Recently, we went away for a long weekend to a colonial town and stayed in a beautiful old restored house, operating as a B&B. The breakfast was a very traditional Mexican dish, known as Huevos Rancheros. It’s something I’ve been wanting to try ever since we moved here, and I can’t believe it took so long for me to do it! The dish combines many of the staples of Mexican cuisine - tortillas, eggs, beans and salsa. It’s not a combination I would have imagined to be as tasty as it was, but it was really yummy.

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I haven’t made dumplings for so long and yesterday when I was trying to think of something to do with mince that was a bit more interesting than Spaghetti Bolognaise I came upon my dumpling recipe.

My husband loves dumplings and usually I put them on top of a veal goulash or a traditional beef casserole (using beef strips) but really there’s no reason they can’t accompany any type of casserole.

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Of course, I had to make Anzac Biscuits today, seeing as how its ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. A day when we remember the troops who fought and died at Gallipoli in the First World War and when we pay homage to diggers, past and present who have fought for Australia. I am most definitely of the anti-war persuasion and wish that we’d never had to send young men off to be slaughtered on Turkish beaches, and think we never should have sent our soldiers to Iraq, but I have a lot of respect for people who can make that commitment and sacrifice for something they believe in so strongly. Read the rest

After our idyllic honeymoon in the snow in Whistler baking Choc Chip Cookies, we were obsessed with finding a way to spend another season skiing. The only way to do it was to find jobs in the ski-fields, and since we were spending the summer in London, the perfect place to look for work was with one of the many catered chalet companies run by British companies in the ski-fields of Europe. Our job was to manage a chalet for 14 people in the French Alps; cooking, cleaning and ski-guiding for them. 6 nights a week I had to produce a three course meal for 14, but since the guests only stayed for a week, I had one weekly plan that I rotated over and over again for 5 months. I got very good at making those dishes, and pretty sick of eating them by the end of the season. Read the rest

My Nanna was famous for her Chocolate Caramel Slice, which we always called Chocolate Value in our family. She was famously making it from at least the 70s, when my Grandfather was a University professor and warden of one of the colleges. They lived in for a few years and would host an afternoon tea for a small group of students each week, every time serving chocolate value and listening to the angst of young fresh-faced uni students. My grandparents had a few tales to tell about this time in their lives, not least because 2 of their sons were students at the university at the time. Imagine the dramas those uni students had in the 70s!

I’ve been thinking about my Nanna a lot lately since the first anniversary of her death has just passed. And I’m always thinking about chocolate so it seemed perfect to make her famous Chocolate Value. My daughter was a great help at sifting flour and mixing the ingredients for the base, but this recipe has to be cooked in stages and needs to cool before the chocolate topping goes on, so it can be a bit frustrating for impatient little ones (and Mums) who want to taste the fruits of their labour immediately. It is well worth the wait though, and an impatient sweet tooth can always be placated with cleaning condensed milk out of the tin with your finger. Did I just say that out loud?

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Lightening tagged me for my first meme on the new blog and it’s all to do with food porn, which started at Smoky Mountain Breakdown.

Here are the really simple rules. Answer each of the five questions. Tag five bloggers you would like to pass the meme to. Have them link back to you and to this post as the source meme. You and they can take the graphic from here if they like.

1. What food do you consider the best “date” food? In other words, what meal or food item do you think is sexiest to eat in the company of someone you would like to look sexy around?

Well, it’s a long time since I went on a “date” but I think the best food to share with someone you really luurve is food you’re passionate about. Your favourite food is a great thing to share with a special person. I have a hard time picking what my favourite food is but one of the best meals my husband and I had was a degustation menu for our first wedding anniversary. That’s my ideal meal - the chance to try lots of different dishes!!

2. What well-known person would you like to share a meal with—with or without clothing. (saying whether or not clothes are involved is optional).

Ben Harper, he would be clothed and singing and I would probably be so enthralled I would forget to eat.

