Cause I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane…..

Don’t know when I’ll be back again….

Just kidding I will be back in roughly 6 weeks….

…..so for now I will be embarking on a different kind of blogging. Not recipes as such (well, none that I know of yet) but tastings, delicious food, cafes, the famous Hummingbird Bakery in Notting Hill or a mouth-watering pizzeria in Rome, maybe even ice-cream sundaes in San Francisco!

I don’t know what form these posts will take but I hope to take you lovely blog followers and commenters along for the ride  That’s right, you can live vicariously through me! Heavens I’ve done that enough myself with friends, family, workmates…

Anyway, I better get going and finish packing but in the mean time if you have any recommendations of some great foodie places that would be a such a shame to miss out on, email me at: aftertasteblog@gmail.com

Ciao for now!

Lemon Biscuit Slice

Right now, I should be packing for my trip, but I felt like sharing this recipe with you instead.

I know I’ve blogged a lot about slices on After Taste in the past so I really don’t need to go into just how much I appreciate a good piece of old-fashioned slice.

But while slices are simple in theory, countless cafes and bakeries just can’t seem to nail it. The base is often terribly crumbly, or dry and the all-important icing-to-base ratio is often out. So your best bet for a tasty wee morsel is generally one you just make, yourself, at home.

From memory this uncooked lemon biscuit slice is a total crowd pleaser. It is quite moist, with a coconutty base and a soft, sweet lemon icing. It is really simple to make and requires absolutely no baking!

Tell me, what is your favourite slice recipe?

Lemon Biscuit Slice
Makes 24 pieces

Base:

• 250 grams wine biscuits
• 1 cup desiccated coconut
• Finely grated zest of 1-2 lemons
• 120 grams butter
• 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

Lemon icing:

• 2 cups icing sugar, sifted
• 40g butter, melted
• Juice of 1 lemon

Grease and line a 17 x 27cm slice tin with baking paper, leaving an overhang on all sides. Place biscuits in a food processor and process to form fine crumbs.

Transfer the mixture to a bowl, then combine with coconut and lemon rind. Place butter in a small saucepan over medium heat to melt. Stir in condensed milk. Pour melted mixture over the dry ingredients. Stir to combine well.

Press biscuit mixture into prepared tin. Refrigerate for one hour or until firm. When set, ice with lemon icing. To make lemon icing, place the icing sugar in a bowl. Add melted butter and lemon juice and beat until smooth.

New Zealand Lolly Log Cake

Lolly cake or lolly log (as some might know it) in New Zealand is a national institution. It is such a kiwi favourite.

It is found absolutely everywhere here and I would go as far as saying it even makes the  list of my favourite sweet treats. This is the type of food item you’d probably expect to see in every New Zealand bakery, corner dairy, or even your local service station, nationwide. I almost think it is unique to New Zealand as  I have yet to find any reference to its existence that can’t be traced back to a New Zealander’s blog.

It is an uncooked recipe and uses two main ingredients: biscuits and lollies – what could be better?! The mixture is usually pressed into a log shape and rolled in coconut, and then refrigerated until set and sliced up. Sadly I can’t credit anything more than the back of a packet of Pascall Fruit Puff’s for this delightful recipe. Enjoy!

New Zealand Lolly Log Cake
Makes 15 slices

• 1 packet malt biscuits, crumbs
• 1 packet fruit puffs or eskimos
• 100 grams butter
• 1/2 can condensed milk
• Coconut

Warm the butter and the condensed milk in the microwave.  Add the biscuit crumbs and either a packet of eskimos or fruit puffs (cut into pieces).  Stir mixture well.  Form the mixture into a log shape or into small balls.  Roll in Coconut.  Put into the fridge for approximately 4 hours.  Once set, cut the log into slices and serve.

Whittaker’s White Chocolate Oreo Truffles

Okay, correct me if I’m wrong but is there *anything* better than oreo biscuits and cream cheese? ……………….hello?

