In my Christmas Kitchen 2020

 My friends it's been a cooking frenzy in my kitchen this last week, preparing for Christmas and the arrival of our daughter and family. Sore feet, music constantly playing, lots of water and the occasional vino, have ensured the marathon is completed. 

Ricciarelli Biscuits or Italian Almond Biscuits

Italian biscuits like these are always such a treat. The Christmas Countdown is on for us. My daughter and family arrive on Monday from Cairns which is such a joyous thought, however that means lots of cooking, cleaning and organising, but as much time for blogging. I wanted to try these little Italian biscuits which my friend Christine baked during the week for our Mahjong afternoon tea and given more time I would have baked a second batch, if only just to improve the presentation of them. Please believe me though that these biscuits taste absolutely amazing, are gluten free, and are my favourite new biscuit for Christmas. I learned a lot cooking this first batch. I will be halving the sugar back to 125 g in future as Christine did. If you are a really sweet tooth, well go for the full 250 g by all means, but I find that with the reduced sugar I can eat two of them. Next time I will make them into attractive little rectangular parcels which is a pretty look. I also reduced my oven heat to 160 deg. C for these, however next time it will be 180 deg. as Sylvia Colloca suggests, as I like the slightly crazed and cracked look that results. Given all of that though, these are delicious and will keep in an airtight container for a few weeks. 

If you make them and I urge you to, I suggest you bake a double batch, as they will disappear very quickly.

 Makes 16-18

Ingredients:

300 g (3 cups) almond meal

250 g caster sugar (125 g is enough sugar)

2 egg whites

finely grated zest of 1 lemon

icing sugar, for dusting

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 180 deg. C fan forced and conventional. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Mix the almond meal and sugar in a large bowl. Add the egg whites and lemon zest and mix through to create a paste (using your hands is best here.) Pinch off pieces of paste and shape into 3 cm x 4 cm rectangles (give or take). This mixture is very pliable. I like to make mine look a little bit more interesting by placing indents of my fingers around the edges and then a slight thumbprint in the middle. Dust in the icing sugar to coat well, then place onto the lined tray, leaving room for spreading. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the biscuits look slightly marked or crazed and the bottom is firm.
3. Cool on a rack. These biscuits keep for weeks in an airtight container, so you can double the ingredients if you like and make a bigger batch.

This is an Italian family recipe by Silvia Colloca for SBS food.

Last night Mr. HRK and I attended a Christmas concert at the Conservatorium of Music here in Mackay, which was a beautiful sparkly event and was hosted by the brilliant Professor Judith Brown who is also a remarkable pianist. Community choirs, and graduate and current students all dressed up and blinged up and performed on stage. Judith reminded everyone of the true meaning of Christmas. The Conservatorium of Music is a Faculty of the Central Queensland University. Before I retired, one of my roles at the University was as the Music Librarian for the  Con as we call it, and as part of that role I attended lots of the student concerts and got to know the talented staff and students very well. This year has of course been a difficult one for music students and performers everywhere, as there have been no concerts permitted or avenues for performance, because of the pandemic. So last night was very special for them and for us, and I realised  all over again how much I love attending concerts, and just how important music is for the soul, and yes I always have music playing when I am cooking, do you? Bring on Christmas!

Happy Christmas baking my friends,

Warm wishes

Pauline

Pasta Liguria with pesto, new potatoes, and green beans

With this recipe we are travelling in the kitchen to Liguria, in northwestern Italy, where it's Mediterranean coastline is known as the Italian Riviera. Liguria's most famous specialities are pesto and focaccia, which can be served plain, or with tasty variations like onion, olives, sage, cheese etc.

