Bean salad with feta cheese

Last night, The Boy decided that I would make dinner instead of him and it's still horribly hot here ... I expect it will continue to be horribly hot since it is Summer, but I decided on a bean salad.

When I told The Boy about it, his reply was that he was not keen on it since he wasn't crazy about a dish full of French (green) beans. I told him that it was just too bad because I had bought all the ingredients and he had to eat it anyway, plus the fact that he was the one who tagged the recipe in the cookbook anyway. Really, he didn't put up too much of a protest and he's very good at eating whatever I place in front of him.

This recipe is from my "Mmmm ... Salads" cookbook, which is part of the LOVE FOOD imprint by Parragon Books UK which has done a series of cookbooks for salads, pasta, fish, etc. I tried to find this book online but have not been able to do so. I bought it from a local discount bookstore that buys up big lots of out of print or excess stock books and sells them at a low price.

Here's a RECIPE for this delicious salad:

Ingredients:

• 350g French (green) beans trimmed
• 1 Spanish (red) onion, diced
• 3 - 4 tablespoons of chopped fresh coriander
• 2 radishes, thinly sliced
• 75g feta cheese, drained and crumbled
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano or 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar or fruit vinegar
• 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 ripe tomatoes, cut into wedges
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Place the beans in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 5 minutes or until tender when pierced with a fork. Drain and halve.
• Transfer the beans to a bowl and add the onion, coriander, radishes and cheese.
• Sprinkle the oregano over the salad, then grind pepper over to taste. Whisk the vinegar and olive oil together and pour over the salad. Toss gently to mix well.
• Transfer to a serving platter, add the tomato wedges and serve at once or chill until ready to serve.

Once again, I didn't follow the recipe exactly, this time though, due to some shopping and grocery store restrictions. We went to get our groceries on Christmas Eve before the grocery stores shut for two days over Christmas and Boxing Day and a lot of the product had been picked over. We managed most of the ingredients but could not find a few of them.

To start, instead of leaving the green beans long and then halving them, I trimmed the green beans and then cut them into 1 or 1.5 inch lengths depending on the size of the green bean. I bought about 3 large handfuls of green beans but I don't know what weight that was since the store didn't have a scale for me to weigh the beans in.

I couldn't find any fresh coriander from the store because they were completely out of herbs (and really, it was our fault because we didn't get to the store till late afternoon as we were waiting on a delivery). Instead, I used the Gourmet Garden Coriander paste which came in a tube.

I didn't use any radishes because The Boy doesn't like radishes and also because there were none to be had at the grocery store. When we came across radishes at another fruit and vegetable specialty store a few days later, they sold them in bunches of 6 and I had no use for the remaining 4 radishes, plus they wouldn't just sell me 2 radishes, and The Boy once again reiterated that he did not like radishes. So, no radishes were harmed in the making of this salad. ;-p

With the feta cheese, I used the Coles brand Australian Feta Cheese which is pretty hard and doesn't crumble well, so I broke a 200g package into half which ended up more like 2/3 and 1/3 since it didn't break evenly in half and I used the larger piece. I just cut those into small pieces.

For tomatoes, I used the Perino - Sweet Snacking Tomatoes which are like grape tomatoes just because that is what I had in the fridge. I used just a little over a half a punnet of it and instead of adding it at the end, I included them into the bowl and mixed the dressing through it as well.

I cooked the beans, keeping them only lightly cooked and crunchy by steaming them for about 3 minutes rather than boiling them and then putting them into ice cold water to stop them from continuing to cook.

After cutting up all the other ingredients, I put the beans, onion, feta cheese and tomato into large bowl. I also had a piece of cooked chicken breast leftover from another meal and I cut them into small pieces and included that into the mix.

I then mixed up the dressing in a glass jar, which included the coriander paste, olive oil, dried oregano, salt, pepper and red wine vinegar. I then closed the lid of the jar and shook the jar vigorously to mix up the dressing which I then poured over the salad in the bowl.

Once the dressing was poured into the bowl, I mixed it through the salad thoroughly and then the salad was ready for serving.

The salt and pepper was to taste, so just use the amount that is suitable for you. Something to note though, since the feta cheese has salt in it already, there's no need for a lot of salt.

This is an extremely tasty and hearty salad and served a generous portion meal for the both of us.

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Happy birthday to The Boy ... what incredible food we had!

Just a little disclaimer! There's no recipe in this blog post. I'm just commemorating a very special event that has occurred recently in our lives.

The Boy turned 60 this year and I was very excited about the event and possibly a little concerned about his getting old! :-)

Originally, we had thought to invite a whole bunch of friends to a party to celebrate but the more we thought about it, the larger it was going to be and in the end, it was a case of - oh, if we invite so and so, then we HAVE to invite so and so too, and we couldn't possibly leave out so and so .... and it rapidly became HUGE and out of control.

We finally decided to scale it right back and similar to my 40th, we limited it to friends we had know for 10 years or more. Special friends whom we had shared many similar events with as well, and in general just kept it really low key. Some special friends came in from interstate for the evening and we had a special last minute visitor from The Boy's college visiting and we invited him along as well.

We decided to ask our favorite chef friend, Jay Huxley to cater the meal for us and The Boy pulled out wines to match the food.

Jay fixed an incredible menu for us and The Boy did a fine job matching wines. You can read about the wines for the night here.

When Jay asked me what I wanted for the menu, my response was "something fancy, modern Australian".

We had originally thought cocktail style food but Jay told me that we really needed a sit down meal to do the menu he had devised justice. This, of course, involved additional chairs and us squashing rather intimately around our dining room table, which only sat 8 people, since we ended up with 11 people for the evening.

Here's the incredible menu that we enjoyed for the evening.

• Tian of Alaskan King Crab, black caviar and radish
• 
  
• Sousvide  Pork Fillet, red cabbage, cauliflower purée and lentil pear salad
•  
• Oyster and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil
• 
  
• Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple
• 
  
• Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk
• 
  
• Charcoal octopus in romesco sauce and verde oil
• 
  
• Confit duck in a mushroom, abalone and star anise consume
• 
  
• Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro
• 
  
• Spice poached pear crispy wonton, salted caramel and double cream
• 
  
• Death by chocolate

I'm sorry that I don't have pictures of every single course. At some points in the evening, I got so excited (and just a little bit tipsy) that I forgot to take pictures of the food.

My favorite dish of the evening, if I had to pick on would be the vichy asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk. It was an incredibly decadent and sumptuous dish.

All in all, it was an amazing night of friendship, celebration, food and wine.

If you ever need a meal catered, I highly recommend Jay.

Ps. Jay is incredibly generous with his skills and knowledge and he will happily share with you his recipes if you ask. At the very least, that has been my experience with him. Whenever I've needed advice on something or a recipe for something he's cooked, he's been happy to share.

