Easy Cheesey Snacks

This super-simple recipe was inspired by the fact that I ran out of packaged lunch box snacks to put in my boys' lunch boxes today and couldn't quite muster the courage required to brave the supermarket. Cheese straws; much maligned, much forgotten, but such a quick, easy snack that's delicious. You can make them a bit more posh by using different cheeses, as I've done here, or keep them simple with reliable cheddar or Colby (for those who like their cheese creamy but essentially flavourless).

Cheese Straws
Ingredients

• 2 sheets ready-made frozen puff pastry (you could go to the trouble of making your own, but really, why bother when there are great quality puff pastries available?)
• Red Leicester cheese
• Parmesan cheese

Method

Preheat oven to 200C.

Slice very finely or grate cheese over pastry sheet (one cheese on one pastry sheet).

Press the cheese into the pastry sheet. The pastry should have thawed sufficiently in the time it took you to grate/shred the cheese for you to press the cheese firmly into it.

Cut the pastry into long, thin strips (straws). Yes, I do this after I put the cheese on top and it works well.

Line a biscuit tin or flat baking sheet with baking paper. Arrange the straws on the tin with 2 - 5 cm between straws to allow for expansion.

Bake for 10 - 15 minutes (mine took 13 minutes). Allow to cool completely on baking tin out of oven. Store in an airtight container.

A few final notes:

• Remember that firmer cheeses will work better in this recipe. The soft cheeses melt too quickly and tend to run all over the place causing a mess! 
• You can dress these straws up by sprinkling herbs (rosemary chopped up very fine works well, as does sage) or paprika for more adult tastes. 
• If you're using a blue cheese, go for the firm blue cheeses rather than the blue castello.

Something's Fishy

As part of the "no red meat during the week" campaign, we've been increasing our intake of seafood. Bouillabaisse seemed like the perfect fit.

I've wanted to have a go at this scrumptious seafood soup for a long time, but have avoided it largely because my youngest son hasn't coped well with seafood. His intolerance seems to be improving now and, more importantly, he's keen to try more.

I was afraid this was going to be a complicated dish with lots of obscure ingredients, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy.

So here's my version of a perennial favourite.

Cheat's Bouillabaisse
Ingredients:

• 2tbsps extra virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 red onions, finely sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
• 1 tin diced tomatoes
• 4 bay leaves
• generous pinch of saffron
• salt and pepper
• orange peel from 1 orange (use a zester)
• 1 cup good white wine
• 750ml fish stock, warmed
• 500g clams
• 250g prawns (shelled and deveined)
• 250g scallops
• 500g Spanish mackerel, cubed
• 1 smoked trout, skinned, filleted and shredded
• 1/2 cup coriander /cilantro leaves (leaves only)

Rouille:

• 2tbsps hot fish stock
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup white bread, crusts cut off
• 1 red chilli
• 1/2tsp salt

Method:

Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a heavy based pan. Add onions, garlic and bay leaves and fry till onions are translucent.

Add tomatoes, saffron and orange peel and cook gently for around 5 minutes.

Add white wine and fish stock and bring to the boil. Turn heat down to a simmer and add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 20 minutes.

This is a good time to make the rouille if you're using it. Put fish stock in the bottom of a blender or food processor. Add garlic, chilli, salt and bread. Blend until very smooth. With the food processor still running, add the olive oil in a slow drizzle (it's like making mayonnaise). Stop blending when the oil is incorporated. Place the rouille in a bowl ready to serve with the soup - use sparingly like you would Tabasco sauce.

When the soup has simmered for 20 minutes, raise the heat and add clams. When clams pop open (this is fun, it's a bit like watching popcorn - use a glass lid on your pot so you can see it), add the mackerel. Cook for 5 minutes.

Add scallops and prawns and cook for a further 5 minutes.

To serve, place the bouillabaisse in a bowl, sprinkle the shredded smoked trout and the coriander leaves over the top. Allow each person to add their own rouille.

Serves 4 - 6

What's Up Doc?

I've been wanting to try my hand at cooking rabbit for some time now. As a meat, it completely intrigues me. Not quite red meat in a beef kind of way, but not white meat like chicken or pork either. So today, I decided to get some from my lovely local butcher (the trip there is always fun since he flirts like mad with all the customers!). He very kindly chopped it up for me and gave me lots of encouragement.

