Chahan Induced Nostalgia

On the 20th of December it was exactly one year since I left Japan. It's a bit sad not being able to think "this time last year I was..." I've had to move onto "this time two years ago..." Which can be weird, I cant believe it was so long ago, all the memories still feel so recent. One of the hardest things is seeing what my friends still in Japan are up to, statuses from friends all over Japan are starting to talk about snow, and it's making me think of two years ago (eek) when I had just returned back from Japan after being home for the holidays, waking up, opening my windows and seeing this!!

It isn't much for normal northern hemisphere people, but damn, I very near wet myself! The first problem I had with the snow (which I only saw twice in my entire 18 months in Japan) was what footwear to use! I was so perplexed, I had never thought of it before! About five minutes before leaving for work I looked at my little plastic shoes and thought "well that's not gonna work at all," then looked over at my ug boots and thought "yes, brilliant, brilliant idea Michelle, you GENIUS." After much stomping, slipping and giggling I started to realise that the non waterproof super absorbent footwear was not a great choice... But I'm Australian, how on earth was I meant to know??

Next snow day I fought fellow cold footed shoppers and got me some gumboots, only to find that by the time I had finished work the snow had not only stopped falling, but it had melted as well. Ah, Tokyo winter. Snow--melt--gone. Here's the slushy stage!

So yes, with these memories and many others, I've turned to cooking foods that remind me of my time in Japan, some may say I'm torturing myself, but I like to think I'm just being nostalgic. Please enjoy the first of many Japanese recipes to come, I know I will!

Vegetable ingredients looking like a dog hiding in the bushes...

Vegetables added while the meat is still cooking, I did what I was told, but it scared me and I just don't think I'll do it again. I've got a mad fear of salmonella poisoning going and yeah, the vegetables were pretty damn overcooked before I was convinced the pork was done.

Cooked Japanese rice added, all coming together, just one more ingredient...

A nice cold bottle of Sapporo! My beer of choice while Izakaya hopping in Japan was Asahi, but I do enjoy a good Sapporo, I've never been, but I really do think that this is what Hokkaido would taste like, I recommend!

Missing you always Japan, even though sometimes you can be scarily cold, I'll always love you!

Chahan (Japanese Fried Rice)

By Brooke from Take it and Like it

• 1 tbsp canola oil
• 1 carrot (The recipe says it can be chopped but they grated it, I thought this was a great idea, I don't think I would appreciate crunchy carrot in this, but if you would, go nuts!)
• 3 shallots
• 60g chopped cooked pork (I don't like chopping meat so I bought stirfry pork and ended up with huge pieces of pork all the way through, would not recommend, next time I think I'm just gonna have to man up and get meat juice all over my hands.)
• 1/2 tbsp grated fresh ginger (Woolies ran out of ginger. I know, nuts, so I had to use tube ginger, not as strong but still good, i GUESS, *sulky face*)
• 2 cups cooked Japanese rice
• 1 tbsp sake or mirin (I used mirin)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 eggs
• handful of chopped greens (I got a packet of mixed rocket and baby spinach from the fruit and vege section)

1. Heat the oil over medium heat. Add any ingredients that need to cook first - I put the carrot, green onions and pork in now, and because I had shredded the carrot instead of chopping it this only required 1-2 minutes of cooking time.
2. Stir in the ginger then add the cooked rice. Break the eggs on top of the rice and quickly mix everything around so the rice grains are coated with the uncooked egg.
3. Add the sake & soy sauce then the greens, and serve.
4. You definitely want to move fast when making this; if you let the eggs overcook it tends to be a bit too dry. Remember, the heat from the rice will keep cooking the eggs while you're plating it.

Queen of Kitchens, Thy Name is Nigella.

