Popping up in my feed is pictures of people cooking amazing things – seafood, tagines, roast with all the trimmings – no one is really living on what they have in their pantry.

I’m taking a different approach and trying to use up what I have in the pantry first, cooking what I have on hand.

And it turns out, I have a lot of Quinoa on hand, leftover from now non-existent catering jobs.

As cooking is in my blood, heart and soul, I am going to work out as many ways to cook Quinoa as possible, maybe come up with 100 recipes.

So far, I have three.

This recipe was served as a side dish with last nights dinner (Building Maintenance doesn’t feel like I’ve fed him right unless there are carbs on the plate).

The next night, I stuffed it into zucchini, then baked the lot in the oven covered with fresh tomato sauce.

Quinoa with pickled lemon and parsley recipe.

Cook Quinoa using pressure cooker method, 1-part Quinoa 2 parts water, 3 minutes on high pressure.

Finely mince a 250 ml jar of pickled lemons and a bunch of parsley.

Once the Quinoa has cooked for its three minutes and the steam has released from the pressure cooker, but the quinoa is still hot, stir through the minced lemon and parsley.

Season with salt and pepper.

Enjoy!

A friend told me recently, that in tough times make sure you have Brussels Sprouts. They will survive at the bottom of your fridge through everything.

Here’s how you cook them

To save on the typing, from now on I’m going to call Brussels Sprouts, BS.

I like to peel off any leaves for the outside that are past their best.

You can either cut a cross in the bottom of each BS or cut each BS in half vertically.

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to the boil. Blanc your BS in the boiling water for 2 minutes. I do less time, not more, as I like my BS still crispy. Not grey and soggy. 

Dice a couple of strips of bacon and one onion.

Heat a frying pan. Add a spoonful of butter. Melt.

Add the bacon and onion to the frypan. Fry off until the bacon is crisp, and the onion cooked.

Throw in the BS. Fry off until they start to brown.

To finish the BS off, pour in ½ cup of white wine. Add a pinch of salt, pepper and the chef’s secret ingredient, sugar.  

On this day, I’ve served mine with a rack of Wattlebank park farm lamb

Stay safe and keep cooking!

Everyone in a Jacican preserving class cooks lemon curd. 

If you would like to learn how to cook lemon curd, along with marmalade, cordial, preserved oranges and lemon jelly come along to a seasonal citrus preserving class. 

Digging back into my chef training, there are a couple of things we should all know to make the perfect lemon curd. 

Firstly, eggs. 

And not making bad scrambled eggs of your lemon curd. 

Lemon curd thickens as the egg proteins coagulate.

For eggs, whites coagulate around 60 °C and yolks around 68 °C, with the coagulation temperature increasing depending on the amount of sugar you have added to them. 

With this lemon curd recipe, you can achieve a coagulation temperature of up to 82 °C without scrambling the eggs. 

The advantage of heating your lemon curd to this temperature is that you can hold it at temperature for 5 to 10 minutes, which helps reduce the risk of nasty bacteria that can sometimes be found in eggs. 

Ingredients 

• 3 lemons
• 150 grams of pouring cream
• 200 grams of caster sugar
• 5 eggs

You need to use a reasonable-sized lemon for this recipe. If your lemons seem small, use an extra one.

You will be cooking lemon curd using a bain marie, which is when you cook something over a water bath.

It is a gentle cooking method where the ingredients are in a bowl over gently simmering water and whisked until cooked. 

A lightweight metal bowl that fits on top of a saucepan is ideal. 

Hold the metal bowl over the saucepan with a folded dry tea-towel to protect your hand from the heat. 

Hint: Don’t let the bowl touch the water, as if the bottom of the bowl touches the water, the lemon curd will cook too fast and curdle. 

Method

1. Set up a bain marie. Find a saucepan that will comfortably hold the bowl. Half fill the saucepan with water, checking that the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. If you place the bowl on the saucepan before filling it with ingredients, then lift it back up, you will see and feel if the bottom of the bowl is wet. Bring the water to a simmer.  
2. Place all the ingredients in a heat-proof bowl. Beat the mixture together using a whisk.
3. Place the bowl of ingredients over the bain marie. 
4. Whisk the mixture together until the mixture thickens. Using a kitchen thermometer to check the temperature, bring the mixture to 82 °C. Reduce the heat and hold the mixture at this temperature for at least 5 minutes, if not 10 minutes.
5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl. Place a layer of clear plastic wrap on the surface of the hot curd. This will stop a skin from forming on the curd. 

Everyone in a Jacican citrus preserving class will make lemon curd. 

This is the mandarin marmalade recipe we cook together in a Jacican citrus preserving class.

You have heard me talk before about my tree change, and when we arrived, there were only three fruit trees on the property. 

This gave us a blank garden canvas to work with, allowing us to design and plant what we wanted to grow, cook, and eat. 

Over the last 17 years, the garden has evolved from having no citrus trees to featuring four different lemons, cumquats, limes, oranges, a few citrus hybrids and mandarins. 

Mandarins are one of the few fruits BM will eat, unabated, so two trees, an imperial and an emperor, were planted early on.

Both crop abundantly each year, providing us with fresh fruit to snack on for up to six months, with plenty for mandarin marmalade. 

Mandarin Marmalade Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 kg of mandarins
• 2 litres of water
• 2 kgs of sugar

Method

1. Wash your mandarins, then cut or pull off the stalks.

It is likely that if you are using store-bought mandarins, someone else has already removed the stalks for you.

2. Roughly chop the mandarins so that the pieces fit more easily into your food processor. Place in the bowl of your food processor.  

3. Process until mandarins are roughly chopped, but still have a few larger pieces. This should take approximately one minute to process. 

4. Place the chopped mandarins in a large non-corrosive container. Here, we use rectangular plastic boxes with lids. 

5. Cover the mandarins with 2 litres of water. Put the lid on and place them in the fridge overnight. 

By covering the mandarins with water and leaving them to soak overnight, you accomplish two things: drawing the pectin out of the fruit and softening it for a faster cooking time. 

6. The next day, place the mandarin and water in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Once the mixture has boiled, reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the fruit has become translucent.

7. Add the sugar. Return to a boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Once the marmalade is boiling, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the setting point is reached. This will take up to 2 hours. 

8. Bottle. 

This recipe makes 9 * 250ml jars of mandarin marmalade. 

Mandarin marmalade pairs perfectly with toast, as a glaze for ham, or you could steam it in a steamed pudding. 

If you would like to learn to cook mandarin marmalade, come along to a Jacican - citrus preserving class.

Together we will cook marmalade using three different recipes and three different types of citrus  - Lemons, mandarins and grapefruit - along with other citrus preserves.