Random.

Wow. I can't believe it's been 2011 for 10 days already. Today marks the first day of the new year in which I am actually at home and just chillin' out. I haven't had much time to blog lately and have been feeling rather uninspired. To sum up my year so far:

- I have worked to the point where I may scream the next time a person says "you must love seeing the show every night" or "oooh you're so lucky to work here" because when 50 different people say that I don't feel lucky, I just feel irritated and mildly annoyed.

- I have said goodbye to two of my closest friends as they leave ol' Sydney town to embark on what I'm sure will be grand adventures.

- I have dined out almost everyday of this new year, and had some really great food. But now all I want is a home-cooked meal.

- I have festival-ed at Sydney Festival First Night (yes, I realise festival-ed is not a real word but since my brain is having trouble functioning and for lack of a better word I'm rolling with it).

- I have attempted to re-enrol in uni but it would seem they don't want me to return. I'm half tempted to take that as a sign that I should skip it and just travel...maybe?

And now here I am today, exhausted and feeling like I need a year off from my life.

Amongst all the 'busy' that has been 2011 for me so far there are a few exciting things coming up in my life in the near future. So maybe I'll return to blogland then, but in the meantime I'm taking a blog hiatus. Hope everyone is having a great 2011 so far!

Farewell 2010.

The last week of every year is always an insanely busy time in my life. This might have something to do with the fact that there is Christmas, followed by my sister's birthday (which always leads to lots of celebrating) and then of course more celebrating to ring in the new year.

Christmas was a super quiet affair this year, in fact if it didn't really feel like Christmas time at all. My sister and I have a tradition of watching 'Meet Me in St Louis' and baking Christmas cookies together every year - sadly this year I baked by myself, and we simply never got around to watching the movie. I did however hang out with some of my favourite people on the day AND I went to the movies. I don't know why I've never thought to go to the movies on Christmas before, it's fantastic! You get to see new releases without the accompanying first-week crowds. Think I know what my new Christmas tradition is going to be :P

The rest of the week has pretty much been spent helping my sister celebrate reaching the quarter century milestone in her life - and it has been lots of fun! I don't like to get too sentimental when blogging but I have to say I am so lucky to have such a great sister and am so proud of all her achievements this past year.

I must admit the highlight of my sister's birthday (aside from spending it with her, of course) was the cake. I absolutely love chocolate, so by default I absolutely love Lindt's cake collection. The birthday cake selected was the Chocolate Hazelnut Gateau. It is three layers of vanilla bean cake soaked in frangelico, layered with roasted nuts and gianduja (a hazelnut and chocolate paste). I highly recommend it...so delicious!

The day after my sister's actual birthday, the celebrating continued with a day of shopping, and this is where we finally tried this American-style diner that I've wandered past countless times over the past year but have never had the time to stop in and eat. The decor screams American diner with booths lined all along the walls, and the menu has typical diner fare with extensive burger and fries options, as well as all-day breakfast (featuring a dozen or so pancake options). We opted for pancakes, which were absolutely delicious and completely transported me back to my time in the States where I consumed insane amounts of pancakes (though the portion size was considerably smaller than American standards).

While I would definitely return, I have to say Melbourne has much better options when it comes to American-style diners. Guess I'll just have to get my year's worth of diner food fix when I return to the States.

***

Well, I can't believe 2010 is about to come to an end. While it hasn't always been great, I have had some of the most wonderful times of my life this year. Thank you to all the wonderful people in my life that have made it a pretty awesome year, I'm so lucky and grateful to know you all. I hope 2011 brings good health and happiness to all!

Happy New Year!!

Christmas Cookies.

It has a been a hectic time in my life since my last post, but when is it ever calm this time of year. Today, after a tense kind of morning I decided to come home and bake Christmas cookies to cheer myself up.

I decided to make two different types of cookies. The first were gingerbread people. I make these every year and almost always end up with several dozen of them - and that's after packing them up to be gifted. My version of gingerbread doesn't have allspice, nutmeg or cinnamon in it. It is super simple with ground ginger, golden syrup, flour, brown sugar and bicarbonate soda (and of course, butter). I much prefer this toned down, less spicy version of gingerbread.

