Chicken Curry
This was never going to go well. . .
Ingredients
1 kg skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (I used half a kilo chopped chicken thigh and adapted from there)
2 tsp salt (I left it out)
1/2 c cooking oil
1 and a half c chopped onion (I used half a fennel bulb)
1 T minced garlic (I used a jar)
1 and a half tsp minced fresh ginger root (I used a jar)
1 T curry powder (I used chilli powder)
1 tsp ground cumin (I left it out)
1 tsp ground tumeric (I left it out)
1 tsp cayenne pepper (I left it out)
1 T water
470g crushed tomatoes
1 c plain yogurt
1 T chopped fresh coriander (I used dried and powdered)
1 tsp salt (I left it out)
1/2 c water
1 tsp garam masala (I used my own mixture)
1 T fresh lemon juice
Should I even bother typing the method? Looking at the ingredients above, I can see why this didn’t… resemble… the original recipe.
It was edible, but nothing special.
TJ liked it, presumably because his aim in life is simply to keep us guessing. (Oh, and because I once again set aside some plain butter-fried chicken for him.)
Louisette… well…
Next stop: Banana and cinnamon donuts
Carrot Halwa
I thought this was a dip until I googled it, at which point I went, “Ah, a dessert! That explains all that sugar.”
Ingredients
2c grated carrots
1c milk
3/4c palm sugar/brown sugar
3 T ghee (clarified butter)
Pinch of cardamon powder
10 cashews (optional; I used much more than 10)
1 T raisins (I left them out since Louisette and I are intolerant of dried fruit)
Method
1. Heat a pan with one tablespoon of ghee. Fry cashews and raisins until golden brown and then set aside. (I realised I was frying cashews in butter, and added sugar to see if I could create a ‘sugared/toffee cashew’ effect. It worked pretty well!)
2. Put grated carrots in the pan and sauté them until they no longer smell of raw carrots.
3. Add milk and cook on low/medium heat 10-12 minutes.
4. Stir sometimes. Milk will boil and bubble up nicely. Cook it until the carrots are completely cooked and the milk is absorbed.
5. Once the milk is almost absorbed, add brown sugar and cardamon. Mix well. The mixture will liquefy and then thicken up. Continue cooking until all the milk is absorbed. Keep stirring, and add the remaining ghee little by little.
6. When the halwa forms a whole mass and doesn’t stick to the pan, add fried cashews and raisins and switch off the flame.
I didn’t use nearly enough carrots, so the result was rather like eating wet brown sugar. Naturally the kids approved of this result.
Yum Factor: 2 (it’s unusual for a dish to have too much sugar for me, but this managed it)
Health: 1 (contains carrot)
Easy: 1 (since I fatally screwed it up)
Will make again? Nah. . . but I might make sugared cashews again one day.
Hey, want a cat picture? Sure you do!
Baklava
Sugar, pastry, butter, and nuts?
What could possibly go wrong?
Ingredients
1/2 kilo Antonnious Filo Pastry (we used some other brand)
2 c crushed almonds (we used a combination of cashews and walnuts)
1 and a half c butter
1 T cinnamon
Syrup
3 c sugar
1 c hone*
2 c water
Cinnamon stick
1 tsp cloves sticks
Method
- Mix nuts, sugar, and cinnamon.
- Butter a slice tray and lay a few sheets of filo pastry onto it (I used one sheet; the one we bought had a smaller number of thick slices which worked fine).
- Brush each sheet with butter (sooo much butter).
- Spread a small amount of nut mixture over filo layer.
- Continue making successive layers of filo and almond that are roughly the same thickness.
- Finish with a thicker layer of filo sheets (6-8 sheets), brushing each sheet with butter (I used one thick sheet, as before, and didn’t put butter on top).
- With a sharp knife, cut the baklava into diamond shaped pieces (I did squares).
- Sprinkle with water and bake in a medium oven for about an hour.
- When it is finished cooking, prepare syrup: Place water, honey, and spice in a saucepan and boil for 15 minutes.
- Pour boiling syrup over baklava, and let it cool again before serving.
The above pics are the baklava before and after the syrup. I ended up with 150g of syrup left over, presumably because I didn’t use honey. It still tasted fantastic, and I set aside the syrup with a plan to add it to another dish (which I did, with. . . results).
It’s amazing how some recipes take butter and sugar and suchlike and actually make them less healthy. It doesn’t seem possible, yet it happens. I’m no poster child for healthy eating, but the day after making baklava my blood sugar level was insane.
The kids loved it, but even they struggled to finish a single piece in a sitting.
Yum Factor: 4.5 (all this sugar and butter but no chocolate? Pfft.)
Health: -5000
Easy: 4
Will make again? Only if I’m trying to be the first person on Earth to be diagnosed with double diabetes. It was delicious though.
I’ve actually made it almost all the way through the recipe book (with blog entries lagging behind). This recipe is #9, which marks the halfway point.
*I pondered the meaning of hone, and googled this exotic ingredient with no success. Then I realised it was HONEY. I used a mix of maple syrup and golden syrup instead.
Utter Butter Chicken
Butter chicken is the biz. Everyone knows that.
Making it without using a packet was a strange and wondrous experience.
Ingredients
2 T peanut oil
3 shallots, peeled and finely chopped (I used a fennel bulb instead)
1/2 white onion, peeled and chopped (I used a fennel bulb instead)
40g butter
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 clove of garlic, crushed or chopped
2cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 tsp garam masala (I mixed my own approximation based on a quick google search)
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 bay leaf (I used lots, because they were fairly old, then removed them because they’re gross to actually eat)
3 T natural yogurt
1 c cream
1 c tomato puree
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
500g boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size pieces
1 T cornflour
3 T water
[Serve with rice. Naan bread and natural yogurt are really nice with it too.]
Method
- Sauce: Heat half the oil in a large saucepan over medium high heat. Fry the shallots and onion (or fennel) until soft.
- Stir in butter, lemon juice, garlic, ginger, half the garam masala, chilli, cumin, and bay leaf. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
3. Add tomato puree and cook for two minutes, stirring frequently.
4. Stir in cream and yogurt. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and set aside.
5. Heat the rest of the oil in a large frypan over medium heat. Cook chicken until lightly browned, about ten minutes. Reduce heat and season with the rest of the garam masala and cayenne. Stir in a few spoonfuls of sauce, and simmer until liquid has reduced and chicken is no longer pink. Spoon the cooked chicken into the sauce.
6. Mix together cornflour and water, then stir into the sauce. Adjust seasonings and cook for 5-10 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.
7. Beg children to eat it.
8. Decide to stick to packet mixes in future.
Louisette was SO SO excited about making butter chicken, and assured me she loved it. As you can see, she gave it “side thumb”. This pattern of wanting food and then refusing to eat it is very familiar to us by now.
Tim is giving a thumbs up… to the plain chicken that I set aside partway through the recipe, knowing he’d most likely turn up his nose at the delicious sauce. Which he did.
Yum Factor: 4.5 (for anyone with good taste)
Health: 4 (I added carrot and water chestnuts to the mix, so it even had vegies)
Easy: 3 (gathering that many ingredients takes time)
Will make again? I know it’s heresy, but the packet mixtures are pretty good. I’ll stick to them in future. (Of course, the kids don’t eat them either, so we don’t have them often.)
Pancakes #1
You may know me as a novelist, but for most of my life my true claim to fame was as the maker of pancakes. Technically, I actually make crepes (with lemon and sugar*), usually so thin that they’re slightly see-through.
My recipe is:
1 egg + 500ML milk (I use lactose free) + anywhere between 1/2 and 1 cup of flour.
