Meaty Menu

I went to pick up my son from the bus stop and decided to do a diversion down the road to the regional centre to try on clothes and go to a meat place.  The prices were not as cheap as I had hoped.  They did have a special on chicken and bacon.  Also they had things I hadn't seen here for awhile because I don't travel to shop and I think one IGA has changed what meats they get in, so has the other IGA actually.  So I was able to get things I enjoyed buying from a couple of years ago.  I spent just over $100.  Still I use meat sparingly to make it go further.  Although I am going to have veal campagnola as a treat, as it is a family tradition.  The mince was a price from a couple of years ago.  I find the Coles at the regional centre's meat is a little expensive atm, so went to this meat place instead, and the sausages were still cheap like I would have paid a couple of years ago.  I am wondering how many menus I will get from this meat, I am hoping three.  I have had this can of green peppercorns for ages, when I find another silverside I will use them for that.   The chicken pie recipe was from a facebook update from the taste site.  It is similar to a pie we made a couple of months ago that we really enjoyed.  The pork sausage and silverside, I'll have to wait until I find the ingredients.  I bought a couple of pre-made meatloafs as my youngest daughter can't remember eating meatloaf and has asked twice about it.  I have two extra kids home on the weekend, my second and third children.  So there will be six of us, hopefully we can make the chicken burgers and veal as they are special for them, well me and I have the extra meat.  I got the dog a rather large bone that I haven't been able to do for ages either.  There have been some special recipes with lamb mince I've seen, now to find them.

I am concerned that my use of rookwurst predates this blog.  I used to use it for bigos.  I have an older blog and my other blog and I am using it to work out what I did with it, since I bought one.  It is very hard to find sauerkraut now though, one upon a time my local shop always had it, but you couldn't rely on it having other things except chicken mince, but it doesn't now. 

Pork Sausage & Cherry Tomato Bake (like the rocket one we use, see below)
Silverside with Green Peppercorns
Tuesday ~ Chicken, Leek & Lemon Pie
Wednesday ~ Chicken Schnitzel Burgers
Thursday ~ Lamb Mince Pasta Bake (pastitsio, like a Greek lasagne flavour)
Friday ~ Meatloaf
Saturday ~ Rigatoni Milano (uses Italian sausages)
Sunday ~ Veal Campagnola
Monday ~ Beef Keftedes with Tzatziki & Tomato Salad
Tuesday ~ Beef Sausage Minestrone
Wednesday ~ Pumpkin & Bacon Pasta
Thursday ~ Lamb, Feta & Herb Pasta
Friday ~ Beef Sausage & Lentil Casserole
Saturday ~ Fettucine Carbonara
Sunday ~ Taco Salad
Monday ~ Bratwurst with Lentils & Salsa Verde or Butter Chicken


Recipe by Cooking Company Noosa via Facebook

Jamie Oliver's Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage Bake - slightly adapted by me !

• 2kg lovely ripe cherry tomatoes, mixed colours if you can find them or x2 400g tins of cherry tomatoes
• 2 sprigs each of fresh thyme, rosemary and bay
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
- 2 red onions roughly chopped
• 12 good-quality Cumerland or coarse Italian pork sausages
• extra virgin olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas 5.
Get yourself an appropriately sized roasting tray, large enough to take the tomatoes in one snug-fitting layer.
Heat up a splash of olive oil and sauté the onions until soft.
Put in all your tomatoes, the herb sprigs, oregano, garlic and sausages. Drizzle well with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and season with salt and pepper.
Toss together, then make sure the sausages are on top and pop the tray into the oven for half an hour. After this time, give it a shake and turn the sausages over.
Put back into the oven for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how golden and sticky you like your sausages.

PS Any leftovers can be chopped up and made into a wonderful chunky pasta dish, using penne or rigatoni, the next day.

Once it’s cooked, you’ll have an intense, tomatoey sauce. If it’s a little too thin, lift out the sausages and place the tray on the hob to cook it down to the consistency you like – I tend to make mine quick thick – then put the sausages back in.

Interesting recipes:
Huey's black lentil recipe:  Bratwurst with Lentils & Salsa Verde

Retro Apricot Chicken

I had typed this out when I was a teenager

Apricot Chicken

Put pieces of one chicken, 1 can of apricot nectar, and 1 packet of French Onion Soup mix into baking tray and bake until cooked.

