moonvoice (ravenari)

A really basic photo today.
I was throwing together bits and pieces for lunch.
So it ended up being a mild chickpea curry with onions, celery, carrots, cashews and coconut milk (because apparently I like my food to have alliteration).
So after dry-frying the spices, I added the onions and some water and hey presto:
photo.

We ate simple tonight.
Just some individual bok choy plants (four)
and ramen noodles
with soy, chilli and oyster sauce and the packet flavouring.
It was nommy.

You will need:

(all directions in Australian metric)

- 3 cups self-raising flour
- some plain flour for dusting (yourself, all over. You like it. I know you do.)
- 80g cubed butter (better if it's room temperature), I use unsalted
- 1 cup milk (you may need a little more)
- extras: pinch of salt and/or teaspoon of vanilla bean paste. Mnnnnmmmmm.

Soundtrack:

Something awfully catchy, like Beyonce or Lady Gaga. Otherwise, the scones won't rise.

What you do:

1. Preheat oven to 180C (if not fan-forced, about 200C is good).

2. Lightly dust baking tray/s with plain flour. If you're me, you'll pretty much do this very enthusiastically. Oh look. Flour! It goes everywhere! I just cleaned the kitchen yesterday! Fuuuuuu- (Actually, Mum tells this story of how I once got a flour packet when I was like three and went 'BFFT!!!!!' with the packet, and got it everywhere. She was laughing so hard she couldn't say 'please don't do that again.' So I never learnt.)

3. Sift self-raising flour into a large bowl.

4. Rub your cubed butter all over your body into flour with your fingertips till it feels really good resembles breadcrumbs. But for the love of god, don't rub it anymore! No more rubbing! Rubbing is now BANNED!

5. Make a well. Not an actual well. You'd need a really large bowl for that. And maybe a land-drill or something. So make one of those pathetic weakling pits that they call 'wells' in cooking. Actually, I forgot to do this part, and mine still turned out just fine. So I guess the well is optional! (You should probably make a well).

6. Pour your 1 cup of milk all over your body into the well. Mix with a flat-backed knife. I'm not really sure how important this is. It seems important in the recipe I bastardised, but people were using food processors and everything. It's a pretty simple recipe. The only thing is, don't mix it too much. Basically handle the flour as little as possible. Otherwise this becomes a recipe for how to make rocks. Not scones. (Tune in next week for that one).

7. Turn onto lightly floured surface and knead your body gently until smooth. This part is easy. At this point, you might want to keep a really close eye on your young cat (do you have one? It's an essential part of the recipe! It gives it a lovely flavour of suspense), who is literally as close to you as she can be without being ON the actual kitchen bench. Watch her like a hawk. She will sell her soul to the devil for some scone mixture. Don't doubt it for a second.

8. Pat into a 2 centimetre round (approximately) and use a biscuit(cookie) cutter or drinking glass or whatever's handy to cut little scone shapes (about 5 centimetres in diameter, but who's counting?) If you find this part boring, you can just pat the dough all over your body instead. Make a little neck pillow!, you can decide to get a really catchy but unabashedly pop song into your head. May I recommend: 'umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh' or 'ra-ra-ah-ah-ah, roma-mah-mah-mah, Gaga-ooh-la-la, want your bad romance!' Keep refolding and cutting the scones until you have about 14-16.

9. Place on the trays and put in the oven and don't forget to dance or something. Or tell your cat the scones are gone now! They have disappeared! And then laugh like this: BAHAHAHAHAHAAAA, in your cat's face. No point having cats unless you're training to be an evil overlord, after all.

10. Wait about 15-20 minutes, or until golden and well-risen and very happy to see you. In that time, you can do things like mix whipped cream, wash dishes, clean the butter off your torso, dance in the 'dancing room' (dining room), perform a choral arrangement of meows with your cats. Whatever you do, make sure you do it in a *badass* way. This is the secret to the success of the scones.

11. Success! Serve scones with whipped cream and jam. If you haven't wasted all the whipped cream in other pursuits, anyway.

So now, you have scones! Unless you followed the strikethrough instructions, and then you have something else entirely. And you made them like a badass! Rock!

Apple galette. This was the one that we didn't eat so fast that I couldn't take a photo of it. It's also the least pretty one. Oh, least pretty galette, you will still taste amazing (seriously, they were freakishly good, especially as we had them with local honey made from local bees feeding on local red gum trees).





( CAT PHOTOS. CAT PHOTOS. CAT PHOTOS. Only four. )

Pia’s ‘I’m still working on the perfect recipe so don’t blame me if you hate them’ Orange-Vanilla Choc-Chip Muffins.

Warning kids, I'm NOT a professional, so you CAN try this at home! ;)

You will need:

- A muffiny-type tray for muffin things. (This recipe will make 9 muffins, or like...twelve regular cupcakes, ish). Greased or like...muffin paper-y things. I’m a very official cook.
- An oven preheated to 180C (355 F)
- Stirring type things. Bowl type things. A clear bench space (I frequently forget how important this is).

You will also need:

- 220gms Self-Raising Flour
- 1/4 – 1/3 cup castor sugar (you can use raw sugar, and the original recipe said ½ cup, but that’s too much for me).
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- ¾ cup milk
- 1 lightly beaten egg
- 1 tspn vanilla essence
- 1 tspn orange essence (you can also use grated orange zest and stuff, but I had none).

- 150 - 200 gms filling of your choice, I of course choose the superior dark chocolate chips by any brand that looks really decadent and fattening. Hey, it’s muffins. But seriously, people add cinnamon and apple; white chocolate chips and raspberry. I’m just a whore for dark chocolate chips in vanilla muffins – it’s totally your choice what you put in there. The recipe is flexible.

