Cooking meat

One thing that has always caused me great anxiety was cooking a roast or any large chunk of meat in the oven. I never knew when it was done and I was not sure what to do with it after. I sure as heck did not know that I had to rest the meat for at least 10 minutes after taking it out of the oven so that it can relax and settle down before cutting it up.

For me though, the biggest question was always - when is the meat ready? How do I know it is done without having to cut it up?

I was taught at one point to stick a sharp small knife (like a paring knife) into it and if the juice ran clear, it was cooked. This, of course, was all well and good if you wanted your meat medium to well done, but certainly not medium rare.

Well, since going to cooking class and taking the lesson on meat, I have learned a few things - like that whole resting the meat thing.

Turns out I don't need to cut up the meat to check it, I can just stick a thermometer into it - a meat thermometer to be exact. Fun times! I just stick it into the centre of the meat (without touching the roasting pan) and then read the temp. Easy peasy! and shopping for a meat thermometer was fun too. There are so many kinds to choose from.

Basically, I discovered that pork is done at 70 degrees C, and chicken or any other type of poultry is at 75 degrees C.

For other meats - beef, veal, lamb steaks and roasts, here's the range:

• Rare - 52 degrees C
• Medium rare - 55 degrees C
• Medium - 58 degrees C
• Medium well - 62 degrees C
• Well done - serve them a sausage ... okay, no, so anything above 70 degrees C, but really ....

Stick a fork in me, I'm done!



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Prawn cocktails

Here's something that's totally 70s and yet very tasty. It's a great way to do a yummy and yet simple starter for a dinner party and it can be presented in a variety of ways to make it very fun and colorful (it's all those lovely, orange, cooked prawns!) Who knows, it might even come back into fashion one day. :-)

To begin, all you need in a bunch of cooked prawns from your local fish market or fresh fish store. How much you get depends entirely on how many people you are going to feed. I'd say about 4 - 6 prawns per person is plenty, because along with the homemade cocktail sauce, it is pretty rich.

You will also need 1 head of cos lettuce or romaine lettuce.

To make the cocktail sauce, you will need to make your basic mayonnaise, which you can find the RECIPE for here. After that you will need:

Ingredients for cocktail sauce:

• 1/ teaspoon paprika
• 3 squirts of tomato ketchup
• A splash of Worcestershire sauce

Instructions:

• Make basic mayonnaise
• Add to basic mayonnaise the cocktail sauce ingredients and mix well
• Adjust quantities of cocktail sauce to taste

Once the cocktail sauce is made, finely slice the lettuce till you have about a third cup amount serving per person for however many people you are serving. Mix some of the cocktail sauce through the sliced lettuce and set it aside.

Shell the prawns any way you like (without any shell, with tail, with head and tail, whatever takes your fancy, though I personally prefer to leave only the tail - something for you to hold onto when you're picking up the prawn with your fingers, if you are that way inclined!) and arrange the prawns, cocktail sauce and lettuce salad on a plate, bowl or martini glass. If there is room, you can also include some whole lettuce leaves as part of your arrangement. You can make the arrangement as fancy or as simple as you like.

Once your arrangement is done, serve and enjoy.



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Now in the kitchen

Hello there!!! Wanted to say "hi" to everyone from the new blog site.

I'm much happier here with the new URL and since I've put a bit more thought into the blog name, much happier with that too.

All the posts from the old blog is here as well, so there's nothing missing. (Thank you, Blogger, for the wonderful import function!).

Now that I'm here, I guess I'd better get back to cooking, but before I start that - please spread the word ... Let everyone know I've moved and point them here.

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F-F-F-Friday

I've been thinking that even though this is predominantly a cooking blog, I'd like to do a feature once a week, or once in a while, where I post about something not related to cooking, or mildly related to cooking, or get a guest blogger to post something. I think it's a great idea, but that's me *grin*, what do you think?

Since today is Friday in my part of the world, I thought I'd kick off with this, which is only very mildly (at a stretch) related to cooking, but being the girly-girl that I am, I wanted to talk about it, just 'cos ...

My nails have been starting to look rather grubby with the workout they are getting from all the cooking I've been doing (two dinner parties last week!!). I haven't been happy with them and particularly with all the yuck that gets trapped underneath. I just never seem to be able to keep them looking clean.

