Christel and Laura’s beer battered fish and chips.

The perfect beer batter is a topic of discussion the world over. I have tasted quite a few and find most of them to thick or the fish isn’t very well coated.

Christel found this recipe somewhere online and it has become our family recipe now. Laura is very good at preparing the batter, which is kind of funny, as she does not like fish at all. Not even deep-fried. We have tried this recipe with a number of different fishes. So far Australian Salmon and spotted marcel have been our favorites.

If you like your batter thick then add a little less fluid. I like it thin and still completely coated.

Ingredients:

- 1 ½ cup       self raising flour (whole meal)

- 1                  Egg

- 1 bottle        chilled beer (375ml)

-                     Salt and pepper

Method:

-       put flour in a bowl, quickly wish the egg and add it. Mix

-       slowly add the beer while stirring to make a smooth batter

-       add salt and pepper to taste (mix white and black pepper)

-       chill in the fridge for 30 minutes before using.

Add fish pieces to the batter. Then slowly lower into hot oil (190 C). Fry until golden brown and fish is cooked.

Coconutties

Over the last year the movies Despicable Me I and II have played over and over at our home. For those who have not seen them. Go and see them! They are hilariously funny. All our children are able to reproduce quote after quote from the movies. One night I was lying awake wandering what coconutties would taste like. I did not know they where cookies that actually excited before the movie but it turns out that they do.

One of the ingredients, sweetened coconut, I had never heard off. You can quite easily create this from desiccated coconut so if you can’t buy this ingredient than just make it yourself. It is readily available in the USA and you can buy it in our bigger supermarkets (Woolworths has it). The process of heating egg whites with solid ingredients to make a paste before baking was also new to me. Quite a nice (and easy) process.

Needles to say that my kids where very surprised and happy to bite into these sweet coconut, nuts and white chocolate beauty’s after a long hike up one of the gorges in WA.

Ingredients:

4 large egg whites

3 cups dried sweetened shredded coconut

¾ cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp coconut extract

¼ cup all purpose flour

½ cup chopped macadamia nuts (divided in 2 halfs)

1 cup white chocolate chips (divided in 2 halfs)

Methode:

1.     put egg whites, coconut, sugar, vanilla and coconut extract and flour together. Mix well. Cook on low heat until it becomes thick. Keep stirring constantly or it will stick to the bottom of pan and burn.  Then let it cool to room temperature (stirring occasionally as it cools)

2.     When cool, add half of the macadamia’s and half of the white chocolate. Mix well. Pre heat oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

3.     Drop spoonfuls on baking trays covered with baking paper (or put them in a cookie mold to get even shapes, like I did). Bake for 12-13 minutes until golden brown, then remove from the oven and let cool on baking trays.

4.     This step is optional and I have not bothered with it. (Instead I added some more nuts and chocolate in step 2). Once cool, melt remaining white chocolate chips. Drizzle over each cookie and sprinkle with additional chopped macadamia nuts.

Making sweetened coconut:

Ingredients:

3 cups desiccated coconut (rough is better then fine for these cookies)

6 tbsp powdered sugar

3 tbsp canola oil (or other vegetable oil)

4 tbsp water

Methode:

1.     mix coconut with sugar. Stir well.

2.     Mix oil with water. Stir well.

3.     Now mix dry and wet ingredients thoroughly.

4.     Let this stand for approx. 10 minutes or until all moisture is absorbed. Stir mixture once or twice while waiting.

Use immediately or store in fridge for short period of time.

Wilma’s Yo-Yos

Soon after starting work in Barham I met Wilma Bot. She was a remarkable woman with an equally remarkable family. Wilma sadly passed away and in doing so took with her a wealth of baking knowledge. This recipe of Yo-Yos was given to every one at Wilma’s funeral.

Wilma was also very involved with the local footy team and with the arts in Barham. In her honor there is now a Wilma Bot award for excellence in Dance. This award is given to one of the dancers of the local dance school and we were very proud that Laura received the award a few years ago.

Wilma’s excellence in baking is reflected in this recipe. I have followed it to the letter and as long as you do so, you will have perfect cookies every time. Even the cooking time of 16 minutes perfectly matched my oven.

Ingredients:

500 g softened butter

180 gram icing sugar (6oz)

180 gram custard powder (6oz)

530 gram plain flour (1lb 3oz)

½ tsp salt

Filling:

7 heaped tbls icing sugar

3 flat tbls margarine

1tsp vanilla

Method:

Preheat over to 150C fan forced (6-7 gas oven or 160 C conventional).

Beat butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy.

Sift dry ingredients 3 times

Add slowly to the butter mixture to create soft dough

Roll mixture into balls and put placed on greased tray. Press down with meat mallet or fork.

Place in oven for 16 minutes.

Leave to cool on rack.

Beat ingredients for filling until light and fluffy. Spread onto one yo-yo half and place other half on top.

ANZAC Biscuits (April 2015)

Today we(Laura, Jaap and Peter) have baked Anzac biscuits as part of a school project. We are parked at the Anzac Centre in Albany (a fitting place to make these biscuits). After searching a number of recipes we decided to follow the CWA recipe.  

Anzac biscuits where backed by women in Australia and sent to the troops in the first world war. They started this because they where worried about the nutritional value of the food being supplied to their men at war.

The main ingredients used in ANZAC biscuits where: plain flour, sugar, rolled oats, butter, desiccated coconut and golden syrup. There where a number of reasons that they used these particularly ingredients. The biscuits had to keep well during the long sea voyage from Australia to Europe. They are highly nutritious and readily available. Because eggs where scares, eggs where replaced by golden syrup or treacle.          

Ingredients: 

1 cup plain flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup  rolled oats

1 cup desiccated coconut

125 gr            butter

1 tbsp golden syrup

2 tbsp             boiling water

1 tsp   bicarbonate of soda

Method:

Preheat over to 180 Celsius.

Grease 2 baking trays

Combine flour sugar rolled oats and coconut.

Melt the butter in a saucepan with the golden syrup over medium heat.

Combine the boiling water with the bicarb and stir to dissolve.

Add the bicarb to the melted butter and mix well.

Then stir butter mix into the dry ingredients until thoroughly combined.

Drop teaspoons of the mix onto the backing trays and allow room for spreading.

Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Allow to cool on tray for few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes approximately 35 biscuits.

Warm Razor Fish Salad

Razor fish are filter-feeding shells just like oysters and mussels.  They grow in abundance in the colder waters of South Australia.  They are also called poor man’s scallops. The only part of the shell that you eat is the muscle that keeps the two halves of the shell closed.  They have been farmed in the past but I have never seen them for sale anywhere.

Tim and Hugo helped me collect a feed of these shells while walking the boardwalk of Port Lincoln and Peter helped clean them up. We dined like kings tonight. I was surprised by the very sweet flavor of the Razor Fish. We ate this dish outside overlooking the bay with the setting sun. Unforgettable

Ingredients:

75       Razor Fish muscles (or scallops if you can’t get Razor Fish)

50gr    smoked bacon in cubes (home smoked from free range pig)

1          avocado

75 gr   cottage cheese

half     ice berg lettuce

            Pepper and salt to taste

Method:

Cook bacon in frying pan to render fat and brown the bacon.

In mean time cube the avocado, add the cottage cheese and mix well. Slice the lettuce very thinly in strips and add.

Remove bacon cubes from the pan and add the Razor fish to the hot pan. Fry for a minute on both sides. Add to the salad and mix well.

Serve on fresh brown bread.