Creamy garlic and prawn risotto

I'm love love loving my new Thermomix! Risotto in less than 20 minutes - yes please! I think I've only bothered to make risotto once ever before in my life and because that took almost 2 hours (and tasted kinda average *shhh*) I never made it again. 

Cue the Interwebs and Thermomix users on blogs, websites and forums - talk about recipes galore! Amongst the lot -  whole heap of risotto variations, including chorizo and capsicum, mushroom with macadamia cheese, light lemon and chicken, leek and garlic. I could have kept reading for hours but kept coming back to a recipe on Full Little Tummies for a creamy garlic and prawn version - *YUMMMMMM*

Being a newbie with the machine, I was a bit overenthusiastic with the stock and accidentally put a bit too much in. I also added some spinach in to bump up the veggie content.

The result was a slightly watery risotto (don't look too hard at the picture) but it still tasted amazing!

Definitely one to make again :)

I *heart* my new toy

What can I say - I splurged. 

I'm now a proud new owner of my very own Thermomix. I could justify the purchase by saying that my kitchen is equipped with a couple of pots, a pan and a wok, and not much else, but that would be a lie. I did buy a mortar and pestle when I was whipping up my green curry paste ;)

Honestly though, I did need to get a bunch of appliances for the kitchen. I'm used to just reaching into a cupboard and having access to a blender, food processor, cake mixer - even a grater - so there has been no cake baking for a long time now (possibly not a bad thing but an unrelated subject). Cue the all-in-one magic cooking machine - very suitable for places with limited storage. How could I resist?

So yes, I decided that this purchase would be my reward to myself for starting my (not-so-)new job, and help my efforts to cook at home a little more. Hurrah! I'm super pleased with my purchase - but now I just need to work out what to name her...

(Green) Curry in a Hurry!

Who knew it was this easy to make Green Curry?

Actually I kinda did seeing as I did have a quick turn at making some in Thailand at Pum's Cooking School, but this is the first time I've made it at home.

Using the paste that I made a few days ago and following the recipe from my trusty cookbook, it was a pretty simple process.

Chopping up the ingredients for the steps above was probably the most time consuming part of it after making up the paste, but I think I'll get a little quicker as I cook more. 

Add some rice and a couple of kaffir leaves into the curry and voila!

Fragrant green curry and jasmine rice

Fresh green paste

As soon as I bought my mortar and pestle, I pounded out some fresh green curry paste - just like I was taught at Pum's Cooking School. Once again, the recipe came from the cookbook I bought after the lesson.

This smells AMAZING!

This is just about enough for 5 standard serves of green curry, but I did learn that more paste = more spice, so we'll see how long it lasts in my kitchen ;)

Pad Thai Pum Style

I recently went to beautiful Phi Phi island with Fezbola for a bit of R&R but after a couple of days of lounging by the beach and pool, Fez had had enough and was getting mighty restless. Me, I could lounge about doing nothing for weeks on end, but I was unfortunate (stupid!) enough to get a bit of sunburn on my shoulder so we decided to make the most of our last day and signed up for a cooking class at Pum's Cooking School. We'd discovered it as we wandered the streets of Phi Phi and after some googling and reading great reviews about the Phuket branch, we signed up for a 1.5 hour class called Pum's Little Lipstick - just the right amount of time before we had to jump on a ferry.

Source: http://th.pumthaifoodchain.com/cookingschool.html

Class was great - and it really opened my eyes as to how simple Thai cooking can be. I have always had a mental 'block' if you will about Asian cooking and how you need a million and one ingredients and sauces and bits and bobs. I was in fact so sold on what we did that I cam away from class with not just the small complimentary booklet of recipes you get as part of the class but also 2 additional cookbooks by Pum!

Lazy? Yes please!

This was the book that really caught my eye - it covers a lot of my Thai favourites, including Pad Thai which I decided to have a go at. It hadn't been covered by the class but it looked simple enough. Before starting though I needed to stock up the kitchen - the only Asian-y thing in the pantry was soya sauce, so a trip to the local Asian grocers was definitely required.

