Midnight Spaghetti 7 (with a twist...)

I added sliced and diced ham, white wine vinegar and "Cream for Cooking" (a new product, thank you James at The Food Show for the free samples!) to the sauce, and omitted the chili. It was nice, but I was FAR too heavy handed with the cream!

Pizza 3

This is fast becoming a fave. I make it as often as I feel I can justify.

Pizza 2

My sister and her kids came for dinner tonight. Pizza night!

Pizza Base - for 2 pizza's (I think this is from my mum's JOY of Cooking cookbook, with some of my own modifications)

3 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 cup semolina (or just use 4 cups flour, I do all the time)

1 Tbsp of yeast in

1 1/3 cup of warm water

2 Tbsp oil

1 tsp salt

1. Add yeast and oil to water and stir briefly. Leave for 10 mins or until foamy.

2. Mix all ingredients.

3. Knead.

4. Optional: Rising time. The dough can stretch to make two, cookie tray sized pizzas even if it doesn't have time to rise.

5. Roll out on a greased tray, turn up edges and add toppings.

6. Bake at 200 degrees Celcius for 15 (no rising time) -25 (risen to twice the size) minutes or until done.

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Pretty simple and easy! Can anyone tell me how to insert a degrees symbol on here?

Tortilla Pizza 2

This has got to be the fastest meal start to finish.

Pasta Salad 2

My secret to a good pasta salad: Paul Newman's Balsamic vinaigrette. I use that and mayonnaise as my dressing and it always turns out well. I just throw in whatever pasta I have on hand, anything else that looks like it could work, and stir through the gold. But actually another tip I have is to stir through little cubes of cheese and eat the salad warm. Some cheese will be melted and some not and it's just a nice surprise every now and again while you're eating it to get a little cheesy bite.

What's in this salad? Penne - cooked; oil, onion, garlic, ham, mushrooms, salt, pepper - all fried in a pan; tomatoes, spring onions, cheese - all fresh/raw/uncooked; corn - cooked separately, mayonnaise and Paul Newman's Balsamic vinaigrette. Delicious!

Pizza

I don't normally make pizza because I'm always lacking in toppings I thought. Then I asked a friend what she was putting on her pizza and she said she just does tomato and cheese. And for her tomato she just whizzes up a can of tomatoes*. How simple is that? It's so liberating to know that I can do something that simple, because if she can, I can. So I tried it tonight, and it was good! I whizzed up a 400g can of tomatoes with a bit of salt, pepper and oregano in the blender, topped with chopped ham and grated cheese. I really could've gone without the ham though. Yum! And the kids liked it too! We had some cooked carrots on the side as well to ease the mother guilt.

So one can did two full tray sized pizzas nicely, but probably could do three.

*My friend said she also uses canned tomato soup or even plain old tomato sauce/ketchup when she's really going it easy.

Mushroom Risotto

Mushroom Risotto

3 Tbsp oil

50g butter

2 small onions

3 cloves garlic

8 large button mushrooms (250g ish maybe?)

5 slices of shaved ham

3 rice cups of rice (how much is a rice cup? Much smaller than a standard/metric cup)

6 standard cups of water

4 tsp chicken stock/4 stock cubes (dissolved in the water)

Put oil and butter in the pan and melt the butter. Add chopped onions, crushed/chopped garlic, chopped mushrooms and diced shaved ham and saute until they're all looking yummy (10 minutes maybe?) Add the rice to the pan and "brown" it a little bit. Add more butter if you need to. Make sure the rice gets nicely coated. Add 2 cups of water. Cook on high for 5 minutes or until the water is about 3/4 absorbed/cooked off. Add the rest of the water with the stock. Cook until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender, about 20 minutes.

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This was pretty nice but you may want to consider making some changes to adjust to taste. My suggestions:

-Add peas. Lots of them. 1-2 cups of peas.

-Scrap the ham. Or use less. It affected the flavour a bit too much.

-Use less stock, maybe half the amount, and add a bit of salt instead.

I also don't know if this is the correct way to cook "risotto". But it works for me.

Tomato and Cheese "Risotto"

My sister Erika's recipe. More or less. Over Christmas she made this for the big family gathering. My nephew said "Dad, when I throw up, it looks like this". But he still ate it and liked it (I think...?).

Tomato and Cheese "Risotto"

Oil

2 slices middle bacon (I actually use shaved ham. WAY cheaper!)

