Fig Brownies

This is a pretty simple and highly delicious recipe for brownies. The original recipe called for cashews but all I had were figs and, lemme tell you, it turned our very delicious.

Prepare:
-Mix 200g dark chocolate (broken up) with 175g unsalted butter in a bowl
-Melt in a microwave (medium heat for several minutes, stirring every now and then) or over a pot of boiling water and then leave aside to cool
-Whisk 2 eggs and 1 cup of sugar (brown makes for a moister brownie) for about 5 minutes until pale and fluffy-Add the chocolate butter mixture-Sift 1 cup flour and 1/3 cup of cocoa powder into the large bowl and mix well-Roughly chop 100g of dark chocolate and a handful of dried figs-Fold into the mix
Cook:
-Preheat oven to 160C/320F
-Pour into a shallow brownie tin, lined with baking paper
-Bake for about 30-35 minutes. Top should be firm but not too hard, as these will set when left to cool
-Enjoy with some fresh fruit or an icing

Tips:
-These are pretty quick to make and very delicious. You can use a sour-cream based icing but I find these sweet enough on their own to not need it
-You could use many different things instead of the fig: pistachios, cashews, almonds, dates, apricots, dried cranberries, etc.

Pecorino and Pumpkin Pie

I bought a pumpkin and was browsing recipes and found an interesting one for a savoury pie thing. I modified it quite a bit as the original recipe looked fairly bland.

Prepare dough:
-Sift together 3 cups of flour with 1 tsp sea salt and 1 tsp rosemary
-Mix together 1/2 cup of extra-virgin olive oil, 1/3 ml of cold water and 1 egg
-Make a volcano out of the flour and add the liquid in the middle. Beat with a fork to form a dough, switching to hands once it gets too tough

-Knead for a couple minutes (add a bit of water at a time if it gets too grainy) until smooth
-Put in a plastic bag and place in the fridge for a couple hours

-Roll the dough to about 2mm thickness (pretty thin)
-Cut 2/3rds of it and mold it to fit a greased 6 1/4in x 10 1/2in baking sheet-The other 1/3rd of the dough should be cut into strips
-Place in the fridge for half an hour

Prepare filling:
-Preheat oven to 200C/400F
-Dice pumpkin, about 2 or 3 cups worth
-Coat in oil and a bit of salt and put in a roasting pan and into the oven
-About 20 minutes afterward, mix up the pumpkin and place 4 cloves unpeeled garlic in the pan
-Beat 3 eggs in a large bowl
-Grate about 2/3 cup of pecorino cheese into the egg-Once pumpkin is soft, remove from oven
-In the bowl, mash pumpkin and garlic (removed from skin)-Add a tsp each of sea salt, crushed black pepper, nutmeg, and basil

Cook:
-Place the filling into to the dough, smoothing out
-Place the strips diagonally across the pie-Bake for an hour or a bit more until the pastry is crisp and goldenTips:
-This made more than I wanted, so I assembled a whole small pie and put it in the freezer and baked it a week later, happily
-It was tasty but seemed to lack something that I couldn't put my finger on. Everyone else thought it was really tasty. I found the whatever-lacking was fixed by eating the pie with either a fresh, watery vegetable such as radish or cucumber or by spreading fresh pesto or schug on top.

Sweet Pistachio Cake

Perusing the Weekend Australian magazine for the recipes, as per usual, I came across this interesting pistachio cake. What made it interesting was that all it had was pistachio, egg, sugar, and a bit of lemon juice. Since my girlfriend loves pistachio, I thought I'd give it a go. It turned out very tasty but really really sweet. More of a meringue than a cake, necessarily. I will give the recipe for how I think it should be done next time, so it's not too sweet. Also, contrary to a lot of baked goods, this should not be eaten just out of the oven. I found it MUCH better after spending overnight in the fridge.
Prepare Syrup:
-Mix about 1 cup of sugar with 180ml of water in a pot on high heat, simmer until sugar has dissolved
-Mix in about 1 tbsp lemon juice and 2 tsp (if you've got it) rosewater
-Set aside to cool

Prepare Cake:
-Coarsely chop 50g of unsalted pistachios

-Separate 5 eggs
-In a food processor with 'whipping' attachment, or using an electric beater, whisk together the egg yolks with 200g caster (icing) sugar

-In a food processor, grind 200gm (~1/2lb, sorry - no cups) of unsalted and unshelled pistachios

-Mix the pistachio meal with the whipped sugar and egg yolk-Now beat the egg whites until they turn stuff-Fold the egg-white into the pistachio mixture, not too much (don't blend it together completely)
-Put in a greased round cake tin, lined with baking paper-On top, spread the chopped pistachios

