WWDH - Chicken and Pumpkin Stir-Fry

For Wednesday with Donna Hay this week, Chaya chose Donna's chicken and pumpkin stir fry, from p120 of Off the Shelf.  I had made something very similar years ago from BBC Good Food, but Donna's recipe is online here.

I skipped the basil because I didn't have any.  I thought that this was lovely anyway.  I laughed when Chaya chose this, because I would have chosen the same thing until I saw it was already picked.

This is a quick, relatively easy dinner to make.  I  boiled some rice to go with it, and funnily enough, boiled some beans for the side.  (No, I really didn't find the old post until just now when I was typing this.)  I love pumpkin in just about anything, and I think it really made this stir fry.  I also loved how the chilli gave everything a bit of kick.

To see what Chaya, Sarah and Margaret thought of this dish, visit their websites.

Goats cheese mini puffs

As a savoury contrast to the cake at my birthday afternoon tea, I made Dorie Greenspan's goats cheese mini puffs from Around My French Table. 

What's not to love - choux pastry, goats cheese, cream and cream cheese - yum!

We made these for French Fridays with Dorie ages ago, and I remembered how much I enjoyed them, so they made it to my afternoon tea menu.  This time, I piped in the cheese - the puffs just look neater that way, provided that you can be bothered faffing about with a piping bag.

If these little morsels sound appealing, you can find the recipe here.

Raspberry and white chocolate mini cupcakes

 

I love a girly cupcake.  It's got nothing to do with Sex and the City or the decade long fascination with cupcakes.  I just love the aesthetic of them and the potentially endless varieties.

For my birthday afternoon tea, I went teeny and made raspberry and white chocolate mini cupcakes from a recipe on p113 of  Nibbles: 100 Sweet and Savoury Finger Foods.   These cupcakes were little bite-sized morsels of deliciousness.  Instead of topping them with white chocolate ganache, I made my usual Primrose Bakery vanilla buttercream, dyed the perfect shade of pink, and crowned each one with a little sugar flower.

Here's a peek at the baby cakes before icing:

and here they are in all their glory, fully dressed:

Tempted?  To make 24 of these tiny morsels, you will need:

24 raspberries (fresh or frozen)
75g white chocolate
60g butter
43g sugar
62ml milk
62g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius and line 24 mini muffin tin holes with paper cases, and place a raspberry in the base of each one.

Chop the white chocolate and cube the butter, and melt them together with the sugar and milk over a bain marie, stirring occasionally until smooth.  Leave to cool for 15 minutes.

Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, then add the chocolate mixture and stir to combine.  Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.  Pour the mixture into a jug, then use it to fill the mini muffin cases with batter, filling them no more than three quarters full.

Put the cakes into the oven for 11-12 minutes or until cooked through.  Cool in the tin for 3 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

I then made a third of the mixture of the Primrose Bakery's vanilla buttercream (recipe here), and coloured it with a drop or two of liquid pink food colouring.  I then used a star tip to pipe the icing on top of the cupcakes, and topped each with a ready made sugar flower (I used these Queen brand ones that my Mum gave to me for my birthday - thanks Mum!). 

The end result is absolutely delicious, gorgeous little morsels - perfect for afternoon tea.

Caramelised onion galettes with goats cheese

 

If you like mini food and want ideas for your next tea party, may I recommend caramelised onion galettes with goat's cheese, a simple but brilliant idea from p120 of Treat Petite by Fiona Pearce.

When I first read the recipe, I was unconvinced.  Supposedly you could make little puff pastry cups by cutting out 3cm circles from the pre-rolled puff pastry sheet, then scoring smaller (2.5cm) circles just inside, and it would cook up into a cup.  No way, I said, and I was thinking of making little tart shells instead.  However, time got the better of me, and I gave it a go - and I am so glad that I did: 

 

The pastry puffs up in the oven, but when you press on the scored centre with a spoon while it is still hot, the middle part crumbles inwards, giving you a neat, shallow little cup to load up with goodies.

 

The recipe suggests caramelising your own onions to fill the tarts, but I just filled them with a teaspoon or so of bottled caramelised onions - another time saver for the time poor, like me.  You then just pop a small piece of goats cheese on top of each tart, and a sprig of thyme, then bake at 180 degrees for a further 10 minutes and lo - you have gorgeous, perfectly formed galettes that look super and taste devine.

 

 

FFWD - Celery-celery soup

For French Friday with Dorie this week, we had to make Celery-Celery Soup.  The double celery comes from celery stalks and celeriac.

Although it is officially spring here, it is still soup season so I was happy to make soup.  I wasn't really sure about the celery flavour - I am not a celeriac fan - but  in the end, I found this soup to be pleasant in taste, and even better with a splosh of crème fraiche on top.  This soup may not be a beauty to look at. but it tastes quite good.

To see what the other Doristas thought of this soup, visit the LYL section of the website.

Salmon blini

For my recent monumental ladies afternoon tea, salmon blini were also on the menu.  I thought this one was a bit risky because of how things go with pancakes (you know, the first one is a dud, the last ones always brown too much), but the Gods were smiling on me and the blini went just fine.

I topped half of my blini with salmon, crème fraiche and dill, and the other half with crème fraiche and truffled caviar.  The salmon ones were the most popular, but in my books, both tasted good.

The blini recipe came from p118 of Treat Petite by Fiona Pearce.  To make them, you will need:

150g plain flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
175ml milk
1 egg
50g melted butter

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together into a bowl.  Whisk in the milk and the egg, then half of the melted butter.  Place the mixture in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill.  

Heat a frying pan and brush it with half of the remaining melted butter.  Dollop tablespoonfuls of mixture into the pan, and cook until bubbles form on the top side and the blini are  lightly browned underneath.  Flip the blini and cook on the other side until browned, then flip out onto a plate.

To serve, top with a dollop of crème fraiche, a strip of smoked salmon and a sprig of dill; or a dollop of crème fraiche and some truffled caviar.

WWDH - Spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce

This week's Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe, chosen by Margaret, features an old fashioned family favourite from Modern Classics I  - spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce.

To start off, we had to make a basic tomato sauce using tinned tomatoes and which takes only 15 minutes from start to finish:

You then make your meatballs (you're supposed to use beef and pork mince, but I used just beef mince) and toss them in the sauce, which is lightened with beef stock, and serve it on spaghetti.  Simple!

I liked this dish a lot.  To see what Margaret, Chaya and Sarah thought of this dish, visit their websites.