100 recipes: Outtakes

If you are compiling your own list of 100 recipes to cook in your lifetime, you may like to consider some of these favourite dishes that were on my long list of nominations, but didn’t make the final one hundred.

• Arancini
• Bacon sandwich
• Baked potato
• BBQ
• Beignets
• Boston baked beans
• Bread – austrian
• Bruschetta
• Cake – funnel
• Calzone
• Carbonara
• Chicken consomme
• Chicken kiev
• Churros
• Clam chowder
• Corn chowder
• Croissants
• Crudités with dips
• Crumpets
• Cupcake
• Custard
• Fairy cakes
• Fritatta
• Full English breakfast
• Hollandaise
• Hummous
• Inslata caprese
• Kangaroo
• Kebabs
• Kleftiko
• Leek and potato soup
• Lobster roll
• Loukouimathes
• Macaroni cheese
• Moules marinier
• Moussaka
• Morton Bay Bugs
• Noodle soup
• Onion tart
• Oysters and pearls
• Panforte
• Pani puri
• Panzanella
• Pasta salad
• Pastry
• Pesto (Coriander pesto or Macadamia pesto)
• Porridge
• Prawns
• Quails in vine leaves
• Roman gnocchi
• Rum balls
• Russian salad
• Saltimobocca
• Sandwich – BLT
• Sandwich – cuban
• Sausage and mash
• Scallopine a la limon
• Scallops
• Smoked salmon
• Soupe au pistou
• Squid
• Steak
• Steak sandwich
• Stifado
• Taco – fish
• Tapas
• Tomato sauce
• Tuna
• Truffles
• Vegetarian lasagna
• Wild weed pie
• Yoghurt

About | 100 Recipes | Outakes

100 recipes: About

This is an inspirational list of one hundred popular recipes that I’d like to cook over my lifetime. Like many people I’ve been collecting recipes for years, and I finally decided to turn that very vague goal of wanting to be a better cook into something measurable.

It’s something to inspire you to try out new recipes, explore different cooking techniques and flavours. I’ve also learnt about the history of these dishes, famous chefs and why certain flavours are a classic marriage.

Along with the recipes I’ve collected along the years that I’ve been meaning to try one day, the list of one hundred originated from a number of different sources:

• Things to eat before you die – The Traveller’s Lunchbox
• 50 best simple recipes – The Observer
• The 50 best recipes – Jill Dupleix – The Sydney Morning Herald

The list started off about twice as long, so I narrowed it down to Australian, British and European recipes. The list of outtakes can be found here.

I encourage you to make your own list of ‘100 recipes to cook in your lifetime‘ and explore your own countries’ cuisine.

About | 100 Recipes | Outtakes

Queensland Floods – other ways to help

Here is a list of some of the other ways you can help with the flood relief effort in Brisbane and Queensland:

• Australian Wine Trade Flood Relief Raffle
• Baked Relief (Brisbane) – cook something for the volunteers, now includes Adopt-a-family
• Handmade Ark Flood Appeal by BrisStyle (handmade etsy shops)
• Handmade Help is looking for handmade donations for a Craft Relief auction
• Writers Auction for Queensland Flood Appeal (facebook)
• Register your volunteer interest with Volunteering Queensland or Volunteering Australia

There is now a more update to date list of ways to help with the flood and cyclone relief.

The butterfly struggle

It was the early blossoming of spring and a girl was wandering through a garden when she discovered a cocoon hanging from the branch of a tree. It was almost time for a butterfly to emerge. Fascinated with her discovery she returned to the garden daily, enthusiastic to see all that would happen and hoping never to miss a thing.

One day a small opening appeared from its cocoon and the girl saw the butterfly struggling to free itself from its cocoon and enter a new world. She watched intently – until the butterfly seemed to have stopped making progress. It appeared as if it had gone as far as possible and could go no further.

The girl made a sudden decision; she began to remove pieces of the cocoon that were obstructing the butterfly. Excited, she watched as the butterfly emerged, hoping its wings would unfold. But her excitement turned into dismay as the butterfly remained unable to move.

It was then that the girl realised what was happening: the cocoon was intended to create the struggle necessary for the butterfly to fly. In fact, it was not trying to escape…. this was just nature’s way of making its wings stronger. It occurred to the girl that the butterfly would actually be grateful to the cocoon for the struggle that they would share.

- Anonymous.

Please donate generously to the Queensland Flood Relief Appeal.
From Treasure Yourself – Miranda Kerr

Only one cookbook?

Zeralda’s Diary is running a challenge asking us to post on “if you were limited for the rest of your life to one cookbook only, which would be your choice?”

My immediate answer would be The Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander. It’s Australia’s answer to The Joy of Cooking. The book stop tome is hard to miss with its rainbow of carnival stripes on the cover. Even though there are no illustrations, the recipes work and they range from the classics to different cuisines, hard to easy.  The book is divided into over 100 chapters based on a type of ingredients. The index is easy to use and comprehensive. An ideal housewarming or wedding present.

It’s often mentioned as the favourite cookbook of many famous and not-so famous Australian chefs. Which one would you choose?

Masterchef vs The World Cup and Plate

Join us over at one of our other blogs, The World Cup and Plate, where we will be eating and drinking our way around the world guided by the FIFA World Cup schedule.