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

Cajun swordfish ... well, fish anyway

A little while ago, we went up to The House for a long weekend and The Boy decided that he wanted to do some cooking (all on his own) and he had a craving for Cajun swordfish.

The House is situated in the country and while we are near a small town, conveniently located only a few minutes from where we are, seafood choices are limited.

We headed into the grocery store (there was no fish shop to be had) and found some salmon, basa and assorted white fish in the deli section but no swordfish.

We made do with what we had and made up our version of Cajun fish (minus the "sword"!).

The Boy found a recipe online that he used to mix up the Cajun flavors which were zingy and yummy.

Here's the RECIPE:

Ingredients:

• 1 tbs / 15ml lime or lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 4 swordfish, halibut or salmon steaks (750g in total)

Instructions:

• In a small bowl, whisk together lime or lemon juice, 2 tsp water and all the other dry ingredients listed.
• Rub the mixture gently onto both sides of the fish.
• Place on foil lined baking sheet, roast in oven at 180dC for 10 minutes or until fish flakes easily with fork.

The Boy followed the instructions exactly for the spice mixture and we bought some salmon and some Basa fillets which we seasoned to cook.

Instead of cooking the fish in the oven, we placed a foil sheet over a small BBQ and cooked the fish on the BBQ. After the fish was cooked (but still moist), we then took it off the foil sheet and quickly seared the fish on the BBQ to give it a smoky flavor and seal in the spices.

This mixture turned out to be spicy and delicious. I enjoyed the Basa fillets more because I think the Basa allowed more of the spices to come through and really come into its own. The salmon while a lovely fish (and I love my salmon raw) was too flavorsome a fish on its own and I thought that the spice flavors were somewhat in conflict with the fish itself, each competing for dominance.

I think in general, with such a spicy mix for the fish, something like a Basa, swordfish or something similar (as I put it, a white fish rather than a colored fish, ie., salmon, tuna, etc.) would be better to allow the Cajun flavors to come through and not compete with the flavor of the fish.

This was delicious and we're up at The House soon again. I'm going to ask The Boy to make this for me again. I really enjoyed it.

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

Creamy chicken and broccoli casserole ... really, really delicious!!

I have been wanting to make a chicken casserole of some sort for the longest time and finally found a recipe that appealed to me.

Of course, after finding the recipe I had to convince The Boy that it was something he'd eat because every time I mentioned the words "chicken casserole" he'd make a face. The reason? Because I've been feeding him a lot of chicken since I'm not eating any red meat at the moment. He could be just a tad chickened out.

Well, last night, I finally decided that I'd cook this chicken casserole recipe that I had found and I'm very glad that I did.

My worry in cooking a creamy chicken casserole was to make sure that it was tasty. It's so easy to make a chicken casserole, follow the instructions and then have it turn out quite bland, because let's face it, the ingredients do lend themselves to something that could turn out rather bland.

Here's the RECIPE for the casserole and I'll go on to talk about that I did differently to make sure that it was tasty as well.

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken breasts, cooked & shredded
• 2 cans of cream of chicken soup
• 1 cup of mayo
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup colby & monterrey jack cheese
• 1 bag frozen broccoli,thawed and chopped
• salt & pepper to taste
• Spaghetti noodles - cooked

Instructions:

• Cook chicken & shred.  Meanwhile, chop the broccoli.
• Now, mix all ingredients together.
• Spray casserole dish with a thin layer of oil.
• Put cooked spaghetti noodles on the bottom of the casserole dish.
• Transfer rest of the mixture to the casserole dish.
• Put into oven at 180dC and cook for 30 minutes or until bubbly.

First off, I used chicken thigh fillets - 6 of them, because I do not like chicken breast. It's horrible, stringy meat with very little flavor.

I did not have all those various types of shredded cheese because this is an American recipe and we don't that many types of shredded cheese here. I just used our shredded pizza cheese mix.

I also used fresh broccoli rather than frozen broccoli because I'm not much into frozen vegetables other than peas.

I also used macaroni elbow pasta rather than spaghetti noodles because that was what The Boy wanted.

The other things that I did differently - and these was quite different were:

• On top of the chicken pieces, I added several slices of bacon, cut slightly chunky and cooked together with the chicken, so that it was cooked and the bacon flavor came through but not crispy.
  

• While I was cooking the chicken, I also added several generous pinches of salt and a lot of pepper. On top of that, I added 1 teaspoon of chili paste to give it just a hint of heat. There was not enough to make it hot and spicy, just enough to get a hint, that's all.

• I used 1 cup of a leftover blue cheese dressing that I had made up when I was cooking (experimenting with) buffalo wings.

• I used 1/2 a cup of mayonnaise instead of 1 cup of mayonnaise since I already had plenty of mayonnaise in the blue cheese dressing.

• I didn't mix the cheese into the chicken and broccoli mixture, rather I layered the cheese on top of the pasta and then again, on top of the chicken mixture.

This turned out to be absolutely delicious. The hint of chili really helped give some depth to the flavor of the casserole. The Boy absolutely loved it and when he asked me what I did, I told him, to which he responded "so you didn't really follow much of the recipe, did you?" ... I did ... sort of!

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

Smashed avocado and feta on toast with tomato salad and smoked salmon

We're up at The House for the weekend and when we're up here, The Boy likes to get the weekend paper, sit and read the paper with a cup of coffee. It's something that he truly enjoys.

Very often, when he reads through the lifestyle sections of the paper, he'd pull out any recipes that sound interesting to him and suggest I make them. I confess, I don't often do but the recipe he pulled out this weekend sounded like the perfect meal for a dinner to me. In reality, this would also make a lovely weekend breakfast dish but we had it for dinner instead because we're crazy like that. :-)

The thing I love about this recipe is that there is no cooking involved and it's super easy to make. You just need to make sure you have all the ingredients and that it's thrown together quickly.

Here's the RECIPE for our meal.

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe avocado, halved and stoned
• 1 tbs dill, finely chopped
• 1 tbs mint leaves, chopped
• Sea salt and pepper
• 1 tbs lime or lemon juice
• 100g feta cheese, crumbled
• Half a red onion, finely sliced
• 100g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2 slices of thick toast
• 2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
• Extra dill or mint for serving
• 200g smoked salmon

Instructions:

• Roughly chop the avocado with a fork, but don't make it completely mushy. Place into a bowl with chopped dill, mint, salt, pepper and lime or lemon juice. Put in the crumbled feta and lightly toss it all together. Check the taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary.
• Put the cut tomatoes in bowl and add the sliced red onion to it. Mix with the olive oil, salt and pepper.
• Take the smoked salmon out of the package and place onto the plate.
• Toast the bread and brush the toasted bread with butter or olive oil.
• Place bread on the plate and top with the avocado and feta mix, then add the tomato salad on top.
• Serve and enjoy!

This is a very simple meal to pull together and also very nutritious and tasty.

I didn't use any salt in the avocado and feta since the feta itself it quite salty but I used a fair bit of pepper because I like my pepper.

