Lasagna

Sorry, no photo, I knew I said I wouldn't do this anymore, but just in case any of you really care to know, I won't be posting for the next week because we're going away. But we're taking a lasagna that will last us around 3 days, so there's something for you. Back to posting (semi) regularly again in a week!

Nachos 3

Quick, easy, delicious. Don't forget the sour cream.

Savoury mince and veges

I thought about just calling this "dinner" but I've learned from experience if I can't give something a definite name then it's not going to be good.

And this was good. Even though it's a bit-of-a-mess looking. I was focussing my energy somewhere else today.

Spaghetti Pie

This is a good one. A friend made it for Erika post-partum baby #2 a year and a half ago, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. It's been included in my family meal arsenal ever since. Don't give it a miss just because it's a bad photo.

Spaghetti Pie

500-600g Vermicelli

50-75g butter

2 small/1 large egg

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

250g cottage cheese

Prepared tomato sauce

Grated cheese

Cook your vermicelli in salted water (I used regular spaghetti in the photo above. But vermicelli is just so much nicer for this). Cook your tomato sauce how you like it (mine: oil, onion, garlic, mince, mushrooms, Worcestershire sauce, beef stock, salt, pepper, dried mixed herbs, canned tomatoes, tomato paste). When vermicelli is cooked, drain and immediately put in the butter, egg and parmesan cheese and stir to mix. Press the vermicelli into a dish, cover with the cottage cheese, then the tomato sauce, then the grated cheese on top. Bake in oven till heated through.

Calzone

I don't know the technicalities of calzone, but this was pretty nice. It was nice to have something different. I used my Nice Buns recipe and rolled it out and filled it, next time I'll use a heavier dough maybe? Don't know.

Quote from Nat: "There's definitely room for improvement, but it's good". Which is pretty much spot on.

Room for improvement:

- Find a way to make sure all the dough on the bottom is cooked

- Make the sauce more tomatoey

- See if we can get more filling to bread ratio, even though I think it was pretty perfect, Nat would like more filling.

- Some sort of glaze on the bread would be nice

- Do it all much, much faster

This 'n' That and Lasagna

My friend Johanna recently reminisced that one of her favourite dinners growing up was what her mother called "This 'n' That": a plateful of leftovers and whatever was left in the kitchen pretty much. This is what the kids had for dinner,

(broccoli, water, yoghurt, peaches, cracker, rehydration liquid for Sadie. She got pretty sick)

(Sadie finishing off a piece of cheese)

(the reject bowl: spaghetti, for the 4th(?) evening this week (the meatballs got eaten), banana, peeled pear, plum)

because the main event wasn't ready in time.

This is the first lasagna we've made at this house, so that's AT LEAST 6 months! It was so good!

But I overdid it with the cream.

Cream in the lasagna? Oh yes we did! After it's all assembled (with uncooked pasta) we bake for 10 min, pour over cream, 10 min more, more cream, 10 min more, more cream, 10 minutes more. Well those were my instructions from Nat. He normally does the "creaming". But I didn't fully understand his description of how much cream to put in. So after baptising the lasagna (by immersion) after the first 1o minutes it took another 40 minutes for the cream to absorb. Or look like it was absorbed.

Lasagna with your cream anyone?

Spaghetti and Meatballs 5

Sorry about the lack of posting recently. We haven't really been eating anything original is the thing. But I thought I'd better post something so here's what we had tonight.

Remember, the best ever meatballs recipe is Rachael Ray's. Give it a whirl.

Burritos 6

I felt like burritos this morning. I got mince out of the freezer. We had taco sauce which was unusual for us. And avocado. This was going to be great. When I came to making it I cooked up the mince, then realised I didn't have anything else that we normally stuff burritos with other than the taco sauce and avocado. SO a little different tonight, I added plenty of corn to the mince mixture, and chopped up some capsicum (really small so that the kids would eat it) and that was us! Sour cream, mince with corn, cheese, capsicum, avocado, taco sauce.

Spaghetti and Meatballs 4

Spaghetti and courgette meatballs - after making the stuffed courgette the other night I had tons of leftover filling and froze a tray full of meatballs. They didn't turn out the best, because courgette flesh that I'd included in the meatball mix became watery as they were cooked and so a few fell apart. But other than that it was a good meal.

The sauce tonight: a large splash of olive oil, 2 onions, 4 cloves garlic, 1 can tomatoes, 1 beef stock cube dissolved in 3/4 can of water, salt, pepper, generous shake of worcestershire sauce, 2 pinches dried sweet basil.

It turned out quite nice! A little bit different than what I normally make for a tomato pasta sauce.

Stuffed courgette with spaghetti

This was ok, I'd make it again, but no one else in the family liked it. It's not good enough to post the recipe. The kids just ate the meat out and left the courgettes and most of the spaghetti.

Marzetti

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is Marzetti just some sort of pasta with a tomato sauce, mince and cheese? That's what my upbringing has told me.

Marzetti

500g macaroni pasta

1 Tbsp oil

2 onions (finely chopped)

5 cloves garlic (minced)

300-500g mince

2 x 420g (ish?) chopped tomatoes

1/2 can water

1 oxo beef stock cube

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp salt

A few cracks of pepper

1 cup grated cheese

Heat oil in a saucepan. Cook onions and garlic. Add mince and brown. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until thick. Cook pasta. Stir the grated cheese through the pasta and then pour over the sauce (I used most of the sauce, all but about 1 cup). Stir until well mixed and the cheese is all melted and making the sauce nice and cheesy. You want it to be the consistency of mac and cheese, not that cheesy, but not too saucy.

