Saturday Night Fever

Planning of Saturday dinners usually goes something like this.

Mise en scène: Saturday morning, Spouse and self reading the weekend papers at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.

Me: What should we cook tonight?

Spouse: Mmm.

Me (flipping through 'lifestyle' section): Nothing interesting in here. What do you feel like?

Spouse: Mmm.

Me: Ok - beef, chicken, seafood, vegetarian? European, Asian or other? Hearty or light?

Spouse: Beef, not Asian.

Me: I don't want beef.

You get the drift.

This week, however, I managed to bypass all of that. I found this recipe a week or so ago that I wanted to try.

Stuffed pork fillet with grilled eggplant (filetto di maiale ripieno con melanzane alla griglia) - from delicious magazine May 2010

2 large eggplant, sliced into 1cm rounds
100g pork mince
100g chestnuts, cooked, peeled etc
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp fennel seeds, toasted & ground
1/2 cup sultanas
2 x 500g pork fillets
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp thyme leaves

Dressing
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp each honey & caster sugar
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp finely chopped chives

Salt & drain eggplant for 1 hour, then rinse and pat dry.

While eggplant is draining, put mince, chestnuts, garlic and fennel seeds in a processor and whizz. Add sultanas and season.

Slice fillets lengthwise but not the whole way through (see below). Stuff, roll up and fasten with kitchen string.

Heat oven to 180C.

Brown pork in 1 tbsp olive oil in ovenproof pan on medium-high then transfer to oven for 15 minutes. Cover with foil and rest.

While pork is in oven, cook eggplant on chargrill (or grill pan), then toss with thyme and a little olive oil.

Divide eggplant between plates. Mix dressing. Slice pork in thick slices on an angle and arrange on eggplant, then drizzle dressing over and serve.

Notes: Recipe above has ingredients exactly as per original. I love eggplant, but even I don't want half a large eggplant as part of this dish, so I cut back. I am also WAY too lazy to do the full salt and drain thing with the eggplant - as far as I know, this was designed to reduce bitterness in old varieties of eggplant, that has since been largely bred out. Our pork fillets were definitely not 500g each either. And last but not least, I used my favourite technique for stuffing a fillet (can't remember where I got it from). Here it is: Working on the premise that your fillet is a circle in cross section, cut straight down to halfway. From this point, cut to the left and right about halfway each.


This gives a good 'spread' for putting your stuffing in and makes tying it up much easier. Ok, yup, I realise I may be getting a bit obsessive. I'll back off now.

And I left out the sultanas. The dish does need the tang of the dressing though, definitely.

The verdict after all that? Pretty tasty (if not pretty!).


I thought about a pannacotta for dessert, but was so occupied with the lawn in the morning that I ran out of setting time. Rice pudding had to suffice.

Lawn Dogs

When we bought this house, mid last year, there wasn't very much nice you could say about it. It was uninhabitable, some rooms minus floors and/or ceilings, almost all without power and plumbing, etc. 'Has potential' would be the real estate description.

And the garden ... well, the backyard was taken up by one very large shed, dozens of ugly overgrown ferns, a toxic tree (Angel's Trumpet) and a number of bizarre brick structures that Kenny (our predecessor) had built (maybe too many bricks left over after he built the extension?).

The house is now habitable (well, we're in it, right?), even if I do still have a list a page long of minor bits and pieces to get done. The garden, not so much. Well, the shed is gone. The ferns are gone. The toxic tree is gone. The brick structures are gone. (I should mention that digging out bricks is very good exercise.) In their place we have, um, a patch of dirt. This has been the situation for some time now.

But, hurrah, today I ordered turf. Tomorrow I will flail about with a screed rake and try to get things as level as possible. On Saturday, we will lay the turf. (Note that I say this as though it's simple - it had better be.)

Scout, the supposed-BeagleXJack-Russell-who-is-actually-BeagleXStaffy-and-growing-as-big-as-a-Great-Dane, will probably do his best to dig it up. This will be a conflict for poor Spouse, who loves lawn (go figure) almost as much as he loves The Dog. Weeks of entertainment lie ahead of me.

I also have the sleepers for building the bed for my vegetable garden ...

The Wedding Planner

The other day, as he was eating his way through the last of the baby shower food, one of my best friends said to me, 'You know, you should do this for a living' - meaning I should plan and cater parties.

I disagreed with him. If I had to try to make a living doing it, it would drive me insane very quickly. I'd argue with all my clients. I'd insist that all party food must include choux pastry somewhere in the menu. I'd overdo the savouries and underdo the sweets. I'd roll my eyes at people's choices.

So I'll just stick to my usual strategy - as soon as anybody I know is having a party, I put up my hand and say 'can I do the food?'.

My mother-in-law is having a significant birthday next month and my sister-in-law has finally managed to bully her into having a small celebration. And I, of course, am doing the food - canapes for 30 people. Absolutely my idea of bliss!

God forbid that my children should one day grow up and get married. I'll be Mother of the Bride From Hell, not to mention Mother of the Groom ...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

No food news this weekend, as last night spouse and I went OUT, instead of having our usual stay-at-home Saturday night. Kid 1 was at a 'dance' (disco) at the yacht club where he sails, and since this is just down the road from the grandparents, they offered to take both of them for the evening.

So we walked down to our lovely local cinema and watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. A couple sitting near us had clearly not read the book, as they left during one particularly unpleasant scene ... I thought the book had great central characters and a cracking plot, but the writing was, um, average at best. Ideal for being made into a film, in fact. What the book lacked in its prose style, the film achieved through direction and cinematography.

We grabbed a bite to eat on the way home and discussed how nice it is to live where we do.

This morning, spouse was up at stupid o'clock to go and compete in a triathlon. I got up to an empty house, which seemed all wrong for a Sunday morning, so quickly headed over to retrieve the children ...

