dinnerlastnight

Quick tuna pasta

Rich was working late last night and I had to work at home as well... so dinnerlastnight had to be quick. Richard doesn't like tuna but considering he wasn't home to have dinner (I think he ended up having pizza or something at his desk) I could make what I like for dinner.

This is another one I used to make at Uni...it can be thrown together as quick as it takes to cook some pasta. The base tomato sauce can be kept in the fridge for a few days to whip up another quick meal.

Ingredients: italian canned tomatoes, good quality canned tuna, chilli, garlic, onion, fresh basil, dry oregano and spaghetti.

Preparation:

Throw some spaghetti into a saucepan of boiling water. In a frypan, add a little olive oil and fry some chopped garlic and chilli. When fragrant shake some dried oregano into the pan and add a can of italian tomatoes. They are better than ordinary canned tomatoes and have a much thicker sauce. Heat through until thick adding some pepper and salt if required.

Drain cooked spaghetti and add a portion to a deep bowl. Top with pasta sauce and fresh basil leaves. Have with a nice glass of red.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10

Chicken with kumera pumpkin mash

Again for this dinnerlastnight I wanted something healthy and I this chicken is one in a covered oven dish. It is low fat as you don't need to add any oil and there is no skin on the chicken breast.

Ingredients: Chicken breast, pesto, zucchini, carrot, spring onion, chicken stock cube, lemon, kumera, pumpkin, milk and a little butter.

Preparation:

Use a potato pealer to peal think strips of zucchini and carrot. Layer the carrot and zucchini on the bottom of a oven proof dish and top with sliced spring onion. Trim any fat from the chicken breast, place topside down and put a large dollop of pesto in the centre. Fold the chicken breast over and place in the oven dish on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle over a crushed chicken stock cube and add slices of lemon over the chicken. Put in a hot over at about 180 degrees for about 30mins or until chicken is cooked though.

While the chicken is in the over peel the kumera and pumpkin then chop into chunks. Add to a saucepan of boiling water. Once cooked through, strain, return to the hot saucepan, add some milk and a nob of butter. Mash until smooth.

Serve chicken on the mash with vegetables on the side.

dinnerlastnight rating: 6/10

Torn lasagna with tomato capsicum sauce and bacon

It was Friday night and it had cooled down quite considerably from the previous days. I happened to be at lunch with some friends from work - just somewhere cheap - and when reading the menu I notice that they were good enough to suggest what wine you should enjoy with your meal. It was at that moment that I got a craving for a good red wine. Bit of a problem as I was already enjoying a beer and the red wines available at this establishment was not ideal. I promised myself a nice bottle of red with dinner.

After visiting the bottle shop on the way home I walked in the door wondering what to cook to go with the wine. This reminded me of a favourite Saturday lunch venue - Il Baretto - which serves amazing Italian.

Italian it was then - a nice rich sauce layered over torn lasagne sheets with salty bacon pieces. YUM!

Ingredients for this were: Italian canned tomatoes (the sauce with the tomatoes is richer and thicker than others), half a red capsicum, garlic, dried oregano leaves, onion, dried lasagna sheets, bacon rashers, fresh basil, pine nuts and achicken stock cube.

Preparation:

This is really easy. Place the capsicum under a hot grill until the skin is charred. Cover with a tea towels for a few minutes and the skin should peal off easily - but watch your fingertips as they are hot. Roughly chop the capsicum flesh.

Chop garlic and an onion finely. Heat a little oil in a pan and gently fry the onion, garlic and a shake of dried oregano leaves. When the onion looks glassy, add two 400gram tins of tomatos, the cooked capsicum and a crumbled chicken stock cube. Cook on medium heat until the sauce is cooked through. Pour the sauce into a blender and use the pulse to make the sauce smoother - but not like tomato soup - it should still be a bit rough. Pour back into the pan, stir through chopped pine nuts and keep hot.

Break roughly a number of dried lasagna sheets into sizable pieces and boil some salted water in a wide saucepan. Add the lasagna pieces stirring to make sure they don't stick together. While this is cooking, fry about 6 rashers of bacon cut into thumbnail sized pieces.

Drain pasta when cooked. On each plate starting with a large spoonful of sauce, roughly layering alternate layers of pasta, sauce, bacon and fresh basil leaves finishing with basil. Season with cracked pepper and serve. We had a rocket salad as well, oh and a bottle or two of fantastic red.

dinnerlastnight rating: 8/10

Hot pepper chicken stir fry with beggars rice

When I was at Uni I went our with an Chinese/Indonesian girl named Ratna. She was a fantastic cook and I will always remember what she used to say about food - "Rich or poor, all that matters is that you have good food". I agree with this totally - we used to be so broke while at university but we always were able to eat well. It was then that I learned how to turn simple (and cheap) ingredients into really satisfying meals - like chicken livers into a hearty, spicy asian casserole. Unfortunately I haven't been able to recreate that casserole and have lost touch with Ratna in the twelve years uni ended.

Prompted by a recent Sunday Life edition I remembered one dish that Ratna used to make and I used to love - fried rice. Now don't laugh just yet but Ratna used to use canned corned beef (like Hamper) as one of the main ingredients - however in this dinnerlastnight I used chinese sausage instead which is more like whats called beggars rice.

Teamed up with this rice dish is a hot pepper chicken stirfry. The paste that is used for this is Korean and is called Sunchang Gochujang (Hot Pepper Paste). You can get it at most asian grocery stores and comes in a convenient red flip-top container.

Ingredients for the beggars rice were: rice (I used basmati as it is low GI - any long grain rice will do), ginger, garlic, onion, eggs, soy sauce, chinese sausage, sesame oil, peas and spring onion.

The chicken stir fry included: chicken breast, hot pepper paste, zucchini,  capsicum and broccoli.

Preparation:

In a rice cooker, cook 4 cups of rice until it is cooked but still holds its shape. While it is cooking, crack four eggs In a bowl, lightly beat and add to a non-stick pan sprayed with some oil over low heat. Cook until the egg is set, place on a chopping board and roughly cut into small pieces.

Thinly slice about a thumb sized ginger root, a couple of garlic segments and chop two brown onions. Slice a couple of chinese sausages and spring onions and put a half a cup of frozen peas in some hot water.

While the rice is still cooking you can prepare the stir fry. Dice the chicken and place in a bowl. Add a one or two teaspoons of hot pepper paste and stir to coat the chicken - you can add a little oil to smooth out the paste if you need to. Heat a little oil in a frypan and fry the chicken. When done put aside. Add to the hot frypan some chopped zucchini, capsicum and broccoli with a little water and cover with a lid. Leave for 3-5minutes until tender add the chicken back to the pan toss and keep warm.

Back to the fried rice, in a wok fry the sausage, garlic, ginger and onion in a little oil. When fragrant, add the cooked rice to the wok and toss to distribute the flavours. Add a good splash of soy sauce and a couple of drops of sesame oil. When hot toss in the drained peas, spring onion and cooked egg. Taste and add more soy sauce if necessary.

Serve the fried rice and chicken stirfry with some fresh chopped coriander.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10

Cinnamon lamb casserole

I felt like some lamb last night. It can get that way every now and then - you get a craving for the taste of something and that is all you can think about. The problem was I didn't know how to cook it. I didn't want to prepare dinner one of the normal ways - I wanted to try something new.

There is a good online site that can help you with these types of problems. It is called recipefinder and is part of ninemsn. On the site there is a feature called in the pantry. Basically you can enter a number of different ingredients that you have in the fridge/pantry and it will suggest recipes to cater to what you have. Although it is not full proof (it might suggest a recipe that includes ingredients you don't have although it includes what you have entered) but it provides a lot of results in the hope that one suits. If you are on your way home from work you can access before you leave and have the ingredients SMSed to you so you can pick them up on the way home.

So I was searching for lamb and celery - I wanted to use celery too - and what popped up was Cinnamon lamb casserole amongst others. It sounded interesting and I had all the ingredients so I gave it a go. I am going to be lazy and not recreate the recipe here but I will make a couple of comments.

