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Foodie Friday: Spring veggie tart recipe

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Welcome to our new series, Foodie Friday! Pop in each week for our latest easy and  delicious recipe. Today’s is from our friends at Williams-Sonoma.

Free for brunch this weekend? Try this easy Spring Veggie Tart.

Why not lift your brunch game this weekend by gathering a few friends at home and celebrating the new season’s bounty? Cafés are great, but don’t overlook the virtues of entertaining at home – especially when you’ve got little ones in tow. This easy, versatile tart base is easy to load with whatever vegetables are stacked highest at the farmers’ market. Here, it’s elegant leeks and vibrant spring asparagus paired with pungent Fontina. Fontina is an Italian cheese with a delicious strong flavour that melts brilliantly. It’s available at most supermarkets and delicatessens, but if you can’t find it you could easily substitute Gruyère or provolone. Serve the tart warm from the oven with the usual brekkie sides, such as roasted baby tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon and great coffee (Champagne cocktails optional).

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Styling tip: give your tart an extra glamorous edge by presenting it the same way the best food stylists do. Bring it to the table pre-cut on a generous, rustic chopping board lined with a piece of parchment or baking paper. Simple and chic. Just beware that your guests might show up again next week!

Ingredients

  • 1 sheet frozen puff pastry, about 250 g, thawed
  • 1 cup (125 g) grated Fontina
  • 15-20 thin asparagus spears, ends trimmed (thicker spears halved lengthwise)
  • 1 small leek, white part only, halved and thinly sliced
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup (60 ml) full-cream milk
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Lay the puff pastry on the prepared tray. Fold over the sides to make a 2.5 cm rim, overlapping the pastry at the corners and pressing it lightly. Inside the rim, prick the pastry all over with a fork.

Sprinkle half of the cheese over the bottom of the pastry inside the rim. Top with the asparagus, laying the spears vertically in a row from one side of the pastry to the other. Sprinkle the leeks over the asparagus. Bake for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, beat the eggs, milk, 1/2 tsp salt and several grinds of pepper until well combined. Remove the pastry from the oven. Pour the egg mixture evenly over the asparagus and leeks and sprinkle on the remaining cheese. Bake until the pastry is puffed and golden brown, about 10 minutes. Let the tart stand for 10 minutes before serving. Serves 4.

This recipe is adapted from one in the Vegetable of the Day Cookbook by Kate McMillan. Head to Williams-Sonoma for lots more recipe inspiration, or book yourself into a cooking class in the stunning marble-clad Bondi Junction Cooking School!

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Appliances Kitchens

Smeg small appliances finally available in Australia

In this job, you get pretty good at spotting what’s going to be popular and I’m convinced these new Smeg small appliances are going to FLY off the shelves. I was lucky enough to attend the launch of these in Milan last year and have been waiting (im)patiently for them to land in Australia. Last week, Olivia attended a glamorous launch in Sydney and ever since we shared pictures on Instagram, our readers have been going mad for them!

Smeg Kettle PG-Toaster P

Smeg say Italian design, award-winning style and enduring performance are the trademark features of the new collection of small appliances – the latest extension to the brand’s iconic FAB retro refrigerators. While we would all love a FAB fridge (I’ve been obsessing over the thought since I was a teenager and still don’t know which colour I’d choose but it WILL happen one day!), they aren’t the cheapest out there. Now, there’s an entry level Smeg option with a two-slice toaster ($179 to $199) through to the space age looking signature kitchen mixer at $799.

Designed in collaboration with Matteo Bazzicalupo and Raffaella Mangiarotti of Deep Design Studio, there’s also a kettle ($199) and a four-slice toaster ($199 to $219). Each retro style appliance pays homage to the Golden Age of the fifties while showcasing Smeg’s signature elegance and sophistication. Indeed, the aesthetics of the stand mixer and toaster have already received the GOOD DESIGN Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design plus the prestigious international iF Design Award for 2015.

Smeg Mixer R-Kettle C-2-2

There are up to seven colours — silver, black, red, panna and pastel blue across the range — plus pastel green and pink for the kettles and two-slice toaster.

And while style is always a standout feature of any Smeg appliance, it goes hand in hand with the brand’s commitment to the very latest technology and highest performance. The kitchen mixer, for example, sets new benchmarks in terms of power and versatility. Attributes include 800W high torque motor, 10-speed variable power and the all important soft start (no more splatters when starting at a high speed) and a planetary mixing action to ensure all areas of the bowl are reached. There is also a low-speed front attachment hub for optional attachments such as pasta roller and cutters. A blender, with a capacity of 1.7 litres, an 800W motor and four speeds will be added to the range later this year.

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The Smeg kettle is feature rich with quiet-boil technology, soft-opening lid, cord-free swivel base and auto shut-off when the body is lifted from the base. It also has automatic switch-off at boiling point. A variable temperature model will be added to the range later this year.

Toasters include both a two and four-slice model with extra wide slots, reheat, defrost, cancel and bagel settings plus self-centring racks, six browning levels and removable stainless steel crumb tray.

