Bacon and Egg Pies

Fast, Easy, Cheap and Tasty.
Took a day off yesterday, played and sewed and just generally lost track of time, imagine the shock of hearing the garage door open when I was sure it was only 3 o'clock..........and what was to be had for dinner?!?!.

Thankfully one of the things I had done was cruise through a Donna Hay cookbook, yep, another one, this time her modern classics book 1, where there was a rather interesting and easy looking recipe for bacon and egg pies on page 158.

Using frozen pastry, grated cheese mixed with mustard and of course bacon and eggs this was very quickly assembled and popped into the oven for 15 minutes while I scooted downstairs and harvested the lettuce leaves, spring onion and basil for the salad.

Popped them onto plates and topped them off with some of these goodies, Kumato grape tomatoes, darker skinned with a hint of black, they are a sweet and flavourful tiny tomato, not exactly budget but hey, a few go a long way and the same goes for Sardinian green olives and Persian Fetta.

Old fashioned and a budget beater, but tasty

Gosh, its been ages since I cooked some of these more old fashioned meals, first there was the meatloaf, then the leftover fritters and now for heavens sake Rissoles, not only rissoles, but gravy, dried peas and plain mashed potatoes.

The Darling does like dried peas, his Mum used to cook them, I have a tendency to burn the poor little blighters, in fact we lost a perfectly good coffee table after one effort.

The only concession to anything a little more up to date food wise is the caramelised sweet balsamic onions on top and no there isn't a recipe, just slice up as many red onions as you think you will need and then slice up a bit more.

Cook them slowly in a heavy based fry pan with a little olive oil and just a tad of butter until they are nicely caramelised, add a good splash of balsamic vinegar and let sit over a low heat for a few minutes. Rather yum if do say so myself.

Ohh and the coffee table? well the family was home for dinner and there was a tad of wine involved, so judgement was a little skewed, .......you understand.

So after filling the kitchen with burnt pea smoke, I removed gently, well o.k., chucked, the saucepan into the sink and filled the pan with water,

Mistake!

Big mistake!

The steam smelled worse than the smoke, so I slapped a lid on the pot and just left it to moulder.

Someone helpful came alone, smelled the burnt pea smell, and immediately knowing what I had done - past experience you know - and to be really helpful removed the saucepan to the back deck, where the only place to put the pan down was the coffee table, oh and did I mention that the top of the table was glass??

Someone helpful was barely back in the kitchen when there was this rather explosive bang, followed by the tinkling sound of glass raining down from the verandah to the concrete below.

DDIL was not happy, it was her Coffee Table.

Leftovers, what do you do with them?

We had meatloaf for dinner the night before last, its literally been years since I made a meatloaf, but the request had been made and as I'm on a bit of a budget kick the two tied in together. However, we had leftovers, even after sending a roast vegie and meatloaf lunch off with the Darling, we had leftovers, so what with the budget kick and my hating to waste food, something had to be done.
A quick net search and about the only thing that came up was either fritters or bung it in a can of soup and call it a.............well I've forgotten what it was called and it is probably a fine thing to do but just didn't seem to be up my alley, so I went with the fritter idea, there was a nice sounding potato fritter, not unlike roesti so I went with that. The only thing I would change is the size of the meatloaf chunks, as the potato cooked down the chunks became more of an accessory than an integral part of the fritter. The whole thing was surprisingly tasty and very easy, I topped the fritters with a fresh tomato and caramelised onion sauce and a sno pea salad.

Fritters for 3 serves

4 medium potatoes, grated and squeezed dry

1 medium onion, grated

1 egg

1 Tablespoon plain flour, approx

salt and pepper

leftover meatloaf, cubed, 1 to 1 1/2 cups small chunks

Olive oil

Grate the potatoes, and using you hands, take handfuls of the grated potato, squeeze the excess potato juice out over the sink and place dry grated potato into a large bowl.

Grate the onion, add to the bowl with the potato.

Add egg to the potato and mix together well.

Sprinkle the flour over the potato, just enough to pull the mixture together, Add the meatloaf chunks and season.

Heat a good coating of oil in a heavy based fry pan.

When pan and oil are hot, place 1/4 cup measures of the potato mixture into the pan, press down to flatten slightly.

Cook over low heat until fritters are well browned and crisp on both sides. The center of the fritters will be creamy when fully cooked.

You will need to use two pans if you are cooking a number of fritters or remove the first batch to the oven to keep warm and continue using the one pan.

When fritters are all done, place on serving plates, top with tomato sauce and the sno pea salad and Enjoy!

Caramelised Onion and Fresh Tomato Sauce

1 medium onion, finely sliced

2 large ripe tomatoes, seeded and chopped - I didn't bother peeling the tomatoes, I rather like the skin left on the chunks

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon stock or water.

Heat oil in saucepan and add onions, fry over a medium heat until the onions caramelise, turning a nice soft brown, don't allow the onions to catch and burn, they will go bitter.

Add the tomato chunks and stir through. Place lid on pan and allow to cook down, stirring occasionally.

Add a little stock or water if the sauce is becoming too thick or beginning to stick to the pan.

Sno Pea Salad for 3

150 - 200 grams sno peas,

1/4 red capsicum

1/4 green or yellow capsicum

1/3 long red chilli - more if you love chilli

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 tablespoon brown sugar

3/4 tablespoon lemon juice

Blanch the sno peas in boiling water for 1 min, drain and refresh under cold water.

