Fri 27 Jan 2012

Roasted Rice?

Posted by Bandicoot under Recipes, Religious/Occult
1 Comment

I’m very fond of a book called Sorcerer’s Apprentice, written by a travel writer named Tahir Shah. You see, Shah is an Anglo-Afghan, who’s family are still considered royalty in one region of Afghanistan. When he was a little kid, he saw an Indian magician at a festival, which captivated him. He went on to study stage  magic, from books and such, but he could never duplicate the illusions he saw the old Indian dude perform. So, of course, he went to India and apprenticed himself to a travelling magician. As you do.

The book is all about his journey into the secrets of Indian “godmen”. He learnt amazing (and freakishly dangerous) tricks and illusions, tramping along and meeting sadhus, sages, god-avatars and magicians. It’s a great book! And it contains a great deal of out-of-the-way information about India and Indian folkways.

However, lets get back to food.

In the book, Tahir Shah goes first to Afghanistan. And, because he’s a prince and because his ancestor was a hero of the First Afghan War, the locals make a big fuss of him and cook him a huge Afghan feast, the central dish of which is pigeon biryani.

So. We get to the point of this post. Biryani!

Biryani, is a rice-based casserole made with spices, basmati rice, vegetables and, usually, some kind of meat. The name is derived from the Farsi word beryān which means “roasted”. It’s essentially a spiced, fried-rice/paella type of thing, layered in a dish with a kind of curry. It’s pretty damn good!

But it’s not Indian, at least not originally.

You see, Indian chefs describe biryani as the “pinnacle” of Indian cuisine. But the dish is obviously not Indian. It belongs to the Farsi-speaking culture, which exists around the Pamir Mountains, in the area known as “The Roof of the World” around Gorno-Badakhshan province, Badakhshan province, Uzbekistan and Tajikstan.  This is the area of Tashkent and Samarkand, magical cities on the Silk Road. And biryani is the kind of dish that calls to mind the romance of this area of the world.

So. Biryani.

The Biryani I make is called Lucknowi Biryani. It’s characteristic of Uttar Pradesh, in Northern India. And it’s delightful! It also demonstrates the Indian spiritual practice of buttering everything, to increase its holiness.

Lucknowi Biryani

Ingredients.

* 2 cups basmati rice, butter, chicken stock,, 1 tsp cardamom pods, 1 tsp saffron threads, ½ tsp ground cinnamon.

* 1 cup drained, tinned tomatoes, 2 onions, 12 cloves of garlic, 3cm piece ginger.

* Butter, peanut oil, ground cumin, salt, ½ tsp chilli powder, pepper, ground coriander, garam masala, 1 tsp curry powder, 500g sliced chicken fillet, 1 cup yoghurt, 1 small eggplant, coarse salt.

* 1 carrot, 1 large tomato, ½ cup frozen peas, 1 tbsp sultanas, 1 tbsp chopped cashews, ½ cup chopped green coriander.

First, melt a big lump of butter (or ghee) in a frying pan. Stir the rice into the butter and cook it for a few minutes, stirring it around, so the rice is all coated with butter. Put the buttery rice into a microwave rice cooker with three cups of stock, another lump of butter, the cardamom pods, the saffron powder and the cinnamon, and microwave it on High for four minutes. Take the rice out of the microwave, stir it around really well, put the lid back on and microwave it for another four minutes. Let it stand for ten minutes.Transfer the rice to a large mixing bowl and fluff the rice up with a fork, making sure you break up any lumps. Put the rice aside.

Blend the tomatoes to a liquid. Peel and chop the onions finely, peel and chop the garlic and peel and grate the ginger. Melt the remaining butter and oil in a pan. Very gently fry the onions, the garlic and the ginger for twenty minutes in a heavy pan. Add three teaspoons of ground cumin, the salt, the chilli powder, the pepper, three teaspoons of coriander, three teaspoons of garam masala and the curry powder. Fry it all gently for five minutes. Add the chicken and fry it for twenty minutes. Add the yoghurt and the blended tomatoes. Simmer the mixture uncovered for around forty minutes or until it’s very thick. Adjust the seasonings and put it aside.

Trim the eggplant and salt it heavily. Leave it to sit for about ten minutes. Wash off the salt and cut the slices up into small pieces. Peel the carrot and cut it into small pieces. Core the tomato and slice it up into small pieces. Set the eggplant and carrot to fry in some butter and sprinkle it with some garam masala, ground coriander and ground cumin. Fry the eggplant and carrot until it feels soft. Add the tomato and fry it for a few more minutes. Mix the fried vegetables and the peas through the rice.

Spoon one third of the rice into a casserole. Smooth it down well. Add half the chicken mixture and press it down until smooth. Repeat the layers, finishing with the last of the rice. Sprinkle the top with the remaining stock, the sultanas and the cashews. Bake at 120ºc (260ºf) for thirty minutes.

Sprinkle the top of the biryani with the chopped coriander.

Serves six.

So. As you can see, this “pinnacle of Indian cuisine” isn’t that hard to make. It can also be made with lamb or different vegetables or whatever. You can put boiled eggs in the centre if you like (that’s VERY traditional) or you can forget about the layering and just mix it all up in the casserole dish.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

 

Mon 3 Oct 2011

Belly Up

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
No Comments

Belly of pork is one of those cuts of meat that causes people to either scream or drool. People seem to genuinely love it, with a deep and abiding passion or they hate it, with a concentrated venom that can take one quite aback.

