Chapati Bread || Recipe

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Ready in: 30 minutes
Serves: 10

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup hot water or as needed

Directions

In a large bowl, stir together the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, and salt. Use a wooden spoon to stir in the olive oil and enough water to make a soft dough that is elastic but not sticky. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is smooth. Divide into 10 parts, or less if you want bigger breads. Roll each piece into a ball. Let rest for a few minutes.

Heat a skillet over medium heat until hot and grease lightly. On a lightly floured surface, use a floured rolling pin to roll out the balls of dough until very thin like a tortilla. When the pan starts smoking, put a chapati in it. Cook until the underside has brown spots, about 30 seconds, then flip and cook on the other side. Continue with remaining dough.

Sausage Curry || Recipe

Preparation Time: 2 hours
Servings: 4

Ingredients

8-12 pork sausages
6 medium/large potatoes
250g mushrooms
vegetable oil
tomato sauce (about 2 desert spoons)
tomato purée (about 1 desert spoon)
1 1/2 desert spoons Madras curry powder
about 1/2 litre boiling water

Method

Peel the potatoes, cut into "roast" potato-sized pieces. You should have around 12 big pieces of potato. Add the potatoes to a pan and cover with boiling water. Simmer until par-boiled. They should be soft but not crumbly.

Brown your sausages by grilling or frying. Put to one side and once cooled, slice your mushrooms and fry until soft.

Fry potatoes and add curry powder. Stir for one minute.

Add sausages and mushrooms. Stir again.

Cover ingredients with boiling water. Stir.

Add tomato sauce and purée.

Simmer for 10 minutes. The potatoes should have just started to break down to create a nice, thick sauce.

Leave for at least 30 minutes (preferably longer -- the longer you leave it the fuller the taste it achieves).

Serve the curry with Basmati rice.

Chicken Curry || Recipe

Perhaps I've mentioned before that four of my siblings and I are each assigned one night per week to cook dinner for the family. Over the years, I have spent many pleasurable hours preparing various culinary creations, and several favourite recipes have emerged. I discovered early on that Indian cuisine is some of my favourite, and hence makes our menu fairly regularly! A few people have asked me what I cook, since there are ten of us to feed. Really, it isn't that hard because we've only ever gained one extra mouth at a time, and so the volume of ingredients has only gradually increased! I thought I would share a few of my favourite dishes, though. Pictured above are three curries: chicken, sausage, and vegetable, which I served {this time!} with Basmati rice and Chapati bread. The vegetable curry is just from the Edmonds cookbook currently available at grocery stores, and the other two curries, along with the bread recipe, I found online. Between three posts I will share the latter three recipes.

Chicken Curry

Ingredients

8 bone-in chicken breast halves, skinless

salt and pepper to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 onions, peeled and quartered

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger root

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

1 tablespoon hot (Madras) curry powder

1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce

1 (15 ounce) can coconut milk

4 whole cloves

4 pods cardamom

1 cinnamon stick

Directions

1. Rinse chicken and pat dry; season with salt and pepper to taste. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat, then saute chicken until browned. Remove chicken from skillet and set aside.
2. Saute onions in skillet until translucent; add ginger and garlic and saute until fragrant, then stir in curry powder.
3. Return chicken to skillet and add tomato sauce, coconut milk, cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon stick. Season with salt to taste and stir all together.
4. Reduce heat to low and simmer until chicken is tender and cooked through (no longer pink inside), about 20 to 25 minutes.

My turn to cook!

So...what does dinner in our house look like when it's my turn to cook? This:

Samosa, naan bread, butter chicken, vegetable korma, and rice.

 Well, ok, maybe not always.... lol :P

Second-to-Last Dargaville Holiday Post

Ok well its now about 7 months since our holiday in Dargaville (wow!) and, frankly, I don't remember very many interesting details. So, I'm simply going to do TWO posts and summarise what we got up to, and show you a few pics! =)

Monday 25th,  we went to Dargaville Museum. First off, we watched a 15-minute(?) video about gumdigging and stuff, then we walked through to see everything on display....Mum and Dad thought it was amazing, so ask them what was there! lol everything's blurring with the following day in my head!

Tuesday 26th, was a trip to the Kauri Museum which we really enjoyed. They had all sorts of things..a cow in the process of being milked (not real!), the first Caterpillar(?), operating models of various machines, and a life-size boardinghouse, complete with model people, performing various tasks, etc.. - examining a patient, having a tooth pulled(!), and so on. .................

Wednesday 27th saw as take do the Trounson Kauri Walk:

This became a bit of a photoshoot (to get my mind off being bored...lol):

Danielle and Diana...Diana is soooo nice to photograph!! lol =D

Funny photo I think!

Diana, Danielle, Bryce

The boys

Girls shot (minus Maria)



Does this pic in anyway remind you of the Duggars or Bateses?

 Later on we had Thai takeaways for dinner; I still like Indian better!

Kai Iwi Lakes and Shiraz - Wednesday 20th April

Written 27 & 28/4/11

After another late morning, we went to the Dargaville info centre, collected some brochures, then drove out to the Kai Iwi Lakes.
Mum and Dad looked around the campground, while the others got soaked in the lake, and me? Well, I sat in the car txting, playing games........and finishing the packet of roasted salted peanuts!(yum!)

After going back to the unit to finish cleaning sand off children, etc., we drove back into Dargaville to look for a nice restaurant, eventually deciding on the Shiraz and Indian restaurant.

Aren't the lights so cool?

The dinner was nice, despite not being as hot as I like (everything was mild) and the desert...well I had chocolate cake, with ice cream and chocolate sauce. Now, I tell you, it is the weirdest sensation eating chocolate cake and having your mouth burn! Seriously, my entire mouth felt like it was on fire!

Later on we did some washing at $4 per load in the machine and driers - Wow the owners of the camp must be rich!
and I did a bit on my cross stitch before having a[nother] late night.