Honey Roasted Macadamia Nuts

I love going to movie theatres that sell hot honey roasted nuts- they are delicious. One thing though is that they often come with a gigantic sugar crust ball which is far too big in comparison to the size of the nuts.

So I am going to make some of my own with my favourite nuts - macadamia nuts. They are crunchy and have the creamiest, buttery texture. I can never get enough of it. They are not the most affordable nuts out there, so it's a little treat for me  each time that I have them.

For every cup (140g) of macadamia nuts, you will need:

1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup sugar for rolling

Place the honey and oil into a saucepan over a medium heat. Stir constantly and bring it to boil. Once it starts boiling, turn down the heat at the lowest setting.

Toast your nuts in a 160°C oven for around 7-8 minutes until they are  just slightly golden brown then take them out to cool down. 

Place the nuts into the hot honey and oil mixture once they are cool. Be very careful with the sauce, it is extremely hot - trust me you do not want to touch that.

Now add the coated nuts into the sugar bowl. Use a fork to separate out the nuts.

Once the nuts are cool enough to handle, you can use your hand to pick them out and rest the onto baking paper.

Roll each individual nut until it's surfaces are round and smooth. Let it dry out overnight.

Store the honey roasted macadamia nuts in an air tight container the next day.

How to package edible items

 

1) Container

Before you wrap up your present make sure your food is in an air tight container or wrapped up in a zip bag at least.


2) Label it

Label your food and tell people what it is.

3) Ingredient Lists

It is always a good practice to provid ingredient lists, just in case the other person who you are giving the present to has some sort of food allergies or special dietary requirements.

4) Serving Suggestion

Not everyone will know what to do with the present that you have given them. Most of my food blogs come with serving suggestions of some sort, so do write them down if you can.

5) Wrap it

Reduce rubbish by reusing materials such as coffee sacks from your local coffee roastry.

If you are in Wellington, you can source your old coffee sags (should be free) from:

Caffe Laffare - 27 College Street, Wellington
The Immigrant's Son - 10 Elizabeth Street, Mount Victoria, Wellington
People's Coffee - 12A Constable Street, Newtown, Wellington
Mojo - Shed 13, Waterfront, Wellington
Supreme - 35 Hopper Street, Te Aro, Wellington
Havana - 163 Tory Street, Wellington

Gingerbread Gift Tags and Gift Wrapping

We cannot have Christmas without gingerbread of course. I love eating homemade gingerbread cookies --- just fresh and hot out of the oven, still too hot to hold and still soft, yum.

My partner's dad is German, so one year I  decided to make a gingerbread house for him. It took me more than half a day to assemble and decorate the whole thing with loads of icing, but he loved it so it is all worth it.

I am using the same recipes as I did when I made the walls and roofs for the gingerbread house, but this time it's to make edible gift tags to goe along with all those presents.

It is time to take out all your cookie cutters and let your imagination go wild!




For 6-7 gift tags, you will need:


1 cups (150g) flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup (33g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground clove
55g soft butter
2 tbsp (60g) golden syrup
1 egg yolk
 

Mix the flour, brown sugar and spices together. Rub the softened butter in with the flour mixture and  keep rubbing it until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add  the golden syrup and egg yolk into the flour mixture until just combined. Place this cookie dough in the freezer for ten minutes until hard. Cut the dough into 4 parts. Dust some flour on to a piece of baking paper and place a part of the dough on top of it. Dust some more flour on top of it and roll it flat. Dust off any excess flour with a pastry brush. Cut shapes with your cookie cutters and bake it in the oven at 160°C.

Let it cool on the rack and place a ribbon around it. Easy!

So start baking now and no one has to get confused with sorting out which present belongs to which person!

Click here for more edible Christmas present ideas.

Chilli Lemon and Lime Salt

Seasoned salt is one of the quickest and easiest ways to add flavour into food. Just a sprinkle of this chilli, lemon and lime salt on some barbecued prawns  will bring out their sweetness and flavour.

To make 90g of this, you will need:

A  mortar and pestle
70g of rock salt/ flaky sea salt
3 lemon zests
3 lime zests
6 fresh chillies

Zest all of your lemon and lime and add them with  all the other ingredients into your mortar. Start crushing and grinding the ingredients until they reach  a powdered form. The idea of this exercise is to grind and extract all those delicious citrus oil and chilli flavours into the salt. Be warned though, this might take a while - well at least it is a great upper body exercise- much more fun than going to the gym!

