Re-purposed Indian (by G)

We had some Indian food left over from Thursday so, in the interests of not wasting food, I decided to re-purpose it.  As anyone knows, puff pastry is the friend of the lazy leftover re-purposer. I de-meated the chicken wings and folded it into pastry to make pasties. I mashed the potatoes and added an egg to make a kind of potato cake. For the pies I just cut down the lamb chunks into littler lamb chunks and stuck them into the pie maker with some more pastry.

The potato cake was really, really dry and not very flavourful. The pie and the pastie tasted just like the filling but with a hint of puff pastry.

Burgers (by Biggs)

I was in charge of cooking dinner tonight but by the time we got back from Atherton the grocery shops were closed. The next plan was kebabs from Leefkas. Leefkas was also closed. The next plan was dumplings from Zagyoza. Zagyoza was also closed.

In the end we got Burger Urge. The staff dicked around a fair bit but it all worked out. G was initially aghast about the wholemeal buns but pushed through and enjoyed his New Yorker with bacon, pickles and BBQ sauce.

I got the limited time Uber Urge special with German sausage, sauerkraut and mustard. Those bits were good but it was a bit weird in burger form.

Chips were excellent. G was generous enough to give me one of his beers to have with dinner and it pretty much saved my life. It's been a big weekend.

Luisun Pizzeria (by Biggs)

After a big big day of eating, drinking, swimming, dancing and jumping castle fun at todays wedding we were all pretty tuckered out so decided on some drinks and takeaway pizza on our leisure park cabin deck.

Whilst the option of Eagle Boys delivered was tempting due to laziness Alison made the good call of further research. Admittedly further research did involve signing into the Luisun Pizzeria Facebook page to try and obtain the phone number and menu. At this point Alison proclaimed that the Facebook page was just full of "a lot of crap unrelated to pizza.....or even food" but we pushed on and Andrew called them up to ask for two of their finest pizzas. And fine they were!

Pictured are a Capricciosa and a Diablo pizza. The Diablo was my personal favourite with pepperoni, caperberries and anchovies but the Capricciosa was mighty fine too with ham, mushrooms and black olives. The two pizzas were devoured post-haste.

I reflected that I was pretty glad we didn't get Eagle Boys and Dominic of Urban Spoon summed it up with his Eagle Boys Pizza Atherton review.... "It's corporate pizza, pretty much the McDonalds of pizza".

Penne Bolognese (By Biggs)

This weekend we find ourselves in Atherton for a family friend's wedding. Dining options in Atherton initially seemed limited but we did have an excellent steak burger at the pub for lunch so our hopes were buoyed.

After a day of putting up temporary fences, collecting groomsman suits, unpacking and repacking cars, de-petaling roses, painting signs, cross-checking spread sheets and printing programmes everyone was ready for a hearty dinner and magically a hearty dinner was served.

Impressively the bride's brother's partner didn't bat an eyelid when she was asked to make dinner for over ten people and served up a penne Bolognese with a spinach salad. The highlight for me was the sourdough bread with homemade garlic butter.

Dessert was left over bits and pieces of the gluten free desserts that had been prepared for the wedding. The little lemon muffin things were delicious and it's worth noting that the cheesecake that was made has previously won second prize at the Alice Springs Show. Splendid.

The little lemon muffin things were served with a mascarpone cheese that was later tested as a cleaning product to try to lift fresh black grease stains out of the groom's white carpet but that's a wedding disaster story for another time. Thanks for dinner Kirsten and Geoff!

Trio of Indian Dishes (by G)

I thought it would be nice to have some Indian food tonight and just one curry does not cut it so I decided to do three.

The best of them was a Mutton Kari (with lamb, not mutton), also I made Bhuna Murgh (which I decided to do with chicken wings because chicken wings are awesome) and Alu Bartha (the recipe says spicy mashed potatoes but I forgot to mash them I guess).

These were pretty simple Indian dishes but they still had a lot of ingredients and were quite involved to make - pretty tasty though.

T-Bone and Salad (by G)

I wanted to marinate some kind of meat in a mix of garlic, coriander, onion and green chilli (for some reason) - I found T-bone steaks at the supermarket and decided to go with that. The steak was marinated in the mix for a few hours then cut from the bone and pan fried. The bone was oven roasted because - when the meat is cooked on the bone it is often quite raw near the bone.

