Food Friday

While I do enjoy cooking, I don't enjoy spending a long time doing it. Slaving over a hot stove all day is for the 1950's wife and that's not me. I got stuff to do! Like pinning on pintrest, reading blogs and Facebooking...You know being a Noughties housewife. :)

So today I have a couple of quick and easy dishes I experimented with recently.

Mums cake and my sauce.

My mum made this delicious cake which she insisted was so moist it didn't need any icing...I wasn't so sure  so experimented with these two ingredients Creme Fraiche and Whittaker's L&P chocolate to make a quick sauce. I plonked about 100 grams of the chocolate in with about 50 grams of the creme fraiche in the microwave for 1 minute. Boom...a delicious sauce! The family went nuts for it.  Mum was right though...her cake was the most moist chocolate cake ever. I NEED that recipe. 

Grandmas Lemon Honey tart

Confession time. I have had these blind baking balls for about a year...and these tart tins for about 6 month...and just used them for the first time. Oh dear...good intentions yadda yadda.

This one has three easy ingredients....Frozen Sweet Short crust pastry, Lemon Honey (homemade by my MIL) and a dollop of vanilla yogurt. So easy but tasted so good. 

Roasted Pork Belly

Roasted pork belly is pretty much our favourite family meal. Priced at $30-40 as a mains at the local restaurants, I am slowly trying to perfect it on a budget. My local New World has started selling a piece of pork belly for $10-15 and this size easily feeds our family of 5.

I use a layer of carrots, onion, cellery and garlic and sliced apple in an oven proof dish, with a bit of water in it. I lay the pork belly over the top which has been scored and sprinkled generously with salt to create a delicious crackling. I slowly roast it on a low heat (120 Celsius) for 2 hours with some foil over it. Then I turn up the heat to 200C with the foil off on the top rung of the oven until the crackling is golden and crunchie, about another 20-30 minutes.

While the pork is resting I put the layer of veges that was underneath the pork into a pot with some more water and chicken stock and reduce it down. Strain it so you just use the liquid to make a delicious "jus". Some roasted veges on the side and you have an easy special family meal.

happy birthday hubsta

This post is dedicated to my fella...aka Hubsta...aka...My love. 

I had a brilliant idea to break into his office and birthday bomb* his desk space. He was feeling a little depressed about having to work on his birthday so I thought this would be a fun surprise for him to walk in to. We both work for the same company so when I went to work yesterday (Sunday) I  could get it all ready for a Monday morning surprise. 

I bought him a cake to share with his workmates and their favourite plunger coffee to have for morning tea. 

In our line of work where people our age are sick or are dying, I have now come to the realization that every birthday is a blessing and  is worth celebrating... the more extravagant the better!

Birthday celebrations will continue later when he comes home from work today...as he left a bit too early for the usual morning pressies in bed this morning. So a favourite meal and our traditional goofy birthday dance will be on the cards later on tonight.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY LOVE!

*Birthday Bomb....we should make that new thing! Im keen to birthday bomb some more loved ones...make sure you let me know if you birthday bomb someone!

bullet point ponderings

Time for a catch up bullet point post.

• Im a tired grumpy cow today. Two night shifts and few more late nights including another work night tonight has gotten to me. And so when this morning I could hear two boys bouncing off the walls far too early in the morning for my liking..I almost lost the plot. I decided not to. I took my self of to the shower and calmed myself with the warm waters... and  came up with a better idea...I did not yell. I told them in no uncertain terms that if the same thing happens tomorrow morning...a game they have been saving up for will have a one day delay for every morning I am woken up too early...that'll learn them.  

• Yep...I'm  not a morning person. 

• I planted some three plants three weeks ago and they are not dead!

• Friday Fun-day continues to be weekly event unless I have to work that afternoon. I try not to use it as a way to enforce good behavior...as in "we wont have Friday fun-day if you don't behave". In fact we do it anyway...just because. And so my kids don't think I'm a dragon mumma. It Friday fun-day...just because its Friday. That's all. Favorite things we do are...visit a park, go to McDonald's, go to the town basin and have an ice cream, go to the DVD store. Just anything fun rather than just coming straight home from school. A good way to start the weekend.
  