Cook:
-Preheat oven to 350F/180C
-Bake for about 45min-1 hr until nice and golden and firm on top upon pressing
-Poke about 15 holes around the cake and pour in half the syrup
-Taste a bit of the inside and if not sweet enough, add more syrup (make sure you do this and not dump all the syrup in!)
-Set the cake aside for a couple hours or refrigerate overnight and enjoy later with fresh strawberries
Tips:
-As I mentioned before, I changed the recipe to make it less sweet. You could just make half as much syrup or use the same amount of water but less sugar if you want the cake to be moist and gooey on the inside.
-I didn't have rosewater so I used the juice from one mandarin but I could hardly taste it. I would like to try it with rosewater next time.
-Make sure you clean the beater/whipping device in between whisking the egg yolk and the egg white, as fat from egg yolk changes the texture of the egg white firmness, supposedly.
-I didn't line the cake tin with baking paper and it SUCKED to clean. Please do it, you'll thank me later.

Shortbread Date Fingers

This recipe I picked up from a Brisbane news magazine and adjusted it to taste. I was happy to use dried dates, as they are a very cheap dried fruit with an exquisite taste. This bar turned out very tasty and I got lots of kudos for it. It's a bit of work with some prep but worth it in the end.
Prepare Base:
-Sift together 80 g (3/4 cup) caster or fine sugar, 1 1/2 cup white flour, 1/2 cup rice flour (or extra white flour if you don't have it) in a large bowl
-Add in about 1 cup of chopped butter and a tbsp of oil and mix until you get fine breadcrumb-like objects
-Add in 15ml cold water and 1 egg yolk
-Knead until it forms a dough and then freeze for 20 min or refrigerate for 1 hr
-After it's cool, roll it out to the size of your deep baking dish (mine was 12''/30 cm by 9''/24cm or something) and then refrigerate for another 20 minutes-Place on deep cooking tray lined with baking paper and bake in oven that's been preheated to 175C/350F for about 25 minutes or until it starts turning brown
Prepare Filling:
-While the base is baking, place about 400gm (almost 1lb, maybe 3 cups) of dried dates in a small pot
-Cover with water
-Add the zest of 1 orange, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp cinnamon, and a splash of vegetable oil-Simmer for 15 minutes or until it turns to mushPrepare Topping:
-Mix 425 g or ~ 3 cups of self-raising flour with 2 cups caster sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon and 3/4 tsp of baking powder
-Mix in 1 1/2 cups unsalted chopped butter, with some oil, until coarse bread crumbs are formed
Cook:
-Spread the date-filling onto the base and sprinkle the topping crumbs over it
-Bake at 175C/350F for about 30 minutes or until it starts to get a bit golden on top. Check halfway and make sure it's firm - if not, sprinkle some more oil on top.
-Dust with powdered sugar on top and enjoy

Tips:
-This recipe called for a lot of butter. I used significantly less but substituted a fair amount of canola oil, olive oil and some egg white. It was from a pouring bottle and thus I do not know the exact amounts. Adding another egg or using applesauce and stuff would be a great way to cut out on the fattiness (though the fat is what makes shortbread short).
-The way I presented it was how I did it, but next time around I'd make the base and topping at the same time to cut down on time. Only for the end bit (mixing water and egg yolk) would I separate it. I'd also cut down on the sugar a bit as it was a tad sweet - otherwise, it was mighty tasty

"Light" Caraway Rye

I love caraway rye bread. I specifically love light, white, airy rye bread with lots of caraway seeds. I did a lot of searching and wasn't able to find what I wanted. This recipe looked good and promising so I gave it a shot. I won't include the recipe here since I copied the recipe almost exactly as the post mentioned (I didn't have molasses so I substituted with brown sugar and some lemon juice). The bread turned out nice but not exactly what I wanted. Not rye-y enough, and a bit sweet. Quite tasty as a bread but didn't come out how I wanted (I want something like this). Oh well. No worries.

Polenta Focaccia

Browsing through a copy of Woman's Weekly at the hospital, I stumbled on this easy polenta focaccia recipe. I whipped it up to serve for some friends for dinner as an appetizer to potato gnocchi and pesto. This recipe really was a winner. The bread topped with pesto and parmesan was an especially lovely treat.
Prepare:
-Sift together 2 2/3 cups self-raising flour, 3/4 cup polenta, 1 tsp sea salt, 2 tsp rosemary-Mix 1 1/2 cup warm water with 1 tsp instant dried yeast (7g) and mix well (whisk)
-Mix the flour with yeast-water and add 1/2 cup olive oil
-Knead together thoroughly -Set aside for an hour or so and let rise
-Re-knead for 5 minutes
-Divide into 2 balls
-Roll pretty flat (about 1 cm) on a floured surface
-Put on a pan that lightly has polenta flour spread on it-Place flattened dough on pan, sprinkle polenta on top and poke holes with a fork
-Let rise for at least 15 minutes
Cook:
-Preheat oven to 230C / 445F
-Once oven is hot place bread in and bake for 5-10 min, until golden brown
Tips:
-Mix in 1-2 tsp of freshly cracked pepper into the dough - I did it with only half and it was so good, I'd definitely do it for the whole batch next time. I also think I'd maybe mix in some minced garlic as well
-If you don't have self-raising flour, the equivalent to 1 cup is 7/8 cups plain flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1 tsp salt

