You’re missing out!!!!

There’s a neat-o post over at the new Voodoo Kitchen on cupcakes.

Don’t forget to update your links and feeds to the new Voodoo Kitchen!!!!

Voodoo Kitchen Has Moved

This is the final post for the old Voodoo Kitchen.  The new version of this blog can be found here…

All the old entries have been moved over and eventually this blog will be wound up and deleted.  Please take the time to adjust your RSS feeds and links.

Any questions, complaints or other communications can be direction to blog@voodookitchen.com.au

Kind regards,

NinaZer0

It never rains but it pours…

*sigh*

Neither TasteSpotting nor FoodGawker have accepted any of the articles I’ve posted within the last two weeks.  Either my dodgy internet link is being particularly malicious or my photography skilz are less leet than usual.  Guess I’ll have to try harder, but this is so damn frustrating!!

And in news just in, my novelty cheeseburger cake for a friends 4th of July party has not turned out well.  It started OK but went downhill rapidly.  You know when you have one of those days when NOTHING will go as you want it??  Yeah.  A lot of that about.  The cakes didn’t bake as evenly as I wanted.  The fondant was more trouble than ever (same brand – can’t understand what the problem is), I could’t get the colouring right.  Every layer (bun, burger patty, American cheese) was more trouble than the one before and I started having to do major revisions.  By the time I got to the lettuce layer, I had fondant that was too malleable (it’s cold here – how does it get TOO SOFT!) and the colour (previously not strong enough) was way too strong.

At this point I had a melt-down/panic-attack, emailed my friend in tears (I’m 36 years old this August – I shouldn’t be crying over a damn cake) and then got back to work trying to make lettuce leaves out of unworkable fondant.  Only, in the short time it had taken me to shuck gloves and type an email, the cat had got up on the counter and nibbled at the icing.  The final straw.

Then my dear friend called me (having read the panicky email) and listened to me sobbing and snivelling away and very kindly said that these things did sometimes happen and I should take the rest of the afternoon off, have a drink, and we would forget the cake.  He has been very sweet about it but I feel DREADFUL for letting him down and very guilty about f*cking up 3 kilo’s of cake and a kilo of fondant.  The awful mess is sitting on my kitchen bench and taunting me.

Not a very good day so far at all.  I’d go blow off steam by decimating more lawn for the vege patch but it’s just started to rain.

I think I might find “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” amongst the packed-up DVD’s and watch that – it tends to cheer me up when all else has failed.

*doublesigh*

It never rains but it pours.

Tastespotting is Back!!!

Yay!  Tastespotting (food porn par excellence!!!) has made a comeback!

*goes mad with the ra-ra gear*

I don’t know how or why, but it’s back (and no longer a part of the not.cot stable) and it’s beautiful.  There’s been a little redesign, but essentially it’s as it was and that makes me happy.

Other food-porn has sprung up in its absence, but this just gives me more to love.

Creamy Citrus Cheesecake

I am such a sucker for cheesecake.  It is one of my favourite foods and I haven’t met one that I didn’t like.

Anyhow, I had a real craving for cheesecake the other day and rather than buying one I decided to bite the bullet, pull out my sinfully creamy cheesecake recipe and whip up some decadence.

My recipe (which I adapted from Stephanie Alexander) can be found here - it gives you a very creamy plain unbaked cheesecake.  I had a lemon that I needed to use up so I decided this would be lemon.  But after adding the zest and juice of one lemon, it still wasn’t enough.  I had some clemantines so I zested and juiced one of those as well.  Delicious.

The trick with the recipe is to whip the cream until it’s very stiff before mixing with the rest of the creams.  Because I had so much juice, I was obliged to add two teaspoons of powdered gelatine (with hot water) to the mix to get it to set.

The result…

Dong Po Pork – The Reckoning

One of the most popular things on this blog is my recipe for Dong Po Pork. It’s basic, easy and delicious.  Could it be possible to make it even better?

Well…..

Yes.

The original recipe I used was very basic and used only a few ingredients.  The new improved version is even more delicious.  To the original seasonings of light and dark soy, rice wine, garlic, ginger, rock sugar and shallots, I added dried mandarin peel, whole star anise, and some whole dried shiitake mushrooms (those are the darker brown items on the right of the photo).  Oh, and I cooked it in my $8 Chinese clay pot that I bought at the local St Vincent de Paul the other week.

Such a minor change, but it really brought the dish onto a new level!  It was just as succulent and delicious (and impossible to cut while warm – most of the fat had rendered out and the skin could be cut with a spoon) but had a level of subtle fragrance that was hard to pin down.  I served it with a little black vinegar to dip (perfect to cut the fat), the usual steamed rice, and some pickled veggies I grabbed on my latest trip into the Tai Kee market in Chinatown.  Perfect!

Long live the Pig!!!!!

