Braised lamb shank with sweet peppers and feta on a bed of sweet potato mash ... in the Thermomix

Since we've moved to wine country, we have some lovely neighbours. Not new neighbours, since we've known Gay and Warren for 10+ years from when my parents owned the house we're in now, till when we bought the house but never lived in it cos we had it rented out and now.

It has become a bit of a thing where we have Gay and Warren over to dinner (and you know how much I love cooking for company) perhaps once every 3 or 4 weeks. Since we've been up here for 5 months, I think they've been over to dinner as many times. I love the challenge of coming up with something new each time and hopefully not repeat myself too much.

This time when Gay and Warren came over for dinner, I decided on something slow cooked. Slow cooked because the meat was going to be very melt in your mouth tender and because I thought it would be better for Gay's 95 year old dad who was coming over to dinner too - you know, on account of he may not be able to chew something tough!

I picked out two recipes to try and decided to go with the lamb shanks as I had not cooked lamb in a while. The recipe came from The New Slow Cooker by Brigit Binns.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 4 - 6 lamb shanks, about 1lb (500g) each, trimmed of fat
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1 large carrot, finely chopped
• 1 stalk of celery, finely chopped
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 cup beef stock
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons continental parsley, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup crumbled feta

Instructions:

• Season the lamb shanks generously all over with salt and pepper. In a large pan over medium high heat, warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil. When oil is hot, working in batches if necessary to avoid crowding, add the shanks and sear, turning as needed, until golden brown on all sides, about 8 minutes total. Transfer to plate.
• Pour off most of the fat from the pan and return it to medium high heat. Add onion, carrot, celery, bay leaves, oregano and cumin, saute until vegetables are golden, 6 - 8 minutes. Pour in stock and wine and stir to dislodge any browned bits on the pan bottom. Transfer the contents of the pan to a slow cooker and stir in 1/2 teaspoon salt and several grinds of pepper. Place the lamb shanks on top. Cover and cook on low setting for 7 hours, basting once or twice with the braising liquid if possible. The meat should be very tender.
• Carefully transfer the shanks to a platter. Cover to keep warm. Strain the braising liquid into a small saucepan, let stand for a few minutes, then skim away the fat with a large spoon. Bring to boil over high heat and boil until reduced by about half, about 5 minutes.
• In a frying pan, over medium high heat, warm the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Add the bell peppers and saute until just beginning to soften, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Remove from heat, stir in parsley and season with salt and pepper.
• Divide the lamb shanks among warm individual plates and drizzle with the reduced braising liquid. Top each shank with a spoonful of the sauteed peppers. Sprinkle the feta over the top and serve immediately.

The recipe worked a complete treat.

One of the things that I have learned over the years of slow cooking is that the recipes never tell you to put in enough liquid. This one was no different. It asked for only a total of 3/4 cup of liquid. If something is going into the oven and cooking for 7 hours (the way I slow cook, with a dutch oven casserole pot in the oven at 120°C) the liquid is going to evaporate. I'd even hazard a guess and say that if you were using a crock pot, you'd still get a fair amount of evaporation after that long. I ended up adding 1 cup of white wine and 3 cups of beef stock into the pot. By the time we were done, the liquid had mostly evaporated but there was still enough left for sauce.

For the sweet potato mash, I used this recipe for mashed potatoes in the Thermomix, but substituted regular potatoes with sweet potatoes. It turned out beautifully.

If you want a non-Thermomix way to make mashed potatoes, here is a recipe that also makes absolutely delicious mash. Again, just substitute regular potatoes for sweet potatoes.

To serve, I spooned a serve of sweet potato mash onto the centre of my dinner plate, then placed the lamb shank on top of the mash. Then I placed some of the sweet peppers onto top of and around the lamb shank. After that, I scooped a spoon of the gravy along with the cooked down bits of carrot, celery and onion (I didn't strain it as the recipe said and it didn't need reducing since it had already reduced by about 75% over the 7 hour cooking process) on top of the lamb shank. To finish, I crumbled some feta cheese around the lamb shank.

As a side, I served some steamed broccolini with the dish so that we would have some greens to go with the meal.

This dish was full of flavor and the lamb shanks were incredibly tender. There was flavor bursting in our mouths with every bite.

If you do make this, be sure to post pictures for me to see either on Instagram - be sure to tag me with @langshipley or on my Daz In The Kitchen Facebook page.


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Orange Roughy on a bed of pea and asparagus risotto ... in the Thermomix

I need to start off by saying that I am damned proud of this dish and how it turned out. It was absolutely delicious.

We've recently started having more fish as we've discovered a good fish supplier (almost) locally. It's an hour drive and back to get to them but we get excellent fresh fish and at great prices.

The Boy is always after me to make more fish to add to our diet, but I'm not a big fan of fish in general. I need my fish to be really, really fresh and not smell like fish. Can't stand that fishy smell!

Long story short, we went for a little trip and picked up some fish and Orange Roughy (a fish from New Zealand) was in the mix. The Boy loves Orange Roughy. I asked for two portions but didn't realise that for the Orange Roughy, one portion could feed two people. They came frozen (though I could have asked for them fresh, had I known!) and I just put them straight into the freezer.

The last few times that we have been out, The Boy has ordered fish and it has arrived on a bed of risotto of some sort. I thought that was a great way to serve fish, since we always find that fish on its own just isn't quite satisfying enough as a meal.

We had some friends over to dinner recently and I was at a loss as to what to cook for dinner and The Boy reminded me that we still had the Orange Roughy in the freezer, so I thought I'd serve the fish on a bed of risotto for the mains.

Here's what I did for the fish: (of course, it doesn't have to be Orange Roughy, you can use any fish you like).

Ingredients:

• Orange roughy (or any other type of) fish in single serve portions, as many as needed for number of people serving
• Salt
• Pepper
• Paprika 
• Olive oil

Instructions:

• Heat oven to 200°C
• Prepare baking trays with a sheet of aluminum foil on it. Lightly spray with oil (I use an olive oil spray)
• Place Orange Roughy onto the tray, depending on size of the tray, 2 or 4 to a tray
• Drizzle a small amount of olive oil on top of fish
• Sprinkle salt and pepper onto fish for taste
• Dust a light coating of paprika onto fish as well
• Bake in oven, uncovered for 8 - 10 minutes until fish is done
• Serve on a bed of pea and asparagus risotto

For the risotto, originally I thought of making a porcini and truffle risotto but then thought that the porcini and truffle might overpower the flavor of the fish, so went with pea and asparagus instead.

