Kara's oozy chocolate fondants

Kara's Chocolate Fondants

(Makes 3 or maybe 4)

100g Lindt dark chocolate
100g butter
2 egg yolks
2 eggs
50g icing sugar
30g plain flour
butter for greasing
cocoa for dusting ramekins

Preheat oven to 200 deg celcius.  Grease 3 ramekins with butter, then dust with cocoa.

Melt chocolate and butter in a bowl sitting over a pot of simmering water.  Remove from heat and set aside.

In a separate bowl whisk eggs, yolks and sugar together.  Pour chocolate mixture into egg mixture and stir well.  Add flour and stir until well combined.

Pour the mixture into ramekins.  Place onto a tray and bake in the oven for 8 minutes.

Enjoy the deliciousness.

Watermelon Salad

Watermelon, fetta, fennel, and beetroot relish sounds like a weird combo, but it was a great salad to go with our steak and crispy wedges.  The salad also had finely sliced red onion, roasted hazelnuts, and roquette.

Dinner last night!!

Quick and dirty update

Well I see that it has been about five months since there has been any activity on here... now that there will be two extra mouths to feed in the house things have been a little busy!

Just so this site wasn't totally neglected, I thought I'd upload a few photos of things we have created over the last five months, in the hope that this will inspire to post the recipes for the photos on here soon!  We'll see how that works out.

I also thought i'd mention a few restaurants (and cafes) we have visited lately.  This list includes:

• La luna bistro (Rathdowne St) - have been there twice in the last months and have not been able to fault a thing either time.  Fresh, beautiful, wonderfully cooked food that is full of flavour - topped off with fantastic service
• Il bacaro (Little Collins St) - amazing food, and probably the best service I have ever experienced in a restaurant
• Hardware Societe (Hardware lane) - Was it worth the wait on a freezing Melbourne morning?  Most definitely.  Delicious food and great drinks, with efficient service.  Pork belly baguette is to die for!
• Little creatures (yet again) - Just as good as before
• The lake house (Daylesford) - an epic, luxurious dining experience courtesy of K.  I can't wait to go back
• Mr Wolf (St Kilda) - Great food, excellent pizzas and great value
• Hellenic Republic (again) - amazing food as always, however their insistence that we pay for members of our group that didn't turn up left a bad taste in everyone's mouth (we didn't have to in the end, but it was still disappointing that they tried to squeeze extra money out of us)
• and of course, the burgers (tipoffs courtesy of the burger adventure) - Cafe Vue, and Beatbox kitchen - I have no words for how good these burgers are - just go there!
• 
  

Now, to the photos....

Slow cooked spicy lamb pides, with cucumber, red onion and parsley salad

Pumpkin, zesty ricotta and walnut pizza (idea shamelessly borrowed from my old work)

Ricotta hotcakes with banana, chocolate sauce and nutella

This idea has potential, but needs some work - a kind of breakfast quiche (maybe) - topped with a sauteed mushroom and cheese

same again

Our annual hot cross bun bake-off (well half a batch) 

The glazed, finished product

Raspberry, white chocolate and peach dessert pizza

And again

Good old roast chicken with bacon, macadamia and onion stuffing

Crispy skin soy and ginger salmon with stir fried greens and noodles

Pork belly on a white bean and chorizo braise

Decadent Breakfasts

On the breakfast menu - French toast hot cross buns, and ..... I have no words to describe the decadence of the dish on the right!

I'll start up with the death by chocolate dish.  

This dish doesn't really have a name... maybe 'chocaholics wet dream' would suit.  It consists of 'blondie' (white chocolate brownies) sandwiched together with nutella, coated in a marscapone and cocoa mixture, and wrapped in chocolate crepes!

Blondies in chocolate crepes

Bake the blondies using this recipe, and make the crepe batter using the recipe below.  

Chocolate crepes (makes 2)

Combine 1/3 cup plain flour, 3 tsp caster sugar, and 10g of cocoa powder in a small bowl.  In a seperate bowl, whisk together 1 egg, 100mL milk, and 10g melted butter.  Gently fold the dry ingredients into wet ingredients.  Cover, and refrigerate for around half an hour.

