It’s been a really busy week for me and I haven’t had anywhere near the time I need in the kitchen.  Cooking for me is a need in the same way writers need to write and artists need to paint.  I’m just not happy unless I have that creative outlet.  We had old friends from southern Australia visit this week and because it’s June we ate hefty wintery food and I wanted a light dessert that wouldn’t be filling.  Meringue is really versatile and my guests say it’s like eating sweet air.

I’d made fresh strawberry ice cream and I had egg whites left over and that always spells meringue at our house.  I decided to make rectangles because I have this lovely rectangular plate and I wanted to use it.  Never mind that the size of my meringues were larger than would look good on the plate, it was still a good idea. A round plate did just fine.  Next time I’ll measure the plate!

My meringues are only room temperature egg whites and caster or superfine sugar – that’s it.  Whip the egg whites til foamy and then add the sugar very slowly and beat until you rub some of the mixture between your fingers and there’s no gritty sugar left.  Then shape into layers on baking paper and bake in a low oven til they’re crunchy on the outside and moist and fluffy on the inside.

I have visited some wonderful blogs this week and want to share them with you.  Veronica’s Cornucopia has a delicious Pound Cake made with Condensed Milk and I can’t get this recipe out of my head.  I will have to make it soon or I won’t get any sleep.  Kissed By Sweets made the cutest little donut holes from a recipe she found for Mini Donut Muffins.  If you like donuts these look really easy to make. For thirsty people who love watermelon and pomegranate, Chef in Disguise posted a recipe called Watermelon Pomegranate Dream that puts these two flavors together brilliantly.  Finally, if you’re a raspberry lover and a blueberry lover like I am, then you won’t be able to resist Blissfully Delicious’ Fresh Berry Tart.  The berries sit on lovely pastry cream and would be perfect for a summer night’s dessert.

 

 

I was at our weekly cooking class last Friday and it was a demonstration by the owner of a company which produces cooking sauces using native Australian foods.  The company is called Wild-Foods and the name on the jars is “Eat Me I’m Wild.” She wants to encourage everyone to use native ingredients.

As I was leaving, Martina from Le’Petit Gourmet gave me a recipe card for pork tenderloin with wattle seed cream sauce.  Le’Petit imports gourmet food to our region and also promotes local producers.  I thought, “what the heck, I’ll buy some Oz Tukka wattle seeds and lemon myrtle and give it a try.”  I got home and put the jars away and promptly forgot.  I was at the butcher today and saw pork tenderloin that looked really good and remembered the recipe card.  Dinner done.

Have you ever cooked something that tasted so good you wanted to cook it again even though you were full?  That’s what this dish was.  Not only that, it photographed like crap.  I so wanted it to look good because it tasted absolutely heavenly.

See what I mean?  Looks like something the cat dragged in, doesn’t it?  Well, let me tell you it tasted like joy on a fork.  It was simple as can be to make too.  Cut an onion into wedges, slice a few mushrooms and sauté til soft and then slice the tenderloin into steaks and brown in a hot skillet.

Transfer the pork to an ovenproof dish, add the onions and mushrooms on top.  Mix the cream with salt, pepper, wattle seeds and lemon myrtle and pour over the pork, onions and mushrooms.

Wattle seeds are native to Australia and they add a nutty, chicory flavor to dishes.  Wattle seeds have been used by the Aboriginal tribes by grinding them into flour. Real bush tucker!  I’ve lived in Australia for a long time but this was the first time I’d tried cooking with them.

When I first stuck my nose over the jar I wasn’t too sure but once I put the first forkful in my mouth I was convinced.  No wonder the Oz Tukka company passes this recipe out with their wattle seeds.  Lemon myrtle is like having powdered lemon in a jar.  Yum.

Bake at 200°C or 400°F for 20 minutes and that’s it.  I tell ya it’s that easy.  I only cooked one tenderloin for the two of us and usually there’s plenty left over for the dog.  Poor Charlie didn’t get a look-see tonight.

 

 

I was cleaning out the freezer and found some raspberries from summer and thought maybe a tart with these and some apples with a streusel topping with flaked almonds.  I was on  a mission!

