Avocado Pesto

Mmmm - avocado, what an amazing and versatile fruit. Great on toast with a sprinkle of S&P and an absolute must have for any sushi lover.

With the incredible heat in Sydney this past week, it's been a real challenge to whip up dinner after work - the last thing you want to do in the 40 degree heat in a non-airconditioned apartment is turn on the stove!

This lovely pesto went perfectly with a simple salad of spinach leaves, roma tomatoes, barbecue chook and spanish onion - and no cooking required!

Finally, the cool change is here. Personally, I'm pretty done with summer!

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Avocado Pesto

Ingredients:

1 bunch basil
2 small garlic cloves
1 avocado
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup olive oil


Pick just the leaves from the bunch of basil. In a food processor, pulse basil leaves with garlic. Use a stick mixer to puree avocado and basil, garlic mix while slowly adding the oil in a steady stream until the mixture is smooth. Salt and pepper to taste.

Great for leafy summer salads - and works well with cold pasta salads as well.

A delectably delicious new year - chocolate crusted lemon tart

My friend went to New Zealand and the Cadbury factory last month and came back with the Green and Black's chocolate cookbook - lotsa awesome recipes including this one for a divine lemon tart. Definitely a holiday hit.

This year, I hope I'll be able to include more about the foodie community. There are so many great food bloggers out there, especially here in Sydney and I would love to become more involved with it. Hopefully that also means I get myself off my lazy butt and blog more!

Have a very happy new year everyone and here's to a delectably delicious 2011!

http://www.greenandblacks.com/ca/recipes/online-recipes/green-and-blacks-chocolate-crusted-lemon-tart.html

What's your comfort food? (and Har Gow Recipe)

Mac and cheese, lasagne, chicken noodle soup, casserole - we all have our comfort foods. Most of them will probably stem from our childhood and our fondest memories - when mum tucked us in with a blanket in front of the TV and served up a piping hot bowl of tomato soup with our fav cartoons.

Being asian, a lot of my comfort food is chinese - although when I was sick, my mum usually gave me a bowl of some sticky black bitter herbal concoction that was supposed to make me better. Much worse than cherry cough syrup. Anyway, my point is that a lot of my "comfort" foods come from comforting routines my family had established. Because my dad worked in a restaurant I didn't get to spend weekends with him when I was in school - but during school holidays we always went out for lunch, usually to some chinese noodle place where I would always order roast pork and wonton noodle soup. Or we would go to yum cha and I always had the har gow. So those are at the top of my list for "comfort food".

What's on yours?

Har gow recipe

Taken from http://www.anyrecipe.net/asian/recipes/hagow.html

Filling

300 g prawns
150 g water chestnuts minced
2 1/2 tbs corn flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp black bean sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp grated ginger

Wrapper
1 1/4 cup wheaten corn flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 cup boiling chicken broth
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp oil

Peel and devein prawns and cut into 1 cm pieces. Mix with filling ingredients and set aside.

Mix wheaten cornflour and tapioca flour with broth and oil. Knead into dough - if it's too sticky, add more wheaten cornflour.

Break off about 1/4 of the dough and cover the rest to keep moist. Roll into a 1.5 cm thick tube then divide into eight pieces.

Roll each piece out as a flat dumpling wrapper - using a flat bottom of a pan to press down on the dough really works! Your wrapper should be round and no more than a couple of mm in thickness.

Pleat the edges of about 1/2 the circumference of the wrapper so you have a small little 1/2 cup. Traditionally, 8 pleats iis a lucky number in chinese culture. Place filling into the "cup" and fold over to form a half moon shape. Fold the corners in a little and flatten the bottom on a piece of grease paper to form the rest of your dumpling shape. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Steam in a bamboo steamer lined with grease paper for about 7 minutes. Let sit for 3 minutes before serving.