Recipes on the back of packets #1

Next time you go to the supermarket to do a bit of shopping, have a look at the back of every packet you are buying. A lot of ingredients packets have recipes on them. Does anybody use these recipes? Are the recipes actually any good? I have a bit of a theory that they probably aren't very good at all. So I'm going to test a few as I come across them to see if they're any good.

#1. Choc Chip Cookies from the back of the Nestle Choc Bits Packet.
225g butter, softened
1/2 cup of castor sugar
1/4 cup Sweetened Condensed Milk (I used the Nestle 99% Fat-Free version)
2 cups Plain Flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup Choc Bits (I used Milk but Dark would be great)

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.
Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the sweetened condensed milk. Cream until the mixture is light and fluffy. (Use your Mixmaster)
Sift the flour and baking powder together and then add to the mixture, beating it together slowly. Add the choc chips (and extras if you are adding any)
The mixture will come together like a soft, buttery pastry with choc chips in it. Because that's what it is.
Roll the mixture into balls about the size of a ping-pong ball and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper or tin-foil. Flatten them a little. Leave space between each cookie as they will flatten out.

The recipe says to bake them for 15 minutes in 190C. I found this to be too long for too high. I cooked them  at 150C and set the timer for 15 mins but I kept a close eye on them. When the bases were brown, I took them out of the oven. (My oven is slightly dodgy)

RESULT: Very good! But I would recommend trying some variations in this recipe as the choc chips alone aren't that exciting. I added mini-marshmallows but some salty caramel or fudge would be great too. These cookies are as good as or better than those ones from Subway.

There is also something odd about the choc-chips. On the front of the packet there is a "benefit" that claims that the choc chips hold their shape when baked. Does that seem odd to you? I'm pretty sure I would prefer chocolate that melts when it's baked.

TIP! Salted caramel is and will always be awesome. If you don't like it, feel free to not tell me about it.

NOTE! None of the companies mentioned in this recipe have paid me, asked me to mention them or try this.

Bloody Manly egg and bacon pie

I don't know why, but somewhere along the timeline of stupid man-stuff, "quiche" got a bad name. But the joke is that if you call it "Egg & Bacon Pie" it makes it ok. Maybe it's that the word "quiche" sounds a little poncy? Maybe some dumb-arse was emasculated by the fact that he couldn't spell it? Whatever the deal is, I'm over it. It's stupid and we've moved on since the 70's, so catch the fuck up.

I love quiche. Its EASY. Its about the easiest thing you can make, give or take a cheese toastie. And I will get to cheese toasties eventually too, as I have some brilliant variations that would hair on an alopecia sufferer's chest, which is something that science should look into.

Quiche is a brilliant way to use left-over stuff in your food storage areas. You can go with tradition if you want and just make it egg and bacon and cheese. Or you can use up the rest of the good stuff you don't want to waste and make it a "gourmet" mess, which can hardly ever go wrong, sort of.

Any recipe book worth a pinch of salt will have a basic quiche recipe in it which is basically a blank recipe that you can feel free to add your leftovers to. So here is a very, very basic quiche "blank" to start with and then you can go to town with whatever muck in your fridge is a couple of days past its use-by.

Blank Quiche
4 Eggs
1 cup of milk (warmed)
Pepper
Enough pastry to cover the base of a quiche dish (frozen shortcrust is awesome, puff will work too)
Grated cheese

Whisk the eggs in a bowl with the milk and two or three grinds of pepper.

Line a fairly shallow dish with the pastry.

Now find some stuff to ensure your quiche is more than just cooked egg pie. For mine, I pan-fried some small cubes of pumpkin, then I did the same with some onion and bacon. Chuck it on top of the pastry in the dish and spread it about evenly. I added some spring onions at this point and then I poured the egg mix evenly over the lot. Then I quartered up some cherry tomatoes and spread them over the top. Then spread
some grated cheese over the top and chuck it into a preheated oven at 200C for about 15 minutes.

