Fat little dumplings

For Easter we celebrated Greek style and had a few friends over for dinner.  It was a very fun night which ended in playing ‘The humming game’ (where you hum a song until the group guesses its title – a terrible game which you only resort to when there is nothing else to entertain your guests with, and you’re out of food to throw at them).

We started off with Domatokeftedes, which are basically little tomatoey balls of fried goodness. I got the recipe from the March issue of Gourmet Traveller.  Mine didn’t turn out quite like the picture in the magazine, but they were tasty.

Anything fried is of course going to be awesome, but the dipping sauce was what made it good.  Though it looks a bit murky here, the sauce was fresh and zesty with lemon, parsley, mint, garlic and olive oil.  I felt very authentic pounding it into submission in the mortar and pestle.

After that we moved onto individual spinach pies, which I made from Donna Hay’s ‘Seasons’ book – though I didn’t make it in the right season according to Donna.  If I ever disappear you know it will be because I’ve met Donna Hay and she’s glassed me for making spinach pies in Autumn.  They were yummy, basically just chopped spinach, mint, fetta, eggs and lemon zest.  I used filo pastry which was a bit time consuming but worth it.

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Here’s a quick mid-week meal I tried for the first time tonight…I had been planning a totally different pork mince dish, using rice noodles, but Woolies thwarted me by having their fridge break down, and I couldn’t get rice noodles.  Grabbed some glass noodles/vermicelli noodles instead and decided to go for a cold salad.

It was really tasty!  I just cooked the pork mince with some oil, a dash of fish sauce, and lots of soy.  The idea for the sauce was borrowed from my friend Rachel, who had used the same thing for a dipping sauce.  Unlike me, she has an instinct about mixing asian flavours.  For the sauce there was the juice of 1 lime, half a teaspoon fine grated ginger, 4 tablespoons fish sauce, sweet chilli sauce to taste, a dash of peanut oil, chopped mint, and about a third of a bunch of coriander.

An easy, awesome salad.

Oh Look, it’s the new year, so I decided to celebrate my return to blogging by cooking something from the recipe book of a good friend, Maggie Beer*.  It is a new recipe book, and this is the first thing I have cooked from it…and i’d have to say I was pretty happy with it.  Take a look:

It’s not the best photo, but it looked pretty good, and tasted great as well – only VERY rich, it had 14 egg yolks in it! and two cartons of pouring cream.  The tart was fairly easy to put together, my downfall though was Maggie’s sour cream pastry – I dodged it up.  It needs a food processor, which I don’t have (maybe you should send me one Maggie?).  I ended up sort of kneading the butter into the flour, which I think softened the butter too much, and kinda ruined it…buuuuut, overall, pretty awesome.

You can check out the recipe on Maggie’s website:

http://www.maggiebeer.com.au/recipes/Details/?Item=ArtclsAsparagus88

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Today we attended an RSPCA fundraiser hosted by our good friends Cathy and Andy.  What a day for us!  So many great cupcakes to be tasted, and Lexi with such a tenuous grip on the diabetes free life.  Doctor says he’s gonna take her foot if she don’t stop eatin’ sugar!  Cathy made some spectacular cupcakes and we foolishly did not get a picture of them – but they were sugary and delicious.  Here is a link to Cathy’s blog: http://www.friendswithcandy.com/blog/

I made Lemon Lime Meringue cupcakes.  They were very tasty and looked good (if a little burnt on top). 

The recipe is from ‘500 cupcakes’ by Fergal Connolly (a great book!).

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes

225g Unsalted butter, softened

225 g Caster sugar

225g S.R flour

4 Eggs

1 Tsp Vanilla essence

For the filling

75 ml Lime Juice (I used half lemon half lime)

400 g tin condensed milk

For the Meringue

3 egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

75 g granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 175’C.  Place all cupcake ingredients together in a bowl and beat until smooth and pale (about 2-3 mins).  Spoon the batter in cases and bake for about 20 mins.  Remove tins from the oven and cool for 5 mins – then remove cupcakes and cool on a rack.  For the filling combine the juice and condensed milk in a bowl.  Remove the top of each cupcake and hollow out a small hole.  Spoon the filling into the hold and replace the top.  For the meringue, beat the eggs and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.  Add one third of the sugar and beat for 1 minute.  Repeat until all sugar has been added.  Increase the oven temperature to 230’C.  Spoon or pipe the meringue on top of the cupcakes.  Bake for 5 mins until golden (be careful here – mine were almost burnt within 3 mins).  Store for no more than a day in an airtight container.

Tom made white chocolate and strawberry cupcakes (from the same book).  Lexi and I decorated some of these with a cream cheese and strawberry icing (which was ace). 

Mostly they looked ok, and the cupcakes were very tasty (good work Tom!) – icing very well executed by Lexi.

Tom decorated some as well, this one is a Cthulhu.  Apparently a Cthulhu is a Lovecraftian horror from beyond time and space.  This doesn’t look horrible though.  Tom made excellent use of Pashmak Persian fairy floss, a house favourite.

This is another “Tom special” – an Evil Dead cupcake! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

White chocolate and strawberry cupcakes (also a recipe from ‘500 cupcakes’ by Fergal Connolly)

Ingredients

For the cupcakes

225 g unsalted butter, softened

225 g caster sugar

225 g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

4 eggs

1 tsp strawberry essence

100 g white chocolate chips

For the icing

200 g cream cheese, softened

175 g icing sugar, sieved

1 tsp vanilla essence

3 tbsp unsalted butter, softened

Strawberries, to decorate

Preheat the oven to 175’C. Place 18 paper baking cases in muffin tins. Combine the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, eggs and strawberry essence in a medium bowl. Beat with an electric whisk until light and creamy. Stir in the chocolate chips. Spoon the batter into the cases, and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the tins from the oven and cool for about 5 minutes, then remove the cupcakes to cool on a rack.

To make the icing, beat the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla and butter together until smooth and creamy. The longer you beat the mixture, the lighter and creamier it will become. Ice the cupcakes, and decorate with strawberries.