In The Kitchen - Round-up 16-22 November

Whip-around my kitchen...

On Friday 16th, Darren and I went to Radiohead and had a quick takeaway dinner with friends beforehand. Miss 1.5 was with Grandma and I made them both garlic roasted chicken with potatoes, red onion, carrot and mushrooms from allrecipes.com for dinner. I had a quick sample: tasty.

Saturday 17th, Miss 1.5, Darren and I went down to Glenferrie and had dinner outside on the street, watching the trams and trains go by (Miss 1.5 loves large transport vehicles).

 

On Sunday 18th, Darren cooked up tasty seared pork skewers, in ginger, garlic, fish sauce and Chinese cooking wine, using the recipe from 'The Essential Asian Cookbook'. This was really good - make again!

Tuesday 20th was tuna bake, cooked up on Monday and reheated. Wednesday 21st was grilled chicken seasoned with cashew za'atar and bush tomato and served in wraps with salad and chutney and cheese. Last night, Thursday 22nd, was a beef korma curry in yoghurt and sour cream with potato, spinach, zucchini and cauliflower.

Beef korma curry.

In The Kitchen - Round-up 9-15 November

Quick whip around...

Friday 9th was shakshuka (Israeli eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce) from 'SBS Feast Magazine.

Shakshuka.

Saturday 10th was chicken soup made from all those carcasses of roast chickens, with lots of vegetable and we had that again on Tuesday 13th. On Sunday 11th I made prawn pilau from Bowl Food and on Wednesday 14th I made the prawn heads into prawn stock and turned that into soup with udon noodles, vegetables and prawn and chicken dumplings.

Yesterday, Thursday 15th, some mice (two small children) got into my defrosting pastry...

... but I still made some successful pasties, filled with potato, spinach, carrot, salad onion, leek, zucchini and curry powder.

Pasties.

In The Kitchen - Round-up 2-8 November

We've eaten a lot of beetroot this week. Interesting...

On Friday 2nd, I cooked caramelized ginger chicken from Pauline Nguyen's 'Secrets of the Red Lantern'. This is chicken and onion (and other vegetables) in fish sauce, ginger, garlic, sugar and stock. Very good.

Caramelized ginger chicken.

Saturday 3rd, Darren barbecued some lamb and I made a potato and pumpkin salad with spinach and roquet and croutons, dressed in a sour cream and mustard dressing. Beetroot on the side. Summer must be coming - I can tell because Darren is getting attached to the barbecue again.

Lamb and salad.

On Sunday 4th, Darren roasted a pre-marinated lamb shoulder on the barbecue, along with a lot of vegetables, since we had both my parents and his mother over for dinner. It was a great feast.

On Monday morning, I had a SMS asking if I was interested in a bag of lettuce and a bag of spinach from a friend at work. People ask me things like that. This worked out perfectly becuase I was lucky enough to have my mother-in-law come over on Tuesday 6th to cook dinner for us. She made delicious san choy bow, using some of the aforementioned lettuce.

Wednesday 7th, I made salmon kedgeree using the recipe from 'Home Food'. Although the recipe calls for a salmon fillet, I always add tinned salmon to my rice that has been cooked in onion, curry paste and stock. I also throw in vegetables - in this case mushrooms, the spinach and broad beans from my mother-in-law's garden. This version was topped with boiled eggs and sour cream.

Salmon kedgeree

Last night, Thursday 8th, we had people over for dinner again and Darren and I cooked roast chicken. I marinated the chickens in lime juice and jerk seasoning, and Darren then barbecued them. There were also wedges of potato and mushrooms stuffed with mushroom stems, garlic and parsely, cooked on the barbecue, roasted beetroom in cumin, coriander, garlic, balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, asparagus with grated cheese, and a salad of the lettuce, tomato, cucumber and capsicum. Yay for barbecues.

