Jul 02

Cookbook 3: Sri Lankan Flavours: A journey through the island’s food and culture

This weekend’s book was Sri Lankan Flavours: A journey through the island’s food and culture with recipes by Channa Dassanayaka (a Melburnian it turns out).  I cooked for 7 for this meal, and there are several important lessons I learnt.

  1. PREPARE ALL THE INGREDIENTS FOR THE DISH BEFORE YOU START TO COOK
  2. The serving size is an estimation at best (and often generous)
  3. Curry leaves are amazing (I already knew this) and they smell great, and they’re easy to cook with (the latter I didn’t know)

I do have a few problems with the recipes in the book, and given the number I made I am going to find equivalents on the internet and link to them because otherwise I will be typing forever.  There are times when the author doesn’t specify something important to the recipe.  For example, in the Eggplant Pickle, he says slice the eggplants thinly, but doesn’t really specify what that means.  Later, after describing how long to deep fry the eggplant for, he doesn’t specify how long to deep fry the onion or chillies for – and in relation to all the deep frying, he never specifies at what temperature.  Also apparently the Ghee Rice is enough for 4, we doubled it and had WAY too much for 7.

Continue reading

Jun 24

Cookbook 2: Malaysian Hawker Favourites

This week was Malaysian Hawker Favourites with recipes by Rohani Jelani.  I found this book while holidaying in Malaysia, and at the equivalent of $AU 3, I couldn’t give it up, besides it had some of my favourite Malaysian dishes in it.  Sadly it only has one vegetable dish, so this time I made a bread dish (roti canai) to go with the meat dish, and I made a starter.  The recipes were slightly more fiddly than I expected, and I didn’t plan my time out as well as I should have, but the meal of spring rolls, Chicken Rice and Roti Canai was amazing.  Sadly I forgot to take photos of the spring rolls because we were far too interested in eating them at the time.  I remembered to take photos of the other two dishes.

Continue reading

Jun 17

Cookbook 1: The Food of France: a journey for food lovers

The food of France: a journey for food lovers, recipes by Maria Villegas and Sarah Randell

Today’s recipes were:

  • Boef Bourguignon;
  • Gratin Dauphinois; and
  • Chocolate Mousse

The beef bourguingnon is the longest and most time consuming of all these recipes, so if you are going to tackle it, time it out appropriately.  I also have other comments about this recipe, so please note them at the end.

Continue reading

Jun 13

Welcome to my project!

Hi there and welcome to my Cook Book project.  I am somewhat addicted to buying cook books, the idea of being able to cook tasty food from all around the world just seems so ripe with possibilities that I find it very hard to resist purchasing more and more books.  This of course is silly given the number of free recipes on the internet, but I like books, so I just keep collecting them.

After my last purchase (5 books for $50), I decided that I needed to actually cook from the recipe books I owned (all of them) before I can allow myself to purchase another one.  So this project has the following challenge, one meat (where applicable), one vegetable (where applicable) and one dessert/entrée from each of the cook books I own.  I will exclude the reference cook books I own and clearly won’t be able to make main meals from the chocolate cook books I own, but will instead make delicious desserts.  This challenge has the added fun of me not being able to cook a recipe in a cook book that I have previously made before this challenge.

I aim to cook something extraordinary each weekend, and will update the blog with a photo/s of what is made,  as well as where the recipe is from (amazon/fishpond links as appropriate), and the recipe (that’s probably ok, it should be fair use, especially if I’ve had to substitute an ingredient because I am unable to obtain an equivalent in Australia).

I have the awesome Smallfrogge (Scott) to help out, and to keep me focussed.  This weekend we’ll probably tackle something French, and we’ll go from there.  Come along and enjoy the ride!

%d bloggers like this: