Yummy Favourites

I haven't done a recipe for a while; and on Facebook, I've had a few people ask me to pass on the ones I cooked up on Thursday just gone. So, here goes! 

Mushroom and Spinach Spaghetti

Ingredients:

Mushrooms - sliced (not too thin)
Garlic - I slice mine thin, but crushed is just as good.
Baby Spinach
Paprika
Salt and Pepper
Parsley
Butter
Spaghetti - thickness is on taste.

Method:

Boil up the spaghetti and then in the last few minutes, cook up the mushrooms in the butter with the garlic, paprika, parsley and salt and pepper. Just before it's all cooked up, add in the baby spinach and put on the lid and turn off the heat; letting it steam the spinach and finishing off the cooking.

Serve up the spaghetti on plates with the mushroom and spinach on top. It's delicious with garlic bread and a touch of parmesan - or on its own the way it is. 


Baked Custard

Ingredients:

6 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons of raw sugar
4 cups of hot milk
ground nutmeg (optional)

Method: 

Whisk eggs, vanilla essence and sugar together. Heat the milk until hot - not boiling - and then pour gradually into the egg mixture while mixing it. Pour this mixture into a lightly greased ovenproof dish and sprinkle with nutmeg (optional). 

Stand ovenproof dish in a baking dish with enough boiling water to come up halfway up the side of the ovenproof dish..

Bake, uncovered, in a moderate oven about 45 minutes or until the custard is firm.

You can also add rice to the bottom of this dessert and it'll add a deliciousness to it. 

Serves 6.

Recipe can be made a day ahead and served cold.
Microwave - not suitable.
Freeze - not suitable.
Store - covered in the fridge.

Home Made Limoncello

I haven't been on here for a while, but that's because I've been busily working away on a few other projects which have to do with the upcoming markets at Murarrie State School.

And it's been really hot lately, and so, I've also been making the most of the hot weather too... airing out the house, doing all the laundry and doing as much as I can outside in the garden. 

It's been nice - except the day I went to Thorneside and was attacked by midges all over! OMG! It was horrible. I've still got huge bites all over my legs and some on my arms which drive me nuts at night. I am finding it hard to sleep though; even though the ones on my kneecaps aren't so bad since I've gotten the poison out of those last night.

Otherwise, I've been making Limoncello... for those who know what this delicious stuff is, you'll be wanting to know how to make it. Well, I have a recipe I've dug up on the internet and I'm hoping it works out - as I've yet to bottle it and chill it for 2 weeks.

Ingredients:

13 lemons
1 large bottle big enough for over 2 litres of liquid
1 bottle Vodka 40 proof (not 80 or it'll crystalise and the bottle will rupture in the freezer; and you'll be scraping Limoncello off your freezer walls for months).
1 litre water
2 cups of sugar (raw sugar is fine, but it'll turn the syrup brown).
Sanitising solution - can be purchased at home brew stores for around $7.00
Bottles for Limoncello - can be purchased at home brew stores for around $3.50 but only in plastic. I have found they don't have glass bottles for this kind of thing anymore.
Wooden palate knife - keep it separate from the rest of your cookware and label it to save on cross-contamination.

Method:

Take the peel only off the lemons - without the pith. The pith is the white stuff on a lemon and makes the peal taste sour. If you're finding this hard, use a lemon zester, or a grater... but with the grater, you only need to rub the lemon once and you'll have the zest you need off the lemon. 

Put the lemon zest and vodka into the large bottle, and put the lid on - make sure it's an air-tight lid - and leave the jar/bottle in a cool place away from the sun. 

Stir it once a day, for a week.

On the seventh day, get large saucepan and put in the one litre of water and two cups of sugar and heat until the sugar has melted away. If you're using raw sugar, the syrup will turn brown. Don't worry, that's the molasses in the sugar. I've read that it won't affect the outcome of the Limoncello; just the colour.

Turn off the heat and leave the syrup off to one side for an hour to let cool and funnel it into the vodka/lemon peel jar/bottle. Put the lid back on and leave it alone for five more days. 

A day or two before bottling, clean the bottles you're going to use and ready them for the Limoncello. 

Separate the peel from the vodka/syrup. Sieve it through food muslin 3 times before you ladle the limoncello into the bottles then chill for 2 weeks before serving. Keep chilled.

I've yet to bottle and chill mine... so I can't tell you what it tastes like. I've used raw sugar in mine, so it's gone brown from the molasses in the sugar. I'm not worried about this, it'll have a different colour and maybe a different taste to the other type of Limoncello I've seen around the place. I'm hoping it turns out okay... I hope it does.

