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...".