Our dear friends renewed their vows today after many years of being in love. It was a beautiful ceremony accompanied by a beautiful feast!
Great ideas here for how to create a visually appetising and stunning buffet for any occasion.
This Burrata with fennel jam and spinach, with a hint of chilli, was delicious as an accompaniment for dinner tonight.
I was inspired by the Burrata with fennel jam at lunch at Nomad restaurant in Surry Hills in Sydney this week. There it is swimming in fennel flavoured olive oil and served with their delicious crusty sour dough to mop it up.
My version of the fennel jam doesn’t involve quite as much oil, and I added one chilli to the fennel mixture during the cooking to add a kick of spice.
I also teamed up the Burrata and fennel jam with baby spinach leaves and cherry tomatoes to make it much more of a salad.
The resulting combination was really good, and perfect as an accompaniment to our steak tonight. It would also make for a great addition to a buffet or a festive meal. Great to share amongst a few people.
Mind you, you could add more oil and skip the healthy ingredients and serve it just as Nomad restaurant do! Or you could just use the fennel jam as a great accompaniment to cheese or a charcuterie platter.
Method
1. Slice fennel and onion as thinly as possible, reserve some of the fennel fronds for garnish.
2. Heat oil in large flat, non-stick frying pan, add fennel and onion, lower heat to medium heat and cook slowly until fennel and onion start to soften for about 5 minutes.
3. Add chilli and cook for another 5 minutes.
4. Add sugar and vinegar, stirring until sugar dissolves.
5. Continue cooking until vinegar evaporates and the sugar creates almost a glaze on the fennel and onions.
6. Place baby spinach leaves and tomatoes on a platter, sprinkle cracked black pepper over the leaves and tomatoes, spread fennel jam over the centre.
7. Place Burrata on the top, garnish with a few fennel fronds and serve.
This easy whole orange cake (rind and all) recipe is perfect for lazy bakers like me!
You just boil a couple of whole oranges for a long time, then chop and process them in a food processor, along with 4 other ingredients and pop in the oven for an hour or so!
I was too lazy to swop out the water too many times, so I just boiled the oranges for half an hour, with a flat bowl placed on top, to keep the oranges submerged. Then I did it once more for another half an hour. This process removes the bitterness from the rind so is important, but doesn’t require much attention or effort.
I love using a food processor to make this cake, as it really is a one bowl cake with little washing up and no fussing. Definitely a very easy cake to make!
Turned out my fan forced oven is probably a bit hotter than others so next time I’d probably heat it to 150 degrees Celsius and cook it for about an hour an ten minutes so it doesn’t get as dark on top. Mind you it still tasted great the way it turned out!
The resulting moist cake full of orange flavours and a slight hint of mint is delicious! I made this and took it to work today and it disappeared in a jiffy. Orders for more have already been placed.
I used this great recipe from Recipe Tin Eats but added a small handful of very finely diced up fresh mint leaves to the batter right at the end to add the minty zest. Totally optional though.
Thanks Recipe Tin Eats for the very easy and delicious recipe!
On our last night at Arcadia Retreat in Rarotonga our friend Neil made this delicious and nifty version of nachos and chilli.
As we know Nachos are usually multi-layers of tortilla chips with cheese and a variety of toppings often including versions of chilli con carne or meatballs. Inevitably the chips go soggy in parts, but with Neil’s Nifty Nachos, there is no danger of that!
The nifty trick is simply serve the cheesy tortillas baked in the oven separately to the chilli, sour cream and guacamole!
His recipe for the chilli con carne is also delicious, imbued with spices such as cinnamon and cloves!
In exploring tips for great nachos I found these two articles which focus on the more traditional multi-layered versions.
This story from the Cape Cod Times suggests using the cheese as a buffer zone to protect the crispiness of the chips. (This story also has some interesting suggestions about the creation and naming of nachos.)
And Bon Appetit lays out 10 rules for making nachos.
But neither suggest Neil’s Nifty Nachos version of simply separating the chips and sauce and completely avoiding any chance of soggy chips in the first place!
So here’s how he does it.
Make the chilli first, but don’t forget to get the ingredients for the nachos and sides when you go shopping!
Chilli Ingredients
Method:
1. Heat oil in a large heavy based pot or pan with a lid, and add cinnamon, cloves, cumin seeds and bay leaf ..heat until fragrant.
