Making your own Ravioli

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I have a new toy…

A lovely new ravioli cutter.

Ravioli I love, but the frozen bought stuff hurts. My belly is never happy after I eat it, so I stopped years and years ago. It wasn’t worth the pain, and the taste was always such a disappointment. The kind of dinner that seemed like a good idea at the time, and then nothing but sore tummy and oh whose idea was this anyway?

After finding this new little toy and making our own though, oh happy belly… It’s light, it’s tasty, and it screams eat me now and perhaps a little glass of red on the side.

Pasta

550 gms Fine semolina flour

300 mls water (approx)

Knead dough until a lovely elastic consistency. It should be a smooth ball of dough.

Next, cut off small portions, and feed into the pasta machine. Flatten and thining out, (we went to level 4).

Ravioli Mixture

1 red capsicum (pepper) finely diced

1 small block of fetta crumbled

Lightly cook the capsicum in a little olive oil, just for a few minutes until soft. Add the fetta, mix well.

Placing one long strip on the bottom and then dropping small spoonfuls of mixture evenly spaced between. Another long strip of pasta over the top and with my new cutting toy… hey presto!

Serve with a simple sauce. Olive oil, garlic, canned tomatoes, ripped up fresh basil, a little salt and serve with grated parmesan.

As I have said with my other hand made pasta dishes, (orechiette and pici) keep the sauce simple. All the taste and love is in the pasta you have made. Don’t complicate it, and let the sauce be the accompaniment to the love you can taste in the pasta.

* If you don’t have a pasta machine, the same results can easily be done with a simple rolling pin…and if no rolling pin, a glass bottle will do the trick as well.

wind ups

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This is one of my favourite things in my kitchen. My little wind up radio and torch. No batteries needed, and no plug in. All I need is a little winding arm action, and my radio will play. It also has a quite powerful torch. If I am waiting for a pot to boil or waiting for the toaster to pop, one minute of winding action will give me quite a long time of radio play (I haven’t actually timed how long). No cords to be had and I can take easily where ever I am. The beam is strong enough for all our needs, (I’m not hunting rabbits though.)

The Monkeys wanted to make this their own, and I didn’t really want to share as much as they wanted me to, so they in turn got their own windups.

The penguin is a great kids present. All kids love torches, and again no batteries. Just a little hand pumping action that can easily be done by Monkey Boy, pumping side gets tucked away and let there be light.

Little Monkeys torch is much smaller, but probably more powerful than the penguin. It’s small, the windup handle tucks away, and it has three options for the beam. (flash continuous, slow and fast.)

Chocolate Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread

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Mr Chocolate bought this lovely, sumptuous book awhile ago. Adventures with Chocolate, by Paul.A.Young has so many recipes that you just turn page after page thinking wow, I wonder what that tastes like. The photography is quite dark and alluring.

This recipe caught my eye, as I love all the ingredients and together who knew what taste sensations would happen. I did change it just a little as I like to cook to my tastes. Selfish perhaps… but I want to like what I am making. So a tweaked version of the original.

Chocolate Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread

100gms chopped uncrystallised ginger

100gms raisins

2 tps ground cardamom

zest and juice of one orange

100gms dark muscavado sugar

200ml strong black tea

2 beaten eggs

200gms S/R flour

100gms partially melted dark chocolate (70%)

Ginger, raisins,cardamom,sugar, orange and tea all in a bowl together and let soak over night. Next day add 2 beaten eggs to fruit mixture, and fold in flour. Then fold in melted chocolate. Bake at 160C for approx 1 1/2 hours. Cool in cake tin and then turn out to rack.

Verdict… I don’t know. It was tasty, but was it delicious?… It was like all the ingredients were vying for attention. The ginger was jumping up and yelling hey look at me! The chocolate wanted to be the star, and the raisins wanted everyone to talk about them. I was going to make it again and tweak it some more, but just couldn’t decide how I could make it better, (maybe I couldn’t?).

If anyone has any suggestions, I would be very interested to hear them.

alpaca wool

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This is Diego. He’s an alpaca and lives with my mum. Alpacas are delightfully inquisitive creatures that originate from South America. He likes to watch people garden, snack on plants he shouldn’t and he also has the most wonderful soft wool.