In My Kitchen, November 2020

Beautiful Jacaranda trees growing in our street

It's a lovely time of year with the Jacaranda trees in flower and my Dancing Lady orchids (oncidiums) producing beautiful golden sprays of colour this year. I feel as if I have lost a week though, as I started this post a week ago and then we received news that our brother-in-law was in intensive care in Rockhampton which is in Central Queensland, following surgery. Jim is blind and has been for over 20years, he is incredibly independent though. But his blindness adds extra complications to any health issues. Knowing that Jim's children and family in NSW wouldn't be able to visit him because of Covid restrictions and other family couldn't get there until Monday we drove down, after all Mackay is only 350 kms up the road from Rky. Rockhampton is my hometown, so it is always nice to go back,  perhaps under better circumstances though. We drove home yesterday after 6 days of visiting the hospital, and Jim seems to be doing quite well in rehab at the Mater Hospital now so I'm so pleased we could be there for him. The staff at the Rockhampton Base Hospital provided excellent care for him. 

Dancing Lady orchids

A highlight of the trip though was that Mr. HRK and I found a grove of Common mango trees where we took our dog Locky for a walk each day, still green but ready for picking, and perfect for making mango chutney. So my handyman husband repaired Jim's specially designed mango picker,  and on Wednesday we picked two bags of mangoes. We needed enough mangoes for 2 kilos of mango flesh. Jim also has a thriving Bowen Mango tree in his backyard, so we picked all of those for him and brought back just a dozen for ourselves. Common mangoes don't have the lovely pink blush around the stalk that the Bowen mangoes have, as they ripen then turn yellow.

A bowl of Green Common Mangoes ready for cooking.

It's interesting though that the mangoes in Mackay are still not ready for harvesting despite being further North, Rky has surprisingly had more rain than us. So today in my kitchen can you guess what I've been doing all morning, yes my friends, making mango chutney as some of the mangoes have started to ripen already with the warmer weather around. The mangoes need to be very green and hard for making chutney or the flesh will just break down too easily in the chutney. The result, 13 jars of spicy and sweet mango chutney which I am very pleased with. Mr. HRK peeled them while I sliced them up, and then I cooked up the mixture in a large pot, outside in our patio BBQ area on the gas burner, our outdoor kitchen. It took 45 minutes. So it's Mango Madness here in the North, or anywhere where there are mangoes growing, heralding the beginning of the Christmas preparations. Traditionally mango chutney is eaten with ham on Christmas. Day. However we eat it all year round. 

Click here for my Mango Chutney recipe on a previous post.

All the ingredients are in the pot, ready for cooking

My latest batch of mango chutney still to be labelled and stored.

Just before we left for Rockhampton, I made this delicious Chicken, Tomato and Basil traybake using up some fresh tomatoes given to me by my wonderful friend Irena. It was delicious.  I'll put up the recipe one day soon. 

My sweet Italian basil is growing beautifully this year, so I made some pesto from it. It was so delicious, the best pesto I have ever made, mainly because I think the basil was so fresh. The pesto is all gone, so I need to make some more. However here is the recipe I used from River Cottage Veg everyday, written by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. A great recipe book and never far from my kitchen.

Hey presto we have delicious basil pesto

Basil Pesto ingredients:

50 g pine nuts or walnuts, lightly toasted (I used pine nuts this time)

A large bunch of basil (about 30 g), leaves only

1 large bunch of parsley (about 30 g), leaves only

A few mint leaves (optional)

1 garlic clove, chopped

50 g Parmesan, hard goats cheese, or other well flavoured hard cheese, finely grated

 (I use parmesan)

 Finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon

100-150 ml extra virgin olive oil

A good squeeze of lemon juice

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To Serve:

Extra virgin olive oil, to trickle over the top (optional)

Method:

Put the toasted pine nuts into the food processor along with the herbs, garlic, grated cheese and lemon zest. Blitz to a paste, then, with the motor running, slowly pour in the olive oil until you have a thick, sloppy puree. Scrape the pesto into a bowl and season with salt, pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice. This will keep in the refrigerator for a few days. Sometimes I make a  pasta dish using this pesto with new potatoes, and green beans. Delicious!

Below is my Brassia Rex orchid in flower at this time of year. It's quite an un usual flower.

Nasturtiums from a friend make a lovely posy in a vase in the kitchen. This is the last of them now unfortunately that the Summer heat takes it's toll on some garden plants.

 I started sewing a couple of weeks ago, and made this book bag for Hugo our grandson, and sent it in a Christmas parcel over to the Falkland Islands with a book inside of course. I really enjoy sewing once I get started. This is an easy project and very useful. I'll be making some more for the children in the future.

