Kiwifruit Challenge Part 2

I'm not going to apologise for the delay in producing part 2 of my kiwifruit challenge blog.  I had a very good reason for delaying the write-up.

I made a dessert using fresh kiwifruit on the same night I made my chutney featured in part 1 of the challenge.  A day after preparing my rather reasonable dessert of kiwifruit and orange muffins, I had a very lovely and special dinner guest; to whom (amongst other things) I served my kiwifruit muffins.  She was kind enough to provide a brief review stating that I've "Shown that Kiwifruit is not just for pav".

There was one unfortunate downside to this, when after, I say again AFTER! eating (and enjoying) these muffins, I was firmly instructed to not feed this very lovely and special lady tofu.  This was unfortunate for me at the time, as well, as you'll see in my recipe.  These orange and kiwifruit muffins contain silken tofu.  I'm not talking a couple of teaspoons here... I mean step one of the recipe is going to involve you draining and mashing an entire 250g packet of the stuff.  Awkward.

However, being a glass half full kind of lady, I decided that silken tofu in muffins was not really a show-stopping problem in the general scheme of my life... let's face it, worse things have happened. 

  I deliberated the issue with myself for a few days, before deciding on a course of action.  Honesty really is the best policy.  I came clean about the tofu.  No doubt placing a very severe strain on this fledgling relationship.  I really tried to sell it as a glass-half-full situation.... Tofu isn't evil! it's not even bad!... the tofu-hump has been conquered! It's all good from here on in, with salt and pepper tofu, tofu-cheesecake, mr-puffy-tofu, agadeshi tofu, grilled tofu with salad....

Yeah okay, record scratch.  The moratorium on fermented soy products continues. 

Here's my muffin recipe, I can honestly state that you wouldn't know they were vegan and had tofu in them if you don't specifically tell someone.

You will need:
250g silken tofu (the soft stuff, not silken firm)
50g nuttelex (melted)
2 cups Self Raising flour
1/2 brown sugar
1 cup chopped fresh kiwi fruit
1/2 cup orange juice (from a bottle is fine, it doesn't have to be freshly squeezed)


You will have to:
Pre-heat your oven to 180C
Prepare either 12 large or 24 small muffin cases (your choice of greasing with cooking spray or lining with paper trays)

Open the packet of silken tofu, drain the water.

In a mixing bowl mash the silken tofu.

Melt the nuttelex (I just put mine in the microwave)

Stir the sugar and melted nuttelex into the tofu mix.

Add the flour slowly, stirring until incorporated.  It should be a bit dry.

Add the orange juice, adjusting the volume of OJ if needed to get a good muffin batter consistency.  It should be thicker than a pancake batter, but not like a dough, you should be able to spoon it into the muffin trays when it's just right. 

Add the chopped kiwifruit last, stirring very gently to incorporate the fruit without squashing it.

Bake at 180C for about 20 minutes, they are cooked when  you can poke a fork or other similar item into the muffins and it comes out clean.

These muffins are not super sweet, so if you want something really decadent you may want to consider some icing. Happy cooking!

Masterchef kiwifruit challenge - Part one

Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in.  In this blog entry I'm taking on the Masterchef kiwi fruit challenge.

A lady in my pub trivia team was lovely enough to bring a plethora of kiwi's along one night last week; I was the lucky recipient of about twenty little specimens of this brown and furry on the outside, green and tangy on the inside fruit.

Kiwi fruit is really good for you; it's very high in vitamin C.  However, I've never had kiwi as anything but a snack all by itself, where you either cut it in half and eat it with a spoon or cut it into slices and remove that furry skin in little rings.

As I um and ahh about accepting these lovely fruit; not knowing if I can manage to eat that many kiwi fruit before they go off; and not wanting to waste any "BG" suggests that I take the "Kiwi fruit challenge".  By suggest, I really mean her wish is my command, so of course I must go forth and produce food and a blog entry to fulfill this brief.

I cast my mind back; to the memorable episode where Mindy won herself the immunity pin in Masterchef.  Admittedly, it was in a raw food challenge against some top sushi chefs, however they were required to select a 'star' ingredient to feature in each of the courses.  The sushi chef guy selected kiwi fruit.

I now have an excuse (oops I mean a reason) to take the kiwi fruit and produce something worth blogging about.

I start off by consulting with my good friend and much lauded oracle; "Google Chef"... She's got recipes for absolutely everything. I am actually cooking from a recipe I found on the net; the recipe was vegan by the ingredient list as is.  I guess that's a bit of an 'invention/creativity fail' however, I also think it's a great opportunity to show that you can get really delightful and unexpected results from different ingredients if you're just willing to try something a bit different.

The first thing I did was weigh my kiwi fruit to see how much I had.

I forgot to rotate the image again, sorry.

I'm just thinking of your health and well being by making sure you flex your neck while sitting at the computer.  If you can't be bothered flexing, I have about half a kg of kiwi fruit on that scale.

In addition to the 500g of kiwi fruit you will need.

1 banana, 1(large) brown onion, 3tbs lemon juice, 1/2 cup raisins, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, allspice, nutmeg and cardamon, 1 dessert spoon salt, 1/2 cup white vinegar.

Prepare the kiwi fruit by removing the skin and dicing them.

By this time I'm a tad skeptical of this recipe... a kiwi fruit, a banana and some onion in a pot?  sounds like a "someone walked into a bar joke" to me right now.  But I persevere.

Banana ready to be prepared.

The instructions to this recipe are very straightforward, I'm actually surprised to learn how easy it is to make a chutney.  This is my first time making one and I'd always thought they were complicated!

All you do is chop up the fruit and vegetables, then take everything in the ingredient list and throw it into a large pot over medium heat.

Starting to cook chutney

Give it a stir, and once it boils then turn the heat down to a gentle simmer.  The recipe says to simmer for 1 hour, until everything is cooked down to a jam like texture.  I keep an eye on it every few minutes, giving it a stir to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot.

The finished product looks like this:

Yours may be less sideways.

I'm the first to admit that a jar of chutney doesn't look like much; really this just looks like a jar of chutney.  I made some onion bahji's for dinner to try out with my chutney. 

The kiwifruit chutney was tangy and delicious! I've discovered that it's great with onion bahji's, cauliflower pakoras and just regular old bread.

So... if you find yourself in a situation with stacks of kiwi fruit you don't know what to do with and you like tangy chutney give this one a go.