Beyond Beeton» child

Magic in the Microwave: Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding

Rachel — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 08:32:55 +0000

As a child, I used to beg my mother to make this for us, even when I was more than old enough to make it myself. It was a special weeknight non-fruit dessert treat that invariably came from the kitchen in a large bowl, oozingly hot and chocolatey, topped with my favourite old english toffee ice-cream.

photo credit: I love chocolate pudding

I do have to admit, I'm not usually fond of microwave recipes.

The microwave bewilders me; it places a plastic barrier between the food and my senses, blocking out changing smells and textures and rendering me useless. I can only gaze at the steady spinning, whirring and hoping that the 'ding' will come at the right time.

My grandmother was always equally hopeless with the microwave. I recall her wrapping butter in aluminium foil and putting it in the microwave because someone had told her she could do that to soften it. I also recall the zapping noises and the sparks.

This recipe is however so enticingly easy and delicious that even I and my microwave manage to call the truce long enough to make this one.

I'd be surprised if you didn't have all of the ingredients in your fridge and pantry right now and you'll be delighted to know that this pudding is prepared, cooked and served in just one dish!

Photo credt: 365:339 Microwaved

You will need to consider your own microwave's power rating and adjust the time accordingly; the time is set based on the older 800 watt microwaves. It is probably wise to drop the power down to medium-high if your microwave isn't similarly ancient.

Ingredients

60g butter
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
220g caster sugar (about 1 cup)
25g cocoa (1/4 cup)
180ml milk (I use low-fat milk and it works fine)
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
35g (1/3 cup) cocoa, extra
2 cups boiling water

Method

Place butter in a large microwave-proof dish and heat on high for 60 seconds to melt. (Note: I still can't bring myself to do this and melt the butter in a pan on the stove then add to the dish)

Stir in sifted flour, caster sugar, and cocoa. Add the milk and vanilla and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Sprinkle with combined brown sugar and extra cocoa.

Carefully pour the boiling water slowly over the back of a large metal spoon and over the pudding mixture.

Cook on high for 12 minutes (Note: Eep! Try 8 minutes on medium-high in a modern microwave and see how you go) until springy-soft and just cooked in the centre.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes if you can, then serve with ice-cream or cream.

photo credit: the last bit of pudding

I promise it will be magic.

The truth about the supermarket and what you can do about it

Rachel — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:20:46 +0000

There is something incredibly dreary about every supermarket ever known.

As soon as you walk into one your heart sinks and you become a grumpy trolley shuffler, unless you're one of those crazy basket people that goes to the supermarket at 6am after a brisk jog (in which case you should go away and eat a carrot now and leave us all alone), or you're 2 years old, in which case it is your god given right to chuck a giant tantrum.

photo credit: jumer

The traffic inside most supermarkets is just as bad as roads in any modern city. The same women who can't manage to reverse without an oops or two are let loose here on far more dangerous vehicles without a licence.

You'll find those horrid perky athletic types in the supermarket too - jogging on the spot while contemplating whether they want 5 packets of lean cuisine spaghetti low-fat extra-goo or the smooshed up packets of tofu burgers with added tar that are on special this week.

There's always at least one newlywed couple - arms around each other, romantically deciding whether they should have a bright yellow packet of tacos or frozen lasagne for dinner tonight.

The aisles are set up like one of those awful hedge mazes that landscape architects think are "charming" and "quaint" but there is nothing at all quaint about an entire aisle of noodles served with varying kinds of sludge in styrofoam cups. This aisle is a particularly dangerous one and must be avoided at all costs, lest you accidentally tarnish your ears with the existential rubbish that can only be emitted from first year arts students.

When you run away to safer ground you find yourself surrounded by last year's apples, floury and tasteless. Or maybe they're the potatoes? It is hard to tell.

photo credit: Lab2112

A fact about supermarkets that you should know:

'Fresh' fruit and vegetables on supermarket shelves can actually be around a year old when you buy them. The Sydney Morning Herald bought apples from Australia's major supermarkets and sent them to the Sydney Postharvest Laboratory for testing. The tests revealed that the apples were up to ten months old.

Despite common misconception, apples are not grown year round in Australia. In order to meet the year-round demand, supermarkets purchase apples from growers during the short season and then keep them in cold storage. While the cool temperatures can help the apples last longer, it has a negative effect on the quality and flavour of the apple.

