Lack of development: Fajitas again

Lack of development: Fajitas again

Another meal selection by the 3 year old, another meal of fajitas. I threw in some prawns again this time for a bit of variety and it wasn't too bad at all. But really I think I need to declare fajita a "naughty word" in our household.

Chili on Garlic Toast with Melted Cheese and Cream Fraiche

Chili on Garlic Toast with Melted Cheese and Cream Fraiche











Another reuse of leftovers recipe, this one looks like a white trash meal, but tasted divine. The chili had stewed away nicely in the fridge and had developed a real depth of flavour that it missed the first time. Whacking it on garlic toast and smothering it with cream fraiche and melted cheese meant it was a hit with the 3 year old as well. I noticed that my wife also polished her plate.

Ingredients

• Chili (reheated from the other night)
• Garlic toast
• Cream fraiche
• Grated cheddar cheese.

Garlic toast

• Sourdough bread (from flinders bread)
• Garlic
• Butter
• Parsley

Method
Stick some unpeeled garlic in some foil and whack in the oven until it's soft and squishy. Squeeze the garlic out of the skins and mix with some soft butter and minutely chopped parsley (think wet green powder, we want the taste not the texture). Slice bread thickly and smear with garlic goo. Then whack in the oven to crisp up. Whip chili out of fridge container and whack on the stove and stir whilst it heats. When it's hot spoon on top of garlic toast and then top with cream fraiche and grated cheddar, then stick under the grill to melt.

Cost of ingredients: $8 (excluding chili)
Time to prepare: 20 minutes
Number of serves: 3
Recipe inspiration: None.

Leftovers: Reheated Rigatoni

Reheated Rigatoni


Learnt an inportant lesson today, cooked spinach microwaves abysmally. It turned out looking and tasting like green dish cloths. Besides that it wasn't too bad and the little guy polished his off without too much in the way of threats.

Time to prepare: 5 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $0
Number of serves: 3
Recipe inspiration: The other night

Rigatoni with Mushroom, Lemon, Parsley, Spinach and Prosciutto

Rigatoni with Mushroom, Lemon, Parsley, Spinach and Prosciutto












Tonights dinner was adapted from the pages of a Donna Hay magazine and for once it was tasty rather than just pretty. I added the prosciutto as the carnivore in me has problems with veg meals, they always seem incomplete. Everyone ate this with gusto.

Ingredients

• Rigatoni
• Mushrooms
• Garlic
• Parsley
• Lemon zest and juice
• Prosciutto
• Spinach

Method
Cook the pasta
Fry the prosciutto until crisp.
Chop 'shrooms and stick 'em in a baking tray with some unpeeled garlic, sprinkle with Olive oil and salt, roast in hot oven until tender. When done squeeze garlic out of skin and whack back in tray, along with the chopped parsley, lemon zest and broken up prosciutto, stir to combine. Then whack the whole lot in with the drained pasta and pour in the lemon juice and salt to taste. Serve with shaved parmeasan cheese.

Time to prepare: 30 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $25
Number of serves: 5
Recipe inspiration: July edition of Donna Hay magazine.

BBQ Chicken Satay Sticks, BBQ corn and Mini-Veg Salad

BBQ Chicken Satay Sticks, BBQ corn and Mini-Veg Salad



Sorry, no photo's today the camera had pooped out. The meal was tasty though and the meat on a stick thing got the three year old eating. He even ate the salad if we stuck it on the stuck too. Wife ate so much she said she felt ill, which has to be a good sign.

Ingredients

• Chicken tenderloins
• Peanuts
• Coconut milk
• Curry powder
• Salt
• Olive oil
• Corn
• Mini tomatoes
  
• Mini cucumbers
• Mini broccoli
  
• Balsamic vinegar

Method
Heat BBQ enough to keep you warm in the chill night air and make enough smoke to chase away the mossies, then whack the corn on it. Stick chicken on sticks, mix salt, curry power, crushed peanuts, coconut milk in a bowl and coat the chicken sticks. Whack them too on the bbq and turn frequently and baste with the satay sauce. Chop the veg and slather with a salted 1:3 mix of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Time to prepare: 45 minutes
Number of serves: 4
Cost of ingredients: $28
Recipe inspiration: very little.

Beef and Bean Chili

Beef and Bean Chili













I've never cooked a chili before and have read many many mouthwatering accounts of how tasty they can be. I thought I had been a little restrained on the amount of cayenne pepper used, however the three year old demanded more sour cream before he'd eat his and he has a pretty high spicy threshold, so I guess I missed the mark. Oh well live and learn. I cleaned my plate and so did my wife.