Er, no. Didn’t think so.

The following recipe is the stuff that dreams are made of. Oreo cookie crumbs blended with cream cheese and covered with a white chocolate shell. They really are the very best-tasting truffles in the world…

The first time I ever tried one of these; my mouth was watering for more.  I can assure you they are one of the yummiest things ever and so simple to make because there is absolutely no baking involved. Better yet, you only need three ingredients.

Happy truffle making!

Whittaker’s White Chocolate Oreo Truffles
Makes approximately 15 truffles

• 250 grams cream cheese
• 2 packets Oreo cookies
• 1 block Whittaker’s White Chocolate
• Optional – Dark Sante bar to drizzle

Crush the cookies to fine crumbs in food processor and place in medium bowl. If you don’t own a food processor, you can just as easily crush them in a plastic bag. Add the cream cheese and mix until well blended. Roll truffle mixture into approximately 15 balls and place on a baking tray lined with paper. Refrigerate until firm, for about 1 hour.

Remove the balls from the fridge. Break up the block of white chocolate and melt in the microwave until smooth. Dip balls in chocolate and place on  a clean sheet of baking paper. If you like, you can  drizzle with a bit of melted dark chocolate to decorate.

Return truffles to the refrigerator and leave until firm and chocolate has set. Store the truffles, covered, until needed. Believe me they won’t last long – you have been warned.

This is also my entry for Sweet New Zealand. May is hosted by Jemma at Time for a Little Something. Head along to her page and check out all the entries at the end of the month.

Roasted Vegetable and Pesto Pasta

Carbs: I  love ‘em and I bet you do too.

Pasta, rice and potatoes seem to be a regular staple in our diets. Too much of them of course isn’t necessarily a good thing but eaten in moderation, they are sooooo good. I am  such a fan of a good pasta dish because pasta is a great ingredient for putting together quick and delicious meals.

The following recipe comes from the dynamic duo, Alison and Simon Holst. Although it includes a few pricier ingredients (hello, pesto!), I found overall it was quite good value for money and the flavours were pretty incredible! Of course you can mix it up a bit and add all sorts of different  roasted vegetables to the mix.

I found it was wonderful hot for dinner, and equally as delicious cold for lunch the next day. The roasted vegetables add so much flavour, you don’t really need to use too much cheese. Enjoy!

Roasted Vegetable and Pesto Pasta
4 servings 

• 400 grams pumpkin
• 1 red onion
• 1 yellow pepper
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2-3 large portobello mushrooms
• 300 grams short pasta
• 1/4 cup evaporated milk or cream
• 5 tsp basil pesto
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100g feta, crumbled
• Pepper to taste

Heat oven to 225 degrees. While the oven heats, peel the pumpkin then cut into small pieces. Cut the red onion into about 12 thin wedges. Halve the yellow pepper, remove the seeds and then cut into 1cm strips.

Place the prepared vegetables into a large bowl. Add the garlic and two tablespoons of oil and toss gently until the vegetables are coated with oil. Spread the vegetables in a single layer over a baking paper-lined roasting dish, then place in the oven. After 10 minutes gently turn the vegetables, add the mushrooms and return to the oven for a further 10 minutes. Depending on your oven, the vegetables may need a little more time roasting so they don’t go mushy when added to the pasta.

While the vegetables roast, cook the pasta in plenty of lightly salted, rapidly boiling water. Drain the cooked pasta, return it to the cooking pot and toss with the remaining oil. Add the evaporated milk or cream, pesto and salt and stir to combine.

Remove the roasted vegetables from the oven and cut the mushrooms into strips about 1cm wide. Gently stir the vegetables and the feta into the pasta. Season to taste with pepper and garnish with the remaining feta.

Serve with a simple mescalin salad.

Stewed Feijoas

New Zealanders love feijoas and I’m not sure how true it is or not, but apparently it is the one fruit we most look forward to here in Aotearoa. The aroma and flavour of fresh feijoas is just unbeatable and best of all, they are packed with Vitamin C.

