Cakes, cakes and more cakes

Last Thursday was nannu Edgar's birthday, so since the mother-in-law decided to slave away baking a huge batch of vegetable lasagne and another batch of meat cannelloni, I offered to make the cake. It had to be sugar-free, and everyone agreed it had to be light cause we were sure nobody would feel like a heavy dessert after lasagne and cannelloni! So after looking for some cake recipes that used Splenda, I decided to give Diana's Desserts' version a try. Mother-in-law had a batch of strawberries that needed using, and hubby reminded me that he'd been wanting a cream-filled cake for ages.. so I came up with my own concoction. I made two cake layers, a mascarpone strawberry filling and covered the whole thing with sweetened whipped cream.

----------

Here's what went into the filling:

1 tub (something like 250grams) mascarpone cheese

1/2 tub (about 100grams) light cream cheese
about 5 tablespoons red Martini

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup Splenda

about 2 cups small strawberries, cleaned and halved

----------

I just mixed all the ingredients together except the strawberries. I spread a thick layer of sugar-free strawberry jam on the bottom layer of the cake, then I spread half of the filling mixture onto that, topped it with the halved strawberries, and proceeded to cover with the other half of the filling mixture. The top cake layer facing the inside filling was also spread with jam, I pressed the top cake layer onto the filling to make everything adhere properly, and then covered the top and sides of the cakes with whipped cream that was sweetened with Splenda. After allowing the cake the cool properly, I decorated its sides with chopped hazelnuts, placed a paper doiley on top and sifted powdered cocoa, removed the doiley and topped the cake with sugar-free chocolate dipped strawberries. The result was better than I expected - the cake rose perfectly even though it had Splenda rather than sugar, and cut beautifully revealing the nice contrast of the strawberries in the cream filling. And, most importantly, it was light enough to eat after lasagne - and the birthday boy liked it :)

Yesterday I baked the best banana cake ever. I omitted cinammon and sultanas, which I usually love in banana cakes, cause of hubby. The banana flavour came through more intensely however, and I ended up loving it. I added a generous amount of chopped walnuts and real vanilla extract, but what really set this cake apart from other banana cake recipes I'd tried before was the fact that I used 'OO' type flour (the kind that I usually only use for pizza dough). The crumb turned out really light and moist. I just drizzled some melted chocolate on top and that was it - a cinch to make really. I've finally managed to locate the recipe I used - Kato's Easy Banana Cake from Recipezaar. I made some of the batter into cupcakes and they worked out fine as well. This has definitely become a go-to recipe now!

I usually try to make Monday an easy slowly-ease-into-the-new-week kind of day. Judging by what I have in the freezer, it was either beef brodu or even easier, the beef barley soup I had tried a couple of months ago. Since it had gone down a treat with the hubby, I suggested it, and he actually preferred it to brodu.. which is all the better cause it meant shoving all the ingredients in the slowcooker this morning and now I'll actually go back home to dinner! Yes and I'll have plenty of time to catch up on housework hmmm...

Just for the record..

It's been quite crazy lately, what with organising lunch or dinner for people coming over, cleaning the house, shopping, running errands, organising experiments at work.. so it's been ages since I've posted anything. The cooking has been going on at full speed mind you, with some yummy results. Sometimes I do take a few pictures with the intention that I'll write about it, if for nothing just to keep track of recipes that went down well. But the next day I realise we were in too much of a hurry to gobble everything up and the pictures turned out too dark or just not good enough. Then when I do get good photos, I just end up procrastrinating and the cycle starts all over again. Anyhow, I've decided just to post this cause it was just too good to forget...

This plum frangipane tart (recipe adapted from Jamie Oliver's website) was a result of having some plums sitting on the kitchen top for over a week which nobody wanted since they refused to ripen. I had tried Dorie Greenspan's Dumply Plum Cake the week before with yet another batch of unloved plums, but it was too buttery and rich for my liking. Jamie's tart was not too sweet, not too heavy but hit the spot perfectly - problem solved. I also made a miniature version of this to take to work and it disappeared even before I left the room at 8 in the morning - always a good sign.

And I've still got sugar under my feet...

Here we are already drudging along the second week of September... already into our fourth month of married life! Looks like we've settled in quite nicely now, but it's proving to be a lot of work managing the household chores, cooking and working a full-time job. Most days I plan the next day's dinner in the evening, and if I'm stuck I just go through my emergency meals spreadsheet that I've been compiling, complete with hyperlinks to the recipes. I've been finding it very useful on days when hubby doesn't feel like wrecking his brains over ways I can use what's in the fridge and leaves me with a genial "Surprise me!" void.

You see, the element of surprise stops at the exact point that I actually decide on a recipe - then he'll instantly start tweaking and twisting and stretching the ingredients and side dishes to such extents that I might as well just go on "Ready, Steady, Cook" with a mystery bag of produce and place it in front of him, letting his imagination run wild. Wild meaning that if there's meat, there has to be fries.. if there's pasta, some of it has to be left sans sauce for him to enjoy as God (or Barilla) created it.. What worries me most is that if left to his own devices, he'd be more than happy to eat steak or pasta every day, so I have to be a bit sneaky with the veggies and the tough task of at least one weekly meat-free meal. Last time I suggested I make a nice soup for dinner, I showed him a few recipes on Tastespotting, and as soon as he saw a stew-like Beef and Barley soup, I had lost my battle. It did look delicious, and it was cooked in the slowcooker, and I did have to go buy that dress after work, so what do you know I did end up making just that!

Lately I've been trying out quite a lot of new recipes, including FX Cuisine's Falsomagro, which turned out to be an exercise in bondage with me all tied up with a lump of meat on a Saturday evening. All the hard work and swearing paid off in the end, cause it's definitely one of the recipes I'll be going back to. Good thing I figured out how to 'knit' a string jacket for the Falsomagro (pictured here) - next time round it won't take half as long to prepare. I made some minor changes to FX's recipe, mainly that I left the eggs slightly undercooked so that they were easy to peel and could continue cooking whilst inside the Falsomagro, but in the end they had just solidified to a bright yellow and were not overcooked to a greyish rubbery lump. I did not serve the Falsomagro slices topped with the sauce - instead, I had added some pancetta cubes to the sauce ingredients prior to cooking, and used the heavenly result to dress fresh pasta and used that as a starter. With the Falsomagro slices I served a very simple Bernaise sauce, which in my opinion, let the tastes and textures of all my hard work stand out much better.

Today should have been one of our 'lighter food' days after quite a few days of indulgence. Yesterday we had agreed before that I was to limit myself to Brodu (a Maltese traditional soup which is basically a light vegetable broth flavoured with fresh beef chunks). But then hubby came running into the kitchen later in the evening sniffing around with a huge smile on his face - I'd lit a Yankee Housewarmers candle, which had in a few minutes filled the house with the smell of cakes, and what my husband apparently concluded were donuts.. as if I'd decide to start frying donuts at 9pm yeah right!! He was so disappointed that I decided to surprise him with a batch today, even though I'd have to rush home like a madman after work and after going to the supermarket to fetch a few things we needed.

I did a few research on the net - what hubby and most of the Maltese population mean by donuts is the doughy, yeasty, sugar-enrobed concoction, and definitely not the glazed light Krispy Kreme version. On 101 Cookbooks, there was an oven-baked recipe which sounded tempting, but then I thought what's the point - if this is gonna be a treat, then let it be a full-blown one! I looked and looked and decided that I should really tweak my findings into my own recipe, and the risk was worth it.. I'm writing it here for my own reference in the very near future cause this one was definitely a hit!

