Low Fat Instant Hot Chocolate Mix (with Variations)

In many overseas countries i've noticed there are a huge range of instant hot chocolate mixes available in a multitude of flavours. By instant I mean all you need to add is water and you have a cream hot-chocolatey beverage. In Australia though all our hot chocolate mixes require to be mixed with hot milk (except for Jarrah brand hot chocolate which I personally detest as it has artificial sweetener in it that tastes horrible to me).

This isn't so great if you are camping or doing fieldwork outdoors like I do everyday. So i've come up with these recipes to make my own. Homemade is even better that bought anyway as it is easy to adjust the ingredients to your taste or to make them lower fat or lower calorie as necessary.

For all these recipes simply stir together the ingredients and store in an airtight container for future use. To make hot chocolate then just add 3 tbs of hot chocolate mix per cup with boil water and stir.

Basic Skinny Hot Chocolate Mix

1 part hot chocolate powder

5 parts skim milk powder

Hot Coco Mix

1 part coco powder

1 part sugar

10 parts skim milk power

This recipe can be adjusted to have less sugar or to have an artificial sweetener instead if that is what you'd prefer.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Mix

1 cup Hot Coco Mix or Basic Skinny Hot Chocolate Mix Powder (see recipes above)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon all spice

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

pinch of black pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground chilli powder

Amount of spices can be adjusted to suit your taste.

Homemade Mexican Refried Beans

I have previously bought refried beans in a can from the supermarket for my Mexican dishes. Last night though I wanted to have soft tacos and didn't have any so thought i'd try making my own. It is a bit of fluke because i didn't look at any recipes, but this turned out absolutely delicious!

Makes approximately 1 cup of bean paste.

Ingredients

1 can red kidney beans drained

1/2 can chopped tomatoes

sugar

salt

tabasco sauce

sprinkle of nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

1. In a saucepan put kidney beans and tomatoes and heat until tomato juice starts to boil. Reduce heat to a simmer.

2. Using a potato masher mash mixture while it cooks. The texture to aim for is a mostly smooth paste with a few lumps. Mix as you do this. The whole mixture should thicken due to the beans becoming paste as well as water from the tomatoes boiling off.

3. Season with tabasco, spices and salt and pepper. Note if you accidentally add too much tabasco then add more sugar to counteract it. Mix though

4. Once the mixture nice and thick and fully combined remove from the heat and serve warm.

Great as a side/filling in a variety of Mexican dishes.

Roast Vegetable, Garlic and Fetta Bread

This Italian style bread is delicious hot from the oven with butter or cold dipped in olive oil and dukkah.

Serves: 6

Cooking Time: 30 mins

Preparation Time: 2.5 hours (most of it resting)

Calories per serve: 274

Ingredients:

1 small sweet potato

1 potato

50g fetta cheese

dried rosemary

2 garlic cloves

3 tbs olive oil

3 cups strong white bread flour

1 egg beaten

1 cup luke warm water

2 teaspoons active instant dried yeast

1 tbs salt

Extra flour for dusting

Olive oil spray

Method:

1. In a large mixing bowl sieve flour. Sir in salt.

2. Make a well in the flour. Pour in water and add yeast. Leave for 10 minutes until bubbles form.

3. Add olive oil. Using a spoon gradually mix liquid into flour until it is a single ball of dough.

4. Put dough on a floured surface a kneed. It if is too sticky add extra flour. Kneed for 10-20 minutes to develop the elastic gluten.

5. Spray some olive oil into the original mixing bowl. Put dough to rest in it and cover with a damp tea towel. Put in warm place for 1 hour to rise (perhaps near oven that will soon be on to cook the vegetables).

6. While dough is rising peal and chop into small cubes the vegetables. Put in a baking tray with a spay of olive oil. Cook in a 200 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until soft and golden. Turn occasionally to ensure vegetables are cooked evenly. Once cooked take out of oven and put on a plate to cool. Set oven temperature to 190 degrees to preheat once you are near to the end of the 1 hr dough rising time.

7. After an hour the dough should have doubled in size. Punch down to release the air. Put back on a floured surface. Now incorporate into the dough the roasted vegetables (including the garlic), the rosemary and fetta. Shape into a loaf and put on a floured pizza stone (preferable) or a baking tray. Brush with a beaten egg and sprinkle on some more rosemary. Put in 190 degree oven for 30 mins or until golden.

