Day 27 - Roast chicken

It's nice to be able to cook again. I found it impossible with two babies, but now the girls are a bit older, often I can distract them with books or toys, or even get them to help a bit with prepping dinner.

We headed out in the morning to find a chook for dinner. So this afternoon, while Elisabeth napped, I talked Maggie through teasing the skin away from the breast and stuffing it with butter and tarragon.
Then rubbing the skin with olive oil, salt and pepper, before squeezing half a lemon over it and stuffing it in the cavity with some more tarragon and garlic.

I popped it on a bed of red onion slices and more garlic and into a hot oven. We baked some pumpkin as well, boiled some new pink eye potatoes and served it with asparagus and peas.


A Sunday roast, a day late.

I'm sure her namesake, Maggie Beer, would be proud!

Monday Menu

Monday Menu

A big two week post. Yesterday I felt queasy and unwell. Still do a bit. So i wasn't that inspired by food if it wasn't a salada. Hoping the girls don't catch it. Rob came home early to look after me.

Pick of the week Roast Mt Gnomon pork, and THAT ice cream.

Monday's Menu and snail mail

What an odd weekend weather wise, windy on Saturday (but sunny) then on Sunday we had rain/hail downpours every hour, so we kept trying to do stuff outside before scurrying inside to hide (especially Nigella and Claudia!)

We visited the Woodbridge Nursery and picked up some flowering plants for my garden and some lettuce and broccoli seedlings for the veggie patch.

On Sunday we took delivery of two round bales of pea straw and lucerne hay for mulch.

Menu wise-

Monday: Salad with carrots, cheese, broccoli, cauliflower and potatoes.
Tuesday: Chicken breasts with crispy sage on a bed of rice and peas.
Wednesday: Broccoli and chorizo frittata
Thursday: four bunches of asparagus steamed, prosciutto, fresh sourdough bread and a few slices of parmesan cheese (and soft boiled eggs for Rob.
Friday: Barbecue sausages and silver beet.
Saturday: An aged piece of porterhouse beef on the bone, roasted with onions. Our first harvest of some cute little parsnips and carrots, more silver beet and some steamed new season pink eye potatoes (not ours).
Sunday: As we ate some leftover beef on fresh bread for lunch, Rob just fried up the leftover pink eyes as chips with some parsley. Oh and we had an apple and raisin crumble for dessert (I always double the crumble recipe which means we have frozen crumble topping ready to go!)



I got busy stamping some parchment writing paper, putting my Webster's dictionary stamp set  and Kikki.K to good use. I have written most of my letters as part of Sarah's Good Mail Club, and it's quite satisfying to see the pile of fat creamy coloured envelopes pile up on the table.



How was your weekend? What have you been eating recently?

Monday's Menu with a side of our Spring garden and Cinnamon tea cake.

I like the ying and yang of this weeks Monday's Menu photo collage. Chocolate cherry cupcakes made with a jar of Bonne Maman cherry preserve right next to a very virtuous meal of steamed greens from the garden. The greens are starting to get going now, we ate three types of broccoli in our soup on Saturday, the ever present silver beet, as well as the tops of the Savoy cabbages.
I can not wait for the broad beans and peas to start. Yesterday we planted some more seedlings and seeds: lettuce, chives, sweetcorn, beetroot, rocket, radishes, and parsnips.

Anyway the menu:

Monday: Baked ziti with silver beet.
Tuesday: ahem, baked ziti with broccoli.
Wednesday: Steamed broccoli, silver beet and cabbage tops with soy sauce.
Thursday: Pork and fennel sausages on silver beet and fresh sourdough bread with home made tomato sauce.
Friday: Decided to live in the moment and headed down to Cygnet for dinner at the Red Velvet Lounge. Rob enjoyed a rump steak, with old-school chips and salad. I had the famous pork cotoletta. We shared a dessert of cherry ice cream and chocolate sauce, and we were back home by 8pm.
Saturday: The big grand final day with our annual consumption of footy food. We ate the footy franks in white squishy buns with mustard, tomato sauce and butter (that sentence confused a few of my international Instagram followers- they eventually worked out I was talking about a hot dog!) I'm afraid that they didn't make for a very photogenic food picture, but they were tasty. We used the remainder in a tomato and vegetable soup.
Sunday: Rob cooked us Patricia Well's Chicken breasts with sage and potatoes (parboiled, then sliced and cooked in butter).

