Back to love...

There's been a number of not-amazing meals lately. They've been edible sure, but not delicious, yum-inducing, drooling, can-I-have-more, meals. Which has been disappointing.

But now my faith has been regained.

Recipe:
141. Tagliata with rosemary and garlic potatoes

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: As I had stated, I had run out of garlic, so couldn't make the garlic-infused oil. So, it was served with rosemary potatoes.

Preparation: I marinaded the steak for about 30 minutes. While it was marinading, I diced the potatoes and chucked them into the oven.

Cooking process: Steak was fried both sides in a normal frypan. I don't have a griddle pan. Then I left it to cool a little - I didn't bother wrapping it in foil as Nigella suggests.

End result: Served with rocket and lemon (as specified), and avocado and baby tomatoes (my addition). Yuuummmmmmmmmmmmm. Love, love, love this meal. Check it out.


Repeatability: Yes please!

Cost: $10 for a nice cut of steak (serves 2), $14 all up. You must be mindful, that my quantities serves 2.

Mess: About the biggest mess is when you carve the steak, and all the juices run out onto the board...I guess Nigella would suggest pouring the juices on top, but I wouldn't.

Special utensils: A mortar and pestle to bruise the peppercorns, a frying pan, and preferably a non-stick roasting tray for the potatoes.

Clove-hot chilli con carne

I made this on Friday night.

Recipe:
140. Clove-hot chilli con carne

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I'm starting to notice a tendency towards ease. I used a tin of borlotti beans rather than soaking. I substituted normal mushrooms for dried porcini, as I didn't feel like walking down to David Jones to get my porcini at lunchtime. Instead of the dried peperoncino, I just used dried chilli flakes.

Preparation: The vegies are put into the food processor. Love it.

Cooking process: The minced vegies are then cooked for about 10 minutes, then the other ingredients are gradually added. You then leave it to cook for about an hour, returning to stir it every now and again.

End result: I tasted it while cooking, and then added some more chilli pepper. It's a very sweet chilli con carne - I can see why it would be good for kids. Given that no kids are in this household, I upped the chilli levels for more adult tastes.


Served with rice, then the next day I bought some taco shells and we had it in those. I think it tasted better as tacos.

Repeatability: It's okay, but it's not an amazing chilli con carne. I like a more adult version.

Cost: $10 for about 6 servings.

Mess: Nothing too bad.

Special utensils: Food processor.

Roast lamb for one for two

The Neglectful Next Nigella needs to quickly get her August write-ups in before the clock ticks to September. If memory serves correctly, I think I made this last Thursday.

Recipe:
139. Roast lamb for one

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I doubled this recipe for both of us. Given the potatoes from Tuesday night, we had used up all of the garlic in the house, so I left out the garlic (and substituted with garlic powder, sshh), and couldn't find redcurrant jelly.

Preparation: I know it was supposed to be marinaded overnight. Forgive me, but I didn't. It marinaded for about 2 minutes.

Cooking process: The lamb and marinade all gets put into the oven for about 1-1.5 hours. I also put some potatoes in there to keep the lamb shank company.

End result: It wasn't very nice. I don't know if it was the lack of marinade time or something else, but it put us off lamb shanks.


So now, adding to the list of prohibited items:

• offal
• quail
• black beans
• lamb shanks when cooked like this
  

Repeatability: No, thanks.

Cost: $8 for the lamb shanks themselves, rosemary from the garden, $10 all up.

Mess: Not really, mainly because I used a non-stick roasting tray.

Special utensils: A non-stick roasting tray. I am hoping that it doesn't have cancerous elements on the surface. I suppose I should also say that you need a lot of time. To marinade the lamb shank. Or at least some organisational skills so then you read the recipe beforehand, and not just when you are ready to make dinner.

Apple crumble

Given that I didn't need to cook on Tuesday night, as it was just a matter of heating up the lamb, roasting a few carrots, and washing a handful of rocket, I decided to make apple crumble.

Recipe:
138. Plain apple crumble

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I didn't have light muscovado sugar, so just substituted with brown sugar. Orange juice I had plenty of, given the oranges that my work colleague had so kindly given me. I think I just used plain flour for the self-raising flour - I did have both, I actually have about 7 different flours in the cupboard, but thought why use self-raising flour if those properties are not needed.

