Zoodles Vs Spoodles

SO after my Spaghetti squash rice paper roll extravaganza on Sunday arvo, I decided to do a Zoodles (Zuchinni noodles) vs Spoodles (spaghetti squash) as a pasta replacement, experiment. I had leftover Spaghetti squash in the fridge that I didn't want to waste, so it made sense! 

It wasn't a hard one, I just made up some puttanesca style sauce with anchovies, red capsicum, olives, chilli, garlic and capers ect. I warmed up the two different batches of noodles slightly and mixed in with the sauce. 

First up: Zoodles. I made these with my Gefu. It's my favorite new toy. Have you seen them? Like a giant pencil sharpener - you put your Zuchinni in one end, twist and it comes out as spaghetti at the other end! (No idea what I'm talking about just google 'Gefu') I loved this! I had a great time doing it too! I steamed mine ever so slightly, it was just enough to soften it a tiny bit. 

Next up - Spoodles. Spaghetti squash noodles:

Totally different texture to the zuchs. The spoodles were nice but i think they are forever going to be 'vermicelli noodles' in my head.....and.... it would be a cold day in hell before I served vermicelli noodles with pasta sauce! 

Verdict - zoodles win in my book as a 'pasta' alternative, but I would definitely use spaghetti squash (experimentally) as a rice 'noodle' replacement. I have some other ideas cooking up in my head, so will give them a whirl when I find some more squash! 

Squash/Zuchinni hating husband verdict: 

He prefers real pasta.

Mushroom and walnut rice paper rolls with spaghetti squash 'noodles'

I was so excited to find spaghetti squash last week. It was a real random find. I quickly ducked into a shop I never go into & found them completely by accident. I love trying out new produce and ingredients so it was a big find for me AND in true EV fashion I've been banging on about it ever since!! So today I finally had some time on my hands to spend experimenting. I only had half a squash to work with as I gave half away to a friend to try.

Luckily my squash came with instructions.... so I had a rough idea on how to prepare it without having to do any research.

I bought two cut halves so I decided instead of boiling (as per above instructions), to steam it. I gave it 25 mins in my Thermomix Varoma, but you could get the same result in a traditional steamer.

After steaming, I used a fork to rake out the strands. It really was amazing the way they separated instantly like noodles!

 The first thing that came to mind, was how much they looked like vermicelli noodles. 

They also had a similar texture, so I decided to make some ricepaper rolls. My fridge is looking a little bare at the moment, so I didn't have many ingredients to work with! This only made the challenge more interesting. The ingredients came about because thats what I found in the bottom of the fridge.

You wouldn't have know that it was spaghetti squash and not vermacilli noodles! We really enjoyed them -  I hope you do too!!

If you can't source spaghetti squash,you can easily replace with vermicelli noodles. For a vegan option swap out oyster sauce for hoisin sauce.

Mushroom and walnut rice paper rolls 

Makes 16 - 20 rolls

Ingredients

Mushroom & walnut paste

70 gms walnuts

2cms of leek (white part) OR

half an onion if you don't have any leeks (white onion would be best)

3 large garlic cloves

small knob of peeled ginger (about a teaspoon)

400gms mushroom (mine were field mushrooms, but other varieties or a mixture would work fine)

10gms sesame oil

15gms soy sauce

2 tablespoons oyster sauce - replace with hoisin sauce for a vegetarian/vegan option

freshly chopped chilli or a dash of sweet chilli sauce - optional 

Rice paper roll filling

Steamed spaghetti squash strands - approximately 200gms***

1 large carrot

1 stick of celery

3 shallots sliced finely

1/2 large red capsicum cut into strips

a handful of fresh herbs - coriander, mint, thai basil are my favorities
a pinch of sesame seeds

Dipping sauce

1 clove garlic
1/4 cup of fish sauce 

1/4 cup of fresh lime juice

2 tbsps palm sugar/rapadura sugar/brown sugar

1 fresh chilli sliced

diced coriander leaves

*** My half squash produced approximately 550gms of strands - you you could make a double batch, but may need to adjust cooking time for the mushroom paste - I would continue in 5 min lots until you get the desired paste consistency. 

