Quick Lamb Curry

This simple lamb mince dish is based on one from Simple Indian Cookery by Madhur Jaffrey – an old book that I came across at work recently, with loads of terrific and EASY Indian dishes.

There is no rocket science here; the key is in the use of fresh spices – get your mortar & pestle action on!

You could serve this as is, in a bowl, or make it a bit more glamorous with rice, tortillas or naan bread, raita, and maybe a side dish of sauteed mushrooms or mashed potato!

Minced Lamb With Peas

2 tbsp olive oil

1 brown onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tbsp freshly grated ginger

1 tsp cumin seeds, ground

1 tsp coriander seeds, ground

1/4 tsp turmeric

1/4 tsp cinnamon, ground

1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tomatoes, chopped

4 tbsp low-fat Greek yoghurt

500 gms minced lamb

cracked pepper, to taste

1 cup water

juice of 1 lemon

3/4 cup frozen peas

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan or frying pan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic and ginger; stir until lightly browned.

Add the cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg and cayenne pepper, and stir for 10 seconds. Add the tomatoes and yoghurt. Cook over medium heat until the tomatoes have softened, stirring often.

Add the lamb and cracked pepper. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes, breaking up all the lumps.

Add the water and bring to a simmer, then cover and simmer on low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add lemon juice and peas, return to a simmer and cook gently, uncovered, for a further 10 minutes.

Serves 4

Happy Fooding!

Zucchini Bread (Cake?)

It’s interesting that carrot cake is always cake, but banana cake and zucchini cake are often called breads. The ingredients for all of these are very similar, but we never say carrot bread (or beetroot bread!) do we! I think they’re all really cake, because bread in my view is generally a savoury thing. But who am I to argue with the masses…….

Anyway I came across this great looking zucchini “bread” recipe a couple of weeks ago via a Food.com e-newsletter, and decided to make it for morning tea at work, last week. As I had successfully made my usual carrot cake in the bread machine the week before, I looked at the zucchini bread ingredients and thought hmmmmm they’re very similar in quantity etc. so I’ll do this one in the bread machine too.

It worked, but it was not as moist as the carrot cake, so I think this one would be better eaten straight after cooking (I made it the night before taking it to work). Also it didn’t rise quite as much and I think would have been better on the medium crust setting, which would have baked it about 8 minutes longer. It was good enough to be a “keeper” though, so I will change the baking time slightly next time.

Below is my bread machine version for 1 cake – if you want to do it the original, oven way, here is the website I got it from – which is in fact quantities for 2 loaves.

The Ultimate Zucchini Bread (CAKE!!)

In order, place the following ingredients in bread machine bowl:

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

1 1/4 cups grated zucchini

1 tbsp orange zest, grated

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1 3/4 cups plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bi-carb soda

1/2 tsp salt

Bake on bread machine’s Cake setting, with Medium crust and 750gm loaf settings.

If you’re feeling like a more savoury bread, try this lemon & dill bread, also in the bread machine. I made this again recently and we had it at work with apricot & almond cream cheese on top – a great combination with the bread flavours.

Happy Fooding!

Carrot Cake Bread Machine Style

Ready for morning tea at work

My lovely bread machine, best friend for years, also has all those fancy functions like jam and cake. I’ve never tried making jam in it, mainly because I’m just not a sweet eater and wouldn’t really use it – I am a definite Vegemite Kid and the idea of eating sweet stuff for breakfast is, well, just plain full of wrongability, as the smegheads  from the Dwarf would say!

I have, however enjoyed making this carrot cake recipe in my current bread machine (which is my second one as my first, beautiful, trusty Sanyo died 3 years ago after 15 years of faithful service and being used to death, literally).

I do have a great non-bread-machine carrot cake recipe, but really this is so easy to do that I haven’t made the other one for years. It is from the recipe leaflet that came with the machine, and works a treat.

I have a Sunbeam Quantum Smartbake – but I’m sure if you have a different machine the same or similar settings and quantities will work just fine. I transferred all my favourite old recipes from my old machine to the new one without a problem.

Carrot Cake

2 eggs

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

1 1/2 cups grated carrot

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 cup SR flour

1/2 cup plain flour

1 rounded tsp bi-carb soda

Place ingredients in bread machine in the order listed. Bake on the CAKE setting, with light crust and 750 gm loaf size chosen.

Ice as desired, or if you can’t be bothered making icing, sprinkle with icing sugar through a sieve.

