A quick, simple and yummy snack. It’s especially good when you’re cooking for one or in a hurry.
Ciabatta, Tomato and Olives
Enjoy,
Kim
The Edmonds Cook Book
I remember being given one when I left home as most household have *at least one*.
I suspect the reason for its popularity is that the Edmonds does the basics. It’s hard to mess up its straight forward recipes.
Here is one of my favourite Edmonds recipes. I’ve made it with lots of different fruits but my favourite remains apple and plum.
Fruit Sponge
Place stewed fruit in an ovenproof dish. Sweeten with sugar to taste. Cover and keep hot. Put butter, vanilla and measured sugar into a bowl. Beat until pale and creamy. Beat in eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour and baking powder together. Fold into creamed mixture. Add milk and mix to combine Spoon mixture over fruit. Bake at 190C for 40 minutes or until sponge springs back when touched. Serve hot with cream or dusted with icing sugar.
For the Bron Marshall Wild Weeds Event I made Spirulina Wedges.
Spirulina is a blue-green algae (Mmmm, sounds delicious) which grows wild in fresh water ponds.
It’s a bit of a wonder food. As well as being a complete protein it is one of the few plant sources of vitamin B12. In powder form it’s also rather strong smelling. After mixing all the ingredients together I got this green concoction.
I confess to having a back-up lunch in mind in case it tasted as strange as it looked. Fortunately it actually turned out rather yummy. The wedges ended up with a nice savoury crust.
Spirulina Wedges
Mix oil, cajun spices, spirulina and garlic together. Cover wedges evenly with the mixture. Cook at 200 C until done (turn wedges at least once).
If you’re afraid of lentils but intrigued by them at the same time, then now might be the time to give cooking them a go.
Red lentils give this pasta sauce a nice thick, smooth taste. Best of all it’s extremely quick and simple to make.
(Thanks to Healthy Food Magazine for the recipe).
Red Lentil Pasta Sauce
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
Bring a large saucepan of water to boil. Pour in the lentils and stir to ensure they do not stick to the base of the saucepan. Boil the lentils for 8-10 minutes or until soft.
Heat the oil in a medium pan and saute the onion and garlic until soft.
Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, and herbs. Stir in the lentils.
Season with salt and pepper to taste, and simmer until flavours develop, around 15 minutes.
I’ve made this recipe a few times now and it’s always tasted yummy. One thing I do suggest is making the effort to get small grapes. The larger ones seem to turn into lip burning juice bombs.
Oh, and never ever put your piece of hearthbread down on a surface you’ve just used for cutting garlic. Grapes and garlic don’t really go together. Who’d have thought it?
Sweet Grape Hearthbread
Sponge:
Dough:
Topping:
Put all the sponge ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer and whisk until smooth. Set aside for 10-30 minutes.
To make the dough, add to the bowl the warm water, olive oil, sugar, salt and 3 cups of flour. Mix in with a wooden spoon, adding more flour if needed to make a soft dough. Attach the dough hook to the machine and knead the mixture for about 5 minutes. Detach the dough hook and cover the bowl with a damp tea towel.
Set aside in a warm place until the dough has risen by at least double.
Tip the dough onto a lightly floured bench and roll out approximately 3mm thick to fit into a shallow-sided baking dish approx 45x30cm. Brush the dough lightly with olive oil and set aside until it is well-risen and puffy. Depending on room temperature, this will take an hour or so.
Half an hour before the dough is likely to be ready, turn on the oven to 220°C. When the dough has risen, use your fingers to press deep dimples into it. Scatter the grapes over the dough, so that many of them are lodged in the dimples. Use the flat of your hand to press the grapes firmly into the dough. Sprinkle generously with sugar and bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until the dough is golden brown and the fruit bursting.
Slide the hearthbread onto a rack, and leave to cool until lukewarm before cutting into 12 large squares. Serves 6.
note:
The recipe says to use a mixer but I did it all by hand and it was fine.
