EPIC FAIL

tonight's attempt came from the women's weekly short & fast recipe book. "pumpkin and corn patties" which shall be from here on known as SLOP. the recipe called for deb instant mashed potatoes but i just couldn't bring myself to that so i used normal mash (error #1 i soon discovered)...

boiled 1 cup of coarsely chopped pumpkin and 2 cups of potato (i don't really like the boiling, i think if i ever attempt to make this slop again i might try roasting them instead.)

mashed together with 1/2 cup of buttermilk (125ml), 125g can of drained and rinsed (why?) corn kernels and 1/2 coarse chopped fresh parsley.

now here i was supposed to 'shape mixture' into patties- but what i had was sloppy slop so there was no definitely no shaping happening ("choo chooo"- that's the sound of the fail train coming!) but i tried my best using a spoon. i was supposed to 'coat the patties' in toasted sesame seeds (1/2 cup/ 75g) and then cook them in heated oil in large pan. this of course turned to browned oily mash slop fairly quickly. also the mixture was tangy and pretty gross. so i added an egg (to try and hold it all together) and some curry powder and piri piri and tried again. still a fail, but a slightly less fail. so then i tried in the oven. this was the most succesful.

it tasted okay but gosh it was ugly. i must say i am left feeling quite disappointed. friggen cooking. FAIL

potato roesti

only slightly different from the recipe in the darling donna hay book <3

6 chat potatoes peeled and shredded
1 1/2 tblspn's olive oil
1/3 grated fancy pants parmesan
1 1/2 tspn's thyme leaves
salt & pepper

place the mixture in 6 heaps on baking papered tray and cook at 200c for oooh around 20 mins. we had ours with steak*, red wine honey jus (dane made that) and peeeeeas. success!

*cooking steak 101

heat oil in pan on high until it just begins to smoke. place the meat *gently* in the pan then JUMP the heck back coz that stuff is spitting (i used the lid as a shield-this was successful- i can recommend it). when the blood pools (ew ew ew) on top then turn it over and it will take about half as long to cook that side as it did the first side. i like mine a little hotter and little more cooked than dane so i did mine first and then put it in the oven to keep warm with the roesti's. good good. *thumbs up*

oooooooh i make up a recipe!

i couldn't find a recipe for mini quiches with pumpkin so i just made one up! taking advice from another quiche recipe of course.... i needed a starting point:

MADE UP MINI-QUICHE

1/2 cup cream
4 eggs
rocket
1/2 onion, browned
grated expensive parmesan
1 chopped and cooked bacon rasher
short crust pastry
finely diced roasted pumpkin

after prepping the ingredients, and while the pumpkin was roasting and the bacon and onion frying, i lined the muffin tray with baking paper and shortcrust pastry and pre-cooked that for 5-10 mins (so the bottoms weren't soggy). whizzed the cream, salt & pepper. fancy parmesan and eggs in the beloved kitchen whizz (thanks casey!) scrunched a few leaves of rocket into each mini quiche pastry cup, sprinkled the bacon, pumpkin and onion in and then poured the whizzed egg/cream/paremesan mixture over the top and baked in the oven at 180c until puffy and slightly browned. let them set/cool in the muffin tin before removing.

iron chef judge tonight gave an whopping 8/10 and went back for SECONDS which is enough of a good sign for me :D he suggests leaving the rocket out and trimming the excess pastry off next time (but i don't agree :P)

2 things i have learned from dane: guess the amounts, forget measurements and 'if in doubt 180c'.

p.s look out nigella

G/B

i know i know it's pushing the whole 'cooking' concept but we had all the ingredients here already and a baguette that was going stale so i made.....

GARLIC BREAD

1 giant tablespoon scoop of butter
3 crushed garlic cloves
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped continental parsley
le baguette
salt & pepper

combine and stir/mash in a bowl, slice the bread and slop the butter in there, wrap in foil, cook in 200 c oven for 30 mins.

WALAHH

harry & dane gave it thumbs up, i thought it was pretty good too.

cupcakes for penny

i baked cupcakes this morning. it's something i like to do on my little girl's birthday. if she hadn't died she would have been 6 today. i can't believe how the time has flown.

spaghetti bol 7/10

tonight's recipe is from the women's weekly back to basics cookbook:

INGREDIENTS

olive oil
2 cloves garlic
3 slices of pancetta
1 large onion
1 med. carrot
500g mince beef
1 cup milk
60g butter
250g beef stock
1 cup shiraz
410g can chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons tom. paste
fine chopped flat leaf/continental parsley
spaghetti
VERY expensive parmesan (OH MY)

i got everything ready before i started because it's all a bit hectic for me yet trying to concentrate on stirring things AND chopping/measuring whatever needs to go in next. i flipping SUCK at "chopping" and dane had to give me another (my 34th) lesson, but at least this time half of the ingredients didn't end up on the floor.

METHOD

i heated (medium heat) extra virgin olive oil (that's the only oil we ever use) in our big orange vintage corningware saucepan (jill!, is that what that pot is?) cooking the pancetta until crisp. next adding onion (low heat) and carrot and stirring them until the onion was soft.

next, browned the beef (high heated) until it was mostly brown and no longer clumping (yuuuuuuuuuck, this part stinks).

added the milk and butter and stirred occasionally until the liquid had reduced a fair bit and then the stock, wine, puree and paste and left to simmer (low heat) with the lid half on for 1 hour, then the lid of for another half hour. cooked the pasta (under dane's supervision), stirred through the chopped parsley (from our garden!!), sprinkled with ala expensive parmesano and WHALA!

tonight's iron chef expert connoisseur super judge generously gave the dish 7/10. pretty chuffed :)

WOO! my beautiful donna hay arrived today and it is, well, BEAUTIFUL! it is much bigger than i expected and all of the recipes look soooo good! i look forward to a time when we have enough $$$ to buy ingredients to cook the recipes :) YUM

pikelets OK!

i have been craving pikelets with gluttonous amounts of butter and jam for days and since i am having a sad day today, i decided to make myself a cheer up breakfast. i had a big cry last night and this morning my darling boyfriend had left his eftpos card for me with his very last $15 on it, even though that means he won't have any money at work today, just so i could go to the store and buy things to make the pikelets. naaaaw what a sweetheart. no wonder i <3 him. that darling!! *swoon*

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/5757/pikelets

i did add the recommended bit of vanilla, but not the extra sugar and i thought they were just perfect. ummmm except for i couldn't wait to eat i was SO hungry so of course the last few batches got a bit burnt OOPS.and of course i ate myself stupid on them YUM. and yes i do feel a bit better now. thank you.

fail/win

cooking home fries/chips round #2 was another fail :( however this mornings hard boiled eggs were a win! :) however i did burn my toast :(