Olive Parcels

 I think the original recipe for these, such as it is, came from and Allyson Gofton cookbook... But I am not certain!

Parmesan, pastry and olive these little parcels come together in moments! My Mummy used to make them to take as nibbles (Ladies, a Plate! NZ Style) to Adult Dinners - and I used to try to scoff as many as I could before she noticed... It was a good deal. I usually got in trouble, but it was worth it!

Now that I'm an adult (kinda-sorta) I can make them as and when I please/ have leftover pastry... The olives might make them a little less popular that my other leftover Pastry Snacks - but that just means more for meee!!!

"Leftover pastry" is possibly a slight misnomer here - because the easiest way to make these is to use pre-rolled puff or savoury short crust pastry cut into squares... But you can use any puff or savoury short crust, really - the pre-rolled stuff just saves you time!

Aside from "pitted" the olives can be any of your choice! Kalamata is my favourite - but stuffed, green olives are fun too...

Taste & Create: Thali - Black Sesame Chutney

This is the final Taste & Create Thali recipe from Seduce Your Taste Buds... and it's the visually stunning Black Sesame Seed Chutney...

It's such a gorgeous, glossy, black colour!

PJ's chutney is very creamy looking... I'm not sure how I caused mine to look so different...? I wonder if it's because I used dried, desiccated coconut rather than fresh grated?

The seasonings are very similar to the ones used for the tomato riata and the two accompaniments complemented each other beautifully!

One factor that most excited me about this dish was that I got to make my own chutney with speed and ease rather than my usual (but fantastic) shop-bought mango chutney... :)

This one is well worth knocking up!

Simple Stuffed Pork Loin

Why hello there!

Long time, no post!

Sorry about that...

I've been having a funny old time of it... After returning to New Zealand in February this year, and spending a lovely, but woefully unemployed 4 months at home with my parents - I returned to Wellington and got a job as a research assistant at a market research company... I had a fantastic time and got to learn all kinds of things about what New Zealanders think! I'm now sort of unemployed again (fixed term contracts will do that to a girl) - but I'm about to be included in a 3 week stint as a web-tester, which I think will be a lot of fun, and something new again!

Being back at the dreaded cooking for one has been a bit of a drag - but with an exciting new boyfriend to be cooking for - things could be looking up for me! :)

In the mean time, here is an example of a rather fantastic Kat-in-Sweden staple... Stuffed Pork Loin.

Here we have, clockwise from the top: Pork loin stuffed with feta, red onion and oregano, red(something) leaves and baked potato with tzatziki (supermarket styles!)

In NZ pork loin would be a pretty crazy think for students to buy... But my local ICA had Danish pork loin for a crazy-low price (maybe $10/ kg?!) so I. Bought. That. Shit. UP! It was yummy... :)

I made this dish a couple of times, swapping for different fillings (honey, walnut and goat's cheese was a serious hit!) but only photographed my first attempt... The reason the photograph is kind of pallid and un-appetising is because, although I browned the loin a bit before baking, I did bake it in tinfoil so that it wouldn't unwrap! In later iterations I made tinfoil "string" by fold tinfoil into long strips and sort of twisted them around my stuffed loins to secure them... Resulting in a much browner, prettier loin!

The method is pretty simple:

For each person:

Set the oven to 200C. Slice a (10cm [4"] ish) piece of pork loin almost, but not quite all the way through on the horizontal. Stuff with your chosen filling, something slightly moist so as not to dry out the pork is best! Tie with string or tinfoil ;) and season to taste with olive oil, salt and pepper. Brown a little in a frying pan before baking in the hot oven until the pork is cooked through (usually about 20 mins for me...)

Serve with whatever on the  side and enjoy!

Taste & Create: Thali - Tomato Riata

This is my penultimate Taste & Create Thali recipe from Seduce Your Taste Buds... :)

It's a year, one month and 23 days since I posted my original review of 6 of PJ's delicious recipes... and today I will tell you, in greater detail about the 6th: Tomato Riata...

I really loved all the colour matching going on with the riata in this particular bowl...

Now, you may be like me, and of the belied that riata always contains cucumber. And cumin. And mint. Yes? No? Well; it turns out - we're wrong. Shocking, I know!

If you check out PJ's Menu page and scroll half way down (ish) she has a whole HOST of riata dishes! Only one of which contains "cucumber" in the title... So there. You learn something new every day.

This riata is a little more acidic tasting than its more conventional contemporary - but tasty none the less! I recommend giving it a go even if only to say that you have...

Taste & Create: Tahli - Sambar Powder

Taste & Create Thali recipe from Seduce Your Taste Buds #3!!

You're going to need today's Sambar Spice recipe for tomorrow's Sambar Curry Recipe... It's pretty simple, really - just the ingredients together and away you go!

The quantities listed here will make more than you need for the Sambar; but the spice powder will keep will in an airtight container for future use...

I had a great time blending these all together by hand with a mortar and pestle! But use a spice blender, if you have one... or whatever else you have available to you. :)

You'll need:

1/2 cup coriander seeds

1 Tbsp gram dhal

1/2 Tbsp fenugreek seeds

Red chillies, to taste (I used 1)

1/4 tsp Asafoetida (hing) - this is an anti-flatulence herb and won't affect the taste of the Sambar Powder if you can't find any to use.

1-2 tsp oil

Dry roast the coriander seeds until fragrant.

