A New Simple Soup

One of the things I enjoy most about the cooler winter months is being able to cook lots of delicious soups to warm our bellies. More often than not at this time of year, we have soup on a Sunday night for tea with something simple alongside like a toasted sandwich. Last weekend I tried out a new recipe from ‘Frost Bite’ and it was a winner here. If you like tomato based soups like minestrone, than this one’s for you. Here’s the recipe:


Tomato, Zucchini & Basil Soup

Serves 4

olive oil
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 x 400g tin Roma tomatoes, crushed
2 tbsp tomato paste
5 medium-sized courgettes (I used 2 small zucchini instead), sliced
large handful fresh basil, roughly chopped
3 cups vegetable stock
sea salt & pepper


Heat oil in a large saucepan over low heat and add onion and garlic.  Cook for a few minutes until the onion is translucent. Add remaining ingredients and stir well.  Cover with lid and simmer for 20-25 minutes of until the vegetables are tender. Puree or blend.

I've been cooking up a storm here this week in our kitchen.  However most of it has been in the form of baby purees for Sophie which should now last me for many weeks ahead.  Grace and I did manage to make a muesli slice though which we've been enjoying the last few days for afternoon tea.

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend ahead.  It's the Foundation Day long weekend here in Perth.  In our household we'll hopefully be resting, relaxing and (fingers crossed) catching up on sleep.  Do you have any special plans?  I'd love to hear what you'll be up to...

Cooking Club: Pot Luck Theme

On Monday, we held our first Cooking Club for 2012. I'm so glad my friends were keen to continue with it this year as I really enjoy our little get-togethers where we try out yummy dishes and share new recipes. One of my best friends, Kylie, who is in our group, leaves today for Paris and won't be back for about five months so we wanted to make sure we snuck in a Cooking Club before she left.

We kept things simple this time with a Pot Luck theme and I too restrained myself with the decorating and other usual touches like prizes which I organise. I did however want to give the table a little touch of Paris and so I found some Parisian material in my fabric stash and added some blue, red and white hints to the centrepiece.

Our menu this time consisted of:

• Rice Salad
• Chef’s Salad
• Layered Chicken and Mango Salad
• Potato and Leek Tart
• Empire Chicken
• Cookies and Cream Cheesecake


Here is the recipe for the 'easy to prepare ahead of time' Rice Salad which I made:


Rice Salad

Serves 4 - 6

1½ cups brown rice, cooked
4 spring onions, chopped
1 red capsicum, finely chopped
handful chopped parsley
150g raisins
200g cashews
½ cup celery, chopped
½ cup green capsicum, chopped
¼ cup olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp mustard
2 tbsp red wine vinegar

Mix together olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, mustard and vinegar. Stir through cooked rice. Add other ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Cookies You Have To Try…

Thanks to some wonderful friends and family members and thanks to all the meals I made and froze at the end of my pregnancy, I haven’t had to do a lot of cooking lately. This has been extremely helpful as Sophie’s most unsettled time is usually in the evening when dinner needs to be sorted out. I have rather missed cooking though and while I’ll have to work out how best to organise and prepare meals with a newborn in the house, I am eager to get back into the kitchen.

Last week, keen for something sweet to have with my afternoon cuppa, I made a batch of biscuits from a new recipe I’d seen a while back on A Spoonful Of Sugar which I’d been wanting to try. It took me all afternoon to make them in between feeding Sophie and keeping Grace occupied, but it was worth it as they were delicious. Do yourself a favour and buy a jar of Nutella this weekend and make a batch. Be sure to enjoy several while they’re still warm too. Here’s the recipe I followed from A Spoonful Of Sugar…


Nutella and Oat Cookies

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup Nutella
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup plain flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350°F). Line a cookie sheet (or two) with parchment paper. Cream the butter, sugar, and brown sugar together with an electric mixer. Add the egg, vanilla, and Nutella and mix until well incorporated. Add the flour, oats, baking soda, and salt and mix until combined. Roll into balls, flatten with a fork, and bake for 7 minutes. Allow cookies to cool on wire rack.

Cooking Club: Favourite Dishes

Saturday night just gone was our latest Cooking Club. This time our theme was 'Favourite Things To Cook' and we had a range of delicious food to try.

To set the table, I stuck to white and an aqua blue. Some graph paper material I had bought a while back off Etsy made the perfect table runner and went well with some placemats I already had. My centrepiece was a fern which usually lives in our laundry and on either side, I had two little juice bottles which I'd covered with paper and ribbon to hold some simple flowers from our garden.

