Gorditas (by G)

At some point in my internet meanderings over the past month I came across a photograph of a tiny little Mexican food truck and noticed they served Gorditas so I thought I would check it out.

Basically Gorditas are fresh tortillas fried in oil, cut open and stuffed with tasty. In this case I stuffed them with finely chopped barbequed chicken, cheese, fried red onion, fried capsicum, coriander, jalapeno, cumin seeds, oregano, paprika and a dash of Fi&Dan's world renowned tomato relish.

For a side I wanted to make a 3 bean salad - apparently they don't sell three bean mixes in a tin any more, only four beans. So I mixed a tin of various beans with some red onion, tomato, coriander, jalapeno, salt and a dash of lime.

Also, just for flavour, I made a picante sauce of tomatoes, garlic, jalapeno, salt and lime. Tomato and jalapeno in everything.

I was a bit dubious about frying the tortillas but they turned out excellently. I would have to say this was the best tortilla related dinner I've made in a while - which is good because I was running out of ideas...

Lemon Chicken Koftas (by Biggs)

I've already run out of ideas about what to have for dinner so I now just rely on the hope that I'll randomly stumble across a recipe every second day to make the following day. I caught a bit of Justine Schofield yesterday and she was making these so that was dinner decided.

The flavour in the koftas is onions caramalised in honey mixed with some preserved lemon and harissa. I wasn't going to commit us to owning a whole jar of preserved lemon so I just used non-preserved lemon. We didn't have harissa but I read you could substitute harissa with a sriracha, cumin and coriander mix. I couldn't immediately find our sriracha so I just used some green chili, tabasco, cumin and coriander seeds. Once that cooled I mixed it with chicken mince, egg, flour and coriander mix.

I made a quick salad of cucumber, olive, tomatoes and mint. The mint and tomatoes together made the salad quite sweet but it was still okay teamed with the koftas. The koftas were good, they could have done with a little more flavour but the flavour that was there was quite nice. I think I'd make them smaller next time....they turned out a bit sausage meatloafy being this size.

Summer Soup and a Sandwich (by G)

Biggs bought Ferran Adria's 'The Family Meal' quite some time ago and I felt a bit guilty that I haven't cooked anything from it yet.  The other day I was looking through it and found a recipe for gazpacho soup - which seemed a good idea for the summer.

Gazpacho soup alone would not make much of a meal so I decided to do a soup and sandwich combo.

The gazpacho soup was made by blending some blanched garlic, capsicum, cucumber, tomato, red onion, some stale bread, vinegar, olive oil, a little water... also, surprisingly, mayonnaise.  Unfortunately when I came to strain it I think I over-strained it so it was a very thin, texture-less liquid... which is probably why the lumpfish roe I spooned on top sank right to the bottom.

The sandwich consisted of lettuce, beetroot (because we have some left over), tomato, Swiss cheese and home boiled corned beef - on a Kaiser roll, with some mayonnaise.

The soup was a bit sharp - quite refreshing though. I didn't spice the corned beef as much as I normally would and the flavour was a bit lost on the sandwich. None-the-less it was an okay and easy Sunday dinner.

BBQ Pork Noodle Salad (by Biggs)

I work in Chinatown so spend my lunchtimes being temped by the BBQ ducks and pork loins hanging in the butchers window. Since it's a Saturday I had time to stroll down to our local butcher who specialises in such things and bought a BBQ pork loin to add to this salad. I could try making it myself I guess but why bother when it's done so deliciously by a very smiley Mr Hong Lee.

Other things in the salad were a bunch of different greens (I don't know the specifics, they came in a packet), sugar snap peas, capsicum, pickled ginger, chili, vermicelli rice noodles and a dressing of rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, lime juice and chili. 

The recipe said to crumble Japanese rice crackers over the top but I didn't know what that meant so instead I just got G and I some Tao Kae Noi tempura seaweed crackers as an afternoon snack. They were great, as was dinner. The noodles were slippery to the point of making dinner quite difficult to eat but we struggled through. 

Aussie Burger (by G)

As a counter to Biggs' English burger I decided to make an Aussie burger and take a blurry photo of it.

The chicken was seasoned according to a secret copycat recipe that I found here.  Despite how insistent the copycat was that all the seasonings must be exactly as stated in the recipe (and you can tell he's serious because the recipe instructions are written in capitals), I could not find Dalmatian Rubbed Sage, Jamaican Ground Ginger, Winter Savoury or Egg White Powder and I completely forgot to look for Fenugreek.

Anyway, apart from the things I couldn't get, I made some substitutions and prepared the chicken according to the recipe. Brined it in salt and MSG (as a substitute to Accent), doused it in the flour, herb and spice mixture then shallow fried it (in substitution to deep frying it).  The coating on the chicken was not as thick as I would have liked but the copycat recipe dude insisted that I ' DO NOT DOUBLE-BREAD CHICKEN SINCE IT PLACES AN EXCESS OF SODIUM AND SPICES ONTO FINAL PRODUCT AND COMPROMISES AUTHENTICITY'.

The crispy onions were battered, then crumbed, then shallow fried and turned out pretty crispy (if not a little burned).

After that it was just a matter of topping a sesame bun with some lettuce, cheese (I chose Havarti for some reason), beetroot, the chicken, some barbeque sauce and the onions).

The burger was okay. The chicken was not much like the real thing (I take the blame for that) but it did leave an authentic weird, slick coating in my mouth.

Indian-spiced Shepard's Pie (by Biggs)

I couldn't sleep the other night because my mind was racing thinking of various things I could cook for dinner now that I have to do it every second night. Eventually I thought the Internet must have some sort of recipe roulette type website and drifted soundly off to sleep.

Turns out Recipe Roulette is a thing so I spun.....and won. The recipe that came up was an Indian-spiced Shepard's Pie. Initially I thought it wasn't a recipe well suited to the heat-wave weather we've been experiencing but I also thought it would be super tasty. And, it was.

I fried off some lamb, onions and carrot before adding garam masala, chicken stock and peas. At the same time I cooked up some diced potato then fried it with turmeric and coriander. I dumped the later on the former, squeezed some lemon over the top and jammed the whole lot in the over.

I can't take the credit for this one but fuck me it was good. Thanks Recipe Roulette!

Stuffed Pork Medallions (by G)

I was too busy today to think about what to have for dinner so I winged it at the supermarket.  We ended up with pork medallions stuffed with pork sausage, shallot, parmesan cheese and sage powder. They were fried and then finished in the oven.

For healthfulness we had some carrot, baby corn and mushroom fried in butter and oil.  There was also an attempt at a kind of potato rosti thing - it didn't much work out so I tried to hide it under the pork.

The stuffing was not as flavourful as I'd hoped and the pork a little dryer than ideal - it would have benefited from a bit of gravy - alas there was none.