If not? Well, I've learned something about how to make Limoncello. If it has a great taste, but is brown, and yet my Mum still loves it, I'll mark it down as my own style and keep making it this way... who knows? I may yet still refine this recipe and tweak it more to make it better; as there's so many different ways of making it too.

My Cold-Buster Soup!

It's Winter here and everyone who's everyone has come down with the dreaded cold and flu; and I have a cold-buster soup to put that horrible thing out the door - or at the very least start it on its way.

I thought I had added it to my 'recipes' tag, but I haven't - and I was surprised about that, seeing most of my best recipes have landed here for all of you to have a go at.

Anyway, here we go!

Ingredients:

1/4 pumpkin chopped sliced up and skinned (Jap Pumpkin or Kent Pumpkin work the best in this).
1/2 orange sweet potato sliced and diced.
2 carrots sliced and diced finely.
2 cloves of garlic chopped finely - not crushed - best to have fresh and not bottled(optional, but in this better for the natural antibiotic).
1 tablespoon of Olive oil 
2 cups of water.
Paprika, parsley, season to taste.
Sour cream
Crusty bread.

Method:

Cook the carrot first, then the sweet potato and pumpkin and garlic until soft. Add the 2 cups of water.  Once it starts to simmer, put it on medium heat and cook for 25 minutes. While it's doing that, put the bread in the oven for the same length of time (it will be ready by the time the soup is). Add paprika, parsley and salt and pepper to taste.

Once the timer has gone off, get out your potato masher, turn off the heat and mash it all up into tinier pieces, then pull out your one-handed electric blender and a towel and blitz it until it's either smooth or chunky (depending on what you like) and serve it up with the bread.

Dollop in the sour cream, sprinkle with parsley and ... yum!

enjoy... and don't just make it because you have a honky, disgusting cold; make it because it's also chock fill with great vitamin C and helps you through Winter as well.

Lavendar Lemonade

I love making home made drinks and food - as you all know - and I've just come across a recipe on the net for Lavendar Lemonade.

Now, I haven't tried it out yet, but it ought to be very good for anxiety and headaches - as the recipe says - and so I thought to put the link up here for you all to have a look at.

Lavendar Lemonade

Let me know what you think of it if/when you have a go at it... and I'll let you know my results when I have a go at it too.  Until my next post, take care, stay safe and remember, I'm always here.

Woah! Christmas Already???

It's that time of year already!  The carols are playing in very store, Santa is being spotted chatting to children... and it's also time to depart with any recipes we have online.  For me it's my Christmas Cake... 

Ingredients:

1 cup of self-raising flour
1 packet each of dried Cranberries and Blueberries
3 egg whites
1 cup of mashed pumpkin
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of bi-carb soda
sprinkle of mixed spice

Method:

Preheat oven 180 degrees Celsius.  Place the fruit, sugar, spice and water in a saucepan and boil for 3 minutes.  Stir in the bi-carb soda (it'll fizz, don't worry, it's supposed to).  Boil or microwave the pumpkin and then mash it and let it cool down completely.  
Mix the pumpkin and the fruit together, stir in the egg whites well.  Fold in the flour.  Pour mixture into 19cm (8 inch) round tin coated with butter/cooking spray and bake approximately for 1 hour.

This mixture can be halved into two Christmas Tree moulds to make it more festive... yay!

Very yummy cake - and very much one which you'd love more than one piece of.

I Love Cooking!

Cooking is a big part of my life; always has been.  However it hasn't been until the last few years I've gone out and really bought up big on the kitchen utensils and recipe books to learn to make what I can normally get as takeaway food.  Seeing I can't afford to buy a lot of things, and I enjoy cooking in my kitchen, I also love to learn to cook new things.

When I first moved out, I was into the fastest way to make things.  But when that fell through as quickly as my food was produced, I started looking through my recipe books I already had and learning how to make stir-fry sauces, learning exactly what to put into those stir-fry meals to make it taste like a takeaway - or better than a takeaway.  And I also started questioning where my food came from, how good it was for me and how I could store it to keep it longer.  
I found that not everyone was as curious about food as I was.  So, Mum bought me a wonderful book about food: 'What Food Is That: And How Good Is It For Me?' (or something long those lines).  It's a great reference book on nearly every food possible you'd come across in the shopping aisle and at the veggie market.  It tells you how to take care of food once you get it home, what you can cook it with, how to cook it, where it originates from and what the nutritional values it has.  I'm amazed at how much this book has in its index about food.

