Rag-who?

A birthday present subscription to Australian Good Food magazine thanks to my MIL gave me direction for this recipe.  I am not always one to cook Italian but in the last week I have made Osso Bucco and now this - it must be the change in the weather....FINALLY we have the beautiful 30 degree days and breezes that make living here so beautiful... and the nights are cool enough that thoughts of stews and slow simmered dishes are replacing the previous staple menu items of salads, light asian dishes and BBQs.
My magazine tells me that tagliatelle with ragu is romantic.... I don't know about that but it was certainly delicious!

15g dried porcini mushrooms
1/4 cup olive oil
50g unsalted butter
1 small onion finely chopped
1 small carrot finely chopped
1 celery stalk finely chopped
1 garlic clove crushed
100g chopped pancetta
200g pork mince
200g veal mince
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup red wine
400g tomato passata
2 bay leaves

Soak porcini in hot water while you get on with the rest of things...
Heat oil & butter and cook onion, celery, carrot and garlis till soft
Add pancetta and cook 3-4 minutes
Add pork & veal and cook 10 minutes till brown.  Season
Add tomato paste and cook 3 minutes till darker in colour
Add wine and simmer 10 mins till absorbed
Add tomato passata, chopped porcini & bay leaves
Here I transferred mine to my slow cooker as we were going out and I just let that cook away on low for 6 hours but the recipe says to simmer on the stove stirring every 30 mins for 2 hrs.
Serve with taglitelle and to each delicious bowl-ful add a tablespoon of fresh ricotta stirred through the sauce & pasta.
Pour yourself a glass of red wine.
Snuggle up on the couch with pasta and red wine in your PJs and enjoy.....

Engagement party!

We had a great night on the 16th, about 70 people turned up to help us celebrate at a friend's plantation.  We decorated the inside of his huge shed with streamers and balloons hung from the roof via forklift.  We had a huge pig on a spit donated through a friend of a friend.  It was about 48kg dressed out so it was more than enough food! Also we had bread rolls and gravy, veggie platters, nibbly platters and delicious homemade Vietnamese spring rolls.  We had huge eskies filled with beer wine and soft drink and margaritas on tap and lots of champagne for toasts and speeches.  And we had the most beautiful homemade cake made by my talented friend Ali from work.

After dinner we had a couple of short speeches - Justin may act tough but he made a sweet speech that brought a tear to the eye! What a man... :)

After that it was time to party - we had a rotating disco light and a dance floor area set up and it was very well used! Leigh - I took a photo of the fold up shoes you got me - (I got rid of my fancy shoes when the dancing started and went for the comfort of fold-up flats)  - they ALMOST have a hole worn through them - I tried! My legs were so sore the next day from all the dancing!

It was really great to see a lot of people that we can't normally catch up with - Justin's brother and fiance drove all the way up from Perth (a 2000km round trip) just for the party, Justin best friend came all the way from Southern Cross (a 3000km round trip!) and we had a couple of friends travel up from Geraldton as well (5 hours drive) as well as Justin's dad and step mum who we never seem to see enough of and Justin's step brother and his fiance.  It was really touching for me to see so many of the people I care about in the one place at the one time!

However I spent (as did Justin) the whole time talking to all these people (well all the time I wasn't dancing) and NOT taking photos..... so here some of the only ones we have!

 The set up of the inside of shed

 The marker at the entrance to the plantation! Made by Justin .....

 Ali's beautiful cake!

One of the only photos of us from the night!

Dinner for one

Justin is working night shift..... and I have a day off tomorrow so we can get ready for the engagement party on Saturday night and see some of the people who have travelled  to town for it. So here is my dinner for one: Chicken in tortillas with tomato, corriander, guacamole, chillis and hot sauce.  Oh and a leeeeeetle nip of tequila... because I can.

Chicken Rice for the soul....

There seems to be a common thread of home-made-stock-based-recipes happening in my household right now.  My all time favourite meal in the whole world (this month) is chicken rice.  I first ate it in Penang which (amongst a few other Asian places) claims to be the birthplace of this recipe.  Basically it is poached chicken, rice first fried in chicken fat and then steamed in chicken stock served with the chicken broth as a soup and a chilli sauce on the side.  It is all sorts of good.

We made it last night.  Well ok, Justin made it.  But I chopped a spring onion.

A whole chook is stuffed with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, spring onions and chinese rice wine and then poached in a homemade chicken stock.  Then it is removed and brought to room temperature and sliced and served over the tasty rice.  The chilli sauce is a combination of fresh chillis, garlic, ginger, chicken stock, lime and salt.

 Mmmm I think I am going to go eat a serve of this for breakfast right now!

Nails, medals and pringles....

As we haven't been shooting every weekend (our club still can't be used after the floods in December) I have managed to sort of grow my nails.... Usually as soon as I rack a gun a few times and change a few mags they get chipped and ruined so four months of no shooting has done wonders for my nails (and terrible things to my shooting ability...)

Annnyyyhoooo - here is a product I have discovered and fallen in love with.  They are polish strips that you lay onto your nails, they stick and are instantly dry and don't chip or come off for at least a week (even lasting through days and days of dishes and pharmacist-y things like picking off labels).  So I'm impressed and highly recommend them.



Now just so you don't think I have turned into a girly-girl... here are the medals I won last Friday night at our pistol club presentation night.  :-) 3 gold in the ladies categories and a bronze overall against everyone!

And for something completely different.... Screamin' dill pickle pringles.  Justin found them somewhere online..... They aren't as bad as they sound! Actually they remind me of salt and vinegar flavour!



Walking home.....

