Smoked Chicken Salad For The Soul

Sitting in bed at the end of a ten hour day at work I'm thinking about my next couple of weeks to come. It looks like there won't be a day off for another three weeks, and holidays are well and truly over. I cant believe how quickly they have gone, and how quickly all my week days have filled up again. Its a little bit scary, but at the same time very exciting to see all of my little plans starting to take life. I have so much work in front of my, but some of it is so fun that its hard to call it work.......for example, in about a weeks time I am launching a range of my sugar cookies at little cup cakes. I'll keep you posted with the details of this, because I want you all to rush in and by them off the shelves so that it looks like I'm a huge huge success.

With all these things in front of me I've been thinking about the idea of working heard. I always knew that coming to Melbourne would be difficult at times (or even all the time.) I knew I would miss my family. I knew I would be broke at times. I knew I would have to work like crazy and I knew it would be a little bit lonely before I met all the wonderful friends I now have. I didn't understand what this meant though. I think I had an idealised idea of 'work.' I was so keen to get stuck into pulling together this little career that I idealised hard work into something of a movie montage. You know the sort where there is music playing in the background and lots of snap shots of wonderful things being achieved. Everything always comes together so quickly in these montages, making it look like hard work is just one eventful moment in time. This however doesn't seem to be the case. The more I work hard towards the things I want, the more I realise that there is no one moment where you are pulling everything together, or when everything makes sense. However its just a process of slowly applying the things that are important to your life everyday. When you look at it like this, its actually pretty simple. It can be harder to apply because it takes persistence, but this is kind of beautiful. 

So right now, I'm appreciating this simple slow beauty of just getting done all the things I need to get done, and enjoying them. When It gets too overwhelming though (I had a bit of a night of feeling like that recently) this is what I do:

Make a smoked Chicken and ricotta Salad.

You will need:

One smoked chicken breast

Half a bunch of asparagus 

1/4 cup of fresh green peas

1/4 lemon

salt and pepper

olive oil

1/4 cup of ricotta (from the deli) broken into little chunks

Heat a frypan with some olive oil

Break of the thick uneatable ends of the asparagus and add it to the pan. Cook for five minutes stirring from time to time. Add the fresh peas and continue to stir for two minutes.

Add the juice from the lemon.

Season

Cut the smoked chicken breast into 5 pieces and add to the pan. Cook for two minutes to heat the chicken through.

Add the chunks of ricotta and stir.

Take of the heat and pile it all onto your plate. 

Delicious!

Kale Chips

Today was my first day of work experience in a huge kitchen in the city. I spent the day making hundreds of panna cotta and thousands of pieces of biscotti. It was actually kind of lovely.....and not what I had expected. Previous work experience in the past has been pretty dull so it was nice to just hang out in a huge pastry kitchen and cook.......although there is something to be said about having to get up at 5am when you have a cold and then work in a freezing room all day (so the pastries don't melt.)

The chef looked at me while I was working today and said "why are you so thin? No offence but I don't trust a skinny chef! How can they know their food is good if they aren't tasting it?" It made me laugh.......and want to explain that its all very well and good to want to look like a Nona when you are in the kitchen.....but when it comes to dating in Melbourne, thats another story all together.

Life outside of work experience seems to be flowing quite nicely too. My housemate and I have been making so many healthy treats lately. Over the weekend we made a huge batch of granola.....which was so very addictive. We ended up just eating it out of the tub with a spoon. So yummy!!

(I went to the macaroon shop today as a treat after my first day of placement)

Anyway the other treats which is totally delicious and healthy that we have been getting stuck into lately is kale chips! They are so yummy and easy to make.

Kale Chips!!

You will need:
1 bunch of kale
salt
olive oil

What to do:

• Preheat oven to 180
• Cut the leaves of the kale away from the stalks
• Place kale leaves on a tray
• Sprinkle with some oil and salt
• Bake chips checking after 5 minutes.
• They should look dehydrated and be crispy to touch. This may take about 15 minutes.
• Eat them all!

Cherry tomato and caramelised onion tarts.

Everyone loves a tart. I'm not one, but I do love to eat one.

Cherry Tomato and caramelised onion tart

You will need:

• 5 onion
• olive oil
• 12 cherry tomatoes (yes cherry tomatoes....funny, it has my name in it. Have a good laugh, I've heard it all before.)
• thyme
• One egg
• two sheets of puff pastry.

