No bake caramel tart

This picture is fairly self-explanatory. This is heaven on a plate - that is all!

Ok, maybe a bit more explanation is needed is you'd like to sample the above bit of heaven.

I had a hankering for something sweet last night. The above is what I came up with after looking through the panty and the fridge. There are three ingredients used here - oat biscuits, mascarpone and dulce de leche caramel. No baking or cooking, just a bit of spooning and layering! I think it turned out rather well.

As a bit of background, my Mum makes the most amazing caramel tart. She always uses boiled canned condensed milk as her caramel, which for me is almost the most delicious thing in the world. It's a bit of a fiddle to boil the condensed milk, so, a few weeks ago when I walked past a Mexican grocery shop and saw they had 'dulce de leche' caramel in the window, I got a little excited. So in I popped and grabbed a few jars.

If you've never had dulce de leche, you need to try it. It is divine - a thick, sweet, vanilla-flavoured, proper caramel. I give a warning here - it is edible from the spoon. And I think it is nothing like that awful product sold in supermarkets that claims to be caramel - yuk. 

So, this little dessert was made up in 5 minutes and devoured by me soon after that. I loved the crunch of the biscuits, the sweetness of the caramel and the luscious cream. For me, it was the perfect combination and it really sorted out my sweet craving.

You can't make this in advance, it is assemble and eat immediately. Enjoy in moderation!

Eggplant and goat's cheese stack

Yes, I have a thing for eggplant. And yes, I have a real thing for goat's cheese. Combine them and I'm happy as a pig in you-know-what.

Look at this little stack of eggplant and goat's cheese. Isn't it pretty!

I used a variegated eggplant (white and purple stripes) so there was a little bit of extra colour, but the flavour was the same as a 'normal' purple eggplant. I made a tomato chilli jam to go onto the top, which was a little spicy, but really jazzed up the flavours of the other ingredients.

We had this with a grilled chicken breast and some salad. It was tasty and filling.

You could make this for a dinner party entree. I think it could be a real show-stopper when you bring it to the table. You could pre-grill the eggplant and keep it warm and also make the chilli jam beforehand, so this would be easy to quickly assemble.

Donna Hay's sweet potato wrapped in speck

Look at these little beauties. When I saw this recipe in the latest Donna Hay magazine (pp 123 Jun/July 2013 issue)  I knew I had to make it straight away. What a simple idea, but really wonderful.

If you can't buy speck (a type of prosciutto made from pork shoulder) use prosciutto.

Once cooked, the sweet potato becomes squishy and sweet, while the speck becomes crispy and imparts its salty flavour into the potato.

Great as a side dish served with chicken, beef or lamb. Or you could just make up a huge tray of these for a bbq or yummy finger food.

Braised pork with potatoes and fennel

When I was small, the smell of fresh fennel was highly disagreeable to me.

Actually, I still find the smell of the green, ferny bits of the fennel very overpowering. I think it must be the aniseed smell, not my favourite at all.

However, I always looked at recipes that used fennel and thought that it must be alright as people seem to eat it and like it.

I have had a conversion to fennel in the last few years. You may say I have seen the 'fennel light'. I now really like the fresh, crunchy, almost sweet flavour of this vegetable. I have been known to make a huge bowl of finely sliced fennel with a lemon dressing and gobble this up for lunch!

I have not done much 'cooking' with fennel, preferring to have it raw in salads etc, but in the colder weather of a few weeks back, I threw some fennel into the baking dish when I made this roasted pork shoulder. The result was lovely. The roast fennel became quite sweet, and the texture was lovely and soft, similar to roasted celery. And the juices from the fennel permeated the potatoes and the jus for the meat.

The little people ate it, which I was pleased about, although one asked, "Mum, what is this?"
To which I replied," It's fennel and it's great, eat it up." Can argue with that, can you!

Fresh peach, rocket and goat's cheese salad

It's high season for stone fruit at the moment. Peaches, plums, nectarines and cherries are in abundance.

It is a novelty for me to have these fruits in the middle of the year. In Australia, the stone fruit season is at Christmas time. When the first plums and cherries hit the shelves of the supermarket, you know that Christmas is not far away.

Walking into a fruit shop in summer in Australia, you are hit with the wonderful smell of ripe stone fruits and mangoes. And a Christmas lunch table in our house usually has a large bowl of yummy ripe stone fruit.

But in Austria, stone fruit heralds the start of the warmer weather; although this year it did take a little longer than usual for things to warm up.

Spring here brings the beautiful blooms of the soon-to-be fruit. It's almost as if the trees burst with happiness after the long, cold winter and say, 'soon you'll be warm and able to eat fresh fruit again!" The white and pale pink blossoms are one of my favourite things about spring here. Where we live in Australia we don't really have spring, so it is nice to experience it here.

Here is a simple salad recipe using ripe peaches, although nectarines would work equally well. A word of warning though, don't use really-ripe or over-ripe peaches for this recipe, as they will turn to mush when you try to remove the seed. Use fruit that is just soft.

