Month: December 2011 (page 2 of 5)

The Bombadil-Dark Santa connection…

The Bombadil-Dark Santa connection… – This is weird. (Snook – this is for you.)

Aussie Jingle Bells

Aussie Jingle Bells
The Snook has been singing this song every Christmas for as long as I’ve known him, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen/heard the original. It’s awesome. (I predict my Dad will like it.) I feel like I might have to do an annotated version for all you Yanks though to explain the references! 🙂

Chibi Game of Thrones house banners

Chibi Game of Thrones house banners

Re-post: Geekery and the humanities

Re-post: Geekery and the humanities – This.

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #35: Steak Indian-Style

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #35: Steak Indian-Style
This was our 35th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We haven’t given up yet! We are still going! We’re just a few weeks behind. This is one we had a couple weeks ago, and frankly it wasn’t that memorable. It was “Steak Indian-Style with Spinach & Paneer Salad, Naan Breads, and Mango Dessert.” We chose it primarily because mangoes came into season! Unfortunately I don’t have the time saved on my phone, but I seem to remember it coming in around the 34 minute mark. The Snook was on chef’s duty for this one.

Steak Indian-Style

Substitutions: We couldn’t find Patak’s Jalfrezi paste, so we went with Balti instead. We left the cress out of the salad. We also had an unplanned substitution for the naan breads, but you’ll see about that soon enough. Other than that, everything was as written in the recipe.

Quick verdict: Okay, Indian style steak?? THAT’S NOT A THING. Most Indians don’t even eat beef, much less marinate it in curry paste. It doesn’t taste bad; it’s just a weird idea. That aside, this meal was mostly okay. However, it’s one of the ones where I don’t really know how to eat it. There are just lots of small components, along with dips and such, and it’s just kind of confusing. Like, am I meant to be making a little open-faced sandwich? Or is it more of a salad? We liked all of the individual components well enough. We both rated it an 8 out of 10. I’m not really sure who you’d make this for, though. I sure won’t be serving it to my Indian friends!

Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready to go. The grill pan was put on high heat and the oven turned on to 180C.

First up are the ingredients for the steak: Patak’s curry paste, lemon, rump steaks, and coriander.

Steak ingredients

For the curry sauce, we used some more of the paste along with a tin of coconut milk. For the yoghurt dip, we used yoghurt, mint, and lemon.

Yoghurt dip and curry sauce

Here are the naan breads along with the ingredients for the salad: baby spinach, coriander, alfalfa sprouts, carrot, paneer, sesame seeds, and lemon.

Naan breads and salad ingredients

For the dessert, we needed mangoes, icing sugar, mint, and lime.

Dessert ingredients

Pots and pans, ready to go! We had a grill pan for the steaks, a saucepan for the curry sauce, and a frying pan for the paneer.

Pots and pans

And he’s off! The Snook began by making a marinade for the steaks out of curry paste and lemon juice.

Squeezing lemon

He added olive oil, salt, and pepper and mixed it up.

Marinade

Then he rubbed the marinade all over the steaks and set them aside for a while.

Coating the steak

Now for the yoghurt dip. He spooned yoghurt into a bowl and then added mint, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, and salt.

Yoghurt dip

He started the salad by tipping the spinach into a bowl and tearing over most of the coriander leaves.

Salad leaves

He topped it with alfalfa sprouts, and then sliced over thin ribbons of carrot.

Slicing the carrot

For the naan– WAIT! THE NAAN WERE ALL MOULDY. GROSSSSSSS. So, no naan for us. We made do with some slices of sourdough. (We just bought those naan too! I got Coles to give me a refund.)

Mouldy naan

Time to cook the steaks! They went into the grill pan.

Grilling steaks

For the curry sauce, the Snook mixed some of the curry paste together in a saucepan with coconut milk and left it to heat up.

Curry sauce

Next he sliced up the paneer…

Paneer

…quickly jumped to turn over the steaks…

Steaks

…and then placed the paneer into the frying pan with olive oil to fry. Multi-tasking!

Paneer frying

Curry sauce is just about done.

Curry sauce

Once the paneer was golden on the bottom, he flipped it over to cook the other side.

Golden paneer

The steak was finished so he put it into a board to rest.

Resting steak

To finish the paneer, he sprinkled on salt and sesame seeds.

Cooked paneer

Lastly, the dessert. He started by cutting off the mango cheeks…

Slicing the mango

…and making the customary “hedgehog.”

Mango hedgehog

Then he sprinkled the cheeks with icing sugar.

Icing sugar

A bit of mint and a squeeze of lime finished them off!

Finished dessert

He finished the salad by placing the cooked pieces of paneer around the edge of the bowl and tipping the excess sesame seeds over the top.

Salad

Here’s the finished salad!

Spinach and paneer salad

Lastly, he sliced up the pieces of steak…

Slicing steak

…before dressing them with coriander and the juices from the board.

Steak

The final condiments: curry sauce and yoghurt dip.

Dips

And here’s the completed meal: Steak Indian-Style, Spinach & Paneer Salad, “Naan” Breads, and Mango Dessert.

Finished meal

Tasting notes: Meh. Everything was fine. It probably would’ve been nicer with naan rather than sourdough, but that was out of our control. The salad was nice and crunchy, and everybody likes fried paneer. The steak was good, though I don’t think such a quick marinade imparts much to the final product. The two dipping sauces were mostly wasted, since we didn’t really know what to do with them. And the dessert was really just a mango! So a simple one, and also a weird one. This one feels a little like filler. We both rated it an 8 out of 10, but I can’t really see us bothering to make it again.

Stay tuned for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is Gayer, Steamier, and Explodier Than Before

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is Gayer, Steamier, and Explodier Than Before – With Stephen Fry playing Mycroft as a nudist? SIGN ME UP.

RunningBlog: Week 50

Week 50
Holding steady. Work has been really busy in these last weeks before Christmas, so I haven’t been able to squeeze in any training sessions at Spudds. I did still manage my three runs though!

Dec. 11: 7.65km
Dec. 14: 5.17km
Dec. 15: 2.76km (walking)
Dec. 16: 5.86km
Total this week: 18.68km (11.6mi)
Total in 2011: 1007.85km (630mi)

And I’ve crossed the 1000km mark! There isn’t really any chance I’m going to rack up 93km in the next two weeks, so I’m not quite going to reach my goal of 1100km in 2011. But I’m already past last year’s total, so I count that as a win. I’m also very happy to see that my fitness is recovering nicely from being sick. I still have a post-viral cough, but my doctor confirmed my lungs are clear and I’m good to run. My speed has been coming back a little more with every workout. Onwards and upwards…

Three Cheers for Little Girl Spock

Three Cheers for Little Girl Spock – That is the cutest, coolest thing I’ve ever seen. See? I’d have a kid if I could guarantee it would be AWESOME and like AWESOME NERD THINGS.

Bokeh Christmas Tree

Bokeh Christmas Tree – We have no tree this year. I waited too long and every single artificial tree at Broadway was sold out last weekend!

I AM A GODDESS OF EFFICIENCY – mlkshk

I AM A GODDESS OF EFFICIENCY – mlkshk – I grabbed the final frame to use as my iPhone wallpaper.