Raw Carrot Soup - recipe

I just haven't eaten enough fresh live food this weekend, so I really couldn't face the thought of having a meal based on lamb tonight.  I had a raw soup recipe bookmarked that I've been wanting to try for a few days, and Simon didn't seem to mind the idea of raw soup for dinner. 

This is inspired by Uncooking 101's Creamy Garden Chowder recipe.  Thanks for the inspiration! 

My drizzling skills need some practice!


Raw Carrot Soup

for the soup
3 large organic carrots, peeled and chopped roughly (my chunks were about 2cm long)
3 stalks of celery in 4cm lengths
1 clove of garlic - use a small clove, or just 1/2 a clove (I used a really big one and it was seriously overpowering!)
1/2 red pepper
1/2 cup filtered water
1/8 cup olive oil
1 spring onion
1/8 t himalayan sea salt
for serving
extra olive oil for drizzling
baby tomatoes for garnish (or whatever you have on hand)
pepper for garnish

Throw all the soup ingredients in a blender (and I don't use a vitamix, just a good quality kitchen blender), and blend until smooth and slightly warmed - but not too much!

Pour into bowls, drizzle over olive oil, garnish, crack some pepper and serve!

Simon thought it would have been good chilled and with coriander.  I'll give that a go next time.  And yes, he completely cleaned up his serving and said he'd happily eat it again.

Donna Hay the Miracle Maker - Brussels Sprouts were YUMMY!

We are a household that categorically does not like brussels sprouts.  Both on principle, and on taste.  However occasionally we meet a brussels sprout (tried to shorten it to BS but realised that was just a little inappropriate!) that we actually enjoy. Tonight was one of those occasions and all credit is due to my favourite recipe author - Donna Hay.

Her December/January magazine has a host of divine looking trifle recipes that I'm itching to try, along with the Red Velvet Layer cake, but tonight it was Brussels Sprouts. (I expect you're asking why we actually buy them if we don't like them.  I'm not sure really.  Call me an optimist.  And we try to eat a variety of veges to keep things interesting).

The recipe is on page 148 and is appropriately titled "Brussels sprouts with lemon, garlic and almonds".  Seriously - if you're not a sprouts fan, give this one a go, they are really really really yummy and I will be intentionally buying them again to make this recipe. Oh, and as a bonus, the recipe instructions are a mere 4 lines long.

Thanks Donna!

Vietnamese style prawn salad recipe

We got back from our holiday yesterday, and today I lacked the inspiration to do a full supermarket shop, so instead went to my favourite local asian green-grocer and stocked up on a huge load of fresh fruit & veg with a couple of little extras thrown in.  I grabbed a bag of frozen prawns (cooked, tails on) while I was there as well, and thus ensues tonight's delicious dinner!  We love vietnamese style food - it is so fresh, crisp, clean and bursting with flavour. 

 (Credit to Simon for the photo)

Ingredients
1 bag frozen cooked prawns, tails on - leave in the fridge overnight to thaw, or as long as possible, then rinse in cold water to complete the thaw if need be
rocket
mung bean sprouts
about 3" of telegraph cucumber
yellow capsicum
1 spring onion
fresh mint (about 6 leaves)
2 serves vermicilli noodles
dash peanut oil

Sauce
juice of 5 small yellow limes (from Dad's tree)
fish sauce to taste (I'd guess I used between 1 and 2 T - but seriously, do taste!)
2 teaspoons caster sugar
generous handful coriander leaves & stalks
1 small but potent red chilli
1/4 t minced garlic (normally I'd crush my own fresh garlic, but I had none)

First, make the sauce.  Very finely chop the whole chilli (seeds & all), roughly chop the coriander then mix all ingredients - adding the fish sauce a bit at a time and tasting to check the balance of flavours.  Set aside to allow the garlic & chilli to infuse while you prepare the rest of the salad.

Finely chop the rocket (I know, rocket is a little odd for vietnamese, but if you like it and have it, use it, otherwise substitute).
Finely slice the spring onion & capsicum.
Peel & deseed the cucumber, slice thinly on the diagonal.
Place the vermicilli in a bowl and cover with boiling water (from the kettle).  Leave for 5-7 minutes.  Rinse in cold water, drain well then divide between 2 bowls.  I had no peanuts, so at this point I added a dash of peanut oil to the vermicilli.  Ordinarily, I'd finish the dish with a sprinkling of chopped peanuts. 
Top the vermicilli with the prepared salad ingredients, plus the mung beans & prawns, leaving the diner to mix their own salad.
Finally, divide the sauce into 2 bowls, serve.

