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.
I’m sick of boston baked beans, nice though they are and the whole ham hock thing presents problems of ethical procurement that I just can’t be bothered dealing with. So imagine my delight at the concept of ham hockless Greek style baked beans. I used this recipe as my base and fiddled the amounts which […]
We have one more week here until Son and Heir is released into the wilds of the school ground. At the same time, Lil Miss is back at creche and I am back at work. It’s going to be busier than ever for our little family this year. In my usual obsessive way, I am […]
I’ve been cruising around the net incessantly for years now this week and have come across a few wonderful recipes which I thought I’d share. Besides, I want to be able to find them again myself, they’re definitely keepers. Firstly there was the ridiculously quick and easy to prepare cheeseburger pie. This one has the […]
Yesterday, I had a desperate craving for a kebab. The doner kebab style kebab. Not the sort of thing I would trot out and buy and I certainly don’t have one of those upright rotisseries thingamabobs. An hour or so of cogitating and I came up with a plan. A plan that worked. Son and […]
Since October, Lil Miss has had her heart set on a teddy bears ‘nicnic’ for her third birthday. What mother could deny such a humble request? Not this one anyway. To avoid the whole saga of cleaning the house only to have it destroyed by hyped up preschoolers, we elected to picnic at a wonderful […]
Summer has come to Melbourne this week with another scorcher today. The sort of day that makes one reluctant to cook for fear of unnecessarily heating up the house. To add another challenge to the day’s meal provision, chez KP is drastically short of fruit and veg. Lil Miss’s birthday extravaganza made the farmers market […]
‘Twas hot and sunny in my little corner of the world today. Much as I love the hot weather, when combined with a boot load of lovely thick wood donated by my brother and my dad, it makes for a hot and somewhat grumpy Dani. Only grumpy until the job is completed. Then we have […]
Dinner invented itself as i was staring at the vegetable tray of the fridge tonight. I saw several summer vegetables that just begged to be chargrilled. I had no meat defrosted or beans soaked so lentils were an obvious choice. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is an actual recipe. More just […]
Mexican is always a big hit at chez KP. I know I’ve mentioned that before. I’ve possibly also mentioned that store bought tortillas are vile travesties and masa harina breaks down my locavore tendencies. If ony I could grow enough corn and work out how to mill my own. Let’s move away from the tortillas […]
The past few days have been perfect Melbourne summer days. Bright sunny days, warm nights. My inner gardener is badly lamenting Melbourne weather at the same time as the rest of me revels in it. My water tank has reached critical levels again. I’ll be howling at the moon and rain dancing tonight. The vegetable […]