Griddled Steak and Cruchy Potatoes (by G)

As a reward for a job reasonably well done in 2014 I bought myself an expensive cast iron griddle pan. A proper one. This thing is so heavy that if you dropped it on your toe you would probably loose the whole leg.

My idea was to test it out on a big hunk of beef like a rib roast or something exciting like that. Disappointingly the largest piece of beef I could find was a vacuum packed Angus steak - I'm a bit suss on those though - they seem to always turn out to have a very weird texture.  The rest of the meat appeared gristly, at $40 a kilo.  In the end I just bought a rump steak, there is no way I could bring myself to shop around for meat on new years eve.

I was inspired to have potatoes by Biggs' blog on the 29th featuring Mike's roast potatoes. My potatoes were simply peeled and simmered in salty water until just about falling apart (not by design, I got distracted admiring my new griddle pan and forgot about them).  After letting the potatoes dry a little I coated them in dripping, sprinkled over some rosemary sprigs and oven roasted them.

To cook the meat I heated the griddle pan to screaming hot and dropped the pre-oiled and seasoned steak onto it.  The pan may have been a little too hot... despite having all the doors open and the extraction fan on high smoke soon overwhelmed the house and set off the fire alarm. Not the volume of smoke that can be dispersed with a cushion, there was so much smoke that I had to re-arrange the furniture to get the battery out of the smoke alarm. You're supposed to test the smoke alarms on new years eve so I saved myself that little chore.

I had honestly meant to have some other things with dinner - roasted tomatoes, a little baked sweet potato and such but I completely forgot about those things until I had started eating.

Maya Indian Restaurant (by Biggs)

We decided to go out for Indian to celebrate the New Year which was an excellent decision.

More words will go here once I've sobered up.

Instant Tacos and Tortillas (by G)

Despite my excellent efforts over the Christmas period in eating most of the enormous leg of pork I cooked up there is still a significant quantity bagged up in the freezer. There was not much option but to have pork this Tortilla Tuesday. For something different I decided to get an instant taco kit.

I simmered a big hunk of the tender leftover pork with the seasoning sachet provided along with some water until it had almost dissolved. There was also some kind of red salsa provided so I stirred that through the pork mix as well. To my delight the instant taco kit I bought came with both hard tacos and soft tortilla wraps. I decided to have both, simply served with the pork mixture, some lettuce and tomato (no cheese - I've been eating too much cheese lately, if you believe in such a thing).

I was concerned at how much seasoning powder came with the taco kit, I thought the meat would turn out to be too powerfully salty and spicy. I think half the seasoning must have been sugar because the meat turned out to be a little bland but sweet.

It was not too bad, I'd rather provide my own flavourings though.

Toasted Cheese Sandwich (by Biggs)

Our household had a huge morning today that started in the wee hours so by lunchtime we were ready to eat. We devoured a huge dish of tortellini carbonara which meant by dinnertime we weren't so hungry.

Someone made the genius call of toasted sandwiches and we proceeded with a selection. Mike had tuna and cheese, Amanda had cheese and Vegemite and I had cheese and chili jam...an amazing concoction made and Christmas gifted by Mike's cousins.

I suggest you also take note of my new beer  cooling aid. I got it after a low-tide walk across to Penguin Island down in paradise....holidays are excellent.

Hotdogs (by G)

I was really hankering for something fresh like a chicken/salad wrap for dinner forgetting that I had already committed myself to having hotdogs - in the interests of getting rid of the footy-franks that have been kicking around in the freezer since I made Korean Army Base Stew.

I elevated the hotdogs somewhat by serving them with fried onion with red capsicum and crispy hickory smoked bacon. I did consider shaving on some smoked cheddar but thought that would be taking the decadence a bit too far.

The franks themselves were the least appetising aspect of dinner - I'm not sure why, they were made from 'finely ground meat - including pork'.  I love 'including pork'.

Anyway, I thought I would get through 6 of these hotdogs but my stomach gave in at 3 so I ate the rest of the crispy bacon and saved the fried onion and capsicum for another day.

