Ham, Cheese and Spinach Omlette (by G)

The main theme for my meals is to use up the remainder of the Christmas food, which basically means ham for every meal. As Biggs was not home I decided to do a simple omelette with some diced ham with frozen spinach and cheese from the freezer.  What more is there to say but, um, "Awesome!". Also, the omelette didn't look too great when I first plated it so I re-plated it. "Why bother?" you may ask after a brief glance at the resulting image below. That's only because you didn't see it the first time round.

Kafe Meze (by Biggs)

New Years Eve this evening so a bunch of us got together and went out to dinner. Joss and Annetta were keen on having some Greek food while they are in Australia so we took the opportunity tonight. It may look like we had a bunch of different things but in fact, we mainly had halloumi. Lots and lots of halloumi. I think we ended up ordering a couple of rounds each over the course of dinner.....which is something like 50 slices of halloumi all up. Seems appropriate!

You know you've got good friends when they all want to celebrate the New Year by eating cheese.

Chicken with Camembert Sauce (by Biggs)

The main focus tonight was to use up some of the Christmas leftovers. Seems most of the leftovers are either meat or cheese so dinner involved three meats and three cheeses. That seems like an appropriately balanced meal right?

It was oven baked chicken topped with ham and a WEIRD Camembert sauce I concocted. The salad was mostly halloumi and chorizo but I did my best to freshen it up with lettuce, tomato and snow peas. In my mind it was going to be a lot fresher than it turned out!

Lamb Pizza Tortillas (by G)

Among the leftover meats from Christmas was some lamb. I know what to do with lamb mince - you season it up (in this case with cumin, coriander and berbere spice), spread it on pita bread and grill it. I did go to quite a bit more effort by sprinkling some finely chopped shallots on top before grilling and serving with sliced tomato and some lettuce but overall it was a pretty un-taxing meal to cook.

In the confusion of a 4 day weekend I didn't actually realise this was tortilla Tuesday but the result is kind of reminiscent of a tortilla so I think I got away with it.

Mac Loaded Fries (by Biggs)

Tonight I went to the baseball. What do you eat when you go to the baseball? An American Classic of fries topped with bacon mac n cheese. Great concept not excellent execution - there was sooooo much mustard I almost choked with every forkful.

Pizza (by G)

Yes, well. Picture the scene if you can. It's a long 4 day weekend and all I want to do is drink beer, eat pizza and read Murakami. I had the beer and Murakami and when Biggs messaged to tell me she wouldn't be home to cook me dinner I ordered up some pizza. There were also some soggy chicken-type balls, they were fucking awful. The pizza was not too bad though...

Cold Pea and Ham Soup (by G)

Got to use up the ham, that is the post Christmas rule. Pea and Ham soup is a traditional 'use up the Christmas ham' post Christmas meal, the weather is kind of hot though so I decided to do a cold version. I had some fresh coriander so I decided to try an Asian version with lemongrass and other fresh Asian flavours, but I couldn't find any lemongrass or whatever else I was looking for.

In the end I just fried up some spring onions and garlic, added ginger, minted peas, some fish sauce, chilli sauce and coriander and blitzed the shit out of it... then strained it, not something I would normally do (or probably have ever done) but I was in the mood for straining. I'd fried a bunch of diced ham earlier so it was just a matter of dumping that in a bowl and pouring the cold soup on top. The ham was plentiful. Whatever other complaints there may be no-one can complain about the quantity of ham.

Ham and Eggs (by Biggs)

An obvious Boxing Day dinner - ham and eggs. The Christmas Ham hasn't had much of a look in over the past couple of days so I thought I'd give it some attention tonight. A few generous slices of ham and two fried eggs - dinner sorted. I also served up the only greens I could find in the house - two spears of asparagus and some fried parsley.

Christmas Special! (by G and Biggs)

G came back from Mexico in a pretty relaxed mood and decided we were going to have a simple approach to Christmas Day and just do up some lovely platters. I agreed to do a breakfast platter and he was going to look after the luncheon platter.

Then his brain took over and it couldn't help itself but invent the unheard of, Internet black hole, totally fictional DUMPEMBOUCHE! Christmas. Was. On!

Biggs: I started the day off right with some bacon and eggs, jazzing it up a bit by baking the eggs in a basket of bacon and serving them with a side of halloumi and asparagus with a touch of Christmas ham on top.

