What's In The Pantry?

Here's a website that may take over from Taste as my go-to when MIL asks for a quick Greek Salad for the weekend family BBQ and all I have in the cupboard is SFA. Supercook is the work of a genius - just enter the products you have in the pantry, it gives you some recipes, and you don't need to skulk round Coles in your Ugg Boots looking for the right kind of pitted olives. I found this site thanks to The Showpony, and thanks to The Showpony I've been sitting here for half an hour putting all sorts of ridiculous combinations into Supercook to see what would happen, or if it would self-implode if I put in "bananas, sweet chilli sauce and couscous". (It didn't, weirdly it just suggested "Namibian Black Eyed Peas". Yum). If you're thinking your New Year's Resolution is going to be a combination of organising your pantry/buying less, wasting less/spending more time on amusing websites, give Supercook a go. It's handsdown more interesting than simply reading about 4 Ingredients.

Weekend Baking: Berry & Apple Tray Bake

Mmm, trays. No, seriously, I tried this scrummy concotion last weekend and it's totally worth the calories. I don't quite get the point of a 'July Picnic' but I do get the point of a warm, filling dessert with lashings of custard or a fresh dollop of cream on a cold wintery evening. It takes a while to make, but if it's a rainy, grey old day, a good baking sesh is more productive than, say, buying shoes online. Ahem. Anyway, courtesy of that wikipedia of recipes, Taste, here is delicious magazine's Berry & Apple Tray Bake:

Ingredients (serves 6)
300ml thickened cream, plus extra to serve
175g unsalted butter, chopped
3 eggs
2 cups (300g) plain flour
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, thinly sliced, tossed with 2 tbs lemon juice
300g frozen mixed berries, thawed
Icing sugar, to dust
Blackberry or strawberry jam, to serve

Method
Preheat oven to 180°C. Lightly grease and flour a 32 x 22cm baking dish. Bring cream and butter to just below boiling point in a pan over medium heat. Cool slightly.
Using electric beaters, beat eggs with sugar until thick and pale. Slowly beat in cream mixture. Sift in fl our, then fold to combine with a metal spoon. Stir in vanilla, apples and berries, then pour into pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean. Take to picnic in pan, then serve with icing sugar, jam and extra cream.

Your hips won't thank you, but your lips sure will. Delicious, indeed!

Taste - no need to be a Masterchef

I am far too cynical to enjoy most reality TV, but Masterchef holds a scintillating charm - you have to admire people that can take a zucchini and an anchovy and turn it into a 3-course gastronomical delight. The judges aren't ridiculously critical and watching people cook delicious concotions makes entertaining telly without the need to resort to stories about perverts with erections (yes I'm talkin' about you, All Saints**). My brother in law would've been a serious contender for MC but he lives in Canada - a few Christmases ago, he put together the tastiest lunch in our little Edinburgh flat (yeah, he gets around) which was no mean feat considering all we had in the cupboard was rice, tinned peaches and Strepsils. Anyway, whether you are into cooking or not, you've probably seen or visited Taste.com.au , an online recipe resource combining recipes from several good food publications (including my current economic-hardship/domestic goddess mag of choice, Super Food Ideas . It's less than $3 and just makes you want to buy a pretty apron and bake all weekend!).

So, thanks to my new arsenal of cookery instruction, the past few weeks have seen truckloads of gourmet dishes gracing our dinner table. Some, like the roasted lemon chicken (above)have been a massive hit; others, like tonight's Cous Cous Tabouli Salad, almost got me voted out. Actually the salad was tasty, I just mucked up the cous cous (yes it is possible!) and it ended up, erm, mushy. Ew.

When you're cooking for a fussy 28 year old and a 3 year old who's favourite foods are broccoli and peanut butter (not together, as far as I know), many of the recipes here are fantastic for finding healthy, fast, affordable meals that get vegies/protein/other healthy things into them and have little waste. The recipe below is another winner courtesy of Taste and you can make enough for leftovers the night after, which quite frankly is of high importance to most of us - as much as cooking and nutrition are important, who wants to do it at the end of every day?! Enjoy...!

Chicken & Cheese Pasta Bake

Ingredients (serves 4)
1 x Basic roast chicken ingredients (see related recipe)
400g dried tortiglioni or rigatoni pasta
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small red onion, finely chopped
500g jar tomato pasta sauce
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
100g baby spinach leaves

Method

Follow steps 1 to 3 of Basic roast chicken recipe. Remove skin and meat from chicken. Discard skin and bones. Roughly chop flesh.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Cook pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water, following packet directions, until just tender. Drain. Return to saucepan.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and onion. Cook, stirring often, for 3 minutes or until tender. Add onion mixture, pasta sauce, chicken, 3/4 cup cheese and spinach to hot pasta. Season with salt and pepper. Toss gently until well combined.

