Afgan Biscuits!

Yum - even with watery icing!

At the school I used to work at in Singapore we used to have a fantastic "Mum's Canteen". The mum's that ran it were the best and they made great food that always made me homesick for Australia. My all time favourite treat was Afghan biscuits. Years later I shared this story with my mother-in-law who promptly found a recipe and now makes them for me every time we visit home. Thank you Sandy! 


On this rainy Saturday morning I decided to make some Afghan biscuits with my 22 month son. We had lots of fun and obviously the best bit for him (and me) is licking the spoon at the end. He loved how crunchy the biscuits are and I just love them!

Keep your eyes on the mix!

Here's what you need for the biscuits:
200 g butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup corn flakes, slightly crushed
1/2 cup desiccated coconut 


Here's what you need for the icing**:
1 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 tablespoons water
walnuts (to decorate if you want) 


Here's what you do:
Preheat oven to 180c and use baking paper to line some baking trays (I use pizza trays). When the butter is soft place it and the sugar in to your mixing bowl. I used my KitchenAid to cream it together until it was light and fluffy. In a separate bowl mix the flour and cocoa together. It is better to use a sifter but I am not sure if my son would have the patience for this so I just mixed them both straight from the packet. When mixed through add it to the butter and sugar mixture.

Lots of fun

Add the crushed cornflakes (my son had lots of fun helping with this) and the coconut to the bowl . Mix through until all blended well. Spoon teaspoon sized portions of batter onto your lined trays. It's important to know that the cookies won't spread or rise. If you want flat cookies be sure to press them down.  Bake in your oven for 15-20mins. This recipe made abut 24 small biscuits. When ready let cool then make the icing and ice. Traditionally afghan biscuits are served with a walnut decoration but also delicious on their own. Enjoy! 


**my icing turned out very watery. If you have a great recipe for icing please leave a comment and share!

Crustless Apple Pie with Cinnamon

Crustless apple pie

I've been making this apple pie since my son was about 7 months and he loves it, in fact we all do. Super easy and healthy I usually make about 4 pies and freeze them to use later.

I should be more adventurous and make one with a crust but I've already made a lemon pie and this apple pie works every time.

Cook the apples for 15 mins

Here's what you need:
6 apples, peeled & cored. I used Granny Smith.
1 egg yolk
2-3 cinnamon sticks
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbspn lemon juice
ground cinnamon

Here's what you do:

Mix in the egg & sugar

Preheat your oven to 180C. Cook the apples in boiling water with the cinnamon sticks and lemon juice until soft (about 15 minutes). Drain well and add the apple to your food processor. Mix to the consistency you like, I puree it all.

Add in the egg yolk and sugar and mix again. Pour mix into 4 ramekin dishes, about 2/3 high, even out the surface and sprinkle with ground cinnamon. Bake in the oven for 20mins. When cooled, cover with cling wrap and freeze or eat straight away with ice-cream. Enjoy!

Roasted Pumpkin Sauce with Fettuccine

Pumpkin sauce pasta

This is one of my all time favourite pasta sauces and dinners. So easy and tasty. The best part about it is that you can add to the sauce. Next time I might add some fried bacon and pine nuts, even pesto. You can even use the sauce to stuff portobello mushrooms. The recipe was adapted from the Family Circle Quick Pasta Cookbook and originally says to use pappardelle pasta but I couldn't find any so used regular fettucine. The recipe also says to use butternut pumpkin but as I live in Thailand it was a lot cheaper for me to use chinese pumpkin and it still tasted great. I cooked the whole packet of pasta and it served 2 adults and 3 toddler serves.

