Honey and Ginger Stir Fry

Ever since I started to have more time available to cook as it doesn’t take us an hour plus to get home anymore I have really enjoyed trying new recipes and trying little tweaks to perfect them. This also means that I have really gone off eating the ready made sauces that we used to end up eating because cooking from scratch was not appealing after our journey home. I can really taste the sugars and salt that are put into the sauces and they just don’t taste the same to me.

A recipe I always enjoy is my Honey and Ginger Stir Fry. To begin with the recipe didn’t include ginger so it was more honey and sesame and it was nice but adding the ginger, has in my opinion, really improved this dish! I also use half of the sauce to cook the chicken and then the other half over the vegetables and noodles when they are just about cooked.

The recipe I use is as follows and is best served with noodles I find:

1/2 cup of Honey
4 tablespoons Soy Sauce
2 tablespoons Oyster Sauce
3 teaspoons Sesame Oil
1 large chicken breast diced
1 teaspoon ginger paste
Mixed stir fry veg adjust depending on number of people (I use frozen stir veg and they work well in this)
Large handful of Cashew Nuts
Packet of noodles

I then mix the honey, soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil in a bowl with one cup (measuring cup) of cold water. Heat some olive oil in a pan and when it is hot add the ginger paste and the chicken which is cooked until it becomes golden brown.

Once the chicken is browned pour in half of the sauce and cook for 2 to 3 minutes before adding the stir fry vegetables which I cook for about 5 minutes (following the packet instructions for the vegetables).

Once the vegetables are starting to cook throw in the cashew nuts and add the remainder of the sauce to cook everything together. When the sauce is heated add in enough noodles for the number of people you are feeding and cook them through until heated and then serve!

Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup

Since having some leftover pumpkin at Christmas that I ended up throwing away I have wanted to try and make pumpkin soup. I bought some pumpkin about a week ago and then picked up some sweet potato when we went shopping last and decided I would have a go at making the soup in my slow cooker.

I googled lots of different recipe ideas and decided to try the following recipe which I kind of made up from lots of different recipes but which worked really really well!

Recipe:
Half a butternut pumpkin
One large sweet potato
One onion
2x stock pots
3x cups boiling water
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Peal and Chop the pumpkin, sweet potato and onion and line the bottom of the slow cooker. Mix the stock pots in a jug with 3 cups of boiling water and add salt and pepper to taste.

I then cooked the ingredients of the high heat setting for 4 hours before mashing the ingredients up and leaving it to cool overnight.

When your getting ready to serve it put the liquid through the blender and back into the slow cooker along with the cream and heat it on the hight heat setting for an hour until fully reheated and then serve.

I really enjoyed my experimental recipe and the Aussie and our friend who came to dinner like it too I think! Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the finished result but this is it mid cooking!

Home Comforts

I’ve been in Darwin for just over a year now and until 2 weeks ago the fact that we often wouldn’t get home until 6.30/7pm evening and that I only had a BBQ to cook with meant I was a lazy cook trying to cook the easiest and quickest things possible with little experimentation.

I’m actually far too excited about the fact we have a cooker with an oven AND a grill. We also bought a slow cooker which meant I can try to recreate the delicious stews my mum makes as well as casseroles and the like.

Reading this blog post on the Smitten by Britain blog today really got me thinking about the foods I miss from the UK and the dishes I’ve cooked that remind me of home and my mums amazing cooking.

Every winter at home in the UK means stew season and on the weekends I’d often wake to the smell of my mums beef stew being cooked ready for re-heating at lunchtime or for dinner. This stew tastes fantastic the first time it’s cooked but is even better when re-heated especially with dumplings!

I made a Darwin version although called it a casserole as seems strange to call it stew and to be eating stew when it’s about 25 degrees.

Here’s what it looked like :

To make the stew I basically placed the following ingredients in the slow cooker, cooked it on the fast cook setting for 4 hours and then cooked it for a further hour just before serving. The only thing I will change next time will be to add some corn flour to thicken the stock:

Stewing beef
Carrots
Onion
Swede
Turnip
Parsnip
Celery
1 litre beef stock
Worcester sauce
Pepper
Mixed herbs

I also had a craving for my mums cottage pie today and came up with this which we enjoyed a lot

The ingredients were:

Minced beef
One onion
Two carrots sliced
Handful of mushrooms
Handful of frozen peas
Vegetable stock (I used a stock pot and added about a cup and a half of boiling water)

For the topping
8 potatoes
Butter to mix
Drop of milk
Grated cheese

To make the cottage pie I boiled the potatoes and carrots and started them at the same time but only boiled the carrots for about 10 minutes. Next I cooked the minced beef until it was brown, added the onions and mushrooms until cooked then added the stock, Worcester sauce, water along with the carrots and peas and simmered this until the stock reduced.

