My creative space

A longer than anticipated visit to Bunnings on the weekend saw me come out with a stack of paint chips. I spray painted the back of them silver and they've been turned into bunting for our tree.

Beetroot wonton raviloi revisited

As requested, it's a little time consuming, but makes for a nice meal.

Start by roasting 200-250g beetroot wrapped in foil at 180C for ~50 mins.
At the 40 min mark, throw 2 cloves of garlic in the oven, still in their skin and a handful of hazelnuts. Roast these for 10 min.

Once done, process the beetroot, roasted garlic cloves, 200-205g ricotta, 30-40g Parmesan cheese, salt & pepper to a smooth paste.

Place a generous teaspoon of the beetroot mix onto a wonton and sandwich with another wonton wrapper, making sure to wet the edges so that they seal properly. I use a fork to press along the sides.

Cook 'ravioli' in rolling boiling water until they float. Or the wonton become translucent. It won't take long

Serve with a burnt butter and sage, and roasted hazelnuts

Hints and tips.
• You can use either yellow or white wrappers. I preferred the white, though they didn't seal as well as the yellow. Mr T preferred the yellow, he said they were richer.
• 4 per serve works pretty well, if you serve with a side of greens.
• They freeze beautifully, making for a super easy and speedy midweek meal

I might try steaming them next time. I'll update here if it works well.

Lemon passionfruit delicious

Oh yes. This will be made again. And again.
Two changes, I upped the flour to 1/3 cup and I cooked it in four ramekins for about 40 mins.
Light and fluffy on top, with a curd like consistency at the bottom. Delicious indeed.

Down time

Still loving the library. And making slow progress on my squares.

At it again

With summer only rearing it's head during the week, leaving wet weekends, Mr T was getting itchy with idleness. The boy can't sit still and so the laundry was demolished. Downstairs is littered with instructions, bolts and half built cabinets. While the trailer is close to another trip to the tip. We had a hard rubbish collection and had a satisfying purge of unwanted/unusable/unrecyclable goods and we're getting ever closer to appointing a drafter to help with the plans for out the back. After the wet winter we've had we're longing for a water tight roof!

The week in green

We have 1000 thread count sheets, but I much prefer the feel of basic Ikea cotton sheets. We got a new set, there's something about the green that reminds me of my childhood.

The basil is sitting happily on the kitchen windowsill getting the morning sun, while the homegrown garlic behind it is four weeks away from use.

And sadly I ate the last of our green tea kit kat supply. Sweetness from the white/green 'chocolate' and the slight bitterness of green tea, a perfect combination!

Refreshing

Returning from overseas, Mr T thought that he'd spend his allocated duty free alcohol allowance on pear infused vodka. Sounds like an awesome idea, taste is another matter altogether. We finally stumbled on something appetizing and refreshing for stinking hot days; like today.

If you're (un)lucky enough to have a bottle of pear vodka hanging around try this:

Lots of ice
1 shot/30mls pear vodka
1 shot/30mls vermouth
top with plenty of soda
garnish with lemon, lime & pear slices.

The weekend

Late for a recap, I know. My weekend was about movies (Wild Target, The Hurt Locker), cabin fever due to all the rain, Mr T ripping out our laundry, a hellish trip to Ikea and highly coloured food.

The beetroot ravioli was delicious, I totally cheated and used won ton wrappers for the pastry, next time I'll hunt out the white ones though, these were a touch glutinous. For dessert it was all about the green tea macaron filled with a simple cream cheese based icing; passionfruit or chocolate flavoured. Personally I thought the chocolate let the green tea flavour come through better, but Mr T preferred the over powering passionfruit.

This week in the garden

...I am lamenting another stolen olive tree. I bit the bullet and replaced the one pilfered previously, it had been in the ground for about a month before it was taken out on Saturday night. Again I'm left with a gaping hole in my garden.

That said, my snowpea plants are producing at a rapid rate and they're absolutely delicious.

Found

I've just had a very long weekend and am gradually easing back into a working week. With the weather on the improve I've been out running more and am a bit of a sucker for bringing things home. I could help myself with these pink seed pods.