Farewell my boys ... with chocolate mousse

This is a rather old post which I write a while ago but never posted. Thought I'd pull it out tonight and post it since .... well, I just really should. :-)

You've heard me talk about my boys for a while now and all the cooking that I do for them. It's rather a regular thing, the Singles and Strays dinner. It started off pretty casual and has grown into a three course dinner where I go a little silly cooking and The Boy gets all excited about matching his wines to the food. The fun thing is that people keep coming back. :-) That's a good sign, I guess.

Well, a recent dinner has left me feeling rather sad and a little bittersweet. The Boy's project has recently wound down / finished / ended - you get my drift, and many of my boys all work with him. After a long day at work, they all troop over to the apartment, kick back and we eat, we drink, we laugh and generally have some wonderful fellowship. I'm very fond of my boys. I find them delightful and I love cooking for them. I'm not sure if the dinners will continue, possibly not in it's current form 'cos the boys are scattering to the four winds. Job in another state, one returning overseas and one thinking of heading overseas to work and one of them thinking about going back to their home country to spend more time with family.

It's going to be our last dinner for a little while because of all that's going on, plus we're going away for a little while. Hopefully, some of the boys will be around when we get back and we can round up a gang for another dinner.

Of course, the dinners are not always with the boys only - regular ring ins also include the best bud and his lovely wife, the girlfriend and a few others.

So for this rather recent dinner, I went with an Italian theme, mostly because I wanted to cook something simple (it never turns out that way) and also there were a few recipes I wanted to try.

I decided to make a soup starter, which I've become rather fond of doing. So starter was Italian Pea and Basil Soup. This was followed by mains of Spicy Chorizo Spaghetti (mixing my cultures here, but those chorizo sausages are dang tasty!), Three Cheese Pasta Bake and a large green leafy salad with a dijon vinaigrette dressing. The dessert was going to be Chocolate Mousse with whipped cream and strawberries.

After I worked out the menu, I started freaking out about there not being enough food because I was cooking for 8 people instead of my usual 6. I then decided to add a pre-starter nibblies dish to accompany drinks before we sat down to dinner. For that, I made the Pepperoni Pizza Puffs.

It turned out to be a lot of food and one of the boys took home a record amount of leftovers. He calls it his "takeaway" and he loves it. We even took a shot of him with his food haul.

The highlight of the evening, I'm told was the chocolate mousse. According to the best bud's lovely wife, it was the best chocolate mousse she has ever had. Then she went on to say that in all the desserts that she's had since arriving in this country, this was the best, which has even topped the chocolate covered peanut butter balls that I made some time ago (another recipe for another day, I promise!). See - that's the thing I love about cooking for other people - the pleasure I give them when they eat the food I cook. I love that they love the food. :-)

Here's the RECIPE for the chocolate mousse - courtesy of Cooking for Blokes. It's super simple, really it is. If I can make it, you can make it.

Ingredients:

• 200g dark chocolate
• 50g butter
• 20mL brandy or other liqueur
• 4 eggs, separated
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar

Instructions:

• Place chocolate, butter and brandy into a stainless steel bowl and melt in a bain marie, stirring gently so the chocolate does not burn or dry out.

• Remove from heat, cool slightly and stir in egg yolks. Cool.
• Whisk egg whites and sugar to form soft peaks. Fold into chocolate mixture gently using whisk. Pour into serving dishes and refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

This makes 4 generous serves and believe it or not, I did not do anything different. I followed the instructions exactly, which you kinda have to with desserts and all those baking-y sorts of things. Then, I topped the chocolate mousse with whipped cream and strawberries to finish it off. Lots of rich, chocolatey goodness!

Do you have any meals that you've had that have been bittersweet for you? Do you remember the event with fondness and keep with touch with the people? Do you remember what you ate at that meal? 



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Hanging out at Cooking For Blokes

This here is Pete, my lovely instructor from Cooking For Blokes. I'm doing their Classic II classes, which are the advanced classes. I have 3 classes to make up in the coming weeks. One down, 2 to go.

Tonight, we made a pesto sauce which topped some potatoes and beans, gravalax (which will be ready next week and a Thai green chicken curry.

More pictures to come.

