doctortim

MiFi, all of your dishes look great, but that prime rib and gratin look particularly delicious.

Last night I celebrated my first chili of the season by making spaghetti in a spicy tomato sauce with grated pecorino. It was such a simple meal, but easily one of the most satisfying I've eaten.

Thanks! I've posted my Butter Chicken recipe previously, although it's always changing slightly. What I served last night was that recipe minus the onion, plus pulverized cashews and fennel seeds toasted and ground. The cashews and fennel seeds were a good addition. In future if I had onions I would not leave them out (remember to cook slowly to make them sweeter). The pavlova is from Stephanie Alexander's recipe (which Nigella Lawson credits in her recipe for pavlova):

Percyn, that butter chicken is unlike any I've seen before -- how did you get that intense colour? Most of the butter chicken dishes I've had lose some of their colour after adding the cream. I haven't posted for a while, but I have been eating! Beef and blue cheese sandwich (ran out of burger buns). Vegetables cooked with indian tomato and indian spices (I'm sure there's some indian name for this of which I'm not aware). Last night we had some friends around, and I made Indian food. First we nibbled on roti with a some dips (lentils, overexposed raita). Then the main course. Butter chicken, beef vindaloo, and aloo gobi. There was also some mango lassi which is tucked away in the background. Dessert was a not-very-indian pavlova, but the addition of mango and a sprinkling of cardamon helped it keep with the theme. It was a great night.

I had an urge to have roast potatoes for lunch, and being the weekend that's exactly what I did. This was my first attempt at a technique I saw Jamie Oliver do (although no doubt countless others have done it as well), where you par-boil the potatoes first, then drain and smash around in the pot to rough up the edges before roasting. I was very impressed, these were the crispiest roast potatoes I've had. For added flavour I added some rosemary and garlic cloves to the cooking water.

A soft boiled egg with soldier toast. Served in a shot glass

There's some great look dinners (and desserts) here! The other night I made panfried potato gnocchi with bacon, radicchio, and sage. And minestrone soup (which was dinner tonight, and will be lunch for a while to come).

C. sapidus, I plan to check that cookbook out at the library next time I visit, the chicken looks great. Ever since I started eating my indian meals with basmati rice, I can't go back to plain rice. The smell of basmati cooking with some cloves, some cardamon pods, and a little saffron makes the house smell so good. I hardly ever cook steak, so tonight was a change. A porterhouse steak (I think in the US it's called New York Strip, and what you call porterhouse we call something else) on pan-fried radicchio with what's basically puttanesca (diced garlic, tomato, anchovy, olives, chilli, and parsley). I was amazed with how well the combination worked. The steak was intentionally unseasoned, and the salty puttanesca mixture with the bitter radicchio balanced out to one of the most intensely savory things I've tried, without being too salty.

From David's photos, those pasta sheets look about a 7 on the Atlas Marcato pasta machine (which goes up to 9).

Thanks C. sapidus. The recipe's a bit of a mashup, pulled together from various other recipes I've seen. I'm not very precise on the amounts. To make the chicken I marinated chicken pieces in equal parts yoghurt and tandoori curry paste (bought), then baked them in a scorching hot oven so there was some charred edges. Then for the sauce, I slowly sautéed half an onion in ghee, then turned up the heat and added quite a bit of minced ginger, some minced garlic, and some diced chilli. To that I added 1/2 tsp of turmeric and cooked it very quickly before adding some canned tomatoes. Cook the tomatoes down, then add some garam masala, ground black pepper, toasted then ground cumin seeds, and some cilantro. This was blended with a stick blender, then seasoned with salt and honey to get the right balance. Then I added the cooked chicken pieces, some water, and simmered it all uncovered for about an hour. Once the chicken was tender I added some cashews, some cream, and further adjusted the seasoning with salt and honey. I've had butter chicken that's sweet and butter chicken that takes sourness from adding more yoghurt than cream, but I prefer some sweetness. The cashews add a lot, and one recipe I read even suggested reserving and pulverizing some cashews into a paste to add to the sauce.

Butter chicken.

The other day I decided to try my hand at making orecchiette. I made a dough of mostly durum wheat semolina plus a bit of AP flour (roughly a 3:1 ratio), salt, and water. I kneaded the dough for 15 minutes, then formed the pasta. I used half of the batch that night for a tasty dinner, and set the rest aside to air-dry completely. The problem was, a number of them broke completely in half while drying, and many more formed incomplete cracks which caused them to break when I added them to the water. They weren't even particularly thin -- they were pretty much the same build as bought orecchiette. What's going on? Is there a special way to dry pasta that prevents cracking?

C. sapidus, that's a much darker crumble than I'm used to seeing. How do you make yours? David, both the soup and the cannelloni look really, really good. By the looks of it you're starting with uncooked fresh pasta sheets, is that right? I almost made cannelloni the other night but I couldn't be bothered par-cooking the pasta sheets. I had no idea starting uncooked was the proper way. The last few evenings I've been making a lot of pasta. First off, spinach and ricotta cappellaci. With brown butter & sage. I would have liked the butter a bit more brown, but I'm always so paranoid about burning it. The next night, I used the remaining spinach & ricotta filling to make gnocchi. They turned out well -- I wouldn't make them any differently -- but after earnestly trying to enjoy it, I'm beginning to accept that I'm just not the biggest fan of ricotta. Tonight I decided to try my hand at making orecchiette. That is, making the pasta myself. My technique was slow, but it worked. Served in a brandy cream sauce with peas and bacon. Although I didn't get any pictures, I can't forget last night. It was dinner at a friend's place, who for the main course served chicken breasts stuffed with feta, tomato, pesto, and mascarpone, and wrapped in prosciutto. They were cooked to perfection and served on the creamiest sweet potato mash I've ever eaten. It was fantastic.

