Baked Sweet Potatoes.

Winter. As a season, I like it. And as a season, it presents opportunities. Such as Sweet Potatoes being in season. Sweet potatoes, as the name suggests, are sweet. And although the name also suggests they are potatoes they are actually a very distant cousin to the Potato. In some ways they're BETTER. Maybe they're not as versatile over-all but they do have some different properties that make them more attractive for using in old ways.
My favourite of these old ways is as a Baked Potato. Baked potatoes are a winter favourite comfort food that are cheap and easy and a total crowd pleaser. Normal Baked Potatoes rely on the toppings you throw on them but Sweet Potatoes have a flavour of their own and have an awesome caramelisation quality if you cook them well enough (almost burn/burn, whatever).
So, baked potatoes. Bay Po's. BPs. Beeps. Everyone likes something different on theirs and I'm the same. But when I make BPs, what it usually means is - I have potatoes and a bunch of stuff in the fridge that needs to be used.

Whatever's left over in the fridge + pantry basics = Good Tucker

The prep is important here - chuck the oven on first to get it ready. The potatoes will take about an hour to cook if you only use the oven but they're worth waiting for. You can cheat and pre-cook them for a couple of minutes in the microwave if you want, it'll save you half an hour. The important thing with any baked potato is the outer crust - you cant cheat this bit, it just wont work any other way than oven-baking.
With normal potatoes, I just wash them, stick a fork in them a few times and put them in the oven. But with Sweet Potatoes, I prefer to peel them because sometimes the skin is hit & miss and blemishes can be bigger than they seem. No-one likes to eat a blemish. Also remember that because of their shape (longer and thinner than potatoes) and a slightly different texture, they will cook more quickly.

Method - Put it in the oven til you reckon its ready.

While its cooking, get your toppings ready. You can put almost anything on a baked potato and not go too far wrong. I'm not suggesting caviar or otter snot or anything too El Bulli, but regulation fridge and pantry stuff is spot on. My personal choices usually include sliced bacon, grated cheese, corn, coleslaw, cubed beetroot, warmed baked beans and one or two other bits as appropriate.

One of my favourite super-easy baked potato varieties is just the potato and one of those tins of Tuna with Sweetcorn & Mayonnaise ("I Love Coles" brand tuna is only 90c right now BARGAIN). Any of the flavoured tuna varieties would probably go alright, just melt some cheese on top and its awesome.

The BPs are a meal on their own, but they go really well as a side.
Particularly to a scotch fillet (Pork!)

I almost always include a bit of butter or garlic butter as a foundation. When the potatoes are ready, cut them open and mash the potato a little bit with a fork. Then put the butter on the potato and it will melt in brilliantly.Then chuck whatever else you have prepared on top, grab a fork and smash it down your face.

Enjoy!

"Country Style" Pea & Ham Soup

If tinned soup has taught me anything, its that country people are too lazy to chop vegetables into small pieces. I'm OK with lazy (aka energy efficient) and chunky is good when it comes to soup. In Winter there is nothing better than coming in from the cold to the smell of a soup that has been simmering away for hours. And even better is polishing off a big bowl of steaming, chunky, hearty soup with some fresh bread and butter. My particular favourite is Pea & Ham.

Right now supermarkets are all over the hearty winter ingredients and they are cheaper than chips, which are unusually expensive given they're made of fucking potatoes and that one packet of chips contains roughly one potato which would otherwise cost you fuck-all and a pinch of chicken salt worth 2c. This soup really only has two main ingredients - a bag of Split peas will cost you $1 and Smoked Ham Hock. You can use bacon bones instead and they're about the same price per kg but they don't yield nearly as much meat, so stick with the hock. You only really need one big hock. I bought one medium sized hock for $4.38.

The split peas will have a recipe for Pea & Ham Soup on the back of the packet because Pea & Ham soup is the only recipe in the world with split peas in it except for plain Split Pea soup which even vegetarians and doomed pigs think is boring. The good news is that the packet recipe is fine. But it's better with a few amendments.

