Nasi Goreng

When we were on our honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu we came across Nasi Goreng and were informed that it was the "national dish" of Malaysia by many locals. We got to enjoy this dish on a trip into the jungle. We were taken right out into the middle of no where to this small village, we ate at a small open walled shed, the air-conditioner consisted of a water sprinkler on a tin roof. We were served Nasi Goreng with chicken that was killed only hours earlier. I was scared to eat it, so sure I would get food poisoning but in the end I couldn't resist.

Nasi Goreng 

Chicken & Marinade 
Chicken breast
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed thinly sliced

Combine all of the ingredients with the chicken and let sit in marinade for at least 30 minutes. Put chicken and sauce into an oven tray and roast in a 180 degree Celsius oven and cook for 30 minutes, until chicken is cooked through.

Nasi Goreng
2 cups white rice
1/2 brown onion, diced
1/2 carrot, diced
1 teaspoon minced ginger
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed thinly sliced
1 bunch pak choy, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Eggs

Bring 2 cups of water to the boil and add the rice, reduce heat to simmer for 15 minutes. In a wok or electric frying pan, fry carrot and onion until soft. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and stir-fry for 1 minute. Stir through the cooked rice, add the pak chou, soy sauce and brown sugar and stir through to combine.

Fry the eggs, ensuring the yolk is still soft. Serve the rice topped with the fried egg with the chicken on the side.

Sunday Sweets: Snickers Pie

So this just happened.

 I'm pretty sure I'll never look at Snickers bars the same way again. This Snickers pie is like a sweet, gooey chocolate and peanut layered lasagne. It's just that good. The richness of the chocolate mixed with the creaminess of the cream cheese and the texture of the Snickers peanuts. Whew. Get some water and take a seat.

Snickers Pie

Pie Base 
250 grams scotch fingers
90 grams butter

Fudge-Snickers Layer
115 grams butter
115 grams milk chocolate
5 tablespoons plain flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
220 grams Snickers bars, diced

Cream Layer
250 grams cream cheese
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 egg white
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and prepare a pie dish.  Process the scotch finger biscuits in a blender until fine. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Melt the butter in the microwave and add to the biscuit crumbs. Mix to combine then press the crumbs into a spring-form dish.

For the fudge layer, melt the butter and chocolate in a heat proof mixing bowl over boiling water. While chocolate is melting (keep an eye on it!) use an electric mixer to beat the sugar, eggs and egg yolk and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Add the melted chocolate and mix to combine. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder on top of the chocolate and fold together.

Bake for around 15 minutes, the batter should still be moist in the centre. Let this base cool then arrange  the diced pieces of Snickers bar over the top of this chocolate layer.

For the cream layer, beat together the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add the egg and the egg white and vanilla and beat until well combined.  Carefully spread this mixture over the top of the Snickers bars and fudge layer. Bake the pie for 15 minutes or until cream cheese is just set. Allow to cool in the fridge.

Sweet Chocolate Brownies

There's nothing wrong with sitting on the couch for 3 days watching Breaking Bad and eating brownies right? I LOVE school holidays.

Brownies have been on my mind for a while. It all began with a trip to Max Brenner and then a super chocolate smothered brownie sundae at the Gold Class cinema. Both times were the ultimate over indulgence. Over the past few weeks I have been throwing together some different ideas - white chocolate brownies with butterscotch sauce for example or caramel brownies?! However, having never made an original brownie I thought I might be best to start there. All of the recipes I looked at asked for dark chocolate, being Easter, however, I had a store of dairy milk that I decided I would sacrifice for the great good. I ended up with sweet, fudgey deliciousness.  Eat this. And watch Breaking Bad, it's amazing.

Sweet Chocolate Brownies

200 grams milk chocolate 

120 grams butter

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

140 grams brown sugar

2 eggs

150 grams plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

50 grams chopped almonds

Melt the chocolate and butter over boiling water. Once melted and smooth remove from the heat. Add the vanilla and the sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisk after each egg. Sift the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and salt over the chocolate mixture add the almonds and fold in with a spatular. 

