What I cooked with evaporated milk

A neighbour of Mum's friend is eligible for food parcels from AC Care. She gets tins of evaporated milk in them and with no idea what to use them for she hands the tins to mum's friend, who gives them to Mum, who in turn hands them to me.

I am sure my mum lives for giving away food. If it's not homegrown veggies from her abundant garden, it's packets and cans of stuff she wont use.

I am not one to knock back free food. So I happily brought them home with me and they sat in the pantry until I hit google up for some ideas.

One of my pet hates is when hubby stands at the pantry, fridge or freezer proclaiming to all who will listen that he thinks we are running out of food. It gives me the shits! 

To prove that no, I don't need to go to the shops, it gave me the perfect opportunity to use up the three cans of evaporated milk keeping the pantry shelves warm, for weeknight dinners. I did not hear any complaints, from hubby anyway. The kids are a whole other kettle of fish, that continue to make me want to throw my hands in the air and order takeaway every night.

Bacon and egg pasta.
I used this recipe for ham and egg pasta on the Taste website. Instead of ham I used bacon. It's cheaper and I had in the freezer. It's a quick and easy recipe, tasty too.

Bacon, broccoli and sweet potato quiche 
This was another Taste recipe which I changed to use up ingredients I already had. 

The broccoli was from the garden, I substituted ham for bacon again, and instead of using tinned corn, which I didn't have, I cut up sweet potato in small cubes, about a cup, and microwaved them until soft.

Pumpkin and pea risotto
When you have a particular brand of food stuff that you have no ideas for, a great tip and one that I didn't do myself at first, is to head to the brands website for recipes. I found this recipe on the Nestle website, for Pumpkin and broccoli risotto. 

Of course I'd used the broccoli in the garden in the quiche, so used a cup of peas instead. 

This makes a fair bit of risotto, so if you have lots of left overs, you can try making arancini balls! I didn't, I just ate risotto for lunch three days in a row!

Here's how I made my risotto. You will need -

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
1 onion, chopped
2 cups short grain rice 
4 cups water
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
600 grams cubed pumpkin (about 1-2 cm cubes)
375ml can evaporated milk
1 cup frozen peas
Parmesan cheese, for serving

Heat oil in a large saucepan on medium heat. Add onion and garlic for a minute, add rice and stir to coat the rice with oil.

Pour in water, add thyme and pumpkin. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the can of evaporated milk and frozen peas, continue cooking for a further 5 minutes.

Serve with parmesan cheese.

An InLinkz Link-up

Parcel - the herb and Mushroom Risotto

This is a handy herb to grow if you have the space in the garden. It's a perennial, so it will die down over winter, only to flourish back, ready for use in the spring.

I made a gorgeous mushroom risotto last week that called for celery. I didn't have any, but what I did have was Parcel in the garden. It's leaves look like flat leaf parsley, but smells of and has the flavour of celery, so I used it to substitute. It worked a treat.

I used some of the mushrooms that we found in June that I had frozen.  

1 onion, sliced thinly

2 celery sticks, sliced

2 tablespoons oil

350 grams mushrooms, sliced

1 lemon, finely grated rind and juice

175 grams arborio rice

400 ml vegetable stock or chicken stock

125 gr frozen peas

75 grams grated cheese

2 tablespoons grated parmesan

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Fry onion and celery for a few minutes in oil. Add the mushrooms, lemon rind and juice and cook for 10 minutes.

Add in the rice, stirring for 2 minutes. Add stock and simmer gently, covered, for about 20 minutes. If the rice isn't tender and there is no more liquid add a little more stock or water and give it another 5-10 minutes.

Stir in the peas, cheeses and parsley until the cheese has melted. 

Serve and enjoy. Delicious.

Asian Pork Meatballs

500 gr pork mince

4 shallots, sliced thinly

5 water chestnuts, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed

1/4 cup fresh coriander, chopped

4 tsp soy sauce

3 tsp oyster sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup plain flour

2 tsp peanut oil

Combine everything, besides the flour and peanut oil. Roll tablespoonfuls of mix into balls.

Season flour with pepper and roll meatballs in flour to coat.

Fry meatballs over a medium-high heat in the oil, turning, until browned and cooked through.

I had no water chestnuts, so I used 1heaped tablespoon of almond flakes I had left in the cupboard. 

I used olive oil to fry.

I didn't make one, but a dipping sauce wouldn't go astray! 

Izzy gobbled these up. Winner!!

Potato onions and coriander from the garden

If you have a small vegie garden, these potato onions (that's all that I know them as) are an excellent addition to add, if you can find them. They multiply from one bulb, so if I planted one of them, five or six or more would grow around it. I harvest them once a year and leave the smaller ones in the ground for more and more. I have that many I can just go out and pick and use like shallots when I need them. The mature onion is more bulbous than the ones here, anything from about a 10 to 50c piece size.

I picked lettuce leaves, small silverbeet leaves, parsley, rocket
 and coriander for a simple salad, with some cucumber added.

Coloured Rice - Open Slather

Last week, Rebecca from Four little piglets added a post about coloured rice. I always see posts about sensory bins, I never get around to doing them. So I gave this one a go. I didn't make much rice, I just used what I had left in the pantry, it was enough just for Izzy. I only had blue and yellow food colouring, and put some plain brown rice in for a different colour.

She loved it and played with it for over an hour, so I loved it too. My prediction was right, I thought at some point she would start to eat it!