I also slow roasted some fresh and black garlic and mixed it through some softened butter. This was added to baked potato flesh (along with cream and Parmesan cheese) and mashed and added back to the potato skins. The garlic butter was also cut into disks and placed on the completed steak.

For a salad I diced up some celery, red, green and yellow capsicum, cucumber and lettuce. This was an attempt at a fresh, healthy meal but - what with the butter, cream and cheese - it is more likely to kill rather than cleanse.

Flour and Corn Tortillas (by G)

Biggs was not home for dinner today so I didn't make much of an effort with the tortilla making. The meat is the leftover pork from last week. Underneath is some left over lettuce and they were topped with plain yoghurt.

I did experiment a little with the tortillas themselves making a 2 parts flour 1 part corn dough. They were better than just plain corn - not as pleasant than plain flour - charred up nicely though.

Beer and Wine (by Biggs)

I miscalculated tonight and forgot I'd bought Brisbane Festival tickets to the Hungry Kids of Hungry. It was an excellent decision and a good night was had by all but it does mean I went straight from work to a bar, to a gig, to a bar and home to my bottle of wine. So, yes....dinner was beer and wine. The beer was imported from Little Creatures in Freemantle, excellent.

Vegetable Quiche and Salad (by G)

Real men don't make quiches... I did, so make what you will of that. The reason for making quiche was to try and use up some of the leftover vegetables we had. Turns out you have to buy vegetables to use vegetables.

Of the vegetables we already had I used, asparagus, potato, carrot, half a brown onion, a zucchini and a brussel sprout (along with radishes and tomatoes in the salad). I bought a white onion, pumpkin (and for the salad - mixed salad leaves and cucumber).

To make the quiche I slowly sweated off some onions with bacon, shredded brussel sprout and grated zucchini and added that to oven roasted pumpkin, potato and carrot seasoned with cumin and garlic powder. To bind I just mixed some egg, cream and Parmesan cheese.  I forgot to buy pre-made pastry from the supermarket, so I remade the same dough as last nights Monti which I just happened to have remembered.

All in all it worked out pretty well - a very manly flavour.

Monti (by G)

I was doodling about aimlessly on the internet this morning when I came across a reference to the Armenian dish Monti - I'd never heard of it before but after looking into it decided we should have it for dinner.

It is basically pastry canoes filled with seasoned meat floating in a soup and topped with yoghurt garlic.

The pastry came out really well, easy to roll. The filling is supposed to be lamb mince with onion, garlic and parsley but I could only find beef mince - a bit disappointing because I think lamb mince would have been much better.  The soup should have been chicken stock with catsup and tabasco. We didn't have catsup and were not entirely sure what it is so I substituted with ketchup and Worcestershire sauce (having since researched catsup I think that is a pretty close approximation - catsup looks like more fun though):

Sorry, got a bit distracted... Monti is good - we should check out some more Armenian dishes.

Feijoada... sort of (by G)

I was looking though some cookbooks looking for something to have for dinner and came across a feijoada recipe in Jennifer Paterson's 'Seasonal Receipts'. I don't know what it is about feijoada that made her associate it with Spring.

Being the national dish of Brazil, I was keen to try it while I was there but never got the chance - it is only served on certain days and I always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I still want to try feijoada because I don't think what I produced was very authentic.  Basically I simmered a bunch of pork products (ribs, belly, sausages, chorizo, bacon bones) along with some beef jerky (the recipe called for salted pork but jerky is the best I could do).  In another pot I boiled some onion, garlic and black beans (I could only find the salted kind so I rinsed the salt off them prior to cooking).  When the beans and pork were ready I combined them on a plate and topped with a fried egg.

It photographed the same way it tasted - not great. I didn't mind it too much but Biggs found the tastes and textures to be pretty unpleasant.

Pork Chop with Bacon Vegetable Stew (by G)

Today I thought I would have a load of vegetables with dinner for their health... unfortunately I had a whole block of Gouda cheese for an afternoon snack so that probably undermined any good the vegetables will have done.

