Work office kitchens are an ideal place to observe strange food behaviour. When I worked full time, I was constantly amazed by the strange combinations of food people ate for lunch. Leftover curry in toasted sandwiches. Cheese and jam slathered on crackers. Canned tuna on everything. I still remember one woman who cooked Maggi instant noodles then piled the lot on two pieces of toast. That’s right. Noodles on toast.

We all have weird food concoctions we like to indulge in. My favourite combination? Chicken nuggets with rice and chilli sauce, preferably my mum’s homemade sambal oelek (a type of Indonesian chilli paste). This is precisely what I ate for dinner last night, while the husband ate leftover soup and the little man a tub of Ski yoghurt.

My chicken nugget and rice fetish is a childhood throwback. Whenever my family had KFC for dinner, mum would always cook a batch of rice and open a bottle of chilli to eat with the chicken. It sounds strange, but there’s something about the salty, fried chicken that goes really well with soft, freshly cooked rice. Eventually our family stopped eating KFC  for health reasons, but I widened the concept to include all crumbed and highly processed meat products: chicken nuggets, fish fingers, chicken tenders, even (and yes, I’m aware this sounds a bit gross) burger patties.

Surely that gives noodles on toast a run for its money.

Every Wednesday, I write a post about what I cooked the night before. What went down in your kitchen? What weird combinations of food do you like to eat?

Do you use a cookbook when cooking dinner for your family? I enjoy flipping through cookbooks, but sometimes it’s hard to find one that’s suitable for weekday family meals. They’re either too specialised on one food region, require too many exotic ingredients (Jamie Oliver is a classic culprit, with his constant badgering for kale, watercress, speck or some other British produce) or a bit too generic, like those ‘four ingredients’ series you often find at Kmart or Big W.

I own two cookbooks, though, that have been good value in terms of family meals.

The first is The Thrifty Kitchen by Suzanne and Kate Gibbs, which I reviewed on Ben’s blog two years ago. Not only are the recipes delicious, but they promote such a good food philosophy. Going on the premise that economical food can still be wholesome and tasty, they encourage families to cook from scratch, reduce waste and plan ahead. Today I cooked zucchini loaf, a recipe from the “freezer friendly” chapter. The one loaf is about a week’s worth of dinners for the little man, plus a great way to sneak green vegies into his diet.

The second is Holiday by Bill Granger. As great as his scrambled eggs are, I’m normally not a Granger fan and I did find the writing in Holiday ridiculously affected: “In an ideal world, we’d all spend half an hour a week on the back doorstep, shelling peas”. Despite such pontifications, the recipes are lovely with a nice Asian touch. Tonight I made the Ginger and Sesame Rice with Poached Chicken for our dinner, a bastardised version of Hainanese chicken rice. I had everything except the shallots and fresh chilli, so they were sadly omitted in favour of dried chilli.

What cookbook do you regularly use?

Every Wednesday, I write a post about what I cooked the day before. What did you cook yesterday?

Something I love about toddlers is how they copy adult behaviour. The little man has been doing this a lot lately, wanting to use the ‘big’ spoon, refusing crayons and preferring to draw with a pen, cleaning imaginary messes on the floor with a piece of tissue. The other day, while showing him pictures on a digital camera, I kept wondering why he was rubbing his finger across the screen in an almost rhythmic fashion. It took me a while to realise he thought the screen was a touch pad, and he was trying to scroll to the next picture. Digital native indeed.

One adult ritual the little man particularly loves is coffee drinking. Every morning, the husband (who is an ex-barista) makes both of us flat whites and we drink them out of a specific set of brown mugs, usually on the couch while ABC radio or Sky FM plays in the background.  The little man has recently started showing interest in this activity, wanting to have his own mug or lick the edge of mine when I’m finished drinking my coffee. So yesterday, I suggested the husband make him a Babycino. For the uninitiated, a Babycino is what you get if you skim the top off a badly made cup of coffee: piles of frothy, over-steamed milk ladled into a tiny mug with chocolate sprinkles on top. Children love them. As you can see from the photo, the little man was no exception.

Looks like we’ll be making a few more babycinos in the next little while. Now if only I could get the little man’s mimicry to include doing the washing up…

Every Wednesday, I write a post about what I cooked the day before. What about you? What went down in your kitchen last night?

Here’s a question to all the parents out there: what do you cook your children for dinner? Do you have a fail-safe dish that you regularly rely on?

