Blondie's Recipes | Finding Feasts

Pork & Lentil Thai Red Curry + Thai Pork Meatballs w/ Dipping Sauce

What to do with leftover roasting pork? Make Pork & Lentil Thai Red Curry + Thai Pork Meatballs w/ Dipping Sauce

With close to a kilo of pork to use (leftover from our Christmas in July) and the weather warming up, a roast was out of the question. Feeling like something Thai inspired I decided to do meatballs.

It feels like forever since I spent a day in the kitchen pottering around, which is why there are 3 different recipes included in the one post. The first one is…

Pork and Lentil Thai Red Curry

Mum does a gorgeous Curry Pork and Lentil soup, which can also be served over rice if you choose, so this is my version, Thai style!

The benefit of using a roasting pork for the curry is that the pork becomes beautiful and tender while simmering away with the lentils for 40 mins or so, but you can most certainly use pork mince. I also cooked them in the oven first though so they would retain their shape.

Some notes for making this dish…

Buy a pre made Red Curry paste – there are so many out there and it’s trial and error to find the one you will love. Be warned some are extraordinarily, mouth searingly hot!

If you do find that it’s just too hot for you but you love the flavour add some sweet yoghurt (not Greek style) and lime, works a treat.

Use coconut oil to cook with – it smells divine when cooking and has just so many health benefits – LOVE IT!

Thai Pork Meatballs w/ Sweet Chili, Dill and Coriander Sauce

While rolling out the meatballs I started feeling hungry – it was lunchtime, so quickly fried some of them up and they were just so good I had to give them their own recipe page, which is the reason for this second recipe. Served with a sweet and spicy dipping sauce they make a lovely plate of appetisers. Skewered onto some ornate chopsticks or served with the sauce already over them (very Christmasie) they are great tasting and so quick.

You can make these at anytime, freeze them and then cook as you need them.

Sweet Chili Sauce

I always have Sweet Chili Sauce on hand, it’s the only sauce my son likes so I make big batches of it and it lasts for ages. I also have the jar out on the kitchen bench so it’s always at hand to add to food that needs some sweetness, it’s used instead of sugar as it already has the chili infused and the zing of vinegar that is the perfect compliment to any Asian dish.

Enjoy, Blondie

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Mussels Cooked in White Wine & Parsley

Mussels Cooked in White Wine & Parsley… Imagine sitting by the water with a bottle of Moët and a big bowl of freshly cooked mussels to graze on… this is what you call a great day!

Fishing rods poised, ready to catch a lovely bream to have for dinner – Holiday’s don’t get much better than this.

Sun soakingly delicious… Blondie

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Checkered Birthday Cake – Dirt Block Minecraft Cake

Finding Feasts - Checkered Minecraft Cake — Click on image for recipe

Checkered Birthday Cake – Dirt Block Minecraft Cake… It was my son’s birthday last week and of course the cake was left to the very last minute. Considering last year’s cake was a hasty store bought chocolate cake that I threw coloured specks at, surrounded with plastic rings and stuck a Power Rangers dude on – which he absolutely loved – I knew the last resort would be, at the very least something similar. I mean really, I have yet to hear of a kid having a tantrum when they saw their cake on their birthday, so long as it has candles, colour and people singing “Happy Birthday” you really can’t go wrong… but I still had hope that I could pull something spectacular out of a hat.

With only 2 days left, finally an idea comes to me… Minecraft!

Minecraft is his greatest love at the moment and I can’t believe that it didn’t hit me sooner. So with the clock fast ticking down, I needed a plan of action and unfortunately it was too late to pay someone else to make it – I had to do it myself.

Action plan…

Thursday: Make the sponge cakes – I ended up with 3 usable ones out of 5 made
Friday: Construct a work of art with fondant – Well it kind of resembled what I had finally decided on

What I was actually going to construct from the Minecraft game was still being tossed around at lunch on Friday, but settled on a dirt block (I realise that unless you know even the basics of this game a dirt block birthday cake just seems too strange for words).

Now, I love to sculpt and had this picture in my head of a beautiful dirt block that was going to wow all the kids (and anyone else who’s eye-line would pass across this Minecraft beauty) but being realistic I knew I needed something that would make this mound of dirt even more spectacular, just in case the outside wasn’t what I was hoping for.

