Carrot, Parsnip and Sausage One-Pot Dinner

I love parsnips.  They must have to be in my top five all time favourite vegetables.  Unfortunately for me though, parsnips seem to be ridiculously expensive.  I still haven't quite worked out why or how they can possibly really cost $10/kg.  Roll on the day when Hubby and I finally get the vege patch up and running and I grow my own (please, oh please let there be a variety that is happy to grow in South East Queensland!).

In a celebration of the wonderfulness of parsnips (and the fact that I had some), along with a hectic day and a cold wintery night, recently I found this lovely one-pot recipe in a new favourite recipe book of mine - Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion and decided it ticked all my boxes.

I had to amend the recipe slightly as I went - simply because I think my dish was smaller than the one in the recipe and because I wanted to sub out some carrot and sub in some sweet potato and potato.  But in the end, I cut up carrots, onions, parsnips, sweet potato and little potatoes we happened to have in the fridge.

I cooked the onion slices off in a pan with some olive oil, and then poured some more olive oil into a pyrex glass dish and then added all the veges, 2 unpeeled garlic cloves and 2 bay leaves.  I covered the lot with foil and popped it in the oven for 20 minutes on 180.

Once the 20 minutes was up, I pulled the dish out of the oven, turned the vegetables over and added in eight sausages, making sure they got coated in plenty of the oil in the dish.  Then I popped the onion in over the top, put the foil back on and put it back in the oven for another 20 minutes.

At the end of the second 20 minutes, I pulled the dish out, took the foil off and turned the vegetables and the sausages.  I had been concerned that the sausages wouldn't cook all the way through, but after 20 minutes they were looking good!

The final stage is to crank the oven up to 200, put the dish back in (without the foil) and cook for about 15 minutes (have a look at it after 10 and see what you think).  To serve, I just put the dish on a trivet on the table, and had a stack of fresh crusty bread on hand to go with it.

Hubby whipped up a simple gravy to have alongside it as well, which really just finished things off.  Can I just say, this dish is an ABSOLUTE WIN.  It was so easy, and so much is done by the oven, rather than the cook, that it's not a big ask to duck away every 20 minutes to turn the veges over.  We had enough left over (from feeding four) to feed two with left overs the next night, so, depending on the veges you choose (you don't HAVE to use parsnip), it can be a super cheap dinner.

Spicy Meat Gumbo

Recently my Sis presented me with a copy of Jamie's America - complete with her own notes scribbled across the Spicy Meat Gumbo recipe inside.  I've been hanging out to give it a try after hearing about her success with it, and decided that the three days I was going to spend at my parents house on a mini break between jobs would be a great time to give it a crack.

Mum was provided with an emailed list of ingredients that we needed for the great cooking extravaganza, and on Monday afternoon I made a start.

Can I just say now.  Any recipe that requires THIS MUCH organising, chopping and sourcing ingredients does leave me a bit cold.  I'm all for recipes with just a handful of ingredients - not a page long list (I ended up ticking things off the recipe as I prepared them, and then again as I added them to the pot to make sure I didn't miss anything).  I subbed out some of the sweet potato and used some parsnip on the grounds that Mum had a heap that needed using up.

So, first things first - I cut up all my chorizo, bacon and got my chicken legs ready (I didn't have any chicken thighs - Mum and I protested when we saw the price per kg and decided not to bother).  Next I cut up the onion, capsicum and celery.  Then I got a bit frustrated with the endless cutting up and Mum jumped in to handle the sweet potato and parsnip while I seasoned my chicken with cayenne pepper, paprika, salt and pepper.  

Next I popped some olive oil in a pot, heated it up and put all the meat in.  Which lead to the frustrating conclusion that the pot was not big enough for that.  Ignoring my Mum's suggestion that I should remove the chicken from the leg bones, I poured it all into a large frying pan and browned it all off.

After the meat was browned, I pulled it all out of the pan, leaving as much of the juices as I could in the pan.  Next I tipped in the onion, celery and capsicum and cooked it off for a few minutes until it went nice and soft.  I was a bit hesitant about the next bit - making a roux.  I know that if you don't cook the flour off properly, the whole dish will taste chalky (haven't we all had a creamy pasta that tastes a bit weird?).  But I threw in my three heaped tablespoons and started stirring on a low heat.  This bit took AGES, and it was really hard to be patient, but I perservered until it went a nice dark peanut butter colour.