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Addendum: Turns out it's Marzetti not Marsetti. Check out my sister's comment and link on this post if you want more info. (And why not click through to her blog too? It's great)

Spaghetti and Meatballs 3

I made Rachael Ray's Meatballs again with Ruth Pretty's Tomato Pasta Sauce. I think the Sauce is a keeper. Click on through and take a look.

- I used two cans of chopped tomatoes instead of 14-18 fresh tomatoes. In the future I may use whole peeled tomatoes. You definitely get a different result depending on how you prepare your tomatoes, but it's SO much easier to just open a can and tip it in.

- I didn't have bay leaves. I'm sure the flavour would be a bit different if I did. I used basil a little differently than the recipe calls for.

- I may have over-reduced the sauce.

Burritos 5

Topped with sour cream, mince mixture (onion, mince, cumin, worcestershire sauce, beef stock, salt, pepper, baked beans, corn), cheese, salad, grated carrot, chopped tomato, more cheese. Delicious!

Chili 3

It's meant to be summer. And yet I'm dressing my children like this:

So I made chili for dinner tonight. Much like the recipe I've already posted but with some alterations.

- We had no garlic. It was still delicious.

- I doubled the measures for the spices.

- I added a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce.

- I used an extra can of chili beans, hot, salsa flavoured.

- I added 1/2 a can of water.

- I added a good 1 1/2-2 cups of frozen corn.

- It simmered away for a good half hour.

- We added chili flakes at the table to increase the heat. Since we were serving it to our kiddilicks it wasn't very hot in the pot. But a couple shakes of chili flakes increased it to the perfect amount of heat. Enough to heat up your mouth and get your nose running by the time you finish the bowl, but not so much you can't taste your food or get through two bites in a row.

It's nice with sour cream and bread, or tonight we had the last of my most recent batch of delicious home made bread rolls or as the recipe calls them:

Nice Buns

1 1/4 cups warm water

3 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp yeast (dry, granules)

1 Tbsp cooking oil

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

Dissolve sugar in water. Have the water at a temperature so that it is still luke warm after the sugar has dissolved. Sprinkle yeast over the mixture, add oil and stir briefly.

Leave mixture to stand for 5 minutes or until it has become foamy. This works best if left in a warm place.

Add the rest of the ingredients. Knead for a bit. When smooth (takes 5-10 minutes of kneading) you can leave the dough to rise for 30 mins (recommended) or you can bake it straight away.

Divide mixture into 10-12 buns. Cook in hot oven at 180 degrees Celcius for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

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In my personal preparation, after I have divided the mixture into buns, I pull the dough from top to bottom, squeezing all the air bubbles out underneath and form it into a rectangle shape. Then I slice it lengthways down the middle, not all the way through, with a sharp knife, then press it back together and place on the tray. The buns turn out round or sometimes square, and with a line down the middle that makes it easy to break in half. These are the business.

There you go Nicole!

Nachos

A great Friday night meal, with hardly any preparation required. Here's how I make it:

Fry onion and garlic in a pan. Add mince and brown. Add seasonings (my personal taste - salt, pepper, cumin, beef stock, occasionally a splash of soy sauce/malt vinegar/worcestershire sauce. Not all at once but one or the other). Add a can of chili beans and stir to combine and heat through.

WATTIE'S Mild Chilli Beans WATTIE'S Mild Chilli Beans is New Zealand's favourite chilli bean. The combination of WATTIE'S secret spices and a rich chilli sauce makes an irresistible meal for any time of the day. WATTIE'S Mild Chilli Beans include quality red kidney beans, capsicum and onion, making a tasty meal on its own or a delicious accompaniment to a variety of recipes. Available in 420g cans.

When I'm really in a hurry I don't even cook mince, I just use the beans straight from the can. Also, if your adding a can of seasoned beans rather than just straight beans, you can probably skip seasoning the mince too.

Pour your corn chips in some sort of oven proof vessel. Top with mince and beans mixture and grated cheese. Bake till cheese has melted. You can then grill if you want, but I've found that grilling alone doesn't heat it through, so bake it for a bit first.

Top with sour cream and serve! I'm sure you could add other things like salsa, corn in the mince mixture, chives or spring onions on top but I normally do the minimum.

Spaghetti and Meatballs 2

I made Rachael Ray's meatballs again tonight. It's a winner recipe (stay away from the sauce though). Served with our tomato and basil sauce through spaghetti, also over mashed potato which was nice too.

Also delicious home made dinner rolls. Yum. I can't stay away from these.

Mince Spaghetti

Mince spaghetti last night and tonight as leftovers.

Olive oil, onion, garlic, pepper, beef stock, can of tomatoes, good squirt of tomato paste, oregano and rosemary. (Served with parmesan cheese)

Burritos 4

Tonight I mixed the mince and beans together (which I don't normally do) and snuck in some peas and corn. The kids didn't mind them! Yay for more veges in their tummies! If you want to do it I would recommend the corn, it belongs in there flavourwise, but the peas really don't. It doesn't make it gross or anything but you can tell it's an extra.

Lasagne, Stew, Brown rice and Salad

We went to a friends place for dinner tonight, so no photo. They served up a delicious dinner of lasagne (with veges, which I can never pull off tastily. So I normally leave out the veges), stew and rice (brown! I love brown rice) and salad (with TONS of extra veges). It was great!

Spaghetti and Meatballs

I made Rachael Ray's Spaghetti and Meatballs for dinner. The verdict: the meatballs were GREAT but the sauce only so-so. Nothing exciting. I'm still on the look out for a good, made at home, straight, tomato pasta sauce.

(Apologies for the earlier version of this post if you saw it. Late last night I asked Nat to post the photo for me and I'd update it today. That was his idea of funny.)