My sister, her husband and my niece visited for afternoon tea yesterday, we had chocolate caramel and almond slice (similar to this recipe but with almonds), those cherry chocolate cupcakes and a simple cinnamon teacake. Which was probably the most popular! See the very simple recipe below.

Cinnamon Teacake {From Women's Weekly}

Ingredients:

60g butter, softened
2/3 cup castor sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup self-raising flour
1/3 cup milk
15g butter, extra
3 tablespoon castor sugar, extra
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
Preheat oven to 160deg C (fan-forced oven)
Grease and line a 20cm cake tin.
Beat butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until light and fluffy (about 5 mins).
Stir in sifted flour and milk with a wooden spoon, beat lightly until smooth.
Spread mixture into the tin, bake for approx. 30 minutes.
Turn onto wire rack, pour over extra melted butter, sprinkle with combined extra sugar and cinnamon. Serve warm with butter.

Finally Rob headed out when it wasn't blowing a gale or pouring with rain (not many opportunities over the weekend!) and took some photos of the flower and vegetable gardens with a real camera. I'll share them on Friday, but in the mean time I'll leave you with a photo of the dogs in the flower garden. Everything is starting to look very green and lush.

Monday's Menu

A lovely quiet weekend. Saturday was sunny and warmish, so we opened up all the doors of the hut and headed into my flower garden to weed. The garden is coming along, but I'll save that for a Friday flowers post!

On Sunday we headed to Cygnet for breakfast at the Red Velvet Lounge (I had a half breakfast while Rob had the works, including black pudding). Then we wandered around the market (which didn't seem to have as many produce stalls this time), but we still found a bargain $2 Tupperware container (it looked brand new!), a long black linen dress for me at the second hand clothes store behind Lotus Eaters, and a cute vase made from a Grolsch beer bottle.

We had to collect plants and go shopping for one of Rob's 2nd year prac classes - Supermarket Systematics; he gets the students to classify fruits and vegetables into their families to introduce them to taxonomy.

Then after a nap on the window seat we cleaned the hut.

On the menu at the hut this week:

Monday: Asparagus, pea, silver beet and bacon risotto.
Tuesday: The power was out so we headed to the local pub, I had crumbed scallops and chips and Rob had a steak and chips.
Wednesday: Free range scrambled eggs on wilted silver beet on sourdough toast.
Thursday: Cheese and more sourdough bread.
Friday: We had beef, Guinness and potato pies for lunch and Jackman and McRoss so just snacked.
Saturday: Brined and barbecued chicken on salad.
Sunday: After our big breakfasts we didn't feel like lunch or dinner!

What's been on the menu at your place this last week?

Monday's Menu

Thanks for all your comments and wishes for my Mum. She's staying positive and so am I.

This weeks menu:

Monday: Left over paella
Tuesday: Potato, pea and purple brussel sprout frittata (disturbingly the next day the brussel sprouts were blue!)
Wednesday: puttanesca pasta
Thursday: Soft-boiled eggs on rocket on sourdough toast
Friday: Chicken and mushroom pie with rocket
Saturday: Roast chicken with roasted potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, carrots, parsnips and the obligatory rocket salad.
Sunday: Chicken, vegetable and pasta soup.

A few other highlights included a lunch date to Tricycle for soup and still warm rye rolls for breakfast in bed yesterday with cumquat marmalade.
We're churning through the citrus at the moment, tangelos, mandarins, oranges and blood oranges, I'm loving it. What's your favourite winter citrus?

a belated Monday's Menu

It was quite a grey old weekend in the end. I was hoping for some more sunshine, but it was still nice to relax at home. We felt quite good about the cleaning and tidying both at my parent's shed and ours (Rob gathered up another trailer load of rubbish and recycling from behind our shed).

