Slow Cooker Week: Wednesday FAIL

Urgh. I'm tired and Offspring is about to be on. Why don't you lot just talk amongst yourselves tonight. Okay?

Slow Cooker Week: (grati)Tuesday

As I'm typing up this post Spike the kitty, who just celebrated his 6 month birthday, is chasing a piece of uncooked penne up and down the hallway. I made a quick pasta dish for dinner and dropped a couple of bits of pasta on the floor and they've kept him amused for the better part of three hours. Cheapest cat toy ever! And highly amusing for the humans of the house too. Gotta love pets that love to cuddle and keep you laughing.

More Slow Cooker tips: Did you know that each time you lift the lid while you're cooking you need to add an extra half hour of cooking time? Well, now you do! So don't lift the lid. Or, if like me you can't resist giving the dinner a bit of a stir, be sure to allow the extra time needed when you're doing your planning and prep.

Got any tips you want to share. Any fab meals you've made in the slow cooker that you think someone else might like to try? Don't be shy...

And here's Tuesday's recipe. Good old Pea and Ham Soup. Easy to make at the best of times but even better in the slow cooker. To be honest, I'm not a huge pea and ham soup fan but Hubby is and, as I am a huge fan on his, I make it a couple of times each winter to make him happy. We generally have it for dinner the night I make it then I freeze the rest in single portions so he can take it for lunch or if we're having an easy dinner over the weekend. Hubby's grandma is also a fan (of him and the soup!) so I usually send her some too.

Pea and Ham Soup

Slow Cooker by Sally Wise

Serves 4-6

3 carrots

1/2 parsnip (optional)

1 onion

300g green split peas

300g bacon bones or ham hock (I generally use bigger because that's what I've got - extra meat is just fine by the carnivorous man I'm married to)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

5 cups water (this is way too thick, I always add more water at the end to thin it a bit).

Peel and dice the carrots and parsnip. Peel and finely dice the onion. Place in the slow cooker with the remaining ingredients and stir.

Place lid on cooker and cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours.

Slow Cooker Week: Monday

Before we get to the slow cooker part of the post, check out my bargain buy...

I picked this up at the post office (of all places) this morning. It was in the clearance display and I couldn't walk past it. $10, flowery, pink and lime green. What more could a girl ask for? At work my cuppa always ends up going cold, I think this is the perfect way to make it stay hot just a little bit longer and hopefully I might even get to drink it!

Right, more slow cooker hints. Some cookbooks say you must brown the meat before you add it to the slow cooker while others tell you not to bother so it really is up to you but I find that browning the meat first makes a huge amount of difference to the end product. Browning the meat seals in the juices and the flavour and, in my opinion, if your making a casserole-y type dish you need to brown the meat first to give it all the extra flavour that turns a good dinner into a great one. Also, if I'm browning the meat (red meat that is, not chicken) I'll dust it in flour first - that lets the sauce really thicken up and get some nice texture. Otherwise I find the sauce/juice ends up really runny and takes away from the flavour too.

Another good tip I was told was to give the inside of your slow cooker bowl a light spray with canola spray. It helps stop the food from sticking quite so much and makes it heaps easier when you're doing the washing up.

The recipe I'm sharing now is the one we had for dinner tonight. So, quite literally, straight from the table to you! It's in the current issue of Australian Good Taste as an oven slow cooked meal but I've halved the recipe, changed a couple of things and done it in the slow cooker instead.  It was absolutely delish - Hubby and Offspring #1were most extravagant with their praise. #2 had a boiled egg instead. (But I knew she wouldn't like this, plus she hasn't been terribly well so I offered her egg and toast straight up!) . I served it with some steamed carrots and beans. The photo is absolutely disgusting - this is no reflection on the yumminess of the dish. Do you know how hard it is to make anything brown look appetising?? The original recipe had red chilli in it but as none of us are big chilli fans I left it out.

