I’m back! with more rainbow food!

It sure has been forever and a day.

I’ve been cooking – I promise!

I’ve even been photographing!

(just not posting anything.)

More importantly – I’ve been working and saving and WE BOOKED OUR FLIGHTS TO EUROPE!

Funnily enough, our mainly Europe trip has ended up consisting of:

• 5 weeks in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam
• 2 weeks in India and Nepal (my heart flutters for Nepal)
• 2.5 MONTHS in Europe
• 3 days in NYC (hehehe – this is solely for us to ice skate at Rockefeller Centre at Christmas time!)
• and then back to Canada to live for a year or two or 5 million, who knows.

So throw any food/restaurant/cafe ideas my way for any of those extremely vague travel plans I have given you!

To keep your tummies rumbling, here’s a little of what I’ve been up to lately..

Moroccan Chick Pea and Vegetable Curry. Served with cous cous and yoghurt.

A sneak peak into my quest for the perfect flatbread! Tomato, Basil, Onion, Caper and Cheese Flatbread.

Chilli Soy Hokkien Stir Fry.
(I work near an Asian cafe’ and have been stealing stir-fry tips to get the smokey flavour!)

Pizza pizza maaaaan!

What you will need…

FOR THESE RAINBOW CUPCAKES!

Creating some artwork with food colouring and a handy-dandy toothpick!

Fresh outta the oven.

Rainbow Delights!

Both cupcake AND icing recipe are from JoyofBaking.com – I’m really enjoying this website, it’s so easy to find good basic recipes. Everything I have tested from it has turned out great!

CLICK HERE FOR RECIPE.

Nom Nom Nom Nom.

pssst, this is mah new do. Ya dig?!

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Yellow vegetable curry and many other delicious goodies.

An update on bug’s food intake as of late:

avocado, home-grown tomatoes and cheese melted on fabio’s home-made rye bread! and home-made chilli pickle and cheese on fabio’s home-made rye bread!

where would my life be without my dads cooking?! A SHAMBLES!

fruit salad.. yummy yummy! check the link… its a song, i’m not crazy.

normal salad – also quite yummy yummy.

JYMUNGO lasagna made for lunch/dinner at work for the week 😀

why yes… yes those are crinkle cut cucumbers.. YES, I DID RECEIVE A CRINKLE CUT KNIFE FOR CHRISTMAS. Let the joy begin.

jymungo salad plus jymungo lasagna equals quite a nice nap.

 

RECIPE TIME:

Yellow veggie curry.

1 teaspoon each:

cumin

turmeric

nigella seeds

mustard seeds

paprika

chilli flakes

ginger powder

1 pinch asafoetida

1 heaped teaspoon vegie paste (mine was home-made my a neighbour! or a stock cube mixed in with the water)

1/2 cup coconut milk

1/2 cup water

2 roasted garlic cloves, sliced

1/4 small butternut pumpkin

1/4 cabbage

1/4 cauliflower

1 zucchini

1 cup peas

3 tomatoes

1 mixed handful ground almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds.

LETS GET STARTED THEN!

Combine all spices in a bowl with enough water to create a paste. Fry off in vegetable oil until the paste is fragrant and beginning to separate from the oil.

Chop all the vegies into big bite sized chunks.

Add in garlic, pumpkin, cabbage, cauliflower and zucchini. Mix until all coated with spice mix. Crank up the heat until there’s lots of delicious dark goodies on the bottom of the pan!

Pour in your coconut milk and add just enough water to almost cover everything.

Give it a good stir, pop the lid on and leave it for up to 10 minutes. It’s pretty much ready when the pumpkin is cooked – as its the most solid vegie of the lot. Add in tomatoes and peas and quite a bit of salt for the final 2 minutes of cooking.

To thicken and add richness add in the whizzed up nut mix – its pretty delish when some are whole and you get a crunchy nuttiness against the creaminess of the curry.

EEEEEEEEAT with rice and pappadams and possibly splurge on some naan bread too!

..or just do what I did and eat it on it’s own, out of a bowl with a spoon 😀

Peace out brussel sprouts!

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A perfect squished picnic sammidge.

You know what’s good? Sandwiches.

You know what else is good? Spring. And it begins tomorrow! I am getting in early and practising picnic food, I tell you what – this baby is a sure fire winner.

One of my many missions in life is to create the perfect sandwich, or, sammidge as I prefer to call it. Also, the perfect cupcake + icing flavour combo. This sammidge is pretty dang close to perfect. It has everything I love in it and it’s a joy to make. Set aside a day, or a morning and make this – because your efforts will reward you with a delicious sammidge! I made this for a family picnic once and it was all devoured quite rapidly. It’s the perfect picnic sandwich because you can make it ahead of time … like… the night before!

