Vietnamese summer salad

Does anyone have a better salad than this? its still pretty damned good but not perfect. I added fish sause and about a handful of mint.

much better...it also needs more chilli....lots of chilli

http://yummies.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/vietnamese-cold-beef-salad/

Ingredients
¼ cup light soy sauce
¼ cup lime juice
¼ cup water
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs minced garlic
1 tsp red chili sauce/paste/oil
1 ½ tsp minced ginger
½ pound flank steak
1 cup fresh basil leaves (I didnt have this)
1 cup fresh cilantro leaves (or this)
1 cup fresh mint leaves (this I had...it was good)
½ red onion, sliced finely (used shallots instead)
½ seeded English cucumber, halved and sliced finely
2 cups julienned carrots
½ cup dry roasted peanuts

*Optional* cooked rice, prepared as you like

Directions
Combine light soy sauce, lime juice, water, sugar, garlic, and chili sauce/paste/oil and ginger in medium bowl. Whisk or stir to blend. Pour approximately 5 tablespoons into a resealable plastic bag or large container. Cover and refrigerate the remaining dressing. Add steak to bag/container, seal, and turn to coat. Chill 30 minutes or overnight (for a more stronger flavor) to marinate.

Heat broiler to 400 degrees F. Broil steak 8 to 10 minutes, turning once, or until medium-rare. Let rest 5 minutes and slice thinly at an angle, across the grain.

Place basil, cilantro, mint, onion, cucumbers, and carrots in large bowl and toss. Top with sliced steak, drizzle with reserved dressing, and sprinkle with peanuts.

Can be eaten with a bowl of cooked rice or alone for a healthy low carb alternative. Let the ingredients mingle overnight for a more intense flavor. If you choose to do this then keep the basil, mint and cilantro out of the dish till you are ready to eat to keep them from getting droopy in the dish.

Roman Cheesecake

It's been a while since I cooked it for Yule Feast and Cold Wars. I have a cunning plan to put it in many places so it can't be lost.


Savillum (Cato 84)
(Cato - 180 BC
Cato. Liber de agricultura)

Savillum hoc modo facito: Farinae selibram, casei P. II S una
commisceto quasi libum, addito mellis P. - et ovum unum. Catinum
fictile oleo unguito. Ubi omnia bene commiscueris, in catinum indito,
catinum testo operito. Videto ut bene percocas medio, ubi altissimum
est. Ubi coctum erit, catinum eximito, melle unguito, papver
infriato, sub testum subde paulipser, postea eximito. Ita pone cum
catillo et lingula.

Make a savillum this: Mix 1/2 libra flour and 2 1/2 libra cheese, as
is done for libum. Add 1/4 libra honey and 1 egg. Grease an
earthenware bowl with oil. When you have mixed the ingredients well,
pour into the bowl and cover the bowl with an earthenware testo. See
that you cook it well in the middle, where it is highest. When it is
cooked, remove the bowl, spread with honey, sprinkle with poppy, put
it back beneath the testo for a moment, and then remove. Serve it
thus with a plate and spoon.

Serves 4
750g ricotta
1 cup flour
6 Tbs honey
1 egg
2 Tbs poppy seeds

Blend cheese flour, 4 Tbs honey and egg. Grease baking pan with oil.
Pour in mixture and bake in hot hot (400F) for 20-30 minutes. Cover
with foil for first 10-15 mins. Remove from oven drizzle with honey
and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Replace in oven for 5 minutes and
serve.

The above recipe, translation and redaction comes from Giacosa, Ilaria
Gozzini, (1994), A Taste of Ancient Rome, The University of Chicago
Press, Chicago.

And here is the recipe we actually used at the feasts.... not quite
the same, but I didn't re-read the recipe at Cold War, and the result
was so well received, we just did the same again for Yule.

3kg ricotta
750g honey
200g poppy seeds
4 cups flour
5 eggs
makes about 12 cakes

Mix every thing together. Shove into buttered foil pie tins. Bake in
oven about 200C-ish until starting to brown. Allow to cool a little
before attempting to stick in head.

