Sunday, June 28, 2009

macro bought by woolworths

Just a quickie today - unimpressed to discover that Macro Wholefoods, as of May 09, has been bought out by Woolworths.

Enough.
Freaking.
Woolworths.

You can read more here - some of the stores are going to be turned into 'upmarket grocery' stores named Thomas Dux. Macro's line of products will be bought out too, and presumably rebranded.

I am getting downright sick of hearing terrible stories of the way that Woolworths treats its food growers and suppliers, and I know I'm not the only one.

And I really liked their tempeh burgers.

Read more here.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

cheater pastry pudding

This recipe is super easy, but requires puff pastry which I just bought at the shop (hence, cheater).

I was watching Masterchef a little while ago, and they made some sort of caramelised apples with french toast. I am yet to be convinced of the virtue of either eggy french toast, or a vegan alternative, so I came up with these to go with my apples.

Again, don't have any quantities in this recipe...

You'll need puff pastry, don't use a low fat version or they won't be nice & crunchy and puffy.

Take
1 sheet puff pastry (defrosted), and sprinkle on top:
Caster sugar (about 1 tbspn), &
Cinnamon, &
Nutmeg of clove powder, &
Dessicated coconut, &
Apple, just a tiny bit grated VERY finely (optional).

Basically the more you add, the harder it is to roll, but that's okay. Don't add much that is too wet or it won't be nice & crunchy when it's cooked.

So. Roll it all up (the pastry needs to be very non-frozen & very non-low-fat or it will crack).

Then with a sharp knife, slice it into rounds - each should be about 1.5cm thick.

Then, place on a baking tray and bake for about 15 mins or until they look golden and delicious.

Pre-cooking - sorry about the battered tray!

Post cooking - the darker ones are just upside down.

Serve with caramelised apples or something else yummy.

You can also make savoury ones of these, go for it!!

pumpkin: roasted pumpkin pasta

Now that we're getting our weekly vegie boxes, I'm a lot more focussed at cooking specific vegetable types. We recently had a BIG chunk of pumpkin in our vegie box, which called for, amongst other things, Roasted Pumpkin Pasta.

It was quite easy to make...

I peeled and roughly chopped my big pumpkin into bit sized strips.

I chucked them in an oven tray with some olive oil, salt & pepper, and roasted them at about 180 degrees for 1.5 hours, until they were lovely & sweet and the way roasted pumpkin should be.

Toward the end of the roasting time, I made a basic pasta sauce, with:
Leek &
Onion, fried until golden in
Olive oil, to which I added
Salt,
Pepper,
Chopped Tomatoes (from a can), &
Spinach leaves

When the sauce was ready & the spaghetti cooked, I tossed it all together with about half the pumpkin, and then served with more pumpkin on top, and some pistachios (yum!)

It was soooo nice. Recommended!

And sorry for lack of measurements, I NEVER measure when I cook savoury, but you'll figure it out!

Monday, June 1, 2009

Kumquat Salsa

I know, it is a bit unusual, kumquat salsa. But I like to experiment!
We were having tacos, and I had just finished making some kumquat marmalade (more on this soon). Kumquat apparently is a very common ingredient in Asian cooking, I love it with soy & chilli. So I thought, why not in salsa? It worked really well, very yummy.

I've been eating this salsa with the tacos, and also just on bread. So good!

Ingredients:
1 small onion, sliced finely
1 teaspoon fresh ginger shredded
1/2 tbspn olive oil
1 capsicum sliced finely
1 chili sliced finely
salt & pepper
1 tomato, cut into little cubes
1 tspn soy sauce
pinch of cumin seeds
2 stalks of oregano leaves
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbspn kumquat syrup

You should cook this in a mid-sized frying pan.

Fry the onion and ginger in the oil on a medium heat for a few minutes until the onions are just starting to brown.
Add in the capsicum and chili, turn the heat down, and cook for around 10 mins, until the capsicum is nice & soft.
Turn up the heat to high, add the cumin seeds, salt, pepper & oregano, and cook for around 1 min until the cumin is nice & fragrant.
Add the soy sauce and kumquat, and cook about 1 more min - the sauces should sizzle when you add them in, and the liquid quickly evaporate.
Okay. Now add in the lemon & tomato, turn down and cook a bit longer.

Voila! You have salsa. Enjoy!