To eat - toss the salad and sauce, enjoy!

Cannellini Bean & Fresh Vege Salad

I had another 'I really don't want to go to the supermarket' day today so had to get creative about dinner. The result was further proof that necessity is indeed the mother of invention. The only meat in the freezer was lamb shanks or a whole free range chicken - and arriving home at 2pm dictacted that these were not options! I did however have 3 cans of cannellini beans! Yay! I love them, Simon's not so sure.

My resulting salad was fresh, vital and delicious. I really enjoyed the different textures - from the crsip fresh veges to the smooth avocado and the meaty cannellini beans.

Cannellini Bean & Fresh Vege Salad

1 small red onion
1 head of baby cos
1/2 red pepper
1 avocado
small handful fresh coriander leaves
1 can cannellini beans - drained
pepper

Dressing
2 T good quality olive oil
2 T lime juice
1 t garlic crushed
1/4 - 1/2 t ginger
salt

• First make the dressing by combining all ingredients in a shaker or jar and shaking. Alter seasoning to taster.
• Build in the bowl in the following order (so the beans and avocado don't smush through the salad):
• very finely sliced red onion
• red pepper cut into thin matchsticks
• cos - I removed the white cores from each leaf then used a plastic lettuce knife (to prevent the leaves from browning) to cut into thin curly bits
• roughly chopped coriander leaves
• freshly cracked black pepper
• pour the dressing through a fine sieve (the garlic will have infused through, and it's better without the lumps!) over the salad and toss at this point
• now add the cannellini beans and the diced avocado and gently mix before serving

Absolutely delicious and nutrionally - well, you can eat this meal and feel truely virtuous!

Salmon & Ricotta Ravioli Recipe

Last night I made what Simon concluded was 'the best pasta I've made yet'.  I wasn't sure how well this one was going to work out - while I was scouring the web for similar recipes, I was surprised to find that pretty much all the salmon ravioli recipes called for smoked salmon and not fresh salmon.  But in my head it seemed to me be do-able, so I went with it and I'm really pleased with the result - and I'm very glad I have leftovers for lunch today!

Note: the photo is of the leftovers that I cooked up today and unfortunately I hadn't dried them sufficiently before storing them, so they're not quite as plump and attractive as last nights, but still a reasonable depiction.

Ingredients

Pasta Dough
Refer to this post for details of my dough, make for 2 people (note I now make it in the food processor rather than all that upper-arm toning kneading - it's just so much quicker).

Filling
300g skin-on, tail end salmon fillet (or about 270g if you buy it skinned)
275g fresh ricotta (I used a handmade ricotta from the grocers at the fish market rather than the much denser supermarket mass-production style)
about 2 tsp fresh dill
1 fresh lemon
salt & pepper

Sauce
Good quality EVOO (extra virgin Olive oil)
1 clove garlic, crushed & finely chopped
part of the lemon from the filling

Instructions

• First make your dough as per the instructions referenced.  Leave to sit for about 30 minutes while you make the filling.
• Skin the salmon then slice and then re-slice into small pieces - I ended up with mostly 10mm by 10mm by 5mm pieces or perhaps a smidgen smaller.  Place in a mixing bowl.
• Add the gently drained ricotta - I just poured off the liquid trying not to lose any of the actual chesse
• finely chop the dill and add to the bowl
• finely grate about 2/3s of the lemon rind and add
• mix gently and then add salt & pepper to taste
• Get a pot of water on the element so that it is boiling by the time your raviolis are filled
• And place the sauce ingredients (including the remaining finely grated rind of the lemon) into a pan ready to gently heat and infuse prior to serving.
• Now roll your pasta through the pasta machine doing the usual process of going through number 1 and folding and back through number 1 and folding several times until the dough is smooth, then eventually rolling it through to number 5.  I did this in several batches - such that I filled a tray of ravioli before rolling the next lot dough.
• Place the dough over your ravioli tray (after my 1 exasperating attempt at making ravioli by hand I refuse to do it without my raviolamp tray ever again). I'm using a tray that does 12 good sized ravioli.
• (probably a good time to begin heating the oil over low heat now)
• Place a spoon of the filling in each depression then cover with another layer of pasta and use the rolling pin (and your fingers) to seal the edges then remove the ravioli from the tray.  Repeat until all your filling has been used.
• Place about 12 ravioli in the pan of boiling water at a time and cook for 4 minutes with a dollop of oil to prevent them sticking.
• While the ravioli are cooking, agitate the oil a couple of times - you're not aiming to bring to a high temperature here, just to warm it and release some of the flavour from the lemon & garlic.
• Drain the ravioli then serve in pasta bowls, dressed with the infused oil.

