Smoking in the Kitchen

Korean Eggplant and Tofu Hot Pot

2010-03-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

With the weather attempting to cool down, TheBloke and I are looking forward to busting out the slow cooker again. Last year it became something of an idol for our household, the sort that, on account of its neverending procession of deliciousness, beat the pants off the gilt framed pictures sold by the Greeks outside the church down the road.

The only problem with the slow cooker is that it's just not that impressive a serving vessel. Which is where the All Clad tagine that my parents bought us for Christmas comes in. Not only is it stylish in looks, it's also rapidly becoming my go-to saute pan. The heavy base conducts heat as well as our Essteele saucepans and the height of the walls is perfect for dry and wet dishes alike.

A hungover craving for bahn mi made with goods acquired from Mr Chao's BBQ Bar on Saturday morning saw me returning with not only BBQ pork, but also half a duck and some roast pork too. Whoops. But happy day, it enabled another layer of flavour to be added to this hot pot. Of course, if you're veganically inclined, you may choose to omit said swine and congratulate yourself for having far more restraint than I.

Korean Eggplant and Tofu Hot Pot

Ingredients

1 tsp peanut oil
1 onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 tbsp Szechuan peppercorns, toasted and crushed in a mortar and pestle
2 tbsp crushed dried chilli
2 tbsp soy sauce1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
150g kimchi
1 tsp chilli bean paste
1 tsp red miso paste
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 cup straw mushrooms
1/4 cup bamboo shoots
1/3 cup dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in enough boiling water to cover until soft (reserve water)
1/3 cup dried wood fungus, soaked in enough boiling water to cover until soft, then drained and chopped
150g Chinese roast pork (or you could use uncooked pork belly), cubed
1 eggplant, sliced, salted and then rinsed and cut into large chunks
300g firm silken tofu, cut into large chunks
500mL chicken (or vegetable) stock

Method

1. Heat the peanut oil in a large pan. Add onion and pork and saute until onion begins to colour. Add garlic, peppercorns, dried chilli, chilli bean paste, miso paste and soy sauce and saute until fragrant.
2. Increase heat and add Chinese rice wine, then the eggplant. Stir fry until eggplant begins to caramelise.
3. Turn down the heat and add kimchi, shiitake mushrooms and the water they soaked in, sesame oil and chicken stock. Reduce heat to minimum, cover and allow to cook for half an hour, or until eggplant is very soft.
4. Stir, then add tofu cubes, bamboo shoots, wood fungus and straw mushrooms. Taste for heat and salt, add more dried chilli and soy sauce if desired. Recover and cook for another fifteen minutes.
5. Just before serving, sprinkle with spring onions. Serve with rice and stir fried mixed greens.

Bairro Petersham Portuguese Food and Wine Festival

2010-03-10T17:01:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, TheBloke and I made our second pilgrimage up the road to the annual Bairro Petersham Portuguese Food and Wine Festival.

The festival has been running since time began (or for nearly a decade), and brings the amazing food and culture of the local enclave to the streets. Last year it rained. This year, despite some ominous looking clouds, it was mostly fine all day, which made the event much more conducive to indulgence in cheap and cheerful Portuguese cask red and Sagres beer.

Audley and Fisher Streets were closed off and instead of cars parking to get to the train station, the bitumen was filled with happy masses and food stalls.

I set my sights high when I woke up on Sunday morning. All I wanted to achieve for the day was a barbecued sardine and a chorizo in my tummy. Luckily there was plenty of both available, although I did have to contend with a dimwitted security guard commenting that my plate "looks good... if you're a cat" whilst waiting for TheBloke to buy us some drinks. Speaking of which, his sights were set on eating the chunks of meat on sticks pictured on the back grill above. Deliciously rustic!

Most of the stalls were selling variations on grilled meatstuffs, cornbread, bolinos de bacalhau (cod cakes) and feijoada (dried beef stew). We eschewed the huge line in front of the prawn and chilli sauce grill joint that seems to be at every food and wine festival we attend; and hit up a smaller stall for our chorizo fix. It turned out to be a good move, because instead of a stock standard commercial sausage, we ended up with a handmade work of snag art, filled with chunks of pork belly.

Unfortunately, our late arrival time (2pm) meant that we missed out on churros. First come, first served! We pacified ourselves with a plate of malasadas for the road.

An impromptu round of singing, clapping and dancing broke out as we were leaving. Accompanied by an accordian, nonetheless. Saúde!

Three Way Cookies

2009-07-06T21:46:00.001-07:00

My usual baking hit rate is birthdays, dinner parties and miscellaneous occasions where I've impulse-bought something that calls for a crumblin'. Two lots of sweet treats in less than a week is some sort of record for me. Alas, a craving for chocolate has struck me down, and combined with a stack of baking ingredients that have been sitting sullenly in my spice rack for the past eleven months (since my last foray into birthday baking for three birthday weekends in a row), I decided to do something about it.

Cookies aren't something that TheBloke and I normally have in the house (choosing to expand our waistlines with jamon et fromage instead), but they're quick to make, don't require me to pull the stand mixer out of the back of the cupboard, and can be easily bagged and tagged for TheBloke to take to work with him. (As an aside, while baking these I got into an internet fight with a random guy on Facebook who took offense at my anti-pornography stance. I've concluded that being called a "femo" as an insult is actually good for the constitution. It gives one an opportunity to ask oneself the hard questions, like 'is it fair to judge intelligence based on an individual's use of poorly thought out sarcasm?'; 'is arguing about ethics in a virtual medium with idiots ever productive?'; 'can you be a "femo" and still bake your husband cookies?'; and most importantly, 'why aren't you finishing off last week's management theory workbook questions?' But I digress.)

The best triple choc cookies I've ever eaten were a batch that my Mum posted to me when I was at boarding school. This recipe is admittedly little more grown up (using 70% cocoa for both varieties rather than copious amounts of sweetened milk and white chocolate), and satisfy in a single (or double... hehehe...) dose, rather than in teenage-sized handfuls. I think there's a time and a place for both, but given my allegedly man-hating womb is still childfree, it's good to make the most of the finer things while the eating audience is just the two of us! Their naughty name is obviously a calculated effort on my behalf to cut down my hard-arsed no-fun femme-core reputation. Der.

Three Way Cookies

Ingredients
Makes two dozen

Basic Batter
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
120g room temperature unsalted butter
200g 70% cocoa dark chocolate, chopped
2 eggs, beaten

Missionary Style
1/4 cup white chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup milk chocolate, chopped

Mouth Party Time
2 tbs mixed peel
2 tbs toasted unsalted pistachios
50g Mayan Gold Green and Black Fairtrade Chocolate, chopped

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Line baking trays with non-stick paper.
2. Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa into a large bowl. Add brown sugar and mix well.
3. Place dark chocolate and butter in a saucepan. Melt over a low flame until smooth, remove from heat and set aside for fifteen minutes.
4. Once the chocolate mixture has cooled, make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in chocolate mixture and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients are combined and dough is smooth.
5. Divide mixture in half. Add chopped milk and white chocolate to one half and stir well. Repeat with peel, pistachios, and Mayan Gold with second half.
6. Roll dough into small balls of approx 3cm radius. Place balls on trays, leaving five centimetre gaps between them. Squish balls with a fork. OH HAR!
7. Place trays in oven, bake for ten minutes, switch trays around, bake for another ten minutes. Remove trays from oven, allow cookies to cool on tray for five minutes then transfer to racks. RACKS! OH LE ENTENDRE!
8. Is lucky. Are you getting lucky? No? Try these cookies as bribes.

