Hot chilli sauce

I love chillies.  I've grown them for years and often make my own chilli relish with fresh chillies Straight from the garden.  Sometimes I dry them as well and make my own dried chilli flakes.

A bowl of chillies fresh from the garden.

Today I noticed there was a nice crop of chillies on my plants when I looked out the window, but I already have a jar of chilli relish in the fridge. So I decided to make some hot chilli sauce instead.
I found a simple recipe that popped up a couple of times when I was searching for recipes and added some extra ingredients to add to the flavour.

Chopped chillies, ready to go.

Ingredients
200g chilli peppers, ends removed and roughly chopped
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 tsp fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, sliced
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tsp lime juice

Add all ingredients to a pot and bring to the boil.
Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring constantly for 8 minutes.
Transfer the sauce to a blender and blitz it for a minute or so until you have a nice consistency.
Pour into clean sterilised jars.

A jar of chilli sauce ready for tasting.

It turned out really good.  It's very hot but that's how I like it.  You can always blend it together with some tomato sauce or something if it turns out to be too hot, or replace some of the chillies with capsicums.  I think I might use some of this to make some chilli mayonaise tomorrow...

Hint:  If you get chilli on your hands while chopping them and it starts to burn, rub your hands on something made from stainless steel (like your kitchen sink or a large spoon).  Sounds weird but it works!

I think these are jalapeño peppers

Visit Teena's blog for more about our chilli garden.

Macaroni and Cheese

Macaroni and Cheese with Bacon

There are some foods that Thomas seems to like more then others.    Macaroni is one of his favourites as it's easy for him to pick up and eat.  Last night we decided to make a simple Macaroni and Cheese and it was a hit!  The recipe is adapted from the Classic Macaroni and Cheese receipe at Taste.com.au, the only variation being that I added bacon.

Ingredients

• 400g macaroni
• 50g butter 
• 2 tbs plain flour 
• 2 cups milk 
• 2 cups grated cheese (I used Tasty Cheese)

Cook the macaroni in a large pot of boiling water until al dente.
Melt butter in a saucepan.  Add bacon and fry for a few minutes until the bacon is cooked.
Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute on a medium heat.
Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth and the mixture comes to the boil.
Remove from heat and add the cheese, stirring until melted and smooth.
Drain pasta and add to sauce mixture, stir until well mixed and pasta is coated with the cheese mixture.

Best eaten with your fingers.

Thomas prefers foods that he can pick up and eat himself as he doesn't like to be spoon fed (unless it's home made custard).  The Macaroni and Cheese was easy for him to eat as it sticks together nicely.

That was yummy!

As always, it's not a proper meal unless you get it everywhere.  Luckily he got most of it in his mouth this time and not too much in his hair or on the floor.  I think that means he really likes it!

Thomas

It's hard to believe that it has been over a year since I have posted to this blog.  How time flies when you're having... fun?  Well mostly fun anyway.  Our son Thomas was born in December 2010, two months premature due to a condition called HELLP syndrome. 

Thomas in his humidicrib.

Thomas spent 7 weeks in the special care nursery at the hospital before he could come home.  He weighed only 1.25 kg's when he was born and spent most of his time sleeping.  To begin with he had to be fed through the nose with a tube and syringe.  If only we could do that now...  it would make feeding time so much easier (and cleaner!).

So small...

Home at last... and still sleepy.

Eventually he was allowed to come home.  It was difficult at first and a huge adjustment to our peaceful lives.  It's been great watching him grow and develop though.  Every week there was something new he was doing.

Starting to lift his head.

Smiling.

Wearing his beanie.

Feeding time...

Feeding him has been a challenge sometimes.  He started out on milk of course, but when he started on solids we made our own puree vegetables and froze them in ice cube trays for convenience.  Then we started giving him meats and other dishes.  Some of his favourites were roast chicken dinner puree, sausage and vegie mash and vegie bake puree.  All home made of course.  Thomas did not like the store bought puree's at all, except for the pure fruit puree's.

 Toe sucking.  An important milestone?

