Day 197 - Lamb Cutlets with Indian spiced rice

Magnificent! Worth making again.

Every now and then we have a dish that is so good, it makes you want to eat it again. This was absolutley one of those!

It comes from the Donna Hay No Time to Cook book, page 106.

Lamb Cutlets with Indian spiced rice
2 tablespoons tandoori paste
6 lamb cutlets
1 tablespoon olive oil

Spiced rice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion but in wedges
2 cloves garlic sliced
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 cardamon pods crushed
1 cup Basmati rice
1 3/4 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup toasted slivered almonds
1/4 cup coriander leaves

lime pickle and yoghurt to serve

Heat a saucepan over medium high heat. Spread tandoori paste over lamb cutlets. Add oil to the pan and the cutlets, cook 1 minute each side or until browned, place on a plate and keep warm.

To make spiced rice, rinse pan and heat over medium high heat. Add oil, onion, garlic, cummin and cardamon and cook for 1 minute until fragrant. add rice and cook 1 minute. Add stock and cook until tunnels form in the rice. Place cutlets on top of the rice, cover pan with a tight fitting lid and cook on low heat for 2 minutes. remove from the heat and stand 3 minutes. To serve, stir through almonds, salt and coriander through the rice and divide between serving plates. Top with the cutlets and serve with the lime pickle and yoghurt.

Donna Hay says serve with Tzatziki, but plain yoghurt is better!

Day 196 - baked chicken

I have cracked the art of making sourdough, so we used it in our baked chicken dish. This was a quick dinner of chicken breast, tomato, garlic, onion & thyme. Baked and then served with garlic sourdough bread!

Day 195 - shanks & sourdough

More pantry surpise! I made shanks in the slow cooker. It was a super simple recipe and very tasty too.

Here is my recipe

I put my still frozen shanks in the slow cooker at about 10am with a cup of chicken stock, zest of a lemon and a handful of thyme. Then I forgot about them until Morry got home at about 8pm. When Morry was on his way home, I put some potatoes on to boil and mashed them in the food processor. When Morry came home I put the beans on and started serving.

I think the slow cooker is the best kitchen gadget we have! It is great for nights when Morry is not sure what time he will be home.

Below is my latest sourdough. I am really close to making the perfect loaf. It takes 24 hours minimum to make. The bread is perfect, it is the crust that I am working on. It is very crusty on top but not so on the bottom. I need to learn perfect the steam bath... Either way it will be magnificent toasted tomorrow morning with strawberry jam!

Day 194 - French food

Pantry surprise has never tasted so good!

Lashings of peas served with Gulf seafoods shoestring fries and a porterhouse steak. I only had one steak in the freezer so it wasnt the meatiest dinner but it was tasty. Morry made his own Hollandaise sauce - OH YUM!!

Day 193 - Laxmis

Date Night! Woo Hoo!!!

You know, it has been so long since we had a date night, the food would have to have been indigestable for me to have a bad time.

Morry read a review that said Laxmis was about the best Indian restaurant in Adelaide. Its possible this review was written by the owners mum. It was OK, but not as good as Chefs of Tandoori. The pickles were good though - maybe the mum made them?

Day 192 - cookies!

I ate pizza with the boys - smoked oysters and cold beer!! Morry was out.

But before that, Catherine and Mary came for a coffee today so I made cookies from Silvias Cucina. They taste great straight from the oven, but dont keep well. I havent actually found a cookie recipe that does keep well - maybe Anzacs? Ill try that.

Anyway, here is the recipe for these chocolate chip and oat cookies

Day 191 - Chorizo and lentil salad

This dish was really tasty and simple. The problem is, I cant remember where the recipe came from! The dressing was made using red wine vinegar which was fabulous. The chorizo is fatty and the lentils are heavy but the dressing really cut through it all. It was a great dish!

Day 190 - Dahl

It never looks any good, but always tastes great. This recipe came from the Womens Weekly slowcooker book that I currently love. It isnt actually cooked in the slow cooker though, it is listed as a side dish, but why would you bother with anything else - really?

It has black mustard seeds, which are favourite of mine tumeric and onion cooked in ghee, then red and brown  lentils and yellow and green split peas added. A bunch of other spices - awesome. I recommend that cookbook.

Day 189 - Hugo's birthday dinner

Fish and Chips!

Hugo turned 6 today and chose his dinner. It was really nice actually. I bought crumbed flathead fillets from Gulf Seafood and their shoestring fries, served predictably with a rocket salad.

I also made a rasberry and brown sugar pudding for dessert. Morry & I enjoyed it, but the boys would have been happier with a banana...

