Buttered Asparagus with Ham

As I rose out of my flu-induced apathy, I started craving vegetables. I wandered around Fyshwick Markets with a friend, trying to buy veggies while I had no idea what I was going to cook. The red capsicum looked good, so I grabbed some. I felt like soup, so I grabbed a some stock-making veggies (making a mental promise to Ryan not to feed him parsnip). There was no healthy looking green beans, and the broccoli was expensive. Even the spinach looked old and unhappy. Then I found some asparagus that looked green and crunchy and good. And I had some inspiration from cookiecrumb about exactly what to do with it.

Buttered Asparagus with ham

Brown a small amount of butter in a non-stick pan. Turn the heat down to medium, then roll the asparagus around in the butter, until it's nearly cooked. Then throw in a handful of shaved ham. Keep stirring it gently until the asparagus is developing black blisters, and the ham is getting a little crispy. Pile on to a plate, add some cracked black pepper, and enjoy.

This might be even better with a soft poached egg, but I'm not that patient.

Wrap your sausages

Ryan found a new way to cook sausages, and I'm very impressed. I'm not usually a sausage person, even if the sausages in question are preservative-free from the farmers market. But this is guaranteed to please the fussiest carnivore.

Find some toothpicks. Wrap each sausage in a piece of bacon, and secure with the toothpicks. Then cook in a frying pan over a very low heat until the sausages are cooked through. Remove the sausages and make a quick onion gravy in the pan. Then serve everything on good mashed potato.

Yum.

Oops. Don't forget to remove the toothpicks!

Menu Plan Monday - July 3

Yes, I know it's Tuesday. I don't think I've ever been hit so quickly and so hard by one bug. But now that I'm feeling a bit human, I'm going to make up for last week's pitiful blogging effort.

Here's the plan:
Curried Sausages
Baked meatballs and assorted vegetables
A swanky fish dish (a friend is coming for dinner, and there is much to celebrate)
Sweet Potato Risotto
Chicken Stew with dumplings

I am still in winter-warming and comfort food territory. But I do have pictures to share, and some yummy recipes.
Happy Tuesday

Menu Plan Monday - June 25

I've been flattened by a cold. So lots of comfort food this week (especially comforting when cooked by Ryan).
Satay Meatballs
Chickpea and Vegetable Soup
Sweet Potato Pizza
Bangers and mash
A something pie. Not sure what yet.

Sesame Date Muffins

These muffins were really good. Definitely one of my best muffin experiments so far! Just in time for the next round of Muffin Monday too! The theme for this round was a muffin and your favourite muffin-matching drink. I've been drinking a lot of apple tea and mint tea lately, so I concocted a muffin to match.

Sesame Date Muffins

1 Cup Self Raising flour

1 Cup Wholemeal Self Raising flour

small pinch ground cardamom

1/2 Cup Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup milk

1/2 Cup cream (you could double the milk instead)

1 egg

1/3 Cup tahini *

3/4 Cup chopped dates

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease the muffin tins

2. Sift flour into a large bowl with the cardamom, then stir in the sugar.

3. In another bowl, mix the milk, cream, tahini and egg.

4. Combine wet and dry ingredients, and dates. Stir as little as possible to combine. Use a spoon to drop into muffin tins, sprinkling with sesame seeds if you have some. Bake for around 20 minutes or until golden.

I can't wait to see the other muffins at the round-up!

* tahini is sesame paste (like peanut butter, but not). if you have to substitute, canola oil with a tablespoon of sesame oil would probably work.

Lamb Cutlets and Fritteda

I finally cooked the fritteda! I didn't half the ingredients, so I made it up. I like this way of cooking vegetables though, so I'll probably do it more often.
Fritteda
2 small potatoes
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and squashed
300g of green beans
half a cauliflower
2 medium zucchinis
1/2 Cup frozen peas
a handful of mint leaves
Chop all the vegetables into around 1cm pieces. Heat some oil in a heavy based frying pan, then add the potato and garlic. Cook, stirring, until the potatoes are slightly browned. Add the green beans, cauliflower and 1/3 Cup of water. Simmer over a medium-low heat until the water is almost all gone (about 10 minutes). Add the zucchini and peas, and some more water if it needs it. Simmer for another 5 minutes, or until all the vegetables are tender. Stir in the mint, and serve.
Lamb Cutlets
Trim the cutlets, drizzle with lemon juice and set aside for 10 minutes. Sprinkle with cracked pepper. Grill (under the griller) for two or three minutes each side. Easy!

Basic Minestrone Recipe

This soup is so simple, I made it during CSI (and didn't mess it up). It's also very versatile - pick the veggies of your choice! So it's perfect for the Heart of the Matter #4, being hosted by Joanna. The challenge was for new ways with vegetables. I guess there isn't much new about minestrone, but it's quick, easy, tasty and comforting. So I thought I'd share it.

Basic Minestrone

2 Tbs olive oil

2 celery stalks

1 leek

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 carrot

3 small chat potatoes

2tsp tomato paste (salt reduced, for extra heart healthiness)

2 bay leaves (if you look closely at the picture, you'll see Ryan is about to eat one. oops!)

2 sprigs fresh oregano (any italian herbs will do, though - basil, thyme, anything)

6 Cups of stock - vegetable or chicken. (I used 2 cups of chicken, and the rest vegetable. Again, if worried about sodium, you could substitute water for some or all of the stock)

1 Can of cannellini beans

2 small zucchini

1 Cup frozen peas

Sprinkle of grated parmesan, to serve.

Chop all the vegetables finely. Heat the oil in a large saucepan, then saute all the hard veggies (leeks, garlic, carrot, potato, celery) until the leek is translucent. Add the tomato paste, herbs and stock and bring to the boil. Simmer until the potato is tender (around 20 minutes). Add beans and soft vegetables (peas and zucchini). Simmer for another 10 minutes. Serve with a sprinkle of freshly grated parmesan, and basil pita crisp.

Wholemeal Basil Pita Chips

1 Wholemeal Pita bread

Spray olive oil

Dried basil leaves.

Spray the pita with the olive oil, then sprinkle with the dried basil and pepper. Rip into pieces, then cook under the grill until crispy. Eat as soon as possible.

Menu Plan Monday - June 18

I'm still finding new and interesting recipes in my Delicious magazine. Here's the plan:
Minestrone
Lamb cutlets and fritteda
sang choy bau
chicken with Vietnamese caramel sauce
lentil salad
crispy bacon & cauliflower pasta

Happy Monday!

A very sweet husband

I was trying to explain to Ryan why I haven't posted much lately. First, I've been working a lot. So I get home and make faces at the computer, not wanting to go anywhere near it. Second, we've cooked a few things lately with very complicated recipes (like the pie from the cover of Delicious). They turn out ok, but I'm too lazy to type them up, and I worry about duplicating somebody else's hard work. Finally, most of the photoworthy food around here has been Ryan's creations, not mine. Ryan said that was silly, I could post about his stuff. So here is a selection of his recent endeavours:

Chocolate Dessert Cakes. Yummy, and fudgy, and I think I blogged about them already.

Then a chance conversation brought an urge to make souffle. Chocolate, of course.
At this point, I tried to exert a healthy influence, and opted for Apple Cobbler. But that just made Ryan feel like shortbread, with icecream and jam.

The next night, Ryan felt compelled to complete the biscuits, by making the caramel filling that the recipe suggested.

He forgot we'd already eaten 10 biscuits, so there was a lot of caramel left. Not wanting to waste it, he made caramel & cherry ripe tarts.

I think I've just realised why I've gained a kilo this month. Oh dear.

Experiments in cheese

Or, how not to make palak paneer.
I found an awesome site about cheesemaking, here, via simplesavings. It's a very cool site, and has explicit instructions on making many cheeses, including panir, which is an Indian cheese. One of Ryan's favourite Indian curries is Palak Paneer, or Saag Paneer, which is this cheese in a spinach sauce. So I got all excited, thinking we could make the cheese and then the curry and it would be GREAT!
This was a great lesson in following instructions. I used the wrong sort of pot, treated the measurements as guidelines only, and finally, decided the texture looked funny. I pressed the cheese, even though the recipe only said to hang it. My cheese turned out dry, with a vinegary after taste, and a 'squeaky' texture. If you've ever eaten unheated haloumi, you'll know what I mean. But anything covered in a good curry sauce tastes ok, doesn't it?
I had to find a recipe for the curry. I eventually found one where I recognised most of the ingredients (still not sure what methi leaves are). There was no way that I could quit at this stage, so even though I only had half the required spinach, I pressed on. Normally, the spinach sauce for this curry is almost pureed, and a very lurid green. But mine was really only slightly mashed, and the spinach shortage made for quite a yellow result (almost as much onion as spinach).
The end result was edible. Not much like Ryan's favourite, but we both ate it. That could have been politeness though. Ryan made chapatti's from scratch to go with the curry, and they were fairly experimental as well.

