WWDH - Asian Spiced Lemongrass Pork

 For Wednesday with Donna Hay this week, I made Asian Spiced Lemongrass Pork from Everyday Fresh.

This dish involves making a stir fry paste with ginger, garlic, chilli, lemongrass and Kaffir lime (the latter of which I left out because I didn’t have it). This paste is cooked until fragrant in a fry pan, before the pork mince is added and stir fried until golden. Finally, a sauce of rice wine vinegar, brown sugar and fish sauce is added to the mince and cooked until the sugar dissolves.

Donna suggests a number of ways to serve this mince. I went my own way with rice, green beans and carrots as sides.

To see more Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte and Margaret.

TWD - Asparagus-Lemon Quiche

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie (Baking with Dorie) recipe is Asparagus-Lemon Quiche.

As the name suggests, the quiche is filled with chopped asparagus and chopped lemon (including the rind). The top is decorated with asparagus heads and sprinkled with parmesan.

The flavour combination is delicate and the quiche looks elegant. I served mine with salad:

This is such a gorgeous quiche, I would definitely make this again.

To see what everyone else made this week and their thoughts on it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

My Mother’s “Hotch Potch” - Beef Stew

 

It’s cold here and definitely a good time for stews and hearty meals. One of my favourite stews is my mother’s hotch potch, pictured.

There is no set recipe for this - it’s about using what you have. In rough terms, to a large casserole dish, I added 500g cubed chuck steak that had been tossed in a mixture of salt and plain flour (I did this in a freezer bag for easy clean up), 500g peeled and chopped potatoes, and whatever other veg you have to hand (I used carrots and beans, but mixed frozen veg works a treat). Take a generous heaped metal tablespoon (the big spoon not a baking measure) full of plain flour and mix it with just enough water to make a paste - put that in the casserole dish with the meat and veg, and shake in some Worcestershire sauce and tomato sauce to taste. Crumble in a beef stock cube, season with salt and pepper to taste, then add enough water to the pot to just cover the meat and veg.

Cook in a preheated 180 degree Celsius oven for around 2 hours, and that’s it.

The crucial step is using enough flour to make the sauce thicken, otherwise you end up with tasteless watery stew (which I have done a number of times). 

A perfect dish served with crusty bread to soak up all of that  yummy sauce.

WWDH - Balsamic Chicken Pot Roast

Today’s Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe is Balsamic Chicken Pot Roast from One Pan Perfect. 

This is a super easy dish - there is no pre-cooking involved, just prep your chicken and veg, plonk it into a large casserole dish and roast:
 

I served my pot roast with roasted pumpkin and broccoli.

To see some other Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte and Margaret.

WWDH - Spiced Almond Roasted Chicken

This week’s Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe is Spiced Almond Roasted Chicken. 

This recipe involves coating chicken breasts, chickpeas, currants and almonds with a mixture of olive oil, honey, cumin, cinnamon and lemon, and tossing in some crumbled feta before roasting in a hot oven.

I halved the chickpeas and feta used, as the recipe amounts seemed a little too much for me.

 I served mine with chilli roasted broccoli and boiled frozen veg.

This was an easy, tasty dish that I’d happily make again.

To see some other Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte at Grandma’s Kitchen Table, and Margaret at Tea and Scones.

WWDH - Flat-Roast Chicken with Almond and Mint

This week’s Wednesday with Donna Hay is Flat-RoastedChicken with Almond and Mint, from her Seasons cookbook.

It is what it says on the tin - a butterflied roast chicken served with a toasted almond and mint sauce:

 It was an ok dish - it’s not dissimilar to something I would ordinarily make, zhouzed up a bit.

To see some other Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte at Grandma’s Kitchen Table, and Margaret at Tea and Scones.

WWDH - Chicken and Potato Tray Bake

 This week’s WWDH recipe comes from One Pan Perfect, released last year. The recipe was called Chicken, Chorizo and Potato Tray Bake, but I couldn’t get chorizo, so I left it out.

I also thought that 1kg of potatoes was excessive, so I halved it. Other vegetables baked with the chicken are red onion and kale.

I really liked how easy and tasty this dish is.

To see some other Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte at Grandma’s Kitchen Table, and Margaret at Tea and Scones.

WWDH - Donna Hay’s Essential Mince Mixture

 This week’s Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe is Donna’s Essential Mince Mixture, baked as rissoles.

You can find the recipe online here.

