Satay Chicken and Vegetables

This is not your avaerage chicken satay. For a start, there is no peanut butter. No nuts at all for that matter. The satay flavouring comes from a combination of soy sauce, brown sugar, ground cumin, ground coriander and caraway seeds. The vegetables: carrot, onion and bok choy substituted for capsicum. The sauce is thickened with a bit of cornflour dissolved in water. If cooking for more than one person, stir fry the chicken in batches to prevent it from stewing. Serve with steamed rice.

Foccaia

This recipe comes from a year 11 food textbook "Food Solutions" book 1. The foccacia recipe requires dried yeast, bread flour, warm water, salt and oil. The bread is left to prove in a warm place, then toppings are added. The surface is brushed with oil and sprinkled with frsh torn basil, grated parmesan and lemon pepper, with black olives inserted every 3-4cm.

After baking, split and fill with yellow cheese, sliced tomato and more fresh basil. Bon Appetite!

Spanikopita

Still from AGT this time from the budget book that came with the low fat issue. Spanikopita, a spinach filled filo pie is a traditional Greek recipe. The updated recipe called for silverbeet, which was growing plentifully in the vegie patch. I added a box of frozen spinach to flesh it out a bit. The flavourings include feta cheese, grated lemon rind and fresh dill.

Homemade Pumpkin Ravioli

This recipe comes from Australian Good Taste Magazine as a feature of their low fat issue. These ravioli are made using wonton wrappers to enclose a creamy pumpkin filling. We had some extra pumpkin mix left over, so we made a small lasagne with pumpkin filling. It was very tasty.

Baked Mediterranean Risotto

This baked risotto comes from the "Food Challanges" textbook put out by sanitarium. It differs from a traditional risotto as there is no endless stirring and ladelling involved. The ingredients which include arborio rice, boiling water, tinned tomatoes, vegetable stock powder, margarine and mushrooms are placed in an ovenproof dish, stirred, covered and placed in an oven for 40 mins. A yellow capsicum is placed alongside in the oven. By the time the rice is tender, the skin of the capsicum is blistered enough to be peeled and sliced. To serve, stir through fresh spinach leaves, roasted capsicum strips, parmesan and feta cheeses.

The risotto had a wonderful flavour from the stock powder, roasted capsicum and cheeses and was nicely moist due to the tomatoes, water and margarine.

Fish Tacos

This recipe comes from Anthea Paul's Girlosophy cookbook. The fish is marinated in cumin, chilli powder, garlic and olive oil. It is served with pico de gallo,
home made coriander pesto and garlic crema (sour cream, garlic and lime juice). It is served with regular yellow shells and taco shells made from blue corn (another kosher find).

Making the salad and pesto was a palaver but my main criticism of the recipe was that the accompanying photo did not match the ingredient list in many ways. There is avocado in the picture of pico de gallo but avocado is not in the recipe. Similarly in the cabbage salad (not pictured) there is pawpaw but again, not in the ingredient list.

Home Made Wontons

Imagine my delight at discovering kosher wonton wrappers! This recipe came from delicious magazine in an article about chef Liz Egan. The filling is mainly veal mince, water chestnuts, dried and soaked shitake mushrooms and coriander. According to the article it makes 80 wontons. However, we had a bit more mince so it made about 100. A number not truely appreciated until you have to fill and fold 100 of those little packages.

These were then steamed using a bamboo steamer placed over a wok for about 10-12 minutes. Then serve as an appetiser with sweet chilli or soy sauce (or a combination of the 2). In hindsight this operation was a slight palaver. Not hard but very fiddly. Probably won't be making them again for sometime, especially with about 50 in the freezer.

Any left over filling could be used to fill spring rolls or turned into burger patties.

Ye Olde Cookery Treats

Last week we had a school camp trip to Tasmania. We travelled over on the "Spirit" and visited many places, the highlights including Port Arthur, Hobart and the Cadbury chocolate factory. In Port Arthur when you get admission to the grounds you also get a playing card to decide your fate in the museum. My crime was idleness and for that I was sentenced to assisting with cooking duties.

The pictures show the type of food usually served to prisoners and the different levels of entitlement ie whether you ate gruel for all three meals or could experience life's little luxuries of salted meat and soap.

Cumquot Jelly

Not jelly wiggling on a plate. More like what the Americans call jelly. Like jam. This is my second foray into cooking with cumquots. The first was a marmalade which was a palaver involving peeling and deseeding the little buggers. Jelly is a breeze by comparison but next time I'll be using the sugar with added pectin to make the process faster.