This is Diego’s little mate Alfalfa, also provider of oh so soft wool. Shorn like a sheep, they produce quite a lot of wool from a yearly shearing.

Alfalfa’s wool spun and ready to be knitted.

Knitted into a warm soft hat for Monkey Boy.

My new favourite Pizza

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Pizza is always a favourite in this household. Usually a weekly occurrence as without it everyone gets a little toey, and I try and keep the peace.  I wanted something different though, I wanted to stray into unchartered waters. I wanted a different sensation when I chomped down on the weekly favourite. Find it I did. My mouth was happy. My taste buds were saying oh yeaaahh. My brain was saying why the hell didn’t you stray before hand?

My new favourite pizza topping. A little Middle Eastern inspired, and making use of the Labneh.

Dough

3 tsp dried yeast

1 tsp sugar

mix together with 200 mls luke warm water- leave until froths (approx 20 mins)

600gms cups strong flour

1 tsp salt

Mix together in a bowl and slowly add the yeast liquid, mixing as you go. Add

4 tbs olive oil

When combined, knead for approx 10 minutes until, dough is elastic. Leave for 1 hour or until dough has double in size.

Light knead again, and divide into 8 balls. Flatten, and dough is ready to be rolled out, or if you are feeling extra lazy- hand stretch it. (Rustic is good.) If there is too much dough, simply roll balls and freeze until next time.

Topping

english spinach

pinenuts

garlic

mozzerella

olive oil

labneh

cumin

Cook up good size bunch of english spinach, squeeze out excess liquid and leave. Once  you have flattened the dough, spread a really small amount of mozzerella, scatter cooked spinach, and add some finely chopped garlic. Scatter pinenuts, dust with a little cumin and cook in oven at 220C until golden. Add dollops of Labneh, and drizzle with olive oil.

Eat with GUSTO.

The Monkeys were not going to go for the spinach on their pizzas though, so a Monkey friendly one was made as well. Utter silence, except for …”mmm, slurp, mmm…” Easy small kid dinner. (Tomatoes, salami, mozzerella, they don’t want excitement when it comes to their Monkey pizzas.)

Blue Mountains

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The Blue Mountains are just west of Sydney, and an easy day trip or weekend away. The area is full of eucalyptus trees which produce droplets of oil, which then combined with water vapour and dust particles transmit a blue tinged light… hence the name Blue Mountains.

It is a World Heritage listed National Park, and full of great walks and look outs. I have lots of happy memories of being very weary after walking all day and tramping through the bush.

My Nana lives just 1 minutes walk from here.

Katoomba is a town within the Blue Mountains, and here are two wonderful reasons to visit it, (other than to visit my Nana and go bush walking of course).

Organic sourdough shop. Open 7 days a week from 6am, I got there about 6.30am, the sun still not yet up, and the cold winter streets deserted. I head towards the bakery, a 200 metre walk from where we are staying, and the smell hits me. There is nothing, absolutely nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread hitting your nostrils first thing on a cold mountain morning. The smell promises warmth, and happiness. How could you not but smile when smelling that?

Handmade chocolate shop. Now I am a big advocate of shopping locally, (also a big advocate of chocolate.) supporting my local businesses, like to consider food miles etc. It doesn’t get much better than this. Food miles= about two metres. Made on premises, and you can watch them through the glassed wall. Oh I had my eye on that tempering machine, yes I did…yes I did.

Vanilla Plum Trifle

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How did this Battenburg Cake over at Zeb Bakes become this Vanilla Plum Trifle?

Well as is happens, I had really strong intentions of giving the Batternburg a crack. I saw it, I had never heard of it, it, it looked tricky and I wanted to play. I thought the combination of vanilla and plum for the cakes would be nice. I also thought the vivid colour of my frozen summer plums would transcend in to the cake just a little more than it did. I also thought I had caster sugar.

Result?… A cake that had raw sugar sticking out in it, and a rather murky plum cake colour that did not contrast at all with the vanilla side. What to do?

