Above: On Saturday night I made this quick pizza, using a scone-base recipe from Alison Holst's Dollars and Sense cookbook. This is a great stand-by recipe, very fast to make. I couldn't live from this cookbook alone but, well, someone could.
Quick Scone Dough Pizza Base
2 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1 T oil
1/2 cup (125mls) milk
Sift dry ingredients into a bowl, stir in oil and milk, and mix to form a dough. Roll out onto a greased tray, (this rolls out very easily), cover with your desired toppings (tomato paste and cheese in my case) and bake at 220 C for 15-20 minutes.
That night Tim and I got very drunk, and met up with Emma, her friend Scott, and Paul in town. Sunday morning, natch, was a complete write-off. By Sunday afternoon though, I was feeling up for something cultural and so trekked across the waterfront to see the Philharmonic Orchestra give a free performance of famous film scores (You know, Harry Potter, Psycho, that movie with swords in it, etc.) It was thoroughly enjoyable but after a while it started to rain heavily which brought things to a halt. And made for an awful walk home. Yeh I was wearing a skirt again. I think that's how the weather knows when to be rainy and windy.
Above: By the time Sunday evening rolled gently around, I wanted to eat something healthy, in order to pretend that it would erase the previous night's excesses (and okay, we had McDonalds for breakfast.) So I came up with this Thai Beef Salad. It's not entirely original, in that anyone probably could have thought of it, but I wanted to do something different with mince - use it in a more elegant way. This is basically mince, onion, capsicum, fish sauce, lemon juice and sesame oil, cooked together and tossed with some of those pre-packed salad leaves that make EVERYTHING look like you've made an effort.
Above: Pasta with Beurre Rouge. Last night, our vegetarian ex-flatmate Ange came round to watch Fame (which I finally found, for $10 at Real Groovy! Kapow!) and I cooked her some dinner as well. In a self-absorbed kinda way, the entire meal was based around my recipes - the Miso-Honey Roasted Parsnips, the Carrot and Zucchini Salad, and something new - Spaghetti with Beurre Rouge. Now it's not actually an authentic French dish, it's just something I had an idea for, (as I was about to fall asleep the other night), a kind of tomato-flavoured Beurre Blanc. Hence the name.
I reduced Vermouth with some garlic, simmered it with tomato passata, and whisked in some butter, pouring it over cooked pasta. Here's the flummoxing thing though. I absolutely LOVED it, thought it was the best thing I've ever come up with (I know I say this every time) while Tim just thought it was...nice.
Which totally confused me. Had I actually come up with something good? So I'm going to make it again tonight, just to make sure I wasn't imagining how great it was...or that Tim is completely demented. Ange loved it, which helped my bruised ego somewhat. I shouldn't stress too much, this thing happened the first time I made him listen to "Needle and The Damage Done," come to think of it...
And I thought I was organising something quick and exotic for dinner by finely slicing a smoked chicken breast and artfully arranging it on a platter with some garlic herb buns, cherry tomatoes, wilted cucumber, cusp-of-use-by-date mesclun, and avocado. You win.
ReplyDeleteYum, that sounds great Mum!
ReplyDeleteMuesli in the mail, on its way to you :)
Shame about the wind and skirt thing but you probably made someone's day.
ReplyDeleteAm struggling to come to grips with my uni paper and all 6 books, DVDs, CDs, text books, workbooks, interactive webcam thingy, on-line chat shows etc etc!! All is in the too hard, too much basket at the moment. Oh for a piece of number 8 wire to hold it all together!
Muesli arrived safely and we are assured of breakfast for the next week, at least.
ReplyDeleteAm thinking of ordering a regular food parcel.
Loved the Marilyn Monroe moment - very Wellington when you least expect it LOL. The pizza dough looks v easy and will give it a go with the girls I think when I am next on in the weekend. Tried to get this comment on last night but am having some dyslexic moments - have given out the ph no back to front, same with my blog address. I think it is a case of the typing fingers going faster than the brain LOL. All the best for the new term and thanks for your comments.
ReplyDeleteLove Lynn