Easter Recipes | Finding Feasts

Braised Wild Rabbit w/ Smokey Bacon & Mushrooms

Braised Wild Rabbit w/ Smokey Bacon & Mushrooms – I have a couple of favourite butchers I love to go to. Unfortunately my visits to them are limited to our annual and quarterly visits to family. This is why I go prepared with a big esky and lots of icepacks to bring my loot safely home.

Wagga Wagga is Knights Meats, an veritable candy store of meats. We always stock up on their Corned Hogget, enough to last a year as we only get there annually.

Canberra has Eco Meats in one of my favourite food markets, located right near my nana’s place, in Belconnen. If there is an animal you would like to try then here’s your place… among their cornucopia of meats are camel, ostrich, possum, crocodile, plus nitrite free bacon. This is where I stock up on bacon and wild rabbit before heading back to Sydney.

I love rabbit and have been eating it since I was young, even being the ‘lucky one’ and getting the bullet in one of my mouthfuls when eating a freshly shot one we had for dinner when we were in Finland.

There is a big difference between a farmed white rabbit and a wild rabbit. The flavour of a wild rabbit is definitely alot more flavoursome and as they may be older than the farmed ones, they can be tougher, which is why braising is the preferred method for wild rabbit. Having a stronger flavour also means you can be a bit bolder with the other ingredients you choose to put into it. The farmed rabbit has a more delicate flavour so softer flavours are needed so as to not overpower the rabbit.

If you aren’t sure if you would like wild rabbit or have yet to try rabbit then purchase a farmed one and then move up to the wild rabbit.

Happy hunting! Blondie

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Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Easter Eggs

Click image for recipe – Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Eggs

Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Easter Eggs … Looking for bright and colourful ideas for Easter this year lead me to find these gorgeous little things at Kitchen Simplicity. These are incredibly simple to make – once you work out how to mould them, and they look so divine!

Cheri says to wet your hands so as to make the forming of the eggs easier. I went the latex glove route, just to be sure, wet them and then dove into the mixture….

OMG! It was like dealing with some hyper viscous, glue demon. I could not get it off my hands, there were strings of marshmallow flying around the kitchen and no sign of the Rice Bubbles even coming close to forming a ball.

About to give up and go the way of Cheri’s other idea of forming a slice rather than going through the work of making eggs; I decided to take off the gloves, get my greased spoon and use plastic wrap to control the unruly Rice Bubble mixture (inspired by Heston Blumenthal’s scotch egg recipe that I had watched the previous night – thankfully!) and it worked – beautifully!

I will definitely be doing these again next year, maybe with white chocolate and different food colourings for a more rainbow look.

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Carrot & Ginger Cake w/ Pineapple Flowers

Carrot & Ginger Cake w/ Pineapple Flowers is a cake I designed for Mother’s Day. Yes, this post is a little late for this years Mother’s Day but lets think of it as getting in early for next year and it doesn’t even need to be just for Mother’s Day, this cake can fit all types of celebratory occasions. What could be more occasional than edible flowers strewn across the top of a delicious carrot cake? It looks impressive and tastes divine.

Designated with doing a dessert I knew instantly what I was going to do. The cover of the April’15 Gourmet Traveller magazine had a picture of what I originally had thought was a hummingbird cake, but on closer inspection realised it was in fact a carrot cake, a deliciously moist looking layered cake that I knew would be the perfect platform for some edible flowers and crunchy nuts, which I had been eager to do for quite some time – not unlike a hummingbird cake.

I’m not a cake construction type person so if I can pull it off, anyone can (and I was so impressed with myself, which is why the following paragraph is all about how fabulous a job I did)

Once completed and placed on a rightfully deserved pedestal it was a breathtaking piece of sweet art. I had achieved what I had planned to do and that was to deliver a beautiful looking centrepiece for mum and nana for Mother’s Day. Now I fear I may have set a benchmark to what could be years of trying to one-up myself.

There are alot of steps in the preparation of the cake but you start doing elements of it in the days prior so you aren’t rushed off your feet; the candied nuts and flowers can be done before hand.

Happy whichever day it is you are celebrating… Blondie

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Amazing Coconut Roughs

Amazing Coconut Roughs… These are truly amazing little treats to have on hand for when you need a little energy boost… and fantastic for primary schools as they are free from most things that some kids are intolerant to – There is always one kid that can’t have gluten or eggs or sugar etc, in a class and it’s a shame that they always miss out on treats.

I will definitely be making them into little egg moulds for Easter this year!

Guilt free eating – Blondie 🙂

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Warm Kale and Quinoa Salad w/ Seared Salmon and Wild Mushrooms

Warm Kale and Quinoa Salad w/ Seared Salmon and Wild Mushrooms is the very first dish I made with this years first haul from the forest… although not really a haul as I came out with only 13 prized funghi specimens but pair them with a stunning salmon fillet and it’s a feast of a dinner.

It’s still a little too warm for the mushrooms at this point but the rains we have been having in NSW makes for a very promising season. There were lots of very little baby mushrooms poking their heads out, they will be just ripe for picking the following week.

As you can see from my basket there wasn’t too much around, a very small haul indeed but still a feast worthy of a delicious dinner.

FinSkis 2014 mushrooming trip — A small haul but still worthy of a dinner

This is a high nutrient rich meal with just a little indulgent use of butter and a sweet hit from the vino cotto.

Enjoy the forage and savour the feast – Blondie 🙂

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Polish Jam Doughnuts

1Paczki - Main Shot — Click on image for full recipe

Polish Paczki,in my opinion are the most divine Polish dessert ever made!

Attend any Polish cultural event and I guarantee you that these will be on the dessert menu! Light and fluffy, filled with jam and coated in sugar or icing, they literally walk off the plate.

Having already made Makowiec, Babka and Szarlotka, it was time to roll up the sleeves and try to make paczki, after all how hard could it be? It’s just sugar, butter, milk, yeast, plain flour, vanilla essence AND a small amount of the most potent vodka you can find, in Poland we call it Spirytus – which is 95% alcohol by volume…ekkk!

Adding the Spirytus to the dough prior to cooking assists in preventing the oil being absorbed into the dough. I had none of this and although I am sure that if I had called one of my Polish family friends that they would be able to tell me in an instance where I could get some but on this occasion I was happy to go without.

My attempt No. 1 = total utter failure! Although I used a new packet of dried yeast, my dough didn’t rise. I still attempted to deep fry the paczki but they were flat as a pancake and rock hard so into the bin they went.

A valuable lesson learnt: Always proof the yeast before baking. This will tell you if the yeast is still active. To proof your yeast you need to warm up the exact amount of liquid as the recipe asks for. Add the required amount of yeast, a pinch of salt, stir to combine, cover with a tea towel and set aside for a couple of minutes. If foam develops you have proof that your yeast is alive!

Attempt No.2, well the picture speaks for itself. And although these paczki were nothing near as yummy as the ones you can buy from a decent Polish deli, Blondie’s son loved them!

The second attempt ones were still a little dense and slightly on the dry side, so I can’t help but wonder if adding the Spirytis would have made them light and fluffy because less of the oil would have been absorbed during the deep frying process. I guess I will find out on attempt No.3!

If you would love to give these a try but prefer not to bake look up your local European Deli. Campbelltown in Western Sydney has these fresh most Saturday mornings but you have to be quick! They sell out as soon as they open their doors at 8 am!

Olka Polka Deli is located at Shop 4, 100 Queen Street Campbelltown NSW. Telephone (02) 4626 3726

I guarantee you will fall in love with these too!

Bella

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