My own Masterchef….

Zoe loves cooking – her dreams are to be a chef one day and I couldn’t get her away from Masterchef when it was on tv. She has all the terminology down to a tee and she is always asking if she can help me with dinner( I wish she loved washing dishes as much as cooking – Nah!!). Yesterday I let her cook the dinner – I just instructed her and she did it. It was something easy but a meal that always goes down well – macaroni cheese. Usually we make this with a cheese sauce, but yesterday we decided to do a baked macaroni with egg. This is what she did:

• I packet macaroni (we used spirals)
• Bacon – however much you like
• 1 large red onion
• 4 small eggs or 3 large ones
• 3-4 cups of milk
• Grated cheese
• Breadcrumbs
• Salt and pepper

Cook up your macaroni till al dente(not too soft). fry onion and bacon till nice and brown. Beat eggs and milk together and add salt and pepper. Place macaroni in oven dish , add bacon, onion and some cheese. Pour over egg mixture. Sprinkle breadcrumbs on top and grated cheese. Bake in oven at 180 degrees till firm and brown on top. Oh so easy!! Serve with lashings of tomato sauce. Everybody enjoyed it – even the 4 year old asked for more!!

Good old Aussie Bush Tucker…

Today the weather is cold, very windy and rather unpleasant. We had some rather nasty rain last night and so it is very fresh today. I decided that we would have a thick minestrone soup for dinner tonight and so threw it all into my crockpot to cook. Instead of bread with it, I decided to try a good old Aussie traditional bread – Damper!

Damper is traditionally a simple Australian unleavened bread baked in the hot coals of a campfire. The dough was wrapped around a stick and cooked or put into an iron pot and buried into the coals.

The bread is called damper because the fire is damped to allow the bread to be cooked over the ash covered coals. During colonial times it was a staple food in the bush because the dry ingredients could be easily carried and they only needed water to make the damper. Damper  has changed slightly over the years to include butter and sugar in some recipes as well as beer in others. Of course I won’t be cooking it over a traditional fire (not even my indoor one) but the oven will do fine.

One of my most favourite movies of all time is Australia with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. It is such a lovely story of life in colonial Australia and is so special – if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favour and get it out for a Saturday afternoon when the weather is bad. Of course having Hugh Jackman in the movie is a serious plus as he is the second most gorgeous man ever (after hubby of course!!) – if I had to be stranded in the outback, I would want him to rescue me!!

So here is the Damper recipe I used today:

• 4 cups self-raising flour
• 3/4 – 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter at room temperature
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water

Mix the flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl. Cut in the butter until fine crumbs form. Add milk to make a soft dough. Knead lightly on floured board until smooth. Shape into round loaf, brush with milk, and bake at 180 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the loaf makes a hollow sound when tapped.

 Here’s hoping you enjoy a real Aussie treat.

Vegetable Spring rolls

I decided to make some spring rolls as they are quite expensive to buy from the takeout place. The kids absolutely loved them and I even improvised and replaced things I didn’t have. So here goes – this is what I did:

Ingredients

1  packet of frozen spring roll pastry

3/4 cabbage shredded

2 large carrots grated

Spaghetti broken into very small pieces (I didn’t have real vermicelli)

Oyster Sauce

Sweet Mango Chilli Sauce.

Fresh coriander

Oil

First I mixed it all together

 

Then I cooked it up in some water with chicken stock until the spaghetti was tender. I drained off the excess liquid and added some oyster sauce and sweet chilli sauce. I also like to add some sugar so that it is slightly sweet. I know I am an annoying cook as I can’t give exact quantities – I’m sorry, that’s just how I cook – taste as you go along. Lastly I added some chopped coriander because it is my favourite thing!!

Defrost your pastry – it is very thin.

 

This is how I filled and rolled them and then finally fried them in hot oil in my wok.

ENJOY!!!! These work out cheaper than buying them at the takeout – they cost about $1-60 to $2 per springroll at the takeout whereas mine worked out at about 40 cents each and one packet of pastry made 20 springrolls.

Poor man’s enchiladas

Tonight was a challenge for me for dinner – I always find this the case toward the end of the week just before payday – you know when the cupboards are almost empty and the bank account looks the same!! So I had to come up with a meal with a few ingredients in the cupboard. This is what we had and everyone (Except Z9 who is sick and not eating!!) loved it. I call it poor man’s enchiladas.

I only had about 500 grams of beef mince. I had a packet of 15 budget brand tortillas, a tin of baked beans and two tins of tomatoes. Last but not least I had a little bit of cheese left that I grated.

I cooked up the mince, added the beans and half a tin of tomatoes. Then I added salt and pepper, a bit of chilli powder, some thai spice and a little sugar.

Then I put some of the cheese and mince mix into each tortilla and rolled them up. Once they were all in my raosting pan, I covered them with the remaining tomatoes and topped that with the last bit of cheese. They went into the oven for about 20 minutes and that was it!!

The cost of this meal was as follows and fed five of us with leftovers (seen in the photo)

• Mince  $3.50
• Tortillas  $3.99
• Beans    79c
• Tinned Tomatoes  2 @ 99c each       $1.98
• Cheese – I used about $2 worth

So this meal totalled out at $12.26 for our family of 6 – that works out to $2.04 per portion. The most expensive part of the meal was the tortillas – if I had wanted to cut the cost further or had time to make them, I would have. There is also no need to use huge amounts of meat or cheese in each tortilla as this is a very rich dish.

