Steamy Citrus Goodness

I made up this carrot recipe to go with a chicken dish I tried last week that wasn’t so fabulous…..I did this in one of those steam bags you buy for the microwave. It is amazing how much juice comes out as the vegies steam in their own juices – no water or other liquid required. I just added the lemon juice for flavouring.

Steamed Citrus Carrots

4 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

1 tbsp fresh rosemary, snipped

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tsp grated lemon zest

1 tbsp apricot jam

cracked pepper, to taste

Place all ingredients in steam bag. Seal bag and toss until carrots are coated with the other ingredients. Lay flat in the microwave and cook on HIGH for 5 minutes. Remove carefully from the microwave (these little buggers are burning hot and will give you a massive steam burn if you aren’t careful when opening!), give the bag a gentle toss and let stand for a further 2 minutes.

Serves 2-3 as a side dish

Happy and Steamy Fooding!

Let’s Get Mediterranean….

Oven bags are fabulous!!! Years ago I only ever used them to cook a great big roast in, and only then for the meat part – mainly to stop the oven getting splattered with fat.  Now, however, I’m using them more and more, for vegies as well as meat – I just love throwing random food bits and spices in a bag and seeing what comes out. I find them so convenient for a “one pot” meal, especially when it is too hot to muck about with complicated dishes, or it’s a week night, when let’s face it most of us can’t be bothered spending too much time in the kitchen.

I find that I still always cook a “normal” serving size for a meal, as I like leftovers, either for lunch or dinner. Once a week I work a 12 hour day and have to take my evening meal as well as lunch, so a small amount of a leftover meat dish I find perfect for that.

This chicken meal is a great example of oven bags really coming into their own, as the chicken stays locked in the steamy juices and doesn’t dry out. There is no need to even add any liquid to the bag, as the meat juices create enough of a sauce to keep things cooking quite nicely.

Mediterranean Chicken Bake

6 chicken thigh fillets (skinless)

2 wedges preserved lemon, chopped

180 gms pitted olives of your choice (I got a mixed serve from the local deli)

2 tbsp honey

3 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped

6 new potatoes

cracked pepper, to taste

Place all ingredients in a large oven bag. Close the bag and gently toss it all around so that everything mixes together.

Place on a baking tray and cook at 180C (160C for fan forced) for 45 minutes. Serve with a green vegetable of your choice, and a glass of white wine!

Serves 3

Happy Fooding!

Bacon Wrapped Salmon

Ready for the oven

From a cod recipe in Jamie’s Food Revolution I was recently inspired to wrap my salmon in bacon. I brushed the fish with extra-virgin olive oil, then sprinkled it with truffle salt, chopped fresh rosemary and cracked pepper, and baked for 20 minutes.

The outcome was alright –  a bit too salty though, as bacon + truffle salt is overpowering, so I couldn’t actually taste any rosemary. I like the concept though, of wrapping the fish and using whatever herbs and flavourings you like. Worth playing with anyway.

The garnish is a sprinkling of finely chopped nori – I love this stuff! So good for you, and it gives an oriental touch to fish, chicken, rice etc.

Garnished with shredded nori

I’m baking gingerbread today – should be fun. Don’t forget the cookie cutter giveaway!

Happy Fooding!

French Onion Lamb Shanks

Ready to go in the oven

This week I picked up a luscious looking 2-pack of lamb shanks, and thought I’d do them in the Continental cook-in-bag things that I have tried before. But…..when I went to the supermarket they didn’t have any of the pre-prepared bags in the lamb shank flavour that I used last time.

I decided to make up my own version. I placed the shanks in an oven bag along with 4 small, whole potatoes and 1 onion, cut into chunks. In a small bowl I whisked together a packet of dried French onion soup mix with about 1/2 a cup of white wine and 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary,chopped.

I simply poured the flavour mixture over the meat, closed up the bag, and baked at 180C for 1.5 hours.

Yum!

This made enough for 2, so I kept half for a leftovers meal the next night. I think next time I would cook it for a bit longer – 2 hours – to make the meat fall off the bones more easily.

(I served it with coleslaw – for no reason other than that I just felt like it!)

My Rice Cube arrived in the mail this week! I just have to find time to have a proper play with it…..

Happy Fooding!

Surprisingly Quick & Tasty

I love lamb shanks, but I’ve only ever thought of them as a dish to be slow-cooked for hours ’til the meat falls off the bone. Apparently, not always so! The other day a friend cooked this delicious cooked-in-an-oven bag meal, using a packet of Continental Cook-in-Bag as the flavour base. We checked the ingredients, because I was skeptical about how healthy the dehydrated contents would be, but actually it was pretty good – nothing too nasty in there. I mean it’s not 100% perfect of course, and you could always make up your own herb/spice blend, but for convenience it was certainly great and really tasty. We added celery, onion and carrot to the oven bag, as well as fresh rosemary (I’ve just discovered, thanks to meeting the neighbours, that there is a large rosemary bush growing under the staircase at my new place – never noticed it before – guess I walk around in a daze a lot of the time!).

The great thing about this dish was (apart from the yummy flavours) that it was ready in less than an hour, which for lamb shanks is excellent, as I always have to plan ahead and either be home for hours to let it cook, or get it ready in the morning and put it in the crockpot for the day.

Spoon the juices from the bag over the meat, mashed potato (made with cream cheese rather than butter) to serve, and a glass of wine or 3, and there you have a delightful gourmet dinner that was no trouble at all to prepare.

Happy Fooding!

Love these free e-cards http://www.someecards.com

Getting Stuffed!

Well today is moving day, for me. And all I’ve eaten over the last 3 days has been leftovers, sandwiches, muesli and oven-roasted bought trays of vegetables. So nothing exciting to report, and tonight when I am left alone with my still-packed boxes and am exhausted, my dinner will consist of a home-delivered Crust pizza and a bottle of champagne all to myself. I’m working tomorrow and the next day, and will have no Internet connection at home for a few more days, apart from my iphone, so my next posting might be a tad delayed due to technical difficulties and sheer exhaustion!

But in the interests of being well-organised with my blog, as they say on cooking shows, “here’s one I prepared earlier”…..

I LOVE stuffing! No one makes it like my ex-mother-in-law, who always used to have to make a whole extra batch when I was coming over, so that I could take it home. I love it sliced and eaten cold on sandwiches, and these days I don’t bother actually stuffing a chicken/turkey with it – I just make it separately – because why wait for a roast in order to make a batch, when you can just make and enjoy it any old time.

This is my ex-MIL’s recipe, with my addition of pine nuts, because pine nuts are one of life’s great joys and you should be eaten on or in as many dishes as possible!

Phyl’s Stuffing

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 cup fresh white breadcrumbs (of course you can use any kind of bread, doesn’t have to be white)

1 box packaged stuffing mix (if you can’t find any, use 200 gms more breadcrumbs mixed with dried herbs of your choice)

2 springs fresh rosemary, finely chopped

1 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped

~ 1/2 cup pine nuts (optional)

1 egg, beaten

cracked pepper, to taste

milk

Boil the onion in a little water for 10 minutes or until soft; drain and add to breadcrumbs, stuffing mix, herbs, pine nuts, egg and pepper. Mix well, then add enough milk to make a quite moist (but not runny) consistency.

Use as desired: either stuff a chicken/turkey with it, OR form into a log and wrap in lightly greased piece of foil to bake (about 45 mins at 180C), OR spoon into greased patty pan tins and bake for about 30 mins at 180C.

Happy Fooding!