Kath & Kate

Steak and Banana Casserole

Posted on June 2, 2015 by kathandkate

This is one fruity casserole!

Mum recoiled in disgust when I told her that I would be making this. She has childhood memories of Nana’s banana curry, which it’s safe to say was not her favourite meal. When I served this up for the family at dinner no one was particularly excited. The first taste was, however, met with favourable “mmmm’s” and “oh, this is actually quite good!” After the last bite everyone was asking if there was any more. Give it a go people!

Ingredients

750g chuck or blade bone steak
Plain flour
2 onions
2 cooking apples
2 bananas
3 tablespoons of brown sugar (no I’m not joking)
470g tin tomato soup
Small tin pineapple pieces
Pepper and salt

(do these ingredients ring a bell?? )

Do this:

1. Cut steak into pieces. Roll in flour which has pepper and salt added.
Place into casserole dish.

2.Slice onions, apples and bananas. Add to steak and sprinkle with brown sugar, pepper and salt.
Add pineapple and half of the juice.

3. Pour tomato soup over.

Ah yes our old friend tomato soup makes a re-appearance. When Mum was a child the cupboards were well stocked with Campbell’s. Ready to add to any dish requiring a little ‘tomatoey’ tang.

4. Cover the dish and cook in a moderate oven until the meat is tender (this took about 2 hours).
Serve with rice.

Verdict:
Yes, it was on the sweet side, not as sweet as expected though. I’m sure you could leave the brown sugar out. The pineapple gave it a tang and the meat was beautiful and tender. And the bananas? You could hardly tell they were there! If we added some ‘Keen’s’ curry powder to this it would probably taste a lot like the ‘Sweet and Tangy Curry’. Let me know if you give it a go!

Posted in Main Course, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Raspberry Coconut Slice

Posted on May 26, 2015 by kathandkate

I will admit to you now that I approach the humble slice with an element of trepidation. I have little patience for messing about with layers and taking things in and out of the oven, and I find it frustrating that I can perfect 2 of the layers but if 1 falls short the whole slice suffers.

Nana’s books are full to the brim of slice recipes. So I decided I should tackle my first slice sooner rather than later. Spoiler alert: I chose well, this disappeared in minutes and it was super easy! I was lucky to have the help of my two beautiful younger cousins for this one. They filled the kitchen with infectious giggles, which is an important ingredient in baking of any kind.

For the pastry:

– 1 cup self-raising flour
– 2 tablespoons sugar
– 30g butter
– 2 egg yolks
– 1 1/2 tablespoons water

For the topping:
– 2 2/3 cups coconut
– 3/4 cup sugar
– 4 egg whites
– 1 tablespoon water
– 1/3 cup plain flour
– 4 tablespoons raspberry jam

I have this really nifty toy for separating eggs. It’s a little fish. You just crack the egg, squeeze the fish a little, put his lips over the yolk, let go and he sucks the yolk up! You can do this with empty soft drink bottles too.

Step 1:

For the pastry, rub butter into sifted flour, mix in sugar, combine lightly beaten egg yolks and water, gradually mix into flour mixture to form a soft dough. Turn pastry out onto floured board; knead lightly to form a smooth ball of dough.

Our dough was a little too hard. My aunt suggested putting the dough into the microwave for a few seconds until it was a little softer and this really helped.

Step 2:

Press pastry over base of greased 28cm x 18cm (11in x 7in) lamington tin (we lined ours with baking paper too). We had trouble extending our pastry this far, perhaps it wasn’t quite soft enough, so we used a slightly smaller tin. Prick base well with a fork, bake in moderate oven (I put mine at 180 degrees) for 12 minutes; cool.

Spread jam over cooled pastry. We were generous with the jam!

Step 3:

Combine in medium saucepan coconut, sugar, water and 1 egg white. Stir over medium heat until mixture becomes moist and lumpy. Don’t let the coconut brown.

Remove from heat, cool. Sift flour into cooled coconut mixture. Beat remaining egg whites until firm peaks form; fold into coconut mixture, combining well.

Step 4:

Using hands, sprinkle (or gloop) coconut mixture over top of jam.

Bake in moderate oven for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown (ours took about 25 minutes). Allow to cool before cutting the slice.

This slice looked really beautiful and was gone in minutes.

Enjoy!

