Australia Day - Lunch

As is traditional, we gathered for lunch on Australia Day (26th January) at my parent's place (see  last year's post!)


Once again, the meat eaters enjoyed pies - this one was chicken (see the little pastry chicken on top! - cute!)


And this one was mince!


There was mashed potato


and some delicious sweet, buttery peas


My contribution was this Passionfruit and Mango Pavlova Ice-cream!  Very simple to make - (if I was more organised I would have made my own ice-cream, but using bought ice-cream makes this super easy and quick!!)

Simply soften 2L of vanilla ice-cream, and split into 3.  To one third add the pulp of about 5 passion fruit. To another third, ad the pureed flesh of 2 mangoes. Keep the other third plain.

Line a fluted ring tin (or container of your preference!) with glad wrap.  Into the base spread the pulp of 2-3 passionfruit and some diced mango.  Then, add your passionfruit ice-cream, followed by half of your vanilla ice-cream.  Then add a layer of mini meringues (I bought mine from Woolworths), and cover the meringues with the remaining vanilla ice-cream.  To complete, the final layer is the mango ice-cream.  Put the whole container into the freezer to set. When ready to serve, simply remove from tin, peel off the plastic and cut into slices!




We finished with these delicious lamingtons - surprisingly, the light fluffy cake under the icing - was chocolate! Brilliant alteration!

Christmas Day 2011!

Our day began at home with some gift opening....

Shadow managed to destroy her toy in about 2 minutes....

Monty was slightly interested in the tree



And Jaspa had a ball playing in the paper!

And then we headed off to Pam & Sid's for breakfast....



We began with some delicious fruit salad!


Sid cooked up some ham, tomatoes, hash browns, mushrooms and toast on the bbq

and Pam made some scrambled eggs. This was my plate!

oh, and there were also croissants! A great way to start the day!!

then we headed off to my parents place for lunch....


 


sparkly bon-bons made by my cousin! These bon-bons gave us all a sparkle for the rest of the day!



Prawns for entree


this sesame seaweed was amazing!


instead of prawns, I had this quinoa salad with walnuts and cranberries

and then we filled the table with an amazing array of food!

A crunchy noodle salad made by Jill -


 I made this Cous Cous and sprouted Chick Pea salad.  I saw how to sprout the chick peas on Scandie Foodie's blog.  TO the cous cous and chick peas, I simply added some roasted pumpkin, sweet corn (from our garden) and tossed through a dressing made from lemon juice, garlic, chilli, olive oil and a splash of soy sauce.

I made this potato salad - for the dressing I mixed equal parts of Birch & Waite Aioli Garlic Mayo and EasyYo Greek yoghurt. Then I just mixed in some chives and some cooked bacon (I also set aside some without bacon for me!)


there was also roasted chicken

ham

this magnificent, and massive green salad

and a tomato salad!


Were we full yet? possibly, but there is always room for pudding!

fruit mince pies!


Berries! The berries are my highlight of the Christmas lunch for me! Its not Christmas until I have had a lovely bowl of juicy berries!

There was also a Christmas pudding, but it was chopped up and dispersed to plates before I had a chance to take a photo! believe me, it was yummy!!


MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Fathers Day Lunch!

For Fathers Day, we took lunch to Mum & Dad's place, so the food had to be transportable, and, since we were off to a morning tea prior to lunch, it had to be pre-cooked.

I decided to give Pulled Pork a try.

I adapted this recipe from Not Quite Nigella

Since I do not have a pressure cooker, I used the oven. And majorly increased the cooking time!!
Pulled Pork
2kg Pork Shoulder (remove the skin and fat layer
1 onion
bunch of parsley
4 cloves garlic
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon salt
good grinding of pepper
1 cup water

Fry onion, garlic and parsley stalks, and brown pork in the same pan (if you have a casserole dish that can go on the stovetop, use this, if not, you will need to improvise!).  Mix remaining ingredients and pour over/around pork.  Allow to come to a gentle bubble, then remove from stovetop and place in a 140c oven (put a lid on it).  Cook in the 140c oven for 6-7 hours.  Until pork is falling apart.  Then remove the meat from the sauce and pull it apart with a fork.  I found I had too much liquid, so only put some of it through the pulled pork.  This could be because I used 1 cup of water instead of the half in the original recipe.  Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve.  (or put in fridge, then transport to lunch the next day, reheat gently in microwave, sprinkle with parsley and serve!) Serve with fresh bread rolls and make pulled pork rolls!




We also had a delicious garden salad from Gina & Scott



and this potato salad which I made (simply potatoes and snow peas in a dressing made with half a bottle of potato salad dressing and the same quantity of greek yoghurt.)

For Dessert, I made @everydaycook's famous brownies (topped with toasted hazelnuts)and some cinnamon donut icecream to go with them....

the icecream recipe goes like this......