Feijoas are another one of those things (like many I blog about) that take me back to a particular time. The taste and smell of feijoas return me to when I am am 7 or 8 years old to Francis Drake Street in Waipukarau where my Nana lived. We would sit underneath her feijoa tree and eat a huge number, one after another, maybe 20-something in a row…skin and all. Although my sisters and I were in fruit heaven, I think my Nana was more concerned about the state of our tummies in the hours or days following.

Memories aside, they are great for breakfast, lunch, dinner and anytime in between. You can enjoy them fresh just scooped right out of their skin or enjoy them cooked, chopped, sliced or blended in so many combinations. Stewing feijoas is an excellent way to use up fruit that otherwise might go to waste. This makes a delicious dessert or is perfect cold over cereal for breakfast. Enjoy!

While you have feijoas on the mind, be sure to check out this amazing blog dedicated to feijoa recipes: Feijoa Feijoa. Brilliant.

Stewed Feijoas
Serves 2

• 12 feijoas
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 cups water

Slice the feijoas in half and scoop out the insides of approximately 12 feijoas. If they are particularly large or you want more of a puree, feel free to cut them up a bit more.

Fill a pot with water and put on to the boil. Add a 1/2 cup of sugar (white or brown – doesn’t matter too much). Wait till the sugar dissolves and add the fruit. Simmer for about 10 minutes until fruit has softened.

Quick Tomato Relish

My favourite after school snack as a child was tomato relish and cheese, sometimes on crackers, usually on toast. I have always been quite the fan of relishes and chutneys and these days when I go back home to visit the family, I raid Mum and Dad’s pantry. It is seriously stocked full of chutneys, relishes and sauces – my kind of heaven.

The following is Mum’s recipe which she has been making for as long as I can remember. It’s fantastic as a relish in a burger or just with cheese and crackers. It is also delicious on just about any kind of meat. Tomato relish is pretty much ideal for anything you fancy.

It’s definitely not hard to make and is something that’s always good to have available. Such a brilliant way to use up overripe tomatoes too. Enjoy!

Quick Tomato Relish
Makes about 1.5kg

• 1.5 kg red tomatoes, sliced
• 2 onions, sliced
• 1 tbsp mustard seeds
• 125 ml white wine vinegar
• 150 grams sugar
• 2 tsp wholegrain mustard
• 1 pinch of nutmeg
• 2 tsp cornflour
• salt and pepper
• 2 tbsp cornflour

Bring all the ingredients to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about half an hour. Mix the cornflour with a little water, add to the mixture and stir well until thickened. Decant into sterilised jars.

Homage to the years of after school snacks, endless cartoons, and being home by 3pm!

The Versatile Blogger Award

Just a quick post to say I was lucky enough to receive The Versatile Blogger Award for the very first time from Acorn in the Kitchen. Head along and check out this blog!

It is  now my job to nominate 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award which is just a list of blogs I enjoy reading and that I find, quite simply, inspirational.

Foodie Gems of Wellie
The Kitchens Garden
Lipstick and Cake
Heartbreak Pie
Baking Makes Things Better
Two Spoons
Time for a Little Something
Made From Scratch
My Darling Lemon Thyme
Pease Pudding
An Unrefined Vegan
Lydia Bakes
Treehouse Kitchen
Hungry and Frozen
Cook like your Grandmother

Thanks all for making the blogosphere so enjoyable! 

Old-Fashioned Sausage Rolls

Sausage rolls – they’re usually a little touch n’ go, aren’t they.

It is fairly rare that I’d go to a cafe to eat a sausage roll these days, but while I’m here I might as well give a little shout out to one of the quaintest little cafes in the Hawkes Bay. That cafe is The Paper Mulberry and you should definitely go there if you are passing through and in need of a cuppa. These guys make great sausage rolls, and fabulous coffee! Either way, you’ll find it well worth slowing down and pulling in.

But if you’re not up that way, check out this recipe.  Although this is only my second ever homemade sausage roll experience, they taste pretty good! Much better than the very first time I attempted a sausage roll which were the days of Home Economics at intermediate school, I was 11. This recipe is based on one I found in The Healthy Food Guide magazine and includes a vegetable or two so probably a bit healthier than your average sausage roll!

They make a great snack, lunch or party food and you can decide how big or small you want them to be. I do have one tip though: make sure you have heaps of tomato sauce or nice chutney to go with them. They really are quite delicious straight out of the oven! Next time though, I think I will experiment with the flavours a bit more. I just discovered a recipe that uses caramelised onions and blue cheese! Amen to that, so watch this space!

Old-Fashioned Sausage Rolls

• 3 sheets ready-rolled reduced-fat puff pastry
• 500 grams trim pork mince
• 2 slices wholemeal bread, made into crumbs
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 medium kumara, grated
• 2 courgette, grated
• 1 tbsp bran
• 2 tsp dried sage
• 2 tsp mixed herbs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons tomato sauce, be generous
• water, to seal pastry
• 1/4 cup trim milk, for glazing

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees. In a bowl, combine the fresh breadcrumbs, herbs, salt, bran flakes, onion, meat, grated kumara, grated courgettes and the sauces. If you have a processor, chop the onion, add the slices of bread and pulse to crumbs, then add all the rest of the ingredients and mix in the processor.

Lay out the pastry on a floured bench. Scoop out the meat mixture and place a ‘sausage’ of mixture along the middle of each strip. Brush one edge of the strip with water, roll the pastry over and seal it together to form a long roll.

Cut into approximately eight sausage rolls depending on how big you’d like them. Place the rolls seam side down on a greased tray. Slash the top of each sausage roll once or twice with a serrated knife to allow steam to escape, then brush each one lightly with milk. You could then sprinkle with a few sesame seeds or poppy seeds or perhaps, sprinkle with a small amount of grated cheese. Clearly I forgot this step!

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until dark golden. Serve with tomato sauce or a nice chutney for dipping.

Lest We Forget – ANZAC Biscuits

They went with songs to the battle, they were young. 
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

It is April and Anzac Day is nearly upon us.

Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance here in New Zealand, and in Australia. Both countries commemorate it on 25^th of April every year to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli.

I decided to mark this day by baking some traditional Anzac biscuits, or “crispies” as they used to be known! This recipe has long been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps established in World War I. As the story goes, wives, mothers and girlfriends sent the biscuits to soldiers abroad. The ingredients did not spoil easily and kept extremely well during transportation, which was sometimes up to 2 months!

At first the biscuits were called Soldiers’ Biscuits, but after the landing on Gallipoli, they were renamed ANZAC Biscuits. You may notice the lack of eggs to bind the ANZAC biscuit mixture together. Because of the war, many of the poultry farmers had joined the services; therefore, little wee eggs were very scarce.

I remember Anzac biscuits being one of the first recipes I learnt to cook as a child. They were a firm family favourite in my family and still are. Easy to make and they taste great!

Lest we forget.

ANZAC Biscuits
Makes 15 

• 1 cup plain flour, sifted
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup quick oats
• 3/4 cup dessicated coconut
• 125 grams butter
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup
• 4 tablespoons boiling water
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl. Melt the butter and golden syrup together in the microwave or on the stovetop. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water, then add to the butter and syrup mixture. Add foaming mixture to dry ingredients and combine thoroughly. Mixture should be firm enough to roll into a ball on a teaspoon. If not, you may have to add a little bit more flour! Place balls on tray and press each gently with a fork.

The biscuits like to spread as they bake so be careful not to place them too close together on the tray. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes at 150 degrees, or until golden brown.

Remove from oven. Allow the Anzac biscuits to cool on the tray for a few minutes.