Remember that a quiche is basically open to putting whatever you want in it. It's receptive, so try a bunch of stuff. Mushroom is good. Roast chicken wins. Bacon rocks. Sweetcorn is awesome. Capsicum, yes. Potato, probably not. A cheeseburger, don't.

TIP: Spring onion makes any quiche more awesome, especially if you use a lot of cheese and don't have much else.

Ehrmagerd! Bourcon!

UPDATE! 19/03/2013
First time through I didn't get what I would call an excellent result. So I re-did it.
TIPS! Leave the Bourbon/Bacon mix out at room temperature for at least 24 hours. Put the cooked bacon in it too. The longer you leave it, the better. Then you can put it in the freezer.
NOTE: The freezing process is literally just to make getting the bacon fat out easier. It is worth it - the last thing you want when you drink your delicious bourcon is bacon fat in your mouth. Not even a little bit. That shit is DISGUSTING.
Also, I have since been told that Bacon Vodka works well too. Go forth my children.

ORIGINAL POST
In this world there are Bacon People, who seem to live on the internet and Non-Bacon people, who I don't give a fuck about at all, let alone which syphilis-riddled mattress they sleep on under a bridge. Non-bacon people are not to be trusted. This includes vegetarians, vegans, people with allergies, the religious and people whose family/friend/new wife were tragically killed by or with a pig at Christmas somehow, like in Gremlins*, and worst of all - people who claim to "just not like it". These people are hiding a secret family in their basement. And don't start with the "But I have a legitimate reason blah", I don't want to hear it and you don't really need my friendship that badly.

I don't know much about religions. What I do know is that when they talk about someone with wine for blood, they could be talking about any number of my friends. Where is the God with Bourbon for blood? Where is the God that can feed 40k with Souvlaki and Beer? That's MY kind of miracle. What I mean is - anyone with wine for blood is ok by me unless he touches kids. Even then I'm sure he had his reasons, like it might have been a really sexy kid. And let's face it, any sexy kid who complains about being paedophilated by a God needs to have his priorities checked. Look up Ganymede, he didn't really seem to complain because he understood what it meant. Be warned, it may change your opinion of Zeus, unless you have a high opinion of child abduction and rape. But I digress. I was recently in Canberra where a bartender, as he made me an Old Fashioned, told me of a little thing called "Bacon Bourbon". Yes. It rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Say it. Bacon Bourbon...now whisper it loudly and slowly...Baaaaacon (long slow intake of breath through your nose) Boooourbon. If you are at work, sneak up behind someone hot and whisper it into their ear without warning. Then breathe deeply and remember your last orgasm. No reason, it's just nice to do. Then go back to your desk and pack up your things, security will be along shortly.

If watching The Lost Boys has taught me anything, Catholics have a concoction called Holy Water which is good for protecting yourself against vampires. I would like to suggest that Bourcon (Bacon Bourbon...Bourcon! Get it?) is potentially particularly good for protecting yourself against Muslim and/or Jewish Vampires due to the double-whammy of Bacon and Alcohol. If you can get it blessed too, that would be some kind of potent de-vampiring juice. Although potentially it also may contravene one of those treaties about chemical warfare because FACT! Bacon is a chemical. OK, maybe not, but booze might be. Find out. (If I get a choice when I die, I will choose Bacon Gas). Either way, use it sparingly on your enemy as you will want most of it down your facehole. If you are going to need to use it on Muslim and/or Jewish Vampire, I would suggest using a Super-Soaker as you can also shoot it directly into your friend's mouth from across a room while you're waiting for the Muslim and/or Jewish Vampire Apocalypse to start.

Where was I? Oh yes, Bourcon. So anyway, a lacklustre search online came up with fuck all about where to buy Bacon Bourbon in Melbs, but it did come up with a recipe for making your own. And it is so EASY even an alcoholic baby could do it. So I had my alcoholic baby do it and I just took the photos.