We enjoyed this with a beautiful oaky Clearview Estate Chardonnay.

Short Crust Pasty recipe (for Cornish Pastys)

Last night I made Cornish Pastys again, this time however I also made the pastry instead of buying it ready-rolled, and for the first time ever I used the (apparently) traditional short crust pastry instead of flakey-puff. I'll now continue to do so!  The result was fabulous and very very yummy.

Short Crust Pastry
for 2 main course sized pastys

200g plain flour
110g butter
pinch of salt
2-4 Tbsp cold water
extra flour for rolling

• Chop the butter into small cubes (about 1cm), add flour & butter to bowl of food processor with metal blade.
• Pulse until it resembles fine-breadcrumbs (briefly wonder if that slightly electrical smell is the beginning of the end for my student-days food-processor.... and keep going anyway )
• Add 1Tbsp of water at a time while running the food-processor until the dough comes together
• Remove and knead briefly, then roll into a ball (processor survives to be used another day, phew!)
• Cover in gladwrap and chill for at least 15 minutes
• tick tock tick tock tick tock........tick tock DING
• remove from the fridge, sprinkle your clean bench surface with a little more flour, and a little on your rolling pin
• gently shape the ball into a flatish rectangle with your hands then begin gently rolling out until you can cut 2 dinner plate sized rounds from the pastry
• and do so (cut the dinner plate sized rounds)
• at this point Simon offerred to make a J and an S from the left over pastry, so he did that while I filled the pastry with the pasty filling, rubbed the edge with milk, folded over, formed the crimp and brushed the resulting pastys in milk.  
• add the initals (this point is optional in case you were wondering!) and brush them with milk too.
• (oh - for the filling recipe, see my Cornish Pastys post - note I got the spelling wrong on that post - I have since searched on google for pasties and realised what a mistake this was and will never do it again.)
• Bake for 45 minutes at 220°C.  (actually, this is a bad idea.  it's what I tried to do last night, but I ended up having to turn it down to 160°C at about 30 minutes, and managed to get another 8 minutes out of it before I decided I really had to rescue the pastys.  So, I need to experiment with this - my original method was 1 hour at 180°C - next time I'll try 45 minutes at 200°C - I feel pastry ought to be cooked hotter than 180°, however I want to give the skirt steak as long as I can to achieve a slightly more tender result.)
• Serve with my dad's delicious tomato relish and devour while admiring your handiwork with that delicious golden, crusty pastry outer.

Monk Fish Ceviche recipe

Several months back we had a hankering for a raw-fish style meal and tried to find a quick and easy recipe.  I'd remembered watching a Jamie Oliver episode where he made ceviche in a matter of minutes with minimal marinating time, so was really surprised to discover pretty much all the recipes I found online required marinating the fish for a minimum of 2 hours.  This is simply not a style of cooking that is compatible with my naturally impatient approach to meal preparation!

We came up with something and I must have hastily scribbled down the recipe, because when I came to make it again tonight, Simon found the piece of paper scrawled with red pen and I spent the next 10 minutes while I prepared dinner, and then again at random intervals for the next couple of hours going " 'SMASH', what on earth did I mean?" as there is a commandment in the middle of the page in solidly printed capital letters  - SMASH.  Weird. And there are ingredients in the list that don't feature in the instructions, then things in the instructions like 'add garlic' when there is no garlic in the ingredient list!!! [later: I re-read the recipe and found garlic powder] I have no idea what was going on there. 