Le parfait d'armangnac aux pruneaux

Frozen prune mousse with armangnac (with commentary)

450g best quality presoaked dried prunes, stoned (I got a packet from the shops, that were soggy in their bag already, stoned, and they seemed to work fine. Perhaps Oz has better access to prunes?)
a few strips of lemon zest (I could have gone a little heavier on this I think)
4 tbsp armagnac (I used brandy. Couldn't get armangnac)
500ml thick double cream
whites of two large eggs
2 tbsp caster sugar
a pinch of salt


Soak the prunes with the lemon zest and armangnac for an hour or so. Remove lemon zest and whizz prunes and armangnac in food processor until a puree.
Whisk egg whites with salt until stiff, then add sugar. (And then whisk some more? The recipe says nothing. I whisked, and don't think it did any harm.)
Whisk the cream until it has a floopy consistency. (Why? Surely thick double cream has been beaten enough already? I had to be careful not to make butter)
Carefully fold the prune puree into the cream and then, with a wooden spoon, fold in the stiffened egg whites. (I think all the egg whites are doing is cutting the thickness of the cream. I may be wrong)
Spoon into individual serving pots and place in the freezer for no more than 2 hours. (it says 6-8 serves - I filled 10 espresso mugs, and then a small pyrex dish, and had plenty of bowl to lick. No idea how big their pots are!)

Goat in Goat with Goat

http://chrisbadenoch.com/2010/03/22/goat-in-goat-with-goat/

I cant claim credit for this. It come from liam but .... COOOL :-)

Fruitcake for BaggyT

Made from stewed fruit that was over-spiced. Recipe adapted from Ye Olde "Day to Day Cookery Book" which is the standard text HomeEc cookbook in Queensland.

3 cups cold spicey stewed fruit (BaggyT's special mix of a besquillion secret fruits and spices but had in there - apples, cinnamon sticks, half a lemon, ground cloves, honey, brown sugar. Fish out lemon and cinnamon sticks before making cake)
2 eggs
1 cup self-raising flour
1 1/4 plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix fruit and eggs. Fold in sifted flours and baking soda. Stick in two loaf tins lined with baking paper. Cook in 150C oven for 1 hour or until skewer is clean. The end.

It's very good with icecream. Be sure the fruit really is cold before you put the eggs in. I was never a patient cook, but eggs poached in fruit is not a good look

Mmm bunny

Just in case you missed it elsewhere...

About 300gm pork belly, fried off, and as it caught on the bottom of the pan, deglased with red wine. Removed.
Rabbit, halved to fit in the pot, browned in the pork juices and more olive oil. Removed.
Two onions, lotsa garlic, into the rabbit/pork juices. Thyme, rosemary chucked in, then sliced fresh tomatoes. Add the meat back in when everything's a little softer, top-up with vegeta stock. (I didn't put enough liquid in I think. The resulting rabbit was a little dry, and could have been moister. He cooked for the whole time not wholely covered. Next time, enough liquid to cover.)
Stuck in the oven for close to 2 hours.
At about the 40 minute mark, I had a smell, and while it was good it needed...something...sweet? I threw in a good slug of orange flower balsamic vinegar. I love this vinegar - more please if you're heading to tassie! It seemed to be a good idea.
About 30 minutes before I wanted to eat it I threw in a large cup of 'french' lentils. I need to remember that while it takes about 30 minutes to cook a cup of lentils on the stove, it takes a little longer in the oven, and they suck liquid like a bastard. So next time, the lentils go in about 45 minutes before the eating, maybe even an hour, and a splash more liquid.
Fz stripped the carcass and stirred the meat back into the lentils. Cunning way to make the meat accessible to all. Could be left in the juices for a while too, to soften up some more.

It was tasty. Not pork, not duck, not chicken...but very enjoyable. The last bunny I ate was well musky, and I didn't like it. This is only my second tasting attempt. I'm not sure I'll make it a thing, but it could be a fun party trick. The bunny cost $14, and the whole meal was about 20 bucks, and would have fed 6 people happily. I have 2 small serves left now in the freezer, and with either bread or potato we will have a tasty second dinner sometime.
I served it with steamed potatoes and a salad of bitey rocket and tomatoes, with a tiny drizzle of orange balsamic. And a bottle of Italian red.

