Category: Orange

Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel

Happy Caramel Custard Day everyone!  Yes indeed there is a day for every sort of food imaginable and October 3rd is Caramel Custard Day!  I am celebrating with a Moroccan twist on the classic French dish with an Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel.

Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel

No one in my family, except me, is a great lover of sweet things.  As a result, I didn’t have too many desserts growing up.  The one thing we did have and which my mum cooked to PERFECTION was a creme caramel.  So, I know what a good creme caramel looks and tastes like.  The caramel needs to be a nanosecond away from bitterness, the custard smooth and silky, the top a shiny mirror glaze and the almost ombre effect of the darker caramel soaked custard at the top and the paler pure custard at the bottom.

Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel

My problem is, I have, up until now been absolutely terrible at making it myself!  I tried to make a creme caramel recipe from Cantina THREE times.  Twice the caramel went all crystally.  Another time there was no sauce only a hard set toffee that was stuck to the bottom of each of the serving dishes!

Not so with this recipe which came from Lousie Frank’s Winter which is a fabulous book.  I’ve made many great dishes from it and, as it was a Tasty Reads selection will no doubt pop up here again!

Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel4

 

The Recipe

This version of a creme caramel was lovely.  The cinnamon came through quite strongly, the orange not so much.  When I make this again, I will sprinkle some orange zest over the top of the completed desserts to really ramp up the taste of the orange.  You could, of course, leave one or both of them out completely if you are not a lover of orange or cinnamon and this would still be a damn fine Creme caramel.

Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel

 

So on October 3rd what do we say to Caramel Custards?  We say…

Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel5


Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel6(2)

Have a great weekend  everyone!

REPOST -Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout & Orange Salad

Hello Friends!

Today we are celebrating Lunar New Year, and the Year of the Monkey with a delicious belly stuffed rainbow trout.  Lunar New Year, often called Chinese New Year  is celebrated all over Asia, and all over the world via the Asian diaspora.  It is a time for families to get to together, for the exchanging of gifts and of course food.

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I read this article in Serious Eats recently and as soon as  I read that whole fish was a common item at Lunar New Year dinners I knew exactly what I wanted to cook.  I have been waiting for an occasion to make Sabrina Ghayour’s Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout for AGES and this seemed like a perfect opportunity.   Fish is considered lucky for New Year, particularly at the Reunion (New Year’s Eve) Feast because the word for carp sounds like the words for good luck and gift.

Belly Stuffed Rainbow TrouNow I know some of you might be a bit freaked out by cooking / serving a whole fish.  And believe me, I used to be right there with you.  If you do not like the idea of a whole fish, you could certainly pan fry or bake fillets of rainbow trout and serve with the stuffing mixture.  However, in Chinese symbolism a whole fish represents togetherness and abundance.

Chinese Lantern Banner

But first, let’s talk Chinese Astrology.  We are about to enter the Year of The Monkey.  Famous people born in Monkey years include Leonardo Da Vinci, Elizabeth Taylor, George Lucas, Charles Dickens, and Lord Byron.  Gillian Anderson is also a Monkey.  Dragging that list down a notch or two from the great and the good,  other monkeys are Miley Cyrus and me!

What can you expect in the Year of The Monkey?

It is a year to act, to innovate and to take your destiny into your own hands.  However, the recklessness of the monkey also cautions us to think before we act so do not be  too hasty in making decisions.  Setting clear goals is important this year.  The monkey is also a sociable creature so this is a good year to nurture and expand your relationships with those around you.

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Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout

I guess I should have made something a bit more Asian to celebrate however Sabrina Ghayour’s recipe for belly stuffed rainbow trout is delicious at any time of the year!  Incidentally a rainbow trout is the only fish I have ever actually caught for myself.

The fussiest eater in the world is a keen fisherman (yet curiously cannot eat anything he catches; he just throws them back).  A few years ago we rented a holiday house in the mountains and one afternoon set out to go berry picking.  Well the berry farm was closed but the trout farm was open.  He went to the most difficult area and started catching fish left, right and centre.  I was content to read my book but, seeing how easy it looked said that I would have a go.  Well.  We slowly moved from the most difficult to the next most difficult to the next most difficult,  ending up in what was basically a wading pool.  The four year olds (who were the only other people using this pond) and I eventually caught our fish.  Then I cried because I felt bad about killing something.  But my rationale was “If I’m going to kill something then I ‘m damn well going to eat it” so we stopped on the way home and bought some almonds and I made us a lovely Trout Almandine for dinner.

