What are you COOKING now...

[Ginnie]

Gee, its been so long since I started a thread! So I thought I would start a few "fun" threads to get away from all this serious Apollo business. ;D ;D
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Alright, I like to cook - I do most of the cooking at home in fact. I do not bake.
Last week I tried to make something different, so I tackled Falafels.
I normally see Falafels as deep fried balls, but when I dropped them into the oil, they promptly fell apart, so I had to do another batch. I ended up making patties out of the mixture and frying them. They tasted pretty good, but I would have preferred them as crunchy balls.
i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/ginniegatrit/falafel.jpg
I used all fresh ingredients, and soaked my chickpeas properly, so I don't imagine I screwed up the way they're supposed to taste!

[echnaton]

For dinner I cooked a ham steak in tart apples for dinner. Complemented by bread with cheese baked in.

Tomorrow we will have thinned chicken breasts sauted with a spiced breading. We put them on cibatta rolls with pancetta, ricotta cheese and vegetables.

[lionking]

today we cooked cabbages rolled with rice and meat. you cutt he cabbage leaves into small ones after you boil them. you prepare raw rice with tomato sauce and tiny meat with a bit of grease. then, you put the rice and meat in the cabbage leaves and make each one a roll, then you cook them.

[BertL]

Getting ready to cook me some macaroni. It's been a while since I cooked; this is my first week on my own again after I got diabetes (I stayed with my parents until that was balanced out a bit).

[Ginnie]

Feb 9, 2010 10:52:21 GMT -4 @lionking said:

today we cooked cabbages rolled with rice and meat. you cutt he cabbage leaves into small ones after you boil them. you prepare raw rice with tomato sauce and tiny meat with a bit of grease. then, you put the rice and meat in the cabbage leaves and make each one a roll, then you cook them.

We call them "Cabbage Rolls". They are really good although I've never made them - just ate them.

[Ginnie]

I've got to do some adjusting for my meals now - my wife can't have milk or sugar - my daughter can't have wheat (that leaves out regular pasta) and a bunch of other ingredients.
Have you ever noticed how many sauces have sugar and/or milk ingredients in them?
So most meals I make have some combination of garlic, extra virgin olive oil and onions. That's a good place to start. I've adjusted pretty well to a new menu - I make an excellent Potato Wedge!

[laurel]

I'm not much of a cook but I'm working on it. The best thing I've cooked recently was a skinless chicken breast that I flavored with dried parsley and Clubhouse Lemon and Herb Seasoning. Very tasty.

[echnaton]

Tonight for dinner we are going to grill salmon. Served with cheese ravioli and what ever veggies look good when I go the the market this afternoon.

So most meals I make have some combination of garlic, extra virgin olive oil and onions

You can't beat that. I think we'll start there as the base for personal pizzas this weekend.

[BertL]

I made the macaroni yesterday. It was delicious. I forgot how the mind tricks you into thinking your own cookery tastes superior to any other food.

[chew]

A chuck steak browned then braised until tender in water, liquid smoke and miso. Tastes like steak and bacon!

[PeterB]

Shepherd's Pie

Brown some mince (ground beef for the uneducated) in a frypan, while boiling potatoes in a saucepan. Add carrots, onion, diced tomato, tomato paste and sauce from the sachet with the recipe to the mince. Mash the potatoes. Add peas to the mince. Put the mince in a casserole dish, cover with the potato, sprinkle some grated cheddar on top and into the oven for 20 minutes.

According to the recipe it serves four, though somehow after we have what we want and put away two other meals, there's usually still enough left over for a couple of meals for Small Person.

We're slowly filling the chest freezer with extra meals.

[BertL]

I know it doesn't count, but until just now I hadn't eaten jam on a slice of bread in a long time. It's very tasty, like lemonade only less liquid.

[laurel]

Tonight I made baked potatoes with melted cheese on top for dinner. It was easy, even for me. A new addition to my short list of kitchen successes.

[echnaton]

I am grilling fajita's tonight. To be served with hot tortillas, guacamole, sour cream, black beans grilled onions and roasted red pepper. While I've have the grill hot, I'll cook some chicken marinated with a tangy bar-b-que sauce.

[PeterB]

It was a big cooking day for me yesterday - we had family come to visit, both to celebrate one brother's birthday and for other family to see our new baby for the first time.

Most of the cooking wasn't for them, but rather to put some nice smells in the house. So while I was watching the football on TV, I cored, peeled and chopped up some apples to go in the slow cooker (home made stewed apple is much nicer than the tinned version), and got some bread going in the bread maker. Then I made some Anzac biscuits. I'd made some of the bikkies the night before, but messed up the recipe, so took advantage of the late arrival of some family to cook some more.

Anyway, I find Anzac biscuits so easy to make, I thought I'd share the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of rolled oats
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of dessicated coconut
125 grams of butter
1 tablespoon of golden syrup
2 tablespoons of boiling water
1 teaspoon of bicarb soda

1. Mix the four dry ingredients in a large bowl.

2. Melt the butter and golden syrup in a saucepan and mix them together.

3. Mix the water and bicarb soda, then add to the butter and golden syrup.

4. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.

5. Grease some baking trays, then place 3-4 cm balls of biscuit mix on the tray, separated enough so they don't spread into each other.

6. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes at 180 degrees C.

7. Let the biscuits sit on the tray for a few minutes before removing and eating.

Some notes...

Metric measures here - in Oz a cup means 250 ml (quarter of a litre), a tablespoon means 20 ml and a teaspoon means 5 ml.

Biscuit to Aussies means the same as it does to Brits - what Americans would call a cookie.

I'm not sure if some of these ingredients will make sense to American readers, but golden syrup is apparently a pale treacle best known in the USA in Louisiana.

Yesterday's batch took about 10 minutes from start to mixing all the ingredients. Scooping out the mixture onto the baking trays took another 10 minutes or so, as it's incredibly sticky - at the end I had nearly enough mixture on my fingers to make another biscuit. No worry - it's tasty enough to lick off your fingers.

Yesterday's batch produced about 30 biscuits. Not many of them left now.

The mistake I made in the batch I made the previous night was to use a tablespoon of bicarb instead of a teaspoon...