Lol! Well, I hate American cheese, so that makes two of us ;).
O.K. scrap the tuna casserole and lasagna. Don’t put cheese in the tuna salad and you can still eat that.
Homemade burger:
Some hamburger mince
1 egg
Chopped onion
Chopped capsicum
- Mix all ingredients in a big bowl.
- Shape into patties.
- BBQ/pan fry/grill patties.
- Layer on bun with your choice of sauces and accompaniments. E.g. fried eggs, bacon, cheese (not you, other people ;)) capsicum, lettuce, onion, tomato, pineapple (an Oz thing?), beetroot (ditto?), etc, etc.
Homemade burgers taste waay better than takeaway joints, plus you have a bit of quality control present. You can even make your own mince if you have the equipment.
Shepherd’s pie:
Hamburger mince
Carrots
Onions
Capsicum
Peas
Potato
- Cook mince until brown.
- Mix in everything else but potato and put it in an oven dish.
- Boil some water and put in peeled potatos. Boil them until done. They’re done when you stab them with a sharp knife and try to pick them up. If they slide off the knife easily, they’re done. If not, leave them longer. You can cut them into smaller pieces first to make them cook faster (unless you’re making whole boiled potatos for your side dish). Boiling spuds takes a while. Maybe ±30min for a whole one.
- Pour out the water and add a little butter and a splash of milk. Varying these will vary the viscosity of your mash.
- Mash with a potato masher until smooth.
- Layer the potato mash over the top of the meat mixture.
- Bake in 350F oven until potato starts to brown on top.
Eat with loads of ketchup or your favourite sauce (ketchup on this is great). You can also experiment with flavouring the meat mixture. Maybe some brown sugar, soy sauce, red wine, garlic, etc. Mix it in a side dish to test out the flavour. I generally try to balance out some salty stuff with some sweet stuff, so e.g. equal parts BBQ sauce and soy sauce for example (+ other ingredients) might make a good base. This is another where you could make a lot and freeze some for later. Doing that sort of thing you can make a week’s worth of meals on the weekend and just take them out in the morning before work and cook 'em when you get home.
Honey mustard fish:
Some dijon mustard
Some honey (equal amount?)
Some lemon juice
Breadcrumbs
Some nice fish fillets - a nice firm fish rather than a flaky or delicate one.
- Mix honey, mustard, lemon in a bowl. Maybe add a pinch of salt and pepper.
- Breadcrumbs in another bowl. Maybe add some herbs. Thyme, rosemary, tarragon, sage, etc.
- Make sure the fillets are well boned and scaled. Otherwise it pisses me off. Wash them in salty water and pat them dry with paper towels.
- Dip them thoroughly in the honey-mustard mix. Really cover them well.
- Straight into the breadcrumb mix. This whole process is pretty messy, but easy. Make sure they’re well covered so no wet mustardy bits are left.
- Into a greased oven dish or tray.
- Into a hot oven (400F?) for a long while. 30-45min.
- Hopefully the breadcrumb coating will start to darken and crisp.
The fish will cook inside the “batter” and it’ll keep them moist. This takes a bit of tuning to get a nice crisp coating, but even if it doesn’t it tastes good. Accompany with side dishes of steamed or boiled vegies. You know how to make mashed potato (see Shepherd’s Pie) so you could use that. Carrots panfried in some left-over honey maybe? Something green as well - boiled/steamed spinach? Brussels sprouts? Pretty healthy.
More mashed potato hints - add some (cooked) peas, capsicum, spanich onion, whatever and mix it all up. This works great to get kids to eat all the stuff they usually wouldn’t. Tastes pretty good, too ;). Just pretend you’re a kid.
Homemade chips:
(a) Potato version
- When you peel potatos for mash, keep the skins.
- You can either:
2(i) Oven roast them in a hottish oven.
2(ii) Panfry them in oil.
2(iii) Deepfry them in a deep fryer or pot filled with oil (messy and a waste of oil).
Potato skins make excellent chips. Sprinkle with salt, vinegar, etc.
(b) Bread version
- Buy a packet of Lebanese/pitta bread.
- If they’re in “pocket” form and fresh, try to separate them into two halves. If it’s too hard (often is) don’t bother.
- Spray lightly with a spray can of healthy oil (e.g. canola, olive, whatever). Or you could lightly butter/margarine them or brush with oil with one of those soft kitchen brushes. I’d prefer a healthy oil to butter/margarine.
