Lazy Weekend (Honestly!)

After the torture that was Friday (5 and a half hours of Christmas shopping during which I bought three whole presents, although spending time with Miss P and Little P totally rocked ) I treated myself to a very laid back rest of the weekend.  Occasionally I forget I am a classic over achiever and let my ADD take a back seat to doing nothing. 

Yesterday I managed drag my sorry behind out of my pyjamas at 4.40pm and that was only because I had to go grocery shopping.  Let me tell you when you have 20 minutes before the shops shut it's amazing how fast you can chuck random shit that looks like food in a trolley.

I had a lovely lazy Sunday today stitching and gossiping with Loz and her sister, Marilyn,(you need to get a blog Marilyn) Val and Claire at my house. It was the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Thank you ladies for gracing me with your wonderful company. And thank you Ms. Loz for my hostess gift. I'm sitting here stuffing my face with rum and raisin clusters as I type (and the little decoration was so cute !) 

I threw some vittels on a plate and we all helped ourselves because I'm a lazy hostess. (honestly it was this or a Kentucky Fried bucket !)

I made an apple galette( as recommended by Kirsten) and it was easy and delicious and I even made the pastry from scratch . That's two baking type successes  in one week without a stuff up . Pinch me! You really have to try this recipe.

This is Claire modelling an upcoming group project. A bunch of us have decided to do a Farmer's Wife Quiltalong next year. I'm equal parts excited and wanna throw up. Hopefully I won't be the quiltalong dunce ( or get stuck in the naughty corner again)  

For all my blathering about promising to do some quilting on lurking and neglected quilts this weekend (like that was going to happen for real?) , I started and finished a Christmas table topper/runner this weekend. 

I'm especially loving that binding.

In the end , I did drag the blue and brown quilt out and stared at it for a while as if I could telepathically make it quilt itself. 

It's still sitting on the floor of the sewing room but if I just think hard enough I'm pretty sure I can bend it to my will. 

Lemon Tart Love

 I had so many comments and requests for the recipe for the lemon tarts that I decided to  post it. It seems there are a lot of lemon lovers out there.The risk is now you'll all know how easy they are and I'll lose my "baking genius" reputation. Oh well ...such is life.

I love lemon tarts but had never made my own before  last weekend.  Like a complete sap - I was tripping down to Assaggio twice a week like a crack addict to get my lemon tart fill. Not anymore.

You're going to need:

Pastry

50 grams self raising flour

90 grams plain flour

20 grams caster sugar

80 grams cold butter cut into pueces

1 egg

Lemon filling

1 egg

1 egg yolk

75 grams caster sugar

1 teaspoon of lemon zest

2 tablesppons of lemon juice

50 grams of butter cut into pieces

Pastry:

Sift the SR flour , plain flour and sugar together . Place in a food processsor with the butter and process until it resembles fine breadcrumbs . Add the egg and process until it clumps together. If you're doing this process by  hand rub in the butter with your finger tips then add the egg and mix well. Knead it into a flat ball then wrap in plastic and pop it into the fridge for an hour.

Even Faster Pastry Method

Some people would call this cheating. I call it superior time management.   And it will save you getting your food processor dirty, and flour on your bench and crap under your fingernails. And if the universe didnt want you to use ready made pastry it wouldn't have allowed it to be invented. So there. And if I hadn't just dobbed on myself you never would have known that I copped out and used stuff from a packet.

Lemon Filling:

Discover at 9am on a Sunday morning you have a 1 cm square piece of  butter in the house. Send hapless husband (who didn't put butter on the shopping list when he used the last 250 grams) down  to the convenience store to buy some. Why would you need to buy from the convenience store? Because the normal shops don't open until 11 am Sundays here in order to enable everyone to go to church or sleep off their hangovers. Remind husband to steal a lemon on the way back, from the old guy round the corner that has a lemon tree that overhangs the footpath. Remind youself you really must plant a lemon tree.

When your husband returns from a 30 minute hunt for butter assume an injured air because he just paid $8.00 for a pound of butter. Convenience is expensive. Mix together the egg , extra egg yolk , lemon juice and lemon zest in a saucepan. The original recipe didn't mention where to add the sugar so I just guessed it went in at this point. Place the saucepan over medium heat and add the butter, stirring continuously until the mixture thickens and becomes translucent. Yes that's right- Stand there stirring until you develop muscles in your arm  that look like Popeye's. Apparently this step takes approximately 10 minutes but it will feel like hours.  Vow never to make bloody lemon tarts again. Review dreams of becoming the Australian version of Pioneer Woman because this baking caper is hard work . Remove the saucepan from the heat while you're ruminating on another career choice that will make you famous. Once the mixture has cooled slightly transfer it to a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap and stand to the side until it cools completely.

