Welcome to The Kitchen Playground. Cooking can bring great joy and great despair. I hope that the recipes you find here, many of which are very quick to make with the weeknight in mind, help you to experience more joy than despair. Many recipes have instructions for the Thermomix 31 as well as traditional instructions. The emphasis is on real, fresh food that combines flavour, texture and scent to delight the senses.
Well. Melbourne is a land of extremes lately. From the seemingly unending drought, the searing heat and the dreadful, heartbreaking burning, today was both chilly and wet. Yes, wet. Joyful rain, real rain. A wonderful excuse to pull out the slow cooker again as panacea to my current painfully hectic schedule. I headed over to […]
By the end of every season, the food and flavours of the incoming season are so appealing. Some cooler days in Melbourne have given way to Autumnal flavours. Last night, we had a cauliflower and date curry served on a Tunisian pilaf. Recipe from the thermomix blog. Delicious, budget friendy quick and easy. All boxes […]
Just a quick one from me tonight. Tired. Busy. It’s been a crazy weekend here. Saturday was an early am dash to the farmers market followed by a full day at school. Today I worked a double shift with a quick break in the middle to pedal to the library to return books, the supermarket, […]
I’m not entirely sure that calling this a salad is the right thing to do. I will though, for want of a better idea. Salad being a concept that has been on my mind today. My original plan was to have grlic calamari and prawns with a green salad. Then I discovered shortly before dinner […]
So often at chez KP, dinner is inpisred by the one or two ingredients that need to be used most urgently. Tonight, it was a slab of thick cut ump steak and 450g roma tomatoes that were getting a bit squashy. It was a cool day so oven baked goodness was appealing. The result was […]
Maybe it’s end of season ennui or perhaps an effect of the strange summer we have had down here in Victoria on growing, but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what vegetables to buy this week. I managed to make a decision after a full lap and a half of the market and returned […]
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes is a wonder. I know I’ve said that before. Combined with the thermomix, it is a marriage made in heaven. To combine to the two to best effect, I begin with supplies. The grains I always have on hand are milled bread four, barley grain, rye grain, spelt grain and […]
Recently we had yum cha with some friends to celebrate Chinese New Year. It was Son and heir’s first bone fide attempt at using chop sticks and he did remarkably well. I mentioned to him that they would be easier to get the hang of if they wee child sized. Ever since, he has been […]
I asked for some dog bones at the farmers market the other day. I was given a couple of kilo of beef ribs for $3. For the first time ever, Little Creek Beef disappointed me. There was no way I could feed those ribs to my dog. They were far too good for the dog. […]
There is a blood red sun setting over Melbourne this evening. The day has been smoky and the light eerie. Running this evening made me feel like an emphysema sufferer, the smoke haze is thick enough to be worrisome for those with respiratory diseases. On a more cheerful note, we had another great dish for […]