1. Mix. (Can be left overnight.)
2. Fry with plenty of butter (tipping the pan around as you pour it in, to make it even thinner).
Other people think their way is best. They are wrong. But I’m gonna make pancakes differently this time, because that is part of this whole recipe journey thing. Two of the Year 1 kids came up with pancake recipes, so I’ll be making both.
Here’s the first.
Ingredients
1 c milk
1/2 c sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 T butter
Extra butter
Maple syrup
Method
- Beat milk, sugar, egg and vanilla.
- Add sifted flour and baking soda, and fold in.
- Then add melted butter. Mixture should be fairy liquid.
- Heat pan, grease with a spoonful of butter. Spoon mixture into pan and brown on each side.
- Serve with maple syrup.
Yum Factor: 4 (mine are better)
Health: 0
Easy: 3 (frying anything is relatively high-maintenance)
Will make again? Nah. But I’ll make my version.
Louisette declared them the best pancakes of all time. Grr!
Perhaps it’s for the best, since the boy who submitted this recipe was one of the most eligible bachelors in Year 1.
Just look at that focus!
*A classic Aussie combination, and my personal favourite. Other recommended combinations include:
Butter and maple syrup
Butter and cinnamon sugar, rolled up (a South African specialty)
Vegemite (strange but true!)
Ham and cheese (cooked into the pancake, and served either as is or with vegemite)
Muesli Bars
If it wasn’t for procrastination, I’d never get anything done.
Today the kids are both with grandparents, so it’s definitely time to focus on my Top-Secret Well-Paid Writing Thingy. (I’m not allowed to tell people what it is, but it’s super awesome). I prepared by getting all the current “Murder in the Mail” stuff sorted: I stamped and addressed ALL of the “7b” postcards, and have already packaged and addressed all the “8” parcels, which is the Very Last Parcel For This Mail-Out (it’s been a huge thing!), and I washed and put away a whole lot of clothes.
So today I’ve done two more loads of washing (mostly linen), cleaned the bathrooms, applied for a writing thing, invited two more people into the “Magic in the Mail: Feuding Fae” story (and sent them contracts, and chose two possible art options), arranged delivery of two paintings for the “Murder in the Mail” Exhibition (24 August until 7 September here in Canberra), rearranged my twitter profile, ordered contact lenses, arranged a dentist visit for Louisette and a checkup for the cat, and fed all the pets.
And I’m writing my second blog entry of the day.
In unrelated news, it’s 11am and I haven’t scraped up the courage to open the aforementioned Top-Secret Well-Paid Writing Thingy. Today is my last chance to truly focus for at least ten days (there’s another grandparents’ day approaching, but I have much doctor-y stuff to do that day).
So… let’s talk about muesli bars!
1/2 c honey (I used maple syrup, which definitely did NOT work as well)
1/4 c brown sugar
125 g butter
3 c rolled oats
1 c rice bubbles
1 c choc chips (the original recipe said 1/2 c but that’s clearly an error)
1/2 c desiccated coconut
1/4 c pepitas
1/4 c sunflowers
(with ANOTHER thank you to the grandparents for supplying the last two ingredients because I did not want a whole pack of either)
- Grease a slice tray.
- Add honey, butter, and sugar to a saucepan and stir for two minutes or until the sauce is nice and thick.
- Mix everything else in a big bowl (except choc chips).
- Add syrup and stir.
- Put in tray, sprinkle with choc chips, and press down firmly with the back of a spoon.
- 15-20 min at 160 degrees (or until golden).
- Cool on tray before cutting into pieces.
Like I said, maple syrup didn’t work as well as honey. . . but I ended up with a kind of granola which was actually delicious (I ate it dry, with a spoon).
It was impossible to get the kids to stop eating long enough for a smiley-style picture. I am okay with that!
Yum Factor: 5
Health: 4 (a pretty good snack)
Easy: 4
Will make again? I don’t know. It doesn’t have as much protein as peanut butter balls… but then again, I’m not as intolerant of these either. And healthier than Anzac Biscuits, I reckon—but somewhat less portable. I might do some syrup experiments, because these could potentially be a school snack that Louisette actually eats. (No peanuts at school.)
