Successfully moved

And only one glass broken! Tea set and KitchenAid both happily intact. Thanks to assorted parents and friends who gave their precious weekend to help us move... I will be organising a housewarming very soon!
The best thing about the new house (as far as this blog is concerned) is the total ABSENCE of the terrible terrible oven. No, it didn't come with us, praise be to Irwin. We cleaned it and left it at the old rental place, and I didn't shed one tear over it. The interior lining peeling off inside the oven, the rusted-through holes in the stovetop, the grill tray held on with bits of fencing wire, the gas elements perchily balanced on a 2mm border of rust above the ancient burnt enamel. Fare thee well, oven, and don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.
Meanwhile, now I have a NEW OVEN. It's got a spiffy little setting where as soon as you turn the dial to set the temperature, it automatically ignites itself and starts preheating. Ooh. And there is a RANGEHOOD. With EXTRACTOR. And it seems to be less than 400 years old, a major selling point.
I tested it out on the weekend with a chocolate marble cake. Joy of joys, it baked perfectly! Even (dare I say it) too perfectly! The oven was a little too hot, so I got some cratering and cracking, but WHO CARES, at least I have a competent and confident oven that seems to be saying: "Come aahn. Is that the best you got?!? Throw it at me! BRING IT ON". And I say, sure oven, I'l' be bringing it on... Sooner Than You Think.

Brownies

I decided to make Pete some brownies to take for his lunches. They are from the Baking With Love cookbook ( I believe it is from Reader's Digest) which I have now packed, so I can't divulge the recipe. But it was totally standard: melt butter and chocolate, beat the crap out of some eggs and sugar till they beg for their lives, fold in some flour, cocoa, nuts (we left them out) and chopped extra chocolate, shove in tin and abandon at the mercy of the oven.

When they were done I wrapped them in little individual cubes and packed them in the freezer. Now in the mornings, Pete just yoinks one out of the freezer and trundles off the work, looking
forward to his morning tea chocolate hit. So no recipe, but you can track the evolution of the brownie through the marvel of modern visual imagery.

Macaroni cheese

Was inspired to make this for the first time ever, possibly as a result of some pseudo-lust for American soul or comfort food brought on by a combination of watching Home Alone (again), reading the New York Times online and listening to too much Marvin Gaye. Plus there was a packet of elbow macaroni pasta in the cupboard and I felt it would be too sacriliegious, and not nearly as much fun, to make it into anything else. And I just wanted to make something new, that I'd never made before. Also, PJ has a strong weakness for any hot, pasta-related, creamy, cheesy food item, preferably with synthetic bacon flavouring, so I thought I'd give him a break from the Pasta-For-One Cheesy Bacon Flavour microwave jobs and whip up the real thing (for dinner, and probably about 400 lunches, seeing as it made so much).

How easy was it?? For a start, there are only about four ingredients. (I naively assumed that you just mix cheese and pasta together in a bowl, but it turns out that there's actually a bit more to it). I was a little alarmed to see some recipes that called for cheese, full-fat milk, butter AND cream (how's ya arteries?) but luckily I found a creamless one that I could adapt by cutting down the butter quantity and using some low-fat cheese.

• Small knob unsalted butter (maybe 1 or 1 and a half tablespoons)
• 1 to 2 tbsps plain flour
• quarter cup Trim milk
• cooked and drained elbow macaroni pasta
• paprika or other seasonings
• Trimmed bacon, cut into small strips and cooked (soft-cooked, not crispy-cooked)
• grated cheese, any kind you like. Although I think a milder, firm cheese would be more appropriate than a screamingly mouldy blue or a mega-sharp cheddar. I used havarti, Coon low-fat mild and a tiny bit of leftover tasty cheddar.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add flour, stir it till it's smooth and bubbly (about 30 sec). Chuck in the milk, stir stir stir, till thick and creamy (this only took about ten seconds so maybe in future I will turn the heat down a bit. Didn't expect that so fast). Pull it off the stove, stir in paprika and cheese. Maybe put it back on the heat for a bit if you need to help the cheese melt in. Throw the lot on top of the pasta with the bacon, and stir like Satan's MixMaster until it's all a goopy homogenous mass. You can stop there and eat it as is, but I then put it into a baking dish (lined with baking paper: don't make more washing up for yourself) and sprinkled with a bit more cheese. Into a hot oven (mine was set to "hot"...who knows what the actual temperature was) for maybe half an hour or 20 minutes or so, till top is golden and crisp. Mmm, tasty.

