Something a little tarty for breakfast...

Breakfast tarts.

I love having something a little more special for breakfast on the weekends.  You have a bit more time to create something delicious and substantial that will get you through the day too.

These little breakfast tarts can be made with pretty much anything!  (You can also make them for a starter too depending on the ingredients you use.)  The ones above have egg, spring onions, bacon and cheese but really you could add spinach, mushroom - anything!  It's really just a lovely puff pastry shell and a yummy filling.

How to: 

• You will need a muffin tin, greased.
• Cut some thawed ready made puff pastry into squares (so cut the pastry sheet into fours)
• Push the squares into the bottom of each muffin hole, you don't need to be neat, leave the corners out to puff up when cooked.
• Place some delicious treats inside the case, onion, bacon, mushroom etc - leave room for you egg!
• In a jug, whisk with a fork about 6 eggs (this is for approximately 8 muffin/tarts), season with salt and pepper.  If you like, you can add a little cream here too.
• Pour into the cases, don't fill right up though, leave a bit of room for expansion.
• Top with some grated tasty cheese or Parmesan and pop in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for around 15 to 18 minutes or until the egg is just cooked and pastry brown.

Enjoy your little breakfast tarts!  Experiment with the flavours!

Women In Wine 2011

selection of photos from the evening... some tasty treats and empty wine glasses.

Yes, it is that time of year again.  The annual Women In Wine function which is held by the MCC (Melbourne Cricket Club) Women association.  My friend David and my husband Mark have been attending this annual event for the last four years and we love it!  Not only do we get some delicious food treats, we get to sample some great wines from a different winery every year.  These wineries are selected as they have some inspiring women in charge of the wines, or making them - or both!

The menu for the evening.

This year's winery was Rob Dolan and we were treated to a selection of wines that aren't even available to the public yet!  Very exclusive!

I savoured the very last meatball!

As per usual the food was excellent, this year there was a lot of seafood on the menu (not so great for people with allergies!) And the main part of the meal was a tapas style.  I complained a bit about this as while the platters were going around and it eventually came to me, someone had swiped my allocated meatball!  Luckily the great staff there brought me out another plate of meatballs and I indulged in maybe four!  Gotta love a meatball!

The gorgeous Rob Dolan pinot gris and it's lovely pink colour.

The stand out wine for us was the Pinot Gris which was unusual in the sense that it was quite pink in colour.  It had an excellent nose, was lovely on the palate, so much so that we ordered a case of it to enjoy with our friends.

Again, a fantastic Women In Wine event.  Looking forward to the next one in 2012 (and our case of pinot gris to be delivered!)

Dark, decadent Chocolate Mousse...

I've been having a bit of a craving for Chocolate Mousse recently and thought that making some would be a great way to use my Kitchenaid mixer.  I like to use dark chocolate in my mousse as I don't really like sweet mousse so here's my recipe for a more bitter, dark and decadent chocolate mousse!

Ingredients:

• 200grams of dark chocolate (I used 2 blocks of Lindt 70% chocolate)
• 3 large eggs separated
• 1 cup of cream
• 1/3 cup of freshly made espresso coffee
• 30ml of dark rum
• 2 tablespoons of caster sugar.
• pinch of salt

How to:

1. break up chocolate into small pieces into a large mixing bowl.
2. Make a fresh espresso coffee (it must be hot!) and pour 1/3 cup of it onto the chocolate. The heat of the coffee will start to melt the chocolate.  Begin to break it down and mix it until it is smooth.  If you have trouble melting the chocolate with the coffee, pop the bowl in some hot water in the sink to get it to finally melt.
3. add the rum and the egg yolks to the slightly cooled chocolate and mix with a wooden spoon until smooth and glossy.
4. Beat egg whites until smooth peaks form, add 2 tablespoons of caster sugar and continue to beat until stiff peaks form.
5. Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mix.  You should start with just one spoon full of the egg whites to get it going, then fold the remainder in.
6. Whip the cream and fold into the chocolate mix.  Add a pinch of salt.
7. Spoon out the chocolate mousse into small containers and chill for at least 2 to 3 hours.

I used this cute bird teacups to hold my chocolate mousse! Cute huh?  You can serve your mousse with extra whipped cream and berries, raspberries with the chocolate are a match made in heaven! Enjoy your decadent chocolate treat!

Miss Mardi's mini meringues!

My lovely mixer, ready to be given a test drive.

After pulling my gorgeous tangerine Kitchen Aid stand mixer out of the box and drooling over it, I needed a recipe to give it a whirl with.  When I went to see my parents over Christmas, they gave me loads of farm fresh eggs so the best answer seemed pavlova!  I've never made pavlova before (I know, shock horror!) so I researched a couple of recipes.

There were a few things that I had remembered about 'pavs', the eggs needed to be room temperature and I probably needed cream of tartar.

Don't forget to have eggs at room temperature!

I had pulled all the ingredients together and then wondered should I make one giant pavlova or some smaller, individual sized ones?  Naturally the answer came from Martha and I followed her Kiwi Meringue recipe, but omitted the lemon to the meringue and the kiwi.  Yes, I just used the meringue part really.

