sour-sweet lamb yahni with black-eyed peas and almonds

{c}
a Turkish dish, served with orzo pilav.

A bit more of an exploration of the Turquoise cookbook, which has so far yielded loads of unexpected pleasures.
The dish had strong echoes of the delicious north african dish of lamb and quince tagine, though the sour elements were stronger. Here the fruit is dried sour cherries -- which were wickedly expensive, even at the market at $60 a kg; I needed only about 1/2 a cup, but even that was a noticeable cost. They are truly delicious though. I had a bit more meat than I thought, so I ended up extending the dried fruit element by adding some dried cranberries. They weren't as quite as sweet as the cherries, but it worked. A surprising element was that a substantial part of the sauce was apple cider vinegar, which was balanced with honey. It was an interesting mix and the result gave a pleasing tartness under the sweet flavours. The black-eyed peas were delicious, cooked for so long in that sauce.

I've tried almost all the pilavs in Turquoise, they are all delicious and all wicked in some way. This has loads of butter. You cook the orzo pasta at the start in quite a lot of butter until the butter's all foamy and the pasta starts to brown, and then add the rice and stock. It looks good and tastes better.

And a bowl of new season brussels sprouts. I love them, so long as they aren't overcooked. They have to still be bright green.

dessert: strawberries and icecream. I know it's not the season for the berries, but the woman at the fruit stall I go to recommended them highly, and they were indeed sweet and delicious. I tried not to think of the travel distance they involved, since they must have come from Queensland ...

ROTI CHANAI

It was 30 years ago when I first tried Roti Chanai. I was backpacking in Singapore and had these thin flaky flat breads for breakfast with a curry dipping sauce. Now I usually don't go for curry for breakfast but these breads were sensational.
Ten years later I introduced R to them. We had just arrived in Penang after an overnight boat trip from Medan, Sumartra. The sun was just thinking about rising as we staggered, bleary-eyed off the boat, loaded down by our packs. The path from the dock lead through a food market were I spotted a stall selling them. I suggested to R that we have breakfast and it was lust at first bite. She spent the rest of our time in Penang fretting about were she would get her next Roti fix. If it wasn't for all the other food delights Penang had to offer it would have been Roti for breakfast, dinner and tea.
Back in Coburg there has been a serious lack of good Roti. Frozen ones that you can reheat in the microwave have been around for quite a while but this is not the same as freshly made Roti.
More recently a couple of south Indian restaurants have opened up selling delicious Roti, so the harmony of the universe has been restored.
Better still C's recently acquired Madhur Jaffrey cookbook has a recipe.
The thought of freshly made roti for late breakfast was just too much so I decided to give it a go.
The recipe is pretty simple, mix 300g plain flour with 4tbsp sweetened condensed milk, 4 tbsp oil and 1 egg, lightly beaten. Add 120ml warm water to make a soft dough. Knead for 10 mins, divide into 12 balls. cover with a bit more oil, then put on a plate covered with cling wrap and into the fridge over night. I can do all that.
Next morning roll the dough balls out on an oiled surface until paper thin. Pick up the edge of the dough and stretch them further if possible. Roll the sheets of dough up into tight snakes and coil them onto a board. Cover with cling wrap and leave for 30 mins.
Roll the out again until very thin and plonk onto a hot cast iron pan with a little oil. cook for about 10 secs and flip over. Cook each side twice fro 10 secs and service with hot curry sauce.

The verdict: Well the local Indian restaurant needn't panic just yet. Although very nice for a first attempt the other layers weren't as flaky as the best roti. The dough needed to be a bit softer as it was too elastic to be able to stretch out properly. Next time I'll try adding a bit more water.

Ribeye roast beef with Roman gnocchi followed by apple rhubarb crumble

This recipe was based on a couple of ideas from Stephanie Alexander's "the cook's companion"
The ribeye roast was a 2 rib (1600 grams) came with back bone still attached so I removed the backbone, and used roasting times like it was 1/2 on the bone & 1/2 fillet.

The roast beef is coated in a paste of mustards for at least an hour or so before roasting:
Could not find the recipe book where this idea came from so...
The mustard paste was made up of:
Dijon and Russian mustards some olive oil and freshly ground black and white pepper
Russian mustard from Cunliffe & Waters Count Vasiliev's Russian Mustard.

Simple Horseradish sauce from Stephanie (page 315)
freshly grated horseradish, a root freshly dug from the garden, used about 1 cubic inch to form 1 tbsp of finely gated radish.
mix with a little fresh cream and white wine vinegar to form a creamed horseradish
then added dill seeds (2 tsps), didn't have the fresh dill leaves, and used yoghurt rather than sour cream.

{R} Roman Gnocchi recipe came from the "Italy the beautiful" cookbook and was simply delicious, and an excellent substitute for potatoes or other starch.

Roast carrots (fresh from the garden) and roasted onions and shallots in the same roasting pan as the ribeye. Vegetables were rounded out by steamed cauliflower.