So what can you do if you want to eat produce that is actually fresh, full of flavour and nutrients?

photo credit: tanguero (BLOCK, rinse, repeat)

The answer is simple. You need to embrace the slow food movement and buy nearly everything from organic happylands where everyone wears hemp, talks about ecosystems and sustainability and smiles a lot.

The hippies have got it right. The birds sing and frolic as you stroll along at farmers markets or at those wonderful greengrocers that actually source fresh produce. I promise you will taste the difference. Nobody will smack you in the shins with a trolley. You will be able to identify everything on the stands and if you can't, a friendly person over the age of 12 will be able to explain it to you.

So how much extra should you pay for fresh? Almost nothing at all. Sure, the prices look more per kilo but somehow my basket, laden with fresh goodies, costs less than the equivalent from the supermarket.

photo credit: Indiana shutterbug

Fresh lasts longer too, so you won't need to resort to stringy lettuce or frozen peas at the end of the week. Is it any wonder that most kids don't like vegies? Get them to choose the fresh veg from the stands and see what happens next. You can thank me later.

If you can find a quality butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer or farmers market and wholefoods store you will come out ahead financially and have the knowledge that you're supporting your community, your own health and the environment too.

If you haven't got access to a fresh market, have you considered starting your own or a community garden?

How can neon lights and plastic wrapped in more plastic compete with that?

Orange and poppy seed cupcakes with passion fruit butter cream

Rachel — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:53:59 +0000

There's something so appealing about tiny, citrusy cupcakes, bursting with the peppery tingle of poppy seeds. Oranges and poppy-seeds is one of those combinations that just works. These cupcakes just work too - they can be whipped up in no time and I guarantee they'll be light, yet moist.

Ingredients: Cake

125g self-raising flour, sifted
120g caster sugar
125g unsalted butter, chopped, room temperature
2 extra-large eggs
one large orange (or lemon): 3 tsp finely chopped zest and 2 TB juice
3 TB poppy seeds
2-3 TB milk
good quality marmalade, for glazing

Ingredients: Icing

2 TB passionfruit pulp, strained to separate seeds
125g unsalted butter, chopped, room temperature
220g well sieved icing sugar

Method: Cake

cupcake glazed with orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 180C (not fan forced) for mini cupcakes, or 200C (not fan forced) for standard size cupcakes.

Take eggs, butter and milk out of the fridge to come to room temperature. While that's happening, measure out the other ingredients and get everything ready.

Stir 2 TB milk into the poppyseeds in a small bowl. The poppyseeds should start making 'zingy' noises.

Combine flour, sugar, butter, eggs and 2tsp of the orange rind in the large bowl of a food processor, don't over-mix.

Add the freshly squeezed orange juice through the top of the processor while pulsing the mix.

If more liquid is required to make a smooth batter, add half to a TB of milk.

Fold the poppyseeds into the batter with a metal spoon. Add remaining chopped orange zest to taste.

Spoon the batter into muffin tins lined with cupcake papers. The mixture will make 36 mini cupcakes or 12 regular size.

Bake mini cupcakes for 8-10 minutes and regular cakes for 15 minutes. The tops will spring back when gently prodded.

When done, immediately take the cupcakes out of the tins and onto wire racks.

While cakes are still warm, use a pastry brush or bread knife to carefully spread gently warmed marmalade on the tops of the cupcakes.

Method: Icing

iced with passion fruit butter cream

Beat butter with electric beaters until pale and fluffy

Beat in half of the icing sugar and half of the juice from the passionfruit pulp until combined

Beat in the second half of the icing sugar and passionfruit juice.

Add a little extra milk (1/2 to a TB) if required to make a very light and fluffy icing

Pipe icing onto cooled cupcakes.

If desired, decorate with reserved passionfruit seeds or curls of orange zest.

I like my citrus cupcakes to have a gently rounded top. If you prefer a flat top, underfill the cases slightly and drop the oven temperature a little.

One relationship, two careers – how to cope

Rachel — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:02:55 +0000

In my day..

In the good old days, life was better. Men worked and women stayed home, kept the house, looked after the kids and wore frilly aprons over pretty dresses.

photo credit: KimmiK

Everyone knew their place and life was simple and modern issues of career vs career and whose turn it is to race from work early to pick the kids up from day care were non-existent. Something like that anyway.

Oh no! Here comes feminism!

Along came feminism and we fought to get away from the sink and into the classroom and boardroom. We did such an awesome job at proving women can and should do anything (more like everything) you could say the choice has almost disappeared in the opposite direction.

