Bella Hyde, Author at Finding Feasts

Mushroom Risotto with Tomato & Chicken

FinSki's Mushroom Risotto 1 — Click on image for delicious recipe

I was given a set of the these beautiful Williams Sonoma Harvest Botanical dinner bowls by Carolyn, my Managing Directors wife for Christmas. Each bowl is carefully decorated in earthy autumn colours with forest fungi, ready for the picking. Portuguese Artisans then finish off each bowl by painting its underside a royal purple. Simply gorgeous.

Naturally, these beautiful fungi bowls had to be filled with a dish that complemented their beautiful craftsmanship, so mushroom risotto it was!

I love risotto. Sure I have had my fair share of disastrous results but how else are you supposed to learn from your mistakes? I love the labour intensive process that is required to produce the end result, watching each rice grain meld with butter and stock to produce a rich, hearty and warming goodness.

If like me you are a fan of this laborious cooking process, then you will absolutely enjoy this hilarious Thermomix risotto review. The Katering Show‘s Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney are fantastic!

Back to the matter at hand! My risotto and beautiful bowls. I am quietly pleased at the risotto results and I think the bowls are amazing.

Love risotto? What’s your favourite?

Bella

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Vertical garden from a wooden pallet

Ask my father and he will tell you that growing up I hated anything to do with gardening. I hated our garden with a passion. It probably didn’t help that mum and dad forced my brother and I to weed the backyard lawn with hand weed pickers! A very mundane and long task! It was a weekend chore that was the cause of many tears and arguments, mainly over me trying to get out of the weeding. The lawn had to be spotless and weed killer free!

Back then I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about with growing your own vegetables, fruits and herbs. To me it was so much easier to just get it from the shop.

Fast forward 25+ years and the tide has changed. I dream of one day owning a little plot of land out in the country. One that boasts a lush vegetable and herb patch. For now though I have to settle for a house with a small courtyard.

Living 10 minutes away from the city has its positives and negatives. Great restaurants are within walking distance. Parking is a bitch, every day! Living in a townhouse means that my ability to have a garden is very limited. What small outdoor area we do have contains a BBQ, outdoor setting and our fire pit (a must in autumn and winter!) The remaining floor space is occupied by Ti our cat and Spot the bunny rabbit. Both furry four legged animals have taken it upon themselves to claim what available land we have left and use it for their toilet needs. Not the compost I had in mind!

The idea of having a vertical garden came to me some months ago when Spot demolished some wild strawberries we had growing in the garden. I started to research balcony gardens and came across vertical gardens designed from wooden pallets. Yipee! With plenty of free pallets around in Sydney my vertical garden came alive last weekend.

It took 6 hours in total. Hubby built the leg support stand but was retired from service when he tried to staple with first weed protector sheet to the pallet, not up to the standard.

I am proud as punch of my achievement. My legs and arms were a little worse for wear a few days after but I now have a little small thriving garden. It will be interesting to see what vegetables and herbs grow best over the coming months and can’t wait till my first harvest.

Ps…If you are short on space in your yard Milkwood have written a lovely story about Best Edible Plants for your vertical garden. Lots of useful information and handy tips on setting up your own garden.

If you have a vertical garden I’d love to hear from you.

Bella 🙂

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Mushroom & Walnut Pillows w/ Saffron Milk Cap Sauce

FinSki's Wild Mushroom Pillows1 — Take me to the recipe!

You’ll find our beautiful Mushroom and Walnut Pillows with Saffron Milk Cap sauce recipe in Lyndey Milan’s, Taste of Australia Book. Page 184 to be exact, and yes, Blondie and I take full credit for the recipe! However if you don’t have the book then click here!

Easter Forage Review

Awesome fish for Good Friday fish bbq, packed! Mushroom picking kits, check! Enough food to feed a small army, yep! Wine, bubbles and beer for the boys, tick!

Blondie and I were off for what was going to be yet another amazing Easter at Yarrawonga South with our respective families. Good food, chilled wine, company of long time friends and of course wild mushroom picking! Bliss!

With both cars packed to the top, kids in the back, dog in the front Blondie and I took the long way round. We headed south, stopped off at the Southern Highlands pine forest to pick some mushrooms. Whilst there was nothing to be found (zip, zero!) at our usual spot our spirits could not be dampened! We had the most amazing drive ahead of us. Oberon via Taralga is such a beautiful drive. Winding country roads, sheep and cattle grazing and cool tunes pumping out.