Menu wise this week:

Monday: Chicken cacciatore with boiled potatoes.
Tuesday: Chicken and vegetable soup.
Wednesday: Pappardelle with some chicken cacciatore.
Thursday: Ziggy's hot dogs! An excuse to eat our home-made tomato sauce. I added some hot english mustard quite liberally, which cause a wasabi rush right down to the tip of my nose. But I love that feeling and kept eating anyway.
Friday: Cheese night was back, a hard, French goat cheese, called Chebris Brebis, a soft French cheese, Picolin and Gorgonozola Dolce. All delicious in their own way, served with a little fig and walnut baguette and a rocket salad.
Saturday: Pasta and meatballs.
Sunday: Dry-cured, then hickory smoked slow roasted in the Weber beef short ribs, with potato stacks and rocket salad.

Other treats this week included; speckled bread (fruit loaf), a lamb, potato and pea parcel at Jackman & McRoss, figs grilled in prosciutto and stuffed with fetta, pancakes with maple syrup, boiled eggs on toast, left over pasta and meatballs on toast, and that chocolate caramel peanut slice.

What's been on the menu at your place?

Monday's Menu

Winter food is certainly the go at the hut at the moment.

Monday: Beef and mushroom pie with peas.
Tuesday: Ham hock and vegetable soup.
Wednesday: Beef stew on tagliatelle.
Thursday: Beef stew with mash and silverbeet.
Friday: A bowl of mashed potato! (I missed out on the food at the Crib championship as I arrived late. So found some leftover mash in the fridge).
Saturday: Roast chicken with potato, fennel, pumpkin and silverbeet. With an apple and mincemeat crumble for dessert (will post the recipe tomorrow).
Sunday: Chicken and pumpkin risotto with rocket salad (from our garden).

Monday's Menu {our normal little life}

We had another quiet stay-close-to-the-hut weekend. At least the weather was nice enough this week to go outside, open windows and get some sun. Maybe our quiet life might seem a little dull to others but I wouldn't have it any other way. I posted this photo of the hut, reflected in our dam yesterday on Instagram. One of the comments said it looked like a fairy tale. Which made me think about our life at the hut. Rob and I often walk around the block, checking on our trees, looking for thistles and enjoying the dogs running and wrestling nearby. There have been many perimeter walks, mostly with the hut present only in our imaginiation. There were times when I dragged my feet, that I didn't enjoy it, because I didn't think we'd ever live there. Seeing the empty spot where the hut should be just made me feel upset. The problems seemed insurmountable, but still we couldn't think of anywhere else we'd rather be. I guess that's being a little melodramatic, but I hope I never forget the difficulties we had to get there, as it makes me all the more grateful for the quiet weekends we've had recently.


We've put a moratorium on going into Hobart on weekends at the moment. With the shorter days it seems such a waste to be driving around shopping so we've been trying to get organised on Friday evening for a weekend in. Having said that, our washing machine is becoming quite temperamental so shopping for a new one may be a task for a Saturday morning soon. So our weekend started with some shopping and then a quick lemon linguine with a glass of wine, then reading new library books on the window seat.

Saturday morning is becoming our sleep in morning now, and I was treated to bacon, eggs and baked beans with freshly baked rolls in bed. Claudia was very interested in the bacon, both dogs got a little taste afterwards. I borrowed some novels from the library for once, normally I stick to cooking or gardening books. So I enjoyed reading Eat, Pray, Love and an old Rosamunde Pilcher novel set in Cornwall.

I made some meatballs to freeze for future meals, and cooked some quinces for a tagine I had in mind. Rob spent his morning on his hands and knees shoving aluminium fly screen underneath the cladding of the hut, in an attempt to keep the mice out.

Rob came in after lunch and made a massive batch of shortbread cut out as foxes. Which I have just realised I have failed to photograph. I think he was a bit over it by the end, as the mix was quite crumbly but they were very tasty.

Claudia has obviously decided to take the mouse problem to task. She snuffles around in the tufts of grass looking for them. Up until now I didn't think she'd been very successful. On Saturday afternoon she was pouncing and pointing and then just stood there until we came closer, then she picked up a poor mouse and ran off with it! I guess she didn't think it was fair if she had caught it that we should get it. Apparently it was quite comical to see me running after her, and her running with the mouse's tail hanging out of her mouth. I'm still not sure if she swallowed it or spat it out somewhere.

