After another successful cooking expedition with Special K and Jfox (will post very soon!) I was left over with a 20cm ham hock (used for our reproduction of MoVida's croquettas).
With the chilly weather upon us, it seemed fitting to make use of the hock and cook something hearty enough to keep a certain flu away!
Ingredients:
- 2 cups or 350g of yellow split peas (soaked overnight)
- 1 large ham hock
- 1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
- 1 large onion, diced
- 2 carrots, peeled and diced
- 1 ham hock
- 3 litres of water
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 cloves of garlic
- freshly ground pepper
1. Heat oil in large saucepan and add onion, garlic and carrot and cook until onion is softened.
2. Add all the remaining ingredients to pot and slowly bring to the boil.
3. Reduce heat and cook slowly for 1.5 hours.
4. Remove bay leaves, thyme, bone and skin and continue to cook for another half hour.
5. Puree soup in a food processor and return to a low heat.
6. Serve with crusty toasted bread.
Note: If the soup is too thick add another cup of water and heat to incorporate. Makes about 1 litre of soup which can be frozen in batches for 3 weeks.
Labels:
classics from the vault,
meat,
Soup,
winter
(02) 62...
Labels:
Cafe,
Canberra,
Sandwichings
A big shout out to the folk at University and Graduate's House who always put on a fantastic spread whenever I'm lucky enough to visit Serenity Later and The Fonz in Canberra.
Thinking of university days you wouldn't normally associate it with fantastic food, rather the endless supply of cheap 2 min noodles, pizza and beer (and in my case a habit for sour gummy bears-mmmm!)- but we were in for a big treat!
These folk wield some serious cooking cred in the kitchen as well as being super talented with their academic pursuits as well!
Risotto is my favourite dish to prepare. It's a stress-free, one-pot meal, and perfect for entertaining a few friends. While the need for constant stirring does keep me tethered to the stove, I can easily juggle that with talking to my companion(s) and sipping from a glass of the remaining white wine. For me, cooking risotto is one of life's simple pleasures.
Lemon risotto is the newest addition to my repertoire. I found the original recipe in Stephanie Alexander's "The Cook's Companion". Stephanie's prescribed quantity of parmesan makes the meal sickeningly rich; in my experience only a small 'garnish' of parmesan is required. Diners can easily add more parmesan to taste.
Ingredients (for three to four people as a lone dish)
1 lemon
1.5 litres chicken stock*
300 mL dry white wine
120g unsalted butter
1 small onion, very finely chopped
600g arborio rice
Freshly-grated parmesan cheese, to taste
Finely-chopped fresh parsley (at least 3 tablespoons)
* I use Massel's "chicken style", all-vegetable stock powder, but you can prepare your own from scratch. Some commercial stock powders are overly salty, so be careful.
Method
To ensure the process is stress-free, prepare as much as you can before you start cooking. Make up the chicken and wine stock, juice and zest the lemon, chop the parsley, grate a small quantity of parmesan (I use less than a handful, generally) and weigh out the unsalted butter. Divide the butter in two, keeping the halves separate, and chop each into smaller pieces for easier melting.
Heat the stock and wine in a saucepan. In a heavy-based, deep, non-stick frying pan (or pot) melt half of the butter over gentle heat and sauté onion until softened and translucent. Add rice and raise heat to moderate. Stir to ensure rice is evenly coated with butter. Add 1 cup of stock (I add two soup-ladle's worth). Simmer, stirring constantly, and add 1 cup of hot stock at a time as the liquid is absorbed, making sure that the rice is always just covered. Taste the rice after 15-20 minutes. It should be soft with the merest "nuttiness" in the centre of each grain. I generally find the rice isn't ready until all of the stock and wine is added/absorbed, but be careful not to let the rice become gluggy.
When the rice is ready, remove the pan from heat. Add a small amount of parmesan, the remaining butter, parsley, lemon zest and lemon juice. Stir the ingredients through, making sure the melted butter has distributed evenly. Serve immediately.
Labels:
recipes
Awhile ago, a friend found a recipe for rainbow cake and showed it to the rest of us. Me being the resident Remy scoffed at the fact they used cake mixes and lemonade to make the cake. Yuk. Diet cake? Cakes should be made with things like eggs and butter! They're all about celebrating the wonder of life not restriction!
Having voiced this sentiment, I was challenged to make my own version of the rainbow cake. I decided to use a lemon cake recipe since it's relatively easy with a nice clean flavour. Plus lemon is a fruit for people who care about things like nutrition. And so, here I present my Rainbow cake made with all the things that make life worth living!
Ingredients
Cream the butter and sugar together
Grate the lemon rind and add that to the butter/sugar mix.
Slowly beat the eggs into the butter/sugar mixture until the mixture is nice and liquidy
Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and mix in well
Add the poppyseeds and lemon juice, then start dividing up the mixture and colouring it with food colouring (the original recipe used something called "jelly colours" which I couldn't find in the normal supermarket - might have to look for them in the specialist baking stores). Bake at 170 degrees C/338 degrees F for 45 minutes
Ice if you want, I was too lazy so I covered it in a saturated sugar syrup that will form a crust as well as soak the cake more lemon flavour. Cool in the tin (for 30 mins), then transfer it to a wire rack.
