Quiche Darveed : This is one I arrived at by the simple process of elaborating on bacon and egg pie. (Vegetarian version available) It wasn't until much later I discovered that I had re-invented Quiche Lorraine, or at least a close relation.
Zucchini Slice : An adaptation of an internet recipe. Absolutely delicious, but main claim to inclusion is that it uses up some of the surplus crop of courgettes. For vegetarians, leave out the bacon and throw in some chopped olives and or blue cheese pieces.
Winter Quiche: Developed from the Zucchini Slice above, but using winter vegetables. Excellent.
Curries, Chillies and Pulao
Dave's Curry (See also Dave on Curry): This is a handy basic curry for those who like playing with lots of spice jars. Can be adapted to lamb, pork, beef or chicken.
Dave's Pork Pulao: This is basically an adaptation of my standard curry mixture to a pulao format. This being pork rather than beef or lamb, I have increased the caraway/aniseed component slightly and reduced the clove/cinnamon/nutmeg component.
Chicken Pulao: Possibly a wannabe recipe, when I got it called a "biriyani". Fairly elaborate but if I can do it, so can you, and the end result is excellent. A vehicle for the consumption of cardamom which is far and away the predominant spice in the recipe.
Dave's Vegetable Curry: (Contains optional meat) Yet another and, I modestly claim, a successful attempt to present the annual zucchini blessing in edible form at table. Bringing dairy elements into the curry, and dicing the zucchini to 1cm are I think key elements. I imagine you could probably substitute choko or lauki or pumpkin for the zucchini.
Franita's Curry : Franita is a wonderful cook I found on the internet. I originally used her "curry" mix for a vegetarian chickpea and cauliflower curry and then began using the preground curry mix in a variety of other ways. Whereas my mix is substantial and complex in its flavour - a bit like a rich fruit cake - hers is lighter and more immediate in its impact - staying with cakes, a bit more like, say, an apricot fruit loaf.
Tom Yum Chicken (or Tuna, or Hapuka or Kingfish) A baked and basted delight, about as simple as it gets. Theoretically there's nothing to stop this becoming Laksa Chicken or Pad Thai Chicken or Tandoori Chicken, etc, depending on which of the various pastes you want to feature.
Dave's Laksadaisical Pork (or Chicken) You can use a laksa paste for this or make your own up from the recipe linked to this page. Laksa is authentically a soup, but as an independent spirit, I play around with the ingredients to suit. Tasty, and with a bit of a zing if you want it.
Bacon and Bean Chilli: A wonderful winter weekend
meal when you have a little time for the fiddly bits during the day. Or
soak the beans in the morning, and cook during the late evening, to serve
the next day.
Beef Dhansak: Dhansak is
a Gujurati dish. It is a spicy hot yet almost sweet and sour curry,
which consists of meat or fish combined with a lentil dal. It is also
possible to make a vegetarian version of this dish by using paneer (a
kind of compressed cottage cheese) or eggplant or pumpkin/kumara in
place of the meat or fish.
Samoan Chicken Pulao: This is an adaptation of tsapasui (see elsewhere) to a pulao format, using rice instead of bean curd noodles.
Beef Vindaloo: The essence of a vindaloo is that it
is both hot and sour. The heat is not just a matter of extra
chilli - it has a strong element of mustard and black pepper as well. Onions also feature strongly. They
must be cooked until they begin to brown. Transparent is not enough. Burned
is too much.
Meatloaf, Sausages, and Rissoles
Meatloaf Helensville: A hearty jam roll style combo of meatloaf and pate, with the pate flavour permeating the meatloaf with a flavour not unlike a good leberwurst, but with a slightly gruntier texture. Hot or cold.
Whitebait Fritters: This recipe goes back to a time when Dad rarely ended the whitebait season without a couple of hundred pounds of whitebait in the freezer, when it was still common to come home with 2-3 gallons of whitebait after a days fishing. Before cellphones, Dad and the neighbour used a homing pigeon to let the other one know whether the whitebait were running. You can adapt the recipe to canned salmon or tuna, and some of the Thai or Indian pastes add interest when required, but NEVER with whitebait.
