Hints and Tips | Finding Feasts

Apple Galette aka The Easiest Apple Tart Ever

Apple Galette aka The Easiest Apple Tart Ever is a recipe that you will use continuously from this point on … I promise!

A lot of people feel there is too much time and effort needed in making their own pastry, let alone a flaky pastry, but, being a rather lazy cook myself I know that this one will turn you into a pastry maker forever.

The pastry is done in a food processor in under 1 minute. It is then pressed into a ball and placed into the fridge till you are ready to roll it out and add the filling… See! So incredibly easy. You really can’t mess this pastry recipe up.

Once you’ve got the pastry, the filling combinations are endless; peach, berries, rhubarb, whatever.

If you want to make a savoury filling, say a mushroom galette, then omit the sugar and use half a whole wheat flour for added savouriness. Cook down the filling so as to not make the pastry soggy, making sure the filling is completely cold before placing on the pastry and cook for the 40 minutes or so.

Tip: cover the base of the rolled out pastry with a thinnish layer of flour that will absorb any excess liquid from your filling.

This is an amazingly simple recipe for an end result that is an incredible centrepiece.

Happy pastry sculpting, Blondie 🙂

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Spinach Saag with Handmade Paneer

Spinach Saag with Handmade Paneer, Who doesn’t love Indian, especially when it’s so easy to make a feast of food to satisfy anyone.

As my family chooses to have at least one meat free day a week (part time flexitarians if I choose to hop onto a bandwagon) coming up with tasty, satisfying meals is always fun and inspiring.

What I find though, when doing a cuisine like Indian or asian food, I need to have several dishes – at least two curries with samosas or dumplings and condiments. When I cook with meat I seem to be happy to plate up just one bowl. I don’t know why that is but no one’s complaining 🙂

This spinach saag is creamy, spinachy and full of delicious spices, including my absolute favourite herb, fenugreek aka methi. The aroma is just insane… it gets added to most of my Indian meals. Add the golden panfried, handmade paneer and you have meal that will sit pride of place at the dinner table.

Enjoy with family and friends… Blondie

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Brine For Christmas Turkey Cooked on the BBQ

It’s that time of year again, the feast of food that can either make you giddy with cooking excitement with planning, prepping and designing or leave you completely dreading all the planning, prepping and designing.

How to brine, air dry & BBQ a 4kg Christmas turkey is a fail safe way to have a beautifully tender, succulent turkey with crispy, browned skin at your Christmas table. As an added bonus, the oven is freed up to cook the veggies and ham, casseroles and whatever else is a family classic.

This is a two day process, which involves brining the turkey in a slightly sweetened and spice salt bath for 24 hours then air drying it in the fridge. The brine bath tenderises the meat and the air drying dries out the skin that then enables it to develop a rich brown and crispy skin when cooked.

Merry Christmas and happy BBQing… Blondie 🙂

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Poached Eggs & Mushrooms w/ Chorizo & Feta

Poached Eggs & Mushrooms w/ Chorizo & Feta – This is such a lovely meal, and you could easily have it as a main for dinner but it works really well as a weekend brunch.

This recipe shows you the fool proof way of poaching eggs using the cling film technique. Everyone knows you need fresh eggs to do the ‘free fall’ poach, so having this method under your belt means a poached egg is only ever 3 minutes away, no matter your egg. It’s also great for beginner poachers.

Grab some friends and enjoy!… Blondie

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Bread & Butter Pudding w/ Banana Bread

Bread & Butter Pudding w/ Banana Bread is a delicious way to use up leftover, stale banana bread… Upcycling food in a sense. This is the recipe that my son told me last night that I should use as my entry recipe to get onto Masterchef, so it must be good.

We all get to the point were we’ve had the bread out for days and it’s getting stale, it’s now too late to freeze as it will forever be stale banana bread that will need to be toasted (although that’s not too bad if you have the freezer space). So making it into a pudding will extend the life of the bread for a few more days – if it lasts that long.

There are no hard and fast rules to this fabulous recipe other than the egg and milk ratio for the custard, but even then you can add a bit more cream or add and egg yolk for extra richness. I prefer a firm custard to a wet one for these puddings.

The size of your pudding will be determined by the amount of banana bread you use. I had just under half a loaf left and it was perfect for a 22x15x6cm baking dish.

It’s delicious served warm with ice cream or a dollop of cream and if you were feeling so inclined to be decadent, a light drizzle of Salted Caramel Sauce will top it off nicely.

Enjoy with family… Blondie 🙂

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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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Clarified Butter and Ghee

Clarified butter and ghee are simple enough products to get at your local shop (well ghee is), so why go to the trouble of making them yourself? Aside from the flavour, it’s simply for the fact that you have control of where the butter will come from. Maybe you like a particular butter from a farm near you or a Danish butter brand or you only eat organic. If this is the case then you need to start making this for yourself.

The difference between clarified butter and ghee is purely the time the butter has been cooked for. Butter is clarified once the milk solids have separated – there will be two distinct layers. Ghee has just been cooked for a bit longer and will have a nuttier more golden hue. Both are far more outstanding products, both in taste and aroma when made yourself… I can absolutely promise you that you will never, ever buy ghee or clarified butter again after you have tasted your own.

This recipe is probably more a ghee than a clarified butter as I cooked it a few more minutes after the splattering stopped. It’s fast to make and it lasts for ages, up to 6 months in the fridge.

Use a butter that you love, (this is my favourite for making ghee). It needs to be unsalted and butter in it’s purest form, no additives at all.

Simple, easy and tasty – Blondie 🙂

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