How good are Saturday mornings!!

My friends, what are you up to on this lovely Saturday morning?

I woke bright and early to bake a dozen Lemon & Raspberry muffins (a-la-Nigella). Ah, the simple pleasures - how {good} is the smell of freshly baked treats in the morning. The raspberries were so juicy and sweet, I couldn't wait to pop one in my mouth...

Life never stops for the Holden's, we were back in Oz last week to celebrate the nuptials of Kristy & Matt and Gen & Tim. Both weddings were amazing celebrations of LOVE...but mmoorree on that later...

No sooner did we arrive home, the house was filled with visitors. We have 2 of Will's brothers and one of their friends staying with us for 10 days. The boys are off to Macau for the day on a "boyz day" = go-carting, sight-seeing (not sure how much of that they will get done), big feed of Portuguese at the fabulous Fernando's and then on to the casino's. Watch out Macau - the Holden boys are on the loose...

I on the other hand am off to visit a lovely friend and her fam to enjoy mani/pedi's before packing the passport and heading over to the dark side (TST) to help a friend at the Food & Wine Festival. Last years event was H.U.G.E. and no doubt this year will be even bigger. If you are at a loose end (and happen to be in Hong Kong), come visit us at Booth D118 (Margaret River Wines).

Thankfully, we have been blessed with perfect weather today. The humidity is all but gone and the temperatures have dropped - the sky is even blue!

As the boys won't be back till late, I am SOOO looking forward to a quiet night in. I am planning on testing some recipes out of Jamie Oliver's {newish} recipe book Jamie does... I have my eye on the Spring & Summer Minestrone (my motherly instinct has kicked in and I feel compelled to feed the boys vege's), and the Beef Tagine. Full report to follow...

This recipe ROCKS!!

A few weeks ago I stumbled across the wonderful 64 sq ft kitchen blog. Warda's blog contains her favorite family recipes from Algeria and The Maghreb. Now doesn't that sound yummy!

The night after I made the discovery I was having a couple of friends over for a casual Sunday night supper (BTW - I don't normally refer to dinner as supper but this blog has me hooked!). I had promised said friends homemade burgers done on the BBQ and intended to make my stock standard wedges as accompaniment (potatoes cut into wedges, sprayed with canola spray and sprinkled with cajun = low fat, scrummy fake chippes). After seeing this recipe, I decided to change plans and try something new. Oh boy I am glad I did (and so were my guests), the chips were absolutely delicious!

Warda calls the recipe "Weeknight Potatoes" but I'm afraid that in the Holden household, these would count as "Main Event, Saturday Night Dinner Party Potatoes". They were a real hit!

I have reproduced (copied) Warda's recipe below. I have also included the link above. I know this might sound crazy, but this recipe is a keeper and I want it saved on my blog permanently!

Roasted Spiced Potatoes Recipe: serves 4

Six big Yukon Gold (or any of your favorite yellow flesh potatoes)
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp chopped parsley
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
1 tsp Harissa, or your favorite hot sauce (Optional)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven at 400F.

Peel and slice the potatoes into wedges or fries. Put them in a bowl, along with the olive oil, salt, black pepper, ground cumin, paprika and harissa, if used. Toss the potatoes to combine.

Arrange them in a baking sheet in a single layer and bake until golden brown and crisp on the outside, turning them over once, about 25-30 minutes.

Mix the herbs, garlic, lemon juice in a bowl. When the potatoes are baked, toss them quickly with the garlic infused herbs and serve.

Image from here

Homemade preserved lemons

We really love Moroccan cuisine in the Holden household. Trouble is, every time I pull out the recipe books and set my heart upon a lovely recipe, it always calls for preserved lemons (which I don't usually - well until now - keep a stock of in the kitchen).

After seeing this post on Sunday Suppers, and being inspired by their chicken tagine with preserved lemons, green olives and golden raisins, I decided that I wouldn't be caught out again.

Yesterday I set to it and jarred up two jars brimming to the top with lovely fragrant preserved lemons. Not sure how long I have to wait until they are technically "preserved" but I will be waiting with baited breath!

Image 1 - taken by mwah yesterday in our kitchen

Image 2 - Sunday Suppers

Cheese heaven

Isn't this cheese table adorable!

