Fennel Risotto and Tri-Colour Ciabatta - Meat Free Monday

Meat Free Monday - Summer Week 8 - 
Fennel Risotto and Tri-colour Ciabatta

Week 1 of cooking my way through Meat Free Monday!!

I wanted to do it properly, I really did, but you just can't buy baby artichokes in deepest Sydney suburbia! So I combined 2 of their recipes and came up with a great Fennel Risotto. 

I also tried their packed lunch option of a ciabatta with tomato, avacado and buffalo mozarella. It was fabulous and one to be repeated for sure. 

Their full menu has:
Breakfast - Mango and Lime - Yum
Packed Lunch - Tri-colour Ciabatta (see below)
Home Lunch - Stuffed Tomatoes with Gruyere (sounds great - would like to try some time.)
side dish - Basil scented braised Fennel  
Dinner - Risotto with Artichokes (see my variation below)
Dessert - Fruity Amaretti (really meant to make this, even made the ricotta from scratch - but time got away from me - I will try it sometime soon and let you know how it goes.)

Risotto with Artichokes  Fennel

Ingredients

(Serves 4 - but only just)

3 baby Fennel, finely sliced
2 cloves of Garlic, crushed
2 Tb Olive Oil
1 litre Vegetable Stock
75g Butter
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
300g Arborio Rice
3-4 Tb white wine
75g freshly grated parmesan
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method 

* Gently heat vegetable stock in a saucepan

* Melt 1/2 the butter with the olive oil in a heavy based pan. Gently fry the onion, garlic and fennel until soft - about 10 minutes - stirring now and then.

* Add the rice and stir until it is coated in oil.

* Add the wine and stir until it has been absorbed.

* Start adding the hot stock a ladleful at a time, stir until it is absorbed, then continue with next one. Over about 15 minutes all stock should be absorbed and the rice should be creamy on the outside and slightly al dente in the middle.

* Gently stir in the remaining butter and parmesan and serve immediately.

* I suggest serving with a green salad with a tangy dressing to offset the richness of the risotto.

Tri-colour Ciabatta

serves 1 

Ingredients
A small Ciabatta Roll
a little extra virgin olive oil
1 tomato, sliced
1 avacado, sliced
1/2 a ball of fresh mozzarella (or  a few baby bocconcini)
A few basil leaves
freshly ground salt and pepper

Method

* Cut Ciabatta in half and toast under the grill.

* Drizzle a little olive oil over the roll.

* Layer some tomato and avacado slices on one side of the roll

* Tear the mozzarella over the top (you could slice it but tearing it was fun and sounds good)


* Top with some salt and pepper and some basil leaves, and the top of the roll.

* Pack and take to work to look forward to all morning (or eat straight away as I did being on holidays!)

Happy Meat Free Monday!
Nicola

Fancy Mushroom Pasta - a Birthday Foodie Treat

Making Decisions!

It's almost my birthday, so today we went on what has become a bit of a birthday tradition in the family - a trip to Everleigh Farmers Market at Carriageworks. It's foodie heaven. We take $50 each and a few bags and taste and buy our way though as much as we can manage.
Tasting highlights included:-

• fantastic sweet strawberries
• Trout sausages (sadly sold out)
• The creamiest Yoghurt 
• Middle Eastern Ice Creams - we bought a halva one and a turkish delight one.
• Blackberry, Blueberry and almond Jam
• lemongrass chicken
• salted caramel sauce
• Pear, Pecan and Ginger Museli - bought
• lemon myrtle cheesecake
• Amazing Goats cheeses - bought a goats curd maninated in garlic.

Lunch (which was a little obscene after all that tasting) was a shared combination of a "Billy Kwong" Pancake with asian vegie salad and organic egg (and we actually saw Kylie Kwong - one of my favourite chefs),  a fancy Toasted cheese sandwich (Croque Madam) from "Bird Cow Fish" (Alex Herbert was there too!!) and some Indonesian Vegetarian Spring Rolls. YUM.

Our Combined Haul!

Tonight we used the first of our haul for dinner - a fancy creamy mushroom pasta made with the amazing mushrooms we bought and an awesome Cherry Pie Ian chose. Sadly I didn't photograph the pasta - out of the blogging habits - but you can see the mushrooms and the pie in the photo of all the things we bought.

This is the way I made the pasta.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

Ingredients

2 Tb Extra Virgin Olive Oil

40g butter

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 large red onion, diced

500g mixed mushrooms, sliced (we used 300g Portobellos, 100g fresh shiitakes and 100g Black Cloud Fungus)

125ml red wine

100ml fresh cream

1 tspn truffle oil (optional)

500g Pasta of your choice (we had little elbows)

Pepper & Salt

Method

Put a large pot of water on for the pasta

Heat the oil and half the butter in a heavy based pan.

