Apricots.

At our house we have two massive apricot trees and today we picked a whole lot before the birds could get to them.
Fresh fruit off a tree in your backyard is probably the most wonderful thing ever. My housemate bought some apricots from a shop a couple of weeks ago and they were completely bland compared to the ones we've picked from our backyard.

Heres some things I plan to do with the mass amount we just picked:

Apricot Jam:
Pretty much, same amount of white sugar as you have fruit.
If you have 1kg of fruit you need 1kg of sugar.
Cut up the fruit, remove any stones, cut off any bad bits, then put it in a massive saucepan with the sugar and let it sit for half an hour or so to soften the fruit, then put it on medium heat and let it slowly cook for a few hours, until a little spoonful on a plate sets in a few minutes and you can run your finger through with it keeping shape. (not runny)

Put the jars and lids you're using in another large saucepan with water and let it boil. Remove the jars with tongs and fill them while they're hot. Put the lids on straight away.
If the jars are sterilised enough it will keep in a cupboard for ages. Once its open its worth keeping it in the fridge though, just in case.

Apricot crumble
Some ripe apricots
Caster sugar
Oats
Butter
Plain flour
Brown sugar
Coconut, or flaked almonds, or anything else you'd like to add to the crumble.

Cut up the apricots in halves or quarters and remove the stones, put them in a saucepan with (for about 1 - 2 cups of apricots) 1/4 - 1/3 cup of caster sugar. Put it on a medium heat and let them stew, it should take about 20 minutes depending on how many apricots you use.

Preheat the oven to about 180.
Melt about 60g of butter, add about 2tbsp of brown sugar, about 1 cup of oats, 1/3 cup of flour, and half a handful or anything else you wanna add. If its too dry add more melted butter.
This recipe can easily be doubled or whatever if you're making a really big crumble. Same for the apricot part. And this crumble can be used for anything, I also make apple crumble, apple and raspberry, apple and rhubarb, pear, whatever. And it can make a really easy dessert if you get tinned pie fruit, I love always having a can handy for random dessert-craving. You can make one up in about 15 minutes easy.

Once the apricot is stewed and the crumble is made, put the apricot in a little pie dish or ramekins or whatever you want to use and top it with the crumble. Then bake it for about 15 minutes just until the top is brown and crispy.
Its wonderful with custard, or icecream.

Apricot muffins (makes about 3-4 large ones)
60 g butter, softened
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup oats
Stewed apricots

Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and mix quickly and well, add 1/4 cups of flour and tbsps of milk until its all combined and light and fluffy, then stir in the oats and apricots.
If the mixure is too wet add some more flour, but I like to keep it pretty wet so that they turn out lovely and moist.
Have the oven preheated to 180, put the muffin batter into muffin trays (you can make them big or little, it doesn't really matter.) and bake for about 15 minutes (maybe a bit longer if they're really big, shorter if they're little) until the top is a bit brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Miso soup

This is so so easy and completely delicious. We make it when we just need a quick meal or need to use up vegies in the fridge.
You can find miso paste at supermarkets and probably at asian shops as well.

We used:
Miso paste
Carrot
Brocolli
Pak choy
tofu
mushrooms
wonton wrappers

But really you can put just about anything in it, or even just have it as a broth. (its awesome when you're sick)

I chopped everything up small and cut the wonton wrappers into thirds.
Start off by putting a pot of water to heat, just however much soup you want = how much water to use. I'm pretty sure there's an exact measurement for miso to water ratio, but once the water is hot I just put a big spoonful in and taste it, then add more if needed. It should be quite salty and dark brown with a kind of cloudy look. Pretty much just make it however strong you want.

Then I added the carrots 'cause they take the longest to cook. Then started to heat a frypan with a whole lot of butter (by a whole lot I mean maybe a tbsp or a little more) I fried the tofu and mushrooms in that until they were all browned and delicious.

