Crumbed prawns

My little boy really likes prawns.

Anytime we see prawns in a shop or on a menu, he wants them. We were shopping a few days ago, and he spotted a packet of frozen prawns in the freezer section of the supermarket, so in the trolley they went.

It is summer here, so stone fruit season is in full swing. We had the most beautiful, sweet nectarines in the fruit bowl.

The man of the house suggested I use some of the nectarines and make something a bit different so we could all enjoy this fruit.

So, prawns for the boy and nectarines for the man. What to do? How about coconut-crumbed prawns with a fresh nectarine and avocado salsa? This was so, so yummy to eat. The combination of the crunchy prawns and the soft, sweet nectarines and squishy avocadoes was wonderful. Really fabulous textures and flavours in this recipe.

This would be a real crowd-pleaser to serve as an entree for a dinner party. It was a definite crowd-pleaser for my family as a mid-week dinner. I served this with some fresh bread and a tomato basil mix, goat's cheese and a green salad. And I think I satisfied the boy's prawn craving and the man's nectarine wish.

What you'll need

*Served four as a part of a dinner with salad, cheese and bread

For the prawns
250g prawns - I used cooked, frozen king prawns with the tail removed. You could also do this with green prawns with a tail on.
1 cup fine bread crumbs
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup plain flour
3 cups vegetable oil (for frying the prawns)

For the nectarine salsa recipe, click here.

    

     

What to do

Defrost the prawns, drain off any excess water and dry off on some paper towel.

Prepare three medium-sized bowls; one with the flour, one with the egg and milk mixed together, one with the crumbs and coconut mixed together.

Coat each prawn with the flour, then the egg mixture, then into the crumbs. I used a pair of chop sticks in each bowl for this step so I didn't have to get my fingers all mucky.

Place the crumbed prawns on a clean plate and leave in the fridge until ready to cook them.

When ready to cook, heat two pans and pour half the oil into each. When the oil is hot (you can check by pinching off a little of the crumb from one the the prawns and placing it in the oil to see if it bubbles and goes brown) place the prawns as quickly as possible into the oil to cook. Once light brown on one side, turn and cook on the other side. This process should take about five minutes.

Once cooked, remove from the oil and place on a plate lined with lots of paper towel. Sprinkle with a little salt and serve while hot with the nectarine salsa or just with a simple squeeze of lemon or lime.

Nectarine and avocado salsa

It is high summer in Austria, so stone fruit is at its best right now. This is a little strange for me, as stone fruit season in Australia is Christmas time. No sign of Christmas in the shops yet, but I am sure it won't be long.

It is amazing to walk into a shop or supermarket and all you can smell is peaches, nectarines and apricots. There are also lovely plums and cherries and local strawberries. We are eating lots of this fruit; itis plentiful and inexpensive right now.


I did find some rather special nectarines during the week. They were really big, smelled wonderful and just ready for eating. The man of the house suggested we use one of the nectarines in the dinner that night, so I made up this little salsa with avocado, some fresh mint and a squeeze of lime.

This complimented the crumbed prawns I served it with very well; the sweet juiciness of the nectarine, the squishy avocado and the tangy lime offset the crunchy prawns.

I know that there aren't any fresh nectarines (or any stone fruit) right now in Australia, but you could make this with tinned peaches or apricots. Just drain the juice and chop and you'll have a little taste of summer in your mouth with this lovely salsa!

You could serve this salsa with any type of seafood; grilled scallops would be fabulous, grilled fish or grilled chicken.

What you'll need

*Serves four as an accompaniment to the crumbed prawns.

1 ripe nectarine, stone removed, and roughly chopped.
Half an ripe avocado, roughly chopped
Juice of half a lime
Handful of fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
1 tbl olive oil
1 dsp rice white vinegar (or plain white vinegar)
Salt and pepper

What to do

Combine the chopped nectarine and avocado in a bowl.

Gently mix in the other ingredients (don't mix it too much otherwise the avocado will turn to mush and it won't look very nice).

Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Upside-down banana cake

Serious yummy cake alert!

This was a 'spur of the moment' cake baking, as I had four over-ripe bananas in the fruit bowl that needed to be used.

We had a play in the park planned with school friends so I thought a cake might be something nice to take along to share.

