Eternal Ingredients » Rachel Turner

How recipes change from generation to generation

Rachel Turner — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:50:32 +0000

Our family is a great believer in passing on recipes from generation to generation. As the recipes get passed down subtle changes are made, it is then often rewritten and passed down again. The recipe then seems to get slightly changed when it is passed down to the next generation again. Recently, I have been pondering on why these recipes are changed and whether it is for the better! For as long as I can remember my Grandma made Peanut butter cookies. Just like there is always a Yummy Fruit Slice in our house for John to take for his lunch, there was always a jar of peanut butter cookies at my grandma's house, that my uncle would have with his coffee every morning. We spent years helping to make them (ok... so maybe helping to lick out the bowl while pretending to make them). My grandma's peanut butter cookies were definitely the best and I think there were two reasons for this. She used to roll the balls to an exact size and always used normal Weetabix and peanut butter. Mum's are nice, but not as good as she uses organic peanut butter and organic weetabix which have more grains in them and she doesn't roll them. My uncle now makes them himself and again they are not as good, as I don't think they are made with as much love as my gran! My sisters are good, but again not quite as good as Grandma's. Again I think it is partly because she doesn't roll them into balls. I hadn't made them for years as the Australian Weetbix are very different to the UK Weetabix and (Ithink) they don't taste as good!! All this changed recently y when I found 'UK Weetabix' in the supermarket! I have since made 2 batches and they are good, butstill not quite as good as Grandma's. My grandma also made a Duke of Cambridge Tart every time we went to stay and then became my mum's trademark dish and it has now it has become one of mine! When mum showed me how to cook it 2 years ago, we started chatting about how the recipe had changed so I dug out Grandma's old recipe tin and it turns out that she used to put brandy in her version. For some reason mum never did and also changed the recipe. I have not tried making it with the brandy, but plan on doing so to see if it enhances it or not and if the recipe has indeed changed for the better! Fish was another regular on the menu when we were growing up, as my Grandpa had a fish depot so we had plenty of access to wonderfully fresh seafood. My dad has always made an amazing Smoked Cod Kedgeree which we all love and cook regularly, but none of them taste the same! Dad adds lemon juice at the end and it tastes great. I did this one time as John said Dad's was better, but it tasted awful, so I have gone back to my tried and tested version. My sisters is similar to mine but my brothers is very different and I think it may have something to do with the way the rice is cooked, the curry powder you use and the subtle changes we have all made to the recipe to make it our own. Mum's Cheese Straws are something that have definitely changed over the years. She claims they haven't but when I dug out the original recipe from the "My Learn to Cook Book" it proved that she has certainly changed the recipe around. Every time I thought I had got it right she changed the size they should be or something else, to the point I could never get it right. She has now signed off on the final recipe which we all make and again all taste slightly different. Do you have any recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation that have been changed along the way for better.......... or for worse? Happy cooking. Rachel

The Secret Ingredient

Rachel Turner — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 22:19:33 +0000

When a recipe is SHARED with you, can you ever really recreate it in the same way as the person who SHARED it with you? I suspect not, as we all have our own little twists and tricks that we use when we cook, that make the dish our own. I have been given and SHARED many recipes over the years and when they have been SHARED with me I don't think they ever taste quite how they did when they had originally been cooked for me. That's not to say they don't still taste amazing! I remember mum and dad coming to stay with us and mum making untold batches of cheese straws to have with drinks before dinner. They always tasted amazing and John would always say that mine were not as good. The day they were leaving to return home, I insisted mum teach me how me to make them, which she did. The lesson improved the cheese straws but apparently mum's are still better! However if you ask a couple of our friends they disagree and say mine are better. Is this just because they know they will only get mum's cheese straws every 2 years and they need to keep me happy so I keep on making them, or do they truly prefer my version! After watching and cooking with mum, I know her secret tip for making pastry, cheese straws and some biscuits, is to use cold butter and always cut it into tiny pieces before adding it to the flour. She then squashes the pieces of butter into the flour rather than rubbing it in too much. I now use this trick and get a much better result with all of them. My trick with biscuits, fruit cakes and brownies is to cook them at a slightly lower temperature than they say for slightly less time so they end up a little chewy. This doesn't work for all recipes but I tend to know which ones it will work for. When I'm cooking something that has a sauce with it I will always add a bit more liquid than the recipe asks for because, like the judges on My Kitchen Rules I love lots of sauce / gravy with my food. I am also a firm believer that unless you are cooking a cake or something like macaroons there is no need to follow a recipe to the letter as it is always good to put your own twist on things, to make them your own. The only problem is remembering what that twist was and writing it down for next time. We would love to hear from you on what your secret ingredient or tips and tricks are when you cook. Happy cooking Rachel

Macaroon Challenge: How Easy Was it?