Apricot, Honey and Pistachio Tea Cakes

2009-06-30T22:29:00.001-07:00

Yet another post driven by frugality, or lack thereof. The Bloke and I have recently returned from the Wildes of Vietnam and Cambodia, and have also recently started shopping at ALDI. You may make the connection between these two occurrences and say "HI, I DO SAY JEEVES, IT APPEARS THAT MRS M'S ESTATE IS IN THE POORHOUSE!" You would, of course, be correct. But being in the poorhouse is no excuse for a lack of afternoon tea in one's life! No, indeed, baking scrumptious things at home and washing them down with a cup of Boh Cameronian tea bought overseas during more prosperous times can be just as fun as an evening spent at the Wine and Cheese Room under the GPO!

OK, I'm full of it. Being confined to the house sucks the big one. And the only reason I baked these was because I cracked open a tin of ALDI apricot halves to serve with pan roasted free range pork cutlets last night and knew full well that they'd just fester in a pile of wastefulness at the back of the fridge if I didn't do *something* with them. And as much as I dislike Kylie Kwong with the fire of a thousand suns, I do agree with her that food wastage is pretty criminal in these hard times (even though I threw out a whole tub of yoghurt and an entire pot of sour cream this morning... yeah, I'm working on it, OK?).

Having an infinite preference for savoury over sweet, I was hard pressed to figure out what to do with the offending leftovers, until I came across a picture of an apple tea cake (yes, just like Agnes Skinner in The Simpsons) and figured that both fruits start with A. Smart, me! A search on The Google came up with a couple of basic recipes which I tweaked to fit the ingredients on hand. The small sizes are more a product of leaving my springform pan in Canberra than deliberate planning. The pistachios were the first thing that came out of a lucky grab into the container labelled "Nuts, Legumes, Mexican" in my pantry.

Forgive my lack of enthusiasm. They taste good, but not as good as a bottle of 1986 hermitage and a lump of ripe blue on a cold city night. Beggars can't be choosers. Enjoy.

Apricot, Honey and Pistachio Tea Cakes

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
170g butter, softened
3 eggs
1 cup tinned apricots, drained and chopped roughly
2 tbsp raw pistachios
2 tbs honey
2 tbsp butter, extra
Method

1. Pre heat oven to 190 degrees celcius.
2. Toast pistachios in oven for fifteen minutes, remove and cool.
3. Meanwhile, dump flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a bowl and stir with a fork to break up any lumps. Set aside.
4. Cream softened butter in a bowl, then gradually add sugar until combined. Continue creaming until light and fluffy, then add eggs one at a time, and then the vanilla extract.
5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, beating after each addition, until combined. Place batter in freezer for half an hour.
6. Meanwhile, grease 12 pan muffin tin with extra butter. Combine the chopped apricots with the honey.
7. Distribute half the batter into the bottoms of the muffin pans. Top with 2 tsp chopped apricots, then divide the remaining batter across the tops of the pans. Sprinkle with pistachios.
8. Bung it in the oven for half an hour, remove, check doneness with a skewer, shove 'em in your face at afternoon tea like the Queen's corgi scarfing down a leftover Harrod's pork pie. Remember the time you went to London and it rained UP, use this as a focus point for dissuading further overseas travel.

Mixed Dahl with Homemade Naan Bread by Curry Khor

2009-02-01T23:39:00.000-08:00

As the neo-hippy culinary coordinator for our household, I resolved to include at least one vegan meal a week in our repertoire of recipes during the hungover apocalypse which was the post-New-Year period. We already eat vegetarian several times a week, but given the new / old evidence that the best way cut carbon is to kick meat, I figured it was an easy way to greenwash our household and make us feel better about consuming nought but Californian raspberries, Kobe wagyu beef, Stilton and Bollinger on the other nights. Oh lulz everybody. LULZ.

I used to consume a dahl made from brown lentils when I was an ACTUAL vegan (imagine that!), and while that version has its place as a winter warmer, I much prefer a mixture of pulses and vegetables during the summer months - especially given that our current abode is more of an oven than Lucas Heights. While only part of this meal is vegan (the dahl, silly) - I'm pretty sure that cooking a dough made with a good quality fresh soy milk in olive oil would be an acceptable way to veganise it completely. If anyone has a crack at doing it that way let me know.

Mixed Dahl with Homemade Naan Bread by Curry Khan

Ingredients

For the dahl
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
2 birds eye chillies, diced
2 stalks celery, finely diced
2 medium sized carrots, finely diced
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1.5 litres vegetable stock
3/4 cup brown lentils
3/4 cup black (du puy) lentils
1/2 cup red lentils
1 cup water
Two cups assorted vegetables, diced (I used capsicum, zucchini, broccoli and mushroom 'coz they were what needed using up in my crisper)
Fresh coriander, chillies and various chutneys to serve (optional)

For the naan
1 1/2 cups plain flour, plus extra for dusting
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Butter to cook
Nigella seeds, to taste

Method

Make the naan dough first - you can let it rise while the dahl is cooking and shape and cook them after adding the vegetables to the lentils.

Naan
1. Chuck the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder in a bowl. Stir vigorously with a fork to kill any lumps. Combine milk and oil in a pouring jug.
2. Add milk and oil mixture to flour mixture a little at a time, stirring to combine after each addition. When the bowl contents reach a dough-like consistency, turn it out onto a floured bench and knead until it is smooth and bounces back when you poke it.
3. Oil the same bowl you used for mixing then dump the ball of dough back into it and allow to rise in a warm area until doubled in size (1 1/2 - 2 hours).
4. When the dahl is cooked, punch the dough down then divide into four, and shape into 20cm rounds.
5. Melt a knob of butter in a large non-stick frypan over a medium/high heat, then throw in one of the rounds. Allow to cook until puffy and golden, then flip , sprinkle with nigella seeds and cook for another minute or two. Remove and repeat with remaining rounds.

Dahl
1. Chuck a slug of olive oil into a mid-sized saucepan over a medium flame. Add the onion, celery and carrot, and cook for a couple of minutes until they begin to soften.
2. Add spices, garlic, ginger and chilli to the pot, stir until fragrant then drop the heat and pour in the vegetable stock.
3. Bring to the boil, then add brown and black lentils, stir and reduce heat to a simmer. Allow to cook for 45 minutes or so (until the lentils are al dente), stirring occasionally.
4. Add the red lentils and the water, stir, and allow to simmer for another twenty minutes.
5. Add vegetables, stir and simmer until tender.