What you do.

00. Preheat that damned oven already.

0. Take chocolate chips and a teaspoonful of flour and put them in a bowl, mix until chocolate chips are very well coated in flour. If you do not do this, all the chocolate chips will sink to the bottom of your cupcake and; while still tasty, will be a source of shame and embarrassment to you and your friends.

1. Sift flour (into a bowl, not directly onto the bench). Add sugar. Lightly mix. If you’re like me, you’ll think ‘wow, that’s a LOT of sugar,’ even though it isn’t really compared to other things. Make a well in the middle.

2. Mix wet ingredients (in another bowl).

3. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, mix until just combined. I use a fork and work very lazily. Because I always interpret ‘just combined’ to ‘the laziest most half-assed stirring you can imagine,’ which seems to translate to, ‘muffins!’ Go figure.

4. Add ¾ chocolate chips (or ‘most of them’) mix very lightly (the dry coating of flour around the chocolate chips is what makes them not sink to the bottom of the muffin, so if you mix too well, they’ll sink, might be a reason why muffins have such uneven distribution of fillings yeah?), and then spoon the mixture into your muffin-y type tray.

5. Add rest of chocolate chips to the top of your muffins.

6. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until lightly golden; whichever comes first. I recommend passing the time by playing Bejewelled Blitz, telling the cats to ‘get off the kitchen bench,’ washing dishes, repeatedly checking the oven in a futile way, making this sound when you realise they’re rising – ‘EEEEE!’, and doing things like... imagining how awesome you’re gonna be when you make them again. And again.

7. Eat them!

Lunch - (om nom nom nom)

So I made my beef + palm sugar stir fry again, and I'm going to try and replicate the recipe (which is improvised) here since onyxrising expressed an interest:

ingredients:

- approx. 200-350g stir fry beef (or beef cut into strips or cubes, whatever)
- quarter cabbage sliced thinly
- two red or green (or red AND green!) capsicums sliced thinly (you yanks know these as 'peppers,' weird)
- bean sprouts (any, I use about three good handfuls, but whatever works)
- three small brown onions (or two large brown onions) sliced thinly
- two tablespoons grated gula malakka or palm sugar
- four tablespoons kecap manis
- a bunch of oyster sauce to taste (I start with three tablespoons and go up, I like really flavoursome stir fries, can't you tell?)
- teaspoon black pepper (or whatever)
- a good dollop of sweet chilli sauce
- soy sauce (I start with about 4 tablespoons, and I didn't need anymore tonight, really though, I just pour until I think 'whoops,' and that seems to be the perfect amount).
- teaspoon peanut oil
- teaspoon fish sauce
- tablespoon sesame oil
- 2 minute noodles (I used five blocks of dried ramen noodles, the cheapie stuff.)

(You can also use mushrooms, gai lan - chinese broccoli, or bok choy. Be careful of starchy root vegetables which taste like fail in this. Oh, and if you have it, a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger in this is OH SO JOY. But I didn't have any tonight. Alas. Really, you SHOULD have grated ginger in there).

Remember, with all stir fries, you slice everything *before* you cook. Not during. This took me ten minutes to cook. And that was probably too long.

I think that's everything. I have a feeling I'm forgetting something. But meh, you can add things to taste. I personally thicken up the sauce with water + cornflour, to both help the sauce spread through noodles, and to make it a really thick, Wintery type 'stir fry,' as opposed to a lighter, 'fresher' Summer one.

Okay. Stir fry beef in wok over high heat with peanut oil until seared on all sides. Dump out of wok into plate and leave without eating any, even though you may be so hungry that you want to... I understand.

Put palm sugar and onions into same wok and stir until browning. Be careful of having the heat on *too* high for the palm sugar, or it can burn. Which actually doesn't matter, because it still tastes awesome. It's just a disturbing scent. Lol. 'My food is burning, argh!'

Add capsicum (or peppers, for the weird people). Add all the saucey-type things except for the sesame oil / black pepper. You add that right towards the end. With anything else for flavour. You can turn up the heat now if you haven't already. Stir. Stir. Keep stirring. It gets boring, but it's called a stir fry. You must oblige according to the laws of chef-type physics. Oh, and taste the sauce after a while, you should have something quite sweet and pungent. Remember, the sauce will be quite strong, because you're spreading it through noodly, starchy goodness. Yum. If you're going to have it on your own, ditch the noodles and lower the sauce amounts.

Boil water. If you haven't already done so. In a pot, preferrably, because eventually you're gonna have to cook the ramen. It takes two minutes.

Add noodles to boiling water. Add cabbage and bean sprouts (I like mine softish, and not crunchy. If you want really crunchy, add right at end) and sesame oil and anything else I forgot to wok. Stir. Stir. Still stirring? Good. Keep doing it. Get RSI! Make people feel sorry for your stirring efforts.

Stir noodles too. Do what I do, accidentally flip boiling water onto the stovetop so it makes that hissing sound, drop some capsicum under the burner where you can't get to it, and pretend that you're really cool by stirring both things at the same time (which is why you actually dropped all this stuff in the first place).

When noodles are cooked (not overcooked!) drain them, add noodles and beef back into wok. Stir. Stir the sauce through. I hope you're not cooking on a high heat anymore! Keep stirring. And then stop stirring, turn off the heat, and eat it! Or look at it and point and go 'look, there are lots of ingredients but now it looks almost all like noodles. Where'd the food go!' (Imho, this means you didn't stir very well).

And clean the stovetops in about a week, will you?

Oh, and this serves about 4 hungry people, or 8 - 10 dieting ones. And no vegetarians, because of the meat factor.

I've just realised I've become one of those people who regularly cooks with over 15 ingredients...