Once the crepe batter is in the fridge, slice your blondie into 2cm square logs.  Take one log, cover the three large sides in nutella, and slide another log up next to this once. Cover it's exposed edges.  Stack a third log on top of your original one, and cover it's exposed edges with nutella, and do the same with the fourth log.  Now if you look at the end, it should look like a window, with a nutella cross through the middle.  

I then coated the completed blondie log in a mixture of 3 tbsp marscapone cheese, mixed in with 2 tsp of cocoa, and 2 tsp of icing sugar.  Adjust the quantities to achieve your desired sweetness/bitterness/colour.

I then made the crepes, and wrapped each blondie log up in a crepe.  I very carefully cut the ends off, so you end up with a nice cross section at each end, as you can see below.  

I served the blondies with berry compote, and icecream tossed in spiced sugar.  

A word of warning - this was very rich, half as much probably would have been enough for one person!  You may be questioning whether this is really a breakfast, however, I say the inclusion of crepes keeps it 'breakfasty'.  Also, I can eat whatever the hell I want for breakfast!

French toast hot cross buns, with poached peaches, marscapone and white chocolate cream, with orange syrup and hazelnuts.  

Start by making your french toast mixture.  Whisk together:

2 eggs

1/4 cup of cream

1 tbsp icing sugar

a few drops of vanilla essence

Poach some fresh peaches in boiling water until soft.  Allow to cool a little, rub/peel the skin off, remove the stone, and slice into wedges.  

To make the orange syrup, combine in a small saucepan over low heat:

2/3 cup orange juice

1/3 cup water

1 cup caster sugar

Stir until the sugar is dissolved, bring to the boil, boil for a minute or two, and remove from heat.  

For the chocolate cream, melt a handful of white chocolate melts or pieces over a double boiler.  Add 2-3 tbsp of marscapone and combine.  Remove from heat.  

Slice your hot cross buns in half and soak in the egg mixture.  Put a pan on low heat, and add a knob of butter.  Shake excess egg mixture off the hot cross buns, and cook in the pan as you would for french toast.  

Serve with poached peaches, marscapone white chocolate cream, orange syrup, and crumbled hazelnuts. 

Ella's Cheshire Cat Birthday Cake

This labour of love took around 4 hours, and a lot of bad language from start to finish.  I baked the cakes the night before in three different shaped bowls, then allowed them to cool, and cut them on quirky angles.

I then roughly iced all surfaces with basic icing, to make the marshmallow fondant icing stick to the cakes.  I couldn't believe how easy it was to make the marshmallow fondant, and also, how easy it was to work with.

To make it, i bought a 250g pack of marshmallows, and split them into pink and white.  I put one colour in a bowl, with 1tbsp of water, and microwaved for approximately 30 seconds, and stirred until it was a smooth mixture.  I then measured out around 250g of icing sugar, and started mixing it into the marshmallows bit by bit.  Once the mixture was starting to almost form a dough, and lose it's tackiness, I turned it out onto the bench, and kneaded the rest of the icing sugar in.  I should mention that I had dusted the bench with icing sugar to ensure that the icing didn't stick.  Once the icing reaches the consistency of playdough, it is ready!  You can either tint it at the marshmallow stage, once it is removed from the microwave, or you can actually tint it once it has turned into icing, by kneading the food colouring through - however this takes a bit longer, and you may end up with stained hands!  

From this point I separated the icing into batches and tinted them different colours.  For the base icing layer of each layer of the cake, I simply tinted to the desired colour, and then rolled out to around 4mm thick, draped it over the cakes, removed any extra, and smoothed out any joins.  You can smooth the joins by brushing with water, and rubbing the area with a small ball of icing, dusted liberally in icing sugar.  

Once you have finished decorating, brush very lightly with water to remove any traces of icing sugar.  The cat's face came out a bit soft and started to fall apart, as it was a 35 degree day, and quite warm in the kitchen.  I wasn't sure whether time in the fridge would help to set it hard or not, and I didn't have time to experiment.  

On the menu lately...