Rachel Turner — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 04:34:18 +0000

We were out for dinner the other night with friends and Dave said "I want macaroons for dessert". There were no macaroons on the menu and this led to a conversation about what Macaroons are because Dave confessed even though he wanted them for dessert he had never tried one before! I ended up saying I will make you some salted caramel macaroons. The next day I remembered my foolish promise and set about figuring out how to make them in order to come good on my promise to Dave. I researched and researched how to make them and every recipe seemed as hard and time consuming as the rest. I then reached out on Facebook and was sent a link to a recipe from Belinda. It looked just as time consuming as the rest, but seemed a little easier to follow. After walking the dogs on Saturday morning and picking up the few ingredients I didn't have, I set about my quest to make macaroons. I regretted not making them the day before as my kitchen soon resembled a bomb site and my kitchen had just been cleaned the day before! I had bowls and ingredients everywhere. Don't let anyone tell you they are quick and easy to make. I started with my salted caramel filling and had that all finished in about an hour! Yes by the time you read, re read, start, read again and then continue it takes quite a long time to make. I then had to embark on the quest of making the perfect macaroons. Having watched way too many cooking shows I knew they were easy to get wrong. I followed the recipe to the letter (something I never do). However I got distracted by a call from Vicki half way through dissolving my sugar and realised I wasn't meant to stir it. I debated whether to start it again, but figured what could a little stirring do to ruin my macaroons. As it turns out, nothing! Before piping my macaroons I noticed that nowhere in the recipe I had or any of the others I had googled, did it tell me what size to make my macaroons. I had a small cookie cutter ring in the kitchen drawer and decided to go with that for my marker. I drew all the circles on my baking paper and then turned it over. I used these circles as a guide while I was piping my macaroons. I made 6 batches all up. The first 2 tins were perfect little rounds, probably slightly smaller than they were supposed to be. The second 2 tins were a little larger and I recon were the best of the bunch. The last 2 tins were not quite as good. I think the mixture had been overworked as one tin didn't rise at all. All that said John said they all taste amazing! Would I attempt making them again? To be honest I am not sure if I would. I enjoyed the challenge and am very proud of the end result, but they were very time consuming and will add about 2 kilos to my waistline. I would also say if you are not a reasonably good cook I wouldn't undertake making them. Instead I would take the advice of Anne and Grant and go and buy some!! If you want to give them a go the recipe for Salted Caramel Macaroons is now on our website. Also if you do give them a go and wonder what you can do with all the spare egg yolks you should make some of my mum's Cheese Straws.

Home Baked Biscuits vs Shop Bought Biscuits

Rachel Turner — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:28:44 +0000

Growing up, the only biscuits I can remember my mum or gran buying were, Penguins (the English equivalent of TimTams - which appeared in the house about once a year), Digestives (the plain boring ones without the chocolate on them!) and Toffee Pops (a huge treat in our house when these arrived and it was normally my Grandad who went out and got these for us, when he was out shopping alone with nobody to say "we don't need those"). As you are probably guessing, we didn't have a lot of treats in the house (not that I'm scarred by this!). I do however still remember going round to my best friends house, Dawn Adamson, and looking enviously into the treats cupboard, which I kid you not was filled to bursting with crisps, lollies, chocolate bars and biscuits. I would look longingly, knowing that the only chocolate that would be in our house was on the odd Friday night when Dad came home from work with Cadbury's Cream Eggs as a treat! I am now old enough to appreciate that we were better off with our rare treats and home made biscuits, than my friend Dawn was, with her huge cupboard, full of treats that she could have whenever she wanted. Now I sit back and remember how wonderful it was to grow up in a home where there was always the amazing smell of home baked biscuits in the house. Many of the favorites I can remember being baked are, Cornish Fairings, Grantham Gingernuts, peanut cookies (my gran made this every week for my uncle), peanut biscuits, chocolate biscuits....... to name just a few. Since then I have introduced even more recipes into our cupboards such as Chocolate Brazil Nut Cookies, Stem Ginger Macaroons, Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Seed Biscuits, Anzac Biscuits...... I also bake a fruit slice for my husband to take to work every day. It all started because he got fed up with the muesli bars getting smaller and smaller and he always comments that the cake is made with love. There is something about home baked biscuits that taste so much better than the shop bought ones. I think it is a combination of things that makes them so good; the smell of them cooking, the thought that someone has put time and love into baking the biscuits themselves rather than popping to the shops, and I think lastly it is that you know what is in your biscuits and can make them as big or small as you like! In my case I always ere on the larger side!! You will then always find a batch of home baked biscuits in our cupboard. Normally I rely on the recipes I grew up with, unless someone has sent me a new one to try out. For me, a tin of home made biscuits not only taste amazing, but they make me think of home and my wonderful family. Please SHARE your biscuit recipes with us so that I can add more variety into my bulging cupboard of home baked biscuits. Happy Baking Rachel

Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Seed Biscuits

Rachel Turner — Sun, 26 May 2013 22:30:22 +0000

Ingredients

175 gms crunchy peanut butter
75 gms unsalted butter, melted
200 gms dark brown molasses sugar
2 medium sized eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
100 gms pumpkin seeds, plus extra to finish
125 gms plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

OS Kitchen: Hampton

Rachel Turner — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:41:42 +0000

Until about 18 months ago John and I often said "what we really need on Hampton Street (our local shopping / eating strip in Hampton) is a great restaurant". This soon stopped when OS Kitchen opened at the end of our road. It quickly became popular and it was a while before we managed to book a table. Once we had been there for dinner we quickly understood why it was so busy and have been the biggest fans and regular customers ever since. Alastair has made OS Kitchen a place that not only locals want to go to but, also people from further afield as well. His passion for food and wine and the service you get from not only Alastair but all the staff is outstanding. The food is amazing and so is the atmosphere, so it is no surprise that we would go down there so regularly. We sometimes just drop in for a wine and plate of the mouth watering cured meats when we are out for a walk with Bob. The menu changes every few months, which I was quite unhappy about the first time round as their Pork belly was to die for. I am pleased to say it has just come back on the menu, a different version, but just as good as ever. 12 months ago they did a foraged mushroom degustation dinner which we thought sounded interesting and went along to. From memory the mushroom foragers had been tracked down through Twitter and were all from Victoria. The food and the wines that accompanied each dish were outstanding and we got plenty of great information about the mushrooms and wine along the way. We missed out on the duck degustation dinner a few weeks ago and so when the foraged mushroom dinner was announced I booked table for 4 straight away. When we arrived we were given a beautiful glass of bubbles and a bowl of the raw mushrooms to look at and touch to see what we were eating. When Alastair started talking about the mushrooms we took a look in our bowl only to find one was half eaten. John had to quickly confess he had been trying them!!! The menu was amazing and the food so good that I had eaten a number of my dishes before I remembered I was going to take a picture to go with my blog post!! We dined on: Beetroot cured kingfish, pickled asian mushrooms and wasabi sorbet Foraged mushrooms on toast, truffled pecorino Confit chicken leg, mushrooms provencal, garlic emulsion Jerusalem artichoke risotto, pine mushrooms, braised beef cheek, fresh horseradish Autumnal forest floor There was much debate on our table as to what the Autumnal forest floor would be and I was convinced that it would be berries with some mushroom shavings. How wrong could I be. It was one of the best desserts ever: Crème anglaise topped with a layer of frozen chocolate crunch and honeycomb, with a beautiful handmade marshmallow mushroom and flowers on the top. How was I supposed to pick that!!! If you want a restaurant with friendly service, fantastic wines amazing food and great atmosphere, OS Kitchen should definitely be put on your list of places to eta. Let us know if you have eaten at any great restaurants lately that you can recommend to us. Happy eating Rachel