Once you have made the mince mixture, it’s up to you how you cook it. I shaped it into rissoles and baked them at 180 degrees Celsius for around half an hour.

That’s parmesan cheese oozing out onto the baking tray - they have plenty of cheese in them.

To check out some more Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte at Grandma’s Kitchen Table, Margaret at Tea and Scones.

WWDH - Mustard and Fennel Pork

 This week’s Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe is Mustard and Fennel Pork. The recipe is online here.

I took liberties with this recipe. I left out the skewers and chose my own sides, including my own choice of fennel salad that I’d already made.

To check out some more Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte at Grandma’s Kitchen Table, Margaret at Tea and Scones, and Peggy at Pantry Revisited.    

WWDH - One Pot Ginger Chicken

This week’s Wednesday with Donna Hay recipe is One Pot Ginger Chicken, from Donna’s new book, One Pan Perfect.

Donna was inspired by Hainanese Chicken with the flavours in this dish - ginger, chilli, garlic.

 This is a really tasty and healthy dish, and low fuss to make.

To check out some more Donna Hay dishes, visit Kayte at Grandma’s Kitchen Table, Margaret at Tea and Scones, and Peggy at Pantry Revisited.  

Bridget Jones’ Pan Fried Salmon with Pinenut Salsa

 

"Bridget, this baby situation threw me initially. We squashed an entire relationship into one night and skipped straight to the starting a family phase. We never even had a real second date, but just so you know I would have taken you to Ottolenghi’s, an amazing place in Notting Hill. You would have had the grilled salmon and pine nut salsa. It’s unbelievable AND healthy." Jack in Bridget Jones' s Baby

In the movie, Bridget Jones' Baby, Jack tells Bridget that he would have taken her to Ottolenghi's restaurant for their second date, and that she would have ordered the grilled salmon and pine nut salsa.  That dish did not exist  on Ottolenghi's menu, but to fill the gap, Ottolenghi developed a recipe for this dish for his cookbook, Ottolenghi Simple.

I have Ottolenghi Simple, and I am also a Bridget Jones fan, so I had to make this salmon dish for myself.  And I am glad that I did.  It is tasty, with a mix of sweet (from currants) and savoury flavours.

If you fancy bringing a little movie magic into your life by making this dish, you will need:

100g currants

4 salmon fillets, skin on

100ml olive oil

4 celery sticks cut into 1 cm dice

30g pine nuts, roughly chopped

40g capers + 2 tablespoons of their brine

40g large green olives cut into 1cm dice

a pinch of saffron mixed with a tablespoon of hot water

20g parsley, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 teaspoon lemon juice

salt and pepper

Cover the currants with boiling water and soak for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, mix the salmon with 2 teaspooons olive oil, salt and pepper.  Set aside.

Put 75ml olive oil into a large frying pan over high heat.  Add the celery and pine nuts and fry for 4-5 minutes.  Once the nuts have browned, remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the capers, the brine, the saffron in its water, the olives and a pinch of salt.  Drain the currants, then add them, the parsley, the lemon juice and lemon zest to the mixture.  Stir through, then set aside.

Put a tablespoon of olive oil into a fry pan, and once hot, add the salmon, skin side down, and fry for 3 minutes or until the skin is crisp.  Flip the salmon and cook for another 2-4 minutes, dpeending on how you like your salmon.  Remove from the pan and set aside. 

Place each of the salmon filets onto a plate, and spoon over the salsa.

Enjoy!  

Orecchiette with Prawns and Zucchini

Nigella Lawson has said that she likes to keep frozen prawns on hand to make a prawn dish whenever she fancied it.  Inspired by this, I grabbed a tray of prawns at the supermarket recently with this orecchiette dish in mind. The recipe comes from Taste.com.

This dish is a terrific all in one, and dead easy to make.  If you'd like to try it, you will need:

400g orecchiette

60ml olive oil

2 crushed cloves garlic

2 tablespoons capers, rinsed

2 small chillies, seeded and finely chopped

2 zucchini, finely diced

700g medium green king prawns, deveined and cut into 3 (I just used small prawns)

2 cups baby spinach

1/2 cup mint leaves, torn

juice of half a lemon

salt

Cook the pasta and drain, retaining 1/3 cup cooking water.

In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a frying pan.  Add garlic, capers, zucchini, chillies and a half teaspoon of salt  and cook, stirring, for three minutes.  Add the prawns and cook on high until the prawns are cooked through.

