Category Archives: Fruit

Vintage Cooking: Chinese Chews

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When I was at primary school, I would often fill an afternoon baking something with my mum or a friend who had come over (remember, Louise?). But what to bake? We would pull out all the recipe books and pore over the baking sections. We made shortlists. We made shortlists of the shortlists. I think we spent more time choosing than we did baking.

I always, always came to rest on Chinese Chews. But for some reason, another recipe always won out. It may be because we didn’t often have walnuts, dates or crystallised ginger (or all three) in the house. It may be because the tried and true chocolate cake in Alison Holst’s “What’s Cooking” was too tempting. For whatever reason, I’ve wanted to make these for nearly 20 years.

I don’t know what I expected them to be – that’s half the fun of recipe books with no photos, you have no pre-conceived idea of what they should be or look like. Turns out their like a chewy, short cross between a cake and a slice. Sort of like a brownie but much lighter and   not made with chocolate.

They’re not actually a family recipe, as most of my vintage cooking posts. These are from the Edmonds cookbook that almost everyone has. They’re a lovely wee weekend bake. As with many of these old recipes, what makes these “Chinese”? No idea.  Could be the inclusion of exotic ingredients such as dates and ginger?

Chinese Chews
from Edmonds Cookery Book

2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
75g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1½ cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
½ cup rolled oats
¾ cup chopped dates
¾ cup chopped walnuts
¾ cup crystallised ginger

Preheat the oven to 180°(C). Line a 23cm square cake tin (or I used a brownie pan).

Beat eggs and sugar until well mixed. Add butter and vanilla. Into a large bowl sift flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in rolled oats. Pour egg mixture into the sifted dry ingredients. Add dates, walnuts and ginger. Mix well. Spread mixture into prepared tin. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until cooked. Cut into squares while still hot.

Just Peachy Pancakes

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Happy Easter! I hope you get to relax with friends and family over the break.

Right now I’m eating the biggest bowl of fresh fruit and yoghurt… and I’ve told myself that if I finish that, then all bets are off and I can rip into the chocolate. I’m sure I’ll read this post again later with chocolate stains and remorse.

Today I bring you a breakfasty brunch recipe, so if you feel like making it, you’ve still got tomorrow to try it!

This is just a simple pancake recipe – actually, it’s a pikelet recipe, which I’ve often used for pancakes. This makes hotcake-y kind of pancakes, rather than the really fat pancakes that you get with beaten egg white recipes. I served our pancakes with what may be the last peaches we eat this season.

Pancakes

25g low fat spread or buttter
1 Tbsp golden syrup (or maple)
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
¾ cup trim milk
1½ cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar

Melt the spread in a large heatproof bowl or jug in the microwave. Add the syrup and microwave again, just until the mixture is softened. Add the sugar and eggs, and whisk until they’re well combined. Whisk in the milk, then add the sifted flour, baking soda and cream of tartar and just mix until there are no more pockets of flour – as for muffins, avoid over-mixing like the plague.

Heat a large-ish frypan over medium heat and either spray with non-stick cooking spray, or melt a little butter and swirl in the pan to grease.

Drop the batter in to form pancake sized discs – I use a slightly less than full ¼ cup measure to do this. Once you have quite a few bubbles burst on the surface, gently flip the pancake. I find if you have a good non-stick spatula or fish slice you can tilt the edge up and have a peek to see whether it’s your preferred colour too. Once both sides are cooked, remove from the pan and serve.

If you’re cooking for a bunch of people, and you want everyone to eat at the same time, I keep the pancakes stacked on the bench in a folded clean teatowel, one pancake between each folded layer. This keeps them pretty warm without letting them go stodgy.

Good served with bacon/banana/maple, berries and yoghurt, light butter and syrup, or grilled fruit as below.

Grilled Peaches

Preheat the grill to 180-200 or so. Slice the peaches, cutting the flesh away from the stone, and lay the slices out in a single layer in a small lined baking tray. I suggest using metal, as it  heats up quickly and conducts heat to the peaches – ceramic dishes will take longer. Sprinkle the peaches with brown sugar and drizzle some balsamic vinegar over the top. Grill for a few minutes until tender and delicious.

Enjoy your Easter weekend!

Easter Biscuits

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Another Easter recipe for you! This one’s a bit more old fashioned, and would make a great afternoon tea over the holiday weekend.

It comes from Alexa Johnston’s sequel to Ladies, A Plate – A Second Helping. They’re rather lovely biscuits – crisp and lemony, with crunchy sugar on top.

The dough is a delicate one to deal with – so chill it well before you roll it out so it’s good and firm. I rolled out half and left the remainder in the fridge, then started again.