Just Three Ingredients! If you want.

For the simplest version, you can literally just use the peas, the hock and about 8 cups of water. But it can be made even more awesome with some simple extras thrown in. Instead of just water, I also like to use a little bit of stock - it adds depth. It also adds "sounding wanky" if you mention it out loud or on a blog. I also put in salt, pepper and a bay leaf. Easy. If you have a family and want to extend it or sneak some vegies into your kids, add a chopped onion and two diced carrots.

Chop It Up. Here's a photograph I prepared earlier.

Some people, including the back of the pea packet (wait, that's not people) will tell you to pre-cook the peas but this soup is best slow-simmered over a few hours so there is no way they wont be cooked anyway, so skip it. Chuck all the ingredients into a big pot over high heat on the stove until it boils. Then turn the heat down and simmer it.

It will look like a pot full of uncooked ingredients. Do not eat it yet.

Show me simmering, baby!

Simmer it for a few hours. You'll need to stir it occasionally, but just to make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot. It will slowly but surely thicken and the meat will come away from the bone.

When the skin has come away from the meat you can take it out and give it to your dog, who will love you forever.

Some recipes say to take the meat out and cut it into cubes, put the stick blender in and give it a whiz or some will say to run the soup through a sieve or but I don't bother with any of it. If it has been cooked for long enough, the peas will have broken down and the meat will have fallen clean off the bones. It's extra work that you can just skip if you have time to leave it simmering away for longer. You will occasionally get small bits of bone in the soup but if that really bothers you, maybe you should just take a long hard look at your life. How do you think the pig feels? Toughen up.

A couple of hours later, when the soup looks like swamp filth, take out the bones and the bay leaves - it's  ready. It will be thick, it will be meaty and it will be awesome.

Put the win in Winter.

Hint! This soup gets thicker the longer you cook it. If it gets too sludgy, just add water to bring it back to a consistency you prefer. It also congeals when you put it in the fridge. The best thing to do is just to add a little water before you reheat it and it will come up a treat.

And was it cheap? My oath! The split peas were $1, the hock was $4.38, one onion was about 20c and two carrots at about 20c each means that my outlay was about $6. The rest of the ingredients came from the pantry (bay leaves, stock, S&P). This should feed a family of five well. Thrift!!

COMING UP - When life gives you lemons, make lemon curd. And then have it on pancakes.

Simple Food! My Ethic.

I love food. Its pretty simple. My food ethic is one of simple ingredients put together well. That's it. Food is amazing. It is something that we do every day because we have to. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't excite us - in fact, its for that very reason that we should look forward to it. Food is an experience that can involve all five of our senses. We love the look of food, the smell, the texture, the taste and even the way it sounds on the plate and in our mouths. Its brilliant!

It really annoys me when I hear people saying they "CAN'T" cook. A recipe is a set of instructions in a simple order. If you cant follow simple instructions, I wonder how you do the more complicated things that you need to do in life. Cooking a skill like any other skill - you need to learn it. But its not a hard skill to pick up and anybody can do it. You'll be surprised at some of the amazing foods you can make right now with only four ingredients in them!

And I know that its a daily necessity (or we would die) but I don't think there is any excuse to eat crap (aside from occasionally as the necessity arises). I know a lot of people who think that cooking is a hassle. Or they don't have time. Or they hate doing dishes. Or they think that cooking comes from a packet. But good quality home cooking is much simpler than people seem to remember. And cheaper.

We get sold ideas sometimes that pre-packaged food is cheaper than what we can make at home ourselves. That's almost never the case. Its certainly never going to taste better than what you can make with a little know-how. And that's what I'm here for. I'm going to try to show you how to cook simple, beautiful food that isn't expensive and that will excite your senses!

Come along, I want your feedback on the things I do as I am here to learn too!