Tag Archives: easy

07/08/2013 · 8:59 pm

August cook-a-long: Recipe reveal

Welcome to August, friends!

In another 15 days my baby is turning 5. B4 will become B5. Goodness gracious me. This year is absolutely flying by. And here we are at our fifth cook-a-long…already!

This month I really umm’d and aahh’d about which recipe to choose. I even “phoned a friend” (thanks Denica!) to get a second opinion, so I really hope you enjoy the recipe I (we) have chosen.

The recipe this month is Pork Schnitzel with apple salad. Something to keep the carnivores in our lives happy.

Full details for the August cook-a-long can be found here.

Don’t forget to mark Wednesday 21 August in your calendar and invite your friends.

Once you are finished cooking, take a moment and capture a photo of your meal. Post your picture and comments on the My Delicious Year Facebook page or share it on instagram using the hashtag #cookalong and tag @mydeliciousyear.

Good luck,

X Bree

If you have any themes, cuisine’s or key ingredients you would like to see in future cook-a-long’s, make sure you either leave a comment below for me or send me a message through the Facebook page. I love to hear from you guys.

 

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12/07/2013 · 8:44 pm

July cook-a-long: Recipe reveal

Hello friends,

Well here I am on the 12th of July posting the July cook-a-long recipe. Goodness me! Slack hey?

I’m the first to admit that life is a bit hectic for our little family. Huge kudos to those of you out there working full-time and raising a family. I don’t know how you do it…

So the theme for this month is “keep it simple”. This month’s recipe is a very simple Savoury Lamb Pie. If you would like to take it to the next step, have a go at making your own shortcrust pastry.

All the details for the July cook-a-long can be found here.

Don’t forget to mark Wednesday 17 July in your calendar and invite your friends.

Once you are finished cooking, take a moment and capture a photo of your meal. Post your picture and comments on the My Delicious Year Facebook page or share it on instagram using the hashtag #cookalong and tag @mydeliciousyear.

If you have any themes, cuisine’s or key ingredients you would like to see in future cook-a-long’s, make sure you either leave a comment below for me or send me a message through the Facebook page. I love to hear from you guys.

Good luck,

X Bree

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02/07/2013 · 7:06 pm

June cook-a-long: Wrap-up

Hello my beautiful friends!

Here we are. Another month gone by in a blink of the eye. Goodness gracious me! We are almost half way through the year already!

As the nights are getting cooler and the days are getting shorter, all I can think about is what to cook that will warm me up! The answer? Soup, soup and soup!!!

Fortunately, thanks to the June issue’s of ABC delicious. Magazine, there has been no shortage of fabulous soup recipes.

Having made at least six different soup’s this month (much to the disgust of B4), I can honestly say that THE BEST one was the Vietnamese chicken, lemongrass & rice soup from the June cook-a-long. So much so that I actually made it twice in one week!

Me

I just love the combination of spring onion, ginger, lemongrass and chilli. In fact, I often have to hold myself back from cooking Asian food every night of the week. I seem to be drawn to those flavours.

It seems though that I may have put a few of you off with the recipe I chose this month, which resulted in a bunch of you not getting time to cook-a-long with me this month. (sad face)

For those of you who don’t have time to make your own stock, I can only encourage you to just try it once. In actual fact, it cooks itself. Just pop all the ingredients in a pot on the stove and let it gently simmer for a few hours. Until you taste it, you won’t realise just how much better homemade chicken stock is. Comfort in a bowl…

Dessert

As a huge chocolate fan, I have to confess to not actually loving the dessert this month because there was too much chocolate in it!!! Here’s what I DID love about Jamie Oliver’s Chocolate & orange croissant-bread-and-butter pudding:

  1. I didn’t actually have to make it. My little sister Beck whipped up dessert. It was that easy! (Thanks Beck!)
  2. Croissants.
  3. Butter
  4. Cream
  5. Need I list any more?

Thank you so much to those that did actually participate in the cook-a-long this month. I really hope that you and your family enjoyed the recipes as much as we did.

Just a reminder that cook-a-long will now take place on the third Wednesday of the month. The July cook-a-long will take place on Wednesday 17 July. The Facebook event is now open. Don’t forget to head over and join in and invite your friends!

Until next month.

Take care,

X Bree

Stay tuned: Next month we have a fab new recipe to cook and a GIVEAWAY! Yay!

 

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08/06/2013 · 10:40 am

June cook-a-long: Recipe reveal

Hello friends,

So I’m running a bit late this month. Ok, so I’m actually running a whole lot of late this month. So sorry peeps.

