A WORD FROM THE WISE(GUY)

 The other day I made a pasta sauce that was so delicious it will become my 'go to' sauce in the future.

It was from Annabel Langbein's cooking book More Taste Than Time which we've had for many years. The dish was named simply 'Pasta Siciliana'

I've never met Annabel but I did know her sister Prue at university.

As you can see the recipe is simple and the cooking time very short but the explosion of flavour from the combination of kumara, orange juice and the herbs is outstanding. The orange cuts through the otherwise heaviness of the tomato flavour.  One orange was all iI needed and I only used half of a medium sized golden kumara which was enough when cubed. I grated Colby cheese together with Parmesan for the topping. While the kumara, orange juice and pureed tomatoes were simmering I quickly sautéed some pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and pine-nuts in a pan with some orange and chilli oil. These were crunchy and added the 'wow; factor to the dish.I really recommend this as it's fresh, flavoursome and healthy and any fool can make it.

I know that Richard will like it and Robert could slaughter a pig or a lamb or something to add to it.

FISH TACOS

 That 'Food, Glorious Food' post by The Curmudgeon reminded me that I haven't written a post for a while. Mea Culpa or, as Richard might say - "il vecchio gatto annusa il sedere del cane" - or something like that.

I've obviously cooked some delicious meals over the last two months using tried and true recipes but one variation stands out.

The Old Girl likes it when I prepare tacos for dinner. These are crispy tacos heated in the oven and then filled with layers of a hot bean mix (red kidney beans fried with garlic and chillies), tomatoes, cheese, lettuce and spring onion. It is a delicious meal and leaves you feeling good afterwards.

A couple of weeks ago - a Friday, Robert - I varied this by substituting the bean mix with a fish one. I cubed some snapper into very small pieces and covered in seasoned flour. This I pan-fried quickly with diced capsicum, chilli, garlic, ginger and some Jalapenos. I proceeded to put the tacos together the same way as the bean ones but left out the cheese. The result? Fabulous. This is going on the list.

A GUT REACTION

 Years ago, in Wellington I lived for a year in a household of vegetarians which, at the time, was a novel concept having been used to 'meat and two veg' eating for years. I leant to cook without meat which serves me well today. See: HERE

I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian and don't preach to others about the benefits of healthy eating ... but ..... a good friend of ours died a few years ago, at a young age, from bowel cancer. 
Bowel cancer is the second highest cause of cancer death in New Zealand but it is treatable and beatable if detected early enough. A diet that is low in fats and animal product is advised.

So where is this going?

On Robert's blog he finishes each post with a note of what he has cooked or is about to cook for dinner. 

There is a disturbing amount of meat, including fatty meat like lamb and pork mentioned

I looked back on a month's worth of posts (most recent back to a calendar month ago) and can report here his evening meal choices.

"Lamb roast."

"As I put my hand out to receive this very special Sacrament the lady gave me two hosts! I've never received two Jesus' before. My first thought was maybe I could spit one out and take it home to Sue. Then I remembered back to when I had the job of handing out the Eucharist, I recalled the priest eating any left over hosts. I swallowed both and sat back at my pew."

"Chicken, brussel (sic) sprouts and those mushroom things."

"Fish burgers with extra fish! (Sue had oysters and didn't want all of hers)."

"Rissoles, spuds and peas."

"Lamb roast for dinner."

"Hot dogs for dinner."

Roast dinner.

"Lamb roast dinner."

"Scotch eggs and veges."

"Fish and chips."

"Chicken and veges."

"Chicken and mushroom pasta"

"Chicken and veges." Bizarrely in a pst titled 'Animals Matter'

"Lamb chop and veges."

"Sushi and flied rice."

"Chicken rissoles and indian (sic) peas and cauliflower and spuds with gravy."


I did think that he consumed more pork (not a deliberate pun although the little critters might be tasty) but that must have been in previous month's posts.

The more observant reader will note that Robert includes 'veges' in most of the meals mentioned. It's worrying though that he doesn't define which vegetables he cooks and he might be like my sister who thinks adequate vegetables intake is chips and frozen peas.

I do take my hat off to him though in his choice of sushi which he made himself I believe. I don't know what 'flied' rice is though unless it suggests that he dropped the pan when cooking it.

Balance in our eating habits is the thing. For every meat based dish we consume we should give our guts a break and eat vegetable based or vegetarian dishes for at least the next two meals.

I'M GNOCCHI-DING - THIS IS GOOD

 I like gnocchi and often order it in restaurants. The restaurant in the new Hundertwasser Art Centre  does a particularly nice spinach and ricotta one with a mushroom, pinenuts and roasted artichoke cream sauce. Yummy.

Whenever I've bought pre-made gnocchi from the supermarket I've been disappointed. I've done this because I thought that making gnocchi from scratch was complicated. I was wrong.

I found this recipe on-line and gave it a go last night.

INGREDIENTS

500 g cottage or ricotta cheese ( I used ricotta)

2 cups plain flour + extra as needed

100 g parmesan, grated

6 eggs

Small handful each parsley and basil, chopped

2 tsp sea salt

Tomatoes for topping (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Mix the gnocchi ingredients together in a big bowl to form a soft, just-sticky dough. Don’t over mix. Turn out onto a well-floured surface.
Divide dough into six portions, then roll each into a 3cm-thick log. Cut into 2cm lengths, dusting the little pillows with flour as you go.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Cook gnocchi in batches, dropping handfuls of the little dumplings into the water and cooking for 4-5 minutes only (they will sink then rise to the surface), removing with a slotted spoon and transferring them directly to serving plates.
To serve, add a splash or olive oil and some chopped basil or parsley or tomatoes to the dumplings.
Serve with grated parmesan and a squeeze of lemon juice.

I cut the recipe in half using 250 gms of ricotta and only 3 eggs and this was still enough for dinner and lunch today for the two of us.

I made a sauce of lemon and fennel infused olive oil, pesto and lemon juice, mixed this through the cooked gnocchi and topped with some good Parmesan cheese. 

The result was excellent and delicious and will now become a staple dish. Once I've 'mastered' the basics of a dish I then experiment with different ingredients. I'll try using combinations of pumpkin, potato, spinach, smoked salmon,  with different herbs and sauces in future.

PLEASE SIR - I WANT SOME MORE ...

 

The trouble with going to Wellington for two weeks each month - and not just having to listen to Robert complain about the fancy-schmancy surroundings and high prices of Richard's favourite Petone pub - is that it throws my food provisioning out of whack.

No sooner do I get back home I'm planning to go back down to Wellington. As I live a wee bit away from the shops (half an hour) I tend to do supermarket shopping once a week. This means now, as I'm away for 2 weeks, I have to make sure that the fridge is empty of fresh and non-frozen items. A couple of days before I leave there is often nothing enticing to eat so last night I bought a Hawaiian burger at the local takeaway place. Boy was this a disappointment. The fish and the chips there are great but this burger was the pits. Instead of a nice home-made burger patty like I'm used to (The Old Girl makes a fantastic lamb burger) this one had a thin, flat, processed patty that had no flavour and was like chewing putty. Crap! I won't be buying another of these.

I've cobbled together breakfast and lunch ( weetbix and a toasted potato hash brown) which was boring as I haven't baked a fresh loaf of bread and have no eggs. I think I'll play some golf this afternoon so will dive into the 4 Square on the way back to buy something interesting for dinner.

"GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD"

It's a crappy day here today with torrential rain so it doesn't look like golf is on the agenda.

I've been lazing around reading and listening to music but thought I'd better make a loaf of bread.

I have two breadmakers.

The Breville Bakers Oven is the original I bought some years ago and that got me enthused in bread making.

This model bakes 1KG and 750gm loaves. I usually use it for the 750gm setting .

The other oven I have is the Sunbeam Bakehouse 4500 which bakes 500gm loaves. I use this when I don't want a larger loaf, or for fruit loaves as it has a neat fruit and nut dispenser fitted.

Today I'm using the Breville for a mixture of Country Grain and Soy and Linseed that I buy in bulk from Binn Inn.

I should have started the bake earlier as it takes about 3 hours and would have been nice to have a fresh bread sandwich with a couple of slices of the meatloaf left over from last night's dinner. Never mind, I'll have a slice or two with dinner.

I have six different bread mixes (from Binn Inn) and a lot of different flours from which I knock up my own blend. To be honest though, the Binn Inn mixes are better.

I like sourdough bread but you can't get a pre-mix for this as you have to start from scratch using a fermented dough mix. It takes a lot longer which is why I've never bothered.

Maybe I'll give it a go some day.

BETTER THAN FASTING

Being locked down isn't a problem if you know how to cook.
Fortunately I and the fellow bloggers in this community know how to cook (although Robert is maybe overly reliant on the use of his pie-maker).

We've got a reasonably stocked pantry, fridge and freezer so making a different and interesting meal each night is easy. We're fortunate though in not having a household full of children which, no doubt is a problem for families who have been, prior to lockdown, used to indulging their kids in takeaways like KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut. Often in these cases good home-cooked food isn't liked or wanted by the kids.

On Neighbourly recently I saw an interesting idea from a couple who have three kids. To bribe the kids to behave they promised them one of their favourite takeaway meals.
Fortunately these parents own and run a design business so they downloaded images and logos off the McDonald's website and created cartons, place mats and other items to hold the home-made burgers and chips that they cooked while they sent the kids out of the house. The result was 'Big Mac' type burgers and shoe-string chips that the kids absolutely loved. This was clever and fun.

Thinking of this I went over the types of food we cook at home and, among the more 'serious' meals we make are some nice simple, wholesome and completely home-made versions of fish and chips, tacos, pizzas, pies and other 'meals' that can be bought at fast food outlets. Fried chicken isn't included in our menus as we can't stand that KFC rubbish but I'm sure that others could do so.
Again on Neighbourly I read that some guy had experimented and perfected the 'Colonel's secret coating' for Kentucky Fried chicken and was making it at home.