After the carrots been cooking a few minutes add the broccoli, and then a couple minutes after that add the pak choy. I cut up the little inside leaves of the pak choy into long strips to look nice, and the larger outside leaves in little slices. The leafy bits take the least time to cook, but the white fleshy bit takes a bit longer.

At the very end I added the wonton wrappers. Add them one by one in different spots in the soup or they'll all stick together, that might happen anyway but this will prevent it.

Lastly I added the fried tofu and mushrooms. When I serve it I usually use tongs to divide out the vegies, and then ladel the broth over the top.

Voila!

Tomato macaroni and cheese

This is a very popular meal in my house, and was in my old house too. My mum got the recipe from Jamie Oliver which can be seen here. I just kind of improvised the ingredients and method from seeing my mum make it, hers is better but this one is still pretty fabulous.



Ingredients
One packet of hollow pasta of your choice
About 500ml cream
A jar of pasta sauce or a tin of diced tomatos or a whole lot of diced fresh tomatos
One or two cloves of garlic, crushed or diced really really small
A handful of breadcrumbs
About 2 cups of grated cheese, but more is okay too
Some fresh or dried herbs

Put a large pot of water on to boil and salt it, when its boiling add the whole packet of pasta and stir it occasionally.

While waiting for the water to boil and the pasta to cook begin the prep - crush or finely chop the garlic, open the tin of tomatos and the cream, grate the cheese, get the herbs. Put it all except for about a 1/3-1/2 cup of the cheese (more if you want) in a bowl and mix. Mix the last of the cheese with the breadcrumbs and some more herbs.

Once the pasta is cooked drain it, and then mix in the creamy sauce. If its not saucy enough add some more cream. Put it into a tray and then sprinkle top with the breadcrumb mix.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes at about 180, until the top is a bit brown and the cheese is all melted.

Christmas Feast pt. 3

The salad and gravy.

These were the easiest parts of the meal, but quite essential.

The salad was made up of a base of baby salad leaves, baby spinach leaves, and rocket. I also added tomato and cucumber, and made a dressing of olive oil, salad vinegar, lemon juice and seasoning. Easy as!

The gravy I made from all the juices at the bottom of the pans of chicken, with some chicken stock, butter, and flour added. I put the stock and juices in a saucepan and added butter, then flour and stirred it until it thickened.

And that's it! I don't have a photo of these ones, but heres one of the finished plate!

Christmas Feast pt. 2

The Vegies

I did both roast and boiled vegies, I wanted to do steamed but we don't have a steamer big enough so I just boiled them.

For the roast vegies I just used potatos and sweet potatos and onion, peeled and cut into about the same size chunks (the onion I cut into wedges). I covered them with oil and dried herbs and roasted them at about 200 for half an hour.

This photo is prior to cooking, the one below is the only one I really have after they're cooked, and you can see the rest of the feast along with them!

For the boiled vegies I used brocolli, baby carrots, and snow peas. I peeled the carrots and then cut them in half across, and then each half into 4 pieces. So they were like little carrot sticks. I just cut the little bunches off the broccoli, the really big ones I cut in half so they were all about the same size. The snow peas I de-stringed and then cut in half.
I boiled a massive pot of water and first added the carrot, and let them cook for a few minutes before adding the broccoli, and then a minute or two after that the snowpeas. Then its only a minute or two more til they're all cooked.
I served them just like that, but they'd be really nice with a bit of melted butter and salt.

Christmas Feast pt. 1

Christmas is awesome. And one of my favourite parts is the food. I had my family over for lunch this year and wanted to take full advantage of finally having a large kitchen, and a hungry group of people to feed!

I made roast chicken drumsticks, roast potato and sweet potato, boiled vegies, and salad. And will be writing blogs about them one by one !

Roast Chicken

Chicken drumsticks (Or wings, or whatever)
Plain natural yogurt
Olive oil
Dried herbs
Salt and pepper
Honey
and anything else you'd like to add.