Easter Biscuits

5oz butter, slightly softened
4oz caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
2 egg yolks
8oz flour
¼ cup currants
pinch mixed spice

for the glaze:
1 egg white
extra caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190°C and line a couple of baking trays with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar with the lemon zest. Add the egg yolks and mix well. Work in the sifted flour, spice and currants until you have a fairly stiff paste. Put the dough in the fridge in a covered bowl, and leave there for 10-15 minutes.

Sprinkle the bench with cornflour to help the dough from sticking, and roll it out fairly thinly (I think 3-5mm), and cut biscuits (I used a 7-8cm fluted cutter). Place carefully on the lined baking trays, and brush with the lightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Bake for 10-15 minutes – mine only took 10, and watch them carefully, as they turn from lightly golden to crispily brown very quickly. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.

Apple Purée

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Today I thought I’d share something we eat nearly every day but that usually flies under the radar: apple purée.

As per usual with me, this is really not revolutionary – it’s just cooked apples that have been whizzed up. But it is SO yummy, simple, useful, versatile, healthy and cheap. How else can I sell it?

I first made this when we had loads of apples and they were just starting to go a bit soft and not so nice for eating plain. Now I buy extra apples (little ones, or ones with a couple of marks on them) just for making into purée. I make it once every couple of weeks, and the obsessive housewife in me packs 1-cup quantities into little snap lock bags (which can be used over and over and over), and freezes them. Then I take them out the night before I need them, and they’re purée again by morning.

I add the purée to my muesli, fresh fruit and yoghurt for breakfast – great way to bulk out the meal without adding extra fat or excess kJ. You can also use it in desserts,  smoothies, milkshakes etc, or I’m sure there are plenty of other ideas floating around. I think you could use it in most instances as a substitute for store-bought apple sauce – much better for you, too.

I really like using apple purée as a substitute for butter in baking recipes. I have a general rule of thumb for cakes, muffins and loaves etc, that you can swap a quantity of butter for a half and half mix of fruit purée and low-fat spread. It’s not a fail-safe rule, some recipes do need a higher quantity of fat to work, so I can’t guarantee you success! But for example, I made a beautiful gingerbread a few days ago – instead of 200g butter, I used 100g apple puree, and 100g low fat spread, and it came out perfectly (I’ll post the recipe sometime soon). You really wouldn’t know from the taste, and although the sugar content is still high, you’ve significantly lowered the fat, which is a great start! By the way, this can be a great option if you need to make a baking recipe dairy-free.

Apple Purée (or you could use pears)
Just cut apples into quarters, and remove the core and pips. Chop the apples roughly, leaving the skin on (it’s where lots of the goodness is, and it just melts into the puree during cooking and whizzing). I microwave my apples – pop say 800g of them in a microwave proof bowl with 1-2 Tbsp cold water, cover and cook on high for about 8 minutes. I don’t find you need to add any sugar, unless the apples are spectacularly tart. Alternatively, you could steam them on the stove top, just until they’re tender and will puree easily. Once they’re cooked, transfer the contents (including the liquid) to a food processor, and whiz for a couple of minutes, or until you have a smooth puree. The purée in this photo is made from lovely gala apples and they gave it this beautiful rosy pink colour.

Enjoy!

Chargrilled Salmon with Avocado & Corn Salad

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This is another dish that I actually cooked some time ago, but hadn’t got around to posting yet. But this is surely the time for it, given the abundance of corn at the moment… I’m sure the next time I go to the supermarket they’re going to offer to pay me to take corn away from them.

I’ve had this recipe in my book for ages… but I’m not quite sure where it came from. It’s not my own. So if anyone recognises it let me know! And if nobody does, then we can send a collective thank you to its author.

It’s a lovely summer meal and doesn’t take long to make. It’s extra good for you, too – fairly low in fat with lots of omega 3 and coloured veges. My camera or photo editing has captured some eerily bright colours – the salmon doesn’t in fact look so thermo-nuclear in real life. Try it and find out!

Grilled Salmon with Avocado & Corn Salad
Serves 2

corn kernels – from say 1 cob (or about half a can if you’re using the tinned variety)
½ a medium avocado
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 ripe tomato, copped – or use a few halved cherry tomatoes
½ a red onion, finely chopped
¼ cup chopped fresh coriander
salt and pepper, to taste
2x salmon fillets, skin removed if you prefer (or if you want the even healthier version)
2 tsp moroccan seasoning
cooking spray – canola or olive oil
baby spinach or lettuce leaves, to serve

Cook the corn in the microwave until just tender (this won’t take long at all). Set aside to cool.

