Family Feats: Meat Cupcake

I wouldn't suggest this for dinner guests with any sort of finesse, but if you're looking to impress a younger group of diners, this one is a winner.  

By using a muffin tray and a bit of imagination, I make "Meat Cupcakes" - or, if you like, individual Shepard's  pies. All I do is line the muffin case with foil (I use bits of alfoil rather than muffin cases, as I find it's better at holding in the mince mix). Then using your favourite "Savoury Mince" mix, just spoon some in each case, add your mashed potato (I like to sprinkle some cheese on the top) and pop in the oven, just like you would a regular Shepard's pie. 

It's up to you whether you pre-cook the savory mince and then just use the oven to brown up the mash topping and melt the cheese, or whether you bake this in the oven - I've found either method works just fine, but baking the meat in the oven makes for a more "meatloaf" consistency to the mince, it binds together better, and is less likely to spill when the "cupcake" is removed from the tray. The oven method also takes longer, so it also depends on how much time you've got. 

I usually garnish with whatever's at hand - this time I had carrots, sweet potato and pumpkin so it was an all-orange extravaganza, I sliced a wedge of carrot to perch on top of each cupcake.

Family Feasts: Beans, Bangers & Cornbread

Some nights the pressures of a day at work make the prospects of a involved and intricate dinner rather unappealing, and something quick, easy and tasty is the order of the evening. I'm loathe to eat most things "right out of the box, and even when recovering from a crushing day, I still need to do "something" to my meals to save me from "meat and three veg" boiled pap.

I put the oven on, as there was still a chill in the air, and looked in the shelves. cans of baked and "four bean mix" beans stared up at me. Taking one of each, and grabbing the brown sugar, Keens curry powder, and some smoked paprika from the Oasis Bakery, I quickly tossed these together, in a casserole dish, and popped them into the oven.

With Thanksgiving coming up fast, I wanted to try out a variation of corn bread I had thought up whilst relabeling our dry-goods jars and stumbling upon our Spanish corn-flour (made with actual corn, rather than wheeten corn-flour. I quickly whipped up a batch of batter, substituting half the regular flour for corn-flour and plopped it into these cupcake moulds. Throwing this into the oven as well, I looked at the meat portion of the meal, and whilst this was cooking, set to defrosting something from Hoth, our chest freezer.

The addition of the corn-flour added a very new flavour to the muffins, much more reminiscent of tortilla taco-shells than the more familiar, sweet gritty cornbreads I've made with just polenta.

 So, thin supermarket sausages. Not the most appealing of gourmet options, but entirely salvageable with just a few easy additions. I first heated the pan, and ducked out to the veggie patch, and harvested a handful of rosemary sprigs. After a quick rinse, and a dollop of beef-lard in the pan, I sprinkled on the stripped rosemary leaves, and laid the sausages on top. A substantial sloshing of balsamic vinegar, and throwing the lid back on, I reduced the heat and left them to sit, shaking them about from time to time to avoid sticking and to cook them evenly.

When the beans and cornbread were ready, I gave the sausages a burst of heat, and a second slosh of balsamic vinegar, and deglazed the pan to get all the sticky reduction onto them.

All in all a tasty meal, from humble ingredients.

Family Feasts: Market Day Feast

A fortnight ago, we stopped in at the Mulgrave Farmers Market )Wellington Rd (Jacksons Rd), Mulgrave) and picked up some gorgeous local and fresh produce.

These, combined with more veggies from our front-yard garden came together to make a delicious and wholesome dinner for the family. We love getting to markets, not just for the produce, and social aspects, but also as a chance to find new things to taste and try. We had Tactical Baby along (having been on our way back from dropping Triceratops Girl to her mother's place) and she was likewise delighted to see it all, taste everything we did (apart from the wines) and generally going ballistic over all the dogs being walked.

First up on the menu was Brasserie Bakery Caramelized Galric Pullapart loaf which was a no-brainer when we tried it at their stall. At first we balked at the price. $9 for a loaf of galic bread, but upon tasting it, even cold in the taster-plate, it was stupendous. They also had on offer some delights such as a sour-cherry loaf and a variety of "plain" sourdoughs, rye. We reheated this loaf by just popping it in the oven for a touch, it crisped up and the inside was still delicious and moist. As each other element of dinner was cooked, i popped it into the still warm oven to be ready for table.

We also collected some tasty thin, lean beef sausages. These were sourced from Otway Prime Premium Grass Fed Beef who had a variety of happy looking beef on hand, but we had to limit ourselves somewhat (this time). These were very tasty, no-gristle, all-flavour sausages, with a just-right fat content to keep it succulent.

We rounded off our luxury purchases (or at least what I'm showing you here) with this fine vino, from a very encouraging fellow from Folino Estate Wines who plied us with the sweet reds that we delight in. We settled on this light and effervescent Moscato Rosso for dinner, but also tried their Muscat, several other sweet reds and even a taste of their hair-curling but smooth grappa! 

