sweet-potato-delight

s w e e t - p o t a t o - d e l i g h t

I've recently moved to the other side of the world! I'm in Australia for two years so I've had a bit of change going on in my life!

Moving for 2 years is tricky....partly because I had to say goodbye to all my kitchen stuff at the beginning of July as it got shipped over here so I'm without cake tins, my magic scales, my electric mixer, and everything else that makes me feel at home! (Yeah, these things make me feel at home, even if it is just for the plug sockets and Lakeland labels on things!)

As I get used to the new country and wait for my old faithful kitchen appliances to arrive I wanted to cook something pretty simple....and having just got some great sausages from South Melbourne market I really wanted to eat them! So in an attempt to cook something homely I checked the blog I read the most and was instantly sucked in with the sentence, "I wanted to try another new way to enjoy the best orange vegetable there is". I haven't built up a stock of herbs and spices yet (I'm almost certain I will have accumulated a few more in the coming weeks) but I had the basics so have altered it to go with what I had!!

So for the recipe:
3 sweet potatoes; 2 large sausages; 1/2 red onion; 4 mushrooms; Worcestershire sauce; 2 cloves garlic; 2 eggs; dried chillies; salt and pepper.

Dice the sweet potatoes and boil for 5 minutes then spread onto a baking tray and bake in the oven for around 20-30 minutes. Cook the sausages in the oven with some red onion, mushrooms and a glug of Worcestershire sauce. When the sausages are cooked cut them into slices and mix them in an oven-proof dish with the cooked sweet potato and some finely chopped garlic, dried chilli and salt and pepper.Drizzle some olive oil on top and return to the oven for another 15 minutes. Create two small wells in the sausage and sweet potato and crack an egg in each well. 
Bake until the egg is cooked and then serve (it should take another 10 minutes or so).

It absolutely hit the spot in terms of something homely when I really needed it!! I've not tried to make any Aussie food so far but given how big the Parma is over here I'm sure I'll try it pretty soon...

sausage-hotpot

s a u s a g e - h o t p o t
I bought a brilliant turquoise casserole dish with a lid last year which looks perfectly at home in my kitchen. It usually sits on a shelf surrounded by my cute little, charity shop bought, cups & saucers and my mum's old milk jug... but that's not really the point of it I suppose! After deciding I should do more cooking with it (and mostly because I realised I had sausages needing used up), a sausage hotpot seemed like an obvious choice!

So for the recipe:
6 sausages of your choosing (I used pork & red onion sausages but it definitely works with Quorn sausages too); 2 carrots; 1 leek; 1 courgette; 4 chestnut mushrooms; red wine (some for cooking, the rest for drinking); chutney; red onion; Worcestershire sauce; tin of baked beans.
Cook the sausages in the casserole dish with a chopped red onion, 200ml (ish) of red wine, a 'glug' of Worcestershire sauce and 2 tablespoons of chutney. Whilst the sausages are cooking, parboil the carrots and have a glass of wine. After about 20 mins of the sausages cooking, cut them into smaller chunks and add the remaining ingredients (chopped leek, parboiled carrots, chopped courgette, sliced mushrooms, baked beans). At this point I added a little water and another tablespoon of chutney - because it's just so tasty. Cook on a lower heat (about 120) for a further 30 minutes until everything is bubbling away in the casserole dish.


I served it with mashed potatoes (which I mash with olive oil & a tiny bit of paprika to give them a deep, nutty taste with a bit more colour) and I'll admit the portions were slightly out of control...the recipe would comfortably serve 4 but it seemed to be finished by the two of us!!

winter-cakery

w i n t e r - c a k e r y
Like a grit bin, I'm made for winter really. A 'Celtic' transparent & freckly complexion lends itself well to being wrapped up in a hat and coat on winter nights with the steam of a cup of mulled wine keeping me warm!
Warm, spicy and tasty are the results I aim to produce when I bake during Winter.
I can throw together a Marieke Cake pretty quickly & add a dusting of icing sugar with some Christmas-related greenery in the middle. Alternatively, I cook some gingerbread biscuits. Gingerbread biscuits are so easy to make in all different sort of shapes and sizes (man/woman/star/heart/bell).

So for the recipe (which makes about 30 decent star shapes):
350g plain flour; 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda; 3 tsp ground ginger; 1 tsp cinnamon; 125g butter; 175g brown sugar; 1 egg; 4 tbsp golden syrup
Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon (or other spices) into a bowl. Add the butter and blend together until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.
Gently beat the egg and syrup together and add the the dry mix until combined. Tip the dough out and knead it until it had turned smooth. Wrap it in clingfilm and leave to chill for 15 minutes.
Roll out the dough to a £1 coin thickness and use cutters to cut out your gingerbread shapes. Place on a baking tray and bake for 12 minutes at 170 degrees. Transfer to a cooling rack once cooked so they can begin to harden.

marieke-cake

m a r i e k e - c a k e . . .
When I was much, much younger my family would have Dutch girls come and stay with us for a few months and they would work in the hospital in an admin job to improve their business English.

Marieke was the third Dutch girl who came to stay with us and her first gift to us was a round cake. I think it is usually called kruidkoek (in Holland) but we refer to it as Marieke Cake. I’m not entirely sure how a Marieke Cake was transported so safely all the way from Holland but it didn't lose any of the flavour in transit!

I was old enough to appreciate a ‘big sister type’ when Marieke came to stay with us. She loved Leonardo Di Caprio almost as much as I did. We sat in the front row of the cinema when Romeo and Juliet came out, swooned in unison, and when she went back to Holland she sent me a beautiful postcard of his face – which I instantly stuck to my mirror! She inspired a lot of my idiosyncrasies (I was clearly eager to be quirky from a young age), gave me some amazing advice and was just so cool.

Marieke Cake is my favourite cake to make. It’s low-ish fat (in cake terms), smells absolutely delicious before, during and after baking and is quite difficult to mess up! It’s now become something of a tradition whenever I go home I have to make a Marieke Cake for my best friend, Maryam, and her family (her dad eats most of it though!).

Marieke Cake - someone stole a cranberry!

So for the recipe:
250g self-raising flour; 250g brown sugar; 2 tsp mixed spice (mostly cinnamon & nutmeg); salt; 250ml milk; handful of raisins.
Mix everything together. Pour into a round tin and bake for about 30 - 35 minutes at Gas Mark 4 (or until a skewer comes out clean). Simples!


This cake has quite a 'bouncy' texture to it once it’s cooked and I think part of the joy of it is the hole in the middle - but this is optional of course!!
I made this at Christmas time for the office and even people who don't like dried fruit loved the cake!!