And they are SO cheap. And they make you feel AMAZING when you eat them. And they just POP when they’re cooked just right. Fresh. Vibrant.  Crisp, but still yielding on the tooth.

This is a way I’ve recently been cooking beans.

I boil them fast in half a centimetre of salted water in a frypan for a few minutes until they are almost exploding out of themselves with that vibrant GREEN.

Then I pour away the rest of the remaining water that hasn’t evaporated, add a teaspoon of good olive oil, a chopped garlic clove and fry it on high heat for about a minute.

I’ve been serving them with everything, in a bowl to share, next to pizza, stew, anything. And they were only 99cents a kilo today. This really is something that you see at top end restaurants – for $9 for a handful of beans.

Last Sunday I was given the opportunity to attend a workshop hosted by ‘Cakes by Judy C’ at Ashgrove.  Her shop sells an array of beautiful cakes, biscuits and other baked sweets. Just recently she has been offering workshops to small groups of people who are interested in learning specific cake decorating skills.  I’ve always been impressed with decorated cakes but daren’t try making one myself – I simply didn’t know how to do it! But since doing this workshop I have complete confidence that I will be able to ice a cake again at home. And this all comes down to Judy’s teaching style. She is a natural tutor – for the 5 ladies in the workshop, she first showed us how she would decorate the cake, and then we were each given a cake to decorate ourselves. Throughout this time she would move between us, offering advice and assistance if we needed it.

If you are interested in learning this skill, I highly recommend Judy’s workshops.

I was pleased as punch with my cake and so proud of what I had acheived. And at the end of the day we not only went home with our finished creations, but we also took with us the confidence of a new skill.

Here follows a step-by-step How To of icing a traditional fruit cake. I have focused mainly on the base icing only, because I feel that the only way to get that flawless, professional-looking cake is to get a perfect, satin-finish white base.  

 Here is a quick list of utensils and tools we used during the day. Most of them, apart from the wood float you probably will have already. If you would like to buy a wood float, you can contact Judy – she has them handmade! (I’m seriously thinking about getting one!)

• A cake to decorate
• Pettinice icing (or any good quality ’plastic’ icing)
• Cornflour
• Decorations
• Royal icing (eggwhite and icing sugar)
• Sherry
• A foil-lined card cake platter (or a plate!)
• dessert spoon and water
• Pastry brush
• Rolling pin
• Wood float /acrylic float (see photos below)
• a pin
• a small knife

Judy had baked a batch of beautiful fruit cakes for us and had them ready at room temperature. (P.S. Judy’s cake is to die for – one of the best I’ve ever had!)

Hot Tip! Often, before adding the fruit to the cake batter, she will smear some batter over the sides of the cake pan then  add the fruit to the batter and pour it in. This eliminates a lot of the extra fruit on the outside of the cake, which can cause dimples.

Turn the cake over so the flat bottom is facing up and remove the paper (Judy uses old butter paper to line her tins. I love her for that!! )

Hot Tip! To stop the cake from ’sweating’ after it’s complete, make sure the cake and the icing are at room temperature before you begin.

Make sure the cake sits in the centre of the presentation platter

If the cake is sitting unevenly, take some icing and roll it into a sausage with your hands and wedge it under the cake to ensure it sits flat

Make more thin sausages and with moist fingers press and wipe it along the bottom edge of the cake to fill the gap down there.  If there are any divits on the top or sides of the cake made by the fruit in the cake, press them down and see how far they go in. With wet fingers, press little smudges of icing into them to fill the hole.

As you go, wet the back of a dessertspoon and press and wipe the icing so it sits flat on the cake.

Wipe away any crumbs and water with a teatowel

Brush the whole cake with a fortified alcohol. You could use sherry (which we used), brandy, cognac or rum. Whatever you choose, to help preserve the cake, it must be over 17.5 percent alcohol.

Again, wipe away any crumbs off the platter and clean and dry your whole bench.

