Tag Archives: light

Coconut Panna Cotta with Passionfruit Jelly, Caramelised Mango and White Chocolate Mousse

Posted in Dessert by

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Summer is almost upon us and that means it’s time for barbeques, salads and long days at the beach. I should know, because as I write this post I am looking rather red from spending rather too much time in the sun. Tut tut. Because the days are warm, we want food that is fresh and light, and while desserts are usually decadent affairs, that does not mean we have to miss out. I know that must be a sigh of relief for all you sugar fiends out there – myself included.

One of my favourite summer desserts is panna cotta, which essentially translates to ‘cooked cream’. I remember first eating his dessert while on holidays with my family in Italy in a tiny little town just outside Florence. It was at a small traditional restaurant and the panna cotta was heavenly – it was smooth and creamy but oh so light and melted on your tongue. We had spent the day sightseeing in the heat, so to end the day eating this chilled creamy vanilla goodness topped with fresh berries was perfect.

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The variation I have made here is a coconut infused cream – make sure you toast the shredded coconut yourself first and try to give it the full hour for the flavours to envelop the cream mixture as it really makes a difference to the end result. I wanted to make this dessert scream summer so I’ve given it a tropical hit with the caramelized mango and passion fruit jelly – with just a hint of pure sugary sweetness from the white chocolate mousse. The flavours work sublimely together it really makes you feel like you’re on holidays in some far away exotic location. While each of the elements is a little time consuming as there is quite a bit of chilling required, they are not all that hard, so please don’t be put off.

Give this a go for your next barbie, or when you want to impress your friends at a dinner party and let me know how you go!

 

Coconut Panna Cotta with Passionfruit Jelly, Caramelised Mango and White Chocolate Mousse

Serves 6

Coconut Panna Cotta

  • 140 gm shredded coconut
  • 400 ml milk
  • 400ml pouring cream
  • Thinly peeled rind of 1 lime
  • 110 gm (1/2 cup) raw caster sugar
  • 4 titanium-strength gelatine leaves, softened in cold water for 3-5 minutes
  • 150 ml coconut cream
  1. Preheat oven to 180C. Spread coconut over an oven tray and toast until golden (4-5 minutes). Transfer to a large saucepan, add milk, cream and rind, and bring to the boil over medium-high heat, then remove from heat and stand to infuse (1 hour).
  2. Bring coconut mixture back to the simmer over medium-high heat, add sugar and stir to dissolve. Squeeze excess water from gelatine, add to coconut mixture, stir to dissolve, then strain into a bowl through a coarse sieve (press on solids to extract all liquid; discard solids). Stir in coconut cream, then pour into six 1 cup-capacity jelly moulds or one 1 litre cake tin and refrigerate until set (overnight).
  3. To serve, dip the moulds in hot water, then gently pull edges of jelly away from sides with your fingertip (this helps break the vacuum and release the jelly). Place a plate on top, invert mould and plate, then remove mould.

 

Passionfruit Jelly

  • 375 ml (1½ cups) passionfruit juice
  • 150 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
  • 200 gm white sugar
  • 6½ gelatine leaves, softened in cold water
  1. Combine juices, sugar and 1 cup water in a saucepan. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves, then pass through a muslin-lined sieve. Warm ½ cup juice mixture in a saucepan over medium heat, squeeze excess water from gelatine, add to pan and stir until gelatine dissolves, then add remaining juice mixture. Cool slightly and pour into six 1 cup-capacity glasses and refrigerate for 4 hours or until set. Once set, cut jelly into small cubes.

Note: To make passionfruit juice, blend passionfruit pulp in a food processor to crack seeds, then strain through a fine sieve. Twelve passionfruit yield about 1 cup of juice.

 

White Chocolate Mousse

  1. 3 egg whites
  2. 200g good quality white chocolate
  3. ½ cup caster sugar
  4. 1 egg yolk
  • Melt the white chocolate over a bain-marie until smooth. Remove from heat.
  • Whisk egg white in the bowl of an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar to egg whites. Keep beating until sugar has dissolved and the egg whites are stiff.
  • Gently fold through white chocolate mixture and egg yolk until the mixture has incorporated.
  • Place bowl in fridge and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

 

Caramelised Mango

2 mangoes, flesh sliced into thin pieces

½ cup brown sugar

25 g butter

  • Heat a medium sized frypan over a medium heat. Place the sugar into the plan and leave to heat for about 30 seconds, then add the butter in small knobs around the pan. Mix the butter and sugar together until it forms a caramel paste. Add in the mango and coat it in the sugar mix. Take the mango off the heat and place on a plate after about 30 seconds.

To serve 

  • 3 passion fruit
  • Toasted coconut flakes
  • Handful mint leaves
  1. Arrange the de-molded panna cottas onto plates. Place a few pieces of the caramelized mango around the panna cottas. Scatter some jelly cubes over the mango. Using a piping bag, pipe little mounds of the mousse into the gaps between the mango and jelly. Place toasted coconut flakes into the white chocolate mounds – use the mousse as a glue to stick the coconut into. Garnish each of the six plates with mint leaves and the pulp of half a passion fruit. Serve immediately.

Freekah and Haloumi Salad

Posted in Lunch, Recipes, Salads by

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I think making this salad was wishful thinking. Sydney is still rather chilly and dreary at the moment. Getting up in the morning requires well thought-out layering of coats and scarves. Work lunches normally consist of soup, and numerous cups of hot tea are consumed throughout the day. But I am off to Europe in a month for my first holiday in two years and I think the thought of sunshine, warm water and balmy nights got me confused about which hemisphere I was on. I had urges for something light and fresh – something that I might order while I drink cocktails and relax by the pool in Santorini. This salad seemed to hit the mark rather well though. I may be slightly premature in my food choices but this salad is rather tasty. It’s zingy from the lemon, slightly textural with the crunch of the freekah, salty with the haloumi and with just the right amount of sweetness from the tomatoes. So if you’re dreaming of being on a different continent, do like I did and give this a go!

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Freekah and Haloumi Salad

Serves 4

Ingredients

175g freekah, cooked according to packet instructions

1 bunch flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

1 handful mint, finely chopped

1 small red onion, finely diced

3 spring onions, sliced thinly

3 vine-ripened tomatoes, deseeded and finely diced

125ml extra virgin olive oil, plus extra

juice of 2 lemons

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

300g haloumi, cut into 4 slices

 

Method 

Put the freekah in a bowl and add the parsley, mint, red onion, spring onions and vine-ripened tomatoes. Mix well.

Whisk the olive oil and lemon juice together and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the dressing to the freekah and mix through thoroughly.

Place a pan onto the stove on a high heat and add a splash of extra virgin olive oil. When hot, add the haloumi slices and cook on one side for a minute until they turn brown and a crust forms.

Turn over and repeat.

To serve, slice up the haloumi, divide between 4 plates and spoon over the freekah salad.

Middle Eastern Barbecued Eggplant with Tahini Dressing and Pomegranates

Posted in Recipes, Salads by

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Our oven broke last week and it forced me to get a bit experimental in my cooking. I’m confident in my normal domain – the oven and stove. But when you take the oven out of the equation, your choice become considerably more limited. Sure, you can get creative and there are countless dishes you can make that require solely a stove-top. But when you get home from work the first dish that creeps into your head will undoubtedly be pasta. And after a while, or my third night consecutively chowing down on the delicious carb-loaded aforementioned meal, I had reached my limit. I needed something baked. Then I remembered we had a barbeque. That foreign object that sits outside in the garden. To me, the barbeque is the domain of steaks and sausages, not the domain of slow roasted meat, or caramelized vegetables. However, I decided that I needed to break-free from my comforting inside-oven domain and brave the grey, rainy weather to use the barbeque. Under the careful prowess of my boyfriend who helped me turn it on (yes, you read the correctly) I started to get acquainted with the big, scary barbeque. And I can tell any of you other non-barbecue-users that it’s not as a scary as you may think.

