Coleslaw

How to make quinoa exciting!

Posted by Gary
Quinoa cooked and ready for the refrigerator
Quinoa cooked and ready for the refrigerator

Please forgive me I wanted a catchy title. I know full well the majority of earthlings do not share my love for tinned corned beef or SPAM®. In fact some people have made quite gross comments. I don’t care, I like tinned meat products.

Tonight I wanted something to make my quinoa exciting. I had some leftover quinoa from last night’s delicious roasted chicken Maryland (you know, cooked in the cooking juices of the chicken) that I had mixed with arborio rice.

Tonight’s meal is simply curried tinned corned beef bulked up with quinoa and rice and served on a bed of coleslaw. I also added some cheese and green peppercorns for some extra zing.

Corned beef with juices
Corned beef with juices

Probably the only decent thing to come out of New Zealand is this corned beef  (apart from cousins and close friends who happened by chance to be born there…)

Quinoa and rice with corned beef on coleslaw
Quinoa and rice with corned beef on coleslaw
How to make quinoa exciting!
 
Recipe Type: Dinner
Cuisine: Australian
Author: Gary Lum
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • Leftover quinoa and rice
  • Tinned corned beef
  • Tin of green peppercorns
  • Cream
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • Curry powder
  • Coleslaw
  • Red chili for garnish
Instructions
  1. Fry up the corned beef and add the curry powder
  2. Add some Worcestershire sauce
  3. When the corned beef starts to stick to the frying pan add the quinoa and rice and stir through
  4. Again get the corned beef and the rice sticking to the pan and then add some cream
  5. Add the tin of green peppercorns
  6. Put some coleslaw on a plate
  7. Add the corned beef and add some cheese
  8. Garnish with the red chili
 

So how do you make quinoa exciting?

Cheesy chicken nuggets and potato gems

Posted by Gary

Last night on Twitter Kate (Star Trek podcaster and aficionado extraordinaire) and I were having a bit of a KFC conversation. She suggested that KFC should consider cheesy chicken nuggets plus several other suggestions. 

 

Kate also mentioned using Bega cheese to keep it Australian.
 
 

It got me thinking that I could enjoy a Hump Day meal involving cheese, chicken nuggets and also some potato gems. It’s a bit of a carbohydrate load I know and yes I’ve been complaining of recent weight gain, but I still have this lurgy and the persistent cough had me leaving work early again today.  Lurgy begone. I’m getting sick of being sick.  2015-04-01_18.18.23_009_GARY_LUM_FB The day started with a pretty big carbohydrate load so I figured what the hell, let’s go the whole hog. At lunch I had a couple of sausage rolls with sweet chili sauce. 2015-04-01_13.10.41_001_GARY_LUM_FB 2015-04-01_13.42.22_003_GARY_LUM_FB So for dinner I had chicken nuggets, cheese and potato gems to make my cheesy chicken nuggets and potato gems. If you click on an image in the gallery a light box will pop up and you can see a larger version. If you’re viewing this on a mobile device I hope the gallery works. On a tablet it should render as it would on a desktop or laptop. If you’re viewing this on a smartphone I hope you can see all the images. 

 

So would you make and eat cheesy chicken nuggets and potato gems? Do you reckon KFC should add this to its menu?

 

Quinoa cooked in lamb fat

Posted by Gary

So tonight I cooked quinoa in lamb fat. I’ve cooked this superfood now in pork fat, chicken fat and with a nice piece of salmon which has a little fat. To complete all the major food groups (fish, poultry, lamb/goat, pork and beef) I have to cook quinoa in cow fat. That will happen but not yet.

I used a small roll of deboned lamb shoulder for dinner tonight. I also served the dish with chips or potato crisps for my English friends.

When I’ve visited the USA I’ve noticed that many places serve potato chips (crisps) with the evening meal. Not hot chips (fries for my US friends) but chips from a packet. Today I had one of those days. By the end I wanted to poke my eyes out. I ended up eating a couple of small bags of potato chips and as I was finishing them at my desk I thought I’d like some with dinner.

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Quinoa cooked in lamb fat
 
Recipe Type: Dinner
Cuisine: Australian
Author: Gary Lum
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • Lamb
  • Quinoa
  • Coleslaw
  • Avocado
  • Potato chips
Instructions
  1. Cook the lamb in a low oven with the quinoa in the baking tray with some water
  2. I cook the lamb at 150 °C for 45 minutes and let the meat rest for 15 minutes
  3. Once the meat is out of the oven lift the meat out and put it onto a plate to rest
  4. Spoon out the quinoa and mix it with an equal amount of coleslaw and add diced avocado
  5. Sadly the avocado was a Shepard which sucks, Shepard avocados are awful compared with Hass
  6. Plate up the coleslaw quinoa mix
  7. When the meat has rested untie it and then slice the meat and serve
  8. Add some potato chips
  9. Shoot a photograph
  10. Eat the meal
  11. Wash the dishes and put the rest of the meat in the refrigerator
  12. Write the recipe
  13. Blog (verb)
 

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So do you serve chips with your dinner meals? Do you like lamb fat cooking?

