Category: Recipes – A to N

Over the summer holidays I have been browsing through my collection of recipe books and recipe files collected over the years. A good pastime activity can be to see what you can make from the ingredients already in your cupboard. Over the last few weeks one of our favourites has become the Edmond’s Cookbook Coconut Maroons.

125g Flaky Pastry, Raspberry Jam, 2 Egg Whites, 125g sugar, 75g coconut, half a teaspoon almond essence.

Roll out pastry and line patty tins. Place a little raspberry jam in the bottom of each. Whip egg whites until stiff. Fold in sugar and coconut and essence. Place spoonfuls of the mixture in patty tins. Bake about 45mins in a moderate oven at 180 degrees.

I changed the recipe a bit to fit what was in our cupboards using puff pastry (2 sheets), any jam and vanilla essence. I also found with our oven half an hour was more than enough to cook the macaroons.

Last night as the macaroons were in the oven hubby commented that this would be the perfect recipe to make when selling your house as the smell of warm coconut just wafts throughout all the rooms – men will say the darndest things when they are drinking beer.

Every month I like to try and find a new recipe to add to my tried recipe file. This month I found a chocolate chip recipe on Chocolate Chip Biscuits – New Zealand Quick & Easy Recipe at KiwiWise. Lots of people on the site have made them and have various  suggestions about altering the recipe. I reduced the amount of white sugar and chocolate chips (below is the iriginal recipe) and froze my unbaked dough in long thin rolls. It freezes really well and the biscuits still came out lovely once cooked. The cookies spread quite a bit when cooked so I made my rolls with quite a small diameter – about 2cm – I prefer lots of average sized cookies given the amount of butter and sugar that is in the recipe. 

 1 cup of butter (225g), 3/4 cup white sugar, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 2 eggs,2 teaspoons vanilla, 2 1/4 cups plain white flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 cups chocolate chips.

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease an oven tray.

2. Cream the butter, white and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs into the mix one at a time, and then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, then stir into creamed mixture.

3. Fold in the chocolate chips. Place rounded spoonfuls onto the prepared baking tray.

4. Bake until light brown, approximately 8 to 10 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes and then transfer to rack to cool.

Our new recipe for this month was smart shopper smart shopper  meatballs made by replacing breadcrumbs with rolled oats. Hubby didn’t even notice the swap so is still blissfully unaware that his wife is fiddling with his food. A bonus to the recipe is that rolled oats are great for your health Why you should eat: Oats — Healthy Food Guide — News/articles so including them in as many recipes as you can is a positive move.

700g beef mince, 1 large onion finely chopped, half a cup rolled oats, 2tsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 egg, 1 tsp paprika, quarter cup tomato sauce, salt and pepper, 1 can chopped tomatoes, 1 tbsp oregano, quarter cup water.

Mix the mince with onion, rolled oats, Worcestershire sauce, egg, paprika, tomato sauce and 1 tsp salt. Heat oil in frying pan, shape mince mixture into meatballs and fry, carefully browning on all sides. Cook in batches and transfer to a casserole dish when browned.

When all the mince mixture is cooked into meatballs add the flour to the pan and cook for 30 seconds. Add the can of tomatoes, the oregano and a quarter cup of water. Season with half teaspoon salt and bring to a simmer.

Tip the sauce over the meatballs and bake in a preheated 180^oC for 30 minutes.

Our 2 yr old niece has been visiting for the weekend.  She is not one of these fickle eaters – she eats everything you put in front of her and is more than happy to try new food. I needed a quick recipe yesterday for our afternoon tea given the minimal amount of ingredients I had in the cupboard. I pulled out my favourite recipe book – my 100 page plastic leaf folder filled with old favourite recipes or new recipes that look interesting as I have come across them in magazines or newspapers. I found this recipe which I tried for the first time and the result was approved by everyone including the 2 yr old! A very easy recipe for young ones to help with also.  

 Coconut Loaf

2C Flour, 2 tsps baking powder, 1C sugar, 1 ¼ C coconut, 1 ¼ C milk

Line tin with baking paper.

Sift flour and baking powder. Add sugar and coconut. Stir milk into dry ingredients until just dampened without over mixing. Bake at 170^oC for 35 -40 minutes until loaf springs back.

FoodTown Magazine; pg 105; Sept 2004

As part of my holiday library reading one of my books has been the River Cottage Family Cook Book – we love the river cottage programme in our household. When reading recipe books at the moment I am mostly looking for recipes that are relatively cheap to make and don’t take too much fiddling around.  First on my cooking list for 2010 I chose meringues. Growing up my mum would always bake meringues and pavlova but I have always been a buy it girl. I realised last week though as I bit into my first made by me meringue that supermarket meringues have absolutely nothing on homemade meringues. Homemade meringues just melt in your mouth and are seriously addictive . They use very few ingredients and are definitely worth learning to make.  

Meringues

2 large eggs, 100g caster sugar

Separate the eggs – place the whites in a clean bowl. Eggs should be at room temperature. Using an electric beater beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Add half the sugar and continue to beat until you could turn the bowl upside down and nothing would fall out. The mixture should be shiny at this stage. Add the remainder of the sugar, gently folding with a metal spoon. Place teaspoons of mixture onto a tray with baking paper. Place in an oven preheated to 100^oC for 1.5 – 2 hours. Remove from oven and allow meringues to cool completely.

Source: River Cottage Family Cookbook, Fearnley-Whittingstall & Carr, 2005.

Hubby and I have been together for over ten years and not once in that time has he ever allowed me to ‘ruin’ his meat by using it in a casserole! A fortnight ago he finally relented and I made up a version of beef olives for him (never cooked it before but my mother used to cook it for me when I was little). Hubby adored it so much he now requests if I can make it. I like to make it because I get to use my lovely flat leaf parsley that has grown inside our bifold windows in an ice-cream container for the last 6 months.

Ingredients

Home made bread crumbs, finely chopped onion, finely chopped parsley, finely chopped mushrooms, butter, olive oil, schnitzel

Fry onion gently in a little olive oil until softened. Add butter and fry mushrooms and then add breadcrumbs and continue to fry. Add parsley, salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool.

Beat schnitzel so it is a little more flattened. Place a spoonful or two of stuffing on the schnitzel and roll up. Fix with toothpicks (can also tie up with string). It doesn’t matter what size pieces of schnitzel you have – you can make rolls out of tiny pieces of schnitzel to medium pieces. 

Fry the schnitzel rolls quickly just to brown. Place in a casserole and make a gravy in the same pan as you fried the schnitzel rolls. A drop of good red wine will help the flavour of your gravy. Pour gravy over the schnitzel and place in the covered casserole at 180 degrees for about half an hour. Serve with mashed potatoes and vegetables.