Fine dining at its best / Tararua tramping

As you know I love cooking and trying out new recipes. From time to time I come across something that I like to share with others. I'd like to share this particular recipe as it's the meal I've most enjoyed in recent times.

Now, to enjoy this recipe to it's fullest, you need to tramp for 9 hours ensuring that you ascend at least 1200 metres and then descend back down 1200 metres. Make sure the last few hours are in the dark and that there is no clear track to travel on. And, just to ensure you've worked up an appetite, the last 200 metres should be through impenetrable bush with loads of supplejack.

Once you've got to the hut you can then prepare the following meal :

Cook up some onion, garlic and chilli in a little oil. Put aside.

Lightly boil some broccoli, cauliflower and carrot.

Add dried mashed potato to the vegetables. Stir well. Add onion, garlic and chilli and stir. Add a tin of tuna. Serve and eat immediately.

I forgot to mention, try turn up to the hut late in the evening when all other trampers are tucked up in bed sleeping. I'm sure they didn't mind us arriving then cooking our dinner.

This trip was an overnight into the Tararua Range. We parked at Holdsworth road end and then headed up the Gentle Annie track. We stopped for a lunch snack at Mountain House Shelter then carried on up to Powell Hut for another quick break. From there we climbed another 100 metres or so (a total climb for the day of 1200 metres) until we reached the turnoff for High Ridge. That's the signpost in the photo below.

This photo is the start of High Ridge. You basically walk along the top of the ridge. At first it's open tussock and then further along the ridge you get into bush. It's a little rough in places getting into and out of the bush but not bad once you're in it. We walked along to Flaxy Knob which is the bush covered rounded bit in the distance on the right of the photo. From there it's a descent back down to 200 metres to Totara Flats Hut.

 

The following photo is looking back up the ridge to the start point.

 

From Flaxy Knob the route is less easy. There was a lot of windfall and, of course, it got dark soon after we started descending. We lost the route a few times but managed to get back onto it with a bit of scouting around. Finally we were about 200 metres from joining up to the main Totara Creek track when we lost the route again. At this stage some bright spark put forward the idea that it would be quicker to make our way through the bush than it would be to spend time finding the route again. That was one of those statements that I wish I'd never made!!!! It took us an hour to travel the 200 metres. The bush was pretty thick, the ground was quite rugged in places and the supplejack was rife. For those that haven't experienced walking through supplejack it's like some awful nightmare where you are constantly trying to climb over vines, duck under other vines, getting vines stuck on the top of your pack etc. Not a lot of fun and certainly slows down forward progress.

Once we joined onto the main track it was a matter of minutes to get to the hut over the swingbridge. By now it was after 9pm. It had been a long day. But, that meal was divine! And the whiskey in front of the fire went down pretty well too.

The following morning we woke to a little bit of mist but the weather remained calm and dry - both important when out tramping in the Tararuas. Makes for a much more enjoyable day. 

 

Soon after leaving the hut there's an impressive swing bridge across the Waiohine River. The walk out to the carpark was a lot shorter and more straight forward than the previous day. Basically a walk up the Totara Creek track which joins back onto the Gentle Annie track. The walk out took us three and a half hours all up. The climb was only about 500 metres or so. A lot easier than the day before.

 

 

That's another corner of the Tararua's that we can tick off. If you're thinking of doing this walk it would be prudent to get down off High Ridge in daylight hours. Oh, and if you lose the route, find it again!

Food glorious food

Most of my friends and family know that I no longer eat meat (apart from fish!). I would have to say that the overwhelming reaction I get from people is not a positive one which I find that difficult to understand.

For a long time I've enjoyed eating healthy food and cutting out meat is one more step in making my diet healthier. It's over a year now since I stopped eating meat and I don't miss it at all. A positive side effect has been a reduction in weight. I am guessing some of this can be attributed to not eating meat. Cycling to and from work everyday and tramping on weekends might also have contributed to the weight loss.

For me, the reasons behind this new lifestyle are health based. It's not an ethical issue for me. I am fitter, stronger and healthier now than I was previously. Maybe this can be attributed to the vegetarian diet. Maybe not. What this has taught me is that I don't need meat to satisfy my hunger. I thought I would struggle with not eating things like bacon and a good steak but this is not the case. What has happened is that this lifestyle change (which is what it is - it's certainly not a "diet") has opened up my eyes to a whole new range of food.

Eating out is not quite as simple as it used to be but that's not an issue as we only eat out on rare occasions. Usually there will be one or two items on a menu that are either seafood or vegetarian. We have found a few great places to eat around Wellington where the menu caters for our needs. One such place is Nature Vegetarian. This is a tiny Asian-style place on High Street in Lower Hutt (across the road from Pak n Save). Their food is pretty good. They do have menu items that include fake meat which we're not into but, if you're after a vegetarian chop, they can cater for you. Their golden fried tofu is a great starter.

Generally ethnic restaurants are a better bet than pubs, etc. We've had some great meals at Indian, Vietnamese, Turkish and Thai restaurants in the Hutt Valley and in Wellington. For the record, Kilim in Petone is the best Turkish restaurant I've eaten at for a long time. They're BYO and their food prices are cheap so it's possible to have a great meal out on a budget.

Hmmm, this post has turned into a bit of a restaurant review edition which was not my intention. I actually wanted to talk more about what we're eating at home. Of course we're lapping up all the wonderful fresh summer fruit and vegetables at the moment. Our grocery bill for the past few weeks has been around $45 for fresh produce from the markets. We've managed to avoid the supermarket for three weeks now although this weekend we'll need to go stock up on a few things.

Two memorable meals in the last few days have been homemade corn tortillas on Saturday night and then zucchini fritters, broccoli soup and fresh sweetcorn last night.

I can recommend making corn tortillas from scratch. They were delicious and super easy to make! We should have made more. For the tortillas you need to buy some Masa Harina. This is available from some New World stores, usually found in their specialty food / gluten free aisle. You can also buy it online - www.tiapablo.co.nz (their website looks slightly broken - especially when you access it via IE6!).

To make the tortillas you mix two parts Masa Harina to one part water to make a slightly tacky dough. Two cups of the flour with one cup of water should make about 12 tortillas. Roll balls of the dough between two sheets of waxed paper, cook in a hot pan with no oil (30 seconds one side, 45 seconds the next, flip back for a further 20 seconds) and you're done! Fill with beans, onion, carrot, lettuce, tomato (urgh), chilli sauce, etc and you have a tasty meal. Like I say we should have made more - the ones we made were inhaled pretty quickly.

If you're thinking of going vegetarian I think the trick is to embrace fresh produce and cooking at home to ensure you eat an interesting variety of food. If it all seems a little too hard you could always try reducing the number of meat meals you have and experiment with some vege meals.

Vegetarian / pescetarian

I've been 99.9% meat free since Christmas Day and it hasn't been as difficult as I thought it would be. My intention was to be vegetarian but I have found, so far, that I am more comfortable being pescetarian. For me this means I have fresh fish perhaps once a week and have tuna in my lunch once or twice a week. I'm happy to continue like this for now but am sure I will phase out the fish in the future. It's also my intention to cut out dairy and cut back on other fats and oils (as per Dr Esselstyn's book.

So what does this change in eating mean for my meals generally? Well, breakfast is either home-made muesli (yum) with rice or soy milk and yoghurt or Vogel's toast with Vegemite. Most of the time I have freshly made juice - the favourite mix currently is carrot, apple, beetroot, pineapple and spinach - delicious! At some stage I will revert back to porridge - probably once the weather gets cooler again.

Lunch during the week is most often a salad or a wrap but is sometimes leftovers (my favourite would have to be leftovers!). Lunch on the weekend varies considerably depending on what I am doing. Today I had a mushroom, spring onion and spinach omelette (with fresh eggs from my chooks).