And this is how it ended up!
Labels:
cakes
While I have really let my blogging activities fall off the wayside for reasons intricately linked to slothfulness and a general lack of inspiration, I want to state for the record that it’s not because I have not been eating or cooking or enjoying interesting cuisine, because that would be foolish and unhealthy and ...umm physically impossible. Anyway, I found a compelling reason for a blogging comeback in the form of some recent travels to the
Okay, first up the most utterly delicious discovery of the festival was the Cochon de Lait po’boy. A po’boy is essentially a crusty baguette filled with a type of meat (e.g. shrimp, oysters, crawfish, crab, roast beef) and dressed with accompanying vegetables (usually lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, cabbage) and mayo. The Cochon de Lait is the Maserati of Po’boys in that the filling is made out shredded roasted suckling pig that has been hickory smoked for 12 hours and dressed with coleslaw, and what I guess is a horseradish mayonnaise. You can also opt to drizzle it with some of
Another delicious offering was the crawfish pasta, which was basically pasta tossed through a creamy sauce (and according to the recipe HEEEAAPPPS of butter) that had generous flecks of crawfish pieces with Creole seasoning to give it some real personality.
For sweet offerings, as it was a warm & balmy weekend in town
But nevertheless, an iced treat was a suitable way to satisfy a sweet tooth, given the summer-like weather on offer that weekend. As far as refreshments were concerned, the main offerings were the popular frozen daiquiris, iced teas, strawberry lemonades and a particular beverage that, as Australians, bemused the heck out of both myself and Vernoona. Can you guess why?
*sassy & saucy is in reference to a shout out made by the jolly (and possibly) bourbon-soused hobo we encountered, who wanted to wish us sassy AND (the emphasis was his) saucy ladies a lovely evening on our stroll through the French Quarter, and as such this has now become part of our vernacular.
Labels:
adventures,
festivals,
It-must-be-love,
music,
travels
It made it easy to divide the steps amongst the three of us and since I suggested this - it only seemed fair to volunteer to slice the onions (no mean feat either- as the contestants on Masterchef would attest)! Not sure what the judges would've made of rolling out the dough- but bonus points to Jfox for creativity? Fair to say our tastebuds were abuzz as we savoured the caramelised onions and crispy bacon and creamy, cheesy pie.
This is a Brigitte Hafner recipe from a while back, which comprises of a hazelnut meringue whipped to perfection thanks to Special K's sexy red Kmix! You can go all out with the ganache and cream- but after our earlier exploits (and because we had run out of cream!) we made do with what was left after our 1-2L and made up for it by decorating it with as many sexy strawberries as we could pile on top!
Labels:
restaurants
The food blog amnesty is a fantastic idea (Thanks Jack!); I immediately feel released from a pile of photos, recipes and excuses due to a pile of (new) work.
Exhibit A: Coconut Macaroons
Back in March, we went up to Bendigo for The Age of Couture exhibition (necks craned, polite jostling all around). These were my contribution to the road trip snack booty - Coconut Macaroons with Raspberry jam.
A good road trip snack should always consider driver sensibilities; they should a) be able to be gobbled up in one go and not make too much mess, b) be able to be stored well in hot car boots (as we found out the hard way re: j's road trip snack), and c) be moderately healthy (maybe?).
I followed Karen Martini's recipe from butter sugar flour. We didn't have cream of tartar, but they seemed to survive ok.
Very easy to make and very easy to eat!
Exhibit B: Banana Yoghurt Muffins
This was a Womens Weekly "Bake" recipe. 
For that extra healthy touch, some sour cream in between - so good!
Exhibit C: Chocolate Ripple Cake
Elmo reckons when Choc Ripple biscuits are on special, you make Choc Ripple cake.
We dipped the biscuits in Frangelico and put a dash into the cream as well.
Exhibit D: Strawberry Jam
My folks took us strawberry picking when we were kiddies - unfortunately, we found a better use for the poor strawbs as projectiles at each other.
Needless to say, my parents never took us back.
A few weeks ago, mum and dad went strawberry picking (yes, on their own) in Bacchus Marsh. They came home with about a kilo each for myself and my brother.
They were so fresh and sweet... it did seem a waste to bottle them up!
jfox's bacchus marsh strawbs jam
Lightly rinse strawbs (about 500g) and remove stems.
In a saucepan, add juice of 1/2 a lemon, and sugar to taste (a few teaspoons for me) to strawbs.
Simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Ladle hot jam into sterilised jars*.
Place lid on jars, and flip upside down. The lids should pop (vacuum seal) as the jam cools.
* I didn't bother to boil the jars, I just washed them in warm soapy water and heated them (and their lids) in an oven set at 150 deg for about 20 minutes.
Exhibit E: Har Gau
I love yum cha.
But all the good yum cha is out in the burbs.
I know it's not that far, but I also love a good sleep in and mooching around with the weekend paper.
This is why I love Hong Kong Dim Sum. Instant yum cha for your home.