Dust your bench with pure cornflour, cut a large piece of pettinice icing from the block and knead it with your hands until you feel a change in texture to smooth and silky. The heat of your hands with make it more maleable.

Dust the dry bench again with plain cornflour. Roll the piece of icing until it will fit over the cake and down the sides. Don’t roll it too thin!

Pick it up and with one quick movement place it straight onto the cake.

Working quickly now – rub your hand across the top of the cake to make it smooth

Carefully smooth the sides and press it onto the cake

Rub the icing back and forth so there are no creases or lumps

This is a specialty tool, but it is wonderful! Use the smooth wood float to further smooth the surface of the icing. Rub it firmly across the top and around the sides

If you notice any air bubbles sitting under the icing take a very thin pin, find the airpocket with your finger and at an angle pierce the icing then press out the air with your finger and gently smooth it over.

With the acrylic icing trowel smooth the top and sides and with the edge cut into the icing all the way around the edge of the cake

Now use a knife to cut the excess icing completely away from the cake

Lift the excess icing away and smooth out the edges again with the trowel

Wipe away any smudges of icing from the presentation platter.

Ta Da! That’s how you ice a traditional fruit cake!

Use extra pettinice icing to make the decorations. It can be coloured using liquid food dyes. Massage the dye into it, then shape it how you wish.

To get the decorations to stick to the cake, use a small wet artists brush and use the water as a glue.

Add extra decorations (like these lovely red cinnamon flavoured holly berries)  by piping royal icing onto the cake. Also use the royal icing to add the candle wax detail and to use as a glue to help the inedible ribbon to stay put.

We used a little edible lustre powder to make the candles glow.

Iced cakes like this can last for months and months at room temperature – just pop them in a container so the bugs won’t get to it before you do!

I’m sorry to say this cake lasted no more than a few days – but it was delicious! My justification is that I plan to make one just like it again before Christmas to hone my skills.

Merry Christmas!

Cakes by Judy C

Shop 1/227 Waterworks Road
Ashgrove QLD 4060

Phone: (07) 3366 9111
Fax:(07) 3366 9222

http://www.cakesbyjudyc.com.au/

This was in the Courier Mail, on November 2nd, the back page of the Taste magazine –  I’ve been a bit slack getting it on here. It was great fun, and I’m surprised at how many people have seen it!   We really do get a lot of happiness from our little garden and I really have Darren to thank for all the work and expertise he puts into it. Also, the recipe down there is his too – I’m merely the mouthpiece!

And yes darling, I always wear my pearls whilst doing the gardening (I won’t mention they’re made of plastic and cost $1! )

oh, and thank you David for quoting me SWEARING IN THE PAPER! My dear mother was horrified!

hehe

Follow your instincts to make pizza dough.  Because one thing I’ve learned when it comes to pizza dough is that you pretty much can’t get it wrong. The only thing is that the texture will be different each time – and that’s not a bad thing at all!

Try it with different flours, with or without oil, add some herbs or spices, add more or less water, yeast, salt… even try letting it rise for diffferent amounts of time.

Use your eyes, feel the density and elasticity with your fingers and the heel of your palm while you knead the dough.  Smell the yeast doing it’s thing.   Perhaps keep an eye on what you put in, just in case it turns into the perfect creation – and you can emulate it once more if you wish.

Now, I’m not saying I’ve perfected it – no where near it! But this a great exercise to allow your instincts to take over for a while. Get the practice of cooking out of your head and into your senses.

Ingredients. These are all approximates, go on…. follow your senses!

2 cups plain flour and extra for dusting

about 1 cup luke-warm water

1 tbsp olive oil

1 pinch salt

1 tsp instant dried yeast

1 tsp raw sugar

Method

Mix it up on your kitchen bench or in a big bowl, knead it, massage it – then leave it rest in a lovely warm spot (I pop it on my stove – unlit of course). You can use it straight away - it just won’t be so risen. Or you could leave it overnight! Do whatever makes you feel good – or whatever you have time for

Then, dust some flour over a baking sheet and roll the dough out, arrange your choice of toppings over the top and pop it in a moderate (180 degrees) oven until it looks delicious!