Ingredients

• Beef mince
• Pork mince
• Red kidney beans
• Cannalini beans
• Diced tomatoes, canned
• Celery
• Onion
• Cayenne pepper
• Paprika
• Salt
• Olive oil
• Sour cream
• Cheddar cheese
• Garlic bread (purchased)
  

Method:
Soften onion, celery in big ass pan with some olive oil, when soft brown meat in there and drain off any excess fat and remind self to mince your own meat again. Just as the meat starts to go brown, chuck in the spices. When it's all the way brown chuck in the beans and tomatoes and simmer for an hour or so. Season at the end to taste. Serve on a hot piece of garlic bread, covered with grated cheese and a dollop of sour cream. Try to remember to photograph before you start eating and fail.

Time to prepare: 2 hours
Number of serves: 8
Cost of ingredients: $32
Recipe inspiration: Many many accounts of tasty chili

Chicken cashew, apple, potato curry with Rice

Chicken Cashew, Apple and Potato Curry with Jasmine Rice











This is very similar to curries I've cooked before, I beefed it up a little with some stock The three year old was entranced with the moulded rice and scoffed a sizable quantity. I think I could have chucked in more chilli, but it was tasty none the less. Certainly it was better than the last inspid curry I made.


Ingredients:

• Chicken thighs
• Golden delicious apples
• Beef stock
  
• Potato
• Coriander
• Cashews
  
• Curry paste
• Coconut cream
• Salt
• Pepper
  

Curry paste:

• Onion
• Shredded coconut
• Tomato paste
• Sugar
• Curry powder
• Chilli
  
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Tumeric
• Garam masala
• Cashews
• Almonds

Method
Curry paste
Stuff everything in a blender and turn it up to obliterate.

Rice:
I succesfully nuked it and it turned out nice and fluffy. Secret turned out to be nuke on high for a while and then on low for a long time in a bowl covered with glad wrap (BTW NEVER go cheap on plastic wrap, it's just not worth the hassle)

Curry:
Sweat some onions in a pan and then fry off the curry paste. When it starts to become fragrant, chuck in the chicken thighs and fry 'em until golden. Then chuck everything else in and turn the heat down low and cover the pan and cook until it's all tender.

Time to prepare: 60 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $18
Number of serves: 4
Recipe inspiration: Many many recipe books.

Quesadillas

Quesadillas with sour cream and guacamole











These look a lot like white trash food, but tasted divine. Cooking them at the table in the sandwich maker ensured that the 3 year old bought in too. A quick peek at wikipedia for quesadilla makes me think that perhaps these should be called sincronizada instead but what the heck.


Ingredients

• Wheat tortillas
• Cheese
• Coriander
• Spanish onion
  
• Tiny tomatoes
• Guacamole
• Sour cream
• Lime juice
• Frijoles

Guacamole

• Avocado
• Lime juice
• Chilli
• Tiny tomatoes
• Onion

Frijoles

• Pinto beans
• Chilli
• Stock
• Bay leaves

Method
Frijoles
Boil pinto beans in stock with bay leaves until they are soft, then blend the lot until it has the consistency of soggy cardboard.

Guacamole
Blend everything until mostly liquid.

Mix cheese, coriander, shredded onion, diced tiny tomatoes and a little lime juice and whack in a bowl. Smear some frijole on a tortilla and sling in the sandwich maker. Cover with a large handful of the cheese mix and another tortilla. Close the sandwich maker and wait until you here the sizzle of the cheese oozing out.

Time to prepare: 20 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $18
Number of serves: 3
Recipe inspiration: Something I saw on the Fresh tv show.

Fajitas ad naseum

Chicken Fajitas.



No need to comment allthough I haven't actually done a method before for these so behold the wonder that is the meal which is the bane of my belly.


Method

Toss chicken strips in spice rub and leave for as long as you can.
Slice onions into wedges and capsicum into thin slices. Chuck in a hot pan with a little oil and sprinkle over some of the spice rub. Leave it alone to char. When you can smell the carmelisation toss the vegs around a bit and carmelise on another side. Repeat until the veg is nice and charred. Remove from pan and chuck in a bowl. Toss in chicken strips in batches and again leave 'em alone to char. Toss in bowl with veg as you go. Return the lot to the pan and squeeze over the juice of several limes.

Guacamole (well my version).
Mash with fork, avocado, corriander, chilli. Squeeze in some lime juice.