I've written this post as part of the In My Kitchen series hosted by Sherrys Pickings. It is worthwhile dropping over to her posts if you haven't already

We are so fortunate here in Queensland that life continues pretty much as normal now, however we are aware that the the Covid pandemic situation overseas is still very concerning. You are all in our thoughts and prayers and one of the biggest global challenges now is to produce and distribute a  reliable vaccine that immunises populations across the world against this dreadful virus.

That's all folks, have a safe weekend. My next project today, soaking the fruit and nuts for this years Christmas cake.

Warm wishes,

Pauline.

Gingered Garlic Pork with Stir Fried Vegetables

This is the perfect meal on a hot and sticky day like we are experiencing today, it's light and tasty. I love the way we Aussies describe a day like today, it's a Stinker, or it's Muggy and we are always hoping for rain or a storm. 

Spanish Vegetable Stew with Chorizo

I had an abundance of vegetables in my refrigerator crisper needing to be used during the week, and rather than do a traybake of them, or donate them eventually to the compost bin, I decided to make a rich vegetable stew with a Spanish theme and Mediterranean flavours. 

Thai Style Vegetable Green Curry, a Meat Free Monday recipe

I often cook a green chicken curry with some vegetables included especially if I have eggplant needing to be used, but this time, using the Five Tastes Green Curry Paste in a vegetarian version I was so thrilled with the amazing flavour of this curry, minus the chicken. Thai food is a very popular cuisine in Australia, partly due to our proximity to South East Asia, our climate, and the ease with which we can grow many fresh Asian herbs and vegetables. It just tastes so very good. 

Bulgur or Bourghal Wheat Risotto with Chicken and Artichokes

It's easy to treat yourself to a fast, tasty and nutritious meal at the end of a busy day from food in your pantry. This is a quick post, to share with you a deceptively easy and delicious midweek meal. At the end of a busy day, if you have some left over chicken in the frig, a bottle of  preserved artichokes in your pantry, some bulgur wheat, and some white wine for the dish and the cook, voila you have the makings of a tasty and nutritious meal only 45 minutes max away.  

Showcasing In My Kitchen, October 2020

 

I've been going to make Golden Syrup Dumplings  for MR. HRK for a while now, definitely one of his faves, and when I saw Maggie Beer make a guest appearance on journalist Annabel Crabb's  recent TV show, "Back in Time for Dinner", broadcast on the ABC here in Australia over four Tuesday nights,  I couldn't put it off any longer. I've made Golden Syrup dumplings a  few times in the past, always delicious, but I thought I would try Maggie's recipe this time. Yes I'm quite a fan of Maggie Beer, show me someone that isn't.

Watching this series was quite nostalgic in a way for our age group as we found ourselves reminiscing over  the various pieces of kitchen and garden equipment that we remember from our childhood days. Not during the wartime era I hasten to add, we definitely weren't around then or even thought of, however by the 1950's and the 1960's some of those old Aussie things, now vintage, were still around in some homes.

Something I found interesting during the 1920's episode of "Back in Time for Dinner"  was the revolutionary appearance of canned food in the kitchen pantry in the 1920s and the excitement that caused for the woman of the house. Offal was still a readily available and popular choice for meals, and we even ate our fair share of it, but suddenly the housewives were creating a plethora of meals out of canned meat, canned fish, and canned fruit and vegetables. There was no disgrace in serving a meal out of a tin, and it's still ok if it's baked beans, sardines, tuna, salmon, or spaghetti. Now it seems there is no disgrace in serving a meal out of a bottle, although as you know if you read my posts regularly, I like to mainly cook from scratch now that I have the time. However pantry staples such as tinned food are still important as an economical and  time saving resource. As well as all of the homemade jams, chutneys and pickles in my pantry, I keep a good stock of tinned tomatoes, chick peas, corn, pulses, sliced beetroot, sardines, tuna, sliced apples, pineapple pieces, and condensed milk as a minimum. Does that sound like your pantry these days?

