Chicken Stew (by G)

Biggs commented the other day that we had not had a good stew in a while (she may have said 'ever' but I think this is an exaggeration).  I set out to make a good stew and was close to successful.

The night before I put some white beans in a bowl of water to soak - after 24 hours I boiled them in plain water while boiling some bacon bones in their own pot to make some stock. The reason I didn't boil them together is that I've heard that beans won't become tender if boiled in salted water, and I figure baconised pork has a healthy dose of salt in it.

Once I had the stock and the beans at the correct point of cookedness the rest was easy. Fry some onions, chorizo and chunks of chicken thigh (separately) then progressively add them along with cubed celery, carrot, swede, potato, some thyme and cracked black pepper and simmer for an hour.

Actually, I've found it quite vexing in the past that when you stew chorizo all the flavour goes into everything else and the chorizo ends up as bland lumps - so I added the chorizo right at the last moment, along with the little nuggets of bacon meat that I had stripped off the bacon bones.

I don't know that this was the best stew ever, but it was welcome filler on a cold, wet day.

Spring Rolls and Mushroom Noodle Broth (by Biggs)

It seems that 'Vegetarian Wednesday' has quickly turned into 'Mushroom Wednesday'. I've had this Chinese Mushroom Noodle Broth recipe in my back pocket for months but was always worried it wouldn't be filling, or satisfying, enough for dinner.

I overcame that possibility tonight by serving it with some packet spring rolls as an entrée. They were flavourless but fine.

The broth was vegetable stock, oyster and soy sauce as well as the liquid leftover from soaking some dried porcini mushrooms. Added to the broth were the dried mushrooms, bok choy, pak choy and spring onions. The recipe didn't say to add any fresh mushrooms but I fried some up and added them for good luck. The extra mushrooms were enoki, ummm....maybe king browns and, err....another type. You're not meant to eat mushrooms you don't know what are but they didn't seem to do us any harm.

I must say, the broth was delicious. And, I unnecessarily made it in our brand new wok which was very satisfying (not actually brand new - in fact, a hand-me-down from Fi and Dan since it won't work on their fancy induction cooktops!).

Beef Skewer Tortillas (by G)

I thought it might be fun to try something different and make some skewers that would slide right off the stick onto tortillas.

These are beef skewers - cubes of beef marinated in paprika, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder then dusted with salt and then grilled. I served them with simple accompaniments - onion I had soaked in water to take out a bit of the bite, cucumber, avocado, sour cream mixed with coriander, lime and salt... and of course there were a few wholemeal tortillas (I couldn't find any plain ones but the wholemeal type were pretty good).

The flavouring on the beef didn't create much of a taste sensation in the mouth, though you could taste it in a kind of heart-burny way in your chest afterwards.

Dinner didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, but skewers are awesome, therefore dinner was awesome.

Sausages and Beans (by Biggs)

I've been eyeing off these little pumpkins for ages thinking what I could stuff inside them. I've thought of lots of things - fried rice, couscous, baked eggs. In the end I got lazy and decided on baked beans.

I was all sorts of grumpy today and couldn't extract myself from the grumps so went with a bit of mood eating for dinner. Sausages, cheesy bread and baked beans in a miniature pumpkin.

Dinner did make me marginally less grumpy.

Cawl (by G)

Shameful as it is to admit, I was watching a Jamie Oliver show the other day and was tempted to cook one of the recipes. Cawl is a Welsh delecacy - basically lamb and vegetables stewed in water. It didn't appear to promising, and ultimatley wasn't - it tasted like lamb and vegetables stewed in water.

It was kind of nice to chop up a bunch of vegetables. Swede, carrot, potato, parsnips, leeks - I accidentally also snuck a turnip in there - I don't think it did any harm. I followed the recipe to the letter (apart from the turnip as previously mentioned - oh, and I had to use lamb forequarter chops instead of neck) and suspect that any enjoyment the Welsh get out of this dish is pure nostalgia. That said, it was good to have some proper vegetables for once.

Pie and Crisps (by G)

I was participating in organised sport until late in the day so decided to avail myself of the culinary delights of a local convenience store - a beef pie and some plain salt potato crisps.

