Chicken BLT (by Biggs)

For Christmas Nancy got me a German grain bread mix and today I finally got around to baking some. It didn't go well. I think I added too much water so the dough was quite sticky and didn't ever really seem to cook through however long I left it in the oven.

The only thing I could think to make for dinner that featured bread was a BLT. So, bacon was fried, tomato was sliced and a packet of rocket was opened. I also fried up some chicken breast to bulk out dinner. I tried to toast up the bread as much as it would.

For flavour I served it with some peri peri hot sauce and some avocado mashed with lemon, salt and pepper. Even though we already own a number of different chili sauces I specifically wanted a peri peri flavour. It was hot.

Barbequed Meats (by G)

Today, being Australia Day, I thought a barbequed dinner was in order. Rather than one or two meats I decided on 3.

I wanted chicken wings but could only get legs so I marinated them in soy, mirin, ginger, garlic, and sugar.

The other two meats were inspired by recipes from Luke Nguyen's 'Greater Mekong' series.

Chang Mai Pork is a marinade of garlic, coriander root, ground coriander seeds, sugar, soy, oyster sauce and pepper. Rather than pork belly I used a couple of cheap chops.

For the Uyghur Spicy Beef Skewers I marinated pre-cubed beef with a mix of vegetable oil, soy sauce, salt, chilli flakes, ground coriander, cumin, ginger powder, nutmeg, paprika and Sichuan pepper.

Everything was marinated for hours and hours and hours.

With a small barbecue and a lot of meat it is tricky to juggle the cooking so first I dropped some foil wrapped potatoes onto the coals then blackened the chicken legs and popped them into the oven to cook through. Next I put the pork chops and beef skewers on the grill - when they were half cooked I said a curse word when I remembered the corn should also have gone on so I chucked them on - then almost immediately realised there wasn't enough room on the grill so I put them into the oven with the chicken.  Once the pork and beef was cooked I took them off and discovered I hadn't taken the potatoes out as I'd intended.  Anyway, I put all of that stuff into the oven to stay warm while I unwrapped the corn and put them directly on the grill to get some colour. Then I dumped everything on a plate.

The corn was really good and fresh, the pork was a bit sweet but the coriander flavour was pretty intense and good. The beef was really flavourful, really, really flavourful. I thing sprinkling the skewers with more cumin and chilli flakes while they were grilling was a bit of overkill...

Roast Beef (by Biggs)

Why have meat and three veg when you can have meat and two veg? It's Saturday night so I wanted to make something a bit special. And, what's more special than roast beef (other than roast pork, obviously!)?

The only smallish roast available was already flavoured with some parsley and pepper but it didn't stop me adding more salt and pepper before putting it in the oven. The instructions suggested I cook it for 20 minutes and rest it for 10 so I decided to cook it for 40 and rest it for 15 which was pretty well perfect.

I decided to serve it with my two favourite vegetables - potatoes, mashed (with 50% butter) and peas, boiled (with 0% butter).

I also decided to serve it with my favourite gravy - salty from a packet.

My final inspiration was to put some whole garlic gloves in the baking tray with the meat. The first time someone served me a roast with whole roasted garlic I thought it was pretty whack but very sophistimacated. Surely you know what you're doing if you're making your guests eat garlic shell paper. Turns out it's how the professionals do it too so I went with it. Very "on-trend" you see.

Dinner was terrific.

Cheesy Pork With Braised Vegetables (by G)

I was watching Iron Chef (the Japanese and only good version) and saw the Iron Chef wrap a sweetfish around some cheese, crumb it and deep-fry it. That seemed and excellent idea to me if the fish was substituted for pork.

Things didn't go quite right from the start. I bought some pre-beaten pork schnitzel pieces from the supermarket - disappointingly they were all irregular sizes and it appeared some of them would not wrap all the way around the cheese - so I did a little extra beating but there's only so far a piece of pork is willing to be beaten. I thought I'd get around the likelihood of the cheese oozing out by enveloping the cheese in some nori before wrapping in the pork. Through a mathematical mis-step I didn't cut the pieces of nori large enough.  By that point my carefactor was much reduced so I just wrapped and skewered everything together, bathed the pork in a slurry of egg, flour and water, then dusted with a breadcrumb/parmesan mix and fried.

