u/catherine100000

I decided to go with a fusion dish for this week's theme, and what better than to combine my home country (Australia) with the country that knocked us out of the World Cup (Egypt).

https://www.themediterraneandish.com/hawawshi-recipe/#wprm-recipe-container-37394

I used the above recipe as the basic premise of the dish, but tinkered to add an Australian twist. First, I changed the meat from beef to lamb - mainly because I think Australia is renowned for our lamb. I also kept the same spicing mixture, but added a classic Aussie combo of vegemite and cheese.

This tasted surprisingly cohesive, the vegemite added a subtle flavour that complements the spices and herbs used in the meat mixture. I think in hindsight, the cheese altered the texture so some additional moisture leaked out in the baking process.

As a bonus, I served some party pies and sausage rolls (a true Aussie classic delicacy).

For high fibre, I decided a salad was in order and I had some eggplant to use up so I landed on this lentil and roasted eggplant salad recipe. According to the nutrition information, it provides 96% of the daily recommended intake of fibre.

It's served warm so it felt nice for the cold snap we've been experiencing where I am lately. It was also my first time cooking dry lentils so that feels like a good skill to add to my repertoire. Overall, I felt it was missing something in terms of flavour (but looking at the reviews I seem to be the only one so it could be down to a skill issue on my end).

Unfortunately, our little apartment balcony garden isn't quite thriving at this time of the year. So instead, I decided to make a little edible floral arrangement.

https://www.recipetineats.com/quick-and-dirty-focaccia/#recipe

I followed the above recipe for the focaccia and then added some decorations. Tomato and olive flowers, broccolini trees, a baby caper vine and fried onion soil.

This wasn't bad for a first attempt, it just didn't rise quite as much as I had hoped so I have added it to my 're-make' list.

As a person who knows next to nothing about tarot, the hardest part about this week's challenge was picking what to make. I ummed and ahhed for a long time trying to work out how to incorporate this theme, and even resorted to purchasing a tarot deck so see what the universe had on the cards for me.

I ended up drawing some cards and tried to make something that vaguely resembled them.

I used this recipe for the koftas (arranged to match the illustration on the card), and it turned out delicious! I will definitely make these again, they were quite easy but very juicy and nicely spiced.

I then shoe-horned some flat breads into the mix by deciding the round shape is close enough to a coin to fit the Pentacles card.

Truly stretching the theme, I also used the orange of the pumpkin to represent the Sun in a simple pumpkin, feta and greens salad. It was the Winter solstice on the day we ate this, so it was a nice touch to introduce some Sun into the shortest day of the year.

I went with using coffee as the base of a dry spice rub this week. A lot of the recipes I saw when researching suggested that would work best with beef, as it is robust enough to take on the bitterness of the coffee.

I decided I wanted to do chicken instead; so I dialled back the quantity of coffee compared to the other herbs and spices I used. The resulting flavour was nice and while I could definitely still taste coffee it wasn't overly bitter or overpowering.

I think because of the coffee the skin looks quite dark and I had worried it had burnt, but thankfully not and it just nice and crispy.

Served the chicken with some other roasted veg, a fresh green salad and gravy (not pictured).

I always find that irrespective of what I'm cooking, the time that a recipe author suggests is never enough compared to how long the process will take me. It always takes me longer than the suggestion. So I decided to put myself to the test, by selecting a recipe that theoretically takes 15 minutes, and see how quickly I could cook it.

I followed this recipe, which uses a clever shortcut to make "home-made" wontons. Notably, the recipe suggest zero prep time and 15 minutes cook time.

According to the stop watch - it took me about 8 minutes longer (which feels like a pretty large differential given it's more than half of the allotted time) from start to finish. Having said that, this was super delicious and pretty easy to make, and the flavour definitely felt like it took longer than 22 minutes to build so I'm not too worried about the overage. I will be adding this to my regular rotation and who knows - maybe after a few try's I can shave some time off.

A first read of 'Jams and jellies' had me in mind of a dessert, but a recent trip to the dentist gave me pause on going with something sweet for this theme. Instead, I decided to use jam as an ingredient and made a slow cooked chilli jam chicken.

No real recipe followed for this one. I used 3/4 of a store bought jar of chilli jam; and added some home made stock (plus soy, vinegar, MSG and probably other ingredients I'm forgetting) to chicken drumsticks, sweet potato and carrots and cooked it for about 6 hours. In the end stage, I added some broccolini for extra vegetable content.

In a bid to avoid making yet another 'chicken and rice' variation (which I seem to have done several times over this challenge thus far) - I served it over a bed of polenta which I cooked in a mix of milk and water with a few pats of butter incorporated in the end.

Overall, this ended up being a very hearty, comforting homestyle dinner which felt appropriate for the rainy, cold night I had it on.

This week's challenge for me I guess is technically a fail (because the admittedly questionable looking but delicious tasting meat I served as the protein source in this meal makes it four colours as opposed to three), but it was tasty.

Didn't really follow any recipes; but I made a coconut milk infused basmati rice for the white colour.

Alongside it, I made a tomato and chilli salsa-ish sambal for a splash of red. I mainly made this to use up a number of ingredients kicking around in my fridge.

For the pop of green, a herby cucumber salad.

The vegetable sides were a really nice fresh accompaniment to the caramelised savoury pork, and honestly I might have preferred to forego the rice and combine this all into a tangy, spicy salad.

It has occurred to me that I have made a variation of 'rice, protein and veg' several times now for the cooking challenges, and while it's a tried and true combination I'm making a mental note to try not to revert to this formula too much...

One of my bucket list destinations is India. So I decided to make a few dishes, which I believe all originate from the North of India.

I made Chicken saag curry and rice. This recipe calls for microwaving onions to form the base for the curry, which is quite different than how I would usually build the base of a curry. I loved how the flavours turned out, it tasted rich and creamy (despite no cream in the recipe). I paired it with plain basmati rice.

I also made Naan, which was easy and turned out well. I also used a new method for this one, which was to proof the dough in my clothes dryer!

As a side, I made Aloo Tikki and a Mint Coriander Chutney for dipping. Unfortunately, the aloo tikki lacked structural integrity so they kind of fell apart when they were cooking. The flavour was still good though, and the zingy chutney was an excellent dipping sauce.