To overcome this, I decided that I would color my nails and bought myself some nail polish - base coat, top coat, nail color - the whole works!

I'm pretty good at putting on nail polish well. I stay within the confines of my fingernails and my cuticles and I apply it evenly, etc., - evidence of a youth spent painting my nails a lot. I chose a shimmery nude color, as I did not want to have to deal with color clashes with clothing and make up. Plus, I like the understated look.

After coming home with the haul of nail related paraphernalia, which incidentally is not cheap, I proceeded to clean my nails and apply the polish. The whole process went pretty well except that no matter what I did (and I removed the nail polish and applied using a few different techniques) I got bubbles forming on the polished nail surface. Now, some of my friends tell me it's inevitable and they just ignore it. To me, OCD perfectionist that I am, it's just unacceptable and it bugged the heck out of me.

Since I was unhappy with the results, I went online in search of D-I-Y alternatives that would give me better results - less drying time, no bubbles, long wear, smudge free, etc. All the things that I got out of a pair of gel nails without the bulkiness and weight of the gel nails and found .... this!

It's a product called "Shellac" by CND that applies like nail polish but has the strength and durability of gel nails, without the thickness and weight. Oh frabjuous joy!

I decided that I liked the sound of it, particularly, after reading a number of forums on the product, as well as some blog reviews. I let my fingers do the walking and googled "shellac" along with my local city and found a place that did it within walking distance of where I lived. Oh more frabjuous joy! Taking a walk on the wild side, I decided to just rock up first thing in the morning instead of making an appointment! Fortunately, they were able to fit me in.

After a short 30 minutes, my nails were done, complete with manicure. The results? Even more frabjuous joy!!! My nails looked lovely and I'm very, very pleased with the results.

On my way out, I accidentally scraped my nail against the metal zipper of my handbag. Verdict? Not a dent, not a scratch! Still in its perfect, just applied condition.

I will be doing this again. Might even get my toes done! They last up to 14 days.

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Fish, mayonnaise and tartare sauce

I have just learned how to fillet a whole fish!!! While I know this is a skill that many people possess, in particular, those people who are avid fishers, I have to say that I have never felt the need to know where my meat comes from and I do not need to be hacking at the whole animal, bird, or fish. I spent a lot of time watching my grandmother do that as a child and that was plenty for me.

The whole filleting a fish experience totally freaked me out. There I was, at Level 2 Cooking for Blokes class and our instructor, Jay walks in with a huge bag which he reveals to be WHOLE, UNCLEANED, UNFILLETED fish. Ugh! At the best of times, I'm not a fish fan and if it even smells remotely fishy, I am outta there like a shot. At least, these fish did not smell like fish.

Jay stands at the front of the class and demonstrates how to fillet the fish. I've donned gloves because no way am I touching that thing with my bare hands and holding onto my boning / filleting knife like my life depends on it and totally freaking out inside my head.

When it comes to my turn, because I was so busy freaking out, I had no idea what to do. Fortunately, Jay was right on hand to show me again. Long story short, I did manage to (oh ew!) fillet the fish but thank you very much! one time is plenty. I'm buying my fish already filleted. That said, when push comes to shove, I do now know how to fillet a fish.

Here are the steps:

• Use a very sharp boning / filleting knife.
• Cut at a 45 degree angle just below the head to the bone.
• Make a cut just before the tail to the bone, but do not cut through the bone.
• Turn till the top of the fish is facing you and score along the top side of the fish from top to tail.
• Turn the fish around and do the same thing to the bottom side.
• Then go back to the top side and slice in small strokes into the fish along the score that was already made with the knife between the bone on one side and the flesh of the fish on the other. Cut as close to the bone as possible to maximise the amount of flesh off the bone. Do that all the way to the middle of the fish to the spine of the fish.
• Turn the fish around and repeat on the other side.
• Remove the fillet from the fish itself. You can toss the carcass of the fish or save it for fish stock if you have enough fish bones.
• Cut to remove all the yucky bits at the top.
• Cut down both sides of the spine to remove the bones from the centre of the fillet.
• You will end up with two pieces of fish.
• Then take one piece of the fish fillet, slice into the flesh at the tail end, flesh side up, along the skin. Slice gently and as close to the skin as possible to remove the skin from the flesh of the fish.
• Repeat for all pieces of fish.

And there you have it - a freshly filleted fish. Ugh!

