Mothers Day Desserts

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Natasha J Stewart

9 people have just unloaded out of my tiny apartment. I was the host of mothers day dinner tonight– providing the space and in charge of desserts. My two nans turned up as well so we had a full house as we crowded around the makeshift dining table on the communal first floor. My middle sister was cooking the food. She turned up with a slow cooker, a few pans, meat and vegetables. For the past couple of days I’ve been planning the desserts.

I actually started designing the main dessert a few weeks ago. I was working on an incredibly interesting, but also frustrating, essay on Vietnamese national identity and the celebratory banh chung. So while looking for many ways to procrastinate I designed a dessert. I bought half sphere silicon moulds a while ago, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to use them ever since.

This was the original design. A chocolate shell filled with chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache, and a honey comb and choc biscuit base. I would have loved to have topped it with gold leaf as well, but I didn’t get a chance to buy any. Instead I changed a few things. I made a hollow teardrop shaped chocolate pipe in the centre of the shell (teardrops were easier than cylinders). This was surrounded with mousse and then ganache. I filled the pipe with a raspberry coulis that after a bit too much reduction resembled more of a raspberry jam. Then I decorated with a few chocolate shavings, bits of homemade honey comb, and a few raspberries. The end result:

You can’t see the raspberry centre because I only filled 5 of them and we had two unexpected guests turn up.

It wasn’t quite as I’d pictured it, but I was happy with the results. Initially I’d planned to have some kind of anglais or chocolate sauce to pour over the top, but in the end I ran out of time and ingredients. Thankfully it didn’t let the dessert down.

Of course it wouldn’t be a family gathering without my nieces so I whipped up something for them too… quite literally. My go to dessert is an eton mess. Chantilly cream, strawberries, and meringue. The only tricky/time consuming part is making the meringue. Apart from that you just need to chuck everything together at the last moment. That way the meringue stays crunchy throughout the cream and strawberries.

I’ll try and add some recipes up a little bit later, but for now I’ll just leave you with the pictures. I’m off to China on Tuesday for two weeks, so I won’t be in the kitchen again for a while. Perhaps I’ll get some inspiration while I’m away.

How did you celebrate mothers’ day? Was there anything sweet on the table?

Christmas Cooking: An Eton Mess Recipe

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Natasha J Stewart

I’d intended to pop this recipe in the December Sweet Adventures Blog Hop. As soon as Christina announced the theme ‘Sweets for Santa‘ I knew that this red and white dessert would be perfect. But then life goes ahead and happens, and things don’t always go to plan. Thankfully, the Eton mess is really easy to make, and while I didn’t get a blog post up in time it still made it onto our Christmas table.

In the early hours of this year’s Christmas Eve my granddad passed away. He’d been sick for a while, and after many Christmases that might have been granddad’s last one, this was the first one we were going to have without him. My aunt made a toast for him at dessert, his favourite meal, and I think every time I make this Eton mess I’m going to have a little smile thinking of granddad.

There are three things you need for a basic Eton Mess:

Chantilly cream
Strawberries
Meringue

You can start getting fancy with other fruits and other flavourings, but sticking to these three means you’ll have a beautiful and popular dessert.

The meringues are the first things you’ll need to make. They’re a basic mix of sugar and egg whites. I used about 120g of egg whites to 240g of sugar. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks begin to form, and then start adding the sugar. I use caster sugar but you can use plain white sugar. Keep beating them till you have stiff peaks.

Then pipe the meringue into disk shapes on a lined tray. It doesn’t really matter if they touch, because you’ll be breaking them all apart in the end.

The oven should be preheated to about 120ºC, but once you put them in drop it to 90. They’ll take about an hour and a half to bake. If they don’t seem to have dried out enough leave them in the oven overnight (that’s what I did). Make sure it’s switched off!

The meringue can be made in advance, just make sure that it’s not too humid or they will lose their crunch.

