Lamb Fritters – in memory of my Mum on Mother’s Day

05.09.2015 by Trish // 8 Comments

In honour of my mum who was my first food inspiration , I give you Lamb Fritters. A lamb roast was not all that common as I was growing up, more often than not it was actually mutton or hogget. ( I still love the smell and taste of a long, slow-cooked mutton roast.) I always hoped there would be enough meat left over to have lamb fritters the next day, what a treat! A couple of weeks ago as I popped a piece of roast lamb into my mouth I could just smell the fritters that Mum used to make, I could hear that first hot crunch of the batter which burnt your tongue because you couldn’t wait to shove them into your mouth , I could the taste the salt and the tomato sauce bringing out the flavour of the lamb….oh my, eating is such a full sensory experience!!! In the early 1950s when Mum and Dad were first married they lived in the small farming town of Borden where Dad was the teacher at Salt River School .

There were no phones of course, so when Mum decided to make lamb fritters and couldn’t remember the batter recipe, where did she turn? Like most women of the time she turned to the Golden Wattle cookbook. Her copy has long since fallen apart, so this my copy. As you can see, it has been well used!

Well used page in Golden wattle — Golden Wattle with my mum’s white china bowl

For the batter we used the pancake batter with half the amount of milk and SR flour instead of plain . And of course the fritters were always cooked in some of the dripping from the previous night’s roast.

LAMB FRITTERS

Ingredients

slices of left over lamb roast, about 1.5 cm thick
1 cup of self raising flour
pinch of salt
1 egg
3/4 cup of milk
tomato sauce for serving, and by tomato sauce I mean real tomato sauce in a bottle, like Heinz or Rosella, not that stuff where you cook up tomatoes and push them through a sieve!

Method

Sift salt and flour. Make a well in the centre and drop in egg. Stir in gently, adding about half the milk gradually and drawing the flour in slowly.
Beat with wooden spoon for 10 minutes until the batter is creamy and bubbly (as a child my dad was the household beater, he could cream butter and sugar to perfection!)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Beat until you get a beautifully bubbly batter

Add reminder of milk and stand in a cool place for at least 1/2 an hour
(That of course is the traditional method. Usually what I do is mix all ingredients together, beat vigorously for a few minutes and let stand for an hour if you have enough time, if not use straight away.)
Heat enough dripping to thinly cover the bottom of the fry pan
Dip slices of lamb into the batter and fry until golden brown and crunchy. Serve sprinkled with parsley. My mum always used to say you had to chop the parsley so finely that you couldn’t see the shape of the leaf!
I don’t think this would have passed the ‘no leaf’ test!

I’d love to hear from you, what meal reminds of your mother?

Anzac Day Pavlova

04.25.2015 by Trish // 4 Comments

On Anzac Day we honour the Australians and New Zealanders who fought side by side at Gallipoli. But the Aussies and the Kiwis are not always allies. Apart from the good-natured banter involving sheep, many epic battles have waged on the sports fields . Nowhere is the battle more fierce than that fought over the ownership of that classic dessert, the pavlova. In order to find out the truth I turned to the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia. That seemed to be firmly in the New Zealand camp so I kept searching and finally came up with an explanation that will suit all parties

Yes I will concede that New Zealanders first developed the recipe for a meringue cake. However it wasn’t until Perth chef Bert Sachse from the Esplanade Hotel developed the Pavlova in honour of the ballerina Anna Pavlova, that the name and recipe become more widely known around the world. Australia 1 New Zealand 1 !!

I have always been rather daunted by the prospect of making a pav, but inspired by the Dawn Service and in true Anzac spirit I decided to have a go. I was actually surprised at how easy it was, whip up the egg whites and sugar,

Whip up egg whites and sugar until peaks form

add the cornflour (Nurses Cornflour of course!) and vinegar to make it chewy in the middle

Nurse Cornflour, the only cornflour to use

and the vanilla for flavouring, and Bob’s your uncle!!

I wasn’t keen on the part where you had to pile the meringue on the oven tray, it was very sticky, and what does “make furrows up the sides” mean anyway?

My oven is quite fierce and I hate wishy washy directions that sit on the fence, like “Cook for an hour and 15 minutes or until firm to touch” Be decisive with directions I say to the writers of recipes, don’t flip flop around trying to wriggle out of responsibility for the success of the dish! Anyway I cooked it for just under an hour, it seemed to feel quite firm and was getting rather brownish so I figured that was enough cooking. As directed I left the pav to cool in the oven with the door slightly ajar. When I popped it back in the oven after inspection it was quite high and puffy, although I was disappointed that the shell had cracked in quite a few places. By the time the meringue had cooled it was less puffy and more cracked and I was more disappointed.