My view as I walked home from work yesterday... kinda makes it less of a chore to get some exercise when its this pretty!

Phở

Mmmm I made this delicious dinner the other night.  Since going to Vietnam I have fallen in love with Phở and was keen to try to make my own.  It's one of those dishes where the broth is really the hero of the dish so stock cubes are out of the question! I simmered beef bones and some beef offcuts together with some spices for about 5 hours and then strained and discarded the solids.  At the last minute you add cooked rice noodles and raw beef. so it just barely cooks in the hot broth.  Then you dump in a big pile of bean sprouts, basil, mint, coriander/cilantro, chilli, fish sauce and squeeze lime over it all. Really good!
The recipe I used was from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian cook book - available online to view recipes if you google it.  I also looked at Luke Nguyen's recipe, he is a famous chef over here with his own Vietnamese travel/cooking show.  He also has a restaurant in Sydney that I would love to go to one day called Red Lantern.  His recipe was a lot more complicated than Charmaine Solomon's so I will have to wait until I am next in Sydney to try his version... (Wishing!!)
Luke Nguyen's recipe is here: http://insidecuisine.com/2010/03/06/pho-fat-noodle/ and you can watch some of his episodes of his show online here: http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/lukenguyen/watchonline/page/i/1/show/lukenguyen

Oh and the fish sauce you can see in the photo is from Phu Quoc Island - we found it in Carnarvon!

Floods and bugs

While we were away there were more floods and another cyclone passed near us.  Flying back into Carnarvon we got a great (although depressing) view of some of the damage.  This photo shows clearly the dirty brown flooded river water emptying out into the beautiful blue ocean! This is an area about 300km south of Carnarvon.

 This is an area in Carnarvon called Pelican Point (or more accurately Peli Point, everything in Australia is abbreviated if it is at all possible!)  It is about ten minutes drive from the centre of town and is/was one of our regular places to go to fish, swim and hang out at the beach.  The water is stained awful dirty brown from the huge river and you can see the crazy high tides and strong swell ripped the 'point' in two.  There is water either side of the land but normally you can walk all the way - now you need to swim/wade some of it!

As a result of the massive rains we have GAZILLIONS of bugs.  There are dragon flies, mosquitos, cockroaches, beetles, locusts, grasshoppers by the thousands.  So much so that even bug-phobic me is getting more brave - there is no other option!

 However the down side is that any plantations that survived the floods are now being eaten to the ground.  Its hard to make out in the photo of the banana tree above but see how some leaves are full and others are skeletal? This one is only half eaten.....

 We had a party for the pistol club out at a member's plantation - a great venue but we were sharing it.. and out numbered!

 The next day we came back to help with some of the clean up.... This pile doesn't have any twigs or leaves in it...... look closer - its all bugs! EW!

 Even though his crops are under crop nets the hungry beasties still get through so chemicals are the only option...

This year Oscar is growing grapes... for eating not wine! Surely we can give it a go though right?!?

Singapore Part Three

The last holiday post..... On our last day in Singapore we took the cable car over to Sentosa Island.  We have been on a few scary cable car rides... we agreed that the worst one was in Langkawi in Malaysia, although the glass bottom in the cable car in Hong Kong was kinda spooky! I think the weird thing about cable cars is the silence when the are running.....

 Over in Sentosa we went to Universal Studios which was fantastic.  We never went to Universal Studios in LA and regret it (good reason to go back right?) and this one in Singapore was probably not as big but it was certainly very polished. We went on a few rides (neither of the guys were all that brave and I wasn't going on rides by myself!!) but I think one of the funnest things about the place was the American-ness of it all! There was a huge Hershey store, there was a down town New York section of the park and we had Chilli's for lunch.  I also discovered one of THE. BEST. THINGS. IN. THE. ENTIRE WORLD.
http://www.garrettpopcorn.com/

 We saw Shrek briefly....!

That night we went out to the Raffles Hotel to have Singapore Slings - Delish!

 The Long bar of the Raffles hotel.

After cocktails we took ourselves up to the top of the funny ship thing on top of the three towers that you could see from the previous photos.  It was very cool.  Awesome views and there was a jazz band playing up there and another bar! Beers at 80 stories anyone? Why yes I think I will.

Oh - and my soon to be husband had flowers delivered to our room after the proposal, this photo was taken in our hotel room when we were just about to go to the airport - I was sad to leave such pretty flowers behind!
All in all it was the most amazing holiday, the food, the company, the sights - I just loved it.  Let's do it all again tomorrow! Now I just need someone to go to work for me and pay all my bills.... Takers?

Singapore Part Two

The first night in Singapore we went to a place that Justin had researched on the internet - Morton's Steakhouse.  We met up with some friends from Carnarvon who had been in Vietnam with us as well but had come to Singapore a few days before us.  It was a great (although not cheap!!) dinner, beautiful prime rib, cocktails, wine and for desert there was REAL New York Cheese cake - flown in from New York! It was great! 

 This place is actually a hotel you can stay in... there is a bar up on top and there is a great view over Singapore at night, photos from that still to come.....

 

 A giant ferris wheel is in the centre of town.  It takes about 40 minutes to do a complete rotation and gives a great view of Singapore.  There were so many boats in the harbour, it was a huge port!

Another Hard Rock Cafe moment! We were celebrating here and so in addition to the Hurricanes and Margaritas we thought we better have some B52 shots. Fun! 

And the best and cheapest place to get dinner in the whole of Singapore? Chinatown hawker street food; huge plates of Char Kway Teow, freshly made spring rolls, steamy BBQ pork buns and big icy glasses of Tiger beer. Ahhhh what a great way to end our first day being engaged!