Sunday Roast (by G)

I was watching an episode of 'Save With Jaime' the other day and saw him make a roasted lamb shoulder, Biggs requested a roast for today so I went with it.

I'll be honest and say I didn't pay all that much attention to lord Jim (I was flicking the channel). I didn't see the start so I studded the shoulder with garlic and rosemary then stuck it in the oven for 3 hours (that much I did see), then Jim did something with the meat and put it back in for another hour (I uncovered it at that point).  I also saw him make some mint sauce (kind of) I covered some chopped mint with hot water, added sugar and vinegar and mixed it up.

For sides I roasted some potatoes, sweet potato and pumpkin (all a bit disappointing) and fried off some asparagus, bacon and quail eggs (I had them handy and couldn't imagine when I might use them in the near future).

The potatoes were frustratingly not good, I was trying to get them crispy and good - but they were not.

Steaks Morateur with Seafood Cocktail Entree (by G)

Today I was looking through 1960's cookery magazine Cordon Bleu Cookery Course for inspiration. Rather than inspiration I got two whole recipes. In 1960's dinner party style I made an entree and a main. For entree we had a seafood cocktail - a mix of celery, lettuce, frozen prawns (as specified), preserved mussels and crab (the recipe called for tinned crab - I couldn't find that, though I didn't look too hard. We had cooked and defrosted king crab instead).  For flavour there was an awesome vinaigrette of chardonnay vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and parsley.

The main was pretty simple. I made an anchovy butter by mixing anchovy and butter. Then it was just a matter of oven cooking some chip potatoes (as they called them in the 60's), boil some green beans (I added the rest of the cocktail vinaigrette for flavour) and fried off some very nice steaks in butter with fine chopped shallots and white wine.

 

 

Though the photo of the steaks is pretty bad I think it looks more appealing than the weirdly grey ones shown in the magazine. The flavours of the whole meal were great and, though I say it myself, the steaks were perfectly cooked to my liking.  I may have overcooked the chip potatoes slightly - I always have difficulty with those things. I know they need more than the 10 minutes listed on the packed but 1 1/4 hours was probably a bit too long.

Sausages and Tarts (by Biggs)

I don't know why G still lets me cook dinner once a week. I'm totally crap at it. I'm always very concerned I'm going to bitterly disappoint the household when I'm in charge of dinner so, this week, I decided to manipulate G's emotions with his favourite sausages to convince him I should still be allowed to step foot in the kitchen.

I was going to do sausages with a trio of healthy salads. I'm not sure what happened to that plan but I spent a bit of time on the Internet today and the next thing I knew I was making tomato tart things. The pictures of them with the recipe were a lot more dainty but after a couple of Friday night beers that went out the window too.

I almost ruined the whole thing by accidentally glugging truffle oil over everything but the tarts were tasty enough. They were puff pastry, parmesan, onion and garlic fried off, slices of tomato, chopped basil and mozzarella. The sausages were.....sausages.

The Vietnamese Restaurant (by Biggs)

Tonight I met my friend Red for after-work beers. After a bunch of them we decided we were ready for some dinner and being close to Chinatown decided to head there. The Vietnamese Restaurant is a favourite of mine so instincts lead me to their front door. 

I first started going here when I heard that it was owned by Regurgitator Quan's Mum. I've since learnt that that's actually Green Papaya but every time I remember the error in my ways Wooloongabba seems a long way away and I really do love this place so I stick with it. 

Red and I made an agreement to order big and big ordering we did. Entree was salt and pepper quail (my absolute favourite), steamed dim sims and pork stuffed chicken wings (not as exciting as you'd think)

For mains we ordered crispy duck and pork with vegetables and crispy noodles. The crispy duck pretty well blew my mind. I don't know what they did but it was pretty magic. My guess is it involved a light dusting of corn flour and a deep-fryer.

I declined an after dinner whiskey. I think this was a miscalculation. Idiot.

Potato and Chorizo Frittata (by G)

I has been way too long since I last had chorizo so I decided to get some into me today before I died of a flavour deficiency.

I didn't follow too much of a recipe for this frittata just boiled off some thick cut potato slices, added them to a small pan with fried slices of chorizo, caramalised onion and sage, Parmesan cheese and a bunch of whisked eggs.  After frying on the stove top and under the grill I popped it into the oven to make sure the egg was cooked through.  For a side I made a simple salad of cucumber, tomato and shallot.

The frittata was pretty good, it could have used a bit more chorizo - problem is, I decided to have a little quality check on the chorizo when I got it home and inadvertently ate one of the two I was going to use for dinner.

Chicken, Bacon and Beef Noodle Soup (by G)

I had a grand plan to hand pull some noodles and serve them in a nice broth. I did some research about how to make the noodles and watched a few on-line videos. It seemed easy enough, make some dough - streach it out, boil and serve.

The problem I came across in the whole process is that it's not enough to just want good noodle dough, you've got to knead it. I hand kneaded mine for about half an hour but I could see it was still a long way off so I cracked the shits and just rolled it flat and hand cut it. I could have been a bit more precise with the cutting of the noodles, they turned out more like tagliatelle.

The broth was made by boiling a supermarket barbecue chicken carcass and some left over bacon bones in plain water for a few hours. Not shown is a short rib surprise at the bottom of the bowl under all those noodles - these were browned off, coated in a mix of miso, honey, ketjap manis and sesame oil then slow roasted in the over for 4 hours.

For toppings I made a mulch of coriander, mint, garlic, lime juice, seeded red chilli and fish sauce and also sprinkled on some (packet) fried onion and fried garlic.

I guess if I had to take a positive from tonight's meal it would be that I now know how to hand make tagliatelle.

Classic Chicken Tortillas with Guacamole (by G)

I thought I would return to basics today. The chicken was coated in salt, white pepper, cumin powder and paprika then browned up in a pan - chicken stock and tinned tomatoes were added, then the whole lot was simmered for a couple of hours.

The guacamole consists of mashed avocado, diced red onion, coriander stems, minced ginger and lime juice.

Back to a full 100% flour tortilla, unfortunately I got the consistency of the tortilla dough a bit wrong - it was too watery and the end product was somewhat rubbery. Just goes to show that no matter how many times you make tortillas they can still come back and bite you in the ass... not literally - in fact you could say I bit them in the ass... though I don't think tortillas have asses... I ate them, they were okay, though they could have been better.