Daily Prompt: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry… | The Daily Post

Posted on 19 December 2013 by SJPONeill

Photographers, artists, poets: show us DINNER via Daily Prompt: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry… | The Daily Post.

Random dinners…some flash, others expedient…

Fish cakes, corn fritters and poached eggs

Sausage and eggs of cheese toasties

Meatloaf and veges

Baked omelette

Bangers and mash

Not sure in Brussels

Can’t remember in Brussels

Steak @ Chez Vincent

Vegetarian gadogado

Gadogado and Sausages

Salmon and curried kumara fritters

Crushed coconut chicken on rice

Fissionchups

Posted on 16 December 2013 by SJPONeill

Saturday night dinner

A Kiwi classic meal, fish and chips is a quick and easy meal after a hard day in the sun…this weekend was the first time that I have used a beer batter but it certainly won’t be the last!!!

Switch on your deep fryer at an intermediate setting; or start to heat a pot of cooking oil – the healthy stuff, of course…

The batter is simple, just an egg, about half a cup of flour (self-raising or toss in 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder), and enough beer (Tui Golden Lager worked well) so that the batter is runny enough for the fish to be dunked in it. Let this sit in the fridge for 30-60 minutes – the Masterchef recipe said 30 but I got distracted and left it for 60 and it was still good and still good again for Sunday’s dinner as well.

Personal choice whether you batter the fish whole or in pieces…my preference s is for pieces so I chopped the fish into thumb-sized chunks that I then submerged into the batter. The fish I used was terikihi, caught by our mighty hunter ans fisherman SIL a few months ago…it freezes well…

While the fish is soaking up the beer flavour from the batter, start on the chips. I always suffer from The Legend of the Little Boy Whose Eyes Were Bigger Than His Puku when I make chips and make more than I need (but rarely more than I can eat!!). I usually use our custom chip cutter but I am thinking that next time I might cut them myself so that they are bigger and chunkier.

Once chopped, give them four minutes in the microwave. This pretty much cooks them and means that the frying is mainly applying a crispy surface. By now, your oil should be hot enough so you can transfer the chips directly into the oil from the microwave. I use a slotted spoon to do this to minimise splashes – trust me, that oil is HOT!! Keep the chips in the oil for four minutes then take them out and drain them.

Turn the fryer up to its hottest setting and once it is hot hot hot, place the chips back into the oil…leave them in the oil until they attain your personally preferred shade of golden brown. Remove and drain.

Sunday night dinner

Add the battered fish to the oil and cook them for two to three minutes – this is all they need to cook all the way through. While they are cooking, plate the chips and, as soon as the fish are done, drain them and plate them as well. Sprinkle some sea salt over the top, squeeze some lemon on to the fish and voila, done!!

Daily Prompt: Food for the Soul (and the Stomach) | The Daily Post

Posted on 21 November 2013 by SJPONeill

Photographers, artists, poets: show us FOOD.

One of things that I really enjoy when travelling to Western Europe over any other destination is the dedicated food shops…I don’t think you really find anything quite like these anywhere else, nor the range of products…

…sausages in Brussels…

…my favourite restaurant in Brussels, Chez Vincent which does the best steak on the planet…and the scampi a l’ail is pretty damn good: I always have one meal here whenever I visit Brussels…it’s a bit pricey but well worth it…

…seafood on display in Brussels…

…Belgian chocolate…I always bring a KG or two home with me…

…and Belgian beer…where else can you go where a dairy has 400 flavours of beer and only one type of crisps…? This picture is the window of the appropriately-named Bier Tempel…

…gateau in Ieper…

…and cheeses in Amsterdam…I would love to be able to toss one of these in my suitcase to bring home…

via Daily Prompt: Food for the Soul (and the Stomach) | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Habit | The Daily Post

Posted on 16 November 2013 by SJPONeill

This week, show us something that’s a HABIT. We look forward to the glimpses into your everyday.

That don’t call these challenges challenges for nothing and I had to think into this one for a week or so about my habits (as opposed to quirks and eccentricities which are, of course, totally different!)

I did identify that, although it is well into summery weather here, I am still in the habit of putting the ‘lectric blanket on an hour or so before bedtime – not because it is particularly cold here at night but because I just love the feel of a the hot mattress on my back as I slip between the sheets…

We had a drought earlier this year – three months with no rain – and we only got by at home because we put an extra water tank in a couple of years ago. Even so, we were glad when we finally got some decently rain in April and heard the steady gurgle of tanks refilling. Once it became clear that this drought thing might last for a while, we started to be a lot more aware of our water consumption and I reverted back into old jungle habits of re-using water as much as possible, especially that water normally wasted running a tap waiting for hot water to come through, and when rinsing pots and other containers after use.

