Making Fresh Egg Pasta and Sung Choi Bao

Sung Choi Bao is more commonly spelt San Choy Bow is a Chinese dish of mince and vegetables which you serve and eat wrapped in lettuce leaf cups. I hadn't planned on making this today but had some beef mince that needed cooking, some left over water chestnuts, shallots, ginger, garlic, lettuce and Chinese cabbage so this came to mind. This dish is more commonly made with pork mince but was still nice with beef. I based my recipe loosely on Kylie Kwong's but omitted and added some ingredients. The mince and vegetables are flavoured with sherry or shao hsing wine (Chinese Cooking Wine also known as shaoxing, found in Asian Supermarkets), sugar and oyster sauce. A quick, enjoyable, healthy lunch.

How to make fresh egg pasta:

1. The basic rule is 1 egg per 100g of plain flour. Most recipes recommend using 00 flour but I have found regular plain flour works fine. 300g of flour and 3 eggs serves around 4 people. Place the flour in a well shape on bench and add eggs to well.

2. Gradually work the eggs and flour together to form a dough. You can add a little water if it is too dry or a little flour if too moist. Knead the dough for at least 5 minutes and up to 15 minutes. It needs to be really smooth. It helps if you throw the ball of dough at the bench a few times as well. A great thing to make if you need to get a bit of emotion out or just feel like an upper body work out!!

3. Once you have a nice smooth dough form it into a disc shape and flour lightly before wrapping in Gladwrap and refrigerating for 30 minutes. Do not leave it too much longer than this as it tends to be harder to roll out.

4. Remove dough from fridge and break into large orange sized pieces. Roll out or flatten with palm of hand into 1cm thick rectangles. Cover remaining pieces until ready to roll out. You can use a rolling pin to roll into thin sheets but a pasta maker makes it much easier. Lightly flour the machine and the dough as necessary. You need to feed the dough through on the thickest setting twice then fold onto itself, turn 90 degrees and feed through again. Do this several times on the thickest setting and then reduce the setting by one and feed dough through smaller setting twice (no need to fold on itself and turn 90 degrees from this stage). Repeat this process reducing the setting thickness until desired thickness is reached.

5. Cut pasta sheets into desired lengths. About 30cm for spaghetti or fettucine.

6. Feed the pasta sheets through the pasta maker spaghetti attachment or roll sheets and cut using a knife.

7. Place the spaghetti on wire racks covered in baking paper and flour lightly.

8. When you have finished making all the spaghetti allow to dry for about an hour and then flour lightly again and form loose nests which can be stored in an air tight container or zip lock bag in the refrigerator until ready to cook. Fresh pasta does not tend to store well and after a day or two can turn grey in colour. Some people leave out to dry for 24 hours but I personally wouldn't feel comfortable doing this due to the raw eggs. The best idea is to make and cook on the same day.

9. If you haven't had a go at making fresh pasta DO! It is messy and fun and really only takes an hour to do. The kids love helping too.

Fresh pasta cooks in just a couple of minutes and has a much nicer texture and flavour to the dried supermarket pasta.

I'll be using mine to try Donna Hay's Crispy Pancetta and Chilli Pasta tonight so stay tuned!

Cumin Roasted Lamb with Pumpkin Mash

Another successful Donna Hay recipe! A really simple dinner of lamb rack rubbed with sea salt, cracked pepper and cumin seeds (ground together in mortar and pestle) served with a creamy mash of pumpkin (and a little potato) seasoned with cumin and coriander and topped off with a squeeze of lemon. Really fresh, clean flavours that worked well together. Would make again. Rating 8 out of 10.

Chocolate Layer Cake

A very yummy and easy choclate cake recipe:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tspns baking soda
1 1/2 tspns baking powder
1/4 tspn salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup oil (canola or light olive oil)
2 tspns vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Grease and dust two 22cm layer cake pans with cocoa.
In large bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir with wire whisk until blended. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla and beat well with wire whisk or electric mixer until combined, about 2 mins. Stir boiling water into cake batter.
Pour thin batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 30-35 mins or until cake pulls away from sides of pan, top springs back when lightly touched and a toothpick or skewer inserted into centre comes out clean.
Cool for 5 mins in pan and then remove from pans and cool completely on wire racks.
Fill and frost with Chocolate Frosting. I cheated and used the chocolate flavoured icing mix from supermarket which was very nice.
ENJOY!

Salt and Pepper Squid and Potato, Bacon and Pea Soup

Yum, yum, yum and YUM!!!!