Forgive me Nigella for I have sinned. The first time I met you (ie saw you on an ad for tea) I thought you were snobby and full of yourself, swanning round, smirking about drinking tea in bed. But oh how I was mistaken, the shame I feel for ever judging you is immense. I now harbour no ill feelings towards you, only feelings of wanting to be you. I know it was Austar that decided to put on a weekend marathon of your wonderful show, but I like to think you had something to do with it, a chef-like angel swooping into my loungeroom and opening my eyes to your brilliance. Thankyou, I will be forever grateful. In return, I shall buy all your cookbooks (as my bank account permits) and not let anyone say anything bad about your big bottom. One of the big things I miss about being home (along with being with family etc etc) are the Austar marathons. 72 hours of Will and Grace? Yes please! Mind numbing amounts of Friends? Don't mind if I do! 100 episodes of Girls of the Playboy Mansion? I shouldn't... but okay! This past New Year long weekend I was flicking around trying to find a marathon I could commit to, when I stumbled upon the food network. I saw Nigella, and she wasn't talking about tea, so I was intrigued. I was instantly drawn in by her adjective and simile filled descriptions of food. Who knew cheese could be voluptuous? I sure didn't, but I'm so glad that I do now. The real clincher I think though was her statement that burning your tongue while taste testing your dinner is a "tragedy." Something that I have always felt, but never been able to put into (such melodramatic) words. As I watched I frantically wrote down especially amazing recipes (very near all of them), missing steps and measurements as I went, being crushed when I had to pop to the shops and missed an entire episode. Since then I've missed Nigella, I wish every day were Nigella marathon day. But then yesterday I discovered that my favourite of the Nigella shows (Nigella Express) is a book! AND it has all of the recipes I hastily wrote down, and so so so many more! Instant buy. Instant sitting on my front veranda with my bird and reading it all the way through. It is honestly just the best cookbook that has ever happened to me; the intros, the methods, everything, you can just hear Nigella saying it all. "Place the potatoes in a freezer bag and hit them with a rolling pin." I love that she can sound all fancy British yet still be the kind of person that beats potatoes with a rolling pin. So please buy it, if not for me, for Nigella and her neverending list of adjectives. Or you could just sit around and wait for me to make everything in the book, which is totally going to happen. Number one: Doughnut French Toast. Nobel Peace Prize material, seriously, no one can fight when they have Donut French Toast in their lives.

First few stages - not looking so appetizing, but oh, just you wait...

I made this the day after the marathon and was going off my rough notes, so I didn't know I had to soak the bread for so long, but it was still good, I don't think I would want any more mixture soaked in than this...

See? They Still turned out super thick, so it's up to you!

My first time making french toast, I was NOT disappointed.

Incase you hadn't already noticed, my photos are now being taken with a super fancy camera. Christmas is the best. Thankyou family for getting it for me, I promise I will learn to use it properly... one day.

Doughnut French Toast

Nigella Express

Serves 2

• 2 eggs
• 4tsp vanilla extract (I haven't taken the plunge and bought extract yet, I'm just so cheap, one day I will, but till then essence works just fine!)
• 60ml full fat milk (that's what I love about Nigella, she isn't scared of a little fat)
• 4 slices from a small white loaf or 2 slices from a large white load, each slice cut in half.
• 25g butter plus a drop of flavourless oil for frying (on the show she said adding the oil helped prevent the butter from burning, fascinating! I used vegetable oil here.)
• 50g caster sugar (Nigella uses this sugar to dip the bread in, I decided this might be a little too much sugar so instead just dusted the toast with some cinnamon sugar, because who has ever heard of a doughnut without cinnamon??)

1. Beat the eggs with the milk and vanilla in a wide, shallow bowl.
2. Soak the bread halves in the eggy (eggy!) mixture for 5 minutes a side.
3. Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan, and fry the egg soaked bread until golden and scorched in parts on both sides.
4. Put the sugar on a plate and then dip the cooked bread in it until coated like a sugared donut.

In the intro to this recipe (yes, this little gem hidden away in an intro!) Nigella gives the recipe for a strawberry sauce if you so choose to swing that way. I myself swung in the golden syrup direction but it's always nice to have choices!

Direct from the pages of Nigella - You Can turn this into a dinner party doughnut-allusive dessert by whizzing up 150g hulled strawberries, 4T icing sugar and a spritz of lemon juice in the blender, to make a sauce to pour or puddle (puddle!) over.

My Little Gingerbread Army

Timeline of Michelle's transition into the Christmas spirit:

24th of October - Walking through Big W exclaiming "Oh come ON, its not even my BIRTHDAY yet!" every time I walk past Christmas decorations.

13th of November - Late night shopping in the city, shaking my head in disbelief at the groups of carollers singing around the place. Followed by me telling everyone I spoke with over the next week about my disgust.

20th November - First suggestions of work Christmas party and Secret Santa are made, Silly Season seed is planted...

25th November - Christmas party confirmation. Secret Santa present brainstorming begins.

29th November - Secret Santa present decided: Gingerbread men. Christmas excitement growing rapidly, even though getting excited about Christmas before December is technically ridiculous.

3rd December, 2am - Covered in flour and bits of dough, smelling of nutmeg, ginger and cloves, trying to use previously mentioned Christmas spirit to stay awake, thinking it should be stronger now that it is officially December.

4th December - Trying not to allow Christmas spirit to dwindle, even though Gingerbread men made of my own blood sweat and tears (figuratively speaking, of course...?) were grossly under appreciated. Instead decide to focus on open bar and steak the size of my head.