By way of example, my sis-in-law, the Mambo of Voodoo Kitchen will kill (and I am in no way speaking metaphorically) for a dish of Siew Yuk (that’s Chinese Crisp-Roasted  Belly of Pork).

However, another friend of mine who suffers from hyperacidity, turns pale and wan, when confronted with a tiny canapé of crisp-fried pork belly.

You see, belly of pork has no bones, but HEAPS of fat. A 100g serving of pork belly has around 518 calories. Which is quite a lot really.

But belly of pork, in my humble, marsupial opinion, is the Queen of Meat!

However, there’s a couple of things about belly of pork. First off, it’s not just an ingredient in Asian food. Every second fool with a food blog seems to think that you MUST flavour belly pork with star anise and dried tangerine peel. It gets a little tiresome. And secondly, I guess it’s technically possible to cook belly of pork without pre-cooking it, but let me tell you; it is SO much better if you simmer it first!

So, here’s a little recipe for …

Roasted Belly of Pork.

Ingredients.

* 1.5kg belly of pork, salt, 4 onions, 4 apples, olive oil, rock salt, black pepper, 1 cup chicken stock.

Fill a large saucepan with salted water and gently simmer the pork for a couple of hours, with a lid put on ajar, leaving a space for the steam to escape. Take the pot off the heat and let it cool for a bit. Take the pork out of the water, drain it and pat it dry. Score the skin of the pork with a sharp knife; it will be very soft and easy to cut. Transfer the pork to an oiled baking slide, put another oiled baking slide on top of the pork, weight the top slide with a few tins or a brick and put it in the fridge to sit overnight.

The next day, peel the onions and apples and cut them into thick slices. Rub the pork skin with salt, pepper and oil.  Oil a deep baking dish and lay the apple and onion in the bottom. Place the squares of pork on the apple and onion mixture, skin-side up, splash some olive oil over the top, pour the stock into the bottom of the dish and roast the lot at 180ºc (350ºf) for an hour or so. Turn the griller (broiler to my American friends) on, slip the baking dish under it and grill the top of the pork for about five minutes.

Serves six.

This is great stuff; soft, juicy meat, with beautiful crackling. And it makes its own apple sauce! (That would be “applesauce” to my American readers).

Of course, if you’re the kind of libertine who wants to gild the lily and tint the rose, you can serve your savoury, crisp-roasted belly of pork and delightful, sticky, meat-flavoured apple and onion sauce with caramel syrup. “What!” you say. “Caramel syrup on roasted pork? Insanity!”

Of course, it’s not ordinary caramel syrup. It’s savoury caramel syrup. A disgusting indulgence. And really good!

Savoury Caramel Syrup.

Ingredients.

* 115g brown sugar, 80 ml red wine vinegar, 1 cinnamon stick, 250ml chicken stock, 1 orange,  sea salt, freshly ground black pepper.

Cut four wide strips of peel from the orange and juice the orange as well. Put the juice and the zest aside.

Put the sugar, vinegar and cinnamon into a small saucepan and cook it, stirring it as it cooks, until the sugar has dissolved. Bring it to the boil and simmer the syrup for five minutes, or until it’s thick and … well, syrupy.
 Stir in the chicken stock and simmer it for another five minutes. Add the orange juice and orange peel, reduce the heat to low and simmer the sauce gently, until it’s very thick. Adjust the seasonings.

Serves six.

So. Drizzle your caramel syrup over the roasted belly of pork and watch your guests weep with joy.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Wed 20 Jul 2011

Π = X

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
1 Comment

The great thing about pie is that you can put pretty much anything in it.

And the way you cook the filling can radically change the taste and texture   of your pie.

Case in point. Steak pie with slow-cooked filling.

Australians, you see, love pies. Unfortunately, we often seem to think that we invented them. We didn’t. In the UK, they make great pies too. And even the Americans make meat pies. (Crazy, I know!)

But we’re still pretty damn good at the whole pie-making thing.

May I say though, a lot of websites, cookery blogs, etc, say that you can make ordinary beef ragout and make it into pie. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

You see, ordinary stewed beef, beef casserole, etc has a lot of sauce. That’s kind of the idea with ragout, it’s partially liquid. But for pie, you need a much less liquid filling.

The good thing about this filling is that it has virtually no sauce. The meat is very soft and juicy, but there’s hardly any loose liquid. This means that, when you cut the pie, the filling doesn’t spill out in a great boiling geyser. This is helpful. On the whole. I find that 3rd degree burns can spoil an intimate supper for friends.

Steak Pie with Slow-Cooked Filling and Dripping Paste.

Ingredients.

* Olive oil, 1kg chuck steak

* 1 onion, 12 garlic cloves, olive oil, salt, pepper, cumin, pimentón.

* 1 litre chicken stock, 500ml white wine, 20 sprigs thyme, * 1 egg, 1 cup flour, salt, melted dripping.

* Frozen puff pastry.

First, oil a large baking dish, put the steak in it, brush the steak with more oil and  roast the steak at 220ºc (450ºf) for twenty minutes.

While the steak is roasting, peel the onion and garlic, Chop the onion and crush the garlic. Gently fry the onion and garlic with some salt and pepper, a little pinch of cumin and a big pinch of pimentón. Fry the mixture, stirring it around as it fries, for ten minutes or so. Put the pan aside and let the onion mixture cool.

Take the steak out of the oven and put it in a slow-cooker, along with the stock, wine, thyme, and the onion mixture. Cook the steak on High for two hours, turn the slow-cooker down to Low and cook it for another four hours. Let the steak cool in the cooking liquid.