Place all of your ground powder on a baking tray and let it dry out in a cold oven overnight. Once it is  dried the salt will slightly stick together again. So, place it all into the mortar and pestle again and grind it a little bit more to separate the grains. You can now store your chili, lemon and lime salt in a air-tight container.

This salt  goes well with seafood,  fish, chicken, oven roast potatoes and even salad dressings.

I also did three other flavoured salts:

From left (clockwise): Sumac Salt, Fennel Salt, Chilli Lemon & Lime Salt, Schechuan Pepper Salt

Fennel Salt

I love fennel salt. It has a subtle aniseed flavour which goes extremely well with ingredients such as cannelini beans, cauliflower, fennel, pork and parsnip. In the winter, I love sprinkling it onto my  bowl of soup and eating with a German dark rye  bread.

I have also added a teaspoon of this aromatic salt into my dukkah mix!

To make 60g of this, you will need:

A  mortar and pestle
40g fennel seeds, toasted
20g Rock salt/ flaky sea salt

Toast your fennel seeds on a  skillet, shaking your pan constantly to promote an even cooking temperature. Remove from heat once it has turned slightly golden. Let it cool.

Add  the toasted fennel seeds and salt into your mortar and start crushing and grinding until it has reached a powder form. Store it in an air-tight container.

Sumac Salt

Along with yoghurt, lemons and pomegranates, sumac is one of the key ingredients that provides the sour flavoured characteristic in Middle Eastern food.

To make 50g of this salt, you will need:

A  mortar and pestle
30g sumac
20g rock salt/ flaky sea salt

Add a teaspoon of this whenever recipes call for lemon. I like garnished homemade hummus with a bit of this and a good dash of extra virgin olive oil.

Szechuan Pepper Salt

Having grown up in Hong Kong means that each time I go to a northern Chinese cuisine restaurant I find some form of Szechuan Pepper in at least one dish. 


Szechuan pepper has a unique aroma and flavour that is not hot or pungent like black or white pepper, or chilli peppers. Instead, it has slightly lemony overtones and creates a tingly numbness in the mouth.

Whenever I am making some form of stir fries, I like to put a teaspoon of this in it. This Szechuan pepper salt is all ground up, so it is perfect to control the quantity you would like to have in your food.

Remove the pan from the heat when the Szechuan pepper starts smoking.

To make 50g of this salt, you will need:

A  mortar and pestle
30g of Szechuan pepper
20g of flaky sea salt/ rock salt

Toast the pepper on a skillet, and remove from the heat once it starts smoking. Let it cool down. Add the toasted pepper into the mortar along with the salt and grind it until it reaches a powdered form. Store it in a air-sealed container.

Click here for more edible Christmas present ideas.

Dukkah and Rosemary Oil

Fresh bread that has been dunked into a bowl of olive oil and dukkah is my kind of comfort food. I can have tonnes of it, and I often already get half filled up before the actually meal has even started.


I used to buy dukkah from shops, until a friend persuaded me into making my own ones. I did and they are ridiculously easy and don't cost much to make.

For 200g of dukkah, you will need:

1/4 cup sesame seeds (40g)
1 cup (130g) hazelnut , toasted and skin off
1 tsp of fennel seeds salt (you can replace this with fennel seeds and salt)
2 tbsp (14g) cumin , toasted - again I use the ground ones
2 tbsp (14g) coriander seeds, toasted - I sometimes use grounded ones when  I'm lazy
 
Spices that are in their original form are supposed to have more flavour and aroma than grounded ones, but I was in a hurry so I use grounded one instead.

Toast your seeds: Place both the sesame seeds and hazelnuts on two separate baking trays. Place both trays in a preheated 160°C oven. Sesame seeds should take no more than 5 mins to turn golden brown in colour and hazelnuts take around 7-8 minutes. Once you have removed the hazelnut from the oven, rub the nuts between a tea towel to remove their skins. Continue doing so until they are all removed and then let them cool down.

Toast your spices: You can either toast them whole or grounded. If you are using the whole ones, you have to grind them finely after toasting. Toast your spices on a skillet over a medium heat and shake the pan constantly to create an even cooking temperature. Remove from heat immediately once it starts smoking. Remember it will still continue to cook even after that, so keep an eye on it. Set aside.

