Potato Cakes

Sometime last year I decided that I was going to become the next ‘upcoming blogger on the block/blog’………….it so did not happen because life & Cookalooks happened

Cookalooks: had a cracker Festive season with Christmas parties, cooking classes, year end functions and loads of outside catering every day for a period for 8 weeks … I finally hung up my apron on the 24th Dec and spent the next 3 days in the horizontal position (this means flat on my back doing nuffing)

Life: A son off to brave the big bad world…

A clutch overall (this means my clutch was f@%*^$ and I had to get a new one)

A family crisis (ok so it wasn’t quite a crisis but it felt like it to me)

Root canal + tooth extraction…..this seriously should be at the top of the list but I don’t want to offend my son

And who thought buying a little printer would turn me into a ranting raving lunatic

Anyways what I’m trying to say is that I’m BACK…!!!

I’ve decided to keep it simple after that long introduction so here is my simple potato cake recipe that stole the show at my Valentine’s cooking classes.

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

8x potatoes boiled with their skins on until cooked through (I used the skins to make potato skins the next day)

250ml cream

Salt & Black pepper

Method:

1. Using a fork mash the potato filling until it resembles a rough mash…a few rough bits gives the potato cake character….it’s easier to do this when the filling is still warm
2. Season with salt &black pepper.
3. Bring a handful of mash together and place in the hollow of a muffin tin until just sticking out over the top.
4. Pour a little cream over and around the potato….approx 15ml of cream per potato cake.
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven (200C)for approx. 20-25min or until crispy & golden brown.

Don’t let this bad pic put you off as to how good they taste

Around the World

When I asked my parents, where we’d be spending the summer holiday, my dad would always reply “we’re going to Romania.” I got caught the 1^st time but soon realised that ‘Romania’ was code for NO-WHERE (remain here). All I ever wanted was to get on a plane, I didn’t care where it was going just as long as it was faraway and over the ocean but sadly it looks like the only place I’ll be going this July holiday is Romania! The good news was that I wasn’t the only person staying put these holidays I knew there would be loads of kids going to Romania so I decided run some cooking classes to alleviate holiday boredom with an Around the World theme.

Now no kiddies class would be complete without chocolate so we just had to go to Switzerland and make our own Chocolate truffles then a quick stop off in the U.S of A for cookie dough pizza with chocolate and more chocolate.

Thankfully by the time we hit Italy they were sold out of chocolate so we made a spaghetti dish with a difference and they loved it.

This is a great recipe for kids because not only does it appeal to the younger generation but encourages the use of their fine motor skills.

Here is the recipes (taken from Pinterest & adapted by me)

Funky Spaghetti

Ingredients

Spaghetti

Viennas or sausage of your choice

Cheddar cheese

Bottle of Italian tomato pasta sauce

Method:

1. Cut your Vienna sausage into 4 equal pieces.
2. Gently thread a piece of uncooked spaghetti through the middle of your Vienna from 1 end to the other. Do this a few times…about 5x
3. Bring a large pot of water to the boil…add your funky spaghetti and cook until the spaghetti is just soft. While the spaghetti is cooking heat your Italian tomato pasta sauce
4. Drain the water once the spaghetti is cooked and the warm pasta sauce.
5. Pour over the spaghettie and sprinkle with cheddar or Parmesan cheese and enjoy!

For information on holiday cooking classes click here

 

 

Lemonade Cocktails

I’m hosting a ladies brunch this coming Saturday to celebrate a clients 50th birthday. I think it’s such a neat way of celebrating a birthday….great food, champagne & orange juice and best of all spending a few quality hours with your girlfriends. I am blessed to have great friends, one of them is my friend Kelly who picked me a HUGE bag of lemons from her tree so that I could make some home-made lemonade. I wanted to serve it at my ladies brunch in beautiful glass bottles that we had bought recently during one of our shopping expeditions.

So with the bag of lemons and a little electric squeezer that I unexpectedly found a couple of days ago…for the life of me I don’t know where this little gadget came from but it sure came in handy, I ended up with 1L of freshly squeezed lemon juice without breaking a sweat. After tasting my lemonade ‘luvie’ decided that it would taste better with a little gin…. 30 min later my friend Kelly & her hubby were sitting on our deck sipping ‘lemonade cocktails’….another day in paradise.

Recipe

500ml of freshly squeezed lemon juice

500ml sugar

500ml water

Soda water or sparkling water

Gin

Fine salt

Lemon

Method:

Dissolve the sugar in the water…allow to boil for 3-4 minutes. Cool slightly.

Add the lemon juice and stir. Refrigerate.

To serve

Rub a slice of lemon around the rim of a glass. Dip the rim into some fine salt.

Add some crushed ice to a glass, half full with lemonade, top with soda water and a generous splash of gin.