My spot prize this month was a butterfly cookie cutter, a ready made 'hot chocolate spoon', a bar of stainless steel soap (for removing cooking odours from your hands) and some recipe cards (which I printed off and made up after finding them available on The Pretty Blog).



Our menu this time consisted of the following...

• Chicken Breasts with Sage Butter & Prosciutto
• Spinach Salad
• Red Prawn and Mango Curry
• Homemade Pizza (of Little Caeser’s fame)
• Chocolate Mousse
• Caramel Dumplings
• Chocolate Mudhoney Pizza
• Lemon and Pistachio Slice



Our next catch-up won't be until mid November, after bub has arrived and I've settled into life with a newborn. At this stage, we're going to do a Pot Luck theme again as it was good to have a range of dishes to make up our night's menu.

For those who are interested, here's the Nigella Lawson curry recipe which I'm hoping to make tomorrow night for tea...


Red Prawn and Mango Curry

Serves 2-4

1 x 15ml tbs wok oil
1 spring onion, finely sliced
1½ x 15ml tbs red Thai curry paste
200ml coconut milk
250ml chicken stock (made from concentrate)
2 tsp fish sauce
1 x 350g pkt butternut and sweet potato cubes
200g king prawns
1 tsp lime juice
150g mango cubes, diced
3-4 x 15ml tbs chopped fresh coriander


Heat the wok oil in a large, heavy-based frying pan and fry the sliced spring onion for a minute, then add the curry paste. Whisk in the coconut milk, chicken stock and fish sauce and bring to the boil. Tip in the butternut squash and sweet potato cubes and simmer, partially covered for about 15 minutes or until tender. Drain the prawns under running water to remove excess ice and tumble them into the pan. Let the sauce come back to the boil. When it does, add the lime juice and diced mango and cook for another minute or so until the prawns are cooked through. Sprinkle with the chopped coriander as you serve over plain rice or wide rice noodles, or even both.


NB. If you don't have access to the ready-peeled cubed pumpkin and potato, this recipe suggests alternating them for some drained chickpeas and some pineapple.

Freezing Meals

Photo above by Ralph Anderson via Southern Living

I’ve decided I’m going to give myself the next three weeks to get all the essentials ready before our bub arrives, that way I can spend the remaining month taking things easy. One of my ‘essentials’ is stocking my freezer full of meals for us to use in those first weeks when we arrive home from the hospital. Our freezer isn’t all that big however so I need to find an efficient way of storing things so I can cram as much in as possible. I’m keen to find the perfect storage containers, preferably ones that are BPA free. I bought a few Pyrex dishes the other day as then I can reheat meals straight from the glass dish but these tend to be pricey.

In my searching for meal freezing ideas, I came across a few handy resources. I love the idea of the labels below as I think it’s important to have the date of frozen meals labelled. I will definitely be printing off a little batch of these to use. The link for the PDF file for these labels is here.

Image above from Martha Stewart

Another useful find was a table listing the freezer life of different foods. I’m always phoning my Mum asking her questions about freezing or reheating dishes, so this table will be handy for me. I might put it up somewhere inside our pantry. This article on the Taste website is also handy for knowing the best way to store particular dishes.

I’m keen to know which storage containers you all use. Do you use different ones for different dishes? Are you too avoiding any plastics with BPA? Which meals do you find are the best for freezing? So far I’m planning on freezing spaghetti sauce, lasagna, muffins, cookie dough, pesto, soup and perhaps a curry (although I’m not sure this is the best idea with breastfeeding?) What else would you add to my list?

Cooking Club: Teatime Treats

On Saturday afternoon, we had our 'Teatime Treats' Cooking Club get together and I think this theme would have to be one of my favourites we've had so far. Dishes could be either sweet or savoury as long as they were something suitable for a morning or afternoon tea.



To decorate the table, I used a more 'Nanna-looking' white embroidered tablecloth and added some touches of pink and mauve with a bunch of pink ranunculi and two small jars of Geraldton Wax (which I snipped from the bushes growing beside the road at the end of the street). A piece of pretty pink floral fabric leftover from Grace's quilt made the perfect placemat for the centre of the table. I really didn't want to use my boring old white and silver crockery so I borrowed some pretty teacups, saucers and side-plates from my Mum and sister to put together with my own and ended up with a mix of different patterns, all within the same colour palette. I tried to research the correct way of setting the table for an afternoon tea - some references placed the cup and saucer on top of the side plate, others described what I did.



