Chicken and Basil Pasta

This is something I make fairly often. It is tasty, easy and quick. It has chicken, basil, garlic, semi-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, snow peas, tomato paste and fetta cheese. If you want the cheese to stay in intact pieces, you need to add it at the end - you can just put it in after turning off the heat from the frypan and then stir it through. If you add it earlier it will melt and mix through everything else. Both are tasty, just depends on whether you want general cheesiness or cheese pieces. Other than that, everything is pretty straightforward: brown meat on high heat, turn down to low-medium, add everything else, wait for it to cook, serve with pasta. I tend to add the snow peas later than everything else because I like them crunchy.

Apologies for the blurry phone photo. :/

Chicken Pesto Parcels

This is a delicious and filling meal that is alas not nearly as well suited to leftovers as many of the other meals I make.

The dish requires chicken thigs, pesto, salt and camembert cheese and puff pastry.
You cut the pastry into two triangles andrub salt on the outside of the chicken thighs. You then roll the chicken thighs around pieces of camembert and then put pesto on the outside and place each one in the centre of a triangle.
Finally you fold the pastry around them; either the recipe book I took this from is using larger pieces of pastry or the chicken thighs I get are a little too big, so I tend to use another piece of pastry (about a quarter of a sheet per triangle) to help cover the gap otherwise they leak all over the place during the cooking process.
You then bake the parcels for 30 minutes at 180 degrees and serve with a salad. In this case I just tossed together a salad of lettuce carrot and green capsicum.

With the amount of chicken thighs you tend to get from the supermarket this meal serves 4.

More than 5 Minute Pasta

This is the laziest meal that Emma and I cook that we still actually consider cooking.

It consists of:
1) Latina Pasta (typically the beef ravioli)
2) A Latina Pasta Sauce (typically a red one)
3) Vegetables

I also added a bit of other pasta from the cupboard because I was fairly hungry at the time. Simply cook the pasta, heat the sauce and cut up the vegetables (in this case it was just capsicum and carrot). I then mix the pasta sauce and the veges in a heated saucepan briefly and add the pasta for the final mix.

Then serve with grated cheese, it takes about 10 minutes in total and is a nice low effort meal especially when one or both of us are home very late but we still aren't actually ordering dinner.

Pad Thai

This is fast and tasty and only requires one pan so cleanup is easy too.

Get some rice noodles and soak them in hot water - you should do this first because everything else cooks so quickly that they are not going to have time to soak enough before you need them. So I usually put them in the bowl to soak before I even start any of the other prep.

Cut up some chicken and brown it in a wok on high heat. Once it's done, push it to one side and crack an egg or two into the pan (or if you're paranoid like me, crack them into a bowl first to make sure there isn't any shell in there). You need to immediately scramble the egg as it will set quickly. Break it up and mix it in with the chicken. Then remove both from the wok and set them aside.

Now you can turn the heat down a bit and add the following things to the wok: the noodles, bean sprouts, peanuts (finely chopped - I highly recmmend having a magic immersion blender attachment thing to do this for you), lime juice, a teaspoon or so of sugar (raw sugar is nicest, IMO), garlic, cayenne pepper, fish sauce. You can also leave aside some of the bean sprouts and peanuts to use as a garnish, which makes it look fancy and the fresh bean sprouts give a nice crips texture. I didn't do that this time because I couldn't be bothered. But if you're having a dinner party or something, it's nice.

Cook all the stuff in the wok until it's cooked - the main thing you're looking for here is the noodles, since everything else doesn't need that much cooking. I like to test the noodles by eating some.

When everything's done or nearly so, add back in the chicken and egg. Leave them in there long enough for the chicken to be thoroughly cooked and to have absorbed the delicious flavours of the other stuff and then serve. Optionally add your garnish and/or some more lime juice.

You can also make this with prawns and/or tofu in addition to or instead of the chicken if you want.

Easy and Impressive: Pesto Pasta with Pine nuts and Pmushrooms

This one's a snap. Fellas pay attention, it's a great way to impress a lady, fast.


Bonus points, it's even vegetarian compatible! Whoever said vegetarian food sucks hasn't seen me cook (ask me about my salad)


Extra bonus points, it's easy, and cheap. It's only got four ingredients (six if you include salt and pepper, seven if you include oil for frying). They are:

• Pasta. Any kind will do, but I recommend penne. Obviously, you'll need as much pasta as you need for the number of people you're cooking for.
• Mushrooms. About two per person.
• Pine nuts. A decent handful per person.
• Pesto. Usually about two teaspoons per person, depending on taste.

Righto, let's go!

Get your water boiling for your pasta and get your grill up to temperature. Once the water's boiling, chuck the pasta in. It'll normally take about ten minutes to cook, which i plenty of time for the rest.

Grill the pine nuts while the water is boiling. This is probably the trickiest step as you need to watch these nuts like a hawk; they go from raw to lumps of char in about ten seconds. I've found that usually by the time they smell cooked, they're already too far gone. You can tell when they're cooked just right, they'll be a lovely golden brown colour. Obviously, when they're cooked, take them off the heat. It doesn't matter if they go cold.

Chop and fry the mushrooms. Easy.

When the pasta's done cooking, strain it and then mix the pine nuts, mushrooms and pesto in the pan, and then serve.

Mm, delicious and easy.

I've always found some salt really brings out the flavour in this dish.

Enjoyed in conjunction with: I would normally recommend a white wine for this one, but it's a weekday and I'm not on holidays *shakes fist*.

Roast Lamb with Juniper Berries

As we approach winter, I start doing more and more cooking in the slow cooker. It has the dual benefits of cooking awesome, rich, filling meals that also make the house smell awesome, whilst being ridiculously easy to make beautiful tasting meals using cheaper ingredients. Here's what we had Saturday, which was awesome to come home to after playing a game of soccer in the rain.

First get a good hunk of lamb - in this case a leg with the bone in. I meant to get shanks but unfortunately they were out. Pop it in the pot and put it to one side. In the pan cook up whatever you want the sauce to be made out of. In this case it had juniper berries and orange peel as the main flavours, with merlot, onion chunks and crushed tomatoes to flesh it out. A bit of flour went in as well to thicken it. Then pour it over the lamb and cook it for 7 or so hours on High.

Here's what the lamb is like when you take it out. Note that it was so soft it literally fell apart as I took it out - it was so juicy and soft that you could have used a butter knife to carve it. Put the sauce back in a pan and boil it for 5-10 minutes to thicken it a little to make it your desired consistency.

Serve with mashed potato with the sauce over the top, and then settle in for a hot, tasty and above all else filling winter meal. Serve with the rest of the wine, assuming any is left.

WOMBAT STEW or possibly SLOW COOKED KANGAROO THING

This was an experiment, based off one of those microrecipes Dad remembered from the back of a packet of Beef stock.

To make this, you'll need:

• Diced kangaroo, 500 grams (Beef may also be used, but I prefer Roo)
• Beef stock, 660mL (one pint)
• Tomato paste, 1 1/2 tablespoons
• 1/2 cup - 1 cup red wine (ALL of the wine!)
• 250 grams of mushrooms, diced
• Two carrots, peeled and diced
• Two onions, peeled and diced
• Two cloves of garlic crushed
• One stick of celery, diced
• 1 1/2 cups of rice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons mixed herbs
• Oil for frying stuff
• 2 - 3 teaspoons of cornflour
• Salt and pepper as desired
• One big-ass pan for cooking stuff in
• One less big-ass pan for cooking rice in.

First thing: heat up the pan and put in about 2 tablespoons of oil. Brown the kangaroo then set aside, on a plate or whatnot.

Next, using the same amount of oil, fry the onion and garlic until it's just starting to go translucent (about 3 minutes). Now, add about 3/4 of the stock, the mushrooms, carrots celery and the mixed herbs, and bring to the boil.

Boil for about ten minutes, then lower to a simmer. Whilst simmering, add the meat, wine and tomato paste.

Simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently, and taste frequently. Add salt, pepper, more ingredients as you see fit.

This is what it looks like, taunting you, smelling amazing, for thirty minutes

While this is simmering, cook your rice. If it finishes before the rest, I normally put it in a bowl with a lid in the oven on low to keep warm.

Anyhoo, back to the main event. After about 30 minutes simmering (you can probably do it in a bit less time if you desire, or in way less time in a pressure cooker), add the remaining stock and the cornflour. For this, I mixed the remaining stock with the cornflour in a cup and stirred the bejeezus out of it to break up any lumps in the cornflour before adding it to the rest of the dish, and then stirred the bejeezus out of that. My point being: avoid getting the cornflour to go lumpy.

Simmer for about ten more minutes or until you're satisfied that it's thick enough. Serve.

This is what it'll look like when it's finished. Now you may taunt it instead.

Enjoyed with: If you cook with wine, drink it with the meal. For this one we used a Rorlach Estate 2010 Shiraz