Broadening my horizons...

As someone who used to be a vegetarian (a recovering vegetarian as Aaron likes to put it), I find it hard to stomach a lot of meat, my body just isn't used to it after spending most of my life without it. When I first started eating meat when I was 15 years old, I started with mince and deli meats and worked my way up to chicken. Since then I've pretty much stayed in that territory, eating the occasional piece of fish when my flatmates cooked it or ham & turkey at Christmas time. I had a nasty incident with homemade lamb souvlakis one time that has pretty much put me off lamb forever, lets just say my stomach didn't like it and it will be a long time before I test it out again!

Another meat that I eat very rarely is pork. Bring on the bacon anytime, but the Land of Pork is not a place that I venture very often. However, when I saw this recipe in the October 2007 issue of Super Food Ideas I knew I had to make it, obviously it took me a few months to get up the stomach-courage to do so though! When I originally saw the recipe I loved the combination of flavours with honey & mustard and it had 2 of my favourite vegetables in it - pumpkin & leek. I was very tempted to chicken out and try it with... chicken! But I decided to just use pork stir fry strips instead of the leg steaks that the original recipe called for. I also added some asian greens because we had them at the time, they went really well.

My apologies for the greyness of the meat in the photos, I really hate the lighting in this place - I want a kitchen of my own dammit! Or maybe I could just steal Aarons? The lighting is really good for photos there.

Mustard Pork w/ Honey Pumpkin Mash Serves 4

Preheat oven to 200C and spray a baking tray with olive oil spray. Cut 800g butternut pumpkin into 3cm cubes, place on tray and drizzle with 3tsp honey & 2Tbsp olive oil. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden.

Meanwhile, combine 3Tbsp wholegrain mustard & 500g pork stir fry strips (or 800g pork leg steaks) in a bowl and season with salt & pepper. Cook in a little olive oil a frying pan over medium heat for 3-4 minutes (2 minutes a side for leg steaks). Add 1/4C light cream, reduce heat to low and simmer for 2-3 minutes, until sauce has thickened and meat is cooked through. Remove from heat.

Heat 30g butter in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add 1 leek, trimmed, healved lengthways, cut into ribbons and cook, stirring, for 3-4 minutes or until tender. Add 2 bunches asian greens and cook until just wilted.

When pumpkin has cooked, remove to a bowl and add 1/2C light cream. Roughly mash with a potato masher and season with salt & pepper. Serve pork on a bed of pumpkin mash and leek mixture.

You might notice a bit of a chicken theme going on over the next week or so. I found all those photos that went missing back a while back (most of them being chicken recipes, including this one which I just added the photo to) and I'll probably be posting them while my exams are on because I don't remember much about the dishes, so they will be quick posts to write!

More pasta!... from Cookbook Challenge Book #9

Woohoo! I've FINALLY cooked something from the current Cookbook Challenge book 'Better Homes & Gardens - All-Time Favourite Beef Recipes'. While I was staying at Aaron's place during my study week last week I made us some Manicotti for dinner. For those of you like myself who have never heard of this dish, it is basically pasta tubes filled with a ricotta cheese mix and baked in a bolognese style sauce. It was delicious and tasted a lot like lasagne. Not only was the dinner a success, but I managed to get Aaron to buy a baking dish - I'm slowly building up the kitchen stash at his place! muhahaha...

Anyway... I know this makes 2 Presto Pasta Nights posts in a row, but I am sending this one to Ruth from Once Upon a Feast for this weeks roundup.

I will try to post again later this week, but I am also trying to concentrate on getting my exams done (trying being the operative word!), the last time I entered those exam rooms I did so knowing that my father was in a coma and unfortunately he passed away later that day. Needless to say it is going to be hard to enter those doors again.

Manicotti Serves 6

Preheat oven to 200C and grease a large baking dish with olive oil spray. Cook 8 manicotti shells (I used 16 cannelloni shells because I couldn't find manicotti shells at my supermarket) according to packet directions until just tender. Drain and rinse in cold water.

Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, fry 1 diced brown onion & 2 crushed garlic cloves until softened, add 500g lean beef mince and lightly brown. Add 340g tomato paste, 2Tbsp chopped basil, 1 1/2tsp salt, a dash of pepper & 2C water, stir well and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring ocassionally.