Here's how I made the risotto: (of course, if you don't have a Thermomix, you can make your risotto the traditional way).

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of Parmesan, block or shredded
• 1 onion, quartered
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 40g Olive oil
• 300g Arborio rice
• 80g white wine
• 4 tsp chicken stock
• 1 litre of hot water
• 1 cup peas
• 1 bunch asparagus, diced

Instructions:

• If Parmesan is in blocks, put in TM bowl, grind for 10 seconds, speed 7, remove and set aside
• Chop onion and garlic together Speed 6, 3 – 5 seconds, scrape sides
• Add olive oil and sauté at 100 degrees for 2 minutes
• Add Arborio rice and wine wine, sauté for 2 minutes at Reverse speed 1, 100 degrees
• Add stock and hot water, set time to 12 minutes, Reverse speed 1, 100 degrees
• After 12 minutes, peas and asparagus, cook at 100 degrees for 4 minutes, Reverse speed 1
• Remove risotto from TM bowl into a large serving bowl, fold in 2/3 of ground Parmesan, add pepper to taste.
• Serve risotto and sprinkle remaining Parmesan on dish. Enjoy.

A word of advice, timing is everything for this dish. You don't want your fish to be done too early and go cold or get overcooked, so time your risotto and when it is about 8 to 10 minutes from being ready, then pop your fish into the oven.

To serve, I put a generous scoop of the risotto onto the middle of a dinner plate and then placed the fish on top of the risotto. For garnish, I kept it simple and just drizzled a little olive oil over the outer rim of the plate.

If you do make this, be sure to post pictures for me to see either on Instagram - be sure to tag me with @langshipley or on my Daz In The Kitchen Facebook page.


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Happy birthday to The Boy ... what incredible food we had!

Just a little disclaimer! There's no recipe in this blog post. I'm just commemorating a very special event that has occurred recently in our lives.

The Boy turned 60 this year and I was very excited about the event and possibly a little concerned about his getting old! :-)

Originally, we had thought to invite a whole bunch of friends to a party to celebrate but the more we thought about it, the larger it was going to be and in the end, it was a case of - oh, if we invite so and so, then we HAVE to invite so and so too, and we couldn't possibly leave out so and so .... and it rapidly became HUGE and out of control.

We finally decided to scale it right back and similar to my 40th, we limited it to friends we had know for 10 years or more. Special friends whom we had shared many similar events with as well, and in general just kept it really low key. Some special friends came in from interstate for the evening and we had a special last minute visitor from The Boy's college visiting and we invited him along as well.

We decided to ask our favorite chef friend, Jay Huxley to cater the meal for us and The Boy pulled out wines to match the food.

Jay fixed an incredible menu for us and The Boy did a fine job matching wines. You can read about the wines for the night here.

When Jay asked me what I wanted for the menu, my response was "something fancy, modern Australian".

We had originally thought cocktail style food but Jay told me that we really needed a sit down meal to do the menu he had devised justice. This, of course, involved additional chairs and us squashing rather intimately around our dining room table, which only sat 8 people, since we ended up with 11 people for the evening.

Here's the incredible menu that we enjoyed for the evening.

• Tian of Alaskan King Crab, black caviar and radish
• 
  
• Sousvide  Pork Fillet, red cabbage, cauliflower purée and lentil pear salad
•  
• Oyster and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil
• 
  
• Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple
• 
  
• Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk
• 
  
• Charcoal octopus in romesco sauce and verde oil
• 
  
• Confit duck in a mushroom, abalone and star anise consume
• 
  
• Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro
• 
  
• Spice poached pear crispy wonton, salted caramel and double cream
• 
  
• Death by chocolate

I'm sorry that I don't have pictures of every single course. At some points in the evening, I got so excited (and just a little bit tipsy) that I forgot to take pictures of the food.

My favorite dish of the evening, if I had to pick on would be the vichy asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk. It was an incredibly decadent and sumptuous dish.

All in all, it was an amazing night of friendship, celebration, food and wine.

If you ever need a meal catered, I highly recommend Jay.

Ps. Jay is incredibly generous with his skills and knowledge and he will happily share with you his recipes if you ask. At the very least, that has been my experience with him. Whenever I've needed advice on something or a recipe for something he's cooked, he's been happy to share.

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Pizza party!! ... with a tomato, basil and boccocini salad

So, The Boy has committed me to writing a post about pizza only I've just discovered that I've already blogged about our pizza making and repeating that would just be boring.

Here's the link to where I talk about our ingredients that top our pizza. This time though, we bought our pizza bases because we didn't have time to make our own pizza dough. We'll probably do that again when we make pizza next.

I also didn't have any pizza sauce made up, so we just bought a jar of pasta sauce and used that instead. Usually, I make my own pizza sauce, which consists of:

• 1 can diced Italian tomatoes
• 1 small tub of tomato paste
• Italian herbs (use as much or as little as you like!)
• Salt and pepper

I heat that in a pan and then blitz it with a hand blender until it's smooth and then let it cool. Usually that makes enough for about 4 serves of pizza. I put them into small baggies and freeze what I do not use. It defrosts just fine and once defrosted, I just add it straight onto the top of the pizza.

We had The Best Bud and his wife over to dinner so it was a little more that pizza that was served.

We started off with some garlic bread and a tomato, basil and Bocconcini salad.

The garlic bread was easy because we bought it, though I think next time I will make my own. The brand that we usually get was not available, so we tried the regular Coles brand (Coles seems to be replacing all the brands with their own brand and sometimes not for the better). The Coles brand garlic bread was disappointing. It was bland and did not have enough garlic or really any other flavor. Both The Boy and I were disappointed in it, but The Best Bud thought that it was ok. We had thought that we would keep any that was unfinished as leftovers to go with lunch the next day, but decided to toss the remaining pieces since it wasn't very good.

