Granola Goodness!

I love granola, as most people do...but it generally is not the best thing for you. However, in last month's Donna Hay magazine, there was a recipe for home made peach and coconut granola that looked too good to turn down...I had to try it! The recipe was not too bad on the health scale, although I imagine that it has a few calories...albeit from good sources. But I was not to be deterred!! I had to try this nutty, fruity goodness.

And my oh my...how good it is!! This stuff totally rocks my socks off :) This is seriously the best cereal I ever had, I could not stop eating it. My hubby felt the same way, going so far as to say that we should sell it!

I don't think we will start a granola business just yet, but if you do get a chance to try this, do it!! Its super tasty and yummy. The best part is you could change the peaches to whatever dried fruit you liked. I actually added currants and dried pear to mine, but your imagination is the limit.




Peach and Coconut Granola
(Makes 8 cups)

3cups of oats
1 cup flakes almonds
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups shredded coconut
2 cups dried peaches
honey, extra to serve
vanilla yogurt
2 cups natural yogurt
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped

1. To make vanilla yogurt, place the yogurt and vanilla bean seeds into a bowl and stir to combine. set aside.

2. Pre-heat oven to 355F. Place oats and almonds in a large bowl and set aside. Heat honey, oil and vanilla extract in a small saucepan over high heat and cook, stirring occasionally for 2 minutes or until honey is melted. Pour over oat mixture and stir well to combine. Spoon mixture onto a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper and cook for 14-20 minutes or until golden. Stir through coconut and peaches and allow to cool.

3. Serve with vanilla yogurt and honey.

Seared Tuna with Lime Crust

I always look forward to Friday night dinners, as I feel a sense of accomplishment. On Friday's I have managed to feed myself and my hubby for an entire week with pretty nice and healthy meals and my reward is usually to have dinner out on Saturday night...definitely something to look forward to. I love cooking, but who doesn't love to have someone else cook for them and wait on them...I sure as heck do!!

So anyway, down to tonight's "gourmet" offering. Its another dish from Donna Hay's Flavors....can you tell I am obsessed with this book yet?!! I decided to make the seared tuna with lime crust for two reasons. The first being that tuna is a fish I can usually get my picky hubby to eat and the second is that the pasta in the picture looked incredibly delicious and I happen to love love love pasta, as well as tuna, so it seemed like it would be a very yummy and healthy meal.

It certainly didn't disappoint. This was a fabulous dinner that was not too involved to make. It would have taken me even less time if I had have remembered to put the water on to boil for the pasta earlier than when I was ready to cook it. The marinade for the tuna is refreshing and delightful and the same marinade ends up in the pasta...very simple and tasty.




Seared Tuna with Lime Crust
(Serves 4)

12oz Tuna fillet
1 tbs grated lime rind
1/3 cup lime juice
1/4 cup finely chopped dill
2 tbs chopped flat leaf parsley
2 small red chillies, seeded and chopped
2 tbs olive oil
sea salt and cracked black pepper
14oz fettuccine
1 tbs olive oil, extra
3 1/2oz baby arugula leaves
extra lime juice and olive oil to serve

1. Place tuna in a shallow dish. Combine lime rind, lime juice, dill, parsley, chilli, olive oil, salt and pepper, then pour over the tuna to coat. Refrigerate for 20 minutes, turning once.

2. Cook the pasta until al dente and then drain. While the pasta is cooking, place the extra oil in a fry pan over high heat. Remove the tuna from the marinade and reserve the liquid. Cook the tuna for 1 minute on each side until well seared, then slice.

3. To serve, pile the pasta on serving plates and top with the arugula, sliced tuna and the reserved marinade. Drizzle with a little lime juice and olive oil before serving.

A Taste of Pineapple

There have been a lot of posts with yellow food in the blog world recently and this is all due to a single, brave woman (Barbara) over at Wino's and Foodies. Barbara is a cancer sufferer and asked the food blogging community to contribute recipes using yellow food for "A Taste of Yellow", a registered event for Lance Armstrong's Livestrong day on May 16th. The purpose of this event is to raise awareness for cancer and cancer research, of which I think there isn't a single person who hasn't been touched by this terrible disease.

I am very fortunate not to have been touched directly by this beast, however my Grandmother died of leukaemia and one of my best friends mother recently passed on, also from cancer. My mother has had some skin cancers removed from her back and neck, which luckily had not metastasized. In addition, as a scientific researcher at NIH, I come into contact with cancer every day, so I felt it important for me to contribute to this event.

I am a little late to the party, with only 2 days left to submit my contribution, however it took me a while to work out what I really wanted to make. I thought about bananas, lemons, cheese, eggs and nothing was grabbing me. I really wanted to do something with passionfruit, but as I have complained in the past, its very hard to come by here in the States. So, I settled on pineapple.