Imagine: a wall of dim sum large enough to please even the most ardent fan of dumplings. Their Egg Tarts are fantastic: the custard is soft, melt-in-your-mouth and the pastry is super flakey. Hmmm.
We stocked up on Har Gau, Siu Mai, Gow Choi Gau (Chive Dumplings) and BBQ Pork buns from the Box Hill shop. Happily, we had dumplings bursting out of our freezer, it was so good!
Though it's not quite the same as the yum cha houses, a mere 10-12 minutes in the steamer, and breakfast is ready.
(When all these posts are viewed together, you'd think that we eat nothing but sweets or instant food. I promise this is not true! I'm just too busy digging in to take pics =) )
Labels:
Australian Women's Weekly,
Chinese,
dim sum,
jam,
obsessions,
recipes,
road trip,
strawberry,
sweets,
yum cha
I often think of Australian Women's Weekly cookbooks as the gold standard - who else can boast triple-tested recipes? We spent the afternoon listening to a new ceedee and baking a sweet treat for our afternoon coffee break.
Last year, Elmo and I found this book: ‘My Grandmother’s Family Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons, a food autobiography of sorts by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, an American-Chinese foodie. Lo speaks about the migration experience, focussing on the inheritance of food and kitchen-life traditions from her grandmother and her mother. This book has many recipes (including Wintermelon Soup, Won Ton, Radish cakes) that remind me of simple dishes my nana taught me when I was a kid. I’ve been casually flipping through and getting nostalgic, but with the cooler weather in the last couple of days, the first recipe we tried was Five-Spice Pork Belly.
This recipe is super-easy and results in beautifully tender meat and a rich, syrupy aromatic sauce. And because it simmers for four hours on the stove, your senses will thank you because your place will smell like heaven, I guarantee!
6 ½ cups of cold water
4 ½ ounces sugarcane sugar, or dark brown sugar
1 piece of ginger, about 5cm long, lightly smashed
4 spring onions, trimmed and cut in half
3 cinnamon sticks
4 pieces star anise
10 cloves
¼ teaspoon anise seeds
¼ teaspoon
1 piece of pork belly (ours was from an Asian butcher, cut into a square ~12cm each side, weighing ~1 kg)
2/3 cup double dark soy sauce (available at Asian grocers, we substituted dark soy sauce, with a tablespoon oyster sauce)
2/3 cup Shao-Hsing wine, or dry sherry
Place water, sugar, ginger, spring onions and five spices into a large pot. Stir to blend, add pork belly. As it boils, add soy sauce and stir.
Return to a boil, add Shao-Hsing wine and mix. Return again to a boil. Lower heat, cover pot, leaving a slight opening at the lid and simmer for four hours. As it simmers, turn meat over.
After four hours, close lid and allow meat to come to room temperature. Place entire contents of pot into a large bowl and refrigerate overnight. This allows the meat to further absorb the spices. (This is also a good opportunity to remove any fat that will solidify overnight).
It ain't pretty, but it's delicious
To serve: Remove meat from the refrigerator to a chopping board. Cut meat into ~2-3cm slices, and allow to come to room temperature. Place slices in a steamproof dish, ladle sauce over the slices and steam for 10 to 12 minutes until very hot. (We found our sauce to be jelly-like rather than able to be ladled.)
We served our pork belly on rice with choy sum.
Labels:
childhood food,
Chinese,
cookings,
five spice,
pork belly,
recipes,
recipes books
So what do you eat the day after Christmas? Usual response is you're stuck with leftovers for the next week, right? You might be inspired to make some super simple pancakes with a slightly healthier (?) twist. This recipe is from the Made in Spain series with Jose Andres. You can find the video recipe and here along with many other yummy recipes.
What you need:
- 1 1/2 cups of plain flour
- 2 tbs sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda (didn't have any, pancakes were fine)
- 1 1/2 cups buttermilk (use normal milk, with 1-2 tbs of vinegar to make your own!)
- 1 egg
- 1-2 tbs olive oil (not light though extra virgin will intensify olive flavour)
- 1/2 cup of finely chopped dark chocolate
dressing: honey, mint or berries
What to do:
1. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl
2. Make a well and add buttermilk
3. Lightly beat egg and add to mixture, along with oil
4. Whisk lightly, then add chopped chocolate and combine
5. Ladle mixture onto lightly oiled pan and cook until bubbles form in middle, then flip and cook until golden brown (the video is funny at this point Andres quips "the pancake will tell you I'm ready to be flipped, my friend")
6. When all pancakes are made, stack and pour over honey and garnish with mint. I decided to add berries which is nice but it could also work if you make a ganache with cream and raspberries and pour over (decadent? yes!)
7. Enjoy
Labels:
chocolate,
cookings,
experiments,
spanish
Mushroom cappucino, white truffle foam
Crayfish cocktail, avocado mousse, tomato jelly
Pan fried snapper, red claw yabbies, melted eggplant,
Confit of lamb with a spiced olive and onion sauce
Deconstructed strawberry cheesecake- strawberries,
Turkish delight parfait, rhubarb sorbet, orange jelly
Labels:
adventures,
birthdays,
restaurants