He refused to eat it.  Which resulted in a blazing row where the phrase “I killed a fish for you.  How can you not eat it?” and variations there of were thrown around the room.  Miraculously his piece of trout stayed in the pan and not over his head!

Lesson learned.  This time, we bought a trout.

Rainbow TroutThe stuffing is a very tasty and gorgeously colourful mix of spring onions, pine nuts, garlic, chilli, coriander and preserved lemons.

Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout2Sabrina’s recipe from the wonderful book Persiana is below:

Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout

 

 

My notes on this recipe were that even though I halved the stuffing ingredients because I was only cooking one trout I still had a lot of it left over.

This is not really an issue as it is totally delicious and I had the following ideas for the remainder:

  • Scatter over cooked vegetables
  • Add a little olive oil and toss through pasta, maybe with some crispy breadcrumbs
  • Serve on flatbread crisps with a dob of hummus as an appetizer
  • Stir through rice for a pilaf effect
  • Sprinkle onto mushrooms and grill.

Or you could just do what I did and just eat it by the spoonful while waiting for the fish to cook!

Chinese Lantern BannerBelly Stuffed Rainbow Trout3

Orange & Arugula Salad

To serve with my Belly Stuffed Rainbow Trout, I made a very simple orange, black olive and rocket (arugula) salad.  Citrus fruits are a symbol of prosperity, good luck and abundance and lettuce symbolises spring.  So, despite not having Asian flavours my salad has come celebratory significance.

It’s almost too easy to call a recipe but here we go:

Print

Orange, Olive and Arugula Salad

A delicious, fresh and simple salad that is a perfect accompaniment to seafood.

Ingredients

Scale
  • 100g rocket / arugula
  • 1 orange
  • handful of black olives
  • 1 tbsp orange juice
  • 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • S&P

Instructions

  1. Place the rocket in a salad bowl.
  2. Segment the orange removing all peel and pith. Do this over a bowl so you catch the juice – this can be used for the dressing
  3. Toss in a handful of black olives

For The Dressing

  1. Mix the orange juice, lemon juice, olive oil and seasoning to taste.
  2. When ready to serve pour over the salad

Notes

You can fancy up this salad with any //all of the following

  • Chopped toasted walnuts or pistachios
  • Toasted pinenuts
  • Pomegranate seeds
  • Thinly sliced fennel
  • Thinly sliced red onion
  • A smattering of feta
  • Some tarragon leaves

 

Chinese Lantern BannerSome other lucky foods to serve at Lunar New Year include:

  • Spring rolls represent gold bars
  • Celery for wisdom
  • Plums for mental acuity
  • Dumplings for wealth
  • Long Noodles for a long life.

My work is celebrating tomorrow with a yum-cha lunch.  Bring on the dumplings!

Lunar New Festivals will continue until 22 February so you have plenty of time to join in the celebrations.

Just for fun, I took some fortune cookies to a family dinner and we all chose one to pick our fortune for lunar new year.  This was mine:

Fortune cookieIf you are celebrating Lunar New Year, or even if you are not, you are all my garden of roses and I wish you all a year of joy and abundance!

Have a wonderful week.  I’m off to eat my weight in dumplings!

Signature 1 Vintage Valentine Quick as Wink2;

REPOST – Rosemary and Blood Orange Cake

What Katie Ate by Katie Quinn Davies is the featured book on the Cookbook Guru this  month.  I made Katie’s Rosemary and Blood Orange Cake.  It turned out pretty well, despite some massive hesitations on my part.

Blood Orange and Rosemary Cake2If you are not familiar with Katie Quinn Davies, Ladyredspecs of Please Pass The Recipe wrote a great post on her background and work here.

One of the issues she mentions with the recipe she tried, a carrot cake that was definitely on my list to make,  is a certain vagueness Katie has around specific quantities of some ingredients.  This made me chuckle because only a few days before I’d had a very intense (and hilarious) discussion on just that point and it involved rosemary, one of the key ingredients in this cake.

Rosemary and Blood Orange Cake1I mentioned I was thinking of making this cake to the work girls.  One of them visibly paled.  “Go easy on the rosemary” she said. She then told us this awful story of how she had made a rosemary panna cotta for a dinner party and it turned out terribly.

“People were gagging, ” she told us.  “The rosemary was soooo strong”.