I cooked the beef and quince tagine, we've become quite obsessed about chuck steak at the moment and are dreaming up all sorts of slow cooked casseroles to use it in, serving it with a roasted pumpkin and fennel couscous.

Sunday was so sunny so we took the dogs for a walk on nearby Manuka Hills through some dry sclerophyll forest. The dogs loved it and ran around pretending to be timber wolves. We headed back to the hut and listened to Radio National's coverage of the Sydney Writer's Festival while we oiled all the timber window frames, doors and skirting with tung oil, a job we'd been meaning to do for awhile. We planted the red ranunculus in the flower garden, quickly walked another perimeter and then headed inside so Rob could help me dye my hair. I'm not sure it looks very different though, the colour was just called Chocolate, but looks a bit red under lights.

How was your weekend?

On our plate this week, chicken soup, scrambled eggs, steak and those potato stacks again, my breakfast, quince and beef tagine, tomato and meatball soup, lemon linguine and chicken and roasted vegetable risotto.

Monday's Menu {Mother's Day megamix}

Trying saying that really fast.
We finished our week on a culinary high with a Mother's Day lunch for my parents and brother at the hut.
The weather was FOUL all weekend. Horizontal sleety rain, gale force winds, snow on the mountain, winter temperatures.
So we hibernated inside.

The menu:
Monday: our weekend curry with the addition of silver beet and served with rice, papadams and yoghurt.
Tuesday: the 2nd encore of the curry, with more silver beet, butternut pumpkin and potatoes. I think it was the best version of the three!
Wednesday: our cheat's ravioli (made with wonton wrappers). Stuffed with Elgar cottage cheese, spinach, pine nuts, and parmesan, served in a tomato sauce.
Thursday: Pan-fried potatoes, speck and onions.
Saturday: vegetable soup.


On Friday we treated ourselves to meal at our favourite Tasmanian restaurant, the Red Velvet Lounge. Quite luckily for us, it's only 15 minutes down the road to Cygnet. We ran in from the rain, and felt warmer as soon as we saw the wood fire. Our neighbour is the front of house, so we caught up on neighbourhood comings and goings, the current mouse plague our gardens. Steve came out for a quick chat too. A small group of musicians sat in the corner of the restaurants singing and playing music, adding to the ambience. I can't get enough of this place, and would go every week for dinner (or lunch, or breakfast or for a piece of Banoffee pie) if we could.

I had been thinking about a steak with chips and Bearnaise sauce all week. Rob had read an article on how to best eat out. Apparently you should order the item that sounds the least appetising. Don't order the steak (like me), but the item that at first glance you wonder why it's there. Because it will be there for a good reason. The theory goes that the chef has to cook steak all the time, so won't find that interesting, but the different item, may not be ordered very often and therefore will be more exciting for the chef to cook. He thought he'd test it out at RVL. Which isn't very risky because all of the food looked delicious. So he picked the lambs fry.

We enjoyed a glass of Blighs cider each and a Chicken liver parfait, with red wine jelly, sourdough toast and cornichons.

Then our mains arrived, my steak was cooked perfectly, smothered in a the Bearnaise sauce and the chips were nice and crunchy, just how I like them. The lambs fry was served with bacon, slow cooked onions, potato puree and sherry sauce. We decided to share so ate half and swapped. I had never tried lambs fry before. But it was tender and delicious with the sides and the herbs. But I found it very rich (especially after the liver parfait and steak, so couldn't get through my half). Happily full, we stumbled out into the cold and headed home to the hut with smiles on our faces.

Weekend baking included pancakes with stewed apple and blackberry jam (Rob), date loaf (me, found this recipe on BabyMac's blog, so easy and so good) and Coconut rough slice (me).

Sunday menu for Mother's Day

Nigella's Union Square Cafe Bar Nuts

Annabel's baked Sicilian olives

with Jansz NV sparkling

Nick Nairn's potato stacks

Roasted onions, neeps, carrots, parsnips, and leeks.

Wilted silver beet

Margaret Fulton's Roast tarragon Chicken with brandy cream sauce.