Once cooked I spooned it into an oven dish and mashed the potatoes with butter and pepper adding a drop of milk at the end. Once mashed I spooned it on top of the mince mixture and spread some grated cheese on top before placing the oven dish into the pre heated grill for about 10 minutes before serving.

This was a great home cooked meal and I’m looking forward to trying some when I get home in just 23 DAYS!!!!

Creamy Salmon Pasta

In this post I mentioned that I had tried a delicious Salmon pasta at a restaurant in Darwin and wanted to give it a try and on Saturday night I gave it a go.

I’m not too confident on following recipes as I worry I will get them wrong or it won’t taste very nice because I’ve never tried it before. I also tend to use lots of pre-packaged mixes like pasta sauce rather than try to create it myself as we don’t really have a way of storing the ingredients you would need and it would be too expensive to keep buying them every time.

I started off by following this recipe or at least that is the one I found online standing in Woolworths trying to work out what ingredients I would need. When I looked a bit more I liked the look of this recipe as well so this dish is a bit of a combination of the two!

The ingredients for 3 people are:

Pasta of your choice – enough for the number of people who will be eating the dish
500g of smoked salmon – I used the pre packed sliced version but the salmon fillets would work and probably be a bit better as they would be more flaky
300ml of thickened cream
A spoonful of garlic paste
A couple of tablespoons of lemon juice – but add to taste
A handful of chives
Half a chopped red pepper (capsicum)
Half a chopped green pepper (capsicum)
Half a chopped medium sized onion
A handful of mushrooms roughly copped.

The Method:
I cooked the pasta and whilst it was cooking chopped up the peppers, mushrooms, onion and salmon into smaller pieces. Then when it was cooked I used the olive oil spray to cook the peppers mushrooms and onion altogether in the frying pan until softened.

Then I added the pasta which had been drained back in to the pan and cooked it for a minute with the vegetables before adding all of the cream and cooking for a further minute making sure all of the ingredients were cooked in the cream.

Next I added the garlic paste, lemon juice and chives in to the mixture and cooked for a further minute.

Finally I turned the heat off and in the salmon leaving it to cook for about a minute before serving it up.

The final result was good, it wasn’t like the version I had tried during the week but I think that was because I had added lemon to the dish and I am definitely not a chef. It was tasty and full of flavour which was good as I worried it would taste a bit bland. I might experiment a bit and leave out the lemon next time but we quite enjoyed it and there are left overs which will definitely be eat up over the next few days!

Aussie Burgers

I haven’t done one of my “outback recipes” for a little while now so thought today’s dinner might be a good one for an update.

I don’t know if there is such a thing as an Aussie Burger but when I first visited Australia I had a burger which was very similar to this and called an Aussie Burger and so every often I make it for us. It seems a bit weird because of some of the ingredients but actually tastes so good, it’s definitely comfort food.

The recipe is also so straightforward and goes something like this:

For the Burgers the ingredients per person are…

2 x burgers
1 x burger bun
1 x slice of cheese
2 x slice beetroot
1 x pineapple ring (would suggest using the ones in juice not syrup)

Then just cook the burgers on the BBQ and pile them up with the other ingredients in the bun. I chose a slice of beetroot followed by a burger then slice of cheese, burger and slice of pineapple. You can add sauce like ketchup but it has quite a lot of flavour without the sauce.

For the chips I just bought a tin of pre cooked potates sliced them up into pieces and fried them in oil in a pre-heated frying pan.

I’m sure a chip pan would work as well but you’d have to be careful they don’t over cook as the pieces are quite small.

Finally I served it with a mixed salad and everyone dug in!

Salmon and Mushroom Pancakes

I realised on the way to work today that it is Shrove Tuesday which is the day before Ash Wednesday and signifies the start of lent. It is also known in some Countries including the UK and Australia as Pancake Day.

Pancakes are associated with the day preceding Lent because they were a way to use up rich foods such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40 days of Lent.

I normally have sweet pancakes with things like sugar and lemon or maple syrup on Shrove Tuesday which are really delicious but decided to try some savoury pancakes today so we could have them for dinner and if we fancied it afterwards, to have some sweet pancakes.

I found the recipe that is the basis of this meal here and tweaked it a bit to fit my favourite ingredients and what we had in the fridge.

The Ingredients for the Mushroom and Salmon

Ingredients
A couple of handfuls of mushrooms diced
A couple of handfuls of green capsicum and red capsicum diced
A small onion diced
200g salmon
A small jar of hollandaise sauce
A tablespoon of dill chopped

Method
I chopped up the mushrooms, capsicum and onion in to small pieces and set them aside whilst i copped up the dill. i mixed the dill and hollandaise sauce in a bowl and set that aside as well. I then chopped up the salmon in to small pieces.