Place the avocado and lemon juice in a medium bowl and toss to coat the avocado. Add the warm corn, tomato, red onion and coriander. Toss gently to combine and season to taste.

Heat a char-grill pan, barbecue, or frypan over medium heat. Sprinkle the salmon fillets with moroccan seasoning, salt and pepper, and spritz with cooking oil spray. Cook the salmon for 4-5 minutes each side.

Place salmon on plates with salad leaves, and serve with the corn & avocado salad.

Chicken Burgers

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Well, I’m not going to pretend this is a classy or elegant dish. It’s a weeknight chicken burger. And a total mash-up of flavours – moroccan and mexican, all at once.

The moroccan chicken filling comes from a random recipe I found tucked away, although I’m not sure where it came from. It’s usually served with couscous and cumin-spiced yoghurt, and is really yummy like that, but burgers feel so summery, and the other half LOVES them, so the poached chicken was re-purposed accordingly.

Chicken Burgers with Guacamole & Salsa

1 Tbsp cumin seeds
1 Tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
4 small lean chicken breasts, trimmed
1 cup hot chicken stock
¼ cup lemon juice
½ an avocado
1 Tbsp finely chopped chives
juice of 1 lime
a few cherry tomatoes, as many as you like/have, halved or quartered
½ red onion, finely chopped
chilli – either a little chopped fresh stuff, or even some minced from a jar
fresh chopped coriander
burger buns or good grainy bread
salad greens, to serve

Pop the cumin seeds, coriander seeds, salt and pepper in a mortar and pestle and just crush them lightly. Place the chicken breasts between two sheets of glad wrap, and beat them lightly with a rolling pin or something until they’re about 2cm thick. Rub the chicken pieces all over with the crushed spice mix.

Heat a dash of oil in a large frypan, and brown the chicken quickly – just a minute on each side. Then add the stock and lemon juice. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes, then take it off the heat and let it stand for 5 minutes – make sure it’s cooked through.

While the chicken’s cooking, place the avocado, chives and half the lime juice in a small bowl. Mash, season and set aside.

In another bowl, make a salsa with the cherry tomatoes, red onion, chilli, coriander and remaining lime juice. Season and set aside.

Lightly toast the burger buns and spread with guacamole. Fill with chicken, salsa and salad greens. If you’ve got some hummus handy, chuck that in too!

 

Summer Smoked Chicken Salad

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I’m trying my best to make the most of the long evenings and summer weather (on the days it shows up), with light meals that don’t involve the oven or the stove being on for too long. Loads of salads fancied up with cold meats or pan-fried fish, and sourdough or ciabatta breads. What’s been on your menu?

I’ve really gotten into smoked chicken this summer, it’s been one of my new finds. I’ve been buying smoked chickens for less than $10 at the supermarket; they’re great for making a salad one night, and having smoked chicken sandwiches or wraps for lunch over the next couple of days. Lovely! And a nice change from plain cold roast chicken, which can get, um… boring. My supermarket carries a couple of brands of smoked chicken, but I couldn’t see a free range option. I’ve been buying Turk’s which I think is probably the next best thing – the chickens are corn-fed and I think barn-raised.

This salad was inspired by an Annabel Langbein recipe in her The Best of Annabel Langbein: Good Food for Busy Lives. I love summer stone fruit so if there’s a way to get it into a meal, count me in. Following my own advice from last Friday, this is an adaptation from the original ;) It’s a low fat meal with a healthier dressing than most!

Summer Smoked Chicken Salad
adapted from an Annabel Langbein recipe. Serves 4 

few handfuls baby spinach leaves or mesclun salad leaves
1 punnet strawberries, hulled and halved or quartered
2 peaches, stones removed and cut in wedges
2 nectarines, stones removed and cut in wedges (as best you can!)
raw snow peas, topped & tailed, and halved
400-500g smoked chicken, sliced or shredded (one chicken would be heaps)
chopped fresh mint, basil or coriander, or a combination
2-3 Tbsp pesto
2 Tbsp water
squeeze of lemon juice
salt and pepper, to taste

Place the spinach or mesclun leaves in the bottom of your serving bowls or plates (I like wide and shallow ones best). Arrange the fruit, snow peas and chicken over the greens.  Sprinkle over the fresh herbs.

In a small bowl or jug, mix the pesto, water and lemon juice. Season to taste and drizzle over salads.

Can be served on its own, or with some crusty bread.

