Beef Pie

Well I really like meat pies, yet I've never really made a good homemade one. So I tried again. I got a recipe from taste.com.au and tweaked it a bit.

1kg diced beef - I used chuck steak
plain flour
400ml beef stock
dried italian herbs
worcestershire sauce
1 diced onion
2 stalks diced celery
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 cup frozen peas/corn/carrots (or fresh diced carrot etc)
short crust pastry
salt and pepper

Dust the beef with some flour to coat, then brown in a heavy based pan with a little olive oil for 5-6 mins until brown. Take from the pan, then fry up the onion and celery (and if using fresh carrots, that too) with a little more oil. After a few mins when it's a little softened, add the meat back in, and the beef stock and some italian herbs. Stir and then add the mushrooms. Let it simmer for 1 hour or so. Stir occasionally and don't let it stick. Then add the frozen veg and and worcestershire sauce (a few gloops of it to taste). Let it simmer another 30 mins or so. Add salt and pepper to taste.

By now it should have reduced a bit, but you'll need to thicken it. A bit of flour and water mixed to a paste, then slowly poured in while stirring should do it. Don't under do it, or overdo it so it's a pile of glug!

Get a pie dish or a lasagne dish (I used a square lasagne dish) and spray with cooking spray lightly. Line it with shortcrust pastry including the sides. Pour in the meat mix evenly and put a pastry lid on top. Make sure there's no holes and it's nice and sealed. I folded the sides over the top of the lid and that worked well.

Bake at 180C for approx 40 mins till golden brown.

Serve immediately. YUM!!!!

simple lamb casserole/stew thing

When I was a kid, mum used to make this 'mutton stew' which was the absolute bane of my existance! I hated it with a passion! However, lamb casserole was my favourite dinner ever.
They were the same thing.

So here is my version of my mum's mutton stew, although with lamb!

1kg diced lamb
1 onion, diced
6 potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 carrots, chopped into chunks
3 sticks celery, chopped into chunks
1 tin tomatoes
italian herbs
red wine
frozen peas (optional)

brown onion in pot, add diced lamb and brown. add other vegies, tomatoes, herbs and stir. then put in some red wine (1/2 to 1cup) and simmer for 1hour or so.
this would also work well in the slow cooker on low for 6-8hours.

towards the end, add the peas if you want them, and heat through until peas are cooked.

serve on it's own or with crusty bread or similar.

spicy cous cous and chicken pieces.

this is the cous cous i served with the moroccan chicken, but also a really yummy spicy chicken recipe too.

chicken:
combine
2tsp curry powder
2tsp coriander (dried)
2tsp cumin
1/4tsp cayenne pepper
1 clove garlic
2tsp orange zest
2tsp dried ginger

slice chicken breasts into 1inch cubes or so and put in a bag with the spices and get it all mixed together so the chicken is coated.

heat some olive oil in a frying pan so it's about 1/2cm deep. shallow fry the chicken pieces until cooked, but don't let them burn, so turn them regularly. place on paper towel to dry the oil off them. set aside.

cous cous:
in a bowl, put 1 1/2cups cous cous and 2 cups of hot water. stir with a fork and put a lid on and let it sit for 5 mins. fluff it with a fork after this and break up any chunks.

then combine:
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil (good oil as this is for a dressing)
1 1/2tsp cumin
3/4tsp paprika
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
salt
1/2 cup toasted pinenuts (heat in a frying pan with a tiny bit of olive oil until browned, stirring)
1/2 cup currants (or more if you really like em!)
1/2 a small red onion, finely chopped (i like to quickly fry this up for 1-2 mins to just take off that raw flavour as red onion is pretty strong)
1/2 red capsicum (red bell pepper)

mix the oil, lemon juice and spices together and pour into the cous cous and mix together. then add the rest of the ingredients and stir together!

easy!!!!


cous cous

moroccan chicken tagine

now i tried this recipe because it said tagine... and i have a tagine but have never used it. but my recipe ended up being too big so i cooked it in the dutch oven!
i got this recipe from here but i did change some of the ingredients etc.
so this is my version:

1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp ground black pepper
1.5 tbsp paprika
1.5 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp turmeric
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 whole chicken (butterflied) or 10 chicken thighs
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions finely diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tins chopped tomatoes
200g dried apricots, halved
100g dates, halved
100g currants
1 tsp strands saffron, soaked in cold water
600ml chicken stock
1 tbsp honey


mix the spices in a bowl. using half of the spices, coat the chicken and place in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

fry up the onions and garlic with the olive oil, then add the rest of the
spices - it will become quite pasty so i added some extra oil.

get the chicken and lightly brown each side for a few minutes in a griddle pan or frying pan, then place in a casserole dish. dutch oven or tagine
with a lid.
pour the onion mix over the top, along with the currants, apricots, dates, saffron (and water), chicken stock, honey and
tomatoes. give it a bit of a mix.

bake in the oven with a lid for an hour or so until the chicken is well cooked.


i did both a whole chicken plus some thighs, and took out the whole chook, cut it into 4 and grilled it just to brown it on top.
i put the thighs in a lasagne dish, and simmered the sauce to get rid of some of the juice as it was quite watery by then.
then i poured the sauce over the thighs and placed the chicken pieces on the top to serve.

this was served with spicy cous cous.

Easy peasy biscuits!

SERVES 10 , 60 cookies

• 250 g butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 3 cups plain flour
• 1 (400gram) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

1. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy.
2. Add vanilla essence - beat for another couple seconds.
3. Add the tin of sweetened condensed milk to the "cream" mixture.
4. Add salt then flour - cut into the mixture whilst mixing with a round edged knife.
5. Once mixture has the consistency of workable dough (more flour may be needed to get right consistency) roll out dough into 6 inch "sausages" - wrap "sausage dough" in parchment paper (wax paper) and place in fridge for half an hour before cutting the sausages into slices. Flatten biscuits lightly before baking in a preheated oven @ 180degrees until biscuits are a fine golden colour.
6. This recipe makes approximately 60+ biscuits.

This recipe is VERY easy to make changes to. Add a few spoonfuls of cocoa for choc bikkies. A packet of chocolate chips, or some peanuts or dried fruit or whatever you like!
Today, I made double choc chip. A few spoonsful of cocoa (and slightly less flour) and a 250g pack of white and of milk choc pieces. DELISH!

Also if you have a mix master this is very easy to make. Use the beaters for the butter/sugar/milk mix then swap to the dough hooks when you add the flour.

Pics hopefully to come.
Also I found that when adding all the cocoa and choc chips, the mix is VERY stiff so I added a tiny bit of milk to help it mix easier.

We made these biscuits for my wedding afternoon tea. :)

White Sauce Mix

I'm doing corned beef tonight, with white sauce - yum! So I thought I'd pass on this fantastic white sauce mix that I found last year.

2 cups skim milk powder
1 cup plain flour
125g butter

Throw them all in a food processor and combine. If you don't have one, then rub the butter in by hand.
This will make about 4 cups of the dry mix. This is able to be frozen! Just pop it in an airtight container or a ziploc bag. Easy as!

When ready to make white sauce, combine 1 cup of mix with 2 cups of water and heat while stirring till it thickens. I add a bit of salt and pepper too. And I always use a whisk.

Add cheese for cheese sauce, or use vegetable or chicken stock for a savoury sauce for casseroles etc.

So easy, and so much better than melting butter, adding flour and milk and trying not to let it get lumpy!

Lemon Chicken Disaster

I had high hopes of blogging tonight with a great recipe. But it turned out not so great.

I made lemon chicken with fried rice.

The chicken was great! Chop chicken breasts into pieces however you like, coat in cornflour, egg and cornflour again. Then deep fry (I did it in the electric wok) until cooked through. I did batches of 4 pieces for approx 15 mins each? I let them drain and then placed them in the oven on 100C to keep warm.

I then made a super easy fried rice: diced carrots, capsicum, frozen peas and corn fried up in the frypan. Add some teriyaki marinade and some cooked rice (I have a rice cooker) and stirred it up. I also added the leftover meat from our roast on Friday night. There was a little bit of beef left so I diced that up with it. The rice turned out not too badly. Normally I'd put more ingredients in it, but for a simple dish, it was OK.

The disaster was using a jar of Kantong lemon chicken sauce. GROSS! Not nice at all! Totally destroyed my yummy dinner, and I barely ate any. I was so disappointed. Next time I'll go with my instincts and make the sauce from scratch - there are so many online, why didn't I do that?

Anyway... a picture?