Take the steak out, pick out any bits of gristle of big lumps of fat and shred the meat with your fingers. Put the shredded meat aside.

Strain the cooking liquid into a non-stick saucepan and discard the bits of thyme and onion. Reduce the liquid down, until it is thick and syrupy.

Next, make the pastry. Beat the egg in a small bowl and set it aside. In another bowl, sift the flour with a pinch of salt. Add two tablespoons of the dripping and mix it well, with an electric mixer. Add a tablespoon of water and the beaten egg and mix it together very well. The mixture will end up crumbly, but still moist. Form the paste into a ball with your hands, but don’t knead it. Put the paste into a ziplock bag and put it in the fridge for thirty minutes or so, while you finish the pie filling.

Peel the onion and garlic and chop both pretty finely. Fry the onion and garlic together in some more oil, with some salt and pepper, a pinch of cumin and a big pinch of pimentón, until the onion and garlic are soft and collapsing. Add the shredded meat and the reduced cooking liquid and gently cook the mixture until all the liquid disappears. Put the mixture aside.

Flour a board and roll it out with a rolling pin. Grease a large round pie tin with dripping, line it with baking paper and brush the paper with more dripping. Line the tin with the rolled-out pastry and lay another piece of baking paper over the pastry. Fill the pastry case with rice or dried beans, place the pie tin on a baking tray and cook it in an oven, preheated to 220ºc (450ºf) for ten minutes.

Remove the pastry case from the oven and remove the baking paper and rice or dried beans. Cook it for a further ten minutes or so, until it is a light golden colour.

Spread the meat mixture into the blind-baked pastry case. Top the meat with a thawed sheet of puff pastry and turn the edges up or trim them off. Bake the pie at 220ºc (450ºf) for twenty minutes. Check the pie and bake it for a bit longer, if it seems to need it.

Serves four to six.

This is a VERY impressive pie. Try it and you’ll see.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Sun 12 Jun 2011

Lord Love A Duck.

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
1 Comment

Cantonese roast duck! Who doesn’t love it?

Of course, if you make your own, you can claim the title of ‘Doctor’ (D.D – Doctorate of Duck). It’s not very hard; it’s just the stuffing and sewing of the duck’s bum than can be a little difficult. But if you take your time and follow the recipe, things will work out fine. The Research Division of the Marsupial Kitchen (that would be me) have worked this duck recipe out to the smallest detail and you may rest assured, that it works. OK?

By the by, here might be the place to deliver my rant on the Cantonese Duck/Peking Duck debate. The world, you see, is full of idiots and many of them will loudly exclaim that Cantonese roast duck and Peking duck are the same thing. (Insert Gong Show-type noise here). This is wrong.

Cantonese roast duck and Peking duck are very different. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous Chinese restaurants in Sydney will serve you Cantonese roast duck, while telling you it’s Peking duck. The quickest way to tell the difference is to look at the duck. Cantonese roast duck is deep red-brown in colour and looks varnished. (Hence the common term lacquered duck to refer to this kind of duck). Peking duck is yellow/honey coloured and looks more like an ordinary roast duck. Also, Cantonese roast duck is cooked with a filling of liquid, which is served with the duck. Peking duck is cooked dry, with some aromatics like garlic, star anise, shallot or dried orange peel, placed in the cavity.

So! Lets look at a recipe for …

Cantonese Roast Duck.

Ingredients.

* No 30 duck (3kg), salt, 5 shallots, 2cm piece ginger, peanut oil, 2 tbsp caster sugar.

*3 tbsp dry sherry, 1½ tbsp bean sauce, 1½ tbsp hoisin sauce, 2 tsp 5-spice powder

* 6 tbsp honey or maple syrup, 2 tbsp rice vinegar, pinch Chinese red food colouring.

Remove the neck, fat sacks and any giblets from the duck. Cut the wingtips off and thoroughly dry the cavity.

Half fill a big stewpan with water and bring  it to the boil. Dip the duck into the boiling water a few times, leaving the duck in the water for about ten seconds each time you dip it in. Thoroughly dry the duck, rub the skin of the duck with salt and tie the neck closed tightly with fine string.

Trim the shallots and mince them finely. Grate the ginger and put it aside with the minced shallots.

Heat some oil in a heavy saucepan. Add the shallot and ginger mix, the caster sugar, the sherry, the bean sauce, the hoisin sauce and the five-spice powder. Bring the mixture to a boil, let it cool a bit and liquidise the mixture with a mixing wand. Stick a funnel into the duck cavity, carefully pour the mixture into the funnel and tightly sew the cavity closed. (The duck must be watertight, so don’t skimp with the stitching). Leave a long loop in the string, so the duck can be hung up, head-down.

Warm a cup of cold water in a small saucepan. Dissolve the honey or syrup in the water with the vinegar and the red colouring. When the mixture is completely dissolved, brush the duck all over with the mixture, ensuring that the duck is thickly covered with the glaze. When the duck is glazed, hang the duck, head-down, in front of a fan for a few hours. If you don’t have a fan, hang the duck up in an airy place; in an open window is good. (Watch out for the neighbours’ cats).

Pre-heat the oven to 200º c (400ºf). Half fill a shallow roasting pan with water and place an oiled cake cooler in it. Place the duck, breast-side uppermost, on the rack and roast the duck for twenty-five minutes. Take the duck out of the oven and brush it with some more glaze. Reduce the heat to 170º c (340ºf), carefully turn the duck over, so the breast is underneath and roast the duck for another thirty minutes. Take the duck out of the oven, turn it over again, so that the breast-side is uppermost, brush it again and roast the duck for a final thirty minutes. Take the duck out of the oven, cover it with a cloth and let it rest for a few minutes.