Are ya chicken?
And so we come to the “actual meals” part of my daughter’s class recipe book.
First, we have Sweet Chilli Chicken Skewers.
6 chicken tenderloins, sliced in half lengthwise
12 bamboo skewers, soaked
2 T sweet chilli sauce
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 T grated ginger (I got mine from a jar)
2 tsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed (jar)
1/2 tsp ground coriander
- Thread chicken strips onto bamboo skewers.
- Mix everything else and marinade the chicken in it.
- Bake in moderate oven for half an hour, keeping it covered with aluminium foil for the first twenty minutes, and turning once. (The original recipe said to char-grill or BBQ for 3-4 minutes each side.)
(I cooked some frozen chips to go with them.)
I wasn’t super enthusiastic about this—I’m against anything with chilli, as a rule—but the sauce was simply exquisite.
The kids enjoyed squeezing and sucking on the lemon:
TJ also enjoyed the sauce—as did I!
It was a rather nice dinner. TJ was enthusiastic (he likes novelty, and is going through a pro-unusual food phase, although he still likes being able to clearly see exactly what each item is—the sauce was thin enough that it fundamentally didn’t register as “other”). Louisette. . . not so much. We made a rule at the beginning of this adventure that she had to have at least one bite of everything we made.
Yum Factor: 4 (an excellent meal)
Health: 4 (loses points for only being a meat recipe, rather than a balanced meal)
Easy: 4 (no real skill required, but slicing the chicken and putting it on skewers is more work than I usually do for a meal)
Will make again? Probably not as skewers (unless I’m bein’ fancy-like), but that sauce was great and I expect I’ll make it again at some point.
Excuse my French
Regular readers will know I’m a sucker for punishment.
Allow me to rephrase.
It really helps my depression to have a win in life, and taking on something a little bit special/difficult/unusual really works for me (while also making all my near relatives—except my Mum, who also loves a good project, and my Dad, who is used to her—try to talk me out of it*).
In unrelated news, Chris and I watch the Tour de France each year.
One of the sexiest things about Chris is that his reaction to virtually any sport is to immediately and pointedly fall asleep (he’ll literally change the channel/mute if sports news comes on). The Tour is the one exception; something he inherited from his father.
For about three weeks each Winter, our household grinds to a halt as the Tour is on from 8:30pm until 2:00am most nights.
It has a bewildering, hypnotic beauty (once one becomes desensitised to all the lycra). There are castles, and coastlines, weirdo spectators, epic art, plenty of heroes and villains, complicated and ever-changing team strategies, sprinklings of French, and amazing feats of endurance.
Aaaand then there’s Gabriel Gaté. He’s one of those chefs that just adores his job. Each night he films a short segment meeting local restauranteurs* and/or farmers, and cooks a dish (the recipe is written out in full online) inspired by the region.
The first night was last Saturday, so he cooked a “perfect coastal dish”: Prawn, Potato, and Hazelnut Salad. You can see what he actually did here.
This is what *I* did:
Ingredients:
Boiled cubed baby potatoes
Boiled cubed sweet potato
Chopped hard-boiled eggs
Diced cucumber
Finely chopped cashews
15ish cooked and ready-to-eat prawns, defrosted overnight (did you think I’d cook them myself??) and chopped (except for several saved for garnishing)
Some walnut halves, for garnish
Sprinkling of chopped chives, for garnish
50mL olive oil
1/2 tsp lemon myrtle/salt mixture
1/2 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp sweet chilli sauce
I mixed everything from the first section of the above list (except the garnishes), put it into fancy glasses, drizzled the dressing (ie the last four ingredients, mixed) over the top, then garnished it, then served it.
This is what the dressing looks like. We actually didn’t need that much.
The great thing about salads is that it’s easy to adjust them for different people. TJ’s salad contains carrots and cheese instead of prawns (I also chucked in some water chestnuts, because why not?)