Preparation: Peel, core and cut up apples. While I am doing this, Hubby decides that he is an apple crumble expert and says to cut them up smaller. Rub flour and butter together. Add sugar to make the crumble.

Cooking process: In a saucepan, melt butter, add sugar, orange juice and apple. I'm not sure whether this really added much to the process, other than tossing all those ingredients together. Then assemble crumble and put in the oven for about 25 minutes.

End result: It was so nice, I wasn't used to adding orange juice to the crumble filling, but will be sure to do so from now on. I really should make desserts more often.


Repeatability: While I did enjoy the apple and walnut crumble more, this is a good one to have when you don't have walnuts in the cupboard.

Cost: $4 for about 4 servings.

Mess: It's not really that bad.

Special utensils: Citrus reamer. I don't have a vegetable peeler yet, I just go with a paring knife.

Roast lamb

I marinaded this on Sunday night, and we had it for Monday night's dinner.

Recipe:
136. Saffron roast lamb with sticky garlic potatoes
137. Sticky garlic potatoes
Is it a cop-out counting this as two recipes?

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Saffron threads, which I had bought from the Middle-Eastern store and carefully saved until now. I looked for redcurrant jelly at Safeway, but could only find cranberry sauce - unless I was looking in the wrong aisle. No, I didn't end up using cranberry sauce!

Preparation: Marinade lamb leg overnight.

Cooking process: As Hubby gets home earlier than I do, I got him to put the lamb and marinade into the oven. He guessed the temperature would be 220 degrees, and guessed rightly. When I got home, I started the potatoes, which were boiled for 30 minutes, then mushed up with garlic, then roasted. Then at the end you just make a saffron gravy in the same tray that the lamb was roasted in. I didn't bother straining, so if you look closely at the photo, you may be able to see a couple of strands of saffron.

End result: Oh, it was so nice. We especially enjoyed the crunchy potatoes - yum. As you can see, I got too lazy to make more vegies, so just washed a handful of rocket and that was it.

The roast lamb was nice too. We don't usually have a lot of red meat, but if it's this nice, we will.
Repeatability: Yes to both. Especially the potatoes.

Cost: From memory, the lamb leg cost $22; total cost of meal $30. Now, this lasted us for dinner on Monday night, Hubby's lunch on Tuesday (the remainder of the potatoes), again on Tuesday night (I roasted some carrots), and on Wednesday night, I used up the rest of the lamb in a fried rice.

Mess: Because my tray is non-stick, the mess isn't too bad to clean up.

Special utensils: Citrus reamer for the lemon juice, preferably a non-stick roasting tray, and I used my pestle to bash the potatoes and garlic mixture.

Almond and orange blossom cake

I had this in the oven on Sunday, around the same time as the garlic for the hearthbreads. I remember hoping that the smell of the garlic wouldn't transfer too much to the cake.

Recipe:
135. Almond and orange blossom cake

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had bought almond essence a few weeks back, but hadn't used it yet. Oranges were given to me by someone at work, so it was an opportune time to try out this recipe. I also bought a packet of Italian 00 flour from Safeway - amazing what's now available!

Preparation: I greased my 23cm tin and lined it. Cream butter and sugar, add beaten eggs and flour, then add ground almonds, essence, orange zest and juice, and orange-flower water. I always feel good when I use one of the ingredients that we had bought from the Middle Eastern store, given that we went out of our way to purchase them.

Cooking process: Bake in the oven for about an hour. I put foil on top at about the 40 minute stage.

End result: I wrapped it up until the next morning, when I cut up 3 large slices. I found that the edges had burnt a little - maybe it was my tin? and that the cake again stuck to the paper. I can't remember if I greased it or not. I cut off the edges and the papery bits.


When I tried it, it was quite edible, but I found too almondy for me - the almond meal is fine, I think it's the almond essence that I found too strong? But Hubby and the cake connoisseur at work found it to be fine.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $8. It's because I bought some expensive and some cheap almond meal.

Mess: Not really.

Special utensils: 23cm springform tin, micrograter to zest the orange, and a citrus reamer.

Mughlai Chicken

This was Sunday night's dinner. It was going to be a lamb leg, but when I looked at that recipe on Sunday evening, I found that the lamb leg needed to be marinaded for about 24 hours, so I marinaded the lamb, and then looked for something else I could cook.