Menu Plan Monday - June 11

We went bushwalking this weekend (today was a holiday in most of Oz). This morning I was cooking over an open fire, making chapattis and scrambled eggs and tomatoes. Now I am home, and clean again, and I have to figure out what we're eating this week.
Here's a quick guess, based on what we didn't eat last week, and what's living in the freezer:
chilli bean soup
roast veggie couscous
yellow chicken curry
lamb cutlets and fritteda (I really am going to try it this week!)
spicy beef, olive, and caramelised onion pie (it's on the cover of delicious)
chicken and leek pasta bake (because Ryan won't let me cook any of the parsnip recipes in the new Donna Hay magazine)
I think that will do.
Now I'm going to sleep.
Good night! Happy Monday!

Ignoring my cookbooks

I've been neglecting my hardcopy recipe books lately, and trying some great recipes on the web. My menuplan this week was deliberately vague; I didn't know what sort of stew I wanted to make, I just knew I wanted to find one with lamb chops. And I found one on the ABC. It was pretty good, but a bit greasy. Next time I'll trim the chops a bit better.

Tonight's meal was a bit more spectacular. I had spaghetti and meatballs on the menu plan, but when I saw Bill Granger's Baked Meatballs with Tomato and Tamarind Sauce, I changed my mind. I actually followed the recipe to a T (even substituting lime juice for the tamarind, which I didn't have). I even made all the side dishes. Everything tasted good, but there was way too much rice.

Ryan just wandered in to ask what I wanted for dessert.

Happy Thursday!

Menu Plan Monday - June 4

Here's what we are eating this week :
Vegetarian Lasagne
Roast Veggie cous cous
Spaghetti and meatballs
A lamb chop stew
chicken curry & chickpea curry
chicken with butterbeans

Last week I got a challenge to menu plan for Pissed Off Housewife.
"Between them I need one meal to feed all that includes nothing with a mushy or lumpy consistency and nothing white. The rule is food must have a different consistency going down than it would coming back up. We eat a lot of chicken, lamb rice and fresh steamed veggies but I'm bored... And Adam won't eat "girly" food but he also won't give me a definition of "girly" food except to tell me that boys eat BBQ ribs."

I've been dreaming of summer food, so here's the boy-food-no-mushy-white-stuff plan:
Barbecue! That's gotta be boy-food. I'd go with recipe, or chickpea burgers, with lots of roast vegetables, and maybe this. Anything with tentacles is boy-food.
Chicken (or whatever) with Roast Vegetable Couscous – we eat variations on this a lot. This recipe doesn’t look too bad. You can add oven roasted chickpeas, or some toasted nuts for a bit more crunch.
Homemade pizza - I think this probably fits the boy-food label too, especially if they get to add their own toppings. And you can load them up with vegetables. And serve them with salad.
Spicy green beans and baby corn - with the curry protein of your choice. I can post the recipe if you think your kids will eat it. The short version is blanch the beans, sauté some onion, throw in spices, desiccated coconut and baby corn. Serve with lots of rice and poppadums. Poppadums in the microwave are great, because they puff all by themselves - which is an easy thing for the kids to do.
Chicken Parmigiana and Fritteda - I've only just discovered fritteda. It's an Italian dish with lots of green vegetables cooked with stock. I have a slightly different recipe to try, and I'll hopefully post about it later in the week.
Lamb Parcels – I thought this sounded pretty good too.

There’s also Freddie’s adventures at The Great Big Vegetable Challenge, if you still need some veggie inspiration. So let me know what you think!

The Best Chocolate Pudding Recipe

Ever.

Right now, I swear at the weather report. Because 12 Degrees is not a bloody maximum!!

Ryan just laughs at me, and starts making wintery desserts. This one, from Donna Hay's 'the instant cook', is the best one we've ever found. The book is worth it, just for this recipe and the bread and butter pudding.

My only advice for messing with this recipe: smaller servings are good, if you've eaten dinner. And don't over cook it - it's better fudgy.

chocolate dessert cakes

185g butter, melted

1 Cup caster sugar

1/3 Cup brown sugar

3 eggs

1 1/4 Cups plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 Cup cocoa

double cream to serve

Preheat the oven to 160 Degrees Celsius. Place the butter, sugars and eggs in a bowl and mix unti combined. Sift over the dry ingredients, and mix until combined. Place in 4 x 1Cup capacity coffee mugs (or whatever). Bake until 20 minutes or until fudgy. Serve warm or colded topped with the cream.

Oh, I forgot! These are also really awesome heated up in the microwave! They rise, and taste just as good as when they first came out of the oven. I might have to make some more...

Mushroom Wonton Soup

It is deep soup weather here. It was negatve 3 last night! Ice on the car, gloves on the hands. I needed hot, spicy comfort food. Anh at food lovers journey also has a beautiful soup recipe - and much prettier pictures than me.

The instructions for making wonton soup are here, thanks to taste magazine. I pretty much followed the wonton part, except I used chopped fresh shitake mushrooms instead of the pork mince. The recipe I want to share is the broth, which is equally good with dumplings, meatballs or wontons. Wonton's are fun though.

Simple Spicy Soup

1L Chicken Stock

2 big tablespoons of fresh grated ginger

Sliced shitake mushrooms

a pinch of chilli flakes

1 star anise

a splash of soy sauce

a splash of fish sauce

fresh coriander

There isn't much in the way of a method. Get the stock boiling, then turn down the heat to simmer. Add everything else, and let it simmer until the wontons are ready! I like boiling the wontons in a separate saucepan, because I like a LOT of wontons. I drain them, add them to bowls and then pour the soup over the top.

Menu Plan Monday - May 28

Still eating our way through our bulk lamb purchase. This week it's the roast. We are also using the three small butternuts that we bought last week, and oddly, forgot to eat.

Lamb Roast with lots of vegetables (including pumpkin).
Pumpkin and Feta Pasta
Souvlaki Wraps
Fish. I'm not sure how yet, but I'm sure there will be pumpkin.
Pizza. From scratch, of course. Maybe with pumpkin.
Quiche. Can you put pumpkin in quiche?
Chicken with Butter Beans

Happy Monday everybody!

Layered Shepherds Pie

I am one of those odd people that plans to have leftovers. Most of our leftovers go straight into lunch-size containers and into the freezer, so we never have to buy our lunch at work. Sometimes though, I plan leftovers to be eaten in another meal. Lamb roast becomes lamb fritters or Greek souvlaki wraps. Roast chicken becomes chicken risotto, which becomes arancini. (yum!)

For this Leftover Tuesday, it's a bit different. We bought a whole side of lamb a month ago. I made stock with the bits I couldn't identify, but I rescued all the meat that got boiled up. Sounds appetising, I know. But this meat is so tender, it deserved to be rescued. And Leftover Tuesday was a good excuse to use it. This recipe would work equally well with any leftover roast meat, or chicken, I think. I'm sorry it's such a loose recipe, but it doesn't really need a lot of measuring. Trust yourself!

Layered Shepherds Pie

Dried shittake mushrooms

An onion and a clove of garlic, diced

Left over meat, chopped as finely as you can

Tomato paste, soy sauce, vegetable stock powder (whatever seasonings you like, really)

Assorted root vegetables (I chose 4 small potatoes and a renegade beetroot. The beetroot had somehow escaped from being roasted earlier in the week)

Two big leaves of silverbeet (leftover from Ryan's spinach and ricotta

Milk and butter for the mash

Grated cheese

Boil the kettle and soak the mushrooms. Meanwhile, chop the potatoes (and beetroot) and put them on to boil. Heat some oil in a pan and add the onion and garlic, stirring until the onion is soft. Add the lamb, just to heat through. If you have any other vegetables to add, now is the time. Capsicum or tomato (finely diced) would be good.

When the stuff in the pan is all heated through, throw in the mushrooms with their soaking liquid. This is the base for the gravy, so add a tablespoon or so of tomato paste, a dash of soy sauce, and any other herbs or flavourings. Let it simmer for 10 minutes, then take it off the heat.

When the potatoes are soft, drain them and mash. Adding the beetroot made for a funky pink version, and added some depth of flavour. Chop the silverbeet finely and then steam it briefly (just until it darkens in colour slightly).

Finally put it all together - the meat at the bottom of a casserole dish, topped with the silverbeet, topped with the mash and then cheese on top. Heat in a medium oven until the cheese is melted. Enjoy!

Thanks for hosting this Pam!