Secret piano birthday cake

Tomorrow is a special family birthday day. I have spent the morning making the pilaf from Marie Claire Taste 101 and the bases for the special secret birthday cake I am making.
The plan is to make a tall, layered, 20cm chocolate cake, and to layer it with fudge icing. I have made the two chocolate cakes, but even with me and the oven thermometer working overtime, they still puffed less than desired. I am unimpressed. I have gone to Plan B: make two more (plain this time) cakes and layer them in between the choc cakes. This will give me a much higher cake. Sure, the bottom layer will get a bit squashed, but that's fine. I'll have to get up early tomorrow morning and whip up the butter cakes, and then I'll be able to do the decoration! I've got a couple of packets of Orchard icing, and I'm going to make a piano keyboard in black and white around the sides of the cake. Today's task was to colour half the icing black. Please don't ever attempt this. It was hell on earth. I was hoping to find Orchard chocolate icing at Woolies, but no go, so I bought some food colouring and hoped for the best. I covered a chopping board with baking paper as a shield, put on some rubber gloves (eventually went through three pairs), and went nuts. It took soooooo long. I used significant amounts of red, blue and green colouring, and used cocoa powder to absorb all the extra moisture, which also added brown to the colour mix. Four hundred hours later, the kitchen and me all splattered with blue colouring (there was a small incident when a bug flew in the window and startled me), kneading, kneading, kneading, pouring, powdering, adding, kneading, kneading...arrrgh.
Apparently the icing is now black. By the end of it I couldn't tell black from nearly-black, purple, brown, browny-purple, purpley-green, whatever. It's not BLACK black, but it's a very dark feral colour and it looks black against the white, which is all anyone cares about.
I wonder if it will colour everyone's mouth.
I'm going to make the keyboard round the sides, then just have plain white on the top. I got a black icing gel pen at the supermarket, and I'll draw on a treble clef, stave, and possible a birthday message on the top.
Now, it's just down to you, oven. Don't let me down...

***next day***

I slept in! Arrgh. I had to do the butter cakes this morning...they turned out fine, despite the oven being PARTICULARLY BAD today. I discovered that when you set the oven to 200 C, the floor measures 110 and the top shelf measures 185. All you bakers out there, shed a tear for me. And be amazed that I turned out the result that I did! SO...I made the butter cakes, I made the fudge filling for in between the cake layers, then I tried to assemble it, all in an hour, while getting ready. It was total madness. I rolled out the fondant for the top, and tht was really difficult. It kept sticking, smearing and smudging, and when I'd pick it up to try to drape it over the cake, it kept tearing. Calm, calm. Try again. Eventually the top went on. It had a few choc smudges on it from where I didn't realise it had touched the fudgy icing sides. No prob, cover that up with something later on. Roll out the strips, measuring carefully for the cake sides. Had to do that in two sections. Big problem when it turned out the cake was higher on one side than the other. No idea how that happened. Re-measure, cut. Lots of gaps, and oozing fudge, and mess. Cutting strips and patches of fondant to fill the holes, like Selley's No-More-Gaps for birthday cake. The white icing looked like Frankencake at this stage. I considered giving up. No, we push on. Onward, to victory!
Cut out the keys from the black/brown icing. This was much easier. Careful not to get cocoa powder on pristine yet wrinkly, buckled, patchy white surface. Used skewer to drag lines into icing to represent piano keys, glued black keys on white with more fudge. Wiped down the edges. Cut out some dark hearts to cover some splotchy bits on the top. Got black gel icing pen, drew treble clef, stave, notes and name of birthday girl. Got white icing gel, filled in some tiny gaps, tidied things up a little. Was feeling much better about it at this stage. Kitchen looks like bomb has hit it: icing sugar, bits of fondant and cocoa everywhere. Zoom into the shower, dressed and in the car with cake, pilaf, presents and emergency cake repair kit, only 30 minutes late. At the party I sprinked around some gold chocolate coins to represent wealth and prosperity in the year ahead. It was a total success, everyone congratulated me and it was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.
Note for the future: do not attempt cake of this magnitude with 24 hours notice. Destroy oven. Do not sleep in. Panic less... it's only a cake, after all!