Thermomix method:

Mushroom walnut paste.
-Add 70gms of walnuts to dry Thermomix bowl. Chop 1 sec | Turbo. Set aside
-Add 2cm of leek, or 1/2 white onion, small knob of ginger and 3 large garlic cloves to bowl and chop 4 secs | Spd 7.
-Add 400gms mushrooms, chop 2 secs | Spd 5
-Add remaining ingredients and cook 8-10 mins | Varoma | Spd 2 with the MC off  the mixture should have a paste like consistency. Remove from the bowl and mix with walnuts. Don't bother cleaning the TM bowl, any residual mushroom paste will dress the carrot and celery and add flavour.
-Peel carrot and roughly chop carrot and celery. Add to TM bowl and chop 4 secs | Spd 5

Dipping sauce
-add 1 clove garlic to TM bowl chop 1 sec | spd 7 scrape down side with spatula
-add remaining ingredients except chilli and mix 5 secs | Spd 4
-remove from bowl and stir in chilli with a teaspoon

Conventional method:

-roughly chop walnuts and set aside
Food processor:
-If you have a food processor, add the following to your food processor bowl - 2cm of leek, or 1/2 white onion, small knob of ginger and 3 large garlic cloves and process until fine. Set aside
-Add 40gms mushrooms to food processor bowl and chop until fine.
By hand:
 If you don't have a food processor, chop onion finely, grate ginger and crush garlic with a garlic crusher. Finely dice 400gms mushrooms.
-heat sesame oil in a wok, add onion/garlic/ginger mix and stir fry until cooked. Add mushrooms and stir fry well, add oyster or hoisin sauce and soy sauce and continue to stirfry until cooked. Depending on how smooth you managed to chop your mushrooms, you might want to add the whole mix back into a food processor or blender to get it into a paste consistency.
-once finished, mix with walnuts
-peel and grate carrot and finely dice celery

Dipping sauce
-crush garlic clove into a bowl
-add sugar, then fish sauce then lime, mix well with a whisk or a fork
-add coriander and chilli

How to wrap your rice paper roll:
- fill a plate with warm water and submerge your rice paper wrap in there until it softens. You need to be careful you don't soften it too much though or it will be too wet to wrap.
-place your wrap down on a board and spread a teaspoon of mushroom mix, and layer on your spaghetti squash (or vermicelli noodles if you can't fine spaghetti squash) followed by carrot and celery mix, slice of capsicum and shallots and fresh herbs.
-wrap as per the photos below - the packet of rice paper wraps will also have instructions.

Don't overfill them is my biggest tip! Or you'll have a big hot mess.

Serve with dipping sauce, fresh lime wedges and green paw paw pickles.... if you're lucky enough to have a jar!

Enjoy! 

Pink 'Lemonade' for Pirates.

I love birthday parties. I've looked forward to being a Mummy all my life so I can have fun creating birthday parties for my little people. My big boy turned 3 in February this year and after much deliberation, a pirate party was decided upon. I won't lie, I was more than delighted that the Pirate party pipped the Peppa Pig party at the post (say that fast)!! Master N and I sat down together and planned his party. He decided who he wanted to invite and after a few shouts of 'Aye aye Cap'tn ship!' and 'Arrrrgh' we set to work. It was a lot of fun. 

We made a cardboard box pirate ship.

 
Most of the boxes were saved from our trampoline delivery at Christmas, and the box Master S's cot came in and then we put it together with box rivets, that I bought online at www.mrmcgroovy.com It only took about an hour for 2 of us to do. I didn't have a pattern or a blue print, it sort of just came together and I stopped when it looked the way I imagined it would in my head. I cut the holes in with a stanley knife and painted on the anchor, mermaid figurehead and windows. The birthday boy is always saying 'Mummy's a mermaid!!!!!' hence the figurehead choice. The sail was 2 meters of Ikea fabric, bulldog clipped to a crossed piece of dowel, which was held up in an umbrella stand. The crows nest was an old plastic bucket with a hole cut in the bottom and the bunting I made for N's first birthday party. I found the bit of fish net underneath the house, it was left over from a failed gardening project from a few years ago.

