Month: October 2015

Presented without comment

Scene: rooftop carpark of major shopping centre. A not elderly gentleman sitting on a mobility scooter, shirt off, sunbaking.

Scene: outside school gates at pick-up time. Father, holding a young baby, drinking from a VB longneck.

Watching: another episode of The Biggest Loser. This year the criteria is fat AND (more) stupid. (I think that’s a comment)

Watching: the finale of The Bachelorette. I would be ashamed we watched this were it not for the fact it was largely hate-watching. That said I thought Sam was a top bird and Sascha seemed like a daggy dad type of guy so I wish them well. (which technically is a comment)

Watching: Gogglebox – basically the best show on television. I’m quite certain what this says about my mental capacity and I simply do not care.

Desire: a new set of saucepans. I’ve had mine since mum gave them to me for my 21st (and she’d had them in storage for me for a few years before that) and they’ve served their purpose well. But I want heavy-based ones like these. I saw them in the shops the other day, liked their weight then lost my breath at their price. There’s some super cheap on eBay at the moment but I can’t quite hit the buy button.

Reality: I have a thousand mugs but most of them are for my holiday house. When I buy one (never going to happen). Every time I go to the shops (rare) I am on the look-out for nice mugs. I’m yet to find ones I like. I’ve decided it is a lost cause and finding a mug with a thin lip* is impossible.

Action: In searching for mugs I ended up in at T2 where I spent a housing deposit on its Irish breakfast blend (because the Twining variety is not strong enough for my discerning palate), a fancy (plastic) jug and two herbal tisanes** to trick the boys into thinking it is iced tea just like the sugar poison! -laden ones. This outlay seems only to have worked on Oscar and considering he’d probably eat cardboard doesn’t count.

Targets for irrational hatred: mobility scooters, elderly drivers, people who do not pull to the left or right side of the lane when turning.

Winning: signed up for Presto after ongoing disappointment with Netflix and irritation with Stan. Result? 30 Rock and far better movie offerings.

Highlight: Being there for a friend earlier this week when she needed a sounding board and a subsequent walk amble around the lake (8km) with her later in the week.

Realisation: I can not be friends with gluten. This makes me sad but (largely) removing it from my diet transforms me into a better version of me.

Anticipation: It’s Friday and I’m staring at a weekend of cooking bacon cancer! and cheese pinwheels, cinnamon scrolls and something else I can’t recall as per the specific request of Felix. So weight loss plans and gluten-free existence working well then.

Onward!

 

*If there’s one thing my mother taught me, it’s that a tea cup must have a thin lip.

**really?

New Favourite

By no means their most recent but I’m listening to their entire catalogue a lot lately.

Onward

Jasper is 10.

Because who isn't up at 12:45pm making cupcakes for a boy about to turn 10. (that's meant to be purple icing, not grey. No really)
Because who isn’t up at 12:45pm making cupcakes for a boy about to turn 10. (that’s meant to be purple icing, not grey. No really)

Jasper is 10 today. It’s such a cliche but I really can’t quite believe it. When we discovered I was pregnant with him I’d just returned to a full-time salaried job in a government department. I’d also just enrolled in my Masters of Creative Writing at UTS.

It was such a surprise but we were all so excited about a new baby. The big boys were both at school, Oscar in Year 1, Felix in Kindy and we thought we were done, but Jasper decided otherwise.

He was the most happy, joyous contented baby in the world. We indeed called him Jasper, the happiest baby in the world!, just like paprika in Bachelor Party.

Jasper 8Aug07 2

He’s always been such a reflective little soul, emotional, thoughtful, loving, loyal and deeply empathetic.

First hair cut in almost 3 months for Jasper.
First hair cut in almost 3 months for Jasper.

Isn’t he delightful.

 

Onward.

Espresso brownies

I have just finished my (paid) work and am bracing for school home time. It’s been a mixed bag of a week which saw me in tears last night at the thought of making dinner AGAIN (#everyfuckingnight, I swear to God people, every.fucking.night). Sure, there may have been some hormones involved but let’s just put that day to bed.

These are on the front cover of Food52’s baking book from which I want to bake every single recipe. Hey, maybe that’s a challenge I can set myself? And are so very good.

You need a big baking pan – 33 x 45cm, 13 x 18 inch – so get onto that. You could of course just split the mixture between two smaller ones but as to what size they’d be don’t ask me because, well, numeral.

It makes a lot – 24 large brownies, 36 smaller ones. It uses eight eggs. EIGHT EGGS! When I started cooking as a kid and then with a fair amount of gusto as a teenager I’d show mum a recipe and without fail there’d be an exclamation about how many eggs were in it. Were eggs expensive back then? Was there some sort of price collusion in the 80s I was unaware of? Anyway, it uses eight eggs.

Now, even though in the recipe’s intro it talks about how this is the 35th version of  these brownies the recipe creator June Jacobs has created, I still didn’t follow it exactly. Just follow it exactly OK?

Espresso brownies.
Espresso brownies.

