Chicken Diane

Ingredients:

• Free range chicken
• Red rascal potatoes
• Green beans
• Red onion (or eschallots I guess)
• Parsley
• Garlic
• Lemon juice
• Chicken stock
• Brandy
• Cream
• Butter
  
• Balsamic vinegar
• Dijon mustard
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Method:

1. Peel and dice potatoes.
2. Spread on baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil and season.
3. Stick in preheated 180 degree oven.
4. Dice onion as small as possible.
5. Break down chicken (save frame to make stock)
6. Chuck about 30g of butter in a pan along with 30ml or so of Olive oil and brown the chicken all over.
7. Put on a baking sheet and put in the oven.
8. Soften onions and garlic in same pan.
9. Add cream, brandy,mustard, balsamic, stock to pan and reduce about half.
10. Having begun to read The French Laundry cookbook, I now strain sauces (when I remember).
    

11. Blanch the beans, boil the corn. Add the lemon juice and parsley just before plating.

Time to cook: 35 minutes
Cost per serve: $9
Inspiration: Feb 2008 issue of delicious magazine.

Steak Dianne, tarragon potatoes and corn

Ingredients:

• Fillet steak
• Corn
• Kipfler potatoes (home grown)
• Tarragon
• Parsley
• Brandy
• Dijon mustard
• Worcestershire sauce
• Butter
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
  

Method

1. Preheat oven to around 200 C
2. Slice the potatoes into even thickness rounds
3. Melt the butter in a pan and splash in some olive oil to help prevent it from burning.
4. Chuck in finely sliced tarragon
5. Layer potatoes in the pan (careful it spits if the spuds are still wet)
6. Oil and season the steak and sear it well on both sides.
7. Take steak out of pan and steak in oven until done the amount you want.
8. While the steak is finishing cooking, nuke the heck out of the corn
9. Reheat the steak pan (don't clean it) and when hot again
10. Deglaze with around 1/2 cup of brandy (careful it will catch fire)
11. When the fire goes out pour in 1/3 cup of Worcestershire sauce.
12. Stir then put in a table spoon of dijon, if it thickens too much add a little beef stock.
13. Melt in about 50g of unsalted butter whilst stirring
14. And finally season to taste and chop finely and chuck in the parsley.
15. Remove corn from nukebox, steak from oven, drain spuds on paper towel and plate up thusly.
    

Time to cook: 20 minutes
Cost per serve: $8
Recipe inspiration: The fresh tv show from yesterday.

Chorizo and potato stewed in verjuice.

Ingredients

• Corn
• Sliced beans (frozen)
• Thyme
• Tarragon
• Coriander
• Onion (grated)
• Chorizo (sliced)
  
• Potatoes (new, sliced)
• Vegetable stock (store bought, but good quality)
• Olive oil
• Butter
  
• Salt
  

Method

1. Sweat onion in olive oil and butter, with a few sprigs of tarragon and thyme
2. Fry chorizo in oily mess until soft
3. Throw in potatoes and deglaze pan with verjuice, then add a splash more (maybe 1/2 cup total)
4. Almost cover potatoes with vege stock and stew until the sauce reduces to a nice consistency, the potatoes are soft and your mouth is watering.
   
5. When just about done pick out the thyme and tarragon and add the chopped coriander.
6. Serve with steamed corn and beans

Time to cook: About 20 minutes
Cost of per serve: $5.50
Inspiration: Last weekends good weekend.

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.

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

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.

Chicken, Apple, Potato and Cashew Curry with Rice

Chicken, Apple, Potato and Cashew Curry with Rice












Not nearly enough ommph to this one, was almost insipid. I'm still very partial to the combination of curry with the sweet apple and the tender chicken. The three year old turned it into finger food with the help of some Naan so he scoffed the lot (the offer of an icecream if he finished probably didn't hurt either).


Ingredients:

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

Curry paste:

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

Naan:

• No idea it was store bought.
  

Time to prepare: 40 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $15
Number of serves: 5
Recipe inspiration: Nothing in particular

Steak Chips and Veg

Porterhouse Steak, Home Made Chips Peas and Corn












I had a hankering for some real honest to goodness (well honest to badness if you take HDL into account) hand cut home fried chips. It was pure serendipity when I paid a visit to Nepean Bulk Meats and discovered they stock a large range of bulk supplies of King Island beef. I took home a 2kg piece of porterhouse for $30, tough to complain. It portioned up nicely into 9 2cm thick steaks. The chips I lusted after were not as good as they could have been, perhaps I blanched them for too long in the first cook? *shrug* but the steak more than made up for it. The veg were there to make me feel a little virtuous and the corn to be fair was extremely sweet, something to be said for picking and snap freezing in the peak of the season I guess.


Ingredients

• Porterhouse steak
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive oil
• Potatoes - golden delight if you care. Greengrocer swore you couldn't make a chip out them that wasn't crunchy. He lied.
• Canola oil
• Corn
• Peas

Time to prepare: About 25 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $18
Number of serves: 3
Recipe inspiration: I could lie and say bifteck et pomme frites in some fancy french restaurant, but really just my childhood where this (sans the KI beef) was standard fare

Chicken Parma with Chips and Veg

Chicken Parma with Chips and Veg













Nice and simple and the fact that it was NOT fajitas made it very tasty.

• Chicken breast fillet
• Breadcrumbs
• Parmesan cheese
• Salt
• Pepper
• Tomato sauce (ready made)
• Prosciutto
• Mozzarella
• Peas
• Corn
• Brocoli
• Chips (frozen)

Time to prepare: 20 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $24
Number of serves: 4
Recipe inspiration: Too many pub meals.

Guiness Beef and Vegetable Stew

Guiness Beef and Vegetable Stew













Nailed the seasoning on this one, very tasty. Perhaps I could have let it simmer a little longer for falling apart beef rather than just tender. All four plates were wiped clean, although that may be a testament to the quality of the garlic bread rather than the stew.

• Beef shoulder
• Guiness beer
• Beef stock
  
• Red wine
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Garlic
• Tomato paste
• Sugar
• Bay leaves
  
• Thyme
• Vegemite
• Butter
  
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Coriander
• Sour cream

Time to cook: About 2 1/2 hours.
Cost of ingredients: About $25
Number of Serves: 4

Bangers, Mash and Steamed Veg

Bangers, Mash and Steam Veg












Gotta be one of my favourite meals, it's tough to beat the ability to deeply satisfy the precisely balanced combination of fats, carbs and salt. (Fundamentally, lots of all three) The three year old ate roughly the same amount as me (and that's just not a normal event), so I'm guessing he liked it too.

• Sausages
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carrot
  

Mashed Potato

• Sebago Potatoes
• Butter
• Salt
• Nutmeg
  

Pan Sauce

• Red wine
• Salt
• Beef stock (I used premade low salt)
• Butter
  
• Crunchy bits from sausage cooking

Time to cook: 20 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $10

Steak with Salsa Verde, Pot Sticker Potatoes and Spinach Salad

Porterhouse Steak
Salsa Verde
Pot Sticker New Potatoes
Spinach Salad








Tasty enough meal, perhaps a little too much lemon on the spinach.

Porterhouse with Salsa Verde

• Char grilled porterhouse steak
  
• Garlic
• Anchovies
• Capers
• Lemon juice and zest
• Olive oil
• Basil sprigs
• Parsley sprigs
• Salt
  

Pot Sticker Potatoes

• New potatoes
• Salt
• Water
  
• Olive Oil
  These are great and easy, just oil a pan and get it smoking hot, toss in spuds, wait for them to stick, shake, wait 3 minutes, add a little water, cover and serve when water has gone.

Spinach Salad

• Spinach leaves
• Lemon Juice
• Salt
• Olive Oil

Time to cook: 20 minutes.