Turkish chicken with apricots, ginger, lemon, saffron and pistachios.

Ingredients:

• Cumin seeds
• Coriander seeds
• Cinnamon
• Black pepper
  
• Salt
• Turmeric
• Chilli flakes
• Saffron
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Green chilles
• Thyme
• Mint
• Apricots
• Dried apricots
• Lemon
• Brown Onion
• Pistachios
• Honey
• Tomato paste
  
• Vegetable stock powder
• Wine (I used a rose)
• Olive oil
  

Method

1. Toast and grind all the spices to make a coarse rub.
2. Break the chicken down into 8 bits
3. Coat the chicken in the rub (large plastic bag is useful here)
4. Dice the onions, julienne the ginger and chop the apricots.
   
5. Dump 100ml of olive oil into a heavy pot and brown the chicken all over.
6. Fry the onions, the ginger and the split chilli in the oil and fallen off spices.
7. When they are soft, dump in the wine to deglaze then stir in tomato paste, thyme, apricots, saffron, vegetable stock powder and bring to a simmer.
8. Then return chicken to pan and toss in lemon juice and zest and cover with water.
9. Simmer covered for 10 minutes and then uncovered for 15 more until chicken is meltingly tender. If you go a little bit further the apricots will render down and the sauce will become almost jammy (whoops, but yum!)
10. Serve with steamed cous-cous, creme faiche and mint.

Time to prepare: 15 minutes larder, 15 minutes active, 25 mins goofing off.
Cost per serve: $8
Inspiration: Sunday Life Magazine, Jan 27 2008 page 25.

Ramen vs Soup Noodles

Ingredients

• Good stock, I used vegetable.
• Oyster sauce
• Keecap manis
• Sesame oil
• Soy sauce
• Finely sliced chicken breast
• Soba noodles
• Lop cheong
• Pak choy
• Baby sweetcorn
• Pork and chive dumplings (store bought)
• Spring onions (not pictured but home grown)
  

Method

1. Heat stock
2. Dump in rest of ingredients
3. Add a little oyster sauce and keecap manis, stir
4. Plonk in bowls, float a little sesame oil on top of hot liquid
5. Garnish with spring onion

Time to prepare: 20 minutes
Cost per serve: $10
Recipe inspiration: Nothing conscious.

Tortellini Bolognese and a Cheats Mille Feuille

Ingredients

• Veal and pork mince
• Canned tomatoes
• Onion
• Garlic
• Tortellini (store bought)
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Cream
• Marscapone
• Vanilla paste
• Icing sugar
  
• Croissants (again store bought, part cooked)
  

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 C
2. Stick big ass pot of salted water on to boil.
   
3. Slice croissants into three and place on an oven tray and bake until crispy.
   
4. Chop onion, mince garlic, defrost store bought tortellini and raspberries.
   
5. Saute onion and garlic until onion is translucent
6. Chuck in mince and stir until brown
7. Add tomatoes and chop up big bits
8. Stir in a little tomato paste
9. Simmer until thick
10. Season to taste.
    
11. Tip tortellini in water and stir, stick lid on until it comes back to the boil.
    
12. Whip cream to soft peaks, stir in vanilla paste, icing sugar and marscapone.
13. Smear crispy croissant slice with cream, sprinkle with raspberrys repeat with other slices.
14. Sprinkle the lot with icing sugar and serve thusly

Time to cook: 30 minutes
Cost per serve: $15
Inspiration: Ripped more or less directly from a fresh tv episode.

Peking Duck, Chicken with Vegetables and Cashews, Rice

Ingredients

• Duck legs (preprepared peking duck flavour luv-a-duck vac pac)
• Cucumber
• Spring onions (home grown)
• Hoisin sauce
• Peking duck pancakes (I bought 'em as I'm lazy)
• Long grain rice
• Corn-fed chicken thighs
• Baby corn (canned chopped)
  
• Water chestnuts (canned sliced)
  
• Capsicum
• Snow peas
• Beans
• Broccoli
• Cashews
  
• Stir fry sauce
• Ginger (grated/minced/reduced to pulp however you want)
  
• Sugar
• Salt
  
• Soy sauce
• Garlic (same as the garlic)
  
• Sweet chilli sauce
• Tomato sauce
  
• Water
  

Method

1. Preheat oven to stupid degrees C.
2. Whack duck on an oven tray and stick in oven.
3. Stir fry sauce, is easy, mix it all together in a bowl.
   
4. Put rice in heatproof bowl and cover with water to the depth of one knuckle. Cover with glad wrap.
5. Nuke rice on full power for 3 minutes.
6. When done nuke for a further 10 minutes on 50% power.
   
7. Chop cucumber into bits, and spring onions into long batons, stick on a plate.
   
8. Chop vegetables and chicken up.
   
9. Heat wok until smoking and then toss in a little canola oil (don't use olive oil it smokes too much)
10. Stir fry vegetables in batches (or all at once if you have a good wok burner than can keep up the heat)
11. Stir fry the chicken in batches.
12. Chuck all the vegetables, chicken, cashews into wok and toss in sauce, heat through.
13. Nuke pancakes for 30 seconds or so, until they go soft but don't turn into a single gelatinous mass.
14. Remove duck from oven and remove meat from bone and slice.
15. Serve thusly

Time to cook: 30 minutes
Cost per serve: $15
Recipe inspiration: The luv-a-duck pack spotted in the local wholesale butchers.

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.

Pad Thai (well sort of)

Ingredients:

• Chicken fillets
• Rice noodles
• Spring Onions
• Capsicum
• Pad thai sauce (previously made, but basically mixed keecap manis, dried prawns, chilli, palm sugar, ginger and salt)
• Onion
• Bean shoots (couldn't get fresh used canned)
• Baby sweet corn
• Water chestnuts
• Bamboo shoots
• Fried shallots
• Peanuts
  

Method:

1. Slice chicken and veges up into small slices.
2. Stick noodles in boiling water to soften up.
   
3. Stir fry hard veges in a oil until soft, set aside in bowl.
   
4. Stir fry chicken in batches in a little oil and some sauce.
5. Chuck everything in wok and sprinkle with peanuts.
6. Serve with garnish of crunchy fried shallots

Time to prepare: 20 minutes
Cost per serve: $5
Recipe inspiration: Side of a bottle of pad thai sauce that I was stealing the ingredient list from.

Pumpkin and Sage Risotto

Ingredients

• Arborio rice
• Pumpkin
  
• Sage
• Parmesan cheese
• Herb bread
• Salt
• Onion
• Garlic

Method

1. Chop half the pumpkin into largish bits and boil until soft in 1 litre of lightly salted water.
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.
   
   
4. Stick herb break in hot oven to heat.
   
5. Chop onion and garlic and sweat for a little while.
6. Dump in rice and swirl around until covered with the oily goodness.
   
   
7. Add the pumpkin stock bit by bit whilst stirring.
8. Half way through the stock add most of the chopped sage (retain a little for garnish)
9. Risotto is done when it mostly squishes between your fingers.
10. Add the grated parmesan cheese and stir to melt in.
    
11. 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.