To ensure I have an easier time of it next time, I am going to record how I made tonight's rather delicious ceviche.

For 2 people:

1 fillet of Monk Fish
juice of between 6 and 8 limes (need enough to cover the sliced fish)
2 fresh red chillies
salt (I'm currently using Himalayan  rock salt)
1 spring onion sliced thinly (I would have used a red onion, but didn't have any)
leaves from 3 stalks of coriander
small clove of garlic

• Rub the fish in salt, then rinse under cold water (apparently this makes the fish 'thirsty' for the marinade. Who knew?)
• peel and gently crush the garlic clove enough that the inner flesh is exposed, then rub the bowl with the garlic.  finely chop a small amount of the clove - I used about 1/4 - and add to the bowl
• Chop the chillies finely, removing the seeds, unless you want a lot of heat, add to the bowl
• add about a teaspoon of salt (yes, a whole teaspoon), then (and this is where that commandment comes in) SMASH. Hehe.  So in more helpful terms, use the back of a spoon to smoosh the ingredients together - I have no idea why, maybe it helps release some of the flavour from the chilli.  It's fun anyway, so just do it.
• Add the lime juice, stir then taste to check the salt level.  You'll be surprised at how much it tastes like lime and not like salt!  Add salt if necessary until you can pick both flavours easily, but no so that it tastes powerfully salty (not very helpful here am I?)
• Add the chopped fresh coriander and spring onions (or red onion)
• Slice the fish into thin strips and add to the marinade, check the salt level again then  leave for 1-2 minutes.
• Serve! Yep, it's that easy!

(For my future reference - the scrawled recipe from the 1st time says to rub chilli around the bowl - not garlic, and the instruction to 'add garlic' comes after the commandment to SMASH, along with pepper (a pinch).  'dash garlic powder' is in the ingredient list.  There is also a celery stick in the ingredient list, but it's not in the instructions. And I do wonder if I may have used a mix of lemon and lime juice the first time around.)

Cooking, such an adventure.

Tomorrow night, I'm making salmon & ricotta ravioli because a friend told me she remembers once having ravioli with some sort of divine salmon filling when she was in Aussie once and it was so good she can all but still taste it.  Random inspiration. It sounded like a challenge.  I can't resist a challenge.

Cornish Pasties

While visiting a friend for lunch the other day, we got to talking about what we were going to cook for dinner in our respective homes that night.  She shared the simplicity of making Cornish Pasties (her being from the region and all!) with me and I decided to make them for dinner a few nights later. Oh my word, how simple and delicious!  I am a convert. To the extent that I bought more ingredients during my grocery shop today in anticipation of a 2nd round!

I thought these were huge, but when I mentioned it to said friend yesterday, she said this is pretty normal. I did modify the recipe ever so slightly - I used flaky pastry instead of savoury short (and would do so again) and I used carrots instead of swede, but only because that's what I had in the house.  I'll list the recipe below as I intend to do it for my next batch.  I've served it above with some lightly steamed broccoli & a small bowl of my Dad's absolutely delicious tomato relish.

Recipe - Cornish Pasties (serves 2, with spare filling left over)

• 1 Potato
• Skirt steak (in whatever quantity you'd buy for 2 people. I think I got about 400g, but I had leftovers that didn't fit!)
• 1 swede
• 1 onion
• salt & pepper
• knob of butter
• 2 sheets of flaky pastry (pre-rolled and frozen in my case - I don't mind making pastry, but I can't be bothered rolling it)
• a little milk or egg wash (I used milk)

Directions

1. Cube the potato, swede, onion and skirt steak into pieces about 1.5 - 2cm in size, or thereabouts. [Update: on subsequent runs through this I have concluded that I get a better result when I finely dice the onion, and cube everything else at about .5 to 1.0cm cubes rather than larger - especially when using skirt steak which can be a little chewy in bigger chunks]
2. Mix in a bowl and season with salt & pepper. (nope, the meat does NOT get cooked before putting it in your pastie)
3. Cut your pastry into a circle using a dinner plate or a bowl as a guide (get as big a circle as you can from the square)
4. Pile the filling in the middle (I know there is often fierce debate over whether Cornish pasties should be sealed at the top or side - I went with what seemed easier which was the top)
5. Add a knob of butter to the middle of the pile.
6. Brush a little milk or egg-wash around the edge of the pastry (this helps with sealing it.
7. Bring two sides up and seal into the traditional shape (usually tidier than I did above!!!)
8. Optionally brush with milk or egg-wash
9. Bake in a hot oven for 1 hour. (I went with 200°C)

Serve & enjoy!!!

