Num nums

I've always been pretty into cooking and extremely into food, so it's no surprise that my love of each of these things has intensified now that I'm a Mum. For starters, I'm so tired food is my go-to pick me up. As well as that, I'm trying to get rid of some of that baby weight, so it's become important for me to find yummy dishes that are also healthy. Finally, let's be honest, there's just not that much else going on in my life!

Justus and I are currently trying to cook different meals and recipes each night ("We are" could loosely translate to "I am" - although he picks some of them and gladly eats them) which kind of makes us like that girl from Julia & Julia. Except we don't do Julia Childs. Anyway, this of course leads to the occasional kitchen disaster but more frequently the discovery of easy, delicious recipes that we can add to our rotation when we decide to stop trying new things. Which at this rate may be never!

Here are two I've loved lately:

Red Wine Chilli Lentils w/Barbequed Veal Chops

 

Yummoooo!

Recipe:

2/3 cup puy lentils

Salt

1 red onion, sliced

1 red chilli,  seeded and finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup red wine

1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes

4 veal chops

Parsley, to serve

Method:

This was super easy! Basically bring 500mL water and the lentils to the boil, and then simmer until tender. When tender, drain.

In a frypan, heat oil and add onion, garam masala and cumin, and cook until onion soft and spices smell DELISH. Then add tomatoes, wine, 1/2 cup water and CHILLI. Cook for five mins, then add lentils and simmer for 10 mins.

Meanwhile, cook the chops on your barbie' however you like them done (medium rare is my preference).

Stir parsley through lentils and serve. EAT!!

I made a few changes, not many, but first of all I added more chilli. If a recipe has "chilli" in the title I expect it to be noticeably hot, but this just had a mild flavour of chilli. So I added about a gazillion teaspoons of chilli flakes but you could maybe just add one or two...I also used veal rib cutlets which was maybe a bit SILLY as I'd never cooked them before and they were slightly underdone for me (not so for Justus but then he'd eat anything). Finally, I didn't use parsley because, um, I didn't have any but the lentils were still DEL and to be honest I think parsley is a really overrated herb. 

OH and I made a little side salad, see what I did there? Yeah.

Moving on.

Battered flathead fillets w/sweet potato chips 

OMNOMNOM

Okay so this is not SOOOO healthy but guess what guys? I made this sucker up myself! Yeah! Alright it's essentially fish and chips but I made my OWN batter up and I invented these chips which fair enough have probably been "invented" by tons of people around the world but LET ME HAVE MY MOMENT, 'kay?

Right, now. What did I do here? 

Fish:

Flathead fillets - I bought enough for two peeps but you could buy however many you need for however many bros you got. 

1 cup flour

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

Oregano

Thyme

Salt & Pepper

Oil for frying (seed based oils e.g. Canola are best for frying but I used peanut oil because it was all I had and I only decided to fry the fish at the last minute - turned out fab so you can do it too!)

Sweet potato chips:

Some amount of sweet potato, chopped into chip sized bits

Olive oil spray

Rosemary

Thyme

Salt & Pepper

Method:

So whenever you're battering and frying fish, first you gotta dry it with paper towel and coat in flour. Done? Right. 

Mix flour, salt & pepper and herbs in a bowl, and gradually add liquids so you don't get any nasty lumps. There's your batter folks. 

Heat oil in a large pan until a piece of bread browns in it. When oil is hot enough, coat fish in batter and chuck it in! It will fry. I fried mine for about 10 minutes and dried it on paper towel.

MEANWHILE put the sweet potato on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and sprinkle with herbs. You can in fact use any herbs you like, because technically rosemary and thyme don't go with fish but they tasted RIDIC-ulously good. Then spray the bejeezus out of them with olive oil spray and place in a 180 degree fan forced oven until done. 

I would have ideally made a tartare sauce with this but didn't have all the ingredients so instead made a basic seafood sauce but it didn't really go, we just seasoned the fish w/salt and squeezed lots of lemon juice all over it. MMMMM. 

So, that's my cooking for the week. Well it's NOT, actually, but it's all I have time to blog about and frankly you're over reading this aren't you?!

What have you whipped up in the kitchen lately?

Z x