In a bowl, combine 2 lightly beaten eggs, 680g ricotta (or cottage cheese), 1/2C grated parmesan cheese & 3Tbsp chopped basil, mix well and season with salt & pepper. Stuff cooked tubes with cheese mixture using a small spoon (this is when my piping gun would have come in handy if I made these at home!).

Pour half of the tomato sauce mixture over the bottom of a large baking dish, arrange stuffed tubes on top and pour over remaining sauce mixture. Sprinkle with 1/4C grated parmesan cheese and bake, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes, or until cheese is golden.

And now, Cookbook Challenge Book #10 has been chosen by the LibraryThing Widget gods as 'International Recipe Book' which is a book that was produced by the Internation Students Club at Victoria University. I bought the book while I was studying there a few years ago and have never touched a recipe out of it. So I'll be giving it a look through and cooking something from it soon. Stay tuned!

One of My Favourite Pasta Dishes

This is one of my favourite pasta dishes of all time. Let me tell you why - It's quick, It's simple (I think my boyfriend could even make it... well maybe if I left the pumpkin already chopped for him), It uses ingredients which I usually have on hand already which makes it great for those nights when you are short on time and can't decide what to cook... AND it has pumpkin in it which I LOVE (If you haven't already picked up on that, have you been paying attention at all!?!)

Speaking of pumpkins, I finally made myself a mosaic for the Flickr game which has been going around for a while now. OK, so the connection between pumpkins and the Flickr game might not be quite so obvious, but as you can see 'Pumpkin' was my answer for the second question of the quiz! For a full list of the questions you need to make a mosaic and play along for yourself, just click on mine below.

Anyway, back to the food! I have been making this dish for so long now that I don't even remember where it came from originally. It was probably from some food magazine many years ago, or maybe a cookbook. Either way, it is a quick standby meal and I am sending it over to Presto Pasta Nights, which now has a brand new home! Also, Ruth is enlisting the help of some guest hosts at the moment, with this weeks being Kevin from Closet Cooking. I'm looking forward to his round-up later this week.

Pumpkin Pasta Serves 4

Cut 1/2 a butternut pumpkin into 2cm cubes. Place in a large saucepan of boiling water along with 500g penne pasta and cook for as long as the pasta packet suggests. If you have a basket to separate the pasta from the pumpkin while it is in the water it will make the process a lot easier, but if you don't that's fine too - you can just pick it out. Meanwhile, fry 1 large onion, diced & 2 crushed garlic cloves in a saucepan with 1Tbsp olive oil until softened.

Drain pasta and pumpkin, set pumpkin aside in a bowl, return pasta to pan and leave off the heat. Mash pumpkin and add enough light cream to make a sauce consistency, season with salt & pepper. Add pumpkin, onions, 1Tbsp margarine & 2Tbsp chopped herbs (rosemary, basil, thyme or sage for example) to drained pasta, return to heat and mix thoroughly until heated through. Serve topped with shaved parmesan.

Some Guests for Breakfast

The past couple of weeks I have been lucky enough to have some guests staying at my house. Of course, being the hospitable person that I am, I have enjoyed making them delicious breakfasts to start the day.

First I had Sarah & Dave (who got married back in September) staying the night after going to a football match in the city (They live out in the countryside near my boyfriend Aaron). I made some interesting savoury waffles from Marie Claire Breakfast, topped with herbed ricotta along with the usual breakfast fry-up suspects - bacon, tomatoes & mushrooms. I loved the excuse to use my waffle iron (which I am struggling to recall ever having used before) and they were really nice, but unfortunately we scoffed them down too quickly before I remembered to take a photo of them... oops! So just trust me on them, I know savoury waffles sound a little strange, but they were great!

The weekend just gone I had Aaron's friend Jon (who is down in Australia from Wales) staying at my house. This time I made some baked eggs out of the June 2008 issue of Recipes + magazine and they were great with toast soldiers! They took a little longer to cook in my dodgy oven, but they were well worth the wait.

So, onto the recipes so you can cook yourselves some delicious breakfasts!

Cheese & Onion Waffles w/ Herbed Ricotta & Balsamic Fry-Up Serves 4

Preheat the oven to 160C & lightly grease a baking dish. Fill baking dish with 4 halved roma tomatoes & 12 halved button mushrooms, drizzle with 2Tbsp olive oil & 2Tbsp balsamic vinegar and sprinkle with 1tsp sugar & 1Tbsp chopped oregano. Bake for 1 hour or until softened. In the last 10 minutes of cooking put 8 short-cut bacon rashers on a baking tray and place under the grill until crisp.