I also didn't crumble the feta like the recipe said, instead I just chopped it up into small pieces (about the size of my little fingernail) with a knife since the feta I used was not crumbly and quite hard.

Instead of cherry tomatoes, I also used grape tomatoes. I generally prefer grape tomatoes to cherry tomatoes since I think they are a little sweeter and also to me they taste more tomato-ey.

Half a red onion is a lot of onion so 1 only used 1/4 of an onion. If you really really like your onion, you can certainly use half the onion but then you would have more onion than tomato.

The Boy had his on toast, while I just had mine on its own without the toast. I was trying to be good and going a little carb free for the evening since I'm been a little carb crazy the last couple of weeks and I really need to cut back on it. My downfall is the steamed Chinese BBQ pork buns!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this recipe. It's a fabulous summer dish since it's a very cool dish. We had a hot day up in The House last night, so this lovely cool dinner dish really suited us.

ps. I also just realised that it's been over month since my last post and for that I apologise. I've got another one lined up, which I hope I'll get up shortly.

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

Corn on the cob ... in the microwave

First of all, I want to apologize for the lack of attention that my blog has been getting lately.

We haven't been cooking all that much as for some reason or other, either both of us, or just The Boy has not been home for dinner and we've been busy over the weekends. Usually, there is at least one big cooking day, normally, a Sunday where I cook a new recipe or spend quite some time in the kitchen. This has not been happening much at all.

We're still cooking at home most nights and eating in when The Boy is not out for a work function, but the meals have been simple and more often than not, just fruit or vegetables.

I've been on a fruit and yogurt kick, so a lot of the time, I've been eating a small bowl of blueberries (they are in season right now!) with some strawberry yogurt (I've managed to find one type of yogurt that does not aggravate my lactose intolerance and I've been able to eat it with no problem).

Tonight, has not been much different. We had a big day yesterday and were out for both lunch (visiting with some friends we hadn't seen in 9 years) and dinner (visiting with some other friends we had not see in in 18 months). We were fed well, 3 courses of starter, main and dessert with both meals.

As a result, we decided on a simple dinner. We had bought some fresh corn from a farmer's stall while up in the country last weekend that needed to be eaten along with some lovely tomatoes.

Our mish-mash of dinner consisted of some corn on the cob, along with a tomato, basil and boccocini salad.

You can find my recipe for the boccocini salad here and it's very simple to make. Very refreshing and satisfying!

As for the corn on the cob, I used to cook my corn by boiling it.

The boiling method was quite simple, boil water, put in corn, continue to boil for 12 minutes, then remove corn, season and eat.

These days, I've been using the microwave. I learned this from my mother-in-law.

I put the corn in the microwave and the general rule of thumb is 4 minutes per corn cob. This has worked generally really well for me, but recently we got a new microwave and that sucker packs a punch, so now 4 corn cobs only take 8 minutes to cook. You just need to check the power levels on your microwave and adjust accordingly. If your corn kernels start to look prune-like and shriveled then you've cooked it too long.

The corn goes on a large dinner plate into the microwave. This is for 4 corn cobs - I cook it for 4 minutes on one side and then turn the corn and cook it for another 4 minutes.

Then I take the corn out, butter and salt it to taste and munch away.

Hopefully, I will get back to some more regular cooking and doing some new recipes soon so that this blog will get some much needed love again.

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

The Boy cooks ... Black bean soup

It has been weeks since I've posted anything on the blog, mostly because we've been eating some repeat recipes and we've also been really busy with work. I've just been doing what was easier for me given the lack of time.

We recently had a long weekend and we headed up to The House for it. Stayed a lovely 4 days before heading back to reality and city life.

While we were up there, The Boy decided that he wanted a few things to eat that he's been craving but for some reason or other we have never made the effort to cook. One of them was black bean soup.

The Boy is a huge fan of anything bean-related. The 8-year old in him is particularly fond of the after effects of eating a lot of beans. :-)

Anyhow, he also decided that he will cook unaided by moi completely on his own while up at The House. Well, it wasn't completely unaided as I did offer some advice along the way but he pretty much did most of it himself. I was so proud of him.

Here's the RECIPE for the black bean soup that he made:

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
• 1/4 red capsicum, finely chopped
• 2 heaped teaspoons of chicken stock
• 1.5 cups of boling water
• 2 (15 oz) cans of black beans, undrained
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 1.5 tablespoons of corn starch

Instructions:

• In a pot, combine the first 6 ingredients, simmer for 10 minutes
• Add half a can of beans, salt and cumin, cook for 5 minutes
• Puree soup with a hand blender while still in the pot
• Add the rest of the beans into the pot
• Combine cornstarch with 1.5 tablespoons of water
• Add lemon juice and cornstarch to soup and cook until thickened

For the most part we followed the instructions, though I was not keen on them. I struggled with that part of the instructions that said "puree soup". Seriously, I wanted my black bean soup to be chunky, but after feeling somewhat disgruntled about it, I left it and walked away because after all, this was The Boy's show and he was cooking it and it was his recipe.

That said, we still did a few things different which I think helped the soup.

I like more flavor in my soup, so I used 3 teaspoons of stock instead of the recommended 2 or rather, I suggested that The Boy use 3 teaspoons.

We mixed the cumin, salt and lemon juice together and just dumped it all in to let it boil before pureeing the soup.

We didn't have any cornstarch so went without. It wasn't really missed because the soup was very thick even without it. It might have been too thick with it.

After the soup was ready, I tasted it and found it to be somewhat bland so I added 1/2 teaspoon of paprika and 1/4 teaspoon of chili powder to give it some depth in the flavor. This worked out really, really well for us, but could have been a little to spicy for some, so watch this.

To serve, we added a generous dollop of sour cream, which softened the flavor and gave it a richness that was just delicious.

All in all, The Boy did an awesome job with this soup. We will definitely be doing this again.

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

Slow cooked crock pot orange chicken

Last weekend, a friend of mine decided to go into a very industrious cooking frenzy and made a whole bunch of meals, slow cooked and otherwise to freeze for the week. One of the dishes that she made was a recipe for orange chicken which she found on Pinterest (doesn't every recipe come from Pinterest these days? or at least it feels like it?).

I was interested in the recipe since we hadn't had orange chicken in a very long time, and for that matter, not even lemon chicken. The reason for that is because being of the Chinese ethnic persuasion, orange chicken and lemon chicken was always the dish that the "kwai lows" (ie, foreigners) ordered when they went to a Chinese restaurant. Us Chinese would turn our noses up on them and the dish because, well, we'd eat more authentic dishes, of course!! Seriously, though, sweet and sour pork is one of my favorite Chinese dishes at a Chinese restaurant, so I really have no excuse about being a snob about orange or lemon chicken.

