King Street kitchen

Hey Christina Street, a great first contribution. It sounds like there are some unusual chefs at Wareemba Avenue Kitchen. And it is good to see the  Douglas Street "Kitchen hands" making an entry onto the blog in concert with Hunter street.

Mushroom pasta for two, a quick and yummy pasta around two key ingredients, mushrooms and butter. I like to make this with a few different types of mushrooms but last night only had the ordinary champignons, around .5 kg.

Slice the mushrooms. Also prepare some sort of onion, any kind, yellow, red, green or leek. Last night I used leek. Heat some olive oil in a saute pan until hot, add onions and toss lightly, put in the mushrooms and toss till coated, leave heat on high until first mushrooms start to brown then lower the heat. Add salt and pepper. Add a good pinch of dried chile flakes. If you like using wine, a good splash of a white at this stage goes well. Then turn off the heat and allow to sit.

For pasta papperadelle is great or fettucine. The trick is to not use too much. 100 grams is plenty for two people. Prepare pasta.

When it is nearly done, reheat the mucshrooms and add a GENEROUS (don't skimp) chunk of butter and allow this to melt.  Drain pasta thoroughly and add to pasta and stir until heated through.

Turn into serving bowl and add a generous covering of parmesan cheese and chopped continental parsley. Some good bread is handy for sopping up those juices. The smell of this pasta dish is fantastic!

Wareemba Avenue Kitchen - Quick Moroccan Chicken

Thanks Christina St Kitchen! The Potato Wrap Bread looks great!

Last night in the Wareemba Avenue kitchen I was left to my own devices and I whipped up a quick chicken tagine while Bern and Val were out taking an evening stroll. First I browned off an onion in a little oil and added Moroccan seasoning mix to release the flavours. Then I added about 3 single chicken breasts cut into larger pieces and sealed that off.

Then came a tin of tomatoes, a couple of carrots cut into larger pieces, some zucchini and a little bit of chicken stock to make up the sauce.

I let it cook on the stove top for about 20 minutes waiting patiently, with lovely smells wafting, for the other members of the wolf pack to get back. The recipe worked very well and my first attempt at using the tagine produced delicious results! Bern had some couscous which looked lovely (and I had it without ... trying to cut out all pm carbs).

I am definitely going to try this one again and do some more experimenting with my tagine. I didn’t realise that you could use your tagine for a quick meal and thought it was more for “cook all day” type recipes. I even have some mince out for tonight and am going to try some Moroccan style meatballs. Hopefully Valerie won’t slack off and I will get some help (though I am not sure how easy rolling meatballs is when you don’t have opposable thumbs). I will let you know how it goes!

Christina St Kitchen

Since we found this recipe online it has been a family favourite. We use this wrap bread for any turkish/greek or indian meal. It is soft and holds a wonderful selection of yummy meats and salads. Tonight it is with a stack of felafel, hummus, tomatoes, spanish onion and tatziki. Delish! (we generally double this recipe)

Potato Wrap Bread

3+ cups plain flour

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1 mashing potato, boiled and mashed

1 tsp salt

2 Tbs veg oil

1 tsp instant yeast

2 Big bowls for mixing

Place 2C flour in one of the bowls and pour the boiling water over and mix in thoroughly. (will make glue - don't be scared) Set it aside.

In the second bowl mix the mashed potato, 1C flour, yeast, salt and oil till you get a doughy mass.

Once the flour/water mix is cool enough (but still quite warm) to be bearable and won't kill the yeast, put the two mixes together and knead till smoother. (we are very lackadaisy with this bread. depending on the flour sometimes it is beautiful and sometimes terribly dauntingly sticky) NB use oil on your hands as opposed to flour

You will end up with a stiff, sticky ball. If it is way too sticky, add more flour before you leave it to rise. It is an oddly sticky dough though. Cover it and let it rise for up to 2 hours (1 or less is standard at our house)

Use a tray with sides and pour a little oil in the bottom to coat the base. shape tennis ball sized balls out of the dough and line them up in the tray. You can then roll them out and stack ready to cook or roll and cook in sequence. I try not to use flour at all in the rolling out process, but use baking paper and keep oiling my hands. I use two dry pans at the same time or they do really well on a flat dry bbq plate. Roll them out till they are about 5mm thick. Cook on each side till they begin to bubble up and if you peek under they will be brown in patches.

As they are cooked stack them in a pile on a wire rack. They will stay soft and warm.

