Breakfeast

Today I have no recipe for you, sadly. I am leaving for some travel for a while (4 weeks in Nepal, 2 in Buenos Aires, and then a month back in MN) and so the normal cornucopia of resplendent food will be postponed for a bit. Apologies in advance... hang tight, though, I will be back shortly with all new ideas.
Cheers

Kiwi Sorbet

At the beautiful farmer's market on Saturday, I noticed a stall selling 12 kiwis for $2 (AUD). I thought that that was a bargain and a half and so I did what most shoppers are often compelled to do: buy something simply because of the value, not the need. Well, luckily, I had a brunch I was cooking the next day and so I brainstormed for a use for these kiwi. It was between kiwi jam or a sorbet and I settled for the latter. Most recipes online call for an ice cream machine, which I obviously don't have. The recipe I used was pretty simple, though a little annoying in its manifest, and came out delicious - my guests were most impressed. This makes about 6 servings, pending on how much you eat at a time.
Prepare:
-In a saucepan/small pot, add 1 and 1/4 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar and heat on medium low. The recipe said that you shouldn't mix it until it starts to boil, and then let it simmer for 5 minutes. After that, place pot somewhere cool (ie fridge)-Peel 8 kiwis and then puree (I had a little more extra puree for myself with 8... you might get away with 7, I think the point is to have equal parts kiwi and water)-Mix in 1 tsp lemon or lime juice
"Cook":
-Mix pureed kiwi and sugar water in container and place in freezer-About 2 or 3 hours later, once its set a bit, mix it around a lot
-Several hours later, once its fully frozen, mix it again
-Mix it again several hours later
-EnjoyTips:
-I recommend starting making this in the morning. I made the mistake of starting it in the late evening and ended up waking up at 2:30 in the morning (not with an alarm - just my own panic) to beat the sorbet!
-This was great plain... eating it with fresh fruit or mint or champagne or something would be delicious, I'm sure
-Other recipes I saw online suggested seeding the fruit. I don't quite know how one goes around seeding kiwi, but as I like the seeds this wasn't a problem for me

Challah

Feeling nostalgia for home and its saturation of Jewish cuisine, I felt a craving for some challah. Sadly, here in Australia, I have never seen challah and would probably have to find some Jewish people and a synagogue in order to find one. So my solution was to make it. I got the recipe off the ever-proliferative AskMeFi, and would like to thank flakypastry for the post. This was not as difficult as I thought and amazingly delicious. Seriously, it was one of the nicest things I've made. This makes one big loaf.
Ready:
-2 egg yolks (save the whites for later) and 1 egg, beaten together
-2 packages active dry yeast (4 1/2 tsp)
-1 cup warm water
-1/4 cup olive oil
-1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
-4 cups bread flour (plus more for later)
-2 tsp salt
-Some sesame/poppy seeds, if you like them
Prepare:
-In a large bowl dissolve yeast into 1 cup of warm water, wait till you see bubbles
-At this point, add the beaten egg mixture, oil, sugar, salt, and flour and mix until you can remove the dough from the bowl-Knead on a floured surface/board, adding more flour, about 1/4 cup at a time, until the dough is not sticking to your hands, but still sticking together (you'll be able to tell)-Transfer dough to an oiled bowl (I sprayed with canola oil), and turn it a couple times till it's covered. Cover with a towel and leave somewhere warm for about an hour. It should have at least doubled in size and an indent made with your finger should stay in place-Knead dough for about 5 more minutes and then divide into 3 balls
-Roll out balls until they make 3 snakes, about a foot long or so-Press together 1 end of the three snakes, and proceed to braid them together
-At this point, get the egg white from previously and crack another egg in there, and beat it. Now, brush the surface of the challah with the egg wash, and then sprinkle sesame/poppy seeds on top-Place on a flat baking tray with baking paper
Cook:
-After you've seeded the challah, turn on oven to 350F/175C and wait for the oven to get warm while the challah rises a bit longer
-Bake for 30-35 minutes (mine took exactly 35), until it's starting to get golden. If you remove from the pan, knock the bottom - it should sound hollow

Tips:
-If you like/want a sweeter challah, you can up the sugar a bit and add raisins after the first rise. If you do this, you'll want to lower to the temperature to about 340/350 and bake for 40 minutes
-Keep the rest of the egg after the egg wash and fry it up into a little scrambled egg to eat with the fresh challah
-Enjoy with some hummus!