Rye dinner rolls.

Nick Nairn's chocolate souffles with brandy cream.

I think the guest of honour was suitably impressed, she liked her present too (slightly narcissistically I gave her two photos, one of Rob and I on our wedding day and one of us on the day of my PhD graduation) for her photo wall. She had been hinting that she didn't have any photos of us.

After they left (and Rob took the dogs for a walk) we lazed on the window seat. 

We didn't get around to much mouse proofing, however, we did catch three in the humane trap (ie we let them go in the bush). They are so cheeky. On Saturday night we heard much squeaking coming from the heat pump. We opened it up and out hopped a mouse, it must have been fighting with another mouse cause we could hear scuffling. He brazenly looked us in the eyes and ran back in before we could do anything!

Hope you had a lovely weekend, particularly those of you who are mothers to children young or old.

One Year and Monday's Menu {Flatbread Pizza}

So first up, today is a special day at the hut.
A year ago today we invited our closest friends and family down to the hut for Rob's birthday party.
It was meant to be a house-warming too, but the build of the hut hadn't quite gone as fast as we'd thought.
But that didn't matter, we ate all our favourite foods, drank sparkling wine and enjoyed the sun.
In between main course and dessert, we had organised a little surprise.
Just a little ceremony.
I can still hear the gasp.
Happy 1st Anniversary Rob, it was a perfect day and our first year has been a memorable one.
(If you'd like to read the full story of our surprise wedding last year click here).

Back to our menu.
Monday: Beef and red wine stew.
Tuesday: Gres de Champenois with fresh figs and salad.
Wednesday: A tomato based pasta sauce with eggplant, zucchini, olives and fetta.
Thursday: Pork sausages and mash with home-made tomato sauce
Friday: Pesto and potato pizza (see the recipe below).
Saturday: Margaret Fulton's tarragon roast chicken with roast vegetables.
Sunday: Yum cha and Me Wah. Steamed dumplings and roast duck and many other delicious morsels.


Rob used this bread dough below for the pizza base.

Annabel Langbein's Crusty Flat Bread

This is a wonderfully supple focaccia dough that makes enough for two large loaves. You can freeze half the dough to cook later. We used leftover mashed potato, but if you don't have any in the fridge, boil potatoes until tender, mash them and allow them to cool before adding to the recipe. The wetter the dough is, the lighter the finished result will be, so don't be tempted to keep adding flour.

Prep time: 20 minutes + 3 hours rising, or 12 hours in the fridge.
Cooking time: 25 minutes.
Makes two large loaves.
Crusty flat bread dough
1 ½ cups warm (not hot) water
1 ½ tsp dry yeast granules
1 packed cup cooked and mashed potato
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 ½ cups high-grade or baker's flour, plus extra for kneading
2 tsp salt

Topping
1-2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp fresh rosemary leaves
½ tsp sea salt

Place warm water in a large mixing bowl (a breadmaker or electric mixer with a dough blade is ideal, if you have one). Sprinkle yeast over the water and allow to stand for 2 minutes. Mix in the mashed potato and the cup olive oil. Stir in the flour and salt and mix until the dough just starts to come away from the sides of the bowl.
Turn the dough on to a lightly floured board and, using lightly oiled hands, knead about 30 times (or for 3-4 minutes on the dough cycle of a breadmaker). Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with muslin or a teatowel and leave to rise in a warm place for 3-4 hours, or until it has doubled in bulk. You can also leave it in the fridge, covered, to rise slowly overnight.
When you're ready to cook your bread, place a baking stone on the centre shelf of the oven and preheat oven to 220degC. Turn the risen dough on to a lightly floured board, divide in half and shape each half into a ball. Roughly flatten one ball on to a tray lined with baking paper, pressing the dough out to an oval shape about 25 x 20cm. Use your fingertips to press dimples into the top of the loaf, then drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt. Slide the baking paper with the dough on it off the tray and on to the preheated baking stone. Bake for about 25 minutes until golden.
When cooked, the bread will sound hollow when you tap it. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking stone for a few minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool. Repeat with the other ball of dough. If you want to save the second ball of dough to use later, place it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a clean cloth and place in the fridge for up to 48 hours. It also freezes well. Thaw before pressing out and baking.
This recipe is from Annabel Langbein Free Range Cook.

