Stegosaurus Snacks

These are something I have been making for about 20 years. The legs and eyes were a recent addition, even though I have always called them Stegosauruses (due mostly to Mr 3). 

Today my parents took me, Mr 3 and 2 of his cousins Mr 5 and Mr 16 to see Erths Dinosaur Zoo. So of course Mr 3 and Mr 5 had to come back to my place to have a dinosaur themed lunch after it.

Remember, stegosaurs were herbivores so if you can't fill them with meat - only vegetables.

We always make extra vege mash when we do these because it is a great thing to have in your fridge to add as an extra to any meal.

Recipe

(makes 8)

Pastry

300g plain flour

150g butter

100g cold water

1tsp salt

Add all ingredients to bowl and mix 20 seconds/sp 4. 

Turn out onto Thermomat and roll into a ball. Store in fridge until ready to use.

Filling

1kg peeled and chopped vegetables (this time we used, 1 broccoli head, 2 medium carrots, 2 medium potatoes, and 2 small kumara)

250g milk (we use rice milk)

40g butter

1 tsp salt

Add all ingredients to bowl and cook 25 min/95°C/sp 1.

Mix 40 sec/sp 4.

Preheat oven to 200°C

Roll the pastry to approx 4mm thick. 

Cut into 13cm circles. 

Place 1 tbsp of vegetables in the middle.

Dampen the edge with water and fold in half. 

Roll spare pastry into 1cm balls and attach for legs.

Add black sesame seeds for eyes.

Stand up on an oven Thermomat or baking paper.

Bake for 10-15 min until lightly golden.

Serve with fruits/vegetables in true stegosaurus style.

Teething problems

Sorry! I have been away for so long. I decided to rip out my entire kitchen and put in a new one. This has taken longer than I had hoped because we needed to replace our fuse board among other major electrical issues as part of the renovation. 

I am loving the new kitchen. I have a dedicated spot for my Thermomix with its own power point and storage cupboards. It sits right between the fridge and on-bench pantry so everything is right in close range when needed. The chipbooks can stick on the side of my fridge so they are very handy.

We put in an induction cooktop and twin pyrolitic oven to enhance our new cooking experience. I didn't realise that you can't use these like your regular cooktops and caused an oil fire the first time we cooked on the new stove. Oops! 

What happened was I turned the stove on to heat up, it goes up to 15. The manual said not to leave it at 15 for too long, so after about a minute I turned it down to 10 and popped some oil in. Instant fire. Flames over a metre high.I grabbed the pan and was walking backward and forward with it in the kitchen trying to decide what to do with it. I knew you can't put water on it, and the lid was in the cupboard out of my immediate reach. I dropped it back on the stove and grabbed a teatowel, soaked it with water and threw it on top, I then put the lid on as well as an extra precaution. After it cooled, my husband used lots of elbow grease to remove the black burnt oil, but my beautiful new Scanpan frypan is now tarnished. We joked that it will be a good reminded of how quickly the new cooktop heats up!

We managed to cook our honey, soy tofu in a saucepan without incident, and the ThermoServer kept the sticky rice warm throughout the ordeal. So we still had a great dinner, it just took a little longer than expected, and we had a few laughs along the way.

So far, the oven is working great. Still working out the functions, but this morning I made honey date loaf for lunch. It cooked perfectly, I probably need a different tin to cook it in because the silicone one spread quite wide and it looked weird. It tasted great though.

Our smoke alarms did go off when we tried to set fire to the kitchen, but they were very quiet. Definitely not loud enough to wake people who are asleep. Replacing the batteries or the alarms themselves is high on our priority list this weekend. Have you checked yours lately?