I plan to pull this new knowledge out for Festy Feast, with added porks and lentils to feed the masses.

Onion Jam

Basic premise

1 brown onion
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Cook everything together.

What I actually did was 4 times the above quantities with 1/2 clove of garlic and about a punnet of home grown cherry tomatoes.

It's completely yummy on toast with a slice of cheese. I just need to cut the onion up a little more next batch.

Epic BBQ vs Summer Heat

I so wasn't in the mood for making something hot, or meaty. And I'm glad I didn't - there was so much meat already. So I made mojito iceblocks, in little plastic shot glasses. There was 58 of them, and they kept us cool and minty! And I made sure I followed a recipe, 'cause then I knew that the alcohol amount would be enough to ensure freezing.
Win!
I'm interested in some of the other recipes, if they're available - jerk marinade, for starters!

General Bottling

*queue Hey Hey It's Saturday cheesy memories*

Hello! General Bottling here!

Okay, enough of that.

Over at BT's we've been talking about bottling stuff, and I though I'd copy down my notes on bottling stuff, the basic methods you can apply to anything you want to bottle, like jams, sauces, pickles, stewed fruit etc. I still find it disconcerting that it's called canning on the US. Bottles, people. Bottles.

In general, to bottle something:

1) the liquid must be boiling hot. If you've let something cool down, bring it back up to a boil for a few minutes.

2) the jars and lids must also be hot, to avoid explodifications. Hot liquid + cool jar can sometimes = bang. You can be mildly cheaty and do this straight out of the dishwasher. Or if they're already clean, microwave them (except the lids, put them in a bowl of boiling water). I tend to stick jars and lids on a tray in the oven on about 100C until you say OUCH when you touch them.

3) put your hot bottles onto a teatowel on the kitchen bench to help avoid other explodifications. Hot bottle + hard or cool surface may = bang.

4) leave about 1 - 1.5 cm for expanding/contracting at the top. Where the bottle becomes the neck is often a good guide.

5) ideally, wait until the liquid is no longer steaming, then put lids on. Too hot can mean too much condensation. If it's too cool, you may not get a good seal.

6) once filled, you can do one of three things:

A: Seal lids about quarter turn too loose (ie, not completely tight) and boil in a saucepan of water, making sure the water doesn't come right up to the neck. The boiling expands the bottle, causing a tight seal. You still need to check this seal and make sure it's tight. It usually is.

B: Seal lids completely (as tightly as you can by hand) and turn upside down to cool. Turning upside down helps to create a vacuum against the lid as it cools, thus making the seal tight.

C: Be a slack tart and just seal tightly. I like to think this isn't completely slack, because if I turn jam upside down it would set like that and then be messy-looking when I turn it back upright. I do it for sloppy things though.

7) Rest the bottles on a teatowel until room temperature (see explodifications, bottles thereof).

8) In theory, pop-tops should pop down. If they haven't, and they pop down when you press them, it's worked. I usually have a few which go SNAP and it's very satisfying ;-) If they don't, it's still probably worked but you might like to store them in the fridge just in case. So far I haven't had any problems.

9) I've used some jars with plastic screw lids (like the Vegemite jars) for things that either aren't going to be kept for very long, or are going to be kept in the fridge. So far, so good.

Got any other tips to add?


Note: As exciting as it sounds, I haven't had any exploderating bottles experiences, nor do I want to. I'll leave that to Dr Nik to explore ;-)

Sweet Tomato Chutney

8 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
5 inch piece of ginger, roughly chopped
2x400g tins chopped tomatoes, or 800g peeled fresh
300 clear vinegar
350gm jaggery or brown sugar
2 tablespoons sultanas
2 teasp salt
3/4 teasp cayenne pepper
chili powder (optional)

Combine garlic, ginger and half the toms in a blender and blend till smooth.
Put the rest of the tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, sultanas and salt in a large, heavy-based saucepan. Bring to the boil and and add the garlic and ginger mixture. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 90-120 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick enough to tall off a spoon in sheets. Make sure the mixture doesn't catch / burn.
Add the cayenne. For a hotter chutney, add the chili. Leave to cool, then pour into steralized jars. Store in a cool place, or in the fridge.
Makes 2 cups.

