Frozen Yoghurt - 3 Ways

Last week i was in Hobart having a bit of a city holiday- eating and drinking and reclining. It seems I'm quite attracted to the Hobart lifestyle. Much like Melbourne, Hobart's food and coffee scene is inspired and trendy. Much UNlike Melbourne though, is the slower pace of the city and the amount of water around! Ahh... Island life!

In my eating adventures around the Tassie city, I came across a cool Frozen Yoghurt place called Vita: Nature+Culture which is owned by the Creators of Ethos Eat Drink and Provedore (all next door to each other.) To be honest, I'd never jumped on the FroYo bandwagon so this was my first experience. It was so yum and the flavours were so interesting, i was inspired to make my own when i got home.

Here are the recipes to Frozen Yoghurt 3 Ways. This is so easy to make, I'm kicking myself I hadn't thought of doing this before! In these recipes, i have used some ripe fruit that i had at home, but be creative and use what you've got!

Nectarine Frozen Yoghurt
2 Ripe Yellow Nectarines
2 Ripe White Nectarines
1 cup. Organic Natural Yoghurt

Cherry Frozen Yoghurt
150 g Fresh Cherries, Pitted
1 cup. Organic Natural Yoghurt

This Method applies to both of the above recipes.
In a food processor blitz the fruit (without the pips) until you reach a smooth pulpy consistency. Stir through the yoghurt completely, transfer to an airtight container and put it in the freezer to set. Stir every half an hour and repeat 4 or 5 times.

Honey (Hobart Wildflower) and Cinnamon Frozen Yoghurt
1 1/2 tbs. Honey, melted if it's raw
1 tsp. Cinnamon
1 cup. Organic Frozen Yoghurt

Stir the melted honey and cinnamon through the yoghurt, transfer to an airtight container and put it in the freezer to set. Stir every half an hour and repeat 4 or 5 times.

Enjoy.

Rosemary & Roasted Garlic Popcorn

 I love the thrill of making popcorn. Waiting with bated breath for that first.... POP! Like a ticking time bomb until a whole mine field goes off with tiny little yellow kernels exploding in to big white clouds.

I must say, I've become quite the expert in making popcorn. Cal and I are, you could say, slightly obsessed. Any excuse to make popcorn, we'll make it. The trend started when we were traveling in Berlin. It was the middle of winter and we were staying in a tiny little studio apartment with the bedroom as the only sitting room. Somehow we found ourselves tucked up in bed some afternoons munching down popcorn and watching movies on the laptop. Yeah i know, exciting tourists hey? It was in Berlin that we remembered how exciting and delicious popcorn was and since then we always have kernels in the house.

Today i thought i'd go a little gourmet and jazz up my everyday popcorn. Let me assure you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with plain old buttery salty popcorn, but it probably isn't all that interesting to blog about or take photos of. Hopefully i've inspired some ideas.

 The aim is to get as few unpopped kernels as possible. It takes skill.

How to cook popcorn
Ingredients:
1/3 cup popcorn kernels (will feed 2 hungry popcorn eaters)
Oil with  a high smoke point- rice bran, peanut or sunflower. I try to steer clear of canola and vegetable oils.

Put a heavy based saucepan on a medium to high heat and coat the bottom of the pan with oil. Drop in 3-4 kernels and wait. When the first one pops, add in all of your kernels and cover the pot. Keep the heat high, but make sure you shake the kernels around every few seconds or so to ensure they don't stick to the bottom or  burn. Your popcorn is ready when the popping slows and then stops.
How many are unpopped?

Rosemary & Roasted Garlic  Infused Butter
50g butter
2-3 rosemary sprigs
2 garlic cloves
rock salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 180-200 degrees. In a baking tray place 2 cloves of garlic, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast for about 30 minutes or until soft.

In a saucepan, melt the butter on a low heat and add in the rosemary sprigs and roasted garlic cloves (remove skin from garlic), salt and pepper to taste. stir occasionally and allow the flavours to infuse for 5 minutes or so.
Strain the butter through a sieve on to the popcorn and stir to coat. Don't be afraid to add a few garlic clumps to the popcorn. It's verrrry tasty!

Perfect beer snack, movie snack, day time snack or party snack to wow your friends.

Roasted Beetroot Dip with Chickpea Flour Flat Bread (Socca)

Such a beautiful sunny day today. I'm doing an assignment on weather at the moment where i have to compare the forecast with what actually happens with the weather. Don't think the forecast had this sunshine on the cards. It's lovely!
I've been getting a few things done this week while i've got some time off work. I got the worm farm up and running today finally.
During an afternoon walk in the park today in the sun i was pondering my next recipe-One that was not soup, salad or baked goods and one that could use up the back up of market veggies we have in the fridge.

Beetroot dip and Chickpea flour flat bread came in to mind. I started to potter away in the kitchen, but decided to check quantities for the flat bread when i came across this word 'Socca'. It turns out that chickpea flour flatbread or 'Socca' is actually a thing! I'd never heard of it before. I promptly did some research and from what i've read  the origin of Socca is disputed, but it seems it's a traditional dish from  Nice in France. ALSO it seems that this flat bread is traditionally baked in the oven, then grilled and chopped roughly. So instead of pan frying my flat bread as i usually would. I've tried this whole oven Socca thing!

Ingredients

Roasted Beetroot Dip 

4 beetroots

1 clove garlic

1/2 cup natural yoghurt

Juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup chopped dill

olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
Remove the stems from the beetroot and cut in to quarters. In a baking tray drizzle the beetroots and garlic with olive oil and sea salt and roast for about 40 minutes. Or until soft. You may have to remove the garlic before the beetroots are done as it cooks faster and might burn.
Once the beetroots are cooked, blitz them  in a food processor with the garlic and lemon juice. Once combined, stir through the yoghurt and chopped dill and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Chickpea Flour Flat Bread (Socca)
1 cup chickpea flour
1 cup water
1 1/2 tbs olive oil plus more for the pan
1/2 tsp salt

*i've kept the recipe fairly plain because i'm serving it with the beetroot dip which has quite an intense flavour, but in other circumstances i would add things like cumin seeds or powder, paprika, fresh herbs or garlic.*

Whisk all ingredients together and let the mixture stand for at least half an hour. The longer the better.
Coat a heavy based frying pan with olive oil and place in the oven to warm.
Once the oil and pan are warm, pour in the mixture and place under the grill until the top starts to brown. Depending on the size of your pan, you may want to cook the mixture in 2 batches so you get a thinner, crispier crepe. Mine was quite thick.  Cut in to pieces and serve with whatever you want!