January 2010 Archives

This was dinner on Wednesday night, because I was looking for something that I could prep and then leave to cook for the afternoon so that X and I could get out of the house for a bit of a shuffle around the suburbs.   We had chuck steak in the freezer, and most of the ingredients in the house, and I improvised the herbs and flavourings.   It smelled mighty tasty while it was cooking, but it needed a little adjustment once it was out of the oven - a little bit of a flavour boost from some of Decay's not particularly secret ingredients, which might've made some French dudes turn in their graves, but it did let us get dinner on the table not too long after Decay was home from work!

Straight out of the oven, they were a tender kind of cookie; the next day, they were crisper, but still with a bit of chew.  Both straight out of the oven and once they'd done their cool-down, the citrus flavour was there.

We've been getting lamb koftas from various butchers around here, as a quick dinner idea, so when we saw a recipe for shish kifte in this book, we figured it would be worth a go.  The first time we made these, we got the butcher to mince some extra fat through with the diced lamb being turned into mince for us.  They were tasty, but we thought they could've done with even more of a flavour burst.  The second time we made these, the butcher misunderstood Decay's request for lamb mince, and instead gave us lean (beef) mince.  They were tasty, but didn't taste like lamb, and didn't have the fat content to give them the right texture.  Third time, and we got minced lamb, no extra fat, we forgot about any green leafy content in the mix, but they were still yum!   I like how this particular recipe has basically given us a general method to work with, and Decay's pretty much just run with it and tweaked things to suit what he's aiming for.  Anyways, Decay's preferred mix is still in the works, but this is what dinner looked like on Monday night:

 

So, my hankering to bake something wasn't appeased by the crunchy chickpeas, and I'd found this recipe earlier in the week (back when it was 40°C outside and the air-conditioning at work was trying its hardest to keel over). It looked like it would be something nice quick to throw together, which, for a Friday night after a day where I felt like I needed more sleep before I started the day, was definitely something in its favour.  

So, this was one of those things that popped up and I thought, I could make use of that can of chickpeas we bought last year to make something (probably hummus) but never got round to doing... so when X and I got home from work/daycare, and Decay was already home, playing against Lumpy on the XB360, I decided to give the chickpeas some oven-time.   It barely needs a recipe, and the flavourings are pretty much only limited by your imagination - The Kitchn has a list of some tasty-sounding options for flavouring up your crunchy roasted chickpeas, and seeing as we had some ras al hanout already mixed up from when we were trying out one of the recipes in one of the books I received for my most recent birthday, I figured I'd go with that for a flavoury punch.  We tried some after adding just the ras al hanout, and while it was spicy, it was missing something.  Decay suggested adding some sugar to the mix, and so about a tablespoon of dark brown sugar was thrown into the mix. It doesn't make the chickpeas obviously sweet, but it does bring out the moreish-ness of the crunchy things.  

Seeing as it was NOT going to be 40°C today, I decided it was high time that I got some baking happening, kind of funny in that for both running and baking, I miss it if I go too long without getting a fix ... I got a cookie cutter set (among other fun things that should see the spotlight here, as well as some non-food stuff) from B & C, Em and M, and Jul for my birthday, and I decided that I wanted to find something to give them a test run, even if it was going to be fiddly, because cookie dough can always wait if other stuff decided it needed attention instead. 

So while X was having his breakfast, I went looking for things that might make use of what was in the magical (to X) baking cupboard, and remembered that at some point I'd thought of making Linzer cookies, except that wasn't what the hazelnut meal was purchased for.  Actually, I couldn't tell you what the hazelnut meal was originally destined for because it was in the haze that was December that it was bought and I had cookies everywhere.  X also discovered the joys of taste-testing the cookie dough before it had some time in the fridge prior to rolling, cutting, and baking, and he also woke up from his nap at the right time to get to sample some of the baked cut-out shapes.

One of my workmates came back from his break before Christmas, raving about the many, many slices of key lime pie he and his family had while they were over in the States, which led me to some recipe trawling inbetween the cat-herding that is a part of my usual work day.  Seeing as we don't really get Key limes here, bottled or fresh, and graham crackers aren't a quick trip to the supermarket away (unless you happen to be at USA Foods), I figured that fiddling with the recipe I found over at Taste was going to be the way to go.  It made for a nice tangy filling inside possibly not quite enough crust ... and some of it went home with my parents after their whirlwind trip (:

The hardest part of throwing this together was actually talking to my mum on the phone (on speaker) about her questions to do with buying an iPhone, while whisking together the filling - I'd actually already poured the filling into the crust, and chucked the thing into the oven, before I'd noticed that I'd forgotten to whisk in the four eggs that were a part of the recipe too ... so the whole thing came out of the oven, Decay helped with pouring the filling back into the bowl, and I whisked the eggs in before going with take two on the oven time.  If I hadn't done that, then the hardest part was probably getting the crust squished down into the springform tin lined with baking paper, because the baking paper was sliding around and generally not helping.  If I were to do this again in full size, I'd probably make more crust, with a lower butter ratio, so there was more crust to go around.