Present - Presents are slowly being bought, Christmas trees are slowly being put up, Christmas Spirit definitely in full swing. Thinking of going late night shopping in the city again to fully appreciate carollers, that's if they haven't already been replaced by people dressed as Easter Bunnies or something...

Hopefully all of you are getting into the Christmas Spirit too, though hopefully less grudgingly than me... Please enjoy these ASTOUNDING Gingerbread men, not astounding because I am fully against being modest, astounding because Martha is a clever ol' bird and has made the loveliest Gingerbread I've ever had the pleasure to try. I was impatient (as per usual) so made mine thicker than suggested, but I think it only made them better, they aren't a chewy biscuit, so it was good to have them thicker so you could enjoy more of the soft biscuit-y goodness. It's been pointed out that my cookie cutter makes somewhat unconventional Gingerbread men, with one review stating "I don't know why but their feet and sloping shoulders look so cute." If you too like their sloping shoulders, I got mine from House. So yeah, even though they are kind of time consuming, I wholeheartedly recommend you give them a go, and then tell me how they went, I love seeing how people decorate their own!

I really need to learn to read recipes all the way through before beginning. It wasn't until I had finished mixing the ingredients together (at like 11pm) that I read the part about having to chill the mixture in the freezer for a whole entire hour. Not cool. Ha, freezer, cool. (Note, this is bag of mixture #1 of 3, if this gives you an idea of just how much mixture this recipe makes!)

But once the mix was all properly chilled i realised just how necessary it was, rolling the room temperature stuff would NOT have been fun. Chilled definitely WAS. (P.S. Nice food posing Michelle, didn't even put the cookie cutter up the right way).

Cookies baking, and no, the camera isn't tilted. I bought cookie trays before measuring my oven, resulting in all my baking being ever so slightly lop sided...

Just SOME of the gingerbread men! That Martha, my oh my, she certainly doesn't do things by halves. You should though. I don't think anyone needs this many gingerbread men.

Day 2: The decorating begins. While I love everything about this bowl of icing pre-mixed, there was nothing to love about it post mixed. Worst. Purple. Ever.

Sister Meagan (of the non nun variety) beginning the decorating festivities. It looks posed, but she really was like, milliseconds away from putting hair on that little guy. (The icing bag is the one I'm talking about later on).

Putting the finishing touches on her Gingerbread Borats. Because one is never enough.

The men! Oh, I'm sorry, and the ladies, and the one genderless baby. Meagan's are the six on the right, mine are the rest on the left. I'm not sure how we got so off course on the whole traditional gingerbread men front, I even googled pictures of them for ideas, but somehow we got caught up amongst a sea of toga wearing greeks, overalls and rockstars. I think i like them better this way.

One of my favourites, and incidentally one of the first to be ripped apart by my secret Santa receiver. My heart broke a little when i saw his beautifully styled hair being brutally separated from his slick little bowtie... He'll always hold a place in my heart...

Gingerbread Men

Martha Stewart's Cookies

Makes lots, can't remember exactly but I'm guessing almost 30.

Ingredients

• 5 1/2 cups plain flour (US cups, but it was too late in the evening for me to fiddle around with conversions so I just went nuts and used metric)
• 1tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp salt (I used normal salted butter so left out the extra salt)
• 4 tsp ground ginger (nuts, i know, this is why i would feel safer it if were halved!)
• 4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg (Martha was going on about fresh ground nutmeg, but she's fancy and I'm not so I just went for the jar stuff)
• 225g unsalted butter (as I said before, i went for the normal stuff).
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar (I usually just skip the dark bit and go for normal brown sugar, but i figured gingerbread is meant to be all dark and syrupy so I lashed out and got dark, it was way worth it)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups unsulfured molasses (what the heck right? I just used golden syrup, it may not have been unsulfered (does that make it sulfered?) but it still did the trick)

