food glorious food

The dinner that almost wasn’t

Posted on August 12, 2011August 12, 2011 by bekswhoknits

A bowl full of J’s favourite foods;Bacon, hard boiled egg, grated cheese, mushrooms, andonions.
It had to be confiscated as he had planned to eat it all before dinner.
It was only the promise of combining the goodness with other magical foods that allowed it to survive.

The bowl of goodness was part of a greater plan (for world domination?) for dinner.
Potato salad and sausages.
It was a combined potato salad and layer salad, as I was too lazy to do two salads.
So into a bigger bowl went some chopped lettuce, then some boiled potatos and peas, which had cooled.
Then the aforementioned bowl of goodness (Bacon, egg, grated cheese, mushrooms, andonions) and some (storebought – naughty!) caeser salad dressing over the top.

With some cumberland sausages on the side (J’s contribution) it was a good dinner.

And yes that’s a stable table in the background.

One spoilt lady

Posted on August 10, 2011October 5, 2011 by bekswhoknits

My boy spoils me.
He cooks dinner for me, while I watch my stories.
And he makes the plate look pretty because he knows I like to take pictures.

So without any further ado, I present lamb cutlets, on a bed of potato mash, with beans and a mushroom sauce.

Lemony chickeny

Posted on August 9, 2011August 9, 2011 by bekswhoknits

After a hard day watching series 1 of Mad Men, dinner had to be easy. So I adapted my own recipe.

The chicken was coated in flour and lemon pepper, and then fried in hot oil.
Once the chicken was browned, a pint glass of chicken stock was poured over to bubble away.
Then an egg yolk and the juice of 3 small lemons was added.

The chicken was then poured over two packages of Mie Goreng noodles which had some frozen carrots, corn, broccoli, and cauliflower, in it.

Serve and done.

I added a little too much pepper for my liking, and a little too much lemon for J’s liking.
But it went down a treat.

Followed by some strawberry ice cream (with milo sprinkles), and a diamond fizz (because all I had to mix gin with was sparkling, apparently that’s a thing).

Apologies for the bad photos, I was hungry.

Saturday lunch – The Royal

Posted on August 8, 2011August 9, 2011 by bekswhoknits

In the middle of a busy weekend, on the way to pick up some dry cleaning, we stopped off at The Royal for a late lunch.
Sitting in the sun, after a rainy week, was just delightful.

The pints of heineken went down very easily. J had the chicken penne, whilst I had the hand torn pasta with lamb.
It was absolutely delicious.
My lamb tasted like a roast dinner on pasta. The roast vegetables were little parcels of goodness, and the hand ripped pasta was divine.

I didn’t know what sauce was on J’s pasta, but if ever figure it out I would make it every night.
And there was still more options on the menu that we wanted to try.

I’ve been to The Royal before, mainly for after-work drinks, a few times for lunch, but this was the best food I’d tasted there.
J had never been there before and he wants to go back (always a good sign).

The views are lovely, looking out over the water.
Hopefully next time we could take the boat and stop off for a spot of lunch.
Either way, we’re going back.

Lamb shanks

Posted on August 2, 2011August 2, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Let it be known that I love lamb.
Lamb cutlets, French trim, Lamb chops, roast lamb, and I am rather partial to a lamb shank.

And this is a very good recipe which I found in a cookbook by West Australian authors, Dujour

It is a glorious book, with beautiful photos of food, and special embossed pages between chapters.

I’ve tried several recipes from it, but one that I keep going back to is their method for cooking lamb shanks.

I wasn’t particularly true to the recipe. So here’s my version.

I smeared two lamb shanks with minced garlic, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and olive oil. That went into a 200 degree oven for about 30 minutes.
While this was cooking I made scones (as you do, but more on that later), and boiled some potatoes.

I mashed the potatoes with some beef stock, milk, butter, grated cheese, and chives, and then spooned onto a baking tray. A smidgen more grated cheese over the top, and some garlic olive oil and then they went in the oven to brown up.

At the same time as the spuds were going in the oven, the lamb shanks came out and were covered in a tomato mixture, covered in alfoil and then back in the oven.
The tomato mixture was 1 tin of tomatoes, some chopped Italian sausage, a grated carrot, some red wine, and more salt and pepper.

At the 40 minutes in the oven mark I put some broccoli and cauliflower on to boil.

After 50 minutes in the oven, the potato was crispy and the lamb cooked.

We tried to rest the lamb but we just ended up eating it.
It was melt-in-your-mouth good.
I had my reservations about adding the Italian sausage but it didn’t make it too meaty.

Definitely make it again, although I wouldn’t mind finding some way to keep my olives.

It’s a kitchen invasion

Posted on August 1, 2011October 5, 2011 by bekswhoknits

I was all set to cook fish and chips for my boyfriend who had cooked the previous two meals.

