Simple Essentials: Chicken by Donna Hay

In a household where beef and pork aren't eaten, chicken is a staple and you can damn well bet that we've cooked it in every way possible, utilising all the different parts of it (yep, even the occasional giblet, although I personally do not go there...). A book like this is great for when inspiration is lacking, as it provides a consolidated collection of recipes using a single core ingredient. It also provides information about basic cooking methods and how to make the perfect roast chicken, so it covers all bases.



The recipe I went with wasn't something revolutionary, and I don't really think you need to follow a recipe to make it. But hey, I was in the mood for pasta and I thought I might as well cross off another book  on the list at the same time ;). I do try to stick with the recipes as closely as possible, but in this case, I added garlic and chilli as I felt the dish would probably lack a strong flavour. It's a very small extra step for the amount of flavour you add, and I somehow just doesn't feel right about making pasta without garlic ;).

 Spaghetti with Chicken and Capers
Adapted from Simple Essentials: Chicken by Donna Hay

Ingredients
200g spaghetti
200g chicken breast, cooked (I poached mine)
2 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
1/4 cup basil, chopped
1 heaped tbs capers
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 long red chillies, deseeded
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Parmesan cheese, to taste

Method
Cook the pasta in salted water until al dente. Drain and set aside.

Over medium heat, fry the garlic and chilli until the softened and starting to brown. Add the chicken and stir through until warm.

Add the spaghetti and toss through to fully coat. Add the remaining ingredients and taste for seasoning. Serve with parmesan cheese.

Hay,D. 2011, Simple Essentials: Chicken, HarperCollinsPublishers, Sydney.

Marion: Recipes and Stories from a Hungry Cook by Marion Grasby

I wasn't an avid watcher of the very first season of Masterchef Australia but I do remember a public outcry when one of the favourites, Marion, was eliminated in the last few weeks of the competition. Regardless of missing out on a spot in the finals, Marion has had a successful post-Masterchef career, having had released not only cookbooks, but her own range of curry pastes and Asian food kits in supermarkets.

This is her first cook book and it is absolutely adorable. Western and family recipes from Thailand are interspersed with photos of produce at Thai markets and of Marion herself, making the cookbook colourful and extremely easy on the eyes. She also includes personal stories from her life and how she shifted from a journalist at the ABC to a fully-fledged devotee to da culinary lyf.

While a lot of the recipes in here are too adventurous for me to attempt (those including eel and other such exotic ingredients), I like that this book touches on a lot of the basics such as Pad See Ew, Thai fried rice and red curry paste.

You only have to take a short drive to your local supermarket to know that curry pastes of all tastes and varieties are readily available for purchase, with red curry paste being one of the more common ones. However I loved the idea of making my own, and while it is certainly more labourious, the satisfaction you gain is well worth it.

I assume it was a combination of the fact I added turmeric to the Chiang Mai noodle soup and left out the shrimp paste that the curry lacked the red colour, but it certainly did not detract from the taste at all. The soup I made with the paste was extremely delicious and I had to exercise gross amounts of restraint in order to stop eating it. It can also be served with rice if you're not much of a noodle fan (I know, I know! But apparently these people really do exist...).  



Red Curry Paste
Adapted from Marion: Recipes and Stories from a Hungry Cook by Marion Grasby
Ingredients
10 dried long red chillies
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin
1 tbs uncooked rice
3 golden (French) shallots, roughly chopped (I didn't have any so i substituted with a small brown onion and 2 extra garlic cloves)
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
10cm piece of ginger, peeled and roughly sliced
1 stem lemongrass, white part only, roughly sliced
1 tsp sea salt
1 fresh red chilli, sliced
2 tsp shrimp paste

Method
Soak the red chillies in some boiling water until softened (about 10 minutes). Drain, pat dry and set aside. Meanwhile, toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, until fragrant. Remove from pan and set aside.

Use a mortar and pestle to pound everything (except for the chillies and shrimp paste) for "as long as your arms will let you."

Transfer everything, including the shrimp paste and chillies, to a food processor and blitz until a smooth paste is formed. I left out the shrimp paste and found that the curry paste was very dry and added two tablespoons of oil to help it come together. Transfer to an airtight container and store in the fridge for up to a week.


