Dessert: Brownies

Sorry I haven't posted in a while I have been so busy cooking and saying good bye to my friends that are leaving for China on Monday.

Today my friends Charlotte and Jackson came over and made brownies with me. Now I seem to be childhood-dessert challenged because I can't cook those little sweet treats you used to eat when you where little like cookies and brownies if my life depended on it. So I did go into the task with a negative point of view. I was about to melt the chocolate when I noticed this sticker on the bottom of the pot that said "take care of me, wash me when I'm hot" I thought it was meant to be there so I dismissed it... big mistake. Just as we where about to put the brownie in the oven I pulled out what I thought to be a piece of chocolate but it was none other than the sticker.
I over cooked the brownies a little bit and the pan...thing I put them in wasn't the right size but all in all they looked alright and tasted fine... a bit chewy... but fine.

Dinner: Curly Pasta with feta, spinach and pine nuts

Tonight we had a early dinner of a very healthy pasta dish, it had in it this frozen spinach which was one of the oddest things I've seen in awhile and feta cheese as the two main ingredients other than pasta. When I was cooking the pine nuts I walked away from the pan and they started to burn, so I had to hand pick as many burnt ones out as I could... fun.


Other than that there isn't much to report with this dish but the end result was pretty good, mum and dad really liked it, dad is going to take the rest of it to work tomorrow so he obviously liked it... I think I know whats wrong with it... it doesn't have chocolate ;)
Tomorrow I'm going to start cooking for a dinner party I'm having on Friday for some of my friends that are going to China (Group 2) and there is going to be plenty of chocolate involved in that one.

Breakfast: Blueberry and Cornmeal Muffins

Last night I was up coughing so hard my ribs started to cramp, in other words I'm really sick and it's a horrible feeling! I would take a runny nose over a cough any day!
But because I have so much dedication I decided to make Blueberry and Cornmeal Muffins :)
Okay, first problem cornmeal!?! It doesn't sell in Melbourne so my mother bought polenta which is the same thing but the grains are a tad bigger. Making the batter for the muffins was easy, it seamed runnier than the picture in Nigella's book but thats okay.


Tip:
When making muffins with any type of berries in them always put the berries in the mixture once it's in the tin or the berries will break and your muffins will turn purple, yes that is very cool but not very welcoming.

Apart from leaving a stain on my fingers the blueberry muffins turned out fine, not amazing just fine, like if the muffin man ran out of chocolate chip muffins and he only had these left I would still buy them but I would watch and envy the other kids who got a chocolatey treat.
Oh well I still have at least 100+ more recipes and chances are 95% are going to be A-MAZING!
Hopefully tonight I'll have a better sleep so I can cook like crazy tomorrow :)


12/04/11

Dessert: Chocolate Key Lime Pie

I thought Key Lime Pie would be a creamy, yucky, thick mess. I was wrong. It's a sweet and tangy, refreshing taste with a moist biscuit bottom.
As the first dessert of the project I couldn't have chosen a better tasting/ looking one, the 4 hour wait while the pie was setting was a killer but eventually I. had.my.pie!

In the circus, of course you have the clown act where they throw pies back and forth missing the flying messes by a fraction of a centimetre, if I was sitting in the audience and I watched one of those funnily dressed people pick up that beautiful chocolate key lime pie and in slow motion as if time was stopping I would lunge forward dodging dangerous lions and deadly tigers and I would jump in the path of the clown and tell him to hand over that amazing dessert he held in his hands or else.


I had only one major mistake... instead of keeping the lime zest and the condensed milk separated i mixed the together, but luckily my amazing mother bought two cans of condensed milk and i just washed my mistake down the drain :)

Looks kind of like mayo :S
Other than that everything went well...


Tip: 
Read the method, it's important next time I might not be as lucky to have to can's of condensed milk on my hands.


Tomorrow I'm going shopping again after I make some Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins for breakfast.
Four down alot more to go ;)


11/04/11

Lunch: Crisp Chicken Cutlets

My favourite sound in the whole world is when the thick chicken pieces covered in breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, celery salt, dried thyme and cayenne pepper (for extra spice) is placed into a pan covered in oil and all you can hear is that sizzling noise...yummm.
Today I was in the kitchen the whole day cooking Lunch and Dessert (next blog) and oh man those Chicken Cutlets where to die for! I'm not a big fan of chicken but I couldn't stop eating them, neither could my friends Luke, Gus and Bella who stopped in for some lunch.