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F-F-F-Friday - Helping My Girl Cook

I've got The Boy back to write my F-F-F-Friday post for me because he did such a fabulous job the last time. Plus, I just love hearing from him. So .... here's The Boy ....

After a year of being the beneficiary of my wonderful wife’s delicious cooking, I decided to take some cooking lessons myself.

I did this for three primary reasons:

• I realised what a large chore it was for her to do on her own, and I felt I could help her out when needing to take some of the pressure off,
• I remembered how cooking (I used to do a lot of Chinese cooking 25 years ago, but was self-taught) concentrated my attention on cooking and pushed work to the background and felt I would benefit from that again,
• And I felt that better understanding and participating in the cooking process would provide healthier and better tasting foods and also help me to better select matching wines for the meal

Most importantly, since my dad’s massive stroke (and remarkable recovery, thank God), I have taken to making my occupation the one of living and not working (of course, one still needs to work to make a living, but it is a matter of setting the right priorities). There is nothing more basic than preparing and eating meals and relating to others, so the focus on cooking has helped me to achieve that goal. It does take some time to learn and practice and also the time to prepare the meals, but it has been a fulfilling experience and as with most things, it is not a matter of time, but rather one of priority. Once I placed cooking, health and socialising with great friends higher on the list, I made the time and you can too.

Christmas cooking class, which involves drinking
with friends too

I have had six lessons so far, including three lessons from Cooking for Blokes, a great program in North Sydney, a special Christmas cooking lesson and special knife skills lesson from Cooking for Blokes, and recently a How to Cook Pasta lesson from Sandalyns in the Hunter Valley. I have loved the experience as it has provided me with a deeper understanding and more confidence to take on more myself.

My Girl still plans the meals when we have guests over and controls the kitchen, but I participate more. Additionally, I have been doing a few meals on my own for us, including making a cauliflower soup and a chicken risotto and tonight will be preparing a mushroom and sausage risotto. Additionally, in two weeks’ time, we will congregate with close friends at our place in the Hunter Valley to have a cooking, eating and drinking weekend among great friends – kind of like The Big Chill, but without the funeral and neuroticism! Each couple will lead the preparation of a meal, we will all cook, sit around and eat, drink and socialise and have a great time of it.

Resources available to help you get started are this blog, which provides a number of recipes and instructional material and here is the link for Cooking for Blokes which is a great way to learn and improve. It is for blokes, but also for women (this is where DAZ first trained!) and they have a six lesson Level 1 course followed by numerous Level 2 courses, provided by one of the Masterchef finalists.
I have learned to cook and have more confidence and fun doing so and so can you. It is not as intimidating as it might appear!

Talking turkey ... 'cos it's almost Christmas

I'm ba-ack! Well, mostly I'm almost recovered from a rather nasty bout of bronchitis which knocked me on my back for about 10 days until I dragged my ass to the doctor and got antibiotics. Once I got the antibiotics, I was on a steady improve almost immediately (except for a night of heaving 'cos the antibiotics didn't agree with my stomach). I had to go on a bland diet (no fun!) for the duration until I'm off the antibiotics though I did take a short break from it in order to do some cooking ... and of course, the eating after that.

As we know it's coming close to Christmas. In our part of the world, Thanksgiving is not a holiday so even though it's only early November, we're gearing up for Christmas. The shops have all their Christmas decorations out, Christmas cards are doing a roaring trade and my family are already making plans for Christmas lunch.

Today, in preparation for Christmas, we did some Christmassy cooking. Turkey, ham, BBQ prawns (after all, it's Summer over here!), Christmas cake (made into a Bombed Alaska), fruit coulis Champagne .... mmmmm ..... yum!!!

It was also a day of fun and frivolity as we chatted, cooked at ate.

So ... let's talk turkey.

Instead of your traditional whole turkey stuck into the oven that comes out crinkly and dry (though there are bits of that I do like ... can you say "thigh meat"?), this was much more tasty and fun.

Preparing the turkey:

• First off, we take a whole turkey. A size 34 turkey which is rather small and weighing about 3.4kg will feel a good 6 to 8 people, more than amply, especially since there are lots of sides and dessert to follow.
• We then de-bone the turkey and cut off the important bits: turkey breast pieces and turkey thighs.
• Then we save the rest of the turkey for stock.
• With the turkey thighs, we de-bone the thigh, so it's just the meat. Remember to cut off the sinew 'cos that's going to be tough and chewy and you don't want that.
• With the breast meat, make sure to cut as close to the bone as possible so that you get a nice big piece of meat.

