Gnocchi

Hello, I'm back....maybe....

About two weeks ago I made gnocchi for the first time in my life. Today I thought I would improve on my first performance and make some to put in the freezer.

The ingredients couldn't be simpler

Potatoes (desiree)
Plain flour
Salt
1 egg

Today I used about 8 potatoes. Boil them until they are cooked through (I peel them before boiling, and add the salt to the water). Strain and then put them through a potato press. While the potatoes are still warm add the egg and integrate to the potatoes (use your hand). Then slowly add plain flour by the hand full until the mixture forms a dough that you can start to manipulate and its not too sticky. Be careful not to add too much flour. The softer the dough the lighter the gnocchi.

Break off small chunks of the dough and roll into long logs/strips, and cut into short pieces (about 2 or 3 cms long). Repeating until the dough is finished. Then each piece of dough has to be pressed/rolled into gnocchi board (use a fork if you don't have one). This bit takes a bit of practice.





Enjoy!

Granny Smith Green

I love the colour green. So for a long time I've known exactly how I would renovate my bathroom.

After four long long months, the bathroom and toilet renovations are finally complete. For the last 6 weeks I had only really been waiting for the vanity top to be made and installed. It finally went in on Tuesday, so I took a few photos to mark the occasion. It will probably never be this clean again.

Having designed it all myself, with advice from my builder along the way, this is the end result. I made a couple of mistakes that I won't highlight to you..but overall I am really pleased.









PS your eyes don't betray you - there is no door to the shower.

Lemon Curd

Well it's been a while between drinks, and I must say I thought this blog had died. But I've been off work a few days now, I've had some quiet time, and bugger me if I haven't had a couple of opportunities to get back into the kitchen. Not dead yet! And I needed somewhere to store this recipe.

Lemons have been falling off my tree, and unfortunately a lot of them have just ended up in the bin, but tonight I made some lemon curd as I'm on the hunt for the perfect lemon curd recipe. I posted one to this site back in July this year when I made some lemon cupcakes, but I think the method was a bit strange - you had to add the egg after the mixture had already been on the heat which I didn't like.

The following recipe is based on the recipe from the television show MasterChef. I had tried it once before and thought it was pretty good, but tonight I adapted it further myself. I think it's better now!

You will need:

3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
3/4s cup caster sugar
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 3 lemons (or 4 if they're small)
125gm butter, chopped

Mix the egg and sugar together until dissolved (I used the stand mixer). Add the zest, mix further. Add the juice and mix again.

Transfer mixture to a saucepan and add the butter. Stir over medium/low heat until the mixture starts to bubble and thicken.

Triple 6

Today is the 6th October. Nothing unusual about that. Except, for my family, this is a very unusual date. I have four brothers and no sisters. Three out of my four brothers have partners. The phenomena of this day is that all of my sisters-in-law share their birthday on this day. Yep, every single one of them was born on the 6th October.

Apparently the odds of that are something like 1 in 48 million....



(Jenna wasn't born on the 6th October - she just has to blow out the candles.)

Ten little fingers, ten little toes

There is a new addition to the family. Marisa, my brand new niece arrived 10.40 last night. Mum and baby doing well, and she is just gorgeous. Auntie Nina very excited.



I love you already Marisa!

Out with the old

My blog posts are definitely getting few and far between these days. Work is all consuming and just too demanding at the moment. Tomorrow morning I am off to Melbourne for a week after just having got back from Sydney, and Melbourne the week before that. Hopefully it will all be over soon and I can get back to doing stuff I really want to do, like baking. However, if this blog is still alive by the end of the year I will be very surprised. Let's wait and see...

Tomorrow also sees the beginning of my bathroom renovations, so this post is to show you the 'before' shots of my bathroom before it gets demolished tomorrow. I arranged for the work to start when I won't be home so that a) I don't have to worry about where to have a shower, and b) so I don't have to come home from work and see the mess created.

I am very excited about what the bathroom will look like when completed, but I am afraid that it will not be finished for weeks. I don't even want to think about it. Anyway, for now I will focus on the fact that I don't have to look at the ugliest green tiles I think I have ever seen, ever again. See for yourself.

Ramona was a waitress

I never used to be a fan of the Ausie band "Something for Kate" but now, years later, I can't seem to get enough of the lead singer Paul Dempsey's voice. He has gone out on his own and released a solo album. Here's one of the songs from the album: