LIKE WARM APPLE PIE

If Jason Biggs were made to choose just one Apple pie to spend the night with I'm sure he'd chose this one. This recipe was handed down to me by a family member and I tweaked it a bit and it ended up coming out lovely and amazing - not that the original wasn't, this one I just think is better.

I was going to save this one for National Apple Pie Appreciation Day (for those of you playing at home that's May 12 in Australia and May 13 in the States) but I just couldn't wait that long! I'd serve this one with some cool custard or vanilla ice cream - just make sure the only body part that comes into contact with it is your tongue.

LIKE WARM APPLE PIE
Serves 8

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of plain flour
• 250g unsalted butter
• 6 tsp cold water
• 2 egg yolks
• 6 tbsp white sugar
• 3 large apples - I used Royal Gala
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 cup of brown sugar and extra for sprinkling

Chuck your plain flour in a bowl and chunk up the butter into squares. Add it to the bowl of flour. Add the white sugar in.

Put the egg yolks in a bowl, add the water into the egg yolk and stir through well, then add to the flour mix. Stir through quickly with a wooden spoon and then get your hands in there and get them dirty. This is your luvverly dough.

Flour the surface and roll the dough out. Get a normal size dinner plate and use it as a template to cut the top and the base. You should have 2 circles of dough - one's the top, one's the bottom.

Grease the pie dish. Press one circle of the dough into the base of the dish. Add a layer of baking paper and add the uncooked rice and blind bake for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, remove paper and rice and bake again.

Peel and chunk up your apples. While your base is baking, in a frying pan add the butter and melt until brown. Add your apples in and then one cup of brown sugar. Coat the apples and cook them until they're soft and lovely looking. Set it aside for 30 minutes or so to cool slightly.

Take your baked base, add your warm apple filling. Get the top layer of dough - pat it over the pie and seal the edge - crimp them in. Any leftover dough can be used to decorate the pie on top. Sprinkle remaining brown sugar on the top.

Put into the oven on 180 and bake for a further 30 minutes.

SERVE IT UP!

NAKED MEXICAN

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How good is Mexican food? Seriously. I can't get enough of that combination of avocado, lime, red onion, chicken and cheese. It's pretty amazing really. So inspired by the idea of eating the BEST burrito ever but without the burrito wrap bit, I decided to make the most awesome mexican salad ever.

Seriously, I doubt you could fit more salad veggies in this if you tried. This is what you'd call a layered salad - it all goes together in lovely little nacho-like layers but then by the time you take a mouthful of it I reckon you'll be tearing into it like a crazy donkey.

Naked Burrito Salad
Serves 6 - or make one big one for a party
Ingredients:

• 1/2 iceberg lettuce, shredded
• 1/2 red cabbage, shredded
• 2 large tomatoes 
• 1 can of red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 can of corn kernels, drained and rinsed
• 1 red capsicum sliced thinly 
• 1 small red chilli, de-seeded and sliced thinly
• 1 medium green chilli, de-sedded and sliced thinly
• 1/2 red onion, finely  diced
• 1 slightly firm avocado cubed
• 500g chicken breast, cubed
• Burrito packet seasoning (cheat!) or use a bit of smoked paprika, some salt, some pepper and mexican seasoning and do it yourself.
• 2 strips of bacon (optional)
• 1 lime cut into eighths
• 1 small handful of mexican jack or asadero cheese
• 1 small bunch of corriander

For the dressing:

• A good drizzle of olive oil
• 1 big tbsp of honey
• 1 tsp of chopped chilli
• A squeeze of lime juice
• Pulp from the centre of the tomatoes used in the salad
• Salt

The Method

In a frying pan, heat oil and add chicken and burrito packet seasoning (or the one you made yourself) and cook until browned - in fact if you get a bit of black on your chicken even better, crispy is good. In the same frying pan cook your bacon until its nice and crispy. Put on a paper towel to drain. Once it's cooled down break up the bacon into tiny flecks to put through your salad later.

Now comes 30 minutes of chopping, shredding and peeling. Shred your lettuce, red cabbage and put in a bowl. Slice the capsicum and chilli, wash and set aside. Cut your tomatoes into small squares and discard the center pulpy bits of the tomato. Drain corn and beans and set aside. Peel and cube your avocado, squeeze a bit of lime juice on it so it doesn't brown before it gets its chance to join your salad.

