Mother's Day 2014

To celebrate the last few hours of Mother's Day 2014 I have decided to share my mum's baked chilli pumpkin salad. Now this is one of my favourite salads of all time and it is my mum's creation. This salad goes with almost any meal, is extremely healthy, tasty and simple to make! - what more could you ask for!?

Better yet, you can customise the ingredients to include whatever you fancy!

These are the ingredients that I love together in this salad:
- Chilli olive oil
- Butternut pumpkin
- Canned Chickpeas
- Sunflower seeds
- Croutons
- Feta cheese
- Garden salad leaves

The recipe goes like this:
1. It is as simple as cutting the pumpkin into squares (to whichever size you please), popping these squares onto a baking tray, glazing the pumpkin with the chilli olive oil and baking the pumpkin in the oven (180 degrees fan forced) for 40 minutes.
2. Whilst the pumpkin is cooking, add all other ingredients into a salad bowl (don't forget to drain the chickpeas first!). - It is entirely up to you for the ratios of each ingredient you want to use. - Once all ingredients are in the salad bowl, lightly toss around to mix the ingredients in. Once the pumpkin is cooked, leave to cool a little and then add the pumpkin pieces to the salad. Toss lightly, and you are ready to serve!!
Serving suggestion: For me personally, I love this salad with baked chicken and couscous!

This is such a simple recipe it will have all the guests talking or become a family favourite in no time. I hope everyone has had a wonderful Mother's Day!

Easy and Fast Creamy Chicken Curry

There is no secret to the wonders of curry all it takes
is the careful and precise application of this wonderful spice at the right time. Today we'll show you how to create and easy creamy curry.
Firstly your ingredients will be: white/brown rice, onions, chopped garlic, chicken breast, whatever curry powders you can get a hold of (for me the more the better),Full cream, olive oil, salt, pepper and whatever other spices you want to throw in, there's no limit when it comes to cooking.

The first step would be to start cooking your rice 2-1 ratio with water to rice with salt and a table spoon of olive oil and chuck it in the microwave for about 12 minutes. While this is cooking you can get started on your curry sauce. Firstly chop up an half an onion and then cut up approx. 500 g of chicken breast into small pieces. Then start cooking your onions in a pan with a little bit of garlic and olive oil until it begins to brown then throw in the chicken and stir it around until it is cooked the whole way through. At this point you can bombard your chicken with curry i personally use three different kinds of curry powder and pepper. After the curry has been mixed in you can pour in approx 300 ml of cream and swirl it around and let it simmer until it takes on a golden hue. By now your rice should be finished so then you serve them together and only then do you salt the dish, salting it any earlier in the chicken makes it unnoticed due to the powerful taste of the curry.
Total time to complete about 30 minutes.

Preparing for Winter

It's coming up to the time of the year when the sun sets a little earlier, it's harder to get out of bed in the mornings, we wake up with frost on our grass and the air is crisp, pure and not to mention freezing! Thats right, winter is approaching! - 23 days away to be precise and we can already feel it!

Who doesn't love a hot bowl of soup to warm our insides when this time of year comes around! I have you sorted with the BEST pumpkin soup recipe, I promise once you try it you'll love it! If you are anything like me, every winter you devour different variations of this winter miracle food but your version just isn't like the restaurants! I have found that 2 key miracles to a perfect pumpkin soup.

1. Roast your pumpkins beforehand, it just gives it that rustic, homey taste of your mum's cooking.  
2. Don't be shy with the cream! A full of flavour pumpkin soup must have that perfect creamy smooth taste!

