Inspiration in Cooking

Gluten-Free Granola with Dried Berries

Recipe from “The 20/20 Diet Cookbook” – made from all natural and gluten-free ingredients!  Delicious breakfast (and also to snack on!)

 

Homemade Pasta – Spinich & Ricotta Ravioli & Fettuccine

About four months ago, maybe more, we decided to buy our first pasta maker… but it’s taken this long until we’ve actually been motivated enough to use it.  Not that we thought it would be terribly time-consuming and difficult, but I guess we haven’t thought of actually getting in and testing it out!  After watching it done so many times on MasterChef, we really wanted to see how good fresh pasta was.
It turns out, it’s actually heaps of fun to use and quite easy once you get the hang of it.  Plus, it’s true when people say that once you taste fresh pasta, you’ll never want to go back to the packaged variety!

We just used a basic recipe for this first time which we found at: http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/12460/basic+fresh+pasta
There’s also suggestions for other things you can add to it to make different variations – beetroot pasta, fresh pesto pasta, spinach pasta, saffron pasta… I’m sure you could basically try anything!

Once we had made the pasta sheets, we cut out circles using a cutter as we were making half ravioli, half fettuccine.
For the ravioli, we mixed in a bowl some chopped spinach leaves and ricotta.  Once the circles were cut in the pasta, we put a dollop of the spinach mixture into the middle, put a light layer of whisked egg around the outside of the pasta circle and then put a second piece of pasta on top, closing it up properly by using a fork around the outside.
The fettuccine was easy as there’s an attachment with our pasta maker.  Once we’d made a pasta sheet, we just put it through the attachment and we had fettuccine!
For cooking it, we had a boiling pot of water with some salt added and it probably took about 8 mins for the ravioli and a bit less for the fettuccine.  It was all trial and error though – we kept testing it until we were happy with it!

We served it with a semi-dried tomato sauce and some of the spinach and ricotta mixture on top.  Delish!!

Please see the photo gallery for the whole process!

Moroccan Lamb Cutlets with Bruschetta

This is an easy meal to prepare and cook, plus very delicious!!

We made bruschetta for a small entrée using a bread stick, cherry tomatoes, little onions and mushrooms.  The lamb cutlets were seasoned with Moroccan spices and served with a sweet potato mash, asparagus and the bruschetta topping.  So easy but so tasty!

Beef Stir-Fry with Rice Noodles

I was feeling really uninspired at work today while thinking of what to cook for dinner… In between my hectic periods of actually working of course! 😉
A very handy site that I love looking through is taste.com.au.  It seriously has thousands of recipes of every type of meal.  There’s even handy recipe collections which allow you to select a type of meal, for example, curries or stir-fries, and then it brings up all the different types of meals in that category.
I was feeling like a healthy stir-fry as we had a massive eating weekend celebrating our anniversary.  Lots of delicious, very special food… and we definitely ate alot!

This is the stir-fry I made tonight and it was so good!  My lovely husband was very impressed and kept on saying how much he loved the flavour.  We both agreed that this would be added to our favourite meals as it was also very cheap to buy all the ingredients!  Highly recommended!  The photos just don’t do it justice as it looks bland and colourless here… it looked very bright in real life with the vegetables and noodles providing lots of colour!
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/5688/beef+stir+fry+with+rice+noodles
Also, make sure you check all the ingredients properly if you’re celiac, but I’m pretty sure this is also gluten free!  Instead of soy sauce they used Tamari sauce.  Otherwise, soy sauce works perfectly.

(Please excuse the photos – the quality is pretty shocking as my good camera had run out of battery!)

Upcoming Post

Stay tuned for a post on how to easily incorporate vegetables into all meals.  I’m just amazed at the excuses people come up with in relation to why they don’t eat enough veggies.  I couldn’t imagine how bad I would feel health-wise if I didn’t eat enough fruit and veg.  With so many easy options, there’s no reason for anyone to miss out on the nutrients and health benefits found in vegetables.  A new post on that coming soon!

