Bits of Carey

Yes. You read right, easy!  So many people are freaked at the idea of attempting the “dreaded roulade”, however I urge you to give it a go –  it is so rewarding you will not believe!  I craved this for dinner recently and managed to whip it up in +- 45 minutes – not too shabby! Savoury roulades are perfect for a brunch spread, finger food for catering or as sumptuous starters. There are so many options for fillings: creamy spinach and feta, proscuitto and creamy mushroom, wild mushroom, smoked salmon creamed cheese and watercress(one of my faves)… the list goes on.

I had bacon in the freezer as well as mushrooms and smooth cottage cheese in the fridge, so a bacon and mushroom roulade was a given. I can guarentee that once you make this, you will be hooked! The texture is sublime – it just melts in your mouth.

You will need:

Makes 12- 15 slices

50 g/ 50 ml butter

125 ml (1/2 cup) cake flour

500 ml ( 2 cups) milk

salt and pepper to taste

4 eggs, carefully separated

250 g back bacon, diced

15 ml butter

1 clove garlic, crushed

a sprig of rosemary, chopped

250 g button mushrooms, sliced

1 tub smooth cottage cheese or creamed cheese

milled black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees celcius.

Line a swiss roll baking tin (basically a shallow +- 30 X 20 cm baking tray) with non stick baking paper and grease any surface that may stick out.

In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour to it, whisking to break up large lumps. Cook the flour mixture for a minute.

Add the milk and whisk vigorously over high heat until the sauce thickens. When it starts to bubble, remove from the heat. Season the sauce and allow cool slightly(about 5 minutes).

While the sauce is cooling, whisk the egg whites to soft peak stage. Whisk the yolks into the sauce, followed by carefully folding in the egg whites.

Carefully pour onto the prepared tray spreading the mixture out evenly.

Bake for 40 minutes.

While this is baking, get on with the filling…

In a large frying pan, fry the bacon until slightly crispy then remove from the pan and set aside.

In the  same pan, add some butter if needed and as well as the garlic and rosemary. Saute the mushrooms in this pan, until soft and browned.

Return the bacon to the pan and combine.

Remove from the heat. Allow to cool for 15 minutes.

Stir the cream cheese into the mushroom mixure until well combined. Season with lots of black pepper.

Get a dish towel ready ( or wax paper or foil) and place it on your work surface. Invert the baked roulade onto the towel, then gently peel the grease proof paper off.

Allow to cool down for 5 minutes before spreading the bacon and mushroom mixure all over the sheet of baked roulade – leaving a border.

Take the piece of towel closest to you, use both hands and  firmly use the towel to roll the roulade tightly – like a swiss roll.

It’s best when left to stand or refrigerate for 30 minutes before cutting.

Serve on a bed of dressed rocket or watercress.

This can be made a day in advance if you want to plan ahead(just make sure your filling cools down before rolling it up and refrigerating it).

If you are doing the salmon version, don’t mix it with the cream cheese, rather lay slices of salmon on the roulade sheet, spread with cream cheese, top with some watercress and roll! Do the same process if you want a proscuitto, creamy mushroom and rocket roulade.

I was a super duper sponge at the Food Bloggers Indaba 2011 on Sunday, absorbing everything from the views at Monkey Valley to every valuable word or tip from the speakers and fellow bloggers. 

So many fantastic bloggers and iconic foodies including my idol, Abigail Donnelly, attended and it was such a honor to meet and chat with some of you, you have all inspired me so much. I don’t want to mention names because I’m afraid I’ll exclude someone – but you know who you are!

Colleen is such an amazing women for pulling this Indaba together, we are all so grateful for her passion and hard work. I must just mention the monster goodie bags we received, omg! Sponsors were Yuppie chef, Wusthof knives, Le creuset, Verlaque, Primitiv vodka, Lindt, Griottines, Madecasse chocolate, SAB, Simonsig, Eat in, Eat out, Taste, Fresh living – and more.

Also thank you to Nina and Sam for your inspiring photography and styling workshop on the balcony overlooking long beach! A breath of fresh air it was! Jane-Anne’s talk and workshop on food writing was excellent, a witty and wise woman,  I just lapped up every word she had to say! Meeting all these inspirational people made me certain that one day my dream will be realised too! I can’t thank you all enough!

