Onion Pie (by Biggs)

I unexpectedly found myself responsible for cooking dinner tonight and was none too happy when I remembered it was also Vegetarian Wednesday. I had zero inspiring ideas but the household has been big into slow-cooking onions lately so I wondered if I could hodge-podge that into a meal.

I hodge-podged it good. I looked up a few different recipes and they all seemed insistent that the pie crust should be made from crackers and butter. I couldn't make it work so just kept adding butter until I ran out. Too much butter in the end it seems but it held together okay.

The pie filling was one million onions, milk, eggs and cheese. Some freshness on the side and bread for good luck.

Green Chorizo Tortillas (by G)

I had seen green chorizo ages ago and was determined to make it, somehow or other it slipped my mind. Eventually I remembered and here it is.

The chorizo is a mix of pork mince and ground toasted spices (bay leaf, cloves, cumin seeds and coriander seeds) along with some blended green things parsley, coriander and chillies - also roasted garlic. I was super tempted to add paprika but the recipe didn't call for it.

I made some sauces as well - one with grilled avocado, fried onion and coriander. The other with roasted garlic, red chilli, tomatoes, some liquid smoke and a dash of savoury chilli sauce.

All that was topped off with crumbled feta.

Serving dinner family-style can get a bit nail-biting sometimes, when the good stuff is running out and there are still tortilla wraps left... so I decided to serve these tortillas ready made. The green chorizo was okay - much greener than I expected and a bit dryer and more crumbly.

Crumbed Steak (by G)

Biggs is out of town so I decided to something basic for dinner. Crumbed beef steak with mashed potato.

Who knew crumbing is so difficult - I shan't try it again, I was not too successful. I think my egg mix was too thin, maybe I cooked it on too low a temperature... who knows. What I do know is that the crumb layer got sweaty and sloughed off. You do not want your dinner to resemble a moist, shedding reptile.

Chicken Dinner (by Biggs)

The street my hotel is in has all the classics - Golden Arches, The Colonel, Sandwich Artists and even 'Where America Comes to Eat'. All in no way tempting. I walked around and around and around the block before settling on this...a chicken dinner. I can sing the jingle if you like. "Australia, your chicken is ready....."

Caesar Salad (by G)

I decided on something healthy for dinner. Salad is healthy right?  My salad had bacon, parmesan, eggs... all the healthy stuff. There were also some leftover olives in the fridge so I added those as well.

I forgot to add croutons - no matter, bread is high in carbs and probably not all that good for you.

Dinner was healthy (presumably), nutritious (possibly) and delicious (definitely).

Chicken Parmigana (by Biggs)

I flew into Townsville today for work, too late for anything but room service. The choices were slim - steak (likely lukewarm and uninspiring), pizza (currently on a ban) and parmigiana....an obvious choice.

Not the best I've ever had but not the worst.

Chicken and Cous Cous (by G)

After my recent faux pas leaving Biggs hanging on chicken wing dinner night I decided I did not deserve anything nice for dinner.

I threw together some cous cous with old freezer burned peas and leftover olive and served it with the remains of a supermarket barbequed chicken. It was pretty nice despite my intentions.

Curry and Rice (by Biggs)

Some friends of mine decided to get me out of the house and force me to watch fireworks tonight. I'm a grumpy old lady when it comes to crowds of families having fun so they kept it fairly simple for me. They plied me with booze, curry and sports on TV then when it was fireworks time I just had to wander out to the street. It was great!

The curry was great too. Big chunks of beef and tomato. Super spicy. I don't know what more to say. It was really really great. Apparently big pots of this are rare in this household and this curry is only cooked about once a year. If I could cook a curry this good I'd cook it at least once a week!

Chicken Roll (by G)

Biggs had suggested I cook up some chicken wing, I agreed. I brined some wings and marinated others, prepared some smoking materials - days in advance.

Alas, I was delayed at work and did not make it back in time to actually cook the wings. I brings a tear to the eye to imagine whistling as she skipped home, certain in the knowledge that there would be chicken wings in the near future... but the chicken wings never came.

