Egg and Garlic Chive Pot-sticker Dumplings

5 eggs
1 tablespoon vegetarian oyster sauce
bunch garlic chives
teaspoon cornflour plus more for preventing sticking

Crack eggs into a bowl and mix with oyster sauce. Cook in a frypan like scrambled eggs (they don’t need to be cooked through). Mix together with chopped chives and cornflour.

Put a teaspoon of mixture in a dumpling wrapper (the white ones, not the yellow ones), moisten edges and crimp together. Nobody really cares if it’s perfect!

When you run out of filling or wrappers, put them in a frypan with a splash of peanut oil and ¼ cup water. Crank up the heat and put a lid on. The dumplings will steam until the water evaporates, and then the bottoms will crisp up nicely.

I served mine with chinese red dumpling vinegar (I have no idea what this is really called), but that isn’t really necessary – they are entirely delicious without sauce!

Recipe adapted/stolen from http://www.mijorecipes.com/appetizers/crispy-chinese-dumplings/.

I went to find out more, and was very impressed. I wanted one, but couldn’t see a way of justifying the expense. Mark disagreed – he helped me to rationalise it, and a few weeks later we ordered one.

So Ferdinand took up residence here a few months ago, and we haven’t regretted the decision. Even considering the cost, it’s been worth it. I’ve given away the food processor, and only used the stove about twice since he came. I’ve made risottos, vegetarian sausage rolls, soups, casseroles, sorbet, ice cream (creme anglaise, frozen, then blended with strawberries), steamed veggies, polenta, fruit juices, pancakes with pear and strawberry sauce, pizza dough (the only thing that isn’t as good as my original recipe!), béchamel sauce, “chocolate” date balls (Inigo LOVES these – dates and cocoa with a bit of coconut, he thinks it’s chocolate), apricot iron booster balls, Moroccan tomato soup, home made preservative free veggie stock etc, etc.

It’s been great, and since a few friends are also interested in finding out more about the machine, I am having a demo on saturday – let me know if you’d like to come!

Remember this?

Then here after I refined the recipe a little.

But now I’ve done a final re-jig to make the recipe work for me. I buy flour in 2kg bags, so I asked my maths man to do the numbers so I didn’t have to measure 13 cups of flour each time.

So now I use 2kg of flour, 4 tablespoons of bakers yeast, 2 tablespoons of salt, and 1.6 litres of warm water. Mix, and dump into a tub that will go into the fridge.

What I have found is that I can just throw a lump of dough into a bread pan lined with baking paper and it makes a nice dense, almost sourdough like loaf. If you like, you can also brush it with milk and scatter sesame seeds, caraway seeds, poppy seeds, or my favourite, nigella seeds on top before baking.

Or, you can work the dough a little, and leave it in the pan to warm up to room temperature before baking for a lighter loaf.

You can also use wholemeal flour, with exactly the same recipe.

And it makes wonderful french toast, and after a day, fantastic dippers for your baked brie. Recipe to come one day….

With some encouragement (and the imminent death of my beloved (borrowed) breadmaker, I tried this last week, and LOVED the result. I found the bread a trifle too salty, but I loved the taste, the crust, and the dense, chewy middle. I experimented with another batch, with less salt, and different loaf shapes. Then I made a double batch, with the idea that some of the dough will last in the fridge long enough to develop that beautiful sourdough flavour. Previous batches have all been cooked and eaten within a few days.

So without further ado, and because I am assured that before and after shots are always fun (by RoseRed, via Bells), here you have it.

These a brushed with a little soy milk, and dusted with, clockwise from top left, Nigella seeds, Carraway Seeds, Sesame Seeds, and Poppy Seeds.

After baking, but with the tray 180 degrees from the previous shot. Forgive me, we were running late for the Symphony darling.

Oh, and yes, it does taste as good as it looks. And the smell is amazing.

one mouldy orange
half a bottle of mango and apple juice
one random cleanskin red (with a skin so clean it doesn’t even list a variety or region, let alone year. Yup. Clean)
and a six year old bottle of cinzano bianco from a brief martini fad

You make sangria of course.

And yes, I deserve it!

1 Cup Self Raising Flour
1 Cup Milk (I used Soy)
1 Egg

Mix.

Cook.

Eat the fluffiest pancakes you’ve ever had.

Recipe from here.

Thanks to my friend Simone who made Inigo’s first birthday cake, and then shared the recipe with me to make his second.

Ingredients
250 g butter
250 g white chocolate
200 mL water
1½ cups caster sugar
1¾ cups plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

And food colouring. Don’t bother with the liquid ones you get at Woolies, you need specialty cake decorating gels. Liquid colours won’t give you the intense colours that you need for the full rainbow cake impact, and if you’re going to go to all that trouble, you want to get the wow factor. I got mine here – cheaper than eBay, and awesome quick service.

Method
Preheat oven to 150°C. Line the cake pan with baking paper (this cake will stick).

Heat butter, sugar, chocolate, and water in a saucepan and stir over low heat until all combined. Let it cool a little bit so the self-raising flour doesn’t fizz before its time.

Sift both flours together and blend into chocolate mixture (don’t worry about lumps).

Stir in eggs, sour cream and vanilla (use a whisk for this bit and any remaining lumps will break up once these wet ingredients go in).

Pour the mixture into a deep 20 cm tin* and cook for about 1 hour, or pour into two 20 cm shallow tins and cook for about 45 minutes (this time is way out – cook it until a skewer comes out clean which will take much longer). I would also seriously consider cooking the cake/s au bain marie ie. once the mix has been poured into the cake pan, put the cake pan into a big roasting pan and fill the outer container with boiling water so the cake won’t form the really thick crust that comes with having to cook it for so long.

Recipe notes
Instead of sour cream you could use thickened cream, yoghurt or condensed milk, this just adds to the moistness of the cake. Also great with white chocolate ganache (hell, what isn’t?).

Colouring

Here is where being married to a maths nerd is handy – but don’t worry, I married one so you don’t have to. My cake batter weighed at about 1600gms, so I separated out the batter for colouring in the following proportions -

500gms – red
400gms – orange
300gms – yellow
200gms – green
150gms – blue
50gms – violet

Pour the colours into the tin in the above order, trying as much as possible to keep the pouring centered. You will end up with a tin that looks like a multi coloured target from the top, and each colour will fall “inside” the previous colour like a bubble.

1.7 litres (3 pints) = 200 mm (8 in) ROUND = 180 mm (7 in) SQUARE
2.3 litres (4 pints) = 230 mm (9 in) ROUND = 200 mm (8 in) SQUARE
3.4 litres (6 pints) = 250 mm (10 in) ROUND = 230 mm (9 in) SQUARE
4.5 litres (8 pints) = 280 mm (11 in) ROUND = 250 mm (10 in) SQUARE

And if you want more rainbow goodness – try pancakes!

Edited to add – if you want to stick with microwave popcorn, try this.