Cooking Vegetables

I was lazy and used a pre mixed pancake mix where you just added water. The pancakes came out nicely but were a touch on the sweet side so I would recommend making up the pancakes yourself.

Pancake Cooking

I then began heating up the frying pan to cook the pancakes, pouring in small amounts so that I ended up with 2 pancakes per person. At the same time I turned on the oven part of the BBQ to heat it up to 200 degrees C.

I cooked up the six pancakes setting them aside before beginning the salmon mixture.

Adding in the Salmon

Firstly I cooked the onion, capsicum and mushrooms so that they were still a bit crunchy and added in the salmon by gently folding it in to the vegetables so that it didn’t break up to much.

I cooked the salmon and vegetables together for a couple of minutes before pouring in the hollandaise and dill which was cooked until hot.

With the Hollandaise

I set out the pancakes in oven trays and spooned in the mixture in to each pancake. I tried to fold the pancakes up but couldn’t get them to stay in shape even with cocktail sticks so put both trays in to the BBQ, closed the lid and cooked them for about 7 minutes until the pancakes were a bit crunchy.

Ready for the Oven

To finish of the dish I made up a light salad and served it with a pre-bought pasta salad we might have to have some sweet pancakes another day!

The Finished Product

Outback Cookery Experimentation’s – Egg Fried Rice

I was also curious about how to make the perfect egg fried rice after trying the delicious delights lots of times.

I made this recipe, ohhh probably before Christmas and it tasted really good (if I do say so myself) and then when I tried it again last week I completely messed it up so it looked like a massive pile of mashed potatoes and was only edible when mixed with the sauce from the stir fry I created.

My mistake, I think, was to cook the rice and then immediately attempt to turn it in to egg fried rice so this time I cooked up some rice last night for our dinner and made sure there was some left over for tonight’s dinner which was to be egg fried rice and sweet chilli beef stir fry.

This is another BBQ recipe and is also all cooked in the same frying pan so saves washing up (ish, I have to use lots of bowls to transport the chopped up ingredients outside to be cooked so that creates a bit of washing up).

The stir fry was not exciting as recipes go. I just cooked the beef in small pieces in sesame oil, wacked in some frozen stir fry vegetables (they always taste good but make things a bit watery which is a tad annoying) to cook for 4 or 5 minutes and then added in a supermarket bought sauce packet we bought last week as part of some good sounding deal! Let it all simmer and then it was ready to serve with the rice which was already cooked.

My rice is based upon a few searches on the internet for recipe suggestions and started off as this recipe by BBC’s Good Food Guide with a few tweaks to make it just how I wanted.

Ingredients
Cold cooked rice left overnight in the fridge.
An onion chopped in to small pieces – I used a quarter of a small onion because I didn’t have heaps of rice so this should be adjusted.
A red peppers chopped in to small pieces – again adjust to the volume of rice.
A handful of frozen peas.
A handful of mushrooms chopped in to small pieces.
2 eggs.
2 teaspoons of sesame oil.
Some ground pepper.
Honey and soya sauce.
Vegetable oil.

I started by chopping the vegetables up so that they were nice and small and would cook quickly with the rice. I then mixed the eggs and sesame oil in a bowl and left it whilst I got to work cooking the rice.

I heated the vegetable oil in the frying pan until it was quite hot and added the rice which I cooked for a few minutes to make sure it was heated right through. When the rice was a little bit brown I added the vegetables and cooked them for a couple of minutes before adding the ground pepper and soya sauce for flavouring.

I have discovered that the trick to the egg fried bit of the egg fried rice is to put it all in the frying pan and let it start cooking away a bit like an omellette. When it has started to thicken I then mixed it all in with the rice and vegetables and cooked it all until the egg was totally cooked before serving it up.

Outback Cooking Experimentations – Chicken Burritos

Today’s dinner choice was a bit unplanned but I picked up a burritos kit yesterday which came with the chicken seasoning, some salsa and the wraps so thought I would give it a go tonight. I loved how it all came together and looked so thought I would share my recipe/plan/attempt not to give everyone food poisoning.

Mid way through preparing the dinner I thought that maybe this was a bit adventurous for a Sunday night but it was also quite fun to make with all the different elements and then putting them together in the wrap to see how it tasted together. I was also worried that there wouldn’t be enough food so of course catered for 3 people for about 3 nights worth of food instead of just tonight.

Vegetables Cooking away

I also kind of followed the recipe that was on the burritos kit but also kind of went of and did my own thing.