Felafel

(you have to plan ahead for these and soak the chick peas overnight)(tinned does not work)

1 1/3 C dried chick peas soaked overnight

1 tsp salt

1 Tbs baking powder

1 Tbs cumin

1 Tbs ground coriander

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 garlic clove - crushed

2 T chopped parsley

juice of 1 lemon

Whiz it all together till chopped but not pureed. Squeeze into balls (3cm diameter?) Shallow fry in veg oil.

Quick Hummus (stephanies)

1 tin chick peas, drained and soaked

2tsp cumin

juice of 2 lemons

2 big cloves garlic

good sprinkle of cayenne

ground black pepper

salt to taste

Whiz, taste, adjust to your liking.

Douglas St and Hunter St - Semolina Pastry

Today Cecily and Amanda were cooking Makrout, a Maroccan treat, at Hunter Street. This is another simple and unusual pastry - 3 ingredients, no rolling and unlike most pastries it likes to be handled.

Makrout is a a filled semolina pastry. For the pastry mix 1 cup of semolina with 1/3 cup of melted butter and just enough rosewater of orange flower blossom water to be able to form the mix into a stiff pastry. The pastry is easiest to handle if left to sit for 20 min while making the filling.

Filling could be any mix of dates, apricots, figs, almonds, pistacho nuts etc whizzed with a little sugar, cinnamon and some rosewater or orange flower blossom water - again this needs to be a thick paste. Make small balls of this mix. Take a tsp of the pastry, flatten into a disc and shape around the ball. Bake at 170C for 15-20 min until firm. Roll in icing while hot.

Any leftover filling can be made into fruit balls by rolling in coconut.

This pastry could be used in the same way for savoury options with fillings such as spicy mashed chickpeas or meat filling. The filled pastry can also be shallow or deep fried.




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Hunter St Kitchen

I am so impressed with our gen y bloggers! How clever and competent! Pasta sauces..frittatas...yum!

Fatima fared much better in the King St kitchen than the Hunter St kitchen! Those little fingers looked great.

Last night I became inspired whilst cooking as Rick Stein was on the telly. I enjoy the way he links food with memories of past meals and experiences, literature and the aromas which surround him.

 I made some zucchini and chic pea fritters which were pretty bland but another quick way to embellish a plate.

I mixed one tin of chic peas, drained and smashed; onion; zucchini; self-raising flour; lemon zest; dill; salt.

They were pretty bland actually. Needed more spice.

Wareemba Avenue Kitchen - Hakuna Frittata

What do we do when we have a hungry man and not enough chops?? Why whip up a yummy Frittata using the beautiful free range eggs delivered by one terrific father!!

Valerie and I first whisked Dad’s eggs up. Look at how beautiful and yellow they were. All that green grass certainly does the trick!

We then added what we had in our fridge and pantry – baby roma tomatoes, English spinach asparagus and a potato. A sprinkle of parmesan on the top and voila! A beautiful healthy dinner with chops on the side and some steamed veggies!!

Jamie Oliver would be proud of our healthy - less than 30 minute meal!

King St Kitchen pics

King Street kitchen

Fatima's Fingers from the Hunter St Kitchen were so enticing I had to try them too. The Tunisian Brick Pastry is really interesting, although it does come with a lot of packaging as each round sheet is on its own paper. I made a filling of beef and pork mince, leeks, roasted pumpkin, cranberries, continental parsley (is there any other kind of parsley even worth mentioning?)and then some parmesan cheese and two eggs. My wrapping technique wasn't that great either, I need to find a Tunisian person to demonstrate. Then I pan fried them in a little oil. Very tasty and yet another take on flour based containers for tasty fillings. Every culture has them, a way to make a bit of meat or special filling go further.

Charles St Kitchen

Slow Cook Sunday

Greetings all. I'm excited to be part of this cooking blog, although as you can guess from the title I am going to post a bit sporadically (ie. today is Tuesday...).

Sundays in our house are a day of relaxation, a day for me to cook something just for the fun of it: baking or roasting of slowcooking. This week I was keen to make some sort of family-friendly creamy chickeny pasta something.

I started with thigh fillets, shallots, mustard, and mushrooms. I was aiming for good carmelisation on the shallots and chicken but fell short of the mark; firstly I was a bit impatient, and secondly my saucepans are cheapies and I was too lazy to use a frypan first. Then I deglazed with chicken stock and let it simmer for a couple of hours or so until the chicken was lovely and tender.

Right before the end, I added a bunch of asparagus and cooked until tender. I took it a little further to make sure that the baby could eat them.

Then I poured in a good dollop of cream and heated until just boiling, then removed from heat and added parmesan cheese to taste (from Norton St grocers - yum!).