A Bloody Mary on the side ensured a crackin' start to the day. Speaking of crackin' there was quite a mis-step when I managed to shatter an entire egg, shell and all, into one of the bacon lined muffin trays - no matter, I just gave myself that one so as not to ruin G's Christmas. After all, he was about to embark on ruining his Christmas Day all by himself!

G: Biggs and I were watching some baking show the other day and the TV person made a croquembouche. I don't have a sweet tooth at all so I pondered out loud, "Why doesn't anyone ever make a savoury croquembouche, with dumplings or something, a dumpembouche". Biggs picked up on that and ran with it and insisted on a dumpembouche for Christmas instead of my original, simple, plan of just doing platters. As to the final resulting dumpembouch... I don't want to talk about it. It was a failure, dumpembouch is not a thing and I don't want to talk about it. That's not to say that I won't, one day, a long time in the future, forget the searing pain of failure that this dumpembouche brought me and try again...

Biggs: I for some reason offered to make dessert which wasn't a great idea since I've never made dessert before, barely eat dessert and really don't care about such things. I tried to care, I really did. I loved our Grandma's flummery when I was little so thought I would recreate that. I assumed it was a jelly made on cream but the Internet seemed to think it was just a jelly wizzed up to make it fluffy. So, gelatine, water and sugar were mixed up and heated with orange and lemon juice. Then, once set in the fridge slightly, passionfruit was added and wizzed up for a long, long time. I made a giant error of using a hand blender with blades instead of beaters so in seconds the passionfruit seeds had broken up and turned the whole thing into a grainy, grey mess. I served it with cream and strawberries and everyone was VERY polite.

 

Biggs: G doesn't eat dessert so I served him up a cheese platter of which I didn't take a photo - you'll just have to use your imagination.....imagine the best cheese platter ever....it was something like that. I did however take a photo of the fruit platter Fi and Dan brought along. I don't know where they get their fruit from but it sure was fresh and delicious, super ripe and flavourful. They also brought along some crackers, hommus and a heap of different home brews that were very welcome! 

Pasta Salad (by Biggs)

I wanted something following a few Christmas Eve dinner rules tonight:

Something simple to cook, light to eat and that wouldn't trash the kitchen.

A pasta with chorizo, tomato, basil and peas. The dressing was mostly the oil rendered from the chorizo but I also added some Italian dressing from a bottle.

I think I followed the rules okay. Without the chorizo it would have been pretty depressing and flavourless.

The First Ham of Summer (by G)

The first ham of summer is a wonderful, glorious thing. The first meal using the first ham of summer should be simple and showcase the majesty of the ham. There will be many ham meals in our future, ham will be added to just about every dinner for the next few weeks - so that first meal needs to whet the appetite for what is bound to become a much maligned waste of fridge space.

Being a savvy fellow I decided to have my ham (along with a bunch of other Christmas requirements) delivered by a man direct to my door from the supermarket. No fighting the crowds at the supermarket like a schmuck on Christams-eve-eve for me, no sir!

Of course the jerk-wads at the supermarket delivery place saw if differently, they didn't end up bringing me my ham, so I ended up having to get it myself from the very supermarket chain that did not have any hams in stock (ideally our Christmas ham would not come from the supermarket but such is life). As I was already at the supermarket I decided to get some ham accompaniments. Rather than oven chips or potato gems I decided to get oven bake onion rings, also some Kaiser rolls and slices of gruyere cheese.

With these items, and a couple of eggs and pickled jalapenos already in stock, I whipped up a couple of delicious ham, egg and cheese rolls with a side of (decidedly un-delicious) onion rings.

Mizu (by Biggs)

I went out to dinner with Julie tonight and we decided to meet in West End. We have a shared love of sushi so I suggested Mizu. We didn't actually order any sushi in the end but instead concentrated on fried meats and gyoza.

I don't know why I don't eat at Mizu every single night.

Achiote Prawn Tortillas (by G)

Biggs was not home for this one so I low-balled it. Briefly fried prawns mixed with some achiote from a bottle on a smear of mashed avocado and shop bought tortillas. Simple and delicious.