----------

Donna's Donuts

3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
5 cups plain flour, sifted
2 sachets instant yeast
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten

----------

Method:

Mix the milk, sugar and salt and whizz in the microwave till warm. Mix so that the sugar and salt dissolve completely. Place 2 cups of sifted flour in the food processor (with the dough hook attached), add nutmeg and vanilla essence and milk mixture and process till mixed well. Sprinkle yeast and process for a few seconds. To the melted butter, add the 2 eggs. Pour this mixture with the rest of the contents in the mixer, and process till it's incorporated. Add the remaining flour gradually, until the dough starts leaving the sides of the food processor as it turns. The dough will be very very soft, but shouldn't be liquidy or pourable. Transfer the dough with the help of a spatula to an oiled bowl. Cover with clingfilm and let it sit in a warm place for 30-40 minutes, until the dough doubles in size. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and fold it over a couple of times, ensuring there's plenty of flour underneath it. Roll the dough to a thickness of around 3cm, cut out small rounds of about 8cm in diameter (I wanted relatively small donuts) and place the dough rounds on floured dishes. Cover again with clingfilm and allow to rise for another half an hour.

Deep fry the donuts in hot vegetable oil, turning once one side is done. These really cooked fast and were done in 2 minutes flat, so you have to keep an eye on them otherwise they burn! Drain on paper towels, roll in generous amounts of sugar and pipe either nutella or strawberry jam (or both like I did) into the centre. Best eaten warm (with a loved one).

Store any leftovers (yeah right) in an airtight container.. but as I said these were verrrry good so if you do not intend to eat them all please think ahead and send out a batch to a neighbour as soon as you make them!

Grilled pizza... charred bits included

I've been pretty busy this past week.. which explains why I've been meaning to post this entry for ages. I've tried my hand at grilled pizza and well, it could do with a bit of improvement. The pizza dough was the best I've had in ages - thin and crispy and more importantly, made with the least of effort. The toppings were those typical for a Capricciosa pizza (without the anchovies and artichokes - beyond-the-border foods for hubby), so much loved by the husband, but not so much by our new gas barbeque. Although it didn't sound like too much on paper, a layer of cubed perzut tal-koxxa (ham), sliced mushrooms, quartered hardboiled eggs and grated mozzarella proved to be a teeny weeny on the kitchen-sink side. Which made for a charred-bottom pizza by the time the toppings were cooked through, despite following the rule for indirect cooking (flame underneath pizza switched off). We'll have to try again with a simpler pizza margherita (in my books: tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil, swirl of olive oil) and Parma ham pizza (tomato sauce, Parma ham, mozzarella).

After some time researching easy and practical pizza dough recipes, I decided to try out Heidi Swanson's (101 cookbooks) approach. The dough has a multitude of pros for a working housewife like myself - just have the very few and very basic ingredients ready and whizz everything into the food processor. Following Heidi's recipe, I had six small balls of dough, each yielding a medium-sized individual pizza. I wrapped the dough balls that I wasn't gonna use in plastic wrap misted with olive oil, and froze them (defrost overnight in the fridge, then place in a warm place for proving a couple of hours before intended use). Being based on a delayed fermentation technique, the pizza base had a notable yeasty flavour, and was impressively easy to spread out - in fact I just used my fingers till I got the right thickness. The only tricky part of the process was flipping the olive-oiled side of the pizza base onto the grill surface. I let the base cook slightly, with the barbeque lid shut to keep up that all-important high temperature as much as possible, then flipped the dough over (after brushing the uncooked side with olive-oil), spread enough tomato sauce and leaving the edges free to rise, sprinkled the toppings, then shut the barbie top again to finalise the cooking. I had to peep every now and then, to monitor the stage of cooking, and only removed the pizza from the grill as soon as all the mozzarella had melted nicely. The other toppings (ham, harboiled eggs, mushrooms) were all pre-cooked, so they just needed to be heated through. The result was very promising, despite the few charred bits, which I found quite pleasant anyway. This proved to be a very fast and tasty dinner, which we enjoyed alongside a medium sweet bottle of Rose' D'Anjou. Make sure you have all the toppings ready at hand, cause once you turn the pizza base you need to put your act together pretty fast!! The pizza sauce was one highlight which really pulled this simple dish together - cooked in a slowcooker over 6 hours on the LOW setting meant that the freshness of the tomatoes shone through, the onions melted and caramelised, and my nanna's secret tomato sauce ingredients - mixed spice and a sprinkling of cinnamon - worked their magic for a truly yummy sauce. Here's how I made it...

