Spaghetti Bolognese by N.O. Papa

Spaghetti Bolognese has got to be one of the most variably reliable dishes in the world. It seems that no matter which corner of the planet you visit, there'll be some vendor foisting the stuff on their craving-ridden customers, with mixed results, almost all on the "bad" end of the eating spectrum. Ahh yes, the humble spag bol. Ever alert to the call to action. How we love you.

It's a brutal confession for a try-hard gourmet to make, but: I've had traditional bolognese with veal and pork mince, and hated it. My tastebuds don't "do" pork or veal at the best of times, and the lack of thick tomato sauce to disguise their flavours meant I couldn't even PRETEND to be enjoying the dish. Yeah. If I were a true foodie I would've choked it down with a bottle of expensive wine and waxed lyrical about the refreshing authenticity - but I'm not, and thus it went in the bin instead.

I've had spag bol in Indonesia; where lamb mince was used instead of beef; and where commercial tomato and sweet chilli sauce replaced the more standard tomato accompaniments. My best friend told me it was cat meat. That didn't stop me hoeing into it, but the interpretation (like many Euro dishes served in non-Western countries) certainly wasn't something I'd be repeating in my own kitchen in a hurry.

I've had spaghetti in Japan. Oh boy, was that an experience. Instead of the dried or fresh wheat based pasta I was expecting, we were served up egg noodles cooked al dente. The sauce was punctuated with mushrooms - shiitake mushrooms. It was hilariously brilliant, a true example of adapting a dish to suit the ingredients available locally.

(For those who are wondering what the hell I was doing eating faux-Italian in Japan - I'm from Sydney. We eat meals from a different cuisine every night of the week. I don't care how refined a gastronomic culture is, my guttiwuts aren't programmed to eat it at every meal for an eternity - especially where no matter what dish you choose there's only a couple of distinct flavours present, as is the case with Japanese food. Sorry Nippon. But I digress.)

I've said earlier in this blog that Spaghetti Bolognese is the traditional Friday night meal at my parent's place. My mum makes it with less tomato paste and more tinned tomatoes. My dad makes it with less tinned tomatoes and more tomato paste. Both my brother and I make it with a fairly balanced blend of the two - not too watery, as is the case with the tomato-heavy version; and not too thick, as is the case with the paste-heavy version. None of them add carrot or celery into the soffrito or anchovies as are my most recent adaptions to our family's recipe.

It's a Friday here in Sydney, and after the vast disappointment of my Christmas Pudding (that story coming soon!) I needed something easy and reliable to cook. This utterly Anglocised bolognese delivers - it's like a hug in a meal for me. Although I tweak this recipe almost every time I cook it, these are the basic bones of my old faithful.

Spaghetti Bolognese by N.O. Papa

Ingredients
Olive oil
500g beef mince
1 brown onion, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, trimmed and finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3/4 cup red wine
3 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp chopped semi dried tomatoes
1 400g tin whole tomatoes, chopped up with a knife a bit
1 1/2 400g tin water
2 tsp chopped anchovies in oil
2 tsp dried oregano
2 bay leaves
1 beef stock cube (told you this was unashamedly Ocker)
Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to taste

Spaghetti - cooked according to the instructions on the packet just before serving time

Method
1. Heat a couple of good glugs of oil in a large heavy wok / frypan over a medium flame. Add the onion, celery and carrot, and cook, stirring, until they begin to soften. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant.
2. Add the beef mince and cook, stirring, until well browned. Add the wine, stir, and allow to bubble until wine has reduced in volume by half. Add anchovies, semi-dried tomatoes, stock cube and oregano, stir. Add tinned tomatoes and water, stir and allow to bubble for two or three minutes.
3. Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for about an hour, seasoning to taste with the sauces, salt and pepper about halfway through. Remove bay leaves before serving. Gosh, that was hard, wasn't it? Reward yourself with some wine, go on.

To serve - top a mountain of spaghetti with the bolognese sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan and sing "on top of ol' Smokey, all covered with cheese." Look sheepish. Accompany with more wine, garlic bread made with non-fancy bread and a garden salad made with non-fancy veggies and non-fancy vinagerette. Be transported back to a suburban Italo-Australian restaurant circa 1988, be glad you didn't order the fish and chips, smile.

Cabbage Rolls by N.O Soobdyet

My earliest memories of cabbage bear no resemblence to the maligned tales of boiled to near-death grey-white leaves common to anyone who's choked down dinner cooked by elderly Anglo-Saxon relatives. Far from the horrors of wartime recipes, or the gastronomic warfare of 1985's cabbage soup diet; they involve family and a great sense of where food comes from.

My Oma makes a magnificent blaukraut, with red cabbage, cloves, green apples and salt, sugar and vinegar to taste. I've yet to perfect the dish myself, I doubt I will, considering the old dear has a good sixty years of cooking on me. It's one of the dishes I secretly hope she'll whip up whenever I visit, along with the other Deutsch classics she has up her short sleeves.

My Dad used to grow cabbages in his vegetable patch during winter. When they weren't being attacked by snails, they had to be closely guarded against attack by my younger brother, who liked to "help" by pulling them out - all of them - and hosing and boxing them whilst Dad was at work.

Whilst I remember having cabbage rolls for dinner as a child, my main memories of the vegetable involved it being lightly steamed as a sweet yet savoury side, or served as saukraut alongside meat-laden meals. Thanks to the protective culinary web provided by my family it wasn't until I went to boarding school that I realised just how bad it could be when cooked incorrectly. Luckily common sense prevailed and those nightmare-inducing experiences didn't turn me off it for life. These days we don't have it that often, but when we do it's generally served as part of a greater good rather than by itself on the edge of the plate.

For this dish, I've adapted a sauce recipe from Iain Hewitson's "Never Trust a Skinny Cook", the title of which I take as gospel in my own waistline pursuits*. I figure he's probably making enough money through his website subscriptions to warrant me doing a bit o' culinary shoplifting from his cookbook, especially considering the number of man hours I've put into watching him and Mr Moon of a quiet weekday afternoon.

*(N.B. This mantra, of course, does not apply to chefs, who create food for a multitude of reasons, the vast majority of them less trustworthy than the Daily Telegraph.)

Cabbage Rolls by N.O Soobdyet

Ingredients

Sauce
Olive oil
1 brown onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sambal olek
2 tins whole tomatoes, smashed up a bit with a knife
1 tin water
Balsalmic vinegar
Sugar
2 anchovies, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup mozzarella cheese, grated, to assemble

Filling
400g minced beef or lamb (whichever you prefer)
1 carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 stick celery, finely diced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon fresh chopped oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried)
1/4 sauce mixture reserved from above
Salt and pepper to taste

Wrapping
1 small savoy cabbage (this time I used Chinese wongbok because procuring a whole, non-cut Euro cabbage on Sunday afternoon proved beyond my hunting and gathering skills... I don't recommend it as the flavour is negligable and the leaves are too watery and yeah, the whole thing is pretty blah actually.)

Method
Pre-heat oven to 190 degrees celcius

Sauce
1. Take a large heavy frypan and slosh in enough olive oil to cover the bottom, then heat over a medium flame.
2. Throw in the onion and cook, stirring, until softened. Add the garlic and sambal olek and cook until fragrant.
3. Add the tinned tomatoes, water, anchovies and sugar and balsalmic vinegar to taste. Stir well, then reduce heat and simmer for about half an hour, stirring occasionally, until thick. Remove sauce from pan and set aside.

Wrapping
1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil
2. Plunge the entire cabbage into the water for several minutes until it begins to soften. Remove, drain and then strip the whole leaves from the outer layers working inwards. Set aside.

Filling
1. Add another slosh of olive oil into the same pan used for the sauce (don't bother washing it, ya sook). Add the mince and cook, stirring, until browned.
2. Add the celery and carrot, stir. Add the white wine and cook for a minute or two, stirring.
3. Add the oregano, tomato paste, reserved sauce and seasoning to taste, stir and simmer over a low heat for ten minutes.
4. Remove from heat and set aside until cool enough to handle.

To Assemble
1. Take one softened cabbage leaf. Place 1 tablespoon filling at one end of the leaf, leaving a lip to fold over. Fold over lip and sides, then roll, tucking edges in as you go. Set aside and repeat with remaining leaves and filling.
2. Take a square oven-proof dish and pour half the sauce into the bottom. Place the cabbage rolls on top. Pour over the remainder of the sauce and top with cheese.
3. Bake in oven for twenty five minutes or until cheese is golden brown.

Serve with steamed rice and the satisfaction of knowing you've just turned a much-maligned vegetable into a mouth party. Well done, you. TAKIN' IT BACK!

Beef Stroganoff by Ruski Nail

A lot of things have happened since the 12th of August, when I last threw up a concoction on the hallowed (ha!) virtual pages of this blog.