A quick run down of the recipe!  Ingredients include:

4 large egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar (I used caster sugar)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
 
How to!

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. With a mixer, beat egg whites and cream of tartar until very soft peaks form. While beating, gradually add 3/4 cup sugar, then add cornstarch and lemon zest. Continue to beat until meringue is thick and marshmallowy, about 5 minutes. Drop 6 mounds of meringue, 3 inches apart, onto prepared sheet. Using the back of a spoon, make a small well in the center of each mound.

Place sheet in oven; immediately reduce temperature to 120 degrees celsius. Bake until meringues are pale and easily lift from paper, about 2 hours. Turn off oven; let sit in oven, 30 minutes. Transfer sheet to a rack to cool, 1 hour. (To store, keep meringues in an airtight container, up to 2 days.)

meringue all completed, ready to be topped.

I topped our individual mini pavlovas with a combination of raspberries, strawberries and blackberries that had been drizzled with some Pimm's over some luscious whipped cream.  (Thank you Kitchen Aid again!)

The finished, delicious product!

The final result is very satisfying.  I'm sure these little Miss Mardi's mini meringues will be coming out at future dinner parties during the Summer months!  A hint from Martha though is not to bake these little guys in humid weather as they won't crisp up as they should!

Making a bucket o'margerita....

Following my lovely sista Miss Shannon O'Shea's recipe, you too can make a bucket o'margarita for tonight's New Year's Eve festivities! Enjoy!

Christmas gifts for those who love all things food!

Well, Christmas has been and gone in quite the whirlwind fashion for us.  There was lots of thoughts of our friends on the East Coast of the USA who were being belted by one hell of a blizzard while we were in a reasonable heat wave here.

We were incredibly lucky this year to have scored some beautiful items for Christmas from friends and family.  Naturally our gifts seemed to revolve around all things food and cocktail like, making perfect gifts for us!

Some highlights in our Christmas stockings were:

Our gorgeous tangerine Kitchen Aid artisan mixer!  At first I wanted aqua but was definitely swayed by this awesome colour (and the fact that we got it quite cheap too!)  I can't wait to whip up a storm in the kitchen!

It's super tangerine!

Mark received this very handy cook book for our Webber BBQ, a little smoke box and some Jack Daniels flavoured smoking pellets.  The cook book has some fantastic and very inspiring recipes and I'm sure that the Jack Daniels smoking pellets will get a work out for New Years Eve celebration, most likely for some ribs.

Mark's most excellent BBQ cookbook.

Tupperware!  I can't tell you enough how excited I get over Tupperware.  My parents are always awesome at getting some of the bigger and more expensive pieces for us at Christmas time.  They are always the pieces that I say to myself "I'm going to buy that this year" but never get around to it.  This year we received the potato and onion keepers which stack nicely in our pantry.

Our beautiful Marimekko table runner.

Our friend David went to great lengths to obtain this super cute Marimekko Christmas table runner!  I'm sure that this will become our holiday table runner for many, many years.

We also splurged on some gifts for ourselves (and our friends too!) including a gorgeous Laguiole cutlery set each for us and the Coopers.  I just love the bright colours and the knives cut through steaks like butter!  There is something so cheery about having colour in the kitchen, it makes for some very happy dinner parties.  It's soooooo pretty that it may have to feature in it's own blog post!

Was Santa kind to you in the foodie gifts?  I sure hope so!  Let me know what kitchen essentials came out of your santa stocking!

Food Shopping...

first thing on a Sunday morning at ALDI, notice no makeup!

Food shopping.  We all need to do it and sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's a real chore!  We shop all over the place for food ingredients.  Every week we get a box of organic fruit and veggies from Organic Angels.  It gets delivered straight to our house and we have been doing this for close to three years now!  I love having the box delivered as it's one less thing that I have to go out and do during the week and if we are a little slack in getting to the supermarket, I know that we have some tasty and healthy food to cook with.

We also do a lot of our 'staple' shopping at ALDI.  I so wasn't into this place but then my mum started to get weird delicious treats (such as cheap German beer and sauerkraut) and I thought I would give it ago.  We go every fortnight to stock up on tinned tomatoes, mineral water and all of that sort of stuff but they also have some delicious seasonal treats.  At the moment I'm loving their wild cranberry sauce on turkey sandwiches.  I also like some of their crazy packaging too, especially the breakfast cereal cheetah!

I really enjoy shopping locally for food.  I love my butchers that are a five minute walk from the house and pop in often after work to pick up a steak or some lamb.  The wonderful guys are always on for a chat and I love having a laugh with them and getting them to specially cut something for me.  I think it's important to support these little shops that have been there for ages and are experts in what they do!  We are lucky to live nearby a great butcher and baker, we constantly get great produce at a very reasonable price.

We do have a farmers market in the area as well but I always seem to be too busy in the morning to visit!  I do hear good things about it and love the fact that people are returning to buying directly from the growers.  In our case we also have lots of things growing away in our garden too, which you can't get much fresher!

So where do you shop?  Do you love it and enjoy the experience of selecting great produce or do you think that it's another chore for the weekend!  Let me know!