Dinner Party (Part one - Entree. VIETNAMESE RICE PAPER ROLLS)

I had my cousin and his fiance over for dinner tonight.

I decided to make Vietnamese rice paper rolls for the entree, followed by Chicken Penang Curry with Jasmine Rice for the main meal, and a Berry Clafoutis for dessert.

The rice-paper rolls were so fresh and tasty!!! I'll definitely be making them for my son's first birthday party in a few weeks.

INGREDIENTS:
Pack of 22 rice paper rolls
Rice vermicelli
Chopped iceberg lettuce
2 grated carrots
2 grated Cucumbers (drained of moisture)
half a cup of fresh mint
half a kilo of fresh peeled prawns
Hoi Sin sauce (for dipping)

METHOD:
Place the rice vermicelli in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Sit for 10 mins before rinsing with cold water and draining.
Place a sheet of the rice paper in a bowl of warm water for 30 seconds.
Remove from water and place on a damp tea towel.  Mount some vermicelli, lettuce, cucumber, carrot, mint and prawns toward the bottom of the sheet.
Roll the bottom up, fold in the sides, and roll to seal.

Serve with a Hoi Sin dipping sauce.

You can add many different things to these - teriyaki chicken is delicious, and you could also use tuna, bamboo shoots, or avocado. Anything goes!

Tandoori chicken and pilaf rice, with a yoghurt dipping sauce

Tonight's dinner was a hit with the family. This classic Indian dinner is one of my favourite dishes, full of flavour yet so easy to make.

INGREDIENTS:
1kg chicken tenderloins
1 cup of natural yoghurt
3 tablespoons of tandoori paste
1 tsp minced garlic
a squeeze of lemon (optional)
1 large brown onion, diced
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups of jasmine rice (or medium grain rice)
2 tbsp powdered chicken stock
2.5 cups of water
2 bay leaves

bok choy, chopped
green beans

Dipping sauce:
1 cup of natural yoghurt
1/3 cup of water
2 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp paprika

METHOD:

Stir the tandoori paste into the yoghurt. Add the garlic and lemon.
Score each side of the tenderloin with a knife.
Dip each tenderloin into the mixture and place into a dish.  Refrigerate for 1.5 hours.

Pan fry for a couple of minutes on each side, before placing on a deep baking tray and into a 180 degree oven.  Cook for around 15 mins or until chicken is cooked through.

To make the rice, put chopped onion into a pan with the olive oil and sautee until the onions are clear.  Remove from the heat and add washed rice and chicken stock powder. Stir.
Add the water and bay leaves, stir and reduce heat.  Simmer covered for around 25 minutes.

Mix together all dipping sauce ingredients.

Serve alongside chicken and rice, with steamed Asian greens.

Banana Bread

Banana Bread - who doesn't love it? The name kind of annoys me, because it is more of a ''cake'' than a bread.  It's definitely not healthy as the name ''banana bread'' implies. However, I love it! It took me a few recipes to find one that that I loved.  So thanks to my dear friend Laura, here is my super easy Banana Bread recipe:

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup plain flour
half cup SR flour
1 cup brown sugar
125g butter, melted
2 eggs, whisked
2-3 bananas, mashed
1 tsp cinnamon

METHOD:
Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C.
Mix together dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients and mashed bananas.
Pour into a greased loaf pan (I like to line mine with baking paper).
Bake for 45-50 mins.


YUMMM

Home made spinach, fetta and chorizo gozleme!

One word for tonights dinner - TASTY!!!!!!

I had some chorizo and some fetta in the fridge that I wanted to use for dinner, so I googled the two ingredients and some gozleme recipes came up in the results. I'd never made gozleme before so I thought I'd give it a go. I used the dough recipe from an online source, but then just winged the filling ingredients myself.

INGREDIENTS:

Dough:

2 cups of plain flour (plus a little extra)
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup of water
1/4 extra virgin olive oil

Filling:

2 Chorizo sausages, sliced.
a handful of fetta cheese, crushed
1 cup of frozen spinach (or you can use fresh spinach)
1 tsp butter
2 tbsp parsley
1 tsp dill
1 cup of grated tasty cheese (or you can use part tasty, part mozarella)


METHOD:
Firstly, I made the dough: 2 cups of plain flour and a pinch of salt sifted into a bowl.  I made a well in the middle and poured 3/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil. Mix together to form a dough, and knead for a few minutes.  You might need to add some extra plain flour so it's not so sticky. Divide into 4 balls, place into an oiled bowl, cover with cling wrap, and set aside for 20 mins.

If you are using fresh spinach, cook in a pan with a little water for a few minutes until soft.  If you are using frozen spinach, pop into the microwave with a little water and cook for a few minutes. When ready, add the butter and stir.  You can also use some spring onion, but I didn't because I didn't have any!

Cook the Chorizo in a pan with a touch of extra virgin olive oil (I use a spray).  Once cooked, set aside and place onto paper towels.