I make no apologies for my absence. Well, maybe just a few. It's not that I WASN'T cooking; it's just that in the moments that my stove-chain reached more than five metres from the kitchen I was tied up with the arduous pursuit of planning a wedding whilst grappling at every corner with my inner Bridezilla. Don't get me wrong - being married is great. Weddings are not. I'm not sure if/when I'll recover from the stress involved in dealing with binty venue coordinators, disorganised caterers and overbearing relatives... sometimes all in the same hour. SUUUCCKKKSSS.

But you know, live and learn, live and learn. And The Bloke and I did get a smashing excuse for a south east Asian eating holiday out of the deal, so I can't complain too much. I'll be filling in the gaps in this blog retrospectively over the next week or so. Maybe.

But now - it's a neo-typical Tuesday evening here in the recently un-sinned Casa del Bitch'n'Bloke; in that The Bloke is having a rehearsal with the reborn line up of his band... and that I, as the feminine component of this newly-wed bliss, felt it my duty to whip something up for him to eat before he gets down to the serious business of pushing keys and twisting knobs.

Pun intended. Artists. You know how they are.

I don't really have a clever tie in to explain why I decided on beef stroganoff for dinner. I can honestly say that although I have, like every good woman raised with nouvelle cuisine* in the heady gastronomical heights of the mid-eighties, I can't remember the last time that a morsel of it passed my lips. Probably the best explanation for its presence on our menu is the fact that the charming butcher at the Marrickville Metro had some pre-cut strips in his shop window on Sunday night, and it got me thinking about it for more than five minutes. It doesn't take that long to cook, plus, if you have a bit too much wine whilst cooking STROGANOFF is a great word to shout out your kitchen window. So without further ado... STROGANOFF!

Beef Stroganoff by Ruski Nail

Ingredients
400g rump steak, cut into strips
1/2 cup plain flour, seasoned with freshly ground black pepper, sea salt and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
30g butter
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 onion, thinly sliced
125g mushrooms, cliced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup sour cream

Method
1. Toss the beef strips in the seasoned flour and dust off the excess. Melt the butter in a large frypan / wok over a medium heat.
2. Chuck the onions into the pan and fry, stirring for a couple of minutes until they begin to soften. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant.
3. Add the beef and cook until well browned, stirring constantly.
4. Add the white wine and deglaze the plan, then let simmer until the wine is reduced by half.
5. Add the mushrooms and fry for a minute. Add the stock and tomato paste, stir well.
6. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about half an hour, until the beef is tender.
7. Add the sour cream and stir to heat through, then remove from heat. Don't let it bubble, comrade, unless you want your dinner to curdle like the USSR circa 1991.

Serve with buttered noodles (I use macaroni 'coz I'm retro-core and still pissy about the authenticity) and an assortment of steamed veggies. If you've saved enough rubles, perhaps a glass of zesty white or light red wine to cut through the cream would be noice on the side. Noice. Different. Unyooshual.

* (I've just checked the Wikipedia entry, and there are no words to describe the disappointment I am currently feeling after reading that it was first cooked in 19th century Russia and is thus somewhat more authentic than the 1985 Annual Blacktown RSL Members Dinner creation I was hoping to discover. NYET!)

Borscht by Yell T. Sing

Borscht, along with Natascha, Boris, vodka and furry hats, is probably one of the most recognisable lasting stereotypes of Russian culture. The brightly coloured beetroot base is punctuated, variously, with meat, potato, onion, cabbage, herbs and spices. Needless to say, it leaves glorious stains on anything it comes into contact with (the amount of staining is usually directly proportional to vodka consumption). Messy to prepare, messy to eat, messy to clean up... but worth it? You betcha.

The main variation on this dish is whether it's served hot or cold. Without getting into a fistfight with anyone who prefers the insipid, thin, watery, cold and nasty version... the dish originated in Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe is frigid for most of the year. Do the maths. With little regard to the factual cultural background of this variation - if you've got something to burn then you have no excuse for eating the cold form, which, despite global warming and its cultural history, should have remained buried in the 1970s New York hotel buffets where it came to prominence. In my humble opinion, of course.

For the sake of the stereotype, and the interactive fun involved in tweaking the toppings to taste, I serve blinis alongside borscht. To save time and effort, you could carve up a loaf of schinkenbrot, or other black rye bread instead. In our house, regardless of the starch side, the pile of chopped gherkins, onion, sour cream and horseradish are definitely not optional - allowing The Bloke to sour his broth down with polski ogorki, and me to rev mine up with a spoonful of horseradish. It's a nice touch for a dish which otherwise takes care of itself once you've got everything in the pot.

This is a great meal to serve when you've got company, as you can chuck it on to cook and prepare the garnishes and blini batter in advance, leaving you free to drink as much vodka (also not optional) as you can handle before quickly frying the blinis just prior to serving time.

Borscht by Yell T. Sing

Ingredients
Soup
2kg fresh beetroot, peeled and chopped finely in a food processor
50g butter
2 medium brown onions, chopped
2 medium potatoes, coarsely chopped
1 400g tin of tomatoes, smashed up with a knife
2 medium carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
2.5L water
500g piece gravy beef
3 bay leaves
4 cups shredded savoy cabbage

Blinis
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk
30g melted butter

To Serve
1/2 cup finely chopped gherkins
1/2 red onion, finely diced
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon lumpfish caviar
Horseradish
Finely chopped parsley

Method
Borscht
1. Melt butter in a large saucepan. Add onion and cook, stirring, until soft. Add all other ingredients except cabbage, bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for one hour.
2. Skim fat from surface of soup, discard. Remove beef and shred, return shredded beef to soup with cabbage and simmer, uncovered, for another half an hour.

Blinis
1. Whisk together milk, eggs and butter. Mix flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Gradually whisk in milk mixture until well combined.
2. Heat a large pan over a medium heat. Add a knob of butter to the pan and allow to melt.

To Serve
Ladle soup into pre-warmed serving bowls. Serve with blinis and accompaniments above, a chilled bottle of vodka, and much accented dah-ing.

Busy Gettin' Hitched...

... BRB.

Classique Fish Pie by Cap'n Hyseas

I spent a good part of my childhood years living, as the crow flies, less than a kilometre from the beach. This proximity resulted in fishing, and seafood, being an integral part of my formative years. Some of my strongest memories from this time involve the ocean in one way or another, be it the feeling of falling backwards off a large wharf only to have my Dad catch me by my jumper, or digging up pippies in the wave zone at Seaman's Beach, or dropping in handreels just to see if we'd catch anything. The simple life!

This idyllic seaside existence was cut short by my family moving to the middle of Australia for four years. Obviously, fresh fish was difficult, if not impossible to come by, and hence my family went from eating tailor and flathead caught off the wharves at HMAS Creswell that morning, to relying on BirdsEye frozen and crumbed fillets for our piscetary fixes. But apart from the occasional tuna noodle casserole, or tinned tuna served as part of a salad, we still didn't bastardise the fish too much. Fish are noble creatures, see. The asparagus of the deep. Not to be messed with. Therefore, the initial experiences I had of anything vaguely resembling fish pies came from outside our household - the first via tinned tuna mornay cooked by the mother of a schoolfriend of mine, the second in the form of a tinned-tuna-n'-corn filled puff pastry pie purchased from the Erldunda Roadhouse. At the time I thought that both were pretty much the bastions of high cuisine. Fish in a creamy sauce? Knock me down with a feather!

Needless to say my Dad, who'd regularly dive for abalone in Jervis Bay and bring the molluscs home for us to barbecue, was horrified. To his credit, he suffered through the first meals I cooked for the family as a ten year old - my attempts at replicating Anne Smith's tuna mornay using soy milk as that's what we had in the fridge at the time would make even my hardened guttiwuts turn these days - but I'm sure a little voice in the back of his mind was asking the niggling question: 'where did we go wrong?' After all, catching our own fish, along with growing our own veggies and... err... picking our own chops at the butchers... were surely excellent means of installing a decent sense of where food comes from in youngsters? And once that lesson had been taught, surely treating said food with a little respect wouldn't go astray?

The horror. The horror.

So it's with a little trepidition that I share the following recipe with y'all. Undeniably tasty, it involves three sorts of fish (and could involve more if you were feeling rich - I reckon some oysters would go pretty well in the base mix), "caught" fresh from such reputable outlets as the Marrickville Metro Woolie's seafood counter (for the smoked cod) and my local Vietnamese fish shop Phuoc Hai on Illawarra Road (for everything else). But yes, also undeniably, it involves a creamy sauce, which could be used for disguise-purposes if the core products weren't of such high quality. And that's pretty much the key to this pie being good rather than evil. As Ali G would say: " RESPEC' ".