Place toasted hazelnuts into a electric mixer to grind them to the right size . The ideal size for chopped hazelnuts is that they are the same size as  a grain of rice or couscous pieces . They  need to large enough to create a crunch or texture in your dukkah.

Stir in the whole toasted sesame seeds, the ground  hazelnuts and the spices together. Place the dukkah in  air tight containers. This will last for at least 3-4 months.

Rosemary Oil

For around 250ml of rosemary oil, you will need:

260ml olive oil
4 springs of rosemary 

1 spring of rosemary for garnish

3 dry bay leaves

5 – 10 black peppercorns

Wash and dry your rosemary. Simply heat the oil until  you can see a little movement inside the oil. Remove from the heat and add in your rosemary. Let it steep until the oil gets cold. Sterilise your container and place the peppercorns, bay leaves and rosemary into the bottle. Pour the rosemary oil into the container and seal.

Cardamom White Chocolate Truffles with Pistachio

Who can resist chocolate truffles? Certainly not me. I personally would pick homemade truffles over any chocolate bars. I like them at room temperature, when they are soft to bite and they literally melt it in your mouth. I am in heaven already just by thinking about it...

I had some baklava the other day and this inspired me to make some chocolate truffles with rosewater. So I came up with these white chocolate truffles with tiny amounts of rosewater and cardamom added to them and rolled in  pistachio nuts. Maybe you can call it Moroccan inspired but I call it delicious. The rosewater flavour hardly came through, but the cardamon was just beautiful. Maybe I should make a cheesecake with cardamom next time!

The following recipes will allow you to make around 25 small chocolate truffles. Double the recipes if you want to have some more leftovers for yourself.

250g white chocolate, roughly chopped
1/4 cup double cream
a knob of butter (5g)
2 tbsp cardamom
1 tbsp of rosewater
a handful of pistachio, roughly chopped

I am not using any fancy Belgium chocolate, just some good old NZ made Whittaker's.

Place some water in a saucepan and bring it to boil. While you are waiting for the water to boil, chop the chocolate into pieces and place them into a big bowl. It is important that the bottom of the bowl isn't  touching the water surface. Once the water starts boiling, turn it down to the lowest setting and place the chocolate bowl over the hot water. Let it sit for 5 mins. Be patient as it will melt slowly by itself and you barely have to stir it.

























When it is starting to melt, add in the cream, cardamom and rosewater. Once everything is completely melted, add in a knob of butter to finish it off. Turn off the heat.

Cover the bowl with glad wrap and place it in the fridge for couple of hours (I placed them in the freezer for half an hour, and they fully set).

Finely chopped a handful of pistachio nuts and place them into a mixing bowl.

Remove the chocolate from the fridge and put on some disposable gloves. Now scoop out equal amounts of chocolate with a melon baller or a teaspoon. Roll the chocolate into little round balls and then drop them into the chopped pistachio.

Shake the bowl sideways to make sure that the chocolate is rolled and coated evenly with chopped pistachio.

Place it on some mini paper cups and seal it with glad wrap and keep it refrigerated.

Candied Orange Peel

There are many ways to eat an orange. Some peel them by hand; others  cut them into quarters; I just like skinning them with a pairing knife.

Not only can you eat the flesh , you can also eat the skin as well. Instead of throwing the skin away into a compost bin, you can turn them into delicious little candies! The texture is chewy and the orange fragrance just wafts beautifully around your nose. It is an absolute pleasure eating them.

For 500g of candied orange peel, you will need:

2 oranges
1 1/2 cups (300g) sugar
1/2 cup water (100ml) water

extra 1/2 cup (100g) sugar for coating

Prep time: 30minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour

First, slice off both ends of the orange.This will provide stable platform for peeling the skin.

Start at the top, just where the pith (white part) meets the pulp and slice off the skin, following the curve of the fruit. Unlike cutting orange segments, you are trying to avoid cutting into the flesh! So leave the orange peel as white as possible.

After removing all the pith of both oranges, slice them into thin strips.

Now it is time to blanch the orange peels. The purpose of doing this is to remove the natural bitterness of the pith. Cover the orange strips with cold tap water in a saucepan and bring them to boil. Once boiled, drain away all the liquid and repeat this procedure again.