Celery and Bean Tomato Stew

I had a freshly purchased batch of celery and half a can of beans in my fridge and I was wondering what to do with them. I spent sometime googling around and managed to formulate something pretty decent. It was surprisingly not bland and made for a great lunch with a fresh roll.
Prepare:
-Chop 1 or 2 big stalks of celery, 1 medium onion, 3 cloves garlic, 1 small carrot, and some broccoli
-Finely dice one potato
-Rinse and drain 1 1/2 cans of beans (I used berlotti beans and butter beans (aka lima))
-Ready 1 can of peeled, crushed tomatoes
Cook:
-In a large pot on medium heat, with some olive oil fry onion, garlic, and celery on medium heat until onions are cooked and fragrant-After about 5-10 minutes, add the rest of the vegetables, the beans, and the tomatoes-Add salt, pepper, cumin, some soy sauce, and a bit of sesame oil
-Lower heat to low, and let simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring every now and then making sure the tomatoes get crushed. Once the potato is done, so is the stew

Tips:
-You can obviously use any vegetables that you like. Zucchini, cauliflower, etc would work well. Also I think substituting the potato for pumpkin would turn out quite triumphant
-For the tomatoes, instead of a can you could use fresh tomatoes. 1 can is about 3 or 4 roma tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced. The way to peel tomatoes easily is to lightly cut the skin in one part, then put in boiling water for like 30 seconds, then cold water for a couple minutes, then peel off by hand

Celery and Pine Nut Risotto

I recently received a cute little Italian cookbook. I opened it up and the first thing I saw was 'Asparagus and Pine nut risotto'. It looked good, interesting, and educational, as I'd never made risotto before. I had some celery and thought to substitute that for the asparagus and it worked out surprisingly tasty. I had to scale down the recipe a bit... this makes about 3 servings. It's not a difficult recipe, really, but the 20 or so minutes of cooking are intensive, as you are stirring the whole time. Be warned.
Prepare:
-Dice 1 medium onion and crush 4 or 5 cloves of garlic
-Dice 1 1/2 big stalks of celery
-Prepare about 1 1/2 cups of rice (note: you are supposed to use Arborio or some other shorter, absorptive rice. I used plain medium grain that I use for everything and it turned out fine enough for me)
-Prepare about 3-4 cups of stock
-Ready 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan
-Optional: chop up about 1/3 cup worth of fresh basil
Cook:
-In a large pot, fry onion and garlic in olive oil on medium heat, until onion starts to get soft and translucent-Add the rice and stir like crazy, until it's covered in oil and oniony goodness-Add 1/4 cup of stock, while continuously stirring until it starts to evaporate
-Keep adding stock, 1/4 cup a time-In the meantime, spread out pine nuts on a flat pan and toast for 3-4 minutes on medium heat, stirring every minute or two, until they get golden brown-After about 10 minutes, add the celery-Around 15-18 minutes after the rice was initially added, it should start getting done: the rice should be firm still, but edible and almost fully cooked. If not, keep adding stock until it's cooked and starts getting kind of clumpy-At this point, mix in the parmesan
-Take off heat, add pine nuts, salt, and some cracked black pepper
-Serve with some basil

Tips:
-I added a couple chili peppers with the celery, but for some reason didn't taste them at all. Next time I'd omit or vastly increase them
-The pine nuts were good and complemented well the inherent nuttiness of the celery. Substituting another nut would also work, for sure, perhaps with different combinations of vegetables (peanuts and pumpkin... almonds and broccoli... pecans and peaches, go crazy!)
-I ate this with an over-easy egg. At the middle of the meal, I decided to cut up the egg into small pieces and mix it into the risotto and I must say it worked quite well. You could try if you wanted to get more protein in with the meal

Fruity Gluten-free Muffins

Today is my last day in class with the teacher who has Coeliac's disease and thus needs to eat gluten-free foods. I decided to give a muffin-recipe a go, using rice flour and some fruity essence. I took the recipe largely from here and, as per usual, did some modifications. This made 11 (I know... odd number) smallish muffins. Anyway, I must warn, they turned out nice but nothing amazing unfortunately. If I were to make them again, I would up the amount of honey/sugar, for sure. Also, definitely more jam... I could hardly taste it. The rice flour was alright... a bit grainy but I guess that's what it's like. Oh well.
Prepare:
-Melt 60g (4 tbsp) of butter in the microwave (about 45 seconds)
-In a large bowl, mix butter, 2 eggs, 2 tbsp honey, 1 tsp vanilla, zest of an orange, and 1 cup milk (I used 1/3 cup vanilla yogurt and 2/3 cup milk) (I also made a batch that had about 1 tbsp of Milo - a drinking chocolate powder)-Mix into the bowl 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tbsp baking powder, and 2 cups rice flour
-Add in dried fruit, if you'd like (I added dried currants and cranberries - not too much)Cook:
-Preheat oven to 375F/180C
-Grease muffin pan
-Add a heaping tbsp of batter into the muffin pan
-Add 1/2 tsp or so of jam (I used blackberry) onto the batter, then cover with another 1/2-1 tbsp of batter. I also made 1 batch that had jam and peanut butter inside-Bake for 25 minutes
-Let cool on a cooling rack, dust with icing sugar
Tips:
-The butter will coagulate/thicken when mixed with the milk and eggs. I don't know if that was supposed to happen... I tried to whisk it as smooth as possible and then add the flour right away and whisk a lot and it seemed to look like a pretty homogeneous mixture.
-You could substitute for the fruit (or add) nuts or chocolate chips. For the orange zest you could use nutmeg/cinnamon/clove combo for that flavor.