Add the pasta, three quarters of the mint, spinach and lemon juice to the prawn mixture and mix to combine.  Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with the remaining mint.

Serve and enjoy!

My Mum’s Meatballs in Tomato Soup

 I had a hankering recently for the meatballs baked in tomato soup that my mum makes. I rang her for the recipe so I could make them. It always makes me laugh when she gives me a recipe because the quantities are so I exact.

There is not much else to say about these meatballs except that they are good! If you would like to try them, you will need:

500g beef mince

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons tomato sauce

1 onion, finely chopped

1 egg

2 slices bread, processed into crumbs

1 x 400g tin tomato soup

plain flour or dried breadcrumbs to roll the meatballs in

1/2 soup can of cold water

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

In a large bowl, mix together all of the ingredients except the soup, water and flour.  Make balls of the desired size from the mixture with wet hands.

Roll the meatballs in flour (or dried breadcrumbs) and place in a large casserole dish. Pour over the tomato soup, then the water.

Bake the meatballs in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. Serve with rice and vegetables.

One-Pot Sticky Salmon

Recently, searching for new ways to cook salmon, I found this One-Pot Sticky Salmon on Taste.com.au. I liked this recipe because the salmon is flavoured with oranges.

Not only does it taste good, but it looks pretty:

If you would like to try this dish, you will need:

4 salmon fillets

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves garlic

2 teaspoons cornflour 

1 teaspoon fennel seeds (I skipped these)

1/3 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup orange juice

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 orange, thinly sliced

Season the salmon with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, and cook the salmon, roughly 3 minutes per side, over medium high heat.

In a jug, combine the cornflour, garlic, fennel seeds, stock, orange juice and maple syrup. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour the maple syrup mixture over the salmon, and cook for 4 minutes or until the sauce is thickened.

Top the salmon with the sliced orange. (I cooked the orange for a minute or so in the pan.)

Serve with rice and vegetables.

 

Beef Goulash and Braised Cabbage

One of my more recent cookbook purchases is Just Add Love, by Irris Makler.  The byline is "Holocaust survivors share their stories and recipes".  The recipes come from Jewish women from all over Australia, and includes not just recipes, but the stories of the people behind them. It really is a fascinating and inspiring read.

As it is still quite cold in Melbourne, and I wanted to find a way to use the stewing beef I had in the freezer, I turned to this book for recipes.  I wasn't disappointed - Annetta Able, a woman of Czech origin, had contributed a recipe for beef goulash.  The goulash was thick and rich and hearty - perfect for a cold night.

I bought cabbage to go with the beef goulash, and Just Add Love has a recipe from Rita Ross for braised red cabbage that intrigued me because it contains apple.  I had a green cabbage - no matter - and a single Granny Smith apple, so this seemed like the perfect recipe for me.  Rita says that the juxtaposition of the sweet and sour make this braised cabbage, and I agree - I really enjoyed the freshness of the braised cabbage which resulted from the sweetness of the apple with the  tartness of lemon, both of which help to lift the cabbage out of the realms of the mundane.

To make Annetta's goulash, you will need:

1kg stewing beef, cubed

1 finely chopped red capsicum

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 finely chopped onions

2 tablespoons paprika

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup beef stock

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

Heat the oil in a large pot and fry the onion until translucent.  Add the beef and fry until the beef is browned.  Add the paprika and salt and stir to combine.

Add the stock, capsicum, tomato paste and caraway seeds,  and bring the mixture to the boil.  Turn down the heat to a bare simmer, cover the pot, and simmer for two hours, stirring occasionally.  If you need more water, add it half a cup at a time, and check every half an hour to ensure that the goulash does not boil dry.  The aim is for all of the water to be absorbed into the sauce, so don't add too much.

The goulash is ready when the meat is soft and tender.  Adjust the seasoning as necessary.

For the braised cabbage, you will need:

1 finely chopped onion

1/2 cabbage, shredded (the recipe says red, I used green)

2 tablespoons vinegar

2  green apples, peel on, roughly chopped (I used one as I only had one)

rind of 1 lemon

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

salt and pepper to taste

Fry the onion in a large frypan until translucent. Add the cabbage and the vinegar to the frypan and stir to combine.  Add the lemon juice, apples, lemon rind and caraway seeds and mix well, and season to taste.

Cover the frypan and cook on low heat for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Before serving, take out the lemon rind.

