Luckily, Kitchenware Direct, an Australian online kitchenware store, came to my rescue recently and offered me a Cuisinart Stick Blender to review on my blog.  I could think of hundreds of things to do with it, but I wanted to especially see if the chopper/grinder attachment that came with it could make chopping my most dreaded vegetables a more fun and pain-free experience.

Flipping through the latest MasterChef Australia magazine, I saw a recipe for Filipino fried noodles with chicken and beans.  This looked like a fantastic, flavorful dish and chose it to try out the stick blender.

Onions first.  I was a little bit annoyed that the instructions insisted that food be chopped into 10mm-length pieces before being placed into the chopper/grinder bowl because this meant that there is still a chance the onions could make my eyes sting and water.  And sure enough!!  However, after placing the onions in the chopper/grinder bowl….

It made short work of chopping the onions up into the fine pieces that I needed for my recipe.  Easy!

Next, chillies.  The ones in this recipe aren’t the fiery bird’s eye chillies, but the more mild, longer ones.  Again, the stick blender made chopping these up a breeze.

I did find that I needed to take the top off the bowl and scrape down the sides and the bottom because some bits were left a little chunkier than I wanted.  The motor on this little guy is quite powerful, so I had to be careful not to chop the ingredients too finely or they might have quickly turned into a puree!

I might take this opportunity to say that if you want to make your own pureed baby food, the Cuisinart stick blender would be perfect for that!

The choppiner/grinder bowl is mainly for small jobs, like chopping an onion or a chili for a recipe, or for pureed baby food, or for making your own breadcrumbs and food needs to be processed in the chopper/grinder bowl 1/2 cup at a time after being chopped into 10mm-length pieces.

The blender also comes with a whisk for whisking egg whites or whipping cream – I haven’t tried this yet, but am looking forward to it!  It also comes with an attachment to puree soups or make milkshakes, in true stick blender style.  If you need to measure ingredients, you’ll be pleased to find that Cuisinart supplies a measuring cup as well.

But I digress on this handy little piece of kitchen machinery!  Back to the recipe.  The rest of the prep work for the recipe is pretty easy.  If you’re not familiar with julienne-style carrots or ginger then you may also need to invest in a julienne slicer to spend even less time preparing your veggies!

I hesitate to say that these noodles make a healthy dinner, as there is quite a bit of soy sauce in the recipe which means this dish is probably quite high in salts.  However, at least you can say you have had at least one, if not two, serves of veggies in this meal!

Filipino fried noodles with chicken and beans.  I was really pleased with how this turned out, it was absolutely delicious!

I gave a serve of these filling noodles to my mother-in-law to take home with her for dinner after she left our house, and my husband gobbled up a ton of it after he got back very late from a day in Melbourne for work.  We even had some leftover for lunch and dinner the next night.  And the flavor does get better the next day!  This is a dish I’ll be definitely be making again!

Now, I haven’t had the Cuisinart Stick Blender for very long, so I haven’t experimented with it very much as of yet, but I have also made my own peanut butter.

Super easy, just put in 1/2 cup of nuts (even try almonds for your very own almond butter) then pulse to chop, then blend until the nuts become smooth.  I added a touch of salt and peanut oil to mine to make it a little bit creamier, and I was really happy with it!  The stick blender got the peanut butter smoother than my new food processor did; I was really surprised!  If you’re looking for a yummy homemade peanut butter recipe, try this one from Alton Brown (it uses a food processor rather than a stick blender though).

I do think a stick blender is a worthy investment, whether you’re cooking for 1, pureeing baby food or soup, or doing prep work for a recipe, or even just simply whipping cream.  It’s a powerful little machine that doesn’t take up much room and is very lightweight.  Choose your own stick blender from the range at Kitchenware Direct!

If you’re after the recipe for those delicious Filipino noodles, you’ll find it below!

 

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Filipino Fried Noodles With Chicken And Beans
Adapted from MasterChef Australia magazine, issue 13
Serves 4 hungry people

Ingredients
600g chicken breast, boneless, skinless
60ml (1/4 cup) soy sauce
250g bean vermicelli (glass noodles)
60ml (1/4 cup) peanut oil
1 red onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3cm piece ginger, cut into julienne (matchsticks)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 long red chillies, thinly sliced
1 large carrot, cut into julienne (matchsticks)
400g green beans, trimmed, cut into 5cm lengths
1/4 cup coriander leaves, roughly chopped, plus extra leaves to serve

Tomato Soy Dressing
1 tomato, cut into small wedges
80ml (1/3 cup) soy sauce
2 coriander roots, washed, finely chopped
1 long red chilli, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Method
To make tomato soy dressing, place all the ingredients in a bowl, stir to combine, then set aside until needed.