And now he's 1 year old.  He only has two teeth and he's not quite walking yet but that doesn't stop him from getting into everything he shouldn't be touching.  He mostly eats what we eat now and we've taken him to Yum Cha several times and he loves it!  His favourite food at Yum Cha is Coconut Ice, he can't get enough of it.  Which reminds me... I need to find a recipe and try making some for him.

He's not usually so happy to be in his cot...

Asleep on a rug his mum made him.

Playing with a toy on his birthday.

Eating an ice block for the first time.  Home made of course...

1st Birthday cake.

So that's where I've been and hopefully I can find some time here and there to make a few more blog posts.  Who knew a baby would be so time consuming? :)

Choc Chip Cookies

 
I'd never made choc chip cookies before but thought I would give it a go.  After a quick search I found a pretty simple recipe over at Best Recipes.  It also gave me a good excuse to use my new electric mixer!

Ingredients
125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
3/4 cup choc chips

 

Preheat oven to 160°C.  Cream butter and sugars.  Mix in vanilla essence and egg.  Sift in flour until well combined, then add choc chips.

As always, you never know what's going to happen the first time you try a new cookie recipe.  The first batch I used too much mixture for each cookie and they flattened out more then I thought they would.  So I ended up with some giant cookies!

The next batch I used about a teaspoon of filling and they turned out just right.  They only take about 10 minutes to cook and were very tasty!

Steamed Buns

Here is the recipe for the Steamed Buns I made for my Birthday Feast.  Normally these are made with pork as Char Siu Bau at Yum Cha (Dim Sum).  As soon as I saw the recipe in my The Food of the World - A Journey for Food Lovers book, I knew I had to make them!  We just love going to Yum Cha and this is possibly my favourite dish, though there are so many yummy foods it is hard to choose a favourite.  I was very pleased that these worked so well and tasted just like the real thing.  I think they may become a regular item on our menu!  The dough does take some time to prepare, but once it is ready they are very easy to make and well worth it.

Basic Chinese Yeast Dough
3 tbsp Sugar
1 Cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
400g plain flour
2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Place the water, sugar and oil in an electric mixer bowl.  Add flour, make a small well on top and add yeast.  Mix with dough hook attachment until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 8-10 minutes.  If you don't have an electric mixer you can mix with a wooden spoon, then knead dough on a lightly floured surface.  Lightly grease a bowl with some oil, place the dough in the bowl and turn it so that all sides are coated.  Cover with a cloth and set aside to rise in a draught free place for 3 hours.

Uncover the dough, punch it down and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.  If you are not ready to use the dough, you can wrap it in plastic wrap and place in fridge until ready.  When you are ready to use the it, flatten the dough and make a well in the center.  Place the baking powder in the well and gather up the edges to enclose the baking powder.  Pinch the edges to seal.  Lightly knead the dough for several minutes to evenly incorporate the baking powder.  It is not ready to use.

Red Bean Filling
1 tsp oil
1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed.
1 onion, finely chopped
1 small zucchini, finely chopped
3 button mushrooms, chopped
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp soy sauce
3 tsp sugar

Heat the oil in a wok or large frypan.  Add the beans and stir fry for about 3 minutes until the beans are soft and breaking up a little.  Add the onion, mushrooms and zucchini and cook for a further 2 minutes.  Add the sesame oil, soy sauce and sugar, cook for a further minute, then leave to cool.

Steamed Buns
Divide the dough into 24 portions.  Press a portion into a circle and place 1-2 tsps of the red bean filling into the middle of the dough.  Fold the sides up to enclose the filling, pinching the top to seal them completely.  Repeat with remaining portions.  Place the buns well apart into a steamer.  Normally this would be done in a bamboo steamer over a wok but as we didn't have any, I just used a vegetable steamer insert over a saucepan of boiling water.  Steam the buns over simmering water for 15 minutes or until the buns are well risen and a skewer inserted into the center comes out hot.