Pre-heat your oven to 180 C and grease a 12 hole tart or muffin pan. Remove the dough from the fridge (if you're not cheating like me ) and use a rolling pin (wave this in the general direction of your husband for fun and to watch him flinch ) and a floured board to roll it out to a 5 mm thickness (The original recipe said to roll it out to 5 cms but that just doesn't seem right does it?) Cut 6 cm diameter circles with a fancy schmancy cookie cutter so you have pretty edges and put them in the tart or muffin pan and prick the bottoms to stop them from exploding in your oven because that stuff sets like concrete and cleaning your oven is going to cut into your quilting time.

Place the tart shells in the oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes or until golden . If they end up looking slightly mutant it's OK because you can hide your mistakes with filling. Take them out of the tart pans and let them cool completely on a wire rack.  Spoon the lemon filling into each pastry and sprinkle with icing sugar. Wait for the compliments to flow. 
 

Hide at least 6 in a secret spot so you can eat them at your leisure. Let everyone else fight over the remaining 6 tarts. Enjoy!

Let the Good Times (Sausage) Roll

When Little P celebrated his birthday party in July we were up to our earholes in kitchen renovation. Somehow I managed to make these (obviously that was pre-oven pull out )  I'm finally posting the recipe I promised back then for sausage rolls since a couple of you were kind enough to ask. These are easy.

Miss P  is likely to be moving into her own place at some point so I decided it was time she had a cooking lesson. She agreed to cook these and then went to the beach and came home with what she says is conjunctivitis, so she couldnt possibly cook dinner because of the germs you know. I have since banned her from touching anything in the house, including me.

 You will need:

Sausage meat 500 grams

Manky bread with the crusts torn off 2-3 slices

An onion (minced)

Mixed Herbs (about a tablespoon)

Salt (about a teaspoon)

Tomato sauce for the recipe (about 100  mls)  and for after for dipping

Frozen Puff pastry (or if you're really adventurous you can try and make your own - since 5 sheets are under 3 bucks why would you bother )

One egg for an egg wash

Bung all the ingredients in a bowl and mix together.

You can use your hands. Unless you have an infectious disease. Then it's preferable to keep your hands to yourself. I'm not divorcing Mr. P this week, I just took my wedding ring off so I didnt have to pick sausage meat out of it later. My hands look quite thin there. That picture is a keeper.

Lay out your pastry thus and then cut each piece down the middle . I used two whole pastry sheets for this recipe (cut into 4 bits)

Place a long line of meat mix down the centre of the pastry. Roll up and make sure to seal the join. I poke it repeatedly with a fork.

Give the roll a wash in some egg.  You can cut it into smaller bits now or leave them as mega sausage rolls. I went small because it makes me look more delicate and ladylike when I cram it in my mouth. Plus you can eat more and not look piggy... 

Place in a 180 C oven and cook for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. You might have one of those ovens that has a mind of it's own about cooking times.

Enjoy! Serve with tomato sauce. (It's un-Australian  to eat a sausage roll without sauce.) You can serve with vegies but that's just not the way I roll.

This recipe will make about 20 small sausage rolls. Or 8 big ones. Or 4 MASSIVE ones if you dont cut them up at all. These are Little P approved.  

Butter Tarts

I bet you all wish I had my sewing machine back, then I'd stop posting about food.  Nanci at Quilting at The Cottage left me a comment this week mentioning butter tarts, and how they were quintessentially Canadian  so of course I had to make them. I've been thinking about them all week.  Dreaming of butter tarts. Which is way better than dreaming that clowns are trying to eat me.   

I wish I'd had this butter tart recipe at Christmas when we had a Canadian for lunch, ( he  was eating here , we weren't eating him, which is what that last sentence sounded like ) The best I could come up with then was a yule log. Store bought log cake, store bought frosting (Yes, Brenda) slapped it together and threw a Holly leaf on top. Pretty classy huh? I bet he would have been mega impressed if I had cooked these instead.