I would give this meal 10/10 for convenience and about 2/10 for any other category you would care to mention.

Fried Cheese, Pork Cheeks and Tarte Tatin (by Biggs)

Tonight, Fi, Dan and I hosted a bit of a dinner party for our friends Ria and John to celebrate their recent engagement.

Celebrations call for fried cheese so I did just that....fried some cheese. I coated some camembert wedges with honey then double-coated them in breadcrumbs with Fi's assistance. They were then fried to perfection and served on a salad of lettuce, walnuts, pear and bacon. The salad could have done with more pear to balance things out but it was goodish. Did I mention the fried cheese?

Dan then made his celebration meal of pork cheeks in apple cider. He's been trying to perfect this dish since a trip to France last year and I'm happy to keep eating it while he does. The pork cheeks were beautiful. I'm not sure what went down in the kitchen but the meal was delayed an hour or two while Dan "tried to salvage dinner". If it was going down hill at some stage, Dan definitely did salvage it. It was lovely.

Dessert was an apple tarte tatin which Dan has perfected - highlight of the meal I think.

Delivered Pizza (by G)

I don't know if you guys have heard about this yet but you can get pizza pies delevered right to your door if you know the right people. 

I knew I wan't going to have the enegry to cook dinner quite early in the day and ordered the pizzas at about midday - they turned up about 1/2 hour earlier than ordered, which was not a bad thing.

The twist to this meal is that I ordered the pizza from a place I don't think we have had delivery from before. It was fine. The BBQ meatlovers BBQ sauce was increadibly sweet and the toppings on the pepperoni pizza and the supreme were a bit erratic. As I said, it was fine.

Hotdogs with Fennel Apple Slaw (by G)

The inspiration for this meal came from the delightful Rachael Khoo, though she should take none of the blame for the styling - that is entirely my fault.

The slaw is a combination of fennel, apple, cabbage, lemon juice and some oil. I don't normally like fruit in dinner but the apple was great in the slaw. Not seen are the red onions caramelised with red wine vinegar.

The most disappointing aspect of dinner was the roll. I bought some rustic Pana de Casa Vienna rolls for the look - they were immensely dense and unyeilding. In retrospect I wish I had just bought the normal highly processed, fluffy white hotdog rolls.

In the end I ditched the rolls and just had the sausages, onions and slaw by themselves - excellent.

Red Hook (by Biggs)

Fi, Kirst and I headed out to dinner tonight. Fi was keen to try Red Hook, a New York Street Food place and convinced me with the statement "You like Old Bay Spice".

We ordered all of the sides, some of which were good, some not so good.

On the not so good side:

• Popcorn chicken - dry, with not much chicken
• Battered pickles - flavourless, with not much pickle

On the good side:

• Fries - complete with salt and vinegar
• Chicken wings - tasty, can't go wrong with a chicken wing

On the excellent, excellent, excellent side:

• Macaroni cheese squares - crumbed, deep-fried mac 'n' cheese

YES!

I had looked at the menu quickly earlier in the week and was really keen to try the lobster roll. It just seemed like a proper arse-hole move whilst at dinner with friends with seafood allergies and gluten intolerances so I gave it a miss tonight. Not that they would have cared. All my friends are awesome no rules/no judgement types but, I will come again for my lobster roll. 

Mushrooms beside Toast (by G)

Wednesday is vegetarian day (for no particular reason - this new rule was Biggs' suggestion).

I had seen piles of lovely looking mushrooms in the market on the way to work, alas, by the time I had finished work they had disappeared, so I bought some less lovely looking supermarket ones - swiss browns and regular field mushrooms.

The concept was to simply fry them in a tonne of butter and season them with salt and pepper. Unfortunately I crowded the pan and the mushrooms dumped much of their water so I added some chicken gravy to thicken up the sauce. I don't know if the chicken gravy actually contains any chicken so this may still be a vegetarian meal.

Overall these were not the best fried mushrooms I've ever had. I served them beside the toast so that the toast wouldn't get soggy.