In The Kitchen - Round-up 26 October - 1 November

Back in the B.C. (before children) days, we ate Vietnamese at at different restaurant on Victoria Street once a month. Everyone who was invited (about 30 people) had a number and whenever they came they had to order that item and then put it in the middle to share (usually around 10 people showed up). It was tasty, fun, meant that we didn't have to think about what we were ordering and was a great way to try new foods, like tendon and betel leaf. On Friday 26th, I rounded up some of the old team and we went to the restaurant that we had rated the highest, but didn't order by numbers. The food was still good, but perhaps not as exciting.

On Saturday 27th, Darren and I went out alone for a Greek dinner for our wedding anniversary. Lovely.

Sunday 28th, Darren cooked some mussels in a cream and coriander sauce using the recipe on 'BBC Good Food', with extra mushrooms. He baked some potato slices with rosemary and salt as well, for the frites.

Mussels in coriander cream.

On Monday 29th, Darren cooked up some beef meatballs, based on the recipe for veal meatballs which involves herbs, Dijon mustard and egg in 'The Cook's Companion'. He added in some vegetables and cooked some rice and the meatballs were looking lovely until I suggested throwing in some tomatoes as well. Upon which the meatballs disintegrated. Still tasted good.

Tuesday 30th, I was in a bad mood and defrosted the pork and vermicelli noodle fillings from previous weeks (1 and 2). I thought that they could go in the left over rice sheets to become rice paper rolls, but we only had six, which wasn't enough to feed five people. Then I thought that I could make banh xeo (Vietnamese pancakes), which was a stupid idea, because I did a big banh xeo experiment over several months a couple of years ago and found the correct recipe after many, many failures and knew that the secret was to let the batter sit for an hour or so. I ignored all my experience and used a recipe from SBS which didn't stand the batter and was a miserable failure. Tasted fine, looked like slop. I'll have to go back and use the correct recipe and make lovely, crispy, tasty banh xeo to make up for it.

Things went better on Wednesday 31st. I used some premade pizza bases and put tinned tomato in the blender with some leftover pesto dip to make a sauce. Then I cut up ham, salami, mushrooms and tomatoes for the topping, added cheese and anchovies and baked. Just before the end, I threw on roquet and baby spinach. Yum.

Last night, Thursday 1st, I made bunny chow from SBS 'Feast' magazine again. This time I was cooking for people who like spicy food, so I threw in the chillies and added hot curry powder - worked well. I also made some banana icecream (not really icecream, since it's not mixed) using an old recipe from the 'Epicure' in 'The Age', which is bananas, egg yolks, brown sugar and sour cream blended together and then mixed with soft peaks of egg whites and glucose syrup before freezing. A great result!

Apologies for the lack of photos.

In The Kitchen - Round-up 19-25 October

A very speedy kitchen round-up today, since I spent toddler nap time working on pricing instead.

On Friday 19th, I cooked chicken wingettes, which I had marinated in honey, soy sauce, Dijon mustard, garlic and lemon juice using a recipe from 'Small Food' and then baked. We had them with rice and salad.

Saturday 20th I made Vietnamese rice paper rolls, filled with a stir fry of minced pork, vermicelli noodles and rehydrated mushrooms, flavoured with soy. The other fillings were lettuce, carrot, green beans and Vietnamese mint, with a fish sauce, sugar and chilli dipping sauce from Pauline Nguyen's 'Secrets of the Red Lantern'.

On Sunday 21st we had claypot chicken rice, which I made using a recipe that Darren copied from somewhere or another. The marinade is soy, ginger, sugar, sesame oil and cornflour, as well as stock for cooking. I added lap cheong, asparagus, bamboo shoots and rehydrated mushrooms.

Claypot chicken rice.

I was planning on cooking a curry with some beef chunks for Tuesday 23rd's dinner, but couldn't be bothered. Then I was going to just use some bottled pasta sauce, but decided that it was a waste of money when I could easily make it myself. So on Monday I minced up the beef chunks and cooked them with onion, tomato, eggplant, carrot, tinned tomato, garlic and herbs. We ate the sauce with roasted vegetable and ricotta tortellini.

Tortellini.

