My seaside themed Christmas

I have been having some fun over the past few days as I put my beach themed Christmas together. Although we can see a lot of the ocean from our house, we live on a hill some distance from an actual beach. Don't get me wrong, I love our view and never tire looking at it but it would be nice to own a place right by the sea.
I have always fancied myself having a beach house, a place to escape to over the summer, where I could invite all my family and friends to visit and where I could chill out while my man goes fishing every day to catch our dinner. Mmmmmm.....
I do have quite a few lovely memories of visiting such places. Not at the house right on the beach but a place close to the beach with the sound of the sea gently washing onto the shore (in Fiji). And one lovely holiday at a typical elderly Kiwi bach very close to a lake, in fact about 10 paces from the water's edge. I slept in what was the converted boat shed complete with big soft bed enveloped by a much needed mosquito net. A truly magic, quiet, relaxing holiday near Rotorua. In more recent years, a lovely weekend away to a beach house on the Kapiti Coast (mostly spent inside due to the inclement weather), idly away the time reading, playing board games sipping on some superb wines.
As of today I have not achieved the dream of actually owning a beach house but I can certainly keep on dreaming!
To help with my beach themed Christmas, I decided to make some decorations, to (hopefully) help create the right ambience for our Christmas day seafood lunch.
I searched the internet for ideas and made up a few myself. A trip down to the beach at Owhiro Bay later, you can see the results. A good friend of mine helped (in a huge way - thank you Julia!) by lending me her Christmas beach themed decorations. Have a look at what else they can offer at Christmas Treesy Peasy. https://www.facebook.com/ChristmasTreesyPeasy
I should probably go and buy a proper 'live' Christmas tree, but my little retro (1970's) tree has so many memories for me I couldn't really leave it in its box!
Looking at the final result, my general feeling was that I needed my much more talented artistic daughter Becky to help me!
But every time I look at my efforts I have a little chuckle..... it's the small things that can make us happy....

Made by Becky

Made by Becky

Made by Becky

Have a merry Christmas everyone!

   

The children's animal party

While recently in Christchurch I was enlisted to help with my grandson T's 5th birthday party. The party had an animal theme and it was so well done I felt compelled to write a blog about the experience. T's Mum (my daughter) does it all, she is so clever and I am very proud of her.

During the year, for each birthday (thank goodness they only have two children!) she spends hours planning the day for them. (Backed up on the day, by a very helpful and understanding hubby). I have told her she should go into the event planning business as she has built such a reputation for wonderful children's parties.

The invites, themed food, table decorations and themed surroundings (complete with a monkey on a swing), the dress up outfits and the small favour bags - all done with such amazing thought and detail and on a very tight budget!

From the paper 'animal nose' cups to the strawberry mice and alligators in a jelly swamp - she creates such a wonderful experience for the children (and adults!).

I especially loved making the snail scones. A simple scone dough rolled out, smeared with Marmite and grated cheese, rolled up, baked and when cooled - a couple of pretzels added for their antennae. Such fun and they were really tasty!

She also made the party activities - pin the tail on the giraffe, pass the parcel, and a Pinata in the shape of a Red Eyed Tree Frog!?? Oh boy did the little guests love giving that a whack, especially when it gave up the goodies inside!

Throughout the afternoon the weather threatened to spoil the day. And almost on cue (at the end) the heavens opened up and the festivities were topped off by a sudden down pour - we had to take refuge in the gazebos but it didn't seem to matter - it was all part of the jungle experience!
I am not sure who enjoyed the party more, the children or the adults. Roll on the next one!

