Never use margarine! Oyster stew needs real butter.

Don't fry them for too long. Make sure the pan is hot and flash fry them.

Biscuits, American
 

[Tune: American Music]
o/' I like American bis-cuits
She likes American bis-cuits
We like American biscuits, baybeee... (drums)o/'

Better Homes & Gardens calls this Biscuits Supreme

2 cups/475ml All-Purpose Flour
4 tsp/20ml Baking Powder
2 tsp/10ml Sugar
1/2 tsp/2.5ml Cream of Tartar
1/2 tsp/2.5ml Salt
1/2 cup vegetable Shortening (Crisco or other brand)
2/3 cup/160ml Milk

1. Stir together Flour, Baking Powder, Sugar, Cream of Tartar, Salt. Cut in Shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
2. Make a well in the center, add Milk all at once. Stir just until dough clings together. Knead dough gently on lightly floured surface for 10-12 strokes. Roll out or pat out to 1/2" (1cm) thickness, cut with biscuit/cookie cutter or cut into squares 5-6cm on a side with a knife. It's useful to dip cookie cutter into flour between cuts so biscuits release easily.
3. Transfer biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet, bake at 450 F for 10-12 minutes until golden on top. Serve warm. 10-12 biscuits.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Prepare Biscuits as above, but stir in 1/4 tsp/1ml+ Baking Soda into the flour mixture and substitute 3/4 cup/180ml buttermilk for the milk. If you don't have buttermilk, sour ordinary milk with 5ml vinegar to 237ml milk.

As you can see, this one works by combining acid with baking soda to leaven, rather than the double action of baking powder.

Sour Cream Biscuits

Another substitution. Prepare biscuits as above, substituting 1 cup/237ml Sour Cream and only 2 TBSP/30ml Milk. Not too different from Buttermilk Biscuits.

The best Spinach Pie ever!

Ingredients:

1 lge bunch of spinach (or silverbeet) finely chopped
1 lge Onion finely chopped
1 cup of grated cheddar cheese
2 cups of crumbled fetta cheese
1/2 cup of long grain rice (uncooked)
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

2 sheets of puff pastry

1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl and then drizzle olive oil in the mixture until it starts to 'cling' together, but not drip.

2. Line a pan with 1 sheet of pastry.

3. Tip the spinach mixture into the pastry lined pan.

4. Make a lid out of the second sheet of pastry. Remember to poke holes in the top so the mixture can breath.

5. Brush melted butter or milk over the top of the pastry.

6. Bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour then turn the heat up to a hot oven for 10 minutes to brown the pastry.

7. Eat with gusto

Enchilado de Camarones

Kind of like a seafood stew. Can be made with lobster, chicken... lots of other stuff, but shrimp is the best.

Ingredients
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
The juice of 1 lime
1 onion, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup white wine (I use sauvignon blanc)
Fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Ground cumin
Salt & pepper
Cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tablespoon of olive oil

Directions
Put the shrimp in a small bowl. Mix in all of the lime juice, a sprinkling of cayenne pepper, and salt & black pepper to taste. Cover and marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour.

While the shrimp finishes marinating, heat the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, bell peppers, garlic, and about a teaspoon of cumin. Cook for a few minutes until lightly browned. Turn the heat up to high and stir in the tomato paste -- cook for about a minute. Stir in the wine and bring to a boil. Stir in the shrimp and the marinade, and reduce the heat to a medium low. Simmer for 3 to 5 minutes or until the shrimp is cooked through. Add more wine if needed (it should have a consistency similar to spaghetti sauce) and flavor with more cumin, s&p, or cayenne paper to taste. Serve and sprinkle the parsley on top.

Goes really well with yellow rice, but plain white rice will do.

Christmas Rum Cake
 

FORTUNE'S FAVORITE RECIPES: #8
Christmas Rum Cake

1 or 2 quarts rum 1 tbsp. baking powder
1 cup butter 1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. sugar 1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 large eggs 2 cups brown sugar
2 cups dried assorted fruit 3 cups chopped English walnuts

Before you start, sample the rum to check for quality. Good, isn't it? Now
select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc. Check the rum again. It
must be just right. Be sure the rum is of the highest quality. Pour one cup
of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can. Repeat. With an electric
mixer, beat one cup butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add 1 seaspoon of tugar
and beat again. Meanwhile, make sure the rum teh absolutely highest quality.
Sample another cup. Open second quart as necessary. Add 2 orge laggs, 2 cups
of fried druit and beat untill high. If the fried druit gets stuck in the
beaters, just pry it loose with a screwdriver. Sample the rum again, checking
for toncisticity. Next sift 3 cups of baking powder, a pinch of rum, a
seaspoon of toda and a cup of pepper or salt (it really doesn't matter).
Sample some more. Sift 912 pint of lemon juice. Fold in schopped butter and
strained chups. Add bablespoon of brown gugar, or whatever color you have.
Mix mell. Grease oven and turn cake pan to 350 gredees and rake until
poothtick comes out crean.

