Spiralizer Week: Day Four: Ginger Egg Drop Soup

This was the evening of another exercise class and I knew that the very simple soup we had in mind was just not going to cut it. So I beefed it up with some extra ingredients, while keeping the rest mostly the same. I was really unsure about adding vinegar to a soup, but it worked *really* well. In fact I can't quite believe how smooth and tasty this dish was. Of course it helped that I had made a really great chicken stock with the chicken carcass I had left from jointing a chicken earlier in the week. I think that is crucial for any non-puréed soup. The photo really doesn't do this soup justice!

Ingredients

• a thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
  
• 3 tbsp dried wakame
• 4-5 spring onions, shredded
• 1/3 tsp chilli flakes
• 4 tsp sherry or apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 3 cups really good chicken stock
• 2 large eggs, gently beaten
• two chicken thighs or a chicken breast, cooked, shredded
• two grilled corn-on-the-cobs, kernels cut
• 1 zucchini, spiralized into thin noodles

Fry the ginger gently until golden and beginning to crisp, then add the wakame, spring onions, chilli flakes, vinegar, soy sauce and chicken stock. Let it come to a simmer and cook for a few minutes, then add in the eggs, stirring as they cook. Add in the shredded chicken, corn kernels, and zucchini, and bring back up to temperature. Serve!

Microwave Hollandaise Sauce

The asparagus season has started, new potatoes are out, and salmon is fresh and tasty at the supermarket, so what better accompanying sauce than a home-made Hollandaise? I have never made one before but they're notoriously difficult, so I looked for a microwave recipe. This one worked first-try, and I made 2/3rds of the website quantity, which gave generous helpings for two people.

Ingredients

• 125g butter
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (about half a lemon), well-strained

Method

Put butter in a small pyrex bowl and microwave for 10-30 seconds, until the butter is soft, and no warmer than 45C. In a separate bowl or ramekin, mix the yolks and lemon juice. Add this mixture to the softened butter and combine well. Microwave on high, stopping to whisk every 10 seconds, which will feel very frequent but is necessary. Suddenly the sauce will thicken as the yolks cook: don't overbeat or overcook beyond a good consistency.

Yasai Cha Han

This weekend was chore-tastic but also really hot, so I wanted something nourishing but not too heavy. I'm still working my way through the vegetarian section of the Wagamama cookbook, and this recipe called for things I mostly already had in the fridge. A quick cycle to the local grocer (and a quick swim when we got back to cool down) and I was able to pick up the rest of the ingredients. It was super-fast to prepare; easily a new weekday meal for me. You'll want really good fresh ingredients for this, as there are no other flavourings beyond soy sauce, so the vegetables need to speak for themselves. The rice instructions and the sheer amount of salt were both a shock to me, but I followed the recipe and they did work out.

Ingredients

• A ladleful of Thai fragrant rice
• Four ladlefuls of boiling water
• two king oyster mushrooms, cubed
• 250g firm tofu, cubed
• 8-10 baby sweetcorn
• 15-20 sugarsnap peas
• 4 spring onions, trimmed and cut into 4cm pieces
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp light soy sauce
• 2 eggs

Cook the rice in the boiling water on a medium heat for 4-5 minutes, until softened but not done. Drain and refresh under cold running water; set aside. If you have wobbly tofu (which I usually do), fry the tofu in a little oil in a hot wok, turning carefully and occasionally until lightly seared on a few sides. Scoop out and set aside.

Turn the heat up, add a little more oil, and stir-fry the mushrooms for five minutes, until golden and bouncy. Throw in the vegetables, rice, salt, and soy sauce, and stir fry for a further 2-3 minutes, until the rice is cooked and the vegetables are bright. Add the egss and stir fry until they are just cooked. Divide between two bowls and serve with miso soup on the side.

