445/1038 - Parmesan cake

This was my third cake for the week, and it was savoury and fabulous! 

I was making burgers for dinner and thought the boys would appreciate a little cheese injection into the meal. Such a quick and easy cake, this one included freshly grated parmesan, which I grated into little chunks to give the cake some texture.

My husband was away on the night I made this and sadly he didn't get a chance to taste it, with the boys and I polishing it off within a couple of hours. We loved the texture and also the good, strong parmesan flavour that came through. 

Given how fast this was to make and also how much the boys loved it, I can definitely see this one becoming a lunch box staple in future. 

444/1038 - Angel cake

I had quite a lot of chocolate icing left over from making lamingtons and decided that if I made another cake it might just stop my teenager from eating it straight from the bowl.

I have never made angel cake before and was surprised to learn that I needed the whites of twenty eggs! Because my chickens lay lovely big eggs I was able to use a few less to achieve the required 600 grams. 

I ran out of cornflour and so supplemented it with some gluten free flour instead, which worked beautifully. Anybody else who is looking to make this cake, be aware that the recipe makes two of them! I filled a very large cake tin and when I realised the mixture was not going to fit, made this mini version at the same time. I am certainly not complaining! This little cake was devoured last night and we are already well and truly into the big one too. 

So lovely and light and full of lemon zest, my husband thought this tasted a little like cheesecake. Being a person who is slightly wheat intolerant I just loved the fact that it was predominantly made of egg whites and so helped myself to a couple of extra pieces! 

I am going to make this again and play around with the recipe to see if I can make a completely gluten free version. The only downside being that if I succeed I may just be so excited that I eat the whole thing. 

Life could be worse.

443/1038 - Lamingtons with Genoese sponge

I was never really a big lamington fan...until I made them myself! Oh. My. Goodness. They really are quite fabulous, aren't they?

The Genoese sponge was really simple to make and resulted in a gorgeous cake that was light and airy. After tasting a little bit to make sure it was OK, I popped it in the fridge and waited patiently until it was a day old so that I could turn it into lovely lamingtons.

Although I covered myself in chocolate and coconut as I made these (is that a bad thing?) the result was absolutely worth it. The trick is to add a good thick layer of the chocolate icing so that when you take a bite you get a good taste of all three elements.

The chocolate layer is simple;

One part melted butter

One part dutch cocoa

One part hot water

Eight parts icing sugar

Yum, yum and double yum.

442/1038 - Farrotto with garlic and porcini mushrooms (but with pearl barley...)

I must have been feeling really guilty because my challenge cooking has taken off this week! 

I undertook a half hearted search for farro but unfortunately came up empty handed. Not deterred, I decided instead to substitute pearl barley for the farro in this recipe, having made pearl barley risotto  many times before.  

The taste of this was quite wonderful, with the porcini mushrooms bringing a wonderful depth to the dish. Rather than cooking my begetables separately, I decided to add broccolini to the farrotto, stems first and the tops in the last few minutes of cooking.

The family liked this one, except for the fact that my husband confessed to a strong craving for red meat which I have not served in some time. Looks like it's steak for dinner tonight! 

441/1038 - Son-in-law eggs

My amazing little chickens are laying like crazy at the moment and so I am in egg cooking heaven! 

I have always been interested in the sound of this dish, but to be honest was always turned off by the sound of deep fried boiled eggs. I decided I would finally try it out but must admit I cheated and only fried one of the eggs, with the reminder being chopped up straight after peeling. 

I didn't have a problem, however, with making a beautiful little pile of fried garlic chips. If I wasn't worried about how I would smell I could certainly eat these all day long!

The sauce for this dish was absolutely divine, made with tamarind, fish sauce, palm sugar and lime juice. Sticky, sweet and sour all at once, and such a great pairing with the boiled eggs. 

So there it was, my fourth challenge recipe for the month. Nowhere near my best effort but at least I have reached my (self-imposed) monthly minimum with almost a week to spare. 

440/1038 - Lime dressing

Recently I was the lucky recipient of a big bag of kaffir limes. As well as whipping up my first batch of lime gelato (zingy and fabulous!) I decided to make this little lime dressing to serve with a simple stir fry dinner. 

As the dressing was cooking, my house smelled wonderfully of lime and sweet bubbling sugar. I will admit to adding any extra lime or two to the pot and so my sauce had a pretty good zing to it. I do love my flavours quite tart, and so the slight criticisms that came from my family fell on fairly deaf ears. 

Being a bit busier than usual, this is only the third recipe I have posted for the month of May, making it officially the least productive challenge month to date. I am feeling more than a little guilty for letting the momentum slip and so expect to see at least one more recipe churned out before the month is done. 

439/1038 - Prawn coconut curry (in lieu of bug meat)

I feel as if I am cheating a bit completing the Bug meat chapter with this recipe. I had every intention of using bug meat but just couldn't get my hands on some in time! 

The flavour of this curry was absolutely sensational and think it worked wonderfully well with prawns as a substitute. The only downside to the taste was that by the time I got around to cooking this, the bunch of basil I had bought was no longer any good. 