Chilli Chocolate Muffins - Muffin Monday 3

We got pretty excited when the third Muffin Monday was announced. The first one had started an Iron Chef competition here. The second one resulted in very green Green Tea Muffins. This time we are going spicy!
Ryan and I decided to experiment with Chilli and Chocolate. The trick is making it spicy, without making it inedible. Chilli syrup seemed like a good starting point. And we were encouraged by Clotilde's Chocolate Chilli Bites. Ryan went first with a chocolate chip style muffin, but we weren't brave enough with the chilli's. Mine were much richer, with much more bite. We hope you enjoy!
Ryan's Chilli Choc Chip Muffins
1 1/2 Cups Self Raising Flour
1/2 Cup Wholemeal Self Raising Flour
1/4 Cup Cocoa
3/4 Cup milk
100g melted butter
2 eggs
3 Tablespoons chilli syrup (we could have added a lot more)
3/4 Cup Dark Chocolate Chips.
Sift together the dry ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients together, then stir into the dry ones, with the chocolate chips. Stir until just combined (or as little as possible). Spoon into muffin tins, and cook for 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. The muffins are cooked when they spring back from a gentle touch.

Rich Chilli Chocolate Muffins
1 1/2 Cups Self Raising Flour
1/2 Cup Cocoa
1/2 tsp Paprika
150g Dark Chocolate
100g Butter
1/2 Cup Chilli Syrup
1 Egg
Sift together the flour, cocoa and paprika. Melt the butter and chocolate in the microwave, stir well and allow to cool slightly. Mix the egg and chilli syrup into the chocolate mixture. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mix until just combined. Spoon into muffin tins and cook for 20 minutes at180 degrees Celsius. Makes around 12 muffins.

Chilli Syrup
4 birds eye chillies
1/2 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup water
Bring to the boil in a small saucepan. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove the chillies and cool the syrup. Keep in the fridge until needed.

Simple Beef Curry

I love slow cooked beef - stews, roasts or curries where the meat is falling-apart tender. This is one of my favourite ways to cook it. It creates a really mild, really succulent beef curry. There's a picture of it here.

Simple Beef Curry
Onion
Curry Paste (this time I used Thai Green Curry Paste - tandoori or penang are good too)
Stewing Beef - chopped into pieces
Coconut Milk

Heat the curry paste with some oil in a small pot. When it's fragrant, add the beef, and saute until it's browned all over. Add the coconut milk (I usually use a whole can) and if it isn't enough liquid to cover the beef, add some stock. Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down. Simmer, uncovered, until the beef is tender. Stir it occasionally to make sure it isn't sticking.
This is a pretty flexible recipe. I often add a potato or a carrot to it, once the coconut milk has gone in. I haven't had a bad batch yet.

Simple in-a-hurry Chickpea Curry

Ryan and I both like curry. We will happily eat any sort, Thai, Indian, Fijian, Ethiopian or Somali (just some of the taste sensations available in Canberra). But sometimes you have to cook them up yourself.

Curries make great frozen lunches, so usually we do two or three big batches and freeze the leftovers. This week we made a chickpea curry, a mixed-lentil dhal and a hybrid green beef curry. Don't worry, I haven't been cross-breeding livestock. But I used the green curry paste in ways that no self-respecting Thai chef would admit to. It's the chickpea curry I'm going to share today, because it's the easiest one to make.

Simple Chickpea Curry

1 Tablespoon Cumin Seeds

1 red chilli (you can leave it out if you like)

1 red onion

1 400g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 big handfuls of spinach (or silverbeet)

2 Tablespoons sour cream (or cream)

squirt of lemon juice

Heat the cumin seeds in a frying pan until they are aromatic. Add enough olive oil to coat the pan, then add the chilli and onion. When the onion is soft, add the chickpeas. When the chickpeas are warm, throw the spinach on top. Put the lid on, and let the spinach wilt a little before stirring it through. Add the cream and lemon juice, stir through and serve.

How easy is that?

Menu Plan Monday - May 21

I have given up forever on Tidbit Thursday.
Apart from the cute name, it just didn't fit in with my life. Menuplanning on Monday makes a lot more sense in our house.
So here is a renewed Menu Plan Monday:

• A big curry cook up (dhal, chickpea curry and a green beef curry)
• Spinach and Ricotta Canelloni (as inspired by the Australian's Weekend Magazine)
• Sweet Potato Cottage Pie
• Roast Chicken Thighs with Roast Vegetables
• Creamy Fish Pasta

and... something with lamb.

Happy Monday!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

After all the eating out, it was nice to have dinner at home. With cake of course!

This is a cherry ripe mud cake from the Women's Weekly Kitchen. And now ours : )

I'm still here, just not cooking

Just apologising for not posting. We have a houseguest, and it's been busy at work, and we are attempting to buy a house. All in one week.

So instead, I'm going to post a list of blogs I love to read:
At My Table - his descriptions of mushrooms are even better than pictures.
The Great Big Vegetable Challenge - go Freddie!
Morsels and Musings - the first food blog I discovered. and I'm still hooked.
Milk and Cookies - beautiful photos.

Meanwhile, our beautiful houseguest has cooked us a beautiful meal. Lambchops with asparagus, green beans and sweet potato mash. Yum. And Ryan made bread and butter pudding with white chocolate and raspberries. There may be pictures.

A Taste of Yellow - Prawn Laksa

I saw this event hosted by Barbara at Winos and Foodies and I thought I needed to support it. Not only is cancer awareness a good cause, but Barbara is doing this in conjunction with the Live Strong Foundation, and I've just finished reading Lance Armstrong's biography. Besides, Barbara is from Western Australia, like me!
My yellow food is prawn laksa. Laksa is any curry soup with a coconut base, so it isn't always yellow. But we get a great, yellow laksa paste from the Kingston markets, so mine is nearly glowing.
Yellow Prawn Laksa
Heat some peanut oil in a wok, and add some curry paste. I usually use around 2 big tablespoons, because we like it hot. When the paste is sizzly and aromatic, add a chopped onion, and any other hard vegetables you have handy. I added a carrot. Stirfry until nearly cooked, then add a couple of cups of chicken stock and a can of coconut milk. When it comes to the boil, throw in some rinsed bean sprouts. When it returns to the boil, add some raw prawns. As soon as the prawns are pink, take off the heat and serve.
If you are a hungry carb-loading person like Ryan, pour the laksa over some cooked rice noodles. Or if you are grumbling about your weight (like me) eat it by itself.
The proper topping would include fresh chopped coriander, chopped peanuts, fresh chopped chilli. But I was hungry.

Lamb Fritters - another way with left overs

I've been putting off writing this post, because I couldn't figure out the recipe. I know I must have used one, I'm just not sure which.

Anyway, fritters as the title suggests, are a great way to use up leftovers. Just chop it small, add to batter, and fry.

First you need the batter. It doesn't really matter what's in it, as long as it's a bit thicker than pancake batter.

Donna Hay's basic fritter batter:

1 cup SR Flour

2 eggs

20g butter

1/3 cup milk

salt and pepper

I've made them with plain flour before, and with chickpea flour. Once the batter is whisked and de-lumped, add your chopped things. Corn kernels and spring onion are traditional. We chose left over roast lamb, green capsicum and some mushroom. Any vegetables would work, provided they aren't too runny.

Heat some oil in a frying pan, and then fry the batter, a quarter cup at a time. The fritter is ready to turn when bubbles appear on the surface.

Make sure you eat them warm!

Tasty Tidbit Thursday!

This is a short list this week because we are eating out Friday and Tuesday. Tuesday is budget night - part of the weirdness that is Canberra.
Chili con Carne
Tofu & Shitake Stirfry
Prawn Laksa
Lamb Chops and veggies
Bruchetta Pasta

Three ways with cauliflower

Maybe I give the impression (with the menu planning and all) that I always know what I'm going to cook, and vegetables never get abandoned to the back of the fridge. Well, yesterday I threw out half a kilo of grapes, and faced the dilemma of a whole dinner's worth of cauliflower. We made cauliflower soup earlier, and it was ok but not worth writing about. I should have taken a picture of the cauliflower though, because it was HUGE. A few days after the soup, Ryan made cauliflower cheese. But there was still a heap left.

Where would I be without the BBC recipe search? The answer was cauliflower curry. I was looking for a dry, spiced cauliflower sort of thing. But the one I ended up with was pretty good.

So here are three ways to use up a very large cauliflower.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup from Delicious

This isn't the recipe we used (I don't think we used one) but it looks awesome.

Cauliflower Curry from Ready Steady Cook

This was a great recipe because it didn't require anything that wasn't already in the cupboard. It was very photogenic too, unlike the soup.

Cauliflower Cheese

Does this need a recipe? Steam or microwave the cauliflower until just tender. Make white sauce, add lots of cheese. Pour white sauce over cauliflower, add more cheese (and maybe something crispy, like crispy bacon or cracker crumbs) and then grill until golden.

My husband cooks!

Ryan and I cook very differently. I am brilliant at throwing things together to a deadline, with an emphasis on comfort food, and veggies. Ryan loves trying new, complicated recipes, the more spectacular the better - and it always looks beautiful. When I went to a late gym class last week, I came home to a surprise four course dinner.

How could I not love him?

Chilli fried Prawns. Yum.

Blue cheese fritters. I still don't know how he managed to cook these so perfectly. They were deepfried, but not greasy at all. Magic. And gooey cheesiness inside. That's parmesan cheese on top.