Apparently, everyone on the internet thinks they have the best butter tart  recipe, so I  had to guess who was telling the truth. Right after I got the lie detector test results back (can you believe some people refused to submit to a polygraph?) I decided to use this recipe.   Plus I'm allergic to nuts  so I had to choose one that said nuts were optional. Thirty years ago, I was a circus freak with my nut allergy, now it seems there are lots of us. And by the way , I am often asked if I miss eating peanut butter and Ferrero Rochers. Let me ask you this : Would you miss eating something that had the capacity to kill you?

The prep stuff with these is pretty easy. I'm going to confess , I cheated  was creative with the pastry. I had shortcrust sheets  in my freezer so I used them. I don't think it made any difference to the final product, which was Delicious. This is what they look like filled but not cooked.

20 minutes later ..........

Ta da!

Thank you Canada for butter tarts from the bottom of my heart. Thank you again Canada for giving me a recipe that means I can brag about my international cooking skills, that doesn't send me half insane and make me feel inadequate like some other recipes I have tried. I know that Americans make fun of Canadians, but frankly I think you  guys rock! Plus you have awesome bacon, a really nice flag  and maple syrup. I'm sold!

Thanks Nanci for alerting me to this culinary wonder. It's going in my cook book and I'll be making these again.

P.S. I still have a pretzel recipe I'm wanting to try but nobody else in my house eats pretzels so I feel it would be a waste to make them just for me plus my arse doesn't need that level of carbs solo. Does anyone wanna come over and help me eat them if I make them?

Beef Rendang Recipe

 Posting for Kirsten, but feel free to give this a bash if you like slightly spicy curry type foods.  It would work equally well with lamb.  I wish I could remember where I got this recipe, but I've had it for 4 or more years , lifted from somewhere off the internet- an Australian chef - so all credit to the unknown chef. (I think that now covers all the legal aspects of plagarism, since I can't afford to get tied up in litigation this week )

I usually double or triple this recipe because it freezes really well which saves you having to cook dinner another night (or two) You can microwave or oven re-heat this and it still tastes delicious.

You need:

1 kg of gravy beef or casserole beef (cheap cuts of beef are good – I use blade bolar roast when I can get it on special)

1 x 400ml can of coconut milk (slightly more or less won't make a massive difference)

1 onion (Medium to Large )

3 cloves of garlic

2 or 3 teaspoons of fresh ginger (stuff from a jar is fine if you can’t find fresh)

1 stalk of lemon grass ( I omit this because it does weird things to my lips - yeah I know I'm a circus freak  )

1 teaspoon of ground cloves

1 teaspoon of ground turmeric

2 teaspoons of ground coriander

1 teaspoon of salt

1 or 2 teaspoons of chilli powder or sambal olek ( I personally use chilli powder or crushed dried chilli's)

Method

Cut your meat into one inch cubes . Brown your meat and toss it in the slow cooker. Toss everything else , except  the lemon grass into a blender and blatt for 30 seconds or so. Or you can just mix it all together in a jug if you want. I throw mine in the frypan I just used for the browning of the meat and mix it all that way. Pour blender/frypan/jug contents into your slow cooker and give the lemon grass a few whacks with a heavy object and toss into the slow cooker as well.

Stir, making sure all meat is well coated in sauce. Cook on high in the slow cooker for about 4 hours. The sauce will become darker as it cooks. After four hours give it a stir, and turn down to low and cook for another 2 hours.

Serve with Jasmine rice. Yum!

Confession:  I can't cook rice to save myself. Mr. P does this for me. He uses a weird method involving washing the rice in cold water  first, chanting at the full moon, praying to the rice gods and  giving the rice a bath in boiling water in the microwave for 4 minutes before stirring it viciously with a fork and putting it back in the microwave  to torture it some more. It's all greek to me. I just know the rice turns out perfectly every time.

Disclaimer- Everyone’s slow cooker is different , so you may need to adjust your cooking times. If you double this recipe add at least another two hours to the cooking time at the end. True rendang is apparently supposed to be dry, in the slow cooker it will have a gravy which is the way I like it.

More Disclaimers: Don't set your kitchen on fire while cooking like SAJ did recently.

And  as I finished this post, I  thought "I should have done a tutorial with pretty pictures" Bummer. Too late now.

Meatless Monday -Can You Keep a Secret ?

