Meals with mince - Baked Enchiladas

Once a month or so I make up a big batch of mince which I then make into various meals quickly and conveniently. This one is a favourite of Ron's, the girls will eat it but prefer to make their own "wraps" and fillings.

Make your mince up in the way that you prefer. I like to use a kilo of premium mince which I brown, remove from the pan and fry onions, capsicum, garlic and celery until softened. Add back the mince and I add plain tomato passata and then gently simmer before adding tomato paste, worcestershire sauce and a couple of finely grated carrots. Season to taste. After the mince has cooked for a few hours I seperate it out into containers, removing some to use for spaghetti bolognaise at which point I then add mashed red kidney beans to the remaining mince along with some cumin, coriander and seasoning. After this has cooked down a little longer I put this into containers to be used for Baked enchiladas and mexican rice bake.

Baked Enchiladas
Ingredients:
6 small tortilla wraps
500g mexican mince
salsa
sour cream
grated mozzarella

Put a few spoonfuls of salsa in the bottom of an oven proof dish, rectangle shaped. Spread this around and then put some spoonfuls of mince into the centre of a wrap, fold it over itself and tuck in the edges, place the wrap into the dish, continue until all your wraps are lined up next to each other. Spoon over some more salsa, spread it around. Drizzle some sour cream over and then sprinkle with mozzarella. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 20 minutes until the cheese is melted and golden. Serve with a green salad and some quacamole.

Salmon and caramelised onion quiche

Ingredients

5 eggs

½ cup of thickened cream

½ cup of finely grated parmesan cheese

a tin of pink salmon, flaked

1 large onion, sliced and caramelised in butter

salt and pepper to taste

Pastry

125g plain flour

100g unsalted and cold butter

60ml sour cream (approximately)

Chop the butter into small pieces and blend flour and butter in the mixer until it looks like coarse bread crumbs

Gradually add spoonfuls of sour cream until the pastry comes together

Tip out onto a floured surface and bring into a rectangle, don’t work pastry at all

Cover in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.

Roll out on a floured surface

Method

I used a 26in quiche tin with a loose bottom, its quite a shallow one so I had to adjust the volume but its pretty easy to fiddle the quantities.

Roll the pastry out line the tin. I left the bits hanging over the edges because this pastry does tend to shrink.

Blind bake for 12 minutes in a 180degree oven using pastry weights or dried beans in parchment paper

Remove the pastry weights and bake for a further 5 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 160degrees and remove the quiche and trim the excess pastry with a knife, be careful as its easy to break the sides doing this and then your filling will run out.

Mix the eggs with the cream and the cheese and season lightly.

Arrange the caramelised onions over the quiche base and then add the flaked salmon.

Pour the egg mixture over the top until it is completely covered

Return the quiche to the oven and bake for about 30 minutes until the top is lightly golden, leave in the tin to cool for another 10 minutes and then carefully remove the tin.



A great big internet hug!

If you have found your way here, to my (Super Sarah from thesuperwhites.com) humble food blog then you are a friend of the gorgeous Tiff and that means you care about her lovely family and want to help out while Ivy has to endure another stay in the hospital, another wait for treatment while the Dr's try to find a new plan. This means that the rest of the family has to make do without Mum for a few days, Dave has to hold down the fort while Tiff is torn between taking care of Ivy and being at home with the rest of her children.

Trish from My Little Drummer Boys wanted to try and arrange a little something for Tiff and her family and I absolutely want to get involved, ideally we would love to get a bunch of people together to cook some big meals for the family to help them out while Ivy is in hospital. This is just too complicated to arrange at short notice so instead Trish has put together a donation widget to collect some money to buy the family a few meals so when they all come together to visit Ivy in hospital, they can enjoy a meal and spend some valuable time as a family.

We thought we would use my much neglected food blog as a place to plan this little suprise for Tiff because right now the last thing she will be thinking about is recipes or cooking! This is going to be a tough week for her and we are hoping that by Friday we can pass on a little something to cheer her up and show her that she is much loved by her internet family!

Russell's sesame (or not!) chicken salad.