We love a good tomato, basil and Bocconcini salad and it's the easiest thing to make. We made enough this time to serve 4 people and here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• 3 vine ripened tomatoes (they taste better), cut into 7mm slices
• 1 tub of Bocconcini standard sizes cheese balls, sliced into 7mm slices
• Basil leaves
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Place the sliced tomatoes on a serving platter
• Place one basil leaf on each slice of tomato
• Place the sliced Bocconcini cheese on top of the basil leave
• Grind some salt and pepper over the top
• Drizzle olive oil over the top
• Serve and enjoy

It was a pretty leisurely evening, so we had the garlic bread and tomato, basil and Bocconcini salad first. After that we made up the pizza and popped it into the oven for 12 minutes at 180 degrees C to cook and melt the cheese. When that was ready, we had a few slices of pizza but decided not to eat the second pizza that we made so that there was room for an Affogato for dessert.

We ended up with a whole pizza leftover that we've put into the fridge. The Boy will probably have some for lunch over the next few days and will likely take a few slices to work as well.

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Moroccan vegetable soup

I had written this a while ago and it seems like an opportune time to post this right now since it's Winter here and it's a great time for soup. I hope you enjoy this.

I love soup and lately, I've been doing a lot of soups for starters when I do my dinner parties because it's easy to make, I can make it ahead and they are delicious, plus if I serve a small amount, not too filling.

The good thing about soups is they can also make a meal in itself, if that's what you want out of it and most of the soups that I make tend to be the thick and creamy sort (without the cream since I'm lactose intolerant) and very filling if consumed in significant quantities.

This soup I made for a dinner party some time back. I think it was one where I had the boys over for dinner and the menu looked something like this:

Starter - Moroccan vegetable soup.

Main - Roasted pork belly (another favorite), sautéed garlic vegetables and truffle mashed potatoes.

Dessert - White chocolate cake with homemade ice cream. I made the ice cream, one of the boys brought the dessert. I've yet to get into baking and to be honest, it's not something that I'm excited about doing. It's too exact a science for me.

I think I've talked about all the main dishes before and even got some recipes put together for them from previous posts, so today it's all about the soup.

Here's the RECIPE for the Moroccan vegetable soup:

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 1 tablespoon olive oil or sunflower oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 onion chopped
• 225g carrots, chopped (about 3 medium carrots)
• 225g parsnips, chopped
• 225g pumpkin, chopped
• 4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
• Lemon juice, to taste
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Ingredients for the garnish:

• 1 ½ teaspoon olive oil
• ½ clove garlic, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley and coriander, mixed
• Good pinch of paprika

Instructions:

• Heat the oil and butter in a large pan and fry the onion for about 3 minutes until softened, stirring occasionally. Add the carrots and parsnips, stir well, cover and cook over a gentle heat for a further 5 minutes
• Cut the pumpkin into chunks, discarding the skin and pith, and stir into pan. Cover and cook for a further 5 minutes, then add the stock and seasoning and slowly bring to boil. Cover and simmer for 35 – 40 minutes until vegetables are tender
• Allow the soup to cool slightly and then pour in to a food processor or blender and puree until smooth, adding a little extra water if the soup seems too thick. Pour back into a clean pan and reheat gently
• To make garnish, heat the oil in a small pan, fry the garlic and herbs for 1 – 2 minutes. Add the paprika and stir well
• Adjust the seasoning of the soup and stir in lemon juice to taste. Pour into bowls and spoon a little of the prepared garnish on top, which would then be swirled carefully into the soup

This recipe only makes 4 (or so it said) and I was making soup for 6, so I increased the amount of ingredients by an extra 50% or so. The amounts are not exact, since I'm pretty relaxed about these things, so long as it eventually tastes good and I am really bad at math.

Here's what I did different (besides increasing quantities):

• I'm never exact with olive oil, I just use a bunch which is whatever looks about right in the pot / pan, depending on what I'm cooking and if it's not enough, I add more
• I did not buy enough parsnips (back to the bad at math thing) so I was on the original numbers of parsnips for the recipe
• I had a ton of pumpkin and decided to use it all up, so had a bit more pumpkin
• Fortunately for me, the carrots did end up going in with the correct quantity
• I used chicken stock because I think chicken stock gives the soup a better depth of flavor. I almost always do this, by the way, so if you ever see me making soup, chicken stock is a given
• I put some lemon juice in but after two tablespoons of lemon juice and it still not tasting very lemony, I decided that was enough. There was probably enough in it to give it a boost in flavor without dominating. I still wanted the vegetable flavors to come through
• I did not add pepper to the soup because I wanted to keep the sweetness of the vegetables and didn't want the heat from the pepper coming through
• For the garnish, I used quite a bit more garlic than the recipe said but again that's just me 'cos I like garlic
• I also not only mixed paprika into the garnish mix but I also sprinkled some extra on to the soup to give it some contrasting colors - the orange of the soup, the red of the paprika and the green from the garnish - made it very pretty!

The soup tasted lovely. There was a hint of spice from the garnish that added a delightful flavor to it.

Are you a seasonal soup person or can you have soup year round? Is soup something that is warm and comforting for the winter time or is it something that you will eat whenever you are looking for something that's tasty and simple?



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Farewell my boys ... with chocolate mousse

This is a rather old post which I write a while ago but never posted. Thought I'd pull it out tonight and post it since .... well, I just really should. :-)

You've heard me talk about my boys for a while now and all the cooking that I do for them. It's rather a regular thing, the Singles and Strays dinner. It started off pretty casual and has grown into a three course dinner where I go a little silly cooking and The Boy gets all excited about matching his wines to the food. The fun thing is that people keep coming back. :-) That's a good sign, I guess.

Well, a recent dinner has left me feeling rather sad and a little bittersweet. The Boy's project has recently wound down / finished / ended - you get my drift, and many of my boys all work with him. After a long day at work, they all troop over to the apartment, kick back and we eat, we drink, we laugh and generally have some wonderful fellowship. I'm very fond of my boys. I find them delightful and I love cooking for them. I'm not sure if the dinners will continue, possibly not in it's current form 'cos the boys are scattering to the four winds. Job in another state, one returning overseas and one thinking of heading overseas to work and one of them thinking about going back to their home country to spend more time with family.

