Update: Lemon Slice

The icing is still a little runny, but I couldn't wait.

Sprung! (Lemon Slice)

So gorgeous Garry was away for work for a couple of days. I popped to the shop to pick up some supplies and was standing in the checkout queue. I turn around, and there right behind me is Georgia, who lives in our block of townhouses, and her 6 month old baby Rosie. Georgia has clutched in her hand a container of chocolate ice cream. And that's all.

"Is Henry away this week?" I laughed.

"Yeah, how could you tell?" She asked.
"Ice cream. Dead giveaway".

Then I look down at the conveyor belt taking my shopping to the checkout. BBQ roast chicken (high in protein, nutritious!). Two packets of mini dairy milk chocolates (they were on special!) and a packet of cinnamon doughnuts. Hmm. I suppose she could tell Garry was away as well...

Georgia and I were chatting on the way home and decided on a playdate for the next day. I promised her a cinnamon doughnut feeling a little sheepish.

Resolving to be a better host than Coles doughnuts, yesterday morning I set about making something. Something quick and easy that could be made while Lily played with a spatula and a plastic bowl at my feet. Lemon slice.

So I crushed the biscuits and measured the coconut, all while the butter was melting with the condensed milk. I turned around to wash the lemons and noticed a funny smell... I'd burnt the condensed milk. B*gger. No more condensed milk. No time to make an alternative snack. B*gger.

Not just sprung buying sugary treats to console myself that my husband was away but also unable to make the simplest of no-cook slices. It was not starting off a very good day! So I packed away the crushed biscuits and coconut in a box for tomorrow.

Play date went well, and nobody seemed to notice that (a) there were no cinnamon doughnuts left or (b) there was a strange smell of burnt sugar in the air.

This morning I set to, and now chilling in the fridge is the lemon slice.

Can't wait for morning tea to take a bite!

Lemon Slice

 

I tend to double the recipe. Not just because I'm greedy, so that you can use whole small tin of condensed milk.

½ cup sweetened condensed milk
100g butter
200g granita biscuits, crushed
1 cup desiccated coconut
Rind of one lemon

Icing:

200g icing sugar, sifted

 

Juice of approximately 1 lemon

Line a 20 cm square tin with baking paper. Combine butter and condensed milk in saucepan and cook over low heat until butter is melted (3-4 minutes).
Combine crushed biscuits, coconut and lemon rind in bowl. Pour butter mixture into biscuits and stir well to combine.
Press mixture into prepared tin and place in fridge for at least one hour.

Create icing by combining icing sugar and lemon juice in small bowl. Pour icing over slice and return to fridge for at least one hour to set.

Cut slice into small pieces and keep refrigerated

Veal Schnitzel

I remember when I was a kid my mum would come home from shopping every so often with some veal escallops that she would turn into the most delicious schnitzel. I have to assume her excitement was in that you don't often see veal, so when you do you snap it up. Crumbed and fried, I'm sure it played havoc with dad's high cholesterol, but it always made us happy. And it was always served in one of two ways, either with mashed potato and peas and presented with HP sauce, or with her special pasta with broccoli and anchovies. I've never asked where she found these recipes from (or how she decided to pair them together), I must do so next time we're visiting with them in Victoria.

So. I found some veal at the butchers, and just like my mum, I got all excited and covered them with eggy breadcrumbs and we had a delicious dinner. I've got some tips for you.

• First,  add a little chopped parsley, grated lemon zest and Parmesan cheese to the crumbs to make them tastier (if it was in any way possible to make fried bread any more tasty that is).
• Second, use only one hand to do the crumbing, otherwise you end up with flour, egg and breadcrumbs stuck all over everything. Leave one hand clean for turning on the tap.
• The third tip is not mine but Garry's, but I employ it. Repeat the crumbing process twice, so you get an extra thick crust. The resulting coating is so much more delicious it's worth both the time and the calories.

I have done away with both the HP Sauce and the broccoli pasta (although that is delicious in it's own right) and prefer to serve with some mashed potatoes and some rocket, lightly dressed with some lemon pressed olive oil.

Veal Schnitzel

2 veal escallops, trimmed of all fat and sinew
4 tbs flour
2 eggs
2 cups dry sourdough breadcrumbs
zest of one lemon
2tbs finely chopped parsley
2tbs finely grated Parmesan cheese

Bash out the veal until it is a uniform thickness, about 4-5mm thick. Mix together the breadcrumbs, lemon zest, parsley and cheese to form the crumbs.
Dip each escallop first into the flour, then the beaten egg and then the crumbs, being sure to get a good coating of each. Repeat to get extra thick crumbs.
Allow the crumbed escallops to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to help the crumb set.
When you're ready to eat, heat some butter and olive oil in a big fry pan, I make sure there's about 1/2 - 1 cm of fat in the bottom of the pan to ensure fast cooking. When the butter is foaming, place the crumbed escallops in and let them cook. Don't play with them or the crumbs will fall off. Trust the process, when the crumbs are cooked they will come off the bottom of the pan! It takes a couple of minutes. Turn and cook the other side.
When cooked through, remove from heat and drain on some kitchen paper. Serve up immediately with mashed potato and a good squeeze of lemon.

Bagels

In my opinion, the bagel is the king of bread. Sure, a chewy piece of sourdough cooked by a master is amazing and cannot be beaten, but I think of the sourdough family as a more feminine type of delight so needs to be crowned the Queen.

The bagel on the other hand is tough. Tough, strong, sometimes a little chewy, but always yielding to the touch of a subtle but delicious topping.