Serve in big bowls with freshly chopped coriander, chillies and chutneys on side, pretend like you're part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Roladen mit Brodknoedel by Toba Fest

2008-10-01T03:01:00.000-07:00

In just over a fortnight, The Bloke and I will be in Munich catching up with my extended family. This excites me for more reasons than I have words, although most of them are focussed around discovering a part of my history which has previously been rendered impossible due to geographical distance. As a first generation Australian German (on my Mum's side) I've always had a yearning to see the places that my family called home before WWII, and the fact that my cousins, aunts and uncles are so excited about our impending visit is just heart-warming.

Thankfully, we've timed our visit to miss the hoardes of American fraternity kids that descend upon the city for Oktoberfest. Instead, we'll be spending the culmination of the festival down at our local Concordia Club in Tempe. This recipe is a fitting tribute for both family and festive occasions. I first came across it when my Oma rustled it up for my Mum and I when we came to stay - I didn't eat pork at the time, so she used marinated roast beef strips in the centre rather than bacon. I think the bacon gives the dish more body (especially if you're using very lean meat) but it's tasty either way, and definitely pays up against the sometimes fiddly nature of roladen construction! You could also serve the roladen with buttered pasta noodles or boiled potatoes if your beer condition prevents you from mucking around with bread dumplings.

Roladen mit Brotknoedel by Toba Fest

Tip: Read the recipe all the way through before starting, as you can actually make the raw roladen and brotknoedel in advance and refrigerate them until required for cooking.

Ingredients (for two)

Roladen
1 schnitzel cut beef steak per person (or one oyster blade steak per person, hammered out to 0.5cm thickness)
Polski ogorki, thinly sliced
German mustard
1 rasher of bacon per person, thinly sliced
Half a brown onion, thinly sliced
2 cups of beef stock
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 teaspoon cornflour, dissolved in enough water to make a paste
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Brotknoedel - this makes about six, which you shouldn't eat all at once as they take up valuable beer space.
1/2 loaf three day old white bread
1 onion, grated
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
50g butter, softened
1/3-1/2 cup warm milk
Salt and pepper

Method

Roladen
1. Coat one side of each slab of beef in mustard, then evenly distribute the polski ogorki, onion and bacon slices over the mustard side, to make a sort of a meat pizza. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
2. Take one edge of the short ends (given that your meat pizza is probably vaguely oval in shape, this means one of the thinner ends) and tightly roll into an, hmm, trying to think of a witty comparison point - oh yes, like a pirate scroll. A meaty pirate scroll! Roll 'til you can roll no more, then take some tooth picks and secure the scroll so that all the delicious filling is hidden from the world (just shove them in however works, along both the rolled edge and the two ends).
3. Heat a couple of glugs of the oil in an appropriately sized saucepan (one which will allow your meatscrolls to sit on the bottom snuggly but comfortably), then brown the meatscrolls well. Add the beef stock, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer gently for around an hour.
3. When the meatscrolls are nearly done, add the sliced mushrooms to the pan and cook for another ten minutes. Add the cornflour, allow to bubble and thicken for a minute or so, then taste and adjust for seasoning, and remove from heat.

Brotknoedel
1. Cut the bread into 1cm cubes and place in a large bowl. Pour a small amount of milk over the bread and squish it until it is just beginning to bind (it is very important that you don't overdo the cowjuice, if you do you'll be left with a sludgy mess). Beat the egg with the parsley and salt and pepper, then add it to the bowl. Cut the butter into little chunks and add it to the bowl. Give it all a good squish together and allow the mixture to sit for about half an hour.
2. Take a fistful of the mixture and shape it into a smooth ball, repeat with remaining mixture.
3. Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Drop the dumplings in one at a time, making sure they don't stick together. Simmer for around 25 minutes. Remove from pot using a slotted spoon.

Serve the roladen, mushroom sauce and dumplings with steamed vegetables and a stein of whatever wets your moustache.

Pumpkin and Spinach Lasagne

2008-09-12T16:10:00.001-07:00

When The Bloke and I got married last year, we were presented with a cookbook. Well, truth be known, we were presented with several cookbooks, but Huey will have to wait his turn, as his coriander and harissa filled concoctions are not on the table for discussion today; and while Damian Pignolet's French is a beautiful read, I'm a bit too rough around the edges for all but the most peasant-y of Gallic gastronomy.

The cookbook I am referring to is a compilation of family recipes from both sides of our families, beautifully put together by my Mum (who even found the same sort of ribbon that we used for our bonbonniere to use in the binding). Its true meaning kinda got lost in the bothers surrounding the wedding day, and although I have used it a number of times since receiving it (mostly in vague attempts to recreate my Oma's blaukraut), it wasn't until the intertwining of The Bloke picking it up for a flick through, and a special on silverbeet at our local market Banana Joes that we talked about how special it is. Go on, everyone say "NAAAAAWWWWW!".

This recipe comes from Scott's Aunty Julie (his Dad's sister). I've tweaked it a bit, as I am wont to do, but the basic skeleton is the same. It was delicious, of course (I wouldn't share a dud with you, would I?) and although my distaste for the combination of spinachy things and cheese as a vegetarian standby is well documented; the substitution of the far-more-ballsy silverbeet, and addition of butternut pumpkin and an aged cheddar to the topping kicks this into the territory of highly acceptable cuisine for my less bloodthirsty friends.

Julie's Pumpkin and Silverbeet Lasagne

Ingredients
1 butternut pumpkin, seeded, peeled, and sliced thinly.
1 bunch silverbeet, de-stalked, chopped, and washed
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 large brown onion, finely diced
1 clove organic garlic, finely diced
2 400g tins of tomatoes, smashed up with a knife
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cut water
1 tablespoon balsalmic vinegar
2 teaspoons brown sugar
Two sprigs thyme, washed, de-sprigged and finely chopped
3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons plain flour
500mL milk
1 bayleaf
1/2 shallot
1 1/2 cups aged cheddar, grated
1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano, grated
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method
1. Heat a glug of olive oil in a frypan, the way you always do when you make a red sauce. Add the onion, cook, stirring, until beginning to caramelise, add garlic and cook for a further minute. Add the white wine and cook for a minute, add the tomatoes, tomato paste, thyme, and water, stir. Add the brown sugar and balsalmic, bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer and cook for half an hour. At the end of the cooking time, taste and adjust for seasoning, then remove from heat.

2. Meanwhile, in another frypan, heat some more oil. Fry the pumpkin in batches over a medium heat until soft and beginning to brown, remove from the pan and set aside. Add the silverbeet to the pan, then the nutmeg, and cook, stirring, until wilted. Add salt and pepper to taste, remove from heat.

3. Chuck the pumpkin back into the pan, then add the ricotta and stir until everything is evenly coated with its creamy goodness. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary, set aside.

4. Bung your oven on - around 200 degrees celcius should do it. Pour yourself a congratulatory glass of wine for reaching the halfway stage of the recipe.

5. In a microwave-safe jug, nuke the milk, shallot and bay leaf for two minutes until steaming, remove the bay leaf and shallot. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan. Add the flour and cook, stirring, until it begins to foam. Add the milk all in one go and whisk rapidly until all lumps have had the bejeezus beaten out of them. Allow to bubble over a medium heat, stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pan and annoy The Bloke whose job it is to wash up, until thick. Remove from heat, add 1/3 of the grated cheddar, set aside.

