Lovely lemons from a lovely lady

These lovely lemons were given to me by a wonderful friend and colleague, Patsy, from her backyard lemon tree so that I could make a lemon and honey drink to soothe my sore throat. Thank you Patsy - they are very much appreciated!

Chicken and tomato bake

Last weekend, while still carrying a heavy cold, I stupidly booked myself into the dentist in the early morning, spent half a day travelling around on a bus to see the fairy penguin parade at Phillip Island, went to brunch with friends the morning after arriving back from the penguins in the wee small hours, followed by a mini spa treatment I'd booked in ages ago to use up a Christmas gift voucher, then went to the movies with other friends. I must be crazy to book all of this in one weekend - I should have re-arranged all engagements except the treasured time with my friends until I feel fighting fit again. I look forward to catching up on some sleep this week!

This leads me on to the featured dish in this post. Over a week ago, for dinner with my friend Veronica, I made the above-pictured chicken and tomato bake. However, until now, I have been (a) too sick; and then (b) too busy to post about it, and time slipped away. It deserves to be posted though, because it is simple yet flavoursome. The recipe is based on a dish from Jamie's Dinners and you can make it as follows:

4 chicken legs and 4 chicken thighs with skin on
a handful of fresh basil leaves
6 small tomatoes cut into eighths
1 whole garlic bulb, split into cloves (you can leave the skin on)
1 chopped red chilli
6 small potatoes, quartered
salt and pepper
cooking oil (I used canola)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Rub salt and pepper into the chicken skin to taste, then place on the bottom of a lightly oiled roasting pan. Scatter the basil over the chicken, then place the tomatoes, potatoes, garlic and chilli in the pan. Spray the whole lot lightly with cooking oil, and bake in the oven for 1 1/2 hours or until the chicken and potatoes are cooked. Before eating the garlic cloves, squeeze them out of the fibrous skins - they pop out easily once baked. Serves 4-6.

This is really simple but rather delicious for a quick dinner. To vary it, you could add whatever other veges take your fancy, or perhaps toss in some olives. Perfect!

Blueberry and pear cake

Each working week, I make something for my morning tea at work, and either refrigerate or freeze it so that I can keep it fresh for the week. Now that I have a blog of my very own, I try to make something different each week so that I can share what I have made with you.

After discovering Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries just before Christmas, it was a no-brainer that I would start the year making cakes from this book. They are drool-worthy creations that are simple to make and don't have weird and wonderful, hard to source or expensive ingredients. Weird and wonderful is great when you are trying to impress someone else, but I don't have to impress myself - I just want something yummy and filling to have with a piece of fruit to tide me over until lunchtime.

As berry season is currently in full swing in Oz and berries are plentiful and cheap (as opposed to the remaining 10 months of the year when they are scarce and very expensive!), I selected Nigel's blueberry and pear cake for my lunchbox treat this week.

This cake is really easy to make, and has lots of fruit on top so tastes delish - there's nothing more to add.

To make it, you will need:

130g softened butter
130g sugar
4 tinned pear halves cut into small chunks
2 eggs, lightly beaten
130g sifted plain flour
1 teaspoon sifted baking powder
1 punnet blueberries

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin. Cream the butter and sugar. Gradually beat the eggs into the creamed mixture. Stir in the flour and baking powder, and pour the batter into the prepared cake tin. Top the cake with the blueberries and pears, and bake for 55 minutes or until cooked through. (My cake took about 70 minutes.) Cool the cake for 10 minutes or so in the tin before taking it out of the tin and placing it on a wire rack to cool completely.

I served thick slices of this cake with thick, honey-flavoured Greek yoghurt for dessert at my friend Veronica's place, and it was good. It is also great all by itself as a morning tea treat ;)

BBD #6 - Filled rolled bread

There's a thrill you'll never know if you never try

Why don't you give it a, give it a, give it a whirl ...

(From "Give It a Whirl" by Split Enz)

Life is always full of surprises, and this week, I have already had two pleasant ones. First - I found out that I can successfully make bread. Second - I found out that other people liked my bread!

Eva at Sweet Sins is hosting Bread Baking Day #6, and the theme is shaped breads. Not generally being a bread baker, I was a little hesitant at taking up the challenge (I have plenty of stories from friends about the rock hard loaves produced from their bread machines!). However, I decided to "give it a whirl", and was really surprised at the result.

I searched through my cookbooks, and the only shaped bread that I hit upon was a large doughnut shaped construction in Happy Days with the Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver. This recipe was for a rolled bread filled with ham, cheese, basil, olives, tomatoes and eggs. This sounded like a seriously delicious combination, so I set to work on it.

Jamie's instructions start with making his basic, all purpose bread dough. Now, I should have known that I was going to end up with a Frankenstein's monster sized loaf when I read that this recipe contained a whole kilo of flour - but being a lawyer, numbers are not my strong point, and I forged ahead. If that didn't tip me off, the serious quantities of cheese (400g) and boiled eggs (8) should have - but the numeric sector of my brain was clearly not working, because I simply halved the number of eggs, clicking my tongue at what I saw as a huge waste of good eggs, and kept going. (I blame my lack of brain function at the time on the horrendous cold that I subsequently developed, and which has now blossomed into a full blown lurgy.)

The resulting bread is enormous!!!! I didn't have a baking sheet large enough to hold it comfortably, and it almost bumped the roof of the oven as it baked. Once the bread was finished, I looked at it, then looked at me, tasted a slice, marvelled at how filling it was, and only then wondered what on earth I was going to do with it all! Luckily, I had made it to take to dinner at my friend Veronica's place, so Veronica became the recipient of half of it. I optimistically placed the other half in the fridge for later, then the next morning, reality dawned - this lovely tasting bread with buckets of ingredients would be "dead" (in the way that only fresh food can die) before I could plough through the remaining half by myself. Somewhere in my addled mind, I realised that the obvious solution was to take it to work to share - and they loved it! There wasn't enough to go round everyone who wanted some, and all the comments I received were favourable (hope they just weren't being nice!).

A cross section of the bread showing all of the ingredients is as follows:

If you would like to make your very own "doughnut bread", here is how to do it:

Bread

1kg plain flour
625ml cold water
21g dried yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons salt
more plain flour to dust work surfaces and the dough

Place the flour into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Into the well, tip half the water, the yeast, sugar and salt, and mix the ingredients in the well with the handle of a spoon until combined. Slowly combine the flour from outside the well with the water, trying not to break the walls of the well, until all of the water has been soaked up by the flour. Next, add the remaining water to the centre of the mixture, and combine with flour until it forms a thick paste, then combine all of the remaining flour with the gooey centre, using your hands, until a dough ball forms. (If this sounds confusing for any non-bread bakers out there, it is! I had no idea what I was doing.) If your dough is too sticky to knead, add more flour; if it's too dry, add more water.

Once you have a dough that is of a consistency that you can knead, proceed to fold it, squish it, push it and roll it around on a floured surface until your dough is smooth and soft. This will take a few minutes, but have faith - it magically comes together eventually! Once the dough is smooth, place it in a clean large mixing bowl, cover it with cling wrap, and put it in a light, warm place for about half an hour to rise. (I placed it under the touch lamp in my bedroom.) When the dough has doubled in size, you are ready to shape and fill it.

Filling

8 thin slices of ham
4 hard boiled eggs, shelled and sliced thinly
3 small tomatoes, sliced thinly
a large handful of fresh basil
10 black olives, pitted and halved
400g grated cheese
oil (I used canola)
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Roll out the bread dough until it forms a long thin rectangle about 1cm thick. (Mine was 20cm wide and 70cm long). Spread the filling ingredients out along the centre of the entire length of the bread, leaving an even border of dough on each long end. Drizzle the filling with oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Wrap the dough on each side over the filling to form a filled tube of bread, then join up the two ends by squeezing them together to form a large doughnut shape (ie a ring with a hole in the middle). Place the bread on a large oiled baking sheet, allow to rise for 15 minutes, dust the bread lightly with flour and place it in the oven to bake for about 35 minutes or until golden. (Mine took about 45 minutes.)

Enjoy the bread warm or cold. My preference is for it to be warm, but other people said that they enjoyed it cold. It is just like a very well-stuffed sandwich, and hence is very filling. That said, it is delicious. You could play with the filling combination (eg those that dislike olives can leave them out; lovers of another ingredient, such as marinated artichokes or eggplant, could add them).

This experience with bread making has reminded me that I should confidently take on new experiences and "[face] the future with a smile on [my] face, win or lose" (another quote from Split Enz's "Give It a Whirl" - I am attending their Wellington concert in March, and I can't wait!).

