Tag Archives: family food blog

The Magic Ingredient

Posted on by

1

I was just watching Ina Garten in  The Barefoot Contessa …I love that show.

There is something so soothing in her voice and accent. Reminds me of all the good things I love about the USA (like cheese in a can, Reese’s peanut butter cups and See’s Candies).

Anyway, she was dedicating one of her Back to Basics shows to an article she was writing about what makes for a Magical Ingredient.

One of those special touches you add to a dish that really makes it shine.

Her Magic Ingredients were Lemon Zest ( in baking and roasting), Instant Coffee (in baking with chocolate) and Tarragon (in her chicken salad sandwiches).

So, I thought I’d make a post about one of my favourite magic ingredients.

White Pepper.

Yes, it’s boring isn’t it, but when you can harness the power of white pepper, you’ll be adding it to your kitchen arsenal as well.

It smells different, more pungent than black pepper. It almost reminds me of cumin.

I use it when cooking with chicken. Sprinkle it on your roast chicken and you will notice the difference.

Add it to your bastes and marinades and you’ll find it gives the flavour that extra nudge into greatness.

I also use it in my stir fries, under the instruction of Kylie Kwong (author of ‘Simply Chinese Cooking’ my favourite Chinese cook book ever!).

So there it is. Nothing fancy, but it’s my little secret weapon when I want to make my meat or savoury meal taste super fantastic.

I would love to hear what YOUR magic ingredients are readers!!!

Go on, take a chance, and leave a comment. I LOVE LOVE LOVE getting reader comments.

Red Lentil Soup

Posted on by

1

The weather is cooling down (well, it is in the Southern hemisphere anyway) and so it’s time bring out the soup recipes.

To keep the calorie count down, I have carb-free meals for lunch, as it feels to me the most expendible meal of the day, in terms of deliciousness. Not like breakfast and dinner.

Now don’t get me wrong, this soup is not un-delicious, it is actually really tasty and light. But my point is, it is low fat and low in carbohydrates (unless you eat with bread that is).

Turkish Red Lentil Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

1 onion

1 carrot

2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp cumin

pinch cayenne pepper

1 litre of chicken or vegetable stock

200 g dried, red lentils

1 or 2 tomatoes, diced

1 tbs dried mint

Method:

In a processor, blitz the onion, carrot and garlic (or very finely chopped).

Saute the onion, garlic and carrot in a drizzle of olive oil.

Add the spices and fry a little until fragrant.

Add stock and lentils and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the diced tomato and dried mint and simmer further 1o minutes.

Serve with a sprinkle of sumac and a dollop of natural yoghurt.

Afiyet olson!

(that means, enjoy your meal, in Turkish…I think)



Chicken and Rice

Posted on by

4

I remember how this dish evolved from a rich red, paprika dish with chicken pieces to a light risotto style meal with breast pieces of chicken.

Me and my brother remember the old one wistfully, like some mythical half-remembered dream of our childhood.

Then my mum got wise. Perhaps we all got chubby. Who knows. But she realised that the old version was very fatty and unnecessarily oily. Delicious yes, but oily.

So she developed it into a light and fairly healthy meal that ticks all the boxes on the nutritional check list.

This dish is light and healthy. Tasty and makes great left overs.

Chicken and Rice Recipe

Ingredients:

chicken breast meat

1 – 1 1/2 cups long grain rice

1 L chicken stock (or vegetable stock, or powder/cubes etc) plus extra water

1 diced onion

1 clove of garlic (minced)

2 sticks of diced celery

1 diced green capsicum (or pepper)

frozen peas and corn

Method:

In a large frying pan, brown the pieces of chicken. (See Notes on Recipe for size suggestion)

Set those pieces aside.

In a bit of oil, saute the onion, garlic and celery.

When they have turned transparent, add the rice  and stir for about a minute.

Then add half of the stock and the vegetables and the chicken.

Give it a stir and put the lid on and simmer for as long as it takes to cook the rice through.

Keep stiring and add more stock and then water when it dries out.

Notes on the Recipe

You can use any type of chicken in this recipe. But the skinless breast is the most low in fat.