Banana Pancakes

This is my new favourite weekend morning breakfast! The only problem is, I have to patiently wait all week for a couple of bananas to overripen: rare in our house. I used this recipe but substituting homemade buttermilk (milk with some lemon juice left for a few minutes); I reckon real buttermilk would give an even fluffier result. I halved this recipe to make enough for two.

Ingredients

• 200g (1 1/3 cups) plain flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 55g (1/4 cup) sugar
• 2 eggs
• 250g mashed banana
• 330ml (1 1/3 cups) buttermilk
• 40g butter, melted

Combine all of the ingredients together, stirring until the flour is no longer visible. Fry in dollops until golden brown (about a minute) and then flip for another minute. Serve with sour cream, maple syrup, and strawberries.

Tarte au Chevre (Goat's Cheese and Onion Quiche)

Shamelessly stolen from the February 2011 issue of the Observer Food Monthly, where they share some excellent French recipes. I cheated and used store-bought pastry, and it wasn't as good, but I didn't have time to make it myself. I also had the wrong size tin so had to scale the recipe up by about 40%, and it worked fine, with 5 minutes extra cooking time.

We served this with their baked fennel (shown in the background of the photo), but I didn't find it a sufficient improvement on braised fennel to actually warrant bothering in future, unless I already had the oven on and felt like using the spare energy to heat something up.

For the quiche, you'll need a round 22cm tart tin at least 3.5cm deep with a removable base and beans for baking blind. I was extremely sceptical of their instructions for greasing the tin, but they really worked! One layer of butter, then another of flour.

Ingredients

For the pastry

• 200g flour
• 100g butter
• 1 egg yolk
• a little milk

For the filling

• 400g onions (usually 2-3)
• 25g butter
• 2 tsp thme leaves
• 2 eggs
• 200g creme fraiche or sour cream
• 200g full cream milk
• 180g goat's cheese

Blitz the flour and butter together in a food processor, until it forms tiny breadcrumbs. Stir in the egg yolk and enough milk to make a pastry dough. Pat the pastry into a flat round and roll out large enough to line the tart tin. Lightly butter the tin and dust it with a small amount of flour, shaking off any excess. Lay the dough into the tin and push it right into the corners without stretching. Trim off the overhanging pastry and repair any holes. Chill for 20 minutes.

At 200C, pre-bake the pastry case, using greaseproof paper (or foil) and baking beans to hold down the base. After 20 minutes, remove the case from the oven, pour out the beans, remove the paper and bake again for another 5 minutes, until the base is dry to the touch. Remove from the oven and turn it down to 180C.

While the crust is pre-baking, you can finely slice and fry the onions in the butter and thyme for a good 20 minutes, over a low heat, until they are totally falling apart, golden and tender. Beat the eggs and creme fraiche together, then slowly add the milk. (It will look like way too much, but the volumes do work out!) When you have blind-baked the pastry shell, put the onions in a layer on the bottom, crumble over the goat's cheese, then pour over the rest of the filling mixture. Bake at 180C for 40 minutes. The centre should quiver when gently shaken. Let it rest for at least 10 minutes, so you can serve it warm.

Yorkshire Puddings

I love Yorkshire puddings. When I was a child we always looked forward to when my mum would make them. We'd beg and beg for more of them, even above and beyond roast potatoes! Pure carby goodness. It seems the tricks to getting a well-puffed pudding are to beat the batter well to get air into it, and to heat a generous amount of oil in tin (in the oven) before you pour the  batter in -- and always less than half of the height of the tin, or they won't have room to expand. I was surprised that the Joy of Cooking said to beat the batter, since I would normally worry about toughening the gluten, but it worked very well. And luckily, they were wrong about needing to leave it to stand for an hour. (I'm impatient like that!)

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water plus 1tbsp
• 2 eggs
• vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Combine the salt and flour, make a well in the centre and pour in the milk and water. Stir, then beat well until very combined. Add the two eggs and continue to beat until large bubbles rise to the surface. Pour a little vegetable oil into each tin of a muffin tray and place in the hot oven; there should be enough oil that the base of each tin is easily covered. After five minutes, remove the tin from the oven and pour the batter into each cup, to about 40% of the height of the tin. Return to the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until risen and golden.