This is them fresh out of the oven...

Then I gave them faces...

And here they are ready to be sent off as Christmas gifts.

The second type of cookie is a classic shortbread. The recipe of course comes from none other than the great Ina Garten (aka Barefoot Contessa), who generally inspires most my baking endeavors. These a Christmas-y in the sense that they are made into Christmas-related shapes, i.e. bells, angels, stars and Christmas trees. Aside from that they are pretty ordinary cookies. I varied some of them by drizzling them with some dark chocolate (as per Ms. Garten's suggestion).

A Disastrous Thanksgiving Meal.

I realise that the US Thanksgiving holiday was almost 2 weeks ago, and this post is long overdue. It would be easy for me to say I've been busy finishing up uni for the year, returning to work and just generally getting back in control of my life. But in truth, I think I'm embarassed about what a disaster my 3rd attempt of cooking a thanksgiving meal turned out to be and was simply dragging my feet about posting up the disastrous result.

So, to begin my quest to find a turkey was a complete disaster. I was in the middle of exams, and did not take into account that fresh turkeys will not be available until closer to Christmas. There were literally no turkeys available at my local grocer's. There was a sign telling me I could place an order for Christmas but that didn't help me in the slightest. This should have dissuaded me from pursuing this dream to make a traditional thanksgiving meal...but alas it didn't.

Instead I used the only whole chicken available to me, and it turned out to be the tiniest chicken I have ever cooked with. It was so incredibly small that I actually felt bad eating it... and considering turkeys are about 10 times the size of this chicken, it was really sad to even be calling it a turkey substitute.

At this point I was so upset about not having a turkey that I cheated and instead of making a potato side dish out of real potatoes I made mini-potatoes.

Because the chicken was so tiny, it was near impossible for it to produce sufficient amounts of fat/drippings to be turned into a gravy. So I supplied bottles of different ready-made sauces instead. I skipped making stuffing as well as cranberry sauce (though this is because it is so hard to source frozen cranberries!!).

The only thing that turned out was the pie. I took the recipe for Cranberry and Blueberry pie from the 2010 Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appetit and substituting raspberries for the filling (again, the reason being frozen cranberries are not easy to find).

The dough is a standard pie crust recipe (available here). To make the filling that I made (which varies slightly to the original Bon Appetit recipe - is as follows:

Ingredients

Approx. 3 1/2 cups of frozen (not thawed) Raspberries (or any other frozen berry combination you like)

1 1/4 cups of sugar (I actually put 3/4 cups of sugar because I didn't want it to be too sweet, so do whatever you like - it's a really flexible kind of recipe)

About 3 tablespoons of corn flour (though this may vary depending on how thick you want to make the filling)

About 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and some grated lemon zest

*The original Bon Appetit recipe includes adding cinnamon, but this doesn't go with ALL berries. I also left it out in my variation due to dietary requirements of my family members.

Method

Place everything into a pot and boil over medium heat (which the magazine said is approx. 15 mins - I found it did not in fact take that long).

Also remember to stir it constantly, as it's like making a jam and if it boils too quickly it will stick/burn to the sides of you pan, which is a complete pain to clean (trust me, I speak from past experience).

Once it's come to a boil, and thickened to a consistency you like, leave it to cool in a glass or ceramic bowl.

Then to assemble the pie - line a pie dish with crust (the standard size is a 12-inch dish, but you can use whatever you have it generally works), place cooled filling in centre and then you can either cover it completely with more crust or make a lattice top.

Brush dough with fresh cream, or milk, or butter - generally anything dairy to help it stick.

Bake for approx. 1 hour or until golden. Leave to cool a bit.

Bon appetit!

Cake Boss and Cannoli.

On another food related note, one of my favourite shows at the moment is Cake Boss. The show follows the crew at Carlo's Bakery located in the heart of Hoboken, New Jersey. Let me just say, these guys are amazing. They make some pretty phenomenal looking cakes, to suit any requested theme. On the whole, the show not only showcases their amazing talents in the cake/baking department, but is generally entertaining following their (often hilarious) family dramas.