Vintage Cooking: Canadian Date Loaf

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My mum used to make a sultana loaf when we were little. I remember finding little buttered slices of it in my lunch box at school. And she must have served it to visitors, because I have a funny memory of standing beside a coffee table, which came up to my 4 year old waist, and seeing a plate of buttered loaf slices with 3 or 4 of those brown tinted glass coffee mugs that everyone had/has. I have no idea why I would remember that! It seems otherwise insignificant. But the mind is a strange beast.

Anyway, I’m not sure what made me think of this loaf a few months ago, but I got mum to email me the recipe. I baked the loaf a few days ago, and the aroma of it cooking in the oven created one of those spooky moments. I hadn’t had this loaf since I was quite little, and the smell of it really got me! All the memories came flooding back. Do you have foods or smells that transport you?

This is a family recipe. Grandma used to make it, too, but I have no idea where it came from. I also have no idea what makes it ‘Canadian’. Furthermore, mum never made it with dates, usually sultanas, so its title really was misleading. I did make it with dates this time, though, and re-discovered how beautiful this loaf is. The boiling and macerating before baking results in a dark and caramelly loaf, with a beautiful soft texture. You’d be forgiven for thinking it had treacle or golden syrup in it.  The loaf also freezes well, and has a comparatively low fat content with only 1 Tbsp butter (it does sort of make up for that with high sugar, but… you know…). It’s truly my favourite loaf in the world.

Please give it a go! You won’t be disappointed.

Canadian Date Loaf

1 cup sugar
1½ cups water
8oz dates, sultanas, mixed fruit – whatever you like
1 Tbsp butter
1 tsp mixed spice
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Place the sugar, water, fruit, butter and mixed spice in a large-ish saucepan over medium heat, and stir together. Increase the heat and bring the mixture to the boil, and boil for 5 minutes. Leave it in the saucepan until cold.

Preheat the oven to 180°(C). Lightly grease a loaf tin. Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda together, and stir into the boiled and cooled fruit mixture. Spoon the batter into the prepared loaf tin, and bake for about 45 mins to an hour, until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in its tin to cool for a few minutes, then transfer to a rack. When cold, cut into slices, and enjoy as is or with a wee spread of butter.

Crunchy Lemon Muffins

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Some days, you need a bright and cheery morning or afternoon tea to help get you through the day. And things don’t come much brighter or cheerier than lemon muffins. Aren’t they sweet?

Muffins have rather fallen out of fashion, landing in the ‘dated’ pile with a definite bump. I don’t make them very often anymore, but they’re a nice blast from the past when I do.

Like almost every other New Zealand household, we have an ageing copy of Alison Holst’s Marvellous Muffins. I understand the Crunchy Lemon Muffins is one of the most popular recipes from that book, so I present it here, in a slightly healthier form. Disclaimer – I didn’t actually adapt it myself; the Holsts also put out a ‘healthy and delicious’ version of a muffin book, which has lots of modified recipes which cut down on the butter and sugar.  I did still hesitate before adding a ‘healthy’ tag to this recipe; they’re probably not food for every day, but if you’re going to munch muffins, they might as well be these ones!

If you’re finding work a bit hard to get back into, I recommend whipping up a bunch of these (if you can’t be bothered faffing around with the crunchy topping, just leave it out completely), freezing, and popping one in your lunchbox every morning, so it’s thawed and ready to cheer you up at morning tea time.

Crunchy Lemon Muffins by Alison Holst

2¼ cups self-raising flour, sifted
¾ cup sugar
1 large lemon, finely grated rind and juice
½ cup rice bran or canola oil
1 cup trim milk
1 large egg
½ tsp salt

¼ cup lemon juice (you might need to top up the juice from the lemon above)
¼ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 210°(C), and have a rack for the muffins just below the middle of the oven. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin pan (I use a quick spritz of rice bran oil cooking spray).

Place the self-raising flour and sugar into a medium-sized bowl and mix with a fork.

In another, larger bowl, place the lemon rind, oil, milk, egg and salt, and beat with a fork until well combined.

Tip the dry ingredients onto the liquid mixture all at once, and fold everything together until the flour is just mixed in. This step is the trick to good muffins. You want the ingredients just mixed together until there are no more huge pockets of flour. The mixture should not be smooth or too well combined.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan evenly. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the muffins spring back (I usually check with a skewer, too).  While they’re cooking, get your measured sugar and lemon juice at the ready.

Once baked, leave the muffins in their tin for about 5 minutes – until you can just get them out of the tin without them breaking up. Lift them out carefully onto a cooling rack.

Working quickly, mix together the lemon juice and sugar, and brush this mixture on top of all the hot muffins, making sure they all get a bit of undissolved sugar on top. Once you’ve done the tops, keep brushing on the sides and bottoms of the muffins, until you run out of mixture. Leave them on the rack until they’re cold and crunchy.