Zwetschgenschnecken! (German plum rolls)

I added that exclamation mark because I feel a word like that must be yelled, not said.
I write this entry with trepidation - committing an almost-unthinkable act: adding a recipe before tasting the product.
Why would I do something like this, you may wonder; there are a number of reasons, actually:
1) this is the most technically difficult thing I've made, I reckon. I am proud and want to share my glory
2) I really fear this is going to suck. The recipe I got was weird, the fact that there are pretty much no other recipes for this thing is weird, and the name is weird.
3) I'm waiting while it's in the oven

It all started today with a bag of plums for 1 dollar. It's the end of the season and I was at the markets around closing time and so snagged it up. Some googling later pointed me to this recipe that caught my eye, though instilled worry given its lack of comments/reviews. I bought some cream cheese and commenced this wild ride. I made quite a few adjustments to the recipe, almost enough to call it Measchgenschnecken, I think, but they were based on availability of stuff in my kitchen/personal judgment.

Prepare:
-Dice about 8 plums. The riper the better, but not too soft
-Toast about 1/4 cup macadamia nuts (original recipe calls for almonds... I think any nice, not salty nut, would be good)-Prepare some "plum butter". This actually isn't butter; the recipe is here. I didn't have enough plums for that, so I used some pear jam/sauce that I made a couple weeks ago - about 1/2 cup
-Mix these first 3 and set aside
-In a large bowl, mix
-1/2 c olive oil
-1/2 c milk (I used soy)
-5/8 c white sugar
-1 1/2 c cream cheese (I just used a large packet, which is 250g and not enough and I think that may have contributed to some of the problems)
-1 pinch of salt
-1 tsp of cinnamon (I used cloves since I didn't have it)
-Then add 4 cups of flour and 1 tsp of baking powder (This was the craziest part... the recipe called for 1/4 cup of baking powder! Never have I heard of that - even "baking powder cookies" uses less than that. I assumed it was a typo and hope it turns out to be the case)
-Knead dough on floured surface
-Roll dough to a rough 20 inch by 20 inch square (I didn't measure this and was hopeless in this part)-Spread the plum mix in the middle
-Roll up tightly... somehow-Cut into 12 even slices
Cook:
-Preheat oven to 350F/ 175C
-Grease a flat pan
-Arrange rolls on the pan and butter the tops-Bake for 50 minutes or until brown
Verdict! So these turned out to be damn tasty, I must say. I'm glad I did the modifications that I did to the recipe since it turned out pretty right. In the future if I use the little amount of cream cheese that I did, I would add an egg to the dough to make it stickier and more pliable. But I'm very happy, even though it was quite difficult to do.
Tips:
-Rolling it up was pretty difficult... hard to evenly get it at once. I think maybe if you had put baking paper underneath originally it would be much easier. I also wonder if the dough was right - it felt like it was not connected enough... I suspect an egg should have been involved. Of course, this could be due to the fact that I didn't have enough cream cheese...

Bean and Broccoli Baked Polenta

I got some polenta from an awesome Mediterranean grocery store and whipped up (and modified) a recipe from an Italian cookbook. It was nice, if a bit bland. It is a bit intensive (you cannot stop stirring polenta, really) so make sure you have everything ready ahead of time.

Prepare:
-Ready 3 cups water with 1/2 tsp of salt in a pot
-1 cup of polenta (yellow cornmeal)
-2 tbsp olive oil
-Chop and lightly steam about 1 cup broccoli
-Drain and rinse 1/2 cup cannellini beans
-2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

Cook:
-Preheat oven to 400F (205C)
-Bring the pot of water and salt to boil and then reduce to simmer
-Immediately add polenta in a light, slow, constant stream (I put the cup of meal into a glass and then poured from there), mixing it as you add it. Break any lumps that happen to form-Once all the cornmeal has been added, add the olive oil
-Continue to cook, stirring the whole time (a wooden spoon is best), for 20 minutes. Make sure it's medium-low heat (to keep from polenta sticking to bottom of pot)
-Add beans, broccoli, and some cracked black pepper and salt and mix thoroughly-Pour polenta onto a baking dish (I used a loaf pan - it came out thick)
-Sprinkle cheese on top-Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until cheese has brownedTips:
-This was a bit bland - having a tomato or pesto sauce to go with this would be great
-I served this with kangaroo sausage. I think adding sausage directly to it would be nice as well.