In my defence I launched my new business last week (hooray!) and have been flat out setting up processes, spreadsheets (of course) and servicing my first clients. The motivation for the business was to ensure my life was completely focussed on food (and my family of course) and the service model plays to my strengths beautifully. The website is at a Fork for your Oyster if anybody would like to take a look!

Knowing that I would seriously be missing the basil, I decided instead to top my dish with even more green peppercorns and I was pleased that I did. If you have not yet cooked with green peppercorns, do yourself a favour! They are wonderfully peppery (of course) but mild enough to chew on without gagging.

The other change I made to this recipe was to add green and yellow capsicum to the curry a few minutes before it was finished cooking. We ate this with red rice which I can highly recommend for it's nutty flavour and slightly firmer texture. Yum, yum, yum.

So there we are, six chapters from one hundred and twenty five completed. Even if I did cheat a little bit.

438/1038 - Chicken and leek pie

Life has been a bit "all work and no play" lately and so I decided to take some time out to make a special dinner for my busy little family, and even decided to make my own puff pastry. All was going well, the dough had been rested once and I was performing the first roll. As I was rolling I read the rest of the recipe and realised the pastry was going to take FOREVER to make (roll, rest, roll etc.) and decided that my patience was not quite up to it on this particular day. 

Not wanting to waste the pastry, I simply rolled the life out of it and decided that I was happy with very buttery (but not puffy) pastry instead. 

Having recently smashed my grandmother's pie dish (devastating I know) I needed to retrieve one of the dishes I keep on top of my kitchen cupboards. I was once surprised by a dead huntsman curled up inside one and so now I have taken to teetering on a step ladder and using my camera phone to scan the inside of the dishes before I will lift them down. 

It was lucky I did! There was indeed a well sized spider inside the square dish I had my eye on and so of course that one remained on the shelf and my pie became a rectangle instead. Note to self: get husband to dispose of spider in the square dish! 

The pie was lovely and absolutely enormous so it will serve us for a second dinner tonight, leaving me time today to make a yummy dessert. Look out for a tasty sweet on the blog soon!   

437/1038 - Zucchini and feta fritters

Recipes like this one make me LOVE meat free dinners! 

I cheated and skipped the step where I was supposed to salt the zucchini and leave it for an hour. Those who know me well will know that this was because I was in a rush to get dinner on the table and simply did not have time to comply! I thought I got away with it, even though the mixture was a little runnier than it probably should have been.

Continuing with my rebelliousness, I decided not to deep fry the fritters. Using a medium amount of coconut oil, I fried these for quite some time on medium heat, ending up with amazing tasting little discs that tasted incredible, even though they were not as light as they might have been had I followed the recipe. 

The fresh mint and feta added the most incredible taste to the zucchini and for a meat free meal, the family exuded a particularly high level of enthusiasm. 

Love x

436/1038 - Lemon delicious pudding

Lemon delicious indeed! 

In our house, my husband is the pudding man. The boys delight in telling me that his chocolate pudding is BY FAR the best dessert they have ever tasted. It is a running joke in this house which has been going on for some time. Well at least I thought it was a joke! 

When I said I was making pudding the kids got really excited. Until I started making it and asked my eldest to hand me a lemon. "A lemon?", he asked. "Whatever for?" In his mind, of course, there is no pudding other than chocolate. 

Insert horrified child here.

Once the pudding was made and my children had gotten over the fact that it was not chocolate, we sat down to what truly was a very lovely, and wonderfully tangy, dessert. 

...but apparently the chocolate pudding is still better.

435/1038 - Lois's almond and orange biscuits

These biscuits are so good they should be illegal! 

I completely changed the shape they were supposed to be, due to my almonds not being ground as finely as they could have been. I was fairly sure my mixture would not hold together in a log formation and so opted for these semi-squashed balls instead. 

There was a moment of panic when I was about to make the drizzling syrup and realised I had allowed my youngest to drink the remainder of the orange juice. Thankfully I had not squeezed the orange completely and was able to eke out just enough to make the syrup appropriately orange flavoured.

As is customary in our house, I sent a biscuit along to school with my youngest for his teacher to eat for morning tea. Apparently this one was a winner, with my son passing on his teacher's request for the recipe.

Unfortunately for my figure I ate around half of these. Given my desire to remain a reasonable size, I will be unlikely to make them again in the near future. 

434/1038 - Spicy chicken parcels

A few weeks ago my eldest had a little "incident" with my camera, which explains the dodgy pictures I have been posting! Thankfully this is the last of them, with my good camera (and also my peace of mind) having now been restored. My son and I are still on speaking terms and we have a mutually agreeable arrangement in place regarding the $600 repair bill...

It is amusing to me that I had always read the title of this recipe and assumed that the "parcels" were made of pastry. So on a day that I actually felt like a pastry encased dinner I pulled out this recipe...and discovered the parcels were made of foil! It sounded so nice I decided to make it anyway and push back my pastry craving for another day.   

I do love a yoghurt marinade and the toasted cumin and coriander in the mix made it wonderfully tasty. To top it all off, the coriander and squeeze of lime over the top of the baked chicken is a must for the full flavour experience. 

Stay tuned for another blog post soon...with decent photos! x

433/1038 - Mushroom custards

I spied a container of portobello mushrooms in the fridge as I was beginning dinner preparations last night and decided it was time to try out this custard recipe.

The custards were simple enough to make, but as per usual I had some trouble getting them out of the moulds looking perfect. With a piece missing from the side of this one, I decided a photo of the custard in the mould was much more attractive! Given my inability to consistently unmould custards, I was certainly playing the safe option serving these to my family rather than at a dinner party. 

The flavour of the custard was very rich, thanks to the fabulous rehydrated porcinis I included in the mix. We ate the custards with my chia seed meatloaf (nice combination!) and also slathered on slices of freshly baked rye caraway bread. 

Lovely x

432/1038 - Freekeh pilaf with spinach and fried onions

I have an overflowing pantry at the moment and this recipe was my first attempt at clearing out some of the tupperware containers of grains and legumes I have tumbling about in there. Only appearing in the latest version of the Cook's Companion, this recipe is a beautifully flavoured dish which would pair nicely with meat or veg but would also be lovely on its own as a quick lunch. Tonight I decided to serve it with a small pile of buttery, mashed golden sweet potato which we enjoyed very much. 

I used baby spinach rather than English, and instead of cooking and pulverising it, I chopped it finely and then simply wilted it in the pan. 

Had I known how lovely this would be, I definitely would have doubled the recipe! So nutty and quite salty from the stock, it was also given a wonderful lift with the addition of some preserved lemon. 

Big winner on all fronts! Although I still have some freekeh left, so sadly my pantry is no tidier than before.

431/1038 - Bok choy with fermented black beans

This is the beautiful dish which inspired my first attempt at cooking cha-siu pork. 

To be honest, once the pork was organised, this dish was very quick to put together. I really liked the way the bok choy was cut into quarters, making it pretty to plate and also enabling the edges to char a little in the pan. The cubes of pork and black beans gave this dish a wonderful flavour and certainly made vegetables seem much more exciting to the boys!  

We all adore fermented black beans and given that I now have almost an entire packet stinking out one of my tupperware containers, I think I need to get cracking with some more black bean recipes.

430/1038 - Cha siu-style pork

I have had this recipe ear-marked for more than a week now but, due to a small misunderstanding, this is the first time I have actually had all of the required ingredients to hand.

After an incident with a rather large huntsman, lots of bug spray and a car door that was not closed properly, my adored little Smart car has been sitting idle for the past week with a flat battery. As such, I asked my husband to pick me up some red rice vinegar, the only ingredient I was lacking for this wonderful recipe. 

Apparently when you are only semi-listening, red rice vinegar sounds a lot like red rice...and so that's what he came home with! No matter, we had a lovely meal that evening with red rice the star, supported by steamed trout and steamed veg.

Today he came through with the goods, having spent quite some time searching at the local Chinese grocer. I excitedly threw together the cha-sui marinade and spent the next four hours intermittently rotating my pork and inhaling its wonderful aroma.

This was actually a very simple recipe, but one that created a lot of mess! Marinating dish, draining rack, oven rack and drip tray...there was a lot to clean up. Thankfully it was worth it. (Easily said given I was not on dishes duty!) It smelled so good the boys began tucking in almost the second it came out of the oven.

The actual reason I made this was to include it in my bok choy with fermented beans, which I also made for dinner tonight.

Post to come! x

429/1038 - Rice noodle soup with garlic chives and pressed bean curd

There has been quite a lot of blogging involving cabbage lately and so thought I would shake things up with this simple noodle soup.

Eating dinner tonight, I couldn't help but think of Kung Fu Panda as I struggled to capture slippery squares of silken tofu with my chopsticks. It was the, "You are free to eat" scene that came to mind and I was chuckling to myself thinking that somebody should create a chopsticks diet to encourage people to slow down their food intake. It's not a bad idea really, since it takes twenty minutes for the message that you are full to get from stomach to brain; and of course by the time it gets there it is usually too late! 

As she has done so many times in the past, Stephanie provided me with a recipe that is quite simply fast food at its best. So simple to put together, this soup was on the table in minutes and as a bonus, everybody loved it! I didn't have any black rice vinegar and so we topped this with a splash of dark mushroom soy. At a pinch, I am sure regular soy would also have worked to provide the dash of flavour this soup needed to make it truly fabulous. 

The obvious substitution I made was to use silken tofu instead of pressed bean curd, for no reason other than the fact that it was in the fridge and pressed bean curd was not. I also replaced the fresh chilli with a good dash of Darwin Chilli co. hot sauce. The smell of this, together with the fresh ginger in the pan was simply wonderful. 

I highly recommend this soup to anybody looking for a quick feed. Don't forget the chopsticks for a truly amusing experience. 