It's going to be our last dinner for a little while because of all that's going on, plus we're going away for a little while. Hopefully, some of the boys will be around when we get back and we can round up a gang for another dinner.

Of course, the dinners are not always with the boys only - regular ring ins also include the best bud and his lovely wife, the girlfriend and a few others.

So for this rather recent dinner, I went with an Italian theme, mostly because I wanted to cook something simple (it never turns out that way) and also there were a few recipes I wanted to try.

I decided to make a soup starter, which I've become rather fond of doing. So starter was Italian Pea and Basil Soup. This was followed by mains of Spicy Chorizo Spaghetti (mixing my cultures here, but those chorizo sausages are dang tasty!), Three Cheese Pasta Bake and a large green leafy salad with a dijon vinaigrette dressing. The dessert was going to be Chocolate Mousse with whipped cream and strawberries.

After I worked out the menu, I started freaking out about there not being enough food because I was cooking for 8 people instead of my usual 6. I then decided to add a pre-starter nibblies dish to accompany drinks before we sat down to dinner. For that, I made the Pepperoni Pizza Puffs.

It turned out to be a lot of food and one of the boys took home a record amount of leftovers. He calls it his "takeaway" and he loves it. We even took a shot of him with his food haul.

The highlight of the evening, I'm told was the chocolate mousse. According to the best bud's lovely wife, it was the best chocolate mousse she has ever had. Then she went on to say that in all the desserts that she's had since arriving in this country, this was the best, which has even topped the chocolate covered peanut butter balls that I made some time ago (another recipe for another day, I promise!). See - that's the thing I love about cooking for other people - the pleasure I give them when they eat the food I cook. I love that they love the food. :-)

Here's the RECIPE for the chocolate mousse - courtesy of Cooking for Blokes. It's super simple, really it is. If I can make it, you can make it.

Ingredients:

• 200g dark chocolate
• 50g butter
• 20mL brandy or other liqueur
• 4 eggs, separated
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar

Instructions:

• Place chocolate, butter and brandy into a stainless steel bowl and melt in a bain marie, stirring gently so the chocolate does not burn or dry out.

• Remove from heat, cool slightly and stir in egg yolks. Cool.
• Whisk egg whites and sugar to form soft peaks. Fold into chocolate mixture gently using whisk. Pour into serving dishes and refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

This makes 4 generous serves and believe it or not, I did not do anything different. I followed the instructions exactly, which you kinda have to with desserts and all those baking-y sorts of things. Then, I topped the chocolate mousse with whipped cream and strawberries to finish it off. Lots of rich, chocolatey goodness!

Do you have any meals that you've had that have been bittersweet for you? Do you remember the event with fondness and keep with touch with the people? Do you remember what you ate at that meal? 



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Roast pork belly

We had a dinner party last night and I tell you what ... a mid-week dinner party when working full time is a killer! I don't recommend it.

Anyway, I served roast pork belly for the main and it turned out soooooo well.

The inside was juicy and tender. The skin crackled beautifully.

Yum!

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Easy is good ... and so is roasted pork belly

I think I went on a cooking overload when I did 3 dinner parties in 7 days - Wednesday night, Friday night and Tuesday night. I don't recommend it unless you are a professional chef and are used to the hours and the heat in the kitchen.

After planning the menus and cooking on Wednesday and Friday night, I was a little lost at what to cook for Tuesday night. Fortunately, I had suggested roasted pork belly at a different night and so the main was set. Then The Boy requested truffle mashed potatoes to go with the pork belly, and I threw in some green stuff just 'cos it's good for you.

The menu turned out like this:

Starter was a Morrocan Vegetable Soup (I'll write about this another time), followed by Roasted Pork Belly, Truffle Mashed Potatoes and Garlic Sautéed Broccoli for main. Dessert was courtesy of Angelo, so all I had to do was provide homemade ice cream as an accompaniment - Vanilla and Caramel.

Angelo, one of the boys, is a particular fan of pork belly. In fact, he told us this story (I do not recommend anyone do this!) of how he found a pâtisserie that served a pork belly and brie baguette that was delicious, in fact so delicious that he ate it twice a day, everyday for 3 weeks straight. At the end of the 3 weeks, his blood pressure was through the roof. The moral of this story? Too much of a good thing can be bad for you!!

Anyway, Angelo asked if the pork belly was easy to make and could he do it himself. I told him that yes, it was super easy to make and explained it to him at the dining table while we ate. He was surprised at how easy the whole thing was.

Here's the RECIPE for roasted pork belly:

Ingredients

• 1 slab of pork belly according to number of people to be served (200g per person)
• Olive oil
• Salt
• 6 – 8 large onions

Instructions:

Preparing the pan:

• Oil a roasting pan with spray oil
• Cut up onions into quarters and place in centre of pan

Preparing the pork belly:

• Defrost pork belly and let sit to room temperature. Dry the skin of the pork belly with some paper towels and then gently rub a little bit of vinegar onto it. Any vinegar will do, since this is just to make sure that the skin is very, very dry
• Score the skin of the pork belly in a crosshatch pattern using a knife – the cuts to be deep enough to penetrate to the fat layer below the skin
• Pour a generous amount of olive oil to cover pork belly surface
• Sprinkle a generous amount of salt on top of olive oil
• Massage oil and salt thoroughly into skin

Cooking the pork belly:

• Heat oven to 180 degrees C
• Heat a saucepan with some olive oil and sear all sides of the pork belly (including crackling) until golden brown, remove from pan
• Place pork belly on top of onions and roast in oven for 30 minutes
• After 30 minutes check temp in middle of pork belly (should be 70 degrees C)
• If it is not up to 70 degrees C, put back into oven to continue roasting
• After 15 minutes, repeat step 4 until middle of pork belly reaches 70 degrees C
• When at right temp, take out of oven and stand pork belly for 10 – 20 minutes
• Remove crackling, slice and serve with hot gravy and red cabbage relish

Since I was feeding the boys and I wanted enough to have some for them to take away for leftovers, I ordered a 2kg slab of pork belly. That was a mistake because the slab of pork belly was wider than my oven. It's just a good idea to make sure that the piece of meat is going to fit into the oven. I know I could have halved it and put it into two trays, but I have a stupid, small oven and I needed the second shelf for the mashed potatoes. On top of that, I did not have enough onions (stupid me, I didn't check my onion supply, which I had exhausted after cooking so much) and only had 4 onions instead of 8 to rest the pork belly in. That was not too much of a problem, but I'm a perfectionist and that did not make me happy.