Darren bought some marinated kangaroo in garlic and herbs, which I grilled on Wednesday 24th. We made wraps filled the the kangaroo strips, some potato slices fried in cashew za'atar and bush tomato from 'Gourmet Morsels', grated cheese and carrot, roquet, tomato and your choice of tzatziki dip, homemade pumpkin chutney or mayonnaise.

Although I traditionally can't make quiche, on Thursday 25th I made two, one for lunch with my sister-in-law and sister and one for dinner. I based both recipes on the one for tuna, leek and pumpkin quiche from Taste.com.au, making the base and the sour cream and egg sauce for both, but using tuna, roasted pumpkin and sauteed leek and spinach for one filling, and roasted mushroom, pumpkin and capsicum, sundried tomato and sauteed leek and spinach for the dinner one. The dinner one was less soggy - it actually worked quite well. Salad on the side.

Roasted vegetable quiche.

In the kitchen - Round-up 12-18 October

On Friday 12th, I had a cauliflower out for dinner. Darren had done the shopping and thought that the cauliflower might become cauliflower soup. This would have been a brilliant plan, but we didn't have any onions or milk or stock. I went through my cookbooks for inspiration and thought that cauliflower, tomato and green pea curry from 'The Essential Asian Cookbook' might be nice, but we didn't have any onion, yoghurt or tomatoes. Curried cauliflower from 'Fire and Spice' might be nice, but we didn't have any coconut milk. I entertained the idea of South Indian lentils and vegetables from 'Fire and Spice', but I had a vague feeling that that hadn't worked out fantastically the last time that I tried it and I didn't have any tomatoes anyway. In the end, I made vegetable pakoras, which are kind of like Indian tempura, from 'The Essential Asian Cookbook' and omitted the capsicum, onion, chickpea flour, chilli powder and corn kernels. They ended up being potato, cauliflower, cabbage, flour, garam masala, coriander, bicarbonate of soda, water and lemon juice, all deep-fried. The cabbage was a purple cabbage, which went an odd shade of blue after cooking. On the side, I had rice and dhal, based vaguely on a few recipes from 'Fire and Spice', including lentils, garlic, ginger, turmeric, tomato paste and coriander. It all tasted rather nice, which was good.

Vegetable pakoras.

Saturday 13th we had a big working bee on the new house and got takeaway for dinner.

I bought some lovely flathead fillets at the market and cooked them for dinner on Sunday 14th. I coated them in beer batter (recipe in 'The Cook's Companion': self-raising flour, beer, water and a little turmeric and cumin) and deep-fried them and then baked some chips. There was also a coleslaw salad, with a dressing made of olive oil, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, mustard seeds, based on the Asian coleslaw with sesame dressing recipe from 'Food.com'. I wanted to use as similar recipe that my friend introduced to me last year, but I wrote it on a random piece of paper which I have since lost.

On Tuesday 16th we had left-over vegetable soup, with some added pasta.

When I got home on Wednesday 17th, I threw some washed potatoes in the oven and made a sauce to go over them. This was onion, minced meat, slices of ham, diced mushrooms, a tin of four beans, a tin of tomatoes, some vegetable stock and a little sumac and coriander powder, all sautéed until the sauce thickened. There was grated cheese and carrot to go with it.

Baked potatoes.

Yesterday, I got some slow cooking in. I combined two recipes from 'A Little Taste of Morocco', so Thursday 18th's dinner was lamb shanks with quince (I froze a whole lot from my grandmother's orchard earlier this year), onion, ginger, saffron, coriander and cinnamon. I also made a salad of carrots and green beans in a dressing of paprika, cumin, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil, and the whole lot was on saffron rice. It's funny that I don't like to eat a big piece of meat, but I do love lamb shanks.

Lamb shank and quince tagine.

Today, after nap time, we are also going to the zoo, so I made a tortilla (Spanish omlette) for lunch. My recipe is the recipe that my mother gave me and might not be very authentic!