Place chicken, soy sauce and 500ml (2 cups) water in a large saucepan, ensuring the water just covers the chicken.  Bring to the boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through (I had to cook mine a bit longer).  Using a slotted spoon, remove chicken from soy sauce mixture, place in a bowl and refrigerate for 10 minutes or until cool enough to handle.

Strain soy sauce mixture through a fine sieve into a small saucepan.  Bring to the boil over high heat and cook for 10 minutes or until reduced by three-quarters.

Meanwhile, soak noodles in cold water for 15 minutes to soften.  Drain.

Using your hands, finely shred chicken into a bowl, then season with pepper.  Toss well to combine.

Heat oil in a large frying pan or wok over high heat.  Add onion, garlic and ginger, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until onion is soft.  Add soy sauce mixture, sugar, fish sauce, chillies, carrot and beans and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until sugar dissolves.  Add chicken, noodles and coriander, and cook, tossing, for 5 minutes or until noodles are warmed through.

Divide fried noodles among bowls, scatter with extra coriander and serve with tomato soy dressing.

I put together this slideshow on Flickr to share with you…

It looks like a lot of fun, doesn’t it!

Now, earlier, I had made this Easter-themed chocolate mousse cake, but it was way too rich.  So rich, in fact, that I couldn’t even finish a slice of it.  It was very delicious, but basically inedible, in my opinion.

And then came Easter and we found ourselves up to our bunny ears with chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs.  That’s why I haven’t updated here very much, because I haven’t been baking anything sweet as we still have a bowl full of leftover bunnies and eggs!

Therefore, I am not going to give you a sweet recipe today.  I am going to give you a delicious, savory one for a flavorful chicken dish.  It was one of the first recipes that really stuck out at me from Jamie Oliver’s new book 30 Minute Meals.  I’m not normally a fan of Jamie Oliver’s, but the concept of the book was neat enough to get me to buy it.  I’d take Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals over Rachel Ray’s 30 minute meals any day!

So what exactly is this flavorful chicken dish that I speak of so highly?  Let me show you.

Okay, so yes, it has that messy Jamie-Oliver rustic look to it, but this mingling of flavors is a lovely one.  First, the raw chicken is rubbed in a mixture of olive oil, salt, pepper, dried oregano and sweet paprika (Jamie doesn’t give exact amounts for the spices, but in the recipe below, I tried to give you an estimated idea as to the amounts I used).  The chicken is then fried until golden.  It is then added to a roasting tray with a quartered lemon, tomatoes, rosemary and bacon, then the whole thing is placed under a grill until the chicken is cooked through.

In Jamie’s book, he serves this chicken with spinach and potatoes, but I served it with buttered and salted peas.

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The exciting announcement post is still forthcoming – I’m nowhere near completing it.  In the meantime, I’ll share this recipe from Donna Hay with you.  It’s chicken yakitori with cucumber salad – a really easy Japanese-inspired dish that you could whip up on a weeknight.

Mirin, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil make this really flavorful and delicious.  And as long as you have a mandolin slicer you can make pretty ribbons of cucumber as well!

You may read the recipe and look back at the picture only to realize that there is no wasabi on my plate.  I cannot eat wasabi, it is way too hot for my taste!

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I had never made a homemade sausage roll, but in all honesty, they couldn’t be easier.  I could have been enjoying them during my time in the US if I had only made them myself!  I found a yummy-looking recipe in the August 2010 issue of delicious. magazine for calabrese sausage rolls.  This recipe can be be eaten already prepared at Desmond & Molly Jones cafe in Surry Hills in Sydney, but since I don’t live anywhere near Surry Hills I made the calabrese sausage rolls myself.

The best sausage roll I’ve ever eaten!  Inside of this golden puff pastry is calabrese sausage (pork sausage with hot peppers!) with fresh parsley and thyme, peas, red onions, garlic and parmesan cheese.  On top of the puff pastry is a sprinkling of fennel seeds.

Fennel seeds.  I have to digress on fennel seeds. Fennel seeds bring back memories. My mom and dad liked this particular pizza from a place called Sunshine Pizza. They were the only pizza joint that did deliveries in our small town. I, however, hated their pizza. I always requested their spaghetti (which wasn’t great, but it was better than their pizza). What did I hate about that pizza though? Was it soggy? Was there not enough cheese or mushrooms? Oh no, those weren’t the reasons. I hated their pizza because there were fennel seeds in their pizza.

