French apple tart & Sunday dinner.

I've always wanted to host a dinner party. Always. In my Ideal Dinner Party Situation, everything would be perfect. The wine would be good, the table would be set in a fancy design, there'd be lots of people in lovely dresses/suits, the food would be amazing, and I would play the perfect hostess. Instead, we don't live in a house big enough to host a dinner party, so alas, I'll have to keep dreaming about the perfect dinner party. One day. It'll happen one day.

But in the meantime, I can have dinner with as many people as can fit in our lounge room, and around the tiny table that I borrowed from my Dad. That makes a total of four whole people. So there was Brent, Me, Brent's sister Kirby, and her boyfriend, Arie. We squished around this table that I set up (at the time, it didn't look like the one above. I didn't take any good photo's at the time, because I was embarrassed, I've never had people watch me take photos like that before, so I re-set the table when I was cleaning up this morning. Sneaky. In an Ideal World, my table setting would have looked [like this]), and ate this huge meal in the space of an hour, because we decided to catch a movie after. We had a simple tomato Bruschetta, Beouf Bourguignon (Julia Child's recipe, of course), and French Apple Tart (also Julia Child's). I could tell you about all the bad things about the meal, but let's focus on the positive, shall we? The tomato Bruschetta was nice, the tomato/fetta/red onion combination never fails. The sauce for the Bourguignon was really rich from the wine and tasted really good, but I think the mushrooms and the onions (which had been cooked in an indecent amount of butter) were my favourite bits. The apple tart looked really pretty, if I may say so myself, I was super proud of my lovely apple-pattern on the top. The apple sauce mixture underneath was really tasty and spiced just the right amount (it was even good for breakfast this morning with some yoghurt and some homemade granola). I'll give you the other recipes at a later date, but we'll start with the apple tart. As my Mum always says, eat dessert first. So that's what we'll do.

The apple tart wasn't hard to make, it was just time consuming: making the pastry, peeling/coring/slicing all the apples, making the apple sauce. But I think it's worth it, especially for a special occasion. It makes you feel very domestic-goddess, being able to produce something like this from your very own kitchen.

French Apple Tart:

From Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

Makes one 25-26cm tart.

For the Pastry:

2 cups pastry flour ("00" flour)

1/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp white sugar

200g cold butter, chopped into bits

1/2 cup iced water

Mix flour, salt, sugar and butter in a big bowl. Rub the flour and butter together with the tips of your fingers until the mix resembles crumbs. Don't over mix, you don't want the butter to get too warm.

Add the water and quickly mix in with one hand. Add a few more drops of water if the mix hasn't come together. The dough should hold together without being sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a floured board. With the heel, not the palm, of your hand, knead the dough to blend it together. Sprinkle it lightly with flour and wrap in baking paper and place in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight before using.

When ready to use, place the dough on a floured board. Roll out into a thin circle bigger than your baking tin. Lift the dough off the board and lay over your greased tin. Press the dough into the tin and prick all around with a fork. Cover with a square of baking paper and then pour in rice, dried beans or baking weights. Blind bake in a 200C preheated oven for 8-10 minutes until base is set. Remove the paper and weights and bake for another 3-5 minutes until pastry starts to colour.

For the Apple topping:

2 kg apples (I used golden delicious and fuji's)

1/3 cup apricot jam

2/3 cup white sugar

3 tbsp butter

1/2 tsp cinnamon

zest of 1 lemon

Peel, core and quarter the apples (You might like to have a sit on the couch whilst you're doing this). Cut enough of the apples into thin lengthwise slices to make 3 cups. Toss them with 1 tsp lemon juice and 2 tbsp sugar. (for the top of the tart).

Cut the remaining apples into chunks, about 8 cups, and place in a pan with 3 tbsp water. Cook, covered, over a low heat for 20 mins, stirring occasionally. The apples should be tender.

Mix in the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil and cook until the apples have turned into a thick sauce.

Preheat oven to 190C.

Spread the applesauce on the blind baked pastry shell. Arrange the apple slices on top of the sauce.

