Tomato and Basil Spaghetti

F#*k Dr Atkins-I need carbs in my life. We eat a lot of pasta at my house, and feel special cause I'm about to share with you the basic tomato sauce which I use for this simple, light spaghetti, but you can also add meat to for bolognese which also makes what I've been told is the most amazing lasagna ever.

My dad has an Australian-Italian friend who came over and taught him this recipe- however as I tend to do, I've changed it a wee bit and got tips from various cooking shows. Here goes...

Tomato and Basil Spaghetti
Ingredients
1 brown onion
4 large garlic cloves
Salt
Pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
2x 400g can of whole tomatoes
200g tomato paste
1 heaped Tbsp brown sugar
3/4cup extra virgin olive oil
Fresh basil- 12 leaves
Pasta
Freshly grated parmesan

Heat a frypan to medium heat with a swig of olive oil. Chop the onion and cook till soft. The first tip for getting the most flavor out of your sauce is to cook these off as long as you can before the get too brown. You want them to get to a point where you can mash them with the back of your spoon, which usually takes about 10-12 minutes so if they're getting too dark too quickly, you need to reduce the heat. Once the onions are almost to that point, add the finely chopped garlic, oregano, and a decent amount of salt and pepper. Fry this off till the oregano and garlic are fragrant. Add the canned tomatoes, tomato paste and brown sugar. Fill up one of the tomato cans with hot water, add to the pan and bring the sauce to the boil. Add the whole lot of olive oil. It seems like a lot and will sit on the top looking not too attractive but this is the second tip for a flavorful sauce. Reduce the heat to a medium boil and cover. Cook for around 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. You're going to be looking for the oil to first melt into the sauce, then the oil will become a beautiful rich red color and sit on top of the sauce. Cook the sauce down till it becomes relatively thick, and is going the give the pasta a thick coating. Heat a pot of water to a rapid boil. Add a few heaped Tbsp of salt and cook your favorite pasta (I like to use thick spaghetti) till al dente and drain. About 5 minutes before the pasta is ready, chop 8 basil leaves finely and add to the sauce and cook for 5 minutes. Add large spoons of the pasta sauce to the cooked pasta until you've got a good coating on it. Plate up and add a little more of the sauce, more fresh chopped basil and a generous amount of parmesan cheese.

Tip: get yourself a loaf of crusty bread and soak up all this olive oil on the bottom of your plate. It will change. your. life.

Panko-parmesan crusted chicken with mushroom sauce

I first put this meal together a couple of weeks ago when I felt like stuffed chicken breasts but couldn't be assed stuffing it. Now it's one of my absolute favs. I discovered panko (japanese breadcrumbs) after watching lots of cooking shows over the years and now that they have them at the local supermarket, I'm addicted. Tanuki's Cave is one of the bf and I's fav places to eat where they coat almost anything you can think of in panko-and it's delicious.

 Note: do not try this if you're trying to diet. Do try this if you love good food and want something relatively easy to throw together, even though it looks kind of complicated.

There are three parts to this meal:

Roast potatoes with buttered spinach

Washed potatoes (around 3 small potatoes per serve)

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp dried oregano

Fresh spinach (around 6-8 leaves per serve)

Butter

Salt and pepper

Panko-parmesean crusted chicken breasts and

Chicken breasts (1 per serve)

1 cup Panko breadcrumbs

1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan

1 egg

1/2 cup canola oil

Mushroom sauce

1/4 red onion

3 cloves garlic

10 button mushrooms

3 Tbsp dark soy sauce

1/4 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup cream

2 Tbsp water

1 Tbsp cornflour

Cut the potatoes into small similar sized pieces. Put the flour and oregano in a bowl and add salt and pepper. Toss the potatoes through the flour and then shake off the excess. Place in a roasting dish with a generous drizzle of olive oil and bake at 220 degrees until cooked through and crispy. Toss during cooking to make sure they brown evenly. For the spinach, melt some butter in a frypan and sauté the spinach till soft. Season with salt and pepper.

The assembly line

The remaining flour mix can be used for the chicken. Crack the egg into another bowl and mix well. Place the panko into a third bowl with the grated parmesan. Cut the chicken breasts longways into thick strips. Toss through flour mix, followed by egg mix and lastly panko mix. Heat the canola oil in a large frypan on medium heat. To make sure the oil is at the right temperature, tear off a small piece of bread and throw it in. It should brown in about 20-30 seconds. Shallow fry the chicken until golden brown, then place on a paper towel to drain excess oil. Test the largest piece of chicken to make sure it's cooked all the way through and if not, put in the oven at 180 degrees for a few minutes.

For the mushroom sauce, heat a swig of olive oil with a small knob (that's what she said) of butter in frypan. Chop the onions and the garlic finely. Cook the onions till clear then add the garlic and cook till fragrant. Slice up the mushrooms and add to the pan, cooking till soft. Add a good sprinkling of cracked black pepper. Add the soy sauce and the stock and simmer for about 5 minutes before adding the cream. Simmer again for 3-4 minutes. Mix the water and cornflour together with a fork till smooth and add to the sauce. Cook until the sauce thickens.

To assemble, toss the potatoes with the spinach, top with the chicken and pour over lots of mushroom sauce.

This sauce is amazing, and is super good with steak too.

