chicken wings from heaven!

Chicken Wings With Orange Tomato Glaze - Apples for Jam (Tessa Kiros)

Ingredients

12 Chicken Wings

110 g (3 1/4 oz) Light Brown Sugar

375 ml (13 Fl oz/1 1/2 cups) Fresh Orange Juice

185 ml (6 Fl oz/3/4 cup) Tomato Passata (Pureed Tomatoes)

1 Tbsp Soy Sauce

1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

Method

Preheat the oven to 160˚C (315˚F/Gas 2-3). Put the sugar, orange juice, passata, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce in a pan and bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Spread the chicken wings in a baking dish just large enough to fit them in a single layer and pour the sauce over the top. Bake for 2-2 1/2 hours, basting and turning the pieces over every now and then, until the chicken is crispy and sticky and the sauce is a thick glaze. Serve warm, or even at room temperature.

YUM!

easy, you pprob have the ingredients in the cupboard already... next time im going to leave out a bit of the sugar and add some orange zest to give it a bit more zing! we added some purple tiger chillies (little baby ones that pack a punch) whole, fresh from the garden, but with the tops cut off and punctured, it let some heat out into the sauce, which was perfect for me, and bf ate the chillies whole (and cried a little bit lol). Had no passata, used whole canned tomatoes (without the juice) just blitzed...

I served it with thinly sliced roast potato chips (that Steve made - delish) and broccoli - would be awesome with a crunchy salad or coleslaw with a zingy dressing to cut thru the sweetness/richness of the sticky marinade... will be making this again, the meat falls off the bones... make it!!

btw I didnt manage to get to get a photo of it... because we just ate them without thinking about it! Ill try to do better next time :D

Little moments that make my world...

http://8tracks.com/delihopes/little-moments-that-make-my-world

a fab playlist from one of my fave music websites, 8tracks. Users log in, submit playlists with at least 8 tracks and you can peruse at your leisure, and find new music!

Do yourself a favour... listen and then discover your own :)

Long time between drinks...

It has been a very long time since I last blogged... I was living in this little town with not much to do really, but work, cook, watch tele and blog. However things have changed ALOT since then!

I was only ever on a temporary contract at my old school but was unsure whether or not I would be asked back - turns out the school had their staffing allocation cut, and no secondary teachers were hired, aside from the core they already had - so now with one less teacher, they're actually a bit understaffed. But oh well, I did a fair bit of relief teaching there which was cool, as well as at another nearby school just outside of Perth, who ended up offering me a whole terms worth of relief for a long service leave cover. Its pretty awesome as Im teaching English and SOSE which Im loving. The English not so much, as its quite specific and upon inspection of what I had planned to teach (with very little direction from the other English teacher - read, none) was told it wasn't good enough at all. However, no one has come in to tell me what I should be doing instead... So I'm just going ahead with what I had planned! The kids are a bit rough sometimes, but Im getting used to them, and them me. They're realising Im here for the whole term and I think they like me :)

Now because of the uncertainty of my work situation this year, and how much relief work I would get, or when/if I would get offered a permanent position, I decided to enrol again at uni, and worst case scenario I could study full time, get Centrelink and at least be able to pay the rent! Turns out I got plenty of relief work but hey, silver lining, Im now studying a Graduate Certificate of Behaviour Management and Im really enjoying it. Im finding the work really interesting, relevant and I feel like my teaching is improving because of it, which obviously makes it alot less stressful day to day! Im actually meant to be writing an assignment now, but the internet is failing me and Im feeling quite uninspired... I churned out alot over the weekend and am struggling to carry it on!

Another new addition to my life - a boyfriend, who I now live with. All happened quite fast - but he's amazing, and were both really happy living together :)

Thats about it for the update on my life at the moment, but Ill write more often and post pics of stuff n things...

Rolled beef brisket, chilli naan and couscous salad

Well its been ages since I wrote, and since I have alot more time on my hands at the moment, I should probably get writing!

Anyway I went to the shops the other day and the meat was on special, so, amongst other things, I bought a rolled brisket of beef... not really knowing what I was planning on doing with it! After a bit of searching I ended up discovering its a slow roasting joint, and alot of people forget about them in the slow cooker for ages...

I without any real plans about what I was going to cook with the beef, I oiled it with garlic oil, bit of S&P and left it in the oven for about 5 hours on 75, to cook really slowly... it remained super tender the whole way through, and at the end I turned the heat up to about 180 and blasted it so it went nice and brown and delicious!

I served it with a couscous salad, which I made with chicken stock. I had previously that day cut up some cherry tomatoes and spring onions, added salt to draw the moisture out and added some vinegar. I left them in the fridge for the afternoon and when I needed them I poured all the juicy tomatoes into the couscous, seasoned and mixed in a glug of garlic olive oil - delish!!

