Mum's recipes

My mum is an amazing cook. She can cook ANYTHING and cook it well. Over the years she has accumulated an impressive array of recipes from innumerable sources. OLD recipes from elderly relatives, books, magazines, friends, my food technology classes at school, tv shows and more recently, websites. Mum has modified old recipes for a modern twist, combined different recipes into one “Super recipe” and flat-out invented new recipes. My goal is to immortalise these amazing recipes as best I can using this blog. I not only want to make sure these tasty morsels don’t get lost to the ages, but also to share the wonderful flavours with all of you. This weekend, I sat down and raided my mum’s recipe book and came up with approximately 40 different recipes ranging from starters to mains, side dishes and sauces to biscuit and desserts. Some are simple, some are complicated. Some are budget friendly (German potato pancakes), some are not (Carpet bag steak). Over the next weeks and months (hopefully not stretching into years!!!), in addition to my normal blogging, I plan to make ALL these recipes (and more), photograph them, then blog about them. I endeavour to include not only the ingredients and method, but also a brief history about how this recipe came to be.

Recipes to look forward to:

Sweet	Savoury
Pavlova (Both crisp and marshmallow centre)	German Potato Pancakes
Pecan Pie	Sweet and sour sauce
Sponge Cake	Canneloni
Cinnamon Tea cake	Pasta Cabonara
Rock cakes	Steak with whisky sauce
Angel cakes	Lasagne
Honey Joys	Carpetbag steak
Cornflake biscuits	Meatballs in tomato sauce
Honey jumbles	Herbed Chicken Marylands
Jam drops	Prawn toast
Mrs Thomas biscuits	Sweet Chilli chicken
Creamy Caramel Sauce	Satay Chicken
Strawberry Yogurt cake	Béchamel Sauce
Lemon Meringue Pie
Raspberry coconut slice
Chocolate rough slice
Maple Fritters
Chocolate caramel slice
Spiced peach pudding
Caramel marshmallow slice
Skywalker scrunchies
Anzac biscuits
Coconut crisp biscuits
Date loaf
Christmas Cake
Traditional Christmas puddings
Carrot cake
Blueberry muffins
Lattice slice
Chocolate mousse

Kitchen list

Today, I am going to tell you a secret - To cook well, you don't need to have a well stocked kitchen, but it definitely helps. Here is what you need to have in your pantry, refrigerator and freezer so you can whip up a gourmet meal at the drop of a hat.


Pantry:

• Brown Onions
• Potatoes - a good multipurpose spud like coliban
• Dry Pasta - Spaghetti and a shape (Spirals, penne, macaroni etc)
• Rice - Medium grain white
• Plain White Flour
• Self Raising Flour
• Sugar (I usually keep raw, white, caster and brown sugar on hand, but you can get away with just white and brown)
• 7gram Sachets of instant dried yeast.
• Vanilla (essence, extract, paste)
• Tinned Tomatoes (at least 1 can)
• Large Jar of tomato paste
• A large variety of good quality dried herbs and spices in sealed glass containers. I recommend the following: Rock salt and peppercorns (in grinders), cinnamon, nutmeg, ground paprika, lemon pepper blend, garlic salt blend, mixed herbs, Italian herbs, chives. Chinese 5 spice powder, ground ginger, chili powder.
• Peanut butter
• Honey
• Sweet Chili Sauce
• Soy Sauce (and Kajup Manis)
• A good quality olive oil, a flavourless one like canola and oil spray (I used garlic oil)
• Non-stick cooking spray
• Some kind of canned fruit - I usually have pineapple, peaches and apricots
• Some kind of sweet biscuit - I am a softy for Arnott's Shredded Wheatmeals
• Tea Bags
• Instant Coffee
• Chicken and Beef stock powder or cubes and/or "real" stock in UHT packaging
• Long life packet of Asian noodles (either dried or vacpac pouches) such as ramen, hokkien or Singapore style
• Long life UHT cream (250mL packs)
• long life UHT milk (250mL packs)
• Some kind of instant gravy powder (I like gravox supreme chicken gravy sachets and greens gravy granules)
• Tomato Sauce
• Barbeque Sauce
• Alcohol - 1 bottle of White wine, 1 of red wine and 1 bottle of a nice tawny port, at bare minimum. You may also like to add brandy, dark rum, tia maria and/or Kahlua to this

Freezer:

• Puff pastry
• Frozen berries
• Bacon
• Ice cubes
• Beef mince
• Frozen veges - corn, peas
• Oven fries
• Vanilla Ice cream

Fridge:

• Eggs
• Capsicum
• Carrots
• Milk
• Butter (Yes, I said butter and NOT margarine)
• Some kind of fruit - apples, oranges, pears
• Hoi Sin sauce
• Cheese
• Kraft Parmesan cheese
• Jam - Strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and/or plum
• Real maple syrup.
• Minced Garlic
• Minced ginger
• Dijon mustard
• Seeded mustard

Cookware and other stuff:

• Aluminium foil
• Cling film
• Non-stick baking paper
• Paper towels
• Clip-lock bags - sandwich size
• Bamboo Skewers
• Meal-sized take'n'toss plastic containers
• Non stick frypan - 1 large, 1 small
• Stock pot
• Good heavy based saucepans with lids.
• Wooden spoons
• Big metal spoons
• Silicon tongs
• Pastry brush
• Measuring cups and spoons
• Egg Flip
• Wire rack
• Large baking dish - I have a giant oval shaped Corningware one, that we gone as a wedding present, with a pyrex lid, but a lid is not necessary
• Cookie slides/baking sheets
• Round 20cm cake pan
• Muffin pan
• Knives - Bread knife, carving knife, paring knife, steak knives.
• Whisk
• Colander
• Grater
• Various size metal or pyrex mixing bowls