The Untidy Cook

Goosefest 1

Macaroni Cheese

End of a busy day and its the long march to the fridge to find some supper.  Inspiration deserts me and I resort to the freezer.  Result!  A portion of 'Lucky Boy (tm)' Macaroni Cheese and a tub of soup (unclassified, but orange coloured) are my lucky finds.

Periodically I cook a set of macaroni cheese and stash them away in the freezer.  As, typically, this happens when I'm abandoning The Loved One for a few days I wasn't holding out much hope of finding anything consumable.  The macaroni cheese doesn't look dried out and freezer burned, so it gets defrosted and then zapped in the microwave until its all hot and lovely.  Popped onto a plate with some lettuce (token vegetable item) and the tomato sauce bottle, it goes down a treat.

The soup turns out to be some sort of lentil number and isn't bad either.  Wrapped in the warm hug of a brace of toast slices it complies with my desire for something solid but not too hefty for supper.

The Loved One updates me on progress with supper last night (when I'd abandoned him to go listen to some art) - not only did he use the oven (!), he opted for the advanced option by cooking some pasta to go with his Lucky Boy (tm) Meatballs in Tomato Sauce.  Apparently, it was a meisterstuck and representative of his natural and unforced genius.  I, naturally, agreed.

Joanna Newsome

I'd heard Joanna Newsome's music after one was used on Melbournes tourist advert. It's odd. Her voice attracts debate about what it's like - varying from childlike, to weathered, to f*****n' awful. Her music is lovely to me. And it's all about the music, not about distractions. Except for a birthday cake (for Joanna) and a reworking of Happy Birthday part way through. Leaving the Opera House, it was dark and the listeners ambled up the quay taking in the balmy night.

Rissoles & Steak Sandwich

Some planning ahead this evening as The Loved One will need to fend for himself tomorrow evening.

I'd bought some rissoles from the butcher.  They sound so very unappealing, I know, but my friendly, flirty butcher runs up a lovely rissole using pork, herbs and small cubes of (I think) mozarella.  Tonight these are going to be placed into the loving embrace of a tomato sauce.

This is an ultimate low maintenance recipe and sounds like it needs more in it, but it works just as it is. Heat the frying pan with some olive oil and, when hot, put the rissoles in to brown.

   

Turn to brown on all sides.

 
Once they're good and brown add a tin of chopped tomatoes with a tablespoon of tomato puree and let simmer until thickened.

As this is being prepared as a 'Lucky Boy (tm)' ready meal that The Loved One can pop into the oven and cook for his supper, I split it into two and put it into oven proof dishes.  All he has to do is to stick it into the oven when he's ready and, Bob's your ankle, supper's done. 

 
So that was the forward planning bit.  Which leaves supper tonight.  I'd bought two minute steaks which, upon closer examination were huge.  So one went in the freezer and the other one I cut it in two and made steak sandwiches.  Seared minute steak (left to rest for a couple of minutes after cooking) innabun with mustard, mayo, lettuce and spring onion.  And jolly good they were too.

 

Sunday laze

I feel a sunday ritual coming on. Up at sparrow's fart, to sea pool, bracing dip, flat white, home. Ahhhhhhhh! Definitely a force 10 on the Perfect scale.

Work Week 1 - successfully completed

After pasta surprise yesterday, it was supper surprise today.  

It being Friday and the end of the first week back at work, The Loved One and I had a spontaneous celebration with supper at Prime in the GPO complex at Martin Place.  

Perhaps more on this tomorrow.  However, full and sleepy, now it is time to stump up the wooden stairs to bedfordshire for a lovely long nap.  Nighty night.

Alliterative Parmesan

Upon reflection, a peppering of powdered parmesan would have fit the bill nicely.  Ah, the joy of hindsight.  

Pasta Suprise

It was a surprise to me that it  was pasta.  I'd mentally prepared to cook something else but by the time I got in I just couldn't remember what it was and rather than dig around in my cerebellum to reignite the inspiration, I settled for pasta.

It's comfort food and it's speedy and it will help make reparation after yesterdays total failure to deliver supper.  I'm using up some twirly pasta (is that fusilli?) which is a bit dull but needs finishing off.  Once it's cooked and is sitting in a colander, draining, a little sauce is rustled up.  A bit of butter goes into the hot saucepan along with a finely sliced spring onion and a chopped mushroom.  Once these have sweated for a minute or two it needed something to make it saucier.  From the drift of left over white wine bottles in the fridge, I added the remnants of a riesling to the vegetables and turned the heat up to drive off the alcohol.  Still wasn't quite saucy enough so another fridge dig resulted in some still in date lite sour cream.  A couple of tablespoons were stirred the sauce off the heat along with the drained pasta.