I served the goulash and cabbage with mashed potato - a perfect accompaniment for me, but you could also serve with pasta, rice or nockerl, as suggested in the recipe.

African Drumsticks for Christmas in July

 

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  Charles Dickens 

Yesterday was Christmas in July, and I decided to celebrate by making myself  a special dinner.

I had some chicken drumsticks in the freezer, so rather than buy something else, I decided to jazz up the drumsticks.  Looking through my cookbooks, a recipe from Nigella Kitchen for African Drumsticks caught my eye.  With a marinade of Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, mustard, ginger, apricot jam and onion, the flavours sang from the page. The marinade has a delightful sticky zing to it, sure to put the fire in anyone's belly.

Here's my dinner, ready to go, with African drumsticks, roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, beans a la Sunday and honey carrots - oooh, and  cheeky glass of red, my first since March:

Here are the drumsticks fresh out of the oven:

and the roast vegetables:

To make Nigella's African Drumsticks, you will need:

80ml Worcestershire sauce

45ml tomato sauce

2 teaspoons mustard powder (I just used Dijon mustard)

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon apricot jam (I used Pam's apricot an ginger jam, a souvenir of New Zealand)

1 peeled and finely chopped onion

8 chicken drumsticks

1 tablespoon olive oil  

In a wide, shallow dish, mix together all of the ingredients except for the chicken and the oil.

Use the oil to coat the base of a baking tin just big enough for the drumsticks.  Coat the chicken by dipping each drumstick into the marinade, then place into the baking tin.  Pour any leftover marinade over the chicken, and leave it to chill in the fridge for 4 hours.   

When you are ready to cook the chicken, preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.  Put the chicken in the baking tin into the oven and cook for 45 minutes - 1 hour (depending on your oven), basting the drumsticks with the marinade a couple of times during the cooking process.   

Serve the drumsticks lavishly coated with any excess marinade left in the baking tin.

No Christmas celebration is complete without pudding, so I made rum balls:

seen here with a slice of Maggie Beer's Christmas pudding (shop bought) and warm custard:   

For the connoisseurs, here's a close up of the Christmas pudding and custard:

Did you celebrate Christmas in July?  If so, what did you do to celebrate? 

Pork meatball curry

 

I see you're wearing a white shirt and eating curry.  I too like to live dangerously. 

I am a member of the Quarantine with Jam and Claire Facebook group.  Jam is Jamila, and once every few weeks, she co-hosts a cook-along session on Facebook Live.  One of those sessions is Substitution Cooking, which she co-hosts with Alice Zaslavsky, who blogs as Alice In Frames and first entered Australian loungerooms on Master Chef.  Here they are in yesterday's Substitution Cooking session: 

I haven't ever cooked along before, although I have just watched, but yesterday's recipe took my fancy - a pork meatball curry with a Thai-style curry sauce.  I already had all of the ingredients and I am always scratching my head as to what to make for dinner, so this was the perfect time to jump in and cook along.

The recipe we used was based on Smitten Kitchen's Braised Ginger Meatballs in Coconut Broth.  It's not something I would have been attracted to from the title, especially as the original is described as a soup rather than a curry, but when described as a pork mince curry, I was there.

Here's my meatballs and sauce at the nearly done phase.  The meatballs are baked; quite a bit of fat came out of the meat during the process.  I liked the idea of the meatballs being baked rather than fried, and they stayed quite juicy.  The curry sauce is based on coconut milk and chicken stock flavoured with lime, chilli, turmeric, garlic and ginger.  Despite this not being a dish I would have chosen myself, I am glad that I cooked along with the Substitution Cooking Group and made it - it was delicious, and I'd make it again.  

To make this delicious, fragrant curry, you will need:

900g pork mince (I used half and half pork and pork and veal mince)

2 eggs

3 tablespoons panko breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons finely chopped peeled fresh ginger

4 cloves garlic (I just used minced garlic in a tube)

2 tablespoons fish sauce

400g can coconut milk

2 cups (500ml) chicken stock

1/4 cup thinly sliced peeled fresh ginger

2 fresh red chillies, deseeded and thinly sliced

zest of 1 lime and juice of half a lime

2 teaspoons ground turmeric

1/2 teaspoon white sugar

a few handfuls of baby spinach

salt to taste

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius, and line a baking tray with baking paper.

