101 Things Update - Weeks 9-11

Well, things are still hectic and hellish but I'm slowly settling back into a routine, which is good. And despite the fact I have been quite absent, rest assured that I HAVE actually been achieving things from my list! I'll explain the changed goals next time, and I haven't posted about all of these (I promise I'll get to it!) but for now, there's this, in reverse chronological order:

#40 - to buy a good pair of sneakers that support my feet like they should: Check. Bought them on Sunday. Haven't used 'em yet, mind you...

#31 - to build a Lego model: Check. Did I ever! Spent all of Saturday on my knees. Um, playing Lego... ! And I didn't just build one, I built, like, five. And I'm still going. And my dad came over and played with me and it was soooo cooool!!!

Ahem.

#30 - to do a jigsaw puzzle: Well, I haven't started it but I have bought one, so I'm on the path to achieving this one. You know that famous photo of those guys sitting on a steel girder, high above New York City eating their lunch? Well I reckon it might be the same guys, but they're all having a snooze. It sort of made me wonder if it was a staged or superimposed photo, which made me question the authenticity of the "real" photo of the guys having lunch... way to burst my bubble...

#71 - to learn the basic geography of Africa: I've just started to learn about Morocco. Watch this space for the first of waaaaaaay too many. Stupid goal, this one...

#39 - to climb Mount Bogong (again): I am in the process of rallying the troops, and of convincing myself that serious, regular exercise is a good way to prepare for something like this, especially if you have a heart condition...

#9 - to make gnocchi from scratch: Check. I made it (them? Is gnocchi by implication a collection of singular objects considered to be one dish, or does it refer to the individual components that make up the dish?? Is it like the words "sheep" and "fish" and "deer"?? Can someone help me because my head's exploding!!!) for the lovely Mary in Adelaide the weekend before last. Thanks for the company, Mary! Hope you enjoyed the leftovers.

#18 - to make a lemon tart: Check. Again, I made it for dinner with Mary in Adelaide, and again, she took the leftovers off my hands on account of the fact that I would be leaving town the following morning. Luckily I saved myself a piece for brekkie (yes, really) otherwise there would have been no evidence that the tart ever existed!

#16 - to make Monkeyface biscuits. Hurrah! I did this! AND I wrote a post on it! The Cake With and his lovely family took them for their first test run in the morning (they must have been okay cos The Junior Burger went back for seconds, and even little Caitlin wanted some of her dad's), and Jody came for the second round in the afternoon but settled for miniature versions of the lemon tart instead, and I sent a Monkeyface home for her mister, Brad. This suited me quite nicely because by the time I got back to Melbourne on the Sunday night, all I wanted to eat for dinner was... you guessed it... the last Monkeyface that had travelled interstate in my handbag! Quite possibly the world record for Monkeyface travel...

Maybe it's because I'm ever so slightly addicted to raspberry jam biscuits (seriously, I could polish off a whole packet of those Raspberry Shortcake bikkies... okay, maybe not quite... OMG but those Kooka's Country Cookies with the jam centres that you get a motels? *swoons*) but I happened to really, really enjoy these and I will be sure to make them again. And then I'll have to make another batch because I will have eaten all the first one and there won't be any left for anyone else.

So, all things considered, tough though the last little while has been, I think I've been doing okay. I seem to be averaging doing one thing and starting one thing per week, although that will probably flatline quite shortly. Maybe my little list is keeping me afloat, or maybe the feeling of achievement is just a happy side-effect. Who knows? Who cares? I'm doin' stuff I wanna do! I promise I'll post about it soon.

Meanwhile, this is the last week of September (oh CRAP, I just wrote "August" and August is long gone!) which means that I have to make cupcakes on Friday night otherwise I have just ruined Year of the Cupcake!!! That's okay, I'll bake them Friday and decorate them Saturday. Technically, that way, I still made them during September. Whew.

Feta, Pancetta and Basil Mini Toasts

Behold the glory that is the mini toast! Cute and versatile, I happen to think that this Blast from the Past is tasty enough to be used at any social gathering. I seem to recall some very odd things being put on them in the eighties and nineties, but they ain't no cream of chicken and mushroom vol-au-vent (no idea whether I spelled that one correctly, but I think ya'll know the little Filo Baskets from Hell that I am referring to).

And that's a good thing.

I dreamt up this combination on my three-and-a-half-hour Friday night drive back to Melbourne the other week (does anyone else spend as great a proportion of their waking hours as I do thinking about food??). I had already decided to make brother Saul a caramel mud cake and had more or less nutted out how I would decorate it (which, by the way, was blown out of the water by the fact that NOBODY in Eltham seems to stock Jersey Caramels(!!!), so I had to improvise), and my mind then wandered to savoury food as I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to bring a plate. Well, I figured that even if I wasn't supposed to bring one, that nobody would have trouble polishing off a plate of them.

They're super simple:

1 packet mini toasts

10 thin slices of pancetta

1 thick slice of Danish feta from the deli

1 bunch of basil.

I used a pair of scissors to cut up the pancetta into 4 or so strips (they should be ever so slightly narrower than the mini toast, and short enough to wrap once around a small cube of feta without too much hanging over at the end).