I simmered some potato and carrot in a stock made from bacon bones and water, then fried off some asparagus, oyster mushrooms and shaved brussel sprouts then dumped them on a plate.

The pork chop was pan fried then added to the bacon bone stock and simmered until fall off the bone tender.

If I had to use one word to describe this dinner I would use 'bacony' - and I'm pretty sure that's not even a word...

Frozen Fish and Coleslaw (by Biggs)

After work I headed to meet some ladies at The Loft in West End to celebrate our friend's engagement. When I heard we were going to The Loft I immediately decided I was going to have the pulled pork sliders I've seen on their menu as an afternoon snack / dinner. Alas, when I got there I was too caught up chatting with friends and completely forgot about the sliders....blasphemy.

Instead I stopped by the supermarket to pick up something easy for dinner. Unfortunately I had already confirmed with G that I wouldn't need feeding this evening.....mistake.

Last weekend Kirsten was discussing the pros and cons of various frozen fish fillet brands and it reminded me that back in the summer of 2000ish I lived off frozen fish fillets and loved it. So, dinner was decided. One packet of frozen fish fillets and one packet of supermarket coleslaw. It was fine. The dijonnaise helped.

I shudder to think what horrors go on in both the frozen fish fillet factory and the packet coleslaw factory so usually just try to avoid thinking about it at all.

Alas, curiosity got the better of me on this occasion. According to the packet the frozen fish fillets are "made with 100% fish fillets" but the ingredient list suggests otherwise with "51% fish fillets". The packet does state in bold that it "contains fish and wheat" so I definitely had fish for dinner regardless of what some of you may think.

BLTs (by Biggs)

I thought BLT stood for Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato....turns out it stands for Bloody Lovely Tucker. Yep. 

Secrets are: two rashers of bacon per roll (minimum), not a lot of lettuce, not a lot of tomato and lashings of dijonnaise. 

A simple dinner compared to the evenings when G is in charge but still very satisfying.

Squid Ink Pasta with Chorizo (by G)

I got some squid ink pasta the other day - I've never had that before.

Originally it was supposed to be a simple meal of pasta, chorizo, garlic, basil and tomatoes - then I thought I should add mushrooms for volume so I added some oyster ones, and we had some leftover onion and garlic salsa and coriander sauce from yesterday so I added those as well.  I think this was a good move because the chili added a nice kick. Actually, I accidentally forgot about the garlic while I was cutting the mushrooms and somehow a whole clove got cut in half and added to the pan so we each got a large chunk of virtually raw garlic on the plate (see bottom of photo below).

The squid ink reeked while the pasta was cooking, fortunately the smell wasn't reflected in the flavour.  This was a pretty good meal - the chorizo could have been cooked a little more... I burned the chroizo last time I cooked it so I got a bit fry-shy.

Corn Tortillas with Pork (by G)

Biggs bought Ferran Adria's 'The Family Meal' some time ago - last night I realised that we had never cooked anything from it so I looked up to see if he had a tortilla recipe... he did, and here it is.

For two people the recipe called for 350 grams of pork shoulder, but I couldn't find anything under 2kg and was unwilling to cut it down, so I cooked the whole thing. Differences from the regular tortilla recipe is the inclusion of achote - a South American fruit - paste in the pork marinade. I found this ingredient at Penissi in Woollongabba. The lady at Penissi said a kilo was a life time supply, I've already used a third of it so I'm not sure what that says about my life expectancy.

The other difference was that, instead of flour tortillas, I made corn tortillas. The masa dough is amazing, soft and easy to press - unfortunately the tortillas get a bit stodgy after a while so we didn't get through all of them.

Two additions to Ferran's meal was a coriander sauce with vinegar, lime juice, oil and coriander - made because we had left over coriander. I found a little strip of pork belly in the freezer, so I decided to slice this thinly and fry them off as a crunchy accompaniment.

Salmon and Watercress Mayonnaise (by G)

I bought watercress at the market the other day and decided today was the day to use it before it melted to sludge. Reviewing online recipes for watercress there turned out to be not many things I'd actually want to eat that included watercress so I went with watercress mayonnaise with salmon.

