Lunch with Bills

Now, it is time again to go on with some more food from Bills Sydney Food by Bill Granger with you. You might remember my post Breakfast with bills. After having had breakfast, it’s the only natural step to have lunch.

What do we have on offer today?

Ricotta and Tomato tart. Delicious! Since I like ricotta anyway, that’s a good one for me. The recipe had all the guidelines you needed to make your own puff pastry … I used a package from the shop anyway. Maybe next time! 

Have a look again …

Apart from the ricotta, the tomatoes and the puff pastry there is also some rocket involved. I never would want to argue with that. Another thing, to me it seems Bill used some more tomatoes on his tart. At least that’s how it looks like in his book. I am pleased anyway.

Let’s go with another one …

Maybe I should have known from the start, it wouldn’t work out properly. The recipe I tried was Coconut and Passionfruit slice. It was just because passionfruit was on offer in the supermarket. Sadly the girl at the check-out couldn’t recognise passionfruit and made me pay for figs (obviously she doesn’t know that one either). Or was the problem on my side.

Anyway, the recipe didn’t work 100 % with those ‘figs’ … eh … right, it was passionfruit. I reckon, though, the oven was the problem and the whole thing could have used a bit more time in it. While the taste was fine, there was no way in getting a half-delicious photo of it.

No worries! We don’t want to dwell to long on failure or negative things, but rather go on with something else … good the butcher knew about steak … Fine Steak Sandwich with Garlic Crème …

Obviously you need some kind of bread … ciabatta in this case, but the main heroes are the steak and the garlic crème.

The butcher did a good job and preparing the steak correctly in the pan was no big deal either. The real work here is the garlic crème. I didn’t take the same approach as with the puff pastry from the Ricotta and Tomato Tart.

I really went for it and had some food exercise again with all that whisking of the egg yolks and oil. As I’m not a sissy, I didn’t use a food processor for it either.

It was all worth it!

For sure you would find other fine uses for that crème! Well, we had already something in mind for it. I don’t want to say too much about it, though. Just watch …

Do I have to mention it was very delicious? You might have reckoned that already by yourself.

I hoped you enjoyed your lunch with bills and of course me. Yes, I know, you would enjoy it even more, if it was for real, but … hey … who am I? I can’t be everywhere and do everything and make everyone happy (it’s a great relief to recognise that and stop trying).

Oh, that brings me back to the pickle I’ve got. I can’t go everywhere. So, if you have any ideas (because you know something) feel free to give any suggestions for travelling Australia.

Now …

Keep smiling … 

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Have a Snack - Chilli Cheese Balls

Sometimes when the day is getting late, I feel I don't need a proper dinner, but a snack will be just fine, maybe together with a beer ...

Just like that! Some chilli cheese balls on a bed of rocket together with some serrano ham. Life is good! I'm happy and satisfied! The end of the day can come. I would say that snack has it all ... all those ingredients I love: chilli, cheese, serrano ham and rocket. What more could I want? Oh, I mentioned it already ... a nice refreshing beer.
It's not much work and quick you go and have your snack ...

Ingredients:
Rocket, as much as you want
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt
Pepper
4-6 slices Serrano ham
200 g soft goat cheese
Chilli, fresh, dried, flaked, powder or whatever you like, have and want
Small bunch fresh parsley, chopped up
Flour
One egg, whisked
Large hand full breadcrumbs
Oil for frying

Method:
Dress the rocket with the lemon juice, olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. Place it on the plate to serve and arrange the serrano ham on top.
Mix the goat cheese with the chilli and parsley. Give it a pinch of salt. Shape small balls from it. Then it's time to get them bread-crumbed. Off to be rolled in the flour, then egg wash and finally breadcrumbs.
Get some oil hot for frying and fry the chilli cheese balls until brown and crispy. Obviously you want to avoid that the cheese gets leaking out.
Lay the ready chilli cheese balls on some kitchen paper to get rid off some of the oil, but hurry, we want to have a snack ...

Ah, I really should make sure I have serrano ham and goat cheese in my fridge most of the time. So, have it as a late night snack or a starter, if you prefer that.
Now, tell us, what is your favourite quick evening snack?

