raspberry & white chocolate muffins

A couple of posts back, I mentioned that there would be a little 'project' in the works and what better time to make a start on it when it's the long weekend! Just to bring everyone up to speed, my project will be to cook my way through Allan Campion & Michele Curtis' 'In the Kitchen'; a collection of 'more than 1000 recipes for every day'. It'll probably take me a little while to get through this book but I figured it would be a great way to put myself back in the kitchen, learn a few new recipes and well, I guess have a bit of fun!

Allan Campion & Michelle Curtis have previously published 'Everyday in the Kitchen' which was a Winner at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for Best Easy Recipes. I suppose that was what attracted me to them in the first place. I love simple recipes that I can cook everyday. I'm sure there are others out there like me who own a sizeable collection of cookbooks but really, there's only a handful that you'll use to cook out of on a daily basis. When I went through the ones I had, Campion & Curtis automatically jumped out at me as a good fit for this project.

1st recipe out of the book - Raspberry & white chocolate muffins.

True to its word, this batter gave me 10 muffins and cooked nicely with 20 minutes in the oven.

The taste test - the muffin tops were crunchy, the inside moist and the raspberry and white chocolate flavours were well balanced. I had mum agreeing with me - these muffins were neither sweet nor too bland, they were just perfectly right!

The recipe actually suggests a sprinkling of icing sugar to serve - personally I think it can do without but icing sugar does make everything look pretty! Well, maybe if I was giving them away... There's only 10 in this batch which probably won't last very long :P

Excited as I was to start this project (coupled with J having his exam meaning I was at home for the day), I decided to try a second recipe. Can you guess what else I made in the above pic?

I promise there'll be savoury recipes to follow. Just that I do have a personal preference/attraction to sweets and those recipes always seem to come first. 

donna hay's chocolate brownies

It's been awhile since I've done any baking and is usually the case, it meant rummaging around in the pantry and cupboards trying to see if there was everything I needed for the recipe that I'd decided on. In this case, I'd decided on the brownies in Donna Hay's 'Chocolate' book and the recipe was simple enough - combo of flour, a block of butter, dark chocolate, cocoa powder, a smidgen of baking powder, eggs, brown sugar. Pretty much all these ingredients are staples that I recommend any baker to have at home. 

I followed the recipe by the book and the brownies turned out to be a real treat. The brownie was moist and tasted great for the next couple of days. (15 seconds in the microwave and you get a brownie that tastes like it's just come out of the oven). 

What's a brownie without a sprinkling of icing sugar! I tend to enjoy my cakes with a cup of tea.

Donna Hay's 'Chocolate' is a great little book for those chocolate lovers out there. There's another recipe for chocolate brownies with raspberries which I want to try. I know her recipes aren't always as detailed as they should be but this book of chocolate recipes doesn't pretend to be anything fancy - it's got all your staple recipes in there and so far all the recipes I've tried have turned out pretty good (and I do have high standards for myself when I cook!)

 

Notice how I've cut the brownies into little squares. To be honest, I did get a little disconcerted seeing the amount of butter that went into this batch of brownies - a whole 250g into a tray that was probably about 18x18cm....hmmm....

chorizo & sun-dried tomato pasta

The colder weather has taken me back into the kitchen and I've been flipping through my recipe books bookmarking recipes to try and end up with some many bookmarks that I may as well have not done so to start with! It has given me some ideas though and I'm keen to do a little project and cook my way through a cookbook - and well, not just any cookbook but one of the ones I picked up at last week at Basement books (my latest love) - 'In the Kitchen' by Allan Campion and Michele Curtis. FYI: This book contains more than 1000 recipes and well, I don't really know what's gone in the thought process to decide on this one but somehow it appealed to me. Anyway, let's see if this project comes into fruition.

Upcoming projects aside, I did manage to get into the kitchen last Sunday and cook up a batch of pasta for lunch. The base of the recipe came from Good Food Magazine - it was meant to be a Sizzled Sausage pasta; base ingredients being pasta, sausages, sundried tomato and parsley. That morning I'd been reading NQN's blog where she had cooked a chorizo pasta and that's were I get the second half of my recipe. You see, failing to find sausages at the supermarket and there being no deli in sight, I decided to substitute the sausages with the chorizo. Thanks NQN!

Zafarelli pasta was on special at Franklins! 3 bags for $3. Here's one of the bags. Aside from chorizo, the sundried tomato and parsley was already in my fridge.

This recipe is so easy to cook, it's light on the palate and won't leave you feeling too full. Heat  2 tbsp of the oil from the sundried tomatoes, cook the sliced chorizo until browned on both sides, add the sliced sundried tomatoes, toss in the cooked pasta and chopped parsley (I've taken after Nigella and actually use scissors to cut the parsley in - it's ingenious!) Top with a generous dosing of cracked pepper.

I had these on reasonably small plates and ended up eating about two. J had another two and leftover was just enough for two takeaway boxes of which I had one for lunch on Monday. It still tasted great after reheating it in the microwave.

You'll find that I tend to cook a lot of pasta recipes. Number of reasons - I love eating pasta, it's hard to go wrong with a pasta recipe and thirdly, pasta is great for bringing to work and reheating. I suppose a fourth reason is that pasta is actually quite expensive when you buy it outside. Although occasionally, as a treat, I do like using fresh pasta at home which can get quite expensive (but trust me, tastes so much better!)

Anyway, that afternoon I actually got back into the kitchen and made brownies - post to follow. 

