Pressure cooker meatloaf

This meatloaf was cooked in a pressure cooker, so it's more like a steamed meatloaf than a baked meatloaf, but I would defy you to taste the difference. The carbs in this meatloaf are oats, which work really well. Other ingredients are the usual (egg, onion, garlic, parsley, ketchup) but also chopped up green olives. Yum.

The potatoes were cooked in the pressure cooker together with the meatloaf, then smashed and baked in the oven.

Chorizo and Mushroom pasta

Start with some amazing chorizo, and pan-fry until browned. Remove and set aside. Add mushrooms and chopped up capsicum to the pan and fry until mushrooms are nicely browned, then add some chopped tomatoes and spices (smoked paprika, s&p in my case). Cook for about 5 minutes until you have a nice pasta sauce. Would have been good to add coriander, but, hey! Finally stir in pasta (cooked separately - should have been rigatoni, but I didn't have any on hand).

Chorizo was great, thanks Adam!

A trio of soups

Roasted carrot soup:
Oven roast some carrots with onion and garlic, then add stock and a little bit of cinnamon, s&p. Reheat and puree. Top with fetta cheese.

Sweet corn and egg drop soup:
Start with chicken stock, add some soy sauce, a dash of fish stock and a little bit of sesame oil. Add some creamed sweet corn, then slowly drizzle beaten egg into the soup. Add some vegetarian won tons (from Min at Prahran Market) that have been previously steamed.


Salmon poached in miso soup with udon noodles:
Prepare some miso soup (I like to always add edtra miso), and poach the salmon in the soup for about 7 minutes. Add the udon noodles about 3-4 minutes before the end.

Warm Rissoni and Chicken salad

This was a way for me to use up left-over barbecued butterflied chicken.

Cook the rissoni first and then run under cold water to stop it cooking further. Then in a pan heat up some evo and thinly sliced garlic, add the tomatoes, cook a while. Add the left-over chicken and cook until it's warm. Add lemon juice and salt (basically making a warm salad dressing). Add the rissoni back and just let it warm up. Stir in some rocket leaves.

Lovely!

Veal Scallopini with Lemon Caper Sauce

This was delicious!

A really simple dish of pounded veal cutlets, dredged in seasoned
flour, then pan fried in evo.

They were removed when medium-rare, and put aside.

The sauce was then cooked in the same pan - a little more evo, capers,
lemon zest, chicken stock, lots of pepper - simmered down then
finished with a splash of lemon juice.

The veal was then returned to the pan to heat back up and finish
cooking (the flour from the meat also helped thicken the sauce)

Served with boiled baby chats.

Brilliantly simple.

Recipe Backlog: Spinach and Fetta Pie

Base is made from puff pastry blind baked. Filling is fetta cheese, ricotta cheese, one egg, nutmeg, s&p, combined with some wilted baby spinach. Even Jake liked it!!

Recipe Backlog: Baked Cheesecake with mixed berry coulis

This is a no-crust cheesecake, made with Philadelphia Light cheese, Sour Cream, a little bit of flour, egg and some vanilla essence. Bake for about 30 minutes and let rest in the warm oven. This is such an easy cheesecake to make, and it tastes delicious! The coulis was made with frozen berries, sugar, lemon zest and a tablespoon of water.

Recipe Backlog: Barramundi and shiitake mushrooms

Lots of ginger on the barramundi! Cooked in an aluminium foil pouch, but in the oven rather than on the stove top. So tender!

Recipe Backlog: Rogan Josh

Never had Rogan Josh in an Indian restaurant, so don't know how close I got to the authentic version. I thought it was quite good, but probably wasn't as creamy as the real thing as I didn't use any yoghurt. Served with Aloo gobi and Palak Tomatar (couldn't do Palak Paneer, but this is a similar dish using spinach but tomatoes instead of the paneer cheese).

Recipe Backlog: Leek, Mushroom and Fetta tart

An open tart made with puff pastry. Pastry is rolled a bit and edged folded over. The leeks and mushrooms are pre-cooked, so basically it's a matter of getting the pastry to brown and the egg-cheese mixture to set. Nice light dinner.

Recipe Backlog: Grand Indian Dinner

Tandoori salmon, aloo gobi, vegetable curry and tandoori cauliflower on rice. Tandoori salmon was a failure because of the spice mix I used, but everything else was good :)

Recipe Backlog: Salad of beetroot and oranges

Beetroots taste so much better when you cook them yourself, rather than use tinned ones! I really like roasted beetroots as well.

Recipe Backlog: Crispy-skinned salmon a la Gordon Ramsay

Tried to follow a Gordon Ramsay recipe for crispy-skinned salmon. It worked, but the kitchen was overpowered by the fumes. Won't try that indoors again :)

Recipe Backlog: Hungarian Soup

How can you say no in winter to a soup that is based on minced meat, spicy sausage, tomatoes and sauerkraut? Spices are paprika and caraway seeds. Based on the following Recipezaar recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/90377 . Really different and very hearty.

Recipe Backlog: Moroccan meatballs

Lovely way to cook meatballs. Because they cook in the sauce they end up very tender and juicy.

Recipe Backlog: Chicken with Side veggies

This dish was cooked by Adam - marinated chicken on an indoor ridge grill. Side dishes were fennel with lemon and olives, roast pumpkin, and roasted thinly-sliced potatoes.

Recipe Backlog: Pan-seared Duck Breast

This is what I did with the rest of the duck! Skin scored and then pan-seared skin side down. I should have made some plum sauce but I was too lazy. Love duck!

Recipe Backlog: Tagine of Duck Legs with Green Olives

This is a catch-up, so I won't write much about each recipe. This one was a relatively standard tagine, cooking the duck legs in a tomato and lemon-based sauce. Very nice, quite spicy.

Shepherd's Pie

A classic family favorite.

A bolognese style base, but with less tomato, and more stock, and
flavored with bay leaves, soy sauce (a la Huey), and Worcestershire sauce.

Also I added lots of carrot in the begining, and finished with fresh
(frozen) peas.

Allowed to cool, then topped with mashed potato, brushed with egg and
baked till golden.