nutty pumpkin salad

i love this salad. the original came from the austalian womens' weekly's great barbeque cookbook, but as with so many things, i can't leave them well enough alone.

1 kilogram pumpkin, cubed (i like jap/kent pumpkins best)
2 bacon rashers, chopped
3/4 cup pepitas
1 apple, chopped
3 green onions, chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 teasoopn ground nutmeg

microwave the pumpkin until just tender. cool.
cook bacon until crisp. drain and cool.
gently combine the pumpkin, apple, celery, mayonnaise, sour cream and nutmeg together. place in serving bowl and sprinkle the pepitas and bacon over before serving.

internet chicken

this is one of the first dishes i cooked from the internet. it was a novelty for me. i wasn't a can of this and that cook....i cooked things from scratch....i made cake from distinguishable ingredients....this was a first for me. mind you, i have never been able to leave well enough alone with recipes and like to add my own touch, so this is now a bit different to the original which had chipped beef in it. no quantities - i just roll with what i have at the time. simple as.

chicken
bacon
mushrooms
1 carton sour cream
1 can cream of mushroom soup

lay the chicken in casserole dish and strew the sliced mushrooms and bacon over the chicken. combine the sour cream and soup together and pour over everything in the dish. bake at 180 degrees celcius for 45 minutes to an hour. serve with noodles or rice.

cheese and bacon pinwheels

i've always loved baking and have never discriminated between sweet and savoury. so when i discovered a french bakery in chatswood some 30 years ago (a pioneer of its time) which had these savoury ham and cheese pastries, i thought i would replicate them; not only did i replicate them, i came up with different variations. this was the simplest.

1 sheet of puff pastry
1 cup grated cheese
1 rasher bacon, diced

line a baking tray with baking paper.
place the puff pastry on your workbench and sprinkle with the cheese and bacon. roll up the puff pastry as if you were making a swiss roll, removing the plastic from the puff pastry as you go, but not all the way - leave the last bit of pastry stuck to the plastic and use the plastic to enclose the roll. place the roll in the fridge for about 30 minutes to firm up; the plastic will protect the pastry from drying out too much.
preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius.
remove the roll from the fridge when firm, discard plastic and cut into slices about 1 centimetre thick and place on the baking tray. ensure the oven has come to the right temperature, and bake for 20 minutes or until golden and bubbly.

very often i like using low fat extra tasty cheese to make these as regular cheese can be greasy and messy. i do emphasise the extra tasty intentionally as low fat cheese is sometimes lacking in flavour. if you should choose the low fat way to go, try to serve the pinwheels warm as low fat cheese cooled/cold isn't too palatable, either. choose your trade off.

poulet au moutarde

this is a well flavoured casserole which was originally a rabbit recipe. it was the first, and dare i say, last rabbit dish i ever made, not because i'm squirmish or anything, but i like chicken, beef, pork and lamb better than rabbit. if i have to eat rabbit, i will, but i like this dish made with chicken - i loved the flavour of this sauce so much i decided to translate it.
if you do choose to make this dish with rabbit, joint and soak the rabbit overnight in salted water to which some vinegar has been added.
i like serving this dish with rice or mashed potatoes so there's something to absorb the delicious sauce; bread isn't a bad addition either, never mind how uncouth it may be.

2 kilos chicken pieces
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
30 grams butter
4 onions, quartered
2 rashers bacon, cut into strips
3 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons french mustard
salt and pepper
a bouquet garni consisting of thyme, a bayleaf, celery, parsley and tarragon
1/2 cup cream
parsley to garnish

rinse the chicken pieces and pat dry with paper towels. dust lightly with the flour seasoned with salt and pepper. set aside.
heat the oil and butter in a heavy based casserole and and the onions. colour the onions briefly, remove and set aside.
add the bacon and also allow to colour briefly, remove and set aside.
add the chicken pieces in batches and sear until each piece is golden.
pour in the stock, and add the bouquet garni and mustard.
return the bacon and onions to the casserole.
bring to the boil and lower the heat to a bare simmer for 40 minutes or until tender.
remove the chicken to a warm serving dish and boil the sauce rapidly to reduce and slightly thickened.
skim off the fat.
add the cream and taste for seasoning and correct, if necessary.
pour some of the sauce over the chicken and pour any remainder into a gravy boat for those who like things saucey.
garnish with parsley.
serve.

pasta carbonara

much as i love pasta carbonara, i have never made a point of working out how i wanted my version of the dish to turn out...until now. miss c loves pasta with all the different sauces, but not miss k, so i don't often have pasta on the menu in our household. a few days ago, miss c was craving pasta and let me know on no uncertain terms that she was missing it. so i thought that i had better sort something out for miss k, lest she had another bowl of pasta unadorned. miss k doesn't like tomatoes. period. since most pasta sauce is derived from the tomato, it was a no go zone. but then miss k more recently let it be known that she did actually like pasta and wouldn't mind it with a sauce...perhaps a cream sauce... nothing with mushrooms....bacon would be good. ahhhh. carbonara, perhaps? sounds good (read: acceptable), mum.
so after some thought, i decided that if i ate carbonara, i'd want the sauce to be hot, but i wouldn't want my eggs dry and over cooked. so this is what i came up with.

