The Best Lentils Ever

According to Jamie Oliver, that is. And since I futzed around with them, probably not exactly, but they were damn fine. Unphotogenic, though.

I've just finished Sunday dinner in front of Dr Who, with a plate of slow cooked lamb on a bed of lentils, with home made mint sauce and roast potato, pumpkin, onion and fennel, and steamed broccoli. With a 1999 cab sav, Harper's Range by Seppelt. I went on line to look for it, and found it's still only $25 a bottle, so we didn't score very much by keeping it in the cupboard for almost a decade. Oh well. It's very yummy anyway, and at least it didn't go off.

I was very pleased with this. If you've ever made one of those lentil dishes with some fatty meat, you know you're supposed to add some vinegar to finish it. Balsamic, almost certainly. And if you are a roast lamb traditionalist, you will be thinking mint sauce. And if you are old enough, then you will remember fresh mint from the garden, chopped with sugar and doused in excessively potent malt vinegar.

Sooo... Balsamic or Malt? Hmmm... I've solved this: neither. Mint sauce old-style - but made with Homeleigh Grove Apple citrus vinegar. It's much more delicate, but still assertive enough to add the required sharpness to the lentils.


Recipe: Not Quite Jamie Oliver's French Lentils with Lamb
2 cups Puy lentils
2 carrots
2 onions
3 cloves garlic
1 small leek (2cm diameter)
1 medium potato
splash olive oil
splash brandy or cognac
1 litre beef stock
Bouquet garni
--
A small lamb roast
--
2 tablespoons mint leaves
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon caster sugar


* Chop the carrot and onion small, and fry gently in a good glug of olive oil until onion is translucent.
* Add chopped leek and finely chopped or crushed garlic and fry another minute or so.
* Deglaze with a splash of brandy, then add in stock.
* Add lentils, chopped potato and bouquet garni.
* Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
* Add lamb to the top of the lentils.
* Cover and bake at 150C for 2 hours.
* Uncover and give lentils a good stir, crushing the potato in to make a creamy base.
* Squidge the lamb down into the lentils, so it's mostly covered; skin side up and uncovered.
* Bake for another half hour uncovered.
* Remove from oven and let rest for half an hour.
* Chop mint leaves with the sugar sprinkled over (this helps to bruise them). Put in a small jug and stir in the vinegar.

To serve, remove lamb and carve up. Put a mound of lentils on the plate, top with sliced lamb and pour over a generous serve of mint sauce.

Notes: My bouquet garni was a generous sprig of rosemary and thyme, tied up in string with 3 fresh bay leaves. I used Australian Puy-style lentils, available from most gourmet delis. My lamb roast was a small leg - just 1.3kg. I can't remember who raised the lamb, but it was from one of the stall-holders at EPIC.

The half hour rest gives you time to turn up the oven and crisp up a tray of baked veggies - they can be started for an hour in the slow oven.

We have lots of leftovers from this meal, and I only made enough mint sauce for one go. I'll have to do more sauce for the re-heat.

Jamie's recipe uses parsley instead of rosemary, and duck fat instead of olive oil; and veggie stock instead of beef. For meat, he has confit duck added right at the end, instead of the lamb cooked in the lentils, and he adds a swirl of creme fraiche at the end. No mint sauce, of course - Jamie uses balsamic vinegar. His lentils only take 45 minutes, with no baking, so his is the quicker option unless you confit your own duck. But they won't be as richly meaty as mine!

Old fashioned things, and the importance of numeracy

My good friend B1 has been out of town a lot, for personal reasons that I won't go into on this blog. Recently she was back, and hinted shamelessly at me about lamb shanks and creme caramel. So what could I do but comply? I even managed to put this together on a weeknight by dint of moderate planning ahead.

I didn't quite manage enough forward planning to get market lamb, so I had to get the shanks from Woolworths, who sell them as whole bones, not the easier to manage French trimmed version. They're not particularly cheap - they averaged about $4.50 a piece, which for the actual amount of meat makes it's cheaper to buy a hunk of rump steak.


I do actually remember when they were cheap - the offcut bit, good for a soup, or a cheap family meal, but not fit to bring out for company. That was before the revival of the slow cooked homestyle food in fancy restaurants. My Mum hasn't kept up with the trends, and a while ago was horrified when some visiting friends chose to eat lamb shanks at a fancy restaurant. To her generation, it sounds like ordering spam. But really, it's good - I remember trying to bags the shank end of the lamb roast whenever possible. Sticky, tender and full of flavour.

I more or less followed this recipe from allrecipes.com.au, which involves browning the meat & veg, then a slow cook in red wine, tomatoes and stock, with lots of herbs, and in my addition, some strips of lean bacon. For six lamb shanks, that's two tins of tomatoes and a whole bottle of red, then stock to top up. Then it's overnight in the huge cooking pot in a very slow oven (120) - my slow cooker was too small to take them. Simply reheat for dinner. I served it with mash, which I enriched with a little leftover cream, and frozen baby peas. Half the shanks minus bone, and most of the veg and sauce went into the freezer, to be a ragout later on. With the Italian tomato, garlic and rosemary flavours, it should go well with pasta.

I had leftover cream, of course, from the creme caramel. This is another easy one to cook ahead, I made the caramel on a Monday night, baked the custard on Tuesday and served them on Wednesday. In this case, I used a Maggie Beer recipe, from the Maggie's Harvest book. I looked up several to get the proportions, and decided to use the one with the whole eggs. I have too many egg whites in the freezer already.

The importance of numeracy comes in here. Check the recipe and see if you can spot the problem!

Recipe: Maggie Beer's Creme Caramel
110g sugar
125ml water
-
4 large eggs
125g caster sugar
250ml cream
300ml milk
1 vanilla bean

First, make the caramel. Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat until sugar is dissolved. Continue to heat until it turns into a dark amber colour - watch carefully when it first starts to turn, because it can be quite quick to change. Pour the hot caramel into 4x120ml capacity individual ramekins, and swirl a little to get it around the edges. Leave to set.

Heat the milk and cream together with the vanilla bean and scraped out seeds. Bring to just off boiling, then remove from heat and let cool. Overnight is fine. Later, make the custard by beating the eggs, sugar and re-warmed vanilla infused milk together. Strain this into a jug.

Prepare a large roasting tin with a folded tea-towel on the base, then the caramel ramekins. Pour the custard into the ramekins in situ, then gently pour hot water around them to soak the tea towel. Fill up as high as you can manage around the edges of the ramekins, without getting water into the custard when you move it.

Bake in a 180 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool in their water-bath, then refrigerate until ready. To serve, run a knife around the edge of the ramekin and invert it onto a plate. The caramel will mostly have dissolved into a sauce, though if you've done a thick layer there may be some left.



Notes: Actually I reduced the sugar in the custard from the 145g in the recipe, and slightly changed the milk/cream balance because I had low fat milk in the house. (Hers: 375ml milk, 190ml cream.)