Ditch it and eat the cake?… Or, as my mind went tickity tock. I thought Plum puree red and delicious…. vanilla mixed with a little mascarpone and dunk it all in cake…. Done. The deal was sealed and Mr Battenburg will have to wait until another day. This was given a 10/10 from Mr Chocolate, and he NEVVVERRR gives 10/10. It didn’t even have chocolate in it.

Vanilla Plum Trifle

chopped up pieces of plain vanilla cake

1 1/2 cup plum puree

250gms mascarpone

1 tps vanilla

1/2 cup icing sugar

strawberries

In bowl place chopped up pieces of cake, and then drizzle some of the plum puree over  the cake. Whisk together the mascarpone, icing sugar and vanilla. In between the cake and plum puree, dab spoonfuls of the mascarpone mixture. Keep laying the three componants until all used up and then place strawberries on top to fill in any gaps. Let sit in the fridge for a few hours to infuse the flavours.

Vanilla Cake

200gms softened butter

200 gms sugar

Cream these two together. Add

3 beaten eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

When mixed well, add

200 gms s/r flour

cook in lined baking tray at 180 C until golden.

Then cut into small squares.

locavore biodynamic wine

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I hadn’t bought a bottle of wine for a very long time, but Friday night I had decided was wine night, (well this Friday night was anyway.) I needed some antioxidants!

Walking in to the local bottle shop, they had a really big array of wines to choose from. Gosh, how to choose? Its been so long since I had a vague clue as to what was good and what wasn’t. That clue had long since flown out the door, and left with my choices being white or red?

G’day, do you have any organic, biodynamic and or local wines here?

The assistant sprang in to action, and explained he didn’t usually work there but he thought there were a few that would fit my description. Flying all around the shop, he could only come up with one locally produced one (within 160kms). He offered to ring the owner who had stepped out for a minute to ask him if there were any others, but I said that was fine and kept perusing. Apparently requests such as mine only come in about every 1:1000, so demand wasn’t high.

The owner came back and straight away directed me to a biodynamic locally produced family run winery. He was very knowlodgable and didn’t even take a second blink when I repeated my request of what I wanted.

I like that… Not feeling like a complete leper all the time with my requests.

Wine bought ‘Wild White’. Produced by Krinklewood Biodynamic Vineyard– located in the Hunter Valley.

Taste- pretty darn good. I’m no wine expert, but I like it when I like it and don’t when I don’t. I’m complicated like that. I think it would have gone perfectly with a cheese platter or as we did with a light dinner.

I would love to know how much of a market there is out there for these sorts of wines. Organic, biodynamic, or locally produced. Is it something that crosses peoples minds when they are purchasing? Availability? At $18 a bottle it’s not the cheapest of bottles available but certainly not expensive either. And for a person that very rarely buys wines, I am more than happy to support biodynamic farming practices within my locavore area for an infrequent bottle buying.

Embracing the Eastern goddess

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Labneh and Rose Apple Jelly.

I was given this cookbook (Crazy Water Pickled Lemons) awhile ago. It’s a tantilizing mix of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and North African cooking. At the time I thought it was pretty but  thought a lot of the recipes were above me. All in the too hard basket, both with methods and ingredients. Then I revisited and woah mama! Of course I can cook out of this! Well I can at least hack a few recipes up and mama-fy them a bit.

First up Labneh. Labneh is a Lebanese Cream cheese, that has the taste of yoghurt but texture of cream cheese and couldn’t be easier to make. So easy you may just have to slap yourself  to believe, just how simple it really is.

First up make some yoghurt, or if you couldn’t be bothered…. buy it, a good natural one. Yoghurt is pretty easy to make though. Christine @ Slow Living Essentials has posted two great methods on making yoghurt. I do the quicker boil the kettle one. (and just a note, homemade yoghurt really is so much better than the bought stuff. No added ‘things’, it’s a LOT cheaper, its easy to make, and your cutting down on all those plastic tubs. Easy to flavour as you like.)

Back to the Labneh. Yoghurt made, and it’s time to to put it in a sieve and some muslin, and leave it for 12-24 hours. My book said for 24 hours, I did it for 12- depends on how quickly the liquid drains out of the yoghurt. Unwrap the muslin and voila! Labneh.