Tortilla Stack (by Biggs)

I was looking for a vegetarian bean tortilla recipe and the internet decided I should look into this one. Sure, it's not vegetarian and doesn't even feature beans but the internet definitely knows a thing or two about what I want for dinner.

It's pretty much a tortilla lasagna - a pork and veal mince with traditional tortilla spices, as well as chilli, onion, garlic, tomatoes and corn. That was all layered between packet tortillas with PLENTY of cheese and served with a salad.

Clearly I haven't been very creative with my salads lately but a little freshness sure was welcome.

Also, I promise that next time I make tortillas, I'll make them from scratch. You heard it here first.

Chicken Biriyani (by G)

I had an excellent biryani from a local takeaway on a whim a few weeks ago (for lunch, not dinner) and got a hankering to make one myself. The original plan was to make my own curry paste but I quickly talked myself out of that. In the end I just bought one from the spice shop (I think it's called 'Spice').

 

It seemed like a pretty authentic curry paste in that it was full of identifiable bits and looked as though it had been jarred in someones garden shed.

 

Along with the curry paste I added some fried onion and garlic, toasted slivered almonds, some browned chicken lovely legs (they're a kind of skinless drumstick with the stick cut short), par cooked rice and some stock.

 

There didn't seem to be any general consensus on the Internet as to how long to cook a biryani so I cooked it in a moderate oven for 45 minutes then let it rest for 15 minutes - that seemed to do the trick.

 

For sides I oven baked some garlic naan and mini vegetable samosas - both from a packet. The samosas came in a pack of 96 so I still have dozens and dozens of those left over for snacks.

 

I was pretty pleased with my biryani - the only drawback was that, though I know rice expands, I still couldn't help but to cook waaaaaay tooooo muuuuuuch.

BBQ Korma Koftas (by Biggs)

Tonight's dinner is brought to you by the Northey Street City Farm Markets. Bon and I dropped in there after breakfast today to pick up our respective dinner produce. We arrived fairly late in the proceedings so I had to get beef instead of lamb but dinner was still pretty tasty.

I made the koftas from beef mince, onion, coriander, mint and korma paste. I was fairly heavy handed with the korma paste but G seemed to enjoy it and it balanced nicely with the yoghurt garlic sauce. The yoghurt was made from goats milk and, I thought, was an absolute win. It tasted a lot more savoury and cheesy than the regular stuff.

My belief is that koftas can only be cooked on the BBQ so I fired that up. Well, technically I misfired it the first time but managed to get it going eventually. It occurs to me that evening BBQs, or fires at the very least, are the only thing that can help quell the Sunday night blues.

Chicken Wings (by G)

The photo reflects a bit of a minimalist dinner - just chicken wings on a plate.

I went for 3 varieties just to experiment. One type was simply brined in salt, water and apple cider vinegar then oven roasted with some cider vinegar soaked wood chips to add a smoky flavour. Typically the wood chips didn't ignite so there was no smoky flavour - though the 3 hours of cooking made the wings toothless tender.

Another set of wings I brined in the same brining mix as above with the addition of fresh garlic and ginger. They turned out pretty much the same but less tender.

The last set of wings I marinated in a combo of Korean BBQ sauce and the funky chilli and fermented black bean stuff I keep in the back of the fridge and use infrequently and very sparingly.

All the wings were good in that they were wings, and there were no vegetables to sully the palate. I think I can do better though.

German Sausages and Asian Dumplings (by Biggs)

I really screwed G today. I promised him hot dogs, which he was most excited about, but for various reasons I bailed on that plan. I did however make the offering of German sausages as a potential substitute which he quickly agreed to.

So, back at the night markets eating German sausages we were.

Dumpling dessert was also a must.

The only thing particularly noteworthy from the evening was that the German sausage lady commented that my pronunciation of debreziner was prefect. She was impressed. Unfortunately I then went on to pronounce it an entirely different way so immediately lost her short-lived respect.

Thank Truck it's Thursday (by Biggs)

I'd heard rumours of a food truck bonanza that is held in Fish Lane every Thursday and tonight G and I decided to check it out. I wouldn't exactly call four trucks a bonanza but it was still pretty great. Given there were four truck we decided to try four things....perhaps it's a good thing there weren't sixteen trucks on offer.

I wasn't too excited about the taco truck given we have tacos so frequently but was then charmed by the name "Juan More Taco", then was further charmed by the fact they had stubbie coolers for sale, then was totally sold by their delicious, delicious tacos. There was a spicy chicken one and a slow cooked pork one and we located the beer tent.

Next was a triple pig burger from a pig truck, or a meat truck, or something....I'm sure it had an equally nifty name but I didn't take note as I was onto my next beer by then. Pork, bacon, chorizo, beer? Yes.

We then moved onto eating a craptacular Philly Cheese Steak which I care not to discuss further.

Dessert was a salami pizza. G was highly impressed with the pizza guy and even came back with a business card in case we want to host a pizza party. If this is the standard of pizza that would be served at said pizza party, then I'm keen to have a pizza party. The green olives G requested as an extra were a stroke of genius.

Vegetable Penne and Chicken Legs (by G)

In my head this was going to be more appealing than it turned out... It doesn't appear too appealing but it was pretty good. Corn and zucchini sautéed, then mixed with cooked penne, grated cheese and a but load of salt and pepper - then topped with some leftover BBQ chicken legs. I can't believe I was going to add carrot to the vegetable mix but was too lazy to par-boil them before sautéing...

Anyway, a note on the chicken. It was a fearfully expensive organic supermarket-barbequed chicken that was not overwhelmingly more tasty than the regular supermarket-barbequed (torture) chicken. I don't know what to think about that. I guess it's nice that it had a relatively happy life before being served up in a couple of relatively unhappy meals.

Sushi (by Biggs)

I had to work tonight so, knowing I wouldn't be home until well after dinner time, I got myself a very, very late lunch of sushi. That's if you can count fried chicken in rice, wrapped in seaweed 'sushi'. It was shit....and I even got it from the good sushi place. I'm not sure what went wrong.

BBQ Chicken and Potato Burritos (by G)

What ungodly half-assed abomination is this? - you may well ask. I have no excuses.

Chopped barbequed chicken with par-boiled potatoes fried with garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper - mixed with cheese, wrapped in some packet tortillas, oven baked and served with instant chicken gravy is about as un-authentic as a burrito can get.

They were surprisingly okay, like a roadhouse Sunday roast gone bad - or good, depending on your taste. It was a meal, it was filling and no one died - job done.

Sausage and Bean Stew (by Biggs)

I noticed this recipe in The Guardian over the weekend and thought it might be a nice comforting dinner during this cold snap. Turns out it was actually quite lovely and warm today but I forged ahead with the sausage stew anyway.

It wasn't as flavourful as I'd hoped but was definitely nutritious and satisfying. The stew was pork sausages, onion, garlic, rosemary, tinned tomatoes and beans, chicken stock and black cabbage. I threw in some leftover tomatoes and rocket as well to avoid them rotting away to nothing in the fridge.

Sriracha fixed any dinner shortcomings.

Slow Cooked Lamb Shoulder with Anchovy (by G)

I was, uncharacteristically, cleaning out the fridge the other day and discovered we had a jar or anchovies in oil. I have no idea how long they have been there but I figured they are not the kind of thing to go out of date so I had a bit of a brainwave to incorporate them with some slow cooked lamb. I blitzed together some anchovies, capers, garlic, dried oregano and salt and spread this over a surprisingly cheap shoulder of lamb, then chucked that in the oven for about 4 hours - adding some squeezes of lemon juice at random intervals.

Later I blanched some baby broccoli and carrots and added some mushrooms to the oven and made a bit of an anchovy butter from butter, capers, anchovies, garlic and shallots.

The lamb was not as fall-off-the-bone tender as I had expected and the anchovy butter ended up tasting like just anchovies and butter, but - overall - this was a pretty successful meal.

The meat was not as appealing as shown below - I accidentally added a retro filter to the image giving it a classic 70's cookbook glow.

Bacon and Egg Tarts (by Biggs)

A cold snap hit Brisbane this week and immediately grounded me with a lurgy. G was still keen for me to cook dinner but insisted I get some disinfectant wipes to use regularly throughout the cooking process.