Potatoes are a classic pairing with salmon so I boiled some kipfler chunks and mixed through some roasted garlic and parsley. I also wanted sweet potato chips but they just turned out to be cumin flavoured soggy disks of sweet potato.  Asparagus is in season (probably... at least it's less prohibitively expensive then is usually is). The asparagus was quickly fried off and served on a square of iberico ham.

The mayonnaise was supposed to be hand made but when I went to hand make it I discovered that we have run out of eggs so I just mixed some dijon mustard, chardonnay vinegar and chopped watercress through some of the poisonous no-name brand of mayonnaise.

All in all it was a pretty good dinner - who says you shouldn't have two starches on one plate?

Lamb Shanks with Kale (by G)

Being Spring I thought it was time to start ingesting some baby sheep and, as I bought some kale the other day, I thought lamb with kale would be appropriate.

The shanks were seasoned with salt and pepper and browned off, then added to sauteed onions, garlic, carrot, potato, crushed tomato, vegetable stock, red wine, bay leaves, desiccated rosemary from the cupboard and kale and cooked low and slow for about 4 hours.

I reserved some of the raw kale to fry to use as garnish - the plan was to get it crispy to add some texture but it got a bit vigorous and spat oil at me so I bailed out before it got fully crunchy.

Sausages (by Biggs)

Another night, another late night dinner. This had potential disaster written all over it - two trays of sausages, a gas BBQ awkwardly suspended off the side of a two story veranda almost out of reach of a very drunken Amanda.

There was a choice of wagyu and pepper or lamb and feta sausages teamed with bread rolls, tomato sauce, spinach and fried onions. We'd been eating non-stop for 24 hours at this point including about 6 kilograms of cheese so we really didn't need the sausages but they were pretty good.

The fact mine escaped from my gullet a few hours later was not a reflection on the quality of the dinner but more the quantity of cider I had in my belly (9 hours worth).

Borscht (by G)

I was looking through Len Deighton's Action Cook Book yesterday because I realised that, although it is about the coolest cookbook I own, I've never cooked anything from it:

It's pretty warm in the old town at the moment so I though a of cold borscht would hit the spot.  It's pretty easy to make - boil some beetroot until soft then peel and simmer for 10 minutes with chicken stock and softened onions then blend, strain and add a squeeze of lemon juice.

Maybe it was a bit too simple because it turned out to be like a bland beetroot dip (I did a bit of a course strain job so it turned out almost as thick as dip). The addition of boiled eggs, natural yoghurt and caviar (well, lumpfish roe) pepped up the flavour a bit.

In retrospect, maybe it wasn't as good as I'd expected because I didn't have my gun with me and I didn't have a sexy (sic) lady to stroke my (non-existent) hair.

Thai Beef Salad (by Biggs)

G is correct that I am on some kind of ladies weekend away this weekend. More specifically, a Duck Day Celebration ('cause we refuse to call it a Hen's Night) over on Stradbroke Island.

We spent most of the afternoon and evening sitting on our deck eating cheese (a LOT of cheese) and drinking wine (a LOT of wine). At about 9pm I realised that if we didn't put something more substantial in our stomachs the weekend would be wasted to hangovers so Amanda and I headed to the kitchen.

After a flurry of drunken frying, chopping and mixing, 10 minutes later we were tucking into a big bowl of beef, spinach, cucumber, shallots, tomatoes, garlic, chili, red onion, fried noodles, mint, coriander and a dressing of soy sauce, oil, fish sauce, lime and brown sugar. it was most excellent. Everyone loved it. I suspected this was a result of being a bit tipsy but Fiona commented that it would be delicious even if she was sober. Fiona is a highly intelligent women so it must be true.

Pork Chop and Veg (by G)

Biggs is on some kind of ladies weekend away so I didn't feel too motivated to go to much effort for dinner tonight. When it got to 8:30 I thought I should probably get off my ass and do something so I par-boiled some potato pieces and fried them off with mushroom and green capsicum and made a sauce out of some tinned tomato, Korean bean paste and chardonnay vinegar. For protein I fried off a forequarter pork chop.

Not a very exciting meal but filling. I don't use forequarter chops very often but they are a fun piece of meat - all different textures with little nuggets through it, like knots in a piece of wood.