Classique Fish Pie by Cap'N Hyseas

Ingredients
200g green prawn meat
300g smoked cod
300g trevally fillets, skin off
3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped coarsely
1/2 small brown onion
1 bay leaf
6 black peppercorns
2 cups milk
3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons plain flour
1 stalk celery, roughly chopped
1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
3 large potatoes, peeled
1/4 cup hot milk, extra (or cream, if desired)
1 tablespoon butter, extra

Method
Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius
1. Chop potatoes into small pieces and boil / microwave / steam until soft. Mash with the extra milk or cream and extra butter, season to taste and set aside.
2. Place 2 cups of milk, peppercorns, bay leaf, onion, carrots and celery into a large frypan and heat until just simmering. Place fish and prawns into milk and cook over a low heat - remove prawns when they turn pink and set aside; allow fish to cook until it flakes easily.
3. Strain fish into a colander, reserving milk. Remove fish from colander, discard other ingredients. Flake fish into bite sized pieces, removing any bones or remaining skin. Set aside.
4. To make mornay sauce - melt butter in a medium sized saucepan. Add flour and cook until foamy. Add reserved milk all in one go, then whisk immediately and continue stirring until thick and smooth. Remove from heat.
5. To assemble, place fish, prawns and hard-boiled eggs on the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Pour over sauce then top with mashed potato (cover the filling, but leave it a bit rough - it helps with browning during baking). Bake in oven for about half an hour or until golden on top. Serve with steamed green veggies, a crisp white and a piratey "ARGH!".

NB: I've tagged this as "birthday" because it's what I cooked for The Bloke and I on my birthday yesterday. Boo fucken' hoo.

Asianish Dumpling Soup by Miss Appropriate Kulcha

This recipe has not been with me long.

By that, I mean, it's only been in my cooking repertoire for the last four years or so.

And by that, I mean, I've only made versions thereof ... OK, this was the third, or maybe fourth time that I've bothered to make it.

"Why?" you ask?

"Bitch, you seem to be pretty competant in the kitchen. What's with the fact that you've stumbled upon a concept of deliciousness, only to execute it so infrequently?"

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Or give you the recipe.

OK, OK. I must admit, on this, the third or fourth attempt I've made at making a vegan(ish) Asian(ish) dumpling soup, things were a lot easier... not due to experience, but because I accidentally picked up the "wrong" dumpling wrappers at our local Woolworths. "Wrong" in that they weren't the type I'd used before... and quotation-marked because this slip of the hand resulted in a dumpling-making experience which was positively...zen.

Now, I don't doubt that there'll be cynics out there who doubt that a single mispurchase could possibly, in ANY way, shape or form be responsible for transforming a previously mind-breaking dish into a pleasure to make. For them, I recommend choosing standard dumpling / wonton wrappers in the cold-foods section of their supermarket, and following the recipe as follows. I will not be held responsible for the ensuing chaos and possible mental-slash-physical breakdown.

For the rest of us, I absolutely and wholeheartedly recommend using something labelled as "Shanghai Dumpling Wrappers" or approximation thereof. Basically, the "pastry" is thicker, and flour coated. This makes for a malleable, sturdy, and generally more forgiving wrapper - and cuts the prep time for this dish down from more than an hour to around fifteen minutes.

I also discovered on this latest round of Bitch vs. Butterfingers (i.e. my artistic vision battling my lack of coordination) that boiling the dumplings in the soup stock rather than steaming them can save on the heartbreak resulting from your beautifully constructed morsels ripping apart when you try to remove them from the bamboo steamer. Just make sure you squeeze the tops together really well and they'll hold together in a rollicking boil just fine.

I first made this dish as a newly un-vegan-ed piscetarian. For the meat-eaters out there... suck it up. Naaahhh, if you really want you could use about 200g of chicken mince (or pork, if that's your thing) in place of the tofu - although this is pretty "meaty", especially if you go with adding some fish sauce to the veggie mix. You could even use a vegetarian (e.g. Massel) beef stock powder to amp up the soup a bit, thus pleasing everyone at your table. Whichever way you take it, this dumpling soup is sure to be a hit, especially when you tell all and sundry that you made the tasty little bastards yourself.

Asianish Dumpling Soup by Miss Appropriate Kulcha

Ingredients
Dumplings
1 packet of approx. 40 "Shanghai Dumpling Wrappers"
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
250g silken tofu
1 medium sized mushroom, finely diced
2 eggs OR 100g firm tofu, finely chopped
3 spring onions, finely chopped
3 tablespoons coriander, finely chopped
2 chillies, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon garlic chilli sauce
1/2 tablespoon fish sauce (optional: omit for vegan version)
1 medium carrot, peeled and grated
1 medium potato, peeled and grated

Soup
Five thin slices fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
2L vegetable stock (use whichever sort you prefer)
Soy sauce to taste
2 cups assorted chopped Asianish veggies (I used 1 bok choy, 1/4 red capsicum, and about 10 green beans topped n' tailed then halved)

Method
1. Place the vegetable oil in a wok on the stove and heat over a medium flame. Add the carrot and potato and stir fry for a minute or two. Add the silken tofu (and the firm tofu if you're using it), mushroom, spring onion, coriander, garlic and chilli and stir fry for another two minutes. Add the soy sauce, garlic chilli sauce (and fish sauce if you're using it) and mix well. Add the eggs if you're using them, mix through and allow to just set, then remove the wok from the stove and allow to cool.
2. Once the filling has cooled, the fun begins! Take a dumpling wrapper and place a small amount (say between one and two teaspoons) of filling into the centre of the wrapper. Fold the sides in, then squeeze the top together firmly to seal. Set aside. Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling.
(Can be prepared ahead up until this stage - cover with glad wrap and refrigerate until required).
3. Place the vegetable stock in a large saucepan and add the ginger, sesame oil and soy sauce to taste. Bring to the boil.
4. Place six dumplings into the boiling stock and stir momentarily. Allow the dumplings to cook for about a minute and a half (if you cook them for too long, the wrappers will disintegrate, and you'll be left with gruel rather than the impressive-looking short soup you were hoping for). Remove from the stock with a slotted spoon and set aside. Repeat with remaining dumplings.
5. Drop the veggies into the stock and cook for about a minute - you want them to be brightly coloured and still a bit crisp!
6. Divide the dumplings between serving bowls (three or four depending on how hungry your flock is) and ladle over the stock and veggies. Serve with more freshly chopped coriander, spring onion and chilli if desired.

Lamb Shank Casserole by B.A. Afflock

I hate sheep.

Hate them worse than rising property prices. Hate them worse than a leaking roof. Hate them worse than credit card bills.

Oh, it hasn't always been like this. There once was a time, dear readers, that I embraced all forms of livestock without a care for their colour or creed. Along with my previously discussed tree-hugger tendencies, I must admit that I once found pigs, horses, chickens... and yes, sheep, fascinating, majestic and even a little bit cute n' cuddly.

Until I actually had to deal with them in real life, that is.

It was a long weekend in Western Australia, and I was a sixteen year old boarder at the all-girls Catholic school I mentioned back in the first post of this blog. My parents lived some 3500km away, which made travel back to their place for three days somewhat impractical. And so, with much excitement and anticipation of clean living and country air, I accepted an invitation from my friend and onetime room-mate Claire Teale, to visit her family's farm near Lake Grace in the greater Southern district. My bags packed, my boots on my feet (Doc Martens rather than your standard farm-issue Rossi or Blundstones)... I was anticipating a weekend of good ol' fashioned fun. Hey, I grew up in the country (although, admittedly, about as far from mainstream agriculture as possible) - I was going to cope just fine with the isolation, the open spaces, and if there were animals involved, well, I just LOVED animals. No problem.

And then I found out... it was shearing week. The excitement was palpable! I'd never seen shearing before, and my preconceptions of the concept were largely limited to Banjo Patterson poetry crossed with rude versions of "Mary Had A Little Lamb." I was ready to witness the fine and noble traditions of mixed use districts across this wide, brown, unpleasant land firsthand!

And I must say, things were going well down on the farm. I'd managed to prove my worth by jumping out of the Hilux for opening and closing duties every time we got to a gate (the fact that I volunteered for this job roused slight suspicions, but they were overridden by the fact that no one else had to do it if I kept at it). I'd curtailed my hippy tendancies and caught, cleaned and eaten marron from the dams. I'd learnt not to rinse my dishes off in the sink like I did at home (water shortages and all that). I hadn't even squealed (much) when I got pooh on my purple boots. So come morning, Claire's dad gave me the honourable task of worming the sheep after they came out of the shed.

I confess: up until that morning, I'd only seen sheep from a distance, and perhaps once as a child at a hobby farm down in the Illawarra region. My first up-close-and-personal encounter with the creatures was attempting to herd them into the run before they were dragged onto the boards for their biannual haircuts. Oh, it was a jovial sport (mostly because there were five other people involved - five other people with somewhat more experience in livestock management than my good self.) I was having a great time. So when Mr Teale offered me the worming solution backpack tank and worming gun, I accepted the job with anticipation of the glee to come.

The glee came, alright. Until I climbed into the run with the sheep, that is. I think I managed to worm about ten of them successfully, which took about half an hour as I'd collapse into giggles in between each animal. And then, came my downfall.

