vegetarian medfouna

bread stuff:
* 1/3 millet flour
* make up the rest of the cup with self raising flour, quinoa, and mealie meal.
* 2 teaspoons of yeast
* half a teaspoon of sugar
* teensy bit of salt
* like maybe 1/4 cup of warm water

filling:
* 1 small onion
* some garlic
* some spinach
* 1 tomato
* a couple of mushrooms
* anything else probably
* salt, pepper, cumin, ginger, paprika, parsley, and whatever else you wanna try out
* olive oil

1. knead together all the stuff. Work in more flour or water as needed. The millet flour, quinoa, and mealie meal will dry it out, I think, so maybe make it all a bit wetter than normal bread.
2. let rise for a while in a covered bowl.
3. chop up all the vegetables pretty small cuz they've gotta cook in the bread. you might want to mix them up in a bowl with the spices you've chosen.
4. roll out half the mixture into a circle.
5. use the olive oil to grease up a cake tin or shallowish casserole dish or baking tray.
6. put the rolled out bread in/on your cooking receptacle, and then arrange your filling on top of it. Leave some room around the edges, so you can seal it up without filling poking out. If you haven't added the spices yet, put 'em in now. I recommend slicing up the tomato and putting it on the very top of the pile of filling, so the juice can run through when it cooks. Also putting the ginger on the top of the tomatoes here is pretty rad.
7. roll out the rest of the mixture for the lid. You might wanna use some beaten egg to seal the two bits of bread if you've got a lot of mixture and not much bread.
8. smooth some olive oil over the top of the bread, and put it in a 180 (140 fan forced) oven for about 20 minutes.
8. eating time, hopefully!

I also put some poached chicken bits in it, so we'll see how that goes.

Red Bean Pancakes

Red bean paste:
* can of red beans
* up to 1/2 cup of sugar
* some water

1. blender up the beans with the sugar and some water. I think 1/2 cup is too much sugar.
2. "fry" the bean mix, stirring continuously, until it's more of a thick paste and has darkened in colour.

pancakes:
* 2 cups of flour (plain or self raising, depending on how fluffy you want the pancakes)
* up to 1/3 cup of sugar
* 1 egg
* enough water to get it to a good consistency
* butter/light oil for frying

1. blender up the flour, egg, sugar, and water until you've got a nice pancake mixture.
2. cook up some pancakes.
3. spread some bean paste over half the pancake, then roll up the pancake, making sure the mixture is evenly spread. seal the roll with a little uncooked pancake mixture.
4. in a little butter, place the rolled up pancakes in the pan and fry until it starts to brown.
5. eat!

Meatloaf, just like on tv

Surprisingly ok:

quantities are approximate:
* 1 cup of tomato sauce
* 2 tablespoons of barbeque sauce
* 1 tablespoons of sugar
* 0.5kg/1kg of beef mince
* 6 tablespoons of plain flour or breadcrumbs or both
* some salt
* some "onion powder"
* some "garlic powder"
* some ground black pepper

1. tomato sauce, barbeque sauce, and sugar in a small saucepan over moderate high heat, stirring until it starts to bubble.
2. mix most of the tomato sauce goo (leave about two tablespoons) and beef mince in a bowl.
3. add the rest of the ingredients and mix it all up good and proper.
4. dump it into a loaf tin/whatever you can find to cook it in, cover it in cooking foil, and put it into a hot (200 degrees) oven for half an hour.
5. take it out after half an hour and discard the foil - if it's particularly fatty, drain the fat.
6. cut it into about eight slices/chunks, pour the remaining tomato sauce goo into the cracks and over the top of the meatloaf.
7. cook uncovered for another half an hour or until it's cooked.
8. serve with vegetables, because otherwise this is a heart attack waiting to happen.


I reckon it'd be awesome with chili or paprika or, y'know, any kind of taste. Also maybe some small bits of carrots and capsicum and mushroom and stuff.

Nervous Gumbo

Ingredients:
(3 tablespoons) vegetable (I used canola) oil
3 tablespoons of flour
l large chopped onion
chopped capsicum
chopped carrot
chopped sweet potato
5 or 6 cloves chopped garlic
some string beans or something
half a thing of tomato paste
1 tin of tomatoes
2 - 3 cups water
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper or whatever seasoning you want

Instructions:
* cut up the vegetables into bits that you'd like to find in your gumbo (bearing in mind that it's meant to cook for, like, an hour and a half).
* Heat the oil in a big ol' pot, then stir in the flour. Stir it like you've never stirred before, until it gets all brown and you wonder if perhaps you've let it go too far.
* Chuck in the onions, capsicum, sweet potato, and garlic. Keep stirring and cooking until the onions go clear.
* Add the tomato paste, and stir.
* Throw in the beans and keep stirring over heat until it "goes crumbly or dry". Or until you get sick of stirring it.
* Tinned tomato goes in, and cook slowly on low heat for ever and ever and ever. Add the water, a little at a time, and stir ocassionally. This thing'll stick to the bottom like some sort of manta ray.
* Hey, remember to put in the sugar and the bay leaf, too. Also I put in some peri peri seasoning to make it a bit bitey.

Goes great with steamed or boiled rice. Also, maybe you should use the proper vegetables? Who knows?

Rum and Raisin Muffins

Ingredients:
1 cup raisins
1 cup (dark) rum (or less if you are feeling stingy. You only use about two tablespoons of this in the muffins)
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup sugar
125g butter
200g sour cream (one little container's worth)
1 egg
some vanilla
some nutmeg

Instructions
* soak raisins in the rum (apparently you're meant to do this overnight, but who does that? I soaked them for maybe twenty minutes, tops.)
* whisk/mix sour cream, egg, vanilla and 2 tbs rum until smooth.
* if you can be bothered, cut the butter into the dry ingredients. If you can't be bothered, maybe beat the butter into the wet ingredients.
* ut the dry and wet ingredients together and carefully mix until almost combined.
* add the raisins, and mix a little bit more.
* divide into 12 muffiny things on a muffin tray, and cook the heck out of them in a moderately high oven for as long as you can wait.

Probably would go good with some butter.

Worst Biscuits Ever (Inverness Biscuits)

Adapted from The CWA Cookery Book and Household Hints (36th edition), page 241.

Ingredients:
125g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 egg
some amount of rolled oats
(some amount of flour)

Instructions:
* Cream butter and sugar
* Add and mix in egg and vanilla
* Add a bunch of rolled oats and the baking powder to make a "dry mixture"
* Wonder what the heck is dry about the mixture. Panic. Add some more rolled oats.
* Realise that rolled oats are not very nice anyway.
* Grease a baking tray and put (a teaspoon of) mixture with plenty of room in between them
* Bake in an oven. For some amount of time.
* watch as the butter melts and starts to burn and the rolled oats sit there doing nothing
* Panic. Maybe add some more rolled oats.
* Add some flour.
* Re-grease the tray and put more teaspoon quantities on them. Fiddle with the temperature settings, and fret about the biscuits until they are a bit chewy and a bit burned.
* Whinge at your housemates until they eat some and pretend to enjoy them.

Biscuits keep until somebody eats them. Cuz it's not like they're gonna taste any worse in a week's time.