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My barbeque has a temperature dial, which helped when trying to figure out how long and what temperature to cook things at. However, a barbeque cannot be treated in the same way as an oven as the heat is not regulated in the same way and may not cook things as evenly as you might be used to. Do not despair. Just keep an eye on what your cooking, move it around to a different part of the barbeque and play with the temperature dials a bit until you get a feel for it. You will get there, I promise and the results will be worth it!

While the barbeque does produce a decidedly more smoky flavoured result, this can be absolutely perfect for some recipes. This recipe for middle eastern braised eggplant being one of them. I have made this dish before in the oven but I was pleasantly surprised that the barbeque produced a far more flavorsome meal. The smoky, charred flavour that finds its way into the eggplant means that the eggplant is soft and tender inside, with a crisp, crunchy skin. Pair this with a tangy, creamy tahini dressing and a fresh hit of pomegranates and I promise you’ll be grateful that you ventured outside.

Middle Eastern Barbequed Eggplant with Tahini Dressing and Pomegranates

Serves 6 as side

Ingredients:

  • 2 medium sized eggplants, sliced into 1cm thick discs
  • ½ bunch chopped coriander
  • ½ cup pomegranate seeds

Marinade

  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 4 tbs olive oil
  • 1 tsp ground chilli
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp dukkah
  • Sea salt to season

Dressing

  • 2 tbs tahini
  • 2 tbs olive oil
  • 1 tbs water
  • Juice from 1½ lemons
  • 1 clove crushed garlic
  • Sea salt to season

 

Method: 

  • Preheat the barbeque to 200°C and line two baking trays with baking paper.
  • Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl.
  • Place the eggplant discs flat on the baking trays and spread out evenly.
  • Using a pastry brush, dip it into the marinade and baste each disc with the marinade. Repeat on all the discs, turning each over to coat each side.
  • Put the eggplant into the oven and cook for 30 minutes or until soft in the middle and crispy on the outside. Be sure to turn the eggplant discs over so they cook evenly about half way through cooking.
  • While the eggplant is cooking you can make the dressing. For the dressing, combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir well. The tahini will absorb a lot of the liquid so if it looks a little thick, add a bit more oil, lemon juice or water and taste.
  • Remove the eggplant from the barbeque and place onto a serving tray. Drizzle with dressing and sprinkle with pomegranates and top with coriander. Serve warm.

 

 

Fluffy Ricotta Pancakes

Posted in Breakfast, Recipes by

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Sunday is the sort of day where you are allowed to treat yourself. You’ve come to the end of the weekend and you know you have to face the real world again tomorrow, you might be nursing a sore head or you might just be allowing yourself some well-earned relaxation time. Either way, it is my opinion that if it’s Sunday it is very much acceptable to indulge in some of the things you might not allow yourself to do during the rest of the week. And eating pancakes is one of them. And if you’re going to treat yourself you may as well do it right.

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These pancakes are fluffy and light through the combination of the beaten egg whites and the creamy ricotta. This duo ensures that the stodge-factor, which is present in many pancakes, will not be present here. I have added only a little sugar as I’m not as fond of overly sweet pancakes but this amount can easily be adjusted according to personal preference. I topped them with fresh berries as they were in season but lemon, butter and sugar is always a hit as well.

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Fluffy Ricotta Pancakes

Makes 12 pancakes

Ingredients:

  • 1 ½ cups self-raising flour
  • 3 egg whites
  • 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
  • 1 ½ tbs caster cugar
  • 1 cup milk
  • ½ cup fresh ricotta
  • Butter, to grease
  • Berries, to serve
  • Maple syrup

 Method:

  1. Place flour, egg yolks, caster sugar, milk and ricotta in a bowl and mix until just combined.
  2. Place egg whites in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer and stiff peaks form.
  3. Gently fold the egg whites through the batter mixture in two batches.
  4. Heat a fry pan over a medium heat. Melt a knob of batter in pan. Place large spoonful’s of the mixture in the pan and cook for about 2 minutes on each side or until the sides are golden in colour. Repeat until batter is empty. Serve with berries and maple syrup.