Roast Beef and Veg salad

This one is almost too easy - Roast whatever vegetables you like in a hot oven for around an our - I used carrot, parsnip, mushroom, zucchini, onions, garlic and shallots.  Before roasting toss them in salt, pepper and olive oil.  Sear in a hot pan a well seasoned piece of topside/virginian beef, and roast in the oven for around 25 minutes.  Allow to rest for around ten minutes before slicing, and serve with seeded mustard or mustard aioli.  Toss your cooked veg with some roquette and/or spinach leaves, and dress with olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.  

Jamie Oliver's pulled pork and coleslaw

Click here for the recipe

Mexican shredded chicken salad on corn tortilla with refried beans

Simply poach a chicken breast in some water flavoured with lime juice, peppercorns, tabasco, and dried chillis.  Shred, and toss with chargrilled corn, avocado, cucumber and capsicum.  I dressed the salad with a lime juice and chilli vinegarette, and served it on a crunchy corn tortilla.  

Roast Beetroot Salad

Inspired by a special at work - roast beetroot, spinach, roquette, red onion, fennel, and dukkah coated fetta, dressed in a beetroot gastrique and topped with mint yoghurt. 

Gingerbread House

Project Bacon - Phase 3

And on the seventh day, God created bacon!

After waiting nervously for a week, today it was finally time to take the pork belly which was being patiently transformed into bacon out of the fridge for the final phase.  I had been checking it every day, worried that it might have grown a mould colony in there, but all appeared to be well this morning.

I removed it from the fridge, rinsed it off and put it in the oven at 95 deg celcius for around 90 minutes.  When I removed it, it had taken on that lovely pink colour, and looked..... well, it looked like bacon!

I couldn't wait for it to cool down, so I sliced some off and chucked it in a pan.  How did it taste?  Delicious, and full of flavour.  Eating it by itself, it was perhaps a little salty, and it is also a little sweet.  The sweetness I had suspected, being an american recipe.  Next time I will probably halve the amount of sugar.  To fix the saltiness, I will blanch the bacon before cooking.  This was mentioned in the recipe I used, and appears to happen sometimes. I was unsure whether to blanch it or not this time, so I just left it.  It seemed like I had rinsed enough salt off under the tap.  Apparently not.

Next time I will hunt down a bigger piece of pork to use, as this one was a little thin.  However it was all that was available when I bought it.  It's a little hard to slice so I will take it to work and slice it on the meat slicer tomorrow!  I look forward to making some panchetta next time.

PS.  Sorry for the dodgy photos - we had changed the exposure settings on the camera, and I hadn't adjusted them!

On the menu this month....

Steamed, and crispy fried dumplings with Nuoc cham dipping sauce.  You can find a great recipe for Nuoc cham (Vietnamese chilli sauce) here.  If you make it correctly, the chilli will float on the surface - apparently a pre-requisite for finding a partner in Vietnam!

Lamb Shanks with soft polenta, courtesy of the mini recipe books that you could get with the Herald sun.  This one came from the Guy Grossi cookbook.

Roast Pumpkin Salad

Delicious, easy to make, and healthy.  It's also great topped with a chicken fillet marinated in some lemon juice, paprika, ground coriander and cumin.

Roast Pumpkin (and Moroccan Chicken) Salad

1/2 butternut pumpkin, peeled and sliced to approx 3-4mm thick
Salad leaves (I used roquette and spinach)
Fetta, crumbled
Pine nuts, toasted
Fried shallots
1 avocado, thinly sliced
4 tbsp cumin seeds
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200 deg celcius.  Line 2 baking trays with baking paper, and brush with oil.  Cover with approx 2 tbsp of cumin seeds, salt, and freshly cracked pepper.  Lay the pumpkin on top of the seasonsings, and brush with oil.  Top with more cumin seeds, salt, and pepper.  Roast the pumpkin for approx 20 minutes, or until you think it's done.

Build your salad on the plates using the salad leaves, avocado and pumpkin.  Sprinkle with pine nuts, shallots, and finally the fetta.  Dress with  a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice.

As I said above, it goes well with moroccan chicken.  I make this by marinating the chicken in olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and approx 1 tsp each of sweet paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander, mixed with a few ground up coriander stems and leaves.

Halloween!

