Category: Miscellaneous
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Making The Impossible! No. 2
It is impossible to make flour based cakes and puddings in the Microwave oven! Right? Well we have stumbled across a self-saucing chocolate pudding that gives a great result when microwaved. The background Some weeks ago we were over at Olive’s Cottage at Windermere. It was just a few days after the flood scare for…
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Making The Impossible! No. 1
It is impossible to make croissants at home! Right? Well I think so! Decent ones, anyway. I did try to make croissants once but I have selectively cleared my mind of the details of that unfortunate experience. The complexity of the process and the dismal result warrant the jettisoning from the memory bank. Despite this…
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What’s in the Fridge? No. 3
How to use up those almost finished bottles and jars of jams, chutneys, etc., that clutter the fridge? Lamb can be the answer – it is possibly the most robust of all the meats! An acquaintance once told me about a method for cooking a whole leg of lamb smothered in a bottle of ………
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Made At Home – No. 2
Over the last two decades, harissa, like preserved lemons, has become known largely through Moroccan recipes. Jars or tubes of harissa can be found but they tend to have a ‘mass produced’ texture and flavour, and thus they are often somewhat less satisfying than homemade versions. The key ingredients to harissa are chillies – hot…
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Made At Home – No. 1
We have just returned from staying at Olive’s Cottage in Windermere for several days. With autumn well under way in Tasmania, the herbs were looking a little ragged and needing trimming while the lemon tree had a handful of fruit that needed to be picked. We were thus prompted to make three items we regularly…
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Hot Cross Buns
For many of us, Easter means chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. We can’t tell you how to make Easter eggs, but here is a photo of some. It was taken on a boat called Coral II when we were in the Galapagos Islands during Easter last year! We can, however, give you our version…
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What’s in the Fridge? No. 2
We love to cook with leftovers or with what’s in the fridge or freezer or on the pantry shelves. Last week we had friends coming for afternoon tea. We had an apple, two plums and some strawberries that needed using, along with some cream heading towards its use-by date. We also had a stock of…
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Our Herb Garden
We don’t have a garden big enough in Melbourne to grow vegetables, which is rather fortunate: unlike my father, I am a hopeless gardener! We do, however, manage to maintain a reasonable selection of herbs. Paradoxically, while my father had an extraordinary vegetable garden, he grew little in the way of herbs – mint, parsley…
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From Todd’s Garden
If there is one regret we have about living in Melbourne and not on the Tamar, it is ready access to just-picked, home-grown fruit and vegetables. While we have a good herb selection, our garden in Melbourne isn’t big enough for fruit and vegies and I am not sure we would be good at vegetable…