Egg and Bacon Pie and memories of a Milk Bar

When I was a Uni student in Melbourne I lived an an apartment that had a Milk Bar nearby - less than a 100 metres away. This Milk Bar was our stop whenever milk ran out(obviously) or bread, for a quick chocolate fix or snack. Even for a can of corned beef or when we had run out of something like tomato sauce. The milk bar was also a 'saviour' whenever we wanted a quick meal and that was usually a four and twenty meat pie with loads of tomato sauce squeezed into the pie. Joe and Claudette, the proprietors of this milk bar, served up another fancy pie that I absolutely loved - Egg and Bacon Pie. Joe and Claudette orginated from Lebanon and since I lived in that apartment for more than 3 years, we became good friends. They would know what I wanted based on what time of the day it was. If I sauntered in at around dinner time, Joe would welcome me before asking "Meat Pie or Egg and Bacon mate?"

A Cake and a Meal for a Belated Birthday Celebration

Although we didnt celebrate my sons birthday on the day itself, I still wanted to make him a cake. I love Nutella and when I saw that Matt Preston had a recipe for a flourless Nutella cake that he had showcased on MasterChef Australia, I was rather intrigued. I planted the seed of suggestion in my kids but they didnt seem to enamoured by the thought of a flourless cake. I wasnt too sure either since the recipe called for only two ingredients - Nutella and Eggs.

I tossed about the idea of making him a decadent dessert cake but the more I looked at recipes, the more appealing the idea of the Nutella cake became. I asked The Lovely Wife to get me a bottle of Nutella when she went to the market but didnt check the amount required and told her that a small bottle would be enough. Actually, the small bottle held only 200g of Nutella whereas the recipe called for 240ml. I decided I would just add in some cocoa and also flour as I wanted the cake to be more like a cake rather than a pudding.

I decided I would use self raising flour so that there was some leavening agent.The eggs whipped up beautifully and then I added in some of the Nutella and then the flour and cocoa. The eggs started to deflate rapidly but I put it in to bake nonetheless. It was a disaster!

The cake didnt rise at all and was thick and rubbery. I let it cool and cut out a small piece. It tasted okay but the texture was just too rubbery. My daughter had a bit of a laugh and made a face at me. Was I crushed...

Crostini - Christmas 2011

Carrying on with my posts on Christmas Eve dinner 2011....


Whoever said appetisers had to be complicated? I wanted something simple, tasty and easy to make and their is nothing simpler and tasty than crostini.

Crostini, which actually means "little toasts" in Italian is an Italian appetizer consisting of small slices of grilled or toasted bread and toppings. The best thing with crostini is that you can use whatever topping you want.



I had some Mozzarella cheese in the freezer that was nearing its use by date and that was what prompted me to use it for this appetizer. I decided to keep it simple although The Lovely Wife suggested a variety of toppings. I got some nice baquettes from our local bakery and cut it up into slices. Then I fried up some bacon and mushrooms, topped it with mozzarrella cheese and then placed a sliced tomato on top. This was then grilled in the oven till the bread was slightly crisp and the cheese had melted. Simple but very tasty. My parents enjoyed this very much as a starter coupled with some crisp white wine while the kids wanted seconds.

Me? I could eat these all day long.....

Bacon Wrapped Brandied Apricots

This is the first appetiser that I made for the dinner for eight the other night. I had wanted to serve an appetiser with bacon and tossed up a variety of options. Searching the web yielded a few recipes with ham wrapped fruits as well as bacon wrapped fruits. I found a few websites that featured apricots wrapped in bacon and that idea stuck in my head!

The recipe is really easy and the result is quite spectacular both in presentation and in taste as well. The saltiness and meatiness of the bacon contrasted really well with the apricots.





This is what I did:

Ingredients
30 dried Apricots
2 Tbsp Orange Juice
1 Tbsp Brandy
10 rashers back bacon
Method
Soak the Apricots in the mix of orange juice and brandy for at least 2 hours to rehydrate the apricots. Trim the fat off the bacon and cut into three strips (lenghtwise). Wrap the apricots in the bacon strips and secure with a toothpick. Place on a baking tray and bake for about 30 minutes till the bacon is cooked and the apricots are slightly tender.

Now how easy is that! My son sampled a few before he had to leave for his birthday party and declared it a success. The guests really enjoyed popping them into their mouths as appetisers with their drinks and it got polished off very, very quickly.

Mediterranean Rice Tartelettes - Royal Foodie Joust

It's Royal Foodie Joust time again!! The Royal Foodie Joust is hosted by HRH Jenn, The LeftOver Queen and if you still haven't heard about it or don't know what it is, all I can say is Get With It - this is probably one of the most awesome cyber cooking competitions!