Biggs took care of her own dinner and I swung by the supermarket on the way home and got some breadrolls, a barbequed chicken, some olives. I threw all those things together and squeezed some tartare sauce on top. More than I deserved.

Quick Noodles (by Biggs)

I was promised beer and chicken wings for dinner but G never came home. I'd even lit the BBQ for him in preparation for the promised chicken wings. Eventually the fire went out, the hour got late and by the time the coals were stone cold I decided I should probably forage for my own dinner.

I thought perhaps we might have some freezer treats. I had a quick look and found some seafood balls left over from a recent hot pot and a few rashes of bacon - gold struck! I have a bizarre love for processed seafood products and bacon is my favourite.

I fried them up with some frozen veges, a packet of hokkien noodles and added some hoi sin, soy and chili sauce. In the end, an incredibly satisfying dinner!

Sausage Dogs (by Biggs)

I was harping on last night about never drinking again, eating vegetables, respecting my body more, blah blah. I had plans for something fresh and healthy for dinner but then got in a grumpy funk and decided on hot dogs instead.

G likes his hot dogs made with sausages so I packed these buns full of sausages, onions, bacon and cheese.

Topped with some Western Bull Dogs promotional tomato sauce, these were super tasty. Happy again!

Halloumi Slider - with a twist! (by G)

The twist is that I used mushrooms instead of bread rolls...

I'm a bit disappointed with the sliders - the mushrooms and the halloumi needed more cooking. I deliberately kept the mushrooms firm and a bit underdone but in hindsight it would have been much better to season them up and cook the crap out of them. The halloumi looked cooked but was not as melty as I had intended.

Oh, well - you live and learn... and it wouldn't be vegetarian Wednesday if you came away satisfied with dinner.

Juan More Taco (by Biggs)

We don't often have a mid-week family outing but when Spain's best surf rock band - Los Coronas - come to town you can be damn sure G and I will be there.

Fortunately we could still adhere to Tuesday rules what with Brisbane Taco truck Juan More Taco parked at the stage door. We had a beef one, a pork one and a chicken one. All good.

The show was brilliant but we celebrated with so many beers I can't remember much more about the tacos. They were definitely good.

Moroccan Stew with Left-over Meats (by G)

I Don't Want To Talk About It (by Biggs)

I don't want to talk about it.

Carpetbagger Steak (by G)

It came to my attention recently that there is such a thing as carpetbagger steak, and it is a traditional Australian recipe. The internet disagrees - apparenty it may have originated in America but I'm claiming it.

Basically it is a steak stuffed with oysters and wrapped in bacon. I used 6 oysters (being all that I could afford) mixed with butter, parsley and garlic and stuffed it into an eye fillet of beef then fried the surface and oven roasted it for a bit with a bacon wrapper. Unfortunatley the bacon was too short to wrap all the way around so the effect was lost a bit.

Naturally when I carved the fillet into steaks it was very rare in the middle so I resorted to the old home cook trick of frying the surfaces.

Colonial Australians probably would have topped the steak with osteria caviar and truffles with a side of seared foie gras but I blew the budget on the other ingredients so instead I cooked up some multi coloured carrots, baby potatoes and brocollini and mixed through some pine nuts and bacon - as you do. There was also some of the flavoured butter in an oyster shell on the side.

Mac 'n' Cheese Pizza (by Biggs)

When I saw this scene in Parks and Recreation I knew this dinner was going to be in my future. I've got a cracking mac and cheese recipe so figured it would be pretty great in pizza form.

I couldn't be arsed making dough....it's Friday after all. G talked up some shop bought bases recently so figured I could get away with them. Alas, I searched two supermarkets to no avail. Fortunately I spied some naan bread and decided that would do the trick.

G thinks I only made this with the hope that it would end with a kiss from Amy Poehler. I'm still waiting.....

Jerked Chicken, Jerk (by G)

Vegetarian Scotched Eggs (by Biggs)

Okay, so, this wasn't perfect but I do think I've had a good run of at least trying with dinner. Anyway, it's Vegetarian Wednesday so I started with an significantly unfortunate handicap.