Do you ever lose things in your freezer?  I have a friend who inventories (and dates) everything in her freezer and keeps it posted on the outside. I can only dream about EVER being that organized.  She does the same thing with her pantry but keeps that inventory in a notebook she takes with her to the grocery store.  Yeah, I couldn’t live with her either but she’s great fun on a night out.

It’s not often I make something without getting a recipe first.  Sometimes you just suck it and see how it turns out.  Turned out mighty fine!  My crust recipe is always good and I figured the filling couldn’t be too difficult.

Since my berries were frozen and I wanted to make the tart NOW I put them in a sauce pan and melted them until all their royal goodness oozed out. The color of raspberries is almost as exciting as eating them just off the vine.  It’s a marvelous color.  …and yes, I overfilled the tart.  I couldn’t help myself.  I’ll do better next time.  Right now I’m full of apple raspberry tart.

Here’s how I made it.

 

 

We love potatoes in our family. Just look at my backside and you’ll know for sure. One of our favorite potato dishes are these baby (chat) potatoes with a creamy, garlicky, buttery sauce.

They are a bit decadent so you wouldn’t want to have them often but we love them on veggie nights.  It’s not that they replace meat but they’re filling in the same way.

If you like garlic like we do, then give these a try. They’re really quick and easy to make and I’ve never had anyone not want seconds.

I’ve seen recipes where you slice these and fry them and then toss in the cream and reduce but I choose the easier route.

I scrub the potatoes and cut them into bite sized pieces and boil in salted water until just tender.  In a sauce pan I put two cloves of minced garlic and the butter and s l o w l y tease out the garlicky goodness over very low heat.  Then I add the cream and salt and pepper to taste and reduce the cream til it’s thick enough to coat the potatoes.  By the time the sauce is done, the little pieces of potato are done and it’s time to fill my belly !

 

Ever want something out of the ordinary?  Me too.  For me that would be something like Moroccan chicken.  I love this type of cooking and I don’t make it often enough.  It certainly deserves to be in everyone’s recipe rotation list.  (Don’t have one of those?  It’s perfect for those nights you can’t think of anything to cook.)

I won’t lie and tell you that this isn’t complicated to make because it is.  There’s a lot of things that go into this recipe but none of it is difficult.  It just takes the time to measure out all the spices, toast the almonds, cut the preserved lemon, coat the chicken — but it’s oh so worth it when you put the first forkful in your mouth.  It’s mildly spicy, a bit lemony, a bit tart, a bit sweet and very very tasty.

Once you’ve got all the recipe ingredients ready, the actual cooking is fairly fast.  Cut up chicken pieces don’t take long to cook and if you cook them too long you’ve got tough chicken, so let’s go.

Measure the spices into a bowl and then toss in the cut chicken pieces to coat and then let them sit for 2 to 6 hours before cooking.  You could prepare the chicken before work in the morning and then it’s ready to cook when you get home.

You can use a tagine to cook this in but I prefer my saute pan because I like my chicken browned.  Once you have cooked the onions and the garlic slices, you add the chicken and brown it and then add the remaining ingredients and cook on low for 20 minutes.

As you can see there are a lot of preserved lemons.  The recipe I was getting my inspiration from recommended a whole lemon.  I wouldn’t use that much again.  Just a hint of lemon would be better I think.  When finished it looks like this!

Here’s the recipe!

 

When they named this recipe they certainly didn’t go wrong thinking it should be made for royalty. It’s so good.  It’s rich, it’s creamy, it’s chocolatey and perfect when you want to wow your guests.  I used to make this for my son when he was growing up.  If he ever asked for “my cake” I knew it was always this one he wanted.

I don’t make it often because I can’t stay away from it.  I foiled myself this time though, I served it for dessert at dinner the night after I baked it and then I froze the rest in slices.  Now when I’m having a HUGE craving, I will eat just one small piece.   Remarkable restraint on my part.

It’s fairly easy to make — there aren’t many ingredients in a cheesecake.  Once you have the crust done it goes pretty fast.  The original recipe calls for a cookie type crust but I’m partial to a graham cracker crust on this cake.  Either one would be good though.

 

When I said the cake was rich, it’s got 3 packages of Philly cream cheese and a cup of chocolate chips, 6 eggs and a cup of sour cream.  When they said “royal” dessert they were thinking BIG.