Bake for 30mins

Here's what you need:
1 packet of pasta (papperdelle recommended)
1.4kg pumpkin, deseeded, cut in 2cm chunks
4 garlic cloves, crushed
100ml olive oil
3 tablespoons thyme leaves
salt to season
3/4 cup hot stock (vegetable or chicken)
2 tablespoons cream
Parmesan, grated to season at end

Here's what you do:
Preheat your oven to 200C and place water in a pan for the pasta and bring to the boil. Cut your pumpkin into 2cm chunks with the skin and seeds removed. Place in a baking tray and coat with the crushed garlic, thyme leaves and 60ml of the olive oil. Season with salt and place in the oven for 30mins. Place the pasta in the salted, boiling water and cook for about 12mins. When cooked, drain and pour the remaining 40ml of olive oil through the pasta. Keep the pasta warm.

Take the pumpkin out of the oven and place all contents of the baking tray in a Magimix or other food processor. Add the hot stock and cream and mix together. Pour the sauce over the pasta and stir through. That's it! Serve topped with parmesan cheese and thyme leaves if you want. Enjoy!

Apple & Carrot Muffins

Crunchy carrot & apple muffins

This recipe came across my Twitter feed a few days ago and comes from this website. It caught my eye because of the carrot. Carrot in muffins? It all sounded too healthy for me as I prefer chocolate sweets like this slice and or these wontons. But as I like Oscar to eat healthy snacks I decided to try them.

I also decided to stick to the recipe completed. I was tempted to leave out the sugar and salt, and add half the uneaten banana Oscar left on the bench but as it's my first time making them I wanted to know what they should taste like before I experiment. The recipe made exactly 12 medium muffins and I've put some in the freezer.

Combine wet & dry ingredients in separate bowls

Here's what you need:
1 1/4 cup wholewheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tpsn baking soda
1/4 tspn salt
1 cup grated carrot (I grated it fine)
1/2 cup apple sauce
2 lighly beaten eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tspn vanilla extract

Here's what you do:
Preheat oven to 180C and grease a muffin tray. Mix together all the dry ingredients in one bowl (flour, sugar, cinnamon, powder, soda, salt). In a separate bowl mix together all the other ingredients. Add half the 'wet' ingredients to the bowl with the dry mix. Blend together well, then mix in the other half of wet ingredients. Fill each muffin hole to 2/3 and bake in the oven for 20mins. They didn't rise as high as I thought they might but are actually quite nice, even a little crunchy. I would eat them warm, enjoy!

Ricotta & Spinach Pasta Bake

I think one of the reasons I find the slow cooker so boring is that I like to use my hands when cooking. This pasta bake is perfect because you get to mix the cheese and spinach and fill the pasta shells. If my son wasn't sleeping I would have let him have a go at stuffing the shells. The best part about him being asleep is that I can get dinner ready quickly, ahead of time, and without him clinging to my leg asking for some "cheeeeessse".

This recipe comes from the Women's Weekly Healthy Babies Cookbook. I've made it before and Oscar (and us) loved it. He normally has 4-5 pasta shells for dinner. The original recipe says to use 32 pasta shells but, being a big eater, I always use more and then always have too much left over and the pasta ends up being squashed all on top of each other. I swear next time I will only use 32 shells, but that's what I said last time!

Preparations

Here's what you need:
32 large pasta shells
500g spinach, trimmed
600g low-fat ricotta cheese
2 tbspn finely chopped flat parsley
700g tomato pasta sauce (I use Passatta as it's exactly 700g per bottle)
1/2 cup or 125 ml chicken* stock (I used home made stock today from the freezer)
2 tbspn finely grated parmesan cheese (or you could try with other type)
*use vegetable stock to make recipe vegetarian

Here's what you do:
Preheat the oven to 180C. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to boiling point and then add your pasta shells. Cook for 3 minutes only as you want them to stay firm, When done, drain and let them cool down. Chop the parsley and boil or steam the spinach, drain and squeeze out the excess water.

Ready to be covered with foil

In a bowl, add the ricotta, spinach and parsley and using your hands mix all together. In an oven proof dish, pour the tomato sauce and chicken stock and mix together with a spoon. Use your hands to stuff each pasta shell with the ricotta mix. Fill each shell quite full. Place the shell in the dish and repeat. When done sprinkle the top with parmesan cheese and cover the dish with foil.

Bake in the oven for 50 minutes and then remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes. Leave it to cool for a bit before serving and you can scoop up some of the sauce to pour over the shells. Enjoy!

**Lemon Pie** (mum-in-law's recipe) DELICIOUS! DELICIOUS!

Seriously delicious!

As we live in Thailand throughout the year I create a list of all the things I will eat (and do) when we visit home, Australia, for our holiday. Definitely in my top 3 eat list is my mother-in-law Sandy's Lemon Pie. I seriously LOVE this pie and literally wait all year for a slice (or 5!). So I was excited knowing that Sandy was coming to visit us here in Bangkok and now that I have a food blog I decided to challenge myself and ask Sandy to walk me through the recipe. Keep in mind that I have NEVER, EVER, made pastry from scratch before but how hard could it be...


Here's what you need for the pastry:
200g plain flour

Oscar inspecting the pastry and filling

130grams butter (room temperature)
70g caster sugar
1 egg

Here's what you need for the filling:
4 lemons zested
250ml fresh lemon juice (from the ones you zested)
9 eggs
375g caster sugar
300ml cream

Here's what you do: (I tried to take lots of photos to document my experience)

Prepare the pastry and filling first thing in the morning. I prepared everything at 7:30am and then cooked it later the same day at 7pm. As I live in Bangkok though the humidity is so bad at the moment that it was better for the pastry to be made early. You can use your hands or a processor to make the pastry. I used my KitchenAid, Sandy always uses her Magimix.

Pastry #1: 
Combine the sugar and flour mixture and then add the butter. After about 30 seconds mixing, add the egg. Combine ingredients until it has formed a smooth dough. Take out of the bowl and roll in to a ball. Cover with cling wrap and place in the fridge for at least 1-3 hours or overnight if you wish. It will feel like it has turned rock hard but that's ok. This is the easy part I discovered!

Love my juicer

Filling:
Zest and juice the lemons (this was my least favourite part). I was happy to bring out my awesome juicer that we picked up in Turkey. Mix the eggs, cream, sugar, juice and zest all together. I used the whisk component of my KitchenAid. Pour mixture in a tupperware container or keep in bowl and place in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Pastry/Filling #2:
It's now 6pm so pastry has been sitting in the fridge for about 10 hours. Preheat your oven to 160C and take out the pastry ball and lemon filling. Generously flour a surface on your kitchen bench and gently pat and roll your pastry. Use a floured rolling pin, start at the centre to roll the pastry out into a circular shape a bit bigger than your pie dish. You might have to stop regularly and piece the pastry back together on the side. Make sure it's not rolled too thin and keep adding flour under the pastry to stop it sticking.

Oh dear...

Now... the tricky part!!! Carefully pick up your pastry and line a deep pie dish. As you can see from the photo I need a lot of help in this department! What a mess! We had a good laugh, blamed it on the humidity and set about piecing the pastry back together again. I knew there was a reason I have never made pasty before!

Patched all up, looks great

If you're lucky then yours would have stayed together nicely and ended up looking like this photo to the right. Now that the pastry is covering the base and edges of the dish, line the base with baking paper and bake at 160C. I covered the baking paper with pie weights (ceramic balls - gift from Sandy). Bake the pastry for about 10minutes, but maybe less, check on it and once it is slightly brown take it out of the oven, discard the baking paper and store the pie weights.

Reduce the oven temperature to 150C. You might want to use a sieve to pour your filling through before baking. Sandy sometimes leaves the zest in but sometimes sifts it out, up to you. We poured it through a sieve first. Evenly pour the lemon filling around the pastry but not up to brim, leave about 3/4 cm gap or a bit more from the top. If you have left over filling pour these into greased ramekin bowls and bake at the same time. These can be crustless pies! Now....so super carefully carry the dish to the oven.