During the 9 months I was in Central America I developed an excessive pineapple habit. The pineapples in Guatemala are divine. On good days I could get 2 pineapples for $1 (my bargaining skills weren’t very good) .
I’ve been back for about three months and today the pineapple urge hit me hard. I was worried that pineapple cravings in New Zealand in the middle of winter would go unfulfilled. I was therefore happy to pay $3.99 for one at the local supermarket.
Pineapples in NZ are good, sometimes very good if you know how to pick them. Unfortunately if you don’t pick well they can be almost tasteless. My experience in Guatemala has made me much better at picking them. Below are my two simple tips.
Mmmmm, the May Cuisine Magazine was all about potatoes. How can that be bad?
It was hard to decide which recipe to make! I went with the baked potatoes in the end as I find it hard to resist any recipe with feta in it (feta and potatoes!).
Sadly, I’m afraid I can’t rave on about this dish. It was nice but rather dry. I think if I tried it again I’d mash the potato flesh with a bit of butter before adding in the rest of the ingredients.
The recipe below has been reduced to serve two people.
Baked Potatoes with Feta and Peas
Serves Two.
Ingredients
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the potatoes side by side on an oven tray and bake for 1 hour until very tender.
2. Meanwhile, put the cheese, garlic, zest, spring onions and parsley into a bowl, mix well and reserve.
3. When the potatoes are cooked, slice the tops off each, scoop out the flesh with a teaspoon, mash it and mix with the cheese mixture, without breaking up the pieces of cheese too much. Use the flesh from the sliced off lids but discard the skin of the tops.
4. Add the peas, mix again, taste, season with salt and pepper and pile the mixture back into the potato shells. Sprinkle well with oil and place back in the oven for 15 minutes until well browned. Remove from the oven and serve. Serves 4-6.
To view the original recipe (Serves 6) please go to Cuisine
It’s cold, it’s rainy and I don’t have to go to work. Today is the perfect soup day.
And for me, soup also means scones. I made cheese and corn scones to go with the pumpkin soup.
Pumpkin Soup
Ingredients
1. Remove seeds and skin from pumpkin. Chop and put into large cooking pot with 3 cups of vegetable stock.
2. Peel and wash potatoes. Cut into chunks and add to the pumpkin and stock mix.
3. Add extra water to the pot until it covers all the ingredients.
4. Sautee garlic and onion at a low heat in a frying pan. Add to soup pot.
5. Boil for about 20 minutes or until the pumpkin and potato are cooked.
6. Remove half of the mixture and mash (with potato masher or blender).
7. Return smooth mixture to the soup pot, stir in.
8. Serve with salt and pepper (tastes good with sour cream).
Cheese and Corn Scones
Thanks to the Edmonds Cook Book for the base of this recipe.
Ingredients
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Rub butter into flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add milk, cheese, corn, cayenne pepper and mix quickly to a soft dough with a knife. Lightly knead. Lightly dust an oven tray with flour. Press scone dough out onto this. Cut into 12 even-sized pieces. Leave a 2 cm space between scones. Brush tops with milk, place a small amount of cheese on top. Bake at 220C for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 12.
Tip
Thomas and I and a couple of friends formed two cake making teams. The idea was that each team would make something fun/interesting or excessive within the time allowed.
Our team produced a damn impressive pizza cake (complete in Pizza Hut box!).
The Pizza Cake was good. Banana cake with fruit toppings and white chocolate ‘cheese’. Possibly sacrificed a unified flavour for cosmetic design, but I believe it still worked well.
Their team came up with the equally impressive Chocolate Excess special (chocolate, chocolate, chocolate). It was a feat of structural engineering, two cakes separated by chocolate pillars!
The Chocolate Excess cake – well, it was just excessive. Chocolate cake with baked in chocolate chunks and chocolate peanuts, topped by real chocolate icing, chocolate girders, and chocolate decorations. It was nice, but maybe a tad chocolaty. Best taken in small doses.
It was meant to be a competition but we decided that we all won. After all, we all had cake.