You are free to eat x

428/1038 - Sweet potato and prawn fritters

This recipe takes us way, way back to the original edition of The Cook's Companion and also represents my fourth chapter completed. I can imagine what you are thinking - almost four years into the challenge and only four chapters finished? In my defence, I do like to spread my cooking around and try to focus on the chapters with more recipes left to cook. This plan should also mean that I am not left with a multitude of recipes centred around the same ingredient at the end of the challenge. There is, as always, method in my madness. 

I will confess to messing about with this recipe a little, omitting the sugar and replacing the flours for coconut and a gluten free flour blend that I purchased recently from Pomona cafe. I also replaced some of the coconut milk with water, purely because I had trebled the recipe and didn't have enough. Last but not least, I used coconut oil for frying. My fritters were little oil suckers and I had to keep adding it to the pan as I fried. This upped the coconut flavour quite a bit, which of course was a fabulous outcome.

I really liked these, as did the family. We ate them on top of raw cabbage and carrot, to counteract the decadence of the fritters. A fabulous addition to our dinner was a drizzle of the fiery sweet chilli sauce recently purchased from Darwin chilli co. Such a fabulous taste, but wow did it blow our socks off!

I have quite a bit of fritter mixture left over, which I cooked up in a scrambled fashion in the pan. I confess this was mainly because I was tired of making patties! I imagine tonight's dinner will either be a crustless quiche or perhaps little home made pasties.

Leftovers really are one of my favourite things.

Darwin Chilli Co. sauces that recently landed on my very
lucky doorstep. Amazing product from a small family business.
(This enormous quantity was an order for my extended
family, we are not crazy chilli heads!)

Post Script! I made a beautiful oven bake from the leftovers with fresh corn, chorizo, egg and spring onion. 

Sensational.

I love leftovers!

427/1038 - Cabbage salad with anchovy sauce

Calling all anchovy lovers...this recipe is fabulous! 

I had plenty of cabbage left over from the lion's head meatball recipe (it was enormous!) and so decided that this salad could be the basis of a lovely meal. I do try to sneak at least two vegetarian meals past my family each week and this one was absolutely wonderful. My reasons for doing this are threefold; health-based (a balanced diet must be a good thing!), environmental (read: less meat production) and ethical (I would much rather eat animals which are raised humanely, therefore it is logical that I should not expect to be able to eat meat every day). 

So for this dinner I started with potatoes, which I sliced, oiled, salted and baked. Next step was to put the salad together as it needed to sit for at least thirty minutes before eating. I used beautiful white anchovies instead of the grey, salted variety as their taste is quite mild and I tend to keep them on hand for recipes such as this. Oh and also for random snacking, which I do frequently. The salad literally took a couple of minutes to put together - my kind of salad! 

Once the salad was resting it was time to slice a pile of Swiss browns and pan fry them in lots of butter. My family adore mushrooms done this way and so I knew that no matter what the rest of dinner tasted like, I would be on to a winner. 

Last of all I lightly fried a thick piece of halloumi for each member of the family. I would normally do this in oil but given there was a fair amount of butter still in the pan I used that instead. Stacking it all together, I was conscious that a bit of colour might have been nice. Given that this was a Wednesday night dinner for my family (and not a fancy dinner party) I didn't bother to rectify this. 

The flavour combination of these elements was nothing short of fabulous! The sweetness of the buttery mushrooms was beautifully offset by the saltiness of the potatoes and halloumi, and the anchovy salad gave the dish a wonderful flavour burst.

Very happy with this one x

426/1038 - Lion's head meatballs with Chinese cabbage

I do love a recipe with a fabulous name! 

As my children so aptly described tonight's dinner, these meatballs are just like the inside of a delicious pork dumpling. Only of course it would need to be one big dumpling to fit these babies in! The meatballs are large, as big as a fist, and full of wonderful Asian flavours including soy sauce, rice wine and fresh ginger.

Simmering for two hours on the stove resulted in lovely light balls that I served smothered in Chinese cabbage with brown rice, steamed capsicum and plenty of the chicken stock they were cooked in. 

Having already added a good pinch of river salt to the pork mixture, I found that all my dinner needed was a good crack of pepper to finish it off. 

The family were big fans of this dish and everybody hurried back for seconds. Even so, we still have plenty left for tomorrow night which I am thinking I might extend with more liquid to make it more of a soupy affair. 

Options everywhere. 

425/1038 - Slow-cooked zucchini

This is the lovely looking little entrée I served to my dinner guests on Sunday evening.

Having decided that I would like to road test the recipe for slow-cooked zucchini, I simply added a few more layers and my dish was born. On the bottom was a home-made tomato sauce, slow cooked for several hours and flavoured with bay leaf and rosemary. The filling was the absolutely incredible zucchini which also spent a couple of hours on the stove top. It was the coriander seeds that made it fabulous! The zucchini leftovers ended up in a fabulous and very homely beef mince stir fry the following night.

