Click here for recipe

I have gone through, well you don’t need numbers, let’s just say a lifetime without ever having  a pie floater. It never really appealed to me, but for some unknown reason the pie floater has been playing on my mind for the past week. The craving for ham and pea soup along with the desire to have a pie and all of a sudden the pie floater made perfect sense!

*spoiler alert* a very brief history lesson coming up.

Looking into the history of this dish I discovered that it is uniquely Australian. Although it’s now labeled a South Australian Heritage Icon by the National Trust of Australia it became popular through Sydney’s Harry’s Cafe De Wheels (which is a must for visiting travellers) Harry’s is a food truck situated at the old graving docks down at Wooloomooloo, which are now the Australian Naval Dockyards.

Back in the Great Depression between 1929-1932 (although it did start a little earlier here in Australia)  unemployed workers could go to the local soup kitchens who would serve them the  soup of the day (this could be potato, pea or even strawberry soup) with the leftover pie scraps donated from the pie manufacturers in the area. They were able to get a cheap, if not free, nutritious and warming meal for themselves and their family to help sustain them till their next meal, which may not have been for days at a time.

Just looking into the history of this one particular dish you really get to see the extraordinary hardship people/families, for four decades, worldwide went through. It was one event after the other… it’s truly unimaginable. They just recover from one then another one appears to slap you in the face.

WWI : 1914-1918

The Great Depression : 1929-1932

WWII : 1939-1945

It’s really is no wonder that the ‘plastic fantastic’ era of the fifties was embraced – they were given the convenience of gadgets and an easy ‘disposable’ lifestyle after all they had been through…you just have to love the cycles of life… and loving coming back to a sustainable lifestyle.

…Blondie

Click to enter

With much excitement Blondie and Bella have launched FinSki’s Food Store

www.FinSkisFoodStore.com

Now you will be able to purchase the mushrooms that are so often talked about and enjoyed by the FinSki’s girls!

This is seasonal produce so supply is limited.

With lots of other condiments, sauces, oils, salts and pastes to come on to the shelves, be sure to keep popping in.

Click here for recipe

A very simple and beautiful technique of cooking food is smoking it. It’s generally regarded as an occasion food, considering the unusual preparation, but can really be made at any moment, just keep on hand the smoking sawdust or chips and you will always have a smoker available.

This same technique can be used to smoke cheese or nuts, just keep an eye on it if you are doing cheese as you dont want it melting everywhere before you get to eat it!

Smoke it up!… Blondie

Bella and I had the good fortune to meet an amazing group of people who give their time to helping make aware to young Australians the need to take ownership of the development of a healthy and secure food future here in Australia… Youth Food Movement Australia

With two Guerrilla dinners planned, the menu was designed with exact knowledge of where and how the produce came to their plates…

“You’ll be enjoying a beautifully crafted ‘paddock to plate’ menu alongside a specially designed conversation menu, and get to know the food and the local providores who brought it to you! ”

So on a very warm Autumns day we took YFM to The Southern Highlands to forage for enough mushrooms to feed their guests. After a brief about the mushrooms to be collected we all headed in.

After a few hours and most baskets getting full, we headed back to the cars to rehydrate and have lunch. With so many helping hands the YFM had enough saffron milk cap mushrooms for their main course of Pine Mushroom Parcels… and a spare few mushrooms to cook up. Nothing beats foraging for your food and cooking it there and then, heaven!

YFM photo – Blondie cooking up some tasty mushrooms

Carefully laying out the mushrooms in their beds, they were ready to be taken back to Sydney.

It was a great day and such an opportunity to meet amazing people.

FinSki’s gave gift bags for the two nights of both the Dried Saffron Milk Cap Mushrooms and the Dried Slippery Jacks…

FinSki’s Dried Mushrooms

The Windmill in The Rocks, a few hours prior to the first dinner

Click here for recipe

This mouth watering dish is adapted from Annabel Langbein‘s salmon and egg gratin. Originally made by one of Bella’s family members and served for lunch one beautiful summers day while in New Zealand, it was then made by Bella for one of our dinners over Easter away this year and now it is made by me for you…

Like chinese whispers the original dish has altered a little, Bella included the potato wedges on top and it works so well to help mop up all of the white sauce and to pad it out for a more filling meal. I have added a dry salsa verde (once you make it you will see why I call it a dry salsa verde), which adds another complimentary layer of flavour.

There is actually quite a bit of white sauce for this recipe and you don’t need to use it all, but do make it to the recipe as it’s so handy to have on hand. Freeze the leftover to make mac’n'cheese at a later date – simply reheat, add parmesan or tasty cheese and mix with cooked pasta.

