Finding Feasts | Cooking Eating Storytelling

Sweet & Sour Sardines

Sweet & Sour Sardines is a dish I served while we were all away over the Easter break for the Friday Fish BBQ.

Before we head off for the holidays, Bella and I go for a massive shop at the Sydney Fish Markets, truly, so much fun! Prawns, oysters (which I now know I have a severe reaction to, but that’s another story) barramundi, sardines, whiting and morton bay bugs… a true feast.

We all head to a beautiful property near Oberon, which is on the other side of the Blue Mountains. The kids have a ball with the zip line and the animals that are there, while Bella and I enjoy a week of cooking and mushroom foraging. The hubbies enjoy eating and golfing…so everyone is catered for.

This is a dish inspired by Feast magazine April 2014, the Venetian recipe of Sarde in Saor. If I were in my own kitchen I would have had all the ingredients but since not, there were a few alterations to the original recipe. I used bay leaves instead of thyme. I didn’t have raisins or white wine vinegar so used Dill Pickle juice and pickles to get the acidity and sweetness.

This recipe sings on the tongue, with each bite a delicious blend of sweet, sour and fishy saltiness.

Enjoy the bounty… Blondie xx

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White Chia Seed Banana Bread

White Chia Seed Banana Bread is a great way of incorporating the healthy goodness of chia seeds into your kids’ lunch boxes. Plus they are so fun to eat as they are little balls of popping seeds that all kids will love.

This is part of my New Years resolution, the one where I have to make one recipe from any book or magazine that enters my house, and as you can see below, sadly I have fallen way behind…

So in order to get back on track I have made an important decision, that is, I am allowed to be inspired by recipes within the books and magazines, hence this little gem of a recipe.

Vol.2 of Nourish magazine 2014 had a big article on chia seeds with some nice recipes, but I really needed something for the lunch box, which is where I chose to incorporate the seeds into my normal Banana Bread recipe. Voila, a popping banana bread that I know Seb is going to love.

Popping seeds of goodness… Blondie xx

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Mushroom Yoghurt Pie w/ Spinach Crust

Mushroom Yoghurt Pie w Spinach Pastry — Click image for recipe

Mushroom Yoghurt Pie w/ Spinach Crust is the recipe attached to the Spinach Pie Crust I posted a little while ago.

This recipe comes direct from one of my most favourite cookbooks, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen. Every page you turn to has a recipe you want to try – 289 pages of delicious vegetarian dishes that i’m slowly getting through. I’ve said it before, this book deserves to be in everyones cookbook collection.

This is a flavoursome pie with a simply stunning pie crust that I know you will make more than once. Every time you walk past a bunch of silverbeet or spinach, this pie base will pop into your head with an endless list of fillings to try it with.

Enjoy… Blondie

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Pork & Prawn Stir Fry w/ Zucchini Noodles & Sweet Potato Sticks

Pork & Prawn Stir Fry w/ Zucchini Noodles & Sweet Potato Sticks is a simple stir fry dish that is flavoursome and textural, relying on great produce to make it a special meal. The only sauce addition is fish sauce and a pinch of sugar, everything else comes from the garden, pasture and ocean – love it!

If you haven’t got your vegetable slicer/noodle maker yet then what are you waiting for? It makes vegetables fun for kids but also opens up a whole new world in cooking. The zucchini noodles really do have a similar texture to normal noodles. They also do spirals, which are fantastic in salads!

Slop it up! Blondie xx

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Chocolate Brownies – the packet kind!

FinSki's Chocolate Brownies 1 — Click on image for full recipe

Come on, admit it, these chocolate brownies look good huh! Firm on the outside, rich, dark and gooey on the inside, a devilish treat if you ask me.

Did I slave over the oven with these? Definitely not.

A few weeks ago Imogen was in her ‘mum let’s bake some cup cakes mood’. This goes something like this…we head out to the shops, buy the packet mix and additional ingredients, get home and prepare everything and she suddenly disappears but some how reappears again when it is time to lick the spoon!

Having baked the same old velvet cup cakes over and over again I jumped at the opportunity to try something totally new. You won’t believe this but I have never made chocolate brownies before! Yup…never! I know…deprived childhood huh.

It was a Sunday, I was not the least bit interested in baking anything but Imogen found this mix at Thomas Dux…

The packet came with choc chips and all that I needed to add was 2 eggs and some melted butter, too easy!

I’m no expert at making chocolate brownies but these were pretty good! For $4.99, I highly recommend keeping a packet in your pantry for the ‘just in case’.

Bella 🙂

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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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Roti Canai using Pizza Dough, a step by step

This is insanely good Roti Canai using my ‘Best Ever Pizza Dough’ recipe – That’s right, pizza dough for roti!

I knew this dough was good but I am truly surprised at how adaptable it really is. I generally have a portion of this dough in the fridge at any given moment – Seb loves a pizza, but it was only when I went to use it after it had been there for a few days that I realised just how supple it had become…

While the Finding Feasts gal’s were taking a short break with the families in Kangaroo Valley, I chose to try my hand at roti. The dough was amazingly supple and had an incredible stretch but the end result wasn’t too great. But I will never forget the feel and texture of that dough.

When I came across this similar texture in the pizza dough my first thought was the roti dough, which is why we are now here!

What makes this just so amazing is that you have a dough that has so many uses. You don’t feel like you are making an effort for a dish that you will only make once or twice, you will be able to make it whenever you want knowing that some of it can go to making pizza bases or flat bread.

I made two styles of this, one is the circular one and the other is a rectangular one. The rectangular shaped one can also have a filling of your choice,

Roti is alot of fun to make and if you are so inclined you could use the proper technique of flipping – that will be my next challenge!

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