This is an awesome dessert, really easy and quick, plus it looks snazzy!!

This is the healthy-ish version

Choc Berry Parfait

1 pkt Chocolate Mousse or Pudding Mix - Sugarless or Weight Watchers
1/2 cup low fat plain yoghurt
Small tub low fat cottage cheese
1 tsp Splenda or similar Sugar replacement
1 cup fresh raspberries or chopped strawberries
4 Dessert glasses

• Mix dessert as per instructions, set aside to set slightly
• In a separate bowl, combine yoghurt, cottage cheese and splenda
• Layer glasses in the following order....dessert mix, yoghurt mixture and then berries. Repeat layers at least twice
• Refrigerate for at least 30 mins.

I make something like that in summer time but I don't use any pudding mix. I make a fruit puree and (if I'm feeling keen) I set it with gelatine. If I just want to do it quick, I use the puree unset. It still looks good in the glasses.

If I want it to be a bit creamier, I add in some whipped cream to the yoghurt.

Kids love this dessert. Mine go crazy for it. They'd probably go even crazier for it if I put pudding in as well. lol

Maybe you should tell them they can have all they want, with the pudding, but they have to eat it in the back yard -- where they can be hosed off before being allowed back in the house! ;)

Basic recipe
Par-boiled pasta.
Soften chopped in 1 tablespoonful of olive oil, or low fat marge, or other stuff. Take the pan off the heat briefly.
Sprinkle 1 rounded tablespoonful of flour (selfraising or plain, it doesn't matter) onto the softened onions and stir til all onion bits coated in flour.
Put the pan back on a low-medium heat, add a little bit (an eggcupful-ish) from half a pint of milk (semi-skimmed, skimmed if you like I suppose), and stir til mixed and thickened. Add a little more milk and repeat ... Adding the milk gradually like this prevents the formation of lumps.
When the consistency of the onion sauce (yahey!) is to your liking, stir it into the pasta, and add the chunks of tuna. I'd grate a little cheese on the top, and stick it under the grill to brown.
Variations
Instead of tuna tinned mackerel, cooked chicken pieces, salami-type sausage bits, a tin of beans (not baked beans, but black eyed, or kidney beans, say), crisply fried bacon bits.
Instead of onion, mushrooms, or add peppers to the onions. Cook the onions til dark brown for a different flavour.
Curry powder in the sauce.
Cheese in the sauce. Goats cheese!
Go wild and poach (gently simmer until the flesh is white and flaky) an 8 ounce fillet of (smoked or unsmoked) haddock in the 1/2 pint of milk, and then use tha tmilk to make the sauce and the haddock instead of the tuna.
Add peas or sweetcorn.
Instead of onion sauce, a tin of tomatoes or passata or whatever and herbs (basil is good).
Please accept my apologies if any of this is too basic. Hope this helps.

Not too basic at all, that is great, thank you :)
It is easy but by using a sauce base fulfils my need for real cooking, where I get to decide exactly what ingredients are used.

HM makes a pretty mean cheese sauce, and it's the one thing he cooks from scratch. I've been too embarrassed to admit that for all my chopping, soaking and liquidising skills I never did get the hang of the correct proportions of a flour based sauce!

Limey's secrets for a lump-free sauce
 

About twice the volume of flour to fat (hence a level tbsp fat and a rounded tbsp flour above), this is about the right amount for half-a-pint of milk, but experiment.
NEVER try to add more flour on its own once you've started - that is the route to guaranteed lumps.
Cooking something in the fat and then adding the flour, as above, as pretty foolproof.
If you're after a classic white sauce, melt the fat, add twice the volume of flour and mix over heat until it forms a soft ball. Gradually add the milk as above, stirring and beating it in until it is completely smooth before adding more.
If you get lumps make sure you've got a balloon whisk (wire whisk) handy and beat the shit out of the sauce when no-one's looking.
And finally ...
it's always edible, even if it doesn't look it!

And if you want to make it cheesy, just add cheese. To convert it to a beschemelle sauce, just use parmesan cheese and fry off a bit of garlic when you melt the butter at the start. ;)

It really is too easy...especially if you use the whisk right from the start.

Where I grew up that's called cheating :eyebrow: ! (but who's to know?)

lol...really? Doesn't it just make sense to make cooking as simple and easy as possible?

There's no need to be a hero in the kitchen in my opinion. I'd much rather be fairly certain that what comes out will be good to eat and have taken the minimum of fuss to prepare. Also, avoiding cooking mishaps (like lumpy white/cheese sauce) only makes sense to me.