Bake the pie at 150C for approximately 45mins-1hr. Mine cooked faster than I thought, check it by gently pressing the centre. It should be spongy and rise back when pressed.

Take it out of the oven and serve with ice-cream or just cream. Seriously delicious and no where near as hard as I thought. I felt like a Masterchef contestant afterwards and so proud of myself! THANK YOU SANDY! xoxo

No leftovers - ever!

3 Recipe Treat - what to do with the bits & pieces!

I don't know if your fridge is anything like my fridge but today I literally had 3 mushrooms, a carrot, left over sweet corn and some zucchinis. I also had a toddler clinging to my left leg who seems to have discovered his inner whining voice and was very busy 'telling' me he was hungry. So I quickly slapped some cheese on bread, gave Oscar his cheese sandwich and within 20 minutes had whipped up 3 toddler friendly meals, used up all those annoying half-eaten ingredients and stocked my freezer! Then when Oscar had his nap, I ate my pasta salad that I made yesterday and read my book for 20 mins guilt-free, a good day so far!

Recipe #1: Vegetable Pancakes

Vegetable Pancake stack - yum!

The recipe below makes about 13 pancakes but I ate 3 of them (!!) so was able to freeze 10. I don't include sugar in my pancake recipe as I would rather not cook with it. I used wholewheat flour for the first time today too.

Here's what you need:
any leftover vegetables hiding in your fridge! I used:
half a grated zucchini/courgette
half a large grated carrot
1/2 cup of sweet corn
1 egg
1 cup wholewheat flour
1 cup milk
little bit of baking soda

Here's what you do:
Mix the flour, milk, egg, baking soda together with a wooden spoon. Originally I used only 3/4 milk but it was quite dry so I added an extra 1/4 milk. Add all the vegetables and mix through. Heat a little olive oil in a frypan on medium heat and then using a normal spoon to scoop the batter out and place in the pan. I cooked 5 at a time. Turn after 1 minute or so, or until golden brown on each side and place on sorbent towel to cool. Repeat until all cooked. You could spread some cream cheese on top to serve if you find them a little dry. When cooled, wrap in foil and freeze. Enjoy!

Yum!

Recipe #2: Vegetable Frittata
Oscar is egg crazy, he likes them anyway they can be made which makes life easy on a Sunday morning when I want a no-fuss breakfast. I just scramble or boil an egg and he is happy. I love frittata though and the best part is if your child is fussy you can hide loads of vegetables in them which I did today. This recipe made 3 frittatas. They are perfect for freezing and for lunch or dinner, kids or adults!



Here's what you need:

any leftover vegetables hiding in your fridge! Chopped capsicum/peppers work well. I used:

half a grated zucchini/courgette

half a large grated carrot

1/2 cup of sweet corn

3 mushrooms sliced

3 eggs, whisked

grated cheese, I used Montgomery Jack as that's what was in the fridge.

Here's what you do:

Grease 3 ramekin dishes (ceramic are best) and preheat the oven to 180C. In a medium bowl add all your vegetables and cheese and stir together. Add salt or pepper if you want. In a separate bowl whisk the eggs. Place the vegetable mix evenly in your 3 dishes. Pour the whisked eggs evenly over the top in each dish. Bake in the oven for 20mins. When cool, run a knife along the edge and carefully tip the frittata out and allow to cool. Enjoy!

Soft inside, crunchy outside = yum!

Recipe #3: Cheesy Crumbed Courgette
These would have to be one of Oscar's favourite snacks. So quick & easy I like to have them handy in the fridge or freezer. The best part about them is that the zucchini/courgette stays so soft but the outside is crunchy. The cheese also takes away the sometimes bitter taste of zucchini.

