Happy Birthday Allstar, Part III [The Eating]

I hadn't seen most of my friends from my old work for over a year. (Before my current cinema, and before my terrible 3 months working in a restaurant, I used to work at a different cinema, which is where I met the lovely Alistair). Apparently, Daniel, who still works there, has been really bigging up my cooking in my absence. This surprised me, as I, unlike Daniel, tone down the food-talk in everyday conversation, so as not to make me appear like a crazy Nigella-obsessed loon.

Some quotes from the weekend:

"So Sarah, Daniel tells me you've been cooking some fantastic stuff..."
"How's your food blog?"
"I hear that you appeared in a magazine!"
"So what's your favourite thing to cook?"
"Hey, did you hear that? We got a compliment! The gourmet chef likes our nachos!"

I pulled out the cheese stars on Saturday afternoon as we were all chillaxing by the pool. They taste just like Cheds. In other words, they taste awesome. And their salty crunchiness was perfect with a beer on a warm afternoon.


joe with stars

Joe: You could sell these. I'm serious!


Jo, Al, Jaffe with stars


Symone reading my article

And later that evening... it was time for cake!


the cake


allstar with cake


Box o' cookies - these were all the extra ones that didn't make it onto the cake but were delicious nonetheless.

The cookies and the cake went really quickly - there were about 15 of us up there, and sugar always seems to be welcome.


1/2 cake

Nigella was right. As she predicted, "Your child will be more interested in the cake’s icing than in the texture or taste of the sponge itself". People liked the icing, and as you can see from the photo below, even shaved off slices of icing to eat.


people like icing

Now, as regards the stew - I didn't serve it up to everyone. Partly this was because there wouldn't have been enough for 15 people, but mainly because I was still pretty wrecked from the previous day of cooking and passed out in my room during dinner time. Whoops. They had snags for the BBQ, they were fine.

One more thing, you may remember I was planning on making Nigella's patented marmite sandwiches (vegemite, in my case) while I was up there. But again, Nigella was right.

"I have come to the conclusion that sandwiches are primarily there to placate the parents: they act as a nutritional sop, making the grown-ups feel better about all the sweet stuff the children are really eating; it thus looks like a proper tea, not the full-on sugar orgy it is".

I didn't end up making the sandwiches - I was too relaxed to bother, and to tell the truth, no-one really seemed to mind. Biscuits, cake, nachos, BBQ sausages and all the other generic supermarket-bought snacks seemed to satisfy all our meal and munching needs.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLSTAR!

Happy Birthday Allstar, Part II [The Cooking]

Wednesday

Ok, so I started off by making the chocolate version of the birthday biscuits, with which I wanted to decorate Al's birthday cake. These are the same as the birthday biscuits which I made for DG last year, but with the addition of 1 tablespoon of cocoa.


Biscuits


tray of bix

There’s really nothing too complicated about these biscuits, so there's nothing much to say about them. Apart from the fact that they taste good, they’re easy, and I absolutely LOVE using my Living Kitchen cookie cutters!


Friday

274. Greek Lamb Stew (Cooking in Advance)

On Friday morning, I made the Greek lamb stew, in full quantities. With Nigella’s advice that “this should be plenty for about 10”, I knew that a full batch of this stuff would be enough to feed my mother and I that night, with enough left to tide me over for the weekend, and to keep my parents satisfied back home.

The method of making this stew is the normal one – brown bits of meat in a pan and set aside, cook vegetables and herbs in the same pan, re-add the meat to the pan along with a lot of liquid, and let simmer until tender. The meat in question was lamb shoulder, the vegetables were carrot, onion, garlic, the herbs were thyme and oregano, and the liquid was water and white wine. But actually, I didn’t use white wine. It was 30 degrees that day, too hot to walk to the bottle shop, and the only white wine I had in the house was my dad’s Cloudy Bay. Hah! No way I’d use a bottle of that just for a stew! So, out of laziness, I threw caution to the wind and decided to use a cheap bottle of sparkling wine which I had sitting around.


champagne and tomato stew

While this was simmering, I got on with the proper party food.

