zucchini, feta and dill 'pie'

A vegetarian delight - thank you to Belinda Jeffrey for the recipe for this pie/slice. The texture was like a quiche, probably due to the high number of eggs (5). It is quite rich, filling and packed with zucchini. Small servings at room temperature makes it the perfect light summer lunch and when warmed up, its a satisfying winter meal.

Due to my high cholesterol and conscious stomach, I used less feta and Parmesan than noted in the recipe and still tasty. I used one bunch of dill (all of one packet from Woolies) and it was a tad overpowering - the basil in the recipe would probably have been good. Would definitely do this again!

See Belinda Jeffrey's website for the recipe.

lazy food

Ah, im tired but feel like i should update this blog with visual prettiness. Below, you can see soft cheesy polenta topped with sliced zuchinni and mushrooms. Yum lazy food. Inspired by the book 'Lighten Up' by Jill Dupleix.

Chicken, chickpeas and carrots cooked in a homemade madras curry paste and tomato paste etc

thai food festival

I had a great weekend in Canberra. On Sunday, my grad friends and I explored the grounds of the Thai Embassy, as they were hosting a Thai food festival. Here’s what it was like: it rained in the morning but the sky was mostly clear and had a warm shine. The air of the Embassy was filled with foreign languages, spices from a distant memory, the voices of intrigued people and deep frying oil.

The hustle & bustle of the festival was near perfect. It was a lively but chilled atmosphere and there were no majorly long queues that you’d get in larger cities.

The food that we got/saw included: pad thai, hokkien-like noodles, chicken pad siew, deep-fried bread and beef skewers covered in zucchini. I enjoyed seeing the diversity of food – it (expectingly) broadened my knowledge of thai food which was confined to restaurant menus. There was a ‘street-food’ culture that came through in the festival. 

No meal is complete without a sweet addition. My friends and I bought these crepe-like pancakes. They differed from French crepes as they were flaky (lard was probably added to the crepe batter) and chewy (probably due to asian glutenous flour). The pancakes were drizzled with condensed milk and a chocolate sauce. We also enjoyed a coconut jelly pudding which had kernels of corn throughout it. I’ve never had this before and it was sweet comfort food yet exciting.

brodburger

In Canberra's balmy Autumn, a bunch of the grads went to Brodburger for one of the grad's birthday. For those who don't live in Canberra, Brodburger is a little red caravan nicely situated near Canberra's 'iconic' Lake Burley Griffin. After ordering your burger, you'd sit in the park in a picnic-like fashion and enjoy the views of the lake.

Before going to Brodburger, I heard rave reviews of the place and that it makes the 'best burgers in Canberra'. The hype of the place was heightened by the lengthy 30 minute wait after ordering my burger. It was definitely a novelty to visit this place. And it is impressive that they created such a big business out of the tiny tiny caravan where they cooked the burger. I grew up in hospitality and commercial kitchens so I can safely say that the size and way that a kitchen is set out has a massive impact on the quality and speed of the food. The 30 minute wait for my burger @ Brodburger can definitely be attributed to the minuteness of the caravan and its limited capacity to have extra staff and a larger grill plate. Maybe, just maybe the smallness of the caravan and long wait subconsciously makes people think that their burger is more special than what it really is.

For me, the food didn't live up to all the hype. I felt like I could have recreated my vego burger at home, for a fraction of the price that I paid at Brodburger. My burger had an assortment of char-grilled vegetables (mushroom, eggplant, zucchini, capsicum) topped with fried haloumi cheese and a white vinaigrette dressing (kudos to the website for this detail). However, the oiliness and squishiness of the eggplant overpowered all the other veges, especially the haloumi which was meant to be the *star act* of the burger. Maybe I ordered the wrong thing. There was a grilled fish burger that sounded devine.

Another grad ordered a 'Brodburger Deluxe' which had: 2 x A grade gourmet beef patties, flame grilled, Eggs, lots of crispy bacon. Topped with fresh lettuce, tomatoes and Spanish onions. Includes homemade aioli and tomato relish. This looked fantastic and great value for money (see picture below).