I bought these gorgeous little 150ml Ball Mason jars through my co-op, the tiny milk bottles are recycled - that's what our Ivyholme Organic Dairy pouring cream comes in and the large bottles are recycled Ivyholme milk bottles. I made 'pink lemonade' which was actually more raspberry cordial, with frozen raspberries, sugar and water whizzed up in the Thermo and strained through a nutmilk bag and then some iced tea for the grown ups.

I found all these bits of scrap wood on the ground under the saw while my husband was working on making garden edges, I thought they would make a great sign, so he whipped one up for me (begrudgingly, he thinks I'm a total pain when it comes to birthday party requests!) I just pained the wood with acrylics - it was very easy and effective.

No pirate party is complete without a giant pirate ship cake. I'm not going to lie I had a great time putting this together! 

Here is a close up of the treasure chest. 

I try to make party food a mixture of naughty and nice. So we had watermelon slices, fruit salad boats, homemade dips with veggie sticks, mini chocolate 'ship' cupcakes, pirate bananas Arrrgh!, iced sugar cookies (recipe is on my blog!), fairy bread and homemade sausage rolls. 

Fruit salad ships

 

Iced pirate themed sugar cookies 

The birthday boy about to blow out his candles. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that next year a superhero party could be on the agenda.....

Pasta Threading

A while ago Mr 3 & I dyed some pasta. It was a fun activity on it's own, sorting the pasta into piles, choosing the colours, adding the food colouring to water & mixing the primary colours to get our green & purple & orange. 

I'd quite forgotten about the 2 buckets of colored pasta I had tucked away, until today, when it was simply too hot for outside play. I had to come up with something cool..... so pasta threading it was. Not long ago, I accidentally ordered this plastic rope thread from officeworks online (thinking it was ribbon) so I used that as our thread, I sticky taped a half sized skewer to the top of the plastic string and that was our threading needle. It was fun, as well as educational.We counted, sorted and picked out colours. It also took a lot of concentration & some fine motor skills, for a little person. 

After a while, N accidentally stepped on one of the prices of pasta. It crushed underneath his foot, making the most delicious crunching sound.... I let him stomp on a few more before the activity turned back to threading. 

Dying pasta:

1 packet of penne style pasta

Various food dyes

Mix 1ltre water with 1-2 teaspoons of food colouring (cold water is fine) add pasta, leave for a couple of minutes, remove with a slotted spoon and leave to dry overnight on paper. 

You can used the pasta for threading, gluing or shakers or even pretend kitchen play.

Happy playing! 

Fruit and veggie stamping

I asked Mr 3 what he wanted to do the other day and he gleefully yelled "painting!!!!!" as he yahooed around my ankles in the kitchen. Painting it was. Instead of the usual paintbrush painting we do, I thought we would do some fruit & veg stamping. I remember doing it at preschool when I was a kid... many moons ago now!!!

I had apples & potatoes to spare, so I sliced an apple in half and cut some shapes out of potato slices with tiny cookie cutters. I used some small skewers as handles and poked them in the backs of the apples & spuds. I just used acrylic paints squirted on some cardboard and stood back... N dipped the stamps in and pressed onto paper, he also used paintbrushes to paint the bottoms.

Much fun was had. 

We also have some great sheets of homemade wrapping paper now. 

Happy playing.

Crochet - hello old friend

I've recently been inspired to pick up my crochet hooks for the first time in 20 years. I was invited to contribute a square to make a blanket for someone who needs a lot of love right now. I ended up making a trip to this little shop called Tangled Yarns at Newstead before I could hook 1 stitch, because I had every size crochet hook on this green earth including wooden ones, except a 4.0, which is what I remember using when I was a young girl. My wonderful Nan taught me to crochet. I have all her old crochet hooks in a little tooled leather case. I remember her patiently teaching me. I used to make little granny squares, which were mainly used as dolls blankets in my dollhouse and doilies, usually in outrageous colour combinations, like lime green & purple.... as it turns out, my colour combinations are still a little outrageous. I just love rainbows. It was such a trip down memory lane at Tangled Yarns looking at all the lovely yarn and hooks and bits and bobs, much like strolling through my Nan's sewing room. 