Next step in embracing my inner middle eastern goddess was Rose Apple Jelly. Sounding exquisite, and the colour divine, thursday night was jelly making night. (Naturally I was going to hack the recipe up and make it simpler.)

First roughly chop up your apples, seeds, core, skins and all. Cook it up until soft (approx 40 mins) then carefully drain off the liquid into another pot. Now the recipe did say to leave it for 12 hours in a jelly bag (or muslin) but I didn’t have that time so did it the quick way.

For every 600mls of liquid, add 375grams of sugar. Cook up along with juice of 1/2 lemon and 1 long strip of lemon peel. Cook until gels on small cold saucer. Add rose water to taste. (The original recipe asked for rose petals- with no access to lovely roses, I was going to have to skip that bit too. If by chance you would like to make your own rose water, Dana at  Fleur De Sel posted on making it.

Result? A really delicately flavoured, gorgeously coloured jelly. I hadn’t made jelly before and kept taking it up to the light and letting it sparkle.

Sparkle it did.

Capturing winter sun in a jar

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Winter sun can be so uplifting to the spirits when its cold outside. A face tilted towards the sun through a glass window. Body warming against a sheltered brick wall. There are pockets of warmth in my apartment that are just perfect for capturing that winter sun.

Little Monkeys pillow, when he goes down for a day time nap. His pillow has been soaking up the morning warmth already for him to lay his head on. Makes me want to snuggle right down with him.

Coat stand, standing holding all of our jackets. When ever I go to put one on during the day, a little bit of winter wonder has been stored in there. Warming my back and a soft ahhh slipping from my mouth.

The dining table, just about time I usually eat some lunch, that soft winter sun is waiting for me. Sunny fingers out stretched, waiting to draw me in.

This mandarin marmalade drew me. Its sunny colour, and tang of sweet citrus, just begging for a little sourdough to accompany it.

Mandarin Marmalade

1.3 kilos skinned and segmented manderines

800mls water

Cooked up until soft (approx 1/2 an hour). Then wizzed up in a hand held mixer.

1 kilo sugar

1 large strip of lemon peel

Cooked up, and reduced until thickens. (Saucer test- put in freezer, then ladle a little jam on, if thickens and wrinkles then its ready.)

Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal.

* If you are not so keen on marmalade but like jam, this could be a good one. It doesn’t have the citrus tartness that normal marmalades do, due to their skins not being cooked up in the batch. The Monkeys loved this, and you know most kids don’t go for marmalade. It sits happily in between.

Sourdough Oat Cakes

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Are they a pancake or are they a pikelet? Or a they simply an oat cake? I started making pancakes with oats in them quite awhile ago.

1/ It was something to do with left over porridge. (as an alternative to my grandmothers staple ‘mock brains‘).

2/ I added a lower glycemic index to the old pancake.

3/ I thought it was a bit tastier and more substantial than a traditional pancake recipe.

Not that I don’t love the traditional kind, but I am always hungry not long after, and with the added oats it keeps The Monkeys going longer as well. One day while talking to a Scottish friend, these little pancakes came up. She said that she had always made them and back home she called them oat cakes. There you go… oat cakes sounds much more appealing than porridge pancakes.

Now seeing as though I was well and truly aboard the sourdough train, I thought lets see what happens if I add some starter. I had originally wanted to make sourdough crumpets, but didn’t have any rings to cook in them so this was somewhere between. I was mixing it all up and Mr Chocolate went past asking what I was making… just playing. Seeing what will happen if I add this and this and then do this…

Verdict?

Deeelicious! Well thats what Monkey Boy said anyway. I’m sure the Little Monkey meant it too with his cheeks stuffed full like a squirrel. My oat cakes will now always be sourdough oatcakes. Gobbled up with in minutes.

Sourdough oatcakes

1 cup sourdough starter

1 cup plain flour

1 cup milk

50 gms butter

2/3 cup whole oats

1/2 tps bicarb soda

Put butter and oats in microwave together, (butter on top) and heat till melted. Add starter, flour, milk, buttery oats to mixer (I used a dough hook) and mix until well combined. Fold in bicarb soda and let sit for 3 hours in warm spot. Spoon into frying pan and cook as you would pancakes.