Paleo Stuffed Mushrooms - Goats Cheese & Char Grilled Peppers

Will its official, I have Tonsillitis. It sucks.  It really, really sucks.  I have been off for 3 days, and right now its getting worse.  I am on codeine to manage the pain and itchy throat.  I feel like shit.

So I have spent some time on Pinterest.  OK, I am obsessed with Pinterest.  

Pinterest is pretty awesome except for the the following trends:

People selling work out programs- Thanks for all the pictures of models making me feel like shit

Deserts and sweets everywhere- Lucky I don't care for sweet stuff cause that mixed with the above would create an unstable existence.

Wedding/bridal crap- I bet half of these chicks arn't even engaged and they are clogging up Pinterest with stuff that is irrelevant to them at this point in time.

Pinterest Stuff I love:

Paleo inspiration.  When you get stuck you can find new ideas (Spaghetti Squash- major obsession right now)

Fashion trends- You can see what is ahead of the next season

Interior design inspiration- I love EVERYTHING in this category

Actually it just helps you get inspired about things you didn't know exist or never would of though of.

So the point of my crapping on (well I have more or less been unable to talk fro 3 days straight so this was bound to happen) is I saw something similar to this on Pinterest last night and decided to grab the ingredients after my doctors appointment for dinner tonight.

Ingredients:

Portobello Mushrooms x 3

1 large char grilled pepper sliced finely

Crumbled goats cheese (use as much as you want, I didn't use enough)

Mixed herbs or oregano (a wee pinch per mushroom)

Method:

Take the stalks out of the mushrooms, Add the sliced roasted peppers and then the crumbled goats milk cheese the the herbs.

Heat the oven to 180 and roast for 15-20 minutes.

DONE

Images by me.

Greek Food

I love Greek food.  So fresh and yum.  So healthy! (minus the fries in the background!!)

This meze lunch inspired my tapas night.  I am actually now going to do a Greek Meze night next :)

Niks home made chicken, bacon, leek and mushroom pie

I made this recipe off the back of 2 small chicken pies I bought from the Friday Shop.  I only just discovered the Friday Shop a couple of weeks before my trip to Australia.  It was very hard not to get carried away whilst saving. The week before I left I spent almost $70 on food there.  Its that damn good.  So after the Friday shop chicken pies (which were fantastic I might add) I felt a challenge coming on, so I decided to make my famous chicken pie. It  has been almost 5 years since I have made it but did it from scratch, so hopefully I will remember the recipe as I write this!

Ingredients:

Puff pastry sheets

1 egg white

250grams of bacon sliced 

300 mls of cream

1 leek white part sliced thinly

1/2 kg of boneless chicken thighs sliced finely

1 good pinch of grated parmasen.

1 egg yolk

1/2 a kg of sliced mushrooms 

1 knob of butter.

Method:

Use a frypan and add the butter till its melted. Add the chicken and fry till browned.  Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. 

 Add the bacon and fry till cooked.  I personally like mine crispy.  Remove bacon from the heat and set aside.  Fry the leaks till transparent.  Add the mushrooms and fry till cooked.  Add the chicken and bacon back to the frypan and cook on a medium heat.

 Add the cream and stir through, let it sit on medium heat till it starts to boil down. Add the egg yolk and stir till it is blended in.  Remove from the heat and let cool

Get 1 sheet of the puff pastry and put it in an oven tray.  Add the chicken, bacon, mushroom and leek filling to the middle of the pastry, use some water to brush the edges and get another pastry sheet and cover the pie. 

 Use the egg white to bursh the top of the pie, this makes it come up golden.  Use a fork to seal the pie around the edges.  Repeat, this recipe should make 2 full sized pies.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees on fan forced.  Let the pies bake fro 25 minutes.  The puff pastry should rise and the pies should look like couch pillows.

Images by me.

The GC.

IM BACK!!!!!!!!

I have been super lazy/busy and have not posted for maybe 3 weeks?!  Pretty poor effort.  I have been to the GC and back, we have been looking at appartments/ properties for next year and I havent cooked in 2 weeks!  2 WEEKS!  Its crazy.... I have no motivation!

When I was over on the GC I did some cooking for my grandmother.  It was sooooooo fun.  My beautiful sister Bree and I spent 6 hours in the kitchen cooking up a storm (and drinking our weight in wine) It was great!  Then we woke up with a hangover!

So the highlight of my trip aside from seeing my family and the shopping (6kg's over the limit :S) was Dan Murphy's.  That shop rules.  $2.99 for a bottle of wine! (I probably wouldnt drink it) but it reminded me how cheep things are in Australia. 

 I think we are going to move to the Gold Coast!

FUCK YEAH! Cheap Wine and a three legged goat..

So here is a recipe for you all.  A tip from Bree- Add milk and cream, it will make the quiche go further!

Salmon Quiche (crust-less)

Ingredients:

Treat this like a pizza.  Add whatever you think is needed.

12 eggs

250 grams of smoked salmon (we used hot smoked and cold smoked)

1/3 of a cup cream

1/3 of a cup of milk

1/2 a red onion

200gms-250gms of cream cheese (just use whatever is needed)

1/2 a bag of sliced baby spinach

Method:

Whisk the eggs.

scoop the cream cheese into wee balls and add to a bowl

Combine all the ingredients into a large bowl, add to them to the cake tins.  Use a spoon to ensure all the ingredients are spread through evenly.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Add the tins to the oven and leave for about 30 mins (fan forced).  Keep an eye on this, it may take longer.  If it does, get a knife and poke it till it the knife comes out clear.

Images by me :)

Sauerkraut

As you can see, I have had a break from blogging.  Too much happening and not enough time to relax!  Anyways, as you can see from the title of this blog post, we made sauerkraut!  From scratch, thank you!  I am really luck my partner loves to experiment with food too.  He does it from more of a health perspective (every now and then he sways the other way- he is eating Paleo chips tonight- oven fries cooked in butter) and does alot of research behind what he is interested in.  Sauerkraut that is fermented is suppose to be good for your digestive system, I have terrible problems with my digestive system, so this was a perfect pairing! I dont know where he got this recipe but it was really good!

This should make one medium sized jar

Ingredients:

1/2 a cabbage sliced really thin

1 litre of natural yoghurt (to turn into whey)

1/2 a teaspoon of salt.

Method:

Slice the cabbage thinly.  Add the thinly sliced cabbage to a bowl and get something really heavy to pound the cabbage.  You need to pound the cabbage till it is broken down till there is just as much juice to cabbage. 

 Add to the jar.  

Get a clean piece of material (I used a clean cotton tea towel) and place the yoghurt in the centre of the material.  Tie and hang it up so that it is in a ball, leave a bowl underneath to let the whey drip into.  This should take a a few hours.  We cheated and placed the material with the yoghurt in it in a metal steamer with a sauce pan underneath to collect the whey.  

Once the whey is collected, add 4 tablespoons of whey to the pounded cabbage.  Add the salt and stir.

  Close the jar with the lid and keep in a warm place (roughly 27 degrees celcius). We cheated and used a EasyYo Yoghurt maker to fast track the process.  If you are on top of this by changing the hot water when needed using the easyyo Yoghurt maker , you can have your Sauerkraut ready in 3 days.

Images by me.  I look rancid in this shot!