Lamb and Stuffed Spuds

Well! Here we are again, a lovely new recipe for everyone to enjoy. I do apologise for not uploading as much, but hey, I have to try things out and get them -right- before subjecting you guys to their deliciousness. This recipe, for instance, is VERY nice. A teensy bit fattening, and bad for you, but, only a small amount. This is lamb chop and vegetable stuffed potatoes.

For this you will need:
1 lamb chop per person
1-1 1/2 potatoes per person (depends on the size of the potato. I was feeding two, so three spuds, two medium-small and one large)
1/2 cup finely diced zuccini
1/2 cup carrot (around half a carrot)
1/2 large brown onion (or 1 whole small brown onion)
1 1/2 tsp sour cream
1 tsp butter
1/4 cup of milk
1 spring onion
1 small tomato
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

First off, because I try to make things as easy as possible, grab yourself a bowl, and your potatoes. Stab your potatoes with a fork, once or twice for each side, working your way around the potato. Put them into the bowl (try to fit them all into one, to save on dishes) and fill it with water so that your potatoes are half-immersed. Put it into the microwave, and cook them on high for ten minutes, pull them out, turn them over so that the -other- half is immersed, and cook them for another ten. When your microwave dings, pull them out, drain off the water, and let the things cool for about five to ten minutes.

While your potatoes are cooking, you get to go mad with the knife! No seriously. I am having a 'millions of chops for teeny fiddly things is FUN' mood lately. So! What you'll need to do is top and tail the onion, shallow slice in the side through the first layer or so, and peel off the skin. Discard. Cut the onion in half, and carefully slice and dice it. Try to make each slice and piece of the onion as small as possible. Don't worry too much if you can't do this in the initial chopping, since you can pile them up into a neat line, rest one hand on the tip of your carving knife, (on the blunt side, not where you get poked and bleed) and chop/rock the knife to completely decimate your onion.

Same thing with the zuccini, you only need a couple thin slices, two to three millimetres thick at the -most-, slice vertically through the two rounds, then horizontally to make them into teeny tiny little cubes. Top and tail and peel your carrot, if you have a full sized one, you only want to use half. Slice the carrot into disks, and then go nuts with the knife on those disks. If you can cut them up the same way you did the zuccini great! If not, don't stress. Just make sure that you have tiny little bits of carrot, not lumps. You are going to be mixing this in with mashed potato, and you don't want to go from soft mashed potato to chewing on a chunk of carrot.



Spray a frying pan, put it on low heat and toss your onion in first. Cook it until it is starting to soften and go from opaque white of raw onion to the more transparent colour of cooked. Then you toss in the zuccini and carrot, and stir occasionally to fry them evenly without burning. Hopefully.

Your potatoes will be ready for their turning over now, so deal with that, and put on the lamb in another frying pan. You want the blood to rise to the surface and puddle slightly before turning over. Yes, I know, it doesn't -sound- particularly appetising but it's a way to tell how well cooked it is. Potatoes back in the microwave, the teeny pieces of vegetable are frying, and it is all wonderful. If you are especially skilled, or y'know, have the attention span of a gnat like me, wander off and do something else for a little while, just don't forget that you -do- have things cooking.

Microwave will ding a second time, take the potatoes out and drain them, as described above. Now they get to cool down! Why? Because you have to handle them! Cut each potato, once it is cool enough to touch (and providing that a testing prod with a fork has the tines sinking easily into soft flesh) cut each potato in half lengthways.



Using a dessert spoon, carefully scoop out the potato from the skins, you want to take as much as possible, without the skins losing their shape. Put the potato in a bowl, all in the same bowl, add in the butter, sour cream, and the fried bits of vegetables. Using a fork, mix and mash the potato and bits in together, adding milk about halfway through. Not too much, you want the mix to be firm, and feel more like dough, than mashed potato.



Once it is mixed through completely, and there is no milk, sour cream, or butter visible as a separate entity, carefully spoon the mash back into the skins and set them on plates.



Grate up your cheese and top and tail the tomato. Slice and dice the tomato, so that you have little tomato cubes. Push the cubes onto the potato, sprinkle the grated cheese and ...leave for a little while. Odds are your meat isn't finished cooking! Make sure the blood has risen to the surface to pool for a second time and then turn it over.



It may rise and have -slight- amounts for a third turning, to sear the juices back in. I know this may seem a little excessive, but I assure you, undercooked lamb is FOUL. Really really bleh. While beef can and apparently is eaten in all stages from raw and chasing the lettuce to old boot leather, lamb needs to be well done. Always. So, while you're waiting for the searing of the final turn to happen, pop your potatoes in the microwave, and zap on high for a minute to a minute and a half.

Peel off dead leaves, or 'crispy' bits of the spring onion, cut off the roots, and slice into round disks. Chop chop chop ding! The first lot are ready, pull them out of the microwave, put the second plate in (if you have a second plate) and do the same thing. This has the added bonus of reheating your potato mix, so you can prepare this earlier, and it doesn't -really- matter what time your potatoes are ready, because you're reheating them just before serving anyway, to melt the cheese!

Once cheese is melted, put the bits of spring onion ontop of your potatoes for garnish (and because it really brings out the onion flavour. So good) and add your lamb to the plate. Ready to serve! Yum.

You can also have some more sour cream ontop of your potatoes and underneath the spring onion, but you have some in the potato already, so it's slight overkill. Less is more, and subtlety is the key! You can, if you desire, eat lamb with mint. It goes rather well, actually. But, not necessary. Thus!

Deliciousness Delivered.

Chicken meatball tube spaghetti pasta!

Goodness me. So filling. So unanticipatedly filling that I could only eat half! :( A bit of background, this is the typical 'style' that Americans have their 'pasta' as. Spaghetti, meatballs and sauce. I have had an american -cook- me said meatballs and through no fault of his own, I found it absolutely ... unappetising. The meatballs were just beef, or it tasted like, moulded into fist size balls that sit on your plate and were covered in tomato paste, water and salt. Ugh. So, with -that- in mind, I made the meatballs much ...smaller. Much, much smaller. And it turned out rather lovely! For this you will need;

500g chicken mince
1-2 spring onions, finely (very very finely) diced
1/4 of a green capsicum (pepper) finely diced. Very finely.
3 large cloves of garlic
A handful of tube spaghetti (or normal spaghetti) per person.
1-2 Tbsp of butter
1 1/2 cups of plain flour
4 tbsp of olive oil
6 tsp of powdered chicken stock
2 eggs
1-2 cups of breadcrumbs
2 tsp of Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
3 tsp parsley
1 cup of grated cheese (cheddar)

This is sliiiightly complicated because I've listed the full amounts of everything, rather than piecemealing it out into separate parts. I hope this doesn't confuse people!

The spring onion, capsicum, cheese, worchestershire sauce, 2 tsp of chicken stock, the 500g chicken mince, 2 cloves of garlic; finely diced, thyme, oregano, 1 tsp of parsley, the breadcrumbs and 2 eggs allllll go into the same bowl, and stirred through thoroughly, so that it is evenly mixed, stirred through thoroughly. Use a dessert spoon to do the stirring if you like, makes it easier to do other things.



Mmm, delicious looking right?

Fill a pot with water, add oil and 3 tsp of chicken stock to the water. Turn on, so that it can start to boil. Get your chicken mix, and the dessert spoon, using -half- of the dessert spoon as serving size portions. You want these to be small, so that one and nearly two would fit on the dessert spoon when you turn them over. Roll the mix into small balls, and put directly onto the hot frying pan.




While they are cooking on one side, your water should be starting to boil, turn the heat down slightly, and put the pasta in. Turn the meatballs over, remembering to stir your pasta so that it doesn't stick -- protip; to lessen chance of pasta sticking to the bottom of the pot, keep the water boiling. Bubbles from the bottom means the pasta isn't sitting there long enough -to- stick. But, do try to stir your pasta, keeps it cooking evenly.

Put the butter in another pot, and 1 clove of garlic, diced and sliced very finely. Melt the butter, and fry up the garlic in the butter. Stir so that nothing burns -- keep the heat low! -- before adding the flour. Stir. Thoroughly. You want to lightly cook the flour into a crumbly sort of dough before you add the milk, one little bit at a time. One dollop and little dribbly bit, stirring all the while. Once you have around half the milk in, add 1 tsp of chicken stock (I know! Used a LOT) and 2 tsp of parsley.

...Now, you'll want to rope in some help for this, just tell them to keep stirring the sauce, paying attention to the corners of the pot (yes it has corners, that's where the side meets the bottom. Flour has an unpleasant tendancy to hide there and burn) while you pull the meatballs off of the heat and onto a clean plate. If you haven't a frying pan large enough (like I didn't) then put the rest of the mix into little balls and on to cook. The sauce should be really rather thick by now.

Easiest way I found, to turn the little balls of chicken deliciousness, I used the dessert spoon, and a pair of tongs -- though another spoon, fork or if you're exceptionally skilled, pair of chop sticks would do just as well. Strain the pasta, serve it onto plates, add an appropriate number of meatballs (five to seven) and pour the sauce over the top.

It is EXTREMELY filling, so you probably wish to serve up less than I suggested, because I could only eat half of my plate. SO MUCH CHICKEN flavour though, goodness. As you are cooking the pasta in the equivalent of liquid chicken stock, and chicken and more chicken and ... so good.

If you do not want the pasta etc part (it is very difficult to co-ordinate it all on your own and not burn anything or overcook or fubar) then the meatballs do well enough on their own. They would do wonderfully for finger food for the kids, stick a toothpick in each, some tomato sauce and it is gold.

Deliciousness Delivered. ...So. Full.

Rolled-Roast beef, warm pasta salad and 'edible' zuccini

Okay! First off, this is focusing nigh exclusively on the vegetables or 'side dishes' on the plate. I -loathe- zuccini. Ugh. It's the vilest most despicable vegetable on the earth, in close competition with aubergine for repulsiveness. So, this was my attempt to make it an 'edible' part of my meal. Why, you ask, if I hate it with such a passion? Because we have a garden. The garden has vegetables. One of those vegetables growing are zuccini. And tomatoes. MY GOD. So many tomatoes. Avalanche of tomatoes! In any case, to the meal! For this you will need:

1 rolled roast
1-2 cups bow tie pasta
4-5 tomatoes
2-3 tsp sour cream
1 large brown onion
2 tsp tumeric
1-2 cups finely chopped zuccini
1-2 spring onions
1-2 Tbsp oil (vegetable or olive)
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp oregano
2 tsp powdered chicken stock
1/2-1 cup of grated cheese

Complicated list huh? But don't worry! It will aaaaaaaall make sense in a few moments. First, top, tail, peel and slice the onion. Slice, not dice. The difference is that you have half-moons of onion rings, you can cut them in half again if you wish, but the idea is to have fairly long 'strings' of the onion. Put the oil in a wok (if you have one, if not a large frying pan would do just as well) let it heat up and then toss the onions in. You want them to start to brown.

While they're doing the cooking thing, and you've broken them up into the individual layers with some deft applications of bashery with a spoon or pair of tongs. Slice and dice the zuccini (leave the skin on) into around 1cm cubes, or there about. Put the water on to boil, add some more oil so that the pasta doesn't stick together. Chicken stock and garlic powder in the oil and the water, add the oregano to the water as well. Once it is boiling add in the pasta.

Your onions ought to be real nice by now, and three quarters cooked, add in the zuccini. (Remember to turn your roast whatever) Dice and chop up your spring onion. To do this, slice off the roots and perhaps a half inch above, peel off any 'dead' leaves, or brown layers around the outside (should only need to do one or two) then slice even rings off of the spring onion. Toss it in with the Zuccini and onion, making sure that it is all stirred through and left to cook and soften and absorb delicious flavour.

At this point, add the tumeric, and some salt and pepper if you desire. Stir through so that everything coated evenly. When the pasta is cooked, turn off the water, and drain it. Yes, drain before the rest of the meal is done. Slice the top off of the tomatoes, and dice them into even squares and pieces. Put the cold tomato into the warm past, stir through with the sour cream and cheese, leave to cool/warm/whatever.

Take your roast out, snip and peel off the string (if you used a rolled one, like I did) and carve, put on a plate with the zuccini onion mix and the pasta salad. The pasta tomato thing tastes best warm. Not hot, not cold, but warm, enough for the tomato and stuff to be 'cool' and for the sour cream to be slightly melted.

The best thing about the way I cooked the zuccini? It gained the flavour of the onion and spring onion, which is what the plant is best for, and made it taste nice! The pasta was my favourite part as for me, the beef was a little undercooked (oops, my bad) but my father loved it all. So for that, I can say that this one is again;

Deliciousness Delivered.