Food

Blog below recipe:

 Lamb

10 large lamb cutlets on the bone, french trimmed.
(Get your butcher to do this for you)
 2 tablespoons of garam marsala
Olive Oil
5 Spring onions
1 Fresh red chilli
1 thumb sized piece of ginger
4 jarred red peppers (I didn't add these but you can)
I heaped tablespoon of runny honey
balsamic vinegar
3 sprigs of fresh coriander
1/2 a lemon
Salt and Pepper

Curry Sauce

2 tablespoons of Patak's Korma Paste 
1 x 400gm tin of light coconut milk
1 lemon


Garnishes

3 uncooked poppadoms
fat free natural yoghurt 



Pumpkin Cous cous

One cup of cous cous
(You can buy this at your local supermarket in the pasta and rice aisle)
I cup of chicken stock
Oil
Half a butternut pumpkin cut into cubes ( steamed, boiled or roasted )
Make sure the pumpkin is not overcooked and is still slightly firm
I small red onion diced
1 garlic clove diced
6 small mushrooms sliced into quarters
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of tumeric
1 teaspoon of parsley
1 teaspoon of coriander dried or fresh
Salt and pepper

Method: 

Rub lamb with salt and pepper and the garam marsala, bash and flatten them with you fist or a mallet and put them in a hot frying pan with 1 or two tablespoons of oil turning when they have gone nice and brown. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes on each side.  Meanwhile heat the chicken stock until boiling or use a chicken stock cube and add to water. Add the cous cous stir slightly and put lid on...leave for 2 minutes to set. Put the Korma paste and coconut milk into another frying pan with the juice of a  quarter or half a lemon, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes on a low heat. Chop up the Coriander, Spring onion, chilli and peppers into small pieces.

In the same pan as you cooked the lamb.  Stir in the diced onion and cook for one minute and then add the mushrooms and cook for another minute.  Add the pumpkin and garlic cook for another minute. Check cous cous and go thru with a fork add a teaspoon of oil.  Stir the cous cous in the pan with all your other vegetables add the cumin and tumeric and a bit of pepper.  Add salt to your liking.  Mix thru and turn heat off.

Break up the poppadoms into small pieces put into the microwave and cook for a minute or two until they puff up.  Take them out and bash them further with a rolling pin.  At the last minute toss the lamb with honey and a splash of balsamic vinegar.  Serve the lamb on a big serving platter scattered with the spring onions, peppers and chilli on top with the poppadoms on the sides . Pour the Curry sauce in a bowl and Cous Cous seperate.  Put yoghurt in a small bowl and your Cous Cous in a seperate bowl...Have some lemon wedges out on the table too.  The idea is to get the lamb with your hands, dip it in the sauce, then roll it in the poppadoms and add a dollap of yoghurt on top and add lemon to your liking.  Eat with the cous cous for a complete meal....Yum!

Enjoy!!



 FOOD!!!



We are all busy and rushing around doing our thing whatever that may be.... but for me no matter what,  I love to end my day with a great meal.  I was never a person who enjoyed take away/take out foods...I don't mind it once in a while but I prefer home cooking....I grew up in a house where the word take away or take out only meant that the oven had blown up or it was way too hot for my mother or father to whip up one of their fantastic meals and that was rare. At school my brother and I had sandwiches made for us the European way...in Vienna white bread, Schnitzel in the middle with cheese and Tomato wrapped in foil....it would take you half an hour just to unwrap it:) The other kids thought we were very uncool while they ate their vegemite or jam sandwiches. Numerous times we were laughed at. We were only allowed a lunch order once a week and with that there were strict instructions from my mother who to put it bluntly said "no meat pies as you will die of food poisoning".  Which now as an adult I absolutely love meat pies and I'm not dead yet...haha.    Dinner for us was a South Eastern European specialty and there was always plenty, finished off by a tray of assorted cakes made fresh by my mother.  I don't think as children we really appreciated what we were eating and where our food came from or how it was made. For us it was normal...the only time I realized we were different was when people not from a European culture would come over and gloat over the food and eat like they had never eaten in their lives and tell us how lucky we were to have this.  They were right! We were lucky especially to have both parents who knew how to cook fabulous meals. These days the food we ate back then is described as "Gourmet".  Who's laughing now!!?

As a grown woman in these times I really do appreciate food. I also appreciate my parents culinary skills as it has been passed onto both my brother and myself.  I love to cook, buy cook books, watch cooking shows and make up recipes. I love dinner with friends and recipe swapping. These days you can type in your main ingredient on the internet and usually hundreds of recipes will come up.  I love to experiment with my cooking and usually I will take a recipe and tweak it slightly and out comes a masterpiece.  I know this because my fiance Z just bulldozes his way through dinner and its all gone in a matter of seconds.  He loves food and eating it and lucky for him he has it on the table every night. I try to mix it up and we eat Seafood at least 3 times a week which is our favourite.  As for cakes, they are few and far between as firstly I'm time poor and secondly we are trying to keep our weight down....emphasis on the word TRYING!!

Up above I have added a photo and recipe of a recent meal I cooked incorporating Jamie Oliver's Lamb Lollipops in curry sauce (that I slightly tweaked), with my Pumpkin Couscous..I hope you enjoy.  Let me know what you think. Z devoured this in seconds and asked me to make it again...hehe...Who needs take out...?:)

I will sign off with this:     One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own



Enjoy your weekend people:)

Bye for now...

Ana x