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...

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 :)

Buffalo Mash of Deliciousness

Whew! Now here's a bit of an endeavour that I have just gone through in the past two days. I started this -yesterday- just after dinner. Why did I start it yesterday, because I marinaded the wings. It served 3 people comfortably. Here's what you're going to need to pull this off:

Wings
1kg of chicken wings (around 36 individual pieces, each wing makes two pieces)
1 1/2 Tbsp white vinegar
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 'flavoured' sauce -- A very mild hot chilli sauce, the one I used was Maggi but whichever works for you.
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.



Put the whole lot of those sauces and ingredients into a bowl, stir them together so that it is evenly distributed, joint and put your chicken wings into the bowl -- make sure that the chicken can fit in the bowl, obviously. And trust me, there is enough sauce mixture in that above recipe to fill the bowl and coat the chicken as illustrated. Cover, and leave in the fridge to marinade overnight until you're ready to cook it the next day for dinner!

Cheese Dip:
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup crumbled bleu cheese (I used a full 200g and it was a little overpowering in flavour, unless you LOVE the cheese)
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbsp white wine (sweet)
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic



Again, pretty simple, dump the whole lot in, grate/crumble the bleu cheese into smaller pieces, mix it all into a bowl and mash the cheese within an inch of its life. Conversely, you could use a handheld blender, or food processor or something of the sort, but I'm oldschool and used a fork. Once it's prepared, put it in the fridge so it keeps chilled.

Preheat your oven to ~220 degrees Celcius, if you have a fanforced oven it's 170 degrees or so, as the fan makes it hotter and forces air around and so on, so things cook faster and you don't want your so painstakingly prepared chicken to dry out!

The chicken wings should be put onto alfoil wrapped trays with a decent amount of space between each so that they don't stick together, like this;



Put them into the oven, set the timer for 20 minutes and ignore until it buzzes. Once buzzed, turn them over to cook for another 20 minutes. That marinade the chicken sat in? You are keeping it! Put the leftover 'marinade' sauce into a frying pan, and heat it for about 15 minutes or so, just let it gently simmer with the lid on so that it doesn't reduce.

While your oven is heating up to usefulness, we shall get started on the side dishes! Which is the mashed potato, asparagus and capsicum. You will need:

1 medium potato per person (I served 3, so it was 3 potatoes, they were huuuuge) or 2 small.
1 garlic clove per potato (I used 5, as I said, loooots of potato!)
1 tsp of butter
3/4 cup of milk
1 cup of thin asparagus cut in half (If you did what I did last night, it was the 'leftover' asparagus)
1/2 cup of red and green capsicum.

Peel and cube your potato, put it into a pot, cut the base off of the fresh garlic cloves, peel off the papery shell, discard. Cut each clove in quarters or so, so that they are chunky, not minced or diced. Put the whole lot in a pot, with water, and bring to boil. Once boiling, put the asparagus and capsicum into a steamer ontop of the pot (I had a set for this) Or conversely put them into a pan to lightly fry on -low- heat.

When the chicken has five minutes to go, you are turning off the heat on your sides, drain and mash the potato, adding in the butter and milk so that it is very soft and well pulverised. Dish up on the plates, the asparagus goes ontop of the potato as a garnish, capsicum (or bell pepper if you are american) goes beside the potato, your chicken will have buzzed by now, pull it out of the oven, distribute the pieces between the plates (It worked out to 9 per person and 6 left over) and drizzle the sauce over the wings as well.

Distribute the cheese sauce how you like (I used little dishes) add celery sticks and voila, deliciousness is served!

Prior the celery.

The chicken when marinaded, absorbs the sweetness in the sauce, but not a terribly great amount of the spice, which is distributed when the sauce is coated over the top. It does have a fair bite to it, the sauce is much warmer than the chicken, so be warned. Celery and the cheese dip lessens the burn considerably.