Italian

Peih-Gee Lawsagne

Main, Survivor: Cambodia - Second Chance

Poor sweet, scrappy Peih-Gee – just when she felt safe, our dear friend Abi-Maria (we met after getting kicked out of the same anger management course) flipped the game and orchestrated her blindside.

Let this be a warning to all of the remaining players, do not cross the Brazilian beauty … she will boot you!

We first met our (other) dear friend Peih-Gee while working as back-up dancers during Madonna’s performance at the 1998 MTV Music Awards (where I once again displayed twerking to the masses before Miley did). A fast bond was formed upon discovering that she was heiress to a jewellery dynasty, hoping she would go full Patty Hearst and help us rob the family business following a period of brainwashing.

While that didn’t happen, on account of her superior morals and strong will, she was kind enough to keep us blinged out with her superior jewellery designs.

Going into Second Chance, we felt that Peeg (as her closest friends call her) was well placed to succeed being a lone representative from a middle season however sadly our little firecracker Abi took an immediate dislike to our pocket rocket and she was doomed to join our other (loser) friends on the pre-jury vacay while we hung out in Ponderosa with their more successful peers.

While she was bummed to go out early, she was more than ready to leave the desolate Angkor beach and devour a hearty slice of our famed and noted Peih-Gee Lawsagne.

 

Peih-Gee Lawsagne_1

 

We first made her the Lawsagne while squatting at her San Franciscan home whilst Annelie was trying to destroy George Lucas for taking away her first love Mark Hamill and I was developing my Castro based, soon to be green-lit Andy Dick Broadway musical Little Whorphan Andy (Harvey Fierstein, give me a call).

Peeg had just returned from her crushing defeat in China (could you imagine how great a Peih-Gee / Courtney finals would have been?) to discover that we had sold most of her possessions and trashed her house – the only thing we could do to apologise, was feed her our delicious, delicious comfort food.

Enjoy!

 

Peih-Gee Lawsagne_2

 

Peih-Gee Lawsagne
Serves: 4-6.

Ingredients
500g chicken mince
1 cup Toni Basil pesto
1 cup green peas
400g ricotta cheese
1 egg
3/4 cup Parmesan
1/2 cup mozzarella
2 cups passata
1/2 cup cream
8-12 fresh lasagne sheets

Method
Heat a large saute pan and cook chicken mince until browned all over. Add cup of peas, cup of pesto and 1/2 cup of water. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes, or until peas are cooked.

While the chicken is cooking, mix together ricotta, egg, 1/4 cup Parmesan and season with salt and pepper. In another bowl, mix passata and cream.

Preheat oven to 180C. In a rectangular baking dish, spread 1/3 of passata mixture. Lay out lasagne sheets and top with a thin layer of ricotta mixture and chicken, and roll up from the short end. Place on top of passata mixture. Continue until all filling and lasagne sheets are used.

Top roll-ups with remaining sauce and sprinkle with remaining Parmesan and mozzarella. Bake for 35 minutes, or until lasagne noodles are soft enough to eat.

 

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Chicken ParmiGina Gershon

Main

Annelie and I pride ourselves on having our fingers on the pulse of everything celebrity, fame, entertainment and style, so you can imagine the shame we feel for not realising that a) Lifetime, the greatest film producer on the planet, made a movie about our dear friend Donatells and b) that our other dear friend Gina Gershon played her in said movie.

How on earth did we miss it?

Obviously Gina was hurt that we missed her Emmy-snubbed performance of a life…time and that we didn’t get her in touch with Telly for research, but thankfully our beautiful past and promise of some great collaborations quickly turned the visit around.

(We had to lie through our teeth about her appearance on Glee being good for her image, but you do what you’ve got to do to maintain a friendship).

Gina was very thankful she missed our Carnival Week celebrations (for peasants and hicks, she said). Being a Cali girl, she was loving the mild Brisbane winter and I must say, it really brought the best out of us creatively, both in dance (gotta be warm enough for midriffs and nipple tassels) and scripting (Magic Showgirls XXX is going to win Oscars, guaranteed – obviously if Elizabeth Berkley agrees to reprise Nomi and Annelie and I co-star as rival divas).

With such laborious and meaningful work being undertaken, a big, sentimental meal was required, so we opted for the Chicken ParmiGina Gershon. Funny story, we first made Giny the ParmiGina after getting into a brutal altercation with Jan Draboltchka on the set of Face/Off resulting in him literally losing his face, leading to a re-write of the script and a bump down to co-star for poor Gins.

She is pretty forgiving, but I guess that goes with the territory of being friends with us.

