As long as you’re prepared, a slow roasted lamb leg is the easiest thing in the world.
And prepared means – a solid five hours.
But as long as you have that, it’s easy as. To prepare the leg, all I did was score the skin, rub salt and oil over it, and then it went into the oven on top of a bed of rosemary and chopped onions.
Five torturous hours later, as the house filled with the scent of gently roasting lamb, it was ready.
Note: this is a scheduled post while I’m away. Replies to comments/emails will be even slower than usual. 🙂
This is my life nowadays. I get up early to bake cookies. Ten years ago, I would’ve been awake at the same time because I hadn’t gone to sleep yet after a night out.
Ahh, youth. As they say, it’s wasted on the young.
I’m not sure which part of my life I will remember more fondly, but in this part I have cookies and ice cream sandwiches and a tiny bit more wisdom. The invincible feeling of youth or cookies… tough choice!
Note: This is a scheduled post while I’m away, so replies to comments and emails will be slow. Enjoy!
I have a terrible habit of buying ingredients just because I’ve never seen them for sale before. I have no idea what to do with them and no plans for using them. My mind just goes “Oooooh,” and before I know it, I’m leaving the shop with it.
That’s how I ended up with a bag of kataifi pastry that sat around in the fridge for a month. Every time I saw it, I thought to myself, “Must cook that up.” But of course, once I closed the fridge, all thoughts of it disappeared.
I like celeriac but I find it incredibly annoying to write about. And it’s not really poor celeriac’s fault. It’s because, try as I might, celeriac is one of those words that I just *can’t* spell.
I’m no spelling bee champion, but I’m a fairly good speller. Despite that, EVERY SINGLE TIME I type celeriac, it comes out as celeraic.
I’m starting to think it’s a conspiracy. I’m spelling it right and everyone else is spelling it wrong. (It’s the only explanation.)
Sponsored by Nuffnang and Prahran Market.
After my Prahran market visit the other week, I was all inspired by the produce available there. In particular, the rabbits from the John Cester Poultry and Game stall caught my eye and had me dreaming of a hearty flakey pie stuffed full of a savoury bunny and vegetable mixture.
With that in mind, I made a return visit to the market to pick up ingredients – a couple of rabbits and assorted vegetables.
Guess what? It’s the FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of my blog.
!!!!!!
Holy crapballs, I can’t believe I’ve been posting on Off the spork for so long. I NEVER suspected that I would still be here five years later. That’s half a decade, man!
My mum and I cook completely different meals. Growing up, dinner almost always consisted of steamed rice, two or three accompanying dishes, and Chinese soup. When I think about it, my mum has quite an amazing repertoire of dishes in her memory. She can churn out tons of things in her sleep – all Cantonese home cooking and food that you will rarely find at restaurants. Interestingly, it’s also the kind of food that I don’t cook for guests, because I associate it with family eating. Like it’s too simple to serve to other people. Weird right? It’s a bit silly because although it’s mostly simple food, Cantonese home cooking is delicious.
This winter I found myself hands deep in a big bowl of raw meat. It all started last year, with a passing comment from my friend Maztech. She casually mentioned that her mother makes sausages every winter. And while it was just a passing remark, it got me all excited.
“I want in! Can she show me? I want to make sausages!”
And that’s how I ended up with 10 kgs of sausages. It’s also why I have sausages currently hanging in the spare room.
Here’s another recipe to use up sad, too ripe, fruit. This time: bananas.
Sure, there’s a billion recipes out there for banana cake. Why should you make this one? Because it has caramel. Caramel! Yes yes!
I like to buy apples through autumn and winter, but invariably we end up with ones in the fruit bowl that are starting to go floury. I hate floury apples. Plus if there’s one thing worse than an overexaggeration, it’s floury apples. 🙂
What to do with them? Well there’s a gazillion and one things you can do with apples but lately I’ve been very enamoured with apple sponge pudding. The kind of pudding that has a layer of baked sponge/cake on top, and soft apples sitting on the bottom. I made one recently that had an additional component – caramel sauce – which coated the apples on the bottom.