I look forward to seeing all the marvellous shaped breads from around the world when Eva posts the roundup for Bread Baking Day #6.

Postscript: The wonderful roundup has been posted by Eva here and here.

Saucy pork

Cakelaw was, for a long time, on the heavier side, and only lost weight about 4 years ago on her GP's advice to help her temperamental back. The back is still temperamental, despite my substantial maintained weight loss, but it is great to be able to have a choice when you buy clothes (which are one of my passions!).

In my on-again/off-again quest to lose weight, I tried Weight Watchers (unsuccessfully). However, one great thing that I got out of attending Weight Watchers was discovering Michelle Trute, who was our group leader before branching out on her own. Michelle subsequently has written newspaper cooking columns, appeared in regular TV cooking slots and produced a series of cookbooks based on her own weight loss and experience as a qualified chef.

One of my favourite "every day" recipes is in Michelle's first cookbook entitled "Cooking with Conscience". This recipe is for a saucy pork and apricot pastry. However, as filo pastry and I have always had a rather stormy relationship, particularly where you use a hot filling, I have ditched the pastry and just make the saucy pork, which I serve with rice or noodles. The pork is flavoured with curry, mustard and apricots, and is absolutely delicious (provided that you don't object to meat and fruit combinations).

My version of Michelle's recipe is as follows:

1 diced onion
1 tablespoon curry powder
500g diced pork
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
500g packet frozen mixed vegetables
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1 tablespoon of your favourite mustard

Brown the onion and curry powder in a spray-oiled pan. Roll the pork in the flour until it is coated, then add to the onions in the pan and cook until brown. Add the stock and vegetables and heat until the liquid is bubbling. Toss in the apricots and mustard, reduce the heat, and simmer for 20 minutes until the sauce has thickened. Season with salt and pepper as desired, and serve with boiled rice or udon noodles.

This dish is a cinch to make, and has a mildly spicy flavour to tickle your tastebuds. If you object to meat and fruit in the same dish, you could leave out the apricots. However, I love the sweet tang that they bring to the dish. The added bonus is that this dish is (according to the cookbook) a low fat, low calorie, low GI dinner option.

Lemon curd cake for Racquel

Happy New Year! I am back from holidays, although because it was an action-packed vacation, I cannot truthfully say that I feel refreshed. I have posted about my foodie adventures in New Zealand's South Island here. I hope that you enjoy reading about them, and perhaps will be enticed to visit there yourself some day. I highly recommend it!

On Monday, another work colleague, Racquel, celebrated her birthday. As Racquel is bright and sunny, and she is English, I though that there would be no better way to celebrate her birthday than with a bright and sunny lemon curd cake by none other than the grand doyenne of English kitchens, Delia Smith.

The recipe for this lovely cake can be found here on Delia's website. I only made two layers because my cake tins are 20cm in diameter instead of 18cm, and instead of using Delia's lemon curd recipe, I used a delightful Martha Stewart recipe that I found here at the Cupcake Bakeshop site. (Be warned - you could eat the whole batch of curd with a spoon before it goes anywhere near the cake, as it is absolutely morish!) For the finishing touch, I decorated the cake with sugar pansies and leaves.

This cake is really easy to make because everything is mixed together in the one bowl. The only tricky bit is turning out the cakes, because they are a little fragile and tended to stick to the wire cooling rack. It is delightfully lemony in flavour - if you love a light, citrus-flavoured cake, you will love this.

New Zealand - South Island culinary adventures

Cakelaw has just returned from travelling for a week in the South Island of New Zealand or, as the Maori people call it, Aotearoa (roughly pronounced Ay-oh-tay-ah-row-ah), meaning "Land of the Long White Cloud".

It was absolutely wonderful, and you can read about my non-food related experiences here.

However, as this is a food blog, this post will focus on my foodie experiences in the South Island. As I was travelling with my mother and brother, who are strictly non-gastronomes, I wasn't able to partake of any high falutin' food and wine experiences, although New Zealand as a whole has plenty to offer in this regard. However, within the limitations of my circumstances, I tried to experience as much on the local food front as I could.

For those who are not acquainted with New Zealand, it is a beautiful land, filled with:

mountains and lakes;

sheep (blurry and taken at high speed from a bus, but you get the idea);

cattle (also intensively farmed);

deer (forgive the bad photo taken through a bus window);




and, erm, sheep (in fact, there are 39 million of them in NZ!).