Snobbishness aside, this recipe looked tasty (the picture on the Pinterest post looked really nice and don't they say we eat with our eyes?) and I wanted to try it. It was time we had something slightly ethnic in our cooking repertoire and dinner menu rather than your usual pedestrian American or Italian fare. This one was at least Asian-ish and had different flavors from the tomatoey, cheesy, beefy or chickeny goodness I usually served up.

I'm going to serve this with brown rice and steamed broccoli.

Here's the very simple RECIPE for the orange chicken:

Ingredients:

• 3-4 boneless chicken breasts, chopped into small chunks
• 1/3 cup flour
• olive oil
• 1/2 Tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• 3 Tablespoon ketchup
• 200ml frozen orange juice concentrate (thaw or throw it in the microwave for 45 seconds)
• 4 Tablespoon brown sugar

Instructions:

• In a bowl, mix the orange juice, brown sugar, vinegar, salt, and ketchup.
• Pour the flour in a small bowl.
• Cover the chicken breast chunks in flour and shake off the excess.
• Pour a small amount of olive oil in a skillet and brown the flour-covered chicken.
• The chicken doesn't need to be fully cooked since it's going in the crock pot.
• After the chicken is done cooking, pour the pieces into the crock pot.
• Then cover the chicken with your sauce mixture and give the pot a stir.
• Cook on low for 5-6 hours or on high for 2-3.
• Serve over rice and even add veggies if you want a healthier meal.
• Enjoy!

I bought a 500ml carton of the orange concentrate and didn't want to end up with too much of the orange concentrate on my hands so decided to be generous with it. I used about 250ml of it in the dish and that worked out really well.

My brown sugar had also hardened to almost a rock-like state (from not being used in a long time) so I ended up popping it into the Thermomix to blitz it up. I then just tossed all the ingredients for the sauce into the Thermomix and just mixed it up in there.

I think I've said this before, but I don't have a crock pot, so I used a cast iron pot and put it in the oven at 90dC for 3 hours.

This turned out to be super tasty. Orangey but not too orangey and the sauce was so good that I wanted to drink it (which I did when I was putting away the leftovers!).

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

My top 10 most popular and most viewed posts

I've been noticing that some of my posts seem to be more popular than others and often end up in search engine results over and over again. I never know, of course, what makes them popular, especially my number 1 post.

Anyhow, here's a list of my top 10 most popular posts.

1. Boiling vegetables ... hot water? cold water? - I talk about the correct and best ways to cook vegetables.

2. Risotto, risotto, risotto - I talk about risotto and how to make it the traditional method.

3. F-F-F-Friday ... Love affair!  - I talk about my love affair with my Nespresso coffee.

4. Beef lasagna with bechamel sauce ... in the Thermomix - I talk about how to make a traditional beef lasagne but with the help of the Thermomix.

5. Chicken and mushroom risotto ... in the Thermomix - I talk about making risotto but using the Thermomix instead of doing it traditionally in the pan.

6. Creme Brulee ... in the Thermomix - I talk about how I made a lot of creme brulees using the Thermomix.

7. Farewell my boys ... with chocolate mousse - I talk about how I make my favorite chocolate mousse dessert. It's completely dairy free!

8. Beef stroganoff with fettuccine noodles - I talk about the recipe I use to make an amazingly luscious beef stroganoff.

9. Curry ala Thermomix - I talk about one of my first attempts at making a curry using the Thermomix.

10. Swedish meatballs with creamy mushroom sauce and fettuccine - I talk about making meatballs (and calling them Swedish!) with a creamy sauce served over a bed of fettuccine noodles.

So that's it, my current top 10 most viewed posts.

Hope you enjoy this little recap.

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

Simple but delicious chicken pot pie

First of all, I apologize for the once a week posts lately but I just haven't cooked as much the past couple of weeks and also doing some repeat meals of some of The Boy's favorites. Minimally, I try to do something at least over the weekend.

Tonight I decided to drag out an old, old recipe for chicken pot pie that I had not made in a very long time. I originally got this recipe from a dear friend of mine who is a wiz in the kitchen. She was visiting and staying with me and whenever she visits, I always take advantage (yes, I know, naughty!) and have her do a lot of the cooking because she is an awesome cook. One evening we thought we'd have chicken pie and she came up with the recipe for this chicken pot pie. I've loved it ever since.

Here's the RECIPE for the pie:

Ingredients:

• 4 pieces of chicken thigh fillet
• 1 small head of broccoli
• 1 stick of celery
• 1 small carrot
• 2 small white onions
• 1 can of Campbell's condensed chicken / chicken & corn / chicken & mushroom soup
• Small amount of flour

For topping:

• 1 cup Bisquick
• 1 egg (beaten)
• ½ cup of milk

Instructions:

• Cut chicken and vegetables into bite size pieces
• Dip chicken in some flour and cover
• Lightly fry chicken in oil until cooked until browned
• Lightly fry vegetables until cooked
• Mix chicken and vegetables in together
• Pour in condensed soup, mix well and cook
• Add salt and pepper to flavor

For topping:

• Mix the bisquick, egg and milk together
• Put chicken pie mix into pie dish or individual bowls
• Cover with bisquick mixture
• Put into over at 180dC for approximately 20 minutes or until golden brown on top

This recipe makes 2 large individual pot pies and 2 small individual pot pies.

I wasn't in the mood for the broccoli and celery and decided to go with a bag of frozen mixed vegetables instead, plus one brown onion, diced. I ended up using about two cups of the frozen vegetables which is a mix of peas, corn and carrots. Other than that, everything else was pretty much done to the recipe.

The Boy loved it and even said that the chicken pot pie was exactly how a chicken pot pie should taste. :-)

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

Pork chops slow cooked with creamy gravy and mashed potatoes ... in the Thermomix

I'm sorry that there has not been as many posts the last couple of weeks. One week, we just had a lot of leftovers and this week, The Boy has been out a few nights so I have not cooked much. I also haven't been well and have not had much of an appetite. One night, I just had a banana for dinner.

I've been wanting to try slow cooking for ages and I've been seeing a ton of slow cooking / crock pot recipes being pinned on Pinterest.

In the past, when I've tried a slow cooker recipe, it has not been particularly tasty and The Boy has been all "don't ever cook that again!" That was mostly my fault due to the fact that back then I knew nothing about cooking and I didn't know how to adjust flavors to something that The Boy would enjoy. I'm hoping that this time, with a little bit more cooking experience, I am able to make a recipe taste good.

So, in trolling through Pinterest, this recipe for pork chops with dressing and creamy gravy caught my eye and I decided that it would be great for our Sunday night dinner.

I'm going to serve this with mashed potatoes made in the Thermomix ... which is where the "Thermomix" part in the title comes from.