I made bacon and egg tarts. The "best ever" bacon and egg tarts according to The Meat Shed website I got the recipe from. Puff pastry rounds were filled with bacon, onion, cheese and an egg mix. The mix was meant to be eggs and cream but I used sour cream instead. They were tasty little treats to be sure. A little more bacon wouldn't have gone astray but that's the case for most meals.

The recipe called to be served with tomato relish. Luckily Fi recently put herself to work with a box of over-ripe tomatoes and gifted everyone with a jar of magic. This is her third batch and is a cracker....literally a cracker.....this stuff is as addictive as crack.

Potato Bake (by G)

Well, this was disappointing. I was hoping to make a nice potato bake for dinner. It turns out no such thing exists.

This potato bake was layered up with fried onion and bacon, potatoes and a cheesy milk type substance, then topped with cheese. I didn't follow a recipe because I was sure they would tell me to cook it for only half an hour or so. I cooked mine for an hour and found the potatoes were still uncooked so I cranked up the heat, split the milk and ended up with a fine mess on a plate.

This was not a highlight.

Night Market Treats (by Biggs)

Tonight I joined some of my lady friends at the night markets for some good old fashioned foozing. I kicked it off by gathering us some pork buns and pork gyoza.....and beer.

We then moved onto a nacho-type thing that was fresh and tasty but virtually impossible to share without dumping most of it down your chest.

Next came the hit of the night - Tibetan momos. Delicious! Sadly, Fi only bought these so she could tell a lame joke. I can't even really remember the joke now but she insisted it was featured on the blog so, I think it was something like "I meant to get empanadas but was distracted for a momo".

Then we got empanadas. They took a loooong time to cook but we're worth it in the end. One was shredded beef, one was shredded chicken and the other, black beans and cheese.

Finally, we finished the night with donuts. Gluten free donuts which are virtually unheard of. Gluten doesn't bother me. I could eat it by the bucket load but it does send Kirst down a black hole of misery so this was an absolute treat for her. A treat for the rest of us too. They were great. The donut guy's truck was swamped so I guess everyone else thought so too.

Great night, perfect start to the weekend!

Chicken Pad Thai (by Biggs)

I like Pad Thai. It's quite possibly in my top ten most enjoyed meals.

I'd like to say that I made the sauce - it's easy enough to do after all. However, I used jar sauce. Flavourless, flavourless jar sauce. When will I learn?

I'm terrible at quick stir fried dishes and can't help but overcook everything. I was determined to just flash fry everything this time alas it still all turned out fairly gloopy.

Despite these atrocities, dinner was still pretty good. Chicken, carrot, snow peas and spring onions were fried off, eggs, jar sauce and noodles were added and the whole lot was topped off with peanuts, bean sprouts, coriander and lime.

The supermarket had sold out of real coriander and it's virtually ungrowable in our garden so my hand was forced to buy some of that wanky microherb stuff. Sigh.

Hot and Cold Meats (by G)

I impulse bought some cured meats the other day and was hoping to incorporate them into dinner. It wasn't too hard... cured meats, a Mediterranean style salad and some lamb chops.

Biggs and I like our lamb chops almost incinerated and jerkylike - the best way to do this is under the grill, just salt and heat.

The lamb chops were, perhaps, a little under-done for my taste - but almost exactly right. The highlight of the salad (apart from the olives) were the snacking tomatoes, they are about the only tomatoes available at the supermarket with any flavour.

There was also a dessert of more grilled lamb chops, the perfect end to a meal.

Crispy Chicken and Kiss Pepper Tortillas (by Biggs)

It's been a while since I've been on the tortilla train. But then, let's be honest, it's been a while since I've been on the cooking train in it's entirety.

I arrived home too late from work to get homemade tortillas on the table in time for our pre-appointed dinner o'clock so, this evening, relied on packet ones. The crumb on the chicken is also a from a packet....in fact it came in the same box as the tortillas.