Tomato sauce for pizza

two large onions, chopped finely
5 large cloves of garlic, chopped finely
ten medium fully-ripe tomatoes, chopped roughly

2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons freshly-ground pepper
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
fresh basil, chopped finely, or dried basil
dried mixed herbs
1 tablespoon mixed spice

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes

How it's done

Just put all the above ingredients in a slowcooker and cook on low for 6 hours, (whilst enjoying the aroma as it swiftly makes its way around your house). As soon as the sauce is done, use a hand blender to puree into perfect saucy decadence... hmm.. Oh yes, and freeze any leftover sauce along with the pizza dough - for those days when you realllly neeeeed to go clothes shopping after work :)

Carnivore's Chicken Salad

We've been indulging quite a bit these past couple of days, so while having our pre-bedtime cup of coffee on the terrace, the husband suggested I cook something light today. It's funny how men equate "cooking light" with "not steak or pasta". And it's not as if it means having a 100% vegetarian meal - when it comes to preparing a salad for example, I've now learnt that veggies on their own just don't cut it, so I tend to make it a bit more interesting. There are then the cardinal rules that I now know by heart - no cucumbers, no aubergines, no zucchini, no pumpkins, no anchovies.. oh yes and no fish mixed with pastry (our traditional Maltese lampuki pie is a no-no) and more importantly no fruit with any sort of meat (cranberry sauce, apple sauce, apricot chicken stuffing - I bid you all farewell). So when it comes to preparing our chicken salad for tonight (which he helpfully suggested), I had to scrap any thoughts of adding chopped apples, grapes or raisins like most recipes suggest, and stick to what I know will be something he'll love. Incidentally I too have my own red-light ingredients - raisins with anything chocolatey, green peppercorns and fennel all give me the creeps!

Coming up with my own recipe for chicken salad meant including ingredients which added interesting tastes and textures. Being such a versatile dish means that you can vary the ingredients according to what you like and what you have available. This particular combo worked well - I sliced rather than shredded the chicken to have something to chew on, I added croutons for extra crunch, bacon for umami, cherry tomatoes for freshness and colour, parmesan shavings for richness and potatoes and eggs for sustenance. Here's how I put it all together:

Carnivore's Chicken Salad

2 small chicken breasts

Marinade

2 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon lemon juice

salt and pepper

-----

iceberg lettuce

rucola, cleaned and washed

1 small red onion

1 red pepper, sliced thinly

12 cherry tomatoes, halved

3 small potatoes

3 medium eggs

6 thin slices back bacon

4 slices bread, brushed lightly with olive oil and grilled both sides, then cut into crouton-sized cubes

plenty of parmesan shavings

-----
Dressing

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

4 heaped tablespoons mayonnaise

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 tablespoons finely chopped dill
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

-----
What to do

Start off with blending together the marinade ingredients, hammer the chicken breasts till they flatten out into an even thickness, then bathe the chicken breasts all over with the marinade mix. Cover with cling-film and let the chicken sit in the fridge for around an hour or for as long as you can wait.

-----

Boil the eggs, cool, peel and quarter. Boil the potatoes (I like keeping the skin on) until just tender but you don't want them too soft, cool and quarter them. Grill the bacon slices till they're super crispy and chop them into small pieces. Use the proper attachment on your shredder to produce as many parmesan shavings as you prefer, or if you're skilled enough you could do this with a sharp knife. Chop the onion finely. Wash and clean the lettuce from the outer leaves. Break up the lettuce leaves roughly into manageable pieces. Slice the red pepper into long thin slices.

