In the kitchen - Round-up 28 September - 4 October

Oh! So much cooking.

On Friday 28th, I cleared out the fridge and put all of the vegetables that I could find, including those pesky rehydrated mushrooms, into a vegetable soup. I added the mushroom stock, vegetable stock and thyme.

When I grow up, I will be soup.

We were going to a Grand Final party on Saturday (once I'd discovered what day Grand Final Day was), so I also made some gingerbread cars, using the recipe in 'Celebration', and iced them in red and white, and yellow and brown (after checking what colour the teams who were playing were).

Gingerbread cars.

On the Saturday 29th, Darren also marinated lamb chops in garlic, ginger, olive oil, coriander, cumin, soy sauce, sesame oil, sweet chilli and lemon juice, using the recipe from 'Hot Food', and I made a Polish potato salad, using the recipe from a friend (I halved this recipe, it's still a ridiculous amount of salad):

12 potatoes, cubed, boiled

6 carrots, cubed

8-10 eggs, boiled, cubed

1 can peas

1 can Polish cucumbers, cubed

2-3 green apples, peeled, cubed

1 onion, chopped

salt

pepper

olive oil

mustard (I used Dijon)

parsley

Thomy mayonnaise

Mix it all together!

At the party, Miss 1 ate two sausages, dried biscuits and dip, potato salad, coleslaw salad, bread, a lot of olives, pasta salad and two gingerbread men. What a gutz!

For dinner, Darren made nori handrolls with prawns, tuna, carrot, avocado, cucumber, mushroom, Kewpie mayonnaise, omlette, spring onion and dried seaweed seasoning for fillings. For the first time when making sushi, he was flying solo (I had a nap) and the results were fantastic, although there were some issues with seasoning the rice.

Nori handrolls.

We were trying to get goat at the market this week, but they didn't have any. Oh well. On Sunday 30th, I made a Jamaican curried goat with lamb instead. I used the recipe from Fleetwood and Filippelli's 'The Caribbean Central & South American Cookbook', which is lamb, curry powder, garlic, onion, thyme (of course), bay leaves, allspice and stock, and added in potatoes, carrots and peas. The curry in the book was meant to be dry, but this turned out very wet - it actually looked and tasted a lot like my grandmother's curries, so I figure that I must have done something right. The curry was served with my mother's recipe for easy rice and peas. It goes like this:

2 cups basmati rice

400 g can red kidney beans

400 ml can coconut milk

Vegetable stock

Place the rice in the rice cooker. Drain the kidney beans and place the liquid in the rice cooker. Add the coconut milk. Add stock to make up 4 cups of liquid total. Cook. Stir in the kidney beans at the end.

Curry lamb with rice and peas.

Because my neighbour is a wonderful man who mowed my lawn again, I also made some blueberry muffins, based on the recipe from 'Taste.com.au', but modified based on the comments and the want of a crumble topping:

2 1/4 cups self raising flour

90 g chopped butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

200 g frozen blueberries

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup pureed apples (just under two apples, peeled, boiled and mushed)

2 eggs, lightly beaten

slurp of vanilla essence

Crumble:

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

60 g chopped butter

75 g flour

2 tablespoons rolled oats

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Sift flour, rub in butter. Stir in sugar. Make a well in the centre of the flour. Add blueberries, milk, apples, eggs and vanilla. Combine. Spoon into muffin pans. Top with crumble mix (Mix sugar, baking powder, cinnamon. Rub butter into flour and oats. Combine with sugar mixture.). Bake for 25 min and cool on a wire rack.

Blueberry cupcakes.

Bunny chow was in order on Tuesday 2nd - this is a bean (I used tinned four bean mix) and tomato curry with a grated carrot and tomato salad, all served in a loaf of bread. I found the recipe in the SBS 'Feast' magazine and this must be the third time that I've made it. Very nice!

Bunny chow.

On Wednesday 3rd we made a steam boat, which was super fun. There were Udon noodles, mushroom, choy sum, carrot, baby sweet corn, sliced pork and green beans, in a soup of pork stock that I had frozen, Japanese sake (I meant to add Chinese rice wine, but grabbed the wrong bottle), ginger and garlic. The dipping sauce was fish sauce, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, sugar, garlic and chilli using the recipe in Lister & Pohl's 'Koto'.

Last night, on Thursday 4th, we had pork chops. I marinated them in oyster sauce, fish sauce, honey, sugar, spring onions, garlic and a little oil for a few hours (inspired by the recipe in the SBS 'Feast' magazine' and then grilled them. I used the left over marinade as a sauce for a stir fry of bean shoots, bamboo shoots, choy sum and Thai noodles. Sweet and tasty.