This time around, the ingredients were chosen by the winner of the May Joust - my friend Nuria over at Spanish Recipes and they are:
Bacon
Rice
Tomatoes

Seems quite simple but the difficulty here really is that there are so many options available! My first thought was to make stuffed tomatoes but that would be too simple. Then I thought about a bacon based Briyani but decided that I had already gone along those lines for a previous joust.

What to make, what to make? Then it hit me as I was driving my car.




I remembered a picture I had seen once when I was browsing cookbooks in a bookstore of a tart made with rice. Then I thought of filling the tart with eggplant, mushrooms (gotta have mushrooms!) and bacon and topped off with tomatoes. The picture in my mind looked really good and even though I wasn't quite sure how I would make the tart, I let the picture in my minds eye lead me on!

This is what I did.

Mediterranean Rice Tartelettes - makes 10 tartelettes
Ingredients
1 cup rice
2 eggs - beaten
Salt
8 rashers back bacon - chopped
1 large eggplant - cut into large pieces
3 tomatoes - sliced
2 tsp basil
200g button mushrooms - halved
2 tsp oregano

Method
Cook the rice and let cool. Add in the beaten eggs and mix well ensuring egg is incorporated. Season with salt. Set aside.
Degorge the eggplant by placing the cut pieces in a colander. Sprinkle with salt and let stand for about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, fry bacon till cooked. Set aside
Fry basil and tomatoes together till slightly soft. Set aside
Fry oregano with mushrooms till cooked. Set aside.
Rinse eggplant and then pat dry. Fry till tender. Set aside.

Assembly.
Place rice into tart moulds and bake in a preheated 190C oven for about 15 mins. Place eggplant, then bacon, mushrooms and cover with a slice of tomato. Return to oven and raise temperature to 200C. Bake for another 20 mins. Allow to cool slightly before unmoulding. Garnish with some celery leaves if desired.

The picture I had in my mind had a mushroom half sitting on top of the tomato, but since there was enough mushroom to go into the tarts, I thought it best to keep the mushrooms under wraps!


I was kind of worried as to how to unmould the tartelettes but as they cooled, the tarts pulled in a little and whatever parts remained stuck to the sides were easily removed by sliding a sharp knife in between the mould and the rice. The tarts unmoulded very nicely and kept their shape.

The Lovely Wife had invited her parents over for lunch and so these tartelettes became the appetiser and I had more taste testers that usual. The first tartelette was tasted by The Lovely Wife and she declared it as very good. My son then had a proper tartelette and he enjoyed it immensely. My In-Laws really loved it too and were rather surprised that I had used rice for the tart shell.




I must say that the tartelettes were very delicious too! I think the mix of flavours of tomato, bacon, egpplant and mushrooms complemented each other really well and the rice tart shell gave it a lovely finish. Then again, as Nuria says, anything with Bacon in it is good and I just have to agree with that!



This is definitely something that I will make again although I might vary the fillings. This joust was a lot of fun so thanks once again to Nuria for choosing these great ingredients and of course to Jenn for hosting this great event!

Frittata or Quiche, does it really make a difference?

I've always wanted to make a Frittata although I always wondered what the difference was between them. I know that generally speaking, a quiche has a crust although there are some quiches that don't. I've never eaten a Frittata, let alone made one, so the only thing I had to go by was how they looked in pictures.

A quiche, to me, always looked a little more wet and softer in texture than a Frittata. The Lovely Wife makes a good quiche and I also remember the quiche sold in my neighbourhood Milk Bar in Australia that Joe and Claudette (the owners) used to call an Egg and Bacon Pie. To complicate matters, some people refer to Fritattas as Spanish Omelletes as well...

One thing I've learnt though is that the same thing can be called something completely different depending which part of the world you come from. Case in point is what we call Currypuffs here in Malaysia are known as Empanadas elsewhere and variants of the same include Perogies and I'm sure all sorts of other names in other countries or cultures.


So anyway, I decided I was going to make a Frittata for lunch and I wasn't going to worry to much about whether it was a Quiche, a Spanish Omellete or a Frittata. To me, it was a Frittata and that settled it.
I based this recipe on a combination of recipes from various Australian Women's Weekly cookbooks as well as different recipes found on the web.

This is what I did.