8. mmmmmm

Chilli Jam

I'm quite addicted to this stuff at the moment. It is great on meat or spinach pie or even on toast. Costs a fortune to buy at markets and supermarkets don't usually stock it so I thought i'd work out how to make it myself.

Makes 2 jars

Ingredients

1 red capsicum

6 sweet peppers

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

Splash balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup white vinagar

3/4 packet jam setter

3/4 cup water

1/4 cup sweet chilli or hot chilli

Method

1. De-seed and chop capsicum and peppers finely. Put in everything except jam setter into a saucepan. Cook on low for 30 mins.

2. Slowly add jam setter. Bring to the boil stirring then remove from heat.

3. Let stand for 10 mins then bottle and put in fridge to set.

Chicken Pâté

After seeing the movie Julie and Julia I got Julia Child's recipe book 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. It's a wonderful book. I completely recommend it. Anyway after discovering how easy and cheap it is to get chicken livers (my 'exotic' ingredient for the week) I thought i'give Pâté a go. Unfortunately though some of the ingredients weren't all that easily available so i had to substitute here and there. Thus i figure i might well well put up this recipe which is almost the same but using much more easy to find ingredients and with measurements made metric.

Ingredients

300g chicken livers

a pinch of chopped fresh thyme

1/2 cup butter

3 tbs butter

1/2 cup cream cheese

1/2 onion finely chopped

pinch salt

pinch white pepper

1/2 cup white wine

Method:

1. Clean the livers. This involves washing them under a tap and cutting out and throwing away and gross bits that are green/black or yellow. Pat dry with paper towel.2. Put 3 tbs butter into a skillet. Then slowly saute onions on low heat until they are soft for about 10mins. Don't let them brown. Add livers. Constantly turn them and cook for about 1min.3. Add white wine, salt, pepper, thyme. Cook for about a minute.4. Remove from heat and puree in a food processor or similar. Then slowly add the remaining butter and cream cheese. Mix until smooth. Chill.Serve on crusty bread with cheese.

Red Wine Pasta

This is pretty simple to make, and worth the time. It tastes much, much better than dried pasta with bottled sauce. Oprah if you are reading this, perhaps this could be an example of 'cook yourself fit' because I think any carbs in the pasta would get burnt off with all the kneading and rolling!

Serves: 2
Preparation time: about 2 hours
Cost: Probably about $10

Ingredients
Pasta

250g plain flour
3 eggs

Sauce
4 roma tomatoes
1/2 a bottle cheap Aldi french red wine
basil
oregano
2 cloves garlic
olive oil
salt
pepper
plain flour for thickening

Instructions

1. Start by making the pasta. Sift flour onto a clean bench. Make a well and crack eggs into it. Using your hands mix egg and flour. Knead until pasta dough feels smooth and elastic.

2. Wrap in cling wrap and put in fridge for at least 30mins.

3. Finely chop tomatoes. Heat some olive oil in a saucepan. Add tomatoes, garlic, herbs spices. After about 1 min add red wine. Simmer on low for 45 mins

4. Remove pasta dough from the fridge. Split into 2 balls of equal size. Knead each ball and then using a rolling pin roll as flat as you can. With a knife cut into long thin strips.

5. Boil water in a saucepan. Add pasta. It will be very quick to cook in comparison to dried pasta so watch it!

6. When pasta sauce is reduced down to about 1 1/2 cups take off heat. Sprinkle a small amount of flour. Return to heat and stir until it thickens.

7. Drain cooked pasta. Add sauce. Serve with cheese and fresh basil.

Other ideas: this pasta recipe can be used to make all sorts of pasta. Make lasagna or ravioli using spinach and home-made ricotta (see recipe below).

A Purist's Shopping List

It has been a bit of an obsession lately of mine to get my shopping list down to only the essentials (plus any gathered foods I find) from which I then make everything I can from scratch. It is fun, satisfying, healthier and cheaper (and because of that if you wanted it probably would be affordable to opt for organic versions of everything).

It might take a little bit more time, but often most of the time making basics is spent rising, setting etc. Thus it takes longer to have the finished product, but while you wait you can do other things. So it is just a matter of planing and setting a routine whereby you make things to set overnight every few day etc.