Dave's Meatloaf: I made a variant of this recipe
in the seventies at Drury with instant coffee in the basting sauce - not my idea, but it
had it's own strange charm - and at Centrepoint, Murray and Lynne Faulkner
brought this dish to close on perfection. Because it is to some extent
dependent on what is around in the pantry at the time, it varies a bit
in final effect, but it is a beauty. Clifford always wraps up the leftovers
and takes them home with him for lunch next day.
Dave's Sausages: No big deal. Either in the oven or in a covered heavy-base pan, this is a simple method of reducing the amount of fat in the finished product. What I like about this process is that you preserve the particularly delicious flavour of sausages browned in fat while actually reducing the amount of fat in the finished meal. You can do this of course by boiling them first and then frying or barbecuing but this is a one-stop-shop as it were.
PS. Have you tried Dave's Gringo-Killer Sweet Chilli Sauce with these?
Dave's Pork or Chicken Rissoles: I grew up with pork and chicken as luxury meats and beef and mutton the staples of our home diet. Dad killed our home-grown lamb (or mutton, as the case might be). Recently, with the price of lamb and beef heading past the Sky Tower, pork and chicken have been increasingly competitive, and particularly so in the case of mince (ground meat). This recipe was devised to make about 9 rissoles about 60-65 cm across - enough to fit on the small George Foreman electric griller.
Casseroles and Stews
Tsapasui (Sapasui): This is a dish my Samoan Uncle Wes used to make and bring to family occasions, always cooked the day before, and reheated immediately before serving. Wes cooked it in a pot. I like a slow casserole version.
Its taste is a little reminiscent of a sate that has drifted east and gentled somewhat in doing so. The name, I suspect, is a variant of "Chop Suey", though, as chop suey consists almost completely of vegetables in it's basic form, I'm not sure of the precise nature of the relationship.
Fast Chicken Casserole: This came together
in a hurry when my wife, who is a midwife, brought a colleague home for
a meal after a birth. I had about an hour's notice.
Rachael's Boeuf Bourguignon: A classic dish. Rachael served us this one when we went over for a birthday celebration, and I made sure I didn't leave without the details.
Pasta and Noodles
Tsapasui (Sapasui): This is a dish my Samoan Uncle Wes used to make and bring to family occasions, always cooked the day before, and reheated immediately before serving. Wes cooked it in a pot. I like a slow casserole version.
Its taste is a little reminiscent of a sate that has drifted east and gentled somewhat in doing so. The name, I suspect, is a variant of "Chop Suey", though, as chop suey consists almost completely of vegetables in it's basic form, I'm not sure of the precise nature of the relationship. [Website sources cite canned vegetables and pisupo/elapi (Hellaby's Canned Corned Beef) as "traditional" ingredients, but Wes always made it this way.]
Fish
Whitebait Fritters: This recipe goes back to a time when Dad rarely ended the whitebait season without a couple of hundred pounds of whitebait in the freezer, when it was still common to come home with 2-3 gallons of whitebait after a days fishing. Before cellphones, Dad and the neighbour used a homing pigeon to let the other one know whether the whitebait were running. You can adapt the recipe to canned salmon or tuna, and some of the Thai or Indian pastes add interest when required, but NEVER with whitebait.
Tom Yum Chicken (or Tuna, or Hapuka or Kingfish) A baked and basted delight, about as simple as it gets. Theoretically there's nothing to stop this becoming Laksa Chicken or Pad Thai Chicken or Tandoori Chicken, etc, depending on which of the various pastes you want to feature. You can even make up your own pastes.
Baked and Grilled
Baked Neck/Leg Chops: I was raised on a farm where Dad ran a few cull Romneys on land too steep for market garden and we more than once ate very tough chops out of Mum's frypan. Lamb chops .... Well. no. This recipe I found in Marguerite Patten's 1960's classic "Cookery in Colour" which I bought with my green stamps in London in 1968. It produces a tender and juicy and wonderfully flavoured chop, even from suspect "lamb". Neck chops, also, even from lambs, are often a little too tough to fry and they do well in this recipe.
