Category: Cooking

  • Tim Tam (and Oreo!) Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Sometimes I amaze even myself. I knew I wanted to make some sort of sweet treat this week as a belated birthday gift for my friend Kunaal. (He was overseas on his actual birthday a couple weeks ago.) Kunaal has a serious sweet tooth, and he is partial to chocolate. I suddenly remembered seeing Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies being linked on a bunch of food blogs recently. “But self,” I thought, “Oreos are kind of a novelty here and they’re really more American than Australian. WHAT ABOUT TIM TAMS?” Tim Tams, for the uninitiated, are just about the best chocolate cookie in the world. They’re an Australian icon, and everybody who visits and tries them gets addicted. What better way for an immigrant like myself to symbolize the two cultures than by baking one national icon inside another?

    Tim Tam Cookies

    Oh man, they turned out AMAZING. I was half worried that the chocolate coating would melt and, like, leak out of the cookies or something, but they worked perfectly. I followed Picky Palate’s recipe pretty much exactly. I have to give a big thank you to the Snook, who helped with the assembly. We did half of them with Oreos, and half of them with Tim Tams. (We cut the Tim Tams in half so they were square rather than oblong.) These are some pretty hefty cookies! I let each batch bake for about 14 minutes or so, just until they were golden and lovely. Then they cooled on the tray for 5 minutes before going on to a rack. I was worried they’d be squishy, but they feel pretty robust and I don’t reckon transportation will be a problem.

    Such a great idea, and such a great result! Now I want to bake more things inside of things. Hmmmm…

  • Homemade Hostess Cupcake Cake Balls

    Dear Sister. The next time I visit you, I will require Homemade Hostess Cupcake Cake Balls. Thank you.

  • Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #9: Green Curry

    This is our 9th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We picked this recipe for a few reasons: We had the episode saved on our DVR. (It’s always nice to watch him prepare it rather than rely on the book solely.) This one doesn’t have a dessert, and it also looked like one that could be fairly low-carb, as long as you didn’t eat the noodles. (I indulged a fair bit at my birthday last week, so I’m trying to make up for it.) And also, we LOVE green curry. 🙂

    Green Curry, Crispy Chicken, Kimchee Slaw, Rice Noodles

    Substitutions: Not a single one. However, we didn’t bother with the “garnishes” of prawn crackers, chili sauce, and a cos lettuce. That just seemed like overkill for two people!

    Quick verdict: Pretty good! The chicken was very good and the skin crisped up nicely. Snook thought overall the flavours of the meal were very tasty. We both liked the curry a lot, but we felt the kimchee slaw probably had a bit too much chili. We both felt it rated between 8.5-9/10. Not a homerun, but pretty darn good. Elapsed time was 39:09, but I can’t think of many ways to speed it up (beyond having the recipe memorised). There are just a LOT of ingredients to handle with this one!

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  • Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #8: Pregnant Jools’s Pasta

    This is our 8th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We decided this week to move our “Jamie meal” to Saturday nights which gives me a lot more time to put the post up on Sunday. The goal for this particular meal was to CARB-LOAD in preparation for today’s long run. With that in mind, we picked out “Pregnant Jools’s Pasta, Crunchy Chicory & Watercress Salad, and Little Frangipane Tarts.” We saw the corresponding TV episode a couple months ago, so we had a good idea of the preparations.

    Pregnant Jools's Pasta

    Substitutions: We couldn’t find red chicory in any of the shops – it must not be in season – but we did find a bag of mixed salad at the farmers’ market that had red chicory in it. We only made a half-recipe of the dessert. It was supposed to use “golden” caster sugar, but we couldn’t be arsed buying it specially so we just used plain. The Snook ground his own almonds (just because he objected to the price of pre-ground at the grocery store) and we used cherry preserves instead of raspberry jam. Everything else was as-written.

    Quick verdict: Yum! This is the quickest and easiest recipe in the whole book, I bet. The frangipane tarts are really impressive considering how quick they are to make. The sausage pasta is just good, filling comfort food that would please any picky-eater. The Snook found the simple salad a little too bitter for his taste, but I thought it was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the pasta. We both rated it 9/10. Our elapsed time was 35:23, but the last 5 minutes were just standing around waiting for the tarts to finish baking. If we’d have been quicker getting them in the oven, we’d have easily made the 30 minute mark. This is a great recipe for any beginners who aren’t super confident in their cooking ability!

