Bitter Sweet Recipes

This recipe was given to me quite few years back by a friend’s mum when we went to stay on their farm in central Queensland.

Its very quick, easy and tasty and is surprisingly filling. It can be served as a posh starter to a meal, or, as I prefer, in a big warm bowl on a lazy night in front of the TV.

This recipe yields 2 large serves or 4 small starter serves. It is best eaten on the day of cooking, but you can keep it in the fridge for about a day if you like.

INGREDIENTS

Half a head of Cauliflower
Generous teaspoon of Crushed Garlic
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
pinch of nutmeg
2 vegetable stock cubes or about 3 cups of veggie stock
3 tablespoons of grated parmesan
a knob of butter
1/2 cup cream (or milk)
salt and pepper

METHOD

Cut the Cauliflower into medium sized chunks.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan with the garlic. Add the cauliflower and stir until the cauliflower is lightly browned.

Add in your veggie stock and nutmeg then simmer until the cauliflower is soft (about 5 minutes).

Using a stick mix (or your blender, carefully!) puree until it is no longer lumpy.

Add the parmesan, butter and cream. Puree again until combined. Taste your soup and season as needed. Warm again slightly before serving.

VARIATIONS

You can make a healthy variation of this soup by omitting the butter, reducing the parmesan (or using low fat cheese) and using light milk instead of cream. If you do this you may need to add in 2 teaspoons of corn flour to thicken the soup up.

I decided to embark on making some dulce de leche the other day after reading about dulce de leche brownies. Im not really much of a fan of brownies but I absolutely adore caramel.

So I went down to the shop to buy the sole ingredient of Dulce de Leche; Sweetened Condensed Milk. Removed the Labels off the tins, Lined a Big pot with a tea towel (to stop the rattling) and started boiling the cans. When the water started boiling the teatowel dislodged itself and started floating in the top of the water so I decided to take it out and make do without it. After all, delicious gooey caramel is worth three hours of rattling!  About half an hour into the boiling I decided to read the labels which I had removed off the can and noticed in big bold letters it read “ATTENTION: DO NOT HEAT IN CAN”. At first I panicked, but hey, life isn’t so much fun if you follow the rules all the time!

There are a lot of different recommendations that come with making dulce de leche,  one is to poke holes in the lid of your cans and not immerse in the boiling water. Another is to just pop them in, keep them immersed the whole time, cross your fingers, and hope for the best. Some people say you should only make it in the oven, others say to pour out the contents of the condensed milk into a saucepan and heat while constantly stirring until it turns into caramelly goodness.

Being a little bit lazy at the best of times, I went for the cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best option.

Well 2.5-3 hours later, the tins have a strange kind of expanded look to them, the lid looks scarily as if it is going to pop off, and the sides are slightly curved out. I decided that I should leave them to cool down for a few hours while I went to work… and hopefully when I get home I will be rewarded with some delicious dulce de leche.

Ok I lied… I really couldn’t wait for it to cool down I cracked open one of the tins over a bowl to see molten hot caramel flow out. I would caution against this as sugar burns are not always fun but if you really cant wait then be VERY careful.

I am storing one tin unopened in the cupboard and the contents of the opened one in a sterilised glass jar. This can be used for many different sweets, to fill pie cases, to make banoffee pie, to warm and pour over ice cream , as a sweet dip for sugar puff twists (will be posting a recipe soon) or you could just eat it on its own with a spoon for a sneaky midnight snack.

Guess who got to lick the tin...

I am the first to admit that I don’t like eating bananas once they get to that brown spotted stage. Usually when my bunch of bananas start to ‘turn’ they are immediately peeled and chopped into small bits to be frozen and used in smoothies. This time I got to them a bit late and they were already quite brown and beginning to go soft, perfect for banana bread.

Because the weather is starting to warm up I wanted to make a summery banana bread, I was searching around for a recipe and came across Janelle Bloom’s Banana and Coconut bread (as featured in Super Food Ideas magazine), which intrigued me because it used coconut milk as the ‘wet’ ingredient.

So now I am writing this waiting for my banana bread to bake and enjoying the delicious scents wafting from the oven. My teapot is waiting and the water is boiled so I can have a nice cup of tea with that first slice hot from the oven…

An hour later the banana coconut loaf is ready, it has a nice sweet chewy crust and a very moist spongy texture. Definitely my new favourite recipe for banana bread, this is going into my permanent collection, nice one Janelle!

