Day 169 - Thai Waterfall beef salad

After days of heavy eating and drinking, I desperately needed a dinner that didnt make me feel like a boat anchor!

Morry googled this recipe. It was a perfect blend of crispiness with the rocket, crunchy little tomato and bean sprouts. The beef was BBQd beautifully and it was served with a typical thai dressing, light and fresh.

My tip is to give this a go!

Day 168 - Marc & Johns

Dinner was fabulous but I had a champagne in one hand and a canape in the other, so predictably no photos!

Marc and John made arancini balls, little ricotta muffins (may absolute favourite) and spicy meatballs as an entree, and then Bouffe Bouginon for main, served with duckfat? potatoes and a steamed green salad steamed to total perfection.

Decadent dessert.

I ate the lot.

The wines were simply excellent. I cant tell you what they were but it was a smorgasboard of excellence!

Day 167 - The quiz night

no photos. Which is a very good thing really.

Day 166 - Kafe Kefi

We had dinner with John and Anna at Kafe Kefi. OMG

The food was possible the best quality food I have had in a restuarant in memory. The only down side was that the portion sizes were too big. Yep, you read it right, too BIG!!!

The white bait was brilliant. Big puffy yummy wait bait. And the char grilled squid was succulent. the salad was rocket - enough said!

More entree dishes, we had chicken wings - im not sure where they source the chickens from! The dip selections was nice but the pita it came with was outstanding. I couldnt stop eating it!

We inteded to cancel the mains as we had eaten too much, but they came anyway. One seafood, the other meat. They are intended for one apparently. But thats just not possible. Everyone leaves with a doggy bag or two.

Day 165 - Quiche Lorraine for the boys, chinese 5spice chicken for us

Donna Hay, chinese five spice chicken. The chicken was great, but the broccolini was a bit tough.

Salad for lunch - couscous, almonds, brocolli, snowpeas, red onion, field mushrooms, currents and lemon zest. The perfect lunch!

Quiche Lorraine for the boys

Day 165 - Sandwich bread

I am actually posting this recipe becuase I have finally found a great recipe for sandwich bread. I have tried a few different ones but the bread always seems a bit solid which is all fine and well for ciabatta loaf, but not really ideal for the boys school lunches.


But I have cracked it - its in the flour. Dont use baking flour, just use normal flour and it comes out light. I used a combo of 200g wholemeal & 300g white for this one, but I would change it depending on the sandwich filling. Rye flour would be good with an oily fish, like hot smoked salmon! 

Ingredients

500g flour - a combo of white/wholemeal/rye
7g yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon honey

Method

1. Tip the flour, yeast and salt into a large bowl and mix together with your hands. Stir 300ml hand-hot water with the oil and honey, then stir into the dry ingredients to make a soft dough.
2. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 mins, until the dough no longer feels sticky, sprinkling with a little more flour if you need it.
3. Oil the loaf tin and put the dough in the tin, pressing it in evenly. Put in a large plastic food bag and leave to rise for 1 hr, until the dough has risen to fill the tin and it no longer springs back when you press it with your finger.
4. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Make several slashes across the top of the loaf with a sharp knife, then bake for 30-35 mins until the loaf is risen and golden. Tip it out onto a cooling rack and tap the base of the bread to check it is cooked. It should sound hollow. Leave to cool.

Day 164 - ah har, me hearties

Soup, oh yummy, hearty soup! And I made some ciabatta bread. The Ciabatta recipe comes from the common sense baking guide that I bought a while ago, it is a bit of a tricky recipe, as it takes a day to make in about 3 different steps, but it was really lovely fresh out of the oven with soup and lashings of butter (I have banned polyunsaturated fats in this house in favour of saturated fats as I think they are healthier, so its real butter for us!)

The soup was really tasty and very filling. Perfect for a cold night!

Recipe

In a good lug of olive oil, saute 1 chopped onion, 1 crushed garlic clove, 2 chopped carrots, 2 chopped sticks of celery and 4 rashers of bacon. saute until everything is a bit soft. Add  a cup of red lentils and a litre of chicken stock and cook for about 15 minutes.