Accompanying wine was a Rutherglen Durif, the legendary Warrabilla cleanskin ~2005


{C} Dessert was rhubarb and apple crumble with special seeds in the crumble with hippie heritage that {T} could not find the words to express
Accomanpied by Brown Brothers Special late harvested Orange Muscat & Flora 2005

Rating: 3 stars total

Probably cannot get a TEAM star for Affordable due to the cost of the ribeye cut of beef
but certainly was tasty, with a really nice

Accompanying wine was a
used a reasonable amount of local ingredients, especially the horseradish!

T *
E *
A 1/2 *
M 1/2 *

= 3 stars total

4 star rating: the TEAM approach

Rating: 4 stars rating system, or the TEAM approach to cooking

TEAM
l Tasty
l Easy to make
l Affordable = Cheap ingredients
l Most ingredients available locally, ideally from the garden

Meals are rated a star for each of the 4 sub-categories of achievement.

If desperate a 1/2 star can be awarded, particularly in the TASTY category

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ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

chicken curry and cumquat pudding

{C}
No, not all at once.
And yes, it does so go together.

First, with inspiration from curry queen Madhur Jaffrey's ultimate curry bible, was the chicken curry in cashew-cononut sauce (from Sri Lanka), paired with cauliflower in a mustard seed sauce. And rice. Fragrant, loads of spice -- I love the fact Jaffrey goes for whole handfuls of all sorts of spices in her curries (and when she doesn't, we do) -- none of this pinch of this and quarter teaspoon of that . It makes the sauces rich and thick and delicious. Plenty of sauce left over for dipping roti for a weekend breakfast.

Then -- and just because we still had candied cumquats still, made from the last of the cumquat crop -- we had Maggie Beer's steamed cumquat and almond pudding, topped with candied cumquats. With cream. There was some soy milk ice cream in the freezer. The person who originally brought it into the house apologised for bringing it as soon as he tasted it, and warned us that it was inedible and should be thrown out immediately. But the lads had to taste it anyway, and it was variously described as tasting like plastic ice cream and whipped fat. In any case, totally vile.

Back to the pudding. I love a good steamed pudding, but it still feels odd to have to make a dessert at 3 so you can cook it for 4-5 hours and eat it at 8pm. Still, it's comforting to hear it rattling away in its pot all afternoon. We didn't have a trivet to keep it off the bottom of the pot, so I used a collection of egg rings. Worked just fine.

It's only the second time I've ever made a steamed pudding (I was always a main course kind of girl, not a sweets one), so seeing it come out of its pudding basin looking all perfect is a matter of considerable pride. Next stop, sticky date pudding.

And then, finally, chocolate. Because there's always chocolate. And maybe a small something as a digestif. frozen vodka ...

Frantic fish dish

Bought a Trevelly Roast at the Victoria Market this morning. By the time I had got home after work that evening, inspiration on what to do with it was somewhat lacking! So after a quick cruise around the garden this was the result.
"Parsley, Yes that will do, and what about some rocket ,after all no shortage of that in the garden at present!. Garlic chives, why not!'
(Back in the kitchen) " Why don't I puree those with a handful of almonds, some olive oil, a dash of chillies preserved in oil, a few cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. A sort of 'pesto' with a twist! now lets smear the mix all over the fish, wrap in foil, bake and see what happens"
(Accompaniments) "While we are at it boil up some of the Jerusalem artichokes we dug up last week and then puree them with the last of the pumpkin, a different slant on 'bubble and squeak'. Now how about the remaining brussel sprouts simmered in white miso"


Results: Cooked the brussel sprouts for too long, puree was very tasty, and the fish was very good if a little overcooked, 30 mins at 170 degrees C would have been enough.

Rating: 4 stars, or the TEAM approach

* Tasty
* Easy to make
* Affordable = Cheap ingredients
* Most ingredients available locally, ideally from the garden

TEAM

Binge drinking (Kevin Rudd) part 1 - Beer

Yesterday Kevin Rudd's cultural police declared that
any more than 2 standard drinks (2 sniffs of alcohol) per day constituted binge drinking.
Hence, in a rush to retrospectively gain notoriety we are documenting our drinking habits.

First is Beers. We have made, under strict control of the purity laws" (only using "certified" cans of wort), a number of brews to assist in the binge drinking.

The beers made so far in 2008 are listed below, in order of brewing:

1. Wheat Beer
2. Czech Pilsner
3. Belgium Ale
4. Scottish Ale
5. Irish Stout
6. Wheat Beer II
   
7. Chocolate Mahogany Porter

Next on agenda is a repeat of the Scottish Ale due to overwhelming popularity.
This full bodied drop was a bit watery after only a month in the bottle but has since matured nicely and after 2.5 months is showing great potential as a satisfying winter ale.
The Irish Stout is at last also beginning to develop a mature complexity of flavours to match last years brew (after 7 weeks in the bottle)

Last year's Stout (Winter of 2007) is drinking very well at this time.

We have brewed a second batch of Scottish Ale this weekend (21 June 2008) due to plummeting stocks of all beer types in the cellar.