For those of you that love cheese (and that includes me!), I was so inspired by these pics and the story over at Sunday Suppers. The gals at SS were asked to guest post over at Martha Stewart's wedding blog: The Bride's Guide with Darcy Miller, and this is what they came up with.

Whilst their table was designed as a wedding dessert table, I think it would be just as befitting at a cocktail party. In fact, I am trying to think of reasons to host one soon, just so that I can prepare one of these gorgeous tables!

In terms of weddings though, the best thing about this idea (aside from the fact that it looks so darn good), is that it is attainable for every bride (and budget). I have a few friends getting married this year, and I am definitely going to recommend this idea to them!

Speaking of cheeses, on Friday night we celebrated a friends 40th birthday with a few drinkies at a new bar/restaurant that's just opened in Hong Kong - Posto Pubblico. Whilst I was still recovering from a bout of food poisoning and was off the wagon - both in terms of food and drink - we sat near the open kitchen (a rarity in HK I must say) and I watched the chefs prepare the most awesome looking food. The dish that particularly caught my eye was a pasta made with fresh Parmesan. Basically (from what I could see anyway), the chef just threw the hot pasta into a huge wheel of parmesan (that had a whole carved out the middle), and swished it around until it was all creamy and gooey. It looked so darn good I wanted to take the plate right out of her hands and gooble the whole thing.

It got me thinking though, what a fabulous idea for a dinner party. Whilst the purchase of a whole wheel of parmesan is a little OTT, I wonder if I could source a not so big wheel that would have the same effect... Then I got thinking, you could serve the pasta in a big bowl on the table, alongside the parmesan and a platter of all kinds of yummy accompaniments. Your guests could then make their own pasta however they fancied. YUMMO!

All this will have to wait however, as the diet continues... I was helped along last week by the food poisoning, but I am resolute that this week I am going to continue to be good! Wish me luck.

Hope you had a fabulous weekend! The weather in HK was divine - a little chilly, but nice and warm in the sun with gorgeous blue skies. I was even lucky enough to get to spend the whole weekend with Will (who had Saturday off)! I feel almost ready to face a new week...almost!

xox

Image via Sunday Suppers

Foodie inspiration!

Following our visit with Dee & Laz, I have come home full of enthusiasm on the foodie front. Trouble is, it is in complete contradiction to the diet I have just started...

The books above are on the top of my book list, but I may just have to hold off on purchasing them until I have progressed a little further on the diet front, seeing as though it is only day 2 and all...

Perhaps I can use this as inspiration to keep me on track, the sooner I shift the weight, the sooner I can purchase these books and cook up a storm!

Wish me luck :)

xox

Yummy Pizza!

I thought I would share with you some pics of the yummy pizzas we made on Sunday night (bases and all!). The first is spicy salami, olive, and cherry tomato, the second is garlic cheese, and the third is mushroom, gorgonzola, walnut and pecorino.

They were incredibly yummy, although I must admit we still have a little work to do on the bases. Any tips?

I'm funny when it comes to pizzas - as you can see by the toppings above I do like a gourmet pizza (I spent many years during uni working in a gourmet pizza shop), although on the other hand, nothing beats a good Hawaiian or BBQ meatlovers pizza does it! Unfortunately we don't get Hawaiian pizzas in Hong Kong (boo), unless you want it complete with corn kernels and cocktail sauce, a la Pizza Hut - no thanks!

Next time I might try my hand at the old classics and try to perfect those bases while I'm at it.

Oh, and in case you are wondering what happened to our afternoon spent mastering the art of french cooking (and wondering whether my lack of promised reporting was because it didn't go so well!), it didn't happen - friends called over and instead we cooked a BBQ! C'est la vie

Mastering the Art Of French Cooking

That's what Will and I are planning to do this afternoon/evening!

Not sure how it will go, but I'm sure if we involve a nice bottle of French wine it won't be too bad.

Reports to follow, I promise...

What have you got planned for the weekend?

The weather is just glorious here today, planning on making a few Chrissy cards this morning, taking CoCo and her brother Ari to the park and then commencing our foray into french cooking this afternoon.

Have fun whatever you are up to!

xox

Divine Intervention

I don't know if it was divine intervention (I think god knew I couldn't handle another brownie failure), or just plain luck, but yesterday morning when I arrived at work there was an email in my inbox notifying me that the cake bake had been cancelled. Can you believe it!

