Date Ka’ak biscuits

Here they are at last – the best ever biscuits. Date filled, sugar dusted, melt in the mouth goodness. There’s an art to making them, but if you’re willing to take the time to master the art, they are well worth the effort. Making these is all about the feel and technique – people who have been making them for years still don’t always get it 100%. If you try them and they don’t quite work, leave me a comment, and I’ll consult with the “master cooks”, Rosemary and Aunty Irene.

No more waiting, here it is.

2 1/2 packets of butter

1 kilo plain flour

2 heaped tsp baking powder

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 tsp mahleb

icing sugar (to serve)

Wash the dates very well. Drain them, keeping them moist. Place them in a saucepan with the 2 tablespoons of butter. Simmer until the dates are soft. Remove from the heat, and allow to cool. Roll the date mixture into small cylinders, ready for putting into the biscuits.

Place the rest of the butter in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, and boil for a few minutes.

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees

In a large, heatproof mixing bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and mahleb. Add the butter slowly and mix in with a wooden spoon. Switch to mixing with your hand when almost all the butter has been added and the mixture has cooled enough. The dough should be moist, but still reasonably firm. When you roll some in a ball it should be shiny and smooth. When you spread the mixture in a disc onto your palm, it should hold it’s shape and not crack too much at edges.

Take some dough and roll a ball the size a walnut. Flatten that ball into a disc on the palm of your hand, about 5cm across. Place some of the date filling onto the dough disc, and then fold the dough over and around the filling. Shape the dough with the mixture in the middle into a cylinder. Place on a baking tray, and pinch across the surfac if you have a pincher. This is not essential, but it makes the biscuits look pretty and helps the icing sugar stick.

Place them in the middle of the oven. Get them out when they start to brown.

To serve, sift some icing sugar onto plate. Press each biscuit into the plate, so that a nice thick layer of icing sugar catches onto the base of each biscuit. Place the biscuits in a place, and then sift icing sugar over all of the biscuit until they are totally covered.

The cake of the 5 eggs

This is another one of Rosemary’s all-time popular recipes. It’s the perfect cake – easy to bake and loved by all. It also works well if you are looking for a good cake to cut and decorate. Another plus, it doesn’t need butter, and if you substitute soy or rice milk (I have done both), it still works. Measurement is in mugs, because that’s what she uses, a regular coffee mug works well. Here it is:

5 eggs

1 mug milk

3/4 mug oil (vegetable or canola)

1 mug sugar

2 drops vanilla essence

self raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Put the eggs, vanilla essence and the sugar in a mixing bowl, and beat them. Add the milk and the oil slowly, and sift the flour over the mixture, and mix it in a little at a time, until the mixture thickens. The right consistency is for cake batter to be thick, but to still drip from the spoon, like custard.

Grease a square or bunt tin, and pour the mixture in. This cake will rise quite a bit. When the smell of baking cake starts making you hungry, check the cake (30-40 mins). It will start to brown on the top. Insert a skewer. If it comes out clean, your cake is done.

Easy!

Mama’s Mahshi

Mahshi is a family favourite, because my mother’s Mahshi is a especially good. The word “mahshi” is Arabic for stuffed or filled. In this case it’s vegetable with a mince and rice stuffing. You can make it with capsicum, eggplant, marrow or potato, but the one I like best is tomato. Mahshi is one of those dishes which is also very good the next day, and it freezes really well, so make extra! When I was living in another city for Uni, Rosemary would keep some for me whenever she made it so that I could take it back with me.

Select firm, ripe tomotoes

1/2 kilo premium beef

1 1/4 cup short grain rice

4-5 cloves garlic, crushed

15 medium sized firm but ripe tomatoes

2 large spoons of oil

mixed herbs, salt and pepper

Step 1

Step 1.

Core out the vegetables you are going to use. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. If you have a fan-forced oven, turn the fan on.

Step 2

Step 2.

Make the filling by combining the mince, rice, garlic, 1 spoon of oil and about half the tomato pulp. Season with salt, pepper and mixed herbs. The pulp makes the mixture soft, and is needed to cook the rice. If you don’t have any because you are using another vegetable, then use some tomato paste and water. Place the stuffing into the vegetables, but don’t push the stuffing in too hard.

Step 3

Step 3.

Put the remaining tomato pulp in the bottom of a pyrex, bessemer or similar heavy baking dish. Put the tomato pulp in the bottom of the basking dish, drizzle with 1 tablespoon of oil, salt and pepper. Place the tomatoes in the dish and cover with the lid or with foil.

Step 4

Step 4.

Bake in the for about 2 hours. By now the baking food should smell delicious, the kind of delicious that makes your family or guests hungry as soon as they come in the door! Remove the lid or foil, and bake it a little longer, until the top of the vegetables get some colour.

Impressive Chicken

Sometimes the universe points you in a certain direction and it’s best to go that way.  Like today, I was in the supermarket, and the free range chicken thigh fillets were calling out to me.  I have chicken in the freezer, and wasn’t really planning to buy more, but I followed my instincts and picked it up (it wasn’t even on special). By the time I got home, I knew what was going to happen to the chicken.  I’d been to Fratelli Fresh on the weekend and picked up some excellent Italian prosciutto, and leeks are in season, so there was one of those in my shopping as well.

It was all coming together in this recipe, which I started making from Jamie Oliver originally, but which I have adapted over time.  You can see Jamie’s influence in this recipe evenn when I’ve written it down because nothing is really measured and the ingredients are interchangeable.  It always looks and tastes excellent, but isn’t that difficult to do.  It makes an impressive midweek meal, but is also pretty good at a dinner party.