A particularly large wether saw me coming from afar. He eyed me off. I eyed him off. I clambered along the fence to get at him. I climbed on top of his back, brandished my worming gun.... and that's when it happened.

BASTARD THREW ME.

BASTARD THREW ME OFF HIS BACK AND DOWN THE SIDE OF THE RUN.

BASTARD THREW ME OFF HIS BACK AND DOWN THE SIDE OF THE RUN AND UNDERNEATH HIM AND THEN TRAMPLED ME.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only about 20 seconds, someone heard my screaming, realised that I wasn't just mucking around, noticed that I had seeminly disappeared, grabbed the straps of the tank and pulled me out of the run. And that, my friends, was the end of my illustrious animal handling career. I was sent back up to the house to wash off and band-aid up the injuries I sustained, and then put on sandwich making duties for the rest of the day.

Thwarted. By. A. Sheep.

Yep. Not my finest hour.

How did it happen? How did a wooly bag of chops manage to outclass me?

In discussion during the aftermath of the event, it was decided that the size discrepancy combined with my lack of experience in just how stupid these animals can be were the main contributing factors. I tried to add in something about them being inherantly evil, but the look of sadness on Mr Teale's face when he realised that I didn't love his sheep anymore shut me up.

Since then, I've avoided live sheep wherever possible. Just the glint of madness in their eyes from afar is enough to prompt flashbacks of the fateful day that I realised that, like in humans, stupidity plus bastardliness plus power is a terrible combination in the animal world. But sheep have their role to play on our planet.

So enjoy this recipe for Lamb Shank Casserole.

Lamb Shank Casserole by B.A. Afflock

Ingredients

2 large / 4 small lamb shanks
1/4 cup plain flour
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons of olive oil
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 red onion, cut into eighths
1/2 cup white wine
400g tinned tomatoes, smashed up a bit with a knife
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup risoni

1 medium zucchini, cut into chunks
1/4 red capsicum, cut into chunks
1/4 green capsicum, cut into chunks
6 button mushrooms, halved
1 teaspoon lemon rind, finely grated
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 tablespoons continental parsley, chopped
Optional: 2 tablespoons goats cheese or feta, to serve

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees celcius.
2. Mix the flour with the salt and pepper in a bowl, then coat the lamb shanks in the mix, dusting off any excess.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large frypan. Add the lambshanks and fry over a medium heat until well browned. Remove from pan and place in an ovenproof casserole dish.
4. Place the pan back on heat and add the onion and garlic, cook, stirring, for two minutes. Add wine and allow to deglaze the pan until almost evaporated. Stir in tomatoes, tomato paste and stock and bring to the boil. Add bruised sprigs of thyme, remove from heat and pour over lamb shanks. Cover tightly with foil and bake in the oven for two hours.
5. Remove casserole dish from the oven. Add risoni and remaining vegetables to the dish and stir. Re-cover with foil and bake for another 40 minutes or until veggies and risoni are tender.
6. Sprinkle shanks, risoni and veggies with lemon rind and parsley and cheese if using. Serve with some wilted baby spinach and a full bodied cabernet.

Passionfruit Cheesecake by N. St Algia

When I was a kid, one of my favourite past times (aside from making potions with my next-door neighbours to poison Adam Lambie, who lived up the road from us... sorry Adam, if you're reading this) was eating stuff straight from the garden. Be it snowpeas plucked from the trellis, cherry tomatoes picked from the stakes, or carrots pulled from the beds, it's surprising that there were ever any veggies left over for my parents to cook with, such was the force with which my brother and our friends attacked the garden with.

One of my favourites, if one could be chosen, was passionfruit. I can remember setting up camp on top of the jasmine vine which grew in a metre wide clump all along the top of our wooden fence, occasionally climbing down towards the bottom of the yard to gather handfuls of fresh, ripe passionfruit from the vine further along. We'd rip into them with our teeth, scooping out the pulp and then... perhaps the best bit... using the leftover husks as part of aforementioned potions. Just kidding. I loved passionfruit then, and I love passionfruit now.

My first exposure to the somewhat less wholesome delights of cheesecake came a bit later on, courtesy of a party at the ranger station in the National Park which my family was living in at the time, a setting which today would probably be entertaining the verge of gourmet. But no, the novelty of a cake coming IN A PACKET was probably responsible for at least half of the joy I experienced the first time I tried the marvellous sweet yet slightly savoury, crumbly yet creamy delights of Sara Lee Frozen Lemon Cheesecake.

I don't think I actually tried "proper" freshly made cheesecake for at least five or six years after that initial experience, and perhaps with a slightly guilty conscience (even more so than the curried sausages recipe...) I admit that I preferred the pre-made on that occasion, and probably the next ten or so, until I tried a baked ricotta "New York" (yeah, like the pizza) style at a country cafe. It was then I realised that while frozen Sara Lee will always have a special place in my heart, variations on what I consider to be the classic aren't all that bad.

So with all that reminiscing aside, and with the knowledge that I don't really dig on sticky things that much, I present to you the following recipe which gives ultimate bang for your buck in the dessert stakes. After all, there's so many rad savoury things to eat out there, I know I don't have the time or belly space to fit both sweets in at the same time (nor the patience to make biscuits from scratch for the base, nor the anti-capitalist leanings to avoid referencing to brand names in this recipe...). Combining passionfruit and cheesecake in the same dish makes sense on both gastronomic and gutsonomic levels, and this recipe is so easy you could get your kids to make it while you do something fun like drink sparkling wine and talk nonsense.

Passionfruit Cheesecake by N. St Algia

Ingredients
1 packet plain sweet biscuits (I used Arnott's Marie), crushed to crumbs in a food processor
125g unsalted butter, melted
2 packets room temperature light Philidelphia cream cheese.
1/2 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
250mL thickened cream
Pulp of five passionfruit (about 1/3 cup in total)
Extra passionfruit to serve

Method
1. Take a 20cm round springform pan, grease and line the base with non-stick baking paper. Place pan on a baking tray.
2. Mix the crushed biscuit crumbs with the melted butter in a bowl until well coated. Press the crumb mixture onto the greased walls and base of the pan. Place the pan in the fridge for at least half an hour to set.
3. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees celcius.
4. Place the cream cheese in a large bowl and beat with an electric beater on medium speed for a few minutes until creamy. Pour in the caster sugar and beat for another couple of minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating between each addition.
5. Decrease speed and pour in the passsionfruit and cream. Beat for another minute until combined well.
6. Pour the cheesecake mixture into the biscuit base, bake in the oven for fifty minutes to an hour, until golden on top and firm. Turn off oven and cool in the oven for an hour, then refrigerate for another two hours. Serve with extra fresh passionfruit and a glass of sparkling wine or two.

Vegetable Cannelloni Crepes with Gorgonzola Bechemel by M.T. Soul

Oh, cannelloni. How I love to hate thee! One of the banes of my existence as a vegetarian was spinach and ricotta encompassed by the dried tubes of packet pasta which is the second degree cop out of cafe menus the world over (I'll save the rant about spinach and ricotta generally for next time). So easy to do right, but so common to do wrong. Such is the persistence of this dish, that I hadn't even tried the version made with fresh crepes until I because privvy to the existence of the wonderful Mamma Maria's restaurant, upstairs on King Street in Newtown, NSW. Since making that discovery, I've regularly had debilitating cravings for the vegetable version of the dish (usually in the most impractical reaches of the earth, like Kailua, Hawaii; or Nara, Japan). Such was its magic, I never even dreamed of trying to conquer the construction myself... until a winter's evening when The Bloke was supposed to be having his annual pay review.

Being a stay-at-home-Bitch, I thought I'd redeem filling my days with naps and online shopping by making something a bit special for the occasion. Opening the fridge, I was confronted with a defiant chunk of butternut pumpkin, perched atop the roughage in the vegetable crisper. Looking up, I came eye to eye with the comical packet of gorgonzola The Bloke and I had purchased during a grocery shop some weeks previous. And it was then that I had some sort of pride-driven flash of inspiration... if The Bloke brought a payrise to the table, I could surely contribute by bringing a fancy yet hearty meal!

Admittedly, this recipe is probably best saved "for good." With its multiple steps and protracted cooking time, not to mention the fact that it actually required the use of every saucepan in my kitchen, it's not the sort of thing you'd whip up if you didn't have copious amounts of time on your hands and a deep-seeded sense of uselessness in your soul. But I digress. I combined the two ingredients which inspired me with a stack of other consumables I found lying around the place, and voila! A delicious meal that's sure to impress.

Vegetable Cannelloni Crepes with Gorgonzola Bechemel by M.T. Soul

(Hint: read the recipe all the way through before starting - you can cook the tomato sauce at the same time as the veggies and make the crepes too.)