Cook the onion and garlic gently til soft.

Put the pasta in to cook

Add the remaining butter and the mushrooms and cook, stirring, until they are all soft.

Add the red wine, letting it bubble and reduce a little.

Stir in the cream, truffle oil and a generous grind of salt and pepper.

Simmer for a few more minutes, while pasta finishes cooking and is drained.

Stir pasta through the sauce.

Serve sprinkled in chopped parsley and with a green salad on the side (Cos and Cucumber with balsamic vinegarette today)

Very simple - but delicious because they were fantastic fresh mushrooms!

In the coming days we have the following market treats to make and/or eat to look forward to:-

• tasty museli for breakfast
• Mia plans to make kale chips and stuffed zucchini (courgette) flowers tomorrow
• A busy monday evening with no cooking time we'll have a meal of pumpkin felafels, greek pitta, tabouli, baba ghanoush and dolmades.
• the lovely ice creams
• the hazelnut and coconut butter (Mia made today with the market hazelnuts) on the 2 sourdoughs Ian chose.
• a salad with my new pot of french tarragon growing on the window sill.
• smoked salmon and dill muffins and dried fruit and vegetable "Flats" in our lunchboxes
• something yummy with the Goats curd.
• Pizzas this friday night with the very tasty roasted tomato and basil sauce Ian bought

Days of treats still to look forward to. A fabulous Birthday Outing!

Nicola

Playing with the dry ice from  the ice cream packaging.

Tuscan Plum Upside Down Cake

We had family for dinner last night. I don't always do dessert - but my father-in-law is a dessert fan so I decided to find a dessert using our plum surplus. With our Italian leaning this week a Tuscan Plum Upside Down Cake seemed to fit the bill. I haven't made an upside cake before!

Ingredients

• 275 g Sugar
• 150 ml Water
• 
  
• 900 g Plums, Halved and Stoned 
• 
  
• 150 g Soft Butter
• 175 g Sugar
• 200 g Self Raising Flour
• 3 Eggs

   

Method

Preheat the oven to 170’c.
• 
  
• Put the sugar and water into a heavy based pan (that can go into the oven).
• Stir over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then cook without stirring until the sugar caramelises to a golden brown. (I turned it off at a hint of brown as the cast iron pan I used held heat and the caramel continued to darken after I removed it from the stove)
• 
  
• 
  
  
  Carefully and immediately arrange cut side down in a single layer in the caramel (this will be the top of the cake when it is cooked).
• 
  
  Put the butter, sugar and flour into the bowl of an electric food processor, whiz for a couple of seconds, then add the eggs and stop as soon as the mixture comes together. ( if you don’t have a food processor, just cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs one by one, then mix in the flour).
• 
  
  Spread the mixture in an even layer over the plums in the pan.
• 
  
  
  
  Bake in the preheated oven for about one hour.
• 
  
  The centre should be firm to the touch and the edges slightly shrunk from the sides of the pan.
• 
  
  
  Run a knife around the edges to make sure it has not stuck anywhere.
• Leave it to sit for 3 or 4 minutes before turning out.
• 
  
  Serve with whipped cream, ice cream or crème fraiche.

It was delicious, hot at the time and in my lunch box today. I also have a nectarine stack - I could see this becoming a regular dessert!

Menu - March 12-18 2012 - leaning towards Italy

Another weeks menu for you. 

We've already had the first 2 nights meals. 

Lentil Frikkadels were fantastic, way tastier than we had imagined,  and will definitely be cooked here again. (Mia will post the details soon.)

The stir-fry was a little disappointing. The Bok Choy didn't come as promised in fruit co-op bag (probably due to the torrential rainfalls last week) so I used beans for green. Not quite the right feel, but simple and healthy. Tuesday night meals have to be quickies around here as  the packing of fruit co-op bags fills the gap between 'arriving home from work' and 'hungry family needing to eat' almost entirely!

Off to cook risotto now...

Nicola

Sweet pizza - a new addition to pizza night

This Week we had our usual pizza night with a new addition. The girls had both been inspired by sweet pizza recipes that they had come across lately and so they made one each.

Eva's was a grape pizza from "Poh's Kitchen" by Poh Ling Yeow. This is her new book she chose with the book voucher she was awarded at Speech Day.
I have found a copy of the recipe on Poh's website -  Poh's Grape Pizza Recipe.