Roast Pork (by Biggs)

One thing that you need to know about Mike is that he is The King of roast pork. The King.

This year he has even more so perfected the art of the roast pork with the addition of his BBQ. Apparently that once went badly when he discovered late in the game that the BBQ had run out of gas.

The next time it went badly was tonight....allegedly. I have no idea what he was on about. It was fucking beautiful. Perfectly cooked pork, crackley crackle, great veges. I love when people cook roast garlic and Mike did that. He also surprised me with a great roasted carrot.

As for the potatoes.....I have a fine eye for a quality roast potato and this was a quality roast potato.

Sunday Roast Chicken (by G)

I thought it would be nice to have something other than pork for a change. I was wrong.

I lovingly oven roasted a free range chicken that I had seasoned up with some salt, pepper, paprika (why not) and dried parsley (for eye appeal).  When it came out I was anticipating amazing flavour from this outrageously expensive bird, unfortunatley it was bland to the point of being unpleasant. Even after dinner I would forget how bland it was and pick bits off the carcass thinking, 'This is going to be good'. Nope, it was not good.

The roasted potato, sweet potato and corn - on the other hand - were great. As was the chicken-style gravy I made with some chicken-style stock. I couldn't use the drippings from the roasting pan becasue it was basically pure flavourless fat.

Sausages with Vegetable Mash (by Biggs)

Something simple was in order for dinner, the decision being sausages with a vegetable mash. I've never dabbled in vegetable mash before but it's exactly what you think it is.

Our vegetable mash featured potatoes (both sweet and standard), carrots, broccoli and peas. Delicious!

We also had beef sausages cooked on the BBQ and doused with gravy. Also delicious!

I was in charge of picking the sausages and had it narrowed down to herb and garlic beef or classic pork. Mike suggested going with the beef which is a bit strange for him but I think it's because there is an awesome pork roast in our very near future.

Pea and Ham Soup (by G)

When life sends you a leg of ham and an aversion to leave the house to buy provisions, make pea and ham soup - that's what I always say.

The soup wasn't very pea-ey - there was only half a bag of frozen peas in the freezer. The bulk of the soup is made up of carrot, celery and onion - simmered with the ham bone for about an hour then blended chunky smooth.

I took the ham bone out prior to blending and stripped it of leftover meat. There was surprisingly little ham left - apparently I've been hitting it pretty hard the last few days.

The soup was okay - I think I may have over simmered the ham in the end, it was  a bit bland.

Chicken and Bacon Wraps (by Biggs)

Amanda, Mike and I hid away from the world today eating cheese, drinking wine and listening to music to soothe our troubled souls.

Once darkness fell I thought it might be a good idea to line our stomachs with something a bit more substantial so I fried up some chicken in Cajun spice as well as some bacon. We had that in wraps with some lettuce, tomato and avocado as well as various fridge condiments. 

Photography credit goes to Amanda. 

Cold Pork and Salad (by G)

Boxing day was pretty warm and I couldn't really face anything hot for dinner. It was indeed fortunate that I had a large quantity of ham and roasted pork at hand.  I sliced the meats and made a salad - the same ingredients as a coleslaw but cut differently for a bit of variety. No dressing on the salad - I needed some clean flavours to counteract the pork crackle binge I went on the day before.

The only thing missing was mustard pickle - I do wish I had thought ahead and bought some of that.

BBQ and Salad (by Biggs)

This might all look very familiar but what's Boxing Day if not a day especially put aside to eat left-overs? We gave the left-over Christmas ham a fair crack at breakfast and lunch but there were still some salads to conquer!

It's always best to pad out salads with some hearty meat products so the BBQ was put to good use tonight.

Lamb chops, chicken and some delicious sausages were cooked up and were a perfect compliment to the Christmas salads. New additions were watermelon and mint, some cherry tomatoes and the giant slab of cheese made available in the middle of the table.

The beer, wine and champagne I had also seen before...and feel like I'll see much more of for the remainder of this holiday.

Christmas Special! (by Biggs)

It's Christmas Special time on the blog, in real life even...also in my heart and in my mind, but mainly in my stomach. I've never been in a house so calm in the lead up to Christmas dinner. I barely saw someone in the kitchen so I'm really not quite sure where all this food came from. Perhaps all the legwork happened while I was down at the beach. I really appreciate the hard work that someone must have put in at some stage.

Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of Mike's shit hot chili and garlic prawns but the rest of the menu you can check out below. 

Baked ham, chicken, roast beef, a whole salmon in Asian marinade, haloumi salad, potato bake. All very amazing. 

If you'd like to see what that all looks like all on one plate it looks a little something like this...

I really can't articulate exactly how magic dinner was. I guess you just had to be there. Your loss if you weren't. 

Christmas Special! (by G)

I am prone to impulse buys sometimes. When I saw a whole 8kg leg of pork for sale shortly before Christmas I couldn't pass it up - despite the fact I would be spending Christamas alone this year.

No matter, the day I can't single handedly eat a leg of pork is the day I retire from life.

The main issue I saw with cooking the pork was getting it in the oven. Fortunately it fitted (fairly snuggly) if I had the oven rack as low as it could go and tilted the pork on an angle.  The cooking of the pork consumed much of the day. Uncovered at a high temperature for half an hour, then wrap the leg in foil and roast at 170 deg C for a further 8 hours. Then uncovered again for about another hour to get the crackle crackled. I was pretty confident the pork was cooked by the end because the meat had pulled away from the bone and was fork tender.

 

The crackle doesn't look like much in the photo but it was the thin brittle kind rather than the puff crunchy kind - most excellent.

 

Oh, I also made a couple of salads to go with the pork. A potato salad with cubes of ham cut straight from a half leg and a spicy coleslaw dressed in mayonnaise and sriracha.

 

The end result looked a bit like the institutional kind of meal you might get in prison at Christmas but it was pretty frickin' good.

Salmon, Salsa and Salad (by Biggs)

I'm on the West Coast this Christmas visiting my dear friends Amanda and Mike. We headed straight from Perth to Mandurah to be warmly welcomed by Mike's parents. Some afternoon champagne, followed by a walk on the beach and we were ready for dinner.

A stunningly, delicious meal was served. Salmon on the BBQ, a beetroot and feta salad, beautifully baked potatoes and a fruit salsa for the fish.

This is the happiest I've been in some time....and I'm a pretty happy person!

Ham And Eggs And Steak (by G)

I've been eating mostly vegetarian for the last few weeks to save up for the end of year period - the idea being that now I can eat as much meat as I like guilt free.

As Biggs is in the West for Christmas and I bought a half leg of ham to eat by myself I decided to get stuck into it straight away.  Ham and Eggs are a classic combination so I fried a couple of eggs.

The steak was a late addition - It has been a long time since I've had steak. The steak was not great, too lean. Other than the steak dinner was most pleasing - just a dollop of mustard and a sprig of parsley (an old butcher's trick to make it look like a balanced meal).

You may think that someone who has to eat half a leg of ham by himself went a bit easy with the quantity of ham. Not shown is the huge quantity of cold ham I had prior to dinner - and the modest amount of cold ham I had for dessert.



Prawn, Corn and Bacon Tortillas (by G)

Well, this was planned to be an easy Tortilla Tuesday but turned out to be a bit more involved than expected.

The idea was to make a version of the  prawn, corn and bacon tortillas that Curtis Stone made on his casual Christmas show. It seemed easy. Indeed, it should have been easy. A mix of bad luck and bad planning contributed to make this less casual than I had hoped. Actually, now that I think about it Curtis was not making tortillas - just a prawn, corn, bacon and avocado conglomeration on a plate. Biggs asked me how you would eat something like that and I said, 'With tortillas'. 

The first difficulty was that I could not find any ripe avocados - I bought two anyway, like an idiot.  Next problem is that I didn't buy enough prawns, I should have just asked for more while I was at the seafood counter but hesitated too long.  To counter my first two difficulties I bought a container of avocado dip and (on the way home) stopped off at the seafood shop and bought some more prawns - unfortunately they didn't have any of the pealed kind so that was a bit of a dick around when I got home.

When I did get home I discovered I had not bought any tortilla wraps which meant I would have to make them from scratch - and that is something I have not done in a while.

In the end dinner was fine.  The tortillas were a bit thick and glossy. I mixed the avocado dip in with an almost ripe avocado, some coriander and lime juice - the dip was too creamy for my liking.  The prawns were fried with paprika, cumin, garlic powder and some lime - they were probably the highlight.

The other element - fried bacon and corn was improved by some good bacon, hickory smoked.

Biggs is a fine judge of how much corn is too much corn - I think she will agree there was too much corn.

Blue Cheese Fettuccine (by Biggs)

This is what I was originally going to make on the awful seafood basket night a few weeks back. This would have been a much better decision and was tonight.

A simple pasta in a sauce of zucchini, blue cheese, garlic, pepper, sour cream, wine and parsley.

Why have one cheese when you can have two? You shouldn't, so, I topped dinner with parmesan.

Congee with Pork Rib (by G)

Biggs requested that I make congee before she departs for her Christmas holidays and this is pretty much the only night that was available.  I decided not to make brown rice congee this time - it doesn't work. The congee pictured below was made by boiling a cup of basmati rice in about 2 litres of a light chicken style stock for two hours, whisking occasionally to break up the rice grains. I added some smoked salt at the end just for kicks.

The best thing about congee is the fixin's. The toppings provided were red chilli, coriander, shallot, toasted sesame seeds, toasted crushed nuts (they looked like peanuts but the packet was not specific) and the meat from some slow cooked pork ribs.

The marinade for the ribs was based on a char siu recipe - hoisin, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, hot sauce (sriracha), ginger powder, onion powder, garlic powder and 5 spice. The recipe also called for brandy and red food colouring - I didn't have either of these so I substituted with red wine.  After about 3 hours in the oven the ribs became pretty tender and plenty delicious.

All things considered I'm pretty happy with my attempt at congee - at least I probably haven't turned Biggs off the concept.

Packet Indian 3 (by G)

Last week, when I had packet Indian 2, I also bought a packet of curry with paneer but didn't eat it because it seemed like too much of a good thing.

As I am drawing close to the end of my responsible meat eating period I am ridding the house of any non-meat ingredients to make room for piles and piles of meat and meat related products.

This time around I decided to make the effort of doing some fancy rice to go with my packet Indian.  I cooked up some rice and added it to some onions, garlic, mustard seed, cumin seeds and red chilli cooked in ghee. Then I added some chopped coriander and toasted slivered almonds - sort of like an Indian special fried rice.

Everything was great, especially the rice.

Christmas Pork Spectacular (by Biggs)

Today I was invited, along with Fi and Dan, to have dinner at Kirst's house. She and Ryan wanted to cook us a Christmas feast and we very much wanted to eat a Christmas feast. It's always a good sign when you turn up to someone's house and they casually mention they've had half a pig in the oven cooking for over 6 hours.

While we were waiting for the pig to finish doing his thing Ryan served us a delicious Chicken Larb. It was fresh and tasty and awesomely satisfying.

Then....dinner was served. I don't know what to say. Dinner was incredible - the best meal of the year I think. After slow cooking a giant pork belly for about 9 hours it was popped under the grill to crackle up and served with fresh Asian greens, lime and a peanut sauce. Speechless. 

Dessert was also a new experience for me. Strawberries dipped in sour cream and brown sugar. Amazing. A perfect finish to a perfect evening. 

Perfect!

Crispy Fish Sandwich (by G)

The plan today was to make a shrimp po-boy but wouldn't you know it they sell all kinds of breaded seafood snacks but no shrimp.  I was contemplating breading and frying my own shrimp but the seafood section at the supermarket was a bit whiffy so I gave that idea a miss.  Instead I got some crunchy crumbed Hake from the freezer section and oven baked those.

