Cooking Stuff

So a couple of days ago, Repton and I were wandering through Moore Wilson's wondering what the difference is between a boutique grocery and a regular supermarket. Then Repton asked how you cook goat meat. I didn't know, so we went home, looked at some recipes, decided that we could do that, and next time he went past the shop he procured some.

It turns out that goat meat isn't good to fry or roast because it shrinks like billy-oh, and most of the recipes out there are for curries or casseroles. I don't have much experience with curries, but casseroles I do, so this is what we went with (adapted from here.)

- some flour (about half a cup?)
- various dried herbs (we had rosemary, thyme and oregano)
- about 500g of goat meat
- two small onions chopped into large chunks (I guess one large would do)
- two cloves of crushed garlic
- one cup chicken stock
- half a cup red wine

Season the flour with the dried herbs and coat the goat chunks in it. Fry briefly to brown it and place in a casserole dish with the onion, garlic, chicken stock and wine. Add some extra rosemary.
Cook at 150 degrees for three hours. (Every hour or so I stirred the mixture.)
Served with basmati rice and grilled capsicums.

It smelt _really_ nice, and tasted pretty good too. We also ended up asking the obvious question of: so how much does it cost to run an oven for three hours, anyway? which Repton worked out from first principles and I looked up on the internet. Turns out to be about a dollar fifty, or less than the cost of the cooking wine, but even so, we made shortbread as well.

Adventures in Cookery, part something or other

Today's new recipe was Hungarian Goulash, which to the uninitiated is a kind of casserole/stew made with paprika, black pepper and capsicums. The recipe I used also said to put in tomatoes, but I'm not sure how authentic that's supposed to be. And, er, apparently proper goulash is more like a chunky soup. But anyway, you get the idea.

It was quite nice, but took a while to make, what with having to make a trip to get some stewing steak because we didn't have any, spending rather longer than I'd like trying to get the can of tomatoes open and opting for puree instead (stupid can opener), and generally doing the messing about prefrying the steak, as you do. And the two hour cooking time, although we shortened it a bit because I was getting hungry. On the other hand, the recipe didn't quite use the last of the cooking wine, so I felt duty bound to finish it off while I waited for dinner to cook. I really am a cheap drunk. Whee!

In Which I Chill Out

So it's been a good weekend, and I feel that I've managed to recover some of my missing spoons from last week. (Thanks, Debbie, that's such a cool metaphor.)
Anyway, I've been doing domestic type things all day like toddling along to dancing practice, and having bacon sandwiches for lunch, and catching up on homework, and making a really nice beef casserole that turned out to be not too peppery after all, and doing minor repairs on clothes, and watching Serenity and, well, chilling out.

[Big Zen sigh] Aaaaah. Bliss. Time for sleep now, I think.

I'm Making Casserole

As opposed to my sister's recent excursion into the Ways of Liver, complete with greyish membranes, large mysterious holes and weird chewy texture, mine is a nice beef casserole with onions, broccoli and beef stock that doesn't scare my flatmates. Come to think of it, there's some bacon in the fridge which I could likely have added to some profit...

Gosh, it's amazing how much housework I can get done when I should be writing an essay. It doesn't help that the subject that it's on is not exactly enthralling me. 1100 words and counting. (Min limit 1500.) Back to work. Sigh.