Jamie's at my home...

With christmas just around the corner, I got my present early and since I never look a gift horse in the mouth, I don't care why but I have to tell you all that Angus and Robertson has Jamie's latest book for half price. I paid $32.50 for this beautiful book and I am happy, happy, happy - it combines all my loves in life, cooking, shopping and bargains!!!!!!!! Cannot get any better than that for me, I have to say.

If you will excuse me, I have a date with Jamie at home.... Vida

Nice Matters Award - who me???

The lovely Hannah (http://www.hannascountrykitchen.blogspot.com/), has nominated me for the Nice Matters Award and I am please to forward it onto seven other bloggers that I think are worthy of this award. The award is for being a good blogger friend, encouraging fellow bloggers and making the blogging world a better place. (Forgive me Hannah, if I did not get that right, I was trying to remember it all because I don't know how to copy it across). What can I say, I am a novice!!

http://www.thefowlerfam.blogspot.com/ Pigeon Pair who started me on the whole blogging road. Without Christie I would not be.

http://www.hungryhampster.blogspot.com/ Hungry Hampster who regularly visits and posts nice comments and has a great blog.

http://www.theflyingapple.typepad.com/ Angelika who posts desserts like my dear mother made. Visiting is like going home.

http://www.parisparfait.typepad.com/ The lovely Tara who is generous enough to take time out of your extraordinarilly busy world to write to little old me. She posts the most glorious photos of Paris and lives the dream I dream.

http://www.doriegreenspan.com/ The wonderful Dorie who had almost six hundred comments to her competition but took time out to write to me and thank me for my comments.

http://www.luculliandelights.blogspot.com/ The sweet Ilva, who takes the most beautiful photos and makes time for everyone. Tuscany, my second dream of dreams.

http://www.eatmefood.blogspot.com/ These guys post delicious foods and puts their own twist on food and life. How wonderful diversity is! And they're Melbourne boys, what more can I say.

Thanks again Hannah for the honour and happy blogging to everyone. To all those I did not mention, you know I love you regardless!!

Vida x x x

Salad Simple!

Spinach leaves, pinenuts that were toasted, haloumi cheese that I fried til golden,
Some leftover baked pumpkin from last nights roast...
Dress it all with balsamic vinegar and some olive oil, a little salt and freshly ground pepper...
Toss it all and enjoy, some chicken would have been great but none of that was leftover...

France...

This is the place that I stayed at whilst in the south. It's called La Combe de Tayac http://www.lacombe-perigord.com/ and is in a little valley called Les Eyzies. It is about 5 hours drive south of Paris.


This is my I might be the talk of dinner parties for years to come look... you see I love dessert so much that all those that did not in our group, decided I should have theirs. So with a choice of 4 over lunch, I had FOUR desserts and the rest went begging...

These are friends of the Chef taught our course and I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch in the fabulous Paris apartment. They even sang me happy birthday in French and had glorious cake for me...

This is my kitchen in our old home in Malvern East, the girls made a welcome home banner for my return. I had been gone for 5 weeks and they appreciated me being back even though their father had done a tremendous job in caring for them... If there is any interest I will post more photos of my French Fantasy....

Sunset....

This is the view I have from my balconey. We are on the fifth floor and though you cannot see it past the sunset, the sea is beneath that beautiful sun setting... Bring on summer I say....

Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar

This is taken from Real Chocolate cook book. Chantal Coady of http://www.rococochocolates.com/ in London wrote this book.

She says "I have found this little invention totally invaluable. As well as its obvious uses, say in salad dressings and deglazing pans to make gravies and sauces, you will see it delivers the chocolate element in lots of my savoury recipes. It does, though, also lend itself to dishes other than savoury - just try it over fresh strawberries. For a more piquant version to use with red meat and cheese dishes, like Welsh rabbit, add 100ml Worcestershire sauce.

Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar

1oog white caster sugar
100 ml vinegar (I used equal parts cider and cooking balsamic)
30g grated real dark chocolate (at least 70%)

Gently heat the sugar and vinegar in a small deep pan until all the sugar has dissolved, then allow to bubble gently for 5 minutes.

Take off the heat, whisk in the chocolate well and leave to cool. When cool, stir again quickly. Pour into a small clean jam jar to store until needed.

(I warm it in the microwave for a few seconds, with the lid off, until I have a liquid consistency).

I have made fresh pasta and filled it with cooked potatoe and fried brown onion (until it's really browned and caramelised) like a ravioli and drizzled this sauce over it, some grated parmesan and toasted pinenuts and my vego friends have LOVED this recipe. Also last weeks pizza recipe as I showed you.


Enjoy, Vida

Pizza Friday....

I decided to make pizza (from scratch) on Friday for dinner. I made the usual pizza base, flour, water, sugar, salt and yeast. The sauce, fry and onion, a clove of crushed garlic and add a can of tomatoes and reduce down to a thick sauce.
This is my secret little addition, so secret I had to blur the picture (NOT). This is just my bad picture taking skills, that's all.
I topped the pizza with cooked eggplant (aubergine) and goats cheese, buffalo mozarella, normal mozarella, pine nuts and some grated permasen cheese, it was supposed to have olives and capers but I forgot.
I forgot because I was busy arguing with Alana about her not wanting any of the above on her pizza but in the end she relented and loved it...
Here you can see my secret sauce swirled on at the end of the cooking and in readiness for serving. My sauce is just a balsamic vinegar reduction (boil sugar and vinegar until syrupy) and my secret is that I swirl dark chocolate (70%) in at the end... it is sweet, sour, almost bitter with the dark chocolate and really tasty. I have been known to put this on meat, pizza, filled pasta and stawberries and pavlova... but these are all future blogs... so for now I hope you like my Pizza Friday...