I find that the cayenne is enough to give this quite a nice warmness, without being evil. I always add a little more garlic, of course. And I was mad enough to take the skins off the cherry tomatoes before I made it, and I think it was worth it.

From The Food Of The World

Productive!

Today, I've turned 2.5 kilos of cherries into jam, using this recipe. I'm yet to see if it will set - I think it will. I cooked it for far longer than recommended, convinced it wouldn't set each time I was ready with jars...I'm a jam beginner. On the dream wish gift list now? A thermometer!

This cooking frenzy was brought on by a buying frenzy yesterday at the markets. We picked up a box of toms for 5 bucks, and the 5 kilos of cherries was 6. Sadly, I might have got most of the 5k out of the box if I'd done this yesterday. The compost is happy and dripping red.

There's about 800gms of cherries left. I might make muffins. Or jelly - I'm keen to try that out, now that I know about gelatin. And I'm not scared of hand-pitting the last of them. Not now.

Two kilos of toms became roasted tomato puree, using this recipe. I'll slip that into some freezer bags soon. It tastes good - better than the old eye-tie/aussie boil up. I might finish the rest of the box that way. Most of it will be a donation to Pasta Night.

Also got a fist full of basil from the markets for a buck. That's become pesto for Pasta Night, using pine nuts, brazil nuts and almonds that got a quick and dirty dry roast beforehand - so dirty, in fact, that I burnt a few. Pesto still tastes grand though!

What did you cook this Sunday?

Christmas Cooking

It is the season to eat until you explode!!!! and the need to spend days sitting infront of the boiling oven in 33C heat preparing.

We love it. and dam you freaky "White Christmas" Euro/Americanos

So...to the cooking

Zucchini Pickle

This was Liams discovery while he was sitting around being a French housewife and I was the bread winner before we left on the Euro tour. We survived on this for a couple of months while living as hobos. In the end it was so good we were rationing so we didnt run out.

1.0 kg zucchini
4 onions
2 apples
Apple cider vinegar
500g sugar
Salt
1 tblsp Tumeric
2 tsp Curry powder
1 tsp Cayenne pepper
1 tblsp Brown mustard seeds

Dice the zucchini, onions, apples into 5mm pieces (+- 1mm ...yes im an engineer).

Add about 100ml of water and boil them until they are soft.

Add 400ml apple cider vinegar (important here to adjust to taste, ive killed too many things by just following the recipe), sugar, 1 tablespoon salt, tumeric, curry powder, cayenne pepper and mustard seeds.

Boil for 25-30 minutes and thicken with 1 tablespoon cornflour and a little vinegar (make them into a paste) and boil for another five minutes.

Pizza Tartiflet

This is a classic Marseillais pizza. using creme freche instead of a tomato base. For the fully classic marseille experience its cooked in a woodfired pizza oven in the back of a truck (yep, smoke stack out the roof and everything). This was our little christmas eve dinner.

1 Pizza base
1 onion
2 large potatoes steamed and sliced
200g of bacon pieces
a small can of mushrooms (or fresh)
Roblochon
2 soup spoons of creme fraiche
parsley
salt, pepper

Fry the bacon pieces, after a couple of minutes add the onions and mushrooms. Fry for a bit, add the parsley and salt and pepper

Butter the base with crème fraîche. Lots of Creme fraiche. Put on the potato slices followed by cheese and cook at 180C.

Shredded Pork Stew

So I know that a lot of the folks who read this blog are in Australia, and Australians don't on the whole eat a lot of pork (just try to get decent lamb in this country though - it probably came from NZ) but I thought I'd pass this along.

