Very Easy White Butter Cake, a Family Recipe and Never a Failure.

 I'm back to baking this weekend and it feels great. This delicious cake to mind, when ingredients are so hard to come by in the supermarket during this critical period of increased stocking up by so many people, and rationing of the number of ingredients we can buy is the new normal. 

Portabello Mushroom Toast with Goat's Cheese, Pine Nuts and Chives, a perfect breakfast treat

Let's start our day with a delicious and healthy breakfast.  I now think of Breakfast, as an easy way to treat ourselves to something special, tasty and not necessarily expensive or time consuming, and to give us an important psychological and healthy boost to the day. This dish is also a perfect meal  for a Meat Free Monday dinner served with a delicious salad. Choosing Meat Free Mondays in our eating habits and reducing our met intake,  are simple ways to show respect for the mission by many to improve our own health and the health of the planet. 

I'm a cook and food writer, not a scientist, but I was interested to read that the BBC was quoting scientists when it said  that whilst there is no silver bullet to climate change, the humble mushroom has a role to play. The Mycelium, or the vast root systems of mushrooms, play an important role throughout various processes by improving the nutrient content of the soils. Those richer soils then encourage biodiversity by supporting diverse plant life..

Mushrooms make a surprisingly "meaty" accompaniment to anything from a baked potato gratin to a grain salad. Large Portobello mushrooms can be prepared like toast, and that is just what I did with these. Only not toasted, but grilled. This is such an easy way to cook big, flat, fresh mushrooms. Mushrooms, goat's cheese, pine nuts, and freshly snipped chives from the garden, what's not to love about this vegetarian dish for a weekend brekkie? Add a little finely chopped garlic straight onto the mushrooms if you wish. 

Portobello Mushroom Toast with Goat's Cheese, Pine Nuts and Chives, perfect for meat free Mondays

 I'll only buy mushrooms if they are available to buy loose and not packaged in plastic.  At least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans every year, with plastic making up 80% of all marine debris found from surface waters to deep-sea sediments (IUCN). Marine species are suffering severely from ingesting or becoming entangled by plastic debris. We all know this, and yet supermarkets continue to use so much plastic wrapping on their produce. Storing mushrooms them in the refrigerator crisper in a brown paper bag is the most sensible storage option.

I try to cook mainly with vegetables that are in season, and cooking with mushrooms is an easy decision as they are available all year round now in our shops in the Southern Hemisphere. I hope it's the same for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere. Mushrooms must be very fresh or they are not worth cooking,Wash them well, and most importantly, dry them well.  

Portobello Mushroom Toast with Goat's Cheese, Pine Nuts and Chives

Ingredients:

Serves 2

4 Portobello mushrooms 
Slurp of olive oil on each one
60 g soft goats cheese (Meredith Dairy soft goats cheese works well), or choose hard cheese
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 handfuls of fresh chives, snipped

Method:

Turn the oven grill to high.

Place the mushrooms open side up on the baking tray, drizzle with the oil and season with a pinch of salt and plenty of black pepper. 

Place under the grill for 3 minutes.

Remove the mushrooms from the grill, dot on the Goat's cheese and sprinkle with the pine nuts.

Place the mushrooms back under the grill for a further 2 minutes until Goats cheese is further softened and pine nuts are toasted. The pine nuts need to be watched as they will burn if left under the grill for too long.

Sprinkle on the snipped chives to serve. 

Served with homemade spicy tomato relish, or any savoury relish, in my opinion these rival any meal served in a cafe for brekkie. Add delicious bread on the side if you wish.

Say healthy,

Gorgeous German Plum Cake

Ripe blood plums are in season at the moment, however in North Queensland unfortunately they aren't available for long.  Inspired by a delicious Plum cake we ate at the Groove cafe in Annerley on a visit to South Brisbane, and because I was entertaining my Mahjong friends who love a good cake, I made this very special plum cake. The recipe was originally created  by Stephanie Alexander, and she called it Mieze's Plum Cake, after a German friend of hers who introduced her to this cake. I think this would be a perfect cake to bake over Easter, for a special meal.

This is a large mixture, capable of serving 12 people for dessert, if it is baked in a 28 cm spring form tin. If you aren't feeding a crowd, just halve this recipe and use a smaller spring form tin.

The less cake mixture in the base the better, so only filling the cake tin a quarter full with the cake mixture is the preferable way to make the cake. It rises so well. I have also baked this in a smaller 23 cm tin and used the extra batter to bake a smaller cake for Mr. HRK. That kept him happy until the other one was served up a day later.

