Home Made: Gravy

Tried to make some gravy withsome left over beef stock. I put in fresh rosemary from my Mother in Law's herb garden, and chopped up mushrooms. Added some flour to thicken and that was it! It turned out very very very salty :(

Home Made: Meat and 2 Veg

I made my first Roast the other night!


I let the roast rest a bit too long so it was only slightly pink in the middle, but it was still very tender. I made some gravy which turned out a bit runny. Okay for a first attempt :)

Home Made: Beef Burritos

Beef Burrito Marinade:
Thinly sliced beef
Lime juice
Vinegar
Cumin powder
Salt
Pepper
Chopped coriander
Chopped Jalapeno Peppers
Olive Oil

Combine, then cook on a grill pan. Add chopped vegetables, grated cheese, sour cream and tomato salsa in a warmed tortilla.

Cơm Tấm

This is my mum's Cơm Tấm, or vietnamese broken rice. Its soooooooo good with Nước chấm (fishsauce with garlic, chilli and lemon juice) AND my dad's chilli garlic sauce (for extra extra flavour). Major garlic breath after this meal but its so worth it.

Homemade: Hommus

Ingredients:
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
100ml-ish of olive oil
garlic cloves
2 tablespoons tahini
salt
cumin powder
paprika

Blend everything together, add water if its too thick.

I may have overdone the garlic and tahini this time round. Will try again once I finish off this batch. I used my new hand wizz to blend it all and didn't get too much chickpea on all the kitchen counters.

Update: Leaving it in the fridge for two days (I forgot all about it) only enhanced the garlic in the dip, until it just tasted like blended raw garlic :(

Homemade: Shark Fin Soup

Of course I did not make this. This is my dad's awesome shark fin soup.

He makes about 15 litres of the thing (only on special occasions) and by the second day its all gone.

Xmas Day Cupcakes

I had absolutely no time at all to take ANY photos of ALL the food I made for the xmas dinner that we hosted at home. Believe me when I say that everyone was completely stuffed and I needed 2 full days to finish off leftovers.

After everyone left I did manage to take one single shot. Here are some cupcakes made by my mother in law

Cute aren't they? Even two days later (seriously, we had tons of leftovers) these cupcakes were still soft and moist. They were made with organic blue shelled eggs which turned the sponge a lovely golden yellow color.

Xmas Deserts

Since I took some photos of just some of the deserts that were made for xmas, here they are:

Very cute!

Grace's very professional Strawberry cream cake. It deserves a schmancy name like Strawberry creme a la Grace. It was a teensy tad dry but it was sitting in the fridge for a while. We are all happy for another attempt :D

I call these Brit's Choc Nuts Kapow! Cookies.

There were plenty of other home made deserts, but all my photos are blurry so will have to rely on someone else to upload them.

Eggploits of a hungry beast

Brittany here again, how is everyone?

I was trawling around the interweb and came across this other food blog and it just so happened to be lunch time.
It is what is known as a cheesy pasta scramble...and i began to make it cos it looked so damn good.


I followed the recipe and added my own twists - i substituted the milk for soy milk (that's all i had in the house) and it worked fine. Despite there being no measurment for the milk, i just guesstimated it and poured it in until it looked like the photo. A few tablespoons?
Instead of basil, i put in spring onion and then added a tin of tuna - that's why it looks the way it does.
I used my trusty Kraft Singles (plastic cheese) and it coated the pasta smashingly.

This is definitely an easy-peasy dish to cook and only took me half an hour in total to whip up. It's also a very flexibile recipe to change to fit your own tasty-buds, much like a pasta-bake.

I would recommend trying an egg, tomato and mushroom scramble with a few bits of crunchy bacon for a nice pasta scramble/fry-up.

A very good brunch, indeed.

Food-music for thought: Know Your Onion! - The Shins

Disaster Cupcakes

My one and only task for a xmas get together: make cupcakes.



I never said that they would be good, or even round :( I blame the oven for its uneven temperature (but I'm sure the baking try I crammed 24 odd cupcakes on didn't help things either)

It was half brown and completely dry. Disaster!! :(

Home Made - Shepard's Pie

Here's my first attempt at Shepard's Pie:



Ingredients:
500g mince beef
diced carrots
diced onion
500ml beef stock
plain flour to thicken sauce
salt and pepper
dash of soy sauce
dash of tobasco sauce
dash of worchester sauce
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
mash potatoes for the top
melted butter over the potatos for color

I completely went overboard with the carrots and the end result was a very carroty shepard's pie (After all the hard work of chopping up the carrots I wasn't leaving any of them out of the dish). It was a massive dish in the end, and took a few days for us to finish it all. Overall it tasted like a shepard's pie, but I think next time I will cut back on the carrots, and maybe add some mushrooms as well.

For desert, Scott made vanilla cake. Out of packet mix. It was nice and moist, and this time real butter was used in the icing (as opposed to margarine). Definately the way to go.

Cakes and things

Brittany here. Tried to figure out how to post here for a long time now. So i'm sharing an account with my sister. Success!

An orange and almond cake i made a while ago. It was SUPER moist. There was an orange syrup that was supposed to accompany it, but i didn't make it.....perhaps i should've, to offset the cutting edge moistness.

MOISTMOISTKAPOW!

My banana cake, which i have altered several times. It started off as banana, honey and pecan cupcakes before i put it in a cake tin and added sultanas, raisins and almond flakes (replacement of pecans) and then switched honey with golden syrup (which works just as well..and not overwhelmingly sweet as honey).
ps. this cake does not contain any butter or eggs. such a clever cake.





Pre-Little Birdy risotto at a lovely Italian place on Degraves Street - Il Tempo?
A lunch i made myself on one of my Wednesdays off from school (which are now extinct).
(L-R) Almond biscuit from a Viet bakery, which tasted like a biscuity-meringue actually, a sandwich filled with French Brie (!!!), tea in a smiley face mug, salad with my first boiled egg (the yolk was runny and delish!)

**Music for food: Elvis Costello & Paul McCartney - So Like Candy
(Paul Dempsey cover is available on his album 'Everything Is True'..it's amazing)

Home Made Take 2: Scones

Second attempt at scones went a little better.



This time I didn't leave the oven on for ages before I was ready to put in the scones (since I knew now that I take forever in getting my dough sorted).

They were still a little hard, next time I'll take them out a little sooner.

Home Made: Apple Crumble

Here is the Apple Crumble I made over the weekend. I ended up with way too much of the crumble, so had to use the big tray (and a lot of apples). I think I cut up the apples a little too small, so they became a little too mushy for my liking. It took about 3 days to finish it all off though :)

Homemade - Scones (take 1)

I promised I'd make scones months ago, and it was not forgotten. All the recipes I looked at estimated 10 minutes to get everything ready for the oven, but it took waaaaay longer than that for me. Consequently, my oven was way too hot and all my scones came out a bit overcooked outside (but still soft inside!). I'll know better next time! I had a couple of scones that actually looked like scones (they're the ones at the back). I couldn't find scone cutters so used a cup instead. They are very filling!

Home Made: Fettuccine Bolognese

Scott's home made bolognese with fettuccine and lots of fresh parmesan cheese.

Home Made: Pizza

I made this for dinner last night. The pizza base was 3 day old pita bread. It did taste a bit stale but I'm still alive so I guess it was still alright. I added tobasco sauce to it and it was awesome.