 
In another saucepan, place both the water and sugar into it and bring it to boil. Turn down the heat and wait until it turns into a slightly thicker consistency, then add  the orange strips into this syrup and simmer gently for at least 1 hour.

When the orange peels turn completely transparent, turn off the heat. Remove the  peels from the syrup, shake off any excess  and add into a bowl of sugar.

Constantly shake the bowl, until the orange peels are completely covered in sugar. Seperate any orange peels that may stick together.

Place the candied orange peel on a baking paper and let it dry out overnight.


Place all the candies in an airtight container and they will last for 2-3 months.

Elderflower Cordial

People make their own homemade elderflower cordials in Europe. It is one of the bare essentials during summer as it is  refreshing and has a distinctive yet subtle floral aroma which is very delicious. You can find elderflower trees around Wellington. Some people have it in their own garden. I picked my own elderflowers at a park up the top of Tory St. The perfect time to pick them is when they just start blossoming, which is from  now through to early January.

Making you own cordial will probably cost you $2 -$3 and no more than 20 minutes. If you found the right tree you should definitely do it this summer.

To make 500ml of elderflower cordial, you will need:

10 elderflower heads
2 lemons, zested and juiced
1.5 cups (300g) of sugar
1.5 cups (300ml) water
1 tsp (5g) of citric acid

Prep time: 20 mins max + overnight for steeping

Pick 10 blossoming elderflower heads and wash them under running water over a sieve. Give it a shake and let it dry while you make the sugar syrup. Stir in the water and sugar until they are completely mixed together. Stop stirring and let it simmer for 10 mins for a thicker consistency.

While you are waiting, zest your lemon and juice it as well. Combine the lemon with the elderflower.

Once the sugar syrup is ready, pour the hot syrup straight into the elderflower and let it cool down. Once cool. place some gladwrap over it and let it sit at room temperature overnight.

Drain the liquid with a fine sieve or a cheese cloth the next day, and it is ready for bottling.

If you are making this as a gift, don't forget to write the following serving suggestion:

Add a generous dash of cordial into a glass with plenty of ice, sprigs of mint and a few slices of lemon and lime. Top it up with either sparkling or tap water.

Make the most of summer and plenty of outdoor entertainment!

Vanilla Marshmallow

Homemade marshmallows are the best! There are not many around, and when you have tried a real one, you must realise that there is no reason for us to go back to that commercial crap ever again. It is softer in texture because there is less gelatin. No colouring, no artificial flavours, no preservatives – only pure yumminess. With only a few ingredients, you will be surprised.

Those little square babies are so attractive; I want to eat all of it.

To make around 40 marshmallows, you will need:

2 tbsp powdered gelatine or 12 gelatine sheets
1/2 cup water water
1.5 cup (330g) caster sugar
2/3 cup glucose syrup
1/3 cup water, extra
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup (25g) cornstarch


Place the gelatine with the warm water and eventually it will melt together. 

Making Sugar Syrup: Add sugar, water and glucose syrup together and stir them slightly over the heat until all sugar is dissolved. After that, leave it to boil and do not attempt to stir the sugar syrup again. If you have a sugar thermometer, wait till it reaches 115 degrees or until it is in a soft ball stage which is around 5 minutes or so.

Temping the sugar syrup into the gelatine: Have the electric mixer running. Slowly pour all the hot sugar syrup into the gelatine mixture and let the motor run for 10 minutes until the mixture turns white and fluffy.

Setting it: Spray oil onto a squared or rectangle container, then pour in the mixture to about 6cm deep and let it cool in the fridge for a  couple of hours until it is  firm to touch.

Cutting it: Now place oiled baking paper onto your chopping board and rest the marshmallow on it. It is important that you either oil the baking paper with a pastry brush or through oil spray. If you don't follow this step, your marshmallow will end up sticking to the baking paper and will make a mess when you are cutting it. Run your knife through hot water and wipe it dry with a tea towel each time before you cut the marshmallows.

Trim the four edges until till they are all squared up. Then start cutting them into rectangles then into cubes. 

Mix in the cornflour with the sifted icing sugar. Place your cubes into the icing sugar mixture, and make sure all sides are covered. Place them in a box with lined baking paper.

Click here for more Christmas gift or gift wrapping ideas.