Chocolate and port fruitcake

That's right, it's the richest, smokiest, darkest and fattest fruitcake ever to emerge, gently steaming, lushly decorated and beaming with pride, from your oven. "Look at me", it says. "Ain't I swell?"

I have made this cake the last three Christmases. It's so giant that one cake feeds two families and all of their assorted visitors, guests and sundry cake-eaters. This year, I will make it again. The cycle continues.
Last year, it was the very first thing that we cooked in our terrible terrible oven. Because it's relatively difficult to muck up a fruitcake (most of them are idiotproof), the cake came out looking el fabuloso and I was lulled into a state of quiet oven-related satisfaction. Unbeknowst to me, the terrible terrible oven was merely BIDING ITS TIME. Waiting until I tried to roast a chicken, or bake a cookie. Then it would UNLEASH ITS MIGHTY POWERS OF DESTRUCTION. However, the cake was a great way to christen the oven, and our new house. As it bakes, it will fill the entire house with a sweet, deep and spicy aroma, and you'll have a strange desire to mull some wine and shove cloves into an orange and wrap up a few gifts while munching on a candy cane, spraying fake snow on the windows and singing along to A Richard Clayderman Christmas.

By the way, the spice measurements are correct. I told you it was a special cake.

Chocolate and Port Fruitcake

• 375g currants


• 375g raisins
  
• 350g pitted prunes, cut up with scissors


• 250g mixed peel
  
• 200g nuts (I suggest walnut)


• 1 cup port, (adding a splash of Frangelico, Madeira or Cointreau is optional)


• 250g dark chocolate (You can use cooking chocolate but I use Club or Old Gold)


• 250g unsalted butter, cut into cubes


• 1 tablespoon vanilla essence


• 1 tablespoon mixed spice
  
• 1 tablespoon nutmeg


• 1 tablespoon cinnamon


• 1 cup dark brown sugar


• 4 eggs


• Grated rind and juice of an orange


• 1/3 cup treacle or golden syrup
  
• 1 and 1/2 cups plain flour


• 1/2 a cup self-raising flour


• 100g approx blanched whole almonds (optional)


• Extra 1/4 cup of port to pour over the monster
  

1 Pour port over the currants, raisins, peel and prunes in a large bowl. Leave it to macerate for a few hours, or overnight is even better. Mix occasionally.

2 Preheat your oven to slow, about 160 degrees celsius. Line the base and sides of a deep 23cm round tin with two layers of baking paper, bringing it a good 5cm above the rim of the tin. Take the time to do this right because your paper will protect the monster during its prolonged stay in oven rehab.

3 Put butter in electric mixer and beat until pale yellow. Add vanilla and beat again, then add sugar and beat until light and creamy. Add the eggs one by one (into the rotating beater of death, eggs! Meet your destiny!) and beat well after each one.