All of this was in our Goodie bags!

C xx

Patatas bravas is basically spicy fried potato cubes – a very popular Spanish tapa.

Browsing through one of “Fresh Living Fresh Ideas” booklets, I came across their version of “Patatas bravas” with chorizo, cherry tomatoes and oregano” recommended as a light snack or as part of a tapas platter. In my opinion, it looked filling, delicious and well balanced enough to serve as a quick and uber delish dinner! I tweaked it here and there and this is what I got. It really is a marriage made in heaven…spicy chorizo, soft centred crispy tatoes, sweet and tart tomatoes with a punch of oregano, balsamic and black pepper.

You will need:

serves 2 – 4

1 large chorizo sausage, thinly sliced on the diagonal

some olive oil

4 potatoes, cubed and boiled in salted water until tender – no mush!(leave skin on for extra fibre, adds great flavour too)

4 spring onions, sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

a few sprigs fresh oregano

4 firm,yet ripe tomatoes, quartered

a splash of balsamic vinegar (+- 30 ml)

freshly gorund salt and pepper

In a dry non stick pan, fry the chorizo crispy and all the oils leak out. remove from the pan.

Add more olive if necessary.

Fry the potatoes until browned on all sides, shaking the pan every now and then. Do not stir too much. Remove from the pan and season well.

Add a little oil to the pan and fry spring onions, garlic, oregano and the tomatoes until slightly softened and browned. Add some balsamic vinegar and shake the pan to coat the tomatoes.

Add the chorizo and tatoes back to the pan and heat through. Season again with loads of black pepper.

Toss in some flat leaf parsley, basil or oregano leaves.

Serve hot or at room temperature.

This could also be an awesome fry up for brekkos or brunch. Replace with bacon if chorizo is too rich for you.

Food bloggers Indaba 2011 in Monkey Valley on Sunday,  I just know it’s going to be amazing. See some of you there!

C x 

This dish is one of the 7 ”Monday to Sunday” meals I did for CRUSH 5. It happens to be my favourite, it just oozes summer with subtle flavours of lemon, olive oil, dill, cucumber and smoked salmon. All tossed in al dente whole-wheat spaghetti and finished off with a dollop of sour cream and lots of black pepper. Perfection!

The focus was to develop light and healthy recipes that are still a joy to eat!

If you like the look of this, you’ll probably enjoy the rest too:

Pea, crispy bacon and feta penne

Moroccan chickpea and roasted veg salad

chicken and mango kebabs with herbed couscous

Beef and glass noodle stir fry

Low Gi caprese pizza

Delish chicken salad

For the recipes, check out my Monday to Sunday feature in Crush 5 .

There are LOADS of recipes and features from other foodies and writers too!

Happy cooking all!

C xx

Want something easy and super delicious for your special dinner? Look no further, it’s all here!

A refreshing strawberry and goats cheese salad that takes seconds to prepare as well as a delicious homemade beetroot pesto for sumptuous bowls of tagliatelle that can be eaten hot or cold, perfect for this hot Feb weather!  And lastly, quick white chocolate cheesecakes topped with blushing rasberries…mmm…

The only thing that takes a while is the fresh beetroot that needs to be roasted. If you are in a hurry, boil them until tender with the skin on. I prefer roasting them, the flavour becomes sweeter and more concentrated. Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of blitzing the pesto and boiling the pasta.

So here goes…

Strawberry and Goats cheese salad

Serves 2

+- 8 strawberries, halved

+- 50 g chevin/goats cheese, sliced

handful of rocket

extra virgin olive oil

balsamic reduction

black pepper

Arrange the ingredients onto 2 plates and finish off with oil, reduction and pepper.

Home-made Beetroot pesto

makes +- 500 ml

+- 250 g beetroot, washed thoroughly and quartered ( do not peel)

olive oil

salt and pepper

fresh thyme

4 fat cloves garlic

100 g slivered almonds, toasted

50 g grated parmesan

juice of 1 lemon

+- 200 ml extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground salt and pepper

Preheat oven at 200 degrees celcius.

Place prepared beetroot onto a baking tray, drizzle with oil and season. Bake for +- 1 hour and 20 minutes. Allow to cool.