What will I make next? 

If you're in Brisbane & you're yarn-y I highly recommend a trip to this lovely little shop. I had Master S in the Manduca but next time I have a second alone.. (perhaps in 20 years!) I'm going to head in there and enjoy a HOT cup of coffee* and one of their scrumptious looking cupcakes. 

http://www.tangledyarns.com.au/catalog/

*I'm still dreaming of hot coffee.....

Butter cake with passionfruit cream cheese frosting

Butter cake with passionfruit cream cheese frosting

This is a gorgeous moist cake - it's dangerously good and so simple! The passionfruit icing just finishes it beautifully. I love passionfruits, I think I've grown a vine in almost every house I've lived in. At the moment I am training one over a triangle shaped frame in our garden, so when it's covered in the leafy green folage, Mr 3 shall have a passionfruit tent, to crawl through, lie under or read a book in.... maybe even picnic on a slice of cake in there too! 

TM Method

Ingredients:

Cake:

440gms raw sugar (to process to caster sugar)

250gms butter

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

4 eggs

340gms self raising flour

25gms corn flour

220gms milk

Icing:

250gm pkt cream cheese - remove from fridge 20 mins prior to soften

Pulp from 2 small passionfruits or 1 large (if using frozen passionfruit use 2 ice cubes)

220gms icing sugar

Method

Cake:

Preheat oven to 160*c fan forced.

Grease a 22cm springform baking tin with butter and line the bottom with baking paper***.

Add 440gms raw sugar to TM bowl and process 5 secs | sp 10.

Add 250gms butter, bring together 5 secs | sp 6.

Add butterfly, beat 30 secs | sp 4.

Add 4 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla bean paste, beat 10 secs | sp 3.

Add 340gms self raising flour and 25gms corn flour and 220gms milk and mix 40 secs | sp 6.

Pour into a prepared springform baking tin and bake for 45-60 minutes until a skewer comes out clean from the centre.

Allow to sit in cake pan for 5 mins and then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely. 

Icing:

Scoop passionfruit pulp from fruit or put frozen cubes into TM bowl mill 40 secs | sp 9. (Omit this step and leave seeds whole if you prefer, just add passionfruit and continue with recipe below)

Roughly cut cream cheese into 2cm cubes with spatula and add to TM bowl with 220gms icing sugar and whip 40 secs | sp 4.

Spread generously onto cake with spatula once cake has completely cooled. Store in air tight container on the bench, or in the fridge. If you store in the fridge, allow cake to come back to room temp before eating (this will ensure the texture is lovely and soft).

Conventional method:

Ingredients:

Cake:

2 cups caster sugar

250gms butter

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

4 eggs

2 cups self raising flour

1/3 cup corn flour

1 cup milk

Icing:

250gm pkt cream cheese - remove from fridge 20 mins prior to soften

Pulp from 2 small passionfruits or 1 large (if using frozen passionfruit use 2 ice cubes)

1 cup icing sugar

Method:

Cake:

Preheat oven to 160*c fan forced.

Grease a 22cm springform baking tin with butter and line the bottom with baking paper***.

Cream butter & sugar in mix master or with electric beaters.

Add vanilla bean paste.

Add eggs one at a time and beat at a low speed until combined.

Gradually add dry ingredients plus milk into mixture and beat until well combined.

Pour into a prepared springform baking tin and bake for 45-60 minutes until a skewer comes out clean from the centre.

Allow to sit in cake pan for 5 mins and then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Icing:

Crush passionfruit in pestle and mortar (or you can leave whole if desired) add cream cheese and icing sugar to mix master or use electric beaters and mix until combined. Spread generously onto cake with spatula once cake has completely cooled. Store in air tight container on the bench, or in the fridge. If you store in the fridge, allow cake to come back to room temp before eating (this will ensure the texture is lovely and soft).

***the easiest way to get the baking paper the right size is to put the baking tin on a square of baking paper, draw a ring around the outside with a marker and cut it out with scissors. You will have a precise circle which will sit nicely inside the tin and mean your cake will come out easily.

Enjoy!!!