Lemon Meringue Pie

I found a real cracker by chance tonight. Friends came over for dinner, and on a whim I decided to make a Lemon Meringue Pie. I’ve never done it before, but they are close friends, and they were happy to be my guinea pigs. The pie, it turns out, was pretty gosh darn tasty, if I do say so myself… which I do. AND it wasn’t half bad looking either 🙂

The recipe is from Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbooks: BAKE. Give it a spin, you won’t regret it. 🙂

End of STEP 4: “Blind baked” pastry, (a little too browned in some places).

A TIP FOR STEP 5: When you are stirring the mixture over the stove, small glutinous lumps will appear. Don’t freak out (I did a little bit). It wants to turn into an almost glue like texture, so when this happens you know it is on it’s way to achieving its dream! It will be ok. 🙂 It comes together super fast after this, changing from a milk like consistency to glue-like, in about 2 seconds! 🙂 It was impressive to see.

Watch the magic happen on my video here.

STEP 6: The recipe says to “spread” the meringue, but I choose to pipe it. I think it looks pretty when it browns up. Each to their own. 🙂 Also because piping takes up more of the meringue mixture, I suggest using the forth egg white (from the pastry), and a little extra caster sugar, to make up extra meringue. Besides, all good intensions aside, what do most of us do with one left over egg white, in a glass in the fridge? We ignore it, until we can justify throwing it out. Instead: beat it up with sugar, and eat it. 🙂

We loved this pie. I will definitely be making it again soon. Next time I will be brave and leave it in the oven just a tad longer (a few minutes only) to further “crunch-ify” the browned tips on the meringue.

Seasonal Note: In Australia lemons are in season in Autumn, Winter and Spring. Just something for us all to keep in mind. 😉

Yogurt and Cucumber Dip

This is one of my fav dips. Awesome on its own, dipping with biscuits, bread or fresh cut veggies. Also great with lamb, kofta, cous cous etc. It is from The Australian Woman’s Weekly Cookbooks: Great Vegetarian Foods.

A tip on straining whey from yogurt:
You know that watery stuff that you get on top of natural yogurt? It needs to be strained before you can use it for dips etc.
I have strained yogurt the “proper” way before, but to be honest usually I don’t bother. I have a lot of food paraphernalia around my house, but seriously, cheese cloth… on hand… all the time? Yeah, that’s not happening.
Here is an alternative method, which works just fine.

Place a smaller strainer (just the kind you would drain pasta in, or wash small veggies or herbs) over a bowl. Make sure it can balance there on its own. Line the strainer with about 4 layers of good quality paper kitchen towel. Dump the yoghurt onto the paper. Place the whole “thing” into the fridge. The paper and bowl will draw out/catch excess whey from the yogurt, making a thicker, more delicious end product. Leave it in the fridge for a few hours at least, but over night is ideal. You can loosely cover the whole thing in glad wrap, I suppose, if that’s your sort of thing.

Make this dip at least one day before you want to eat it. It gives all the ingredients time to make friends and invade one another’s personal taste space. 🙂

Mum’s Hommous

It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I make this one, it is never as good as my Mum’s.

FACT: My Mum makes gosh darn good hommous.

What’s in it?

• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tin of chickpeas, save half the juice from the tin
• 3/4 cup of tahini
• 1/2 cup of lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• “a glug” (dollop, sloosh etc) of olive oil.
• chilli to taste

Put all the ingredients in a blender, or food processor and blend the bergebers out of it. Then blend it some more. Then blend it a little more, for good luck. You want it to be as smooth and silky as possible.

I like to sprinkle a little cayenne pepper over it, once it is presented. But this is just a personal preference. Parsley is good too. Fresh flat bread (Lebanese bread probably if you’re buying it) is a necessity here.

Better Banana Bread than you can buy

One of the things I love about Banana Bread is that we, as a society, have come to a socially constructed agreement that we will all ignore the obvious fact that essentially it is cake. It is CAKE, people! 🙂 We shall ignore it, and continue to uphold the delicious assumption that Banana “Bread” is the ok-breakfast-afternoon-anytime cake, for which we SHALL NOT BE JUDGED too heavily for enjoying. 🙂 Enjoy.

This is how I used to make banana bread:

1. Buy bananas
2. Leave them in my fruit bowl until they are no longer recognizable as bananas
3. Feel sad and/or guilty about it for a day or so, regretfully throw out the bananas, while pouting sadly at them
4. Go to the shops and buy banana bread. (It’s not as nice as your homemade woulda been, Sam, but at least it actually exists. Unlike your planned banana bread, Sam, that never happened because you are a wasteful fool, SAM!)

Funnily enough, this wasn’t working for me. I finally learned to listen to the “Mums” around me who were convinced that you could freeze blackened bananas (at step 2 or even 3 above), and they were of course right. Thanks Mums of the world! How do you guys know this stuff? 🙂

SO – this is how I NOW make banana bread, and like, *flicks hair* omg, it is so much better than store bought bread. 🙂

Banana Bread is one of my favourite “pretend healthy” things to make. One by one, I freeze the poor neglected fruit bowl rejected bananas until I have 4 ugly horrible gooey black (delicious) ‘nanas frozen and ready to go for when the cooking mood strikes.

Here is the recipe I use. It is from the October 2009 edition of Australian Good Food Magazine. I always skip the nuts (personal preference), but NOT the lemon. Trust me, the lemon MAKES this recipe. It says use four bananas, but I find three works better. Four (“normal” sized) bananas tends to make the mixture too wet, and its hard to get it to cook just right.

Tip: There is no escaping the fact that it is really, really icky peeling thawed, frozen, blackened bananas. It’s just so gross. I try to go to my happy place while doing it. If you are grossed out too, I find it helps, if while peeling off their skin – you smile and think to yourself, “It is just a banana. Just a banana. Come on, harden up!” I don’t know why, but it helps me, anyway.

Seasonal Note: In Australia bananas are pretty much in season all year. So that’s good news for homemade, sustainable banana bread. 🙂