6 potatoes, diced

3 onions, diced

Olive oil

Salt

Salami, diced

Peas

10 eggs, lightly beaten

Microwave the potatoes and onions with olive oil and salt for 20 min, stirring after 10 min. Add in the salami and the peas. Add the eggs and mix thoroughly. Grease a frying pan and add the egg mixture and spread it out evenly. Fry until the base is well cooked (mine is always slightly burned, Jamaica style!). Then put under a grill until the centre is cooked. Turn out on a plate to cool. Delicious hot and cold.

In the kitchen - Round-up 5-11 October

Apologies for the lack of photos this week. Things are less exciting without photos.

We went to a lovely wedding on Friday afternoon, up in the Dandenongs. Miss 1.5 (at the time, Miss 1) stayed at home with my mother and had a lovely evening too.

On Saturday 6th, Darren marinated some chicken in red curry paste, garlic, tumeric, soy and palm sugar, using the recipe for satay marinade and sauce in Stephanie Alexander's 'The Cook's Companion'. I made the accompanying sauce of tamrind, peanut butter (you're meant to use peanuts, but I can't be bothered crushing them), garlic, chillies, palm sugar and coconut milk, as well as rice and salad to go with it. It's a good recipe.

Sunday 7th, Darren cooked a tasty risotto of pumpkin and seafood marinara mix - yum :-)

I had a work teleconference on the evening of Tuesday 9th, so dinner was reheated curry lamb with rice and peas from last week. Most curries work well on reheating and this was no exception. The only problem was that Darren hadn't realised that I had frozen the rice and peas as well, so he cooked up a big pot of rice to go with the curry.

As a result, on Wednesday 10th, I made fried rice with the excess rice (luckily he hadn't added the coconut milk, stock or kidney beans). I used David Thompson's recipe for fried rice with crab from 'Thai Street Food', but with a chicken breast fried in garlic, as well as egg, soy, sugar, white pepper, green beans, baby corn, carrot and coriander. On the side there were chillis and garlic in fish sauce and lime juice, which is the best way to complete this dish.

Fried rice with chicken.

Last night, Thursday 11th, I made laksa. I have a few recipes for laksa, but a lot of them are too oily - the best one that I have is for prawn laksa in 'Bowl Food' (I put a big tick on the page so that I remember that this is the good one), which makes the paste out of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, turmeric, onion, ginger, garlic, lemon grass (didn't have any), macadamia nuts (didn't have any), chillies (left them out), shrimp paste and stock. The paste is then cooked with coconut milk (it calls for 750 ml, but I only add a tin usually, and in this case I added a tin minus a cup), kaffir lime leaves, lime juice, fish sauce and palm sugar. I put in fish balls that we get from our fishmonger in Box Hill, as well as cauliflower, mushrooms, capsicum, coriander and Vietnamese mint. The whole lot goes on vermicelli noodles. Is good!

Fish balls from Box Hill.

On a side-fish-ball note, I buy these fairly often and can never remember which are the good ones. So! If I record them here, I'll have a record. Going clockwise, (1) is kind of a fried crab stick, (2) and (3) are just fish/crab cake, (4) has a bit of extra flavour in it and (5) is stuffed with spinach (and is therefore the most exciting).

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.

In the kitchen - Round-up 21-27 September

Illness was still working it's way through our house this week, but happily I have remained immune (maybe I am Typhoid Mary? maybe this is the illness I had at the beginning of the month?).

On Friday 21st, I made vegetable tempura of cauliflower, carrot, capsicum, mushroom, broccoli and zucchini dipped in batter and deep-fried. The batter was an egg yolk, 200 ml water and 200 g flour, loosely combined. I made two batches - the first was a bit thick and clung in lumps, whilst the second was much improved. The dipping sauce was some dipping sauce of mirin and soy that I have left over in the fridge from a previous Japanense effort. There was black rice on the side, which was nice but didn't really go.

On Saturday 22nd we had some koftas from our Andrew's Choice supply. Miss 1 thought that these were perhaps the best thing ever invented and ate two, as well as rice and salad, and then had them for lunch the next day too.

