roast veg + cous cous salad

As I mentioned yesterday, I made quite the cous cous salad for our grand final lunch we hosted on the weekend. With a bit over two months to go before The Wedding / The Big Move I am starting to fossick around in our pantry for items which I need to use up. For some reason we have an extreme amount of couscous for a household that doesn't actually eat much of the stuff (perhaps that's the reason it is sitting in my pantry unloved?!) 

Anyway, here is my made up couscous salad recipe which can be thrown together with whatever veggies you happen to have in the fridge, this is just what I had...

Ingredients...

2 cups cous cous

2 cups vegetable stock

Half a butternut pumpkin

1 large zucchini

2 cups field mushrooms

1 large red capsicum

2 handfuls of kalamata olives

1 small red onion

Handful of baby spinach

Quarter cup of balsamic vinegar

Olive oil + salt

Few good blobs of butter

Cut the butternut pumpkin into bite sized cubes, drizzle generously with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake at 200 degrees in fan forced oven for 30 minutes, turning once. Whilst that is all happening cut the zucchini and capsicum into chunky pieces, throw in with the pumpkin after it's been in there for 30 minutes. Bake for a further 15 minutes. Pull it all out and set aside.

Heat the vegetable stock in a saucepan, bring to boil and add couscous, stir, cover, set aside for 2-3 minutes. Add few good tablespoons of butter to couscous and stir through, it will melt and make your couscous less lumpy : miraculous! 

Cut up mushrooms and throw in a pan and sauté with some butter until just soft and delicious. Add mushrooms + yummy juices as well as pumpkin, zucchini and capsicum + left over oil to couscous. Toss baby spinach through as well whilst hot veggies are in there to slightly wilt spinach. Finely dice the red onion and add to salad along with olives. Pour balsamic vinegar over the lot and stir through. 

Dig in.

Image by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella 

blueberry + vanilla jam

You might remember when I got a special delivery of 30kg of blueberries to my desk, followed by a frenzied purchase of bottles and jars from a jar wholesaler as I thought I would have to make the jam using fresh berries. Well, turns out I didn't have to and we ended up freezing them. Our freezer for many months has been looking like this...

...with every trip to the freezer followed by a thud, plastic crushing sound and a 'bloody blueberries!' curse under one's breath. We decided enough was enough and we had to get cracking with our blueberry of a dilemma. The big question: should we make one jar per couple or one jar per person? I had 160 jars on hand (as this was the minimum order from the jar wholesaler, Cospak in Melbourne), but we would probably only just have enough blueberries for one jar per person. We could always buy more berries we thought, so onward with the one jar per guest idea.

First thing, we needed a recipe seeing as though Mr M's mum wasn't familiar with blueberry jam making, although she could make raspberry jam in her sleep. Questions swirled, like: 'Do blueberries have pectin? In their skins? Maybe we'll just buy pectin...can we do that? What is pectin anyway? Maybe we don't need it...' Long story short, Mr M's mum found a blueberry and vanilla recipe (stating no pectin required) and infused with orange zest, lemon juice and cinnamon. After a small test batch I was convinced. Yum-yum, blueberry vanilla jam here I come. Next step - the farmhouse kitchen is totally lacking in benchspace so we brought the outdoor table inside to get everything ready - the berries, the sugar, the cinnamon, the oranges, the lemons, the vanilla, the scales, the cup measures, the jugs, the ladles, the giant pots. Check, checkity, check, check.

Then the recipe goes a little like this...

9 cups of blueberries

3 cups of sugar

12 strips of orange zest (about 7cm x 2cm)

6 tablespoons lemon juice

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Pinch of salt

3 teaspoons vanilla to add at end of cooking

Pop your jars on a baking tray and put them in the oven whilst you cook the jam, just bring them up to about 60 degrees, warm to the touch. If they are cold when you put the jam in it won't set properly. If you are using old jars you need to really thoroughly wash and sterilise them, but ours were brand spanking new. Bonus.

