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