Louisiana Shrimp Boil (by Biggs)

You may have seen this on the blog before but G and I really liked it and I promised to make it again soon.

Soon was tonight.

I thought I'd used the same quantities but perhaps I used twice the quantities. I definitely used twice the amount of butter.....and almost killed us.

'twas good though. Corn, potatoes, onion, smoked sausage and prawns in a broth of beer and Old Bay Spice. What more could you want?

Bacon Burger Puffs with Butter Poached Vegetables (by G)

An avid fan of the Blog sent Biggs a pack of Bacon Recipe Playing Cards - in true tortillatuesday style Biggs and I played a game of concentration to decide who got which recipe. The details are a bit sketchy but I ended up with Bacon Burger Puffs.

I think Biggs was hoping to get it as a snack - I decided to incorporate it into a proper dinner.

The burger puffs were created by wrapping layers of mozzarella cheese, bacon, fried beef patty, bacon and cheddar cheese in puff pastry and baking in the oven. The timing was a bit off - I ended up taking the burger puffs out of the oven and blitzing them under the grill to colour them up.

For sides I poached some potato and carrots in butter, I also fried some French shallots in butter. To cut through the butteryness I also quick simmered some snow peas in plain water.

The recipe called for packet au jus. I couldn't locate any of that - I could easily have made some myself but decided to stay true to the recipe and microwaved some packet Dianne finishing sauce - it was appropriately shit. The burger puffs were actually okay - could have used more bacon.

Pork and Peri Peri (by Biggs)

I decided to half-arse dinner tonight because I was very tired. Well, it wasn't a decision exactly, dinner pretty well just half-arsed itself.

I bought some pork loin chops to fried up.....and fried them up.

Then I just cooked up some potatoes from a packet and found some left over frozen veges in the freezer to use.

I was feeling pretty good about using up the veges so scoured the newly cleaned and tidied fridge (thanks G!) for something else that could be used up. I found some peri peri sauce that had been loitering around in there for a while so served the rest of that up with dinner too. It was surprisingly hot....for me.

Chorizo, Tomato and Sour Cream Bowtie Pasta (by G)

I had a similar, but different, plan for this evening. I'm feeling a bit poorly though - so I simplified.

Bow tie pasta with a sauce of fried shallot, garlic, chorizo, some Asian green (leftover), a sachet of tomato-y pasta sauce, fresh tomatoes (leftover), the rest of a tub of sour cream (left over) and some parmesan cheese mixed through - also on top.

I also served some garlic slices (from a packet) on the side.

The best thing is that, when I was self checking out at the supermarket I couldn't scan the tomato-y pasta sauce because it didn't have a bar code (I think it may have had a cardboard attachment at the top at some stage). I asked the lady at the supermarket how to scan it and she said, 'If you're willing to take it you can have it - we can't sell it in that state).  Mildly amusing story - not surprising I didn't share it with Biggs - she can be a bit funny about things that supermarkets can't sell.

Deconstructed Devilled Sausages (by Biggs)

I was a little, tiny bit grumpy after work so any dinner plans I may (or may not) have come up with went straight out the window and decided we were going to have sausages.

And chips.

I thought I should 'spice' the sausages up a bit and found a 'devilled sausages' packet mix in the supermarket. It wasn't until I got home that I realised there was a little more involved than just sausages and the packet mix. It said to add apples, tinned tomatoes and onions as well. I didn't have two-thirds of those ingredients but didn't really care. Instead, I fried up some onion and added a squeeze of tomato sauce.

When G worked out we were having sausages for dinner he was so excited that I didn't want to fuck it up so decided to deconstruct it instead by serving the 'Devil' in a bowl beside the sausages.

Twice Cooked Pork Tortillas (by G)

I won't go into any detail regarding what this was actually supposed to be - what it is is some chunks of pork slow roasted in paprika, oregano, white pepper, cumin, garlic, dried coriander, chicken stock and a bunch of salt - almost too much salt.  After the pork was tender I refrigerated it over night - next day I chopped it up and pan fried it to try and get it crispy. It turned out a bit like salty pork floss - which is not a bad thing.

To go with the meat I made an avocado sauce with sour cream, garlic and red onion - and a bit of a salad with tomato, red chilli, red onion, garlic, coriander, lime juice and a touch of salt.

I had grand plans of making the tortilla wraps myself this week, but Biggs and I are on a spring cleaning blitz, which is both time consuming and tiring.

Steak, Soup, Bread and Cheese (by Biggs)

I was going to make steak and chips for dinner but had a craving for blue cheese on my way home from work so decided to serve the steak with bread and blue cheese.

After that decision I thought I might need to lighten dinner up with something. Something that wasn't salad. After wandering around the supermarket for a while I decided on packet pea and ham soup.

There's not much more to say about dinner. I did an awesome cook on the steak. The soup was pretty average.....but, I wasn't about to cook it from scratch so guess I can't complain too much.