corn waffles

We all know about corn fritters, but how about corn waffles? Not bad, if I do say so myself!

1 cup self raising flour
½ tsp salt
1 cup creamed corn
2 eggs, seperated
½ cup milk
butter to brush iron
Chives and grated cheese to serve as pictured

In one bowl, whisk the egg whites until fluffy and forming peaks.
In a separate bowl, combine egg yolks, milk and creamed corn.
Then add the flour and salt, mix well to form a batter.
Fold the egg whites into the batter.
Brush the waffle iron with butter and spoon about ⅓ cup of batter into the iron, in about 2 mins remove and repeat with remaining batter.
Keep waffles warm in a low oven until serving.

more topping ideas:
Crispy bacon and a poached egg, roasted tomatoes and rocket, tomato salsa and avocado, smoked salmon and dill yoghurt.

berry parfait

Lactose intolerant? Look away now. Love creamy cheesecakes or mousse and berries? You’ll be into this! It’s easy. It’s yummy.

125 g (light) cream cheese
¼ cup icing sugar
1 tsp orange rind, grated
¼ cup (light) sour cream
300 ml thickened cream
250 g strawberries
200 g blueberries
2 tbsp pistachio nuts, chopped (optional garnish)

Beat cream cheese, icing sugar and orange rind until creamy.
Beat sour cream into mixture.
Add cream and beat until soft peaks form.
Layer strawberries, blueberries and cream mixture in a serving glass.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour but overnight is good too.
Top with nuts to serve.

Substitue: Berries for mango. Nuts for chocolate flakes. Nuts for cookie crumbs… the possibilities are endless but the pleasure lasts about 5 mins, depending how piggy you are.

strawberry cobbler

60 ml dry vermouth
¼ lime, juiced (or ½ if its not very juicy and you like lime… you know me, I’d just use the half and save myself struggling with a tiny wedge)
1 tsp caster sugar (or 2 if you like a sweeter drink)
5 strawberries
ice and mint to serve

Combine all but ice and garnish.
I started out muddling this mix, in proper cocktail fashion, but it was tedious, slow and messy so I ended up using my hand blender on it. Much better. And ready in seconds.
Then pour over ice and garnish.

ratatouille: a healthy dinner in 15 minutes!

Ratatouille is a super fast and super healthy meal. What’s more, I think it’s super tasty. You don’t need a lot of ingredients to make a basic ratatouille but you can jazz it up with extras like parmesan or romano cheese, olives and more fresh herbs, like basil and parsley. Don’t make your vegetable chunks too big, this will slow cooking time.

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 red capsicum, 2 cm dice
1 eggplant, 2 cm dice
1 zucchini, 2 cm dice
1-2 tomatoes, diced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp thyme leaves
½ cup water
½ tsp sugar (sugar will balance the acidity of the tomatoes)
handful of baby spinach

In a medium saucepan, start by frying the onion in the olive oil.
Add the remaining ingredients, minus the baby spinach.
Simmer for 10 minutes or until eggplant is soft and cooked.
Watch the moisture level, add a little more water if you need to, the aim is a thick sauce but not too dry.
As soon as eggplant is reaching ‘cooked’ which is 5 minutes before serving, prepare couscous (1:1 with boiling water, cover and allow to absorb for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork).
Finally, add the baby spinach and stir through. …Bon appetit!

Alternatively, serve with brown rice, pasta, a bread stick, or on its own.

ginger soy barramundi on rice with bok choy

The most time consuming part of this dish is cooking the rice. It’s clean, healthy, quick, cheap and tasty. For the vegetarian option, substitute fish for tofu.

barramundi fillets
soy sauce
ketchup manis
ginger, small julienne
garlic, thinly sliced
water
rice to serve
Asian greens to serve

Put the rice on.
In a suitably sized pan to hold your fillets, pour in about 2 tbsp of each soy sauce and ketchup manis, add the garlic and ginger and about 3 tbsp water.
Turn on the heat and mix the sauce.
Add the fish (skin down), essentially you will be poaching the fish so keep adding water in small amounts if the sauce becomes too thick and sticky. If you have a lid, put it on.
Dinner is done in 15 minutes from start time.

Serve over rice with quick steamed Asian vegetables (bok choy, choy sum, pak choy, whatever).

Sub: Barramundi for sea bass, snapper or almost any white fish. Barramundi for thick cut tofu.

banana coconut pancakes: the weekend breakfast

1 ½ cups self-raising flour
1 tbs brown sugar
¾ cup coconut milk
¾ cup milk
2 eggs
2 over ripe bananas, peeled, chopped
butter, melted, to grease

coconut caramel sauce:
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs water
⅓ cup light coconut milk

Combine the sugar, water and coconut milk in a glass microwave jug. Blitz for 30 seconds, stir, and blitz again, stir, or until sugar dissolves. CAUTION, caramel is hot!

sides:
lime wedges
dessicated coconut
banana, sliced
strawberries and blueberries

Foreword: I hate sifting, grating and using more bowls than I need to so rather than sift the flour, you can actually put the flour and the sugar in the bowl and use your whisk or beater on lowest speed to aerate the flour. Then its just a matter of whisking in the wet ingredients until smooth.

Make the pancake batter by ‘sifting’ the flour into a large bowl.
Whisk together the coconut milk, milk, egg and sugar in a jug (or just throw them all in and whisk a bit more ferociously).
Whisk until batter is smooth and combined. Set aside for 10 minutes to rest – your arm? (while you make the sauce and coffee!). Then mix through the bananas.