On top was a small handful of Barossa Gypsy ham, which has the most wonderful onion and garlic coating. To finish things off I made mini garlic chips, which not only looked pretty but imparted a good crunch and great flavour to the dish.

These lovely layers were held together by circles of potato, which had been pan fried in coconut oil and then baked. I almost had a mini disaster on the day after I fried the potato and put it in the oven to be baked a bit closer to plating time. Completely forgetting they were there, I absent-mindedly pre-heated the oven in readiness for the bread, and after a few minutes wondered why I could smell potato cooking. I took them out without any damage done, but it did mean that the dish needed to be served cold as I was not keen to cook them a third time.

Last but not least, some lemon zest was grated over the top of my little stack, an addition I love to include in so many dishes, both sweet and savoury.

I was pleased with this entrée, but it was nowhere near my best work. Remembering to add the smoked salt and heating the potato just before plating might have elevated my rating of this dish. No matter, the guests were happy and on this night it ticked all of the required dietary boxes for my guests. 

424/1038 - Roman lamb stew

Do not let this fairly ordinary picture deceive you! Roman lamb stew is absolutely lovely and quite frankly deserved a much better effort on my part of photographing the result. In my defence it was served at a dinner party and so I was conscious of not spending too much time away from my guests, fiddling with the camera. 

I spent a bit of extra time designing the menu for this event as one of my fellow diners is on a restricted diet for medical reasons; abstaining from dairy, gluten and sugar. I found myself discarding recipe after recipe in search of the perfect menu but got there in the end with a range of dishes I was comfortable would complement one another nicely. 

Apart from cooking two separate loaves of bread, I was keen to ensure the menu was accessible to all, not wanting to serve up two different versions of a meal and make my friend feel different or uncomfortable.

As I generally do when putting the final touches on a meal, I hacked a rather large piece out of my finger while dissecting the lamb shoulder. After this incident I was not keen to go anywhere near the bone and so left that to the side for another day. About 15 band-aids later I stemmed the bleeding and rendered myself presentable enough to greet my guests. 

The resulting stew had the most beautiful flavour (minus any blood, I swear), with the lamb taking in the scent of the herbs and drawing flavour from the simple soffritto which spent some time in the pan first. The meat was also lovely and tender, falling away from itself easily.

My husband had made a Roman lamb stew many years ago, using the recipe from The Silver Spoon, another favourite cookbook of ours. It is probably a good thing that it was too long ago to say which version was better, although if memory serves his was every bit as good as this one.

Conclusion: All Roman stews are fabulous!

My special menu

423/1038 - White bean purée

I have some friends coming for dinner on Sunday night and have been fiddling around with menu options for the last few days. One of my guests is loosely following the Wahls protocol, and so is currently avoiding gluten, dairy and sugar. 

Determined to include her in the bread eating, I am testing out some gluten free bread recipes to find one that tastes lovely and is also healthy. This was my first attempt which, after an initial surprise at the taste, I have come to quite like. The recipe is Cat Elliott's and is worth a try for anybody who does not tolerate gluten well. 

I am going to have a play with this recipe to aim for a bread that is not quite as sweet. In particular I am keen to try it sans honey and cinnamon and perhaps with some extra buckwheat instead of the coconut flour. I did love the texture of this bread though, which slices very smoothly like cake! The boys are not big fans, and I have been petitioned by the three of them to please abstain from including this bread in their lunchboxes in future. Message received. 

My new topping of choice is white bean purée, which is full of flavour thanks to the garlic and rosemary. It is wonderful spread thickly and topped with pepper and olive oil. I also served this with dinner the other night; in an artful smudge underneath a pork and apple sausage. Another great combination. 

Don't mind me...I am off to bake some more bread! Wish me luck x

422/1038 - Pumpkin, silverbeet and fetta salad with quinoa and nutmeg

I am always on the lookout for great quinoa recipes and this one is a cracker!

Of course anything with roast pumpkin in it is likely to be very good, but the complementing flavours in this recipe take it to another, wonderfully fabulous, level.

We ate this salad with amazing pork and apple sausages which I am hoping to replicate in my own kitchen very soon. Apple in sausage may sound weird but it was surprisingly fabulous. Perhaps a good one for kids as I found the aftertaste to be rather sweet. 

There was a heap of fresh ginger in the dressing, which I decided to chop finely rather than grate. I buy the most beautiful organic ginger and I am always keen not to waste a scrap. The lemon juice with the ginger and honey was a lovely combination and of course the addition of my best olive oil did not hurt.

Yet another good reason to upgrade to the third edition! x

421/1038 - Béchamel sauce

Of course I have made béchamel a million times and so tonight, given that I was to blog the result, I thought I would incorporate it into a brand new recipe, only created today.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being introduced to the concept of making cannelloni with mortadella rather than pasta. Building on this concept, tonight I decided to make gluten free lasagne, replacing the pasta sheets with slices of  with ham. 