Method

1. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and spices in a large bowl. Set aside.
2. Put butter and brown sugar in the bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. (As per usual, didn't read this part of the recipe at all, so just used normal beaters, the mixer struggled, but that probably had something to do with the 5 cups of flour...) Mix on medium speed until fluffy. Add eggs and molasses and mix until combined. Add flour mixture; mix on low until combined. Divide dough into thirds, wrap each in plastic. (I used sandwich bags, I heart sandwich bags. Sorry environment.) Chill 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 175C. Line two large baking trays with baking paper.
4. On a generously floured (superclean) benchtop (Martha rolled hers out on the cookie trays, but my rolling pin was too big to do that so yeah, that's why I went bench) roll dough just under 1/4 inch thick. Brush off excess flour and freeze until firm, about 15 minutes. (I didn't freeze after I rolled it, i just got in there quick and cut it up before it got too warm. With the extra bits of dough, roll them back up into a ball and pop them back in the freezer while you're rolling out the next batch, keeps it all nice and cold and rollable.)
5. Cut dough with cookie cutters (Martha used snowflake shaped cutters, super pretty, but I've never seen them in Australia, plus who can go past a good old fashioned Gingerbread man?). Place dough onto prepared baking sheets, freeze until firm, around 15 minutes. (God, you'd think martha wanted to marry a freezer the way she keeps going on about them. I fully didn't freeze them and don't feel it had an overly negative effect. They kind of bumped into each other and stuck, but I think that's because I put them too close, plus they were on a slope...)
6. Bake cookies for 12-14 minutes, or until crisp but not darkened, rotating sheets halfway through once and firmly tapping down pan. (My oven right now is weird and cooks SUPER fast and dries EVERYTHING out, so mine cooked quicker and I probably took them out a little early out of fear of ruining them, but they were still awesome. Some hot a little burnt because I forgot about them, but I kind of liked them like that, they were crunchy with a pretty nice taste, so you really can't go wrong! Oh and the tapping thing, it was like 1am by the time I got to the actual baking stage, and the firm tapping was a bit loud for the roomies so I skipped that step). Transfer cookies to wire wracks to cool completely.

And now for the icing! Martha's had something called 'Meringue Powder' or something so I found a less weird, slightly more dangerous recipe on the internet. (Yeah, some people live on the edge by speeding, patting sharks etc, me? I'm all about the raw egg whites baby.)

Royal Icing

Best Recipes

(I shouldn't be giving them a mention, the stupid website doesn't let you copy the text. How do they expect me to steal their recipes quickly and easily??)

Because I had lots of Gingerbread men I quadrupled this recipe, too much, but better to be safe than sorry. For a regular batch I'd probably double it.

• 1 egg white
• 1 cup icing sugar (Have a little extra on hand, I had never made this before so didn't really know what it was meant to look like, but it seemed a bit runny to me, so I just kept shaking in a little icing sugar at a time till it looked firm enough not to run straight off the gingerbread men.)
• food colouring

1. Place egg whites in a clean, dry bowl and beat with an electric mixer until soft peaks form.
2. Gradually add icing sugar until soft peaks form. (Ha, just read this properly, there was nothing gradual about my icing sugar adding, whoops).
3. Divide icing into bowls, add food colouring and stir until combined.
4. Spoon the icing into separate small freezer bags, snip the ends and pipe onto cooled biscuits. (I have always sworn by using freezer bags for icing, but I have recently discovered the light, it is bright, convenient, and alot less risky (writing on my friend's birthday cake, freezer bag exploded, I cried, bad memory). I am not going to admit how long I just scoured google to find these things so I could link to them, but yeah, no luck. They're just plastic disposable icing bags, and they come with icing tips as well, only like 3 bucka or something, totz worth it, I would recommend them to the Pope if he were interested.)

Accidental Absences and Macadamia Mania

Why hello! If you are reading this, thankyou for coming back to check on me, even though I have been lame and haven't given you any fun food to look at in a while. If you aren't reading this, then, um, woah... I just blew my own mind. So, did my absence make your heart grow fonder? If it just filled you with annoyance at my laziness then i plead with you to forgive me, please, ill even show you how to make the best white chocolate macadamia cookies you could possibly imagine. Now come on, who can say no to that? People with diabetes maybe, but yeah, im sorry. I have excuses though! Lots! My long list of excuses all began on Thursday the 15th of October at 4:36pm. I remember it vividly, I was lying on my bed watching "Madmen" thinking how much that show makes me wish i were a smoker when my phone rang, and it wasn't my mum! I know, crazy. Turns out it was some lady asking me to get my behind to Brisbane for an interview to be part of their collections team! Cue frenzied panic crossed with utter joy, which was not hampered by the fact that i didn't totally know what the job i was being offered was. I ran around and found my interview handbag and shoes, then brushed the dust off of them, then put on my interview clothes only to find that my months of baking had left them, slightly undersized. Cue more panic and a trip to target, thank gosh for Thursday night shopping. I then drove my way up to Brisbane and turned up on my sisters doorstep with an air mattress and a bag of crispy m&ms (a driving necessity). After a night of talking, toast eating and valley dropping off I came home and laid out my interview clothes and went to bed, but not before i jumped on my laptop and tried to find out just what a "collections officer" was. Next morning i was interviewed and then instantly offered a job! "I must have really impressed them!" I thought, so naive. They asked me to start on the Monday so after a quick trip to a cupcake shop with my sister I went back to Ballina to pack. By Sunday night me and my bird Rolly were all settled in to my sister's cute little previously blue house. It is now three weeks later and I am now an official debt collector. It isn't a cool feeling to be a debt collector, i will tell you that now. I call people all day and ask for money, which of course is then their cue to abuse the hell out of me, which, while completely understandable, makes the working day not so enjoyable. My second day I was told by a debtor "you're awful chirpy for a debt collector." While three days ago I was given a wake up call when a debtor asked me if I "was trained to be this rude." My chirpyness, it is leaving me, and this, I do not like. Of the seven people trained since I started, only 3 of us are left, and I have seen two other older workers quit. I hope I am lucky enough to be one of them soon! While I was astoundingly relieved to be finished with the job hunting game, I shall start again, if only for my personality's sake. So wish me luck, and I shall reward you with cookies you will tell your grandchildren about. I personally can't wait for that so Im just walking round telling other people's grandchildren.