Ingredients:

275 g softened butter
250 g sugar
200 g plain flour
200 g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
100 ml milk
1 cup ground almonds or fresh breadcrumbs
20 ripe blood plums, halved and stoned

TOPPING

125 g butter
200 g sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
4 eggs

Preheat oven to 180 deg C and lightly grease a 28 cm spring form tin. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in flours and salt. Add eggs and milk to make a soft dough ( the mixture should drop easily from the spoon.) Spoon batter into prepared tin (it should not fill more than a quarter of the depth of the tin as the cake rises a great deal) then sprinkle over the ground almonds. Arrange the plums, cut-side up, on top,starting around outside edge and working towards centre. (Have one yourself as they are delicious.)

To make the topping, melt the butter and stir in the sugar and cinnamon, then allow to cool. Whisk eggs well and stir into cooled butter mixture. Spoon over and around plums on top of cake. Bake for 1 hour, and test with a skewer that the cake is cooked in the centre.

Serve warm with cream or ice-cream. Any leftover cake can be warmed up, wrapped in foil in the oven at 180 deg. C for 15 minutes. There won't be much left over though, I assure you.

Thanks Stephanie Alexander, this is a brilliant recipe.

Best wishes

Pauline

Quick Blueberry Self Saucing Pudding

Need a quick but delicious pudding for dessert just because you want some comfort food in a hurry on a rainy and windy day, or for just no particular reason?  A self saucing pudding always hits the mark. This post is laced with nostalgia, focusing on a pudding recipe that Mr. HRK passed on to me from his Mum Jessie, a long time ago. All of the ingredients were already in my pantry so that was easy. I added dried blueberries to the batter instead of using currants or sultanas, as that's what I had left over from making my Rustic Blueberry Scones. I always try to keep a couple of packets of dried blueberries on hand as they come in so handy.

The Falkland Island's Gentoo Penguins and a fresh Mango, Coriander and Corn salad

Dear Friends,

You can use what you have on hand for this salad but the fresh ingredients of mango, cherry  tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin, shallots and coriander really pack such a punch of flavour into the rest of the ingredients. No need for a dressing at all. The beauty of a salad is that it can be anything you like, served for main course, a side dish or just a nourishing bowl to munch on. This is the easiest salad ever, it's the many ingredients which bring the flavour to the dish and we loved it.

It's great to be home again after being away for 7 weeks in the Falkland Islands, Chile and Peru and I am embracing the freedom of eating salads. A lot can happen on such a trip and it did, some good and some not so good. I hope to share some of my stories with you over the next few months and once the jet lag settles, and my mojo returns I have lots of recipes to try and experiences to share.

This post is dedicated to the amazing and quite gregarious Gentoo Penguins we visited on the Falkland Islands.

We just couldn't get enough of the Penguins on East Falklands Island, so I thought I would share a Penguin story with you. We drove along the beach in our son's Falkland's inherited Land Rover, to Bertha's Beach, located on Fitzroy Farm, a very large working sheep farm, (and there's a whole book written about the fleet of Falkland Island's Land Rovers if you are interested). People are often recognised by the Land Rover they drive in Stanley, so as we had use of it for the month that we lived in the Falklands, we received lots of friendly and knowing waves from locals, ha, ha.  We saw this gorgeous colony of Gentoo Penguins on the beach and in the moorland. Suzi and Gilberto who manage Fitzroy Farm for Falklands Landholdings gave us permission, via Matthew,  to access the beach (for a bottle of red wine) and along with a few tourist buses we were treated to the beauty, magic, and wonderfully inquisitive personalities of these intriguing animals. Here we are driving in Matthew's Land Rover along the beach towards the parking lot near Bertha's Beach and the penguins.



Bertha's Beach is located only 6 miles from the Mt. Pleasant Military Base and Airport at Stanley, which is where we flew into on LATAM Airlines, on arriving at the Falkland Islands. Such an interesting part of the world to be driving through a high security military zone, before entering a pristine and protected penguin sanctuary. Besides managing one of the largest sheep farms on the islands, Suzi and Gilberto are also quite self sufficient and very eco friendly on their own farming patch, rearing pigs, chickens, orphaned lambs, and growing what fruit and vegetables they can, weather permitting. The extreme weather at times in the Falkland Islands can be very challenging. Suzi invited us into her lovely home for a cup of tea and then showed us around their farm. Such beautiful country hospitality and an amazing day. Thanks so much Suzi and Gilberto.