Darren cooked on Sunday 23rd and made pat thai from David Thompson's 'Thai Street Food'. This is clearly a favourite in our house. This time, the vegetables were bean sprouts and mushrooms and the garnishes were coriander and fried shallots. I think that this might have been the best effort so far...

Pat thai.

On Tuesday 25th we came home and cooked the last of our Andrew's Choice sausages: cheese kranskys. We had them on a fresh loaf of bread, with a green side salad and Mrs H.S. Ball's Chutney.

I had an annual leave day on Wednesday, so Miss 1 and I went to the zoo, where she showed me the proper way to eat a Paddlepop.

And we were tired when we got home, so we had take away for dinner!

Last night, Thursday 27th, I put together goi bo (beef, mushroom and glass noodle salad) from Luke Nguyen's 'The Songs of Sapa'. I read the recipe calling for 100 g of dried mushrooms and thought that that sounded like a lot, but I guessed it did say that it was a mushroom salad. I only had 50 g of dried mushrooms - that would have to be enough. After I'd rehydrated them, I re-read the recipe and realised that it called for 10 g of dried mushrooms. Now I have lots of mushrooms left... Anyway, this was beef marinated in garlic, soy, fish sauce, sugar and sesame oil. Then it was in a salad of vermicelli noodles, mushrooms, mint, basil, coriander, Vietnamese mint, kaffir lime leaves, red onion, carrot and green beans, dressed in palm sugar, lemon juice, fish sauce, soy sauce and garlic, with peanuts and fried shallots. Oh yeah!

Goi bo.

Update: Oh! I forgot! I made chocolate brownies for my neighbours too, because they are wonderful people who mowed my lawn for me :-)

In the kitchen - Round-up 14-20 September

It's been another sicky week here. On Friday 14th, I was hosting parent's group and made some apricot pies from the 'Epicure' in 'The Age' a few weeks ago. These are shortcrust pastry stuffed with stewed dried apricots and topped with almonds. Tasty!

Apricot pies.

That evening, our neighbours had us over for dinner. In the night, Miss 1 became ill (nothing to do with our neighbours!), but this didn't diminish her appetite (disappointingly) and she was still up for yum cha the next day. We just had some nibbles on things lying around the house, since we never need dinner after yum cha.

Sunday 16th, I coated chicken thigh strips in Cajun spice mix (garlic powder, onion powder, dried thyme, white pepper, cayenne pepper, dried oregano) for those who were into heat, or Cashew Za'atar & Bush Tomato from Gourmet Morsels for those who were not. I grilled the chicken and we had it in wraps with lettuce, grated cheese, tomato, grated carrot and cucumber. Very fresh.

Monday night was the point where Darren became ill. On Tuesday 18th, the rest of us had reheated frozen chicken domburi, which worked well on defrosting.

Wednesday 19th morning, I put together the ingredients for a salad niçoise for dinner that night, which I made with potato, eggs, cucumber, tomato, butter beans and, of course, canned tuna, dressed in lemon olive oil. That night, driving home, I heard a piece on 'Hack' talking about Greenpeace having a guide to what brands of canned tuna are most sustainable. I usually purchase #10, which is "must improve". Next time, I shall try to purchase something in the "good" category.

Salad Niçoise.

Yesterday, Thursday 20th, I made use of the left-over apricot pie filling and put it into the loaf of bread that I was making. The "twins" thought that this was fantastic. Darren was feeling well enough to attempt food again, so I made a Chinese soup for dinner. This one had a base of the liquid from rehydrating dried Chinese mushrooms, with a bit of chicken stock throw in to make up the volume. Then I just added sliced chicken breast in egg white and cornflour paste, sliced asparagus, carrots and rehydrated mushrooms, and some dumplings. Yum!

Chinese chicken, asparagus and dumpling soup.

In the kitchen - Round-up 7-13 September

Sometimes, you just have a bad day in the kitchen.