In a bowl add all the ingredients of your dressing including tomato pulp and stir vigorously.

In individual bowls (or one big bowl) start layering your salad. Add iceberg lettuce first, then red cabbage on top, then kidney beans, then corn, then tomatoes, then capsicum, then avocado. In the centre create a small indent and add a handful of shredded cheese and some of the real bacon bits. Add a generous scoop of chicken and then drizzle your dressing over the layers. Top with a bit of coriander and a lime wedge or two.

A word of warning, it'll look pretty now but to get the dressing through you'll have to mix it up when you're eating it. I hope you enjoy a bit of mexico in your bowl - I sure did.

GET STUFFED EGGPLANTS: A twecipe from @iamromy

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So I've been asking people to submit their recipes online via Twitter (@tweateryfood) or via email and I have my very first recipe share.

This one comes from a friend and former work colleague Romy. Let's be honest, she's a mixed-culture glamazon and one of her passions in life is cooking well and making delicious healthy things (within reason). She also loves to eat but you'd never know that by looking at her.

Eggplants (or aubergines as my overseas friends call them) used to scare me as a kid. Big, giant glossy black things. They look a bit like an alien leave behind and once I made the mistake of biting into one. It's not delicious. However cook them in a bit of oil or stuff them with a lovely filling and it's the direct opposite - amazeballs.


Romy has been kind enough to share her stuffed eggplant recipe - it's got all the things I find delicious in meals - meat, tomatoes, garlic and cheese - plus a whole bunch of other things. Here's the recipe.

Photo from Romy's original get stuffed eggplants

Ingredients

• 3 eggplants, halved
• 1/2 red capsicum, chopped
• 1 brown onion, diced
• 500 g veal mince (you could use lamb or beef too)
• 1 handful of fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 cup plain tomato/pasta sauce/crushed tomatoes/passata
• 2 pinches of cinnamon
• 1 pinch paprika
• 1 pinch dried oregano
• 1/4 cup uncooked couscous
• 1/2 cup cubed feta
• 1/2 cup mozzarella or tasty cheese

The Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180 and line a baking tray or dish and bake the halved eggplants for 10-15 minutes. Take your cooked eggplants out and then scoop out their insides. Don't turn off the oven.

Chop up the scooped eggplant filling, put a frying pan on the heat, add a touch of oil and brown all the meat and vegies in a pan. Remove the pan from the heat and empty the contents in a bowl.

In the same bowl add your tomato sauce or passata, raw couscous, feta, herbs and spices and mix together well. Spoon the mixture into your eggplant shells and return to the oven and bake for a further 15-20 minutes. Take out of the oven again, add mozzarella or tasty cheese and return to the oven and bake until all melty and brown - about 10 minutes.


Enjoy. Tweet

FART SOUP

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Sounds delicious doesn't it? The real truth behind this soup is that it's a detox soup - I was told by a friend of a soup she had made that ahem did wonders for her insides - but the real beauty of this soup (besides the ability it has to make you ride the porcelain) is that it uses a whole bunch of green vegetables you might have lying around in the fridge - and some you might not.

I'm not going to lie, a good hearty bowl of this soup will make you fart like a senior at bingo night but it's super healthy for you, great for the skin and apparently really really good for your intestines and the nasties that can lurk there.

A word of warning, you'll need to make this soup the day before you intend on eating it.

Ingredients
Makes one gigantic bowl

• 2 large heads broccoli chopped
• 2 large leeks chopped
• 3 shallots chopped
• 1 large onion diced
• 1.5 litres low salt vegetable stock
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbsp olive oil 
•  A dash of light cream, some chopped shallots to serve

The method here will be a quick one to make up for the hour or so you'll need to simmer this detoxy soup. Heat a large pot and put oil and chopped garlic in. Add chopped onions and Stir. Add broccoli, leeks, shallots and stir fry for 10 minutes.

Add vegetable stock bring to boil. Simmer for 30 minutes until everything is softened - now I've used low-salt vegetable stock so that I can season it to my own tasting, but if you've used the stock before and you're comfortable with the salt level then go for it. You'll know the soup is ready to go when the vegetables look well and truly bathed.