The fish cooked up good and crispy (with a little blast under the grill). The secret to my fish sandwich was the onions - I fried them low and slow for over an hour to get them to an almost liquid consistency. The onions went on the base of the sandwich, then some Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, the fish and a smear of kewpie/chilli sauce blend - not sriracha this time but the super savoury Koon Yick Wah Kee chilli sauce.

I had some skinny fries in the freezer that I cooked up for a side. There weren't too many of those so I also served some prawn crackers as a tribute to my original intention for dinner.

Mushroom and Vege Mee Frittata (by G)

I kind of figured this one would not turn out to be a feast for the eyes - no matter though.

In-case you were wondering, what you see below is a frittata of caremelised little tomatoes, fried onion and mushrooms mixed with Vege Mee instant noodles and set with a few eggs. I included the noodle flavourings in the mix - one of the liquid sachets contained something like molasses, which was unusual, and the dehydrated vegetable sachet had some very powerfull dreid seaweed.  I added some dried tarragon (by mistake) and some dried parsley (they look very simmilar).

When the frittata was done I turned it out and topped it with spring onions (because I had a couple handy), sriracha and a blob of oyster sauce.

I must say, this was one of my more unusual creations flavour wise. I was tasty and filling though.

Chicken Schnitzel (by Biggs)

What do you do when the regular afternoon thunderstorm hits Brisbane? Find a friend and shelter in an Irish pub.

Bonnie and I bunkered down for a few beers then decided to stay on for dinner as well.

This was a great chicken schnitzel....as they so often are. The photo speaks for itself.

Sweet Potato and Smoked Salmon Salad (by G)

I was going to make a salad for a work thing but bailed and bought supermarket salad instead, which left me with salad ingredients to repurpose for dinner.

My basic plan was to make Biggs' famous sweet potato salad but use smoked salmon instead of bacon (the night before I had seen Curtis and Benders Christmas special and Bender referred to salmon as the pork of the sea).

I can't remember if Biggs puts feta in her salad but I got some of the Danish stuff just to be on the safe side. As soon as I tasted the feta and had a sample of the smoked salmon I knew dinner would be good.

Along with the feta and salmon is some roasted sweet potato with a dusting of cumin, toasted pine nuts and a packet mix of rocket and baby spinach - I also added some Smalt (smoked salt). Actually, from now until I run out of smoked salt you can assume anything I make has a dash of smoked salt.

A note on the salmon - last week, while passing though the city markets, I thought I smelled and saw a stall selling smoked fish. I recall it having a sign saying 'Smokies'. Maybe they didn't return this week, or perhaps I imagined the whole thing, becasue the stall was not there. This salmon is from another stall that happened to sell smoked salmon - I bought a trio of salmon pieces each with different flavourings - dill, itallian herb and chilli. I don't know which one tastes best because they were all mushed together in the salad.

A note on the photo - it's a abit blurry. I can only assume that I knew dinner was going to be tasty and was in a hurry to take it.

Pumpkin Pasta (by Biggs)

After three and a half weeks of travel for work, tonight, I was finally on my way home for a least a weeks worth of normality before Christmas fun commences. The best bit of work travel is that my travel companion Nick is a high flying member of the Qantas Club so I've been leveraging free beer privileges along the way.

I've been too bashful to date to start pocketing fruit and biscuits at will but did seriously consider taking a bite or two out of a wheel of Brie tonight. The only thing that held me back was Nick's confidence that we would be fed on the plane.

He was right. I selected a pumpkin pasta with a cheese sauce which was surprisingly satisfying. More satisfying was that the crew had seemingly taken it upon themselves to chose me as a pawn in their game of "drunk passaenger.....to the max". They continually plied me with wine and encouraged my boozy "wit", before settling it down with packets of soy snacks, then setting it off again with more wine. Things got a bit confusing from this point on but, like I said, dinner....satisfying.

Mushroom Tortillas (by G)

Well, I'm pretty much out of non-meat tortilla ideas. Mushrooms are a meat substitute so I fried some slices of those up then added paprika, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder and some fake chicken stock.