The main event - chicken pot pies! They had a tomato based sauce, not creamy, and it was really good.
I was way too full for dessert, but I ate my poached pear anyway.

Heaven. There was even cream.

Retro Cookbooks

It was the Lifeline Booksale a couple of weeks ago. They put a warehouse load of secondhand books in a big pavillion at the showgrounds, and it's a massive free for all. The books are categorised, but we tend to go on Sunday afternoon, when the books are $10 for a bag. By then the tables are pretty-well chaos.

I have developed a fetish for retro cookbooks! And I picked up a heap of them. Here are my spoils - I'm going to enjoy searching them for new recipes. Ryan actually picked up one of the baking books. He's planning on baking his own bread sometime soon.

Half a Sheep! or a side of lamb

We had very little meat left this week. The freezer was empty. So I planned for lamb stew (see Thursday's menu plan) and headed to High Country Meats. I like this store - no frills, minimal packaging, lowish prices.
I ended up buying a side of lamb - for $5/kg, it looked like a pretty good deal. It wasn't as big as I thought, easy enough to fit in our freezer, but I was a bit unsure as to what sort of cuts were actually in there. I ended up with:
- a 1.5kg roast
- 4 dinner-sized packages of lamb chops
- 2 shanks which will make a good stew
- 4 or 5 spare ribs, I think.
- a 1.5 kg bit of lamb breast, which just looks like a whole lot of skinny ribs in one piece and not much meat.
I know I should be able to roll the lamb breast and stuff it - but I don't know how to get the bones out. Instead, I'm turning it into stock. So that makes at least 8 meals for the two of us, plus stock, and the leftovers from the roast. That will keep me busy for a while!

Menu Plan Thursday - April 26

Hmm...
just doesn't have the same ring to it. Never mind.

Baked Marinated Chicken Wings with salad and green beans
Cauliflower soup with corn bread and left over chicken wings
Wonton ravioli (ricotta and basil)
Quiche
Lamb Stew
Pork Ribs with mashed potato and vegies.

Hope you had a good Anzac Day!

Menu Plan Monday's - No More!

Here's the thing. We have big plans for our weekends that are often foiled by boring stuff like laundry and grocery shopping, and fixing bicycle punctures. So in an effort to avoid the grocery shopping at least, I am going to do the menu plan on Thursday and shop after work on Friday. Henceforth, it will be Menu Plan Thursday, unless I can think of a snappier name (suggestions, anyone?)
So here is my final (for now) Menu Plan Monday:
Chickpea curry (I know, it's been hanging around for a while, but it didn't quite happen yet)
Lamb fritters
Quesadillas
Pumpkin Soup
Chicken & Thyme Pies.

Happy Monday!

Green Tea Muffins

Elena Ho at experiments is hosting Muffin Monday again. The theme this month is 'muffins that make you go ooooh'. But I think my muffins are more likely to make you go eewwwww. They are really quite green, even if they don't look that way in the picture. After my green tea cheesecake adventure I was determined to get my hands on some matcha powder, and do some more experimenting. When Elena challenged us to make some muffins you wouldn't normally see in the shops, this seemed like a great opportunity.

The green cheesecake didn't look particularly green (actually kinda grey) but it did taste pleasantly tea like. These muffins had a much more exciting colour, but unfortunately a very mild taste. They were pretty good anyway.

On the subject of frugality, matcha powder isn't cheap. However, most recipes only call for small amounts, so now I've got some, I think I'll be experimenting for a while...

Green Tea Muffins

2 C Self Raising flour

1/2 C Sugar

2 teaspoons matcha powder (Japanese powdered green tea)

1 C skim milk

1 egg

90g melted butter

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease the muffin tins (this recipe makes about 15 muffins). Sift the dry ingredients together. In another bowl, mix the wet ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry with as little stirring as possible. Spoon into muffin tins and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden.

These muffins are not very dessert-like. They are more like scones or rock cakes in consistency, but still quite sweet.

Lamb Souvlaki Wraps

This is one of my favourite left-overs recipes. I've only ever tried it with left over lamb roast, but it could be pretty good with chicken too. So I'm having my very own left-over Tuesday.
Lamb Souvlaki Wraps
Slice up any left over roast lamb, as thin as possible. Marinade it as long as you can with garlic and olive oil. You can add a thinly sliced onion if you like.
Meanwhile, drain and rinse a can of white or butter beans. Mash them with a fork, but leave it a bit lumpy. Mix in some lemon juice, crushed garlic, cracked pepper and some finely chopped parsley if you have some.
Fry up the lamb and onion. It really only needs to be warmed through, but I like it a bit crispy (like kebab meat). Then assemble - spread your flat bread with the bean dip, top with salad and lamb. Roll it all up. If you're feeling very gourmet, you can toast it in a sandwich press. Ta dah! Instant dinner.

Menu Plan Monday - April 16

On Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday) I stocked up on meat. Not JUST because my vegetarian experiment was coming to an end, but because Coles had to mark it all down. I think Good Friday is the only day (apart from Christmas Day?) when they can't open at all. I got a packet of sausages for 50c, a pack of stirfry pork for $1.50 and lamb roast for $4. It all went straight into the freezer! And this week's menu plan is all about the roast. Yum. Ryan is poking it with rosemary as I type.

Monday: Roast lamb with all the trimmings
Tuesday: Lamb and vegetable soup (recipe from Women's Day)
Wednesday: Fish salad, Donna Hay inspired
Thursday: Lamb souvlaki wraps or lamb fritters. Yay for left overs!
Friday: Chickpea curry (we didn't eat it last week, so it stayed on the list)

Backup: Quesadilla's

Quick Fruity Porridge

There is way too much going on in Canberra this weekend. Ryan got up stupidly early to take pictures of the hot air balloon festival. We are still recovering from last weekend's National Folk Festival. And today is the Thai Festival (complete with lots of yummy food), and the farmers market, and Kingston Markets.
When Ryan called on the way home, I decided to be nice and cook him a hot breakfast. Being up at dawn around here is pretty chilly!
Quick fruity porridge
2/3 cup quick oats
2 small apples, chopped
2 tablespoons of sultanas
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/4 cup skim milk
Pour everything into a big bowl. Zap in the microwave for two minutes on high. Stir, then keep zapping a minute at a time, until the milk starts to boil. Watch carefully! Otherwise the milk will boil and dump all the oats out on the microwave tray (yes, this is the voice of experience). Very tasty, no fat, much fibre, and two serves of fruit! What more could you want from a cold weather breakfast? This serves maybe 4 people. Or else me, and one hungry Ryan.

Hot Cross Buns & other sticky English things.

When we had a birthday afternoon tea at my aunt's house, there was always sticky bun. Sometimes iced, sometimes glazed, always with fruit. We would slice it thick with lots of butter and it was always very soft and squashy. Easter Hot Cross Buns are just a ceremonial variation on the theme. I think of afternoon tea and sticky bun as being very English - but I haven't found anything to support this theory - please correct me if I'm wrong. In any case, I'm going to enter it in Sam's 'Fish & Quips' event, and hope she's often enjoyed a bit of bun with a nice cup of afternoon tea.

We made Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, not without some trepidation. They involve gelatine and yeast, both ingredients that make me nervous. They turned out really well, and we even managed to add the crosses and glaze with a minimum of fuss. We used the recipe from Donna Hay's Classics 2, except that we forgot to add all the sugar. They turned out really well anyway.
The only other thing to add is that they taste much, much better the day they are baked. They go stale very quick.

Hope you all had a great Easter!

Campfire Cookery

We got lucky with our campsite on the weekend - we had our very own fireplace, complete with barbecue plate. There was a fairly substantial supply of firewood, and the evenings were crisp but not unpleasant. Combined with some salt and some plain flour - the recipe for hours of messy fun.

Something worth noting: The traditional lump of damper in hot coals method NEVER, EVER WORKS.

You end up with a horrible gooey mess encased in a rock-hard crust that tastes like, well, flour and water. At least Ryan's looked edible.

A more successful method is to wrap the damper around a stick, but it will break off (or fall off) if you have the consistency wrong. At least it won't be gooey in the middle, but who wants to eat their bread off a stick?

Given a hotplate, it's possible to make something a little more edible. I couldn't decide if these were more like chapatti's or tortilla's, but they tasted pretty good with eggs. Next time I will take some oil as well, and practice making tortilla's as per Hillbilly Housewife's suggestion.

Menu Plan Monday - April 9

We have been camping since Saturday Morning, and spent all day Friday making Hot Cross Buns (there will be a post, soon!). This means I only have the bones of a menu plan...
Tonight we had a roast chicken breast with some vegetables - it was supposed to be roasted with couscous, but there wasn't any. The veggies in question were capsicum, tomato and red onion. Very colourful, to make up for an almost vegetable-free long weekend.
Also in the freezer is some pork stirfry strips - so there will be pork stirfry, probably on Wednesday.
I have a giant sweet potato in the fridge. The first thing that came to mind was sweet potato risotto, but I'm thinking soup might be better. I haven't made a sweet potato soup before, but pumpkin is always good.
Ryan flicked through my latest Donna Hay magazine and suggested fish pie. That takes us up to Thursday...
Chickpea curry. The ultimate pantry dinner. And an alternative protein source. Excellent.