This complemented the meal terrifically.  From the garden, I parboiled these Désirée potatos. Unfortunately you can see that some of them were a bit too close to the surface, and were a touch green and had to be fed to the chookens. The rest were quite tasty, tossed with dried thyme and olive oil. The simple addition of herbs like this can really accent a plain dish, without overwhelming the flavours of home grown produce. Last up is another iteration of my "garlic and greens" This time the top of leek (yes, even the green leaves are edible) was sauteed in butter until soft and sweet, then removed from heat, and the bottom was again sauteed with roughly chopped garlic to form something like a tomato-free sofrito. Once golden, the greens were stirred back through, and the meal was ready! Simple, satisfying and tasty food, done in minutes. Farm or garden fresh ingredients can really add a subtle improvement in taste, especially if one doesn't mask them.

Winglets, greens and pasta

One of the difficulties that many parents face is how to make a healthy, hearty meal, that will be accepted by picky toddlers and finicky teens. Thankfully, I at least don't have to face those two dreaded parenting cooking issues "I'm a vegetarian now" and "I don't eat carbs now". This is a quick meal I threw together, once I realized how many mouths I was expecting. I like to make my spaghetti Al dente, both for its slightly lower-GI rating, and also because it copes with being played with by little hands better. I tend to toss mine in butter or olive oil after straining, to keep it from clumping and add a little richness.

For greens, I went out to our veggie patch with Triceratops Girl, and picked a mess of spring onions and kale. I'm always glad when she takes an interest in where her food comes from, and hope this carries on in all we grow, make and eat. The kale and spring onions were washed and blanched, then chopped and sauteed in beef lard which had crushed and diced garlic cloves previously browned in it. I didn't want to over cook the kale, wanting to lock in its flavour and not letting it loose that emerald green colour or turn to mush. 

The winglets were the easiest par by far. Pre-marinated honey-soy winglets and drummettes in a "family pack" from the meat section of Aldi. This is always a good option, and keeps our chest-freezer well stocked. To do these I greased the eathernware dish that would fir the chicken evenly, poured in the meat, and baked them in the oven until the raised winglets tips were crisped and the marinade was sizzling. All in all this meal was both very quick, easy to prepare and pleasing to both the picky and finicky eaters of the house, whilst being flavoursome and hearty enough for the more mature palates as well.

Family Feasts: Indian Style

For my first post here, I thought I would begin with a home-cooked meal I made for my family: my partners Omega, (my co-author here, and author of Fashion Adjacent) and Anastasia, Mz Anime (Omega's 15y/o daughter) and Tactical Baby (Omega and my 17m/o baby girl). Tactical Baby gets her name from my other blog, Apocalypse Equipped, check it out of that takes your fancy. We have a large household, with two housemates, and one night a week my other daughter, Triceratops Girl (4y/o) so between them, and frequent other visitors (like Anastasia) I like to have a variety of ingredients I can put a meal together out of and tailor for taste and number of mouths, on the fly. This is one such meal:


This is a red lentil dahhl that I put together by simply simmering dry lentils in a pan with water, adding more as it cooked, with a dash of a mixed Indian spice packet a colleague gifted me (it's in Hindi, so I can;t really tell you much about it, but I added it "to-taste" and kept it at the mild end of flavorsome. Once it was mostly cooked, I added dollops of "Smashed Cheese" dip we had gotten from the Oasis Bakery. I let it simmer further, till the cheese heated up, and served it sizzling in the pan.





The second dish was roughly chopped broccoli (stalks included, because I think they are quite tasty, and always try to use all available components of food). I braised this in a pan with rendered bacon fat, and once mostly cooked through, topped with the remains of the fabulous bacon-jam that friends of ours gifted us a while back, and we had been rationing. Tossing the broccoli through the jam coated it, and following deglazing the pan, I returned the brownings to the bowl for added crunchy flavours.

 The purple rice comes in a mix which included regular long-grain rice, split peas and "purple sticky rice" which I treat like wild rice, and generally cook in the microwave, at a 1 cup rice-mix to 3 cups of water ratio. It is a delightful, hearty, sticky dish, slightly sweet, and subtly flavoured. Perfect accompaniment for this meal, I thought.

Lastly, was the pre-marinated Tandoori mix butterflied chicken, (from Safeway), which I grilled. Before grilling, I also re-spiced this with a dry Tandoor spice mix that my same colleague had gifted me, to add to the flavour, and vary it from simply a "store-bought" meal. Butterflying the chicken makes it much easier to cook, I find, especially when getting a bunch of components together at once, whilst not wanting to run the oven. I also like grilling, because of the slight charring you can get to the edges and skin, which harkens back to the authenticity of cooking in a tandoor oven.

We had a lovely meal, no complaints from fussy teenager, and Tactical Baby ate with gusto.