SWEETNESS - The Patisserie @ oxford st., epping

I've been following Ja's blog for awhile now. I've never actually met her in person although she's told me that she's seen me walking down the street near my work (but it happened to be a rainy night and my focus was probably on getting to the station so I didn't see her). Our story goes quite a fair way back and these days, I call her my twin stomach. There's been numerous times now where we've blogged about the same places or the same foods within the week of each other and these are not just your average places, even our bookings for Tetsuya happened within a week of each other. It's quite bizarre!

Anyway, she posted on her blog recently that she was working at SWEETNESS - The Patisserie in Epping and after a handful of messages on facebook, I said I'd visit her on the Saturday that she was working. Unfortunately, her shift got changed to the Sunday at the last minute so didn't actually get to meet the girl that I'm calling my twin stomach. Hopefully I'll get to meet you soon Ja!

You'll find parking just outside the shop. The shop isn't all that big. There's a display in the front window; to the left is a bookshelf housing packaged biscuits, toffees, jellies; in front of you is the counter with an assortment of fresh-baked pastries including muffins, tarts, rocky road, florentines, brownies; and finally to the right is the register, the shelf housing all the packaged marshmallows and a handful of books belonging to the chef (I noticed a few that were also on my bookshelf at home!) The majority of the shop is actually made up of the kitchen which is sparkling clean!

As tempting as it was to take one of everything, I only took home a small selection (all the more reason to head back there again soon). Here is the banana streusel muffin ($3.50), chocolate brownie ($2.50), pack of 12 mini biscuits ($7.50) and finally their famous mini marshmallows 150g ($8.00). Mum did express a gasp of shock when I told her how much the biscuits and marshmallows were. They are tasty though!

I actually had the muffin the next morning (microwaved it for about 20 seconds and then in the mini oven for another 5 minutes - the muffin was warm throughout and the streusal topping resumed it's slight crunchiness!)

I highly recommend both the muffin and the chocolate brownie. Both were great and after eating the brownie, I was inspired to bake my own! Post to follow. The marshmallows are so soft, I'm not sure if you can even get a marshmallow softer than these ones but these ended up a little too sweet for my liking. The biscuits, whilst pretty were very average and I wish I'd spent this money on a handful of florentines that were on the counter (another of my loves!)

Whilst at the register, I spotted a handful of loaves that were in the kitchen. Asked the girl that was serving me and she said they were $10. Spoke to Ja who has highly recommended these so I've got that on the agenda for my next trip!

nero italian restuarant/cafe/bar @ oxford st., epping

It was with a little convincing and foot-stamping that J agreed to head to Epping with me on Saturday. I know it's bad of me cause he's got an exam this weekend but my way of thinking is that regardless what you have on, you still need to eat! And the thing is, it wasn't going to take long to go out and eat and come back and really, I wasn't going to spend TOO long at Sweetness - The Patisserie (which was the main point of me wanting to go to Epping). Ok, maybe that is my bad...

As luck would have it, we found a spot just out side the Patisserie. I ducked in quickly, checked what time they closed (realised that they were open till 5 so we had heaps of time) and well, came back out and asked J the question of what he wanted to eat. I do try and compromise! He didn't really have a preference and all we ended up doing was look across the road and headed into 'Nero - Italian restaurant/cafe/bar'. From outside, it looks more like a cafe than restaurant and so you can imagine our surprise after we walked in and was shown a much larger area at the back and the fact that they had beers on tap!

Photo from where I was sitting. 

Our drinks. I can't remember exactly how much the beer was but J got rather excited that it was tap beer and that it hardly costed anything. I question how much he remembered the afternoon or his studies after that beer got to the table - he was happily chugging away.

Herb bread ($3.00). I'm pretty sure that this was made on bread baked in-house. Tasty!

There's a real mix of items on the menu - your standard cafe items, all day breakfast etc. but being a restaurant also, they have some more traditional Italian meals. There's a huge range of pasta dishes to choose from and the list of pastas is what caught our eye. J's preference is for tomato based sauces so he picked the 'Spaghetti Prawns Arrabbiata' (prawns pan cooked with garlic, chilli and tomato salsa, served with spaghetti in a paella dish). I'm usually a bit skeptical of prawns when I eat them outside but the chef did a good job with this one - there was a decent serving of prawns and they were cooked just right!

On the other hand, I'm a big fan of cream based sauces. I picked a more traditional pasta, the Spaghetti Carbonara (spaghetti with bacon, onion, pepper, egg, cheese and nutmeg in a cream and wine sauce). I happily dug through this dish and was just short of licking the bowl. Probably could've stopped 2/3 of the way through as later that afternoon, I started to feel a little uncomfortable from how full I was. Don't get me wrong - this was no fault of the lovely chef who came to the table to check that our meal was going ok, it was just me eating to quickly and too greedily!

Whilst prices aren't your cheapest, our pastas were $19.90 and $15.90 respectively (note that they do have daily specials which are much cheaper - there's a pasta meal deal including 1x garlic or herb bread, pasta of the day, 1 glass of white or red wine or soft drink) and whilst tempting, trust me, there's plenty of other items on the menu that will tempt you.

In particular, I have to commend the friendliness of staff, especially the chef who came to the table and checked that we were doing ok with our meal. He was honest and discouraged us from ordering too much to start off with and even when our meals came and were licked clean, he says to us 'That was bad wasn't it?' We could only laugh and assure him that the meal was fantastic, no complaints whatsoever! And that is the truth!