In spite of all that, the pork belly turned out well and the boys loved it. I would have preferred that it was a little bit better, but then I'm much more exacting on myself and The Boy and everyone else did say it was a superb dinner.

Oh, to do with the pork belly, I made red cabbage relish. Here's the RECIPE:

Ingredients for Relish:

• ½ red cabbage
• 2 cups of red wine vinegar (or enough to cover the cabbage in a small pot
• 2 tablespoons of raw / brown sugar

Ingredients for apple sauce:

• 2 small red apples, skinned and cored, diced
• 2 tablespoons of raw/ brown sugar

Instructions for Relish:

• Cut up red cabbage into thin 1 inch slices
• Put in small pot
• Cover with red wine vinegar and put in sugar
• Put over low flame and cook, checking regularly it does not get too dry for 1 hour
• Cover and cook over low flame for another hour
• Put in oven and braise slowly in 80 degrees C heat for another 2 hours

Instructions for apple sauce:

• Put apples into small pot
• Put in sugar and cover with water
• Cook gently until soft ( can put in oven if preferred)

Final step:

• When relish and apple sauce is ready, combine and serve

Note: the cabbage can be made a few days ahead and just put in the fridge and served when you are ready to eat.

The relish is a fantastic accompaniment to the pork belly. In fact, it is so yummy, I was eating the stuff on it's own. It's got a lovely, slighty salty, slightly sweet, slightly sour flavor that's very more-ish. You can't quite figure out the flavor but you just want to keep eating more of it. The Boy said it smelled like sauerkraut when cooking but it really does not taste anything that like because to me sauerkraut just tastes like sour boiled cabbage.

Remember! Everything in moderation!!! Or do what The Father did when I invited him and The Mother to dinner and cooked the same dish - eat half the slab of pork belly as a compliment to the cook.

Do you have any meat that is a favorite? Any meat you don't eat? For health, personal or religious reasons? Any meat you love and will eat all the time? What will you only eat occasionally? What's your "everyday" meat? What do you think of pork?

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Carrot and orange soup

I recently had a dinner party where I was at a loss to what to do about a starter. For me, the starter is always the hardest dish to make because it needs to be tasty but also not to filling, and at the same time (this is a personal quirk) not too fiddly. I have lots of books with recipes for tapas, appetisers, entrees, etc., and they are all fiddly, and the recipe makes enough to serve 20. Bah!

On top of all that, I have a fridge with a shit ton of mandarins. It's mandarin season right now and I just love eating those things. They are all sweet, tangy goodness.

Anyhow, I went through the cookbooks and came up empty after going through 2 of them and thought "hey? how about a soup?" Wow! It was a light bulb moment for me. I thought it was sheer genius on my part (just goes to show how silly I can be!).

Combing through the cookbooks again (this time for soups), I came across a RECIPE for a carrot and orange soup. Wonderful! I will make that 'cos is sounds yummy!

Ingredients:

• 50g (1/4 cup) butter
• 3 leeks, sliced
• 450g / 1lb carrots, sliced
• 1.2 litres / 5 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
• Rind and juice of 2 oranges
• ½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 150ml / 2/3 cup Greek yogurt
• Salt and ground black pepper
• Fresh sprigs of coriander (cilantro) to garnish

Instructions:

• Melt the butter in a large pan. Add the leeks and carrots and stir well, coating the vegetables with the butter. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes, until vegetables are beginning to soften but not color
• Pour in the stock and the orange rind and juice. Add the nutmeg and season to taste with salt and pepper. Bring to boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for about 40 minutes or until the vegetables are tender
• Leave to cool slightly, then puree the soup in a food processor or blender until smooth
• Return the soup to the pan and add 30ml / 2 tablespoons of yogurt, then taste the soup and adjust seasoning, if necessary. Reheat gently.
• Ladle soup into warm individual bowls and put a swirl of yogurt in the centre of each. Sprinkle fresh sprigs of coriander over each bowl to garnish and serve immediately

Carrots and leeks in the pot ready to be sautéed.

For those of you who have been this blog with any regularity at all will know that I never follow a recipe exactly. I can't help myself, I just feel the need to improvise to some extent. Here's what I did different:

• I used mandarins instead of oranges. Remember I mentioned I have a shit ton of mandarins in the fridge? Good way to use a few. The mandarins were not super juicy, so I used the juice of 5 medium sized mandarins and grated the rind of 3 mandarins for the soup.
• I don't know exactly what 450g of carrots looked like, but I used 6 medium sized carrots thought that was about right.
• Instead of 1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg, I used a touch more than 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg because that was what I had in my pantry.
• I don't have a food processor, so I just stuck a stick blender into the pot of soup when it was ready for blending and let that wizz through the soup. Blended it just fine and I could do it while the soup was still hot.
• I did not swirl the yogurt through all of the soup because one of my friends and I don't take yogurt. I'm not sure of Jean Claude's reason for not taking it, but for me, I'm lactose intolerant, so I served the soup into bowls and then just added a spoonful of the yogurt into the bowls of those who wanted the yogurt. I thought the soup tasted find without the yogurt.
• Finally, the soup itself was so tasty that I did not even need to season it with salt and pepper.

Here's what the soup looks like right after it's been blended smooth.

Anyhow, the soup turned out way beyond my expectations. It was rich and creamy in texture, but at the same time, light and tangy in flavor. The mandarin gave it a delicate hint of freshness, while the carrots and leeks provided structure to the soup. I'm not sure how the soup will taste with oranges, but I expect I will find out when I make it and mandarins are no longer in season. All in all, the soup was a win. Super delicious. I'd cook it again!!