My husband has been asking me for years to make a pineapple upside down cake, as it seemed to really appeal to him and he had never had one before. I had never taken him up on this request and thought this would be a good time to do so. But I didn't want to do a boring one, with the pineapple rings on top and the fake maraschino cherries (blech...I hate those things). So I decided to do little individual ones. I found a pretty good recipe on epicurious.com, however it was a little boring for my taste. I wanted to make it a little more pinacolada-ish, so I decided to add some coconut, cardamom, vanilla extract and rum. It turned out really well, I think. I was impressed and hubby was even more so. In fact, he said it was the best he ever had...hahaha!!

So without further ado, here is my entry for "A Taste of Yellow".




Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes
(Makes 12)

Fruit Topping
1 can of pineapple rings
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted

Cupcake Batter
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup reserved pineapple juice
1 egg
1 tbs rum
2/3 tbs vanilla essence

1. Pre-heat oven to 350F and grease a 12 hole muffin pan.

2. Drain pineapple rings completely, reserving 1/2 cup of juice for the batter.

3. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and melted butter. Divide evenly between the muffin pan cup. Cut out a small piece of the pineapple ring so that it can form a smaller circle. Lay on top of sugar mixture and set aside.

4. In a large bowl (or mixer), combine flour, sugar, cardamom, coconut and baking powder. Mix in the pineapple juice and butter to make a smooth batter. Beat in the egg. Spoon batter over the pineapple in the muffin cups, filling each cup 3/4 full. Bake in the centre of the oven for 25-30min, or until cake tester inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Cool cupcakes in the pan for 5 minutes and then turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Feeling Crabby!

The only good thing about Thursdays and Rich having class, is that I get to make recipes that I cannot try on him. He is violently opposed to eating almost all seafood (I can sneak in some fish every now and then, as long as its not salmon) so Thursdays is the night I usually make something with our friends from the sea. Tonight was crab...if you hadn't guessed from my (ahem) hilarious title :)

This lime crab salad come from Donna Hay's-Flavors, one of the best cookbooks I think I have ever seen. Everything in this book looks so yummy, I am determined to one day work through them all!!

This recipe is simple and healthy and light...great for a summer evening. It does have green papaya as one of the ingredients, which I thought I bought...turns out I bought regular papaya, which I didn't realize until I cut it open and the flesh was bright orange. Too late to do anything about it, so I used it anyway and it was fine, however it was too soft to Julienne, so I just cut it into small strips. I also didn't add the fish sauce, as this usually makes me sick, however if you love thai food, this probably would have added a nice touch to the flavor.

If anyone could tell me what an actual green papaya is supposed to look like, I would be interested to find out as I don't believe I have ever seen one, especially not in a US supermarket.

I don't know if I will make this recipe again, but it was very tasty :)

Lime Crab Salad
(serves 4)

3 cooked crabs or 13oz of crabmeat
lime wedges for serving
lime salad
1/2 cup lime juice
1 tsp fish sauce
2 tbs brown sugar
2 Lebanese cucumbers (I used English cucumber, as Lebanese not available)
1 cup shredded green papaya (or mango)
1/3 cup shredded mint leaves
1/3 cup cilantro leaves

1. To make the lime salad, place lime juice, fish sauce, brown sauce, cucumber, papaya or mango, mint and cilantro in a bowl and toss to combine. Allow to stand for 30min to marinate.

2. Remove crab meat from shells. Place lime salad on serving plates and top with crab meat. Serve with lime wedges.

Pizza and a Salad

Tonight's dinner again came from my new Donna Hay magazine purchase and utilized last night's homemade tomato sauce and I am pleased to say that the results were a lot better. I decided to make the goat's cheese pita pizza's from the same feature article that I used for the chicken and zucchini salad yesterday. It utilized the same tomato sauce, which I think was even better today, as well as goats cheese...which I love....and fresh herbs. Yum!! I served it with Nigella's Ricotta and pine nut salad, which I found in last month's Delicious magazine. Also very yummy and a great accompaniment to this pizza. This was a perfect, quick, healthy weeknight meal, which Rich also loved and said was very tasty.

Donna Hay Tomato Sauce
(Makes 2 3/4 cups)

2 1/4 lbs ripe roma tomatoes
5 cloves garlic
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp castor sugar
salt and cracked black pepper
1 cup basil leaves

1. Pre-heat oven to 390F. Cut a shallow cross in the base of each tomato. Place tomatoes and garlic in a baking dish and roast for 15-20 minutes or until the skin starts to peel away and tomatoes are tender.

2. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. Peel tomatoes and garlic and roughly chop.. Place them in a bowl and add oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper and basil. Stir well to combine.




Spicy Goat's Cheese Pita Pizza
(Makes 6)

1 quantity of tomato sauce (see above)
6 small pita rounds
7oz goat's cheese, crumbled
1 tsp chilli flakes
1/4 cup oregano leaves
sea salt and cracked black pepper
basil leaves to serve

1. Preheat oven to 355F. Spoon tomato sauce over the bread and top with goat's cheese, chilli, oregano, salt and pepper. Place on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper and bake for 10-15 minutes or until bread is crispy. Top with basil and serve.




