Chop half the pumpkin into largish bits and boil until soft in 1 litre of lightly salted water.
Chop other half of pumpkin into small even sized cubes and fry over low heat until carmelised on all sides. Patience is the key, just let 'em sizzle away on one side until they are nicely browned and sweet.
Once the first batch of pumpkin is soft, blitz it with a stick blender and add water to make up to 1.5 litres or so.
Stick herb break in hot oven to heat.
Chop onion and garlic and sweat for a little while.
Dump in rice and swirl around until covered with the oily goodness.
Add the pumpkin stock bit by bit whilst stirring.
Half way through the stock add most of the chopped sage (retain a little for garnish)
Risotto is done when it mostly squishes between your fingers.
Add the grated parmesan cheese and stir to melt in.
Serve with herb bread, garnished with left over sage.
Time to cook: 45 minutes Cost per serve: $4.00 Inspiration: An Andrew Blake recipe from one of those newspaper inserts.
Remove avocado flesh (it's icky so dragoon a volunteer if you can)
Squeeze lemon for juice (use a helper if you can)
Combine the two to make guacamole
Chop onions into segments, capsicum and chicken into thin strips.
Chuck onions capiscum and a little oil in pan. Find something else to do so you don't disturb 'em. You want them a little charred. Once they have started going sprinkle some of the seasoning over them.
Chop the coriander.
Fry the chicken in small batches in the same pan as the onions and capsicum where done. Again you want it charred so don't move the chicken about too much.
When the chicken is done return the onions and capsicum to the pan, chuck in any leftover seasoning and the coriander and stir through.
Put the condiments in dinky little bowls and have your helper ferry them to the table.
Mix and match as you will to make yummy (if monotonous) fajitas.
Time to cook: 35 minutes (50 with helper) Cost per serve: $8 Inspiration: Very little
Mince together all the kofta ingredients in a bowl. Remember when scaling down a recipe to scale all of the ingredients especially the yoghurt, otherwise you get:
strange liquid things that don't stay on the skewer as they should (solve this by pan frying them for a little while to form a crust before skewering)
Form sausages of the mush on skewers and char grill for about 8 minutes.
Meanwhile, finally slice the red onion, capsicum and 1/2 a deseeded cucumber and chuck in a bowl with the coriander leaves.
Finely chop the mint and mix with 1/2 a grated cucumber (don't peel it!) and yoghurt, to make the raita.
Plate it up thusly:
Time to cook: 45 minutes (15 minutes less if you don't stuff up) Cost per serve: $8 Inspiration: A taste weeknight recipe
Turn steak after 5 minutes (or so). Season just before you turn it.
Segment orange, core peel slice apple. Whack in bowl
Make thin slices of cucumber with speed peeler or mandolin. Whack in bowl
Slice celery thinly (peel if it's stringy)
Chuck leaves in bowl
Break prosciutto up into bits and chuck in bowl.
Press steak and when it feels right (Should feel like the meaty part of your hand does when you touch your thumb to forefinger) remove it from the grill and let rest.
Whack herbs, inner leaves from celery, a little olive oil, some grated Parmesan, Salt and almonds in a blender and blitz.
Plate up salad and steak. Drizzle salad with vingairette and steak with herb sauce.
Time to prepare: 25 minutes Cost per serve: $12 Inspiration: This one is all mine.