Put all your above ingredients onto boil, boil, boil. Once the sugar melts and it's combined you boil it hard for about twenty minutes. This can get a bit messy with it spitting and spurting about, and apparently the better quality sugar you use the less foam will be created meaning a more 'pure' jam. What comes in here is a bit of mum-know-how, you can't really say to boil it for twenty minutes or for ten, or for however long, it's all to do with when the consistency is juuuust right. Mr M's mum had a very sophisticated droopy-goopy spoon and saucer test which she has used for forty odd years. I wasn't going to argue.

 

Once chief jam maker was satisfied with the consistency, it was off with the heat, add three teaspoons of vanilla essence (not imitation vanilla, oh no) and stir through. Then ladle into a jug and pour into the jars, taking out the orange zest as you pour. Top pro-jam maker tip is the jug for pouring, much easier. Genius.

Sorry I don't have more photos of the goopy-jam stage but it got a bit crazy in the heat of the moment as chief jar-er and quality controller...

Repeat five times and we got 35 little jars all lined up in a row. My jam jar army needs to grow to 118, we're thinking one more jam making day will do it (we only spent a few hours on Sunday afternoon doing these). I'll keep you posted on the jam jar army's growth.

Any jam making going on at your house? Or top jam making tips from seasoned professionals giving the orders? Anyone a professional in the pectin department?

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

point + shoot: the one with the sponge

The weekend brought some dear fellow farming friends to Brindabella. Since moving further south we don't see Tyler and Kate nearly as much, which really is shameful, but a five hour drive is hard to slot in sometimes. It was Kate's birthday on Friday so a cake was in order. I asked her during the week if she had a preference for a type of cake. The reply? A sponge. A sponge! To her credit she had no idea they were quite the tricky cake to perfect (and I had never made one before) and when she found out about my fluster over room temperature eggs and triple sifting dry ingredients she felt terrible! I, however, absolutely outdid myself in the Masterchef ranks though, even if I do so say myself. As luck would have it when I was flipping through last week's Weekly Times I came across a recipe submitted by one of our old neighbours at Ythanbrae: 'never fail sponge'. And fail it did not. Thanks Denise!

The rest of the weekend was filled with far too much farmer and wedding talk, garden walks and thinking about whether things in my garden at Brindabella would work up in the dry north west of the state. We went to see the church where we are getting married, pegged out the marquee size on the site where it will go, went for a drive to find an elusive canola crop we could see on a nearby hill, took Kate for bridesmaid dress fittings (!!!!!) and general mass cheese, quince paste and beetroot dip eating followed by a lamb roast and washed down with a bottle (or three) of Larnoo red talking about the inevitable: The Future. That pesky thing.

A serious case of Mondayitis ensued today. Great, great friends. Feeling blessed to have them in our lives and our future, no matter what that might bring xxx

Head over to Lou's to play point + shoot with me. 

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

baking bliss: mum's chicken and corn chowder

I have been meaning for weeks now to take part in Rhi's Baking Bliss efforts over on Hummingbird's Song - well this weekend I finally got my bake on and got into some serious soup making. Chowder making actually. My mum's chicken and corn chowder recipe is just one of those all time favourite classics amongst my family. My sister was telling me last week how she made it for her family and I got all inspired. So on Saturday whilst Mr M chopped firewood I made chowder. Goodness, it must be winter!

image

And no that is not my actually chicken and corn chowder efforts, but it does look strikingly similar - I pop on some crispy bacon, grate some parmesan on top and sprinkle some spring onion if I am feeling ultra fancy. My chowder was devoured within hours of it surfacing from the stove so I didn't get a chance to take a lovely photo of it in daylight on the dining room table in a cute bowl all Donna-Hay-esque for you. Sorry :(

Here's the (secret) recipe if you'd like to try - it's super easy and I often double the quantity and freeze it to have an on-hand meal when I really don't feel like cooking when I get home from work...

Ingredients

1 brown onion, finely chopped

2 stalks of celery, finely chopped

2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed

4 cups of chicken stock

2 tbs margarine

2 tbs plain flour

1 cup creamed corn

2 x 375ml cans evaporated milk

1 cooked chicken from supermarket

Salt and pepper to taste (and bacon, parmesan and spring onion to garnish like me!)

