Tag: new year new food Page 1 of 2

We had fifteen apples left at the end of the week (from the 45 we picked at the beginning), so we split them up between the four of us to bring them home. 

This morning, I turned my four apples into apple crumble.

I used the second variant from this video, the oaty crumble, but with a sprinkle of apple pie spices in the filling.

The other change I made happened because I’m still operating on a sleep deficit after we got in at 3:30am from a delayed flight. I left the sugar out of the topping. I even noticed there was no sugar and instead of going back to the recipe to check went, huh… that’s weird that there’s no sugar in this. So I added a couple of tablespoons of maple sugar to it and mixed it in. And then about halfway through the baking I was like, hang on… and went back to look at the recipe and yup, there it was right above the butter. And I know I read it, because I remember noting it was the same amount of butter and sugar, but I got distracted melting the butter and it just slipped out of my ear. So when it came out of the oven I sprinkled a bit more sugar over the top. It’s way less than the 100g the recipe calls for, but the filling is sweet enough that it works just fine.

Also, this counts as a new recipe for October.

New recipe for October is Rumbledethumps, otherwise known as cabbage and mash.

I left out the spring onion (I don’t really have enough places to use them to warrant buying a whole bunch for just one recipe); and at the end, I just put it under the broiler for a couple of minutes to melt the cheese instead of baking it for the full half hour, since everything is already cooked and I was starving by that point. I also made a point to cook the veggies in an oven safe skillet so I wouldn’t have to get another pan dirty for the baking step.

Not much to say about this one – it’s potatoes, onions, cheese, cabbage and ham. Can’t really go wrong with it. 

Recipe from this video

New recipe for September is ANZAC biscuits. I have absolutely no memory of where I got the recipe I have saved, but this one is very close. Only difference is that mine calls for 10 tbsps of butter rather than 150g, but that’s pretty close. 10 tbsps is about 140g and that is what I used.

I have been informed by a friend from Aotearoa that they look right, and they taste good. Mildly sweet, good crunch on the edges, good coconut flavour. Flavour-wise, they remind me of the Hawaianas cookies from Gamesa, but texture-wise they’re completely different. I liked them a lot, and if the theatre folks I plan to share them with turn their noses up at them (I feel like I’ve come across a fair number of people who don’t like coconut – and American cookies aren’t usually this dense), I will happily finish them off myself.

ETA: If you weren’t familiar with the history of the ANZAC biscuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_biscuit

Screeching in right at the tail-end of the month, here’s August’s new recipe, Vanilla Scones (recipe from here) 

I was sick for a while in the middle of the month so things had to get put off, but I didn’t want to fail my new year’s resolution after keeping it going this long, so I picked something simple that I could make with what I had on hand.

Only changes I made to the recipe were using salted butter and omitting the additional salt; and using all vanilla extract, because I don’t have any vanilla paste.

It makes a really nice scone – dry on the outside and soft on the inside. I decided to only glaze the two I was going to eat for breakfast. It’ll be less messy to store them dry and glaze them as I’m ready to eat them.

ETA: I was left with half the glaze at the end. If I make this again, I’ll halve that part of the recipe.

New recipe for July is homemade Nutter Butter cookies.

Idea came from this emmymade video, with the original recipe coming from here.

Recipe calls specifically for natural peanut butter, which I had, but also no sugar added, which mine does have, despite being labelled natural. Texture and taste came out just fine, though, so it doesn’t seem to have been too big a deal.

I didn’t bother trying to make them look like peanuts. At the size I made them, I ended up with just over five dozen cookies (the full sandwich – close to eleven dozen individual cookies).

I followed Emmy’s suggestion of making the icing thicker and just grabbing little balls of it to smoosh between the cookies, rather than piping it on.

I’ve never actually tried Nutter Butter cookies, so I have no idea how close a copycat they are, but they are very tasty.

New recipe for June is Cheese and Potato Croquettes. I love a potato, so a new way to eat them is always a plus. Recipe is from this video. 

Only changes I made to the recipe were omitting the chives, which I forgot to pick up when I went to get the other ingredients; and using caramelised onion instead of raw, because I always keep a bunch in the freezer.

I think next time I might try using seasoned bread crumbs instead of plain. While tasty, they are a little bland (which might also be helped by adding the chives next time), and could use a little extra oomph.

And I also still have a bunch in the freezer to eat in the next few weeks.

