Leon and Renee in Melbourne: Returning after a haitus, sabbatical, extended leave but actually it's laziness

Hello! I was just thinking the other day that I really wanted to get back to the blog and post some of my adventures in cooking, so here I am. I'm currently sweating the onions on the very first dish that I will blog about. I'm not sure if it's a recipe, per se, I'm kind of just throwing together what I've got in the fridge. But I did make some some pasta from scratch. It's an easy peasy recipe from ABC's The Cook and The Chef website. Simple. I actually halved it because I'm just cooking for me and Leon. Once I rested the dough for about 30 mins, I rolled out 4 really thin pieces because I want to serve it like a giant free-form ravioli, of a sort. Also, I just used a rolling pin to roll my "ravioli" but it's easier if you're making fettucine, spaghetti, etc to use a pasta machine. Actually, it's a real stretch to name it ravioli, but at least it gives you an idea of what it will look like! Please bear in mind that my list of ingredients caters for 2 people without leftovers.

Ingredients: Pasta as per The Cook and The Chef website

half a large onion, thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, diced
1 medium of head broccoli, cut into small florets
1/4 to 1/2 cup veg stock*
1/3 to 2/3 cup cream*
pinch nutmeg
handful of almonds, either flaked or chopped
*with regards to the liquid measurements, I just kind of chucked it in without measuring! I think the ones I've listed is about right, but just play around with it and don't add it all at once.

Method:

Toast the almonds on a dry pan until fragrant and not too brown, set aside.
Sweat the onions over a med-low heat with a lid for about 5 mins. Remove lid, add garlic, continue cooking for another few minutes, stir frequently so that you don't burn the garlic.
Once the onions and garlic are translucent and fragrant, add the broccoli. Add stock, cover, cook for about 5 mins.
Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Once boiling rapidly, cook the pasta, 2 pieces at a time, or if you have a small pot, 1 at a time. They should only take a few mins each so keep an eye on them. Once ready, simply keep them on the plates you will serve them on. I didn't drain them because I wanted the cooking water to add moisture.
Remove lid from the broccoli, the stock should be steaming and the broccoli bright green. I didn't let the stock reduce so I could add only a little cream, but you could adjust that if you want to. Add cream and nutmeg and stir for a few minutes until well combined. Remove from heat and stir through almonds.
I served mine as a giant ravioli, albeit free-form. It turned our pretty yum!

Photos:

So, hopefully the photos give you an idea of how it should look, if you want to make it like I did, but of course, you can do whatever you want!!!

I also want to show you a couple of pics of other things that I've cooked in the past few days......
- the photo of the top is a recipe from the fabulous foodie blog Italian Food Forever, the Cannara Onion Pizza and I added to that potatos, pecorino and mozzarella added. El gorgeouiso!
- the photo below is blueberry tart with creme patisserie from a recipe on The Cook and The Chef. It also uses Maggie Beer's Sour Cream Pastry, with 2 tbs of sugar added instead of the tart base that is part of the original recipe. I also folded through a punnet of blueberries instead of piling them on the top and I omitted the step that folds in whipped cream. In hindsight though, I would recommend cutting in the cream as it would make it less sweet.