You will need these 3 ingredients.

Bacon Bourbon
Bottle of Bourbon. Your choice, I got a cheap one that I really like called "Hogs 3" because APPROPRIATE. Ideally it will be 700ml/750ml. If its a 1lt bottle, add another strip of bacon.
2 strips of fatty bacon
Coffee filter paper
A 1 litre jug
A Freezer

Method
Fry the bacon.

The pig that keeps on giving.

As the fat renders, pour it into the 1 litre jug. Get as much of the liquid fat from the pan as you can.
When it has cooled a little, pour the bottle of bourbon into the jug over the fat.
Keep the empty bottle aside as you will need it tomorrow when you pour the bourcon back into it.
Put the Bourbon & Bacon fat mix in the freezer overnight.
You may now eat the bacon. Or maybe keep a bit to put in the bottom of the bottle like the maggot in tequila. Actually don't do that, gross.

NEXT: Time Travel forward to the world of tomorrow.
Take the Bourcon out of the freezer. You will see the bacon fat has congealed into gross white globs.

Gross. And it looks like that other disgusting white muck, White Chocolate.

Remove them and chuck them on or near the bin, like I did. Then go pick them up and put them in the bin. Or feel free to taste one and then regret it like my Brother-In-Law. You wont be able to get all of them, so this is where the Filters come in. Put a filter into a funnel and place it in the neck of the empty bourbon bottle. Then SLOWLY pour the Bourcon into the filter and let it do its thing. You will need to change the filter with each funnel-full. I used 6 filters. Repeat until all the Bourcon has been filtered into the bottle.

There may be something wrong with your prostate

Congratulations! You are a Master Bourcon Distiller.

You can now do these three things - Taste your wares. Orgasm. Die Happy. kthxbye

Bourcon Old Fashioned
60ml Bourcon
10ml Maple Syrup (use the good stuff, not Maple "flavoured" syrup)
A few splashes of Bitters
Orange Twist
Pour the maple syrup and bitters into an old-fashioned glass and mix. Fill the glass to the top with ice then pour the bourbon over the top. Stir it all until the glass is very cold and the drink mixed thoroughly. Take the twist of orange and squeeze it over the top (the orange oils are brilliant), then rub it around the rim of the glass. Then get into a retro suit, light up a smoke and pretend you're Don Draper, only even more pork-related.

 *Everyone's truth is different. Less judgement, more lovement.

Lemon Curd is a piece of Pith

I thought I would do something a little different today as I realised I had a few extra eggs in the fridge that needed using and a big stack of sugar in the cupboard that was ripe. Don't tell me I shouldn't keep my sugar in a stack, I know food. So I thought I would bust out some old family favourites that my family actually never made. I'm sure some family did, somewhere, however I am not aware of them or anything more about them, so please keep your questions about them to a minimum.

A favourite recipe and food of mine in recent years has been Lemon Curd. Living in Coburg is a lemon-lover's delight as there is pretty much a lemon tree in the yard of every house. This was a piece of brilliant urban planning by the Lemon Council of Australia, who in 1958 forced every second house to plant a lemon tree in the front yard and every other house to plant one in their back yard. As it turns out, this stroke of citrusy genius has meant that I will never be short of lemons ever again. Seriously, I sometimes come home and there is a shopping bag full of lemons on my porch with no note or indication as to which neighbour may have dropped them off. It's great.

Anyway, as I was saying, I made Lemon Curd. The word "curd" is weird isnt it? Don't let it put you off. Just so you know, this recipe contains only Lemon juice, lemon rind, egg yolks and sugar. The awesome kitchen tool of the day is this thing my sister got me on to, called a Microplane. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It gets only the yellow, tasty, zest off the lemon without taking the pith (the white bitter bit, not a person with a lisp trying to say piss). Microplane haven't paid me to promote this product, I just think its an excellent bit of kitchen gear.