Ingredients
Filling
Olive oil
1 cup butternut pumpkin, cubed
1/2 cup red capsicum, roughly chopped
1 zucchini, roughly chopped
6 mushrooms, roughly chopped
1/2 red onion, roughly chopped
2/3 cup brocolli
1/2 cup frozen peas
Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Gorgonzola Bechemel
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 cup milk
1/2 brown onion
2 bay leaves
40 grams gorgonzola cheese
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Tomato Sauce
Olive oil
1 brown onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cans Italian whole tomatoes, chopped up a bit by banging a knife around the can
1/3 can water
Assortment of fresh herbs, roughly chopped (I used thyme, marjoram and oregano)
1 teaspoon brown sugar
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Crepes
3 eggs
1 cup plain flour
1 cup water
Sea salt
Knob of butter

Topping
3/4 cup grated cheddar
2 tablespoons parmesan, grated

Method
Filling
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
Put the pumpkin and oil onto an oven-proof tray, and bake for ten minutes. Add the red onion and capsicum, toss with the pumpkin and oil and bake for another five minutes. Add the mushrooms and zucchini and bake until all the veggies are soft.
Remove from the oven and place in a bowl with the brocolli and peas, season and set aside.

Tomato Sauce
Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan over a medium flame, add onion and cook for two minutes, stirring, until it begins to soften.
Add the garlic and cook for a further two minutes, stirring.
Add the tinned tomatoes and water, lower heat and cook, just simmering, for about twenty five minutes, until it is saucy like a Mills & Boon.
Add the brown sugar and herbs and cook for another five minutes, remove from heat and season with salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

Crepes
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Whisk the eggs until beaten.
Combine the water with the eggs, then gradually add to the flour and salt, stirring constantly to form a smooth batter.
Melt the butter over a medium-high heat in a 20cm non-stick frypan and add enough batter to just coat the pan (swirl it around to evenly cover the base). When bubbles appear in the mixture, flip and cook the other side for about thirty seconds, until just set.
Remove from heat, place on a plate, and repeat with remainder of mixture to make six crepes, then set aside.

Gorgonzola Bechemel
Heat milk in a small saucepan with the onion and bay leaves until steaming but not bubbling. Melt butter in another saucepan, add flour and cook for a couple of minutes until foamy. Gradually pour the milk through a strainer into the flour and butter mixture, stirring all the time and continue to stir until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and add gorgonzola , and salt and pepper to taste.
Pour the bechemel over the baked vegetables and stir well to combine.

Assembly
Pre-heat oven to 190 degrees celcius.
Place half of the tomato sauce in the bottom of a medium (20cm x 20cm square) ovenproof dish. Place about three tablespoons of the vegetable / bechemel mix into the middle of each crepe and roll, then place on top of the tomato sauce.
Pour remaining tomato sauce over the top, and sprinkle with grated cheeses.
Bake in the oven for half an hour or until cheese is golden.
Serve with a merlot plus the standard Italian accompaniments of garlic bread and salad, and a liberal helping of snide remarks dropped into conversation about the masterpiece you've created being "nothing, really...".

Curried Sausages by W.R. Brohke.

There comes a time in every woman's life when she must confront the greater truths. These truths include the lies in cosmetic advertising, the failures of dieting as a means to happiness, and perhaps worst of all... the fact that eating at Tetsuya's every night is simply beyond the reach of most Orstrayan wallets.

The third truth is, perhaps, the most difficult to deal with when the vast majority of one's decisions are directly or indirectly motivated by food. Perhaps this strikes one's stomach even more severely during those leaner weeks where one realises that going out to dinner at a lesser establishment, or even ordering a Domino's Pizza delivery (check that website out, by the way, I LOVE the little counter thingymebob!) wouldn't be the smartest financial move... even if one can technically afford the lazy slip up.

Oh yes, my friends, THRIFTINESS has struck the BitchBloke household!

Following a weekend of indulgence, our fridge is currently full of your typical party leftovers - a platter of chopped celery and carrot sticks, rapidly ageing salad ingredients, and perhaps the piece de resistance - two kilos of beef barbeque sausages. While the gathering we had was certainly somewhat less elaborate than, say, P.Diddy's White Parties, the fact that we spent more on booze than we did on food has left us feeling somewhat sheepish about the proportional remainders of these two gastric pleasures.

Now, while spending more on drinks than food isn't an altogether new experience for The Bloke and I, the weekend has coincided with us making the momentous decision to seriously save for a kitchen of our own... oh, and perhaps the rest of the house around it as well. And so, driven by the need to set an example (and make up for my latest bout of internet shopping), I nervously set about finding a way to use up as much of the leftover food as possible.

Now, I must confess that I've never cooked curried sausages before. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I've never even eaten curried sausages before. Being raised by a family with... err... alternative culinary leanings, curried sausages were somewhat of a joke, thrown into the same hat as apricot chicken and rissoles with boiled peas. Owing to these youth-installed prejudices, I feel dirty even having this in my blog, which has previously been a bastion of high eating,*cough*, but hey, if the maxi dress is back in for summer, why shouldn't retro recipes follow suit?

And so it is with only slightly blushing cheeks that I present to you:

Curried Sausages by W.R. Brohke

Ingredients

6 thin beef sausages
Oil
1 large brown onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups carrot, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped
1/2 red capsicum, chopped
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon beef stock powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup tinned peaches, chopped
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 cups water
Water, extra
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Place beef sausages in a wok. Cover with water. Bring to a boil then simmer for five minutes. Remove sausages from wok, pour out water. Remove skin from sausages (if it hasn't floated off already) and slice each sausage into four chunks. Resist the urge to poke at the flaccid sausages like dismemberd anatomical parts, and set aside.
2. Place same wok back on the burner. Add one tablespoon of oil and heat momentarily, then add chopped vegetables and stir until they soften slightly. Add the curry powder, beef stock powder and ginger and stir for a minute or two. Add the water and soy sauce. Bring to a boil then drop heat and simmer for one hour.
3. Add the sausages and peaches to the vegetable mix. Simmer for another half an hour.
4. Add the flour paste and stir until sauce thickens. Remove from heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with mashed potatoes, steamed green vegetables and a profound apology to resist spending the week's shopping budget on prescription downers and a new pink lipstick next time.

Vegetable Pasta Pom'adore-no

Ahhh, the humble tomato. Fruit of a thousand uses, vegetable of a thousand recipes. Yes, before anyone kicks up a stink, it is possible for a plant to fall into both categories. Even if the tomato's reputation as the "Fruit of Love" actually resulted from a drunk Italian chef slurring his words to a deaf poncy Frenchman who heard "Pomme de'Moors" (apple of the Moors) as "Pomme d'Amore" (apple of love), you must admit it's a pretty rad ingredient.

When The Bloke and I first started seeing each other, we would oftentimes stay at one anothers houses (some 150-odd-kilometres apart) over the weekend. And oftentimes, we would cook vast quantities of food for one another, a sort of culinary-love-dedication that only the heady days of a new romance can produce (i.e. before "what's for dinner, my love?" is met with scowling declarations of impending divorce and both parties having it out with smashed bottles and box cutters... OK, sorry, too many daytime movies).

During this time there were many meals that were culinary triumphs - a selection of curries made from scratch using recipes from Nilgiris restaurant and cooked by me at 10pm at night as the bloke caught an after-work train up from his home city; a perfectly cooked salmon steak with a lemon feta sauce cooked by the bloke after a trip to the Sydney Fish Markets; and Asian-influenced vegan dumplings constructed with silken tofu and a multitude of herbs and spices, steamed then served in a ginger-soy infused broth. There were also, of course, some meals that didn't work out so well - the time that we attempted to barbeque potato slices using the ancient grill in the bloke's backyard; and an attempt at repeating the dumpling recipe above only to have the dumpling-wrappers stick to the bamboo steamer then disintegrate completely, resulting in a very angry Bitch and a very confused Bloke. But nonetheless, like any worthwhile cooking adventure, both "failures" were memorable as learning experiences.

What's all this got to do with tomatoes? Well, reminiscences aside, my favourite meal from that time, without a doubt, would have to be a simple vegetable pasta sauce which The Bloke concocted one cold Friday evening when there was nothing better to do than stay at home, eat and be merry with the end-of-week veggies floating around in the bottom of the fridge. Like all good meals, it wasn't so much the content as the context that made it special - or, in less wanky terms, hell, who wouldn't want to be presented with a massive bowl of steaming pasta and a kiss on the cheek whilst curled up on the couch with the heating on after a long train trip south? Especially when the presenter is someone you, you know, really, really, really, really dig.

If you're not in the process of shacking up with someone (or you have a lot of love to share around), this recipe will make enough pasta to serve three or four people as part of a meal with garlic bread, salad and wine. It's especially good to use as a demonstration that you can just "whip together" a meal out of the ingredients you have lying around the place, thus demonstrating your flexibility AND thriftiness (just be careful not to cook this for clucky people you DON'T want to have children with, because they will surely interpret your newfound home-making skills as a plus for potential paternity. Ewwww.)