Here's the RECIPE for the pork chops:

Ingredients:

• 4 pork chops, 3/4-inch thick (I used bone-in chops)
• 1 onion, cut into rings about 1/4-inch thick
• 1 box stuffing or dressing mix (I used Stove-Top brand, pork flavored. Chicken flavored would also be great.)
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup (I used Campbell's Healthy Request Cream of chicken soup)
• 1 soup can water
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted (optional, but recommended if your pork chops are very lean)
• Salt and pepper, to taste or use seasoning salt, to taste

Instructions:

• Season each pork chop with salt and pepper. Place in the bottom of a slow cooker.
• Scatter the onion rings over the pork chops.
• Sprinkle the dry stuffing mix over the onions.
• In a bowl, mix together the cream of chicken soup, one soup can full of water, and the melted butter. Pour over the dry stuffing mix.
• Cover. Cook on high for 4 hours. Serve with mashed potatoes and a side salad.

I have to admit to being rather intimidated about the whole idea of slow cooking since my previous attempts have not been met with enthusiasm. That said, I was careful in what I did this time so that I could make sure that the dish was tasty.

I was generous with the salt and pepper when I seasoned the pork chops and I also browned them in a pan first. When I spoke to a chef friend of mine to ask him if it was possible for me to "crock pot" in the oven since I didn't have a crock pot, he told me yes, but he also said that I needed to brown the meat since that would bring out more flavor in the cooking.

We don't have the Stove Top brand stuffing mix mentioned in the recipe so I got the White Wings Stuffing Mix because it seemed to have the most spices in it compared to the other brand that was on offer. Even after that, since the recipe said pork or chicken flavored and this was just stuffing mix with herbs and spices, I added a teaspoon of chicken stock into the mix (just in case).

I did use the butter just because the butter just makes everything taste better. If you're extremely health conscious then you can skip it but it does make the meat cook a lot more tenderly.

I didn't use a crock pot (as I mentioned before, I don't have one!) but used a cast iron casserole pot instead. I put everything into the pot according to the recipe instructions, then put a sheet of baking paper on top of the opening of the pot and then put the lid on. My chef friend tells me that this seals in the moisture better and keeps the liquids from evaporating as much, though to be honest, my cast iron pots seal pretty well.

After a couple of hours the apartment started to smell pretty good. After 3 hours, I took the pot out of the oven to check on it (I also did a little taste test!). I poked the meat with the fork and it seemed like it was becoming quite tender. I also mixed some of the stuffing mix around that was sitting on top since it had not integrated entirely with the soup / gravy, then back in the oven it went for another hour before serving.

This turned out to be a really delicious and tasty meal. Very rich and creamy. There was a ton of gravy from the dish too.

Oh and by the way, this is my first time cooking pork chops. Since it's turned out well, I might do it again.

Of course, I was very remiss and did not update my blog post to talk about the wine that The Boy had picked out to drink with dinner tonight, so check out his blog post on what wine goes best with pork chops.

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

Tangy tomato chicken noodle soup

The Boy and I recently had dinner with a friend of ours and his new wife. They are both Iranian and we were invited to a home cooked Persian meal.

Persian food is interesting because "restaurant" Persian food is a lot of mixed grill, dips, etc., that is what typically defines a lot of "Middle Eastern" food but home cooked Persian food is completely different from what you get in the restaurant.

There are quite a lot of Russian influences in the food, especially with Northern Iranian food and a lot of very creative ways of cooking rice.

When we sat down to dinner, we were served a soup first and I loved it from the first moment that I tasted it.

It's tasty, tangy (from the lemon) and just simply delicious. I declared at that moment that if I had to forego every other dish and just have the soup, I would be quite happy for the rest of the evening. Of course, our friends were appalled that I would not want to eat anything else - I did by the way, and they urged me to try everything else on offer. It was all delicious!

I did manage to extract a promise that she send me the recipe for the soup, which I have now received and am quite happily passing on because good food needs to be shared.

Here's the RECIPE of one of the loveliest soups I've had in a long time:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 chicken breast
• 1 finely diced onion
• 750ml water
• 1 chopped tomato
• Noodle (a handful) - thin spaghetti or angel hair noodles, broken into small pieces
• 1 teaspoon  Oregano, salt and turmeric
• 1 grated carrot
• 1 fresh lemon juiced
• 1 tablespoon plain flour

Instructions:

• First boil the chicken and onion together for 30 minutes until the chicken is soft.
• Then separate the chicken and shred into small pieces then chop the tomato into small pieces.
• Pour into the chicken-stock (onions may be removed), top up with water if needed, add grated carrot and diced tomato.
• Squeeze in lemon juice and also add the noodles.
• Finally, add flour, spices and salt as needed.
• Let it cook for 30-45 minutes.
• Serve and enjoy!

Me being me, there were a few things that I did differently.

I used 1 whole chicken thigh instead of just 1/4 of a chicken breast.

I also used some chicken stock on top of boiling the chicken and onions together, just to add more flavor to the soup.

Aside from that, I really didn't do that much different.

I love the tanginess of the soup from the tomato and the lemon juice.

With the noodles (I'm going to try alphabets the next time!), it's a hearty enough soup to have as a meal in itself even though it's a more broth-like textured soup instead of a thick creamy soup. Also, I didn't put the noodles in right away as in the recipe. I put it in towards the end and only cooked them for about 8 minutes. I didn't want soft gluggy noodles, I wanted al dente noodles.

I also think that you could add some diced up celery into the soup and that would taste great too.

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

My best banana bread yet ... in the Thermomix

Each weekend, I buy bananas for the following week. I usually eat two bananas each day, one for breakfast and one for morning tea, or if I don't feel like it at morning tea, then I save it for afternoon tea.

This week, in my zeal to buy bananas, I did not count how many I needed and ended up buying too many. 4 too many to be exact.

I like my bananas still slightly green and once it starts to have brown spots on them, they become too ripe for me to eat. This happened this week on Thursday, so by Friday morning, I could not eat my remaining bananas.

Anyway, I have previously posted a banana bread recipe which I thought turned out OK but to be honest, I suck at baking and that was possibly the third or fourth banana bread recipe I had tried and while it was quite good, it wasn't perfect. Problem is, because I suck as baking, I don't actually know how to make the recipe better.

This time I asked a girlfriend if she had a good recipe and she pointed me to this one which she said she had made and turned out well. Now, I take that with a pinch of salt because she's a FANTASTIC baker and makes the most delicious baked goods. In fact, she's even thinking of starting her own bakery - she's THAT good!

After I looked at the recipe, I thought, what if I made this in the Thermomix? So I rang, my other girlfriend, the one who is a wizz with her Thermomix (she's my go to girl whenever I have a Thermomix question) and asked her how to change the recipe into a Thermomix one.

After about 20 minutes on the phone, this is the RECIPE that I ended up with:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 1 cup sugar 250g
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 4 bananas, broken into small pieces
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

• Add sugar and grind on speed 9 for 5 - 10 seconds
• Cream together butter and sugar and eggs on speed 7 for 8 seconds
• Add crushed bananas and vanilla
• Sift together flour, soda and salt and add to bowl
• Then mix on speed 6 for 10 seconds
• Pour into greased and floured loaf pan
• Bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 40 minutes in a greased loaf tin, then check every 10 minutes until cooked
• *Cook only for 30 minutes if in muffin tray

This is baking, so I'm paranoid and I did not do anything different.