Roast Chicken with Italian vegetables.
Pork Stirfry
Sweet potato Soup
Fish Pie
Chickpea curry.

Happy Monday! If you got one, I hope you enjoyed your long weekend!

Moroccan Couscous Salad

I should probably leave the poor Moroccans out of this, because even if they inspired the idea, I don't think they'd recognise what I had for dinner last night. This is a favourite get-dinner-on-the-table-in-30-minutes-or-less dinner. With several yummy variations. I am a big fan of any recipe that only requires throwing stuff in the frying pan.

Moroccan Couscous Salad

Turn on the oven to 200 degrees C. Peel and chop a sweet potato, toss with some olive oil on a baking tray, and throw in the oven (you can add a quartered onion, or some garlic cloves if you want). Chop up all unloved veggies from the bottom of the crisper. In my case 5 mushrooms, 1 red onion, two handfuls of green beans and a sad looking roma tomato. Throw the vegetables into a frying pan with a little bit of olive oil, and cook until slightly softened.

Now comes the fun part - add half a cup of dry couscous to the pan, with a can of drained chickpeas - then pour in some water - watch it sizzle! I think about twice as much water as cous cous. Now is a good time to add some flavour - I chose a tablespoon of tomato paste, a teaspoon of vegetarian stock powder, some chilli flakes and some ground cumin. For a more 'moroccan' flavour (and I really do use the term lightly), you could add a touch of cinnamon and a tablespoon of sultanas.

When the water is absorbed, taste the couscous and see if you need to season it. Then stir in the sweet potato (which should have been roasting for around half an hour, and be nicely cooked). Eat quickly.

Everything in this recipe (except the couscous and chickpeas) is completely optional. The sweet potato could be replaced by any cooked protein of your choice (chicken is nice). Or you could throw some salami or chorizo sausage in the pan with the onion at the beginning. This can also be very Italian, with a lot of tomatoes, some fresh basil and rocket stirred through at the end. This batch was gone too quick to take a photo - but here's a photo from one I prepared earlier...

Best Ever Pizza-base recipe

I just realised I've been writing recipes here for months and posting my menu plans for ages, without ever sharing the secret of my pizza. If you have a flick through, you'll realise that home-made pizza features frequently in my Menuplan Mondays. That kinda worries me. But I justify it by making the pizza from scratch. It's hardly an authentic recipe, but it's quick, tasty, smells awesome, and hasn't failed me yet.

Aussie Pizza Dough (or pizza with beer)
4 Cups self raising flour (White or wholemeal, or a mixture of both is nice)
tsp salt
pinch of any dried herbs you like - often basil & oregano at our house, but none are necessary
1 can of beer

Ok! I admit it! I use beer in this recipe! But trust me, it works.
Mix up all the dry stuff, then add the wet stuff. Knead lightly - it doesn't need to be beaten up. If you have time, rest in the fridge for half an hour wrapped in gladwrap. It's very stretchy dough, when you do finally roll it out. Make sure you flour your pizza tray. Add the toppings of your choice, and leave it in a 180 degree oven for around 20 minutes. Smells all yeasty. Yum.

We normally get three big pizzas out of this, so a half batch is a good dinner for two.

Orange Easter Cake

While not strictly speaking an Easter cake, clean citrus flavours and pastel colours always seem like Easter to me. This is the sort of old fashioned, Golden-Wattle-Cookbook kind of cake that my grandmother probably cooked. I've submitted it to Julia at 'A Slice of Cherry Pie'. She's hosting an Easter Cake Bake - which is an awesome idea, especially for those of us that don't particularly enjoy Easter Eggs. (oops, did I say that out loud? I hope nobody linches me...)
I guess I'm sort of cheating, because Ryan cooked the cake, and our great friend N chose it, but never mind...

Orange Cake

We ate it in the park with friends, because it's really the last warm weekend before the Canberra winter sets in. I'm not going to post the recipe, because it's published and we didn't modify it at all. But it's in the Women's Weekly favourites book called 'Food We Love'. We loved it too.

Menu Plan Monday - April 2

I'm a bit late posting this, and I've lost my list, but here is more or less what we're eating for dinner this week:

Vegetable Minestrone
Sweet Potato Pasta
Steamed fish with green beans
Morrocan Couscous
Pumpkin Curry
Homemade pizza

Happy Monday!

Vegetarian Minestrone

My house smells pretty good right now, and it feels lovely and warm. I'm cooking soup. It's the time of year again, when soups and stews seem to be all I feel like. This one's pretty good and based on a recipe from a 1985 cookbook "The Gradual Vegetarian". Not exact, because I never have all the veggies, and I usually have a few extra one's I'd like to throw in.

Meatless Minestrone
220g yellow split peas
1 large onion, chopped
1 large potato, chopped
400g tin of tomatoes
dried oregano, basil and 1 bay leaf
5 peppercorns, 1 clove
3 carrots, chopped
200g baby spinach
1 C green beans, chopped
2 small zucchini, chopped
2 Stalks of celery, chopped
1 can of kidney beans
100 g cooked macaroni

Rinse and drain the split peas, then boil for 30 minutes in around a litre and a half of water. (The recipe book says 2 1/3 1/2 pints of water, but i've no idea how much that is). Add the onion, potatoes, can of tomatoes, carrots and herbs. Cook until the potatoes are soft. Add the rest of the vegetables, cook for a few minutes, then add the kidney beans and macaroni. Cook for 15 more minutes, adding more liquid if necessary.
Very simple. Very yummy.

Been away

We've been traipsing around the country side, attending weddings and catching up with family. There has been much eating and drinking, but little cooking, writing or photography. We came home to an empty kitchen with a lot of dirty clothes, so menu planning is fairly low on my list of priorities. Instead of a Menu Plan Monday, here is a list of my favourite empty fridge meals.

• Moroccan chickpea salad
• tomato & garlic pasta
• dhal & rice
• sweetpotato curry
• tuna casserole
• omlettes
• beans on toast, or potatoes, or rice, or whatever carbs are available.
• corn fritters
• Donna Hay's three bean chilli

Hope your week is going well, especially now that it's nearly over.

Macaroni and Cheese Nostalgia

One of my earliest memories is standing on tip-toes, and being able to see over the kitchen table. Ellie at Kitchen Wench has asked for the recipe and the memory of a food that invokes a feeling of nostalgia, so you get my kitchen table and macaroni cheese.
I'm Australian like Ellie, but I was born in Canada. We moved to Australia when I was 7 or 8, and the table came with us. Nowadays it lives in my aunts beach house with all the other family furniture cast-offs, and I'm on the other side of the country. I think macaroni cheese is one of the few remnants of my North American childhood. It was the first thing I thought of when somebody explained the concept of comfort food. Back then it probably came in a blue box, and was served with carrot sticks. These days I make it from scratch, with lots of healthy vegetables and a recipe from a well-worn Women's Weekly recipe book. I only use the recipe book as moral support while I make the white sauce - for some reason it hasn't turned out well for me since we came to Canberra. And I don't really measure any of it.
Macaroni Cheese with Veggies
Cook the macaroni. While it's cooking, chop up half a red capsicum, a small red onion, a yellow UFO squash and any other random vegetables. The aim is a variety of colours. Make a basic white sauce by melting some butter in a saucepan, then adding a couple of tablespoons of flour and a couple of teaspoons of mustard powder. Don't let it brown. Slowly add around a cup and a half of milk (I use skim), checking to make sure it's thoroughly mixed and no lumps are forming. Stir over a low heat until it thickens slightly. Add some grated cheese, the sharper the better, then remove from the heat. Throw the macaroni, sauce, vegetables and a cup or so of frozen peas into a casserole dish. Heat in the oven until it's a bit brown and bubbly on top. Adding breadcrumbs, extra cheese or crumbled crackers to the top is strictly optional.
Enjoy with carrot sticks, or left over homemade pizza.

Experiments in green cheese

I'd been wanting to make a cheesecake ever since I saw Peabody's Donna Hay event. Ryan had made some green tea muffins for St Patrick's day, and the two ideas converged - Green Tea Cheesecake!

The green tea muffins were OK, but not as green as we wanted. If we could have put our hands on some Matcha Powder, they would have been greener. Instead, we ground up some normal green tea as a substitute. We had more than enough left over for the cheese cake.

Green tea is a great flavouring because it's mild but pervasive. Teamed with something stronger, and more easily identifiable (like lemon) it gives a nice herby undertone, without being too savoury. Matcha powder, used for tea ceremonies in Japan, is finely ground green sencha tea leaves. It's a really lurid colour. Our ground tea leaves were fairly grey, so not nearly as picturesque.