Potato Gnocchi

Potato gnocchi is made from old potatoes (read: the big dirty brown ones), flour, egg and water. The process of making then took quite some time, but they are extremely fast to cook, provided there is a pot of boiling water on the stove. The sauce was an out of the bottle affair, briefly heated in a saucepan and the gnocchi stirred through.

Processwise, peel and cut potatoes into eighths and boil until extremely tender. When potatoes are soft, press through a metal sieve using a wooden spoon. Add sifted flour and egg and knead into a soft dough. Divide dough into thirds and roll out into a sausage shape. Cut at interval of 2-3cm. To pattern, press lightly against the smallest side of a grater (the one used for zesting). Alternatively, use the back of a fork to make indentations. Then drop carefully into the aforementioned boiling water and remove after 60 secs when they float to the top. Voila, authentic potato gnocchi!

Inside out sushi

Though not my first attempt at sushi, it was my first successful attempt which included buying sushi grade rice, vinegaring it with rice wine vinegar, and following a recipe to make it inside out. This comes from super food ideas magazine and I halved the recipe. You need a bamboo mat covered with cling wrap. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top of the cling wrap. Then top with cool vinegared rice and toppings - I used grated carrot and some tinned tuna mixed with some mayo. Other possible fillings include avocado, cucumber, fresh salmon, spinach etc. Then cover with a sheet of nori (toasted seaweed) and roll carefully to ensure the cling wrap is not inside the sushi. Press firmly within the bamboo mat, then slice and serve. The recipe made 3 large logs. One for eating then and there and the other 2 for school lunches the next day.

Potato, spinach and bacon soup

Donna Hay's instant cook book provided this warming number. Instead of bacon I used some left over pickled bola to give it a meaty flavour. The potato's starchyness made the soup slightly sweet and very easy to eat more than one bowl.

Holiday Eating

During the most recent school holidays we went to the country. Dinners were fab, one night was hot dogs, another homemade pizza and oven baked chips and the last night, a trip to the local takeaway for fish and chips. This snap is our homemade pizza and salad. Pizza is topped with chopped sundried tomato, anchovy paste, mushrooms and onions.

Gingerbread Biscuits

Still cooking from Women's Weekly "Kids in the Kitchen", here we have gingerbread biscuits. I felt like baking but not going out to shop for ingredients. This recipe called for household staples such as self raising flour, brown sugar, treacle, egg yolk, ground ginger, mixed spice and bicarb of soda.

The royal icing was made using one egg white beaten to soft peaks, with icing sugar sifted and beaten in. I gave myself a pat on the back for making piping bags out of sandwich bags.

A spoonful of plain white icing was placed in the bag along with a drop or two of food colouring (in the case of orange, that's 2 drops yellow to 1 drop red), tie a knot and mix so that the colour is evenly distributed. Then snip the corner and ice. Some choc chips were added to some smiley stars, to add something extra. My favourite was the carrot shape which iced nicely and looks cute.

Home Grown

In addition to the lovely mushrooms I blogged about earlier, we had also planted some vegetables in the garden. The selection includes baby carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, baby cos lettuce and silverbeet. The silverbeet was picked today in order to make a new version of lasagne with angel hair pasta in place of the regular wide lasagne sheets. Here are the silverbeet leaves fresh from the garden.

Glamour potato photos

This baked potato looks good from all angles (so I included both). This was another work night dinner recipe found by opening the "fast food" cookbook to a random page and there it was. Scrub and prick potato all over with a fork. Place into a hot oven directly onto the oven shelf and leave for one hour. Remove from oven using oven mitts and cut a cross into the top. Using thumb and forefinger of both hands, push into sides of potato to open along the cross. Fill with leben (the thinking man's sour cream), avocado salsa, warmed baked beans and serve. A tasty meal which combines protein, starchy carbohydrate and fresh veggies. YUM.

Avocado salsa: Chopped avocado, tomato, canned corn, lime juice (lots) and fresh coriander or parsley.

Lime coconut cake and Red vegetable curry.

The red vegetable curry is a Donna Hay recipe which I was quite impressed with. I've found that homemade vegetarian curries don't have much variation in taste. This one however, was different due to ingredients (pumkin and eggplant) and curry paste - I used our jar of korma curry paste that was already opened. Served with steamed rice it was a nice quick meal to prepare on a work night and was easy to eat too.

