Salmon with a Thai Twist.

With citrus currently being in season, I, naturally, as everyone does, acquired a 2kg bag of lemons from someone with a lemon tree. Which left me with the conundrum of what do you do with lemons that isn't a dessert, like lemon cheesecake, or a lemon tart or lemon custard or... I made a lemon sauce. That is what this whole dish boils down to really, I had a lot of lemons and needed to use them and ... the magics happened!

For convenience, I'll be splitting the recipe and ingredients into each of the components.

Medieval Feast - So much baking, party, food! So much food.

Whew! It's been a busy as all get out couple of days for me! And first of all I would like to give this disclaimer; I am not a baker. So when I offer you baked stuff (like cakes, tarts, bread) and it's -not- messed up? It's awesome! And to all people who bake for a hobby and enjoy the chemistry that is cake, I am sorry for doing things the wrong way and likely making you cringe. On that note, look at this masterpiece of a cake, that I demand people get messy eating.

Also, advice; get yourself one or two people to help you! It will be a -godsend-.

Sweet Cake Glory! It's almost Pinterest worthy!

'Medieval' Feast - Preparation

Have you ever wondered how those huge banquet feasts were done? Or was it a case of "I'd rather eat this but good lord it is a lot of work to prepare!" and your great untapped reserves of food awesome go ... well, untapped?

No! I say, they shall not remain untapped and I will rise to the cooking station and make a feast! Why? Because I like to cook. And cooking is fun. But, I understand that not everyone has the same delight in cooking, and the idea of preparing a 'feasts' worth of food makes hearts quail and eyes grow large with the anime-esque sweatdrop of nerves down the brow.

I'm rolling up my sleeves, and taking the trauma out of preparation and the cooking process. It is, after all, what this blog is for. To de-mystify recipes, to hopefully, help people make sense of the procedure and how to turn out glorious bits of food from everything and anything in the pantry and fridge. As of writing this,  I have not, yet, actually -made- my feast, so if it doesn't work too well, you'll find out when I do!

Let us begin...

Teriyaki Salmon with Siracha Cream Sauce and 'dirty' Fried Rice.

Oh. My. God. Okay, so I was browsing for salmon recipes or things to do with salmon, and I came across a pinterest recipe of the salmon and siracha cream sauce. It looked stunning (as they always do) and ...mine does not look as stunning but it tastes AMAZING. It is lovely and you really cannot go wrong. I know the ingredients list is a little daunting, but most of it is simply 'put it all in a pot'. Super straight forward.

Baked Lemon Cheesecake

A bit of history for you, and context; I can't bake. If it involves something with flour, I am utterly lost and useless and it just ...doesn't work. Pasta-dough, cakes, scones, pastry ... nada. Even packet-mix cake mixes end up dry and horrible and just ...yeah. I can't bake. I'm a cook, not a baker. This however, worked, and worked well. I know baked cheesecakes are not for everyone, but they're really easy.

Chicken Nuggets and Shredded Salad

Picture this. Your kids are hounding for chicken nuggets. They want chicken nuggets and they want them naaaaaaaaow. And you, being the concerned, health-conscious parent don't want the little darlings to eat the deep fried crap, but crumbing things is like a whole other language and it never stays on the meat you want it to stay on. Oh god. Well! Never fear! Here are some delicious crumbed chicken nuggets that are healthy, and will have your kids raving. (Or at least, had those I subjected them to scoffing them down like woah). Feeds 3-4ish.

Lightly Spiced Oriental-style Crab Soup

This weekend just gone has had a Crab Festival. Which means crabs EVERYWHERE at the festival and at $5 a crab I splurged and bought 16 of the things, figuring that oh, there'd be 3 spare at the end of it. Nuh-uh. I have 9 spare. 2 more went off to other people. What am I going to do with 7 crabs? Eat them, naturally, but shellfish has a short shelf-life, once it's thawed (by the time I'd gotten them home, yup they'd thawed) so... what to do with crab other than just ...eat it? I made a Crab Soup. Oriental style.