What have you done that's seasonal recently? Any particular fruits or vegetables or meats sitting in your fridge or at the store is particularly seasonal right now? What's in season? What do you do when something you want is not in season?

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Eating in or out? ... with some veal thrown in

So, I haven't written a post in several days and I'm *just* jonesing (is there such a word?) to write something. Seriously, I'm getting antsy because I haven't produced anything for the blog and that is disregarding the 11 or so already written blog posts that I haven't posted yet because I'm being disciplined about sticking to my twice a week posting schedule. Plus I'm so behind on my reading because of all this cooking and blogging it's not funny, so I'm not even sure why I so want to write. Must be an addiction of some sort, what do you think?

Anyhow, what have I cooked recently? What am I cooking next?

Dinner this week consisted of a mushroom risotto that I've already written about; another boys' night which consisted of spaghetti aglio, olio e pepperoncino, crustless quiche, shepherd's pie, caramel ice cream; risotto leftovers ... boring! boring! boring!

How about we talk about money? Always an interesting topic, eh?

How much does it cost you and a loved one to eat out?

Here, in Sydney, where we live, it's expensive. Let me give you some examples:

• breakfast at our favorite cafe, consisting of a ham and cheese croissant, scrambled eggs and toast, and two coffees is approximately $40
• a food court dinner of two main meals and drinks is about $25
• a lunch / dinner at an average restaurant, no wine, is about $75 to $100
• a dinner at a nice restaurant in the city, including wine (at reasonable prices) is about $250
• a dinner at a VERY nice restaurant in the city, including wine is about $300 upwards with food costing about $100 each, and wine on top of that
• lunch at our favorite French restaurant with wine and dessert, upwards of $300

All that I've just listed is for only TWO people.Pricey, eh? That's Sydney for you, which has recently been voted into the top 10 most expensive cities to live in. It's nothing to be proud of.

We recently took a trip to the US to visit some family and I was blown away by how cheap it was to eat there. Some examples:

• breakfast for two including full pancake meal with pancakes, sausage, eggs, bacon, plus oatmeal, and two coffees (bottomless) was $13
• dinner for 7 people at a reasonable restaurant, a few starters, mains all around, alcoholic drinks was $150 including tips

Astonishing!

The cost of eating out is one of the reasons that I've started to prefer to cook at home and invite people over for a meal. I can control what I cook, the quality of the food, and The Boy can determine what wines to serve.

The other night, dinner with the boys cost approximately $65 for food, $40 for wine. Total cost to feed 6 people, plus enough leftovers for at least 4 meals was $105. That was made up of spaghetti starter, shepherd's pie, quiche, salad, sticky date pudding with homemade ice cream and 4 bottles of wine. The food was of excellent quality (I should know, I bought and cooked it!) and the wine was good, most of the wines were between $30 to $65 per bottle (retail price) that we picked up on sale or were given to us. Good deal, eh?

Tonight, I'm cooking a much fancier meal, or rather, the meat is much more expensive, but even then, for 4 people - soup, very high quality veal rack for the main, along with vegetables and sides, the food cost is about $85. (I don't have to make dessert because the friends are bringing that, which they often do). A little higher than the boys' dinner but still under $100 for 4 people. I expect the wines would be more expensive tonight, since the boy is wanting to drink some fancy stuff and these friends of ours really like their wines. Still, a meal like this, at a comparable restaurant would cost us about $450 to $600 for the 4 of us, and that's with having to be careful on the wines too.

Anyhow, the point of this is ... if you can cook it yourself, control the ingredients and the menu, you're better off doing it yourself. It's much more fun (if you like the cooking) and the food comes out exactly to your taste. It's also a lot more relaxing and comfortable to be sitting in your own home (to me anyway) than in a restaurant. Plus, it is just much more cost effective.

This is my dining room with the dinner table set for a dinner. The reason not the entire table is set for 8 is because we were expecting a Thermomix demo and needed to leave a space at the top of the table (whole other story that I might one day tell).

I've got the whole dinner party routine pretty down pat now (a dinner party a week will do that to you):

• people arrive, The Boy serves drinks and starts getting everyone liquored up
• I start getting the starters ready - either cooked or assembled, for people to be able to sit down to eat about 15 to 30 minutes after they arrive
• we sit down and eat the starter, meanwhile the main is either cooking or cooked but needs heating
• after the starters are done, I clear that into the dishwasher and start preparing the main (it's all very relaxed)
• preparing the main can take anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes depending on what needs to be done, in the meantime, no one's hungry, 'cos they've had the starter and everyone is just relaxed and sipping their wine and chatting
• I serve the mains when that's ready, we eat, and when that's done, I clear, it goes straight into the dishwasher (this way at the end of the night, there's not much cleaning up to do)
• after the mains are done, we sit for a little while and then I get dessert together and we chat, eat dessert, linger over wine or some after dinner ports and dessert wines

The whole meals takes between 3 to 5 hours, depending on how much lingering we do between meals. During the week, the meals might move along a little faster since it is a school night, Friday and Saturday nights, we tend to crawl along a bit more. Generally though, the meals are relaxed and fun, and that's what I aim to achieve with every dinner party I throw. I want people to feel comfortable, welcome, and feel they can just hang out. Plus the big bonus is (for some inexplicable reason) my friends seem to like to help me clean up, so by the time they leave, most everything is cleaned and put away except for the wine glasses.

Now about that expensive veal rack I talked about earlier, I'm making a chilli and lemon baked veal rack, and here's the RECIPE:

This is the veal rack once it has been properly prepared and before it goes into the oven.