Cajun Chicken and Succotash (by Biggs)

I hadn't planned to cook for at least a few months now that my resident chef is back in town. Alas, G had other ideas. I'm back to cooking on a Thursday night but we've relaxed a bit on the vegetarian clause.

I've wanted to cook brussel sprouts for a few months now. I was intrigued if they're really bad as I remember from my childhood. I looked up a bunch of brussel sprout salad recipes, asked friends what they do with brussel sprouts, researched how to caramalise a brussel sprout and finally decided on a brussel sprout succotash. SUCCOTASH!

Turns out when I picked up groceries on the way home I completely forgot to actually buy brussel sprouts (thank you sub-conscious). I baked up my trusty Cajun chicken and started to throw together the rest of the succotash ingredients in a fry pan - garlic, shallots, bacon, corn, salt, pepper and sage (was meant to be thyme). I hunted through the fridge for greens and found capsicum, beans and parsley to add.

I was meant to add white beans and tomatoes towards the end but the succotash looked so tasty I thought I'd call it quits while I was ahead.

 

DIY Tapas (by G)

I was at a bit of a loose end today so decided to go to go to one of my happy places - Black Pearl Epicure. There I got some Iberico ham, vinegar, white anchovies and cheddar cheese.  The logical decision for dinner was tapas.

I won't go into the preparations - they were pretty straight forward. I left the ham plain, made some lamb (what is the delicate way of saying 'balls'), chorizo stuffed mushrooms, fried chorizo with parsley and garlic (you've got to double down on the chorizo), spicy stuffed eggs, marinated white anchovies, garlic and tomato sour dough croutons and some olives (but I didn't marinate those).

Whatever health benefits we got from Mondays dinner has been well and truly destroyed.

Pork and Mango Tortillas (by G)

Finally back on schedule with tortillas on Tuesdays. Though I don't much like fruit in savoury meals I thought a mango salsa would be a good celebration of spring.

The pork mix is made from left over pork ribs from the other night slowly cooked for a few hours in the oven with some coriander powder, cumin powder, onion powder, chicken stock and diced tomatoes.  The salsa is made from diced mango, fresh chilli, mint, fresh coriander and lime juice.

I'm pretty happy with the result, the mango off-set the salty pork perfectly.  I think the salsa would have been better with a bit more mango, but I already had to take out a loan just to buy one.

Teriyaki Chicken and Miso Prawns (by G)

I was originally going to just do teriyaki chicken for dinner to use up the chicken we didn't have the other night, but it didn't seem like enough so I went out and got some prawns as well.

The salad was a mix of some leftover bag coleslaw with some radish, snowpeas and red capsicum dressed with a vinegar, ginger, garlic, sugar and salt dressing.

Both the proteins were fried off first then I added the sauce at the last minute. For the prawns the sauce was miso, oil, ginger, garlic and brown sugar then fried garlic sprinkled on top - for the chicken, soy, brown sugar, sake, mirin and a dash of water then topped with sesame seeds.

Oh, and we had some left over enoki mushrooms so I fried them off as well.

I set the smoke alarm off while cooking the chicken - I wouldn't say the result was good enough to risk burning down the house for, it was pretty good though.

Roast Pork Rolls (by G)

A lazy Sunday afternoon with plans to have a few drinks by the river so I thought I'd get in early on preparing dinner - alcohol is a de-motivator so I knew I may not feel like making anything afterwards.

I seasoned up a small pork roast and chucked it into a hot oven with a couple of potatoes and pieces of sweet potato.  When we got home I reheated the pork and veg (had to put it under the grill at the end to get the crackle to crackle) and fried off some onions.

Mashed veg and sliced pork was added to some packet gravy and stuffed into the softest, whitest rolls I could find and then topped with fried onion.

It was not bad, considering the lack of effort. I could have done with more pork and less vegetables.

Chicken Pasta (by Biggs)

Remember when I learnt that if you do favours for friends they're likely to feed you?

Tonight I sat on a friend's couch for a few hours while their toddler slept and earnt myself a very satisfying home-cooked meal. If this is babysitting, count me in!