This is the recipe I have found that warms my taste buds up after a chilly winter's day:

•             2kg butternut pumpkin, deseeded, peeled, coarsely chopped
•             
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
•             
80ml (1/3 cup) extra virgin olive oil
•             
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
•             
2 large brown onions, halved, coarsely chopped
•             
4 garlic cloves, crushed
•             
2 tablespoons ground coriander
•             
2 large fresh red chillies, deseeded, finely chopped
•             
2L (8 cups) vegetable stock
•             Extra virgin olive oil (optional), extra, to serve
•             250mls of thickened cream

Three easy steps to the perfect pumpkin soup:

1. Preheat oven to 220°C. Combine the pumpkin, rosemary and half the oil in a large roasting pan. Season with salt and pepper. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes or until tender.
2. 
Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, coriander and chilli, and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes or until onion softens. Add the pumpkin mixture and stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until it reduces slightly. Remove from heat.
3. Place half the pumpkin mixture in the jug of a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into a clean saucepan. Repeat with the remaining pumpkin mixture. Add 250mls of thickened cream, stir in Taste and season with salt and pepper.

And there you have it, your perfect pumpkin soup! 

Faking It - Recipe Book Review

A favourite recipe book around the home is Faking It by Valli Little, from ABC's delicious. collection. Based on the premise of providing clever shortcuts for the time-poor or multitasking cook, without compromising on the quality of the food or the integrity of the chef, this book is six years old and is an old faithful in the kitchen, providing recipes for dishes that are simple but bound to impress, and suitable for anything from a weeknight dinner to a formal dinner party. 

Whilst Faking It may contain some ingredients and methods that the home cook may shy away from - such as chermoula paste or scrambling eggs using an espresso machine - this recipe book contains a variety of recipes to satisfy both a simple and a more advanced cook. 

It also contains many twists on traditional recipes, such as adding truffle oil to macaroni cheese, or topping cottage pies with gnocchi instead of mashed potato. 

Overall, Faking It by Valli Little is a handy cookbook to have around for cooks of all skill levels, and is a valuable addition to your kitchen. 

Faking It is available for purchase here.

Posted by Clare Mannion.

Macaroni Cheese

Macaroni cheese is a quick and easy meal to make, and it's delicious! The cheese sauce used in this recipe can be used for anything - like lasagne, or nachos. The recipe for the cheese sauce I use can be found in Julie Goodwin's book, Our Family Table, an excellent cookbook that you can purchase here. Here is a really easy recipe for how to make Macaroni Cheese.

You will need:

• Pasta
• 50g Butter
• 1/4 cup plain flour
• 3 1/2 cups milk
• Grated Cheese (tasty or cheddar, but you can add blue cheese or another type for taste as well)
• 1 Tablespoon Dijon Mustard (or add to taste)
• Salt and Pepper
• Bacon

Step 1

Melt butter in a saucepan. Once melted, add the flour. Begin to boil the water for the pasta. Preheat the oven on grill at about 220 degrees Celsius. 

Step 2

Once the flour and butter mix is like a dough, add the milk, only a little bit at a time - between about 1/8 and a 1/4 of a cup at a time, and stir until absorbed into the mixture. Repeat this until all the milk is added. Don't forget to stir constantly to ensure the mixture doesn't stick to the bottom of the saucepan. Cook the pasta at the same time as adding the milk. 

Step 3

When all the milk has been added keep stirring until the mixture begins to boil.

Step 4

Put in the mustard, and season with salt and pepper. Remembering to continue to stir. Add cheese to taste.

Step 5

Once the pasta is cooked, strain and put into a casserole dish. Pour the cheese sauce over the top, ensuring that it goes over all the pasta.

Step 6

Add some more cheese on top (parmesan is always a good option, as well as tasty or cheddar cheese). Cut up the bacon into small pieces and place on top

Step 7

Place in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes or until the bacon looks cooked. 

Serves 4.

Tips

• I usually use an entire box of Barilla pasta - either tortiglione, or girandole. I rarely actually use macaroni
• You can add anything to the cheese sauce when you add the cheese, for example onion can be a nice addition
• Use any cheese, but for the sauce use mostly tasty cheese. If you put blue cheese you have the choice of putting it on top, or in the sauce. I prefer it in the sauce. Putting a mixture of cheese on top is also quite nice. 
• Perfect if you have leftover ham from Christmas, or another occasion, just use ham instead of bacon
• If cooking for a vegetarian just skip the bacon. 