On the day you’re planning on serving your Eton mess get set on the rest of the components. Wash and dice your strawberries, leaving some whole to decorate the top. I used around 4 regular sized punnets.

Then start whipping your cream, I used 1.2L of regular thickened cream, but it really depends on the size of your bowl. Once it starts to get thicker add in sifted icing sugar and vanilla bean paste. Add both to your taste.

In a large bowl mix the cream with most of the chopped strawberries and with the crunched up meringue. Save some of the strawberries to layer in the centre, and save some meringue to sprinkle on top. Spoon the mix into your serving bowl, and once it’s about halfway full cover it with a layer of chopped strawberries and some crushed meringue. Then spoon the rest of the mix into the bowl. Sprinkle the top with the remaining crushed meringue, and cut the tops of your remaining strawberries, placing them on top with their points in the air.

Now it’s time to enjoy.

Losing someone at Christmas makes it all the more special when you get to share it with those that are still around. Everyone hugged each other a little bit tighter this year, and while we all had our moments when we were wiping tears from our eyes, it was also a great time to be with family.

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas lunch at my sisters house, Christmas morning with my four nieces is always my favourite part. They’ve recently all chosen new names for themselves to appear on the blog because I always seem to forget which pseudonym I refer to them by. Somehow my funny little nieces all went with flowers, the eldest is Poppy, then there’s Primrose (Prim for short), next is Daphney (nicknamed Daffodil), and finally Buttercup.

Buttercup insisted in helping me with the Eton mess, she mostly just played around with the meringues I wasn’t using, but she did help press in all the strawberries. At the funeral today she was so well behaved, only being a little cheeky while she sat on my dad’s lap. At one point it got a bit too much for her, and she just started crying because she couldn’t stand to see all the people she loved so sad, even if she didn’t really understand what was going on.

On Christmas Eve we all opened out secret admirer Peter Alexander pyjamas, except for Daffodil and Buttercup who had gorgeous pyjamas from Eternal Creations. I was lucky enough to get some great books for Christmas including How Baking Works, The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts, The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef, and Mad About Macarons. I also got the Heston’s Feast box set.

For us Christmas is about food, keeping old traditions and starting new ones (like watching Love Actually and opening our Christmas Eve pyjamas), but mostly it’s about family. This year did a great job at reminding me just how much I love mine.

What was Christmas like for your family this year? Did you have any special Christmas desserts?

Eat: Shiki at the Intercontinental

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Natasha J Stewart

I like birthdays. Well my birthday in particular. It’s the perfect excuse to convince my dad that we need to go out somewhere nice to eat. I spend my actual birthday having dinner at the Adelaide Hilton as part of our food blogging conference, Eat Drink Blog 3, but I had 4 more birthday dinners lined up. I’m always looking for any excuse to catch up with friends/family over food, and this seemed like the perfect excuse.

The first dinner was at Shiki, the Japanese teppanyaki restaurant at the Intercontinental. I first learned about Shiki back in year 10, when I went on a tour of the Hyatt, now the Intercontinental. We were there for a French trip, and were learning about the benefits of learning a second language if you want to get into the hospitality industry. At the time it fuelled a passion to one day own my own hotel. I might not have the same dreams anymore, but I’ve still always been interested in trying out Shiki for myself.

Unfortunately Shiki isn’t the sort of place we can take the entire family, not only because we were doing the $140 degustation, but because there’s not much chance you’ll get any of my nieces eating teppanyaki unless they fry up some chicken nuggets on the iron griddle. So there was just 5 of us: mum, dad, one of my sisters, myself, and the Smiling Foodie. It seemed fitting he come along considering we’re birthday buddies. (We made up for the lack of the rest of the family with a fun picnic at their local park).

