Now, Despite What I Said Earlier...

This time a year ago, I made some rather jocular and possibly insulting comments about barbeques, the tools that are used to drive them, and the cleaning habits of most the men who lay claim to them.
However, despite all my protestations to the contrary, I finally decided that we did, indeed, need a bigger barbeque. Here's me, the boy, and Off-Black Sam, who helped me assemble said new barbeque. (Thanks again, Sam & Fish. Hope Charlotte's still getting a kick out of the box!)
And this, as you can see, is a big, three-burner barbeque, complete with oversized barbeque tools and the obligatory cold beer. See how bright and shiny they are when they're new?
This is the first slab of strip loin steak to go on the barbie, a cut worthy of baptising such a fine cooking device.
These are the mushrooms and onions, for flavouring the grill plate.
This is the steak, sizzling and flaring.
Asparagus, because it's in season and absolutely divine with simple seasonings on the hot plate.
And this is the first dinner plate dished up straight off the new barbeque, with soft buttered rolls and steak sauce to round it out.

What can I conclude about barbeques now that I've had a chance to get used to using one that is bigger than a large frying pan?

Well, I'll be honest and say that yes, good long tools are a requirement. I never really doubted it, but until I got this barbie, I never needed them.

As for cleaning, well, that's another story. I make an effort to not only scrape down the grills and to burn off the dead carbon, but I also slice a couple of lemons and smear them over the plate while it's still hot to get it all citrusy clean. My conclusion is that it's well worth the time to take a few minutes to clean the barbeque after I'm done cooking on it than to open it up a couple of weeks later to find it all greasy and smelly and crawling with critters.

On another subject, this post marks my return to the blogosphere after a near silence for the past two-and-a-half months. Thanks for sticking around and for popping back to check in. I had a very focused couple of months working on the new draft of a novel that is my current obsession, and then we had a nice couple of weeks away in the Marlborough Sounds, sailing and rowing and drinking wine, mostly.

I'm back into it now, but I rather suspect that I will be light on the blogging until I've put the complete rewrite of this novel to bed, which might take me a couple more months.

By way of apology, my next post will be cheesecake.

Garden Update Summer 2010

I know it might seem like this blog has ground to a halt.

(Yes, I went there. It's an awful pun, but it was really begging for it.)

However, we are still alive down here, there has just been an awful lot going on and a whole load of reasons why I haven't been blogging, the main one of which, as I've said before, is that I'm spending a lot more time doing what I should be doing, which is writing and submitting that writing to publishers.

However, I thought it was about time to share with you all how our efforts at growing a garden have gone this year. You might remember our little vege patch that we planted back in August. It did pretty well.

We got lots of leafy greens...
...cauliflowers...
...broccoli...
...peas...
...lettuce...
... and we're still getting strawberries - as long as a certain 3-year-old doesn't pick them the moment they go from green to pink.

We're also getting little cherry tomatoes coming through one at a time, which is about as well as anyone I know that has tried to grow tomatoes has done this season.

Overall it has been a success. My usual pumpkin and potato patch up the back was left this year to ... er ... lie fallow. Yes, it might look like it went to wrack and ruin on the outside, but there is a method to the madness. Fixing nitrogen to the soil and all that, you know.

Honest. It's not just another excuse for being slack...

A Temporary and Unexpected Hiatus

Let me start by apologising to those of my readers who have been popping back here to catch up on Freshly Ground over the past three weeks, only to find that I haven't been updating.

No, there has been no family calamity, nor was I abducted by aliens or a shadowy government organisation both of whom wanted me to cook for them the best meal they've ever had. None of those things happened.

Quite simply, with the silly season upon us and work and life getting busy again, something had to give, and blogging seems to have been the thing that gave.

As well as that, I have another opportunity to submit a novel to a publisher, and I'm pouring every spare moment I can find into working on getting that polished up until it shines. I was doing this about this time last year too, but for a different publisher, and it is always an explosively productive time for me, whether the submission is successful or not.

I very much doubt that I will blog here again before next year, although I may try to get some of my in-progress photos of our vege garden up this weekend coming. It really has been something to be proud of.

And with that I must leave you again, so that I can go and grovel to my readers at The Podagogue. Catch you all later!

A Curry Odyssey Episode 10: Mum's Tangy Sweet Curry

I love it when I can combine two themes into one post: In this case, we have the latest installment in the Great Curry Odyssey, as well as another fast, healthy meal for you crazy NaNoWriMo participants.

By fast, I mean quick to prepare. So long as you can get this ready and leave it to stew for a couple of hours, then it won't take you away from your frantic writing pace for long.

This is the one that started it all; my Mum's famous Tangy Sweet Curry. It's by and large more of a British dish than an Indian one, but if you can get your hands on a good pre-mixed curry powder then there's no reason why this shouldn't stand in for a regular Indian feast. Takes about 15 minutes to prepare. Serve it up with bread rolls and you don't even have to spend time cooking rice.

Tangy Sweet Curry
(Serves 4)Ingredients
500g Stewing Steak, tenderised and cubed
Olive Oil for frying
8 Garlic cloves, minced
2 Onions, sliced
Freshly Ground Pepper and Salt
1T Flour (Use Potato Flour to make this Gluten-Free)
150g Tomato Paste
1/3 Cup Water
1 C Beef Stock
2t Curry Powder
2t Honey
1 Apple, cored and chopped
1 Kumara, peeled and diced
Heat the oil in a large pan. Soften the garlic and onions. Add the meat, season with the salt and pepper and flour and brown. Add the tomato paste and water.
Into your beef stock mix the curry powder and honey, then add to the pot.
Add the chopped apple and kumara. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Boil up some peas, steam a few carrots and some broccoli, and serve with buttered bread rolls.

Quicky Pizza

This blog might have left you with the impression that we eat ridiculously well every night (and most mornings, too).

I can assure you, that is not really the case. It is certainly our intention, but we're just as hard-pressed for time, energy and budget as everyone else out there.

Weeknights especially seem to go the way of meals that are as fast and simple as we can manage. Most of the flash and interesting stuff, the time-consuming stuff, happens on the weekends. It's sort of like the magic of television, only it's the internet.

But you saw it here, so it must be true, right?

Anyway, over the next few posts, I plan to intersperse a few more of our weeknight meals, and the little things we like to do to keep our meals vibrant, healthy, and tasty.

Here we have really quick, simple pizza.

The bases were in the freezer, leftover from another night of homemade pizza.

Then all you need is a brush of olive oil, a little bit of minced garlic, a slather of pizza sauce, some sliced salami, onion, and capsicum, and a grating of cheese.
In the oven for 18 minutes, and served with salad. Dinner made in less than half an hour.

More of these will follow, because I'm sure there are folks out there who will find them useful and hopefully inspiring.

'Urban Driftwood' Review

Our first real review has come in for Urban Driftwood.

Please take a minute to pop over to Tim Jones' website, Book in the Trees, and read what he has to say about our little book.

If you haven't already, you can get a free PDF copy of Urban Driftwood from my homepage, or you can pick up a paperback from Lulu.com ($9.00US plus freight).

We are currently recording and editing an audio version which will be released as a free podcast as well, so keep your ears open for that. Watch this space for more details.

If you've already read Urban Driftwood and enjoyed it, I'd really love it if you could take a minute to rate it and even write a quick review over at Lulu.com.

A Curry Odyssey Episode 8: Chicken Masala

The Great Curry Odyssey continues!

I'll have to tell the truth here. All that hard work with the spices and the grinding and the frying and the blending and all that was never going to catch on. I think it's like Marmite or Chicken & Waffles; you really have to be brought up with it for it to make sense. That's not to say I've given up, mind you, or that I won't plunge into the hard work of real curry again. But for now, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm going to be looking for some shortcuts.

(Yes, you're right, I am ashamed. I'm weak and broken and deserve to be given the task of grinding coriander seeds and lemongrass to paste by hand for a thousand years with tennis elbow, but hey, that's not going to happen, is it?)

So for my first stop on the road to curry-shortcut-ville, I took the Garam Masala turnoff. I know that this is a vagary, but it is also a redemption of sorts. Garam Masala can be as unique as the person blending it. You can either pick it off the shelf at a supermarket, buy it pre-ground from your local Indian or Asian grocer, or, if you have the talent and the tastebuds, you can grind your own. Essentially Garam Masala is a blend of ground dried spices, and can include anything from coriander seeds to turmeric to cinnamon to cumin.

I got a nice pre-blended one from the little Indian grocer who used to be across the road, but which went out of business some months ago. It's probably going a wee bit stale, but it still suits us, and that's the one I used in this recipe.


Gluten-Free Casserole Chicken Masala

(Serves 6)
Ingredients
3kg Chicken Pieces, thawed, skin on
Freshly Ground Pepper and Salt
4T Potato Flour
2T Garam Masala
1/2 a whole bulb of Garlic, minced
4T Avocado Oil
2t Balsamic Vinegar
Olive Oil for frying
1/2 C White Wine
150g Tomato Paste
3 Onions, sliced
1 400g tin Chopped Tomatoes

Toss the chicken in the salt and pepper, flour, Garam Masala, garlic, avocado oil, and vinegar.
Fry in batches in a heavy pan.
Place the browned chicken in an oven dish.
Deglaze the pan with the white wine, then add the tomatoes and onions. Pour over the chicken.
Bake, uncovered, at 200C for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.
The meat should be falling off the bone. Serve with rice and steamed veges.