That said, instead of baking everything in a loaf tin, I put the banana bread batter into individual serves in little muffin trays so that I would have single serve banana breads. This recipe made 8 mini banana breads.

This recipe turned out to be by far the best of all my previous attempts. The Boy loved it and his words were "The other ones weren't bad, by this is a lot, lot, lot better". I'm happy when he's happy. :-) I guess this will be the recipe that I am going to be using moving forward.

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

Bangers and mash ... in the Thermomix

This morning, I had no idea what I was going to cook for dinner. Both The Boy and I stood in front of the freezer with it pulled open staring inside looking at what we had. We had a meat pie (beef, bacon and cheese - YUM!) for dinner last night, The Boy had had a few pasta dinners from the mac and cheese I made on Sunday and some leftover spaghetti that I brought home from lunch one day so we had a bit of a conundrum.

After looking at the freezer for a little while I pulled out a bag of frozen gourmet sausages - I forget what kind. I asked The Boy, "How about sausages?" to which he responded, "Can we have bangers and mash?"

I've never really made bangers and mash before, but really, it's not that difficult. It's just a bunch of cooked up sausages and mashed potatoes. Of course, I was going to serve our usual side salad of mixed lettuce leaves in a caramelized balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

The most complicated thing for this *very* pedestrian dinner (I'm finding, I'm rather good at making pedestrian food!) was making the mashed potatoes.

There are so many ways to make mashed potatoes. There is the traditional and probably most commonly used way - boiling and then mashing the potatoes with a potato masher. There is my restaurant style mashed potatoes way and then there is the Thermomix way.

I decided on the Thermomix way tonight because I wanted no fuss and I also wanted it to be quicker than the 1.5 hours it takes to make the mashed potatoes restaurant style. Plus I'm cooking on a weeknight, any shortcuts are welcome!

Here's the RECIPE for mashed potatoes made in the Thermomix:

Ingredients

• Mashed potatoes
• 800 g potatoes
• 200 g light or full-cream milk
• pinch finely ground sea salt
• 20 g Butter
• Pepper to taste

Preparation

• Peel 800 grams potatoes and dice into 2cm cubes.
• Place in simmering basket.
• Add 200mls lite milk or full if you prefer. Add a little salt.
• Cook at 100 degrees for 20 minutes or so on stir spoon.
• When tender, add butter and a little milk if required and turn speed to 4 for approximately 30 seconds.
• For extra zing, stir through half a teaspoon of horseradish paste. For extra creamy mash, use the butterfly to whisk and use cream instead of milk or half cream, half milk.

Since there were only the two of us, making 800g of potatoes was going to be too much, so I used two potatoes (medium sized) instead. That was about half the recipe - 400g, I think, so for everything else I halved the recipe though I did use extra butter. I think I might have doubled the butter! :-)

Instead of cooking it for 20 minutes, I went with 25 minutes just to let some more of the liquid evaporate.

I cooked it on Speed 1, instead of stir spoon.

I added two pinches of salt, which wasn't quite enough. I think it might have needed at least another pinch of salt.

I also added a generous amount of pepper and finally about 2 tablespoons of truffle oil because The Boy loves truffle mash.

Finally, where it was supposed to "mash" on speed 4 for 30 seconds, I added the butterfly and used that on speed 4 for 30 seconds.

After that it was just a matter of serving, putting the cooked sausages on top and adding the side salad, then digging in.

It was another one of those very yummy pedestrian dinners The Boy loves so much.

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

Mac and cheese with shredded ham ... in the Thermomix

I was going to make a spiral pasta with pesto and chicken for dinner tonight but The Boy asked for home made mac and cheese. Actually, he asked that I make the mac and cheese from scratch for him one night this week and I gave him the choice of having it tonight or having the spiral pasta with pesto. He decided he wanted it tonight.

I love mac and cheese. To me, it's like the ultimate comfort food. The Boy will probably once again call it pedestrian.

I had thought that I would put peas into it, but The Boy doesn't like peas so I'm skipping the peas but I got some shredded ham to put in it.

The one thing that makes me cringe about cheese sauces is cooking them in a pot. Tedious and time consuming, the thought of standing over it, stirring, stirring, stirring. It's like making bechamel sauce. Not one of my favorite things to do. I have a friend who can do it with her eyes closed, but it's intimidating to me since there are some things in the kitchen that I do find intimidating. Making a roux is intimidating for me.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I'm very grateful to have a Thermomix. It makes making a roux or bechamel sauce very easy.

Here's my RECIPE for making the sauce for my mac and cheese:

Ingredients:

• 60g butter
• 50g plain flour
• 750g milk
• 120g cheddar cheese
• 80g Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

• Put Parmesan in thermomix and grate on speed 8 for 10 seconds. Set aside.
• Place cheddar cheese in bowl and grate for 10 seconds on speed 8. Set aside
• Make sauce by placing butter, flour and milk into thermomix bowl and cooking at 90 degrees for 12 minutes on speed 4.

I decided to be a little different with my mac and cheese sauce, so I got a tub of pre-made white creamy Carbonara sauce from the grocery store.

Instead of 750g of milk, I used 425g of the creamy Carbonara sauce, and the remainder in milk. Of course, I used soy milk, since I'm lactose intolerant.

While the sauce was cooking, I also boiled up the pasta so that it would be ready. I used 250g of elbow pasta and put that into boiling water for 8 minutes to make it al dente.

Once the sauce and pasta were ready, I mixed them both together and threw in the shredded ham (about 2 handfuls, possibly 250g) and mixed that through.

Then I added salt and pepper to taste.

This is an incredibly easy dish to make once you get the sauce right.

Of course, if you didn't want to do it all from scratch Kraft also makes a decent boxed mac and cheese where I think you either just add water or milk to cook. I've tried it once before but that was a long time ago. I really don't remember it very well.

Happy comfort food eating.

UPDATE: Apologies! It appears that I have already posted this recipe for the mac and cheese sauce before in this post. I had just forgotten about it and when I checked my tags to see if I had done it before or not, I looked under the wrong tags so I didn't see it.

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

Hummus .... a great dip and all around yummy

There's not much cooking going on this week since we had lots of leftovers from the beef and cheese macaroni casserole from the weekend and The Boy being out one night, me being out another. On top of that, The Boy is away for the next 3 days which means I won't bother to cook much until he gets home.

So rather than posting what I've been cooking, I thought I'd drag out a recipe from a good friend who makes the most delicious hummus.

I absolutely love this recipe. I think it's the garlic and the paprika that she includes in the recipe that makes it so tasty.

