Chocolate Banana Muffins

Otherwise known as Chocana Muffins. Recipe inspired by Nigella Lawson.

3 over-ripe bananas

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1/2 cup caster sugar

1.5 cup of self raising flour

3 tablespoons of cocoa powder

Mash bananas then add oil, eggs and sugar. Mix until smooth. Sift in flour and cocoa and stir for 2 minutes with a wooden spoon . Bake at 180 degrees fan forced for 15-20 minutes.

Date and Walnut Scones

I feel quite blessed for the friends I have at work. Besides being incredibly generous with hard work, knowledge and patience; we also love to eat and and we've shared many morning teas together.

These are the scones I made for G's Bon Voyage morning tea. We also had sausage rolls, party pies, cheese scones, ginger biscuits, biscotti, mudcake and pizza. A lovely tribute to our Queen Domestic Goddess who is departing on her big European Adventure.

Butter Chicken with Paratha

I used a bottled sauce for the butter chicken and made the paratha from this recipe. Easy peasy!

Paratha

1.5 cup plain flour

20g butter

100ml milk

1/4 tsp salt

Melt the butter than add flour and salt. Add most of the milk to form a dough and knead for 3 minutes. Rest for 30 to 120 minutes under cling film. Cut the dough into quarters and roll each quarter to 2-3 mm thickness with a rolling pin. Fry in a non-stick frypan with peanut oil for 2-3 miinutes each side. Serve with curry

Easy Banana Cake

This is a much loved recipe from my dear friend D. Not only is it a good simple recipe, it makes really good use of over-ripe bananas that are frankly too expensive to waste.

3 oz sugar

3 oz unsalted butter

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

2-3 mashed bananas

4 oz self-raising flour

Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in egg, milk and essence. Add 2-3 mashed bananas then sift and fold in flour. Bake at 170 degrees C for 30-35 minutes in a small bread tin. Serves 4.

Roasted Rack of Lamb with Herb Couscous and Peas

There's nothing more Australian than cooking roast lamb for Sunday night dinner. This is a quick and easy meal for two. One lamb rack is the perfect size for 2 serves. As I am feeling lazy tonight, I decided to serve packet cous cous (Tipiak's French Style) and frozen peas.

First thing is to prepare a herb rub with 1/2 tbsp chopped parsley and 1/2 tsp chopped rosemary and olive oil. Add one finely chopped clove of garlic and some lemon zest. Rub your rack of lamb with olive oil and sear on a hot frypan to brown all surfaces. Spoon on the herb-oil mixture on both sides of the rack. I use an oven-safe Scanpan frying pan so I just put the whole thing into an oven at 200 degrees C for 25 minutes. Remove the meat from the pan and rest on a plate with aluminium foil covering it for 10 minutes before you carve. Prepare cous cous by following the packaging. If you are making cous cous from scratch mix equal quantities of dry cous cous with boiling chicken stock. You can also add a tsp of olive oil and dried herbs or even curry powder.

Melt in the Mouth Osso Buco

"There's something wrong with my meat. It falls apart when I touch it" - W.

This is slow cooked osso buco served with a side of Milanese risotto and gremolata. Osso buco is the cross section of a veal shank and the bone marrow is edible. The "internet" suggested polenta or saffron risotto was essential as the side to follow tradition. I decided white dinner rolls were more essential to mop up the yummy sauce and bone marrow! This is a great recipe and I think the secret ingredient (anchovies) really adds a lot to the sauce. Although it takes 4 hours in the oven, it's well worth it for the "melt in the mouth" meat on a cold Sunday night.

I was rather pleased with this meal as I have finally made an acceptable risotto! And this time it didn't take 40 minutes. I attribute my success to proper equipment; specifically, I used a wide shallow saute pan instead of a saucepan. I also put the lid on to let it steam in between additions of stock.

Another "first" of this meal is the use of home grown herbs! Yep, didn't have to buy a single herb. I even stole a lemon from the neighbour's invading tree for the gremolata. :)

Ultimate Brownie Recipe

Best brownie recipe to date. Too good not to share...

Melt 250 g of unsalted butter in a saucepan and add 400 g of sugar and 50 g of cocoa powder. Cool mixture. Beat in 5 extra large free range eggs, one at a time. Sift 150 g of plain flour mixed with 1/2 tsp of baking powder. Fold into wet mixture. Chop up 175 g of good quality dark chocolate and 75 g walnuts. Add to mix. Grease and line a square cake tin (about 25cm x 25cm). Bake at 160 C fan forced oven for 25 minutes. If you have a ridiculous Smeg oven like I do, drop the temp to 140 C or you wont get the rich gooey texture. Yields 24 squares.

Warning: Very Rich!!!!!!