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.