And did you spot it? If the eggs make up about 200ml, then what we have here is about 650ml of custard. This is not going to fit into 4x120ml ramekins! I spotted the need to get more ramekins - I used six. I also increased the caramel amount by half, which I think was unnecessary, since the caramel layer came out much thicker than it needed to be.

Making the caramel dark gives it a bitter-sweet sharp edge, which makes the dessert more interesting and less cloying. You can make it a bit lighter, if you prefer.

A Curry Dinner

Here's last week's curry dinner from the freezer, in its earlier incarnation when I first made it before Xmas. The vegetables are large yellow beans - which look a little like penne pasta in this picture - red capsicum, and green spinach.

It was based closely on a Madhur Jaffrey recipe called "Palag Ghosht".  I have actually cooked this before, and last year even blogged it here, but I like this variation even better. In this updated edition, it's a bright and fresh flavoured thing, with the spinach just barely cooked. The original recipe has the spinach cooked for 45 minutes,  which makes it a bit more the spinach puree types that you usually find in Indian restaurants. I also added some extra vegetables.

Recipe: Lamb and Spinach Curry
600g boneless lean lamb
a thumb sized chunk of fresh ginger
7 cloves garlic
2 tblsp whole coriander seed
75ml sunflower oil
1 medium onion, sliced in fine half-rings.
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup natural yoghurt
300g spinach
300g mixed vegetables

* Grind the coriander seed, finely grate the ginger and crush the garlic.
* Cut the lamb into 3cm chunks, and mix in the coriander, ginger and garlic.
* Mix well and set aside for an hour.
* Heat the oil and fry the onion until golden and crisp. Do not let them blacken.
* Remove the onion with a slotted spoon, and blot off oil on kitchen paper.
* Add the lamb and its marinade, with the turmeric, cayenne and salt to the remaining oil.
* Stir well and cover.
* Cook for ten minutes, lifting the lid to stir every couple of minutes.
* Add the yoghurt a tablespoon at a time, stirring well and allowing to simmer before adding the next spoonful.
* Add the fried onions.
* Cover and simmer for 45 minutes, or until the meat is just tender.
* Add sliced beans, capsicum and simmer for ten minutes.
* Add finely shredded spinach leaves, stir well through and cook until just wilted.

Notes: I used hoggett chops - this is old lamb, not quite mutton yet, and you need a specialist butcher or meat grower to get it these days. A few of the market sellers have it in season. It's a little tougher, a little more strongly flavoured, and takes a little longer to cook than lamb.

I use an old cheap blade-cutting coffee grinder for spices. We upgraded to a proper burr grinder for the coffee, and it really makes a difference.

And the final gadget is a newish toy: a mini food processor, about 1 cup capacity. It's excellent for chopping the ginger and garlic, as well as for herbs.

Fauzi's dinner

I have no idea who Fauzi is or was. But I consulted a friend who speaks several languages, and she explained that the title of this dish, Masak Fauzi, is the Indonesian and Malay word "Masak" for "to cook", with "Fauzi", a name. The recipe comes from a 1970s pamphlet called simply "Curry Recipes" put out by Community Aid Abroad, who are these days known as Oxfam. This is one of the first ever curries I cooked, when I was in my teens, but I haven't made it in, oh, at least a decade. I rediscovered the pamphlet in a recent tidying phase, and decided to give it a try.

And of course you need some greens for a balanced diet, so I tried a veggie dish from the booklet, too. It involves cooked lettuce, which may seem weird but is really quite alright. It's a nice bright look, so that's the photo. Fauzi's yummy brown sludgy thing looks like a brown sludgy thing. Not so photogenic.


Recipe 1: Masak Fauzi
1 lb (450g) meat
5 onions
10 dried chillies
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons raisins
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
2 carrots
salt and sugar to taste
Slice onions and fry with chillies and a tablespoon of oil, until quite soft.
Pound them to paste.
Brown the cubed meat in the other tablespoon of oil.
Add the onion paste and tomato sauce to the meat.
Simmer until meat is tender and onions are reduced well.
Add raisins and chopped carrots and simmer for another half hour.
Add salt and sugar to taste.

Notes: This is quite sweet, even without adding any sugar, and reminds me a little bit of a sauerbraten with that mix of meat, raisins, vinegar. It's not a normal curry, as there are basically no spices. I used 550g of lamb. I tipped my onions into a bowl and used the stick blender to make the paste instead of a large mortar and pestle. Ah, technology.

If you feel tomato sauce is just too appalling, you could use a tablespoon of tomato paste, a tablespoon of vinegar and two teaspoons of sugar.

Recipe 2: Pea and Lettuce Sambal
2 teaspoons sunflower oil
1 small onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
4-6 large lettuce leaves, shredded and rinsed
1/2 medium capsicum
1/2 cup peas
1 tablespoon dessicated coconut
salt, lemon juice to taste

Chop the onion, and fry it in the oil until translucent.
Add the crushed garlic and ginger and continue to fry for 2-3 minutes.
Add the spices, stir for a minute, then add a dash of water and stir well to loosen it up.
Add the peas and capsicum, stir, then add the wet shredded lettuce leaves on top.
Cover pan and simmer 5 minutes.
Stir in the coconut.
Add salt and a dash of lemon juice to taste.

Notes: This is a good use for those larger outer leaves of a cos lettuce, that are a bit strong and tough for salad. Iceberg outer leaves work, too. If you hate the idea, you could try using spinach instead. I used red capsicum, and a few extra green beans, in the pictured one.

By the way, this is a blog post that I had underway two months ago, before I took the break. I made the green veggie sambal again recently; it makes a good side dish for any meat curry. The second time I used fresh peas, and green capsicum.

Finally, Cassoulet

Well, the end result is here. Cassoulet can actually be made with a huge variety of meats. Stephanie Alexander's, in her book Feasts and Stories, features pork neck, pork belly, pork hocks, cotechino sausages, preserved duck legs and veal stock. Julia Child's has a loin of pork, toulouse sausage (for which she gives the recipe), bacon, and a shoulder of lamb or mutton. She mentions variations including goose, turkey, veal and polish sausage.

So really, you can do what you want. The basic concept is white beans cooked in stock, with a variety of cooked meats mixed in, then baked with a breadcrumb topping. The flavours are classic French parsley, bay, thyme and garlic - plus, of course, all the meat juices.