-----

Heat a non-stick pan with some olive oil, seasons the chicken with salt and pepper and cook the chicken breasts on both sides, pouring on the marinade as you go along. While you don't want to overcook the chicken make sure it's cooked right through (the fact that it's been hammered into even thickness will ensure that you won't get any raw parts). Pouring the marinade on top of the chicken while it's cooking will further prevent it from drying out, as well as giving it a nicely caramelised surface. Once the chicken's done (slice through it to check its doneness), keep it warm by placing it on a hot plate, then covering with another hot plate.

-----

In a large bowl, mix the salad leaves, cherry tomatoes and onion, pour over the salad dressing and coat evenly by tossing the salad by hand. Add the potatoes, eggs, parmesan shavings, bacon and croutons and mix gently. Slice the chicken into thick strips and place over the salad. Voila' your salad's ready to serve. Enjoy with thick slices of Maltese ftira like we did to mop up the juices (I would suggest the traditionally-baked ones from Rojolin bakery in Attard, topped with fragrant sesame seeds yum!). We paired this salad with a bottle of Medina Girgentina Chardonnay, an easy-drinking white wine from Delicata... which made for an even more relaxing dinner out on the terrace - just what we both needed after a crazy day at work!

And we're in...

After over two months of hard work (damn it was I being optimistic when I thought we'd manage in three weeks!) we've finally made the move. Both the husband and I are happy with the results... we've managed to go round the house's shortcomings and transform it into a comfy and welcoming home. Still, the new oven and washing machine haven't yet been delivered... as often happens on this tiny island... things move sloooooowly. But I have my slowcooker, a hob, a microwave oven and a rice cooker which should suffice to start off my daily cooking right? It's a challenge, but so far (ok, I've only cooked two meals) I'm managing. As for our laundry, I'll be using my mother-in-law's washing machine next door, which I'm awfully grateful for!

I had been promising the husband that I was gonna make him banoffee pie from scratch as soon as we moved into our new house. See, banoffee pie is his soft spot... and he had really worked hard what with moving heavy boxes and piles and piles of clothes (mostly his), drilling holes to put up new curtain rails, hammering in nails for our degree certificates that we finally got round to framing, cleaning out and organising the garage... plus all the technical stuff having to do with setting up our laptops and internet connection. Thanks to his being thoughtful enough to buy a router I now have a wireless connection which enables me to surf the net from my kitchen - I've been teasing the mother-in-law about being able to look up recipes at the click of a mouse ever since! So, he really did deserve a treat - so yesterday I browsed through some recipes for banoffee pie. Most recipes revolved around some variations, mainly having to do with:

1) Type of base: Pastry crust or Cheesecake biscuit base;

2) Toffee preparation: Ready made, cooked in can (4 hours of boiling cans of condensed milk in a pan) or prepared in an oven (pour condensed milk in a glass dish, put in bigger dish half filled with water, cover with tin foil and bake for 2 hours).

The base definitely had to be the cheesecake biscuit version, just cause I had asked the husband beforehand and he confirmed he preferred it. As for the toffee, boiling cans of condensed milk on a stove (whilst keeping an eye on them for the full 4 hours making sure that they are always covered with water, or else risk dangerous explosions of hot scalding toffee all over your kitchen) sure sounded like going back to chemistry experimental sessions... tempting, especially after reading all the rants about the delicious dulce de leche that results. But I was gonna get back from work at 4pm the earliest, so my pie wouldn't be even close to ready by dinner. So, needing to adopt an oven, I called the mother-in-law and explained my problem - she had a couple of cans of condensed milk (of the low-fat type incidentally, made with skimmed milk instead of full fat milk, still has normal amount of sugar which is the bit I wanted to caramelise, so worked perfectly well) and offerred to put them in the oven for me as explained. When I got back home, I popped next door and found a dish of gooey toffee ready to be transformed into a decadent dessert.

