Pot Luck lunches or dinners can be a funny affair. All of my friends are great when it comes to Pot Luck meals and for some reason, we never end up with doubles and everyone always bring more than is needed. However a colleague of mine’s friends can be a different matter entirely. She and her friends host weekly Pot Luck lunches and she often regales me of tales of Pot Luck Politics. One woman (the organiser, let’s call her El Presidente) tries to corral everyone into bringing something different and therefore avoiding double ups. The Presidente has a Vice Presidente who has her ear closer to the ground and echoes her thoughts and follows up by calling people the night before to ensure that there are no dreaded double ups and god forbid, anyone changes their allocated dish.

She tells me that most of “the people” fall into place but there is one couple that consistently never bring anything along but whom are close friends of the El Presidente so they are allowed to get away with it. When others ask them which dish is theirs they gesture around grandly at the whole table and say something vague like “I brought this” randomly pointing at someone else’s dish of course fooling no-one. After the fifth time they did this, there was much grumbling among the people who have brought sumptuous items such as duck, prawns and pork belly etc. Then there are  some people that bring the cheapest thing you could ever make i.e. boiled rice which is all very fine if you’re not the most moneyed up and they spend the whole time being observed eating the duck and the prawns. And you can bet they’re being watched.

Then there’s the psychological analysis. The dish that one brings is very telling. The people that bring the expensive dishes are the more generous souls whereas the people that bring the cheapest dishes are stingy on compliments and not such lovely souls. Sometimes, the stingiest are the wealthiest of the crowd. Sound like a microcosm of a city in one dining room doesn’t it?

My mother is a Pot Luck participant from way back and there is one dish that my mum makes that I absoutely love and she has made it for group gatherings and it was also the most requested fried noodle dish growing up. It’s versatile as you can make it vegetarian by replacing the stock powder with vegetable stock powder, the oyster sauce with a vegetarian version and adding tofu instead of chicken. I love the little pieces of chicken and the crunch from the lettuce and you could certainly char this more than we have to get that crunchy edge to the hokkien noodle.

So tell me Dear Reader, how are your Pot Luck dinners? Smooth sailing or fraught with political tension?

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My friend Kathy is one of my biggest supporters. She’s always finding very cool and quirky things to make and when she shows me something, I know it wil be a goody. Case in point is these Cheeseburger Cupcakes. As soon as I saw these I got all excited and starting pointing at the computer excitedly trying to get my husband’s attention. “Look! Look!” I mimed as my mouth was full of juice. His chuckle assured me that to make these was a no brainer.

I’ve mentioned the cheeseburger is my favourite burger. When I was young, I was never allowed a Big Mac, only the cheeseburger and whilst I never flipped the pickles onto the window sill as some of my friends did during a rowdy, fun 8th birthday party, I never liked the pickles. Nowadays I make up for my previous pickle shunning by requesting extra pickles in my cheeseburger.

The “cheese, sauces and lettuce” for these are created via icing tubes and I did a shortcut and made 6 cupcakes in total which you can do using the one 12 muffin tray and making 6 chocolate cupcakes and 6 vanilla cupcakes. The chocolate centre is a mud cake centre whilst the bun is a regular vanilla butter cake. It doesn’t get much harder than that and there’s no buttercream to make after it or god forbid any spun toffee. In fact these were amongst the easiest cupcakes I’ve made in a long time and the most rewarding.

In the absence of any real icing or filling, these are more what I’d call novelty cupcakes although you could certainly dig a bit of a hole and add some jam, cream or curd in it. If you don’t, I’d try and eat these on the day you make them or the day after  as icing often helps to keep a cupcake moist. For an authentic measure which also aids in keeping the cupcake moist, do as you’d do a cheeseburger and wrap it up in some wax paper.

So tell me Dear Reader, which type of cupcake would you like me to make next?

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I first saw this Karen Martini recipe in the Sunday magazine. I was spellbound by the photography and styling, and in turn I gravitated towards the recipe. I tucked it away for a few weeks always wondering if I would give it a go. I’ve tried a few of Karen’s recipes in the past and they were long and they didn’t always work out so was I willing to give this a go? One afternoon I decided to try again to reconcile with her.

All was ok until I realised that the “packet of filo pastry” was a rather vague one. There are 500g packets and 375g packets at the store. I had about 14 sheets of pastry left over waiting in my fridge from my 375g packet which was roughly half of the packet but I just couldn’t make the trek to the store so I thought that would do although that’s certainly not a packet under anyone’s definition. But since I had everything else I went ahead and made it using the 14 sheets I had. Little did I know that that even only 14 sheets was way too many sheets – about double the amount that I actually needed. I shudder to think what would have happened had I used an entire packet like she had suggested.

To make matters worse, the filling amount was way too much for the size of the filo so a lot of it leaked out. And as I mentioned, the 14 sheets of filo were too thick to properly roll the strudel (and this should be done with a teatowel to prevent the pastry from breaking).

Le Disaster!

One change that I made from the outset was to use browned butter which I love using for filo pastry when you want a deeply nutty flavour and this worked well. This isn’t an overly sweet strudel so it’s perfect for the non sweet tooths. I’ve adjusted the quantities so that you can avoid my fate. After making this I checked recipes and all of them called for about 6 sheets of filo pastry to 250g ricotta.

Hmm it seems like we’re breaking up again Karen…

So tell me Dear Reader, is there a chef whose recipes rarely work for you?

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