Cook in a 170 degree oven for 20 minutes. When removed from the oven the top of the brownies will be cracked and the middle will still be fudgey. 

Chocolate Sauce 

80 grams milk chocolate

20ml thickened cream

Melt the chocolate over boiling water, add cream gradually while stirring the chocolate as it melts down. Top the brownie with the sauce. 

Spicy Meatballs with Fried Polenta

We spent the Easter weekend in Newcastle being very well fed by my mother-in-law and indulging in a lot of chocolate and wine.

It was a long drive home yesterday and I woke up this morning so happy that I didn't have to go to work! I really wanted to make use of the time I had today so spent some time in the kitchen doing something new that I am now declaring a "regular" on my dinner list.

Spicy Meatballs with Fried Polenta 

Polenta

3 cups chicken stock

1 cup polenta

1/4 cup cream

1/4 cup milk

chives

salt & pepper 

Bring the stock to the boil and gradually add the polenta, whisking to avoid lumps forming. Continue to whisk until the stock and polenta mixture thickens. Reduce heat and simmer until polenta is no long crunchy. 

Remove from the heat and whisk in the cream, milk, salt and pepper. Stir through the chives. The mixture will be moist and thick. Use a spatular to scoop the mixture into a pan (line with baking paper for easy removal later on). Spread out the mixture evenly using your hands or a spatular, it will begin to congeal and thicken more. Place in the fridge to allow to set (mine took about 6 hours to set properly).

After setting, remove from the fridge and cut into desired pieces. Spray a fry pan with oil and lightly cook the polenta on each side until golden and crispy. Place in the oven on a low heat to warm through before serving. 

Meatballs

500 grams beef mince

1 egg

2 tablespoons bread crumbs

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon coriander

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 

1/4 teaspoon sugar 

Whisk the egg and combine with the mince and all other ingredients. Roll the meat into balls (about 1 tablespoon of mixture for each ball and add more breadcrumbs if mixture is too moist to roll ). Rest in the fridge before cooking for about 10-20 minutes. Cook meatballs in a hot fry pan, ensure they are browned on the outside and cooked through. 

Sauce

1/2 brown onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

140 gram can tomato paste

3/4 cup of canned, diced tomatoes 

1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes 

1 tablespoon brown sugar 

Cook the onion and garlic in a saucepan until soft. In a bowl combine the sugar, chilli flakes and tomato paste. Mix to combine then gradually add the diced tomatoes until sauce is at desired consistency. Add sauce to the onion and garlic and heat through.

Serve the polenta topped with meatballs and sauce and sour cream if it's too spicy! 

Sunday Sweets: merry eastermas

After 3 days of overindulgence I'm going on Sunday Sweets break for this week.

Disaster Bunnies

With Easter just around the corner I had a wonderfully, thoughtful idea. Instead of my usual rush job, dashing into Woolworths at 8:45pm the day before the end of term and frantically impulse buying any combination of chocolate coated anythings to give to my work friends, I pre-planned. Around the end of February I spotted some cute little bunny cake moulds. I purchased them and spent many weeks thinking, "I should really practice making those bunny cakes. They would be the perfect gift for the girls at work and a tasty cute way to finish off the term."

I had really wanted to make marble cake because I have never done it before but I kept wondering what a marble bunny would look like. I was also concerned about what type of icing to put on a marble cake. I spoke to my mum about this impending marble bunny conundrum.

Her solution: scrap the marble cake idea and instead make the bunnies like lamingtons. Dense sponge covered in chocolate in the shape of bunnies?! Pretty sure that sounds amazingly like Easter awesome.