True Mexican cooking - as opposed to Tex-Mex, which I also like and which is most of what you get in anything called a Mexican restaurant - involves a lot of rich stews and/or stewlike substances stuffed into other things. And often, for whatever reason, their stews involve the meat being shredded, instead of cubed. I like the texture this leads to, and it also helps get those yummy sauces spread around a bit. So when Coz brought home a slow-cooking "crock pot" the other day, I thought I'd try to make a shredded pork stew, though the shredding technique should work equally well with any meat in just about anything stew-like. I started from some recipe I found online and as usual ended up tweaking things fairly severely, but the first version last week went something like this:

~1 lb. beans (I think they were pintos) soaked overnight with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic and a couple of dried chilies. Cooked in the slow-cooker for about 6 hours, then drained.

~1 lb. pork loin boiled for about an hour with a couple of bay leaves and some more crushed garlic. Skimmed the fat off the top and drained, reserving the liquid for later. Left to cool (pour cold water over it, or leave the whole pot out in the snow for a bit :) Then you literally shred it with your fingers; work the stringy fibers of the meat apart, but try not to break them too much.

~1 lb. of Italian sausage, skinned (recipe calls for chorizo, but we didn't have any.)
Saute in a big pan (I like our tall-sided paella pan for the job, as its harder to spill things out of, but a big frying pan or wok should work) until it starts to brown. Remove the sausage, but don't clean the pan.

1 large onion, sliced.
5-6 cloves of garlic, chopped.
8-9 baby potatoes, quartered.
Sautee in the juices in the same pan until the potatoes start to brown. Re-add the sausage, the shredded pork, some salt, and some baby carrots, and cook for another few minutes.

Transfer to your stewpot, and de-glaze the frypan with some red wine; pour that in too. Add your beans, some oregano, and some more chili - I used a couple of tablespoons of smoky chipotles in adobo, pureed, which are the bestest chilies ever. Added about a cup of the liquid reserved from the pork, and the rest of about a cup of red wine (what I didn't use for deglazing.) And the juice of a decent-sized lime. And 2 cans of diced tomatoes (fire-roasted; my favorites.) Oh, and some bacon left over from breakfast. Stewed this for absolutely _ages_ in the slow-cooker, but a couple of hours on a low simmer on the stove would probably do it. Served it over rice with sour cream. Yum!

Todays version of same has no beans in it, nor sausage, but a huge amount of shredded pork (whole pork shoulders are cheap to begin with AND they were on sale for half-price. I used half of what I got off the shoulder, and this stew is going to be twice as big as the last batch.) Gave in to temptation and just used a whole head of garlic this time. Put the carrots in early with the potatoes so they get that almost-burnt carmelly flavour that carrots do. Added cubed eggplant and sliced capsicums when the veggies were about half-done. Used about the same amount of chipotles - for the double batch - and added a bunch of fire-roasted milder Hatch chilies. Twice as much tomatoes. Half again the red wine. A bit of ground cumin. I'm a little worried that dropping the sausage and pre-boiling the meat will mean there isn't enough fat in it (Hey! Fat is good!), but its a stew; it can't exactly dry out on me. Smells good anyways - I'll let you know.

Tomotoes

I have a billion baby toms. I'm open to suggestions - what the hell am I going to do with them all?

So far, it's been:
Bruchetta
Salsa (really good! will post my ideas here later)
Pasta sauce (handy serves in freezer)
Salads

Last year I made chutney. But we didn't eat it all. Though a jar of chutney could be a good christmas pressie for mum.
Yesterday, I should have left some sliced toms out there, and harnessed the power of the blazing heat and sun to dry them. Oh well. Live and learn.
I've been taking them to work too, and feeding my colleagues tasty home made toms from the fridge.

Any other ideas?

Hi Kim!

Nuts!

Tried my own muesli bars today. In fact, they're still in the oven. I hope I remember to take a photo!
So, the doc and I are still searching for an answer to my lack of B12. But she's circling around coeliac, so I thought I might test out a gluten-free diet for 2 weeks, and see what happens. If it's a reality, then I guess I'd better get use to it anyway. Gawd. I'd always hoped I'd never be one of the high-maintenance guests at parties.