Let the duck cool a little and unpick the stitching from the cavity, catching all the liquid from inside. Use scissors to cut the duck into around twenty pieces, arrange the pieces on a platter and serve the the liquid as sauce for the duck.

Serves six or so.

Remember, the duck is filled with very hot liquid; you have to be very careful when you turn it over.

Alright. So, you’ve made your delicious Cantonese roast duck, and you’ve served it to wild applause. But you made a couple of other dishes too and your guests left about half the duck on the platter. So what do you do?

Well, if you’re clever, you freeze the rest of the duck and invite some different friends over the next week, for a movie night or something like that. And you serve them some beautiful little duck tarts, which I like to call …

Lotus Blossoms.

Ingredients.

* ½ Cantonese roast duck, ½ cup duck cooking liquid, hoisin sauce, 4 shallots, 3cm ginger root, 4 stalks green coriander, 100g water chestnuts, salt, pepper.

* 24 wonton wrappers, oil spray.

First, strip the duck meat off the bone and shred it finely. Transfer the duck meat to a mixing bowl. Add the duck liquid and a couple of teaspoons of hoisin sauce, mix it all together and put the duck aside to sit for a few minutes.

Trim the shallots and shred them finely. Peel the ginger and chop it very finely. Add both shallots and ginger to the duck mixture. Wash the coriander, trim off the roots and chop it finely. Add the coriander to the duck mixture. Dice the water chestnuts into tiny, two millimetre pieces. Put the chopped water chestnuts into the duck mixture and mix it together very well. Taste the mixture and adjust the seasonings if it’s needed.

Spray both sides of the wonton skins with oil spray and press them into two non-stick mini muffin tins. Spoon an equal amount of duck mixture into the wonton skins, until all the wonton skins are filled. Bake the lotus blossoms at 200°c (400°f) for about fifteen minutes.

Serves around ten.

These are lovely, fresh dimsum. They’re easy to make and they look very nice as well. And the name is in no way pretentious! Well … maybe just a bit. But the little tarts are shaped like water-lily flowers, so the name fits.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Fri 22 Apr 2011

Mince is NOT Mexican.

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
No Comments

If you put “Mexican mince recipes” into Google, you get 1,240,000 results.

That’s scary.

What makes it even worse is that Americans don’t call it ‘mince’. If you put “Mexican ground beef recipes” into Google, you get 8,820,000 results.

Sheesh!

Of course, the reason it’s scary is that Mexican cuisine, doesn’t use mince. Well they make albóndigas (meatballs) with minced pork, but they never use beef mince. In fact, the surest sign of a hack Mexican restaurant is that they use mince.

Personally, I blame American housewives in the early 1950’s.

You see, before 1950, mainstream American culture hadn’t really embraced Mexican cuisine. The people of Southern California, Southern Arizona, New Mexico and Texas had always eaten Mexican food, often in their own regional forms; Mexicali, Sonoran, Tex-Mex and the like. But the rest of America hadn’t really caught on to the wonder that was Mexican cuisine.

But in 1950, larger numbers of Mexican immigrants started being welcomed into the US. And, of course, they brought their food with them. And just behind the immigrants came scores of Happy Housewife recipe cards, recipe mixes, tinned goops, bottled mucks, etcetera, etcetera.

You see, the real Mexican food brought by the immigrants used some unfamiliar ingredients and cookery techniques. Thus, 1950’s recipes used grated American cheese (blerk!) and oregano, instead of queso blanco (farmers’ cheese) and green coriander (that’s cilantro to my American readers).

And slow-cooking beef or pork for hours, then shredding it by hand seemed way too much bother. So they turned to mince. (again, that’s ground meat to my American friends). So it’s all good, right?

Unfortunately, no.

You see, when you cook mince, it forms into little lumps that sort of loll around in their own grease. And these lumps-in-grease have a particular creamy taste (that’s the grease!) and an odd, slightly gritty texture (that’s the proteins in the mince tightening up). It’s not inedible, you understand. It can even be fairly pleasant. But the texture’s off by several orders of magnitude and it tastes … well, it tastes like mince. And even if you add herbs or a spice mixture, it ends up kind of missing the point.

So! To help you, my loyal readers, I’ve published my own version of Mexican shredded beef, a dish known as carne desebrada in Spanish.

Carne Desebrada.

Ingredients.

* 2 small onions, 8 cloves garlic, 2 tsp chilli powder, 4 tbsp pimentón, 2 tbsp cumin,

1 tsp black pepper, 2 tsp salt, olive oil, 1.5kg roasting beef, chicken stock, 2 shots tequila.

Peel the onions and garlic, slice the onions and crush the garlic. Mix the crushed garlic with the chili powder, pimentón, cumin, and pepper and set it aside. Put the sliced onion aside by itself.

Preheat the oven to 200ºc (400ºf). Oil the beef all over, place it on a baking dish and roast the beef for twenty minutes. Take the meat out, turn it over, replace it in the baking dish and roast it for another twenty minutes.

When the beef is browned all over, take it out and let it cool.

Lay the sliced onions on the bottom of the slow-cooker.  Spread the garlic mixture on top of the beef, place the beef on the onions, garlic side up and add enough stock to come halfway up the sides of the beef. Replace the lid on the slow-cooker.