I had some fish in the microwave defrosting only to discover once it had defrosted that it wasn’t fish, it was squid.
So J was called on to cook dinner, as I’m not too confident with cooking fish.

So he cooked up a seafood (prawn, squid, and barramundi all from the freezer) medley.
I put the chips in the oven (yay I helped!).

But while the oven was on I decided to make desert. And so I looked in my old high school cook book (yes I’ve still got it after all these years) and found a recipe. We’re not big sweet tooths in my household, so when I find a sweet recipes which can happily feed us two with no leftovers to go to waste, I hold on to it.
This quantity will easily serve two people, but you can have that amount to yourself with no problems.

3/4 cup milk, 1 egg, 2 tsp sugar, some nutmeg, and some vanilla were mixed in a mug.
Then poured over some buttered bread which had the crusts cut off, and placed in the bottom of ramekins.
That then went in a water bath, in the oven for 25 minutes.
It wasn’t fish and chips, but it was good.

Its just one thing after another

Posted on July 27, 2011August 2, 2011 by bekswhoknits

It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that as you sort one aspect of you life out, another will go drastically wrong.

Maybe I’m paraphrasing Bridget Jones badly (and Jane Austen even worse) but that’s what this week has been.

The washing machine, which was due to be repaired on Monday, was diagnosed as being more expensive to fix than replace. So a new washing machine needs to be bought.
And yesterday the water in my sinks was lingering a little too long, so we called a plumber out.
He cleared the blockage so potential crisis was averted but for a while there we thought there could be another flooding on the horizon (and just as we had got everything back to normal).

So on Monday night, the Mr went to the shops as he had a plan for dinner. After we spent the afternoon/evening sorting things out, finally moving everything back into the master bedroom we were somewhat spent, so J had leftover soup that he had taken for lunch but hadn’t eaten. And I made a Nigella fall back (cannelini beans with chorizo).

So Monday night’s dinner became Tuesday nights dinner.

Whilst I started a pair of socks, J busied himself in the kitchen. He came out with barbequed steak with a pepper gravy, over mashed peas and potatos, and some barbequed corn.

It’s really awesome having a boy who will cook me a good meal (with 3 vegies!) while I sit on the couch and try and figure out how to knit socks.

Life is good.

the day after On The Bright Side

Posted on July 26, 2011July 27, 2011 by bekswhoknits

We had a sleep in.

J lost his voice and tried not to speak all day.

Did our washing at a laundromat, while we’re waiting for our washing machine to get fixed.

I finished off a hat that I started, but have plans to frog it.

I made chicken and corn soup (with a trip to the shops in the process).

I fixed our internet connection.

J played Gran Turismo.

I made cheese and bacon muffins

We went to the casino for a silent dinner, watched Mark Webber lose pole position.

Went home and watched some tele and fell asleep.

zzz

cauliflower, it’s better with bacon

Posted on July 20, 2011July 20, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Well I have one crook little cookie at home at the moment.
His temperature is up, he’s going between hot and cold, and all his muscles ache.

So what was needed was some soup.

I’m going through a massive cauliflower phase at the moment. I absolutely love the stuff.
So I’m making sure I buy some whenever I go to the supermarket.

So when J called me on his way home from work (he had to work late yesterday when he was feeling ill) and said that he was feeling terrible but really hungry I had to get dinner on straight away.

A quick search on taste.com.au revealed the cauliflower soup that I made last time (no thanks).
But I recalled a conversation with a lovely checkout lady from Coles, who basically described the soup recipe here

I didn’t have leeks so instead I fried a brown onion.
Then I added the potato and cauliflower so that could boil away in chicken stock.

Once it was cooked, I mashed it (as J was asleep on the couch and the stick blender would have woken him) and added cheese and bacon (because everything is better with cheese and bacon).

I think mashing it meant that it was chunkier, which was nice.

Then topped with some fresh chives from the garden.

It was so delicious I went back for seconds.

After my boy fell back asleep on the couch, I cast on for a cowl that I’m making for his sister, and knitted a few rows of that. The lace pattern didn’t really turn out though so I’ve abandoned the lace in favour of the rib that makes up the lace pattern.

It was almost like having a night to myself.

And it makes for some good work lunches aswell

Leftovers

Posted on July 18, 2011 by bekswhoknits

Mondays afternoons fall into one of two categories. There are the Monday’s like last Monday when I’m in a rampage and everything must be cleaned. Or there’s the Monday’s like today when I come home, read the junk mail standing up in the kitchen, tell J not to talk to me for 5 minutes (I’m not used to him beating me home – I need my me-time) and leftovers.

Tonight was the mince sauce from Thursday (the one J said had too many beans) with toast.
With a magnum gold for desert.
Whilst watching Nigella and Rick Stein.