Cooking is my ultimate relax time, and I have missed it down here.  At home my favourite Sunday is to bribe Will with the promise of hot spinach and feta gozleme if we go to the Farmers market, buy whatever is in season and spend the rest of the day cooking it.  I’m especially happy if it is one of those cool, wet grass types of mornings and I get to carry JackJack so his little feet don’t get wet.  All the local fruit and veg, huge carrots and funny shaped tomatoes, honey, cheese, fresh flowers and local lamb and beef.  We drive home and I am already cooking in my head or trying to goggle how to cook Jerusalem artichokes.

My little kitchen is a slice of heaven, music turned up, usually a bottle of wine and I potter around for hours, almost every bowl or tray has a memory attached.  The little bowl my Grandma gave me when I was about 10, my favourite cookbooks with flour or chocolate smeared on the corners of pages, the mortar and pestle that my Mum bought me and weighs so much that I can barely hold it over the sink to wash.

I haven’t done much cooking in Antarctica we have a chef, Gav and he cooks up a storm every day so there is no need for me to indulge.  He really doesn’t mind if we go and cook anything but it feels a bit like cooking in a friend’s kitchen…. not quite the same.  Then on Saturday Gav went camping and I had the kitchen to myself!!!!!

A dream come true, 12 hungry men and a professional kitchen complete with bread proofer and steam ovens.  I turned the music up loud and inspected the pantry shelves for interesting finds… mushroom fluff any-one????  Brunch is at 1100 on a Saturday and must feature bacon, eggs and beans in some mix.  I already had a request for apple and walnut muffins and baked eggs so it seemed that a muffin day was called for.

Basic muffin mix

• 2cups SR Flour
• 1 egg
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/4 cup of cream

Then I made three different types,

Apple and walnut by adding 2cups of grated apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, 1 cup of crushed walnuts and 1/4 cup of brown sugar.

Blueberry and apple by adding 1 cup of grated apple, 2 cups of frozen blueberries, 1/4 cup of white sugar and vanilla essence

Rocket and parmesan by adding 2 cups of steamed and chopped rocket, 1 cup of parmesan and a pinch of salt.

I was pretty chuffed with the muffins and my kitchen mojo was now in full swing so I thought I might whip up crumpets as well.

I love crumpets they are like the ultimate soul food, all that melted butter and honey running out the holes and down your arms.  Plus I wanted to try the bread proofer.  My trusty food.com. recipe works every time 🙂

• 450 grams flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 7gms yeast
• 300mls warm milk
• 300mls warm water
• right at the last proof 1/2 tsp bicarb soda

Mix everything but the bicarb together and put the batter in the proofer… OMG the proofer was amazing, in 45 mins there was a huge bubbly mass of batter. I stirred in the bicarb and the next step was to let it sit for 30 mins, I didn’t dare to put it back in the proofer and just sat it on the bench.  I had to run to ARPANSA to check no-one had let of any nuclear bombs and I crossed my fingers and hoped the bench wouldn’t be covered when I got back.

As a side topic ARPANSA or the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency is a government department that no-one has ever heard off!! Every day at 9am myself or the fabulous Tony goes out to a special building (shipping container) and put a bit of paper that has been exposed to air for the last 24 hours into a cool machine that looks like it should be in a sci-fi movies. Then the next day the machine can tell if anyone in the world has let off a nuclear bomb, it is so sensitive that it can pick up single atoms of nuclear waste!!!!! That is pretty cool.

Anyways when I get back to the kitchen 15mins later there is crumpet batter everywhere, that proofer works really well. I think I might try to get one for my new kitchen when I get home.  The hotplate is warm and the custom copper cooking rings (curtsey of the plumbers) are greased. Its crumpet time!!!

A nice dollop of crumpet batter into each ring and leave until the bubbles on the top start to burst. Then carefully flip if you want or leave to cook through from the bottom if you want bubbles on top for the honey to drip into …

The final cooking for the brunch spread was baked eggs, simple. Line the base of a muffin tin with ham or bacon then I put cheese and chives in and top with an egg. Bake in the oven for about 10 mins till the egg is firm. Yummy !!!!

An appreciative audience settled at the bain marie for brunch and everything but the healthy choice rocket and parmesan muffins disappeared in minutes.

Very satisfactory…. now onto dinner!!!

How does Gav do this everyday!!