We made a batter for the fish and deep fried it. The trick with the batter is to make it not too runny and throw some ice into it to keep it cold for optimum crisp in the batter when deep frying.

 

To make the batter:

Ingredients:

• A quantity of flour (depends on how much fish you have to batter)
• Season with salt (a pinch or more if you have a lot of batter to make)
• Beer or mineral water
• Handful of ice

Instructions:

• Put flour and salt into a mixing bowl
• Pour in small quantities of the beer or mineral water and mix until it is thick and doughy
• Add handful of ice
• Continue adding small quantities of beer or mineral water and mixing until you get a smooth, slightly thick texture (the batter will continue to thin as the ice continues to melt, but the ice does not need to be melted when the batter is done)

To fry the fish, you flour the fish (which basically means cover all sides of the fish with flour, heat oil to 180 degrees C and test that it is hot enough before putting the fish in. When the fish is covered in batter, slowly put about 1/3 to almost 1/2 of the fish in the hot oil and wave it around gently so that the part in the oil starts to cook for about 10 to 15 seconds before letting go and immersing the whole piece of fish into the oil. This will make certain that the fish will float to the surface and not stick to the bottom of the pot. Cook until a golden brown, remove from oil onto a tray lined with kitchen paper towels and sprinkle with salt while still hot. Eat with sauce of your choice. We made tartare sauce to go with the fish.

Here's the RECIPE for the tartare sauce:

Ingredients for basic mayonnaise:

• 2 egg yolks at room temperature (this is very important. If your eggs are cold, they will not combine!!!)
• 300ml oil (grapeseed, canola, sunflower or any oil that is without color and taste - DO NOT use olive oil)
• 1 heaped teaspoon Dijon mustard
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of pepper

Ingredients for tartare sauce:

• 1 teaspoon of mini capers
• 6 small cornichons - diced into small pieces
• Juice of a quarter of a lemon
• Pinch of lemon zest
• 1 tablespoon of finely chopped parsley
• Pinch of salt to taste

Instructions to make basic mayo:

• Put egg yolks into mixing bowl
• Add Dijon mustard, salt and pepper
• Begin to drizzle oil into bowl while whisking gently (you can also do with this an electric mixer which makes is so much easier!!!) until the eggs and oil combine and begin to emulsify
• Continue with oil until all of it is gone (as you proceed, the oil can go in faster and you can whisk faster)

For tartare sauce:

• Add all the tartare sauce ingredients into 3 heaped tablespoons of the basic mayo and mix together
• Add salt to taste

That's it! Fresh battered fish with homemade tartare sauce. We didn't have any hot chips to go with the fish, just 'cos we didn't make any.

For me though, if I want fish and chips, I think I'll go to a restaurant 'cos I'm not crazy about the whole seafood thing, but that tartare sauce is damned good and they don't make that as well in the restaurant. For all I know, they might not even make it themselves and the tartare sauce comes out of a jar, which would explain why most of it is pretty tasteless.



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Let's have a dinner party!! ...with crispy golden potatoes

Since I mostly cook for dinner parties and most of the heavy duty cooking that I do centers around the dinner parties that I have at home, I thought I'd talk a little bit about that.We have at least one a week or one a fortnight, and it's a whole heap of fun for me. I'm even known to be crazy enough to do two a week, if it takes my fancy. So far, people seem to be willing to come and eat. :-)

I recently had a dinner party that consisted of a starter of nachos, followed by a main of meatloaf with a red wine and mushroom gravy, crispy golden potatoes and Vichy vegetables (a variation of the classic French Vichy carrots, I just used a combination of frozen peas, carrots and corn). Fortunately, a friend was bringing dessert, so I did not have to worry about it.

The tricky part of this dinner was that not much of it could be prepared in advance, it was all cook and eat immediately. It was also my first attempt at a meatloaf, so I was rather nervous. I had to make sure that I had the dinner timed perfectly so that what was cooked ended up on the table piping hot. To that end, being the project manager that I am, I put together a little time line to help with the cooking prep and getting food to the table. I'm not saying do this for all dinners, but there are some dinners that need a bit more help thinking through the timing than others.