As a small party favour for each guest, I bought some cute floral paper bags from Etsy shop Jade L'il Craft which I filled with a selection of different tea bags. The spot prize for this month was a cookbook filled with scrumptious looking chocolate recipes.





Our menu consisted of:

- Chicken and Asparagus Sausage Rolls
- Arancini
- Lemon Cake
- Red Velvet Cupcakes
- Ginger Fluff Sponge
- Spicy Apple Teacake
- Chocolate Chip Cookies

Next month, we are going to have a potluck theme of 'Something I Enjoy Cooking' so I'm hoping we'll have a range of things like soup, mains, dessert, cake and so on.


For anyone who would like to try it out, here is the recipe for the Lemon Cake which was so moist and tasty...


Lemon Cake

5 eggs
250g castor sugar
250g melted butter
250g flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 lemons (juice and zest)
250g icing sugar
100g melted butter (for icing)

Beat eggs and sugar and then slowly add melted butter. Add sifted flour and baking powder and mix. Cook for approximately 10 mins at 180°C (my friend said she used her biggest slice tin which is about double the size of a normal one). For the topping, mix icing sugar, melted butter and the lemon juice and zest. Prick the cake with a fork and pour over topping mix while still hot and allow to soak through.

Cooking Club: Winter Warmers

On Saturday night, my friends and I had our latest Cooking Club dinner. This time, we had a full table of six (seven including six week old baby Lucas). Our theme was 'Winter Warmers' and we all came away with a collection of delicious recipes perfect for the current cold nights. I remembered to take photos although they all have a golden glow to them as I couldn't suss out the lighting and camera settings.



To decorate the table, I used a piece of grey and white striped fabric as a runner (I had actually bought this fabric for our nursery). I didn't use any fresh flowers this time but instead placed a pot of parsley in the centre of the table and made some origami flowers using some pretty double sided gift wrap I bought from Kikki K. One roll provided plenty of paper for five of these flowers as well as enough to wrap my 'spot prize'. I actually had fun putting these together one night in front of the television. You can find the tutorial for making these cute flowers here. I followed the instructions exactly only I didn't use glue but instead tried double sided tape which I think is definitely a better option. It's funny because this week after my dinner party, I was flicking through the latest Real Living magazine and actually spotted these exact origami flowers which had been made into a ball.



To break away from my usual white and silver edged Maxwell and Williams crockery, I borrowed my friend's pretty Marie Claire side plates which fit in perfectly. I also made some labels for each dish using a printable Martha Stewart template you can find here (there are also other colour options you can choose from).



My traditional spot prize for one of my guests this time was the parsley plant, a handy measuring glass from Wheel and Barrow and a jar of vanilla bean paste.

As for the yummy dishes we shared, our menu consisted of:

- Zucchini and Prosciutto Soup
- Spiced Pumpkin and Coconut Soup
- Chicken and Mushroom Pie
- Sweet Potato and Pancetta Risotto
- Crumbed Scotch Fillet
- Moroccan Beef
- Chocolate Orange Croissant Bread and Butter Pudding



I've shared the two soup recipes below, but if anyone is interested in the other recipes, let me know and I'll do another post.

For our next theme in August, we are going to break away from dinner recipes and have an afternoon tea instead with 'Teatime Treats' of cakes, biscuits and slices. I'm looking forward to decorating the table prettily and have already got a few ideas floating around in my head.

Here's those soup recipes for anyone who would like to try them out...


Spiced Pumpkin and Coconut Soup

1 tbsp red curry paste
1kg pumpkin, peeled and chopped
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1½ cups coconut milk
1 large red chilli, seeded and finely sliced

Place a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the curry paste and cook for one minute. Add the pumpkin and stock, cover and cook until the pumpkin is tender. Place the pumpkin mixture in a blender and blend until smooth. Return the soup to the saucepan. Add the coconut milk and heat through. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with the chilli to serve.



Zucchini and Prosciutto Soup

1 tbsp olive oil
1 brown onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
100g prosciutto, chopped
1 tsp thyme leaves
3 zucchini, grated
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
feta cheese, crumbled (to serve)

Heat a large saucepan over medium high heat. Add the oil, onion, garlic, prosciutto and thyme and cook for 4-5 minutes or until the onion is softened. Add the zucchini, stock, salt and pepper and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 10-15minutes or until the zucchini is cooked. Use a hand held blender to partially blend the soup, leaving some texture. Ladle soup into bowls and top with crumbled feta.