When attempting to find the correct name for this type o’ sammidge I came across about a billion. More like 8347239 billion. Apparently every nation has their own version of a pressed sammidge. So it’s a cross between a Mediterranean picnic sandwich, a Cuban sandwich, a Schiacciata al Mattone (which google tells me translates to ‘the crushed brick’ whaaa?) or just a plain ol’ brick sandwich!

Prepare for many photo’s as this thing was like my baby!

Vegetables

1 large eggplant, cut into length way slices, about 1cm thick

2 zucchini’s, cut into length way slices, about 1cm thick

10 whole garlic cloves

10 mushrooms, sliced thickly

2 Tablespoons fresh rosemary, finely sliced

1 large red capsicum

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

1 handful basil leaves

1 handful baby spinach

1 big crusty loaf of bread, preferably Italian (crusty is important, otherwise it will go soggy!)

Roast eggplant, zucchini and whole garlic cloves on baking trays with olive oil and salt and pepper for 30 mins at 180C, or until soft and slightly browned.

Squeeze out roast garlic deliciousness from cloves and set aside to spread on sandwich.

Fry mushrooms and rosemary in olive oil until brown and soft. Set aside.

Blacken capsicum over a flame, set aside and cover with cling wrap to sweat for about 10 minutes. Peel away skin, deseed and slice.

Rocket, basil, spinach pesto

2 cups mix of rocket, basil and spinach

2 garlic cloves

1/2 red chilli

1/2 cup cashews

good glug of olive oil

squeeze lemon juice

salt

BLITZ!

Olive tapenade

150 grams black pitted olives

1 teaspoon capers

1/2 red chilli

1 clove garlic

squeeze lemon juice

glug olive oil

BLITZ!

Caramelized onions

Take 2 red onions, finely slice them and fry them in olive oil on a low heat until they are super soft. Deglaze with a little white wine, splash of red wine vinegar, add a teaspoon of sugar and stir. Crank up the heat a little and watch til they caramelize and are delicious! Set aside.

To assemble

Slice loaf in half but leave it connected on one side. Scoop out bread on top and bottom, so there is a valley of space (ooh poetic!).

Spread pesto on the bottom and the tapenade, roasted garlic and caramelized onions on top.

Layer eggplant, mushrooms, zucchini, capsicum, baby spinach and fresh basil. Top with fresh cracked black pepper.

Wrap sandwich in cling wrap. Tie it tightly with string at 4 intervals so the filling doesn’t come out of the sides when you press it.

Wrap in tin foil.

Place bricks on top evenly across – how ever many you feel is necessary. I used four.. and then thought that was a little extreme so then took away 2!

Leave from anywhere between 3 hours to over night. Depending on how much oil/liquid is in your vegies and how crusty your bread is will depend on whether your bread goes soggy! (it shouldn’t) 😀

Slice with a serated knife, stare at the beauty of your perfectly layered sandwich and eat!

also, lookie here:

cuuuuuute!

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A delicious food week!

This week we had a family dinner at my mumma’s. She, like most mums, is an amazing cook.

She made lasagna – both meat and vegie to accommodate everyone, and we ate it with a nice garden salad and AMAZING olive sour dough bread from the Semaphore Bakery. SO GOOD.

For dessert we had individual carrot cakes, tiramisu and donuts… well, i mean… ya know, we shared it all n stuff. Muffin and I definitelyrolled into bed that night and I fell into a deep food-coma like sleep. Whereas he couldn’t sleep at all due to feeling too round! HAHA.

Last night muffin and I had vegie burgers with rocket pesto, mushroom ‘pate’, tomato, alfalfa and pickles! Very simple. My favourite veggie patties to buy are definitely the cracked wheat rissoles from Foodland. I’ve eaten them since I was a little kid and at $1.80 each they are a bargain! They’re not too strongly flavoured, but you can see peas in them which I assume means they’re healthy. Amirite, amirite?! I hope so.

For brekky one day this week I had THIS….

actually i lie, i had less than half of this. What was I thinking?! It was a day after mums giant meal and I think I stayed full for about 16 hours! It was baked beans, tofu scramble, a million vegetables, grilled tomato and vegetarian sausages. Anywho, what I did eat of it was tasty. See that toast there? Avocado and sweet chilli sauce! The best thing ever! I’m onto something with that winner.

And to finish off this lovely post… lookie what Muffin got me!!!!! Man oh man, its a submarine tea infuser. THIS IS LOVE.

ps, awwwwwwww.

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