Entries tagged with medium difficulty level

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Walnut-crusted pork with maple and mustard pears

I made a first-round attempt at this on the weekend, and the following represents the conclusions my partner (who is more accustomed to roasting pork than I) and I came to about getting it right next time. The base recipe I was working from was this one, from the promotional food magazine in the grocery store, but I added the walnuts and assorted other bits and bobs.

( Dietary and other notes )

( What you need )

( What you do with it )

I served this with a side of kale sautéed with bacon, because in for a pig in for a... bacon?

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Creamy mushroom and spinach pasta

Oh my, why have I never thought to put sage in pasta sauce before? So good. This is adapted from Budget Bytes' mushroom herb pasta.

( Diet and accessibility notes )

( What you need and what you do with it )

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Amazing Pasta: Eggplant, spinach and pine nuts

In the ancestry of this recipe are a Nigella Lawson dish and a Leanne Brown dish, combined because I really needed to use up both sets of ingredients.

( Diet and accessibility notes )

( What you need and what you do with it )

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Chickpea, Spinach and Goats' Cheese Pilaf

I don't get to make Haloumi Pilaf much anymore, because the fried Haloumi really needs two people to eat it up (it tastes weird after it's cooled) and because haloumi is really hard to find here.

Today I finally made an acceptable alternative. I also solved my 'the spinach in this dish is giving it a grainy texture, wtf I thought I'd washed the stuff' problem, *and* the goat's cheese will last with the leftovers.

( Dietary and accessibility notes )

( What you need and what you do with it )

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Improv Chili

1 large or 1.5 med onions, diced (about 2 cups)
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes with chilies
1 28-oz can chunky tomato sauce
3 Tbsp molasses
~1 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped small
~6 oz canned pumpkin
~1/2 package Quorn grounds
1 bottle porter beer (optional)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder

1. Saute the onions in olive oil until translucent. (Optional; I prefer my onions cooked more than they get in a crock pot.)
2. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker and cook on high 3-4 hours or until done. (Spice quantities are estimates; adjust to taste.) (I assume you could do it longer on low.)

Serve with pumpkin spoon bread. (This is why there's a remnant of canned pumpkin in the chili, you see.) Bake the spoon bread toward the last hour of cooking, and it'll be nice and hot in your bowl.

(xposted from my journal)

Current Mood: full

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Massaman Curry (sort of)

This is the curry I made last night (my first attempt at curry and it turned out SO delicious - w00t!) modified from this recipe my dear Katie linked me to. I think I prefer my version. If you have accessibility issues, this is a good recipe to get help with on the prep. My carer did all the peeling and chopping and thus made it possible for me to make this recipe at all.

Accessibility Notes: This is a spoon-eating recipe. You will need to peel and dice potatoes, slice capsicum in small strips, peel and cut ginger into tiny cubes, cut up chicken if yours doesn't come from the store in handy bite-sized strips like mine did, open a tin, stir a full large skillet without slopping over, cook rice, and measure peanut butter out without screaming in frustration (I screamed).

Equipment Needed: A huge deep skillet pan thing or medium huge pot with lid. A wooden spoon for stirring. A ladle for serving. A knife and cutting block and a veg peeler (if you use one) for prep. A tablespoon measurement. A helper is awesome here for the prep.
( Curry! )

Mods: can we have tag: thai?

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Sweet autumn vegetable roast with apples

This evening I had planned to make the autumn vegetable roast from easy vegetarian one-pot, but I had some white wine and a craving for Tarragon Chicken Tray Bake - but neither tarragon nor chicken. A bit of googling, the vague process outline from In the Kitchen's spicy vegetable bake, and this happened:

( Dietary and accessibility notes )

( Ingredients and method )

This works perfectly well as a one-pot meal. If I were serving it at a dinner party, though, I would accompany it with something... I'm thinking of my mother's cold rice and apple salad, which doesn't seem to be duplicated online but is not entirely unlike this rice salad here. Chronic meat-eaters might find baked vegetables like this a good accompaniment to roast chicken (stuff with sliced apples? Or is that overkill on the apples... lemon might counter-balance the sweetness nicely).

~

** I haven't worked out the ideal temperature / time ratio. An hour was nooot quite enough at 180 degrees. Either up the temperature or extend the time! I have this problem with the spicy vegetable bake, too.

Current Mood: full

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Chicken waterzooi and crispy potatoes

"At some point I must try Julia Child's chicken waterzooi," I said, and tonight we did, since we were dining with friends who weren't interested in fish. The creaminess of it reminded me of many years ago when Mi Cucina on Hudson & Jane was a good restaurant and served utterly sublime pollo y rajas con crema with wonderful crispy cubes of potato (if there's a name for those in Spanish, I don't know it), so crispy potatoes became our side dish. We drank Thomas Henry chardonnay, with which I promptly fell in love--glorious notes of caramel!--and sopped our bowls with French bread and it was very, very good.

Both recipes have been modified to be dairy-free. The potatoes are vegan; the waterzooi could be veganized pretty easily.

( Crispy potatoes )

( Chicken waterzooi )

Both recipes supposedly serve four, so we doubled them. They just barely served six. Fortunately the waterzooi is intensely rich and we had bread as well as potatoes, so no one went hungry.

Afterwards we went out for gelato. I am so full, my goodness.

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Spicy vegetable bake with couscous

Adapted from In the Kitchen, by Melbourne food critics Alan Campion and Michelle Curtis. The book's definitely worth the investment: I've only had it for a couple of months and it's become the Everything Cookbook in the household.

( Accessibility and dietary notes. Also, equipment )

( Ingredients and method )

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Artichoke Chicken

When I go to tag sales, I looooove browsing through the old cookbooks. My favorites are old church cookbooks, and I tend to bias my purchases in that direction. However, there was a tag sale a couple weeks ago and I picked up an old Pampered Chef cookbooklet (small cookbook). In it, there was this awesome recipe for pan-fried herbed chicken with an artichoke topper that looked tasty. I didn't have all the ingredients so I modified my recipe to fit that. My modified recipe below the cut!

( Taaasty )