Cook lots, its very tasty!

Day 163 - roast dinner and pudding

For this term, Monday night is roast night! So I stupidly bought a roast lamb from Woolies. God it was horrid. The meat was inedible. Dinner was saved by the fabulous potato bake and Cols plum chutney,which has now run out...

The potato bake was the best recipe ever. It came from a cook book called the food of Italy. You need a V-slicer to do it properly.

You need, an onion, 4 potatoes, a bit of butter, 2 cloves garlic, half a cup grated mozarella and same parmesan (or a bit less)

1. Finely slice an onion and leave it to soak in water for an hour - this miraculously takes out the acidity and crispyness!

2. Line a springform tin with baking paper and heat oven to 180

3. Finely slice (takes seconds on the super dooper v-slicer) about 4 potatoes

4. melt a good tablespoon of butter and then add a couple of crushed garlic cloves and let it sit for a bit.

5. layer the potato, brush with butter/garlic, add a light layer of onion and sprinkle with cheese, and season, then keep layering! Drizzle the dish with the last of the butter, bake for an hour. Yum

(I am having leftovers with some green salad tomorrow!!)

Donna Hay recipe for Chocolate self saucing pudding

Hugo said he didnt like pudding, wouldnt eat it, so I bought out the big guns! Of course he likes pudding - who doesn't!

Day 162 - nibble nibble

Morry made a picking plate - pecorino cheese, kalamata olives, trout pate, Bob's AMAZING indian chutney - Id love to get more, we ate almost the whole jar!, and we served it my sourdough!

Oh, yeah, and some white wine :)

Day 162 - my very own sour dough

Righto, so this loaf was 2 weeks in the making - yes thats right, 2 weeks!!! I made my pasta madre, or mother dough, I fed it everyday, stressed over it really, nutured it, and finally got it to the stage where I could make my own loaf. Shame I ruined it by undercooking it. I could have wept!

I salvaged it by putting it back in the oven so it tasted right, but the bread didnt look as good as my next loaf will.

Want to try your own loaf? I used the recipe at Silvias Cucina. It was a lot of fun and now I have mother dough forever! As long as I look after it...

Day 161 - Osso yummy bucco

Entree from a packet - nice one Morry. Huon valley smoked salmon with dill, served with horseradish, capers and little lemon wedges. It was good, but NOTHING like the main!

Oh so good! Morry used the Stephanie Alexander Osso Bucco recipe from the Cooks Companion - I love that book now. I didnt originally becuase it doesnt have pictures, it took me a while to work out why it is so good. Anyway, we chose to have this dish becuase we saw the meat at the butcher and looked really amazing, so we invited my parents to dinner. Osso Bucco with boiled and buttered baby potaotes a rocket salad and LASHINGS of gremolata!

I have made this before, for Jeff and Jacki one night, but the pears didnt cook right, so I made it again with Buerre borshe pears and it was much better. The guys had really thick cream with it too.

Day 160 - Isha a weelly big piza

So when I got home to put the boys to bed, there were still 4 guys here from lunch. They clearly needed carbs and A LOT of them. So I ordered a party pizza from the Maryatville pizza bar. Half meat lovers and half some combo of meat and veg.

They ate most of it, but all they could say was 'isha a big pizza, neva seen one that big.

And it was.

Day 160 - I got none of it.

Yep thats right, what you are about to see is a luncheon Morry prepared for his friends. And I got none of it, absolutely none, not a skerick. Makes me wonder why I cleaned the house for them ... actually thats unfair, they didnt leave food, but the did leave wine :)

Prawn and strawberry salad

Fried fish

Mussaman Curry

Day 159 - Parwana

No photo

Went to Parwana with Nic & Paul, forgot to take a photo but the food was great. It is an Afghani restaurant on Henley Beach Road. The food was similar to indian but better!

Day 158 - fish 'n mash

Fan fried whiting

Potato mashed so creamy in the food processor

Tomato & red onion salsa

Fresh lime juice

Simple

Sublime

Day 157 - Oh so english, meat and peas!