Cook the beef for an hour on High, turn the slow-cooker down to Low and cook it for another four hours.

Every hour, check the level of stock and add more if it looks like getting too low. When the beef is cooked, remove it from the slow-cooker, let it cool completely and shred it thinly with your fingers.

Remove the liquid from the slow-cooker, add the tequila and transfer it to a saucepan. Reduce the liquid until it tastes very rich and sauce-like.

Mix the liquid with the shredded beef.

Serves six to eight.

This beef is a variety of carnitas, which is the Spanish word for twice-cooked, shredded meat. It’s great for tacos, tostadas, burritos or the like. And it’s good on it’s own too, with some Arroz Español and Ensalada Mexicana. And if you want to be really authentic, use lard instead of olive oil. Or Copha. (That’s like Crisco, for my American readers).

Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

Wed 6 Apr 2011

“Shoulder the Lamb, My Lad, and Drink Your Ale”. (With apologies to A. E. Housman).

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
[2] Comments

A couple of years ago, I found myself watching some thrice-damned cookery show on TV. The moron in charge   asked a  couple of celebrity ‘chefs’ about lamb. “What’s your favourite cut of lamb?” asked the moron.

My thought processes went as follows; “The best cuts of ‘lamb’ eh?, I thought. “I know the answer to that one”. First, hogget is inestimably superior to lamb. But which cut is best? Something with complexity and a lot of flavour. Rump? Shank? Liver? Shoulder? Yeah, that’s it, gotta be shoulder“.

“Oh” said Janelle Bloom, alleged ‘chef’ and all-round idiot. “I like Spring lamb cutlets“.

“What!” I thought. “Well, the other dude’s an actual chef, with an actual restaurant. He’ll say something intelligent“.

“Well” said the actual chef. “I like lamb cutlets too. Crumbed lamb cutlets are wonderful!”

At that point, I turned the TV off and manfully wept for a few minutes.

You see, lamb cutlets, particularly Spring lamb cutlets, are essentially meat lollipops. Very tender, to be sure. Easy to eat, of course. But they’re kids’ food. They taste of nothing. Slightly salty, a hint of umami. And that’s your lot. The reason we crumb lamb cutlets is because they need something to give them flavour. It’s like battered flake; in Australia we often use flake (shark meat) for fish and chips, because it has beautiful texture but very little taste, and the batter, along with the salt and lemon and vinegar, give it more flavour.

So. Let’s look at a good cut of lamb. Shoulder.

Lamb shoulder is one of those cuts that our grandmothers knew, but was neglected for a long time. It has wonderful complexity, a lot of delicious fat, which makes it very juicy, a bone through it, which makes it very sweet, if it’s cooked for a long time and very coarse meat, which tastes wonderful. But you need to cook it for a good long while, and wet-roasting (what the Yanks call pot roasting) is the perfect way to cook it.

Wet-Roasted Shoulder of Lamb.

Ingredients.

* 2kg lamb shoulder, with the bone in, olive oil, salt pepper, 4 brown onions, 1 bunch spring onions, 10 sprigs thyme, 2 cups chicken stock, 1 cup white wine.

First pre-heat the oven to at 200ºc (400ºf).

Next, rub the lamb shoulder with olive oil, pepper and salt and roast it in an oiled baking dish, for about fifteen minutes. Take it out, turn it over and roast it for another twenty minutes. Take it out and let it cool a bit.

While the meat cools, peel and roughly slice the four onions. Peel the spring onions, cut off the long, green shoots, and cut them in half. Lay the sliced onions and the thyme in the bottom of a slow-cooker, pour in the stock and wine and lay the lamb on top of the onions. Put the lid on and cook the lamb on High for two hours. Take the lamb out, add the spring onions and stir them in, turn the heat down to Low, replace the lamb and cook the lamb for another four or five hours. Take the lamb out, place it on a plate and keep it warm.

Put the juice and onions from the slow-cooker into a smallish saucepan and reduce the liquid, until it tastes rich and sauce-like. (This won’t take much reduction; the liquid is very rich).

Serve the lamb, with the reduced sauce.

Serves four.

This lamb is ridiculous. It’s so soft, you can cut it with the handle of a fork. Or your elbow, or an old ping-pong paddle or … well, you get the idea. And it’s delicious. Serve it with mashed potato, rather than roasted potatoes. Mashed pumpkin is good too. And some greens, maybe some fresh green beans or steamed broccolini.

.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

 

Tue 29 Mar 2011

Peppering the Gumbo.

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
No Comments

Ordinary American food can be awful. There! I said it.

Now, many of my friends will find this comment odd. Weird even. I mean,  I’m the one who always talks about American food. Italian beef sandwiches, I say. Bobbed crabs. Red beans and rice. Buffalo wings. Pulled pork. Key lime pie. My friends are sick of my championing the food of the US.

Now, my Brothers and Sisters, you can rest easy. Well, easier.

I’ll come out and say it. Ordinary American food can be awful. Just awful.

Let me show you some examples, the better to expound my point.

Example A. Tuna casserole. A ghastly sludge, made of tinned tuna and tinned mushroom soup. It has boiled eggs and milk and … I dunno, maybe some kind of mucilaginous material. And a garnish! Well, it has a fistful of potato chips, which you crush, then scrape off your palm and scatter over the top.