So once it had been kneaded, Rob rolled it out very thinly. He made a pesto and smeared that across the pizza (you could use a bought pesto, but we still have basil so are enjoying it while we still can).
He carefully sliced raw potato very thinly and spread them across the pizza, then sprinkled rosemary sprigs on top. He cooked it until the base was golden and crisp (how we like our pizzas).

Next morning he added some currants to the remaining dough and made cute little currant buns which were light on the inside but nice and crispy on the outside.

Monday's Menu: one word - cheese

This weekend was all about cheese.
I can't believe I ate cheese with bread or crackers for dinner three nights in a row. Well actually, maybe I can. Rob was on a field trip all weekend, so we thought we'd head to Bottega Rotolo and pick some cheeses for an easy dinner. We chose three (with Tina's expert guidance) a Shropshire Blue (that bright orange cheese), a Rondin de Brebis (sheep's cheese) and soft Saporini (cow, sheep and goat's cheese), with a bottle of Jansz and a loaf of Pigeon Hole bread it was the perfect way to finish off the working week. Rob headed off on his field trip early on Saturday morning, and I headed into town to shop for food. I had to pick up some little pork chipolata sausages from the Wursthaus and they were cutting a large wheel of Pyengana cheddar. I had the best of intentions, it was going to be saved for a treat to share at Easter. I had organised a lunch for my Mother's birthday on Sunday, and decided to do roasted chicken wings two ways. Rob was catering for the uni students with the same recipes on his field trip. Nigella's one pan sage and onion chicken and sausage, and Ross Dobson's lemon thyme chicken wings. They went down a treat yesterday, with some roast potatoes and salad. My sister had made a pavlova which was delicious and I made a lemon and coconut birthday cake (see the recipe below).
Anyway, I was so tired on Saturday after cutting up a zillion chicken wings and baking the cake I decided just to eat the left over cheese for dinner. Claudia accompanied me on the window seat, she loves cheese almost as much as us. Last night Rob returned home, and as I'd had the big birthday lunch, I wasn't feeling particularly hungry, Rob felt like a snack. I said "Well I bought a piece of..." resulting in us munching on cheddar with two dogs sitting very neatly beside us drooling!
Culinary highlights other than cheese, include sausages with home made relish, scrambled eggs and silverbeet, chicken and mushrooms casserole on pasta, and meatball soup.

Annabel Langbein's Lemon coconut cake. 

The cake is from Annabel Langbein's book Free Range in the City. Easy, delicious and feeds my massive family!

3 cups sugar
4 eggs
finely grated zest and juice of 4 lemons
2 cups neutral oil (I used rice bran)
1 3/4 cups plain unsweetened yoghurt
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
4 cups self raising flour
a pinch of salt

Coconut Icing
75 gm butter, softened not melted
250g cream cheese
1/2tsp coconut essence
4 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup desiccated coconut

Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease a 28-30cm springform tin and line with baking paper.
Place sugar, eggs, lemon zest and juice, oil and yoghurt into a food processor or mixer and whizz to combine.
Add coconut, flour and salt and pulse until just combined (don't overmix). It will be lumpy but that's fine! Transfer to the tin and bake about 1 1/2 hrs, until cooked (check with a skewer into the middle or until it's springy). Cool in the tin.
To make the icing put all the ingredients into the food processor and whizz or beat until smooth. It may need to go into the fridge for a little bit to firm up before you use it. Spread the icing over the top and sides of the cake.

Monday's Menu {cheat's ravioli}

How can it be the last week of March already?
This last week flew by, with my trip up to Brisbane, the weekend was upon us before we knew it. Poor Rob had a cold this week, so with the cold weather on the weekend a pot of soup and a casserole was in order.