Here's what you need:
1 zucchini/courgette washed, ends trimmed. Do not peel.
1 whisked egg
some plain flour
3/4 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup parmesan or other cheese
olive oil

Here's what you do:
Mix the cheese and breadcrumbs together in a bowl or plate. After you have trimmed the ends off your zucchini cut it in half lengthways and horizontally. Cut those pieces in half again, and continue to half until you have about 12-13 pieces. Lightly coat the zucchini in the flour, dip them into the egg and then cover with the breadcrumb/cheese mix. Heat a little olive or vegetable oil over a medium heat and lightly fry the zucchini until they are golden in colour. Turn them occasionally to cook evenly. I freeze mine in groups of 3. Enjoy!

Raisin Crazy #1: Chewy Banana & Raisin Mini-Muffins

Delicious!

My husband's parents are coming to visit us for a week, they arrive tomorrow, so as part of the mandatory clean up and getting ready I decided to clean the fridge so I could write a shopping list. Hiding in the back corner  I found a large packet of raisins. Who knows how long they had been there for! They were still within their 'eat before' date so I decided to cook as many recipes as I could with them. The problem is that I really don't like raisins and if I have to eat them I try to just swallow them whole.

So rather than search my cookbooks I turned to the internet today. I adapted the recipe used from SparkRecipes. I have never made chewy muffins before and these are definitely chewy so be warned. They were also so incredibly tasty that I ate 3 in a row, raisins and all! The recipe made 24 mini-muffins and 9 medium sized. I have frozen most of mine to use as snacks.

The original recipes lists sugar and olive oil as ingredients. I completely left the sugar out (who needs it!) and used apple sauce as a substitute for olive oil.

waiting to go in the oven

Here's what you need:
1.5 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup apple sauce or 1/4 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch of both cinnamon and nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 medium bananas, mashed
1/3 cup raisin
1/2 tablespoon honey
**1/4 cup sugar if you want


Here's what you do:

Place your mini cupcake papers inside your muffin tin and preheat your oven to 180C. In hindsight I would have used foil muffin holders or a silicone tray as mine became a bit stuck after baking.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl: baking soda, salt, flour, and combine well. Make a hole in the middle of the mix with a wooden spoon and then add your 'wet' ingredients: milk, banana and vanilla extract. Mix all together well. I use a KitchenAid (*love*) but by hand is just as easy. Add the raisins. While I was watching the mix combine I thought that honey would make a nice extra so I quickly drizzled about a half a tablespoon of honey into the mix.

Fill your muffin papers up to about 2/3 of the way or a little more. Mine were nearly to the top because I had so much mixture. Bake in the oven for about 17 minutes. Mine browned quite quickly and I panicked a bit and took one batch out too early and they were still quite doughy.

I was too impatient to let them completely cool before I tasted one and as a result the muffin stuck to the paper. It shouldn't happen once they are completely cooled. That's it, super easy and tasty! My mother-in-law has promised to teach me her amazing Lemon Tart recipe next week so stay tuned.

Five! Vegetable Rissoles

I just made these rissoles up for Oscar's lunch today and they are great. So many variations possible and I think next time I will add some chicken. The recipe was adapted from Annabel Karmel's fantastic cookbook, New Complete Baby & Toddler Meal Planner, which I've mentioned before is a favourite. The only change I would make to this recipe is to slightly cook the broccoli first before adding to the frypan as they were still a bit crunchy at the end.

The recipe made 6 medium sized rissoles which I have frozen.

Here's what'll you need:

Ingredients

3 medium potatoes or 300g                
25g butter        
50g sweetcorn  
50g broccoli florets chopped up small              
1 small onion, peeled and chopped      
1 garlic clove crushed                          
6 mushrooms or 75g                            
1 medium carrot, peeled & grated        
vegetable oil for frying  
1 teaspoon soy sauce        
flour for coating
1 egg, beaten
75g breadcrumbs
75g grated cheese (I used cheddar, recipe suggests Gruyere)    

Here's what you do:    

The mixture 

Peel and boil the potatoes under tender (for about 10-15mins), wait for them to cool (unlike me who literally kept dropping a hot potato) and then grate them using a cheese grater. Keep to the side.

