Ramble tagged 'Cooking'

These are yum. Not your traditional scone, but somewhere between scone and muffin perhaps. Nothing wrong with that.

We’ve made them about four or five times since these photos were taken.

We’ve taken to making our Pesto in the blender and using brown sugar. We rarely add nuts, so I guess I shouldn’t be calling it Pesto. We do throw some pitted Kalamata olives in sometimes; awesome on pizza’s and pasta.

Also thought I’d mention that growing our own basil saved us heaps during summer. But, now that the winter chill has put an end to that, we’ve found Trader Joe’s has the best value for money on packets of fresh Basil. I really like their Spanish olive oil too.

Gnocchi has long been one of my favourites, and Jon has loved it ever since he tried it, numerous times at numerous restaurants, during his visit to Perth years ago. You can get some pretty good pre-made Gnocchi from TJ’s and such, but you can’t beat the fluffy lightness you get when it’s freshly hand-made.

It’s pretty easy too. We boil a couple of potatoes in their skins. Some people bake them instead to keep them dry, but we haven’t had any problems with boiling. Just put them in the water from cold and get them out of the water as soon as you can easily stick a fork in without feeling that gritty apple-like kind of texture (you can keep the water for later too if you like).

Pull the skin off the potatoes and mush them through a ricer (you can mash them, but the ricer ensures there are no lumps and gets things fluffy).

Spread the potato in a bowl, make sure it’s not so hot that it will cook an egg, get an egg, crack it and drop it in the bowl. Fold the egg in plus about 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour – gently (to keep the mix light and fluffy) with your hands or a wooden spoon. Jon has been adding Parmesan at this stage too, which has turned out nice, but optional.

When the mix is consistent, remove it from the bowl and gently knead in up to an extra 1/4 cup of flour – stop adding flour as soon as the mix looses its tackiness.

Pinch off handfuls from the mix, roll them out into snakes and chop them into little lumps. You can see how big we make ours from our unfancy photos. Traditionally you press a fork into the Gnocchi, to help them hold sauce, but we don’t touch ours. We’re for minimal handling.

Bring your water to boil, place your Gnocchi in and wait for them to start floating to the surface (that means they’re done). Scoop them out as they do and collect them in a strainer.

You can then treat them as you prefer. The absolute best finish we’ve given them is Jon’s Alfredo sauce, which is pretty much the sauce from this recipe. Which gives you this loveliness.

We have also given them a sage brown butter sauté for something different. It was nice, but you lose that awesome fluffiness. So try this one after you’ve perfected the above perhaps.

I love our Sunday breakfast fry up. Jon tells me that beans with breakfast doesn’t happen in the US, but it’s big back home. I like Bush’s Homestyle here. I’ll pick up Trader Joe’s beans next re-stock to compare. We get the hollandaise spot on every time now, and TJ’s has a bread (Delphina’s Italian Hearth) that toasts perfectly.

Pesto pasta is always good for a quick, tasty and filling meal. We make it a lot. These two are;

1. fettuccine with the nut-less basil mix we call “almost-pesto” (see basil corn pizza) with some diced chicken (pan-fried in olive oil)
2. fusilli with pesto, fine-chopped sun-dried tomatoes, olives and diced chicken (flour-coated and pan-fried in olive oil) – this one’s the original that my sister Karen taught me years ago

Cheap, quick and tasty combo. Sour cream & chive Pasta Roni, per the instructions, plus polenta (pre-made tube from Trader Joe’s) sliced and pan fried in olive oil and seasoned with rosemary.

Jon doesn’t like french toast, so I don’t get to cook it very often. But it is big time comfort food for me. As children, whenever mum gave us a say in dinner decisions, I would always ask for french toast.

This is some thick sliced french bread soaked in a mix of four eggs, 1/2 cup milk and a few teaspoons of vanilla extract.

When they’re ready, covering with cinnamon and maple syrup is a must.

We made a vegan version of this for Sam’s birthday. We couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards, so we made the non-vegan version for ourselves.

Well baked bread is my favourite food. We still need to work on this one though. The recipe (find it here) was one of the few I could find on All Recipes that didn’t require a bread machine.

I think the yeast didn’t proof properly, so it ended up quite dense. The result was good though and has the potential to be great. A touch less sugar and some better yeast for next time.

Cliff and Sam cooked this for us one night. It’s so tasty it is now a regular for us.

There’s very little work for such a big taste. Basically drown your mushroom cap in olive oil and a lot of balsamic vinegar (seriously, make a pool). Throw it under the grill (or broiler for Americans) for about 8 to 10 minutes (put some foil on the lower shelf to catch the drips). Put it in a lightly toasted burger bun with some pickled fire-roasted peppers (red capsicum), some fresh basil leaves and some mayonnaise.

This is easily the best method for cooking portobello mushroom I’ve found to date.

You can add avocado and onions, but I like it simple.