Ingredients
2 cups milk
3 cinnamon donuts
extra milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups cream

put milk and donuts into a saucepan and warm over a medium heat.  When hot, but not boiling, remove from heat and put lid on saucepan.  Allow to cool.  Strain milk through fine sieve so that no lumps are present.  Measure how much milk you are left with, and use extra milk to make amount back up to 2 cups.

Place the donut flavoured milk into a saucepan with the 3 eggs. Beat eggs and milk together well, stir in the sugar.  Stir constantly over a low to medium heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of spoon.    Cool.  Stir in the cream. Refrigerate until cold (overnight if you like).  I use an icecream machine to churn the chilled mix until frozen

out for lunch - Sizzler Redcliffe

for Janet's birthday, I caved in and said we could go to one of her favourite dining destinations - Sizzler.  I chose Sizzler at Redcliffe so we could go for a nice walk along the water as well as eat!

We both had the salad bar for lunch - and below are our first plates.....its probably not too difficult to work out which is which...



Janet's plate (hmmm a little bit of green seems to have snuck on there...)




and here is my plate.  I was a little dissapointed they didnt have a tomato based vegetarian sauce for the pasta - I ended up putting some roasted capsicum soup on it! Sizzler salads always annoy me, because so many of them have meat in them! But it ended up being a fairly tasty lunch - I managed to make my own salads anyway!




and the "famous" Sizzler cheese toast. I let Janet have half of mine, because I am very nice :-) and because I wasn't really all that fussed on it! oops!




then it was off for a wander along the water! (we drove to get to the water)

Dinner at home - Potato and Vegie Cakes

What to do with the leftover potato from the stuffed potatoes???

How about some Potato and Vegie Cakes!!

Because the amount of leftover  potato will vary depending on how many stuffed potatoes you have made, its a little hard to give exact quantities - This is how I used up the potato left over from 3 stuffed potatoes (probably less than a cup of potato).

I simply added 1 egg to the mashed potato, along with some frozen peas, corn, garlic chives and a little grated haloumi. I mixed this together well, then fried  spoonfuls gently in olive oil. Don't have the heat too high, the mix is quite fragile, and requires some gentle slow cooking in order to form a nice crust and to set before flipping.






Janet had her potato cakes with a couple of Sausages



I had mine with some cooked tomato and a Sanitarium Vegie Delight Schnitzel

Dinner at home - Sunday Night Stuffed Potatoes

This was a quick and easy Sunday night dinner.

I took 3 potatoes with their skin on, and cooked them in the microwave (stab them a little first so they don't explode).  I just pushed the "potato" button on my microwave, so its best you follow your own instructions :-).  If you weren't trying to make this quickly, you could of course bake the potatoes in a conventional oven!

After the potatoes were cooked, I sliced them each in half lengthways, and scooped out most of the flesh, leaving behind potato cups, ready to be filled.  I put the hollowed out potatoes onto an oven tray and baked in a hot oven to crisp up a little while I prepared the filling.

What you fill them with is up to you - the possibilities are endless - you could even just mash the potatoes insides, add a little cheese and refill with this. I however, decided to make a vegetarian mince filling.
Into a frying pan, I cooked half a red onion in a little olive oil.  To this, I added a chopped clove of garlic, a chopped red chilli, and some fresh rosemary & thyme.  Once the onion had softened, I added some vegie stock, chopped cherry tomatoes and the cheek of a red capsicum. I cooked this until the capsicum was quite soft, and sweet.  To this tomatoey mix, I added about a cup (maybe less - it was a shake of the packet) of frozen Quorn mince, a little frozen corn, and cooked till the mince was heated through.  As the mix was a little wet, I stirred in a couple of spoonfuls of the potato to thicken it all up. 

I then spooned the filling into the now slightly crispy potato cups, topped with a little cheese and put back into the oven for the cheese to melt.

Dinner at Home - Lemon Chilli Chicken with pan fried potatoes

An easy weeknight dinner - Before work, I put a chicken breast into a bowl with the juice of a lemon, a tablespoon of olive oil, a sprinkle of paprika, and a chopped red chilli, and left this to marinate in the fridge for the day.

 Spend the day at work, then come home and start to prepare the potatoes!

I simply sliced a potato into 3 lengthways, leaving the skin on. Into a cold frying pan I put some olive oil, a red chilli, a peeled clove of garlic and some thyme and rosemary from the garden. I gently heated this up and then added the poato slices, and cooked slowly until the potato slices were cooked through. Before serving, I turned up the heat a little to increase the crispness of the potatoes.





The chicken, I simply panfried until it was golden brown and cooked through





I was quite impressed with the colour of the chicken!




For myself, I threw together a quick, but delicious salad - I panfried some Soyco Thai Tofu, and served it on a salad of baby spinach, red capsicum, cherry tomatoes (from the garden), red onion, and a coupe of raw purple beans.  I squeezed over some lemon juice just before serving. YUM!!