Cooking Club: Easy Weeknight Meals

Image via Gingerella

Just over a week ago was our second Cooking Club dinner with a theme of ‘Easy Weeknight Meals’. Once again, I forgot to take photos. I know I promised after forgetting to take pics at our last one that I’d remember this time, but after busily preparing not only my own dish for the evening but also decorating the dining room, it was easy to do once again. Third time lucky at our June one I promise!!

I was a little disappointed the week before our get together as I had two cancellations. One of our girls had her baby four weeks early so she was of course excused. Another forgot to okay the date and organise a babysitter. I had visions of my only recently established Cooking Club falling apart. However, after Saturday night I was reassured. A table of five was fine and with Krystie (and bub) hopefully joining us again next month, our group will be perfect. I’ve decided that six is easier to set the table for, gives you a good number of new dishes to taste and means that we can all take part in the one conversation around the table. I would definitely recommend to anyone thinking of trying something similar to stick to a group of around six.

Our last dinner saw us enjoy:

- Roast Vegetable Pasta
- Thai Chicken Patties
- Spaghetti and Meatballs
- Chicken Pilaff
- Garlic Roast Lamb Cutlets

This was followed by my Apple Crumble for dessert and some after-dinner mints which I wrapped in small packages and placed on everyone’s side plate.

Once again, we had a ‘spot prize’ which this time was a goodie bag of handy gadgets (a julienne peeler, a teabag ‘squeezer’ and a palette knife) plus two mini cookbooks.

Here is the recipe for one of the yummy recipes from the night which my sister-in-law made:


Garlic Roast Lamb Cutlets

12 cloves garlic, peeled
6 x 170g King Edward or roasting potatoes, sliced
4 small zucchinis, halved lengthwise
1 tbsp rosemary leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
sea salt and cracked black pepper
8 double lamb cutlets trimmed
1½ cups chopped mint leaves
1½ tbsp seeded mustard
2½ tbsp honey

Preheat oven to 220°C. Place the garlic, potatoes, zucchinis, rosemary, oil, salt and pepper in a baking dish, toss to combine and roast for 25 minutes. While the vegetables are cooking, heat a frying pan over high heat and brown the lamb on all sides. To make the mustard mint sauce, place the mint, mustard and honey in a bowl and mix to combine. Place the lamb of top of the vegetables. Brush with some of the mint sauce and roast for a further 8-10 minutes or until the lamb is golden and the potatoes are soft. To serve, place the lamb and vegetables on serving plates and top with the remaining mint sauce.

(Serves 4)

Our First Cooking Club

Happy Monday! I hope you've all had a nice relaxing weekend just like we did. On Friday night, my friends and I had our very first Cooking Club get together. Unfortunately, we were having such a good time tasting all the yummy food and chatting away, that I forgot to take any photos (next time I promise!!) so all I have are a few shots of the table before everyone arrived.

It was a smaller group than usual for our first meet up as two girls couldn't make it, but it was still an enjoyable night. I organized a little 'surprise gift' for one of my guests (the latest Good Food magazine and a sample pack of goodies that came with it) who I chose by placing a sticker randomly under one of the side plates on the table. The person who sat in this spot received the prize.

As for food, half of us made salads and half made desserts. I also put some roast beef on in the slow cooker to go with our salads. Our menu consisted of:

Pumpkin and Spinach Salad
Broccoli Salad

Raspberry Bread and Butter Pudding
Easy Tiramisu
Turkish Delight Rocky Road

We have decided to hold our Cooking Clubs every month and a half. For next time, I would like to try making a special drink to serve my guests and would like to spend some more time on decorations and making the table extra pretty. Ideas for future themes we discussed were easy weeknight meals, winter warmers, morning tea treats, an international night and Christmas goodies.

Overall it was a fun night and it was great to taste the dishes and to come away with several new recipes to add to my recipe folder, several of which I'm dying to make again.

Starting A Cooking Club

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you've all had a wonderful weekend. I was just about to sit down and email my friends about the Cooking Club I am starting up when I thought that perhaps I'd do a quick post about it first and see if any of you have participated in something similar and have any suggestions or advice on things I should consider.