Here's what I ended up putting together:

• 4:00pm - make guacamole and refrigerate
• 5:00pm - set out ingredients for all dishes
• 5:30pm - assemble meatloaf
• 6:00pm - make gravy
• 6:30pm - put meatloaf into oven
• 6:30pm - peel potatoes and put in water to be ready for boiling
• 6:45pm - assemble nachos
• 7:00pm - serve nachos
• 7:00pm - start boiling potatoes and vegetables for Vichy dish
• 7:30pm - check meatloaf, take out of oven, heat up gravy
• 7:45pm - finish cooking potatoes and vegetables
• 7:50pm - serve dinner

This is the only time that I've made up such a detailed (and anal) plan for my dinners. The reason for it was mostly timing the potatoes and Vichy vegetables. I wanted to serve them hot from the stove rather than re-heated. It was certainly a great learning experience for me in terms of getting timing right. One thing that I did learn was to figure out how much of the dinner can be cooked in advance. That just makes life a whole lot easier when it comes to putting a meal on the table.

My favorite dish for the night was the crispy golden potatoes, which was a Jamie Oliver recipe, out of his 30 Minute Meals cookbook. By the way, that's an excellent cookbook, and if you're ever stuck for meal ideas, just pull one of those out of the book and make it. Fabulous!

Here's the RECIPE for the crispy golden potatoes:

Ingredients

• 500g red skinned potatoes
• 1 lemon
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme or rosemary
• 1 bulb garlic

Instructions

• Wash the potatoes, leaving the skins on
• Shape into 2cm chunks and throw into a large frying pan
• Cover with boiling water, season with salt and cover with a lid
• Turn the heat right up and boil for 8 minutes or until just cooked
• Check the potatoes are cooked through, then drain and return to the same frying pan
• Leave on a high heat and drizzle over some olive oil
• Add a pinch of salt and pepper, speed in strips of lemon zest and add 4 sprigs of thyme or rosemary
• Halve the bulb of garlic widthways and squash each half with the back of a knife and add to the pan
• Toss everything together, then roughly squash down with a masher
• Toss every 3 minutes or so until golden and crisp

I had too many potatoes in the pot and it took too long for it to crisp (I made more than the recipe) so my potatoes turned out not as crispy all round as I wanted it to, but they tasted fabulous. My lessons learned from that was - fewer potatoes and more time over the heat. Instead of stirring regularly, it's actually a good idea to just let the potatoes sit for a few minutes (just like the recipe says, possibly more) on the heat before turning. I was just too used to stirring or tossing regularly to prevent burning and this was the opposite.



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Coq Au Vin

This is a carry over from the French themed dinner party that I talked about earlier. I had posted the recipe for the French Onion soup but not the Coq Au Vin, so I'm doing it now.

But before I do that, do you know that I always thought that browning something in a pan before cooking it in a casserole pot was a pain in the rear end? Those were back in my lazy and ignorant days, days where I did not know much about cooking (not that I know that much more now) and I did not know the importance of browning. Learning to cook changed all that. The reason for making this point here? You need to brown the chicken going into the Coq Au Vin and it's rather tedious in my opinion. Yes, I said it, I think browning is tedious. Important but tedious.

I had fun with this recipe because there were so many bits a pieces to it and I was in the mood. It's not terribly complicated or difficult to make, but lining up the ingredients and getting it all ready to plonk into the casserole pot took a bit (either that or I'm just slow!).

Here's the RECIPE:

Ingredients:

• 8 pieces of chicken thigh with bone and skin on (2 pieces per person)
• 60gram butter
• 4 bacon rashers, chopped
• 16 baby onions
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 1 sprig thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 500ml dry red wine
• 250ml brown or white chicken stock
• 60ml brandy
• 2tbsp tomato paste
• 250gram button mushrooms

Instructions:

• Cut chicken into serving size pieces and toss in flour.
• Melt butter in a large frying pan and brown the chicken.
• Remove chicken from the pan and set aside, keep warm.
• Drain all but 1tbsp of fat from the pan.
• Add onions and sauté until onions are browned.
• Add bacon and garlic and sauté for 2 minutes.
• Add red wine, brandy, stock and tomato paste and herbs
• Return chicken to pan, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
• Add mushrooms and simmer uncovered for another 10 minutes.
• Adjust seasoning to taste.

The Coq Au Vin turned out to be very tasty and very rich.