Recipe:
134. Mughlai chicken

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: You'll be pleased to know that I've finally bought ready-ground coriander. I got tired of trying to crush the coriander seeds - it does make things so much easier. I had almond slithers rather than flakes, they'll do. I reduced all ingredients by about half.

Preparation: Make a spice paste in the food processor.

Cooking process: Brown the chicken thighs, and remove to a plate. Add whole spices, onion and spice paste; cook and then add the liquids. Put the chicken thighs back in, cover and cook for about 20 minutes or so. I made all this in my French Oven, just because I wanted to use it.

End result: The curry has a nice, mild flavour, although I found the chicken to be a little chewy (maybe because these weren't free-range?). I think I prefer more exciting and hot curries though. I also didn't much like the big bits of spices that I came across every now and again - I prefer it all blended in.

Repeatability: No. That makes it 5 in a row. What a fussy bugger I am.

Cost: $10 for about 3 servings.

Mess: It's not too bad.

Special utensils: Food processor, I used my French Oven but you don't need to.

Garlic and parsley bread

This was Sunday's lunch, to serve with the pea soup encore.

Recipe:
133. Garlic and parsley hearthbreads

Source: How to be a Domestic Goddess

Weird ingredients and substitutes: No. It does use a hell of a lot of garlic though.

Preparation: I put the bread ingredients into the breadmaker and while this was kneading, put the foil-wrapped garlic bulbs into the oven. The dribbly garlic is then processed along with some parsley and oil.

Cooking process: Knead out dough, allow to rest (I didn't end up waiting for the 25 minutes, too impatient), and pour the garlic-parsley mixture over the top. I had HEAPS of the mixture, and probably put way too much on.

End result: One thing you will notice in the photo below is how much of the mixture I put on top. Then if you compare it to the picture in the book, you will notice how way over-the-top I went. It was strong.

The second thing you may notice is that the bread is sitting on top of greaseproof paper (which I had hoped was the same thing as baking parchment or Bake-O-Glide). Unfortunately I didn't grease the paper beforehand, and it stuck!
What this meant was that in the end I sliced off the bottom bit, which had paper stuck to it; and we didn't eat much of the top bit either, given how strong and pungent it was.

Repeatability: No. I'm sure it's very nice if you make it properly, but I still prefer other breads that I've made.

Cost: $5, and the breads were huge; it would have been 4 servings.

Mess: It wasn't too bad, given that you roll out the dough when it's on the trays.

Special utensils: Food processor is essential, a breadmaker makes the process easier, and two baking trays.

More soup

This was Saturday night's dinner. When Hubby heard that I was making more soup, he said, "It won't be like last night's soup, will it?"

Recipe:
132. Yellow split pea and frankfurter soup

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Luckily for me, Safeway did have yellow split peas in stock. I also bought 5 frankfurters from Safeway's deli section, reducing the amount that Nigella recommends (8). I'm just not used to eating such processed food!

Preparation: The vegies get put into the food processor. I do love vegies when they are cut up this way.

Cooking process: Cook vegies, add mace, split peas, stock and bay leaves. Then cook for an hour. I did find that I had to add quite a bit more stock during the process, maybe another 750ml or so. Then add the cut-up frankfurters to the soup to heat up, and there you go!

End result: It was quite a tasty soup, and a huge improvement on the night before.
Repeatability: Tasty as it was, I don't think it's a repeatable. Very nice as a once-off, but not to add to the repertoire.

Cost: $6, and it lasted us for 5 servings.

Mess: It's not too bad, as it cooks in just the one pot.

Special utensils: Food processor and mortar and pestle (to grind up the mace, of which I only had blade mace).

Cornish pasties

I made these for lunch yesterday.

Recipe:
131. Cornish pasties

Source: How to be a Domestic Goddess

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Instead of lard, I used some of my hard vegetable fat (just to use it up).

Preparation: Make pastry, which I made in the food processor. Put into fridge. Chop up onion, potato, swede, and dice steak.

Cooking process: Cook onion, potato, swede and steak for about 30 minutes. I was dancing to Robbie Williams during this time. Hope I am not losing blog readers by admitting this. Divide pastry into four pieces (as you will see in the photo, mine were not even...), roll out, add filling, and pinch edges together. Cook for about 30 minutes in the oven.

End result: Served with tomato sauce.