Christmas time - what it means to me

I have been trying to feel a little more 'Christmassy' and having just returned from a week in Christchurch - I think the feeling has finally kicked in.
In more recent years I have thought of the Christmas season as more of a time for sharing, a time to feel grateful and a time to reflect. This week was no different, as I had the opportunity to spend time with my southern family and friends. And, yes often this time was spent over fabulous food and a glass of wine or two.
One such friend gave me a beautiful Christmas note about our lasting friendship, a friendship that has not been dulled by distance or time. We met over thirty five years ago. Over that time we have each experienced times of great stress, sadness and change (some of it our own making!). And now, over lunch (with that behind us), updating each other and sharing news on how proud we are of our families, our past and current achievements (in work, study and the community) and our current contentment in our homes and life in general.
I think as you get older 'things' don't seem to mean so much to you. Don't get me wrong - I like nice baubles and receiving presents (and quaffing great wine) - but I would give them away in a blink of an eye if I had to chose between 'things' and my relationships with family and friends.
Actually I think I am becoming a bit of a bore with Christmas shopping. I don't really enjoy it as much as I used to. For me it just seems so jolly commercial and the malls so over whelming.
Recently my daughter came up with a new way for the grandchildren to receive a family gift in 2014. A special voucher for one on one 'date' with an Aunt or Uncle to do something fun and inexpensive like making a tree hut, spending time in the garden, or exploring the sea shore for treasures or making a dress up outfit for a special occasion. I really like that idea, it should be encouraged.
Where I can, I would much prefer to make my own gifts. Which is what I have done again this year... grapefruit marmalade, Christmas cakes, a Ginger Loaf and Christmas mince pies. (A thought -  next year I might even have a go at making my own Christmas mince).
My sewing machine has also been kept busy making little girls dresses, swimming bags and the latest grandchild received his special Nana Santa sack.
In the past I made mini Pecan pies and Christmas mince pies too, using short crust pastry. But last week I decided to bake them in my sponge kisses tin using puff pastry. A nice change and a huge hit. I just have to remember to grease the tins a bit more - the failed ones were 'dug out', quickly cooled and eaten by moi!
There is one little luxury I adore at Christmas. The season is short but they are sure to get me in a Christmassy mood. And they always remind me of my mother who also adored them. Cherries! They have to be those big fat dark, dark, juicy crimson ones. It just so happened we found them this week in a cherry orchard stall while travelling back from Christchurch. Only half of them made it home to Welly! Popped in the fridge, they are nicely chilled and the perfect snack to enjoy on a warm summers day. A kilogram just about does it for me until next year!

help yourself straight out of the tin

 

Marlborough cherries - yum!

Chocolate Roulade - a challenge

As promised here is an update on my post about Sponge (Swiss) Rolls. I don't recall ever attempting to make a sponge roll before, so failure last month (at the first attempt) was no real surprise to me.
However, I am extremely keen to master the perfect sponge roll. My goal is to make a Chocolate Roulade just like the one that appears on the front cover of the Cuisine November 2013 edition.  And..... and I want to win a case of Daniel Le Brun bubbles for the best entry in their Christmas recipe competition.
One month on I am still trying to get a Chocolate Roulade to roll without cracking and/or splitting. My husband thinks I am getting a little obsessive about it and he is over testing Chocolate Roulades! I followed the recipe carefully. So why is it so hard and why doesn't it look like the one on Cuisine cover? Hummmphh!
I went to my foodie friends and family bakers asking for their tips on 'how to get a sponge to actually roll' without splitting into three pieces.
This is the advice I garnered
Use a bigger/longer tin
Don't use a fan bake oven
Don't cook any longer than 10 mins at 180 degrees C
It should be cooked when you press your finger in the middle and it 'bounces back'
Let the roll cool slightly (what is slightly?), turn onto a damp tea towel, roll up
Turn it out onto a damp tea towel as soon as it is out of the oven, roll up asap
Cool slightly! Turn out onto a dry tea towel dusted with icing sugar - it will roll perfectly
Hubby's suggestion -Roll it long ways, the other way is across the grain - ummm I don't think it has a grain!
My idea - get a new shiny red Kitchen Aid - that will help - it didn't! But I am loving my new cake mixer just the same.
There is more to the perfect sponge roll than I realised!
I have taken all their expert advice on board - to no avail! My latest roll still cracked/split big time when I tried to roll it up. But I am not giving up! Further research on the web suggests to me I need to buy a different tin ( I was not aware tin size depended on how many eggs you used) and to use cornflour instead of flour (thinking about it, that's what my mother used for her sponges). Both tips are worth pursuing and I am going to have another crack at it (excuse the pun). Chocolate Roulade number four is coming up!
The good news is the end result still looks amazing, tastes wonderful and when the rolls are covered in chocolate you don't really notice the splits or,  that it is layers of slabs wrapped in cream.
I will nail the challenge as I love this recipe for its chocolaty richness and hazelnut flavours.
And it will have pride of place on my Christmas 2013 table.