Put the soup in a bowl, cover and refrigerate till cold - unless you make this in the morning that's most likely going to be an overnight job. When the soup is cold add to a blender and process till smooth - unless you've got an amazing blender the soup won't be completely smooth. You can sieve out the lumpy bits of broccoli that remain but that's just a waste of vegetables in my mind. Still it's up to you.

To serve, warm (or if you're adventurous have it cold, it's just as good) season with salt and pepper and if you're feeling fancy (or trying to impress) add a swizzle of light cream and some chopped shallots for that 'I'm trying to emulate a restaurant quality soup but I'm actually an amateur' kind of look.

A LOAD OF BOLOGNAISE

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Urgh I new this day would come. The day when I craved a bowl of pasta but I was nil by mouth when it came to delicious carbs. So I thought as long as I could make a bolognaise sauce that was extra chunky and satisfying then I could eat that as a meal instead of treating it as just a topping.

The truth about bolognaise is that the real deal is something completely different to what we're served up in stacks of places we eat out. Bolognaise is traditionally more of a ragù style sauce - basically a bunch of vegies chopped up, fried, then shredded meat is added, tomatoes and it's simmered for a really long time. The thing you should know is I'm an impatient person and I didn't have the time to simmer for hours, nor the patience to shred meat. So I made a version of bolognaise that's a bit like the old school sauce and a bit like the mainstream bastardised sauce. Here goes.

The Ingredients
Serves 6 (or 3 really hungry people)

• 500g Pork and veal mince (delicious sauce isn't made with beef)
• 2 stalks of celery, finely diced
• 1 large brown onion, finely diced
• 2 carrots, finely diced
• 5 tomatoes - slightly over ripe
• 1 x can of peeled roma tomatoes
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic crushed
• 1 tbsp of crushed chillis
• 1 cup of white wine (I used Sauv Blanc but use any white except for Chardonnay)
• 1/2 cup of skim milk
• Parmesan to serve

 Chop up all your veggies nice and finely, heat a large fry pan with the olive oil, place the garlic and chilli and stir until the pan has heated nicely (but don't let the garlic go brown!) When it's ready, pop all your veggies in and fry until golden and shiny. Put them in a bowl and set aside.

Divide your mince into batches (three is plenty) and fry one portion at a time. Let the mince go brown. After you've cooked up all three batches put the mince back in the pan. Grab your white wine and add slowly into the pan - this deglazes the pan - which is just a fancy word for getting all the caramlised bits of meat and vegetable that have stuck to the bottom of the pan off. Stir until the bits that were stuck on the pan have lifted off. Then add the milk and simmer until the meat has absorbed most of the liquid.

Here's a funny one - you'd probably not expect milk to be in this sauce - but it adds a level of creaminess to the sauce that can't be beaten and it makes the meat extra tender.

Add the cooked veggies back in the pan, give it a good stir then add your quartered fresh tomatoes and can of roma tomatoes. Crush up the roma tomatoes so the juice runs through the meat. Season with the pinch of sugar and salt and stir, then simmer the pan. Cook for a further 30-40 minutes on low heat, stirring every 10 minutes or so to make sure nothing is sticking and everyone is still friends.

Serve straight up in bowls with a generous handful of parmesan cheese on top while the sauce is nice and hot. You could definitely serve this with a light pasta (spaghetti / fettucine) but I really like it as a chunky almost italian style chilli. If you really crave bread you can't go wrong with serving it with a few slices of toasted sourdough so you can dunk up all that lovely sauce.

NUTS FOR BANANAS

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This isn't so much a recipe as it was an idea I thought might work - and it seems it did the trick. Now I know I'm not the first person in the world to think that covering a piece of fruit in chocolate and letting it set is a marvellous idea, but I decided to take it one step further.

I'll tell you straight - this recipe basically involves getting a banana, cutting it in half, dipping it in chocolate, then crushed nuts and then popping it into the freezer. Really not reinventing the wheel. But the end result is a delicious ice-cream alternative - the bananas are perfect on a summer day and they're slightly better for you than an ice-cream - so why not?

Ingredients
Serves 4

• 2 x slightly over ripe large bananas cut in half
• 1 cup crushed peanuts
• 150g dark chocolate (I used Green & Black's)
• 4 x tbsp light thickened cream
• 2 x tbsp water
• 4 x skewers

The Method
Peel bananas and cut them in half. Remove any rough or stringy bits. Pop a skewer in half way or until you can hold up the banana like a lollipop.