I did not get the opportunity to try many restaurants while on the South Island. However, one restaurant which I did try was Sticky Fingers, situated on the restaurant strip end of Oxford Terrace in Christchurch. I sampled a delightful Thai green fish curry there, complete with prawns and kumara (sweet potato). There is no photo of this dish, but it was devine (and sinus-clearing!). The only odd part about it was that I ordered "Fish of the Day" - I didn't expect to receive a curry when I ordered this! Fitting in with the theme of the restaurant, we sat at a table under this great carved lamp in the shape of a hand:

and we could have ordered a beer from the coppery "sticky fingers" beer taps:

My only other restaurant experience was at The Willow, the restaurant situated at our hotel, Holiday Inn on Avon, which is at the opposite end of Oxford Terrace from Sticky Fingers. With all of those sheep, New Zealand is famed for its lamb, so I ordered the lamb shanks:

This dish was delicious - the lamb melted off the bone, just as it should, and the sauce was wonderfully rich, but there was way too much food for me to finish. My brother managed to polish his off, but was stumped soon after being given some of my mother's pork to finish off.

In my travels from Christchurch to Queenstown, the Intercity Coach stopped off in a gorgeous little town in the province of Canterbury called Geraldine. There is a travellers stop there containing a brilliant cafe called The Berry Barn, which serves a fantastic range of cakes and slices. Below is a photo of some of those slices, including New Zealand favourites such as lolly cake, ginger crunch and Belgian slice.

On the way back from Queenstown, I took the opportunity to buy a couple of slices to take home. Here is a close up of the ginger crunch and the Belgian slice, a little the worse for wear after being stuffed into my day pack:

I loved the ginger crunch, which I have made myself, but was none too keen on the Belgian slice, which is a dryish type of cinnamon cake sandwiched together with jam and topped with pink icing.

I am a huge lolly and chocolate guzzler, so I also took the opportunity to sample some NZ sweets.

In Queenstown, there is a terrific sweet shop called The Remarkable Sweet Shop. It is filled with all kinds of sweets, some of which are peculiarly Kiwi, such as Eskimos (pastel coloured, hard marshmallowy sweets in the shape of Eskimos), Volcanoes (vibrant blue pyramidal foam sweets with a red jelly top) and Deltas (large jellies in the shape of fighter jets). A sample of these sweets is shown below:

I purchased a packet of marshmallow sweets shaped like tuataras. In Queenstown, I also purchased a Perky Nana, available all over New Zealand. A Perky Nana is simply a large, chocolate-coated banana sweet.

From a corner shop (known as a "dairy" in NZ!) in Christchurch, I purchased a chocolate fish, which is simply a chocolate-covered marshmallow in the shape of a fish. All of these sweets are good fun, and the chocolate fish tasted great!

One of the local New Zealand ice-cream brands is Tip Top. (Interestingly, Tip Top is a brand of bread in Australia.) Tip Top makes many different types of ice-creams, including the Trumpet (a cone like the Drumstick or Cornetto available in Australia), the FruJu (as the name suggests, a fruit ice) and the one which I purchased, the Jelly Tip (vanilla icecream with a frozen jelly "tip" and all coated in chocolate).

While the Jelly Tip claims to be uniquely Kiwi, I know that I bought a similar icecream in Australia as a child, which came in a blue wrapper with a picture of a pink wobbly jelly on it. I had to buy this icecream after seeing its great television ad, which queries the fine line between togs (in this case, men's racers - I love the fact that the Kiwis use the word "togs" for a bathing costume, just like Queenslanders!!) and undies (for the uninitiated, underpants). You can see the ad on YouTube, if interested.

On the beverage front, I did not get to try the beer (a local brew made in Christchurch is Canterbury Draught) or the magnificent Marlborough region wines - these will have to wait for another trip.

However, as a self-confessed ginger addict, I tried a local ginger beer made by Phoenix:

and a very sugary (60g of sugar per 600ml bottle!) but refreshingly lemony ginger beer-like drink called Lemon & Paeroa:

The L&P drink cheekily claims to be world-famous - in New Zealand!

In all, I enjoyed my light-hearted foodie trip through the South Island landscape, and look forward to returning soon.