I made 16 pieces of chicken, so my recipe was a bit larger than the one above, since I was feeding 8 people. Also, my chicken thigh pieces were very large, so it ended up filling my casserole pot right to the brim. In fact, it was so full that by the time I added the mushrooms at the end, the gravy was spilling over and I had to scoop up a bowl of it to avoid a small lake around my stove top. I did add that bowl of gravy back in later after some of the liquid had boiled down.

The chicken thighs are very tasty but does have some fat in it. The cooking will melt the fat off the chicken and you'll end up with an oily layer on the top. Skim that off with a spoon and discard.

The bacon in the recipe adds a lot of flavor to the dish, so there's no need to put salt into it. If you do want to add salt, taste it first before doing so. You don't want to over season.

I used a bottle of the 1989 Lindemans St George from the Hunter Valley, which is a Cabernet Sauvignon and a bit of 2001 Cockfighter's Ghost Shiraz also from the Hunter Valley. I know you're going to think: what? a 1989 vintage? Shouldn't you be drinking something of that vintage?? but the wine is past it's peak and was slightly off. It's still drinkable but The Boy is fussy about his wine and decided that it would be real nice for cooking - which it was.

The gravy from the dish is fabulous. We had it on the night with truffle mash potatoes but with the leftovers, I cooked up some spaghetti and used the gravy as my spaghetti sauce. It was super yummy.



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French onion soup ... for a French themed dinner party

Once a week or fortnight, which ends up being 3 out of 4 or 5 weeks in a month, I host a dinner party for a couple of guys (I feed them because I feel sorry for them and their awful eating habits at home) that work with The Boy. I add to that mix a few other friends that I want to catch up with and get the chance to cook up a small storm. The Boy calls this regular dinner of ours "Singles and Strays". I think the name says it all.

Last week, I had some ingredients leftover from a dinner party that did not happen (The Boy came down with a stomach virus) for Coq Au Vin which I decided to make for Singles and Strays.

Since Coq Au Vin is French, I decided on a French themed dinner party and added another French dish to the mix.

This is what I came up with. The Boy matched the meal with French wines.

Starter was a French Onion soup. I'll include a recipe for this dish on today's post. This was matched with an Alsace Riesling from Hugel, 2009 vintage.

Main was, of course, the Coq Au Vin with truffle mash potatoes. My darling friend Wendy, made roasted vegetables and a fabulous salad to go with the main. I'll put up the recipe for the Coq Au Vin and truffle mash another time. This was matched with a Chateau Larose-Traintaudon Haut-Medoc from 1992.

Dessert was homemade vanilla ice cream, which you can find the recipe here, accompanied a chocolate cake that my wonderful friend Ric brought. Everyone enjoyed the homemade ice cream so much that they asked for an affagato to take advantage of the ice cream. Hence, a second dessert of frangelico affagato. Dessert was matched with a Chateau Haut Bergeron Sauternes from 2005 and a Chateau D'Yquem from 1997.

To top off the meal, The Boy and Andrew both sipped a 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port while we sat around the table and chatted.

Since this was such a large menu, I started cooking at 11am and finished at about 4pm. After that, I set the table, cleaned up the kitchen and got showered and dressed. By the time that was done, it was close to 6pm and guests were arriving at 6:30pm and I had to get the mashed potatoes cooking since that took 1.5 hours. Timing is everything when putting together a meal with several courses.

Overall, the dinner was a success and the food turned out very, very well. It was beyond my expectations. My favorite for the night was the mashed potatoes since it was the first time I had tried this recipe on my own and was just totally blown away with it.

So without further ado, here's the RECIPE for the French Onion soup:

Preparation Time 10 minutes

Cooking Time 50 minutes

Ingredients (serves 6):

• 80g butter
• 4 large brown onions, sliced crossways into rings
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tsp plain flour
• 1.5L (6 cups) beef stock
• 125ml (1/2 cup) dry red wine
• 1 bouquet garni sachet (MasterFoods brand)
• Salt & freshly ground black pepper
• 1 30cm baguette (French stick), cut crossways into 12 slices
• 55g (1 cup) finely shredded gruyere cheese

Instructions:

• Heat the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions and garlic, and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes or until the onions are soft and light golden. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until flour bubbles and comes away from the side of the pan. Add the stock, wine and bouquet garni. Bring to the boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or until soup thickens slightly. Remove bouquet garni. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
• Preheat grill on high. Place baguette slices on a baking tray. Place under preheated grill (about 5cm away from the heat source) and cook for 2 minutes each side or until light golden. Remove from grill and sprinkle each slice evenly with the cheese. Place under grill and cook for a further 2 minutes or until the cheese melts.
• To serve, ladle soup into serving bowls and top with the baguette slices.