On Friday 7th, I decided to make some Anzac biscuits. I got the "twins" to help me measure out the dry ingredients and then added the wet ingredients and put the biscuits on a tray and in the oven. I took them out a little early and they weren't cooked, so I put them back in for a bit more of a bake. Upon which I forgot about them. When I remembered, they were burned and I fed them to the dogs.

The reason I forgot the biscuits was because I was preparing a stuffed pumpkin for dinner. This is a recipe that my next-door neighbour introduced me to and I've made it before with great success. You cook rice and add vegetables, herbs, cheese and maple syrup (and sausage, if you're not going vegetarian). At the same time, you empty and roast a whole pumpkin. Then you stuff the pumpkin with the rice filling and roast it again. The flavour of the pumpkin goes through the rice and it's fantastic. This time, however, the pumpkin tasted AWFUL. So bad that after a mouthful, Darren, Miss 1 and I decided that we couldn't eat it. It was the foulest pumpkin on the planet. The awful taste had gone through the rice too. My theory on cooking has always been that I'll give any recipe a go and if it doesn't work, I'll get take away. I don't remember having to ever put this into practice before. We gave the whole stuffed pumpkin to the dogs and ordered take away. The dogs refused to eat the pumpkin too. You know that dinner is an ultimate failure when the dogs refuse to eat it.

On Saturday we went over to my parents-in-law's house for a lovely dinner. On the way, we stopped in Yarraville to visit our old neighbours, stock up on Andrew's Choice sausages, eat cheese kranskies in the park, browse gift shops and general sticky beak in our old neighbourhood. It was a lovely day... I miss Yarraville.

Having been out of the kitchen for over 24 hours, I decided that it was safe for me to venture in again on Sunday 9th. I tried making Anzac biscuits again - this time, success! The recipe is my dad's one:

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup self-raising flour

1/2 cup plain flour

3/4 cup dessicated coconut

3/4 cup sugar (white or raw or brown)

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 teaspoons of boiling water

125 g melted butter or margarine

2 tablespoons golden syrup

Can also add 30 g sultanas or currants or raisins or nuts

Mix dry ingredients. Dissolve soda in boiling water and add to the melted butter and syrup. Then add to the dry ingredients and mix. Place teaspoonfuls on greased trays. Bake 15 min at 160 degrees.

Anzac biscuits.

For dinner, I cooked tiger prawns in garlic, red onion, tomato and spinach. We ate them on some black rice that I had decided looked exciting in the supermarket. It was great!

Tiger prawns on black rice.

Several weeks ago, my neighbour gave me a bag of oranges in exchange for a bag of lemons. They were very sour and I have been complaining about how sour they are at work, whilst trying to eat them. Someone at work suggested that I should make a cake out of them. "But Darren can't eat oranges, and I can't eat a whole cake by myself," I said. "Make it for us," was the reply. So, on Monday 10th, I found a recipe for orange and lemon syrup cake in Sweet Food. I figured that the oranges were so sour that I could leave out the lemons. The result was a very nice, quite eggy, orange cake that was a big hit at work. People are planning what I should bake for next week.

Orange syrup cake.

On Tuesday 11th, we delved into our new sausage supply. Darren barbecued Thai chicken, chicken Montenegro, Greek lamb and Italian lamb sausages and we had them with some mashed potato that had grated carrot, mushrooms and cheese mixed through it. 

Other people cooking for you is a joy! On Wednesday, my mother-in-law made us dinner. Then, on Thursday 13th, I made a zucchini slice for dinner. I used the recipe from Stephanie Alexander's 'Kitchen Garden Companion', which is zucchini, onion, cheese, egg and self-raising flour, layered with sliced tomato. I made a double batch and it didn't set very well (did I forget to double something?), but still tasted good with a carrot, cucumber, mushroom and spring onion salad.