My friend Cindy sat me down gave me a good talking to. She told me I shouldn’t be worrying about the cracks, I should be dressing it with cream and fruit, and serve it knowing I had made an awesomely delicious dessert and I would win the praises and accolades of all who tasted it!!

And do you what? She was right!! I was really proud of it. It looked amazing, thank you Cindy for decorating it, the meringue was soft and melt in your mouth and the shell was crisp and crunchy, there were lots of oohs and aahs when I served it, it was awesomely delicious, and no-one looked at it and commented on the cracks in the shell!

The meringue was so soft and melt in your mouth

And despite the fact that we had just eaten a delicious duck roast dinner, we managed to demolish one Anzac Day Pavlova in very short time. I think an Anzac Day tradition has been born – Dad’s duck and Patricia’s pav!

I used the Kiwi passionfruit pavlova from taste.com.au, the only changes I made were using strawberries instead of passionfruit and it definitely needed 600ml, not 300 ml of cream. If there had been passionfruit available I would have used that as well

KIWI and STRAWBERRY PAVLOVA

Ingredients

6 eggwhites
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
600ml thickened cream
1 tablespoon icing sugar mixture
4 kiwifruit, peeled, sliced
2 strawberries, halved

Method

Preheat oven to 120°C/100°C fan-forced. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Mark a 22cm circle on the paper.
Using an electric mixer, beat egg-whites until stiff peaks form. Add caster sugar. Beat for 10 minutes or until sugar has dissolved. Add cornflour, vinegar and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute. Spoon mixture onto circle. Using a palette knife, shape into a circle with high sides. Make furrows up sides.
Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until firm. Allow to cool completely in oven with door slightly ajar.
Using an electric mixer, beat cream and icing sugar until soft peaks form. Place pavlova on a plate. Spread with cream mixture. Top with kiwifruit and strawberries. Serve to great applause!

All in all I was pretty proud of myself. Although I would appreciate any tips on making pavlova, especially around the cracking of the shell. Although I suspect the fact that I opened the oven a couple of times to heat up the Anzac Day football Mrs Mac’s pies may have had something to do with it!!

Anzac Day 2015

04.24.2015 by Trish // 7 Comments

It is a chilly pre-dawn morning on Anzac Day 2015 and I am just about to head off to the dawn service on this, the 100th Anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli.

My memories of Anzac Day as a child are watching my grandfather, who fought in WWII in the Middle East, crying in his chair in the corner of the kitchen and my uncle,who fought in Malaya, marching in the parade then getting very drunk. It was a period of fierce debates as to whether Anzac Day should continue, with opponents arguing that it glorified war. Today Anzac Day is the day that means most to me on our calendar. I love seeing families with young children at the dawn service knowing that they will grow up with Anzac Day a part of their lives and how it embodies what it means to be Australian and how very lucky we are.

Last night I watched Deadline Gallipoli and followed the story of thousands of our young men who climbed out of the trenches to face the enemy, with the knowledge that they would most certainly die. It was a sacrifice that shaped our nation and we owe it to those Diggers, the Australian nurses and the soldiers and nurses from New Zealand to live our lives to the fullest in their memory.

I have not been to the dawn service here in Geraldton for the last two years. Amazingly enough I have been Spain for the past two Anzac Days. I thought today I would share with you my Anzac Day blogs from the last two years

Anzac Day 2014

Anzac Day 2013

Pear and Granola Muffins

04.19.2015 by Trish // 2 Comments

I love Google, I may have mentioned it before, but I really love Google. And I love my friends. Put them together and what do you get? Pear and Granola Muffins. Take a fancy for muffins, some left over Robbie’s Red Lime Jones granola, a bag of pears fresh from the backyard of Chris Ross of In the Raw fame, add a quick Google and there you go – Martha Stewart’s Pear and Granola Muffins. Of course I always think I know better than the experts, so if you want Martha’s exact recipe click on her link, or you can use my recipe and get yummy muffins which, so I’m told by friends and family, were awesome!

PEAR AND GRANOLA MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS

FOR MUFFINS

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour (I used rye)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar ( I used raw castor)
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 cups of pears cut into 1/4-inch dice
3/4 cup granola

FOR GRANOLA CRISP TOPPING

3/4 cup plain granola
shredded coconut
3 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a 12-cup standard muffin tin with paper liners; set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.
In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, brown sugar, yogurt, and butter. Make a well in the center of flour mixture. Add egg mixture to well, and mix in flour mixture until just combined. Gently fold in the granola and pears.
Make Granola Crisp Topping: In a bowl, cut 3 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter into pieces; add to granola mixture, and rub in with fingertips until clumps form.
Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each 3/4 full. Sprinkle with granola topping and shredded coconut. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool 5 minutes before removing from tin. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Quick and easy! What is your favourite muffin?