Avigayil Damm

Based on one of the recipes in ‘The Australian’s Women’s Weekly Make It Tonight’ series (with slight modifications), tonight’s menu is one that is (or can be) cooked in the microwave from start to finish. Here are the ingredients:

• 250 gr macaroni
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 30 gr butter
• 500 gr minced meat
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp mustard
• 750 ml milk
• 125 gr mozarella cheese
• 125 gr cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley

The recipe suggested to cook the macaroni in the microwave as well, but to save time, I just cooked in on the stove as usual while I started with the other parts. So, while the macaroni is being prepared, cook the onions with the butter, on high temperature for about 3 minutes or until the onions are soft. Then, add the minced meat, cook on high, uncovered, for 10 minutes, stirring twice while cooking. Add the tomato paste and mustard, stir evenly, cook uncovered on high for 2 minutes. Add the milk, cook uncovered for 10 minutes or until it boils and the moisture thickens. Add the cooked macaroni, stir in 2/3 of the cheeses and parsley, mix well, and then add the rest of the cheese and parsley on the top (to cover the macaroni so it doesn’t get dry in the microwave). Cook for another 3 minutes or until cheese melts.

What I would do differently, is actually stir fry the onion so it will not have a slight sour taste. I would probably also add more cheese. Well, on second thought, I would not make it in the microwave again. I think this deserves a full attention and full time dedication. The onions should be stir fried, and so should the meat. And when it’s all mixed, it should go into the oven instead of microwave, to give it a chance to have some crusty top. Next time, I will try the oven method and post the difference here. And, this would probably be more of a weekend recipe, since the preparation to serving time is more or less one hour – 30 minutes too long for a couple just back from a long day at work.

As usual, Sunday is cake day. A few days ago, I set my heart on making brownies, but the easy way: Betty Crocker style. This morning, after breakfast, I thought since I was already busy cleaning up the kitchen after our meal, I may as well stay a while and make the brownies and have it done with. So that I did.

Of course, using Betty Crocker instant brownies package made it all easy. I only had to add one egg, half a cup of vegetable oil, and some water. It didn’t take more than 10 minutes to prepare, and before I could spell ‘chocolate fudge brownies and lamb with rosemary sauce’ backwards, the brownies mixture was ready for the oven.

Since it would take about 25 minutes to bake, I figured I would use that time to prepare the rosemary sauce for tonight’s lamb leg steak. Usually, we would use Gravox ‘lamb and rosemary’ instant sauce, but for some annoying reason, no supermarket in Jakarta (at least not the ones I frequent) sell them anymore. So I had to find myself a recipe and make it myself. For that, I did a lot of Google search, and decided to try this recipe from Epicurious. Originally that sauce recipe is for chicken but that was the only recipe I could find that I thought was easy to make and did not require ingredients that would be difficult to obtain.

The chocolate fudge brownies turned out to be very fudgy (well no surprises there), and since I felt like today I did something better than usual (by baking cake in the morning as opposed to later in the afternoon), I rewarded myself (and my hubby) with freshly baked brownies, served with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and a sprinkle of Hershey’s chocolate sauce. Yummy!

The rosemary sauce turned out to be a little bit too sour, even after I modified it by adding 100 ml more of cream than the recipe required. I guess I will continue to search for different rosemary sauce until I get the best one.

This week has not been much of a productive week for me. After having leftover meatballs in curry, we called in for food once (pizza tropicale for my hubby and pizza margeritha for me from Izzi Pizza), and for two days in a row we had spaghetti bolognaise which was cooked by our housekeeper. One night, I made fried noodles which unfortunately did not deserve to have a post here.

Tonight, I was originally going to make lamb steak. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take the steak out of the freezer, so we resorted to dining out. Since it has been a long time ago that we dined out at Brasserie, we decided to go there. However, we were not lucky enough because it seems that the place had been rented for a private party. So we ended up at the restaurant nearby which we also often visit (and I wrote a post about it here), Die Stube.

I had a big lunch today so I figured I would go for a small dish. So I looked under sandwich and snacks and found Fleischkäse on the menu. This was one of my favourite dish when I was in Germany, and since it fell under the sandwich and snacks category I thought I would be able to down this one easily. Boy, was I wrong!

Not only did it come with two slices of meatloaf, it came with sunny side up egg and a big portion of my favourite roast potatoes. How could I possibly finish that?

The meatloaf was great, I liked it a lot although I thought it was slightly too salty. The sunny side egg made up for it though. In the end I could only finish one slice and took the rest home in a doggy bag. And, yes, you guessed it, I gave it to my little dog so he was a very happy little pup. Would I order this again? Definitely! Just need to make sure that I have enough space in my belly!

Actually, the name of the dish is boller i karry. It’s my hubby’s favourite dish which is made of minced pork. Although I try to avoid eating pork, once in a while I do give in to his craving for his favourites. However, since I don’t really like the smell of raw minced pork, I make a deal with him that he will do the cooking when he wants to have this dish. This deal works well for both of us. Here’s how he does it.

Ingredients:

• 700 gr minced pork
• 1 large onion, minced
• 1 egg
• Malay curry (we use Herbie’s curry powder)
• 50 gr corn flour
• 1,5 litre chicken stock, set one cup aside to mix with the corn flour

Season the minced pork with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly with the onion. Add one egg to help it stick, and form into balls. Bring chicken stock to boil, add the meatballs and cook until they float, remove and set aside. Add about 3 teaspoons of curry powder (or to taste). Add the corn flour to one cup of chicken stock, shake vigorously, and add to the pan. This will help thicken the sauce. Once the sauce has thickened, return the meatballs into the pan and season with salt and pepper if needed. We usually have rice as side dish and have a few spoons of blackberry jam on the side for taste. This recipe makes enough for 2 days (or four people).

This morning my hubby and I wanted to make eggs, sunny side up for breakfast. So I  took out four eggs from the fridge and cracked them one by one into the frying pan. As luck would have it, the last egg turned out to be rotten! Eeeewwww, you can imagine the bad smell, it almost killed my appetite (‘almost’ being the operative word). So we had to toss all four eggs just because that one rotten egg ruined the whole bunch.

Doesn’t it just annoy you when things don’t go as planned? And of course there was no way of telling that particular egg was rotten. Sure, according to this article, a rotten egg will swim at the top when put into a pan of cold water. But seriously, who really does this before cracking an egg?

Note to self: crack the eggs one by one into a small bowl first, and then transfer to the pan.