Tag: party food

Onion tart

A classic dish from northern France.  I make onion tarts for our family dinner, a light lunch, parties and picnics.  It is very versatile as it can be eaten hot out of the oven or cold.  Although if cold, I find it is better at room temperature than cold out of the fridge.

The difference with a pissalardiere is in the seasonning.

The preparation is easy.  You will need to prepare ahead a shortcrust pastry (or purchase a good quality one, then this tart is even easier to make).

Serves 4-6

onion tart

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry:

  • 75 g of soft butter (I like to use salted butter)
  • 150 g of flour
  • Some icy cold water

The above quantity is enough for a 22 cm diameter tart dish.  There is additonal instruction on this shortcrust pastry page.

For the filling:

  • 4 large onions
  • 20 g butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon of four
  • salt, pepper
  • 1 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1/2 cup of milk or cream
Method
  1. Place the flour and soft butter in a large bowl. With your finger tips rub the butter into the flour. You will obtain a coarse granular texture.
  2. Add a little water at the time and mix lightly until the pastry comes together as a ball.  Do not work more than the getting of a nice ball. Cover or wrap in cell wrap and rest for at least half an hour (1 few hours is better) at room temperature.
  3. In the meanwhile, peel and cut the onions. Heat up the butter in a thick base frypan (use one with a lid) and place the onions.  Stir.  After 30 seconds, reduce the heat to half.
  4. After a couple of minutes, stir with a wooden spoon and cover with the lid. You may need to reduce further the heat, we are looking here fro a slow je=heat to reduce the onions. They must not brown. The onions will turn golden and start to “melt”.  This will take 15-20 minutes.
  5. Once melted, add salt, pepper, nutmeg and leave at room temperature.
  6. Preheat your oven at 180°C.   Using a rolling-pin and a little flour to prevent sticking, roll the shortcrust pastry and transfer to the tart tin.  Trim the edges.
  7. In a bowl, mix the onions with the flour, eggs, milk or cream and transfer to the tart.  I like adding fresh thyme is I have some handy at this stage.
  8. Bake for 20-30 minutes until the pastry is light brown. Remove from the oven.  Serve with a mix green salad.

Note: you can use the excess to make tartlets either sweet or savoury. A number of sweet tarts (for e.g. apple, apricots, peaches, pears) use the same pastry.

onion tart

Fried sardines

Fried sardines are such a summer classic.  They have a feel of holidays, warm days, leisure around the house or by the seaside. Love them for what they represent! For me they are associated to that great summer evening spent in Algeria with project team colleagues and local host Kamal who  did such a great job at making us appreciate Bejaia.

This time, my older child asked to buy them, so here we go.

Ingredients:
  • 2 to 4 sardines per person
  • Plain flout and salt
  • oil for shallow frying
  • fresh lettuce leaves or mixed salad leaves
Method:
  1. mix 2 tablespoons of flour with 1 teaspoon of salt, coat the sardines. Depending of the quantity, you may need more. Adjust the salt if you prefer more salty.

sardines

2. Heat up 1 cm of oil in a thick based fry-pan, when the oil is hot, place the sardines, reduce slightly the oil, turn over when golden-brown.

sardines

3. Serve immediately with fresh salad leaves.

sardines

Halloween Menu

Halloween is a couple of weeks away. I have been preparing a Halloween menu for the local school fete and doing some trials.  I know some of you may be curious to get a few ideas to get the children involved in the kitchen or to be able to bring something topical for a party.

I will now share with you some of the Halloween specific menu items.

The witch’s hat

The concept:

A large cupcake, preferably
in a shiny casing,
a strongly coloured icing and a chocolate glaze painted ice cream cone!

Tips for the making:
  • Use a chocolate cupcake. As a recipe take any good moist chocolate cake.  I Halloweenlike to use the reine de Saba but there would be other nice options.
  • The ice cream cone is painted, using a kitchen brush, with a mix of dutch cocoa (darker than the normal one), icing sugar and a little hot water.  It dries out and remains stable for a while.  As a base mix 2 tbsp of cocoa, 1 cup icing sugar and 2 tbsp of hot water.  Make it darker adding more cocoa if required.  Some recipes add 2 tbsp of butter or margarine.
  • For the hat buckle, use for rolling icing.  Add a few drops of food colouring to change the colour and if it becomes to wet, add corn flour.  Similarly, use corn flour to prevent it to stick to the surface and rolling-pin, you can later brush off the excess corn flour.  Use a drop of water to attach together pieces of fondant.

