Kamaboko

450g white fish, 2 egg whites, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 4.5 tbps cornflour, 4.5 tbsp sake, 1 tbps mirin, food colouring if you desire.

Chuck everything in a blender and shape the resulting paste into whatever you like. If you want, colour it, roll it, have fun. Whatever you do, wrap it up in a foil sausage so it can be steamed. 

Steam for 20 minutes, then chill. Ready for use. Easy as. 

Bruschetta - various

Variant 1: (the green one on the left)
Anchovies, tomato, lemon juice, roast garlic, parsley, basil, marjoram. Into blender, salt and pepper.

Variant 2: Camembert and salami

Variant 3: Roasted red peppers, green onions, blue cheese.

Variant 4: Caramelized red onions in a red wine reduction with slices Camembert on the top. Maybe could have done with some near-carpaccio beef slivers on top.


Everything is on sliced baguette (in this case) grilled with olive oil and seasoning.

 

Custard Tarts

You know those custard tarts you buy in the shop that have disappointing amounts of custard and don't taste of anything? This isn't one of them.

Pastry:
250g flour, 185g butter, 1.5 tbsp icing sugar, 1 egg yolk, iced water. Blind bake in four/five generous muffin tins, 10mins with pastry beads 10 mins without, at 200 degrees.

Custard:
1 can condensed milk, 1.5 cups milk, 2tbsp custard powder, 1 eggs, vanilla essence. Cook in saucepan until thickened. Pour into tart casings, chill. Consume with nutmeg grated on top.

Combo for Asian night

Sushi, gyoza, and veg stir-fry.

Gyoza skin is made from 2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp salt and 120ml boiling water. Filling is traditionally shredded cabbage and pork mince. You can steam these babies or fry them for about 3 minutes each and then add a splash of water and cover the pan for about 4 minutes for them to steam/fry. Delicious.

The sushi and stir-fry - well, you do them as you please, don't you?

Custard Cornucopias

Nothing could be easier. 

1) Make custard. (Custard powder's fine. Microwave is not only fine but excellent.) 

2) Chill. (Both you and the custard.) 

3) Wrap ready-made puff pastry round pastry horn moulds. Bake. Until both the pastry and your ego are puffed.  

4) Pipe cooled custard into horns (with a snipped-off sandwich bag works fine). 

5) Dust with icing sugar. 

Kids yum 'em.

Cake Pops

You obviously need a cake-pop maker for these. But for a gimmicky little gadget, it actually gives good returns in child satisfaction, and the pops don't take long to make at all. I served some for afternoon snack in a giant martini glass (forget the tedious poles, just cake balls) and the kids thought it was ever-so swish. Here are the recipes that came with our cake maker. Each batch makes 24. Do a couple of batches for 4-5 hungry kids and they'll have a few to take to school the next day.

Vanilla cake pops 

• 60g butter (softenend) 
• 1/2 cup sugar 
• 1 tsp vanilla essense 
• 1 egg 
• 1 tsp baking powder 
• 3/4 cup plain flour 
• 1/3 cup milk 

Cream butter and sugar, add the rest, bake.

Chocolate Espresso cake pops 
3/4 cup flour

• 1/2 cup caster sugar 
• 2 tbps cocoa powder 
• 1 tsp baking powder 
• 50ml milk 
• 5o ml fresh brewed espresso 
• 1 egg 
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essense 

Mix everything, bake.

Strawberry cake pops: 
As per vanilla with pink food colouring and strawberry essence instead of vanilla.

Chocolate Chip cake pops
As per vanilla with 1/4 cup of choc chips

Red Velvet cake pops 

• 60g butter (softenend) 
• 40g beetroot, peeled, grated 
• 1 cup plain flour 
• 1 tsp baking powder 
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder 
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essense 
• red food colouring 
• 1 egg 
• 1/3 cup milk 

Beat butter and sugar, add egg then rest. Bake.

Citrus cake pops. 
As per vanilla with grated citrus zest.

Apple Fritters

Great breakfast or snack - or even dessert.

Batter:
1 cup flour
1 egg
1 scant cup milk
vanilla
approx 40g melted butter
a few spoons of sugar

this will coat about 5 medium sized apples, though it's a bit of a toss-up. I would do about 1.5 apples per person so theoretically this would be enough for about 3 people. Depending on their level of hunger.

Peel and core the apples, slice them into reasonably thick slices ring-wise, microwave covered in cling film for about 5 minutes or until they're somewhat soft but not falling apart. Cool them a little before you coat in batter (besides, it's hard to handle otherwise).

Shallow fry, and sprinkle with icing sugar as they come out of the batch and go into the serving bowl (so you don't get a bunch of sugar on top at the end and none on the bottom). Serve with maple syrup and/or cream. Or even ice-cream.