There are hundreds of fantastic food blogs out there that I love and admire, but every now and again I come across a gem of a blog that I really resonate with. For me, Connie's blog Whisks and Whimsy is one such gem. It is crisp, clean and elegant and as she is more of a baker than I am, I find myself getting inspiration to bake a little something more regularly after reading her posts.

A few weeks back Connie sent me an email saying she was coming to Sydney. After commenting on a few of each others posts in the past, this was the first inbox email exchange between us. I was delighted to hear from her, put together a list of great food to try in Sydney, and instantly suggest we catch up. We had a wonderful time chatting over lunch and I am happy to say we now have plans to keep in touch.

This weekend I had wanted to try Connie's amazing looking Mini Lemon Olive Oil Cakes, but I didn't have time to buy a mini bundt pan (and they are so cute in mini bundt shapes you couldn't possibly make them without the pan), so I decided instead I would take inspiration from her Banana Bread post and pull out my old fail safe banana and walnut bread recipe which I hadn't made in forever.

I love this banana bread recipe for many reasons: it results in an extremely flavourful and moist cake (lets face it, banana bread is really just cake isn't it?); instead of walnuts you can add chocolate chips, berries, nutella or dried lavender; and as long as you have a couple of overripe bananas on hand, everything else is usually stocked in the cupboard.

BANANA AND WALNUT BREAD

Ingredients:
Melted butter, to grease the tin
2 cups plain flour
3 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup skim milk
2 eggs
50g butter, melted, cooled
2 overripe medium bananas, mashed
1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and then grease a loaf pan with melted butter lining the bottom with non-stick baking paper.

Sift the flours, baking powder and cinnamon into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar, milk, eggs, melted butter, banana and walnuts and stir until all combined.

Pour into the prepared tin, ensuring the top is smooth and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Remove tin from oven and set aside in the pan for 5 minutes. Turn onto a wire rack to cool then cut into slices to serve.

NB: To make other great versions replace the walnuts with one of the following: 1 cup berries, 1/2 cup choc chips, 1/2 cup nutella or 1/4 cup dried lavender.

Sydney weather is beginning to suffer from a case of the colds. It is the point when you have realised winter is coming and frantically make plans to try and finish off all those little jobs around the house you planned to do but didn't get around to. The only explanation for this last minute bout of 'household commitment' is so that when winter hits you can spend the weekends inside wrapped in a blanket and say "At least we finished the...".

In our case the statement is: "at least we finished painting the entry and corridor". Well, it will be when Scotty and I actually finish painting the entry and corridor. We had grand plans to suck it up and spend one weekend knocking it over, but as painting always takes much longer you expect, a couple of weekends later and we are still going. Fingers crossed we finish it soon... painting can really test a relationship (luckily I'm good at taking direction as a painters assistant).

After a day's painting I knew Scotty and I would want something heartwarming to eat for dinner so when we had finally finished the painting, Scotty started cleaning the brushes, rollers etc while I began a hearty Shepherd's Pie (well, technically its a Cottage Pie as we only had beef mince on hand and not lamb... but let's just chalk this one up to folk etymology and move on shall we?).

Shepherd's Pie is truly honest fare which both warms the cockles of your heart and makes you feel good about life. After quickly reading a few different recipes it becomes apparent that there are many different versions and they all look great - which means you can't really go wrong and can add most of the flavour from things already sitting in your pantry. The recipe below is my version made up on the spot and absolutely spectacular in flavour! I encourage you at some point this winter, to give Shepherd's Pie a try.

TASTY SHEPHERD'S PIE

Ingredients:
1 tbs olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled, finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
500g lamb mince (I used beef)
500ml (2 cups) beef stock
1 tbsp dried oregano
3 sprigs of lemon thyme
1 large handful continental parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp tomato paste
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
6 large potatoes, peeled, chopped
20g butter
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. In a large saucepan heat olive oil and add onion, carrot and celery and cook until the onion becomes transparant. Add the mince and cooked until browned.

Add stock, oregano, parsley, lemon thyme leaves, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, tomato paste, salt and pepper and mix well. Transfer mixture to a pie dish, cover with alfoil and bake in oven for 1 hour. 

While the mixture is in the over cook potato in a saucepan of salted boiling water until tender. Drain well and return to the pot mashing until smooth. Add butter and milk and stir well till completely incorporated. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

Remove the dish from oven and increase temperature to 200 degrees celcius. Discard alfoil and top the mixture with mashed potato, using a fork to spread it out evenly. Return the pie to the oven uncovered and bake for an additional 20 minutes or until mashed potato is golden. Serve straight away.

Scotty and I love dumplings. This should be evident by now given our previous dumpling posts. What we love more than dumplings, is finding couples who love dumplings as much as we do. In Rob and Becky we have found such a couple.

Together with Becky and Rob, we are in pursuit of the perfect Sydney dumpling house. With an impromptu last minute dinner plan the four of us headed to Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House in Kingsford on Rob's advice.

Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House is cute and cosy - not necessarily the most stylish establishment, but then, we weren't there for the decor. We sat down and had hot tea served to us straight away. Rob likes to make his own fun so lucky for him the liquid in his hip flask was the same colour as the tea!


We ordered a great selection of items starting with shallot pancakes which are Scotty's favourite. They came rather quickly, were piping hot and possibly the best shallot pancakes we'd ever had. The shallots shone through, the pastry was flaky and crispy and the colouring slightly charred (which really added to the flavour).


All three lots of dumplings arrived at the same time. We chose boiled, steamed and fried - boiled pork and chives dumplings northern style; steamed prawn dumplings; and fried pork and chives (we do love our pork dumplings). These were all homestyle dumplings (no perfectly formed Din Tai Fung dumplings here) but that's kinda how we like them. The boiled dumplings were beautifully moist and retained there flavour well, and the fried dumplings were crispy and probably my favourite. The steamed ones were not amazing, this largely due to the dumpling falling apart as you carefully try to extract it from the steamer.


We did need to appease the vegetable gods so a plate of steamed greens with oyster sauce made its way to our table to offset the the dumpling goodness. These were perfectly cooked, steamed to perfection with a crisp bite and just the right about of sauce.


Now, my second favourite thing to eat at a Chinese restaurant (aside from dumplings) is duck pancakes. The duck pancakes sit on this menu as Peking Duck, but you will be disappointed if you expect the Peking Duck will come with a second course (although the price gives itself away as a one-course dish). The duck pancakes arrived and looked fabulous. Once we assembled our pancakes and started to dig in we realised that the duck, while moist, needed a little more flavour. The dish would have benefited from more crispy skin. It was tasty but there was something missing.


The duck dish signaled the end of our first order and while we probably didn't need anymore food, we couldn't resist a couple of extra dishes. We ordered another round of those fabulous shallot pancakes and crispy beef with Peking sauce. The crispy beef was nice but perhaps a little to much on the sweet side. All in all it was a great meal and the dumplings were super tasty which was the whole reason we were there in the first place!

Name: Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House 

Address: 323 Anzac Parade, Kingsford 

Phone: (02) 9662 0158

Bill came to: $80 for four ($20 a head)