We asked how much she put in.  “Four sprigs” she said.  There was then one of those talks which only happens when you really don’t want to go back to work.  How big is a sprig? She thought it was the size of the stick you get in the pack from the supermarket.  I think it is something about the size of your little finger.  One of the girls thought it was about the size of the tip of your little finger.  The internet was not really helpful. So we never really got an answer.  She used four sprigs of rosemary in her gag inducing dish.

Rosemary and Blood Orange Cake3I got home and checked Katie’s recipe.  It called for three sprigs.

So what to do?  It was less than the panna cotta’s four sprigs and my idea of a sprig was smaller than my friend’s.  But all of a sudden three sprigs seemed like a lot.  Rosemary is a strong flavour.  I really didn’t want people gagging over my cake.

Aarrggghhhhhh!!!!!

In the end I gave in to fear and used two sprigs.  And, as one of my friends commented “You can’t even taste the rosemary”.  You could taste it could but it was faint.  I should have trusted Katie, I think three sprigs would have been about right. And a more exact measure of rosemary would have been ideal!

The Rosemary and Blood Orange cake looked lovely.  However, my version was quite bland.  This was more than likely my fault for being a coward with the rosemary; it certainly would have been a bit more interesting if that flavour had been stronger.

Rosemary and Blood Orange Cake2

It was a shame because the orange flavour was pleasant and the structure of the cake was great – the crumb was good, it was moist on the inside and golden on the outside.  It just needed a little something…possibly another sprig of rosemary for it to level up from being a decent, if ordinary cake to something spectacular.

The cake keeps really well but the rosemary kind of works against it – after a few days it is hard to tell if those little green flecks are rosemary or teeny specks of mould.

Rosemary and Blood Orange Cake4I would like to say I would try this cake again but currently my spreadsheet of cakes to make contains 500+ recipes.  So, let’s say I bake a cake every week, which I don’t and this goes to the back of the queue, that would mean baking it again in about ten years.

Actually, that seems about right.  Let’s catch up in 2025 for an update on this!

Katie’s recipe, and her stunning photo of this cake can be found here.

Signature 1 Vintage Valentine Quick as Wink2

 

 

Jane Grigson’s Watercress and Orange Salad

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter,
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here

Ok, so not exactly true for Melbourne, although it has been a fairly shitty summer.  But certainly for my friends in the States, it must feel like that.  But hopefully, this Watercress and Orange Salad will bring you some virtual sunshine.

Watercress and Orange Salad 5
Watercress and Orange Salad 5

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right

This is a very cool salad from Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book.. I think it looks like a big, beautiful sunflower. And not only is it pretty; it is super tasty too.  How could it not be – peppery watercress, tangy sweet orange, earthy toasted walnuts and salty olives. And it looks so 70’s.  I think it’s the combination of green and orange….

Here is the original recipe from Jane Grigson:

Orange and Watercress SaladAnd here is the original version:

Jane Grigson's Watercress Salad
Jane Grigson’s Watercress Salad

This is very simple to put together.  Line your plate with watercress and start piling in your ingredients.  The worst bit if you do it in the circle is stripping all those watercress leaves.

Watercress Salad LeavesLike a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel…

Watercress Salad Leaves2Never ending or begining on an ever spinning wheel….

Watercress Salad Leaves3I found the best way to get the orange slices as thin as possible was to cut them with the skin still on, then cut the peel and pith away with a pair of kitchen scissors.

Oranges for the watercress saladThen just add your walnuts and / or olives.

Before serving, a grind of pepper and a splash of vinaigrette made with some sherry vinegar and voila!!!  Or should I say “Velado!” because this really has a Spanish feel to it.

I had this with some grilled salmon the first time I made it and it was delicious!!! The second time I had it with some prawns and it was, again super.  I would love to try it with duck as per Jane’s suggestion.

And I made it a third time but this time tweaked the recipe a bit – I added some feta cheese and a teeny bit of red onion.  This time, I had it with a lovely sourdough baguette for a light lunch and it was perfection!!!  And yes, I made this three times in about ten days.  It’s that good.

Watercress and Orange Salad 6
Watercress and Orange Salad 6

So far, Jane Grigson’s recipes are turning out to be amazing.  I am a little disappointed that it is now March and we have another book to focus on at The Cookbook Guru.  But wow!!!  What a book!!!  I am super excited about stepping across the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco for my next venture with The Cookbook Guru!!!

And, if you are struggling through a long cold and lonely winter either physically or mentally, here is a little anecdote that may help.