To make the cheese cake, we followed the recipe posted by Peabody. I left out the lemon zest, and brewed the green tea powder in the lemon juice (which I heated in the microwave).

I don't think the picture proves anything, except that I need more practice making cheesecake - it sunk a little, and stuck to the sides a lot. The colour, not particularly green. But not offputtingly brown either. It tasted really good though - the ricotta lightens the texture from your normal baked cheesecake and the tea added some subtle herby undertones. I will probably make this again, but I'll wait until I can find some matcha!

Menu Plan Monday - March 17

Here in Canberra we are on the last day of a long weekend. We've been camping down the coast! I have been experimenting with campfire cooking, but more about that later.
Here is our short list of meals for the week. It's short because we are going to Perth next Friday! Can you tell I'm already excited?
Coriander & feta patties
Tomatoey Pasta
Tomato and Garlic Stew with prawns
Bruschetta

Ryan chose this weeks menu - he likes trying new things, so he flicked through some of the cookbooks I've been neglecting. I'm looking forward to cooking all of these things!

Happy Monday!

Kristin

Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

This was surprisingly, impressively good. I bought some TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) mince when I decided to give up red meat and chicken for lent. I made chili with it - and it was pretty ordinary. This time, with the help of two sorts of mushrooms and some worcestershire sauce, it turned out great.
Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie
1/4 Cup dried shitake mushrooms
1 Cup TVP Mince (mine was Sanitarium, I don't know if there's other brands)
A handful of fresh mushrooms
1 brown onion, finely diced
3 stalks of celery, finely diced
Worcestershire Sauce
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon vegetarian stock powder
4 big potatoes, chopped
Grated Cheese

Soak the shitake mushrooms in a cup of boiling water, and add 2/3 of a cup of boiling water to the TVP. Put the potatoes on to boil, and heat some olive oil in a big frying pan. Fry the onion and the fresh mushroom in the frying pan until soft. Add some of the liquid from the shitake mushroom to the pan, and wait until it's reduced. Take the shitake mushrooms out of the liquid, squeezing out any excess water, and the chop them finely. Add the shitake's, celery, tomato paste, stock powder, and remain mushroom liquid to the pan. Stir until combined. Add the worcestershire sauce and a bit more water if it's looking dry. Remove from the heat.
When the potatoes are tender, mash with milk and butter. Fill four ramekins with the mince, top with potato and then grated cheese. Put under the grill until the cheese is melted.
Enjoy!

Menu Plan Monday -11 March

On the menu for this week:

Veggie stacks with cous cous
Sesame Tofu with stirfry vegies
Pasta Primavera (ie spaghetti with a tomato sauce, with as many vegetables in it as possilbe)
Home made pizza with mushrooms (and chorizo sausage for Ryan)
Shepherds pie with TVP
Curry vegetables

I'm not sure about the TVP. I wasn't particularly impressed with it in Chili sans carne. But I'll try again this week before giving up completely.

Happy Monday!

Plum Tarts

The problem with tarts is that they are really easy to make. And the word can be interpreted so many ways. This recipe is loosely inspired by whatever Jamie Oliver show was on the other day. I think it was about strawberries, and I think he called this a free-form tart.
Plum Tarts
Heat the oven to 200 Degrees Celsius. Take half a sheet of puff pastry, and cut it into two squares. Quarter some fresh black plums and mix with a couple tablespoons of brown sugar. Sprinkle the pastry with more brown sugar, then pile half the plums in the middle of each square. Fold the pastry up around the edges, to make a loose parcel. Use some water or egg to make the pastry stick if it won't stay put. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and brown.

Apple Tarts

Ryan seems to be compensating for my vegetarian diet by craving dessert. He sneakily loads the freezer with things like Lemon Sorbet and then hounds me to cook something. And some of these things have been turning out rather well.

Wonton Apple Tarts
Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray (I use olive oil, but i don't think it matters). Push a wonton wrapper into each muffin hole - not all the way in, but enough to make them roughly cup shape. Bake in a moderate oven until they start to brown - around 10 minutes, but you need to watch them. Meanwhile, chop up two small apples, and mix with cinnamon. Zap the apples in the microwave until they are softened and the kitchen smells good. I did it with one minute intervals, stirring in between. When the wontons come out of the oven, let them cool slightly then top with the apples. Serve with lemon sorbet. Or else cream would be yummy.

Copycat fig tart

I have a confession to make. I spend an obscene amount of time browsing on the internet. I'm not even going to tell you how much. But it tends to take my thinking (and my cooking) in weird and wonderful directions. Like figs.

At the farmers market two Sunday's ago, there was a stall selling beautiful, fresh black figs. They smelt beautiful, but I couldn't think of anything to do with them, so I didn't bring any home with me. Then I saw this post on Mad Chilli, and I knew what I had to do.

Another confession - sometimes I act like a spoilt 10 year old. On Sunday I spent the whole afternoon making vegetarian lasagne, then told Ryan I was sick of cooking so he would have to make dinner. And then I told him precisely what to cook (with illustrations, thanks to Mad Chilli's beatiful photograph). I can be such a pain some times! Ryan forgave me, but I think that was only because I had chosen such a delicious recipe.

Copy-cat fig tart
Pull a sheet of puff pastry out of the freezer, and preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Put the pastry on some baking paper on a cookie tray. Chop up a couple of onions, then caramelise. This means cooking them on a low heat in a frying pan, with butter and oil and a small amount of brown sugar, until they are soft and sweet. Drain the onions as best you can, then spread them over the pastry. Fold the edges of the pastry to make a border, then top the tart with quartered figs, fresh rosemary and crumbled blue cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the pastry looks puffed and golden. Yum.
Invite a fellow cheese fanatic over for dinner to help eat it.

Menu Plan Monday - March 5

My vegetarian experiment is going well so far. Here's to another week of it!

Sunday: Blue cheese, fig and caremlised onion tart, with roast pumpkin.
Monday: Vegetarian lasagne with salad
Tuesday: Fish Burgers
Wednesday: Nachoes
Thursday: Corn and zucchini fritters
Friday: Veggie stew with beetroot

Happy Monday!

Why?

I've been writing this blog for a while now, and I'm thinking it might need a bit of an explanation. In our house there are just two people, Ryan and I. We both have full time jobs so money isn't tight, but time often is. I hated coming home to a messy kitchen, late, with no idea what to cook. I hated buying take-away every week - it felt greasy, gross and such a cop-out. There was also the whole issue of cash - I wasn't really sure how much money we spent on groceries, but it felt like an awful lot. And I regretted the times we ate out, not because we wanted to, but because we couldn't be bothered cooking, or there was no food to cook.

Things are different now. I generally know what sort of things I'll cook each week, and how much money I've spent. I choose where and when I shop, and I know I'm eating good food. We hardly ever throw anything away, and as for eating out, my friends usually come here instead. : )
I started this blog for two reasons - it's a great, social way to keep track of what cooking adventures work and which ones don't. Also, people are always surprised that I cook most nights - "You cook?" is said in the same incredulous tones as "you save?". So I guess I'm trying to prove to myself and my friends that you can be a foodie without spending all your play money on food. And still fitting in to your favourite jeans.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to write some posts about the 'how' of what we do. None of it is rocket science but it works for us, and has made the whole process of food shopping, cooking and eating into something we really enjoy doing together. I'm even enjoying it so much, I've started writing about it!

Muffin Monday (Wednesday? Sunday?)

When I saw this event on Elena Ho's experiments blog, I knew I had to join in. Muffins are a big deal around here, mostly because they are the only snack food Ryan deems worthy to take to work. Biscuits and cookies just aren't filling enough. I showed Elena's post to Ryan, precipitating a huge storm of activity in the kitchen on Sunday afternoon. The results follow:

Pineapple Coconut Muffins
This was my contribution, working from a tried and true base recipe. These muffins were mostly of the bready, breakfast variety rather than something decadent and cake-like. They could have benefited from more sugar, but I thought the syrup from the pineapple was going to be sweet enough.


1 Cup plain self-raising flour
1 Cup Wholemeal self-raising flour
1/2 Cup dessicated coconut
2 Tablespoons raw sugar
1/2 Cup skim milk
1/2 Cup juice from tinned pineapple
1 egg
1/3 Cup vegetable oil
1 Cup tinned pineapple chunks

1. Preheat oven to 180 Degrees Celsius. Spray muffin tins with non-stick spray.
2. Mix flour, coconut and sugar in a large bowl. (I'm usually too lazy to sift)
3. In another bowl mix egg, oil, milk and juice.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the flour and mix as lightly and quickly as possible. Stir in the pineapple chunks as well.
5. Spoon mixture into muffin tins, and cook until golden and cooked through (around 20 minutes). Allow to cool in the tins before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Ryan's Cappucino Date Muffins
2 Cups flour
1/2 brown sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/2 Cup strong percolated organic coffee
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 Cup milk
1/2 Cup melted butter
1 egg beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/4 Cup diced dates

1. Grease muffin cups and preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. In another bowl, whisk together milk, coffee, butter, egg and vanilla. Add to dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
4. Scoop batter into muffin cups, and bake for 20 minutes.