Ingredients:

• 1 large kumara (sweet potato) 500g sliced thickly
• 4 medium potatoes (800g) sliced thickly
• 1 large brown onion slicked thickly
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1.6kg veal rack (8 chops) trimmed
• 2 cups (140g) stale breadcrumbs
• 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon rind
• 1 fresh long red chilli, thinly sliced
• 1 fresh long red chilli, chopped finely
• 60g butter, melted

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 220 degrees C or 200 degrees C fan-forced
• Combine kumara, potato, onion, oil, juice and 2/3 of garlic in large ovenproof dish. Place veal on wire rack over potato mixture in dish
• Combine remaining garlic, bread crumbs, rind, chillis and butter in small bowl, press breadcrumb mixture over veal
• Roast uncovered about 40 minutes or until cooked as desired. Stand covered for 10 minutes before serving

I did a few things differently with the veal rack from the recipe though they were not drastic differences:

• The recipe called for dressing the kumara, potato and onion in olive oil, lemon juice and garlic. I used carrots, kumara, pumpkin and onions, and I dressed mine in just olive oil and a Masterfoods All Purpose Seasoning spice, with leftover bread crumbs mix for the meal sprinkled on top of the vegetables that was not covered by the veal rack itself. 
• I didn't use the wire rack as it said in the recipe, just left the veal on top of the vegetables. The veggies themselves make a nice wire rack substitute ... plus you can eat it!
• I also wrapped the ends of the bones of the veal rack in foil so that they would not burn or crack in the oven. 
• I used a meat thermometer to check the temperature of the meat and took it out of the oven when it hit 62 degrees C in the middle, which left the meat at a lovely medium-rare to medium cooked state. I don't know exactly how long that took because I checked the veal after 30 minutes and then in 10 to 15 minute intervals after that until it was ready.
• The recipe also didn't call for it, but I had the butcher tie up the veal rack so that it stands better. The only problem with tying the veal rack is that when you cut it, you get bits of string, but I warned my guests about the string and told them to just pull it out before eating, if they come across the string. As luck would have it, I got two pieces of the stuff. *grin*

I probably do a lot of dinner parties right now 'cos I have the time right now, but in general, I have to admit that since learning to cook, making and serving my own food is something I prefer over eating out at a restaurant. I find it infinitely more relaxing. Don't get me wrong though, I do still like to eat out, but I prefer something quick and simple in the restaurant, as opposed to a long drawn out meal.

How do you like cooking for dinner parties? Would you rather cook for friends and colleagues or go out for a meal and have it cooked and served to you? Is it expensive to eat where you live? I'd like to know what the different costs of eating are around the world. 

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Spaghetti aglio, olio e pepperoncino and another dinner party

I'm planning another dinner party ... there's a surprise! It's of course with my two favorite boys, Ramtin and Andrew, but this time I'm also adding two more boys, Angelo (an ex-colleague of The Boy's) and Rohan (our realtor).

I asked Ramtin and Andrew to choose the menu for the dinner party, since I thought it might be nice to revisit some of their favorites from past dinners.

This is what they picked:

For a starter - spaghetti aglio, olio e pepperoncino, which is a lovely spaghetti tossed in olive oil, garlic, chili and parsley. A super simple dish and amazingly tasty.

For the main - crustless quiche with bacon and tomato and shepherd's pie. I'm going to match that with a big bowl of green leafy salad with different types of lettuce, cucumber, Spanish onion, fennel and grape tomatoes, tossed in a plum vinegar dressing.

For dessert - I've made a caramel ice cream and I'm going to match that with a sticky date pudding and caramel sauce.

So that's it. A pretty simple dinner menu for the most part. Timing is going to be simple too. I can cook the shepherd's pie earlier in the afternoon and have it all ready to pop in the oven when the time comes. The quiche is a very quick mix and pop into the oven and the salad would only take a few minutes to toss together. Not much needs to be done beforehand, so unlike the French themed dinner party, I don't think I will be spending the entire day cooking.

Here's my favorite way to eat spaghetti, the RECIPE to the spaghetti aglio, olio e pepperoncino:

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch fresh Continental parsley
• 2 cloves of garlic
• A pinch of chilli
• A pinch of salt
• Olive oil
• Spaghetti
• Parmesan cheese to garnish

Instructions:

• In a separate pot, cook spaghetti until al dente until almost ready, then
• Chop parsley very finely
• Mince garlic with pinch of salt
• In a heated frying pan, pour in olive oil and heat
• Put in parsley and garlic and brown garlic gently in pan, throw in pinch of chilli
• When spaghetti is ready, ladle into frying pan and mix with garlic, parsley and chilli
• Add a little water (about ½ cup) to the pan while mixing spaghetti with garlic, parsley and chilli
• Serve in plates straight from pan and garnish with parmesan cheese
• Eat hot

I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I do.


Is there a particular type of pasta that you always lean towards? Creamy sauce? Tomato sauce? Tossed in olive oil? What's your favorite way of eating your pasta?

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F-F-F-Friday - The Boy’s Role in Matching Wine with Dinner

I'd like you to give a big, wonderful, "hot as" welcome to my darling - The Boy!!!! He's very kindly agreed to take some time out of his busy schedule (I had to remind him!) to write a guest post for me. You've heard me talk about our dinner parties and the wine The Boy likes to serve with them. Here's his perspective on the proceedings.

A red? A white? No? Both!

When my ‘Girl’ is planning a dinner party for several couples or as part of her ‘Singles and Strays’ functions, I look forward to selecting what wines to drink and consider it both a privilege and a responsibility to make sure the wines match the people and food. My main challenge frankly is to provide a great drinking experience to compliment, but not over-shadow the eating experience. Personally this is harder than it should be for me because my love for great wine and ability to enjoy wine on its own (“make sure the food does not get in the way, or forget the damn food”) tends to always push me in the direction of selecting great wines regardless of the food and situation. Therefore, I need to take a subordinate position to make sure the food is the featured part of dinner, not the wine.

The Boy in his cellar ... aka The Man Cave

We usually try to firm up the menu and guest list 2 – 3 days ahead of time to ensure the wines are accessible and properly prepared. I keep about 150 bottles of wine in our apartment, but a larger and more diverse cellar exists in at Wine-Ark about 15 minutes away, and often requires a trip to achieve the ideal line-up. To come up with the wine list for the evening, I answer a few important questions, including:

• How many courses will we have and how many people? (usually 6 – 8 people and 3 – 4 courses, and possibly 5 – 6 dishes)
• What is the general food theme for the evening and what are the particular dishes?
• How mature is the wine palate of the people attending?
• What events and other dinners are the guests (and us) involved in the night before or after? (Should this evening be the week’s highlight or more subdued?)