Telly ... Brain ... Plate ... Chicken Pie

While I was doing some research for the Bloggers Around the World South Africa, I came across Masterchef South Africa. Did I tell you this before or am I having a déjà vu? Oh ... either way it would mean my brain is not functioning properly. That wasn't what I wanted to get to.
Anyway, in that episode the contestants where supposed to visit a restaurant, sample a dish and then cook it. Something like that I like as well. Fine, for one team it was chicken pie. From that moment I fancied to make chicken pie. 
Apparently that was about one month ago.
Now I like to share with you what got to my plate after it went from the telly through my (malfunctioning?) brain ...

Houston, we have no problem - we are having Steak with Pesto

"Houston, Houston, do you read? We have no problem ..."
The same old subject - I haven't made a secret out of it, I like rocket. Yes once again I'm not really talking about spacecraft and the lot, although I thought of scanning some of the photos from my visit to Cape Canaveral, but ... honestly ... I have absolutely no clue where I have put those photos and I am absolutely ... honestly ... not the mood to go searching for them. Therefore, Eruca Sativa has to do. Well, you might want to call it arugula, but ... yes ... honestly ... I prefer the name rocket and I have absolute no intention of bothering you with the fact it belongs to the Brassicaceae family. No, I am not even going to mention that it is rich in vitamin C and potassium and the ancient Romans thought it to be an aphrodisiac. Oopsy, I did mention all that now, while the only thing I wanted to tell you was that I like to eat rocket. I show you ...

Oh, you didn't see it? Let me assure you, though, that rocket is included in this picture. I will tell you more ...

Long Goodbye, Long Lunch ... Fresh Baguette with Ham and Cheese

To me it seems I'm working now a very long long time on my move to a new flat and I still have a lot to do. I tried a relative organised way to do it, but ... I keep on doing here a bit and there a bit. Well, that doesn't mean I don't get anything done. It's rather gives me some variety and in the end ... I am sure about ... well, have to be ... that everything will be achieved in time. Anyway, it's a long goodbye from this place.
Therefore it's only fitting I have a long lunch ... eh ... well ... eh ... sort of ...

... yes, it was fresh, it was long and it was delicious ...

Burger Builder - 'To the Moon & Back' Rocket Burger

Oh, how lucky we are that some words have different meanings. Do you know this game - we used to play it sometimes in school - where two pupil are explaining two different things, bit by bit of course and the answer to both things is the same word. Ah, maybe then again you don't know.
Fine, let's have a try: the one thing can take you to the moon ... and maybe back as well (ah, I was just listening to that song again) and the other thing is edible. 
You know the solution already? I guess you have cheated. How could you not? After all it was quite obvious from the title of the post that the answer is: rocket. Then I guess we can skip the singing and the lyrics analysis and go directly over to preparing some food, burgers to be precise. Well, to be even more precise: 'To the Moon & Back' Rocket Burgers ...

Let us suppose you have your beef burger patties already ... eh ... ready. Then we ...

Bills Sydney Food - Prawn and Chilli Linguine

I have a dream, again and again. I run through the jungle and someone or something is hunting me. I run and run as fast as I can, which is surprisingly fast in that dream. The thing nearly gets me, it's freaking close. Suddenly I come to the edge of the cliff, which is dropping quite a way down. I just jump and ... wake up.
Oops, no, really, I'm not having that dream. I'd rather say that is the beginning of Star Trek - Into Darkness.
My dream is slightly different. It's there since school and it has to do with Australia. I dream of moving there or at least visiting there once. The latter seems more realistic. 
Anyway, that's also why I tend to buy books about Australia, watch Australian movies or TV series and lately above that buy cookbooks.
One of the latest example is Bills Sydney Food by Bill Granger. After all it would be nice to visit Sydney. Here an example of what came from it ...

Into Darkness Basil Gorgonzola Carbonara

No, this has nothing to do with the latest Star Trek movie, although I regret it already. There might be a slight danger, that you don't like me anymore after this post. That is, of course, only if you liked me before this post.
Besides a simple pasta dish, this post is about the darkness of the human mind.

Go for it ... Mushroom-Tomato Bucatini with Rocket and Mozzarella

Time is flowing away. What else should it do anyway? After all we don't want to be trapped in a kind of space time continuum sort of thing. The key, though, is to use your time wisely. You have every minute only once. You don't want to regret anything, do you? However, if you have to, no worries ... time goes on anyway. Well, then, I keep trying to use my time in a good and nice and wise way ...
So in the spirit of the lately announced Bloggers Around the World - Italy, I go for it and I might even do it again. Therefore I start things easily. Mushrooms always go ... eh tomato sauce, too.

I also was able to get hold of some rocket, so it's only natural for it to make it's appearance in the following Mushroom-Tomato Bucatini with Rocket and Mozzarella.

