So after Cherrie had been cooking practically non-stop from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals cookbook, I started watching the TV show and now want to cook everything from the cookbook.

This recipe goes with a salad and a dessert of frangipane tarts, but instead I made a banana cake (recipe to come) as I had some rather sad bananas in the fruit bowl.

The pasta itself is full of flavour, considering you are essentially making a ragu in 30 minutes, when they usually take hours to make. And let me tell you, this tastes even better the next day for leftovers!

To get the recipe for the tarts and salad that go with this pasta, head to : http://www.mydaily.co.uk/2010/10/19/jamie-olivers-30-minute-meals-jools-pregnant-pasta/

Jools’ Pregnant Pasta

Jamie Oliver

4 spring onions
1 carrot
1 stick of celery
1–2 fresh red chillies
1 x 6-pack of good-quality sausages
(approx. 400g)
1 heaped teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon dried oregano
500g dried penne
4 cloves of garlic
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
a few sprigs of Greek basil, or regular basil

1. Trim the spring onions, carrot and celery. Roughly chop all the vegetables, then blitz in the food processor with the chillies (stalks removed). Add the sausages, 1 heaped teaspoon of fennel seeds and 1 teaspoon of oregano. Keep pulsing until well mixed, then spoon this mixture into the hot frying pan with a lug of olive oil, breaking it up and stirring as you go. Keep checking on it and stirring while you get on with other jobs.
2. Put a large deep saucepan on a ow heat and fill with boiled water. Fill and reboil the kettle.
3. Top up the saucepan with more boiled water if needed. Season well then add the penne and cook according to packet instructions, with the lid askew.
4. Crush 4 unpeeled cloves of garlic into the sausage mixture and stir in 4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and the tinned tomatoes. Add a little of the starchy cooking water from the pasta to loosen if needed.
5. Drain the pasta, reserving about a wineglass worth of the cooking water. Tip the pasta into the pan of sauce and give it a gentle stir, adding enough of the cooking water to bring it to a silky consistency. Taste, correct the seasoning, then tip into a large serving bowl and take straight to the table with the rest of the Parmesan for grating over. Scatter over a few basil leaves.

Every time I watch a show that shows Singapore chilli crab, I salivate and dream I could be bothered cooking up crab at home. I found a cheaper, easier… most likely less authentic, but still super delicious and easy to make alternative.

I picked up a bag of frozen de-shelled prawns at Colonial Fruit Market the other day; I always keep ginger in the freezer in little pieces, and tinned tomatoes are a staple in the pantry. So really this is a dish I could whip up at a moment’s notice, and have an amazing meal.

I can’t stress how easy this was to make, and the cleaning up was basically nothing… which is always an added bonus.

I cracked in a couple of eggs at the end to make the dish a little more authentic, and for those who enjoy a bit of coriander, may I suggest, a generous scattering of it to top it off.

Singapore Chilli Prawns

Adapted from Superfood Ideas

1 tablespoon peanut oil
2cm piece fresh ginger, finely grated
400g can crushed tomatoes
1/3 cup sweet chilli sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
600g medium green king prawns, peeled, deveined
2 eggs, lightly beaten

To Serve:
4 cups steamed jasmine rice
Coriander (optional)

1. Heat a wok over medium-high heat. Add oil. Swirl to coat. Add ginger, tomato, sweet chilli sauce and fish sauce. Stir-fry for 2 minutes or until sauce boils and thickens slightly.
2. Add prawns. Stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes or until prawns are pink and cooked through.
3. Add beaten eggs and stir through for 1-2 minutes.
4. Serve with rice and scatterings of coriander.

Serves 4.

I’m trying to do as many recipes that I been gawking at for months, even years that involve the deliciousness of summer stone fruit. There are a few mango recipes that I’m afraid are going to have to wait until next season, as I’ve missed the boat.

For now I’m concentrating on peaches, nectarines and cherries. I <3 nectarines, and I <3 how well they go with bircher muesli.

Another easy recipe you can basically prepare the night before. A bowl of fresh stone fruit bircher muesli is a great start to any day!

Bircher Muesli with Stone Fruit

Bill Granger

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup apple juice
1 cup coarsely grated apple
½ cup natural yoghurt
juice of 1 lemon
½ cup sliced peaches & nectarines
¼ cup mixed berries
2 tablespoons honey

Place oats and apple juice in a bowl and soak for 1 hour, or overnight. Add grated apple, yoghurt & lemon juice to oat mixture & mix well. Spoon into serving bowls & top with fruit. Drizzle with honey.

Leave the yellow boxes at the supermarket! Once you try these, you won’t need the help of Mexican flavours that come in the yellow box.

You may choose to add some chilli if you need a bit of a kick. I went for the soft taco shells as every time we have the hard ones, they break as soon as you bite into them. Then you have taco filling dripping down your hands, and the taco eating experience has instantly gone from fun to fail. Recently Dad and I would just mush up the hard shells and mince and filling and have open tacos

This recipe didn’t say to serve with lettuce which I usually would. I thought I would miss it, but definitely didn’t. I think the mounds of coriander I put on mine made for a more refreshing tase.