I was gonna show you a picture, but my camera is flat :(

Tuna salad and coleslaw

What to cook when you don't feel like really cooking and more just 'throwing things together'. A nice, cool dinner for the warmer nights of heading into summer :)

Tuna Mornae

Whew! Talk about busy! A broken ankle on the 20th of May put a hiatus on my culinary explorations, and just getting back into the swing of things. Thus, we have our next choice up for deliciousness desired! Tuna Mornae.

It's heavy, and thick and very delicious and high in nutrition, the sort of meal you'd have when starving hungry, chew on the floorboards starving, and then go off to do some heavy lifting, or something. It'd get you through the lot! For this, you will need:

1-2 ~500g of tuna tins (a good brand, preferably, in brine not oil or anything. Springwater works too)
1 cup of frozen peas
1 cup of frozen corn
250g dried pasta; shells, macaroni, twists, the short pasta types
250-400g cheddar cheese (grated)
100g parmesan cheese (grated)
3-4 cups of milk
3/4th cup of flour
150g butter (In two batches, so 2 tsp for the potato, the rest for the sauce)
4-5 decent sized nadine (white) potatoes, around the size of your fist.
3 cloves of garlic.
1/4 tsp siracha
2 Tbsp vegetable oil

Peel and dice the potatoes, peel the white papery bit off of each of the garlic cloves, chop off the 'dry' end, that's the part of the clove that was attached to the base, or the roots, roughly slice and chop up each of the cloves. Put them in a pot with the potatoes, fill with water and put on to boil. You want the pieces of garlic to be large enough to stay in the potatoes as they get drained of water mind.

Get a larger pot fill it with water, put it on the stove to heat. Add the oil and the siracha (or hot sauce with a nice flavour) to the oil and leave it to boil. Once boiling, add the pasta, stirring to make sure it doesn't stick.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.

Peas and corn go into the same pot, water yay! Bring to the boil. About this time your potatoes should be boiling, lift the lid to release steam, and boil for another five to ten minutes, stab a piece of potato with the tip of a knife to see if it's cooked. The potato should be SOFT. The pasta should also taste 'cooked', just a little bit raw and a hint chewy, but not soggy or gluggy or overdone.

Once the peas and corn are boiling, turn them off. Taste the pasta, if it is right, strain it out of the water, give it a quick rinse over and put it into a large baking pot. A glass thing like I have. Drain the peas and add them as well. Turn off your potato, drain them, add the butter and a little bit of milk (or a little more) and mash them until they are soft and fluffy and well.. rather sloppy. The potato is going to be a lid for the dish, which means that the solidity of the filling has to be more than the weight of the potatoes, elsewise they'll just sink.

To minimalise on cleaning up, use the pasta pot to make the sauce. While it is drying and cooling slightly from having hot water and pasta in it, grate the cheese.

Once the cheese is grated, put the rest of the butter in the what was a pasta pot, turn it onto heat, and wait for the butter to melt but -not- bubble. Add the flour one teaspoon or so at a time, stirring it into the butter until they look like a dough, add the last of the flour and stir, rolling the 'dough' around on the bottom of the hot pot to lightly cook it. Add the milk in SLOW measurements. A tablespoon or two at a time, just enough to barely cover the base of the pot, and mix it into the dough.

You want a sauce without lumps in. Dough has no lumps. It is all solid, so what you are doing is slowly, gradually, turning the flour from a dough into a sauce by adding the milk. Once you have added all the milk, still stirring your smooth sauce, make sure that it is hot not just warm, and add your cheese. Slowly. You don't want to have clumps of cheese. (Oh, and make sure to keep some aside for later!) Stir the cheese in, making sure that each pinch or whatever amount is fully melted and stirred in before you add the next batch. Remember the corners on the bottom of the pot! Cheese is sneaky and it hides!

Once all the cheese is gone and your sauce tastes wonderful, turn off the heat. Open your tin(s) of tuna, strain out the juice by holding the lid and tipping the tin slowly, compressing the lid down to squeeze as much of it out of the fish as possible. Drink the juice. Mmmm. Delicious. (You don't -have- to, I just like to)

Put the tuna into the bowl with your pasta and peas, make sure that it is broken up into flakes, and stir it through, making sure to spread the peas and corn through as well. Add the sauce and stir again, slowly, careful not to make a mess. Add the mashed potato last, smoothing it out over the top so that it is a nice lid, sprinkle with grated cheese and put in the oven (remember, you preheated it?) for around 15 minutes.

