Winter is on its way

Its a little chilly today and this means baking!

In todays weekly shop we bought some lovely seasonal quince and pears, and im trying to decide what would be best to create using them. Cinnamon holds a special place in my heart, i think its because the smell of cinnamon takes me back to family christmas back in the UK. Its smell is so warming and comforting and is a must in all my baking.

So I am going to poach the qunice and pears till soft and slice them, fold them through a cinnamon spiced cake batter and bake, I will then reduce the poaching liquid and poor over the sponge whilst its warm so it soaks up all the sweet liquor. Delicous! I will let you know how I get on and will post the recipe and photo ...

So here we are pear, quince, cinnamon and oat cake, yum yum!

5 medium free range eggs

300g unsalted butter

300g raw sugar

1 cup oats

50g plain flour

2 tea spoons baking powder

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teapoon mixed spice

1/2 cup chopped dark chocolate

All combined and baked at 160 degrees centigrade for 40 mins, beautiful hot or cold! Yummy with custard! A little bit naughty, but o so good!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!

What a great day Easter is, and not only because its the one calender day that you are allowed to eat ectreme amounts of chocolate without any negative thoughts or comments. I would usually spend the day munching on endless amounts of chocolate including my favourite, creme eggs. I am suprised with myself that I haven't even had one this year! In Australia we also have a fantastic creation, the chocolate hot cross bun! Glorious and soft, chocolately naughtiness. I remember the first time we tried these when we were here on holiday before we moved to Australia at my grandads. We had them toasted and they were as fantastic as pain aux chocolat! and I love pain aux chocolat! these were doughy with warm mouth explosions of soft, liquid chocolate, perfect. This year I have been very good and only had 2 chocolate hot cross buns and 2 regular hot cross buns.

But to say that was it would be to tell a lie. We celebrated Easter Sunday on Saturday this year with the family and for pudding I made a hot cross bun pudding, or what my sister liked to call "bunning"! What I did was cut 8 of the left over homemade, chocolate and regular hot cross buns into small cubes and just soaked these in 8 eggs with a cup of milk. I pressed the gooey mixture into a tall cake tin and baked on 160 degrees centigrade for 45 mins, until the outside was crispy. It came out like a crispy christmas cake and smelt gorgeous! I served this with marscapone with a good shot of Amarula cream. Amarula is quite like Baileys yet it originates from an African fruit which is then mixed with alchol and cream. It is gorgeous and add a fruitiness to the marscapone which was so beautiful, you just wanted more and more! It went down a treat and defiantly was a naughty treat for me!

Tonight I will bake a traditional roast chicken with crispy potatoes, I have some left over cheese selection from the cheese board last night to make a delicouse cauliflower cheese. I will also do some sauteed cabbage with peas and onions, delicous!

Happy Easter, a time to reflect on all the good things in life. Eat and enjoy being grateful for everything good in the world which we have been given!

Bring and share lunch

During summer holidays the local churches hosted a childrens week of worship. I looked forwards to this week as it was so much fun, packed full of activities. There would be craft, singing, dancing, sports and food. If you were lucky you would be icing biscuits or my favourite, knickerbockerglory!

Knickerbockerglory brings back so many happy memories and creates such fantastic images of the seaside. The version I remember making was with sponge fingers, strawberry jelly, cold custard, whipped cream, with sprinkles and a wafer biscuit. You would be given a tall plastic cup in which to layer your dessert and it was so exciting. I have never been a huge fan of jelly, and would be quite upset if I had to eat it at a birthday party, jelly and ice cream was not my friend. Yet this tall glass of mutilayered colours just looked so good and delicous, and I would forget that I didn't actually enjoy this combination, distracted by the pretty colours.

As the week would come to a close the organisers would have a bring and share lunch. My parents would help out every year and to this luncheon we would take a vegeterian option or some crisps. The thing that would scare my sister and I from this lunch would be homemade sandwiches and quiches. We once found a hair in an egg mayonnaise sandwich and when we discovered who had actually made this it may have had the ability to put my sister and I off of egg mayonnaise sandwiches for life. Luckily this didn't happen! When we looked up to the proud creator of the hairy sandwiches it was a woman with a moustache. I can't look at shared lunches the same with the fear of unwanted body hair.