6. To assemble, place 1/3 of the pumpkin mixture in the bottom of a large lasagne dish. Place a layer of lasagne sheet on top, then cover with the red sauce, a thin layer of the bechamel and a light sprinkle of cheddar. Repeat process twice more, making the last layers of red sauce and bechamel thick to use up the last bits in the pans. Top with remaining cheddar and parmesan. Bake in the oven for around 40 minutes, or until cheese is golden and beginning to brown.

7. Serve with a non-sooky white wine, sourdough garlic bread and a garden salad.

Hippy This! Substitute olive oil for the butter (NOT dairy-free marg, unless you particularly enjoy the texture of KY Jelly on your palate), soy milk for the milk, vegan cream cheese (seasoned with yeast extract and pepper if it is too sweet as many of them are) for the ricotta, and vegan hard cheese for the cheddar. Present it to your vegan dining mates on a plate made from bacon.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

2008-09-04T03:18:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, the much maligned pasta bake. Something that most people have in their arsenal for those lazy weeknights where inspiration is lacking almost as much as motivation. Unfortunately, the invention of pour on sauces has degraded what was formerly an acceptable albeit artless meal, into a construction rather than cuisine. The sad fact of the matter is, there's a component of our society that use the back of a Continental packet as their Escoffier, the label on a Maggi jar as their Larousse. I feel for them, I really do. Food advertising, depicting wonder women brandishing a nutritional substitute on one arm and a flock of glowing children on the other; or clueless blokes saved from singledom by a flavour sachet, has a lot to answer for.

But honestly, what's so hard about chopping up a few veggies, simmering a tin of tomatoes for a couple of minutes, and slapping it into a Pyrex dish with some cooked noodles and sprinkling of pre-grated parmesan? It's not exactly rocket science, is it? You can even slap together the sauce component on a grander scale and freeze batches to stick in the nukebox if you truly don't have a minute spare between Monday and Friday. You don't need those preservative laden timebombs, people! Do you *usually* keep a tub of maltodextrin on hand as a secret ingredient in your cooking? Is lactic acid normally in your pantry? No! So why in the name of Zeus' butthole do you buy food "products" with that crap in it?

Yeah, I'm ranty about this stuff, but only because lazy dinners don't need to be fake dinners. Take this recipe for example. Based on a version that my Mum bakes, only jazzed up a bit with capers, lemon and feta cheese, it contains things that most food-oriented folks would have tucked away at the back of the fridge. And if you're missing a veggie - substitute! A withered head of broccoli, an eggplant that's seen better days, some steamed sweet potato that was starting to grow sentience as well as eyes - any of them could be chucked into this old standby to deliver you from the depression which is a cheese jaffle for supper.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Ingredients
1 red onion, finely diced
1 clove organic garlic, finely diced
1 teaspoon sambal olek
1 400g tin good quality tuna in oil (I use Sirena or Sole Marie)
1/4 red capsicum, diced
1/4 green capsicum, diced
1 zucchini, diced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
10 green olives, sliced
2 teaspoons capers
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
3 tablespoons parmesan cheese, grated
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Pre-heat oven to 200 degree celcius.

2. Heat a couple of good glugs of olive oil in a frypan. Add the onion, garlic and sambal olek, and cook over a medium heat, stirring, until onion is soft.

3. Add the capsicum, zucchini and tomato paste, cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the drained tuna, olives and capers, stir, then add lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste and remove from heat. Chuck the cooked pasta into the frypan and stir until coated by the sauce.

4. Throw the pasta into a baking dish, toss the cheeses on top, slug a little olive oil over the lot of it and bake in the oven for about half an hour.

Serve with a leafy green salad and a smirk. Woah to go in 45 minutes. If you don't have time for that, suck my balls and become a breatharian.

Veal Parmagiana by B.B Kow

2008-09-03T19:56:00.001-07:00

Far out. All I wanted to do today was have a faux feminist huff and then sit outside with a Coke Zero and a fresh packet of Marlboros, but no. Some whiny little manbitch had to poke at my pride, much like Jesus being skewered on the cross, and now I'm here, having to update this thing instead.

How did this unjust scenario arise? Whilst perusing the Vogue Forums for new ways to dispose of my non-disposable income, I came across a thread lauding the arrival of a new range of low fat, no sugar icecreams. My hatred of diet products (aside from sugarfree softdrinks for dental reasons) is strong at the best of times, but when they are combined with an insipid marketing campaign involving "fashion launches" supported by Ralph Magazine, and a vacuous "Skinny Cow" diary as part of the branding, my hatred spills across the spectrum of disbelief into Chernobyl territory. Aside from the mindless diary constructions of Modern Woman (TM) dilemmas ("oh gosh, I hope I can stop at one glass of chardy less I end up occy-strapped to some dude's bed with my panties fashioned into a gag whilst he dresses as Big Bird and nibbles at my feet!")*, the prospect of making the exciting choice between sticks or cups reads as less culinary decision and more sheltered workshop training.

Late last year, the same target audience as inhabits the Vogue Forums were getting their miniscule knickers in a knot over Skinny Bitch, a vegan diet book written by a former model and a former modelling agent. Leaving my trainwreck addiction to Australia's Next Top Molehill at the door, the tome of "ethical" weightloss from a couple of washed up clotheshorses really got my goat (and sheep, and bull) up. Taking popularised celebrity diets like Atkins to another level, this book attempts to provide aspiration through insult. The fact that Victoria Beckham perusing a copy was the catalyst for it entering the greater public eye provides a more than adequete summation for its existence.

Skinny Cow. Skinny Bitch. What's next, Dozey Bint, the DIY Guide to Getting a Man in Bed? Pregnant Scrag, the DIY Guide to Keeping Him? Airy Slut, How to Match Your Diet to Your Skull Contents? Honestly, it's enough to send a lady scrabbling for a bottle of gin, a block of gruyere, and a job in an abbatoir.

I'm sure you're wondering where this hysterical ranting fits in with today's recipe. No, I didn't go out and slaughter a few of our four-legged friends in protest. But I did have a think about how my previous blog title, "Cook This, Bitch" fits in with the other appropriations of female insults, and I decided that knowing that I am a self-hating human first and a woman second wasn't going to be apparent in the eyes of casual readers. So to avoid being lumped in with the trash, my new header is "Smoking in the Kitchen." You may read this as you wish (as long as you know that I was considering Smoking in the Girl's Room but it only had double entendres and not triple as per the kitchen reference).

Anyway, on with the show, so I can get back to painting my nails and sticking cut outs of Ann Coulter's head onto knackery horse bodies. Hey, I don't just hate her 'coz she's XY.

Veal Parmagiana by B.B Kow

Ingredients

1 schnitzel-cut slab of veal per person
1 tin of tomatoes, smashed up with a knife
1 tin of water
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 french shallots, finely diced
1 clove organic garlic, finely diced
1 1/2 teaspoons mixed dried Italian herbs
2 tablespoons green olives, chopped
1 eggplant, cut into 5mm slices
3/4 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Steamed vegetables to serve

Method

1. In a saucepan, heat a good glug of olive oil, add shallots and garlic, and sweat over a gentle heat until they begin to caramelise. Add the tomato, water, balsamic vinegar and herbs, bring to the boil then reduce heat to a slow simmer and cook for about an hour, until tomatoes are pulpy. Add olives and salt and pepper to taste, remove from heat, set aside.