I trawled both recipe books and the internet for recipes and in the end, came up with a mish-mash that I'm pretty happy with. It's a bit reminiscent Coq au vin, but here it is...

Rabbit Stew
Ingredients:

• 1 rabbit (chopped into small pieces by the lovely butcher)
• 2 brown onions, finely sliced
• 2 large cloves garlic, whole
• 3 strips pancetta, finely sliced
• 3 medium carrots, cubed
• 3 bay leaves
• 4 - 5 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
• 8 medium-sized button mushrooms, halved
• 1/2 small fennel bulb, finely sliced
• 1/3 cup good red wine
• 2 tbsps good quality balsamic vinegar
• 1 litre water or chicken stock

Flour for dredging:

• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 2 tsps salt
• 2 tsps smoked paprika (Spanish paprika is really good)

Method:

Preheat oven to 190C.

Mix flour, salt and paprika. Dredge rabbit in flour and keep aside.

Heat oil in heavy based pan and fry pancetta strips till crispy. Remove and reserve for the end.

Brown garlic pods gently. Remove and reserve.

Brown rabbit pieces, a few at a time. Remove and reserve.

Fry onions and mushrooms. Add a little salt (a pinch is plenty) as this helps to soften the onions quickly. When the onions are translucent, add the browned garlic, fennel, carrot and bay leaves. Fry for a few minutes until fennel softens.

Arrange rabbit pieces on top. Add water/stock, red wine and balsamic vinegar. Taste for seasoning and add salt if required.

Bring to the boil then transfer to the oven. Cook in oven for 1 1/2 hours or until rabbit is tender and comes easily off the bone.

Sprinkle the reserved pancetta on top just before serving. Serve hot.

Ebony and Ivory....

Brownies seem to be making a come back and this weekend, I offered to make brownies for my godson's birthday party. Never one to take the road most travelled, I wondered what brownies would be like with white chocolate instead.

Let me tell you, they're delicious. That's a huge admission coming from someone who divides the world into "those who like white chocolate" and "those with taste". This particular use of white chocolate has even me admitting that it may have its uses.

Needless to say, they don't come out a rich brown colour, but they are a satisfying caramel colour. My youngest son has decided that they also deserve a name change, so in our house, we're calling them "Whities".

Whities
Ingredients

• 125g white chocolate (roughly chopped or use "melts")
• 125g butter, cubed
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups caster (superfine) sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (get the best quality)
• 1 cup plain flour, sifted
• 1/4 tsp baking powder, sifted
• 100g peanuts, roughly chopped

Method
Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease a 20 x 30cm baking tin and line base and sides with baking paper.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of hot water, stirring until smooth. Allow to cool a little.

In an electric mixer or food processor, beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla for 3 - 4 minutes or until pale and fluffy. Beat in the cooled chocolate mixture. Add the sifted flour and baking powder and beat until smooth. Stir in the nuts.

Spoon the misture into the prepared baking tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until caramel coloured and the top has formed a crust. DO NOT OVERCOOK - this isn't a cake and should be soft and moist in the middle.

Allow to cool in the tin. Remove and cut into squares or rectangles. Dust with icing sugar. Whities can be stored in an airtight container for 3 - 4 days or frozen for longer.

For the regular Brownies, substitute the same amount of dark chocolate.

Deviation from the Theme!

So after making the claim that I'm returning to my roots and becoming a river to my people, I completely deviated from the theme last night. It was bruschetta made with a ceviche of Tasmanian salmon for entrée, Tandoori Red Snapper, rice and roasted brussel sprouts for mains and pumpkin pie with a biscuit crust for dessert.

So here's the Ceviche Bruschetta recipe...

Tasmanian Salmon Ceviche Bruschetta (this is NOT a weight-watcher's recipe!)

• 2 medium sized Tasmanian salmon fillets (skin off)
• 1 red onion
• 1 red chilli
• 2 medium sized tomatoes
• 1 - 2 limes
• salt to taste
• fresh basil leaves
• fresh corriander (cilantro) leaves
• 1 - 2 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 100g butter
• Ciabatta or similar bread, sliced

Dice the onion and chilli finely and place in a glass/ceramic bowl. Chiffonade the herbs and add them with the zest of one lime to the onion and chilli. Slice the salmon into 2 inch long pieces that are so thin they're almost translucent. Mix with the onion mix and squeeze the limes over. Add salt to taste and mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate for around 4 hours.