Sunday salmon and streaky bacon

Posted by Gary
The Yummy Lummy Cooking for one podcast
Sunday salmon and streaky bacon
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I had a piece of salmon and some streaky bacon that needed eating

I made mistake tonight. I started with my piece of Sunday salmon and thought I’d dust it with some flour. Then I remembered the bacon I needed to eat. I chucked that into the bag with the salmon and flour and ended up with a ghostly white piece of salmon and dusty streaky bacon. At that point I should have changed my mind from baking and gone to frying in a little oil with a lid on the frying pan to moisten the Sunday salmon. Instead I went with my first thought and didn’t think it through. A bad mistake. 

I served the Sunday salmon and bacon with some coleslaw that had been mixed with leftover quinoa that had been cooked in chicken fat and added some jalapeño pepper and red chilli.

The inside of the flesh of the salmon was fine, in fact it was moist and nicely cooked. The yuck factor was the skin. It was floury. The bacon also was dry instead of dripping with fat like it should. A wholly unpleasant experience. I ate the salad and the proteins together to try to improve the mouth feel. It worked but not for the Sunday salmon skin.

I stacked the bacon on the Sunday salmon hoping the fat would come through and moisten the salmon. It didn't, it just got absorbed by the flour.
I stacked the bacon on the Sunday salmon hoping the fat would come through and moisten the salmon. It didn’t, it just got absorbed by the flour.
Some of the streaky bacon slid off during the cooking.
Some of the streaky bacon slid off during the cooking.
In this photograph the streaky bacon looks quite anæmic as it sits atop the Sunday salmon.
In this photograph the streaky bacon looks quite anæmic as it sits atop the Sunday salmon.

So have you ever spoiled dinner?

I should have just been happy with lunch

Sunday #lunch is canned pink salmon with feta stuffed peppers, green olives, cream cheese and spinach leaves.
Sunday #lunch is canned pink salmon with feta stuffed peppers, green olives, cream cheese and spinach leaves.

and breakfast

Truffled poached eggs with potato cakes from Chatterbox espresso bar
Truffled poached eggs with potato cakes from Chatterbox espresso bar

The exciting thing this morning was a flyover of some balloons over Lake Ginninderra. The noise you can hear are my really noisy neighbours.

Cooking quinoa in pork fat

Posted by Gary

How many different types of animal fat can I be cooking quinoa in?

I’ve now done chicken fat, bacon fat, and brown onion gravy. I need to do beef dripping and lamb fat but tonight I did pork spare rib fat. As I’m writing this I’m trying to digest what I’ve eaten and I’m feeling very full and it feels like I can feel the lipid globules form in my blood. I know that if I drew blood from myself now and let it stand for an hour I’d have a lipæmic layer develop very easily. 

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So I bought four pork spare ribs and roasted them. In the base of the baking tray I added some quinoa and water. I knew the quinoa would absorb the water and the fat and juices dripping from the pork 

Cooking quinoa in pork fat
 
Recipe Type: Dinner
Cuisine: Australian
Author: Gary Lum
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • Pork spare ribs
  • Quinoa
  • Coleslaw stuff for making coleslaw
Instructions
  1. In the base of a baking tray about ⅓ cup of quinoa and ⅔ cup of water
  2. Add the pork spare ribs and sit them on top of a rack in the baking tray
  3. Put the tray into an oven at 150 °C for 60 minutes
  4. When the pork is ready place on a plate and rest for 20 minutes
  5. While the meat is resting spoon out the fat infused quinoa which is now nice and plump
  6. Mix the quinoa with the coleslaw and pile onto a plate
  7. Place the ribs on the pile of fatty quinoa coleslaw
  8. Shoot a photograph
  9. Eat the meal
  10. Struggle to digest while washing the dishes and writing the recipe
  11. Blog (verb)
 

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Pork spare ribs on a rack with the quinoa in the baking tray

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Pork spare ribs out of the oven with some lovely crispy crackling 

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Quinoa infused with the pork juices and fat 

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The finished dish with the pork fat infused quinoa mixed with the coleslaw

So tell me, what should I do next? Beef dripping or lamb fat?