At that particular time I didn’t know that those were called fennel seeds, I just knew that there was some taste in that pizza that made me hate it. While eating a slice, I tasted one of those seeds separately and I knew that that little seed was the reason I never wanted to eat Sunshine Pizza’s pizza again.

Later, I finally learned what the seeds were called. And I knew that they had no business being in pizza.

I was a little reluctant to put them on these sausage rolls, but I figured that they were in the recipe for a reason, and I have to say that, while I haven’t done a complete 360 about fennel seeds, they tasted much better with these sausage rolls than they did on pizza.

My pictures of the inside don’t really look that great (the plate was too small too!), but I want to show you the inside of the sausage roll anyway.

Sausage rolls are usually eaten with some sort of condiment, ketchup being the most popular choice, I believe, but for these sausage rolls, you should serve tomato or mango chutney (which is sort of like a relish).

These were so delicious.  If I ever find myself in Surry Hills, I’ll stop by the Desmond & Molly Jones cafe and see how mine compares to theirs.  :)

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Last week I picked up a new delicious. magazine; September 2010′s issue.  There was a recipe inside for spaghetti puttanesca, which is a dish I’ve been wanting to make for the past few months.  Since the recipe was now in one of my favorite magazines, I wrote down the ingredients list and immediately went out and stocked my pantry with semi-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives and anchovy fillets.  These ingredients aren’t something I’d normally keep in the pantry, but the rest of the ingredient list is normal for our pantry/refrigerator.

What took longest in making this dish was the preparation.  The cooking was simply a breeze, couldn’t have been easier.  The house smelled amazing while the sauce was cooking in the frying pan; I’m sure you could have smelled it from the street had you been standing outside.  I’ve never, ever eaten anchovies (to my knowledge), so I was looking forward to trying this and wondering how they would taste.

And so was my 1-year-old son!  He wouldn’t keep his hands out of the dish as I was trying to photograph it!

The textures and flavors are many in this dish.  The flavor is tangy and salty and it’ll definitely wake up your mouth.  The olives and semi-dried tomatoes add a variation of flavor and texture with each bite, and thyme-flavored ciabatta breadcrumbs add a subtle crunch.  I know I haven’t been out much, but I can honestly tell you that this is one of the most flavorful dishes I’ve eaten in a very long time.

I would definitely recommend this if you love Italian food!

You’ll have 3/4′s of a loaf of ciabatta bread when you’re done making this dish.  Ciabatta makes an excellent garlic bread, so why not use it to make your own to accompany your spaghetti puttanesca?

Spaghetti Puttanesca
Adapted from delicious. magazine, September 2010
Serves 4 hungry people

Ingredients
1/4 olive or plain ciabatta loaf
100ml olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped thyme leaves, plus thyme sprigs to serve
1 large tomato
2 red onions, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Pinch of chilli flakes
12 anchovy fillets in oil, drained, roughly chopped
200g semi-dried tomatoes, halved
200g pitted kalamata olives
400g spaghetti

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C and line a baking tray with foil.

Place the ciabatta in a food processor and whiz to form coarse crumbs. Spread the breadcrumbs onto the lined baking tray, drizzle with 1/4 cup (60ml) olive oil, scatter with chopped thyme leaves and season well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bake for 10 minutes or until the breadcrumbs are golden and crisp, then set aside.

Meanwhile, cut a small cross in the base of the tomato. Plunge the tomato into boiling water for 30 seconds, then refresh immediately in iced water. Peel and halve the tomato, then scoop out and discard the seeds. Finely chop and set aside.

Place the remaning 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large frypan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes until softened but not colored. Add the chopped tomato, garlic, chilli and anchovies and cook, stirring for 3-4 minutes until the anchovies dissolve and the tomato has broken down. Add the semi-dried tomatoes and olives and stir for 1-2 minutes to warm through.

Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti in a large saucepan of boiling salted water according to the packet instructions. Drain, then add the pasta to the sauce and toss well to combine.

Divide the spaghetti and sauce among bowls, scatter with the breadcrumbs and thyme sprigs, then serve.

I’m a Woolies girl myself, and I’m not a fan of Curtis Stone, but this recipe looked easy, cheap and tasty, so I visited Coles, grabbed the Curtis Stone recipe booklet at the front door and bought the ingredients.  Well, it wasn’t under $10 because I bought a bigger package of ground beef (the leftovers I would freeze for later use).  I wasn’t very interested in the cost, however, as I was more interested in how easy it would be, and whether my kids would like it or not!

I started cooking when I got home from the shops and I found the preparation was quite easy and relatively quick, just what I was after.  The sauce cooks up nice, thick and fragrant.  I love the chunky mushrooms and carrots.