275. Birthday Cake (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

The birthday cake. It is an ordinary sponge, which Nigella suggests making in a food processor for ease and stress reduction, at the expense of the cake not getting very high. I had the luxury of time, so I made it using the traditional creaming method, which results in a higher cake. It’s a pretty big one too – 275g each of butter, sugar and 5 eggs – which you cook in a 25cm tin. I used my 25cm Living Kitchen springform tin, which I also received as a gift last year.


cake mix in tin

It takes about an hour in the oven, during which time I iced the chocolate cookies with a mixture of icing sugar, cocoa and water.


cooked and iced – cookies

This is what the cake looks like when it comes out of the oven.


baked cake

276. Cheese Stars (Feeding Babies and Small Children)
As it was cooling, I made a double batch of cheese stars, which are fabulously easy to make. Simply stir together grated red Leicester cheese (being Australian, I had to resort to “red Leicester-style” cheddar), parmesan, flour, cayenne and butter and roll it out. The mixture is quite dry, but it comes together easily if you clump it with your hands.


cheese star mixture

They take about 8 minutes to cook. Nigella says that you’ll get 25 4-cm stars out of a single batch. With a double batch, and using the small star cutter from the Living Kitchen set of cutters, I got about 90. (Warning: No matter how many you make, it will never be enough. These cheese stars are addictive, compulsive, and amazing. See the next post for the verdict from my friends).


baked v non baked - check out my cheap champagne in the background

To ice the cake, I made a buttercream icing (butter, icing sugar, food colouring), because marzipan, roll-out icing, and all other packet icings are evil. (I’m also not mad on water-based icings for sponge cakes). I dyed my icing a lovely shade of feel-good blue.


cake w icing


finished cake

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had been planning on making jam tarts and periwinkles as well, but by this stage, I could not be fucked. Besides, it was time for a much-needed shower and then dinner.


stew bubbling

The last stage of cooking the stew is to add a packet of macaroni and let it cook in there. I absolutely adore stews in which pasta is cooked – they just taste sooo fabulous. Incidentally, they’re wonderful served with chili oil and are perfect salvation from hangovers. Nigella suggests serving this one sprinkled with a mixture of feta and fresh oregano. Again, I must admit to laziness – I didn’t feel like going to the shops, so I didn’t bother with fresh oregano.

I was afraid that substituting sparkling wine for white wine would make the stew taste munting, but luckily, it did not munt at all. In fact, it rocked!


stew w feta

Just as expected, I totally loved this stew, as did my mum. In honesty, I could have done without the feta, as it made the dish very rich, but the sharp saltiness was more than welcome.

And check it out… here’s my food, packed up and ready to go…


ready to go

Happy Birthday Allstar, Part I [The Planning]

For my 21st birthday in April last year, I was delighted and privileged to receive what is widely known as perhaps the best speech in the history of 21st birthdays – the speech given to me by my friends Liam and Alistair. It was hilarious – we laughed, we cried, drunken stories were shared, and we laughed again.


al & liam


Liam, Sarah, Alistair

So when I was invited to celebrate Alistair’s (aka Allstar) 21st birthday at his holiday house in Red Hill last weekend, I wanted to contribute a bit more than just a six-pack of VB. The basic plan was for a bunch of us to go to his holiday house towards the end of the week, have the big birthday celebration on the Saturday night, and then drive home hungover the next day. I went up there on Friday night, and started preparing my contribution earlier in the week.

