A few updates from my kitchen

Here's a quick collective a few things that I've cooked over the past few months that haven't made it onto the blog until now.

In Australia the concept of 'morning tea', where you stopped work for a bit and enjoyed a slice of cake, was well established. And what's not to like? Time off work and cake has to be a winner. We seem to be having a rush of weddings in the office at the moment so I decided to celebrate each one with a 'morning tea'. So far I've baked the banana cake and pear and raspberry cake from my Bourke St Bakery cookbook and the Lemon and Demerara cake from Nigel Slaters Kitchen diaries. Every one has been a winner and I'm looking for inspiration for the fourth and final bake. It might be time for a chocolate cake?

Homemade sourdough pizza

I was re-united with my pizza stone a few months ago, which could only mean one thing, pizza! I made a sourdough bases using Clint's recipe and made a simple courgette topping on one and mushroom and chorizo on the other. You can never get that perfect base at home, but firing up the new oven to maximum they were pretty good. I was particularly impressed by the sour flavour of the pizza base. Having made the dough the day before and letting in develop in the fridge almost certainly helped.

Dengpo pork belly

I picked up some pork belly at the local Brockley Market one Saturday morning and then came home to flick through my cook books and look for inspiration. I ended up going with an adaptation of the Dengpo pork belly recipe from my Poh's Kitchen cookbook. It was salty, sweet and tender. How could you not like it? The recipe called for a braise which mean there wasn't any crackling, but with that minor quibble it was a great use of the pork. I still have the other half of the pork belly in the freezer that I need to cook.

Protein balls

During the mammoth cook up a couple of weeks ago, Becks kindly whizzed together some protein balls for me using this Jill Duplex recipe. All of the running I am currently doing means that my appetite is almost limitless at the moment and some healthy protein filled snacks are really handy. I've looked at Bounce balls before, but they are really expensive. This recipe was reasonably cost effective and kept in the freezer make a great treat when I get in from work.