There you go.  Pasta Suprise!  It was rounded off with a shower of shaved sheese (I wanted to make parmesan alliterative but it wud'nae fit).  Results below.

 Polished it off in two seconds flat.  Worked out well, that surprise.

Shiraz - one of the major food groups?

Supper went a bit wonky this evening.  I'd fully intended to zap home and rustle up a little yummy something or other, but unexpectedly diverted myself into a bit of a wine tasting evening.

Usual busy day.  Lunch - corn fritter with rocket, chilli jam and sour cream - was a surprising and yummy interval.  Tea - pleasingly squishy chocolate brownie that I really should have left in the coffee shop's cake display.  Supper... well, that went a bit pear shaped despite all commitments to the contrary.

I had meant to zoom home nice and early, as per my new years resolution, and knock up something savoury, healthy and yummy.  Instead I agreed to nip round the corner from the office for a quick snifter and a brief chat before hoying home for supper duties. 

What really happened was that we sat down and perused the wine menu, ordered some olives and started to talk.  I fear that the shiraz uncorked my evangelist personality.  I hope that I didn't bang on unduly about life, the universe etc.  I'm confident that I failed miserably in this regard and that life, the universe and absolutely everything were dissected in minute and ineffable detail.  My colleague did put up with this exchange manfully.  He's a very patient chap.

Home again, home again, jiggety-etc... to find that the supper looked like something from the Cretaceous period and to a general sense of underwhelm-ment at the lack of supper activity.

The Loved One wishes you all to know that tonight he dined on a very dried out baked potato, having been dumped by the Untidy Cook in favour of some work flibberty-gibbet.  The Untidy Cook wishes to reaffirm their new years resolution and to say that she will try harder to be better tomorrow. 

Poached Chicken Asian Style - two ways

Before we get to supper time, let's talk lunch.

I've been captivated, since before the Christmas break, with a local lunch spot - Viet's Pho - and its' chicken roll.  It sounds simple enough - a crispy roll with chicken and salad.  Sounds quite boring perhaps.  But the reality is positively addictive.  A white crunchy roll with, and take note as it's really very precise - a smear of mayonnaise (proper stuff, not the sweet pap that you tend to find), a dab of pate, shreds of chicken with cooked onions, paper thin slices of white onion, two cucumber slices, a trimmed spring onion, two stems of coriander and, the grand finale, a scattering of sliced raw red chilli.   It's all damped down with an unnamed sauce from a squeezy bottle.   

My favourite bit of the preparation is when the gentle person building the sandwich pushes it all firmly together using some very neat tongs, before enshrouding it into a perfectly sized white paper bag. Lovely, lovely, lovely. 

It was as a result that I was feeling a smidge Australian/Asian influenced this evening.  I'd decided whilst doing the supermarket rounds that it was time to make inroads into the freezer stockpile.  I fossicked out a robust little chicken boob with plans to make it into a nourishing little meal.

I decided to poach it.  I put enough water in a saucepan to more than cover the chicken.  To make a poaching stock I added a sliced 1 inch cube of ginger, star anise, 2 tbsp soy, 2 tbsp rice wine and a tbsp of soft brown sugar.  This was bought to a boil and the (still frozen) chicken breast dropped into to it to poach.  Heat was reduced so that it was at a gentle simmer, rather than a ferocious boil.

I've found that if it boils too fast the chicken becomes rather rubbery and unlovely.  I left it to bloop away very slowly as our neighbours rocked up to update us on their fabulous Canada trip.  

When we'd polished off a very gluggable Cabernet Merlot from that lovely Coriole vineyard in SA, I remembered that supper was still simmering.  Time for action.

The Loved One likes rice, so the magical microwave rice cooker was pressed into action.  Me, I'm a salad girl, so onto my plate went some iceberg leaves that was just begging to be used, a sprinkling of chopped coriander, diced cucumber, some crumbled wholewheat toasted pitta bits.  

To jazz it all up it needed some zing which was provided by my favourite spicy dip/sauce thing.   This consists of a tsp of caster sugar, finely sliced raw chilli, a tbsp rice wine vinegar, 2 tbsp soy.  I like to top off with some roughly chopped toasted almonds.  I loved to roast them in a heavy little saucepan and then tip them into the dip/sauce, whilst hot, so they spit and sizzle.  It adds a little je ne sais what to the dip.  

The Loved One likes his plain, so he had rice, chicken and some of the sauce juice.   I had the messy, savoury salad mix.  Both went down an absolute treat.