To bind my ingredients, I decided to include some cottage cheese into the mix. It tasted great, but unfortunately created a good deal of fluid in the dish as the lasagne cooked. This would not have been a problem had I taken the lasagne from the oven gently. I am often one to dash about my kitchen and tonight was no exception. Unfortunately as I whisked dinner from the oven, a good deal of the bubbling fluid ended up on me. Not too much harm done, but sadly I believe my hip will be attached to one icepack or another for at least the remainder of the evening. 

Injury aside, dinner was absolutely fabulous and I am now completely sold on the idea of replacing pasta with meat for a gluten free dinner. Of course, tonight's lesson has taught me that I will use ricotta rather than cottage cheese in future!

420/1038 - Saffron and onion roast lamb

We do love a good roast lamb and this one was a beauty! 

I used a boned leg instead of fillets for this recipe and so the cooking time was an hour rather than fifteen minutes which was actually fabulous because it gave me the opportunity to bake some potatoes and beetroot alongside. 

Instead of rice, I decided to pair our roast with a little pile of quinoa, which we flavoured with the juices from the roasting pan. 

There was a quick call to my Mum on the morning of this meal, checking if she had some spare sumac. Of course she did and there was a special sumac delivery at my house only hours after the call. What service! 

There were plenty of leftovers which I used in a stir-fry with fresh noodles the following night. Sounds like a strange match but it worked well. Particularly with loads of leftover parsley and sumac included. 

Yum x

418&419/1038 - Zucchini chips with beer batter

I made these little chips to go with a roast lamb for dinner tonight. Most nights I insist on having greens on the plate at dinner time but these are not exactly the healthy option I usually have in mind!  

When I was young there was a GIO commercial that saw a lady deep frying chips. She was called away to the telephone and while she was gone, the chips caught fire and burned down the kitchen. My sister and I used to be highly amused that instead of "Oh my goodness, the kitchen!", she came in and said, "Oh my goodness, the chips!". Forgive me, I was eleven at the time and clearly very easily amused.

The reason I bring up the commercial is that I was almost in this situation today, walking out of the kitchen and getting caught up reading an article, completely forgetting that I had put the oil on to heat. When I finally remembered and rushed back in, the temperature reading was off the scale and I had to remove the pot from the heat to bring it back down in the vicinity of 175°C. 

Unfortunately I brought the heat down too much and then threw too many zucchini pieces in the pot, so that I ended up with chips that were not quite as crunchy as I would have liked. The second and third batches, on the other hand, were wonderful and crunchy and well loved by all. I added sumac and cumin to the mix but to be honest I couldn't really taste either in the final product. 

Of course it would have been wrong to tip the rest of the Stella Artois down the sink and so a sneaky beer in the evening was my little cooking bonus tonight x

417/1038 - Warm salad of seared kangaroo

It was a hot day in Melbourne today and so caramelising onions was not at the top of the list of things I wanted to do! But I had been promising this salad to the family for some time now, and so I bit the bullet, cranked up the cooling and got cooking. 

Kangaroo is considered a healthy meat choice, being high in protein and low in fat. Eating kangaroo is also considered to be good for the environment as the kangaroos killed are wild rather than farmed, therefore reducing the need for specifically set aside farmed land. In addition, kangaroos are low emitters of methane, a gas particularly damaging to the environment due to its contribution to the degradation of the ozone layer. 

These are all very valid reasons to eat kangaroo, but of course we also eat it because it's fabulous! My family are quite partial to meats with wonderfully strong flavours and kangaroo certainly does not disappoint on this front. 

This was a very quick dish to put together, if you don't count the caramelising of the onions. I will admit that I did not peel my tomatoes, figuring that all of that extra effort would not amount to enough difference in taste for me to consider it worth my while. Lazy, I know. 

Complete with perfectly cooked kangaroo (hooray!) and a gorgeous red wine sauce, we absolutely loved this salad. This recipe is in all three versions of the Cook's Companion which means everybody (well half a million Australians anyway) can join in the fun. 

I promise it will be worth your while x

416/1038 - Chicken liver pâté

Lying in bed the other night it suddenly struck me that we had used the last of the bread and I hadn't made a fresh loaf for lunches the following day. I decided that the only solution was to set my alarm to go off earlier than usual and to make a soda bread in the morning. I did some quick calculations and decided that I could get the bread to cool by the time the kids had to leave for school. 

Later in the day I was thrilled I had made this fresh bread as my lovely pâté was finished and crying out for something to be spread on, The idea for making this pâté was sparked by a trip to my Mum's place on the weekend. Her partner had just made his own batch, and asked if I wanted his leftover livers, given that the butcher had snuck an extra half kilo into his bag. Don't you just love it when butchers do that?  

Such a quick recipe, the part that took the longest was pushing the mixture through the sieve to catch any sinews that remained. The boys love pâté and my youngest was keen to lick the spoon as I worked. I did double check that he realised it was made with liver and not chocolate and he assured me that he was still very keen to have a taste. A taste which turned into a heaped spoonful! Amazing kid. 

