Sep 14

Things to do with left over roast lamb: Moussaka

A while ago I had a fair amount of left over roast lamb, and I really didn’t want it to go to waste, but wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted to do with it.  I remembered the lamb moussaka I made from More Than One Way, and decided to adapt that recipe to make a much quicker, but still very tasty moussaka.  You’ll need 500g of left over roast lamb for this recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 1 eggplant, sliced into 1cm slices
  • 500g roast lamb, cut into small pieces
  • 45g butter
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 200g tomatoes, chopped
  • salt and pepper
  • nutmeg
  • oil
  • 90g cheddar cheese
  • 1/4 cup breadcrumbs

White sauce:

  • 50g butter
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • nutmeg
  • salt and pepper
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten

Method:

  1. Cook eggplant slices in oil in a frying pan until golden brown, drain well.  Arrange eggplant slices in the base of a greased oven proof dish.
  2. Heat butter in a large pan, add onion and crushed garlic and cook until onion softens.  Add roast lamb and tomatoes and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.  Cook until the tomato softens, then remove from heat.
  3. Prepare the white sauce: melt butter in a small saucepan, remove from heat.  Stir in flour, nutmeg, salt and pepper.  Stir over a low heat for 1 minute.  Add milk, stir until sauce boils and thickens.  Reduce heat, cook for a further 1 minute.  Remove from heat, add lightly beaten egg, and beat well until the sauce is an even consistency.
  4. Combine the grated cheese and breadcrumbs.  Sprinkle one-third of the mixture over the eggplant.  Spoon meat sauce over eggplant and cheese and breadcrumb mixture.  Spread the white sauce over the meat mixture.  Sprinkle remaining cheese mixture over the white sauce.
  5. Bake in a 200C oven 20 – 25 minutes or until topping is golden brown.

Aug 14

Cookbook 86: New Idea’s Chinese Cookbook

I was gifted New Idea’s Chinese Cookbook by my grandmother just after I moved out of her house, as she knew I liked to cook Chinese food.  I’m sorry to say that apart from looking at it from time to time, I didn’t cook from it.  It’s quite fragile, and as it turns out also pretty rare.  That link above is the only place I’ve found it for sale in Australia – so I might have one of only a few copies left.

This cookbook is from the era of “bamboo shots in everything”, and definitely from the era of making Chinese food palatable to Western palates.  From experience, the recipes are also heavily modified to ensure that ingredients are familiar and locatable for the most part, from whenever it was published, I’m guessing early 70s.  Personally I think that bamboo shoots are not food, and the two recipes I selected do not contain them.  Sadly the book has next to no vegetarian recipes in them, so this week was all about the meat.

The cookbook covers famous restaurant specialities, and it would appear that many of those restaurants no longer exist.  It also provides a bit of information about regional cuisines and history of popular Chinese dishes.  Most of the recipes are straight forward, but there certainly are some that need refinement.  Overall I give this 3 out of 5 stars.

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Aug 12

Cookbook 85: Family Favourites

My husband bought the Family Circle Healthy Eating, Family Favourites cookbook while shopping once, and I wasn’t hugely inspired by it, so never cooked from it.  I rectified that recently, and remain uninspired.  The main dishes I made weren’t bad, but the dessert was a disaster.  I don’t think I’ll be keeping this beyond this project, as the recipes it has are all done better elsewhere.  I give this book 2 out of 5 stars.

No photos at time of publication as the camera with the photos on it, is currently in Germany with my husband.  I’ll upload the photos later

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Aug 11

Quick and dirty apple pie recipe

Here is my standard apple pie recipe.  I don’t have pictures, just imagine tasty apple pie and you’re almost there.

Ingredients:

  • 2 – 3 granny smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced
  • 2 sheets of puff pastry (thawed)
  • 1 teaspoon brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon white sugar

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 180C or 170C if fan forced
  2. Grease a 20cm pie dish (I use a pyrex one, I’ve had it forever)
  3. Put one sheet of the puff pastry in the pie dish, leave sides overhanging.  Cut a small (2cm) slit in the base of the pastry.
  4. Fill the pie dish with the apple pieces.  Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon
  5. Lay the second sheet of puff pastry over the top, with the corners of this piece over the sides of the the bottom square, so you have 8 corners of pastry visible.  Starting with one of the bottom piece corners, roll the corner up and into the pie dish, continue alternating top and then bottom corners until you have made a nice crust for your pie.  Make two 2cm slits in the top pastry piece.  Sprinkle the pastry lid with white sugar.
  6. Bake in oven for 25 – 30 minutes.  The pie is ready when the crust is puffed and golden.
  7. Serve with ice cream or cream.

Options: you can swap out the cinnamon and brown sugar for berries (raspberries and blackberries are the best), and a 1/2 teaspoon of white sugar.

Aug 11

Cookbook 84: Cooking for compliments

I can only assume that Scott’s mother bought this book second hand somewhere due to nostalgia, and then gave it to Scott when he moved out, so he’d have a cookbook that she really loved.  Cooking for compliments by Ruth Morgan was published in 1968, it’s lovely full of UK Imperial measurements and is surprisingly popular given you can still get it second hand on Amazon.