Two days later and the banana loaf is still moist and delicious, it has a wonderful texture with lots of little bits of banana and the coconut flavour complements it wonderfully.

This recipe makes a large loaf… don’t do what I did and put it in a small tin! Janelle’s recipe states that it will keep well in an airtight container for about a week.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup castor sugar
1 1/2 cup self raising flour
1 cup mashed banana
1 cup coconut milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

METHOD

Grease and Line a large loaf tin, and preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celcius.

In a large bowl combine dry ingredients.

Mash your banana and combine with the rest of the wet ingredients in a separate bowl.

Pour wet mixture over dry mixture and mix until combined. (it will look a little lumpy due to the chunks of banana and the coconut)

Place batter in your prepared pan and cook for about one hour until your loaf is lightly browned and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

So I know everyone has their own recipe for a baked dinner… but I thought I would share mine anyway.

I grew up in a house where pork crackling was coveted by every member of the family, when I was younger and we had pork roast at grandmas house my aunt and mum would sneak into the kitchen and steal the crispiest bits of crackle before they even made it to the table!
Everyone would get their piece of crackling and save the best till last, all you could hear at the end of the meal was the crunch of crackle between our teeth and the remnants of the salty fat being sucked off our fingers.

I was vegetarian for about 10 years as a teenager and have also grown very fond of all kinds of roasted veggies. Now when I make a roast I include whatever veggies are in the pantry; sweet potato, carrot, potato, onion, capsicum, pumpkin, aubergine, zucchini… the list goes on. I cook my roast veggies very plainly with cloves of garlic, a good glug of olive oil and thyme leaves sprinkled over the top (fresh is preferred, however, my herb garden is looking a little sad at the moment).
The same goes with cooking the pork, I think with a meat like pork it is best to let the flavour of the meat shine through and then complement it with flavours such as apple sauce (traditional) , cranberry sauce (my favourite) or even mint sauce (my man’s favourite) at the table.

My lovely man bought a very strange cut of pork leg that I haven’t seen before the other day and I was pondering over how to cook it. It says on the packet that it is a ‘bone in roasting leg of pork’ but it appears like a HUGE bone in steak. I was a bit worried that the crackle wouldn’t crackle (because it was around the edges of the meat) so I cut it off and cooked it in a separate pan, and I laid the flesh on top of my veggies for roasting.

I love to always cook excess veggies when I make a roast as I love them the next day on a salad, or just to eat on their own. This will really serve as many as you would like to serve depending on the size of the roast that you get and the volume of veggies that you cook.

INGREDIENTS

Pork Roasting Cut
Olive oil
Garlic
Thyme
Salt

Roasting Vegetables such as;
potato
sweet potato
carrot
pumpkin
onion
garlic cloves
turnip
sweede
zucchini
capsicum
aubergine

Steaming Vegetables such as;
broccoli
cauliflower
green beans
peas
METHOD
Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celcius, Prepare two baking trays by rubbing generously with olive oil.

Wash, peel and slice your chosen veggies into manageable sized chunks (you want it to all cook at the same time so keep this in consideration when cutting the vegetables)

Prepare the pork rind. I removed the pork rind from this piece of meat because it was around the sides of the meat and I didn’t think it would crackle effectively there. You can leave it on, or cut it off and cook it in a separate tray depending on what you like.

To prepare the rind you must dry it well with a paper towel.

Then rub it with few tablespoons of olive oil.

Finally sprinkle a generous amount of salt onto the rind and rub it in.

Lay the vegetables in a tray and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with thyme leaves, slice the cloves of garlic in half and nestle them in-between the veggies.

Now you can place you roast on top of the veggies like I have or cook it in a separate pan.

I prepare my meat by rubbing it lightly with olive oil, crushed garlic and thyme leaves.

Place the crackle in the oven on 220 degrees Celcius for 20 minutes, it should bubble and spit and start to brown and crackle before your eyes (keep an eye on it).
Turn the oven down to 180 degrees celcius and place your veggies and meat in to the oven  (if they are not already in there). Leave your crackle in there for the remainder of the cooking time.

The general rule is that you need to cook your roast for about 40 minutes per kilo of meat, keep an eye on it towards the end. It may need more or less roasting time depending on the cut of meat (i.e.. if it has a bone or not).

Allow the meat to rest for 15-20 mins before carving. Serve with a platter of your roasted and steamed vegetables as well as all of the necessary condiments.