Ginger Crunch

Here a little story about ginger crunch.  Once upon a time I was working hard. Really hard.  I was out doing presentations for clients and in between appointments I stopped at a well known cafe in St Clair and bought some ginger crunch for my partner and a scroll for me.  After eating the scroll, I was still hungry so I looked at the ginger crunch.  Anyone who knows me well will know that I don't share things I really like.  So I declared the ginger crunch was not my partners anymore,  it was now mine.  Then BAM!  I bit a huge chunk out of the side of my cheek when uncontrollably eating the ginger crunch. Blood all through my mouth and 3 days of bruised pain.  I don't really eat sweets so I think it was the universe telling me to stay away from sugar and to share with others.

When I decided to make this about 2 weeks ago, it took me a week and a half to get over the horror of the bitten cheek.  We finally got around to getting the ingredients yesterday and joined in on the flat baking activities on a Sunday afternoon.

Just so you know, making ginger crunch is so damn easy.  If I know how easy it was, I would of made it ages ago.  For this recipe I made double so it would go further. A tip, you dont really need to do this.  We now have way too much crunch.

Ingredients

The Base

225g plain flour

100g caster sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoon ground ginger

150g butter, cut into cubes

The Icing

150g butter

60ml (4 Tablespoons) golden syrup

300g icing sugar, sifted

2 tablespoons ground ginger

Method

Preheat oven to 180c.  Line a baking tin with baking paper.  To make base, put the flour, sugar, baking powder and ginger in a food processor.  Pulse several times to combine.

  Add butter and process for a further 30 seconds or until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

  Press the mixture into prepared tin and level off using back of spoon.  Bake of 20-25mins or until lightly golden.  Remove from oven and cool completely.

To make icing, put butter and golden syrup in a medium saucepan and heat until just melted.

Add the sifted icing sugar and ground ginger and cook for a further 1-2 minutes stirring constantly until smooth.  Remove from the heat and pour over cooled base.  Let set and then refrigerate till completely cooled. (it took 2 hours on my fridge)

Gaslights Gnocchi Fumee

This was my ask a chef.  I submitted it and after 5 months there is was!  In the news newspaper!  I had lost hope but it finally happened.  It was nice to see something other than a slice or deserts.  It didn't quite turn out how I would of liked it however it was good to give it a go!

Recipe from Gaslight via the ODT

Gnocchi dough

400g potatoes, boiled then mashed

2 whole eggs

2 egg yolks

250g flour (they use Dover premium bakers flour)

a pinch of salt

Fungi fumee

25g finely sliced red onion

25g finely sliced leek

50g button mushrooms

25g field mushrooms

25g prosciutto, finely sliced (they use Havoc fumee)

25g jowl bacon cut into fine lardons (they use Havoc jowl bacon from the pigs' cheeks)

salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp dried wild mushrooms (they use forestier) soaked and blended with water

fresh herb mix, finely chopped (they use chives, chervil and Italian flat-leafed parsley)

white truffle oil

Method

To make the gnocchi:

Boil the potatoes as if you are going to make mash, but keep them as dry as possible. Mix until they are a smooth mash. Beat in the eggs and yolks.

Add flour and combine to make a dough. You may need more flour depending on how wet the mix is. Wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Roll into sausages no thicker than your thumb. Pinch and cut the sausages into little pillow shapes.

To cook, drop into boiling water. When they float to the top they are done.

To make the sauce:

In a hot pan put a squirt of canola oil. Add the onion, leek, sliced mushrooms. Add the prosciutto and lardons and fry until golden brown.

Add the soaked wild mushrooms and your cooked gnocchi. Season to taste and finish with herbs and a drizzle of white truffle oil.

Recipe from Gaslight via the ODT

http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/food-wine/223578/ask-chef-gaslights-gnocchi-fungi-fumee

Paleo Pasta

I am trying the paleo diet again.  To be honest I am not really sticking to it 24/7.  I am allowing myself a day off every week so I dont get sick of it again.  While I was off with tonsillitis, I went and did a majah paleo shop at the supermarket.  It was soooo fun!  I left with eggplant, zucchini's, mushrooms and all the different veggies I love. I also left countdown with 2 of the Bordeaux glasses in there coupon/sticker collection I had been eyeing up!  I was soooo excited, I am such a geek.

So on Pinterest I saw the spaghetti squashes which don't exist/ hard to find  in NZ.  I was/ still am quite gutted about this.  Instead I saw images of spaghetti made out of zucchini's!  Instantly I had to make this. 

I combined it with my go-to tomato and cream pasta sauce. It is sooooo damn quick to make and so healthy for you!

