Happiness is a strawberry tart

A few weekends ago I made a nice little dinner for my twin sister, her boyfriend and my mum: penne with sausage and jerusalem artichoke, followed by strawberry tart. It was really quite nice!!

We bought the sausages from the Westmere butcher, such a good butcher, they were pork and apple and they were gorgeous. There were sqaushed kalamata olives and some wilted spinach in there too. And a nice squeeze of lemon, a nice scrunch of sea salt, a nice flurry of parmesan cheese.

I made the tart from scratch too - my own pastry and my own vanilla bean pastry cream. The tart was wonderful but I forgot to put some whipped cream into the pastry cream before pouring into the tart shell - therefore when I cut the tart the custard leaked everywhere all over the plate, which made me quite grumpy and made it quite a messy dessert to eat. I got over it eventually though. Look at this tart.

Oh, I didn't make the gelatine stuff that goes over it and makes it look all shiny and pretty, and that probably would have made it hold together better too. I recently did a 6 hour patisserie course at the Main Course cooking school in Freemans Bay and had a BLAST. It was so much fun. It was mostly me and women in their 50s, who were very lovely. We made profiteroles, and tarte citron, and little fruit flans, and quiche lorraine for lunch. I loved it! Until I got home and dropped all of my mini fruit tarts in the driveway.... Merde.

I love strawberry tart! And rasberry tart. And apple tart, and pear and almond. We lived in France when I was eleven for three years, and during the summer we stayed in the countryside, and I swear every day, my sister and I would bike to the boulangerie and buy either a strawberry tart or a rasberry tart, and eat it, for breakfast, every day. Every single day.

Anyway, it really was one of those 'life is wonderful' sundays. Summer is on its way and I am so happy!

Kawau silverbeet and feta quiche

Here is a delicious, healthy recipe from the book that lives at my mum's bach on Kawau Island, which everyone has to fill in whenever they make something out there, and this little quiche is one of them, belonging to our family friend Helen Burley.

Kawau is the best place in the world to eat. It is my favourite place to eat. Mum has an incredible vegetable garden that has just about everything, and the silverbeet is gorgeous, so tasty and I feel like I am eating pure health. And it's not just the eating but the cooking that is always so enjoyable and every step feels important and fun, I don't even find chopping onions a bore like I usually do. Well... But everything that passes your mouth there is savoured and devoured, and for some reason food just tastes better when you're by the sea. Especially after having a dip.

Kawau silverbeet and feta quiche

Base:

1 1/2 cups flour

3 tbsp olive oil

1/4 cup water (approx)

Add oil to flour and mix until combined. Add enough water to make a crumbly dough that you then press into a greased quiche dish. You can put some extra grated cheese over the base.

Filling:

1 onion, roughly chopped

12 or more silverbeet leaves

1 clove garlic

1 handful basil

1 handful parsley

1/2 cup feta

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

1 cup milk

4 eggs

Saute onion. Wash silverbeet and remove middle stems. Drain and chop and add to onion. Cook until limp and moisture has gone. Add garlic and herbs and saute briefly. Cool slightly. Beat last four ingredients together with salt and pepper. Put silverbeet into base, pour over mixture and bake at 180 c for 45 minutes. Rest 15 minutes before serving, with salad.

note: I also added some pan-fried proscuitto shards to the dish before pouring over the egg mixture. This was very yummy. And pitted kalamata olives are nice too.

New favourite

I did a lot of baking again over the Easter break, including cupcakes, again, and a very disastrous self-saucing chocolate pudding. But the best thing I have eaten in a while was the chelsea buns I made, aka cinnamon scrolls. I can't explain how delicious they were, you just have to make them. My flatmate said they were almost like brioche. I got my recipe out of the Edmond's cookbook, which calls for mixed fruit, but I left that out because I am not a big fan of raisins and raisin-type things in baking. And I'm sorry but I don't want you to make these with raisins either because it would just be a shame, you are not allowed to so I have also left that out in the recipe below.




Chelsea buns
1/4 cup warm water
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tsp active yeast
3 1/2 cups high grade flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
3/4 cup warm milk
3 tbsp melted butter
FILLING:
50g butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
GLAZE:
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp water
1 tsp gelatine (I didn't have any of this and found that just the sugar and water was actually fine)

Place the warm water and first measure of sugar in a small bowl. Stir to dissolve sugar. Sprinkle yeast over and leave for 10 minutes, until frothy.
Combine 3 cups flour and salt in a large bowl. Set remaining 1/2 cup flour aside. Make a well in centre of dry ingredients. Pour in milk, melted butter and frothy yeast mixture. Beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms a ball. Turn onto a lightly floured surface. Knead dough until smooth and elastic. Lightly brush a bowl with oil. Place the dough in the bowl, and lightly brush with oil. Leave in a warm place until doubled in size.
Punch dough down in centre. Lightly knead then roll dough out to a 30x25cm rectangle. Spread dough with filling. Roll up like a sponge roll. Using a string (or a very sharp knife), cut into 12 even-sized pieces. Arrange in a greased 25cm sponge sandwich tin, with 9 around the outside edge and 3 in the centre. Cover and leave in a warm place until doubled in size.
Bake at 190 c for 25 minutes or until golden. Brush with glaze whilst hot.
Makes 12.


FILLING: Cream butter & sugar together. Stir in the spices.
GLAZE: Put all ingredients into a saucepan. Heat until sugar and gelatine have dissolved, stirring constantly.

Susannah you have to make these!