Finally I have conquered the dreaded squid! Determined to make successful Salt and Pepper Squid I went to the fish markets and bought whole fresh squid as I had heard the squid tubes are often from Asia and have been frozen so can be tough and chewy. I also bought an oil thermometer as it appears the oil needs to be between 180 and 190 degress Celsius for best results.

I used a Pete Evans recipe I found on the internet which used a mixture of dry roasted black peppercorns, Sichuan peppercorns, salt and dried chillies which were ground and mixed with tempura flour (found in Asian Supermarket).

I have to say I was rather nervous about preparing the squid but it was pretty easy except one ink sack did break making a nice mess! The squid pieces were lightly dusted in the flour mixture before being deep fried in batches for one minute only. They were served with lime wedges and coriander and left us all wanting more!

Rating 8-9 out of 10.

The Donna Hay Bacon, Potato and Pea Soup was really easy to make and full of flavour. Real comfort food which I will definitely make again.
Rating 8 out of 10.

Finally a big Happy Birthday to my 12 year old girl and thankyou for helping make the cupcakes!

Spinach Ravioli with Basil Oil and Veal with Caper Butter

Having quite a few of the ingredients needed for these Donna Hay recipes in my fridge I decided to give them a go. The ravioli was easy to make as it used purchased Gow Gee wrappers and had a simple filling of ricotta, spinach, parmesan, basil and lemon rind. It had a nice light, fresh flavour due to the lemon and basil. One ravioli did lose its filling while cooking which must have been because I didn't wet or press the edges together well enough but the rest of them turned out well. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to get fresh mozarella to serve it with so just used the "processed" type which obviously has a totally different texture. I would like to try the recipe again when I can get to a deli to buy fresh mozarella. Rating 7 out of 10.

The Veal with Caper Butter was also very easy and full of flavour. Lemon, capers, parsley and butter....yum....you really can't go wrong! I have decided I am a salted caper convert and like them much better than the capers in vinegar. I have never seen them in the supermarket but they are readily available in delis. I would definitely make this again as an easy, tasty week night meal. Rating 8 out of 10.

Tips for making Gnocchi

After our "not perfect" attempt at making Gnocchi yesterday I have done some research and come up with a few tips that may help:
1. Make sure you use old floury potatoes. Desiree potatoes are perfect and are even better if you keep them in a cool, dry place for a few weeks to age before using.
2. When cooking the potatoes cook until just cooked but still firm. If boiling don't test with skewer too often or they will become water logged. You can bake the potatoes for extra flavour and this also means you won't have to use as much flour as the potatoes will be drier. You can also steam or cook the potatoes in the microwave.
3. When mashing the potatoes use a fork and keep "fluffing" the mix as you go or better still use the coarse side of a grater or the medium sized grating plate of a potato ricer or mouli. Don't let the potatoes form a clump as you grate or rice them. Using a potato ricer or mouli will create a lighter gnocchi than mashing.
4. If you add too much flour your gnocchi will be heavy and tough. If you add too little flour they will disintegrate when cooking. Good idea to try cooking a few pieces and deciding if you need to add more flour before you make the whole batch.
5. Don't over knead the dough as it will make the gnocchi tougher.
6. When you have made the gnocchi shapes place on a baking tray on lightly floured baking paper and cover with a clean, dry tea towel. I think this is where we went wrong...it was a humid, wet day yesterday so the gnocchi continued to get moister as they sat waiting to be cooked. If we had floured the tray and covered the gnocchi it may have helped.
7. If you roll the gnocchi shapes over the back of a fork or roughen up on the side of a grater the sauce will cling to the cooked gnocchi better.
8. If you aren't going to cook the gnocchi straight away place tray in freezer. When frozen place in bags for later use. You can cook the gnocchi from frozen but obviously it will take a little longer to cook.
9. You can add herbs, spinach or ricotta for different flavours and colour. You can also substitute potato with sweet potato or pumpkin.
10. Give it a go and remember....practice makes perfect!

Coconut Cake, Gnocchi with Sauteed Prawns in a Burn't Butter Sauce, and Lemon Souffle

The Donna Hay Coconut Cake was very easy to make, nice and light and had a really nice flavour (as long as you like coconut). Unfortunately in my rush to get it iced before the Cooking Club girls arrived I misread the amount of water to add to the icing and added too much..hence the lack of icing on the cake and the abundance of icing on the plate!!

The gnocchi was also very easy but when it came to cooking it there were a few issues. The first lot cooked beautifully and the resulting dish looked great. This one was made with salmon instead of prawns due to an allergy to shellfish and looked and apparently tasted great.

