de-brief me

Thai-inspired beef salad – a quick, easy & satisfying mid-week meal

Posted on 11 December 2013 by Elaine

Sometimes, besides our daily glass or two of freshly made, organic, fruit & vegetable juice, we do attempt to be somewhat healthy. And what better time to try it than mid-week when energy levels are slumping and you’ve just got to get past that hump day!!

Here’s a dish that you can literally whiz up in 15 minutes flat. Be generous with the protein and even your man will feel full…

Serves 2 (& a toddler if you have one!)

INGREDIENTS
olive oil
2 slices of steak (I usually go for scotch fillet)
salt & pepper for seasoning
salad (preferably organic)
- half a cucumber, sliced
- 1 large carrot, grated
- 150 grams mixed salad leaves
- 1 avocado, divided in half and sliced thinly
- & anything else you’ve got lying around the house
dressing
- 3 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
- 2 tbsp fish sauce (try the 3 Crabs brand – it’s by far the best)
- juice of one lime
- brown sugar to taste (usually around 2 tbsp!)
roasted nuts, chopped (cashew nuts or peanuts work well)

DIRECTIONS
Heat your frying pan with olive oil. Season your beef with salt and pepper and pan-fry to your liking (usually around 3.5 minutes per side for medium rare).

Whilst your beef is cooking, prepare your salad.

Whilst resting your beef, get your salad dressing ready by mixing your ingredients together well. Slice up your beef when ready, load it up onto your salad and sprinkle with your chopped nuts.

Drizzle with your salad dressing.

Toss and serve up immediately whilst the beef is still warm.I’m not a huge lover of salad but somehow this one always hits the spot – plus it’s great for hot summer nights! xx

Posted in Asian, Beef, Cooking, Savoury | Tagged after work, Avocado, basic, Beef, beef salad, carrots, cashew nuts, cook, Cooking, cucumber, delicious, dinner, dressing, easy, family, fish sauce, Food, healthy, Home, home cooking, hot nights, hot weather food, hump day, lunch, mid-week, mixed salad leaves, nomnom, organic, peanuts, quick meal, recipe, Salad, savoury, Scotch fillet, steak, summer, summer time, sweet chilli sauce, Thai-inspired, Thai-inspired dressing, Thai-style | Leave a comment

Festive Christmas Balls!.. rum balls & apricot balls

Posted on 10 December 2013 by Elaine

Christmas balls are probably the easiest things to make. There’s no cooking required and you literally just stir all the ingredients together and roll, refrigerate, then you’re ready to go!

Instead of searching all over the internet this year, I decided to use my dad’s tried and tested rum ball recipe and my mum’s divine apricot ball recipe. I doubled the portions so feel free to do the same. For the balls I tried to make them roughly the same size by using a 1 tbsp ice cream scooper (similar to what you would do when measuring out cupcake batter). They were still a little uneven but more or less the same.. With double batches, I ended up with around 60 rum balls and 40 apricot balls – so perhaps next year I’ll triple the apricot ball recipe!!

The rum balls are amazing. They are firm but tender and juicy on the inside. I strongly recommend using raisins over sultanas because they are plumper and way more succulent!

The apricot balls are so sweet and delightful. My son absolutely adores them..

Feel free to mix it up a bit; coat them in chocolate, decorate them like plum puddings, cover them in sprinkles… whatever your heart desires…

RUM BALLS
INGREDIENTS
8 Weet-Bix, crushed {it’s easy to do in a plastic bag}
1 cup dried raisins
1/2 cup coconut {plus about a cupful for rolling your rum balls in at the end}
1.5 tbsp cocoa {which you can double or even triple if your like your rum balls to be darker and a bit more chocolate-y}
4 tbsp rum
395 g tin of condensed milk

DIRECTIONS
Mix all the dry ingredients together. Add the rum & condensed milk and stir to combine ingredients well. {I had a very old (4 years old!!) tin of condensed milk which was caramelised – I think it actually made the rum balls taste even better than usual!}

Scoop them up into rough balls and roll briefly in the extra coconut.

When you’re ready, neaten them up and put them on a lined baking tray.

Refrigerate and when they have hardened somewhat, store in the refrigerator in an air tight container.

APRICOT BALLS
INGREDIENTS
250 grams dried apricots, minced
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup coconut {plus more for rolling}
Grated rind of 1 orange
1/2 tin (approx 200g) condensed milk

DIRECTIONS
If you don’t already have minced apricots, mince them in your food processor.

Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Add the condensed milk and mix well.

Scoop balls of the mixture and roll roughly in your extra coconut. Neaten up and place on a lined baking sheet – ready to refrigerate.

When they have cooled and hardened sufficiently in the refrigerator, feel free to store in your fridge in an airtight container.. Or serve immediately. Good luck making your balls look palatable – but somehow, they always disappear quickly at parties!!

Posted in Biscuits / Slices, Cooking, Sweet | Tagged family, cook, sweet, friends, eat, Cooking, DIY, dessert, recipe, children, delicious, nomnom, easy, entertaining, Christmas, recipes, rum ball, rum balls, rum, apricot balls, apricot ball, festive, Christmas cheer, party food, sweet treats, nibblies, finger food, family recipes, family favourites, no heat required, do it yourself | 2 Comments

Hammer & Tong in Fitzroy – this time for dinner!

Posted on 8 December 2013 by Elaine

In October, I blogged about how fantastic Hammer & Tong was for brunch. This month, I’m raving about their dinner.

My boys and I went there a couple of weeks ago on a weeknight. Dinner service is fairly new for Hammer & Tong so it was actually pretty quiet at the time in contrast to their well-established breakfast/brunch/lunch sessions.

But anyway.. we had a great time. The food was pretty darn good and the service – as we have now come to expect – was fabulous.

They started us off with sourdough with caramelised onion marmalade.The marmalade was amazing. Lil’ E absolutely loved it.

The boys had a juice concoction each.. The apple/watermelon/mint and the mango/passionfruit/pineapple.

As our ‘small’ dishes, we had the marron, foie gras, watermelon & yuzu.The flavours were interesting at first but the sweet, the sour, and the salty all went together marvelously.

We also had their famed soft shell crab burger with sriracha mayonnaise which you can get at any time of the day (it’s that good).We kind of wanted to order another one immediately after inhaling our first – but we controlled ourselves!!

After that, we had their amazing duck egg, asparagus, smoked onion, croutons and truffle dish.Such a bevy of flavours and textures. I really enjoyed this one.

Then we moved onto their ‘eat big’ sharing dishes. The most incredible one was the wagyu beef tri-tip, avocado, hummus, puffed quinoa, bone marrow & shallot vinaigrette.The vinaigrette was amazing and tied the whole dish together seamlessly.

Lil’ E loved the purple sweet potato pomme dauphine that we ordered with it..and for good reason because they were delectable..

We also tried their quail, parmesan & salad onions dish which came with the cutest little petri dish finger bowl.It was the only average dish of the night from a flavour point of view. Plus there was an excessive amount of salad onions plated up at the base of the dish.

But that didn’t stop us from wanting to end our meal on a high. So we continued on. To finish, I had a cappuccino whilst my husband and toddler shared a blueberry smoothie.