Saffy

We had a meal last night that would suit your brother Lentil Soup Soak 4 cups of french green lentils in cold water for 2 hours. Drain and then complete next step In a large pot .. 1/4 cup of olive oil 2 tblspoons garlic crushed 1 large leek chopped finely 2 carrots diced 2 medium or one large onion chopped saute until leek and onion are transparent Add in 1-2 tspn ground cumin and continue to cook for a couple of minutes. Add in drained lentils and 8 cups of vegetable stock. Cook with lid on over a low heat for around an hour. Lentils should be tender by this time. You may need to add in more stock if the soup gets too thick. Season to taste with salt and ground black pepper. Some spinach added in towards the end of cooking can be a great addition as well. Very tasty.. very filling and enough left over for the freezer ( there are about 12 serves in this recipe)

Those are fantastic tips! It sounds like I need to set aside some time and give it a try. The method on the Melinda Lee Page sounds similar to one I was reading elsewhere. I keep looking at the beautiful crystalised fruit and peels in our Local Gourmet food supplies shop and wanting to buy some of them, but refusing to pay the exorbitant amount that they are asking for them. It sounds like with Christmas not too far away that I should get on to it now.

Just wondering what a "casserole " is?? Where I come from it is a meat or chicken dish usually in a savoury gravy .. like a stew I guess. Cooked in a casserole dish. Not a can of soup or very rarely cream and never bechamel in sight!

I love these lentils. They seem to be under used considering how tasty they are! I make a soup with them with mix of garlic, carrot, leeks, onions, spinach, cumin, olive oil, and vegetable stock that is so tasty.. sometimes I will add in spicy sausage chunks ( like hunters sausage if our vegetarian daughter is not around for the meal I just wondered what other people make with these fantastic lentils

Just to toss something else into the discussion: in New Zealand we have something entirely different that we call Yams They are Oxalis tuberosa Mol., Oxalidaceae ( Oca) which is a small wrinkled tuber which was a staple of the Andean Indians. They have a sweet and slightly nutty flavour and are fantastic roasted. Apparently it is one of the " lost crops of the Incas" .. and my favourite vegetable! Picture here of Oca- New Zealand Yam but also something called Ulluco which have recently begun to appear on the market here and taste great. Lovely cooked like new potatos. Sweet Potato here in NZ is known as Kumara ( a Maori word ) and there are Red, Gold and Orange varieties. There are also more traditional Tubers known colloquially as Maori Potatoes.. these are small black tubers which taste like a potato but have bright purple flesh which retains it's colour when cooked. You can see them at the Massey University page in all their glory

How about Louise cake? It is actually a bar type cookie with a coconut cake base, a layer of jam ( usually raspberry) and a coconut meringue topping. All baked together for around 30 minutes. slightly chewy and fantastic with a hot cup of tea!

I would love to be able to make Glacé fruit and or vegetables at home. Looking around there seem to be a variety of techniques some taking only 30 minutes ( boiling in a thick sugar syrup for peels) or taking up to a month slowly creating a stronger syrup each night and ending up with a glazed product as opposed to a crystalised product. Has anyone tried this ? What was sucessfull? What did not work so well, has anyone tried candying something unusual ? I believe you can do this to carrots and watermelon rind. I am really looking forward to hearing from anyone that has done this and knowing how and what fruit - veges you used

We have tons of rhubarb in our garden, here in NZ it is usually treated as a fruit and you will find it mostly in sweet dishes. Favs in our house are rhubarb/quince and apple crumble Poached rhubarb on cereal in the morning ( often) Rhubarb and cornmeal cake, to die for with creme anglaise rhubarb and almond jalousie rhubarb jam and last but definately not least a rhubarb/raspberry custard tart. I am always on the lookout for more ways to use rhubarb. Love it!

Well I made Napoleons today enough to feed 16 hungry people and they were a huge hit, and they looked beautiful. Thankyou to everyone that helped me do a good job on this! Compliments abounded!

My palm sugar is always like concrete. I buy it in those cute little discs and just grate it when I want to use it.