I've often thought of making them myself, but I'm not great with yeast. I think I lack the required patience and always stop kneading too soon and peek into the rising dough before it's had enough time to properly develop... Also the whole boiling thing kind of freaks me out, I mean, how does it stay together and not end up as glue in the bottom of the pot? Glue, I may add, that I will have to clean up if things don't go well. No, making bagels is best left to the experts I think.

That's why I picked some up on Saturday from Lawleys Bakery (http://www.lawleys.com.au/) and duly anointed them with some cream cheese, smoked salmon and a little rocket. Delicious.

Mount Claremont Farmers Market

Saturday's with Lily are a far cry from the Saturdays of old. We used to laze in bed for hours, I'd wait paitiently for my pancakes (GG makes the best pancakes ever) in bed and read the paper. Then we'd be off in a mad rush to get to sailing and the day would be gone. No time for shopping, cleaning or thinking about dinner.

Now with LL waking us up before the sun is up and me still not sailing, there's plenty of time to get all those things done we always wanted to on a Saturday. Like going to the farmers market.

I'm not sure which farmers grow plums and bananas, but they all looked good enough to eat

I love the idea of a farmers market: getting to chat with the producers and learning the secrets of growing straight carrots (it's about sand apparently). But GG used to work in the wholesale fruit and vege markets, and knows that what you see is not necesserily what you get. I do love it that GG just wants to squeeze the fruit and chat to the growers, it's like seeing him in his element.
"Are they really organic?" I ask. "Of course not," scoffs GG "You can't get cauliflowers that big without help.". Illusions shattered, I still enjoy pottering around these places. Most of it is no different to a good fruit and vege shop, but they did have purple carrots, orange beetroot and eye wateringly fresh rocket and parsley.

I think my favorite bits of farmers markets are the meat and cheese sellers, they almost invariably do grow/make their produce and know what they're talking about. At Mt Claremont yesterday they had freerange pork (we got some chorizo for paella) and some beautiful Over the Moon goats cheese. Plus there's bread, juice and eggs amongst the trees in the playg ground.

The "organic" produce, looks so pretty under the trees 

Maybe I'm a cynic, but I'm still going back next week to get some more non-organic organic purple carrots. And another one of those killer bacon and egg rolls.

Totally Delicious Chocolate Brownies

Yesterday I went to visit my lovely friend Kel who's just given birth to beautiful baby George. I used to work with Kel, and along with sharing a birthday we also share a deep and respectful love of chocolate. Not an "I need to eat a block of Dairy Milk now!" type love, but if it wasn't consumed on a nearly daily basis, there was something up. We used to pop over to the bakery and buy a little morsel called a chocolate slice, similar to a hedgehog I suppose and share it on the premise that it was too big for either of us to eat. I think we both would have managed it but the joy of sharing the chocolate was greater than eating more of it.

Anyway. Little George is just beautiful, quiet, serene and happy: just what a three week old baby should be. May he never get teeth like our little Lily who kept GG and I up half last night, but I suppose that's a joy for Kel and Brad to experience in coming months.

And the chocolate? Nigella's Chocolate Brownies of course. So simple, very quick to make, but you do need to watch they don't over cook them so they stay sticky in the middle. In my opinion, they are much better eaten the next day after a night's resting in the fridge (as I am doing now with a cup of tea). It seems like a lot of eggs, chocolate, butter and sugar, but it does make a vast amount: even with my current appetite we seem to have brownies around the house for days after I've baked them...

Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Brownies

375g soft butter
375g dark chocolate
6 eggs
1tbs vanilla extract
500g castor sugar
225g plain flour
150g chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 180 C and line large tin (33cm x 23cm) with baking paper. Melt together butter and chocolate and allow to cool a little. Beat together eggs, sugar and vanilla.

Mix together chocolate/butter mixture into eggs and sugar, then sift in flour. Dust walnuts lightly in flour and stir in to combine. Pour into tin and bake for 25 minutes, until cooked (squewer in it will just come out clean), top will be light brown and speckled, but do not let overcook, it will continue to cook as it cools. Turn out of tin and allow to cool.

The Best Pesto

Gorgeous Garry is a horticulturalist, and loves doing things with plants. I don't do plants, but I do love what GG produces in the garden and hence have become very proficient in watering said plants.

So, on Sunday, GG was out in the garden, pulling out the summer crop of now spent tomatoes and capsicums and replacing with some delicious (and fast growing apparently) beans and snow peas and rainbow chard. To make room for the chard, our prolific crop of basil had to go. And where does basil go when it comes out of the garden? Into pesto of course.

I've made plenty of pesto in my time, but I recently read somewhere not to toast the pine nuts. So this time I tried it out and I think it works better. The raw pesto didn't taste as good as usual, not as full flavoured or as "tasty" I suppose, but when I mixed it in with some fresh pasta it was definitely better.

I know blogs are about pictures as well as words, but I seem to find myself eating the products before photos are taken... here's last night's dinner.

Basil Pesto

4 big handfuls fresh picked basil leaves
1/2 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup pine nuts (toasted or not toasted)
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 - 1 cup grated parmasan cheese (1/2 cup if not so finely grated, more if needed to taste)

Throw the basil, pine nuts and garlic into a food processor (or use a mortal and pestle if you're a traditionalist!) and process until chopped finely. Add in oil to moisten (I guess about two tablespoons). Stir in parmasan cheese, salt and pepper and add more oil to make into a nice saucy consistency. Taste to make sure it's got enough salt and a good balance between basil, cheese and nuts.

Pour into a small jar and cover with oil to prevent it discolouring. Will keep in the fridge for about a week. Cover with more oil if you use some to keep it nice and green.