Right towards the end of the book, Nigella has a “PARTY FOOD” section, in which she gives advice for hosting a children’s party. The pointers in there are about young children, but I think they could be applied to us as well. I paraphrase…

1. They will be too excited to eat much. Concentrate on one or two star items. [No problemo.]

2. Your child will be more interested in the cake’s icing than in the texture or taste of the sponge itself. Reserve your energies. [I also believe that most young adults care more for icing than the cake. I went for the plain birthday cake in the same section of the book]

3. Build a party repertoire for yourself. [Sure, call me if you want a birthday catered for.]

4. Don’t try to please other parents. The party is for your child. [Well there weren't any parents so I only had to please myself…]

5. Don’t get agitated about the amount of sugar, food colour, salt, cream or butter. This is not the time. [Don’t worry, I’m not agitated… and I highly doubt any of Al’s friends would be either.]


The plan was for me to make…
- The Birthday Cake
- Cheese Stars
- Marmite Sandwiches
- Jam Tarts
- Periwinkles

But as you will see, some of these plans changed over the next few days.

Duck with Pomegranate

It’s been harder to go shopping since the school holidays finished and Dad’s gone back to school. (I, on the other hand, being a uni student, still have a couple of weeks of freedom – sweet, sweet freedom). Last year, Dad was only part time and did 3 days a week, but now he’s been moved up to full time, and organising shopping expeditions has become harder. Luckily, today both Mum & I had a free morning, so we went Box Hill, huge shopping list in hand, with the aim of buying the ingredients for a steak béarnaise for lunch, and for pomegranate duck breasts tomorrow. (I naturally assumed that fresh pomegranates would be unavailable, but I do have a carton of juice in the freezer).

However, all my steak plans were foiled, because even though I could find every other ingredient, there was no freakin’ tarragon. No-one, anywhere, had any in stock today, so a steak béarnaise was out of the question. Grrr! And all I wanted was some meat!

I suppose fate was urging me towards the duck breasts, because after the tarragon incident, the first thing I saw in Safeway was a huge tray of deliciously ripe and juicy-looking pomegranates, imported from the USA and only $2.50 each. Score!

273. Duck with Pomegranate (One & Two)

This recipe follows the liver with sweet onions recipe in the One & Two chapter, and Nigella offers two options for treating the duck. The first option is to roast a whole duck, basting it with reduced pomegranate juice, and making a sauce from the pan juices and some herbs. Alternatively, “a lower-effort take on the same theme” is to fry duck breasts, and deglaze the pan with pomegranate juice for the sauce.

Lower effort…?
Duck breasts…?

I obviously chose option 2, as this meant no faffing around with roasting trays or bones. It was thus the easy option for both the cook and the eater. (Both of whom are me!) More importantly, duck breasts rock. I could eat them every day.

I started by chucking the breasts in the pan, and putting some home-cook frozen fries in the oven. I’d bought them for the steak, and even though I was happy to substitute breasts for meat today, there was no way I was going to miss out on my fries!

While the breasts and fries were cooking away, I dealt with the pomegranate.


Pomegranate

I cut it in half…


Halved

…and did the Nigella-thwacks-it-with-a-wooden-spoon method for extracting the seeds from one half...

…and with the other half, I squeezed the juice out, using my Living Kitchen blue juicer. To be completely honest, I was quite wary of using the juicer for such a sturdy piece of fruit. As gorgeous as the Living Kitchen range most definitely is, I haven’t found the products to be entirely appropriate for heavy-duty kitchen activity. I needn’t have worried, however. Despite the pomegranate outer hardiness, the inside was perfectly soft and yielding – even easier to squeeze than an orange.


juiced and seeded

So, once the duck breasts were cooked, I deglazed the pan with the pomegranate juice, and lunch was ready! I served it with some salad (it’s too hot for peas), and the frites, and it was a lovely lunch for my mother and I.


one serving


two servings

Sarah, The Queen of Puddings

272. Christmas Queen of Puddings (Basics etc.)

Quite a random thing to make for a Monday afternoon, but I had all the ingredients, so why not?