Cooking the turkey breast:

• Take the turkey breast and lift one side of the skin
• Put in a few thin slices of butter under the skin - about 100g of butter (this will keep the meat moist)
• Repeat for the second breast
• Then, season both pieces of the turkey breast with salt and pepper - be generous 'cos there's a lot of meat going on
• Take one piece seasoned turkey breast, put it on a sheet of tin foil that has been lined with baking paper. Roll it up into a log
• Repeat for the second turkey breast
• Turn on the oven to 160dC
• Put both turkey breasts into a roasting pan and fill the pan with about 1/2 - 1cm of water
• Put turkey breasts into oven and cook for 1.5 hours until ready (you can check this by sticking a thermometer into it. You want your turkey to be sitting at around 75dC
• When the turkey is ready, take it out and rest it for 30 minutes, then carve and serve

Turkey breast after butter goes into skin

Cooking the turkey thighs:

• First off you will need some stuffing. I'll post the RECIPE for the stuffing below
• Take the turkey thigh and open it flat, meat side up, laying on a sheet of tin foil lined with baking paper
• Season the turkey thigh with salt and pepper (be generous)
• Repeat for the other turkey thigh
• After seasoning, fill lay a layer of stuffing across the whole of the turkey thigh and then roll up the turkey thigh into a log
• Wrap the turkey thigh in the log shape in the foil and baking sheet and set aside
• Repeat for the other turkey thigh
• Place the turkey thighs into a roasting pan (no water needed this time)
• At this point your oven is already on and cooking the turkey breast, about 30 minutes into cooking the turkey breast put the turkey thigh into the oven. You want the turkey thigh to cook for about 1 hour
• Check to see if the turkey thigh is cooked, again about 75dC with a thermometer
• When ready, take out of oven and rest for 30 minutes, then carve and serve

Note: this will allow both the turkey breasts and thighs to be ready about the same time

RECIPE for stuffing:

Ingredients:

• 2 onions, diced finely and cooked till translucent but not browned or caramelised
• 1 bag of walnuts, diced
• 1 jar of cranberry sauce
• 1/2 bunch of sage, chopped
• 150g of bread crumbs
• 400g of pork mince
• Zest of 1 orange
• Season generously with salt and pepper
• 150g butter, softened

Instructions:

• Put all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and mix throughly

RECIPE for turkey gravy:

• Take the remaining bits of the turkey that has not been used so far - carcass, wings, etc., and roast in oven at 180dC for 1 hour until nicely browned
• Boil in a large pot of water
• Put roasted turkey bits into water and boil the turkey stock for about 1 hour (longer if you have time)
• Remove the turkey bits from the stock and continue to simmer to reduce the stock to a thickened state (you can cheat and use corn flour to thicken it a bit more if you like really thick gravy)
• Add salt and pepper to taste
• Pour over turkey when ready to eat

So that's it for all the turkey-ness. I love turkey, so I'm particularly fond of these dishes. In fact, I'm thinking, I don't need Christmas to do this. I might just serve this when the mood takes me and I feel like some turkey.

Gobble! Gobble! everyone.

Video updates

We interrupt the regularly scheduled program with this update ... :-)

I've just updated two older posts with videos - one to show how to make the recipe and the other just for fun.

Caramel ice cream

Cooking for Blokes

As other videos come along, I will continue to update posts with them and let you know when I've done it. 

I hope you enjoy the videos and find them helpful.

What about you? Watch any good videos lately? Movies? TV? 



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Cooking for Blokes

I really need to do a post early on about Cooking for Blokes. The reason I want to do this is for a very good reason - give credit where credit is due, I know what I know because of them.

I started the course knowing very little. I could make spaghetti bolognaise (which I admit I can do quite well) and a few soups. Our meals were mostly chicken parcels (very, very yummy) that I got from the butcher (very good butcher - Ray the Butcher (another blog post)), salads (very basic), steamed vegetables and the odd piece of meat (also courtesy of Ray the Butcher).

