San Choi Bau, A.K.A ‘Parcels’.

This is Zach’s favourite dinner by a mile.

5cm ginger, grated

1 garlic clove, crushed or finely choped

2 carrots, finely diced

1 zucchini, finely diced

A handful of mushrooms, finely diced

Baby corn, finely diced (or corn kernels)

Snow peas, thinly sliced on the diagonal

4 spring onions, thinly sliced on the round

500g of mince of your choice (I alternate between pork and chicken mince).

Noodles of your choice

Soy sauce

Hoisin sauce

Lettuce leaves, Cos, baby gem, iceberg

To make life easy, I dice the vegetables, onion, garlic and ginger and put them into a bowl together, keeping the snow peas aside.

Heat some oil in a heavy bottomed frying pan and then add the vegetable mix. Stir over medium heat until the vegetables have softened.

Remove veg from pan. Add another splash of oil and make sure the pan is hot.

Add the mince to the pan and push it down so the whole pan is covered. When it starts to brown, begin to break it up and stir until cooked through. Add the vegetables to the pan and stir. When all combined add some soy sauce and hoisin sauce. A couple of tablespoons of each works for us, but do it to your taste.

Add the noodles and stir through so all combined.

Serve a portion of mince/veg/noodle mix in a small bowl and give the kids a plate with some lettuce leaves on it. Mine love to spoon their own mix onto the lettuce, fold it up into a parcel and take big bites where they invariably drop the bulk of the parcel's contents back onto the plate or, more often than not, the floor.

Mark and I will then add the following to ours for a slightly more grown up version.

1 red chilli, deseeded and thinly sliced

Handful of coriander and mint

Bean shoots

New Ottolenghi cookbook

Everyone should buy it.
It's fantastic.
Your summer salad repertoire will quintuple and them some.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780091933685/Plenty

NB: I've only just become aware of this site (thank you Camille) but it's so cheap. Amazon prices without the postage. They ship to Australia for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Chicken tagine thingey

I love the story that comes with this recipe. My friend Manda made me a chicken and apricot tagine when we both lived in London. I tried to recreate it a week later for some friends and they loved it. So much so that they asked for the recipe, which I promptly made up. Fuelled by the adulation I made it again for some other friends the following week. They loved it and asked for the recipe. This happened one more time. After that I stopped making it, I’d gone in too hard too early.

A few years later my girlfriend Nicole, (who is an extra ordinary cook with a Cordon Bleu feather in her hat) mentioned that her sister was making my ‘Chicken Tagine Thingey’. I was like, my what? She reminded me of the dish and forwarded me the email I had originally sent her entitled ‘Chicken tagine thingey’.

A few years later still, with this dish firmly back in my repertoire and now living in Sydney, I was making it for dinner and to introduce chicken to a then baby Zach. My girlfriend Fiona (another inspiring cook) came over. She asked what was cooking and upon being told, she informed me that all of her female family (mum, sister, aunts) make my ‘chicken tagine thingey’.

The sad thing is, I’ve been taking credit for it for so long, when actually I should have been calling it ‘Manda’s chicken tagine thingey’. Sorry Manda.

Anyways, it was made most recently for an early dinner date with the truly gorgeous Bellamy who apparently sang all the way home. She’s such a joyous child she would have done it anyway, but it’s made me post it.

You will need:

Olive oil

1 inch ginger, finely grated

1 garlic clove, crushed

750g chicken thighs, diced into chunks.

1 brown onion, finely sliced

1 teaspoon cumin seeds,ground

1 teaspoon coriander seeds,ground

¼ teaspoon cardamom seeds, ground ground

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 medium sized sweet potatoes (or 1 big one) peeled and cut into 2cm cubes – you can use pumpkin, which is wonderful for flavour, but can’t take the cooking time as well.

1 litre chicken stock (or water if you prefer)

Juice of a lemon

Fish sauce

½ cup of apricots

Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius.

Heat olive oil in casserole dish and brown the chicken in batches. Remove with slotted spoon and set aside. Then add some more oil and a knob of butter to the pan. When the butter starts to bubble add the onions and stir to coat. When the onions start to soften, add the ground spices and stir around for a minute or so until your kitchen is lovely and fragrant. Then add the sweet potatoes and stir around until they are coated with the spice laden onions. Pour stock over the sweet potatoes, add the lemon juice and a couple of splashes of fish sauce. Bring to the boil. Return chicken to the pan along with the apricots and stir to combine. Bring to the boil again.