Lime & Coconut cake comes from the cookbook "Fast Food" which is a short thick cookery book I recieved for my birthday last year (I think). It was originally a lime, ginger and coconut cake but we didn'y have any crystallised ginger in the house. It turned out well - very moist and flavourful and most importantly, well recieved.

Mum's Lasagne

This took up the whole frame and, as you can tell, it was mightly big. The lasagne consists of instant lasagne sheets, mushroom pasta sauce, cottage cheese and defrosted spinach and grated tasty cheese.

When I make it I like to add other veggies such as sliced pre-roasted pumpkin, capsicum, zucchini and eggplant (salted and rinsed beforehand) and I usually use condensed tomato soup and a tin of diced tomato in place of the pasta sauce. Some combos I'd like to try include artichoke hearts, leeks and roasted sweet potato.

The lasagne was served with baby lettuce leaves from our garden and an avocado fan (I was working on my garnishing skills that week).

Buttermilk Pancakes

This recipe is another from the "Women's weekly kids in the kitchen" cookbook. These are best eaten spread lightly with honey, rolled into a cigar and eaten with fingers.

Chef Lunchy

This was my lunch last Wednesday. The lunch box is an insulated pack from kathmandu camping supplies (originally intended as a first aid pack, I think).

Inside we have a jumbo wholegrain roll with tuna, corn, mayo and sliced cucumber. We alse have a granny smith apple, soy life flavoured soyghurt, mandarin, duplex creme biscuit (in glad wrap), carrot sticks, and a piece of onion flavoured triangle cheese. Upon recalling my lactose intollerance, the triangle cheese was removed.

Cheesy muffins

The Women's Weekly children's cookbook whose title is the most overused of children's cookery books (kids in the kitchen) was my cookbook of choice this week.

I used its ideas for lunchboxes as I have completely run out of do-able lunch ideas, it appears. These were meant to be cheese, ham and capsicum muffins, but I rejigged it as grated carrot, corn, capsicum and cheese. Some grated zucchini may have brightened things up a bit too.

Yellow Split Pea and Sausage soup ( a very bad idea part 2).

Last sunday night I had great plans to make Nigella's yellow split pea and frankfurt soup. And while I made it (substituting chicken sausages for frankfurts) it wasn't quite what I had in mind.

For one, it was super stodgy, which somehow congeals in the stomach, making it hard to move. For another, it took an hour to cook (unlike all my good and fast Donna Hay soups). It also burnt and stuck fast to the bottom of the pan, which is never good. That's one soup I won't be making again in a hurry.

Mushroom Mama

Recently Mum brought home a box from the supermarket called "Grow your own mushrooms" or something to that effect. It had been reduced to $5 and sounded like a good idea. The box contains mushroom spawn spread through what looks to be hay and a bag of soil. The box was left untouched for a couple of months before I got around to reading the instructions. A couple of weeks after that I finally got to it and "planted" them by opening the bag of soil, spreading it out on top, and religiously spraying them once a day for 5 days.

Well, I was sure the weeks of neglect would have killed them, so imagine my surprise when I noticed some growing. When it looked like a button mushroom, I thought about picking it, but by leaving it in another few days, it grew to the size of a field mushroom. The best bit is, as you pick them, more continue to grow.

Mother's Day 2007

For Mother's day we went out for dinner at EandS. I had never been there before and while the ambience left a lot to be desired, food-wise everything was great.

My brother (B) had the sushi plate with sticky soy sauce (not pictured), my dad had the mixed grill (not pictured), my mum had the chicken Thai green curry with rice, my sister (A) had the stir fried beef and veggies with noodles, and I had tempura battered flounder with Cajun wedges (which inexplicably was also served with sticky soy sauce. Go figure).

On a side note, we have a small container of cajun seasoning rattling around in the herb and spice cupboard that I never knew what to do with. Now I can make my own cajun wedges at home!

Pesach 2007

The snaps here are just 2 of the wonderful foods we enjoyed over Pesach. The second is a Pomegranite Jewel Cake (from Nigella Lawson's Feast). This was made with ground almonds in place of flour. The pomegranite seeds and juice were extracted and poured on top of the cake while it was still warm and in its springform tin. This resulted in a wonderfully moist cake with sparkling jewel seeds.

The first picture is of our 3 Pesach ducks. Just as Mum & I were preparing to cook them, I came across a Jamie Oliver recipe in a copy of Delicious magazine. The recipe involved roasting them with some carrot, onion and celecry chopped up and it the bottom of the roasting pan. After they roast, the veggies are meant to be discarded but were so flavourful from the duck fat, that they were saved and eaten.