Crunchy, Tasty Treats

I am South African by birth but now live in New Zealand. The strange thing is that I now cook more traditional South African dishes than I ever did when I lived in SA. What’s with that? It’s not like I am homesick for SA – never have been although I still love SA, and I am not one of these super patriotic people – in fact my family in SA were horrified when I started supporting the All Blacks (Rugby for those who have no idea what I am talking about). Anyway today I made some buttermilk rusks – these are a crunchy, delicious treat and great to have for the kids when they need a snack. A rusk is like a double baked scone so it is dried out till it is hard and crunchy. These are delicious dipped into coffee and eaten as breakfast or a snack.

Buttermilk Rusk Recipe

375grams margarine or butter

500grams sugar

2 large eggs

1.5 kg self raising flour

2 cups of buttermilk

Cream the butter and sugar till smooth and creamy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Add flour to mixture and buttermilk to form a soft dough.

Roll golf ball sized balls of dough and place into roasting tray. Fill up tray ( the balls of dough must be touching and fill the tray completely) Bake in an oven at 180 degrees till rusks have risen and are nice and brown. Break them up into separate “scones” – I then take each scone and halve it again with a knife. Place cut scones on a baking tray  and return to oven that has been turned down to about 90  to 100 degrees. I dry out my rusks on fan bake as this speeds up the process but you can leave them overnight in a low oven if you prefer. Dry out rusks till they are hard to the touch ( should take about 2 to 3 hours on fan bake). Allow to cool. These keep very well in a sealed container for quite a long time but they usually don’t last too long. If you want to make your rusks more healthy then feel free to replace some of the regular flour with wholemeal flour  – sometimes I add raisins or sunflower seeds as well.

Enjoy!!!

Entertaining on a Budget

I have friends coming over for dinner tonight and I have to confess my cupboards are bare!! Ever been there before? Well it can be daunting and stretching especially since I only get paid tomorrow and all I have in my purse is $17. Well I need to be as creative as I can on this one – we are a family of 6 and I will be feeding 3 more. I see that I have some cabbage and a few carrots in the crisper drawer in the fridge – that will make a coleslaw and I have a couple of tins of beetroot to add to that. I whizz down to the store and find some mince that has been reduced for a quick sale  for $7 – because I will use it straight away that will be no problem. I grab a jar of the storebrand fruit chutney for $1-99 and some orange juice for our visitors at $3-99. That just leaves me with $4 for washing powder which I desperately need (pity we can’t eat it!!!). I find a big box on special for $2-99 – Yippee I get to come home with a dollar!! Even small savings like this are great in the current economy. I will now use my few ingredients to whip up  a traditional South African dish called “Bobotie” for dinner tonight together with the last few goodies in my cupboard.

Here is the recipe:

Bobotie

Fry up a chopped onion in some oil and butter till cooked through. Add mince to pan and brown. When mince has browned add the following to pan. Add some curry powder ( I add about 2 to 3 tspoons depending on strength of curry powder) , 1 Tblespoon of lemon juice or vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. In a separate bowl soak 3 slices of bread ( the staler the better) in about 300ml of milk. Squeeze excess milk out of bread and throw bread into  mince mix. Break up the soggy  bread into mince so that it is mixed evenly (use more bread if you wish to bulk it out more). Add about 3/4 jar of fruit chutney to the mince mix. You may add extra raisins/sultanas to mince mixture if you would like it more fruity – I usually find that the chutney has enough fruit (and it is better disguised from fussy little eaters who think fruit should not be part of the main meal). Your mince mixture should be quite fruity and sweet. If not just add a little sugar to taste. Beat 3 eggs and add to the excess milk from the bread. Scoop mince into ovenproof dish and pour over egg mixture. Bake at 180 degrees for about 40mins or until egg has cooked through.

This dish is delicious served with  rice and is a different and tasty way to make mince. It is also very quick and easy. If you want to make it look more exotic, add some tumeric and raisins to your rice to make it yellow rice. Delicious!!

Now I need to bulk the amount of food I have so I am breaking the cardinal rule of entertaining – I am trying a new recipe -I am attempting a bread to go with it – I am rather daring as I don’t even have the right ingredients but I’m giving it a go anyway. I have mixed up  1 Tbsp of surebake yeast with 4Tbsp milk, 1 tsp sugar and 1 cup warm water. Leave to stand a few mins. Then I added 1 Tbsp olive oil and 1tsp salt. Into that I mixed 3 cups of flour and kneaded  till I had a pliable dough. Put in covered bowl and leave to rise for couple of hours. Then knead again and break into two pieces of dough and plait into loaf. Brush with milk and  allow to rise for 30mins. Bake at 180 degrees until golden brown. This recipe is time consuming so not a great idea if you are in a rush.

 

Dessert

What are we going to have for dessert? Again I don’t have too many ingredients in my cupboard so need to come up with something simple.

Fresh Lemon Loaf

125g butter creamed with 3/4 cup of sugar until light and fluffy. Add 2 eggs and beat well. Sift  2 cups of flour and 3 tsps baking powder into butter mix. Add 1/2 cup milk  and mix.

Pour into greased and lined loaf pan and bake for 45mins at 180 degrees until loaf springs at touch. Pour glaze of 1/4 cup of lemon juice and 1/4 cup of sugar over hot loaf. Leave in pan till cold.

Please note that the baking recipe may not work well for you if you live in another part of the world to me but it’s worth a try anyway!! Enjoy – that’s me done for dinner tonight – I’ve had time to blog this between cooking so it can’t have been that hard. Hope you enjoy.

Finally, I enjoy laying my table for dinner when I have guests. I don’t have any flash tableware , tablecloths or cutlery, but I still like my guests to feel that I have made an effort. I will use the beautiful candle  holders I was given for my birthday with the gorgeous vanilla candles and then I will find some flowers that are flowering in my garden and throw them into a vase.