Day 188 - a bit of a pick

The Sweet tomato and sesame chutney recipe was in the The Weekend Magazine in this weekends paper, so Morry made it and cleaned out the fridge.

Morry toasted the left over baguettes from last night, we had hot smoked salmon, rocket pesto, parmesan cheese, capers, olives.

Here is the recipe for the chutney. It says it makes 4 cups but it didnt!

Sweet tomato & sesame chutney
250ml white wine vinegar
185g caster sugar
500g large tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
4 cardamom pods, crushed
1 bay leaf
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sultanas
2 teaspoons white sesame seeds

Heat vinegar and sugar together, stirring until sugar dissolves. Add tomatoes, spices, bay leaf and salt. Bring to boil, simmer for 25 minutes, then remove cardamom pods and bay leaf. Add sultanas and sesame seeds and cook over a low heat for 6 minutes, stirring frequently. Transfer into sterilised jars when cool. The chutney will set to a jam-like consistency when cold. Makes about 4 jars

Day 187 - J&J and Quinoa salad

This is Jax legendary salad. Red and white quinoa, tomatoes left to marinate in balsamic glaze, caremilsed onion, panfried chirizo, toasted pinenuts, roasted pumpkin, feta, basil, coriander and mint and probably 10 other things I cant now remember! It is a magnificent hearty salad, really rich and full of flavour in every mouthful.

Jax says there is no recipe, but maybe its just a secret?

I made a couple of sourdough baguettes to go with the salad. 

And Morry made molton chocolate puddings, Jeff bought the best raspberries ever - 2 punnets - WOOHOO!!! I should have saved a berry each for the boys, but I didnt. 

Day 186 - stir fry

Its a bit boring but we needed to clean up the fridge, so tonight we had a stirfry. But first - I made rum balls!

Actually, there is no rum in them but they still taste good. Here is the recipe

Here is our stirfry. It was very tasty, which was lucky because the beef was so chewy...

Day 185 - Chicken Tikka

I am loving my new womens weekly slow cooker cookbook!

This recipe took about 5 minutes to prepare, 4 and half hours to cook, and about 5 minutes to devour.
Next time I would do it on the bone.

Here is the recipe;

In a slow cooker set to high, toss in 8 chicken thighs, 2 onions sliced thinly, 2 tins of tomato and 200g Tikka paste. Stir it up, put on the lid and sit back - the hard work is done!

I served with rice, a sprinkle of coriander and yoghurt.

Morry had a drinks thing that was meant to finish at 8, but was always going to run over time. I made the rice in the rice cooker. This was a good dish to choose, as we ate about an hour after we meant to, but the slow cooker and rice cooker kept everything hot without drying out too much.

Day 184 - roasted tomato soup

This is a Donna Hay recipe from one of her winter magazines a few years ago (when I still used to buy them. Nowadays they are simply a rehash of old recipes with little changes and funky photography. Lovely, but not worth buying them again!)

So the soup was awesome, here is the recipe;

Oven roast some tomatoes, red onion, garlic, thyme and olive oil with lots of salt. Roast for a good half hour. Meanwhile heat some chicken stock with a dollop of tomato paste. Then blend the lot in a blender - the fabulous kenwood lets you blend hot stuff!

Serve with toasted bread, spread with goats cheese. I used my seed bread, or fred's bread as it is now known in this house.

Day 183 - Mothers Day

Morry made a chilli tomato pasta sauce for dinner. We went to the Maryatville pub for lunch. The food is a bit ordinary, the beer list is an outrage but the enclosed undercover playground ensures they will always be booked out! The food was all gone before we took a photo and the wine was almost out too - damn those vanishing bottles of wine!

It was a fun day with my gorgeous boys.

Day 182 - Perfect coq au vin

This actually was the perfect Coq au vin and here is the recipe that Morry used

Click here for the Perfect Coq au Vin recipe

The brussel Sprouts werent part of the recipe but they are absolutley my favourite veg. Also, Morry made WAY too much. Neither of us could manage more than about half our dinner... leftovers for the boys.

Day 181 - Balsamic Glazed Veal

I have a new cookbook!

The Womens Weekly Slowcooker v2 found its way into my shopping trolley recently and it is much better than the first one.

This dish tasted fabulous, really rich flavours because of the slow cooking time.

Dust some Osso Bucco in flour and brown in a frypan. Transfer to the slow cooker. Pan fry some sage in butter, add 125ml Balsamic Vinegar and reduce for a couple of minutes, then add 1 cup of chicken stock. Transfer to the slow cooker and cook on low for 6 - 8 hours. We served it with polenta and steamed beans.