I was positive I had all of the required ingredients for the recipe and was shocked when I couldn't find any brandy in the cupboard. Then I remembered all of the egg nog we made at Christmas time... I spied the Cognac and wondered if it might be a good alternative. Off to Google I went to have a look, where I discovered that Cognac IS brandy! Who knew? Probably most people, but not being much of a spirit drinker, I was thrilled with my discovery. 

Cooking AND learning. Surely that's what this is all about x

415/1038 - Oyster soup

With three dozen fresh oysters on hand, Oysters Rockefeller was not all that was on the menu! 

I have always wondered what oyster soup would be like, imagining something very rich, and quite frankly not being terribly inspired to cook it myself. This recipe is certainly rich, but is also quite lovely and with many more ingredients than simply oysters. It is a creamy soup, flavoured with thyme, leek and of course those wonderful oyster juices. 

Of course unopened oysters are required for this recipe, so that the juices might be captured as they are shucked. Although I would not call myself a master of oyster shucking, the job we did was good enough to get us by in this case. Admittedly there was a need to sieve the juices which were filled with quite a few broken bits of shell! 

In order to make the croutons, I baked a seed and walnut bread which I just knew would complement the flavours of the soup beautifully. What a wonderful bread it was too! 

Of course I am pleased that I have finally entered the world of the oyster chapter, which in this challenge was number 104 of 125. It seems quite unbelievable that three and a half years into this challenge there are still 21 chapters into which I have not yet ventured.  

We all loved this soup, including my youngest who has now successfully enjoyed oysters two different ways in the same weekend. A tiny part of me is ever so slightly disappointed that I have yet another person in this house likely to steal oysters off my plate in future, however this is overridden by the special thrill I get whenever I see my children expanding their gastronomic repertoire. 

414/1038 - Oysters rockefeller

Our friends with the wonderful garden came through for us again, offering us the opportunity to purchase freshly caught oysters at a very low price. I immediately put up my hand for three dozen, knowing that I would have no problem putting them to good use. 

It was very exciting to receive our special delivery, and of course the first thing I did was to consult The Cook's Companion to see how they would be best used. We ate a couple with only a squeeze of lemon, but to be honest they were a tiny bit salty for my liking. This of course appeased any guilt I was harbouring with regard to cooking these incredibly fresh little babies. 

This was the first time we had purchased oysters that were yet to be shucked, and I will admit to having to resort to youtube for a quick lesson! It is a tricky little process, and one made much more difficult without the proper equipment (read: oyster knife) on hand. I got quite good at it by the end of the third dozen; gardening glove on for protection and Swiss army knife in hand.

I have cooked oysters many different ways over the years, but rockefeller blew our socks off. Even my little one, not an oyster lover, declared them "delicious" and much to my dismay, unexpectedly ate his entire share of the spoils.

With an amazingly creamy sauce offset by crunchy breadcrumbs, we were temporarily transported to oyster heaven while eating these.

Ever so highly recommended x

413/1038 - Fast pasta sauce with rosemary and meat juices

My youngest has been at me since late last year to buy him a thermos so that he might take the occasional hot lunch to school. I finally came through with the goods and he put in a request for a pasta lunch for the inaugural hot lunch event. 

We had a builder doing some work for us yesterday and so I needed to be on hand for questions and issues. I decided that a day of cooking was in order so that I might be busy but also available. Many racks of pasta later, I settled on this lovely and simple sauce to finish it off. I didn't have any meat juices available and so used reduced chicken stock instead which worked very well. 

Chock full of garlic, this one is definitely going to make an impression on classmates and the unlucky teacher today! My mini foodie also requested that the grated parmesan be packaged seperately, so that he might add it with a flourish. What a cutie. 

With so much buttery goodness, I just loved this dish. Of course my hand cut pasta might have helped the finished product! It definitely made me want to utilise our blooming rosemary bush more often, reminding me just how fabulous it tastes.

Mother of the year award is definitely back on track x

411&412/1038 - Diana's fudgy chocolate cake with chocolate and honey icing

My eldest had a birthday recently and he requested a chocolate cake for dessert. This cake is a new addition to the book, appearing only in the latest version of The Cook's Companion. Honestly it was so good it is almost worth upgrading just for this recipe! 

On the evening of my son's birthday I was a bit tired and asked him if he would mind if we had the cake the next day instead. Bless his heart, he just looked at me and told me that he didn't mind at all. Feeling slightly relieved (and possibly a little guilty) I turned to my left only to see my husband with an absolute look of horror on his face. "You can't do that!", he exclaimed, mortified that I had even SUGGESTED delaying a birthday cake. 

I had to laugh and of course made it that night as originally promised. I know I must sound like a dreadful mother, but I am just not as into celebrations as the rest of my family. If Christmas and birthdays were to be cancelled, honestly I think I would cope rather well. It would of course take a large amount of therapy to get my family (and probably the rest of the world) on board. 

...So back to the cake. I am always nervous of pouring mixture directly into a cake pan that is designed to split into two and so I lined the gap with baking paper. Once tasting the mixture I knew this cake was going to be something special and couldn't wait for it to come out of the oven. 