What to do:

1. First you want to set about caramelising your onions. This takes a while but is incredibly easy. Just slice them all up nice and thin. Chuck them in a fry pan with a good lug of olive oil (sorry about all the 'chuck' and 'lug', I've been watching too much Jamie Oliver) and just cook on a low heat. Onions have a lot of natural sugar in them so they will get sweet when they are cooked down. Just keep the heat low, and stir them a bit, for about an hour. You don't want to brown them, you just want to cook them down nicely. Some people add sugar, so add a pinch if you want but make sure you season them.
2. Cut rectangles out of your puff pastry, and prick all over with a folk. Then take some extra pastry to make a border and sit it around the edges of your rectangle. Use a little bit of beaten up egg to stick it together if you like.
3. So thats your tart. Now you just need to fill it. Carefully spoon some of that oniony goodness into the tart. Top with cherry tomatoes. Season. Sprinkle with thyme, and place on an oiled baking tray (or lined with grease proof paper.)
4. Brush the pastry with beaten egg and bake at 180 for around half an hour or until golden and puffy.
5. Its that easy. It looks impressive. Everyones happy

Baked Ricotta

Over the last few days I have been casually watching my emotions. I have made an executive decision not to get involved in them at all...but just watch them from afar. To be honest they confuse me too much to delve into. I know things are quite a bit off as I have proceeded to change my hair colour, trash my room with clothes, ignore my homework and become exasperatingly caught up in my thought world.

All I can do though is wait. So that's what I am doing. This will get better...I am very sure of it. While it passes though, I just have to contain my emotions enough so that I don't start screaming "You broke my heart, you F*$#@ing Idiot" on the train to the general public on my way home.

There are good things about having your heart a little broken though. All your emotions can easily be channeled into creativity. I find that the times when I'm going through really hard things are often the most rewarding times as well. So I hired out some books from the library today and got super inspired by some amazing recipes.

I'm having a small food affair with ricotta cheese at the moment. For years I never paid any attention to this cheese with its funny texture and blandish taste. However, mix it with some spices, herbs and bake it, you will find it makes this amazing transition from plane old boring cheese to a super cheese. I'm getting a bit over-dramatic here, I understand, but you really must try it. It's also great mixed with honey and cinnamon and baked as well.

I won't give you a recipe for this one as it's so very, very simple. Just take a chunk of ricotta, season it, throw on some spices from your herb collection and drizzle some oil. Then put it in a moderate oven and cook for about 30 minutes.

If you want to make a sweet one, simply mix ricotta with honey and cinnamon, place in an oiled muffin tin or small ramekin and bake until it's firm on the outside.

Let me know what you think......

Garlic Asparagus

What drives us as humans? Its something I have been thinking about this week. My head and heart have been on a search wondering what is it I really want. At one stage in my life i believed it was love that drove us. We are continually on a search to be loved. But I'm not so sure now. I think its a little bit more than that. Maybe it can't be simplified into something so easy to understand, but it seems to me everyone dose what they do in attempt to be known and appreciated. One person knowing and loving us isn't enough though. We as humans continually strive for more. More acceptance, more exposure, more appreciation, and more justification of who we are and what we are about. Why is it we do that?

Some days when life feels a bit too complex I wonder what it would be like to move away from all this. To go live in the middle of nowhere. Not worry about a career, not have to put on my makeup everyday, not wear uncomfortable shoes, and not care about the rest of the world. To just simply exist for the sake of being alive. It sounds so perfect at times. I know however it would take me about one week to get board and head right back to the city, put on my stiletto boots and start planing my life as a food journalist. Always striving, always always striving. I don't think I'd have it any other way though.

This weekend my best friend has come to visit. Its really lovely to have someone who knows me so well here. We have doing a little Melbourne tour of bars, cafes, markets and patisseries. I get so blissful whenever I go to the Victoria markets. It also overwhelms me....so much food I haven't cooked yet. So many things I haven't tried. I make an effort to buy ingredients that I don't know what to do with to push myself a bit.

After a big day in the city I made us a little tapas platter and we had a rest. It was so yummy. I pan fried some asparagus to go with our stuffed figs and garlic sour dough. Its really easy and goes so well on a little tasting plate. Give it a go.

Garlic Asparagus

All you need is:
One bunch of asparagus
A know of butter
3 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

What to do:
Heat a fry pan and melt your butter.
Cut up your garlic in large chunks and add to the pan.
Through in the asparagus
Season
Fry for 5 minutes until it is cooked but still crisp.
Serve walm