Recipe: Cath's Canberra Cassoulet
375g haricot beans
a batch of duck stock
2 cured duck maryland pieces
500g toulouse sausage, cut in half lengths
1 tin chopped tomatoes (or equivalent fresh)
2 onions
2 carrots
2 cloves garlic
2 cups breadcrumbs, made from a baguette
pinch salt, black pepper
parsley

Soak the beans overnight in plain water.
Chop the onion and carrots quite small.
Drain beans, add them to a large pot with the onion and carrots.
Add the duck stock, and simmer for an hour.
Add the tin of tomatoes.
Simmer for another 15 minutes, or until beans are just tender.
(Do not discard liquid)
--
Meanwhile, rinse the salt cure mix off the duck, and pat dry.
Pan fry it until golden.
Remove, and brown the sausage well in the duck fat.
Remove, leaving any meat from loose ends behind in the pan.
Strip off the skin and fat from the duck, and chop skin into small dice.
Fry these duck cracklings until crisp.
Add two cloves of crushed garlic and the breadcrumbs to the pan.
Fry until golden brown.
Mix in chopped parsley, salt and pepper
--
Mix the meats and beans in a casserole dish.
Top up with stock to barely cover.
Sprinkle crumb topping over.
Bake, uncovered, at 170C for an hour.

Serve!

Notes: Boil the stock down a little if need be, rather than discarding any excess. The duck cracklings in the topping is not traditional - that idea came from the Epicurious recipe.

A simple vinegary green salad and a few slices of proper French baguette is a good match. My baguette was not the best - the bakery I went to had run out - so I sprayed a little olive oil on the cut surface and toasted it in the sandwich press.

I'm quite pleased with how this all worked out. The beans, sausage and crumb topping are excellent. We've got two dinners out of it, and some freezer stock. The crumbs won't be as crunchy later on, it will instead thicken the bean mix quite a lot. I plan to add some extra tomatoes or wine when I eventually reheat them. The duck I'm less thrilled with. I'm not very experienced with cooking duck, and I found that both of the duck meals came out a little tougher than I'd like. Not bad, just not great.

The Cassoulet Project Continues

We need some stock to cook those beans, so here it is just getting started.


Recipe 1: Duck Stock
1 duck carcass and wings
3 bayleaves
a handful of parsley
2 large garlic cloves
4 cloves
1 tsp thyme
1 carrot
1 onion
Cover with water and simmer all together for 3-4 hours.
Strain, and refrigerate the liquid.
When cold, skim fat off (save for other uses).


Notes: Save the fat for other uses. You don't need to be too scrupulous with the skimming, some fat in the beans will help make things even tastier. But a whole cup would be way too much.



Recipe 2: Cured Duck Legs
2 duck maryland pieces
4 bayleaves
Black pepper
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
Mix the sugar and salt, and rub into duck.
Grind a good amount of black pepper over it.
Layer with bayleaves in a non-reactive container.
Store for 2-3 days in the refrigerator.

Notes: This recipe is from Stephanie Alexander's big book, labelled as "Cath's sugar-cured duck legs". Mine! She suggests roasting then for an hour at 180C until golden brown, and serving with cabbage. I intend to pan-fry them to brown, then finish the cooking with the cassoulet.

So the cassoulet isn't ready to eat yet, but we're moving along. Tonight, perhaps? Or later? I get home late on Mondays, so yesterday we needed quick reheatable meals. This time we ate from the freezer - a Moroccan casserole made by our Easter houseguest A. I added some microwaved green beans, and a quick couscous with lemon. On Wednesday evening I have my first wine tasting class, so it might be better to do it tonight.

Launching the Cassoulet Project: Duck!

I want to make cassoulet before winter is out. And so last time I was in Woollies, I looked for the dried beans. Nope. Not there. No haricots, no kidney beans, no cannellinis, no chickpeas, except in tinned form. They did have some dried split peas and lentils, for soups, but no other pulses. Luckily my local IGA was much more useful, so I didn't have to drive off to the Indian grocery.

I have a duck which needs using up. I bought it frozen, thinking of cooking it last Xmas, but I never got round to it. I intend to use half of that, and some very tasty Toulouse sausage from the "Bangers" stall at the market. The other half was Sunday dinner - see recipe below.

Now possibly some purists are thinking "She's not really going to make proper cassoulet, is she?" and they are dead right. I have been consulting the Julia Child and Stephanie Alexander recipes, and the authentic cassoulet is a major production, involving many days, many steps, and enough food to feed a small army. I'm making something much simpler, but still keeping the basic idea. The epicurious recipe is closer to what I have in mind.

To start with, I am not going to confit two duck legs. To make a confit, you cook the meat very slowly in fat. And this preserved it for the winter, in a pre-refrigeration era. Now I simply don't have that much duck fat to go around and I'm not going to buy it. Nor am I going to buy one of those tins of goose fat from the Essential Ingredient. And I am not going to use a full kilo of haricots, a whole leg of lamb and a pork hock.

What I am going to do is cure the duck legs, and make a proper duck stock from the carcass. I got the duck out to defrost on Saturday, and I have used my expert chicken jointing skills (as learned from Christophe last month) to split off breasts for dinner, marylands to cure, and a carcass for stock.

I have soaked 375g of haricot beans. The next step will be to finish cooking them in stock. Meanwhile, we still needed to eat. I just happened to have a couple of duck breasts - a Sunday duck dinner with cherry sauce and smashed potatoes and something green sounded like an excellent plan.

Recipe 1: Roast Duck Breast with Cheat's Cherry Sauce
2 duck breasts
salt, pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil
--
1 orange
75g "Ham Jam"
1 tablespoon brandy


Preheat the oven to 220C.
Slash the duck breast skins, and pan fry in the olive oil until golden.
Transfer to a baking dish
Bake for 7 minutes; remove and rest for 10 minutes before serving.

While duck is resting, mix the cherry jam with the orange juice and brandy. Heat to bubbling, and stir well.


Notes: The sauce can be heated in a microwave, or a small saucepan. You don't need much oil - duck is fatty. Save the fat, it is good. Brush it over some potatoes. And what, you may be asking, is Ham Jam? This is Ham Jam. It's a savoury cherry jam, and contains no ham whatsoever. It is, however, good with ham. Use cherry jam and add some vinegar, cinnamon and cloves if you don't have it.

The duck breast technique, and the idea for the cheating sauce came from Anthony Worral Thompson at the BBC food site. Orange from P&R's backyard tree.


Recipe 2: Ducky Smashed Red Potatoes
Small red potatoes
Duck fat
Pink Murray River salt
Preheat oven to 220C
Parboil potatoes until barely done, about 15 minutes.
Grease a baking tray with duck fat
Put the potatoes on the tray, and squash each one down with a potato masher.
Brush with melted duck fat and sprinkle with salt.
Bake for 20 minutes, until crisp and golden.


Notes: The smashed potatoes are, of course, a variant on Jill Dupleix' recipe. I'm not very experienced with these, but I find that it's important to whack the potatoes briskly with the masher rather than gently squish them. They're a little hard at that stage.

Meals from the market

Monday dinner was the slow roast hoggett, with plenty of market veggies. The hoggett was beautiful - meltingly tender. As mint sauce is traditional with lamb, and red currant jelly with mutton, I offered both. Neither were made by me: the mint was from a market stall sometime, and the jelly made by B2 from her home grown currants. I made the gravy. B1 brought us a wonderful dried fruit & booze compote, heavy on the oranges, and some good vanilla icecream. Houseguests P&R bought a cherry pie from Kingston market. A good feed was had by all.

