Ready, Steady, Cook!

I am really not a person who enjoys cooking. I love eating. The odd thing is that I love to read and buy cookery books and I collect recipes from wherever I can, magazines, family, friends, the internet and of course that wonderful programme 'Masterchef Australia'. Rob and I watch it every day and often download and print the recipes from Masterclass. (Now, for those of you who do not watch the show, this has not made very much sense at all, but bear with me!)

Nicely set marmelade

Just lately, however, I have had the urge to create in the kitchen and not the usual boring meat and two veg type thing, but unusual and interesting things. A few weeks ago I made some delicious marmelade from a recipe that my sister sent me. It was in pints and pounds however, and by the time I had converted it, I somehow had far too much liquid and it just would not thicken. I decided that I would label it 'Orange Sauce', but Rob cleverly Googled the problem and came up with the answer! Either grape or apple juice would fix it (they are full of pectin), so because we did not have any juice, he peeled and chopped two apples, squished them up and added them to the 'sauce'. twenty minutes later we had the most delicious marmelade that set perfectly!

This weekend I went into Kitchen Goddess mode again. I had found a recipe for Butternut gnocchi that looked easy, and I had also torn out a recipe from a HELLO! magazine that I had borrowed from a friend (with her permission of course). This was for ice cream, made with real cream, condensed milk, vanilla and frozen berries! The gnocchi went well up to the ready to cook stage when I re-read the recipe and discovered that I had left out the egg yolk. This is typical of me, I forge ahead, do things quickly, and then decide to make sure that it's right. (I once made banana muffins and forgot to put the banana in and wondered why they didn't taste at all of bananas.)

So, I threw the gnocchi back into the bowl, added the egg, mixed and kneaded again, rolled in semolina, again, and cooked it! The sauce was tomato and bacon and it really did taste very good.

Ready to cook

Ready to eat!

As for the ice cream, wow, it worked better than I could have imagined! The blackberries I boiled with sugar and a little lemon juice and then strained them so I had a thick syrup. The cream, condensed milk and vanilla were beaten to the 'soft peak stage' and poured into a handy empty ice cream container. The berry juice was swirled through with a fork and then it was simply put in the freezer until set!

Sorry, there is no picture as we ate it before I could get the camera out! Talk about cholesterol on a spoon!!