2. Meanwhile, salt the eggplant slices and allow to sit for 10-15 minutes to draw out any bitterness. Rinse and dry well with a tea towel. Slosh a few glugs of olive oil into a fry pan, heat and fry eggplant slices in batches until golden, turning to cook both sides. Remove from pan and drain on paper towel.

3. Heat grill to hot. Line a shallow baking tray with foil. Season your veal steaks with salt and pepper. Heat some more olive oil in the same pan as used for the eggplant, and cook for about a minute on each side. Remove from pan immediately.

4. To construct your parmagiana - place the veal steaks on the baking tray. Place slices of eggplant evenly over each steak. Top with napoli sauce and mozzarella. Place under grill and cook until cheese is bubbling and golden.

5. Serve with a merlot blend and steamed vegetables. Know that the world is one skinny cow down and better for it.

*Apologies to anyone who actually visited the Skinny Cow website expecting more of such titillations. You didn't really think that people who care about kilojoules would have such depravity contained within them, did you?

A Non-Definitive Top Ten

2008-07-31T17:16:00.000-07:00

Of things that I could go without eating again in my lifetime.

1. Chorizo and haloumi. Haloumi is the styrofoam of cheeses. Chorizo is the gourmet meat of choice for wankers who are only eating Mexican because they're told its the next big thing by their friends.

2. Pork broth. Japan was the worst for this, I think because (despite the cuisine's reputation for delicacy) they seem to like a lot of strong flavours (bonito, soy etc.) in their cooking which eliminates chicken stock from their arsenal of ingredients. They don't have a lot of agricultural space, so pigs are the next best (or worst, if you given even the slightest fuck about factory farming) thing to "grow". Japan needs more Muslims. (Gosh there were a lot of brackets in that paragraph.)

3. Whelk. If you don't know what whelk is, I envy you.

4. Any lollies that have a base made from that sweet flavoured white shit. You know, strawberries and cream, racing cars. Wrong.

5. Fruit flavoured hot tea. Most of them don't even contain fruit, they have "fruit flavour" instead. You might as well just chew on a packet of Hubba Bubba and count it as five serves.

6. Mackarel. Revolting, greasy, bastardly fish. It has none of the rustic charm of sardines, none of the salty delight of anchovies - it's just a big lump of sump. Someone should begin investigating methods of turning them into crude oil.

7. Caraway seeds. They have but one place, and that is sporadically sprinkled through sauerkraut. The rest of the time their presence is downright offensive - take this toast I had for breakfast, for example. It looked like a delicious grainy loaf, I was nomming away on it - and all of a sudden, FUCKEN' CARAWAY SEED. IT RUINSES IT!

8. Chicken in pasta, closely followed by chicken on pizza. Chicken is already kinda doughy in texture. Putting it in pasta is like stuffing a cooked potato with rice.

9. Panini. Actually, any sandwich that doesn't involve (a) steak; (b) sausage or (c) being purchased from a roadhouse where the only choice one gets to make for their salad sanga is whether or not one wants salt and pepper (combined in a caterer's shaker, of course).

10. Rocket. In its defence, there are few occasions where rocket is required. One of them is in my dear Cunter's exceptional balsalmic-y, bocconcini-y fettucine sauce. Such is the radness of her cooking skills that she manages to turn the evil weed into a mouth-watering concoction. The other occasion is as an accompaniment to Bosc pears, walnuts, balsalmic, olive oil and reggiano. Aside from these isolated incidences, rocket can go fuck itself.

Actually, on second thought, perhaps it's not the rocket's fault that I dislike it so immensely. In fact, I think the real culprits here are the cafe staff who have replaced their compulsive snow-pea sprout garnishing with piles of rocket on the sides of plates across this wide, brown, unpleasant land of ours. Die cafe staff. Die.

Top Six Fails at Dinner

2008-07-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

1. The time I substituted bok choy for silverbeet in a silverbeet, onion and olive bake, not reckoning on how watery that piss poor excuse for greenery is, and ended up with a dish full of vague vegetable-ish water rather than the Balterranean mouth party I was hoping for.

2. The time I added kalamata olives to a soft polenta which I'd been stirring over a hot stove for 45 minutes, and then realised that they tasted like chlorine mixed with seasoned flour, and made the rest of the dish taste like that too, and hence required pizza to be ordered for dinner. Extra points awarded because they'd come from a massive tub that I'd bought from our local fruit shop at the time and had to chuck the rest out.

3. The time when we had no potatoes and no pasta and no rice and no bread I only discovered this AFTER the bloke started cooking roast beef on the Weber for dinner, so substitutional genius that I am, I served the cattleflesh with an Asian noodle and pumpkin salad. This did nothing to convince me of the merits of fusion food, just in case you were wondering. To make matters worse we had a friend around for dinner that time, and it was the first time I'd cooked for him. LUCKY WE HAD HOMEBREW TO WASH IT DOWN WITH.

4. The time where one of the stove elements in our East Sydney terrace exploded, blowing a hole through the paella pan that my parents received as a wedding present and ruining the bolognese sauce cooking within. I don't need to explain to you how terrifying it is to know that your kitchen has the power to blast a hold through half a centimetre of frypan, do I?

5. Any time I've used chorizo. In fact, the other day I put chorizo on my list of five things I could easily go through life without eating again, along with caraway seeds; haloumi; pork broth; and perch.

6. Last night, where after hand-shredding half a kilo of potatoes for kartoffelknoedel, and attempting to overcome my fear of haloumi, I finished dressing one of the dinner plates, turned around and promptly had it take a face plant off the kitchen bench onto the tiled floor. SUCKS. Only the fact that I was hopped up on codiene saved the kitchen from taking a trashing last night. Instead I just stood and looked at the shattered plate on the floor then went and had a sulk in front of the heater.

Beef Goulash by Garry Hun

2008-03-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

This year, autumn made a belated appearance in Sydney town. The seasonal distinction is always hard living in a coastal Meditteranean climate, but this time we seem to have had a prolonged spring, with the hot weather only setting in after the calender change at the beginning of March. Last night we had spitting rain and a distinctively cool kick in the pants come through on the wind. Today the bones in my feet are chilly (oh, woe is my aged body!) - perhaps the best indicator that summer is over (or that I'm going to end up a crazy old lady with a hundred rescue dogs gnawing on my corpse, either or).

Being Good Friday (good for the world's Christians as it's an imminent sign that Jebus is coming back, good for the rest of us as we get a public holiday) TheBloke was home from work and we spent the day tackling the masses of boxes that we've carted around through four houses, three years and two storage units. We had a house inspection earlier in the week which was a deciding factor in whether we'd be able to renew our lease for another year (ha, can't escape real estate talk in Sydney even when you're reading a tummy-blog!) - and regardless of the outcome, cutting the crap was something that we desperately needed to do. The idea of living in cardboard shanty town for another year was pretty repugnant, as was the thought of having to cart aforementioned crap through another move.