The ghosts

halloween

The concept:

I used individual brioches drapped with white fondant, just add then the eyes!

Tips for the making
  • Use the brioche recipe in here.  This will make 20 individual brioches. Bake them in a muffin tray.   Make sure you butter and flour well your tray.
  • To drape the ghost esthetically, it is best to rise the height of the draping.  Use a lollipop, place fondant around the ball then plant the stick in the brioche.  Place the ghost draping over the lollipop.
  • For the eyes, you can use melted chocolate or some of the decorative pens sold in food sections of supermarkets.

The not so creepy bugs

halloween

The concept:

This one is easy.  I love it, it is very cute. Just a madeleine covered in coloured white chocolate partly on one side.  Eyes are made using chocolate cupcake decoration balls and the antennas are pieces of pretzels.

Halloween

Tips for the making

The white chocolate must be coloured using powder food colours, those are found in specialty stores.  The liquid food colours will make the white chocolate seize.  You may manage to get it again nice and smooth (by warming it again) but it may not fully dry out (like on the photos here, my prototypes).

The fairy wands

The concept:

Very easy again. Buy some grissini (those long narrow bread sticks).  Melt some white chocolate. Brush it on one end and roll the grissini in hundreds and thousands! My 4 y.o had a great time making them!

halloween
rolling hundreds and thousands
Tips for the making

Just be careful not to burn the white chocolate. Melting it in a bain marie is safer.

HAVE FUN!

Making your own pâté is pretty simple

Making your own chicken liver pate is simple!

If you like pâté, you may want to make your own.  In Australia, finding good pâté is quite a mission, and when you find it, the cost is quite high. Making your own pâté is actually quite simple.  All you need apart from the ingredients is a food processor and a fry pan!  You will find chicken livers at any butcher’s.  It is worth going to a good butcher, chicken livers are cheap and at a good butcher you can be sure they will be very fresh and big. I also add pork mince to my pate to soften the taste. The rest of the ingredients can be sourced from any supermarket and you probably already have them at home .

The recipe I am giving here is the one for the pâté I make again and again, it is the chicken liver pâté.  I make it for picnics, for parties and for no special reasons.  I make a batch and freeze it, it keep really well in the freezer for two months, when you need it, just allow to thaw in the fridge for a day before use.

Last time I made it, the butcher only had duck livers left, the taste was different, delicious too! (it is always a good indicator when there are no left overs).

Chicken liver pate
Chicken liver pate

Other pâtés I sometimes make

I make other types of pates too, not as often, they are definitely for larger crowds than my little family circle and I do not have endless storage space either.  Mum used to make “country terrines” by batches of 20 or more jars, cook them in a steriliser and keep them in the cellar. We would have them for lunch as entrees or for picnics during summer.

Pork Rillettes

making your own pâté
Pork rillettes, a Rick Stein recipe

Rillettes are a type of pate, typically french.  Most people (and even my butcher) don’t know about them down here.  Pok rillettes are pork belly and pork shoulder cooked in stock for a long time and  mixed with pork fat.  The recipe I used is from Rick Stein and was published in Delicious magazine. Rillettes are also often found made with duck.

Ham Hock Terrines

Another nice onein the pate family are ham hock terrines.  Ham hock terrines contains blocks of meat and are essentially ham hocks that have been cooked for a long time in a stock and put together as a terrine with a binder.  There are different ways to combine the meat, I tried the following two terrines, unfortunately I did not take any photos:

  • Ham hock terrine with jellified cooking stock.  This is another recipe from the Delicious magazine. You can find it online.
  • Ham hock terrine with mustard.  This is an early Masterchef recipe.

Personally I prefer the second one,  one friend loved the first one and she was so over the moon with it, I ended up giving the whole left overs to her, she loved it!