Happy cooking!

Posted by Lucinda Moore

Making Crepes the easy way

Making Delicious crepes is on of the easiest and quickest desserts that you can make and there are so many variations in toppings that you have an endless array of deliciousness.
What you'll need:
4 eggs
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
1/4 table spoon of sugar
1/8 teaspoon of salt
2 table spoons of butter
Toppings of your choice
e.g. Honey, jam, nutella, peanut butter or whatever you can think of.


What your finished product will look like ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Step 1
Whisk the eggs until it is one even colour and mix it with your salt.

Step 2
Add flour and milk and continue whisking, it is helpful to pour the flour in stages to prevent it from getting to clumpy. Continue until your batter is as smooth as possible and if you still find clumpy bits of flour you should put it through a strainer just to achieve that perfect consistency.

Step 3
Then merely add the butter mix it in and let it set for a few minutes and your batter is done.

Cooking is just as easy, get a non-stick pan heat it up to an appropriate temperature and add a little chunk of butter or spray to grease up the pan a bit more and pour the batter into the center spiraling out and move the pan so the batter spreads evenly on the pan. It should only take a minute or two to cook the bottom then merely flip it over for one minute and your crepe will be cooked.

Extra: If you want to make your crepe exceptional after you flip it over the first time get nutella for example (you can use whatever you can think of) and put a good chunk in the middle and fold it over so you get a great melted chocolate taste. There are too many ways to enjoy crepes to even begin to list so get in the kitcen and start expreimenting

- Posted by Faisal Janabi

Chocolate Chai Macarons!

So by now its Sunday, and the realisation of the closeness of Monday is setting in. Everyone has probably had way too much chocolate for their own good over the recent Easter festivities but who can say no to Cadbury Chocolate Chai Macarons! I promise, by baking these today, it will make your Monday just that little bit better. Just think, if you get creative in the kitchen today you will also have another excuse not to do that mid-semester paper thats due tomorrow. It is definitely a win-win situation here!  

If you aren't aware, Cadbury has their own website inclusive of the one and only Cadbury Kitchen! Here you can find a myriad of chocolate treats to feed that inner chocoholic. The Cadbury Kitchen, is very simple to use, it even codes the easiness to bake each recipe with chef hats: one chef hat = easy, two chef hats = medium and three chef hats = hard. The recipe we are going to bake today has two chef hats, so it won't be too much of a challenge!

Lets do it!

What you will need:

• 1½ cups pure icing sugar
• ½ cup blanched almonds
• ¼ cup CADBURY Bournville Cocoa
• 1 teaspoon Chai tea (from a tea bag)
• 3 egg whites, at room temperature
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup caster sugar
• 150g Cadbury Dark Chocolate Melts
• ⅓ cup cream

Lets get cooking!

1. COMBINE the icing sugar, almonds, cocoa and Chai in a food processor and process until fine.
2. BEAT the egg whites and salt until soft peaks form. Continue beating, whilst gradually adding the caster sugar just until mixture holds stiff peaks.
3. FOLD one third of the almond mixture into the meringue and then gently fold in the remaining mixture until just combined. Spoon 3cm rounds onto baking paper lined trays to make 48, allowing 2-3cm between each for spreading. Use a wet finger to pat down any tips. Stand at room temperature for 20-30 minutes or until macarons form a light crust.
4. BAKE in a slow oven 150°C for 22-28 minutes or puffed and lightly coloured around the edges. Leave on trays, on wire racks to cool completely.
5. COMBINE the chocolate and cream in a small saucepan and heat gently, stirring constantly until chocolate has melted. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate until firm enough to spread.
6. TO assemble, spread chocolate filling onto 24 macarons and top with remaining macarons, pressing together gently. Serve immediately or store in an airtight container until required.

1+2+3+4+5+6 = DELICIOUS

For more mouth-watering chocolate delights be sure to check out The Cadbury Kitchen!

- Posted by Lauren Wilkins