  

  

  Friday Fun-day

  
  

  

  {The furthest Zak zak has made it up the web. Super proud of himself} 

  
  
  
  

  

  Me and my lovely Miss Joy.
  Knocked out tooth healing well.
  Thanks for the concerns and prayers for her  a few weeks ago

  
  

• I finally watched all the Star wars Movies. They were okay. I could see how they would have been a huge hit in the 70's and 80's. New ground breaking special effects and animations...of which they won awards for. Good stuff George Lucus. Who knows maybe this Sci-fi snob might actually watch the 7th installment at the movies when it comes out in few years time. 



source

• He he....funny mash up of the "Ain't nobody got time for that" meme and Yoda. Yep I now know who Yoda is!

• Having a rare mid week coffee with Dadda while he was having a lunch break from Jury service

• Cocktail time??

Hope your week is going splendid. 

Cheesy Blessing

If you know me you know I like food. I like making it...I like experimenting with it...I like trying new cuisines and new experiences. This week we tried fondue.

So the background on this one was that I offered to make a lovely friend and her family dinner as they were grieving with a major loss to their family. This lovely friend has made me and my family dinner (like really nice dinners) before, I knew a frozen lasagna wouldn't cut it.
They are a little bit Swiss... so I thought I would try and make some sort of "swiss cuisine". I remembered her talking about a special type of thing called "Raclette" that was her favourite and they would have it for birthdays etc.

I had no idea what it was so of course I googled it. Cue the wikipedia!

Raclette /rəˈklɛt/ is both a type of cheese and a Swiss dish based on heating the cheese and scraping off (racler) the melted part.

{Pretty Fancy contraption!}

So I went to the super market and headed for the cheese section looking for "Raclette" cheese . I had never heard of it. It wasn't in the the mainstream cheese section...but I had some ideas to substitute it with. Thankfully my local New World has a killer deli section..and lo and behold...the exact cheese I needed! One big massive wheel of it! I literally did a dance!

I put together a platter of cured meats, and pickled veges as well. I also added parboiled new potatoes and good ol' broccoli and cauliflower. And I cannot forget the french baguette. I made enough for our dinner too...in the hopes of trying a fondue type thing. So our dinner was half prepared too. 

I arrived at their place...and looked forward to the reaction. Had I really pulled off a cuisine I had never tried my self before?? They assured me I had! The special Raclette cheese was a winner...because they hadn't had any in years.  Yay! So good to be a blessing. 

I told them my plans to use the same ingredients I had left over at home to try and make a fondue. I had really no idea how to make it. I was just going to put a bit of cheese in my chocolate fondue set. They insisted that I took home their Swiss fondue set all the way from Switzerland ..and my lovely friend gave me the recipe and some of  the ingredients to make it as authentic to the Swiss way as possible!

Heres the recipe if you want to try it at home.

300g  Grated Cheese. We used Gruyere cheese and Mild. You can use Colby too.  

2 cloves of garlic cut finely

1 small dash of "Kirsh" cherry liquor

75 mls of white wine

and 1 teaspoon cornflour to thicken sauce. 

pinch each of pepper, paprika and nutmeg

Adjust your quantities depending on your family/party size. This was enough for the five of us

Before cutting the garlic clove, rub it all over the inside of the pan.

Stir cornflour in to the kirsh set aside.

Melt the cheese and wine and stir in the pot for a while then add the kirsh and keep stirring until fondue is smooth and bubbling. Stir in pepper, paprika and nutmeg. 

Transfer to fondue stand if you have one. 

And dip in some baguette that has been cut into squares.  

This was such a fun thing to do for dinner. Lucky for us we are cheese heads...so this is right up our alley. A BIG note is that in order to ward off the constipation that will occur after this meal...is that the grown ups need to pair this meal with some white wine...and the kids need some other acidic drink...they had to have orange juice.

I love those times when you decide to bless someone and then you get blessed your self! Such a fun treat!