Recipe #11: Gingerbread waffle cakes with honeycomb butter and banana

Anyone else been watching Masterchef Australia?? I've been LOVING this show, all the cooking, all the drama, I have no idea what I will be watching when it's over.

Right now I'm settling into the couch to watch the grand finale. Go Poh and Julie!! May the best chef win!

I wasn't very excited about the results of this recipe for waffle cakes. I was looking forward to it, loved the idea and the colour photo in the book. The pancake batter sounds yummy from the recipe -- flavoured with brown sugar, golden syrup, cinnamon, cloves and ginger, it sounds like it will make a pretty nice pancake. It looked pretty when fried up, light, airy and a pretty honey brown.

As for the honeycomb butter, I had no idea where to get honeycomb. I don't have a beehive. I don't know anyone who does. After some googling I find out that it is most likely 'sugar honeycomb', a confection commonly found in Crunchie bars or Violet Crumbles. That makes things easier. I pulverised the insides of a Crunchie bar, ate the chocolate part, and mashed it with butter.

But the result? Really nothing special, I thought. Sorry C&C. The waffle cakes tasted sort of bland and wholemeal bread-ish. The honeycomb butter reminds me of why I generally don't go for compound butters -- there doesn't usually seem to be enough heat in the food to stop them being lukewarm and greasy, at least in part. So overall, a bit of a disappointment. Maybe I did something wrong...



Anyway, that's the last of the sweet recipes in the Brunch chapter. Now it's all eggs and bacon up ahead! Meanwhile, back to the TV for Masterchef Australia finale!

Recipe #10: French toast sandwiches filled with chocolate

I approached this recipe with some amusement after I saw that it was basically French toast filled with a layer of Nutella.

I don't know if Nutella is an Aussie thing or worldwide, but for those that aren't familiar with it, it's a chocolate-flavoured hazelnut sandwich spread popular with kids. (It tastes sort of like Ferrero Rochers, if that helps.) In fairness to the authors, they have two school-aged children and so many of the recipes in this book are probably be designed to be kid-friendly.

Nutella isn't something I grew up with as a kid. My mum didn't believe in chocolate-flavoured foods that were marketed as good for kids. So no Nutella, no Coco Pops (to my eternal disappointment), no Milo (although I discovered this was a great substitute for an afternoon coffee during pregnancy).

Anyway, the dish couldn't be simpler to prepare. I could probably get bubba C to do it by the time she's a preschooler. (She got her first tooth yesterday!! So at this rate, she WILL be a preschooler before we know it.)

Take 2 thick slices of day-old white loaf, one spread with Nutella and sandwiched with the other, dipped in an egg and milk mix and pan fry for a few minutes a side.


Done. Drizzle with maple syrup and eat.

Not a fancy dish, or a pretty one, but it was easy and squidgy and yummy. Chocolatey and syrupy. When it was gone, I wanted another one. I wouldn't think it's the end of the world if bubba C eats something like this occasionally when she's older. Especially if it's with fresh fruit on the side. But I might still say no to the Coco Pops.

Recipe #9: Blueberry pikelets

This recipe is pretty much a basic, standard sort of pancake mix, with egg, flour and milk. I tossed in half a tablespoon of sugar just because it seemed strange that it wasn't called for.

The titular blueberries are simply sprinkled on the batter as it cooks in the pan. C&C do note that in winter they omit the blueberries from these pikelets and serve the dish with poached quinces or rhubarb instead. Being lazy, and having a packet of frozen blueberries in the freezer, I decide to ignore them and just use the frozen ones. I do, however, follow their suggestion to serve with maple syrup and natural yoghurt.

The result is underwhelming. It's not bad, just nothing special; solid and pancakey in texture. The sort of pancake a school kid could make.

The blueberries don't add much value. Using frozen raspberries worked in the previous dish, where they were gently poached in a sugar syrup first. But here, the frozen berries nakedly thrown into the batter have nowhere to hide. But that's my bad.

I'm also not a fan of the natural yoghurt with these pikelets. I thought it would balance the sweetness of the maple syrup, but it just tastes really sour next to the syrup, and sort of wrong. With the yoghurt left out and using poached seasonal fruit instead of the blueberries, this would probably have turned out much nicer!

Recipe #8: Ricotta hotcakes with poached raspberries

With all these sweet recipes, I feel like I'm in the dessert chapter already! Only a few more recipes and we'll be into the eggs, bacon and toast. But how can you not look forward to making a dish that's supposed to look like this:


Unlike your standard sort of pancakes with just milk/flour/egg, these hotcakes are made with a thick batter based on ricotta and natural yoghurt. You scoop and plop rather than pour this sort of batter.

