Slack-ish

I seem to be quite slack at updating this thing regularly. I do cook and I do take pictures, but by the time I've had dinner I don't really feel like sitting down and writing about it. So instead, you get the content in batches of when the inspiration strikes. On the upside, you get several recipes at once, so if you're a "once a week" reader, then it's perfect really :)

This month I've been trying to be extra frugal and not spend any money that isn't planned. I was whittling away hundreds of dollars on the incidental "I'll just pop into the supermarket on the way to the train station" purchases. Literally, hundreds! So this month, I said to myself, "No more spending unless it's from a list". The first four days were really really hard! I wanted that takeaway coffee or to go out for lunch or there's a sale on at that store. It's amazing how much time you spend thinking about buying things when you don't have any money!

A few days later it settled down. I realised that I have a ton of food at home and I should make do with what I have instead of constantly buying more. I borrowed a book called The $21 dollar challenge that focuses exactly on that - cooking with what you have instead of buying things you don't use.

On the second weekend of the month, I ventured out to the markets to buy some supplies. Only bought the things that I needed for a couple of recipes: potato bake (already had potato but needed bacon), chicken casserole (The Mad Butcher had thighs for $4.99 a kilo!!), and apple crumble (a friend at work gave me a whole bunch of apples from her father's orchard). Also bought a few household supplies, such as coat hangers and toilet cleaner. I haven't yet ventured out into the world of baking soda for cleaning, but I'm sure the time will come!

Today I noticed that Whitcoulls has a massive sale on books (they're in administration), so bought Yates Garden Fresh Cookbook. It has recipes but also a lot of information on how to grow your own vegies. It's good because it talks about having a continuous vegetable garden, not just about how to grow one thing and be done with it. Might get inspired!

So yes, I have been spending far less money. Unfortunately that means I am not cooking things that all that fancy and they are kind of making me fat. The cheaper food choices are also paired with my current medication that specifically states "watch out as it may lead you to overeat", so I have to be extra-vigilant. But that ice cream just seems so good! Have to be strong.

I also went to a cooking class the other night. I've never been to one before, and I bought this for me and a friend as a birthday/Christmas gift for her. We got all the ingredients and recipe provided and the instruction, and we cooked it right there, and then ate it and shared a bottle of wine. It was really quite nice for $40 each. They do classes several times a week.

Fried mozzarella and aubergine sandwiches with tomato salad

I got this recipe off Hairy Bikers (man, I love that show). It's very filling, and I assume it is quite low in calories as most of the ingredients are vegetables. I watched them make this recipe on TV and recreated it from memory. Which means I forgot half the ingredients :)

So my salad only had tomatoes, olives, gherkins, salt, and a dash of olive oil. Was still tasty though!
Surprisingly I remembered everything that went into the sandwiches, except the flour. But seeing as there's already breadcrumbs, I figured I didn't need it. I left the frying pan a bit too hot and let the sandwiches burn. Next time must remember to use lower heat as my stove is super powerful -- medium heat is enough to boil water (ie. high heat on every other stove).

We ate these for Sunday brunch and it was quite pleasant to start the day with so many vegetables :)

Pan-fried lamb with leeks and beans

I got this recipe off Hairy Bikers. Except I didn't have pork, so I used lamb. Real lamb, not hogget or mutton that pretends to be lamb, mind you. Now that I go to the Saturday markets, I've become quite the lamb snob :)
I didn't have flageolet beans either, so I used a can of "Mixed Beans". And I didn't have Calvados, so I used Apple Schnapps, and I didn't have apple juice, so I used leftover stock that I had in the fridge. Frugal!

Three leeks turned out to be a LOT of vegetables, and the lamb turned out perfect. The creamy sauce is really tasty and is a perfect fit to the leeks. I didn't have any sage leaves either, so I just went without that part of the recipe. Actually, come to think of it, I didn't have any garlic that day, haha, I did use more mustard that it said, so it was quite noticeable.

In the end, it was quite a variation from the recipe, but it was still delicious and didn't cost me a fortune having to buy things I didn't have :)

Russian Fudge

This is a recipe I got given at work. It seems to be doing the rounds, with everyone at work making it. It's extremely simple, and, like the carrot halwa, is made in the microwave.

Combine the sugar, condensed milk, and butter in a microwave safe dish. Microwave for nine minutes, stirring thoroughly every three minutes. Stir in the white chocolate melts and microwave for three more minutes. Put in a slice dish to set (or on a lined baking tray).