However I didn't stop there.  I wanted to know how make different types of food.  When Summer came around and it was stinking hot, I asked my American friends for a good Ice Tea recipe and I got one sent to me through the mail.  It was wonderful!  I loved it and have been making it for almost three years now; and it's so refreshing to have Ice Green Tea in the fridge just sitting there waiting for me to drink.  I even made some last year for my niece's birthday and the two jugs I made didn't last 20 minutes on the table!

And this year, I found a vegetarian bible recipe book where the food in it was amazingly delicious-looking... and when I tried out a cannelloni, it looked just like it did in the book!  And it tasted just as wonderful!  I've perfected the recipe and made it for most of my family and they love it!
Now, I'm onto pizzas... I've bought a book on how to make the base and bought a pizza stone and a proper cutter too.  And my first pizza wasn't anything much - as they are with most first-times with most recipes - but the second time, I had a better idea of what it was supposed to look like and be like... so I had a great dough that rose; and rose well!  

Yes, I love to cook.  I love the mess I make in my kitchen, the amount of flour that gets everywhere, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with serving up something that tastes as delicious as it smells; and then, realising I have to clean up... well, that's a part of cooking!  But it's the fun part to see the pots, pans and bowls and spoons all become clean of the food and spices just so I can use them all over again.  
This is what the passion of cooking is about for me.  It doesn't matter how messy my kitchen becomes, it matters that I love the food I make and others enjoy my meals too.  I love how the recipes can be brought back into basic elements and easily broken down into smaller jobs to do.  

So, do you enjoy cooking?  Or do you find it too much of a chore?  My brother always told me that if you call cooking a chore, you've turned your joy into a job... how true that is of anything.  Well, until my next post, take care, keep safe and warm and remember, I'm always here. 

Pumpkin, Walnut & Spinach Cannelloni

As promised, I'm adding in the recipe for this wonderful cannelloni.  I learned to make this at Brighton while I was staying at my brother's house while I house sat for two weeks.  It was great to learn something new.

Ingredients:

Half a medium pumpkin chopped into tiny pieces.
Half a cup of finally chopped walnuts
Half a cup of baby spinach - wilted in 3 tablespoons of water and squeezed out.
Grated cheese and Parmesan cheese
Cannelloni shells
One bottle of Passatta sauce

Method:

Put the pumpkin into a baking tray with a drizel of olive oil and season with salt and pepper and roast in the oven for 30 minutes on 180C.  Once it's finished, put the soft, cooked pumpkin into a heat-proof bowl with the chopped walnuts, the spinach roughly chopped up and mix it well.  Get out a long casserole dish and the cannelloni shells and - with a teaspoon, spoon the mixture into the shells until you fill the dish.  You might have to pile them on top of each other as a second layer - don't worry if you you, it's all going to be nice and hot and delicious anyway.
Now, get out a large saucepan and put the passata sauce into it - wash out the bottle and get the dregs out of it to add to the pot.  Then, chop up a clove of garlic, add some parsley and a pinch of basil and half a tablespoon of sugar (to cut the acidity of the tomatoes in the sauce) and put it on the stove to simmer for a few minutes.  Stir and wait until it starts to bubble just a little; and then it's ready.  Pour the whole lot over the stuffed cannelloni shells (now it'll look like you've drowned them, you have, but some of this will evaporate).  Then, grate the cheese (I use tasty cheese) and sprinkle only about a cup over the top and shake a light shower of Parmesan cheese over the top of that.  And then?  Put this dish into the oven for an hour on 180C.

It serves 6 - 8 people when you put a salad with it.  I eat it on its own... very nice!

You can stuff cannelloni shells with anything really.  Experiment, have fun... I was told by an Italian lady in Coles the other week that so long you have the herbs right, you can make your cannelloni any way you want with anything you want and your family will love it!  Enjoy!        

Last Minute Stuff

It's Sunday night and I'm onto the last minute packing for the next two weeks.  Fortunately, I have had the assistance of an app on my iPod to help me.  I put up two to-do lists onto it and I've gotten almost everything done on both; very cool.

It's been great today.  The rain has been really good in getting me working on packing - which was easy enough - and cleaning; which was even easier.
So far, 95% of my gear is packed and 3/4 of the housework has been done.  I'm happy with my progress today.  I have yet to post off two parcels tomorrow and, hopefully pay for my PO Box tomorrow as well.  Then, that'll be all my bills paid for and everything tied up neatly.  I'm not expecting any bills to arrive until next month; and that's a good thing.