Espresso brownies
 
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Rich, fudgey brownies with icing on top, as if that's even allowed.
Author:
Ingredients
Brownies
  • 3 cups lightly packed dark brown sugar
  • 225g unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 8 eggs (EIGHT eggs!)
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • pinch of salt
  • 1½ cups plain flour
  • ⅔ cup cocoa powder
  • 2 tbsp instant coffee powder (use a strong espresso kind)
  • 2 cups toasted nuts (I left these out, totally fine without it)
  • 2 cups choc chips
Icing
  • 1½ cups caster sugar
  • 2 tbsp instant espresso powder
  • ¼ cup cognac (I KNOW! Fancy like)
  • ¼ cup milk
  • 6 tbsp butter
  • 1 cup choc chips
Instructions
For the brownies
  1. Preheat the oven to 175C and butter the sheet pan
  2. In a mixer beat the butter and sugar together but you don't want it all fluffy - these are brownies remember, not a cake, you don't need a heap of air in the mix
  3. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping as you go
  4. Then add the vanilla and salt
  5. Mix the flour with the coffee and cocoa powder and nuts
  6. Add to the butter mixture
  7. Pour the batter into the pan and spread it out THEN sprinkle over the choc chips
  8. Swirl the choc chips in a bit (I ignored this and added them with the flour and all the choc chips sunk to the bottom, so yeah, maybe the recipe is right)
  9. Bake for 23½ minutes (don't you love the precision! I did mine for a bit longer because I didn't have the right sized tin and was winging it)
For the icing
  1. Combine everything except the chocolate in a saucepan and stir fairly constantly until it comes to the boil
  2. Let it boil for a a minute or two.
  3. Take off the heat, add the chocolate and stir until smooth
  4. Pour over the cooled brownies
  5. Drown your troubles.

 

Balsamic glazed beetroots

A wonderful way to cook beets for a salad or on their own.

I think beetroots are one of those divisive vegetables, like brussel sprouts and cauliflower. If you like them you love them, if you don’t like them they are the food of the devil.

Mum planted beetroots this winter for reasons I’m not sure of, primarily because she doesn’t eat them. And I must confess that as I saw them growing I thought, what the hell am I going to do with all those beets.

Then this book entered my life. I’d already bought Food52’s baking book from which I want to make every single recipe (the magic espresso brownies are amazing) so I held out high hopes for Genius Recipes. It’s premise is 100 legendary recipes for chefs, cooks, bloggers and cookbook authors and it does not disappoint.

So #everyfuckingnight might be tacos for the boys, but I'm making a beetroot, goats cheese and walnut salad for me!
So #everyfuckingnight might be tacos for the boys, but I’m making a beetroot, goats cheese and walnut salad for me!

So, this week’s Tuesday #everyfuckingnight was tacos which I just can’t come at. Mum had picked me about 8 of the beetroots and my plan was hatched.

What I loved about this recipe was its simplicity. My beets didn’t take as long as the recipe said, probably due to their size, but I just sped the process up and they worked an absolute treat. Mine also turned out a more deep maroon than that black purple we expect from beetroots but again, probably due to the variety that we’d grown.

So look, follow what’s below, but trust your gut. You can lift the lid during the simmering stage and check their done-ness, muck around with the heat when reducing the liquid to a consistency you like. It can be more saucy or more syrupy, just make sure you do leave enough to coat the beets and any leaves you add to them.

Pretty!
Pretty!

The recipe says to add the beetroot leaves at the end but these fall into the category of kale for me and taste like balls so I’d sooner mix through some baby English spinach leaves and rocket than that metallic nonsense.

Finally, I took a little punt based on Maggie Beer in her remarkable tome Maggie’s Harvest  and at the very end added a little more butter, some dijon (about 1/4-1/2tsp), balsamic and more finely chopped fresh tarragon just to liven the flavours.

It’s all really quite straightforward with the result being a complete show-pony of a dish. Giddyup!

Home grown balsamic glazed beetroots w/goats cheese, walnuts and tarragon. #everyfuckingnight #fancylike <- total showpony
Home grown balsamic glazed beetroots w/goats cheese, walnuts and tarragon. #everyfuckingnight #fancylike <- total showpony

Balsamic glazed beetroots
 
Save Print
A fabulous preparation of beetroots to then use in a salad or on their own.
Author:
Ingredients
  • 4-5 fresh beetroots, trimmed and scrubbed and cut into quarters or sixths, depending on size (I used 8 smallish ones)
  • 1 medium sized red onion, sliced into crescents
  • 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 sprigs of fresh tarragon, finely chopped
  • salt and freshly cracked pepper
optional
  • thumbnail sized nob of butter
  • ¼-1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • dash balsamic vinegar
  • more freshly chopped thyme
for the salad
  • greens (I like using rocket)
  • goats cheese
  • walnuts, toasted
Instructions
  1. Put everything into a heavy based fry pan (you want the beetroots to be relatively tightly packed in a single layer)
  2. Pour in enough water to just cover the beetroots
  3. Bring to the boil
  4. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 25 minutes (feel free to check as time passes as they might cook more quickly, depending on their size) or until the beets are nearly tender (I judge this as when you stick in a skewer there's still a bit of resistance
  5. Raise the heat again and boil uncovered until the liquid has reduced right down to a syrup and the beetroots are tender
  6. If you're going the optional extra, make a little space inbetween the beets, add the extra ingredients and mix until dissolved/melted, then toss through the whole dish
  7. Season with the salt and pepper
  8. Serve tossed with the salad greens, dot over little pieces of the goats cheese and sprinkle with walnuts
  9. Add some wedges of pear if their in season or you really want to be fancy
  10. Eat!