Despite the average food, I loved the 'drop-in' nature of the place. We had a large group of friends, so even though some came late, it didn't disadvantage the rest of us who wanted to eat. Its an open casual place, reminiscent of Milson's Point Park in Sydney where people would order take away pizza in a nearby pizza joint and sit in the park.

Brodburger - Flame Grilled Burgers - Food Caravan

Bowen Park Carpark, Bowen Drive/Wentworth Av, Barton ACT 2604

http://www.brodburger.com.au/

Note: later in the year, Brodburger is moving a few hundred metres down the road to Canberra Glassworks. See http://the-riotact.com/brodburger-finds-a-home-at-the-glassworks/46815

afternoon tea

my flatmate recently left Canberra for overseas and I recently moved into Canberra so we decided to celebrate by hosting a large morning tea in our apartment :). We baked TEN things between us - it took a lot of planning, coordination and pre-thinking. I've never baked that much in my life. Here's a picture of all the ingredients, just to prepare you for the amount of stuff we baked:


It was very rewarding and allowed me to practice old recipes and try new recipes.

Between us, we cooked:

*Savoury puff pastry scrolls

*Savoury olive, feta and zucchini muffins

*Chocolate brownies

*Chocolate cake with a marbled meringue topping

*Cashew nut biscotti

*Scones x 2.5 lots

*Mango syrup and coconut cupcakes

*Florentines

*Lemon cake

*Coffee Slice

Below you can see the before and after photo:

Note: Some of our guests brought extra food - we really appreciated it, but it added to our amazement of how much food there was!

And some highlights of my baking journey...

Scones

Over the past year, its taken me many many test runs to find a good scone recipe and to (almost) perfect them. The best recipes that I found were from the Ritz Hotel (London) and the Country Women's Association (Australia). It takes a light yet swift hand to make the fluffiest scones. The recipe that I used for the arvo tea are from the Ritz Hotel - they were rich and buttery. And below you can see my recipe-book-like pictures :)

I'm not going to list the ingredients due to copyright reasons... but here's the method that I used:

1. Put all ingredients except milk in a bowl

2. Cut or rub with your fingers until large flaky crumbs

3. Put milk in bowl then mix

4. Identify cutting instrument (I didn't have a cookie cutter so used the bottom of a cup. I'd definitely recommend a sturdy cookie cutter because if the cutter is uneven, it affects the shape of the scone and how perfectly it rises)

5. Knead on a floured surface then roll out

6. Cut into shapes

7. Place closely next to each other in a tin - this is essential as the closeness of the uncooked scones will force them to rise up rather than out

8. Bake in a 180 degree oven for 15ish minutes

9. Voila!

Cream Cheese icing

When I first started to make cream cheese icing, I always had major problems - there was either too much cream cheese or icing. I'd try to get the balance right by adding one or the other, but it would often end up in me having twice the amount of icing as necessary. Generally, the more icing sugar there is, the more firm the icing is. The consistency of the icing depends on what you want to do with it - pipe it (more firm) or spread it on with a knife (soft).

Sorry, I didn't note down how much of each ingredient I used, but it was about:

*400g cream cheese

*1/4 cup mango nectar (for this particular recipe)

*1/2 cup icing sugar

note: I think I broke my hand mixer by forcfully mixing the unsoftened cream cheese. I had this mixer for 10+ years, so I was quite attached to it and thought it deserved a picture :)

Coffee Slice

vege polenta bake

Today, I’m going to try to call Milly from home (hi Milly!!). I feel like I’m lacking frequent conversation with people from Sydney and I could really use some constant support structures right now… However, I’m glad that I can bring some of my happier Sydney memories with me, namely via food.

If I remember correctly, Milly told me that she once made a vegetarian shephard’s pie – the thought of not gagging over too much meat in a pie, but still having a wholesome pie excited me. What I made in Canberra was less like a pie but a vege bake. Whoops. But it was delicious and colourful:

The base had zucchini, eggplant etc with a tomato pasta sauce. The topping was polenta, olive oil and ricotta…

After baking it, the polenta got really dry and nasty so if I did this again, I’d cover it with al-foil or put Parmesan cheese in the polenta.