For the meatballs, in a large bowl, mix together the mince, breadcrumbs, eggs, 2 tablespoons ginger, 2 cloves minced garlic, 1 tablespoon fish sauce and salt to taste.  Use your hands - it's the easiest and best way.  Roll the mince mixture into golf-ball sized balls and place an inch apart on the baking tray.  Bake the meatballs for 15 minutes or until golden.

In the meantime, make the sauce.  In a large high sided fry pan or a Dutch oven, mix together the coconut milk, sugar, 1 tablespoon fish sauce, chilli, 1/4 cup ginger, chicken stock, turmeric, 2 cloves minced garlic, lime juice and zest, and season with salt.  Simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove the meatballs from the oven, and place into the sauce.  Simmer for a further 15 minutes.  Just before serving, add the spinach to the pot and stir through until just wilted.

Serve with rice and extra fresh chopped red chilli, if desired.  

 

Chicken Jalfreze

 

Life never gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate.

EM Forster, A Passage To India

Just when I had hope that we could go about our business with caution, and had enjoyed a couple of meals out with friends and caught public transport without fear, there has been a spike in virus cases and I feel like I am back at square one. My suburb has not gone back to tougher restrictions, but I no longer feel the same sense of freedom, as though I can return to some semblance of normality and it will be ok. It doesn’t feel ok at all, and as the weeks go by, it becomes harder to believe that it ever will be.

One of the recipes posted by colleagues on our Intranet socials recently for the Pandemic Cookbook was Chicken Jalfreze. I love a good curry and it’s certainly good curry weather here at the moment, so I was keen to try out the recipe.

I was glad I did - this curry has just the right amount of heat and hit the spot on our typical cold, grey winter evenings.

To make this curry for yourself, you will need:

8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1 tablespoon of oil 

500ml of passata

1 large onion, chopped

1 green capsicum, chopped

1 red capsicum, chopped

2 red chillis, chopped

2½ teaspoons curry powder

2 teaspoons garam masala

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 cloves garlic, chopped

½ teaspoon chilli powder

 

Heat oil in a large pan and cook chicken pieces until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.

Place in the slow cooker. 

Add passata, onion, capsicums, chillies, curry powder, garam masala, coriander, cumin, garlic, and chili powder. Stir to combine. 

Cook on low heat for about 6 hours. If you prefer a thicker sauce, add some cornflour combined into a thick paste with a bit of cold water at the end and stir through the sauce until you achieve the desired thickness. (My sauce was already very thick.)

Serve with rice and non-traditional veggies, like me!

 

 

Adam Liaw’s Chicken and Pumpkin Curry

There’s nothing like a good curry when the weather turns frosty, and I have seen a few great recipes lately.

Adam Liaw’s Chicken and Pumpkin Curry recipe on Instagram caught my eye, as Ihad all of the ingredients (more or less).

The recipe is simple and tasty, and the list of ingredients is not too long for a curry.

To make this curry, you will need:

Rampeh

8 macadamia nuts (I used cashew nuts)
2cm galangal (I skipped it)
2cm ginger (I used a squirt of ginger from a tube)
5 garlic cloves (again, I used a squirt from a tube)
1 onion

Other ingredients

1 chicken, jointed (I chopped up a couple of chicken breasts)
1/2 butternut pumpkin (I used Kent pumpkin)
10 curry leaves (I used the zest of a lime instead)
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons Baba’s meat curry powder (I used Keens Mild Curry Powder)
400ml coconut cream
800ml water
(I also added about 250g snow peas toward the end of the cooking time)


Put the rampeh ingredients into a food processor and blitz to form a paste.

Put a tablespoon of oil into a deep frypan or wok and heat until sizzling. Fry the rampeh in the pan for 10 minutes, then add the remaining ingredients to the pan and bring to a boil; reduce the heat to a simmer and simmer for 40 minutes.

Serve with steamed or boiled rice.

Jamie Oliver’s Corner Shop Curry Sauce with Chicken

One of this week’s recipes on Jamie Oliver’s Keep Cooking and Carry On was Corner Shop Curry Sauce with Chicken. It looked so good that I made it this weekend.

You can find the recipe here.

The curry sauce contains onion, ginger, garlic, chickpeas, coconut milk, curry paste and tinned tomatoes.

The verdict: hearty, filling and flavoursome. I used red curry paste as jalfrezi curry paste does not exist here. This recipe is quick and simple to make and a definite keeper.