In My Kitchen: January

Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I share everything I have made over the previous month. For the first time in months, I had a lot of activity in the kitchen, and I have to say I really enjoyed it!

First up I made Hummingbird Cakes to go with my Cook the Books post about Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil which I posted last week! I had been craving something with cream cheese frosting, and these hit the spot! And bonus, I will now be able to find the recipe whenever I want to rather than just stumbling on the bit of paper on occasion.

Jamie Oliver's Cook Book Club has taken a bit of a nosedive, so I have gone back to looking at my Australian cook book clubs for inspiration. This year, the Lamb's Ear Cook Book Club has a book of the year, the monthly cookbook and new for this year is an ingredient of the month. For January, the ingredient was stone fruit, so I went searching through my books and found a recipe for something called Chaja Cake from one of the cookbooks I got for Christmas, Everybody Loves Cake: Sweet Bakes and Stories by Alisha Henderson.  This cake (pictured at the top of the post) originates from Peru, and oh my goodness, it was so good. It is a super light sponge, filled with peaches, dulce de leche and cream, and then the outside is smothered in cream and then the sides are covered with crushed meringue. It was so good! So good, in fact, that I am making it again today, although this time I am going to use store bought dulce de leche. When I next have a gap in my Weekend Cooking posts I will share the recipe.

Continuing on the stone fruit theme, Donna Hay shared a recipe for Upside Down Pavlova on her Facebook page and so I made that too. You can choose whatever combination of fruit you like but I used fresh peaches and plums (we won't mention the blueberries that had been in the freezer for too long) and then you top it with meringue and bake it! It was another delicious recipe, although I think that I needed to buy the fruit a couple of days earlier so it was a bit riper! I actually have Donna Hay's latest cook book out from the library at the moment because it is the February book of the month. I think I am going to end up buying it!

Have you tried the viral Japanese cheesecake? The idea is that you take a tub of yoghurt, you put some biscuits in it and put in the fridge to set. When you eat it, it is supposed to taste like cheesecake. Now, cheesecake is one of my favourites, so I had to try it. We tried it with Greek yoghurt and very plain biscuits. It does have a cheesecakey texture, particularly because the biscuits soften and so are reminiscent of the base, and it doesn't taste bad, but it still tasted very Greek yoghurty. I would try it again with maybe vanilla yoghurt and different biscuits or there is a brand here that does lemon curd swirl yoghurt and I have heard that is good with Anzac biscuits

I have bought more cook books so far this year than I did all of last year! I mentioned earlier that the cook book club has a book of the year, and that is The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater. My idea is that I am going to read with the seasons, so when he is writing about July I will read it in January, but I haven't kept up yet. I will try to do better in February.

The other book I bought is Arnotts: The Cook Book. Late last year I went to a book event where the bookseller was talking about the fact that there were three books that she couldn't keep in stock and this was one of them. It is a bit gimicky in that it is recipes that are made using Arnott's biscuits but there are some things in there that I will make. I think I will most likely start with Vanilla Slice but we will see.

In terms of new things in my kitchen this month, there isn't much. In mid January, we went to Perth for the weekend and spent time with my aunties and one of my cousins. Every time I go over there, my aunt buys me a bottle of spearmint milk (yum) and I get new wine recommendations. We don't drink a lot at home but I will go out and buy whichever wine we like after going over there. This time, we tried these two wines from Aldi. Given that I seem to have a bit of a peach thing going on at the moment, I particularly enjoyed the Peach Bellini wine although the Limoncello is very drinkable too

I did buy some new summery everyday place mats and table runner which you can see in some of the photos

In terms of other foodie events, it was our  meetaversary in early January. Apparently we can't call it an anniversary now that we have a wedding anniversary as well. It was 9 years ago that we first met, so we went out to dinner at the Meat and Wine Company. It was a delicious meal featuring lots of meat (naturally given the name of the restaurant) and some South African flavours. 

Last weekend we went to a new show that is on at the casino in the city. It was called Piper's Playhouse and is an interesting mix of Paris cabaret, magic, drag, burlesque and circus type acts and lots of champagne. The acts were very, very good, and the night was a lot of fun. After the show, the venue turns into a piano bar and the crowd really got into it! I think even the pianist was a bit surprised by some of the things that the crowd did last night! When I head about it, we had to try one of the desserts which was this shoe.  The shoe that you see above is actually all made of white chocolate and was filled with fresh berries and served with cream and berry sauce! Really it is just berries and cream but it certainly looks impressive.

Weekend Cooking posts from the last month

Cook the Books: Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Blog Tour: The Boulangerie on the Corner by Susan Buchanan

The Sweet Life Café by Helen Rolfe

Japanese Chicken Curry

Dinner at the Night Library by Hika Harada

Three Japanese Books Set in Cafes/Restaurants

In My Kitchen: December

New Recipes

While I am not doing the 52 new recipe challenges this year, I do still want to keep track of new recipes I try so I will add them here each month

Hummingbird Cakes

Chaja Cake

Japanese Cheesecake

Roast Chicken

Japanese Chicken Curry

Crispy Lemon and Garlic Chicken

Weekly meals

Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Swedish Meatballs with mash
Monday - Baked Tuscan Chicken
Tuesday - Chicken Stir Fry with noodles
Wednesday - Pressure Cooker Spag Bol
Thursday - Out for dinner
Friday - Out for dinner

I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page