Curry in a hurry

Rachel Turner — Thu, 02 May 2013 08:46:46 +0000

Curries remind me of Friday nights out in London. Every Friday would see friends and I leave the pub at 11 pm and head across the road to one of the many Indian Restaurants in London for a curry and a pint before heading home. I think anyone who grew up in the UK would have a similar memory to mine and as I write this I am looking forward to my next trip back home to see if the Friday night ritual is as good as I remember it to be! Growing up, my Grandma used to cook curried eggs. I am told I have a very rose coloured view on what they were like, as I am obsessed with finding the long lost recipe. My mum and sister have assured me they were not as good as I remembered them to be and from their memories they were pretty awful. I just wish I could find that long lost recipe so I could try them, even if they are pretty awful! Apart from the curried eggs, my family didn't cook a great deal of curries when I was growing up. Maybe this is why when I discovered the Friday night ritual of a curry after the pub. I hooked onto it pretty quickly. Since moving to Australia curry has not been high on the menu / restaurant list. as it is the one food my husband isn't keen on, so I tend not to cook them too often. That's not to say I still don't love a good curry. I was so excited 6 years ago when we went on holiday to India. As well as thinking about all the amazing places we were going to see I was excited about trying all of the local cuisine. In my excitement I forgot about curries not being a favourite of John's and that they also didn't really agree with him. I did start to wonder what he would eat during the trip, but quickly put that to one side and thought about all the lovely food I was going to eat! We had quite a good compromise and I did manage to try a few amazing curries while I was over there, but not as many as I would have liked to,. Maybe it was just as well as well I wasn't eating too many curries as I managed to avoid coming down with delhi belly while I was away. Even though we didn't eat as many curries as I would have liked, I still enjoyed all the amazing smells and seeing all the cooking going on around the streets. There was just so much to take in and I could have eaten my way round all the little street stalls if I hadn't been worried about sitting in the mini bus for the next 5 hours without a toilet in sight! I recently went to stay with some friends in Geelong for a girls night and the lovely Janina had cooked a beautiful curry. This was a huge treat for me as it's not something I often get, and a home cooked curry is always a favourite for me when John isn't around. Janina is an incredibly good cook so I was a bit nervous when I recreated her dish and made my version of the Mutton Kari (Lamb curry). I have to say my attempt was pretty good and went down well with Vicki, who I invited over for dinner to sample it and then sent a batch home for her lovely husband to enjoy. I am sure like me you must have some wonderful curry memories, recipes and amazing restaurants you can recommend. If the restaurants are close enough I may just drop down there the next time John is working away from home as it will save me cooking for one! Please share any of your recipes with us so that I can cook up a storm at home and recreate the Friday night ritual of a curry after the pub closes at 11 pm! Happy eating and cooking Rachel

Healthy Eating

Rachel Turner — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:37:33 +0000

Things have been so busy with work lately and I realised my healthy eating and living has been suffering. Too many mornings I end up waking early and going to my computer, instead of the gym or running with my beloved poodle. When this happens I promise myself I will take him for a long walk at lunchtime or at the end of the day and invariably it doesn't happen. With the my recent lack of exercise has also come a lack of healthy eating. When work isn't quite as busy you always find me at the gym or out running 6 days a week and then taking a long walk on a Sunday morning with John and Bob. I also walk to the shops at lunchtime to pick up fresh food for dinner that night, unless we are out for dinner with friends I will cook a healthy meal at least 5 times a week. So how do I get the balance back in my life and bring back the healthy living again? I am sure I'm not the only person who has this dilemma and is asking themselves "how can I get back to my normal healthier lifestyle". This weekend I decided it was time to work on this, and started by calling my lovely friend Michelle and asking her for her amazing homemade muesli recipe. I then set to work in the kitchen making a batch that will last me at least 10 days. I know exactly what has gone into it and know it is not full of sugar ,which is one thing I really dislike about bought muesli. The next thing I did was bake a batch of my mum's Cornish Fairing biscuits so that if I had that sweet craving I had something healthy and tasty to go for, rather than the shop bought biscuits I have had in the house lately. I also got back into cooking popcorn to snack on when I am hungry in the middle of the day. When John returned home from Sydney I baked his yummy fruit slice which is another great thing to have in the house. This is another recipe that came from Michelle (yes she is definitely one of the healthiest people I know)! OK so breakfast and snacks have been taken care of, so it's time to look at how else I can improve my eating (I will get onto the exercise later)! I went back to the kitchen and cooked some freezer meals for when I don't have time to cook. I made a huge batch of Spaghetti Bolognaise and with the left over mince, (yes I bought slightly too much) I made my Thick Noodles with Hoisin Mince, I then popped individual serves into the freezer. I then made a huge maccaroni cheese (using my niece's recipe from our family cookbook) to freeze. Not necessarily the healthiest meal, but it is one of John's favourites and he will love going to the freezer if I am out and finding it there. Rather than relying on walking / driving down to the shops to get food in for dinner, I have decided I am going to do the shopping on Sunday, so that a healthy food selection is always in the house. If it is there, I have to cook it so it doesn't go to waste and because I have to cook dinner I will have to finish work at a decent time each night, so it is a win win situation. One of my favourite dishes to cook when I am busy and want something healthy for dinner is my Chicken in a bag with mushrooms. I will upload this recipe once I have cooked this in the next week or so. You can make it in the morning and simply pop it in the oven 20 minutes before you want to eat. The flavours are amazing and it is a healthy meal, especially with some snow peas as well. All in all most of the meals I cook and that are on our website are healthy (of course the desserts may be a little indulgent, but we all have to have treats now and then)! Now I have my last challenge, the exercise. How do I motivate myself to get out running or going to the gym now that the weather is colder and work is so busy. The best way is to take a look at the excited little poodle that sits by my bed when the alarm goes off, waiting to go out for a run. Those puppy dog eyes are sure to get me out of bed when I am not feeling like it. They worked this morning when I was ready to have a late start to the day, but instead I was talked around going for a long, fast walk to the beach with Bob, after which we both felt better. Let us know if you have any tips on healthy meals and keeping fit. Happy cooking and running Rachel

