Potato Gnocchi with creamy pumpkin sauce

A comforting family favorite – we love to to this one when we have a bit of pumpkin and want to do something a little different.

Ingredients:

Packet of potato gnocchi – or make your own if you want

Either a lot of diced pumpkin or some diced pumpkin and some pumpkin soup (tin or home made)

1 onion diced

1 cup chicken or vegetable stock

1 cup cream

 

Method:

Cook the pumpkin and onion in the stock until cooked.  If you didn’t use soup, then mash some of the pumpkin with a fork, leave some diced pumpkin,

Add the cream and heat.

Thicken with a little cornflour if needed to make a nice sauce consistency

Cook the Gnocchi – which usually only takes a few mins.  Drain pasta, and combine the pasta and sauce, and serve with a little parmesan.

You could add a little garlic to this, and even add more veggies.

 

Creamy Potato Soup with whole dill seeds

I am stealing this recipe from my sister.  It’s one she always used to make me on those cold winter days, when you just needed warm comfort food.  It’s also a handy one to do when you have a glut of potatoes.  The dill seeds add a lovely bite to the soup.  We have often had this for lunch, and there really is something very comforting about it.   I hope you like it as much as we do.

Ingredients:
4 medium potatoes (diced)
2 medium onions (diced)
2 cups chicken stock
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup milk
30gms butter
1 tablespoon flour
300mls cream
1/4 teaspoon dill seeds
salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Boil the potatoes and onions in the stock and water until soft
Puree and set aside
Melt butter, add flour and blend until smooth
Still in cream and milk
Add seasonings
combine with puree and reheat.

Enjoy.

Easy Peasy Curried Sausages

A long time family favorite this meal is perfect when you just can’t be bothered cooking or you have other things to get done.  It’s easy, and usually all ingredients are on hand.  The balance between sausages and veggies often varies in our meal depending which we have more of.

Ingredients:

6-8 long thin beef sausages.
2-4 cups mixed diced veggies
2  “dutch curry and rice” soup pkts (the ones that make a family pot of soup).
water (enough to almost cover the rest of the ingredients – better to add less and increase it if you need to)

basmati rice to accompany the meal.

Method:

Boil the sausages in a large pot of water for at least 20 mins to get all the fat out of the sausages and cook them.

Drain the water, and cut the sausages up into chunks, return them to pot and add the diced vegetables, the two packets of soup mix and enough water to almost cover everything

Cook for about 20 mins, stirring regularly.  The soup should thicken up and make a nice sauce.  Add more water if you need to.

Serve with rice.

Cream free Carbonara (egg and bacon pasta)

We keep chickens (which is awesome by the way) and so the one thing we always have a lot of is eggs.  One of the best recipes we have for a great filling meal is this one.  It has no cream in it, yet you wouldn’t know. Try it – and let me know what you think.

Ingredients:

Pasta of choice – we use Spaghetti no, 4
Garlic (1-2 cloves crushed)
1-2 Onions , diced
Bacon (personal choice here how much – at least 3 rashers)
Dash of oil
good handful of fresh parsley (fresh is best but dry is fine if that is all you have)
4-6 eggs, beaten.

Method:

Cook your pasta as per instructions (reserve 1 cup of liquid from the pasta water before you drain it)

Panfry the bacon, onion, garlic and parsley until nicely cooked
Add the pasta to the pan and mix in all the bacon mix
Add in some of the reserved water (you want it moist but not swimming so less is best) – start with a tablespoon or two of the water, add more if you think it needs it.

When well combined, add in the egg mix all at once and toss toss toss, until the egg is all cooked.

Serve with parmesan.

Enjoy.

Honey Teriyaki Broken Egg Breakfast for One

 

Keeping chickens mean we always have eggs handy and sometimes on weekends I like to do something a little different to the regular scrambled eggs or omelettes.  I love to play with flavours too and make use of anything I have on hand.

Ingredients:

handful of diced bacon
1/2 a tomato, sliced into 4 wedges
small amount of diced onion or spring onion
1 tablespoon honey teriyaki marinade
1 egg
pinch of shredded cheese

optional:  you can vary these ingredients as much as you like – change quantity, add capsicum, mushrooms, herbs, pepper etc.  But – keep in mind the bacon and the marinade will both add salt, so don’t add any extra salt.

Method:

In a small frypan, add the tomato, onion and bacon and allow them to warm up and brown a little.  I usually wait until it starts “popping”, then I add the marinade and mix well, Cook for another minute, stirring to mix the marinade well,

Break the egg over the top, then using your spatula or a fork, break up the egg and mix into the other ingredients.  Keep it turning with the spatula so all the egg cooks.

Serve on a plate with the ping of shredded cheese over the top.  (if you prefer it cheesier, add more cheese into the egg mix after it has started cooking).