If you want the original recipe, you need to go here
http://barnes-cubed.blogspot.com/2010/07/sesame-chicken-recipe.html
to my good friend Russell's food blog. You can see a photo of his version here
http://barnes-cubed.blogspot.com/2010/07/sesame-chicken-salad-with-cucumber-and_21.html

I tweaked his version a little, ok, a lot and somehow created one of our favourite meals of last year!

Here is my take on Russell's chicken salad:

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts
1/2 a large cucumber
2 medium carrots
2 stalks of celery
a bunch of coriander
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 lime

For the marinade:
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp sugar

Secret ingredient - 1 packet of crunchy oriental noodles

Dice the chicken into large chunks, mix the marinade ingredients together in a bowl and marinade the chicken ahead of time. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius and roast the chicken pieces for 15 minutes until
cooked and sticky!

While the chicken is cooking, peel and prepare the cucumber, carrot and celery. Peel into long strips and finely julienne. Toss the julienned vegetables with the sesame oil and rice wine vinegar.

To serve, dish the vegetables, scatter with crunchy noodles, top with sticky chicken and scatter with coriander.

WOLF IT DOWN.

Chocolate cake in a mug in the microwave.

The other night I was craving something chocolately and delicious and the cooking chocolate chips just weren't doing it for me. I remember reading a while back about a chocolate cake in a mug that you make in the microwave which sounded like just the thing.

Five minutes later and my dessert was ready!

Probably the easiest chocolate recipe I have ever made:

Chocolate Cake in a mug.

Ingredients:
2 tbs flour

2.5 tbs sugar
1 tbs cocoa
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp coffee granules
pinch of salt
1 small egg
1.5 tbs milk
1.5 tbs oil
1.5 tbs chocolate
½ tsp vanilla extract

Mix the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and coffee in your mug. Preferably a larger than regular sized coffee mug. Pour in the milk, oil, broken up chocolate and vanilla extract. Mix well. Whisk the egg in another mug and pour into the mixture. (TIP if your eggs are large I would suggest doubling the rest of the ingredients and making two mugs, sharing the large egg across both mugs.) Sprinkle the batter with some more chocolate and cover with clingfilm. Cook in the microwave on high for 1 minute, check the consistency, it should be gooey but appear cakelike on top, I needed to cook mine for a further 30 seconds and it was perfect, cakey on top, moist and chocolately inside and I couldn't eat the whole thing on my own!

Pork San Choy Bau

This one's for you Russell, I don't have any photos because I haven't made it in a while, but trust me, its good!

Ingredients
1 tbs oil
400g minced pork
230g tin of water chesnuts, drained and chopped finely
125g tin of bamboo shoots, drained and chopped finely
6 spring onions, finely chopped
2 tbs rice wine
1 tbs soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp oyster sauce
lettuce leaves
chopped mint for serving

Sauce: 2 tbs plum sauce, 1 tbs hoisin sauce, 1 tsp soy sauce

Instructions:
Heat the oil in a wok and at high heat, add the pork and cook until brown.
Add the water chesnuts, bamboo and spring onions and cook for a minute.
Combine the rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil and oyster sauce and add to the wok. Cook for a few minutes.
Make the dipping sauce by mixing the sauce ingredients together with a drop or two of water to loosen it.
Spoon the mixture onto the lettuce leaves, top with finely minced herbs and drizzle the dipping sauce over.

Ron adores this but I haven't made it in ages! I confess to having left out both the bamboo shoots and the water chesnuts before, I don't know which it is but one of the flavours I just don't like. I think its the bamboo although I do like the crunch texture of the water chesnuts. I make sure to fry the mince until brown and slightly crispy and then I add more or less sauce depending on the texture. Quick and delicious.

Butternut and Chickpea Curry

Butternut & Chickpea Curry
1 onion
1 medium butternut squash
2 medium carrots
splash of olive oil
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp red chilli flakes
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 tbs fruit chutney
1 tin chickpeas
handful of diced coriander

Dice the onion and lightly fry in some olive oil.
Peel and chop the butternut and carrots into small chunks and add to the pan.
Add the cumin, coriander and chilli flakes, stir for a few minutes.
Add the chopped tomatoes and chutney and leave to simmer for 45 minutes until tender.
Add the chickpeas and cook until soft, another 10 minutes.

Serve over steamed rice and top with chopped coriander.