Vegetable Pasta Pom'adore-no

Ingredients

Olive oil
Six large ripe tomatoes, chopped (leave the skin and seeds, you sooks)
One brown onion, chopped finely
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
Assortment of "crisper veggies" totalling about three cups
- e.g.:
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/3 red capsicum, chopped
1/3 green capsicum, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
6 mushrooms, quartered
1/4 broccoli, cut into floreats
1 Lebanese (long) eggplant, chopped
1 spring of marjoram and 1 sprig of oregano - or 1/2 tablespoon of dried Italian herbs
2 bay leaves
Tabasco
Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
300g egg fettuccine (or long pasta of your choice)
Basil leaves and excellent parmesan cheese to serve

Method

1. Place a large pot of water on the stove and heat until boiling.
2. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large fry pan over a medium flame. Add onion, cook, stirring, until translucent.
3. Add garlic to pan and cook for about thirty seconds, then add the carrot and tomatoes and herbs and cook, stirring, for about five minutes, or until the tomato softens and goes pulpy.
4. Stir through the zucchini, mushrooms, capsicum and eggplant and cook for about five minutes.
5. Add Tabasco to taste (we like it HOT), then simmer for around twenty minutes or until vegetables are soft.
6. Throw half a handful of sea salt into the water-pot (which should be boiling by now) then chuck in your pasta, give it a stir and allow it to cook until al dente. While this is happening, add broccoli to the pan with the sauce in it and simmer for another five minutes.
7. Drain the pasta, reserving about half a cup of the cooking water. Add the pasta and water to the vegetable sauce and allow to cook for another minute or two. Remove from heat. Present to your intended in a big bowl garnished with parmesan cheese and freshly torn basil, accompanied by a cheap and cheerful merlot, garlic bread and salad. Sit back and enjoy the fruits of the vine and your labour, but hopefully not your loins. Yet.

Banana Butterscotch Puddingcake by Di A'Beattiez.

I made a promise to myself when I started this blog, that I'd stay away from the woosy, womanly arts of sweetness and light. Dessert is so goddamn girly. And acknowledging its presence on menus, let alone detailing recipes for end-of-meal sugar fixes would compromise, if not negate my misogynistic tendancies, and reputation as a general hard bitch.

So it was with raised fists that I repeated the following mantra:

I won't "do" confectionary.

Or maybe it was:

I don't "do" confectionary.

OK, OK.

I can't "do" confectionary. There. HAPPY NOW?

The last time I tried to make something which would have fallen into the lolly section of the 1975 Better Homes and Gardens cookbook which was my cooking guide as a child, it failed.

Not once, it failed. Not twice, it failed. Not three times, it failed.

FOUR TIMES. FOUR TIMES IT FAILED.

Four times I tried to make caramel syrup. And four times the sugar and water bubbled away for ten minutes before becoming cloudy rather than golden. And four times the sugar then crystallised out of solution and wrecked my saucepan, my kitchen sink; and eventually, my bidet (where I poured the third batch after blocking the sink plug hole with the second).

After the fourth time I'd run out of caster sugar and self worth. And I vowed never again to attempt anything that resembled a confectionary product, and I vowed to stick to sarcasm and the savoury dishes which go with it. If you can't join them, beat them and run away.

But yesterday, I was faced with a dilemma. Three of them, in fact. Three overripe bananas, sitting in my fruit bowl, waiting to be made use of either through composting, or through baking. There's not much else you can do with overripe bananas, see, and baking is quite acceptable in The Bitch School of Cookery (even if it requires sugar) because it involves the flexing of arm muscles and the slamming of oven doors. Brutal, oui? So I pulled out my trusty cookbooks (because even culinary genii like myself require guidance in foreign lands) to find a recipe for banana cake. But almost all the recipes contained sour cream, and the dairy compartment of our fridge was all Old-Mother-Hubbarded out of it. And yes, I could've walked to the shops, but truthbeknown: I couldn't be bothered.

Flicking through another book I found a recipe for a toffee topped banana cake, sans sour cream. Toffee. Toffee. I had flashbacks to the caramel sauce disaster, and picked up the bananas to compost them. But then I had a lightbulb moment.

Surely if a cake involved "hard" confectionary like toffee, it could also involve "soft" confectionary, like, say, butterscotch?

Butterscotch is EASY. Butterscotch involves cream, butter, and sugar. Add a saucepan, a low flame and a wooden spoon, and five minutes later Bob's yer uncle (or your aunt, depending on the gender reassignment laws of the state you live in).

Butterscotch doesn't set like toffee. After cooking, when it's heated it stays syrupy and bubbles. So what if I used it to make a sort of pudding / cake hybrid - baked, but with pockets of squishy, syrupy goodness throughout?

Reading back over this now, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. But obviously the confectionary- Evolutionists were looking out for me yesterday, because, by jove, it actually WORKED!

This recipe will make enough "cake" to appease about eight - ten people for dessert with icecream or cream to serve. You can bake it in advance and then nuke the slices in the microwave for thirty seconds to heat through just before serving. You can get the butterscotch off whatever it sticks to (and it will stick to stuff, this recipe is delicously messy) by running hot tap water over it. If you tell anyone I was responsible for the creation of this type-II-diabetes- inducing monstrosity, I WILL roast your bones for stock. Are we clear? Good.

Banana Butterscotch Pudding Cake

Ingredients

Cake
1 cup mashed very ripe bananas (about two large bananas)
2 ripe bananas, sliced
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup self raising flour
1 tespoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons allspice

Butterscotch sauce
2/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
80g unsalted butter
300mL cream


Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease and line a 22cm round springform baking tin with baking paper.
2. To make the butterscotch sauce, place the butter into a small saucepan and melt over a low heat. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved in the butter. Add the cream, stir over low heat for two minutes or until combined, and then allow to cook over a low heat for another couple of minutes, until smooth and thickened slightly.
3. Combine egg, brown sugar, vegetable oil and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Sift the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, then stir to combine. Stir in the mashed banana. Set aside.
4. To assemble: Spoon the cake batter into the prepared tin. Top the cake batter with the sliced banana. Pour 2/3 of the butterscotch sauce over the top of the cake and banana slices.
5. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Remove from oven, allow to cool in tin for five minutes before releasing springform and sliding from the tin base onto a plate. Serve immediately with ice cream or cream and the reheated leftover butterscotch sauce, and a late picked riesling. Otherwise, allow to cool then cover with cling wrap and store in the fridge for up to three days.

Beef Fajitas by Gringo Farr.

Wise man once say: "one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor."

I'd planned to cook for just the bloke and myself, but at around six pm said bloke called to say that a friend of ours was coming around for dinner.

Now, I love what the lifestyle world terms "entertaining", but the last time this friend came around for "dinner" we knocked back a brewery's worth of beer, several dry martinis, and the culminating point: an entire bottle of absinthe. The actual solid part of the "meal" consisted of a couple of pizzas delivered as an afterthought to the serious business of liver punishment. However this time, fortune was on our side. His visit coincided with perhaps the best drinking food of all being up for the bat on our weekly fridge menu: fajitas! Not only do they soak up any excess blood in one's alcohol stream, they're also interactive, and hey, with at least five sorts of chilli-based seasoning, you're probably going to NEED a cooling beverage to take the edge off.

I hereby acknowledge that these are probably about as authentically "Mexican" as a Chinese-made Aztec souvenier, but they are a great easy meal for three or four (a "crowd pleaser" as I'm sure it would say on the packet... if it came in a packet... which it doesn't) that lend themselves to being consumed as part of a wider gastronomic adventure (hey, booze goes into your mouth just like everything else, right?).

The method part of this recipe can be adapted so as to have the guacamole whipped up, beef marinating, potatoes parcooked and spiced, and serving extras sans tortillas ready to go before anyone enters your abode. Then all you'll have to do is bake the potatoes and stirfry the beef ingredients when they arrive, and even a gringo like you could do that, right?

Beef Fajitas
(with guacamole and spicy potatoes)

Ingredients

Fajitas
One beef round steak (approximately 350g)
One brown onion, halved and sliced
1/4 red onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
Olive oil
1 tablespoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried chilli
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried coriander
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
Blend of Tabascos to taste: we used about 1/2 a teaspoon each of habenero, garlic and jalepeno (you can buy these in Australia through USA Foods, alternatively just use regular chilli sauce to taste)
1/4 red capsicum, cut in half and sliced thinly
1/4 green capsicum, cut in half and sliced thinly
1/4 yellow capsicum, cut in half and sliced thinly
2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander

Guacamole
One avocado
Juice of one lemon
One clove of garlic, crushed
1/2 small tomato, finely diced
1/4 red onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander
More Tabasco, sea salt and pepper

Spicy potatoes
Three medium potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
Olive oil
Sea salt
Mexican chilli powder (or blend of paprika, cayenne pepper, cumin and oregano in proportions to taste - try 2 tsp paprika to 1 of everything else.)