So what is Lemon Curd? Lemon Curd is a delicious, sweet, zesty gloop, like Lemon Butter but simpler and in my opinion, better. I like to eat it on those little pikelet things that you buy ready-made from the supermarket and then throw in the toaster. The beauty of this is that it's pith easy and pretty much always turns a good result.

You need:
Zest of one lemon
100ml Lemon Juice
1 Cup of Castor sugar
4 egg yolks (keep the white as we will be making mini pavlovas tomorrow, which requires 4 egg whites)

First step is the separate the egg yolks from the egg whites. However you do this, keep the whites clean. If there is any yolk in the egg whites, the Pav recipe we will do later on will NOT work.

Mix the egg yolks with the sugar in a bowl until it resembles cake icing. Then put it in a small saucepan, throw in the zest and lemon juice and heat over a low/medium heat, stirring constantly until it just starts to bubble (should take about 5 minutes) TIP: DO NOT speed this step up by turning up the heat because it will cook the egg yolks and make the mixture taste like lemony scrambled egg, which is gross. And you will have to chuck it out, which is not the point of this exercise at all.

Once it has just bubbled, take it off the heat and let it cool. Pour it into a couple of clean (sterilised preferably) jars and put one in the fridge for you and one by the door to take to your Mum's place. Good on you.

TOMORROW! Mini Pavlovas to have with Lemon Curd.

Bert's Awesome Pizza, No Shit, Good Job

Let's sort one thing out right away. If you don't love pizza, fuck off right now and don't ever come back. 

Pizza is the ultimate food. It should be cheap and provide a sample of every section of the good food pyramid in one hit. Especially the goodness of life-giving cheese. Also, its useful for getting rid of the food bits in your fridge that probably wont get used.

There are basically two parts to making pizza, the dough and the toppings. Frozen or pre-made pizza bases suck farts. There should be a service at supermarkets where you can hire someone to follow you around and every time you pick up something shitty they slap it out of your hand and say "DON'T!". Pizza bases would be a slappable offence. 

Make the dough first because it needs to rise and it can do that while everything else is being prepared. The best way to make pizza at home is to make your own dough - don't let that put you off. It's seriously easy and fucking cheap. It takes no time to throw it together, you just need to leave it for a little bit of time to rise. So do this bit either the day before or in the afternoon and then when you get home its ready to use. And this recipe is the best I've ever found. Don't be afraid. It's very simple even if you've never made dough before.


The Dough
The dough recipe mentions a couple of things that you don't HAVE to use, like the Semolina flour, but if you do it just makes it a little better. Also, you don't need to use demerara sugar, you can switch it for whatever sugar you have in the cupboard. So like, teaspoon sachets from McDonald's are fine.

Assemble these ingredients. You can buy the cheapest, supermarket-brand flour for like 89c. It doesn't need to be too special. It's FLOUR. Just make sure you don't use Self-Raising Flour or the dough wont work. This recipe will make about 4 medium sized bases. If you want more, double the quantities on everything.

• 1/2 kg white bread flour (plus 100g finely ground semolina flour if you can)
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 7 g dried yeast sachet
• 1/2 tbs sugar (demerara if you have it)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 300 ml lukewarm water

In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes. TIP! Make sure the water is not HOT - that will kill the yeast and the dough wont rise. While that's doing its thing, sift the flour and salt into a big bowl. Then pour the yeast/water mix into the flour. Using a fork, mix the ingredients all together until it comes together in a ball.

Once it has some integrity start to knead it with your hands. Then take it out of the bowl and knead it on the bench, using flour to make sure it doesn't stick. Knead it until its smooth and springs back when you stretch it. Now you can leave it in a bowl in a warm room covered with a teatowel for about an hour until it is double its original size. You can leave it for longer if you're out or busy doing something else.