I was going to avocado wih dinner but when I went to get one at the supermarket there was a lady who had fondled all of them and told me that none of them were ripe - I fondled the ripest looking one, it was rock hard. I decided the lady was a good judge of avocado ripeness so went avocadoless.

Instead of avocado I melted some three cheese blend cheese onto some packet tortialls, added the mushrooms and topped with some finely chopped jalapeno, coriander and spring onion.

As unlikely as it would seem these tortillas were cheesy delicious. I liked them and ate a considreable quantity.

Monday Salad (by G)

Biggs left me a bunch of leftovers from her rice paper rolls (lettuce, carrot sticks, capsicum, some coriander), so I thought I should leverage that into a salad.

I personally have had a bunch of beetroot and a piece of goat's milk cheese in the fridge for a couple of weeks and they seemed like some good salad additions.

The beetroot was simply oven roasted and then peeled whereas I balled up pieces of the cheese in glad wrap then froze them. Once they were solid I dusted them in flour, then egg washed them and crumbed them. I went a bit overboard with the temperature when frying them so a couple had some darkish patches - the were great never the less.

There was a dressing for the salad - oil, cider vinegar, lime juice and dijon mustard - the less said about that the better. Oh, and there was a soft boiled egg - classy.

I think the camera on my phone has some default 1960's cookbook filter on it - it is the only way I can explain why the photo came out like that.

Pizza and Quesedillas (by Biggs)

We did some training with a group of volunteers tonight and lured them to the training session with pizza. 

After nibbling on the leftovers we were keen for a touch more food (or in my case, a beer) so headed across the road from the hotel for burritos, quesedillas and such. 

For the eagle-eyed amongst you, this quesedilla may look suspiciously familiar. It was from the same (excellent) Mexican chain I enjoyed in Canberra last month. Ariba! 

Tofu Rice Paper Wraps (by Biggs)

I was planning to make sushi tonight with my fancy new Miyajima sushi spoon but by the late afternoon I was in quite a mood so defaulted to one of my easy specialties - rice paper wraps. I used to make these all the time but it's been a while.

Inside these ones was spicy tofu, rice noodles, lettuce, capsicum, carrot, coriander and peanuts. Horrifyingly nutritious. I was chopping carrots for what seemed like hours. Why I didn't just use my swanky mandolin I have no idea.

You may notice these are beautifully wrapped. I spent years working in a kebab shop and it turns out the skill of wrapping a kebab is quite transferable.

Southern Fried Tofu (By G)

I thought Biggs would like a traditional Ketucky style chicken meal but with tofu instead of chicken - I may have been wrong.

I brined the tofu just like I would have done chicken then coated it in a seasoned flour - it was a really heavily seasoned flour. There was salt and pepper and onion powder, paprika, garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil, curry powder, dried parsley, some mustard powder and various other things. After the tofu was coated I fried it.

I think in retrospect I should have coated the tofu in egg wash before adding the flour, or maybe I should have added some liquid to the flour to make a batter because most of it fell off into the oil. The flavour did not really come through with the tofu.

Anyway - I overdressed a packet of coleslaw with mayonnaise just as they do in certain chicken shops. There were also some oven cooked chips. I seasoned these with a dash of smoked salt that Biggs bought for me in Melbourn. The salt is amazing - I have recently been taking it as snuff.

Lamb Cutlets with a Vegetable Salad (by Biggs)

After a massive work week and a dangerously sleepless night I wanted to keep dinner tasty and simple. 

Lamb cutlets are a bit of a comfort food of mine so that was an easy decision as a starting point. Next, I just wandered around the grocery store  zombie-like collecting vegetables. 

Once I got home I threw all the vegetables into a bowl - pumpkin (cooked with cumin), chickpeas, capsicum, beans, chili and parsley (triple curl!!!). I topped the salad  up with feta cheese and sprinkled some Old Bay Spice on top. 

The lamb chops were seasoned, cooked briefly on each side and rested until I remembered it was eating time. 