We were so excited when we arrived at the beach and saw all of the Penguins. Many hungry Penguin chicks were waiting on the beach for their Mother's to return from the ocean to feed them. Interestingly the adult penguins feed in the ocean close to the shore, they don't venture into the deeper ocean like some breeds do.

Mum feeding her hungry chick.

Beautiful countryside back from the beach near where we had lunch. Matthew's Land Rover features in the background.

We were told not to approach the Penguins and keep a distance of at least 3 metres from them however some were quite inquisitive and approached us. There was also lots of seaweed and kelp on the white sandy beach which is abundant throughout the Falkland Island oceans.

I never thought that I, a food lover, would lose my appetite to the extent I did in Peru. The effects of High altitude in Cusco and Puno, I wouldn't call it altitude sickness in my case, plus a bout of food poisoning which is pretty common despite extreme hygiene and precautions, left me living on boiled eggs and toast, and Coca tea infusions for three days during our last week there, only a week before this last one. We spent our final two South American nights in Santiago in Chile in the beautiful Hotel Cumbres, organised by our tour company Chimu. This was such a panacea before we embarked on our flight back to Sydney, connecting to Brisbane and Mackay. Mr. HRK had a chest infection for some of the trip, and on presenting himself to our local GP on arriving home was of course tested for Corona Virus and many other things. He is now fine. Anyway we are here to tell the tale and I think we should have taken this trip to Peru and Chile 20 years ago. However many of the travellers half our age were suffering from altitude sickness in various forms as well, and oxygen tanks are readily available for use in most hotels and restaurants. The first 10 minutes of usage is free of charge. It helps with the breathlessness. I had organised for medication to take for altitiude sickness from my GP before we left Australia so we only suffered from breathlessness and loss of appetite, not the severe headaches and nausea.

On  our return to Mackay, our good friend Mr. S collected us from the airport and waiting for us in an esky on the patio was a cooked piece of Corned Silverside, a delicius Mango and Coriander salad that I am featuring today, and a healthy quinoa salad made by Mrs. S. Wow my appetite returned on the spot, and our dinner that night will be remembered by me as one of the best I have ever eaten. Eating freshly prepared salads and fruits can be a risky undertaking in Peru and Chile when travelling, because of the risk of contamination and water impurities which I probably found out the hard way. So it was just amazing to be able to demolish this delicious food without any qualms. This is my version of the salad which Mr. and Mrs. S made for us.

.Ingredients:

1 roughly chopped Kite Mango, or any firm mango
1 cup chopped cooked pumpkin
2 tablespoons chopped coriander of more if you really are a coriander fan (to taste really)
1 drained can of corn kernels
4 shredded lettuce leaves
2 cups roughly chopped cucumber
1 chopped red capsicum
2 cups finely chopped carrot
1 cup cranberries
1 drained can chickpeas
1 punnet chopped cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped shallots or more if you like the zing
1/2 cup baby capers

Method:

Mix all the ingredients together and refrigerate. Add the pumpkin, mango and tomatoes just before serving if you prefer so it is all perfectly fresh, however this keeps in the refrigerator very well for a few days.

Thankfully we organised our Peruvian and Chilean tours through a Sunshine Coast travel company named Chimu, who then outsource all of the tours through various South American tour companies. In Peru, Chimu organised for the Tourist doctor to come and visit me and prescribe medication, which is challenging enough when I don't speak Spanish and they don't speak English, however we all did our best and I have survived to tell the tale.

One of the challenges of an extended but still temporary stay in the Falkand Islands is that there is no free WiFi anywhere. Even in the Tourist Information Centre, WiFi access is only available through SURE, the Telco, for a 5 pound minimum. I soon discovered that  creating a Facebook post from there can quickly use up a 10 pound credit. So consequently given our travels, I am very behind with reading my favourite bloggers posts and I may never catch up, so thank you everyone for bearing with me. I am still in the land of the living.

So my friends do you remember after returning from an overseas trip how much you enjoyed your first meal back on Australian soil. We live in such an amazing country here in Australia, despite the challenges we face at times. Peru is after all a third world country, but incredibly rugged and beautiful,  and despite some food and high altitude issues for tourists, the people as a whole are very warm and accommodating. It was an amazing holiday.


Best wishes,

Pauline