Chocolate Roulade with Hazelnut Cream and Croquant - attempt # 3

Chocolate Roulade attempt # 2 - more like a slab!

Left over Chocolate Roulade for morning tea!

I love my new cake mixer

Farro and Pearl Barley continued...

If you are like me you will have childhood memories of the ubiquitous pearl barley. It was always the standard addition to our mothers homemade vegetable soup, often boiled so long it turned to mush. But (luckily for us) it is now appearing in so many different other ways. I really love the texture of this nutritious grain (note my risotto post using pearl barley). I looks like I'm in a bit of a grain phase at the moment! 

Last week I found myself with the remaining pieces of a 2kg pumpkin. I also had an ongoing problem with a large hoard of things in my pantry, space was limited, so the thinking cap went on. What to produce that would deal with the pumpkin and hopefully use up some of the items that keep tumbling out of my pantry. Low and behold this recipe appeared in our Sunday paper. It is totally delicious and should be very appealing to any lover of vegetables and if you make some adjustments prefect for my gluten free and vegan friends and of course leaving out the meat, to vegetarians!
The recipe is in the similar vein to the Farro recipe I posted last month. However, this one uses pearl barley which has the advantage of being easier to find and is a little less expensive than Farro. The whole meal would work out to be less than $10. The addition of smoked paprika sits nicely with the chorizo and gives the dish a different sort of flavour. Sorry I do not have a photo of the final dish but the recipe is detailed below.
Yesterday I cooked another dish along a similar vein - created by Ginny Grant in Cuisine -  but you add 2tbsp of pomegranate molasses and 1tbsp of olive oil to the cooked warm grain (for this I used a mixture of farro and pearl barley) and the pumpkin was roasted with 1tbsp of pomegranate molasses. Two roast onions are added and a little feta crumbled on top of the salad. I served it as a vegetarian main but for meat lovers it would be great as a side with BBQ lamb.
I finished the dish with a garnish of fresh pomegranate seeds, it looked lovely and tasted delicious. In fact the bowl was almost licked clean!
http://cuisine.co.nz/cuisine.nsf/recipes/farro-roasted-pumpkin-red-onion-salad?Opendocument&HighLight=2,farro,roasted,pumpkin
So give these grains a try, they add a wonderful chewy texture to your salads and definitely make a change from rice and couscous salads for the summer BBQ's.
Warm pearl barley, roasted pumpkin and chorizo salad

Fiona Smith – SST November 2013

Ingredients

1/2 - 3/4 cup pearl barley

1 kg pumpkin, peeled and cubed 2cm (drizzle with honey for a sweeter flavour if desired)

1 tsp dried oregano or 1tbsp fresh oregano, chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp smoked paprika

Juice and finely grated zest from a lemon

2 tsp red or white wine vinegar

4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

½ c pumpkin seeds (or sunflower seeds)

200g chorizo, slice 1cm (leave out if vegetarian dish preferred)

½ cup fresh coriander chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 190°C.

Rinse pearl barley under cold water and drain. Cook in boiling salted water until tender. Drain.

Toss the pumpkin with the oregano and oil and season with salt.

Spread out on a baking tray lined with baking paper and cook in oven for

20-25 minutes, turning once, until tender.

In a large serving bowl, whisk together paprika, lemon juice and zest,

vinegar and extra virgin olive oil then stir in warm barley and mix well.

Heat a fry pan over a medium heat. Add the pumpkin seeds and cook for a minute shaking

the pan, until they pop. Set aside.

