What to do with left over Peanuts? (Chinese Peanut Cookies)

Came across an easy recipe for some Chinese Peanut Cookies the other day at A Table for Two.

I would skip the recipe this time as you can find it at the link above, but I couldn't believe that it was so simple. I had left over peanuts in the house and all I needed to do was grind them up, add a bit of sugar, flour, oil and a pinch of salt :)

The only difference was that I had a fan forced oven and the cookies kept turning out dark brown at the beginning. I decreased the temperature to 150°C and baked for 11 minutes instead of the recipe for 200°C at 17 minutes.

The best bit was that it gave me a chance to practice my photo taking, still have a long way to go, but here are some of them. I think I need to work on my styling a bit more - heehee, time for more practice :P

Before the Oven:

After the Oven:

Steamed Hairy Gourd (Hairy Melon) with Dried Scallop Sauce

This is a very simple and healthy dish passed on from my mum. It's something I've had since little and one of the easiest mum recipe dishes :)

Hairy Gourd has various names (see Victoria Agriculture site) and is widely used in Chinese cooking for soups and dishes (mainly steamed and stir fried). It's always a more 'saucy' dish, it is plain and simple, but has a subtle sweetness to it which makes it a perfect option when you're after something light..

To the recipe...

Ingredients

• Hairy Gourd
• Chinese Dried Scallop (soaked overnight)
  
• 2 tsp cornstarch mixed in 1/4 cup of water
  

Method

1. Soak the dried scallop overnight so they soften.
   
2. Slice melon into medium chunks, it depends how you like it. If you're running low on time, slice it thinly so its quicker to steam.
3. Steam the melon til its soft, you can check by poking a chopstick through it.
4. Heat up the wok, add the scallop and also the water it was soaking it.
5. Add some sugar to taste
6. Add the cornstarch water to thicken the sauce
7. Pour onto the melon and serve
   

Zucchini and Bacon Quiche

Happy Chinese New Year !

To celebrate our Chinese New Year this year we invited a few of our good friends over for a lunch as mostly everybody is busy due to family dinner plans. It was another chance for me to cook up something :)

The menu of the day became what I could find in the shops on Saturday which turned out to be chicken salad, some pastry wraps from Lenards and garlic bread :P That together with our fruits in the kitchen didn't seem to be quite enough for about 10 people with 4 guys ("why do guys eat more?") I remembered having a really nice zucchini slice at my other friends place earlier this year and decided to make a zucchini quiche as I still had some shortcrust pastry and whipping cream together with some zucchini in the house.

I've made a very nice quiche lorraine from a French recipe book called "The food of France) before but hadn't made a second one since. I wanted to add zucchini to the quiche but didn't know what other ingredients I should add to make it tasty. In my attempt to check out what's been tried and tested on the net, I came across a nice zucchini quiche recipe from Epicurious and also a zucchini slice recipe from taste.com.au. I'd probably try this one by itself next time, it looks very easy :)

With my homework done I set out to incorporate some of these ideas to the quiche lorraine recipe that I had tried.

Ingredients

• 1 Tart Pastry (I used pampas shortcrust pastry)
  
• 25g butter
• 300g diced bacon
• 250ml double cream (I substituted with 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of whipping cream)
  
• 4 Eggs
• 1/2 zucchini (was what I had left :P)
  
• 1/2 onion
• 1/4 teaspoon salt for the vegies
• 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper for the egg mixture
• Grated nutmeg to taste (I only had ground nutmeg and used about 1/2 teaspoon)
  

Prepare

• Prepare zucchini - scoop out the seeds to limit the moisture coming out. Cut it up in thin slices about 8x2cm wide.
• Prepare the onion and bacon- finely diced up
  

Method

1. Cook bacon first. Melt butter in a frying pan and cook til golden, leave the oil in the pan. Drain bacon on paper towels.
   
2. Cook the onion and zucchini with 1/4 teaspoon of salt til tender and browning. Take out and put into a colander to get rid of excess liquid
3. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius. Line a 25cm tart tin with pastry.
   
4. Place a piece of baking paper in the pastry and pour in some baking beads (dried beans or rice will do).
5. Lightly prick base of pastry with a fork in a few spots.
   
6. Bind bake pastry for 10 minutes.
7. While its baking, mix cream, eggs and milk together with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
8. Remove the paper and the beads and bake again for 3-5 minutes until pastry is just cooked but still very pale. (directly from the cookbook)
9. Take out the pastry.
10. Scatter the 1/2 of the bacon, zucchini and onion in the pastry.
11. Add the remaining in the egg mixutre and pour into the pastry.
12. Bake for 30 minutes or until the filling is set.
13. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes before serving.
    

The quiche was well received, though the pastry could have been done better and was quite hard to get off the pan. Luckily we had some skilled scapers who managed to cut up the quiche and serve each slice in one piece. I guess that's more motivation to try making some myself :)