I'm not sure if vegetable fat is a good substitute for lard, as you can see my pastry looks a bit holey. As you can also see, one of the pasties was a mega-size (in fact, looking at the photo two of them seem pretty big), and it made Hubby and I laugh, talking about how the mega would be able to feed 16 people...

Repeatability: No. The pasty is okay, but it's not outstanding. The pastry is fine, the filling is fine, but neither of them make you shout out in amazement.

Cost: $9.

Mess: I always make a mess when making pastry.

Special utensils: Food processor and a rolling pin.

Black bean disaster

After making the ham in coke (#93) last month, I had obediently frozen the stock for a future soup. Friday night was time for that soup.

Recipe:
130. South-beach black bean soup

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: During lunch on Friday, I ducked out to the Queen Victoria market to buy some black beans. I love the market.

Preparation: Defrost stock. I tasted the stock to make sure that it was up to expectations, and it was lovely.

Cooking process: Here is where everything went wrong. In the blurb preceding the actual recipe, Nigella says that the black beans need 10 minutes of vociferous boiling to take away the toxicity, right? I read that and interpreted that to mean that it only takes 10 minutes for the black beans to cook. Uh uh. So, after 15 minutes of "vociferous boiling" (just to make sure that all the toxins were destroyed), I put 3 ladles into the food processor, and found that it didn't process very well. In fact, all it seemed to do was remove the skins from the beans. "I mustn't have a very good processor," says I to myself. Now, things hadn't clicked by then (I'm a bit slow), so I continued with the soup, serving it out into bowls.

And here's what it looked like at that stage:
so I took one bite and the beans were still crunchy! So I returned the soup to the pan, and continued to cook...and 1 hour later, it was still cooking.

End result: We eventually got some, but ended up just drinking the soup and leaving the beans behind. Blergh.

Repeatability: No, and I'm even going to avoid any further recipes with black beans in them.

Cost: I think it cost me about $2 for 500g of black beans from the Queen Victoria market, and I'm not going to price the stock at anything since it was counted in the previous recipe. $4 all up.

Mess: Given that the rest of the soup was chucked out, the whole thing was a big mess.

Special utensils: A food processor and a big bin.

Advice: Avoid it!

Chicken with pesto

I'm up to Thursday night's dinner.

Recipe:
129. Chicken with pesto

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil, but I had bought a jar of pesto the week before for pasta, and thought I'd better use the rest of it up.

Preparation: Mix pesto with butter, and smear over the chicken. I used chicken thighs for this.

Cooking process: At first I put the thighs into a frying pan, but then it was splattering and making a general mess, so then I transferred them to a tray and put them under the grill. Soooo much easier.

End result: This was quite nice, we enjoyed it, but found that 4 chicken thighs were not enough. Hubby was still hungry after this, so he ate the leftover soup from #128 as well.


Repeatability: Yes, but consider making more chicken thighs

Cost: As Safeway had run out of free-range chicken thighs, I had bought regular, which only cost me about $2 for 4 thighs. Total cost of meal about $5.

Mess: I found that using the frying pan method was very spluttery, and I even got a bit of pesto in my eye. There were a lot of oil splatters to clean up afterwards.

Advice: Use the griller in preference to the frying pan method.

That's Amore!

This was Wednesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
128. Pasta e fagioli

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: My supermarket doesn't sell proper dried beans, so I bought a 420g can of borlotti beans. I suspect that most of the 420g would have been water weight, as you shall see in the picture. I did have muslin (leftover from #16, chickpea and pasta soup), so used that instead of a popsock (eww).

Preparation: Put the rosemary and onion into a nice little muslin bundle. Peel and bruise garlic cloves (I used my mortar and pestle).

Cooking process: Cover beans, garlic and muslin with water, and simmer. As my beans were canned, I only cooked them for about 20 minutes. Chuck out muslin bundle, and add a ladleful of beans to the food processor. Separately fry garlic and rosemary, add the pureed beans (and I pureed all of the garlic cloves too), then add back to the soup. Add and cook the pasta, then serve.

End result: This soup didn't excite me, it was fine, but it seemed a lot of effort for an okay soup. It doesn't look as thick as in the picture, I think it's because I only had a smidgen of beans after draining them (definitely not 420g), also I may have added too much water to the pan in the first place.

Repeatablity: No

Cost: $3 for 3 bowlfuls.