We worked up quite an appetite unpacking, repacking, garbaging and recycling the contents of TheBloke's music studio, and decided to reward ourselves with a movie (Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who - 7/10 if you're interested, the CGI is great in parts and almost claymationish in others) and udon noodles at a Japanese restaurant upstairs in Broadway shopping centre. We were sadly disappointed to find that Jebus' demise had resulted in the closure of the food court, and with an hour and a bit to kill and rapidly increasing hunger, we lamented the lack of other decent options for food in the area. Even the Landsdowne's $5 steak couldn't be had on account of Jebus' drinking all the wine in the city at his Last Supper.

And that's when we remembered Unas. Unas, for those of you who don't know, is a continental restaurant which started as a cafe in the 'Cross, and has, since 2000, grown to two other locations in Double Bay and Broadway. We'd eaten at the Cross restaurant before and come away rotund, jolly and full of praise for their massive Austro-Hungarian (plus a liberal sprinkling of Deutsch and Swiss) meals. Driving past the Broadway restaurant I've always been interested in their lunch specials, but have never actually ventured in there. Given the biting weather and lack of other viable options (sorry crepe cafe also serving Japanese ramen, Chinese dumplings and bubble tea) the only thing standing in our way was the possibility that they might not be able to serve us in time for our movie.

We needn't have worried. The service was fantastic, our meals (schnitzels, a fast decision is a good decision!) arrived within ten minutes of ordering, and TheBloke drank half a litre of beer. Life could only be better if we'd had big enough bellies to fit in everything else on the menu. I've not tried the Unas goulash, but I made an executive decision to carry the Euro cuisine along with the weather to tonight, and make a hearty homebound attempt at the famous traditional beef stew.

I'm not making any promises about Hungarian authenticity: this recipe is based on doing a bit of reading (thanks, Wikipedia), a need for warming spice (hence the distinctively Bitchlike addition of chillies) and memories of how my Oma used to make this when I was a kid. I'm pretty certain she used tomatoes (a no-no amongst purists, apparently) and it was definitely more of a stew than a soup. TheBloke and I are hitting Hungary in late October this year so I'll definitely give the national dish a once (twice, thrice, tenth) over to see if there is such a thing as a textbook version. Until then, this rib-sticker will keep you warm.

Beef Goulash by Garry Hun

Ingredients
500g casserole beef, cubed
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 red capsicum, roughly diced
1/4 green capsicum, rougly diced
1/2 tin tomatoes, crushed
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 bay leaves
2-3 dried chillies, split lengthways
2 cups beef stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan, add onion and cook until it begins to soften. Add paprika and caraway seeds, stir, add garlic and capsicum, stir.
2. Add beef and cook until well browned.
3. Add bay leaves, chillies, beef stock and tomatoes, stir well and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until beef is very tender.
4. Season with salt and pepper and serve with buttered noodles, dumplings, mashed potato or potato rosti and steamed veggies.

Emo Eco

2008-03-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

So in my old age, instead of becoming more cynical and bitter (which, come to think of it, was probably an impossibility) I've come to the horrible realisation that I'm turning into a lentil-loving hippie type.

Oh, I can hear your shrieks from here. "Noooo! Not TheBitch! You, our last bastion of all that is wrong in this wide, brown, unpleasant land of ours!"

Alright, so maybe the lentil-loving bit is a slight exaggeration - although TheBloke and I do partake of vegetarian food several times a week, I'm not in any danger of reverting to veganism. I hold the firm belief that said wide, brown unpleasant land is put to much better use as grazing pasture than attempted agriculture. But aside from that, in the last couple of months I've become increasingly, what's the word? Oh, that's right - eco-conscious. (Don't worry, I screwed up my face a little just typing it).

Along with converting our electricity across to 100% renewable (don't ask me how it works though), trying to remember to turn off the lights (not that hard given that my Dad used to scream coal-fuelled murder if we left them on as kids), and visiting an organic market (by and large a massive fail, the stuff that was for sale there was the same as is stocked in our local Woolies), I've been reading up on carbon footprints, green cleaning and other latte-lefty buzzwords de jour.

The somewhat manical attention paid to grocery shopping by my parents in the eighties has actually held me in good stead for the carbon bootprint part of the equation. "Buy Orstrayan Made" was originally an ocker-mantra designed to keep jobs onshore ~~and away from those funny lookin' types north of us~~ but following the principles these days (for both production and manufacture) is a fairly easy way of keeping eco-transport costs down. Of course, you could go a step further and only buy products grown within 100 miles of your home, but that would be kinda hardcore (cool idea though!). Truthbeknown, I'm loathe to purchase shelf products that have been grown in Australian climatic conditions when there's a better alternative elsewhere in the world. Hence, my beloved tins of Homebrand tomatoes (try them, they're awesome!) will still be coming to me on a ship from Italy (like almost all of the tinned tomatoes on your supermarket shelf) and I'll keep buying rice imported from SE Asia. We do plan to reinstate our veggie garden soon so that will cut down some of our fresh food transport to about twenty metres (and I'm quite proud to say that I've managed to resist the gorgeous hues of California-grown navel oranges in the fruit and veggie department... I'm an arsehole, but not so much of an arsehole that I require fruit to be whisked halfway around the world in cold storage for my tummy).

I'm in the process of converting our household products over to less residual cleaners. We were sucked into buying some Method sprays at the supermarket (ooo! a shiny thing!) but overall I've deemed them a craption (crap+option=craption) because (a) they don't work; and (b) they're imported from the UK or US, kinda negating the whole idea of being more green friendly. I picked up a bottle of Earth's Choice floor and surface cleaner after using their dish-washing liquid down at Tuross Heads a couple of weekends ago and lo and behold that shizz is the bomb! It actually works better than the Pine-O-Cleen I was liberally swishing around the place previously, and it's cheaper. Made in Australia and not tested on animals, it's win win (times four) even if you don't give a toss about amphibious life.

Which brings me to the third chardonnay socialist stickler, Fair Trade. It's something I've known about for a long time and agreed with wholeheartedly in principle, but I'm ashamed to say that yesterday was the first time I actually did something about it. On my second ever visit to Aldi I discovered a treasure chest of cheapish organic groceries, and in amongst the tea and coffee section I came across Fair Trade branded green tea and arabica. Being a David Jones food-hall bean whore, I must admit that I ummed and ahhed over the purchase before figuring that if it was godawful I could use the grounds as mulch around my golden cane palms. This morning I braved the espresso machine (not usually my job, TheBloke is designated caffienator in our house) and made myself a brew... and to my surprise, it's actually drinkable. (I've typed this entire entry in thirty seconds, BTW. Buzz buzz!)

With Easter two days away, the other major produce concern of Fair Trade, chocolate , is everywhere. Channel Nine, in conjunction with Tim Costello from World Vision, ran a piece titled "The Darker Side of Chocolate" as part of their Sunday program last weekend which investigated the practices of child trafficking and slavery in the cocoa industry. TheBloke and I don't eat much chocolate at the worse of times, but I'm going to have a closer look at the options available for the odd occasion when I bake cocoa-riffic treats as well as a less tainted replacement for our beloved 85% Lindt. 600 000 kids working on farms in the Cote d'Ivoire isn't something my newfound inner-tree-hugger is down with supporting.