Khao Soi (Chiang Mai Noodle Soup) 
Adapted from Marion: Recipes and Stories from a Hungry Cook by Marion Grasby 
Ingredients
200g dried egg noodles, prepared according to packet instructions, drained and set aside
200g chicken breast, cut into thin strips
2 tbs vegetable oil
3 tbs red curry paste
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
3 cups coconut milk
2 tbs fish sauce 
1 tbs white sugar

Method
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat and add the curry paste and turmeric. Cook for one minute, until curry paste is steaming and fragrant.

Add 1 cup of the coconut milk and simmer for two minutes. Then add the rest of the coconut milk. fish sauce, palm sugar and 1 cup of water. Allow to simmer for five minutes.

Reduce the heat to low and add the chicken breast. Allow to cook slowly for 20 minutes or until chicken is soft and tender. 

When ready to serve, arrange handfuls of noodles into bowls and spoon over the soup. Garnish as desired with sliced red chillies, fresh coriander, fried shallots and a squeeze of lemon.

Yeah, I was pretty proud of this photo ;) 

Grasby, M, 2011, Marion: Recipes and Stories From a Hungry Cook, Pan McMillan Australia, Sydney.

Planet Cake by Paris Cutler

This book contains enough fondant-covered awesomeness to drive any young child delirious with excitement. You can teach yourself how to make a giant thong (ahem, flip flop), a handbag and a make up box all out of cake and fondant. So it of course makes perfect sense that I would use this book to make the most mundane, ordinary and un-exciting bake of all; plain vanilla cupcakes. If time and money (fondant is expensive, yo) were on my side (and er... an actual occasion to bake for), I would have made one of the many fabulous cakes showcased in this book. Instead, I have made a feeble attempt to redeem myself by frosting the cupcakes in a way not unlike the rainbow paddlepops of your childhood

 #throwback.......Saturday.
To be honest, the resemblance was, much like the addition of Chemical X to sugar, spice and everything nice, merely a happy accident. But it works and the positive reactions to them on social media made me feel a little less guilty for choosing such a plain recipe to blog.



Besides from the cakes, this book provides many useful tips on decorating with fondant, as well as some other basic cake and frosting recipes; I've used the white chocolate mudcake recipe from here before and it is diviiiiine.
As for the cupcakes themselves, they're a fairly ordinary base cupcake and to be honest, the preparation felt a little more complicated than the usual vanilla cake recipe I use (maybe it was all the lemon zest grating? who knows...), so I would probably stick to that in the future. However I found the addition of lemon zest added a complementary taste and these paired well with the sweetness of buttercream as the cakes themselves aren't overly sweet; I'm sure I'm not alone in my fear of people politely wiping off excess buttercream off a cupcake because it's too sweet. It ruins the whole experience of the cupcake, damnnit!



Anywho, here's the cake recipe. I didn't take many progress pics of the icing, so if you want to recreate it, simply Google 'rainbow frosting tutorial' or something similar. Essentially, it just involved four coloured icings put into the same piping bag, keeping each colour as separate as possible until the actual piping bit happened. Yeah, just Google it........




Vanilla Cupcakes
Adapted from Planet Cake by Paris Cutler

Ingredients
175g soft butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon zest, grated
2 eggs
260g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
200mL milk

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a 12 hole muffin pan with patty cases.

Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition to fully combine.

Sift the flour and baking powder together. Fold half the flour into the mixture, and then half the milk. Repeat. 

Divide the batter equally among the patty cases (depending on the sizes of your patty cases, you may well have excess batter, so have some extra patty cases prepared).

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of each cupcake comes out clean. Allow to cool in the muffin pan for a few minutes, before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Ice and decorate as desired. 

Cutler, P, 2009, Planet Cake, Murdoch Books Australia, Millers Point.

The Starter Kitchen by Callum Hann

The realisation that I will soon be the same age that Callum was when he placed second in the 2010 series of Masterchef Australia brings with it an overwhelming sense of un-accomplishment. I won't pretend to remember the dishes Callum plated every week, but to get him to the top two, they must have been amazing. Since Masterchef, Callum decided to use his magical cooking powers to write a cookbook for the peasants, aka those who want to cook delicious food without requiring any fancy skills or ingredients; aka me.
I love this book. Besides from plenty of easy-to-recreate dishes, Callum has included sections aimed to help master some cooking basics, as well as teaching foundational cooking knowledge, with everything from how to find the right cut of meat to basic food safety and hygiene guidelines.
This dish comes from the 'Something Special' section and is one of the more time-intensive recipes. Nevertheless, it was well worth the time and resulted in a deeelliciousss concoction of some of my favourite things; carbs, mushrooms, and carbs.