I guess dinners are the more interesting area these days (for me anyway). I have tried a recipe out of Esselstyn's book called Kitchari - it's a sort of soupy / casserole sort of thing with rice, yellow split peas, chilli, veges, fresh coriander and cumin seeds. I'm not convinced they are all the ingredients but I've lent the book to a friend and can't double-check. The other night I sort of felt like tacos but when it came down to it I cooked all the things I would have had with the tacos and just ate the fillings - so I had brown rice, lettuce, sweetcorn, mushrooms, zucchinis and spring onions - so tacoless tacos. Yum! Vege curries are fairly high on the agenda as are stir fries - all simple to prepare without meat.

I have to admit I feel a little better and more energetic at the moment but I can't be sure that is entirely due to my change in diet.

The other recent change is an increase in exercise. With my finger slowly healing I knew it was time to get back into more activity to regain my fitness and strength. I rejoined the gym so am back to spin classes twice a week and at least one Thai Fit class. On top of that I went for a run the other day - first one for about three months. And on weekends inevitably there is at least one walk up a hill if not more. Next weekend I am off for my first tramping trip since my accident in November and I can't wait! It is also my first trip with the tramping club that I joined late last year so will be interesting to meet some new people.

Life continues to be good - now, if my house would sell it would be even better!

Strange dinner

Coping with one hand sometimes means it is difficult to cook for myself. Luckily I had a huge binge on soup making over the winter. Yesterday I grabbed a container of "something" out of the freezer. As it turned out it was pumpkin soup. I had the brilliant idea of cooking up some brown rice and mixing that with the soup. Some fresh chopped coriander was added and that was dinner. Did you want photos? Too bad - I ate it all before thinking of taking photos. :)

Recipe time - Curried chicken on couscous

It's been a while since I posted a recipe so here is one I tried last night. The recipe is from the latest Healthy Food Guide magazine and I followed it pretty diligently - except I needed it to be gluten free so no couscous. So it became curried chicken on brown rice. The recipe isn't on their website yet but I guess it will appear there at some point. It's a great resource for healthy recipes.

Ingredients :

3 teaspoons grated ginger
1/4 cup lime juice (I used fresh limes)
3 teaspoons curry powder
400g chicken thighs with fat removed (I used free-range chicken)

Mix the first three ingredients in a bowl and then add chicken. Give it a good stir around and set aside while you're cooking the rice (of course you may well want to stick to couscous).

Rice / couscous ingredients :
1 cup of brown rice / couscous
400g can lentils, drained and rinsed
2/3 cup chopped fresh coriander

Cook the rice / couscous, add lentils and coriander. Pan fry the chicken in a lightly oiled pan - takes about 10 minutes. Place the chicken on top of the rice / couscous. Serve with freshly steamed vegetables - I did broccolini and asparagus (yay for spring / summer vegetables).

The dish is really simple but tastes great. I'll be making this one again soon.

Baby-food diet?

I have vaguely (very vaguely) heard that there is a mini-craze out there called the baby-food diet. I haven 't pursued those vague thoughts but imagine it is something to do with eating small amounts of pureed food - correct? Ah well, it doesn't matter if I am wrong.

I find myself on an imposed "baby-food" diet currently. I had some dental work done yesterday - I am sure you don't want all of the ghastly details but basically it involved cutting of gums, scraping (lots of scraping) and then stitching. Sounds horrible huh? Well it was! I spent the entire appointment with my eyes shut to avoid seeing what instruments were entering my mouth.

Now the procedure itself is over and done with but I have stitches in my gums on both sides of the mouth - and strict instructions to not use my molars for eating. Hence my baby-food diet. Today I had porridge for breakfast (the sultanas were a little tricky to squish), soup and dunked toast for lunch and scrambled eggs for dinner. I can see I could get sick of this pretty quickly. In fact I am already craving a nice steak but I am sure that is due to the fact I know I can't have it (unless I puree it and I am sure that would not be the culinary experience I am after).

I am planning a green curry with fish for dinner tomorrow night as that should be nice and mushy to eat.