Notes: Heat apricot and soup, flour chicken. 1 1/2 hours at 350oF.

Bigos Recipe for Rookwurst

Pulled from another place where I wrote this, I found I bought a rookwurst and couldn't remember what I made with it.


Bigos

This is a quick recipe. Take a cup of shredded cabbage and start slowly sautéing, when it is soft and cooked (about 10 minutes) add a 3/4 of a cup of sauerkraut. Cut into small chunks your rookwurst and also add to the pan. Turn the heat up, Cook for about 10 minutes, stir so not to burn the cabbage, add a couple of spoons of tomato sauce or ketchup, salt 7 pepper to taste, cook another 3-5 minutes.. Taste better on a cold day. Just like, we are having today. This is an extremely simplified recipe of Polish Bigos/Bigus.

P.S. Some mashed potato on a side is an added bonus.

From: www.discusscooking.com

A favourite at our house.

Jam Melon Recipes

I have a lot of melon recipes posted around the net on the days we made things with them.  This seems to be a good collection, I am hoping so.  I have to go back and work out which was the best from another place. 


Jam Melon Pickles
5kg melon
6 large onions
2 tablespoons mustard
1 tablespoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 cup sugar
8 cups vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
see below for modifications*
Cut up melon and onions, sprinkle with salt and stand overnight. In the morning strain off all liquid, mix the dry ingredients with a little vinegar, put into the pan, and stir till it boils. Then add the rest of the vinegar, the melon and onions, and boil till tender.
Adapted from: P.W.M.U. Cookery Book 1982 edition. Ann Gemmell, Lothian.
The modifications are *an extra cup of sugar and 4 tabs flour added 10 minutes before the end after mixing it with a bit of the pickles in a cup. We also used a handful of salt (1/2 cup) for the salting down process, as per a recipe for melon chutney (posted).

Makes 16 jars.


Jam Melon & Apple Chutney
2.7kg jam/pie melons
800g apples
1.75kg onions
1.5kg sugar
4 cups vinegar
2 tablespoons salt
4 teaspoons ground ginger
3 teaspoons white pepper
2 teaspoons ground cloves
500g raisins
Chop melons finely, as well as onions and apples. Put 1 cup of vinegar with mixture on low heat. In meantime finely chop raisins.
When starting to boil put in the sugar, the longer the sugar is in the darker the chutney.
After the sugar is well dissolved and the chutney is cooking add the raisins.
Wait until everything is well cooked. Add rest of the vinegar, simmer on low heat in two pans, until thick.
Will take about 2 hrs to get to correct thickness.
Takes a couple of months to ‘mature’ in flavour, should improve with keeping and store for two to three years.

This chutney my husband likes as he likes sweet things on cheese.

Old-fashioned Apple Crumble & Chocolate Fudge

I typed this up ages ago on my original blog.  My daughter recently asked for chocolate fudge, that is what I call self saucing chocolate pudding, I called it that as a child.  These recipes would not be metric. 

My Nana was a good cook.  She loved to bake slices and make puddings.  She also made trifle.  I loved her mixing bowl, it was a slightly different color at the bottom from use.  All was made on the kitchen table, mostly baked in the wood oven.  She had flour drawers built into her cupboards when she ordered them.  Her drawer had a broken tea cup for measuring.

Apple Crumble
1 cup Self Raising Flour
3/4 cup coconut dessicated
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
Rub butter into dry ingredients.  Put onto top of stewed apple and bake. 
This recipe is before metric.
Chocolate Fudge
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 cup Self Raising flour
2 level dessertspoons cocoa
Cream butter and sugar, add unbeaten egg.  Fold in milk, flour, and cocoa alternately.  Pour cake mixture into deep greased baking dish.  Make topping with 1/2 cup sugar and 2 level dessertspoons cocoa and sprinkle on top of cake mixture in dish then gently spoon 1 1/2 cups hot water onto mixture.  Bake in moderate oven 35 mins. 
Also a non metric recipe.

Tofu & Spinach Stir-fry

Pulling this off my original blog.  It is about my first experience with tofu. 

I put off eating tofu for quite awhile, but the two recipes, I think there were two, were a great success.  From memory this one is my favourite. 