This year is rapidly getting away from me. Anyone else feel the same way? June already…

Firstly I need to let you know that I need to change the date of the cook-a-long. I have a regular commitment at night at B4’s school on the second Wednesday of each month, so with that in mind, I would like to shift the cook-a-long to the third Wednesday of the month. That would make this month’s cook-a-long Wednesday 19 June. Hope you don’t mind…

Anyway, back to the big recipe reveal!!!

After finally getting a free night to look through all the June magazines, one thing really stood out. June arrives and there is a whole lot of soup recipes. Winter has arrived so I am officially declaring June soup month! Make it. Freeze it. Share it. You will see this a bit this month. More on that later…

For this month’s cook-a-long I have chosen a soup recipe that is a little bit different – Vietnamese chicken, lemongrass & rice soup. It’s a recipe from an old favourite of mine, Rick Stein. I hope you like it.

And as an added bonus I have included a recipe for dessert too! Chocolate & orange croissant-bread-and-butter pudding. If you’ve got the time, and you feel that way inclined, spoil yourself!

Once again I have also included some notes to hopefully make the recipe a little easier for you.

All the details for the June cook-a-long can be found here.

Don’t forget to mark Wednesday 19 June in your calendar.

Once you are finished cooking, take a moment and capture a photo of your meal. Post your picture and comments on the My Delicious Year Facebook page or share it on instagram using the hashtag #cookalong and tag @mydeliciousyear.

I can’t wait to see what sort of creations you all come up with.

Get cooking!

X Bree

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13/05/2013 · 9:13 pm

Celebrating 100 recipes!

Pop the champagne cork! I’ve cooked 100 recipes!

Actually, I’ve officially cooked 107 recipes (if you count tonight’s dinner).

The 100th happened a few weeks ago, on the second of May, and honestly, I didn’t even realise until just a few days ago. Things have been a bit crazy lately.

So who wants to know what the 100th recipe was?

It was Roast lemon chicken with Sicilian olives, the cover recipe from May 2008.

I’ve made it before, back in May 2008 probably. It was yummy then and it was still yummy now.

There is something about the smell and taste of slow-cooked onions. Add thyme to the equation and I am in heaven.

Keeping with this month’s Italian theme, I served the roast lemon chicken on spaghetti which had been lightly tossed in butter. A little bit extravagant, but indeed delicious.

If there is one piece of advice I can give you when making this recipe, it’s make double. You’re gonna want to eat this meal again!

Enjoy!

X Bree

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Roast lemon chicken with Sicilian olives 

Serves 4

delicious. magazine, (May 2008, p. 125) – Cover recipe

1/3 cup (80ml) extra virgin olive oil
4 large onions, halved, thinly sliced
4 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 heaped tbs fresh thyme leaves, plus 8 small thyme sprigs
8 skinless chicken thigh cutlets
Plain flour, to dust
1 – 2 lemons, scrubbed, thinly sliced, seeds removed
1 1/2 cups (375ml) chicken stock
1 tbs chopped preserved lemon rind* (white pith and flesh discarded), optional
24 Sicilian olives or other large green olives

Heat 2 tbs of the oil in a large frypan over medium-low heat. Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring, for 20-25 minutes until soft and pale golden. Season, then stir in thyme leaves. Spread onion over the base of a roasting pan that will fit the chicken snugly in a single layer. Sprinkle over the thyme sprigs, then set aside.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celcius. Heat remaining oil in the same frypan over medium-high heat. Dust chicken in flour, shaking off excess, then cook in 2 batches for 3-4 minutes each side until golden-brown. Arrange chicken over onion, then overlap 2 lemon slices on each. Squeeze over the juice from any remaining lemon slices.

Meanwhile, bring stock to the boil in a saucepan, stir in the preserved lemon rind if using, then pour around the chicken. Cook in the oven, uncovered, for 45-50 minutes – adding olives after 30 minutes and basting with stock 2-3 times – until chicken is golden and cooked. Stand in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer chicken, onion, olives and juices to a deep platter to serve.

* From delis and gourmet food shops.

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06/05/2013 · 12:12 pm

Sufferin’ succotash, we’re eating succotash!

When I saw the recipe for Bacon-wrapped chicken with succotash I immediately thought of watching Looney Tunes as a child and Sylvester spluttering all over the place “Sufferin’ Succotash”.

Succotash is no meal to suffer over though.

It’s a frugal combination of beans, corn and bacon brought together with a dash of cream.

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For a quick, tasty, mid-week dinner you can’t go past this recipe. And if you’re like me, you’ll probably find most of the ingredients already in your pantry or fridge.

Enjoy!

X Bree

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02/05/2013 · 9:10 pm

Good riddance April!

Oh me, oh my. Thank goodness April is over. What a month.

I have to confess. I really struggled to stay motivated this month. REALLY struggled. Fussy kids and unappreciative husbands nearly made me want to quit. It made me think “why? why? why?”

The other thing that I was overwhelmed by was my need to cook every single cover recipe. What was I thinking when I set that as a ground rule? This month I was good – I didn’t leave them all to the last two days. But I was totally overwhelmed by all the chocolate. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE chocolate as much as the next person. But out of the twelve April cover recipes to cook, nine were sweets and eight of those included chocolate (the other one was caramel). Blah!

Here’s a little secret. I’ve taken to halving the dessert recipes. Why? Because the cover recipes are often so decadent (cream, chocolate, sugar etc) and I am very conscious of only consuming these types of things in small quantities. Otherwise my hips and my health can’t handle it! They also often have a very short shelf life and as a family, we just can’t get through them quick enough, even after sharing the leftovers with our extended family.

And here’s a confession. I actually didn’t cook all twelve covers this month! I know. I know. What a disappointment. But I really couldn’t bring myself to do it. (I only skipped one) Please forgive me? It won’t happen again…

Here's the cover I skipped this month...

Here’s the cover I skipped this month…

On to the fussy kid saga…

Pretty much every night B4 asks me “what’s for dinner?” His usual response is either tears, or hysteria, or running screaming from the room, or a combination of the three. It turns out he’s more of a meat and no veg kind of guy. Like that is ok… Yes, there are nights that he goes to bed hungry.

After more than my fair share of these shenanigans this month, I took him aside one night and asked him what he really wanted to have for dinner. Turns out it was lasagna. A simple request, and one that I will fulfil sometime in May. Until then, he has to keep trying the new stuff I am making.

On another occasion, after a week of very poor dinner eating on B4’s behalf, I was driving to my parent’s house where B2 and B4 were to have dinner and a sleepover. Around the corner from my parents house B4 piped up with “I wonder if grandma is going to make me something yummy for dinner?” I replied with something like “well of course honey. Grandma always cooks yummy dinner.” B4 then replied “yes and I will love it and eat it all up!” (Because I never cook anything you love. And breathe…)

Sure enough, grandma produced the trifecta – roasted chicken, roasted lamb and roasted potatoes. The boys proceeded to inhale their dinner like they hadn’t eaten for a week. (sigh)

So, in honour of the sh#ttiest month ever, I present you with my high’s and low’s – what I loved to eat, what I didn’t and what I’d make again:

The High’s

  1. The cook-a-long. How freaking awesome was it? I was completely overwhelmed by how much people really got into it. I can’t wait for May. Thank you so much, everyone!
  2. Meat-free Monday – I have really enjoyed going meat-free on a Monday and have found that it is a pleasure to create delicious, flavoursome, meat-free meals. My children may disagree!
  3. Huevos Rancheros (Apr 2008, p. 86) – definitely recipe of the month. Simple. Tasty. Delicious. A great Saturday morning brekky. Give it a go.

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The Low’s

  1. Chocolate fondants – COVER (Apr 2008, p. 74) or as someone so politely commented on Facebook “steaming poo”. Thanks Paul. LOL. Something went terribly wrong. Not sure I care enough to try to correct it and make them again.
  2. Pear & ginger crisp (Apr 2002, p. 114). Another dessert disaster. Curdled, eggy, grossness.  May we never speak of it again.
  3. Pearl barley risotto with roast pumpkin, capsicum & rocket (Apr 2009, p. 126). There was a huge uproar in the house when I served this up for meat-free Monday. I think the concept is good, but the execution was not so good.

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More please…

  1. Mascarpone, prosciutto & rocket pizza – COVER (Apr 2007, p. 12). Homemade pizza. Yum!
  2. Roast pork steaks with tomatoes and pine nuts (Apr 2005, p. 139). A few simple ingredients packed with flavour. It was a winner.
  3. Mushroom carbonara (Apr 2012, p. 84). Another recipe with a few simple ingredients that translated to a delicious, easy, weeknight dinner.

Did I mention that neither B2 nor B4 ever complain when offered dessert, or pizza?

Here’s a link to the full list of what I cooked in April.

And to end the month of April, here is the most memorable piece of feedback I got from Mr Picky Palette during April, which pretty much sums up the month:

Me: How was your dinner honey?
Mr Picky Palette: I ate it didn’t I?

The end.

X Bree

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29/04/2013 · 9:50 pm

When life gives you lemons…

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” – Dale Carnegie

It’s a simple message, and such an optimistic one. But when faced with a HUGE surplus of big, fat, juicy lemons from the tree in my backyard, it’s a message I take quite literally. It’s something I have never done before, but I decide to make lemonade. Hooray!

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The lemon tree in our yard is not the prettiest tree. It has met with a variety of creepy crawlys and other citrus pests over time. But it is organic. And it seems to have thrived from all the rain we had over summer. In fact, we have been picking some of the biggest, juiciest lemons I have ever seen. The skins imperfections have not affected the juicy goodness inside. But it does mean the lemons are no good for zesting.

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So back to lemonade…

The day I decided I was going to make lemonade I was back flicking through all the April delicious. magazines as I had found myself a bit short on recipes this month. Sure enough, I came across a recipe for lemonade – not that a recipe is really needed. It’s as simple as adding sugar to lemon juice to suit your tastes and heating to dissolve the sugar. Not exactly rocket science. But in my attempt to make a healthier version I replaced the caster sugar with organic rapadura sugar and reduced the amount of sugar by about half. The end result was a brownish coloured syrup that was sour, sour, sour. Borderline undrinkable. Oops…  So I just added more sugar. Second attempt, result? A brownish coloured syrup that was a nice balance of sweet and sour.

Now where’s the vodka and soda?

X Bree

P.S You can read more about rapadura sugar here if you are interested. (It’s not a plug to buy this woman’s product, just a great Australian reference)

P.P.S If you want some lemons, just drop me an email… 🙂

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29/04/2013 · 9:41 pm

April cook-a-long: Wrap-up

Wow! What a week. Thank you so much to each and every one of you for participating in our very first My delicious year cook-a-long! I am overwhelmed and humbled by the enthusiasm and support you have all shown towards this initiative.

Thank you to those who had the courage to share your dinner with us on the Facebook page. What a great effort! In honour of braving the social media critics, I wanted to share a summary of some of the pictures and feedback shared.

“Yum!! It was a huge hit in our house…” – Denica

“Needed a bit more soy sauce……but yummy!!!!!  Oh and we used a coconut curry paste……more for our taste!!!!” – Melissa D

“I used red curry paste instead of korma (less sat. fat). Advice is to have everything out ready to go, as it doesn’t take long to cook. Yummy!” – Sherry

“Yummy, quick and easy… Thanks for organising tonight’s cook-a-long Brig. So nice not to think about what to cook!! What’s for dinner next month?? Everyone check out my delicious year for inspiration!” – Lisa

“Just had ours, really yummy, even my 14yr old had seconds!!…already started eating before I realised I should of taken a photo. Looking forward to next week Wednesday….thanks Brigitte. This is a really great idea!!!” – Meegan

“Really enjoyed this dish. Very tasty. Added capsicum for colour. Kids enjoyed this dinner …” – Daniel & Jodie

“Thanks for the inspiration Bree…that was yum!!! The only thing I changed was not adding coriander…I’m not a fan.” – Melissa O

“Here’s my version. Have never cooked green prawns before and was pleased it was a success. Was extremely tasty but would tweak it next time to halve the noodles and stock and add more prawns. Looking forward to May’s cook-a-Long.” – Alina

My goal for the cook-a-long was to:

  • give you the night off from planning what was for dinner by providing you with a recipe and a shopping list
  • inspire you to try something you many not have cooked before
  • provide you with a recipe that was flexible, one that could easily be modified to suit all tastes
  • provide a platform to share your experience .

Reading through the feedback I am so thrilled to see people cooking with ingredients that they haven’t used before, modifying the recipe to suit the tastes of your family (lots of different types of curry pastes used) and lots of children who happily ate their dinner. What a winner!

Now April’s cook-a-long is over, it is time to start thinking about next month. The date for the May cook-a-long will be Wednesday 8 May. Lock it in your diaries. I would love to hear from. What you would like to cook? Or maybe what wouldn’t you like to cook? Perhaps you’d like to suggest a “core ingredient” a la Masterchef-style?

Ultimately though, the cook-a-long will always remain affordable, achievable and delicious!

Tell your friends!

X Bree

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Roast pork steaks with tomatoes and pine nuts

Roast pork steaks with tomatoes and pine nuts

Love a quick weeknight dinner. This one is a winner. Only five ingredients: lean pork steaks, a punnet of cherry tomatoes, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a handful of pinenuts and a handful of basil. So much flavour from just a few ingredients. So easy to adapt for one person or ten. Serve it with your chosen carb. Here’s a link to the recipe.

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04/04/2013 · 9:37 am