Apple & Feijoa Crumble Recipe

On a whim, I made Apple & Feijoa Crumble tonight. Seeing as I didn't use a recipe, I figure I'd better record how I made it so I know for next time! It tasted great - the fruit wasn't too sweet, in fact it was a little on the pleasantly tart side, balanced by the crumble topping. We will do this again.

Makes 2 generous serves

Stewed Fruit
2 apples (I used braeburn)
4 feijoas
2 Tb castor sugar

Crumble
3 Tb rolled oats
3 Tb flour
3 Tb brown sugar
3 Tb ground almonds
I'd guess about 40g butter, maybe a little less.

1. Peel, quarter & core the apples. Slice into 3mm widths then halve each sliced quarter.
   
2. Place in a small pan with the castor sugar and about 2Tb water.
3. Heat, stir, cook until tender but chunks are still intact rather than completely stewed down.
4. Halve the feijoas and scoop the flesh out with a teaspoon, cutting into quarters before adding to the saucepan of apple.
5. Cook for about 3 more minutes (or thereabouts). Remove from the heat. If there is a lot of liquid, I'd probably drain some off, but mine was good.
6. Spoon evenly into 2 large ramekins, no more than 2/3s full.
7. And make the crumble! Mix all the ingredients except the butter.
8. Grate half the butter in to the mix. Rub in (I used a wire pastry rubber-doofer thing (what are they called???) because my hands are usually so warm I melt the butter in seconds - not good!).
   
9. Grate the rest of the butter in and continue to rub in - judge the quantity based on the consistency of the crumble (as it happens I put too much butter in and had to add a Tb more of each ingredient - originally I'd only used 2Tb of each!!! This is how I cook though).
10. Crumble the crumble (!) on to the cooled fruit, pat down gently, just gently!
11. Cook at 160 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes, or until the topping is golden & delicious (and a bit of fruit juice is starting to bubble up through the crumble).
12. Serve with pouring cream (or yoghurt, vanilla ice-cream, custard... whatever you prefer).

Nom nom nom. :-)

Carrot & Coriander Soup with Lentils & Lemon - recipe

We didn't have a lot in the fridge last night, but I knew I had a bunch of deliciously fragrant coriander waiting for me to find the right use for it. So after a late escape from work, I whipped up the following for dinner last night - and met with much approval and praise from Simon! (By the time I sat down to eat it my palate was completely stuffed, having tasted through the cooking process and burning my mouth at least twice. sigh.) I'm pretty confident it was damn good though. :-)


Ingredients
1 bunch fresh coriander, including stalks
1 onion
3 large carrots - peeled & grated
1 large kumara - peeled and chopped into about 8mm square chunks
water
1 lemon
Brown lentils (I was planning on using red, but only had brown in the end), about 1/2 cup I guess
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper

Instructions

• Finely chop the coriander stems, sauté these in olive oil until fragrant, remove & set aside.
• Finely chop onion, sauté in olive oil, add the carrots & kumara, stir, add water (750ml - 1 litre).
• I waited for it to start simmering before adding the well rinsed lentils. Season with salt & pepper. About 20 minutes later, add half of the coriander leaves.
• About 5 minutes before the lentils are cooked (which takes about 45 minutes - but I taste test rather than timing it), add the cooked coriander stems & juice of half the lemon.
• Check the lentils are cooked & serve. Top with the remainder of the coriander leaves and a slice of lemon. We had it with bread, but it wasn't really needed. Quite hearty enough with all those lentils!

Credits: for inspiration - I read this about a week ago, but didn't refer back to it until now!

Fresh Ravioli Update

I've been a little absent from the blog of late, working hard, playing a bit to keep my mind off working hard, and sometimes, like tonight, finding time to cook!

Hmm, ok, I just glanced back at what I have actually blogged on the pasta making adventure - turns out it's not much! C'est la vie. Suffice to say I'm pretty comfortable making fresh pasta these days, and as of tonight, I'm pretty happy including fresh ravioli in my list of pasta making competencies.

