Stick with Banrock

Today I found McGuigan's Black Label Red in a one litre bottle for $9.90.

unfortunately it is too soft (tastes almost sparkly) and almost sweet for my pallet
price not low enough, back to Banrock for me

Quest for cheap wine (no three day growth)

In the quest for cheap wine (that tastes reasonable, rather than like flavoured tap water) I found my favourite 1 litre bottle of Banrock Station (Chardonay and Shiraz) for a mere $5.50 at Dan Murphy - I had seen it advertised at Jim Murphy's (no relation at all they tell me) for $6.95 and I found it on sale for $8.75 at Woolworths. It really does pay to shop around. So if you are visiting come Christmas time, you will find that you will be plied with some Banrock Station if I am not mistaken. Of course the other reason that you would love to buy this wine is that you are supporting research and preservation of wetlands in Australia.

Cheers,
Mondo

Wedding cake

Check out this most amazing wedding cake - I was flabbergasted

Lemon Butter

2 eggs
250 g white sugar
125 g butter
Juice of 3 lemons
Zest of 2 lemons

Beat the eggs with the sugar in a saucepan (to make a creamy rather than stiff consistency). Add the butter, lemon juice and zest.

Stir over a medium heat until it thickens, like honey.

Cook for another 2-4 minutes, do not boil.

Cool and bottle.
This recipe makes approximately 400g of Lemon Butter.

Oven Baked Pumpkin Risotto

2 tspn oil

2 cups cubed pumpkin

2 cups arborio (or other risotto rice)

5 cups boiling water

4 tspn vegeta vegetable stock
2 tblspn marg or butter

310gm can creamed corn
2 cups baby rocket
2 tblspn pine nuts, roasted

Toss oil through cubed pumpkin and place on a roasting pan. Bake in a hot oven 200c (190c fan forced) for 20 minutes or until done.
Combine rice, water, stock powder and margarine into a large ovenproof dish. Cover with a lid.
Bake in a hot oven 200c (180c fan forced) for 40-50 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed.
Stir through the pumpkin, corn and rocket. Sprinkle pine nuts on top and serve by itself or with a green salad.

Serves 6

Two new things for me!

I succumbed to a rice cooker last week - I used it for the first time last night. I made a butter chicken curry and cooked basmati rice in the cooker and it came out perfectly. Two cups of rice, and three cups of water. The rice cooker was a bargain at $22.00 from the work social club. While putting the curry together I had to chop some garlic that I bought fresh.

The garlic is whole single clove garlic, that is each garlic is one clove and they are huge. They have purple leaves around them. I used half a clove in the curry.

Steak and sweet potato mash

Tonight I made steak and sweet potato mash for tea, with a mushroom sauce.

3 steaks (good quality)
3-400gm flat mushrooms sliced
garlic
1/4 cup white wine or stock
desert spoon butter
small amount of milk
400gm sweet potato
300gm baby spinach

Cook the sweet potato until soft and mash with some butter and milk until soft and creamy, then stir in 300gm rocket or baby spinach.

Cook the steaks on a griddle pan or the BBQ until cooked the way you like then (which for me is medium rare).

Cook the mushrooms with the garlic and wine for about 5 minutes.

To serve:

Put a spoonful of mash on each plate, top with the steak and the mushrooms and serve.

For the vegetarian in the family, I cooked a vegetable patty in the griddle pan before I cooked the steak.

Serve with roast tomatoes.

AJR has an asignment

AJR had to cook a cake for an asignment, with a partner and then hand it in, unfortunately, the school roof is caving in and the kids are being bussed to other local schools, so this was one asignment he did not have to hand in. However he was excited about making a cake and he decided to make one anyway (perhaps he is going to take after Aunty A and get into cooking!). So he found a recipe for a dog cake, and here is a picture of his cake - it tasted alright, although the cooking times were not great, we are still working out the settings on the convection microwave oven thingy.