So check out the Fair Trade website and give the chocolate eggs a run if you come across them this season of Jebusless. It's easier to take up uncertified products than it is to stop wearing deodorant and grow armpit dreads, and you'll be supporting better outcomes for the yoof of the world without any extra effort.

Plum Cake by P.Runefais

2008-02-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

Excitement in the Bitchin' Kitchen last week, with the belated arrival of our brand-spankin' new Sunbeam Cafe Series 850W MixMaster, a Christmas present from the Parentals de La Bitch. My loveliest Mum justified its purchase with the wisdom that "it's not the sort of thing you'll ever buy for yourself" - which is frankly true. Forking out hundreds of dollars for a kitchen appliance isn't really something that The Bloke and I were likely to do, given the newfound frugalities of deposit-scrounging. Given that I have coveted a stand mixer for about five years now (ever since KitchenAid brought out a supposedly limited edition pink mixer to raise funds for the NBCF) being presented with the infinitely more powerful Sunbeam (325W for the KitchenAid vs. 850W for the MixMaster) as a gift was amazing. Thank you Parentals de La Bitch! We will repay you in Swiss rolls and rye loaves!

Unfortunately, The Bloke's attempt to christen the machine by whipping up some hand-pulled noodles on Sunday night was a little bit o' disastrous fun. Oh, the dough worked just fine once we deciphered the somewhat off kilter instruction booklets. The "noodling" part on the other hand... let's just say that the YouTube videos make it look a helluva lot easier than it is, and that maybe, just maybe, we should've paid attention to the numerous internerd pages reminding us that noodle masters spend decades honing their trade. I think we'll be sticking to our favourite Noodle House in Chinatown to get our fix of wheaten goodness.

But I digress. Attempt number two at creating deliciousness with the MixMaster! And what better dish to get the ball rolling (rather than just warming up ones bowling arm) than a cake! I found the bones of this recipe in the marvellous Cooks Companion by Stephanie Alexander, which is a most excellent book to add to your repertoire as not only is it brainy, the recipes in it actually work. Of course, I got a bit distracted during assembly and thus the top of my version ended up a bit mangled, but eh, it still tastes bloody great. The combination of nut-mealed cake, sweet plums and sticky almost-butterscotch is magic. And it used up the cheap bag of plums I bought from our local fruit market last week, which would otherwise have festered in the bottom of our fruit bowl for all eternity. Who said thriftiness had to equal living on sausages and .... oh wait. OK. Here's the recipe.

Plum Cake by P. Runefais

Ingredients
Cake
180g softened butter
150g white sugar
135g plain flour
135g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
2 large freerange eggs, lightly beaten
70mL milk
1/2 cup almond meal

10 ripe plums (I used a variety called Black Diamond), washed, halved and seeded
60g butter, melted (extra)
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 large eggs, beaten (extra)

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease a 26cm springform pan with butter.
2. To make the topping, mix the extra melted butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and allow to cool slightly. Mix in the extra beaten eggs and set aside.
2. To make the cake, cream the softened butter and white sugar, add the eggs and then both flours and the salt, add the milk and mix well.
3. Spoon the cake batter into the prepared tin and smooth the top (this will take a bit of effort as the batter is quite doughy). Sprinkle the almond meal over the cake then arrange the plums on top, cut side up. Pour over the topping.
4. Bake for about an hour (if you have a normal oven... about a century if you're stuck with our rental-property beast) or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
5. Serve warm with a sticky dessert wine and a dollop of double cream, or perhaps a spicy sherry. (If you made it with a KitchenAid I'd prescribe a cup of tea and a Bex as accompaniments, but as we've got 500W more power than you retro fools we're going to have it with booze... SUCKERS).

Horse Flesh

2008-02-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald lamenting the "gruesome trade in horse-flesh"
got me a bit stabby this morning.

I can see how the average punter (both of the restaurant and racetrack variety) could get upset about the practice, really I can. It's probably for the same reason pet owners get squeamish over the eating of dog meat in some parts of the world - the "cute and cuddly factor" has drawn fairly clear boundaries for most of us who have a choice in what goes on our plates.

But is eating horse flesh really any different to eating the flesh of any other four-legged beast?

Seeing as I brought dog meat up as a comparative example, I should probably explain that I object to the practice from an ethical point of view. The excessive cruelty involved in the production goes against my principles of free-range eating, for a start. Yep, I am a meat eater, and yep, many animals have died for my dinners - but the reports of hanging and pre-death electrocution to increase the adrenaline produced by the dogs before they are killed don't really fit in with my idea of keeping slaughter as clean as possible. (Wikipedia says that these practices are being cut down in Korea in favour of mass-electrocution to keep costs down, however, owing to the fact that dog meat is not legislated for human consumption, the industry is completely unregulated).

In contrast, from the article, it appears that horses in Australia are processed in the same way as the rest of our meat. Laura Stoikos, from a sanctuary called Cedar Springs Horses, is quoted as saying: "They are trucked in like cattle in the dead of night, they can smell the blood and they are killed one after another and they can see the horse in front of them killed so they know what is going on." But this is exactly the same thing that happens when your average cow or sheep or pig turns up at the abattoir, how does the fact that the animal being killed is a (perceptably failed) racehorse make a difference to proceedings?

I've known a few "horsey" people in my time, and their dedication to all things equine usually rivals the sport-lust of your most hardened footy fan or V8 SuperCar bogan. I understand why they'd be upset of the slaughter and consumption of their four-legged friends. I also find horse-racing appalling, in all its guises, so the idea that the industry is profiteering off their track off-cuts gets my hackles up. I actually laughed whilst reading the quote from anti-meat advocate Bo Derek in the linked article, suggesting that sporting horses are no longer "beasts of burden" - you only have to look at the injury stats for ex-racehorses and the relatively few years they spend on the track to realise that the only ones getting "sport" out of racing are humans. Owners have been sending old nags to the knackers since the beginning of time. But to suggest that humans eating horse meat is any worse than chowing down on Daisy the De-Milked Dairy Cow, or Mary the Mangey Mutton ... I don't know.

Horse meat has been eaten since pre-Christian times. My relatives ate it in wartime Germany. After a two day ride in the hot rural climes of Katherine in the Northern Territory on an ex bush racehorse, and being bucked off a cranky school horse startled by a motorbike in the pineforests near Joondalup in Western Australia, I don't have a lot of love for the bastard creatures. Having said that, I will admit to pulling a slightly squeamish-ed face when I came across it on a menu at the Tsukiji Fish Markets.

Would you eat horse-flesh, if you knew it had been processed in the same way that "regular" meats like beef and lamb are processed? Or would the cartoon neighs of Flicka and Black Beauty get the better of you?

A New Low?

2008-01-08T21:26:00.001-08:00

Massel Easy Onion and Garlic Cubes. Onion. In a cube. Garlic. In a cube.

From the Massel website:

"No Trans Fats
All Natural
No Preservatives
No Frying required
No Peeling required
No Chopping required"

Hear that, guys? NO TRANS FATS! They must be good!