Note: You can prepare this recipe to the end of step 1 up to 1 day ahead. Cool to room temperature and store in an airtight container in the fridge. To reheat, place in a medium saucepan over a medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until heated through, stirring occasionally. Continue from step 2 just before serving.

I did a few things differently than the recipe because I just roll like that:

• I made my own Bouquet Garni and here's how - take a long length of kitchen string and tie together a few sprigs of fresh thyme, a few dried bay leaves, a sprig of fresh parsley (flat or curly leaf, doesn't matter) and the rind of a quarter of an orange, and there you have your very own Bouquet Garni. Make sure you tie it tight, otherwise it can come loose in the cooking.
• I was low of beef stock, so when I tasted the soup the first time, it was a bit thin on flavor and I like my food to taste robust and bursting with flavor. I did not have any beef stock left, so I ended up improvising and I used 1 teaspoon of Gravox (shock! horror!), 1 teaspoon of chicken stock (powdered) and 1 teaspoon of corn flour (yes, it's the magic powder again! to thicken). That rounded out the flavor nicely.
• I was generous with the salt and pepper. That really gives you the seasoning you need and bring it much closer to the taste of the soups you have in a restaurant. That said, make sure you don't over season. That would not work well 'cos then all you're tasting is salt and pepper. You want just enough to bring out the flavor of the onion.
• I used a white ground pepper because I did not want black pepper bits floating in my lovely brown soup.
• I used a light rye Vienna bread for the cheese crouton, which was nice and soft. I did not toast the bread on both sides because I wanted the bread to stay soft and absorbent (to soak up the soup). Instead, I just topped with untoasted with mozzarella cheese and stuck it in the oven at 180 degrees C for about 10 minutes until it was melted and browned on the outside.
• To garnish, I sprinkled some finely chopped parsley over the top of the crouton when it was in the soup.

And that dear people is how I made my French Onion soup. Next time, I will make certain I have more beef stock on hand.



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Cooking for Blokes

I really need to do a post early on about Cooking for Blokes. The reason I want to do this is for a very good reason - give credit where credit is due, I know what I know because of them.

I started the course knowing very little. I could make spaghetti bolognaise (which I admit I can do quite well) and a few soups. Our meals were mostly chicken parcels (very, very yummy) that I got from the butcher (very good butcher - Ray the Butcher (another blog post)), salads (very basic), steamed vegetables and the odd piece of meat (also courtesy of Ray the Butcher).

I wanted to become more confident in the kitchen and I also wanted to know what the heck I was doing. I mean, anyone can read a recipe, but do you know what you're doing? Do you understand any of it? If you follow the recipe, does it turn out well and taste good? It was all pretty hit and miss for me, though thank goodness, The Boy was most kind and very easy to please.

As I said in an earlier post, I had done a bit of research on the whole cooking course thing but left it for a bit. When I was finally ready to dive in, I picked Cooking for Blokes because I liked the course curriculum and I liked that it was a wonderful foundation to the cooking skills that I wanted. I also liked that it was in North Sydney, conveniently located near the train station and close to home.

I cannot even begin to tell you how glad I am that I picked Cooking for Blokes. I have had such fun in the 6 week Level 1 Foundation Course and most importantly, I learned a lot and it has made me want to cook more.

I've discovered a few things about myself over the weeks of cooking classes:

• cooking is darned good fun
• I really, really, really enjoy cooking
• I love, love, love cooking for other people and feeding them (for myself ... not so much!)
• I love that at the end of the cooking, there's something to show for it, and guess what? You can even eat it!!! How good is that???

Anyway, for those of you who are interested, here's where you find Cooking for Blokes:

90 Mount Street
North Sydney NSW 2060
P: +61 438 811 368
E: peter@cookingforblokes.com.au
W: www.cookingforblokes.com.au
F: Cooking for Blokes on facebook

And here's a quick run down of the Level 1 course ... I recommend everyone does it!!!

