My 97 seconds of TV fame

Last night I was featured on Today Tonight as part of a story about food blogging. Thanks very much to TT for this opportunity to help showcase food bloggers, particularly the professionalism of the Brisbane crew who came to film me, who helped make it a fun experience - Emily, Jeremy and Julian.

Thanks also to everyone who has provided me with fabulous feedback via email, sms, facebook and twitter.

You can watch the story here - I would love to know your thoughts.

My crazy day - food, video and tv cameras!

You never know when opportunity will come knocking and for me it was this morning with a very unexpected phone call from a producer at Channel 7. They were looking for a food blogger to help with a story on the rise of food blogging - of course I said YES!

It came about because the wonderful Amanda and Jennifer invited me to be the Food Blogger of the Month for May 2013 on the Food Bloggers Australia website - this is how Channel 7 found me. If you're a food blogger in Australia definitely consider becoming a member - it's free (!) and it can provide you with opportunities like this one - as well as loads of useful and practical information to make your blog even more fabulous.

I had a crazy morning with a video camera already planned, as I had said I'd be a cooking class member for my friend Mel who was shooting a corporate video for her cooking school Vanilla Zulu. Somedays I really do pinch myself :)

After helping cook and eat amazing food with Mel, I rushed home to slap on some more makeup and a top not splashed with flour.

Making bread with fresh, grated tumeric, flower petals and black sesame seeds - so pretty!

Simple herbed butter balls with a couple of goat cheese balls for good measure - if your butter is too hard just grate it

The final dish - cauliflower, sweet potato mash, roast red pepper, amazing lamb backstrap rolled in a spicy pistachio mix, bit of toasted proscuitto for crunch. Nom nom nom 

With 15 minutes to spare before the Today Tonight crew turned up, I frantically tidied the kitchen.  Luckily no one looked under the sink cover or in a cupboard! I don't think it's ever been this tidy!

Our unusually sparklie kitchen :) 

I had loads of fun, talking about one of my favourite topics - food! And I had a huge giggle when two of the crew walked in and almost started drooling when they saw my Thermomix :)

Emily, the Associate Producer who interview me asked loads of great questions that made me reflect on why I blog and how lucky I am to be part of such a fantastic community of like-minded people. We really do have a fabulous community - thank you to all my fellow food bloggers around the world who are a part of this.

Blogging, blogging, blogging! And a bit of promotion for the beautiful new book by the gorgeous Jude Blereau 

Julian the cameraman 

Thanks Julian, Jeremy and Emily! I had loads of fun :) 

There were a few questions about what I thought about bloggers who review restaurants and whether chefs are justified in hating bloggers. Clearly now I've seen the promo this is the focus of the story! Let's hope a few of my comments about how I blog to share my love of food comes across.

You can watch the preview here - for some reason it didn't embed :( 

I clearly said that I don't review restaurants, but that I will share positive experiences of places I go to without giving a rating or a point score or without critiquing the food in a detailed way (I don't really consider OMG YUM!! to be a critique :) ) . Let's face it, I want my blog to be a positive place. I also made it clear that no way would I blog nastiness (life is too short!), and that if I have less than great restaurant experiences I always let the restaurant know privately.

Let's see how I'm portrayed when the story airs on Today Tonight tomorrow (Wed 29 May) at 6.30pm on Channel 7.

However regardless of what happens when Today Tonight goes to air tomorrow, I had a fabulous time this afternoon, and shared quite a few laughs and a bit of my leftover maple pecan date and bourbon pie (which was a massive hit and will be blogged...).

Let me know what you think after tomorrow night!

Weekend baking - quiche Lorraine

A lazy Saturday lunch - quiche Lorraine

There is little I love more than waking up on a Saturday morning to a cloudy day full of drizzle. Especially on a day when I don't have to be anywhere or do anything. When I can roll over for another hour of sleep, and then spend a good few hours on the couch watching Rage, reading the weekend papers and drinking tea. Bliss.

Yesterday was one of those days.

At some stage I did start to think of food. Which made me think of using up some of the multitude of eggs that are in our fridge. Eggs from our beautiful chickens. Which then made me crave bacon. Which then made me think of quiche. See how my mind works?

So THEN I removed myself temporarily from the couch to see which of my cookbooks had a fabulous quiche recipe - using the absolutely BRILLIANT Eat Your Books website. If you have loads of cookbooks you rarely use, this is the site for you.

Anyhoo, Eat Your Books pointed me in the direction of the gorgeous Jude Blereau and her beautiful book Coming home to eat - wholefood for the family. I'm a massive fan of Jude's and have been for years. Her food philosophy is similar (but far more advanced) than mine, with her advocacy for eating whole foods. I'm seeing her at a Thermomix cooking demo on Monday and I cannot wait! (Massive thanks to Thermomix too, for comping me a ticket - very grateful).

Me (in the brown dress!) with Jude last year when she was in Brisbane

I love this book and was dancing the happy dance when I found it for $7 in my local Lifeline Book Shop. Especially as it's now out of print. 

What I love about this quiche recipe is that it uses spelt flour for the pastry and full cream, non-homogenized milk instead of cream (although I did add a bit of cream...). I used the beautiful milk from a cow named Dolores (owned by a friend), but you can also purchase full cream, non-homogenized milk from health food stores and some good delis.

Jude suggests that this recipe wouldn't work with regular milk, but if that is all you have, perhaps try with 50% cream and 50% milk (just don't blame me if it doesn't work!). Don't use skim, trim, soy or any other variety.

