Things ive eaten: The most amazing lunch.

The best food I've ever had almost always comes when I go to my parents house. My dad is an amazing cook, and I attempt to be as good as he is. He doesn't do recipes - ever, at all but it always seems to work! His birthday is coming up and I am going to cook dinner for it, hopefully I'll make something good!

Anyway, most recent of lunches, apologies for the photo quality, it doesnt quite do the real life sight justice.

So thats vegetable soup unlike any id ever tasted, ash brie, ham, avocado, bread, gouda, leberwurst and BEER.

x

bagels!

Vegetarian Lasagna photo recipe

First: Tomato Sauce

Of course, quite possible the greatest ingredient ever, the humble onion.

Next, its more glorified cousin, garlic

1. Chop them up, as roughly of finely as you like your sauce (i like chunky! :P) and brown in a pan with a generous slurp of olive oil for a couple of mins (onions first)

Bok choy Silverbeet

2. Now chop up random vegetables of your choice, I like uber greens like spinich and silverbeet that are really high in vitamins and will retain more nutrients (rather than something like celery) when cooking. In this case I had some leftover Bok choy and silverbeet (i also used the stalks of the mushrooms that are used in a later part)

3. Stir the vegetables through the onion mixture until the vegies wilt slightly.

4. add two cans of diced tomatoes (if you have some spare fresh tomatoes, I like to add them as well to supplement the taste) and add 800ml (two empty tomato cans worth) of water with the corresponding amount of stock powder.

I like to use Massel Stock Powder in Chicken flavour, its very concentrated and totally vegetarian.

5. Season with Pepper and Herbs. If you have fresh, even better. Season with salt also, but be careful to taste it first as the stock has a salty taste.

et voila.

Now, assemble.

6. Put one layer of sauce and one layer of pasta sheet.

7. Next, and totally optional, chop mushrooms into crescent shapes

...And arrange into a layer.

8. Add more tomato sauce and another layer of pastaand more sauce over the top.

9. Cover with cheese. I used tasty and some parmesan. mmm

10. Put in an oven at 180C, covered with foil for around 45 mins. The last 10 mins you should take off the foil and brown the cheese. (alternatively, put in the oven without the cheese if your pan is quite full, otherwise the cheese sticks to the foil. Then in the last 10 or so mins, put the cheese on top.

I realised I neglected to take a picture of the final product! But it was terribly exciting.

x

fat full dinner and food philosopy rambles

As I may have mentioned, my gf is a vegetarian. Being german, this is a foreign concept to me- not because I dont understand why someone might become one, but that I have such a love of meat that all of my favourite recipes include meat in some form or another.

Even as a meat eater, Im a staunch believer that the meat I eat must be sustainable and humanly kept and killed. I also am a secret vegetarian in that I crave and adore vegetables just as much as I adore good meat.In that sense it makes it a little easier to contemplate the idea of making meals for a vegetarian and a meat eater - at least we have one thing in common.

Right now, most of our diet comprises vegetarian (although she does still eat fish) food, its cheaper for one thing, but I like the option to have a meal with meat if I want.

The challenge for me, is coming up with recipes that are versatile to include meat or vegetarian, but dont seem to have that 'stir-fry with meat added on in the end' feel to them. That default recipe where the meat is just an unnecessary extra, or the vegetarian option is lacking in nutrition.

Should be a tasty endeavour.

In other news, tonight i made hasselback potatos

vegies (zucchini, onion, silverbeet, mushroom, lemon and garlic, pan cooked)

and oven baked mushrooms with butter, garlic and parsley (for the vegetarian)

and pan fried pork cutlet with parsley, garlic and lemon (for me)

Not the most healthy choice, but who cares. Good food doesnt always have to be so fat free (also, olive oil is a good thing right?) Anyway. This is very delicious, especially for a Sunday evening after a stressful day.

Incredibly tasty and comforting.

x

Linguine with thyme and mushroom

I cant claim any credit or originality for this recipe, its taken straight from nigella lawson, from her Express book. Trust me when I say, its the most amazing dinner ever. seriously.

Get the recipe here

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/linguine-with-lemon-garlic-and-thyme-mushrooms-24

Pumpkin soup and curry

Today I am making pumpkin soup, bit of chilli and coriander on the side, and some tortilla to dip in and crunch over the soupy goodness. Mmmmmmm...



A few nights ago I made chicken in curry sauce with homemade gnocchi.

Because my girlfriend is now a vegetarian, I used half an eggplant for her (in place of a chicken breast) and stuffed both of them with spinich and eggplant middle. And covered them in:

coconut milk (I didn't have any so I used evaporated milk and a couple of tsp of coconut essence)

curry paste

couple of table spoons of soy sauce

Rice wine vinegar

You might want to taste it and alter the measurements to taste, especially given that curry paste is hot.
I ended up using about a can of coconut milk.

Put the chicken or eggplant in a relatively small dish (so the milk mixture will cover most of it when poured in) and marinate for 15mins.

I then baked it in the oven at 200c for about 20mins or so.

Be prepared, the coconut mixture curdles a bit, but I actually like it. I you don't, maybe drain the liquid off and bake it dry.

Gnocchi is super easy and tastes amazing.
I can't remember the exact recipe so you might want to look it up but the gist is:

1kg potatoes (I know it sounds a lot but potatoes are heavy! You can always freeze excess gnocchi)
1egg
3 cups of flour.

Boil potatoes until soft, peel off skins (usually I don't do peeling -why cut down on the nutrition, but I feel Its necessary here) and mash them as finely as possible.

Let them cool a little and then add the first cup ish of flour and mix preferably with your hands (plain four- although I had to use self raising. They just poofed up a little)

Add the egg and mix, then keep adding flour until you can knead it into an elasticy ball of dough.

Then enlist a small child to make the dough into 50bazillion gnocchi balls.

You can make them whatever shape. The idea with traditional gnocchi shape with the grooves or crease down the middle is so the sauce clings to the pasta- im not going to tutorial that. Cbf. Look it up. You don't need a degree to work it out.

Then it's simple gnocchi cooking as per commercial packet instructions. Boiling, well salted water. When they float to the top, they're done!

So take out the curry chicken or eggplant, put it on a plate with gnocchi and maybe a little fresh salad, put juices over the top.


Next time, something to do with chestnut cream which I just bought! I wonder what I can do with it. Never had it before and super excited!!!

x

snowball

My latest aquisitions have included Limoncello liqueur (lemony) and Advocaat. Both of which i have been meaning to get for a while. the Limoncello i am yet to experiment with satisfactorily, but it is good with gin and tonic or even gin and sprite.

The Advocaat i bought for the sole purpose of making Snowballs, an alcoholic version of a lemonade spider and quite possibly one of my most favourite drinks.

although im not usually one for milky shit like baileys, Im very much in love.

Snowball

1/3 Advocaat

2/3 Sprite/lemonade

ice

Fairly simple.

but amazing.

Any help on the limoncello front would be most welcome.

x