 Mia's was a sweet Ricotta and Sultana Pizza based on one in "Veg In" by Flip Sheldon - a favourite book that is still getting a lot of use though, sadly,  it will soon need to go back to the library.


Cinnamon Ricotta Dessert Pizza
150g Ricotta
2 tspn Brown Sugar
1 tspn Cinnamon
50g Sultanas (or other dried fruits "Veg in" suggested dried apricots) 



Combine ingredients in a small bowl

Spread on a pre-cooked pizza base
Warm in pre-heated 200C oven for about 5 minutes.

I made the ricotta for Mia to use in her pizza, (and topped the savoury Pizzas). 

Ian rolled out all the bases to everyones requirements. 

A true family effort!

Nicola

NB - This weeks film was "the Spiderwick Chronicles" -Eva's Choice

Pizza and movie night

For years now we have had a pizza and movie night every Friday night (unless we are out). When it started we made them from scratch, then as we got busier we often bought them but we have returned to the healthier home made ones in the last year or so.

The Base


We try to make the base from scratch, using the bread machine dough setting, but if we don't get time we keep a ready supply of greek pitta breads frozen which makes great instant bases.


Bread machine pizza Dough recipe for 4 (with some leftovers)
300ml water
1.5 Tb extra virgin olive oil
1.5 tspn salt
550g bakers flour
2.5 tspn dried yeast


We put this in the bread machine on dough setting for 1.5 hours.


The First Layer


We usually spread all pizzas with tomato paste (a cheaper one that is not triple concentrated)
The aldi organic one in small tins is good - and we use exactly a tin each week)
Sometimes we will do one of the pizzas with basil pesto or olive tapanade for a change.
Recently eva has convinced us to put a little bbq sauce in with the tomato paste on her hawaiian!


The Toppings
Almost every week we make:
Potato, rosemary and spanish onion
Hawaiian made with "fakin" our name for vegetarian bacon and fresh pineapple -Eva's staple pizza


Other weeks we commonly make:
Tomato and boconcinci
Eggplant and onion,
Zucchini and red capsicum
Sweet potato
Goats cheese, caramelised onion and sage (based on a suggestion in "Veg In" by Flip Shelton - one of our favourite books at the moment)
We add olives (kalamata or parmesan stuffed green ones), sliced red onion or semidried tomatoes to any of the vegetable ones that look like they need more.




The Cheese


Most of the time we use cherry bocconcini for our cheese. A tub will spread across our four pizzas.
We also grate whatever is on hand - cheddar, mozarella or parmesan or any combination. We try not to use too much chees cheese - but it varies according to which family member does it!


The Finishing Touches
I love basil or rocket tossed in balsamic vinegar and sometimes a little olive oil tossed over the pizzas (not the hawaiian - but any other. The rest of the family are less enthusiastic about this so sometimes i put this in a bowl on the side to scatter on pieces as i eat them.




This weeks pizzas on homemade bases were:
1. Thin sliced nicola potato, snipped homegrown rosemary, sliced spanish onion on tomato paste with mixed grated cheeses.

2. Sliced tomato, semi-dried tomaotes, the last few kalamata olives on tomato paste with mixed grated cheese and some snipped homegrown basil on after cooking.

3. Caramelised onions, goats cheese crumbled, thin slices of homegrown sage leaves on a tomato paste base.

 4. Fresh pineapple, "fakin" vegetarian bacon, tomato paste mixed with a little BBQ sauce and grated mixed cheeses.

Then we lie back on the couches in the lounge and chill-out after a busy week! Left-overs make a great meal on the run somewhere on the weekend. 

BTW This Weeks Movie was "Star Wars" - Ian's Choice.

Nicola

Eva's Pasta

Happy New Year!
I have made a new years resolution to Blog at least once a week but haven't yet remembered to photograph anything while cooking it this week!! But I did photograph for my youngest daughter as she cooked her first family dinner (she will be cooking Tuesday Night Dinners for us now.)Her first effort was pasta made from scratch, with a roast pumpkin sauce, green salad and a bagette.

Her ingredients - bread flour, salt, extra virgin olive oil & 3 eggs.

Forming the pasta dough

rolling the pasta dough into thin strips (and adding some fresh corriander)

"shredding" the pasta strips into noodles.

Making the roast Pumpkin sauce (mashed roast pumpkin, cream, salt and pepper)

Presentation - (from the 9yr old Masterchef watcher)

As it was served up. delicious!

We look forward to her future Tuesday Dinners! 

Nicola