I had tried making ravioli before, but without a ravioli tray - so just rolling the pasta, adding dollops of filling, another sheet of pasta, sealing the edges and cutting. The end result was tasty, if terribly ugly! And frankly, it was a frustrating and unsatisifying process, redeemed only by the fact that it was really very very tasty. There was a lot of swearing and serious grumpiness by the end of that particular evening however.

Ooh, but one good thing did come out of that little episode - I had truckloads of filling left, so the next night I made fresh cannelloni. Oh my word! That was heaven on earth! (and THAT episode in turn resulted in far too much pasta - so Simon made lasagne the following night! Which is probably the other reason it's been so long since I've made pasta - we ODed a little!).

So, back to present day! We were at a Living & Giving sale recently and they had several ravioli trays available. We weren't quite sure whether to go for lots of small ravioli parcels, or less larger parcels. We concluded that fewer, larger parcels would be easier to work with and bought essentially this:Good grief - why did I ever try and make ravioli without it??? This was SO easy. Yay! I'd made a filling of chopped up roast lamb, ricotta & parmesan with a bit of mint sauce - this was tasty, but needed more moisture in it. It's all trial and error though, and I was happy with the result - I just took notes to improve it next time!

Happy Days! Until next time - hopefully sooner than this time!

Seafood Chowder

This was dinner tonight, and it was Deeee-licious!

How I made my seafood chowder - you should know up front that I had no intention of making chowder when I shopped yesterday - so any recipe I referred to (I read 3) in making this was for inspiration only - the result was dictated by what I actually had in the fridge.

1. Chop an onion, fry in a butter/oil mix in a heavy bottomed sauce pan.
2. Add in a peeled and chopped golden kumara (recipes called for potato, but I had surplus kumara, so I used it - and liked the result)
3. add a sprinkle of oreganum
4. add fresh chicken stock, use the whole bag (ha! fresh as in purchased from the fridge at the supermarket!!!)
   
5. add a dash of nutmeg and cayenne pepper to taste (and I used a pinch of mineral salt - a free sample from Sabato the other day)
   
6. boil until the kumara is cooked through
7. while step 6 is in progress, whisk together about 3/4 of the pack (don't ask me the size!) of creme-fraiche and a similar amount of low fat milk, and 4 tablespoons of plain flour (I actually only used 2 here, but then had to add 2 more at the end, better to do it here!)
   
8. add chopped snapper fillets & fresh scallops
9. cook briefly
10. add the cream/milk/flour mixture and stir
11. add a generous handful of chopped fresh parsley
    
12. gently heat until suitably thickened
13. serve, garnish with a touch of fresh chopped parsley and enjoy!
    

Tonight I made bean salad

Well, as promised, tonight I made bean salad. And I'm really really tired now. Primarily because of continually stopping to take photographs of each stage. My word. Recipe blogging is not my thing! I'll blog the recipe and I'll even try and post a photo of the finished product, but I don't think I'll do a visual recipe again without willing helpers!

Anyway - too tired to create a single image, so have a look at the set on my flickr pages for now, until I get around to it!

Ok, 1 shot....

Cooking - a rarity

I've got my cooking mojo back just a smidgen of late. Last night I made absolutely-delicious, brimming-over-with-goodness soup - chock full of veges, pulses and scrumminess. This morning I was a little late to work because I decided to soak some beans in preparation for making a batch of bean salad tonight. I must take photographs along the way this time and redo the recipe.

This batch of sloup*:

• thinly slice onion, fry off, add a couple of oxtail bones, brown, add water.
• add diced carrot, parsnip, kumara
• add chopped celery leaves and a few diced stalks for good measure
• boil, for ages
• remove oxtail bones, if there's any good meat on them, hack it off, cut it up, set it aside.
• carefully semi-blend the soup - don't lose all the chunks of vege, but make sure the celery leaves are unrecognisable. ;) I just used my stick blender straight in the pot and pulsed for less than a second each time.
  
• add the meat back in, add Soup mix (barley, lentils, split peas)
• boil, for even more ages than last time (ooh, and make sure there's enough water!)
• season. Cool. Refrigerate until required, or until you can't resist it any longer.
  