Tofu & Spinach Stir-Fry
Serves: 4
Preparation Time: 10 mins
Cooking Time: 22 mins
Tofu & Spinach Stir-Fry
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups (300g) SunRice Thai Jasmine Fragrant Rice
2 1/4 cups stock or water
1 tblspn oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tspns grated ginger
2 chillies, sliced
1/3 cup pinenuts
300g fried tofu, cut into 2cm cubes
1 bunch English spinach, washed and shredded
1/3 cup soy or teriyaki sauce (optional)
Method:
1) Bring rice and stock (or water) to the boil in a saucepan. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, 12 minutes. Remove from heat and stand, covered, 10 minutes.
2) Heat oil in a wok or frypan over a moderately high heat.Stir-fry onions until golden, 3-4 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, chillies and pinenuts and cook until nuts are golden, 2-3 minutes.
3) Stir in tofu and spinach, cook for 3 minutes or until spinach has wilted. Stir in rice and soy sauce (optional), heat through and serve.
Tips:
Rice can be prepared ahead of time.
Variations:
For a Japanese style meal use SunRice Koshihikari rice instead of SunRice Jasmine rice.
The recipe is from SunRice.  Though the recipe doesn’t appear to be on the site anymore.

The reason I seem vague, it was exactly a year ago when I tried this recipe. 

Warm Cottage Salad using Pork Sausages

This recipe was on my other blog.  The blog has spam redirection at the moment, but I found my recipes somewhere else.  When it gets fixed I can check, but I'm sure it is the same. 

Warm Cottage Salad (Sausage)

6 Country Style Pork Sausages
500g Tiny (chat ) Potatoes
300g Green beans , halved
100g Grape Tomatoes
150g baby spinach or rocket leaves
8 green olives
50g fetta cheese

Dressing
1/2 cup quality Mayonnaise
2 tsp Lemon Juice
1 tsp Garlic Crushed
2 Tblsp warm water

Place Country style pork sausages in a shallow frying pan and cover with cold water. Simmer gently for 4 minutes . Drain and cool slice into thick diagonal slices.

Place potatoes in the base of a steamer and cover with cold water , bring to the boil covered and boil for 5 minutes . Reduce heat and place the beans in the top half of the steamer for further 4 minutes.
Remove the pan from the heat and set the beans aside , potatoes should remain in the water covered for a further 5 minutes.

Heat a large frying or griddle pan over a high heat and brown the sliced sausages well 2-3 minutes.

Place the Spinach ,tomaotes, beans , crumbled fetta and olives into a large serving bowl and toss well.

Divide the salad evenly onto serving plates. Arrange the drained baby potatoes and the browned sausages slices over the salad.

Whisk together the dressing ingredients and drizzle over the salad just prior to serving.

Originally from the Australian Pork site.  

Polish Sausage Salad

I found this recipe on my original blog.

Polish Sausage Salad
6 large potatoes
6 eggs, hard boiled and peeled
2 slices thick 1/2 inch double smoked ham, optional
1 cup garlic chives or
(garlic & red onion chopped finely)
1 tablespoon mild mustard
8 polski or gerki (gherkins)
5 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 teaspoons salt
cracked pepper (optional)
1 (KR?) Polish Sausage or 2 sticks export polish sausage chopped
1 green spring onion chopped
Mix onion, mustard, mayonnaise, garlic, set aside.
Serves 6.
Adapted from goodrecipes.

Indian & Pancake Menu

My husband was very lucky to get a crepe pan from the op-shop on a Thursday when he was taking my car to get a new modified exhaust system.  We found he needed one, and one appeared.  It is a lovely frypan.  So I hope we can make crepes especially to see how it goes with them.  

Tuesday ~ Crepes with Chinese Chicken
Wednesday ~
Thursday ~ Roasted Sumac Pumpkin and Feta Soft Tacos
Friday ~ Moroccan-style Shepherds' Pie (uses harissa)
Saturday ~ Butter Chicken Wraps (uses chicken mince, chapatis) from Coles magazine
Sunday ~ Pies
Monday ~ Pizza
Tuesday ~ Left-over Minestrone Soup
Wednesday ~ Pea & Ham Soup with Krankys
Thursday ~ Indian Chicken & Cauliflower Pilaf
Friday ~ Vegetable Kedgeree (from magazine to use up almonds)
Saturday ~ Indian Pancakes with Tomato & Coconut Relish
Sunday ~ Creamy Corncakes with Curry Mayo
Monday ~ Left Over Pumpkin Minestrone Soup

Interesting recipes:

Borlotti Bean Mole with Pumpkin
Black Bean & Pumpkin Chili
Black Bean & Pumpkin Soup
Black Bean, Jalapeno, Pumpkin Quesadillas
Black Bean & Pumpkin Soup 2
Black Bean & Pumpkin Adaptation
Pumpkin Cupcake with Vanilla Buttercream
Eggnog Pancakes

Baking:
Herb and Cheese Scones with Chive Cream
Muesli Pikelets
Fruity Carrot Slice

School Holiday Menu

We had another go at Gozleme this week, with mixed results again.  I had a left over one for lunch today and was really impressed with the dill flavour.  The pastry wasn't quite cooked, it was just as good as cafe food though I think.

Tuesday ~  Beef Chow Mein to use up beans will try this later  Beef Crepes with Gruyere Sauce
Wednesday ~ Pies
Thursday ~ Japanese Pancakes or swap because I used the cabbage
Friday ~ Chorizo Potato Salad
Saturday ~Tuna & Feta Salad
Sunday ~Mustard Chicken with Mixed Beans & Peas (uses up some things) no chicken at shop
Monday ~ Woman's Weekly Tuna pie instead of Cauliflower, Blue Cheese & Spinach Frittata
Tuesday ~ left over silverside and potatoes
Wednesday ~ Red Salmon, Witlof & Rocket Salad
Thursday ~ Chorizo & Feta Gozleme with Tomato Salad
Friday ~ Sausage Stroganoff
Saturday ~ Bacon, Egg & Sausage Burgers
Sunday ~ Slow Roasted Spicy Beef Tacos (uses silverside)
Monday ~ Chorizo, Corn & Black Bean Salad with Tortillas
Extra subs for chicken dish and using up cabbage:
Minestrone with Pumpkin

Winter Menu

Some of these recipes I think can be adapted.  Like I may use normal pasta instead of wholemeal, and I have used a few recipes to come up with my own Gozleme using another lady's idea, she tried it and it worked, so we will try our own version following her idea.  I am not having actual roast chicken, just a BBQ chicken from the shop with gravy over it.  The ideas came from sale items at the green grocers and the left over silverbeet I have.  We tend to keep adding to our knowledge of variations of things or combinations of foods that we have enjoyed before.  Hence the haloumi.  If we can't buy rocket pesto we will use another one we make ourselves, that is in a sausage bake I have posted before.  I have rocket left over from one of the other dishes.  Swap recipes on my site, are recipes using ingredients I have already bought but are similar and usually don't use the meat that I end up not being able to buy.  However I do except my food budget to improve.  But in the meantime I have learnt to appreciate the simpler dishes in most cases.  Looking forward to eating more tuna.  Going to use half chicken on special for one recipe and another with the half jar of pesto in our fridge. 

Tuesday ~ Gozleme
Wednesday ~ Roasted Potato with Haloumi & Rosemary & Roast Chicken & Gravy
Thursday ~ Wholemeal Pasta Spirals with Rocket Pesto, Green Beans & Potato
Friday ~ Cauliflower, Pumpkin & Pea Korma (uses left over tomatoes)
Saturday ~  Tuna Pilau
Sunday ~ Tuna, Fennel & Caper Spaghetti
Monday ~ Salami, Broccoli & Cabbage Pasta
Tuesday ~ Savoury Mince & Potato Wedges
Wednesday ~ Chicken Schnitzel Burgers
Thursday ~ Chicken & Tomato Pesto Pappardelle
Friday ~ Savoury Mince & Chat Potatoes
Saturday ~ Paella
Sunday ~ Pumpkin & Bean Salad with Feta
Monday ~ Moroccan Lentil & Chickpea Soup

Interesting recipes:
Gozleme (silverbeet snack with homemade flatbread and feta inside)
Greek Pasta Filo Pie (uses lamb mince)
Warm Potato & Sausage Salad (uses Italian sausages)
Warm Potato & Sausage Salad (uses chipolatas)
Tuna & Hummus Wraps
Ham, Bean & Cabbage Soup
Pumpkin & Feta Arancini
Lentil & Haloumi Salad

Success from last week:  
Chicken, Silverbeet & Fennel Potato Pie

Baking:
Apple & Almond Pie
using gifted apples
recipe from Foodworks calendar from notes section on their facebook page, I can buy the almonds with my fruit and vegetables