The primary point of this is to melt the cheese and reheat the food in there that may have gotten cold, or was never hot to begin with.

Pull the thing out of the oven, and leave it to rest for 5 -10 minutes or so, until the cheese stops bubbling with the fury of a thousand suns! Get out plates, and serve. Yum!

Works great as leftovers too, since it is so filling it is HIGHLY doubtful you'll eat all of it in one hit!

Deliciousness, Delivered. 

Damper

Have you ever wondered how the ancient sort of civilisations managed to make their bread without high-tech things like yeast, or a bread maker or the HomeMaker 3000 or whatever it is that you put everything into and it stirs the mix into dough for you? I did too! So here is something that you don't need a breadmaker for, or a HomeMaker 3000 or the MixMaster Millennium (any similarity to actual products is purely coincidence) or even a food processor. This is called Damper. 

It hails from Australian's history when everything was cooked in a pot over the fire, and you really wanted to get -all- the juices from your bowl. Really simple to make, and it is traditionally done with purely drystore products -- flour and salt -- and water, however, nowadays with the invention of the fridge and freezer and easily accessed ice, there is the addition of butter. You can also replace the water with milk if you want it to be extra creamy, but I stuck with the water. For this you will need:

3 cups of self-raising flour

'pinch' of salt - around 1/4th a teaspoon. Not much.

80g of butter, chilled and cubed -- roughly 1/3rd a cup

3/4 cup of water - tap water does fine.

Dump your flour and salt into a bowl, and add the butter (there's actually more flour than visible here, I only added half at first whoopsie) and break up the butter with your hands. If you have little ones that loooooove to help you bake, put them onto this task, making sure hands are clean and all that! What you need is for it to be resembling fine breadcrumbs. How do you tell that, I hear you ask? Tada!

Illumination! Basically it should -look- crumbly and incomplete and kinda powdery or crumbly, but if you scoop up a palmful it should stick together -- slightly -- and fall apart again. Similar to a good bit of damp sand, perfect for throwing at someone. 

Add the water, mix it in initially with a butter knife or spatula. Why? I hear your disbelieving snorts, as to why it would be preferable than to use a spoon? Simple. It harks back to the days of yonder before there were such things as cake mixers and electric beaters. A round tipped or 'blunt' knife gets air into the mix much more effectively than a spoon, because a spoon scoops, and shifts the dough all of a piece, however the knife mixes in the liquid, while leaving air-pockets. Saves your arm and makes it very fluffy!

Once the majority of the water is mixed in, then you knead it with your hands, shaping it out onto a lightly floured surface -- baking paper works wonderfully for this -- until it is smooth, elastic and looks like ...well... dough. Shape it into a round disk, and score it with a sharp knife into eight sections, lightly flour the surface. 

Now, you can either put your damper onto a tray and bake it in the oven for 20-30 minutes on 200 degrees Celcius, or, if you don't have an oven handy, build yourself a fire, in a hole, and make sure there are LOTS of coals. Wrap your damper up in foil, bury it in the ash for half an hour or so, and dig it up again. Nice, hot, crisp on the outside damper. 

If you go the oven method, try the traditional route, make your family a soup, or stew, and while everyone is eating, cook the damper, so that when the plates are being emptied, any lingering nibbles are solved by fresh, hot damper! 

It doesn't last much beyond that first meal mind, and tastes best when eaten hot. But! No preservatives, or artificial things. Lovely, simple, and a way to fill the belly when you're low on funds. Butter and self-raising flour, $7 and you have quite a bit of bread to fill your belly! Still hot the butter melts in ...cream, or jam works just as well! Like a really large scone, really. 

Deliciousness Delivered.

Turkey Buffalo wings!

No picture this time, alas, because I didn't think of sharing this until -after- they were eaten. Bad me!

It's really rather simple though, as I have already covered the buffalo wing sauce here: http://deliciousnessdesired.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/buffalo-mash-of-deliciousness.html

Except instead of using chicken wings, I used turkey. Oh my goodness. So big! And due to the huuuuuuge size disparity, it is slightly difficult to find something appropriately sized to marinade the wings in. I went back to what the original recipe had, as my 'marinade' being a sauce. You will need:

1.2kg of turkey wings (around 4)
Buffalo Sauce
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp worcestershire sauce (a generous galooping)
1/2 tsp tabasco sauce
6 Tbsp chilli sauce -- I used Siracha. I recommend you use less if you are not fond of the spice. This thing ambushes!
6 Tbsp sweet chilli sauce -- A decent sort, that has flakes of chilli and the seeds visible in the mix. Alternatively, one hot chilli, sliced with half the seeds retained whole, and
6 Tbsp of honey. Less or more depending on how flaming you want this.
Seasoning
1 cup of flour
2-3tsp of garlic powder
1/2 tsp of powdered chicken stock.
Blue cheese dip
3 tsp of sour cream
1 1/2 tsp of light mayonaise
1 tsp garlic powder
2-3 tsp finely grated blue cheese (strongly flavoured)

Toss all the sauce ingredients in together -- that's from the cayenne pepper to the honey -- and mix them in a bowl until well combined. Or straight into a small pot, to heat them up and blend the mixture nicely, this is the last thing you do, the heating by the way. So the bowl is fine to set them aside for safe keeping.

Put the flour, extra garlic powder and chicken stock on a dinner plate, mix them in together and then place one wing at a time on the flour mix. Rub it thoroughly into the skin and flesh, ensuring you get all the folds and sneaky places. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius (I -think- that is 270 farenheit, but don't quote me on that) while you finish rubbing this flour stuff into the skin.

Line a tray with aluminium foil, two or three layers if you don't want to wash the tray -- which is really the idea -- and put your floured wings in the tray, tapping off the excess flour back onto the plate.

Put them in the oven for 30 minutes per side. Chop up and make a garden salad, if you desire, lettuce, tomato, cheese, carrot, cucumber, while you're waiting for the wings. Heat up your sauce, when the oven dings for the last time, take the wings out, leave them to rest as you set up the other food for preparation -- You can also make the blue cheese sauce.

To do this you get a -small- bowl, one for teeny little things, put the mayonaise, sour cream and garlic powder in, mix them together. Grate the blue cheese, using the smallest holes -- the ones you use to get skinny spiral curls of parmesan cheese, rather than the normal ones for cheddar -- and mix this into the sour cream mixture. You can add more, or less cheese depending on your taste preferences, but the whole thing should be smoothe and delicious looking, like a professional made it! ...All because you grated the cheese, rather than breaking off the crumbly stuff.

Salad, sauce, dip, wings, and extra plates for it all go on the table, and it's self serve of deliciousness! I'm not sure if I slightly overcooked the turkey, or if it was the flour, but the skin was deliciously crunchy and mmmn, so good. This'll serve about 4, one turkey wing per person, added with the salad, is more than enough to satisfy. ...Sure you'll be a little nibbly, but that is good, means you're not over full! And if you want more, have more salad. Tastes good either way!

Deliciousness Delivered.

Pork Tenderloin, potato salad and tomato mushroom 'salad'.

Happy Day After Australia Day! Yes, I know, the last post I did a few hours ago said happy new year, but shhh, work with me here. It all makes sense! Now I don't know about you, but for me, cooking when it is hotter than holy cooked egg on a rock is not on my list of 'top things to do today'. Eating a hot meal when it is hotter than that crispy egg on a sizzling rock is -equally- low on the list.

But, we need to eat or else we'll wake up at 2am with a growling belly going 'oh god so hungry' and after eating it's 'oh god so tired WHY do I have work in the morning' while you can't sleep and... yeah, it's just not pretty. So what do we do? We make a food that is eaten -cold-. Yep! Lovely coldness. For this recipe you will need:

Pork (tenderloin, chop, whichever, could also use a beef steak... doesn't matter)
Potato salad:
5 medium-large potatoes
5 eggs
2 cups of peas
2 cups of corn
~250g of bacon
2-3 Tbsp of mayonaise
1/2 tsp of worchestershire sauce
2 tsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp garlic powder.
Tomato salad:
1-2 tomatoes
3-4 button mushrooms, fresh
1-2 2cm thick slices of cheddar, cubed.

Peel and dice your potato, try to keep all of the potato pieces around the same size, as this is the size of your final potato salad will be. Put them in a pot with cold water, bring to the boil, put in the peas and corn -- yes, into the -same- pot, why waste water, or make extra dishes for yourself if you don't have to? -- put on the lid cracked a little to let steam out, and bring to boil a second time, leaving to simmer. Once that part is cooked, drain the water, and put them into a bowl to cool.

Get out four eggs from the fridge, put into a pot of water (you can use the potato pot if you like) and bring to boil (it should take around 5 minutes) once boiling (thats when the big bubbles are plopping up and effecting the water surface) put the timer on for about seven minutes. If you prefer, you can boil the water -first-, just add a teaspoon or so of vinegar to the water, this will keep the egg shells from cracking, and if they -do- crack, then the egg-white will stay inside, once boiling, carefully put the eggs in (I balance them on a table spoon and slide them in gently) and set the timer for seven to ten minutes. Once the timer is done, pull them off the heat and set aside to cool in the water, or, conversely, empty out the hot water, and replace it with cold. There's more than one way to boil an egg!

Once they are cool enough to touch without you going 'ow ow ow hot hot!' peel and dice the eggs. Three slices, and cut into quarters. You can add more, or less egg as is your preference. While the eggs are cooling, whip out a frying pan, spray oil in it to warm up. While it is warming, you want to slice and dice your bacon into small cubes. Fry them in the pan until cooked, slightly crispy, but not burnt. So they shouldn't crack or crunch when you eat them.

Toss them into the bowl with the potato, along with the egg, and leave to cool down. Or rather, let it rest while you mix the mayonaise with the vinegar. It will separate, and form little clumps as you are stirring it (in a separate bowl to the potato) but you should remix the vinegar in until the mayonaise looks like it did before you thinned it, only smoother and slightly creamy looking. Same principle, add the garlic powder and worchestershire sauce, stir until well mixed in and creamy looking, add to your potato, egg, bacon etc, and stir the whole lot through. Leave to cool -completely- in the fridge. Warm potato salad tastes funny to me.

For the 'tomato salad', I'd been having a hankering for raw mushroom, and this fullfilled that nicely. Raw button mushrooms are very dry, and powdery in taste, the tomato juice counterbalances that nicely, and there's cheese well.. because I like cheese in my salads.

Dice up your tomato, top and tail, three slices horzontally and then checker-board the upper edge, three cuts vertically through the meat of the tomato, and another three crossing over -those- cuts to cube the tomato nicely. Slice the mushroom into little umbrellas, and then cut each umbrella in half. Slice and cube the cheese, toss it all into a bowl, and voila. Another nice cold salad!

Put your meat on (whatever type you chose) and cook it through. If lamb, or pork, you'll be wanting/needing to turn it over -four- times, each time letting blood rise to the surface and puddle slightly before turning it over, the last turning is to sear the juices onto the outer layer. If it's beef, or steak, then you needn't worry so much. Just cook it how you like! 10 seconds sear on each side for, I think, blue rare, 30 seconds on each side for rare... and so on. Personally, I prefer medium well done which is blood to rise twice, and three turnings to cook on each side and sear.

Put the meat on the plate, serve up the potato salad and tomato stuff, and have a lovely cool dinner on a wicked hot day. If you wish to add a dash of surprising freshness, simply slice up some of a cucumber and place it on the plate. It works well!

Deliciousness Delivered.

Rolled-Roast stuffed chicken breast

Happy New Year everyone! Yeah, I know, I have been lazy and not updated for the WHOLE of the new year, how shameful of me! But here it is. A nice roast that I'm sharing with you, including a cheaty way to get your delicious roast vegetables.

A major problem with -having- those lovely roast vegetables, is how the devil do you know when to put them in? And if you -do- put them in and they come out cooked when the roast is done, you lose the delicious crispy to the pan, tray or foil! Dilemna! Never fear however, I shall help you make wonderful, delicious roast vegetables.





First of all, you're going to need some potatoes and carrots. Around one potato and one carrot per person you are serving. You want to cut the carrots in half crosswise, and then half them again down the length. Cut the potatoes in half, on the longest side of a decent potato. A 'decent potato' is the type known as nadine, they are about big enough to fill your hand, without your fingers curling over and connecting, white skin and white flesh.




An appropriately sized roast, I had a net rolled chicken roast, available from a chicken-specialist butchers, so I won't go into the preparation of how to make one. Wrap a baking tray in alfoil, tinfoil or whichever you want to call it. Put the rolled roast into the tray, net and all, if you take the net off, the roast will fall apart while cooking. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius, and once it is ready, put the roast in for fifty minutes. This is to cook the first side and make sure the skin is crunchy. While this is going on, you put the roast vegies on. But wait! I haven't said -how-!



If you've got yourself a banquet frying pan, then you're sweet. What you want to do is put some dripping into the pan, as it is heating, to melt down. Dripping is the fat that melt out of red-meat roasts, so like beef, lamb, the clear film that sits at the bottom of the tray, when it is still liquid, you pour that into a jar, and put it in the fridge to solidify. If you haven't kept/got any no drama's, butter will serve. BButter mind, not margerine. Duck fat as well, if you want to get expensive. Another alternative is to use cooking spray -and- vegetable oil. The cooking spray keeps the oil from sticking, and the oil keeps the vegetables from sticking, and you have a lovely crunchy roast vegie, undeniably the best method is the dripping. So, start saving the fat from your roasts!

Pop all your vegetables in -- you can also roast a whole onion in the same way, if you like, one onion per person that wants it. Cook on medium to low heat, checking them periodically, and turn them over when you have a lovely golden crispy layer forming.




Like so! Around this time, your oven should 'ding' and your roast is asking you ever so politely to turn it over. Do so, and roast it for another 20-30 minutes. If you're not sure, stick it with something sharp -- cake skewer, tip of a thin knife -- and if the juices that come out are clear, it's good to go.

This is when you get to polish up on your multitasking skills, as you also put on the frozen vegetables you want to add to the meal, peas, corn, beans, brussel sprouts... put them in cold water, bring to boil on the stove on a medium to low heat -- I cook with gas, and 'high' is insta-burn because of how hot the flame is. Now you just need to keep track of the time passing.

If your roast is done early, before you have finished doing all the vegetables, no need to stress, or worry, just turn the oven down. 80-90 degrees celcius will keep your roast nice and hot, without cooking it further. When your pot-vegetables (peas, corn etc) are boiling, put on the gravy.

Packet stuff, it's usually six teaspoons of the mix to a cup of water, or there abouts, and it should serve four people. Put the powder in a glass, (or cup measure) stir the powder and water together, put them into a pot and put it on high, while you are -still- stirring. Don't take my hazarded guess measure as gospel, read the packet for the precise requirements. Once the gravy starts to thicken -- you'll notice it -- turn the heat DOWN while still stirring. For the love of all that is holy do NOT let the gravy boil. If it boils you get brown water. Seriously, it does not thicken for love or money. Keep stirring until the gravy is completely thick and gloopy and delicious, the way we all like it, and turn -off- the heat. For everything!

Take your roast out of the oven, and it should look gloriously golden and crispy and delicious, like so;



But! We have a net around our food. And this is bad! What you want to do, is using a pair of tongs, and pair of scissors -- scissors, NOT a knife -- grip, and snip through the netting at the end, and work along the length of the roast. Being careful, and using the tongs to hold the roast, using your fingers peel the netting back. Do so gently, and patiently, and you will have a delicious thing in one piece ready to carve, if you rush, bits of the skin will stick to the netting and on the whole, it will look a lot less appealing. We -prefer- to eat things that look nice, not all mangled after all.

Carefully slice your roast, and serve, putting two halves of a potato, two to four bits of carrot, a serve of peas/corn/beans etc and drizzle gravy over the top. I am sure I have mentioned this in previous posts, but just in case I haven't, the serving sizes per person for the frozen vegetables, is one handful. So if there is peas -and- corn, then it is a half handful of each, per person. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it is all you need.

Enjoy your lovely roast and easy roast vegetables!

Deliciousness Delivered.