I did a tray of roast fennel and beetroot, another tray of roast pumpkin and potato, and I steamed some broccolini. It was a little tricky and the timing didn't quite work right for the potato/pumpkin tray. The pumpkin was a tad overdone and the spuds were a little underdone. I cut the pumpkin too small, and the start with the 125 degree slow roast, followed by half an hour on 180 wasn't quite enough for the spuds. Oh well. The smallest ones were OK and the rest have been cut up and tossed in the soup.

What soup? The leftover roast soup, of course. I used the shank to make stock for the gravy, and then topped it up with the bone - there wasn't much meat left on it after feeding six. I'm having it for lunch now, in between typing this. I also chucked in the leftover stock and the soaked porcinis from the risotto.

What risotto? Tuesday's dinner was a mushroom risotto using the truffle scented rice, with swiss brown mushrooms, and a stock made from Monday dinner's leftover white wine (thanks, M), some frozen homemade chicken stock and soakings from a few dried porcini. Mushrooms and the accompanying salad were from the market.

And tonight I've got a baked egg & silverbeet thingy in mind, perhaps with a side of baked cauliflower. I need to use up the last four truffled eggs ASAP, while they're still good.


Recipe: Slow roast hoggett
1 leg hoggett
500ml red wine
bay leaf
mixed herb/salt rub

Sprinkle the hoggett all over with the herb rub.
Put the hoggett on a rack over a baking pan, with the wine and bayleaf in the pan.
Cover well with foil.
Put into a 125 degree oven. Leave for 5 hours, removing foil and basting once an hour or so. Top up liquid with water if running dry.
Take foil off and return to oven for another hour.
Remove from oven and wrap well in foil to rest in a warm place for half an hour.

Notes: It will fall apart when carved; I prefer to present it in a bowl for people to serve themselves. No neat slices. For the herbs, I used a native herb & salt rub that I bought in Byron Bay. It has lemon myrtle and mountain pepperleaf, among other things. You could make up your own - I was thinking of a lemon zest, garlic & rosemary one, but I was out of garlic. The rich wine and meat juice mix makes excellent pan gravy.


Recipe: Mushroom risotto
180g truffle-infused arborio rice
1.5 litres liquid (see notes)
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
200g swiss brown mushrooms
75g grated parmesan

Heat the oil and butter in a large pan.
Saute the finely chopped onion gently until just barely golden.
Add the finely chopped garlic and sliced mushrooms.
Saute until mushrooms are wilted, then add the rice.
Stir around for a couple of minutes until it begins to look a little translucent around the edges.
Add a ladleful of warmed liquid, and stir well.
Continue to add the stock mix a ladle at a time until the risotto is done to your taste. This will take 20-25 minutes.
Turn off the heat, stir through the grated parmesan, and let it sit for 2-3 minutes before serving.

Notes: In this case I had 400ml white wine, 500ml chicken stock (at a guess, I had condensed it before freezing), and 600ml water in which I had soaked a handful of dried porcinis. For a veggie version, just use veggie stock. But it's best to taste it as you go, and if it seems too strong or salty at the 15 minute mark, add some water instead. You may not use all the liquids - I chucked my leftovers in the soup.

This was another stealth truffle dish. It's not strong, but it just makes everything that bit better. The Bloke loved it. There's more rice left, so I'll probably repeat this soonish.


Not Recipe:
A variation on leftover roast something soup.
This is a standard use-up, irreproducible, and this one came out brilliantly good. I must have another bowlful.

This variation:
* Stock made from the hoggett shank, leg bone and veggie trimmings, bayleaves and parsley stalks.
* Leftover gravy from the hoggett roast dinner. I couldn't deglaze the roasting tin into the stock, because I'd already used it to make the gravy.
* Stock made from a previous roast lamb dinner, from the freezer.
* Stock, wine and porcini left over from the risotto dinner
* a good handful of pearl barley
* a diced carrot, some frozen green beans, and diced leftover roast potatoes
* the few shards of meat from the shank and bone.

So simple: simmer the barley & carrot in the mixed stocks for half an hour, add the other veggies and meat, simmer until veg all cooked. Eat. Yum. Tragically I have to eat it all myself since the Bloke objects to soup with bits in. But he got the leftover risotto, so he's not suffering.

Sauerkraut

Cabbage is such a maligned vegetable, yet it is delicious as long as it is not over-boiled to sulphurous rags. It's the star of coleslaw, plays well in stirfries, and can be preserved into kimchee or sauerkraut. I buy it in those huge 900g Benino brand jars from Poland. It keeps well in the fridge, and it's good just as it comes from the jar, heated up to go with German style sausages or corned beef. But sometimes it's fun to do a more fancy version - something along the lines of an Alsatian choucroute garni.


Recipe: Sauerkraut and smoked pork in wine
1 900g jar of sauerkraut
1 bottle white wine (riesling)
1 large onion
2 large green apples
2 tsp juniper berries
2 bayleaves
1 600g chunk smoked pork loin

Drain sauerkraut and rinse.
Put in a pot, and add the wine, chopped onion, peeled and chopped apple, juniper berries and bayleaves.
Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, then cover and simmer 30 minutes more.
Add the pork, and bury it in the sauerkraut.
Add a little water if it seems to be drying out.
Simmer another 30 minutes.
Slice up pork into steaks.
Serve with boiled new potatoes, or some heavy rye bread. And mustard.

Notes:The wine should be riesling, but it's a waste to use the really good stuff since the sauerkraut and juniper flavours are so strong. Especially if you bite into a juniper berry - they are edible but very strong so you might like to pick them out. A cheap bottle or fancy cask is about right. Or you can use champagne for a French "choucroute royale".

You can add all sorts of meats to this: if they are not pre-cooked, put them in earlier. Sausages, ham, ham hocks, pork chops, and even poultry can be used. Even veggie hot-dogs, I would imagine. You can also cook the potatoes in the same pot for a true one-pot meal, but I prefer them separate.

Experimental Crockpotting

I'm into experiments at the moment. The latest is a simple beef stew in the slow cooker, which I made up after searching for a good half an hour for a decent recipe. Seriously, what is it with crockpot owners and tinned soup? Any time you google for crockpot or slow cooker recipes, you get a million of them with cream of mushroom soup as a major ingredient. I'm unimpressed.

So I made up my casserole in a minimal and lazy manner, just to see if it would work. I wasn't too worried if not: the materials could be recycled into a chilli or pasta or something if need be. But it turned out fine. We ate it on the first day with small potatoes and spinach from B1's garden.