Having arrived at our destination in the cold and wet rain we delayed our foraging adventure to Easter Sunday, after all there was yummy food to be cooked and wine to be drunk!

We knew that Oberon had some rain, but we also heard that it was a very dry summer. Nevertheless with open minds and hope in our hearts we ventured out for our first real forage for 2015. The pressure was on, we had two new picking recruits, Bodie and Bailey, who were keen to see what all the fuss was about.

FinSki's 2015 Mushrooms1 — Mushroom Picking Crew!

FinSki's 2015 Mushrooms2 — New recruit gives it a thumbs up!

Foraging for these beauties can be a fickle thing. Too often there have been stories where people have gone to one section of the forest and found nothing, whilst their foraging counterpart managed to pick a large haul!

Driving into the forest for the first time each season can be a funny thing, the nerves, the excitement, the smell of the fresh pine air, the need to train your eyes to spot the difference between a saffron milk cap mushroom and a saffron coloured rock or leaf (yes, it does happen).

We made a bee line for our true, tried and tested spot but to our disappointment we ended up with a tiny basket of …. 8 mushrooms! Not each, not per day but for the whole trip.

FinSki's Pasta1 — First Saffron Milk Cap of 2015!

When you do manage to get your hands on these flavorsome Saffron Milk Cap mushroom you can’t go past our Mushroom and Walnut Pillows with Saffron Milk Cap Sauce! Perfect for the autumn months and best enjoyed with a glass of chilled chardonnay.

Bella and Blondie

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Chicken pie with the lot!

Half way through last year Blondie introduced me to Aussie Farmers Direct. A great initiative supporting local farmers via an independent online retail facility. Each Monday and Thursday they deliver to my door fresh fruit and veggies along with a selection of meats and dairy items.

At first I was very skeptical of using this service, having bad experiences with both, Coles on line and the Woollies delivery service, however I took the plunge and placed my first order and was very pleasantly surprised.

What appealed to me most about Aussie Farmers Direct was that in my own small way I was supporting Australian farmers, buying Australian made products and keeping the $ in Australia. I also love the fact that it comes to my door bright and early in the morning, 6 am!

What I dislike like is my own negligence that seems to have happened 3 times in a row – forgetting to take stock of what was in the fridge prior to my Thursday and Monday delivery to ensure that I don’t double or triple up in some cases on certain items.

Having another frantic week at work I forgot to revise my Thursday order, as a result I have ended up with three leeks, 3 bags of onions (I can see French onion soup being made!) several bags of mushrooms (ravioli here we come!) carrots (yep Spot the bunny will be happy!) enough garlic to ensure that Count Dracular never visits Team FinSki’s! Cauliflower that is clearly not very happy to be sharing the fridge real estate space with another younger sibling.

With the fridge bursting I had to come us with a recipe that would use as many of the over purchased veggies as I could.

Whilst it hasn’t exactly been pie weather in Sydney I jumped at the opportunity to make a good ol’ fashioned chicken pie with the lot!

I love pies, the home made ones, not the store bought ones with the wobbly bits in the filling. There is something simple, nourishing and very homely about a good ol’ fashioned pie with a perfect crust!

My chicken pie recipe is really a no brainer, you can pack it with any left over veggies you like! The secret is in using good quality stock, I make my own and adding a little wholegrain mustard for extra taste.

I normally make a big pie to feed us for at least 2 maybe 3 nights and then freeze the rest in small batches to make more pie, or mini pies.

What’s your favourite pie?

Bella 🙂

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Christmas Tree Ice Cream Cones

You would have had to been living under a log the last few weeks to not know that it is Christmas in 11 sleeps!

I am a Christmas junkie! I love the food, the wine, the decorations and of course the planning which starts for me as soon as humanly possible! Our Christmas tree goes up religiously on the 1st of December however if the 1st should happen to fall on a week day then you can legally without offending the Christmas spirits put your tree and decorations up the weekend before! Decorating is a huge event, the boxes come out, the Buble Christmas tunes are pumped and I plot around the house with with a glass of champagne whilst Imogen decorates the tree. The hubby on the other hand prefers to have a beer or two at the local, however he is getting better with the decorations going up!

