Our Australian meal was a success. The food was fairly easy to prepare. Not too many ingredients and very yummy. I made the Pavlova first since it had to cook in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. My new standing mixer made it very easy to beat the egg whites. It was amazingly fast. My son was very fascinated by the mixer going by itself. (He's almost 4). After the merangue cooled, we made the fresh whipped cream to put on top and cut fresh strawberries for the top of the cake. My son also helped to put the strawberries on top. He was very proud of himself.
Then around 4 o'clock I started to make the meat pie. Again, just a few ingredients. I had to brown the meat with onions and just a couple of seasonings. It cooked for about 15 minutes in a broth, then I thickened the broth with flour. I rolled out puff pastry for the crust and had some extra left over. I decided to decorate the top of the pie with the extra dough. I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on top. My husband and I went online to look up an Australian logo. After checking things out, I decided to just try to outline the map of Australia. It kind of worked, but it shrunk when I cooked it.
The meal was very delicious. I served the pie with a simple iceberg lettuce salad and Fosters for my husband and Layer Cake shiraz wine for Southern Australia for myself. The meat pie was very mild tasting. My son needed a little coaxing to eat the meat, but he did. Dessert was the star. We each ate 2 servings and will share the rest with my in-laws tonight. It had a very light and airy texture/flavor.
It was a fun experience. I never would have cooked this if it wasn't for my little project here. Next on the cuisine is Malaysia! Who the heck knows what I'll cook for that!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Decision Made
After looking on line and trying to find "traditional" Australian food, I have finally made a decision for what to cook this weekend- Australian Meat Pie and Pavlova for dessert. I found a fairly simple recipe for meat pie on All Recipes.com that calls for it to be filled with beef - no kangaroo here. I feel like the website was pulling my leg with comments about not being able to find kangaroo for the filling. I also found a recipe for Pavlova which is a meringue cake with whipped cream and fruit. It gives me a great excuse to try out my new kitchen toy - my new empire red Kitchen Aid standing mixer! (photos to follow)
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Looking for Recipes
So I really don't know anything about Australian cuisine. Naturally I go to google. I'm looking in allrecipes.com and witchetty grubs comes up as a recipe. It describes them as "a huge white moth grub" that can be quite tasty. I'm not that adventuresome. So I keep looking. I'm finding mostly desserts - anzac biscuits, pavlova. My search will continue later for a main course. Worse comes to worse, we eat desserts!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Introduction
Inspired by the movie Julie and Julia, where the girl cooks her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I decided that I would cook my way through the 2011 F1 Season. It seems simple enough. My husband loves F1 and I love to cook. Cooking is kind of like a hobby to me, so I thought it might be cool to cook different foods from around the world. I will be cooking a dish from each of the host nations of the 2011 F1 Season. Some countries will be easy to create a dish (Italy), but some will be challenging (Abu Dhabi). So the first meal was supposed to have been from Bahrain... well if you follow F1, you know that was canceled. Which brings us to Australia first on March 27th! I don't know what I'm cooking yet, but once I know...I will let you know!
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