A cupcake should be a cupcake

I'm really bothered by these yucky designer cupcakes everywhere. They are usually quite large and have a huge tall hard swirl of icing that looks like rubber. Some of them only have a gigantic dollop of icing bang in the centre, they haven't even bothered to spread the icing out nicely. Whatever happened to the plain simple small humble cupcake? It is the same with afghans. Huge wide flat afghans with a lake of icing on top. Please no! An afghan should be a small circular wedge of fudgy yet slightly crunchy cakey biscuit. And muffins. Why on earth would I want to eat a muffin the size of my head?

The other evening after a delicious steak dinner at my sister's I decided to make some nice old-fashioned plain cupcakes. Of course, I found my recipe in Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess.

The photo is a bit crap but as you can see, these are very plain-looking, yet mouth-watering cupcakes. Everyone who eats them says they are the best cupcakes they've had, and that they are exactly how a cupcake should be. I didn't ice these very well, please note that I made them again recently and I made them look much neater by slicing the humps off the top of each cupcake with a serrated knife, and then icing them. That is what Nigella said to do. And it does make them look much nicer. And then you can put sprinkles or whatever you like on them.

Cupcakes
125g butter, softened
125g caster sugar
125g self-raising flour
2 eggs
2-3 Tbs milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Icing:
125g butter, softened
225g icing sugar, sifted
1-2 tablespoons boiling water, or as much as makes a nice smooth consistency

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper cases.
Put all ingredients except milk into a mixer/blender, blend until smooth. Pulse while adding the milk.
Scoop into the paper cases then bake for 15-20 minutes until golden on top. Remove from tin as soon as possible and cool on a rack.
Slice off any humped tops with a serrated knife for a flat surface to decorate. Decorate as desired, ie. I added a dash of blue food colouring to make a minty 50s green, then some chocolate sprinkles - a very nice colour combo!
Nigella doesn't really give a good icing recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess, or if she does I can't find it, so I found another one, a simple butter icing.
Icing:
beat the butter until light and smooth, then mix in the icing sugar, followed by the boiling water.

Prawn time

Prawn linguine for dinner last night, mmm. Nothing like it.

I stayed at my sister Tan and her husband Mike's place last night, and cooked them dinner. They had some left over tomato sauce home-made by Mike in the freezer which I added to some fried garlic and prawns and tossed them with some good linguine and a squirt of lemon, yummers!

Mike is a chef and Tan is also an amazing cook so whenever I go there I eat incredible meals. Like the chickpea pumpkin stirfry I just ate made by Tan. Thinly sliced pumpkin fried with a bit of cumin and paprika. So good...

Would you like a kiss?

Lately I have been doing a lot of baking. And when I say a lot I mean that people have been begging me to stop. I recently spent about 2 months at my mum's bach on Kawau Island, where we had plenty of guests to feed. There wasn't one day where I didn't bake something.

There is something about that kitchen by the sea which draws me like a magnet! I especially love using my mum's old 70s KitchenAid with the glass bowl that spins round.

These are called 'Kisses'. I found them in the Edmond's cookbook, and having never heard of them I was very curious to see what they looked like, and tasted like. They are basically like a cupcake batter but instead of spooning into a muffin tin you simply drop spoonfuls onto a flat baking tray, and afterwards sandwich them together with jam.
They are so yummy!

Kisses

125g butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup plain flour
1 cup cornflour
1 tsp baking powder
Rasberry jam, or jam of choice
Icing sugar

Method:

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour, cornflour and baking powder together. Mix into creamed mixture, stirring well. Drop small spoonfuls onto greased oven trays. Bake at 200 degrees celsius for 8 to 10 minutes until cooked but not browned. Sandwich two kisses together with rasberry jam. Sprinkle with icing sugar. Makes 20.



-Susan

the first thing - susannah

only dull people are brilliant at breakfast

oscar wilde

if i'm really honest about this, i've been putting off writing my first entry here for a little while now. it's not that i don't want to: far from it. it's just, i've had a lot of scattered ideas - but haven't really known where to begin. i wanted that first entry to be p-e-r-f-e-c-t. so, i put it off and put it off, hoping for a flash of inspiration that so far hasn't materialised.

so, this morning, when i stole a quiet half-hour on my sofa before work, tea in one hand and a warm bowl of porridge in the other, i decided it was time to just get on with it.

it is late autumn here in japan and, although it is indeed lovely, it really is getting terribly cold. in the mornings lately I've been waking up sniffly, headachy and grumpy, following a night of restless, broken sleep as the nights get colder than my body is quite ready to put up with.

at the moment, breakfast for me is usually a bowl of quaker oats, cooked with water and a pinch of salt, with a splash of cold milk poured over the top when it comes out of the microwave. porridge is to my mind a miracle breakfast: quick, warm, filling - and unfussy (read: mad easy) enough to put together in the first fuzzy hour or so before my brain has even really registered that i am awake. there is also something appealing about creating a breakfast as satisfying as this out of such a short, even austere list of ingredients: oats, water and salt. perhaps here is where i should admit that it usually comes down to toppings.

this morning on my oats i had milk, a blob of blueberry conserve, a light sprinkle of cinnamon and some crushed-up walnuts. it was the perfect play of textures and flavours and quite delicious. sure, it wasn't a masterpiece or a dazzling work of brilliance - but i don't mind calling it a small, quiet achievement that made one icy morning just a little bit warmer and a little bit more delicious.

the wait for inspiration is so often a counter-productive one, for me at least. starting this blog is, in part, an attempt to capture what it means to appreciate the small, good things in life. simple, little things. like my morning bowl of porridge.