I've come across an Australia-based website (meaning, the shipping costs aren't prohibitive) that's offering a great price on black iron frying pans. I've been meaning to get a couple of new pans, and these seem ideal. They can be seasoned, they seem relatively sturdy, can be used in the oven, and aren't as heavy as cast iron. Also, they're cheap. Here's what I'm talking about That said, I've never cooked with, let alone seen, "black iron" before. I hope to use it for a range of cooking applications -- frying, making curries, pasta sauces, maybe even cooking a chicken in the oven if my cast iron's in use. Also, my stove has standard electric hotplates, so I want something that will stay flat and won't warp like a certain cheap non-stick I inherited. Versatility and durability are more important to me that how it looks. Does anyone have any advice or experience with black iron pans? Are they a great bargain, or would it be a case of 'you get what you pay for'?

Peter, that turkey is simply perfect. Tonight, chicken and potato curry with saffron rice.

Thanks Percyn. I made the roti dough, from a mixture of (roughly) 1 part water, 2 parts flour, and a drizzle of canola oil. I wish I'd known all along how simple they were to make!

Everything here looks so good! Lately I've been experimenting with Indian cooking, and finding that it's not as intimidating as I'd expected. I started simple: Dal (which I like with a dollop of raita, or in this case plain yoghurt). Served with roti, which puffed up nicely as it was cooking. I didn't take photos, but I made a bunch of meat curries, chana masala, aloo parathas, and yesterday I experimented with lamb parathas (replacing the potato filling with a cooked mixture of ground lamb, spinach, and diced potato. It was great!). Last night I went to a party to welcome home a friend who has been overseas for a year. What better way to do it than an Australian-themed dinner? As a starter I served a South Australian speciality, the pie floater. Famously served from the pie cart outside Adelaide's main railway station, these are a mass-produced meat pie served upside down in a bowl, then drowned in a chunky pea soup and topped with tomato sauce (ketchup). They're not the most appetizing thing in the world, and are traditionally reserved for the end of a big night out. I like a challenge. My version was inspired by a chef on a local cooking show. They were home made mini steak and vegetable pies served the right way up in a little pea and mint soup with, of course, ketchup. When people heard that I was serving pie floaters they were rightfully afraid, but it turned out great and got rave reviews. For main course the host roasted a beautiful piece of beef with vegetables, and for dessert was butterscotch pudding courtesy of a guest, and a pavlova made by me. By the end of the night we were stuffed but satisfied.

Thanks! I make my bolognese in bulk, with onion, a few anchovies, carrot, celery, a bay leaf, meat (minced or chunks, sometimes both), a tiny bit of milk, some canned tomatoes (but not heaps), and a little chicken stock, in roughly that order cooking each properly as I go (as opposed to all together). Then I reduce it quite a lot, and freeze it. When I'm in the mood for bolognese I sauté some tomatoes in a pan with oil, add some defrosted bolognese until it's all mixed through and hot, then toss with the pasta. It freezes well so you can have a great meal really quickly. The thai cooking threads on this site have helped me a lot, particularly the pad thai cook-off. The key to perfectly cooked noodles seems to be to make sure they're pliable but not 100% cooked when they hit the wok. Add them to the wok with your liquids plus a little bit of water and that'll finish them off in less than a minute. Have the sauce mixed together already so you don't waste time fussing around with different jars and bottles while your noddles die in the pan.

Chicken pad thai. What I love about this (and many other noodle dishes) is how after some very basic prep, the whole thing comes together in minutes in a hot wok.

The Australians on eGullet may have seen this one, but has anyone else seen 'The Cook & the Chef' on ABC (sort of the Aussie equivalent of the BBC)? The show is filmed in kitchen of Maggie Beer's ('the Cook') home in the Barossa Valley, as she and Simon Bryant ('the Chef') work to showcase ingredients in their own unique way. Maggie's style tends to be quite traditional with what I can only describe as a very Barossa Valley slant, while Simon's cooking has a lot of asian influences and skews towards high-end restaurant cooking. I love this show, particularly when they visit Adelaide's wonderful central markets. It's always exciting to see Simon Bryant running around with cameras following him while I'm out doing my grocery shopping. And you can judge it for yourself, because every new episode is now posted online for free! ABC TV: The Cook & the Chef

Spaghetti bolognese (I've decided to practise my photography skills, hence the prolific posting lately)

A rather boring picture of a very tasty dinner -- truffled risotto.

Grilled tomato & cheese roll, with salad.

For lunch today, a BLT with a fried egg.

Peter, those chicken thighs look great. How'd the stock turn out? For the next 9 weeks I've got basically no commitments, so I've been taking the time to prepare meals at a relaxed pace every day of the week. I don't know whether it's the result of more careful preparation or simply the psychological effect of cooking at my leisure, but the food has just been tasting so much better. I think it's probably a bit of both. The other night I made spaghetti carbonara. Then last night I took the opportunity to try two things that had been floating around in my head. The first was pan-fried potato gnocchi, and the second was slow-cooked steak. The gnocchi were boiled first then drained and fried in butter until they were crisp on the outside. The steak was a fat cut of sirloin roasted for 1 hour in a 70 degree (160 Fahrenheit) oven, then quickly seared in a stupidly hot pan to develop a crust without cooking the inside further. The results were great -- a smoky crust on the outside and perfectly medium all the way through. I served them together with a simple sauce made with reduced veal stock, brandy, and butter. And after all of that, unfortunately I didn't take a photo. Next time.