My sauce was finished! It sat on the stove smelling delicious until it was time to taste.

Here is our 'Plus 1' testing out the sauce, served with peas and bread for dipping. She approved! She even tried the asparagus (it wasn't a hit, but at least she tried some).

Later in the evening we had ours over rigatoni with pepper and extra parmesan. Not the healthiest, but very delicious. It made good leftovers, too.

A Wave from W-Ave

Hello everyone and thank you so much for inviting me to this Blog! What a fantastic idea!

Valerie (the Red Kelpie love of my life) and I can't wait to get involved from our Thornleigh kitchen. We will have to get our thinking caps on though.

If anyone is interested in some new ideas, SBS has put out a great monthly magazine. There is an amazing recipe for Asian style braised beef shin. We may just have to whip that up on the weekend! Will let you know how it goes.

Love from Jack and Valerie

Hunter Street Kitchen

Fatima's Fingers. 

Over the weekend I discovered the pleasures of cooking with brick pastry. I had never heard of it before Friday when we ventured to Essential Ingredient and bought a packet of these Tunisian pastry circles. I followed the recipe on the back  - basically.

I seasoned and spiced up some pork and beef mince and added a chopped boiled egg. When it had cooled for a while I added 3 raw eggs and a fair bit of grated cheese.

Rolling them into the elegant finger shape is obviously something I need to practise. My Fatima's Fingers looked more like Fatima's arthritic thumbs!  They only took a few minutes to shallow fry and they tasted terrific.

I am quite sold on brick pastry. So much easier that fillo and it has a nice crunchie texture.

Fatima's Fingers looked more like Fatima's arthritic thumbs - but tasted yum!

Green Surprise: Sunday night left overs

I also made, what turned out to be quite a delicious cook-up on Sunday Night. I decided to use up lots of little green bits which were lurking at the bottom of the crisper bin: fennel, zucchini, garlic, mushrooms, a cos lettuce and a green apple. After slicing and peeling them. I put them all in a pan  (with lid on) with seasoning and oil for about ten minutes. The apple made all the difference.  In retrospect,  some almonds or pine nuts on the top might have been effective. I might have to give this a name...Green Surprise???

King St Kitchen

Tonight I made one of my favourites, Zucchini and Chickpea pasta, which is a bit unusual but really good. You need a can of chickpeas, a good-sized zucchini, some sort of onion, 100g of pasta (tonight I used papparadelle), some butter, ground pepper and some good parmesan cheese. Continental parsley is also great but not critical.
First run a can of chickpeas through cold water until they stop foaming (starch), then drain and let dry on paper towels. Deep fry in very hot oil until they start to burst open and then remove from oil with slotted spoon and let rest on more paper towels.
Take a good Zucchini and slice or chop in whatever shape takes your fancy. Saute in olive oil with any variety of onions, salt and pepper. Optional, a few slices of pancetta sauteed with zucchini.
Once Zucchini has started to brown, add a chunk of butter and turn off heat. Add cooked and drained chickpeas to vegetables.
Prepare 100g pasta of your choice. Once pasta is cooked, turn on heat under vegetables, add pasta to vegetables and warm in pan. Turn out into serving dish and add parmesan. Continental parsley and more pepper are also good additions.

Your kitchen

We are hoping that our blog grows as a space for sharing the magic that can happen in any kitchen on any night. This includes your kitchen. If you have received an invite from this blog, you can publish a post from your kitchen. You can be as detailed as you like, that depends on how you cook. Pictures are also up to you. I'm sure where photos are included, these will be appreciated.

Our blog is open so it can be found by anyone. But contributors are by invitation. We can have up to 100 authors, so the world is our oyster. Regarding naming your post, we are using our street names, eg King St kitchen. Then all the postings from your kitchen will be easy to find.

Westcourt Rd kitchen

We are overdosing on our current pasta fave - Spaghelli Al Bianco. The original recipie is from an Italian cookbook Jason borrowed from the library. Unfortunately we can't remember which one. I looked at the recipe and thought - yuck (I.m not really a mince fan) but this pasta is fabulous. Rehydrate a packet of dried wild mushrooms in a cup of boing water (set this aside). Finely slice and saute a leek, a few stalks of celery and a couple of carrots with some olive oil and butter. Add 500g mince and saute till browned. Add a tbs flour and some good grinds of salt and pepper. Add the mushrooms and the soaking water. Gradually add 500ml of hot chicken stock and simmer for 45 minutes or until you are so hungry that you can't wait any longer. Toss the sauce with cooked spaghetti and add the grated zest of two lemons and some good parmesan. The house smells fabulous and the leftovers the next day are an added bonus.