The original idea for these tortillas was to pickle the red onions but I got lazy at the last minute and went with, er....slicing them instead. Then I mushed up some coriander, lime and two avocados - one ripe, one not - bringing some mystery to the eating adventure.

Lastly I served a side of kiss peppers - my new favourite peppers. I first ran into these peppers on a tapas platter down in Sydney and was mighty impressed with the little bites of vinegary fruit. I then stumbled upon them again at the Brazilian BBQ place a couple of weeks ago. G sensibly saved one on his plate and asked the waitress - "What is this?". Turns out it's a kiss pepper and the Brazilian BBQ place had jars of them for sale. I like that when this jar runs out we have to go back for all-you-can-eat meat to get a new jar.

Pork Rib Roast and Veg (by G)

I was a bit undecided about what to make for dinner so I played it safe and slow roasted a pork rib-roast, for about 4 hours or so.

For sides I was going to make roast potatoes and fried brussels sprouts - the sprouts at the supermarket were a mite mouldy however, so I went with cabbage instead.  The cabbage is just fried along with some hickory smoked bacon, shallot and garlic, then braised in some vegetable stock.

This would have been a pretty good dinner if I hadn't made a gravy of the pork leavings. I had added a lot of rock salt to the skin to get it to crackle and a large quantity seems to have made its way into the juices at the bottom of the roasting pan so the resulting gravy (especially after I had reduced it) was saltier than the dead sea. Luckily I drizzled it over everything and killed pretty much any flavour the food had - except the salty flavour of the food, the gravy enhanced that.

Pizza (by Biggs)

This is not the first time we've had take-away pizza on the blog and it usually provides some insight into a down-spiralling lifestyle....

Squid Ink Risotto (by G)

For my last birthday Biggs bought me some things - one of those things was some squid ink. I knew I was going to make risotto with it, it has just taken me a while to talk myself into it. In my mind I was going to end up staining most of the kitchen black.

In the end it was pretty simple - make a regular risotto, then stir in the ink.  This risotto had a base of fried onion and garlic, some white wine, the rice vegetable stock - then a lot of butter and cheese at the end. Probably too much cheese as it turns out. The risotto didn't settle into the plates as it should. It turned out to be basically cheese rice with squid ink.

Anyway, I topped it with some fried squid pieces. I didn't do too good a job of cooking these (I over crowded the pan) but they turned out tender enough.

The squid ink didn't add too much flavour wise, though it may have been overpowered by the cheese. As a risotto this was a bit of a fail, but it was a pretty decent black cheese rice with squid.

Punjabi Palace (by Biggs)

Last night's plan of picking up groceries went out the window at about the point I found myself drinking a fifth Mammoth stein. Given all the grocery stores were closed today I had to (happily!) rely on takeaway.

After a few recent takeaway failures I decided on one of my favourite restaurants - Punjabi Palace. I sensibly over-ordered and got chicken korma, beef vindaloo, tandoori chicken wings and onion bhaji.

There were plenty of leftovers for second dinner alas the cat got to them first. I almost threw up when I caught her licking my leftover cheese and garlic naan and crunching into my chicken wings. Gross!

Pulled Pork Roll and a Hot Dog (by Biggs)

Today was a very very difficult day. I was savagely hungover after last night's adventures. And, what does one do when they are savagely hungover? Go out for after work drinks of course. Afterall, we had to celebrate the two year anniversary of the blog!

Yesterday we accidentally discovered that the Woolly Mammoth does steins of mystery beer so we rallied some troops and headed there. We were all still there at dinner time (and well after dinner time) so ate there too.

The obvious choice was a pulled pork roll. We also wanted to try the hot dog so we split them in two and G and I shared. Pulled pork....splendid.

Smoke House BBQ (by Biggs)

Tonight was family dinner night. After G failed to check if we could have dinner with the old Greek family down the road, I decided we would go to a smoke house.

We ordered wings and shrimp. The shrimp was crazy good. Crispy, savoury and delicious. The wings were good too. G thinks the vinegar was key.

The ribs were fine too but a bit too sweet. We topped things off with a cocktail. We win this round.

Oh, another thing, I think all dinners should come with a side of mac and cheese. Let's make that happen.