The icing was also magnificent, interestingly not tasting much of honey, but it was silky and wildly decadent for a family who generally eat cakes sans icing. I usually find that I have way too much icing but in this instance the amount was just right. 

Being a huge berry fan, my son loved the addition of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries to the plate and a good dollop of cream was also warmly welcomed. 

Yum, yum, yum. Honestly I can not say that enough times! More light than fudgy, and unbelievably good. Another success...and my mother of the year award still intact. 

Just.

410/1038 - Chicken breasts with sage

If my herb garden is ever doing poorly, I can still feel confident that my hardy little sage plant will be thriving as always. It is a plant that seems to defy the odds, even we have been neglecting our watering duties or leaving the soil untouched for more moons than we can remember. So finding twenty four leaves for this recipe in my little garden was not too hard a task! 

My family adores crispy sage and the addition of this lovely little herb in this dish did not disappoint. I think my favourite element though was the marinade, which was boiled at the end and tipped over the finished dish, imparting a wonderful tang.

Served with brown rice and steamed veg, this was a very simple meal that satisfied on all counts. Looks, smell and most definitely taste. 

409/1038 - Unpeeled sweet pepper salad

For those who are still holding on to the original, orange version of The Cook's Companion (hi Mum!), this post is for you! 

We were having fried halloumi for dinner and I was seeking a quick and fresh salad to serve alongside. My little family LOVE capsicum and so I was pleased to find this little gem. The recipe no longer exists in either of the rainbow versions of The Cook's Companion, and I only found it because I decided to trawl my challenge spreadsheet for ideas rather than flipping through the book, which can be a cumbersome exercise given its size.  

There are still eighteen recipes from the first edition and nine recipes from the second edition that I need to complete - none of which made it through to the latest publication. These include:

From the orange version: 

1. Avocado mousse
2. Cornflour batter
3. Preserved cherries
4. Fennel marinated fish
5. Slow-roasted leg of lamb with dried beans
6. Ham and ricotta stuffing for lamb
7. Lime lover's punch
8. Michael Boddy's sweet lime pickle
9. Chinese noodle soup with pig's liver
10. Pink grapefruit and campari granita
11. Mechouia - Tunisian roasted vegetable salad
12. Traditional roast leg of pork
13. Potato drop scones
14. Rhubarb muffins
15. Traditional sage stuffing for goose, duck or turkey
16. Sweet potato and prawn fritters
17. Autumn salad with red and yellow tomatoes
18. Smoked tongue with red pepper sauce
19. Unpeeled sweet pepper salad (Tick!)

From the second edition:

1. Whole cabbage stuffed with pork, liver and capers (I love the sound of this one!)
2. Rosie's chicken dinners (a dish for the dog in your life)
3. Marieke's chocolate cake
4. George's chocolate nut cake
5. Green salad with walnuts, grapes and verjuice
6. Marieke's nectarine or peach tart
7. Dany's tripe
8. Michael's turnip dumplings
9. Yabby salad with walnuts and potatoes

So now there is one less "old" recipe to complete. It was interesting that this recipe sees boiling water poured over the capsicum, which is then left to sit for thirty minutes. We regularly eat our capsicum lightly steamed and I suspect the result would be similar, and also a little faster done my way.

This salad went well with fried halloumi, and I liked it, but it wasn't one of my favourites. At least it was pretty! x

408/1038 - Caramel

My youngest and I had the house ourselves last night and so we decided that a bit of decadence was in order. 

We got our movie organised and set to making some popcorn and Stephanie's caramel to pour on top. I was of course aware that Stephanie's recipe for caramel sounded very much like the recipe I use for toffee and so was not at all surprised that the result was a very sticky and eventually very hard popcorn coating!

It was so yummy though and we managed to get through half of our crunchy stash before calling it quits.

Eddie Murphy, caramel popcorn and alone time with my youngest.

Fabulous x

407/1038 - Grilled coriander pepper chicken

I am not very good at buying presents for my husband, but a couple of years ago I outdid myself in the surprise stakes. The main reason my gift giving is stunted is because my husband and I tend to buy whatever we want, whenever we want it. So for us, gift giving is about those things that we have not got around to purchasing or simply haven't thought of yet!

Some months prior to Christmas he had purchased a cast iron chiminea, which quickly became our favourite place to roast potatoes and marshmallows. I found out that that there was a barbecue /pizza oven attachment that could be purchased and voilà! his Christmas present was sorted. 

We have since had so much pleasure from this gift, from pizza nights to wonderful barbecues such as this. Tonight's chicken was dissected by me and smothered in a lovely mix of pepper, coriander, garlic, salt and lemon juice. The recipe specified lime juice but unless we are planning to drink Coronas I rarely have limes to hand. I can vouch that lemon juice is also fabulous!

The result was incredible, with the chicken meat remaining moist and the skin turning fabulously dark and crunchy. The boys were more than impressed and through mouthfuls of chicken, my husband I were caught giving one another small nods of approval across the table.

Even better is the stock I am currently making with the remainder of the carcass.

Risotto tomorrow night methinks x