Mess: It seemed to be a lot of effort just for soup. Two pans, a food processor, and making a little muslin bundle?

Special utensils: A food processor, I used a mortar and pestle for the garlic, and a microplane for the garlic.

Home carpaccio

I made this for Tuesday night's dinner, along with mushrooms on toast (#95, repeated).

Recipe:
127. Home carpaccio of beef

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil.

Preparation: Coarsely grind your peppercorns. Dredge steak with pepper. Wash salad, add oil, salt and lemon juice. Grate parmesan.

Cooking process: Boil potatoes. Sear fillet on all sides. I didn't bother using the dunking in iced water trick that was suggested, but just let it cool as I got on with making the mushrooms. Slice fillet, and arrange on top of the potatoes which are on top of the rocket. I also added some cherry tomatoes, which for some reason I had chosen really well this week, as they were soooo full of flavour.

End result: A fantastically delicious meal. I should really change the title of this blog entry to "How to keep your Hubby happy".

Repeatability: A definite yes!

Cost: A nice cut of steak, $10. $12 for this dish (not including the mushroom dish). But, it only just makes enough for 2 hungry people, and the mushrooms on toast certainly made a nice supplement.

Mess: The frying pan needs to be soaked afterwards, and I found that I had little peppercorns over the place.

Special utensils: Mortar and pestle. I also used the medium micro-grater to shave the cheese - doesn't it look good?

Hmm...3 month anniversary

I've just realised, that this project is 3 months old, and I am about 25% of the way through.

What I am NOT committing to, though, is a deadline. No promises means no pressure.

I am thinking that I will need to get more into the sweet stuff in order to complete the project.

Kitchen supper for 2

This was Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
125. Aromatic lamb-shank stew
126. Couscous

Source: Nigella Bites (my fingers actually started typing "How" (as in How to Eat) as it is the default source)

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I wasn't sure if I would find lamb shanks in Safeway, but after wandering up and down the meat aisle a couple times, I finally spotted them. Two to a pack, around $7-8.

Preparation: Process onions and garlic in the food processor.

Cooking process: Brown lamb shanks, which I did in the French Oven. I then swapped to a bigger saucepan for the remainder of the cooking process, as my French Oven (beloved though it is) would not have been big enough for all 4 shanks. Fry onion-garlic, add spices and sauces, add shanks, add water, then cook for about 1-1.5 hours. Looking at it, I was afraid that the liquid would be too watery and there wouldn't be enough flavouring. Add the red lentils, and while these are cooking, make the couscous. Toast the nuts, add some to the couscous and some to the lamb.

End result: I didn't even get to see these photos before they were wiped, but I'm sure they were of the same mouth-watering blog-reader-drool-inducing standard that they usually are. Just use your imagination, folks. [Hey, I'm disappointed too. Damn computers.]

We enjoyed this meal. The lamb shanks were tender and flavoursome, the nuts added a nice touch to the couscous, and it was especially tasty with a lot of sauce drizzled over the top. Yum.

Repeatability: Yes.

Cost: 4 lamb shanks, $15, and reduced amount of couscous. $20 all up. It would have served four of us. As it was, Hubby ate one for lunch the next day, and there's one still in the fridge that needs to be chucked out. Should I really be confessing all this to you? You must be thinking, "Ew, gross. I always clean MY fridge."

Mess: You'll need a large pan that will fit all your lamb shanks. A food processor helps with the onion-garlic chopping. You don't need a couscoussier - I just plonked my couscous into boiling water.

Scallops and bacon

I made this for Sunday's lunch.

Recipe:
124. Scallops and bacon

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Seasoned flour, which I hope means plain flour with salt and pepper.

Preparation: Cut bacon in half

Cooking process: Brown bacon, then flour scallops, and fry each side for a couple minutes. Then add sherry to the pan.

End result: Unfortunately we had to re-format my camera card, which means that we lost the photo. And it was a magnificent photo too - very National Geographic worthy. You will just have to believe me. I did see the photo when I was blogging last Sunday afternoon, and it truly was magnificent, but I was too lazy to blog that entry. I'm so sorry!

Anyway, for the food. I thought the meal was great, and would have been even better with toast (if only I had made bread earlier in the week). Unfortunately, Hubby didn't like it, because he doesn't like seafood.

