Dec 25th

Happy holidays all! 

Apparently this is a wise man holding myrrh. 

Picton Village Bakery panettone was a huge hit

We broke our fast with panettone and wise-man-decorated coffee before devouring a hot second breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon and croissants dripping with butter and strawberry jam. 

The dog was not keen to be a reindeer with me.

This book has the most fabulous pictures. Drool.

Pressies from the bf. I think he might want a feed.

And then there were two

I just went to scavenge left-overs and discovered that two mince tarts survived Christmas day. Now there is one. Too tempting!

Plan B

I had big plans for my day off yesterday. Recently at work, I realised just how long it's been since I used a piping bag when the potato I was piping onto pies turned out less than aesthetically pleasing. To build up my skills a bit, I decided to experiment on meringues. However, they didn't turn out exactly right. I used a combo of brown and icing sugar because I couldn't find any castor in the pantry. The brown sugar gave them a lovely caramelly flavour, but made them look, well, a little poopy. Observe.

My experiments continued with strawberry and chocolate meringues. I'd gotten bored with the piping bag half-way through the plain meringues so I was just spooning the mixture onto the tray. The strawberry ones tasted fab but are also a tad ugly.

I melted some very dark chocolate for the last round, but adding liquids to meringues just deflates the egg whites and it all just turned to goo. Determined not to throw anything out (or eat the whole bowl raw) I poured the goo into a ramekin and accidentally made a souffle. It was immediately descended upon and this was the first picture I could take of it. It used to be quite pretty...

Meanwhile, four wild ducks were slow cooking in the oven and were to be a triumphant dinner. Last time we had wild duck, everyone ended up with half a duck each - because carving the bony things was just too fiddly - and we quickly abandoned cutlery in favour of fingers. Today's ducks looked (and smelt) fabulous, but by the time 7pm rolled around, they were only half finished. A house-full of returned gym bunnies demanded light food, now, so the ducks were postponed of favour of quick pasta with gin and tonics.

Post-Gym Pasta
Your pasta of choice
1 onion- diced
4 cloves garlic
Oil
Red wine - 1/4c ish
Can of tomatoes
2 mushrooms
Half a capsicum
Handful fresh coriander and basil
Chopped chillies and pepper
Cheese


Boil water and add enough salt to make it taste like the sea. Chuck in as much pasta as you think you can eat, then a bit more.

Heat oil, onion and garlic in a big pan with the lid on. When the onion is soft, pour in quarter of a cup of red wine and tomatoes. Rinse out the can with a little more wine. Simmer with the lid off and add mushrooms,  capsicum,  basil, and coriander. Season with pepper and chopped chillies.
Serve topped with cheese and more herbs.


Accidental Souffle ( I had enough mixture left for one ramekin, but here's a 4+ person recipe, depending on the size of your ramekins)

3 egg whites
Lemon juice
100g brown sugar
70g icing sugar (or 170g worth of whatever sugar you can find)
Chocolate - I used Whittakers 72%

Preheat oven to 130°C. Beat the egg whites. Add lemon juice and beat some more. Super slowly, add teh sugars a little at a time, while continuing to beat. Melt the chocolate and beat it in. Pour into ramekins or one big container and bake for about 15 minutes. To prevent collapsed souffles - which aren't as pretty but just as tasty - leave the finished souffle in the oven (turned off and door shut) until completely cool.

Jammin'

False advertising, not actually mango chutney

In the weekend, I decided to finally get onto my Christmas shopping. Rather than heading into town, I mosied next door to the hydroponics strawberry-growing neighbours and bought two kilos of jam strawberries.

I scrounged some lemons from the yard and discovered that dad mows very close to the lemon tree, resulting in grassy lemons. My ambitious plans for strawberry and lemon zest jam were then scrapped. 

 

Strawberries don’t have very much pectin, which means they need a bit of hand to set, otherwise you end up with liquid jam. I used both lemon juice and tartaric acid because I like the juxtaposition between zingy lemon and sweet strawberry. The great thing about strawberries is that you don’t need to sweat over a boiling pot for long because strawberry is a quick jam!

Do not splash onto skin

  

Preparing for the skin test

To sterilise, place clean jars in the oven at 100°C for at least ten minutes. Boil lids for at least ten minutes, ensuring they stay underwater the whole time. Do this towards the end of the cooking process, so jars and lids are hot while bottling. Pro-tip: funnels are a godsend when bottling molten jam.

Method adapted from Alison Holst's Complete Cooking Class

2kg strawberries
4 Tbsp water
7c sugar
2 tsp tartaric acid
Juice from two lemons

Put strawberries and water in large pot and place over medium heat. Cook until soft and mash slightly to break fruit up.Add sugar and cook until sugar is dissolved. Boil for three minutes then add tartaric acid and lemon juice. Boil for ten minutes further, or until jam passes the skin test. Place a spoonful of jam on a plate and allow to cool. Jam is ready when it forms a skin which crinkles when you run your finger through. Pour into hot jars, filling to the very top. Screw lids on as tight as possible. Listen for the pops of the lids sealing themselves in the coming hour.

Bread and Butter Deliciousness

I have just started a new job as a bakery assistant at a fabulous Dutch bakery. It is simply brilliant. Quite apart from the fact that all the staff are all lovely, and every customer is pleased to see me, when I finished work yesterday, I got to take home a bag of date scones. Tasty though they are by themselves (they’re topped with cinnamony sugar!), I decided that if I left them for a day, they would make a delightful “scone and butter pudding.”

I only recently discovered that bread and butter pudding is essentially stale bread with custard. As a custard fiend, I was delighted and have been experimenting ever since. It’s a great pudding for students because an essential ingredient is stale bread – a standard in the uni cupboard.

I found some frozen berries in the freezer and everything fell into place. According to legend, bread and butter pudding tastes even better the next day. I compromised and made this one in the morning so it can develop its flavours during the day. The smell created by hot berries oozing into sugary, date scones combined with the Christmassy aroma of chai and star anise steeping in warm milk made for a rather pleasant kitchen. It’s pretty tempting to have some for lunch right now. 

This star anise reminded me of the tine a flatmate "accidentally" knocked a spider into the dinner I was cooking.

Mmm layers

Delicious layers

Ingredients

1 c fruit - I used frozen red currents 

Sugar to taste

1 c milk

Spices for flavour - I used a chai tea bag and a star anise, but you could also use ginger root, cinnamon quills, vanilla pods etc.

2 eggs - room temperature

4 Tbsp. brown sugar

3 date scones

Butter

Extra brown sugar

100 ml booze - I used walnut liqueur 

Stewed Fruit:

Heat fruit over low heat with a small amount of water. Add sugar to taste. 

Custard:

While fruit is stewing, place milk and spices over low heat and watch carefully, stirring frequently. Remove milk from heat as soon as it begins to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together eggs and brown sugar until thick and creamy. Remove spices from milk. In small increments, add milk to egg and sugar while continuing to beat.

Assembly: 

Butter tin. Half scones horizontally* then cut into soldiers. Cover the bottom of tin with 1 1/2 scones, breaking soldiers with fingers into smaller pieces. Pour half of stewed fruit over scone pieces and press down with the back of a spoon to ensure even coverage. Pour half of custard. Crumble the soldiers of one scone on top. Pour in the last of the fruit and spread out with spoon. Pour in remaining custard. Rest for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 180° C. Place the soldiers from the last scone half in so they half stick out of the custard. Bake for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with extra brown sugar and pour liqueur over top. Grill for 10-15 minutes. Leave it overnight, if you can resist!

* If using jam, smear liberally in both halves before cutting into soldiers.