Roll out the dough into a rectangle by pressing with your fingers, and then lightly roll with a rolling pin, being careful not to make it too thin.  Add the filling, first the spinach, then chorizo, some fetta, fresh parsley, dill and top it off with grated cheese. You can really use any filling that tickles your fancy!

Fold each side over to the middle, folding back the second side (like the picture below), and close up each end by folding it up.  Place the gozleme on a hot pan (lightly sprayed with extra virgin olive oil) and cook on each side.

Keep warm in the oven until ready to serve.  Slice into quarters and serve with lemon wedges, and a side salad.

YUMMMMO

Home made yoghurt

In my mission to slowly rid the house of unnatural foods (ok, cut down) I decided to buy a Lumina Yoghurt Maker from Aldi.  I only buy the Jalna yoghurt for the kids because it is pot set and contains no nasties.  However, they don't come in kids size tubs or pouches and although it's easy to just put some in a small container, it is not as appealing to the 3 year old as the fun pouches!

So I purchased some pouches from www.pouched.com.au.  The pouches are fabulous - the smaller ones are for single use only, but the food can be frozen in them as well as thawed.  I also purchased some larger ones for freezing larger meals and for things like leftover chicken stock.  These can be re-used up to 5 times.

So all I did was mix 1200ml of full cream milk with 200ml of natural tub-set yoghurt. I then divided the mixture into the 7 glass containers, pressed the button and waited 6 hours for the yoghurt to "cook".

After 6 hours the yoghurt was still watery, so I left it on another hour and a half and it was set.  However, next time I will leave it on even longer so it thickens up a bit more.  A few hours in the fridge and it was ready.

I pureed some apple and pear, added a little cinnamon and after it had cooled in the refrigerator I mixed some with the yoghurt.

And into my little pouches they went.

Fun for the 3 year old to eat.
Easy for the 10 month old to eat from.

A definite win!

Off to the health food shop tomorrow to find something natural to sweeten the yoghurt up (as my son is too young for honey).

My husbands birthday dinner

I made a delicious three-course meal.....

Oysters Natural (they were HUGE - almost the size of my hand)

Chicken Cordon Bleu with chat potatoes and beans

And a SCRUMPTIOUS Baked Berry Cheesecake for dessert....

Creamy chicken, basil pesto and sundried tomato pasta

Tonight's dinner was something I just threw together based on available ingredients I had at home, and it tasted sensational! Even my 10 month old son loved it.

INGREDIENTS:
500g chicken breast, sliced
a handful of chopped chives
half a cup of basil pesto
300ml light cream
a splash of white wine
100g sliced sundried tomatoes
penne pasta
handful of parmesan cheese

METHOD:
Cook the chicken breast in some olive oil.
Add the chives and stir.
Add the white wine and stir.
Add the pesto, cream, and sundried tomatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes.

Serve on penne pasta, sprinkled with parmesan cheese.

Moroccan Lamb

My dear friend Luke cooked this dish for me many years ago and graciously gave me the recipe because I absolutely loved it.

I have changed it a little (because it was VERY spicy) and now I add much less chilli powder, and I also added chick peas.

INGREDIENTS:
4 cloves of garlic
1 tbs salt
1 tbs coriander powder
half tsp chilli powder
1 tbs cumin powder
olive oil
500g lamb cubes
tinned crushed/diced tomatoes
1 tbs tomato paste
S&P
1 tsp lemon zest
half tsp tumeric
handful of roasted almond flakes or slivers
tin of chick peas
cous cous
raisins (optional)

METHOD:
1. Add garlic, salt, coriander, chilli, cumin powders to herb grinder. Grind til it resembles a paste.

2. Add olive oil to the pan and cook the herb paste for around 2 mins.
3. Add the lamb cubes and cook.

4. Cook and simmer for around 25 mins.
5. Add the crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, s&p, lemon zest, tumeric and chick peas.
6. Simmer for about half an hour.

7. At the end add the roasted almonds and stir.
8. Serve on a bed of cous cous with raisins (optional).

Spicy pumpkin pancakes

We have been cooking and baking so much this week as my son is sick and we have been stuck at home looking for things to do - and my daughter just loves cooking!
Today we made spicy pumpkin pancakes and they were absolutely DIVINE!
Cannot wait to make them again!!

I got the recipe from here http://allrecipes.com/recipe/pumpkin-pancakes/

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (I pureed my own pumpkin, but you can also use canned pumkin)
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Method:

Boil up some pumpkin and mash.

Use one cup for the recipe (I am saving the rest for babies food for dinner tonight, but you can freeze it for next time)
Combine all wet ingredients in a bowl.
Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl.

Mix both together.

Heat a slightly oiled pan and pour approximately a quarter of a cup of the mixture onto the pan and spread with the ladle.  Cook on both sides until brown.

Serve warm with some maple syrup!

YUMMMMM