We used to serve Queen of Puddings at the restaurant at which I used to work as a cook. I never quite figured out what it was though; our hot-food chef heated it up, someone else chucked it in the bain marie, and I only saw it once it had been ravaged by the hordes of customers in the buffet line, and all that remained were bits of meringue on the edges of the empty dish, and custardy crap stuck on the bottom.

Nigella says that this pudding is Christmassy because she includes pandoro instead of normal breadcrumbs, and marmalade instead of jam. To bump up its inherent Christmassy-ness, (yes, I know it’s already February, live with it), I used the Seville Orange Marmalade that I made last year.

I also used pannetone instead of pandoro, because only pannetone came in appropriately sized portions. You need 150 grams of crumbs for the recipe, and pandoro only seems to come in 1 kg mega-loaves.

The first step is to rip up your crumbs, and add to them castor sugar, orange flower water and orange zest. I love the way that the 3 orange elements complement each other and intensify their inherent orangey-ness. Then you heat up milk and butter, pour it over and let it all infuse.


Crumbs

Then you pour it into a buttered dish (having run out of butter, I substituted margarine here... may the culinary gods have mercy on my soul), and bake until set.


Custard

The next layer is a mixture of marmalade and golden syrup.


with syrup

Then you whisk up egg whites and sugar to form a meringue, and dollop it on top.


Meringue

From here, you have to bake it for 20 minutes until crispy and brownish.


What a queen.

Here's what it looks like on the inside. It was a bit more liquid than expected, but still tasted great. The dense, fragrant, rich custard below and the airy, airy meringue combine to form a wonderfully comforting pudding.


halved

Daniel: Wow, the meringue is so fluffy!

Nigella says the recipe serves 4-6. I halved the quantities, and 3 of us managed to get about halfway through the pudding. I know I keep going on about Nigella's enormous portions, but I am consistently amazed by them.

Aussie Aussie Aussie... Oi Oi Oi!

Well slap a pair of white jeans on me and call me Bill Granger, I made an Australian recipe tonight!

271. Fried Prawn Cakes (One & Two)

The "white jeans" example is particularly apt, as this recipe is taken from Leonie Palmer's Noosa Cookbook. Noosa's this beach resort town in Queensland. You know the type, lovely white beaches, full of super-tanned, super-blonde people in bikinis, sarongs, kaftans and hoop earrings. Ew! It's not really my type of place... but the fabulousness of recipe proves that Noosa does indeed have redeeming features.

The main ingredient is, unsurprisingly, prawns. My dad bought these wonderfully blue prawns, which were so luminescent that they could have come straight off a fashionable chunky necklace.


blue prawns

To these prawns, you add flour, sherry, garlic, spring onions and water to make a stiff (and still gratifyingly blue) batter. Then you have to let it sit in the fridge for an hour before you get to the deep-frying.


batter

Deep frying is such a brilliant way of cooking food. I love eating deep fried food, (as most sane people do), but even more, I love the deep frying process itself. Just scrape off rough spoonfuls of the batter into the hot oil, and watch them turn from gooey-blue to white and red, and finally to crispy golden brown. They smell divine too, smelling exactly like a good Chinese restaurant does.


deep frying

I made a double quantity to feed my parents and I, and to have some leftovers for my brother when he eventually comes home from work tonight. And, as per Nigella's suggestion, I served it with mayonnaise, fiercely sharpened with lime juice and fresh chopped coriander.


prawn cakes

I also added some mixed salad leaves, just to create the illusion of healthy virtuousness.


Plate

These are quite compulsive, and the sharp mayo is a great accompaniment for the dense and slightly crisp balls. We all loved them, especially my dad, who insisted that I make these the next time he has guests over. (This is his standard, and very welcome, compliment for good and fancy food).

Bonza prawns cakes, mate.

Why I love being single...

270. Garlic Fried Potatoes (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

Because I can spend a quiet evening in, eating potato slices, which I've fried in goosefat with peeled garlic cloves, not caring that my hair smells of smoky fat and my clothes have oil-splotches on them.