 

New House – Can’t sleep….walls too noisy

Well, life has been busy here at the Parramatta Eels Wonder House.  Preparations continue to paint the horrible American Cheese walls and I have been out in the yard tearing the sad vegetable garden completely apart.  Compost bins have been purchased and half-filled already and I’ve just finished digging out a dead tree from the centre of the vege patch.

I’ve bought a heap of seed via the Diggers Club (Oh, their catalogues are garden porn, I tell you!!) and have lashed out on more than a few heritage varieties of beans, shallots, and so forth.  So now I’m busy getting the soil prepped and seed trays ready to get seedling started and so get a head start on Spring.  Things like chives, shallots and so forth can be planted now as we’re in such a sheltered spot.  I’ve also purchased a long-cropping type of broccoli that  can be picked from the main stem and will keep producing more heads for a couple of months.  Should be interesting – I LOVE broccoli.

And, in the spare room (lilac and corpse blue) I’m nearly ready to paint, having removed a huge mirror (held on with double-sided tape and three small nails, would you believe), puttyed and sanded the holes etc.  I’ve also been making a desk for myself (as my old one was just too huge and has been re-purposed as the entertainment unit.  Which is a little empty as the big (and donated) TV tried to kill me and has been thrown out.  My little old Sharp 14″ that I bought in 1991 has been put back in pride of place and continues to provide sterling service.

On the food front, I scored a Chinese clay pot for $8 at Richmond St Vincent de Paul and have made Dong Po pork.  Photo’s will be posted shortly.

I also have a batch of biltong drying at the moment – again, photo’s and a recipe will be posted shortly as well.

I can honestly say that I haven’t been busier in ages.  Nor have I been happier.  I even caught The Husband whistling the other day – something he hasn’t done in a long while.  Granted, it was horrible and off key and he appeared to be murdering a Judas Priest song (I could’t be wrong – it might have been Slade – also a likely suspect), but that’s pretty much par for the course.

My next task will be to contrive some sort of a BBQ so that we can have a small housewarming party and a thankyou for all the people who’ve helped us move in.

More to follow shortly.

 

Tastespotting Part 2

Ladies and gennulmun, there is a new contender for the Tastespotting crown!  With only 75 posts (and counting) it has been live for only a little time. 

I give you (via SlashFood) ….  Food Gawker

They acknowledge that they are a homage to Tastespotting and list a small number of rules-of-usage on their About page.  Registration is required, of course, and it’s all a bit basic at the moment (RSS feeds??) but it’s early days yet.

I would like to wish them the best of luck.  Clearly they have huge calzone’s. 

Tastespotting is No More

Alas, the legal rats out in the metaverse have added another notch to their weasely belts – Tastespotting has been folded up and done away with.

Apparently there were legal issues with usage of photographs on the site – what that might be, I couldn’t say.  I was a contributor (caveat: I contributed only my own stuff) and know how powerful a blog it was.  The occasional photo sent my blog count up hugely.  One particular post (Naan bread) made me the third fastest-growing WordPress Blog for a short time - an achievement I am still very proud of despite its ephemeral nature.

Why anyone would deny usage of a photo that you’ve already posted to a public site is anyone’s guess.  Especially when it returned such stellar hits and boosted pageviews by (for me) a factor of about 10.  Presumably (and this is a wild guess here), someone got greedy and wanted money.  It tends to boil down to the sordid gimmee’s in the end, alas.

And, with Tastespotting gone, where do I go now for my daily fix of food porn??  I can only call upon someone with large cahones (and an even larger legal team) to please – pretty please!!! – put together another such aggregator.

We’re Back! Huzzah!!!

After mammoth problems with Virgin Broadband, we’re now onto a new (and temporary until we find something with huge downloads for not much money) ISP. 

AND seeing as the kitchen is now sorted and fully stocked (with new appliances too, moreover!) things are pretty much back to normal.  Of course, I’m typing this from a folding table and sitting on my old weight-bench, but at least everything works.  I also have the VOIP phone back so my business is no longer languishing in the dark.  All of this outage has lost me sales which I’m not at all happy about.

I’m avoiding a trip to Bunnings at the moment – I’ve got to go get some stuff to fabricate a desk for myself.  I’m recycling Ikea racking as two plinths and need to get a top for it.  I also need to go get paint-stripper, paint, varnish and some other doo-dads as well. 

Don’t quite know why I’m procrastinating so much – I had a great day yesterday and managed to track down, purchase and install the replacement left wing mirror on my poor old car so at least I can get it re-registered.  I suspect that it’s a combination of my still-dodgy toe and the huge amount of grey and drizzly weather.  Normally, I don’t have a problem with dark days, but I suspect that not being properly eased into the new place has really put me off.  You know – can’t snuggle into the couch with books, can’t sit on the internet talking to people, can’t sit out the back in the garden with the cat, can’t any of the usual stuff etc etc etc.

Ah well.  I might procrastinate some more by finding something delicious to cook and then upload some photos.  That’s always soothing!