Delicious!

 

 

Budget Pork Comfort

I’m currently training at a local retirement home. I’m introducing new recipes, putting in a costing system and training the staff.

The retirement home has a very small budget and relies heavily on the generosity of people for donations. I’m not wild about cooking on a budget but then who is. The thing is, there should be no excuse for eating bad food because with a few basic ingredients we made a seriously great pork stew with creamy mash & green beans for under R10 a person.

I’ve worked & trained in retirement homes before and for me it’s always an emotional time. If you want to put your life into perspective go and spend some time in a retirement home/establishment..Say, Do, Walk, See, Love, Eat, Laugh and drink wine because one day you might not be able to….

So with that said, go and cook your loved ones a lavish meal OR better still give my budget pork comfort recipe a go.

Budget Pork Comfort

Ingredients

2kg of pork stewing meat

1/2  bunch of celery, chopped

250g carrots chopped

1x large onions chopped

1x tin of baked beans

1x tin of chopped tomatoes

45ml paprika

4x garlic cloves finely chopped

2x bay leaves

300-450ml chicken stock (made with 2 stock cubes)

15ml cornflour to thicken sauce (if necessary)

Method:

1. Marinate the pork with the paprika, garlic & bay leaves – allow to marinate for an hour.
2.  Fry the pork to brown. Remove from the pan.
3. Add the onions, carrots, celery and cook until soft.
4. Add the baked beans & tin tomato. Cook for a few minutes.
5. Add the pork meat and mix well.
6. Add the chicken stock and simmer for 30minutes
7. Serve with mash and green beans

Creamy Mashed Potato

Ingredients:

2kg of Potatoes, peeled and cut into small chunks

15ml of coarse salt

100g margarine or butter

250ml of milk

Salt & Pepper

Method:

1. Place the potatoes into a pot and cover with cold water. Bring the water to the boil and add the coarse salt. Reduce the heat and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through completely.
2. Add the butter/margarine to the milk and heat through in the microwave for 1 minute. Drain the liquid from the potatoes and immediately add a little of the butter and milk mix to the potatoes and using a masher, mash everything together.
3. Add a little more butter and milk and continue to mash until a creamy mash is formed.
4. Season with a little salt & pepper.

Notes:

It is always important to warm the milk and butter/margarine as this makes the mash creamier.
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Junior Masterchef Cook-Off Party

Masterchef Australia & Masterchef South Africa had nothing on the Junior Masterchef held at Cookalooks this afternoon….man was I impressed.

12 young ladies celebrating Hannah’s 13th birthday party were given Pink & Green Masterchef aprons and split into 2 teams. A pressure test involving a culinary quiz and ‘do you know your herbs’ had the 2 teams scrambling for answers & sniffing herbs (all legal). The winners of the pressure test were given a 5 minute head start and 1st dibs at the mystery table of ingredients. A host of ingredients from chicken to veg to pasta and even 2 min noodles were on display to tempt the teams into creating a 2-course menu (starter & main course) in a 1h15min time period.

Teams were also instructed to design a logo and name their teams PLUS perform a short skit at the end of the cook-off show-casing their menu or dishes.

Now I’ve done loads of Masterchef Cook-Offs involving ‘big people’ but this was my 1st Junior one and I have to admit I was a little anxious. I’d had nightmares of tasting 2 min noodles & tuna concoctions or having to send 12x hungry young ladies home because the food they made was yuk!

The good news was I didn’t have to eat some concoction and spent the most enjoyable afternoon tasting tomato & onion bruschettas, mushroom skewers and roasted veggie tartlets and these were just the starters. For mains it was pasta…a chicken & mushroom pasta with a creamy white sauce (which by the way took a 1h15mins to make) was seriously yummy and beautifully seasoned. The second teams main course was a creamy tomato pasta with chicken and although not as good as the first team certainly was tasty.

While I tallied up the scores the girls tucked into their meals, sharing with one another and being ever so complimentary about each others dishes.

The winning team was announced …congratulations to the Green Pepper team….those tartlets did it for me!

The afternoon ended with a decadent chocolate cake (compliments of Cookalooks) and many a parent vowing never to cook another meal because their daughters can!

Rosemary & Raisin Bread

My mother was a baker but not a cook. I’m cook but not a baker! When you bake you have to follow the rules & the recipes and I’m not very good at doing that! Baking, especially when baking bread is an exercise in patience and that’s something I don’t have. I got divorced a couple of years ago and all I longed for was for the pain to be gone, to be able to let go and move on and I wanted it all to be done………….yesterday. A good friend suggested that I make a loaf of bread. She said the process of baking bread was therapeutic and would teach me patience. So I headed her words and kneaded. I also waited (patiently) for the dough to rise, not once but twice then finally took pleasure in eating a thick slice of buttery home-made bread…pure bliss.

