dinnerlastnight

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

Steamed pork fillet with ginger shallot mash and miso vegetables

At work, I often have hainan chicken noodle soup for lunch. The noodle soup is served separately from the chicken which is basically poached in stock on low heat for hours until the meat is juicy and tender. The chicken is usually served on the bone chinese style. My favourite thing about this dish is the topping my local adds to the chicken. It is a delicious mix of chopped shallots and grated ginger.

The ginger shallot mash took a few tries to get right at home but really makes this dish special. This dish can be made with chicken or pork. I tend to go for the pork as it is a richer flavour and a little easier to cook - all you need a bamboo steamer. If you don't already have one of these go out and get one right now. It will only cost you a few dollars at an asian shop and you can also use it for steaming dumplings, vegetables, tofu and fish. As you would guess it is a much healthier cooking method than frying.

Ingredients for this dish were pork fillet, ginger, shallots, garlic, miso paste, broccoli, pumpkin, rice, soy sauce, coriander sesame oil and chilli sauce. Prep is about 10mins and about 10mins to cook.

Preparation:

Place in a mortar and pestle two finely chopped shallots (white and green parts) and a thumb sized portion of ginger finely grated. Mash together and add a small amount of oil and a couple of pinches of salt. Set aside.

In a bamboo steamer arrange a fillet of pork and place into a wok with enough boiling water to cover the base but not touch the pork. Steam for about 10mins or until the pork is just done. While that is steaming start cooking some rice.

5 mins before the pork and rice are ready heat some peanut oil in a small saucepan. Fry a segment of sliced garlic till fragrant, add choppped floweretts of broccoli and thinly sliced pumpkin. Toss to coat,add a little water and top with a tight lid to steam. When cooked through but still a little crispy stir though a tablespoon of miso paste. This should form a nice thick sauce for the vegetables - add more water if necessary.

Slice cooked pork and serve topped with coriander and ginger shallot mash. Miso vegetables and rice in separate dishes. Additional condiments were soy sauce with a dash of sesame oil and some chilli sauce both served in small condiment dishes. We usually eat this dish with small bowls and chopsticks

dinnerlastnight rating: 8/10

Chicken Burritos

dinnerlastnight fell on a Friday and after a couple of beers at work and then the pub I didn't feel like going to too much trouble with dinner - but I was ravenous. I jumped off the bus early to go to the local shopping centre to pick up some avocados, lemons and tomatoes because I had a bit of a Mexican feeling.

In the last couple of years I have really liked making Mexican. Richard says that there are no good Mexican resturants in Australia so we tend to do our own thing at home instead. Rich makes a great chicken mole (pronounced mo-lay) but is also called chocolate chicken as cocoa is one of the main ingredients. I might feature that one in a later post. We also really like huevos rancheros for breakfast.

Anyway if you are going to try this dish, make sure you use Old El Paso branded salsa (always the hot variety) and refried beans. These are the best I have tasted. I also used their large flat tortilla bread as you can keep in the cupboard to use when you need.

Ingredients for this dinnerlastnight were chicken breast, refried beans, cumin, hot salsa, tortilla bread, avocado, fresh lemon or lime, tomato, spanish onion, jalapenos, cheese and coriander. It takes about 10mins prep and 5mins to cook on the stove.

Preparation:

Start with the guacamole - scoop the flesh from two avocados into a bowl and squeeze some lemon juice over them to stop them going brown. Chop a tomato and half an onion roughly and add to the bowl. Mash the avocado mixture so you end up with a chunky consistency. Stir through chopped jalapenos to your own taste. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Slice the chicken into long thin strips and place in a bowl. Add cumin, a little oil and stir to combine. In a frypan, add half a can of refried beans and stir on low heat until thick and hot. Transfer the beans to a bowl and rinse the pan. Add some oil to the pan and when hot add the chicken. Fry until cooked through.

Now we just assembled the burritos. Lightly dry toast the bread in a frypan until hot and lay on a plate. In a strip on the bread add an amount of refried beans, chicken, guacamole, cheese, salsa and chopped coriander. Wrap the bread by first turning in one of the sides at the end of the strip of filling. Turn in one of the longer sides and keep rolling to finish your burrito - one of the ends should be open. Keep making the burritos until the mixture or the bread is all used. Serve with extra salsa if you like. The burritos will keep a couple of days if you have leftovers - a quick microwave is ok to reheat.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10

Tandoori Lamb and Greens

Sometimes you find something that is really good even though some would think it was a cop out. I don't mind a shortcut or two - a microwave, a stock cube, an ingredient from a jar...you know what I mean - I don't have the time to spend mincing spices and grinding in a mortar and pestle. This is why I want to tell you about a great spice mix in a jar which I use every now and then for a tasty Indian meal.

Sharwoods Tandoori paste is a great, quick and tasty way to create a Indian meal. You can use Chicken or Lamb with the paste - either is really tasty.

For dinnerlastnight, lamb was the meat and it was cooked on the BBQ. When we built our house we made sure that there was a gas mainline in the backyard for a BBQ. We have been at friendss houses many times when the gas has run out of the bottle it just made sense to get a constant supply for a BBQ. We can now cook anytime and not have to worry about running out of gas.