Mine is a good old 80s classic: apricot chicken. You can’t get any easier then a tin of apricots, a packet of French onion soup, chicken thighs and whatever vegetables you have in the fridge. The little man loves the sweet flavour of the apricots, although I often reduce the nectar and replace it with stock or water if I want to lower the sugar content a little. Here’s the batch I made yesterday, portioned into freezable amounts:

The little man usually eats whatever we eat, but every few weeks I try to cook a large batch of his favourite food to freeze in small portions: beef meatballs, mince and eggplant hotpot, creamy chicken pie filling and zucchini loaf. I don’t always pull this off (chicken nuggets and fish fingers are my good friends) but when I do, it’s a lifesaver for days when I’m too busy or tired to cook.

Every Wednesday, I post about what I cooked for dinner last night. What about you What went down in your kitchen? And again for all the parents: what’s your fail-safe kids meal?

I learnt so much from interviewing Libby for yesterday’s post that I asked her to write a guest post for this week’s ‘what went down in my kitchen last night’.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a terrible sticky beak when it comes to other people’s cooking habits. Even more fascinating is finding out what an easy dinner looks like for gluten-free/peanut-free/dairy-free/egg-free kids. You can’t just slap together some pasta, a quick vegetable omelette or a chocolate Yogo for dinner (ahem…not that I’ve ever given my kid chocolate for dinner). You have to be creative. Here’s a meal Libby often cooks for her family on a weeknight.

Sesame Beef Stirfry

Libby: This is an easy and quick meal using ‘normal’ ingredients that is suitable for people allergic to nuts, gluten, dairy and egg. So it is a great one to keep in case you are having anyone over for dinner! My kids enjoyed the flavours and ate most of the vegetables – I made sure that the ones I chose were what they would be likely to eat.

Here’s the recipe from Taste.com

400g beef stir-fry strips
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2cm piece ginger, finely grated
1 carrot, peeled, cut into thin strips
115g baby corn, halved lengthways
150g green beans, trimmed
2 tablespoons Chang’s oyster sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce
3 teaspoons caster sugar
steamed jasmine rice, to serve
Combine beef and sesame seeds in a bowl. Toss to coat.

Heat a wok or frying pan over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of oil. Swirl to coat. Add half the beef mixture. Stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes or until browned. Remove to a plate. Repeat with remaining beef mixture. Set aside. Add remaining oil, garlic and ginger  to wok. Stir-fry for 1 minute or until aromatic. Add carrot, corn and beans. Stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Combine oyster sauce, fish sauce and sugar in a bowl. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Add to wok. Return beef mixture and any juices to wok. Stir-fry for a further 2 minutes or until beef is heated through. Serve with rice.

My adaptions: I added some broccoli I had already blanched in the water I was prepping for the rice, and celery cut into thin strips. I probably didn’t put in as much ginger and garlic, but it was still tasty. Chang’s oyster sauce is gluten free (it does say ‘wheat extract’ in the ingredients list, but it also claims ‘gluten free’ so I assume the extract doesn’t involve the gluten protein). I didn’t use baby corn, but cut some corn off the cob. You could remove the sesame seeds if someone is allergic to them. I used blade steak and made sure I didn’t over cook it.

It was so tender and delicious!

Thanks for sharing, Libby. Every Wednesday I publish a post about what I cooked for dinner last night. Now over to you. What went down in your kitchen last night?

What’s your standard roast chicken dinner recipe?

I go through different phases. My standard is to stuff a lemon and some rosemary in the chook and season it with olive oil, salt and pepper. I got bored of this a couple of months ago, so I tried roasting chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. It tasted delicious, but we could smell the garlic in our pores the next morning. Currently I joint the chicken and marinade it in 1/3 cup of honey, 1/3 cup of soy and 1/2 cup of tomato sauce. It sounds so simple, but I love the way the sauce caramelises the meat and makes it go all sticky and scrumptious.

The best part about roast chicken dinners is the meat can last for at least three subsequent meals. Normally we eat the legs, thighs and wings with baked vegetables, then I shred the breast/back meat and store it in the freezer. For the third meal, I simmer the carcass with some celery, carrot, onion and peppercorns to make stock. Last night, I used this stock and some of the chicken meat to make chinese chicken and sweet corn soup.

Even though this soup doesn’t usually have noodles in it (or ham, which is included in the Taste recipe I linked to), I added some somen noodles to bulk it up, as the husband doesn’t think soup is a meal unless it has a substantial amount of carbohydrates in it. Personally I think it’s better with just fresh corn, chicken, swirls of egg and homemade stock.

Viva la roast chicken!

Every Wednesday, I write a post about what I cooked the day before. What about you? What went down in your kitchen last night?