Instant Bean Burritos

Slice onion, zucchini and capsicum and stir-fry. Add tin of beans (mexe-beans are good, kidney would be ok too) and tomato passata, chicken stock cube, cumin and ancho chilli. Cook till heated through. Serve with burritos and grated cheese.

Result: 5 for lunch. Really hits the spot.
Preparation: ready in 10 mins!

Tandoori Chicken

Night before: put into snap-lock bag 3 chicken thighs, cut in half, with yoghurt, cumin, coriander, kashmiri chilli, saffron, turmeric, salt, garlic, ginger. Refrigerate.

Prepare oven: rack above oven rack at position 4 (from top), above veges. Cook chicken directly on rack on fan-grill 220 degrees for about 15 mins, turning once.

Serve with cucumber raita and rice or Indian bread.

Result: 5
Preparation: surprisingly quick and easy.

Pork Burritos

Sliced pork fillet, marinated in lime juice and smoky tabasco for about 15 mins.

Finely sliced halved onion and capsicum. Fry up in hot pan. Add pork fillet once onion and capsicum cooked. Don't overcook the pork.

Guacamole with avocado and yoghurt.

Mexe-beans (old El Paso), cooked in microwave then drained.

Serve with shredded lettuce, grated cheese, chopped tomato, burritos.

Result: 4
Preparation: quick and easy. Minimal washing up.

Home-made baked beans, with antipasto

Beans: lightly fry grated onion, add tin cannellini beans, passata, chicken stock and sugar. Cook for about 10 mins.

Rice: in rice cooker, put rice, passata, chicken stock and peas. Check it as it might be ready early.

Serve with: olives, cheese, grilled zucchini and eggplant and vine leaves.

Result: 3.5 (beans were great)
Preparation: quick and easy

Sausages and Brown Lentils

Lamb & rosemary sausages, cut into pieces, browned. Finely chopped onion, browned. Lentils brought to boil and then rinsed, then added to onion. Chicken stock and water. Bay leaf, grind of salt and pepper. Cook all for about 45 mins.

Serve with steamed veges and brussels sprouts sauteed in butter and garlic.

Result: 4
Preparation: very easy and minimal supervision required, and low mess.

Lamb, Chickpea and Plum Korma

From Poh's Kitchen ...

Ingredients
serves 4

* 40ml ghee
* 4 green cardamom
* 4 cloves
* 3 black cardamom
* 2 bay leaves
* 2.5cm cinnamon stick
* 1 cup sliced onion
* 1 tbs ginger paste
* 1 tsp garlic paste
* 1 tbs roasted cumin seeds, powdered
* 1 tbs roasted coriander seeds, powdered
* 1 tsp Kashmiri red chilli powder (mild, vibrantly red powder from large red chillies)
* ½ cup yoghurt
* 1kg diced forequarter of lamb (or 4 lamb shanks)
* 2 cups plums, stones removed
* Salt to taste
* ½ cup cooked chickpea
* 1 tbs keora water (water of the pandams plain)


Method

1. Heat the ghee, add whole spices and then the onion; when golden brown, add ginger and garlic pastes and sautè for one minute. Mix the powdered spices with the yoghurt and add this to the onion mix. After three minutes on high heat add the meat and brown till the oil separates from the spice blend. Stir in the plums, salt and one cup of water. Cook covered on low heat till the meat is almost tender. Add the chickpeas, a little more water if required and continue cooking until the meat is soft. Flavour with keora water and rest for half an hour before serving.

Notes:
- make sure plums are firm
- use less than 1 cup water, maybe 1/2 cup
- we didn't use the keora water
- the chickpeas were amazing so we added more
- wasn't really done after 1 1/2 hours, but very nice after 2 1/2
- the lamb forequarter (curry lamb from Halal butcher) was very fatty. Would be better for health to go half/half or 30/70 with some diced lamb leg.

Result: 5 for super amazing flavour (but -10 for saturated fat content!)
Preparation: a while to set up, but very easy once the pot's on.

3 Moroccan Vegetable dishes

All from Cooking Moroccan book ...

Spiced carrots. Quick and easy preparation.
Mezghaldi of onions with eggplant. Takes a while to cook the onions.
Preserved lemon and tomato salad. Quick and easy, though tomatoes need to be skinned.

Result: 4.5. A great combination.

BBQ Chicken Skewers

follow recipe from "Cooking Moroccan" book for spiced grilled chicken, but with chicken thighs instead of whole chicken, and thread onto skewers. Basically just marinate in cayenne pepper, cumin, smoky paprika, black pepper, salt, garlic, saffron, lemon juice and olive oil. Cook on the BBQ.

Result: 5. Best BBQ chicken skewers ever.
Preparation: dead easy, marinate ahead of time.

"Paella", somewhat ...

Follow recipe from AWW "Cook" book for Paella, but ignore whatever you like ... probably best to have at least one of the meat components (we had chorizo).

To make up for missing ingredients, add vegetables - zucchini and carrot. Would be better with capsicum rather than without, and with sweet paprika rather than kashmiri chilli. And also probably better without 3/4 of a cup of chardonnay which wasn't in the recipe and didn't really help. Still, Caitlin ate 3 peas so there must be something good about it.

Result: 3, with potential for more ...
Preparation: easy and not too much attention required, but takes about 50 mins all up.

Pork Sausage and Capsicum Stew

From Cam's Greek cooking course:
- 4 Pork, Chilli and Garlic sausages from High St butcher, sliced in 3cm lengths
- 2 green capsicum, sliced
- tin tomatoes

Lightly fry the sausage in a saucepan. Add the other ingredients and cook with lid on for about 20 mins until sausage is cooked. Serve with risoni pasta.

Result: 4.5
Preparation: about 5 mins, then eat 20 mins after that.