Pork Tacos

BBC Good Food Magazine

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 brown onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
500g pork mince
1½ tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cumin
½ cup apple cider vinegar
400g tomato passata
Taco shells or soft tacos
1 tomato, chopped
1 small red onion, finely chopped
½ cup grated light tasty cheese
½ cup light sour cream
coriander sprigs, to serve

1. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan on medium. Add brown onion and cook for 5 mins, until softened. Add garlic and cook for 1 min, until fragrant. Increase heat to high, add pork mince and cook, stirring to break up any lumps, for 5 mins, until browned. Add brown sugar and cumin and cook for 1 min, until fragrant. Add vinegar and simmer  for 3-4 minutes, until reduced.
2. Stir through passata and simmer for 10 minutes until liquid reduces and thickens.
3. Serve pork with taco shells, chopped tomato, red onion, cheese, sour cream and coriander.

Serves 4.

So it would seem that when they published this recipe on the BBC Good Food Website, and the BBC Good Food magazine, a few things didn’t match up. I cooked from a magazine rip out, and we found this dish had WAY too much cinnamon, yet when I went searching for the recipe online, the cinnamon quantity was halved.

So if you would like to make this dish, I suggest using the recipe below as it’s from the website, with reduced quantities of the ingredients we found too overpowering.

Piri Piri Pork with Mustard Coleslaw

Olive Magazine

2 pork loin steaks or chops
fat oven chips , to serve (optional)

Piri Piri Marinade
2 red chillies, chopped
1 lime, juiced
1 garlic clove, crushed
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp peanut or vegetable oil

Coleslaw
4 carrots, grated
½ small white cabbage, shredded
½ red onion, finely sliced
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard

1. Put the chops in a freezer bag or shallow dish with the marinade and smush everything together. You can leave for up to an hour but 15 minutes will be enough.
2. Mix all the coleslaw ingredients in a big bowl. Leave for 20minutes, mixing now and again so the dressing is completelycovering everything. This will make more coleslaw than you need for two, but it’s worth making a big batch as the ingredients areso cheap and it will keep for a few days in the fridge.
3. Heat the grill to medium high. Grill the chops for 4 minutes eachside, leaving as much marinade as possible. The chops should bejust golden and charred on the edges but still juicy. Leave them to rest under foil for a few minutes after grilling. Serve the chopswith the coleslaw and a handful of fat chips if you like.

Today Iron Chef Shellie turns 4!

It’s been another amazing year to be a food blogger. Making lots of new friends, I finally got up to Sydney to gorge myself on Zumbo treaties and there was even a trip to New Zealand!

I hope you have enjoyed reading, and I hope we can share many more delicious posts together

My slice didn’t turn out as pretty as the book, but that’s because the tin I used was smaller. It still tasted delicious though!

Peach & Raspberry Slice

Bill Granger

185g (6.5 oz or 1.5 cups) plain (all purpose flour)
1.5 teaspoons baking powder, plus an extra ½ teaspoon extra
125g (4.5 oz) butter, chilled and diced
115g (4 oz or ½ cup) soft brown sugar
115g (4 oz or ½ cup) caster (superfine) sugar
3 ripe peaches, peeled and sliced into wedges
90g (3.25 oz or ¾ cup) raspberries – fresh or frozen
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 egg, lightly beaten
185ml (6 fl oz or 0.¾ cup) milk

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF/Gas 4). Grease and line the base of a 20x30cm (8x12in) baking tray. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and then rub in the butter with your fingertips. Stir in both the sugars. Press half the mixture over the base of the tin. Lay the peaches over the top and sprinkle with raspberries.

Add the vanilla extract, extra baking powder, egg and milk to the rest of the base mixture and stir well – don’t worry too much about lumps. Pour evenly over the top of the peaches and raspberries and bake for 1 hour. Cool in the tray and then cut into squares to serve.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Traditional new year biscuits are very tedious to make, and pineapple tarts are no exception. I usually help my mum make peanut cookies, or she will make kueh bangkit, and my aunty will make kuih kapit which I learnt to make last year.

Pineapple tarts are one of my favourites, and I always looked forward to someone bringing them back from Malaysia. I tried buying them at the Asian grocer in Melbourne one year, and there was barely any filling, and they didn’t taste good. So this year, I decided to give them a go myself. I ended up making two batched using different recipes.

The most successful batch was using Bryan’s recipe. It uses fresh pineapple instead of tinned, which gives for a more juicer and better filling. The first batch I made was using tinned pineapple and a different recipe and I can promise, although grating fresh pineapple is a lot of work, it is well worth the effort. Plus you get fresh, additive free pineapple juice to keep you going whilst making the tarts!

Mum picked me up the tart mould a few years ago when she was in Malaysia, but if you don’t have a mould, you can make the pillow shaped cookies.