• reheat, consume with toast. Or on it's own.

* SLOUP: not a spelling mistake, rather an indication that this is a cross between a sludge and a soup - ie its really very very thick and hearty.

WARNING: when you taste this before the cool, refrigerate step, try not to blister the roof of your mouth.
Ooh, another WARNING - if you're cutting up the veges with a victorinox serrated knife, remember they are omnivourous and will not be sastified with the veges and are liable to take a chunk out of your thumb if you don't keep them under control. (gory details - DON'T KEEP READING IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH!!!!!!: I felt every single serration going through the pad of my thumb). I'm fine. So's my thumb. This is why I keep sticking plasters in the kitchen.

Cooking Schnitzel

I cooked schnitzel for dinner tonight. Simon is always a little nervous when I cook schnitzel, despite really liking it. Patience is not my strong point and as far as he's concerned, good schnitzel requires a concerted exercise in patience.

Well, tonight I cooked seriously impressive schnitzel. Thanks to a little help from German Food Guide. Every tip on this page helped.

• Lightly flour the schnitzel, then egg it, then coat in the crumbs without patting it on and IMMEDIATELY get it into the oil/butter mix at a medium temperature. I used Canola Oil & Butter.
• This requires a bit of preparation - I had the german potato salad (made last night) and green salad served on the dinner plates before I even removed the schnitzel from the fridge. And had the oven on to keep the schnitzels warm while I cooked the rest of them.
• I cooked one at a time. And I replaced the oil/butter after the 2nd schnitzel.

Delicious! (And Simon reallly wanted me to make a note of it here for reference next time around).

Stir Fry Chicken and Veges

Simon has told me that I MUST blog what I just cooked for dinner, so that I can create it again. He didn't stop raving while he ate it, and then proceeded to slurp (yes slurp) the sauce off his plate with the odd glance at the neighbours house to check that I was the only one who saw. Although I was actively not looking and frankly I don't think he'd have cared if the neighbours did see! Either way, I'll take it as high praise and a seal of approval on what I thought was a quick easy meal.

Prepare everything before you start cooking anything. I used 8 separate bowls in the preparation! Admittedly they were all little rice bowls or smaller, so not as bigger deal as it sounds.

Thinly slice 2 cloves garlic.
Cut a thumb size piece of ginger into thin matchsticks. (Keep the ginger and garlic separate for now - they need to be cooked separately - seriously!)
Cube half a mammoth breast of chicken (I don't know what our grocer does to his chickens, but I think they genuinely have been crossed with a mammoth)
Squirt some honey and soy sauce over the chicken.
Cut the ends off a couple of heads of bok choy or similar (because I HATE having to cram a whole bok choy plant in my mouth - the leaves are fine, but not the the whole damn tree!)
Grab the left over broccoli (which I can never spell) out of the fridge and cut into small mouth size chunks.
Thinly diagonally slice a carrot or 2 - put in the same bowl as the broc.
Thinly slice a couple of courgettes on the diagonal.
Quarter or a halve a handful of mushrooms (depending on the size).
Thinly slice, end to end, about 1 capsicum - I used half a red and about a quarter of an orange one.

Ok, is that it? Hmm, prepare 2 cups of Chicken stock - but bear in mind you only used 50 ml this time, so maybe 100ml prepared would be sufficient!

Also required on the bench - soy sauce, Hoisin sauce, arrow root, oil. Wok on the gas element, both a slotted (or net) spoon and my favourite wok turner thingamy-doofer.

Ok, wok on, add a generous amount of vege oil. Before it smokes (in theory), add the garlic, this will take less than 1 minute to cook - remove with the slotted spoon, drain on a paper towel. Do the same with the ginger - they can now both be put in the same bowl for use later.

Now you should have quite a bit of oil in the wok - add the chicken and keep it moving until cooked through. Drain and remove to a bowl.

Now there is a brown soy-ey, honey-ey, oily puddle in the wok. Begin adding the veges in the order of slowest cooker to quickest cooker - brocolli (spelt differently!) and carrot first, then capsicum & courgette fairly close together, finally bok choy and mushrooms.

Throw a teaspoon of hoisin sauce over the chicken.

If the veges are taking too long (I'm a notoriously impatient cook), add a dollop of chicken stock to the pan to encourage more steaming!