Macadamia chopping: fun. White chocolate chopping, not very thoroughly thought through. After these few pieces were chopped I went back to the drawing board and added a step: cool white chocolate in fridge if weather is astoundingly hot for October.

Look! Brown butter! Brown butter I made all on my little lonesome! This is another of those things i always read about in American recipes but am always too scared to try. Im so glad i went for it, it was awesome. Thankyou Joy for giving such awesome instructions on exactly how it all works, and what should happen when. If it weren't for those instructions I would have chickened out before the 'brown' part happened and would have just ended up with hot butter.

This is the 'brown' bit im talking about, see? They're little burnt bits of butter which makes the mixture taste kind of nutty, I think from now on im going to be using brown butter in ALOT more things.

This photo makes me want neenish tarts! Ooh, I saw a recipe for those today, i hope i make that happen, real soon...

Here is my lovely little ball of deliciousness. If you are wondering why it is still a ball, well, let me tell you. Since Cassie from howtoeatacupcake talked about freezing balls of cookie dough before baking them in one of her recipes I have become a little obsessed with it. It works so well, it leaves the middle slightly squishy and more puffy, it helped me perfect my favourite peanut butter cookies, and I figured it would do the same here. A few things happened though, I got distracted by visitors and ate lunch and left the trays of cookie dough in the freezer for AGES, and i put heaps of macadamias and white chocolate in the mix, AND i didn't cook them long enough, which all culminated in these little miracles. They are thick and raw in the middle, I couldn't have hoped for anything better. I love when my cooking mistakes turn into something beautiful.

Brown Butter White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

Joy the Baker (who adapted it from Betty Crocker)

For Joy it made two dozen small cookies, while for me, I havent got a clue. I just made them as big as I wanted. Make them as big as your judgement suggests, then add a little more!

Ingredientes (that's Spanish for ingredients, just in case i lost you.)

• 115g butter (direct quote from Joy: don’t even think of using margarine)
• 1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar (I used normal, I think joy wrote at some point that it doesn't really matter which you use.)
• 2 Tablespoons milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts (I chopped them in half because i wanted a flavour explosion. And I used more than recommended, once again for the flavour explosion.)
• 1 cup white chocolate chunks (i just chopped up white chocolate, its so much bigger than choc chips!)

Método (are you catching on to my theme yet?)

• Preheat oven to 175C. In a medium saucepan melt the butter, swirling and stirring the butter until nicely browned bits appear in the bottom of the pan. This may take about 5-7 minutes. Once the butter is browned, remove pan from heat and set aside to cool a bit while you measure out the dry ingredients and set them aside.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer add the brown sugar and slightly cooled butter. Beat on medium speed for about 2 minutes. Add egg and beat for one minute more. Add milk and vanilla extract and beat to incorporate.
• Turn the mixer off, scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the dry ingredients all at once. With either the stand mixer on low, or by hand with a spatula, incorporate the dry ingredients until just mixed in.
• Fold in the chopped nuts and white chocolate chips.
• (Eat a spoonful of mixture and tell me if it tastes like aromatherapy oil to you. Other taste testers assured me i was being silly, but I need more opinions. Don't worry if it does, the taste does not carry on past the baking stage.)
• Scoop two teaspoon sized balls onto a lined baking sheet. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until cookies are deliciously golden. Remove from oven and let rest of the baking sheet for 3 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

Aoli Adventures.

Aoli and chips. I lived for over 23 years without knowing what this tasted like, and now I know that they were wasted years. The only problem with the stuff is it changes everywhere you go. Cheaper places tend to taste like minced garlic from a jar mixed with mayonnaise, which while edible is not the best. I found some at the supermarket but it had a weird plastic-y taste to it, not very cool. I think the best I have had was at this new cafe in town which is in the old post office, or was it the council chambers? Eh, either way, I got some fish and chips and they gave me some mad perfect aoli, and home made ginger beer which sometimes visits me in my dreams, sigh. I figured that it tasted so good because they made it themselves and because they used all good fresh ingredients. And so the challenge was set.