Now I don't actually have a major problem with pre-bought stock, which is what I knew Massel for previous to this ad screening on the telly. Massel's stock powders and cubes aren't actually that bad - and despite what the kitchen nazis will tell you, not everyone has the time or energy to dedicate to making stock themselves. But this is a whole other kettle of fish.

If you don't have time to chop an onion, you don't deserve to cook. These cubes make Rachael Ray look like Escoffier. A new low? A NEW LOW.

Breakfast Buns by Hun Glover

2008-01-03T16:47:00.000-08:00

I should preface this entry by saying that normally, I'd stab people who regard the construction of food, rather than the cooking as a "recipe". That's not to say I'm a purist - I can see the need for instruction in toasting bread amongst the kitchen newbs, and certainly wouldn't begrudge such fine publications as the Commonsense Cookery Book or the Australian Women's Weekly for including such simplicities in their breakfast sections. However, it must be said that amongst the published celebrity cooks, there is a disturbing trend for tizzying up a couple of fried eggs with some parsley and passing it off as nouvelle cuisine. FAIL. Let's call a spade a spade and accept that construction and creation are two different things, and be done with it.

So having got that little rant off my chest, I can unashamedly say that this is NOT a recipe, this is a blueprint. Breakfast Buns. Kinda like a hamburger but not. Kinda like a fry up but not. Kinda like the best thing you could ever consume after a big night, but not not. If you can keep this down, you'll be right, and if you can't, you'll be right too.

The first time I came across the idea of a Breakfast Bun I was hungover to the shizens after being forced to consume vast amounts of red wine and homemade, rubbing-alcohol based limoncello by my best friend. I was also vegetarian at the time, so instead of leftover barbie snags and ham, I padded out my slightly-squashed hamburger roll (probably resultant from shennanigans the night before) with NotBacon and Veggie Sausages. I then drowned the lot in melted cheese and barbecue sauce. Combined with a couple of codiene-heavy painkillers and a strong coffee, it killed off my hangover within minutes of its consumption. Voila! The Breakfast Bun was born.

As I said before, this is not a recipe, it's a blueprint. But instead of being the plans for an architecturally intricate modern building, it's more of a guide to building a humpy. You can include whatever you like on the Breakfast Bun, as long as you follow three set rules.

1. The Breakfast Bun innards must be fried, either on a barbecue plate, stovetop grill or, at a pinch, in a frypan.

2. Anything included in a Breakfast Bun must follow the golden ratio of 1 part charcoal to 2 parts fat to 7 parts other. The "other" can be whatever you can get your hands on during the cold, sad half hour it will take you to shuffle and stagger around making the damn things. (See FAQ for a guide to selection of Breakfast Bun fillings, and for what to do if the shuffle and stagger is too much for your fragile body to deal with).

3. The Breakfast Bun must be buttered and sauced. The spread selection is up to you. Anyone who requests "no butter" should be shown the door.

I can hear the doubters questioning my cooking method as well as the inclusion of fat and charcoal as necessary ingredients. To them I wish a thousand raging hangovers and an overworked emergency department the next time they need a gastric lavage. That's right, charcoal is good for you. Suck it up, follow the rules and you will be well on your way to recovery through deliciousness.

Now you may have gathered that this dish is not going to be particularly complex, however, sometimes the simplest things are those which stump us. And thus, I have put together a Breakfast Bun FAQ to cover any further questions before we get on with the all-important business of construction.

Breakfast Bun FAQ

Q. Must I be hungover to the shizens to partake in Breakfast Buns?

A. No. However, if you are normally a health-conscious consumer, the sense of relief gained from consumption of a Breakfast Bun when sober may be outweighed by terror resultant from mental calculations of caloric intake. Plus, if you're not hungover it's likely you'll be in a state which would be conducive to making a "proper" breakfast rather than this trainwreck. But if you're still up for it - good on you.

Q. If I am normally a health-conscious consumer, can I adjust this recipe to be less of a time bomb and more of a vitamin pill?

A. If you're normally a health-conscious consumer, what are you doing getting so drunk that you're considering eating this at all? Enjoy your branflakes, numbskull.

Q. I have many potential ingredients for Breakfast Bun fillings lying around my kitchen. How do I choose which ones to use?

A. When contemplating the inclusion of ingredients in a Breakfast Bun, you should ask yourself several questions. Firstly, will this hurt if I ralph? Secondly, would I be ashamed if my loved ones saw me eating this? Thirdly, does this ingredient have the ability to meet the golden ratio of Breakfast Bun filling? If a potential ingredient fulfils all three criteria correctly, then go ahead and chuck it in.

Q. What if I am too hungover to contemplate the construction, let alone the consumption, of the Breakfast Bun?

A. This could be a massive fail, but never fear! Unless you're a sad drunk, there should be a couple of semi-comatose comrades passed out around your house. Find the least responsive of these and prod them until they're slightly functional. If they're anything like my friends, you'll then be able to coerce them into making you food whilst still severely limited in their consciousness - and thus unable to fight back. As for the issues of consumption - as detailed earlier, if you can keep this down you'll be right; if you can't you'll be right too.

Now for today's blueprint.

Breakfast Buns by Hun Glover

Ingredients

1 - 2 buns per person (today I used some ciabatta)
1 leftover sausage per person (today I used Bratwurst)
1 egg per bun
Onions and tomatoes, sliced (enough for all the buns - 1 small tomato and half an onion per person should do it)
Butter / spread; sauces of your choice (today I used Berenberg Hahndorf Tomato Sauce)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

(Other suggestions - eggplant, mushrooms, jalapenos, capsicum, zucchini and squash all barbecue well and can be made to fit the golden ratio by dousing them in olive oil. It goes without saying that bacon and other meat products would be a bonzer addition. Cheese of any variety is also good if you have some cut up already. Baby spinach can be a fancy touch if you've got some leftover from dinner the night before. Actually, scrap that - greenery is for sooks at this time of the morning.)

Method

1. Turn the barbecue on. As tempting as it may seem to have the luxury of a pre-heated grill, it is not worth leaving the barbie on overnight if you're running off portables - an empty gas bottle is the last thing you need on a hungover morning.

2. While the barbie is heating up, douse your veggies in a good helping of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Slice the buns in half. Take a couple of the concentrated codiene lollies I referred to earlier. Don't panic.

3. Chuck the onions on the barbie and let them cook until they're beginning to brown. Chuck on the leftover snags (and any other meat you have to go with them). Once the meats are getting near done, chuck on the tomatoes and eggs.

4. Throw the sliced buns on the grill and let them heat through.

5. To construct: liberally butter and sauce each bun. Stack your fillings one on top of the other. Finish with salt and pepper to taste, and more sauce. Serve with the hair of the dog (or strong tea / coffee) and do it all over again.

Spaghetti Bolognese by N.O. Papa

2007-12-13T23:21:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-11T23:27:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-10T23:00:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-28T13:39:00.000-08:00

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...

2007-11-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

... BRB.

Classique Fish Pie by Cap'n Hyseas

2007-08-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-12T03:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-01T01:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-01T00:35:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-25T01:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-07-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-06-28T23:41:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-23T18:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-22T18:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-22T00:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

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!