Secret Family Cheesecake

This is known at home as either 'Charlene's Cheesecake' (after my cousin Charlene. My Aunt Marlene made this for Charlene's christening and mum grabbed the recipe...)... although in reality it's just called 'Cheesecake, Cheesecake, Cheesecake' by a chanting family...

Now this is a secret family recipe, so I cannot divulge the ingredients or process.  I can say that in making it, I learned how to properly separate egg yolks, make meringue, use a double boiler, and make a mess out of pretty much every pot and pan in the kitchen! Took about 90 minutes to make too, so a very intense recipe...


So, if I make you Cheesecake, you'd better enjoy it! ha!

Bobutti

 Made this with my Dad last weekend.

Still waiting on the recipe from him. Basically it's a southern african curry with lots of dried fruits in it - super yummy.

For now I'll just post photos.

Rombauer Port

Excellent!!

Very sweet, blackberry and cherry flavours, but not so strong that you can't enjoy a full glass or two!

Thanks to Reesa for the tasting - she purchased the bottle on our 2007 trip to San Fransisco and saved it for a special occasion.... congratz on buying a place Rees!!

Tinhorn Creek 2005 Merlot

Had that last night with some sausage rolls while watching Planet Earth with the parental units.

Straight out the bottle, for the taste test, I was worried it had gone a bit 'over the top' - slight vinegar aftertaste.

However after letting it breathe a bit, it was just fine.  Now I'm terrible at describing red wines, but it had no tannons, which I was happy about, as I don't like it when my red wine 'dries out' my mouth.  It wasn't very 'heavy' or anything - it was pretty much exactly how I like my red wines - good flavour, smooth, but not overly heavy, or overly watery.

Fingers crossed as I type up about wine, I'll be come a bit more knowledgeable about it all, and at the very least develop some kind of consistent language so you know what I'm talking about!!!

Frightfully bad

I am frightfully bad at keeping up with my cooking it seems.

I shall try cook something tomorrow.

In other news, my Uncle suggested I start adding the wine's I drink and enjoy (or not) to my blog, for added... fun? 

So expect to see the odd wine review on here as well. If I remember to photograph bottles, I shall do that too.

Sorry to be so cooking-boring! :)

The Return of Chef Lolls!

I'm baaaack....

And I'm trying to perfect some of my favourites. Today's attempt was some Hummus, using a recipe from a book I purchased in England - see photo. However, as usual, when I followed their instructions, I wasn't happy with the outcome, so I then improvised.

Simple Hummus
Ingredients:
19oz can Chick Peas
5 Tbsp Tahini paste
1.5 Tbsp lemon juice
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tbsp water

3 Tbsp olive oil
3 shakes of cayenne pepper
2 shakes black pepper


Method:
Drain chick peas. Blend in blender until nice and smooth. Add tahinni, then garlic and lemon juice. Blend. Add water, then olive oil. More blending. Add cayenne and black pepper. Still more blending.

The original recipe was for a 14oz can, and I had a large one, so I just up converted. However the results were a bit off - I should only use 3 cloves of garlic, and definitely need at least 3 Tbsp of olive oil.

I served it with some cut up baguette, baby tomatoes (from my Dad's garden - yum!), cucumber and carrots. I think this was a good mix of flavours and textures, and did help disguise the strong garlic bite. If you like garlic, definitely keep the 4 cloves, but if you want to interact with humans within the next 24 hours, I'd say only do a max of 3.....

incinerator plate

So I am not having much time to do inventive cooking because I'm working around 10 or 11 hours a day, plus another 2 hours of commuting.. when I get home it's 9pm and I just want a quick meal, so in goes a microwave dinner...

However this past weekend I did try cook... and I learned some valuable lessons. 1) my 'hot plate' is an incinerator plate (technically I already knew this, but now it is confirmed). 2) you can't boil rice in soup. Or at least not 'cream of chicken' soup. I was going for a psuedo rissoto thing... in my mind it was going to be fantastic... but it just didn't work and I created an epic burned up mess.

No photos, sorry.

Perhaps this weekend I'll do something successful, like a stirfry or something. Otherwise me and the microwave will continue to be best friends.