Cook Book Challenge: Week 31

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Now that my mini-series of cook books has been cooked through, I'm back to indecision in picking a book for the challenge. This week was made a little easier for me, as dad picked up another couple books from the op shop for me. I was flicking through one whilst trying to decide on dinner and came across as recipe I just had to try.

The book is New Idea's "Let's Cook Chinese". I'm such a lover of Asian food, but it's something I seldom have at home. Neither of my parents were equipped to cook Asian dishes, so growing up the only Asian food I got was take away. I haven't learnt enough yet to be able to experiment much with Asian flavours, and so I tend to rely a lot of cook books when I'm making it at home. Some are more westernised than others, and I feel this one lingers half way between traditional and bastardised Asian cuisine, but as a Westerner I'm not picky enough to mind. This book had so many dishes I wanted to try, but there was one that caught my attention above all else.

Crab Meatballs

6Aug2012

Cook Book Challenge: Week 28

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I'm a week late in posting this challenge. I've just started a new round of field work for my research project that has me up at 5am and home way after the sun has set. Ahh, the joys of working with a nocturnal species. But if you're as much of a fan of squid as I am, you'll agree that this one is definitely worth the wait.

This week's book is Tobie Puttock's "Daily Italian". Tobie is a local Melbourne boy who cheffed his way across Europe, working 18-hour days in Italian-speaking kitchens. He worked with many a high profile chef before bringing all this knowledge back to Melbourne. In 2006 he opened his restaurant, Fifteen — a Jamie Oliver founded chain many of you will know of, that gives opportunities to disadvantaged youths. The restaurant fell victim to arson a few years ago, but recently reopened as The Kitchen Cat.

Tobie is a fantastic foodie, and his book was full of recipes I wanted to try, and will do so soon. But I couldn't go past the squid recipe. Not only do I love it, I've never cooked squid myself before, and so it was perfect for the cook book challenge.

Recipe after the jump…

20Mar2012

Prawns in Puff Pastry

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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.