- Sprinkle something over the top. In Oz if you look in the herb/spice section you’ll find stuff like chicken flavouring, lemon pepper, steak seasoning, etc, etc. All these work well. Lemon pepper’s my favourite. Not too much or it’ll be too strong.
- Bake in moderate oven until crisp (wait until they start to go golden brown).
- Take out and leave for 1 minute so you don’t burn your hands (or bugger it and eat straight away).
- Break into chip sized pieces to share, or just crunch away at the whole thing if you don’t care about manners or have guests.
Yummy entree that can make a super-easy meal:
- Go to continental deli.
- Buy baguette and spicy sausage (e.g. chorizo).
- Slice sausage thinly and space out on an oven tray.
- Grill until it starts to get crispy.
- Pour some olive oil into a small bowl.
- Pour some balsamic vinegar into the bowl.
- Dip pieces of baguette into the oil/vinegar mix.
- Scoff down the spicy sausage.
Hmm, not particularly healthy that one, but put a salad on the side to make you feel better about yourself.
Fruit crumble (e.g. apple):
- Buy some tinned or fresh fruit.
- Buy some granola or as we call it, toasted muesli. A nice toasty, sugary one will work best.
- Slice the apples so they fit in an oven dish. Anything smaller than a 1/4 apple should do, but I prefer a bit smaller. If you buy a tin of other fruit e.g. peaches, it will already be sliced enough. If it’s fresh fruit, you might want to pour some juice in with it to make it a bit more liquidy. Doesn’t matter what sort, but preferably a quality juice. Orange works well for everything.
- Thickly cover with the granola. If it’s not sugary enough, mix it with a bit of brown sugar. You don’t want the crunchy bit to be too coarse or fine, so check that.
- Bake in oven for a while. Maybe 20-30min.
- Impress the wimmins by serving them your crumble with a dollop of cream and some ice cream. Maybe a glass of red wine.
Breakfast - this one is awesome. Made it last weekend. Used to get it in Austria in a past life. You can have this breakfast, lunch or a sweet dinner (or dessert after dinner). It’s called kaiserschmarrn.
5 eggs.
4 tbsp castor sugar.
1 1/4 cup (or 1 cup?) plain flour
little milk (1/2 cup?)
1 tbsp sour cream (optional)
1/2 pinch salt
Maybe some vanilla essence
Bunch of raisins or currants or berries.
- Separate the yolks and whites into two large bowls.
- Beat the whites until stiff. This means you can turn the bowl upside down and it won’t fall out. Or, more safely, you can pull your whisk out of the bowl and it’ll stay sticking up where you pulled the whisk out. Takes a while and is a pain in the ass.
- If you’ve got raisins or currants or other dried fruit, boil some water and add a splash of rum or brandy or something similar (optional).
- Put the dried fruit in the hot water and leave to “plump” (absorb some liquid and get soft again). Just do this while you do the other steps for example.
- Mix the rest in together with the yolks. Takes about 30s. You’ll have to experiment with the milk to get it right since I forget how much. It should be like a thin paste. Not margarine thickness, but not quite pouring thickness.
- Fold the stiff egg whites in with the yolk mix. Fold means gently mix with e.g. a wooden spoon. Doesn’t have to completely mix, just gently stir for 30s or so. Super slow - you don’t want to spoil the work you did beating the whites.
- Mix in the fruit.
- Pour everything into a hot frypan. Leave it for a bit so the bottom gets hardish.
- You’re supposed to flip it. This is hard depending on the size of your frypan. We’ve got a monster one so I cheat and put the frypan under a preheated grill for a little while to brown the top first. Also, the thicker your poured mix, the harder it’ll be because the middle will stay soft. Doesn’t matter if it breaks - that’s the next step.
- While still frying, start to chop it up with e.g. a spatula. You’re aiming for large bite-sized pieces, so not too fine. Continue mixing to ensure it’s all cooked.
- Sprinkle with icing sugar. You can either do this while cooking and it’ll melt and disappear and coat the pieces or do it after and end up with nice white sprinkled stuff. Your choice.
- Serve with e.g. some nice dark jam (complementing the fruit you used) and optional cream.
This is truly awesome. Makes enough for 2 super hungry people or 3 average ones. Maybe google for “kaiserschmarren” or “kaiserschmarrn” for other methods. My recipe is a mixture of some stolen ones off the web.
Maybe I should just write a cookbook :p.
Oso’s kind of right - beer can make a good marinade/sauce base ;). Some beer and some sweet sauce or sugar, some garlic, salt, pepper, etc. You can also liberally splash it over your BBQ meats while cooking.
