A sad farewell to giant beasts. I mean feasts.

I’m filled with mixed emotions at the moment. It’s all coming to an end. On the weekend I went to the farm with Marcus and Mel and the girls again. And I cooked a Jamie feast again. But that’s it. There will be no more giant farm feasts from Jamie. Which makes a little bit sad, but also makes me leap with joy that I can finally get back to farm tradition and cook spag bol. Bog rolls. Mmmmmmmm…

Ultimate Rib of Beef with Rosemary & Garlic Roast Potatoes

And so it was that I cooked meet and potatoes. Again.

Mel had kindly accepted my shopping list and gone to the butcher for me, requesting a rib of beef to be cut into chops/steaks. We had seven adults and five kids, so it was a pretty giant bag of beef that I pulled from the fridge on Saturday and then I got to work.

I marinated the steaks with smashed up garlic cloves, lemon zest, rosemary and olive oil and left it to sit for an hour.

Mel and I had a small production line going for the potatoes – Mel peeled, sipped wine, handed to me, I chopped into cubes, sipped wine and put into a pot of salted water. Easy.

Once the water with the potatoes in it came to the boil, I transferred the tayties into a baking dish that I’d heated over the stove with some duck fat (left over from the duck earlier in the week – clever huh? Forward thinking – yeah!) and tossed them with smashed garlic cloves, rosemary and S&P. They then went into the oven for about 30 minutes or basically until they were crispy and we were ready to eat.

Then I heated oil in a big and very hot pan and quickly pan fried the beef on either side, just to seal it, then popped them all into the oven for 25 minutes.

So we each had a giant piece of beef, with some very fatty and delicious potatoes and then a very healthy salad of rocket, pear and parmesan on the side. Ah lovely.




It all went down a treat, as usual. They are an eager and easy to please crowd those Wests and friends. And I love cooking in the kitchen at the farm coz it’s big and accessible.

No, I’ve decided, it’s going to have to be spag bol AND giant feasts at the farm from now on.

Xx

PS – would you believe I have only TEN recipes to go!
PPS – yes, correct. That means I will finish next week.
PPPS – which means I will finish exactly 2 months early!
PPPPS – eat your heart Julie Powell – you took a full year!!!
PPPPPS – I know I know, her cookbook was about 3 times the length of mine, but who’s caring!
PPPPPPS – sad but excited. Mostly excited though!!!

Slow and steady wins the race.

I started cooking for Tuesday on Sunday. But don’t freak – Jamie doesn’t have a 48 hour slow cook recipe. But cool if he did huh?

Gnocchi with Braised Oxtail

I browned some oxtail (which is pretty much the same as osso bucco meat) in my oven proof pot then added finely chopped & diced celery, onion, carrot and leek and sweated til soft then added ½ bottle of white wine, some crushed fennel seeds, finely chopped dried cranberries (which were a substitute for juniper berries, which I could not find anywhere), some cinnamon, dried chilli, S&P, tomato puree and two tins of plum tomatoes, stirred it all together, put the lid and put it into the oven for 3.5 hours.

Then I put it in the fridge til Tuesday night and when I got home from work, I put it back in the oven for an hour to reheat it and soften it all up, then I pulled the meat of the bones (well it had kind of all fallen off anyway – perfection - so I was really just making sure I’d removed all the bones from the stew), then I added a sprinkling of oregano and kept it on a low heat, bubbling away while I made the gnocchi.

So with the gnocchi, I decided I would use the mouli this time and it definitely worked a lot better than it did last time, but I have to say my gnocchi overall has got worse. They don’t fall apart or explode when I put them in the water, but they don’t really hold their shape once they hit the plate. But I guess that doesn’t really matter, coz they’re just going straight into to my tummy anyway… I did decide to make them smaller this time thought, so they were kind of mini gnocchi, which I think looked better.

Once the gnocchi was done spooned the stew into a bowl, put the gnocchi on top then garnished with some burnt butter sage leaves and parmesan. It was the richest stew I’ve eaten in a while. Not in a bad way at all, but I could just taste the richness of the meat. But tender? You bet. The meat was so soft and juicy it was sensational. Slow and steady definitely wins this race.

Xx

Duck, duck, pheasant. What a goose?

On Monday night I cooked duck again. The second in my final three ducks. As you can imagine, I was hardly excited about it. Especially after another bird experience I’d had on the weekend.

Mum and I had a mother/daughter weekend in the Southern Highlands and on Saturday night we went to Josh’s Café in Berrima and shared a pheasant. There were loads of interesting things – with a sort of Mediterranean twist – on the menu, but the waiter did the hard sell on the pheasant. Mum was sold straight away and I was happy to give it a try, so away we went. It was cooked to order, so took 50 minutes to arrive and was served with brussel sprouts (yum – love Brussels), chestnuts, pancetta and creamy polenta, it looked superb. Mum LOVED it and was chatting away with the waiter and chef about cooking techniques, so she can head over to the UK and cook a pheasant feast. Me, not so much. Apparently I don’t like game. I love games. But not game. Solitaire, Trivial Pursuit, netball, Taboo, tennis – love those games. But birds that are not chicken and I’m not really a fan. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s just something about them that I don’t like.