A Birthday Feast

For my Birthday this year, I decided to cook my own special Birthday feast!  As Teena and I both love going to Yum Cha, I wanted to try cooking some myself at home.  I'd found a recipe for Sweet Pork Buns in a book...  It looked easy enough and I wanted to try it as soon as I saw it, so this was a good opportunity to try it out.  So in the end I came up with the following menu:

Vegetarian Spring Rolls, Steamed Sweet Buns, Fried Rice and Hot and Honeyed Chicken Wings

The Vegetarian Spring Rolls were very tasty.  Teena doesn't usually like spring rolls, but she did like these one.  I found the recipe at Taste.com.au.  They were fairly easy to make, but I ended up using all the wrappers and still having a bowl full of vegetables and noodles left over.  We just fried that up for dinner though so it wasn't wasted.  We froze the leftover spring rolls and they cook up just fine after defrosting them.

The original recipe for these Sweet buns were with a pork filling. As Teena is 16 weeks pregnant, we are being careful with the food she is eating.  So I made the filling with red beans instead of pork.  I wasn't sure how these would turn out but I was hopeful as i really love these when we go to Yum Cha!  I'm happy to say they were delicious!  A bit involved as it takes a while to prepare the dough, but once that's done it was fairly easy.  They may not look so great in the picture, I should have taken one opened up...  But they do taste great, the bun is so sweet and soft, and the filling turned out great as well.  You can see the recipe for these here.

I also love fried rice.  This one was a little different then usual with some ginger and shredded Chinese cabbage in it.  It was nice but I prefer the type you get in a restaurant, something I've never really been able to recreate...

These chicken wings are so tasty!  It's really hard to stop eating them...  I've made them before though, so you can see the recipe here.

So needless to say, I had a good birthday :)

Baked Cheesecake with Passionfruit Topping

Teena loves cheesecake, so for her Birthday this year, I made her this Baked Cheesecake with Passionfruit Topping.  We've decided to only make one cheesecake per year because after a week of eating a whole cheesecake between the two of us... it felt like we put on a few kgs.  Luckily, this year Teena's parents visited her for her Birthday and helped us eat it, so it wasn't so bad.  I had meant to get a few more pictures of the cake after it had been sliced, but it just didn't last long enough :)  This recipe is based on a recipe found here.

Ingredients
Crust
2 cups ground Arnotts Choc Ripple Biscuits
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

Filling
900g cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup caster sugar
Juice from 1/2 lemon, strained
Finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup heavy cream

Passionfruit Topping
1 tbs cornflour
1/3 cup water
4-5 Passionfruit
1/4 cup caster sugar, extra


Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C. Lightly coat the bottom and sides of an 8-inch (20cm) springform pan with nonstick cooking spray.

To Make the Crust:
In a mixing bowl, combine the biscuit crumbs and the melted butter with a fork until evenly moistened. Spoon the biscuit mixture into the prepared pan and, using the bottom of a glass, press the crumbs down into the base and 1-inch up the sides. Chill crust in refrigerator until ready to fill.

To Make the Filling:
Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese on low speed for 1 minute, until smooth and free of any lumps. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, and continue to beat slowly until combined, then beat in cream. Gradually add sugar and beat until creamy, for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the strained lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla. Periodically scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters. Beat until well combined and the mixture is light and fluffy (the batter should be well combined but not overmixed).

Using clean electric beaters or a balloon whisk, whisk the egg whites in a medium bowl until soft peaks form. Using a large metal spoon, fold beaten egg whites into cream cheese mixture until just combined.

Pour the mixture into the chilled crust. Bake in preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until just set in the center. Loosen the cheesecake from the sides of the pan by running a thin metal spatula around the inside rim. Let cool in the pan for 30 minutes. Chill in the refrigerator, loosely covered, for at least 4 hours to overnight to set.

To Make the Passionfruit Topping:
Combine the cornflour and water in a small bowl. Transfer to a saucepan. Add the passionfruit and extra sugar. Place over medium heat and cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes or until the mixture boils and thickens. Set aside to cool slightly. Pour over cheesecake. Place in fridge until set.