Sweet Potato and Bacon Frittata

The Internet told me to make this one. It was the end of the week, and we were running low on food, and the two things I needed to use up most were a large sweet potato, and a packet of bacon. So I typed 'sweet potato bacon' into Google, and auto-complete immediately suggested 'frittata recipe'. So I went for it! And it turned out wonderfully :) I also served it with a quick courgette ribbon salad from a blog that I simply cannot find again, but I'll cover that in another post.

I think grilled green pepper or even some okra would work better than peas; I might try that next time.

Ingredients:

• a medium sweet potato
• 3 full (or 6 streaky, or 4 back) bacon rashers
• 6 eggs
• 3/4 cup of frozen peas
• 25g cheddar
• 1 tsp paprika

Preferably using a mandolin, but a sharp knife and a steady hand will do, slice the sweet potato into 3mm rounds. Brush them lightly with oil and bbq them with the bacon; if you can fit them all on the grill, it should take about 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, break the eggs into a large bowl and whisk in some bubbles of air. Drop in the frozen peas. When the bacon is done, shred it finely and add it to the eggs and peas. When the sweet potatoes are done, make a layer of sweet potato discs at the bottom of an oiled, medium cast-iron skillet. Pour in half the egg mixture, then add another layer of sweet potatoes, then the remaining egg mixture, and then a final layer of sweet potatoes. Grate over the cheddar and sprinkle over the paprika. Cook on the bbq hot plate for a further 10-15 minutes, until set and coming away from the sides.

Any extra sweet potato discs are fantastic to snack on with a sprinkling of coarse salt.

Okonomiyaki (Japanese Savoury Pancake)

Another inspiration from my amazing Flavour Thesaurus, with guidance from one of my favourite food blogs and a helpful Japanese cooking info page. This time I was reading the underwhelming-sounding 'cabbage and egg' section. Turns out the Japanese have a long tradition of making these gorgeous savoury pancakes with a range of different ingredients, but almost-always including shredded cabbage as the base. And since cabbage was on my list of 'cheap veg at the market this week', I have a whole head to use up. I made up the money saved buying the cabbage by buying beautiful katsuobushi, the dried bonito flakes that 'dance' in the convection currents generated by the hot pancake. I also made my own okonomiyaki sauce, which meant I had to buy ketchup for the first time in my life. Oh well - maybe when winter rolls around I'll deep-fry some potato chips. Or, more likely, I'll just make these again, because they were AMAZING! Even easier to flip than Korean pancakes, less fiddly than fried veggie fritters, and absolutely divine in flavour. I think it's worth putting in the extra effort to make the sauce, and track down the katsuobushi and wakame (dried seaweed).

Ingredients

What is so exciting about this seaweed??

For the pancake: 

• 1/4 white/green cabbage
• 1 carrot
• 2 spring onions
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup room-temperature dashi stock (substitute seafood stock, or vegetable stock, or even water)
• 1 cup plain flour

For the toppings:

• 2tbsp ketchup (tomato sauce)
• 2tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 50g katsuobushi (fine bonito flakes)
• a small handful of wakame (dried seaweed)

Japanese pancake on the barbie.
Now that's what I call fusion food :)

Shred the cabbage, grate the carrot and finely slice the spring onions. Combine with the egg, stock and flour in a large mixing bowl. Get a bbq hot plate nice and hot and brush generously with oil. When you can see it start to shimmer, plop the mixture onto the hotplate and push down and smooth out to make a pancake or two (how many depends on your confidence in your ability to flip them!). Close the lid and bbq for 5-10 minutes, until crisp and golden on the bottom, and cooked through enough not to fall apart when you lift the edges with a spatula. Flip onto the other side and cook for a further 5-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and sugar in a small bowl, to make the okonomiyaki sauce. Put the mayonnaise in a small plastic bag with the corner cut off, or piping bag, if it's not in a squeezy bottle already. When the pancake is nearly done, turn off the heat and brush the top surface with the okonomiyaki sauce. Pipe on the mayonnaise in long lines, or whatever pattern you like. Tip on the katsuobushi and scatter with a handful of wakame. Serve hot off the grill, with the bonito flakes dancing to their tasty song :)

