Tomato Sauce Day - Italian Backyard Style.

Mention the words "Tomato Sauce Day" to several Italians and you can guarantee that they would get flashbacks of their respective family memories. I distinctly remember a scene from the movie "Looking for Alibrandi" where everyone gets together in the backyard to make sauce. It looks like a blast with Italian folk music playing in the background..but, as is often the case - our Italian backyard is not like the movie. I have to burst this imaginary notion of a  laid back and relaxing Tomato Sauce Day (TSD) -it is not a time nor a place to Mambo Italian in the backyard. It is that one day of the year where everyone is expected to perform back breaking labour to produce bottles of precious, homemade tomato sauce which serves as the base of family meals throughout the year. And when they say they make it in bulk - they mean BULK!

The night before, the Boss Lady and I were out, enjoying a rather boozy saturday night. She says : "Tomorrow is TSD..you are coming and you are writing about it, you are an adopted Italian anyway". Boss Lady clearly gives no options - and I was more than happy to oblige! I have always wanted to participate in this tradition, so come Sunday morning my adoptive Italian family, Boss Lady, and our respective hangovers were all present in the backyard. We already got scolded because TSD starts at 6am sharp.. I can't even tell you what time we started participating! And so the day begins, surrounded by tomatoes!

TSD is a very well organised affair. I can tell that my adoptive Italian family are experts in the art of TSD and have their well oiled procedure down pat! I'm  lucky because some strict Italian families do not let non-italians help during TSD. Apparently ruins the sauce! This is a silly myth but I washed my hands with Italian soap (Palmoli-vino) as a preventative measure.The first sets of photos above show the preparation. The ripe tomatoes are sorted and selected, washed, cut in half and put aside. All up there were 34 large boxes of fresh tomatoes to turn into rich tomato concentrate (passata), and this was just for the small immediate family! Some families make TSD a major "once a year" family affair - producing massive quantities of sauce with Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents involved in the process. This was TSD was small in comparison!

Lumpiang Shanghai for Kulinarya and some happy snaps from Manila

I have been looking forward to this month's Kulinarya Cooking Club Challenge. After ringing in the New Year and spending a week discovering culinary delights in the Philippines with Demos - I have come back recharged and all the more excited to share my favorite Filipino dishes here on our blog. This month's theme was sharing a dish "that you would most like to have on your birthday' (thanks, Jen, Maribel and Tressa!). So friends, behold my super easy family recipe for Lumpiang Shanghai.

I've been known to request this dish so many times when I was little - and standing in the kitchen patiently watching these filipino spring rolls being wrapped. This attentiveness has actually paid off because now I am the only one at home who can sucessfully wrap spring rolls in quick succession. Take a look at my handywork below:  

Macadamia Sylvanas & A Big Christmas Brunch.

It's has taken me a while to fully embrace the holiday season - but there is nothing like a busy day of cooking christmas treats to get into the spirit. For this month's Kulinarya theme - we were asked to share a recipe for something you could give as a present or include in the "Noche Buena" tradition. This is the Christmas tradition that many Filipinos, including my family participate in. It involves stuffing yourself silly until 12 mindnight on Christmas eve - need I say more? 

I made a sweet dessert that is not very well known, but super delicious - Macadamia Sylvanas. It is pretty much buttercream with Macadamia nuts, sandwiched in between 2 super chewy meringue discs made with crushed macadamias and egg whites. It's a macadamia overload. Traditionally, they are made with cashews but of course I had to change it up. These sandwiches are frozen and served very very cold.

The sides are then rolled in more toasted crushed macadamia pieces, but you can't really tell with the photos. I think the macadamias give it a but of contrast from the sugary biscuit and buttercream filling. I used a cookie cutter to get the disks and froze the sylvanas as they are best served rock solid. I have included the reicpe I used at the end of the post. 

This weekend, we also had to endure a marathon cooking session for Sunday Christmas brunch. It is the last weekend before Christmas, and since Demos and I are going on holidays on Christmas night - it was nice to spend some time with family and friends. Yes, the excitement is kicking in - this time next week we will be eating our way around Hong Kong, and then travelling to Manila - my first time back since I moved to Australia nearly 12 years ago. So lucky for us the weather turned out beautifully, here is a photoroll of our boozy sunday brunch:

A Gourmet Ice Cream Making Class at Serendipity, Marrickville

Ice Cream - most would agree that it can be considered as the world's best remedy. Remedy for what exactly? I'm not really sure but when Ice Cream is involved you can pick and choose any ailment and 9 times out of 10 a nice big scoop will cure it. I know this, because currently I have been constantly attacked by super immune system attacking bugs and Ice Cream is my constant companion. 

I was beyond excited when a few weekends ago, the sweet-as-strawberry-sorbet Rhonda aka The Dainty Baker asked me if I wanted to join her at for a Gourmet Ice Cream Making Class at Serendipity HQ in Marickville. Hell to the Yes! With summer fast approaching (yes - I know its the second week of December but these rains are not easing at all, so I am in Summer denial) I really wanted to have a go. So what better way to spend a Saturday morning than learning the tricks of the Ice Cream trade with Sarah Mandelson, CEO of Serendipity Ice Cream.