2 eggs
1/4-1/2 cup cream
dry fried bacon, to taste
freshly ground pepper
butter
sufficient pasta for one person, just cooked and drained

place the eggs, cream, bacon and pepper in a bowl a lightly mix together.
place the butter in a hot place and when bubbling, pour the eggs into the pan, followed by the very hot pasta. remove from the heat immediately.
stir the eggs through the pasta very quickly and into the serving dish.

for me, the essence of this dish is split second timing. have the pasta al dente the minute the eggs are in the pan and remove the pan off the heat immediately, so the eggs stay creamy and don't over cook. it's easy to get it wrong, but then by the same token, it's also easy to get it right. timing...timing...timing....

AGSM's potato salad

back in the days when i was a uni student, i used to go to the AGSM's cafeteria for lunch and one of the vegetables served with one's meal was a potato salad. it was different to any of the other potato salads i had eaten in the past because it didn't have any mayonnaise.
to date, that was one of the best cafeterias i have ever been to - the chef there was genuinely a great cook with a fabulous repetoir. i guess the council at the AGSM felt they needed a cafeteria which matched the calibre of the students - AGSM at the time was the first of its kind, but others have since popped up - sydney university started their own graduate school not long after and macquarie uni has one as well.

1 kilogram potatoes
8 rashers bacon
2 green onions
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
1/4 cup lemon juice or vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil

boil, steam or microwave the potatoes until tender and cut into 2cm cubes.
take the rind off the bacon and slice the bacon into strips and dry fry them until crisp.
slice the green onions.
place everything in a large bowl and toss gently so the potatoes are coated with the lemon juice and oil.

dry "frying" bacon

dry frying bacon is really useful for a lazy cook such as myself; i trim the bacon of visible fat and cut it into cubes or thin strips, pop it in a pan and into the oven, very often whilst something else is in there or after something has finished baking to take advantage of the residual heat. i check it every 10 minutes or so to give it a bit of a stir and remove it when it has been done to my liking.
i find the bacon is much nicer than if i were to pan fry it, as in the oven, whatever fat not removed from the bacon renders out and the bacon cooks quite happily and evenly.
this is how i like to cook the bacon for my layered garden salad and stuffed potatoes. it's also handy to have some to already prepared in the refrigerator to sprinkle on anything you want to make a little special.

stuffed potatoes

if you think you're going to be having a baking day or that the oven will be on for a while, why not bake some potatoes? and stuff them....
these are seriously delicious comfort food, and you can make them as simple or as fancy as you like.

8 large potatoes
100 grams butter
1 cup sour cream
1 cup chopped, cooked bacon (you can pop the bacon into the oven to cook with the potatoes - i do)
1 onion diced and sweated (again, this can be cooked in the oven), or
1 cup of sliced green onions, which you can leave raw
1 cup grated cheese
freshly ground pepper
1 cup grated cheese, extra - optional

bake the potatoes for an hour at 200 degrees celcius or so until they are easily pierced with a skewer.
slice the potatoes in half when they are done and scoop out their centres into a large mixing bowl.
add the butter, bacon, sour cream,onion/green onion, cheese and pepper. and stir around with a knife. the potatoes will break up into chunks and blend with the other ingredients. if you want your potatoes smooth, go ahead and mash them smooth, but i like mine with chunks. the butter will also melt and be absorbed by the mixture.
when mixed to your liking, pile the mixture into the potato skins and sprinkle over extra cheese, if liked. return the potatoes to the oven to warm through and serve.
if you'd like the potatoes to be fancier, you can add celery seeds, capsicum, mushrooms, sweetcorn, chicken, leeks etc to the mixture. the world's your oyster.

cheese and bacon rolls

you make these rolls with the basic bread roll dough.

find yourself a muffin tin with loaf shaped holes. if you can't, it doesn't matter, you can still use the one with round holes and it will still work fine. either spray or grease the tin with oil or butter.

cut your bacon into strips and slice your cheese. i like using "light" or low fat cheddar cheese when baking because i find it less greasy (otherwise, i always use full fat everything). you can also use grated cheese, but i like using a slice of cheese so i can "insert" the cheese into the dough.

snip off 3 walnut size pieces of dough and pop them into the prepared tin(s) and press the cheese and bacon onto the dough. you can actually be quite firm when pressing the cheese and bacon on because when the dough rises, it will more or less push the cheese and bacon out.

cover the dough with a clean cloth and leave it to rise for at least an hour in a warm spot (read previous posts for what i suggest is a suitable warm spot).

heat your oven to 200 degrees celcius when the rolls are ready to bake and pop them in when the oven comes to the right temperature for about 20 minutes or until they are beautiful and golden. the cheese should bubble and the bacon, sizzle.