BBQ Aubergine with Garlic Mayonnaise

I'm still recovering from the flu, so I gave this 40-minute recipe to the SO to do... so of course it took a good two and a half hours, and I had to take over at the end... good job he doesn't read this blog ;) I ended up making the mayonnaise because he didn't check whether we had mayonnaise before we began, which in the end turned out well: I'd been looking forward to making my own mayonnaise for some time, just never expected to do it while exhausted with the flu! Turns out the key is patience. The SO's method of putting-all-the-ingredients-in-one-bowl-and-using-a-blender just results in a broken blender. Stay calm and keep dripping oil.

Ingredients

• a large aubergine
• a head of garlic
• an egg
• 65-75ml of olive oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2-1 tsp lemon juice
• 1-2 tbsp capers
• a few leaves of basil

Wrap the garlic in foil and drip in some olive oil; roast in a hot oven or on the bbq for 40 minutes, until cooked through and soft. Slice the aubergine lengthwise into long fat slices and grill (preferably on the hot bbq :) for 10-15 minutes, until meltingly soft in the middle and beginning to crisp on the edges.

Meanwhile, separate the egg and discard or save the white for something else, plopping the egg yolk into a large bowl. Drip no more than three drops of olive oil into the yolk and whisk until it is completely combined and lightened. Drip in a couple more drops and repeat. Continue this process, increasing the number of drops very gently as you proceed. It will slowly turn into mayonnaise! Whisk in the salt and lemon juice at the end, adding the lemon juice again in small quantities. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of the head and whisk into the mayonnaise. Serve with the hot grilled aubergine slices, and garnish with capers and torn basil.

Huevos Rancheros

Decided to do something a little different after Zumba today - well, I decided the night before, since it helps to cook the refried beans in advance. In the morning, it was a matter of minutes to put the ingredients together, and then enjoy a protein-rich meal with a big cup of coffee.

Ingredients:

• 400g refried beans
• three cloves of garlic
• a tin of chopped tomatoes
• Cheddar cheese
• 4 tortillas
• 4 eggs
• fresh coriander
• guacamole or sour cream

Put the tortillas on a large, foil-covered or well-oiled baking tray. Spread on the refried beans. Drain the tin of tomatoes and slice the tomatoes into wedges; dot on top of the beans. Try to make a bit of a well with the beans and the tomatoes. If you like your egg runny, separate the white and pour it into the well; cook under a hot grill for a couple of minutes until it is almost cooked. Cover with cheese and plop on the yolk, then grill for a further minute until the cheese is sticky and melted and the yolk is hot. Cut into wedges and serve garnished with a few leaves of fresh coriander, with plenty of guacamole or sour cream to go with.

