Fish Tortillas with Tomato Salsa (by Biggs)

I thought my idea for tortillas this week was so good I moved Tortilla Tuesday to Tortilla Thursday as I was out on Tuesday and decided we had to eat this as soon as possible. I was wrong.

As some of you may remember I had to order a packet of beer batter when I purchased my old bay spice a few weeks ago so thought some fried fish tortillas would be nice. Unfortunately I forgot the key ingredient in the batter - the old bay spice! Damn it! So, the fish didn't taste like anything. Trying to learn from G's mistake yesterday I ordered more than a handful of whiting fillets.....a lot more, too much more.

The salsa was de-seeded tomatoes, red onion, jalapeños, coriander and lime. It was meant to have avocado in it but the one I bought wasn't quite ready for consumption.

We don't eat a lot of fish but I hope the double-dose of brain food this week will make up for past damage done.

Fish Curry (by G)

I was going to try to make a good dinner tonight - it turned out okay but I had to battle against fate to get it to an edible level which was more effort than I was hoping for.

The first difficulty was that the fish I was hoping to use for dinner was not available so I went with little fillets of whiting "about a handful". One of the fundamental laws of cooking is that "about a handful" of protein is not enough for two people.

Anyway, I started out working from a recipe but I was unable to find so many of the ingredients that it became a bit of a freestyle-a-thon. The curry sauce I ended up with contained shallot, garlic, ginger, kaffir lime leaves, lime zest and juice, turmeric powder, pepper, coconut cream - I think that's all to begin with. When it turned out that the sauce had no flavour I added curry powder, then fish sauce, then some chicken stock... and then some chilli flakes.  I'm pretty sure that's it.

To make up for the lack of protein I decided to make some potatoes. They were parboiled and roasted with onion, garlic, cumin seeds, turmeric, chilli flakes and lime juice.

Add a side of plain rice and top it all with roasted almond slivers and coriander and you have dinner.

Stir-fry (by Biggs)

Dinner was at Nancy's tonight and was a really delicious stir-fry. As detailed on this blog I'm pretty crap at making a stir-fry so always appreciate sitting down to a good one.

The stir-fry was super savoury with marinated tofu, broccoli, capsicum, carrot, snow peas and mushrooms. Perfectly umami. My favourite of all the flavours.

I made a blood donation this afternoon and the staff suggested a dinner of mushrooms and greens. Lucky I was at Nancy's tonight and not at home. You don't often come across a green in our household.

Beef and Black Bean Tortillas (by G)

I had a feeling this one would not turn out too photogenic so I served it on a pink plate and topped the meat with a sprig of coriander.

Biggs was dining out so I made only a negligible effort. Beef, onions, garlic, coriander, paprika, cumin, black beans from a tin and some stock. Yeah, I could have had more vegetables and stuff - I didn't though.

The tortillas were some ancient ones from an open packet I found in the freezer.

Jambalaya (by G)

Whoops! Missed the cut off time by a few seconds - this dinner was actually consumed on the 28th from precisely 7:30 pm.

I saw a jambalaya cookoff on the 'Hairy Bikers' (the North American HBs - not the good ones) and decided it would be a good wintertime dish.

The key seemed to be to fry the chicken to as dark a colour as you dared - I fried pieces of our corn-fed chicken in lard for extra emphasis. It was pretty dark by the time I was done with it. After draining off a bit of the lard I then fried some onions, red capsicum and celery - also chorizo and garlic until soft, then I added rice, some Worcestershire sauce, tinned tomatoes, old bay seasoning (because Biggs convinced me "That's what they do in the South"), onion powder, black pepper and chicken stock as well as the chicken and simmered it until the rice was done.

I was pretty happy with this one, stodgy rice dishes rate pretty highly with me.  The corn-fed chicken didn't taste anywhat superior to the regular fed ones but that may have been because I had been fried to dry nuggets.

Chicken Tikka Masala Skewers with Coriander Dressing (by Biggs)

Sometimes Sundays in our household are a bit sad because it marks the end of rest and relaxation. I thought perhaps a BBQ would make us less sad and I knew chicken skewers would definitely make G less sad.

I didn't really have a particular plan in mind but thought it was likely that the Delicious magazine would have a chicken skewer recipe and it sure did. The chicken was marinated in tikka masala paste and yoghurt, threaded onto skewers then charred over some super hot coals.

The skewers were served with a cucumber salad and a coriander dressing. The cucumber was served simply with lime.

The coriander dressing was a cracker - ginger, garlic, sugar, lime, coriander, oil and yoghurt. It went well with the char.

Pulled Pork Roll Supper (by G)

I had grand plans for dinner - then ruined them somewhat by taking a nap in the afternoon and not waking up until about 45 minutes past dinner time.

Essentially the plan was to slow roast a delicious pork for about 4 1/2 hours then serve it with home-made tomato sauce and a pickled slaw. That is basically what happened except that the tomato sauce I was making became too bitter from the lemon rinds I had left in there for hours and the slaw became just shredded cabbage for reasons of expedience and the pork turned out to be less delicious that I had expected.

The pork had been seasoned in old bay seasoning before going in the oven - this flavour did not really come out in the final product.  The tomato sauce I ended up serving was basically just tomato ketchup with roasted garlic and Dijon mustard stirred through - it was not too bad but there was only about 20ml of ketchup in the fridge so the quantity was lacking.

Poor Biggs had already fixed herself a kwiki-mart feast by the time I had rolled out of bed, so she was not really receptive to a whole other dinner.

The cornichons were excellent by-the-way.