Note the prominent use of fresh jalapeno as garnish - Biggs brought a genuine home-grown chilli back from a visit to Darren and Nancy's place the other day. If you disregard the rest of the items on the plate this was pretty much a free meal.

Pork Hock Pasta (by G)

Kartoffelpuffer (by Biggs)

I love, love, love a potato pancake of any persuasion but am TERRIBLE at making them. I was at our awesome local deli recently and saw they had boxes of kartoffelpuffer mix. A box of potato pancake mix? How could it possibly go wrong?! Well, I don't exactly know how it went wrong but it sure did.

The pancakes turned out weird and wet and gummy. A very strange texture that never seemed to really cook through. But, as I said, I love a potato pancake of any persuasion so was still pretty happy with dinner. Especially given I served it with a side of smoked salmon. And super especially because I got to use the work kartoffelpuffer about 35 times this evening.

The salad was tomatoes, cucumber and olives as well as some rocket.....chopped up given G's immense fear of it's chocking potential. Chives and creme fraiche topped it all off.

Gabba Dog, Burger and Chips (by G)

Market Food and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (by Biggs)

Red was in town this evening, visiting from Melbourne, so I took her to one of my favourite places to eat - the West End Friday Night Markets. The plan was to walk around and peruse everything that was on offer and then make a decision on eats after the grand tour. I don't think Red quite got the concept because she stopped at every single food stall and said "yep, let's get that". She wanted all the things. Understandable really. Everything looked pretty delicious.

In the end we decided on a pork bun entrée - they were fine. We followed them with a great paella. Then, EXCELLENT ribs. Lastly, we decided we were going to have some calamari but it was going to be an ungodly wait so I just picked us up some gyoza instead.

Then were went out and got very drunk so Red offered to make us a midnight snack of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. She was totally on top of the prep side of things but once they got in the pan I think she lost interest. I mentioned a burning smell which triggered her back into action. Though a little burnt they were pretty great. There was also midnight red wine.

Chicken and Chips (by G)

Here's a tip. If you're not much in the mood for cooking buy a bag of oven fries and a bag of something resembling crumbed chicken, throw them in the oven for a while and dump them on a plate. The result is not exactly a 'meal' made from 'food' but your stomach will hardly be able to tell the difference (actually I secretly enjoyed the crumbed lumps of whatever it was that was pretending to be chicken).

Chips (by Biggs)

I had drinks with work colleagues tonight so told G I wouldn't be home for dinner. Turns out I was home by the time G was having dinner but came armed with my own dinner of salt and vinegar chips.

Three Cup Chicken (by G)

I was reading 'The Grub Street Diet' the other day which featured Dominique Ansel, he cooked Taiwanese three cup chicken. I figured that if one of the world's best pastry chefs can cook it it must be pretty simple - and it is.

The name 'Three Cup' comes from the use of equal quantities do sesame oil, rice wine and soy sauce. The only other ingredients are chicken, garlic, ginger, chilli, thai basil and spring onions. The whole lot is simmered down and served with rice (or in my case noodles).

My version did not turn out too well in the looks department, I over reduced the sauce and the oil split out but the flavour was excellent.

A note on the chicken, I used a packet of 'chicken nibbles' from the supermarket which were, in fact, just chicken wings. Honestly! Has it really come to the point where people are so afraid to know where their meat comes from that they can't just call a chicken wing a chicken wing any more?

Chili Con Carne (by Biggs)

I was so excited about this dinner. I thought a big delicious bowl of chili con carne would be an absolute winner. Unfortunately I ended up making a big not-delicious bowl of chili con carne.

I don't know where I went wrong. I put all the right things in -  onion, capsicum, garlic, chilli, paprika, cumin, beef, stock, kidney beans, tomatoes both fresh and a paste - but it all just turned out a bit flavourless. I thought the salsa of avocado, tomatoes, corn and coriander would be an exciting little topper but even that was dull and uninspiring.

The bread served on the side was by far and away the highlight.....I didn't make the bread.

Mini Homemade Chalupas (by G)

I bought a miniature tortilla press when I was in Mexico recently and decided today was the day when I could be bothered going to the effort of making dozens of tiny tortillas.

Chalupa Poblanas seemed like the ideal vehicle for the mini tortillas as it didn't actually involve using them to wrap anything - plus I wanted Biggs to experience the joy of chalupas.