Louisette had… sausages.
Now let’s analyse the work of an international French chef using the same system I designed for 6 year-old home cooks:
Yum Factor: 4 (an excellent meal. Loses point for having no chocolate, and both kids refusing to eat prawns)
Health: 5 (vegetables and everything!)
Easy: 3 (no real skill required, but it took me a while to coordinate all the moving parts; 3 garnishes is just silly so next time I’ll probably just whack a prawn on top, sprinkle chives, and call it a 4. 4.5 because it can be prepped in advance).
Will make again? I was thinking ‘no’ during dinner (although it WAS nice to eat—and good to be able to do a bit and then sit down, and then do the next bit, then rest again, etc) but I think that’s mostly because of the process of adjusting the recipe as I went along. So, in conclusion, yes I do think I’ll make it again (with the changes to make it a 4.5 on the easy scale). I reckon I’ll save it until we have (adult) guests coming over, so I can be all fancy-like.
*Chris evaluates each project on its own merits, and on how exhausted I’m likely to be afterwards. That determines his emotional reaction along a sliding scale from “enthusiastic” to “terrified”.
*Is there any word that’s more FRENCH than that? HOW MANY VOWELS DO YOU PEOPLE NEED?
Amytriptyline
One of my meds is amytriptyline. I take it to prevent migraines.
I’ve always had migraines with my period (not that I knew they were migraines until relatively recently) and when I was pregnant for the second time I had pregnancy migraines. It took a long time to get them diagnosed because they were mostly expressed through an aura that was pretty much 24/7. So basically my vision was blurry, and I had a lot of headaches. Along with a lot of other pregnancy awfulness.
Pictured: The up side of that pregnancy.
The migraines continued after pregnancy, still every day, still mostly aura (but plenty of pain, too—and if I was in pain it usually went for three days straight) until I finally saw a neurologist. They mentioned that, among other things, I had some non-permanent brain damage (as I suspected, at that point – I’d had migraines every day for over two and a half years and definitely felt like something was wrong with my brain that wasn’t “just” mental illness or absent-mindedness or baby brain). The first med we tried didn’t work, and amytriptyline was only an option if I was NOT taking zoloft so I went through a really nasty period of getting off zoloft (for anxiety/depression) so I could try amytriptyline.
Fortunately, it worked—and at a relatively low dose, too. Amytriptyline is also sometimes prescribed for anxiety, but sadly it didn’t help me (so I now take pristiq for the mental stuff).
The early days on amytriptyline were super trippy. For the first week I’d get up in the morning too doped-up to walk straight. It got less silly after a bit, and I started taking the pills with dinner instead of when I went to bed.
Nowadays I still get aura relatively often—generally towards the end of a long day—and the occasional migraine (the aura is a warning; I take painkillers and chocolate and try to avoid physical and mental stress in order to head off the pain before it settles in).
Solving my migraines was a really big step toward functionality, but amytriptyline has some pretty intense side effects.
Firstly, I need to be careful of other meds containing serotonin (so I don’t take too much, get serotonin syndrome, and maybe die).
Secondly, it dries out my eyes. I now use eye drops every single day, but my eyes still water a whole bunch. I can’t wear eye makeup, and more importantly my eyes are in danger of going kablooey due to diabetes.
Thirdly, I sleep. A lot. I typically go to sleep around 11pm and get up at 7am (for those of you who don’t like counting, that’s eight hours each night) and also nap for around ten hours every week. Some nights I go to bed as early as 7pm, and sleep a full ten or twelve hours in a row. Then quite often have a nap the next afternoon. I used to be a night owl, but now I’m usually pretty wrecked in the evenings.
Since I started taking amytriptyline, three things happened:
My writing output dropped, and has never recovered. I still write more than most humans, though.
I can eat chocolate after dinner. This I like.
TJ sleeps less than I do, which SUCKS because I get almost no Chris-and-me-watching-TV down time.