I have noticed at Australian bring and share lunches the scary couldren which is a large round bread which has been hollowed out and filled with a mixture of cheeses and spinach. Whoever created this must have been bored. This movement of scary bring and share dishes needs to be stopped, how about some normal sausage rolls for a change? Not a hairy sandwich or scary bread dip. Im sure you have a horror story from a bring and share lunch, please share with me your experience, until then be weary of unwanted body hair in food!

Bechamel sauce

This wondorous concoction of butter, flour and milk is magical. Found in many different ways from cheese sauce for cauliflower cheese bake or the creamy white layers in between sheets of meat and sauce in a lasagne. Done well this silky smooth, creamy, lucious mixture is perfect, done wrong it turns into a gluggy mess which is extremely dissapointing.

I hate to be disappointed by food. Paying to see a movie which you have looked forward to for weeks and then being utterly disappointed by its pointless ending, I can deal with. Having drooled over a menu item and waited the 45 minutes to come to the table to be utterly disappointed by its presentation, colours and taste, why don't you just put poo in my letter box! I feel utterley disappointed when that bland, old, dry dish comes to my table and I turn and look at the tired looking waiter and then towards the kitchen and think, "really why do you bother?!?!" I cannot believe the amount of cooks, chefs and restaurant owners that are happy to serve second best! Any way, rant over where were we? ahh yes bechamel ..

Bechamel, said better in a french accent I must say, a sauce sent by angels from heaven. I grew up on this thing of magic. From my grandmothers lasagne to tuna pasta bake. All the better with a good amount of cheese I must say.

With autumn finally here, my favourite season of the year! it is time to celebrate and bathe in this joyous creation.

This sauce, simple for regular cooks, has some rules to stick by. Here are a few tips and ideas for your bechamel sauce;

When starting you must use equal amounts of fat to flour, so for example 50g butter, 50g flour. Then you must use 500ml of milk. This will create a great consistency.

You need to melt the fat in the pan and add the flour, stir all together to make a 'roux' which is a paste. Cook over the heat for 1 minute and remove from the heat, add the milk, return to the heat and continually stir to rid your sauce of unwanted lumps!

You must cook out the sauce for 5 minutes, boiling, continuously stirring. What this is doing is when the gluten, which is the protein in flour, burst at boiling point they absorb liquid, this is called gelatinisation and this is how a sauce with flour thickens. Once all the flour has been absorbed then there will be no unwanted floury texture or taste, just a smooth luscious sauce.

How about a beautiful cauliflower bake with not just some grated tasty cheese (not so tasty cheese!) but some strong cheddar to really give your Sunday roast staple some bite!

Have you tried a beautiful velvety seeded mustard sauce with your pork chops? stir a tablespoon of seeded mustard through a quantity of bechamel to really give your dish some depth.

No cream in the fridge to reduce into a sauce to coat your fettuccine? how about a light bechamel with some sauteed onions and peas, with a good amount of black pepper and salt, easy night time cooking I must say. This is what we had for dinner this evening!

Next time you are making bechamel for lasagne grate some nutmeg into the sauce to provide a gentle warming spice to your beautiful crowning glory!

Bechamel goes beautifully with leeks, combine some bechamel with raw baby leeks and a little water or white wine and bake in the oven till the leeks are soft, beautiful, sweet and creamy!

A traditional way of creating an aromatic bechamel is to add a clove spicked onion to the milk and simmer gently, then add the milk into the roux in small amounts, stirring continuously till a velevety sauce has been created and all the flourly taste has dissapeard into the sauce.

So next time you are stuck on what to make, take some time and create some bechamel sauce to warm your heart this beautiful time of year!

Easter fun

Easter has always been an exciting time of year for me. As a christian family we celebrate Easter traditionally, church in the morning followed by a family celebration where a large roasted lunch is served. As I have mentioned before we usually serve salmon en croute, sometimes we will also have a roasted chicken for the meat eaters of the family.