Bake for 30 mins, or until apples have browned and are tender.

Spread an apricot glaze (1/2 cup apricot jam mixed with 2 tbsp sugar heated until just simmering) over the top of the apples.

The tart can be served either hot or cold.

Sometimes, life happens.

Sometimes, things don't plan out the way you expected. Even the little things. Sometimes I'm not the perfect housewife I imagine myself to be (and I'm not even married, things must be all kinds of messed up around here).

You get up in the morning with a plan for the day: Meet a friend at 10 for coffee, finish doing the housework (i.e. finish watching "True Blood"), and eventually make something delicious for dinner.

But things don't always go as planned. Your Dad calls in the morning and tells you that your sister and her friend want to go see a movie and you should go too ("The Social Network" was pretty interesting, in case you were wondering), you don't end up meeting your friend till late, and then you have to pick up some new litter for the cat because he's so fussy all the time and doesn't like the stuff that he has at the moment. When you finally come home, you've forgotten to get anything for dinner and there's only 'other stuff' in the house (i.e. pasta and rice but nothing to go with it). Your lovely boyfriend is tired from work and doesn't know what he wants to eat, so you have to go to the grocer and there isn't much to choose from, so you end up getting fancy rissoles and some lettuce. Your lovely boyfriend fires up the barbecue, and starts to cook them. The patties are so big that they never really get cooked in the middle, but they're very crisp on the outside, so you decide to put the in the oven for a bit. But then you both forget about them (the news can be really interesting sometimes), and by the time you remember to pull them out, they're ridiculously crisp and burnt, so you end up throwing them out and having eggs on toast instead. And then your cat gets his paw stuck down behind the heater and can't get out (good one, Rooney).

But these things happen. And this isn't even bad! If burnt rissoles are the biggest problem I've got, I guess my life is pretty good. People burn things, life goes on, the clock keeps ticking on by. I just have to remind myself this sometimes.

But tomorrow, I'll be ready. You better watch out, Friday, here I come...

Vanilla Chai Granola.

I dreamt about this granola last night. I saw the recipe just before I went to bed and all night I dreamt that I was searching through cupboards to find the right spices. As soon as I woke up, I looked up the recipe again and got all the spices out of the cupboard. 8:00 am and there I am, measuring out spices, oats, and sultanas.

It's official. I've finally become one of those people that makes their own cereal. Do they still call those people housewives? Or just hippies? Either way, I'm not ashamed. I'll say it loud and proud. I make my own cereal. From scratch!

Unfortunately, I burnt some of my granola. I got sidetracked, and all of a sudden, I smell this amazing mix of sweet, aromatic spices, and burning toast. The tray that didn't burn was packed full of oaty, spicy goodness, but the other tray was a little scant, so just remember that when making your granola.

The spices in this make it more like a chai tea than a chai latte, so don't go expecting a sickly sweet taste, full of fake spices and flavourings.

If there are too many oats and not enough 'other stuff' in this granola to satisfy your breakfast taste buds, feel free to add wheatgerm (1/2 cup), pepitas or sunflower seeds (1/4 cup), shredded coconut (1/4 cup) or whatever else you like to eat. The only reason I didn't add these, was because it was early when I made this and I didn't want to walk to the shop.
While this is baking, my house filled with the scent of spices, like taking a big whiff from a box of chai tea, until I burnt it, that is.
But definitely try this. It's completely rewarding making your own granola. I feel like a wholesome, self-sufficient house fairy. I think that's a pretty good way to start the day, don't you?
Now, off to feed the chickens...

Recipe:
Adapted from Simple Bites

If you use whole spices (cloves, cardamom), remember to take them out of the honey mixture before you mix it into the oats, otherwise you might crunch a whole clove or cadamom pod and that would just ruin your breakfast. Ruin it. I'd definately recommmend to just use ground spices. And remember that this is not a heavily spiced granola. If you'd like it to be more spicey, you could use heaped tsps, but don't up the spices more than that, or it gets a bit much.

