When to much cheese just ins't enough

I had always made my cheesy bechemal fairly randomly and although it always tasted good, it was always a bit of a hassle because of the constant stirring and anxiety about getting it right. Tim must have witnessed this and finally gave me a recipe for Bechemal sauce. Although he gave me the recipe several YEARS ago, it has taken me until last week to actually try it, however, I'm completely sold! It's quick, easy, reliable, makes a huge quantity and you can freeze it. Yep, that right, make a massive amount, freeze it in plastic containers and anytime you want a hit of cheesy goodness, it's yours for the defrosting! Let me let you in on the secret (and let me write the recipe somewhere less likely to be lost than my 2006 diary!).

Bechemal
~120g butter
~120g plain flour
1 litre milk
150 g grated tasty cheese
Salt
Pepper
An onion - optional

Make a roux - in a large heavy based saucepan melt the butter, add the flour and cook it on medium heat, stirring it frequently, until it resembles wet sand.

While you are poking your roux, put the litre of milk in a saucepan with plenty of pepper (and the onion if you want. Personally, I'm not a fan of the onion, I think it gives the whole thing an odd taste) let it come to the boil.

Pour the milk, through a strainer to catch the peppercorns/onion, into the roux and, whisking it enthusiastically, turn up the heat until it boils.

Season with plenty of salt and more pepper (white pepper, finely ground, at this point is preferred so you don't have black specks of pepper in the final product). I like to add a dash of nice vinegar at this point.

If you have lumps use your stick blender to eradicate them, otherwise just add the cheese.

Taste it - you may need to add more salt. I ended up adding a lot more cheese - probably because I had cheated and was attempting to use pre-grated cheese which actually has starches in it to stop it glomping together and therefore has less flavour. On the other hand, maybe it's just because I like a very cheesy sauce rather than a traditional bechemal.

Pour it onto your dinner and/or into plastic take-away containers to put in your freezer for a wet Sunday.

Donna Hay - Chickpea patties

Ok, so a donna hay magazine miraculously landed on my desk recently (I don't buy it!) and it's full of table fashion, and food styling and recipes for sweet things and thing that we already make (presented fancily of course). Sorry to sound so disparaging, but it really feels to be almost content-free, although I don't read magazines much these days, so perhaps I'm just re-sensitized to the style-over-substance thing. Anyhow The Wine Dept saw a little recipe on the 'cheats and nibbles' page and thought it would be fun to make with the little guy, and after they had made them and we had enjoyed them I thought I might post the recipe here, so you can get the recipe without looking at any trendy white-on-white table layouts. I have, of course, incorporated our small changes.

Chickpea Patties

Put half a 400g tin of chickpeas in the bowl of a blender or food processor (the little bowl on our Braun stick blender was big enough) with:
1 egg
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/3 cup flat leaf parsley
a little bit of chilli
salt and pepper

Process that together, then add the rest of the chickpeas and give a few more pulses so the rest of the chickpeas are chopped up but not quite as mushy as the rest. Shape the mixture into patties (Our 2-year-old reckons small patties are best, I concur!) and fry the patties in a little olive oil. 'Donna' suggests serving the patties with shop-bought tzatziki and flatbread but we just mixed some plain greek yoghurt with salt and lemon juice and it was delicious.



The patties were literally childs-play to make and they were tasty. As they are, they would be a good source of vegetarian protein and would travel well for picnics and/or lunchboxes, if you could manage to have any left over (double the recipe if you have more than two people or if you want lunch the next day!).

I personally would also like to experiment with the addition of either a handful of cooked brown rice or some chicken mince (obviously *not* vegetarian) but they really are just fine as they are!

Love at first sight!

While we wait for our guest blogger to get his act together (!) I'd like to introduce you to my new love interest: Mealopedia. I only found it today so I haven't really explored it fully, but anything that is going to let me choose what type of food I want to eat (options like 'pasta' 'budget' 'vergetarian' 'meat' 'kid friendly') then give me a weekly meal planner that I can change around and then make a shopping list for me to print has to be good! Right? It's also got a recipe finder that lets you choose an ingedient and it will spit out a bunch of recipe options. I'm off to look at the recipes and check out the articles - no idea yet if the recipes are any good...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After looking at the site a bit more I still really like it. It's not too fancy, more 'Good Taste' than 'Gourmet Traveller' and it really only offers main courses, no entrees or desserts so although it's excellent for weekly family meal plans it doesn't take into account that you might want something a bit fancier occasionally. The other truly excellent feature in the recipes is that although the default measurement is metric it will convert to UK Imperial or US Imperial at the touch of a button. I suspect that it is a relatively new site, from the slow conversation in the forums and the fact that no one has corrected their fairly dodgy article on making bread - hopefully the site will, like a good wine, mature nicely.

Fresh for Spring

Our friend Sean from Cafe Sopra got a really good review today, (to add to his growing list of reviews), and in celebration I'd like to introduce a new guest blogger. Cafe Sopra is becoming known for hearty portions of super-fresh, exceptional quality ingredients so I've asked Thetimbo2000 to inspire us this week with something Sopra-esque and appropriate for the lovely spring weather we've been having. TheTimbo2000 has been working in kitchens all of his adult life until recently when left the heat of the kitchen to work for one of Australia's premier meat wholesaler. Once we've got a recipe I might even talk the Wine Department out of his blogging hiatus to give us a few wine match suggestions...

(I'm also playing around with some new looks for spring - sorry if things look a bit ratty while I settle on something!)