Sauces and Pastes | Finding Feasts

Red Pepper (Capsicum) Sauce

Spicy Red Pepper Sauce — Click image for recipe

Red Pepper (Capsicum) Sauce… Bella and I both love to head to the bargain corner of the grocers hoping to get a great big stash of vegetables or fruit to make into a sauce, jam or some other condiment that takes our fancy. They are generally still firm and beautiful but get relegated to the back of the store after a week or so and sold off cheaply. Tomatoes, capsicum, passion fruits, leeks, cauliflower etc, it’s the grocery shop forage – you don’t now what you will get, if anything, but it’s the thrill of the hunt in the city.

So after a successful gathering session I came home with 10 big capsicums. I knew that I wanted something zingy and spicy with a big hit of heat, so I started looking through recipes online for the one that was going to be the perfect fit. A Roasted Red Pepper Sauce popped up and I knew straight away that this was the one. It’s from Bobby Flay’s Mesa Cookbook (this one will most definitely be added to my collection) and it’s just a stunning sauce! Bobby Flay apparently describes this sauce the ‘work horse’ of his restaurants, and I can see why as I have now used it to marinade chicken, eaten it as a dip and have basted fish on the BBQ with it!

Tonight I’m making Chicken Quesadilla’s with it… or maybe Mexican pizza’s?

Enjoy

Blondie

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Easy Prawn, Bug & Fish Pie

Easy Prawn, Bug & Fish Pie is exactly that. It’s a basic velouté sauce with seafood and herbs topped with a perfectly crispy lid.

On our annual Easter getaway with our families, the Easter Friday Fish BBQ is where our feast begins. Bella and I head to the Sydney Fish markets and get a wheelbarrow load of delicious seafood. With eyes bigger than our stomachs we, without doubt have a great amount of seafood to use and it’s always nice to change it up a bit so you aren’t eating the same dish for 2-3 days… plus we have the massive lamb roast to dinner to do during that week also!

This can really be made with any seafood, it’s especially great to have this recipe on hand to use with leftover seafood. If you feel there isn’t enough seafood to use you can pad it out with vegetables and then you will have a delicious Seafood and Vegetable Pie.

This is a rough guide recipe, so long as you have the velouté sauce you can use as little or as much seafood as your bowl can take.

You want a great fish stock so don’t throw anything in the bin till you have made the stock. You want lots of fish heads and carcasses. It’s important not to over cook a fish stock, which unlike a bone broth where your aim is to extract as much vitamins, mineral and antioxidants and more importantly the amino acids, proline and glycine over days of simmering, a fish stock will go bitter if left more than 40 mins or so. 40 minutes is all that is needed to extract the goodies without losing the flavour.

If you’ve read my other recipes using stocks/broths you will know that I don’t like to over flavour them with lots of herbs and vegetables. Keep this one clean so as to have the fish and the dill as the main flavours.

A stunningly crispy pie top with a delicious seafood medley filling… Blondie 🙂

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Crispy Thai Chicken Nuggets

Crispy Thai Chicken Nuggets are so amazingly moreish you could quite possibly fall into a food coma if you made enough of them – hubby almost did!

With the last of my thai paste sitting idle in the freezer – there wasn’t quite enough left to make a family pot of thai curry, the next dream recipe that popped into my mind was deep fried chicken nuggets, and what an amazing lightbulb of a meal idea it was! These nuggets are so moist, so tender, full of amazing flavours and with the indulgent use of deep frying, deliciously naughty as well.

Balance out the meal with some steamed vegetables such as garlic beans and a stir fried zucchini noodle dish and you won’t feel so bad indulging in these bite size morsels of flavoursome chicken nuggets.

Tip: Don’t be tempted to make this dish a little ‘healthier’ by using chicken breast, as you need the fuller flavour of the chicken thighs as well as the moist meat that the thigh fillets have to successfully make these nuggets.

Make, indulge and enjoy… Blondie 🙂

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Zucchini Koftas in Creamy Tomato Sauce

Zucchini Koftas in Creamy Tomato Sauce is an insanely moresih kofta recipe – it really is hard to stop eating these deep fried zucchini balls. The recipe does call for the zucchini koftas to warm in the sauce but when I do it again I will serve the sauce on the side (or underneath) the kofta balls so I keep the texture of the balls, which soften when sitting in the sauce.

This meal is also kid friendly – there is chilli in it so just remove or reduce it if they aren’t a fan of heat, but they will most certainly love the zucchini balls.

TIP: since the koftas really need to be eaten immediately (they go a little soggy otherwise, but still tasty) turn the leftovers into sausage rolls – these are absolutely stunning! Mix the balls and remaining sauce together with some paneer or ricotta and roll up in puff pastry. This way you get the texture and the flavour just in a different form.

My household is still going strong with our 3-4 days worth of vegetarian days a week and it’s been really exciting coming up with recipes to excite and engage… this one is no exception as it has the naughtiness of deep fried food and the lushness of the creamy tomato curry sauce. I have also included a recipe for Paneer Parathas, which are an Indian stuffed bread, just perfect for dunking into the sauce.

Happy dunking!

Blondie 🙂

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Warm Sticky Date Puddings w/ Butterscotch Sauce

Finding Feasts - Sticky Date Pudding_ (1) — Click image for recipe

A lesson learned… Please don’t try this at home!

It’s amazing how things can change from normal to absolute dire panic in a split second. This is what happened to me two weeks ago… Happily preparing spaghetti at about 6:30pm on a Sunday evening, I dropped a pot of boiling water on the floor. I had a loose top on, the saucepan’s handle was sticking out and the pot must have been off balance on the stove top. As I threw in some pasta, I spun around to get some more and that was it… That was the moment. That was exactly when Sunday night took a turn for the worse.

Frantic calls to the hospital, to my sister (a nurse) and to Bella (to take Seb who was in shock not quite knowing what was going on) and I was whisked away with feet and hands in a large bucket of water to the hospital, husband in tow. To say the pain was extraordinary is an understatement, it was just insane… several of doses of morphine was needed to get through that night!

Anyway, with mid to deep level burns (they no longer grade a burn in degrees) on my foot and burns to my knee and hand, I was told not to be on my feet for more than 15 minutes at a time. Cooking was left to hubby, which fortunately didn’t require much more than reheating as I had made 3 kg of spaghetti sauce and a big batch of Thai green curry paste the weekend prior. All sitting in the freezer, and unbeknownst to me at the time, ready for the two weeks off my feet… almost too funny how things work out.

So, now I’m getting back into the swing of things I wanted to cook something soul warming, something that will soothe and sate the cooking void I had just been in, and what’s better than a traditional Warm Stick Date Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce.

Please take care in the kitchen, an accident is really only a micro second away.

Blondie 🙂

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Smoked Sweet Chilli Sauce

So what can you do to improve on the pantry staple, sweet chilli sauce? Smoke it of course!

Smoked Sweet Chilli Sauce is an amazing accompaniment to all the dishes you have your standard with but with a unique smokey flavour… and you know how much Bella and I love things smoked.

Serve it with seafood or baste chicken kebabs or pour it over a big dollop of sour cream.

Hot and smokey… Blondie

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Salted Caramel Sauce

Salted Caramel Sauce… You can’t beat a gorgeous caramel sauce to add a little indulgence to a dessert dish, throw in some Murray River Salt flakes (my preferred choice) and it’s transformed from normal to sublime!

This is another fabulous gift idea for Christmas, just make it a day or two prior to the day you will be handing it out.

Blondie 🙂

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