I didn't have Nestle melts, so I just used Pam's white chocolate buttons. And I had ghee leftover from making the carrot halwa, so I used that instead of butter. Didn't seem to make much of a difference.

Watch your microwave power settings as mine is too powerful, and I ended up with half the fudge on the rotating tray instead of in the dish. Was quite a mess! I cooked my fudge on medium power (1200 watt microwave), and it still came out in the last three minutes before the buttons go in.

Not for diabetics :)

Ingredients:
3 cups brown sugar
1 can condensed milk
125 g butter
375 g packet Nestle white chocolate melts

Carrot Halwa

I got this recipe off the Hairy Bikers. As I was baking for people at work (self-celebrating my three year anniversary with my current employer), I doubled all the ingredients and rolled out the halwa on a tray so it would make a slice.

This recipe is extremely expensive if you get the saffron and the vanilla pod for the cream. I did buy them and only then noticed how expensive they were. In the end, I didn't make the cream as I was taking the slice into work, so the vanilla beans are still unopened. For the price of gold, it's just as well! Ghee is also not cheap, and you don't actually have to double the ghee if you double the rest of the recipe, because it's used just in the frying of semolina. An Indian person at work said that the whole liquid off the frying is supposed to go into it, but I just poured off the fat into the sink and chucked in the fried semolina.

For the final step, I didn't serve it in glasses or with cream, but simply lay it out on a baking tray, pressed it flat, and put it in the fridge. It set nicely overnight, I then sliced it to take to work.

This is a really tasty dessert. It's not as sweet as I expected it to be (and apparently not sweet enough to be truly Indian, hehe). The cardamom makes it extremely moorish. You can also go without the saffron as it's just for the colour I think.

White Chocolate Cheesecake

My friend Amy linked me to this blog, from which I took this recipe. I am a bit of a klutz when it comes to baking (but not cooking for some reason!), so it was somewhat of a disaster. But the cake still turned out delicious, yet not quite cake-like.

The biggest challenge was melting the white chocolate. The first block I burned. I've got to say though, burned white chocolate is absolutely delicious. Kind of like a caramel cookie. I didn't know what to do when it burned (this was 1 minute + 1 minute + 1 minute in 1200 watt microwave, so anything less nuclear will probably be just right), at first I went through a mental list of friends who could bring me new white chocolate, even thought of the ex's parents that live miles away. Then it struck me -- the dairy down the road! Whoa, this being self-sufficient business is quite a feat!

So here I was, traipsing through Naenae, in pouring rain, in the middle of the cold dark night, in search of white chocolate to go into my cheesecake (yeah yeah uphill both ways in the snow, world smallest violin, etc etc). There was a massive dead seagull on my way even. In fact, I thought it was a dead cat until I saw the wings. Huge.

Naturally, the dairy had every which chocolate bar but white! I did find one block hidden behind some others though, so the cheesecake was saved. Didn't have much luck melting this block properly either, so ended up with a few lumps in the cheesecake. The people at work said it was actually a nice surprise.

I have a silicone cake pan, and didn't quite fit into the baking pan to which you add water. So the cake was misshapen, and when I took the silicone pan out, the cake split as the pan took its original shape. Also, I think I didn't bake the cake enough, so it was a bit mousse-like. It was still delicious though, albeit quite expensive. Dairy is really a luxury item now, isn't it. :( I'm sure it'll be a better cake if I make it another time.

I decorated mine with tinned strawberries.

Dad's Favourite Carrot Cake with Whiskey Praline Cream Filling

This recipe is from The Newlywed Kitchen -- Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together by Lorna Yee and Ali Basye, page 206. Once again they're limiting their market by not only the book title but now also the recipe title! Why dad is involved I have no idea. Well, actually I do - it says it at the front of the recipe that the recipe was created for the author's dad, but still, it seems rather odd now announcing "Dad's Favorite Cake" when it's not my dad. I shall refer to it from now on as the Awesome Whiskey Carrot Cake.

This cake is amazing. I actually cooked something with whisky a while ago and had some leftover, so went looking for other recipes that also use whisky. That's when I stumbled on a couple of blog posts that described preparing this recipe. The blogs didn't have how to make the recipe though, so I had to order this book at my local library. It's finally arrived and I get to use the brand new book for free (Did you know you can order books  at your local library? Brilliant!)