3. What does your perfect breakfast-in-bed look like? (Food AND the details, please. Candles? Music? Flowers? Hot tub? Dancing girls?

Well, for a start, if its going to be perfect, it’d have to be a late brunch so I can sleep in. To eat I’d have potato pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, a glass of pineapple juice and a cup of hot chocolate. I stayed in a B&B in Tasmania years ago where the lady made potato pancakes for breakfast every morning and they were DIVINE.

I don’t need candles or music of flowers, definitely not a hot tub (that’s more of a late supper venue ) and uh, yeah - no dancing girls!

4. What do you consider the best application of whipped cream to be?

Warm Sticky Date Pudding with icecream as well - or on top of a hot chocolate. Mmmmmm.

5. Oh-God-No, Biff, the yacht is sinking! You are sent to the galley to retrieve the food. What luxury food items do you snatch first? The champagne? The caviar? Smoked Salmon? Truffles? Chocolate? Or something else?

Chocolate definitely. No question. The buzz lasts lots longer than champagne.

OK, so now I need to tag 5 people to talk dirty about food and I’m going to tag all new people I’ve started reading recently or who I’ve never tagged before:

Sarah

Planning Queen

Fairlie

M

Dee

I think everyone has their own recipe for Choc Chip Cookies and maybe you don’t need to see another one, but I don’t think any recipe collection is complete without (at least) one, so I’m sharing my recipe and the story behind it with you.

My husband and I spent our honeymoon back in early 2000 skiing for 4 months in Whistler, Canada. It was an idyllic holiday full of fantastic powder runs, cosy nights indoors and a constant stream of visitors to stay and ski with us. (I know, it was our honeymoon, but we did have several weeks on our own at the beginning. )

I found this recipe amongst one of the cookbooks in the condo we rented and it became an afternoon tea staple - it is important to keep your energy up after a hard day on the slopes, after all! I’ve now cooked them in at least 10 different ovens with great results, but you will need to adjust temperatures and times depending on how slow or fast your oven is. The original recipe called for shortening, but since I’m not sure I even know what it is, let alone have it in my house, I substitute butter. If you do know what it is and want to use it, then just replace half the butter with shortening.

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I have been making this recipe for years, so when we moved to Mexico I was interested to see how my recipe compared to the real thing. For a start they call it Carne con Chile here which actually makes much more sense - Meat with Chilli, not Chilli with Meat (unless your version is knock-your-socks-off hot!). They also tend to use shredded beef instead of meat and more chilli than I do for a family meal. We’ve had carne con chili quite a few times here, mostly in burros (wrapped in a flour tortilla) and it is really tasty. Different to my version, but both of them are yummy in their own way.

So I still make this recipe very regularly at home, but I can’t claim that its authentic. I usually serve it with rice and sour cream, but it freezes well and is very handy for leftovers. It’s great with tortillas, jacket potatoes, on nachos, in a taco, on toast, you name it! Read the rest

A stir-fry is always one of my last-minute fail safe recipes that I turn too when I’ve had no time to think about dinner until late afternoon. I always have the makings in the house and to be honest, a lot of the time I make it up as I go. I just use whichever meat & vegetables I have available and throw in a dash of whichever asian style sauces I have.

Sometimes, though it’s nice to actually get some new ideas and follow a recipe, so I recently sought out a pork stir-fry recipe to cook for the family. My usual approach to recipe hunting is to do a quick search of the food blogs I subscribe to (using the search function in Google Reader) and also check out some favourite recipe websites. I seem to find a lot of recipes I like on Taste at the moment. They have a good variety of recipes taken from a number of popular food magazines in Australia - the ones I used to read religiously when I lived there - Australian Good Taste, Delicious, Super Food Ideas and more. The recipe I settled on appealed since we always have limes in the house. We are in Mexico, after all, and Mexicans love to have limes with everything!

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