As someone who's always a little more nervous with even basic pan frying than with anything involving slow simmering or stewing, I found that getting the temperature and timing right takes a bit of practice -- even for something as simple as these hotcakes. It's easy to get one that's a bit too brown or flip it before it's quite ready. That said, the batter is fairly forgiving, and even the overbrowned one got eaten while the next one was being cooked!

The hotcakes are accompanied with raspberries cooked briefly in a sugar syrup, which is then reduced to a glossy glaze. I used frozen raspberries without any problems here.

The result? The hotcakes were delicious, fluffy and puffy and thick like pillows. Definitely will make them again! The raspberries were so very sweet, I think I would reduce the sugar a tiny bit - I am a big sweet tooth but even I'm not used to so much sugar at lunchtime! Perhaps a bit of lemon juice in the berries or even some zest in the batter might be nice, to balance the sweetness. Really, these hotcakes are so nice I could just eat them with a bit of butter and maple syrup or lemon and sugar, yum!

Recipe #7: Winter fruit compote

This compote is 'wintery' in the sense that it contains dried, rather than fresh, fruit -- although C&C suggest a variation using seasonal winter fruit such as apples, pears and rhubarb. I opt for the dried fruit version and choose to use raisins, apricots and dates.

In a similar vein to yesterday's fruit compote, the dried fruit is gently simmered in a sugar syrup for about 20 minutes. In this dish, the sugary water is flavoured with cinnamon stick, cardamom and vanilla bean, creating a delicious spicy aroma.

Fruit simmering in pot

The resulting fruit compote is rich, sticky sweet and heavily infused with the flavours of the spices. It's perhaps a touch too sweet, given that the dried fruits are so sweet to begin with, and it would be nice to try the fresh fruit variation.



Besides the fruit compotes, I've been a busy bee in the kitchen yesterday and today, re-stocking the freezer with baby food for bubba C. Yesterday I made chicken stock for today's cook up of braised chicken with leeks, carrot and sweet potato; and potato, spinach, broccoli and pea. The texture of the blended up chicken was a bit freaky but it tasted fine; it will be her first taste of meat. The recipes are from Annabel Karmel's 100 Baby Purees.

Orange stuff = chicken carrot + sweet potato
Green stuff = potato spinach broccoli + pea

I also made an apple and pear puree with cinnamon and another vegie dish of sweet potato, spinach and pea. Looking forward to seeing what she thinks of these new dishes!

Recipe #6: Fruit compote

Given that I'm working my way through the brunch (breakfast-lunch) chapter at the moment, I had a truly embarrassing breakfast this morning -- Maggi 2-minute noodles. No morning coffee, no orange juice or anything, just instant noodles.

I can't blame bubba C for this; rather, I defrosted our fridge/freezer last night, having given away or used up all the food, and woke up this morning with nothing in the fridge but a pack of batteries and 10 cans of Pepsi Max.

This particular brand of instant noodles has a special place in my memory. I wasn't allowed much junk food as a kid and when I first ate these noodles at my boyfriend's house at the age of about 20, I thought Wow, what are these tasty things!! So good! I practically lived on them while studying for uni exams, and when I moved out with my then boyfriend (now husband) at the age of 22 they were the entirety of my cooking repertoire. (I wish I was kidding! I was too lazy to learn to cook while living at home.)

Luckily, things have moved on since then, and after a trip to the shops and with C down for her afternoon nap, I'm sitting here eating a truly indulgent breakfast (plus morning coffee) at 3PM. This recipe calls for fresh seasonal fruit to be gently simmered in saffron-spiked sugar syrup for about 20 minutes. I used apples and pears, with a handful of sultanas for colour. Topped with yoghurt and muesli, it is just delicious. Very sweet -- not an everyday brekky! -- but very yummy.

Recipe #5: Grilled pears with ricotta and honey

It's Sunday and unsurprisingly, I still have no peaches for this recipe "Grilled peaches with goat's curd and honey". All I have are small, hard, unappetising-looking green pears. Not a promising substitute for gloriously sun-ripened, juicy sweet peaches bought in the middle of January. I don't have goat's curd either, I bought ricotta instead (as suggested by the recipe). Random supermarket ricotta, too.

I am not hopeful.

I peeled and quartered the pears, sprinkled on a smidge of sugar and a few drops of lemon juice, and put them under the grill (the recipe implies grilling under an oven grill, not grilled in the sense of atop a barbecue style grill pan). Some 10 or 15 minutes later, they come out soft and lightly burnished.

