For an introduction to what these Menu Diary posts are about, please click HERE. And for the reasons why you really should read this series, please click HERE.
July 1993
Ox Tail Stew Takes 2 Days to Make, Peruvian Stew, and Delicious Panthe Kowshwe, Plus 3 Recipes
Wednesday 30 June. The previous two days we had old standards but on this Wednesday Trenna has prepared Ox Tail Stew! I feel a little guilty that I don’t remember it. Trenna’s comment is interesting, “took about 7 hours of cooking over 2 days, the smell was overpowering but the final thing was great.”
Saturday 3 July. We have grilled porterhouse steak, oven baked potato skins and a finger salad. She seems to be saying that the potato skins were “Truely fab!” I only vaguely remember having them so they obviously didn’t end up on high rotation. A “finger salad”, by the way, is one you can pick up with your fingers. It probably had things like sticks of celery, sticks of carrot, bits of tomatoes (I don’t think cherry tomatoes were a thing then), possibly some sticks of cheese, maybe halves of hard boiled egg, and probably with some iceberg lettuce.
Sunday 4 July. Further evidence that the Hungry Jacks Whopper is on its way out as an evening meal at our place.
Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 July. Later to be renamed the Tren’s Original Curry – I have spoken about it in previous posts.
Matriciana
Saturday 10 & Sunday 11 July. Matriciana sauce with spaghetti (everyone else calls it amatriciana, but we didn’t). This time using pancetta instead of bacon. I will paste the recipe from the iPad below.
A couple of things about the recipe. Firstly you will see from the big note I have put (a few years ago) at the top of the recipe that Trenna’s reflux problems eventually meant it wasn’t a suitable meal for her – a pity. The hour to make it I’m sure is how long she thinks it will take me (I’m slow and disorganised), and includes preparing the garlic bread and salad as well as the pasta and sauce.
It’s a good, easy, fast recipe if you don’t have reflux issues. Enjoy!
Panthe Kowshwe
Friday 16 July. We had “Success” with Panthe Kowshwe, a Burmese chicken curry/noodles dish. I’m pretty sure Trenna learnt about this dish from Alan, her sister Barb’s husband (he comes from Burma (as it was then)), although I think the recipe came from Charmaine Solomon’s book South East Asian Cookbook, which Trenna mentions in The Fourth Kitchen Tape, here. It was very delicious on this occasion, and all the other times we had it.
Panthe Kowshwe (4 serve) – read the original recipe by Charmaine Solomon (above) for the method
400g chicken
2 heaped tsp minced garlic
1 medium, brown onion
2 tsp minced ginger
½ tsp balachan
1 tbl peanut oil
1 drop of sesame oil
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp salt
1 400ml can of coconut milk
1 tsp besan flour
200g egg noodles
For 2 serves, put the following accompaniments on the table.
1 chopped hard boiled egg
2 chopped spring onions
a handfull of thinly sliced white onion
fried onion flakes
lemon wedges
sambal olek
balachow/balachan
Enjoy!
Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 July. If you asked me yesterday if I had ever had Peruvian Pork Stew, I’m pretty sure I would have said “no??”. But apparently I have!?
Sunday 25 July. We had been out to lunch at Acapulco Annie’s Mexican Restaurant with our friends Christine and Colin. In the evening we had the rest of Trenna’s excellent moussaka. I’m glad it lasted 3 meals as it took at least 3 hours to prepare.
Bondas and Koftas
Tuesday 27 July. We had Kofta Curry and Trenna made “Bondas” for the first time. I think she only made Bondas a few times ever and I don’t think I have the recipe she used in 1993.
I do have a recipe she cobbled together after watching an episode of Huey’s Cooking Adventures – Huey was chef Iain Hewitson. There are no quantities, but an experienced cook could figure it out.
After I mentioned (in 2022) in a previous Menu Diary the superb Aloo Bondas we got as take aways (take outs) I bought the ingredients I need to make them. I haven’t tried it yet.
Making and frying koftas, and making the kofta sauce takes hours so Trenna would have been cooking all day. She would have been totally exhausted, but she would have loved it.
Friday 30 July & Sunday 1 August. Trenna always liked a roast dinner, this time Roast Chicken. We obviously reheated it and had it as a lunch sitting on our front porch, overlooking the park across the road. She describes it as a “Fab idea!”.