We couldn't decide whose muffins were better - they were just too different. Ryan's tasted nice and caramelised from the dates, but could have done with a stronger coffee flavour. Mine were ok, but needed more sugar. I'm sure the experimenting will continue next weekend, with all the inspiration from the Muffin Monday round up so far!

Menu Plan Monday - February 26

This weeks menu is vegetarian - I've decided to give up meat (but keep eating seafood) for Lent. I made this decision after I posted last week's menu plan, but I'm making up for it this week.

Sunday: Chili con carne (with TVP mince)
Monday: Quesadillas
Tuesday: Risotto (maybe in the slow cooker - I haven't tried that yet)
Wednesday: Morrocan Vegetable Stew with Cous Cous
Thursday: Spaghetti
Friday: Vegetable Curry

Happy Monday!

Pancake Day - a traditional Leftover Tuesday

Last Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday - otherwise known as Pancake Day or Fat Tuesday'. It has long been a great day for left overs - people made pancakes to use up all the rich ingredients they couldn't eat during Lent. Lent is the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter, where in many Christian traditions some form of fasting takes place. Any excuse for pancakes, I say.

In our house, it was a great excuse to use up some left overs in the freezer, and a good excuse to join Leftover Tuesday, hosted by Rachel at Rachel's Bite. The leftovers in question were some cooked chicken (from my last batch of stock) and some homemade cream of mushroom soup. I thought we were the only weirdo's in the world who would make such a thing. I don't think I'd ever eaten mushroom by itself before, though it featured often in my first cooking adventures (things like tuna casserole). And it only ever arrived in a can. But Ryan saw a recipe in Donna Hay one day, so we made it. And I've recently discovered we aren't the only ones - tiger fish at Teczcape has a great recipe too.

But back to Tuesday. I made up a generic crepe recipe (there's a couple on www.taste.com.au if you don't have one), and while it was sitting I threw an onion and some garlic in a pan. When it was all nicely translucent, I added the mushroom soup and the chicken, and let it simmer until it looked like dinner. I took it off the heat and stirred through some baby spinach.

Looked appetizing, didn't it? It smelt much better. Ryan made the crepes - he's much better at flipping things than me. I rolled the chicken mix up in the crepes, then heated them through in the oven, with some grated cheese on top. The final product looked pretty good.

Crepes are great like that, you can wrap up just about anything, and they make it so much more interesting. And they don't taste too bad either...

What's in your freezer?

I mentioned last week that I was cleaning out my freezer. It's not a huge freezer, just two shelves worth at the the top of our fridge. But I use it a lot. All meat I buy gets portioned and frozen, and all left overs get frozen in lunch-size containers. At any given time I have the food for 4 or 5 meals in my freezer - not the 'simply re-heat' kind, but easy enough for a week night. Ryan also likes buying the discount bread rolls when we do evening grocery shops, and they go straight in the freezer as well.
So here's the inventory from last week (which has already changed quite a bit):
Home-made chicken stock
Home-made vegetable stock
2 bags of marinaded chicken wings
Puff pastry
peas
2 pieces of casserole steak
pork ribs
1 Chicken leg fillet, and 1 huge chicken breast
1C cooked chicken
1 bread roll
1 bag of Ryan's latest muffins
2 containers of bean soup
1 container of dhal
1 container of home-made mushroom soup
Home-made curry paste.

This week I'll let you know what sort of meals those ice-blocks became.

Menu Plan Monday - February 19

I'm having a phase of cleaning out the freezer. So here goes:

Monday: Stirfry with tofu
Tuesday: Creamy chicken pancakes (made with home-made cream of mushroom soup from the freezer).
Wednesday: Pork ribs, mashed potato and veggies.
Thursday: Marinated chicken wings on the barbecue, with salad
Friday: Risotto with chorizo sausage.

Happy Monday!

Canberra MultiCultural Festival

I know that for most people in the English speaking world, culinary events in February revolve around heart-shaped meals and chocolate and all things red. However, here in Canberra, we get something very special. The Canberra Multicultural Festival Food and Dance Spectacular! I'm not kidding, that is it's full title, and it really lives up to it's name. There were 140 food stalls! I saw two Ethiopian, three Polish, two Argentinian, not to mention Hungarian, Croatian, the Islamic Women's Friendship Society, Swahili food, South African food, Sri Lankan, Indian, Chilean, Spanish, Belgian, Japanese, several Vietnamese, a heap of Thai...
It seemed like all of Canberra turned out, and if you don't believe me look here, here, here and even the good old ABC got into it. The dancing was equally prolific, if a bit baffling at times. There were four stages, and I made sure I got to see the belly dance extravaganza, which went from African dance, through Egyptian, gypsy, flamenco to khaleeji and some wild and wonderful pop interpretations. I loved every minute!
So, how do you eat your way around the world without breaking your budget?
- Take your play money in cash - and leave all forms of plastic currency at home.
- Eat a big breakfast at home
- Take a water bottle, and re-fill it up at the 'seniors rest point'
- minimize alcohol consumption. well, try, anyway. keep in mind that Polish beer is sold in 550 mL bottles : )
- look around, and opt for a number of small things, rather than a plate full.

I had Hungarian fried bread with sour cream and garlic, followed by Dutch pancakes for lunch. For dinner I had a triangular spinach pastry from the Islamic women's society (they really were friendly), followed by a masala dosai (which turned out to be flat bread wrapped around a potato curry, with an extremely spicy coconut chutney). I have to admit at this stage that I followed this with another batch of dutch pancakes. This cost me around $20. I also got to taste Ryan's Hungarian smoked sausage, and various other goodies bought by my friends. I really wanted to try the Chilean empanadas, but they sold out.
It really was a spectacular day out. It threatened to rain, and eventually did around 7pm, but that just meant a brief rest in the pub. We managed to continue eating and dancing well into the night.

Slow Cooker Chicken Stock

Really good stock is the beginning of a whole heap of really amazing meals. The favourites in this house are risotto, soups and some really simple pasta sauces. I do use stock cubes, but only in dishes where I know I'm going to be adding other strong flavours (a spicy spaghetti with a chilli tomato sauce is a good example). I use ready made stock more and find it works really well, but I despair at the price. So every so often I attempt my own stock.
My latest attempt was inspired by a slow cooker recipe in a new book. I had never tried stock in the slow cooker before, and it sounded like a brilliant idea. As it was I followed the recipe not at all, except for the heating/timing suggestions. Instead I used some gentle guidance from the Women's Weekly Basic Cookbook (is there anything those women don't know?).

Kazari's Best Ever Slow Cooker Chicken Stock
1 Carrot
2 Sticks of Celery, with leaves
1 Brown onion
6 Peppercorns
3 Bay leaves
2 Chicken carcasses

Heat the slow cooker on High. Chop all the vegetables in fairly small pieces, leaving the skin on. Wash the chicken carcasses and break into pieces as best you can (this was a bit tricky, and very gross - scissors help). Put everything in the slow cooker and cover with boiling water. Set the slow cooker to low, and leave for 10 hours. Strain the stock, and leave in the fridge to cool. When cold, skim the fat off the top.

This was seriously the best stock I ever made. After I skimmed the fat, it was slightly gelatinous, deep in colour and smelt really, really good. I've frozen almost all of it, so I get to decide later what to make.

Microwave Magic

I have just discovered two brilliant things I can do with my microwaved, that I never suspected were possible. I don't use my microwave all that often, except for making porridge in the morning, and defrosting the stuff from my freezer. I do use it to cook vegetables, but am a bit snobby about the meat and two veg thing, so that doesn't happen a lot. I don't think either of these actually count as recipes, but I'm going to share them anyway, as completely bizarre (and very yummy) uses for your microwave. Both are courtesy of the forum at Simple Savings, my favourite place for collective kitchen wisdom.

Microwave Meringues
Beat one egg white. Add a tablespoon of vanilla extract, or maybe raspberry essence and a drop of pink food colouring. Then start sifting in icing sugar (not icing mixture!) until the mix resembles marzipan. I didn't think this would make enough meringues, so I used two egg whites. This may have been a bad move, because I ended up using around 500g of sugar. Consider yourself warned.
Roll six marble-sized balls, and place them around the edge of a plate in the microwave. Zap for 2 minutes on high. That's all! They puff up, and cook! If they are still soft on top, go another 30 seconds. This was really fun to watch, and I think I got about 60 meringues. I should have thought about what 'enough meringues' was before I started.

Serving suggestions: Really good with double cream and stewed fruit (especially if the fruit is a bit sour, because these meringues are really, really sweet). Also good crushed on icecream for extra crunch. And last week Jamie Oliver crushed meringue and poured rice pudding and strawberries all over it.

