You Say You Want a Revolution….

Layer upon layer upon layer

A quinoa one, that is. Quinoa has been a super food winner for the last couple of years, and I’ve been on that bandwagon since living in Chile, where it has always been a commonly found staple food, and for good reason – it tastes great, is easy to cook, is suitable for those with wheat allergies, and of course is extremely good for you.

There is a plethora (I just wanted to use that word cos’ it’s a cool one!) of quinoa cookbooks around these days, and I eagerly scour through every new one that comes in at my work. The recipe below is adapted from Cabbage Crockpot Casserole, from Patricia Green & Carolyn Hemming’s new cookbook, Quinoa Revolution.

I don’t usually go in for crockpot recipes that involve a heap of pre-preparation – I do like to just throw it all in – but I had plenty of time on this day so was happy to brown the mince before putting it in the crockpot, and it was simple enough to do. Everything else is just layered over the top and then it is switched on and ignored for the day.

I don’t feel the passata on the top added anything really, so next time I will just leave that top bit out – it doesn’t really mix in through the rest, and just stays as a layer of tomato “paste”, when you serve it. Just tinned tomatoes is enough I think.

Layered Beef Casserole

1 tbsp olive oil

500 gms minced beef

1 brown onion, cut into wedges

4 slices rindless bacon, fat cut off, roughly chopped

3/4 cup red quinoa

1 green capsicum, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 green cabbage, roughly chopped

cracked pepper, to taste

400 gm can diced tomatoes

700 ml bottle bought passata

Heat olive oil in a large pan or wok, and saute the beef for a couple of minutes, stirring to break up lumps, until lightly browned. Drain in a colander and if it is a fatty mince, rinse through with hot water.

Place meat in crockpot. Place all other ingredients on mince, layered in the order given.

Cook on LOW for 8 hours or HIGH 4 hours.

If desired, serve with mashed potatoes and a green vegetable, or salad and garlic bread.

Serves 4-6

I don’t think this wins a lot of points for looks, but the flavours are great.

Happy Fooding!

Kitchens on My Travels 2

Palace kitchen garden

As you know, I had a wonderful experience at Kew Gardens on my recent UK trip. It was the day before I flew home and for once the weather was absolutely lovely – blue skies and not too cold, just perfect for wandering around looking at the most amazing plants, flowers and old buildings.

You might remember a few months ago, I made Barley Broth from the Kew Palace kitchens’ YouTube channel. I was really looking forward to visiting the kitchens, which haven’t been open to the public all that long, and I wasn’t disappointed! It took me a while to find the kitchens, as the gardens are humungous and I had expected them to be close to (but detached – fire risk!) the palace itself. In fact, the kitchens (which have a lower floor for the actual kitchens and laundry rooms, and an upper floor where the estate accounts were managed – a bit more elegant upstairs!) turned out to be a fair distance away, and when I enquired about this (because I was picturing a trail of servants carrying tea & cakes between two places*), I was told the kitchens actually belonged to the White House, the home of Frederick, Prince of Wales. This house was demolished in 1802, but the kitchen buildings are what we see restored today.

Nosegay Garden

There are lovely gardens behind the palace itself – known collectively as the Queen’s Garden – one section is the Nosegay Garden and it is full of herbs and other “smellies”, which apart from their herbal/medicinal properties are just gorgeous to look at – it must have been a stunningly pretty view, at a sad time in their lives, for George III‘s family, looking out of their back windows on to the lovely grounds and flowers.

Georgian Cooking

So, inside the kitchens, which are below ground level and would be extremely cold if there wasn’t a fire going for cooking, I found the two gentlemen who feature on the Historic Royal Palaces recipe videos! They were lovely and very chatty, and apparently spend their days divided between Kew and Hampton Court, cooking up a Georgian/Tudor storm which is served at 4pm each day. What a life – cooking fun stuff all day every day, without the pressure of serving in a restaurant, and getting paid for it! There were various dishes in different stages of preparation, and I cannot remember what they were although I did ask lots of questions at the time – the only thing mundane was that a plate of boring ham and cheese sandwiches was being made!

Fit for a Georgian King

I had to be pushy and jump in behind the big table to get a photo of myself with “famous” (well YouTube is the TV of today, right….) chefs. They were lovely and didn’t mind at all, and I had a real warm fuzzy moment, hanging out in a Georgian kitchen with these two guys.

Masterchef Georgian Style?

Apparently the ham you can see on the front left of the above photo, is cured especially for Kew, and costs an exorbitant amount – which I can’t remember, but it could have been like £200 or something ludicrous.