To serve
Sliced tomato, cucumber, lettuce, olives, jalepenos. Grated cheese. Natural yoghurt / sour cream. More hot sauces than you could poke a pinata at. Tortillas of your choice (bought from a supermarket and prepared just before serving according to the instructions on the packet - what, you don't think I was actually going to suggest making them yourself? Hell no, there's drinking to be done.)

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 220 degrees celcius. Boil / steam / microwave the potato wedges until just tender on the outside. Coat with a tablespoon of olive oil then shake over the Mexican chilli powder / spice blend and salt and pepper to taste and stir. Place two tablespoons of olive oil in a baking dish and heat in the oven for five minutes. Put potatoes in pan, swish them around in the hot oil a bit and then pop the lot into the oven and bake for about half an hour or until potatoes are crispy, shaking pan occasionally.

2. While the potatoes are baking, slice the beef into thin, bite-sized pieces. Mix the garlic, spices, sauces and about two tablespoons of olive oil together and add salt and pepper to taste. Dump the beef in the marinade, stir well and set aside for ten minutes, or put it in the fridge and leave for up to an hour while you prepare the guacamole, drink some beers and talk crap with your mates.

3. For the guacamole: peel and deseed the avocado and dice finely, then place in a large bowl. Add onion and tomato, and mix gently (you want to to still be chunky, not a puree). Add garlic and lemon juice, salt and Tabasco to taste and give it a final gentle mix, sprinkle with the coriander then cover with clingwrap and set aside.

4. To turn them thurr cattle into beefy goodness: fire up a tablespoon of olive oil over a medium-high heat in a large frypan. Add the sliced and diced onions and fry for a minute or two, then add the marinated beef and cook until just brown on the outside, stirring all the time (you still want it to be juicy, don't you?). Add the capsicums and stir fry for another couple of minutes (they should still have a bit of bite to them) then remove from the heat and put your fajita filling in a bowl and sprinkle with the coriander.

5. Now, amigos, it is time to eat. Chuck all the marvels you've made on a table (or donkey, or whatever surface you have spare) and watch your ravenous mates tear into that shizzy like vultures in the desert. Wash down with copious amounts of Dos Equis and try to forget about that naughty bottle of tequila eyeing you off from the top shelf of your bar. Hic.

Vegetarian Moussaka by Na.Na, Moosecurry

Vegetarian: the only food defined by what it's not.

What is it about vegetarian cooking that makes omnivores shudder? Could it be the high fibre base, or perhaps the perceived lack of flavour? Could it be the endless dishes of rice-stuffed "things", or the idea that a plate of beans is considered a "meal"? Or could it be the preachy fucks who come part and parcel with the cuisine itself?

Now, despite my bacon-lust and appreciation, nay, adorement, for a juicy chunk of roasted animal, I have a confession to make. For many years, many many years... I was a vegetarian. And... oh gosh, I can't believe I'm going to admit this ON THE INTERNET, for many of those years, many many many of those years... I was a vegan.

"Oh, that explains a lot," I hear you say.

Strangely, about the only thing which I took away from those years of cooking without animal products was an appreciation for how good food can be when it's done well, regardless of its ingredient content. By and large, vegetarian and vegan food is shitty. But thankfully, two food suppliers shaped my ideas of what meatless cookery should be like. Firstly, my dad: who didn't kick me out of my family's Northern Territory home when I announced that I was no longer consuming flesh and associated by-products. Instead, he looked upon it as a challenge to whip up dishes that were tasty, healthy and acceptable to all and sundry rather than just the fussy, whiney, sullen teen skulling cooking wine in the corner. And secondly, the Hare Krishnas: yes, I know they're a cult, but their restaurants and recipe books really do deliver some excellent dishes, proving that not everyone who runs around in an orange robe is a complete waste of space.

Perhaps the worst perpatrators of BAD vegetarian cookery are the writers of vegetarian cookbooks (HK's excepted as above, boarding school kitchens excepted as in previous posts). Oh lordy, what on earth do they think they're playing at? Topping some boiled (BOILED!) vegetables with a lemon wedge and some sliced almonds IS NOT A MEAL, PEOPLE. I think perhaps the biggest problem that exists in the vegetarian / carnivore divide is the fact that vegetarian cookery proponents seem to think that every meal which traditionally contains meat is also off limits to vegetarians. I disagree with the idea that you can't use vegetables and legumes as a substitute for meat in cooking, I disagree that they have some holy status which requires them to be "untainted" by the very stuff that makes food good! Nowhere is this as apparent as in vegan cookbooks, and when the vegetarian cookbooks TRY to use vegetables as a substitute they fail dismally. A fitting example: the vegetarian moussaka recipe in one of my cookbooks suggests topping the pile of insipid, unflavoured legumes and tomatoes with plain yoghurt instead of bechemel before baking.

Nuh uh, girlfriend. That's not how I roll.

So, driven by the desire to make something that could be whipped up before I went out and then put in the oven when I got home to finish it off, I was forced to concoct my own recipe, which wasn't that hard, and tastes a helluva lot better than some baked yoghurt and dry lentils.

Vegetarian Moussaka

Ingredients

1/2 cup of dry chick peas, soaked for at least four hours then boiled until tender and drained (you could use canned but I think canned legumes are a waste of money and kinda creepy with that gooey stuff they put around them in the tin)
1/2 cup dried brown lentils
2 tbsp olive oil
One brown onion, diced
Two cloves of garlic, diced
One 400g tin of tomatoes, smashed up a bit with a knife blade
3 fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
1/2 a red capsicum, chopped
1/2 a green capsicum, chopped

6 mushrooms, quartered
1 large eggplant, cut into thick slices
A couple of sprigs of fresh herbs - I used thyme, majoram and oregano, or use dried. Whatevz.
Tabasco (optional)
Salt & pepper
3 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of flour
500mL / 2 cups milk
2/3 cup grated parmesan or kealograviera cheese
* See note at end for cowjuice free joy.

Method

1. Rinse the lentils then put them in a saucepan on the stove and simmer for about twenty minutes or until tender.
2. Heat the olive oil over a medium heat in a large wok / high sided frypan. Add the onion and fry for a couple of minutes until it begins to turn golden. Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, capsicum, chick peas, herbs, salt and pepper and Tabasco to taste if using. Allow to simmer for around half an hour until the veggies are tender.
3. Meanwhile, cut the eggplant into thick slices and salt. Allow to sit for about twenty minutes, then rinse and grill with some olive oil under a medium - high heat until slightly browned, then turn and do the same on the other side. Remove from grill and set aside.
4. Add the lentils to the veggie mix and stand, covered while you make the sauce.
5. Microwave the milk in a heat proof jug for two minutes on high. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and cook for a couple of minutes until it goes foamy. Add the milk all in one go, then whisk to combine with the flour / butter mixture. Continue to stir over a medium heat for a couple of minutes until the sauce thickens. Add half the cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat.
6. To assemble: place a layer of veggie mix in the bottom of an oven proof casserole / baking dish. Top with a layer of grilled eggplant. Add another layer of veggies, another layer of eggplant, then pour the sauce over it and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top. You could also sprinkle a bit of nutmeg over the cheese if you were feeling creative. (Can be prepared ahead up to this point: cover with cling wrap and put in the fridge until you get home from the pub.)
7. Bake in a 180 degree oven for about half an hour, or until the sauce and cheese are light brown.
8. Serve with a green salad, a bottle of cabernet shiraz or NZ sauvignon blanc, and thick slices of ciabatta; scoff at the fact that vegetarian cookery writers are eating boiled beans with soy sauce for dinner.

* To make this a vegan dish, simply switch the butter for a vegan spread / olive oil; the cow milk for soy ; and the cheese for a vegan substitute product of choice (see here for a list of suppliers and don't say I never look out for you hippies).

Black Forest Cupcakes by Z.E. Krautmama

In approximately 121 days my bloke and I will be wed. In approximately six hours and sixteen minutes, my dear friend Em will be kicking off her birthday celebrations at a pub around the corner from where we're having our after-marriage shindig. What have these two events got in common? Why, CUPCAKES, my dear!

Frustrated with the monstrosities of marzipan presented to me by the wedding coordinator at our reception centre (and gobsmacked over the price - $140 for a single tiered plain cake? I think not!); I have decided to bake our own wedding cakes. Cakes? Yes, plural. I am looking at the prospect of baking in much the same way that I look at a basket full of unfolded washing: yes, folding the big things first gives you more bang for your buck, but it's the little things that are most fulfilling to put away.... oh lordy, scrap that, I sound like Martha F'n Stewart, don't I? Forgive me, I have not yet had my morning tipple.

Basically, we decided on cupcakes because big cakes are both cumbersome and out of the realm of my decorating abilities. Cupcakes, on the other hand, are itsy-bitsy bundles of goodness, kinda like the crispy bits on the edge of bacon rinds. And owing to my bloke's love of Krautrock, and the Deutsch blood flowing through my veins, we decided that the classic torte combination of chocolate and cherry would be fitting. The only problem is we haven't done a trial run yet, and that, my loves, is where Em's birthday comes in. Because if they end up messed up, well, there's always beer to eat instead.