But because it will go dry and rubbery if you cook it too long, cut the pieces large. So they take longer to cook, and to reduce the chances of them becoming dry.

If you are really concerned about the chicken drying out, you can remove them from the rice once they are cooked, or add them a little while after you add the final ingredients.

I like to fry off a bit of sherry or white wine in the onions and rice mixture before I add the stock. A little extra flavour.

If you use water instead of stock (which is what I usually do…never seem to have chicken stock in the cupboard) I use a bit of Vegeta to add flavour.

(Don’t panic about that weird black thing in the corner. I check it out and it’s just the camera strap. I still have a lot to learn in the art of photography apparently. Annie Leibovitz doesn’t have to worry about her job just yet).

No-Bake Chocolate Pistachio Slice

Posted on by

2

Here’s a tasty treat for the weekend.

But be warned, I don’t think it’s low fat, or healthy. It’s just sin in a slice.

I was going to whip this one out for Christmas, as that is the only time I can justify making this very OTT slice.

Chocolate Pistachio Slice Recipe

Ingredients:

1 pkt (250g) plain chocolate biscuits

85g butter

400 g dark chocolate

3/4 cup pouring cream

1/2 cup chopped, roasted pistachios

1 tpbl spn coffee liqueur

Method:

Process the biscuits & butter. Press into lined slice pan.

Smooth it over with back of a spoon.

Melt chocolate and cream, stir till smooth.

Stir in nuts.

Pour chocolate mix over the base and refridgerate for 2 hours.

Notes on the recipe

I found it hard to get roasted UNsalted pistachios, so I had to buy raw and then roast them myself. Annoying.

I use whatever liqueur I have lying around…which usually means Frangelico or bourbon…maybe brandy. I have brandy in the cupboard these days….how very old school of me.

You probably should melt your chocolate and butter in a pan but I use the microwave on the lowest power setting. Works just fine.

Not much else to say here really…there’s no baking involved, how badly can you stuff it up?

Apple, Cranberry and Nut Loaf

Apple, Cranberry and Nut Loaf

Posted on by

1

This one I ripped out of a magazine. My sister’s. Thanks VC. It was so nice when I made it that I had to give the page back. I guess I should have published this post in the lead up to Christmas, … Continue reading →

Fish Balls

Posted on by

0

For those of us who can eat vegetables in their natural state, without the use of various sauces and threats, then this recipe is not aimed directly at you. Rather, your children.

You know, those little people that wander around the house. Tottering around with their disproportionately large heads covered in wispy hair and who generally have their fingers either in their mouth or down their pants?

I do think hiding veges in food is a good idea, sometimes. I don’t see it as a long term solution when trying to teach your children healthy eating, they’re going to have to come to terms with eating their veges at some point in their lives. So I go with a little from column A and a little from column B.

Well, my fabulous Fish balls are of the ‘hidden vege’ variety.  It’s one of those recipes where the main ingredient isn’t really discernible. I know, you think it’s fish right? Well, you’d be wrong.  The way I make them they end up as vege balls with a little tinned tuna or salmon mixed up in between.

The story goes….

I was in the market for a fish recipe for the boys, and I had been burnt in the past. Badly.

I remember they were about one and three and so naturally I was not sound of mind or body. My brain was addled and tired and I was foolishly thinking they might eat salmon cakes or patties. I was wrong.

I had spent at least 45 minutes preparing and cooking these delicious little morsels only to have them spat out and rejected.

I felt as if I were the one who was spat out and rejected, so delicate was my emotional state at the time. Mothers, I know we have all been at that point where our efforts can only go unnoticed and unappreciated for so long.  We become irrational and over sensitive.

I swore never to make salmon patties again. Ever.

But the good mother in me won over the bad one and eventually I tried again. I knew fish was one of those foods that made a rare appearance on my children’s menu and so I persisted with tinned salmon (or tuna), but this time I tried something different.

Balls.

Crumbed, fried and dipped in tomato sauce. How could I go wrong?