Drain well and place in bowl

Very finely dice the red chilli, place in screw top jar with soy sauce, brown sugar and lemon juice, shake well and allow to sit for a few minutes.

Slice capsicums finely, add to sno peas and pour dressing over to serve.

Oven Semi-Dried Strawberries

That wonderful flavour of fresh picked strawberries is pretty hard to beat with its promise of spring days and fresh produce. When the opportunity presents I like to semi dry the berries in the oven to use them in cakes and salads. It is a simple process, and the net abounds with different methods and how to's but I just simply wash them, slice away the top and halve them, placing them onto a paper covered biscuit tray.
If I am planning on using them for cakes etc., I sprinkle just a little brown sugar over them and put them into a slow oven 130 degrees Celsius, for about 50 - 60 minutes.

If the plan is to use them in a Spinach and Strawberry salad, just pop them into a bowl, sprinkle a little brown sugar over with a splash of balsamic vinegar, turn them to coat and pop them out onto a baking paper lined tray and into the oven for the same time and temperature.

When sliced open, the halves are still full of moisture, the flavour is intensified and the dry surface helps them not to sink to the bottom of the cake mix.

They will keep for awhile in a jar in the fridge, how long I'm not sure as I use them pretty quickly, these will be made into muffins tomorrow.

Cumquats and Limes

Harvested the Cumquats and a few limes from our trees, and decided to have a go at preserving one of the limes.

No jar with a wide enough neck to take a whole lime so I quartered it and packed it with salt, then,following the advice on preserving lemons in Stephanie Alexanders book, I topped the jar with added lime juice. This is going to be a resounding success, and I will be serving lovely preserved limes with my Tagines. Or it will be a disaster and no one will ever hear about that poor little lime again.

An experiment in making Cumquat Syrup, these quarters will sit in the sugar and brandy for a day and then be popped into a pan of heavy syrup, simmered for a few minutes and be ready for use immediately to drizzle over a citrus cake.

Recipe for Cumquat Syrup

Weigh cumquats and measure out equal weight in sugar.

quarter cumquats, removing all seeds and mix with 1/3rd of the sugar, place in a jar to with a good slosh of brandy, about 1 - 2 Tablespoons. Cover and let stand for a day.

Place the 2/3 rd measure of sugar into a sauce pan (not aluminium) and with a very little water,

melt the sugar and bring to a simmer, add the cumquat quarters and syrup and simmer for approx 10 mins.

This will be the first time I have tried that old favourite, Brandied Cumquats, but I have enjoyed them in the past, it will be interesting to see if they are as good as I remember.

Pork Cutlet with Apple Slaw

After a day of mending, house cleaning, playing in the cubby with the youngest Grandie and getting over the sticker shock of taking the Shitzu to the vet, I really was looking for something simple for dinner, trouble was, no lunch also meant I wanted something to sink the fangs into.

Went for a straight copy of the Donna Hay 'Peppered Pork with Apple Slaw' from her latest book 'no time to cook' and another of her ideas of herbs in olive oil over slices of steamed potatoes.

What can I tell you, it was fast, it was easy, and beat the nickers off take-away on all fronts.

Peppered Pork with Apple Slaw on page 36, in the chapter aptly named fast flavour, go spoil yourself.

Beef Tagine with Honey, Prunes and Apricots

Another wonderful pressie I was lucky enough to get for my Birthday was a Tagine, now I have hankered over one of these for such a long time, gee, could it be at least a couple of years now??

Anyway, I was given this wonderful tagine, a gorgeous splash of red for my kitchen, and it goes rather well with that other showy splash of gorgeous red in the kitchen, my lovely new Kitchen Aid mixer.......ahh red, the new pink....., sorry, got a bit carried away there....

Today I found a recipe for a beef tagine, whew, the list of spices almost took my breath away, but they were all in the spice drawer so just got to work and assembled the most glorious flavour sensation.

While the tagine was cooking the kitchen smelt like you could just package it up with a ribbon and be happy forever, wonderful aromas.

As couscous isn't a fave in this neck of the woods, we decided on rice as the accompaniment.

There will be more tagines in our lives.

The recipe I loosely based our tagine on was 'Fragrant Moroccan Beef, Date, Honey and Prune Tagine' from Recipe Zaar. The recipe called for ras el hanout spice mix or their substitution, well on a whim I Googled 'ras el hanout', and while Recipe Zarr called for 4 spices this little lovely called for no fewer than 12, well.........ya gotta give that a go now don't you!

So here is the list of ingredients I used.

For the Ras el Hanout spice mix

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

For the Tagine

500grams cubed beef, - I used round steak

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 large clove garlic, minced

1 carrot, peeled and cut into chunks

1 400 gram can diced tomatoes

6 pitted prunes

6 dried apricots - the recipe called for dates, but -... well you know the story

1 scant tablespoon honey

1 cup beef stock

2 rounded teaspoons of the ras el hanout spice mix

Assemble the ras el hanout spices, they will keep for a month in an airtight jar.

Heat the tagine base over a medium heat, add the olive oil and when heated add the beef cubes and turn to brown all over.

Add the onion and garlic, followed by the carrot chunks, stirring through the meat to pick up the lovely juices.

Add the spice mix, stirring all the while so that all those lovely spices coat everything and don't catch on the bottom of the tagine.

Pour stock into tagine, stirring again

Add the tomatoes, prunes, apricots and honey, stir well and cover with tagine lid

Lower heat and cook slowly for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours, If the beef was tougher the cooking time would have to be longer

The dish was lovely but the pics were not.

Mmm, yummy