This casserole has a curry lamb base and a rolled oats, chive and flour crust. Rolling the dough into a log and cutting the log into slices makes a great looking crust. I think that takes it from just a family meal to being good enough to serve up to visitors.
Mum seems to have collected a lot of booklets from Sun Rice Australia I suspect she went to one of their cooking demonstrations. This recipe has a great combination of rice, spices and seafood all in a coconut sauce. It’s a meal in itself.
As a child I loved going to stay at my Auntie Elsie’s as she would always make salmon patties for me, I loved them. I’ve never managed to make any as good as hers and they certainly weren’t as fancy as these ones that John West published years later. The closest here is the Australian version minus the corn or lemon.
I know it’s lazy but I think being able to buy frozen sheets of pastry is a wonder of modern baking. Although I don’t usually buy wholemeal sheets I do think they would work really well in this tandoori flavoured chicken and vegetable roll.
The combination of chicken, spinach and cheese is always a winner for me and even better if it’s wrapped in pastry. This recipe uses filo pastry, which is a bit fiddly to use, but if you can’t be bothered or don’t have the time, puff pastry would work just as well.
As you can see the full title of this recipe from the Australian Meat and Live-Stock Corporation is ’24 minute Speedy Mexican Lamb’, a bit long I thought so I’ve shortened it. The good thing is that it’s quick to make. I think the recipe card was put out by the Corporation in the late 1980s, whenever it was, Mum and I both seem to have collected quite a few from our butchers’ counters.
This isn’t a dish for my family as they don’t like recipes that have a meat and fruit combination, which is a shame as I think it would be worth trying. The chilli kick in the base and the coconut in the topping certainly add a lot of interest.
For some reason I always think of pot roasts as being American, but this recipe published in the 70s by the Australian Meat Board would seem to disprove that idea. I’ve never made a pot roast and since I found this recipe I’ve meaning to buy a piece of beef to give it a go. It’s just one of the many ‘treasures’ that Mum’s recipe drawer has uncovered and which I’m yet to cook.
I’ve already posted a recipe for Pumped Leg of Lamb, but instead of boiling the meat this recipe bakes it in dough and then coats it with a marmalade glaze. That makes it a bit more work, but the result could be quite good. Although the original recipe suggests either mutton or lamb, pork would also work very well.
I think this recipe, published by the Women’ Weekly in 1974, shows how differently we buy meat these days – no need to ask the butcher to remove the bones, its already done for you now. That’s great, but I don’t like the way its wrapped in netting. I find that it sticks to the crackling and is hard to get off. Laying the meat out, stuffing it and then tying it with cooking string like this recipe suggests is a much better idea. I’ve included the apple sauce recipe although it’s not like Mum’s version. She left out the cloves and lemon and always put a knob of butter in after she’d pureed it.
Beb's Recipe Drawer 