1 onion, chopped

50g butter

2 1/2 cups rice

1 400g (ish) can tomatoes

4 cups water

salt

pepper

chilli powder

1 cup (or more) grated cheese (like Edam)

Cook onion and bacon/ham in oil. Add butter. When melted add rice and stir while cooking for a few minutes. Add tomatoes, water and seasonings and cook, stirring occasionally until rice is tender. Stir in cheese until melted.

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Did I leave anything out Erika? Is that even right? That's what I did the other night when I made it anyway. Is that what you do?

Also, it's named "Risotto" because I'm sure that it's not cooked right to be a risotto, but that's what I call it.

Leftovers

The quiche was slightly better today, cold, as leftovers. Slightly.

Quiche 2

I made a quiche tonight. It was what I'll call "not the best". But it was from scratch, and edible, and Theo liked it. I modified this pastry recipe and tried to remember how it was made at the cooking group I went to ages ago, rather unsuccessfully. I also used this recipe for reference.

In a food processor put 2 cups of flour, 150 grams of cold butter cut into cubes and blend until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add an egg and blend again, adding 1-2 Tbsp cold water as needed to bring the dough together into a ball. Turn out and lightly knead a few times to bind the dough together. Refrigerate for 10 minutes. (I decided to use wholemeal flour to try and be healthy)

Roll out the pastry then lift and press in to a greased quiche pan. Bake blind at 180-200 degrees C for around 20 minutes maybe longer. (This is one of those times that you really do need to weight down your pastry.)

Cook chopped onion and ham (and any other ingredients that need to be cooked eg. bacon, garlic, shallots, mushrooms) in butter, then add flour and milk to make a roux sauce. (This roux sauce turned out to be too thick! So try for a bit more milk in yours. Then again it might have acted as it did because I used wholemeal flour instead of white)

Prick the bottom of the pastry all over with a fork (I forgot to do this) then spoon the roux evenly in.

Lay out sliced tomato (or any other ingredient that needs to be laid out eg. spinach leaves, sliced rather than chopped mushrooms)

Whisk 5 small eggs (or 4 large), 3/4 cup milk, salt and pepper to taste and nutmeg (optional. I didn't use it). Pour over tomatoes. (It would probably be good to add some grated cheese in to the egg mix I reckon. Just a bit.)

Cover with grated cheese and cook at 180-200 degrees Celcius until the centre is just set. (Mine took an hour since it was so tall)

Realise just after you've put the quiche in the oven that you forgot to put the brocolli that you chopped and cooked into the egg mixture.

As you can tell from that last photo, this wasn't a winning recipe. So don't follow it without making MAJOR alterations.

Mistakes I made that you can now avoid:

- Don't just substitute in wholemeal flour as you please. It really acts differently to white flour. If you want to make your own wholemeal pastry find a proper wholemeal recipe. You could possibly do half wholemeal in a white flour recipe but I'm making no promises that it will work out.

- Weight your crust when you blind bake it. Mine caved in because the wholemeal flour doesn't hold the same way white does. I had to re-press it with a spoon, luckily I caught it before it had cooked enough to harden. I've seen the white crust bubble up in the middle but that didn't seem to be a lasting issue, once the filling was on it all came right. But to be on the safe side, weight it.

- Don't use a straight sided, tall tin. The pasty can't grip those tall, straight sides very well.

- Don't use the whole pastry recipe. Unless you have a very large pan, this pastry recipe is just too much. I used the whole recipe and it was much too thick. Use 3/4 of the recipe rolled thinly, and use the reserved pastry in muffin tins to make mini quiches for lunches.

- Don't make your roux sauce too thick. In the quiche that I had at my cooking group, the roux was what really made it taste like quiche instead of omelette. But my roux was totally separate from the egg mixture because it was too thick. Another time that wholemeal flour doesn't act as white.

- Put a tray on the next shelf underneath your quiche to catch any overflow. It's so much easier than cleaning the oven!

Overstuffed Omelette

The fillings: onion, ham, mushroom, tomato, cheese, peas, corn.

The "omelette".

Lentil Stew and Leftovers

My mum made a chicken, onion and lentil stew in her slow cooker for dinner today. We had that and leftover pasta salad for dinner.

Pasta Salad

Tonight we had pasta salad made with shells, ham, cheese cubes, mixed veges, boiled egg. The dressing was actually a dip that I make when I need to take a plate somewhere on short notice. It's great for vegetable sticks. As a dressing I thought it really lacked and would be vastly improved with salt and pepper (or a splash of Paul Newman's balsamic vinaigrette).

Emergency Dip

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp - 1 Tbsp mustard (mild american)
Crushed garlic to taste, about 1 clove

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and stir till combined. Tastes better if left to chill for about half an hour, the flavour matures a bit.