Melt the butter in a frypan and cook the onion, garlic and broccoli for about 4 minutes or until they become soft. I think I needed to do this for longer though as my broccoli were still a bit crunchy. Add the mushrooms and cook till they shrink a bit then add the grated carrot and cook for about 2mins more. Add the sweetcorn and cook for 1 more minute.

Mix in the grated potato, cheese, soy sauce and salt & pepper if you like. I never add any salt but it's up to you. You mixture will become almost gooey like, perfect for shaping into rissoles.

Ready for frying

Take the mixture off the heat and allow it to cool (again, I am an impatient cook and didn't listen to my own advice). Using your hands, mould the mixture into 6 rissole shapes. Make sure to pack down the ingredients, otherwise they will fall apart. Roll each rissole in flour, dip it in the egg and then coat with breadcrumbs. 

Heat the vegetable oil in a fry pan and cook the rissoles until crisp. Enjoy!

Oscar eating his rissole with baked beans

Chocolate & Cinnamon Wontons

Seriously tasty!

I think I have just found my new favourite dessert. After an early dinner and once Oscar was in bed I quickly decided to try a recipe I have been staring at for a couple of months in my Donna Hay: Fast, Fresh, Simple cookbook. I just love the look of Donna Hay's book and love turning through the pages.

I love dark chocolate and cinnamon but was a bit weary of the wonton mix. Well, all up it took me 10mins from start to finish and I am betting by years end I would have eaten more wontons than I can remember. The count is at 8 so far!

Here's what you need: (to make 16, I only made 8 so halved all ingredients)

16 wonton wrappers
40g melted butter
16 small squares of dark chocolate
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons caster sugar

Chocolate squares in place

Here's what you do:

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a tray with baking paper. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl or cup.

With a brush (I actually used a new paintbrush as I didn't have a kitchen brush, must buy!)   coat the 3 edges of the wontons with melted butter and place a small chocolate square on one half. Place it close to the front edge as otherwise the when you close the wonton it won't seal properly. Fold over the wontons and press the edges together to seal.

Put the wontons on the baking tray, brush over with butter and sprinkle with the sugar & cinnamon mix. Bake for 8mins or until golden.

These were seriously delicious and my husband and i ate them so quickly. Serve with ice-cream, strawberries. Also, you could experiment with putting other treats in the wontons. On Donna Hay's site she has a recipe for Apple & Chocolate wontons - yum!

Smells so good... yum!

Sweet Potato & Pear Soup

The best part of cooking this soup was smelling the butter cooking at the start - dreamy! This recipe was adapted from the Family Circle Quick Short Recipes cookbook and it was super easy and tasty. The recipe made 5 kid sized serves (which I put in the freezer) and 2 adult serves.

Here's what'll you need:

25g butter
1 onion chopped finely
3 medium sized, orange sweet potatoes (or 750g) peeled & chopped into 2cm cubes
2 firm pears, peeled, cored, and chopped
3 cups or 750ml stock (chicken or vegetable). I used pre-made stock as it was easier for me today.
1 cup cream or milk

Here's what you do:

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat, add the onion and cook for about 3mins or until the onion is soft, almost see-through. Add the chopped sweet potato and pear and stir for 2mins then add stock, bring to the boil and cook for 20mins. I have made chicken stock from scratch before but i just wanted a quick Sunday dinner so use store bought stock.

Place the mixture in a blender or Magimix and blend until smooth (I love my Magimx!). I then spooned 4 large spoons of the soup in tupperware containers without adding the cream, you can do this when reheating at a later date. If you are going to eat immediately return the mixture to your saucepan, stir in the cream (I used milk) and reheat slowly. Season with salt or pepper and that's it, enjoy!

Apricot, Apple & Pear Custard

When Oscar first started eating solid foods I went slightly crazy trying to find age-appropriate food for him to try. My sister passed on a few of her cookbooks and Annabel Karmel's New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner soon became my baby cookbook bible. I cannot recommend it enough for new parents stuck for ideas and the custard recipe below is adapted from the book.