When cooking for this blog, I do attempt to stick to the recipes as closely as possible so as to achieve the purpose of actually testing the quality/reliability of each cookbook. I did make some tweaks to this recipe, mostly due to the availability of ingredients. Winter has turned our once beautiful herb garden into a few bare and broken stems, so I had to make do with a small sprinkling of dried herbs in lieu of fresh parsley and thyme. I'm not big on goat's cheese so er... the recipe strayed from its actual name (Mushroom and Goat's Cheese Risotto) but er doodedoo let's ignore dat1. Also, we only had regular button mushrooms at home so unfortunately the dish lacked the intensity of mushroomy flavour that could have been provided if I used a mixture of shiitake, king brown etc as suggested. However I still enjoyed this risotto very much and although I couldn't fully appreciate the flavour of this dish (excellent idea to make something like this when my sense of taste was severely compromised due to sickness...), it was still fabulous. Try this out when you're feeling particularly patient, it's well worth the wait!

Mushroom Risotto
Adapted from The Starter Kitchen by Callum Hann
Ingredients
2 tbs olive oil
1/2 brown onion, finely diced
2 garlic gloves, crushed
2/3 cup arborio rice
30g butter
60mL white wine
10g dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in 1/4 cup hot water, drained (reserve the soaking liquid)
500mL salt-reduced chicken or vegetable stock, diluted with 125mL boiling water
250g mixed mushrooms, cut into pieces
3 thyme sprigs
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
Parmesan cheese and black pepper, to taste

Method
In a large heavy-based saucepan over medium heat, cook the onions with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, stirring occasionally until lightly browned. Add the garlic and cook until soft, and then increase the heat to medium-high and add the rice. Toast for one minute, stirring to combine the grains with the onion mixture.

Add half the butter, allowing it to melt and coat the other ingredients. Then add the wine and allow to bubble away for about a minute. Add the poricini soaking liquid and a ladleful of stock. Continue to add the stock one ladle at a time, allowing the previous amount to be absorbed before adding the next. Stir occasionally so as to keep all the rice coated in the liquid. If all the liquid has been added and the rice is still not cooked through, add some extra water and continue cooking. I used approximately 1/2 cup stock mixed with 1 cup of water extra as I like the rice to be on the soft side of al dente, but the amount you need is obviously dependent on your desired consistency. Taste after every extra addition to make sure you do not overcook it.

While the risotto is cooking, heat the remaining oil in a smaller frypan over medium-high heat and in two batches, cook the mushrooms until browned. Add the porcini, season with salt and pepper and keep warm until the rice is cooked through.

When you are satisfied with the risotto, season with pepper and add the parmesan, parsley and remaining butter. Callum serves his risotto with the mushrooms distrubuted equally amongst the bowls of rice. To me that feels like serving spaghetti with the bolognaise on top as opposed to mixed through, something I've never really warmed to, and so I stirred the mushrooms into the rice; do what floats ya boat!

Sit down, eat and enjoyyyyyyy :)

Hann, C 2012, The Starter Kitchen, Murdoch Books Australia, Millers Point.

Taste: Cupcakes

Whatever suspicions and mistrust I have of cookbooks is amplified a hundred-fold by those which have an unknown author. When the book refuses to yield the name of an author at all, the book might as well be a stash of alcohol labelled "THIS IS NOT ALCOHOL" #nothinsus. So it, of course, makes perfect sense that I would fish out a book like this from the table of suspiciously discounted books at Dymocks and take it home with some sort of intention to actually use it. 
Of course, any such intention was swiftly thrust out the door


(Couldn't resist)
as I adamantly refused to part with the beloved tried and tested recipes that I usually use. 
Finding a recipe that I actually wanted to recreate was not easy, as I found most of the cupcakes in here uninspiring and lacking any sort of excitement. This, coupled with the fact I had no idea if any of these recipes were reliable, led to me settling on these simple chocolate chip cupcakes.