Haloumi, avocado and lemon salad

Quite a few salads have been made in my kitchen lately.

Perhaps I am trying to encourage the weather to turn more 'summer-like' as we've had a lot of rain, wind and generally depressing 'Autumn-like' conditions for the past month.

This Haloumi salad is packed with lots of texture and strongly-flavoured ingredients. Instead of just squeezing some lemon juice over the top, I peeled the lemon, removed the seeds, sliced finely and then added this as an ingredient to the salad. If you think this may be too strong for you, just juice the lemon instead of using the flesh. And because the lemon flesh is in the salad, I only dressed this salad with olive oil and some salt and pepper. That's it.

Again, there's lots of texture here; the chewy and crunchy Haloumi, the squishy avocado, the tart lemon flesh and the fragrant fresh mint. I really liked this combination. And it is so 'summery' and pretty to look at too.

Serve as a side dish to roast chicken or seafood.

Falafel, lentil and celery salad

Quick and crunchy salad - chock full of texture and taste. This took 10 minutes to throw together. We had it with some simply-grilled pork steaks.

I love crunch and texture in food, especially in salads. The celery in this salad is super-crunchy, then there's the chewy falafel and the squishy lentils and ripe tomatoes.



I made a dressing with red wine vinegar, just because I really like it, but I think it really brings out the flavours of other ingredients. If you don't like the tartness of this type of vinegar, use plain white vinegar or cider vinegar, or add a little water to the dressing to reduce the tartness. Some lemon juice and olive oil would be good as a dressing too. This salad would also be great with some fresh parsley tossed through.

One pot Asian-poached chicken

I cooked this tasty poached chicken dish in one pot. No really, just one pot. 

I made the poaching liquid for the chicken, and as it was so tasty, I thought I'd throw the noodles into the pot to cook as well. Instead of being cooked in plain boiling water, the noodles took on the delicious flavour of the chicken and other poaching ingredients. The broccoli, I placed on the top of the chicken to steam towards the end of the cooking process. 

And there you have it, my one-pot poached chicken. I have written previously about the wonderful texture of poached chicken. I won't go on about it again, but if you've never tried to cook a chicken breast like this, give it a try.

Asian noodle salad

This Asian-flavoured noodle salad is perfect for a bbq or for when friends come over.        

You can make it in advance, even the night before, and it will stay fresh, and then it's just a bit of dressing at the end to finish it.

I like the slippery noodles and the other crunchy ingredients and of course the salty, sweet dressing. Yum!

I served this salad with some oven-baked pork belly pieces. The salad was a nice contrast of fresh flavours to the strongly-flavoured meat.

You could shred some cooked chicken or duck breast into this or even some cooked prawns, which I think would be really good. Or just serve it by itself if you prefer, but definitely with a cold beer.

Pork, scallop and asparagus stirfry

Thanks to my father-in-law, I've discovered a new ingredient - mung bean noodles. Also called cellophane noodles, mung bean threads or glass noodles, these noodles maintain their shape once cooked, are chewy and don't go mushy like rice noodles.

These noodles don't have any real flavour, so it's best to serve them with something tasty like this pork, scallop and asparagus stirfry.

Mung bean noodles take about 10 minutes to cook and are gluten free, if gluten is a problem for you. Use them in place of rice or pasta.

Pulled pork with oven-baked sauerkraut

I'm looking at this photo thinking 'it doesn't look like a very appetizing dish.' It might not look like much, but this was so tasty and satisfying.

This recipe is one for a chilly night, when you want some comfort-type food to warm you up.

The pork was juicy and the oven-baked sauerkraut, for me was almost heavenly. It was soft and delicious as it had absorbed all the juices from the pork, as well as the wine and stock.

This is my kind of comfort food!

Serve with some steamed broccoli or French beans.

Chicken and vegetable tray bake

This simple one-tray bake is a quick and easy family meal. It takes about 50 minutes to prepare and cook.
And you only use one tray for the cooking, so it also saves on the washing-up.

The juices of the ingredients combine to make to make a tasty sauce that you can spoon over the dish. And you can easily substitute your favourite vegetables or whatever veges are in the fridge into this dish too. For example, throw in some baby carrots, olives, capsicum, chunks of sweet potato or parsnip.

The trick to this dish is to place the ingredients that take longest to cook - such as the chicken and potatoes -  in first, so they have the longest cooking time. And then add the ingredients that take less time as you go along - such as the mushrooms and tomatoes. That way, all your ingredients will be perfectly cooked and ready to serve at the end of the cooking time.

Moroccan-spiced chickpeas, carrots and apricots

Here is a lovely, spicy dish or chickpeas, carrots and apricots. You could eat this dish by itself with some rice or fresh pita bread. Or serve it as a side dish with pork or chicken. Either way, the sweet, slightly tart apricots break down a little once cooked, and combined with the tomatoes, coat the other ingredients and make a wonderful, tasty sauce. The carrot pieces hold their shape, as do the chickpeas. And the pine nuts provide a nice crunch.  

This dish is spicy. If you don't like spicy food, or you are cooking for children, leave out the chilli.