Spicy Broccolini and Bacon Spaghetti

Sometimes you don't have much time to cook or you just don't feel like standing in the kitchen for hours.  That is when a simple and quick meal like this one is great.  All up it should take well under 30 minutes to make and tastes delicious.

Quick, easy and tasty!

Ingredients

• 250g Spaghetti
• 100g Bacon, roughly chopped
• 1 Onion, roughly chopped
• 1 clove Garlic, finely chopped or crushed
• 1 bunch Broccolini
• 400g can chopped Tomatoes
• 2 tsp Hot Chilli Sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• Shredded Cheese (we used mozzarella as we were out of parmesan)

Cook spaghetti in a large pot of boiling, salted water.
In a large frypan, cook bacon for 3 minutes.  Add Onion and garlic and fry for another 3 minutes.
Roughly chop the stems of the broccolini and add to the pan.  Continue frying for 5 minutes.
Add tomatoes,chilli sauce, broccolini heads and water.  Bring to the boil then reduce heat to simmer for 5 minutes.  To serve, put spaghetti into bowls, then add sauce and top with cheese.

Chilli Mayonnaise

I tried making my own mayonnaise before I bought a food processor without much luck.  Using just a whisk I was never able to get the right consistency (it was always very runny).  Now that I have a food processor though, it's really easy to make mayonnaise and it comes out thick and creamy!

This is the chilli version that Teena and I both like, but we also make plain one with Dijon mustard and a garlic mayonnaise that I like.  I hear people talking about ranch dressing all the time but have yet to attempt that ( I don't think it's as popular in Australia as it is in America).

Chilli Mayonnaise

 
Ingredients
1 egg yolk
150ml canola oil
1 tbs hot chilli sauce
salt

Place egg yolk and 1 tsp oil in food processor.
Blend for 20 seconds.  With processor turned on, slowly drizzle oil into the top funnel.
Start with a very thin stream and increase as the mixture thickens.
After half the oil has been added, add a pinch of salt (to taste).  Add remaining oil slowly.
Once all the oil has been added, add the chilli and continue mixing until it is mixed through.

A jar of Chilli Mayonnaise

Beef Casserole with Rosemary Dumplings

Lots of vegies!

 There's nothing like a nice casserole or stew to warm you up in winter.  But it's not winter in Australia at the moment, it's actually quite hot.  That didn't stop us from making this delicious dish the other night.  We love the dumplings, they really make the dish in our opinion.  The best thing about a dish like this is that you can add just about anything you have on hand.

Ingredients

• 500g casserole steak, cut into small chunks
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 1 large Clove garlic, sliced
• 1 red capsicum, roughly chopped
• 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 1 cup frozen green beans
• 1 sweet potato, roughly chopped
• 1 potato, roughly chopped
• 1 cup pumpkin, roughly chopped
• 2 tbs plain flour
• 4 cups vegetable stock (or beef stock)
• 1/4 cup wine

 Rosemary Dumplings

• (2/3 cup self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 25g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tbs rosemary leaves
• 2 tbs milk

Sponsered by... ???

Heat oil in pan.  Add steak and stir until browned.  Remove from pan and set aside.
Heat some more oil.  Add onion, capsicum and garlic.  Cook for 3 minutes on high.
Add carrots, kidney beans, green beans, potato, sweet potato and pumpkin.  Cook for 5 minutes stirring often.
Stir in flour and cook for a few more minutes.  Add stock and wine.  Bring to the boil.
Reduce heat to low and cook, covered, for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

The dumplings soak up the delicious stew.

To make the dumplings, sift flour and baking powder into a bowl.  Add butter  and rub until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.  Stir in rosemary, salt and pepper.  Add milk and mix until you have a soft dough.  Add the dumplings into the casserole and cook a further 20-30 minutes until dumplings are cooked through (test with a skewer).

Ready to eat!

The Rosemary was dried from the plants in our potted garden.  You can read more about our rosemary on my wife Teena's blog, flushedwithrosycolour.

Hot chilli sauce

I love chillies.  I've grown them for years and often make my own chilli relish with fresh chillies Straight from the garden.  Sometimes I dry them as well and make my own dried chilli flakes.

A bowl of chillies fresh from the garden.

Today I noticed there was a nice crop of chillies on my plants when I looked out the window, but I already have a jar of chilli relish in the fridge. So I decided to make some hot chilli sauce instead.
I found a simple recipe that popped up a couple of times when I was searching for recipes and added some extra ingredients to add to the flavour.

Chopped chillies, ready to go.

Ingredients
200g chilli peppers, ends removed and roughly chopped
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 tsp fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, sliced
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tsp lime juice

Add all ingredients to a pot and bring to the boil.
Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring constantly for 8 minutes.
Transfer the sauce to a blender and blitz it for a minute or so until you have a nice consistency.
Pour into clean sterilised jars.

A jar of chilli sauce ready for tasting.

It turned out really good.  It's very hot but that's how I like it.  You can always blend it together with some tomato sauce or something if it turns out to be too hot, or replace some of the chillies with capsicums.  I think I might use some of this to make some chilli mayonaise tomorrow...