And today, we ate it with dumplings and broccolini. I made a variant on my usual dumplings with parsley and ricotta - the Perfect Cheese freebie. I also cooked these in the slow cooker, with some trepidation. I had a recipe in a crockpot cookbook which was too large a quantity, but it did give a 30 minute cooking time, unlike the usual 15-20 minutes it takes on the stovetop. This did not work too well, but we did still end up with an edible dinner, so it could have been worse. Recipes follow.


Recipe: Slow cooked beef and red wine stew
1.25kg topside beef
500g button mushrooms
500g small onions
375ml red wine
2 tblsp worcestershire sauce
2 tblsp tomato paste
large bunch of rosemary
sprig of bayleaves
salt to taste
Peel the onions, leaving most of the root end attached. If they are very small, leave them whole, otherwise halve or quarter them. Put them in the crockpot.
Wipe the mushrooms clean, trim if neeeded, and put them in the pot.
Cut the beef into large cubes. Add it to the pot.
Pour over the wine and worcestershire sauce.
Top with the whole bunch of herbs, and cover.
Cook on low for 4 hours.
Remove herbs, stir, and replace herbs on top.
Cook on low, stirring occasionally, for another 4 hours or until meat is tender.
Taste, adjust for salt, and discard herbs.

Notes: I used this layered method because I have read - and noticed - that vegetables seem to take longer than meat, and it's hotter at the bottom of the pot. Also, the herbs sitting on top scenting the steam that drips back in may seem a bit wasteful, but if you have massive garden trimmings, it's not an issue. If you don't have ridiculous amounts of rosemary on hand, I'd recommend a couple of teaspoons of the tube variety, like Garden Gourmet. I have no freebies from them, I just like this as it mixes well without leaving tough spiky leaves everywhere.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Ricotta & Parsley Dumplings
1 1/4 cups self raising flour
1 egg
1 tablespoon butter
75 ml milk
100g ricotta
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
pinch salt
1 big pot of stew!

Set your slow cooker to high an hour in advance, so that your stew is bubbling gently.
Beat together egg, milk, parsley, ricotta and salt.
Melt butter, and add to egg mix.
Mix all of this though the flour.
Stir to combine well.
Dollop tablespoons of the mix on top of the stew.
Cover and let simmer for 30 minutes. (ORLY? or until done)

Notes: Makes about 8 dumplings. I used the last of the Perfect Italiano low fat ricotta, and of course the beef and red wine casserole above.

Now, importantly, this didn't work quite right. My crockpot's high setting may not be as quick as the one in the recipe book. Or I may not have let it heat up long enough. My dumplings took more like an hour, and even then the innermost ones were still a bit sticky. But we were hungry and didn't want to wait any longer. The flavour and texture of the cooked part was still pretty good, but still I'd prefer the more reliable stovetop method.

Meat lovers: check this out

A mob called Bonah are putting together meat packs. It's organic and free range, and you can get pork, beef and lamb packs. Chicken is coming soon. It's $15.99 per kilo, and the boxes range in size from 2-3kg samplers up to 15kg. You get a mix of roasts, chops, mince, stirfry strips etc.

My freezer is a bit too full at the moment, but while the renovations are on I'm trying to eat from the pantry and freezer and not buy too much more. When I get some space, I'll check it out. I'm especially keen to get free range pork - lamb and beef in Aus are mostly free range anyway, but pigs are still kept in quite cruel conditions.

I'm not 100% clear on the concept, and the website is quite irritating. All flash, with insufficient information, and it plays music (hate hate hate). But at least you can turn the music off. If I understand it right, you put in an order with the local distributor, and the Bonah people deliver the pack there for you to collect.

Who is the local distributor? It's the farmers' outlet, Choku Bai Jo in North Lyneham. They have flyers. Go check it out.

MEAT-loaf. With MEAT. And MEAT.

Here's a very yummy random meatloaf that I made last night out of 3 kinds of meat (bacon, veal, and pork saussage). I had been thinking of BBQ snags, and then the rain came. Lovely, soaking, heavy rain, wonderfully good for the garden and the dams and the tanks, and absolutely crap for the BBQ.

I made this up out of things from the fridge & freezer. You almost certainly can't replicate it, and I almost certainly never will. But it may inspire. The recipe, that is, not the picture. It's not the most photogenic thing. It makes me feel a bit guilty about that time I sent the Canberra Times photographer off to take a photo of liver and onions.

Recipe: Random Meatloaf
6 eggs
4 pieces eye bacon
500g leftover lean cold wine-poached veal
750g Italian spicy pork sausages
2 large field mushrooms
olive oil

Softboil and shell 4 of the eggs.
Chop the veal quite finely, but not to mince. Around 0.5cm dice.
Mix half of the sausage meat and a raw egg into the veal.
Mix the other raw egg into the rest of the sausage meat.

Layer in, from bottom to top
* the bacon
* half the sausage & egg mix.
* half the veal & sausage mix.
* the eggs, end to end.
* the remaining veal & sausage mix.
* the remaining sausage & egg mix.
Bake at 160C fan forced for an hour.
Add sliced up mushrooms to the top, spray with olive oil.
Increase heat to grill for ten minutes, or until done to your taste.
Turn out onto a small chopping board, then invert it onto a larger one to slice up.

Read on for the notes

Notes: the point of this layering is partly to get a contrast in textures, but also partly to protect the lean meat from drying out. The sausage meat is relatively fatty and this helps keep it moist. Also, the streaky end of the bacon rashers would have been much better for lining the pan. But you work with what I have.

If I had made a meatloaf from scratch, with mince, I would have spiced up the meats with whatever took my fancy at the time. An English style sage and onion perhaps, or one could go Asian with chilli, ginger and garlic, or Italian with tomato, olives, garlic and basil. In this particular case I didn't add any extra flavours, because both the sausage and the veal were already strongly flavoured. The veal had been poached in white wine, and the sausages were Country Pride from Lyneham, and very spicy and flavoursome.

I served it with steamed broccoli and pattypan squash; a tomato relish made by B1's Mum; and soft white bread rolls from the Kambah bakery. It was very good. We also accompanied it with a spot of champers, a couple of friends, and a DVD of Young Frankenstein. Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you!

I'm a vegetarian for today. And I got the first figs from my little tree.

A Couple of Curries

I found a lamb meatball recipe last week, from the "Taste & Create" event, and I also found a recipe for a cashew curry while browsing for non-legume vego dishes. With some lamb mince at the market, courtesy of the saltbush lamb people, and the Bloke's OK to go for meat, this sounded like a good combo. And it is. Not terribly aesthetically appealling, I know. My photos aren't that encouraging.

I kept pretty closely to the recipe for the "Rista" meatballs. I did not have any Kashmiri garam masala, though. I do actually have some "Kashmiri Masala", but it's a paste, not a powder, and has that red colouring you get in tikka. I had a look at it, and decided to just go for regular garam masala, and add a little extra cardamom for the Kashmiri theme. I'm also not convinced that my saffron is any good. But at least my meatballs look much the same as Happy Cook's.