In a bowl, place chopped up dark chocolate or dark chocolate bits and the thickened cream. Put in the microwave and heat on high for 2 minutes. Take the bowl out of the microwave carefully, add water and stir vigorously. This is a cheats chocolate ganache - and tastes just as good.

Get a plate and spread crushsed peanuts over it, dip bananas or spoon over the chocolate mix ensuring it's coated well, then roll them on the peanut plate until you get a nice covering of nuts. Put on a prepared tray and then place in the freezer in an airtight container. Freeze for at least 2 hours.

When ready to eat it, take it out of the freezer wait a minute or two (if you can) for the banana to get to room temperature and go for it.

SAN CHOY WOW

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2012 for me so far is all about the health kick - after a bit of a health scare late last year, I'm trying to eat better, reduce the amount of crap things I put in my body and generally just be a better human (it's not just limited to cooking!)

So as a part of that I'm reducing the amount of carbs I eat - being an Italian boy carbs are in my genetics, I used to live and breathe pasta and c'mon who doesn't love an awesome pizza slice now and then? But it's time to kick them for a bit - so here's my take on a classic Asian dish, except I've replaced the delicious white spidery vermicelli noodles that's normally in them with sliced cucumber. Here's the recipe as originally tweeted.

Ingredients

• 1 x Iceberg lettuce
• 1 x 500g lean pork and veal mince
• 2 x tbsp olive oil
• 2 x stalks of celery diced
• 1 x carrot diced
• 1 x telegraph cucumber
• 1 x spanish (red) onion diced
• 1 x can of water chestnuts, drained and chopped finely
• 1 x tspn chopped chilli paste
• 2 x cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 x limes - 1 for juice, 1 for garnish
• 2 x light soy sauce
• 1/2 cup of chopped peanuts

The Method

Grab your iceberg lettuce, turn it upside down and press the stalk down firmly - then rip it out. If all goes well you should be left with just a bunch of lettuce leafs which will be your cups. You can also peel the lettuce leaves off individually. Wash them to remove dirt and bugs and set aside.

While the lettuce cups are drying, take your telegraph cucumber, peel it and julienne it thinly. I use a mandolin with a 3.5 mm julienne attachment to it - which makes the cucumber take on the texture and look of spaghetti almost. You can achieve the same with a bit of a patience and a sharp knife :)

The thinly sliced cucumber is a replacement for what is traditionally filled with vermicelli noodles.

It's pretty simple from here. Chop up all your veggies nice and finely. Put your olive oil in a heated fry pan, add the chilli paste. Stir fry the onion, celery and carrot together until golden. Put in a bowl and set aside. In the same pan stir fry your mince in batches until it browns. Add the vegetables back, add the water chestnuts and take off the heat.

In a bowl mix together minced garlic, soy sauce, juice of half a lime and then pop it back onto your mince and vegetable mix. (PS. For those who aren't a fan of sour and salt, add a teaspoon of raw sugar to the sauce) Stir fry until it's looking good - by the way, if you don't have time to make your own sauce, buy a San Choy Bow sauce from the shops, it's just as good - except I'm trying to do as much home made stuff as possible.

Now comes the assembly. Grab a washed lettuce leaf, add a generous pile of your cucumber 'noodles', a nice spoonful of your mince mixture, a squeeze of fresh lime and a sprinkle of the chopped peanuts. And there you have it - a fresh, carb free alternative to San Choy Bow. You're welcome.


Tweet me on @tweateryfood or email with how your recipe turned out - or leave a comment below.

Welcome to Tweatery

I spend quite a bit of time on Twitter (follow me I'm @adsticle) but when I'm not on Twitter I'm generally found cooking. I kinda love it. I'm not an expert - by no means, but I do like to experiment. And sometimes those experiments fail. But when they don't fail I'll post them here on Tweatery - where what you eat starts with a tweet. 

I often post pictures of what I've cooked or what I've eaten on Twitter - and more often than not I get a few replies asking for the recipe. Whilst I'd gladly email each of you individually, I thought it'd be easier to share those recipes with the world. If you like them, let me know, if you don't or you've done something different also please let me know. And of course I'd love to have your recipes too! Tweet me @tweateryfood or email thetweatery@gmail.com - happy cooking (and tweeting) :)