Topped with ricotta and the apparently ubiquitous honey, the pears are pretty good. Yum. A pretty big improvement for sure -- sweet, juicy and warm. Maybe not a "decadent breakfast", as C&C promise the grilled peaches to be, but definitely a nice one. The ricotta adds a complementary bland creaminess. I don't know what goat's curd is (I have goat's cheese, but presumably that's not it) but I guess that would probably be good too. Can't wait to try this with midsummer peaches!

No peaches...

The next breakfast recipe is supposed to be grilled peaches, but it's July (winter) so obviously the only peaches are out of a tin. I thought I'd substitute pears, but in the meantime I'm sitting in front of a big bowl of the apricot and almond muesli from day 1 with a ridiculous amount of Dairy Farmers cheesecake flavoured yoghurt and honey.


I made a big box of the muesli, as per C&C's suggestion. So the pears will have to wait till later.

Unrelated to food, my little girl is 6 months old today! I can't believe half the year has gone sooooo quickly. At her 6 month weigh in and checkup yesterday I saw a couple with a newborn and thought wow, I can't even remember C being so little. But she was little - born at 37 weeks and weighing 2.6 kg. Yesterday she weighed in at 7.2 kg!

Six months is such a cute age with lots of huge smiles, rolling over, and grabbing at everything and shoving it into her mouth. Love it! Can't wait to see what the next six months will bring.

Recipe #4: Moroccan spiced breakfast couscous

In contrast to yesterday's hearty porridge and stewed fruit, today's breakfast recipe is light and delicate, and a little unusual -- a sweet couscous made very simply by bringing orange juice to a simmer with a little sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, and pouring over a small portion of couscous.

It makes a light and fluffy dish, served with yoghurt and honey and topped with flaked almonds. Could have done with some raisins or something though... C&C suggest serving it with poached or stewed fruit, so that might be the go next time.

I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember the last time I've tried couscous even in its savoury form. I think I tried it once, at a restaurant, thought it tasted of nothing and never tried it again. But this delicate little dish has made me want to try making couscous with other things. Pine nuts, sultanas, parsley and lemon... I guess? If this sounds unremarkable, I should add that until recently, I've always been quite an unadventurous eater. One of the things I hope to get out of this project is to try things I would otherwise never have given a go!

Recipe #3: Porridge with stewed apple, raisins and honey

Porridge is perfect for winter mornings when you need a warming start to the day.
- ITK, page 7

I haven't eaten porridge or stewed apples since I was probably about 10, let alone attempted to make it. I have cooked stewed apples at least a few times recently -- to make baby food for my (almost) 6 month old. (Pureed apple seems to go down a treat with pretty much anything else. Apple and carrots are a particular favourite.)

But it is mid-winter in Melbourne and I could do with a warming start to the day, especially as it is 11am by the time I get bubba C down to sleep and have a chance to shower let alone cook breakfast.

Luckily, it's not demanding stuff -- stew some sliced apples with raisins and a touch of cinnamon until soft and juicy, and cook the oats with milk and water. Reminds me of cooking risotto, except quicker and without nearly as much stirring.

The porridge is warming, filling and sweet with the stewed fruit. A comforting and homely breakfast (or lunch), the sort of thing mum would have made for me when I was little.

Index of completed recipes

I thought I'd try be organised from the start and make an index of completed recipes, as follows:

Brunch
1. Apricot and almond muesli
2. Bircher muesli
3. Porridge with stewed apple, raisins and honey
4. Moroccan spiced breakfast couscous
5. Grilled pears with ricotta and honey
6. Fruit compote
7. Winter fruit compote
8. Ricotta hotcakes with poached raspberries
9. Blueberry pikelets
10. French toast sandwiches filled with chocolate
11. Gingerbread waffle cakes with honeycomb butter and banana

Note on variations:
Some of the recipes list variations underneath. These are pretty simple ones -- for example, a recipe for chicken and asparagus risotto lists "chicken and pea risotto" and chicken and mushroom risotto" as variations; these call for substituting peas or mushrooms for the asparagus. I'm going to leave the variations as optional in this project.
I don't know whether the promise of "more than 1000 recipes" includes the variations. I haven't counted all the recipes in the book! In any case, even without the variations this project will take a good long time to complete!

Recipe #2: Bircher muesli

With the sort of over-enthusiasm that usually accompanies a new project, I decided to follow the breakfast muesli with recipe #2, also muesli, for lunch.

This one called for oats, sultanas and flaked almonds to be marinated overnight in milk and natural yoghurt, then topped with fruit prior to serving. As suggested, I served it topped with grated apple, sliced banana, berries (I warmed some frozen raspberries and blueberries on the stove with a dash of water and a little sugar, yum!) and honey.