Lo and behold, $70 later

I also bought some huge king prawns (a few more than required by the recipe - because who doesn't love an extra prawn or three) and got down to business.

After doing a few things I had never done before (buying a savoy cabbage (I failed and got a green one instead), pre-soaking rice noodles, de-veining the prawns, making an omelette in a wok), I managed to come up with what I think was a pretty good Pad Thai - check it out!

Ta-dah!

I was pretty pleased with the result, especially the prawn omelette on the top. Super tasty.

Feedback was positive - but I was told that the green beans recommended by the book didn't really suit the dish and maybe bean sprouts might have been a better option. I'll be making it again so I'm happy to give that a bash next time round.

I also need to work out how to use fewer dishes because I hate washing up!

Easter Monday Macaroons

I thought I'd take advantage of the long Easter weekend to do a bit of catching up with friends, so Kimba and I nominated Easter Monday as our day of baking macaroons. I had had a very yummy one from Laurent when I went up to Sydney last week but it was a reminder that regardedless of where you are, if you want to eat a good macaroon, it's going to cost, so I thought it'd be great if we could just bake them up at home.

I had heard that making macaroons wasn't difficult *YAY* but making good macaroons was *eep*. Armed with that bit of information, we went into it knowing that at the very least, we'd have something edible!

Kimba found a couple of recipes online and printed them out, and with a bit of guidance from our own personal masterchef Cindy, we decided to combine the recipes and go with 2 batches - chocolate and vanilla - partly because they are generally liked flavours but mainly because we didn't have the ingredients to make orange or raspberry ones (we're maybe not so great with the forward planning).


The frothy peaks of whipped egg whites... so shiny!
As we progressed, we had some surprise visitors drop in so our group of 2 bakers and masterchef doubled in size - perfect timing to help with the various stirring, mixing and piping jobs that were available. No work no food!


Sifting the almond meal
Following the instructions, we piped out our macaroon mix to a 1.5cm ball size, expecting them to expand.


Masterful piping
They did not.

As they were baking and not expanding we decided to take sizing into our own hands and piped out the next lot into (rather large) escargot shapes which once baked, looked a lot like... well escargot shaped baked goods.

After the macaroons had cooled and we had whipped up the butter icing for the vanilla macaroons and the ganache for the chocolate ones, assembly began. As you can see from the pictures, visually our mini-macaroons looked almost like the real things but they were a little over-baked (I suspect due to their small size they baked a lot quicked than we expected), so they weren't too chewy on the inside.


Our pretty mini-macaroons. Almost perfect!
Our giant escargot-style macaroons were very goo-ey, but pretty much went the other way and didn't have the firm, slightly crunchy outside that we were hoping for, but they sure tasted good!


Our escargot macaroons. It was pointed out that the chocolate ones bore a rather strong resemblance to something stinky...
Considering it was a first time effort, we were pretty happy with how they turned out, especially since we pretty much had no idea what we were doing. Lots of lessons learned for next time - and lots of happy full tummies in the meantime.

Toad Cakes

Well, that's a literal transalation of 'kuih kodok', or as we called it in my family 'goreng kodok' (fried toads), which is a something my Aunty Catherine used to cook up when I was a lot younger. It is also known as 'cekodok' and 'cokodok' and probably a whole bunch of other variation that I haven't heard of. It's actually a type of fried banana fritter where the banana is mashed up instead of being cooked whole. The only thing it has to do with toads however is the fact that the finished product ends up shaped a little like the amphibian so you can stop feeling a little grossed out :)

After buying a big bunch of bananas and having too many slices of birthday cake recently in the office (I don't know why half my team was born in February) I found myself stuck with 4 large bananas that were at least half black on the outside. Half black = a lot sweeter than normal, but too mushy to eat. I refused to throw them away and decided to 'recycle' them into something else yummy to eat. The standard banana muffins/bread/cake wasn't appealing to me, and for some reason I suddenly got hit with a craving for some goreng kodok.