I looked up a few recipes on the internet and ended up with this one because it had lime in the title and lime ALWAYS = win. Ive never made anything mayonnaise-y before so it freaked me out a little that I was going to make something out of raw egg yolks but I persevered. Yeah, I'm a trooper. After eating this, I definitely think that I, and all other people who ate this earned the right to be called troopers, man alive was this stuff garlicky! And not just like "oh no, I'm gonna need a tic tac!" garlicky, this had like, burning your taste buds levels of garlic. I put this on some fish, then i scraped alot off my fish, then I put some tomato sauce on my chips and went "what? did I accidentally get bbq sauce??" the answer was no, the garlic had just broken my tongue and everything tasted weird as a result. The only person who was a fan was Dad who even used it again the next morning on toast for breakfast. Supertrooper. I think that this recipe would be amazing with ALOT less garlic, that's why I'm sharing the recipe, I think it has potential, I hope you aren't too scared to give it a go!

Pouring in the oil, so so much oil... but i guess that's just how mayonnaise works...

Giving it a good mix, the oil kept gathering at the bottom where the blades couldn't get to it so I had to keep stopping it and giving it a stir.

All done! Looking a little like pureed curried eggs or something, eek. Wow, I'm just really talking this stuff up aren't I! I'm sorry, please ignore my descriptions, I think that with the changes I'm gonna make below we could have a real aoli winner on our hands. You have to trust me, imagine yourself standing on the end of the titanic, you are rose, i am jack, do you trust me? I promise this won't end with us freezing our bums off in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, promise.

Lime Aoli

From Taste (really great website, it has recipes from a few food magazines all in the one place. I always buy Super Food Ideas and Recipes+ but when I cant be bothered looking through these for dinner ideas I pop on this site.)

• 2 limes
• 4 egg yolks
• 2tsp dijon mustard
• 250mls/1cup light olive oil
• 6 garlic cloves, finely chopped (so many things wrong with this one, well, two, but they are two very big things. For one, WAY too much garlic, 6?? Really?? I cant believe I even believed this would be a good idea... The new wise Michelle would go for 2 cloves and have a taste. And for number two, i want my garlic to be as small as possible in this sort of thing so I crushed it)
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Finely grate the limes and reserve a little to garnish. (it says to julienne the rind of one of the limes, but like the garlic, i decided that smaller was better). Juice the limes and measure out 1 1/2T of the juice.
2. Place the egg yolks, lime juice and mustard in a food processor.
3. With the motor running add the olive oil drop by drop until the mayonnaise begins to thicken.
4. Continue to add oil in a thin steady stream until well combined.
5. Add garlic and grated lime and process to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I was expecting it to get thicker so left it processing for ages but it doesn't really need to, it's a sauce afterall!)
6. Serve it out and garnish with leftover lime rind.

A Fiesta of Paella, followed by a Siesta in a Sombrero.

Before I started this site I spent about a week trying to think of a name for it. I made lists and tried them out on my mum and sister. Some of the names were based around cupcakes and im so glad none of them were successful in the end. A site purely dedicated to cupcakes never would have allowed me to share this amazing recipe with you all, and that would be downright silly. This chicken paella has to be one of my favourite mexican dishes, it has so much going for it, the best of all being the chorizo, my goodness the chorizo. It's making me super hungee just thinking about it, and these pictures definitely aren't helping! The recipe is from this book I got when i was working as a checkout chick at woolies. It came glued to the back of some magazine, then when the next issue of the magazine came out we had piles of this lovely recipe book lying round, so I made puppy eyes at the nicer supervisors and managed to score a couple of them. Ill be forever grateful to those supervisors, and my puppy eye making skills. It is half mexican dishes which is sponsored by Old El Paso, and then you flip it over and get Latina product inspired Italian dishes. Basically its a huge advertisement for both companies but I don't mind at all, the recipes are really good and you can always substitute the ingredients for any brand you like. I've never made anything from the Italian side, probably because every time i get the book out i ended up getting distracted by either this recipe or the Baked Tortilla Beef stack which is on the same oil spattered page. Poor rest of the book, I'm sure you're good, but you just have nothing on these two babies, swoon. (Putting the action 'swoon' in type makes me worried that people think i'm actually saying swoon outloud. I think this comes from when I was teaching english in japan and a student was reading a dialogue and actually said "gasp!" I learnt very early on there how to laugh on the inside.)

My beautiful Chorizo, just before I cooked it to near burnt-to-a-crisp levels. Im a huge fan of burnt, much less scary than undercooked. And so lovely and crunchyyyy.

