Cooking at Home in Melbourne Part 1

As most of you might know, it's impossible to eat out all the time in Melbourne because of the higher prices. The cheapest meal one might get in an el cheapo Asian diner would be around $8 on average, but it would also come with a splitting msg-induced headache as well as suspicions of the hygiene standards of the place. Thankfully, the Australian produce is of really good quality, which makes cooking at home super enjoyable too. Here's a collection of some of the stuff I've been cooking at home, and unfortunately it's a somewhat disjointed post since I've combined about two months' worth of cooking into one rather vague photo essay. Try to follow along, though, and if you want any of the recipes I'd be happy to share them.

Breakfast is my biggest headache since I'm not a breakfast person. Unfortunately, the husband happens to need breakfast every day. I usually try to do simple and interesting things, like bruschetta. Fresh basil, and vine ripened cherry tomatoes.

Together with some bocconcini cheese I found at the supermarket. I know most people don't use cheese in bruschetta, but I happen to like bocconcini. I suppose any form of burrata or buffalo mozzarella would do.

Super cute little balls. It actually looks better before it gets cut up.

Everything diced up finely, with some salt, pepper, lemon juice and a smidgen of grated garlic.

Combined with some drizzles of EVOO, it  made the husband rather happy.

The Melbourne markets also stock an amazing variety of great deli food, including cured meats, dips and cheeses. This was one of the cheese platters we put together for dinner with friends one evening. 

And this was another dips platter that we put together another evening with olives, hummus, capsicum+sundried tomato pesto and sun dried tomatoes. Beautiful with one of our favourite MacLaren Vale wines. 

From here, this blog post gets slightly more detailed in instructional (I told you it was rather disjointed). After settling in a bit more, I started getting more ambitious in wanting to try different recipes. One of the first things I cooked was clam chowder soup. I couldn't find clams, so I decided to substitute it with pippies, which are local shellfish but are slightly larger. 

They were also slightly tougher. 

That same night, I also decided to cook a baked cauliflower+potato dish and roast beef. 

I decided to make it with a white sauce, using flour, butter and milk.

The white sauce is made by melting the butter over a flame, putting the flour in and diluting it with the milk. 

It's ready when the consistency is thick.

So after boiling them, I stacked the potatoes and cauliflower in a baking dish

Before adding the white sauce on top, followed by freshly grated tasty cheese

That went into the oven. In the meantime, I started working on the soup - with chopped bacon, celery, garlic and onion.

Everything was fried with some olive oil

Plus some finely diced potatoes that I had saved for adding towards the end

The pippie meat ready for dicing

Everything being boiled in the pot

Everything looking pretty good, after adding cream

And in the meantime, I seasoned the beef with italian herbs, salt and pepper. I used a 700g piece of scotch fillet, which is what they call rib eye in Australia.

I seared it on a skillet to keep the juices in (at least that's what they tell me it does) 

 This was after 30 mins of roasting at 200 deg C 

The insides looking perfectly medium. PERFECT. Probably my proudest moment this year.

Another close up just so you can see how perfectly I nailed it

 The baked cauli and potatoes were looking good too.

Pretty perfect too, if I may say so myself

The soup was a bit thin and I think one more potato would have done the trick. But it was good in terms of flavour, just that clams would have been slightly sweeter. 

Another day we had lamb cutlets. I love lamb cutlets, which are ridiculously expensive in Singapore. Check out how fresh and tender the cutlets were.

Seasoned with italian herbs, salt and pepper (yes, all the meat we cook could potentially taste the same)

 That night we had a salad of bocconcini cheese, fresh tomatoes and baby spinach

Perfectly pan-fried and juicy on the inside

And because my roast ribeye was so perfect, I decided I had to do it again soon. The following photos are just for bragging purposes. This was a 1kg cut that I did when we had friends over. This time I added a lot of rosemary and oregano too.  

PERFECT again. I am damn good. 

That night, I paired the roast beef with some mashed potatoes. Because I had too much mash left over, I decided to cook shepherds pie to finish it up. It's pretty easy, but rather labour intensive. Apart form chopping the usual garlic and onions, there needed to be finely diced carrots and celery.

I used a mixture of beef and veal mince. I know lamb is traditionally used, but I didn't want to risk having a smelly lamb mince. 

First, I fried the meat with chopped garlic and onions.

Then the veggies went in, together with tomato paste and bay leaves.

I added some italian herbs, as well as rosemary and thyme, and simmered it with beef stock and red wine until it was reduced. Worcestershire sauce goes in too.

Pretty tasty shepherds pie.

We had it with some mushroom soup that I had also made the day before (no instructional pics since I've had a previous post on that)  

That's it for Part 1 on mostly "western" style dishes, stay tuned for Part 2 when we travel to the exotic east (or rather, when we find the motivation to sort out another few hundred photos)