Rich Chocolate Mousse

Posted in Dessert, Recipes by

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Does chocolate mousse really need an introduction? It’s well loved by millions for the simple fact that it’s delicious. It’s light and airy but at the same time rich and decadent. I think it really is the texture that does it for me. The egg whites perform little miracles in this dish. They produce the creaminess, the fluffiness and the lightness. When you fold the egg whites through the mixture it looks like a simple chocolate cake batter, but leave it in the fridge for a few hours and it’s transformed into the delight that is chocolate mousse – no gelatine required.

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I had cravings for this because as I said in my last post, it has been very hot here in Sydney of late. And this sort of weather suppresses your appetite a little and leaves you wanting things that are fresh. No beef bourguignon on a 30 degree day for me thank you. So while I’d had a light dinner I couldn’t help hankering for something sweet, you see my sweet tooth knows no bounds. And then it hit me; chocolate mousse. This is chocolate mousse in it’s purest form – no gelatine, no butter, no espresso or other odd additions, just chocolate, cream, sugar and egg whites. This recipe is slightly different to the bulk of chocolate mousse recipes as it doesn’t use the egg yolks. I can’t really give a reason for this, it’s just the way I’ve always made it and to me it’s absolutely delicious like this. And egg yolks or not, it most definitley cured me of my sweet tooth cravings that night.

Rich Chocolate Mousse

Serves: 6

Ingredients: 

  • 250g dark chocolate, broken into chunks (I used Callebaut)
  • 1/2 cup cream
  • 1/4 cup caster sugar
  • 3 egg whites

Method:

  1. Place chocolate and cream in a saucepan over a low heat. Stir with a spoon until chocolate is melted, careful not to let the bottom of the pan burn.
  2. Transfer chocolate mixture to a metal bowl and leave to cool.
  3. Meanwhile, place egg whites in a metal bowl and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add the caster sugar until stiff peaks form.
  4. Gently fold the egg white mixture through the chocolate.
  5. Spoon into glass ramekins and leave to set in fridge for at least 2 hours.
  6. Garnish with strawberries or raspberries and serve.

Watermelon and Feta Salad

Posted in Salads by

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Spring has definitely sprung here in Sydney. Leaving the house early in the morning on the way to work you can already feel the warmth of the sun on your back. If you’re lucky enough to leave the office on your lunch break, it’s the sort of weather where you head to the nearest park and laze barefoot on the grass with a good book and soak up the sunshine. It’s warm enough to spend your weekends lying on the beach, running to the water’s edge when the sun starts to get a little much and then retreating back to your towel to dry off again and repeat. And if there is fruit that screams summer and sunshine it would have to be watermelon. Biting into a juicy slice of watermelon is supremely satisfying. The juice runs down your face; it’s cool, refreshing, but most of all sweet. Watermelon’s are delicious on their own as the perfect summer snack, but there are so many different uses for them. You can make popsicles, sorbet, granita, juice them, fill them with vodka for a summer BBQ or make a savoury salad as I have done.

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This salad is ridiculously simple but oh so satisfying when you’ve come home after a day at the beach and you’re hot and tired and just want to make something easy. The sweet, refreshing taste of the watermelon is balanced with the salty, creamy texture of marinated feta and the freshness of mint. All these flavours are then married together with a basic vinegar dressing that just gives the salad a hint of tang. Sometimes I can overcomplicate things, and this sort of salad makes you remember that sometimes simple is best because it really does let the ingredients shine through.

Watermelon and Feta Salad

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients:

  • 1 kilo watermelon, chopped into small pieces
  • 100 g marinated fetta
  • 5 sprigs mint, leaves only and torn.
  • 1 tbs olive oil
  • 1/2 tbs red wine vinegar
  • 1/4 tsp seeded mustard

Method:

  1. Arrange the watermelon on a serving dish. Crumble the feta over the top. Sprinkle the mint on top.
  2. To make the dressing: combine oil, vinegar and mustard in a jar and shake. Spoon dressing over salad and serve.