Looking back now even though I knew the true meaning of Easter I would still get so excited about Easter eggs. I think its the childhood excitement and the effect of advertising that creates this. The television adds and then walking around the supermarket, chocolate eggs all around, all shapes and sizes. So tempting .... until now.

I have embarked on a health kick to rid myself of my extra weight I have gained in recent years. I want to be a size 10, it saddens me that I cannot remember ever being a size 10, it seems I took a large leap in size from childrens clothes to a size 14. I have already dropped a dress size and continue on my path to loose the rest. I also think that I have grown up a bit. I now don't see chocolate as a big part of my Easter celebrations, I now crave spices like cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, those that you find in hot cross buns.

Every morning I collect the bread from our local bakery close to where I work, the amazing smell that floats through the air as I walk closer to the bakery is fantastic. The sweet spices from the hot cross buns envoke memories of the past, mostly of Easter.

This afternoon on my path to rediscovering my relationship with food I decided to bake some traditional hot cross buns. I added alot of spice and they are just so warm and comforting, just what I felt like;

Here is my recipe to share with you all, my hot cross buns;


Recipe makes 12 buns

500g plain flour
80g raw sugar
1 egg, beaten
a 7g sachet of yeast
60g margerine
150g sultanas
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp nutmeg
1 tbsp mixed spice
75ml boiling water
125ml milk

Seive the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the other dry ingredients including the yeast. Mix the water with the milk and pour into a well in the middle of the bowl, add the margerine and the beaten egg. Stir all together and create a dough, knead to a smooth ball. Place into a floured bowl and leave in a warm place to prove for 1 hour.

Once doubled in size 'knock back' the dough by kneading it for 2 minutes and then portion into 12 even balls. Smooth the balls and place onto a baking tray. In a seperate bowl combine some more plain flour and water and make it into a loose dough, roll into thin sausages to create the traditional cross ontop of each bun. Let the buns prove and then bake in a 220 degree centigrade oven for 15 minutes.

Leave to cool a little and in another saucepan combine equal amounts of sugar and water, boil to a syrup and glaze each bun. They are now ready to be eaten with whatever you like to eat them with. For me its just a light smear of margerine. I know margerine? but your a chef,  isn't butter better? Well it is but I can't always be naughty!

Happy Baking!

Growing up

My mother bakes beautiful cakes and puddings. Whenever we'd have guests over for lunch my father would prepare the vegetables, my mother would cook and then present the pudding she had carefully created that morning. To think now she was actually quite creative with her pudding selection and put alot of effort into everything she made. I remember her kiwi fruit cheesecake, trifle and the most amazing banoffee pie.

If you haven't been fortunate enough to try banoffee pie that is a real shame. I think the recipe originates from America, but my mothers consisted of a chocolate digestive and coconut base, boiled condensed milk filling, whipped cream on top with a crumbled flake chocolate bar to finish. This pie was able to move even the toughest looking men into a soft ball of toffee. Something about the sweet layers and the comforting feeling you get from condensed milk is just bliss. I think this pie may have started my love of textures in food. I love the crunchy base mixed with the gooey toffee and smooth finish of freshly whipped double cream. Texture in food is fantastic, no good dish is without a range of textures, similar to the salmon en croute or even just a simple salsa, with avocado, chilli, corn and tomato.

My mother baked the most amazing cakes. But she excelled in birthday cakes. When the time came for your special day the Childrens cake book would come out of the cupboard and we'd be allowed to go through the pages and decide which one we would like for our birthday. I remember my sister having a dog shapped cake with marbled butter cream fur effect, I had a Peter Andre cake for my eighth birthday which was literally Peter Andre's face with licorice hair, I was so in love with him back then! But the best and most well remembered cake was the princess castle.

The princess castle was as the name says an actual free standing castle, complete with turrets, a moat, windows, doors and other little details. Baby pink and topped with sprinkles this was to us like my mother had just painted us the Mona Lisa. This cake would take a long time to make and would be in the cake box for days on end due to the huge amount of cake and icing and sweets. Luckily my family love a freshly baked cake and we'd be more than happy to re visit the cake box every day till then last scrap of baby pink icing had been consumed.