What we need:
All we need is love ... eh ... sorry, I was supposed to give the ingredients, but cooking with love won't hurt either.
Splash of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
Few leaves of basil
400 ml tinned tomatoes
Splash of red wine vinegar
300 g mushrooms, chopped up into small pieces according to your desire
500 g Bucatini (or other pasta)
150 g mini Mozzarella balls (or pieces of mozzarella)
50 g rocket
Salt and pepper

What we do:
Heat up some olive oil in a large pan. Toss in the garlic and slightly fry the slices. Add the leaves of basil just briefly before you are ready to pour in the tomatoes and some extra liquid. Bring it to the boil and let it all simmer for 30 minutes before you start crushing the tomatoes - poor fellas.
Give the sauce a splash of red wine vinegar and unload your chopped mushrooms in the pan. Take a lovely (suppose so) wooden spoon and give it a gentle (cooking with love) mix up.
Have a look onto your watch. For sure you agree to boil the pasta, don't you?
What are you waiting for then? Go for it and cook the pasta ... drain it and add it to the Mushroom-Tomato sauce and ... yes ... mix it well.
All done - so you can plate up. Place some rocket leaves over your pasta and some mini Mozzarella balls as well. Drizzle a bit of olive oil over it and ... there you go. La vita e bella! 

Somehow I have the feeling I have something more in mind for Bloggers Around the World. Anyway, what do you have in mind?
Just go for it then!

Anti-Rabbit Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

"Hey, are you eating again the food of the rabbit?!" "Poor rabbit, you are eating up all it's food!"
Did you hear a comment like this before, while enjoying a portion of salad?
From time to time I'm getting such comments.
What can we say about this? A lot!
My rabbit like some good fresh green salad leaves. Carrots it appreciates as well. She even gladly goes for some herbs. Well, some days I gave her some Thai basil and ... she absolutely devoured it.
Well, it's true then! Are you eating up the food of the rabbit?

Not exactly! A good salad is more than just a few green leaves of salad.

A keen observer might see a few things in that salad a rabbit for sure would not appreciate at all.

Let us though go a bit into detail with preparing our Anti-Rabbit Salad. That way, the rabbit for sure would never like it, but I hope you do.

Ingredients (amounts according to taste):
Rocket
Tomatoes, according to size halved, quartered or even further
Physalis, halved
Gorgonzola, in big chunks
Walnuts ... obviously without shell, broken into smaller pieces

Honey Mustard Dressing:
Balsamic vinegar or lemon juice
3 x as much olive oil
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp honey
Salt and pepper according to taste

Method:
Put the ingredients for the dressing into a dressing shaker (old, empty and clean jam jar) and give it a good shake to bring all the ingredients together.
Put the rocket, tomatoes, physalis and the walnuts in a bowl. Pour over the dressing and mix it through carefully.
The gorgonzola I reserve for the finish in order that it doesn't fall further into smaller pieces because I like big fat chunks of it to get the full blast of the cheese flavour.

Well, a good salad isn't just a few green leaves. You have different flavours: bitter, sweet, sour, peppery, and have different textures: soft, crunchy and so forth.
This time I thought, the physalis would look nice in  the salad and taste nice as well. I have never seen them before in salads or even thought about using them that way, but ... hey, why not! Just use your imagination ...

So, I hope you enjoyed this Anti-Rabbit Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing. 
What is your favourite combination when it comes to salads?

Rocket, Ricotta and Chocolate ... Triple Feature Random Recipe

I have to make a confession. Yes, honestly, I have a problem ... it might even be serious.
It's not life-threatening ... at least not that I know.
To relief the tension a bit I have to say, it has to do with chocolate. I have been busy reading along in blog-world and the posts I read really make me worry. At least they could if I would give in to every urge of immediately running to the kitchen and reproduce the recipe I've just read about.
Well, in one incident I even just did that. It was one evening. I was sitting in front of the computer, feeling quite depressed actually. Therefore following this urge was not a curse at that point, but rather a blessing.
So to whom do I have to be grateful then? It's Choclette and her Chocolate Log Blog. She brought me this.