Lance Armstrong

Magic! But seriously if your ball swells like that in the space of an hour, see a doctor

You now have to knead it again to get the air out if it (this is called "Knocking back the flour") but after you knead it for a minute or two, its pretty much ready to go. I usually like to split it into four ball* (*HAHA BALLS) just so I know its all even and I wont have one giant pizza and one inadequate pizza. The worst thing on earth is an inadequate pizza.

I have four balls

The Toppings
What have you got in the fridge or the cupboard?  You can put a lot of things on it to suit your own tastes, which rocks. I generally stick to two or three toppings at most because imo, simple flavours are what pizza is all about. If you have pasta sauce, use it as the base for your toppings.

You can throw whatever you want on it but in case you need some wanky inspiration, try these:
Caramelised pumpkin with goats cheese and toasted pine-nuts
Potato and Rosemary with gruyere cheese (even better with a little truffle oil)
Margarita - put whole or half cherry tomatoes on top with just herbs and cheese
Char-grilled capsicum, pancetta and olives.
 

Caramelised pumpkin, goats cheese and pine-nuts on one end
Potato, Rosemary and parmesan on the other! AWESWANK!

Use whatever shape flat pan you have. I have a rectangle medium sized flat pan that works a treat. Round pizzas are for squares. Flatten out the dough to a roughly even thickness all over, smear some pasta sauce or tomato paste across it and then throw your chosen toppings across it as evenly as you can. I like to put a little cheese on top of the tomato paste first, then the toppings, then more cheese. It just helps to hold the ingredients to the base.


When its ready to be cooked, throw it into a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 10-12 minutes or until the toppings look visibly cooked and the cheese is melty and maybe even browning. You should be able to lift the base to check its ready, it should be light brown on the underside.

TIP! Don't go overboard on the toppings. Enjoy the simple flavours of two or three toppings and see how well they go together.

Ham and Mushroom for breakfast the next day.

TIP! If you don't use it all, just wrap each bit in cling film and freeze it.

Coconut Curry Chicken with extras

Hello. Yes, its been a while, I know. Ive been busy living my life. But now things have stabilised and I'm cooking again. Which is great. As you might remember, I like to do simple but hearty stuff when I cook. I'm not averse to using simmer sauces and pre-made marinades because they are often quite good and will save you a stack of time.

I think it would be a fun experiment to buy things in packets and then to make the recipes on the back of them strictly to the recipe to see how good or bad they are. Hmm... nah. I've already got too many blogs.

A few weeks ago, as part of a promotion for something else, I was sent some Nando's marinades and sauces and other cool stuff. And Ive been dying to try the Coconut Curry Chicken cooking sauce the most. Just so you know, Nando's didnt ask me to cook this and write a blog to promote their stuff, I just wanted to. And just so you know, the rest of their product has been really good, so I have high hopes for the curry.

So the directions sound easy enough. Brown 500g chicken, add capsicum (recipe says to use Red but I've only got green) and green beans. But as I like to "enhance" a recipe, I am also adding some pumpkin because it goes brilliantly in curry and I've also got a little leftover broccoli, so that's going in too. First off, I cubed the pumpkin into dice-sized bits and fried it in some oil (and salt) until it was brown and a little softer.

Yes, its awesome to eat like this.

Then after browning off the chook (which I cut into strips instead of cubes like the menu says) I put everything in a deepish frypan (deeper than a frypan, not quite a wok. I should work in advertising) and turned down the temp (not the Tempo, that's different) to allow the whole lot to simmer for the required 12 minutes. Good timing because microwave rice takes 11 minutes. Considering the prep took about 10 minutes, this is a quick and easy dinner.

End result - BOOYA!

I've cooked with all the different sauces and marinades from Nando's (that I was given) and this was the best result so far. This was delicious! In terms of curry-typing, this was closer to a sweet Thai style curry than an Indian curry, and the chili was only Medium. For a pre-made "jar of sauce" product this was an excellent dish. Nando's Perinaise is also awesome and not just on chips. I used it in a salad instead of caesar sauce and it was fantastic.

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!