My variant on the Capsicum-Cashew Curry came out a little differently to the original picture. I seem to have much more potato and green and much less cashew. I suspect the author of cheating :) Anyway, it's delicious, a simple dry curry. I varied it in several ways.

First, I did not actually have any black gram dal, nor any asafoetida. Nor did I want to drive off to Belconnen to get them. Remembering that asafoetida is often used instead of garlic, I swapped in a couple of mashed garlic cloves. Also, Pratibha Rao says that usually this dish is made with some other vegetable called "tendle" that I don't know anything about. With her example, I felt free to do some further swapping. I only had one green capsicum on hand, so I added an equivalent bulk of green beans. I also decided to add the capsicum and beans later in the process so they wouldn't overcook.

It's a pleasant dish - gently spiced, warming and filling with the potato. The raw cashews, when soaked and cooked, become soft and a bit bean-like in texture, but they still taste like cashews.


Links to the originals, for reference.
* My Kitchen Treasures - Rista, lamb meatballs in saffron cream sauce
* The Indian Food Court - Capsicum, Potato & Cashew Curry

About that Spag Bog

I like to use the term "Spag Bog", because I doubt very much that any self-respecting citizen of Bologna would recognise my variant. Or rather, variants. I am not sure if I've ever made the same spag bog twice. What a "spag bog" is, is a tomato and minced meat pasta sauce, with Italian herbs. All other facets may vary. It's not easy to go wrong. I've never made an inedible one, except when I forgot about one and burned it.

The one I made last week featured kangaroo, and three different colours of capsicum. I also had a couple of little zucchini from the garden. They were lovely, much crisper than the usual ones. Bayleaves also come from the garden.

Here's my "recipe". Such as it is. Which it isn't.

Recipe: Generic Spag Bog Sauce
* Minced meat {lean beef, kangaroo, pork & veal, turkey, chopped up leftover roast beef etc}
* Baconish meat (optional) {bacon, prosciutto, ham etc}
* Alliums {garlic, onion, shallot, spring onion etc}
* Oil {olive, bacon fat, sunflower etc}
* Veggies to be cooked soft {mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini, carrot, celery etc}
* Tomatoes {fresh, tinned, roasted, paste, puree, sugo etc}
* Herbs {oregano, basil, bayleaves etc}
* Spices {pepper, chilli etc}
* Liquids {stock, wine, brandy, water, tomato juice etc}
* Other flavour agents (optional) {salt, sugar, balsamic vinegar}
* Veggies to be cooked crispish (optional) {capsicum, zucchini etc}

Method:
Fry up the alliums in the oil.
Add any of the soft-cook vegetables that need browning.
Add the meat (and optional bacon) and keep stirring until browned.
Add tomatoes, liquids, herbs, spices.
Simmer for at least an hour, stirring occasionally.
Taste and adjust flavours if need be.
Add in the last minute veggies for crispness while the pasta boils.

The proportions are left entirely to your own sense of culinary aesthetics. If you like it heavy on meat and light on veggies, or vice versa, go for it. I have done this with as little as 250g meat for 8 servings. Grated eggplant and finely chopped mushrooms do quite a good meat masquerade, if you want a vegetarian version. A half teaspoon of brown sugar helps if your tomatoes are too insipid - which fresh non-premium supermarket ones can be.


PS: Don't forget about the wonderful handmade market coming up at the Albert Hall next weekend. I'll be at the coast, so I'll have to miss it. Dang.

PPS: Look at me posting on a Monday morning. This unemployment thing is looking good so far.

BBQ Lamb a la Wog

In a hat tip to Australia day, and the forthcoming Canberra multi-cultural festival, I present you with this recipe in honour of our immigrant communities, and our sheep. In titling this post, I trust that years of "Wogs out of Work" and other comedians have sufficiently moved this epithet away from insult to a joke that a Skip may use.

So, anyway, roasting lamb is fine and good, but a roast dinner is a bit heavy for this weather. BBQ lamb and salad is the ticket - and it's really very easy. I bought a pre-made one from Meatways a while ago, and that inspired me to make my own. The salad in the picture is a random assembly from what salad fixings I found in the fridge - baby spinach, cucumber, tomato, avocado, olives. But to keep it in theme it was dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Recipe: BBQ lamb with lemon and herbs
1 small leg of lamb, butterflied. (About 1.2kg)
3 large lemons
6 medium cloves garlic
2 tablespoons fruity extra virgin olive oil
a loose half cup of chopped fresh herbs: parsley, oregano and a bit of basil.

Zest 2 of the lemons thoroughly, or three half-arsedly.
Juice the lemons, and crush the garlic
Mix everything except the lamb together.
Remove any large obvious chunks of fat and tendon from the lamb.
Place in a non-reactive container, and pour over the marinade mix.
Smoosh it around to coat, and leave for at least 3 and up to 36 hours. Turn it over occasionally.
When ready to cook, heat BBQ to a medium low flame.
Scrape off most of the herbs, and plonk the lamb on the BBQ, and leave it alone for ten minutes.
Turn it over and drizzle with some of the liquid from the marinade, or a bit of extra oil & lemon.
Leave to cook the other side - 5 minutes is enough for rare; up to 15 minutes for well-done.
Remove from heat, wrap in foil and leave in a warm place to rest for at least 15 minutes.
Slice across the grain. Serve as a pile of slices, not a big chunk.

Notes: A Greek salad would be the perfect accompaniment, of course.

We had part of this one night, cooked on the cast iron grill inside, with salad, pita bread and a dollop of bought hommous. And I took the rest to a BBQ on Friday, where our host and fellow guests added BBQ corn and asparagus, a sweet potato and chickpea salad, and a carrot and zucchini salad. And some other meats. All good stuff. I drank a few too many purple champagnes, though.

Beef Week

Last week was chicken, this week was beef. We've had cheeseburgers with the Minto Galloway mince, and I roasted the 1.5kg hunk of silverside to medium rare. We had it as a hot roast dinner one night, with some roast potatoes, pumpkin and steamed beans, and a dab of horseradish. But mostly we've been eating it cold. With this hot weather, a salad is perfect, and I've been making Thai-inspired ones.

The one in the picture has mixed greens, coriander, mint, spring onion, capsicum, radish, cucumber and tomato, with a sprinkle of cashews on top - and plenty of rare roast beef. I did one with avocado and some of the cold roast pumpkin, too. The dressing is a standard for me, but so far I only seem to have posted two variants.

The salad dressing recipes are very simple, but the proportions really are a matter of taste. It's lime juice, fish sauce, and grated palm sugar - with sesame oil and chilli as the optional extras. The sesame oil is not traditional in Thai salads, but it works beautifully. Use fresh lime juice if possible, or a good preserved one like the Lime Grove juice cordial. If you don't have palm sugar, you can use jaggery, coconut sugar, or just a dark brown sugar. Use dried chilli flakes, fresh chilli shreds or a dab of sambal oelek. Make your own personal blend of sweet, sharp, salt and hot.