YUM'O

Day 180 - Cheese and wine carpet picnic

Jax came for wine and cheese so I went to the market and bought a few things.

Salted roast nuts, grapes, felafel with tzatziki and a morocan lentil dip, some bread rolls from the 'Say Cheese' shop, some Brie, a black label Kangaroo Island Cheddar which we had with the stand out of the night - caramalized fig jam.

We sat on the rug and drank wine and munched our way through the lot!

Jax bought dessert nibbles but we didnt get that far - next time

Day 179 - Crispy Chinese Chicken

The Instant Cook, Donna Hay, Crispy Chinese Chicken

A chicken breast per person
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
2 1/2 teaspoons chinese five spice powder
1 tablespoon peanut oil

Sprinkle both sides of the chicken with the salt and five spice.

Heat the oil in a fry pan and cook the chicken for about 4 minutes a side or until just cooked through.

Cut into pieces and serve with steamed snow peas tossed in some hoisin sauce.

Perfect!

Day 178 - Chilli and tomato fish

Another recipe from Donna Hay from the Instant cook, this one is chill and tomato fish. It was very light - maybe a better summer dish?

you will need;
olive oil
a sliced onion,
some chilli flakes
2 firm white fish fillets (we used Ling)
3 ripe tomatoes cut into wedges
zest of a lemon
chopped parsley

Basically you just fry up the onion and chilli in oil for a few minutes, then add the seasoned fish and cook for a few minutes each side until cooked and then set aside and keep warm.
Increase temp to high and add the tomatoes and lemon zest and cook for a couple of mintues, add the parsley, then dish it up! I think it would have been good with some couscous or maybe some crusty bread.

Day 176 - Steak and spinach

This recipe was adapted from Donna Hay The Instant Cook. It was meant to be Steak with rocket sauce. And you all know how much I love rocket! But when I went shopping the rocket was stringy and bit blah, so I bought baby spinach instead.

Here is what Morry did;

Brush steaks with oil and season with salt and pepper.

Heat a griddle pan until hot and cook the steaks for a few minutes each side or until the kitchen is so smokey you cant see the dining room.

At the same time grill some sliced, oiled potatoes until browned and cooked through.

Add butter, juice of a lemon, and a couple of teaspoons of sugar to hot pan, cook for about a minute, then add garlic and baby spinach until the spinach is wilted.

Layer it up on a plate and tuck in.

The sugar in the sauce is a great addition, it makes what would otherwise be a sharp sauce into a dish that is easy on the palate.

Morry cooks steaks like a professional too!

Day 175 - Dinner at Anna & Kyms

Kym made an appetiser of baguettes topped with all sorts - one was anchovies with a hard cheese, maybe haloumi?, this one was goats cheese with tomato and basil, and my favourite was the proscuitto one. They were great - nice work Kym.

Morry made slow cooked shanks with potato and carrot and all sorts.

Kym made dessert which was magnificent. I am going to make it for the boys one night. Anna sent me a copy of the recipe (below) and obviously peaches are our season, but pears are in! It is a great dessert.

Day 173 - slow cooked beef & Day 174 Tom Kai Gai

Family dinner in the slow cooker tonight. I made a beef stew and buttery boiled potato, Morry made spinach becuase I didnt know how. The boys ate the potato. Hugo wants to be a vegetarian.

Once again, it was so long ago I cant remember what recipe I used... but I did go to the effort of browning the meat - I remember that much!

Morrys Tom Kai Gai is great with a dollop of chilli paste mixed through.

Before we started using a different recipe each night, this was a staple! Serve it with sticky rice.

Day 172 - curry?

Righto, I had to be honest here. I have no idea what this was. I cant remember if it was tasty or if I liked it. It looks like might have been a curry maybe?

I made scones for breakfast! Morry and I ate ours - the boys just picked at theirs. Hmmm, a lot of effort for not much thanks ...

Day 171 - Baked Chicken salad

I do remember this one!

This was a bit of a pantry surprise dinner.

I baked some chicken breast with beautiful little cherry tomatoes and some olives, the Morry put them on some baby spinach and topped it with basil and preserved lemon.

It was a taste sensation really - lots of really intense flavours, but it really needed a big glass of white wine to comliment it. Lucky for me, Morry provided!

Day 170 - Damper & Soup

Internet problems have prevented me from updating my blog, so I now cant actually remember what kind of soup this was.

I remember the damper though! God it was magnificent. Hot out of the oven with a bit of butter and then dipped into the soup. Superb for a cold winters night.

Damper is a bit easy to make too!