Corn tortilla dough is easy - I made half the regular mix - 1 cup mesa harina, 1/2 tsp salt, 3/4 cup water, mix and rest. The hard (or at least time consuming) bit is pressing the tortillas. I made 26, ate two, leaving 24 for dinner.

For the chalupa slurry I oven roasted half a capsicum, half an onion, 2 jalapeno chillies, 1/2 a tomato and a few garlic cloves then blitzed them up with plenty of oil and some fresh coriander. That was then fried and I added some pork hock meat (from a packet... it was a bit of a last minute idea and packet pork hock was the only non time consuming pork delivery system I could think of. I's actually very good).

Next I dumped the mini tortillas into the pork and vegetable mix, stirred them around to coat them as well as possible then served with a tomato, onion, cucumber, coriander and jalapeno salsa.

The chalupas were not wet and sloppy enough to be traditional, and the flavours were probably a bit cured porky to be authentic but I was most pleased with my efforts. Especially the fact that my mini tortillas didn't reconstitute themselves back into a dough when cooked in sauce.

Punjabi Palace (by Biggs)

G reminded me late this afternoon that it was my turn to cook. I shouldn't have been surprised - I've barely cooked for two months so it was bound to be my turn eventually. It's my last day of holidays and I'm not the cheeriest person on the planet so instead of making dinner I decided to ask a nice man from Punjabi Palace to do it on my behalf.

I asked the man to cook and bring us a Chicken Makhini, Beef Vindaloo, Cheese and Garlic Naan and some 'Indian Salad' (tomato, cucumber, onion). At the last minute I decided to make a poor financial decision and order lamb chops as well. Turned out to be a fantastic financial decision in the end because they brought much happiness.

And people say you can't buy happiness!

Halloumi with Vegetables (by Biggs)

Super lazy night tonight. Though, not so lazy that I didn't cook. I realised I haven't cooked this whole week so thought I should give it a red hot go. I kept it super simple though. I just

 

fried off some green beans, asparagus and tomatoes then topped it with a piece of grilled halloumi.

Tasty.

Pork Chop, Rosti, Mushroom and Eggs (by G)

It's a fatal error to be too dinner ambitious on a Sunday... I was too dinner ambitious.

My plan was to have a pork chop with a zillion different sides and a sauce and make it with love and such. In the end I just did the chop, rosti, mushrooms and a poorly fried egg. Sriracha served as a sauce.

Two good things about this dinner - I brined the pork chop in bacon water (after noticing how salty water got after it had been used to simmer bacon bones I realised I could use this to my advantage). Also I managed to make a crispy potato rosti, it was just a mix of grated potato, egg white, potato starch and seasonings fried in oil, but it got good and crispy.

Chicken Wings (by Biggs)

I met Bonnie for dinner tonight before seeing Custard but is was a bit too rainy to just meet in the beer garden of the Triffid. Bonnie was clear she wanted pizza so we headed to the Burrow.

Instead of pizza I ordered chicken wings and jalapeño poppers. I always order jalapeño poppers if I see them on the menu in a hunt for the perfect popper. The hunt is still on. These ones were hot but dull. 

As for the chicken wings, I think they forgot to toss them through the buffalo sauce as advertised on the menu but I wasn't unhappy about that. It left them crispy and savoury. They were good ones! 

Dinner was topped off with a giant glass of Merchant beer they had on tap satisfyingly called When Sloths Cry.

Sausage with Cabbage and Carrot Puree (by G)

I'm a sausage monster and when Biggs whetted my appetite the other day I decided I would require more sausages. I couldn't remember if Biggs went to the Stores and wanted Italian sausages and they gave her Pork and Fennel, or if she wanted Pork and Fennel and they gave her Italian... anyway I asked for Pork and Fennel and they gave me Pork and Fennel. They also had some bags of bacon bones so I picked up one of those.

My plan with the bones was to simmer them in water and make a kind of bacon jus for the sausages but the reduced liquid was just a bit salty to have as a sauce. Instead I decided to use it as the seasoning for the carrot puree and mushroom and cabbage fry.

The carrot puree was just boiled carrot with some leftover fennel that I softened in a pan blitzed with bacon water to a fine consistency.

The sausages turned out to be extremely salty so with the salty mushroom and cabbage and the salty carrot puree this dinner turned out to be quite the salty one.

