Mini Smoked Salmon Quiches

As promised from the last post, to share my super easy Mini salmon quiche recipe which I made for Sydney Food Bloggers XMAS Picnic… and many occasions before – because it is THAT easy!

While making them for the picnic, I didn’t get time to take photos as I made them, so I had to make it again the next day with left over ingredients!

What’s awesome about this recipe is, there isn’t specific amounts of ingredients you need to put in…. kind of like… just grab and chuck in!

Makes about 24

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 sheets of frozen puff pastry, thawed
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup of cream
• 150gm Smoked Salmon (more or less!)
• Dill, chopped
• Chives, chopped
• Spreadable cream cheese

1. Preheat oven to about 180°C (fan forced.

2. Lightly oil two 12 hole patty tin (I used a cupcake tin!) Use a round cutter (I used a poached egg ring .. that’s the only ‘cutter’ like thing I had! ) to cut out circles from the puff pastry. I managed to get around 9 from 1 sheet.

3. Line each hole with a pastry round, not necessary stretching it to fit if you can’t.

4. Now time to fill them up! Simply divide the salmon, herbs, cream cheese into each pastry round… pretty much put as much as you desire. I added about a tbsp of smoked salmon, pinch of herbs, and a tsp of cream cheese!

5. Whisk the eggs with the cream, and divide the mixture between the 24 holes.

6. and BAKE! for 20mins or until golden brown. They get really puffy while in the oven but will sink during the cooling process! (boo!)

Sounds easy guys? It took just under an hour to prepare and bake. Its such an easy fool-proof recipe.. if you’re a beginner at cooking this is an easy crowd pleaser! Oh how many times have I said easy! I’m not the most enthusiastic cook sometimes, so I love discovering these sorta recipes.. you’ll appreciate it now that it’s PARTY SEASON!

There’s a crunch with the puff pastry, and then there’s the smoked salmon which goes oh-so-well with the cream cheese and herbs! You’ve gotta try it!

I encourage you to try it out for yourself! And let me know how you go!!

Now go forth, bake, entertain and FEAST! =)

How about a Mango & Avocado Salad?

Daylight saving occurred not too long ago, which means we are now an hour ahead… and I love the fact that I can make dinner by 6:30pm and its not too dark to take food photos! Well, usually I don’t have dinner till 8, but I will try to aim for early dinners and get some food shots while I’m at it! Maybe try out some new recipes too!

So today, is the long-awaited Sunday where I  had time to cook a decent meal rather than speedy recipes; pasta, stir fries etc. My first attempt at making Crispy Pork Belly some months ago was successful, so I decided to give it another shot tonight. (more on that near the end…)

So, what goes well with Pork Belly?

Personally, when it comes to roasted dishes, I’d love a refreshing accompaniment. Salads are my first choice. I’ve been trying to make different salads recently for the family, instead of the boring ol’caeser salad. (We do know Caesar salad isn’t the healthiest of salads, right?). So what salad to make?

Since…mangoes are in season….!

I’ve never used mangoes in a salad before but knew it’s been done before, trying to recollect several mango salad recipes in mind I’ve decided the ingredients for tonight’s Mango … salad.

Accompanying the Mango tonight, is Avocado! … as well as the following recipes:

INGREDIENTS; (more or less, this was enough for 5)

• 100g baby spinach
• 1 mango, diced (the one I used was quite large, use as much as you want really)
• 1 avocado, sliced/chopped/diced, however you like it
• a handful (or 2) of walnuts, lightly crushed
• diced bacon, pan fried
• Parmesan cheese, shaved
• Caesar salad dressing

STEPS:

1. Simply, toss everything together.
2. Bon appetit.

haha….

Gotta love quick and easy salads

The bacon complimented the slight tangy-ness of the mangoes and caesar salad with a crunch of walnuts.

Definitely a great, refreshing salad for summer!

So here is my 2nd attempted of pork belly, which wasn’t as successful somehow.

My first attempt; it was perfectly crunchy, but the meat was a little bland.

Second time round, the meat was juicy and had just enough flavour, but there was only a part of the pork belly that was crunchy! What’s pork belly without the crunch huh?