First we were given some light soba noodles, which were followed by the sashimi: kingfish, salmon, and tuna. Lucky for me Sam is not a fan of sashimi, so I lucked out and got to enjoy double. They were so fresh, I could have easily had myself another plate.

sashimi

As is usually the case with teppanyaki (unless you’ve got a very large group), you share your bench with other diners. We had a small group who’d obviously been enjoying the wine selection, who were having a great time, and an older English couple who had only just arrived in Adelaide on business. I always enjoy the chance to meet new people, and I find food is the perfect social lubricant.

One of my favourite dishes of the night was the soft-shell mud crab. It’s got the flavour of crab without all the mess, and it’s got that great mix of soft meat and still lightly crunchy shell.

softshellcrab

I always enjoy watching my food being cooked, and it gives you another level of connection with the cooking process. There weren’t any wild antics, we didn’t have food thrown into our mouths, but the flames are always entertaining. In general I found the service to be quite reserved. It was interesting to see what I assumed to be typical Japanese dining etiquette, all the women were served first with dad (the oldest male) receiving his meals last.

At the end of the meal we were lead away to have our dessert, green tea panna cotta with red bean. I’m not sure if the move was supposed to be for our benefit or theirs, whether they were freeing up our spot at the main table or just giving us the opportunity to relax over dessert somewhere a little more secluded. I enjoyed the panna cotta, as I generally do, it was a refreshing end and the matcha flavour wasn’t too bitter.

dessert

Overall I really enjoyed Shiki, but I could personally justify the price. $140 a head + alcohol isn’t a cheap night out, and I definitely won’t be doing the degustation again unless someone else is paying.

P.s. If this doesn’t seem like much food for $140, I haven’t actually covered every dish! You can read all the menus online.

Medieval Feast @ Rigoni’s Bistro

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Natasha J Stewart

When someone offers me meat on a spit, there’s no way I can refuse. Enter the Medieval Dress Up Dinner at Rigoni’s Bistro on Leigh Street, helping to celebrate Coopers 150th Anniversary and raising money for Variety. I found out about it on Facebook, and thankfully mum and dad were both in. We got dressed at my new place, before walking over to join the festivities.

The lamb and pork were already set up on the street. It was great having the spits out in full view rather than hidden away out the back, plus they made something warm to congregate around while we stood outside. Inside one long table was set up, each place with our own tankard to fill with beer throughout the night. Most people dressed up, which was great, and it was fun watching people’s heads turn as they walked down Leigh Street.

I wasn’t just hanging out with mum and dad for the night (although I was lucky enough to have a song dedicated to me about my mum courtesy of Elbow Skin). Caitlin from the Good Food Society was there with her friend Leigh, which helped the night get extra merry. There was free flowing wine and beer throughout the night, with everything provided by Coopers & Aramis Wines.

As well as all the food and drink the night was also about raising money for Variety. Rigoni’s have/sponsor a car in the Variety Bash and seem to put a lot into supporting the charity. So there was a silent auction on the night, we bid on a few of the bottles of alcohol, but didn’t come away with anything at the end of it. I forget the exact numbers, but there was over $1000 extra raised from the auction.

There was meat, meat, and more meat. We started with something a bit lighter, prawns and oysters, before moving onto a plate of meat pasties, terrine, pork pies, and other meats. We popped outside to check on the meat on the spits (i.e. stare at it longingly) and by this stage they’d begun roasting the quail. Boy did they look delicious.

The plates of meat were brought to the table – there was quail, pheasant, pork, and lamb. There were supposedly steaks on the menu as well but I didn’t see any. The lamb was hands down my absolute favourite. The plate was piled high, and the meat was just so succulent. I would have loved to eat a lot more than I did, but I just couldn’t fit it all in.

We were entertained throughout the night by the two funny and hilariously rude guys from Elbow Skin, but it was also great just chatting away with everyone. Everyone was in good spirits, and how could you not be? The fun and festive Medieval theme was definitely embraced. The girls behind the bar were lovely, and always seemed to be there at the perfect moment to refill my glass.

I’m just adding it to the growing list of great experiences at Rigoni’s. Now I just need to have a day off so that I can head there for breakfast again.

