So first time living alone, I am left utterly to my own devices for everything! And considering I don’t like the word budget, instead preferring terms like “marginal propensity to spend” and “I allocate and redirect resources,” I have done a fair few bits of experimental cooking.

Hence, my Adelaidean winter wonderfuls. Winter here has actually been nice so far – I hated Sydney winters and everyone told me Adelaide was cold, super cold. But I’ve been loving it – apart from having a fit with the sporadic rain – the chill is so pleasant!

Mushrooms, goat curd on rosemary and potato sourdough, egg

Central Markets is absolutely amazing and I love the fresh and seasonal produce. All of a sudden I’m creating things at a cheaper cost than going to cafes and twice as pretty and tasty! After making this masterpiece, I have no desire to have breakfast at any cafe ever again! (Single Origin Roasters, this may include you too :( ) The mushrooms used were button, swiss and pine – pine mushrooms are in season and orange and amazing! I love mushrooms, so I had a blast with this. Buttered up and chive-y, the best kind! I failed at boiling eggs so I watched it closely this time; I wanted a runny yolk but again I overshot by a fraction, however it looked amazing the way it is.

Mushroom and chicken pappardelle

Sounds simple, right? Except this is some amazing wholegrain pasta with no preservatives. Expensive, but great – the texture is slightly grainy with the way I cooked it, but I love it because it’s eating with health! It’s the same trio of mushrooms as above, with chicken, garlic and sauce made with creme fraiche, topped off with parmigianio reggiano, and a dash of truffle oil. Wow, this was nice when I made it, and then it was mindblowing the day after! Letting the flavours sink in overnight made a huge impact! I am continually disappointed with pasta dishes at restaurants; the best pasta I had was at my local restaurant back in Sydney once, which was very simple – chicken pesto pappardelle. Ever since then, I’ve stuck with pappardelle (I love how wide the ribbons are) and only love the pasta that I make.

Rabbit stew with bacon, haloumi, lentils, beans, carrot, eggplant

I found farmed rabbit at central markets too – they were selling pieces of it so I decided to try it out, since I never wanted to buy a whole rabbit the first time round. I’d had rabbit once before at Jamie’s Italian and loved it, and from what I heard rabbit was best in stew. Because this was farmed, the shop assistant said it’d be tender regardless, but I stuck with stew since I just happened to have a bean and lentil soup mix. I went for a slow cook and decided to safeguard myself in case I destroyed it, to put bacon in the dish. Turns out it works well like that! I also wanted haloumi for that extra bit of fun, and let it sit. I’ve been told I cooked it near perfect because it tasted just like chicken! It was 100% tasty, and mission accomplished! Never have to cook rabbit ever again since the texture and flavour is just like chicken, but chicken is way cheaper.

House creamed corn, bacon, avocado, tomato on toast

Hello Single Origin Roasters, thank you for your amazing house creamed corn, bacon, avocado, tomato chutney. I have now made my own version thanks to you! Your wonderful memory will live on! I finally decided I had to make creamed corn, and then decided that I needed it as a breakfast with sourdough, bacon, avocado and tomato. Wow, it was great! I just wish I was able to make a tomato salsa, and I forgot to add goat curd. However it was still amazingly tasty and again, why would I ever need to go to a cafe for breakfast ever again? My ego is talking and I am amazing.

French toast, bacon, maple, fig

When my flatmate has stale bread, or when I inadvertently acquire excess bread (and onions) from work after a BBQ, I make french toast! It actually works without sugar; I’ve been using coconut nectar and agave syrup for most of my cooking, resorting to sugar only for lemon polenta pancakes and poached pears. The slices of bread were too thin, hence it looks kind of funny – I would have preferred thick cut brioche, but hey, I take leftovers to save money anyday! I may be posh with my food preferences, but really I only have one rule: I eat what I like. It just so happens the majority of it is either expensive and/or healthy. I also found some cheap figs so why not!

Okay, super crazy I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING time! I found some patagonian toothfish at the markets, so I HAD to buy some as the only time I’ve had it before was at Jugemu Shimbashi, where the owner said it was a very tasty fish and worth the money – and he was right. I had forgotten what it was called, but immediately knew I had stumbled upon the same fish as soon as I saw the name. I also bought some duck, and made them the same way – honey soy ginger garlic (plus cinnamon and star anise for the duck). I coined the term “Pseudo confit, semi sous-vide” because I way overcomplicated the process of cooking with flavours – that’s how I cook! It was so tasty, that I decided to make the same for some duck legs.

Essentially, I bought oven bags (since I didn’t know where to acquire vacuum bags and the machine, plus that’d cost lots of money), and placed the duck and sauce in it. I let it marinate overnight, then slow cooked it (like no heat as I was attempting confit – the water never boiled) for 2-3 hours. The duck legs I left for 2, and they were cooked just right! And smelled amazing.

I then fried these off in a pan just to colour the skin, and then pulled all the meat off so I could nibble at it, make bread rolls or whatever with it!

As I mentioned above, I had too many onions without even wanting them, so I decided to make french onion soup. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, so I also prepared some leek and fennel to add to it. Good thing I did, as 45 minutes after cooking the onions, and they finally went brown, it shrank from half a pot full of raw onions to a puny amount of caramelised onions! I reckon it would have only been enough for 1.5 servings. I added leek and fennel to bulk it up. All the recipes I saw said to use stock, but I didn’t want to (and didn’t have) so I used red wine and parmesan rind. Then pancetta and grana padano. I was stupid and added salt so that I almost had a heart attack though! I always remembered that adding bacon to a dish meant I didn’t have to add salt, but totally forgot about the pancetta having the same effect.

The end result was the following:

Honey soy ginger duck with onion, leek and fennel soup, crispy pancetta

And last of all for this post, my leftover duck was then used for an amazing salad:

Honey soy ginger duck salad with blue cheese and honeycomb

This was actually really tasty, since the honeycomb was perfect with the blue cheese, and paired well with the honey soy duck. I would so do this again since I love all the ingredients, however, I tried making “chicken, bacon, blue cheese and honeycomb” and that didn’t work! So now I know!

And last of all, I spent way too much today on fungi. I couldn’t resist and bought the following:

$33 for 11g Tasmanian winter black truffle

$7.50 for 50g fresh French chanterelles

$7.50 for 50g fresh French mousserons

I will be using these for an ultimate decadent pasta dish like the one above.

HERE IS TRUFFLE OF GORGEOUS DARLING BABY OF A FRAGRANT SMELLY THING

Yes, I have started collecting Riedels now too. I REGRET NOTHING.