I used a recipe from a member of the foodie website Through the Oven Door for the naan breads I made... I had no mint so just used a red and green chilli. I found the mix to be really really wet and impossible to knead so I had to add quite a bit more flour... it also didnt rise but thats not the fault of the recipe, I think that dried yeast just hates me... anyway I rolled them out to around 5mm and grilled them on the griddle pan. They took a little while but I think next time I need to be more patient, and wait for the "bubbles" to appear, and not have the heat on too high! Also there is to be NO oil on the dough before cooking, you brush garlic butter over it at the end once its cooked... Im going to try it in the oven next time...

We didnt wait long enough to get a picture of it, but it was really really nice! the meat was great and there were leftovers for my lunch today! always good!

Seedling progress

I am amazed at the difference putting my seeds under the bathroom heat light has made! You can look at the seeds at say 6pm and go back at 10pm and see things have popped up that werent there before... I had 7 leeks at about 7:30pm, and went back and had another look at about 10:30 and there were 12, it boggles the mind! You can see that the beans are unfolding over a matter of an hour or 2!

If you look at the 2 pictures you can kinda see how much progress has been made over 24 hours. The darker one is from saturday night, and the lighter one, sunday night... In the top left going across is: purple beans, heirloom tomatoes, rocket and beans again. On the bottom left going across is spring onion, sage, leeks and spring onions again...

You can see that on saturday there were only a couple of beans coming up but sunday, nearly all of them! Sunday there was I think one maybe two leeks - now there are THIRTEEN! A tomato has come up, so have a few spring onions, and the beans have just gone nuts!

Strawberries, farm fresh!

Today I stopped by the Berry Sweet strawberry farm in Bullsbrook to grab some "seconds" strawberries from their farm shop. For $5 you get a pretty big punnet of their top strawberries, which is cheaper than in the shops already... However for between $8-$10 (depending on the size of the box you end up with) you get a massive box of strawberries which are their second rate quality, not fit for the supermarkets... the picture on the right is of my $10 box of "not fit for supermarket" berries... some look a little bit old, but I've gotten berries like that in the punnet you get from the supermarket, so Im not complaining at all!!

When I went to take the photos of the berries, I sat on the kitchen floor, taking pics... eat a strawberry, take a photo... strawberry, photo, berry, photo... They're so nice and sweet and so juicy!

But what am I going to do with them?? Ideas Ive had, or been given that are very viable, are margaritas, jam, and cheesecake... Strawberries and cointreau seem to be a popular combination, I might try a strawberry and orange cheesecake tomorrow - since I have a few oranges to get rid of too, after visiting a work colleagues farm, and her offloading a number of oranges, a huge broccoli, cabbage, and 6 free range eggs!

Life in the Chittering Valley is pretty good :)

Germination!

2 weeks ago, in 8 little black plastic punnets (that I bought for $1.30) I planted 6 different kinds of seeds in special seed potting mix... Rocket, purple climbing beans, heirloom tomatoes, leeks, sage and spring onions have been planted, and waited upon by one fairly impatient gardener!

The rocket took about a week to show signs of life, and the little dicots are about 2cm tall now! I took those seeds straight to school for the kids to plant, in the hope that something they've sown will germinate quickly and spark their interest! So Im looking forward to being able to add rocket to my meals in the near future, in the knowledge that when it looks like they're going to run out, they germinate quickly and Ill be back on my way!

Tonight I went and had another look, in the vain hope SOMETHING will have sprouted... Upon having a look I think I acted like a child at christmas when I saw a bean had sprouted! I had a little poke around and found that more were starting to come up!! Without digging too far in and disturbing the little seeds, I found that quite a few had germinated so I think its pretty safe to say, that I'm going to have at most, 16 purple bean plants! I also noticed something else coming up, much smaller, just poking its little head out, but I cant remember what it is... I think its either leek or sage, I cant remember... Either way, its on the up!

I think things may have gone faster if I had've chosen a better spot for them, because they didnt get as much sunlight as they should have, I think... So I've decided that, if I remember, Im going to have the seeds outside in the sun during the day, and for part of the night, in the bathroom under the heat light... I dont know how that will go, but I worked on a flower farm in Queensland for a month when I was backpacking around, and in order to get the Chrysanthemums nice and tall, so they had long stems for good bunches, they were under lights all night, and obviously, sun all day. Im hoping this same idea will work for the germination of seeds - they need sunlight to grow, and Im assuming the grow upwards in the search for sunlight, so if theres light on more often, Im thinking they're going to grow a bit faster? Looking at the picture, it doesnt look very impressive... But there are bean shoots coming up in the top left and right punnets, and I honestly think, in the last hour, after I gave them more water and lots of light, a few others that might have needed another day before I saw them, have started to come up! More to come, but I think the light idea is a good one!

I suppose this means Im going to have to get busy on getting the garden ready?! There are ALOT of weeds out there, still! I actually may have teed up a sheep or 2 to get rid of them! Ahhh the country life :)