Repeatability: If it was up to me, yes. But with both our votes, unfortunately, it doesn't pass.

Cost: It cost $3 for 10 scallops, which I had the fish-lady in Safeway count out for me. $6 all up.

Mess: It wasn't too bad. There was crunchy flour bits which were stuck to the pan afterwards, I just left it to soak, and it all came off when I eventually got around to washing it.

Special utensils: Frying pan. That's it.

Mushroom risotto - the other one

This was last night's dinner. As you may have noticed, I didn't make a shopping list before I went shopping last week, which meant creative substitutes or recipe avoidance altogether. Lesson learned.

Recipe:
123. Mushroom risotto

Source: How to Eat. This is the one found in the Children's chapter, as opposed to the low-fat one.

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had bought a packet of dried porcini about a month ago, and had been hoarding it ever since. I hadn't tried porcini before, so was interested in finding out what all the fuss was about. For the stock, I used chicken stock powder - like I could be fussed trying to search for porcini stock!

Preparation: Soak porcini in hot water for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, chop up shallot and normal mushrooms.

Cooking process: Cook as per a normal risotto, which means stir, stir, stir for 20 minutes as you keep adding ladlefuls of hot stock.

End result: Served with parmesan cheese (so easy to grate with a micro-grater) and parsley. I only had afro parsley instead of the flat-leaf.

The risotto was very nice, but I must admit that I was quite non-plussed with the porcini mushrooms - they didn't stand out to me in terms of flavour, for how much they cost and how much trouble they were. I wouldn't go out of my way to use them again.

I should also add a warning, where I think I had one bit which was a little gritty? Be careful if you do use the porcini-soaking liquid as part of the stock.

Repeatability: No, I don't see why this is so much more special than the low-fat one.

Cost: $5.50 for a 15g packet of porcini, bought from David Jones' Food Hall. $8 all up.

Mess: Not too bad

Special utensils: Micro-grater, for the cheese.

Chicken drumsticks

This was Thursday night's dinner.

Recipe:
122. Marinated chicken drumsticks

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I had run out of mustard, wholegrain or otherwise. I substituted buttermilk for the suggested creamed coconut dissolved in pineapple juice.

Preparation: Make marinade, one was honey, garlic, onion, and white wine. The other was peanut butter, soy and brown sugar, and the rest of the buttermilk. Marinade drumsticks.

Cooking process: Chuck drumsticks into oven, to which I later added the leftover roasted potatoes.

End result: It was quite ordinary. Even the marinade didn't add the required flavour and zing to the meal. Blergh.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $8 for the two of us, but Hubby's drumsticks (less a couple mouthfuls) went into the bin.

Mess: Not really

Special utensils: Nigella suggests a rack over a roasting tin, I substituted with a cake cooler over a cake pan base. Think MacGyver.

Buttermilk chicken

This was Wednesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
121. The tenderest chicken

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Buttermilk is not something that I buy on a regular basis, does that make it weird? I substituted wholegrain mustard for Dijon mustard, as I usually do, and finished my wholegrain mustard off.

Preparation: Marinade chicken in buttermilk mixture, which I did that morning.

Cooking process: After getting home from work, I couldn't be bothered wiping the chicken dry, so just plonked the chicken into the tray into the oven, along with some potatoes.

End result: And this is the reason why you should wipe the chicken dry - the marinade crustifies. It still tasted good, but visual appeal was a little low.

Repeatability: Yes, and I guess next time I may even follow instructions...

Cost: $8, which covered about 4 free-range chicken thighs, and served two of us.

Mess: Not too bad.

Special utensils: I'd suggest a roasting tray for the chicken

Lamb for Tuesday

This was Tuesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
120. Lamb with garlicky tahina

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Tahini, which I had bought a few months before in a healthy fit.

Preparation: Marinade lamb.

Cooking process: Brown lamb, then put into oven to cook. I put the lamb back into the marinade tray in the oven.

End result: Served with leftover rice from the curry, and leftover stir-fried vegetables from Sunday night. I did like the lamb, but didn't like the tahini sauce at all. Blergh.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $12, with about 8 noisettes.

Mess: The rest of the tahini went straight into the bin, if you call that a mess...

Special utensils: Micrograter.

Fish and pumpkin curry

This was Monday night's dinner.