Back in my kitchen, one last look at the sad ripe bananas on the counter - soon you'll be heroes my friends.. here's the list of ingredients:

Banoffee Pie

Base

300 g digestive biscuits + ginger biscuits + Mulino Bianco's Grancereale Croccante biscuits
150 g melted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
-----

Filling

3 ripe bananas, sliced
600 mL condensed milk
400 mL fresh cream
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 cup grated dark chocolate
-----
What to do
First thing to get out of the way is preparing the dulce de leche - that's the caramelised condensed milk - just open the cans and pour the condensed milk into a glass dish, cover it tightly with tin foil, then place it into a larger dish that's half-filled with water. Put everything in an oven and bake at 150 degrees celcius for 2 hours. Once it's ready allow it to cool down to room temperature then put it in a fridge or freezer if you want to speed up the process.
-----
While the condensed milk's in the oven, start working on the base - just throw the biscuits into a food processer and process until they're all finely chopped. Add the melted butter and sugar and whizz everything round until the mixture has blended well. You want a moist crumb which you can work with, but not a paste, so add more biscuits or butter to the mixture accordingly. The amounts will vary slightly according to the type of biscuits you use - although most recipes indicated using digestives, I wanted a more flavoured and easier to bite into base. So I mixed the digestives with ginger biscuits (for just a bit of spicy flavour) and Grancereale Croccante (very very crumbly and crunchy made with cereals and rice) make the base a bit less compact. This combination worked well I must say - will be trying it for other variations of cheesecake. When you're happy with the consistency of the base, press the mixture onto the base of an 8 inch springform tin. I got a pretty thick layer, about half an inch, cause that's how we like our cheesecake base - you could decrease the thickness if you think that's too much. Once the base is all spread out, place it in the fridge for an hour till it sets, or in the freezer like I did, for about 20 minutes.

When the base has set, spread half the dulce de leche on the biscuit base, then chop the bananas and arrange in concentric circles on top of the toffee. The remaining dulce de leche is then spread on top of the banana layer. For the final layer, whip the fresh cream with the castor sugar and vanilla essence and spread on top of the pie. Sprinkle the finely grated chocolate on top of the cream layer to make it pretty.

Ideally you should refridgerate this decadence for at least another hour - but if you can't wait, like my husband, go ahead and indulge. A word of warning though - the layers could fall apart if not allowed to set properly, though the husband's oohs and aahs weren't indicating any sort of discontentment!! It tasted even better this afternoon since the banana flavour had come through even more. So there you have it - easy peasy banoffee pie that's sooo much better than other versions we've had at restaurants! And it really did make our first official dinner in our new home even sweeter :)

Roasted chicken - two ways..

Last Saturday the husband left for what should be not more than five days on a work trip. I kept myself busy with housework on Saturday night - I managed to clean the main bedroom from top to bottom, which was quite an achievement. The mother-in-law was wondering whether to cook ribeye steaks on the barbeque on Sunday, or the two free-range chickens she bought. Since as it turned out it was only gonna be the in-laws and myself for Sunday lunch, and she had enough steaks to feed an army, we decided it was wiser to save the steaks for Monday (when there will be more mouths to feed).

I suggested trying out an experiment I had read on The Paupered Chef - basically roasting a chicken in a slowcooker by cooking it on the 'Keep Warm' setting (or about 60 deg Celcius) for 5 hours. This was based on a method mentioned in Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection, and would theoretically lead to virtually no loss of juices from the chicken, leaving the meat plump and tender as no other roasting method would. The only downside is that the skin doesn't crisp up, as happens in the traditional oven-roasting method... so as a compromise, and also to compare the tenderness of the meat resulting from the two cooking methods, we decided to cook one chicken using the slowcooker, and the other we'd roast in the oven.