Example B. Can-can casserole. This dreadful dish is so comically awful, that people don’t believe me when I describe it. It consists of tins; a tin of chicken in broth, a tin of green beans or peas, a tin of cream of mushroom soup, a tin of chicken soup, a tin of evaporated milk and a tin of chow mein, all mixed together and baked, covered in vast handfuls of shredded cheese, (synthetic American cheese by preference). By all accounts, this dish is so heavily salted that salt crystals can grow in it, if you put the filthy stuff in the fridge overnight.

There! Vile enough for you?

Of course, America is by no means alone in this. People in the UK, despite the availability of heirloom breed pigs and delightful charcuterie and offal, seem to live on frozen beef patties and fish fingers, along with frozen ‘ready meals’. Here in Australia, for every family that slow-cooks shoulder of lamb or bakes yellowtail kingfish cutlets, there’s a family that lives on pre-cut chicken in Kan-Tong sauce and tinned soup.

So, let’s look at something American (with tins!) that’s actually good.

My parents-in-law are pretty amazing people. My father-in law is a bassoon-playing, yoga-practicing, belly dancing, atheist physicist  and my mother-in-law is a Unitarian who has a Masters in English and spent years in the US, teaching disadvantaged kids in Washington DC.

Cool, huh?

But getting back to the food, my parents-in-law brought back a recipe from the US called ‘hamburger gumbo’. It’s not real gumbo you understand, it’s an urban Afro-American dish that evolved in the mid-West. It seems to be related to ‘Southern Illinois Chowder’, which is a ragout of beef, chicken, cabbage, lima beans, green beans and tomato.

So here it is.

Hamburger Gumbo.

Ingredients.

* 3 onions, 12 cloves of garlic, 3 carrots, 2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, 400g tin red kidney beans, 400g tin corn niblets or baby corn, 400g tin whole champignons, 1 cup frozen green beans.

* Salt, pepper, dried mixed herbs, dried  sage, pimentón.

* 500g free-range beef mince, olive oil, 3 tbsp tomato paste, 500ml chicken stock.

Peel the onions and garlic. Roughly chop the onions and crush the garlic. Put them aside in one bowl. Peel the carrots and cut them into discs or julienne pieces. Put them aside. Strip the thyme leaves off the sprigs and put them aside in a little bowl. Open the tins, drain and wash the red beans, corn and mushrooms. Put them aside in one bowl. Measure out the frozen beans and put them aside in their own bowl.

Measure out some salt, some pepper, some dried mixed herbs, some sage and some pimentón in a little bowl.

Gently fry the mince in the oil until it’s browned, stirring it pretty vigorously to break up the lumps. Add the onions and garlic and fry it all together, until the onions are transparent. Add the salt and herbs mixture and cook the lot for ten minutes. Add the carrots, the beans (both kinds), the corn about a half litre of water and the stock. Simmer the lot for one or two hours. Add the tomato paste and simmer the ragout for twenty minutes. Adjust the seasonings.

Send the gumbo to the table with sour cream and Tabasco.

Serves four to six .

I’ve added my own changes to this dish. In the original, it had sour cream added to the mixture while it was cooking; I like it better if you mix it in on your plate. It’s a cheap and easy ragout-type recipe. Serve it with rice, and maybe some chopped raw onion. You can also add leftover cooked vegetables as well.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

 

Tue 22 Feb 2011

It Comes with the Terrine

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
No Comments

Egads! I just looked at some American cookery blogs and found that their most popular definition for ‘terrine’ was ‘a jellied meatloaf’. Honestly, who writes this stuff? I mean really. When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound that good, does it?

On the contrary, terrine is more like really, really rough pâté. So rough that you can eat it with a knife and fork.

In her book The Country Kitchen Cookbook, Jocasta Innes describes these things along a continuum; if you grind it up fine, it’s pâté. If you chop it roughly and layer it, it’s terrine. If you layer it and wrap it up inside a boned chicken or a boned piece of pork, it’s a galantine. And if you layer it or mix it up inside a pastry case, it’s pie.

In addition, although both pâté and terrine are often seen as ‘fancy’, they’re both ideally suited to cheap bits of meat. You can make them with cheap off-cuts of pork, cheap pork mince from a Chinese butcher, chicken livers (still cheap after all these years), rabbit, breast of veal and cheap, bulk bacon. You don’t need unsmoked bacon, prosciutto, cognac or pork fillet, despite what some cookbooks say. Yes, the French used to make pâté of larks’ tongues, but, frankly, that’s just weird.

But here’s a good recipe for …

Farmhouse Terrine.

Ingredients.

* 500g pork belly, 300g chicken mince, 200g chicken livers, 150g pork fat,

* 10 cloves garlic, 2 tsp ground black pepper, 1 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp ground ginger, 50ml dry sherry, 50 ml honey bourbon whiskey, 2 heaped tbsp good grain mustard, 3 tbsp sea salt, ½ cup chopped parsley, 8 chopped sage leaves, 12 sprigs fresh thyme, 1 beaten egg.

* 1 bunch spinach.

* Butter, de-rinded bacon rashers.

Bone the pork belly, slice the skin off and roughly mince the meat. Weigh out four hundred grams of the minced meat and put it into a mixing bowl. (You can use any extra meat for something else). Put the chicken mince in with the pork meat. Coarsely chop the chicken livers and add them to the pork and chicken mince, then finely chop the pork fat and add that too. Put the meat aside in the fridge.

Mince the garlic and add it to the meat mixture. Add the black pepper, nutmeg,  ginger, sherry, whiskey, mustard, sea salt, parsley, sage leaves, thyme, and the beaten egg and mix the lot for around two minutes, making sure the mixture is completely mixed. Cover the meat mixture with plastic, put it into the fridge and leave it to sit overnight.