A while back I had this genius idea of vegetarian scotched eggs where you replace the pork with falafel. A genius idea perhaps but where it went wrong was with the "replace the pork" part. Bad idea!

I was hoping to just buy a falafel mix but couldn't find any so had to draw on my kebab shop wench roots and put it together myself. I went with chick peas, onion, lots of herbs and spices, a touch of egg white and flour. I would have added tahini if we had any which I'm sure would have helped with the resulting dryness situation.

The vegetable combination was one G has enjoyed before but, once again, the difference being the pig. Last time the veges were cooked in pork fat and were delicious. This time, not cooked in pork fat and they were fine.

I knew I would probably be disheartened by eating vegetarian scotched eggs regardless of the genius of the idea so I cooked up some halloumi as well. That was, and is always, a good decision.

Smokey Pork Blue Corn Tortillas (by G)

Bacon and Cheese Croquettes (by Biggs)

I love croquettes so decided to whip some up myself. A simple mix of mashed potato, bacon and parsley, crumbed and deep fried. Sounds okay right? And it was....especially since I snuck a big chunk of cheese into the middle of each one.

An olive salad side, a bread roll and a generous slab of butter. What more could one want?

I am getting awfully good at frying things if I do say so myself!

Hotpot (by G)

I've owned a hotpot pot for ages and only ever cooked one hotpot. Disappointing I've used it only once. I decided to rectify this by making another.

There are a million hotpot recipes out there - I won't go into details other than to say that my version includes Szechuan peppers - lots of. I did a bit of a half-half thing with spicy stock and non-spicy - it's good to have a break from the spicy sometimes.

For dippings I provided heaps of things, fishballs from a packet, puffed tofu, fresh chicken breast, hokkien noodles, enoki mushrooms, Chinese greens, carrot, prawns, pork ribs (that I precooked for safety) and some bundles of konnyaku noodles.

It's a bit of a piss-about to make, and costs more than the gross domestic product of most the world's countries but hotpot is about the best thing you could ever choose to cook.

Spicy Spare Ribs (by Biggs)

I was unusually organised this weekend and got my dinner marinating as soon as I got home from work on Friday. Pork spare ribs in honey, tomato sauce, soy and hoisin sauce, garlic, ginger and chili.

Not much left to do on Saturday night but to pop them in the oven, cook some rice and rinse some salad leaves.

I'm not certain G enjoyed this because he was "too full" for seconds but I thought it was fucking great. I ate the leftovers for breakfast with a beer.

Stuffed Mussels and Fisherman's Eggs (by G)

I've been meaning for ages (approximately since February) to use fancy tin of sardines Biggs got me for my birthday. I've had the recipe on standby for almost as long, but something always crops up. Finally I got my chance.

The eggs are just chicken eggs baked on a bed of shallot, parsley, garlic and sardines. I suspected that a small serve of sardines and eggs does not a meal make, so I also stuffed a few mussels Istanbul style.

It was a relatively fiddly pain in the ass. Locating mussels was most of the problem - the ones I eventually found were pre-blanched, which was not my plan. Many of the bag of mussels had been smashed to pieces - which was not ideal.

The filling is a rice, cinnamon, chilli, currants and... all sorts of other stuff. Stuffing that into the shells was vexing. After that the mussels were steamed, the rice was already overcooked so it probably didn't need that extra cooking time.

Anyway, the mussels were pretty good despite the addition of fruit and spices which I am not particularly fond. In retrospect it would have been simpler, cheaper and better to travel to Istanbul and let them take care of it.

The fisherman's eggs were okay - pretty fishy.

Lamb Cutlets with Anchovy Broccoli (by Biggs)

I've been craving 80's crumbed lamb cutlets for a while now and found this menu suggestion on the Gormet magazine website. Broccoli cooked in anchovy jus? Yes!

