In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, bananas, strawberries, mini watermelon, broccolini, cabbage, cauliflower, mushrooms, potatoes, pumpkin, dried apricots, rolled amaranth

Happy Anniversary

♥

Nothing says I Love You like a steak dinner

Spelt Pizza

Friday night was very cold, windy and generally awful. What better to brighten things up than some homemade pizza? It really doesn't take long to make (sometimes it's quicker than waiting for a delivery) and you can have any topping you like.

There are some lovely ready-made bases available (the Bazaar ones are particularly nice) but the dough is easy to make. I bought some fancy organic spelt flour to make these ones, but you can use any plain flour you like. I used this recipe on Taste as a starting point, they also have recipes for a gluten free version.

What's your favourite pizza topping? Here's what I made:

Cheese and Spinach (sundried tomato, cottage cheese, silverbeet, egg, shaved zucchini, pickled chilli and parmesan)
Pepperoni (pepperoni, mushrooms and mozzarella)
Spanish (chorizo, mushrooms, red capsicum, sundried tomato, onion and mozzarella)

Buttermilk Pancakes

On Saturday it was cold, but bright and sunny when I woke up, so I went down to the beach to practice my running. I'm not very good at it, but I'm definitely improving! My ever-inspiring mother-in-law was out on her brand new stand-up paddle board!

Sunday morning, though, was cold, grey and cloudy. So I made some nice warm pancakes. My favourite type of pancakes are the thick and fluffy - much more like American hotcakes than French crepes.

I learned to make pancakes when I was quite young. I've tried lots of recipes with varying levels of success. Lately I think I've struck a very simple recipe that is very adaptable, is very easy for when you're hungry and half-asleep, and works well if you want to pop some fruit in there too. I added apple rings and frozen blueberries while the pancakes were cooking, and served with a drizzle of maple syrup and plain yoghurt.

The batter had a very gooey texture because of the buckwheat flour I used - regular wheat makes a batter that is much easier to ladle into the frying pan.

Buttermilk Pancakes (serves 4)

1½ cups self-raising flour (or 2 cups plain flour and 4 tsp baking powder)

⅓ cup sugar

2 eggs

approx. 1 cup of buttermilk

Put the flour and sugar into a large bowl and mix well. Add 1 egg into the middle of the flour and mix with a whisk, slowly incorporating some of the flour. Add the second egg and mix a little more. Then add buttermilk gradually, whisking in between, until the batter is smooth and easy to ladle. The amount of buttermilk you add will depend on the sort of flour you are using.

Heat a non-stick frying pan to a medium-high heat. You can add a little butter or oil to give a crisp outside, but it isn't necessary. 

While the pancakes are cooking on one side, you can add some small pieces of soft fresh fruit - they will cook when the pancake gets flipped.


Serve hot with some yoghurt, maple syrup, or honey, and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

In The Box This Week

apples, avocado, oranges, pears, red cabbage, carrots, celery, mushrooms, mustard greens, potatoes, sweet potato, zucchini, pork mince

Organic Expo

This weekend was the Organic Expo and Green Show International. I went to the Good Food & Wine show a few weeks ago, and to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Partly because it's become much more commercial than about produce. There were hardly any samples to try, and I found that I just wasn't interested in a lot of the products. I hadn't realised how much my mindset had changed since switching to more organic and less processed foods.

So I was keen to go to the Organic Expo to see if it would satisfy my craving for novelty. Often organic and health foods are expensive, so it's good to be able to try them first. I think we've all been stung after buying something in a health food stall and coming home to find out that the snack bar tastes like candles, or the green drink really does taste like chopped up grass - ew!

On the whole, the day was a lot of fun. There were plenty of samples to try, some good value, and I came away with a couple of new and exciting ideas for kitchen adventures.

My Little Garden

I live in a bushy area, so I don't really have the kind of garden that's suited for growing vegetables. Instead I have a collection of pots outside my kitchen window, and with the recent burst of warm weather, everything is growing nicely!

Daffodils and Jonquils

Silverbeet, Baby Cos Lettuce and Baby English Spinach

Rosemary, Parsley and Watercress

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

Don't worry, he didn't actually eat any!

Chocolate Hazelnut spread is delicious, but I can't ever see myself putting it onto a slice of bread and feeding it to children, despite the tv ads telling me that it's good for them (ha!).

I think a much better use for it is as a topping for cake.

Happy Half Birthday!

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

3 eggs

1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

100ml macadamia oil (or other light vegetable oil)

1 cup plain flour (or any wholemeal plain flour)

1/2 cup hazelnut meal

1/4 cup sifted cocoa
1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp baking powder

1 grated apple

Grease and line a cake tin, and preheat the oven to 180℃.

Beat the eggs and sugar together until pale and foamy, when the sugar has dissolved. Add the oil, apple and vanilla and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients, then gradually fold into the wet mixture. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for at least 15 minutes before you turn it out.

When the cake has cooled completely, spread the top with Chocolate Hazelnut spread.

PS - Sweet William make a vegan chocolate spread. I'm currently eating the organic version from Aldi.

Beef Stock

Step 1: Roast

I only wanted to make a small amount of stock, so I started with one kilo of beef bones, sprinkled well with sea salt flakes and freshly ground pepper, and gently roasted in the oven at 180℃ for 1 hour. I didn't want to burn the bones, just brown them and start to render out the fat. Then some vegetables were added to the baking dish - some carrot and onion, and roasted for another 30 minutes to caramelise the vegetables.

Step 2: Pressure Cooker

Into the pressure cooker went the browned bones, carrots and onion, plus a celery stick (with leaves), a small leek, 2 bay leaves, a pinch of peppercorns, 1 star anise, 1 cup hot red wine (heated to remove the alcohol), a few sprigs of fresh thyme and a sprig of fresh rosemary, and enough cold water to cover everything. The pot was brought up to pressure, then left to cook on a low heat and high pressure for 90 minutes, then the heat switched off and the pot allowed to cool and lose pressure slowly. Notice how nothing has moved when I take the lid off the pot? It's actually a very gentle way of cooking!

Step 3: Strain and Chill

It's much easier to strain a stock made in a pressure cooker. Because the mixture barely simmers, you don't get anywhere near as much sediment as when you use a normal pot. You also don't get any scum. The strained stock was put into the fridge to cool. Once cool, the fat was skimmed off the top of the jellied stock. I ended up with 1.5 litres of stock. 

Worth the effort?


The pressure cooker certainly takes care of the biggest hurdle in making home made stock, which is time. In terms of cost, a litre of of beef stock from the supermarket will cost $4-6, depending on the quality. The beef bones to make this stock cost $4-5 a pack, and the vegetables were already in the fridge - I didn't buy any extra specifically to make stock. So it costs about the same as buying a carton.


The benefit is that you know what's in the stock, you have control over the amount of salt, the flavourings added, and you get a real richness from all the gelatine in the bones that you don't often get in commercial stock.

I used this to make a delicious jus for roast beef, and a very yummy french onion soup.