Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Pasta (Secret Recipe Club)

SRC time again, already! Having something to do every month really makes me realise how little I post on my blog. This month I was assigned to Ethan's blog, Food in My Hands. I spent the better part of the month trying to decide what to make, everything looks so good. First it was Maple Swirl Bread, then White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies, then Veggie Meatballs with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce... in the end, though, I settled on roast eggplant and tomato pasta. Because I love me some pasta, and I was keen to try roast eggplant. I made this for dinner at the Friendzone, so instead of adding sausages (because Levi is a vegetarian and veggie sausages are expensive!) I substituted them for mushrooms, and I think it worked out delightfully. I also substituted fresh tomato for tinned diced tomato, thats just because I am lazy. Also tomatoes are expensive at the moment, who knew?

As always, the Secret Recipe Club website is looking delightful and you should head over there.

ROASTED EGGPLANT AND TOMATO PASTA
Serves 4
Time commitment: 40 minutes roasting, 20 minutes actual work
Recipe from Food In My Hands
Cost: $1.82 per serve. 


500g pasta (I used elbow pasta, but I'm sure anything would work)
1 large eggplant
6 mushrooms
400g can diced tomato
Olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Cube the eggplant and put it in a roasting dish with a generous amount of olive oil. Cook for about 40 minutes or until roasted, flipping halfway to make sure its all even. Well, as even as it will get. Fun fact: Smaller cubes that have lots of olive oil go really crispy and are fun to eat straight out of the oven.

2. Slice mushrooms and fry in a little olive oil until browned. Turn heat to medium-low, add diced tomatoes, and heat. Add eggplant and let the sauce thicken.

3. At this point, you can cook the pasta and serve it, or refrigerate the sauce for later. I haven't tried freezing it yet, I'm not sure about how it would go with the texture of the eggplant, but I made mine before uni and threw it in the fridge until dinner and it turned out fine!

Gingerbread Cuffins with Cream Cheese Icing

Do you ever get to that stage where you know you've had a recipe bookmarked for ages, but its not until you finally get around to making it that you see how embarrassingly long it has been there for? I realised when I finally got around to purchasing all of the ingredients yesterday that Sian published this recipe in December 2009. Gracious me. I had been planning to make these yesterday, but then my friend who I haven't seen in almost a year (disgraceful!) came over with cupcakes and we had a grand old time which meant I needed to devote the rest of my afternoon to uni work. So instead when I woke up at 8 this morning after having a terrible sleep, I made these for breakfast. Also I can highly recommend the uncooked mixture as one of the more delicious things I have eaten.

Sorry, family members who think I am responsible. It gave me the boost I need to write more of my essay! That counts as responsibility!

I'm still not sure whether to call them cupcakes or muffins... I feel like cupcakes are terribly dainty and adorable and celebratory, and the spices in these make me want to call them muffins. I think the fact that it is cream cheese icing, which must be healthy because its used on carrot cake and that is a cake with CARROTS in it so +50 health points, has swayed me to the "muffin" side. Even though I know what is in cream cheese icing now and its essentially butter icing with cream cheese. Cupcake muffins. Cuffins.

GINGERBREAD CUFFINS WITH CREAM CHEESE ICING

Makes 10 large, muffin-sized serves

Total time commitment: About 40 minutes, including 20 minutes cooking time

Recipe from Monster Girl Writes

1/2 cup SR flour

1/2 cup plain flour

1/4 tsp bicarb soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

100g butter, softened

1/4 cup milk

2 tbsp golden syrup

Preheat oven to 170C. Combine dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients and mix together. Spoon into cupcake liners and bake until springy and golden.

While cooking, combine the following:

30g butter

50g cream cheese

2/3 cup icing sugar

When the cupcakes are done, take them out of the oven and let them cool for 5 minutes before icing them. Lovely!