I guess there may be an unexpected positive out of this experience - there is a chance I could lose that extra kilo or so that has been hanging around for a while.

Yet another soup recipe

Last year at a friend's birthday dinner I tried broccoli and blue cheese soup for the first time. It was delicious and so I tucked the idea of making some of my own into the back of my mind.
One vegetable that is particularly cheap right now just so happens to be broccoli so tonight I made my soup. The recipe is as follows :

2 cups chicken stock
250g broccoli
150g courgettes50g blue cheese
Salt and pepper

Heat the chicken stock then add vegetables. Season with salt and pepper. Cook the vegetables until just tender (and still nice and green). Remove from heat and blend until smooth (or at least not lumpy). Add the blue cheese and blend again. And that's it. Soup all ready to go. I just finished a bowl of it and it is delicious. Of course you would need to like blue cheese to appreciate it. :) Here's a photo of the finished product.

Leek and potato soup

I've been a bit slack posting - mostly due to standard busyness and nothing particularly interesting to post about.

Tonight after dinner I decided to try out making leek and potato soup. I haven't made this type of soup before so wasn't sure how it would go. Luckily my mum emailed me a recipe. I pretty much followed it....... but excluded the bacon, used random fresh herbs (it was dark outside!) and haven't added the milk. For once I remembered to take photos - but, to be honest, it's pretty bland looking really.

I didn't bother sticking to the recipe too closely - especially on the quantity side of things. What I did was : slowly cooked one chopped onion and one sliced leek in a little oil until soft. Added 3 chopped potatoes (volume wise there was probably equal leek and potato), salt, pepper, fresh herbs (I think I ended up with a mix of fresh marjoram and oregano) and enough chicken stock to cover the veges. I cooked it up until the vegetables were tender, cooled it and then blended it until smooth. I tasted it and it was delicious.

The bonus of this recipe is that it works out really cheap - the leek cost me $1.30, potatoes from the garden, herbs from the garden. Yup, pretty darn frugal. :)

Of course I had already had dinner when I made the soup so it's destined to the fridge and freezer. Yum! Here are the photos.

Asian pork patties

It's been a while since I posted a recipe. Yesterday I hosted a Tupperware party and decided it was a great opportunity to try something new. I did a cooking class a year or so ago where we made some chicken patties. The flavours were divine so I made up the following recipe with those tastes in mind:

Asian pork patties

500g minced pork
1 teaspoon finely chopped coriander
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped kaffir lime leaf (or some lime zest and bit a of lime juice)
2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 finely chopped red chilli

Mix together and roll into small balls and flatten. Fry in a little oil until cooked through and nicely browned. Serve with the following dipping sauce.

1 clove garlic
1 whole red chilli
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon lime juice

Grind garlic and chilli together, add to other ingredients.

That's it really. Very simple food but rather delicious.

Nutritious, wonderful soup!

With autumn fast approaching here in New Zealand I have a craving for soup. One of my fondest childhood memories is of drinking cups of Mum's vegetable soup while curled up reading a good book. I can never seem to replicate the taste of her soup but it's good fun to keep trying.

Today I bought a bacon hock and a few extra vegetables and now my house is filled with the wonderful smell of soup which is bubbling away. For those trying to lose weight, eat healthier or save money soup is a wonderful meal. I will be freezing meal-sized portions which will make good lunch fodder for the next week or so. Also, living by myself I love coming home from work and having soup and crusty toast for my dinner.

Today's soup has onion, grated carrot and parsnip, sliced celery, silverbeet, barley and, of course, the bacon hock for flavour. Now I find myself sitting here impatiently waiting for it to ready to eat. Yum! Lunch will be a real treat today.

The downside of holidays

I guess this is preditable but the only negative I can think of from my holiday in Nelson is the 2 kilos I managed to pile on - pretty good effort for one week I think! I think I can put it down to being totally inactive for a week and drinking gallons of beer every day. :) Generally I get to the gym 6 days a week with a mix of spin classes, thai fit classes and weights. So a week of lazing on the beach and not thinking at all about what I ate and drank has resulted in a bit of unwanted weight going on.