The book claims that all recipes were tested in their kitchen and that these recipes are for anyone regardless of cooking ability – that claim I certainly dispute.  Like many cookbooks from its time, the recipe photos are less than inspiring and make you wonder why people thought these things looked like edible food.  Some of the dishes are odd as well, ham or bacon mysteriously turns up in vegetable dishes, as if the thought of eating vegetables without garnish or additional meat is some kind of weirdness.  Some of the language used to describe ingredients in the recipes is also strange, I’m still not 100% sure what “chicken joints” actually means, but I am now positive it does not mean chicken maryland.  I’ll also do my best to translate the imperial measurements into metric for ease of use.  I don’t think I’ll cook from this book again, I give it 2 stars out of 5.

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Jul 26

Cookbook 83 (ish): Asian Cooking Made Easy

As we’ve previously established, I am addicted to cookbooks.  I find it very hard to say “no” when someone makes me an amazing offer of “buy these recipes on a periodical basis for not very much money, and we’ll throw in the supporting folders and other information”, I generally say, “yes please”.  And this is how I ended up with 3 folders (the complete set) of Asian Cooking Made Easy.  There are hundreds of recipes, sensibly organised into different meat types, starters, stir fries, vegetable dishes, breads, noodle dishes, ingredient descriptions and simple recipes for pastes and sauces.  The recipes cover the geographical regions from India and Sri Lanka, across to China and Japan, and down to Indonesia.

I am somewhat disappointed that pretty much all the purely vegetarian dishes are from India and Sri Lanka – it ignores great vegetarian recipes from the rest of the countries’ cuisines that have vegetarian food.  Despite this disappointment, the vegetarian recipes I made were delicious, all the recipes are straightforward, well explained and have explanatory illustrations as required.  Included on each recipe card is also a brief description of the recipe or its origins, a map of where it’s from (usually correct, but not always), suggestions for recipe variations, cook’s tips, serving suggestions, and information about wine matching.

Overall I’m very happy with each of the recipes I made, even the ones using ingredients I’ve never used before.  It’s probably incredibly difficult to get your hands on this recipe set, but if you see one languishing unloved, do try.  Overall I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

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Jul 12

Cookbook 82: Tasty Mince Recipes

So the lovely Scott brought the Family Circle Tasty Mince Recipes with him when he moved in, because this is not a book I would have thought to buy on my own.  It’s not that I am against minced meat in any way, it’s just that I don’t need an entire recipe book dedicated to the subject.  For this meal there were only 3 of us for dinner, and no vegetarians (which is why I was cooking from this book), so I decided to only do one recipe, otherwise I would have ended up wasting food.  The instructions were straight forward and sensible, the recipe delicious and overall I give it 3 stars.

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Jul 05

Cookbook 81: Margaret Fulton’s Book of Quick Meals

Firstly, the recipes in Margaret Fulton’s Book of Quick Meals are not actually by Margaret Fulton, but by Michelle Berriedale Johnson.  That of course doesn’t stop them being quite tasty, though in some cases definitely a product of their time.  This book is designed to take advantage of frozen or pre-packaged foods where appropriate in order to reduce overall cooking time.  Apparently no recipe in this book will take more than 45 minutes (unless you’re unable to find the 1980/90s equivalent convenience food (as I was for a couple).

Two of the recipes I made in the book were actually the best of their type that I have ever made, and I honestly mean that.  The macaroni and cheese, and the stroganoff were by far the best that I have ever made, and I’ve made quite a few.  The other two recipes did not come out as intended, as “onion sauce powder” is no longer an ingredient that is stocked by supermarkets – that or the recipe meant onion gravy, and didn’t say so.  Either way, I ended up substituting another onion sauce in these dishes, which made them oddly sweet, which was quite hit and miss with my guests.

The recipes were quick, which made juggling them all to get to the the table quite hard, but that’s my problem – not the book’s.  Overall, I’d give this book 3.5 stars out of 5.

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Jun 24

Cookbook 80: Vegie Main Meals

I cooked from the Australian Women’s Weekly Vegie Main Meals, and I was not disappointed.  The book states, “Triple Tested” on the front, and all the recipes were a delight – as you’d hope they were coming from the AWW kitchen.  The instructions were straightforward and easy to understand, the decision as to what to cook was really difficult because so many of the recipes looked tasty, and the dishes I selected all came out tasting amazing – even the one I wasn’t sure I’d like because it was full of mushrooms.  Overall I give this 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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Jun 15

Cookbook 79: Classic Cajun: Hot and spicy Louisiana Cooking

I bought this book as a part of three, the other two (African, Indian) I’ve already cooked from as part of this project.  Classic Cajun: Hot and spicy Louisiana cooking, with a foreword by Rube Le Bois is not a book that my capsicum allergic, vegetarian housemate could partake of.  All but one vegetable recipe contained capsicum (including the roast potatoes), which I thought was great, so we saved this book for a night when my housemate was not around.

The recipes themselves are well put together, and the results are delightful – well except for one dish which I found quite bland in comparison to the others.  I’ll happily re-make two of the recipes I cooked from this book, and will investigate it for other tasty recipes, when my capsicum allergic housemate is visiting other people.  Overall I give this 3 out of 5 star.

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