I made up the marinade (everything but the chicken) using about 1 - 1 1/2 cups yogurt, 3-4 tbsp oil, tbsp dried 'mixed herbs' (oregano, thyme, majoram) 1 1/2 tbsp honey and a good amount of salt and pepper and some sprigs of rosemary from the garden which I rolled in my hands a bit to release the oils. But that was for about 25 drumsticks.

I put it all in a massive bowl and marinated it overnight, making sure it was all mixed together and covering all the chicken.

When it came time to cook I layed them all out on a tray so that I could fit as many on the tray as I could, but so they weren't overlapping. I drizzled them with more oil and then roasted them at about 200-220 for at least 35 minutes, until they're nice and brown and crispy on top.
I didn't, but you can turn them over halfway through to cook a bit more evenly and get colour on all sides.

Homemade Vanilla essence

You will need:
Some small jars or bottles
Vanilla pods (at least one per jar)
Vodka

I just found some little jars at a $2 shop, but only because I couldn't find them anywhere else and I was running out of time. You can find some really nice ones on Ebay and other websites.
I got 5 vanilla pods from a nut shop, and a bottle of vodka.


Cut the vanilla pods in half longways, and then in half again (or just to whatever fits well in the jars) and put the pieces in the jars. I had 4 jars and put 1 1/4 pod in each one.

Top up the jar with vodka, and thats it.

I put glad wrap over the tops underneath the lids, and then wrapping paper tied with ribbon. But if the lids are really tight that's not necessary. (except to make it look pretty)

Then you leave them for at least a month, after that they're good to go.
I'm not sure, but I've read that you can just top up the jars with vodka once they're running low, and then leave them a few more weeks for the vanilla to infuse.

I made them for my family for christmas, and they're a perfect gift. And its very easy to make a lot all at once.

Bread

Fresh homemade bread is probably the most wonderful thing ever. I grew up waking up to the smell of fresh bread about every week, and having butter and vegemite on a fresh, still warm from the oven, slice of crusty bread is the best breakfast anyone could want.



I use my mums recipe which (from memory) is as follows:
2 cups plain flour
tsp dried yeast
1/4 cup of oat bran or cornmeal or something of the like
1/4 cup oats or grains of some sort
tbsp oil, or an egg
1/3 cup ish of warm water

Today I didn't use oat bran or anything of the like because we don't have any.

I got a massive bowl and put everything in it, I did a double batch so that I could make one loaf and also a pizza base for dinner, using both an egg and a tbsp of oil.

Then I put the dough hooks in our hand beater and mixed it a bit, and then slowly added water until it formed a dough. You want the dough to be moist, but not too wet or sticky. If you find you add too much water just add a little more flour and knead it in by hand.

Once everything has been incorperated in, clean some bench space and flour it, then put the dough on it and knead it for about 10 minutes, it should become very smooth and stretchy. If you find it too sticky, put some oil on your hands and put a bit extra flour over it and knead the flour in until its not sticky anymore.

Then get another big bowl (or just clean the first one..) and oil it, then put the dough in it and let it rise for as long as you can, until its at least doubled its size. Leave it in a warm spot, I put the oven on for a few minutes while I was kneading it and then turned it off and let it rise in the oven with the door open, but if its a warm day just on a bench or windowsill in the sun will work fine.

After an hour or so check it out, if its become massive knead it down a little again, and then put it into greased tins and let it rise for a bit again. I usually flatten the dough out a little and then roll it up and put the seam at the bottom of the tin, that way you get a pretty perfect end product. If you want you can cut a few slits in the top, or just one down the middle. You can also easily turn it into rolls, just break off handfuls of the dough and roll them up and put them on an oiled tray. (or pretty much do whatever you want, plait it, twist it, make faces out of it..)

Have the oven preheated to 220, and bake the bread it that for 10 minutes, then lower it to 180 and bake for a further 35 minutes. You can tell when its done by tipping it out of the tin and tapping the side, it should be crusty and sound kinda hollow.