Add the oil and the rest of the ingredients and fry briefly until all oil is absorbed.

All to cool before grinding into a fine paste.

Store in an airtight container until needed.

Taste & Create: Thali - Aloo Fry

Hej, hej!

Remember my Thali from Taste & Create way back? Well... I've been paired with PJ of Seduce Your Tastebuds once again and I feel this is the optimum opportunity for me to finally get around to posting the full recipes I made last time... thus reminding both you and me how awesome they are! (It's a sign from the Gods, I tell you!)

Top: Tomato Riata, Aloo Fry, Garlicky Spinach Rice
Centre: Black Sesame Chutney
Bottom: Sambar made with home-made Sambar Powder

Although I really liked (most) of the dishes I made... Far and away my favourite (and the one I've made most often since) was PJ's Aloo Fry...

The crunch provided by the whole spices and slightly crispy fried potatoes in this dish really blew me away. Think; pan roasted, Indian spiced roast potatoes!

*drool*

Most of the spices required here (mustard seed, cumin seed, coriander seed) are not all that "unusual" and if, as a student, you were to go out and buy a packet - I'm sure you'd find many reasons to use them again and again. (Packet curries very rarely stand up to their homemade counterparts). The fenugreek (kasuri methi) leaves are a liiitle bit more unusual... and although they definitely add an enjoyable extra dimension to the dish; I hope I'll be forgiven for suggesting that you can probably get away without them if it's beyond your means.

Do try this dish out! I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

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?

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!

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!

Marmite Spaghetti

... or, in my case, Vegemite Spaghetti. Because that's what I had. Also, Australian Vegemite is closer (in flavour, but not texture) to English Marmite than New Zealand Marmite is... Make sense? No? Good.

This is another Nigella recipe, and a absolute, bottom-of-the-barrel cupboard scratching recipe. Tasty though! Well worth making even when you do have sufficient ingredients to make something else.

do you think the pasta looks tastier from this angle...

The result is a salty, savoury pasta which is tasty when served under cheese. In much the same way that toast can be made tasty and savoury by being served beneath marmite (or vegemite) and cheese.

The sauce is simple enough to make... and if you want to feel as if you're eating a balanced meal - add some peas at the last second to the pasta water for a splash of green!

...or this angle?

I won't get into the vegemite vs marmite debate... you can suit yourself! Either will work just fine... :)

Egg Flop Omelette

Super healthy, super tasty breakfast...

Omelettes and I get along in kinda the same way that stir-fry and I get along... I like to eat 'em... but I kinda suck a cooking them.

My current theory is that this is because I like to fry my "fillings" and then pour the egg over them and cook it all together unlike a normal person - who either doesn't cook the fillings at all or cooks them separately from the egg part and actually using them to fill the omelette...

My may is easier - and requires less mess. But only when "mess" refers to the number of plates and pans required. The finished result invariably looks a mess... kinda like someone else already tried it and didn't think much of it...

But that's beside the point! Kat Omelettes are tasty and healthy. And that's what matters here. They involve egg, which is good for protein. Spinach (whenever possible) which is good for iron. Tomatoes, which I cook a bit to help prevent prostate cancer ( ;] ). And cheese which is good on everything. Oh! And they're cheap. And easy. Student-able. Yeah.

See how I managed to get the daisies in the background in perfect
focus? Yeah! Mad photography skills...

I dunno... Let's just read the instruction now.

Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Pasta Puttanesca

Why don't ask, don't tell? Because puttanesca sauce contains three things people commonly believe they don't like: olives, capers and anchovies.

WAIT!!!

Before you give up on this recipe in disgust - know this, I loathe anchovies and am only just learning to tolerate capers (olives and I on the other hand... well put it this way - for much of my childhood I preferred olives to chocolate) but "a la" puttanesca is one of my favourite ways to eat pasta! Even when I've made it myself and I know what's in there!

See? Looks pretty harmless, really...

If you really, really can't stomach the idea of anchovies, you can substitute them for bacon or salami, I suppose. And the capers for gherkins. The olives? Pick 'em out you lazy so and so's...

Thus, if you're feeling brave, read on for the recipe:

The Broke Student's Cupboard Feast

Okay. So, admittedly "feast" might be taking this dish one step (or a leap) too far... but it is an invaluable cupboard scraping meal. As it's based on a Nigella "recipe" (the Exhausted Mother's tea-time special from her "Bites" series) you know it's gotta be good! (I would post a link, but apparently it's not deemed a real recipe and the internet doesn't have a copy yet?)

It's a sort of rice/lentil pasta sauce soup... Nigella tells you to simply bring a jar of pasta sauce and a jar of water to the boil before stirring in a handful of rice, cooking for 10 (ish) minutes and serving to small children with a lump of Parmesan nearly the size of their heads to grate over.

My "ingredient" list is a little more extensive, but the basic premise is the same. I added lentils for protein, and frozen spinach for greens thus making it an *almost* balanced meal...

As with my last post - you need to make sure that you use a pasta sauce you like, as it is the dominant flavour - but other than that go nuts with whatever you have in your cupboard/fridge/freezer...

eg: chick peas, broccoli, pasta, un-veggie-ise it with some chopped ham... or veganise it and leave off the cheese...

The beauty of this dish was that I could not go to the supermarket for almost three weeks (not something I recommend!) and still manage to put a tasty meal on the table... Score 1 for Kat!