As for the rest of the palace itself (which is not very big and is not completely restored yet), there was one morbid moment – in a bedroom is a black chair with a small placard on it – see pic below. The placard states “Queen Charlotte 1744-1818 Died in this chair 17 November 1818″. Hmmmmm gee thanks for sharing that image!

The Chair of Death!!!

Speaking of food at Kew, I never did get the Kew Explorer Muffin recipe from them – they very nicely acknowledged my request and passed it on to the bakers (a national concern), but I never heard back. Shame as it was such a yummy healthy, fruity, seedy piece of yumminess. I’ll have to have a go at making it up some time.

Happy Fooding!

* a-la-Downton-Abbey-Red-Nose-Day hilarity – watch this 2-part parody Uptown Downstairs Abbey if you haven’t seen it before – it’s a crackup!

Ploughing Away….

I’ve been quiet this week as I am in England at the moment, hence 1) not doing any cooking and 2) I’m busy seeing sights and travelling around. I am, of course, doing my best to eat lots of yummy food, and am doing my usual hunt for new & better Ploughman’s Lunches!

There is something sooooo satisfying about a platter of cheeses, crusty bread, pickled onions, ham and chutney. No two places serve it in the same way, although some are better than others!

I’ve had two so far on this trip. One was at a pub in Covent Garden, part of a franchise, so you can get this particular platter all over the country. Included was ham pork quiche, a pie really, with beautifully crumbly pastry. Everything on this dish was delicious and I certainly couldn’t get through it!

The other one I had was whilst on a day out to Ightham Mote in Kent with a dear friend I was staying with. After a lovely morning wandering around the beautiful gardens and medieval house, we went for lunch at a quiet looking pub at the tiny village of Ivy Hatch, called The Plough Inn. Inside it was ultra modern, not quaint and cosy like we expected, and the service was downright poor as they were very understaffed. The food was lovely though, we both had the Ploughman’s, ate every scrap! The cheeses were so good, and the bread was nutty, fruity and fresh, a perfect accompaniment.

I’m having an amazing time and have loads of gorgeous food photos to make your mouth water. I love food.

 

Happy Holiday Fooding!

 

Mulling Over This One….

This Mulled Pork recipe looked excellent on the face of it – anything that calls for a whole bottle of red wine can’t be bad! I did enjoy it; however, the meat was too dry, particularly with the leftovers the next day. The flavours were fabulous and my flat smelled amazing – lots of citrus and red wine and cinnamon and cloves in the air – it was quite Christmasy in fact!

The dish is adapted from a recipe from More Than a Schnitzel, a German cookbook recently acquired by my library. I will make this again quite happily, but use beef instead of pork – slow cooking for 8-10 hours is just too much for pork, in this instance. Venison would probably be good with these flavours, but might also dry out I suspect.

Mulled Pork

1 kg diced pork

750 mls red wine (I used a Merlot)

2 1/2 tbsp brandy

juice and zest of 2 oranges

juice and zest of 1 lemon

1 tbsp brown sugar

6 cloves

1/4 cup raisins

1 tbsp beef stock powder

4 apples, sliced

3 onions, sliced

4 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

cracked pepper, to taste

1 tbsp cornflour

Place all ingredients except cornflour in crockpot bowl, and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours (or leave overnight in fridge).

Place bowl into crockpot base and cook on LOW for 8-10 hours. About an hour before serving, mix the cornflour with a little cold water and blend to a smooth paste. Add this to the meat and stir through.

Serves 4-6

Happy Fooding!

Party Nibbles 1

I made a batch of mountain bread rollups on Christmas Day – these little savoury bites always go down well and you can put whatever fillings in you like. In this case I made some with smoked salmon, some with asparagus, and some with both.

These are quite suitable for making the day before and then just slicing up when you are ready to serve – always a plus at party time.

There aren’t really proper quantities here – just make as many as you like. I usually keep going ’til I’ve run out of cream cheese.

Rollups

lavash/mountain bread (you could also use thin tortillas, but you get a fair bit of wastage by the time you trim them into a rectangle/square shape)

cream cheese (I use low-fat)

smoked salmon

fresh asparagus spears (I prefer to use them raw, for a bit of crunch, but if you prefer you can blanch them in the microwave for 1 minute per bunch)

cracked pepper, to taste

Spread each sheet of bread thickly with cream cheese. Lay fillings on the lower half, topped with cracked pepper and then carefully roll the bread up as tightly as you can.

