It gave me a little bit of a shock when I logged on tonight and saw how long it's been since my last post. And it gave me pause as well. I achieved a lot over the Christmas period in the kitchen, from tackling my first pavlova, making Adriano Zumbo's choc orange macarons with a friend, moreish roast beetroot, mint and feta salad and endless bbq fare. So why didn't I blog about it all? Possibly because I'm the last great procrastinator. And because time always seems in short supply. But I still felt, as I moved into the new year, that this blog (neglected as it may be on occasion) has actually seen me, for the most part, achieve what I set out to achieve. Learning how to be a good home cook. Or at least a capable one.
Yesterday my Sis-In-Law paid an impromptu visit so Hubby could install her new car stereo. None of us were sure how long it would take, or how much of the day she would be spend with us. But in the true spirit of 'it's the unplanned events that turn out to be the most fun', her lovely partner came and joined us, and they ended up staying the night. I could wax lyrical about our prowess on Band Hero as a team, but instead I'll tell you about the food I cooked on the spur of the moment.
The best thing, for me, is that I did this BY MYSELF. And I didn't get cranky half way though, or give up the ghost, or sulk the whole time cause I was stuck in the kitchen while everyone else was busy elsewhere. Oh no. For the first time, from the very beginning, to when we sat down to eat, I enjoyed every minute of providing a great meal for my family. Something that I very much feel is going to be my signature meal.
What did I make? Spaghetti Bolognese, with fresh home made pasta. The sauce is my take on a version my Mum used to make when I was a kid. I actually remade her version a couple of years ago and was amazed at how bland it was compared to what I eat as an adult, but to her credit, at the time it was a good, filling, tasty meal the whole family would eat.
I make it by browning off 1/2 kg of kangaroo mince with a diced onion, garlic (as much as you like). Next I add in LOTS of paprika (I like paprika), two beef stock cubes, some chilli powder (but you could use fresh chilli) and give it a good stir. Liquid ingredients go in next - a good slug of Worcestershire sauce, a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste (I buy those little tins and use the whole thing), and two tins of diced tomatoes. You can throw in some red wine too, and I often do, but last night I didn't have a bottle open. Lastly, I threw in some diced up veggies (whatever you have in the fridge - I had mushroom, capsicum, zucchini and carrot, but I've put everything from green beans to broccoli in it), gave it all a good stir through and left it on a medium-high heat for about ten minutes before turning it down onto low.
While I was getting the sauce off, I thought to myself that it was probably a good opportunity to bust out a quick dessert as well, so I grabbed a house warming gift from a very good friend called '500 Cupcakes'. My plan was to whip up some plain cupcakes, then mix a little water with some icing sugar, dip the top of the cupcakes in the mixture, then dip them in dessicated coconut. For some reason I always have a big jar of dessicated coconut in the pantry that NEVER gets used.... anyway. The vanilla cupcake recipe in the book was super easy, I had all the ingredients and they looked gorgeous iced (as well as making the kitchen smell heavenly).
Once I had the mixture in the tins, and while waiting for the oven to get hot, I made a start on my pasta dough. I was so proud of myself for this - I knew that the pasta dough needed to rest for 20 mins once I'd got it all together, and I knew that the cupcakes would take about 20 mins to cook. So I cracked four eggs in a well around 500g of flour and started incorporating the eggs into the flour. Usually I make half, or a third this much pasta, and it certainly was a bit more time consuming to get the dough together, but I got there in the end! So I popped my ball of dough in a floured bowl, drapped a tea towel over it, bunged my cupcakes in the oven and set the oven timer to twenty minutes.
After 15 minutes my cupcakes came out of the oven and five minutes after that, I started the laborious job of rolling out my pasta. It's only really laborious because we don't have a bench with enough 'overhang' to clamp the machine to, so instead it gets clamped to a little foldy table from Ikea, which wobbles all over the place while I work. But I got there in the end, while simultaneously covering myself, the floor, the work benches and all three of my onlookers/assistants in copious amounts of flour.
The last step was getting the pasta in a pot of boiling water to cook for a few minutes (harder than it looked - Hubby accidentally turned the hot plate for the water down not once but twice, which dramatically increased the time it took to get boiling), getting the sauce nice and hot, then getting it into a dish and onto the table. At the last minute, Hubby sorted out some garlic toast to go with my meal, and I'm glad he did - I hadn't even thought about it.
The pasta was an absolute win. There is something just right about fresh made pasta. It tastes so much better, and the sauce went really well with it too. There was something very homey about the whole thing - a huge dish of pasta on the table, lots of red wine, and a table surrounded with family. And lucky me - there's plenty left for dinner mid-week, and a couple of cupcakes left over too!