4 Add the creamed butter mixture to the fruit. Add the rind, juice and treacle and stir. Sift the dry ingredients and add to bowl, along with chopped up chocolate and nuts. Get a strong wooden spoon (you'll need it) and stir with all your might until the cake mixture is just combined. It's good luck at this point to heft the bowl into your arms and lug it around the house, bleating at house occupants to have a good-luck stir before it goes into the oven. Last year I mis-timed myself and arrived at the couch just as the Paris Open was starting. Peter's eyes never left the screen for a second, but he did manage to get all fingers wrapped around the spoon and to move it about 2mm, wedged as it was in the wet-concrete mass of cake mix. I considered that an achievement and was satisfied.

5 Spoon the mixture evenly into the tin. Tap the tin on the bench to settle it. Wet your hand under the tap and smooth out the surface of the cake. At this point I like to decorate the top with the blanched almonds in a star or lace pattern.

6 Wrap the tin in a double thickness of brown paper, right around the outside, and secure it with string or a paperclip. Bake it for 3 to 3 and 1/2 hours- until a skewer comes out clean. Remove cake, pour over the extra port, and wrap it in a thick clean towel. Don't unwrap it until the cake is completely cold- about 24 hours.
I remember needing two of us to hoist the red-hot baked monster from the terrible terrible oven. I also remember, for some reason, choosing to cakeify on a hot sticky day. By the hour of cake removal, I was down to working in a sarong and bra, pausing every so oft to down a few cups of cold water and splash my pinned-up hair. But...of course, it was worth it!

Vietnamese dinner

I forgot another friend's birthday. Again.

I have to do another special dinner to compensate for my lack of good-friendism.

If this continues, I may have to kill myself.

It will be a Thai-Vietnamese Hybrid Dinner for Five.
This is what I am making:

Thai green chicken curry: no bones though, with lots of basil, coriander and green chili
Jasmine rice with kaffir lime leaves
Vietnamese rice paper rolls: some prawn, some vegetarian and some BBQ pork
Thai Great Salad: with hard-boiled eggs and peanut dressing
Nuoc cham
Pandanus and coconut cake
Fresh fruit: melons, strawberries and kiwis

I already made the curry base and froze it. I will finish it off with the fish sauce, sugar and herbs on the day. I will go to Burlington's for the pork in the morning and then just make the rolls and salad close to the serving time. Oh yeah, and the cake. I got some Singha beer from Thailand as well. Hot damn, that's a tasty beer!

With the cake, I have an ancient old recipe that my father was given by a Filipino woman years and years ago, back in Papua New Guinea when he was hanging out at the bakery by day and running the Yacht Club disco by night. Apparently this woman made the best chiffon pandanus cake you can imagine. Anyway she ended up writing him out the recipe by hand on a scrap of old yellow office paper. He made the cake a few times and then the recipe was lost. A few years ago my mother found it, and scrunched it into the bin....from where, LUCKILY, I rescued it.
Phew.
Anyway, the scrap is now in my recipe folder, but it has become even more spattered and faded with age. I am going to transcribe it and put it up here for safekeeping, just in case there's a fire and I can't get to my recipe folder in time.
It's just a normal kind of chiffon cake, eggs, sugar and so on, but the special ingredients are cornflour, coconut milk (out of a can) and pandan paste. I have had limited success in the past making it, because of my TERRIBLE TERRIBLE OVEN and also because chiffons are quite temperamental. You have to get the inside light and fluffy and the outside golden and firm.

So, I have decided, for this dinner, to improvise and take the old recipe just as inspiration. I will prepare a Margaret Fulton sponge cake, substituting the coconut milk for the milk and the pandan for the vanilla. Interesting. It will either be a triumph of invention or a complete mess. I will go back to the chiffon mix when I have a better oven and I feel more confident about chiffons.

What is pandan paste / pandan pasta?

