BAKED EGGPLANT WITH CAPSICUM

This recipe bring back memories for me. Some years ago we we rented a house up the coast to spend Christmas with family. Our son’s girlfriend at the time was a vegetarian, so I racked my brains and searched through my cookbooks looking for something I could cook for her for Christmas Day. It had to be something easy and that I could take the ingredients up there with me to cook in an unfamiliar kitchen. This was it. Luckily I prepared most of it the day before, because on Christmas Day bushfires in the area meant we had no power for Christmas lunch. We managed to put a meal together, but it’s a Christmas that lives in the family history.

CRUSTY BAKED APPLES

In years gone by baked apples served with a nice thick custard or ice cream was a pretty standard family winter dessert. Inexpensive, tasty and filling, not to mention quick and easy to make. This old 60s recipe Mum kept is a little more fancy as it wraps the apples in a sweet crusty coating. A little more trouble to make, but it is still inexpensive, tasty and filling.

SHORTBREAD HEARTS OF PASSION

I guess these could be renamed Melting Moments with Passionfruit Filling, but cutting them into heart shapes and naming them ‘Hearts of Passion’ is definitely more colourful. Obviously you can make them any shape you want and while the recipe uses I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, you can use butter as a substitute if you want to.

SEAFOOD LASAGNE

This recipe comes out of one of my pasta cookbooks. I already make a meat lasagne and a chicken lasagne, so a seafood one has to be on the list as well. Obviously buying good quality white fish, scallops and prawns would make an excellent dish, but you could also go for the cheaper option and buy a generous amount of marinara mix. It mightn’t be quite as good, but it would certainly be a bit more affordable.

CURRIED ZUCCHINI PUFFS – Curried Vegetable rolls

There was a time when everyone seemed to grow zucchinis in their backyards and happily gave them away, so lots of zucchini recipes were published. This is one of the more unusual ideas published in The Sun newspaper. The mix of vegetables, curry, sultanas and chutney all wrapped in pastry sounds good, although I think you’d want to watch that it wasn’t too moist and soaked through the pastry. It would make a change from meat filled sausage rolls though.

PINEAPPLE SOUFFLE

You can definitely tell the age of this recipe by the ingredients – jelly and Carnation Evaporated Milk and in fact I found the recipe is in a Carnation Evaporated Milk pamphlet. The combination of the jelly and evaporated milk makes a really light dessert, almost like a flummery, which was one of Mum’s favourite desserts to make. It has the advantage of also not been very expensive, a bit of a bonus these days.

SWISS STYLE POTATOES

Whether you’re having a BBQ, a roast or just a nice steak, a great potato dish is always appreciated. This is a new one to me, a bit of a twist on French Potatoes au Gratin (Dauphinoise). The difference being the cheese, Swiss Raclette. You can substitute Gruyere, Emmenthal, Romano or Mozzarella mixed with grated parmesan if you can get the Raclette, but the Raclette really is the best.