In the kitchen - Round-up 17-23 August

It's been a busy week, with my brother and his wife and new baby Mr D visiting from Mount Gambier, my mother visiting from Brisbane (via Mount Gambier), lots of people coming over to see the visitors, and my birthday and associated dinner guests (who shared lots of cake with me).

Miss 1 meets Mr D.

On Friday 17th, when things were still on the quiet side, I wondered what to do for dinner that would involve pork mince and salty duck egg. My friend, Kat, suggested stir frying the mince with oyster sauce, then folding it around the salty duck egg and steaming the package with lots of ginger. Steamed Asian greens on the side. I totally intended to do that, but got side-tracked and ended up stir frying the mince in garlic and oyster sauce with red cabbage and baby corn, adding the duck egg and some fish sauce and lime, forgetting the ginger and serving on vermicelli rice noodles and steamed choy sum.

Pork stir fry thing.

There followed a reasonable amount of eating out.

On Monday 20th, I was home from work early to say goodbye to my mother, so I made dinner. I used the Beef Rendang spice pack from The Saucy Spice Company, which is great because it's proper cooking, just with all the spices prepared for you. I added lamb (not beef), onion and garlic, yoghurt and coconut milk, zucchini, pumpkin and green beans, on rice. Miss 1 enjoyed it all, with the sauce sucked off since it was quite hot, and we all had it for lunch the next day.

Yay for frozen meals. Some months ago, a trolley of pumpkins arrived from some co-workers who have a farm. To say I was excited was probably an understatement. I used the pumpkin to make pumpkin jam (don't knock it if you haven't tried it), pumpkin chutney (fantastic on a sandwich), and pumpkin soup (with potatoes, nutmeg and tarragon, from Debra Mayhew's 'Soup'), which I froze. After work on Tuesday 21st I defrosted the pumpkin soup and we had it with cheese on toast. I love soup!

Pumpkin soup.

Dinner on Wednesday 22nd was chicken domburi, based on the recipe from 'The Essential Asian Cookbook'. As well as the copious amounts of chicken, onion and eggs, in soy sauce and mirin, my version had rehydrated mushrooms and carrot, topped with spring onion and seaweed.

Chicken domburi.

My lovely Spanish friend introduced me to the Spanish method of baking fish in salt. On Thursday 23rd, the "twins" and I went to the market and bought two snapper, which I had cleaned, but with the scales left on. I stuffed them with fresh basil and parsley and then buried them in three kilograms of salt. After baking at maximum temperature, I unearthed the fish and peeled off the skin. The result is fantastic and not salty at all (unless you pierce the skin of the fish). We had them on rice, with two salads, one of roasted beetroot and chick peas in a cumin, coriander seeds, mixed spice, brown sugar and balsamic vinegar sauce and one of steamed mushrooms with avocado and green capsicum, in coriander seeds, olive oil, garlic and red wine vinegar. Delicious.