No bully beef or Spam in sight though, as were the staples in the wartime era. After the First World War, attention turned to manufacturing food for the population, instead of the soldiers. Post War in the 1920's, the Ad man arrived, and gas ovens, couches, lino floors, new household appliances, and tinned food, sparked up everyone's lives. Let's not forget the glamourous Flappers either, it was party time.

Along with the tinned food innovation,  came the humble can opener, and some subsequent kitchen accidents, as these weren't easy appliances to use. The old can opener was really sharp, and a warning to watch your fingers came with it. I would have hated that can opener, and I can remember it still being around in kitchens in the 60s. This a photo of the one in the show. 

Then along came this one, a slight improvement. I remember trying to wrestle with this one in my Mum's kitchen. They seemed to go blunt quite quickly.

When the electric can opener appeared, in the 70s I think, it was revolutionary and everyone had to have one to make life easier. We still laugh when remembering that Mr. HRK and I received four  electric can openers for wedding presents in 1977, that's how popular they were. They were all the same, and yellow if I remember correctly,  and we know where in Rockhampton our young friends went to purchase them. It was at Millroys, a much smaller version  of Myer today, no clothing though that I remember. The electric can opener looked something like this, I don't have fond memories of that one either.

Thankfully now, most of the cans are ring top making life a lot easier. However I wish cans of condensed milk still needed to be opened with a can opener as boiling a can with a ring top to make caramel always worries me, even though I have had no disasters as yet. Touch wood! Which raises the question my friends, do you still have a can opener in your kitchen, or do you prefer an electric one or do you use one at all? I like my hand operated can opener, an easy one to use and occasionally I still need to use it.

Enough reminiscing, let's cook some dumplings, requiring no can openers. When I have cooked dumplings in the past, I have placed them in the frying pan to cook with the simmering sauce just as we sat down to eat the main meal, and they were ready when we finished eating. Although I always checked them after 20 minutes. However if you like a long interval between the main course and dessert, just slide them into the sauce as soon as you finish your main course. How you do it,  could depend on whether you are eating with your family, or entertaining guests. Golden syrup has been around in kitchen pantries for a long time, definitely since the 1940s anyway, and these dumplings have been a very economical and popular dessert through the decades.

Golden Syrup Dumplings, this recipe originally by Australian cook and chef, Maggie Beer

Ingredients for dumplings:

1 cup self raising flour

Salt to taste

20g  butter

1 egg

50 ml milk

Ingredients for Golden Syrup Sauce:

1/2 cup golden syrup

3/4 cup brown sugar firmly packed

30g  butter

2 cups water

METHOD:

• Sift the self raising flour into a bowl and add a pinch of salt.
• Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs, and then add the whisked egg and stir to combine.
• Slowly add the milk and mix gently until the dough just comes together and resembles a scone mix (do not over work the dough or it will be tough instead of light and fluffy.) Set aside.
• Combine all sauce ingredients into a large frypan. Bring to the boil to amalgamate before reducing heat to a gentle simmer.
• Flour your hands and roll the dough into the size of a twenty cent piece. Smaller dumplings will absorb more sauce.
• Slip the balls off the baking paper all together into the syrup. Cover the frypan with foil to form a tight seal and cover with the lid. Cook for about 10 minutes before turning them over to cool for another 10 minutes on the other side. (Turning them over is optional.)
• Remove with a slotted spoon and serve with the remaining sauce and a jug of runny cream or ice-cream or even custard. Whatever you prefer. The dumplings will steal the show anyway.

Where would we be without this Golden elixir called Golden Syrup

There is reference to a version of Golden Syrup being produced at the Spiller's Sugar Plantation here in Mackay, North Queensland, in 1868. Outback shearers and station hands bought their golden syrup in 70lb. (30 kg.) tins, naming it "Cocky's Joy". Small farmers in Australia were also called a cocky in the first half of the 20th century. Cattle farmers were called cow cockys. Golden syrup was much easier to transport in tins than jam and often used as a substitute for butter on their damper. Who doesn't love Aussie damper with Golden Syrup, especially over a campfire? This  Golden Syrup story reinforces what a culinary icon it still is in our kitchens. Mine is in a plastic bottle here but I generally buy it in a decorative tin. 