Totally worth the couple of kilos you'll put on after eating it

Cookies for Santa- Take one

My father is a cowboy from the states, Idaho to be exact. Therefore a lot of my cooking has been influenced by American recipes. My first baking experiments were going through his American cookbooks  which have a lot of weird stuff in them (there was a chocolate mayonnaise cake that tasted exactly as it sounds and you're right-it wasn't a success). American's do however make the best chocolate chip cookies. Growing up on American cookies- I have to learn you NZ people that the perfect chocolate chip cookie should be chewy and soft almost cake like in the centre.

I've tried many many different recipes in search of the perfect one but today, after not being able to sleep post my 12 hour night shift I decided I needed something sweet. I've been wanting to try Alton Brown's "The Chewy" recipe after reading rave reviews about it so I gave it a go today, putting my own spin on it, and they turned out perfect.

Change 1: Not having made this recipe before, I got to the final stages before adding the chocolate and decided that the mixture was too runny. Therefore I added the extra egg white (that's 2 whole eggs) as well as an extra half a cup of flour.

Change 2: Chocolate chips have oil in them to help them keep their shape. I'm not so interested in that so I always use a king size block of chocolate chopped into reasonably large chunks. Today I used Whittakers dark chocolate because dark chocolate is the best. The result is huge chunks of melted chocolate. Amazing.

Change 3: I also added about half a cup of chopped walnuts to add a bit of texture.

The chilling part is very very important to stop the cookies from spreading too much. 

I suggest doubling the dough and freezing it in balls ready for flash homemade cookies anytime of day. 

Served with a glass of milk, I'm sure Santa will be very happy to get these.

The best damn aioli you ever had bitches

I love garlic. I put garlic in fricking everything. I am also one of those annoying "everything with mayo" people. So when I set out to make the best garlic mayo in the world one day, it was a big deal. I must admit there was a huge disaster when I tried to make the mayo myself...by hand...with the bf tipping in the oil and me getting one huge bicep trying to whisk the damn thing in. But of course it ended up in one big "There's something about Mary" type mess. Not pleasant.
I have however in my food quest come up with one of my greatest inventions- the best damn aioli you ever had. So get your pen and paper out and write this shit down. I swear this is amazing and super easy and goes on anything.

The best ever Garlic Mayo recipe
Ingredients
1/2 cup Best Foods Mayo
3 large garlic cloves (can add more or less to taste)
Small handful of italian parsley, coarsely chopped
1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp english mustard
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Your cooked garlic should look something like this

Heat a frypan with a splash of olive oil on low-medium heat. Peel the garlic cloves and place in the frypan off to the side not in the centre. The goal is to cook the garlic all the way through while trying not to get it too brown. This should take around 5 minutes. When the garlic is soft remove from the heat. Finely chop the softened garlic and then squash it with your knife against the chopping board until it makes almost a paste. Put the mayo into a small bowl with the garlic paste, the mustard, 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice and the parsley. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Mix till combined. Place in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.

Garlic paste

I have no idea how this stuff would keep in the fridge because it's always all gone by the end of dinner.

My favourite dish to use this mayo on is beautiful eye fillet sandwiches. I'll do another post on how I cook steak but for now here's how you chuck this all together. For this you will need:

Garlic Mayo a la Operation Yum
Ciabatta rolls
Pieces of good quality eye fillet steak
Parmesean cheese
Rocket lettuce
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Heat up a frypan with a touch of olive oil on medium high heat. Cut the ciabatta in half and toast lightly under the grill. Season your steak with salt and pepper and olive oil. Sear off in your frypan to your liking (has to be medium rare in my opinion). Allow to rest for at least 5 minutes. Slice thinly (makes it much easier to eat). Fill your ciabatta with the steak, thin slices of parmesean, a handful of rocket and lashings of garlic mayo. YUM!!

Eye fillet sandwich with potato wedges and aioli

TIP: you could totally roast the whole garlic bulb in the oven and then squeeze the cooked garlic in instead but who has time to do that
TIP #2: another definite favourite is to add the garlic to softened butter with parsley. This garlic butter is awesome on steak, or smeared on your favourite loaf of bread (like lonestar only better).

Dinner at the Argentinians: Bacon ravioli with basil pesto

Had a dinner party with the work girls the other week at my good friend Cece's place. Cece is from Argentina and you are almost guaranteed a fuckin good time when hanging out with her. The girls whipped up an amazing bacon ravioli with basil pesto while I drank Gin and took photos, and we all woke up to our boyfriends trying to get away from our stinky garlic breath :)

 The view from Cece's street. Super jelly.

 And her amazing "bege" garden.
I've never made pasta before because it looks like there's a lot that can go wrong but the girls made it look easy so I'm willing to give it a try in the near future. So although there was no exact recipe involved, here's what went in.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Cinnamon rolls are definitely a fav of mine but I've always found bread making really difficult (partly because of the fact that i'm impatient and can't be assed waiting for rising times). However I gave this recipe a go after seeing it on one of my favorite blogs Cupcakes and Cashmere and it worked wonderfully. The dough didn't quite go smooth and elastic like it's supposed to so I was bit worried that the bread was going to be a bit tough but it was amazingly soft and delicious. Topped with a cream cheese frosting, this is definitely what I want to wake up to Christmas morning (hint hint Santa). TIP: you could totally chuck the rolls in the fridge overnight after cutting them to delay the second rising stage, and then bring them to room temperature and bake them in the morning. But I reheated mine in the microwave for 30 seconds and they were still extra good.