 

Chicken ParmiGina Gershon_1

 

Like Gina, we like our parmies to be smokin’, saucy and to leave you wanting more. We also like them to be liberal with the breast.

Enjoy!

 

Chicken ParmiGina Gershon_2

 

Chicken ParmiGina Gershon
Serves: 2-4, breast dependent.

Ingredients
2 large, skinless chicken breasts, halved through the middle
2 eggs
1 cup plain flour
¼ cup breadcrumbs
¼ cup polenta
2 tbsp parmesan, grated
1 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 cups passata
2 tsp dried oregano
8-12 slices smoked ham
small bunch fresh basil
125g ball mozzarella, sliced

Method
Preheat oven to 180°C.

Beat eggs in a large(ish) bowl. In a second bowl, combine breadcrumbs, polenta and parmesan. Chuck the flour, or you know place it gently, in a third bowl.

Place the halved chicken breasts between cling film sheets and bash out with a rolling pin until they are about 1cm thick (don’t worry too much about this…mine generally end up looking pretty ugly anyway). Dip the fillet in flour, followed by the egg, then the breadcrumb/polenta/parmesan mix. Place in the oven to bake for 20-30 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Heat oil and cook garlic for 1 min, then tip in passata and oregano. Season, generously (even add a pinch of raw sugar if you want) and simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Remove chicken from the oven. Drizzle a thin layer of tomato sauce over the chicken, cover with a few slices of the ham, pour some more tomato sauce over the chicken, place a few basil leaves on top and covered with the sliced mozzarella. I then scatter some extra Parmesan for good measure but that is only because I love me some cheese. Return to the oven and bake for 5-10 minutes or until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is melted and golden.

Serve with fries. Copious amounts of fries.

 

As you can probably tell, we are very social but the fun isn’t only limited to celebrities! You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+.

J’Tiamisu

12 Days of Survivor Christmas, Dessert

I’ve said it before (well, at the very least alluded to it), sometimes we are terrible people and that is how we first connected with Cagayan contestant, J’Tia Taylor.

Don’t get me wrong, while her moves with the rice were pretty cruel/amazing, J’Tia is a lovely friend…it is just that we befriended her to try to live out Annelie’s dream of going to space.

You see, while we could have used our friendship with Panama contestant Dan Barry to get on the space program, I incorrectly read her profession to be Rocket Scientist when she was on the Brains tribe (she is a Nuclear Engineer, a job I still wouldn’t understand).

You see, I convinced Annelie that J’Tia could build us a rocket and we could cut out the middleman that is NASA. After a year of awkward hints, blatant threats and blackmail, J’Tia kindly told us she couldn’t build us a spaceship, but offered her friendship as a consolation prize.

To celebrate our first Christmas as friends, we decided to catch up for a dessert of J’Tiamisu as a symbol of her sweet nature…and the fact that we all may need a boozy dish to get along/be tolerable humans.

 

J'Tiamisu 1

 

Inspired by Nigella Lawson’s Tiramisu layer cake, the dish is made of a chocolate cake base, with Tia Maria providing the coffee and the kick. We decided to serve them in individual martini glasses so that we wouldn’t have to worry about portion control (lest J’Tia thought we were going to vote her out) and as we love anything kitsch, and they looked kitsch.

Enjoy!

 

J'Tiamisu 2

 

J’Tiamisu
Serves: 8.

Ingredients
700-1000g chocolate loaf cakes (shop-bought variety is fine)
400ml (ish) Tia Maria
1 tsp cocoa and 1 tsp espresso powder combined, for dusting

Cream Filling
2 large organic eggs
75g caster sugar
500g mascarpone
250ml double cream
125ml Tia Maria

Method
Wash and dry 8 martini glasses and leave aside until assembly.

Slice the chocolate cakes thinly, and pour the Tia Maria into a shallow dish (keep the bottle handy as you may need more), ready for soaking the cake.

Whisk the eggs and sugar, mascarpone and double cream in an electric mixer (I am lazy, you can just use a whisk). Slowly add, the 125ml Tia Maria and continue whisking until light, fluffy and combined.

To assemble, dunk the slices of cake in Tia Maria and press into the base of each martini glass (it will probably be a slice per glass at the start), ensuring that the layer is firm but not too thick. Spoon a layer of cream filling over the cake (roughly 5mm thick). Continue layering, alternating between cake and cream until you have almost filled the glass.

Finish with a generous layer of the cream mixture and dust with cocoa/espresso powder mix.

I always want to add cinnamon, but I think I have an unhealthy obsession with adding cinnamon. Maybe don’t add cinnamon?

Eat straight out of the glass and pretend you’re at a festive swingers party in the eighties.