Add the cooled beetroot, garlic and almonds to a blender and blitz until fine, add the parmesan and juice, followed by slowly pouring in the oil and season to taste. Add more oil if you want the pesto to be thinner.  Store in an airtight container and it will keep for up to 2 weeks in the fridge.

To serve:

Cook 250 g tagliatelle until al dente, drain, and combine with as much pesto as you like(to taste). Delicious hot or cold.

Or serve on bruschettas or part of a mezze platter.

Quick white chocolate cheesecakes

makes 6 small pots or 1 large cheescake!

This recipe was inspired by Bar Bar Black sheep’s cheesecake, the chef sent me his version and I tweaked it a bit.

+- 200 g crunchies, ginger biscuits or shorbread

+- 100 ml melted butter

3 slabs white chocolate(I used Cadbury’s Dream)

250 g cream cheese

125 ml cream

5 ml vanilla essence

15 ml icing sugar

Combine the crushed biscuits and butter, should be damp enough to press at the base of each dish.

Break the chocolates into blocks and gently melt over a double boiler.

Whisk the cheese, cream, sugar and vanilla together until smooth. Add the melted chocolate to the cheese mixture and whick again until well combined and smooth.

Pour into prepared dishes and refrigerate for +- 3 hours until set.

Serve with fresh rasberries!

Delish!

I know this mixture makes alot, but it can keep in the fridge for up to a week and you can freeze them too! Just thaw out in the fridge when you need them!

Made this meal for my beloved today and it’s his turn tomorrow, can’t wait to see what he will cook up!

Happy Valentines day all! Today is just a reminder that we all should love our partners passionately everyday( ha ha! we”ll try!)

Honestly though, I am so grateful to have J in my life, he really is my rock, knight in shining armour and best friend.

Have a fab week people

C xx

Imagine tender root veg baked in thick cheesy leek sauce. After seeing Simply Delicious’s cheesy leek risotto , I could not stop fantisizing about leeks and cheese! In the fridge, I had a packet of prepared mixed root veg, leeks(a staple at home as I prefer them over onions) and smoked cheese(it’s my flavour of the month, no joke, I add it to everything!). So a cheesy veggie bake would suffice…satisfying on it’s own as a meatless Monday dish or as a side dish for a roast!

You will need:

Serves 2 – 4

500 g mixed root veg(carrot, butternut, sweet potato, potato)

vegetable stock

2 leeks, finely sliced

45 ml butter

45 ml flour

300 ml milk

200 ml cheese of your choice or a combination(smoked cheese, cheddar, blue cheese, parmesan)

1/4 cup fine bread crumbs

salt and pepper

30 ml parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees

Parboil the veggies in prepared vegetable stock until tender(not mushy)

Saute the leeks in the butter until soft, stir in the flour and heat through, followed by the milk. Continue stirring over moderate heat until thickened. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the cheese until well combined. Season.

Combine the veggies and cheesy leek sauce, spoon into a medium sized baking dish. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and parmesan.

Bake for 30 minutes or until golden.

Happy Monday all! Wishing you a super week!

C xx

There is nothing more disappointing than cutting into a dry chicken breast, quite frankly, it makes me ballistic! I prefer buying them with the skin and bone on to keep ’em moist, succulent and flavourful. Stuffing butter under the skin of a whole chicken works wonders for a roast. Now imagine stuffing feta, lemon zest and juice, fresh herbs, loads garlic and olive under the breasts’ skin? Yes, just how you are imagining it in your mind right now, is how it tastes! It’s a flavour explosion. The meat is tender from the lemon and olive oil, and the skin so irresistably crispy! 

 This is so do-able in the week: when you get home from work quickly prepare the breasts in 5 minutes flat and bung them into the oven for exactly 40 minutes..not a minute longer. This usually allows me time to feed Charlie - our demanding cat, give the puglets some attention, have a quick shower to wash off any fried onion smells from work, get into my comfy clothes, make a cuppa tea and plonk onto the couch to flick through some channels, avoiding Paula aka”Ya’ll” like the plague and resort to reading my current book ( a slightly freakish, “Cleaving” by Julie Powell) until the buzzer goes off. It’s vital that you allow the chicken to rest for 5 minutes before serving. Meanwhile, whip up some wilted spinach and couscous and there you have it, a stress free utterly delicious and satisfying supper!