This recipe for Roast Vegetable Frittata is easy. I decided to use my omelette maker and just popped the roast vegies in and poured beaten eggs on top. They only take about 8 minutes. A few minutes before the finish I popped some edam cheese and basil on top and closed the lid on the omelette maker again.

This is the finished result.

Mr. Pyjamas couldn't join us due to another commitment - so his is plated in the fridge for him to enjoy when he gets home later .

I'm sure these taste scrumptious but since there was no adult supervision in the house to shame us into eating vegetables on Meatless Monday Miss Pyjamas and I did a covert Maccas run for dinner.

It was delicious !

I'm just going to dispose of the evidence and wash the plates we used for our McDonalds so it will look like we actually ate the Frittata....

And honey , if you're reading this , I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure that the stuff in  McDonald's burgers isnt ACTUAL meat so we haven't really broken the sanctity of Meatless Monday. 

Meatless Monday on A Tuesday

Again, I'm flaunting all the rules by having Monday's dinner on Tuesday . I'm one wild and crazy chick!

I made sure I filled up on meat eating the equivalent of two sheep and a small cow  yesterday since I wont be seeing meaty protein again till Wednesday. That's not cheating ! That's good planning!

Tonight's delectable vegetarian dinner  was a copycat Olive Garden Fettuccini Alfredo. I have to confess we dont have Olive Garden here so I dont know how close this comes to the original. At 52 grams of fat PER SERVE I don't think it's particularly healthy either.

You can get the recipe here and it got lots of good reviews from people who know what Olive Garden Alfredo tastes like.

You will need the following ingredients.

You will also need  a defibrillator on standby when you have a heart attack from immediately clogged arteries, given the fat content of this dish.

It's pretty easy to do. You chuck everything in 2 different pots and stir a lot. I added extra cheese, butter and cream cheese to mine to disguise the taste of the cardboard ....err I mean pasta.

It smelled great cooking, and looked good plated. I had very high hopes.

It's 30 minutes after dinner time and I'm sitting here stuffing my face with mandarin jubes....and I'm already planning a ninja raid on some vegemite on toast in about an hour. Miss Pyjamas will no doubt be joining me. In my own defence I had spaghetti for lunch so maybe I'm just pasta-ed out .

Or I'm just not cut out to be vegetarian. Or maybe I'm just picking shit recipes.

Till next week...This is meatasaurus signing out.

Meatless Monday

I alluded to Meatless Monday on my Peking Duck post ( kind of ironic huh? since duck is meat) That’s the way I roll. Pushing boundaries all the time.

Anyway , Mr. Pyjamas tendered the idea that we go meatless one day a week after watching Oprah (he says he was channel surfing but I know the truth ) where some dude said if everyone in America went meatless one day a week, the carbon tradeoff would equal taking 20 million cars off the road a year. So we’re going meatless for America…in the name of international relations since we’re in Australia.

Confession: I am a carnivore. If it didn't moo, baa, cluck, gobble, snort  or swim in a previous life, it probably isn't worth eating.  As far as I am concerned vegetables are a garnish to make my plate look pretty. Yeah, Yeah -I get that they are healthy and all that jazz, but they just don’t taste the same as say a roast chicken  or a great fillet steak.

I’m trying to be happy and positive about this. What I actually want to do is sneak out of the house and find the nearest lamb chop.

Today’s recipe is eggplant parmigiana. You will need the following ingredients:

If you look very carefully in the left hand side of this picture you will see a pack of Samboy BBQ chips which I plan to have for dessert later because I am sure I am going to be starving from lack of meat. I also have snowballs and illicit mince pies squirrelled away somewhere...

 

Here is how mine turned out. I’m not sure why they call it eggplant parmigiana. It has only two eggplants and 2 kilos of potatoes, so at least I'm not carbohydrate deprived. I cheated a little. I used less potatoes but then put my body weight in cheese in there to hide the eggplant. The level of cheesiness was sublime.

 

 
It would actually be a great side dish and was pretty tasty.  I guess we need some time to get used to Meatless Mondays and to get a bigger vegetarian recipe library.
 

Miss Pyjamas stated "I wouldn't be tripping over myself to have that again but it wasnt too bad". I'm so glad we taught her to be tactful. She picked her way around the one offending slice of eggplant that somehow found its way onto her plate. Pretty sure she'll be hitting the Coco Pops later.

 
You can find the recipe here (and the mince pies in my underwear drawer, if you're interested )