Gado Gad-ish

Gado-Gado is an Indonesian dish which consists of veggies and a peanut sauce. Essentially. This is my interpretation...

So many colours!

 Okay, so basically I providing you with a "recipe" for my style satay sauce... and a serving suggestion. But! It's an excellent serving suggestion! And Gado-Gado sounds like a much more legitimate meal than peanut-butter scooped out of the jar an onto a carrot stick... and there's only a *little* bit more effort required!

Veggies? Check! Peanut sauce? Check! Extra protein kick? Check!!!

We have here stir fried pepper, carrot strips and bean sprouts on greens with a soft-set boiled egg. Probably 10 minutes effort start to finish (not counting dishes) and the peanut sauce! Oh! The peanut sauce!

Wanna see?

A Taste of Home: Afghans

What else is a girl to do when her body is all...

"No. Screw you! You missed those three seconds wherein I was actually tired... and now I'm gonna stay up AAALL NIGHT!!! WoooOOO!!!"

"What?"

"No, I don't particularly care that you have to be up at 6:30am to go count people in a train station. I'M GONNA KEEP YOU AWAKE UNTIL 3AM ANYWAYS!!!"

"VAHAHAHAH!!!"

...but blog? About food. It's the logical solution.

...What's a girl to do when she starts referring to herself in the 2nd person and giving her "Body" a voice and opinion of its own? Probably see a therapist... Well, I am studying psychology (still!) and you know what they say about us Psyc(o) kids...

As for the counting people in at train station? Yes. I'm actually doing that. It's for science. Leave me alone.

Anyway. I thought I said I was gonna blog about food? Yes. Right. Um.

So... I'm in Sweden at the moment - have been for the last almost four months (!)... Haven't really been cooking a lot. Cooking for one sucks. It's horrible! So horrible that I currently cook very rarely. And when I do I make massive amounts of whatever it is and then I have to eat it for days and days because I have THE smallest drawer in the freezer. You know the one. The bottom one which is shorter than all the others anyway... even before it loses half its depth to the freezer motor thingy. Oh! Woe is me! And stuff.

One thing I have gotten really into while over here is proper Kiwi Kai... which is a bit of a misnomer, really... because the only foods (according to Wiki) that are truly unique to New Zealand and New Zealand alone are sweet things... which don't really count as "proper" food... Sorry guys, turns out we didn't invent fush and chups, the BBQ or roast lamb... Who knew?!

But sweets we do well! And they've gone over pretty well too! I've made Lolly Cake (but I ate it all... *ahem* I mean, shared it with all my friends before I remembered to snap a photo), Chups and dup (chips and dip - not exactly a "sweet" but junkie all the same...) and Afghan biscuits! Now referred to by my corridor mates as "those cookies you make" - I've only made them once guys! But I smashed them out of the paaark!

 So - it turns out no one else makes cookies quite like these little babies? I've taken to describing them as "shortbread with cocoa and cornflakes topped with icing and a walnut" ... which works well until the person you're talking to asks in their cute, European accent "what is shortbread?"

*sigh*

Describing things. Not one of my greater talents. I usually say - "Look, next time I make 'em - I'll give you a call, yeah?" ... but I haven't made them since. Mostly because I used up the last of my flour and cocoa to make the photographed batch here... and as I'm basically moving out in a month (!) I can't really justify the Swedish prices to buy more...

Don't get me wrong though, these are totally student appropriate! There're only, like, 5 ish ingredients most of which you probably have naturally occurring in your pantries!

I'm talking about a shit-tonne of butter (technical term), some flour, a bit o' cocoa, a very small quantity of sugar and 1 1/2 cups of cornflakes... and that's it. Then there's the icing and essential walnut... but the cookie part is basically a pantry given!

The recipe I followed is fairly simple... there are some negative reviews on the basis of the biscuits being to "crumbly"... Guys. This is shortbread. It is crumbly. That's the point. Squish it! Or - start with only one cup of cornflakes they'll be what gets in the way of the sticking power of the butter.

Oh, and there's not a whole lotta sugar in the cookie for a reason - the icing is a little bit non-negotiable. Buttercream or icing/glaze is up to you! Just as long as it's there! The walnut? Up to you. For me, they make the cookie. The recipe I was using suggested flaked almonds (WTF?!)... some people go without entirely! O_o

Intrigued? I hope so! Read on, Mac Duff!

Buttons and Bows

I may have mentioned this before... but I'm not a very effective preparer of "simple" dishes... the Great Alison Holst describes the following dish as a "well balanced family dinner which can be cooked in half an hour in one pan"... she neglects to add the bit "unless, of course, you are Kat. In which case this'll probably take an hour and a half several pans a couple of pots and maybe even a little floor-space for good measure. But don't worry! Your flat mates will love it!"

And, inexplicably, they do! This is not my favourite dish ever... but it comes to you highly requested by one of my most favourite people ever... and I aim to please! :)

Even I recognise that this is a very cute dish!

The flavour and sauciness for this dish comes almost entirely from a can of condensed soup - so make sure you pick a flavour you like from a brand you trust! I usually pick mushroom soup and then bulk up the flavour with some combination of; shit-loads of garlic, onion, Worcester sauce, soy sauce, chilli sauce, oregano, mushrooms etc... It's a stone soup type recipe!

The bows are provided by the pasta shape... and the buttons come, ideally from carrots and courgettes... but if, like me you don't have any courgettes to hand make buttons, bows and pearls! Substitute in any veggies you have lying around! Make this dish your own...

You can bulk out the greens with salad, as I did here - but with all the veggies in the dish proper salad isn't a necessary addition to make balanced-ness.

And so Joshee, I have for you (at long last!) the recipe for buttons and bow - enjoy!

Super Sorbet (1 Ingredient!)