Method

Place the onion, celery, potatoes and stock into a saucepan. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until vegetables are soft. Place in a blender and puree. Set aside.

In the same pan, melt the margarine, add the flour and stir until smooth. Add corn and stir through. Remove from heat and add the evaporated milk, stirring constantly. Add chicken (however much you like, I only used half and had the other half for sandwiches the next next day!) Return to the heat and stir until mixture boils and thickens. 

Add the pureed vegetable mixture. Season to taste and stir until well combined.

Bon appetit! 

white choc marsh-freckle eggs

First things first, my sincere apologies for this appalling kitchen photography. A foodie blogger I do not make. But you get the general idea - the general idea being that I have some fairly funky 1970's bench tops and pretty dodgy lighting in my kitchen. New lighting is on the humungus to-do list don't you worry. You may have heard me tweeting all about making these earlier in the week, so here they are. Twitter and facebook are most definitely making me more accountable for blog posts - nowhere to hide!

Keeping up with my constant gift giving, I thought I would make something for my five nieces and one nephew to kick off the Easter festivities. Usually I might send an Easter colour-in (like this one) and a packet of crayons, or a cute egg cup or something practical. I figure they will get loaded with Easter eggs from the big bunny himself. But last week whilst in civilisation (aka a town with shops) I saw some super cute pink silicone egg moulds - for $1! So snagged them, some white chocolate and some pastel inspired gift bags at Spotlight and away I went.  

I melted the white chocolate (my favourite, sickeningly sweet) on the stove in a glass bowl over some simmering water. The trick is with white chocolate to do it steady and sloooow - it can burn easily and be all-over-red-rover quite quickly. I then spooned the melted chocolate into the silicone mould ever so carefully with two teaspoons. In hindsight I possibly could have melted the chocolate in the microwave in a glass jug to pour the chocolate into the mould, although I think microwaving white chocolate can end in tears.

I considered 'gluing' the two halves together with melted dark chocolate to form one perfect egg but decided that was just not fun enough. So I raided my pantry and discovered some mini white and pink marshmallows and 100's and 1000's to make what I am calling 'marsh-freckles'. Original I know.

Popped them in the fridge to set and then in the morning hurriedly popped them out again, put them in the little cello gift bags, tied them with white satin ribbon and wrote a little Easter card to the girls + Ethan (sorry about all the pink Ethan, he's quite used to it by now though!) and ran to the post office to get them off in time to Queensland, Wodonga and Neerim South where all the bunnies live.

Do you do any Easter crafting or baking? I'd love to hear how others celebrate the holiday, we usually associate it with camping for the long weekend up in the high country with friends and a big fish on an open fire for Good Friday.

Photos by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella.

short stack + blueberries

When I was a little girl my mum would always make us kids a huge stack of pancakes as our after school snack on Shrove Tuesday. I remember flying in the door from the school bus, flinging my bag aside and sitting on the stool in the kitchen armed with eggs, milk and flour. They would always be served with lashings of cream and Nanna's jam, maple syrup, lemon juice and sprinklings of sugar. Mmmm. 

Well this morning I totally forgot to make Mr M pancakes for breakfast (he was up and out the door at 6am) and I was starving hungry coming home from work. So my own 'after school snack' today were these deliciously fluffy pancakes with fresh blueberries and a drizzling of cream. 

If you would like to make your own to celebrate the beginning of Lent then here is my recipe:

2 cups self raising flour
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar

Whisk eggs and milk together. Sift flour and sugar together in seperate bowl. Combine wet and dry ingredients, folding gently together trying not to over mix, until the mixture is a batter consistency. Cook on medium heat in pan, as big or as little as you like and flipping as crazily as possible!

Dust with icing sugar, pour on the cream or jam and lick fingers furiously.

Bon appetit!