Courgette Souffle

Another entry from Delia's Frugal Food that at first I skipped straight over, then went back to, thinking 'Aaactually, courgettes ARE really cheap, and it has been years since I made a souffle...' With my lack of recent experience in mind, I followed the instructions almost to the letter, including barely half a courgette between four people. So I'm slightly upping the quantity in the recipe below. I also messed around with the herbs since I didn't have any parsley or chives - I think almost anything works, even a very mild herb like marjoram, as the flavours are well-preserved and aromatic in the beautiful fluffy matrix. I served this with just a salad of pears, toasted walnuts (used the oven as it was already on, energy-saving score!) and avocado, dressed with honey and balsamic vinegar. If you were very hungry you could also have a bit of crusty bread or mashed potatoes. Oh and we ate all of this between two of us. I disagree with Delia that anyone would be excited to receive a single egg and some air for lunch.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium courgette
• 90g butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 200ml milk
• 40g cheddar
• 25g Parmesan
• a handful of herbs; I used thyme and marjoram
• 4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 200 C and butter five 0.28L ramekins (or equivalent volume souffle dish). Wash, top, tail and slice the courgette lengthwise. Scoop out all the fluffy seeds and chuck, eat or feed to the worms. Very finely slice or mandolin the remaining flesh, and fry it in half the butter until soft and just beginning to colour, then turn off the heat, season and set aside to cool a little. Meanwhile, melt the rest of the butter in a pyrex jug or bowl in the microwave, combine well with the flour and then stir in the milk. Microwave for another minute and stir thoroughly, then grate in the two cheeses and stir in the herbs. Separate the eggs; when the white sauce is cool enough (<57C), stir in the yolks. Beat the whites until they stand up in stiff peaks, then pour over the cheesy white sauce and fold together; don't overmix it, some inhomogeneity is fine.

Dollop half of the mixture into the bottoms of the ramekins or souffle dish, top with fried courgettes, and cover with the remaining mixture. Stand in a roasting tin and pour in boiling water until it comes a third the way up the side of the ramekins or dish. Pop in the oven and reduce the heat to 170C; bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and risen.

Pear and Almond Tart

We bought a huge bucket of pears last weekend and they have been sitting sullenly in a bowl, failing to ripen. So today I decided to use them in the best way possible - baking a beautiful French pear and almond tart. The recipe, according to my dad, is not French at all, but if you google it you'll find hundreds of examples of how to make it. I used this nice blog entry as it talked about all the different subtleties and, crucially, explained how to poach the pears. I won't rehash every single point since the post is worth a read in its own right, but I'll post how I made this wonderful tart... with metric weighted quantities!

My pastry isn't quite even but I'm working on it :)

Ingredients:
For the pears:

• two large or three small pears
• water
• sugar
• a couple of cloves
• a wedge of lemon

  
Halve, core and peel the pears then place them flat-side up in a saucepan. Cover with water, drop in the cloves and lemon, and add about a third as much sugar as you have pears. Bring to a simmer; while you do so, use the lid of the pan to trace and cut out a circle of greaseproof paper; cut a hole in the middle and place on top of the pears. Simmer for 6-10 minutes, until the pears are perfectly tender.


You can either chill and marinade the pears at this point, or use them as soon as they're cool enough to handle. The poaching liquid can be reduced down to a drizzling sauce, or frozen in an ice cube tray for another recipe. To slice the pears ready for the pie, place flat-side down on a board and, using a very sharp knife, slice diagonally through so that the pears will be able to fan out in that classic shape. Leave them on the board or a plate until the rest of the pie is ready. (If you chop savoury foods, especially onions, on the same board, make sure to line it first with cling film.)


For the pastry:

• 110g unsalted butter
• 80g granulated sugar (halve if your pastry-handling skills are not strong)
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 225g plain flour

Line a 9" pie or tart pan with butter and greaseproof paper. Briefly cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in the egg yolk and the vanilla. Add the flours and mix until well combined—the dough will form clumps and all the flour will have been absorbed. Form the dough into a thick disk. On a lightly floured board gently roll dough out to a thickness of 3-5mm. Brush off the excess flour and transfer the dough to a greased tart pan. Ease the dough into the pan, being careful not to stretch it or break it (the more sugar you use, the more fragile it will be); press it against the sides of the tart pan. Use a pair of scissors to gently cut the dough a 5mm taller than the edge of the tart pan.

For the almond filling:

• 85g slivered or ground almonds
• 85g sugar
• 85g unsalted butter
• 1 whole egg
• 1 egg white
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 20g flour

Blitz the almonds, sugar and butter together in a blender, then crack in the egg, egg white and almond extract. Whizz for a minute or so, then gently fold in the flour. Using a spatula, spread evenly over the pastry shell. Drop any excess from the spatula scraprings right into the middle of the tart. Using a metal or sharp-edged spatula, lift the sliced pears and gently slide into the pie in the classic pattern: into four, six or eight 'fans' depending on the size of the pears.