I must admit these weren't the crispy over-cooked cutlets I remember from my youth and thus a touch disappointing. But, I think I did actually cook them quite well. A double crumb in a thyme and parmesan crumb fryed to medium (accidentally a touch darkened by an initial high heat). They weren't super flavourful but I'm on a current salt ban after a recent INCIDENT.

I also thought the broccoli, cooked down in chicken stock, garlic and anchovy, was salty enough. Definitely freshened up nicely with a squeeze of lime. It was meant to be lemon but can you believe that the (big chain) supermarket did not house one single lemon?

The best bit of dinner was that Fi and I, when we met for lunch today, got to go on an anchovy hunt through the Valley delis. I now happily own many an anchovy variety.

Mushroom Rissoto (by G)

Vegetarian Wednesday. This is a classic risotto mixed with a ton of blitzed mushrooms and a healthy dose of butter and cheese. It looks a bit like poop-on-a-plate, it was not too bad though.

Char Siu Pork Tortillas (by Biggs)

The char siu pork lettuce wraps were so successful the other night I decided I could probably replicate them in tortilla form. I still couldn't be arsed to make the tortillas from scratch but I could definitely be arsed to stuff them full of pork, carrot, capsicum and spring onions.

I bought way too much char siu pork but think I might have been influenced by the awesome lady from Burlingtons. She sure doesn't dick around when it comes to BBQd meats.

Sauces served with dinner were hoi sin and sriracha.

Chopped Salad....and Meat (by G)

I was in the mood for a massive hunk of meat - happily I found a rib roast at the store that satisfied my desire. I didn't do too much with the meat, just seasoned it, roasted it in the oven for a bit then rested it. The meat was excellent.

As most people know, I am particularly fond of vegetables - alas, Biggs is not. To try and tempt her I tried to mix up the flavours, textures and colours. Sliced purple carrots, kohlrabi, capsicum and a sprinkling of mixed sprouted seeds (we saw a show recently where Nigel Slater used sprouted seeds and Biggs seemed very enthusiastic about them - or, perhaps, mockingly disdainful. Yes, the latter one sounds more like how she would view sprouted seeds). I had a handful of pickled onions and olives in the fridge so I sliced them up and threw them in as well for luck.

Crocodile, Chips and Curry Sauce (by Biggs)

I was watching a British cooking show the other day and a lady made fish and chips served with curry sauce and pickled onions. An intriguing combination I'd never heard of before - must be a UK chippie thing.

I decided to give it a go but with the Australian twist of using crocodile instead of fish. Admittedly I thought crocodile would taste pretty similar to fish but it turns out it really, really does "taste like chicken".

Home-made chips is an effort I usually try to avoid but turns out they're actually not too much of a challenge as long as you've got a vat of oil handy. I did have a vat of oil handy and took advantage of it for both the chips and the battered crocodile. The batter was quite a success - equal parts flour and beer along with two eggs and a generous amount of old bay spice.

I think dinner would have been quite good but the chips and crocodile got a bit knackered waiting in the oven while I was making a curry sauce. I was a touch too generous with the seasonings in the sauce so it turned out to be more of a salt sauce than a curry sauce - disappointing.

G was also convinced part of his crocodile was undercooked but I think it was just a fatty bit. It seems crocodile fat doesn't crackle up like I'd hoped.

The pickled onions were not pickled by me and whoever pickled them did a much better job than I ever could.

Sausage Dinner (by G)

Initially I had forgotten that Biggs would not be home for dinner - once I realised (when Biggs reminded me) I decided to make an abstract meal based on that Samuel L. Jackson movie where there are snakes on a plane... I can't recall what the title.

The sausages represent the snakes - the bread represents various other things. I haven't personally watched that particular movie but I'm pretty sure I covered all the plot elements.

Triffid Dog and Pork Chips (by Biggs)

Bon and I headed to the Triffid tonight to see Australia's beloved Whitlams and arrived a bit early to fill our bellys before the gig began. Bonnie couldn't decide between the hotdog and the pork chips so I suggested we have both. And both were really quite good.