This weeks menu:
Monday: After making a zillion spinach and ricotta triangles (Claudia Roden's recipe) for a Harmony Day lunch, I came home with the leftovers. We reheated them and made a Lebanese salad to match. I finally used the purslane I insisted we grow, it's nice and crunchy in salads. We froze the remaining triangles for an emergency meal some time.
Tuesday: Another salad with soft boiled eggs, prosciutto, Meredith Dairy Goat Cheese.
Wednesday: Our cheat's ravioli - see below for the recipe.
Thursday: Massaman Curry, whilst I was in Brisbane. I need to cook this one at home, I haven't eaten it before I don't think, if anyone has a favourite recipe for this curry please pass it on. Oh, and I couldn't resist the chocolate tart either.
Friday: Beef pho in the Canberra airport.
Saturday: Vegetable and barley soup.
Sunday: River Cottage Chicken and mushroom casserole with Cider. Best thing was there are enough leftovers to eat on pasta tonight after work and the gym.

The Hut Ravioli

As we ran through the supermarket the week before, we grabbed a packet of wonton wrappers from the refrigerated section.

Image from Supreme Quality Foods

We hadn't used these in a long time. But we had a faint memory of seeing Simon Bryant use them on the Cook and the Chef as ravioli instead of fresh pasta.

It was a week night, which means by the time we've been to the gym, collected our dogs from doggie day care (ie my parents place) and driven to the hut it was probably around 7. We decided to "make" ravioli for dinner. A week before I made a batch of Nigella's meatballs and frozen them for use in pasta and soups.

Nigella's meatballs

250 g pork, minced

250 g beef, minced (or we used 500g pork and veal mince)

1 eggs

2 tbsp parmesan, freshly grated

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tsp oregano

3 tbsp semolina, or breadcrumbs

1 pinches pepper

1 tsp salt

To make the meatballs, just put everything in a large bowl, and then, using your hands (if you wet them with a little water the mix doesn't stick as much), mix to combine, before shaping into small balls.

So I wrapped (a still frozen) meatball in between two wrappers (sealing the edge with a little water and squishing it out a little so the joins were not too thick).  Meanwhile Rob quickly fried a chopped onion and some garlic in a little olive oil before adding a bottle of tomato passata. We quickly boiled the ravioli then added them to the tomato sauce to finish off.

We served them with some dollops of ricotta cheese (left over from the triangles I'd made earlier), lots of chopped fresh basil and some grated parmesan.

They were good. I think we might have to try another filling this week. Any suggestions?

Monday's Menu

A varied menu at the hut this week-
Lamb ribs with mash and peas
Beef curry with pappadums and beer.
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
Oysters with chilli, lime and salt.
Seafood paella.
Boiled eggs on toast.
Roast lamb for one: quince jelly roasted lamb shanks with vegetables.
One-pan chicken, sausages and sage (marinade the chicken for a couple of hours then throw it in a pan with some sausages, very tasty, a Nigella recipe from Feast).
Lamb and vegetable soup - I promised the recipe to Ally on Instagram but I'm running short on time so I might post it later or tomorrow.


The Easter bunny arrived at the hut a little early this week. I'd better stop eating them though cause Easter is still over a month away!

Monday Menu

I'll let the photos do the talking. Soup, steak, spaghetti puttanesca, soup, cheese, lime and chilli chicken, chicken pilaf, macarons.
That cheese was pretty darn good.
I just completed a job I'd been putting off for awhile- a clean up of the pantry. It looks much better now.
Hope you had a good weekend, we hid inside from the heat only venturing out to take the dogs to the beach.

Monday's Menu Megamix

So what's been on the menu?

Vegetables- in the form of stir fries, fresh sweetcorn, pumpkin and rocket salad, baked potatoes and minestrone soup.

Pasta- pesto, Spaghetti Bolognese,

Meat- Roast chicken, slow roasted lamb shanks with quince jelly.

With both of us away last week there was a bit of a hole in my digitally recorded menu (I still feel self conscious about taking photos of food in public and will only really do it if it's just Rob and I. A few people have been teasing me about my Facebook page as I often post images there too - one friend even commented to me as I took a photo of a pavlova I'd made,  "we know it's good if it goes up on your Facebook page!")

However, I did find a little cafe that made great smoothies for breakfast, I had a mango and a espresso whilst staying in Brisbane. The food at the conference hotel and the dinners were surprisingly good. One dinner was served on shared platters for each table. So you got to try fish, lamb, beef, chicken and there were lots of vegetable side dishes too.