Frying

And because I can eat my indulgently-fried potatoes, covered in Maldon salt, perfectly contented, slouched in front of the TV.


fried potatoes

And better yet, because I can eat all the crispily-fried garlic cloves too.

Drool....

A Very Nigella Dinner

I was hungry at about 7 o'clock tonight, and decided to make linguine carbonara for my dinner. This has become a useful last-minute dinner, now that my culinary repertoire has been so vastly expanded by How to Eat. I used the linguine that I have stockpiled in my storecupboard, a couple of pieces of bacon that were glad-bagged in my freezer, and some leftover cream which was sitting in the fridge.

Read the "Storecupboard", "Freezer" and "Fridge" sections at the end of the Basics etc. chapter, and you will understand why I am so proud of myself. An "efficient domestic angel", I am. For tonight, at least.

I guess this meal goes to show how much I've changed as a result of this project. When I first made carbonara, I didn't eat it (me eating pork? Never!) but according to my brother, the bacon was too chewy. And the second time I made it, it was disgustingly eggy.

But tonight, it was good, fantastic even. A perfect, gratifying, peaceful dinner.


Pasta.

I am so glad I started this project.

"So this is some sort of ice-cream custardy mousse thing?”

In the afternoon, I suddenly got the irrepresible urge to make something sweet.

269. Zabaione (One & Two)

Mum and her friend Lena happened to be having coffee in the kitchen, but seeing as I didn't have the energy to explain what zabaione was (I was unsure myself), and that it's "not comfortable to make for any number larger than two", I decided against offering them any. And having never made or eaten it before, I didn't know if it would be nice enough to offer to company. So, I just made it at the stove, as discreetly as I could, and once it was done, shared it with my brother in the lounge room.

I don't know how discreet I was, however, as making zabaione necessitates your standing at the stove for 20 minutes whirring away with an electric mixer. You have to whisk egg yolks and sugar in a double boiler, and then slowly add marsala and continue beating until it is "a soft, foaming, bulkily billowing mass". I did switch to a whisk towards the end though.


zabaione


zabaione in glasses

So as I said, I took the 2 glasses into the lounge room, along with a packet of langue de chat biscuits, for my brother and I to eat. In my experience, I've realised that for some infathomable reason, not everybody appreciates the beauty of a good langue de chat. However, I knew that they would be well received in my house.

Me: Dan, try this, it's sweet.
Daniel: Ok, what is it?
Me: Zabaione. It's an Italian dessert, apparently. You have to eat it with the biscuits.
Daniel: Er, ok.

...after eating some...

Daniel: So this is some sort of ice-cream, custardy, mousse-type thing?
Me: Er, ok.

I didn't mind it, but it was a bit too sweet for my taste. I loved the texture, though, which contrasted fabulously with the crunchy langue de chat. Nigella's description of zabaione as a "soft, foaming, bulkily billowing mass" was very accurate. Given Daniel's unsure, seemingly lukewarm reception, I thought he didn't like it. But how wrong I was! Apparently, as soon as he finished his portion, he ran into the kitchen, clutching the empty glass, and exclaimed to my mother, in front of Lena, "Mum! Did you try this dessert thing Sarah made? It's fantastic!! Have you tried it?!"

There went all my hopes of being discreet. Whoops. Sorry Mum! I guess I should have made more.

Good Crumble

I spent the last 2 days up in St. Leonards at my friend Sandy’s holiday house with some workmates. I wanted to cook something up there, something universally pleasing, but not too difficult. You see, there were 11 of us up there, including some guys with very cutting senses of humour, one of whom is a qualified chef (!), and the idea of slaving in a foreign kitchen all night, only to be derided (even jokingly) by them simply did not appeal. Plus, I wanted to make something cheap.