Ingredients
1 onion - chopped
4 cloves garlic - chopped
3 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
3 potatoes
200g Bacon - diced
8 eggs
100ml cream
50g spinach - blanched and chopped
1 red capsicum - diced
1 green capsicum - diced
200g mushrooms - sliced
100g cheddar cheese - grated

Method
Skin the potatoes. Boil potatoes until just tender. Slice into thin slices and set aside. Meanwhile fry the onion, garlic, basil and oregano. Add in the bacon and mushrooms and continue to fry until well cooked. Add in the capsicum and spinach and mix well. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Line the base of a 9" cake pan with baking paper. Place a layer of potatoes on the base and cover with half the vegetable and bacon mixture. Place another layer of potatoes and cover with the remaining vegetable mixture. Whisk together the eggs and cream till incorporated and season with salt. Pour over the mixture and cover with grated cheese. Bake in a Preheated 190C oven for about 20-30 minutes till the top is golden and egg has set. Allow to cool slightly before overturning out and removing the baking paper underneath. Flip right side up onto a serving platter.

I placed this Frittata on to a bed of lettuce for effect but it turned out that the lettuce added some nice salad-like crunch to the Frittata. I also served this with basil roasted tomatoes. It might be an idea to place the tomatoes on top of the Frittata after it's been unmoulded rather than serving it as a side.



The Lovely Wife enjoyed the Fritatta although she started the whole debate again about Frittata and Quiche. The kids thought the Fritatta was really tasty although my son felt it was a little eggy.

I liked it not just for the taste but also how easy it was to prepare. I will definitely use this recipe again for a vegetarian version or maybe even add in some spicy sausage for a variation on the same theme.



So Frittata? Quiche? Spanish Omellete? What are the real differences? I'd like to know!!

Spaghetti Carbonara - well sort off!

You know, for the longest time, I thought that a Carbonara was simply a creamy sauce with bacon in it. I also thought that a Marinara was a Seafood sauce, while a Bolognese was a Tomata based sauce.

Oh wretched fool!

In my travels down lifes path though, I've quickly learnt that:
a basic cream sauce is an Alfredo;
a Bolognese is a traditional meat sauce originating from Bologna that often contains tomato;
a Marinara is actually a classic Tomato based sauce - and does not need to contain any seafood. The term Marinara refers to the Italian word for Sailor - Marinaro.
a Carbonara is actually a cream sauce finished off with egg yolks!

I actually knew about the need for egg yolks in Carbonara sauce a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. To make a 'real' Carbonara, you are supposed to use add in egg yolks at the very end, quickly beaten into the hot cream sauce to form a nice emulsion and then served over very hot pasta so that the egg yolks continue to cook. This can be very tricky and often results in a curdled mixture.

That's why I have never used eggs in my Carbonara. So I suppose I can't call it a Carbonara any longer can I...

Now this is the beauty of cooking! There is this well known theory of Inductive Reasoning which states

If a bird looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck.

Therefore, following the same postulation:

If you can make a pasta sauce Look like a Carbonara, Taste like a Carbonara and Smell like a Carbonara, then surely it Must be a Carbonara - even if there are no eggs in it.

Right??


So that my dear friends is what I do with my Carbonara. No one has to know that there are no eggs in the sauce. For those of you that are reading this and now have the 'secret' knowledge that I do NOT use eggs in my Carbonara sauce... well, I'm afraid I am going to have to kill you.



So anyway, this is my recipe for a Carbonara Sauce:

8 Bacon Rashers (or use 50g Chicken shredded)
200 gm Fresh Button Mushrooms
200 ml Cream
1 tsp Oregano
3 cloves Garlic
½ Tsp Ground Black Pepper
1 tsp Corn Flour
Olive Oil
Salt to taste



Method
Slice Mushrooms thinly and set aside. Chop the Bacon (or chicken) and set aside. Chop Garlic and sautee with Black Pepper and oregano. Add in the garlic and fry till fragrant
Add in Mushrooms and bacon (or chicken shreds if using chicken). Cook Well
Add in cream and bring to the boil.
Lower heat and simmer. Add salt to taste
Mix corn flour with a little water and add to mixture.
Cook till mixture thickens

And there you have your sauce!

Sometimes, in the absence of cream, I make a roux with flour and butter and add in lots of milk to simulate cream. Much cheaper and the taste difference is negligible. I also reckon that the best way to serve a Carbonara is with just a little sauce so that it coats the pasta and gets it all gooey. Too much sauce makes the dish too rich and you don't get the taste of the pasta and the subtle mix of flavours. That's what I think anyway.

As usual whenever I make pasta, I submit the post as an entry to Presto Pasta Nights hosted by my lovely friend Ruth over at Onceuponafeast.blogpsot.com.