Main Ingredients
2 Chicken breasts
1/2 red bell pepper (capsicum)
1 green bell pepper (capsicum)
1/2 red onion
About 10 small button mushrooms
1 tin of sweetcorn

Burritos Kit Ingredients
8 wraps
Chicken seasoning
Salsa

Finishing Ingredients
Sour Cream
Grated cheese
Cooked rice with peas
Lettuce leaves or similar with small tomatoes.

The Chicken cooked in the marinade/seasoning

I began by chopping up in to fairly large pieces the onion, mushrooms and red and green pepper’s and added them to a bowl with a tin of sweetcorn which had been drained.

I then chopped up two medium size chicken breasts and marinated them with the seasoning powder that came with the burrito kit in a bowl for about 10 – 15 minutes.

I was going to just cook these bits up but worried about insufficient food and put a handful of rice in to a saucepan which I boiled for about 10 minutes. Just as I took it off the pan I mixed in some frozen peas (I was also worried the rice on its own would be bland).

Rice all finished

Once the rice was finished and left to stand (one gas burner cooking at its best!) I cooked the marinated chicken in a pan which I removed and left in a heat proof dish and then cooked the chopped vegetables for a few minutes so that they were still crunchy.

The cooked veggies

The meal was completed by adding some salad, salsa, sour cream and grated cheese added to taste to the wraps before rolling them up and tucking in.

All the extras you could need

It was pretty delicious for a meal out of a box! I sometimes surprise myself with my cooking as my Mum cooks such amazing food and you never enjoy the food you’ve cooked as much as when someone else cooks it. I learnt a lot from my Mum and I experiment a bit now to see where I end. The poor Aussie has had some not so nice concoctions over the last six months (burnt stir fry last week as an example when I was distracted) but always says its nice, even when I know its not!

About to be wrapped up

Outback Cookery Experimentation’s – Christmas Dinner

I thought I would give a bit of a description of my triumphs and failures in the cookery department on my blog and even though it was over a month ago I thought I would start with our Christmas Dinner which was all cooked on the BBQ over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

I think I have mentioned that we don’t have an actual kitchen our house. We have a BBQ which has a lid and one stove top on the BBQ so that when I cook dinner for me and the Aussie I have to plan things strategically so that they are cooked in the right order and at the right time.

The ultimate test of this planning was the Christmas Dinner particularly as a lot of the vegetables if not all have to be boiled before I roasted them. I had not at this time tried roasting anything in the BBQ and too say I was nervous was an understatement. Thankfully my Mum was on hand to text me instructions and when things should be cooked!

We (crazily) braved the supermarket on Christmas Day and picked up all the food that we would need and then I started work on the roast chicken.

The BBQ is temperamental at being lit and also frequently (read always) runs out of gas right in the middle of cooking dinner but this time it all lit. I had Googled numerous times “how to roast a chicken on a BBQ” and was advised to heat the whole thing up and then turn the burner where the chicken would sit off so that it reached the optimal temperature (210 degrees C) and then the BBQ would work as a convection oven.

I watched the temperature rise and then when it was ready put the chicken in and half way through it was perfectly brown when I turned it over with the help of the Aussie. About 2 and a half hours in total (cooked for about 20 mins per pound and then an extra 20 minutes) I produced this from the BBQ and was very surprised!

I prepped all of the vegetables on Christmas Eve and so on the actual day I filled a baking tray with oil and started the potatoes boiling at the same time for about 15 minutes as they needed the longest time in the roasting tray (about 45 minutes at 180 degrees).

I set the BBQ up again as I had when I was roasting the chicken and then followed the process with the pumpkin, carrots and parsnip boiling them for about 10 minutes and then adding them to the oil along with the potatoes.

I also created pigs in blankets which is literally little sausages, usually chipolatas, with bacon wrapped around them and then if needed, secured with a cocktail stick. I placed them in an oven proof dish with some oil and cooked them for about 30 minutes at the same time as the roast vegetables.

To finish the roast off I boiled some broccoli for about 15 minutes on the stove top and mixed the pre made stuffing powder with some water and put it in another oven proof dish with a drop of oil for about 15 minutes until it was crispy on top.

Of course no roast dinner would be complete without gravy and I mixed the liquid from the roast chicken with a drop of hot water and then added this to the gravy granules and a little more water and it was ready to go.

The finished production!

We were of course so full that we couldn’t eat the Christmas Pudding that we bought (and still haven’t now in February).

This Christmas was strange as it was my first Christmas where I wasn’t at home with my family but was also different in a good way with the Aussie and his Brother.

I was very excited to speak to my Family in the evening whilst they opened up their presents and I am planning a mini Christmas for them (probably using a cooker this time) when they get here in June.

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