The colourful dish getting it's serve of garlic, using the world's best garlic crusher. I don't care if saying this makes me sound old: They just don't make them like they used to.

Looking like its going to turn out slightly un-delicious.

Leave it a while and then BLAMMO, the best mexican rice dish in the history of man. Actually I think this may be the only mexican rice dish i've ever had so I really shouldn't be making claims like that, but it's just. so. good.

All served up with some avocado and sour cream. I should really add lime into that description because the avocado mix probably has more lime in it than avocado, I do love limey avocado...

Fiesta Paella with Chicken

From Modern Mexican (I couldn't find any reference for this book through google searching so you just get the link to the Old El Paso website, sorry.)

Serves 4-5

• 200g chorizo sausage, cut into 1/2cm slices (When i buy this in the deli section of the supermarket it's always like, 150g per sausage so I just round up and get two, it's not too much, it's just right! Plus I like to slice the sausage a bit thinner because i like it crispy but it's all up to you.)
• 500g chicken (i always just get already cut stir fry chicken but you can get whatever kind you like and slice it up yourself if you like)
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 medium capsicum, finely chopped
• 1tsp turmeric (thanks to spellcheck i just found out that i have been spelling (and saying) this wrong since, forever. Tumeric. Turmeric. I like the mispelled way...)
• 1tsp cumin
• 1 1/2 cups long grain white rice
• 375g jar Old El Paso Enchilada Simmer Sauce (or any brand, doesnt matter if the size jar you get it a little bigger or smaller. Also if you cant get simmer sauce just get burrito or taco sauce or something, im sure it will work well too.)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1/4 bunch flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped (I'm not a big fan of garnishes that do not add anything to the taste of the meal, it just seems silly to buy a bunch of parsley just so it can look pretty for to seconds before you mix it all up. So yeah, if you have parsley on hand and you are all about the parsley taste, go for it, but if not, it doesn't really make a difference)
• Sour cream to serve
• avocado and lime juice mixed together. (I use bottled lime juice and it does the trick.)

1. Cook chorizo sausage in a dry frying pan for a few minutes until golden brown, then remove and set aside.
2. Heat oil in pan, add chicken, cook until browned.
3. Add onion, garlic and capsicum. Cook until softened.
4. Add tumeric, cumin, rice, enchilada sauce and stock. Bring to the boil then cover, reduce the heat and simmer 15 minutes or until the rice is tender, stirring occasionally.
5. Return chorizo to pan, add peas and stir until well combined. Cover, simmer for 5 minutes or until the chorizo is heated through and peas are cooked.
6. Serve with avocado and sour cream.

Now we're baking with yeast!

You know how a few posts ago i was going on about how i don't BAKE bake, like, i have no patience for bread baking and all that? Well, turns out my curiosity has overpowered my laziness. And now I'm here to tell you that while curiosity didn't kill any cats, it definitely resulted in some meeeean monkeybread. "Monkeybread?!" i hear you fellow Australians say, what the heck is monkeybread??" Well I'm here to tell you that it is not as weird as it sounds, its more, heavenly than weird. Yes, heavenly, that is definitely the word i was looking for. I've seen lots of recipes for it on American blogs, its usually made in a big loaf, and yeah, it didn't really appeal to me, then i saw this recipe on cupcake project. How did she make me take the leap? She did two things: She changed the loaf into cupcakes (probably the same amount of work, but shh, this is not the time to point out such boring things) and she added chocolate and banana to the mix. Genius. Deliciously inspired. All resulted in something that tasted like a doughnut, but better. Well, id better stop rambling and get to the process, there were alot of different steps involved but it was fun and totally worth it, heeere we go!

First thing first: open up the yeast. Second up is being weirded out by the yeast. Isn't it weird? I don't know why i feel this way, i just do. I guess i just pictured it differently...

After much mixing and kneading (i wasn't even TOTALLY sure how to knead, so i was pretty happy it worked at all!) i got this pretty little ball of dough. My little dough baby.

Then after an hour of letting it hang out on the bench it doubled! Magic! My little baby, all grown up!

Next up I got the cinnamon sugar ready. I was pouring out the cinnamon and noticed something weird (yes, weirder than the yeast, which is really saying something). I couldn't get a clear picture but look at the bottom lip of the jar, see those strands of cinnamon? It was like they were magnetic or something. You remember that toy, it is a little box with a mans face in it, with metal shavings, and you give him a beard and stuff? It was just like that, but without the facial hair fun, if anyone 'gets' science and knows what went on here, fill me in yeah?