Banana cakes are not as common here in Austria as they are in Australia, but I made one anyway.

This cake has a slight twist, in that the banana isn't actually in the cake, but is on top. But the flavour permeates all the way through in this recipe, and in my opinion, any cake with banana in it is a winner.

I will freely admit that I am not a cake baker. I am not a precise cook; I prefer to add a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And cakes don't take too kindly to adding a bit of this and that. Generally cakes may refuse to rise or be rather dry and inedible, which I don't take too kindly too!

The other thing about baking cakes is that when you make a cake, it has to be eaten. I don't like to give the little people too many cakes and sweet things, even if it is homemade, and the man of the house doesn't eat much cake, so that leaves me, and my waist-line doesn't take too kindly to that. Maybe I need a few more kids in the house, then problem solved.

Back to the banana cake though. I found a recipe for upside down banana muffins, but I didn't want to make muffins, so I adjusted the recipe to make this cake. It was very much enjoyed at the park, and enjoyed at home and in the kindy lunchbox. I cooked this cake one afternoon, and ate it the next day, and it is still lovely and moist two days later.

You could serve this warm as a dessert-type cake with icecream or cream, or as a 'normal' cake cut into slices. This would also work well baked in a loaf tin, although you would half the quantity of the mixture.

In a first for me, I used vanilla seeds straight from the pod. I'm not sure this added anything special to the taste of the cake, but it was what I had - no vanilla essence to be found in the local supermarkets. The smell of the pods was wonderful and very different to usual bottle of vanilla I have in the cupboard.

What you'll need

* Serves 20 - 24 medium pieces of cake.

4 small ripe bananas - thinly sliced
170g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup cater sugar
2 eggs
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence (or seeds scraped from half a vanilla pod)

What to do

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Melt half the butter and the brown sugar in a saucepan over low heat. Once combined and melted, remove from the heat. Line a 30cm x 20cm cake tin (approx size) with baking paper. Pour the sugar and butter mixture into the bottom of the cake tin, then layer the sliced banana on top. Set aside.

Make the cake batter.

Cream the remainder of the butter and caster sugar together with an electric mixer until pale and thick. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after adding each.

Sift in the flour, cinnamon and baking powder. Then stir in the milk and vanilla. Mix until just combined.

Spoon very carefully over the banana and smooth out the top.

Bake for approximately 35 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes away clean.

You can leave this to cool for 10 minutes then turn out and serve immediately while still warm. It would be lovely with vanilla icecream or cream.

Alternatively, turn it out onto a platter after 10 minutes let cool for half and hour, then store in an air-proof container until the next day.

* I was not very careful when I poured the batter into the cake tin over the bananas; dumping it all into the middle of the pan. As a result, all the banana shifted to the outside of the cake. This made the outside bits of cake deliciously gooey, but I thought the inside bits needed something extra, so I whipped up some lime and coconut icing for these bits of cake.

Quesadillas

Here is an easy, quick and healthy lunch or dinner for the whole family.

Quesadillas - basically a Mexican version of a toasted sandwich - is super-quick to make with a few ingredients from the pantry and fridge.

I like to keep a packet of tortillas in the pantry; it is a great ingredient for emergency late dinners and snacks, and even for the school lunchbox.

There have been times on a Sunday evening, realising that I have no bread in the house, that a packet of tortillas has been a life-saver!

Today we ate ours around the coffee table while watching very fit people run fast at the Olympics. Almost made me want to go for a jog - almost!

I made my quesadillas with a ham and cheese filling, but you could many other combinations such as left-over taco mince and cheese, sliced chicken breast, cheese and tomato, vegetarian with grilled eggplant, zucchini and capsicum and some feta. Enjoy experimenting with your favourite combinations.

What you'll need

*Makes 4 quesadillas, which you can then slice into quarters or eights. This is enough for 3 or 4 people for lunch.

1 packet medium tortillas, containing 8 tortillas
150g grated cheese - I used Gouda
12 slices ham - I used three slices on each quesadilla

1 ripe avocado
100g natural yogurt or sour cream
Salt and pepper


What to do

Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat.

You do not need any oil in the pan as you are only toasting the tortillas.

Place one tortilla on the base of the pan. Working quickly, sprinkle a handful of cheese onto the tortilla and spread to the edges evenly. Place three ham slices onto the cheese, making sure that the ham covers the cheese and covers to the edge if possible. Place another tortilla on the top and squish the it all together with an egg flip.

