eggs

60 Little Lemon Cheescakes

by Linda on May 18, 2013

My glut crop at the moment is lemons. It’s not quite the glut it was last year.  Last year at this time, this was what the bush lemon tree looked like, and we have four lemon trees of different varieties.

lemon tree

But at the end of the season last year, we pruned the tree fairly heavily – it was getting too tall and thorny to harvest effectively – and fed it with manure and mulch.  So this year we only have three trees bearing too many lemons.

These little lemon cheesecake tarts are a great party food – easy and cheap to make in bulk this time of year when lemons are in season, and they travel and keep well.   They cook so fast, you can make them in batches which means you don’t need industrial quantities of baking gear – just a couple of muffin trays and a couple of biscuit trays.  They are wonderful warm in a bowl with a little cream, but just as good cold eaten straight from the hand, which makes them perfect for parties and no washing up. I brought these out at the end of a Halloween celebration (southern hemisphere Halloween, early May) and they were a big hit.

The Recipe:

The Pastry

Turn the oven on to heat up.  You want a medium hot oven.

I use my Braun food processor to blend:

  • 4 cups of wholemeal plain flour
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • 250 grams (1 cup, or two sticks) butter

till it resembles breadcrumbs.  It takes literally seconds in the food processor.  If your food processor won’t do it, you can rub the butter in with your fingertips the old fashioned way.  Don’t overprocess it – little flakes of butter are fine.  The key to making good pastry is not overworking it.

Then add cool water, little bit by little, till the dough holds together in a ball.  It will take about a third of a cup. Again, don’t overwork it.

Roll the pastry out on a floured benchtop till it is ½cm or so thick, then cut rounds with a small bowl.

Lightly grease muffin tins with butter and line them with the pastry.  It will flute a little since the pastry is flat and the muffin tins cups, but that gives a nice shape to the finished tarts.  Prick the bottom of each with a fork.

Bake the pastry cases for around 10 minutes till they are firm.  Try to catch them just before they start colouring.  I don’t bother with beans or rice or anything to bake blind.  The pricking helps them not to rise, but if they do, it doesn’t matter. You should be able to tip the cases out and line them up on biscuit trays for filling.

The Filling:

While the cases are baking, you can make the filling. Using the trusty food processor again, blend together:

  • 1½ cups of lemon juice
  • 3 teaspoons of finely grated lemon zest
  • 1½ cups of raw sugar (not brown sugar this time, or it makes the filling a caramel colour).
  • 1½ teaspoons vanilla essence
  • 6 eggs
  • 250 grams (1 cup) Danish feta, or some other smooth, creamy, salty white cheese like goat’s cheese. (Australian feta doesn’t give you the same smooth texture.)

Baking:

Fill the pastry cases immediately before you put them back into the oven to bake.   If you fill too early, they soak in and the pastry is soggy. You will probably need to do it in a couple of batches, so halve the filling so you can fill the first and second batch of cases evenly. A jug makes filling easy, and you need a cloth to catch drips.  Don’t overfill – they do rise a little and if they overflow or drip, the filling sticks and burns.

Bake in a medium hot oven for 15 minutes or so, till the pastry is just starting to brown and the filling is nearly set.  Take them out of the oven and dust with icing sugar, using a sifter or sieve to get a nice fine even dusting.  Put back into the oven for a final five minutes.

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Zucchini, Carrot and Sunflower Seed Slice

by Linda on March 20, 2013

zucchini, carrot and sunflower seed slice

Today is just the second day in the last two months that it hasn’t rained, a gorgeous sky blue day but my garden is still too wet to plant.  The zucchinis have struggled in the wet, but the tromboncinos have done really well right through all this rain.  (And the Suyo Long cucumbers – very impressed with their mildew resistance).

So my glut crop is tromboncinos rather than zucchini, but this recipe works equally well with both.

Zucchini, Carrot and Sunflower Seed Slice

Turn the oven on to heat up.

Grate 1½ cups of carrot, 1½ cups of zucchini, and one onion.

Put them all in a heavy pan with a good swig of olive oil and fry, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes.  The idea is just to heat the vegetables through, soften them, and evaporate a bit of moisture.

While they are cooking, blend together:

  • ½ cup of  cottage cheese 
  • 3 eggs
  • a good handful of flat leaf parsley leaves
  • 1 big tablespoon of wholemeal plain flour
  • salt and pepper

Grease an ovenproof dish well.  I have a square, pyrex dish 20 cm square that is perfect for it.  You may like to line the base with greaseproof paper – it does come out without it but it makes a little less risk of sticking.

Mix the egg, cottage cheese and parsley mix with the vegetable mix.  Add 1/3 cup sunflower seeds and mix well. Tip into the oven dish and smooth out the top.  Sprinkle the top with grated cheese.

Bake in a hot oven for 15 minutes until golden on top.

