For Wednesday with Donna Hay this week, I chose Donna's Beef and Caramelised Onion Salad from Off the Shelf. You can also find the recipe online here. As the name of the dish suggests, it is comprised of pan fried beef fillet slices atop a bed of onion cous cous and baby spinach.
I took heed of the Cookbook Critic's comment on the excessive onion in the cous cous, and I only used one onion (instead of four). For me, that was plenty. I used wholemeal cous cous instead of white, for no reason other than that I could. I had a heck of a time finding cous cous that wasn't already flavoured with dried veges by Ainslie Harriott! In the end, I bought some from the organic shop in Flinders Street (as Mediterranean Wholesalers was not on my weekend travel list). My beef fillet (which cost a motzah) was cooked to medium rare. It looks funny because I don't have a sharp carving knife for meat, so the slices are a little mangled.
Although it is reminiscent of Manu on My Kitchen Rules to say so, for me, this dish needed some sauce. I liked it way better on day 2 when I added some chilli jam to the mix.
To see what my fellow Donna Hay group members, Kayte, Margaret and Chaya, thought of this dish, visit their websites on Wednesday their time.
This week's Baking with Julia challenge is Croissants. Our host is Amanda of Girl + Food = Love. I had made croissants in September 2011 for The Daring Bakers, using Julia Child's recipe from Mastering The Art of French Cooking, so I was interested to see how this recipe went by comparison.
I will be honest - I liked Julia Child's recipe way better than this one. It was less fussy (although by no means not fussy), and the end result was a lot better. I found the Baking with Julia recipe to take longer (the recipe suggested 8 hours just for resting the dough before laminating), and the resulting croissants were overly buttery somehow - they just weren't as good taste-wise, and certainly appearance-wise, for me.
I filled my croissants with almond filling, and topped them with flaked almonds so that you were not left guessing as to what flavour they were. The paleness results from my oven, which is useless at browning things on top.
I still have half of my croissant dough in the freezer, but I sadly won't be in a hurry to use it.
To see what the other Baking with Julia bakers thought, visit the website.
Thank goodness we've made it to Friday again - and the first of March already! It has been a steamy, hot week this week - which is very unlike Melbourne and much more like Brisbane, where I hail from. Ironically, it is wet and cool there - has the earth been turned on its head? Extraordinary!!! The humid heat has made it difficult to sleep, so I am not sure whether I am coming or going this week.
This brings me to this week's French Fridays with Dorie dish, Chicken Breasts Diable - aka chicken breasts pan fried and served with a creamy mustard sauce. My photo may not do the dish justice, but this was seriously good. The hardest part for me was ensuring that the chicken was cooked through, as I overlooked the requirement to flatten the chicken breasts a little before cooking - oops. It all worked out in the wash, although it took significantly longer than 8 minutes for the chicken to cook. However, if you like things hot and spicy, don't be fooled by the name of this dish - it is tame as a lamb in the spice department.
I served my chicken with the lemon-steamed spinach (to be revealed later this month), and the spiced butter-glazed carrots that I missed way back in December 2010:
These were pretty good - I am a ginger fan so I especially liked the fresh sliced ginger flavour through the carrots.
The only dish I now have not made from our schedule is Salmon in a Jar - and that was deliberate. Maybe one day I will get the stomach to try it, but not right now.
To see what the other Doristas thought of Chicken Breasts Diable, visit the LYL section of the FFwD website.
I have been feeling a little world weary lately, so I decided to bake some cookies, despite the heat, to cheer me up. A little while back, I had seen some White Chocolate and Ginger Cookies on Patty's blog, Patty's Food, and printed off the recipe. I have also had the pleasure of meeting Patty, and I shared a lovely lunch with her when I was in San Francisco last year.
How could you go wrong with white chocolate and crystallised ginger in a cookie? They sounded fab. Also, they are low cal - making them a guilt free treat in my book.
I whipped up these cookies fairly quickly, and was surprised that I actually got 24 cookies, as the recipe states. Normally, I get more or less cookies than the recipe states, so these impressed me from the start.
Now, if you are hunkering for a massive cookie to sink your teeth into, these are not it. Only one teaspoon of cookie dough goes into each cookie, so these cookies are more of a bite sized delicacy than a man sized munchie. However, doesn't that actually mean you can eat more of them??
I really liked these cookies, and their Weight-Watchers friendly nature is a bonus for someone like me who expands on the sight of food. Thanks for sharing this treat with us Patty!
Chaya is this week's Wednesday with Donna Hay host, and she chose Donna's Soy-Simmered Chicken from Modern Classics Book I. You can also find the recipe here.
This dish was simple but delicious - the sauce gave a slightly sweet flavour to the chicken. I served my chicken with stir-fried veges.
I really enjoyed this dish - it is quick to prepare, tasty and nutritious.
To see what Chaya, Kayte and Margaret thought of this dish, visit their websites.
Sarah from All Our Fingers in the Pie was our February 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to use our creativity in making our own Crisp Flatbreads and Crackers!
I can't honestly say that I was too creative, because I used the recipe provided by Sarah for Raincoast Crisps. However, they sounded pretty good, with their nuts, fruit and seeds (and mysterious name!), so I thought I would give those a burl. The recipe will be on Sarah's website. However, I did use my creativity in the substitutions that I made. Instead of using pecans, I used brazil nuts, and instead of flax seed, I used LSA.
These crisps tasted pretty good. Not all of them were as crispy as they should have been (most likely because of my knife skills, the oven or a combination of both), but they were good. I think Raincrisp Crisps would be perfect with soft cheeses like camembert or brie, but I did not have any in the house at the time of photographing, so you will just have to imagine that.
To see what crackers and/or flatbreads the other Daring Bakers made, visit the slide show on 27 February at The Daring Kitchen. Thanks to our host, Sarah, for this month's challenge.
On Saturday night in Melbourne, the first Australian White Night Festival was held. The White Night Festival was an all-night arts festival, in the style of similar festivals held around the world and originating in Russia. My firends V & C invited me to accompany them to the White Night Festival/ The thing that initially astonished me was the number of people clogging areas that are normally main roads in the CBD. As an example, here is a shot of Swanston Street with some of the 300,000 strong crowd:
It was rather surreal wandering the streets that are normally out of bounds to pedestrians, with such enormous crowds.
We didn't linger on the bands. Rather, we went down to watch the light show on the Yarra River from Birrarung Mar, which was not dissimilar to (but not as grand as) the light show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. A number of CBD buildings were also lit up including Flinders Street Station with Harry Potter-like lightening bolts on the dome:
and a row of buildings on Flinders Street, including The Forum theatre:
While I enjoyed the lights, I was left a little puzzled by the White Night festival. There seemed to be an awful lot of people moving very fast in all directions, but I am not sure what we were all hurrying to see. However, the festival was lauded a success, and plans are afoot to repeat the festival next year.
Moving on to the cake, The Age Sunday Life Magazine featured Neil Perry's Strawberry and Yoghurt Cake a few weekends back, and I tore it out as a "must bake". The cake contains polenta for texture and colour, chopped strawberries, and the smooth moistness of yoghurt. I substituted the yoghurt for cream, and it didn't seem to matter. The cake still looked wonderful and tasted delicious:
You can find the recipe online here.
Provided that you are not adverse to polenta or strawberries, I believe that you will enjoy this cake, and urge you to give it a go - hopefully your weather will be kinder for baking than it is here at present.