When I gave Oscar a taste this afternoon, he came running back saying, "mumma mumma" and helped himself to 5 more spoons. The recipe made 5 serves which I spread into small tupperware containers and have frozen for desserts or breakfast toppings.

Ingredients

What you'll need:

75g dried apricots
1 large apple, peeled, cored and chopped
1 ripe pear, peel, cored and chopped
1 tablespoon of custard powder
150ml milk (I use full-fat always but up to you)

Here's what you do:

In a small saucepan heat the apricots and apple in about 6 tablespoons of water and cook for about 10mins or until the apple is soft enough to break with a fork.

In a separate saucepan blend the custard powder with some of the milk over a medium heat and use a whisk to stir it to make a smooth paste. Mine went quite lumpy at first so it's a good idea to take it off the heat while stirring (according to my husband). Add the remaining milk and bring to the boil, keep stirring until it thickens and any lumps disappear.

Put the cooked fruit plus the pear in a blender (I use a Magimix) and blend to the consistency you like. I preferred mine with no lumps. Stir in the custard. I distributed the custrad to small tupperware containers and froze it. Enjoy!

Ricotta & herb gnocchi with tomato sauce

I adapted this recipe from the Healthy Eating cookbook by Family Circle and even my husband commented while eating that it "tastes healthy." I'm happy with the way it turned out and given how easy it is to make, we'll definitely have it for dinner again. Oscar loved it as much as we did too which is always a plus. The recipe made 3 big serves.

Ingredients

Here's what you need for the gnocchi:

450g ricotta cheese
35g grated parmesan
20g chopped mixed herbs (I used parsley, thyme, chives, basil)
pinch of nutmeg
120g white breadcrumbs (I used white sliced bread & put it through the Magimix)
2 beaten eggs
plain flour for rolling

Place the mixture in the fridge

Here's what you do:

To make the gnocchi combine all the ingredients (except the flour) in a bowl. I used my KitchenAid but it's easy enough with a wooden spoon as well. Once mixed, cover and place in the fridge for at least 2 hours, longer if you wish. I've made it before and left it overnight.

When you're ready to make the pasta use the flour to dust an area on your kitchen bench. Take the mixture out of the fridge and use your hands to knead it gently. Add flour to your hands as needed so the mixture doesn't become too sticky.

Roll the pasta mix into long ropes

Divide the mixture into sixths and roll out each part with your hands on the flour surface. Roll the mix into a long rope shape about the thickness a finger and use a knife to cut the mix into 2cm pieces. Put a piece in the palm of your hand and use a fork to lightly press a ridge on both sides. You want the gnocchi to be a slightly rounded. Place each piece on tray lined with baking paper.

Place on a tray before cooking

Boil salted water in a large saucepan. You need to cook the gnocchi in batches and they only take about 2-3 mins to cook. You know they are ready when they float to the surface of the water. Don't take them out too quickly as they can go soggy. Use a large slotted spoon to collect each piece and make sure to drain it well. Place in a bowl and repeat process until all gnocchi is cooked.

Serving Sauce:
I served my gnocchi with a tomato sauce. I made the sauce while the gnocchi mix was cooling in the fridge.


Here's what you'll need:

Final product - delicious!

1 onion chopped finely
2 garlic cloves crushed
800g or 2 cans of whole tomatoes
2/3 cup of thawed frozen peas (optional)
a pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon shredded basil
1 tablespoon of olive oil

What to do:

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan and add the onion and garlic. Cook over a low heat for about 8mins or until the onion is soft but be careful not to brown the onion. Add the tomatoes and simmer for about 7mins then add the sugar and peas and cook for a further 2 minutes. Stir in the basil and cook for another minute or so.

Take off the heat and let cool for a minute. Place your cooked gnocchi in a bowl, spoon on sauce and shave (using a potato peeler) some pieces of parmesan.

Enjoy!