Put 310g ricotta cheese in a bowl and fold in 4Tbsp chopped herbs, season with salt & pepper. Divide into 4 equal portions and refrigerate.

Place 1 1/2C self-raising flour, 3Tbsp grated parmesan cheese, 3Tbsp grated cheddar cheese, 3 finely chopped spring onions, 1 egg & 1C milk in a bowl, season and mix well. Whisk 2 egg whites and add to the batter. Heat your waffle iron and spray with olive oil spray. Pour in 1/3C of the mixture at a time (Don't be tempted to put in more or you will end up with batter spewing out the sides... not that I know from experience or anything! Just remember there is self-raising flour in there, it will spread to cover the iron while it is cooking) and cook until golden on both sides. Serve immediately, topped with bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and herbed ricotta.

You can do a bit of preparation the night before to help make short work of these in the morning. Cut tomatoes and mushrooms and cover with other ingredients in the baking dish. Mix the ricotta & herbs together. Make the batter as well, but leave the egg whites until the morning otherwise they will lose their air. Refrigerate everything until the morning.

Baked Ham & Eggs Serves 6

Preheat oven to 200C and spray 6 x 1C capacity ramekins with olive oil spray. Place in a large baking dish. Combine 200g shaved ham, 200g diced creamy fetta cheese, 1 large diced tomato & 1/2C chopped flat leaf parsley in a bowl and divide between ramekins and shape a small hollow. Crack an egg into each hollow (6 eggs in total). Stir 3tsp wholegrain mustard into 300ml light cream and pour over eggs, dividing equally. Pour hot water into baking dish to reach 2/3 of the way up the sides of the ramekins and bake for 15-20 minutes, until eggs are set to your liking. Serve immediately with toast.

To save some time in the morning you can put the ham mixture in the bottom of the ramekins and mix together the cream & mustard the night before and keep refrigerated separately until the morning.

Quick & Delicious Gnocchi

How good is gnocchi for a quick dinner option?! Well, I'm talking the bought variety here, not the make it yourself from scratch type. I absolutely love these morsels of dense potatoey goodness, I just can't get enough! I made this version from the May issue of Super Food Ideas Magazine a few weeks ago and it went down really well. It will definitely be making it to my favourite recipes file. It's pretty versatile too, you could change the pesto for the regular basil variety and use pine nuts instead of (or as well as) the roasted capsicum - Change it up a little, its is gnocchi after all, you can't lose!

I'm sending this one over to Ruth at Once Upon A Feast for this weeks Presto Pasta Night, apparently there is going to be a big announcement this week so be sure to check it out!

Creamy Red Pesto Gnocchi Serves 4

Cook 500g fresh potato gnocchi in a large saucepan of boiling, salted water, following packet directions, until tender. Drain. Preheat grill on high.

Meanwhile, heat a frying pan over medium heat, add 1C light thickened cream & 1/4C sun-dried tomato pesto and simmer, stirring occassionally, for 3-4 minutes or until slightly thickened. Add 150g chargrilled capsicum, finely chopped & 150g baby spinach. Cook for 1 minute, until spinach has just wilted.

Add gnocchi to cream mixture, toss to combine and transfer to a greased 8C capacity baking dish. Top with 1/2C grated parmesan cheese and cook under hot grill for 5 minutes or until cheese is melted and golden. Serve with salad.

A Very Late Thank-You!

I know this post is VERY late and my deepest apologies go to Michelle from Culinography who sent me a beautiful package for the most recent BBM. BBM is of course Blogging By Mail, an event organised by Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness. This round the theme was 'Little Things'. Michelle sent me some gorgeous, bright salt & pepper shakers made from recycled plastics (Love them!), A little jar of pumpkin butter, Ginger chews, Carbonated lollies, solid chocolate to make hot chocolate (delicious!) & a North Carolina cookbook (which she apologised for because she thought it was a bit tacky - No way! I love it, I absolutely love cookbooks and it is a great addition to my collection. I can't wait to try something from it). Thank-you sooo much for a wonderful package Michelle and also to Stephanie for organising this great event.

The partner I sent to was Mary from The Sour Dough, you can see her post about my package here.