The taste was so-so.  Oh, it was good, definitely, but it just seemed to be lacking a little bit of flavor, like it could have used more seasoning (which would have been my fault for not using more) or more basil.  I don’t know, I’m not a cook – I’m a baker!

My kids didn’t like it very well.  They ate about half of their serve and left it.  My 2-year-old son hated the carrots and mushrooms, and my 4-year-old daughter would only eat the mushrooms if I told her they were actually little bits of fish (what??).  Well, she has an aversion to mushrooms, as one morning during a playgroup outing to the playground she picked a wild mushroom out of the ground and ate a piece of it.  I was horrified and worried she would get really sick (or worse), but she was just fine.  We must have worried her too much by telling her to never eat mushrooms that she sees on the ground, because now she won’t any mushrooms at all!

Anyway, I would definitely recommend this meal, and I probably will make it again, chunks of fish and all!  If you read the comments on the recipe page from Coles you’ll find some tips on how to make this pasta dish a little bit better, including adding an extra can of tomatoes or even a couple tablespoons of tomato paste.

Fettuccine Bolognese
Adapted from Curtis Stone
Serves 4 generously

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 brown onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 medium carrots, finely chopped
250g Portobello mushrooms, sliced
500g  beef mince
400g whole peeled Italian tomatoes
350g fettuccine pasta
1 cup fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese, finely grated, to serve

Method
Heat 2 tbsp oil in a large frying pan. Add the beef mince, season with salt and pepper and stir to break up the lumps. Cook for 5-7 mins over high heat until browned. Add the onion and cook for 2 mins then add the garlic, carrots and mushrooms, cook for 2 mins until just softened. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 30 mins.

Cook the fettuccine according to packet directions.

Toss fettuccine with sauce in fettuccine cooking pan. Mix in basil. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese to serve.

I try to feed my kids healthy foods, but there are those evenings when there’s only time for a frozen pizza, or French fries, or chicken nuggets.  And of course, if I’ve made cupcakes we’ll have those for dessert.  I always feel guilty about it, but if I look over the course of a week or so I realize that they’ve gotten plenty of other healthy lunches and dinners and I don’t feel so bad.  Besides, I’m a firm believer in having a treat every so often!

When it comes to fruits and vegetables, my kids prefer them raw.  If I’ve taken the time to cook any vegetables, they’ll usually always think it’s disgusting.  So you’ll find a lot of chopped cucumber, celery, carrots, apples, etc. in the refrigerator along with various dips such as hummus, or avocado.  Most of the time I remind myself to not waste time cooking the vegetables, but sometimes I’ll find a recipe that just looks too interesting to pass up.

If you live here in Sydney, you may have seen an ad on the TV recently sponsored by Woolworth’s.  In the ad, Annette cooks a special, quick and healthy dish for children called Orange Pasta.  Annette juliennes some carrots and cooks them with diced tomatoes and some onions and serves plates of this Orange Pasta with shredded cheese and parsley.  Apparently, her children don’t realize that the “pasta” is actually julienned carrots.

I thought it would probably be easy for my kids to distinguish between regular pasta and carrots and that they wouldn’t eat this Orange Pasta, but I thought it looked interesting and that I’d give it a try.

The preparation was quick and easy and the cooking time was next to nothing.  The hardest part is chopping the carrots into matchstick pieces, but it’s easy if you’ve got the proper tools, such as a julienne peeler.

Here are my notes from the recipe:  I found that I needed to cook the carrots a bit longer than 1 minute to cook them properly and to soften them just a bit; I used half of a red onion instead of a whole one; I used extra virgin coconut oil instead of olive oil; I used Parmesan cheese instead of cheddar cheese.

My conclusion is that this is an excellent vegetable dish.  I’d like to use it as a side dish sometime, but it would make a great main dish for a child who actually liked it.  My 4-year-old daughter took a couple of bites but decided she didn’t like it at all.  And I just didn’t even bother trying with my 2-year-old son!

Orange Pasta
Adapted from Woolworth’s
Serves 2

Ingredients
3 medium carrots
3 tbs olive oil
1/2 red onion, diced
200g can diced Italian tomatoes
1 small clove garlic, chopped
salt and pepper, optional
fresh parsley, chopped to serve
shredded Parmesan cheese to serve

Method
Wash the carrots well, then peel them into long thin strips.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan on medium-high. Add onion and garlic and allow to soften.

Add carrot strips and toss them continually for a minute or until just cooked. Stir in chopped tomatoes and season if desired.

Remove the pan from the heat and serve with a sprinkling of tasty cheese and chopped parsley.