Bake in a preheated 175 C oven for 30-40 minutes, until the frangipangi is risen and golden-brown.

10th Anniversary Dinner: Crème Brulee

I love this dessert, and since I got a kitchen blowtorch for Xmas, I've been looking forward to making it for some time! I followed this recipe, swapping the vanilla bean for vanilla extract, but found that it didn't set. Still delicious, and the crispy brown sugar worked wonderfully with the cold custard, but it was just not jelly-like enough. From Molecular Gastronomy, I know that egg yolks harden when they reach 57 C. So whether it's my oven, or the latent heat of the dish I used for the bain marie, or the cream not being hot enough, I know that the reason they didn't set was that the custard did not reach and stay at 57 C. That seems quite incredible given that the oven was at 120 C, and the water I put in the bain marie was boiling, and that the cream was beginning to bubble in the pan before I added it to the eggs... but it must have been the case! When I get this recipe right, I'll post again with how I did it! Maybe I should hint that I'd like a kitchen thermometer as an anniversary present ;)

French-ish Salad with Sauteed Potatoes

We spent another weekend away - this time attempting to dive in Exmouth, in north-west WA. Unfortunately the weather was against us, with a cyclone a few 100km away causing massive sea swell and poor visibility. So we cut the holiday short and came back, just in time to do some really zonked-out shopping. After all the sunshine and travelling, I had only enough energy to throw together a quick salad for a nutrient hit, with just a couple of potatoes, few and sliced thickly enough that I could sautee them altogether in a single batch.

Ingredients:

• one tomato
• half an avocado
• a handful of lettuce or mixed leaves
• a few slices of prosciutto
• two eggs
• a handful of sprouting seeds
• one generous tsp dijon mustard
• one flat tsp grain mustard
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• salt and pepper

Boil the eggs to your liking - I prefer to put them in cold water, allow it to come to the boil, give them 2 minutes 30 seconds, then take them out and leave them in a bowl to cool. That way I can also boil the potatoes in the same water.

Chop the tomato and avocado, and wash and tear the lettuce into a large salad bowl. Tear in the proscuitto and tip the seeds in over the lettuce. Shake the dressing ingredients together in a jar and pour over, then toss. Peel the eggs, quarter them and arrange over the salad on individual plates.

Dolsot Bibimbap (Korean Stone Pots)

While I was Zumba-ing, my most excellent husband-chef prepared all the bits for a delicious pair of dolsot bibimbaps. Tonight we had white rice, very rare, thinly sliced spiced beef from yesterday, stir-fried broccoli and carrots with a slosh of water-thinned soy sauce, and an innovation with the eggs! We've found that the clay pots we bought have less thermal capacity than the stone pots used in some restaurants, so entirely raw eggs don't go as crispy on the bottom of the pot as one would like. However it's completely unacceptable to overcook the yolk - raw yolk is one of life's great pleasures. So tonight we fried the white of the egg, then snipped it into strips, and popped the raw yolk on top of the hot pot at the last second, along with fried slivers of garlic. No kimchi tonight (the store was closed at 5pm; thanks, Perth!) but sweet chilli sauce was perfect with the soft rice, gooey yolk and spicy beef. Delish!

Pasta Carbonara

Amazing. After a whole year blogging, I still haven't covered a recipe that I have always fallen back on when I can't think of anything else to eat. It's brilliant if you've been doing a bit of exercise, as it's basically a huge plate of carbs and protein, and it's also handy if you are running low on fresh vegetables, as traditionally it has none whatsoever! I also think of it as 'breakfast pasta', because of the eggs and bacon.