The oil got a bit hot at one point and I burned some of the crumbs, then I stuck them in the oven to stay warm.

I was looking for a couple of sticks of celery the other day and could only find a ginormous full bunch so I was determined to use up some of it today. I fried the celery in butter along with some carrot and mushrooms then added pepper and beef stock and reduced - braised vegetables in minutes.

I also oven roasted some little potatoes to ensure there was enough food.

As expected the cheese oozed out of the meat roll so I served it (rather elegantly) on the side. The time in the oven toughened up the pork quite a bit so it was quite leathery.  Despite these issues I still enjoyed this dinner.

Beef and Black Bean Sauce (by Biggs)

When I was deciding what to make for dinner I remembered that G went through a period a few years back of ordering beef and black bean sauce at every given opportunity. Unfortunately every recipe I looked up had only two steps - fry the beef, add the black bean sauce.

But, I pushed on and eventually found a recipe that involved me taking a lunchtime trip to Burlington's to purchase black beans. The recipe called for fermented black beans but the only options were dried, preserved or salted. I wasn't going to be bothered soaking the dried ones so it was a toss up between a small packet of preserved beans that seemed a little dry or a large packet of salted beans that seemed to have the right moist texture. At the risk of having a huge amount of (potentially) inedible beans left in our cupboard I went with the large packet. The instructions on the back sensibly suggested giving them a thorough rinsing prior to eating.

Even though I followed these instruction and gave the beans a good rinse they still tasted like.....poison, salty salty poison. But, once they were added to some fried beef, snow peas, onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine and served on rice...they were delicious.

In other news, G very generously agreed I could use his precious Japanese-fuck-off-sharp-do-not-touch-bitey-san knife to thinly slice the beef but at the last minute I chickened out and just used an old blunt one I found our drawer. Dinner was served and I still have all my fingers.

Pork Medallions and Pasta Salad (by G)

Today I wanted to wrap something in nori but did not want to go to all the effort of making sushi rolls so I decided to wrap pork fillet in nori.

Because it has been quite hot lately I decided to serve the pork cold along with a pasta salad - which seems like a very summery thing (in a low rent kind of way).

To get the pork started I seasoned it with salt and pepper then fried the surface to a brownness - then I brushed on some yakitori marinade from a jar then popped it in the over for 15 minutes, then re-basted with marinade then ovened it for another quarter of an hour.  After the pork had rested for a while I stuck it in the fridge to chill.  Come serving time I wrapped the pork in a sheet of nori - which was initially less successful than I'd hoped. Pork fillet is not a cylinder as in my mind but knobbly and tapers at one end - I ended up having to brush the seaweed sheet with water and mush it around the pork a bit.

The pasta salad is just a mix of cooked spiral pasta, finely diced cucumber, celery, yellow capsicum and tomato - then mixed through some mayonnaise.

To serve I sprinkled some powdered seaweed on the plate and drizzled some more of the marinade over the top.

I was pretty pleased with this dinner - it took very little time (it's like the more effort Biggs puts in to her dinners the less I make with mine).  The nori didn't add much but my burning ambition for today was fulfilled.

Peking Chicken Tortillas (by Biggs)

I knew I wanted to make tortillas with some sort of Asian flair tonight and after not much time on the interwebs I found a recipe for Peking Chicken Tortillas on the Epicurious website.

I made a sauce with hoi sin, soy, honey, ginger, garlic, rice vinegar and cayenne pepper. I sliced up three chickens worth of thigh fillets and marinated them in some of the sauce. After baking them in the oven for a little while I fried the pieces up for a little colour and caramelisation.

I simmered the rest of the sauce and threw some fresh plum in at the end. I was pretty happy with the sauce, it was well balanced and the cayenne added a nice little kick. The secret is that I followed the recipe precisely....except for quantities. I probably didn't need to quadruple the ingredients, the sauce was so rich we ended up with about four times too much left over.

The only greens involved were some sliced shallots which were a nice touch. I also added some capsicum because it was in the fridge and had to be used.