The washing up has been done, I've soaked two plates of paint to take with me and I'm going to clean up the painting gear ready to go tomorrow night.  So, all I need to do is get myself ready completely by Tuesday afternoon; after my tv is fixed up at Eagle Farm (it's being looked at by Panasonic there, and hopefully they'll be able to fix it.  If not, they may have to replace it).  

I'm looking forward to this holiday away.  I'll have some art to work on, books to read and music to play while I'm there.  It's going to be great.  I'm also taking two recipe books of mine to use while I'm there; and with the chickens there in residence, I'll have plenty of eggs to eat.  And even thought it'll be raining, I'm sure I'll be able to keep myself interested in what I'm doing.
So, what do you do when the weather goes to extremes like it has here, for long periods of time?  Until my next post, take care, keep safe and warm and remember, I'm always here.    

Riley's Birthday Weekend

This weekend, we celebrated a belated birthday party for Riley.  She turned 13 last week and, seeing the day was spend with her Mum, we thought to throw her a birthday lunch from our side of the family.  Well, at Mum and Dad's place here in Logan City, we got together with Gabe, Kat and Jay (the family dog), Aunty Helen, Kate and me to have a great lunch.  There were balloons hanging from the dining room light, a 'Happy Birthday' streamer strung along the window and we had a great lunch of either make-your-own sandwiches or wraps.  After that, out came the lollies and chocolates, with my home made ice green tea to cool everyone down and clean their palates.  This drink went down a real treat!  And I was thankful I made two jugs of it as it's been a favourite treat of mine to make in Summer for a while now.  One of my Bookcrossing friends from the South in America sent me the recipe and I've loved making it as it's just lovely.  I'll put the recipe at the end of the post for you all to try out.  
Anyway, Riley's birthday cake was lovely and we all sat around feeling like we needed a nap not long after; even though Dad made some coffee for us all.  At at around 4pm, one by one, we all had to leave.  The day was cooling off, the sun was going down and Gabe and Kat had a long way to drive home with Riley and Jay.  But we had all had a great day with her; and she enjoyed herself.  
When I got home, I didn't want to eat anything - seeing how much I had scoffed down that afternoon.  So, I defrosted some raisin bread and browned it under the grill and ate that.  Then, watched a few episodes of 'That 70's Show' until around 10:30pm and shuffled off to bed.  Before that, Dad helped me get my hard drive out of my computer, put it into the hard drive caddy I had bought a few days ago from 'Game Dude' on the service road and then he pulled apart the rest of the computer - taking what he wanted from it - and now I have a shell of a computer that I can toss out.  Well, from around 7pm - 8:30pm, I worked on getting my music from the Purchased section on my iTunes Store.  Most of it came through, some of it got stuck there and wouldn't come through.  So, what did come through, I'm happy with.  

Today, I put the music I had on there that were cds and this only took about half an hour.  I had to update my iPod with the iTunes 6.0 and then put my music on it... and it would work okay.  I'm happy now, and I hope it keeps on working; but the 4 pages of Apps I had on it are still not there.  So, I'll have to go back to the Apple Store at Carindale and have them look at it and have them put them all back on for me now it's updated and mostly fixed.
This morning, I made pancakes, read some of the paper, gave my Little Miss Stevie a cuddle and some shell grit and then came up here after washing up, scrubbing the cutting board and letting it dry on top of the fridge and wiping down the counter and some of the cupboards.  The kitchen now looks a lot better and I feel better about it now everything is cleaner in it.   And now... for my recipe:

Ice Green Tea

In a heat-proof bowl, steep two teabags of green tea.  Decaf is good to do with this.  Otherwise, you can use it with other tea - black tea is okay to use as well.  But Green Tea just cleanses the mouth.
Wait for it to become nice and strong and add 2 tablespoons of raw or brown sugar.  This will give it a nice flavour.  White sugar is too refine and far too sweet.  And adding the sugar while the tea is hot will make sure it dissolves properly.  Take the teabags out and let the tea cool completely.
Once it's cooled, get a lime - without seeds - and cut into slices until you've cut up half the lime.  Then, cut those slices in half and add them tea once you've added the liquid to your jug.  Then with the other half, squeeze some of the juice in with the tea and stir it a little with a wooden spoon, refrigerate with plastic wrap over the top overnight and then serve in a nice tall glass.  

Well, there you have it!  The Green Ice Tea recipe.  I'm sure I've written it down before.  Just look unk under the label of 'recipes' and it should be there - if not, well, here it is.  Until my next post, take care, keep keep safe and warm and remember, I'm always here.