Lesson 1:

• Vegetables - initial procedures and preparation
• Stocks - chicken, beef, fish and vegetable
• Puree based soups, basic presentation

This lesson covers an introduction to the kitchen, how to address your work station and important kitchen safety. You learn how to use a knife correctly and practise our skills. We learn how to dice and slice an onion, carrot and celery and learn how to julienne. From there we learn discuss the importance of stock in cooking and we learn how to make a puree soup. The number of soups you can make from this method is only limited by your imagination.

Lesson 2:

• Blanching and refreshing fresh vegetables
• Basic sauces - tomato and cream
• Principles of cooking pasta

This lesson cover the technique of blanching and refreshing, one of the fundamental ways of dealing with timing in the kitchen. We learn how to skin and de-seed a tomato, how to chop herbs and how to keep our green vegetables attractive. We learn two basic sauces, how to cook dry pasta and put our meal together for the evening.

Lesson 3:

• Egg based sauces - hollandaise and bearnaise
• Eggs- poaching, scrambling, French and Italian omelettes
• Sweet souffle omelette

All about eggs. We start with making hollandaise sauce, how to poach eggs and then put it all together to make Eggs Benedict. Then we scramble, make a classic French omelette, an Italian omelette and a sweet Souffle omelette with an easy dessert sauce.

Lesson 4:

• Chicken - jointing and boning a chicken
• Deep frying chicken
• Shallow frying chicken

We learn how to joint and bone a chicken. From the different cuts of the chicken we do some deep-frying of chicken bits for a tasty snack. We learn how to bone out the leg and thigh of the chicken. We make a dish of chicken breast with lemon and garlic, baby potatoes and green beans.

Lesson 5:

• Fish - crumbing and shallow frying
• Meat - roasting cuts of meat, roasting vegetables and gravy making
• Meat - grilling, pepper sauce

To begin, we learn about a crumbing station, how to crumb fish and then shallow fry. From there we discuss different cuts of meat, bone and stuff a leg of lamb and how to roast. We learn how to roast vegetables and make our own gravy. We look at how to grill a steak.

Lesson 6:

• Meat - braising method
• Sweet treats - home made ice-cream, caramel sauce, and chocolate souffle

Here we learn the braising method, which applies to wet dishes such as Osso Bucco etc. Then we learn how to make a souffle - it’s easy when you know how. We make the famous Joan’s ice cream and a caramel sauce. We practise our knife skills and a have de-brief of what we’ve learnt throughout the six weeks. Then a big hug and photos.

This is straight off their website and I'm blogging about it because I love it. No other reason.

I'm off to do Level 2 now, it's fancy food, a Masterchef instructor and yummy goodness. I've just finished Lesson 1 and it's AWESOME!!!



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Burmese Red Pork Curry

It's not often that I cook Sunday dinner since Sunday usually tends to be a lazy day, but I've decided that I'm going to make an effort to cook more regularly, even if it's just for the two of us.

This Sunday's attempt is Burmese Red Pork Curry.

I served the curry with steamed broccoli and brown rice. That picture above is my very own. That's what our dinner actually looked like. *happy smile* Verdict? It turned out delish! The Boy even had seconds.

I'll post the recipe for this as well, which I got out of the book called "Slow Cooker Curry by Sunil Vijayakar. (As an aside: I used to have a tailor called Sunil. I remember him fondly from my days of living in Qatar - totally irrelevant, I know *grin*).

Here is what I did different from the recipe:

• I doubled the tomato puree and soy sauce amount that was listed in the recipe
• I added an extra 1 teaspoon of curry powder
• I also added an extra 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder mix (my own concoction - I'll add the mix ingredients below) for extra kick.
• The curry was still quite liquidy (I checked) after 5 hours, so I took off the lid of the cast iron casserole pot that I was cooking it in and just covered it lightly with foil for the last hour at 120 degrees C (instead of the original 90 degrees C). I think, it being cast iron, it was sealing really well and the liquid was not evaporating.
• After it came out of the oven at hour 6, the curry was still quite liquid so I put it on the stove and set it to boil. I then mixed up some magic powder (okay, corn flour - 3 teaspoons with 2 tablespoons of cold water) and added it to the curry and then let it simmer for a minute, stirring gently until it thickened.

Here's the RECIPE: (I used the oven, not a slow cooker, so the recipe's been modified accordingly).