It’s always super easy to get to sleep. Except every so often, generally when (like tonight) I take the tablet much later than usual, when I feel wildly awake. When that happens, I get up and watch TV or read a book until I feel tired enough to try again.
And that’s why I wrote this blog entry. At 2am.
One of the to-do lists I wrote recently was a medical one. There’s a lot of stuff on that list. I’m currently on a waiting list to see the neurologist again (I think the waiting list is about a year) and talk about other pill options. I don’t mind waiting because I know things might get worse before they get better. My mental state is fragile at best.
It’s clear I still have issues with migraines. It’s also clear that my brain damage hasn’t healed in the two years since I started taking amytriptyline (suggesting that the low-level migraines I’m still getting may be preventing my healing).
There is a very simple test for brain damage: I try to walk using ‘fairy steps’ – with each step, I touch the heel of the new foot to the toe of the previous foot. I’m now able to do it, but only if I use my arms to help me balance. If I keep my hands clasped together, I fall over. The physical lack of balance is nice and measurable, but I don’t know the effect this brain damage has on my writing or my ability to socialise. I’ve always been bad with names, but I’m really REALLY bad now. I also switch nouns (eg “Put the carrots in the laundry[fridge] please.”) and presumably my conversation isn’t as sparkling as it could be.
I used to be quite fond of my brain. Mental illness really doesn’t help with that, but brain damage is a whole new kettle of brains. Fish. Fish brains.
You know what I mean.
Isaac Biscuits
TJ insists that I’m wrong to call these “Anzac Biscuits”. Well, what would I know?
Ingredients:
1 c rolled oats
1 c plain flour
2/3 c brown sugar
2/3 c desiccated coconut
130g butter
2 T golden syrup
1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
Method:
- Mix oats, flour, sugar, and coconut in a bowl.
- Combine butter and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir for 2 minutes or until butter is melted. Stir in bicarb soda (fun).
- Mix butter mixture with dry ingredients.
- Line a tray with baking paper.
- Roll mixture into balls and flatten slightly.
- 10-12 minutes at 140 degrees.
Having only eaten store bought Anzac biscuits (as far as she remembers), these were a revelation for Louisette. They were gone in 24 hours (mostly because of me rather than Lizzie).
Yum Factor: 4 (they’d be a 5 if I was a biscuit type of person, or if they contained chocolate)
Health: 3 (relatively healthy by snack standards, but definitely a treat)
Easy: 4 (hard to screw up. . . although I technically did screw them up by just mixing everything instead of doing the syrup properly)
Will make again? I reckon so. They’re quite similar to peanut butter balls (in terms of being oat-based and a relatively healthy treat that’s simple to make and has some nicely basic pantry ingredients), but with less protein and chocolate (sad but useful because I can’t eat too much peanut butter; I’m intolerant of nuts).
Plus I’m pretty sure that adding the bicarb to the syrup makes it fizz up in a fun way (and presumably makes the final biscuits even nicer too), and I’m annoyed to have missed that.
I reckon we’ll make these next time we run out of choc chips.
Bicarb is cool.
Today is Saturday. The kids woke up at 6am as usual and instead of turning the TV on (the usual morning routine, while Chris and I sleep) they decided to do our world puzzle together. Wearing beanies.
(For the sake of honestly I should mention that there were intervals of screaming rage before they settled down into this charming scene. Then there was some more screaming, which is why I was awake to take these pics.)
So, how’s the cooking project going? This is only the fourth official blog entry, but we’re actually up to Number 8 (of 18). The next FIVE are rather tricky for various reasons, so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes (I’ve deliberately delayed the actual blog entries so they’re spaced out nicely).
One week of school holidays is DONE and OVER and no one has been hospitalised. So that’s good. The grandparents are visiting us today, which of course is fantastic. Nana is entertaining both kids, and Poppy and Chris are fixing various things around the house. They just walked through carrying the innards of our sofa bed.
Felicity Banks 