Welcome to The Kitchen Playground. Cooking can bring great joy and great despair. I hope that the recipes you find here, many of which are very quick to make with the weeknight in mind, help you to experience more joy than despair. Many recipes have instructions for the Thermomix 31 as well as traditional instructions. The emphasis is on real, fresh food that combines flavour, texture and scent to delight the senses.
I found two yellow fin tuna steaks in the freezer and 1 small tin of tuna. The Ankle Biters have not been worthy of yellow fin steaks today. So I had yet another delve into Into the Vietnamese Kitchen and found this lovely recipe for pan seared tuna. I served it on top of steamed […]
The pantry raid (phew, lucky I didn’t leave that ‘r’ out), continues tonight with a recipe I’ve been meaning to try for ages plus a sauce cobbled together out of leftovers. I generally do my supermarket shopping at a wonderful IGA, Leo’s. Apart from not belonging to Coles or Woolworths which is a major plus […]
I did my supermarket Christmas shopping tonight. Just have the fruit and veg to go now. I seem to have spent a small fortune on food lately and the house really is very well stocked, Christmas notwithstanding. So I have decided that I am only allowed to restock on fruit and veg for the next […]
I found a recipe ages ago and put it aside thinking I might make some as Christmas gifts. I didn’t get around to that but I came across the recipe again last weekend and thought I’d make a batch for Christmas Day nibbles and general snacking. I won’t re-write the recipe as I made it […]
OK so we know that Vietnamese food is my favourite. Real, authentic Vietnamese food. Tonight though, I have proven the incredible perfection of Vietnamese flavour combinations. I threw a few things together and ended up writhing in culinary ecstasy. How does one cuisine manage to get it so damn right? Admittedly the Ankle Biters were […]
If you read my ramble this morning, you won’t be surprised to discover that tonight’s dinner comes from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. I’ve made the panfried stuffed tofu exactly as the recipe specifies, which is a rarity for me. Due to a tomato shortage courtesy of yesterday’s bolognese extravaganza, I have omitted the tomato sauce […]
I really felt like some good old Char Siu pork but simply did not have the time to get down to Richmond to buy any. I thought I could probably approximate with what I had in the house though as I knew I had a nice little pork fillet hiding in the freezer. It worked […]
This week got away from me a bit in the kitchen department which meant I had a selection of vegetables that really needed to be cooked today. Plus I had some odd remnants of cheese. Cheese and Vegetable Strudel A few stray snow peas A few stray green beans 1 head broccoli 1 potato wedge […]
This is not a salad to eat if you are on a diet! Pumpkin, Bacon and Blue Cheese Salad with Hazelnuts 1 large piece of pumpkin cut into small cubes 150g Danish blue cheese, cut into small cubes 4 rashers free range bacon 1/4 cup hazelnuts baby spinach leaves olive oil white balsamic vinegar 1 […]
My cooking mojo is curiously absent at the moment so apologies for the low level of new content. It happens from time to time. But if anyone has seen my mojo, please send it back, I hate it when cooking is a drag, I have to do too much of it to not enjoy it. […]