Back in 1969, there was not much joy camp Beatle – there were personality clashes, legal battles, business disputes….things were going to hell in a handbasket.  But in the midst of all the problems, all the trouble and strife, George Harrison (by far my favourite Beatle) walked into Eric Clapton’s garden with an acoustic guitar and wrote, to my mind anyway, one of the most beautiful, hopeful songs ever written.  In the midst of adversity and all that…

And just to tie it all in together, here is George singing  that song with some Spanish subtitles.

All together now

Sol, sol, sol
Ahí viene

Have a great week.  I hope all your clouds have silver linings.

Signature 1 Vintage Valentine Quick as Wink2

Surprise! Orange Chicken Salad

OMG. I was downloading some photos from my camera of the Ice Iced Vovo when I found all the photos  I had taken of the Orange and Chicken Surprise Salad. I had totally forgotten about it. How,  I do not know.   I’m sure I didn’t drink THAT much over the holiday period.  I’m equally sure you will agree that the Orange Chicken Surprise Salad should be unforgettable (in every way).

Given that I have named January the month of crazy, it seemed fitting to post it here.  I totally had something else in mind to close out the month and we may yet get there.  But this had to get a mention.

It looks quite pretty.  Like a lovely orange jello dessert.  But wait!  A surprise lurks within.

Surprise Orange and Chicken Salad
Surprise Orange and Chicken Salad

Not much of a surprise as the name pretty much gives it away….(There must be some sort of term for that….is it a paradox? A tautology?  Someone smarter than me please tell me….) But  hiding under that innocent orange jello exterior is a chicken salad.  A rather tasty chicken salad to boot.

Surprise Orange and Chicken Salad2
Surprise Orange and Chicken Salad2

The idea of mixing sweet jello and savoury items kind of freaks me out.  It should not work.  It freaks me out even more when, like this, the result is actually pretty tasty.  Mind you, I loaded the jello with lemon juice so it was not as sweet as the original recipe dictated which may have helped make it a bit more palateable to my taste.  The original recipe is below:

Orange and Chicken Surprise SaladThe hardest thing about this recipe is getting the layer of jelly on the top the right thickness.  My cup sank way too deep the first few times, requiring some melting and resetting of the jelly.  It was still a little bit thin in this version and it kind of fell into a heap when I cut  into it.

Orange and Chicken Surprise Salad
Orange and Chicken Surprise Salad

But all up, this was a success.  The jelly actually added a light tangy touch to the salad which was refreshing both on a hot day and after the heavy meals of Christmas.

My version, which includes cranberries and tarragon is below.

I’ll be spending this week working on my post to celebrate Australia Day….I’m venturing into the best left alone arena of “things people eat when drunk”  and, believe me, whether I love it or hate it, it’s going to be a doozy!!!

Signature 1 Vintage Valentine Quick as Wink2

Print

Orange & Chicken Surprise Salad

Surprise! Hidden beneath the layers of tangy orange and lemon jelly is a super tasty chicken salad.

Ingredients

Scale

For the Jello

  • 2 packets orange jello
  • 2 1/2 cups orange juice
  • 1 cup lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup boiling water, just off boil

For The Salad

  • 11/2 cups finely diced cooked chicken
  • 1/4 cup mayonnaise
  • 1 tbsp chopped parsley
  • 1/2 tbsp chopped tarragon
  • 1/2 tbsp chopped chives
  • 1/4 cup (about a handful) of cranberries, chopped
  • 1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted
  • 1 stick of celery, diced
  • more lemon juice to bind, if needed
  • salt and pepper to taste

To Garnish

  • 1 orange peeled and segmented
  • Mint leaves
  • Cranberries

Instructions

  1. Combine the jello, fruit juices and boiling water, stirring until the jello melts. Place in fridge to set.
  2. When about half set place a small bowl into the jello and weigh it down (baking beans are ideal if you have them, otherwise use rice or beans or anything else you have to hand).
  3. Chill for several hours until very firm.
  4. Meanwhile combine all the salad ingredients and season to taste.
  5. When the jelly is set, take a sharp knife and dip it in hot water. Dry the knife then ease all around the small bowl. You may need to dip it in the water a couple of times.
  6. Once the bowl is removed pack the chicken salad into the cavity. Put foil or a plate over it and chill until firm.
  7. When ready to serve, place the mould in hot water to loosen the jelly, it only needs to be in there a short time. Then turn it out and garnish with the orange segments, cranberries and mint leaves.

Notes

  • If your cup sinks too low in your jelly mould like mine did, place the bottom of the mould in hot water. The jelly will melt. Keep the mould in the water until you get the level of jelly you desire then place back in the fridge to reset.