This started out as the Donna Hay Crumbed Veal Cutlets with Minted Peas recipe from the Spring magazine last year. But Morry didnt know that when he started cooking, I just gave him the name of the dish, so he started making it up while I put the boys to bed.

He crumbed some veal cutlets and then baked them. (He made the crumbs from the crust of the loaf of bread I made this morning). When I came down stairs and showed him the recipe, he added a topping of grated parmesan and lemon zest towards the end of cooking. He then boiled the peas and added basil and mint. and drizzled a bit of olive oil over the top before serving.

The meat came from woollies and was really good quality.

A glass of voigner marsanne, something else. mmm tasty!

Day 156 - yellow chicken curry

After a day at the park eating and drinking with Nicola, a big curry was the last thing I felt like, but probably exactly what I needed!

It was a very tasty, mild yellow curry. With potatoes in it. Why honey? Why put potatoes in the curry?

Day 155 - Souvlaki

A while a ago I bought a cookbook called easy summer food, so with this fabulous weather we have been having I thought this dish would be ideal for an outside family dinner. In my mind the kids were going to pick at the bits they liked and make a wrap just with their favourite things.

Yeah well, Hugo just ate a piece of pita bread, charlie ate most of the pork and tomatoes and Morry and I got the tasty morsels of leftovers.

The pork with actually brilliant, marinated in lemon juice olive oil, fresh oregano leaves and grated onion, and then BBQd, it was so tender. It was an excellent cut of meat and Morry cooked it to perfection - he is getting rather good on the new BBQ (...that is years old, but rarely turned on)

The salad was tomato, lettuce, red onion and the yoghurt dressing was meant to have raw garlic in it and some lemon juice, but Morry isnt a fan of raw garlic, so I just served greek yoghurt.

The photos looks awesome doesnt it? Shame it wasnt what we ate@! Everthing was too hard. Didnt get a photo, no one had much fun.

It was a good idea, worth trying again.

Day 154 - Ratatoille - yeah!!

We had a picnic lunch with Morrys family today so a vegetarian dinner was definately in order.
Morry makes awesome ratatoille and we serve it with LASHINGS of greek yoghurt.

Here is lunch. A salad of tuna, beans, lettuce, brocolli, capsicum, red onion, toasted pine nuts and fresh basil. its really moorish

Day 153 - Lamb and salsa

I had a fridge full of stuff that needed to be used. I had planned Jamie Oliver fish cakes with a salsa as a family dinner, but it seemed every one was over the joy of the family meal, so the kids had eggs on toast and early to bed, while Morry made BBQd lamb backstrap with a salsa made from roasted baby roma tomatoes, there were some orange tomatoes too - dont know what they were called but they were very sweet, with onion, avocado and balsamic dressing.

A glass of tempranillo.

yum.

Another perfect meal

Day 152 - creamy tomato and tuna oriechette

Its hard to make some family meals look glamorous.

Morry made a tuna and tomato pasta for us, but as Hugo has an aversion to tomato he blended the sauce and it made it quite rich and creamy somehow.

Im not a hugo pasta fan, but any combo of tomato and tuna always gets my vote!

Day 151 - fish and chips, Morrys way

Family dinner!

$50 worth of whiting - oh why cant my kids eat boiled rice or plain pasta like every other kid?

Well, with a dish this good, its no wonder they dont. Morry panfried the whiting, roasted some babychats and made an aioli and served with with some steamed snowpeas.

Oh, and a glass of white. - not for the kids of course, they got water...

Day 150 - Dinner at Jac & Dions

Mmmm, mmmm.

Dion BBQd magnificent steaks and cooked them to perfection, and Jacqui made a salad of watermelon, rocket and feta, and another of cherry tomato, butter beans and grean beans.

This for me, is a perfect meal!

Day 149 - Dinner at Mum & Dads

My mum does great food, but to be honest I dont think they have us around often enough!

Entree was blanched asparagus with goats cheese and macadamias. Its an awesome entree out of a weight watchers cookbook I got years ago. I havent dont weight watchers but about 15 years ago, a girl I worked with had one of their recipe books. I will dig it out and do some things from it.