Ingredients

• a hand's grip of straight pasta, like spaghetti or fettuccine
• 6 rashers of streaky bacon, or more if you like
• 3 eggs
• 100g of parmesan, finely grated
• a small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
• a few tbsp crème fraiche

Take enough straight pasta out of the packet that you are holding it all in one hand, like a staff, with your thumb and fingers just meeting. This should be enough for two people. (Smaller people have smaller hands so need less pasta!) Drop it into a pan of salted boiling water and cook until a minute before the packet instructions say.

Grill or fry the bacon until crispy, then chop into small slivers. Break the eggs into a bowl and fork through a little, then season with pepper. When the pasta is done, drain it and return it to the pan over a low heat, adding in the eggs, bacon and half the parmesan. Stir occasionally until the eggs are cooked, scraping the bottom of the pan to get the good scruddly bits combined. Turn off the heat, add half of the parsley and the creme fraiche, stir through and serve, topped with the remaining parsley, parmesan and seasoned with black pepper.

Cashew and Vegetable Stir-Fry

The weather's cooled down a bit so we're having a couple of BBQ-free days :) This is a simple vegan version of the usual chicken and broc stir fry since we've not been particularly active and don't really need the meat. Just substituted some carrots and baby sweetcorn for the chicken, egg-fried the rice, and added some extra cashews for more protein. I'm still poorly so super-husband cooked this one, and he very cleverly came up with a way of not burning the garlic and ginger - he fried them first for a minute in the vegetable oil, then removed them, stir-fried the rest of the vegetables in the flavoured oil, and added the ginger and garlic again at the end. Really tasty!

Prosciutto, Avocado and Egg Salad

Always wonderful to come home and find something like this waiting for you :) Rocket, avocado, prosciutto, perfectly-cooked eggs and lovely sprouting seeds tossed together in a mustardy sauce, with a pumpkin scone I prepared earlier ready for slicing in the background - probably the last one until autumn, as the pumpkins seem to lose all flavour in the summer, and this one had to be heavily spiked with thyme and pepper to give it enough flavour.

Wiener Schnitzel

This Austrian meal is traditionally prepared with veal, but apparently nowadays in Europe pork is quite commonly used, and I used to use turkey fillets when I lived in the UK. Beef is relatively cheap in Australia, so it was nice to find some real veal at the butcher's for a reasonable price. I don't know how traditional my breadcrumbs are, but I find they work well and don't take long. Tonight it was unseasonably cool, so I served this with some parboiled potatoes, baked in the oven for an hour with herbs, a little white sauce and cheese.

Ingredients:

• One veal fillet per person
• one slice of bread per person
• 2 tbsp parsley per person
• half an egg per person
• plain flour
• black pepper

Lay a piece of cling film on your work bench or bread board, and place a veal fillet on it. Cover with a plastic bag or one or two more pieces of cling film. Gently pound with a rolling pin until thin, at most 5mm thick. Blend the bread and parsley together in a blender. Break the egg into a pyrex bowl, and season the flour in another bowl. Dip the veal into the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs, shaking gently free of any excess at each stage. Fry in olive oil for 60-120 seconds on each side, until the breadcrumbs are golden and the meat is tenderly cooked.

Nectarine Clafoutis

This dessert goes a little way toward explaining how our family managed to eat one egg each, per day, over the Christmas week! It's also totally delicious, and wonderful timing for an Australian Christmas as the stone fruit season is very much in swing. It's good to cook it in shallower, wider pan than shown here, as we had to keep it in for an extra 20 minutes to cook through the centre.

Ingredients:

I like how the empty bowls are crowded around
waiting for their turn to be filled :)

• 300g nectarines (about 5-6)
• 4 eggs
• 1/3 cup honey or caster sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/4 cup flour

Heat the oven to 180C and make sure there is space in the centre. Grease the dish you're using, and slice the nectarines into medium-sized wedges, dropping them in as you finish.

Whisk the eggs and honey (or sugar) together using a hand blender, until well-combined and a little airy. Add the milk and cream, and whisk again, then carefully combine in the flour, stopping as soon as the flour is no longer visible. Pour the batter over the fruit, and bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.