Date and Pine Nut Cous Cous

Wow this was a work in progress... even though I have made Cous Cous before, for some reason the first attempt ended up looking more like sandy cement which A would use to brick up a house, than something which would complement our Moroccan chicken.

Ingredients
2 cups of Cous cous
2 cups of stock
1 cup dates
1/2 cup pine nuts (roasted in a pan)
Coriander to serve
Oil
Butter

Method
Place 2 cups of stock and a good dollop of olive oil into a saucepan, bring to boil. Once boiled get the 2 cups of cous cous, add whilst stirring. Put the lid on and let it sit for about 5 -10 minutes
Take a fork and separate the grains, add butter and stir

then chop the dates, combine with the roasted pine-nuts add to the cooked cous cous, stir through roughly chopped coriander and serve warm.

Note - if you are not sure about the cous cous, as there are different types, brands etc., read the packet instructions and just adapt with stock rather than salted water.

Thermomix Guacamole

The Thermomix books and posts on the forum contain plenty of recipes for all sorts of dips, but when it came to the crunch, 1/2 hour before the imminent arrival of the family for the Sunday Smorgasbord, I just whipped something up and it was actually delicious.

Ingredients
6 small ripe avocados
1 250ml tub of Sour cream
Salt
Pepper
Lemon juice (about a small lemon)

Method
Place all ingredients in the terrific Thermy, blitz at 7 or 8 for about 30 seconds (if that) scoop out and serve.

I served it with bread sticks

Enjoy!!

Sunday smorgasbord aftermath

this is quite an old post I realise I never published

Sitting with A, watching another episode of masterchef, we debriefed on today's Sunday lunch

Guests - 8 adults, 3 children

Menu
Nibbles / starters
Thermomix guacamole

Cheese platter & Thermomix Guacamole

Cheese platter with quince paste flowers, dried nuts and seeds

Main

Moroccan Chicken

Rotisserie morrocan chicken
Date and pine nut cous cous
Garden salad
Green beans
Roast parsnip, beetroot, onion, turnip and carrot

Dessert

Ski Birthday Cake

Fondant covered carrot cake With cinnamon butter cream
Homemade strawberry ice cream
Homemade vanilla ice cream
Fresh cherries
Fresh strawberries

Looking at the menu and menu from earlier this week I gave a lot of recipes to post xx

Carrot cake

I promised a friend to make her husband a cake for his birthday, I asked her what type of cake and she smsed back "carrot" cake.
I dont think I have ever made a carrot cake , so I decided to make a carrot cake as a trial for the family feast tomorrow.

Carrot Cake

Recipe Moist Carrot Cake


Ingredients
150grams plain flour
190 grams self raising flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
200mls vegetable oil
225grams brown sugar (the soft type is best)
4 eggs
115mls golden syrup
10mls honey
500grams grated carrot
60grams of chopped walnuts

Directions
preheat the oven at 170 degrees. Grease a square 18cm cake tin and place paper across in all directions to ensure that it comes out easily.

combine the flours, spices in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix together oil, sugar, egg, golden syrup and honey once combined, make a well in the large bowl containing the dry ingredients, add to the well and constantly stir till combined. Once combined add the grated carrots and the chopped walnuts.

Pour the mixture into the tin, smooth and place in middle of oven for about 1.5 hours or till the skewer test tests clean.

leave the cake to cool, then turn onto rack. 

Making the carrot cake into a mountain

Cake Assembly and decoration
once cake has cooled, cut the cake at and angle to create the mountain. Then cut the larger cake in half and fill with cinnamon butter cream. Ganache the cake with white chocolate ganache. Cover in white fondant. Smooth the fondant, add the cake toppers and present.

Skier and Frosty

Cake toppers
Using fondant coloured with good colouring shape the snowman, skier and ski. the ski was a covered paddle pop stick, stocks coloured skewers. Frosty arms were also made of coloured skewers.