For dinner my friend Cam made a creamy chicken pasta with a garlic, sun-dried tomato, capsicum sort of a vibe.

He claims it's not a specialty of his but it was pretty special for me.

Spicy Pork Noodles (by G)

Biggs is off baby-sitting tonight (which is wrong on so many levels) so I felt free to experiment a little.  I decided to use the leftover pork from last night. Originally I was going to try for a caramel pork kind of deal - in the past I have had chicken wings marinaded in an equal mix of sugar and fish sauce and, though it was very rich, I decided to use that as a starting point.

To the fish sauce/sugar mix I added lemon grass, fresh chilli, mirin, minced garlic, coriander root and soy. That mix was not quite right so I added some tamarind paste. It still wan't quite right so I decided to uncap the 'fuck-off-hot-do-not-touch-homemade-chilli-sauce'. This turned out to be a slight mistake.

The flavours were good, but the heat level was astronomical. It's the first time I've cried since Amanda Peet was married.

DIY Cambodian Barbecue (By G)

Scroll back a week or two and you'll find I had Khmer Barbecue while I was in Siem Reap - the untold story is that the next day I went on a trek to find a barbecue dome to take home with me. I eventually found one in a scungy market in the industrial area of town.  The market was truly awful. It was undercover and really dark, the floor was greasy and slimy, buckets of festering goop stank up the place... never-the-less I found my barbecue dome ($4).

I retrofitted our briquette barbecue with a couple of metal skewers and we fried off strips of chicken breast, chunks of pork and wafer thin strips of beef.  In the trough at the bottom we boiled some chicken stock and added egg vermicelli, green beans, turnip slices, packet coleslaw and enoki mushrooms.  For flavouring I made up a couple of sauces. The first was a mix of black and white pepper, lime juice and oil with cider vinegar added for volume. The other sauce was a mix of soy sauce, minced garlic, minced ginger, coriander, fresh red chilli and some mirin.

There was an anxious moment early on when I accidentally tilted the barbecue and poured chicken stock all over the coals - happily they were so hot that they were not affected.

I don't know that the flavours were 100% authentic but the result was satisfying... very satisfying...

Before:

After:

Pork Ribs (by G)

I had a craving for ribs, so that's what we had for dinner.  At the butcher there was a choice of regular spare ribs or American spare ribs. Apparently the difference is that there is less meat on the American ribs - typically I went for the regular kind. In hindsight I should have gone with the less meaty kind.

Despite marinading the ribs with a mix of minced garlic, fried garlic, fried shallot, five spice, chilli paste, beer, dried chilli, sesame oil, shrimp paste, vinegar, sugar, honey (and the left over tomato salad from last night); and basting with a mix of tomato chutney, chilli paste and barbecue sauce the ribs, ultimately, tasted just like pork.

For sides I blanched and fried off some asparagus with fried shallot and bacon wrapped corn.  The bacon was outstanding, not as crispy as I'd have liked but meaty and bacony.

Spicy Grilled Fish (By G)

After 7 weeks of travelling I was really looking forward to cooking for myself (and Biggs) again.  I got a little cookbook in Cambodia and, after intense scrutiny over a long period of time, settled on barbecued fish.

The recipe called for whole Mackerel but they didn't have any at the fish shop - they guy said Taylor is running at the moment (which I took to be a good thing) so I got that instead.

I marinated the fish in a lemongrass, chilli, ginger, shallot, lime and coconut blend then chucked them on the barbecue.  To make sure the fish was cooked all the way through I chucked them in the oven for a while.

For sides I attempted a Burmese tomato salad - tomatoes, red onion, coriander, fish sauce, vinegar, lemongrass (actually the recipe called for lemongrass vinegar but we appear to be fresh out), fried garlic, fried shallot and crushed peanuts. Also, I blanched some beans, added red onion, rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, tamarind paste, lime juice, sugar, fish sauce, sesame oil and fried garlic.

To my surprise the fish was moist and perfectly cooked. I think it could have done with some more of the marinade. The tomato salad was a long way off the mark and the beans were a bit over blanched - otherwise it was a pretty good effort. Somehow I've lost the ability to multitask so there was a lot of dashing back and forward as I remembered urgent things that needed to be done shortly after they needed to be done.