  It was delish......

Ingredients.

Zucchini- sliced very finely like fettuccine.

1/2 a teaspoon of crushed garlic.

Oil to fry the zucchini

Sauce:

Cubed eggplant 

finely sliced sun-dried tomatoes

cherry tomatoes halved

3/4 of a can of tinned tomatoes -Watties crushed & seived are the best

1/2 of a large white onion diced

100 mls of cream (you can use more, I just add more depending on the taste

1 heaped teaspoon on crushed Garlic

olive oil. 

good pinch of grated parmesan

Salt to taste

Method

Add the oil, zucchini fettuccine and the garlic to the fry pan and fry till limp.  Once its limp set aside.  

Add some oil to a frypan on medium to high heat , add the diced onions and cook till transparent.  Add the garlic and fry off till flavours combine.  Add the tinned tomatoes and cook for a few minuets till all the flavours combine.  Add the sun dried tomato, cherry tomatoes and cubed eggplant and fry till the eggplant is limp.

Add the cream and stir through.  I would taste the sauce at this point to see if you need to add more cream.

  Once the sauce is right, add the parmesan cheese and stir through. 

 Taste again and see if you  need more parmesan or salt and add what is required. 

Images by me

Chili Crab

This was the moment I had been waiting for for the last 3 months.  CRABS ARE BACK IN SEASON!  I would go to the market to check to see if they were back week after week asking the same fish monger only to get "come back in another month".  I kind of gave up hope, then kind of forgot about it.

Growing up in Australia having crab in your diet is not unusual. Its kind of a right of passage as a child to go fishing and eat fresh from the sea.  Or I could of been really lucky and exposed to some opportunities that others were not.

 When I was a wee girl, we use to go snorkling for blue swimmer crabs. We would swim above them, I would hold a really long sick, dad would hold a really long handled fishing net and be about a meter or so away from me.  I would use the stick to tap the crab on the side and the crab would run into the net. DONE! The most effective way to catch blue swimmer crabs.  Then straight to the BBQ on the boat they would go.

We also would order mud crab at the local Chinese restaurants.  The mud crabs are alive, fresh and tied up. As kids we would get to choose which ones we wanted.  Mud Crabs are different to blue swimmer crabs as the are much larger, with much larger claws (good for family eating).

Mud crabs

 Dad would educate us on which ones were the females and which ones were the males.  The males have a narrow V underneath their bellies and the females have a more rounded V underneath their bellies. I have never caught a live Mud Crab as the live in mangroves.  I have seen shows where people sick their hands into mangrove holes to fish them out.  Not on my to do list, Mud crabs have huge claws with moler like grooves on them.  I value not having broken bones and fully functioning hands LOL. At the Chinese restaurants, we would have the crabs in either Chili sauce, Black Bean sauce or Salt & Pepper.  They all taste fantastic.  Its probably one of my favourite foods.

All the crabs I bought from the market were male.  I think they dont keep/sell the females for breeding purposes here in NZ.  They return them to the water.  These crabs from the Otago Farmers Market are so cheap!  They were $2 each.  Such a cheap, healthy and yummy meal!

Now for this, I used a Junior Masterchef recipe from Australia. It actually blows my mind a child under 12 was able to come up with this recipe.  It was really yummy and the coriander really makes the dish.

Instructions on how to precook and prepare paddle crab here.  I precooked mine as that's how I roll. I find it easier to gut them if they are precooked.  Just make sure you crack the claws to get the chilli sauce in.

If you are going to cook them raw, please look up some instructions on the net on how to clean and gut a crab.  There are many video's on youtube.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons peanut oil

2 fresh red chillies, sliced

1 tablespoon ginger, grated

2 cloves garlic, sliced

½ tablespoon fish sauce

40ml tomato puree

1 tablespoon brown sugar

½ cup fish stock

½ cup water

1raw mud crab, broken into claws, half bodies and top shell

1 handful coriander, chopped, to serve

Method

For chilli crab, heat peanut oil in a large frying pan over medium heat.Sauté chilli, ginger and garlic for 1-2 minutes.

 Add fish sauce, tomato puree, sugar, stock, water and seasoning. Stir until the mixture boils.

Crack crab claws to allow the sauce to penetrate into the crab meat and cook in the sauce for about four minutes. 

Remove from pan once the shell colour changes to a bright orange. Keep warm

.Place half bodies and top shell in the pan and cook for five minutes, remove and keep warm.

Assemble the crab so it resembles its whole form.

 Serve with sweet chilli sauce. Garnish with coriander. 

Recipe from Junior Masterchef Australia

Images by me unless stated otherwise.