Regardless of the theme and specific courses, I try to follow a simple formula as follows:

• Start with a wine upon arrival (may be on its own while we stand and chat or served with a tapa or two). This is usually a sparkling wine, moscato, or a more exotic blend (such as a shiraz / semillon spritzed wine)
• Have a white (if it matches) or lighter red with entrees
• Based on the main course, several bottles of red wine and possibly a white
• With desert, finishing off the reds and providing an assortment of desert wines, usually including a sweet white desert wine, and an assortment of ports, muscats and other liqueurs

In general, I try to serve as many different wines as the size of the crowd will allow, never serving more than one bottle of the same wine. I also try to provide a diverse set of wines to ensure there is something that everyone will like and to provide variety for those who like a lot of different wine.

I also try to have a line-up which allows comparison of styles, vintages, regional differences, and price range for people to learn a little and appreciate the many different wines available to them. (The purpose of the dinner party is to enjoy the people, the food and the wine – not critique, compare or judge the wine: for that, every three months or so, we have a larger group of people and wines as a wine tasting where the wine is the dominant theme and the food is secondary). I also always only serve wine from my own cellar so as to have some history and a story to tell for each wine. When guests bring wine as they often do, I put it away for personal consumption later or to serve up at a future dinner. Often, the bottles that guest bring need to be cellared for at least several more years before hitting the proper drinking age. And finally, I try to always find a wine which ‘surprises’ or is quite a unique experience. This may be a $15 bottle of wine which drinks like a $50 bottle of wine, or an alternative grape such as a durif, tannat, or malbec.

I do my best to provide stand-out wines, but it is always with the intent of complimenting, not over-shadowing my Girl’s great food.

Wasn't that a wonderful post? I'm so glad The Boy took the time to write this up. I had an idea that he put a lot of thought into selecting the wines for the night, but I really had no real idea until he articulated it like this. Thank you, darling. You're welcome back anytime. 

On another note, The Boy is going to be starting up his very own wine blog very soon. I'll keep you posted and provide a link when it's up and running.

Now on to you ... do you like a glass of wine or something else with dinner? What do you serve for your dinner parties? Do you plan ahead what drinks will be available for your guests to drink? Do you have any favorites yourself?

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Let's have a dinner party!! ...with crispy golden potatoes

Since I mostly cook for dinner parties and most of the heavy duty cooking that I do centers around the dinner parties that I have at home, I thought I'd talk a little bit about that.We have at least one a week or one a fortnight, and it's a whole heap of fun for me. I'm even known to be crazy enough to do two a week, if it takes my fancy. So far, people seem to be willing to come and eat. :-)

I recently had a dinner party that consisted of a starter of nachos, followed by a main of meatloaf with a red wine and mushroom gravy, crispy golden potatoes and Vichy vegetables (a variation of the classic French Vichy carrots, I just used a combination of frozen peas, carrots and corn). Fortunately, a friend was bringing dessert, so I did not have to worry about it.

The tricky part of this dinner was that not much of it could be prepared in advance, it was all cook and eat immediately. It was also my first attempt at a meatloaf, so I was rather nervous. I had to make sure that I had the dinner timed perfectly so that what was cooked ended up on the table piping hot. To that end, being the project manager that I am, I put together a little time line to help with the cooking prep and getting food to the table. I'm not saying do this for all dinners, but there are some dinners that need a bit more help thinking through the timing than others.

Here's what I ended up putting together:

• 4:00pm - make guacamole and refrigerate
• 5:00pm - set out ingredients for all dishes
• 5:30pm - assemble meatloaf
• 6:00pm - make gravy
• 6:30pm - put meatloaf into oven
• 6:30pm - peel potatoes and put in water to be ready for boiling
• 6:45pm - assemble nachos
• 7:00pm - serve nachos
• 7:00pm - start boiling potatoes and vegetables for Vichy dish
• 7:30pm - check meatloaf, take out of oven, heat up gravy
• 7:45pm - finish cooking potatoes and vegetables
• 7:50pm - serve dinner

This is the only time that I've made up such a detailed (and anal) plan for my dinners. The reason for it was mostly timing the potatoes and Vichy vegetables. I wanted to serve them hot from the stove rather than re-heated. It was certainly a great learning experience for me in terms of getting timing right. One thing that I did learn was to figure out how much of the dinner can be cooked in advance. That just makes life a whole lot easier when it comes to putting a meal on the table.

My favorite dish for the night was the crispy golden potatoes, which was a Jamie Oliver recipe, out of his 30 Minute Meals cookbook. By the way, that's an excellent cookbook, and if you're ever stuck for meal ideas, just pull one of those out of the book and make it. Fabulous!

Here's the RECIPE for the crispy golden potatoes:

Ingredients

• 500g red skinned potatoes
• 1 lemon
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme or rosemary
• 1 bulb garlic

Instructions

• Wash the potatoes, leaving the skins on
• Shape into 2cm chunks and throw into a large frying pan
• Cover with boiling water, season with salt and cover with a lid
• Turn the heat right up and boil for 8 minutes or until just cooked
• Check the potatoes are cooked through, then drain and return to the same frying pan
• Leave on a high heat and drizzle over some olive oil
• Add a pinch of salt and pepper, speed in strips of lemon zest and add 4 sprigs of thyme or rosemary
• Halve the bulb of garlic widthways and squash each half with the back of a knife and add to the pan
• Toss everything together, then roughly squash down with a masher
• Toss every 3 minutes or so until golden and crisp

I had too many potatoes in the pot and it took too long for it to crisp (I made more than the recipe) so my potatoes turned out not as crispy all round as I wanted it to, but they tasted fabulous. My lessons learned from that was - fewer potatoes and more time over the heat. Instead of stirring regularly, it's actually a good idea to just let the potatoes sit for a few minutes (just like the recipe says, possibly more) on the heat before turning. I was just too used to stirring or tossing regularly to prevent burning and this was the opposite.



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