Serendipity Ice Cream is known for it Australian Made Ice Creams, with flavours that just awaken the tastebuds from your everyday ordinary varieties. They use top notch ingredients and the result is a bowlful of the creamiest, most luxiorious dessert. I was most excited to find out what flavour we were making. For today's class, we were making a batch of Wattleseed and Grand Marinier Ice cream. What a combo huh? As a group, we gather around the industrial kitchen and all listen attentively to Sarah. Some of us take turns in preparing the 2 main components - The creme anglaise, and the Sugar Syrup.

Because we were making such a large batch we pretty much had to quadruple the recipe. Anyone who tells me that "fat is not a dirty word" is pretty much an idol in my books. Fat is a big requirement in the ice cream making process and scrimping on the fat content of the milk or cream would sacrifice that smooth velvety texture. To make the creme anglaise - our "base" we mix the milk, cream, sugar and egg yolks in a double boiler. Stirring continuously and making sure to melt the sugar until the mixture thickens - we then leave this to cool.

The Domo Birthday Cake!

I have a very obsessive streak, so much so that it is borderline massochistic.

Well thats not really the best way to start a post - but my goodness this week has been one of the busiest ever. So why on earth would I attempt to make a 3D Domo-kun cake? Well because its Demos' birthday thats why!! Happy Birthday Demos - Please join me in admiring this cake while I collapse in exhaustion!

Happy Birthday Demos!

I have been excited to share this birthday suprise with Demos, he did have an idea that I was making him a Domo cake, but he had no idea what madness I was be up to! Yes, every spare moment of this busy week has been spent baking, ganaching, and decorating this Domo cake - and here is my honest account on how I did it. Oh, did I leave out the part where I have never made anyone a Birthday cake before?

Angry Birds Cupcakes with a scared looking Piggy!

I have been so so so very excited to share these Angry Birds cupcakes here! The moment when I finished there I was like a hyperactive little child jumping up and down at home! I have had so many failures in the kitchen and I was so happy that this was not one of them. I actually pulled the idea off!

Continuing my iPhone/Pad/Touch game theme after the fun Words with Friends Scrabble cake - its time to pay hamage to another time consuming, insanely addictive obsession - ANGRY BIRDS. Basically, the point of this puzzle game is to launch these helpless angry birds into the air, "bombing" the pigs who stole their eggs. You have to concentrate and judge distance and get past obstacles to hit these piggy targets. Oh its so very addictive! Addictive to the point that I got home one afternoon, pulled into the garage - and then sat in my car for the next 40 minutes trying to beat a level!

Words With Friends Cake

I turned into a mad woman this weekend. A mad, crazed, obsessed woman to be exact - all because of a cake. It clicked in when Demos and I were out on friday night. I mentioned that one of our friends would be back on Monday from a month long trip. "Great, going to get my ass kicked on Words with Friends (WWF) again". You see, our friend that is returning is what can only be considered a professional Words with Friends player. For those that don't know, its an absolutely addictive game on the iPhone and iPad, where you play a real time scrabble game against different users and friends.  "Danni-jack" is the girl to beat, and im sure she suffered severe WWF widthdrawals while travelling. What better way to surprise her then with a Word With Friends / Scrabble themed cake?

I was up and motivated on a Saturday morning. Forget the fact that it was Macaron Day, I was a girl on a baking mission. I should point out however, that my baking escapades should be called The Empty Pantry... and baking supplies and ingredients needed to be bought! With my long shopping list in tow, I was off!

Orchard ready to roll icing - $4 a box

Someone had told me that Spotlight sold cake decorating supplies, but as soon as I got to Town Hall (in torrential rain mind you!) I found out that the CBD store had closed. After a minor detour to Victoria's Basement and impulse cookie cutter and piping bag purchases, I then drove to Burwood to buy actual cake ingredients from Coles, luckily for me the had plenty of White Ready to Roll Icing for $4 a box (Thanks to The Dainty Baker for the tip!). Of course I bought some extra packs of flour, sugar, butter, buttermilk... but I still had no gel colouring to dye my fondant! Next stop was another Spotlight store at Birkenhead Point. They had a few tools, decorations, writing icing but no gel fondant dyes.

Creative Colour Dyes for colouring fondant - $7.95 each

I then drove to Balmain, and oh, it was so painful to drive past the Zumbo store and not want to wait in line on Macaron day! I got to say 'Hi' to Simon through my car window - and he was holding his precious Macaron haul! Thank goodness for Essential Ingredient at Rozelle - now why didn't I think of going there first! I went a bit overboard, and finally headed home - not just with my precious fondant dyes, but with a new rolling pin, cake leveller, spatula and maybe a few new cake tins as well.

Now for the baking. I decided on a Red Velvet base, with a Buttercream Frosting. I used the Red Velvet recipe from Joy of Baking as well as their Frosting recipe. I filled my 8x10 rectangular cake pan with this goes red mixture and after leaving it to cool, I iced them to smooth the surface in preparation for the fondant.