Checkered sponge on the inside! The idea was to have the 8bit effect on the inside just in case the outside failed to represent that effect to my expectation. We want pixels!

I am very fortunate to have an amazing friend who is a stunning cake designer and was able to give me a few hours of mentoring on the Friday, who without guidance (and some tools) this would have been quite a unique cake, to say the least.

All up it was a great first attempt at cake sculpting and will next year aim to start something like this 2 weeks prior!

Oh… and complete respect to all cake makers/artists out there, it’s insanely hard to master sugar and they deserve every single dollar that they charge for their designs!

Happy Birthday… from mum (Blondie) xxx

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Brazilian Fish Stew – Moqueca

Brazilian Fish Stew – Moqueca is a beautiful, full flavoured fish stew with coconut milk, heat from chilies, sweetness from the capsicum with a zing of lime juice… such gorgeous flavours all in one bowl.

You could use any seafood/crustacean in this recipe, actually, more the merrier. If I had more on hand I certainly would have thrown them in. I like to keep the fish fillets whole rather than cut into pieces and to very quickly sear the fish and prawns, remove them and then de-glaze the pan with the stock. It’s incredibly fast so just have all your ingredients ready to be thrown into the pan.

Eat it with a bowl of rice, crusty bread or like a soup with rice noodles – yes, not very Brazilian but oh so good!

Slurp away… Blondie xx

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Joulutorttu – Finnish Prune Tarts

Finding Feasts - Finnish Prune Tarts - joulutorttu — Click image for recipe

One of the most traditional of traditions for a Finn is the making of joulutorttu – finnish prune tarts.

These are a labour of love if you choose to make your own jam and dough. The pastry needs to be made the day before and left overnight in the fridge. The Prunes in Port and Spice Syrup can be made weeks prior… just make sure you make enough so you can have them on ice cream!

You can use any jam of your choice but traditionally it’s a prune jam.

These are wonderful and festive, Christmas just isn’t Christmas till these come out.

Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

Blondie 🙂

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Prunes in Port and Spice Syrup

Finding Feasts - Prunes in Spiced Port Syrup — Click image for recipe

Prunes in Port and Spice Syrup, Christmas is only 10 weeks away so Bella and I are going to start getting our traditional Finnish and Polish recipes together.

This one is in preparation for the Finnish prune tarts that are eaten at Christmas time, although I have done it slightly different to traditional recipes, in that I have added some traditional Christmas spices to the port.

Finnish Christmas’ are celebrated on the 24th of December (in case you were wondering, Santa generally sneaks into the house while we are all around the dinner table, or conveniently distracted by something amazing) with huge feasts of hams and other roast meats, casseroles and salads – mum does an incredible beetroot and herring salad that’s just so scrumptious and works perfectly with the heat of the Australian Christmas. There are also lots of sweet dishes eaten but the main two that we grew up with are gingerbread biscuits and Finnish prune tarts – joulutorttu.

This prune in port syrup recipe is for making the prune jam that goes into the centre of the tarts – the jam is normally made with just prunes, sugar and water then pushed through a sieve or blitzed in a processor till it’s to a jam consistency. I have decided to have the prunes soak in the port and spice syrup till I make the tarts, which will be in a couple of weeks… I was also craving the syrup, warmed up, on ice cream – a girls to satisfy her cravings!

Don’t be put off with the idea of prunes as once you have tried them this way there’s no going back…

Blondie 🙂

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Korvapuusti – Pulla aka Finnish Cardamom Scrolls

Finding Feasts | Pulla Sweet Finnish Cardamom Bread — Click image for recipe

Pulla – a cardamom laced, sweet Finnish bread – that is devoured by the truck load by the Finns! Eaten with coffee, this bread is as traditional as Karelian Pies.

There are 3 main ways of having them… round like a plain bun, plaited into a loaf which is sliced (grandpa’s favourite, along with a very thick slathering of butter on top, dipped into his strong coffee) and finally the scrolls with sugar and cinnamon rolled through it. The later is my favourite way of having them, along with every kid who ever gets a chance to try them.

I have done two recipes for this Pulla, one for hand kneading and one if using a bread maker (coming up shortly). They are slightly different, but both work beautifully.

I also have another recipe coming up – Pulla bread and butter pudding – after burning my first batch of hand kneaded Pulla. There was no way I was going to let all that effort go to waste!

Enjoy!

Blondie

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