My Toppings

for the pizza sauce I used a can of tomatoes, heated in a frypan until it becomes very thick (it takes about 15 minutes. This is a very easy and very cheap way of making your own sauces!! and no added salt and nasties!)  But use can use any good pizza sauce

crispy bacon

fetta

baked pumpkin pieces

sundried tomato strips

lots of herbs from the garden – oregano, rosemary and thyme

grated cheese

Serve with some bright green vegies!

Oliver is working with Premier Anna Bligh to support the initiative, which will see the Ministry of Food based in Ipswich, and mobile cooking demonstration trucks travelling throughout the state of Queensland. Whilst there are no plans to produce an Australian run of the TV show, Jamie is still seeking to equip Australians with the critical culinary skills needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle full of delicious food.

The program is set to launch in the coming weeks – perhaps this will help people in combatting the drastic silly-season snacking that always seems to lead to ill-kept New Year’s resolutions. In all seriousness, though, I think it’s fairly safe to say that every Australian has someone close to them who battles with obesity, and has seen the devastating physical and emotional toll it has on people’s lives.

Whilst it’s all well and good that we’re taking our new-found Masterchef-inspired cooking skills to the kitchen table, it appears that many Australians are still struggling with the balance of quality and quantity when it comes to food.

I am really excited to hear that this program is being run in our fair city.  I really hope that it helps all the people who truly need the skills, motivation and support to overcome obesity.

Check out details on the programme at Jamie’s website, or watch the video of Jamie announcing the reasons for starting Ministry of Food in Ipswich.

Get involved in the Ministry of Food in Ipswich!

If you think you can contribute knowledge or assistance to Ipswich’s own Ministry of Food, sign up at Jamie’s website as a volunteer!

What do you think about the Ministry of Food being launched in Ipswich? Will it make a difference? Tell us in the comments.

That day could not come around fast enough. Every time I’d see one in a cafe I’d pine for the day that I would make one myself. Then, the day finally arrived.  The recipe is a fairly easy one, but I’m very glad it was one of my days off work – it takes HOURS to prepare!… well… the doing part of the day is rather easy, it’s the waiting part that takes a bit of time. The recipe I used stated to make the pastry first, then make the lemon curd – then rest it for 3 hours! I recommend making the curd first and the pastry second.  I used the recipe here from taste, it uses all the egg yolks in the curd and all the egg whites in the meringue – so there’s no waste.

So when Mum and Dad turned up last week I looked at Dad and firmly stated ’you’re not allowed to look in the fridge!” although, we all knew what was for dessert. After dinner,we lit the candles, turned off the lights and sang that very special song. Dad even blew out the candles all in one go!

The verdict?:  ”Mmm, that was lovely, love”.

Thanks Dad, I love you too.

Happy Birthday Dad.

And so are we! It’s been a while since I’ve given an update – the last time all our plants were only seedlings! Well, we’ve had quite a few harvests now from the garden, we’ve had plenty of lettuce and herbs like parsley, coriander and basil, thyme, dill, and also other fun things like standard/frenchbreakfast/scarlet radishes (which are easy and I recommend everyone grow them!), kale, spinach, beetroots, snowpeas, french red spring onions, strawberries, bok choy and purple carrots.

Strawberries – we have 3 different types in there now. We get maybe 1 strawberry a week at the moment – but it is very satisfying!

Beetroot and Kale

Spinach on the left and Lettuces, a big cabbage, mint, and two bok choy at the front there.

Snow Peas!! (for some reason I am the most excited about these babies) and Spring Onions. I don’t think I’ll ever buy spring onions again. These are just too tasty!

