The Food Pornographer

This was my favourite dinner of the week. Jac cooked up a pot of bow pasta (farfalle). I blanched some chopped green beans, then opened a can of Sirena tuna slices with chilli and oil. I love canned tuna slices – I find it more meaty, satisfying and pleasurable to eat than chunk style or sandwich style tuna. I mixed the blanched green beans with some freshly cooked pasta, then topped that with the tuna slices and a drizzle of the chilli oil poured from the can. Not all the oil, I’d say around half. A little cracked black pepper on top and it was ready for photographing, then eating.

It was such a simple meal to prepare, but so delicious. I will definitely have this again (in fact, since I originally wrote this post, I’ve had it another couple of times, once more with pasta, and another time with freshly cooked rice).

This is Pixel. She wants a bite of ham steak.

On a weekend a few weeks ago, Jac fried ham steaks for both of us. She fried me one egg, sunny side up (I asked for one egg instead of my usual two). She poached herself a couple of eggs, and with a packet of instant hollandaise sauce and a sprinkling of fresh parsley, made herself eggs benedict. We had toast and tomatoes too. I made us a cup of tea each to wash it down.

Pixel tends to sit at the breakfast table with us, while Billy Lee is quite happy watching from a distance.

I had kaya on my toast. Yum!

This was my breakfast: ham steak, fried egg and a fancy-cut tomato.

Pixel seemed quite interested in the appliance catalogue Jac was reading.

See? Fascinating!

Just because I think it’s a beautiful sight, here’s another view of my breakfast plate. :)

Jac served me a big bowl full of penne, prawns and snow peas. I cracked fresh black pepper on top. The garlic smelled fantastic and I couldn’t wait to dig in.

The cats got a little treat too. Jac took the tails off a few prawns, squeezed out the prawn meat and gave it to the cats in little dishes. (Don’t worry – no oil, onion or garlic for the cats!) They were so excited! They loved having prawns for dinner!

A few weeks ago, Jac fired up the barbecue and cooked chicken sausages, onions and potatoes on it.

She sliced and parboiled the potatoes before putting them on the barbie.

We both love barbecued onions, and Jac cooked up plenty.

The cats watched as Jac cooked.

This is Billy Lee’s “I’m hot and can’t be bothered” pose.

Pixel’s fur was dirty – she’d been playing in the garden all afternoon.

As Jac cooked the barbie, I made us each a mini salad, with cos lettuce, yellow capcisum, red grape tomatoes, green beans and seedless green grapes.

Dinner was delicious! Chicken sausages, potatoes, onions and salad.

Lunch – barbecue chicken and coleslaw from the supermarket. The chicken with salty skin, meat falling off the bones, finger-sucking good.

Dinner – Indomie mi goreng, the original flavour. We had some chicken left over from lunch. I took the meat off the bones, zapped it in the microwave, then served it with the noodles for our dinner.

I am not exaggerating when I say these were the most delicious pork steaks I have ever eaten. After the first bite I ate very slowly, savouring every chew.

This was an experimental potato salad Jac threw together. It consisted of steamed potatoes and sweet potatoes, baby peas, hard boiled egg and chopped parsley. She used mayonnaise for the dressing. It was surprisingly good!

Jac also made a tomato, onion and cucumber salad, with a double vinegar dressing (a little red wine vinegar and a little white wine vinegar). It was quite refreshing, but I preferred the potato salad. Jac liked this one better.

So back to these pork steaks. Jac rubbed them with Alseason before cooking. The Alseason complemented the pork flavour beautifully, adding a tasty savouryness to the delicious natural pork flavour. Jac cooked them so perfectly so they were tender and juicy, and slicing into the meat with my knife was such a pleasure. Jac served the pork with a little dish of fruit chutney, but the pork was so good it really didn’t need any sauce.

I know some of you will ask about the Alseason, so I took this photo the last time we were at the supermarket. We use the original/plain Alseason, but there are “spicy”, “peppered” and “herb and garlic” varieties. This is what they look like (see bottles 2 to 5 from the left, top shelf):