The Kitchen Reader: Home Cooking

So on top of my SRC commitments that mean I'm posting at least once a month during my hectic uni times, I've also joined The Kitchen Reader, where members read one food-related book per month and blog about it. This month's book was Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin, chosen by Sarah from Simply Cooked (whose blog is also fantastic!)

I wasn't expecting much from this book, because I'd prefer to be reading recipes (or, you know, eating) than just reading about food. I was very wrong! The book is amazing, and I've already sent it down to Mum to read because I am going to get crazy evangelical about everyone in my extended family reading the book. It's so good. There are recipes interspersed into the short essays, and it wasn't pretentious at all. I don't think its possible to be pretentious when you are writing about eggplant for one. I just enjoyed everything about this book, so you should probably pick up a copy ASAP.

Secret Recipe Club: Pesto Potatoes

I know, how predictable that I chose another potato recipe :P I've been so swamped with uni and the panto rehearsals/performances that I haven't had time to cook anything of note lately. It was a welcome challenge to fit the SRC into this month! (Also, please do click the link and visit our webpage, it looks pretty rad).

The blog I was assigned was Savouring the Thyme. Jennifer's blog is great! I bookmarked so many things to make this month but it turned out that this was the only thing I could fit into my uni work haze. As soon as I hit summer holidays, the bookmarks are coming out!

These potatoes are ridiculously simple and I can't believe I never thought of combining potatoes and pesto before. If you can commit to the hour for roasting the potatoes, and I suggest you do, this is entirely worth it.

PESTO POTATOES

Serves 1
Total time commitment: 1 hour 20 minutes (1 hour 15 minutes cooking, 5 minutes actually working)
Recipe from Savouring the Thyme


1 potato
1 tsp pesto

1. Coat the potato with olive oil and roast for 50-60 minutes until tender. Leave to cool until you can handle them.

2. Cut off the top third of the potato and set aside (or eat - I ate and it was one of the best decisions I've made). Scoop out the innards of the potato, leaving a little wall around the skin so it doesn't collapse in on itself.

3. Mash the potato insides and pesto together and scoop back into the potato.

4. Bake for another 15 minutes.

Click here to look at all of the other members' recipes!

Friend Zone Food: Cheeseburgers

I'm so sorry about the lack of posting! I've been absolutely swamped with uni work and panto and work, and to be completely honest I've been living on things like baked beans, jacket potatoes, and microwaveable Indian meals. Its the same story as last month though, I've been eating a lot of meals at the "Friend Zone", the nickname we've given the house that Levi and Chris and Briony moved into down the road, so I thought I should add another category for meals I have at their place that someone else has cooked with me (or cooked entirely :P).

Chris and I made these burgers last night when Levi and Briony were still away on a uni trip. If Levi is away it seems remiss to not take advantage of the opportunity to cook something that isn't vegetarian! And when I say Chris and I made them, I mean Chris made them and I picked up hamburger buns on my way there from work. The burgers are from the cookbook What to Cook and How to Cook It by Jane Hornby, which I would absolutely recommend. There are step-by-step photos, and all of the ingredients are set out in a delightfully organised photo at the beginning of each recipe. This is the third or fourth dish we've eaten from that cookbook and everything has been simple to make and really delicious.

These burgers were SO GOOD. I'm going to make them again soon, because they were really great. Before we started I was lamenting that we didn't have any chips with them (because I obviously have attachment issues with not having potato in my meals) but it was so filling that I wouldn't have been able to fit them in anyway!

Also happy birthday shout outs to Tara, who turned 22 on Wednesday, and my cousin Clare whose birthday is today :D

Serves 2
Total time commitment: 30 minutes
Recipe adapted from What to Cook and How to Cook It

1/2 onion
3 small gherkins
250g minced beef
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 egg
Salt and pepper, to season
2 large burger buns
4 slices cheese, to cover patties
Lettuce and tomato, to serve

1. Preheat the grill to high. While its preheating, finely chop the onion and gherkins and place in a large mixing bowl. Add the egg, mustard, mince and salt and pepper, and mix together.