Rather than buy ready-to-eat yoghurt, we make our own from packets that have a much better shelf life and which also provide more yoghurt per $. Even the hot water used to activate the process doesn’t go to waste…it’s about a litre…

…than can be poured onto one of the developing plants (L-R: chestnuts, raspberry, kaffir lime and pohutakawa)on the deck outside the front door…

DSCF7348

…or, with a slightly longer trek, irrigate the box garden opposite the garage which seems to be self-planting as seeds left from last summer start to germinate around the broad beans and others planted this year… DSCF7349

The twenty metre journey each way to the box garden all adds up over a day, a week, a month, into regular exercise, even with only a couple of litres per trip…so in addition to the water conservation, this is probably a good habit to stick with…?

via Weekly Photo Challenge: Habit | The Daily Post.

Daily Prompt: You, the Sandwich | The Daily Post

Posted on 7 November 2013 by SJPONeill

If a restaurant were to name something after you, what would it be? Describe it. (Bonus points if you give us a recipe!)

Photographers, artists, poets: show us DINNER tonight via Daily Prompt: You, the Sandwich | The Daily Post.

This is the second chicken recipe that I tried before heading off to the land of beer and schnitzel last month…the full recipe and process are on Sofia’s post Ayam Penyet so you’ll have to pop over there for the nitty gritty…

Mixing the herbs and spices including…

…kaffir lime leaves from our own little kaffir lime tree which has not only survived another winter but which has exploded into life with the coming of the Down Under spring…

…combining herbs, spices and chicken pieces…

…before placing them here to overnight and marinate in the fridge…

After 24 hours of marination, the chicken pieces are removed from the fridge…

…and flattened before being reheated in the wok and served with rice…

…et voilà…

Very tasty, and very filling…one medium size chicken breast was more than enough to satisfy my appetite…

Edit: I drafted this post using the WordPress for Android app and I must say that it is really quite crappy especially in its instability with posts that contain images…I had just had to re-insert all the images after the app stripped them out during the publishing process. Some things, if not worth doing well, are not worth doing at all…

Tuscan Stuffed Chicken

Posted on 20 October 2013 by SJPONeill

Dinner tonight…chicken breast stuffed with black pudding, served with fancy cabbage and mashed potato…details @ Healthy Food Guide…very yummilicious although both the cabbage and chicken are quite spicy/Herby where the mashed potato is uber-vanilla and too bland for the chicken or the cabbage: I think for next time, the potato would be better mixed with maybe kumara or parsnip to add some flavour and, while the cabbage was excellent, I noticed this afternoon that the silver beet has exploded in the box garden and I may experiment with it as a potential cabbage substitute…

Edit: forgot to mention above to peel the skin off the black pudding before stuffing the chicken. This makes it more crumbly and easier to stuff…

Going nutty

Posted on 14 October 2013 by SJPONeill

Played around with this one tonight…previously, I have been using a squeeze of lime juice (as I have a bottle in the fridge) but finding a half lemon, squeezed this in to the pot/saucepan. I also increased the ginger, having a knobby chunk handy, to a piece about acorn size finely chopped. This added a whole new zing to the flavour but interestingly, either the lemon or the ginger negated the chili. On the whole, I would say that tonight’s gingerised version is the more preferable of the two…certainly this is one of my better, quick’n’easy culinary finds…

I also substituted a quartered parsnip instead of the carrot and far prefer this to the original recipe…I’m more of a fan of parsnip than I am of carrot, and I still have few in the fridge that I need to get through before they turn gnarly…

The World According to Me...

DSCF6607-001 I went through a bit of a vegetarian phase last week…well, not quite, I looked up a few recipes at healthyfood.co.nz but this was the only one that I made…

Ingredients

For the spicy peanut sauce

1/2 teaspoon oil
1 tablespoon chopped onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 small pinch ground chilli
1 squeeze lemon juice
1/4 cup trim milk

For the vegetables

1 egg, hard boiled
1 medium potato, scrubbed and cubed
1 carrot, peeled and cut in quarters lengthwise
1/2 cup broccoli florets
cauliflower or other seasonal veges (I usually use 2 cups of veges in total)
snow peas or a few beans if you have them

Step 1

Steam the veges till tender (the egg can hard-boil in the saucepan of water that you set the steamer on top of).

Step 2

While the veges…

View original post 250 more words

Sausie and ‘mato noodles

Posted on 7 October 2013 by SJPONeill

We made my poor people’s spagboll for dinner on Saturday night but I erred in describing the ‘ghetti to the girls as ‘noodles’…noodles apparently those which you can suck into your mouth with lots is slurping sounds and, if you get it just right, flick the sauce-laden tail across your face before it disappears …and, well, you just can’t do that with ‘ghetto, certainly not the sort that comes out of a Watties can…

So I was kinda committed to noodles for Sunday dinner with two of the world’s pickiest eaters – who sometimes run risks of being two of the world’s hungriest when they turn their noses up at what has been prepared for them – but as always google is your friend and it did not take much to turn up one of the simplest and fastest dishes that I have found yet.