What is the most valued appliance in your kitchen my friends? I would have to say mine are my Kitchen Aid, and our Rancilio Coffee machine and coffee grinder. The slow cooker and pressure cooker are great as well, we are lucky aren't we?

I like to collect  pretty milk and water jugs, which I use so I thought I would share a few of these with you.  I also love these beaded jug covers which are very useful. I inherited these, and still use them although I wish I could crochet as a couple are in need of a little repair. 

This past 12 months of living with the pandemic, has meant that some of the survival skills needed during the 1900's to 1950's as discussed in the show have been needed in our own homes. Simple home cooking, growing our own food, making our own coffee, avoiding supermarkets when we can, and just general resourcefulness have become a saviour during difficult times. Resourcefulness and resilience is surely in our DNA if we tap into it.

I've written this post as part of the In My Kitchen series hosted by Sherrys Pickings. It is worthwhile dropping over to her posts if you haven't already.
 

Warmest wishes

Pauline

                   

Sherrys Pickings

Impromptu Spring Chicken, Tomato and Eggplant Traybake Surprise

 It was one of those rare days on the weekend when I hadn't planned what we were having for dinner. It was a beautiful Spring day, perfect for gardening, and that's what we did in the morning and the late afternoon until the sun was setting and it was Sundowner time. When I stepped into the kitchen, I knew I had 6 chicken thighs in the frig which needed cooking but beyond that I hadn't organised any specific ingredients to be on hand for cooking. Not like me at all. Does that sound familiar? I love a tasty traybake, and that is what I cooked in the end using ingredients on hand from the garden and the pantry and the frig.  So here it is my foodie friends, my impromptu Spring traybake and it was delicious. 

Tarte aux Fraises (Classic French Strawberry tart)

Spring is here, and the good news is that the strawberries are still sweet, unless you buy them from the supermarket. This traditional French dessert combines a buttery almond pastry crust, with juicy ripe strawberries and a parade of other seasonal fruits. Traditionally this tart is decorated just with strawberries, but with the bounty of other fresh fruits on hand at the moment, I decided to combine them with blueberries, mandarin segments, and kiwi fruit.

This is a no fuss tart that I have brushed with an apricot jam glaze on all of the fruits. Apricot jam is commonly used to glaze fruit tarts in France,  and this is what I used, as after baking my Apricot Almond Cake for Fathers' Day, I still have a lot of Apricot Jam left over. However other fruit based jams work just as well for glazing, such as peach jam, strawberry jam etc. I've also included a more traditional glaze recipe using potato flour and redcurrant jelly if you would like to try that. However they are not items that I keep on hand so I didn't try that glaze.

 I fondly remember when we were in France, every boulangerie (bakery) had display cabinets full of enticing and colourful fruit tarts. Well we can't travel there now unfortunately, but we can eat their famous tarts. Instead of using the traditional "creme patissiere" in my Tarte, I have used a French Chantilly style whipped cream, with swirls of homemade lemon curd laced through it. However the lemon curd is optional, and the tart will still taste great without it.  I think lemon curd could be the secret ingredient though. The beauty of this confection is that you can prepare it a couple of hours ahead of serving, it will stay in tact for a few hours in the refrigerator,  yes I tested this out, or wait to assemble it at the last moment. My friends I'd suggest the former as honestly who wants to be assembling a tart like this while your family or guests are waiting for dessert, not the French or moi that's for sure. 

This tart serves 10 generously so there can be plenty of leftovers if you are making this for fewer people. It tastes great the next day as well. It might look complicated to make this dessert, and to be honest I felt a bit challenged by it, but it turned out to be much simpler than I thought. At the back of my mind I was thinking of contingencies for a dessert replacement in case it didn't work out. Thankfully it came together beautifully so no contingency plan needed. 

Anyway let's cook.