Nutty Muesli

Rachel Turner — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:02:23 +0000

Ingredients

3 cups rolled oats
2 cups almonds, cashews and pistachios
2 tbls chia seeds
1 cup coconut flakes
1 tsp ground cinnamon
100 gms coconut oil or butter, melted
3 tbls rice syrup

Bring a Plate

Rachel Turner — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:26:11 +0000

Until I moved to Australia I had never heard of the term 'bring a plate'. I still remember my husband coming home one night, saying we were going to friends for dinner and we had to bring a plate. I looked at him, not quite knowing what he was asking me to bring, was it a plate to eat my dinner off or what sort of plate was it. He had to explain, in Australia it was common for people to be asked to bring something along to a person’s house when they went for dinner. I was still a bit stunned as I had never been out to dinner before with anything but a bottle of wine, bunch of flowers and box of chocolates for the host. I sat back and thought this is all very odd and it means instead of looking forward to going out for dinner tonight and only having to think about getting myself ready, I had to prepare something to take along with me. Then the questions started going around in my heard. What sort of salad was I to bring. Would there already be a potato salad or coleslaw on the table? Should I be more adventurous? How big should I make the salad? How many people were going to be there? What was everyone else was going to bring? John told me to calm down and just make a salad and not worry about it anymore. Once I got over the initial shock of bringing a plate, it kind of made sense, if there were lots of people going to be there, the catering wasn't left up to just one person. However it still felt very odd and took me a long time to get used to. Even though I am happy to bring a plate along if I am asked to, I still can't bring myself to ask anyone to bring anything to our house when they come for dinner. For me, the enjoyment of having people over for dinner is planning what we are going to eat and ensuring that all the courses will go well together and that there won't be too much food that goes uneaten at the end of the night. Friends have stopped asking of they can bring anything along to our house, as they know the answer will be 'no, just bring yourself'. With John working away from home this Easter, I was home alone and had plenty of invitations to go to friends for lunch and dinner. Easter Sunday I was invited along to a friend’s family lunch and was asked to bring nibbles. I knew there were going to be 11 people and 2 of them were young children, so had to think carefully about what to bring. How much should I take along with me? If I was at home it would be easy as I could keep on topping it all up as it ran out. After much thought I kept things quite simple with figs with cream cheese and prosciutto, olives, dip, carrot sticks (stop the children filling up on too many crackers), a lovely Brie and some healthy pitta crackers. I then added a special touch to it all with some of my homemade parmiers. Even though they are better served hot, I decided it would be messy to take them and cook them when I got there, so I pre-cooked them just before I left home. They tasted just as good cold and went down a treat with everyone. Let us know if you have any great tips for what to take along when you are asked to 'bring a plate' when you go out to friends for lunch or dinner. Happy eating Rachel