Wrap the “log” in cling wrap and refrigerate for a few hours (or overnight). Thinly slice and arrange on a plate to serve.

Other filling ideas: grated carrot, thin slices of ham or turkey, shredded lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, canned tuna, cucumber (skip things like avocado, tomato etc as they will just go soggy or discoloured by the time you slice them up).

Happy Summer Fooding!

Delicious Dumplings!

Still haven’t been cooking much here, apart from a last minute Christmas cake. Instead, I have been doing a lot of Christmas shopping (and I mean a LOT – 10.5 hours at Chadstone shopping centre on Thursday!!!), and quite a bit of just slobbing around!

At Chadstone, 4 of us had the most wonderful dumpling lunch at the Oriental Teahouse. Lots of small serves of dumplings that just melted in your mouth. I had chilli prawn dumplings, chill vegetable dumplings and chilli pork dumplings (yes there is a recurring theme there….). The pictures tell it all really. Scrumptious.

Today, we are in a flurry of Christmas Eve activity – last bit of shopping (there is always something you’ve forgotten, isn’t there), roasting two boneless turkey breasts and a piece of pork, preparing the stuffing, making a cheesecake, making some mountain bread rollups, the list goes on…..busy day, but it means tomorrow will be nice and relaxed, with strawberries and champagne flowing from very early on!

Mum’s Christmas Tree

May all of your Christmas wishes come true, with lots of food, family (and of course presents!), involved in your day tomorrow.

Happy Christmas Fooding!

Pre-Christmas High Jinks!

I’m in Melbourne now, for Christmas with the family, and am more in party mode than cooking mode! Lots of socialising and catching up with people going on this week. I have cooked one meal for my mum and son, my delicious and sooooooo easy Beef Rendang, but apart from that I’ve been eating out or having a sandwich.

I’ve had a lovely lunch at Red Fire Lounge (see pic below of yummy calamari stirfry with hokkien noodles – the calamari was ultra-tender and it was a HUGE serving, no way could I eat it all), and a wonderful brunch in the sun at Barmah Park Winery, complete with champagne at 10.00 in the morning!! It is Christmas, after all, and I’m on holidays. In fact, my friend and I spent 3 hours there yackety-yacking, and the waitress asked if we’d then like to order lunch as well lol. I’ve eaten there before but never ordered from the breakfast menu, and it was divine. Sitting outside on the verandah, looking out at the vineyard – supremely relaxing and fun.

Mum and I have written our grocery shopping list for this weekend, and we’re pretty well organised, so it should be fairly stress-free. We will do most of our cooking and a lot of other preparation on Christmas Eve, so that on Christmas Day it’s all just a matter of throwing a few easy things together and slicing things up. Chilled out and relaxed, is the aim.

The Christmas ham is all ready to be hacked into, and I’m sure that will happen in the next day or so – after all, it’s so huge there will be more than enough for Christmas Day (along with roast turkey, rolled/stuffed pork and a myriad of vegies and salads….not to mention nibbles and dips beforehand and LOTS of desserts later on….let’s face it, it’s just one big food-fest ALL day!!).

So…whilst I might not be doing too much actual cooking this week, I’m certainly doing some fabulous eating!

Happy Christmas 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!

Thai Pork Stir-Fry

The other night I made this very easy pork mince dish from taste.com – I don’t usually think of mince when I think of stir-fry, but this did turn out well and has a lovely mix of Thai flavours in it. Instead of serving with rice noodles, this would be good served in lettuce cups, as it pretty much is the same ingredients as a Thai larb dish.

The ingredients here are not anything super unusual, but the flavours come from using fresh foods. If you didn’t use fresh lemongrass, ginger, garlic and chilli, for sure this would taste quite uninteresting and bland.

Another serving idea, which would make this go a bit further if you had more people to feed, is to serve it as a kind of Thai fajitas – the noodles in a separate bowl, with warm tortillas, Greek yoghurt or sweet chilli sauce, and maybe a bowl of shredded lettuce.

Serves 4 – so plenty of leftovers for me!

Happy fooding!

Ham Dip

Super easy, this dip also makes a great filling for sandwiches.  I think you can get this particular meat paste at Aussie online food shops, but there are sure to be local equivalents in all countries anyway.

Ham Dip

250 gm tub low-fat cream cheese

~60 gms (1/2 a jar) Pecks Devilled Meat Spread

2 spring onions, chopped

1 tbsp milk

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp seedy mustard

cracked pepper, to taste

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Refrigerate for a while to firm up, then serve with water crackers or other dipping style biscuits.

Happy Fooding!