Apple ricotta cheesecake ... that was it that immediately caught my attention.
Somehow I failed to take some better pictures of it.
I still had some ricotta lingering in my fridge, so I had to go for it. Just lately a neighbour had told me I could take apples from their garden. So it was just perfect.
The recipe you find on the Chocolate Log Blog anyway. Everything went well. I even got a kind of ripple effect as you can glean from the picture. Right, well, there was one thing, I really couldn't cut it into individual pieces, but hey, I could just go for it and spoon it from the tin. After a day in the fridge, though, cutting into pieces was possible ... but I didn't care anymore.
Things are not all that bad. When I say bad, of course, I don't mean bad as in the sense of bad, but just bad. Hm, you know ... hips don't lie.
Why so? There was another lovely recipe from another lovely lady from another lovely blog. This recipe didn't contain any chocolate, but green leaves, fruits and some goats cheese.

On top of it, it was so simple it was put together in no time. What you see is what you get. I wish I could have that at other times in life as well (maybe at work).
Who helped this time?
It was Karen from Lavender and Lovage with her Fresh Fig and Goat's Cheese Salad with Walnuts. As you see on the picture, though, something must have gone wrong. Why I didn't use walnuts, I don't know. I have no problems with them. I even have a large amount of them at home.
That has to remain then another unsolved mystery.
Towards the end, things get dangerous again, but very very dangerous, indeed.
Because of this I like to link to the responsible person twice.
Let me get into detail.
That very person I am talking about is Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. She got me with her Chocolate Tiffin. Why very very dangerous then?
If you have a look at the recipe, you will not fail to notice the usage of 400 g of chocolate.

That's what it looked like. I didn't have all dark chocolate available. This recipe nearly killed half of my choclate supplies (I had to stock up again today).
Just a few days before I tried that recipe. I was talking about cooking to a friend of mine, particularly about a kind of tiramisu I once did. What she was saying about it, didn't fit, but I think it would rather fit to this recipe, because there are certain similarities.
What is he talking about?
Well, there is a German recipe that is called Kalter Hund (cold dog), which is done with butter cookies and choclate. After I finished the chocolate tiffin recipe and had a bite of it later, it just reminded me of that.

Anyway, it tastes very lovely. So I need to be careful as nobody is nearby to help me with that. At least not now.
So far about all that. I still have to try an apple cake, a sea salted caramel cake, some mint cupcakes and some chocolate fondant with balsamic blueberries. Due to this I might be set for the month in the sweet department.
Wish me good luck ... or something like that!
Now we are nearly at the conclusion. This post is an entry for Bookmarked Recipes, the October edition.

It's a very special one, not only because of it being a triple feature, but also because it is kind of reciprocal ... you will figure it out. Or maybe you have to make a confession as well. Do you?

Fair Verona and Mini Mozzarella Penne with Rocket

There are some things in life, where cooking will not help. Situations come up and no matter how much chocolate you have, it will make no difference, the pain will not go away.
Anyway, I couldn't imagine, how chocolate or any other kind of edible thing would have made a difference here:

"Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend."

- Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, Act 1, Prologue

Well, the scene is set for tragedy. However, we shall not dwell on such thoughts for now.
Just coming back from the scene - fair Verona, Italy - what better could I do than having some pasta.

After all, one has to eat, no matter how you feel ... even if you don't want to at times, you will come back ...
Did I say something? Oh well, why not do some easy pasta. No shopping for the two past weeks, so I have to go with what is in the house. 
That leads us to Mini Mozzarella Penne with Rocket.
Having a pot ready with some olive oil marks the beginning. Finely slice three cloves of garlic and fry them gently in the oil until the fine odour of the garlic starts to rise up from the pot. To make things even more lovely as they start to unfold, we add a handful of freshly picked basil leaves to the pot.
Now we go on to pour in one 400 g tin of tomatoes and fill half the tin with water and put that in as well. Season with salt and pepper according to your taste and needs. Bring the contents of the pot to the boil and let it simmer.
After that we can focus our minds on the pasta. Use a sufficiently large pot to fill with water. Let the water have a lot of salt. Of course you can use a kettle to heat up the water before you put it to the pot.
Once the water is ready you only have to cook your 500g of pasta according to the instructions on the package (it took 12 minutes for me).
After that rinse the pasta whilst you catch up some of the cooking water. Mix this, your pasta, your sauce, and two handful of mini mozzarellas (or how much you like) together.
Plate it up and top with a handful of rocket leaves mixed with some basil leaves. Pour a bit of good olive oil over it and finish with some grated Parmesan.
I leave you now with this and some impressions of fair Verona.

Torre dei Lamberti

Arena di Verona

Romeo & Juliet in progress

Giardini Giusti

Lemon tree

Verona from above

"A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

THE END

For more Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet have a look here: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.