pork wontons

These wontons are super easy and fun to make.

We tend to do these on a Sunday night for tea.

We use 500g of pork mince and two packets of wontons.

 Add whatever flavourings you like to the mince- we used a slash of soy, a splash of fish sauce and some green ginger wine- you could use powdered or fresh ginger.

Simply put a teaspoon of mince on your wonton wrapper, brush the edges with water and fold- this is the fun part and we end up with all sorts of interesting shapes that the kids come up with.

You can find traditional folds on the net here. 

We cooked half in the deep fryer a few at a time and steamed or boiled half.

The two sauces were a Vietnamese dipping sauce and a plum sauce both found at the supermarket without any nasty additives in them.

I often make my own concoction up with various Asian ingredients in my pantry, soy sauce, oyster sauce, honey, ginger etc.

The consensus was that the fried ones tasted better with the thicker plum sauce and the steamed with the thinner dipping sauce.

These would be great as finger food for a party.

peru

Last week we studied Peru.

Our meal was a dish from Peru called Tacu Tacu which is traditionally a working man's lunch dish made from leftovers and originated with African Slaves.


It consisted on a rice and bean patty, a thin sheet of steak, Fried Plantain (I used bananas - as per recipe) and a fried egg on top.
The rice and bean patty was too hot even though I had used half the amount of chilli.
The fried bananas were good.
VCH thought the dish was a bit dry- I would probably agree with him.

We also had a frozen lime drink- very refreshing in this hot weather.
I would definitely make this again.

Dessert was a caramel meringue parfait.
The caramel was made by boiling a tin of condensed milk for a couple of hours. (it tasted exactly the same as caramel top'n'fill) and the meringue was made by boiling port and sugar together and then adding to whipped egg whites.
You put the caramel into parfait glasses and then pipe the meringue on top, chill.
Sprinkle with cinnamon just before serving.
These were extremely rich.

There was heaps of meringue mixture left over so I piped it onto a tray (I am not one for piping much) and cooked it as for cooking meringues and we ate them at the same time as the dessert.
I think the kids liked them best of all.
I also found a nice salad recipe with corn in it but I didn't think we would be able to fit it in, but I would like to make it some other time.
It is interesting trying different things from other countries.
Some are hits and others not but I am glad that the children are always keen to try new things.

don't cry for me argentina

My children are so sick of hearing me sing the lines to that classic song every time we talk about Argentina.

But they now know the meaning behind it.

Here is what we cooked.

Pastel de papas.
Which is basically cooked mince sandwiched between mashed potato.


And a salad- their salad only had lettuce and tomato but I had to add some cucumbers from the garden and a nice dressing with parsley and mint from the garden.

Everyone really liked this and have requested it again.

Then yesterday morning we had Churros for morning tea.

You boil water, salt and butter and then add the flour and cook.
Then you roll the dough into shapes and deep fry in hot oil and sprinkle with icing sugar.
In Argentina they serve it with dulce de leche which is basically a tin of condensed milk boiled until it caramelises.
I didn't bother with this but got a tin of caramel fill out of the pantry and heated it until it was smooth.
Dip your Churros into the caramel and enjoy.

meal from brazil

For our meal from Brazil we had Brazilian donuts for morning tea.

For the night time meal we did a Brazilian BBQ with chicken skewers marinated in garlic and lime juice and then topped with yoghurt and Parmesan cheese before grilling. Yummy!
We also had kebabs with lamb, pork chorizo sausage and mushrooms, I used a Portuguese marinade, because a lot of their recipes are Portuguese based, it was very spicy. this was served with Brazilian rice, and a salsa made with capsicums, tomatoes, and onion.
We made Swiss lemonade (which is made with limes) and for dessert we made Brigadeiro, a little sweet made with condensed milk and cocoa.

I have become out of practice at taking photos of meals and forgot to take some of the main, so I only have photos to show you the donuts and the sweets.
We are off to Argentina next- stay tuned.

last meal in europe

This week the boys got to pick their own country in Europe to study.

B1 chose Norway, B2 Austria and B3 Denmark.
They each had to pick a part of the meal to make and choose a recipe.
B2 chose dessert but we forgot to start it before we went out for the afternoon to our Home School meeting.
So we will have that for dessert tonight.

B3 did the main- a meatball dish from Denmark
So B1 had to make some vegetable dishes from Norway.
They mustn't eat many salads or veges in Norway as it was really hard to find any recipes.

We settled on a cucumber salad, and a beetroot salad that was inspired by a salad someone had in Norway.

We decided that the coconut in the dish was probably not authentic!
Next term they have decided to study South America.

wedding anniversary

To celebrate our 20th Wedding Anniversary we had a lovely three course meal with the children.

We stared with a prawn cocktail with a twist.
I made a mango and avocado salsa (chopped mango and avocado, coriander, mint with lime zest and lime juice, brown sugar and sweet chilli sauce) and a lime mayonnaise (mayonaisse, sour cream, lime juice and zest) to go with it and some chopped Asian style lettuce from our garden on the bottom of the dish.


Then for the main we had our favourite harrissa lamb cutlets.
Dessert was reminiscent of our wedding cake (pictured below) we had a Croquembouche.


(I would really like to make one of these one day).


So I made profiteroles and filled them with a custard cream and served them with macerated strawberries and chocolate fudge sauce. YUMM!!

It was a lovely family meal and we thought the children should be involved after the weekend.

french food

We visited France last week.

So dined in Paris on Tuesday night!
We enjoyed an entrée of Deep Fried Camembert with Cranberry Jelly courtesy of B1.

A Spinach Quiche from B2 and a lovely salad by B3 were the main

and I successfully pulled off Creme Caramels for dessert!

We used lovely greens from the garden for the salad and our never ending supply of silverbeet for the quiche- it is so satisfying to cook with vegetables from your own garden- I just need to remember to use the cabbage!

german cooking

We travelled to Germany last week so enjoyed cooking and eating a meal.

It is quite enjoyable with B1, B2, B3 and myself all cooking together.
I give one dish to each child to cook and we all help where needed.


B1 made the apple strudel for dessert.


B2 made the hot potato salad.


B3 made the carrot salad.


I made the cucumber and dill salad.
And we all pitched in to do the mustard pork chops.


The meal was very yummy.
The sauce on the pork was very rich and we felt very full after the main meal so the kids cleaned up the kitchen, put the dishwasher on and washed the big stuff up before we had dessert.
We have been having so much fun visiting all these countries we are off to France this week.

spanish night

This is from our Spanish night.

We made spicy sausage and cheese tortilla


red onion and orange salad


stuffed tomatoes


apple empanadas

sammy cooks (aka B4)

Today with my mummy I was cooking an apple pie.
When mum finished there was some pastry left over, she said I could make something with it.
So I made my own little apple pie.


Mummy went off to work on the computer and while she was gone this is what I did all by myself. I rolled out the pastry and put it into a metal dish, then I cut up some apple and put in some lemon juice, mixed spice, cornflour and sugar. Then I put that on top of the pastry and put some more pastry over that, then I put it into the oven with Mum's pie.
I ate it after tea with some ice cream and whipped cream. It was very yummy.

by Sammy