Dinner for Noops, Rich and Droosh

I've discovered Monday night dinner parties. So practical. Your guests don't have the same expectations as they do on say a Saturday because it's a school day, but if you choose your menu wisely, you get the weekend to prepare your dishes AND this weekend, the boy was hanging about Sydney with his Shacker gaming nerd friends, talking about Left 4 Dead and cloud computing whilst singing Karaoke and downing all sorts of trans fatty grossness so i had more time than usual to hunt down fancy recipes and source freaky ingredients. The spread shat on our meal at Maha last week. Our spread wasn't exactly Middle Eastern, although there was some Tahini in the pumpkin dish and we did roll out a variation on the traditional tabouli salad, but it was tres delicious.

We started with the Rosemary and Spice Chestnuts with Almonds and Hazelnuts from my all time favorite Snowflakes and Schnapps book. Had an interesting time peeling the chestnuts. Don't think i boiled them long enough and ended up ripping the flesh under both my thumb nails. Had a 2nd attempt then next day and microwaved them individually for 1.5 mins and boom! Shells and skins came right off. Took a little longer than i would've liked but i refused to be defeated by these little squirrel brains. The nuts were then sauteed in butter and honey and other herbs and then baked in the oven. I thought they were yum but my guests weren't that excited by them. Unfortunately some of the chestnuts were a bit hard, which turned people off the rest of it and get this, Don broke out in a full body rash after dinner and my nana, who is quite knowledgeable it comes to allergies,  reckons the chestnuts were to blame :(

Entree shat on nibbles (thank god). We'd spent the night before rolling out pasta for the star of the show, the Ricotta and Artichoke Tortellini that swum about the Chicken Brodo (i think this is posh for 'chicken soup'?) with assorted floaties; chives, tarragon and parsley. Another stuff up saw my soup, which was supposed to generously serve 6, reduce right down to 1.1L. Thankfully i had cute little $2 shop soup bowls which worked perfectly with the token soup.

Our feature side for the night was Roast Pumpkin Wedges with Almonds, Goats Cheese and Tahini Dressing. We did this a couple of weeks ago for the folks and it was a massive hit, although last time the pumpkin was a bit soggy, but everyone was too polite to say anything.   This time, Don roasted them upright and we followed the recipe exactly in terms of timing and the edges went crisp and black, just like the picture, and let's face it, there's no point cooking unless your end product does look precisely like the picture and this baby was a site for sore eye! It's a really easy recipe. Even you two minute noodle folk out there could handle it.

Next came our staple Teriyaki Beef. We used a good part of the 6kg Porterhouse we've been saving for a rainy day and threw it on some blanched green beans. Unbelievable. Always a winner. For 600g of meat, mix together 2 tbs of mirin, 1 tbs sake or dry sherry, 1/4 cup soy sauce and 1 tsp of caster sugar. Right before you're ready to serve the meat, heat it up in a pan with spring onions and then pour over meat. Very sexual. Mmmm. Remember, it's important to serve some of your courses on colourful plates that compliment the food.

Having run out of pomegranates, and with an abundance of back-up peas in the freezer, I was forced to stray form my trusty Roast Beetroot and Candied Walnut salad. My trusty Gourmet Traveller spat this at me when i typed 'quinoa' into the search field: Quinoa, celery heart and pea tabouli. Curious. It was quite fiddly (as is usually the criteria) and i still have no idea how the heart of a celery differs from the rest of the stalks and why you need to boil the skin off the tomatoes, but it was fresh and tasty, just like a regular tabouli with loads of bonus bits.

We decided yo keep it simple for dessert this time and went with David Lebowitz's Roasted Banana Ice-Cream in choc-chip cookie sandwiches. Now I know, the smell of ripe banana is vomitous but i managed to block my nose whilst roasting the bananas in the oven with the brown sugar and butter. It was hard (wasn't so bad for my recently diagnosed narrow left nostril, however the right side did struggle), but the reviews suggested it would be worth it. I then schmultzed the mix in the food processor before i added honeyed pecans and turned it into ice-cream. Flavor was phenomenal. Might try a more adventurous vessel next time. A meringue nest perhaps?

 

Pam's Lemon Yogurt Cake and nana's vintage napkins.

This is the yummiest, moistest, softest, easiest lemon cake i've ever tasted. Pam flicked it over to me after RPM one morning and i wolfed it down before i even got out of the car park. I baked it the next weekend using our endless supply of Vaalia French Vanilla yoghurt and Don, Donna, Dean and I consumed half the cake in about 4 minutes. Amazing. And how adorable is the napkin it sits on? My nana gave them to me. No doubt from the moth-ball cupboard so I won't poison my guests with them, but if you're into learning scientific names of grapes and vines while you fres, these are the napkins for you.

INGREDIENTS
1.5 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup rice bran oil
1 cup vanilla yoghurt
Grated rind of 2 lemons
2 cups self raising flour
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Icing sugar to dust
Baking paper
Either round or square 20cm cake tin
Whisk

METHOD
1.      Preheat oven to 180 (160 if fan-forced)
2.      Grease baking tin and line with paper
3.      Whisk together sugar, eggs, oil, yoghurt and lemon rind
4.      Fold in flour with wooden spoon and 1/2 tsp of salt
5.      Stir in lemon juice
6.      Bake 45 mins or until a bit firm when you touch it. Shouldn’t wobble  lot
7.      Cool for 5 mins and then turn out onto plate
8.      Dust with icing sugar

My new ice-cream book!