I use the extra batter for red velvet cupcakes which I set aside for my next project :)

 

I roll out the icing to cover my cake slab, which I do ever so carefully. Its harder than it looks to get a smooth layer - and up close, my cake looked like it had a bit of cellulite. Not bad though for my first attempt! I also use my gel dyes to colour the fondant, lucky for me I only needed primary colours as I wanted to keep it as close to the image of the game as possible.

You cant really see it in my photos, but I also then rolled out a light grey piece to go onto the white slab - this is the grid board. Using the straight end of a butter knife, I cut out the individual tiles. The hard part was trying to connect all the words together, folling official scrabble rules of course! I position the tiles by making marks directly on the icing, and then I draw the grid using a tube of black writing icing. I was surprised that the lines I drew were not too wonky, and I that the tiles I used were (mostly) a similar size. I had to throw in the word 'QI' as it was my friend's signature word - if it is in fact a word!

I am still very proud of my first decorating effort, and danni-jack's reaction and excitement was well worth the effort! The red velvet cake was definitely a good choice as it was not too sickeningly sweet, something i'd like to avoid with already a thick layer of icing. The end result is well worth the effort and once again, Welcome Home danni-jack! 

Stay tuned.. I have another decorating feat to share, those cupcakes needed some detail too..and I can't wait to post the end results! On a side note, my Words with Friends username is 'Gbangs' and i'm always up for a challenge! Until next time!

Orange Chicken and our 5 Minutes of Fame

If there is one thing that I love as much as food, its fashion. Yes, it is a shallow cliche but I am drawn to pretty things and shiny objects. One would think that very manly other half of The Empty Fridge would be uninterested in all this but that is not the case. Demos is one heck of a fashionista. Yes - I just called my bloke a fashionista. Our overseas holidays consist of as much shopping as they do eating, and most of the time it is spent in men's stores. Demos actually has a bigger closet than I do and takes much longer to get ready when we go out, he says its because he is indecisive - I think he is just a fussy dresser. 

So, imagine both of our excitement when we found ourselves in a window display for the French luxe brand Hermes. Yes folks, my life is now complete. I was lucky enough to be spoilt with a very special "Little Orange Box" on my birthday this year and thanks to some fun happy snaps taken during Vogues Fashion Night Out, our mugs have been on display at the Sydney store.  I plan to break in and steal the portrait once our 5 minutes of fame is over.

Hermes Orange bags and boxes aside, lets get back to food quick smart! This is not a well known dish in Australia but it is one of the dishes I love to eat when I visit the USA - and we can stick to the "Orange" theme Here is my take on...

Orange Chicken!

It is a similar concept to Honey Chicken, that dish you usually get in Chinese takeaway shops or seedy varieties in food courts. A very popular version that I crave is from Panda Express, a chain of Chinese takeout in the USA. How can you resist sweet citrusy goodness and some fried chicken? With the abundance of Oranges in the shops at the moment, I wanted to try my hand in replicating this. I googled some recipes and followed this simple version from Rasa Malaysia with a few adjustments. Firstly, I had no ginger or scallions at home.. and as I have previously established I am still trying to find my kitchen prowess.

Mmm..Orange guts. I love freshly squeezed oranges and for this dish I used 2 large navel oranges. It produced more juice than needed so I had a nice drink too! The recipe calls for just 1/4 cup of juice but I added 1/2 a cup . I figured I would just reduce the sauce longer to get a stronger orange flavour.

I diced up more garlic than the recipe required, and again to add to the orange bite, I finely chopped up some orange peel instead of just using the grater. I also added 2 teaspoons instead of just 1.

I used about two large chicken breasts, but unfortunately I didn't think to coat the chicken pieces with flour before dipping it into the batter. Silly me, another cooking fail. This resulted in the batter not "sticking" onto the chicken pieces, so I didn't get that outer crunchy crust. 

We did not have any fresh chillies readily available either, but because it is a partly greek kitchen, there is always a container full of homemade marinated chillies in the fridge, and boy did they bring the heat. As you can see, my batter didn't stick at all when I was frying.

When I was adding all the ingredients together for the sauce, the smell of the orange peel, juice, garlic and chilli just took over.

I was very disappointed that my chicken did not have a crispy crust to coat and soak in the sauce. However, the dish was full of flavour and tasted really exciting compared to the usual stir -fry's. Although the sweet, citrus and spicy flavours sound a bit much together in one dish, Demos and I really enjoyed the end result. It was very different to the takeaway version but I was happy to discover a yummy new stir fry with a kick. I served the chicken over some brown rice, but it would go well with some steamed bok choy or snow peas for a crisp taste.

There we have it, another attempt in the kitchen - not the ideal end result and yes I did get a bit upset and emotional about the batter and coating not sticking. At least I know for next time. Now I have two coping mechanisms when things dont go right in the kitchen, the first being Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice cream. If that doesnt fix it then I can wander down to the local Hermes store and be that crazy lady that yell's out to the tourists walking by..

"That's me in the window..That's meeee".