268. Apple Crumble (Basics etc.)

Apple crumble is delicious, easy, and seems to be something that everyone will eat. I have previously made the rhubarb crumble and the apple and walnut crumble, and loved them, but in this instance, I thought that the basic, ur-recipe would be the best. Also, this is the easiest crumble in How to Eat, and making it enabled me to cross yet another recipe off my list.

I aired the idea to the gang on the first day of our holiday, and they all seemed up for it. I bought some apples and butter at the supermarket on our way up there, and made the crumble in the afternoon, while the others were playing Uno, drinking, and watching TV. There were no scales up there, or a food processor, so I had to do it by eye and hand.

I got 1 block of butter, cut it into cubes, and piled on an appropriate-looking amount of flour, before rubbing it in with my fingers, and adding a bit more flour as I went along. Then I stirred in some white sugar (Sandy had no brown sugar at her house), and popped it in the fridge.

Then I peeled the apples (with a knife!) and cut them into wedge-shaped chunks. Bizarrely, Wes & Brad, who were sitting at the kitchen bench playing Uno whilst I was doing this, really love eating apple peel, and kept taking pieces out of my detritus bowl.


raw apples, crumble mix

Then I cooked the apples in a pan with some butter and sugar and a bit of lime juice, (fresh oranges were sadly also lacking), and let them sit aside while we ate dinner.


stewed apples

For dinner, we ate some packet lasagne and delish roast potatoes that Sandy made, and after that, I put the crumble together.

Me: Is apple crumble ok with everyone?
Everyone: Yes… yeah… yup etc
Me: So Wes, you like apple crumble?
Wes: Yes. The crumble part is better. Can my piece have more crumble and less apple? In fact, just give me a bowl of crumble.

I myself much prefer the crumble, (as does everybody, apparently) and it seemed that the dimensions of the pans and quantities of fruit and crumble available to me meant that we were going to end up with a very high crumble-to-fruit ratio. It was basically one thin layer of apple pieces, with heaps of crumble dumped straight on top.


raw crumble

This took about 30 minutes to cook in the oven, and in the meantime I made the custard. (Just to prove that I wasn’t lying when I said in the Q&A with Sarah, that I can make custard without a recipe now). It thickened easily without any problems. However, I did feel the need to get the OK from Brad, (our resident qualified chef), before I was sure it was thick enough.

Me: Brad, check this custard out, is it thick enough?
Brad: ...peering into the pot… yeah that’s heaps thick! That’s perfect for an anglaise… how did you make it?
Me: I mixed eggs and sugar, then poured in hot cream and stirred the whole lot over the heat.
Brad: Good girl! But, it’s an anglaise, not a custard.
Me: It’s a custard.
Brad: It’s an anglaise… custard is made with custard powder.
Me: Whatever! Go back to Uno!

Then we divvied up the crumble and custard.


crumble, custard

I do realise that most people aren’t as obsessed with custard as I am, and only drizzled a sane amount onto their servings. But for my bowl, I totally drowned it in custard.


mmm custard

Thank goodness, everyone liked it! And they all said the same thing about it... "Good crumble, Sarah". People were also appreciative of the good smells while it was baking.

I went to bed relatively early, and it happened that yet more friends arrived while I was sleeping. You see, I got up the next morning, groggily walked to the kitchen, and found everyone milling about the living area/kitchen, including some new faces. At this point, my friend Michael grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me in front of some dude I'd never met before (one of his friends who'd arrived during the night), and shouted, "Hey! This is Sarah! She's the one who made that crumble you devoured last night!". The mystery-friend then said to me,"That was good crumble". Awesome! He was hot, too. And he made me a pancake for breakfast, which I ate in addition to the very few remains of the crumble, drowned in cold and deliciously thick leftover custard.


breakfast

Oh hey! I just got a message from Sandy…

“thankyou sooo much for coming up hun! We must do this again! I’m craving your apple crumble BIG time xoxo”

Rocking.