Thoroughly wash the spinach and cut off the stalks. Blanch the spinach for two minutes, then squeeze it, until it is really dry. Chop the spinach roughly – you should have about half a cup of spinach, when you’ve finished. Put the spinach aside.

Preheat the oven to 160ºc (320ºf). Butter the loaf tin (if you have a terrine, by all means use it), and line  it with bacon strips  laying the slices crossways and allowing the ends to hang over the edges. If you need to, you can lay down a ‘patch’ of bacon, but make sure the loaf tin is completely lined. Spoon half of the mixture into the bacon-lined tin, pressing the mixture into the corners. Spread the spinach over the meat mixture, making sure it’s spread evenly. Then, spoon the other half of the meat mixture over the spinach pressing it down well. Lift the ends of the bacon over the meat mixture and arrange them nicely, as if you were arranging drapery.

Cover the top of the terrine with foil, place it in a pan with water that comes half way up the terrine and bake it for about an hour. Pour off the fat, reduce the oven temperature to 140ºc (280ºf)and continue cooking the terrine until the juice runs clear when the terrine is pierced with a skewer. Cut a piece of thick cardboard to fit just inside the top of the loaf tin. Place the card on top of the terrine and chill it overnight with weights on top of the cardboard.

Serve the terrine with some cornichons, some onion jam and a warm loaf of  sourdough.

If you want, you can serve this warm. I think it’s better that way. It’s good at room temperature too, but don’t ever serve it cold, straight out of the fridge.

PS. I realised that onion jam is sometimes hard to get and stupidly expensive to boot. So make your own! Here’s my recipe.

Onion Jam.

Ingredients.

* 1kg red or brown onions, ½ cup olive oil, 6 whole cloves, 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 bay leaves, ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup red wine vinegar.

Peel the onions and chop them roughly. Put the oil in a heavy pan and add the cloves, cinnamon and bay leaves. Warm the oil for ten minutes or so. Add the onions and sugar to the pan and cook the onions very gently until the onions are well coloured.

De-glaze the pan with the vinegar and a little water. Keep cooking the mixture until it is a thick paste.

Pack the jam into sterile jars.

Makes about three jars.

This is a very old-fashioned accompaniment for pâté and terrine. And by the by, DON’T call it ‘onion marmalade’; the use of that phrase marks you as the worst kind of pretentious know-nothing.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Sun 30 Jan 2011

Cheesecake Shots

Posted by Bandicoot under Rants, Recipes
No Comments

Have you ever noticed that cheesecake has a kind of split personality?

On the one hand, cheesecake is presented as the height of culinary sophistication, a delicate, refined dessert, made with Amalettea ricotta or  Southcape mascarpone, flavoured with orange flower water, Amaretto or triple sec and laid in a crust, made from crushed macaroons or pfefferkuchen.

People rave about how wonderful it is; indeed until the stupid American designer cup-cake craze started, cheesecake was the reigning champion dessert at hens’ nights, office farewells and suburban dinner parties.

On the other hand, cheesecake also has this kind of lame ‘Ladies’ Home Journal‘, American hausfrau-Stepford Wife, home-for-the-Holidays vibe about it. It’s like pavlova; nearly everyone likes it, but you’d never admit it to your sophisticated foodie friends.

It’s all very odd.

Like a lot of things, it was the Arabs who gave us baked cheesecake. They didn’t invent it, you understand (the ancient Greeks used to make it), but it was through the Arabs, via the Crusades and thanks to the Ottoman Empire, that baked cheesecake was introduced to the West. They used to love it in mediaeval England; the 14th Century English cookbook Forme of Cury featured a dish called sambocade, which was baked cheesecake, made with chèvre and flavoured with elderflower.

But baked cheesecake is not what I’m talking about today.

In Australia, baked cheesecake is a relative newcomer. In the ’70’s we worshipped at the shrine of the unbaked cheesecake. I remember my mother’s Book of Cheesecakes, which I always loved, because it had a cool octopus on the spine. (Octopus Publishing Group, London). It had about eighty unbaked cheesecake recipes; cheesecake topped with passionfruit, strawberries, lemon curd, caramel, chocolate shavings, glacé cherries, swirled chocolate fudge … My mother only ever made two or three of these, you understand, but the book was illustrated and I used to drool over the pictures.

Anyhoo. Unbaked cheesecake.

Unbaked cheesecake probably evolved from a Russian Easter dessert called pashka, which is a sweet cheese custard, made with an un-ripened Russian cheeses called  tvorog. Whack it in a biscuit base and you’ve got cheesecake.

Oh, and a word about cranberries. I love ‘em. Cranberry juice, cranberry sauce, cranberry jelly, it’s all great. And I’d dreamed of making cranberry cheesecake for years, ever since I saw it in an American cookery magazine. But you couldn’t buy cranberries in Australia. But now you can! The amazing Possum-Bride bought a kilo of frozen cranberries at Metro Grocer in the Marrickville Metro shopping centre for A$12. Huzzah!

So, without further ado, I present …

Cranberry Cheesecake.

Ingredients.

* Sweet butter, 1½ cups crushed plain biscuits, 1 tsp Dutch cinnamon, 1 block cream cheese, 1 tin condensed milk, 85ml lemon juice, 1 tsp grated lemon zest, 6 drops vanilla, extract.

* 1 cup sugar, ground cinnamon, 2 cups frozen cranberries, thawed and washed, 2 tsp cornflour dissolved in a little cold water

Lightly butter a shallow twenty-two centimetre pie dish or spring-form dish. Line the dish with silicon paper.