Quiche Lorraine
By Mel Kettle, adapted from a recipe by Jude Blereau 

What you need: 
90g plain wholemeal spelt flour
90g plain white spelt flour
100g chilled butter, cut into cubes
80-100ml ice cold water (I use filtered tap water and stick ice cubes in it to chill it quickly)
butter for greasing
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
450ml full cream, non-homogenized organic milk
50ml cream
80g cheddar cheese, grated
175g bacon, finely diced
1 red onion, finely diced
5-6 button mushrooms, thinly sliced

What you do:
Put the flours and butter in your thermomix (or food processor), turbo pulse 3-4 times until it looks like small breadcrumbs. Add about half the water and mix for 3-4 seconds on speed 6. Slowly add more water until it comes together to form a fairly moist ball of dough (I used about 90ml and in total it mixed for about 8 seconds). DO NOT OVERMIX otherwise it will be too tough.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Once the dough is chilled, roll it out - you'll need to flour the mat or bench, and also flour your rolling pin well as the dough should be a bit sticky. Try not to use too much flour, but make sure it's enough so the dough doesn't stick. Once you've rolled it out, use a palette knife (or an egg flip if you don't have a palette knife) to carefully lift the dough to turn it. Roll the other side - you want it to be about 33cm in diameter and about 2mm thick.

Preheat the oven to 200c.

Grease a 24cm loose-based tart tin that is 3cm deep. Carefully transfer the pastry to the tin (this can be fairly easily done by loosely folding the pastry into four, placing it the tin, then gently unfolding it. Carefully push the pastry into the tin and cut off any excess pastry that hangs over the edge. You might need to use some of this excess pastry to patch any gaps or holes in the pastry. Pop the remaining pastry back in plastic wrap and in the fridge.

Place some baking paper over the pastry and fill it with pastry weights or dried beans or rice. Place the tart tin on a baking tray and in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove from oven and remove the pastry weights and baking paper. Reduce the oven temperature to 180c and pop the pastry back in the oven for another 9 minutes.

While the pastry is blind baking make the filling. Cook the bacon in a frypan on medium heat for about 2-3 minutes (I don't add any oil as my bacon had quite a bit of fat, but you might like to add a small amount), then add the onion and the mushroom and cook for another 4-5 minutes, stirring so it doesn't burn. Set aside once cooked.

In a medium sized bowl, add the eggs, egg yolks, milk, cream and salt and pepper. Whisk it well. Set aside.

Once the pastry is cooked, remove it from the oven and increase the oven temperature to 200c.

Check there are no cracks in the pastry - if there are, use some of the excess pastry to fill them in (otherwise your filling will leak everywhere and make a huge mess). Scatter half the cheese on the bottom of the tart, then all the bacon, onion, mushroom mix. Put the tart tray on the baking tray and carefully pour the egg mixture into the tart.

Pastry shell after it was blind baked, with the cheese and the bacon, onion and mushroom mix. 

Gently place it in the oven and bake it for 15 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 180c and bake for another 15 minutes. Scatter the rest of the cheese on top and bake for a final 15-20 minutes until the filling is lightly puffed and the centre just set. It should be a light golden colour when cooked.

Once cooked, remove from the oven and let it rest for 15-20 minutes. Serve warm with a simple salad (mine was just baby spinach leaves, tomato, red onion and an oil and vinegar dressing).

Ready for lunch! 

What is your favourite thing to do on a lazy Saturday? or Sunday? Baking nearly always happens in my kitchen!

In my kitchen - May

The months are rolling around far too quickly for me to keep up right now! But I have a few fabulous delights in my kitchen this month, so I thought I'd share.

I'm trying to crank up the health factor in what I'm eating [and drinking] so making a bit more of an effort to have a green smoothie every day. This one had baby spinach leaves, cucumber, carrot, ginger and some pear. It made loads and was very refreshing to slurp on throughout the day.

Sometimes I think the chickens are the best fed at our place! I'm really grateful to our local greengrocer, Feast on Fruit at Morningside, for helping us keep our girls fed in greens. At least three times a week they give us a very generous bag of lettuce and cabbage leaves from their scraps pile. The girls go crazy when they hear that red bag rustle! We've been buying loads of our fruit and veg there since moving here about 8 years ago, and their deli is sensational!

My fairly blah day yesterday was brightened immeasurably when this gorgeous pack of goodies arrived from Nessun Dorma Coffee Roasters and cafe at Yeronga. A bag of coffee, a couple of macarons, some drinking chocolate and a gift voucher to check out their cafe for lunch or breakfast over the next couple of months. Excellent timing as I'm just about out of coffee - a calamity when you are a full time uni student, and trying to run a business and blog and feed a hungry hubby and step-kid!

I'm a massive fan of Thomasina Miers Mexican cookbooks, so I was beyond delighted when Fiona from Tiffin gave me a pack of wahaca chilli seeds she collected on a trip to the UK. I really need to plant them, but I love the pack too much!

This wooden flour scoop was mum's that I found a couple of years ago. I remember using it as a kid when I baked, and I love that it is now in my kitchen again. Especially as I've been having a bit of a baking revival over the last year or so.

I'm a massive fan of Marion Nestle and her wonderful blog Food Politics - a blog that everyone who wants to know more about food and the power of "big food" should be reading. I bought a couple of her books recently, and they are fascinating reading - especially What to Eat. 

The gorgeous people at Heilala Vanilla noticed a tweet of mine a while back that said I hadn't ever tried their product, so they sent me some. How kind was that! I'm now a convert, especially to that vanilla paste. OMG yum. Shortly after it arrived, Bizzy Lizzy posted about a slow cooked vanilla beef casserole that I just had to make - it was stunning.

What's in your kitchen this month?

Thanks to the lovely Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for instigating In My Kitchen - you can check out other kitchens on her blog.