Allow to cool for about 5 minutes, then tip it out and slice into little squares or fingers.

Serve on a platter to share, with chili jam or chutney or homemade tomato sauce, or cold in a lunch box or picnic basket.

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Spanish Tortilla

by Linda on November 14, 2012

A couple of others in my circle have posted recipes lately for Spanish Tortilla – Cityhippyfarmgirls’s Frugal Friday Tortilla de Patatas, and Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial’s Dinners at Home tortilla with beetroot, kale and potato.  It must be the moment in the year when eggs and potatoes both peak together to create the perfect seasonal food moment, which is exactly what you want for a recipe that meets the Tuesday Night Vego Challenge rules of fast, healthy, in season, from scratch.

I get eggs all year round, even from my small clutch of chooks of motley ages and breeds.  They have a relatively high protein diet compared to chooks fed mostly pellets.  They are moved regularly to a new garden bed where they have access to greens and grubs and snails and grasshoppers and any worms that are too slow. They get the household scraps including meat and fish bones. I try to give them a some mulch with grass and weed seeds, or  waterweeds with snails and insects and crustaceans, or cow pats with the odd dung beetle, to scratch through every week.  And they get a handful of mixed grain every day, scattered over the top to encourage them to scratch.  They also get a scattering of shell grit from the beach occasionally. With a nice balanced diet and enough exercise to stay healthy, they tend to keep laying for years if a predator doesn’t get them. I’ve had a chook once, of motley mixed breed, that lived to over 10 years old.  But the peak of egg season is in spring when even the geriatrics lay most days.

Up here in northern NSW, I have two spud seasons a year.  The spring ones are planted in early August, as soon as we are over the crest of winter, and are harvested October November. The autumn ones are planted in February, as soon as we are over the crest of summer, and harvested May.  But it’s only the spring one where potatoes meet eggs, and Spanish tortilla is the obvious conclusion.  This is my version;

The Recipe:

For 4 serves.

You need a heavy plan that can go under the grill.

Chop an onion in half, peel, and slice finely into half moons.

Finely slice some potato into thin half moons too.  You need about twice as much potato as onion.

Put a good slug of olive oil in a heavy frypan and gently sauté the potato and onion together till they are soft and just starting to colour.

While they are cooking, use a fork to mix four eggs, a good dessertspoon of cottage cheese, and a good pinch of salt and pepper.  You want to just break the egg yolks and mix – don’t overbeat.

Finely chop a good handful of parsley and stir in.

Stir the potatoes and onions, pour the egg mix over them, and turn the heat down.  Cook without stirring for a few minutes then put the whole pan under the grill to brown off the top. (If you don’t have a grill, you can put a lid on and cook very slowly till the eggs set, but I like the browned top).

Cut into quarters and serve. It’s perfect with the acid sweetness of cherry tomatoes, just dressed with a little parsley, olive oil, and salt, on the side.

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Yorkshire Puddings With Silverbeet and Feta Filling

October 16, 2012

I think Yorkshire puddings are the same as popovers in USA, or almost the same.  They are crisp on the outside, almost hollow on the inside little pastries made with a very simple mix of equal parts milk, eggs, and plain flour.  These were baked in regular sized muffin tins and took 25 minutes to [...]

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Egg Curry

October 9, 2012

The Spring egg glut situation is still going on.  The goose eggs have started hatching (three babies today and another egg or two to go)  and the ducks have slowed down laying.  But the chooks are still laying four or five eggs a day (even though some of them are well into chook middle age). [...]

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Caesar Salad With a Vego Twist

September 26, 2012

Love Cos lettuce this time of year.  We’ve had a little bit of rain and a cool start to spring and the greens are very happy.  With Cos and eggs in abundance, my thoughts for the  Tuesday Night Vego Challenge this week turned to Caesar salad. There’s a reason that Caesar is a classic salad.  Bitterness of [...]

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Egg Fu Yung

September 18, 2012

Which is a two part dish, consisting of an Asian style omelette in a mildly ginger laced vegetable stock sauce.  It’s surprisingly addictive! I used duck eggs for this one, just because we have them, but chook eggs work just as well. We are just a few days away now from the Spring equinox, one [...]

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Baked Ricotta with Lemon and Herbs

September 12, 2012

We’re still in the Spring egg glut situation, so for a little while yet, expect Tuesday Night Vego Challenge recipes to feature eggs.  And though we don’t have cows or goats, people who do will know that milk is also a Spring glut produce.  Both are good protein foods, and eggs are also a good source of lots [...]

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Pasta Primavera Carbonara

September 4, 2012

This is a bit of a  Tuesday Night Vego Challenge rules cheat.  Now the days have started really lengthening, even the geriatric chooks are laying so handmade pasta with real eggs was in my mind. And then I was looking for a cake tin deep in the back of the shelf and came across a fluted flan tin [...]

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