On Sunday morning mother-in-law was still hopeful that we'll be able to fire up the barbeque and sizzle those steaks, but we had to resort to the roast chicken plans as soon as we realised that the father-in-law might not make it for lunch due to a last-minute business meeting. Definitely not worth starting the barbeque just for three people.. so I took one bird out of the fridge, rubbed it with some good olive oil, seasoned it with sea salt and freshly-ground pepper and shoved it in the slowcooker. Then I rushed out to the garden and got a bunch of fresh rosemary which I shoved inside the chicken's cavity for aromatisation purposes. That was it. Since it was already 10am there wasn't gonna be time for the required 5 hours.. so I amended that to 2 hours on the 'high' setting. The mother-in-law put the other chicken on a roasting dish, seasoned it and shoved it in the oven for two hours. It was too hot to think of preparing anything more fancy or elaborate than simple roast potatoes and a nice fresh salad as accompaniments. Plus I was itching to rush next door after I had finished 'cooking' to have some more fun scraping paint off the floor.

Two hours later and there they were - Specimen A - Slowcooker Chicken.. Specimen B - Oven-roasted Chicken. Specimen A had released as much juices in the dish as Specimen B, although had I followed Heston's method of cooking at a lower temperature for almost double the time, I should have had no juices at all. Specimen A hadn't lost any juices through evaporation though, unlike the oven-cooked Specimen B, so the meat was much more juicy. The really obvious difference was when we tasted the chicken breast. I definitely prefer the slowcooker method, especially since most of the crispy skin of Specimen B was eaten by our two (very grateful) dogs. So trying out Heston's method, this time following the temperature and time instructions properly, is definitely on my to-do list once we move into the new house. I'm fascinated by my slowcooker and I can't wait to start experimenting on the different dishes that I can make in it. So far I've been using mother-in-laws (which is identical to mine), and I've experimented with dishes such as chilli con carne, stews and an amazingly rich and decadent chocolate mud cake. What I love about slowcooker recipes is that you usually just throw in the raw ingredients, switch the thing on, leave the house and slowcooker (safely) unattended for anywhere between 3 to 8 hours, and return to a kitchen full of intoxicating aromas and, more importantly, a ready-to-serve meal. I've been looking for reliable slowcooker recipes on the net for some time now so that I'll have a range of quick-resort meals for weekdays when I won't have time to cook dinner after work. On SlowAndSimple.com I've found quite a good list of recipes that sound interesting, whereas A Year of Crockpotting is a blog written by a slowcooker-obsessed cook who plans to use her slowcooker every single day of the year. While I definitely wouldn't want to use my slowcooker daily due to limitations that would bring along, I sure am looking forward to experiment with this cooking method. Right now though, I've got rooms to clean and vases to buy and curtains to hang.. hopefully the husband will be pleasantly surprised to see all the developments when he comes back on Thursday. From my calculations we should have moved in by the end of next week, so that's not too bad. I'll just have to keep myself from going crazy until the husband's return.. I was in such a bad way yesterday that I somehow ended up washing my car in the driveway - I decided that 2pm was the perfect time to wash my car.. it was scorching hot and I kept burning my feet on the pavement.. silly me. At least though, I could actually see through the car windows this morning on my way to work!

Kitchen in progress

I'm in the process of cleaning the sploshes and splatters of paint from the floors of each room... I actually made the discovery that the blades that I bought for the job are worse than useless - the best method is to wet the 'problem area', which incidentally happens to translate to 'the whole house' and rub (vigorously) with a scourer. I did that between 8am and 1pm last Saturday and I only managed to finish the kitchen. After planning to start from the bedroom so that we could gradually move in our clothes and stuff into this very essential living area of the house, I decided last minute that I'd rather have the kitchen all nice and clean first. Go figure. But despite feeling exhausted after a whole morning on my knees (ok on my rubber kneecaps) and perched dangerously high on the (thankfully sturdy) ladder cleaning on top of each cupboard, I am now one step closer to having an actual working kitchen. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that since the existing oven wasn't working, we had to buy one. Our new Siemens oven will be delivered in four weeks' time, meaning five or six weeks by Maltese standards.. you'll see. The microwave we bought was in stock though, so as long as I can come up with dinners cooked solely on the hob, in my slowcooker and in the microwave (not!), for the first month after we move in, we'll be fine. In case of emergency, there's always mother-in-law's oven next door :-)