Years later I still prefer Not to bake because I still don’t have any patience but every now and then I come across a bread recipe that I just have to make….this is one of them, compliments of Jamie Oliver.

Rosemary & Raisin bread

•  30ml of dried yeast
• 30ml sugar
• Plus/Minus 625 ml tepid water
• 1 kg strong bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 30ml salt
• 1x large bunch of rosemary, leaves picked
• 500g raisins, chopped or left whole

Stage 1: Dissolve the yeast and sugar in 1/2 the tepid water.

Stage 2: On a clean surface or in a large bowl, make a pile of the flour and salt. Make a well in the centre and pour in all the dissolved yeast mixture. With 4 fingers of 1 hand, make circular movements from the centre moving outwards, slowly bringing in more and more of the flour until all the yeast mixture is soaked up. Then pour the other 1/2 of the tepid water into the centre and gradually incorporate all the flour to make a moist dough. (Certain flours may need a little more water, so don’t be afraid to adjust the quantities.)

Stage 3: Kneading! This is the best bit, just rolling, pushing and folding the dough over and over for 8-10 minutes. This develops the gluten and the structure of the dough. If any of the dough sticks to your hands, just rub them together with a little extra flour. Add the rosemary & raisins to the dough as you knead. Allow to prove for 60min.

Stage 4: Divide the dough in half and knock it down to release all the air/gas. Knead for a few minutes then shape into 2 long sausage-shaped loaves.

Stage 5: Place on a tray dusted with flour and leave to prove again until doubled in size. Score down the length of the bread with a really sharp knife and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180C for approx 25min, until golden & crisp.

Leave to cool before eating. Especially good with a ploughman’s platter and even better with cheddar cheese sandwich with onion chutney marmalade.

Bread Pot Slow-Roasted Tomato Soup

Yesterday was one of those days where I was busy doing things I shouldn’t be doing. …fiffing & faffing in my kitchen when I should be working on quotes and replying to e-mails.

For instance I decided to give Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon recipe a go…..I find her recipes long winded and for someone who can’t follow a recipe I find cooking the Julia Child way rather stressful. I mean I know how to cook a mean beef stew but 100 wedding guests expecting Beef Bourguignon (said in a very larney voice) might not appreciate Cookalooks’ version of a Beef Bourguignon so I settled down in front of my computer to google Julia Child Beef Bourguignon.

I got side-tracked….I ended up printing a Rosemary & Raisin bread which I preceded to bake (divine-will have to blog it later), I also entered a Soup competition which needed a photo so I ended up making my bread pot tomato soup and doing a mini photo-shoot.

I did end up making Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon recipe  – to be honest I did tweak it here and there (I kind of ran out of steam) but it was still gob-smackingly good!

So here’s the Cookalooks’s bread pot tomato soup recipe – I haven’t the time to blog Julia’s beef bourguignon recipe and I’m sure it’s been done a thousand times.

Bread Pot of Slow roasted Tomato Soup

Ingredients

2kg ripe tomatoes, cut into quarters

2x onion, cut into quarter

1x carrot, peeled & roughly chopped

4x cloves of garlic, peeled & bashed

1x red pepper, roughly chopped

1x red chilli, chopped with seeds

30ml sugar

15ml coarse salt

Generous drizzle of olive oil

2x Sprigs of Thyme

500ml chicken stock

15ml dried oregano

30ml flour

30ml butter, soften

8x day old soft buns

Cream (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. In a large roasting dish, add the tomatoes, onion, pepper, carrot, chilli, thyme and garlic.
3. Sprinkle with the salt and sugar then drizzle generously with olive oil. Toss together.
4. Place in oven for approx. an hour or until the tomatoes, onions, carrots and peppers are soft.
5. Bang the whole lot into a blender and blend until smooth.
6. Return the soup to a pot; add the chicken stock and the dried oregano.  Return the soup to a simmer.
7. Make a paste with the soft butter & flour. Whisk the paste into the soup…keep whisking and allow the soup to simmer gently for 10min.
8. While the soup is simmering, prepare the bread pot.
9. Slice the top off the buns and scoop out the bread filling– keep the top & the bread filling.

10. Brush the inside & outside of the buns including the lids & inners with a little olive oil. Place in a hot oven for 8 min or until crispy.

11. Ladle the  tomato soup into the crispy bun, sprinkle with black pepper or feta, top with lid and serve  with croutons (your bread filling)

How to enjoy:

Spoon the soup into your mouth, you can keep topping the bread bun up with soup if you find its not enough….the bread pot will become soft and easily eaten thereafter. 

Serves

8x (250ml per person) or 16x (125ml) bread pots