January 2010 Archives

This last December made it officially two years since I've moved to Sydney. So this was my third summer, and two winters had passed enough to almost learn the basics.

Realising that it was going to be a lovely warm sunny this weekend, and having rarely cooked any seafood dishes - I thought this would be a perfect time to try.

I invited over to our place for lunch an old primary school classmate and her family who had recently moved to Sydney from Brisbane. Since she doesn't eat beef, seafood was a great (and coincidental) choice for a summer Sunday lunch. So I decided that the menu was going to be Chilli Mussels, Prawn Mango salad, a Chocolate Raspberry crème caramel for dessert, and ice-chilled homemade lemonade.

My aunt in Perth had once taught me how to make chilli mussels almost ten years ago, while I was living with her studying there. Having never attempting to cook it again, I'd almost forgotten what she taught me. The Tasmanian Blue Mussels were in season at $7.99 per kg at the Sydney Fish Markets and I was itching to try it again.

Well to keep from food-boredom (a foodie never lives on the one dish alone), I wanted to create a little variation on the menu with the leftover ham in the days after Christmas, instead of just chomping on cold ham (which my husband does anyway to snack on). The obvious one I've already made was a quick dinner mini pizza with ham and mozzarella - also particularly to utilise one of our Christmas presents from MIL - a pizza stone! I thought up some other ideas like ham sushi, curry ham, ham shish kebab, ham satay, ham in fried rice...

Crazy ham ideas aside, here's just one of the few recipes I've actually made in the last few days... (I'll update with the others to follow-up).