My mother has always worked so hard, being a stay at home mum, to a working woman, she has always tried her best to make and teach us how to bake. We don't celebrate halloween but I remember one year when dad was not home she let us make a witch cake. I couldn't care less what shape the cake was but I do remember how exciting and how rewarding this cake was to look back at. We had made a cake all together and it looked like the one in the book! I still remember that night clearly and I slightly remember the taste of the cake, but not too sure how to put it into words.

Dinner time growning up was a modest affair. When my mum went back to work full time she had to find quick and simple ways to feed her family. Saying this though we never once complained about the food we were eating and my mother always wanted us to enjoy what we were having. Examples of usual tea time meals would be; jacket potato with tuna, cheese and beans, tuna mayonnaise sandwich with chips, cheese and beans on toast, a microwave meal such as chicken korma or turkey escalopes with chips and beans. We did eat highly processed meals, but we did enjoy them. I feel that not being forced to eat food we didn't enjoy has led my sister and I to our healthy relationship with all types of food. We have never rebelled and now appreciate food alot more due to seeing how my mother would juggle everything to make meal times enjoyable. I am not saying that children should be fed large amounts of processed foods, but I understand the need and ease of serving quick food when you have not been well educated with how to cook from scratch quickly. My mother always did the best for her children and her family. I feel she found an escape from her busy life on the weekend, creating her lovely cakes and puddings.

My mother has influenced my relationship with food and my appreciation for parents having to make food on the go. Home cooks to me are the real celebrity chef, I agree that we need to show more praise to those who don't get paid to cook and create. 

From the beginning ....

My first memory of food, or when I became aware of my love of food was at my Grandparents home. My Grandparents live in the most beautiful village on the outskirts of Oxford, England. The village seems to be stuck in the past, it hasn't progressed with technology or the modern world. It is untouched, loved and cherished. My Grandfather keeps an alotment and his kitchen garden. In the garden he grows leeks, apples, rhubarb and strawberries. In his alotment he has berries, beautiful berries.

My Grandmother is a fantastic cook. My favourite dishes of hers are; roasted pork with apple sauce, roasted turkey with bread sauce, Vegetarian lasagne, coffee cake and any variety of crumble she makes. She cooks with love, the love for her family, the love of nourishment and the appreciation she has for food.

My mother told me that she once arrived at my Grandparents to find rabbits hanging in the garage, and my grandmother plucking a dead bird. The image of my grandmother preparing an animal for a dish from scratch is a beautiful one to me. She has tought me appreciation for our accesibility to food, my grandmother grew up in the war and was evacuated to the country. Using her experience in that horrible time, having to live with the bare minimum has made her the amazing cook, and the most amazing woman she is now.

My fathers family love their cheese, and every cheese you could think of. At the end of dinner, after the roast, the pudding, comes the cheese plate. At my cousins wedding last April it was amusing to my fiance and mother to watch my grandparents, my father, my aunt, my sister and I getting into a delicous cheese board. I now think nothing can beat a good blue cheese, a creamy ripe brie or a harsh cheddar. I love going to the David Jones food hall in Sydney and sitting at the cheese bar, a plate of cheese, some good bread and muscatels is my food heaven. Unlike other girls my age I can't get too excited about drinking, going out and dancing. I would so much rather have a good meal with just a glass of water to simply appreciate what is going on on the plate, on my palate and my feelings to what I am trying.

I have been brought up as a traditional British girl and I love nothing more than a good roast dinner. Yet in my family, roast dinners come in different forms as my parents are vegetarians (that eat fish). A staple at my grandmother's Sunday table would be Salmon en croute.

Salmon en croute is the most beautiful, simple dish with a fancy name. Made with good quality, fresh fish, this is a winner. We'd eat this most Sundays and it would definately be on our Easter and Christmas table. With Easter coming up, and my plans already in motion for a beautiful whole Salmon en croute, I would love to share the recipe with you. Please do not be upset in my use of bought puff pastry, I have made puff pastry from scratch and believe me, its not worth it when you can by just as good made for you.