We planted purple carrot seedlings with mild success. They are in the garden for such a long time (100 days) and by the end you really don’t know if they are going to work or not (not like other things that sit above the surface) Some of them were lovely and big, others were still very tiny or a bit twisted. I think we’ll try carrots once more, but might try other things that yield more and faster.

We used the lettuces, spring onion, parsley, carrots and eggs (from the chooks) in this lovely lunch. The tomatoes are from a market stall that moves between the Jan Powers Markets and the Kelvin Grove Markets. We kept a couple of the older tomatoes, removed and washed the seeds and grew little seedlings from them. We have them in little seed pots waiting to be put into the garden.

It is so satisfying eating food produced in your own garden. 

It is so fresh. So Alive.

If you want to have a go at a garden, remember, it’s really easy – it’s just important to:

1. Prepare the soil – you want the soil to be lovely rich and light with lots of compost and a layer of mulch (sugar cane mulch is good) on top.
2. Water it – when it’s being established – every day. Then once it looks happy every couple of days or so. Just keep an eye on it
3. Weed it -surprisingly this is my favourite part. When you’re weeding you get to spend time relaxing in the warm sun, watching the other plants growing. It’s great to get your hands in the soil.
4. Feed it – Fertilise – we’re just using store-bought stuff at the moment, every 2 weeks. But the plan is to get a worm farm… one day. This makes a MASSIVE difference in the amount of growth.
5. Love it – this is the most important ingredient. Show it a bit of love everyday. Observe and explore the garden, check for new growth. Watch the bees pollinate the flowers. Learn.  Be proud of your garden. Thank it for its produce – “My what a beautiful tomato! Thank you!” I sound like a tree-hugging hippy - but it works.

The greatest thing is that we are still learning and slowly understanding what works the best. Some vegetables thrive, others are a little slower. Even the positioning of the plants in the same garden can change how things grow. It’s really exciting to learn and I can’t wait for the next round of plantings.

Pate!! 

Fresh, local pate at that too! Pate is one of those things that I have really fond memories of from when I was a kid. My mum was a big pate fan (Actually, I’m pretty sure every adult during the 1980’s was a fan of pate – along with smoked salmon, purple eye shadow and Dire Straits). And it was one of those things that even after I found out that it was made of animals livers, I kept on eating it! See, this news would have usually put me off most foods, but not pate. It transcends race, creed and mere offal…. It’s like making a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Actually this sort of food is generally my absolute favourite type of food, which I’ve probably mentioned on this blog a billion times already but I think it’s really important. You can do wonderful things with food and other things with not much money. In another example of this I recently made some gorgeous bread by using this recipe. My first ever time making bread from scratch (without a bread maker) It was divine! It cost me about 60 cents for the ingredients – and about 3 minutes work.  This in comparison to an ‘artisan’ loaf at the markets for $6 a pop! There are so many wonderful things that can happen with a tiny bit of extra effort and less cash.

Anyway, I digress – I’m pretty sure an absence of almost a month from blogging is bad for my little fingers – they’re getting run off their feet with this ranting!…. I was talking about Pate. This Pate. More specifically Free range Goose Liver and Black Truffle Pate, made here in SE Queensland.

Yes.

That’s right.

So creamy. So smooth. Delicate but rich. Luxury OFFAL!

Also a Chili Crab Pate, which was more like a terrine and very delicious. 

I guess a good way of describing how good they both were is that every time I tried one I would exclaim that it was my absolute favourite, then scooped a little pate from the other and exclaimed with equal sincerity that that one was now my favourite.

Look! Even our Puss wanted some – but with such a kick from the chili we thought better of it!

We got these at the Jan Powers Markets, but it’s also at a few other spots too – check out their website for the details.

www.freshchefsfoods.com.au

_________________________________________________________________________

OK… so as i’m typing this my V button just popped off the keyboard. Moral of the story for any new parents out there – Close your laptop when you’re finished with it!