Now, the first step in preparing the chicken to be marinated is to constantly bash the chicken until it's flat. Nigella suggested that you place glad-wrap/ cling-film (whatever you want to call it) on the bottom and top of the chicken and then bash away, it took me about
3-4 go's to lay the glad wrap down without it sticking to itself and once it looked perfect and neat i began bashing which then resulted in the glad-wrap breaking up into pieces. So I removed the glad-wrap and continued on my merry way.


After letting the chicken marinate for at least 3 hours while I made dessert, I turned on the frying pan and made heaven on a plate, the crunchy outside, the cooked to perfection inside, the spicy but not cry worthy after taste and the cheesy aroma made you just want to eat more and more, OMG it was so good!


Tip:
When flipping chicken DON'T USE TONGS! Use a spatular or the bread crumbs will fall of and you will just have chicken with no fun and exciting outside!
I was ment to save some for dad...opps... meh there's nothing I can do now :S


11/04/11

Dinner: Pasta alla Genovese

Tonight I had the help of my closest girlfriend Issy, now Issy is one of those people that are very hard to please when it comes to food and better yet she is a vegetarian... that doesn't like tofu.
(WHAT KIND OF VEGETARIAN ARE YOU!)

But I still had not only her company but her amazing skills with a knife.


Tonight if you haven't noticed I made Pasta alla Genovese which is basically a fancy way of saying Pesto Pasta, this dish is quite basic but it did test my patience when it came to waiting for the potatoes to cook then the pasta, then the beans (which Issy couldn't stop nibbling on).


I didn't really have any major problems with this recipe, however I may have cheated a little and I didn't make the pesto sauce myself :S

Issy pointed out that the mixture of potatoes, beans and pasta gave off a Irish/ Italian feel, then we started speaking with funny accents... weird I know.


Tip:
How to test if the pasta is ready is to throw it at a wall (and then at Issy) and if it sticks it's ready, do it three to four times just to double check.

Now I'm sure you have been wondering if this meal has pleased Issy and to my surprise it has :)
She loved it, her bowl is now empty as I am typing this and she rates it a 9.5/10 because it didn't have chocolate... mmm chocolate...


















A picture Issy took of me while I was eating... the sly child.




09/04/11

Breakfast: Mortadella and Mozzarella Frittata

I'M BACK!

China was a blast, the food and the people are so different to those in Australia.

Just to let you know Scorpion isn't that bad, it has a dry after taste and a crunchy first bite but other than that they taste quite... delicious?

Anyway, today I began cooking through approximately 179 recipes which are to be completed by the due date of this project, which I'm unsure when that will be.

Nigella Lawson:

When I was little I used to cuddle up with my mum and watch Nigella's famous T.V shows. I used to love the food she cooked (mostly the desserts) and now in 2011 I'm cooking through all of her home style recipes and maybe even adding a little flare of my own.

Mortadella and Mozzarella Frittata

This is the first dish in the book and also what I thought would be the easiest of them all... I was kind of right.

I came downstairs this morning ready to go and I suddenly noticed that I had forgotten to buy parsley and mozzarella cheese, so my loving father rushed down to the supermarket and fetched those items for me.

Everything was great until it came to the cooking of the frittata, I put it under the grill for three minutes instead of five (Oh no she didn't!) and then cooked the rest of it on the stove... bad idea... I really should have left it in the oven for longer so the top could cook the bottom of the frittata took on a nice brown colour... I really should have cooked it less on the stove and more in the grill.

But the end result looked quite good, you would have never known it was burnt

As a person that hates EGGS! This was a big step for me to cook let alone try, but it tasted alright even though it was a little over cooked on the bottom.

My dad on the other hand loved it, i quote "It's light and fluffy, smells good and... tastes amazing" - Andrew Dawson.

One down many more to go, tonight I'll will be cooking Pasta alla Genovese with potatoes, green beans and pesto.


09/04/11