Zucchini and Basil

This is a pretty simple and wonderfully delicious side dish that I whipped up for dinner tonight. I got the recipe (idea...inspiration) from this site. Modified it a bit for my own tastes, of course. This makes about 4 persons worth of side dish, but I ate half of it for most of my meal tonight...
Prepare:
-Slice 3 zucchini and 2 button squash (total of about 2 1/2-3 cups of sliced veggie)
-Chop 1 medium onion (I did 1/2 yellow and 1/2 red)
-Chop 1/2 cup worth of basil
-Crush 4 cloves garlicCook:
-On medium heat, in some olive oil, cook garlic first for about 1 minute, then add the rest of the ingredients, except only half the basil. -Lightly fry for 7-10 minutes or until zucchini starts to get tender. Add salt, cracked pepper, a bit of soy sauce, a dash of sesame oil, and some sesame seeds-Take off heat, mix the rest of basil into it
Tips:
-Adding chili oil/freshly chopped hot peppers would be a spicy side
-I found eating it with white rice, wrapped in seaweed, was quite a treat
-This is very simple and any vegetable you liked could be cooked this way. I think broccoli, carrot, snow-peas, pumpkin or sweet potato (the last two would need longer time to cook... perhaps steamed for 5-10 minutes before frying would be good) would all work wonderfully.

Simple Tomato and Basil Sauce

This is a simple and very nice and fresh-tasting tomato sauce that goes great with pasta, gnocchi, and on bread as a pseudo-bruschetta. This makes about 2-3 servings worth
Prepare:
-Seed and dice 3 large tomatoes
-Chop 1 large onion and 4-5 cloves garlic
-Chop up a bunch of basil, at least 1/2 cup worthCook:
-In a small pot, on medium heat, cook tomatoes and 1/4 cup of basil in olive oil-At the same time, in another pot/pan, lightly fry onion and garlic, in olive oil, until fragrant and tender-When tomatoes get soft, add the onion/garlic mixture, turn heat down to low, add salt and cracked black pepper, and about a tsp of brown sugar to offset the acidity; simmer for ~2 hours (you read that correctly), stirring every 10-20 minutes to make sure nothing gets burnt. When you're almost ready to use it, dump the rest of the basil in itTips:
-You could add one or two hot peppers to the tomato if you wanted a sauce with more of a kick
-Adding marjoram, oregano, parsley, or other Italian herbs and spices would be welcome, of course, I just wanted to keep mine simple

Marshmallow & Tahini Oat Balls

This is one of the weirder things that I have made. I had some tahini left over from the hummus, and so decided to make some random dessert thing. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted all the pictures from my camera, so there will be no pictorial help. I fortunately had one of these guys left over so you can see the weird-looking creation. This recipe makes 6 things.
Prepare:
-Toast oats: I spread out 1 cup of oats, mixed with a bit of oil, on a pan and put in the toaster oven for about an hour on 350F, mixing it after 30 minutes
-Ready 30 g or ~1/4 cup of butter
-Ready maybe 10-15 large marshmallows
-1 tbsp tahini
Cook:
-In a small pot, melt the butter on medium heat
-Once it starts bubbling a bit, chuck in the marshmallows. Stir much (wooden spoon is best) until all the 'mallows have melted and it's an even mixture
-Add the tahini and the toasted oats, mix well and turn off heat
-Take out about 1/3 cup at a time, putting in a muffin tin
-Set aside to cool down for at least an hourTips:
-This was surprisingly good. Basically, it's an adaptation of rice crispy squares, only a bit different. The marshmallows they have here in Australia are a bit strange... smaller and flavored vanilla and strawberry, so the balls turned out a bit pink and weird - I think this would be much better with good ol' fashioned American 'mallows.
-The tahini was a good addition - added an interesting taste. I would up it to at least 1 1/2 tbsp or 2 tbsp, to make it a little stronger, since it was pretty hard to taste. Peanut butter would be an easy and obvious substitution, as would Nutella. Adding vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, maple syrup and the like would give it a good taste: almost be like granola balls.
-An aside: cleaning up the pot isn't easy (sticky sugar) so as soon as you take the goods out of the pot, make sure to fill the pot with hot water and some detergent. It will help the future

Hummus

I got a new food processor for my birthday and so tried to inaugurate it with hummus. I love the Israeli style hummus (pronounced ch-oo-moos), which is much creamier and richer and less grainy than the hummus available in most stores. I failed, however, in making it and instead made a more Western-style hummus. Still tasty but not my cup of dip.
Prepare:
-1 can of chick peas, drained and rinsed (I should have used the fresh, maybe, and also removed the peels... but I didn't)
-1/3 cup tahini
-Several cloves of garlic
-Some olive oil
-Juice of 1/2-1 whole lemon, pending your taste
-1/2-1 tsp pending on your taste of the following: cumin, paprika, black pepper, salt
Cook:
-Roast the garlic in the peel in a toaster oven for about 20 minutes or until soft
-Process the chick peas first

-Add garlic, oil, lemon juice, and spices
-Add oil/water until reaches desirable consistency and flavor
-Garnish with some olive oil, parsley, and pine nuts, and enjoy with fresh pita, bread, or crackers