Now I am not upset about it. In fact I loved my holiday and if that's the only "bad" thing to come out of it then so be it. But now that I am back home and busy working I am back into my routine and committed to eating healthily (and not drinking beer!). The upside is a focus on finding (or creating) new recipes. Tonight's dinner is an experiment. I had some cooked chicken (which is nice and spicy) and could have had a chicken salad but that is what I had for lunch. So I decided to get a bit creative.

I felt like having something like a frittata and have thrown together a meal that may produce something like a frittata....... maybe! Basically I have stir-fried some vegetables (onion, pumpkin, cauliflower, broccoli and mushrooms) and then have put the vegetables into two ramekins (guess what lunch is for tomorrow?). Then I mixed up some eggs, milk, salt, pepper and chunks of blue cheese and poured that over the vegetables. Now it is cooking in the oven. I am not sure whether the result is a frittata (it certainly doesn't match the frittata recipe I would normally follow).

Here is a photo of them cooking - just about ready I think. Apologies for the poor quality photos but I was in a hurry - I'm hungry. :) Yum!

Harvest time!

I had a craving tonight for fresh vegetables so went out hunting in the garden to see what I could find. This is what I found.

Two eggs from my chooks today so I have at least two laying at the moment. It's quite strange - when I go check on them there is only one who is obviously broody so maybe there are three laying for they are taking turns?

Dinner tonight was grilled chicken with steamed zucchini and silverbeet and with fresh sweetcorn. I have to tell you, the corn was simply amazing - so sweet and tender. The monster zucchini at the rear of the photo is sitting in the fridge while I figure out what to do with it. It may well end up in a pie or cake.

I went and had my massage on Friday. I tried a new place out and opted for a fairly deep massage to sort out my aches and pains. The massage itself was wonderful - a lovely Thai woman used her magic hands and ironed out a lot of the kinks I had in my back. Sadly I won't be returning to this place - the front-desk service was pretty shoddy (to the point of being rude) and the cleanliness etc of the towels was very questionable - plus the towels themselves looked almost threadbare and ancient.

A healthy spring meal

At the weekly market today I picked up some lovely asparagus which reminded me about this dish. The combination of the ingredients may sound unusual but the result is delicious.

Asparagus Pasta Combo

Ingredients :
350g small-medium waxy potatoes
100g spiral or penne pasta
1 large lemon
salt
freshly ground black pepper
3 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint leaves
400g fresh asparagus
400g zucchini
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered (optional but a good way of getting some protein)
1 cup black olives (optional)
1/2 cup olive oil

Method:
Cook the potatoes until just tended. Drain then cut into small bite-sized portions and immediately toss in 1 tbsp lemon juice (half a large lemon), 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp mint leaves and some salt and freshly ground black pepper. Set aside and allow to cool.

Cook the pasta to al dente, drain and immediately refresh in cold water to stop the cooking process and prevent sticking.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees.

Snap ends off asparagus and lay in a single layer on a baking tray. Toss in 1-2 tbsp oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Trim the zucchini and slice each thinly down its length. Place zucchini on a baking tray and toss in oil, salt and pepper. Place trays (or tray if you have only used one) in oven and roast, tossing once, for 7-12 minutes.

While the vegetables are roasting, place the pasta and potatoes on a large serving platter and pile the vegetables on top with the hard-boiled egg quarters (if using).

Just before serving, toss everything with the remaining juice of the lemon, olive oil, remainder of mint leaves, salt and pepper to taste and olives (if using).

This should be served warm and with warm crusty bread. Enjoy!

Caramel Dumpling Recipe

This is a recipe which we discovered a little while back and has now become one of our firm favourites. Be extra careful making these as it's easy to burn yourself when adding the water.

Caramel Dumplings

Dumpling Batter
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp melted butter

Caramel Sauce
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups boiling water
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp butter

Mix all dumpling ingredients - set aside.