This glorious dish is one of a handful of meals that hubby goes back to for seconds, but remember to freeze leftovers for handy mid week dinners.

Smoked Salmon Gratin with a Dry Salsa Verde

Truly scrumptious… Blondie

Click here for ‘how to’

I have just come across this tip, well actually I had heard of this trick a while back but never really thought much of it. That is till I finally got sick of having peeled eggs that look like they had come back from playing with a wood chipper… chunks missing, bits of shell that refuse to separate from the body, just mangled messes of boiled eggs.

So what’s the magic trick to getting a perfectly peeled hard boiled egg? Baking soda… it’s life changing!

For me I always keep my eggs in the fridge and generally dont think of taking them out to warm up till I actually need them, so this ‘recipe’ is for eggs straight from the fridge into boiling water – I like to live life on the edge! I can’t recall any egg casualties from doing it this way.

Click here for ‘how to’

Never fear your eggs again… Blondie  :)

Click here for recipe

With Cinco de Mayo today I thought I would come up with a recipe to celebrate it.

Mexican desserts aren’t particularly sweet and can mix both savoury ingredients with sweet. With this in mind I chose to use a pear and apple filling, since they are so abundant at the moment here in Australia and a bittersweet chocolate pastry. Sprinkle it with a sugar and Cayenne pepper dusting and you have yourself a unique dessert that is the perfect accompaniment to the feast of flavours you would have had with your main meal.

Salud!

Blondie

Click here for recipe

I’m not sure how easy it is to get your hands on rooster in the city – I haven’t seen it on my travels – but I was fortunate enough to receive one from my sister who got five live roosters yesterday. Four were prepared for the freezer and one went to a friend (but may well end up slow cooked after she gets woken up at dawn every morning when he gets to that age!) I know this from personal experience after I saved a chick from the gas chambers at school – his name was Maxwell. We did try to do a light tight environment for him to sleep in till the family woke up, but he just knew. Everyday on the dot Maxwell would announce himself to the neighbourhood! Needless to say that the neighbours in our Lower North Shore suburb weren’t too impressed – that and the fact he would escape to go down to the beach so I would have to spend my afternoons trying to chase down a rooster on the esplanade after school wasn’t too much fun!

Maxwell went to a farm where I believe he lived out his natural life fulfilling his rooster duties.

This is my first rooster and was very excited to make an awesome meal of it, so I went with a traditional Greek dish from Corfu called Pastitsada.

When handling a rooster, the few differences from a chicken are that the fat is an amazing dark yellow, the legs are longer and the wings and chest are different to a chicken. The chest meat is much smaller and it was harder to cut into the pieces necessary, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t too sure of the breakdown of it? The flavour is chicken but enhance and the meat is leaner, which is why you need to do the slow and low cook.

I hope you get a chance to try one but if that’s just not going to happen, try and get a free range, organic chook so you get a more flavourful meat.

Happy plucking !  Blondie  :)

Click here for recipe

Yep, that’s right! Oil free and skin free ‘fried chicken’ drumsticks - These are soooo good that you seriously can’t believe it till you actually make them yourselves.

This is a recipe adopted from The Food Truck with Chef Michael van de Elzen, hubby and I love this show (this is the only cooking show he enjoys). Every meal Chef Michael Van Elzen converts to a healthier version of stock standard fast food is just so mouth wateringly good… I drooled over the burger episode…

This chicken has a covering that is crispy and oh so tasty, the meat is succulent and flavourful (be sure to buy ‘happy’ chicken) and all the family will adore it. It is just as good eaten cold the next day, so make a batch for your next picnic.

Truely finger lickin’ good!  Blondie

Click here for recipe

With the fruits of autumn now in abundance what better way to celebrate than with a dish that uses two of these amazing ingredients… slippery jack mushrooms and walnuts.

These cigars are a take on the fabulous Lebanese Lady Fingers… and I ate plenty of these in my youth! Living in Surry Hills, The Clock Hotel was a regular haunt and there was the most amazing Lebanese fast food cafe across the road. The food was always fresh and the owners always accommodating and friendly. Ever since those times, Lady Fingers have always held a place in my heart.

Each bite of these cigars is a treat – firstly there is the flaky crispiness of the filo, then comes the unique, sweet, earthy flavour of the slippery jacks and then the firm texture of the walnuts, the lamb and pomegranate molasses just round off the flavours.

Mind the fingers!… Blondie  :)