Day 101 - Salad mountain and some baked lamb

Lamb wrapped in proscuitto and baked with a pea, snowpea and feta salad.
Another Donna Hay recipe! This is from her 50 fast recipes that she does in the january cookbook.  The lamb is wrapped in proscuitto and baked for 20-25 mins - easy enough. The salad was divine. You could have it with ANYTHING. Blanch peas and snow peas, crumble some feta (recipe calls for ricotta but I thought that sounded a bland), some butter lettuce and a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil and crushed garlic. Awesome salad!!! Also got about a weeks worth of fibre from all the peas ;)

Day 100 - Spiced yoghurt grilled chicken skewers

The photo looks a bit blah, but this is an awesome dish - definately in the top 10!

This was one of those dishes that I stuffed up. For one thing the dish takes 30 to 40 minutes to prepare, which is not that good on a Monday because always has a late meeting on a monday. My second major error was that I forgot to tell Morry that I hadnt bought the hummus, but that he was meant to make it. And the third error was that I forgot to buy all of the ingredients.

But, wow, this was a GREAT dish!

Donna Hay, Simple dinners

1/4 cup corriander

1/4 cup flat leaf parsley

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon ground cummin

2 teaspoons lemon zest

1 cup natural yoghurt

2 chicken breast (recipe says thigh but we used breast)

the recipe says to serve with flat bread, mache lettuce and store bought hummus. But dont buy it, make it and it tastes amazing.

Place everything but chicken in a bowl and mix, coat chicken pieces and set aside for 10 minutes. Preheat a griddle pan and grill chicken until just cooked. Serve with some sliced tomato and homemade hummus.

To make the hummus, blend a tin of chickpeas, garlic, lemon jiuuce, olive oil, cummin, pinch of chilli, salt and pepper. Blend and eat!!!

Great chocolate chip cookies for the return to school

Day 99 - Roast tomato, garlic and bread salad

OMG. If ever we were going to repeat a dish, this would be it.

Total perfection, yum yum, scrummy yum yum.

Here is the recipe and a hearty cheers to Donna Hay!

Roasted tomato, garlic and bread salad
serves 4 - apparently

500g Roma tomatoes halved
250g sourdough, broken into 1 inch pieces
12 cloves garlic, skin on
2 tablespoons whit balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup olice oil
1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar extra
2 tablespoons water
4 cups rocket
12 slices proscuitto

preheat oven to 160. Place tomatoes, bread, garlic oil and vinegar in a bowl and toss to combine. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and roast 40 minutes or until crisp and golden. Morry actually put the tomatoes in for an hour and half and only did the other things for 40 minutes. But either way would be delicous.

Remove garlic from tray and squeeze from skins, add oil, vinegar and water and mix to combine (with a bamix). Place tomatio and bread mixture in a bowl and toss with rocket. Divide between plates, spoon over dressing and top with proscuitto.

We had it with my least favourite variety of wine, sauvignon blanc and it was superb.

Lovely work Morry!

Day 98 - Salmon with caper and anchovy butter

Salmon is actually one of my favourite fish. Pan fried with caper and anchovy butter and served with watercress made the perfect dinner for me.

Caper and Anchovy butter
Soften a couple of tablespoons of butter, then add 2 teaspoons chopped capers, lemon zest from half a lemon, add 2 teaspoons parsley finely chopped and 1 anchovy fillet finely chopped, then pop it back in the freezer.

I think it would good with other pan fried fish like baramundi, but it is a strong flavour so the acompaniment should be a really simple flavour, the watercress was perfect.

Day 97 - left over heaven

Breakfast - Pauls bread reheated in the oven with jam, marmalade and coffee.

Lunch - Pauls bread spread with goats cheese and layered with leftover lamb and served with Jax salad leftovers.

Dinner - Angel hair pasta made with the left over prawns and Jeffs smoked trout and a bottle of Claudes passata. Here is the recipe;

garlic

white wine

Claudes pasta sauce

tomato paste

lemon zest

fresh oregano

cooked prawns & smoked trout

Saute chopped garlic in olive oil, add a dash of white wine and Claude homemade tomate sauce. Add a couple of teaspoons of tomato paste and reduce. Cook angel hair for 1 minute and add to sauce and cook for a further minute. Add fresh oregano and lemon zest, flake over the trout, toss thorugh the prawns. garnish with some parsley.

We served it with some left over white wine - love leftovers!!!

Day 96 - Australia Day

Paul is an internationally awarded baker of magnificent breads and pastries. He brought some bread to our backyard Australia Day lunch. I imagined a couple of good quality loaves but OMG!!! Check it out!!!!! There are not enough exlamation marks to express my gratitude and awe at his generousity and skill!

This bread is truly fantastic. You can buy the cobs as Paulos bread. I am loving my decision to empty the freezer a bit during the week, now its full of left over bread! Paul started baking at 4am!!!! Crikey it was worth it. I am resolved to stop making my own bread and just buy his. That is of course until I do his bread making course at the end of feb!! Check his desserts a bit later.

4kg of SA King Prawns served with Morrys homemade Aioli. He will kill me for this, but the recipe was digracefully easy so I will post it. Most recipes for aioli you make it from scratch in a food processor, but this was an adapted Donna Hay recipe. Best quality mayonaise, crushed garlic and a bit of lemon juice.

Jeff and Jacki made some smoked rainbow trout. Yes, I said MADE!!! Obviously they bought the fish, but they smoked it! It had a great flavour, very smoky, not as fishy as you get at the shops. definately better. Thanks guys!

The salads! I bought Banana Boys rocket salad (with the dressing on the side so it would keep a day) and sweet potato and betroot salad (not pictured) Jacki made a quinoa (yes pronounced keenwar - who knew! Oh, appartenly everyone but me) Jax salad was fab - had leftovers for dinner with more bread!

Morrys tomatoes
Ripe tomatoes
whole garlic cloves
fresh thyme and oregano
Morry cooked these for about 4 hours. Chop tomatoes in half, add other ingredients, season and drizzle in olive oil. Pur in the oven at 140degrees for an hour then reduce to 110 and leave it another couple of hours.
This is a great side dish as it doesnt require careful timing! 
Left overs can be eaten on fresh bread or put through a pasta. Shame there werent any leftovers :(

BBQ'd lamb and fried polenta. Lots of lamb left over - any ideas for using it up?

So here are the tarts.

Words cannot describe their splendor.

One was chocolate and pistachio, one was frangipane and plum and my favourite was the raspberry. It had a basil infused sponge inside. Enough said.

No leftovers

A big thanks to the guys who brought food. It was an indulgent afternoon, the quality of the food and wines makes me proud to be australian.

Incase you were wondering about the kids, they had vegimite sandwiches, watermelon and strawberries, hotdogs and hours of swimming in the pool with Nics fabulous nannies Meg and Dani. I forgot their dessert which was mini magnums and lamingtons - sorry aussie kids!

Day 95 - Steak and beans

Another quick and easy dinner!

At vast expense, I bought 2 steaks from Wilson, the butcher at Mitcham. Morry BBQd them, no marinade or anything like that. They were really tasty. It was such a good piece of meat, worth every penny. The beans were another misunderstanding. I was after a Canellini bean and tomato salad, which Morry cooked. I was thinking something nice and light to accompany the meat with a lemony kind of dressing, but this was kind of a cassolet. It was very nice.

I think I need to put in a bit more effort with the recipes again. Australia day tomorrow so Ill get back to it after that!