Catching up is an excellent excuse for eating. I’ve been away having numerous catch-ups and visiting some favourite old haunts. London is a favourite old haunt and feels a little like a second home, in no small part because of the many fabulous people living …
Steamed pudding is like a sweet, jammy hug in a bowl. I love it. It’s a special favourite in our little country. I was recently introduced to a New Zealand specialty steamed pudding which is the queen of both steamed puddings and now of my heart…burnt …
Oh, my mouth waters at the merest mention of potstickers! Delicious, plump little morsels, steaming hot and so satisfying. Their real name is Jiaozi, particularly popular during Chinese New Year. In my house, we don’t wait for New Year. They are popular year-round.
I’ve been an enthusiastic consumer for many years now, but a recent convert to making my own. I shied away from DIY potstickers, convinced they would be the kind of fiddly, tricky enterprise that leaves the cook hot, bothered, grumpy and worst of all, without a meal at the end of it.
But trust me, they are quite simple and so rewarding. I find making potstickers pleasantly meditative once I get into the swing of it, letting my thoughts wander while I shape and pinch the little parcels.
You will need:
For the dipping sauce:
Lightly cook the cabbage in boiling water, just until it is softened, so that it is not too aggressive in the final product. Drain and place in a large bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well, using your hands if you’re not too squeamish about it.
Hold a potsticker skin in your palm. Dip your finger in water and run around the edges of the skin. Add one teaspoon of beef mixture to the top half of the skin and fold the other half over it, pressing the edges together.
There is a special way to crimp the edges so they look pretty – this fabulous video does a fantastic job of explaining the whole process; if you want to skip to the crimping technique, it’s 5.05 minutes in.
Once they are ready to cook, heat a little vegetable oil in a non-stick frying pan. And please, do use non-stick. I have learned this the hard way. There is nothing worse than potstickers who take their name far too literally, so well and truly stuck you can’t eat them.
Place the potstickers into the pan and leave for a minute or two, until they are just slightly browned on the bottom. Pour 150 mls warm water into the pan, down the side. Put a lid of the saucepan and let the potstickers steam until cooked, about six minutes. Take the lid off and let the bottoms crisp up for about a minute.
Combine the dipping sauce ingredients and serve with rice and steamed greens.
I was the happy competitor in a baking competition recently. I say ‘happy’ because how could you ever not be happy when you have a genuine excuse to make sweet delicious treats several times over? And the competition was for a great cause too…Good Bitches …
Savoury cheesy beery sauce on toast, that is my delicious experience with Welsh Rarebit to date. And my, this lovely little cheese-on-toast treat is scrumptious.
Hurrah, apples are in season again! This means I can continue my alphabetical journey through New Zealand’s kitchen bible, the Edmonds Cook Book, where I am still languishing somewhat in the apple section of the A recipes.
I’m not going to lie, the idea of making an apple pie did give me a little bit of a start. It’s the making-pastry-from-scratch thing, you see. As a teenager I would blithely tackle this task, and successfully so. A couple of pastry let-downs (or stuck-downs, more accurately) as a young adult, and my confidence was dented.
The apples we are instructed to use for this pie are Granny Smiths. Mouth-puckeringly tart, they are not my first choice for eating alone but they are lovely in this pie. And they have a rather awesome history; cultivated by chance by one Maria Ann (Granny) Smith from a seedling on her property in Tasmania in 1868.
To make this pie you will need:
Heat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.
I started with the pastry, referring to Edmond’s Sweet Shortcrust Pastry recipe. This requires sifting 1 cup plain flour into a bowl and then cutting in 75 grams of butter with a knife, until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. To this, still following instructions, I stirred in 1/4 cup of sugar, an egg yolk and 1 tablespoon water, then mixed to a stiff dough and chilled for half an hour.
I used this time to get the filling ready – it’s really very simple, the apples, 1/2 cup of sugar, butter, flour and ground cloves are all mixed together.
And now, the pastry (cue deep breath in!). Roll the pastry out so that it is slightly larger than the pie dish you are using. The goal is to line the dish sides and top the pie with pastry. So, you need to cut two long strips for the pie sides. As depicted, this went pretty well.
Removing the pastry for the topping from the bench was slightly less successful, hence some strategically placed whipped cream in the photos. Press the pastry strips around the pie dish sides. Spoon the apple filling into the dish and then top with the rest of the pastry, trimming the sides. Brush with water and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake the pie for 25 minutes. If the apples are not quite done after this time, turn the oven down to 180 degrees celsius and bake until the apples are tender. For me, this took and extra five minutes.
I know, I know, vegetables and chocolate. My reflex reaction is ‘blurgh’ too. But bear with me, these brownies are good, contain lots of dark chocolate and are a handy way to use up beetroot if you find yourself needing to do so. Not that I often …
What to do with sage? Make buttery, cheesy sage and cheddar biscuits? Yes please. I’ve found myself with a reasonably plentiful supply of fresh sage, which is a new thing. I have always managed to grow parsley and been left perplexed at how to use the …
I always loved visiting Wales when I lived in the UK, and what’s not to love? Beautiful countryside, that lovely lilting accent and, most importantly, Welsh cakes.
To the uninitiated, these little morsels may present like just another baked good. I promise you, they are so much more. Sugary and dotted with currants, they are gently browned like fat little pancakes on a hot bake stone, which in other words is a whacking great slab of cast iron heated on top of the oven elements.
The secret to the toothsomeness of Welsh cakes lies not just in the sugar, butter and dried fruit, but in the addition of lard. Yes, I too felt a little ill when informed of this fact. But please believe me, it adds a little something wonderful without any taste of fat, leaving the finished product just ever so slightly crisp on the outside, in contrast to the fluffy sweetness inside.
I was very privileged this past weekend to receive one-on-one tuition from a genuine Welsh person, my lovely friend Suze. Not only did she share her bakestone with me, but also her Nan’s welsh cake recipe. Very kindly, Suze also hunted out the required lard, seemingly impossible to find outside of a butchers, which arrived in a slightly piggy-scented white tub.
To learn how to make Welsh cakes a la Suze’s nan, read on…
Ingredients:
Tip the flour, baking powder and pinch of salt into a bowl
Add the butter and lard and rub in with your fingers until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
Mix in the currants, then add the egg and work in together with your hands until you have a soft dough. If it looks a little dry, add the splash of milk.
Lightly flour your bench top. At this point, put your bake stone (or heavy-based pan; I am reliably informed it will work just as well) over a moderate heat.
Roll out the dough to the thickness of your little finger (as demonstrated!). Use a 8cm cookie cutter to make the cakes.
Add a spot of lard to the bake stone and, once melted, cook the cakes in batches. They take about 3 minutes each side to become golden brown, crisp and cooked through – you can observe the colour changing as it cooks through along the side of the Welsh cake.
Sprinkle with caster sugar once cooked. I cannot emphasis enough how delicious they are served all fresh and warm with a good cup of tea. Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus!
What a handsome red cabbage! Or at least, that was my first thought when gifted some of the cabbage overflow from my parents’ bountiful garden. And don’t you agree? And my second thought was coleslaw. Coleslaw, or slaw, has made quite the resurgence of late, I …