Each of the small appliances features an enamel-coated stainless steel body and has been manufactured to the highest standards. Smeg provides a 12-month replacement warranty on all kettles and toasters, a three-month replacement warranty and five-year full manufacturer’s warranty on all kitchen mixers.

The complete range of Smeg small appliances is available from electrical and appliance retailers nationally from May. The range is already available at Myer.

For more information.

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Appliances Kitchens

Make easy French baguettes at home

France has to have one of the best cuisines in the world: crispy baguettes, gooey cheese… ah, it’s getting me hungry just thinking about it! So the idea that you can now easily make some of these culinary delights without leaving your home, let alone the country, is pretty exciting news.

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Introducing the Baguette Mould, designed by legendary French ceramicist, Emile Henry. Part of the just launched Spring/Summer range for Australia, the Baguette Mould creates the perfect light French baguette with a thin crispy crust. All you have to do is place the dough in the grooves on the base, cover with the lid and hey presto, you’ve created three baguettes!

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Allowing the exact amount of humidity in, it’s all about the crust! Furthermore, the bread won’t stick and the mould can be washed in the dishwasher. There is also a round Bread Cloche that uses the same process to produce beautifully firm, light loaves with a crunchy, thick crust.

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But that’s not all for this 165-year-old ceramic bakeware brand, they’ve also got a clever new addition, the One Minute Egg. A dual purpose ceramic design, one way it’s an egg cup, and when flipped, it creates baked eggs. This can be used either in the microwave, where the egg cooks in just one minute, or in the oven, where it will take about nine.

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For those who like the more rustic look for their baking, there are also the new straight-sided deeper bakers in the earthy shades of Poivre, Muscade, Nougat plus the rich hue of Grenade. Coming in oval, rectangular and square baking dishes — plus pie dishes — they can be taken straight from the oven to the table and come in enough sizes to suit every household. Manufactured in Burgundy using skills handed down from generation to generation, only natural products are used in the process and many of the production techniques are still carried out by hand.

Emile Henry‘s ceramic bakeware is guaranteed to last 10 years and is available nationally from David Jones and leading kitchenware retailers. Call distributor DKSH on 02 9425 5000 for details of local stockists.

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Appliances Kitchens

The Kitchenaid ‘which colour?’ question gets harder with 8 new options!

So the ‘which colour’ decision just got a whole lot harder! Sorry! Just in time for Christmas, KitchenAid has announced the addition of 4 new beautiful hues to the Artisan Stand Mixer range and another 4 to the Platinum Collection Stand Mixer Range!

Artisan Stand Mixers (Clockwise: Watermelon, Truffle, Crystal Blue and Cocoa Silver):

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I love the new Watermelon, which looks so cheery and bright!

Platinum Collection Stand Mixers (Clockwise: Plumberry, Liquid Graphite, Bluberry and Toffee):

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Appliances

Smeg Linear oven with TFT display tells you how to cook

Last time I let my vacuum cleaner tell me what to do I got into a whole world of trouble. But Smeg clearly thinks I should give the machines another chance and listen to what its new oven range has to tell me. Or at least read what its new oven range has to tell me.

Smeg Oven SFPA140-LS

The Smeg Linear SFPA140 comes with a TFT touch screen that will give you recipes tailored to Australian produce, advise you on how you should set up your oven depending on what you are cooking and take care of all the fiddly bits and pieces that would usually be handled by a knob or physical button.

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Appliances Kitchens

Kitchenaid Platinum collection with metallic colours, new to Kitchen Warehouse

KitchenAid, the premium brand that first offered its classic Stand Mixer almost a century ago, has introduced its Platinum Collection to Kitchen Warehouse.

The Platinum stand mixer in Raspberry Ice
The new Platinum stand mixer in Raspberry Ice

Arriving at Kitchen Warehouse next week, the Platinum Collection Stand Mixer features a premium two-coat metallic finish, elegant glass bowl and Flex Edge Beater for faster ingredient incorporation.

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Appliances

Beko InnovaChef makes the oven smarter

Smart fridges. Whatever happened to those? When I started out as a technology journalist all those… seven years ago, LG was trying to convince everyone that these were the way of the future. They looked the part too, with big colour screens attached that could connect to the internet and do all this funky stuff. Well, Beko has a similar idea with the InnovaChef, but instead of being a fridge, it’s an oven.

BEKO INNOVACHEF OVENThe idea with a smart fridge is that you could potentially keep track of what is in your fridge and when you needed to buy more of it. Sure, you could do that with your eyes as well, but this is, well, cooler. With the Beko InnovaChef, it’s all about loading your recipes to your oven via USB and using the step-by-step recipe guides that come with the oven. OK, you could read a cook book instead, or use your tablet or smartphone which most people probably do, but that’s not the point.

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Kitchens

14 gifts for mum: a nostalgic enamel pie set

Whether your mum’s old enough to remember these first time around or whether she just loves that vintage look (I know I do!), this Falcon pie set from the UK just scrapes in under $100 at $93.95 from Vintage & Nostalgia Co.

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Who feels like cooking a pie now?! It’s looking like pie weather to me. Buy here.

#14gifts for mum is a gift idea a day for 14 days in the lead up to Mother’s Day. All gifts under $100.