The Italian Job

I was going to jot down some musings about Alain de Botton's book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, but I think I'll stick to frivolity for today and post that another day ...

I bought a copy of Australian Vogue this week. As always, it was horribly disappointing. On the cover - 'The Lowdown - The New Mid Heel'. Inside? The usual four paragraphs of dross, including the helpful advice that if one is going to wear the 'NEW' lower heel, one should wear much shorter dresses and skirts. I can only assume that if one is past the age of wishing to wear minis, one is assumed also to be past the age of wearing shoes or having any interest in them? Grrr.

Anyway, I wear flat shoes at least 60% of the time (except in winter, perhaps, when heeled knee-high boots are a bit of a uniform for me), regardless of what's acceptable to Vogue. I recently wore out a pair of the ubiquitous black ballet flats.

So on my way back from yoga class this morning (Phoebe in tow) I walked into this odd shop that sells discount Italian 'fashion', including shoes. All the women's shoes are size 37. Conveniently enough, so are my feet. So I got these.



Two pairs for less than half what my new Fluevogs (waiting, waiting ...) cost. My photos are terrible, but the lace-ups are chocolate brown rather than back. And ridiculously comfortable, despite the pointy toe (or maybe that's because my feet are actually that shape!).

April Showers

As I mentioned on Sunday, I hosted a baby shower on the weekend. About 30 seconds after I guessed my friend was pregnant, I said 'Are you going to have a baby shower?'. She looked at me in that special way she does (downwards - she's over 6 foot and I'm 5 foot 4 when I stand up straight) and said 'nup'. Let's say I talked her round ...

So, it was an afternoon tea of sorts:

Gougeres
Savoury millefeuilles with creme fraiche, cheddar, quince paste (homemade!) & walnuts
Chicken sandwiches
Tarts with smoked salmon, creme fraiche & dill
Tarts with roasted cherry tomatoes & parmesan
Macarons (bought)
Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting
Lemon curd tarts topped with passionfruit
Fresh fruit
Tea
Champagne
Sparkling grape juice

I like savoury food better than sweet. I think it worked - I got several requests for recipes on Monday, so that must be a good sign.

We played some silly games, and a lovely time was had by all. I was so busy I totally neglected to take proper photographs, but you get the idea.

Saturday Night Fever

Last night I didn't cook anything new or exciting. I have two good excuses, which I hereby proffer:

1. I have been sick (virus, not mushrooms) in bed for two days, eating nothing, and my food excitement levels are low.
2. I am hosting a baby shower for a friend today (Sunday), for which I had to spend all of Saturday preparing (I'm moving more slowly than normal), leaving little time for perusing recipes or cooking slow dinners.

On Tuesday I will post photos, etc of baby shower, but to the business at hand. We had an old standby, lentils with sausages.

Lentils with sausages (adapted from Australian Gourmet Traveller)

Olive oil
1 rasher medium bacon, finely chopped
1 each carrot, onion, celery stick, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 cup white wine
2 cups veal stock
200gm French/puy/blue lentils
1 tsp Dijon mustard
4 sprigs thyme
1 fresh bay leaf
4 fat pork sausages
Salt & pepper
Large handful flat leaf parsley, chopped

Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add bacon, vegetables and garlic and saute until soft. Add vinegar, wine, stock, lentils, mustard and herbs. Cook until lentils are tender.

Cook sausages separately, slice thickly and add to lentils. Season to taste, add parsley and serve.

This to me is comfort food of the highest order. Add a simple green salad, and maybe some crusty bread, and you're done.

Alice in Wonderland

This morning I had an extra chook duty, and duly stomped down in raincoat and clogs, to be rewarded by the sight of a giant patch of mushrooms in the paddock (for want of a better word) next to the community garden. I looked at them, walked around them, picked one, sniffed it, brought it home and did some research.

They are - and if you never hear from me again, you'll know I was wrong - horse mushrooms. So I went back this afternoon to pick some more. And while I was there, a very chivalrous gentleman from the community garden gave me radishes, chillis, snake beans and herbs from his patch. Aren't they pretty?


I shut down this blog for a couple of days while I had a think about it. I don't really blog about anything in particular, and my life is unexciting by most standards, so I was wondering whether there was any point. But over the last couple of days I have realised that what this blog gives me is a reason to be open to the little things that make up the good moments in a small life.

So, I will continue to blog. On Sundays, I will post photos and recipes of what I've cooked the night before. On Tuesdays, I will - for the family members who like to know - say something about the children or other domestic matters (warning - it could be more food) and include photos sometimes. And on Thursdays, I will indulge in random musings - maybe clothes, books, shoes, movies ... even yoga or knitting if the mood takes me.

And now I am off to cook the horse mushrooms.

Cheaper by the Dozen

My mother complained recently that I never mention my children anymore. And there was me thinking that there could be a teeny part of my life that wasn't absorbed by the all-devouring offspring. Apparently not.

Kid 1 just had camp, which he described dismissively as 'not the best camp'. The major complaint was 'food was awful and not enough of it' (very wrong to underfeed voracious pre-adolescent boys), followed by 'there was too much free time'. Imagine having too much free time ...

Kid 2 - at the same time Kid 1 was off at camp - was invited to a 3-day workshop for children who are 'gifted and talented' in the arts. In our school this translated to children whose parents put a lot of time and energy into the school. The culmination of the workshop was a performance last night, incorporating dance, choir, band and drama, which was surprisingly polished and impressive. Muppet is still singing.

Both Kids are now officially on school holidays. My studio space will languish while I try to work from my desk in the garage and vaguely supervise the minors.

Despite my tone, I enjoy having them around when it's holidays. Or maybe I just enjoy not packing lunches every morning.