Hint:  If you get chilli on your hands while chopping them and it starts to burn, rub your hands on something made from stainless steel (like your kitchen sink or a large spoon).  Sounds weird but it works!

I think these are jalapeño peppers

Visit Teena's blog for more about our chilli garden.

Choc Chip Cookies

 
I'd never made choc chip cookies before but thought I would give it a go.  After a quick search I found a pretty simple recipe over at Best Recipes.  It also gave me a good excuse to use my new electric mixer!

Ingredients
125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
3/4 cup choc chips

 

Preheat oven to 160°C.  Cream butter and sugars.  Mix in vanilla essence and egg.  Sift in flour until well combined, then add choc chips.

As always, you never know what's going to happen the first time you try a new cookie recipe.  The first batch I used too much mixture for each cookie and they flattened out more then I thought they would.  So I ended up with some giant cookies!

The next batch I used about a teaspoon of filling and they turned out just right.  They only take about 10 minutes to cook and were very tasty!

Steamed Buns

Here is the recipe for the Steamed Buns I made for my Birthday Feast.  Normally these are made with pork as Char Siu Bau at Yum Cha (Dim Sum).  As soon as I saw the recipe in my The Food of the World - A Journey for Food Lovers book, I knew I had to make them!  We just love going to Yum Cha and this is possibly my favourite dish, though there are so many yummy foods it is hard to choose a favourite.  I was very pleased that these worked so well and tasted just like the real thing.  I think they may become a regular item on our menu!  The dough does take some time to prepare, but once it is ready they are very easy to make and well worth it.

Basic Chinese Yeast Dough
3 tbsp Sugar
1 Cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
400g plain flour
2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Place the water, sugar and oil in an electric mixer bowl.  Add flour, make a small well on top and add yeast.  Mix with dough hook attachment until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 8-10 minutes.  If you don't have an electric mixer you can mix with a wooden spoon, then knead dough on a lightly floured surface.  Lightly grease a bowl with some oil, place the dough in the bowl and turn it so that all sides are coated.  Cover with a cloth and set aside to rise in a draught free place for 3 hours.

Uncover the dough, punch it down and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.  If you are not ready to use the dough, you can wrap it in plastic wrap and place in fridge until ready.  When you are ready to use the it, flatten the dough and make a well in the center.  Place the baking powder in the well and gather up the edges to enclose the baking powder.  Pinch the edges to seal.  Lightly knead the dough for several minutes to evenly incorporate the baking powder.  It is not ready to use.

Red Bean Filling
1 tsp oil
1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed.
1 onion, finely chopped
1 small zucchini, finely chopped
3 button mushrooms, chopped
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp soy sauce
3 tsp sugar

Heat the oil in a wok or large frypan.  Add the beans and stir fry for about 3 minutes until the beans are soft and breaking up a little.  Add the onion, mushrooms and zucchini and cook for a further 2 minutes.  Add the sesame oil, soy sauce and sugar, cook for a further minute, then leave to cool.

Steamed Buns
Divide the dough into 24 portions.  Press a portion into a circle and place 1-2 tsps of the red bean filling into the middle of the dough.  Fold the sides up to enclose the filling, pinching the top to seal them completely.  Repeat with remaining portions.  Place the buns well apart into a steamer.  Normally this would be done in a bamboo steamer over a wok but as we didn't have any, I just used a vegetable steamer insert over a saucepan of boiling water.  Steam the buns over simmering water for 15 minutes or until the buns are well risen and a skewer inserted into the center comes out hot.

A Birthday Feast

For my Birthday this year, I decided to cook my own special Birthday feast!  As Teena and I both love going to Yum Cha, I wanted to try cooking some myself at home.  I'd found a recipe for Sweet Pork Buns in a book...  It looked easy enough and I wanted to try it as soon as I saw it, so this was a good opportunity to try it out.  So in the end I came up with the following menu:

Vegetarian Spring Rolls, Steamed Sweet Buns, Fried Rice and Hot and Honeyed Chicken Wings

The Vegetarian Spring Rolls were very tasty.  Teena doesn't usually like spring rolls, but she did like these one.  I found the recipe at Taste.com.au.  They were fairly easy to make, but I ended up using all the wrappers and still having a bowl full of vegetables and noodles left over.  We just fried that up for dinner though so it wasn't wasted.  We froze the leftover spring rolls and they cook up just fine after defrosting them.

The original recipe for these Sweet buns were with a pork filling. As Teena is 16 weeks pregnant, we are being careful with the food she is eating.  So I made the filling with red beans instead of pork.  I wasn't sure how these would turn out but I was hopeful as i really love these when we go to Yum Cha!  I'm happy to say they were delicious!  A bit involved as it takes a while to prepare the dough, but once that's done it was fairly easy.  They may not look so great in the picture, I should have taken one opened up...  But they do taste great, the bun is so sweet and soft, and the filling turned out great as well.  You can see the recipe for these here.

I also love fried rice.  This one was a little different then usual with some ginger and shredded Chinese cabbage in it.  It was nice but I prefer the type you get in a restaurant, something I've never really been able to recreate...

These chicken wings are so tasty!  It's really hard to stop eating them...  I've made them before though, so you can see the recipe here.

So needless to say, I had a good birthday :)