• Billy has a great video on his blog that helped me to shape me!
• I can vouch that Bryan’s recipe is a keeper
• For great pastry handling tips head to The Little Teochew’s blog

Oh no! Look who found the cookies!!

January is a busy month; Chinese New Year, Australia Day, Blog’s Birthday & Hamsley’s Birthday (and my lovely friend Katie’s Birthday!!). So you will be getting a range of everything this month.

I had this recipe in the ‘to try’ pile for a while now and finally decided it was time to give it a go. Well, let me just say, I had fun learning this new crimping pattern, and found it all rather soothing as I was zen and in the zone, but was rather disappointed with the taste. I found the Chinese 5-spice and coriander too over powering.

Does anyone have an awesome dumpling recipe they can share?!

What are your favourite fillings?

Chicken & Shiitake Dumplings

Chrissy Freer

3 dried shiitake mushrooms (see note)
250g chicken mince
3 spring onions, white part only, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tsp grated ginger
2 tbs finely chopped coriander
1/2 tsp Chinese five-spice
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp honey25 round wonton wrappers

Thanks to Christina from The Hungry Australian for hosting this month’s Sweet Blog Hop. With the theme being ‘Death by Chocolate’, this one was right up my alley… but what to make?!

My friend Katie had her birthday on Saturday, and we were some of the surprise guests at her birthday dinner she thought only her family was going to. To top things off, I made a cake and got the restaurant staff to bring it out and surprise her yet again! I forgot to take photos of the cake before as it was meant to be my entry for the blog hop. Luckily we brought home two slices and one was good enough to photograph. Thank goodness, because I didn’t want to make anything chocolatey again for my hips sake!!

Luckily this cake was a big hit with the birthday crowd, and who doesn’t like the fun that hundreds and thousands bring! Happy Birthday again Katie!

Chocolate Fudge Cake

James Martin

200g milk chocolate
200g butter
200g brown sugar
100ml soured cream
2 eggs , beaten
200g self-raising flour
5 tbsp cocoa powder
hundreds and thousands , to decorate

Chocolate Icing
100g milk chocolate
1/2 a 395g can condensed milk
100g butter

1. Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Line a 22 x 22cm square tin with baking parchment. Put the chocolate, butter and sugar into a large pan with 100ml hot water and gently melt together. Set aside for 2 mins, then stir in the soured cream followed by the eggs. Finally, stir or whisk in the flour and cocoa until lump-free, then pour into the prepared tin. Bake for 50-55 mins until a skewer comes out clean. Sit the tin on a wire rack to cool.
2. Meanwhile, make the icing. Gently melt together icing ingredients in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, then chill or cool until spreadable.
3. To decorate, carefully turn out the cooled cake and peel off the baking parchment. Spread the icing over the top and scatter with hundreds and thousands, then cut the cake into triangles or fingers before serving.

This is seriously the easiest, most tastiest dinner or lunch option you must try!!

You basically do all the prep the day before, then just cook chicken, put it all in a roll and BAM! You have the best meal ever. I’ve included the full recipe below, but I left out the cucumber, and I also left out the chilli and coriander for Hamsley. I went for all the chilli and coriander and it was amazing. The sourness of the pickled carrot, against the juicy caramelised chicken, all in a crispy roll…. I’m drooling at the thought of it. I’m totally making this again this week.

Since I’m obsessed with Vietnamese food lately, I have a few different Banh Mi recipes to try. They are usually served with paté or cold meats, but this is a really tasty alternative.

Banh Mi (Vietnamese Chicken Rolls)

Jill Dupleix

1 Lebanese cucumber
1 cup (250ml) rice vinegar
1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar
1 carrot
2 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs peanut oil
1 tbs honey
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
500g chicken thigh fillets, trimmed
1 baguette, cut into 4, or 4 soft long rolls
1 tbs reduced-fat whole-egg mayonnaise
4 soft butter lettuce leaves, torn
1 tbs pickled jalapeno peppers (optional)
1 tbs Sriracha hot sauce
Few sprigs of fresh coriander

1. Use a peeler to shave the cucumber into ribbons, then toss in a bowl with 1 tsp salt and stand for 1 hour.
2. Heat the rice vinegar and sugar in a small pan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, then cool.
3. Shave carrot lengthways into ribbons with a vegetable peeler, then cut into fine matchsticks. Add carrot, cucumber and their juices to the vinegar mixture and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight.
4. Mix the soy sauce, peanut oil, honey and garlic together, then coat the chicken in the soy marinade and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.
5. Heat a lightly oiled chargrill pan or barbecue to medium heat and cook the chicken for 5 minutes each side or until caramel brown and cooked through. Thickly slice.
6. Split rolls, then lightly grill the cut side for 20 seconds to warm them.
7. Drain the pickled carrot and cucumber.
8. To serve, lightly spread rolls with mayonnaise, then fill with lettuce, chicken, cucumber, jalapenos (if using), carrot, chilli sauce and coriander.

Serves 4