This dish is inspired by a Margaret Fulton recipe, but this version is quicker and easier.  While I’m sure my version doesn’t have the depth of flavour that Mrs Fulton’s does, there’s a lot less mucking around, so a doable dish for a week night meal.

As with many spice dishes, there are a few ingredients, but most are pantry staples. And when I say spicy, this dish isn’t hot. I took out the saffron because it’s too pricey for my pantry, so if you prefer, throw in some saffron with the other spices. I also put the raisins and chickpeas in with the chicken rather than in with the couscous because I like my couscous plain and buttery and the sultanas swell and go juicy and impart their flavour to the stew, while the chickpeas absorb some of the spice flavour. Thigh fillets have more fat on them and therefore taste a whole lot better (especially in stews) than breast, but chicken breast works just as well. I used tinned tomatoes because the ones in the shop at the moment aren’t worth buying. Freeze any leftover tomatoes and chickpeas for later use as pizza sauce or for a quick homemade hummus.

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Cauliflower soup is a wonderfully moreish and filling winter soup. To give you an idea of how much cauliflower it requires, I bought a large head of cauliflower for this soup, but only needed about half. This was our Sunday night easy dinner (I made the soup the night before while the roast chook was cooking), eaten with buttered bread rolls.

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Chilli beef freezes well, so makes a good freezer backup meal. We normally have this with rice, but it’s nice with corn chips for a treat. I had leftovers the other day with some fresh, mashed avocado, yum. To boost the vegetable content, add some sliced mushrooms, capsicum, diced carrot, peas or whatever you have on hand.

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This pasta dish is a family favourite. Sweet and salty is one of my favourite taste combinations. For the die hard meat eater, this dish would also be nice with some chicken breast tossed through. Just slice and brown through before cooking the onions, then add it back in with the spinach or rocket at the end of the cooking to reheat.

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I admit that the photo doesn’t look all that appetising, but this recipe is actually quite tasty. And as a bonus it is healthy and quick to make. I would say it is also quite inexpensive, but as someone has poisoned the winter crops up north, tomatoes and eggplants are going to get a little pricey for a while.

Use this as a dip with some toasted Turkish bread or as a sandwich spread. In the photo above, I have spread it on toast with some cream cheese, a nice combo. The recipe makes about 2 cups.

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This is one of our favourite dishes. Mushrooms, paprika, mustard, wine and sour cream – these are a few of my favourite things. This dish is so quick, easy and tasty and most of the ingredients are pantry staples, I don’t know why anyone would want to make this with a packet mix.

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Why make bolognaise from scratch when you can get it pretty cheap and easy from a bottle? That’s what I thought anyway until I didn’t have any in the cupboard and decided to make it myself. I have never gone back to the store bought bottled pasta sauce.

This makes a very rich, tasty bolognaise. And it’s not that much harder or more time consuming than the bottled variety. It is a foundation recipe, though. You can add anything you like: olives, sun dried tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, corn, kidney beans, extra garlic, fresh herbs, spices… endless possibilities. Or you could remove ingredients that you don’t like or don’t have on hand like the capsicum or mushrooms. A tasty variation is adding a couple of crushed cloves to the sauce. It adds a subtle but lovely aroma to your bolognaise.

Of course, instead of serving this over spaghetti, you could make a simple white sauce, layer with a few sheets of pasta, grate some cheese over the top and have lasagne instead.

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The old fresh v frozen debate. Fresh isn’t blanched so has more nutrients. Frozen doesn’t sit around all year in storage so has more nutrients. Fresh vegetables have more ‘life force’ so are better for your chakras… yep, the debate continues to rage and it’s heated.

But for many of us, the question of fresh v frozen is kind of irrelevant anyway. Most of us don’t eat nearly enough plant food to start with, let alone worry about whether it is fresh or frozen.

I want to take a moment to compare fresh and frozen vegetables from a cost point of view. You see, I’ve had broccoli on my mind a lot over the last few weeks. We eat a lot of broccoli. It’s high in nutrients (fresh or frozen) and it’s one of the few greens I don’t have to force feed DH.

But what to do with the stems? I’ve thrown them in the stock pot, cut them up and to put in the stir fry, I’ve even made broccoli stem soup, but mostly the stem gets wasted. This got me thinking about the true cost of fresh broccoli and whether it is better value (from a purely cost perspective) to purchase frozen.

So I did a little weighing and a little calculating.

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The wonderful thing about living in this part of the world is that despite being winter, the strawberry season has just started and will continue until November. Even the early strawberries are tasting great, the ones pictured came farm fresh from a local grower not far up the road.

This recipe was one bought to my attention by a friend and the original can be found at the Taste.com website. As their recipe suggested, I substituted lemon juice with liqueur (I don’t need much prompting to use a bit of grog in my cooking) and I also changed the granita biscuits for choc ripple. I made the cheesecakes the day before and the biscuits went a little soggy, but in a good way, the choc flavour mellowed and went really well with the strawberry filling. I also use raw sugar (I think it tastes way better than white sugar). To make it ‘castor’ give it a quick wizz in a coffee grinder or blender.

The recipe is for six, but I found I could get eight out of this recipe, nine if I hadn’t licked the spoon, although I think I used regular sized muffin tins. I don’t have electric mixers, I found this recipe only takes five minutes even beating with a wooden spoon.

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Kekap Manis is a sweet soy sauce. Along with the lime juice, it makes a nice combo of salty, sweet and sour. I like to cut my vegetables into matchstick shapes, but it takes longer to do it this way and isn’t necessary. Alternatively, you can use frozen stir fry veggies making this a very quick dish to prepare and cook. Use whatever vegetables you like, substitute the water chestnuts for unsalted cashews for a different flavour.

I usually buy topside beef in bulk and slice and portion the lot before freezing it, which saves a couple of minutes at dinner time. To get tender stir fry meat, cut the meat against the grain, fry it quickly and briefly and in small batches at high heat until just browned (you don’t want it to stew in it’s juices and it will continue to cook once removed from the heat, so no need to over do it), and don’t let it boil in the sauce when you add it back at the end of the cooking.

As far as the oil goes, use one that cooks well at high temperatures. I use macadamia nut oil because it is grown and cold pressed locally and I have a cheap supply. Rice bran oil also has a high smoke point and is good for stir fry – just don’t use olive oil because it will burn.

The recipe below is for two people, about 100g of meat per person is good for a stir fry and just increase the vegetables and add a little more lime and kekap manis.

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