Day 6 - Baked eggs with chorizo, and Lumberjack cake

Now we don't have the luxury of taking photos of our dinner anymore, so I'm afraid my Monday Menu posts have faded away. We count ourselves lucky if we get a moment to eat our dinner at a slower pace before having to clean up one of the girls sitting next to us in their high chairs.

But the other day when the girls finally went to sleep I had a moment to start cooking something for dinner (it was just going to be scrambled eggs) and I quickly grabbed the Blue Ducks cookbook off the shelf.



An Instagram friend Charlotte a publicist at Pan MacMillan has sent us a few generous boxes of books. Cooking, gardening and children's books for the girls. I haven't had the time to cook many things but I have poured over the pages, tucking away recipes to try.

The baked eggs are really a breakfast dish, but I love eggs at any time of day. We had some free-range eggs from a friend so I was set.

So easy, quickly fry a chopped onion and some garlic cloves in a pan. Add 250g of sliced chorizo sausage (I used a can of Manolete chorizo which locals can pick up at Bottega Rotolo), and fry until the onion is translucent. Then add a sliced red capsicum (I had some pre-roasted in a jar), a sliced chilli (I omitted this!), a 400g can of well rinsed and drained cannellini beans, a 400g can of diced tomatoes (or whole baby romas like me), a tablespoon of paprika, stir and simmer for 10 minutes. The mixture should be thick but still saucy, season and add a handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley. At this stage I paused to wait until dinner, but you can press on if you are hungry.


Preheat the oven to 200 deg C. Our fry pan is oven proof, so I just cracked 8 eggs in dents I made amongst the tomato/bean mix. Alternatively you could spoon the mix into the middle of individual terracotta bowls and crack an egg either side of the beans.

Place the eggs in the oven and bake for 6-8 minutes, depending on how well cooked you like your eggs (we like them runny). I served it with Pigeonwhole sourdough, and we all enjoyed it immensely.



I even got a moment to bake on the weekend, quickly making a Lumberjack cake. I used the Woman's Weekly recipe, but made it in a 20cm square tin and doubled the topping mix.


What's been on the menu at your place recently?

Learning to slow down...

I couldn't go through another weekend of frantic jobs, just to ensure I ticked them all off my list. We tried to be better at slowing down. Friday night was a good start, a bottle of French red with a lovely French Brie and an Italian hard cheese pressed inside grapes. We lingered at our table chatting and enjoying the cheeses.

The weather was a little kinder this weekend- warmer, some sun, although the occasional shower did catch us unawares. Rob did have an important project- building a compost bin- our compost has been going to waste, and as we don't have rubbish collected making sure we cut down on our waste is paramount. So while he started sawing and measuring, I baked a chocolate cake- after watching Annabel Langbein's tv show, the Free Range Cook, we couldn't resist the book. For once I am trying to be good and cook all the things we'd like to try from a new book- this resolution may be sorely tested soon, Rob has just ordered 15 news books from Amazon (only 13 are cookbooks!)

I made sure we took the time to enjoy a cup of tea, and a few walks around the block to watch the dogs wrestle in the mud.

The hut is quite peaceful- although this weekend we had several types of bird visitors, our resident pair of geese (they have adopted us), flocks of native ducks who appeared to be fighting over the dam, cheeky currawongs that liked to tease Claudia and the occasional robin. I'd love to get clever enough to recognise all their calls and songs. But at the moment I just listen and wonder what they're trying to say.

We did go shopping on Saturday, we've been living without a mirror in our bathroom since we moved in. As someone who is extremely short sighted and has to put in contact lenses every day this has been a bit of a trial- the little hand mirror on the bench top wasn't going to cut it for much longer. So we headed into town to visit our favourite second hand furniture shop, after looking around we couldn't really find the right one, but we had a chat to the owner, and knowing our fondness for retro he ran out the back and came back with a simple blackwood framed mirror. Back home it was actually a bit big for our bathroom, but suited the guest bathroom better so we swapped the round mirror to our room and hung the new mirror up. It was a little marked from water or the sun, but as I was oiling the kitchen joinery I just ran the cloth over the frame and it improved it markedly.

We made good use of our kitchen on Saturday night and cooked a special meal, just for us. I steamed some mussels open, then topped them with a salsa of lemon rind and flesh, roasted and chopped up almonds, garlic and parsley. Then we blitzed them under our grill. I was quite proud of these, sorry I didn't get a picture, they were begging to be eaten. Rob tea smoked a piece of Salmon in the Weber, it just had a marinade of whiskey, sugar and salt. We ate it with a potato bread from Sweet Envy and a bottle of bubbles. The salmon was so tender, meltingly so, like it was confit. A slice of chocolate cake with a wicked ganache icing and a cup of chocolate tea for dessert. Another excellent meal together. It's still such a novelty for us both to be able to cook in the kitchen together. We love it.

Sunday was spent finishing the compost bin, I was even allowed to use the power tools to help! Then we put a second coat of tung oil on the kitchen cabinets, and then while we were at it we decided to oil all our retro furniture, rejuvenating them beautifully.

We're getting better at living at the hut now, maybe we'll be able to relax once the long awaited window seat is finished, which I'm hoping is soon!

Circumstances beyond my control

Rob and I had promised each other not to buy any more books until we're in the hut and have a book shelf for them! But circumstances beyond my control led to the acquisition of two new books.

I'm not sure I've told you this before. The (opps I mean one of the) highlight of our week is library night. We scan the library website looking for new books, or if they don't happen to have it, we get them to buy it. Then we wait patiently whilst it sits on our holds list until one day the magic email arrives. Your hold is ready for pick up. I'm not sure why it's so delicious to know you are the first person to read a new library book. So you can imagine my delight when Monty's latest book turned up for me. Just as an aside, I do have a slight crush on Monty, I mean what's not to like, he cooks, gardens, loves dogs, writes well, is pleasing to the eye, and can get away with wearing braces! I took it home the night before my brother's wedding. So I only had a quick flick through the lovely thick pages of this book of simple home food, with recipes that make use of garden produce. I looked forward to having more time to savour it. We arranged for a puppy babysitter during the wedding and went off confident it would all be ok. On our return, our poor puppy babysitter looked a bit sheepish. Claudia had snuck inside and munched on a book. Apparently she was only on her own for a few minutes! You guessed it, Claudy had munched most of the front cover off. There was no hiding the fact with the obvious tooth marks. So we had to buy a new copy and fess up at our next library visit (well actually to tell the truth we waited an extra week). Picking a friendly librarian she laughed it off, joking at least it wasn't a dog training book! So we've added Monty's book to our collection, albeit a slightly personalised copy!

Then a lovely friend gave me this book for my birthday. I can't describe it better than the SBS website.

"From the Margaret Fulton of France comes the ultimate guide to French cooking. Concentrating on simple quality ingredients and divided into regional specialties, La Cuisine is a beautiful and functional companion for any kitchen. Francoise Bernard set out to make classic French dishes accessible for everyone, paring away unnecessary flourishes to get down to a recipe’s true essence. For forty years she published and taught the principle that good food can be simple, easy, and economical. Among her rules: No recipe must have more than four steps, ingredients must be easily available, and each recipe must not have more than one tricky technique."

It's amazing, all my favourites are in there, and a zillion more I should try. So spoilt. Can't wait to cook from them both in the hut kitchen.