Hot Smoked Salmon and Potato Salad (by G)

I was passing through the markets on my way home from work on Wednesday and saw (and smelled) a stall selling smokies (smoked fish). I should really have just bought one and had it for dinner but stubbornly decided on mediocre corn fritters.

Today I realised I couldn't go another day without some hot-smoked fish - unfortunately the market is a Wednesday only thing so I had to hunt some down from a supermarket.  Despite being mass produced by some evil corporation the smoked salmon was pretty delicious. I served it at room temperature with a basic warm potato salad. Just potatoes and spring onions - I did put a little twist on it by making a dressing consisting of kewpie mayonnaise and sriracha. Technically that is just the same dressing I used for the seafood cocktail tortillas the other day but it is a surprisingly versatile dressing.

You may notice the slice of bread in the photo - I believe sliced white bread is an essential component of any smoked fish/potato salad meal.

Airport Beer (by Biggs)

It's good to get to the airport 2 hours early. Especially if the plane is going to be 2 hours late. Lucky there was beer. Dinner done.

Corn Fritters and Salad (by G)

I wanted something fried for dinner, but not meat. I decided on fritters, corn fritters.

The fritters were made from tinned corn, some sliced spring onions, plain flour (with some baking powder as a substitution for self raising flour), cheddar cheese, parmesan cheese, an egg an some milk. That was the extent of flavourings as far at the recipe went but I wanted to ensure the fritters were packed with flavour so I also added cayenne pepper, onion powder and garlic powder.

It turned out the only flavour the fritters took on was of crappy tinned corn. I don't know what happened - I have no idea what the deal with the cheese was especially. I know I put it into the fritters but what happened to it after that is a mystery.

There was a salad of mostly leftover vegetables - cos lettuce, tomato, tinned corn, red chilli and an avocado I bought especially. The avocado made the salad a bit murky and I discovered I had no mayonnaise for dressing so I filched a touch of Biggs' Caesar dressing.

Dinner would have been a minor disappointment were it not for sriracha.

Chicken Parmie (by Biggs)

A very exciting night tonight. We're still in the Bay for work so Anita took the time to drive in from Howard to take us out for dinner. We jumped into the car without a solid dinner plan so after driving up and down the Esplanade for a while we eventually stopped at the Torquay Hotel.

The choice was obvious after a brief glance at the pub menu - "Chicken Parmies all round thanks Mr Bar-keep".

I was quite amused that they were listed on the menu as 'Chicken Parmigiana (ITALIAN)'.

The serving plates were mega sized which gave me some confidence....how else should Parmies be served but on a mega plate?

Satisfying.

Prawn Cocktail Tortilla (by G)

Following are the reasons for dinner tonight - I had to use up lettuce and tomato, it's tortilla Tuesday and it is unpleasantly hot and muggy. A cold tortilla seemed like a good idea.

Apart from lettuce and tomato these tortillas contain pre-cooked prawns and a sriracha/kewpie mayonnaise blend.

Dinner was excellent - mayonnaise blended with sriracha is about the best seafood sauce I've ever tasted.

Thai Squid Salad (by Biggs)

Hmmm....it occurs to me now that I forgot it was Tortilla Tuesday. I'm still travelling for work and it's hard enough to remember what town I'm in let alone what day it is. So, no tortillas tonight. 

We were a bit too tired to venture far from the hotel and given we're a bit stuck in the Hervey Bay marina our options were limited to the boat club or the one marina restaurant that was on offer. We weren't too interested in being surrounded by keno machines and pokies so went with the restaurant. 

I didn't expect the squid to be deep-fried but sure didn't mind that it was. The salad was refreshing, I like crunchy noodles, all good in the hood. 

What made this salad Thai I hear you ask? Er, I'm not entirely sure....the sweet chili sauce?!

Packet Indian 2 (by G)

I've been thinking about curry puffs since Biggs mentioned having them for dessert the other day. I knew from getting packet Indian about a week ago that the spice store at the shopping centre had jumbo boxes of vegetable samosas so I decided to get a box.  Curry puffs alone do not make a meal so I also got a boil-in-bag packet of Pav Bhaji (it was also a bit of a back-up incase the electricity went off again as another big storm hit Brisbane).