Just before you're ready to serve, heat a heavy-based pan with the oil and butter in it. Add the garlic and fry gently. Add the bread slices and fry until golden brown and crispy. Remove from pan and drain. Discard the garlic.

Dice the tomatoes very finely and mix through the ceviche at the last minute when you're ready to serve. Pile the ceviche on top of the bread and serve.

Serves = 12 slices of bread

I'll post the Tandoori fish, brussel sprouts and pumpkin pie recipes by and by...

Home-land cooking

Recently I've been exploring a few new avenues for food. Well, one old avenue and one new one.

The New...
We're aiming, as a family, to eat less meat...at least during the weekdays. The ultimate goal is to not eat anything with a face during the week, and paint the town red (meat) at the weekends if we feel like it. Even this small adjustment to our diet should have some nice pay-offs.

It should improve the state of our health (and waistlines) for a start and then there's the additional benefit to the environment. So how did this all come about? From watching another episode of TED talks, of course. Graham Hill makes a good case for weekday vegetarianism, but we're not game enough to go the whole-hog just yet (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html). So we're doing this in small increments. We figure we can manage not eating red meat during the week. We could even manage without poultry or pork, but we need something. So what's our solution? Seafood.

Seems simple, doesn't it? The problem is, I have one child who doesn't like shellfish particularly (I'm convinced there's probably a food intolerance at play there). That limits the seafood options. So faced with the prospect of fish every week night for dinner, I've been plumbing the depths of my, admittedly shallow, repertoire of culinary knowledge. So what's my epiphany? Return to my roots.

And the Old...
My father's family comes from Ponani, one of the oldest ports in Kerala, a tiny town and an important fishing centre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponnani). They lived and breathed fish. My memories of holidays at his home include eating fish at every meal... every meal...even breakfast. We're not talking smoked kippers here, we're talking serious fish curries...and hot. My sister remembers eating a fish curry for breakfast on the first day of her six week stay at my Grandmother's house and then having a stomach upset as a result of the chilli for the remainder of the six weeks! This is not cooking for the faint-hearted, or tender-stomached.

It is, however, a tidy solution to my week-day meat-free dilemma - eat fish and introduce the children to an important part of their cultural heritage and my childhood at the same time. It also doesn't hurt that it's a good way to acclimatise them to higher levels of chilli before an impending trip to India. So the recipes I'll be posting for the next little while will draw on my rich cultural heritage and reflect the cuisine of my father's family. I hope I do them justice...

Kedgeree - a hearty start to the day

Kedgeree is a terrific way to start the day. The version of kedgeree that's popularly made is a British dish. It's thought to have originated from kitcherie or kitchiri - an Indian vegetarian dish made with rice and lentils.

The story goes that the British brought a version of this dish back during colonial times. The British version incorporates fish (usually a smoked variety). My version uses beautiful fresh fillets and was made mild enough for the kids to enjoy.

It's filling, delicious and a brilliant way to start the day.

Ingredients
2 cups (160ml cup) Basmati rice
4 x 160ml cups water
200 - 250g Tasmanian salmon fillet
200 - 250g blue groper fillet
200 - 250g pink snapper fillet
6 - 8 spring onions
1 red onion
1 inch piece ginger diced
1 red chilli (more if you like it hot) diced
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 - 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
salt to taste
200ml cream
5 eggs hard boiled and diced

Method

• Wash the rice in cold tap water to remove as much starch as possible. You can skip this process if you like, but it will make the final product more stodgey and less fluffy.
• Cook the rice in the 4 cups of water as you normally would (I like to use either a rice cooker or cook it in the microwave).
• While the rice is cooking, slice the fish very finely, dice the eggs, onions, chilli and ginger and chop the spring onion.
• Heat the oil in a heavy based pan and fry the onion until translucent.
• Add the chilli and ginger and fry for another minute or two.
• Add the fish and turmeric and stir gently until the fish is just cooked. This will only take a few minutes.
• Add the cream and diced eggs and mix through.
• Add salt to your tastes. Turn off the heat.
• Once the rice is cooked, fluff it with a fork, mix it in and add the chopped spring onion.

This is a really quick and easy recipe. The real secret to the flavour lies in using really fresh firm fish.