I then cubed the feta into about 24 pieces (they were probably a little small but still tasty), popped each cube on 1 small/half a large basil leaf (tear them, don't cut them), put them, feta side down, on the middle of a piece of pancetta, wrap both sides of the pancetta up over the basil, then flip them on to a mini toast so that the join in the pancetta is on the bottom (i.e. touching the toast). The weight of the filling should hold the pancetta in place. 

Creamy, salty, fresh and crunchy all at once. I insist you try these immediately! And, just quietly, because the basil makes it taste so fresh I reckon you could probably polish off almost a whole batch and somehow convince yourself that you'd eaten health food, and not a great big hunk of cheese!

Monkeyface biscuits

Last weekend in Adelaide I had quite the cooking weekend, knocking three items off my 101 Things list. This is one of them - monkeyface biscuits. If you're not familiar with the monkeyface, it is basically a simple jam biscuit with three holes, one for each eye and one for the mouth, the most basic icing imaginable, and finished with toasted coconut. Yum. It's funny, though - when I Googled the recipe with this particular challenge in mind, I kept coming up with all sorts of bizarre combinations involving crushed Flake chocolate bars, and none involving coconut. I'm wondering whether it's an Australian thing, and I'm also wondering whether it's one of those recipes that everyone kind of takes for granted because it's a bit of a no-brainer.

It involves making a basic biscuit recipe, adding jam and sandwiching the biscuits together and then whacking them back in the oven for a little under ten minutes to help the jam set, and then icing and dipping them in toasted coconut. They're a little bit fiddly to assemble but altogether I would still rate them as a simple recipe.

This bias may be in part related to the fact that the other two recipes I tackled last weekend were lemon tart, and gnocchi. As in, from scratch.

INGREDIENTS:

110g butter, softened

1/2c castor sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

3/4 plain flour

3/4 self raising flour

Raspberry jam (allow approx. 1-2tsp per biscuit. Smoosh it around in the jar with a spoon so that there are no lumps. No doubt the more sophisticated bakers out there would heat and strain it, but I happen to think that's a colossal wank waste of time unless you're sticking sugarpaste to a cake, in which case it's important not to have lumps)

1c icing sugar, sifted

1tbsp (+a little extra) boiling water (it will depend on how spreadable you want your icing)

1/2c shredded coconut, lightly toasted (you can do this in a nonstick pan but be aware that it needs constant attention and continues to cook after you take it off the heat. I originally toasted a whole cup and had heaps left over, so I'm estimating that half a cup should suffice. Don't kill me if I'm wrong!)

Do the usual biscuit thing - cream butter and sugar, add egg and vanilla and combine, then add flour.

If you're not the sort of person to stock SR flour in the house and rely instead on baking powder and plain flour, swear loudly when you realise that you have none left and the shops are shut because you're in Adelaide not Melbourne...

... then breathe a sigh of relief when you realise you have the ingredients to make your own baking powder! I seem to recall that baking powder = 1 part bicarb soda to 2 parts cream of tartar.

You then have to go a bit silly over the super-cute tin of biscuit cutters you bought that day for the purpose. True monkeyfaces, after all, have a fluted edge, and you can't very well use the plain round cutters you already have.

And if you're smart, like me, you'll get more bang for your buck and buy a nested set, in a super-cute tin, that also happens to be double edged. I just kept kicking goals all around there, didn't I :)

Knead the dough on a lightly floured bench until it's smooth and sticks together, and then roll out using a floured rolling pin and cut using floured cutters. I experimented a bit with the sizes to get the most bang for my buck with the dough. I was a bit disappointed by the number the recipe made but I guess if you make them a bit smaller it's no biggie (hah! Oh, you know what I mean. Obviously if they're smaller they're not big. I meant that it's no big deal, as in, not a problem. But you got that, right? Yeah, you're right, I do need to go to bed...).

Once you've cut them out, use the end of a wooden spoon handle to make the eyes and mouth in half of the biscuits (make sure that if you're making different sizes, that you have pairs consisting of one intact biscuit and one with facial features, both of the same size). You may need to scrape the cavities you make out a little using a sharp knife once they're cooked (sounds feral to be scraping out the eyes of a poor innocent monkey, but you'll see what I mean!).

Cook on tray lined with baking paper for 8-10 minutes at 160oC, cool on tray for a minute or two and then transfer to a rack. This is how many this recipe made. The largest one was quite big and the smallest one was about the size of a "normal" biscuit, perhaps slightly larger. See what I mean about the eyes? It's like they've been punching on...

Spread jam in the middle, sandwich together (bottom sides facing in) and pop back in the oven at 200oC for about another 8 minutes (mind they don't catch) to heat the jam a little and help it to set. Let them cool on the rack completely before decorating.

Make up the icing (note that the above quantities will probably make about double what you need, but better to have too much than too little). You may need to play with the consistency a little but you don't want it to be too thick or too thin. I used 1tbsp of boiling water and that was a little stiff, so I added a tiny splash more and it was fine. Spread it in a "peace sign" shape around the eyes and mouth with a pallet knife, being careful not to use too much icing otherwise it gets in the eyes and you have to clean it out with a knife again, and now that it contains jam that just seems wrong.... and then you dip it in the coconut while it's still wet and then leave on a wire rack to dry.

Voila!