My idea is to get together a group of friends who are all interested in cooking so that we can share recipes and get ideas for new dishes to try. We will actually be tasting the recipes we are sharing but not judging or critiquing or anything, just sharing. Here are my thoughts so far:

• Meet every two months - we are all busy with either work or children and I feel that monthly meet-ups would come around too soon.
  
  
• We would alternate the days and times we meet - for example, one month we may meet up for a Friday night dinner, the next catch-up might be a Saturday morning tea.
  
  
• Stick to six to eight girls, enough to be able to chat comfortably around a table.
  
  
• There would be a 'theme' for each Cooking Club - so far I've listed a salad/dessert one, sweet treats and Christmas goodies. Does anyone have any more suggestions for this?
  
  
• Everyone would bring along a dish to share along with enough copies of their recipe for all the girls.

I'm really eager to get my Cooking Club up and running, particularly because I can't wait to have an excuse to decorate the table prettily. I have so many images like the one above saved in my 'Entertaining' inspiration folder and I can't wait to try and recreate something similar.

Have any of you tried a Cooking Club before or do you have any suggestions for me and my friends?

Source of image above unknown

Cupcake Making Day

Morning! Thanks for all your advice in regards to bathroom towels on my last post. I bought some yesterday but will wait until I have the other final touches in place before I reveal some photos. I was going to do a post last night, but we found ourselves without power from about five o'clock onwards. I'm not complaining though when so many in Queensland will be without power for weeks and to be honest, reading by candlelight was quite fun.

On Tuesday, my friend Kylie and I decided to have a 'cupcake making day' - a day to try and compare various recipes and to perfect our buttercream frosting to achieve the 'slightly set on the outside yet still soft and creamy' affect. Kylie and another friend of hers Krystie came over with their stash of cupcake decorations, trays and Kylie's red Kitchenaid and our 'assistant' Grace was more than happy to help out (especially when it came to licking the bowl). Our huge kitchen bench was perfect for spreading everything out and having the room to all work away together. Three batches of cakes, several cups of tea and a few taste tests later, we think we have decided on our favourite cakes and frosting.

Next time we have a cooking day, we've decided we're going to focus on the decorating side of things so we can perfect the 'piping technique' and try out some different pretty combinations. Here's some photos of our cupcake making day...

Cooking Class

Last night, my sister in law and I went to a Fancy Pantry cooking class at the Anna Gare Catering Kitchen in North Fremantle. It was a 'Soul Food' class in which we cooked several delicious winter dishes. Afterwards, we sat down to enjoy the meal which we had all helped prepare, finishing off with a warm Chocolate and Orange Croissant Bread and Butter Pudding.

With today's chilly weather here in Perth and inspired to try some new dishes, I've been thinking about other hearty meals to prepare before winter is over. At the moment though, I'm most inspired by delicious desserts. I'm eager to try a Chocolate Mug Cake which I've read about on several blogs such as Not Quite Nigella. Have any of you tried these? What is your favourite winter dish?

Image above from here

Simple Cooking Week

Today is the start of a new week for me following our long weekend. The three of us headed to our uncle’s holiday house for a relaxing weekend away which didn’t quite go to plan as Grace was really unsettled both nights which I put down to a combination of teething and being away from her familiar surroundings. However, it was still nice to get away for a few days to somewhere quiet and peaceful.

This week, I’ve decided to have a little break from some of my homely duties and am going to have a week of ‘simple cooking’. As much as I love cooking, I’ve found recently that the time between four and six is always spent preparing meals for either us or Grace. This week, we are going to have either meals that I have recently made extra of and frozen (such as soups, casseroles and pasta sauces) or meals that can be made with little preparation time. I have a whole week’s worth of meals frozen for Grace too.

What are your stand-by meals for times when you really don’t feel like cooking?

Source of image above unknown

Slow Cooker Convenience

About a month ago, I was given a belated gift – a slow cooker. I wish I’d had one of these sooner, especially back when I as working full time or in the days when Grace was a newborn.

These days, my meal preparation time is somewhat limited. I am also more easily distracted – three times in the past few weeks I have set something on the stove only to return to a pot which has been burnt charcoal black! I love that now I can throw everything in the slow cooker and literally ‘set and forget’ about it until dinner. I also love the fewer dishes involved in preparing slow cooker meals.

So far I have tried out chicken curry, roast lamb (thanks for the tips Janette) and beef casserole. Who else out there loves the convenience of a slow cooker and which recipe would you recommend I try out next?

Image above from here