If we accept the reality that for many modern relationships, two incomes are required and desired, life becomes a bit tricky. Particularly when you consider there is often little or no functional difference between partners in income and the level of commitment to career (and education).

So who picks up the kids from day-care when you're both slaving in the office at 7pm in the pursuit for a corner office with a view?
Who takes the bin out before going to the gym before work?
Who washes the floor while muttering into a dictaphone on a Sunday afternoon?

The division of labour is all messed up - and with that comes serious risk of conflict of a relationship-killing kind.

People have been harping on about equality for quite a while now. If large corporates and the government can't get it right in the boardroom, what chance have we got in the home, where relationships are under even more pressure?

The Seesaw theory

Now this may well be unpopular, but my view of equality in the home does not involve an equal division of labour.

There is no equal. I promise if you concentrate on making things exactly equal at home you are likely to fail. Spectacularly.

You can waste a lot of time thinking (often out loud, usually brought up at a completely unrelated moment) that cooking dinner is harder than putting the dishes away. It doesn't matter. It may well be. Arguing about equality achieves absolutely stuff all.

The reality is that in a successful partnership, sometimes one partner will do more. Sometimes the other partner does more. It balances out.

photo credit: bug138

Think of it like a seesaw, if you each push up and down, you're both on the seesaw and sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down. It takes a damn lot of effort to hold the seesaw at even height without one or both falling off.

Could it work?

The way it works in my relationship, and, I suggest might work in yours. Start by working out expectations:

What does clean mean to each of you?
What constitutes a weeknight dinner?

Sort out a friendly middle ground. Then each do what you're good at/don't hate too much and outsource whatever is left over.

If you approach it with an open mind it is not that hard to manage. I promise. Be flexible and pick up the slack when the other person has a crazy deadline or is sick or is just sick of it.

If you've got a good partner they'll do the same for you and keep you both on the seesaw.

For more tips for a great relationship, take a look at The Secret Ingredient for a Better Marriage at Zen Habits. It is written by Corey Allen of Simple Marriage.

The gift of joy in food

Rachel — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 04:46:02 +0000

The gift of taking joy in eating and cooking is one of the best things you can give a child. Encouraging the natural curiosity and urge to touch, smell and take pleasure in food is a gift that will be lifelong.

The power and beauty in a healthy understanding of where food comes from and how it sustains our bodies and hearts cannot be underestimated.

My childhood memories seem to almost invariably revolve around food.

Photo credit: Delicacies by Marcus Vegas

In one of the first that comes to mind I'm lying on my belly in my grandparents' backyard, the scent of mint and lemons and grass swirling on the gentle wind.

I'm about 7, tanned brown and skinny, the sun warming my face and the grass tickles my legs.

One hand holds a book, the other is reaching for strawberries just picked from the garden, sweet, ruby red, all different shapes and textures, some firmer and some almost jammy from the sun, dribbling their juices.

Time stands still until the strawberries are gone and the spell is broken.

My grandfather has hidden some berries from my ever-reaching grasp and he sneaks them into the house with some herbs and lemons.

A row of sterilised jars, saved from peanut butter and tomato paste, are lined up on the kitchen bench. My grandmother works magic and the jars are filled with spoonfuls of deliciously lumpy, sweet yet tart, rich jam. I could eat it straight from the spoon and I do.

Photo credit: Erdbeermarmelade- Strawberry jam

Later, my grandmother and I make doughnuts, all hands in as we talk as if we are old friends with 50 years between visits, instead of grandmother and granddaughter who talk to each other every day.

There's an index card with my grandmother's handwriting, not perfectly formed slightly forced letters as in my grandfather's hand, written with a ruler underneath to keep it neat, but letters tumbling over each other in their rush to hit the page. Rough quantities and shorthand instructions. It is there in front of us but we work from memory and our senses.

The dough rests and rises, rests and rises, rests and rises.

We chat, slower now, my grandmother has tea in a pretty china cup and I have a tall glass of cadbury drinking chocolate, way too much chocolate powder for the milk, thick bumpy chocolate floats on top. My mother would be horrified to see the amount of chocolate, my grandmother doesn't agree with the instructions on the back of the box, adding more and more and when she turns I add another spoonful still. My grandfather comes in from the garden and laughs at the chocolate on the end of my nose. He gently teases my grandmother and tells her that I'm going to be spoiled rotten.