Heat the pan or grill till hot, cook the chorizo for 2-3 minutes on each side until brown.

Add the pumpkin, chorizo and coriander to the pearl barley mix and toss all together.

Sprinkle with pumpkins seeds and serve.

Serves 4-6

Note – Gluten free option - substitute gluten free chorizo and quinoa for barley

Farro, pearl barley, roast pumpkin and onion salad with pomegranate

Asparagus, Pea and Lemon Risotto

Here is a simple little gem I made last week. On a night when I had no energy (and no real longing) to cook, I went searching for an inspiration in the fridge -  all I found  was a bunch of asparagus!
'I feel like something made with brown rice, said the man of the house'.
Ok, so that part was easy. One cup of rice and three cups of water into the rice cooker - switched on, done. Thinking what goes with asparagus I came up with peas and a freshly picked lemon. What transpired was a gorgeous, buttery, lemony, risotto that rocked our socks off.
It's often said, the simple meals can the ones we treasure the most and the ones we want to eat again.
Asparagus, Pea and Lemon Risotto
1 bunch of asparagus - steamed until just tender - smothered in butter - chopped in half
1 cup of frozen peas (cook in salted water steaming the asparagus)
1 large lemon - zest and juice
1 cup of brown rice cooked and kept warm in the rice cooker. 
Gently stir in the vegetables and lemon zest and juice.
Taste for seasoning then serve immediately.
Serves 2 greedy, hungry people!

Sponge or Swiss roll - a bit of an experiment

Idling thumbing through an old magazine and spying a chocolate sponge roulade I got the inspiration to make an old fashioned Sponge or Swiss Roll. Do you remember those? A lovely yellow sponge with homemade raspberry jam and whipped cream? I think housewives used to make them because they looked rather grand, especially when you wanted to make an impression.
My mother was great at making sponges, and we were particularly good at scoffing large portions of said sponges when we had half the chance.  More often than not we got the left overs from afternoon teas, consequently not much to share between four greedy children!!!
I really cannot remember ever making a Sponge or Swiss Roll.
I needed cheering up, over the last week or so the weather in Welly has been disgusting, think gale force winds, persistent torrential rain, a wrecked broccoli patch and you get the picture. Even our dog refused to go for a walk!!
We are also looking after our neighbour's chickens (again) - for two weeks - which is wonderful. We feed them twice a day (along with a few left over scraps now and then) and we I have a daily supply of beautiful organic eggs just begging to be used!
Last weekend I felt  it was time to make a Sponge Roll.
Out came my battered 1973 Edmonds Cookbook. In spite of religiously following instructions the result was a bit of a flop - for a couple of reasons. My equally battered 40 year old Amco sponge roll tin had a slight bend in it, not a problem when you are baking slices but clearly a problem for sponges as the bowed bit made the sponge run down one end - result - one thin end of the roll that looked like a burnt tongue. The other end looked good! But not quite good enough to post a photo!
Suffice to say the Amco tin has been sent to the tip.
On turning out the sponge onto a tea towel dusted with icing sugar and carefully rolling the sponge it cracked, right down the middle - apparently a common occurrence if you don't cool the roll to the exact temperature before rolling! Mmmmm.... The good news was, once  smothered with whipped cream and freshly sliced strawberries you would never have known about the disaster that lay beneath! The sponge itself was just the right taste and texture.
However, back to the drawing board for a perfect Sponge Roll.....
I received my Cuisine magazine this week, and I couldn't believe it - on the front page was a Chocolate Roulade. 'It's a sign I said to my hubby!' I am going to give this recipe a go - maybe the chocolate will help make it perfect. And I am especially keen as they are running a competition for subscribers to bake something from this edition and write to them about the results. The prize is a dozen Daniel le Brun bubbles. Very timely for Christmas celebrations.
Definitely worth another go at that Sponge Roll.
I have bought a new Sponge Roll tin, the lovely fresh eggs are ready and I just have to perfect the rolling bit.... watch this space