Daisy & Ray Get Hitched

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Natasha J Stewart

The other week I went along to Daisy & Ray Get Hitched, an event that is part of the whole wave of alternative wedding fairs. They say goodbye to tacky bling, and there isn’t an inch of satin in sight. I’ve been meaning to get to one for quite a while (The eclective in Adelaide and One Fine Day in Sydney to name a few) but I just haven’t gotten round to it. But when the invite for Daisy & Ray Get Hitched popped up on my screen, I just couldn’t refuse.

Hannah came along with me for tonight, and we played future Mrs & Mrs for the night. It was at Higher Ground, and this was my first time back there in about 4 years. It was a gorgeous space, three levels decked out in beautiful wedding cakes, flower displays, dangling lights, and dessert tables. Neither of us were brides, and we weren’t likely to be anytime soon, so we were just soaking up all the pretty things.

If you were an actual bride (or possibly groom) I can only imagine that it was a real treasure trove of ideas and inspiration.

There were of course a few things that caught my eye:

- The cakes. Oh my these were stunning. My favourite would have to be the striking glitter cake that we saw as we first came in. Honestly I’m still not convinced that it’s edible because I’ve never seem edible glitter like that, but if it exists I want to know where to find it. Cakes were by Sweet Treats Cakes and Cupcakes.

- SmileBooth! Regular photo-booths are cool, but they’re also cramped, and not half as cute as this. The gorgeous husband and wife team who helped us pick out props and snapped our shots made the whole experience a lot of fun. They were just really lovely. Oh… of course the photos were lots of fun too. Plenty of moustaches, hats, and signs to choose from. Because it’s not a traditional photo-booth you can have as many or as little people piling in as you like. Photos can also be printed in a range of styles, including traditional photo-booth strips or polaroid pics. Of course SmileBooth aren’t just for weddings, but any event.

Photo by SmileBooth: http://smilebooth.com.au/

- The ceremony. Yes, there was an actual ceremony. You know it’s a good faux wedding when the crowd still manages to get a bit teary. ‘Daisy’ and ‘Ray’ played their parts well, and Cecilia White officiated. It was a sweet touch, and added something a little different to the whole affair.

Of course there was plenty more. Gorgeous wedding gowns, some great photographers, picture perfect styling, drool-worthy stationery and tasty macarons from Lil Miss Macaron. We left quite early, we were still heading on for dinner, but ended the night with a good chat to Monique at The Little Van that Could. Love her & her lemonade. She handed us our goodie bags and we were on our way.

Australia Day – How Did You Spend It?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Natasha J Stewart

Yesterday was Australia Day, a day where many people have their traditions. My Australia Days usually involve some the Hottest 100. Sometimes with friends, sometimes just relaxing at home by the pool. This year my sister and I were at home, with seafood, frosty fruits, and the swimming pool.

We started off with coconut prawns with a sweet chilli dipping sauce, and oysters. Half had a wasabi, soy sauce, & mirin sauce, and half had a lime and ginger dressing that we picked up in a Winery near Canberra.

This was followed with scallops and bacon, and lamb chops. I was lucky enough that all I had to do was sit back and relax while Vic cooked it all up for me.

It was a nice, relaxed day.

My Adriano Zumbo Masterchef Gingerbread House

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Natasha J Stewart

I have so many other posts that I’ve been meaning to write, but as many would find, at Christmas time even the best laid plans seem to fall by the wayside. So I’m managing to pop in one last post before Christmas, and then I’ll be back to share some of my recent dining adventures, which are always fun.

This post is dedicated to both one of my greatest loves, and darkest enemies: baking. I find myself awake at 2am, covered in flour and chocolate, and trying not to slip over on the floor that is covered in grease, and I ask myself, why do I keep baking?

It is stressful, it is tiring, and it is very messy, but I guess I just love being in the kitchen creating.