Hey all a y'all Southern Hemisphere kids... Rumour has it that as I head into what is effectively my fourth winter in a row up in Sven-Land (!) ... (Yo! New Zealand! Dafaq was up with my last "summer"?! - I felt ripped off!) ... Youse guys are finally getting around to your time in the sun... :)

As such, I shall present to you this fantabulous little recipe that's been sitting on my laptop for quite some time now... 1 Ingredient Sorbet...

Ain't it preeetty?!

This one I found in Jo Seagar's Lip Smackin', Fast Cookin', Hunger Bustin', Gr8 Tastin' Cookbook which was given to me years and years ago by a friend to whom I had lent my bicycle... This has been a really useful cookbook to me over the years! As was exemplified by my first ever recipe post: Lemony Fish Pita Pockets, this dish, by the way has been quite popular over my two years of feeding other people!

All this recipe requires is a can of fruit in natural juice. That's it. What you do - is freeze this can of fruit until solid... once it reaches this stage - open 'er up, stick the contents in a blender and whizz. Voila! Almost instant dessert and it's not too bad for you!

This one was apricot... and I jazzed it up with a few blueberries (love those things!)

Okay, so now it's a 2-ingredient pudding, but that's not so bad!

But you could use pear, peach... even tinned fruit salad if that's your thing...? (SO much tinned fruit salad!)

So, a rather simple "recipe" to break the fast... but maybe this'll be the taster and need to get my groove back... and maybe you'll be seeing more of me soon?

Guilty Taste & Create: Drunk French Toast

Almost a month to the day... I made this delicious French Toast found on my May Taste and Create partner, Min's blog: The Bad Girl's Kitchen... Since then Life has spectacularly got in way with a variety of colourful excuses/reasons anywhere from the photo's were taken on my Daddy's camera and thus I was at his mercy to have access to them to my usual "lazy" excuse to Holy Hell! I head for London (and ultimately, Sweden) in a little over a month!!!

Still, it's very rude on my part - I didn't even send Min an apology e-mail yet. But fear not! If you were to sign up for Taste and Create for July (e-mail Min before the 8th of the Month) you won't be paired with me, and so your partner will, in fact, be reliable... I'm taking a break... Did I mention Sweden yet? ALL BY MYSELF!!! London for a week with family first... MEEP!!!

Now, French Toast... or, more to the point, Drunk French Toast... The drunk-ness makes it all the more studenty! In fact, if I were flatting right now, I'd have been able to follow the recipe exactly as all my favourite people in Wellington drink Bourbon! My parents however, do not... my French Toast wants to be a pirate when it grows up... I used rum!

In future I'd use more rum... but otherwise the recipe is fantastic as Min writes it... I'm currently working 2-3 shifts/day and haven't the energy for more than a basic update right now... but I will be back! Perhaps typing from Sweden!

Watch this space...

xoxox ~ Kat

Honey Biscuits

Hi There! My name is Kat and I am the author of this blog! Apparently...

... if this blog had an author ... who actually wrote it ... regularly ... ?

As my dearest, darling pen pal Rosie will confirm, and as I have probably explained before... regular writing is not really my forte... I write to her about once a year. Mostly. Except for last year. When I wrote, like, three letters and posted approximately none of them. Pen pal of the year right here!

The point of this little rant is that I'm still here! Still cooking! Still blog stalking all my favourites... :) And now I will do some rabid posting for a little bit... if not here then maybe here or there...? We'll see...

For now, I'm going to start clearing some of my ever-growing back log of images of food that I've made!

Starting with these:

Honey biscuits! Which I made for a friends Nana who'd just had surgery and lives near-by...

This recipe comes from a book called, interestingly enough, Honey Biscuits , that I read in primary school about a boy who bakes with his Grandmother who explains where all the ingredients come from... it was my favourite book! The recipe which was explained throughout the story is printed in full...

This is the version I wrote out, from memory, so that I could bake them with my Grandma (I was probably 6-7)

And this is the translation of my pictograms (spelling wasn't my thing)

Down the far side of the page is 12-13 year old me writing the translations in... I've cropped that bit because it wasn't so cute!

These biscuits are small nuggets of spicy honey flavour and simple/cheap enough for students of any age to make!

Taste & Create: Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Peanut Fudge Frosting

Taste & Create is  blogging event I participate in on an (almost) monthly basis... my post a reliably a day or two late... which is a reflection on Life and its tendency to get in the way and my own, blogging laziness - the actual process of reading my partner's blog and planning what I'm going to make is a lot of fun! That's why I keep coming back... that, and I love getting the feedback from someone else trying out my recipes.

So, if you're reading this, and you're a blogger too - you should sign up! The people are really lovely and it's a lot of fun! Also - it forces a person to post at least once a month... encouragement some of us need more than others... *ahem*

This month I was paired with Carol of No Reason Needed... her blog is a combination of food, family and Life - it's a fun and interesting read!

I had planned to make her Chicken Tetrazzini with Crescent Rolls, but I was called into work that day and my mummy made the Tetrazzini sans crescent rolls for me... but I couldn't submit something I didn't make! That would be cheating!

...So I kept on reading... and eventually stumbled across Peanut Butter Cupcakes SOLD!!!

OM NOM NOM!!!

Now, I didn't have any chocolate to melt to make the ganache suggested by Carol's daughter Dakota, so I decided to create my own peanut butter fudge frosting... and wow. Just. Wow. I'll share the recipe for that with you guys too!

Back to the original recipe - I did my best to follow instructions! I did, however make only a third of the recipe which is four cupcakes! The perfect number for two people!

In my thirding - I misread the quantity of baking soda called for and accidentally put in the full amount... I've corrected this for my version down below though... and that is the only factor that spoils these rather delicious cupcakes! I'll be making them again for sure, and I think you should too!