This is not an easy cake. It's two layers, has a filling between the layers and rather ostentatious frosting. I think there is two much frosting, so you could probably make less. There is probably about a million calories per slice, so don't you be thinking about your waistline when you're eating it. It's just as well it's Easter and I've let myself go :) (I ate a block of chocolate in one sitting on Friday!)

Another annoying thing in this recipe is some weird measurements. I guess it's the American way, but I have no idea what a stick of butter or a cup of butter is (unless it's a cup of melted butter!). Luckily, Google came to the rescue with a butter converter! So I've added grams below.

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Grease two 9-inch (23 cm) round baking pans and line the bottoms with baking paper.

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, and salt. This is just your dry ingredients.

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugar together for about four minutes. I found it helpful to cut the butter up into smaller chunks and microwave it for 20 seconds (I have a 1200 Watt microwave), otherwise all the bits of sugar and butter will just fly everywhere.

Add the eggs and oil and beat until just combined. With a wooden spoon, stir in the carrots, walnuts, pineapple, and coconut, and thoroughly mix together. Add the dry ingredients mixed earlier and stir until well combined.

Divide the batter into the two pans and smooth the tops with a rubber spatula. It's a really heavy cake, so it won't rise much more. Bake both of them for about 35 minutes. Check with a toothpick or a bamboo skewer -- it should come out clean. Both of my pans fitted into the oven on the same level, but it might be different if they have to go on separate levels. You don't have to do anything while the layers are baking, so just clean up the dishes or whatnot.

Cool the baked layers on a rack. I don't have a cooling cake rack, so I just turned a drying dishes rack upside down and put some baking paper on it. It took about an hour or two for the layers to cool.

While the cakes were cooling, we made the praline and the cream cheese frosting.

The praline is quite fiddly and you have to make sure all the ingredients are measured out and are sitting within the hand's reach before you start. It took three of us to make it, mostly because the cake was getting baked at the same time and it rang the timer at the same time as critical steps of praline making were taking place. It was a bit chaotic! I'd say just take a breather while the cakes are baking, and make the praline while they're cooling.

Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan and put them on a high heat. It'll soon boil and not do much else for a little while. Just keep watching it. Soon you will notice light brown colour appearing. When that starts happening, start dragging the edges with a wooden spoon into the middle, kind of like making scrambled eggs. You want to keep it moving so it doesn't burn in some places more than others, but you do want it to go deep amber colour. Keep watch because once it goes brown, it starts darkening really quickly. As soon as it's gone dark, take the pot off the heat and drop in the cold cream. It'll bubble and boil, keep stirring. Add the butter and stir some more until it's all melted. Put the pan back on the stove, lower the heat, and cook it until it's reduced and thickened, about two minutes. Add the walnuts, salt, and whiskey, and set the pot aside to cool.

For the frosting, beat the butter and cream cheese (once again, nuke the butter a little bit first) until smooth. Add the icing sugar, orange liqueur, and orange zest. Beat for about six minutes. The orange liqueurs are Grand Marnier or Cointreau. The bottle stores often sell sample sizes of expensive stuff, which is perfect for baking. I bought a small Cointreau bottle for seven dollars. Same with Whiskey actually, but my friend gave it to me :)

To assemble the cake, place one layer on your plate or cake stand, put the praline on top, cover with the second layer, and then frost the entire cake, sides and all. You can then press the walnuts to the sides for garnish. I added almost an inch of frosting and still had some leftover, so I think you can reduce the amounts there.

Also, we went a bit overboard with the alcohol in this cake. I suggest following the recipe as I think adding too much means both the praline and the frosting stayed too soft. I will probably be making this cake again soon and will try to contain myself with the alcohol addition :)

Once again, I have no photos because my phone is still getting repaired, but this photography blog has some.

Ingredients:
Cake:
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened = 225 g
1 3/4 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1/4 vegetable oil
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped walnuts
One 8-ounce can crushed pineapple, drained well = 230 g
1/2 cup flaked coconut
walnuts for garnish
Whiskey praline cream filling:
1/4 thickened cream
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons water
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon whiskey
Orange cream cheese frosting:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter = 225 g
Two 8-ounce packages cream cheese = 450 g, but I think less is better
2.5 cups icing sugar
1 tablespoon orange liqueur
zest of a medium orange