This week will be spent repeating last Saturday's procedure in all the other rooms of the house. Yesterday, I managed one corner, I kid you not, of the bedroom, just so as to stop feeling guilty about 'not even having started cleaning the bedroom yet'. Then the husband came back from the office (yes, Sunday morning at the office) and instead of cheering me on, he lured me away from housework with a 'let's go watch a movie and then we'll go out' offer. I wasn't complaining and really enjoyed the fact that we spent some time together. Until I get back to the cleaning though, I need to organise my thoughts on how to equip the kitchen with the basic essentials. I think I'm pretty much covered when it comes to utensils and food processing equipment - I got my slow cooker, Magimix food processor, Kenwood hand blender, digital weighing scales, toaster and electric kettle, rice cooker (from Australia, courtesy of Auntie Anne), waterless pots and pans, non-stick dishware, most (if not all) of Tescoma's range of utensils (thanks to the mother-in-law who even bought doubles of some items bless her), enough chopping boards to last me a lifetime (most came free with this and that), and about three full sets of professional knives (it took me a whole morning just to clean them of their very annoyingly sticky labels). So we got the tools - what's left is the basic cupboard staples.. the spices and herbs, the sugar and coffee, the oils, flours, pastas.. you can't just pop out to the nearest town in the middle of making dinner just cause you realise that you're missing an ingredient! Yes, the husband and I need to go on a shopping trip, a shopping expedition to be exact, to my favourite supermarket and fill up our cupboards with ingredients and supplies. That will take place as soon as we're over this verrry busy period at his office.. a wife can only hope!

The Paint Job

So, we're half-way through another week and just when I was feeling like we're getting somewhere with the house cleaning/renovation business, I get interesting news from our bajjad this morning. After barely downing half of my mug of coffee Joe il-Bajjad told us that we might as well have the whole hall, living room and dining room painted, cause he's had to fill in too many holes and whatnot. After Joe's first day, the house now looks like a gang of kids' been let loose with white paint. So yes, there's no other way but to paint the whole thing from scratch. We chose the colours for the hall/dining/living rooms in two minutes.. then we thought we might as well remove the (horrible) wallpaper in the main bedroom, which was starting to peel off anyway, and have that room painted as well... should we go for yellow? "No not yellow" the husband disagreed. I put the colour chart against the bedroom wall "Ok let's go for yellow-I like it".. a sudden change of mind. And yellow it was, "Morning Moon" yellow to be precise - I was trying to picture how the moon would look like in the morning.. yet all I could think of was how many days of cleaning (all over again) the whole house would The Paint Job amount to. Joe il-Bajjad said he'd be done by the end of the week. The husband thinks he's not gonna make it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed so at least I'll be able to start cleaning the house over the weekend. We'll see his progress by tomorrow, then I'll decide whether we should make other, more fun plans for Saturday. If all goes well, I'll be elbow deep in Sgrassatore and bleach on Saturday night. Gone are the days when I used to spend a couple of days planning out what to wear and where to go in the weekends - I don't imagine we'll be spending many nights out when the house is done up either.. we'll be too busy enjoying the cosiness of having a house to ourselves and the luxury of having some time on our own too. Not as glamorous as when we were younger, but tons and tons more fun :)

Coming soon...

Hi all!

Will start blogging regularly as soon as we move into our new house - I'm kitchen-less at the moment, but can't wait to start recording bits and pieces of my life as a newbie wife. The husband can't wait either, cause he knows he's gonna be pampered, so at the moment he's busy gaining brownie points by being my personal handyman- fixing lights, changing locks, and showing me how good he is with his new tool set :)

Come back in a couple of weeks' time to see what's cooking in my Maltese kitchen!