 

The second attempt shown at the top was also great but then things started to go wrong..the gnocchi was just falling apart and ending up looking more like mush than nice parcels of gnocchi.

Eager to try and work out what was going wrong we tried cooking more with a clean pot of water and tried rolling the gnocchi into balls rather than having blunt cut ends. It still wasn't great. The verdict...the humidity made the gnocchi become moist over time so next time we will try keeping it in the fridge until ready to cook.

Overall though this was a really yummy dish, quite rich due to all the butter and very filling. I will definitely be making gnocchi again and would be keen to try it with some different sauces.

The souffles were a great success...they rose beautifully, in fact so beautifully that they hit the oven shelf above....note to self, remove shelf above tray next time! There was a moment when the oven temperature dropped and they appeared to not be rising but once the temperature reached 180 degrees again all was good. Very yummy and no need to fear the souffle!! Will be keen to try different souffle recipes in the future.

All round a successful day in the kitchen and a great start to the Cooking Club. Well done girls!

Tea-Smoked Duck Breast

Rating: 6-7 out of 10.
This dish was certainly an adventure! The adventure started last week when I had to source some of the more difficult to obtain ingredients. The breasts are smoked over a wonderful mix of Oolong and Jasmine tea leaves (which I found in an Asian supermarket but you could also get at a specialist tea shop), orange zest, dried orange rind (which you can buy but I dried my own by leaving sitting on a plate at room temperature for 4 days) jasmine rice, brown sugar, star anise, sichuan peppercorns (Asian Supermarket, also known as Peppertree Pricklyash) and Cassia Bark (I could have bought this on the internet or had a deli order it in but decided to use Cinnamon Bark instead which I found at the Asian supermarket and has a similar flavour). The smell of the orange and wonderful spices as the duck smoked was really quite amazing.
The duck was topped with a pate, water chestnut and pear ravioli and served with wilted spinach, orange sauce and crispy ginger. The recipe used blood oranges, which are not in season, so I just used normal oranges which meant my sauce wasn't as dark in colour but still very yummy and looked pretty on the plate.
We usually eat our meat well done but I followed the recipe and left the duck medium which meant it was very tender. I think I could have made the skin a bit crispier and rendered the fat a little more but overall it was pretty good. It was a very rich dish but the flavours all worked really well together and even my husband, who is not a great fan of duck or pate, went back for a little more of each! I would descibe it as a clever fusion of French and Asian flavours.
Would I make it again? Probably not as it was a reasonably difficult dish to make (think I had 6 pans on the go at one stage) and to be honest I don't tend to make dishes twice anyway unless they are sensational! If you like duck and want to try something new and challenging definitely give it a go!
Best go and check the Donna Hay Coconut Cake I have baking ready for our first Cooking Club get together today. I am not generally a "baker" as I prefer to cook savoury dishes and have very little will power when it comes to not eating nice food sitting around my kitchen! However, I thought I would give this one a go since Donna Hay is our inspiration this month and her books do contain a lot of desserts and cakes.

An Idea is Born

Having always enjoyed cooking and having a love for trying new foods the thought came to me that others may be interested in joining me on a journey into the world of food. With the main concept being to extend ourselves and challenge ourselves to try new recipes that involve new techniques and new ingredients our Cooking Club has been formed. Six of us meet tomorrow for the first time.
Our first challenge is "Alex Herberts's Potato Gnocchi with Sauteed Prawns in a Burn't Butter Sauce" (Masterchef Australia Cookbook) followed by a Donna Hay Souffle for dessert. Yum! Lets hope we can make it taste as good as it sounds.
For the following month we will be inspired by Donna Hay's cookbook "Seasons". A cookbook full of beautiful pictures and wonderful recipes just waiting to be tried. The plan...to cook as many recipes from the Autumn section as we can and then to meet in one month to discuss our successes, our failures and our favourite recipes.
As a new club I hope it will evolve over time to suit the needs of each member as we all embark on our journey into the world of food!
Already inspired by the idea I tried a new dish a couple of nights ago..."Brent's Top Fifty Salt and Pepper Squid" from the Masterchef Australia Cookbook...my first failure!!!!! The squid was chewy...did I overcook or undercook it, did I not prepare it properly...I don't know!!!! My new personal challenge ...to learn how to cook tender squid!
Tonight's dinner..."Pete Evan's Tea-Smoked Duck Breast", also from the Masterchef Australia Cookbook. Lets hope I have more success with this recipe.