The cupcakes were okay and easy enough to make, but certainly not something I'm rushing to make again. The resulting cupcakes were still enjoyable but on the stodgy and dry side.  The quantities seemed odd from the start and the resulting batter was extremely thick, almost like a very wet dough. Also, I broke my beloved and seemingly invincible spatula whilst stirring the mixture. Not happy, Jan. 

So I've still included the recipe for the sake of the blog, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it. Admittedly, the cupcakes weren't bad; it's just that there are far better cupcake recipes out there, so if you have a decent go-to recipe for vanilla cake (I'll share mine later) just use that and add in the chocolate chips. And yep, that's branded flour #highroller #gettingpaper (but seriously, I wept in the Woolworths aisle when they didn't have any Home Brand plain flour left that day. The struggle is real).


Chocolate Chip Cupcakes 
Adapted from 'Taste: Cupcakes'
Ingredients
110g soft unsalted butter
75g caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
175g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
110mL milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
75g chocolate chips

Chocolate buttercream:
140g soft unsalted butter
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
1tbs milk
75g dark chocolate, melted

Method
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and line a muffin pan with cupcake cases.

Beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs in three batches, mixing well after each addition.

Sift the flour and baking powder over the mixture and add the milk, vanilla and chocolate chips. Stir to combine.

Fill the cupcake cases (depending on the size of your cupcake cases you may have enough mixture for more than twelve) and bake in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of a cupcake comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and rest in the pan for five minutes, before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter, icing sugar, milk and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add the chocolate and beat until a pipeable consistency is reached. Decorate the cupcakes as desired. 





2011, Taste: Cupcakes, Hinkler Books Pty Ltd, Melbourne.

Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale

The first time I heard about Lorraine Pascale was a few years ago when she presented part of a weekly Masterclass on Masterchef Australia. She made her Mojito Genoise (also included in this book), and I remember a certain cheeky contestant remarking on how he couldn't concentrate on the recipe because he was distracted by the teacher. Turns out it was with good reason, as Lorraine is a model-turned-cook, who is now very well-known and successful in the UK.

I love Lorraine and I love this book. Instead of numbering her recipes into arbitrary steps, her recipes are organised into paragraphs, which creates a much more casual tone (it sounds strange, but it really does make it feel like a more personal experience! Kind of like writing in Tom Riddle's diary, and how he writes back... yeah, it's not really the same. I tried). 
There are plenty of great recipes in here, which perhaps raises the question of why I chose one of the most basic baked goods, a recipe for something which is present in most sweet-based cookbooks and is hardly anything revolutionary; the humble brownie.

Though what the brownie lacks in sophistication, it more than makes up for in taste and simplicity of preparation. Essentially, it's melt-mix-stir and bake, producing comfort and deliciousness in one tiny little square.
Last week a certain friend of mine with the comical tendemcy to mis-pronounce the name of the university cafe (*cough* 'Maxine' *cough*) grew another year older, and I figured it'd be the perfect time to actually bake him something rather than leaving him to cry over foodpornographic Instagram photos. As much as I love baking and decorating cupcakes for someone's birthday, I was short on time and needed something transportable enough to survive a day out in the city.
This is not the recipe I usually use for brownies (that one, surprise surprise, was found online), so it was good to try a different one while ticking a book off the list.
This uses brown sugar and a LOT more butter than I'm used to (and hardly any flour!), and I swear that I put on a few kilos just by looking at this (for the dieters out there looking at this....... #soznotsoz).
However, they were delicious and Mr Maxine was very happy.
This was the second time I have used Oreos in a brownie batter, and I highly recommend it. The chewy and fudgy texture of the brownies, coupled with the crunchiness of the Oreos, is naice. Very naice.



Cookies and Cream Fudge Brownies 
Adapted From 'Baking Made Easy' by By Lorraine Pascale
Ingredients
165g butter
200g dark chocolate, grated or broken into pieces
3 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract
165g soft light brown sugar
2 tbs plain flour
1 tbs cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
1 pkt Oreos 

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and line a 20cm x 20cm square baking tin.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, add the chocolate and stir until completely melted and combined.

Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and vanilla together in a large bowl until they become light and fluffy. Add half the sugar and whisk to combine, and then add in the other half. Ensure that the sugar is added from the side of the bowl (as opposed to being dumped in the middle) to retain the airiness of the mixture. Whisk until the mixture thickens and lightens in colour.

Add in the chocolate mixture, again taking care to add it from the side of the bowl. Then add the salt, flour and cocoa powder, stirring until just combined.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 25 - 30 minutes. (I found this batter to take a longer time to cook than my usual one, so ensure that it is almost completely baked before taking it out of the oven or you might find yourself shoving the entire unsliced brownie back into the pan to keep cooking! Not that I did that............). Ensure it does not overbake, as the brownies will continue to cook from the residual heat in the baking pan once removed from the oven. It should be set but still a little wobbly in the centre.

Allow the brownies to cool in the pan and then slice into squares.


Close enough? Close enough.

Pascale, L 2011, Baking Made Easy, HarperCollins Publishers, London.

What is the #Shelfie Project?

Shelfie /Shɛlfɪe/ noun A picture or portrait of your bookshelf. Showcasing literature IN ALL IT'S GLORY! (This term was originally defined by author Rick Riordan). Not to be confused with selfie. (Source: Urban Dictionary).

This is my shelfie (well, the cookbook half of it). As my interest in cooking and baking has grown in recent years, so too has my collection of cookbooks. Okay, so it's hardly the NSW State Library, but as someone with the unfortunate tendency to impulsively buy things that I hardly need or have space for, it is getting to be quite a lot. 

Yet I think I like the idea of cookbooks more than I like actually using them. Mostly it's because I'm not sure exactly how reliable the recipe is, nor how it actually tastes. Why bother using a recipe from a book when you there are numerous websites that act as not only a consolidated database of every kind of recipe imaginable, but have user comments from people who have actually tried the recipe? 

Thus, the cookbooks sit proudly on my shelf, read but hardly used. 

While adding two new (signed :D) cookbooks to the collection yesterday (shelf adjustment was required for Mr Zumbo), I felt a sudden burst of motivation and decided that  it was about time I actually started using them. Besides from actually using stuff I've spent any money (the books were kind of like that pretty dress you buy knowing full well you have nowhere in mind to wear it to, but you just have to have it), I'm hoping this 'project' will help me develop my cooking further and allow me to discover new heights of deliciousness :D. And also give me something to do in the holidays besides sleeping 'til midday and consuming five times the recommended daily intake of sugar and saturated fats in front of the TV/interwebz.

By the end of the year, I hope to have cooked at least one recipe from each book (it doesn't sound that exciting but considering I am yet to try anything from several of the books, it'll definitely be an achievement for me!!).  

6 months,

18 books,

1 kitchen.

Wow that sounds like the start of a melodramatic cooking show advert.

Aaanyways.. Hopefully I am motivated enough to actually blog each recipe (that's seriously the hardest part of this. Cooking is fine, it's just the writing-uppy bit that I lack motivation for) so all my fans (fan) can follow my adventures. 

The books are (from L - R in the photo above):

1 Zumbarons - Adriano Zumbo

2 Lantern Cookery Classics - George Calombaris 

3 The Starter Kitchen - Callum Hann 

4 Balti: Step-by-Step Indian Recipes - Padmini Mehta 

5 Cakes - Marina Neri 

6 Simple Essentials: Chicken - Donna Hay 

7 All New Meals in Minutes - Ainsley Harriott 

8 How to be a Domestic Goddess - Nigella Lawson 

9 Nigellissima - Nigella Lawson 

10 Planet Cake - Paris Cutler

11 Nigella Express - Nigella Lawson 

12 Taste: Cupcakes - Hinkler Publishing

13 Baking Made Easy - Lorraine Pascale

14 Marion - Marion Grasby 

15 Cupcakes and Bakes - Recipes selected by Jonnie Leger (actually not in the photo but this is where it usually sits on the shelf ;))

16 My Favourite Food for all Seasons - Janelle Bloom 

17 Family Food and Weekend Feasts - Janelle Bloom 

18 Zumbo - Adriano Zumbo (click the photo to enlarge, I promise it really is there!)