Serves 2

Impressive chicken - ingredients

4 chicken thigh fillets

2 large strips of prosciutto or streaky bacon

1 leek, sliced in 2cm rings

a small handful of dried or fresh oregano or thyme

a glug of olive oil

a splash of white wine

salt and pepper

4 medium potatoes, cut into pieces

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.  Place everything except the prosciutto in a bowl and make sure that all the chicken and potatoes are coated in herbs. Choose a baking dish that is a snug fit for the contents, and oil it lightly (olive oil spray is good for this). Take potatoes out of the bowl and place in a pile in on one side of the baking dish.  Take the leeks out of the bowl and arrange on the bottom of the dish next to the potatoes.  Group the chicken fillets into pairs, and wrap each fillet with the prosciutto.  Place the chicken on top of the leek and drizzle what’s left in the bowl over the baking dish.  Bake for about 45 minutes, when the potatoes are done, the chicken will be done.  Serve with other vegetables.

Impressive Chicken - done

Not Like Other Vegetable Peelers

I could tell you a really long story about this peeler, but there are three things that make it really excellent to use – it’s really sharp, it works for both left and right handed people (as a lefty, I have found this to be a rare quality) and it’s an excellent colour.

Solingen peeler

It’s made by DD and the blade is by Solingen, the knife company. I bought it from Beclau in Sydney, where I also got my fabulous Dibbern tea set.

Mikey

Mikey cooking

Mikey is my husband.  By day Mikey works as a psychologist, and he likes to kick back watching sci-fi TV with his friends.  He’s into cars and computers too.

He likes to cook barbecue and pasta.  Mikey is learning about cooking, and he does some things pretty well.  His favourite foods are barbecues, roasts, pasta and really good antipasto plate.  He loves meat and cheese, but can’t stand raw tomatoes.

Rosemary

Rosemary in her kitchen

Rosemary is an inspirational home cook, and she’s also my mother.  Walk in the door of her home, and you see the kitchen straight in front of you.  You might be greeted by the delicious smells of a baking cake, or a roasting leg of lamb in the oven.

A busy mother with a highly successful career and strong commitment to community involvement, Rosemary’s kitchen techniques are quick and deliberate.  She can put together a family meal in under 20 minutes, but is also well known for her ability to put together a feast for large numbers of family and friends.  She loves to experiment with ingredients and methods, but some of her versions of traditional recipes are the best.

Her favourite foods to cook and eat are Middle Eastern and Mediterranean foods.  My ideas of a what a  joyful kitchen is come directly from living with Rosemary and her cooking at the centre of my life.

Easy Chicken and Vegetable Soup

With winter well and truly settling in over Sydney, I decided that a nice and easy chicken and vegetable soup was just the thing to do with the first batch of stock from that chicken. This is a good basic recipe for using whatever fresh veges you have, and you can vary the ingredients quite a bit. It goes pretty well with corn, parsips, or one of those “soup packs” you can get at the supermarket or green grocer at this time of year. It’s pretty light and quick to prepare, a nice contrast to some of the heavier meals that we find ourselves tucking into over winter!

This quantity was enough for two of us for a full meal.

2 finely diced garlic cloves

3 cups chicken stock, 2 cups water (adjust according to your stock)

shredded chicken (1 1/2 breast fillets)

2 carrots, cut into chunks

3 medium potatoes, cut into chunks

6 broccolini stalks, cut into thirds

2 handfuls small soup pasta (or break some thin spaghetti)

spring onion

Put the chunks of potato and carrot in the microwave for about 2-4 minutes, to get them started. You want them about 3/4 cooked. Put a drop of oil in the pot, and over a gently heat, soften the garlic for a minute so that it releases some flavour, but don’t let it start going brown or sizzling. Add the stock and water, and bring to boil. Add the carrots and potatoes and pasta and allow it simmer until the veges and pasta are done (about 8-10 minutes). Add the chicken and the broccolini for the last minute or two. Check the seasoning, serve in soup bowls and sprinkle some spring onion over the top.

Tasty Chicken Sandwiches

I made these sandwiches with the poached chicken from the stock . . .they turned out very tasty. Be generous with all the ingredients and spread the dressing on the bread instead of butter.

Bread (any multigrain will work pretty well)

shredded chicken

cos lettuce

spring onion

ranch dressing

salt and pepper

Sunday Afternoon Chicken Stock

One of my favourite things to do in the colder weather is to make chicken stock. On a Sunday afternoon when the kitchen is clean and all other chores are being done, tossing a stock together just fits in. It doesn’t take long to get the ingredients together, as long as I’ve picked up a nice free range or organic chicken. It’s a great way to get good value from what can sometimes be an expensive purchase. I will usually freeze some of the stock to use in soups, casseroles, risottos and stir frys, and the chicken itself also turns up during the week in sandwiches and wraps, grills, in soups, and stir frys. I’ll let you know when and how this chicken and stock turns up.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken or 1.5 kilos chicken wings and necks

2 cloves garlic

1 carrot

1 brown onion

1 stick celery

a few stalks of parsley

few sprigs of thyme

2 cloves garlic

2 big pieces of lemon zest

8-10 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

sea salt

Put the chicken in a large pot. Fill with water, until the chicken is covered. Be generous with the water, as it will reduce. Bring to the boil, add the other ingredients, and then turn the heat down. Let it simmer very gently for at least 1 hour – between 3-5 is best. Take out the chicken and put it in the fridge Let it cool (overnight works well), and then skim the top of the stock to remove the fat and stuff that has accumulated there. Divide the stock into different containers and jars and place in the freezer or the fridge (but I find that it only lasts about 4 days in the fridge).