Kath & Kate x

Posted in Cakes and Slices | Tagged Family, Food, Slice | 4 Comments

Curry Night

Posted on May 20, 2015 by kathandkate

There is little that Simon and I love more than a curry night. Simon’s grandmother passed down the most delicious Sri Lankan curry recipes to his mum, Karen, who in turn has passed them down to Simon. We spent Saturday cooking up a delicious storm for a group of friends who came around for dinner on Saturday night. It seemed only appropriate that we include one of Nana’s ‘curry’ recipes. Yes, it’s called a curry…but only as far as it has curry powder in it. Mum has memories of these curries as a teen: ‘To make a curry you simply added some ‘Keen’s’.

Tangy Sweet Curry

You will need:

1kg chuck steak
2 celery sticks
2 large carrots
1 tspn salt
1 large onion
1 tbspn golden syrup
2 tbspn plain flour
1 tbspn curry powder
1 cooking apple
345g can tomato soup
1 cup water
1 small tin diced pineapple
juice of half a lemon
1 tbspn brown sugar

Trim the steak and cut into bite-sized pieces (we cut ours a little too big). Place in saucepan with diced celery, along with peeled and diced onion, carrot and apple.

Blend flour, curry powder, sugar, salt, golden syrup and lemon juice. Add the mixture to the meat and vegetables. Add water and mix well. Cover and simmer gently for one hour.

Add soup and pineapple. Yes, do this. Now. Then simmer gently until meat is tender. This took about 1 and a half hours, but the time will reduce if your meat is cut into smaller pieces. Serve with rice and dig in!

I was as sceptical as the next about how this would taste, and although I might be outing myself as a little less than classy, it was pretty tasty. Obviously our understanding of what a curry is has changed dramatically since the time of this recipe, however there was something rather comforting about this dish. A friend who came to dinner commented that it tasted exactly like the casseroles her grandmother used to make.

It did take all my will power not to add some more spices, maybe a little cumin for example, but I stuck to the recipe (apart from the addition of a little extra curry powder). Leftovers of this dish would make a delicious pie filling! Let me know if you try it!

Kath & Kate x

Posted in Main Course | 8 Comments

Mother’s Day Rum Balls

Posted on May 15, 2015 by kathandkate

Mother’s Day seemed like the perfect time to try out the first recipe, which could really be no other than Nana’s rum balls. Nana lived 3 and a half hours away from us. We would visit every holiday and long weekend, and without fail there would always be rum balls ready and waiting in the fridge. They were often accompanied by some other delicious slice, but always rum balls. If we were greedy and finished them all we would get to help her make another batch.

Nana needed no full recipe for these because she’d made them so often, so all I have is the ingredients jotted down. The steps are very straight forward though.

Ingredients:

– 1 packet of Marie biscuits (250g)
– 2 tablespoons of cocoa
– 1 tin of condensed milk (400g)
– Rum
– Approximately 1 cup of fine desiccated coconut (for rolling)

1. Crush the biscuits.

For this I put the Marie biscuits into a clean plastic bag, placed this in a bowl, and crushed with a pestle. You could also crush them in their packet or use a rolling pin. (This was incredibly therapeutic!) You need to crush these quite fine, however I think I was a little too keen! Nana’s notes say that you could also adds nuts – I guess you could chop them and add them in here.

2. Mix in the cocoa.

3. Pour in the condensed milk.

4. Add the rum!

The amount was not specified and it will depend on your taste. You could even leave it out. I started hesitantly, putting in a tiny capful. My tasters demanded more. I guess I ended up putting in about 2 tablespoons. But go cautiously! You don’t want the mixture to be to moist or ‘rummy’.

5. Combine the ingredients.

I used a spoon to do the first bit of this, but used my hands at the end. The mixture was a little moist, so we added a little flour and desiccated coconut until we got the consistency that we wanted – quite firm and not too sticky.

6. Roll the mixture into balls.

We rolled our mixture into balls about the size of a walnut, or rather I did…Mum is enthusiastic and when placed on the tray her rum balls dwarfed mine.

7. Cover the balls in the coconut.

We covered plates with the coconut and once our balls were formed, lightly rolled them around on the coconut.

8. Place them on a tray and put them in the fridge.

They will need about an hour in the fridge to go hard, although some may not make it that far!

These were taken to a Mother’s Day afternoon tea and were declared delicious!

Posted in Cakes and Slices | 14 Comments