Oven 200C

1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cardamom or 3 or 4 whole pods
1/4 tsp ground cloves, or 3 or 4 whole cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/2 a vanilla bean, sliced with seeds scraped into the honey, or 1/4 tsp vanilla essence

2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup slivered or whole, chopped almonds
1/2 cup LSA mix
1 cup sultanas

In a small saucepan, mix together everything from the honey to the pepper.
Heat until dissolved and mixed, don't bring to the boil.
In a big bowl, mix the remaining ingredients.
Add the spice mixture to the dry ingredients and mix to combine.
Split between 2 lined baking trays, flattening the mix as you go.
Bake at 200C for 15 mins. Reduce heat to 170C and rotate trays, turning the granola as you go.
Bake for another 15 mins.
Leave the granola until cool.
Store in an airtight container.

Poulet en Cocotte Bonne Femme.

It was my birthday this week and I got some excellent presents. A Chasseur cast-iron pot, the Julia Child cookbooks and a set of knives were the main ones. I feel so spoilt! I've been trying to cook things in my new pot and chop lots of things with my new knives and I'm in heaven. But the knives are so sharp that I keep cutting myself. It's the kind of sharp that means you don't realise you've cut yourself until you see the blood dripping down your fingers onto whatever you're chopping. I must've cut my finger pretty deep the other day, because it won't stop bleeding. When it does, if I even touch my finger on anything, it bleeds again.

It did stop bleeding long enough, though, for me to cook dinner. Out of the hundreds of recipes in the Julia Child book, I chose this one because it had Bonne Femme in the title. Really, though, it's just chicken in a casserole with bacon, potatoes and onions - my favourite kind of dish. I know that not everyone likes their dinner to be covered in butter, but I do. Everything tastes better with butter. If you don't like your chicken and potatoes swimming in butter, you should just turn away now, this is definitely not a calorie-friendly meal. Then again, you have to splurge sometimes, so you may as well go all out.

To be honest, I did expect this dish to be a bit more... wow. It was basically just a roast chicken with butter and bacon to make it special. Don't get me wrong, it was super tasty, and cooking chicken in a cast-iron pot is my new favourite past time, but I think it could benefit from something else. I'm not sure what... Actually, I didn't have the right amount of bacon, so that might've made a difference. Doesn't matter though, I'll definitely make this dish again.

Julia Child says to use a 1/2 pound chunk of bacon, which you then have to cut up into lardons. This seemed like to much hassle for me, so I just used 4 strips of bacon, which probably wasn't enough, but, whatever, I do what I want. She also says to use 15-25 white onions. I imagine she's talking about those little onions that you use for pickling, but really, that's a bit outrageous. I used 2 big brown onions instead.

Poulet en Cocotte Bonne Femme:
Adapted from Julia Child's "Mastering The Art of French Cooking"

Oven- 180C

5 rashers of bacon, sliced
4 tbsp butter
1 chicken
2 big brown onions, cut in half with the skins off
4-5 medium potatoes, peeled, quartered
1/4 tsp salt
herb bouquet

Cover the potatoes in cold, salted water and bring to the boil. A couple of minutes before the water starts to boil, drop the onions in. As soon as it's boiled, drain everything.
Saute the bacon in 1 tbsp of butter in the cast-iron pot for 4-5 mins on the stove top. Take out and put aside.
Brown the chicken in the pot, until browned on all sides, be careful not to break the skin of the chicken.
Remove the chicken from the pot and keep aside. Pour out the butter from the casserole.
Put the last 3 tbsp butter in the pot and heat until foaming.
Add the potatoes to the pot, rolling them around to "evaporate their moisture."
While the pot is still on the stove, spread the potatoes around the edge of the dish and put the chicken back in, breast side up.
Salt the chicken.
Put the onions around the chicken and scatter the bacon on top.
Add the herb bouquet.
Baste everything with the butter at the bottom of the pan.
Cover the chicken with alfoil, and put the lid on.
Roast for 1 hour 10-20 mins until the chicken is done.
Serve the chicken with the butter sauce from the pot.