The fact that up until now I have never had cashew soup of any description is a big mistake on my part. Cashews are one of my favourite things in the world, and now so is this soup.
Tag Archives: savoury
Cook Book Challenge: Week 18
This weeks book is one of the cook books that I have no idea where it came from. It was either one of the many cook books my mum decided not to take with her, or another op shop gift from dad. Either way, it's been sitting around forgotten about until I dug it out for the challenge.
It's written by Alison Holst and is called "The Best of Home Cooking". It's very old school, and I find a lot of the directions to be either irrelevant or too vague to follow. But it contains a wealth of great ideas and tempting flavour combinations, so even when I can't follow the recipe, I can usually take the idea away and fill in the blanks myself.
This weeks recipe is "Mushroom Mounds".
Prawns in Puff Pastry
In an attempt to evict the old second fridge/freezer to save both money and power, I undertook the feat of condensing two freezer-loads worth of food into one. My Tetris skills, whilst impressive given the final result, were not so good that there were not casualties. I had a large, space eating bag of frozen prawns that were deemed to big to fit anywhere, so the just had to be eaten. As if that's a shame. Given than this months’s challenge on is seafood, I decided to revisit on old favourite.
I cooked this dish with salmon for the very first week of my cook book challenge, so I thought I'd try it with my favourite seafood.
Lemon Chicken in Phoenix Nest
Honey chicken and lemon chicken are both one of my favourite Chinese dishes. I often order them when I go out, but I make it much less often. Making this reminded of why I should make the effort more often.
Cook Book Challenge: Week 14
I'm not really a believer in New Years resolutions. But if I came close to having one, it was that I was definitely going to keep up to date with the Cook Book Challenge. Well, it's nearly the end of Feb and I'm yet to do it once.
I guess the reason there is that I basically haven't been home to cook. I've been so flat out that I pretty much skipped dinner in favour of sleep. My now my schedule is starting to slow down (i.e. working from home rather than doing 16 hour days on top of a 3 hour commute) so I've been able to return to cooking over the last week.
This coincided with my dad giving me yet another two books from the op-shop. Both these books had so many appetising recipes inside it really got the desire to cook returning.
Cook Book Challenge: Week 13
Admittedly, this cook book challenge was one I did some time ago. But time is escaping me and so I am only just posting it now.
A little while ago my boyfriend's sister-in-law gave me this book. "The Asian Cook", By Linda Doeser. She'd somehow ended up with two copies, and so I was more than happy to take the extra off of her hands when offered. She's told me that it was full of scrumptious recipes, and she was not wrong. It was difficult choosing a dish to make and it is certainly a book a shall return to time again.
This time, however, it was Pineapple Fried Rice…
Cook Book Challenge: Week 12
If you have a list of sauces in your repertoire, you can turn any basic meal into something a little more special. This satay sauce recipe the The Australia Woman's Weekly's "The great chicken cookbook" serves that purpose. This sauce is made with common pantry ingredients and is <i>far</i> from traditional – served with marinated chicken shaslicks, it's perfect for those nights of zero inspiration.
Cook Book Challenge: Week 10
The dish for this week came from another op shop pickup by my dad: "Inspiring Tastes". This book is another of those promo dealies, this one by Masterfoods. The theme for this is that every dish uses a Masterfoods product or four. But, despite the fact that I usually do buy Masterfoods products, they can be easily subbed for any brand, or even fresh herbs.
Now, lamb is my favourite red meat in the world. In fact, it's my favourite meat period. But it is also one of the most expensive meats going around, so it's seldom had in my household. As a poor uni student, I usually only stock our freezer with chicken, mince and sausages where protein is concerned. So this dish was a bit of a special treat.
Cook Book Challenge: Week 8
The cookbook I use for this weeks challenge was one of those "if you buy this product, you get this book free!" type deals from Leggo’s. In said cases, I usually expect nothing much. A few pasta recipes, some spaggy bol, nothing I haven't seen before. I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity in this book, with twists on old classics like a gnocci bake, and then there's the diversity of meaty dishes. The catch with said books is that you usually have to buy their products to make the recipes, however the theme is simply that all use Leggo's tomato paste, which can be subbed by an sort of tomato paste or puree. Whilst trying to think of something to cook for dinner the other night, I rummage through this book and found something that I both had never made (or eaten!) before, and had the ingredients for.
Cook Book Challenge: Week 5
Wow. It did not take me long to fall off the band wagon with this one. Lately, finding time to cook anything that isn't 2-minute noodles is an achievement within itself.
But here's one to fire this challenge up again. This one comes from Mary-Lou Arnold’s “The All Occasion Chicken Cookbook”.
A move from the sweet and to the savory: though you probably won't be surprised to hear that it involves pastry.
I mean, how many times have you heard me say I love pastry?
Cakecrumbs 