So, I was always going to make muesli bars. But now I can't make them with oats. So I made peanuts the base.

400gm peanuts
100gm almond slivers
165gm 'seed mix' (papitas and sunflowers)
100gm sesame seeds
150gm cashews

Roasted at 160 in oven for 20 minutes.
The peanuts had their skins on, so after the 20 mins I played with them until I'd got most off.

The glue roughly follows Moni's recipe - 2 big dessert spoonfuls of peanut butter, honey and brown sugar. I could have done with a tiny bit more glue, I think. Of, and a pinch of salt.
I mixed it all up, and pasted it into the lamington tray. Important to keep the glue warm, otherwise it's really hard to mix. Spose if the nuts had still been hot, that would be a different story!
Threw it all in the oven, and left it for 10 minutes.
Then put baking paper over it, and gave it a damn good pressing! With a tea towel to avoid the heat.
Back in the oven for 15.
Out to take of the paper. I'm glad I did this - pulling the cooled stuck nuts off the paper for nibbles didn't work - they were stuck. It was really easy to pull it off when hot.
Back intot he oven for 5 to dry out a little more.
It's cooling now, and here's a picture of it! I hope it's tasty!

LATER: They were well tasty. A little heavy on the sesame, but great nonetheless. Mores soon!

Leeky joy

I grew leeks!
I've been waiting for them to get big enough to eat...I mean, I knew they were growing on down under the ground, where I couldn't see, but, you know, it was my first time...
I turned them into potato and leek soup. First time for that too. I read a few recepies, hated them all, and made one up. Here's a ruff redaction:

butter and oil
2 huge leeks, and 2 tiny ones, chopped
garlic
many potatoes. I think they were dutch creams
vegeta stock - in cold water, and enough to cover the mix
teaspoon of cumin
salt and pepper
huge splosh of cream

Saute leeks and garlic in butter and oil. Add potatoes. Add stock. Boil and simmer until potatoes are tender. Remove and keep some liquid, just in case. Blend. Splosh in cream, bring back to heat. We ate it with parsley and chorizo garnish. And more pepper.

Was well tasty. Horray for tasty home grown leeks!

ASIDE: I also found potatoes in my garden. tiny, baby, shouldn't be allowed away from their mother kinda size. So I boiled their bottoms off, and ate them today for lunch, with a boiled egg (home made), parsley, alfalfa and mayo. Woot!

I've been busy!

I've been making potato and leek soup, and muesli bars, over at my blog.

Smoky Puttanesca

Saving this for re-use, sharing... and also asking for more puttanesca recipes, or ideas for things to try with this one; it was good, but not quite what I was going for.

Sauteed for ~3 mins:

6 cloves of garlic diced (well all right; 12. But they were tiny little things and hardly counted for half.)
Half a large Spanish onion, diced.
1 tin smoked sardines. (no anchovies :( )
1 chipotle in adobo, diced, and a bit of the adobo sauce from the tin.

Added, then simmered for ~20 minutes:
1 small tin of tomato paste + 3 tins of water.
1 medium tin of chopped fire-roasted tomatoes.
about a glass of red wine.
about a tablespoon of smoked paprika.
20 black olives, chopped.
3 tablespoons of capers.

Those chipotles are hell-on-wheels, but I think it needed a bit more hot. Liked the various smoky flavours running through it. The rough source baseline recipe called for crushed tomatoes rather than paste and water, but you work with what you've got...

Potato and Olive Salad

Kim asked for this Morrocain recipe from Claudia Rodin,

500g of new potatos (not old apparently)
3 tlb olive oil
Juice 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp paprica
1/2 tsp cumin
pinch chilli power
salt
bunch of parsley
1/2 spanish onion - chopped
12 olives

Peel and boil the potatos in salted water until tender. Drain and cut into 0.5 or 0.25 fractions. If the mean potato size < 2.5cm then scission is not necessary. In a salad bowl, add oil, lemon juice, paprika, cummin, chilli pepper and salt. While still warm add the potatos and parsley and onion and olives and agitate gently.