Preheat oven to 100c and put a heat-proof plate in to keep your pancakes warm on as you make them.
Brush a large non-stick frying pan with melted butter and heat to medium-high.
Pour ~ ¼ cup quantities of pancake batter into the pan and cook for about 2 minutes or until bubbles appear on top. I use a big pan and make 4 small pancakes at a time.
Carefully turn pancakes and cook for a further 1 minute or until golden brown and cooked through.
Transfer pancakes to the plate in the oven. Repeat with the remaining batter, brush the pan with butter between batches. (I’ve learnt the hard way that a lot of pastry brushes have faux hair bristles and a silicon brush is best for this job. No one wants a hairy pancake)

Put on some weekend music and enjoy!

 

date and banana pudding loaf cake

I originally got this is a recipe from my dear friend, modernwomansociety.wordpress.com, but I have added bananas as inspired by frugalfeeding.wordpress.com, the result was something much closer to a caramel [vegan] pudding than a loaf or cake – totally delicious!

¾ cup brown sugar
1 cup dates, pitted and chopped
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 tablespoon margarine (or melted butter if you prefer)
1 pinch salt
1 cup boiling water
1 ¾ cups self raising flour
3 small overripe bananas (optional – if you leave them out, you’ll have a vegan date loaf, bake time is 30 mins)

Preheat oven to 180c
Combine sugar, dates, bicarb, margarine and salt in a bowl.
Then pour 1 cup boiling water over the above, stir and leave to cool. The mixture will become lighter and foamy.
Add flour and bananas then mix until combined and similar to a batter consistency.
Pour into a greased (I used light olive oil spray) and lined loaf tin and bake for 40 mins* in a moderate oven until a skewer comes out clean-ish (the banana will make it like a pudding so don’t over cook it).

* During baking I thought individual puddings would be great, perhaps pour the batter into patty-cases in a muffin tin and reduce the bake time. I haven’t tried this yet myself so I’ll add a cook time retrospectively – unless someone else tries first and lets us all know?!

Serve it warm with honey, ice cream, cream and/or yoghurt – whatever grabs you. Or just a dab of butter is great too.

 

bacon bocconcini basil pasta

This is one of the quickest and yummiest dinners you can make. Essentially it’s a warm pasta salad. I highly recommend it for both no-fuss entertaining and those tired week night dinners.

Pasta, fresh is best but dry is fine too
Bacon, sliced (fat and rind removed)
Red onion, sliced (not too thin)
Basil, roughly chopped
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Olive oil
Bocconcini or fresh mozzarella, roughly chopped
Rocket, torn, or use as a bed to place pasta on top of when plating up
Pine nuts, roasted*

Cook the pasta in some lightly salted water, then drain.
Fry bacon until browning then add onion.
Turn the heat off, add the tomatoes and basil to the pan. There is enough residual heat in the pan to warm the tomatoes, we don’t want them to turn to mush so no fiddle-fussing.
Combine pasta and with the bacon and tomato ‘sauce’, drizzle some olive oil in and give it a gentle mix. Add the rocket now if you are mixing it through.
Depending on how soft your bocconcini is you can mix it through the pasta (which is likely to melt it a little) or place it on top of each dish.
Finally, sprinkle with pine nuts.

* Dry fry your pine nuts in the same pan before you cook the bacon, that will save on the washing up. Don’t leave them alone, they burn and go bitter really quickly. Gently keep them moving and remove them as soon as they begin to turn golden.

kale potato and chorizo soup

I planted Kale in the garden, it grew, and now I need to work out what to cook with it. It’s a pretty plant and I can understand why it has made its way into bouquets at the florist. It has a cabbage-like taste that is probably very versatile. So far I can recommend this very quick soup, which makes a tasty weeknight dinner. This soup is as quick to cook as frying thin slices of sausage and boiling diced potatoes, so you can make it within 15 minutes, if focused, and will serve 2-3 people.

olive oil
2-3 chorizo sausages, sliced
1 onion diced
3 potatoes, diced
2 cups kale, chopped
1 tbsp vegetable stock powder
boiling water

In a stock pot, fry the chorizo sausage with a dash of oil, then add the onion. Gently fry until onion is clear, don’t burn it but you can let the bottom of the pot get brown as this will enhance the flavour.
Add the potatoes, stir.
Add the stock and the boiling water, enough to cover everything. Now gently work the ‘brown’ off the bottom of the pot with your wooden spoon.
Simmer until the potatoes are tender.
Add the kale, simmer for 2 minutes so that the kale is just cooked but still bright green.

italian lamb shanks

I’m talking Italian favours not imported shanks. This is simple peasant cooking, wholesome and hearty. The lamb shank makes a really easy to prepare, low cost and tasty dinner, so long as you have the time to cook it. The best shanks will spend at least 4 hours in a low to moderate oven.

Lamb shanks, trimmed of fat
Olive oil
1 Leek
1 Carrot
1 tbsp Tomato paste
Tin tomato
Oregano
Thyme
Rosemary
Parsely
Salt and Pepper
1 tsp sugar
Green beans*, top and tail
Parsley to garnish

Preheat the oven to 160c
Ideally you have a casserole dish (with a lid) that does both stove top and oven, so you brown the shanks in a casserole dish with olive oil and pepper. Then set shanks aside.
Lower heat, sweat the leeks and add the carrot in the same dish.
Add the tomato paste and tomatoes, sugar, salt, then herbs (which can be left on their stick or removed an chopped), stir the sauce.
Add the shanks back to the pot, make sure they are covered with the sauce. You may add a bit of water or stock.
Put the lid on and put in the oven for a minimun of 3 hours.
Check on it half to hourly, if the sauce is drying out, add a little bit of water or stock.
About 30 mins before serving, add the beans so they cook in the pot, or you can steam them separately.

Serve on a bed of parmesan polenta with a sprinkle of parsley.

* I forgot to add the beans to the one pictured (they were still waiting in the colander after everyone had finished dinner, so you can leave them off completely too if you wish)