Will we be able to watch Masterchef, The World Cup and cook dinner?

Earth Hour

Just a quick reminder that this evening it’s time to turn off your lights at 8:30pm for an hour. Earth Hour is an opportunity to show your support for action on climate change.

Last year we ended up going to bed early because we couldn’t think of any thing else to do. This year, we might even be able to see the stars.

Best of 2008

There were a couple of stand out dishes of 2008 and they were cooked as part of The Euro Cup and Plate Challenge:

littlem: the Spanish Chicken in Garlic Sauce and the Chocolate and Chestnut Cake

BigM: Dutch Beef stew with beer and dumplings and the Austrian Apple Strudel

The other dish I’ll add to our top 5 is M.Y.O Pizza because we have it nearly once a week.

On the gardening front, we planted over 100 natives in our little backyard, the majority are less then knee high. Our kangaroo paws are doing the best and were originally planted to cover up a huge tree stump. This year we ate some gorgeous home grown tomatoes, tiny sorbet-flavoured strawberries and a fragrant French melon. We gave away lots of passionfruit and pawpaws to willing co-workers.

As part of our challenge to become self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables in a year, we have reached a total of 444g! During that time we have harvested squash and tomatoes. Let me see that’s only another 483.6kg to go… and not looking too promising!

Jackie French wisely recommends to those:

“who want to be totally self-sufficient: don’t do it. ‘Almost self-suffiency’, though, can make your life as rich and prolific as your garden.”

Quote from Backyard Self-sufficiency, by Jackie French.
Written for Best of Year 2008 Challenge.

Damper

Australia isn’t known for it’s breads, but we do have damper. To make the traditional campfire bread more festive I’ve added some herbs from the garden, some left over semi-dried tomatoes and a heirloom tomato. The green and red flecks of colour make it ideal to serve at this time of the year. We prefer semi-dried tomatoes to the full sun-dried ones. I’m predicting that heirloom tomatoes will be trendy soon, just like sun-dried tomatoes were a few years ago.

A heirloom tomato was the second vegetable to be harvested. As our compost doesn’t get hot enough to kill the seeds, there are tomato plants dotted all around our garden.

2 cups of self-raising flour
30g butter
2 tbps chopped chives and basil
1 tomato
6 semi-dried tomatoes
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup milk

1. Sift flour into a bowl and rub in butter with your fingertips.
2. Add the herbs and chopped tomatoes and mix.
3. Make a well in the centre of the mixture, add the combined water and milk in batches.
4. Mix quickly to form a soft dough. Add more flour or water/milk, if required, to get the right consistency.
5. Place on a tray lined with baking paper. Brush with milk.
6. Bake at 220°C for 15-20 minutes.

Baked for Bread Baking Day #15: Festive Breads.

Last bed planted

We planted seeds in the last and fourth bed today. This bed took longer then the rest because we had to remove a papaw tree that was in the space. Papaws have shallow roots so it would have stolen water and nutrients from the vegetable bed. We also don’t care for the fruit, and as a result it was an easy decision to remove it. Big M’s dad volunteered to chain saw it down – a relatively easy job. Digging up the roots, however, was hot and painfully hard work. Each root burrowed a long way along from the base, making excavation a tedious process. We prepared the bed the same way we did the others – using the no-dig method and left it for a month to decompose.

Anyhow, back to the seeds. Today we planted:

Bed four:

• Capsicum: Zorzi Quadrato d’asti x3; Digger’s mini sweet x 3
• Tomato: Lost Seed Broad ripple yellow currant x2; Brandywine x 2; Green zebra x2
• Pumpkin: Digger’s mini sweet delicata x1; Franchi Marina di chioggia x1
• Cucumber: Eden’s Green gem x 1; Lost Seed’s Armenian x1
• Zucchini: Lost Seed Black beauty x1; Sementi Genovese x1

The rest of the vegetables beds are doing well….

Bed one:

• The pink eye and kipler potatoes are all up. About a third of the nicolas are also up. The king edwards are struggling with only about an eighth up.
• There are 4 watermelons and 4 rockmelons up. I replanted the mixed rockmelon – I suspect one of the seed got washed over next to another plant, so I removed it because it was too close.
• No strawberries yet.

Bed two:

• We have not had much luck with lettuce in the past, so it came as no surprise to see only two little plants under a centimetre.
• The golden bantam corn is going great guns (10 up), but on the flip side the bali corn is showing a dismal display with only one plant growing. I replanted the missing ones.
• The beans are doing really well with 25 plants growing. Although three are looking a little worse for the wear – probably storm damage. They haven’t been stalked yet.
• I snuck in two seeds for black russian tomatoes at the end of the bed.

Bed three:

• The squash are our healthiest looking plants at the moment.
• The beans here are also doing well with the majority of them up. A few stragglers.
• The eggplants are disappointing with no shows of one type and the others have a few under a centimetre.
• No sign of the rosellas yet.

Big M’s mum commented that is was probably the wrong time of year to be growing potatoes. Sweet potato might have been a better choice, although Big M’s not so keen on it. Big M thinks the rosellas aren’t growing because it might be the wrong type of soil for them.

Overall, we’re pretty happy with how things are progressing.