The bakery is apparently renowned for their cannoli, and so without fail every time I watch this show I think of cannoli and then crave cannoli. To satisfy my latest cannoli craving, my sister and dad kindly offered to drive out to one of my favourite little Italian patisseries to get me some of the best tasting cannoli in Sydney. The place is Pasticerria Papa and all their desserts are divine! In fact, they are famous throughout Sydney for their Ricotta Cake, which is indescribably delicious.

After 2 hours stuck in ridiculous amounts of traffic, they finally got there. My sister was worried that they might have run out of cannoli, as the place gets extremely busy on weekends (where the line is out the door) and by lunchtime most desserts are no longer available. Thankfully, they were able to get cannoli - both vanilla and chocolate - and some of slices of our favourite Pecan Pie.

Yum!

Mini Potatoes.

So a couple of weeks ago I started watching Nigella Lawson's new show Kitchen. It's no secret that I'm not a big fan and don't quite buy into this "Nigella - the Domestic Goddess" business. My sister on the other hand doesn't mind her and actually ordered her latest cookbook - aptly named Kitchen after the new series.

The main reason I'm not drawn to Nigella's brand of 'cooking' is that she has a tendency to use a lot of pre-prepared/out-of-the-packet food. I prefer to cook from scratch whenever I can (and therefore admire people like Ina Garten who encourage this way of cooking and show how easy it can be). Nigella also has a tendency to over narrate when showcasing her recipes, which I find irritating and mildly pretentious.

However, I must concede that on occasion, Nigella offers up some interesting and surprisingly decent recipes. For instance, I do enjoy her recipe for Chocolate Pear Pudding (available here). It lives up to her claim that it is quick, easy and delicious.

More recently from this new series Kitchen, Nigella promised us a quick, easy side dish of "mini potatoes". What are mini-potatoes I wondered? I had never seen such a product in grocery stores. And then she revealed that these mythical mini-potatoes were in fact a packet of store bought "potato gnocchi" fried in pan. My sister, fascinated by the whole thing, ended up at the store buying a packet of gnocchi to see if was any good.

Turns out this is a superbly delicious way to serve up and eat potato gnocchi (and they're pretty addictive... once you eat one it's kind of hard to stop). So, I must concede - despite the initial bizarreness behind this Nigella "recipe" it isn't half bad and is certainly a different way to present potato gnocchi as a side dish.

Surprising deliciousness aside, what does strike me as odd is that this counts as a recipe and gets a whole page in the cookbook. It may be a twist or a useful tip, but does placing gnocchi into a frying pan with some oil and salt really require a recipe? So here I am, back to being thoroughly unimpressed by Nigella's unique style of "cooking".

NB: On a slightly unrelated note, the post on my attempts at making a traditional Thanksgiving meal is on its way...soon! :)

Bon Appetit.

Today I received the latest issue of my Bon Appetit magazine subscription in the mail. It's the Thanksgiving special and despite having exams I'm excited that it came just in time for me to attempt my 3rd Thanksgiving meal, this coming Thursday.

It may seem unconventional to celebrate Thanksgiving in a country where many people wouldn't even know what it's all about, but I've always loved the idea of this North American holiday - and so a few years ago I decided that I'd like to make a Thanksgiving feast for my family.

Now, it hasn't always turned out the way I planned. Last year for instance I did not leave myself enough time to make all the usual accompaniments, such as cranberry sauce and stuffing - giving up after making a side of potatoes and gravy. I also had to substitute chicken (well, two whole chickens) in place of a turkey - as my mother forgot to source one for me. The other problem I find is that it is really hard to be in the kitchen for a long period of time when the weather this time of year is so warm! It makes me see the appeal of a cold, wintery North American Thanksgiving.

This year I'm determined for it all to turn out differently. At this stage I still need to buy a turkey (which sadly, may or may not happen in time) and all the other bits and pieces necessary to make a pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and traditional stuffing. I'll be chronicling the result here on Thursday. Fingers crossed it doesn't end in disaster!!