 

 

I went to a class on how to make pasta.  I know, I can hear all of you saying, “it’s only flour and eggs for goodness sake, why did she need a class??”  I attend a weekly cooking demonstration class at a local foodie place called How To Cook.  There is a group of about 30 women who meet every Friday at 10am and this week it was a pasta making demonstration by the importer of Marcato pasta machines.

The class was good because I have always used a recipe that calls for 00 flour, salt, milk and olive oil and Chris from DKSH advises using just flour and eggs and nothing else.  So that’s what I tried and it came out really good.  I used fresh eggs at room temperature and 00 flour that wasn’t past its use-by date.

During the class Chris used his pasta machine to roll the pasta into thin sheets.  One thing I didn’t know was that when you’re using a pasta machine and putting the dough through the machine the first time that you should run it through 6 times on the widest setting.  Run it through the first time, fold it and run it through and then fold it 4 more times before running it through the lower numbers.   He wasn’t sure why but it was a must.

At the end of the presentation we all got to eat pasta with a fresh tomato sauce and we all went home happy.  As we were getting ready to leave, Chris asked if any of us had eaten rotolo and nobody had.  He said it was a fantastic way to use pasta.  When I got home I Googled it and watched a video by Jamie Oliver teaching it to the Today Show crew.  I knew then I had to make it.

I roasted some butternut pumpkin (squash) for 35 minutes at 350F and stirfried some baby spinach in a little oil and garlic and set them aside to cool.

With my newfound pasta inspiration and my dough already made I rolled it out.  It didn’t get thin enough (batch one) but I made it anyway just to taste the ingredients.

I rolled it up in the tea towel and tied off the ends with string.  Then I did as Jamie suggested and put it in a pan of boiling water for 30 minutes.  My dough was too thick and my pan was too small and my roll looked more like a snake than a sausage.  But…

It tasted DIVINE!!

I knew I had to make it again.

Day 2.

Roasted the butternut, sauteed the spinach and this time I sauteed some mushrooms before adding the spinach and garlic and I added some sweet red pepper (capcisum) for color and flavor. I pre-cooked pepper in the microwave for 3 minutes.

I made the dough and this time, rather than try to roll it out (I have arthritis) I thought I’d run it through the pasta machine and then stick the 3 strips together.  Cheating I know, but hey, whatever works and this worked a treat for me.

Once the dough was stuck together and smooth I placed it on the tea towel and added the butternut.  Squish the butternut into a roll – it will be soft enough to do this and you can get a much tighter roll if you do. Then sprinkle the spinach, ricotta, mushrooms, and pepper (or anything else you think you’d like), grate fresh parmesan over everything and roll ‘er up and then roll the roll in the towel and tie off both ends.

This time, instead of trying to fight with the boiling water in a smallish pan, I kept the oven on after the butternut was finished and placed the rotolo in an ovenproof pan and placed it in the oven and then poured boiling water over it.  I baked it for an hour.

Just before it was to finish I clarified some butter and then put some sage leaves in til they were crispy and then removed them.  Then removed the rotolo from the oven, cut the strings and unrolled it.  Be careful this is hot.

Then I cut portion sizes and set them in the hot sage butter for about a minute on each side and then plated them.  I served them with sauteed grape tomatoes that I’d cut in half and cooked with the other end of the clarified butter. (Not one to waste.) Added salt, pepper and fresh parsley. Yum.

This time I plated appetizer sizes because remember, we ate these yesterday too.  Plus I had made fettucini noodles to use with poached chicken and I don’t want to be 3-ton Tina by next week.

Maybe you would use less sage butter than I did.  I look at it now and it seems a bit decadent but seriously, can anyone get enough burnt sage butter?   I served it with grated parmesan but the first time I used it it covered up the rotolo.  (orgasmic cooking sometimes takes effort)  This was SO good, you’ve gotta try it.

Italian Rotolo With Burnt Sage Butter

 

** Update to this post!

Carl Legge from LlynLines

made his own rotolo !  Here’s the photo and I think he’s put me to shame!  I think it looks good enough to put a fork in it!    Thanks so much for sharing, Carl.