The dish was moist and very sweet -- and really filling! I didn't really need so much honey, the grated apple was already really sweet. Haven't had bircher muesli before so I don't know how this compares, but it was pretty good if you like your muesli soft and moist. Good, but I did prefer the drier chewier (and lower effort, lazy me!) muesli from the first recipe.

Thanks to my talented husband for taking the photos, he has a day off from work today. He had a mouthful of both my brekky and lunch today, before scoffing down the leftover spaghetti and meatballs I made last night. He's not really a muesli person (although he thought the bircher stuff was quite alright). Typical man. He will have to wait till the bacon and eggs part of this chapter I guess!

Recipe #1: Apricot and almond muesli

To kick off the cooking project, a recipe that requires no cooking (unless you counting toasting the almonds). It's the first recipe in ITK, and the first in the Brunch chapter.

It's super easy and all I had to do was toss together some rolled oats, chopped dried apricots, chopped toasted almond slivers, and sultanas. The recipe also calls for "bran", but I couldn't find anything by that description at Coles (except All Bran, which I didn't really want in my muesli!) so I left it out. I made the recipe as stated, tasted it, then added a LOT more apricots and sultanas to make it fruitier.

I ate it with yoghurt and a good drizzle of honey. Tasted great, a nice change from my usual bowl of Special K for brekky!

A couple more things...

Just realised I didn't say why I picked this particular book! I guess because it covers a broad range of dishes (e.g. not just desserts, or just one style of cooking), is suited to the home cook and doesn't appear to have anything crazy or impossible in terms of ingredients or techniques. So hopefully, a good combination of challenging but do-able.

Also, I should say that I don't plan to necessarily follow recipes slavishly or to the letter, I might add or substitute ingredients if necessary, alter a technique or cooking time if needed, especially when I'm familiar with the type of dish (such as pasta, stir-fries).

ETA: One more thing... I am allergic to prawns, unfortunately. So they will have to be substituted or omitted as appropriate.

Introduction

Hi! I'm Lisa and this is my blog about my new project -- attempting to cook my way through In the Kitchen, a cookbook by Allan Campion and Michele Curtis.

About me
I'm a 26 year old Melbourne girl, happily married to my dear husband (hereafter DH) and mum to a gorgeous six month old, hereafter Bubba C. I enjoy cooking but am not a super confident cook and would really like to improve my skills! Currently I'm on maternity leave, planning to return to work part time next year, so it seems like a good time to embark on a crazy ambitious cooking project (in between the demands of being a new mum of course!)

About the book
In the Kitchen (ITK), pictured below, is a hefty brick of a cookbook by Australian chefs and food writers Campion and Curtis (hereafter C&C). It contains, according to the cover sticker, "more than 1000 recipes for every day". Comprehensive in nature, the chapters range from brunches and appetisers to pastas, roasts, slow cooked dishes, desserts and cakes. The style is more or less modern Australian home cooking.

The book contains 20 chapters, of which 17 (in bold) have recipes:

Intro
Brunch
Starters
Soups
Pasta + polenta
Rice + noodles
Everyday dinners
Barbies
Roasts
Slow cooking
Curries and tagines
Vegies
Salads + dressings
Sauces + preserves
Pastry
Desserts + puddings
Cakes
Biscuits + slices
Lunchbox ideas
Notes

(For you non Aussies, barbies = barbecue; biscuits = cookies, brunch = breakfast + lunch, vegies = vegetables but that's probably pretty obvious!)












The project
My plan is to cook my way through the book one recipe at a time, from cover to cover.

Why this project?

• To improve my cooking skills. As a new wife and mum I imagine I will be cooking a lot of family meals in the years to come (not that husbands should not cook, they should! but at the moment I am the one staying home and later on will probably work part time, so will likely do a lot of the cooking!) so it will be good to become more confident and skilled.
  
• To challenge myself to try new things (both cooking and eating!)
• For fun!
  
• I was inspired by similar cooking blogs such as the Julie/Julia Project and Sarah Discovers How to Eat (in which the authors cooked through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, respectively). There are a bunch of similar projects that can be found at Cooking the Books.

Why cook through the recipes in order?
I thought this would be a good way to learn, having it structured like a cooking class. I can't just pick and choose things that are easy or that I already know how to do.
It does mean that it will take a long time, because I won't be cooking exclusively from this book (can't have six weeks of soup, or cake... hmmm...). But that's ok. It also means it will be a long time before the desserts!
The only other potential problems I can foresee are that ingredients may be out of season (in which case I'll just have to substitute, or something) or that we will end up eating soup in summer (will try to avoid, this is DH's pet hate!) and salads in winter (not a big deal). Hopefully it willl all go well! Anyway what a long introduction, time to get started I think!