I made this the evening before I wanted it for work, and it was still beautifully moist the next morning – and disappeared very quickly!

Happy 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!

Fruitilicious Muffin Break

I am amazed at how great these dairy-free Fruit Cocktail Muffins taste – this recipe is from the 4 Ingredients: Kids recipe book, and in fact only has 3 ingredients in it! I wasn’t expecting too much of this, but it turned out brilliantly. Mind you, the blurb in the book says “these are ideal for breakfast when in a hurry” …..well, considering the sugar content from the caster sugar and the fruit/liquid, I’m not sure I’d encourage children to eat this in place of other breakfast options – but certainly as a supremely easy morning tea or after school snack this is ideal.

Kids could easily make these themselves with very little assistance, and all you need is to have a can of fruit cocktail in the pantry and you can whip them up and have them in the oven in literally 2 minutes.

For a more decadent version, I might add some choc bits next time. And a bit of cinnamon in the mixture would be good. Or if you have any leftover tiny Easter eggs lying around (unlikely I know!), you could press one into the centre of each muffin before cooking – caramel-filled eggs would be even better.

I’ve frozen some to see how they taste when thawed – possibly they’ll be quite dry and might need butter or jam spread on them. And I’ve realised just how similar this recipe is to the Pineapple Cake I’ve made before – in fact, almost identical – so that means you could easily substitute a particular fruit in this (or the cake recipe), rather than the mixed fruit cocktail. Lots of scope!

Fruit Cocktail Muffins

2 cups SR flour

1 cup caster sugar

410 gm can fruit cocktail, undrained

Preheat oven to 150C (140C for fan forced). Grease or line a 12-capacity muffin pan.

Sift flour and sugar into a large bowl and stir well.

Add the undrained fruit cocktail an stir until just combined (if a little dry, add 1 tbsp milk).

Spoon into muffin pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops of golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Makes 12.

Happy Sweet Fooding!

Christmas Baking & Cookie Cutter Giveaway!

The Cookie Family!

You know it’s Christmas time when you have the smells of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves wafting around the house! I ended up using my own gingerbread recipe, and didn’t decorate them. I was going to, but then I thought meh I can’t be bothered. I find it hard to get motivated to go to that much trouble when there aren’t small children around anymore. When my kids were little I would spend the first weekend in December baking up a storm, but now they don’t live in the same state as me and I only see them a couple of times a year.

One day when there are (hopefully) grandchildren in my life, I will again get really into the Christmas sweet baking, but for this week just a batch of gingerbread to take to work was enough for me.

The cookie cutters worked really well. Don’t forget to “like” this posting (or make a comment) to be in the running for a free set! I will draw the 2 winners’ names out of a hat next Sunday.

My recipe did not turn out as sweet as I thought it should – but it all got eaten at work on Monday so I guess it tasted okay! It makes quite a large batch, but can be halved easily (the photo below shows half a batch). Or use your own favourite recipe, or the one I shared from the cookie cutters the other day.

Gingerbread

1 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup treacle

2 eggs, beaten

4 cups plain flour, sifted

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp bi-carbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

approx 1 cup plain flour, extra

Melt butter in a saucepan until just melted. Remove from heat and add brown sugar, treacle and eggs. Mix well and cool for a few minutes, then add flour and spices and mix well.

Turn mixture out onto a floured board (it will be quite gooey still), and knead extra flour in by hand, to make a firm dough. Set aside in fridge for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180C (160C for fan forced).

Roll dough out on a floured board (work in more extra flour if you need it) to 4-5mm thickness and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.

Place shapes on a greased or lined tray (baking paper works brilliantly) and bake for about 10 minutes depending on how hot an oven you have.

Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Note: you can make the dough beforehand and keep in fridge, wrapped in plastic, for a few days – soften to roll out then cut and bake as above.

Happy Christmas Fooding!

I threw in a couple of stars & angels as well.

Preserved Lemons

I often make dishes that call for preserved lemon, and as I never have any I just use a chunk of lemon or lime pickle (usually with chilli!). I have finally gotten around to making a jar of it – WELL I’m amazed at why I never have before, seeing how easy this is. Literally 5 minutes of work – I spent longer sterilizing the jar, than making the actual recipe!

Mind you, the proof will be in the pudding, as they say – now I have to wait six weeks to see if it actually tastes any good!

There are many versions out there – here is the one I used. As it was a spur of the moment thing and I only had 1 empty jar, I just used 2 lemons and halved the salt – if it works and tastes good I’ll make a bigger batch next time.

Happy Fooding!

Apple, Cinnamon & Coconut Slab Cake

Apologies for the post about nothing, that you might have received in your inbox a couple of days ago, if you are a subscriber. I was drafting up a posting (about a yummy curry), and accidentally knocked some keys and suddenly off it went, before I had written anything!

Here is a delicious, light and fluffy slab cake I found on Best Recipes, which I love as a source of easy and successful recipes submitted by real people like you and I. This was my first baking effort in my new home, so I wasn’t sure how the oven would behave – beautifully as it turned out. This is a very easy recipe and pretty much foolproof. Quite sweet but not too rich.

As I was putting the mixture into the tin, I thought hmmmm I think this would make great apple muffins as well. Something to try next time.

Here is the cake recipe link…..

Happy Fooding!

Sometimes things don’t live up to their memory….

I had a pang the other day, to make a traditional basic tea cake.  It was one of the first things I remember making in my year 8 home economics class, and I seem to recall that I was pretty good at making it!  I looked up my old school cookbook and made the “spiced apple” version of the “foundation tea cake” recipe.

As you can see from the photo, it looks kinda okay, but I was too impatient when turning it out of the tin and it cracked like an earthquake had hit it! I pushed it back together lol, but you can see where it is cracked.

The proof, as they say, is in the eating – well this did disappoint. The apple/sugar/cinnamon topping was lovely and sweet, but the cake itself was way too “plain” tasting to be considered a success.  I’m sure it tasted sweeter back in the day, or maybe my memory has dimmed with the years (quite likely!).

I froze most of it, in broken up pieces, but as I’m going away in a few days and am going to give the freezer a good defrost before I leave, I will probably end up throwing the cake out. I’ll have to have another go at this recipe and deviate from it, when I can be bothered. I’m over it for the moment so it won’t be for a while.

And I’m off to the UK today, for a  holiday. I am super excited, but will try not to get too distracted by castles and pubs to remember my blog entries.  You can guarantee there will be some English food experience content in the next few weeks!

Happy Fooding!

Not-So-Greek Tagine!

I’ve been away for a couple of days, as we had a long weekend here in Perth.  Back to the real world of study now, although I still feel like I’m swaying, from being on a boat for 2 nights!

This very yummy tagine is from a Greek cookbook and was originally made with lamb; however, when I was living in Suriname a few years ago there was no lamb to be had – the very wet, tropical and humid climate just doesn’t lend itself to sheep breeding.  A fellow Aussie expat living in the same compound, did once manage to obtain a supposed leg of lamb pre-ordered through some her local housekeeper – for about $80!  Having shared the then roasted meat amongst a few families one evening, we came to the conclusion it was probably a very pathetic, stringy goat, and we would not go looking for lamb any more!

SO, I made the “lamb tagine” with beef instead, and liked it so much I’ve been making it with beef ever since – and with a few changes to the original.  Delicious served with raita or plain yoghurt, naan bread and rice or couscous.

Beef Tagine

1.5 kg chuck or stewing steak, cut into 2.5cm cubes

5 cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tsp ground cumin seeds

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cracked pepper

extra 1 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, thinly sliced

600ml beef stock

splash of red wine

2 tbsp lime pickle OR 1/4 of a preserved lemon

425 gm can chickpeas, drained

1 cup green olives (pitted)

chopped fresh coriander, to garnish

Combine the garlic, olive oil, cumin, ginger, turmeric, paprika, cinnamon, salt & pepper.  Add to the beef in a non-metallic bowl and mix well to coat.  Leave to marinate for at least 1 hour.

Heat the extra olive oil in a flameproof casserole; brown the beef in batches over high heat then remove from pan. Add the onion to the pan and cook for 2 minutes. Return meat to the pan and add beef stock.  Stir well, cover and place in an oven preheated to 180C.

Bake for 1 1/4 hours, then add the pickle (or preserved lemon), chickpeas and olives. Return to oven, uncovered, and cook for a further 45 minutes.  Serve topped with fresh coriander leaves.

Serves 6.

If you wish, you can cook this completely on the stovetop – instead of placing in the oven, just simmer on low heat for the same times as given above.  And you could of course place it in a crockpot after adding the stock as well – I haven’t done this, but would guess that 8 hours on Low setting would be fine, adding the chickpeas etc after say 6 hours. If you do try it this way, please let me know how you go.

Happy Fooding!