Cook for one or two minutes, then flip it over and cook for the same on the other side. Be careful not to leave it too long, otherwise it will be rather brown!

Remove from the pan, and cut into slices with a shape knife. Serve immediately while it is still crunchy and hot.

Repeat with the other ingredients, serving them immediately. You can ask the little people of the house to act as 'quesadilla runners' to and from the kitchen.

Serve with mashed avocado, simply seasoned with a little salt and pepper, and a dish of sour cream.

Strawberry tart

I am also naming this recipe 'cheater's tart' as it is so easy to make with a few store-bought ingredients.

No baking, just a bit of mixing and chopping and that's it. The tart looks rather impressive, and you can make it in 10 minutes! This is my kind of recipe.

We took this tart to a friend's BBQ. It was lovely to sit outside in the twilight and eat it with a cold glass of Prosecco and great company.

Strawberries are good here now, so we are making the most of eating them up before the season is over, although when I buy a punnet, I do have to hide it in the fridge, as if I leave them on the kitchen bench they are all gone within half an hour!

What you'll need

*Makes 8 to 10 generous serves

1 store-bought 20cm tart base
500g yogurt 'topfennockerl'. (*See note)
200g mascapone cheese
500g ripe strawberries, leaves and stalks removed

*Topfennockerl is a thick, sweet yogurt product. Substitute with thick, natural Greek yogurt, sweetened with honey or icing sugar. You do not have to sweeten it too much as the sweet strawberries will provide natural sugar.

What to do

Mix the mascapone and yogurt together in a bowl until smooth. Taste and sweeten as desired with honey or icing sugar.


Place the cake base onto a cake board or flat plate. Spoon the yogurt mixture onto the tart base and smooth it to the edges with a spoon or spatula.

Place the strawberries, cut side down, starting in the middle of the cake. Work in a circular pattern, until you reach the outside edge of the cake and the yogurt is mostly covered.

To serve, slice with a very sharp knife. Eat with a glass of cold Prosecco or a hot cup of tea.

  

Pork, eggplant, cashew and lime stirfry

This dish was a flavour hit!

The lime, herbs, fish sauce and the subtle hit of chilli was such a great combination. And the textures is this dish were also wonderful; the crunch of the nuts and herbs, the squishy eggplant and the spongy noodles to soak up the sauce.

I really enjoyed eating this, in case you couldn't tell!

Once you have chopped all the ingredients, this dish is quite quick to make too.

I served this with rice vermicelli. Usually I would serve rice, but we have eaten rice for the past few nights, so I wanted to do something different.

The noodles were actually really nice, and much easier to pick up with chopsticks than rice is!

What you'll need

* Serves four with a little leftover

500g pork steaks or fillet, sliced into strips the width of your little finger
100g roasted cashew nuts, roughly chopped
1/2 red or yellow capsicum, de-seeded and finely diced
2 spring onions  or eschallots, finely chopped
5cm chunk of ginger, peeled and very finely sliced (or you can grate it of you prefer)
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 medium red chillis, finely chopped (or you can add more if you like it spicier)
1 medium eggplant, peeled and finely diced
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
Juice and zest of 3 limes
1/4 cup each of fresh mint and basil, roughly chopped
3 tbs vegetable oil

Rice noodles or plain rice to serve

What to do

Heat a pan over high heat with one tbs of the oil, until smoking.

In batches, cook the meat, stirring to make sure it is evenly browned. This should take about two minutes per batch. Reheat the pan in between each batch to ensure it is really hot. Set the meat aside in a bowl.

Add one more tablespoon of oil to the pan and reheat again. Add the eggplant and saute for five minutes until softened. Add the capsicum and cook for a further two minutes. Set aside in a bowl.

Add the rest of the oil to the pan and reheat. Add the spring onion, nuts, chilli, ginger and garlic to the pan and stirfry for three minutes.

Add the eggplant mix and stir, then add the meat. Mix well, then remove from the heat. Add the lime juice, and sauces and mix well.

Serve immediately with the noodles or rice, sprinkling the zest and herbs on the top.

Love, love, love this recipe. Really tasty, strong flavours and not too heavy in the tummy afterwards!