I think the coriander, mint and green onion are essential to this dish. Without them, I would choose some other salad dressing. I've been thinking of trying a more European style, perhaps with parsley, beetroot, red onion, horseradish and shavings of manchego or parmesan. There's still enough beef left for one more salad...

Smoky Devils at the Tiki Party

We went all out for last Saturday night's cocktail party. The Bloke assembled an amazing outdoor bar with lots of fake flowers and vines, flaming torches, and swivelling barstools. He even provided leis for everyone, and the first couple of rounds of drinks. Later on, Master Mixologist Len presided over the bar. I recall a planter's punch, and a lime rickey, and a margarita, and several Campari based drinks...

And when you're going retro, you've got to have retro food. I went for the classic cheese & pickled onion hedgehog; egg & caviar dip; and devils on horseback. With Jatz for the dips, of course. We also had melon balls in a basket, and french onion dip, and coconut cherry cupcakes, and mini sausage rolls (home made), and lots more. All good for soaking up the cocktails. I made up a smoky variant on the devils on horseback, which people seemed to like quite a lot. But man, this is not something you want to do too often! See the recipe for more detail...


Here the divine Miss Em models with a hedgehog and one half serve of the egg dip. I'm sure you don't need a hedgehog recipe - put cheese cubes on sticks with luridly coloured pickled onions; shove into half grapefruit. It may look tacky, but it gets eaten - who doesn't love a bit of cheese and pickle?

Recipe 1: Egg & Caviar Dip
10 free range eggs
250ml sour cream
2 tsp finely chopped fresh dill
1 tblsp finely chopped green spring onion
1 small jar black caviar (lumpfish)
1 small jar red caviar (salmon or lumpfish)
additional finely chopped herbs to garnish
Hardboil the eggs.
Peel and cool.
Mash eggs with herbs and sour cream.
Put into a bowl, and decorate the top with the caviar and herbs.
Serve with Jatz biscuits to dip.


Notes: To hardboil eggs straight from the fridge, put them in the saucepan and fill with hot tap water. Leave for 5 minutes to warm up. Then drain, refresh with more hot tap water, and put on the stove. Leave to simmer for ten minutes. Bash them around under cold water to break the shells thoroughly, and then you can leave them to peel later if you like. If you put cold eggs in boiling water, they crack easily. If you leave boiled eggs sitting around hot for too long, then they go grey around the yolk.

I actually made this with light sour cream and it didn't work quite as well as I'd intended. It was too sloppy. Oh well. I sat the leftovers in a sieve for a couple of hours and got some very nice egg salad for my lunch.



Recipe 2: Smoky Devils on Horseback
500g large pitted prunes
1 kg bacon rashers
250g smooth smoked cheese
packet of melba toasts
1/2 cup red wine
Pour the red wine over the prunes and leave to soften for an hour or two, stirring occasionally.
Cut the smoked cheese into short straws, about 1cm long and 3mm in other dimensions.
Stuff each prune with a piece of cheese.
Remove the bacon rind and eyes. Use short lengths of the streaky bacon to wrap each prune, securing with a toothpick. Cutting it lengthwise may hep if they're wide rashers.
Lay the devils on a baking sheet, and bake at 180C for 15 minutes, or until bacon is crisped.
Put each one on a piece of melba toast.
Serve hot.


Notes: Yes, you do have to be slightly insane to stuff and wrap 70-odd prunes. The 1950s were a very strange time, much better in fantasy than reality, what with all the segregation and unequal pay and McCarthyism going on. By the time I'd finished putting these together, not to mention all the cheese and onion skewering, I was thinking of adopting a gin-and-valium soaked desperate housewife persona. But luckily I recovered by the time of the party.

The cheese needs to be the smooth kind, not a crumbly cheddar. The dimensions are, of course, general guidelines to what makes it easier to stuff. Try one or two to see how big they should be for your prunes. It's not as bad as it sounds; the machine pitted prunes have a hole at each end that you can shove your cheese in quite easily.

I didn't have quite enough streaky bacon so had to use some of the eye pieces to wrap the last dozen or so. The rest of the lean bacon went into BLT sandwiches for us on Friday dinner (we weren't too hungry after our lunch out), and into the lasagna.

Sunday Eating

Today I've been feeling just a little morning-afterish from yesterday's cocktail party - I have a post on that in the wings. But I managed to assemble some muffins, on a whim. And I also assembled, as planned, simple light lasagna and salad dinner. And I ate lunch out. Not too bad for the tired & thirsty.

These muffins are made with natural muesli, which is an ingredient that I sometimes need to use up. I'm a very erratic muesli eater. Sometimes I like it, and sometimes I get bored with it and switch to toast and granola for a while - and then find that I have a slightly stale half-eaten bag of muesli left. It's no longer nice to eat, but not bad enough to toss out. Muffin and biscuit recipes involving muesli are the perfect solution to avoid waste here. The muesli makes these muffins pretty healthy: high on the fibre and wholegrains, and I even use high antioxidant berries to boot. Health food! I swear!

Later in the day I dropped off our overnight houseguest in the city - after we'd had a bit of a swear at the bloody taxis putting you on hold for ever and the uselessness of the ironically-named "Action" busses. And I took the opportunity to do a little window shopping, for the Xmas list. I was getting a bit hungry when I found myself around Borders, and so I grabbed some lunch from the Jewel of India - yes, in the foodcourt. I hadn't noticed before that they actually have a tandoor oven right in the front of the outlet. They make the naan right there in full view, and it smells great. I got a piece of naan that I'd watched being removed from the oven mere seconds ago. Yum! I ate it with a small serve of beef vindaloo which was quite OK. A bit unsubtle in the spicing, a bit on the oily side, but the meat was lean and tender. Excellent by food court standards; this curry would be kind of meh, OK, not bad, in a restaurant. For just under $10 with an iced tea, I was happy.

Since I came home, I've mostly vegged on the couch with occasional ten minute stints in the kitchen to make the lasagna. This is inspired by, but not at all the same as, Clotilde's recent post on Chocolate & Zucchini. It's quite amenable to the tired. No bechamel to make, just a quick ricotta mix. Start the red sauce, let it simmer for an hour or so. Do the assembly. Little bits. In between, I have wargs and liches to slay, and blog posts to write, and older posts to add photos to. (Fridge Frittata and Silly Hat Day.)

Recipes follow.
Recipe 1: Berry Muesli Muffins
1½ cups Natural Muesli
1 cup self-raising flour
½ cup brown sugar
1 cup frozen "high antioxidant" mixed berries
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup oil
1 cup milk
Combine all dry ingredients.
Combine milk, oil and egg, and beat well.
Mix all together coarsely.
Ladle into muffin pans
Bake at 180C for 25 minutes, or until golden and done.