(I’m sure some grammar nazis would suggest that perhaps hiding my exclamation point key would be a good thing. )

It got me thinking. Most of the food we eat that tastes brilliant is the food that has love stirred in. Simple food is turned into mega-stars by giving it some love and energy. That’s why a lot of fast food really just sucks. It could taste great. A home-made hamburger can be to die for and I can imagine some southern deep-fried chicken the way momma used to make would have been super tasty. But the ‘Evil Clown and Feckless Chicken’ just don’t care, and as a result it tastes like cardboard soaked in kerosene.

So stir in a little love, a little magic and reap the rewards.

Spiced Chicken and Chickpea Individual Pies

Ingredients

2 Chicken Thighs, chopped

2/3cup each diced celery, carrot and sweet potato

2 medium red onions, sliced

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 thumb of ginger, grated

1 can tomatoes

1 can chickpeas

2 tsp grainy mustard

sprinkle garam masala

1 tsp paprika

2 tbsp flour

1 cup stock

handful of herbs from the garden - savoury, thyme, oregano, rosemary, parsley etc.

Method

Use a “sticky” pan – i.e. NOT a non-stick pan. This is the secret to making a kick-arse pie filling. You want it all to stick to the bottom and go brown so you can scrape it up and add the flavour to the pie filling. It adds SO much flavour!

1. Caramelize the onions with some olive oil on medium heat until they’re nice and brown

2. Add the celery, carrot, sweet potato, ginger, garlic and cook on a high heat, stirring until looking cooked.

3. Add the chicken thigh and cook again, get it all nice and brown, scraping the bottom of the pan

4. Add the drained and rinsed chickpeas

5. Add the spices, mustard, and fry off for a bit then add the flour and mix and scrape the pan until the raw flour taste is cooked out. You want it to be nice and brown. (seeing a theme here? Nice and Brown!)

6. Add the tomatoes and stock and herbs, stir through and then let simmer until really thick. It will stick to the bottom, keep scraping it off as you go. Let it get nice and thick.

This makes enough for 4 big individual pies. I halved it and put the leftovers in a zip lock bag in the freezer – it’s like a free meal a month later!

7. Heat the oven to 180 degrees. Put the pie filling in a dish and pop a puff pastry lid on top. Brush with egg wash and bung it in the oven. Serve with steamed vegetables (we served it with sauteed kale from our garden)

Radishes are brilliant – and here’s why:

1.  First of all, when you sow the seeds of radishes within about 3 days you can see growth. This is so much faster than anything else in the garden, which can sometimes take up to 3 or 4 weeks! We sow them fairly close together in a big bunch.

2.  As soon as they start to show their sprout leaves you can eat them, roots and all. They’re really fresh and peppery and are a great addition to salads and sandwiches. The stem has a lovely pink hue.

3.  Pick sprouts from all across the plot when ever you feel like a feed - this way you’ll progressively thin out the crop, which will leave more space for the ones you left in to grow bigger.

4.  Once they start growing their very small true leaves you can still nibble on them – Just pinch off any hairy leaves

5.  After a while the radish bulbs will start to bulge just under the surface of the soil. Pick through the plot to find the biggest radishes… and leave the smaller ones… progressively thinning, thinning, thinning the crop. We have often found ourselves standing in the garden, sifting through the plants, pulling one out, wiping it on our shirts and eating them right then and there. It’s a true pleasure.

We have had our radishes in for about 5 weeks and we’ve eaten more than half already! They are absolutely the easiest thing to grow and I recommend giving them a go in a small patch of ground, add some compost, a bit of fertilizer, a very thin covering of mulch and you’ll be laughing!

COMPETITION REMINDER!! We have a mixed case of 24 bottles of Apple and Pear Cider to give away from Punt Road Wines. To enter, all you have to do is write a comment on ANY post on iatebrisbane. Open to Brisbane (and surrounds) entrants only (could you imagine the international shipping fees on a case of cider?!). Check out the details and the tricky little fine print here.