Catching up.. more Ricotta Hotcakes and Moroccan Lamb Parcels

Catching up on posting this week. Alv's wireless router broke down last weekend and he hasn't replaced it. Which is an inconvenience to me because he refuses to move from his computer so that I can do some blogging. I usually do my blogging on the laptop in the dining room, now I can't even surf! So I'm trying to catch up at work in between lunch breaks and just after work.

Ali: I'm not dying w/o the net just yet. I get to use it sometimes.. :) At least not as bad as Ange heheh :P

More on Ricotta Hotcakes


Back to Ricotta Hotcakes, I had the left over hotcakes for dessert/supper that night. :) Zapped it in the microwave for about 1 minute, topped with a large dollop of Sara Lee French Vanilla Ice cream, zapped up left over carribean chocolate sauce from a recipe courtesy of Cook Sister and drizzled with some maple syrup.

This was the only decent photo I could get before the ice cream slid off the hotcakes. :D


Moroccan Lamb Filo Parcels w/ Mango Chutney


I have been wanting to make something with filo pastry for a while now. Having had something similar at Magic City in Camberwell (paid $12 for 2 pieces I might add), I was pretty sure I could make a whole lot more for $12. I found a recipe for Spicy Lamb filo parcels in my AWW Cocktail Food book the other day and decided that it sounded similar enough that I can substitute the spicy bit for the Moroccan flavour.

Ingredients:
500g of Lamb Mince
2 tbsp of Moroccan Spice mix (I used Masterfood's Mild flavour)
2 cloves of garlic
1 small onion diced
80g of pine nuts (toasted)
2 spring onions chopped

*filo pastry
*butter/cooking spray for filo pastry
*oil for stir frying the filling
*S&P if required
*Mango chutney for dipping

• Heat oil and fry garlic and onions until fragrant. Add Lamb mince and Moroccan spice and cook until the sauce from meat evaporates (I didn't want my filo pastry to be soggy, so I cooked it til the sauce was almost gone)
• At this point, I turned off the gas and added the pine nuts and spring onions and mixed them all up and left it on the pan to cool. The AWW recipe says to add the pine nuts in whilst cooking the lamb mince, but I wasn't sure that I liked the idea of my pine nuts being a bit on the soggy side, so I just left it til the end.
• When the filling has cooled down, start wrapping! I only used two layers for my triangles (and 2 tsp of filling per parcel) because I didn't want too much filo pastry but since I was doing triangles and they were going to be folded over and over again I figured it would be just nice. I wouldn't recommend trying to do up the parcels whilst the filling is hot, you might just end up with soggy filo. (eek..)
• Here's where it becomes sketchy, bake in the oven at 180 degrees until golden. I was busy trying to churn out the parcels and not waste and filo pastry that I didn't really pay much attention to the time. I just looked over the shoulders a few times. I'd say approx 10mins.
• Serve with Mango Chutney.
  

You can make the filo parcels in whatever shapes you like but I made mine in triangles because I thought it might be easier to handle. The results kind of turned out like samosas instead but hey, Alv loved it! Which is always a plus!

Had to do it in two batches though, only did half on Saturday night because you could make THAT many. I estimate that I probably made about 40. Froze the rest and even had some for lunch at work on Monday.

My verdict: A little bit moroccany, a lil bit crunchy and tastes exactly like the ones at Magic City! (if not better ;) ) Never going to order that there ever again!