So this year I decided I would try my hand at a gingerbread house. Everything (except the lollies) would be from scratch, and I was being inspired by the Adriano Zumbo gingerbread house on the Masterchef finale. I made the dough, rolled out the pieces, and cut and baked it all, but then had to go out and wouldn’t be back the next day.

When I came home I was shattered to find a crack running straight through the centre of the front house piece. Who knows if it was knocked, broken, or just weak to begin with, but it was there, split into two pieces. After I had a bit of a mope I got to work trying to piece it back together with melted chocolate, and I recovered it with the crunchy chocolate brick work. Once I was finally done, I carefully carried it over to the fridge, only to come face to face with our kitchen stool that had been left in the middle of the kitchen.

The front went flying, and I just gave up. I was angry, frustrated, and tired. I was ready to just say no more, and chuck it all in the bin. Thankfully I didn’t, and after a lot of work, and some more lollies, I have this taking centre stage on our dining table:

So despite the tears, and the stress, I’m so happy with the result. The best bit, come Christmas we’ll all be able to pull it apart. Bring on the destruction!

Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays, I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and that your family and friends do too.

ABC Shop Modbury Doctor Who Night

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Natasha J Stewart

On Monday I got an email from the ABC Shop, and as usual the words ‘Doctor Who’ caught my eye. Usually I do skip past these emails because I buy all my Doctor Who DVDs from amazon.co.uk where they are way cheaper. Thankfully I read on because they weren’t trying to sell me something, they were letting me know about a Doctor Who night at their Modbury store… 3 nights away!

As soon as I could get to my nieces when they were done with school I announced that we had to get planning. Unfortunately their dad (who is also a big Doctor Who fan) didn’t want to go, which meant as well as costumes we had to try and organise getting there too. Modbury is about an hours drive, by public transport it takes much longer.

Molly was already set with her costume, she is part of a project I’m doing on the 11 Doctors, so she had her First Doctor costume ready to go. The day before I managed to pick Emily up some things to make an Amy Pond costume. After painting up some fake converses and tracking down a red wig, she was also set.

William Hartnell - The First Doctor

Amy Pond

Chloe’s costume took days. She would come round after school and we’d do whatever measuring, shopping, painting, or sewing we had to do. Firstly the costume wouldn’t have even been possible without this tutorial. Looking at our costume you wouldn’t guess that we used theirs as a guide, but even though we didn’t have the time, skills, or materials to pull it off as well as them, everything we did was inspired by that costume. It was a really fun process, if not tiring. I was at the same time making myself a Weeping Angel costume, but I put most of my attention towards Chloe’s.

We started off with a white robe, some grey bedsheets, pantyhose, and a pair of gloves. I adjusted the robe so that it fit her better, and used this as a guide, sewing the bedsheet onto the robe, ‘trying’ to give it a crinkled effect like stone. We painted the pantyhose, gloves, and dress to that they were stiffer and appeared stony. The wings were made out of polystyrene. I grabbed the piece out of some packaging a while back because I knew it would come in handy later. Polystyrene can actually be quite expensive, so if you ever come across big pieces I recommend keeping them.

This was Chloe’s costume in the end:

No, none of the colours really match, and yes our ‘silver’ facepaint didn’t really give us the grey stoney look we were going for. But I’m so proud of how well she carried the costume off. She posed for plenty of pictures for me and others throughout the night.

Getting to the Doctor Who night was hectic. Initially the plan was to go BUS-TRAIN-BUS-CAR. Unfortunately our first bus ride was a lot later than expected, then the train wasn’t running. We ended up meeting my other sister at Oaklands (after she did an emergency staple shop so we could mend Chloe’s costume), rather than at her house in Prospect. We finally got on the road again after more stress when my phone went missing. At just after 7pm I got a message from my friend Sam asking where we were just as we pulled in to the Tea Tree Plaza car park.

Inside it was HECTIC.