The flavour duplicates that which is derived from the leaves of the Pandanus latifolius or screwpine which is as popular in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore as vanilla is in the West. Cakes, jellies, desserts and drinks may be flavoured with the light, pleasant perfume. Even some brands of coconut juice in cans hold a hint of pandan flavour. (From Asia Food Glossary)

It's just essence, in the form of a thick, syrupy, deep green paste that you buy from Asian food stores. I get mine at Burlington's, Yuen's, or Sunnybank. Apparently it is a combination of pandanus and coconut essences. Smells really strong, but good, not sharp at all. Its a gentle, soft, clean calming flavour, like your old Strawberry Shortcake dolls from childhood, except if they were Pandanus Chiffon Cake dolls instead.

The thing about this stuff though is that it turns your cake green. And I mean.....green. Really green.

By the way, there is a good and different version of the same cake here at Lily's site. I like this different version, but mine is a simpler mix.

I'll post the original version up soon.



***update***

No crises to speak of. All went well: the cake in particular was fab.


Here's the ingredients for my rice paper rolls: carrot, cucumber, coriander, basil and mint. I also added alfalfa sprouts along with the BBQ pork / prawns.






Note how the oven is only capable of HOT or NOT HOT. I went for HOT to do the cake, so he ended up with a cracked top. But I like how his green green innards peep through the brown crunchy cake-skin.

I eventually drizzled the cake with a thin icing made with coconut cream, and had extra coconut cream in a jug on the side.



Huge coriander bunch: only $1.50! Thanks, Annerley Fruit Barn! I'm still trying to make a dent in it.








I used only fresh pineapple, mint and strawberries in the fruit platter. It was beautiful: really clean, sharp and fresh and in nice contrast to the gentle soft flavour of the cake.







The Great Salad. All the usual suspects plus hard-boiled eggs arranged on top. The dressing went on later: it's roasted plain peanuts, palm sugar, garlic, fish sauce, coriander, lime juice, salt, water and vinegar all crushed together.

Middle-eastern feastern

Possible thoughts for my upcoming middle-eastern birthday dinner:

Watermelon, rosewater and mint salad
Cumin / cardamom lamb meatballs on a platter
Rice pilaf with cinnamon, pine nuts, almonds and currants
Yoghurt and cucumber salad (with....something)
Flat bread (hmm)
Mint tea (gotta find a proper old Moroccan teapot to go with my green glasses)

The birthday cake could be something like figs with honey on a pastry base, spiked with candles.

I want to do a scarlet or red tablecloth with some ornate striped fabric as a runner. Touches of gold would be good too: maybe in a centrepiece or napkins.

I need to consider appropriate music, too.

I bought the latest issue of ABC Delicious today and there is a big section on middle-eastern flavours. That should help me along.

My biggest problem is: a) the DAMN oven (it totally screwed up the pork roast I made for Pete on Sunday...took nearly an hour longer than it should have), and b) my continuing pooritude. Car rego and car insurance have both gone onto the credit card this month, plus rent and normal groceries. Choir fees are due and I still haven't done my tax return. The volunteer unpaid work doesn't help either. I just want to be able to cook and make what I want ( within reason, or course), without feeling resentment towards my dinner recipients, or stressing myself out with ten tons of planning and super-control-freakiness.

So I will try to relax and think about why I am doing it: for the love of friendship, for my own interest and experience and to see my friends enjoy themselves.

***update***

It went well. I made the dishes as above. For the dessert, I used frozen filo and baked it with a filling that I made by soaking dried figs and dates in a syrup of honey, orange juice and orange blossom water. I set some little pieces of rose and almond turkish delight around the edge of the platter, and sprinkled the fruit with pistachios.

I additionally made a platter of carrots and beans chopped into matchsticks, which I poached briefly in lemon and orange juice. They were good, quite tart and still crunchy.

To nitpick, I thought that the overall effect was quite dry. I made the meatballs that morning and then reheated them in the oven, but they dried out a little, and without a dip or a sauce, with the savoury rice and the plain pita bread, I found it a little dry. Next time I will make a tahini or hummus sauce on the side, as well as the cucumber yoghurt.