Whole Salmon en croute

1 whole Salmon
4 sheets of puff pastry, thawed
1/2 bunch of freshly chopped curly parsley
75g butter
75g plain flour
300ml milk
salt and pepper

I like to get my whole fish from the local fish market, but you should be able to request a whole fish or whole fillets from the supermarket. If you are using a whole fish take both fillets off the bones by removing the head of the fish. Now put your knife above the spine and with gentle sawing motions run your knife along the backbone down to the tail end, as close as you can to the bone to remove one half. Once removed turn the fish over and repeat on the other side. Once stripped discard the bones and continue to de-bone the fillets with tweezers to create a smooth, bone free fillet. Remove the skin on each fillet by placing your knife between the flesh and skin and using the same gently sawing motion close to the skin, remove the fleshy fillet. Place both fillets in the fridge whilst you prepare the filling.

In a sauce pan, melt the butter and add the flour, stir to create a roux (paste). Now continue to add the milk in small amounts whilst continuously stirring. I like to use a whisk to quickly rid the sauce of any floury lumps. Stir the sauce till it has boiled and thickened. Now add seasoning and the parsley, leave to cool.

Take the fish and spread the cool parsley sauce onto one fillet, place the other on top. Lay out 2 sheets of pastry, slightly over lapping and place the salmon sandwich on top, place the other pastry sheets on top and seal all the sides with a little milk. Make sure the parcel is closed completly with little trapped air to avoid any bursts in the oven. Coat the parsel with milk and bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes, until the pastry has become golden and crisp.

Serve carved at the table with freshly steamed and buttered vegetables and this will go down a real treat!

My Grandmother is my everything, I love her so dearly, as I do my Grandfather. This couple were made for each other and resemble everything that is good in the world to me. I hope that I become the strong, loving and caring women she is when I grow older and always remeber her in my cooking.

Where to go from now ...

I left working as a professional chef a year ago. When I made this decision I thought my path would lead me back to better pastures. One year on and I am now more lost than ever.

As I sit here in bed after watching Antonio Carluccio cooking ricotta gnocchi and now Nigella Lawson making the most delicous looking crushed peas with scollops, I am close to tears. I have just come to the realisation that I miss food. I know this shouldn't be so as I cook and work with food every day, but I miss being in a relationship with food as you are when working in a profesional kitchen. I so miss baking fresh bread, cutting by hand beautiful thick ribboned papardale and sieving smooth chicken liver pate.

Working in a kitchen is a love/hate relationship. I'd hate having to go into work whilst everyone else was looking forward to leaving. I'd hate the hours and not have a proper dinner at night. The countless times my evening meal would consist of vegemite on toast is just sad when you look at all the delicous food I had created that day.

I had only been a fully qualified chef for 2 years when I left my last kitchen. Can I really call myself a chef now? or experienced? Am I just living in a dream world where I believe that because I worked so hard in my 2 years I am now able to provide advice, teach and write my memoirs of the kitchen? Would my lack of time in the kitchen make my stories and tips seem childish or immature? Am I a failure to myself and those that had faith in me and my success? Am I no longer a chef? Am I now just a humble cook?

I feel lost, trapped and un aware of my path in front of me. I hate this feeling, as a good chef should be I am a very organised person and love to know where everything is, and where things are going. In my personal life I know that my fiance and I will settle down, get married and live happily ever after. Its just my proffesional life that I just can't seem to put my finger on.

I know that I want to work with food, as you know when you meet your soul mate, I feel the same with food. I can walk into a room of people and feel so lonely and shy, I walk into a food shop and I feel loved, wanted and at home. Like some people prefer animals to humans, I feel the same but with food. I love having a relationship with food, but a good, honest relationship.

My ideal postion to be in would be similar to Nigella Lawsons. I love her cooking world, how she is able to write, talk and cook all day and make a living. To create and then write what new thing you have discovered, what combination of foods you have put together and created the most delicous dish.

Food to me is love, life and happiness. I need to re-light my relationship with food, no more lost chef, I need to find that part of me again, I need to cook again.