Here is the recipe for the asparus and macadias

preheat oven to 200. Arrange 2 bunches of asparagus in a shallow ovenproof dish, spray lightly with oil and season. Roast for about 10 minutes.

Heat 1 tablespoon of macadia nut oil in a frypan. Stirfry a handful of chopped macadias until they are nicely toasted.  Add 2 tablespoons lemon juice and whisk over low heat and til warm and well combined. Arrange asparagus on serving plates, crumble over some goats cheese, and drizzle the dressing over the top.

I think mum blanched the asparugus instead of roasting.

Yummy roast lamb and salad for main.

There was a dessert, but I cant remember what it was - I wasnt driving!!!

Day 148 - Paul & Elas

Ela is a fabulous cook. She does home cooking like martha stewart would I recon. We had a chicken curry with rice and fabulous sauce that was quite sweet with cucumber, that was made by Ava.

Thanks for a lovely meal guys!

Day 147 - Hot X buns!

This is a taste recipe which I have made before.

They were ok, but need more salt, more mixed spice and more sultanas. I am mixing the dough to make them again and see how they turn out.

Day 146 - Sausage and bean cassoulet

Jamie Oliver is a god for family dinners! We had the Sausage and bean cassoulet, I made a small change, the tomato dressing was supposed to go over the brocolli, but Hugo is fairly adamant that he doesnt like tomato (Though tomato sauce is fine, so I usually use passata for everything and call it tomato sauce).
The bean dish was good. It had Bacon, onion, leeks, butter beans and canellini beans, a stack of herbs - rosemary and sage, passata and wilsons pork chippolatas. Its a great meal for a family!

For dessert the boys had meringues with strawberries and vanilla bean yoghurt.

Day 145 - Chilli Snapper

Another Jamie Oliver - family dinner is a total breeze!

The snapper fillets were grilled, ours had a chilli and parmesan paste and then breadcrumbs on top (the food processor gets a bit of a workout!), but for the boys I left off the topping and they had grilled fish with a few fennel seeds, which Hugo succeeded in picking all of them off!

Side dishes were panfried procuitto with wild rocket - yum, but the best was the potato, brocolli and pea smash dish. Loads of butter and salt had everyone licking their plates.

Morrys French chicken

Photo upload a success!!

I am so frustrated by the stupid upload issues I cant remember the dish ... looks good though and reminds of another reason why im happy to have Morry home :)

Day 144 - Morrys french chicken

we had a great chicken dish but I cant upload the stupid photo.

Day 143 - New York Pizza

Yay! Yippee! Morry's home and life can go back to normal.

Family dinner tonight from the Jamie Oliver 30 minute meals. The pizza was a bit of a wierd dough, just self raising flour and water blitzed in the food processor and then cooked in a frying pan to do the bottom and the grill to do the top. It was actually quite tasty! His meal plan has the rocket salad and tomotato salad, it also has a fresh mozarella and zucchini salad, but I decided that sounded a bit blah, so I left it out.

The meal was great, relaxed food and a nice bottle of wine made for a nice welcome home

Easy sandwich bread

I am posting this recipe so that I can find it again myself!!! It comes from the BBC Good Food website Ingredients 500g wholewheat &/or white flour 7g sachet fast-action dried yeast 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp clear honey Step 1 Tip the flour, yeast and salt into a large bowl and mix together with your hands. Stir 300ml hand-hot water with the oil and honey, then stir into the dry ingredients to make a soft dough. Step 2 Knead the dough for 5 mins, until the dough no longer feels sticky, sprinkling with a little more flour if you need it. Step 3. put the dough in tin, pressing it in evenly. Put in a large plastic food bag and leave to rise for 1 hr, until the dough has risen to fill the tin Step 4. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Make several slashes across the top of the loaf with a sharp knife, then bake for 30-35 mins until the loaf is risen and golden. Tip it out onto a cooling rack and tap the base of the bread to check it is cooked. It should sound hollow. Leave to cool.