So here is the ball of dough before i put the banana and chocolate in, just to help you get an idea of how big to make it. It fully doesn't matter though, make them bigger, littler, doesn't matter, but yeah, doing them this size i got 12 cupcakes and had a good bit leftover, so don't hold back.

Some of the prepared doughballs next to the tasty coating production line. With mine i kind of just placed the doughballs on top of one another and you'll see later how they turned out, kinda uneven, but i was still happy with them, i just ripped them apart anyway. Though if you look at the cupcake project's cupcakes they were like, a perfect little dome, if you re aiming more for that kind of look then i reckon you should try and put them in the case right next to each other... Let me know if it works...

So here they are just placed in, you can see the ones at the bottom starting to puff up already, probably lame but it was all very exciting at them time! ... okay, I'll admit it, i still think it's exciting, so here are some before and afters, prepare to be amazed by the magic of yeast!

Before...

After! They're just about taking up the whole case now!

Close up before...

Close up after! Pfoosh! (if it didn't happen so slowly i would imagine this is the noise they would make.)

Awesome stuff. Ive always thought being a professional baker would be horrible, those early mornings, bleh, but now i get it, they get to watch this sort of thing happen every single day, lucky bastards.

Sigh, isn't she beautiful?

Okay, one last thing, before you go down and look at the recipe i just want to say that i know it looks like there alot of mad steps, too much to do, too fiddly, but really, its not, i swear! You'll need a bit of time spare but everything involved is super easy and you will be so happy with them once you finish, promise!

Monkey Bread Cupcakes with Banana and Chocolate

Recipe from the Cupcake Project

Makes 12 cupcakes

• 1/2 C lukewarm water
• 1 T vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 t salt
• 1 T sugar
• 2 T instant yeast or rapid rise yeast
• 2 C - 250g plain flour (i only just realised recently that US cups and Metric Cups are a little different so that's why I've gone grams, for those who don't have scales just take out about 1tsp per cup, it usually doesn't make a difference but i thought with dough it might...)
• 1/2C - 115g granulated sugar (i also just really like using my scales, that's why you're getting even more grams!)
• 1 T cinnamon
• 1 ripe banana, cut into small slices
• chocolate chips or baking chunks to taste (55g) (This is what was recommended but I ended up using sooo much more than this! I just got a block of chocolate, cut the squares in half and put one piece in each ball)
• 2 T unsalted butter, melted

1. Place water, vegetable oil, egg, salt, sugar, and yeast in a medium bowl and mix well.

2. Add 1 cup of the flour, stirring to blend.

3. Add the second cup of flour, stirring to make a cohesive dough. (I had no idea what a cohesive dough was, and google was no help, so i just mixed it till it looked good. I'm guessing cohesive is like the glue cohesive, so till the dough sticks together? smart?)

4. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes; this gives the flour a chance to absorb the liquid, making it easier to knead.

5. Knead the dough — by hand, mixer, or bread machine — until it's soft and smooth.

6. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl or large measuring cup, cover it, and let the dough rise for 30 to 60 minutes or until it's doubled in size. (I left mine for an hour but only because i got a phone call, if i were one of those people who can balance a phone under their chin i so would have gotten to it earlier)

7. Gently deflate the dough.

8. Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.

9. Place cupcake liners into a cupcake tin and lightly grease them with butter or cooking spray. (make sure that if you spray them you do it as late as possible, i did mine a bit early and later realised it made the colour from the cases stain the tin! Weird...)

10. Pull off a small piece of dough. How small? You should get 24 pieces out of the batter so that you can have two pieces in each cupcake. However, unless you are having a dinner party for exactly 12 people, it doesn't really matter and you can make the pieces whatever size you would like.

11. Stretch the piece out, put a banana slice and several chocolate chips or baking chunks inside, and then roll it into a ball. (If this sounds a bit confusing make sure you check out the original recipe page, she has a picture of this)

12. Dip the ball in the melted butter.

13. Dip the ball in the cinnamon and sugar.

14. Put the ball into the cupcake liner. You should be able to fit two balls into each cupcake liner.

15. Cover the cupcake tin and let the bread rise for 30 to 60 minutes, until it's visibly puffy. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 175C.

16. Uncover the cupcake tin and bake the monkey bread for 25 to 30 minutes, until it's golden brown and feels set.

17. While the monkey bread is baking, prepare the glaze.

Cinnamon Glaze

Also from the Cupcake Project

• 1/2 C powdered sugar (i put in a little more cause it seemed a little runny and i didn't want it all to just pool at the bottom)
• 1 T milk
• 1/4 t cinnamon

1. Mix all of the ingredients together. 2. Drizzle over the hot cupcakes. 3. The cupcakes are best served warm. If you can't eat them immediately, reheat them in microwave for about 15 seconds before serving.