The "ski" cake

Ski Cake

Oh and I got my ice-cream machine today .. It's not a sunbeam but a cheapie from "homeart" - I tested it tonight with some strawberry ice-cream in just over an hour we had delicious fresh ice-cream - recipe to come 

Thursday - Good Food, Wine & Macarons

Wow - what a whirlwind -

Menu for the Thursday Mega Feast

My dad had bought a massive 3.5kg Ocean Trout, it was the biggest undertaking which my husband and I have ever undertaken.

We wrapped "him" (the fish) in foil and filled him with ginger, garlic and lemon. We cooked it on the BBQ for about 1.5hours.

It was delicious !!

What else did we serve?

Celeriac Salad
Peel Celeriac, Grate, add lemon juice, salt, pepper and some avocado oil.

Wild Rice 
Put the wild rice in a pan, cover with boiling water, let sit with lid on for 1 hour. Then turn on, bring to boil and simmer for about 20 minutes till the seeds open. then add a good nob of butter, salt and pepper to taste and serve warm (mmm yum!!!)

Crunchy potatoes
I actually completely stuffed up the potatoes (I seem to do this every time my in-laws come to dinner) only it was a blessing in disguise as they turned out really well. I peeled and cut them into quarters, boiled them (was meant to be par boiled but they were left on way too long as Princess A was a little hungry and by the time I got back to them I think they were almost ready to mash), drained them and thumped them around the colander a little to make the edges a bit scuffed/roughed up, drizzle with olive oil and put in a pretty hot oven (about 180-200) for about 40 minutes. They were crunchy and delicious. I did not add salt, however for some people you may also want to sprinkle them with salt.

Other Veg
We just served some steamed broccoli and steamed carrots to add some colour and texture to the meal.

Dessert - the Birthday special
after having read "the colour of tea" which i think is just the most beautiful book I have read in forever - it inspired me to take the culinary journey to France and make some Macarons.

I will post the recipe in a separate post with piccies - but as a hint and teaser, I made coffee, strawberry and orange macarons and every last one of them got gobbled up. MMMM!!!

The Macarons

Work in Progress... and the BIG fish!!

Orange, Strawberry and Coffee Macarons

Entertaining ...

This week we are having lots of family fun-time!!

Father-in-law's birthday we are having a mega fish feast tomorrow (recipe to come) and on Sunday we are having a lucious lunch

Menu for Sunday ??


More to come shortly

Finger Food, Additives and other bits and pieces

Finger Food Frenzy

Its finger food frenzy at our place. Princess A has discovered the fun of feeding herself.

A and I are asking ourselves whether this is a blessing or a curse, but a "splat mat" seems to help with the fact that Princess A thinks the floor and Jet (her kelpie) need to try the food too.

So what sort of things has Princess A been trying out

• Bread - wholemeal and multi grain
• Carrot Sticks
• Cooked apple pieces
• ripe pear
• Broccoli Florets
• Broccolini
• Mandarin segments

I have found that bread spread with Avocado is great, she loves it and i think it is pretty nutritious.

Today I am going to try her on some Vita Brits. I was going to try the "kids weetbix" but after reading the content (and the large amount of raw sugar), i have opted for Vita Brits, they only have a little salt added and no sugar.
I also heard from friends that Cruskits were also a great thing to give the kids, they kind of dissolve when wet, again having looked at the ingredients, i decided against them, loads of sugar and other nasties.

I am not sure yet whether I will try Princess A on feeding this to herself (perhaps not) - i will keep you posted.

I have regularly been giving her cottage cheese and am planning on some cheese sticks as finger food this week.

The things I plan on trying are -

• Cheese sticks
• Pieces of Banana (assuming they come down in price)
• Plain rice cakes
• Pieces of fish (yesterday I tried her on some pureed flake, i think she thought it was pretty boring, i am thinking if it was in a piece which she could eat herself it might be a little more fun)
• melon ( i am thinking rock / honey dew as these seem to be quite good)

If I have a few more ideas, i will let you know - for today we will just enjoy the things which are already prepared.

Happy preparing wholesome food for your special little person.