Portable food and festival films

Picnics and festival films are together one of my favourite activities associated with summer in Perth - and the weekend was to end with with a viewing of Baaria with some friends. Picking out some tasty looking portable food and adapting one my stock standard salads gave me a nice mix on the Sunday afternoon of trying out new foods and making easy classics.

February GT has a whole section on Zucchinis and things to do with them so decided on the zucchini fritters as they looked like perfect picnic food. I don't know how often I need to make things with zucchini in them before I realise that even when the recipe doesn't mention squeezing the excess moisture out of the zucchinis that it is still a good idea. This was probably the major flaw with this recipe in my opinion however even with the excessively runny mixture which I squeezed the liquid out of as I made the fritters they still turned out pretty well. The combo of dill and mint offset the zucchini nicely to give a lovely fresh summery flavour. Recipe can be found here Zucchini and Dill Fritters.

Chickpea salads are a pretty standard salad in my throw together salad range. They are easy to make and can be varied easily depending on the ingredients in the fridge at the time so I always have a tin of chickpeas in the cupboard to get me half way there to a quick salad. This time I opted for feta, Cherry tomatoes, marinated roasted capsicums which I had made previously, flat leaf parsley, salt and pepper. The marinated capsicum provided all the dressing needed in this case.

To top off the picnic I decided to make a cake - not that common an occurrence for me unless I am on morning tea at work. Belinda Jeffries Mix and Bake has a plethora of amazing looking cakes and one of my girlfriends is a massive advocate of this book. One of her recommended cakes was the Really Beautiful Orange Cake and this is the cake I opted for being much more of a fruit / citrus in my sweets kind of a girl than a chocolate kind of a girl. Unfortunately I missed the part of the recipe that said it needed concentrated orange juice so had to settle for a Beautiful Orange Cake instead but it was still great. The dried cranberries (or Craisens) gave little bursts of flavour to the cake so although the recipe states that these are optional I would highly recommend including them.

Portable Picnic Fare

It was a tasty picnic and a lovely night catching up with friends I hadn't seen in ages! Love these warm summer nights for outdoor activities.

Superbowl and US inspired food

Wow where did Febuary go - wizzed by in a blur of festival and sporting events and as I look back I realise how long it has been since my last post so I better get on to updating my blog.


What better excuse to theme up your weeks eating than a sporting event. The other week it was the NFL superbowl so this inspired a week of eating US style. Monday night during the superbowl it was Ribs and Samuel Adams beers - the perfect way to watch the game - though alas I was going for the Steelers who in the end went down.

Baring this theme in mind on the weekend I got to cracking on making some pickles for our mid week open steak sandwiches. I opted for the Zuni style pickles from the January Gourmet traveller. Made from zucchini and onions they were pickled in a mixture of apple cider vinegar, sugar, mustard powder, mustard seed and turmeric. They looked great and still managed to have some crunch and definitely jazzed up the open steak sandwiches which were also served with semi-caramelised onions.

Recipe can be found here  Zuni Style Pickles

Breakfast in - Eggs and tea

Which tea to have today.........

I am always a fan of a decent breakfast and eating out for breakfasts is a pretty regular occurrence on any given weekend. Great way to kick start your day and catch up with friends. Years ago a worked in a kitchen for a part time job making basic breakfasts for the punters and through this got plenty of practice making scrambled eggs, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes etc. the basics for breakfasts but the menu was fairly limited there are so many other options. To me the mark of a good breakfast venue is interesting items on the menu and a decent range, turns out not everyone feels like eggs for breakfast all the time. Variety is also the key word for me when it comes to tea as well why simply have an English breakfast all the time when there are so many other more interesting teas out there depending on your mood on any given day - strong, mild, semifermented, green.

Poached Eggs and Orange Pekoe brewing

Friday was a day off and a decent morning trip to the gym was in order. Following in my workout I wanted something packed with protein to keep me going for a while so decided on poached eggs on toast. Poached eggs are probably one of my favourite ways of having eggs but not necessarily something I cook very often. One thing that makes a massive difference to your eggs though is the freshness of the eggs - the fresher they are the more they stay together when you crack them in to that gently simmering water with a dash of vinegar. Matched with a leaf tea - Orange Pekoe probably my favourite black tea - a perfect start to the day.

 Inspired by my poached eggs and wanting to catch up with a friend KJ I decided to have her over for breakfast the next day. This time something slightly more exotic - though not necessarily more difficult - Shakshuka eggs with Chorizo and toast. Realising that I had forgotten to buy parsley and coriander it was the perfect excuse to head down into the cafe strip and pick up a take away coffee (flat white of course) to drink while getting the breakfast ready. Have to say it was a bit of a cheats Shakshuka using good quality tinned tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes and marinated roasted capsicums and chilli flakes instead of charred green banana chillis. However the substitutions worked out fine. I served it with a hot chorizo sliced and fried up and multigrain toast. A cup of tea along side to temper the heat of the meal - only hard bit is choosing which tea to have. Thumbs up from me and the girls - just like shop brought! One of those breakfasts where you get to about 4pm in the afternoon and realise that you never had lunch because you hadn't noticed you were hungry.

