Hamburger (by Biggs)

We have a bag of oven chips in the freezer so I was trying to think of something to serve them with. I also spent most of my grocery money on booze this week so whatever it was had to be cheap.

I was thinking of what we would have had for Sunday night dinner in our youth given we had a family of five living on a moderate income and remembered hamburgers made a regular appearance. I intended to make them authentic with frozen cardboard patties and toast but couldn't walk past the fresh mince and bread rolls. The bread rolls were a nice grained knot roll. The mince was 'heart smart' (?) and already shaped into ovals.

Beyond that I tried to keep the burgers fairly simple.....salt and pepper on the burger, fried onions, cheese, lettuce, tomato and tomato sauce. There was some stress around the layering order but I pushed through and dinner was cooked and eaten within half an hour.

30 minute meal done. I forgot to use the chips.

Roasted Lamb Shanks (by G)

This morning I went to the morning markets and got some lamb shanks, eggplant, kale, artichokes, carrots, garlic and rosemary, fresh goat cheese and farm fresh salted butter.  I cooked all of these things in various styles for various lengths of time and came up with the below:

 

 

To be more specific, the lamb was browned off in a pan and roasted for a couple of hours along with some rosemary and whole cloves of garlic. With an hour to go I added some chunky chopped carrots.

 

I tried to crispy up the kale in oil, that didn't work, it was soggy.

 

I spent a lot of time prepping the artichokes to end up with some little slivers that I fried off in some of the market butter and roasted garlic.

 

I was kind of excited about the eggplant dish - I saw something like it on 'Surfing the Menu' with Curtis Stone and Ben O'donoghue and an eggplant farmer. They made fried slices of egg plant, goat's cheese and red wine look good - mine did not turn out so well.

 

I also made a sauce of beef stock and red wine - it over reduced a bit so there was not much of that on offer.

 

All in all it was a pretty good dinner - except the eggplant, it was not great.

Lamb and Couscous (by Biggs)

Kyo no tema, kore des! Kyo no tema……COUSCOUS!

Allez Cuisine! Bang a gong we are on!

After amateur night yesterday, tonight I planned a restaurant-quality couscous dinner....but it turned out quite rustic round the edges.

My plan was to buy couscous, some lamb, a bunch of my favourite ingredients and throw them all together to see what happened. Fairly good things happened but boy it was a bit hectic in the kitchen. I fried up some onion and capsicum with cumin and turmeric. Then I fried up some bacon in one pan. In another pan the lamb. In another pan the pine nuts. And a pot for the couscous. I, of course, burnt the pine nuts. 

I put some more pine nuts in a pan. Then I chopped up some olives and parsley and mixed all the tasty bits through the couscous. Then I burnt myself on the lamb pan. Then, of course, I burnt the pine nuts again.  

And that’s it. The couscous battle is O-VAH! Who takes it? Whose cuisine reins supreme?

PostScript: Little does G know, on my day off work today, I had time to send my blu gourmet pearl couscous barcode in to win a dinner party hosted at our house by Gabriel Gate....so, I guess it's more pearl couscous for tomorrow night's dinner.

Moroccan Style Chicken and Couscous (by G)

I've gotten out of the habit of cooking every day so it was a bit of a surprise when I realised that I had to cook tonight.  I was trying to think of something a bit different to do and did an internet search for Turkish recipes - I didn't fancy any of them but stumbled on a Moroccan dish, 'Chut b' chi zyu'. It's a fish dish, but when I got to the supermarket I didn't much fancy handling fish today so I got chicken tenders instead.

To begin I fried the chicken until cooked through then chopped it up and put it in a big pot with red capsicum, carrot, some spring onions that were in the fridge, leftover coriander, some dried red chilli, sliced garlic and a sauce of turmeric, paprika, oil and chicken stock... I also stayed from the recipe and added some of my new Korean red chilli bean paste.  All of that was bunged in the oven - covered for 25 minutes, uncovered for 5 minutes and it was done.

I didn't much like couscous once apon a time, then I cooked it for myself and realised it didn't have to be dry and flavourless.  Though couscous is a logical choice for a Moroccan meal I was a bit scarred from last time having spent about half an hour wandering around the supermarket trying to find it. Happily, this time there was a whole shelf of the stuff in all variety of sizes and endorsed by a number of celebrity chefs - after long deliberation I decided to get large size endorsed by one of my favourite TV chefs.

Gabriel Gate endorsed blu gourmet pearl couscous is excellent. I wont go into the details about how I prepared it because, purely by co-incidence, Biggs came home this afternoon toting a packet of Gabriel Gate endorsed blu gourmet pearl couscous for our dinner tomorrow and has been talking up her prospective dish - so I'm not giving her any tips.

My couscous dinner was excellent, stay tuned for a verdict on Biggs' 'attempt'.

Pork Chop (by Biggs)

Tonight I went to The Loft in West End to meet some lovely ladies for our monthly book club meeting. As is tradition, we ate well, drank well and didn't talk about the book. 

I had heard rumours that this place does pulled pork sliders but I must have missed that boat because they weren't on the menu. Instead I ordered a pork chop with sweet potatoes and apple coleslaw. It was excellent and the two for one deal was just an added bonus. 

I usually have a bit of order envy when I go out to dinner and even though Anna ordered ribs and Bec had an awesome looking parmigiana, I was super happy with my chop. 

Any meal that finishes with gnawing on a bone is okay by me. 

Spicy Baked Sausage and Noodle Hotdogs (by G)

Biggs is dining out for this evening so I decided to make something a bit experimental in case it didn't turn out too well - also, I had some sausages left over from last night so I had to use them up.

I ran a little groove into the top of the sausages and filled them with a mix of chilli red bean paste, sriracha, sugar and Worcestershire sauce then oven baked them along with some frozen packet chips for a while.  When they were just about done I boiled up some Mi Goering Spicy flavoured noodles (along with some spring onion I chopped up yesterday but didn't use).

The noodles and sausages went onto soft while hotdog rolls and the chips went on the side topped with some more sriracha and mayonnaise.

Turns out noodles are excellent on hotdog rolls - unlikely as it is for me to admit, but the sausages were probably surplus to requirements.

Mapo Tofu Tortillas (by G)

Just about every time I watch Iron Chef Chen (the Szechuan Sage) Kenichi is cooking Mapo Tofu so I thought, "What could be easier than stuffing a tortilla with Mapo Tofu.  Turns out nothing is easier.

You mix pork mince, silken tofu, ginger, garlic, chicken stock, Chinese cooking wine, soy sauce, red bean chilli paste and sugar then thicken it up with corn-flour slurry.  The Mapo Tofu was served with packet tortillas, cos lettuce leaves (to provide a barrier for the tortilla) and had spring onion for sprinkling on top.

Two criticisms - silken tofu is a pretty unappealing texture and should not be consumed.  There was no pork mince at the supermarket so I had to de-skin some pork sausages - though I love sausages this was not the texture I was going for either.

If I'm allowed one more criticism... this was not Chen's recipe - I think his would be much more flavourful.