I haven’t found a great recipe to follow, or should I say I have to learn off by hard how to get the ‘crunch’ going in pork belly. I rubbed a load of sea salt onto the skin, and oven roasted it skin-side-up for almost 2 hours. 1st hour at 220C and 2nd hour I turned it down to 140C. I assume my pork belly had some moisture left in it, hence it didn’t quite get the crunch? Or is it because I changed the temperature half way?

Nevertheless, the family thoroughly enjoyed dinner – we had a race to grab the crunchiest bits of the belly!

Do you have any pork belly tips recipes/tips you swear by? Do let me know!

Pistachio & Lime Cookies

Did you know: Back in the days, pistachios were a delicacy for the royals?

Nowadays we appreciate it as a nutritious addition to our diet! I always knew pistachios were healthy for you in someway, but it wasn’t until I did a quick Google on it, I found it was a lot healthier than I thought! it’s high in fiber, protein, lowers cholesterol and much more…

So, no doubt I’d go ahead with using it as one of the main ingredients for today’s recipe!

*drum rolls*

Pistachio & Lime Cookies!

Adapted from Technicolor Kitchen.

Lets get started with ingredients:

• 2 cups (280g) all purpose flour aka plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 170g unsalted butter, slightly firm
• Finely grated zest of 2 limes
• 1tbs fresh lime juice
• 1 + 1/4 cups (250g) caster sugar
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 4 large egg yolks
• 1 cup unsalted pistachios, peeled, chopped and lightly toasted (optional)

So this is my 2nd batch of cookies, since the 1st batch disappeared to my sisters tummies way too quickly!.. before I could take photos of them! But it was definitely worth a 2nd batch.. here goes!

1. Sift together; flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer with a paddle attachment; mix the butter with the lime zest until smooth and creamy. This way the flavours of the lime will get infused into the butter evenly.
3. Add sugar and keep mixing till well combined.
4. Add egg yolks, lime juice & vanilla and mix well.
5. Pistachio; that is peeled… I didn’t chop mine instead I used a glass jar, poured the pistachios onto a tray and rolled the glass jar over it to crumble it down.
6. Add pistachios into the dry mixture and continue folding it in by hand (continues to next process)
7. Roll and shape the mixture into logs, with diameters of roughly 3.75cm (1 1/2in) and 15cm long. I managed to do 2 logs out of the mixture.
8. Wrap logs in cling wrap and refrigerate for an hour or until firm… generally you can keep these logs in the fridge for up to 3 days, or a month in the freezer.
9. Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C.
10. Line two trays with baking paper.
11. Using a sharp knife, carefully cut out 6mm (1/4in) thick slices and roll/reshape log if need to.
12. Places slices 5cm away from each other; roughly 8 slices on a tray.
13. Bake in over for 8 or so minutes, or until the edges are slightly brown. If you like slightly soft cookies this step is recommended, otherwise for crunchier cookies you will need to leave in a bit longer.
14. Remove from oven and let it cool… if you tried poking at it and it feels soft.. it’s because.. yes it needs to cool… then hardens.
15. Share and nibble!

*Depending on how big you roll your log… it could make up to 60 cookies. The photos you see below, I rolled my logs slightly bigger.. and they turned out to be medium sized cookies

Step 5

Step 11

Step 12: This is what you SHOULDN’T do. I don’t know what I was thinking when I placed each slice so close to each other… and you guessed right.. this is what happened….

Siamese cookies.

Luckily, I did one tray at a time.. so the others turned out normal

Photoshoot time!

I like soft cookies; so these are slightly brown on the sides hence crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside! mm mm

I loved the crunch of pistachios along with the tingle of lime. I used half the amount of lime zest than Technicolour Kitchen.. so its up to you how tangy you like it!

It’s such a ‘healthy’ snack to just bring along to school/work… I’ve been bringing them to uni myself ! Don’t you just love a different combination of cookies? I’m so going to look into other pistachio recipes too! I love pistachios

Oh and the cookie-eating rule; Must accompany cookie with a glass of milk!

Enjoy!