So here is my current shopping list (many of these things last for ages or can be bought in bulk, thus this doesn't represent a weekly shopping list, just what you would have to buy to set yourself up to start this particular lifestyle):

- fresh fruit, veggies and meat (bought from a local market if possible)
- a variety of dried beans and lentils
- eggs
- butter
- oats
- milk
- milk powder (for yoghurt making...but not essential)
- brown sugar
- caster sugar
- bakers flour
- plain flour
- baking powder
- herbs and spices (including salt and pepper)
- vinegar
- red wine
- dried yeast
- nuts and dried fruit

From this list you can make pasta, bread, croissants, cakes, muffins, yoghurt, jams, preserves, ricotta, musesli... the list goes on.

Ricotta

I'm posting this on request. Note I didn't invent this recipe (like i did the others). The following will make about 1-1 1/2 cup of ricotta.

Ingredients

2L milk

1/4 cup vinegar

2 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Heat milk to 83 degrees C (or just before it starts to boil).

2. Add vinegar. Stir mixture ever so slowly :1 cm every 10 sec or so for a maximum of 1 min. Add salt.

3. Allow to cool for 2 hours.

4. Put a cheese cloth in a colander and pour in mixture. This will catch the curds and let through the whey. Let strain for about 1/2 hr.

5. If the liquid that goes through is still milky then return to the stove and heat until it fully separates and the liquid appears yellowish and clear. Pour through cheese cloth to add to the curds.

6. Squeeze the cheese cloth until ricotta is the amount of dryness that you would like. Scoop into a jar and refrigerate.

Ideas for Using Your Ricotta

- Lasagna from scratch. Make the pasta for it as well (let me know if you need the recipe too).

- Makes a yummy breakfast on toast (even better when you've made the bread too) with cinnamon and sugar.

- There are some tea cake recipes that use ricotta. It adds nice moisture and creaminess.

New Lessons Learnt:
This is one recipe that can be made using long-life milk (even the $1 Aldi stuff). I have done this with skim, but I suspect you get more ricotta from full-cream milk. The process can also be sped up a lot. It isn't necessary to leave it for a full 2 hrs to separate. 20mins is actually enough. Even though it will still be hot drain it through the cheese cloth. The liquid will still be milky so then bring the liquid to the boil and it will fully separate. Now drain the additional curds through the cheese cloth and then with the help of a teatowel to protect your hands from the heat, squeeze the excess liquid out. This way you can probably make your ricotta in a fraction of the time. I haven't noticed any real difference in the quality (although fresh milk is a little better than long-life...don't use powdered milk it won't work).

Quince, Ginger and Peach Yoghurt

Most people have probably heard of quinces before and maybe even eaten the odd cake with it at a cafe. So it isn't entirely exotic. But then, i've never cooked it myself, so I thought I might give it a go.This recipe also involves making yoghurt from scratch. Obviously you could just buy some and add the quince but then that would be cheating!

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 10hrs (a lot of this time can be overnight while the yoghurt sets)
Total Cost: Approximately $4 for 1.5L of fruity yoghurt.
Ingredients
Plain Yoghurt:

1L milk
30g milk powder
4 tbs store bought plain yoghurt (silly i know, but necessary, after the first batch you can use your own)

Fruit Mix:

1 quince (peeled and diced)
3 peaches (diced, leave on the skin for texture)
1 tbs fresh grated ginger
1/2 tbs butter
1 tbs brown sugar
honey to taste

Instructions:
Yoghurt:

1. Heat milk and milk powder in a saucepan to 90 degrees C. Now cool quickly by pouring into a clean bowl floating in an icy bath.

2. When temperature of the milk reaches 43 degrees stir in yoghurt.

3. Pour into a preheated thermos. Let sit for at least 6 hours (or overnight) until yoghurt has set. Refrigerate (it will set even more when it cools).

Fruit Mix:

1. Heat butter in a saucepan. Add quince and ginger. Cook until quince is soft. Add sugar and peach. Cook for another 2 minutes.

2. Refrigerate fruit mix until cool.

Mix fruit with yoghurt and add honey to taste. Serve.

Other ideas: Puree the fruit mix in a food processor and serve with pork instead of apple sauce.