{ image by emma durkin for cinderella at brindabella }

community cheesecake

cottage cheese + sour cream cheesecake with raspberries

Last night was our first real community outing in our new/old small town with a casual barbeque in the park with the local CFA brigade Mr M has signed up with. I obviously grew up here and know a lot of the families in the district, Mr M is getting super confused as to who is related to who etc. But I need some serious memory jogging too! Some people I haven't seen or spoken to since well before I was a teenager, I get a lot of "Oooooh you're Michael's youngest!!" and people genuinely look shocked that I'm not over playing on the swings with the other kids and still four foot tall. I grew up, funny that. 

Mr M and I had to giggle at the invitation to the barbeque which arrived in our (makeshift used chemical drum) mailbox: 'BBQ at Pioneer Park, BYO salad or dessert and alcohol (if required)'. Did we need alcoholic lubrication? Is that what it was inferring? Hahaha. I decided to go for a sour cream and cottage cheese cheesecake with raspberries, after joking with a local lady about how many potato salads would be amongst all the potato farmers. Throw it on our cake platter we got for our engagement off another local lady who would be there (yes I did that especially, I'm a suck) and I think I was a hit, well with the sweet tooth husbands at the very least.

lemony lemony goodness

As I mentioned, on the weekend I made some lemon curd. Mmmmmhmmmm lemony lemony goodness is all I have to say. Perfect on a piece of fresh bread, toasted, drizzled over a sponge, on a muffin, scone, biscuit, ice-cream or mixed with fresh berries. Yumm-oooh!

{ image }

Here is the recipe I use, it generally makes two jars but I usually triple it to give jars to friends and friendly-neighbourly-farmer-sorts. This old favourite uses up lots of my eggs that are pouring out of my henny-penny's faster than I can say family sized quiche! Use as much or as little lemon juice and zest as you like to taste...

3 eggs

2 egg yolks

3/4 cup caster sugar

Finely grated zest of 3 lemons

Juice of 3 lemons

125g unsalted butter, chopped

Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until the mixture is well combined and the sugar has dissolved. Whisk in the zest and the juice.

Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water. Cook, stirring regularly, for 15 minutes, adding the butter gradually. When the mixture has thickened and coats the back of a spoon you have created lemon curd!

Cool and spoon into jars.

ava's tea party

Yesterday was August 22nd. Not an overly memorable day on my radar. Nothing on really, still recovering from my cold, worked at the gallery, the day before Mr M's birthday...

But for one family yesterday was harder and more special than most. It was Ava's birthday. To read about Ava's story you can go to the Ava's Tea Party website, Ava's memorial page or become a fan of Ava's Tea Party on facebook.  

And so I set about having my own tea party for the superprincess. I didn't think Monty would be much into making pink cupcakes (more of a smash tonka trucks kind of kid) so I quietly made cupcakes by myself this morning and sat down with a pot of tea.

Pink of course was the order of the day. I didn't have any little girls to share it with (bummer), no spotty plates in the house as was called for (maybe next time) but I did find the icing of the 24 cupcakes I made therapeutic almost and tea is always a bonus in my books.

And then I went for a spin on the lawn. Barefoot. In a pretty dress. Tessa looked on in amusement. Any excuse to wear my pretty crinoline and one of my favourite vintage dresses. I think Ava would have liked the pretty satin sash ribbon.

 

To see more of Ava's Tea Party you can visit the flickr group Ava's Balloons, see some images from Ava's Tea Party 2009 or visit Ava's mum Sheye's blog. 

Now just to do the dishes.

{ Button Bickies }

Today Monty and I made some button bickies. Mmmm buttery goodness. To be honest Monty requested we do some baking, I got all organised in a kitchen that was foreign to me, found an appropriate recipe in a random cook book in the house that was not mine and then he ran away to play with guinea pigs whilst I baked alone.

   

Anywho, if you feel like making some buttery button bickies here is the recipe:

125g butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup custard powder

Preheat oven to 180 C. Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Use an electric beater to beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Beat in milk and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour, baking powder and custard powder. 

Press the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic cling wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to rest. 

Divide the dough into manageable portions. Roll out one portion on a sheet of non-stick baking paper to about 1cm thick. 

