Test Kitchen Thursday - Rice Paper Rolls

It's been a while since I've posted a recipe, so thought I'd kick start again.
With the recent hot spring weather, we've started having more fresh salad type meals. 

So this week we tried out rice paper rolls as  Little Man has never actually had these before. It was a little bit of a test to see if he'd eat them given he went through a fussy food stage. And typically, I like to have prawns in them.

Additional inspiration came from our friend - who's 70. He recently made them for the first time and loved them.  So I thought I make them to see if Little Man might just like them too.

For me there was one advantage with this meal and this was that  Little Man could participate in making them.

Now if you have older kids - it gets even better as  the kids could make their own. All that would be required would be having the ingredients cut up. This really is the most time consuming part of making this meal.

Rice paper sheets can be bought from the supermarket or local asian store.
The ones I use are from Vietnam.

If you have never ever used rice paper rolls before, the process is really simple. All you need to do, is to soak each rice sheet in warm water. It takes about 15 - 30 secs for the sheet to soften. Usually, I have a dry tea towel ready to soak up the excess water. 

And then it's just a matter of loading it up with yummy ingredients,  roll them up and serve. This is a bit of a laissez faire meal, quantities are up to you.

For our meal we had;

• shredded lettuce
• vermicelli noodles
• julienned carrots
• julienned cucumber
• cooked peeled prawns

For a dipping sauce, we just used soy as we didn't have any sweet chilli sauce.

As to the test, Little Man was very happy to help make them. He helped place all the vegetables and happily indulged in these. As M loves them too, so it's going to be added to our regular family recipe for the summer. 

Do you make rice paper rolls? What are the favorite ingredients you use in them? Never had rice paper rolls - check them out and let me know what you think!

Test Kitchen Thursday - Hoisin Pork Noodles

One of the things that I would like to do is to refine my Chinese cooking skills.
Little Man loves noodles - so i thought I'd try this one out which is adapted from the Taste website.

RECIPE
2 garlic cloves crushed

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

2 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

500g pork fillets, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon oil

1 bunch bak choy, cut into 2cm pieces

4 green onions, sliced 

1 medium red capsicum, thinly sliced

440g packet hokkien noodles - prepare according to the packet instructions


Combine the crushed garlic, hoisin sauce, chinese cooking wine, soy sauce and five spice powder in a bowl. Then add the sliced pork. Marinate for 30 mins.

Drain the pork and retain the marinade to be added later.

Heat half of the oil in pan over a medium heat ,add the pork and cook until  brown. Remove from heat and set aside.

Heat remaining oil in pan over a medium . Then add the vegies, cook for a couple of minutes.

Now add the prepared noodles, cook for a couple of minutes.
Finally add the pork and the reserved marinade. Cook until the marinade boils.
Make sure to keep stirring the pan while you wait.

Note:

The recipe that i tested from Taste included brown sugar - which was too sweet for our liking! So i've excluded it from my recipe

VERDICT: 
We loved it! Very tasty!

It's a quick meal to cook less than 30mins - just requires some preparation which could be done the night before if you are time poor and just want to quickly cook something delicious.

Other recipes tested: 

Sweet Potato and Zucchini Risotto

Jool's Favourite Stew

Test Kitchen Thursday - Sweet potato and zucchini risotto

I'm loving this process of trying out recipes I have not used before. If you are like me, i have some usual go to recipes, but that's becoming seemingly boring if you know what i mean.

Given my new sense of fiscal responsibility and not wasting anything i have in the fridge, I had some zucchini  and some chicken stock(left over from a roast), and i did really want a carb loaded meal - pasta or risotto.

The taste website came to my rescue - Sweet potato and zucchini risotto.
Perfect - LM likes sweet potato, and the zucchini would get used.

Recipe

• Medium sweet potato cut in cubes
• an onion chopped
• Olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 cup of arborio rice
• 1L chicken stock
• 3 small zucchinis - grated (see note)
• 1 cup of grated parmesan 
• 
  

Preheat the oven 200°C and roast the sweet potato in the oven - took me about 35mins

Heat stock in a saucepan and keep at a gentle simmer once boiled.