Well being an NZer I just feel I have to contribute to this discussion. There are definately different grades of lamb, and the lamb that is exported from NZ is often quite different than the lamb we get from our local butcher here in NZ There are a number of different cuts sent overseas that are not readily available here, also the lamb that is exported tends to be much leaner than the lamb that is consumed locally. I personally think a bit of fat left on the meat helps add to the flavour and the juicyness of the meat. When I was in the US and in PNG I was served NZ lamb as a reminder of home and I was very surprised to find that compared to what we actually get in NZ it was less tasty and way more chewy ( it was not overcooked) I don't honestly know if I am just spoilt here eating fresh ( not frozen ) lamb quite regularly. But the exported product was not even comparable to the locally bought fresh product. I don't think the frozen lamb from NZ that is exported does the product justice.

Wonderful tips thank you so much. It is my youngest son's birthday on Saturday and we are just having family over for morning tea. I thought I would make Napoleons for the adults to have with their tea and the kids will get cupcakes and various other things with kid appeal. I am a confident and competant baker but I must admit to avoiding some of the more fiddly things since I don't always have a lot of time. But I really want to make Napoleons, put it down to some irrational craving. I am going to have a practice this evening to make sure I get it right first. so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Please put the Lumberjack Cake in the archive, if you have time. It sounds wonderful. I've added the lumberjack cake into the archives :)

Lumberjack Cake Serves 12 as Dessert. This is a wonderful cake, best served slightly warm with a big dollop of whipped cream. Its' also fine served cold with a good coffee. 185 g pitted dreied dates coarsley chopped 1 tsp baking soda 1 c hot water 250 g caster sugar ( superfine) 125 g butter softened and chopped 1-1/2 c plain flour 1 tsp vanilla essence 2 apples peeled cored and diced 1 egg beaten Topping 2/3 c soft brown sugar 60 g butter 1 c unsweetened shredded coconut 3-1/2 T milk Preheat oven to 180 C Mix the dates with 1 cup of hot water and soda, and set aside while you make the remainder of the cake. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Slowly beat in egg. Sift flour with pinch of salt and stir into mixture with vanilla. Mix in date mixture and chopped apple. Tip into a 22cm lined cake tin. Bake for 40 minutes or until the top is set. Put the topping ingredients in a small saucepan and stir over medium heat until well combined. Remove the cake gently from the oven. Spread the hot topping over to cover the cake and cook for 20-30 mins longer or until topping is golden and cake is cooked through. Remove from oven and cool in the tin until ready to serve Keywords: Dessert, Easy, Cake ( RG490 )

Here is at the bottom of the planet in New Zealand. I think you are describing what I am after, it just seems to be a slightly different presentation. Rather than the classic french presentation of a millefeuille it is most likely an english adaptation since that is the basis for many of the baked goods here being ye olde english colony. But NZers do seem to differentiate between the multi layers of millefeuille and a Napoleon which just has pastry top and bottom with the filling in the middle, like a large sandwhich. I am more interested in getting it right, rather than recreating what is available here, which generally is not that great.

I love those old fashioned cakes. I bake them quite often. I have a recipe book here of my grandmothers ( 30's and 40's recipes ) that I use quite frequently You will NEVER find a packet of cake mix in my pantry, I have never made a cake from a packet and I never will. My current fav cakes are lumberjack cake ( a date and apple cake with a caramel and coconut topping) and good ole dundee cake which is also quite an old recipe. My kids have never had a birthday party at Micky D's or any other place like that and deprived as they are, they never will.

All these replies are really interesting. I bought some today from a local bakery ( not very good admittedly) to see if I could work out what was in the filling. Whatever it was it was not very good! A bit lumpy and grainy. I would have expected it to be smooth and creamy. I think it was a pastry cream with poorly mixed in cornflour. I am not entirely sure what the grainyness was from. Chefette I notice in the recipe that you give you force the chilled pastry cream through a sieve then fold in the whipped cream. Would this result in a slightly grainy texture? millefeuille here is slightly different, having many layers of pastry and pastry cream like a club sandwhich a Napoleon typically seems just to have the two layers of pastry with one layer of filling.

I would like to make a simple vanilla creme Napoleon and all I can seem to find are recipes for all the fillings under the sun except this. I don't want it custardy since then it would be a custard square not a Napoleon which has more a Bavarian cream. Am I right or completely off track What was/is the traditional filling for a Napoleon. Does the original even have a vanilla filling or was it something else? Any and all suggestions/ recipes welcome.