At this point, you're supposed to put the meat back in, add some garlic, the sweet potatoes and the parsnip and then stir fry it all for ten minutes.  I quickly realised, however, THAT MUM WAS RIGHT.  Because I hadn't taken the chicken off the bone, my meat wasn't going to fit in the pan.  Let alone the 1.5L of stock I still had to add.... SIGH!  I spent a few frustrating minutes trying to bone the chicken pieces while they were hot, sticky and covered in paprika and cayenne pepper, but eventually the chicken was in the pan and the bones in the bin.

I covered the lot with chicken stock (Jamie said hot, but I said poo to that and poured it in straight from the container) and then brought it to the boil.  Last step was to let it simmer for 45 minutes (or the chicken was nice and tender, and the vegetables soft and cooked through.

Mum cooked up mess of rice to go with it, and we had some crusty baguette slices to sop it up with.

Things I learned while cooking:-

- Listen to your mother.  She is invariably right.
- Check the sizes of your pots before you start.
- Use the best chorizo you can find - ours was not great.
- Gumbo tastes better the second day (I had it for dinner the following night too)
- Taste it before you serve it - mine definitely needed more cayenne, more salt and more pepper

Feel Better Biscuits

Ok.  So they're not really called Feel Better Biscuits.  But that's what we made them for, and so the name stays.

This weekend, my sis and I had a play date.  We spent a day at the hairdressers, went to Ikea and indulged in house stuff and then I took her home with me where we drank too much and Hubby made us a fabulous dinner.

Sis' partner was also meant to join us for the evening, but he's been taken down by a horrid flu type virus, and decided not to inflict us with it.

The next morning, while we waited for Sis' partner to come and pick her up, we decided to make him some cookies - Feel Better ones.  Our first choice was peanut butter cookies, but I was missing vital ingredients and not prepared to change out of my pj's on a Sunday morning to go get them.  Instead, after flicking through a few of my cook books, we found a recipe for choc-vanilla biscuits in my trusty Women's Weekly Macaroons & Biscuits magazine.

This has to have been one of my funnest baking days.  Sis and I work together really well, and the recipe was super simple.  I don't have a plethora of photos of us working through each stage - because it was more fun just to tag team along as we went and not worry about it.  One of us started beating the egg, butter, sugar and vanilla extract while the other got the flour ready and dug out the cocoa powder.  When we got to the point where the recipe suggested halving the dough (to make half the cookies vanilla and half chocolate) we decided to make them all chocolate and doubled the milk and cocoa powder required.  We made a fabulous mess rolling out the dough (why would I take the helpful advice to roll it out between two sheets of baking paper?) and then busted out my cookie cutters - some of which I am sure have never seen the light of day.

Where did we go wrong?  Well.... turns out after the first two trays came out of the oven, and the last tray went in, we got distracted by toys (my ultrasonic jewellery cleaner to be exact) and FORGOT ABOUT THE LAST TRAY.  Needless to say, when we realised, and opened the oven door, a lot of smoke came out.  It looks like the self-congratulating we had done when we took the first two trays out was a little pre-emptive.

But nevermind!  We only had a little bit of white chocolate to melt and decorate them with anyway, so we melted it and drizzled it haphazardly over the cookies that we did have.  Again, it probably would have been a good idea to put a sheet of baking paper UNDER the wire rack before we did that.  I think my benchtop will be covered in a fine layer of white chocolate for the foreseeable future!

Here are the finished product - hopefully they live up to their new name and put a smile of Sis' partners face when he eats them!

Quick Meatball Pasta Bake

One of the byproducts of winter is, of course, winter colds and flu.  And my now longer commute seems to have given me more opportunities to catch said colds and flu.  So, having succumbed, I spent yesterday at home on the sofa feeling sorry for myself and using my weight in tissues.  I roused myself an hour before Hubby came home though, in order to have something warm ready and waiting for him when he got in from work.

Last weekend we'd made the trip to Ikea, and along with many possibly unnecessary purchases we made, was a kilo bag of frozen swedish meatballs.  I figured a pasta bake with those would be the ultimate simple dinner.

I fried off some green onions with a heaped teaspoon of garlic, then popped in half the bag of meatballs.  Once browned off, I added in dried basil, oregano, chilli powder and lots of paprika (I like paprika).  I let it cook off for just a moment, then added half a tin of tomato paste, two cans of diced tomatoes, a good slug of Worcestershire sauce and some salt and pepper.  Then more dried basil.  Then half a capsicum, roughly chopped, a handful of broccoli florets and a double handful of roughly chopped mushrooms.  Can I just say, it's VERY difficult to work out what's missing from a dish when your sense of taste and smell don't work.  By the time Hubby got home, I was mixing the meatballs and sauce with pasta to and putting it into casserole dish, and he assured me it smelled great.  I topped it all off with lots of grated cheese, and slices of boccocini we happened to have in the fridge.