Heat oil on a medium heat in another saucepan, add garlic and onions. Cook until soft.

Add rice and stir for a couple of mins until rice well coated 

Add ladelful of stock to the rice at a time, stir the rice until the liquid is absorbed. Add the remainng stock until all used. Cook the rice until grains are tender. 

Add the zucchini and parmesan to the rice. Season.  Stir until soft.
Add the cooked sweet potato, stir and serve

I also had some leftover roasted chicken, so i just threw that in for protein.

The official recipe from Taste - i omitted the white wine, as we did't have any.

Note: with the grated zucchini - i put it in some paper towelling to squeeze out the extra liquid from it. 

Verdict:

a very colourful risotto, the combination of the zucchini and sweet potato worked really well, the family liked it.  A thumbs up!

Test Kitchen Thursday - Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake

The cousins were coming over to visit and play, plus see the renovated house, so I told Little Man that we would bake something for morning tea.

To which an excited reply came: "chocolate cake!' 

I don't have a regular chocolate cake recipe - i have an ultra good brownie recipe so I searched through my cookbook collection looking for an easy chocolate cake - and did i find one.. Nope! So off to google i went, and eventually settled on this an old fashioned chocolate cake by Nigella Lawson.

And so Little Man and I created the cake together. I measured out all the ingredient and he poured and mixed to his heart's content.

Recipe

• 200 grams plain flour
• 200 grams caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 40 grams best-quality cocoa powder
• 175 grams soft unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 150 ml sour cream

Preheat the oven 180°C and line and line cake tin.

Mix the flour, sugar and leavening agents in a large bowl and beat in the soft butter until you have a combined and creamy mixture. Now whisk together the cocoa, sour cream, vanilla and eggs and beat this into your bowl of mixture. the other way is to throw everything into food processor and mix it together.

Pour into a cake tin. I used a square 20" tin .

Bake until a cake tester comes out clean, approx 35 minutes.

Remove the cake to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes before turning out .

Ice cake when cooled. i didn't use nigella's icing recipe to ice the cake - i just threw some dark chocolate buds and some thickened cream to make the 'icing'

Nigella's official recipe is found here - Nigella's recipe


Verdict:

This is an awesome cake, really easy to make and delicious!  I made it with my almost 3 year old  so I'm adding this to my recipe book. Thanks Nigella!

Have you ever tried this recipe? Did it work for you? Or do you have a favourite chocolate cake recipe that you'd recommend i try?

Test Kitchen Thursday - Jool's Favourite Beef Stew

Given that I have currently more time on my hands - i've decided to undertake a new project - Test Kitchen Thursday. The plan is to test out a recipe every Thursday. 

M thinks this is grand - he gets to eat! and I get to cook - something i enjoy doing.

So to kick off, I tried out this recipe  Jool's Favorite Beef Stew by Jamie Oliver I had to make some slight changes as i didn't have all the ingredients.

Little Man was happy to polish this off for dinner. M was happy too! It was very tasty. Big Tick for me!

Have you ever tried this recipe - a hit or a miss for you?
If you have a great recipe you think I should try - let me know. I'm happy to give it a go! Just leave me the link in the comments!

Ingredients

olive oil
1 onion chopped
800g Gravy beef
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
flour, to dust
a handful of sage leaves
4 carrots, cut into 3 or 4 large pieces
500g small potatoes, halved
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/3 bottle red wine
250ml beef stock
zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
a handful of rosemary leaves, chopped
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

Note:  Jamie's recipe had 1/2 a butternut squash, turnips and jerusalem artichokes, all which i didn't have so i omitted them.

Preheat oven to 160ºC.

Heat oil in a casserole dish. Add onion and sage leaves and fry on the stove top until softened.

Toss the meat in a little flour and add to brown in the casserole dish.

Add to the pan with all the vegetables, tomato paste, wine and stock, and gently stir together. Season to taste.

Bring to the boil, place lid and transfer to cook in the oven until the meat is tender. It took me about 1hr 20 using a French oven.

Mix the lemon zest, chopped rosemary and garlic together, sprinkle prior to serving.

I served this with polenta.