What have you been eating recently?

Monday's Menu

Ok so at least we got back to regular meal times this week.
It was cool earlier in the week so we felt like warming foods.
Monday was a roast tarragon chicken with roasted parsnips (our favourite), carrots, sweet potato and zucchini.
Tuesday was easy then, as Rob made a leftover chicken and vegetable risotto.
Wednesday has become our traditional pasta night, so it was our store cupboard favourite pasta puttanesca.
Thursday we decided on steak on the Weber, with grilled eggplant, tomatoes and onions with a last minute sprinkle of basil.
Friday night we treated ourselves to our old favourite cheese! A glass of French red wine, with a loaf of fresh bread, some oozy chèvre and a bizarrely orange blue cheese- Shropshire Blue. The iPhone app I have Fromage recommended eating the blue (or orange) with a cup of tea, a combination I tried the next day and it was surprisingly good.
Saturday, truthfully we decided not to take a photo, although it was delicious, fresh butter beans and boiled pink eye potatoes, but unfortunately the steak we cooked alongside was a touch (only slightly overdone), Rob now has quality control and was disappointed, so I decided not to take a picture. It still tasted pretty darn good though!
Sunday we had our friends around for lunch. I baked some potato and rosemary flat breads which went down a treat while we waited for the lamb shoulder to cook. Rob had slow cooked it the day before, so then it just needed a quick grill. We served it with couscous and roasted vegetables (parsnips, carrots, red onions and beetroot) and minty yoghurt. Sorry I forgot to photograph it, but as I've just ordered a lamb shoulder from Mount Gnomon farm we may do it all again this weekend! We finished it off with a chocolate cherry pavlova. I poached the cherries, and I have to admit my first pavlova collapsed into a sad looking cow pat overnight. So I whipped up a replacement in the morning. You know I don't like to brag, but I'm going to, it was fantastic. I thoroughly recommend you try it!

A late Weekly menu

Sorry, I forgot it was Monday yesterday. The paving has been progressing well, almost time to get outside and keep going!
This last week we've eaten quick meals, as we seem to be coming inside to eat around 8pm.
Our Mt Gnomon ham was delicious (every time we ate some Rob would declare it the beat ham he's ever eaten!), we used it in two pasta dishes; a creamy pea and ham sauce, and a lemon, thyme, olive and ham dish. Otherwise we ate the Chicken Provençal with rice, and a few salads. Earlier in the week we had home made pizza with smoked salmon and pesto (our basil is going crazy) followed by an apricot tart when some friends came around for lunch.
This week the ice-cream maker has been put to good use: I've made banana ice-cream, mango sorbet and chocolate ice-cream.
Anyway, I'll try and be more disciplined with my food photography this week.
What's been on the menu at your place?

Goodnight 2011

Today has been spent preparing the base for our paving, it was hot, dusty, thankless work. Although the whacker bit was exciting to watch. Claudia didn't help there, deciding it would be fun to chase the water spray and generally get in the way.
At one stage we had to stop and watch as a wedge tail eagle got harassed by a pair of forest ravens. Watching them swoop above us is literally awesome, to use an abused adjective.
I'm afraid I wasn't as helpful this afternoon. The crusher dust needed to be screed and I was getting in the way.
Added to the fact we were both hot and hadn't eaten lunch, we were a little tetchy. So to cheer us up I went food shopping and have made Stephanie Alexander's chicken Provençal for our last meal of 2011. It is just simmering away nicely, the smell of chicken, tomatoes and garlic pervading through the hut.
So we bid 2011 a fond farewell. It was a big year for us. We sprung our surprise wedding on our family and friends, I became an aunt for the first time, and we finally moved into our hut.
It is truly lovely at the hut, and we don't take a moment for granted, after a four year wait to get here. Having our own home has been very important to both of us. I feel settled and content, not constantly wishing I was elsewhere, or using up time until we could be here.
Happy New Year to you all. I look forward to sharing another year with you, who knows what chapters we might add to the Hut Chronicles in 2012.