2. Roughly divide the meat in half and shape into two burgers, about 2cm thick. Our burgers were HUGE but delicious, and they looked silly in the tiny buns, so I would recommend this for the comedic value.

3. Place the burgers onto the grill and cook for ten minutes, flipping halfway through. If they need a little longer, then do that. Whatever floats your burger-loving boat!

4. While the burgers are cooking, slice the tomato and wash the lettuce so you can go for your life when the burgers are ready. Halve the buns as well.

6. Burgers are looking good? Excellent. Put some cheese on top of them, and place the halved buns face up (the face being the cut side) on the grill. Whack everything back in there for another minute or so, just to melt the cheese and brown the buns.

7. Assemble the buns and serve.

Secret Recipe Club: Oven Stuffed Potatoes

So I mentioned that I had been on a microwaved potatoes kick just before uni started. My laziness aside, I just really like potatoes because they're easy, so I was pretty overjoyed when I found this recipe for stuffed potatoes on my SRC assignment this month! I was assigned to Gloria's blog, Canela Kitchen, and I fell in love with most of the recipes she has posted.

I adapted this recipe to make it vegetarian, and omitted the parmesan cheese coating (although will definitely make them again with the parmesan!). I really loved the end product, and making them almost bite-sized meant I could just pop them in my mouth while marathoning Mad Men. (I know, I'm four years behind everyone else, but goodness it is a good show)

OVEN STUFFED POTATOES
Serves 6
Recipe from Canela Kitchen

1 kilo potatoes, peeled
3 egg yolks
3 tbsp flour
Spinach and feta, to fill

1. Boil and mash the potatoes. Add the egg yolks and flour, and mix to form a dough. Preheat oven to 190C.

2. Wilt the spinach by rinsing it under cold water and then place it into a medium-hot frying pan with only the water that is still on the leaves for a couple of minutes.

3. Cut the feta into small cubes.

4. Form the potato dough into evenly-sized balls. Now that you have checked they're all even, squish down each ball and place a spinach leaf then a cube of feta (or more, depending on size) in each and re-shape into balls.

5. Place the balls on a baking tray and cook until browned (this will vary depending on size).

Check out the other members' recipes here!

Lentil and Tomato Soup

Last week, I didn't do a meal plan. It was the last week of holidays and psssh, people have been surviving and not making meal plans for years, right? It turns out I am not one of those people that can survive without a meal plan. I think the disaster wasn't helped by shopping day moving from Monday to Thursday, so I had ten days between grocery shops, but I did end up eating essentially nothing but microwaved potatoes for two days.

I swear to goodness, if I didn't have friends living down the road to cook for me and let me eat their biscuits, I probably would have faded away to nothing.

So on Monday, once I had run out of potatoes, I decided to finally cook this soup. I got the recipe from one of the free Coles magazines, and actually had everything on hand to make it (its okay, I also wonder why I didn't make it earlier in the week). I have a five hour break on Mondays which gives me more than enough time to come home for lunch and whip something up. Also, I'd only eaten an apple before I went to uni and apparently they do not fill you up for four hours. Who knew? :P

I added some carrot to the soup to bulk it out a bit, and next time I think I will also add some green vegetables (peas and broccoli and the like) for colour and deliciousness. In the various incarnations of this soup (it makes four to six servings), I've had it with spinach, pine nuts, and bacon, and I'm sure there are a million other toppings you could try.

LENTIL AND TOMATO SOUP
Serves four to six
Total time commitment: 30 minutes
Recipe adapted from Coles Magazine
Cost: 68c per serve (if recipe makes 4 serves)


1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 cup red lentils
1 carrot, diced
400 g diced tomatoes
3 cups vegetable stock

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onion and cook until soft. Stir in cumin and coriander and cook, stirring, for one minute.

2. Add lentils, carrot, tomatoes and stock. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, and simmer until lentils and carrot are soft (about 10 - 15 minutes).