I had mean to pick the meat off the bacon bones and fry it up with the cabbage. I forgot to do that and so served them on the side. They were the least salty thing on the plate.

Footlong Hot Dog (by G)

Finally I got my act together and decided tonight was the night for vegetarian. Then Biggs messaged me part way through the day and said we should have a beer at the bar that just opened up at West End and have something to eat at the market - so we did just that.

There is no way I'm going to pay someone to make me vegetarian food so I decided to have an oversized German sausage in a regular sized bun. Both Biggs and I decided on a cheese kransky, which was pretty good - except for the ABSOLUTE ABSENCE OF CHEESE IN THE KRANSKY!

I didn't measure the sausage but I appeared to be about a foot long so I guess in that respect they were not lying.

Duck's Nuts and Beer (by Biggs)

Beer and nuts. Not a lot else to say. I had beer and nuts for dinner.

Cheese and Pepperoni (by G)

With money in my pocket and at the end of a long week I decided to treat myself to a little snifter of cheese after work. Not so much as it would spoil the vegetarian dinner I had planned (to make up for the one I skipped on Wednesday). The pepperoni was not part of the plan initially but it seemed like a combination too good to pass up.

I suspect, sub-consciously, I was not ever planning to have anything but cheese and pepperoni for dinner because I took a photo of it - as seen below:

Garlic Dhal and Rice (by Biggs)

Indian Kitchen tonight. G and I ordered this garlic dhal earlier this year and thought it was fucking delicious. Tonight it was a bit average but still filled my belly effectively enough.

Homemade Pizzas (by G)

I'm on a bit of a no food waste blitz at the moment so when I had tortillas, roast chicken, coriander and salted onions left over from Tuesdays tortillas I decided rather than just keep them in the fridge and bin them later I would put them to use in Wednesdays dinner.  The obvious use for that particular mix of ingredients was to make pizzas. That tied in nicely because Wednesday is market day and I haven't been to visit the cured meat guy in weeks, so I got a pepperoni.

It was only after I had assembled all the ingredients that it occurred to me that Wednesday is supposed to be vegetarian day... but as they say in parts of Europe, 'once the pepperoni is in your hand your fate is sealed'.

I made three varieties of pizza, roast chicken and caramelised onion topped with coriander; pepperoni and salted onion with kiss peppers and an anchovy and olive pizza with capers. By far the best pizza was the simplest - anchovy and olive... so salty.

Note: I owe the universe one vegetarian meal.

Chicken Salad Tortillas (by G)

Tofu and Vermicelli Salad (by Biggs)

Okay, I virtually had exactly the same dinner as last night except in a bowl instead of in rice paper wraps.

Ham Noodles with Miso and Hot Sauce (by G)

Tofu Rice Paper Wraps (by Biggs)

House and dog sitting for Nancy this week so I took the opportunity to head to her local Vietnamese restaurant for rice paper wraps. Sure, it's technically my local Vietnamese restaurant too but at 100 meters from Nancy's it's hard to resist. Fresh, tasty and satisfying. Felt like they were doing good things to my body.

Steak and Cous Cous (by Biggs)

First time cooking in a little while but dinner was quite a success. I decided on a cous cous loosely based on a Jamie Oliver recipe. I say loosely based because I just used what I could find at my local grocer.

So, cous cous, two types of tomatoes, avocado, coriander, chili, jarred jalapeño and lots of old bay spice, fried egg on top and some sliced rump steak.

The recipe called for black beans which I knew would be a great addition but I couldn't find a tin at the grocer. Luckily I was having an afternoon wine at Nancy's and her husband was coincidentally cooking up some Mexican black beans for their dinner. He generously sent me home with some. They were super tasty and by far and away the best thing on the plate. Their deliciousness far outweighed any guilt I was feeling about stealing food from the mouths of Nancy's children.

Shepard's Pie (by G)

Margherita Pizza (by Biggs)

We had vague BBQ plans for this evening but didn't get our shit together enough to buy the required meats and salads so instead we found ourselves out for pizza.

I ordered the super simple margherita pizza. Chili and garlic were optional extras which I found a bit weird....why wouldn't they just be on the pizza in the first place? But, I ordered them to be on the safe side.

Not enough tomato, no fresh herbs but....pretty good.