Unfortunately I had a couple of things going against me:
1) No recipe
2) No ingredients (other than the bananas)
3) No deep-frying experience (and slightly scarred from seeing the results of a wok of oil overturning on someone - eek!)

Armed with just my blackened bananas, I did some research online (I so love technology and my iPhone) and found a few recipes (seasaltwithfood, Best Recipes, Foods and Travel, ptitchef) that looked like they might work. After a bit of umming and ahhing, I put together a trial recipe using the least amount of ingredients possible and a little extra sugar (I find Australian bananas nowhere near as sweet as the ones I ate growing up in the tropics).

I also made sure that I bought an appropriate oil for deep frying (sunflower in this case) and sussed out the dos and don'ts of deep-frying for safety reasons. One of the things I learned was that pouring the leftover oil down the kitchen sink was a no-no. Good thing I looked this up - last thing I need is a clogged sink!


The mixed batter


Sizzling away


The finished product - YUM

I thought they turned out pretty well for a first effort - I'm glad I put in a little extra sugar to compensate for the slightly less sweet Australian bananas.

I got four thumbs up from my two guinea pigs so I'm happy :)


Here's the recipe for those of you who are interested:

SuBoo's Goreng Kodok
Makes approx 12-15

Ingredients
* 4 big ripe bananas, peeled and mashed up
* 1 1/2 cup plain flour
* 2 1/2 tbs caster sugar
* 1 egg
* Sunflower oil

Method
1. Place all the ingredient (except the oil) into a mixing bowl and mix until well blended
2. Heat up a wok and add in the sunflower oil for deep frying.
3. When the oil is appropriately hot, take a heaped tablespoon of batter and place into the wok - try to keep the batter together so that it makes a flat oval 'patty'
4. Fry until golden brown, turning the patty evenly.
5. Once fried, use a slatted ladle to lift the kodok out from the wok onto a plate lined with paper towelling.
6. Dab the tops of the kodok with paper towelling to remove access oil.
7. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Lemonade scones and hot chocolate

I had a craving for Devonshire tea and Sunday company, so I decided to bake some scones and invite K, J and D over for a catch up.

During my trawls for scone recipes online, I noticed a lot of recipes that recommended the use of lemonade. 'Weird' was my first thought - and then 'I wonder how the lemon flavour blends with jam and cream'. I decided to ignore the whole lemonade part until I met someone last night who informed me that lemonade (or soda water) was key to getting scones that weren't as heavy as rocks. Something to do with the bubbles.

Since there was nothing stopping me from adventurous (is it sad that this is as adventurous as I get these days? lol) I tweaked a couple of recipes I had been looking at and the resulting scones were enjoyed with some strawberry jam and whipped cream by all.

We also had very VERY chocolaty hot chocolate, made with half milk, half cream, and a whole lot of Koko Black chocolate flakes.
We had to wash it down with some tea because it was so rich - so it ended up being the Devonshire tea I was craving *hurrah*

I think when I make them next I am going to change a couple of things - my scones turned out to be mini-scones for some reason, so next time I am going to use a bigger cutter and ensure that they are also less flat before they are baked.

Here are some pics of the left over scones - there were about 14 all up but we scoffed them down pretty quickly.


The tweaked recipe (including the changes I plan on making) is as follows:

SuBoo's Lemonade Scones
Makes 8

Ingredients
* 2 cups self-raising flour, sifted
* 1/2 cup lemonade
* 1/2 cup thickened cream
* 1/2 tspn salt
* 2 tbs milk
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place greaseproof paper on a baking tray.
2. Place the flour and salt in a large bowl.
3. Add the cream and lemonade and mix to form a soft dough.
4. Turn out onto a lightly floured workbench and knead lightly until combined.
5. Use your hands to flatten out the dough so that it is about 4cm thick.
6. Use a 8cm round cutter (I used the top of a mug) to cut out 8 scones
7. Place the dough cut-outs on the baking tray and brush the tops with milk.
8. Bake for approximately 10-15 minutes - the tops of the scones should be lightly browned.
9. Serve warm from the oven with some whipped thickened cream and strawberry jam.

Enjoy!