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.
Due to extreme tiredness, a backlog of knitting for the school fete and a half written emergency plan for the kinder, this week’s post contains a side dish only. But what a side dish it was! A thermomix modification of a classic Spanish tapas dish, which was served with Portuguese steak and Portuguese fried potatoes. […]
First week of term, hot weather, committee meetings, swimming lessons, work, craft group meetings. Totally crazy week to decide to do a culinary trip round the world. We did it though. And thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, it’s taken until today to catch up on blogging about it. First Born has placed French food in second […]
Welcome to Europe! Yes we did discuss that Russia is in both Europe and Asia but we cooked European Russian food. On the first day of term with swimming lessons fter school. What was I thinking? Fortunately, I had selected a salad which meant it could be done between work and school pickup, ready for […]
First Born has taken this whole culinary world tour thing very seriously. He amuses and delights me. So I thought I’d share with you his daily offerings to accompany our meals. The text down the bottom reads: Japan is a country in Aisa and Japan is an island Japanese PeoPle sit at low wooDen TaBles […]
Ahh Vietnamese food. It never fails to delight. Never. Every dish was hungrily gobbled and loudly praised this evening. The soup was magical. My love for pho is not unknown but I simply did not have the time to make the stock. I’ve found my quick substitute soup. The beef and Vietnamese coriander soup is […]
After a night out of the kitchen last night, today we resumed our world tour. Tonight’s top, Thailand. First Born has identified it on the map, read a book about it, drawn the flag and listed similarities between Japan and Thailand. I hope he always loves learning this much. And in such a self directed […]
Warning: International food challenges may cause regular blogging.* First Born has embraced this project with a passion. We went to the library today and he borrowed books on Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, France, Russia and Germany. Today he read his book on Japan, located Japan in his Atlas and drew the Japanese flag. Things like this […]
Every now and again, my recipe book shelf explodes. I try and keep only the ones I use but I still seem to acquire a few new ones each year. In addition to that, both the Ankle Biters are cooking regularly now and they have their own little collection springing up. The good thing about […]
I’m such a creature of habit in my old age. Changes to my routine, particularly where food is concerned tend leave me a little disoriented. Having to complete a 24 hour training course at work in 2 days and one evening last weekend thoroughly discombobulated me. No farmers market! Fortunately I had stocked up as […]
I found this little gem whilst trawling the internet recently. We adore refried beans but I do have a problem with the amount of (usually saturated) fat they contain. I also hate buying canned bean products as the price is so much higher than using them dried. The smells that have been wafting through the […]