Then place the lid on your casserole dish and stick in the oven for an hour or so, until the vegetables are soft, but not mushy and the chicken flakes apart.

This purees really well, should you have a puree eating member of the family. Also, if you find there’s too much liquid, take some out along with a bit of the sweet potato. Puree the extracted bits and return to the pan to thicken the sauce.

When you serve this to adults, stir through some almonds (whole or cut) and sprinkle generously with fresh coriander.

Serve with cous cous, quinoa or brown rice.

Sausage (chicken & vegetable) rolls

Sometimes having children enables me relive my own childhood, especially favourite school canteen moments. There’s something so Proustian about a school-like sausage roll. Sadly, I’ve never been able to replicate them, although I suspect that’s not a bad thing, given preservatives, dodgy meat and the like. Instead I have a tendency to make vegetable filled meat rolls, and I alternate the meat I use between chicken, pork and beef.

I made these chicken sausage rolls because I wanted to have a stash in the freezer for when I don’t have the patience to cook (read: because I really fancied eating them and could use the kids as an excuse). Took some to Little Nic this afternoon. My belly did not need to eat that many. Some kids liked them a lot. Others weren’t fussed. The adults, however, were big fans. Pick your audience I say. This recipe made 24 – 30 small sausage rolls. Can’t remember if I cut each roll into 4 or 6 pieces.

Holly, this is for you.

2 tablespoons olive oil
I leek, thinly sliced
2 x small carrots, peeled and finely diced
1 stick celery, finely diced
2 small zucchinis, finely diced
6 button mushrooms, finely diced
Worscestershire sauce
1 egg
6 cruskits, crushed to fine crumbs
200g (1/2 can) creamed corn
500g chicken mince
Tomato sauce
Worscestershire sauce
4 sheets puff pasty
1 egg for egg wash.

Heat olive oil in a heavy bottomed frying pan.
Add leeks and sauté over low heat until soft.
Add the vegetables in the following order ensuring that they are coated in the oily mixture of the preceding vegetables before adding the next one: Carrots, celery, zucchini, mushrooms
I would like to add salt, but as they’re for the kids…. add a few generous splashes of Worcestershire sauce.

Once all the vegetables are nice and soft pour the mix into a sieve over a bowl to cool down and strain any excess oil.
Meanwhile:
Put the chicken mince in a big bowl and use a fork to break it up
Add the vegetable mix, cruskits, creamed corn and egg, a few generous squirts of tomato sauce and stir to combine.
Cut each sheet of puff pastry in half and place a thick-sausage-sized portion of mince, the length of the pastry, on each half.
Roll pastry over and gently press shut.
Place logs onto baking tray (lined with baking paper)
Bake for 30 – 40mins at 180 degrees.

Lamb with Mediterannean stir fry

Mark’s away at the moment and that usually means that I cook for the kids and end up eating toast three times a day. Well that and snacking on all sorts of rubbish because I’m never satisfied by the toast.

So today, instead of purchasing the intended lamb cutlets from the butcher, I decided to pick up a couple of lamb back straps and eat dinner with them. A proper dinner, not just their left overs.

I brushed the lamb with olive oil and seasoned it with some salt. Seared it in a hot pan, two-three minutes on each side then put it aside covered in foil to rest.

Then, inspired by the 'carrot pasta’ from the woollies ad I julienned two carrots, one zucchini and a red capsicum.

A splash of olive oil was heated in a frying pan, the carrots were added along with half a clove of garlic (crushed) , stirred around for a bit then followed by the zucchini then the capsicum, a handful of fresh peas and a few quartered cherry tomatoes. Stir, stir, stir. Added a splash of balsamic vinegar and a bit of water and allowed it to bubble for a minute or two until vegetables were softened, liquid reduced then stirred through some finely chopped basil. Sliced up the lamb and placed it on the vegetables.

It looked a treat plated up and would not have been amiss at a table full of adults (albeit with crunchier veg).

Of course super-guts-Lexi ate it. But Zach, oh Zach gave me an “mmmmm, this good mama”.

High praise indeed.