Nigella’s Pavlova and a different kind of holiday

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For me, the summer holidays end today. I’m back to work tomorrow. Well, not back to work, really – I’m starting a new job. And like all new job starts, it’s part exciting and part scary.

I’ve been on holiday for a few weeks now – probably the longest holiday since I was at university, (when I worked most of them at cafes and restaurants anyway). And I have to say, the days before Christmas still didn’t feel like a holiday! I enjoyed them, but there’s something about those 2-3 middle weeks of December that just breeds hectic busy-ness. Then we had a very full house over Christmas (so full my easy-going brother was sleeping across the inside of our front door, guard dog-style), and a slightly-less-full-but-still-double-the-usual-population for a week over New Year’s. It was such a blast having family and friends with us to celebrate the festive season, and it seems so quiet once you wave them off from the driveway. You turn around to an empty house and an even emptier fridge (easy-going brother helped here, too).

Then my husband went back to work, and I still had 10 days of holiday. I’m a little bit of an organisational freak, so I wanted to make sure my days had some kind of structure, but not so filled with endless jobs that I started the new year and my new job tired and behind the 8 ball.

I usually keep my blog posts to recipes, but I’ve had such a great week, I felt I had to share my secret to a great holiday. These are some of the things I’ve done over the last few days. Doesn’t it look boring??! But I really do feel relaxed, refreshed, and ready for new adventures. So during my last few days off, I…
<ul.

  • went to bed early every night
  • got up early and did fun and challenging exercise every day
  • drank gallons of water
  • ate as much central otago stone fruit as I could lay my hands on
  • enjoyed taking my time preparing simple, tasty, healthy meals
  • started a herb garden
  • took religiously good care of my skin and teeth
  • read magazines
  • had coffees, lunches, dinners with old friends
  • painted my toenails
  • got a massage
  • listened to my favourite music, old and new – including the Kylie Minogue of my childhood (put your hand on your heart and tell me you don’t love old school Kylie)
  • went for walks in parks, gardens, wildlife reserves
  • managed to avoid sunburn – with my complexion, this is probably the biggest achievement of the week

    • I don’t write this to be smug! And I am truly sorry to all parents reading this. Don’t worry, I’ll get my come-uppance one day when I have littlies of my own and I’m too exhausted to re-read this post and wish, wish, wish for another week like this. But if you get the opportunity for a few days to yourself, this is a great way to spend them :)

    This feels like a celebratory kind of post, so I thought I’d include this new pavlova recipe (which I tried before my holiday, of course). My dear husband gave me Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat for Christmas, and my nose has been stuck in the book ever since. On top of that, mum and I have been re-thinking whether our family pavlova recipe really is the best one out there, and with thoughts of improving it, I gave Nigella’s a whirl. It’s included in How to Eat as part of a dinner party menu for six titled, as only Nigella could, “Camp, but only slightly, Dinner for 6″. It’s a darker pav than our family one, but Nigella’s tip of serving the pav upside down is a keeper. I’ve included her comments below too.

    Pavlova
    From Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat

    Nigella says: This version comes, appropriately enough, from an Australian book*, Stephanie Alexander’s compendious, addictive Cook’s Companion. I was taken by her family tip of turning the cooked meringue over before smearing it with cream, so that (in her words) the marshmallow middle melds with cream and the sides and the base stay crisp.

    4 egg whites at room temperature
    250g caster sugar
    2 tsp cornflour
    1 tsp white wine vinegar
    few drops pure vanilla extract
    300ml double cream, whipped til firm
    pulp of 10 passion fruits

    Preheat oven to 180°. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Draw a 20-23cm circle on the paper if this helps you dollop the meringue into an even circle.

    Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until satiny peaks form. Beat in the sugar, a third at a time, until the meringue is stiff and shiny. Sprinkle over the cornflour, vinegar and vanilla and fold in lightly. Mound on to the paper on the baking tray, flatten the top and smooth the sides. Place in the oven. IMMEDIATELY reduce the heat to 150° and cook for 1¼ hours. Turn off the oven and leave the pavlova in it to cool completely.

    Invert the pavlova on to a big, flat-bottomed plate, pile on cream and spoon over passion fruits scooped – pips and all – from their shells. Don’t be tempted to add other fruit**.

    *Um, I don’t intend to start that debate on this blog, but felt it needed to be indirectly referred to.
    **I was tempted. And yielded. Because I didn’t have fresh passionfruit, ok? I put fresh kiwis on it and served it with beautiful fresh blueberries. I’m sure Nigella would understand.