What happened next requires a rehashing of this picture:

Source: memebase.com via Holly on Pinterest

Disaster Bunnies
125 grams butter
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 eggs
1 3/4 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup milk


Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and organise your bunny moulds (or desired pan). Combine the butter, sugar and vanilla and mix until fluffy. Add the eggs one at the time whilst mixing. Sift half the flour over the butter mixture and fold in, add the milk and the rest of the flour and fold to combine.

Spoon the mixture into the bunny moulds and cook for approximately 15 minutes (obviously, if you are not using a bunny mould, cooking time will be about 30-45 min).

Let the cake cool and rest over night before icing.


Disaster Bunny Icing
3 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup boiling water


This is where things went terribly wrong. You see I have had parent teacher interviews, I have been tired and stressed and pushed to the limit and I just wanted to do this one thoughtful nice thing for the lovely people I work with but...it was 8:00pm and I just wanted to get these darn bunnies iced and get to bed. In my haste, I halved everything in the icing mixture because I thought it might be a bit too much, however, I forgot to halve the water. So I ended up with chocolate slush instead of chocolate icing.

Ideally, you would sift the icing sugar and the cocoa powder together, you would add the butter and gradually pour the boiling water over this mixture. Stirring and adding until the icing is at your desired consistency. That is not what I did, and this was the result:

I feel the coconut adds a certain leprosy flair to the whole thing. 

I'll be making a trip to Woolworths at 8:45pm tomorrow night. 

Nailed it! 

Sunday Sweets: Blueberry Swirl Cheesecake

What a week! I have been working 11 hour days so my poor kitchen has been very bare. There was a caramel tart around Tuesday but it didn't last long enough for photos. Somehow I have ended up back at Sunday and only 4 long days left of work until the end of term break. I made it and this dessert just makes the end that little bit sweeter!

Blueberry Swirl Cheesecake has been a long time in the making. Back when we were living in "the outback" we used to do our shopping in bulk. Fresh fruit and veg was hard to come by and  on one shopping trip, I happened upon blueberries in a tin. I was so excited. Berries! That would last forever! That I could readily use at any time! My mind immediately filled with thousands of delectable blueberry based dishes that I promised myself would appear in my kitchen the moment we arrived home (after the 750km drive from the grocery store).

The blueberry tin sat in my pantry for about 4 months. Every time I went to make something I kept asking myself, "Is this really the dish I want to use my ONE TIN of blueberries on?" Then I moved house and I ensured that my tin of blueberries was safely stowed away in a box and transported the 2200kms to my new home.

The tin has sat in my new pantry for about 3 months. Every time I looked in there I could see it. This week I realised I was hanging on to something a little deeper than a tin of blueberries. I now live in a city where fresh produce is available daily. I could finally part with this one little tin that had brought me so much happiness simply by existing. So this finally happened and I am so thankful that my little tin of blueberries provided such a gorgeous, sweet dessert.

Blueberry Swirl Cheesecake
pre-made biscuit base (refrigerated)
250 grams blueberries
1/8 cup caster sugar
Filling
250 grams cream cheese
90 grams sour cream
1 egg
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Pre-heat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius and line a springform pan I used one that was 20cm, I should have used on about 15cm. My cheesecake came out a bit flat! I use a pre-made biscuit base. It is just the biscuit crumbs already broken up so I just have to add butter then press it into the pan. Let the base refrigerate.

Place the blueberries and the caster sugar into a saucepan over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase to medium heat, stir frequently and let the mixture simmer until it is thick. Tip the blueberries into a food processor and process then press the mixture through a strainer or sieve so you end up with a dark purple sludge. Put this into the fridge to cool.

To make the filling process with cream cheese until it is smooth then add the sour cream, egg, sugar and vanilla. Mix until smooth then pour on top of the base. Drip the blueberry mixture over the top and using a skewer or a blunt knife swirl the blueberry sauce through the cheesecake filling.

Bake for 30 minutes then turn off the heat and let the cheesecake sit in the over for a further 30 minutes. Allow the cheesecake to cool and set in the fridge.