So as I say, jumping for joy that two nights later I had a duck in my oven…

Gorgeous Slow-Cooked Duck Pasta

The duck was rubbed with S&P and olive oil, stuffed with four quarters of an orange and popped in the oven at 150 degrees for 2 hours, turned every half hour, so the skin goes crispy all over.

Then I made the sweet and sour sauce – with red onion, pancetta, carrot, celery and garlic all finely sliced and diced and softened in a big pot. To that I added a cinnamon stick, some fresh thyme leaves (a substitute for rosemary, which I forgot to buy), two tins of tomatoes and half a bottle of red wine and left to simmer for half an hour.

Once the duck was done, Mum very kindly pulled all the meat off and then I shredded it and added it to the S&S sauce, leaving it to simmer for another half hour before adding raisins (a substitute for sultanas, which I forgot to buy…) and pine nuts.

While that was all going on, I cooked some really funky semolina pasta that I’d found at Woollies. The packet didn’t have a name for them, so let’s just called them twisty bits.

Finally, to the duck sauce, I added finely chopped parsley, the juice and rind of an orange, two knobs of butter, a glug of red wine vinegar, some grated parmesan cheese and the drained twisty pasta.



Sorry about the photo – it was the steam. Cool huh?

The verdict? Cheers all round. Mum and Evans (who I’d asked in the hope that at least a second person would hopefully enjoy the duck with Mum) absolutely loved it. And you know what? So did I. Apparently, if a duck is hidden in amongst all those other amazing flavours, it’s not half bad. And the flavours were amazing. You could taste them all – the orange, cinnamon, red wine vinegar. All working together to hide a duck and play games with me. The test will be when I cook the final duck recipe next week – a simple roast duck with plum chutney. I don’t know what kind of bird thinks it can hide behind a damn chutney. Just try me Daffy!

Xx

A squash by any other name would taste as sweet…

If there’s one thing I’ve learned while cooking with Jamie, it’s that just coz we’re part of the colonies, doesn’t mean we speak the same language.

Incredible Boiled Butternut Squash with Squash Seed & Parmesan Pangrattato

You know that I’ve struggled to match Jamie’s fish, I’ve had a few issues with seasonal produce and getting my timing right and have moved Wikipedia to my favourites as I look up ingredients that have a different name down under.

Well, we know that a squash is a pumpkin, but why? It’s coz the Poms think that pumpkins are pig food, so if they call it a squash instead, they can eat it without feeling like a pig…

Did I wiki that? Nah, just made it up. But I don’t think I’m too far off.

Well, I love pumpkin and so does Mum, so we made the last vegie recipe in the book the centrepiece of a simple Sunday night dinner. The recipe says to boil a whole pumpkin for an hour, so I thought I’d done really well when I found a mini butternut pumpkin – a whole pumpkin, but just enough for two.

Whole pumpkin, into a saucepan of boiling salted water, lid on, turned down to a simmer and left to it’s own devices for an hour. Meanwhile, I pan fried breadcrumbs, fresh thyme, dried chilli and S&P with oil to make the pangrattato. Once the pumpkin was done (super soft and squashy – pardon the pun…), I drained it and sliced it in half. This was the bit where the mini pumpkin turned out to be not so great. Once in half, I was supposed to scoop out the seeds, wash them and then fry them up with the pangrattato. But… THERE WERE NO SEEDS. Mum tells me that this is because it was a mini (a baby) and therefore hadn’t developed enough to have grown it’s own seeds yet. Poor little fella.

So I had to skip the seeds and just add the parmesan and some chopped parsley to the breadcrumbs to finish off the pangrattato. I chopped the pumpkin (still with it’s skin on) into chunks, drizzled it (from a height, as directed – though I’m not sure exactly why it had to be from a height) with olive oil and balsamic vinegar then sprinkled the pangrattato on top.

We had sausages and peas with it, so it was in the end, a sort of a fancy mash and it was in the end very squashy, but it is still a pumpkin, no matter what they say…

Xx

Better than the best. Better than the rest.

I’m a little delayed with my posting this week, but on Monday night, I had a very successful night in the kitchen and the success has lived on through the week.

Pan-Fried Lemon Sole Fillets with Salsa Verde
Ultimate Gingerbread

I ducked into the fish shop near my house on the way home from the bus stop and yet again I couldn’t get a UK fish. I was prepared for this and had wikipedia’d sole and discovered that the best substitute in Down Under is flounder or plaice. Unfortunately my local fish shop (what is with my range of fish shops!) didn’t have either of these, so I was sent off on my merry way with a fillet of baby snapper.

First up I made the salsa verde by finely chopping a bunch of parsley, half a bunch of mint & half a bunch of basil, a clove of garlic, some polski orgorki (pickled cucumbers!) & a couple of anchovies and mixing the with capers, Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil and S&P. I did a taste test and added some more salt and red wine vinegar then sat it aside.

I shook the baby snapper fillet in a bag of seasoned flour and pan fried it quickly on both sides in a hot pan, then served it all up with some steamed potatoes and broccoli.




It was so good. The salsa verde was delicious and easily and something that I would make again and serve with fish or even a beautiful piece of rare roast beef. The crispy fish was perfectly done and went beautifully with the salsa v. Loved it.

Dinner done and cleaned up, I went back into the kitchen to make the gingerbread. It seemed like it would be a fiddly recipe, as there quite a few ingredients, but with the shortbread made the night before, it actually ended up being really simple and really worth it.

In a food processor, I whizzed up the shortbread with some brown sugar and ground ginger, until it was a massive amount of breadcrumbs (I almost had an eruption out the top of the food processor…). I set aside 100g of the crumbs then added mixed peel, uncrystallised ginger, flour, baking powder and more ground ginger to the food processor and whizzed some more. In a saucepan I melted golden syrup with butter, then stirred through the crumbs til it was a big brown paste-y-kinda-dough-thing. You know what I mean. I spread it thinly into a large flat baking pan and popped it into a warm oven for 15 minutes. As soon as I took it out of the oven, I sprinkled the reserved crumbs over the top and pressed them down with the back of a spatula, waited five minutes til it cooled slightly, sliced it and left it to cool completely in the pan.

On Tuesday, I took it to work. On Tuesday I also experienced a type of office stampede. I didn’t even let anyone know that I’d put a cake tin of gingerbread in the kitchen, I just sat it there with a note that said “eat me”. But I could hear them all scurrying about, whispering that there was food in the kitchen and when I went back 2 minutes later to make myself a cup of tea to have with my piece of gingerbread (thankfully reserved before I put the tin down!), it was all gone. Just like that.

A couple of the girls in my pod had a piece and I am very proud to say they loved it. These girls are seasoned bakers. They know their cakes, their biscuits and their slices and I was told by more than one of them, that it was the best gingerbread they’d ever eaten! One of them said it was better than the gingerbread from Grassmere. Apparently that’s a big compliment, so I looked up Grasmere and it’s famous for it’s gingerbread.

http://www.grasmeregingerbread.co.uk/index.htm

Get outta town eh? I beat those Grasmerians at their own game! Go Jamie and me!

Needless to say, the recipe makes quite a lot of gingerbread and my pod-mates and I have happily been munching away on gingerbread all week long. Lovely.

Xx

Long, green and mean to be seen.

I’ve been proved wrong many times, in life and by Jamie in the last 10 months, and tonight I was again happily proved wrong.

Baked & Dressed Courgettes

The picture for this recipe of whole baked zucchini’s was not an attractive one. It’s a row of greeny/brown zucchini’s. I know it doesn’t sound bad, but I’ve showed it to a few people and the reaction has never been one of “wow, they look amazing, can I come over for that recipe”, it’s been more like “wow, that looks pretty bad, bags not coming for that one!” Nice.

So I saved it for a night of dinner for one and rinsed the zucchini’s to make sure they were clean, then dry, rolled them in oil and S&P and put them in the oven for 15 minutes. While still hot, I splashed them with some red wine vinegar and sprinkled with finely chopped mint and parsley.

Served up with lamb and cous cous, I eat my words (and those of all you nay-sayers out there) and say it was delicious. I mean it’s not surprising it was tasty, I love zuch’s, but you’ve seen the photo - they don’t look that bad. I think for once my food photography was superior to Jamie’s. Go me!

Xx

PS – I’ve just pulled some shortbread out of the oven. It forms the basis for Jamie’s gingerbread, which I’ll make tomorrow night. It’s not your typical gingerbread, but it sounds like it’s going to be pretty tasty.

You take the high (moral) road and I’ll take the low road.

I’m sorry, but I cheated. And this close to the end. I feel ashamed.

OK, no I don’t. But I am sorry for that. It’s just, you know the situation with the leftovers and I just couldn’t bring myself to buy more red fish when I already had red fish in my fridge. A red fish is a red fish is a red fish right? Right?

Pan-Fried Red Mullet with Crispy Breadcrumbs & a Herby Tomato Salad

When I wikipedia’d red mullet, the picture of the fish was very similar to the picture when I wiki’d salmon, so I figured I was OK. Plus, I wasn’t sure I could go into battle with the FSL again. I’ve still got about seven seafood recipes to go, so she’s still got plenty of opportunity to disappoint me. What’s one little short cut to save face?

Anyhoot, enough with the excuses. What’s done is done and to be quite honest, I was happy with the result.
For the herby tomato salad, I combined some roughly chopped tomatoes (big red and cherry grape) with olive oil, red wine vinegar, S&P, finely chopped fennel and torn up basil (fresh from Mum’s garden). Tossed and left to sit.

The salmon – a.k.a. red mullet – was tossed lightly in seasoned flour then quickly pan fried in hot oil, til brown and crispy.

The breadcrumbs were then fried in the same pan with dried chilli, lemon zest (back on form!) and thyme leaves.

I tossed everything together, served and tucked in.



It was absolutely sensational. Fresh and crispy. Probably more suited to a Summer lunch than a winter dinner, but no complaints from me.

And, shock horror, after making spicy Thai fish cakes the day before, I have now finished with my friend Sammy the Salmon. And without any wastage. Very proud.

Xx