One last new recipe coming in at the tail end of May – Blackberries and Dumplings. Recipe’s from this instagram post.

I had mentioned a couple of posts ago that I’d gotten a craving for apple strudel and might make that, but it’s getting hot enough here now that I really don’t want to run the oven. Which is where this recipe comes in. It’s similar to a cobbler, but it’s cooked entirely on the stove.

It occurred to me after I stuffed the above into my gob that maybe I should have taken a photo of the inside of one of the dumplings to show the contrast, so here’s a less decorative pic of the remnants in the pot with one of them cut in half.

I just made half a recipe, which was a little tricky because the amounts of the full recipe don’t lend themselves to easy splitting – e.g. calls for one egg, which I wasn’t going to split, so I had to adjust the amount of milk, and ended up having to add extra flour to get it to the right consistency. As a result of that, I ended up having to stir it more than I think I should have as I added the extra flour a tablespoon at a time, and they ended up a little tough. Other than halving it, the only change I made was using frozen blackberries rather than fresh – I’d have ended up paying three times as much for fresh to get the amount I needed.

Very, very tasty, though, and I can absolutely see its potential if I can cut down the stirring time and get them more tender. The dough is very lightly sweet, with most of the sweetness coming from the berry compote. Will absolutely add this into my summertime “let’s not use the oven” rotation.

A second new recipe for May: Sausage and Grits. Based on this video for shrimp and grits from Glen and Friends Cooking. Mostly, the video reminded me that I really like grits, but I tend to forget they exist, and I’ve never actually had them outside of breakfast or brunch.

As he says in the video, this is more a method than a recipe, so I just used stuff that I had on hand. First of all, I can’t eat shrimp, so I took the opportunity to use up the last link of the andouille sausage I bought for making gumbo a couple of months ago. For veggies I added one and a half bell peppers (I had a three pack of red, yellow, and orange, so I used half of each for some nice colour), and about a third of a head of cauliflower that was left over from hummus a few days ago and needed to get used up pretty quickly. I also added a couple of scoops of frozen caramelised onions and a couple of cloves of garlic confit, with a bit of the oil, and a can of rotel, which was among the things my mother sent me home with when she was clearing out her pantry before her death (thank goodness canned food doesn’t go off, really). 

Didn’t add any seasoning – between the sausage and the aromatic veggies, there was more than enough flavour.

Would definitely make something like this again (and having gone through three big links of andouille in the past few months, I’ve decided that needs to go into my regular rotation too. Good flavour, good texture, and not too greasy). And grits as a base in places where I might also use rice or noodles is also a big hit. Yum.

New recipe for May is Onigiri. 

I’ve never tried onigiri before. Just have never come across them at all, but they always look so good when I see them in videos, and one of the yt cooks I follow recently posted an onigiri video, so I figured it was worth a try. I already had all the ingredients on hand. 

I only made two. They came out pretty big. Mainly because I was trying to use a single-serving-sized springform pan as my mold. 

The first one I didn’t compress enough and it started to fall to pieces as soon as I picked it up and I just had to stuff it in my mouth right there leaning over the cutting board. For the second one, I lined the mold with some plastic wrap for measurement’s sake, and then molded it like he does with the second one in the video. Came out a lot better, but still had bits of it falling off as I ate it, so will need to compress even more next time.

Issues I ran into :

• Though I drained the tuna, it was still pretty wet. Next time I’ll dump it into a sieve and press out more of the liquid.
• The nori I had on hand was the little snack sized kind, and it wasn’t really big enough to make a nice handle, so I’ll need to get some bigger sheets before I try this again.
• I didn’t have kewpie mayo on hand, but I did have prepared sriracha mayo, which is made with kewpie. Not sure that one was actually an issue, and it would have worked just fine if the tuna had been drier. Alternatively, I do have Mexican mayo, which is about the same thickness as kewpie, so I could try that as well.

Next time I want to try the yaki onigiri (the third variant in the video). Also, canned tuna’s not my absolute favourite – I just had some left from the stuff my mother sent me home with the last time I saw her (which was three+ years ago, which just shows you how much I like canned tuna) – so next time I make a filled onigiri, I’ll probably do some other filling.

This is the video, by the way

I was also recently reminded that apple strudel is a thing that exists, and I haven’t had that in literal decades and now I want some, so there may be a bonus new recipe for May coming up.