In the kitchen - Round-up 31 August - 6 September

Things started of swimmingly in the kitchen this week. On Friday 31st, I used the murgh biryani (rice layered with chicken and potatoes) recipe from Hsiung et al.'s 'Fire & Spice' to make a vegetarian biryani. Basically, I marinated cabbage, spinach and zucchini in korma paste with ginger, garlic, coriander, mint, yoghurt, tomato puree and fried shallots, and then sautéed it. I soaked basmati rice with cumin, cinnamon and cardamom. And I fried potatoes. Then I layered it all in a pot, poured over milk, water and saffron, and cooked for an hour. Garnished with fried sultanas and almonds, and boiled eggs. Mmmm.

Vegetarian biryani.

Happily, on Friday my new SBS 'Feast' magazine arrived. The 'One Ingredient Four Cultures' section was squid and they had a recipe for muc nhoi thit (braised squid stuffed with pork) that was a little different to recipes that I've tried in the past so I made it for dinner on Saturday 1st. The pork stuffing was simply rehydrated wood ear mushrooms, pork, cellophane noodles and palm sugar, and the squid were steamed and then fried in fish sauce, spring onions, tomatoes and palm sugar. It was lovely on rice, but would have been even better (less salty) if I'd read the recipe telling me to add 80 ml of water to the fish sauce...

Braised squid stuffed with pork.

Sunday 2nd was Fathers' Day, so I made Darren some nalesniki z serem (cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce), also from the SBS 'Feast' magazine, for breakfast. These are pancakes, stuffed with a European cottage cheese (quark), sugar, cinnamon and egg yolk, and covered in blueberry syrup. Upon re-reading the recipe I realised that they were also meant to be dusted in icing sugar. One thing that this recipe did not need was extra icing sugar.

Cheese blintzes with blueberry sauce.

Feeling energised by his massive breakfast, Darren prepared a roast pork for dinner. He stuffed it with his classic Jamaican jerk seasoning (heaps of spices and herbs, including thyme, mace and pimento) and then did the whole salt-oil-crackling thing. The meat was delicious, the crackling could be even better. More practice required. He made sides of apple sauce, roasted vegetables (red onion, potato, sweet corn, carrot), as well as roasted beetroot and chick peas in cumin, coriander seeds, mixed spice, brown sugar and balsamic vinegar. Fantastic.

Roast pork.

It was about this point that I became ill. I'm not sure what I ate to make me disgusting, but no one else got sick. Blah. I checked out of all things involving food and on Tuesday 4th everybody had the vegetarian biryani again, the leftovers of which had been frozen for just such an occurrence.

On Wednesday 5th, I ventured near the kitchen again and marinated some chicken drumettes in honey, soy sauce, Dijon mustard, garlic and lemon juice, according to the 'Small Food' recipe. They were lovely (I ate one drumette!) and sticky, served on rice, with stir fried carrots, mushrooms, zucchini and spring onion.

Last night, Thursday 6th, was pork chop time. I cooked tomatoes and mushrooms with garlic, basil and parsley, then seared the pork chops, and then cooked them slowly with a layer of roquet and the tomato sauce over the top. They were very nice with risoni.

In the kitchen - Round-up 24-30 August

I've just spent the last 15 minutes blinded by a gardening incident. Now that I can see out of my left eye again, it's probably a good idea to come inside and avoid injury by sitting still for a little while...

This week's kitchen round-up is a little bare. I spent most of the week being cooked for by wonderful friends and family or eating out. On Monday 27th, I did make a lamb roast for my family in Mount Gambier, using a pre-marinated lamb with roasted potatoes, pumpkin, carrot and zucchini and boiled green beans. Everybody seemed happy.

On Wednesday 29th when Miss 1 and I got home, we discovered that Darren had made us Thai-style sausage rolls from Taste.com.au. We had a salad of carrot, radish and tomato with a lemon and sugar dressing to go with them and it was the perfect way to come home.

Yesterday, Thursday 30th, I made a stir fry of strips of beef cooked in garlic, oyster sauce and a sprinkle of brown sugar, with baby sweet corn, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, choy sum and udon noodles. I didn't cut up Miss 1's noodles and she kept swallowing them whole and then choking...

Beef and oyster sauce stir fry.

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.