Equipment:

Use a flat Willow pizza tray, 28 cm across for these ingredients. Or for a 23cm tray use 1/3 less ingredients. Line with Glad Bake. The only round pizza trays that I own now have holes in the base so I lined the tray first with alfoil and then covered the alfoil with baking parchment. It worked well. I then very carefully transferred the cooked and chilled pastry base to a serving plate for decorating.

Pastry Ingredients:

1 cup plain flour
120 g softened butter
2 tablespoons icing sugar
60 g slivered almonds

Method:

Mix butter and icing sugar together. Add the flour.

Mix into a paste.

Refrigerate the dough overnight. Allow the dough to soften the next day (you should be able to push your thumb through the mixture.) Or you could make the pastry and chill it for 30 minutes before using.

Press into the tray lined with Glad Bake, and flatten to the edges.
Press the slivered almonds into the surface of the dough,

Place into a medium oven, 180 deg. F for 10-15 minutes until cooked.

Allow to cool on the bench until ready to use or refrigerate for 1/2 hour.

Chantilly Cream Topping with Lemon Curd:

Mix together  3/4 cup whipped cream, including 2 tablespoon caster sugar or less, and a few drops of vanilla essence. Mix 3 tablespoons of homemade lemon curd through the whipped cream.

Spread onto tart base.

Decorate the cream with a combination or fresh seasonal fruits, such as Strawberries, mandarin,  blueberries, or kiwi fruit, or just strawberries.

Apricot Jam Glaze for fruits

2 tablespoons apricot jam

Method:

Warm up apricot jam in the microwave for 15 seconds and pass through a fine mesh strainer to discard any fruit chunks. 

Gently brush jam over the strawberries and other fruits.

Chill tart on your serving plate for up to 3 hours before serving.

Optional Fruit Glaze instead of Apricot Jam:

1 teaspoon potato flour,
3 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon redcurrant jelly

Method:

Bring to the boil until slightly thickened. Cool before spreading over the fruit

We are buying strawberries every weekend now from our local farmer's truck at Fresh As Sweet As, enjoying their juicy sweetness while we can. These strawberries actually taste like strawberries and now that they are getting smaller as the end of the season is imminent there are more to a punnet. They were a good size for this tart.

Thanks for dropping by and I hope your are finding time to relax this weekend.

Warm wishes

Pauline

Showcasing In My Kitchen, September 2020

Sunday morning foraging has become part of our routine whilst the local farms still have beautiful produce before the heat of Summer takes it's toll. Most Sunday mornings we visit the farm truck of a local Mackay farm called Sweet As Fresh As, and indeed it is just that. This is what I bought yesterday, golden sweet corn, heritage cherry tomatoes (not in the photo), zucchinis, and strawberries. The pineapple is from a local pineapple farm and I purchased it from the corner shop near us. Pineapples are in season here at the moment and are very sweet. The strawberries are sweet and delicious and the corn hardly needs any cooking at all. It's nice and so easy here to bring home some fresh produce from local suppliers. It lasts much longer than what I buy at the supermarket,which travels a long way to get here. Buying what is locally in season and cooking with that is what I try to do.

The previous weekend, I purchased these, and at a very reasonable price.

Our daughter arrived home as a big Father's Day surprise for Mr. HRK, which was on the 6th September here in Australia this year, although I knew she was driving down from Cairns. Mr. HRK didn't, so its been a lovely week with her home, and lots of home cooking and stories and laughter. It's so good when you can pull off a surprise isn't it? Delicious Spring Lamb is in the butcher shops  now at a very reasonable price, and when I baked a Leg of Lamb one night during the week flavoured with rosemary and garlic, I made this Cauliflower Cheese as one of the vegetable dishes to accompany the lamb. I always have lots of haloumi cheese in the refrigerator as Mr. HRK loves it and so I added haloumi slices around the circumference of the cauliflower cheese dish as I was a bit low on parmesan. It was really delicious, and the cheesier the better I reckon. By the way the cauliflower was also grown locally, and was so delicious I could also eat it raw.

A celebratory glass of champagne on Father's Day with our daughter was very nice. I made my
Tuna and Cannellini Bean Dip again as a snack to go with it and Shannon loved it. 