After racking my brain for a week trying to think of savoury dishes to take to Halloween, the inspiration came all at once and I had heaps of ideas.  Apparently everyone was taking sweet dishes, and that was all I could originally think of also.

We ended up going for Eyeball tarts, and a few 'interesting' dips.

The tarts were simply shortcrust tart cases, filled with a tomato, bacon and mushroom filling, and topped with my version of a culinary eyeball!

I simply cooked off a few tins of tomatoes with some garlic, red wine, chilli flakes, basil and oregano.  I then added thin slivers of bacon, and some finely sliced mushrooms.  This became the filling for the tarts.  We then topped them with thin slices of baby bocconcini for the white of the eye, and added stuffed green olives for the iris.  Some of them had just the right curve for an eyeball, probably the slices of bocconcini that came from the ends.  I was pretty pleased with the results!

The 'Carrot Fairy' dip was simply a mango kasundi I made at trade school, mixed with some grated carrot, and thick greek yoghurt.

The 'Exorcist' dip was a green pea and wasabi puree (recipe below), and the corn chips we made by pressing our tortillas, cutting them into triangles, brushing with oil and salt, and then baking.

'Exorcist' Dip

1/2 onion, very finely diced
1/2 cup cream
1-2 cups of thawed or fresh peas
salt
pepper
approx 1 tsp wasabi

Saute the onion gently in some olive oil - do not allow it to brown at all.  Once it is soft and translucent, add the cream and bring to the boil.  Once boiling, reduce the heat to medium and add the peas.  Season with salt, pepper, and wasabi (be careful!) and allow to cool.  Once it has cooled, process with a stick blender, or food processor.

Note:  I have made this a few times, and sometimes the final consistency varies.  You may have to add more cream to make it runnier, or more peas to make it thicker.  Add the wasabi bit by bit to ensure you don't add too much.

Steak, Bearnaise sauce, and roast beetroot salad

Inspired by our recent heart attack inducing visit to France-soir on Toorak Road, I just had to try and make bearnaise sauce at home.  I had gained a little confidence in my ability to make this, largely due to learning a foolproof method for Hollandaise sauce at work.  Prior to learning that, I had experienced quite a few hollandaise failures at home, and had all but given up.

Thankfully it all came together (and stayed together) this time, and after finishing our meal it was good enough to keep eating with a spoon!

The roast beetroot salad that accompanied the steak was fantastic - that combination is definitely a keeper.  I won't write out a full recipe, but it contained the following:

Beetroots roasted in their skins, and then peeled and quartered
Toasted walnuts
Spinach leaves
Soft boiled eggs

I built the salad, and then dressed it with mustard aioli (aioli mixed with dijon, and seeded mustard), and topped it with some soft boiled eggs.  Next time I might even omit the aioli, as the gooey egg yolks were enough dressing for the salad.

Project Bacon - Phase 2

Well I received my pink curing salts in the mail, and went about the business of creating a spice/salt rub for the pork belly.

Pictured above is the mix of regular salt, pepper, curing salts, minced garlic, crushed bay leaves, nutmeg, thyme, and sugar.  I rubbed it all over the pork, placed in a container, and popped it into the fridge for a week.

Next wednesday can't come soon enough!

Trade School Day 3

I thought rice would be a fairly boring class, and even though the recipes were fairly ho-hum, and I'd cooked them all before, it was actually good fun.

First up was wild mushroom risotto.  We finished this off with cream, which I don't normally do.  Usually I add shaved Parmesan to help it get a nice consistency.  However it turned out quite well, and left the dish with a great consistency.

We followed this up with a quick rice pilau, topped with hard boiled egg, crispy onions, and toasted almonds.  Not as bland as it sounds, it would definitely make a good side to a spicy meat dish.

Paella was very tasty, although we needed a bit more saffron.  Also, some more seafood, like mussels and calamari would have made it truly amazing.  It was also missing the poultry component, due to some questionable chicken!

Finally, we pulled our now frozen rice out of the blast chiller for good ole' fried rice!  I tried to dry mine out in the oven a bit, which helped I think.  Upon removal from the freezer, the rice had basically frozen into frosty rice cakes!