You will need:

Serves 2

2 large free range chicken breasts

STUFFING:

1 feta wheel, crumbled

a few sprigs of basil or Italian parsely or both, chopped

juice and zest of 1 lemon

black pepper

30 ml olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Wash and dry the chicken with paper towel. Loosen(but not break) the skin.

Combine the stuffing ingredients together to form a crumbly paste.

Gently push a generous amount of stuffing under the skin of each breast. Place onto a baking tray. NOTE: at this stage you could add some par-boiled thinly sliced potatoes in the tray, cover with rack and place breasts on top. The tatoes will get all the flavours from the chicken.

Rub with a little more olive oil and season with just freshly ground black pepper as the feta is salty already.

Roast for 40 minutes.

Serve on a bed of wilted baby spinach with roasted potatoes, couscous or mashed potatoes.

If you prefer chicken breast fillets:

With a bit of butter and oil in a hot pan, brown the breasts briefly on both sides, top each breast with the stuffing and roast in a 200 degree oven for 10 minutes, not a minute longer k? If you do it this way, you will never have a dry chicken breast again! Without a topping? Roast for 8 minutes.

A fresh summery “roast” in 40 minutes!

Have a great weekend all!

C xx

I am a sucker for a good melenzane alla parmigiana, It is this very dish that made me fall in love with auberines years ago. A good eggplant parmigiana, to me, has a perfectly balanced tomato sauce layered with thin slices of grilled aubergine and heaps of parmesan, baked to perfection and topped with fresh basil. Well that’s the way I do it, however, Nonna Lina in Cape Town makes the best melenzane parmigiano I have ever tasted( have not tried it in Italy yet, will compare during our June trip!). They don’t bake it, it is a plate of tender grilled aubergine slices layered with generous amounts of AMAZING sauce and parmesan and then it is just popped under the grill for a few seconds and topped with fresh basil and rocket – YUM! Their tomato sauce makes you weak at the knees and sticks in your mind for quite some time. It truly is the sauce that makes this dish, you have to put your love, care and time into it. If you rush it, the sauce will be unbalanced, tart and runny. The longer you simmer it, the sweeter, thicker and more rounded the sauce will be!

Because I make this vegetarian dish more often than hubby would like, I decided this time around that I would add a bit of meat to it, perhaps a few slices of salami to give it a slight smokey flavour but most importantly, for me to have a leg to stand on and say”  there is meat in it!”. Don’t get me wrong, J enjoys it but to him it isn’t a meal without meat! Hence my concotion, I get my melenzane parmigiana fix and he gets some source(as little as it may be) of protein. I must just say, it worked out pretty well…

Melenzane salame alla parmigiana – that’s my attempt at Italian, need to practice! 5 months left! Maybe Janice Tripepi , the queen of all things Italian, can help me with this one!

You will need:

Serves 2 large portions or 4 smaller portions

THE SAUCE:

45 ml olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 stick celery, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 sprigs fresh oreganum, chopped

4 ripe tomatoes, seeds squeezed out and chopped

+- 200 ml white wine or chicken stock

+- 450 ml tomato puree

10 ml sugar

10 ml balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion, garlic, celery and oregano in the hot oil until soft.

Add the chopped tomatoes and fry until softened.

Add the wine and and simmer for a  few minutes.

Add the puree and remaining ingredients and gently simmer for +- 40 -60 minutes until reduced and flavourful.

Adjust seasoning.

This sauce is perfect as a pasta sauce too! so versatile and DELICIOUS!

THE AUBERGINES:

2 small aubergines, thinly sliced

olive oil

salt and pepper

Season and drizzle the aubergines with olive oil. Pop under the grill or in a hot oven until browned and tender.

6 slices salami, broken up(tip: do not add too much salami as it can be overpowering)

250 ml grated parmesan or pecorino will do too

fresh basil

TO ASSEMBLE:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees

In 2 individual lasagne dishes or 1 medium dish, place a layer of aubergine and salami slices at the base, top with sauce and sprinkle with some cheese, repeat twice more and finish off with a generous amount of parmesan.

Bake in the oven for +- 20 minutes. This allows all the flavours to infuse with one another as well as reduces the sauce a little more.

Finish off with some fresh basil and ground pepper.

Serve with fresh crusty bread.

Enjoy!

C xx