The jam is injected into the doughnuts and they land in the hot oil, sizzling and turning golden. I have to stand back for this part. My grandmother is scared I will be spattered by the oil and she is wearing a flowered apron. She scoops them out and drains the doughnuts on thick paper towel, dusts them generously in cinnamon and sugar and they're left to cool.

The air smells warm and sweet and we can barely wait. My grandfather tells us to be careful. He suggests that we wait until after dinner to eat them. My grandmother and I wait till he goes back outside and we bite into the golden fluffy softness, bubbly hot jam squirting out, running like lava down our chins. The rest are arranged with pride onto delicately patterned china and are shared, warm with the rest of the family and friends. They taste wonderful but none so perfect as the very first one, stolen and hot with anticipation.

My grandparents' backyard is not huge but the bounty that comes from it, changing with the seasons, is massive. My grandfather tends to it with pride, long ears of corn in green silk, cherry tomatoes heavy with sweetness on vines running up plastic ladders, peas that are popped into the mouth straight from their shells, purple garlic, lemons, chillis, the fragrant green of parsley, chives, mint, basil and coriander, strawberries and more besides.

I taste everything, fresh and light. I love the zing of the chilli and the sweetness of the peas. At my grandparents' house it is my job to shell the peas and they are popped straight into my mouth, they never make it into the bowl.

I'm reminded not to be greedy and to save some for everybody else.

Photo credit: stevendepolo

The peas I'm served at my friends' houses come to the plate from boxes in the freezer, via the microwave and they are hard and wrinkled and almost grey.

The flavour is muddy, I can't tell the difference between the taste of the peas and the overcooked limp broccoli that must have been picked before I was born.

I follow my friend's lead and move the vegetables around on the plate and drop peas off my fork onto the floor.

Her mother sighs and implores us to eat at least 10 peas each or there's no icecream.

I wonder how these peas relate to the ones I eat with joy.

It is now 20 years later and my husband and I fight over who gets the last spoonful of the jam my grandmother still makes with love for the whole family. It is spread thickly on the bread we make at home and split to share with my grandparents.

My grandfather has Alzheimer's disease now and time is slipping away, but he never forgets to give me little red netted bags of fragrant fresh purple garlic and handfuls of tomatoes from the garden.

The memories and lessons I learned in my grandmother's kitchen will stay with me for ever. We use our sense of smell and touch and taste to cook and tell when something is done. Our hands are soiled with flour or cocoa or egg wash and the timer has no place here. I learn how the texture changes as food cooks and how a change in the food's fragrance will signal that it is ready. I learn how to cook and eat with my heart and all of my senses, not for sustenance alone but for pleasure.

To my grandparents I owe everything - my love of food and pleasure and the extra few kilos on my hips. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and the pit of my stomach.

my grandmother and I, 1981

Eat like an American Congressman

Rachel — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:37:46 +0000

While I (slowly) write a detailed post on meal planning I thought I would share a few recipes with you. These recipes come from The Congressional Club Cook Book, 10th edition, published in 1982.

The book is a monument to truly awful eating.

This particular recipe was supplied by George Bush (snr).

Mexican Mound

Ingredients:

2 lbs ground hamburger meat
Lawry's taco seasonings mix
1 pkg Doritos
1 cup grated yellow cheese
1 or 2 small chopped onions
10 chopped black olives (ed: 11 is obviously way too many)
1 chopped tomato
1 cup sour cream
1 cup shredded lettuce
1 can frozen avocado dip (ed: this should be illegal)

Method:

Easy to make, loved by all who love Mexican food. Ingredients easy to keep in the house. Children or guests can all help with chopping or grating. It's fun!! Follow instructions on taco seasonings mix for browning meat. I serve this meal in my kitchen, a big pot of meat simmering on the stove. A wooden salad bowl of Doritos and 7 bowls of the remaining ingredients around the table. Start with a mound of Doritos, a spoon of piping hot meat, cheese etc. Makes 8 servings.

Mmm yummy, Bush brain food.

This one came from Mrs Alan Simpson.

Party Vegetable Casserole

Ingredients:

2 pkgs frozen peas
2 pkgs frozen lima beans
2 pkgs frozen Fresh green beans
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (use Kraft in can) ed: or you could use some dried skin shavings instead

Method:

Parboil vegetables until tender. Layer in buttered casserole dish. Whip cream, add mayonnaise and parmesan cheese. Pour over vegetables. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes at 325F. Makes 12 servings. Can be prepared ahead and refrigerated.

Enjoy!