Caramelised apple and Calvados soufflés/flops

After a rough start, leaving the mandolin, apple corer, icing sugar and milk at home, Moomsy saved the day with her improvisation skills and Woolies drive-by and everything seemed to be on track. I didn't bang anything about, I was annaul with the measurements, my peaks were stiff (egg whites that is) and we'd fingered the rim just like George said to. 15 mins later, when they were golden, we took 'em out  just like the recipe said (first pic) and I stuffed my face with one. VERY tasty, but texture was a bit like raw cake. We popped the remaining three back in the oven and they grew like they were on roids. Amazing. I thought we'd nailed it and expected Masterchef to come bursting through the kitchen window and invite me to be their guest chef in the finale. 15 minutes later...boom. They collapse. Listen, you can't say they don't have character and hell, with the amount of butter, sugar and liqueur in there, i assure you they taste like heaven. The just look a little like an elderly man's ball sack (i've been told).

Recipe can be found here if you want to have a crack.

Tempted to make cabbage rolls with these beauties.

Day off means Domus gets gourmet affair for Friday night fodder.

One of our favorite sidies is this Green Bean Salad With Sesame Dressing. The reason we love it so much is because it has tahini in it. Mmm. It's meant to have asparagus in it too but we didn't have any handy and given the cleaning lady hasn't been in the hood for two weeks, the toilet didn't need additional offensive smells thrown into the mix, so we went without.

To make it blanch 250g green beans and 2 bunches of asparagus and throw them onto a lovely red plate. It's important to have contrast. It tastes better. Then stir together 2 tbs of soy sauce, 1/4 cup tahini, 1 tbsp of caster sugar, 1 tbsp of rice vinegar, 1 tbsp of finely grated ginger and 1 tbsp of water. Drizzle it over the greens and then top with 2 thinly sliced Asian eschalots. Boom. Fabulous side dish.

Then to go with this, i picked out a dead easy Asian-Style Fish Bakes in a Bana Leaf from the June 2010 delicious mag.Couldn't be assed hunting down the banana leaf so we wrapped it in baking paper and foil instead. Not as easy on the eye, but whatever. The recipe is not on the website yet and i can't be fagged tying it all out so i'll update this post when i can give you a link. I'll give you the ingredients. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out how to smack it all together. We always have quarter cups of different home made curry pastes in the freezer so we don't have to drag out the cook time by making paste as well, or worse yet, need to buy ready-made shit. Ew.

Serves 2

• 1 large fresh banana leaf

• 800g whole snapper cleaned (get the fish man to do this. Cleaning/scaling a fish sucks balls)

• 1 tbs Thai red curry

• 2 tbs coconut cream

• 2 tbs finely shredded ginger

• 8 kaffir lime leaves thinly shredded

• 2 tbs coriander springs

• 1 long red chilli sliced on angle

• 2 cups steamed rice to serve

* Coriander and chilli get sprinkled over the fish once it comes out of the oven.

Another freaking good looking/tasting meal AND i have picked up a new trick to get rid of the fishy smell from my oven. 2 drops of vanilla essence in half a cup of water and put it in the oven for an hour at about 150. It's toilet spray for the oven.

Out of closet space. Shoes now reside in living room.

My friends are fertilizing their eggs. I'm poaching mine.

A special thanks goes to Bill's chooks and MasterChef Cookbook Volume 1 for allowing me to make the perfect poached eggs. After years of epic fail with the vinegar and swirling technique, I can now sleep easy at night.

Les Mills, if you don't bring back Paradise City and Night Train to Fitness First RPM, I may have to find a less monotonous place to ride a bicycle..

While the others year 8's were playing Louie Louie in clarinet class, I insisted on learning Hadaway's 'What is Love?' (and 'Ride on Time' by Black Box, but I'm not as proud of that one). Now 20 years on, the passion for this track has died down somewhat, so you can imagine my double displeasure when a) Fitness First decided to stop playing copyrighted music due to the massive tariffs and b) I have to hear a cheesy cover of 'What is Love?' four times a week, before 7am. Vom.

Now, there are only so many things that can distract one from the monotony of all of this RPM cover music. They are listed in no particular order. There's the bike short clad man, who indeed is not the right shape, nor secreting the right fragrance to be wearing such attire. He always rocks up late so i have no way of politely escaping him and sits his sweaty testicles as close to me as possible. There's the rotund lady who usually sits in front of me whose bra is way too big/lacy/agile/non-existent and her nogs swing about like Mr Doo-Bee's bouncing balls, sometimes causing me to lose my balance. Occasionally there's a bloke with nice arms who sits in the front row so i can alternate my attention between him and the two anorexic ladies who should indeed get a good dozen of my lemon ricotta doughnuts up them.

I shouldn't just flag the offensive distractions. There are some pleasant ones too. My instructor Kim is bloody funny and rants on about her sleep-walking kids and how she accidentally took them to Flower Drum for some quick springers, without realising it was actually one of Australia's finest dining Cantonese restaurants. And the intermittent bake exchange with Pam which makes everyone drool as well as drip man juice and nullifies the exercise. 

Despite having so many colourful things to preoccupy myself with/protect myself from in RPM classes, I can't help but long for Gunners and Billy Idol, and even Bobby Brown in a weird way. I hate you Copyright Tribunal of Australia. You are dogs and should be put down.