Consequently I got to spend my evening finishing off some card projects (I have a friends baby shower on the weekend and another friends birthday) with no stress, tears, or tantrums! Fabulous.

I know this image has nothing to do with divine intervention, cake bakes, or brownies, but I just wanted to share it with you because I love it so much. I wish I could spend my weekend lazing about on that bed in the middle of a big green paddock.

Image from here

I'm at it again

Baking that is!!

You may recall me briefly alluding to a brownie incident in a previous post. Well I'm about the spill the beans.

When I first started working at my firm, in fact I had only been there a couple of months, we had an office cake bake. Whilst I am the first to admit that my cooking abilities lie much more in the savoury section than the sweets, I would have considered myself up until this time, a fairly competent all round cook. I set out to impress my colleagues with none other than Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Brownies. How hard could it be!

To ensure success, I bought the very best ingredients I could find (very best also equalling expensive). Having not attempted to cook brownies before, I also decided to add a packet mix of cookie dough to the trolley as a bit of a back up plan in case the brownies didn't work...

As I had gotten home from work late that day, I enlisted the help of my husband who was quickly set to work pounding the walnuts in the mortar & pestle. I was busily melting chocolate and making the batter (which looked divine I might add)! We added the nuts to the chocolate mix, and just as the last crumb was coming out, I noticed that Will (being the muscle man that he is...) had smashed the mortar & pestle with tiny flakes of stone speckled throughout the lovely gooey chocolate mix. OMG!!! I panicked. I couldn't strain the mix cause it was full of nuts, but I wasn't about to give up. In hindsight I am not sure why we made this decision, but we decided to press ahead with the brownies, stone and all.

Next comes the cooking part. We were at the time living in our old apartment where we were using a bench top (cheap) oven. Whilst it served a purpose, that purpose certainly wasn't cooking brownies (well at least that's my story and I am sticking to it)! The top cooked quicker than the bottom, and the whole thing went to pot! Basically they were burnt on the top and soft on the bottom (and not the gooey, oozy soft that brownies are supposed to be)! Attempt No 1 - failed!

I decided to turn my hand to the cookies, now who couldn't make these (so I thought)! I decided that I would make giant cookies (so as not to appear stingy to my colleagues) and set to work mixing the dough, rolling the balls etc. I don't know if it was the tiredness, the stress of the whole brownie experience, or just my crap luck - but I didn't leave enough space between the cookie balls, which resulted in me producing 1 tray sized rectangular cookie (all the dough had fused together and covered the entire bottom of the tray)! Attempt No 2 - failed!

I was by this time beside myself, at which point I think Will intervened and ushered me off to bed. I am sure I had tears in my eyes!

The annoying thing is, I couldn't accept defeat and turn up to the cake bake empty handed. I was on a diet at the time, and in an unusual act of self restraint, insisted that Will test the brownies to see if they were salvageable. Being the adorable husband that he is, he couldn't bring himself to tell me the honest truth - i.e. the brownies tasted like crap. Instead, he managed to convince me that despite there appearance, they were the tastiest brownies he had ever eaten! What did I do, I believed him, and took them to work!

All morning people commented on my brownies (we hadn't yet had the morning tea), with one colleague in particular remarking that she was going to spend all of her cake bake money (we were raising funds for charity) on my brownies because brownies were her favourite thing. You can imagine how I felt, knowing that my stone clad burnt brownies were never going to live up to her expectation... AND THEY SURE AS HELL DIDN'T!

Shortly after the cake bake, I was walking past the reception when I heard her telling another colleague "Oh my god, those were the WORST brownies I have ever tasted - they were disgusting and had really hard chunks in them"! Being the kinda gal that she was, she wasn't satisfied sharing it amongst a few, and before long, the whole office knew how crap my brownies were. My reputation was destroyed!

Needless to say I have NEVER attempted to make brownies again, and the brownie story has gone down in the firm history books (only to be re-told EVERY subsequent cake bake, to my complete horror).

Well, I am about to re-write the history books and impress my colleagues with perfect brownies at tomorrow's cake bake (don't worry there are some newbies who I will be able to convince to try them)! I told you that I have a new KitchenAid and a proper oven, so there really are no excuses...

Wish me luck!!!

xox

Image from here