Wonderful fruit, pawpaw/papaya. It is called pawpaw as well as Papaya in Australia, PNG, Kenya, NZ and I am sure other places too. Green pawpaw is wonderful to julienne and put in salads, ripe pawpaw is divine to eat with salt and lemon/lime, mixed with strawberries in a fruit salad, or just simply eaten on it's own. It has a wonderful sweet melon like flavour. You can get them in various colours yellow and orange being the most common. To choose a nice ripe pawpaw it should be greenish streaked with yellow on the outside with very slight give when pressed, like choosing a just ripe avocado. pawapaw like kiwifruit is a natural meat tenderiser. You have to add it to fruit salads last since it will make the other fruit soft for this reason. Custard apples are completely different and not so good. ( At least in my opinion) We lived in Papua New Guinea for a couple of years and had many tropical fruits growing in the garden, breadfruit, jackfruit, macadamias, bananas, rose apples ( laulau) pawpaw, mangos, avocados, custard apples and pineapples. My vote for best tropical fruit - mangosteens -- wonderful! nectar of the gods.

This thread is making me hungry! All these beautiful custardy creamy desserts are the top of my list. If I see creme brulee or any of it's ilk on a menu it's always my first pick. Think I am going to have to make one for dinner tomorrow. My kids love it when I make Creme brulee..... my recipe makes way too much you see and they get to have it 2 nights in a row. Whats that I hear? You could halve the recipe Saffy ? I would not even dream of it..

Let me start by saying, no one ever has to convince me to order dessert. It is the part of the menu that I always look at first. But I can say that things that will make me choose one dessert over another ( which may also convince people who don't think they want it are ) If I have had a huge main and an entree the waiter/waitress saying " Would you like coffee and dessert ? The - insert light dessert name here - is very light and completely delicious. It gets lots of compliments from customers. If you like I can bring you two spoons to share it ? " Invariably one of us will want it and we end up sharing a dessert One other thing is the waiter/waitress telling me that they have eaten it and loved it -accompanied by appropropriate to die for facial expressions. To sell more desserts, you could also invite me to your restaurant.. I'll try em all out! :)

I love most dried fruit. I usually have a good stock of fruit in the pantry. To snack on I think dried papaya and dried pineapple are right up there for me. But my favourite at the moment would be dates. I made a Lumberjack cake this week with large chunks of apple and date and it was literally all gone within 30 minutes of taking it out of the oven. Even my toddler who usually lives on carpet fluff, peanut butter sandwhiches and live selections from the garden actually ate some! Hmmmm.. maybe that is not a good example to give since I am trying to let you know how delicious it was.

I have drawers full of all kinds of things that are completely useless but I don't have the heart to throw out. I am afraid I suffer from " failure to discard syndrome " Gadets that I would not be without are my citrus reamer: I love it! Never again will I use one of those lemon juice squeezers , the ones that look like a little dish with a ridged lemon in the middle. My zester: I did not realise how much I used it until I temporarily lost it in all the clutter, everyone in the house had to go into search mode until it was found. Lime pie and citrus tarts are just not the same without all those lovely little flecks of zest that my fingers are no longer nimble enough to make with a knife. The gaget that just appeared in my kitchen drawer that I have no idea where it came from and I have never used? the bean slicer

Ahh the joys of being female. It's strange looking down all the posts and thinking .. wow that sounds like me! Bacon, fries, instant noodles ( the msg kind! blah.. they are so gross but I NEED them). It's the one time I might buy potato chips. Anything salty. Orange juice.. gotta be cold and gotta be the real thing. Cuddle up on the couch and feel sorry for myself for at least a day and bite the head off anyone that comes within spitting distance.

Well, I made the curry with the bought curry paste that i had here and although I thought it would turn out to be light, it was darker than I thought! Although not what I would call a dark curry by any stretch of the imagination. It was actually pretty good. I would be really interested to try some other recipes if anyone has some tucked away What is Kao Soi snowangel? I was reading the other day too, that more commonly in Thailand they use yams ( the small ones not the big ones ) than potato, anyone know if there is any truth to that?