I did have to make a substitution to this, however.  My store must have been out of Italian sausage, one of the main ingredients to this recipe.  So I used regular ground beef and while cooking it I added an Italian spice blend.  I’m sure I’ll be making this again sometime, and I will try to find Italian sausage next time!

My entire family loved this, even my 2-year-old son.  It makes a great family dinner when served with a nice fresh salad.  We had a salad of lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and green olives.

The sauce this recipe makes tastes great, and would be nice to use as a regular spaghetti sauce.  I might try this sometime!

The original recipe in the magazine made two full 13×9-inch baking dishes of this casserole, but I divided everything in half (or close to half) when I made this for just one baking dish, and I have posted the recipe for just one baking dish below.

Penne & Sausage Casserole
Adapted from Taste of Home magazine, June & July 2009

Ingredients
3/4 pound uncooked penne pasta
1/2 pound Italian sausage
1/2 pound sliced fresh mushrooms
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
3/4 cup dry red wine or beef broth, divided
1 can (14.5 ounces) stewed tomatoes, chopped
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1/2 cup beef broth
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded fontina cheese
2 cups (8 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
Minced fresh parsley

Method
Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, cook sausage over medium heat until no longer pink; drain and set aside.

In the same pan, saute mushrooms and onion in oil until tender. Add garlic and oregano; cook 1 minute longer. Stir in 1/2 cup wine (or beef broth). Bring to a boil; cook until liquid is reduced by half. Stir in the tomatoes, tomato sauce, broth, sausage and remaining wine (or beef broth). Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

Drain pasta. Spread about 1/4 cup sauce in a greased 13×9-inch baking dish. Spread half of the pasta on top of the sauce. Top with about 1 1/4 cups sauce and 1/2 cup of each cheese. Repeat the layers once more.

Cover and bake at 350F for 25 minutes. Uncover; bake 5-10 minutes longer or until bubbly and cheese is melted. Sprinkle with parsley if desired.

One of the stand-out recipes for me in that book was a stir fry recipe with snow peas and tofu flavored with ginger and chili sauce.  One of the other ingredients, I believe, was peanuts but I always left them out.  I really loved this particular stir fry and made it a handful of times.

I’ve had a craving for it lately but can’t remember how to make it, though!  I remember the main ingredients but I can’t remember the amounts of each.  I’ve tried to recreate it as best as I could from memory and this is what I came up with.

It’s good, but not flavorful enough.  The tofu really soaked up the flavor, but it was just lacking something.  If anyone reading this has the Great Vegetarian Food cookbook, I would be so thankful if you could type up the recipe and email it to me!

For now though, this is the recipe I came up with.  Just remember that if you make this, it needs work, so don’t expect perfection unless you want to tinker with ingredients and amounts yourself.

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Snow Pea And Tofu Stir Fry
Adapted from Great Vegetarian Food by Australian’s Women Weekly
Serves 3-4

Ingredients
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
450g pound fresh snow peas, trimmed
350g extra firm tofu, cubed
1 tablespoon fresh red chilies, chopped finely
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup sweet chili sauce

Method
Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a medium frying pan over medium-high heat.  Add cubed tofu and lightly brown.  Remove tofu from pan and set aside.

Heat remaining 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in same frying pan.  Cook chilies, ginger and garlic until fragrant.  Add snow peas and stir to evenly coat with spices.  Cook for about 3 minutes.

Return tofu to pan.  Pour sweet chili sauce over the snow peas and tofu in the pan and stir to evently coat.  Heat through and serve with rice.

The recipe is really easy and is one of those that you can’t really screw up.  You can add all the ingredients based on your own tastes.  I’ll post a basic recipe, but note that I can’t give you the exact amounts because I never measure them!

The flavor of the mushrooms really stand out in this dish; it is the most prevalent taste, followed by the garlic and herbs.  A sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese finishes off the taste really well.

Spaghetti With Mushrooms And Garlic
Serves 2-ish

Ingredients
2 servings uncooked spaghetti (maybe a little more?)
2-4 tablespoons olive oil
1-1 1/2 teaspoons dried parsley
1-1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 ounces baby portobello mushrooms, or button, finely chopped
Grated Parmesan cheese

Method
In a medium saucepan or skillet, add olive oil, herbs, garlic and mushrooms.  Cook, uncovered, over low-medium heat until it begins to simmer; remove from heat.

Meanwhile, cook spaghetti according to package directions.  Drain.  Toss with mushroom mixture until thoroughly coated.  Serve with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese.

If I have leftover olive oil after plating, I usually just toss it out after making sure there are no more chunks of garlic and mushrooms.

If you try this, let me know.  It’s been my favorite for years!