Notes: You could use any other kind of fruit, chopped smallish. The good thing about the Creative Gourmet frozen berries is that they require no chopping. And this brand contains black currants, which I've taken quite a liking to recently.

Recipe 2: Ham & Ricotta Lasagna
Fresh lasagna noodles
--
500g ricotta
2 eggs
2 tablespoons pesto
--
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
100g bacon
100g ham
1 large zucchini
8 oven roast tomatoes
2 bayleaves
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp dried basil
pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
½ cup red wine
--
grated parmesan cheese
grated mozzarella cheese
--
White layer:
Mix ricotta, eggs and pesto in a bowl.

Red layer:
Saute chopped onion, bacon, ham, zucchini and crushed garlic in olive oil until onion is lightly browned and soft.
Add red wine, and stir well to deglaze the pan.
Add crushed tomatoes and all their juices.
Add herbs.
Simmer gently for an hour

Assembly:
Smear a little red sauce on the base of your baking pan.
Add a layer of noodles.
Put 1/4 of the cheese mix on to the noodles and spread out.
Add a layer of about 1/3 the remaining red sauce.
Add another layer of noodles, and repeat.
In the middle white layer, sprinkle over some grated parmesan.
For the top, smear over the last of the white mix.
Spinkle on some grated parmesan and mozzarella.

Thus:
(red-noodle-cheese)-(red-noodle-cheese)-(red-noodle-cheese)-(red-noodle-cheese)-grated cheese

Bake at 160C for about an hour, covered with foil for 40 minutes, then open to brown the top. (Mine's a bit over-browned in the pic. Shoulda set a timer.)

Notes:It's a good idea to lay out the noodles first to see how many layers you will get, and adjust the ratio of sauce accordingly. You can fiddle around with this a lot. More or less cheese on top. A bolognese style sauce is traditional for the red layer. You could top it with a red sauce and grated cheese layer instead of the white sauce that I've done this time.

And that red sauce is very flexible. I had stray bacon and ham lying round needing using, and roast tomatoes from the freezer. A large tin of tomatoes would do instead, and you could use all ham, or all bacon, or all veggie or whatever. Some roast capsicum would have been nice but mine had gone moldy.

Lamb Saag

So after that little ramble last night, what are we eating? Well, the spinach was cheap and good, and also red capsicums, broccoli and cauliflower. Strawberries were cheap, too. The bloke requested a lamb curry, and by coincidence Woolworths had a special on lamb rump steaks - a mere $15 per kilo. I bought a 900g tray and by the time I stripped off all the fat and set aside the gristle and tendon for the cats, I ended up with 600g of lean meat.

I used a Madhur Jaffrey recipe for a classic lamb saag, and whipped up my ye olde three tins dahl, to which I added a goodly amount of cauliflower in small florets. That sorts out two dinners. I used a lot of the capsicum to make a simple pasta sauce - bacon, onion, garlic, tomato, herbs. That does another two meals, with some broccoli or salad on side. And there will be leftovers for lunches.

Lamb recipe follows: Recipe: Moghlai Lamb with Spinach
600g boneless lamb cubes
7 cloves of garlic, crushed
5 tsp grated ginger
2 tblsp ground coriander
3 tblsp light oil
1 large onion, cut in fine half rings (about 160g)
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
4 tblsp natural yoghurt
500g fresh spinach, cut into fine ribbons.
Mix garlic, ginger and coriander into meat, set aside for 30 minutes.

Heat oil in a large saucepan, and fry onions in the oil until golden brown and crisp. Remove onions and drain on kitchen paper.

Reduce heat, and stir in lamb, all of its marinade, and the cayenne, salt and turmeric. Stir for a minute or two to partially brown, then cover and leave for about ten minutes on a low heat. This will sweat a lot of the juices out of the lamb. Remove lid, add 1 tablespoon of yoghurt. Stir in well, to amalgamate, and repeat process - a tablespoon at a time - with the remaining yoghurt. Chop and stir in the crisped onions.

If the meat is tough, simmer for half an hour. If it's a tender cut, stir in the spinach immediately and stir until it is wilted down. Cover and simmer for another 50 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Source: Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. Mildly varied.
Notes: This is pretty mild, you might like some more cayenne. Jaffrey notes that this is a classic Moghul recipe, and probably has been the same for centuries, except for the cayenne.

You might be more familiar with the title I chose - "Lamb Saag". Apparently paalag or palak is proper spinach, while saag is a more general term for greens.

Corned Beef and all that jazz

Corned beef with mash, cabbage, and parsley sauce - a British classic, and actually pretty tasty with it. Especially when you add some hot mustard. But what was I thinking again? This requires at least one pan per component. And the bloke is sick, so who's going to clean up? And there are lots of one pot recipes for corned beef and cabbage. Why am I not doing one of those? I must be daft.

This week I have rehearsals Sun, Tues & Thurs, and a yoga class on Monday. I need quick reheatable food, and this should mostly fit the bill. The potato, cabbage and sauce can last one more meal, and there's still plenty of corned beef for sandwiches. Perhaps a pasta on Wednesday will help vary things, and bought soup and cheese toasties are always an option. And there's baked beans left over from last week.

So anyway, I went ahead with the four pot dinner, and took a photo even though it's not the most photogenic of meals. One of the pots is for a simple potato mash with some turnip in it. Recipe: boil in lightly salted water for 20 minutes, drain, mash, add butter or milk to taste. More detailed recipes for the rest follow:


Corned Beef in Beer
1.5 kg piece of corned beef
1 jug beer
1 onion
6 cloves
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
Rinse corned beef and put in slow cooker or large saucepan. Cover with beer, add onion and spices. Cook on slow cooker's high setting, or at a very slow simmer for 4-5 hours.



Light Parsley Sauce
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup non-fat milk
1 onion
2 bay leaves
1 bunch parsley, leaves chopped finely, stems saved
2 tablespoons cornflour
Combine milk and chicken stock, add onion, bay leaf and the parsley stems. Bring to a simmer, then turn off heat and leave to infuse for an hour or two. To make the sauce, strain the cool milk and stock mixture into a saucepan, and stir in the cornflour, mixing well. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently. When the sauce thickens, add the chopped parsley.

Note: if the milk isn't cool, mix up the cornflour in a 1/4 cup of water first, to avoid lumps. I invented this sauce when we were more determinedly trying to lose weight, and I like it rather better than the usual bechamel in this context. Adding some lemon zest is a nice option.

Saute Cabbage
1/4 cabbage, shredded, rinsed well
1 onion, sliced
1 apple, peeled & sliced
1 tablespoon of light oil
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
Fry onion in oil until lightly golden. Add caraway seeds, apple and cabbage. There should still be some water clinging to the cabbage; if not add 1/4 cup or so. Add the vinegar. Let this cook down for 5-20 minutes depending on how well done you like it. I prefer it quite soft with the corned beef.