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  • Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #7: Asian-Style Salmon

    This is our seventh official cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We picked this recipe because we hadn’t tried a fish recipe yet, and because we happened to have the corresponding TV episode saved on our DVR. (As before, we noticed that on the show Jamie does some things differently than the book. I’ll try to mention those as we go.) Historically I haven’t been a very big eater of fish, so these dishes are definitely going to be more challenging for me. This wasn’t my favorite of the Jamie meals we’ve made, but it did get me to eat a big piece of salmon… which is fairly momentous in our house.

    Asian-Style Salmon, Noodle Broth, Beanspout Salad, and Lychee Dessert

    Substitutions: Our salmon fillets were slightly bigger than the ones called for (250g instead of 180g), and the Snook had to remove the pin bones himself. (We didn’t count that as part of the cooking time.) He also had to spend a few minutes removing a few scales the fishmonger had missed. We had to settle for canned mango instead of fresh, and we used snow peas for the broth instead of sugar snap. We used some of the Snook’s duck stock instead of a stock cube.

    Quick verdict: We both weren’t that impressed, to be honest. Personally, I thought this was my least favorite so far. We both rated it 8/10. It was somehow less than the sum of its parts for me. The Snook thought the dessert was “kinda meh.” Our elapsed time was 39:59, but a lot of that was extra fish prep time. (Twenty minutes had elapsed before we got it into the oven.)

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  • Jamie’s Recipe: Coming soon…

    In case you’re wondering, this week’s Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals recipe is going to be a day late. The Snook went to three different shops yesterday but couldn’t find any bean shoots, so we had to postpone…

  • Shared today on Google Reader

  • Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #6: Duck Salad

    This is our sixth official cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. As we did last week, we picked this one with the idea of going to the Eveleigh Farmers’ Market Saturday morning to get any necessary ingredients. There are always a couple vendors there with duck. When we got there, we worked out pretty quickly that four duck breasts were going to cost us close to $30. The Snook persuaded me to get two whole ducks from Coles instead (for $40 total), which would also give us legs and fat for confit, and a carcass for making stock. Sounds like a plan! So earlier today he carved up the ducks so we could get started. I was running a pretty serious caloric deficit for the day thanks to my long run, so I was excited for such a big, healthy meal.

    Duck Salad, Giant Croutons, Cheat's Rice Pudding with Stewed Fruit

    Quick verdict: We followed it pretty much exactly (except for actually making homemade rice pudding in the rice cooker rather than buying expensive pre-made stuff). Elapsed time was 39:52, but we think this is one you could easily get down to 30 minutes once you have it memorised. There’s not much to it, really! In terms of presentation, this was the best one yet. If you served this at a small dinner party, people would be in awe! We both rated it 9/10 for taste (but we may have overcooked our duck a little bit).

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  • Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #5: Oozy Mushroom Risotto

    This is our fifth official cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. Hey, we’ve made it through 10% of the book! I had plans to go to the Eveleigh Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning, so I figured we should find a recipe that uses ingredients I can get there. We settled on Oozy Mushroom Risotto, Spinach Salad, and Quick Raspberry & Lemon Cheesecake. For most of my life, mushrooms have been my most hated food, but I’ve been working to get over that in the past few years. I figured this would help. But I wasn’t going to use just any old crap button mushrooms from Coles. There’s always a stall at Eveleigh selling fancy mushrooms (“The Fun Guy”), so that was my first stop Saturday morning. Let me tell you: 500g of fresh exotic mushrooms is NOT cheap. Neither are dried porcini. I’m glad I suffered the expense though, as the resulting meal was well worth it.

    Oozy Mushroom Risotto, Spinach Salad, Quick Raspberry & Lemon Cheesecake

    Quick verdict: No substitutions on this one; we followed the recipe pretty much exactly. Elapsed time was 43:07, which wasn’t too bad. In terms of taste it was fantastic, and we both rated it 9.5/10. I would have never thought such a quick risotto would turn out so good! We did come up with a couple things we’d do differently next time though.

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