lamb and yummy potato product, with broccoli added to the mix as a concession to Gran’s old school tastebuds:

Ben was a total champion, and carved all of the lamb while I entertained, then arranged it artfully on a platter. What a good boy. Gran pronounced the lamb a success, and all went well.

I got the recipe for the dessert from the Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook, and this combination of meringue, mascarpone, mango and passionfruit is pretty fuck off awesome, although it doesn’t make for a particularly pretty looking dessert.

Also, I think I need to face up to the fact that I suck hard when it comes to making meringues. The recipe requires you to mix up some egg whites with sugar, then spread it out onto three sheets of baking paper in the shape of the container it’s going to be eventually placed in, and bake for 25 minutes. Well, I did that, but it didn’t WORK! My first batch of meringue layers were hopelessly undercooked, and when I attempted to get them off the baking paper they just disintegrated. Needless to say, I had a terrible temper tantrum, and Ben required a fair amount of patience when he attempted to calm me down. I eventually sucked it up and made a new batch of meringue – again, not super awesome, but at least I was able to get it off the paper when it had finished baking (I left them in for about 10 minutes extra each). Here is the end result:

As I said, not a particularly attractive looking dessert. But once you’re eating it, you won’t give a crap about the attractive factor, because it’s smooth and sweet and delicious. Check out the layers of awesome that it has:

Well I am certainly setting a record for being prolific, two blogs in one week seems pretty satisfactory. While I was on my non-internet enforced sabbatical, Biff and I actioned some special cake making. I am getting married you see, to our tech support, the lovely Mr Ben, and in a fit of tight arsery and over exuberance, have managed to strong arm Biff into agreeing to make the wedding cake with me. I’ve chosen a recipe that looked pretty tasty, and also sufficiently special (without being covered in marzipan crap, and without the words “mud cake” in the title… I can’t STAND mud cake!) The recipe is for a white chocolate cake, and it featured in a Woman’s Weekly recipe spread about Julie Goodwin (for the non-nerds, that’s the winner of Australian Masterchef). I don’t really read Woman’s Weekly (I don’t, I swear!), but I saw it at Ben’s Nan’s place and managed to cajole her into giving the copy to me. The cake itself is a monument to over indulgence, it has over a kilogram of chocolate in it, plus a hell of a lot of butter and sugar. I’m sure it will be awesome.

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After quite the lengthy hiatus (sans internet for TWO MONTHS, due to a range of different and tedious problems) one half of the Biff n Lexi duo is back online, and feeling fine! To be specific, it is I, Lexi, who is typing this right now. Due to a mixture of slackness and stinginess, Biff has lagged on getting internet connected at his place, so it might take him a while to get back on the bloggin’ horse.

Anyway, I can assure you all that I have been uber crafty during my break away from the computer. I made a dress (very inexpertly!), and I’ve been cranking out various tasty treats. I managed to score a copy of the Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook (it’s awesometown!), and it has inspired me to make pastry from scratch (a fairly long and tedious process, but the end result is rather enjoyable). As Ben is a big fan of lemon and lime tarts, I decided that my first efforts at being a Bourke Street worthy baker would be lemon curd tarts… TA DAAAAAAAAAA!:

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I don’t care if Ben hates it, I love eggplant, and I think it’s the bestest! It can taste like spongey poison if you don’t cook it right, but when it’s all tender and juicy and soft, it’s a winner. Tonight we made stuffed eggplants, and then baked them in our oven for what seemed an eternity. We wanted the eggplant to sort of shrivel down, so it would be nice and juicy. The best way to describe the look of a well roasted eggplant is to say that it has gone “fump!” as it collapses in the oven. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanway, we chopped up some vegies and cooked some rice, then flavoured it with a chilli, turmeric, ground coriander, and Moroccan seasoning. We noticed that the rice was still a bit bland town before we put it in the eggplants, so added some pine nuts, and a big knob of blue vein cheese. The cheese made it lovely and creamy, and lessened the need to add a huge amount of salt. It also made it less healthy though, as we have added a big amount of saturated fat to our previously joyless vegan dinner. Oh well, these are the sacrifices we must make. The stuffed eggplants were very tasty, and went fump! in the oven rather well.