Spoon pasta mixture into a 7cm deep, 24cm x 19cm (base) baking dish. Top with remaining cheese. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden and heated through. Serve.

**Not to put you off your dinner or anything, but apparently the guy in All Saints with his willy stuck in a chair after a vigourous sans-human partner humping sesh, got out safely. Phew.

Home-style cooking is not just for Nannas

I don't mean to stereotype with that title, insinuating that all Nannas wear frillly aprons over floral frocks and are constantly placing freshly baked pies on their windowsills - I know a good few Nannas for whom cooking means placing a takeaway lasagna on a dinner plate. I just mean that thanks to tv chefs and magazines such as Frankie, baking (as well as sewing, but I'm shit at that so refuse to acknowledge it) has become uber-cool. Either that, or my friends and I are truly getting old/growing up - whichever way you want to look at it. This morning over coffee we discussed a) the chore of doing the groceries b) that we all have shopping lists c) shared recipes that are awesomeness in a dish and are thus are satisfying for husbands after a long hard day at work d) the best places to buy in bulk so you don't have to run to the supermarket every other day (like I do. I have more petrol vouchers than you've had hot dinners). I mean JESUS. But it gets better, after coffee we trotted off to Myer, not to look at shoes like we used to but straight upstairs to the Homewares department. At any rate, whether we are getting old before our time or simply exploring that side of our femininity that previous generations picketed so hard against (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, no?) there's no doubt that hearty home cooked dinners are hipper than the latest It-bag, and that the yummy smell of baking wafting through the house is more awesome then any perfume even J-Lo could concoct.

Thus, here is a yummy winter casserole-thingy, tried and tested this very evening (with success, especially with my 2 year old). I did have to make a few alterations because Coles were inexplicably out of both garlic and zucchini, but it's a relatively healthy veggie and protein intake:
Mediterranean Chicken Bake*

Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 60 minutes
Ingredients** (serves 6)
1 tbs olive oil
6 small (about 600g) chicken drumsticks
6 (about 1.5kg) chicken thigh cutlets
1kg chat (small coliban) potatoes, halved
2 ripe tomatoes, finely chopped
95g (1/2 cup) kalamata olives
2 garlic cloves, peeled, thinly sliced
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves picked
125ml (1/2 cup) dry white wine
Sea salt flakes
Freshly ground black pepper

Method
Preheat oven to 200°C. Heat the oil in a 3L (12-cup capacity) flameproof, ovenproof baking dish over medium heat. Add the chicken drumsticks and cook, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes or until browned all over. Transfer to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm. Repeat with the chicken thigh cutlets.

Add the potato to the dish and cook, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes or until golden. Remove from heat. Add the chicken to the potato in the dish and top with tomato, olives and garlic. Sprinkle with rosemary. Pour over the wine. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake in oven for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and potato is tender. Serve immediately.

**I'm a bit of a chicken-racist in that I only eat the white breastmeat, but you can slice up some fillets instead of the thighs/cutlets and it works very nicely. Plus, use less normal potato and subsitute with a bit of sweet potato/carrot/zucchini, and chuck in some bacon and onion before the potato for a bit more flavour, and 1/2 cup chicken stock works instead of white wine if you live in Tassie and can't get grog at the supermarket. Oh, and if you use a much as this recipe suggests you'd be feeding 6 very fat people. I made less than 1/3 and we have leftovers for tommorow.

I have a post coming up about the always delicious Frankie magazine, but this month they published a very simple scone recipe that Charlotte and I tried on the last stuck-indoors rainy afternoon. If you don't mind little floury footprints, handpronts and streaks all over your kitchen, baking is what all the cool kids do after playgroup. Frankie picked the brain of Victoria's CWA president for this recipe, so you know it's hearty:

Ingredients

2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup milk, more as needed
A pinch of salt

Sift flour and salt together - if you dont have a sifter, just stir it around a bit. Admire the little holes that salt makes in flour. Make a well in the middle of the flour, and mix in the milk and cream with a knife (get a grownup to do it if you're prone to stabbing). Stir it til it's all mixed in. Turn the dough onto a floured board or benchtop and knead it gently - don't let it get too sticky. Pat it out to about 2cm thick and cut out squares or diamonds with a scone cutter or knife (I alwasy thought scones were round, so being the true rebel that I am made neat circles with a glass. Hmph.) Bake in a fairly hot overn for 10-15mins, then leave to cool.

Serve with jam and whipped cream, or butter, or Nutella, or whatever you please....add caster sugar, dates or sulatnas for a sweet scone, or cheese, herbs, mustard or curry powder for savoury. Savoury not too crash hot with jam.

For obvious reasons cooking might not catch on with the model set backstage, but that doesn't make it uncool. It's therapeutic and last night Gordon Ramsay was on telly swearing at some butchers as usual, but he inspired me to google for some recipes. **Which admittedly is where I found the Chicken Bake. Cooking: F*** Yeah!