SLs cheats Shakshuka - why would you go out!

Spanish Tapas Fiesta

Well having talked up a tapas night with friends for around 19 months since I got home from and extended trip to Europe I figured that it was about time to come through with the goods and actually make a date for a tapas night at my place. Luckily the weekend was pretty free as I certainly ended up spending a great deal of time prepping for the meal. I spent lots of time reading through various Spanish recipe books and Spanish editions of food magazines. Probably the most challenging of these was the Pintxos book Pintxos de Vanguardia a la Donostriarra that I picked up in San Sebastian on the trip mentioned above. After staring longingly at the pictures in this book and spending a bit of time looking for a half decent translator I determined that a recipe book written in the Basque language was possibly adding an additional and unnecessary level of difficulty - a challenge for another day.

Spoils of the shopping trip

The menu set it was time for a trip to the Re store to pick up some specialty items: Spanish dulce smokey paprika, Sherry vinegar, Pedro Ximenez, chorizo, manchego. Then on to various supermarkets, butchers and supermarkets to pick up the rest. Then let the cooking begin.

The Menu:

Marinated mixed olives

Olives - marinated with chilli, fennel seeds, fennel fronds, garlic, rosemary, thyme, lemon and orange - I used a mix of Sicilian green, pimento stuffed green spanish, kalamata, black roasted and wild olives. The mix gave a good look and the marinade strong enough to infuse flavour into the olives over night. The roasted olives were quite strong and bitter in flavour so certainly not to everyone’s liking so I would probably leave these out next time. 

Roasted capsicums - marinated with sweet smoked paprika, garlic, sherry vinegar, olive oil and flat leaf parsley. Delicious!!! Again marinated over night. Smoked paprika is quite a strong flavour so should be used with restraint.

PX and salted spiced almonds

Salted and spiced roasted almonds – easy delicious though I would probably cut back on the amount of salt used. I combined a number of recipes for this one so included sweet smoked paprika and cumin in the egg white mixture used to coat the almonds then tossed with coarse sea salt and baked in the oven.

Cooking - meatballs and chorizo and chickpeas

Meatballs in a Spicy Tomato Sauce – pork and beef mince with a variety of spices in a tomato sauced spiked with cayenne pepper and peas – didn’t look the most gourmet but tasted perfect.

Chickpea with Chorizo – Often with chickpea recipes I will cheat and use tinned chickpeas rather than dried but this is one recipe where you can’t really afford to do that – the chickpeas are cooked for and hour in stock with herbs and garlic which imparts lots of flavour to the humble chickpea. Plus who doesn’t love Chorizo – had to keep a sharp eye on my brother when he arrived to check he wasn’t picking it all out of the dish…..

Tortilla – potato of course a Spanish classic – can’t count the number of these eaten whilst in Spain.

Ajillo Mushrooms – Shitake, portebello, button, field, shimiji and cooked in sherry with fresh flat leaf parsley.

Rocket, serrano ham, manchego and roast hazelnut salad – to lighten up the tapas. Dressing including wholegrain mustard, garlic, finely chopped shallots.



Crumbing the fritters with Panko crumbs

Duende's Manchego and Corn Fritters with Capsicum Jam – I have eaten these before at Duende and let me say they are pure gold! The recipe is true though and although time consuming I was extremely happy with how they turned out – just like the real thing. If you are interested here is the link - Manchego and Corn Fritters Though as a note make sure you leave yourself plenty of time to make these and be aware that it takes at least 5 pots to make them



Manchego and Corn Fritters with Capsicum Jam 



PX trifle

Dark Chocolate Pedro Ximenez trifle – this was based on a recipe from the 2009 Spanish gourmet traveler – in the GT the recipe had a chocolate ganache as the top layer – I felt this would be too heavy after a meal of tapas so substituted a Donna Hay chocolate mousse which I spiked with cinnamon. Think this would have been better served as an amuse or in a much smaller portion size as even as a lover of PX I have to admit the PX jelly was pretty full on.

When the friends and family were asked which were there favourite dishes just about everyone had a different favourite which always a win – different strokes for different folks and no real losers out of the recipes tried. Props to my brother for his help on some of the photos for this blog and a massive thanks to my beautiful assistant SJ – for her tireless work washing every bowl, pot, knife and frying pan in the kitchen at least twice!

The spread

Let me finally say that any one who thinks tapas is over priced should spend a weekend in the kitchen preparing the stuff – you may find a new respect for that small plate of meatballs, fritters or chickpeas that turn up at your table.