Here's the very simple RECIPE for it:

Ingredients:

• 1 can of chick pea
• 4 tbsp tahini
• 1-2 small garlic
• 1 or 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 lemon juice
• Some paprika
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 c good olive oil (More if needed)

Instructions:

• Add ingredients into food processor and blend until smooth.

That's it. Blend and dig in!

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

Simple beef and cheese macaroni casserole

Last night I decided to try out a recipe that I had seen on Pinterest and thought it looked or at least sounded good.

For the most part it seemed like a very simple recipe, mostly made up of a Bolognaise sauce and elbow pasta (or macaroni).

Here's the *actual* RECIPE: (I didn't think the instructions in this recipe were very good or well written so you might want to pay a bit of attention to what I did outside of the instructions!)

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• Salt to taste
• Optional seasonings: black pepper, oregano, cumin, coriander, chopped garlic, hot smoked paprika, chilli powder—whatever you're in the mood for
• 1 large 800g can whole tomatoes, pureed in the can with a hand blender or in a blender
• 1kg lean ground beef
• 250g of elbow pasta or macaroni
• 1 cup each grated cheddar and mozzarella cheeses

Instructions:

• Sweat the onions in the oil with a three-fingered pinch of salt.  Add the beef and cook it, breaking it up as you do.  Add another three-fingered pinch of salt or two, along with any dry seasonings you want.  Add the tomatoes and any fresh seasonings you may be using, bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low and cook for an hour.
• Cook the macaroni in boiling water till it's half done.  Drain it and add it to the tomatoes.  Stir it into the sauce.  Taste it.  Add more salt and other seasonings as needed, and cover.  When it's cooled and the pasta has absorbed the tomato juices, transfer it to a large baking dish and cover it with foil.  It can sit out for several hours like this, be refrigerated for up to two days, or frozen a few weeks.
• Bake it in a 200 degree Celsius oven till it's piping hot (about 45 minutes if it's cold to room temperature).  Just before you're ready to eat, remove the foil, cover macaroni with the cheese and broil till it looks beautiful.

I went about cooking this pretty much the way that I would making a Bolognaise sauce as I would when making spaghetti, so to be honest, I didn't follow the instructions that much for the sauce part of the recipe.

I did decide to vary the spices so that it wasn't my usual Bolognaise flavors so that we could taste something different. Instead of using Italian Herbs, I used Mixed Herbs, along with a generous sprinkling of cumin, paprika and ground coriander.

I also added several (okay a lot!) cloves of garlic into the mix.

After cooking up the sauce, I put it into a saucepan and placed it in the oven to simmer at 120 degrees Celsius for 1 hour, rather than have it sit on the stove at a low heat. I always find this way of simmering a sauce much more effective, safer and consistent.

After an hour, I pulled out the sauce and had the pasta boiling. I also tasted the sauce to make sure it tasted the way I liked it and added some more salt and pepper to taste.

I usually boil pasta for 8 minutes for it to be al dente but this time I only boiled it for 4 minutes based on what the recipe said.

After that, I layered the pasta, then two handfuls of shredded cheese (mix of tasty, cheddar and mozzarella cheese) over the top of it into a baking dish (I should have used a larger dish as I had sauce leftover!). Then I ladled the sauce on top of it.

I then placed the baking dish into the oven at a very low heat - 90 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes for the pasta to finish cooking and soaking up the sauce.

After 20 minutes, I put two more handfuls of shredded cheese on top of the casserole and back into the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for another 20 minutes.

All up, this takes about 2 to 2.5 hours, possibly 3 hours of cooking time. Make sure you allow that if you are going to make it.

I misjudged a few things:

1. I used a baking dish that was slightly too small and ended up with some sauce leftover. I'll probably freeze that and use it for a pasta dinner one night when I want to just cook something quick.
2. I also started cooking it a little too late so dinner was quite late for us. I should have started cooking about 5pm or even at 4:30pm but I started instead at about 6pm or possibly a little after. This meant that we didn't end up eating till close to 9pm. Very late for dinner at home.

One last thing, since it's all baked and the casserole has pasta in it, you need to be a little heavy handed with your seasoning if you want the dish to taste good. Don't be shy with your spices and your seasoning. It will really help your dish taste yummy.

While the casserole was baking, The Boy snuck into the kitchen and had a taste of the leftover sauce. He declared it "very tasty" and was quite adamant about saving it for another pasta dish one night. :-) It always makes me happy when The Boy enjoys the food I make.

Anyhow, it turned out to be delicious!! The Boy loved it though he termed the dish very "pedestrian" by which he means "everyday, home cooking that is yummy to eat". We have a ton of leftovers, so there are at least another 2 whole meals for the both of us left for the week.

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

Seville Chicken ... and a little grumbling about Microsoft Word and HTML code

Do you know what I don't like about Microsoft Word? I puts in a whole heap of junk HTML coding into the document outside of the text and the actual code needed to format the text you've written. I complain about this because I recently had to edit a book for a friend who had written it in Word and I had to correct the HTML to make some of the formatting work. It was a painful experience of editing HTML code for the better part of a Sunday afternoon. Of course, I also get reminded of this every time I write a blog post.

Why you ask? Because a lot of my recipes are in Word and when I want to insert them into a blog post, I then need to copy it into Notepad, strip out the formatting, copy it back into my chosen blog writing medium (in this case being an email composed in Gmail) and then reformatted.

Of course, now you will ask why I am writing my blog post in Gmail as an email rather than just doing it in the interface from Blogger? Because I don't like the way that formats either. I think I complained about it here when I first learned about it.

The Boy who writes the SAZ in the Cellar blog does all his composing in Blogger and writing in Blogger and even manages to do some fancy formatting with this text alignment around pictures. I am less inclined to fiddle around with the interface, so I have found a way which works for me and which I find easy.

What do I do? I write my blog post in my Gmail email interface, format it and add a picture, then hit send. Once I do that, I go into my blog and edit the post. The only things that I really do there are centre the picture and add labels to the post. This works for me. Of course, it's not as elegant as doing it all in the Blogger interface but I do like that Gmail autosaves and I find it easy to format. It also brings to mind the fact that I'm getting more set in my ways (read: getting older) and less flexible when it comes to learning new ways of doing things, not incapable, just less flexible and less willing to do so graciously.

And finally, you ask: What does this have to do with Seville Chicken? Well, I'll tell you ... when it comes to cooking, I'm much more willing to learn and try new things and this Seville Chicken dish did that for me on many levels.

As a dish, it was of course, new and I was trying it for the first time, but also, where the flavors were concerned, I was taking a step out into some unknown territory with ingredients like orange and different colored capsicums in a combination of flavors that I had not previously tried. It was also my first attempt at a Spanish dish.

I confess to being intimidated by recipes that seem to have a very long list of ingredients but less so as I become more experienced with my cooking. Looking at the ingredient list for this dish gave me pause, but at the same time, I wanted to try something new and decided to go with the challenge.