I really should have cooked some rice this time because the Pav Bhaji is just a kind of sauce with no substance and I didn't even get any bread to mop it up. It was tasty nevertheless, as were the samosas - I ate 8 of them which only leaves me 17 left for snacking on (it was a really big box).

Ragu (by Biggs)

Tonight, my work colleague and I found ourselves foraging for food on the streets of Bundaberg. There was a Mexican plan in place but we were swiftly discouraged by the chain tex-mex, giant sombrero, buckets of margarita style option available.

Fortunately there was a little Italian bistro right next door so we headed that way instead. I went with the ragu mainly because it was made from three meats....deliciousness instantly tripled.

And, it was delicious. I didn't do it justice by only eating a third of it but did take advantage of the offer of a doggy bag. The restaurant's waitress was particularly charming in a delightfully unassuming way. If we had more people like her in the service industry the world would be a better place.

Budae jjigae (by G)

I don't really have any hobbies unless you count searching the internet for Korean recipes.  I came across this one a couple of months ago and have been keen to try it but kept forgetting to get a clay pot to cook it in. Eventually I decided that I could probably just cook it in a regular pot - which is what I ended up doing.

Budae jjigae apparently translates to Army Stew in Korean - though I've seen it referred to as Army Base Stew. The story goes that after the war in Korea food was scarce so the ingenious Koreans made a stew out of whatever leftover tinned foods they could scrounge from the US military.  It's pretty wacky.

I made a broth out of chicken stock, minced garlic, rice wine, sesame oil, fish sauce and a putrid chilli and fermented soy bean mix in oil from a jar. The recipe called for gochujang (Korean chilli soy paste) but I couldn't find any so this jar of awfulness was the best I could do. The smell of this stuff is so powerful that it nearly knocked me over when I opened the jar - I could feel it stripping the lining off the inside of my nose. It is probably the most putrid smell I've come across since venturing into a disgusting covered market in Siem Reap to track down a Khamer BBQ.

Needless to say, I used this chilli/soy bean mix judiciously.  After I had simmered the stock for about 1/2 an hour I also blitzed it with the stick blender to break down the chunks of chilli and whole soy beans.  Surprisingly the broth ended up with a fabulous flavour - from that point on I suspected dinner would not be too bad.

15 minutes before dinner time all I had to do is arrange some sliced onion, cubed spam, hotdog pieces, baked beans and sliced mushrooms in the bottom of another pot, pour over the broth and simmer for 10 minutes.  I did boil some instant ramen and put that into the bottom of the serving bowls before ladling the weird goodness on top and garnishing with some spring onion.  Though the recipe didn't call for it I also added a boiled egg.

If you make only one spam/hotdog stew in your lifetime I urge you to make this one - it really is something special.

Seafood Basket (by Biggs)

I was really looking forward to cooking tonight given it's been a couple of weeks since I dabbled in such a thing. Admittedly, I thought I had a few quails in the freezer to roast up....I was wrong.

Once I discovered that wasn't a thing I instead picked a perfect meal out of my swanky vegetarian cookbook and was convinced it would wow my audience. And again, things did not go according to plan...... I drank some beer.

As a result of the beer I ended up napping until dinnertime and had to swiftly commission a gentleman to deliver us some food. I got us a seafood basket each with prawns and calamari and fish and chips and potato scallops. It was 100% shit. 100%. Awfully awfully shit. Gluggy and greasy and possibly not even seafood. Who knows? I didn't eat much of mine but G ate the lot so he's in for some significant digestive tract issues this evening.

I PROMISE to cook next week....and maybe even the week after that. Stay tuned because it's going to be awesome!

Chicken and Bacon Burger (by Biggs)

This happened.

As a result I now feel like a sack of shit.

I don't want to talk about it.

Although, I do think the rest of tonight is going to be magic.

But, that is a story for another time......