Zucchini and beetroot fritters - from the garden!!

 

How exciting is it to be able to make dinner that the majority of the ingredients were grown just outside in the garden??? Very very exciting indeed!

Our zucchini crop is doing quite well, and I had to thin out the beetroot in the patch, so the result was these fritters -

Ingredients
3 large zucchini
2 baby beetroot
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
fresh herbs (I had parsley, basil, thyme, rosemary & oregano)
2 eggs
3 tablespoons cottage cheese
4-5 tablespoons SR flour

In a food processor grate zucchini & beetroot. Put into a large bowl.

Then with the chopper blade, whizz up the onion, garlic, and herbs.  Add the eggs and cottage cheese and whizz till combined.

Mix this through the grated vegies in the large bowl.  Add the flour a couple of spoonfulls at a time.  You may need more, you may need less.  When the mix looks like it is not overly runny, I usually make a test fritter - fry in a hot frying pan with a little oil and see if the mixture holds together.  If its a disaster, add a bit more flour and try again!

If your test fritter is ok, continue to fry heaped spoonfuls of mix until browned on both sides.  I take the cooked fritters and put into a preheated oven so they don't get cold while I am making the rest.

I served my fritters with some tomato salsa (tomatoes were from the garden also!) made with chopped tomatoes, a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, black pepper and oregano.

2011 Bridge To Brisbane // Results // tiktok results

2011 Bridge To Brisbane // Results // tiktok results

Fathers Day Lunch!

For Fathers Day, we took lunch to Mum & Dad's place, so the food had to be transportable, and, since we were off to a morning tea prior to lunch, it had to be pre-cooked.

I decided to give Pulled Pork a try.

I adapted this recipe from Not Quite Nigella

Since I do not have a pressure cooker, I used the oven. And majorly increased the cooking time!!
Pulled Pork
2kg Pork Shoulder (remove the skin and fat layer
1 onion
bunch of parsley
4 cloves garlic
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon salt
good grinding of pepper
1 cup water

Fry onion, garlic and parsley stalks, and brown pork in the same pan (if you have a casserole dish that can go on the stovetop, use this, if not, you will need to improvise!).  Mix remaining ingredients and pour over/around pork.  Allow to come to a gentle bubble, then remove from stovetop and place in a 140c oven (put a lid on it).  Cook in the 140c oven for 6-7 hours.  Until pork is falling apart.  Then remove the meat from the sauce and pull it apart with a fork.  I found I had too much liquid, so only put some of it through the pulled pork.  This could be because I used 1 cup of water instead of the half in the original recipe.  Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve.  (or put in fridge, then transport to lunch the next day, reheat gently in microwave, sprinkle with parsley and serve!) Serve with fresh bread rolls and make pulled pork rolls!




We also had a delicious garden salad from Gina & Scott



and this potato salad which I made (simply potatoes and snow peas in a dressing made with half a bottle of potato salad dressing and the same quantity of greek yoghurt.)

For Dessert, I made @everydaycook's famous brownies (topped with toasted hazelnuts)and some cinnamon donut icecream to go with them....

the icecream recipe goes like this......

Ingredients
2 cups milk
3 cinnamon donuts
extra milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups cream

put milk and donuts into a saucepan and warm over a medium heat.  When hot, but not boiling, remove from heat and put lid on saucepan.  Allow to cool.  Strain milk through fine sieve so that no lumps are present.  Measure how much milk you are left with, and use extra milk to make amount back up to 2 cups.

Place the donut flavoured milk into a saucepan with the 3 eggs. Beat eggs and milk together well, stir in the sugar.  Stir constantly over a low to medium heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of spoon.    Cool.  Stir in the cream. Refrigerate until cold (overnight if you like).  I use an icecream machine to churn the chilled mix until frozen

Baking - Choc-choc chip cookies

I promised Janet I would bake some choc chip cookies, so after buying some choc chips, I decided to use the recipe on the back of the packet!  I made a couple of changes....

125g butter (soft)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 egg
1 1/2 cups Self Raising Flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 packet Dark Choc Chips (I used Cadbury 230g packet) (recipe actually says to use 3/4 cup, but thats nearly the whole packet anyway)

leave butter out of fridge until soft!! Preheat Oven to 160 C, cream butter & sugars until light and fluffy, mix in vanilla and egg.  Stir in Flour & cocoa, add choc chips.  I needed to add a little water to the mix as I found it a bit too dry.

Place dessertspoonfuls (original recipe calls for teaspoonfuls - but I thought this was a little stingy!)of mixture onto trays lined with baking paper.  Bake in oven for 10-15 minutes.  Allow to cool on trays.

Enjoy!!

Cupcakes - Chocolate & Vanilla

I made these same cupcakes for 2 different events that we had, both on the same weekend.

ingredients for cupcakes


250ml cream

220g caster sugar

2 eggs

225g self raising flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons cocoa powder


preheat oven to 180c and line your muffin tins with cupcake wrappers (makes about 18 cupcakes).



whisk together cream, sugar and eggs until well combined. Gradually add flour and beat until smooth, add vanilla. Take half of the mixture and put into a seperate bowl.  TO the remaining half, add the cocoa powder and mix well (add a little milk if the mixture gets too thick)

dollop alternate spoons from each bowl into cupcake wrappers and bake for about 20 minutes (keep an eye on them!)

When cakes have cooled, ice with vanilla icing (icing sugar, a dab of butter & hot water), then drizzle randomly with melted dark chocolate (I melt in the microwave, them ut into a plastic bag and snip off the corner, for easy drizzling)

Garden Salad - from the actual garden!!

I made a delicious salad - the majority of the ingredients were from our vegie garden!! This was very exciting for me!!!!

Basically, I tossed together lettuce, baby spinach and a mixture of herbs with some roasted beetroot (I put the beetroot into a parcel of aluminium foil with some herbs and a splash of water, and roasted until softened, then splashed the chopped cooked beetroot with a little raspberry vinegar), and some fetta cheese.  I mixed up a quick dressing using olive oil, raspberry vinegar, and some honey mustard, which I drizzled over the leaves.

It was great to be able to make use of some home-grown vegies!!!! Although it makes for quite n expensive salad, if you take into account the cost of setting up the garden in the first place - handyman, dirt delivery etc, but of course, the garden will be around for a long time!!! And hopefully will provide us with more than one salad :-)




Actually, a week later, I made another salad from the garden - this time a Green Garden Salad - I made up a pesto using macadamias, garlic, parmesan and basil & parsley, which I  added a tablespoon of to the usual salad dressing ingredients of olive oil and vinegar. I tossed this dressing over lettuce leaves and baby spinach from the garden to create a very tasty and simple salad.  Seem to have forgotten to make it smile for the camera before it was eaten however!!

Spaghetti Pie!

Here is an easy dinner - delicious too!!

It involves cooking some spaghetti and mixing with a tomato sauce (I make my own with garlic, onion, tomatoes and basil, but use a jar if thats easier!).  You want the sauce to just coat the spaghetti, you don't want it swimming with sauce.

Spread half of the tomatoey spaghetti in the base of an oven proof dish. 

Mix together a tub of ricotta cheese, 2 beaten eggs, a little grated parmesan and a grated zucchini (or baby spinach), and whatever fresh herbs you like.

spread this over the spaghetti.  Top with the remaining tomatoey spaghetti, sprinkle over some grated cheese and backe in a moderate oven for 30-40 minutes!  Cut into pieces to serve. YUM!!