Perfect hard boiled eggs and easy shell removal with baking soda

Perfect hard boiled eggs and easy shell removal with baking soda… I have just come across this tip, well actually I had heard of this trick a while back but never really thought much of it. That is till I finally got sick of having peeled eggs that look like they had come back from playing with a wood chipper… chunks missing, bits of shell that refuse to separate from the body, just mangled messes of boiled eggs.

So what’s the magic trick to getting a perfectly peeled hard-boiled egg? Baking soda… it’s life changing!

For me, I always keep my eggs in the fridge and generally don’t think of taking them out to warm up till I actually need them, so this ‘recipe’ is for eggs straight from the fridge into boiling water – I like to live life on the edge! I haven’t received many egg casualties from doing it this way but it’s the risk you take if you too use cold eggs. If a breakage does occur it is generally a small crack with slight leakage, the egg will still cook perfectly.

Finding Feasts | Boiling eggs using baking soda method

Never fear your eggs again… Blondie  🙂

Spiced Pear and Apple Chocolate Empanadas w/ Sweet Cayenne Pepper Dusting

Spiced Pear and Apple Chocolate Empanadas w/ Sweet Cayenne Pepper Dusting

With Cinco de Mayo today I thought I would come up with a recipe to celebrate it… Spiced Pear Apple Chocolate Empanadas w/ Sweet Cayenne Pepper Dusting.

Mexican desserts aren’t particularly sweet and can mix both savoury ingredients with sweet. With this in mind I chose to use a pear and apple filling, since they are so abundant at the moment here in Australia. Paired with a bittersweet chocolate pastry and sprinkled with a sugar and Cayenne pepper dusting and you have yourself a unique dessert that is the perfect accompaniment to the feast of flavours you would have had with your main meal.

Salud!

Blondie

Rooster Ragu aka Pastitsada

Rooster Ragu aka Pastitsada
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Rooster Ragu aka Pastitsada… I’m not sure how easy it is to get your hands on rooster in the city – I haven’t seen it on my travels – but I was fortunate enough to receive one from my sister who got five live roosters yesterday. Four were prepared for the freezer and one went to a friend (but may well end up slow cooked after she gets woken up at dawn every morning when he gets to that age) I know this from personal experience after I saved a chick from the gas chambers at school, his name was Maxwell. We did try to do a light tight environment for him to sleep in till the family/neighbourhood woke up, but primal instinct was there, he just knew he had to start his wake up call at a particular time. Every day on the dot Maxwell would announce himself to the neighbourhood. Needless to say that the neighbours in our Lower North Shore suburb weren’t too impressed, that and the fact he would escape to go down to the beach so I would have to spend my afternoons trying to chase down a rooster on the esplanade after school, which wasn’t too much fun!

Finding Feasts - Balmoral Beach
Balmoral Beach

Anyway, a long story short, Maxwell went to a farm where I like to believe he lived out his natural life fulfilling his rooster duties.

This is my first rooster and was very excited to make an awesome meal of it, so I went with a traditional Greek dish from Corfu called Pastitsada, a type of Rooster Ragu.

When handling a rooster, the few differences from a chicken are that the fat is an amazing dark yellow, the legs are longer and the wings and chest are different to a chicken. The chest meat is much smaller and it was harder to cut into the pieces necessary, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t too sure of the breakdown of it? The flavour is chicken but enhance and the meat is leaner, which is why you need to do the slow and low cook.

I hope you get a chance to try one but if that’s just not going to happen, try and get a free range, organic chook so you get a more flavourful meat.

Happy plucking !  Blondie  🙂

Finding Feasts - Stivens Free Range Farm
Painting on side of shed at family’s farm in New Zealand

Oil Free, Skin Free ‘Fried Chicken’

Oil Free, Skin Free ‘Fried Chicken’
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Yep, that’s right! Oil Free, Skin Free ‘Fried Chicken’ drumsticks – These are soooo good that you seriously can’t believe it till you actually make them yourselves.

This is a recipe adopted from The Food Truck with Chef Michael van de Elzen. Hubby and I love this show (this is the only cooking show he enjoys). Every meal Chef Michael Van Elzen converts to a healthier version of stock standard fast food is just so mouth wateringly good – I literally drooled over the burger episode.

This chicken has a covering that is crispy and oh so tasty, the meat is succulent and flavourful (be sure to buy ‘happy’ chicken) and all the family will adore it. It is just as good eaten cold the next day, so make a batch for your next picnic.

Truly finger lickin’ good!  Blondie

Thai Pork Skewers

Thai Pork Skewers | Thai Pork Kebabs
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Here is another recipe from David Thompson’s, Thai Street Food – one of my all time top 5 favourite cook books.

I have made a couple of minor adjustments and alternative ingredient options if you have trouble sourcing the exact recipe, but it’s basically the same.

These Thai Pork Skewers are beautifully sweet and salty, and with the cooking processing requiring coconut cream and a pandanus leaf brush for basting you can really feel like you’re on the streets of Thailand. Ideally cook these over gentle coals but you can use a grill on the stovetop – I really need to get my self a hibachi for cooking such dishes as the smoke that rises with the dripping juices adds an authenticity that can’t be beaten. I think every house had one 20 years ago!

Enjoy… Blondie  🙂

Vietnamese Chicken w/ Red Quinoa Stir Fry

Finding Feasts - Vietnamese Chicken w Red Quinoa Stir Fry
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Looking for a ridiculously tasty and healthy dish for dinner tonight? Well go no further… Vietnamese Chicken w/ Red Quinoa Stir Fry is what you’ve been looking for!

This is an outstanding, flavour packed chicken meal that honestly, you can whip up in half an hour… Even quicker the second time round once you have made the big batch of marinade. Just store what’s left in a large jar and it will keep for ages in the fridge.

The Vietnamese marinade is so versatile that you can use it with both red and white meats or fish to baste or marinade with and also as a dipping sauce.

I’m reasonably new to quinoa and fell in love with it from my first taste. The texture is amazing also, particularly with this red quinoa, almost like little caviars that kind of burst in your mouth. This red one is particularly yummy with a slightly sweet taste that complements Asian cooking so well.

A little something you may not know about quinoa is that it’s actually related to green leafy vegetables like spinach. Maybe that’s why it’s such a super food, covers all bases!

If you haven’t had a chance to taste this yummy grain yet, you won’t be disappointed with this dish.

Warming comfort food… Blondie

FinSki’s first wild mushroom foraging tour

What a fantastic start to the 2013 mushrooming season it has been! Bella and I headed out a few weeks ago to see if mushrooms were about… through the grape vine, or more appropriately, the mycelium (sorry, bad mushroom joke!) we had heard they were appearing. The weather has been a bit warm but NSW did have quite a bit of rain this month so the chance of mushrooms was good.

Mushroom foraging tours in NSW

What a treat it was, the Saffron Milk Caps were in abundance and there were many other eager mushroomers out in force. Lots of them not even making it into the forest but getting caught up early on the road by the beautiful orange fungi strewn across the pine needle floor.

The idea to get the first mushrooming tour going a little sooner than expected came when Bella and I both saw the large amount of Saffron Milk Cap heads breaking through the ground. The tour would be guaranteed to pick plenty of mushrooms the following week to keep everyone happy. Continue reading “FinSki’s first wild mushroom foraging tour”