Some of the crowd

ABC Stores aren’t huge (at least ours aren’t), and they’re generally pretty jammed with book and DVD shelves. Throw in a bunch of Whovians and you have a pretty tight squeeze. There were some games for the kids, that involved listing the 11 doctors in order, feeling in a box to pick which figurines were inside, and drawing competitions. There were also quizes. The girls were a bit disappointed that I didn’t answer any of the quiz questions, but it was so crazy, and I’ve never been a fan of quizzes where everyone shouts out the answer. I was happy to let others in the crowd answer and get the prizes, there were certainly plenty of them.

The Store Manager who was running all the quizzes

We still came home with what I would consider was our fair share of prizes. Chloe was lucky enough to win the best dressed child costume. The best dressed adult went to an amazing Cyberman costume. It was pretty cool to begin with, but when we found out he had made it himself I think our jaws may have dropped to the floor. Molly went and had a good chat to him, she was really interested in his costume. Once they handed out the best dressed prizes they split people into ‘Doctors’, ‘Villains’, and ‘Companions’. They then had lots of small prizes to give to other well dressed fans. Neither Molly or Emily got one, but Molly came up to us later with a sonic screwdriver in hand. Apparently the manager had found her and said he couldn’t find her when they were handing out prizes, but he thought her costume was awesome, so she ended up with a prize too. Chloe’s prize was the Doctor Who annual plus a small card with Karen Gillan’s signature.

Molly and Chloe with the best dressed Cyberman

Emily didn’t come away with a prize, which probably came down to the fact that I hadn’t had really any time to work on her costume. We bought her some small toys that were $3.50 each, but you could tell she was a bit disappointed. I want to save up for the next one to make sure that all the girls can come home with a proper toy. We had fun, so if buying them something they’d enjoy means a better chance of having another one, then I’m all for it. You can never have enough Doctor Who merch in my opinion.

It was a great night. There were heaps of people dressed up, I’ll be posting more of the photos on Kids Dressed as Doctor Who. We were all absolutely shattered by the end of it, we had a quick stop off at Macdonald’s on the way home, because I still hadn’t had any food, and then finally got home. They announced at the end of the night that it could be called a success, and we should look forward to another one in the future. We’ve kept this in mind so that planning starts sooner, and hopefully the next one won’t be quite so stressful, but just as fun!

Dinner Parties & Early Mornings

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Natasha J Stewart

After spending the morning cleaning up the lounge room (it needed a big clean after all of the piles that had managed to accumulate) I was treated to a shopping trip with Roxy. Not a shopping trip filled with fun purchases, but one to get some food for dinner.

Vic (my sister) and I had been invited round to Roxy and her boyfriend’s for dinner. It was a lovely night with some good wine and tasty food. Roxy has this Donna Hay cookbook and there is one dessert in it that is the easiest dinner party dessert. If I could find the recipe online I would post a link, but perhaps instead you’ll just have to track down a Donna Hay cookbook (it’s in one of them!). It is a Cheat’s Berry Brulee, made with yoghurt, vanilla, berries, cream, and sugar. Super easy to make and a great end to the meal.

We also indulged in one of our other obsessions, True Blood, and watched the first two episodes of season 4. Safe to say we wanted to watch more, but we decided to call it a night.

Now I just have the weekend to look forward to, and that starts with breakfast in Willunga. We’re trying out a place called Christina’s on High Street, so I’m excited to see what it is like.

Emily’s 7th Birthday

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Natasha J Stewart

I spent today making my chicken pie, which I must say was quite yummy, and putting the finishing touches to my nieces 7th birthday party. I made some labels for the drinks, and a card from me and one from my older sister Vic.

Everyone got here at around 6:00 and the pies and sausage rolls went in the oven straight away.

Here a few photos from the night:

: The Birthday Girl

It was a really fun night, very relaxed. Thankfully we used plastic plates and cups so most of it could just be thrown in the bin afterwards. We were also lucky enough to have gerat weather today, so we could sit up on the balcony.

Here is to summer and many more days like this.

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