The cheese kransky on the dog was great. Good pickles too. Bon had concerns about the chefs generosity of condiments. She argued that condiments are a very personal thing and should be left to the diner.

That's what we do in our household - I leave G to add his own gallon of sriracha to anything I cook.

Cheese, cured meats... and such (by G)

I cleverly saved some pork belly aside from the pork stew I made the other night. After roasting, chilling and slicing it was an excellent accompaniment for cheese, salamis, cured pork, cheese, cornichons, pickled onions and crusty bread.

Apart from having to do a lot of slicing dinner was high on the satisfaction-to-effort scale.

Dumplings (by Biggs)

I headed to Fi and Dan's tonight for dinner but was warned in advance that, if I wanted to eat, I would be put to work on a dumpling production line. They've had a work colleague visiting from China for the past month or two who had taught them the fine art.

Fi and Dan have a tendency to get a little monomaniacal when they discover a new food or recipe so have dedicated much of their time of late perfecting these dumplings. Fi's strength is making the dough and rolling out the skins where as Dan has the wrapping and stuffing skills.

Knowing we'd be at it for a while I came armed with some Burlington BBQ char su pork and a bunch of noodles and veges as a lettuce cup starter. A lovely little number complimented by some quick pickled cabbage Fi whipped up. Yep. This is why I love Fi. Because she's the sort of girl that keeps a jar of pickling liquid ready to go for any pickling related emergencies.

The dumplings were stuffed with a pork mince flavoured with soy, mushrooms, chives and I'm sure many other things. Once wrapped they were popped in a steamer and lovingly overcooked while we drank, chatted and listened to music.

A lovely night. Being part of the production line was incredibly meditativly therapeutic and the resulting dumplings were the best I've ever had.

Hangug-eo Seutail-ui Jeonyeog Sigsa (by G)

I love Korean food and this is probably the most authentic Korean meal I've made. It was fun to make too. Just put some cubes of pork belly in a pot, add some hot regular bean pastes, raw onion, capsicum, kimchi, garlic and a little water then let it simmer away until the pork is satisfactorily cooked. I added some of the thick rice cake noodle type things near the end as well - because that adds to the authenticity.

I served the stew on a bed of shredded lettuce and topped it with some spring onion.

Delicious. Maybe a bit too spicy for Biggy. It was very pleasing to my palate and, in the end, isn't that the main thing.

Miso Soba Noodle Salad (by Biggs)

There's a recipe, on the back of the packet of the most popular brand of soba noodles for a smoked salmon and caper dish, that is loved by this household. I thought there must be a vegetarian version and there was. Although, it turned out to be no where near as delicious.

This particular tofu was better than the average tofu (even with no seasoning added) but it still paled significantly in comparison to the delight of smoked salmon.

The soba noodles cooked to perfection (because I hovered relentlessly over the boiling pot to avoid overcooking), then chilled and served with slightly steamed carrot and snap peas as well as some rocket and thinly sliced radish. The tofu and some sunflower seeds were added along with an oddly acidic dressing.

The dressing was rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, miso paste, oil, Dijon mustard and ginger - mixed together it just tasted like lemon juice....even though I forgot to add the half lemon that G had left over from last night.

This dinner was horrifically healthy tasting. It made me feel good eating it - I could literally feel my superpowers returning....like, the ability to walk up a set of stairs and comfortably put on a pair of socks. But still, healthy dinner, really? What the hell was I thinking.

Prawn and Citrus Tortillas (by G)

It never occurred to me to make ceviche tortillas before, I don't know why. Possibly because the only time I've ever had ceviche it was in a hot, fly-blown shed somewhere in Latin America - the soggy, slightly rancid acid cooked seafood that I ate there did not greatly impress me.

I thought that with fresh local ingredients I could probably make a decent ceviche - in the end I lost my nerve and lightly cooked the prawns a little before marinating them in a lime juice, garlic and chilli mix.

The tortillas were quite good with the standard chunky salsa I made - I kind or regret pre-cooking the prawns in hindsight.