Here's the RECIPE for my Seville Chicken:

Ingredients:

• 1 orange
• 8 chicken thighs
• Plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large Spanish onion, roughly chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 red capsicum, seeded and sliced
• 1 yellow capsicum, seeded and sliced
• 115g chorizo sausage, sliced
• ½ cup flaked / sliced almonds
• 1 large cup brown rice
• 2 ½ cups chicken stock
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• ¾ cup white wine
• Generous pinch of dried thyme
• Salt and ground black pepper
• Fresh thyme sprigs to garnish

Instructions:

• Pare a thin strip of peel from the orange using a vegetable peeler and set it aside. Peel the orange, then cut it into even segments, working over a bowl to catch any excess juice. Dust the chicken with plenty of seasoned flour
• Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and fry the chicken pieces until nicely browned. Transfer the browned chicken to a plate. Add the chopped onion and crushed garlic to the pan and fry until onion begins to brown. Add sliced red and yellow capsicum to pan and fry, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon until slightly softened
• Add chorizo, stir fry for a few minutes, sprinkle over the almonds and rice. Cook, stirring for 1 – 2 minutes
• Pour in chicken stock, chopped tomatoes and white wine, then add the reserved orange peel and the dried thyme. Season well, Bring the sauce to simmering point, stirring, then return the chicken to the pan
• Cover tightly and cook over a very low heat for 1 – 1 ¼ hours until the rice and chicken are tender. Just before serving, add the orange segments and juice, and allow to cook briefly to heat through. Season to taste, garnish with sprigs of fresh thyme and serve

Overall, if you follow the instructions, this is not difficult to make. It does require some patience though.

I did not vary the recipe very much, since this was new to me and also because I could not think of much that I wanted to do to change it.

The only thing that I really did differently was that rather than cooking it over the stove on a low heat after all the ingredients went in, I turned my oven onto 120 degrees Celsius and put the entire pot covered with a lid into the oven to slow cook. Oh, I also used one of those cast iron enamel pots (though mine is just regular Benzer rather than the much lusted after Le Creuset) rather than just a regular pan to cook in. This allowed the dish to be covered and slow cooked in the oven a lot better.

This dish was a complete surprise to me. The orange gave it a very tangy flavor and when you first eat it after it's been cooked the flavors are intense and almost all battling for supremacy in your mouth - between the orange, capsicum, the tomato and the various meat flavors - a delightful tango in your mouth. However, after a few days, when the flavors have integrated and mellowed, it became an entirely different dish yet again - smooth, rich, tasty.

Definitely a very yummy dish that has made it's way into my permanent cooking repetoire.

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

Easy chicken and corn soup

Whenever The Boy is sick, he always wants comfort food, which tends to be warm and soupy.

Either I make him chicken congee (Chinese rice porridge) or chicken and corn soup, both favorites and very often requested in our household.

At the moment, my poor Darling Boy is down with a virus of some sort, a chest infection and a very bad cough. The coughing just seemed to take a turn for the worse this evening though the doctor did warn that he would get worse before he got better. He's very poorly right now.

Sleeping last night was very unpleasant. He fell asleep but didn't sleep easily and tossed and turned all night in bed, as well as coughing all night. I got woken up at 1am and was unable to get back to sleep at all. Very distressing for the both of us.

I had originally intended for us to just have some leftover noodles for dinner but he gave me his cute sooky face and asked for chicken and corn soup, so that was what I made for dinner. I didn't have any chicken thawed for the meal so I ended up thawing out the meat partially in the microwave, cutting it into small pieces and then cooking it in the boiling soup.

Here's my super easy chicken and corn soup RECIPE:

Ingredients:

• 2 pieces of chicken thighs cut into very small pieces (about the size of a fingernail)
• 1 can 400ml creamed corn
• 1 can 310ml corn kernels (drained)
• 3 - 4 cups of chicken stock (enough to cover the ingredients)
• 2 eggs (optional in case the soup is too watery and needs thickening)
• 2 handfuls of shallots sliced (also known as spring onions or scallions)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Put the cut up pieces of chicken, creamed corn and corn kernels into a pot.
• Cover with stock and bring to a boil.
• Simmer covered for about 10 minutes after the soup comes to a boil.
• At this point, if the soup is too watery and you want to thicken it, bring it back to a boil, crack open the two eggs into a bowl, break up the egg yolk slightly (do not beat the egg) and pour into the soup all the while stirring to swirl egg around the soup.
• Continue to simmer for another 5 minutes after that.
• When ready, ladle into bowls, salt and pepper to taste and add a small handful of the shallots into each bowl.
• Serve while hot

Note: since the shallots usually go off really quickly, what I do is buy a bunch and then cut them up into small pieces and store them in a plastic container in the freezer. This retains the flavor and it doesn't go off. The shallots last in the freezer for up to a month or two, and it's great to pull out and just use a handful or two at a time.

Since this is pretty much a recipe that I made up, there's no variation to it. This is just how I make it.

Of course, tonight, this was exactly what the doctor ordered for The Boy. Right now, it's an early night for him and he's all tucked into bed, coughing like crazy and trying to get some rest. Get well soon, my darling.

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

Microwave chocolate chip cookie in a cup

Anyone who knows my cooking, knows that I suck baking, so imagine my delight when I found this recipe on the interwebs when I googled "microwave cookie in a cup" and found this little gem. I can't remember where I found the recipe but I'm very grateful for it. If you do want to find the source, just google it. :-)

I have to admit to being somewhat dubious about the efficacy of this recipe but then again I also know nothing about baking.

I won't blather on much more because there really isn't much to say about this little recipe besides the fact that it's quick to make and very tasty. I like that it's a small single serve cookie and I think it would also be great as a dessert, warm right out of the microwave and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Without further ado, here's the RECIPE:

Ingredients:

• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• 1 Tablespoon Granulated White Sugar (caster sugar)
• 1 Tablespoon of firmly packed Dark Brown Sugar
• 3 Drops of Vanilla Extract
• Small Pinch of Kosher Salt
• 1 Egg Yolk (discard the egg white)
• 1/4 cup of All Purpose Flour (plain flour)
• 2 Tablespoons of Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

Instructions:

• Start by melting your butter in the microwave.
• Add sugars, vanilla and salt. Stir to combine.
• Separate your egg and add the yolk only to your cup. Stir to combine.
• Add flour, then stir again.
• Add the chocolate chips, and give a final stir.
• Cook in microwave 40-60 seconds, start checking for done-ness at 40 seconds.
• Mine takes 60 seconds in a 1000W microwave.

Just for the record, this *is* baking, so I didn't vary the recipe ... sort of. I didn't have any granulated white sugar, so I used raw sugar instead. The cookie came out a little crunchy from that, I thought.

I did think it was a little sweet for my taste but then I think you can adjust the sweetness to taste by adding more or less sugar according to what you like.

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