Recipe:
119. Thai yellow pumpkin and seafood curry

Source: Nigella Bites

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I used a satchet of red curry paste, not sure how many tablespoons it was, but I didn't want half-used packets hanging around. I didn't use fish stock, I believe I used one of my chicken stock cubes. I had palm sugar in the cupboard, which I didn't bother grating, but just plonked in whole. I couldn't find lime leaves or lime in the Asian grocery store, so just left them out. As I had used the salmon the night before, I used rockling fish, rather than salmon and prawns.

Preparation: Chop up pumpkin and fish.

Cooking process: You cook the pumpkin in the curry sauce mixture first, and then add the fish, followed by the pak choi. The whole process doesn't take that long - maybe 30 minutes or so. As I didn't have any lime juice to squeeze into the curry, I added tamarind paste, tasted the curry and said "yum!", so then added even more tamarind paste.

End result: It's a very tasty curry. It's great. Filling, healthy, delicious.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $26, as 1kg of rockling cost about $20.

Mess: Not too bad, it's really one pan cooking

Special utensils: No

Old-fashioned chocky cake

I made this on Sunday night.

Recipe:
118. Old-fashioned chocolate cake

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I left off the sugar flowers. Sour cream for a chocolate cake? Interesting.

Preparation: Mix the cake batter in the food processor. Easy, what's next?

Cooking process: I only had two 23cm cake tins, so I was ready for this to be a very flat cake. Bake in oven for about 25 minutes. Later on, I made the icing, which was quite thick.

End result: And here it is, in all of its chocolate glory:

It was okay, but I liked #57 much better. The icing was nice but very rich; one of my colleagues the next day mentioned the amount of chocolate in the icing, and I suggested that maybe it would have been better to just give him the block of chocolate instead.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $10. It feed about 7 of us at work the next morning, and then Hubby and myself for two days afterwards.

Mess: As you can see, I did make a bit of the mess with the icing, not only on the cake, but on the plate as well.

Special utensils: Food processor, spatula, 2 x 20cm tins (I used 2 x 23cm tins - my smallest set of tins), and a cake cooler.

Salmon and vegies

This was Sunday night's dinner.

Recipe:
116. Sugar-spiced salmon with chinese hot mustard
117. Vegetables with ginger and garlic

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nil. I was hoping to make the salmon dish out of Nigella Bites, but when I went to the garden, I found that most of my pak choi was at the end of its life, and had all gone to seed. I could only find a few edible leaves, which I added to the stir-fry.

Preparation: Cut up vegies, and mix up spices. This is a good way to use up various vegies in the fridge.

Cooking process: Dredge salmon in spices, and cook each side for a couple of minutes. Stir-fry vegies.

End result: I don't like fish as raw as Nigella does, so after I served up, I found that I had to return the salmon to the frying pan for a little bit longer.

It was okay. It did feel very healthy.

Repeatability: No.

Cost: The two salmon pieces cost about $12, total meal about $15.

Mess: I did have to soak the frying pan afterwards, but maybe that's cos my non-stick is getting a bit old.

Special utensils: A wok helps.

Rice and meatballs

This was Saturday night's dinner.

Recipe:
115. Rice and meatballs

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Nope.

Preparation: It's a bit of a process to make the meatballs. Mix the ingredients, roll the balls, and put them into the fridge.

Cooking process: In the meantime, get on with the sauce. Process onion and garlic, cook for about 10 minutes, add tomato paste, add water and seasonings. Cook for a little while longer, add meatballs, and then cook for longer again. I had the rice bubbling away in the rice cooker by this stage.

End result: The meatballs were very tasty, but I'm torn as to whether rice or pasta is best to serve it.

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $8.

Mess: It is messy to make the little meatballs.

Special utensils: Food processor.

I am soooo behind in posting....

I made this on Saturday morning.

Recipe:
114. Sweetcorn fritters

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Given that I couldn't find anything else I wanted to eat for breakfast, lucky that I had all of these ingredients in the cupboard.

Preparation: Separate eggs, whisk whites, then whisk yolks. Mix all together.

Cooking process: Cook each side of the little fritters for about 2 minutes.

End result: And this was my breakfast...

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: $2.

Mess: Not really.

Special utensils: Whisk and a non-stick pan.

Beef salad

This was last night's dinner.

Recipe:
113. Cambodian hot and sour beef salad

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I suppose I could have scavenged the garden for some mint, but it was too cold and too dark to go out there, so I left it out.

Preparation: Turn on griller.

Cooking process: Grill steak; while this was cooking, I made the sauce which consisted of lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, a shallot, and some green chilli. It tasted quite sharp. I cooked Hubby's steak for a little longer than mine.

End result: We both enjoyed this - it was tasty, the steak was tender, and it seemed quite healthy. But I must warn you, it was a very light meal for two. Dessert was essential afterwards (which kind of counteracted the healthiness of the main...).

Repeatability: Yes

Cost: I bought a very nice fillet of steak, it was $9 for two small pieces. $11 total.

Mess: Not really, you do have to be careful of the steak juices as you are cutting it.

Special utensils: A griller.

One-pan chicken

This was Wednesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
112. One-pan chicken

Source: How to Eat

Weird ingredients and substitutes: Because I could not think of a worse thing than de-jointing a chicken, I bought a tray of chicken thighs. Red capsicum was expensive this week! so I bought green.

Preparation: Cut up potatoes, onions and peppers. I did decrease quantities so that everything would fit into one tray. Add chicken and garlic cloves, drizzle oil, add salt.

Cooking process: Cook in the oven for about 45 minutes. I found that after 45 minutes, I needed to turn my thighs over to ensure they would cook on the other side.

End result: I forgot to sprinkle the parsley over. I couldn't even be bothered making a salad. The meal tasted okay, but we found the chicken to be greasy and oily - not sure if it was the cut or quality of meat, or the addition of olive oil. The vegetables were nice.

Repeatability: No

Cost: $10. This made quite a few servings (it filled up the whole pan), which we managed to eat for two meals, but the rest will be chucked away.

Special utensils: A large roasting tray or two.

No more mezze - please!

After having the mezze for lunch on Sunday, dinner on Sunday night, portions taken to work on Monday, more portions on Monday night, and portions taken to work on Tuesday...it was time for a change. This was Tuesday night's dinner.

Recipe:
111. Chickenoodle soup

Source: Feast

Weird ingredients and substitutes: I used chicken stock cubes (ssshh...).

Preparation: Chop up chilli and ginger (recommended by Nigella to make it into a grown-up meal), cut up baby corn, top and tail sugar-snap peas and beans.

Cooking process: I grilled the chicken (in preference to Nigella's recommended frying process), and I think therein lies my error. It made the chicken a little tough. Then the noodles and vegetables get added to the hot stock, and all gets boiled up until cooked. Quick and easy.

End result: Served with Japanese pepper, coriander, lime juice, chilli oil. As I said, I think the grilling process made the chicken a little too tough, but the soup, noodles and vegies were nice.

Repeatability: It is a repeatable, but I would cook the chicken as per recommendations next time.

Cost: Around $11, for 2 huge servings or 3 normal servings.

Mess: Not much

Special utensils: I used a grill, but I overcooked the chicken.

July 2006 assessment

Number of recipes made this month: 54

Assessment by book:

• How to Eat - Last month 38, now at 66 (28 recipes). It's still the favourite.
• Domestic Goddess - Last month 2, now at 7 (5 recipes)
• Forever Summer - Last month 3, now at 4 (1 recipe). Considering that it is the middle of winter currently, the fact that I have been able to make one thing out of this is fine.
• Feast - Last month 8, now at 22 (14 recipes). I do like this book.
• Nigella Bites - Last month 5, now at 11 (6 recipes)

Size of repertoire: From 38 to 74 repeatables. I've repeated the beef-noodle soup already.

Cost: For 54 dishes, $344.

New toys: Roasting pan, and 2 micro-graters.

Weird fruit: Seville oranges...

Cooking skills/experiences: Made pastry, made ice-cream (twice), made an embarrassing tart that shrunk, made a double-layer cake, cooked a sunny-side up egg, cooked a ham!

New ingredients: Seville oranges, dark muscovado sugar, fresh tarragon, treacle, mascarpone cheese, dashi, piri-piri sauce, pickled pork.

The dishes that stand out to me in reviewing the month are:

- Best photo - The potato and onion hash? But none of the photos were particularly National Geographic-worthy this month.

- Best savoury dish - This is hard. There were quite a lot of good savouries this month. The lahmacun?

- Best sweet dish - The completely delicious and lucious chocolate cake.