Ricotta and Pine Nut Salad
(Serves 8)

2 cups fresh ricotta
1/3 cup loosely packed basil leaves
3/4 cup pine nuts
8 loosely packed cups of mixed salad leaves
2 heads of Belgian endive
2 tbs red wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
pinch of paprika to dust

1. Place ricotta in a bowl and break up with a fork. Tear basil into pieces and toss with the ricotta. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

2. Heat a small dry frying pan over medium heat and add pine nuts. Stir constantly until pine nuts are golden. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

3. Arrange salad leaves and endive in a bowl or platter. Combine oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and sprinkle over the salad. Toss to combine, then spread pine nuts evenly over the greens. Drop small mounds of ricotta onto the greens, then dust with paprika.

Two Firsts

So, last week I became the proud parent to a new ice cream maker and today I got to christen it! I was very excited and it was super easy and fun. That is obviously one of my firsts, the second is that on Monday I made my own yogurt for the first time. The recipe...if you can really call it that...was found in Jamie Oliver's-The Naked Chef Takes Off.

I had half of a quart of milk left over that was almost to its used by date and rather than just throw it away, I decided to use it for Jamie's yogurt recipe that I had seen a couple of weeks ago. The recipe called for whole milk and I had 1%, so I didn't know if it was going to turn out or not. But, I am pleased to say, it was just great. Probably not as thick as some might like it, but still a pretty good consistency. All you do for this recipe is bring 41/2 cups of milk to the boil, cool to body temperature, then add 160z of natural, active yogurt and leave covered for 6-8 hours. I just left mine overnight, then put into the fridge.



This made a lot of yogurt and quite frankly I was wondering what to do with it all. I know I want to use some for a muesli recipe this weekend, but I didn't think I would be able to get through the rest. But then, of course!!.....I remembered the spanking new ice cream machine. What if I used the yogurt to make frozen yogurt?? Great!! So I spent a few minutes hunting around for frozen yogurt recipes and decided to use one on David Lebovitz's blog for my inspiration. His recipe utilises fresh strawberries, of which I didn't have. But I did have some frozen ones taking up space in my freezer. Unfortunately his recipe called for 1lb of strawberries, again, I did not have that much, but I did have some frozen peaches as well. So, I figured I would just add them together and see how it turned out.

Its my first go, right? It probably won't work the first time round, right? Well, let me just say I was pleasantly surprised. Not only was making frozen yogurt loads of fun, the resulting product tasted absolutely delicious!! And not to bad for you either, as it utilized 1% milk.

All I did was blend the frozen berries and peaches with 2/3 cup of sugar and 1 cup of yogurt. The fruit was already frozen and cold, so I didn't even need to refrigerate for any time, then I just put it into the frozen bowl of the ice cream maker for about 30-40 minutes.




This is probably not the recipe I would have used to christen my fabulous new machine if I could have picked anything, but I wanted to use what I already had and let me just say, that this was a mighty tasty way to use them :)

Pan Fried Chicken and Zucchini Salad.

I don't want to say that tonight's dinner was an unmitigated disaster....but it came fairly close.

I was so excited last week, as I discovered that the Barnes and Noble near our house stocks both Donna Hay and Delicious magazines. I didn't think I would be able to get my hands on these, so I spent the entire weekend going through all the recipes in them, trying to work out which ones I wanted to make first. I saw the feature in Donna Hay (volume 31) for making tomato sauce and decided to give it a try, followed by the pan-fried chicken and zucchini salad.

Well, the sauce turned out fine, nice and tasty....although I am not sure it was any more tasty than the one I usually make from canned crushed tomatoes. This may be because the tomatoes aren't fully in season here, so this may be better later on in the summer. But it was the chicken and zucchini salad that was not what I was expected.

The problem was, the recipe confused me. It started off saying to pre-heat the oven, but then never mentioned using it. I think the recipe must have had something missing, but I wasn't sure what it was. They never mentioned cooking the zucchini, so I thought perhaps that was supposed to be roasted in the oven....but I really wasn't sure.




Anyway, what it boils down to is that I didn't really follow the recipe fully, as I wanted it to be a warm salad, because of the cooked chicken and decided to pan fry the zucchini as well as the chicken. This worked out fine. I also added the tomato sauce to the pan for the last minute to warm it through and this was not in the original recipe.

The outcome was a pretty tasty salad, that was not really a salad...but I probably won't make it ever again. Rich actually really liked it and said he would definitely request it again, which I was very surprised about. I decided to add some grilled queso blanco on the side, which gave a nice salty little kick, but again, this wasn't in the recipe.

I have to say, that after all the hype about Donna Hay and loving reading the magazine, I was so looking forward to a simple, great tasting, healthy recipe....but alas, it was not to be. It is probably my fault, but I don't think the recipe was very clear due to what I believe was a typo.

I am not posting the recipe, but if you have the last issue of Donna Hay (31) you can find it in there. I hope it works better for you, if you try it!!!