Use round cookie cutter to cut out circles, place on baking tray evenly spaced. (I used a gingerbread man cutter also to make 'Daddy shaped' biscuits). Use a button to gently press into the centre of each biscuit, leaving four holes, then use a fork to press lines into the edges of the biscuits. 

Bake for 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Repeat with remaining dough. Nom nom nom!

{ Chicken Pie Time }

A recent UK survey found that 70% of modern women have FIVE staple meals they rotate to serve to their families. I don't think this finding was shocking - you hear that and nod and agree. One of my new years resolutions was to cook different things, I thought about having a bit of a menu plan but let's face it I don't have five children to feed, it's just me and Mr M, but I still wanted to have a bit of a game plan when I headed to the supermarket and back to the kitchen. My current obsession with Masterchef is not helping the situation of feeling inadequate! 

Reading my favourite magazine, Notebook, in bed the other night I was flicking through the recipes, saw a chicken and corn pie, read the ingredients and thought "I have all of those things in the house at the moment!" i.e. I don't have to drive the 15km into town to the over priced little supermarket to get supplies for tomorrow nights dinner. 

So I set about creating my beautiful pie: I had chicken, creamed corn, no leek though...so I substituted with frozen peas and some onion and threw in some fresh field mushrooms we picked last week as well. Actually it was a lot of mushrooms I 'threw in' - we are mushroom nuts in this house but the fresh ones pack quite a mushroom taste so the pie turned VERY mushroom flavoured and VERY grey in colour (hence no photo of the pie mixture, not very aesthetically appealing sorry). 

It was very quick and easy to make and a great meal for a cold night in front of the fire - here's the recipe for you:

Need this...

1 tbs olive oil

600g of chicken thigh fillets (I used breast because that's what I had), cut into 3cm pieces

20g butter

1 leek, white part only, thickly sliced (I used 1 cup of frozen peas + 1 small brown onion finely chopped)

Mushrooms! As many as you like :)

1/4 cup plain flour

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

400g can of creamed corn

1 sheet ready rolled puff pastry

1 egg, lightly whisked

Do this...

Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the chicken and cook, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes or until brown all over. Remove chicken from pan and set aside.

Add butter to the pan over medium-high heat. Add leek/peas/onion and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until flour becomes slightly grainy. Add stock and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until mixture boils and thickens. Remove from the heat. Add creamed corn and cooked chicken, stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside for 10 minutes to cool slightly.

Spoon the mixture into a pie dish. Top with the pastry sheet and use a small, sharp knife to trim edges. Lightly brush with egg. Back for 15-20 minutes or until pastry is puffed and golden and filling is heated through. Serve immediately.

Voila! Mine was still quite a liquid so either don't use as much stock, or add more flour or perhaps I should have let it come together some more whilst cooking the filling. More of a chicken mushroom soup topped with pastry! But it definitely was delicious and I think I will be making more pies this winter, terrible oven and all...

Bon appetit! 

{ Easter Cupcakes }

It is the last week of the school term here in Victoria, so before the Easter holidays I thought I would do some little Easter projects with Monty {the little boy I nanny}. Yesterday we made these Easter cupcakes, at first I was a bit turned off by the thought of a dried fried cupcake, but turns out the only thing hot cross about them is the caramel cross icing. 

Monty especially enjoyed 'plopping' the chocolate eggs into the centre of the batter. Then when we dished them out to his brother, mum, dad and Mr M we surprised them all with the secret chocolate melted centres! Yum!

Find the recipe here.

{ Christmas Pudding }

I am starting to compile my shopping list for my Christmas party I am having this Saturday. To keep it simple for me to organise, and keep costs down, I have asked a few people to bring some meat to throw on the barbie, if they offered to bring something. A few of my girlfriends are making some salads also. {Stephanie's spinach, pinenut, cherry tomato creation sounds yummo!}As a potato farmer's daughter though I still insist on making the potato salad with baby chats, peppercorns, lots of wholegrain mustard and generous strips of prosciutto.

So, that leaves me to do the little details that I love to do anyway.

