Bought versus Homemade: Falafel Wrap

The café downstairs from my office sells super tasty falafel wraps. I love them! The falafel is spicy, the wrap is full of salad and tabouleh... I'm hungry just thinking about it.

But I'm really more of a "make it at home" kind of girl, so I decided to put together my own version and compare it to the café wrap.

Why yes, my chopping board IS bright green.

I used a shop bought wrap, baby spinach leaves, mayonnaise with minced garlic and herbs stirred through it, and the very awesome falafel recipe from Poor Girl Eats Well. I drop out the fresh coriander because it's too much effort, and add minced garlic because that's what I do with all savoury cooking.

Homemade falafel is not just tasty, it's nutritious (chickpeas are full of protein!) and it's also budget friendly. The recipe makes enough falafel for four lunches, and at $1 a can, that's four serves of falafel for $3 at the very most once you include the cost of the spices. I estimate the total cost of these falafel and spinach wraps at about $2 - $2.50 each. I want to make my own tortillas Sandra Reynolds style, which would a) reduce the cost quite a bit, b) make me feel like I'm the badass 1950s housewife I aspire to be.

Which is tastier? The honest answer is... both. They taste different, but they both taste great. So for me it comes down to not wanting to spend $7.50 on a café wrap when I can make one myself for $2.50 at the most, and the bragging rights of being able to casually say in the lunch room "yes, you really must make your own falafel if you want authentic flavour" in a snooty voice.

Winner: homemade!

Baking: Mini Banoffee Pie

Every year my office puts on a lunch to celebrate Harmony Day. The idea is that everyone brings in a dish and we celebrate cultural diversity by eating way too much delicious and varied food. There was a huge range of dishes on offer including green curry, lamb biriyani, fried rice, pies and sausage rolls, pumpkin and fetta salad, roast lamb, and butter chicken curry. I brought mini banoffee pies for dessert. If you haven't heard of banoffee pie before the name come from banana and toffee. It's my mum's specialty so I've eaten a lot of really tasty banoffee pie. This was my first time making it however.

I used this recipe but I decided to make mini versions as it would be easier to share. I used a mini muffin tin to form the base of the pies. It ended up being very messy and time consuming but the end result was exactly like a large banoffee pie base only miniature.  

I was very worried that they would be difficult to get out once they'd set so I put a strip of baking paper under each pie. It definitely helped a lot when it was time to get them out!

Here's the finished product. They tasted very similar to my mum's banoffee pie and they were just so cute. I'm quite proud of them! They seemed to go down well at the work lunch because there wasn't a single one left to take home (luckily I saved a couple!). 

This is a very simple recipe and it's very hard to get it wrong. If you've never had it before it's definitely worth a try!

Baking: Dutch Spice Cookies

Mmm... these cookies are super spicy! Not for the faint hearted.

Ingredients:
300g self raising flour
220g brown sugar
2 tbsp cocoa (preferably Dutch style cocoa)
2 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
220g butter, softened.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Sift together all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Rub in butter.
Using a teaspoonful of dough at a time, roll into small balls and then flatten with a fork, on baking paper on good quality baking trays.
Alternatively, if you have a cookie forcer, use this to create fun shapes.
Bake for about ten minutes, or until just starting to darken at the edges.

I often sandwich my dutch spice cookies with a little vanilla icing (icing sugar combined with a very small amount of butter, and a little milk). This helps to offset the spiciness of the cookies.

I've given these cookies as presents a few times and I've been told that they're great when warding off morning sickness - maybe it's all the ginger??

What's for dinner? Broccoli!

It's funny that when you're told you can't eat something as often as you would like, you realise how much you like it. This happened to me with broccoli. It used to be an easy side to have with fish or meat until my boyfriend came along and, like some school boy stereotype, declared that it was "gross" and he wasn't going to eat it.  I'm thankful that broccoli is pretty much the only vegetable that he won't eat, but I do miss it. (In the interest for fairness I should point out that my boyfriend will eat broccoli in Thai curries, in fact he introduced me to the concept of broccoli in curry and it's amazing!)

I cook for myself during the week and lately I've been making up for the lack of broccoli in my life. I never used to appreciate broccoli before it became a forbidden ingredient - it can be so much more than an over cooked side dish! I thought I'd share some of my favourite recipes with you.

Garlic, Chilli and Broccoli Pasta

I eavesdropped this recipes from a work colleague. It looks very plain and simple in the picture but it actually has a lot of flavour from the chilli, garlic and white wine that the broccoli is cooked in. To make it you fry two cloves of garlic in a little oil, add chilli flakes to taste (I use about a teaspoon). Cook the broccoli in the oil and slosh in about half a cup of white wine. Add cherry tomatoes or whatever else you fancy. When the broccoli is cooked, but still has some bite to it, toss through the cooked pasta until everything is nicely coated in the winey-garlicky juices. Serve with a generous sprinkling of Parmesan.  

Creamy Broccoli, Pea and Ham Pasta

This recipe comes from the Heath Foundation website. It's actually supposed to be a gnocchi dish, but I make it with pasta because I find it freezes a lot better than gnocchi. This is a nice recipe for days when you feel like eating something creamy minus the actual cream. It uses evapourated milk for the sauce. Make sure you add lots of pesto and pepper! 

Brown Sugar and Lime-Glazed Salmon - with Broccoli!

I saw this recipe on Taste.com recently and thought I'd give it a try as broccoli is my favourite side for steamed fish. I will definitely make this again because I love salmon, especially when coated in limey-sugary goodness. The broccoli and carrots cooked in garlicky-ginger soy sauce was also very good. A word of warming for those who don't like the idea of sugar and meat - this is a very sweet dish. I find it works with the soy sauce and the salts in the fish, but I can see that this wouldn't be for everyone! I have used regular broccoli in this recipe because I tend to buy a few bunches, cut it all up and then add it to my dishes throughout the week for a quick boost of green. One of my favourite uses for extra broccoli is baked eggs with broccoli and mushrooms from Poor Girl Eats Well. This recipe really should be on my list as I make it so often, but I have neglected to take a photo of it (probably because I'm always in a hurry to eat it :-P).