Spice rub.
Dry roast, then pound in a mortar and pestle.

Tortillas (when you can be bothered making them, rather than buying them)
Mix masa with water until the consistency is kinda like cardboard that has been left in the rain for a couple of minutes. I then use two cast iron skillets to squeeze the masa out into tortillas. Cook 'em in a dry pan until they blister just a little bit then flip and repeat.

Steak with steamed veg

Porterhouse with steamed peas and corn



Nothing special here and no photo, this meal was simply body maintenance food. As an aside there's a reason that Aldi's meat is cheaper, anything that needs to be packed in a special gas is suspect in my book.



Ingredients

• Porterhouse steak
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive oil
• Peas'n'corn frozen mix.

Method

Let the steak come to room temperature (or least lose the fridge chill) then salt, pepper and oil it. Stick it on a hot as you can get it griddle pan and turn it just once. Use your thumb to figure out how cooked it is, don't be tempted to cut into it. Let it rest under some loose foil for 5 minutes. Whack on warmed plate. Veg was stuck in a bowl and microwaved.

Time to prepare: 15 minutes
Number of serves: 3
Cost of ingredients: $12.80
Recipe inspiration: Distinct lack of it.

Risotto with Corn, Mushrooms and Chicken Sausages with baby veg salad

Corn, Mushroom and Chicken Sausage Risotto, with a baby veg salad











Sorry about the lack of posting, the family has been ill again. You didn't miss much, cheese and tomato on toast and miscellaneous deep-fried frozen things (fish fillets, fingers, chips) and steamed veg were as exciting as it got. Today we had risotto and in an effort to get the 3 year old to eat without help I snuck some rice around his sausages. It turned out a little salty, which is a change from my normal insipid, oh well live and learn.

Ingredients:

• Arborio rice
• Chicken stock
• White wine
  
• Swiss brown mushrooms
• Corn
• Coriander
• Chicken sausages
• Onion
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Parmesan cheese
• Baby vegetable salad
  

Fairly standard risotto method, heat the stock to a simmer. Fry the mushrooms in a hot pan with butter and then add the snags to the pan and fry until nicely cooked and crispy. Then Chuck some onion and oil in the pan on low heat and sweat until translucent. Then toss in the rice and swirl about until the rice just begins to catch and lets off a nice smell. Then dump in some white white and stir until it's gone. Gradually add the stock whilst stirring until the rice is basically done. When it's done add the corn, coriander, mushrooms, cheese and season.

Baby veg salad is simple chop vegies, toss with a little olive oil, lemon and salt.

Time to prepare: About 45 minutes
Cost of ingredients: About $30
Number of serves: 6
Recipe inspiration: none

Restaurant Meal: Rye Hotel Bistro

Seafood platter and banana split

Rye Hotel is at 2415 Pt Nepean Road, Rye 03 5985 2277

This is a restaurant that positively encourages you to bring kids, it has an indoor playground that has been carefully planned for little and big kids alike.

The menu is pub bistro standard, order at the bistro counter type stuff, covering a vast array of things with chips and salad. I ordered the seafood platter which consists of several gourdons of battered and deep fried fish, a battered and deep fried scallop (with coral, yum!), a couple of deep fried calamari rings, a spring roll filled with prawns, a beautifully cooked piece of squid, a chilli prawn on a skewer, a couple of battered and deep fried prawns, chips and a green salad with a lemon vinegarette. The squid was just perfect, tender and tasty but the rest were fish'n'chips shop standard; a bit of a disappointment.

The banana split however was another story altogether, it was simply divine if completely oversized (it was americanesque in it's enormonity). The deserts at the Rye Hotel are prepared by the person taking your order at the bar and in my case the order taker was a frustrated desert chef, she literally took 10 minutes to make this masterpiece and it consisted of banana (carefully sliced into 3 pieces, two bananas were discarded after peeling as less than perfect), vanila ice-cream carefully formed into quinelles, a tasteful smear of chocolate sauce, an artful sprinkling of crushed peanuts (which she crushed on the spot from a jar of pre-roasted nuts) and the only grating item was the addition of those premade tublar wafers. All in all the masterpiece was a joy to consume, except for the guilt of leaving some behind due to gastro-intestinal fatigue.


Cost of meal: $30 (25 for the seafood platter, 5 for the divine split)
Time to serve: About 10 minutes (how long can it take to pull something from the freezer, deep fry it and then whack it on a plate prepared with salad)
Rating: 8/10 if you have kids, 6/10 if you don't.

Tagliatelle With Pesto, Beans, Potatoes and Sausage

Taglietelle With Pesto, Beans, Potatoes and Sausage












Bit of a comedown from last nights dinner, but tasty all the same and wonder upon wonder the three year old cleared his plate without the normal pleading, cajoling and threatening. The wife also cleared the plate and proclaimed can you please give me smaller serves in the future, I clear the plate cos it's tasty not cos I want to eat it all.

Ingredients:

• Tagliatelle
• Pesto
• Green beans
• Potatoes
• Sausage
  
• Parmesan cheese
• Olive oil
• Salt

Fry sausage, blanch beans, boil spuds (I used the pinenut pan for the sausage well actually I used the sausage pan for the pine nuts, and the pasta pot for the spuds and beans). Stuff in pan with a little oil and then add cooked pasta. Stir through pesto. Season, taste smile.

Tagliatelle

• '00' flour
• Eggs
• Salt

I still haven't figured out portion control yet, how much does a person eat in fresh pasta. I've been whittling it down from 200g to 150 to 100g and it still seems I have leftovers. That aside making pasta is a dodle. 100g flour to 1 large egg to 1 pinch of salt dumped in the kitchen aid with the dough hook and left on slow until it forms a smooth shiny mass. Run that through the pasta rolling machine thingy and you are done.

Pesto

• Basil
• Garlic
• Pine nuts
• Parmesan cheese
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive oil

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan and then apply more machinery, bung all ingredients in food processor and blitz adding enough oil at end to make 'wet enough'

Cost of ingredients: $30 ( I stupidly bought a kg of pine nuts which jacked the price as I include the cost of the pine nuts that hit the floor when I tried to pour them into my pinenut jar.)
Time to prepare: 45 minutes
Number of serves: 4
Recipe inspiration: Tagliatelle genovese in one of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks

Restaurant Meal: Water and Grass

Char grilled boned quail, crisp polenta, shaved fennel, orange and parsley salad; aged porterhouse, potato fondant, roasted shallots and red wine jus; and chocolate, banana and cardamom beignets with vanilla bean anglaise

Water and Grass Restaurant is at 32 Bourke Street in Melbourne, 03 9650 7020Just as well I didn't get any photo's of this meal, there is no way I could fit that title in the layout I use. This restaurant was really sad, it was well presented with a nice ambience, it is well sited with a really nice menu and it still couldn't seem to get a customer. I went in there with a group of 17 and the commis told me they did 25 covers for the night. That's rough for a 200 ish seat restaurant on a Friday night, even more so when it's extremely handy to the theatre district in Melbourne.

The food itself was tasty and well sized, but it seemed to be missing that zing that a great restaurant manages to add to every meal. The guy that organised our event tells me it used to be a Crotian themed restaurant and changed owners a couple of months ago. Perhaps they just haven't managed to tune up the menu yet, *shrug*.

Unfortunately I have trouble recommending this restaurant to people as it was on the medium to high side for prices, but just didn't return the value I'd expect.

The title covers the ingredients so I won't bother to cover them again, but they did have a malee root fired char grill to cook the steaks on and it did a pretty good job, even if the dude driving it had trouble with what rare means.

Cost of meal: $70 ex drinks
Time to prepare: As you can expect in an empty restaurant the response from the kitchen was fantastic.

Takeaway: Thai Rosy

Massaman curry, pad thai, basil beef stir fry, ginger and chilli prawn stir fry and coconut rice


Thai Rosy is at 1659 Point Nepean Rd Rosebud, 03 5982 1400


This is a medium size shop front, in fact it's two shops joined together, thai restaurant in a little shopping strip in Rosebud, lots of handy parking.
This place has about 10 tables and despite doing a fairish chunk of takeaway trade, seems to offer a reasonable place to eat as well. Wait staff consists of local teenagers so don't expect too much, but it's reasonably priced and they have taken the time to ensure that there is nothing to distract you from the meal. The room is muted, adequately lit and tastefully decorated (modulo the required buddha shrine)


The food itself was pretty good, we had a massaman chicken curry, pad thai with chicken, a stir fried beef with thai basil and cashew nuts, stir fried prawns with a ginger chilli sauce, some pork spring rolls, chicken satay sticks and coconut rice. The prawn stir fry was fantastic, the beef stir fry was deliciously picant and went extremely well with the creamy coconut rice. The pad thai was a bit of a disappointment, but I guess that's to be expected after it's been crammed in a plastic container for 10 minutes. All in all the meal was extremely tasty, it wasn't particularly cheap but it was overall worth the money.

Cost of meal: $80
Number of serves: 6
Overall rating: 6/10

Steak with Bernaise Sauce, Fried New Potatoes and Corn

Steak with bernaise sauce, fried new potatoes and corn.











Going to start a new trend tonight, I'll include a brief method along with the list of ingredients for the meal. This one was very tasty although the bernaise was thicker than I would have liked. The steak was so tasty that I even got my wife (who's a "I've have it on the shoeleather side of well done kinda gal) to eat it medium rare.


Ingredients:

• Steak
• Bernaise sauce
• New potatoes
• Corn
• Salt
  
• Pepper
• Canola oil

Season then oil and say 4 minutes each side on the grill to make a pretty (and tasty) pattern.
Potatoes are soaked in brine for a while and then thrown straight into another pan and left to go crunchy on one side. Then shake the pan and crunch up the other side.
Corn simply steam.


Bernaise sauce

• white wine
• tarragon vinegar
• tarragon, chopped
• shallots
• butter
• egg yolks
• lemon juice
• salt
• pepper

Boil wine, vinegar tarragon, shallots and pepper until almost all gone
In a bowl over boiling water whisk the egg yolks until starting to thicken, add the butter bit by bit ensuring its incorporated fully. Dump in herbs and lemon juice and whisk until suitably thick.

Time to prepare: About 30 minutes
Number of serves: 4
Cost of ingredients: $40
Recipe inspiration: Many bistro meals eaten over the years, well except for the corn.

Bangers and mash

Bangers, mash and steamed vegetables




Sorry, I completely forgot to take a photo which is probably just as well as I made the bangers and they weren't the prettiest things you have ever seen. Anyone that tells you it's tough to make sausages is lying, it's a snap, all you need is the right skin (I bought my from the butcher, he told me not to ask what they were made from), no soaking, stretching or hassle required. Simply mince up the sausage ingredients and squirt them into the skins. Much yum. Didn't have any butter tonight for the mash and it _really_ shows.

Ingredients

• Lamb sausages
• Mashed potato
• Carrot
• Sugar snap peas
• Baby corn

Lamb sausages

• Lamb shoulder
• Lamb fat
• Sausage skins (no idea what they were)
  
• Rosemary
• Salt
• Pepper

Mashed Potato

• Pontiac potatoes
• Salt
• Milk
• Nutmeg

Time to prepare: 60 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $25
Number of serves: 10 (cooked 4)
Recipe inspiration: Those over priced "gourmet" sausages (70% meat! Hah!) in the supermarket meat locker.

Pappardelle with Swiss Brown Mushrooms and Poached Chicken in Cream Parmesan Sauce.

Pappardelle with poached chicken and swiss brown mushrooms in creamy parmesan Sauce











This one was just a tasty delight, the 3 year old liked it, the wife liked it, the mother outlaw liked it. I earned a good load of brownie points tonight.

Ingredients

• Pappardelle
• Swiss brown mushrooms
• Poached chicken
• Cream
• Parmesan cheese
• Salt
• Parsley
• Butter
• Olive oil

Pappardelle

• '00' flour
• eggs

Poached chicken

• White wine
• Salt
• Coriander seeds
  
• Cumin seeds
• Bay leaves
  
• Water
• Chicken stock

Time to prepare: About 25 minutes
Number of serves: 5
Cost of ingredients: $28
Recipe inspiration: This one was all mine baby, it's been tried in many many variations up to now.

Fajitas again

Same bat channel, same bat tortillas, same bat result.







I think I'll try wrapping up other food in tortillas and see if the three year old will come at that. Failing that I'm headed back to the bad old days of different dinners for the kids and grownups.


Refer to the previous posts for more information.

Lamb Racks with Steam Vegetables

Lamb rack with steamed vegetables.












Meals are mostly back to normal after a steady diet of white toast and floppy white protein masquerading as chicken. The rack of lamb was great and a very very simple recipe. Although I did have to bribe/threaten/cajole the three year old into eating it. But he did like chewing on the ribs. It even got the thumbs up from the mother out law.

Ingredients

• Lamb racks
• Garlic
• Dijon mustard
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive oil
• Corn
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Beans
• Butter

Time to prepare: 20 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $30
Number of serves: 4
Recipe inspiration: The 18/5/2007 episode of Better Homes and Gardens on tv.