Crepes with Maple Syrup and Berries

After watching a cooking program on TV where they were making crepes, Puppet decided to make some of our own for dessert and to say he got a little carried away is an understatement!  Although very delicious, you definitely wouldn’t want to be eating this for dessert all the time! 

This is just a simple crepe recipe with ingredients of your choice as the topping.  We’ve used berries, maple syrup and icing sugar sprinkled on top.

Roasted Chickpeas

After devouring way too many roasted chickpeas at a recent BBQ, I decided that I would try making some for myself!  It’s like the healthier version of salted peanuts and so easy to make too.

All you need is:
– 1 can chickpeas (400g), drained and rinsed
– 1 tsp olive oil
– 1/4 tsp salt
– 1 tsp chilli powder or smoked paprika
– 1 tsp (or even a bit more) cumin

1.  Place chickpeas on oven tray and roast at 220°C for 20 mins, giving them a shake at about 10 mins.
2.  Take chickpeas out and mix with other ingredients in bowl.
3.  Place back on tray and roast for another 10 – 15 mins until very crunchy. 
Be sure to test them as they’re nowhere near as nice when not crunchy!  Just keep roasting until they’re just right.

Roast Lamb With Vegetables

Poppit – Last night, we had my family over for dinner and for something special, we thought we’d make the ultimate favourite family meal, a roast.  We chose to make roast lamb and spent the afternoon preparing the vegetables and seasoning the lamb before putting everything into the Weber and BBQ to cook.  Now, you’d think that something involving just roasting meat and veg would be a simple task… it probably should be!  But as mentioned in our very first post, https://cookingwithapuppet.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/cooking-with-a-puppet-an-introduction/, we only have a Sunbeam Pizza “Oven” which doesn’t even fit a whole pizza let alone a roast and full trays of veggies!

We didn’t let this stop our feast preparations and we set up the BBQ with a boosted-up tray so that the veggies wouldn’t be touching the plate where they would risk being burnt.  The two roast lambs went into the Weber and everything seemed to be going smoothly for the first hour after which time, the gas bottle for the BBQ ran out.  We frantically decided that the lamb would probably keep cooking as the weber was still hot and changed the bottles over… but it seemed that the BBQ had just decided to stop working all together and would only produce a tiny flame (definitely not worthy of heating up an entire BBQ).

I quickly ran inside, switched on the pizza oven and as the lamb was already on its way to being done and had shrunk in size, we squeezed them into the little oven and switched the veggies over to the Weber.  Once again, everything seemed to be going well until a burning smell wafted in from outside where the veggies had begun to burn as they were now sitting directly over the flame.

Although there was quite a bit of drama involved in the cooking, everything turned out pretty well (minus a few burnt pieces of sweet potato).  The meat was very tender and the rosemary, garlic and sea salt seasoning really gave it a nice flavour.  The family all agreed that it was delicious – but don’t families always say that?

 The veggies prepared and waiting to be cooked

Almost forgot to take a photo of the meal!  Excuse the poor presentation and nibble from the side – by this stage, we just wanted to eat!

Beef Stroganoff (As seen on MasterChef Australia)

Puppet had his night of creative cooking last week and decided, after watching Masterchef, that he would attempt the Beef Stronganoff.  I had the job of getting the beef stock, brandy and sauce mixture ready.  When we first added it to the meat, it was tasted so strong of alcohol that we thought we’d wasted the crazy amount of money we had spent on buying 1.5 kg of beef eye fillet.  Thankfully, after a few minutes of simmering away, the strong alcohol flavour disappeared and once the cream and some more tomato paste had been added, it was just delicious!
Of course, as we had 1.5kg, we had to triple the recipe from Masterchef as they has only used 500g.  We also served with rice instead of pasta. 

We had my family over for dinner and I have to say that there wasn’t much conversation happening while eating – except the constant praise for how wonderful it tasted!  I’ll definitely be trying more of these types of recipes throughout winter!

For the Masterchef recipe: http://www.masterchef.com.au/beef-stroganoff-with-parsley-and-black-pepper-fettuccine.htm