Ingredients were really simple: half a deboned leg of lamb, natural yoghurt, Sharwoods Tandoori Paste, Gai Lan (Chinese Broccoli) and garlic. I use basmati rice instead of jasmine rice all the time. If you cook it in a rice cooker it comes out the same as white rice but is low GI - or so I am told. The dish takes about 10mins prep, a 1/2 hour marination time and 1/2 hour on the BBQ.

Preparation:

Cut the half leg of lamb into 3cm slices. Cut shallow scores in the meat to let the marinade in and let it cook faster. In a bowl, mix two tablespoons of yoghurt and two of tandoori paste. Coat the lamb in the mixture and leave for a 1/2 hour. Make sure you have a hot BBQ and place the meat on the grill area.

Chop the Chinese broccoli into stalks and leaves, slice two segments of garlic and ready a small saucepan with some peanut oil. When the lamb is almost ready heat the saucepan and fry the garlic until fragrant. Add the stalks and leaves, toss in oil quickly, add a small amount of water and place lid on the saucepan. Keep on low heat until the broccoli is steamed but still crispy.

Slice lamb into strips and serve with steamed rice and vegetables.

dinnerlastnight rating: 5/10

Basil and Chilli Chicken Stir Fry

As I have mentioned in previous posts I really love chilli. Fried chilli, minced chilli, sambal, chilli flakes, hot pepper paste….any type. I like food really spicy. However, surprisingly even with three types of chilli this dish was not hot. We did get runny noses though so something must have been happening.

Now I think about it, it was because it was all of the long variety. The longer a chilli the more likely it is to be milder. Although this is not always the case which does confuse me when at my local veggie shop as I sometimes bring home fiery long chilli. Check out this guy for more info on chilli.

I used to find that the fresh chilli I purchased sat at the bottom of the crisper and went bad. I now get around this by putting the chilli in a bag in a plastic container in the freezer. The bag stops the chilli getting freezer burn and the container is convenient to keep in the door. This way you can use the chilli when you need it and it lasts for ages. Kaffir lime leaves go in this container as well as I found they had the same problem.

Ingredients for this dinnerlastnight were fresh basil, chilli oil, fresh long chilli, dried long chilli, chicken, capsicum, long beans, onion, ginger, garlic, choy sum, rice noodles (vermicelli), fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce. It is an easy wok stir fry dish which took about 5mins prep and 10mins cooking.

Preparation:

Cut half a kilo of chicken breast into chunks. Soak 4 dried long chillies in hot water until soft (about 5mins) and soak about ¼ of a 250gm pack of vermicelli in cold water for 10mins. Slice 2 long red chillies (more if you like it spicy or try birds eye chilli instead), 2 segments of garlic and a thumb of ginger. Cut a red capsicum into about 1cm by 3cm pieces, one onion into slim segments like a mandarin and half a bunch of choy sum and a handful of long beans into about the same size as the capsicum. Keep the leaves and the stalks of the choy sum separate as the leaves cook faster. Tear up about a loose cupful of fresh basic leaves.

Add about a tablespoon of peanut oil and the same of chilli oil to a hot wok. Once smoking add half the garlic and ginger till fragrant, then stir fry chicken till brown. Add the rest of the vegetables, basil, chilli, garlic, ginger and half the basil but save the choy sum leaves. Cook until the vegetables are cooked but still crispy and the chicken is cooked through. Stir in a squirt of fish sauce, a couple of lugs of oyster sauce and soy sauce. Add drained vermicelli and the choy sum leaves and stir till wilted.

Serve the stir fry in deep bowls topped with basil leaves and fried shallots. I didn't serve with rice as I had run out.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10

Beef Goulash

Rich and I spent the afternoon yesterday looking around Darlinghurst and Surry Hills. Later we went to a couple of pubs for some beers. It was Monday of the long weekend and we were hating that we had to go back to work the next day.

I decided to make an easy dinner so we could sit down and watch TV with a bottle of wine. One of the easiest and tastiest things to make is a stew. I didn't intentionally start out to make a goulash but it ended up that way. It isn't a traditional goulash as it is a lot thicker and doesn't have as much paprika. If you have the time I found an excellent recipe for traditional goulash (or gulyas) with dumplings in Gourmet Traveller. It was in that issue that I found out that goulash is actually a soup not a stew.

Ingredients for this recipe were beef (chuck steak is ok, I used rump), pumpkin, potato, carrot, onion, garlic, caraway seeds, parsley, marjoram, fresh basil leaves, paprika, canned tomatoes and beef stock. I cooked this for 5mins on the stove and then about an hour in the oven.

Preparation:

Chop 1/2 kilo steak into 1-2cm chunks. Finely chop onion and garlic. Cut carrot, potato, pumpkin into large chunks. In a pot you can use on the stove and the oven heat some oil over a high flame. When hot fry the onion, caraway seeds, marjoram and garlic. When fragrant throw in the steak and brown off. Throw in the pumpkin, potato and carrot and add a couple of teaspoons of paprika. Combine and add a cup of beef stock, a can of tinned tomatoes and the parsley. Move from the stove to the oven on 200 degrees. Set the time for an hour and sit in front of the telly.

Check the tenderness of the beef and cook a little longer if needed adding more water if becoming too thick. The pumpkin should become very soft and spread through the stew as you stir giving it a nutty flavour. Add in some chopped fresh basil leaves. Season with pepper and salt and serve with crusty bread.

dinnerlastnight rating: 6/10