Changi Airport Dinner (by G)

My last night in Singapore - dinner at the airport. Singapore airport is massive with many excellent dining options... sadly I have a tradition of eating at a certain noble burger chain whenever I fly out of Changi A/P.

I can't remember exactly what burger I ordered - all I know is that it looked nothing like the one in the picture.  It reminded me of the Whammy Burger scene in Falling Down - 'Look at this sorry, miserable, squashed thing'.  Customs had already confiscated my knife, baseball bat and firearms so I had little option other than to eat it.

Also shown are 9 chicken tenders - to me they appear to be nuggets... I guess it's a cultural thing.  They were pretty much as expected - cold, with an unusual squashed chicken texture.

Pasta with Caper Butter Sauce (by Biggs)

Sigh! I was hoping G would be home by now. I was really looking forward to a home cooked meal. Alas, he's still in Singapore being threatened with deportation back to Malaysia so I figured I should fend for myself tonight.

I didn't have a plan, any groceries or much motivation so made dinner with the three things I did have - pasta, capers and butter. Pasta with Caper Butter Sauce, it's a real thing....look it up.

It was really tasty but you can't eat much before your greased-up innards threaten to leak out of your anus.

Hmmm....too far? Fear not, G will take the dinner reins tomorrow.....pending deportation.

Duck Rice (by G)

After the excesses of the night before I decided tonight I should get something a bit more modestly priced for dinner so I went to a nearby hawker centre.

I had decided on roast pork rice from one hawker but he was out of pork so I ended up with duck.  It's not the best duck I've ever had, the meat was a bit grey, but you can't deny the value for money - about $3.50.

Another positive is that it conforms to my personal plating philosophy - 'dump the tastiest shit you can make on a plate and to hell with aesthetics'.

Pork, Peas, Potato.....and Bacon (by Biggs)

I'm desperately hoping tonight is the last night I have to cook for myself for a while so I thought I should enjoy it with some of my favourite things....pork, peas, potato and bacon.

The potatoes were oven-baked then fried up with bacon, peas were mixed through and served with a pan-fried pork chop. I can feel my arteries clogging as I type.

And, yes....this does mean I'm having crackling for dessert.

Braised Abalone in Superior Sauce (by G)

When I checked in at the airport in Ipoh (Malaysia) to fly to Singapore the Immigration guy noticed I had less than 6 months left on my passport (5 months and 22 days to be exact). 'You'll be deported from Singapore,' he said. 'It's not worth even taking the flight'.  I was adamant that I would take the flight and sort it out at the other end so they had me sign a waiver absolving them of any responsibility or financial burden if I got deported back to Malaysia.

Initially I was a bit worried but put it out of my mind as a later problem. When I got to Singapore they either didn't notice (or didn't care) about the expiry and let me straight in no questions asked.

I had worked out that being deported would be an expensive exercise for me - a flight back to Malaysia, changing or re-booking my flight back to Australia... when it didn't happen I figured I had a bunch of hypothetical extra money and decided to blow some of it on dinner.

I found a seafood restaurant that looked okay (though totally deserted of customers) and ordered the 'Braised Abalone in Superior Sauce'. I've never had abalone before and the rumours are true... it's fucking expensive. As you can see below, the plate consisted of a mushroom, a small whole abalone and three pieces of broccoli for the reasonable price of 38 Singapore dollars.

The flavour and texture of the abalone was not that dissimilar to the mushroom. I've heard abalone can be chewy if cooked incorrectly so I guess they did a good job of the braising. I don't know what goes into superior sauce but it turned out to be a glossy, mild, savoury sauce that complimented the abalone.

Not shown is a large plate of excellent seafood fried rice - essential for filling the vast recesses of my stomach not filled by the small abalone.

Wine (by Biggs)

Fortunately, since the blog began, I've been photographing most of my meals just in case I fall asleep early one night and lunch becomes dinner. That happened today.

Embarrassingly, lunch was wine. If only I'd photographed breakfast today as well.

I drank wine in the afternoon and fell asleep. Now it's late and I can't be arsed making dinner.

Tomorrow is a new day.