I wanted to become more confident in the kitchen and I also wanted to know what the heck I was doing. I mean, anyone can read a recipe, but do you know what you're doing? Do you understand any of it? If you follow the recipe, does it turn out well and taste good? It was all pretty hit and miss for me, though thank goodness, The Boy was most kind and very easy to please.

As I said in an earlier post, I had done a bit of research on the whole cooking course thing but left it for a bit. When I was finally ready to dive in, I picked Cooking for Blokes because I liked the course curriculum and I liked that it was a wonderful foundation to the cooking skills that I wanted. I also liked that it was in North Sydney, conveniently located near the train station and close to home.

I cannot even begin to tell you how glad I am that I picked Cooking for Blokes. I have had such fun in the 6 week Level 1 Foundation Course and most importantly, I learned a lot and it has made me want to cook more.

I've discovered a few things about myself over the weeks of cooking classes:

• cooking is darned good fun
• I really, really, really enjoy cooking
• I love, love, love cooking for other people and feeding them (for myself ... not so much!)
• I love that at the end of the cooking, there's something to show for it, and guess what? You can even eat it!!! How good is that???

Anyway, for those of you who are interested, here's where you find Cooking for Blokes:

90 Mount Street
North Sydney NSW 2060
P: +61 438 811 368
E: peter@cookingforblokes.com.au
W: www.cookingforblokes.com.au
F: Cooking for Blokes on facebook

And here's a quick run down of the Level 1 course ... I recommend everyone does it!!!

Lesson 1:

• Vegetables - initial procedures and preparation
• Stocks - chicken, beef, fish and vegetable
• Puree based soups, basic presentation

This lesson covers an introduction to the kitchen, how to address your work station and important kitchen safety. You learn how to use a knife correctly and practise our skills. We learn how to dice and slice an onion, carrot and celery and learn how to julienne. From there we learn discuss the importance of stock in cooking and we learn how to make a puree soup. The number of soups you can make from this method is only limited by your imagination.

Lesson 2:

• Blanching and refreshing fresh vegetables
• Basic sauces - tomato and cream
• Principles of cooking pasta

This lesson cover the technique of blanching and refreshing, one of the fundamental ways of dealing with timing in the kitchen. We learn how to skin and de-seed a tomato, how to chop herbs and how to keep our green vegetables attractive. We learn two basic sauces, how to cook dry pasta and put our meal together for the evening.

Lesson 3:

• Egg based sauces - hollandaise and bearnaise
• Eggs- poaching, scrambling, French and Italian omelettes
• Sweet souffle omelette

All about eggs. We start with making hollandaise sauce, how to poach eggs and then put it all together to make Eggs Benedict. Then we scramble, make a classic French omelette, an Italian omelette and a sweet Souffle omelette with an easy dessert sauce.

Lesson 4:

• Chicken - jointing and boning a chicken
• Deep frying chicken
• Shallow frying chicken

We learn how to joint and bone a chicken. From the different cuts of the chicken we do some deep-frying of chicken bits for a tasty snack. We learn how to bone out the leg and thigh of the chicken. We make a dish of chicken breast with lemon and garlic, baby potatoes and green beans.

Lesson 5:

• Fish - crumbing and shallow frying
• Meat - roasting cuts of meat, roasting vegetables and gravy making
• Meat - grilling, pepper sauce

To begin, we learn about a crumbing station, how to crumb fish and then shallow fry. From there we discuss different cuts of meat, bone and stuff a leg of lamb and how to roast. We learn how to roast vegetables and make our own gravy. We look at how to grill a steak.

Lesson 6:

• Meat - braising method
• Sweet treats - home made ice-cream, caramel sauce, and chocolate souffle

Here we learn the braising method, which applies to wet dishes such as Osso Bucco etc. Then we learn how to make a souffle - it’s easy when you know how. We make the famous Joan’s ice cream and a caramel sauce. We practise our knife skills and a have de-brief of what we’ve learnt throughout the six weeks. Then a big hug and photos.

This is straight off their website and I'm blogging about it because I love it. No other reason.

I'm off to do Level 2 now, it's fancy food, a Masterchef instructor and yummy goodness. I've just finished Lesson 1 and it's AWESOME!!!



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