These cupcakes are based on the basic cupcake "foundation" of equal parts caster sugar, self raising flour and unsalted butter. The quantity below will make eighteen cakes depending on how much of the mixture you eat before baking. The recipe is a bastardisation of "Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes" from Fergal Connolly's 500 Cupcakes (what's the difference between a cook and a chef? A cook acknowledges their sauces... oh lordy, kill me now.)

Black Forest Cupcakes

Ingredients

225g self-raising flour
4 tbsp good cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
225g caster sugar
225g softened unsalted butter
4 eggs
90g chopped cherries (I used frozen as fresh are out of season)
2 tbsp kirsch (or other cherry-flavoured liquor)

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees celcius. Place 18 pattycake cases in muffin tins.
2. Using a sieve, sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a medium bowl and set aside. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until soft, then add the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition until the whole thing is creamy.
3. Add the flour mixture and cherries, stirring with a wooden spoon until combined.
4. Spoon into the cases (fill about 3/4 full) and bake for twenty minutes. Remove the tins from the oven, cool in the tins for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack, sprinkle over the kirsch and allow to cool completely.

Icing
(Yes, I know this icing doesn't really "go" with the cupcakes, but for the sake of decoration the whipped cream and chocolate shavings suggested by the recipe book wasn't going to cut it: too much class, not enough arse IYKWIM... You can change the colours and decorations to suit the gaudiness of your intended cupcake recipient.)
375g sifted icing sugar
225g softened unsalted butter
Food colouring

1. Beat the icing sugar and butter together until smooth and fluffy.
2. Add food colouring according to your own whim and fancy, beat some more until the icing is all the same colour.
3. Ice the cooled cupcakes using a metal spoon and decorate with whatever you have lying around the house (sprinkles, icing tubes, cachous, bacon, etc.)

And the result? Well, I think my decorating skills need a bit more work, but meh. They taste good, even if they do look a little like a wreck on the autobahn.

Fettucini Marinara by A. Lapsed-Catholic

As a teen, I spent several years eating institution food at an all-girl's Catholic boarding school. Also as a teen, I spent several years eating my Dad's home cooking. The two cuisines were about as far removed from one another as humanly possible - I'm sure the rest of the young "ladies" boarding with me would have flipped out had they been presented with a chick pea curry or kangaroo meat stir fry; and conversely, my Dad would have committed seppuku if I'd whipped up a vegetarian plate consisting of a bulk-purchased pattie, some boiled peas and corn and Deb mash potato and called it a meal.

One thing that was special in both kitchens, however, was Friday night dinner.

At my boarding school, Friday night was fish and chips night. Friday was the only night we were fed chips, and chips were one of the only foodstuffs the kitchen staff could cook well, so it was as much of a win win situation as one could hope for under the circumstances. The inedible fried-from-frozen fish, of course, was a stickler from ye olde days of the church - but we forgave them for this antiquated tradition like good Catholic girls do... as long as the chips kept coming.

At my parent's place to this day, Friday is spaghetti night (spaghetti being used as a header for an anglocised bolognese as well as the pasta itself). "Spaghetti night" basically entails my father "knocking off work" early, coming home, opening a bottle of homebrew and relaxing for an hour or so before whipping up the sauce using cupboard and freezer ingredients (it's one of the ultimate isolated area meals, not requiring anything flash that wouldn't be found at the local supermarket). He then lets it bubble away for another couple of beers before serving with cooked San Remo (always!) packet spaghetti, a garden salad and a good bottle of red.

So being a Friday, how's about a recipe for nostalgia's sake, combining the basics of the two? I originally planned to fry up a batch of hot chips and consume them with a two litre cask of shiraz, but then another idea came to me - a recipe which will be sure to impress no matter how much of a lady you are.

Fettucine Marinara

Ingredients

Olive oil (about two tablespoons)
One brown onion, chopped finely
Two cloves of garlic, chopped finely
One 400g tin of whole Italian tomatoes (chop them up a bit in the tin by sticking your knife in and smashing it around some)
Three small fresh tomatoes, diced
One tablespoon of tomato paste
1/2 cup of dry white wine
Half a handful of fresh majoram and oregano leaves, roughly chopped
1/2 packet of dried long pasta (today I'm using Barilla fettucine but you could make this with whichever brand and variety you prefer)
6 scallops (roe on or off, whatever you prefer)
6 green prawns (shelled and de-veined but with tails left intact)
6 frozen mussels (defrost and remove beard and grit beforehand)
2 small (10cm) squid tubes, or 1/2 a larger tube (cut in half, score and cut each half into quarters)
1 medium salmon fillet, skin off (cut into bite sized chunks)
Half a handful of basil leaves, torn
Half a handful of parsley, chopped
Sea salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste

Method

1. Heat a large frypan / wok to medium, then put a couple of glugs of olive oil into the pan and allow to heat for thirty seconds.
Add the chopped onion and cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes until it becomes transluscent, then add the chopped garlic and stir for another minute or two.
Add the wine and let it evaporate for a minute, then chuck in the chopped and tinned tomatoes and stir to combine.
Throw in a the tomato paste, sugar and the oregano and majoram, stir, and reduce the heat to low (it should be just bubbling occasionally).
Let it cook for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally.

2. Meanwhile, after about 40 minutes, fill a large pot with water and bring to the boil.

3. Got your tomato sauce nicely simmered? Got your pasta water boiling? Right, now we are going to do a bit o' coordinated cookery. Ready?
Add a bit of sea salt to the water then chuck in the pasta and cook until it is squishy enough to make you happy (call me a heathen - I hate pasta cooked al dente. Take that, purists!).
While the pasta is cooking, add the mussels to the pasta sauce and cook for a minute or two. Then add the salmon and squid and cook for another two minutes, then stir in the prawns and finally the scallops. Cook until the prawns turn pink (don't overdo this stage or you'll end up with rubberarma rather than marinara sauce...).
Stir in sea salt and pepper to taste, and remove from the heat.

4. Your pasta should be ready about the same time as you finish up with the seafood.
Drain it, reserving about 1/3 of the cooking water, then add the cooked pasta and the water to the marinara sauce.
Swish it around a bit to coat.
Serve topped with the basil and parsley, and accompanied by cabernet sauvignon and a Catholic schoolgirl wink and nod.

Voila! A Friday night dinner even Jesus would rise for. Serves two drunks or three as part of a civilised meal with salad and garlic ciabatta.

Chilli Con Carne with Jalepeno Corn Muffins

I realised this morning, about eighteen months after posting this recipe, that it had no snappy intro text.

When TheBloke and I were living in the Wildes of Easte Sydney, we became rather accomplished at gardening in pots. Not only did our "veggie patch" include your standard tubs of herbs, cherry tomatoes and lettuce, we also had a variety of chillies growing which may have rivaled the Peruvian potato gene bank in a capsicum form. Along with making the almost-fatal error of adding an entire habenero to burritos one evening, we discovered the joy of fresh jalapenos, and that's where this recipe came in.

Chilli con Carne with Jalapeno Corn Muffins

Ingredients
Chilli con Carne
1 cup dried kidney beans
1.5kg chuck steak
2 litres water
1 tbsp olive oil
2 medium brown onions, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 400g tins whole tomatoes, smashed up with a knife
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp Tabasco
4 spring onions, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh coriander, coarsely chopped plus extra to serve
1/2 cup jalepenos (bottled or fresh), finely chopped

Jalapeno Corn Muffins
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup SR flour
2 cups polenta
2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 cups buttermilk
2 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/3 cups finely grated cheddar cheese
1/3 cup jalapenos (bottled or fresh), finely chopped

Method
Chilli con Carne
1. Chuck the beef and water into a large saucepan, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 1 1/2 hours. Remove from heat and cool for half an hour.
2. Remove beef and shred coarsely. Reserve 3 1/2 cups of cooking water.
3. Heat olive oil in same pan (don't bother washing it after taking the beef and water out, ya sucker for punishment) over medium heat, add onion and cook, stirring, until it begins to soften. Add garlic and spices and cook, stirring, until fragrant. Add beans, tomatoes, tomato paste, Tabasco and 2 cups of the cooking water, bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for one hour.
4. Add beef and remaining cooking liquid to pan. Stir then simmer, covered, for half an hour.
5. Remove from heat and stir through coriander and spring onions just prior to serving.

Jalapeno Corn Muffins
1. While the chilli is cooking, pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease a 12 pan muffin tin.
2. Mix flours then add remaining ingredients and stir until just combined.
3. Divide mixture between the muffin pans then bake for 35 minutes, or until golden and springy to touch.

To Serve
Ladle the chilli into bowls and serve topped with extra coriander, spring onion and fresh chillies if desired. Grin, gringo. Grin!