Ingredients:

• 100ml (3 ½ fl oz) light soy sauce
• 100ml (3 ½ fl oz) tomato puree
• 875g ( 1 ¾ lb) boneless pork loin
• 2 tablespoons groundnut oil
• 1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 2 garlic cloves, finely slices
• 1 tablespoon peeled and finely grated root ginger

Instructions:

• In a small bowl, mix together the soy sauce and tomato puree. Put the pork in a non-reactive dish, pour over the soy mixture and toss to coat evenly. Cover and leave to marinate in the refrigerator for 6 – 8 hours or overnight.
• Heat oil in a heavy saucepan (or a casserole pot) over a medium heat. Add sugar and stir for a few minutes until sugar has dissolved and is starting to caramelize. Add the curry powder, garlic and ginger and stir fry for 2 minutes.
• Add the maninated pork (including any marinade) and stir to mix well. Remove from heat. Add just enough water to cover the meat, cover with the lid and put into oven at 90 degrees C. Cook in oven for 6 – 8 hours or until pork is tender and liquid is almost evaporated.

Note: if have a slow cooker, transfer mixture into slow cooker and cook on low for 6 – 8 hours per above.

And here's the ingredients for the chili concoction:

Mixed in an indeterminate amount:

• Hot chili powder
• Dried chili flakes
• Paprika (I can't remember if it was hot or mild that I used)
• Hot cayenne pepper ground

I have to admit that this is the first slow cooking recipe that I've done seriously and the first curry that I've ever cooked. I had a few anxious moments when I was not sure if the pork would be tender enough (I really should not have worried, after all the darn thing was cooking for 6 blinking hours) and when there was still a lot of liquid left in the pot.





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Caramel Ice Cream

I'm going to post some recipes of things that I'm making, along with what I experience from them. So - you get some commentary, possibly a pretty picture (either taken by yours truly or from the wonderful world of Google Images) and the recipe.

For your eating pleasure .... I present you with ... Caramel Ice Cream ...

Okay, so this is a very easy recipe that I learned from Cooking for Blokes and it is super easy to make.

The base of this recipe makes a lovely, rich vanilla ice cream.

If you are lactose intolerant (like me) you need to avoid it. Lots creamy cow-ness!!! I only have a teeny, tiny teaspoon to taste.

So, for caramel flavoring, make the vanilla base of this ice cream and then swirl in your choice of caramel sauce, whether you bought it or made it yourself. For today's ice cream making, I swirled in a caramel sauce that I had in the fridge, which I bought from a market. In future, I expect that I will be making my own caramel sauce.

This is a great recipe for a base ice cream and let's face it, I like it because it's yummy and it's easy to make. On top of that, you can pretty much make it any flavor you want by swirling in your choice of additive - blended strawberries or raspberries for a berry ice cream, chocolate, coconut ... you are only limited by your own imagination.

So for your eating pleasure, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
600mls thickened cream
2 eggs
1 x 395gram tin condensed milk
2 drops vanilla essence

Method:
Beat the cream (in a mixer – whisk setting) until thick.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after.
Add condensed milk and vanilla, continue to beat until thickened.
Freeze in a loaf tin for at least 6 hours before serving.

Helpful hint:
My mixer died while I was making this ice cream for the first time, so I ended up using a hand whisk (electric thank goodness) instead. If you are going to be using a hand whisk, just 'cos not everyone has a mixer, make sure your mixing bowl is quite deep or cover the top half that is away from you with a kitchen tea towel. That thing will splatter and you'll end up with ice cream mixture all over your kitchen.


© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd

Hello and welcome to my new obsession

I've recently decided that I wanted to learn how to cook. I'm not entirely certain what my reasons are, but a few of them include wanting to become more confident in the kitchen and wanting to build some foundational skills.

I let my fingers do the walking and found a 6 week course by a company called "Cooking for Blokes". I rang and asked if they taught women too and was told with a resounding "Yes!" that they do. After finding out that information, I let it sit for several months as I ... basically sat around and did nothing about it, really.

Well, the good news is - I finally got round to signing up for the course, and BOY! am I glad that I did.

IT IS BRILLIANT!!!

I learned many, many, many of the basic skills that a budding cook would find essential and more than that - I have loads and loads of fun, plus I've discovered something ... I love to cook. Really, truly, love to cook.

I'll talk a bit more about Cooking for Blokes in a later post, but right now, I just wanted to say "Hello!" and introduce myself.

I'm going to blog about what I cook and what I'm discovering in this wonderful world of cooking.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd