Righto, this is a cooking thread, if you will. A chance to talk about nice food, food you love to eat, and most of all (if you can cook) cook up. This is an opportunity to share a few recipes, and to be able to learn a few tips about cooking.

Now, I don't want people posting that they made cheese on toast, or managed to scramble an egg, pour cereal and milk into a bowl, or god forbid spread butter onto toast. Nor is this to be turned into a sexist thread where Kiwichick (sorry, you're the only female regular here) is being told to go into the kitchen and make a sandwich or that her rightful place is in-between the oven and the sink. None of that. (I like a good chuckle about it too, but I'm trying to be serious about this thread).

So I'll start off.

---

Over the weekend, after having read about it in the paper during the week, I decided to cook a dinner for my family. A celebration dinner if you will because m pop got back from Hospital and I hadn't cooked a dinner in a while. My nan is very partial to fish, and I'm a big seafood fan with prawns, mussels, calamari, and crab/lobster at the top of that list. So after having seen the recipe in the paper, I thought'd I'd cook a Mediterranean Seafood Soup, with Garlic Toast.

Serves 6 approx.

Ingredients.
•   1 tablespoon olive oil
•   3 cloves of garlic – crushed
•   Ginger (according to taste), chopped finely.
•   400g can of diced tomatoes
•   3 cups of fish or vegetable stock
•   ½ cup of dry white wine (optional)
•   1 pinch of saffron
•   2 strips of lemon rind (about 3cm wide, 5cm long)
•   600g firm white boneless fish fillets (cut into 3cm pieces)
•   18 Prawns
•   18 Mussels
•   18 pieces of Calamari
•   1 leek (halved lengthways and chopped finely)
•   1 red capsicum (halved and chopped finely)   
•   1 clove of Garlic
•   6 pieces of Sourdough bread or Baguette
•   2 tablespoons of parsley, chopped
•   Salt & Pepper (according to taste)

Method:
1.   Peel and de-vein prawns, leaving tails in-tact.
2.   Scrub mussels, then pull off the beard (the little seaweedy bit that hangs from the joint)
3.   Heat oil in a pan, over a medium-low heat. Add Leek & Capsicum and cook for ~10 minutes, stirring occasionally until soft and lightly coloured.
4.   Add Garlic, Ginger and ginger and cook for 1 minute.
5.   Add Tomato, stock, saffron, lemon rind, and wine and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.
6.   Add fish, prawns, calamari, mussels and cook, covered, for a further 5-10 minutes, or until mussels open and fish and prawns change colour. Do not overcook Calamari, otherwise it will go a horrible rubbery texture and become virtually un-edible.
7.   Toast bread, and rub it with the cut sides of the garlic and some butter/margarine, or drizzle with Olive Oil.
8.   Ladle soup into bowls, and sprinkle with Parsley and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately with the Garlic Toasts.

The dish was really nice, and you can spice it up if you fancy, chuck in a chopped chilli (or two, for that extra kick). Definitely going to make it again, and next time will add photos.

Anyway, I dunno where this threads going to go, but maybe we can turn it into a Masterchef style thread.

without my slow cooker i wouldn't have a reason to live.

however, tonight i'll be serving up san choy bau - easy to make & really tasty, plus you feel healthy for chowing into lettuce. pork mince works wonders in this dish.

my go-to starter dish is always some turkish/lavish bread smeared with minced garlic, sprinkle with cheese & chuck a few herbs on & grill for a while - homemade garlic/cheese/herbs bread.

Trooth be told, I was smashin the Donna Hay the other night ;)

-PB

making some mac n cheese for home ec today, any good recipes yous've used?

why oh why am i visiting this thread in our fasting month. ](*,) ](*,)

I know you're from South Australia initialy, but c'mon. Didn't realize the South Australian language was somewhere between Swahili and Kazahkstani! :lol:

http://www.jocooks.com/main-courses/pork-main-courses/the-ultimate-mac-and-cheese/

You don't have to use all the cheeses listed there, we just used mostly cheddar, with a bit of parmesan and crumbled feta thrown in.

Why don't you ask him yourself?

My favourite soupb recipe off alll time, so good.

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/1144/french+onion+soup

Going simple dinner tonight, homemade schnitzels with a few roasted veges.

Love cooking but unless I'm cooking for the whole family like to keep it simple.

Did ribs the other week, got 4 racks, trimmed them up and got to make sure you take the membrane off, helps the flavours come through and makes it easier to eat. Used a dry rub of salt and pepper, chilli flakes, garlic flakes and cayenne pepper, leave to marinate over night.

Next day, wrapped them in foil slow cooked them in the oven on about 90-100 degrees for 4-5 hours. When cooked took them out coated them in homemade bbq sauce than put in the fridge. After that coasted them again in sauce and cooked them on the bbq for 10-15 minutes at a high heat... May have cooked them the 2nd time a bit too long sauce was more burnt than caramelised.

Homemade bbq sauce recipe:
Diced onion,
Garlic,
Chilli Flakes,
Olive Oil,
Bbq and Tomato Sauce,
Jack Daniels,
Brown Sugar,
Tabasco Sauce.

Diced onion and crush garlic, cook in olive oil on the stove on a low heat, add rest of ingredients to you find the taste you want, Cant' really remember the amounts I used for the ingredients just added stuff till it tasted awesome.

Fixed. Just sayin'. ;)

guess u learn new things every day ;) jks

Had the missus over for dinner last night. Made an interesting dish of Chicken Enchiladas following This Recipe. I made this mistake of only buying a 400g tin of canned tomatoes, had to rush down to the corner store to buy 1 more. Definitely need at least 2 if you're cooking for 4 - given the recipe says serves 8, you might want to add 3 or 4 cans of tomatoes. All depends on how many you're cooking for.

Was quite nice. The sour cream and grated cheese filling actually went quite well, although it did go creamy and was very filling after about 2 Enchiladas.

I'd also recommend buying a BBQ Chicken and shredding it, instead of buying chicken breast. Seemed to work quite well.

Should have called this thread FourFourFood.

You Ramadan goofed

that dish looks pretty decent - might have a go at it. solely by going by the recipe, was it a spicy dish? the mrs & i love hot stuff, so i nearly always add extra chilli powder/chillies to my cooking.

going on the whole bake trend, the other night i cooked up a really nice pasta bake. just used a chicken-tonight-esque pasta bake sauce, threw in some pasta & veggies, and added some mince to meat-the-dish-up. worked out really, really well.

the only problem i've found - using my stove top & oven at the same time trips my circuit & i have to make a trip to the fuse box. so i can't use them both simultaneously. probably the best excuse i'll find to fork out & convert to gas, which is the only thing i wanted to change in the kitchen when we bought the house.

Yeah, it was pretty straight forward. I wimped the heat factor down a fair bit in regards to the chilli. I was cooking for the grandparents too, and my grandfather especially isn't a spicy fan, and my girlfriend reckons she's allergic to chilli (relationship clearly isn't going to work. :lol: ) so I took out the seeds and removed the veins. She and my pop both reckoned they could taste the chilli but I couldn't, although it's possible the sour cream did cancel it out a bit.

If I had my way, I'd have chucked about 5 chillies in there. :lol: Love my chilli. :D I also add 1 clove more garlic than the recipe calls for and grated some Ginger too to give it another flavour (I do that with most the recipes).

We've been using a gas stove for as long as I can remember, and it's so much better than electric stoves. Cheaper, too.

Mate. Form is temporary. Class is permanent. ;)

Open cheese and tomato melt, seasoned with freshly cracked pepper, garnished with fresh parsley and a sprinkle of paprika, washed down with a freshly squeezed [size=1]poured[/size]Orange Juice.

whats best lads, baked or stove-top mac n cheese?

that pic has made me wanna head home for lunch.

i'm not saying you are wrong, but i don't think i'm wrong. my google search says both are ok


Edited by pv4: 14/8/2012 10:15:19 AM

I'm planning to make a cake for my friend's birthday, and as she loved that Three Wishes chocolate that used to be around, I'm going to make her a layer cake with a layer each of dark, milk and white chocolate. So does anyone have any good dark/milk/white chocolate cake recipes that I could use??

Peanut butter on toast. So amazing.

Can Confirm this to be true.

only if crunchy, anyone that buys smooth is an idiot

Edited by skipppy: 25/8/2012 11:03:00 AM

Came back to this thread for a good reason. Homemade Zataar tonight with lemon juice. Nom Nom Nom.

This x8,000,000

Baked. I used the recipe from cookbook of the guy that runs The Dip and it's bloody good. If i lived in Sydney I would eat at The Dip all the time.
I'm also making Peanut Butter Ice Cream tonight, very keen to see how it turns out