Sticky Date Pudding

This is one of my all-time favourite desserts – I absolutely love the combination of the moist date cake drenched in warm butterscotch sauce.  I’ve always adored the sticky date pudding you can get at the Melbourne Supper Club, and while this doesn’t quite compare to the bar’s lofty standards, it was still a worthwhile effort for a home experiment.

I found the recipe on www.taste.com.au and followed the suggestion of baking the pudding in muffin tins so it came out in individual serves. I found that easier to serve when entertaining my dinner guests, and overall I think the dessert went down quite a treat.

I have to thank my cousin for taking the mouth-watering picture, sure does look good doesn’t it?

Indian Spiced Potato Loaf

There’s nothing quite like the smell of bread baking fresh in the oven, the aroma wafting through the kitchen and overtaking the whole house. I found this recipe in the book Bread: Breads of the world and how to bake them at home and i’ve made it countless times and it has never failed to deliver a deliciously spicy loaf. Making bread from scratch requires a generous dose of patience, with all that kneading and waiting for the dough to rise, but the end result is all the more rewarding for it.

I used a mixture of plain white flour and ’00′ italian bread flour but feel free to use just the plain white flour.

As the bread is loaded with potatoes and spices I find it’s best served on its own – lightly toasted , with just a smear of butter.

Antipasto Pizza

Making homemade pizza is a great chance to be creative, and use up ingredients in your pantry and fridge. I love nibbling on delicious morsels on an antipasto platter, and when combined on a pizza base they turn into a cohesive, yummy whole. Most of the toppings are out of a jar – which really cuts down on prep time. The only real bit of cooking (apart from baking the pizza) is sauteing the eggplant in harissa paste to tenderise the eggplant and add a chilli kick to the pizza. In keeping with the antipasto theme you could also add roasted red capsicum or kalamata olives.

The pizza dough recipe was from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty cookbook, and I have to say it produced the best pizza base I’ve ever made. I used a pizza stone as I’ve found they help to ensure you get a crisp base, but a normal baking tray would also be fine.

Makes 3 large pizzas.

Spicy Hummus

I’ve had a jar of tahini (sesame seed paste)  in my pantry for quite awhile, and last week i finally got around to using it to make some delicious hummus. This was my first attempt at ever making it and I was surprised at how quick and easy the whole process was. The taste of homemade hummus is infinitely better than the store-bought stuff, so it’s really worth giving a shot. You are most likely going to have all of the ingredients in your kitchen already, except for the actual tahini paste – but if you stock up on that it keeps for ages.

This hummus has quite a strong flavour, that’s punctuated by the chilli flakes and garlic.I love eating hummus as a dip with warm pita bread, but my favourite way to eat this was for breakfast slathered on multigrain toast, topped with avocado. Absolutely delectable.

Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m not much of a baker, and I tend to stay away from baking sweet goods, but these cookies are way too easy and awesome to not give a go. I made them on a lazy Sunday with my friend Ruba, and I have to thank her for introducing me to this delicious recipe (although I don’t want to thank her too much as they are too damn addictive).

It’s a recipe slightly modified from 101 Cookbooks (and originally sourced from David Lebovitz’s Great Book of Chocolate). Based on Ruba’s experience in making these cookies countless times we decided to halve the quantity of sugar in the batch we made today, as the original recipe can cause a bit of sugar overload.

These cookies are wonderfully nutty and I think best enjoyed  still slightly warm from the oven, when the chocolate is warm and gooey.

Baigan Bharta

Baigan means eggplant in Hindi, and the vegetable forms the main component of this lightly spiced Indian dish. Charring the eggplant (using the same technique as in the Eggplant and Lemon Risotto recipe) gives it a fleshy,creamy texture and endows this dish with a lovely smoky flavour. I’m not generally a huge fan of peas, but in the interests of staying true to the traditional version of the recipe I’ve succumbed and added them. Despite my general bias against them, the peas work well here and contrast nicely against the beige backdrop of the eggplant.

This is a delicious, light dish that is best served hot with roti for a wonderful lunch or dinner.

Spinach, Ricotta and Fetta Puff Triangles

This tasty snack is easy to make and will serve as excellent finger food at any party. I made these for a meeting at work and I’m sure they were a good afternoon pick-me-up for all those that attended. The flaky, buttery pastry is best served straight from the oven but also works well at room temperature.

There’s spinach, there’s ricotta, there’s fetta….what’s not to love?

Lemon Rice

This type of rice dish is called chitranna in South India which directly translates to ‘colourful rice’ and it perfectly fits that description. Now this is my mum’s recipe but I’m sure there are many variants of this dish that are cooked across households in India everyday. It makes for a nice lunch and generally forms a staple component of many religious celebrations. Because this dish can be served warm or cold it can also be a great work lunch. The peanuts are my favourite part of this dish, so make sure you don’t leave them out to ensure that wonderful nutty bite.

Eggplant and Lemon Risotto

There have been two wonderful additions to my life in the past week, the incredible vegetarian cookbook Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi (which this recipe was sourced from) and my new MacBook Pro (which I’m currently writing on) . I’m sure that both will provide me with plenty of inspiration for many posts in the future.

I found Plenty on Heidi Swanson’s website 101 cookbooks and I knew immediately that I had to have it. Ottolenghi is a renowned chef and owner of Ottolenghi restaurant in London, and though he is not a vegetarian himself, he understands how to inject vegetables with spices to produce wonderfully flavoured and tantalising dishes. The photography in the cookbook is also vibrant and motivates you to try the recipes out for yourself. Some recipes from this book are currently being reproduced in his food section The New Vegetarian in the Guardian paper, and are well worth checking out online.

Kadai Paneer

It seems we are on a bit of a roll with the Indian recipes this week so I’ll continue the trend with this classic curry recipe that my mum taught me. A kadai is an Indian cooking vessel that resembles a wok and was originally made out of cast iron, but these days is more commonly made out of stainless steel, often with a copper bottom (like the one pictured below). Paneer is a soft cheese that’s made quite laboriously out of curdling milk. I personally don’t bother making paneer by hand because I think you can get good quality paneer, at the right texture, in Indian stores and even supermarkets these days. George Calombaris on Masterchef (currently the TV show I’m most addicted to) likened paneer to haloumi cheese in its consistency, and I think it’s a pretty good textural comparison.

This curry base is really versatile and you can replace the paneer with vegetables such as cauliflower and capsicum if you want to. It is light and delicate compared to a lot of the curries you will find in most Indian restaurants. This is one of those standby recipes in our house, because though it has a lot of ingredients, the method is relatively easy and failproof. I think it’s best served with roti or naan, but basmati rice would do quite nicely too.