2. Add pork and beef mince, garlic, onion, chopped chilli and chilli powder.
3. Turn up heat frying and breaking up mince continuously with a spoon for about 5 minutes until well coloured and onions are translucent. It’s important to dry fry the mince rather than allow it to stew.
4. Add tinned tomato, tomato paste and can of kidney beans with brine and simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes or so to allow mince to absorb flavours, adding 1 cup water if mixture is sticking.
5. Add green capsicum, half the fresh coriander and fresh tomato and cook for another 15 minutes until sauce is reduced and capsicum is just cooked.
6. Add the rest of the fresh chopped coriander and mix through.
7. Serve with tortilla chips, sour cream, pickled jalapeños and guacamole on the side.
Nachos ingredients:
Method:
1. Turn on your grill to high heat and line baking pan with baking paper.
2. Alternately layer tortilla chips generously sprinkling the two types of cheese between them, saving enough for a thick layer of cheese on top.
3. Grill chips until cheese is melted and chips are crispy. Serve immediately on the side with Neil’s chilli, sour cream, pickled jalapeños and sour cream on the side.
Lift the cheesy tortilla chips with the baking paper onto a platter or just place baking pan (on a placemat) on the table with chilli con carne and sides such as sour cream, guacamole and pickled jalapeños to the side.
Guests serve themselves, layering the chips with the chilli and sides to their taste, but you can be guaranteed that the chips stay crispy and the chilli is delicious!
Had a truly scrumptious breakfast with Australian style strong coffee at Citizens of Gramercy (362 2nd Ave) on my visit to New York last year.
The Citizens group has 3 neighbourhood cafes in Gramercy, Soho and Chelsea and serves all day breakfast including their excellent smashing avocado.
The Smashing Avocado features avocado tossed with feta, lime, cilantro on top of thick cut multigrain toast, garnished with pickled onion, radish, pumpkin seeds and beetroot hummus…yummy!
Also tried the big breakfast (without the poached eggs that they normally come with) and the crispy bacon with chorizo baked beans which was delicious too. The smoky flavour of the beans even reminded me of my homemade baked beans recipe!
Service was friendly and the Sunday morning breakfast vibe was happy and buzzy. The Gramercy location exudes a beachside shack atmosphere: casual, laidback with great food and coffee but smack-bang in downtown Manhattan. Definitely a scrumptious start to the day at Citizens of Gramercy!
Great find!
This zesty finger lime cucumber salad was a delicious accompaniment to our warm beef salad, and would also be lovely with grilled or poached fish or chicken.
A friend of ours had gifted us native Australian finger limes which are becoming a very trendy ingredient on restaurant menus “down-under”, but they are still difficult to find in shops. If you see any, make sure you grab them as you will love their unique “caviar” like texture with tiny balls of lime that pop in your mouth.
You can read more about this intriguing fruit https://tuckerbush.com.au/finger-lime-citrus-australasica/
I really wanted to make a dish that would showcase their flavour n texture ad thought cucumbers would be a good “backdrop” for this purpose.
I found this great recipe on The Devil Wears Salad but didn’t have all the ingredients to hand so improvised with things I had to hand.
The resulting cucumber salad topped with the caviar-like pearls of finger lime was delicious and the perfect zesty accompaniment to our warm beef salad.
(Thanks Helen for gifting us such a wonderful new ingredient!)
Ingredients:
Method:
1. Slice and chop one cucumber into small chunks. I slice then quarter each slice. Then using a large vegetable peeler, “peel” the second cucumber into long ribbons. Mix the 2 styles of cucumber in a bowl and set aside.
2. Chop the chilli finely and crush the ginger.
3. Mix together the soy sauce, sesame oil, crushed ginger , chopped chilli, and vinegar in a small bowl.
3. Cut the finger limes in half, horizontally. Onto a plate, Squeeze the end of each half gently but firmly until “pearls” of lime emerge. Repeat with all lime halves until you have a glistening pile of finger lime “caviar”. (You want to do this as close to serving your salad as possible so the finger lime pearls don’t dry up and clump together in lumps)
5. Gently toss dressing through cucumbers, then place the dressed cucumbers on a serving plate and scatter the finger lime caviar over the salad and serve immediately.