Because everything was already cooked, it only needed to stay in the oven long enough to melt the cheese and get it nice and brown on top.

It looked great, and it certainly made a great warming dinner.  Unfortunately, due to illness, I couldn't taste it, but Hubby assured me it tasted as good as it looked.  Midweek dinner win!

Fruity Beef Casserole

Now the weather has cooled, and I've conquered my fear of meals that take hours to cook with this recipe, I'm loving the idea of cooking lots and lots of warming stews and casseroles as easy meals for the colder nights.  I stumbled on this recipe last Friday, and having grown up with my folks making sweet curries, thought that this would be pretty good.

I will admit... I did tweak the recipe.  I halved the amount of beef, and made it up with diced potato, an extra carrot, cauliflower and a heap of mushrooms.

I started out by browning the meat off in an oven proof casserole dish in a little oil, and then pulled it out of the pan.

 

Next, I added the onion and let it cook for a couple of minutes until it had softened.

Then I threw in the carrot, potato, cauliflower, garlic, tomato paste, flour and chilli powder.  I got a bit carried away with the chilli powder and put in about twice as much as the recipe called for.  

 

I didn't have any lemon, so instead of lemon rind, I had to just use lemon juice.  Next I added beef stock and, instead of plum jam, 1/2 a cup of asian plum marinade sauce.  Then I put the meat back in, and topped the dish up with stock to make sure the meat was just covered.  Then I added salt and pepper and brought the pot to the boil, at which point I put the lid on the dish and popped it in the oven.

Now, I had actually started preparing this fairly early in the afternoon, so, with a lot of time to let it cook, I only heated the oven to about 100/120 (it's hard to be sure with our oven missing numbers on the dial) and let it cook for three and a half hours.  At that point, I pulled it out of the oven and threw in a big handful of mushrooms and put it back in the oven.

I let it all cook for another half hour or so, and then pulled it out of the oven all ready to serve with lots of crusty bread.

I will admit that both Hubby and I had our tastebuds a bit confused when we ate this.  On the one hand, there was the chilli and on the other hand, the fruity plum.  It was part asian, part casserole, part sweet.  It wasn't bad, but we just couldn't quite reconcile the flavours.  Having said that, we both took the left overs for lunch at work the next day and it was like a totally different casserole.  As Hubby said, it was almost like it needed overnight to 'settle'.  It was the PERFECT winter lunch with some crusty bread to mop it up with.  I think I will be making this regularly on a Sunday, for the purposes of easy winter work lunches.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

One of my mates, who also happens to be a work colleague, has a tradition that I think is truly fabulous. She bakes cupcakes for her friends for their birthday.  You even get to pick what cupcakes she'll make from her fabulous, enormous book of cupcake recipes.  Last year she baked me chocolate rocky road cupcakes that both looked and tasted beyond decadent.

Now, my accomplished cupcake baking friend has a big birthday coming up next week, and for unavoidable reasons, I can't go to her party to celebrate it, so in the spirit of all fairness, have offered to be the cupcake baker for HER.  With one small exception..... she doesn't get to pick the type of cupcake.  Although I did tell her what I was planning to bake so she could veto it if needed.

What does all this have to do with red velvet cupcakes?  Well, I've been reading a number of cooking blogs recently, and red velvet cake keeps coming up.  I've never had one, and I was desperate to see what all the fuss was about.  In order to be fully prepared for next week's cupcake baking extravaganza, I decided to have a practice run on Saturday, and to have a delicious treat for morning tea with a guest on Sunday.  How hard could it be, I figured.  HA.

I found a do-able looking recipe on a blog I've been having fun reading, and on Saturday afternoon, I printed out the recipe, wrapped an apron round me, got all the ingredients out and made a start.

Can I just say now, that if I want to keep making things like this (and I really, REALLY do!), then I now desperately need either a Kitchenaid type device or a food processor.  Really.  Do you know what happens when you try to cream butter with a bowl of sugar with a hand mixer?  It goes everywhere.  And the butter gets all stuck in the blades.  I was a little perplexed by this.  After cleaning all the sugar up, I changed tack and mixed it with a wooden spoon instead.

Once it started to look combined and fluffy, I picked my hand mixer up and then, with some trepidation, turned it back in while slowly adding in a large, lightly beaten egg.

The next step is to add cocoa powder, vanilla extract and 20mL of red food dye into a small bowl.  Now, to be fair, the idea of using 20mL of food colouring in a recipe was a bit daunting, so I made sure I'd bought some natural food dye rather than artificial stuff (call me silly, but while in general I have no problem with artificial colouring and preservatives, it didn't cost me anymore to make the change, and a friend gave me a hot tip on it).  I mixed it all in the bowl until it came together as a thick, very dark coloured paste.

Once combined, I added the paste to the butter, sugar and egg mixed and mixed it until the colour was evenly distributed through the batter.

Next, I slowly added half the buttermilk while the mixer was on a slow speed.  This was a little messy, but not as bad as the butter/sugar attempt.  Then I slowly added half the flour.  Then the second half of the buttermilk and then finished off the with the flour.  While simple to do, this step drove my patience to the limit.  I so badly just wanted to tip all the milk in and whizz it.... and the same with the flour.  But I stuck to my guns and carefully and slowly mixed it all in, sure that there was a good reason for the sedate pace, which I just didn't know.

Once it was all combined and the mixture was combined, I added the salt, bicarb and vinegar.  I have to admit, after watching the bicarb and vinegar fizz before I turned the mixer back on, I was at that point, very interested in how this cupcake was going to turn out.

After a couple of minutes of mixing, I spooned the mixture into patty cases I'd put in a muffin tin.  Unfortunately, I only have one six-muffin muffin tin, so in an effort for perfection, I had to cook my cupcakes in two lots.  I very carefully made sure the cases were only 2/3's full (we've all had cupcake overflow before) and then popped them in the oven for 20 minutes.

I'd just like to say now, the oven in our new house is AWESOME.  All my cupcakes were cooked perfectly - unlike the oven in our old flat, which heated more on one side than the other.

While my cupcakes were cooling, I decided to tackle the cream cheese frosting.  I'd left the cream cheese out of the fridge for a couple of hours so it was nice and soft (and the butter) and got stuck straight into sifting the icing sugar into a bowl and then popped in the butter, cubed into smallish pieces.  Bracing myself, I put the hand mixer into the bowl and turned it on.  Icing sugar went everywhere.  I turned the mixer off, cleaned up the sugar and took up my wooden spoon.  Hubby happened into the kitchen as I was doing this, and kindly offered to have a go.  He took up the mixer, put it back in the bowl and turned it on.  Unfortunately the spoon was still in the bowl.  The mixer flung it across the kitchen in a rain of butter and icing sugar.  Hubby acknowledged that this was, indeed, trickier than it looked.  He scooped up as much of the sugar and butter as he could, popped it in the bowl and, covering more of the bowl with his spare hand than I could (small hands), turned the mixer on again, assuring me that kitchens were made to get dirty.  Eventually the butter and sugar were creamed together and Hubby left me to add the cream cheese and a little bit of food colouring.  It really did look good when it was all combined.

I just used a spatula to ice the cupcakes - and even though it was a bit rough and ready, I thought they looked great.  As for the taste... the vinegar and bicarb just seemed to give the cupcakes enough zing to avoid the over-sweet taste a lot of iced cakes can have.  The cupcakes were light, fluffy and very morish... and have disappeared VERY quickly (although they lasted four days in an airtight container).  They were an absolute hit with my Hubby, who is much more of a savoury person.  Lets hope they turn out this well when I bake them for my friend next week!

Choco-Hoto Pots

A few weeks ago now, we had our first overnight visitors in our new home and, as such, our first dinner party.

I let Hubby handle the cooking on this one, what with it being his parents that were visiting, and settled into a comfortable role of picking new bottles of wine and making sure everyone had full glasses.  However I did make a move into the kitchen for the purposes of dessert.

A number of years ago now I gave my sister a Nigella Lawson book for Christmas, and in it I could remember the most decadent little individual chocolate cakes that were super easy to make.  They were called choco-hoto pots, and a quick internet search soon gave me the recipe, and away I went.
 
To start with, I got the oven cranking, and then melted about 3/4 cup of dark chocolate with the butter.

While that was melting, I combined 2 eggs, 3/4 cup of caster sugar, 3 tablespoons of flour, then added the now cooled chocolate/butter mixture.  Once combined, I stirred in 1/2 cup of white chocolate pieces.

Next I spooned the mixture into four buttered ramekins and popped the whole lot in the oven for about 20 minutes. 

What comes out is hard and cracked on the top, but break the surface and you have the most fabulous, goey melty chocolate pudding.  Hubby had made a vanilla ice cream to accompany it, and I'm glad he did - it's super rich and the ice cream cut through that.  End result?  Easy awesomeness.