1 week hiatus

So i'm back on the food blog, i really have to get into the practice of taking photos of what i eat. I seem to keep forgetting...

The first weekend back from sydney, it's the first chance i've had to cook. Last few days it has been munching on kebabs after many beers and getting home in the wee hours of the monring. No time for cooking there. Today, pierrick cooked a classic french dish that his mother cooked for lunch while I cooked a bbq for dinner. It's pretty kewl, we both manage to keep it simple and try to have minimal mess and fuss.

Pierrick's dish was some vegie stew with tomatoes, zuchini garlic and parsley. Put in into a pan and simmer down for like an hour, adding water/stock when neccessary. then as it is almost done, crack a few eggs in there let it cook a little more and bang your done. Apparently if you had a bagette it would be very awesome. Personally i think it needs some meat in there, lets say just small bits of ham, bacon or pancetta to make it just that little bit more interesting. But it was good and filling =)

I on the other hand basically bbq'd veges, onions, leek capsicum and potato. Onions and capsicum are naturally superb after bbqing, so nothing but heat and oil for these two. Potatos, i sliced thinly, salt pepper and rosemary as it fried on the flat plate. Leeks i tried to do with soy sauce, but err, it burnt =D gotta figure out how to bbq leeks nicely =) For meat LAMB. Lamb rib eye steaks i think it was. Dont really remember anymore. I wish i had mint, but none the less, dijon mustard, rosemary and herbs de provence. I think i should have put more of the herbs de provence, but it didn't really matter, the mustard and rosemary made it taste awesome already =)

Carbohydrates! will any meal be complete without one? I have to have a filler.. my mind cant even fathom preparing a meal without one. Today i tried polenta again, this time in a pot. This was a mistake, dont cook this in a pot unless your looking to spent a good 15 minutes scraping the dregs off the bottom of the pan. This stuff is like steel glue, I cant imagine how it sticks so hard. Anyways as per the first time, i struggled to make it interesting. Perhaps i need to use some kind of stock, but after adding butter salt pepper and oil repeatedly i finally got it to taste... alrite. *shrugs* Perhaps if i had milk or cream i could make it a little runnier and interesting. Atm, the only way it works for me is letting it cool into a rather solid gelanteous goop. It's good, but seems so unhealthy =P In SA they use creamed corn in their pap, maybe i can try that with polenta one day =)

Verdict: its okay after adding a lot of stuff and constantly tasting it. rice is better.

oh, fyi Altitude is an awesome restaurant, look it up!

super veges

Unfortunately the range of chinese veges are very poor here in brisbane, with one of the main chinese supermarkets only stocking bok choy, which is nice but i could never consume a whole bunch without getting completely bored of it. I'd like to find a good source of spinach, and bean sprouts so i can try to make gado gado.

I've decided to maintain a list of veges that one should definitely keep around the house. The basis for entry into this list are a balance between taste, versatility and keepability.

At the moment the two most obvious entries are (roma) tomatoes and onions. Good tomatoes cooked with onions seem to the basis for a lot of curries in indian (not that i cook indian) or african curries. Good tomatoes are fantastic raw as well and they keep relatively long. So top of the list for tomatoes and onions. Oh and potatoes as well, sometimes I get sick of eating rice and they keep for yonks.

So to add to the obvious, i'm including eggplant and brocolli. Eggplant cos cut thin, fried up with a dash of vinegar makes it an awesome side not to mention i love it when its cooked really soft and gooey. Brocolli cos, well its a sauce absorber, keeps well and is very very healthy, apparently.