Loved the lamb pie with potato crust we had last week, I made it again yesterday and this time was even better. This time around, I kept all of the juices that seeped out of the lamb rather than reducing it – which retained most of the unique lamb flavour – and baked it for 5 minutes less. This resulted in more moisture that you’d expect out of any pie. But less about the pie and more about the new dish for tonight.
Author Archives: Mike T

Lamb pie with potato crust
As my brother was going through the psychology section of the book store, I flicked through a handful of cooking books and found the lamb pie recipe. Not only did it look great in glossy print but it appeared easy to make skimming through. I bought the book for a steal of $5, just a little bit more than a large coffee!
So this would become my second lamb dish in this challenge with the first being sizzling lamb koftas. The wraps brought a refreshing change to the beef burritos I normally make. And the use of plain low fat yoghurt added to the fresh healthy feeling. So the lamb pie would need to be convincing to compete.

Prawn toast, prawn laksa and lemon chicken
This week saw three new dishes and one of which I had reminded myself many times I would never. Ever. Try. But the time was right to be bold and daring and I was feeling brave. Later I would realise that feeling bold, daring and brave was synonymous for stupid.
The dish I told myself I would never ever do? A laksa.
“I will never try making a laksa in the chance that I’d ruin a delicious and comforting meal for the rest of my life”.

Fusion Labs
I’ve kept my personal project quiet* but now going into the fourth week, I think it’s safe to make it known to the world. Welcome to Fusion Labs – a column feeding the foodaholic in me through what I’d like to believe as strict scientific, strictly controlled and laboratory grade experimentations but will mostly end up as trial and error.
Until the end of the year**, I will endeavour to create a new dish that I’ve never done before and I’ll do it at least once a week. In doing so, I hope to improve not only my special cooking skills (2 minute noodles once took me 15 minutes) but also subject my taste buds to a range of other flavours, textures and elements I normally wouldn’t even consider trying. I have always been a meatatarian but not a massive carnivore, just one that prefers to have some meaty texture to my intake. I already have my eyes squarely set on Jamie Oliver’s veggie patty burgers.

Chillaxin’ with my bestie
- Woof woof, Simba’s all mine!
- Catch me if you can, fat white retriever haha
- Finally, some peace and quiet
Simba with his bestie Kaddie, after some training this morning.
At training, we were introduced the two finishes (left + right spins and into the ready position), also the figure 8 exercise pattern to reinforce correct heeling and he did his first stand for exam ok…ish!
Oh and our previous trainer’s dog, Ivy, peed on us for the first time saying that she’s only ever done that to one other she cared about, a “breakthrough” he said 🙂