Put the sugar in a heavy saucepan over medium high heat.

Stir constantly until sugar has melted and turns a light brown. Carefully stir in boiling water - take extra-special care at this stage as steam will be created and it will hiss and spit. You may find that the sugar and water go clumpy - carry on stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add butter and vanilla, bring to the boil and boil for two minutes.

Drop spoonfuls of the dumpling mixture into the sauce (I make 4 large dumplings with the quantities listed above).

Lower heat, cover tightly and cook for 15 minutes.

These are best served warm with cream or ice cream. If you would like to make less dumplings you can half the dumpling quantities but it's best to make the same amount of sauce - lots of sauce is yum!

For those in the northern hemisphere this is a great winter warmer dessert recipe. Enjoy!

Yummy Chicken Pie recipe

I posted a week or so back about making food to take to work for lunch. One of the things I make is a Chicken Pie. Here's the recipe.

Base :
1/2 cup of uncooked brown rice
1 onion finely diced
1 whole egg, beaten
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon each of cumin, turmeric, dried coriander
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder (or to taste)

Topping :
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup shredded cooked chicken
3/4 cup grated cheese
1/2 cup milk
3 eggs
1/3 cup chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
Other veges - corn, broccoli, mushrooms - pretty much whatever you have on hand.

Cook rice, drain well. Preheat oven to 200 degrees (Celsius).

Base :
Saute onion for 2 minutes in a non-stick pan with a small amount of oil. Add spices and cook for a further minute. Place in a medium size mixing bowl, add cooked rice and breadcrumbs mixing well. Beat egg and milk and pour into rice mixture, combine well. Grease a pie dish (23cm) then press the rice mixture evenly around the base and up the sides of the dish.

Topping :
In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs and milk together. Add the remaining ingredients except for 1/4 cup of grated cheese (which gets sprinkled on top of the pie). Mix all the ingredients together, add salt and pepper. Pour mixture over the rice base, sprinkle remaining cheese over top and bake uncovered for 50-60 minutes or until set in the centre and browned on top.

Let stand for 10-15 minutes before serving. Can be served hot or cold.

I hope you enjoy this recipe - it's one of my favourites. It would be easy enough to turn this into a vegetarian dish by leaving out the chicken.

Ideas for work lunches

Buying lunch each day works out to be an expensive and sometimes unhealthy proposition. It's easy to pay $6 - $8 just for a sandwich. That all adds up to too much in my book so I bring my lunch from home each day. The trick is to plan ahead so you don't end up bringing the same boring food day after day. It helps that there is both a refrigerator and a microwave available for me to use at work. Plus there is a sandwich press and toaster too.

Leftovers are great to take for lunch as this reduces waste at home as well as providing something tasty. Today's lunch is leftover salad, couscous and two venison sausages. Yum!

Often on a Sunday I will cook something specifically for lunches - this could be a vegetable curry, risotto or soup. I have been delving through my cookbooks recently looking for new ideas. One recipe I found was for a chicken and corn pie - the "crust" is made with breadcrumbs and brown rice and also includes some spices. The filling of the pie is chicken, sweetcorn, eggs, milk, cheese and whatever other vegetables I have in the fridge that need to be used up. I used brocolli and cauliflower in this which made the pie delicious and healthy. I'll post the recipe for this when I get a chance.

I have a few ideas to fall back on when there are no leftovers and I haven't had time to cook anything specifically for lunch. One idea is to cook up some brown rice and a grab a can of tuna - I heat these up and add a good dose of black pepper. Another idea is to make up a sandwich that can be toasted for lunch - my favourite is mushroom, spinach and cheese on grainy bread. Delicious!

Quick after-work meals

I don't know about anyone else but I find it can be a bit of a challenge to get a healthy home-cooked meal on the table for the family during the working week. Over time this is something I have got better at so today's blog entry is all about some of the quick meals I cook.