The table setting was great. I used a scarlet tablecloth from Spotlight, with a orange striped placemat on top. I arranged a vase of oranges, a few tealights in coloured holders and a vase of sand with a tealight inside. I had little dishes of salt and coarse ground pepper, and one of finely chopped lemon peel.

I found a CD of bellydance music at Toombul Music for ten bucks, and had that on repeat. It was effective.

My French dinner

This weekend, I will be preparing a French Sunday lunch for four.

While living there, I was always amazed by the Sunday lunch traditions, and the effort that people went to to prepare beautiful old-fashioned, simple cooked meals. I hardly ever saw a sandwich. Once I was invited to lunch by a student of mine and his family. I was collected from my apartment at 11.45 and taken to their house. The scent of rabbity goodness filled the house.
We all sat down to eat at their kitchen table, with wine, napkins, olive oil, vinegar and crusty baguettes. The first course was a simple salad of various leaves, grated carrot and a plain vinaigrette. Eventually it was rabbit time, and the crockpot was lifted ceremoniously from the oven and placed straight onto the table. In the pot was a steaming fragrant broth that covered tender seasoned pieces of rabbit, winter vegetables and baby potatoes. We used our baguette slices to mop up the rabbit gravy from the bottom of the pot. Afterwards, there was a cheese board, with some Comte and a little piece of Pont l'Eveque. And, of course, yoghurt and chocolate to finish.
I remember being so full of food they had to roll me into the car. My stomach was rock-hard. Didn't eat for the next two meals.
Yom.


Anyway, for this lunch on Sunday I am going to take my inspiration from the above, however I will need to Australianise it and also make it reasonably light and non-stressful.

So far, the plan is as follows:

Nibbles: Not sure yet. Possibly, some proscuitto and olives.

Lunch: Roast chicken pieces, marinated first in lemon and rosemary.

Baby spinach and cos salad, with toasted walnuts, soft goat's cheese and pear. I am thinking about a dressing with orange juice, a touch of garlic and balsamic.

Pissaladiere. This is a traditional Provencal tart with caramelised onions, anchovies and black olives.

Dessert: Possibly, some crusty baguette, dark chocolate and fruit.

***update***

It went incredibly well!!I was very proud of myself, and I didn't stress or panic as much as I thought I would.
I made the caramelised onions the night before, and I marinated the chicken pieces in the fridge overnight. I squeezed over a lime (forgot that I ran out of lemons!), and then left the lime in the dish, along with olive oil, dried tarragon and some sea salt.
The next morning I got up and made the dough for the tart base and left it to rise while I went to the shop for a baguette and some unsalted butter.
The tart came out really well. I used mild Portuguese olives for the top.
I ended up not having an appetiser, just some dry rose wine. The chicken took longer to cook than I thought, about an hour and a half. This is due to my terrible oven though. The lime juice and olive oil made a liquid bath for the pieces to sit in, so they almost poached as they were roasting. Dry crispy tops and white tender undercarriages. So, we had the tart and salad while waiting for the chicken to do its thing. I lightly toasted the walnuts for the salad, and made a dressing from balsamic vinegar and orange juice.
For dessert, we were all quite full, so I just got out my cheese board, and placed on it some juicy grapes, some slices of walnut syrup cake (from the Greek bakery at West End: excellent) and a crumbled block of Club Mild and Creamy, and served it all with coffee.

I must reveal (despite my natural modesty) that I recieved rave reviews: it was divine, fantastic and delicious. I was very proud.

I also had made a table theme to match: a big white tablecloth, covered with a wide runner that I made from a length of cream and navy striped ticking from Spotlight. All glass and white tableware and cream napkins to match, and I made a centrepiece of small glass bottles, each with a green leafy twig in it, and the bottles sitting on a square white platter. Very simple, clean and effective.

For the next event, I am going to try Middle Eastern and/or Moroccan.