This is what I have in mind:

- Christmas star shortbread cookies {I make them every year, with little silver cachous on the points}

- grapefruit, champagne and vodka punch {lucky we live in the middle of nowhere so everyone is staying the night! }

- antipasto platters of olives, stuffed capsicums, Hungarian salami, anything else that takes my fancy at the deli?

- homemade hommus and gaucamole {my mum's top secret recipe}

- spinach, ricotta and red capsicum tartlets {green and red theme! I got the cutest muffin wrappers I'm going to put these in too, from Paper Eskimo}

- white chocolate and macadamia muffins {another one of my mum's secret recipes, also going in the cute muffin wrappers, something sweet, something savoury}

I am terribly anal about organsing dinner parties and such things so have got a million lists going. I make lists for food to buy, food to make, and even what food will go in what bowl/on what platter. I know. Weird.

And for my piece de resistance I am {attempting} to make this:

It is a Donna Hay recipe - I will tell you how I go...it could be a disaster but I think I'm up for the challenge! Better get that apron on!

{ Image from here }

{ My Weekend }

 

I don't know about you, but I had the most productive weekend! I put a ban on going on the internet, I even hid the internet USB thingy-mahoozit on myself! So much of my time is wasted on surfing around unproductively. Not this weekend though! Oh no, this weekend was going to be the weekend of gardening, cleaning, sewing and cooking...and so this is what happened:

- planted new herbs, sage and basil
- did four loads of Mr M dirty-farm-washing

- washed sheets

- shooed pesky sheep away from said sheets as they are grazing our lawn down whilst lawn mower is broken
- put in pretty garden edging to keep naughty puppies off herb garden
- cut back overhanging plants where snakes like to hide, coming up to summer
- took new photos of canvas's for etsy shop
- made two new minky blankets for etsy shop
- finally got my horse Mr Archie out for a ride, got sunburnt on my arms and shoulders, ouch
- gave Tessa a much needed bath
- scolded Tessa for rolling in grass clippings after her bath
- made lasagne, possibly best bechamel sauce of my lasagne making career
- made cinnamon, rolled oats and vanilla biscuits - yummy smell through the cottage achieved
- crunched some numbers for Little Miss Emma, my poor little calculator
- took photos of awesome lavander
- oiled the outdoor timber table and chairs, ran out of oil, need to buy more

And my favourite thing I did this weekend...

- rolled in the grass with our dogs Buddy, Lily, Pippa, Tessa, as well as Pippa's mum Roxy who we are looking after for friends at the moment. Five dogs is fun!

Phew! Are you exhausted? I am surprisingly not - very productive but very relaxing at the same time. This week I must call the freerange hen man that comes to Yea for chicken deliveries. I used to have two little hens, only one would lay though so I thought that one was a bit gender confused - I named them Mr and Mrs Chicken. After the fires in February sadly Mr Chicken went to Chicken Heaven after all the smoke and stress. Mrs Chicken continued laying for a few weeks but then stopped. She has been all alone since February and I think she is depressed. I am going to get three or four more chickens, but I think Mrs Chicken will go to Chicken Heaven to be with Mr Chicken - she is quite old and I hear it's quite hard to introduce new chickens.

What did you get up to on the weekend?

{ Image found here - I will post some photos of said lavender and garden edging, and stay tuned for those new canvas photos and minky blankets to soon appear in my etsy shop }

{ Scones and Tea }

After 18 months of living in Murrindindi I still can not get over the fog! Both mornings on the weekend the fog didn't clear until midday - so depressing and makes me feel so unproductive as the cottage is so hard to heat until that midday sun breaks through and hits the north facing windows. Ho hum.

So a lazy Sunday afternoon had me cutting fabric, organising fabric, trying to get Tessa to stop chewing fabric...but I wasn't very inspired, was just sewing for the sake of sewing. Aha I thought! I will bake! I get very spur of the moment ideas like this, as as you can see I literally brushed aside my fabric cutting implements and got going on some good old fashioned Aussie farm favourties: scones.

Cliched? Probably. Scrumptious? Definately.