Of course there had to be a cake for Father's Day and Shannon's arrival. I've been wanting to make this one for ages, and my friends we just loved it. The flavour of apricot in cakes is one of my favourites, as we can very rarely buy nice apricots this far North. So here is Nigella Lawson's fragrant and delicious Apricot cake. If you can't quite come at using Rosewater in this, just leave it out.

Nigella's Apricot Almond Cake with Rosewater and Cardamon

Ingredients:

Serves 8-10

150 grams dried apricots

250 millilitres cold water

2 cardamon pods (cracked)

200 grams ground almonds

50 grams fine polenta (not instant)

1 teaspoon baking powder

150 grams caster sugar

6 large eggs

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon rosewater

nonstick spray or sunflower oil for greasing

For Decorating

2 teaspoons apricot jam

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 1/2 teaspoons very finely chopped pistachios

METHOD:

Grease and line a 1 x 20 cm/8-inch round spring form cake tin

1. Put the dried apricots into a small saucepan, cover them with cold water and drop in the cracked cardamon pods, still containing the fragrant cardamon seeds. Bring to the boil, and keep it bubbling on the stove for 10 minutes. Keep an eye on it as at the end of 10 minutes  the saucepan will be just about out of water but mustn't boil dry. The apricots will absorb more water as they cool. 
2. Take the saucepan off the heat and allow the apricots to cool.
3. Preheat your oven to 180 deg. C./160 deg. C. Fan, or Gas mark 4/350 deg. F.
4. Remove 5 of the dried apricots and tear each in half, and set them aside on a plate for a while. Discard the cardamon husks, leaving the seeds in the pan.
5. Pour and scrape out the sticky contents of the saucepan including the apricots into the bowl of a food processor. Add the ground almonds, polenta, baking powder, caster sugar and eggs, and give a good long blitz to combine.
6. Open up the top of the food processor, scrape down the batter, and add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and the rosewater, and blitz again, then scrape into the prepared cake tin and smooth the surface with a spatula. Arrange the apricot halves around the circumference of the tin.
7. Bake for 40 minutes, however if the cake is browning  too early, cover it loosely with foil at the 30 minute mark. I didn't need to do this. When it's ready, the cake will be coming away from the edges of the tin, the top will feel firm, and a cake tester will come out with just one or two damp crumbs on it.
8. Remove the cake to a wire rack. If you are using apricot jam to decorate and this gives a beautiful gloss and flavour to the cake, warm it up a little first to make it easier to spread. Stir a teaspoon of lemon juice into the jam and brush over the top of the cake. Then sprinkle with the pistachios and leave the cake to cool in its tin before releasing from the cake tin and removing to a serving plate.

With all of those very fresh zucchinis I bought, I just had to make Zucchini. Corn and Bacon Slice, a delicious family favourite. It was the week for our favourite foods.

Now I know I am cheating a little bit here, as this is supposed to be about My Kitchen, but I couldn't let the opportunity of my daughter visiting without us taking advantage of enjoying a High Tea  at the Fifth Floor Restaurant during the week. It is actually a hospitality training restaurant for Central Queensland University which merged with TAFE a few years ago and now teaches hospitality which was always the domain of TAFE. I used to work for CQU so I still keep my ear close to the ground about what happens there, and this High Tea was reasonably priced, delicious and located on the 5th floor of the inner city CQU building with nice surrounding views. The hospitality students waited on the tables and did a good job. They also cook and serve very nice lunches throughout the month.

The High Tea Menu. 

Spring is as much about gardening as cooking for us and we have been spending a lot of time gardening in the mornings. I collected a few bits and pieces form the garden to fill a vase to put on the bench in my kitchen, and the pretty pink leaves are from a Cordyline, which will strike shoots in a vase of water and can then easily be replanted. Cordylines bring very  nice colour to the tropical garden. We have a couple of garden projects going on at the moment, but I will write more about that later.

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event, that was started by Celia of Fig Jam and Lime Cordial,  If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month. I'm a bit late with this, but it is still the 13th somewhere in the world:)  Or just head over to her blog and visit more kitchens.

Warm wishes everyone and have a lovely week wherever you are,

Pauline xx