I used the salmon patties in the recipe books for a guide and have ended up with something that goes like this…

Fish Balls Recipe

Ingredients:

1 potato, boiled and mashed

3-5 tblspn (or more) puree vegetables

small tin of tuna or salmon (not too much or it tastes too fishy)

handful of cheese (grated Parmesan or cheddar)

handful of bread crumbs and some egg.

Stuff for crumbing (you’ve all done that before, I don’t need to explain).

Method:

Mix the puree veg, tuna or salmon and cheese into the mashed potato in the pan.

Season a little. Throw in some bread crumbs and use a little of the whisked up egg you have ready for the crumbing (you only need the tiniest bit).

Roll into balls, the smaller the better. Mine have the diameter of a 20c piece….approximately. If I am feeling lazy, then they’re the size of golf balls.

Crumb.

Shallow fry in some canola oil.

Serve with tomato sauce or whatever else you want, maybe some mayo…

Notes on the Recipe

This is obviously a very plain recipe. My kids are so slow on the ‘try new things’ bandwagon. They have an aversion to onion, so I don’t put it in their food. But I think a little diced, sauted onion and even some garlic would go a long way in these little balls of goodness.

You could definitely make them vegetarian…you might just need a little more egg/breadcrumbs to bind.

You could run all day on this crumb and fry theme. I think kids would eat just about anything as long as it was crumbed and fried. You could make little arancini, which I did once – only to have them spat out. So I never did that again. Granted it was about 2 yrs ago now, but the incident scarred my well meaning heart, and I swore I would never go to such trouble again for toddlers.

I think it’s the size and shape that make them so appealing, so if you’re going to try it out on little ones, keep it in ball form and you should be right.

No Bake Oat Cookies

Posted on by

0

This is a recipe from my Canadian friend who tells me her grandmother used to make these when she was a kid.

So here, we have an old family recipe. The best kind.

No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups caster sugar

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups quick cook oats

1 cup coconut

6 tbspn cocoa

Method:

In a large pot, heat and mix the sugar, butter and milk.

Bring to boil, and boil for 3 minutes exactly. (Be precise, the cookies holding together depends on this step)

Add vanilla and stir.

Mix in remaining ingredients while on the heat.

Take off heat immediately.

Put spoonfuls of mixture onto lined baking trays.

Refrigerate for half an hour.

Notes on the recipe

I think I got these right. I timed the boil for 3 minutes and they all stuck together ok.

Although I did have lots of crumbs, the majority stuck as they should.

I did however find the mixture quite hot to handle, so I used two spoons and shaped them with my hands. I think I may have been a tablespoon shy of the recommended quantity of cocoa, but they still taste pretty good.

You could also get creative with the ingredients if you wanted to. You could add marshmallows and make it rocky roadish, or sprinkles or dip them in chocolate…just make sure you take out the same amount of oats for what ever you put in.

These are actually a really healthy snack for kids, considering they contain raw oats and not too much butter and they love them.  Suckers.

Thanks Laura and her nanna. xo


The Sunny-boy fiasco of 2001

Posted on by

1

It was the summer of 2001. I had just moved out of home and was living with my now husband and my brother in an antiquated little cottage in Glebe.

Ah… those heady days when buying my own groceries was still a novelty and I could buy what I wanted, anytime I wanted.

And so it was on a balmy summer afternoon that I thought I would grab a sunny boy from the freezer. Oh, how I enjoyed slurping on that ice cold block of flavoured ice, so much so that I thought I would have another.

No one was there to stop me, or tell me that perhaps it wasn’t such a grand idea.

How was I to know?

It was about half an hour after my last sunny boy of the day that I started feeling strange. I felt jittery, wired and suffered from heart palpitations and sweaty palms. What was happening to me?

I was freaking out big time and then I realised why I could possibly be feeling so uncomfortable.

It was the sunny boys.

How was I to know that consuming close to half a litre of heavily loaded sugar water packed with unforeseen amounts of preservatives, colours and additives could make me feel so terrible.

It wasn’t funny for me at the time. My huaband on the other hand, thought it was hilarious.

And so that, my friends, was the summer that I learnt a very valuable lesson.

What ever you do, no matter how hot you are or how much you enjoy it – stop at one sunny boy.

Encouraging such excessive consumption of these things should be illegal!