Before adding the chicken back in, and once veges are suitably cooked (I like mine still a little crunchy), check the amount of liquid in the wok, keep it boiling and add up to 2 teaspoons of arrowroot mixed with a little of the chicken stock. Mix quickly. Yes, quickly - arrowroot goos up really fast if you're not careful!

Reintroduce the chicken to the pan and tell it to play nicely with the veges. Discover you didn't drain it so well and there's more juice in the pan again - no worries, it made a great sauce. Squirt over some soy sauce (because it was lacking a little bit of saltiness at this point), stir loads - like, don't stop, just keep stir-frying until everything is well mixed and the chicken heated through.

Serve and DO NOT forget to evenly sprinkle the ginger and garlic over each serve.

Apparently this was absolutely delicious and Simon would go back to a restaurant to have it again and would happily pay $30 for it. Nice.

Roast Lamb with Root Vege Stack

Yes, 2 nights running that I've cooked. Its a miracle I know, compounded even further by the fact that I've got photos to prove it. Except, to tell the truth, the Beef Wellington was last week, not last night. Ah dear. But, (don't you hate stories that string you along like this?) I did in fact cook last night as well. Last night was the night of the delicious red onion jam. Which unfortunately, became black onion toffee about 30 seconds after this photo:

Sigh. Never mind, the rest of the meal was still both edible and tasty!

And tonight. Well, yes, tonight was thoroughly successful. Despite arriving home and missing the cats so much (they're still with their grandparents) that I really didn't want to do anything other than sit down and drink a delicious wine. But I persevered, and the result is delicious organic roast lamb knuckle, with a red wine reduction, roast purple beans and vine tomatoes and a stack of roast root veges (kumara, potato, pumpkin - 00h, not quite a root vege, never mind).

So what did you have for dinner?

Beef Wellington with Roasted Vegetables

For the first time in a while, I got really inspired about cooking something last week. I had visited my folks and been sent home with a bag of fresh purple beans (I'd never heard of them before then!), capsicum and the courgette chutney I had bottled while I was with them (Mum had already made the chutney, but had to go out so left me to bottle it in their absence).

During the day I found a couple of recipes specifically mentioning Purple Beans, although the tomato and purple bean mix didn't inspire me in the slightest. The roasted purple beans however (and I must find the original inspiration) were certainly of interest!

So starting there, I planned the rest of the meal and settled on making Beef Wellington for the first time ever. I hate to admit that I didn't consult a recipe. The only bit of help I got was to phone Mum on the way home (what would we do without our Mums?!) to check what sort of pastry I needed.

Below is the, if I do say so myself, delicious and gorgeous result! I concede I undercooked the pastry slightly, but it didn't detract from the flavour. And yes, it is VERY blue, but it was a beautiful piece of eye-fillet and so melt-in-your-mouth tender that it wasn't a problem - I don't usually like my steak quite this blue, but seriously, it was delicious! (Larger photos in my flickr photostream)

And yes, I went a little crazy with the roasted veges - 7 in total! Green capsicum & purple beans from Dad's garden, a bulb of garlic, an onion, gourmet potatoes, golden kumara, pumpkin. And a drizzle of aioli on the side. Absolutely delicious!

Antipasta Dinner (DELICIOUS!)

As Simon mentioned in his last post, I did indeed put together a decidedly decadent antipasta platter for dinner on Friday. We'd both had slightly sub-optimal days at work and I concluded we needed a little indulgence to put us in the right frame of mind to enjoy our weekend.

So I wandered down to Sabato (who fortunately are open for an additional half hour at present) and foraged through their delicatessen, gathering tasty looking morsels aplenty. (Ok, so this was a hell of lot easier than the foraging of yesteryear, no brambles to be seen, but it FELT like I was foraging.)

Wandered home, pruned our prolific bougainvillea bushes (not that you'd notice) to add a splash of colour to the table, chilled the 2002 Chandon ZD (as per Simon's tasting notes) and assembled the below platter of divine deliciousness. Splendid!

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

I adore Vietnamese spring rolls. The refreshing taste of fresh coriander and the tang of mint and just the overall feeling of clean, fresh flavour. Divine.

Preparation


Those Delicious Herbs (and noodles in the background)



The Finished Product