King St Kitchen_8 August

I made a Ragu this weekend from beef, chuck to be exact. I never heard the term "Ragu" until I came to Australia. I now know it is regarded as the very best of meaty sauces to have over pasta and it is connected with Italian cooking. I grew up in an Itlalian cooking household in California and it is not something in my memory. But it is now in my favorites, being a dedicated meat eater.It is best on pasta but the pasta to Ragu ratio needs to be carefully managed, not too much pasta!And good parmigiano is important. cooking a Ragu does need commitment. It is a hands on dish and needs time.

This ragu should have been very yummy at the finish but is somehow not as tasty as it should be. Big chunks of chuck steak browned and then put in a covered pot with chicken consommé, salt and pepper and cooked for 3-4 hours. Then cooled and broken up by hand into small meaty morsels with the fatty bits sent to the big bin in the sky.

All those meaty bits are returned to the very enriched consomme that formed around the cooking beef. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes. Chop a carrot, an onion and a bit of celery and continental parsley, sauté in a bit of olive oil till flavourful and add to meat. Add a bit of nutmeg and salt And pepper to taste and cook for another 2 hours. Lid on or off depends on how the liquid is evaporating in your cookware. You want the sauce Around the beef to get less thin and more flavourful.
So this one is nice but I think we have been living with the cooking smell for too long as it is not as tasty as it should be. Mind you it is still tasty. We have had it on toast twice, one of steve Manfreddi's reccos for Ragu. but some thing is missing, so we need to put it in the freezer and bring it out on a new day when we need a tasty meal quickly.

Hunter St Kitchen : Monday Night

I looked in the fridge and saw that I had  many pears and strawberries so I decided to make "pudding". We seldom have sweets or "afters" and on the occasions when we did, the boys would get all excited and say, "Oh good, we've got pudding!"

Nigella would have been very proud of my "well stocked larder". I improvised on a Donna Hay recipe which I had  cut out of a magazine long ago because it was a tart which did not require a base. (Pastry is something I usually avoid.)  The mixture is a combination of almond meal (one cup) , eggs x2, vanilla, lemon zest, brown sugar (half cup) , baking powder and a little flour (quarter cup). I put pears and strawberries into the mixture and cooked it for 40 minutes at 160. I think the good result came from painting  Golden Syrup (yes - I actually had some in the cupboard from the last time I made Anzac biscuits) on the top when it was still hot. The syrup melted right through.

More of an "after" than a pudding. I think it needs a bit more flour than I used. I also think I should work on my presentation. The strawberries were a different texture from the pears, so in future I wouldn't mix my fruits.

Hunter St Kitchen

Hello cookingbuddies!

I find that regular cooking rarely involves following a recipe but rather relies on improvisation, usually governed by what is  in the fridge or cupboard - mix and match.  More often than not, my results are pretty ordinary but sometimes  the "accidental chef" emerges, which is very exciting. I hope that this blog means we can share those victory moments and that we can satisfy the need to record "what I did". 

Last night I went very traditional; baked leg of lamb. It was a birthday dinner for one of the boys (men!) so the request for a baked dinner was bedded in nostalgia. So, how to dress up the conventional stand by?  The leg had been de-boned so it did not need a long cooking time. This was marginally tricky as I am still not master of my new ovens. I think one needs three degrees to digest the voluminous instruction booklets.     

To accompany the baked vegetables I cooked brussel sprouts in cream with almonds. I halved the sprouts and fried them in some butter, added a little vegetable stock and then let them simmer away in lots of cream for about half an hour or so. Crunchy almonds sprinkled on the top.

I have a couple of long term aims. By the end of the month I would like to have experimented with three things I have never been courageous enough to tackle: soufle, panna cotta and Vietnamese prawn soup. There, I've said it!   I am now committed to attempting them!

Breaded meat sounds easy and tasty. Soy sauce seems to me to be an excellent idea!

King St Kitchen

House guests tonight. Did a risotto and breaded beef.
My breaded beef starts with minute steak from the Luke, our local butcher. Cut into serving size and toss in beaten egg and soy sauce, this can sit in fridge for a while. Fresh bread crumbs are best, any multi grain toasted and then put into food processor with a bit of continental parsley, but alternatively multigrain krummies will do.
Risotto had pancetta, silver beat and leek, then parsley, parmegiano R and toasted mixed nuts on top.