Conjurup Rissoles

I do love to cook but even I sometimes need easy quick meals. 

Especially ones that have loads of flavour (but not the preservative packed kind).

I was given Conjurup No. 3 as a gift recently, and it is one of those meals, seriously so simple yet tasty.

The beef mince is mixed with the aromatic powder and a little water.

Roll into balls and cook on the bbq, done, that simple.

 We served with toasted sourdough and other local delicious produce.

The rissoles were beautifully flavoured and moist.

My family loved it, especially my little boy! 

I will have to give the other Conjurup products a try.

Honey Lavender Fillet of Beef

Each christmas my brother buys us a hamper of local gourmet food products.

In the last one he included Herbs de Provence from Lucknow Lavender.

Yes it has sat in my pantry until now when I finally decided to get brave and cook a dish with lavender.

Fortunately the little tag included a recipe.

And my butcher sold us this beautiful piece of scotch fillet.

The beef is brushed with a combination of honey and oil.

Then coated with the herbs and left to marinate for a few hours.

I decided to try some smashed potatoes, they are boiled then squashed. 

They were drizzled with olive oil, then a quick grind of salt and pepper, then popped in with the roasting beef.

The beef was firstly seared all over.

Then roasted in the oven.

I allowed plenty of resting time as we poked and prodded trying to guess if we cooked it right!

And then it was sliced, perfect I would say.

It cut like butter and was so evenly cooked all the way through.

I used the pan to prepare a jus with stock, wine and vinegar. 

It resulted in a rich delicious sauce that was licked off the plate by my daughter.

And the lavender, it was really subtle, just a hint of it, and I loved it.

I've also submitted this post in the Monthly Mingle hosted by the Cook Republic, the theme is honey!

Texan Beef Ribs with Bourbon Sauce

This is an amazing recipe of Anna Gare's Texan Beef Ribs with Bourbon Sauce.

The ribs are rubbed in a intense mix of smoky paprika, salt, cumin seeds, pepper corns, fennel seeds, chilli flakes, brown sugar and olive oil.

The ribs are then slow roasted for four hours, we did it on our baby Weber Q.

Yes it is meant to be blackened! 

Served with honey roasted vegetables and couscous.

A perfect summer dinner to be shared with friends.

The bourbon sauce is quite expensive, requiring two cups of bourbon, but the results were outstanding.

A sweet bbq sauce that was perfect with the flavoursome fall apart beef just asking to be chewed off the bone....

And of course I made dessert, my rhubarb obsession continues. This one inspired from the "Great British Menu" where instead of using lemon juice in a custard style tart use rhubarb juice. Along with a layer of cooked rhubarb and then topped with a caramelised white chocolate crumble.

The crumble was amazing. I firstly baked a basic crumble of butter, flour and a little sugar in a tray, once it just started to brown I mixed in melted white chocolate and then returned to the oven for two minute stints, giving it a good mix in between. Will definitely be using it again -yum :)

I want to eat this meal all over again.....

Cambodian Spicy Sour Beef with Tamarind Sauce

This is yet another recipe from SBS Feast.

My parents have travelled to Cambodia with Operation Christmas Child, an organisation that delivers gifts for children at christmas, the only gift that most of these children will ever receive.

I bought my mum for her birthday the cambodian recipe book From Spiders to Water Lillies. The book is produced by a restaurant in Phnom Penh that is run by ex-street kids, and it turns out my mum ate there. 

So when I saw Cambodian recipes in the this months magazine I knew I would have to try them.

I couldn't find all the ingredients I needed, so I substituted my vegetables for more readily available ones. And I could not find pickled mudfish at the asian grocer so I used shrimp paste.

The base to this dish was a mix of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal and garlic.

Other ingredients included this beautiful piece of steak, turmeric, tamarind, pickled mudfish (I used shrimp paste), fish sauce and palm sugar.

After cooking the lemongrass mix and turmeric you add the fish sauce, tamarind and shrimp paste that have been mixed with water.

Once this is simmering you add the beef and sugar and cook briefly before adding the blanched vegetables.

It was a really interesting dish and quite different to dishes I normally cook. 

The tamarind broth was quite delicious, packed full of flavour. 

Such a simple dish but healthy and tasty.

Beef, Spinach and Peanut Sudanese Stew

The latest edition of Feast, the new foodie magazine by SBS, arrived in the mail last week.

It has some delicious recipes, this one a stew from south Sudan.

Not only a simple dish it was full of flavour. 

The beef is browned and then slow cooked along with the softened onions, garlic and tomato paste in beef stock. Sweet potato is added until tender and then add in cooked spinach (I used silverbeet), fresh tomatoes and ground peanuts. Serve with couscous.

I loved this dish, the taste was amazing. The peanut added a really interesting flavour and made it quite unique.

Nigella's Venetian Lasagne

I'm not sure if my brain is working properly, I just seem to keep stuffing up!

My daughter has requested a princess castle cake for her 4th birthday (as all little girls do!) and I had this great idea to buy a little princess and prince to put on top. In fact I saw a disney set that included a tiny Cinderella and her prince, and a horse and carriage. Can you just picture it, a pink castle topped with a prince and princess and a little horse and carriage waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Well it was quite an expensive set so when I saw it half price in the recent toy sales I took Evie to the shops and we were lucky enough to find it. 

But its not a happy ending as we stopped in the food court for a little snack but walked away leaving our brand new package on the table....realising quite quickly we did not have it we rushed back but alas it was gone. We asked everywhere but no one had handed it in. This resulting in one very sad little girl and one very upset mummy.

I'm not sure what to do now, should I see if I can find it again? I know in the big picture it really is not that big a deal, I just feel so silly for making such a stupid mistake.

Sorry to burden you with my sad story but that was my day yesterday, anyway we came home and I pulled out my Nigella Kitchen to cook Venetian lasagne.

The minced beef sauce is prepared with loads of finely chopped veges and porcini mushrooms, simmering away for an hour. The polenta is cooked and then spread out on trays to make the layers of the lasagne. And then assemble.

It was an interesting concept and it tasted nice but I prefer my 'normal' lasagne.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Bunny Chow (a South African curry)

No this recipe is not made from rabbit, it is the name of a dish that my sister-in-law tried when she recently travelled around the southern parts of Africa. There does not seem to be one excepted theory to the origin of the dish. One idea suggests it was an easy way to serve the excluded people out of a restaurant window as no plate was required, you simply just hold the bread loaf as a bowl and eat with your hands. 

So last night for dinner I attempted to recreate this dish for my lovely sister-in-law. I used this recipe, opting to make it with beef.

The recipe was a reasonably straight forward curry with loads of spices being fried with onion before adding tomato and beef. This is then simmered for a while and then add the potatoes. I made a few changes as apparently the curry tasted in Africa was sweet so I added some palm sugar and a tin of light coconut milk. I also added carrots and green beans.

It was really delicious, I was surprised at how well it went with the classic white bread. It was a interesting tasting curry that obviously had Indian origins but yet was different. 

And yes my guests loved it.

Beef Rendang

This recipe for Beef Rendang was posted recently at Not Quite Nigella. I love cooking curries, and I am always keen to try new ones, especially ones that are "my Mother's".

I have to confess I did not use as many chillies as the recipe suggests, in fact I only used two versus fourteen. This results in a much paler and less spicy curry, I did this mainly for my daughters sake.

To make the curry the beef is mixed with salt, sugar and tamarind then coated in toasted coconut. The paste consists of onion, chilli, ginger, garlic, galangal and coconut. The paste is then cooked with lemon grass, turmeric, kaffir lime leaves, palm sugar and soy sauce. Followed by the coconut cream and beef. It simmers away making the house smell amazing before adding more of the coconut cream.

It was so tasty, the beef was meltingly tender and the flavour of the curry was rich and delicious. We really enjoyed this meal.

Beef Casserole with Parmesan Dumplings

I was so keen I dove straight in and started eating, then realised I hadn't taken a photo; hence the half a plate shot!

You can find this amazing recipe if you head over to the amazing blog of Jasmyne Tea. As soon as I saw this dish I added it to my menu. 

I grew up eating dumplings like this but not savoury, it was caramel dumplings. They bring back such good memories, and are a perfect winter treat. In fact I've just convinced myself to cook it this week!

This recipe though was to make a delicious slow cooked stew of beef, mushroom and red wine. You then top it with some parmesan dumpling balls and bake. 

The result is a yummy stew with some bready like balls on top ready to mop it up. Thanks for the recipe, I loved it :)

Meatloaf Wellington

I have found a fellow meatloaf lover at Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice! I have already tried Reeni's Italian Meatloaf and then when she posted this recipe for Meatloaf Wellington I just had to have it.

It was quite fun to make too. After cooking off the onion and garlic (and capsicum but i had none) with some intense flavours of tomato paste, tomato sauce, worcestershire sauce, oregano and thyme, this then goes in with the mince, egg, and bread crumbs. The meat is then shaped and wrapped up in some pie pastry and baked. I halved the pastry to have a thinner crust. 

A bit of patching required!

It was really good, I loved it. A moist meatloaf with a perfect combination of flavours and flaky crust, what more could you want! Well a delicious sauce is all my hubby said (I'm not really a sauce girl).