We do have a couple of limitations in what we cook. The Optimist (my darling husband) can only have red meat once a week due to a cholestoral problem. The result of that is that we eat a lot of chicken. On top of that, I don't eat tomato (makes me ill) so that limits a lot of our choices. I'd like to move to more vegetarian meals but that is something the menfolk of the house struggle with. So here goes with some meal ideas!

Chicken kebabs - before I leave for work in the morning I cube the chicken (usually use chicken breast) and then marinate in a mix of soy sauce, peanut butter and chilli. When I get home it;s just a matter of putting the chicken onto kebabs, grilling them in the oven, getting some rice going in the rice cooker and getting some vegetables steaming.

Chicken burgers - Again I use chicken breasts for our chicken burgers. I slice them through so the fillets are thinner (and this also stretches the meat a bit further) and coat them in satay sauce. I grill the fillets while getting the salad ingredients ready and the bread sliced. The family loves this one, especially when I have bought mini-focaccia breads instead of plain burger buns. If I have enough time sometimes I will cut up some potatoes into generous chips and oven bake them with olive oil and fresh herbs.

Chicken curry - This isn't the healthiest of meals but a real favourite so this one gets on the menu every couple of weeks. I use a curry paste mix for the base of this dish. In New Zealand we have a range called Asian Home Gourmet and our standard is the Chicken Madras (sometimes we will have the Butter Chicken one for a change). To prepare this dish I simply cube the chicken, heat the paste in a non-stick pan, add the chicken and cook for a few minutes before adding coconut milk. I let the curry simmer for 20 minutes or so, cook the rice while that's simmering and then heat some roti bread in the oven. A tip I learnt recently about the coconut milk was to not buy the "lite" version which I tended to do to cut the fat content down. Now I buy the normal version (at the same price as the "lite" one), pour it into a bowl, whisk it up, freeze half of it, add water to the other half and use that. Twice the coconut milk for the same price!

Crumbed chicken - Yet another way of cooking chicken! You can use any type of chicken pieces for this recipe. My family prefers boned chicken breasts but drumsticks and any other portions work just as well. Using my food processor I make a mix of breadcrumbs and dried herbs (could use fresh herbs and I am not sure why I don't do this). Beat an egg in a small bowl and dip each chicken piece in the egg and then the breadcrumb mix. Place on an oven tray. Crush a clove of garlic into quarter of a cup of olive oil and stir. Drizzle the oil over the chicken pieces and bake until cooked. Usually 20 - 25 minutes works for me. I usually serve this with mashed potatoes (or sometimes fresh pasta) and vegetables.

Crumbed fish - this isn't really a recipe! Dip fresh fish fillets in egg and then fresh breadcrumbs and cook in non-stick pan with a little bit of oil (I usually use olive oil but sometimes rice bran oil depending on what I have at the time).

Roast beef - I know, this isn't a quick and easy meal but I am lucky enough to have an automatic oven. This allows me to set the oven to start at a specified time through the day so I can get home from work to find a cooked piece of roast beef in the oven. Fantastic in the wintertime! I buy a cheap cut of beef (usually blade), season it with salt and pepper, place in roasting dish and cover with foil. I set the oven so that it cooks long and slow which results in a lovely tender piece of meat. I wouldn't usually try and have roast vegetables with this as they take time to cook. But sometimes I do my "cheat" roast potatoes - boil potatoes for about 8 minutes, drain, put lid on pot and shake for a few seconds. This roughens up the outside of the potatoes. Put the potatoes into the roasting dish with the meat and cook for half an hour or so. The par-boiling will have partially cooking the potatoes and therefore they won't take as long to roast. The roughened outsides go nice and crispy.

These ideas are all stock standard for our winter menus (in New Zealand we are heading into winter now) but a lot of these are dishes I use in the summer too. Instead of grilling in the oven many of these dishes can be grilled on the barbeque and salads made instead of steamed vegetables. I do have a slow cooker but it doesn't currently get a lot of use. That is something I hope to change this winter.

I will post other ideas / recipes from time to time as I know there are plenty of other busy people out there who are looking for quick meal ideas.