This dish is one of my favourite late night indulgences (second to a whole Peking duck at BBQ King). In fact, I’ve never actually had the dish at an appropriate time of the day. The last occasion was at Golden Century around 1:45am and let’s just say, we did not leave the restaurant on a good note.

So… because we can no longer get our fix at GC, we tried making it at home and I think we did a pretty good job!

XO sauce is a funny thing – I’d like to think ancient Emperors used it on special occasions but I read somewhere that it was only developed in the 80s in Hong Kong. The sauce is made from a mix of dried seafood (usually scallop and shrimp), chilli, ham, garlic and canola oil. Don’t bother making it – you can get delicious jars of it at Asian grocers. Lee Kum Kee have a good one.

For this dish you will need a lot of things:

• 1kg live pippies
• 6 tbsp peanut oil
• 5 eschalots
• 6 cloves of garlic sliced thinly (whenever I eat this out it always has a strong garlic hit but you can use less if you wish)
• Small chunk of ginger, peeled and chopped finely
• 2 1/2 tbsp of XO Sauce
• 1 cup of chicken stock
• 1/2 cup of Shaoxing rice wine (I didn’t use this because I forgot to get it, I used white wine I had at home and it tasted fine. It’s up to you.)
• 1 tbsp of oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce (light is better but not mandatory)
• 1 tsp of brown sugar
• 3 long red or green chillies sliced
• 3 birds eye chillies sliced very finely (I like it hot, you can exclude this second chilli if you prefer it milder)
• Juice of 2 limes
• 3 green onions sliced
• Packet of Vermicelli Noodles
• 6 or so sprigs of fresh coriander leaves

Pippies in XO Sauce:

• Heat a wok over high heat, add 3/4 cup of water and bring to the boil. Add the pippies, cover and cook for 3-4 minutes, removing pippies as they open. Drain and reserve. Discard any pippies that haven’t opened after 5 or so minutes in the wok.
• Heat half of the peanut oil in a wok over a high heat, then sauté the eschalots, ginger, garlic and the birds eye chillies for 2 minutes or until softened.
• Add the XO sauce and the wine and simmer for 3 minutes.
• Add soy, oyster sauce, stock and brown sugar and simmer for another 2 minutes.
• Add pippies, chilli, lime and green onion, toss to combine.

Crispy Noodles:

• Cook the vermicelli noodles to the packet instructions.
• Once cooked, drain and space out on a tray to cool.
• Heat the rest of the peanut oil in a large fry pan and add the drained noodles.
• Cook until bottom of noodles is crispy and then turn over to do the other side.

Put the noodles on the base of a large serving dish and pour over the pippie mixture. Serve with fresh coriander.

If you didn’t already know… Christmas is this weekend (yay) and I’m so excited to stuff my face silly with ham, turkey, prawns, potatoes, salad and mangoes of course. But, there’s nothing better than the pudding at the end topped with loads of brandy butter, cream and ice cream.

I do, however think it’s a good idea to have some alternatives to the Christmas pudding for those who don’t like it as much as I do and I think I’ve found the perfect subsitute; Black Forest Cupcakes. Australian Cherries have created this gorgeous recipe and the best part of these little bite-sized treats is no one has to wait for the cake to be cut or set on fire (like my Uncle David always proudly does with Brandy and a match) – you can just pop one on your plate and do what you want.

Also a plus – they are ready in just under an hour. Great news when you compare it to the traditional Christmas pud, which takes almost six hours to cook and a year to mature! Who could be bothered?

Black Forest Cupcakes, courtesy of Australian Cherries

You will need:

• 125g butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup caster/raw sugar
• 1/2 cup plain yoghurt
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/3 cup dark cocoa, sifted
• 1/2 cup milk
• 200g pitted cherries, halved
• 125g butter
• 1 cup icing sugar mixture
• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 12 whole cherries with stem on

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180◦C and place 12 cupcake wrappers in a muffin tin.
2. Place butter and sugar in a bowl and beat together until creamy. Add eggs and beat well until incorporated.
3. Stir in yoghurt and then gently fold in flour, baking powder, cocoa, cherries and milk until combined.
4. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin tins and bake for 40 minutes or until cooked. Remove from the muffin tin and allow to cool.
5. Make the icing by combining the butter, sugar and vanilla paste. Add milk as required to achieve a rich, creamy, spreadable consistency.
6. Sift the icing sugar over each cupcake and top with a cherry.

I hope everyone has an amazing Christmas lunch and/or dinner and best wishes for the new year!

Potato week has become Potato fortnight – they go a long way! Regardless, the week has seen lots of yummy dishes for lunches and dinners, but you can eat potatoes at all times of the day. In fact, potatoes are an excellent source of vitamin C and B6, and are full of fibre and potassium – so they’re great for breakfast, a nice nutritional way to start the day. (not so nutritional in hash browns)

I used:

1. 2 Golden Delight potatoes – grated
2. 1/2 red onion – sliced finely
3. 1 sprig of Rosemary
4. 1 sprig of Thyme
5. 1 egg yolk
6. 1/4 cup of parmigiano – grated
7. Salt & pepper to taste

Mix it all together well and make hand-full sizes ready to go by the stove. I fried mine in vegetable oil, but you can use any oil with a high smoke temperature. Once the hash browns have developed a crisp outside pop them into a pre-cooked oven while you work on the others… and while you cook the bacon and eggs.

I used the hash brown as my toast underneath the bacon and eggs - it was amazing.

I’ve noticed these hasselback potatoes are quite the trend on recipe websites – but Andrew’s lovely mother has been cooking them for years!!! To protect Andrew’s food legacy, I’m going to use a different recipe but I wanted to make sure that everyone tastes these because they’re an incredible way to eat a potato!

I used the Golden Delight range of potatoes.

I peeled and halfed the potatoes and then par-boiled them for 10 minutes.

When I pulled them out, I made thin slices about 2/3 the way down the potato, sprinkled with garlic salt and a knob of butter and placed on the baking tray along with my rack of lamb. The potatoes took roughly another 25-35 minutes in a 200 degree oven to create a crisp base and crunchy tops.

They could've done with longer, but I was really hungry and my lamb was ready (poor timing on my behalf).