It turned out that this year hubby had two work functions each night so paper art decorations in hand Imogen and I decorated our lounge and dinning room. Very proud of our colour coordinated efforts!

Back to the food aspect of Christmas! These little ice cream cone Christmas trees are too easy to make and the kids will love helping decorate them!

You need to ensure that the ice cream freezes well otherwise it will melt too quickly when you take the cones out. Although we didn’t have this problem, they were all gobbled up within seconds of coming out of the freezer!

If you have a Christmas inspired desert then please feel free to share!

Merry Christmas and Wesołych Świąt!

Bella 🙂

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Poppy Seed Pate Cake with Baked Ricotta

This is a Polish marriage made in heaven! Poppy seed cheesecake or as I now call it, Poppy seed pate cake with Baked Ricotta!

You might remember that a while ago I came across this tub of poppy seed pate mixture at my local continental grocer.

Happily handing over my cash to the register operator I ran home and ogled hundreds of recipes for poppy seed mixtures. Most of them called for ingredients that I didn’t have and being a Sunday I was determined to not have to venture out into the shops again.

My pantry had Anzac biscuits that had a week left prior to the use by date and sugar. In the fridge I had butter, a kilo of ricotta and eggs.

What on earth did you do with the Anzac biscuits I hear you ask?

Well, as crazy as it sounds they were the base for the cake, a baked base! At first when I put all the ingredients together I had a mini melt down, I remembered that when you typically make a cheesecake base with digestive biscuits, you don’t bake the base. You let it set with the cheese on top.

With my cheesecake about to go into the oven, I couldn’t give up now, no matter how large the error was!

When the cake was in the oven at 180º C the butter melted slightly and leaked onto the bottom of the oven tray, but once the cake cooled down my baked Anzac biscuit base was amazing. The hard set biscuit base complemented the softness of the baked ricotta and poppy seed pate.

The rest of the cake was divine too!

Will I make this exactly the same again…hell yes!

What errors have you made in the kitchen that have ended up working out ok?

Bella

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What’s your cup of tea?

My morning routine starts the night before. On a week day I get my clothes ready for the office, laid out neatly on the ironing board ready to be put on at a moments notice after I jump out of the shower. I have my hand bag packed with the next days necessities, waiting by the door. I have my daughters lunch box ready so that come morning time I just need to fill it with the days fuel (not that it gets eaten anyway!). But the most important aspect of my morning routine is to ensure that my kettle is filled to the top, that my mug is ready and positioned carefully next to the kettle with a tea spoon of sugar sitting in the bottom with my favourite tea waiting patiently next to the mug, waiting to be infused in hot water the minute I jump out of my shower. Without my morning infusion the rest of the day can literally fall apart.

The morning routine fell into a heap this week when I opened the pantry cupboard only to reveal no tea! It wasn’t just a matter of running to the shop and picking up the stock standard Earl Grey flavour. Tea for me is like buying coffee, I have my favourite select few brands and straying from those is not an option. Take the religious 8.30 am coffee at work, I refuse to get it from anywhere else even though I manage to pass 4 coffee shops!

Balance was restored again that evening when I purchased one of my favourite teas, a Henry Langdon, Earl Grey.

I was introduced to Henry Langdon tea about 4 years ago by a rather very strange colleague at work who thought that when we die we get collected in a space ship and are shipped off to a place in heaven, anyway that’s another story for another post! As strange as this lady was, she knew her tea! Thanks to her I keep a box of this delicious tea in my cupboard and very secretly only share it with myself! It’s my little indulgence.

Until this week I had absolutely no idea how popular tea consumption was! Next to water tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world! I also didn’t know that different teas should be brewed at different water temperature levels for best results. For example water temperature for a classic black tea should be at 99°C, white tea at 65-70°, yellow tea at 70-75°C, and green tea at 75-80°. Do you think that this really matters? If you are a bit of a tea expert I’d loved to know!

Growing up tea would be served during breakfast, lunch and dinner, depending on what was on the menu. We drank tea black, with the tea leaves still sitting at the bottom of the cup/mug. Mum would squeeze a small amount of lemon juice and it tasted fantastic. Tea, sourdough bread with some cold cuts!

How do you take your tea and what’s your favourite?

Bella 🙂

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