So how simple is it?

OK, you’ll need a whole three major ingredients:

4 sausages, your choice of flavour

1 can of spicy Herby diced tomatoes – you know, the sort with garlic, oregano, basil, etc

Noodles, the long thin ‘ghetti ones

Makin’ it…

Put a pot of water on to boil – enough to cook the noodles – and toss in the noodles with a dash of oil once the watrer’s boiling.

Cook the sausages – don’t have to be fully cooked as they’ll finish off in the sauce.

Slice the cooked sausages into thin slices, and toss into a fry pan with a bit of oil.

Toss the tomatoes in once the sausages are sizzling (take the ‘matos out of the tin first!).

Simmer for 5-10 minutes or until the noodles are done.

Drain the noodles and mix into the sauce.

…and voilà, there you go…the girls were even up for seconds…

The original recipe also called for 1/4 cup of pesto – that is a serious load of pesto – which we didn’t have any of which is possibly not a bad thing as the girls haven’t had much exposure to herby or spicy…we’ll try that next time once I’ve grown a decent stash of basil…

Easy as and thanks to readyseteat.com for the inspiration for this super-quick and tasty recipe…

Filling Frittata – take deux

Posted on 2 October 2013 by SJPONeill

Filling Frittata.

So…take two of the New World sausage frittata…quicker and easier the second time around; didn’t have any basil handy so just used the usuals stand-bys of garlic and parsley which added a different flavour set as did mixing the stated potato with kumara and parsnip. We have a bulk of eggs at the moment – the ‘girls’ are producing five to seven eggs a day – which is maybe the effects of Spring? It seemed like a good idea at the time and I broke three eggs over the top before sprinkling the cheese on…this turned out really well…

So six sausages, nine eggs (only six required), two potato’s, a parsnip and half a kumara later, I have a yummy filling dinner that will keep me going for the next few nights…as I type, I am mentally kicking myself: with the advent of the warmer weather, we already have a decent take of spinach from the stalks that survived the winter. If I’d been thinking, I could have added a few leaves to the frittata or made a simple salad side dish.

…and washed down with a bottle of this nice Monteiths Golden Lager, courtesy of a recent Monteith’s Breweries give-away….

Slowly getting the hang of tablet-based authoring: while the hardware may be well-integrated, the software isn’t add this is an area that the Android engineers need to spend some serious time distinguishing between the core software and the built-in apps so that the latter can not only be disabled but also removed.

My Little Life: Five Question Friday! 8/2/13

Posted on 7 August 2013 by SJPONeill

1. What is on your Summer 2013 bucket list?

I don’t really have a bucket list…I’ve been around a lot and done a lot of things and am pretty content with the things that I’ve done, places that I’ve been, etc so any such list I might have of things to do before I go is pretty simplistic…for this summer, my one ambitions is to landscape this area so that any rainfall runs parallel to and not towards the house. It will have to be dropped quite a bit on the bank side and the fence past the tank will have to be replaced as the ground level there will drop my about half a metre: probably a good time to convert it to post and rail….

2. What is the most useless item on your child’s back to school list?

Not something we have to worry about now and, as grandparents, we can encourage all sorts of inanity…

3. What is the one reality TV show that makes no sense to you?

There’s reality shows that make sense? The only ones that I watch, if they meet the definitions of ‘reality show’ are some of the more up market cooking shows like Masterchef…well, just Masterchef, really….

4. What is one movie you can watch over and over again? Why?

Oddly enough, the 2009 version of Star Trek….I hated when I first saw it but it’s really grown on me. This might be just because I know that it outrages all the pureborn Trekkies to the point of pain but more and more it is because I think it has a top cast, is an interesting take on an old but tired story, and pays more than lip service to character development…on nights when TV just sucks and I don’t want to think too hard about selecting a movie or I just want something familiar on as background while I work on something else. more and more, Star Trek 2009 is my pic…

Just for those too dumb to figure out what actually happens in the movie, this picture might help make it clear. Everything after The Original Series is gone now (and so, in logic, is First Contact). Is that a great loss? Mmmmm…possibly not…4000 seasons of Voyager, The New Generation and Deep Space Nine pretty much thrashed the franchise to death…MAKE IT STOP!!!! So JJ ABrams did….get over it…

5. What’s your favorite back to school tradition?

Enjoying week day daytime peace…

via My Little Life: Five Question Friday! 8/2/13.