"Bring back the food blog!"
"When are you gonna cook again?!?"
"We miss your writing and your classic good looks!"
The voices in my head have spoken, and their demands have been heeded. The cooking blog is officially back in action! But why the long absence? Where have I been? What in God's name have I been doing all this time? Answers to these questions and more coming up in the next few paragraphs.
So when I last left you, my loyal readers, I was probably half way through my rotation in Wangaratta. Life was good, lots of laughs, plenty of fun, the cooking was going well, but blog frequency was dropping dramatically. Maybe I was just too busy, maybe I had other things to do. Maybe it was my pathologic fear of committment (I'm seeing someone about this). Regardless of the reason, the blog that had held so much promise died a slow, undramatic death into cyberspace oblivion.
Meanwhile, my country adventures finally ended and I moved back home to do a rotation of nights and rehab. Needless to say, my brief dalliance with cooking ended quite abruptly as I returned to exceptionally excellent home-cooked meals courtesy of mother. It seemed my experiment was one born out of necessity rather than interest, and that my passion for food could not translate into a love of cooking.
But the hands of fate have tweaked their puppet strings and led me straight back to Wangaratta for yet another rotation, back to the town I adored so much. Wangaratta, where the wine is good, the weather is beautiful, and sandwiches at the cornershop defy the laws of physics with the amount of filling they are able to contain. My country home, where the faces may change but the people stay the same.
OK enough of all this waffling. Bottom line: 10 weeks in Wangaratta, still no cooking skills. Two cook books and a stack of Delicious magazines idly decorating my bookshelf, and food porn that was more often frustrating than satisfying (Am I right guys?). There was good food to be cooked, and dammit if I wasn't the lonely old country doctor to cook it.
Spicy Tomato Soup with Chorizo, Chickpeas and Beans
This recipe I got out of the latest edition of Delicious magazine, and I have to say it turned out pretty well. I like a hearty soup, and it doesn't get much heartier than chorizo and chickpeas. I generally prefer a thicker, creamier type of soup rather than a brothy soup, but the chilli really gave it a good kick. And even though I halved the recipe, I still made enough to last me 4 meals.
Steak with Roast Potatoes and Buttered Rocket
Once the soup ran out I was stuck with what to make for dinner. My fall back option has always been to cook a quick steak, but this time I wanted to try something I hadn't done before. I decided to try my hand at roast potatoes, to add to my mashed potatoes success from last year. I ripped the roasting instructions from taste.com.au, and the buttered rocket came from Donna Hay's 'The Instant Cook'. All in all a very simple but tasty dish. And I'm well on my way to having a full arsenal of basic potato skills at the ready.
Pasta Primavera
This recipe for pasta primavera (which for those of you who don't know means 'spring pasta') I grabbed from another edition of Delicious. I've never had primavera before but I imagined it as a very light pasta dish with a lot of vegetables. This recipe however was fairly light on vegetables and very heavy on the sauce. A few beans and asparagus' (asparaguses? asparagi?) and a whole thing of marcapone (which I pronounce 'mar-sca-pone', but I think may actually be 'mar-sca-po-ny'). It turned out to be quite rich, and to be honest, a little bland. Without the basil to add some flavour it wouldn't have really worked at all. But I suppose a primavera is not meant to be all that exciting. And I made the mistake of cooking a whole vat of this stuff, which meant trying to a keep a cream-based pasta. Bad idea.
The picture doesn't look all that great. I had to use a small bowl because my flat doesn't have those big plate-bowl things. Later on I found it easier to just eat off a regular plate, but I don't have any photos of those. I invited Matt, another resident working up here with me and who is also my next door neighbour up in Wang, to help me finish this pasta. He seemed reserved in his opinion but I think he agreed it could've done with a bit more...something something.
And that's all I've got for you guys. Three dishes in two weeks is not a bad effort, especially when I'm trying to be a bit more thrifty and cooking for a few meals now. That being said, I still buy lunch and coffee everyday at the cornershop. I think Silvanna (the owner) would be very sad if I didn't turn up one day.
Looking ahead to the future (it would be hard to look ahead to the past, no?), I'm starting a week of night shifts in ED, so it's going to be very hard to cook any decent meals. You may see a lot of breakfast dishes popping up in the blog. However, I do have some very exciting news. I'll be heading up to Sydney in a weeks' time to visit my cousins and have been promised a journey of gastronomical delights. I think two words may sum it all up:
Snow Egg.
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