Slow-Cooked Beef Ribs with Cinnamon and Sweet PotatoAdapted from a recipe in Australian Good Taste, July 2011

Serves 4

1/2 cup plain flour

1kg beef spare ribs

3 tbsp olive oil

1 brown onion, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 tsp finely grated fresh ginger

1/2 tsp paprika

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup beef stock

400g can diced tomatoes

400g sweet potato , peeled, cut into 2cm pieces

1 tbsp honey

Chopped fresh parsley, to serve

1. Switch slow cooker onto low and spray the inside of the bowl lightly with canola spray.  Put flour, ribs, salt and pepper in a ziplock bag. Seal bag and shake until ribs are thoroughly coated with flour. Heat 1 tblsp oil in a frying pan and cook half the ribs for 2 minutes each side, or until browned. Transfer to slow cooker and repeat with remaining ribs.

2. Heat remaining oil in the pan  and cook the onion, stirring occasionally, for 3-4 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic, ginger, paprika and cinnamon. Cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes or until aromatic. Add the stock and tomato and stir through. Bring to the boil then allow to simmer for 5 minutes.

3. Pour spiced tomato mixture over the ribs in the slow cooker. Add sweet potato and honey and stir to combine.

4. Cover with lid and cook on low for 7 hours or until the meat is falling of the bone. Scatter chopped parsley over to serve.

It's Slow Cooker Week!

In my (totally self-proclaimed) role as leader of all cooking, I do declare this to be The Week Of The Slow Cooker. Yep, we're celebrating that terrific invention that, through my 70's childhood came in garish orange, poo brown and vile green and was known as the Crock Pot. Now they're all sleek and shiny and chrome and pretty but they do exactly the same job - cook delicious meals over a long period of time leaving you free to get on with your day.

I don't pretend to be an expert on them. My first one lasted about four years and now I'm onto my second and love, love, loving it. I'm one of those cooks that's great with a recipe but not so great without one so it took me a while to get the hang of switching a regular recipe to make it work out in the slow cooker but eventually I got there. I did find that the slow cooker recipe books that were Australian or English were much nicer than the American ones. The former were full of recipes with fresh ingredients where I found that the latter relied on lots of tinned, canned or bottled goods. A couple of my favourites are Slow Cooker by Sally Wise, Slow Cookers: more than 100 easy recipes published by Murdoch Books and The Australian Women's Weekly Slow Cooker . All terribly original titles, I'm sure you'll agree! I also find lots of good recipes in the foodies mags, particularly Australian Good Taste and Super Food Ideas.

Here are the slow cooker recipes I've posted before. Have a look through and see if anything takes your fancy.

Corned Beef

Pumpkin Soup

Chicken Cordon Bleu

I'm actually a little surprised that I can only find three slow cooker recipes on here - if I'm doing lamb shanks, beef hotpot or a roast of pretty much any description they're always done in the slow cooker and I know I put one for Lancashire Hotpot on the facebook page a week or so ago

So, what do you want to know about slow cookers? Are you trying to convert a recipe but not sure how? Are you searching for a particular recipe? Have you got a great recipe you want to share? Let me know and I'll open it up for you all to chime in and provide answers. And by the end of the week, hopefully, we'll all have some yummy new ideas for dinner!

Stopping To Appreciate The View

Of course this could also have been titled "Now You Know How Easily I Get Sidetracked And End Up Running Late!" But I thought that was a bit long.

Yesterday morning the sun was up late and it was wet, cold and misty out. As I was doing the regular morning rush of organising kids, sorting school bags, making lunches and getting myself ready for work I glanced out the front window. The sun was shining through the trees and bouncing through the mist and it looked all spooky and beautiful at the same time.

So I did what any good blogger does. Ignored the ever-more-quickly ticking clock, grabbed my camera and raced outside. And this is what took my breath away.

I'm not a big fan of winter. Even the mild winters we have here in Perth are too wet and cold for my liking but when this appears out my front window... I kinda see the attraction.

Note: Yes, that's more reno stuff in the corner of the picture and yes, it does rather detract from the shot but that's what you get in reno-land.