Although this sounded great and following the instructions what I ended up with was not great. It didn't taste very good and although it was hearty I could think of a number of other recipes which were better. I served it with steamed potato and kumera.

dinnerlastnight rating: 3/10

Balsamic lime chicken and tossed veg pasta

Balsamic lime chicken is one of my tried and true favourites - I just haven't posted about it yet. I originally adapted the recipe from a Donna Hay recipe. This one is great on the bbq and great for catering for a party. It is easy to do, tastes great and is interesting enough for people to ask how you do it.

The accompanyment to this dish is an adaption of an earlier post where spaghetti was tossed with breadcrumbs, chilli and anchovy. However this time it was carrot and zucchini with the breadcrumbs. I also served this with a side salad of avocado, tomato and rocket dress in balsamic, lemon, dijon a little olive oil as Rich and I are still trying to make up for the lack of fresh vegetables on our North America trip.

Ingredients for the main dishes were:

Balsamic lime chicken: Chicken breast, garlic, balsamic and a fresh lime.

Spaghetti veg pasta: spaghetti, breadcrumbs, carrot, zucchini, birds eye chilli and fresh basil.

Preparation:

Start with the balsamic lime chicken first. Start the bbq if you are going to use this for cooking. Cut a breast of chicken into long wedges and place in a non-metallic bowl. Add a sliced clove of garlic, some fresh cracked pepper and a few dashes of balsamic vinegar. Stir to cover. Leave for 10 minutes.

While the chicken is marinating cook half a pack of spaghetti in salted boiling water. Grate a carrot and a zucchini. Tear a couple of stalks of fresh basil (chopping basil bruises the leaves) and finely chop a birds eye chilli.

A couple of minutes before the spaghetti is ready, throw the chicken on the bbq or into a hot frypan on the stove. Heat a separate saucepan with some oil and once hot add the chilli, carrot and zucchini. Fry until soft and then add some breadcrumbs and reduce the heat. Keep an eye on the chicken and when almost done place two halves of a lime cut-side down onto the frypan. Give the lime a little bit of a squeeze to release a bit of juice - the hot frypan should caramelise the lime giving it a really yummy flavour.

In the frypan with the carrot/zucchini mixture add the drained spaghetti and basil and toss to mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Arrange the chicken and spagetti on a plate to serve. Squeeze the lime halves over the chicken pieces. Serve with the avocado, tomato and rocket salad.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10

Spicy mixed vegetable and chicken salad

Crikey!

It has been a while since the last post - partly from being too busy with work but mostly from being overseas. I have been in Canada visiting family - Toronto and Vancover mostly with a short stopover in San Francisco. My advice in short, don't go to Canada if you are expecting a luscious array of good food and coffee. Rich and I looked long and hard for these and came up mostly lacking. In the next post I will do a quick rundown on what was on offer and some recommendations on what is worthwhile.

Part of the inspiration for this dinnerlastnight is the lack of vegetables we experienced overseas. The vegetable mainstay of North America seems to be the potato - for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everywhere in between. Our first dinner at home after the trip had to make up for our vegetable deficiency.

Ingredients for this dish were green beans, carrot, button mushrooms, rocket, garlic, birds eye chilli, broccoli, chicken breast, roma tomatoes, chilli oil, chat potatoes and spring onions.

Preparation:

Top and tail the a bit handful of green beans, slice a carrot and four or five broccoli flowerettes. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and blanch the vegetables till tender but still crunchy. Plunge the blanched vegetables into iced water to halt the cooking process and set aside.

One of the best things you could buy is a microwave vegetable steamer. If you don't have one go out and buy one right now! You can use it to precook potatoes for the perfect baked/bbq potatoes or vegetables for salads as in this case. Throw three or four large chat potatoes into the steamer, add a little water, cover and microwave on high for five minutes. This should cook the potatoes enough to slice and still hold their shape. Slice the potatoes into discs

Marinate the cubed chicken breast in the chilli oil. Slice a clove of garlic and a birds eye chilli. Heat a little oil in a frypad and fry the garlic and chilli until fragrant. Add chicken and fry until cooked through. Once cooked throw in some sliced spring onion and toss.

In a large salad bowl place the cooked vegetables, torn rocket leaves, sliced tomato, quartered button mushrooms and chicken mixture. Toss salad with fresh cracked pepper and sea salt. Add more chilli oil if necessary and toss again. Serve with a slice of rye bread.

dinnerlastnight rating: 6/10