Put the biscuit crumbs into a large basin with the cinnamon. Melt forty grams of butter and pour it over the biscuit crumbs. Mix the crumbs and butter together well,  press the buttered crumbs into the prepared pie dish and put the dish in the fridge for a few hours before you make the filling.

Blend the cream cheese with the condensed milk, lemon juice vanilla extract and lemon zest. When it’s well mixed together, pour the mixture into the biscuit crust. Dust the top of the cheesecake with nutmeg and cover the cheesecake with kitchen wrap. Put the cheesecake into the fridge and chill it for two hours.

While the cheesecake is chilling, combine the sugar and a big pinch of cinnamon with two hundred ml of water in a non-stick saucepan. Set the saucepan on medium-high heat and stir the mixture around to dissolve the sugar. When the mixture comes to a boil, add the cranberries and cornflour mixture. Cook the mixture until it thickens. Remove the mixture to a bowl and let it cool. When the cranberry mixture is cool and the cheesecake is firm, spread the cranberry mixture over the top of the cheesecake. Put the whole thing back in the fridge for another hour or so.

Makes around twelve small pieces or eight big pieces.

It’s funny, but American cookery blogs often talk about this odd thing called ‘mock cheesecake’. By this, they mean ordinary (un-baked) cheesecake.

Also, cranberry (baked) cheesecake is a bit of a modern American classic, so I realise that a lot of Americans are going to see this page. Hi guys! Try this, you’ll like it!

Tags: , , , , ,

 

Sat 22 Jan 2011

“To iiza the Anguish of a Torturing Hour”

Posted by Bandicoot under Reviews
1 Comment

As my friends can tell you, the Lounge Bandicoot is quite fond of all things Japanese. Whether it be ink paintings, model shops in Akihabara or juttejutsu, this old marsupial is inordinately fond of Japanese history and Japanese culture. This fondness extends to Japanese food.

Now, there’s a new-ish Japanese restaurant in Newtown, (opened in February 2010) called iiza (pronounced eez-ah). Hence the awful pun above. But let’s not linger over my alleged jokes.

iiza!

It’s very interesting, because it’s the first izakaya place in the Inner-West. ‘Izakaya’ is a compound word consisting of the word-element i (to sit) and sakaya (sake shop); thus a sit-down sake shop. However, izakaya places, both in Japan and in the West, are as much restaurants as drinking shops. But you ARE supposed to drink. And the place has a good menu of wine, beer, umeshu and sake available, making such drinking fairly easy.

So, last night, myself, the indomitable Possum-Bride, our beloved country-cousin Fuzz-Buzz and Miss Rufus, the Flying Fox all sallied forth to check out iiza. The P-B had been several times before and had raved somewhat, over the excellence of the food and its authentic character. Well. I must say that if anything, my beloved P-B understated the case.

We had two flasks of good sake between the four of us. (Fuzz-Buzz doesn’t drink much, truth be told). One of the flasks held a very clean, dry sake, called Drunken Whale, and the other was called Meditation Monk , and was stronger and more full-bodied. They were both good, but I’d order two flasks of Drunken Whale next time.

We decided that we’d concentrate on little things (labeled, accurately enough, as tapas on the menu). We ordered goma-ae, which was lightly steamed beans dressed with sesame sauce. It was served in two small bowls; one bowl had black sesame dressing and one had white. It was very pretty and nicely cooked. We also had gyoza. Now gyoza (pork or vegetable dumplings, steamed, then fried on one side) are commonly served in Sydney. And they’re all pretty awful. The gyoza at iiza were good, which was surprising enough to  almost knock me off my bench.  And we also had something they called mayo prawns; beautiful, fat king prawns, marinated in QP mayonnaise, fried in tempura batter and served with more QP mayonnaise. (I had two).

After we’d finished with the sake, goma-ae, gyoza and mayo prawns, we were all hungry and liquored up. (There’s no courses in an izakaya place, you understand. The food kind of keeps coming, in waves). We had some great kingfish, marinated in teriyaki sauce and grilled ’til it was just done. We also had vegetable tempura; a great plate of broccolini, pumpkin slices, onion and sweet potato, deep-fried in  tempura batter. The vegetables were served with green tea salt, but they were good enough to eat plain.  Of course, we also had  karaage. You can’t drink in Japan and not eat karaage. It’s delightful; crunchy fried chicken, marinated in garlic and sake. It’s wonderful and a source of Special Energies. iiza serve their karaage with tartare sauce, but I like the ‘traditional’ way too; QP mayonnaise, English mustard and lemon wedges. We also ate renkon hasami age, which is a marvelous construction of lotus root, fried in tempura batter, then sandwiched with little rissoles of seasoned chicken mince, topped with more mayonnaise and served on top of little piles of green tea soba noodles.

After that, they brought us rice and a cauldron of vegetable sukiyaki; a hot-pot of vegetables, mushrooms and tofu, cooked in dashi broth; brewed from kelp and fermented tuna or bonito. Just the smell of the broth took me right back to my last visit to Kashiwa and day trips to Tokyo and staying up all night, drinking cheap sake from Lawson’s … but I digress.

iiza is a wonderful place. If you live anywhere near the Inner-West of Sydney,  put on your drinkin’ pants, go to iiza, sit down, call out sumimasen! ... and be ready to hook into some great food, good sake, maybe a bottle of Asahi and waddle home, in a state of advanced satiety.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

Next Page »