Microwave (fat free!) potato crisps
Slice one potato as thinly as possible. Place around the edge of a piece of baking paper, on a plate in the microwave. Sprinkle with salt. Zap on High for 5 minutes, then watch closely as you zap for another 2. Somewhere in the last two the chips will start to crisp up and brown, and it's up to you to get them out. These are amazingly crispy, and full of potatoey goodness. The only problem is, doing them in small batches, you can eat them much quicker than you can cook...

Enjoy!

Menu Plan Monday - February 12

It rained all day yesterday, so it was perfect cooking weather. My freezer now contains a couple litres each of chicken stock and vegetable stock, plus some left over soup and two sorts of marinated chicken wings. There was also brownies, corn bread and many mini-quiches for our friends' 30 birthday, which is next week! But on to the main attraction (and hopefully more about our all-day-cook-up later).

Sunday (yesterday, nevermind): Cornbread and spicy chorizo soup.
Monday: Home made pizza (with more of the chorizo sausage)
Tuesday: Creamy mushroom pasta bake. (No chorizo, no cream of mushroom soup either. I don't use tinned soup in anything)
Wednesday: Valentines day! I'm going to the wholesale seafood market and getting oysters and salmon. Oysters balsamic & sticky glazed salmon for dinner. Don't ruin the surprise!!
Thursday: Veggie stirfry
Friday: Sticky barbecue porkribs

Happy Monday Everybody!

Balck and White Bean Soup

A few weeks ago, the blog party hosted by Dispensing Happiness was all about black & white. I had meant to participate, I even found a recipe, but due to a lack of black beans, I didn't quite make the deadline. However, I'm just in time to take part in Veggie Ventures' February Focus: Soup's On.

It turns out that black beans are a bit hard to locate in Canberra. The didn't have them at Coles or Woolworths - not canned or dry. I eventually located dry turtle beans at the health food shop. And I'm so glad I did! This soup is funky to look at (even dinner party standard, if you like a gimmick), very frugal, very healthy and tastes great. I apologise for my rotten photographic skills, which don't do the soup justice. I am slack so I skipped the salsa in the taste.com.au recipe. But Ryan and I had fun trying to pour the soup into the bowl.

The stock I used was fairly dark in colour - I think the soup would have had more contrast if I'd used a lighter stock. As well as contrasting colours, the flavour of each soup was markedly different, making for a very engaging soup experience.
As an added bonus, the soup froze really well, so I got to have it for lunch all last week.

Menu Plan Monday - February 5

Oh dear.
After heaps of visitors, and a dinner party over the weekend, I only seem to have half a menu plan. Never mind.

Sunday: Home-made pizza
Monday: Roast chicken and vegetables
Tuesday: Tex-Mex Pasta and assorted vegies
Wednesday: Spiced Mince Curry with poppadums and rice
Thursday: Fish parcels and cous cous
Friday: this is where inspiration fails me... I suspect omlettes.

Happy Monday everybody!

Some Pictures from the big batch cooking

Call me slack, but I thought I'd post some pictures of the big vegetarian cook-up. This beautiful, healthy looking concoction was the Mexican-vegie pasta. It turned out colourful, and satisfying, but it doesn't pack a huge flavour punch. As it was for a new mum, I'm not too worried - I don't think spicy food is supposed to be good for breast milk (maybe somebody else knows better?).

I'm still drooling over all the photos I see on other peoples' food blogs. So when I can steal the camera from Ryan, I've started experimenting with my photos. You can see some awesome food photography at Frugal Cuisine, Milk and Cookies and in any of the Recipe Carousels hosted at Morsels and Musings.

Back to the food. My favourite of our big batches was definitely the slow-cooker dhal. It was tasty, with a lingering spiciness, but all the tomatoes gave it a comforting flavour as well. It's the first dhal I've had that I'm content to eat on by itself. I didn't take any pictures of the finished product, but here's a look at all the colour as it goes into the wok. The onions, spices and tomatoes get a quick simmer before being added to the lentils in the slow cooker. With mustard seeds, cumin and ground coriander, it smelt pretty good too.

Tandoori-Style Chickpeas

I can take no credit for this recipe at all. But while it's so bright and colourful, and cooking on my stove, I thought I'd tell you all about it.
The recipe is from a really old article from Vegetarian Times. And it was pointed out to me by Tracey C at Simple Savings. It's very simple, very frugal and very healthy. What more could you want in a Thursday night dinner? Oh yeah, taste, well it's not the most complex flavour, but it's satisfying and homey and I suggest you check it out. It's also one of those dishes where you can throw in any sad looking vegies from the bottom of the crisper. So mine 'accidentally' has quite a bit of red cabbage.

Because it was so quick, and Ryan was so late, I was able to experiment. I'm a big fan of blue cheese, and was completely inspired by these beautiful pictures at dessert comes first. I had grapes, and walnuts, so I had to try to to replicate the Red globe grapes wrapped in Roquefort and chopped walnuts. I didn't buy, roquefort cheese, but I did use some of my play money to buy an 'extra creamy' danish blue.
It's not as easy as it sounds.
The walnuts stuck to the cheese easily, but the cheese didn't want to stick to the grapes. I mashed the cheese with a dash of milk, but I think I made more of a mess than anything else.

Tasty mess though.

Cooking for others - a new baby!

Special-K's baby arrived early! He weighed in at 5 pounds, and came 5 weeks early (last Saturday). His mum is all fine, but was a bit teary at having to leave her new baby behind in the hospital. Our big cooking plan was a bit behind schedule! So on Sunday, we did a big cook up. And because my parents are here visiting as well, they got press-ganged into the production line!
We were going for simple, nutritious, freezable vegetarian food. And this is what we ended up with:
Spicy mixed-lentil dhal in the slow cooker
Baked pumpkin risotto in the oven
Tex-Mex pasta with black beans
Vegie-tomato pasta sauce.

The chopping took much longer than anything else - but with my mum wielding the big chopping knife, it was all over in around two hours. The dhal was definitely my favourite, but also the most labour intensive. We put them all into single serve glad containers (the ones you can wash or throw away) and threw them in the freezer. Then we gave Mr Special-K half of everything. He was very excited (as well as exhausted).
Oh I should add, Baby-K is all healthy, just early, and will be allowed out when he figures out what the sucking thing is all about.

Menu Planning Monday

This week we are eating a lot from the freezer:

Monday - Pumpkin Risotto (left over from yesterday) & salad.
Tuesday - Tandoori Chickpeas with Cauliflower (was going to cook this yesterday, but didn't get that far)
Wednesday - out to dinner with visiting parents
Thursday - Spaghetti with Tomato Pasta Sauce (Sauce frozen from yesterday's cookup)
Friday - possibly barbecue stuff - i have sausages in the freezer.

We also have about half a kilo of chopped, raw butternut pumpkin in the fridge. Haven't figured out what to do with that just yet....

Happy Monday!

Roasted Pumpkin and Garlic Soup

This recipe is modified a bit from one found in a Donna Hay magazine. Simple, vegetarian, very low fat and freezes well.

1 Butternut pumpkin, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 brown onion
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
4 Tablespoons Honey
1 sprig of Rosemary, leaves chopped finely
Salt & Pepper
1L Vegetable Stock

Combine all ingredients except the stock on a baking tray. Bake in a moderate oven until the pumpkin is cooked through. Place cooked ingredients in a big pot with the stock, and use a hand blender to blend to desired consistency.

The original recipe called for 850g of pumpkin, but I generally use a lot more. This time, I used about 2kg, which makes quite a thick soup. It was enough for two dinner sized serves, two lunch-sized serves, and a litre of soup left for our present for Special-K.

Cooking for others - big bold plans!

January brings me three big cooking challenges - ones where I'm not going to be able to eat all the leftovers on toast and pretend it never happened.
Challenge Number 1.
One of my very first Canberra friends (who we shall call Special-K) is about to have her very first baby. As a present, Ryan and I want to fill her freezer with easy-to-nuke, ready-to-go meals. One complicating factor is that Special-K is vegetarian, so some of my favourite freezer meals won't work.
Challenge Number 2.
Another Canberra friend is having her 'Goodbye 29' Party. Otherwise known as a '20-10 Birthday' or the 9th anniversary of her 21st. She is having a party, and together we will do all the catering. A fingerfood dinner for 30 people can't be that hard, can it? That's not until February 20, but we think it's better to start planning soon.
Challenge Number 3.
The scales weren't very kind to me, post Christmas. I weighed 64kg on New Years Eve, and the maximum healthy weight for my height is 56kg. I've signed up with CalorieKing to track how much I'm eating. They have suggested a diet of 1200 calories a day. I'm not sure if I can do that, especially on a budget, but I'll let you know how I go.

There go the holidays!

I hope everybody had a smashing good time. We drove to Melbourne and sampled the culinary delights of that fair metropolis, and spent a couple days camping & barbecuing at the beach as well. We had such a good time that I managed to gain an extra 4 kilo's, so the food featured here in will hopefully be a little healthier. Happy New Year!!