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.

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...